Roma duped into seeking Swedish asylum

An estimated 1,000 Roma people, primarily from Serbia, have been lured this year alone into travelling to Sweden in the vain hope of securing residence permits, the Swedish Migration Board has said.

Buses filled with Roma people have been pulling into Gothenburg and Malmö on an almost daily basis.

"Travel agencies run by unscrupulous businessmen are tricking already vulnerable people into coming to Sweden," said board director-general Dan Eliasson.
The migration board chief is advising Roma people not to make the long trip to Scandinavia as their chances of being granted residency are "extraordinarily small".
"They probably feel that they are living in difficult social conditions and maybe even that they are discriminated against, but this is not something that gives them the right to protection in Sweden.

"Generally they'll quickly be informed that they can't get a residence permit and they'll have to go home," said Eliasson, who added that the vast majority came to Sweden from Serbia, though some have also made their way north from Montenegro and Macedonia.
The Roma population in Serbia is considerably poorer than the wider population, and sporadic reports have emerged of violations perpetrated against Roma in Serbia, Kosovo and, recently, in Italy.

"But in order to gain asylum you need to be able to show that you are persecuted and risk violent treatment. It is very difficult to receive asylum from Europe," said Eliasson.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg 'hacked into emails of rivals and journalists'

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists.

The CEO of the world's most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy in a series of articles run by BusinessInsider.com.

As part of a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, the magazine uncovered what it claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004.

In the first instance, it said that, when Zuckerberg discovered that Harvard's student newspaper The Crimson was planning on running an article on him in 2004, he used reporters' Facebook logins to hack into their accounts.

In the second instance, the magazine claimed Zuckerberg hacked into the accounts of rivals at Harvard who accused him of stealing their idea for a social network. He then allegedly tried to sabotage the rival network they had set up.

Business Insider claimed that Zuckerberg learned The Crimson was planning to write an article on him when he was called in for an interview in 2004.

The newspaper was investigating allegations by other Harvard students that Zuckerberg had stolen their social networking idea - allegations that are now well-documented and became the subject of a $65million legal suit.
In 2004, however, Facebook - which now boasts over 400million users around the world and is an incorporated company worth millions - was still just a network confined to Harvard students known as TheFacebook.com.
At the time, Zuckerberg was involved in a now well-publicised dispute with three other Harvard students who had originally asked him to help them create an online social network.
Business Insider chronicles the dispute in detail as part of its main article on the founding of Facebook.

The other Harvard students - Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra - had accused Zuckerberg of intentionallly misleading them about his willingness to help them build their website, HarvardConnection.com.
They had approached the student newspaper, the Crimson, about their accusations.
On hearing their claims, Crimson reporters then spoke to Zuckerberg about the allegations, Business Insider said.

Zuckerberg was apparently able to convince the newspaper that he network he was building differed substantially to HarvardConnection.com, which he viewed primarily as a dating website. The newspaper pulled the story.
However after further claims emerged, Zuckerberg apparently became anxious that the paper would run a story on him after all.
Business Insider claimed he then told a friend how he had hacked into the accounts of Crimson staff.
He allegedly told the friend that he used TheFacebook.com to search for members who said they were Crimson staff.

Then, he allegedly examined a report of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com.
In the instances where they had, Business Insider claimed that Zuckerberg said he tried using those incorrect passwords to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts.
In two instances, the magazine claimed, he succeeded - and was able to read emails between Crimson staff discussing the possibility of writing an article on the accusations surrounding him.

'In other words,' Business Insider claimed, 'Mark appears to have used private login data from TheFacebook to hack into the separate email accounts of some TheFacebook users'.

It would not be the only time that Zuckerberg breached privacy, Business Insider claimed.
In a separate article in the series, the magazine alleged that Zuckerberg had also hacked into his rivals at HarvardConnection.com - which, by May of 2004, had been renamed 'ConnectU'.

Although Facebook was already wildly popular by the summer of 2004 - reaching a million users by the fall - Zuckerberg, the magazine claimed, was still concerned about his competition.
Those concerns, it was alleged, led him to hack in to ConnectU's site and make changes to multiple user profiles - including one of its founders and the fellow student accusing him of stealing the ideas for Facebook, Cameron Winklevoss
Business Insider alleged that Zuckerberg created a fake account filled with fake information for Winklevoss.

It also alleged that he logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changed their privacy settings to invisible - apparently making it harder for people to find friends on the network.
Eventually, the magazine claimed, Zuckerberg deactivated at least 20 ConnectU accounts entirely.
Business Insider admitted it was not clear how Zuckerberg could have hacked into the ConnectU accounts.
When Facebook was approached about the allegations in the Business Insider articles, the company told Mail Online: 'We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek to rewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with dated allegations.

'The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400 million people.'
However the magazine also claimed that a source close to the company said it was the fallout from instances such as these - as well as the expensive litigation with ConnectU - that has shaped Facebook's current privacy policies.
Fears over privacy present one of Facebook's biggest challenges, with the company coming under fire from users almost every time it makes a change to its privacy policies.

After its investigation, Business Insider concluded that Zuckerberg had led his ConnectU rivals on regarding his own intentions of building a social network.
But the magazine said that, in light of the fact that Zuckerberg appeared to consider the two networks as two separate things, and that he had never signed a contract with Connect U, the $65million settlement eventually paid to ConnectU was over the top.

The alleged hackings detailed above, however, it claimed were far 'more troubling'.
The claims will be read with interest by the millions of Facebook users concerned about their privacy - but the full fallout still remains to be seen.

dailymail

We must not be afraid of taking on Islamic extremists (UK)

Muslims are standing up to fundamentalist organisations such as the Islamic Forum of Europe. We should do the same, writes Andrew Gilligan

The East End has one of the best local papers in Britain, a genuine mirror of its community. But curiously, this week's issue seems to have missed a story which has been making some serious waves in that very community. One of the local MPs, Labour's Jim Fitzpatrick, was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, and on national television, as saying that his party had been infiltrated by a secretive, fundamentalist organisation, the Islamic Forum of Europe – which he compares to the Militant Tendency in the 1980s.

At the same time, the area's other MP, George Galloway, was quoted – albeit on a secretly recorded tape – as saying that the IFE played a "decisive role" in his election victory, and admitting that he owes them "more than it would be wise… for me to say". Lutfur Rahman, the council leader in Tower Hamlets, repeatedly refused to deny that the IFE helped him win the leadership. And the reports also pointed out that a great deal of public money has been channelled to IFE-linked projects, causing council officers major concerns.

The IFE, based at the hardline East London mosque, claims to be an "open and tolerant" social welfare institution. In fact, as undercover reporters for Channel 4's Dispatches found, it is working, in its own words, to change the "very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam". It may not manage that – but it has already won significant political power over a multiracial community through democratic, secular parties whose values are diametrically opposed to its own.
 
I admit an interest – I made the programme, and wrote The Sunday Telegraph report. But I think I know why others are reluctant to address the issues we raised. That reason is fear. In six months of research, we spoke to dozens of people in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party. Almost everyone who talked to us said exactly the same thing – but no one, save Mr Fitzpatrick, was brave enough to say it on the record.

Graham Taylor, the chairman of the party, has been forced to make a grovelling apology for suggesting that the town hall was a "centre of Islamic fundamentalism" (he says the comment was meant ironically). Rushanara Ali, the Labour candidate in Mr Galloway's Bethnal Green & Bow constituency, is a secular moderate. But she issued a weaselly statement which can be read, as it was no doubt intended, as an attack on Mr Fitzpatrick, who represents the neighbouring constituency of Poplar and Canning Town.

In the back of every politician's mind lurks the fear that taking on the IFE will cost them votes. In the back of every journalist's mind is the knowledge that writing anything even faintly questioning of the East London mosque will incur tedious correspondence with its hair-trigger libel lawyers. In the back of every white person's mind lurks the fear of the IFE's favoured charge, "Islamophobia".

Dispatches's answer to that charge is that 70 per cent of our interviewees were Muslim. The most important people in the film are the locals of the area – Harmuz Ali, the vice-chairman of the Brick Lane mosque, Badrul Islam, the chief executive of the Ethnic Minority Enterprise Project, and many others. They reject the IFE, knowing better than anyone that it does not represent their community. They dismiss as nonsense the claim that any attack on it is an attack on Islam itself.

Interestingly, too, the IFE's and the mosque's response to the reports has so far been rather more muted than their pre-publication threats would suggest. The Muslim community of East London is calling the IFE's bluff. Given the importance of this issue, it is time for others to find similar courage.

telegraph

DEATH LEAP OF GIRL, 15, BULLIED ON FACEBOOK

A TORMENTED public schoolgirl plunged to her death from a bridge after classmates bullied her on Facebook, an inquest heard yesterday.

In the latest of a series of conflicts, Holly Grogan, 15, was upset by allegations that she had slept with another girl’s brother.
Hours later she was found dead beneath the bridge of the busy A40 dual carriageway.
Her father Steve told the coroner the events of ­September 16 last year “tipped Holly over the edge”.
It was the culmination of more than six months of bullying by girls from £11,000-a-year St Edward’s School, in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

At one point, one of her friends told the inquest, the Facebook taunting took the form of open discussions about an invented medical condition, HGS, or “Holly Grogan Syndrome”.
Mr Grogan, 45, of Cheltenham, told the hearing in Gloucester that the girls’ accusations upset his daughter and made her cry.
They warned her not to come to a party she had been excited to have been invited to.
He said: “Later that day she received a text from the party host saying it might be better if she didn’t go to the party.”
Holly denied to her father that she had slept with the boy.

Still upset later, she asked if she could get into her parents’ bed for a cuddle at 9.45pm.
In the morning, Mr Grogan said he went to have a shower, adding: “My wife Anita went to wake Holly and noticed her bed hadn’t been slept in.

“There was a note on the desk. She wrote, ‘I don’t want to name names but I just wish people could learn to forgive and forget and be more ­considerate to people and let people move on’.”

Mr Grogan admitted his daughter’s problems began after she had lied to get attention. She told classmates her brother had died and her parents were splitting up. The results were devastating. He said: “You cannot ­underestimate how important friendships are when you are 15.”
He broke down as he told how much he regretted never having raised the issue of bullying with the school.

“Holly certainly didn’t want us to but, in hindsight, we wish we had,” he said.

“It was the wrong decision.”

One of her friends said later: “She was being bullied – they didn’t understand how much it affected Holly.”
St Edward’s headmaster Dr Andrew Nash said: “Facebook is something we worry about because it is so completely outside of our control.”
Recording a verdict of suicide, deputy Gloucestershire coroner David Dooley said: “It was clear she craved forgiveness for the lies she told and the desperate position she put herself in, and didn’t see a way out of that.”

dailyexpress

"God bless the Muslims. They'll need it when they're burning in f-ing hell."

This item originally appeared on the 5th March in the New Statesmen

 If you were still in any doubt about the character of the English Defence League, today's march on the Houses of Parliament should make things clear.

 The group, which claims to be non-racist and pro-freedom of speech, but whose followers have been filmed shouting racist slogans and chanting support for the far-right British National Party, has mounted a series of anti-Muslim demonstrations around Britain since March last year. In January, the EDL rioted in Stoke-on-Trent, where Asian residents and their white neighbours (described as "race traitors", according to Unite Against Fascism) were attacked.
Today's rally was in support of the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Having been banned from entering the UK on a previous occasion, he was at the House of Lords today (at the invitation of the UK Independence Party leader, Lord Pearson) to screen his anti-Islam film Fitna.

This afternoon, several hundred EDL supporters assembled outside Tate Britain, downriver from parliament. When the march at first failed to get going, police allowed them to wander off to the pub for an hour or so. (By comparison, a smaller crowd of anti-racist protesters, organised by Unite Against Fascism, had been kept tightly corralled by police outside parliament's St Stephen's Gate since morning.)

Before marching towards parliament, the crowd was addressed by Guramit Singh -- virtually the only non-white EDL supporter present -- who claimed to be one of the "12 leaders" of the EDL. He called "on all religions" to "eradicate militant Islam".
Although Singh and a subsequent speaker at the rally occasionally made a distinction between "moderate" Muslims and "extremists", the crowd's biggest cheer was reserved for Singh's closing words:

"God bless the Christians, Jews, Sikhs, even God bless the Muslims -- they'll need it when they're burning in fucking hell."

Earlier, the Welsh Secretary and veteran anti-racist campaigner Peter Hain said: "The English Defence league, together with their allies the BNP, represent a racist and fascist threat -- not just to Muslims but to [all] black, Asian and Jewish citizens, too."
This was illustrated by the EDL supporters (including a couple dressed in fetching his'n'hers -- black for him, pink for her -- sweatshirts that bore the legend "EDL -- Derby division") I witnessed threatening a frightened mixed-race group of teenagers as they crossed paths on a sidestreet near Pimlico Station

newstatesman

Sussex Police hit out at BNP over preferential treatment claims

Police bosses have hit out at BNP allegations that they give preferential treatment to “foreign religious centres”.
Senior Sussex officers said the claims were a deliberate attempt to create tension between communities, the police and the public.
Statements placed on the right-wing party’s website said a Horsham and Crawley branch meeting had discovered that police had agreed “special measures” to respond to alarms at Broadfield Mosque and Ifield Sikh temple.
The site added that a senior officer is automatically assigned to any callout to either of the religious sites.
It stated: “British people who may need the police are put behind the interests of the foreign religious centres and have to wait, even if they called first”.
Speaking to The Argus Chief Inspector Steve Curry dismissed the allegations as “without any foundation”.
Chief Insp Curry said: "These allegations are clearly designed to undermine relations between communities and between the police and the public we serve.
“Sussex Police remain committed to serving all the people of Sussex fairly and impartially.
"There is no truth to the allegation that each response to the temple is supervised by a 'senior police officer'; the response to any alarm activation at the temple site will be supervised by the duty inspector as with any other call of that type."
theargus

Former concentration camp vandalized in Austria

A former concentration camp in Austria has been vandalized with anti-Semitic and anti-Turkish graffiti by suspected far-right activists, police and officials said on Friday.
Abuse was scrawled on the outer wall of the Mauthausen camp near Linz overnight and no culprits had been found, Michael Tischlinger, head of the provincial anti-terrorism police, told the Austrian Press Agency.

"Such a desecration is not a prank, the culprits had a select target," said Willi Mernyi, head of the Mauthausen Committee which helps oversee the site where around 100,000 people died during Nazi rule in Austria in 1938-45.
"There is an active far-right scene in Upper Austria that does not even shrink away from vandalizing a former concentration camp," Mernyi said in a statement.

The case shows authorities need to clamp down more on the extreme right, local Social Democrat politician Josef Ackerl said. Local police and Austria's interior ministry were not available for comment.
Far-right parties together captured nearly a third of the vote in Austria's 2008 national elections and feed off xenophobia and anti-European sentiment in the insular Alpine Republic.
reuters

Belgium police launch operations against PKK

Some 300 Belgian police raided 25 addresses across the country on Thursday in an operation against a militant PKK group.

Residences in Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi, Namur and Verviers were searched as well as the offices of Kurdish television broadcaster ROJ in the town of Denderleeuw.

The PKK, which launched an armed attacks against the Turkish state in 1984 for a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey, is branded a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the European Union and the United States.

worldbulletin

Human rights group seeks freedom for religious converts

A new human rights group is mobilising people around the world to stand up for the freedom of religious converts to freely live out their faith.
Set My People Free to Worship Me is planning to stage simultaneous marches on April 3 in London, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Cairo, Stockholm and Sydney.

The group’s founder Kamal Fahmi said he was organising the protests to seek freedom, justice and equality for religious converts. The movement wants especially freedom for converts to worship, marry and raising their children according to their new faith.
“We want to advocate that all people, especially Muslims, have the freedom to change faith, to live out and practice their new beliefs,” he said.
Mr Fahmi stressed the movement was non-violent. hopes the marches will become an annual event.
He said: “We believe that it is time to support our suffering Christian brothers and sisters from Muslim background and raise awareness of the injustices that they face.”
The group has launched a petition demanding “freedom to worship in the Muslim world” and condemning apostasy laws.
It reads: “In our rapidly changing world, religious values and human rights are being challenged. Every year thousands die because of persecution, injustice and oppression by governments and religious institutions.
“If we don’t watch it, very soon justice and equality for all men and women will be usurped. In the Muslim world the Muslim people don’t have the freedom to choose their faith. We wish to speak out against the Muslim apostasy law worldwide.”
christiantoday

Caste prejudice 'may exist' in British workplaces

Discrimination on the grounds of caste - or historic social standing in Hindu and Sikh communities - may be happening in the UK, a government peer has said.
Ministers have previously said they did not think people from lower castes were treated unfairly in the workplace.
But Baroness Thornton said evidence may exist. She has ordered more research.
She was speaking as peers accepted an amendment to the Equalities Bill, paving the way for such discrimination to be made illegal if necessary.
Hindu campaigners have long argued that members of the lower caste - referred to as Dalits or "untouchables" - suffer unfair treatment at the hands of higher caste members, even in second generation UK Asian communities.
Baroness Thornton told peers the National Institute of Economic and Social Research was due to present its research in July or August.

"We have looked for evidence of caste discrimination and we now think that evidence may exist, which is why we have now commissioned the research," she said.
"The proportionate thing is to take the power to deal with that discrimination if and when that evidence is produced."
Lord Avebury, for the Liberal Democrats, who moved the amendment, said he believed the research would "conclusively prove that caste discrimination does occur in the fields covered by the bill".
If it becomes law, the bill will require organisations of all sizes and types to promote equality and avoid discrimination in the workplace.
It will clarify existing discrimination legislation concerning sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief and age, and ministers hope increased transparency will help tackle the pay gap between men and women.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said the decision to commission research represented "a historic moment".
"The blight of caste discrimination, under which millions in India are regarded as 'untouchable', has spread to this country virtually unnoticed."

CHILDREN AGED FIVE TO GO ON SCHOOL 'HATE REGISTERS'

PUPILS as young as five will soon be placed on school 'hate registers' for making playground taunts, it emerged last night.

Any form of racist or homophobic bullying will go down on record at the school and the pupil responsible could be monitored throughout their school life.
Details of any incidents, however minor, will then be kept on a database by the local authority and made available to ministers to inform future anti-bullying campaigns.
Children's charities last night expressed concern that youngsters may be criminalised for simple playground banter.

Michele Elliott, of charity Kidscape, said: "Children are being criminalised and singled out from a very early age when they don't know what they're doing."
The extent of the new measures came to light after 10-year-old Peter Drury was told his name would be placed on a register at his primary school in Somerset and his behaviour monitored. It followed an accusation that he called a friend "gay boy".
His mother Penny Drury said she was called into the school and informed the incident would be registered and that her son's file monitored while he remained at Ashcombe Primary School, in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

She said: "He doesn't even understand about the birds and the bees, so how can he be homophobic?
"Peter is very naive boy who didn't know what he was doing and is now very upset that he is in trouble."
Many schools already voluntarily record any incidents of racist, homophobic or anti-disability bullying.

daily express

Dutch anti-Islamists makes key gains in local elections

Preliminary results in Dutch local polls suggest an anti-Islam party has made major gains and may pose a serious challenge in June parliamentary polls.

The Freedom Party (or PVV), led by Geert Wilders, is opposed to what it calls the country's "Islamisation".
General elections have been called following the collapse of the Dutch government in a dispute over the deployment of troops in Afghanistan.
Last year, the PVV came second in the country's polls to the EU parliament.

'Springboard' situation
The PVV fielded candidates in municipal elections in two cities: Almere, a city of some 200,000 inhabitants east of the capital Amsterdam, where its looks set to be the biggest party, and The Hague, where it was in second place.
Preliminary results show that in Almere, it has won 21% of the vote, while in The Hague, it has won eight seats, behind the Dutch Labour Party which had 10 seats.

"What is possible in The Hague and Almere is possible all over the country. It's a springboard for our victory," Mr Wilders told supporters in Almere.
Last year, the PVV came second in European elections in the Netherlands, winning 15% of the vote.

BBC News

BNP 'blocked' Asian man's application to join party

THE BNP have told an Asian businessman that his application to join the party will be blocked, he said today.

Mo Chaudry, 49, had wanted to join the far-right party to "fight them from the inside".
The businessman, from Newcastle-Under-Lyme in Staffordshire, said he was seeking to take advantage of the enforced change to the party’s constitution to expose them.
BNP members voted to admit black and Asian people last month when the party was threatened with an injunction by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Pakistan-born Mr Chaudry, who is worth £60 million, runs a string of businesses around Stoke-on-Trent, which has eight BNP members on the city council. He is a star of the Channel 4 programme The Secret Millionaire, in which rich benefactors go undercover to find good ways of using their money.

He said today: "I debated with the BNP’s deputy leader Simon Darby on BBC Radio 5 Live and he told me that my application would be blocked. How can you be more discriminatory than that?"
He added: "People are not racist in Stoke-on-Trent and I have never experienced racism in my time here but the city council has eight BNP members. The good people that don’t vote need to get off their backside and change things."
The EHRC is considering the changes the BNP have made to their membership rules and will be back in court on March 9.
EHRC has threatened legal action if the rules are still considered discriminatory.

Huddersfield Examiner

BNP party activist Mark Walker has lost his case for unfair dismissal

A BRITISH National Party activist and former North-East teacher who was sacked for absenteeism has lost his case for unfair dismissal.
A judgement against former Sunnydale Community College teacher Mark Walker was issued by an employment tribunal last month.
Mr Walker, 39, was suspended from the school, in Shildon, County Durham, in March 2007, and claimed he was the subject of a political witch hunt.
Twenty months later, he was officially sacked over his sickness record and took the school’s governing body to an employment tribunal.
The Newcastle tribunal, which was met in January, unanimously dismissed Mr Walker’s case, but has not yet published its reasons.
Patrick Harrington, a spokesman for Mr Walker’s union, Solidarity, said there could be further action against his employers, Durham County Council.
Mr Harrington said he would be studying the tribunal’s reasons with a view to a potential appeal, but an appeal was not the only option.
He said: “What we would point out is that Mr Walker’s ill health was largely contributed to by the employer and, in particular, the way they handled the disciplinary process.

“There may be a personal injury claim for the stress caused.”
Mr Harrington also cited an NSPCC report about Mr Walker, who is from Rievaulx, Spennymoor, County Durham, that was leaked to The Northern Echo.
The report reveals the disciplinary inquiry uncovered a large number of emails indicating a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old former pupil.
It makes it clear that no illegal content was found on Mr Walker’s school laptop or desktop computers.
It concludes: “There is sufficient evidence from the emails, and from previous matters concerning his professional conduct, to conclude that Mr Walker’s behaviour has resulted in his conduct being less than one would expect of a teacher placed in a position of trust.”
Mr Harrington said: “This report was very damaging to Mr Walker and there is a duty of confidentiality and a question of damages for the breach. The report was in the hands of the county council and the NSPCC and has to have been leaked by staff.”
Durham County Council declined to comment because of legal reasons.

■A tribunal into the case of Mr Walker’s brother, Adam Walker, also a BNP activist, has been adjourned until the end of May.
The General Teaching Council, in Birmingham, is considering allegations he posted inappropriate comments on the internet

The Northern Echo

BNP leader Nick Griffin to be given TV platform by BBC again

The BNP's Nick Griffin is to be given a new TV platform by the BBC, it was revealed yesterday.
Despite the row in the wake of Griffin's appearance on Question Time last year, he will appear again at the height of the general election campaign in the spring.
The BBC said "alongside" the TV debate between leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, they are to hold a "minor parties debate".
The corporation's website said: "There will be arrangements in the programming around the BBC debate, a week before polling day, to ensure other parties which have demonstrated they have some electoral support - UKIP, the Green Party and the BNP - will have their say."
Bnp activists hailed it as a victory for the far-right group. Deputy leader Simon Darby said it was a "good idea to go head to head with the Greens and UKIP".

After the Question Time bust-up, Darby also claimed the BBC are taking a softer line with the BNP in programmes.
He said an edition of Panorama will feature the far right in the next few months and added: "Unlike some of the previous encounters between the two bodies I think this will be relatively straightforward. But with these guys you never really know."
Anti-fascist group Searchlight called the plan an outrage. A spokesman said: "Executives at the BBC have become obsessed with giving the BNP national publicity at the licence fee payer's expense.
"These are supposed to be serious debates allowing people to make an informed choice. Nick Griffin has no place there." Griffin's BBC Question Time spot turned into a disaster for the Beeb and the BNP.
Riots broke out in front of the corporation's HQ after Griffin boasted it would "propel the BNP into the big time".
But once the cameras began rolling nervous Griffin, 50, squirmed and bizarrely claimed EU laws meant he "could not explain" why he once denied the Holocaust. Justice Minister Jack Straw said: "We've seen that the moment anyone puts an uncomfortable quote to him he wriggles. He wants to wriggle out of it."
Cambridge-educated Griffin was elected as a Euro MP last July.
Mirror

Three men assaulted in Cornwall ‘homophobic’ attack

Police are treating an attack on three men in Padstow, Cornwall, as a hate crime because one of the men was trans.
The friends, who were on holiday from the Plymouth area, had gone out on Saturday night and were attacked as they returned to an address on Broad Street.
It is thought they were followed into the house by two men, one of whom attacked them.
Police were called to the property at just after midnight on Sunday morning and two of the victims required hospital treatment for cuts. One of the two, a man in his fifties, was knocked unconscious.
A police spokesman told the Cornish Guardian: “We have recorded this incident as a hate crime after one of the victims made a claim that the assault could have been a homophobic attack because one of the party was a transsexual.
“We are following all lines of inquiry including checking the local pub’s CCTV camera footage.
“If anyone has any information we would encourage them to please come forward.”
The first suspect is described as white, between 5ft 7in and 5ft 8in tall, in his late 20s, with a bald head and a stocky build. He was wearing a long-sleeved black t-shirt.
The second man was described as white, 5ft 9in, slim, with short tight curly hair and a local accent.

More Attacks on Minorities in Barnaul, Russia

Two more attacks on ethnic minorities have been reported in Barnaul, Russia (Republic of Altay), a city that made international headlines earlier this month after a South Korean exchange student was killed in a racist attack.
According to a February 24, 2010 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center, three of the suspects in the killing of the Korean student are now suspected of attacking a citizen of China and an ethnic Tuvan at the beginning of February. There were no details in the report about the extent of the victims' injuries.
 
UCSJ

Egypt blogger military trial criticised

Egypt has been strongly criticised by Human Rights Watch for trying a blogger, Ahmed Mustafa, before a military court.
The 20-year-old is accused of publishing false information in a blog a year ago, alleging a case of nepotism at Egypt's premier military academy.
Egypt's emergency law, in place since 1981, allows indefinite detention and trials of civilians in military courts.
Egyptian officials have denied that the power is much used.
The only evidence presented at his trial this week is the post on his blog.
The trial has been adjourned to 7 March to give defence lawyers more time to review the evidence.

There has been no investigation into Mr Mustafa's allegation of corruption, namely his claim that a teacher's son was pushed out of the academy, to make way for the son of a more influential individual who could make financial contributions, Christian Fraser, the BBC correspondent in Cairo says.
Under two international human rights accords, both ratified by Egypt, the government is required to protect freedom of expression.
Yet Human Rights Watch draws attention to a growing list of bloggers who remain in detention.
Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in 2006, for writing about sectarian tensions in Alexandria and criticising President Mubarak.
Another blogger, Hany Nazeer, was detained in October 2008 under the country's emergency law that was designed to fight terrorism for expressing forthright views on Christianity and Islam.
Last year after a visit to Egypt, the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on human rights reiterated that the trial of civilian suspects in military courts raised concerns about the independent administration of justice.
"The Egyptian government says one thing in Geneva and then immediately makes a mockery of the Human Rights Council's review process," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

"No civilian should be tried before a military court, and no government that claims to respect human rights should be prosecuting someone solely for writing about corruption," he added.

BBC News

Police probe anti-Muslim website attacking Wrexham Mosque plan

POLICE are investigating a sick anti-Muslim website set up on Facebook to stir up tensions over fake claims a ‘super-mosque’ was being built in Wrexham.
The site “No to the super mosque in Wrexham” on the social network site wrongly claims permission has been given for a mosque at the Miners Institute in North Wales’s largest town.
And the website, which bears the Welsh Defence League logo, is also filled with hateful messages against Muslims, which North Wales Police are now investigating.
The web group has more than 2,800 members and this follows a march by the Welsh Defence League designed to stir up tensions in the town.
A counter group “Yes to the Super Mosque in Wrexham” has also been set up on Facebook.
The Wrexham Muslim Association (WMA) has denied there are any plans to convert the town’s Miners Institute building into a mosque but said there were plans to lease a small building in the town for worship.
A spokesman for the WMA said: “There is nothing in this rumour we are setting up a mosque at the Miners Institute.
“We simply do not have enough money to do anything like that.
“But we are hopeful of leasing a place from the council next to St James’ Church in Wrexham.”
Commenting on the anti-Muslim remarks on the webpage on Facebook the spokesman added: “They are upsetting and annoying and I don’t want to pay any attention to such remarks.”
Ian Tetherington, secretary for anti-fascist group Searchlight Cymru, said: “A mosque is not something to be scared of, it would be something to be proud of.
“Wrexham has a history of tolerance and should be proud of that.
“These people are Welsh, they just happen to be Muslims, instead of Christians or Hindus, but they are still Welsh and just want somewhere to worship like other faiths.

“I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with them worshipping in a safe, dry place.
“The idea this is a ‘super-mosque’ is a complete fabrication made up to stir things up and create tension.
“There are a few hundred Muslims in Wrexham so why would they want a huge place of worship, this is simply not the case.
“Like other faiths in the town they just want somewhere to meet rather than the temporary building where they are currently having to meet.
“I live close to a mosque myself in Cardiff and do not understand why people would have an issue with it.”
A North Wales Police spokesman said: “We are aware of the site and are investigating.
“We are also liaising with members of the local community.”
Daily Post

Immigrants cleaning Swedish cities

In Stockholm, 80 percent of people working as office or hotel cleaners were born outside of Sweden, the new report from Statistics Sweden (SCB) for 2008 shows. In Gothenburg the equivalent figure was 59 percent and in Malmö 66 percent.
Foreign born staff account for 12 percent of all employees aged 16-64 in Sweden and make up 16 percent of the population.
While big city areas have slightly higher populations of immigrants - with 18 percent in Malmö and Stockholm, and 16 percent in Gothenburg, foreign born workers were over-represented in a series of professions such as nurses, hospital orderlies, personal assistants and child minders.
Of the ten categories of profession presented in the statistics, sales staff was the group with the lowest proportion of foreign-born workers - with only 6 percent.
The military, police, fire fighters and air-traffic controllers had a very low proportion of immigrants staff, the statistics show.
Bus and tram drivers, choreographers, dancers and language professionals were all groups with a high proportion of foreign-born workers.
 
posted by Peter Vinthagen Simpson thelocal

Hitler abortion poster sparks anger in Poland

A Polish anti-abortion group has sparked controversy by using pictures of Hitler and a bloody and torn foetus in a billboard campaign designed to ensure Poles adhere to the country's strict abortion laws.

The provocative images, which appeared in the western city of Poznan as a part of a promised nationwide campaign, also carry the slogan "Abortion for Poles: introduced by Hitler, March 9, 1943."

Fundacja Pro, the organisation behind the billboard, said that it wanted to remind Poles that abortion was first introduced to Poland during the Second World War by the country's Nazi occupiers as a means of limiting the population of a people they deemed inferior.
One of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries, Poland now has some of the strictest abortion laws in the EU, and any attempt to have them liberalised arouses furious and passionate debate.

"It was Hitler who first introduced abortion to Poland, and in several days it will be the anniversary of that event.
"In this context it is worth recalling the words of Pope John Paul II: 'History teaches us that democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism'," Fundacja Pro said in a statement.
But the use of Hitler, along with the torn foetus pictures, has already incurred the wrath of critics.
Nazi Germany inflicted horrific levels of death and destruction on Poland, so any perceived attempt to hijack that suffering for the sake of a political or ethical agenda can be viewed with distaste.
"I understand that this campaign is designed to shock but there are limits to the use of shock," said Elzbieta Streker-Dembinska, an MP and member of the Polish parliament's health committee.
"A foetus and Adolf Hitler is unjustified comparison. The design of the billboard is unacceptable and crosses the boundaries of decency."
She added that she suspected the billboard campaign was designed to coincide with International Women's Day on March 8, a day which often sees pro-abortion demonstrations in Poland.

The Telegraph

Irish punk rocker Feargal Sharkey spoke at the annual Hope, Not Hate rally

A Cabinet minister and a punk have visited the region to join forces against racism.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Irish punk rocker Feargal Sharkey spoke at the annual Hope, Not Hate rally at Trimdon Labour Club, in County Durham, on Saturday.
The group campaigns against far right parties such as the BNP and National Front, which have targeted the region with renewed vigour since Labour’s slide in the polls.
Mr Sharkey, who found fame with Seventies punk outfit The Undertones, said he did not back any political party, but supported multiculturalism.

The Teenage Kicks singer and chief executive of UK Music said: “What makes up the whole fabric of this wonderful place we live in is the extraordinary mixture, that we have – different ideas, cultures, colours and religions.

“We have had people coming to this country for the last By Rachel Wearmouth rachel.wearmouth@nne.co.uk 4,000 years and if it wasn’t for that, we would not be what we are today.”

Councillors, trade union members and residents turned out in force to air their views and discuss ways of counteracting far right politics and racism.
Mr Johnson said far right parties offered simple solutions to complicated problems such as immigration and that Labour was working to deal with the issue.
He said: “The trouble with the immigration debate at the moment is we do not have a soundbite.”
He arrived at noon at the club, famous for being where former Prime Minister and MP for Sedgefield Tony Blair celebrated his party’s landslide victory in 1997.
Mr Johnson commended Hope, Not Hate for its work and said: “In this country, people have consistently refused to pick up the message of hatred and intolerance.
“I think the BNP is popular across the country at a time when unemployment is high, and their message is to say it is the fault of people with brown faces or this person.
“We need to spread the message of Hope, Not Hate and face up to them in a united way.”
Clare Williams, chairwoman of the Northern TUC Race Advisory Group, said the economic climate was also a problem.
She said: “The current recession and the burdens felt by ordinary working people are being used by these parties to try and persuade us that (the BNP’s) solutions are the best answer.”
Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson said campaigners against far right parties needed to do more work.
He said: “We may not have the sense of community that we used to have, but it is still there and there are community groups that we need to support.”

written by Rachel Wearmouth thenorthernecho

Israel angry over anti-Semitic postcards sent by Spanish schoolchildren

Rafi Shotz, Israel's ambassador to Spain, received dozens of postcards from elementary school students bearing statements including "Jews kill for money," "Leave the country to the Palestinians" and "Go somewhere where they will accept you."

A Foreign Ministry official said the handwriting appears typical of children six to nine years old.

"Some had very disturbing messages," an embassy spokesman said. "They asked things such as: 'Why do you kill children?' or said that 'money is not everything' and that if someone should leave, it should be the Israelis 'because it is not your land'.
"These are messages about a political situation that they do not understand. Most of these children probably do not even know where Israel or Palestine are."
The Foreign Ministry considered summoning Spain's ambassador to Israel, Alvaro Iranzo, to complain, but ultimately spoke to the envoy by telephone instead, Haaretz reported.
"Apparently there are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel individuals who get permission to operate within schools," the official said. "Each time, the embassy has received several dozen postcards from a different school. And it seems as though whoever is doing this is moving from school to school."
Naor Gilon, the ministry's deputy director for Europe, called Mr Iranzo and said "Israel is greatly distressed" by the postcards. The envoy insisted the letters are not part of any Spanish Education Ministry program, but the initiative of private citizens.
Joan Malonda, the head teacher of El Castell primary school in Almoines, confirmed that the hand-drawn cards had come from his pupils, the Guardian reports.

He denied the children were being indoctrinated.
"A lot of this work was done at home and reflects the atmosphere in their own social environment. They were simply asked to write a postcard on the subject.
"We try to teach the children to have a critical attitude, but we also want them to contrast their criticism against other points of view."
telegraph

Man sentenced for phone call anti-Semitic threats (USA)

A brain-injured man was sentenced to five years of supervised federal court probation Tuesday for making anti-Semitic phone threats to burn down the home of former University of Oregon President David Frohnmayer.
Assistant Oregon U.S. Attorney Frank Papagni joined Gregory Paul Freeman’s defense lawyer in recommending the relatively light sentence because Freeman has had diminished mental capacity since he was struck by a train while intoxicated in 2005.
According to Papagni and federal public defender Craig Weinerman, Freeman made the threatening calls to Frohnmayer and allegedly to several other victims after consuming alcohol, which interacted with his anti-seizure medication.
Frohnmayer, who is not Jewish, has said in the past that he nonetheless took the threats seriously.
Freeman, 56, was convicted in December on a single charge of using a telephone to threaten arson. He had never before been convicted of a crime.
He agreed not to challenge facts alleged by the government in the Frohnmayer case, in exchange for no charges being filed in connection with similar threatening messages he phoned to a Eugene Planned Parenthood clinic, the Eugene Masonic Lodge and to his former psychiatrist.
In court Tuesday, Papagni told Freeman he should “take great comfort” in knowing that his victims’ compassion helped keep him out of jail.
Though none chose to appear at the sentencing, all supported the probationary sentence because of Freeman’s mental circumstances, the prosecutor said.
Papagni also noted Freeman’s compliance with a “no alcohol” condition of his pretrial release. Given that he will continue to be closely monitored under court probation, Freeman should pose little risk of making future threats, the prosecutor said.
“As long as he continues not to drink and has no contact with (the victims), he should be free to live his life as he wishes,” Papagni told U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, who imposed the recommended sentence.
According to court records, Freeman told a court risk and treatment evaluator that drinking exacerbated his “impulsive expression of his negative attitudes toward authority figures” and “individuals of certain faith and political persuasion.”
According to an FBI agent’s sworn statement to obtain an arrest warrant for Freeman last year, the messages included statements such as “Listen, you Jews” and “I’m going to burn your abortion clinic down because you are a baby killer and you hate babies.”
registerguard

Racist incidents, protests spread at UC campuses (USA)

A firestorm over racially and ethnically charged incidents at several University of California campuses spread Tuesday as UC San Diego announced a KKK-style hood was found on campus and students in Los Angeles and Irvine demonstrated against intolerance.
"What kind of campus promotes an environment that allows people to think it's acceptable to target people for their ethnicity, gender or sexuality?" said Corey Matthews, one of about 200 mostly minority UCLA students who held a lunchtime rally. "It's something about the tone of the environment that allows this."
At UC Irvine, about 250 people gathered for a "student solidarity speakout" to condemn the recent spate of racist incidents at UC San Diego that targeted black students and another incident last month at UC Davis, which targeted a Jewish student with a swastika carved on her door, said Marya Bangee, an event organizer.

The protests came on the same day UC San Diego announced the discovery of a white pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood — the third racist incident around the campus in as many weeks — and a day after UC Santa Cruz officials found an image of a noose scribbled on the inside of a bathroom door.
Officials found the hood, which bore a hand-drawn circle and cross, on a statue of children's book author Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, outside the main campus library late Monday. A rose had been inserted between the statue's fingers.
Detectives were analyzing the pillowcase for fingerprints and DNA evidence, a university statement said.
UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox vowed to punish the culprits to the fullest extent of the law. "We will not tolerate these despicable actions," she said in the statement.
The hood came on the heels two other UC San Diego incidents: a February off-campus, student-organized "Compton Cookout" party that mocked Black History Month with ghetto stereotypes; and a noose found hanging from a library bookshelf last week.
UC San Diego campus police said they had completed their investigation into the noose incident and turned their results over to the city attorney on Tuesday for possible hate crime charges.
One of the students responsible for the noose apologized to the university community in an anonymous letter published Monday in the campus newspaper. She said the noose was formed while she and friends were playing around with a piece of rope and had no meaning as a lynching symbol.

The student said she is not black, but is a minority.
The incident also is under investigation by law enforcement agencies, campus spokeswoman Judy Piercey said.
Although UCLA students said no racial incidents had occurred recently on their campus, in 2007, a fraternity held a "Tijuana Sunrise" party that mocked Mexican-Americans with stereotyped images, they said.
The incidents are disturbing and most likely the work of "outliers" using offensive and outrageous behavior to gain notoriety, said Brian Levin, director of California State University's Center for Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino.
He said surveys show young people are less prejudiced than ever, but "these things touch a nerve, and these folks know it."
UCLA demonstrators called on administrators to institute a required ethnic studies course that would teach students about other cultures.
"It would be a very strong and powerful statement for diversity," said Kent Wong, a speaker at the rally and director of UCLA's Center for Labor Research and Education.
At UC San Diego, officials were already moving to create a more tolerant environment after meeting with black student leaders, Piercey said.
Initiatives include recruiting more minority faculty, instituting a mentoring program, creating an African American Resource Center, and ensuring funding for the diversity office, Piercey said.

The Guardian

To BNP or not to be?

The Tories didn’t so much peep on the immigration dog whistle as sound a klaxon in a disgraceful campaign.

A hateful leaflet produced by Romford Conservatives in East London is so grotesque it could carry a BNP logo. The inflammatory charge that Labour “opened the floodgates” is false and way beyond responsible political debate.
Tory home affairs spokesman and local MP Andrew Rosindell admitted to me he was in the area when it was distributed. The right-winger said he was canvassing but didn’t see the alarmist flyer pushed through letter boxes by members of his team.
That’s a shame because it includes two photos of him, including one picture with David Cameron.
The statement “promoted by Andrew Rosindell MP” on the bottom, he said, was a legal obligation on Romford Tory Party because he’s standing for election.

The leaflet, he added, “fell short of what I would have done” and he’ll have a word with the councillors responsible.

So it was a disappointment that I needed 10 minutes to coax the statement “I would not have used the words ‘opened the floodgates’” from the MP.
Cameron described immigration as a sensitive issue, to be dealt with carefully. Yet in Romford, his party wears hobnailed boots.
Apeing the BNP to defeat the BNP is to become the BNP.

Daily Mirror

Blond bombshell Geert Wilders returns to Britain, looking for a fight

Boyish, topped with a bouffant mane of bleached blond hair, cheerful and cherubic, Geert Wilders is the unlikely new face of the far Right in Europe. But appearances are deceptive. The leader of the Dutch anti-immigration Freedom Party has emerged as one of the most divisive politicians in Europe, the purveyor of a virulent brand of anti-Islamic rhetoric that calls for a tax on Islamic headscarves and a ban on the Koran, which he likens to Mein Kampf.
Mr Wilders is facing trial in a Dutch court for “inciting hatred”. Last year he was banned from Britain and turned away at Heathrow when he arrived here planning to show his short film, an incendiary anti-Islamic diatribe that the Dutch Prime Minister described as serving “no purpose other than to offend”.
On Friday, after successfully appealing against the Home Office ban, Mr Wilders will return to Britain at the invitation of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to show his controversial film to an invited audience at the House of Lords. The English Defence League is expected to demonstrate in his support and Muslim groups are all but certain to mount protests.
To his enemies, the 46-year-old Dutchman is an old-fashioned racist demagogue in a new suit; a bottle-blond bigot. To his growing ranks of supporters he is a champion of free speech, a bulwark against what he calls “the Islamic invasion of Holland”. He may be dismissed by some as a crank but he is an increasingly powerful and popular one. On February 20 the Dutch centrist coalition Government collapsed, deeply divided over keeping troops in Afghanistan, paving the way for a general election in June in which the Freedom Party is expected to do extremely well. Polls suggest that the party will triple its tally of seats, becoming at least the second-biggest parliamentary party and quite possibly the overall winner. Mr Wilders is likely to be a key player in any coalition, with a profound impact on the political agenda.
Nicknamed “Mozart” on account of a platinum hairdo that looks strikingly like an 18th-century wig, Mr Wilders has played on the dischords in Dutch society with virtuoso skill. As in Britain, many Dutch voters are alarmed by the scale of immigration, battered by the global economic crisis, culturally anxious and increasingly receptive to his grim warnings about a “tsunami of Islamification”.

The political heir to Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch populist politician who called for a halt to Muslim immigration and who was murdered in the 2002 election campaign, Mr Wilders has portrayed himself as the only politician in his country brave enough to stand up to militant Islam, a threat that he has compared to Nazism. “A century ago there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today there are about one million. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European civilisation,” he predicts. Promising strict limits on immigration, he has also called for a “head-rag tax” of €1,000 (£922) a year on Muslim women wearing headscarves.
In 2008 he released a 15-minute film entitled Fitna (the Arabic word for “strife”) which provoked outrage across the Muslim world: it opens with an image of the Koran, followed by footage of terrorist attacks and a litany of stonings, beheadings, honour killings, homophobia and child marriages. It ends, predictably, with the Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked fury in 2006. Al-Qaeda is believed to have ordered the killing of Mr Wilders after the film was released. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, has described the Dutch politician as “offensively anti-Islamic”. His most incendiary remarks are aimed at the Koran, which he calls a fascist book. “The Koran incites to hatred and calls for murder and mayhem,” Mr Wilders told the Dutch Parliament. “It is an absolute necessity that the Koran be banned for the defence and reinforcement of our civilisation and our constitutional state.”

In January a Dutch court ordered the public prosecutor to try Mr Wilders on charges of fomenting hatred and discrimination. Mr Wilders indicated that he would call witnesses in order to prove Koran-inspired violence, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the man convicted of murdering the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh in 2004.
Although he faces 16 months in prison if convicted, the trial represents a political goldmine for Mr Wilders and helps to explain his recent rise in opinion polls. If he is convicted he will paint himself as martyr to political correctness; if he is acquitted he will claim vindication. The trial has been suspended until after the election.
Inadvertently, Britain also did much to boost his standing in February last year by banning him from entering the country as an “undesirable person”, citing EU laws enabling member states to exclude someone whose presence could threaten public security. Mr Wilders loudly condemned Gordon Brown as “the biggest coward in Europe” and some 84 per cent of Dutch voters objected to the way that Mr Wilders had been ejected by Britain.

The ban was later overturned by an asylum and immigration tribunal. On Friday, at the invitation of the UKIP leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Baroness Cox of Queensbury, he will show Fitna to MPs, peers and guests before giving a press conference at Westminster.
“The issue of militant Islam is the greatest issue facing our Judeo-Christian culture,” Lord Pearson said. “I don’t agree that the Koran should be banned but we want it discussed ... mild Muslims should stand up and debate their militant co-religionists.”
Mr Wilders has sought to distance himself and his party from the traditional standard-bearers of the extreme Right in Europe, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front in France and the late Jörg Haider of the Freedom Party in Austria. He has made no contact with the BNP. “My allies are not Le Pen and Haider,” he says. “I’m very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups.” His prime political role models are said to be Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.

The son of a printer, Mr Wilders was raised Roman Catholic but is now an atheist. He worked in a Dutch social insurance agency before becoming a speechwriter and then MP for the liberal People’s Party, which he left in 2004 to form his own party.
As a prime terrorist target he lives under 24-hour police guard, changing his location nightly. He is seldom seen in public and gives few interviews. Even contact with his wife, a Dutch-Hungarian former diplomat, is limited by security concerns, This way of life, under constant threat, is “a situation I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy”, he once remarked.
“They are trying to shoot him all the time,” says Lord Pearson, noting that Mr Wilders will be coming to Britain with five state-hired Dutch bodyguards. “He has a really, really tough existence.”

Mr Wilders opposes expansion of the EU, most particularly Turkish membership, and Dutch military deployment in Afghanistan, but the core of his message lies in an appeal to defend traditional Dutch culture against perceived encroachment by Islam. “Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe,” he told the Dutch Parliament. “Stop all immigration from Muslim countries, ban all building of new mosques, close all Islamic schools, ban burkas and the Koran ... Stop Islamification. Enough is enough!”
Some polls suggest that after the June elections Mr Wilders may lead the biggest single parliamentary party, raising the prospect that a former fringe provincial politician with extreme views and peculiar hair could end up leading the country. “At some point it’s going to happen and then it will be a big honour to fulfil the post of prime minister,” he says. If that comes to pass it will mark both the triumph of a new, more subtle brand of right-wing politics in Europe, and the final demise of the stereotyped image of the Netherlands as a nation of bland liberal views and easygoing tolerance.

Itinerary
9am Geert Wilders will arrive at Heathrow, his second visit to Britain since overturning a ban by the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. He declared his trip in October last year “a victory for free speech”

11am Screening of his film Fitna in a committee room of the House of Lords. The 17-minute film, which has been shown in the US Capitol, presents verses from the Koran alongside footage of terrorist attacks. The screening has been organised by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, leader of UKIP, and Baroness Cox, a former Conservative peer

12.30pm Press conference near Parliament. UKIP organisers are expecting protests

1pm The far-Right group the English Defence League plans a demonstration to welcome Mr Wilders to Britain. A UKIP source said: “That is what horrifies me more than anything else. Bring protective clothing.”

BBC News

Bill would honor Miep Gies (USA)

A bill honoring the life of the woman who hid Anne Frank's family and salvaged her diary is winding its way through the U.S. House of Representatives.
The non-binding resolution seeking to honor the life of Miep Gies is sponsored by Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) and has 60 co-sponsors.

Gies helped to hide the Frank family from 1942 until they were turned in by an unknown informant in August 1944. Gies discovered the diary pages of Anne Frank and saved them in her desk for Anne's return. When Anne's death in Bergen-Belsen was confirmed, Gies turned the documents over to Anne's father, Otto.
The bill commends Gies, who died on Jan. 11, just shy of her 101st birthday, “for her bravery during Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and her dedication to preserving the memory of Anne Frank and the Holocaust.”
JTA

BNP member teacher faces misconduct charge

A teacher accused of expressing religious intolerance on the internet will answer a misconduct charge today.

Technology teacher Adam Walker, a member of the British National Party, is due to appear at a General Teaching Council committee hearing in Birmingham today.
Mr Walker, from Spennymoor, County Durham, is alleged to have demonstrated views suggestive of racial and religious intolerance while using a school laptop.
The allegation, brought against him by the GTC, states that he engaged in unacceptable professional conduct while employed at Houghton Kepier Sports College in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, between February and March 2007.

This is London

FBI Informant’s Retrial for Neo-Nazi Threats Opened Monday (USA)

Jury selection and opening statements are scheduled to begin yesterday in the second federal trial of hate blogger and former FBI informant Hal Turner.


Turner’s first trial ended in a mistrial on Dec. 7, with jurors leaning 9-3 in favor of acquittal. He is charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges in Chicago. Turner stated in blog entries that they “deserve to be killed” and posted their exact work locations.

Meanwhile, documents filed in federal court last month provide more details about Turner’s past role as a paid FBI informant. His traveling companion during his FBI-financed trip to Brazil was longtime National Alliance member Tripp Henderson of New Jersey, who in a posting to a National Alliance E-group once urged lone wolves to start a race war by shooting undocumented immigrants. On Jan. 31, 2005, Turner and Henderson left for the 10-day excursion to Sao Paulo to woo potential supporters willing to donate between $500,000 and $1 million to the National Alliance. Turner was then able to provide information to the FBI on 12 white supremacists from multiple countries, according to the documents. During the six-week period following the trip, Turner — whose FBI code name was “Valhalla” — received a $3,000 advance payment, in addition to $2,000 he’d already been paid during that fiscal year.

Turner’s intelligence also led to the conviction of James Mazzone (also known as James McManus), who was sentenced to 10 years in state prison for narcotics sales, according to the documents. Mazzone, an Aryan Nations leader, was listed on the group’s website as the New Jersey contact for the neo-Nazi organization.

Turner’s history as an FBI informant figured prominently in his first trial, with the defense arguing that the FBI had not prosecuted Turner when he made similar statements against public officials while an informant. (The FBI severed its relationship with Turner in August 2007, nearly two years before he published the comments for which he was charged.) As it did during the first trial, the government asked that Turner’s defense not be allowed to refer to his work as an FBI informant, calling it “an irrelevant sideshow designed to distract and confuse the jury.” U.S. District Judge Donald E. Walter, who also presided over Turner’s first trial, denied the request on Feb. 19, along with the defense’s motion to bar testimony from the alleged targets of Turner’s threats: Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer. Prosecutors opted not to put the judges on the stand during Turner’s first trial, but plan to do so this time. In interviews with the FBI filed in court, all three judges said they regarded Turner’s blog posts as threats, but did not change their routines or seek additional personal security because of them.

The government is expected to begin making its case Today in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, which was also the location of Turner’s first trial. The three judges will be the government’s first witnesses, according to court documents.

Posted in Extremist Crime by Sonia Scherr on March 1, 2010
SPLCenter

Scotland United denounces planned SDL Lockerbie protest

Members of the far-right Scottish Defence League want to hold a rally in the town, but a counter movement today called for the event to be cancelled

A Scottish anti-fascism movement says far-right protesters should be stopped from demonstrating at Lockerbie.
The Scottish Defence League (SDL) unveiled plans to hold a "respect vigil" at the town's memorial to the 270 people who died when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Dumfriesshire.
The group, which says it is against the "Islamification" of Britain, also wants to use the event as a protest against Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who was branded a "traitor" over his decision to release Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
On Monday, Scotland United released a statement saying the SDL and its sister organisation, the English Defence League, should not be allowed to demonstrate in Lockerbie. The group is backed by all of Scotland's mainstream political parties, as well as trade unionists, charities and faith groups.
In a statement, undersigned by supporters, Scotland United said: "We strongly oppose plans by the Scottish Defence League and English Defence League to demonstrate in Lockerbie. The SDL is a racist group whose aim is to divide us by making scapegoats of one community, just as the Nazis did with the Jews in the 1930s.

"Whatever one's personal or political views on the release of Mr Megrahi, we believe that such a march is totally inappropriate and a cheap publicity stunt. Any attempt to use Lockerbie would cause further distress and suffering to those who have lost loved ones and would be abhorrent.
"We have a simple message for these racist and fascist groups. There is no place for your organisation in Lockerbie or in Scotland, and we condemn any organisation that wishes to capitalise on the murder of 270 innocent men and women. We call on the SDL and all other groups to cancel their action and stay out of Lockerbie."

Dumfries MSP Elaine Murray has also lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament, blasting the SDL and EDL's plans as "deplorable" and calling for the march to be called off.
The Scottish Defence League denies it is a racist or violent organisation. In the limited public content on the group's Facebook site, it states: "This group is for people that can join us to protest the Muslim extremists that support terror in our land and burn our national flag."
The group has worked to keep details of planned actions more secret, since police prevented some members entering Edinburgh for a planned march last month.

Immigrants Rally for a Nationwide Strike in Italy

In an effort to heighten awareness about the contributions made by foreign workers to the Italian economy, the promoters of the first strike by immigrants in the country invited workers to stay home and to boycott shopping for one day.
Similar protests took place in other European countries on Monday (the initiative started in France and found supporters in Spain and Greece, as well). A comparable boycott, “A Day Without Immigrants,” championing full rights for immigrants living in the United States, took place in 2006.
But demonstrations Monday had a particular resonance in Italy, where anti-immigrant rhetoric has increased recently in anticipation of regional elections at the end of the month, and where foreign labor makes up nearly 10 percent of the work force.

While introducing one electoral initiative last week, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused the left of “wanting an invasion of immigrants,” only to strengthen the opposition’s electoral basis.
Around Milan, electoral posters for the anti-immigrant Northern League party depicted a Native American Indian chieftain with the slogan: “They put up with immigration, now they live on reserves.”

But various studies suggest that immigrant labor has become a fundamental component of the Italian economy.
“Many Italians are convinced that immigrants are a burden, but in fact they have a very positive effect on our welfare system,” said Maurizio Ambrosini, a professor of the sociology of migration at the University of Milan, pointing out that Italian families have become increasingly dependant on foreign caregivers to look after their children and elderly parents. The construction industry, too, is heavily dependant on foreigners, particularly from East European countries, he added. “If anything, Italy constantly needs new waves of immigrants,” he said.

Statistics published last autumn by the Catholic Caritas Migrants foundation suggested that the 4.5 million legal immigrants in Italy (about 7.2 percent of the population) contribute about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, often in jobs snubbed by Italians.
In its most recent annual report, issued last May, the Bank of Italy estimated that in 2006 foreigners “contributed about 4 percent to revenue from personal income tax, V.A.T. and excise duties, social security contributions, and the regional tax on productive activities.” More specifically, foreign residents contributed “around €4.5 billion in personal income tax and just under €10 billion in social security contributions, equivalent to 3 and 5 percent respectively of revenue from these two items,” according to the bank’s report, which also found that “the increase in the supply of labor resulting from immigration does not seem, on average, to have had negative effects on the wages or job prospects of the native population.”
“Immigrants come here to work, they’re funding our pensions, it makes sense to integrate them,” said Ciro Piscelli, a left-leaning municipal councilman for the town of Rozzano, in the Milanese hinterland. He was one of several hundred people who met in front of Milan City Hall on Monday morning in support of the strike. Like many other southern Italians, Mr. Piscelli emigrated to Lombardy from his native Naples in the 1970s, so he said he “spoke from experience.” Immigrants, he said, “are a resource.”

But such considerations seem to take a back seat whenever trouble involving immigrants arises. Calls to toughen up immigration policies multiplied last month, after rioting between immigrant groups disrupted a Milanese neighborhood last month.
And studies suggest that racist sentiments are rising in Italy, especially among the young. Research commissioned by the national and regional governments and presented to the lower house last month found that nearly half of Italians between the ages 18 and 29 express varying degrees of xenophobic or racist sentiments. “Young people themselves say that they perceive racism as increasing,” said Enzo Risso, the director of the SWG research institute that carried out the survey.
Jorge Carazas, one of the speakers at the rally Monday, came to Italy from Argentina 10 years ago. “We are the country’s new citizens and we want to send politicians a clear message,” he said. “No matter what racist tones the government chooses to adopt, we’re not going anywhere. This is our home.”



NY Times