Germany Is Becoming Islamophobic

Thilo Sarrazin's comments about Muslims have triggered outrage in Germany and abroad, but have met with willing listeners among the general public. His rhetoric is slowly bringing about change in Germany, transforming it from a tolerant society into one dominated by fear and Islamophobia.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin knew how to fight the plague. He knew catchy, seductive tunes and was successful against the scourge with his unconventional methods. But because society paid him no tribute and refused to pay him the wages he had been promised for his service, he decided to take a radical step and lure away the children of Hamelin. In doing so, he destroyed the very community he had once set out to save.

It is unclear when and why Dr. Thilo Sarrazin, 65, the child of a doctor and a Prussian landowner's daughter, who supposedly did a decent job during his time as finance minister for the city-state of Berlin and who had unusual ideas, became a seducer. Did he see himself as a future chancellor, and was he bitterly waiting in the wings to be nominated by his Social Democratic Party (SPD)? Would he have preferred to become the CEO of Deutsche Bank instead of "merely" a member of the executive board of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank? Does he relish the role of agent provocateur and popular guest on German talk shows? And is he truly worried about the absurd concern that Germany is "doing away with itself" -- as the title of his new book claims -- by tolerating too many foreign influences in its society?

Opinions may differ among those who seek to interpret Sarrazin's behavior. The important thing is that he is someone who has gone from being a tough-talking, audacious politician and anarchic prankster (see quote gallery) to a racist anti-Muslim who makes up nonsense about the genetic basis of intelligence and the "German-Jewish origins of intelligence research." Those ideas have prompted him to voice his concerns over Germany's "cultural identity" and "national character," and to blame Muslim immigrants and their supposed non-culture for all the problems of integration -- ignoring the fact that both the immigrants and the host country have a responsibility.

"We," he says, referring to German society as a whole, are unavoidably becoming less intelligent because Muslims, who Sarrazin characterizes as being unwilling to integrate, alien and cognitively challenged, are producing the most children in Germany. Sarrazin magnanimously allows that there are, of course, exceptions in the Islamic world, perhaps a few intelligent Turks here and there. But his views essentially eliminate the need to even address the issue of a controlled immigration policy, of which Sarrazin himself has been such a vehement proponent in the past. Sarrazin, in one of his typical turns of phrase, said that Muslims ought to "disappear." From that point of view, integration is unimaginable, possible only through death -- which is naturally also one way to solve the problem.

Selective Statistics
The respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper called Sarrazin's book an "anti-Muslim dossier based on genetics." Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with irritation. Stephan Kramer, the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, suggested that the author consider joining the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD).

The interior minister of the city-state of Berlin, Ehrhart Körting, a member of the SPD, expects the book to trigger legal action over hate speech. "Thilo is currently drifting away," he says. "He always had a fondness for statistics. But in the integration debate he uses only those statistics that fit in with his image of the enemy."

Christian Gaebler, who is head of the SPD in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, where Sarrazin is registered, said: "Enough is enough. Should Mr. Sarrazin not go willingly, we are initiating proceedings to throw him out of the party. We will carefully analyze his book and discuss the issue at our next state executive board meeting on Sept. 6."

Sarrazin's rhetoric has even triggered outrage abroad. In France, the daily newspaper Le Monde called him a "racist provocateur." But the widespread rebuke among politicians and in the media (his fellow bankers have remained eloquently silent on the controversy) is only one side of the coin. Sarrazin's theories, in the form of excerpts from his book and quotes published in SPIEGEL, the tabloid newspaper Bild and the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, have also found willing listeners within a highly anxious population. In fact, they almost have majority appeal.

Socially Acceptable
The Turkish-German writer and sociologist Necla Kelek made a speech at the presentation of Sarrazin's book on Monday in which she defended his ideas. Kelek is a fan of Sarrazin and has won several awards in Germany, bestowed by people who -- like her -- see all the problems of the world as being caused by Islam.

The book was already at the top of the German Amazon's list of bestsellers when it was published. Every threat to eject Sarrazin from his party or his position at the Bundesbank only enhances his notoriety. But if nothing happens, he can feel all the more validated.

If Sarrazin were a lone wolf, an agitator in a desert with no supporters, he could be dismissed as a freakish phenomenon. But with his seductive flute-playing, the man now has a host of acolytes, including women of Muslim descent who ostentatiously refuse to wear a headscarf and other copycats. Shrill rhetoric is in vogue, and hysterical Islam-bashing is in full swing. Sarrazin and his fellow cynics became socially acceptable long ago.

Their efforts are having an effect, and are bringing about changes in Germany. The changes aren't sufficiently dramatic to jeopardize democracy right away, but are gradual, like a slow-acting poison. From a cosmopolitan country characterized by religious freedom, Germany is slowly becoming a state that is dominated by exaggerated fears and that exhibits the beginnings of an Islamophobic society.

Of course, these fears are not completely unfounded. Conditions in areas like Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood give rise to very real, justified concerns. There are schoolrooms where three-quarters of the students are from immigrant families, students whose German is barely good enough to get by. There are Arab and Albanian family clans that control crime syndicates and receive welfare benefits. There are phenomena like forced marriages and honor killings. In some mosques, imams are encouraging the faithful to engage in Islamist terror. All of this exists, and yet it has nothing to do with ordinary Islam and the day-to-day lives of well over 90 percent of Germany's Muslims. And yet these are precisely the kinds of things that fuel cheap attempts to create stereotypes of Muslims as the enemy.

Part 2: Parallels with 19th-Century Anti-Semitism
"In no other religion is the transition to violence and terrorism so fluid," Sarrazin writes. Former FAZ correspondent and bestselling author Udo Ulfkotte, another prophet of doom, expresses similar concerns when he warns: "A tsunami of Islamization is sweeping across our continent." Dutch writer and columnist Leon de Winter, who is much celebrated in Germany and a frequent contributor to SPIEGEL, claims to have recognized "the face of the enemy" in the outlandish religion and is generally disparaging of Muslims, writing: "Since the 1960s, we have been deceiving ourselves that all cultures are equal." The journalist and writer Ralph Giordano, a moral authority in Germany, is sharply critical of new mosque construction and sweepingly characterizes Islam as a totalitarian religion.


And aren't those who tolerate totalitarianism nothing but appeasers? And haven't we seen this once before?

Potential for Violence
There is no question that there are Muslims in Germany who sympathize with Islamist ideas (which doesn't necessarily mean that they are prepared to use violence). A report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, includes 36,270 Muslims in this group, a number that has increased slightly in recent years -- by about 9 percent since 2007. It is also undeniable that suicide bombers worldwide frequently invoke Islam -- a deplorable but not an isolated phenomenon. Every monotheistic religion, through its claim to exclusivity, contains the potential for violence.

But no one condemns Christianity as a whole when Northern Irish breakaway factions commit murder in the name of God. We don't blame all Catholics when some of them kill abortion doctors while invoking their faith. And we don't take all of Judaism to task when a Jewish terrorist named Baruch Goldstein slaughters dozens of Muslims during prayers in Hebron while invoking Yahweh.

But we do condemn Islam, whose holy book contains about as many passages glorifying violence as the Old Testament (which, unlike the Koran, does mention stoning as a punishment).

Of course, the widespread mistrust of Muslims, which has only grown in recent years, has a lot to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. It is everything but a purely German phenomenon.

'Growing Hostility' in US
In the United States, traditionally a country of immigrants, where Muslims are much better integrated into society than in Germany, the planned construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque room near Ground Zero in New York has triggered a heated controversy. Comments by hate-mongers from Fox News and leading Republicans prompted Time magazine to conclude, in a cover story in its latest issue titled "Is America Islamophobic?" that there are signs of "growing hostility" toward Muslims. The new government in the Netherlands will be forced to tolerate the right-wing populist politician Geert Wilders, who has even proposed banning the Koran.

In Italy, Denmark and Austria, populist right-wing parties are scoring political points with their crude anti-Islamic slogans. In Switzerland, a country with a very small Muslim population, they even managed to win a referendum to ban minarets. And in France the banlieues, low-income areas on the outskirts of major cities, are in flames because the French government can offer no solution to the lack of prospects for most Muslim youth.

In Germany, which has had at least some success in integrating foreigners, the mood against Muslims is now just as hysterical. A man like Sarrazin is applauded for behaving like a toned-down version of Wilders. But why?

Popular Scapegoat
The widespread support for Sarrazin also shows that there is potential in Germany for a party to the right of the pro-business Free Democratic Party and the conservative Christian Democrats. If Sarrazin were to establish such a party after possibly leaving the SPD, he could be expected to capture at least 10 percent of the vote. Passive, unimaginative politicians, major parties with no real integration policies and, most of all, the quarreling Islamic associations, have contributed to the possibility that the seed of Islamophobia in Germany could germinate and begin to grow when fertilized by people like Sarrazin.

The concept of Muslims as the enemy is becoming more targeted, with Islam being held accountable for many social problems, like unemployment, the supposed inundation of foreigners and deficits in education. A religion has become a scapegoat -- and a focal point for intolerance and hate.

Popular Internet sites like the German blog Politically Incorrect don't even begin to take the trouble to draw the necessary distinctions. Some of the postings on the site are indicative of this tendency to paint with a very broad brush, postings like: "Islam is a voluntary mental illness," "It is pointless to grapple with this inferior culture," and "There is only one word to describe Islam: barbaric." The anonymity of the Internet enables a boundless, blind hatred to cross the last thresholds of inhibition. Worshippers of the Prophet Mohammed are variously described as "goat fuckers" or "veiled sluts." "Dirty Muslim!" and "God-damned camel driver" are among the most popular derogatory expressions among young people today.

The Prophet Mohammed has more than an image problem. According to an Emnid poll, a majority now finds him almost as distasteful as Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect who authorized Jesus's crucifixion. Some 52 percent of Germans would be opposed to one of their children marrying a Muslim or would only accept it with very strong reservations, while 46 percent would be against one of their children marrying a Buddhist and 30 percent a Jew.

'Unbelievable Hatred'
Professor Wolfgang Benz, the long-standing director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin and the co-founder of the Dachau Review with which he established research into concentration camps, now sees parallels between anti-Semitic agitators and extreme "Islam critics." "Populists in the West are responding to the image of the West as the enemy, propagated by demagogues within the Islamic world, with their own image of Islam as the enemy." They use similar tools, exploiting distorted images and hysteria. "The act of equating German citizens who are Muslims with fanatical terrorists is deliberate and is framed as an appeal to popular sentiment."

Benz sees the phobia against other cultures or minorities as a defense mechanism. An image of the enemy is constructed by means of generalization and the reduction of factual information to hearsay. A classic example is the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic pamphlet written in the late 19th century, which supposedly furnished evidence of a Jewish global conspiracy. Although every detail of the text was debunked as incorrect, Russian czars and, most of all, the Nazis used it to incite the people against Jews. The text is still available today in Islamic countries that agitate against Israel. "Anyone who is -- rightfully -- indignant over the narrow-mindedness of anti-Semites must also take a critical view of the portrayal of Islam as the enemy," Benz wrote in January.

Benz has now come under sharp attack for this reasoning. He is the target of verbal abuse and even threats. "I am confronted with an unbelievable hatred," says Benz, even though he has absolutely no intention of trivializing anti-Semitism. But in today's Germany, it appears that few people are interested in taking a differentiated view.

Never Seen Again
Germany is changing. And although it is not yet a consistently Islamophobic society, a Sarrazin republic, it is certainly on its way to becoming one.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin was never seen again after his disappearance. It would, with all due respect, be an appealing thought to not hear anything from Thilo Sarrazin for a long time. However, the Pied Piper did not return the children he had abducted. Only two escaped, one blind and the other deaf. Neither of them was able to help the other children -- and so all were lost.

speigel

ENGLISH NATIONAL ALLIANCE ANGRY SCENES IN BRIGHTON (UK)

A right-wing march in Britain’s “gay capital” ended in running battles yesterday.

Police struggled to contain angry scenes at the English National Alliance’s rally in Brighton.

Dogs and horses moved in when marchers clashed with anti-fascist protestors. There were at least three arrests.

Streets packed with Bank Holiday trippers were transformed into scenes of chaos.

Hundreds of campaigners chanting anti-racist slogans met the march head-on.

As violence erupted, members of the public were caught up in the carnage.

One eyewitness said: “I’ve never seen anything like it, certainly not in Brighton. It was like a war zone.

“There were hundreds of people on both sides. We thought there might be trouble but nothing like this. It seemed to start when one group broke off from the main body of marchers. They slipped off down an alley and it just went from there.”

Police closed pubs and sealed off streets trying to contain the fights that were breaking out all over the city.

A spokesman for Sussex Police refused to confirm the exact number of arrests or comment on the police response.

Both sides had vowed to make it a peaceful day, but each said the other side contained violent members.

Daily Star

FBI raids linked to suspect with supremacist ties (USA)

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation are searching several locations in Spokane County today in two cases.

Frank Harrill, agent in charge for the FBI’s Spokane office, declined to offer details but said one case involves Wayde Lynn Kurt, a 52-year-old convicted felon arrested Monday for illegally possessing a firearm.

Kurt drew federal attention last year after authorities learned he’d been in contact with a white supremacist leader despite being ordered by a judge to refrain from meeting with other felons. Now he’s accused of unlawfully possessing a 9mm handgun, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle on Aug. 21, according to an indictment in U.S. District Court. He was booked into the Spokane County Jail Monday at 9:26 p.m.

Harrill declined to discuss the case and said he doesn’t expect further details to be released today.

"We’re fairly static in what we’re going to be able to release today,” he said.

Kurt was sentenced in October 2004 to 18 months in prison and three years probation for theft of government property. In April 2009, he was found in violation of probation for contacting a convicted felon without his probation officer’s permission.

That felon, Keegan Van Tuyl, is a white supremacist whose parole was revoked in January after federal prosecutors said he’d violated his release conditions by contacting white supremacists and leaving the state to attend a skinhead meeting in North Idaho.

Van Tuyl cofounded two Odinist-skinhead groups, Vangard Kindred and Valhalla-Bound Skinheads, while in federal prison, where he recruited members.

Van Tuyl and other members of the groups were involved in several racist activities in 2008 and 2009 in the Spokane area and North Idaho, federal prosecutors said at his January court hearing.

Kurt’s connection to Van Tuyl isn’t clear. Court documents filed April 16, 2009, say the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office recorded a phone call Van Tuyl, a jail inmate, had with Kurt on April 3, 2009. Kurt acknowledged speaking to Van Tuyl and said he knew he didn’t have permission to speak with him.

“As an intermediate sanction, the undersigned officer verbally reprimanded Mr. Kurt and again directed him to not associate with Mr. Van Tuyl,” according to a report by U.S. Probation Officer Samuel Najera. “Mr. Kurt acknowledged this directive and stated he would not be associating with Mr. Van Tuyl anymore.”

Spokesman

N.Y. ANTI-MOSQUE LEADER DEFENDS GROUP THAT CLASHED WITH BRITISH POLICE (usa)

A leader in the movement protesting plans to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan is defending the actions of a right-wing, anti-Muslim group that was involved in violent clashes with British riot police over the weekend. Pamela Geller is a conservative blogger, activist, and a principal organizer of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which seeks to block construction of the proposed center. The group is sponsoring a protest rally at the site on the 2010 anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a week from Saturday. In a posting on her Atlas Shrugs blog, Geller expresses sympathy for the goals and actions of the English Defense League (EDL), a far-right group implicated in violent clashes with police during an anti-Islamic demonstration last Saturday in the northern English city of Bradford. "The stated goal of the EDL is to oppose militant Islam and the sharia," Geller writes. "What's wrong with that? Everything to the PC, leftist slaves in the media and the government." In an e-mail to Declassified, Geller affirmed her support for the EDL and defended the group's actions in Bradford, which, with its nearby sister city of Leeds, has a substantial Muslim population, many of Pakistani extraction.

Geller wrote: "The media has been defamatory and libelous towards any and all counter jihad activists, including the EDL, which far from being neo-Nazi and racist, is pro-Israel and has Sikh and other non-white members and spokesmen. The EDL's own explanation of what happened in Bradford is here. As you can see from that statement, a group of Islamic supremacists and Communists actually began the violence by throwing rocks at EDL members. White supremacists at the demonstration did not represent the EDL, and EDL members actually removed them from the demonstration." British media reports—including accounts from outlets known for their conservative political slants—and official police statements on the Bradford clashes do not offer much support for, and in some cases contradict, the account offered by the EDL. In an official chronology of last Saturday's events posted on the Web site of the West Yorkshire Police, the first reference to violence is a 2:30 p.m. entry that says: "Missiles have been thrown in the area around the Bradford Urban Gardens, however, this has been contained and the police are utilising their resources to manage the current situation."

Bradford Urban Gardens is the location at which U.K. authorities had allowed the EDL to stage its rally; a left-wing counterdemonstration was booked a half mile away. (The EDL had wanted to conduct a march through the city, but authorities denied permission.) A report from The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper known for its conservative sympathies, says violence broke out "as chanting EDL supporters began throwing missiles towards Asian youngsters and anti-fascist activists who had been taunting them with shouts of 'Nazi scum off our streets.' " The Telegraph said that as EDL protesters got off buses that had taken them to the site, they shouted slogans at locals, including "Allah-Pedophile," "We want our country back," and "We love the floods"—a reference, the paper said, to flooding that's now devastating much of Pakistan. The Daily Maill, a newspaper perhaps even more conservative thanThe Telegraph, also reported on the violence. The paper's Web site carries photos of what it says are EDL protesters, with one caption reading, "Crossing the line: EDL supporters in hats, hoods and balaclavas hurl missiles at police in Bradford today."

By her own account, Geller's support of the EDL and other anti-Muslim groups in the U.K. has put her at odds with what are considered mainstream groups representing Britain's Jewish community. In an interview with the conservative FrontPage Magazine Web site, Geller claims that rabbis and prominent Jewish groups in Britain had urged Jews to boycott a demonstration that a group called Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE) organized last December to protest plans to build a mosque in the North London neighborhood of Harrow. According to Geller, the Community Security Trust, which keeps watch on extremist and anti-Semitic activities in the U.K., much like the Anti-Defamation League does in the U.S., urged Jews not to support the SIOE protest, as did unnamed rabbis who said the protest's "only purpose" was "to spread hatred and fear." Geller accused U.K. Jewish groups like the CST of "aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism." A person familiar with the views of British Jewish leaders, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said mainstream Jewish groups regarded the English Defense League as "politicized football hooligans."

In an e-mail to Declassified, Geller acknowledged that some epithets that The Telegraph attributed to EDL protesters in Bradford were "in bad taste, although in saying that I am not accepting the accuracy of The Telegraph account, and also understand that words said in anger are not always words the speakers would endorse in moments of reflection." In a move apparently designed to avoid such embarrassments at her group's upcoming 9/11 event, she said, "We have already published several notices warning that inflammatory signs will be removed." Geller said the EDL itself acknowledged that there may have been neo-Nazi thugs among its ranks: "The left and real neo-Nazis frequently attempt to infiltrate EDL rallies in order to discredit the EDL. This is amply documented. Both have an interest in seeing the EDL fail: the left so that there will be no serious resistance to its agenda, and the neo-Nazis so that there exists no respectable alternative to them in opposing the British elite, and also because the neo-Nazis have generally aligned with the Islamic jihad that the EDL resists." She added that while she would not assert that the EDL "can do no wrong, I just refuse to accept accounts of EDL misdeeds from sources that have been proven in the past to have lied about EDL activities."

Newsweek

Germany: Neo-Nazi attacks grandson of Munich massacre victim

Alexander Paloch convicted of beating 17-year-old Israeli living in Germany, whose grandfather was murdered in 1972 Olympics massacre. Attacker sentenced to eight months probation, avoids jail term.
The grandson of a victim of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre was attacked by a neo-Nazi in Germany. The 20-year-old assailant, Alexander Paloch, was convicted by the Naumburg District Court of assaulting a 17-year-old Israeli who lives with his family in a small town in Germany.

But despite the court's accepting the prosecution's arguments, the man was only sentence to eight months probation, because of the country's laws.

Paloch, who works as a cook, has a long history of neo-Nazi activity, and was suspected in the past of two incidents of assault. On Tuesday, he was convicted of beating the young Israeli on April 16 in the small town of Lauscha. The victim's grandfather was Amitzur Shapira, who was murdered in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
During the attack, which went on even after the teen tried to flee, Paloch shouted, "Jewish pig". He punched him and kicked him until a passerby rescued the teen with his car.

The judge accepted the prosecution's claims and sentenced Paloch to eight months probation. The defense requested only five months probation. Paloch was also ordered to pay a fine of 360 euros ($458) which will go toward the memorial site at the former concentration camp at Buchenwald.

Victim's mother 'pleased with ruling'

"We are very pleased with the ruling, since we actually got what we demanded," the victim's mother, Tzipi Lev, told Ynet. "This is the maximum penalty for such an offence."
Lev said that since the incident, she and her partner have brought together a coalition of organizations to fight neo-Nazism in Lauscha.


Like many towns in the former East Germany, Lauscha is considered a center of activity for extreme right and neo-Nazi activity.

Paloch himself is considered one of the "protégés" of a veteran neo-Nazi activist in the town.

Y Net news

Two men charged over English Defence League march in Bradford

Two men were charged with offences on Monday after a controversial city centre demonstration by far-right group the English Defence League.
A total of 14 men were detained on suspicion of a range of offences during and after Saturday's protest in Bradford, which was attended by fewer than 1,000 EDL supporters.

West Yorkshire Police said two men have been charged and eight others have been released on bail pending further inquiries.

During the demonstration, bottles, cans, stones and three smoke bombs were thrown at opponents gathered nearby.

Nearly 100 supporters of the far-right group climbed over a temporary 8ft barricade - aimed at keeping them inside the city's Urban Gardens - to get on to neighbouring waste ground from where they threw missiles at police.

As the skirmishes were breaking out, nearly 300 people gathered for an alternative event hosted by Unite Against Fascism/We Are Bradford about half a mile away at Crown Court Plaza.

In the days before the rally, Bradford community leaders called for calm, fearing demonstrations could provoke a violent reaction to rival the 2001 Bradford riots.

Initially the EDL intended to march in Bradford with a planned protest by Unite Against Fascism on the same day.

A high-profile campaign was started to stop the EDL march and Home Secretary Theresa May eventually authorised a ban on any public processions over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

West Yorkshire Police said the 14 people arrested were dealt with in the following ways:

A 37-year-old Bradford man was arrested for possessing an offensive weapon. He has been charged with the offence and bailed to appear at Bradford Magistrates Court on September 8;

A 32-year-old Bradford man was arrested for assaulting a police officer. He has been interviewed and released without being charged;

A 23-year-old Walsall man was arrested and charged with an offence under Section 4a of the Public Order Act. He has been bailed to appear at Leeds Magistrates' Court on December 6;

A 24-year-old Bradford man was arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. He has been bailed pending further inquiries;

A 42-year-old Wolverhampton man was arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. He was released after the event and issued with a fixed penalty notice for disorder;

Two men aged 22 and 20 along with two youths aged 16 and 15, all from Bradford, were arrested on suspicion of wounding after an incident in which a stone hit a man on the head causing a slight injury. All four have been released on bail pending further inquiries;

A 24-year-old Wakefield man was arrested under Section 4a of the Public Order Act and has been given police bail pending further inquiries;

A 23-year-old man from Birmingham was arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. He was released after the event and was issued with a fixed penalty notice for disorder;

A 24-year-old man from Halifax was arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. He was released after the event and was issued with a penalty notice for disorder;

An 18-year-old man from Bradford was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder following alleged missile throwing. He has been released on bail pending further inquiries;

A 24-year-old Bradford man was arrested in relation to two alleged assaults and also criminal damage after a missile was thrown at a coach on the M62. He has been bailed pending further inquiries.

The Telegraph

Football hooligans to launch 'European Defence League' in Amsterdam

The English Defence League (EDL), the anti-Muslim 'street army' composed largely of football hooligans that burst onto the front pages of British newspapers in the last year as a result of its often violent protests, is to hold a rally in Amsterdam in October, EUobserver has learned.
The EDL is to demonstrate in support of Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigrant firebrand, with a recently launched French Defence League and Dutch Defence League, modelled on the English group, to join them along with other anti-Islamic militants from across Europe.

Formed in 2009, the EDL has held over a dozen often rowdy marches and demonstrations in cities across Britain over the last year. Protests that attracted only a couple hundred militants at the end of last year are now bringing thousands out. On Saturday (28 August) a rally in Bradford, West Yorkshire, home to the second-largest community of south Asians in the UK, turned ugly when members clashed with police and pelted anti-racist activists with bricks, bottles and smoke bombs. Thirteen were arrested, according to media reports.

Anti-racist watchdogs call the EDL one of the most worrying developments on the far-right scene in the UK since the 1970s and the days of the National Front, an openly white supremacist and neo-Nazi political party. The group now appears to be meeting with some success in exporting its novel brand of nativism to the continent, a combination of anti-Muslim vitriol, agressive street marches and attempts to rope in football hooligan gangs by holding rallies around the same time as matches.

Graeme Atkinson, European editor of Searchlight magazine, a UK anti-fascist journal, says that the group is "tapping into a widespread and growing Islamophobia in society," in a way that other far-right groups, weighed down with explicitly fascist iconography and discourse, have not been able to.

He warns against panic regarding the new group, but says authorities should not be blind to the growth of such moevements, describing the new formation as "an utterly socially divisive, politically toxic ideology."

New kind of far-right outfit
Distinct from the traditional far right, the EDL, which originally grew out of the "football casual" subculture, claims to be multi-ethnic, to target "jihadism" rather than Muslims, and employs a rhetoric more in keeping with the fringes of neo-conservative anti-Islamism than the nostalgia for Nazism of other far-right formations.

The group's mission statement declares that anyone is welcome, so long as they are "integrated:" "We are non-racist/fascist and anyone is welcome if they want to live under English values and fully integrate into our way of life."

"English Defence League members recognise that this threat is one that must be stopped at all costs. Our Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu friends all have tales to tell with regard to Islamic Imperialism," the group's "Exposing the myths" page reads.

One of its leaders is Guramit Singh, a Sikh born in Britain, and it says it is, like Mr Wilders, strongly pro-Israel and maintains both Jewish and LGBT "divisions" while backing a ban on the building of mosques and seeking the burqa to be outlawed. Its LGBT wing was set up after the Dutchman visited the UK in March when he had been invited to show his short anti-Islam film, Fitna, in the House of Lords. At a demonstration in Bolton in March, a man held up a pink triangle alongside anti-Islam placards and banners. Its LGBT division has 107 members at the time of writing.

In what would normally be anathema to traditional, antisemitic far-right outfits, the group has taken to brandishing the Israeli flag at rallies and, according to the Jewish Chronicle, its Jewish division had signed up hundreds of members on its Facebook page until the page was recently deleted, though Jewish leaders in the UK actively discourage young people from joining, with the Board of Deputies of British Jews describing the organisation as "built on a foundation of Islamophobia and hatred which we reject entirely."

Links to BNP, Swedish Democrats
As with other formations in Europe that far-right monitoring organisations describe as "far-right-lite," notably Mr Wilders, Denmark's People's Party and the late Pim Fortuyn, some in the EDL try to distance themselves from, in the words of the group's website, the "Adolf-worhipping neanderthals."

But these same monitors say that while the EDL is not an outright "fascist" or neo-Nazi formation, links with the traditional far right remain, with many leaders being ex-members of the British National Party. Its leader, Tommy Robinson, is an ex-BNP activist. One of the organisation's main strategists is 45-year-old IT consultant Alan Lake, who has advised the far-right Swedish Democrats on tactics.

Meanwhile, at every demonstration but two in the last year, dozens have been arrested. The group's marches regularly involve anti-Muslim sloganeering and frequently descend into violence. At a rally in Dudley in July, a Hindu Temple was attacked as well as a number of shops, restaurants, cars and homes.

Figures for the size of the organisation and its supporters are hard to pin down and no figures have emerged for the new continental franchises. The group claims it has "thousands" of supporters and has spawned a Scottish Defence League and a Welsh Defence League, both of which have held rallies in their respective countries, as well as an Ulster Defence League. Police meanwhile reckoned that 1,500 to 2,000 EDL demonstrators marched in Newcastle upon Tyne in May this year, one of its bigger rallies.

Ground Zero 'Mosque'
The EDL has received endorsements from Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, two of the main agitators behind the right-wing movement opposed to a Muslim community centre being built two blocks away from the site of Al Qaeda's attacks on New York in 2001, the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Geert Wilders, for his part, is scheduled to speak at a protest in Manhattan on 11 September this year by Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) against the building of the community centre.

Although Mr Wilders is not thought to have direct links with the EDL, SIOA is an affiliate organisation of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), which has marched alongside the English hooligan movement. SIOE itself was founded in 2007 by Anders Gravers, previously the leader of a tiny Danish party called Stop the Islamisation of Denmark (Stop Islamiseringen af Danmark), in reaction to the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoon controversy. On 11 September 2007, the SIOE staged a demonstration in Brussels.

Other affiliate organisations have been created in 10 European countries including Denmark, Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden and the United States of America. Mr Gravers is reportedly on friendly terms with Mr Wilders, is his "friend" on Facebook and will be speaking alongside him at the anti-Mosque rally in New York.

The demonstration in Amsterdam is due to take place on 30 October, according to the EDL website. Mr Wilders heads to court at the end of next month on charges of inciting racism. The case begins 5 October, with a verdict expected 2 November.

Joining them there will be members of the recently formed Dutch Defence League' and French Defence League, both modelled on the EDL. The latter draws its members from the ranks of far-right supporters of the Paris Saint Germain football club, known in France for long harbouring a far-right element among the club's supporters, although elsewhere on the continent, according to EDL spokesman Steve Simmons, not all the defence-league-linked groups have their origins in football hooliganism.

Paris Saint Germain supporters
The French Defence League, which employs both an anglophone version of its name and "Ligue Francaise de Defense," founded in May and more latterly takes the name Ligue 732, after a group of Paris Saint Germain supporters, that, according the outfit, "tries to unify all French Casuals, Ultras and French Fans to fight against Radical Islam."
The 732 figure references the year that the French king Charles the Hammer, the grandfather of Charlemagne, won a victory at the Battle of Tours halting Islamic expansion in western Europe.

Mr Simmons told EUobserver that militants from the "anti-Jihad movement" in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and "other European states" will join them in Amsterdam for the launch of what is termed the "European Defence League" or, alternately, the much cuddlier "European Friendship Initiative."

"I would also like to take this opportunity to announce a new demonstration that is to take the English Defence League global," Tommy Robinson, the pseudonym of the group's leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a former member of the BNP, wrote on the EDL website in a missive in July.

"You may be aware that the great man Geert Wilders is in court for race hate charges," he continued. "The EDL has been in contact with our European brothers and sisters and we have decided that on Saturday, 30 October the European Defence League will be demonstrating in Amsterdam in support of Geert. We hope that all of you will be able to join us for this, what promises to be a landmark demonstration for the future of the defence leagues."

"We feel that freedom of speech is being eroded and a lot of appeasing of radical muslims and Islam in general. Geert has the courage to take this on and we want to support him," the group's spokesman, Steve Simmons, told EUobserver.

Counter-Jihad conferences
In June this year, the EDL sent two representatives to Counter-Jihad 2010 - a conference in Zurich held by the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which does not focus on civil liberties at all but is instead an anti-Muslim movement. It was the fourth such pan-European conference in as many years.

The Zurich conference may have been where the idea for a European Defence League originated. According to an EDL report back from the meeting, which attracted "counter-Jihad" activists from Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, the UK and the US, the conference "built on the important work that had already been done as well as doing the groundwork for new initiatives and the inclusion of new organisations and activists in the work of the global counter jihad."

Mr Simmons for his part in a slight detour from the announcement of Mr Robinson, told EUobserver that the Amsterdam rally will see the launch of the "European Friendship Initiative," and that a "European Defence League" will be just part of this broader alliance of "Defence-League"-branded movements.
He said that talks are ongoing with in particular German, Dutch, Belgian and French groups ahead of the Amsterdam demonstration. Already, in April this year, the EDL took part in a small pro-Wilders rally of 100 people in Berlin outside the Dutch embassy, organised by the Burger Bewegung Pax Europa (Pax Europa Citizens' Movement).

He also explained why the EDL and allied groups are heading to the Netherlands: "We feel that freedom of speech is being eroded and there is a lot of appeasing of radical muslims and Islam in general. Geert has the courage to take this on and we want to support him."

He downplayed the group's rowdy reputation: "We want to turn it into a sort of celebration rather than a protest, with food, drink and entertainment."

He claimed that off-duty serving UK, Dutch and German soldiers which had joined "Armed Forces Unite," (which grew out of "Armed Forces Defence League," a Facebook group for EDL-supporting soldiers and sailors) have offered to help Dutch police to steward the event.

The city of Amsterdam government for its part is aware of the plans for a demonstration and is tracking developments, but will not discuss details of preparations due to "security considerations."

In Bradford over the weekend, in what was a massive police operation, some 1,600 officers from 13 forces took part.

euob server

Anti-Chinese sentiment sparks alarm in Mongolia

Bat a softly-spoken, smartly dressed 24-year-old Mongolian educated in Moscow -- points to the screen saver on his mobile phone with pride. It's a picture of the skull of a German SS officer.

Bat is the somewhat unlikely face of Dayar Mongol, one of three registered ultra-nationalist groups in Mongolia which sometimes take their cue from neo-Nazi outfits in Europe.

Enemy number one for the xenophobic organisations is the landlocked country's neighbour to the south -- China.

"We have 50 trained fighters whose job is to hunt down Chinese living in Mongolia and some Mongolians who have Chinese fathers," Bat said in an interview in the capital Ulan Bator.

"We reject their blood and their culture." Members of his group had assaulted Chinese nationals, he said.

Mongolia, a former Soviet satellite state wedged between China and Russia, has struggled to develop its economy since turning to capitalism two decades ago, and remains one of the poorest nations in Asia.

Its rich deposits of copper, gold, uranium, silver and oil have caught the eye of foreign investors, sparking hopes for a brighter future, but members of groups such as Dayar Mongol reject any outside economic or cultural influence.

"We can't just give Mongolia to the Chinese people. We are protecting it from them," said Bat, who claims to have 300 active members in his group, which he revived in 2005 after it had lain dormant for several years.

Bat says Dayar Mongol also targets Mongolian women who have sex with Chinese men by shaving their heads, and sometimes tattooing their foreheads -- in an eerie parallel to the numbers tattooed on Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.

The crimes of such groups have not gone unnoticed abroad -- the US State Department has warned travellers about an "increased number of xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals" since the spring of 2010.

"Nationalist groups frequently mistake Asian-Americans for ethnic Chinese or Koreans and may attack without warning or provocation," it says on its website.

Two Chinese nationals have been killed in Ulan Bator this year, police have said, adding that the murder of a Mongolian by a Chinese citizen outside the capital was the "reason that ultra-nationalist group have become more active".

Franck Bille, who is doing research at Cambridge University on Mongolian attitudes towards China, said the xenophobia can be traced back to the country's past under Moscow's thumb.

"These anti-Chinese sentiments are a direct product of the Socialist period," he told AFP. "Russians regularly used the 'threat of China' to ensure the Mongols' allegiance."

When the Soviet Union crumbled and Mongolia began its transition to becoming a market economy, the country's traditionally nomadic society fell apart, leaving poor social services and education, and growing social disparities.

While Moscow is still perceived in a favourable light -- both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia last year -- Beijing has come in for public scorn.

"Increased Chinese influence in Mongolia in mining and construction has mainly contributed to a rise in nationalist sentiments," said Shurkhuu Dorj, of the Institute of International Studies at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.

Some Mongolians, also mindful of China's 200-year rule over Ulan Bator under the Manchu dynasty, are worried about China's wider ambitions, even if funding from Beijing could bring on a new age of prosperity, experts say.

"Clearly, they don't want the country to be an economic suburb of Beijing," Graeme Hancock, an expert on the mining industry for the World Bank, told AFP.

"They also want to be making their own decisions, not at the whim of foreign jurisdiction."

Dorj said while he believes the groups had hundreds, not thousands, of members, they still represent a real threat.

"Their vigilante actions against law-breaking outsiders, mainly Chinese, could meet broad support in the country," Dorj said.

"There is a serious danger."

mysinchew

Grandfather becomes the face of French racism row

When Rene Galinier pulled the trigger on his old hunting rifle, he said he was acting to defend his home. Two young eastern European women had broken into his house while he was taking a siesta, and when the startled 73-year-old woke up, he shot and wounded them both.

Since Mr Galinier fired at the intruders, reverberations have been felt far beyond the four walls of his modest bungalow in a village in south-west France.

The case of "Papy" Galinier has become a cause celebre thanks to the bitter debate caused by President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent crackdown on the Roma community in France, which has seen itinerant camps demolished and hundreds of Roma returned to eastern Europe.

On one side stand those who have condemned the expulsions as redolent of Nazi Germany - on the other are those who say Mr Sarkozy has not gone far enough. In the middle of the political maelstrom sits Mr Galinier who is in a local prison cell, charged with attempted manslaughter and denied bail pending trial.

"He was a good man, who had been pushed too far," said 85-year-old Edouard Martin, a retired policeman and fellow resident of Mr Galinier's village, Nissan-lez-Enserunes. "People here are scared of the foreigners. I sleep with a revolver by my bed. If someone comes into my house, then I am going to kill them before they kill me."

Mr Sarkozy started to shut hundreds of illegal Roma camps in response to clashes between police and traveller communities last month. With more expulsions planned, and criticism mounting at home and abroad, he hopes to bolster support for his stance next week by convening a summit of interior ministers from countries facing similar immigration debates. Western European governments are split on the matter. While Italy is considering similar action, Britain will be sending a senior official to the meeting rather than the Home Secretary, Theresa May, for fear of being seen to endorse Mr Sarkozy's policies. On Friday, a United Nations human rights body rebuked France and urged the government to aim for integration of Roma rather than deportation.

Nissan-lez-Enserunes, where four generations of the Galinier family live, provides a vivid snapshot of why it has become such a charged issue in France. Not far from Montpellier, it is a picture-postcard image of southern French living, with elegant stone houses set among narrow winding streets filled with flowers. Mr Galinier has lived in the area all his life, raising two children, working for the council, then retiring to spend time with his wife and grandchildren and tend his garden.

He had been targeted by criminals twice before. In 2002, thieves attempted to break in and in February this year goldfish were stolen from his garden pond.

Among villagers, the finger of blame for local petty crime often points - rightly or wrongly - to a patch of wasteland several miles outside the village where a group of Roma recently made camp next to a motorway. The families and their wild-haired children live in ramshackle caravans among piles of rubbish. On the afternoon of August 5, two women in their early 20s broke into Mr Galinier's home. The unarmed pair, who speak no French and have not given police their names, were both shot at from just a few yards away. One was hit in the groin, the other in the chest. Both are in hospital awaiting identification and questioning.

Mr Galinier's story, with strong echoes of the British case of Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, has resonated throughout the village and beyond. A committee has been set up to fight for his cause, and slogans have been painted on the road to Nissan-lez-Enserunes proclaiming: "We're right behind you, Rene." A local petition has more than 8,000 signatures, with 10,000 from as far afield as the US joining the campaign on Facebook and internet forums.

The internet forums have attracted the attention of more extreme elements of French society, with queues of people denouncing the Roma community for every crime under the Mediterranean sun.

Mr Galinier has caught the eye of the extreme Right with some of his comments. After being arrested, he said: "I was in danger Ö I was scared. I was threatened by this dirty race. I've become racist."

"He's not a philosopher," admitted his lawyer, Josy-Jean Bousquet, acknowledging the unfortunate comments. "But I reject that he's racist. He was angry and upset."

The Front National, an extreme-Right party, seized the opportunity provided by Mr Galinier. Its vice-president, Marine Le Pen, whose father, Jean-Marie founded the organisation, described his arrest and detention as "totally abusive", given the "insupportable immunity of these notorious delinquents".

The village has had a total of 17 break-ins since the beginning of the year and a falling crime rate. Yet villagers still speak of a "crime wave" and lay the blame squarely on the caravan doorstep of the travellers. Roma rights organisations claim that "stigmatisation" will not solve the underlying problems of lack of integration and facilities. Maxime Andreu, of the regional Support Committee for the Roma, said: "We should be looking at why they are having to leave their countries - what is being done with all the EU funds to help them there?"

For the Roma travellers on the waste ground outside Nissan-lez-Enserunes, their new home remains better than the one they left behind. Picking her way among broken bottles, discarded sofas and heaps of rubbish, Mikaela Josephine, 19, is only interested in avoiding being sent back to Romania.

"It's wrong, what Mr Sarkozy is doing," the mother of two said. "But I don't want to go back there. It is more racist than France
Daily Telegraph

ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE BRAWL COSTS TAXPAYER £1M

An anti-Islam demo which ended in a mass brawl where 13 people were arrested cost taxpayers almost £1million.

The far-right English Defence League picked Bradford for Saturday’s rally, insisting it would be peaceful.

But the day ended in violent clashes, with bricks and bottles hurled at anti-racism campaigners as the demo reached boiling point.

Police used riot shields to keep the two warring sides back. But yesterday it emerged it cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to control them.

West Yorkshire Police used 2,000 officers and spent £600,000 during the operation.

Bradford Council also forked out £100,000 on concrete reinforcements around the EDL’s Urban Gardens demo site.
And the cost to local trade is estimated to have been £100,000, without taking into account damage to tourism. Once everything is factored in, including clearing up, the demo could turn out to have cost almost £1m. The area is one of

Britain’s “tinderbox cities” and was targeted because of the racial tensions there.

Police said 13 men were arrested for public order offences and violence offences during Saturday’s demo, most of them from Bradford.

They also confirmed 100 of the 1,000 taking part climbed over a temporary 8ft barricade to throw missiles at opponents.

The EDL had wanted to march through the city but a 10,000-signature protest saw it banned by Home Secretary Theresa May.

Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison said: “The ban of the march seems to have worked. No officers were seriously injured and there was no damage to property. The containment of trouble comes at a cost but it has been money well spent.”

The EDL has held several protests in the past couple of years, including one at Newcastle in May which saw 1,000 members mass in the city without incident.

But 12 people were arrested at an EDL protest in Aylesbury, Bucks, also in May.

Daily Star

Teenage girl killed in skinhead rampage at Russian festival

Over 100 men attack at Tornado festival in Miass, injuring up to 100 people in latest ultra-nationalist attack to hit country.

A 14-year-old girl was killed and dozens of revellers injured yesterday when more than 100 bare-chested skinheads rampaged through a rock concert in central Russia attacking people with iron clubs.

The teenager was among a crowd of around 3,000 people at the Tornado festival in Miass, 900 miles east of Moscow, when the attack happened.

Many visitors were left bloodied and dazed after being hit with iron clubs and sticks, television and news agencies reported. One report, quoting a police source, suggested the teenage girl had suffered multiple stab wounds.

State-owned Rossiya-24 TV saidup to 100 people were injured and 14 ambulances were called to the scene.

Images on the local news website Chelnovosti.ru showed battered revellers and scores of skinheads congregating at the event, which featured Russia's top rock acts.

The motive for the assault was not known, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said local police had refused to comment.

Witnesses told Russian journalists that the skinheads burst through security cordons, pushing police aside and in some cases grabbing their truncheons to attack visitors.

The Ekho Moskvy radio station reported that around 15 attackers were detained, but the majority fled.

Russia has an ingrained neo-Nazi skinhead movement and attacks on foreigners in Moscow and St Petersburg have been relatively common in recent years. The January 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova prompted a Kremlin crackdown on ultra-nationalists, who were blamed for the killings.

In April, a Moscow court banned the far-right Slavic Union, whose Russian acronym SS intentionally mimicked that used by the Nazis' infamous paramilitaries. The group was declared extremist and shut down, but the group's leader, Dmitry Demushkin, complained that it had tried to promote its far-right agenda legally and warned that the ban would enrage and embolden Russia's most radical ultra-nationalists.

Neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist groups thrived in Russia after the Soviet collapse in 1991. The influx of immigrant workers and two wars with Chechen separatists triggered xenophobia and a surge in hate crimes.

Racially motivated attacks, often targeting people from Caucasus and Central Asia, peaked in 2008, when 110 people were killed and 487 wounded, an independent watchdog, Sova, said. The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated that some 70,000 neo-Nazis were active in Russia compared with a just few thousand in the early 1990s.

The Guardian

Australia's first Aboriginal MP shrugs off racist taunts

The first Aborigine to be elected to Australia's Parliament on Monday said he was unworried by racist taunts that have followed his win, saying they were outweighed by messages of support.
Ken Wyatt won the seat of Hasluck in Western Australia for the conservative Liberal Party in August 21 polls, rising above childhood poverty to become the first indigenous person ever elected to the lower House of Representatives.

Since then, he has received at least 50 racist emails and phone calls from angry voters, with some saying they would not have voted for him had they known he was indigenous.

"They don't perturb me," 58-year-old Wyatt told Sky News of the jibes.

"Throughout my life I have experienced the sharp edge of some of the racist taunts that have come my way, but when I outweigh these by the hundreds and hundreds of emails and calls I've had, they are only miniscule in the bigger picture."

Wyatt rose from an impoverished childhood, during which he trapped rabbits and picked fruit for cash to help put food on the table for his family, to become a school teacher and later work in Aboriginal health and education.

When he recently attended the 70th birthday of his former primary school teacher, he brought her a gift that he would never have been able to afford as a child -- an apple.

In claiming the seat on Sunday after a protracted vote count, he said he owed his success to his education which was made possible by a local charity that early on recognised his ability.

"I have come from a life of poverty and through my own individual efforts I stand now within the national arena," he said.

Wyatt said he was naturally inclined towards the right-leaning Liberal Party, despite the fact that this placed him at odds with his father.

But he said his first speech to parliament would pay tribute to the former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, who made an historic apology to the nation's indigenous people in 2008.

"I think people really appreciate the fact that an apology was given," he said Monday, adding that his mother and her siblings were members of the so-called 'Stolen Generations' -- indigenous children removed from their families at a young age to be brought up by white people and in institutions.

"What made me extremely proud was the fact that her life, her experiences were recognised and the pain that she went through was acknowledged."

Wyatt said he wanted to improve the lot of Aborigines, who have a lower life expectancy and generally poorer health than other Australians, with thousands living in poverty in remote Outback settlements where alcoholism is rife.

The United Nations last week warned that Australia faced a problem with "embedded" discrimination, citing the "unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation" for Aborigines in the Northern Territory.

Indigenous Australians have previously served in the Senate -- with Neville Bonner appointed to the upper house in 1971 and Aden Ridgeway elected to the Senate in 1998 -- but Wyatt will be the first to serve in the more powerful lower house.

Indigenous people were for decades denied the vote by officials, and until 1967 were not even included in the national census.

Times of India

Italy's politics are broken

While political debate in Britain is dominated by assessments of the regressive Coalition budget and the Labour leadership election, it's easy to forget what's going on in our European neighbour countries. Of most interest to the British left should be the political turmoil in Italy that could end the career of scandal-ridden, and erstwhile pal of Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi. Unfortunately, my fear is that his possible replacement as Prime Minister would be even worse.

In the rollercoaster that has been Berlusconi's career, the events on August 4th when he avoided a humiliating vote of confidence defeat (the 630 member Chamber of Deputies voted by 299 in favour with 229 against) only because of the abstention of 75 of his own deputies, may amount to only a small footnote. But he now lacks a parliamentary majority and may well be forced to call a snap election this autumn because, in Gianfranco Fini, he has a new and powerful rival - one who also has the 'Teflon touch' that allows him to keep power despite controversies that would end most political careers.

Berlusconi is justifiably loathed by the centre-left in Italy and regarded as a bit of a laughing-stock across Europe , but he is a great political survivor. A series of corruption and sex scandals, massive infighting within his political parties combined with two general election defeats would have finished the careers of most. But sixteen years after his Forza Italia party swept to power in 1994, he remains Prime Minister, as he has been for 9 out of the last 16 years.

The makeup of the current Berlusconi government is frightening. It is a mixture of the corrupt right and the extreme right. And in the battle for the soul of the Italian right, Berlusconi is, incredibly, the lesser of two evils.

The man who would be king is Gianfranco Fini - a man who has either had a 'Road to Damascus ' style conversion, or remains a fascist. Fini's political career started in the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) a far-right party inextricably linked with murderous bombing campaigns and civic violence, particularly in the 1970s.

Having been elected as an MSI MP in 1983, Fini became the party's national secretary in 1988. Back then, Fini was either an unabashed fascist or, at the very least, a staunch admirer of Mussolini. In a series of statements in the early 1990s, he stated that "after almost half a century, fascism is alive", "Mussolini was the greatest Italian statesman of the twentieth century" and "fascism has a tradition of honesty, correctness and good government".

In the early 1990s, the MSI (which consistently polled 5-10% from the 1950s to the 1980s) morphed into the Alleanza Nationale (National Alliance) in a bid to become more credible. It described itself as 'post-fascist' - a name that Nick Griffin would probably use to describe the BNP. It also developed links with the extreme-right of the Conservative party, particularly the now disbanded 'Monday Club', and had particularly close links with Tory MPs Andrew Rosindell and Bill Cash.

But Fini is an ambitious man who wanted to cement himself firmly in the mainstream right of Italian politics. The next logical step, which he took in 2008, was to unite his party with Berlusconi's to form the People of Freedom party - a pretty unlikely name given Fini's history.

Fini is unquestionably the most dangerous man in Italian politics. Despite his fascist past, between 2001 and 2006 he was Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Since 2008, he has been President of the Chamber of Deputies. Now that he sees that Berlusconi is weak, following a sex and corruption scandals and an unpopular austerity budget, he and his supporters are angling for the main prize.

Meanwhile, we shouldn't ignore Berlusconi's other coalition partners, the Northern League, a party that was originally designed to campaign for autonomy for the region of Padania, but in reality is an anti-immigrant and overtly racist party. Indeed, in the European Parliament, the 9 Northern League MEPs sit with UKIP.

We might think it astonishing that a man like Berlusconi is not in prison, let alone Prime Minister of one of Europe 's largest countries, and that the likes of Fini and the Northern League deputies are elected to parliament, never mind government ministers. But it's also astonishing that the Italian centre-left is not in position to convincingly take power. The centre-left Democratic Party is, despite facing a scandal-ridden and unpopular government which is split down the middle, still below Berlusconi's party, on 28% according to latest opinion polls.

My guess is that Berlusconi will, as he always has done, survive once again. If he is forced into calling a snap election this autumn, the chances are that he would just cling to power and should just be able to hold off Fini. The desperately sad thing is that, if the Democratic party and its allies cannot get their act together, and fast, then Berlusconi is probably the lesser of two evils.
New Statesman

TEN-POINT PLAN FOR COMBATING HATE CRIME

Human Rights First calls on all governments to implement the following Ten-Point Plan for combating violent hate crimes:

1. Acknowledge and condemn violent hate crimes whenever they occur. Senior government leaders should send immediate, strong, public, and consistent messages that violent crimes which appear to be motivated by prejudice and intolerance will be investigated thoroughly and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

2. Enact laws that expressly address hate crimes. Recognizing the particular harm caused by violent hate crimes, governments should enact laws that establish specific offenses or provide enhanced penalties for violent crimes committed because of the victim's race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, mental and physical disabilities, or other similar status.

3. Strengthen enforcement and prosecute offenders. Governments should ensure that those responsible for hate crimes are held accountable under the law, that the enforcement of hate crime laws is a priority for the criminal justice system, and that the record of their enforcement is well documented and publicized.

4. Provide adequate instructions and resources to law enforcement bodies. Governments should ensure that police and investigators-as the first responders in cases of violent crime-are specifically instructed and have the necessary procedures, resources and training to identify, investigate and register bias motives before the courts, and that prosecutors have been trained to bring evidence of bias motivations and apply the legal measures required to prosecute hate crimes.

5. Undertake parliamentary, inter-agency or other special inquiries into the problem of hate crimes. Such public, official inquiries should encourage public debate, investigate ways to better respond to hate crimes, and seek creative ways to address the roots of intolerance and discrimination through education and other means.

6. Monitor and report on hate crimes. Governments should maintain official systems of monitoring and public reporting to provide accurate data for informed policy decisions to combat violent hate crimes. Such systems should include anonymous and disaggregated information on bias motivations and/or victim groups, and should monitor incidents and offenses, as well as prosecutions. Governments should consider establishing third party complaint procedures to encourage greater reporting of hate crimes and conducting periodic hate crime victimization surveys to monitor underreporting by victims and underrecording by police.

7. Create and strengthen antidiscrimination bodies. Official antidiscrimination and human rights bodies should have the authority to address hate crimes through monitoring, reporting, and assistance to victims.

8. Reach out to community groups. Governments should conduct outreach and education efforts to communities and civil society groups to reduce fear and assist victims, advance police-community relations, encourage improved reporting of hate crimes to the police and improve the quality of data collection by law enforcement bodies.

9. Speak out against official intolerance and bigotry. Freedom of speech allows considerable latitude for offensive and hateful speech, but public figures should be held to a higher standard. Members of parliament and local government leaders should be held politically accountable for bigoted words that encourage discrimination and violence and create a climate of fear for minorities.

10. Encourage international cooperation on hate crimes. Governments should support and strengthen the mandates of intergovernmental organizations that are addressing discrimination-like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, and the Fundamental Rights Agency-including by encouraging such organizations to raise the capacity of and train police, prosecutors, and judges, as well as other official bodies and civil society groups to combat violent hate crimes. Governments should also provide a detailed accounting on the incidence and nature of hate crimes to these bodies in accordance with relevant commitments.

Human Rights First

SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ASK LEGAL OFFICIAL TO RULE ON AD

The far-right Sweden Democrats have submitted their own election film for review by one of the country's top legal officials after TV4 refused to broadcast the advert on grounds that it promoted religious hatred.

The party, which could win its first ever parliamentary seats in next month's general election, disputes TV4's interpretation of the advert and wants the Chancellor of Justice to rule on whether the film represents a form of hate speech. The half-minute advert shows a race in which an elderly woman with a walker is chased by a group of burqa-clad women pushing prams with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration. The party wanted to pay the channel 1.5 million kronor ($201,240) to run the ad. As an alarm-like sound plays in the background, a voiceover says, "All politics are about priorities - now you have a choice." The clip promotes the Sweden Democrats' demand that, like other parties, pensioners' taxes be cut to the same levels of wage earners. However, they claim their plans would be funded by reducing immigration.

On its website, the party claimed that the film would be shown on TV4, TV4 Fakta and TV4 Sport from September 6th to 17th, but the network changed its mind after viewing the advert. "We decided not to broadcast it," Gunnar Gidefeldt, communications director for TV4, told AFP. Swedish law on freedom of expression prohibits messages that contain hate grounded on race and religion, said Gidefeldt. "In this case, it is against religion," he said. According to party press secretary Erik Almqvist, the ad does not violate Swedish law. The party has screened the clip for lawyers, who said that it does not break the law against inciting racial hatred. "The conflict we see as a result of mass immigration is not related to the person's origin, but rather a conflict of values, as far as we can see," said Almqvist in reference to the burqa-clad women in the video. TV4 CEO Jan Scherman disagreed.

"The film is contrary to the democracy clause in the Radio and Television Act and also against democracy clauses which the Sweden Democrats, among others, have adopted for the equality of all people, regardless of whether it is the European Convention or the UN Charter," he said. "The film is also against the constitution act on freedom of speech that prohibits hate speech," Scherman added. Per Hultmangård, a lawyer at the Swedish Media Publishers' Association (Tidningsutvgivarna), came to a different conclusion. He does not see how the video would violate the law. "I cannot see how this would be hate speech," he told news agency TT. "This is an election ad. The scope is wide for what one can say. They simply play on people's fears. Legally, it is within the allowable framework." However, Scherman stood by his position and referred to an EU directive that is the basis for the wording of the Broadcasting and Television Act. "The directive prohibits incitement of hatred according to race, sex or religion, which supports my decision," he said.

"It is quite clear to me as the editor responsible that those who watch the clip, together with the text, images and sound, very clearly see a group portrayed as intimidating and aggressive. The group is very easily identifiable, belonging to a religion, dressed in a certain way and attacking another group," he added. According to Scherman, that group is the Muslims. "There are probably lawyers and press experts who disagree on this," he said. "It is for TV4 and I to make an independent decision based on our knowledge, experience and perception of the law. It is not possible, even if one gets advice and opinions, to refer to them when making a editorial decision. It must be based on the conclusion that we and I have come to."

The Sweden Democrats could play kingmaker in the election on September 19th, which is up for grabs between the two coalitions. According to a survey from last Friday, just a month ahead of voting, the party was polling at 3.6 percent of the vote, just shy of the minimum of 4 percent that is required to enter Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag. If they can reach this threshold for the first time, political analysts believe the party could be in a powerful position with the two main blocs on course to split the vote.

The Local Sweden

TURKISH LEADER CALLS ON BERLIN TO SACK CENTRAL BANK OFFICIAL OVER RACISM (Germany)

A leader of Germany's Turkish community has urged Chancellor Angela Merkel to fire the Bundesbank's controversial board member Thilo Sarrazin over comments that Muslims are undermining German society.

Chairman of Germany's Turkish Federation, Kenan Kolat, called for central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin to be removed from his post after fresh comments criticizing Muslims in Germany. "I am calling upon the government to begin a procedure to remove Thilo Sarrazin from the board of the central bank," Kolat told the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau on Saturday, August 28. In his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" ("Germany does away with itself"), Sarrazin claims that members of Germany's Muslim community pose a danger to German society. Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Berlin's former finance chief, was reported in June as saying that members of the Turkish and Arab community were making Germany "more stupid." With his book, Kolat said, Sarrazin had overstepped a boundary. "It is the climax of a new intellectual racism and it damages Germany's reputation abroad," Kolat said.

High birth-rates
In a serialization of the forthcoming book in the German popular daily newspaper Bild, Sarrazin said that Germany's Muslim community had profited from social welfare payments far more than they contributed, and that higher birth-rates among immigrants could lead to the Muslim population overtaking the "indigenous" one in terms of numbers. Merkel's chief spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday that many people would find the remarks "offensive" and "defamatory," adding that the chancellor was concerned. Members of the SPD have distanced themselves from Sarrazin's comments, while Germany's Green and Left parties have called for his removal from the central bank's board. A Bundesbank spokesman said that Sarrazin's latest remarks were personal opinions, unconnected with his role on the board.

Blanket generalizations
Lower Saxony's minister of social affairs, Ayguel Oezkan, Germany's first-ever female Muslim minister, accused Sarrazin of doing damage to the Muslim community with blanket generalizations. "There are a vast number of hard-working immigrants," she told the weekly German newspaper Bild am Sonntag ahead of its publication on Sunday. "They deserve respect, not malice." "All of those who are involved in society, those who encourage their children, who learn German, who work and pay taxes and those who, as entrepreneurs, provide jobs – all of them deserve respect." In June, 65-year-old Sarrazin was reported as saying that Germany was "becoming on average more stupid" because immigrants were poorly educated.

'Distorted image, half-truths'
Maria Boehmer, the government's commissioner for integration, accused Sarrazin of giving "a distorted image of integration in Germany" that did not bear up to academic scrutiny. "In his comments, he states only half truths," she told Bild am Sonntag. "It is indisputable that, in education, there are currently a lot of immigrants with a lot of catching up to do. It does not take Sarrazin's comments to establish that." In a lengthy interview with weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Sarrazin defended himself against the charge he was encouraging racism. "I am not a racist," he told the newspaper. "The book addresses cultural divisions, not ethnic ones." Last year, Sarrazin caused a storm by claiming that most of Berlin's Arab and Turkish immigrants had no useful function "apart from fruit and vegetable trading." As a result, the central bank stripped Sarrazin of some of his duties.

http://www.dw-world.de/

The English Defence League in Bradford, a video report

Uploaded to You Tube by the user CY2290

13 men held after EDL demonstration (UK)

Admin: Here’s another account of the Bradford EDL conflict with an updated number of arrests.

More than a dozen men are in custody after a controversial city centre demonstration by far-right group the English Defence League.

The 13 were arrested by police for offences of public order and violence during Saturday's protest in Bradford, West Yorkshire, which was attended by fewer than 1,000 EDL supporters.

Some threw bottles, cans, stones and three smoke bombs at opponents gathered nearby. Nearly 100 supporters of the far-right group climbed over a temporary 8ft barricade - aimed at keeping them inside the city's Urban Gardens - to get on to neighbouring waste ground from where they threw missiles at police.

As the skirmishes were breaking out, nearly 300 people gathered for an alternative event hosted by Unite Against Fascism/We Are Bradford about half a mile away at the Crown Court Plaza.

A West Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said of the 13 arrests, eight were from Bradford and the others from Wakefield, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham.

In the days before the rally, Bradford community leaders called for calm fearing demonstrations could provoke a violent reaction to rival the 2001 Bradford riots, where 191 people were given sentences totalling more than 510 years.

Initially the EDL intended to march in Bradford with a planned protest by Unite Against Fascism on the same day. A high-profile campaign was started to stop the EDL march and a 10,000-signature petition opposing it was handed to the Home Office. Home Secretary Theresa May was asked to authorise the ban by Bradford Council.

It came after West Yorkshire Police's Chief Constable, Sir Norman Bettison, wrote to the council requesting an order to prohibit any public processions over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

In a joint statement police and the Bradford Council praised local people for remaining calm during a difficult day when tensions could have risen.

Ch Supt Alison Rose, Bradford South divisional commander, and council leader Ian Greenwood said: "Although there has been some disruption to the city centre, we are returning to normality and people of Bradford are now able to continue their lives. The police has worked effectively to handle the situation and to respond quickly to the events as they unfolded. The mood of the city in general has been one of calm and local people have co-operated and supported the police by behaving sensibly or staying away. We have done a lot of work with the local community in the build-up to these events and we would like to thank those who helped to plan for and managed the protests. The numbers of English Defence League supporters in Bradford were less than they claimed. Unite Against Fascism has also had a similar presence in the city."

The Press Association

English Defence League supporters attack police at Bradford rally (UK)

Hundreds of far-right activists, including BNP members and football thugs, throw bricks, bottles  and smoke bombs in battle with more than 1,600 officers

Far-right activists threw smoke bombs and missiles and fought with the police as trouble flared during a protest organised by the English Defence League.

Bricks, bottles and smoke bombs were thrown at anti-racism supporters and police as around 700 EDL activists – including known football hooligans and BNP members – held a "static protest" in Bradford city centre. Mounted officers and others in riot gear were attacked as they pushed the EDL into a penned area. Skirmishes continued as EDL speakers addressed the crowd and there was more violence as its supporters were put back on coaches.

More than 1,600 officers from 13 forces were involved in the police operation amid fears that the demonstration would descend into violence. Police said there had been five arrests.

The EDL, which has held demonstrations in towns and cities across the country over the past 12 months, had predicted that thousands of its supporters would turn out in Bradford for what was dubbed "the big one", but police said there were around 700 people.

Earlier in the afternoon coachloads of EDL activists had chanted "Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?" and "Muslim bombers off our streets".

The EDL claims to be a peaceful, non-racist organisation opposed only to "militant Islam".

One of the coach drivers said: "I didn't expect a job like this when I came to work this morning. We're a five-star firm. We don't usually take scumbags like these."

Thousands of anti-racists and local residents joined counter-protests and events organised around the city. Mohammed Khan, 29, said: "We want to show the people of the UK that Bradford is a united and peaceful place, where Asians, white people – everyone – gets along. Nobody here wants these people. They are just trying to divide this city and provoke trouble."

Several hundred people, including David Ward, the local Liberal Democrat MP, gathered at a community celebration at Infirmary Fields near Manningham, where running battles between youths and police took place in 2001. "Everyone wanted to join in to tell people how good this city is," said Surhra Bibi from Bradford's Fairbank Road.

The Guardian

Fund-raisers face race hate taunts (UK)

Caring youngsters who gave up their time to raise funds for victims of the Pakistan floods were subjected to racist comments from passers-by.
Remarks such as “it’s about time something like this happened” have appalled Hifsa Haroon- Iqbal, leader of the Muslim Youth Project who took a group of 10-16- year olds and adults to Stafford town centre to support Oxfam’s emergency appeal.

But she stressed that the vast majority of passers-by were generous in their response, and the group raised more than £700 in just four hours.

“The young people did a fantastic job in Market Square and I want to say thank you to people for supporting them,” Mrs Haroon-Iqbal said.

“However they also got racial abuse and were shocked. It was aimed at Pakistan and the stuff that has been in the Press about it being the centre of terrorism.

“Somebody said ‘it’s time something like this happened’ and when some people came towards the group and realised what we were fund-raising for they said ‘we’re not giving to Pakistan’.

“I was absolutely appalled at that minority of people. They ruined what was such a positive experience for the young people, they have never done anything like this before. To the minority I say shame on you.” Inspector Rob Pilling, Commander of Stafford NPU said: “It was great to see the young people taking the initiative on behalf of the county town to help those people suffering as a result of the terrible floods in Pakistan.

“ I was disappointed to hear of the comments made by a very small minority, which have not been reported to Staffordshire Police.

A fund-raising dinner is being held at County Buildings in Market Street on September 10, which coincides with the Muslim holiday Eid-ul-Fitr. Tickets cost £50 and the evening will include an auction.

Mrs Haroon-Iqbal is also organising a fund-raising dress down day for September 10. For more information she can be contacted on 07872 941129

Staffordshire Newsletter

Remembering the dream.

Today is 57 years since Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and proclaimed to the world “I have a dream”.

With the possibility of race hate riots once again occurring on the streets of Britain. We should remember those words spoken 57 years ago.

And although we have come a long way since that day, today’s planned event in Bradford still shows we still have a long way to go.

Jury awards damages in Neo Nazi case (USA)

The jury has awarded plaintiffs $545,000.00 in compensatory damages in the Bill White civil trial. White is the head of a Roanoke-based neo-Nazi group and is currently in prison for making racially motivated threats. No punitive damages were awarded in the civil case.

In the civil case, five African-American tenants from Virginia Beach alleged that Bill White harassed them after they had filed a law suit against their white landlord. Today the civil trial jury held Bill White liable.

The claims made against White were: "violating federal fair housing law," "racially-motivated harassment or intimidation," and "intentional infliction of emotional distress."

In December, 2009, White was found guilty of four criminal charges in U.S. District Court in Roanoke. He was accused at that time of making threats to a newspaper columnist, a mayor and several others over the Internet and by telephone.

wdbj7

'Show restraint in face of demonstrations by EDL and UAF' (UK)

Political, community and religious leaders across the city are urging the people of Bradford to show restraint in the face of mass demonstrations by far-right and left-wing protesters.

Thousands of supporters from the right-wing English Defence League (EDL) and the anti-fascist UAF are expected to descend on the city centre tomorrow, with a heavy police presence.

In a clear show of unity, politicians of all parties are calling for responsible Bradfordians to keep away from the city centre.

Imams from leading mosques across the district have also been urged to promote a message of “peace and harmony” – and encourage people to stay away from trouble hot spots – at prayers tonight.

Their calls for peace come amid fears that the demonstrators could provoke a violent reaction to rival the devastating riots in 2001.

Paul Meszaros, of Bradford Together, said: “Thousands of people in a very short time signed a petition to stop the march of hate because there is a strong feeling across the city – from old and young, white people and Asian people – that Bradford needs to go forward.

“We are starting to get out of the doom and gloom of the 2001 riots and we need to be united, not set back nine years.”

MPs from across Bradford district have stressed the need for calm.

Bradford East Lib Dem MP David Ward said: “I would ask every single individual to think deeply about what they want for their future and the future of their children.

“I want to see a more positive Bradford not one that takes us back to the days we want to forget about.”

Mr Ward said he would be “nowhere near” the city centre demonstrations and instead would be at Infirmary Fields, Manningham, raising money for the Pakistan floods and the Bradford Burns Unit appeals.

“Anybody who is not from Bradford should not come to Bradford,” he said. “This includes the EDL and other groups who may take part in what may be an aggressive demonstration.

“We don’t need people from outside Bradford here. They should just stay away.

“We have got to think about what dream we want for Bradford, one which does not rely on hatred and division,” he said.

Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe said: “I think that everybody, so far, has acted responsibly and I would want that to carry on tomorrow.

“We need people to be calm and responsible and not let a relatively small number of people have an influence on our city.”

Shipley MP Philip Davies called for people to heed the advice of West Yorkshire Police. He said: “I would rather everybody shunned any demonstration by the EDL and the rent-a-mob opposition demonstration because the city can well do without any of them. The police know how best to manage these events and I would certainly urge people to follow their advice and stay out of the city.”

A spokesman for Bradford West MP Marsha Singh’s office added: “The message to outside agitators is ‘stay away. You are not welcome here’.”

Bradford Council secured a blanket ban on the EDL and UAF marching through the city earlier this month. The ban was sanctioned by Home Secretary, Theresa May, and backed by West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable, Sir Norman Bettison.

Bradford Council Executive Labour party member Councillor Imran Hussain, said: “There is a consensus among elected members in Bradford who represent inner city wards that we have full confidence in the police. We support them and believe they will be able to contain the protests by the UAF and the EDL.

”We will condemn any acts of violence by anybody in the city centre.”

Anne Hawkesworth, leader of the Conservative opposition group, said: “The best way to negate the demonstration and counter demonstrations is to keep away from the city centre.

“Because of the serious effect it could have on people’s businesses and livelihoods, it is not a comedy, it is very sad.”

Bradford Council for Mosques has sent guidance emphasising “key messages” for young Muslim people and their parents.

It includes advice not to react to racist provocation and to beware of “false rumours” floated by the EDL or others, designed to incite violence.

In a direct message to young Muslim people, Ishtiaq Ahmed, a spokesman for Bradford Council for Mosques, said: “Do not take the law into your own hands and support the police to deal with any act of lawlessness and provocation.

“Mosques are being encouraged to organise alternative events to constructively engage people away from the potential spots of trouble.”

The Telegraph and Argus