Police raided offices used by anti-fascists in Dresden on Saturday evening after violence erupted when demonstrators hindered three neo-Nazi marches through the city.
A spokesman for the group "Dresden Nazifrei!" said that officers from the state criminal police (LKA) seized ten laptops and six mobile phones when they stormed the group’s press office, as well as offices belonging to the Left Party and a lawyer.
Left Party MP Katja Kipping said around 20 balaclava-clad LKA officers stormed the "House of Encounter" where the "Dresden Nazifrei!" and Left Party have their offices at around 5.30 pm on Saturday, just as the demonstrations and clashes in Dresden were dying down.
She said the doors were smashed open and several volunteers working there handcuffed and forced to sit on the floor. The officers said they suspected a crime and a trespassing violation were being organised there. Kipping said the raid was excessive, while the spokesman for "Dresden Nazifrei!" said it could have been a revenge attack.
Thousands of people managed to disrupt the three neo-Nazi marches planned for Saturday in Dresden with sit-down protests and road-blocks. Violence flared when some anti-fascists tried to break through police lines to get to where the neo-Nazis were gathering.
Police said on Sunday that more than 50 officers were injured and around the same number of demonstrators arrested.
At times the protests resembled a riot as demonstrators vandalized cars, set rubbish bins on fire and pelted police with stones, bottles and fireworks. Officers reacted with water cannon and pepper spray.
The Local Germany
Monday, 21 February 2011
Voting reformer gets the sack for 'anti-Islam tweet'
A voting reform campaigner was sacked today after posting an "outrageous Islamophobic" joke on Twitter.
Ben Donnelly was dismissed from his volunteer post as a phone bank manager for the Yes To Fairer Votes campaign after his comments provoked a political storm.
And he could yet face disciplinary action from Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, where he works part time as a visiting saxophone instructor.
The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, which wants a switch from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV), moved quickly to axe Mr Donnelly after details of his tweet were leaked to the Standard.
Posted yesterday afternoon, it read: "Says in the Holy Qu'ran Mohammad used to get his neighbours to vote by AV which of his 4 wives he'd shag each night."
Muslim groups were outraged, with Labour MP Khalid Mahmood calling for Mr Donnelly to be referred to the police. "This is outrageous and totally Islamophobic," Mr Mahmood said. "What has Islam got to do with AV?"
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, described the joke as "disgusting".
A Yes campaign spokesman said: "These comments were utterly disgraceful. Conduct like this will not be accepted by the campaign. We apologise for any offence taken and are as offended by these appalling comments as any other right-thinking person."
Mr Donnelly issued a statement through the Yes campaign saying sorry for the tweet, which has been deleted from his account.
"I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused," it read. "My comments were thoughtless and I bitterly regret them."
The Yes campaign spokesman added that Mr Donnelly had only done one shift for the group in London, though an online CV claimed he managed the group's Cambridge office for two months last year.
This is London
Ben Donnelly was dismissed from his volunteer post as a phone bank manager for the Yes To Fairer Votes campaign after his comments provoked a political storm.
And he could yet face disciplinary action from Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, where he works part time as a visiting saxophone instructor.
The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, which wants a switch from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV), moved quickly to axe Mr Donnelly after details of his tweet were leaked to the Standard.
Posted yesterday afternoon, it read: "Says in the Holy Qu'ran Mohammad used to get his neighbours to vote by AV which of his 4 wives he'd shag each night."
Muslim groups were outraged, with Labour MP Khalid Mahmood calling for Mr Donnelly to be referred to the police. "This is outrageous and totally Islamophobic," Mr Mahmood said. "What has Islam got to do with AV?"
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, described the joke as "disgusting".
A Yes campaign spokesman said: "These comments were utterly disgraceful. Conduct like this will not be accepted by the campaign. We apologise for any offence taken and are as offended by these appalling comments as any other right-thinking person."
Mr Donnelly issued a statement through the Yes campaign saying sorry for the tweet, which has been deleted from his account.
"I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused," it read. "My comments were thoughtless and I bitterly regret them."
The Yes campaign spokesman added that Mr Donnelly had only done one shift for the group in London, though an online CV claimed he managed the group's Cambridge office for two months last year.
This is London
POLICE SAY 82 OFFICERS INJURED AT GERMAN NEO-NAZI RALLY
At least 82 police officers were injured when protests against a planned neo-Nazi rally in the German city of Dresden turned violent, officials said Sunday, expressing shock at the brutality shown by both far-right and far-left extremists. Some of the injuries were serious, Dresden police chief Dieter Hanitsch said. Officials had initially spoken of 50 injured officers. Michael Wilhelm, state secretary of the Saxony Interior Ministry, demanded that those responsible be punished. Thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday to prevent right-wing extremist marches to the city centre. Some of them threw paving stones, bottles and fireworks at officers, while the police deployed truncheons, tear gas and water cannons to prevent them from breaking into an area reserved for the right-wing extremists. Officials had expected 4,000 neo-Nazis to stream into the city for their approved rally, but only a fraction showed up. More than 50 demonstrators were ultimately detained for violating assembly laws, committing assault and resisting law enforcement.
DPA
DPA
FRANCE’S EXTREME-RIGHT MAKEOVER
Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, is not exactly Daddy’s girl.
Monday morning in Lille, France. At the regional council meeting, Marine Le Pen, a shock of blonde in casual black, is taunting the chairman. Le Pen, the new leader of the far-right National Front, has been making mischief all morning, sniping jovially with colleagues when it isn’t her turn, just loud enough to be heard across the floor. The chairman wants to move on to council business; she wants to tease him about the latest gossip, a judge arrested for influence peddling. The chairman is a Socialist, like the deposed mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, the small town she represents, who was ousted by a corruption scandal, and she just can’t resist giving the screws another turn. “Shut up!” the chairman erupts. “No! You will not speak to me that way!” Le Pen fires back, nearly out of her seat. The little red light on her microphone is off, but her deep, booming rasp rips through the chamber regardless. “I will speak to you the way you speak! You’re not the only one who can howl! Shut up!”
Before lunch, Le Pen will go on to slam issues such as carpool lanes, genetically modified endives, and “anti-white, anti-French racism.” She says white shopkeepers are being “persecuted” in Roubaix, a former textile capital among the poorest towns in France. When she laments the “last non-halal butcher shop,” opponents groan loudly, as if they’ve heard this before. Then the whole assembly retires to the buffet. Welcome to the new-look National Front, advanced by Marine Le Pen, who last month took over the leadership of the party her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded almost 40 years ago. And for all the trouble he gave opponents through all those years, his daughter has so far proved a tougher mark. Even before taking the helm of the party, she showed she could set the national agenda, and President Nicolas Sarkozy often looks to be responding to her salvos—whether against “Islamization” or the euro—in real time.
Mainstream parties, including Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the opposition Socialists, had been reluctant to speak her name openly, however, lest they give her the oxygen of publicity. And they have reason to be worried. France’s next presidential election is just a year away, and as many as 45 percent of Sarkozy’s own voters say they like her ideas. A poll last Friday showed she could score 20 percent in the first round next year, making her the “third man” her dad once was. Forty percent think she can repeat his biggest upset and make it into a runoff. The presidency seems out of reach, but she doesn’t poll like a pariah: 68 percent think she is “courageous,” 50 percent feel she understands their problems, and 37 percent believe she’s “nice.”
In a big prime-time TV appearance in December, she talked circles around the lightweights the mainstream parties sent to debate her. Unlikely as that may once have seemed, a Le Pen has become France’s new media darling. Marine’s profile is surely more prime-time-friendly than her father’s. At 42, she is 40 years younger than he is. She is twice divorced and pro-choice, both of which count as modern for the National Front. She is a single mother to Jehanne, 12, named after Joan of Arc, and twins Louis and Mathilde, 11. “To lead a party and be a presidential candidate, you need qualities that are almost contradictory—it’s very difficult to find them in the same person,” the 82-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen tells NEWSWEEK. “Marine has that mix. She’s able to lead the party while turning outwards and making the ideas accessible and appealing.”
Le Pen himself seemed more sinister. For years, the ex-paratrooper hid an eye injury under a pirate-style patch. He made headlines with equivocal remarks about Nazis and the Holocaust. Opponents could portray him as the slippery slope toward fascism in French politics. When he placed second in the 2002 presidential election, millions marched in shock and horror. Still “honorary president” of the party, Le Pen père lives in Rueil-Malmaison, an upscale Paris suburb, with his second wife, Jany, a couple of Ibizan greyhounds, and three cats. He’ll admit to no regrets about “passing the baton” to his third and youngest daughter, even if she is more popular than he ever was. “She’s the second stage of the rocket,” Le Pen père says. “She can now strive for objectives I couldn’t reach because there needed to be the basic infrastructure first.”
In 1976, when Marine was 8, a 45-pound bomb meant for her father destroyed their entire Paris apartment building. Incredibly, there were no fatalities, except the family poodle, Rainbow. By the time she joined her father on the campaign trail for a week while in high school, she had seen his party office burned down. When she was 16, her mother, Pierrette, ran off with the reporter writing her father’s biography, and the bitter divorce played out in the tabloids. When Pierrette posed nude for Playboy in 1987, it became a national joke. At the time, Marine was 19, in law school, and mortified. For the next 15 years, she and her mother didn’t speak. Marine’s toxic surname quickly ended her first career as a defense lawyer, paving the way for her to enter the family business. But working for her dad wasn’t always easy. In 2005 she fell out with her father, angry that he was feeding the image she wanted changed when he told an extremist magazine, “The German occupation wasn’t particularly inhumane.” Eventually she returned. For Marine Le Pen, there was no way out of the party; there was only up within it.
During the last presidential election, four years ago, Sarkozy trounced the National Front, winning over the party’s voters by talking tough on security and immigration while promising the blue-collar “France that wakes up early” that it could “work more to earn more.” It dropped Le Pen to 10 percent, a far cry from his 2002 performance. In fact, Le Pen’s party did so poorly in legislative elections that it didn’t qualify for campaign financing and lost two thirds of its public subsidies. It has laid off three quarters of its staff since then and can’t find a buyer for “the Steamship,” its empty old headquarters in St-Cloud, a Paris suburb. But once elected, Sarkozy quickly disappointed far-right voters—along with just about everyone else. Although he tried to weaken rivals by cherry-picking ideas and even big names from his opponents on both the left and the right, his sundry promises foundered on poor follow-through and the recession. Sarkozy pledged to make politics respectable again, but he seems unable to shake the scandals that have dogged him. Stoking fears—he made national priorities of banning the burqa and deporting the Roma—has proved easier than being effective. His approval rating has dipped to an abysmal 24 percent.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen is rejuvenating her father’s party by calling the president’s bluff. In her office in Lille, she’s all brash confidence, chain-smoking Philip Morris Super Lights, which, no doubt, contribute to the trademark rasp in her voice. An all-news channel, on mute, loops between the corruption trial of former president Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy greeting the French handball team. When Le Pen is asked about Sarkozy’s tough talk on security, she plays an imaginary flute, the derisive French pantomime for “nonsense,” and cites law-enforcement cuts. She knows National Front supporters are so sick of Sarkozy that, given the choice, many would even elect a Socialist over him.
The floor-to-ceiling view from her office is bleak. Elevated highways cut through thick fog, and gray commuter trains snake through the rail yards below. This is France’s northern rust belt, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, industrial heartland turned byword for decline. The blur between Paris and London that travelers glimpse from the Eurostar is a symbolic staging ground for the Marine makeover of the party. Her father sank electoral roots in the south: in Provence, part of the Alps, and the Côte d’Azur. His base there—retirees, Army vets, and conservative pieds-noirs, French nationals repatriated from colonial Algeria who never forgave Charles de Gaulle for pulling out in 1962—responded to particular stimuli: immigration, security, and off-color jokes, with economics an afterthought.
Up north, in these old communist bastions, Marine stumps for a strong state (crediting de Gaulle himself) and for nationalizing strategic industries such as energy and banking. Social benefits are great, just not for immigrants who imperil the whole system. She blasts “fundamentalist capitalism” and greedy banks, and says she can criticize rising prices and the euro because she buys her own groceries. “Nicolas Sarkozy tells us, ‘We’ll save the euro at any cost.’ OK, let’s talk about the cost: the disappearance of social policies!” she says. It’s the sort of talk the younger working-class families here can relate to better than her dad’s old war stories. And the depressed north feels a lot like a political boot camp for the rest of the country. Blasting the local elites lining their pockets is good policy with so many Sarkozy ministers in trouble: 29 percent of French people surveyed think corruption is rising.
She has also made a catchphrase of “de-demonizing” her party, gambling that it attracts voters despite the dubious Holocaust references, not because of them. And so when she says, “The [Nazi] camps were the summit of barbarity,” it actually becomes a headline. “I think submitting to demonization, or trying to provoke it, is a mistake,” Marine tells NEWSWEEK over blanched asparagus in the council cafeteria in Lille. She says the shaved-head and bomber-jacket types who hung around the party are unwelcome. She has shown the door to “anti-Semites, extremists, and extreme-right guys.” “I said I didn’t want them, and the 68 percent of folks at the Front [who voted for me] said they didn’t want them, either. So at least that problem’s solved,” she claims.
But her remodeled party is far from soft. She comes at many of the same themes her father did—immigration isn’t less of a scourge in the update—but she does it from different angles. She doesn’t mind being called a populist. “If it’s a choice between extreme right, fascist, Nazi, or just populist, I find that pretty nice,” she says, breaking into the same raucous laughter her father does at his own jokes. “Honestly, I don’t see what there is in our program that fits ‘extreme right,’?” she says. “When David Cameron says ‘stop’ to the 200,000 immigrants a year, saying they should be limited to a few tens of thousands, no one says Cameron is fascist.” Going against the system seems mainstream today. “I’m reading Joseph Stiglitz’s latest book, and he says exactly what I’m saying. He says those who helped build the global economic system should surrender their aprons”—as in get out of the kitchen.
Her masterstroke is in the new vernacular she brings. It is calibrated for a new crowd, a new era intolerant in new ways, three years into an epic economic crisis that has politicians selling protection. The days of petites phrases about the Holocaust, it would seem, are over. “Nostalgia for [Marshal Philippe] Pétain or French Algeria doesn’t speak to her, or [National Front] people of her generation,” says Sylvain Crépon, a sociologist at Nanterre University who studies the far right. “Anti-Semitism does nothing for them. They don’t see Jews everywhere, or a Jewish conspiracy.” But it would be a mistake to call Jean-Marie’s daughter “Le Pen lite.” “On a number of subjects, I am a lot stricter than my father,” she says. “On the [Muslim] headscarf, I am stricter than him … He thinks that sort of behavior lets French people grasp the extent of immigration in our country,” she says, talking tactics. But she argues “Islamization” is just a consequence, less visible 20 years ago, of the rampant immigration he always rebuked. “There wasn’t the headscarf, there weren’t ‘cathedral mosques’ going up on every corner,” she says, without betraying her hyperbole. “There weren’t people praying in the street. Our children didn’t have to not eat pork because it bothers some people,” she scoffs.
Couching old rhetoric in terms new to the National Front, analysts say, is clever. Take “secularism.” The silent sister of liberté, égalité, fraternité has been a cardinal value of every political movement but the far right, where fundamentalist Catholics are loath to divorce state from church. Indeed, for some far-right purists, Marine Le Pen’s semantic creativity amounts to party heresy. “These are people who pretend to believe that when Marine talks about secularism, she’s in line with people who fought Catholicism a century ago,” her father says with a sneer. “But Marine is in favor of secularism against the surge of Islam.” Secularism makes a handy alibi for the French republic when she criticizes swimming pools that cater to Muslims with women-only hours. That subtle shift in tone is today a popular device of European far-right leaders, like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. What makes it a real challenge is that instead of the old knee-jerk diatribes against Arabs or North Africans, “this xenophobic discourse against Islam, against a religion, [is framed] in the name of the defense of liberal values, like women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of religion,” says Crépon. “It’s something that can really work, electorally speaking.”
It’s a strategy that makes the National Front more palatable to moderates. “You have leftists, even very anti-racist leftists, who can relate to Marine Le Pen’s comments because they strike out at a religion,” says Gaël Sliman of BVA, a polling company. “France historically was shaped against religion.” In December, Le Pen likened Muslims praying in the streets to an occupation. In fact, the worshipers in the streets were overflow from mosques too small for Friday prayers, and political rivals jeered that Le Pen employed the same shtick as her dad. Among the public, though, it was popular: polls showed 39 percent agreed with her, including a majority (54 percent) of Sarkozy’s UMP supporters. “Despite everything, she is genuinely less radical than her father,” says Crépon. “[But] it is by being a little less dangerous that she can rally a lot more people … for a discourse that is still very intolerant.” And there is already the Le Pen effect. Observers believe Sarkozy will have to pull further right if he wants to get reelected and silence the pied piper in high heels whose imaginary flute could prove attractive to so many French voters.
Newsweek
Monday morning in Lille, France. At the regional council meeting, Marine Le Pen, a shock of blonde in casual black, is taunting the chairman. Le Pen, the new leader of the far-right National Front, has been making mischief all morning, sniping jovially with colleagues when it isn’t her turn, just loud enough to be heard across the floor. The chairman wants to move on to council business; she wants to tease him about the latest gossip, a judge arrested for influence peddling. The chairman is a Socialist, like the deposed mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, the small town she represents, who was ousted by a corruption scandal, and she just can’t resist giving the screws another turn. “Shut up!” the chairman erupts. “No! You will not speak to me that way!” Le Pen fires back, nearly out of her seat. The little red light on her microphone is off, but her deep, booming rasp rips through the chamber regardless. “I will speak to you the way you speak! You’re not the only one who can howl! Shut up!”
Before lunch, Le Pen will go on to slam issues such as carpool lanes, genetically modified endives, and “anti-white, anti-French racism.” She says white shopkeepers are being “persecuted” in Roubaix, a former textile capital among the poorest towns in France. When she laments the “last non-halal butcher shop,” opponents groan loudly, as if they’ve heard this before. Then the whole assembly retires to the buffet. Welcome to the new-look National Front, advanced by Marine Le Pen, who last month took over the leadership of the party her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded almost 40 years ago. And for all the trouble he gave opponents through all those years, his daughter has so far proved a tougher mark. Even before taking the helm of the party, she showed she could set the national agenda, and President Nicolas Sarkozy often looks to be responding to her salvos—whether against “Islamization” or the euro—in real time.
Mainstream parties, including Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the opposition Socialists, had been reluctant to speak her name openly, however, lest they give her the oxygen of publicity. And they have reason to be worried. France’s next presidential election is just a year away, and as many as 45 percent of Sarkozy’s own voters say they like her ideas. A poll last Friday showed she could score 20 percent in the first round next year, making her the “third man” her dad once was. Forty percent think she can repeat his biggest upset and make it into a runoff. The presidency seems out of reach, but she doesn’t poll like a pariah: 68 percent think she is “courageous,” 50 percent feel she understands their problems, and 37 percent believe she’s “nice.”
In a big prime-time TV appearance in December, she talked circles around the lightweights the mainstream parties sent to debate her. Unlikely as that may once have seemed, a Le Pen has become France’s new media darling. Marine’s profile is surely more prime-time-friendly than her father’s. At 42, she is 40 years younger than he is. She is twice divorced and pro-choice, both of which count as modern for the National Front. She is a single mother to Jehanne, 12, named after Joan of Arc, and twins Louis and Mathilde, 11. “To lead a party and be a presidential candidate, you need qualities that are almost contradictory—it’s very difficult to find them in the same person,” the 82-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen tells NEWSWEEK. “Marine has that mix. She’s able to lead the party while turning outwards and making the ideas accessible and appealing.”
Le Pen himself seemed more sinister. For years, the ex-paratrooper hid an eye injury under a pirate-style patch. He made headlines with equivocal remarks about Nazis and the Holocaust. Opponents could portray him as the slippery slope toward fascism in French politics. When he placed second in the 2002 presidential election, millions marched in shock and horror. Still “honorary president” of the party, Le Pen père lives in Rueil-Malmaison, an upscale Paris suburb, with his second wife, Jany, a couple of Ibizan greyhounds, and three cats. He’ll admit to no regrets about “passing the baton” to his third and youngest daughter, even if she is more popular than he ever was. “She’s the second stage of the rocket,” Le Pen père says. “She can now strive for objectives I couldn’t reach because there needed to be the basic infrastructure first.”
In 1976, when Marine was 8, a 45-pound bomb meant for her father destroyed their entire Paris apartment building. Incredibly, there were no fatalities, except the family poodle, Rainbow. By the time she joined her father on the campaign trail for a week while in high school, she had seen his party office burned down. When she was 16, her mother, Pierrette, ran off with the reporter writing her father’s biography, and the bitter divorce played out in the tabloids. When Pierrette posed nude for Playboy in 1987, it became a national joke. At the time, Marine was 19, in law school, and mortified. For the next 15 years, she and her mother didn’t speak. Marine’s toxic surname quickly ended her first career as a defense lawyer, paving the way for her to enter the family business. But working for her dad wasn’t always easy. In 2005 she fell out with her father, angry that he was feeding the image she wanted changed when he told an extremist magazine, “The German occupation wasn’t particularly inhumane.” Eventually she returned. For Marine Le Pen, there was no way out of the party; there was only up within it.
During the last presidential election, four years ago, Sarkozy trounced the National Front, winning over the party’s voters by talking tough on security and immigration while promising the blue-collar “France that wakes up early” that it could “work more to earn more.” It dropped Le Pen to 10 percent, a far cry from his 2002 performance. In fact, Le Pen’s party did so poorly in legislative elections that it didn’t qualify for campaign financing and lost two thirds of its public subsidies. It has laid off three quarters of its staff since then and can’t find a buyer for “the Steamship,” its empty old headquarters in St-Cloud, a Paris suburb. But once elected, Sarkozy quickly disappointed far-right voters—along with just about everyone else. Although he tried to weaken rivals by cherry-picking ideas and even big names from his opponents on both the left and the right, his sundry promises foundered on poor follow-through and the recession. Sarkozy pledged to make politics respectable again, but he seems unable to shake the scandals that have dogged him. Stoking fears—he made national priorities of banning the burqa and deporting the Roma—has proved easier than being effective. His approval rating has dipped to an abysmal 24 percent.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen is rejuvenating her father’s party by calling the president’s bluff. In her office in Lille, she’s all brash confidence, chain-smoking Philip Morris Super Lights, which, no doubt, contribute to the trademark rasp in her voice. An all-news channel, on mute, loops between the corruption trial of former president Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy greeting the French handball team. When Le Pen is asked about Sarkozy’s tough talk on security, she plays an imaginary flute, the derisive French pantomime for “nonsense,” and cites law-enforcement cuts. She knows National Front supporters are so sick of Sarkozy that, given the choice, many would even elect a Socialist over him.
The floor-to-ceiling view from her office is bleak. Elevated highways cut through thick fog, and gray commuter trains snake through the rail yards below. This is France’s northern rust belt, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, industrial heartland turned byword for decline. The blur between Paris and London that travelers glimpse from the Eurostar is a symbolic staging ground for the Marine makeover of the party. Her father sank electoral roots in the south: in Provence, part of the Alps, and the Côte d’Azur. His base there—retirees, Army vets, and conservative pieds-noirs, French nationals repatriated from colonial Algeria who never forgave Charles de Gaulle for pulling out in 1962—responded to particular stimuli: immigration, security, and off-color jokes, with economics an afterthought.
Up north, in these old communist bastions, Marine stumps for a strong state (crediting de Gaulle himself) and for nationalizing strategic industries such as energy and banking. Social benefits are great, just not for immigrants who imperil the whole system. She blasts “fundamentalist capitalism” and greedy banks, and says she can criticize rising prices and the euro because she buys her own groceries. “Nicolas Sarkozy tells us, ‘We’ll save the euro at any cost.’ OK, let’s talk about the cost: the disappearance of social policies!” she says. It’s the sort of talk the younger working-class families here can relate to better than her dad’s old war stories. And the depressed north feels a lot like a political boot camp for the rest of the country. Blasting the local elites lining their pockets is good policy with so many Sarkozy ministers in trouble: 29 percent of French people surveyed think corruption is rising.
She has also made a catchphrase of “de-demonizing” her party, gambling that it attracts voters despite the dubious Holocaust references, not because of them. And so when she says, “The [Nazi] camps were the summit of barbarity,” it actually becomes a headline. “I think submitting to demonization, or trying to provoke it, is a mistake,” Marine tells NEWSWEEK over blanched asparagus in the council cafeteria in Lille. She says the shaved-head and bomber-jacket types who hung around the party are unwelcome. She has shown the door to “anti-Semites, extremists, and extreme-right guys.” “I said I didn’t want them, and the 68 percent of folks at the Front [who voted for me] said they didn’t want them, either. So at least that problem’s solved,” she claims.
But her remodeled party is far from soft. She comes at many of the same themes her father did—immigration isn’t less of a scourge in the update—but she does it from different angles. She doesn’t mind being called a populist. “If it’s a choice between extreme right, fascist, Nazi, or just populist, I find that pretty nice,” she says, breaking into the same raucous laughter her father does at his own jokes. “Honestly, I don’t see what there is in our program that fits ‘extreme right,’?” she says. “When David Cameron says ‘stop’ to the 200,000 immigrants a year, saying they should be limited to a few tens of thousands, no one says Cameron is fascist.” Going against the system seems mainstream today. “I’m reading Joseph Stiglitz’s latest book, and he says exactly what I’m saying. He says those who helped build the global economic system should surrender their aprons”—as in get out of the kitchen.
Her masterstroke is in the new vernacular she brings. It is calibrated for a new crowd, a new era intolerant in new ways, three years into an epic economic crisis that has politicians selling protection. The days of petites phrases about the Holocaust, it would seem, are over. “Nostalgia for [Marshal Philippe] Pétain or French Algeria doesn’t speak to her, or [National Front] people of her generation,” says Sylvain Crépon, a sociologist at Nanterre University who studies the far right. “Anti-Semitism does nothing for them. They don’t see Jews everywhere, or a Jewish conspiracy.” But it would be a mistake to call Jean-Marie’s daughter “Le Pen lite.” “On a number of subjects, I am a lot stricter than my father,” she says. “On the [Muslim] headscarf, I am stricter than him … He thinks that sort of behavior lets French people grasp the extent of immigration in our country,” she says, talking tactics. But she argues “Islamization” is just a consequence, less visible 20 years ago, of the rampant immigration he always rebuked. “There wasn’t the headscarf, there weren’t ‘cathedral mosques’ going up on every corner,” she says, without betraying her hyperbole. “There weren’t people praying in the street. Our children didn’t have to not eat pork because it bothers some people,” she scoffs.
Couching old rhetoric in terms new to the National Front, analysts say, is clever. Take “secularism.” The silent sister of liberté, égalité, fraternité has been a cardinal value of every political movement but the far right, where fundamentalist Catholics are loath to divorce state from church. Indeed, for some far-right purists, Marine Le Pen’s semantic creativity amounts to party heresy. “These are people who pretend to believe that when Marine talks about secularism, she’s in line with people who fought Catholicism a century ago,” her father says with a sneer. “But Marine is in favor of secularism against the surge of Islam.” Secularism makes a handy alibi for the French republic when she criticizes swimming pools that cater to Muslims with women-only hours. That subtle shift in tone is today a popular device of European far-right leaders, like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. What makes it a real challenge is that instead of the old knee-jerk diatribes against Arabs or North Africans, “this xenophobic discourse against Islam, against a religion, [is framed] in the name of the defense of liberal values, like women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of religion,” says Crépon. “It’s something that can really work, electorally speaking.”
It’s a strategy that makes the National Front more palatable to moderates. “You have leftists, even very anti-racist leftists, who can relate to Marine Le Pen’s comments because they strike out at a religion,” says Gaël Sliman of BVA, a polling company. “France historically was shaped against religion.” In December, Le Pen likened Muslims praying in the streets to an occupation. In fact, the worshipers in the streets were overflow from mosques too small for Friday prayers, and political rivals jeered that Le Pen employed the same shtick as her dad. Among the public, though, it was popular: polls showed 39 percent agreed with her, including a majority (54 percent) of Sarkozy’s UMP supporters. “Despite everything, she is genuinely less radical than her father,” says Crépon. “[But] it is by being a little less dangerous that she can rally a lot more people … for a discourse that is still very intolerant.” And there is already the Le Pen effect. Observers believe Sarkozy will have to pull further right if he wants to get reelected and silence the pied piper in high heels whose imaginary flute could prove attractive to so many French voters.
Newsweek
Sunday, 20 February 2011
EDL chief’s bank accounts frozen in cash inquiry
EDL chief Tommy Robinson, 28, said he was last year arrested for ‘financial irregularities’ and was issued with a Luton Crown Court order on August 11 preventing him from making any withdrawals from or charging any purchases to his accounts.
In a YouTube video Mr Robinson, who has just moved home to an unknown location from Lower Stondon, said he is entitled to take out £250 each week to cover living expenses while the investigation is ongoing.
But other than that he cannot touch the money, the amount of which is unknown, although Mr Robinson, who led the 1,500- strong EDL rally in Luton town centre on February 5, said the figure is £6,000.
He said in the online video: “The £250 comes out of my own bank account which has my money in it anyway. I have had to stop working because if I do work, and say I earn £600, next week it goes into a frozen account and I am allowed £250.
“My solicitor has told me these orders are called disruption tactics in order to disrupt my life, disrupt everything I am doing and pretty much stop what we are saying, put pressure on me – and of course it has put pressure on me.
“This doesn’t cover my living costs. It prohibits me from dealing with any finances at all and that’s all in order to stop the EDL and our goals and what we are doing.
“They have given me this because between the years 2007 and 2009 I had more money going through my bank accounts than I paid tax on. Whoopy doo.
“It wasn’t all my money anyway. I bought a couple of properties and I have got partners that I am 50 per cent with.
“This will all come out if they decide to charge me.
“They haven’t charged me so they slapped this restraining order on me. I’ve been on it for six months. My bail date was February. My solicitor said they would probably bail me for another six months and I’ve been bailed until July again.
“They are just keeping my money frozen for 24 months.
“I’ve only got that £6,000 in my account and that’s going to run out soon.
“I can’t work because I can’t take any credit card payments at my tanning shop and the business is struggling.”
A police spokeswoman said: “A person has been arrested in connection with money laundering but as the investigation is still ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
Luton on Sunday
ANTIRACIST WORKSHOPS FOR UEFA EURO 2012 STEWARDS (Poland)
The Polish FARE partner organisation "NEVER AGAIN" Association, in cooperation with EURO 2012 Polska (Local Organising Committee) and the Polish Football Association, has provided a series of special antiracist workshops for the trainers of EURO 2012 stewards. The participants of the workshops represented members and staff Polish football clubs, security and safety directors of all top two division clubs. They took part in workshops about best models of stewarding on football stadiums, based on UEFA educational materials. One of the most important parts of this training is on racism and discrimination, including a special workshop on recognising racist, fascist symbols and hate speech.
This training is prepared specially for UEFA EURO 2012TM championship. Each of the listeners received the toolkit "How to fight racism?" and can share best practices during their everyday work in Polish top football clubs. In the forthcoming months, all the club representatives will organise similar trainings for their own safety and security staff. Recently the Polish Ministry of Sport recently decided to support the campaign by producing extra 300 copies of the toolkit - best practice guide "How to fight racism?". It will be spread all over Poland mainly to teachers and youth coaches. 'Never Again' Association also provides anti-racist trainings for different other groups such as police football "spotters", police human rights departments, teacher training centres etc.
Football Against Racism in Europe
This training is prepared specially for UEFA EURO 2012TM championship. Each of the listeners received the toolkit "How to fight racism?" and can share best practices during their everyday work in Polish top football clubs. In the forthcoming months, all the club representatives will organise similar trainings for their own safety and security staff. Recently the Polish Ministry of Sport recently decided to support the campaign by producing extra 300 copies of the toolkit - best practice guide "How to fight racism?". It will be spread all over Poland mainly to teachers and youth coaches. 'Never Again' Association also provides anti-racist trainings for different other groups such as police football "spotters", police human rights departments, teacher training centres etc.
Football Against Racism in Europe
CELEBRATIONS IN DRESDEN AS THWARTED NEO-NAZIS RELOCATE TO LEIPZIG UNDER POLICE PROTECTION (Germany)
At least 15 000 people distributed themselves throughout the streets of Dresden today to protest neo-Nazi efforts to hold demonstrations commemorating the 1945 bombing of the city by the western members of the Allied Forces. Police did their best to prevent contact between the two camps and essentially protected the extreme right commemoration, which had been permitted by the courts, from attack by counter-demonstrators who turned out in superior numbers.
Followers of the Green Party and the Left Party formed the core of the counter-demonstration and were joined by small groups of anarchists and left-wing extremists. Czech citizens participated both on the side of the neo-Nazis and on the side of their opponents. Despite police efforts to maintain order, the number of neo-Nazi opponents continued to increase during the afternoon, as did their aggressiveness. Clashes gradually occurred in several places between left-wing extremists and police and kept escalating in terms of intensity. Demonstrators set garbage cans on fire, created barricades out of wood and tires which they soaked in fuel and set alight, and even started tearing up paving stones and raining them down on the police, who responded by using tear gas and water cannon. According to the Green Party website, the demonstrators could not stay on the streets in sub-zero temperatures for long in wet clothing, but their supporters continued to proliferate nonetheless.
The most dramatic situation occurred at around 5:30 CET near Weiskopf-Platz, where about 1 000 neo-Nazis were surrounded by their opponents and police found it very difficult to maintain order. About 50 neo-Nazis attacked police officers and a fight broke out there. German anti-fascist websites had been warning all demonstrators to be on the lookout for aggressive neo-Nazis. In the early evening, police announced they would be providing protection for the extreme-right commemoration in the nearby town of Leipzig instead. After waiting several hours, the neo-Nazis agreed to be transported to Leipzig by train under police protection and to hold their commemorative demonstration there instead. DPA reported that the Leipzig Police were preparing to take over security for the event. Shortly after 18:00 CET the neo-Nazis were assisted by police in getting back onto their buses to head to the train station. Just like last year, the neo-Nazis have been prevented from marching through Dresden. People there have started celebrating in the streets, dancing and lighting candles. About 150 neo-Nazis, however, still do not want to leave and are attempting to march through Dresden anyway. By noon CET, police had already blocked small groups of demonstrators at various sites throughout the city and did their best to prevent them from coming into contact with the neo-Nazis. Bridges across the Elbe were closed so the demonstrators could not relocate freely, according to the news server of the daily Sächsische Zeitung.
The city did its best to ban the neo-Nazi event, but an administrative court overturned the municipality's ban of the march and permitted commemorations to be held by three extreme-right groups at three different places in the city. Two of the events were registered by private individuals, while a third was registered by the Young Compatriots' Association of East Germany (the JLO). The first neo-Nazi gathering took place at noon CET on Nuremberg Square. About 100 neo-Nazis participated and were given police protection. In order to prevent violence, police kept a group of about 1 000 counter-demonstrators from accessing the square. Students living in nearby dormitories and left-wing activists repeatedly tried to breach the police barricades. Most of the blockades did not result in violence.
The most dramatic situation occurred at around 5:30 CET near Weiskopf-Platz, where about 1 000 neo-Nazis were surrounded by their opponents and police found it very difficult to maintain order. About 50 neo-Nazis attacked police officers and a fight broke out there. German anti-fascist websites had been warning all demonstrators to be on the lookout for aggressive neo-Nazis. In the early evening, police announced they would be providing protection for the extreme-right commemoration in the nearby town of Leipzig instead. After waiting several hours, the neo-Nazis agreed to be transported to Leipzig by train under police protection and to hold their commemorative demonstration there instead. DPA reported that the Leipzig Police were preparing to take over security for the event. Shortly after 18:00 CET the neo-Nazis were assisted by police in getting back onto their buses to head to the train station. Just like last year, the neo-Nazis have been prevented from marching through Dresden. People there have started celebrating in the streets, dancing and lighting candles. About 150 neo-Nazis, however, still do not want to leave and are attempting to march through Dresden anyway. By noon CET, police had already blocked small groups of demonstrators at various sites throughout the city and did their best to prevent them from coming into contact with the neo-Nazis. Bridges across the Elbe were closed so the demonstrators could not relocate freely, according to the news server of the daily Sächsische Zeitung.
The city did its best to ban the neo-Nazi event, but an administrative court overturned the municipality's ban of the march and permitted commemorations to be held by three extreme-right groups at three different places in the city. Two of the events were registered by private individuals, while a third was registered by the Young Compatriots' Association of East Germany (the JLO). The first neo-Nazi gathering took place at noon CET on Nuremberg Square. About 100 neo-Nazis participated and were given police protection. In order to prevent violence, police kept a group of about 1 000 counter-demonstrators from accessing the square. Students living in nearby dormitories and left-wing activists repeatedly tried to breach the police barricades. Most of the blockades did not result in violence.
The organization Dresden Without Neo-Nazis held a permitted counter-demonstration in the center of the city in which participants marched from the river to the main train station. The organizers repeatedly called on demonstrators to protest peacefully, and some performers gave short concerts in the streets for the demonstrators. Silent protests against the neo-Nazis also took place in many churches throughout Dresden today. Police originally expected up to 20 000 people to gradually join the demonstrations against the neo-Nazis over the course of the day, as many of 3 000 of whom were expected to be left-wing extremists. About 4 000 neo-Nazis were expected to participate, but by the late afternoon it seemed their numbers had totaled approximately 1 000, while the number of counter-demonstrators was around 15 000.
German media reported that police stopped buses bringing counter-demonstrators into Dresden on the highway before they reached the city limits. Activists had to walk to the center "on foot for more than an hour" in order to participate in the protest. Anti-fascists and neo-Nazis traveling on the same train to Dresden also engaged in a knife fight that sent four anti-fascists to the hospital.
German media reported that police stopped buses bringing counter-demonstrators into Dresden on the highway before they reached the city limits. Activists had to walk to the center "on foot for more than an hour" in order to participate in the protest. Anti-fascists and neo-Nazis traveling on the same train to Dresden also engaged in a knife fight that sent four anti-fascists to the hospital.
Former member of BNP s lashes out at Nick Griffin (UK)
 |
| Roger Phillips |
Kevin Edwards, a councillor for Llandybie in Ammanford, resigned from the ultra-nationalist party after he claimed it failed to properly deal with a member who had been convicted of assault.
The party’s South Wales organiser Roger Phillips, of Cross Hands, was convicted at Llanelli Magistrates’ Court last month after he admitted assaulting Adam Margetts, a fellow drinker at Llanelli Workingmen’s Club.
When Cllr Edwards e-mailed party leader Nick Griffin he claims he was told: “He’s got to go. I’m shocked that this was not dealt with in South Wales ages ago.”
But when a meeting of party organisers chose to back Mr Phillips, Cllr Edwards said the party’s refusal to oust him had left him no choice but to cut all links with the BNP.
Writing on his blog, he said: “What can I say? I have always been a loyal Griffinite and have always believed in Nick’s integrity and honesty.
“That is now shattered. Nick is either a blatant liar, politically naive or just listens to some very bad advice. Whatever the reason he is definitely not serious when he says that the party has cleaned up it’s image.”
Wales on Sunday previously reported how police investigated Mr Phillips in 2009 after he allegedly threatened to kill Bristol man Mark Watson, but charges were never brought.
BNP deputy Simon Darby said of Cllr Edwards resignation: “It’s a minor thing and it won’t affect the huge effort we are going to put into winning seats on the Welsh Assembly.”
Wales Online
Barnsley: antifascists march as EDL’s links to BNP exposed (UK)
Around 100 people turned up to support the joint Barnsley Trades Council and UAF demonstration in Barnsley on Saturday 19 February against the fascist British National Party, despite snow and harsh conditions.
But on the day, antifascists found themselves opposing both the BNP and the English Defence League.
Exposed
Both the BNP – which tries to hide its long history of fascism – and the racist street thugs of the EDL have sought to deny connections between the two organisations, although the EDL’s leader “Tommy Robinson” is a former BNP member and other fascists are central to its organisation.
But the links between the two groups were exposed when members of the EDL’s Yorkshire division turned out to defend the BNP’s stall in Barnsley as local trade unionists and antifascists marched against them.
The BNP is standing in the Barnsley Central byelection on 3 March. Local trade unionists and antifascists organised the march to oppose the BNP after the fascist party’s leader Nick Griffin’s recent visits to the town and the BNP’s attempts to maintain a stall in the town centre. The BNP wants to whip up support for its poinsonous racist and fascist ideas – local people are determined to oppose them.
Marched
The trade union and antifascist demo marched through the centre of Barnsley to show their opposition at the site where the BNP hold a stall.
Demonstrators were shocked when 50 EDL members marched up from a pub shouting abusive slogans. For an hour, police kept both groups penned in and refused to allow the trades council march to proceed.
But the antifascist demonstrators inisted they would march and the police eventually led the EDL back to the pub where they had been drinking earlier.
The trade union demonstration then proceeded through the town centre, chanting and outnumbering the fascists on the BNP stall and the EDL bully boys who had come to defend the BNP.
Rally
A rally in the centre of town was addressed by a number of speakers including the national president of the UCU and regional speakers from the GMB and FBU unions.
The rally finished with a call to leaflet and campaign against the BNP in the byelection.
UAF.org
But on the day, antifascists found themselves opposing both the BNP and the English Defence League.
Exposed
Both the BNP – which tries to hide its long history of fascism – and the racist street thugs of the EDL have sought to deny connections between the two organisations, although the EDL’s leader “Tommy Robinson” is a former BNP member and other fascists are central to its organisation.
But the links between the two groups were exposed when members of the EDL’s Yorkshire division turned out to defend the BNP’s stall in Barnsley as local trade unionists and antifascists marched against them.
The BNP is standing in the Barnsley Central byelection on 3 March. Local trade unionists and antifascists organised the march to oppose the BNP after the fascist party’s leader Nick Griffin’s recent visits to the town and the BNP’s attempts to maintain a stall in the town centre. The BNP wants to whip up support for its poinsonous racist and fascist ideas – local people are determined to oppose them.
Marched
The trade union and antifascist demo marched through the centre of Barnsley to show their opposition at the site where the BNP hold a stall.
Demonstrators were shocked when 50 EDL members marched up from a pub shouting abusive slogans. For an hour, police kept both groups penned in and refused to allow the trades council march to proceed.
But the antifascist demonstrators inisted they would march and the police eventually led the EDL back to the pub where they had been drinking earlier.
The trade union demonstration then proceeded through the town centre, chanting and outnumbering the fascists on the BNP stall and the EDL bully boys who had come to defend the BNP.
Rally
A rally in the centre of town was addressed by a number of speakers including the national president of the UCU and regional speakers from the GMB and FBU unions.
The rally finished with a call to leaflet and campaign against the BNP in the byelection.
UAF.org
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Russian nationalists may fuse into one group
In an interview with Interfax, the group’s former leader suggested that in the future the entire nationalist movement in the country will be “reformatted”.
“It is highly likely that a unified organization will be created and the spector of its interests will widen and involve not only the issue of illegal immigration but also political and social demands,” Belov said.
As to whether nationalists will go into politics and create their own party, Belov said it is too early to speak about that and he is not entitled to make such comments. “But it is obvious that the possibility of registering such party and participating in elections is close to zero,” he added.
Earlier this week, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office suspended the DPNI activities after it had concluded that the movement was “pursuing extremist goals and objectives.” The final decision though is to be made by the Moscow City Court.
Meanwhile, the Federal Migration Service (FMS) believes shutting down the nationalist movement was not a good idea, since it would only serve to bolster the group’s standing and so far it hasn’t enjoyed much support among the population.
“From our point of view, DPNI activities were neither good nor harmful,” Konstantin Poltoranin, FMS spokesman, told the agency. “It had no independent programs, no support within society. What would change with its closure? Radical measures can only provide publicity for such organizations.” The solution, according to FMS, would be taking either criminal or administrative proceedings against activists in movement, who violate the law and foment inter-ethnic discord.
Member of the Public Chamber Iosif Diskin, on the contrary, believes that the DPNI should have been shut down long ago.
“Each time this movement organized any event, it would end up with…mass disorders. Therefore, it has been a while that there was a legal basis for suspending its activities,” he told Pravda.ru.
Lately, nationalistic moods have been on the rise in Russia and climaxed in a riot on Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square on December 11. Initially a crowd of youths gathered near the Kremlin to mark the death of a football fan that was killed in a fight with ethnic North Caucasians. The meeting soon snowballed into a nationalist brawl with ethnic minorities and police being attacked.
The country’s leadership has been seeking a solution to this thorny issue and trying to educate the country’s multi-ethnic society to live in peace and respect one another. According to President Medvedev, "inter-ethnic conflicts are lethal for Russia, no matter where they occur”.
RT.Com
Forde must wait for life-or-death decision (USA)
Forde, 43, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the May 30, 2009, deaths of Arivaca residents Raul Junior Flores, 29, and Brisenia Flores, 9, and of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of Gina Gonzalez, Flores' wife and Brisenia's mother.
Prosecutors presented evidence the Floreses were shot by Jason Bush, 36, after he and Forde forced their way into the home, claiming to be law-enforcement officers looking for fugitives.
The prosecutors said Forde wanted to rob Flores to fund her border protection group, Minutemen American Defense.
Gonzalez testified that as she lay feigning death, she heard Brisenia plead for her life and the gunman shoot her twice at point-blank range.
On Friday, the attorneys argued why Forde should or should not be executed.
Defense attorney Jill Thorpe said Forde is a "broken person" and recounted testimony about the repeated acts of sexual and physical abuse and abandonment Forde suffered as a child.
Because of her childhood, Forde desperately needed to be loved and to feel important, Thorpe and co-counsel Eric Larsen said.
She married five men, became involved in the Minutemen organization and turned into a braggart who made outlandish claims, Thorpe said.
The abuse and a subsequent stroke led to a mental illness that left Forde unable to assess people like Bush and co-defendant Albert Gaxiola, to foresee the dangers ahead and to change course, Thorpe said.
Thorpe asked the jury to ask themselves, "Are we the type of society that says 'We're going to put you down because you are broken ... or are we the kind of society that says segregation is enough?' "
It's Forde's mental illness that prevents her from acknowledging her role and from apologizing, Thorpe said.
"She's not even facing what's going on here," Thorpe said.
Thorpe also asked the jury to look at Forde's moral culpability and compare it to Bush's.
Is Forde as culpable as you if you, "hearing the fear in a child's voice as she's begging you not to shoot her and you do it anyway?" Thorpe asked.
The death penalty should be reserved for the "worst of the worst," Larsen told jurors.
Imposing the death penalty might have an unintended consequence.
"Shawna is going to be a celebrity. She's going to be a martyr, she's going to revel in this," Thorpe said.
Deputy Pima County Attorney Rick Unklesbay said the Floreses would be alive if not for Forde.
Unklesbay, too, urged the jury to think about moral culpability, noting Forde did nothing to stop Bush from shooting any of the victims.
Forde stole Gonzalez's jewelry and then, upon learning Gonzalez was still alive, turned to Bush and yelled, "Hey! She's still alive! Get back in there and take care of her!" Unklesbay said.
Days after the slayings, she told an FBI informant they had more targets, Unklesbay said.
"That's the moral, reasoned response Shawna Forde had after Brisenia had two shots put in her head," Unklesbay said.
While Forde was probably abused to some degree, it's not enough to warrant leniency, Unklesbay said.
Forde must've realized her childhood was abnormal and she wanted something better for her two children, because they apparently weren't abused and still love her, Unklesbay said.
And yet, Forde plotted the Flores home invasion and slayings.
Child-abuse victims, "if they have an ounce of compassion in their soul, they just don't do that," Unklesbay said.
If jurors are unable to unanimously decide Forde deserves the death penalty, Judge John Leonardo will sentence Forde to life in prison with or without the possibility of release. Forde also faces prison time for attempted murder and various burglary, aggravated assault and robbery charges.
Bush is scheduled to go to trial March 15 and Gaxiola June 1.
They, too, face the death penalty.
Arizona Daily Star
MP rejects BNP claim after rant is published (UK)
THE British National Party is to make an official complaint against Gavin Barwell, after the MP publicised one of its candidate's rants about "violent immigrants" in New Addington.
The far-right party alleges Mr Barwell breached the Data Protection Act when he sent a questionnaire, filled in by Clifford Le May, to the Advertiser nearly a year and a half ago.
In the pamphlet, Mr Le May urged the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to "stop ruining our community by stuffing New Addington with violent immigrants who have no right to live among decent civilised white people".
He also referred to Mr Barwell, who he ran against for the Croydon Central seat in the general election last May, as a "traitor to his race and nation".
Now Mr Barwell has received a letter from the BNP threatening to take the matter to the Information Commissioner.
Mr Barwell told the Advertiser: "It's completely bizarre. I've never heard of anyone in a political party complain about their views being made public.
"Perhaps he is ashamed of what he said, as he should be."
In the letter, Tony Martin, the BNP's Croydon and Sutton branch organiser, wrote: "In mid 2009, Clifford Le May received a questionnaire sent out by your organisation.
"Cliff filled in and returned the completed questionnaire only for it to be printed in the Croydon Advertiser.
"Recently I have been looking into the legality of this leak and who is responsible.
"It looks illegal under the Data Protection Act 1998 and Gavin Barwell has confessed to this indiscretion on his blog.
"I contacted the Information Commissioner's Office and was told to contact you first before making any official complaint."
When the Advertiser contacted Mr Martin, who has replaced Charlotte Lewis as Croydon and Sutton branch organiser, he pointed out a promise made on www.croydonconservatives.com not to share information with third parties.
The disclaimer, under the heading Information Collection and Use, reads: "We never sell or share information to anyone outside the Conservative Party."
Mr Martin added: "I want to get the message across that we are not prepared to be trodden on.
"The Conservatives promise never to share information but this is exactly what they did.
"We're not looking for compensation, but an apology."
Mr Barwell admitted the privacy disclaimer existed but added: "Were it the response of a private individual I wouldn't have released it.
"But this was someone running for public office, so people have a right to know his views."
After giving Mr Barwell a deadline of seven days to respond to his concerns, Mr Martin says he now intends to submit an official complaint to the Information Commissioner.
This is Croydon
The far-right party alleges Mr Barwell breached the Data Protection Act when he sent a questionnaire, filled in by Clifford Le May, to the Advertiser nearly a year and a half ago.
In the pamphlet, Mr Le May urged the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to "stop ruining our community by stuffing New Addington with violent immigrants who have no right to live among decent civilised white people".
He also referred to Mr Barwell, who he ran against for the Croydon Central seat in the general election last May, as a "traitor to his race and nation".
Now Mr Barwell has received a letter from the BNP threatening to take the matter to the Information Commissioner.
Mr Barwell told the Advertiser: "It's completely bizarre. I've never heard of anyone in a political party complain about their views being made public.
"Perhaps he is ashamed of what he said, as he should be."
In the letter, Tony Martin, the BNP's Croydon and Sutton branch organiser, wrote: "In mid 2009, Clifford Le May received a questionnaire sent out by your organisation.
"Cliff filled in and returned the completed questionnaire only for it to be printed in the Croydon Advertiser.
"Recently I have been looking into the legality of this leak and who is responsible.
"It looks illegal under the Data Protection Act 1998 and Gavin Barwell has confessed to this indiscretion on his blog.
"I contacted the Information Commissioner's Office and was told to contact you first before making any official complaint."
When the Advertiser contacted Mr Martin, who has replaced Charlotte Lewis as Croydon and Sutton branch organiser, he pointed out a promise made on www.croydonconservatives.com not to share information with third parties.
The disclaimer, under the heading Information Collection and Use, reads: "We never sell or share information to anyone outside the Conservative Party."
Mr Martin added: "I want to get the message across that we are not prepared to be trodden on.
"The Conservatives promise never to share information but this is exactly what they did.
"We're not looking for compensation, but an apology."
Mr Barwell admitted the privacy disclaimer existed but added: "Were it the response of a private individual I wouldn't have released it.
"But this was someone running for public office, so people have a right to know his views."
After giving Mr Barwell a deadline of seven days to respond to his concerns, Mr Martin says he now intends to submit an official complaint to the Information Commissioner.
This is Croydon
TERROR THREAT ACCUSED 'HAD AK-47' (South Africa)
Brian Roach's lawyers told a bail hearing he would plead guilty to attempted extortion, but not to terror charges.
They also said the 64-year-old was no longer seeking bail.
Roach is accused of sending emails threatening to spread foot-and-mouth disease in the US and Britain unless the governments paid him four million dollars (£2.5 million).
Prosecutors have said police have not found evidence that Roach had the means to carry out his threats.
Roach, who owns an engineering firm outside Johannesburg and has business interests in Zimbabwe, is accused of saying in emails that he wanted the money to compensate white Zimbabwean farmers for land lost, and accusing the US and British governments of not doing enough to help the farmers.
About 4,000 white farmers have been forced from their farms since 2000 in what Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe calls a campaign to put more land in the hands of impoverished blacks.
Many of the beneficiaries, though, have been senior politicians who are close to Mugabe.
South African investigators worked with US and British officials on the case, and arrested Roach on February 12 after a seven-month investigation.
Daily Express
No more mister nice radical nationalist Jobbik (Hungary)
It seems that the decision by Gábor Vona to say nasty things about the Gypsies in Parliament while wearing the banned uniform of the Hungarian Guard on Monday wasn't the Jobbik chairman's way of celebrating Valentine's day. According to origo.hu, the leadership of the party has made a conscious decision to change their strategy, by spending more time at public forums focusing on the "harsher topics" they believe brought them success during the election campaign.
The portal notes that while Jobbik's leaders say the reason for their decision to start being naughtier again is dissatisfaction with the government's policies, it is probably also related to the fact that the party's popularity is falling. Imagine that.
Politics Hu
The portal notes that while Jobbik's leaders say the reason for their decision to start being naughtier again is dissatisfaction with the government's policies, it is probably also related to the fact that the party's popularity is falling. Imagine that.
Politics Hu
FRENCH FAR RIGHT POISED TO GAIN FROM WAVE OF TUNISIAN MIGRANTS
The wave of Tunisian immigrants that arrived in France last week shouldn't plan on getting too cozy. The new leader of the National Front is poised to capitalize on what she says is an immigration crisis.
French police say they have arrested some 100 Tunisians who landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa last week as they tried to enter France. The arrested immigrants, each carrying a document provided by the Italian authorities, are being held in detention centers across southeastern France. Should these immigrants request political asylum, their demands would more than likely be turned down, and France would be under no obligation to allow them to stay. On Friday, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Laurent Wauquiez made it clear that immigrants from Tunisia should expect no special treatment. "The Interior Ministry will examine on a case by case basis those who qualify for the right to immigration. Those cases can only be very marginal," Wauquiez told a news conference.
Good news for the National Front
The government is taking a hard line on these immigrants - but that is not preventing Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the far right National Front party, from making political capital out of what she says is the beginning of a new immigration crisis. In an interview with French public radio on Friday, Le Pen said the "great wave of migrants" was one of the consequences of the revolutions taking place in the Arab world. "We have to reform our immigration policy and stop the system that's pumping immigrants into our country. That means revoking the automatic right of anyone born here to French nationality and stopping the insanely easy access to social security benefit, housing benefit, retirement pensions and free schooling," Le Pen said. According to an opinion poll published Friday, if presidential elections were held tomorrow, 26 percent would vote for Socialist hopeful Dominique Strauss-Khan, 23 percent for incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy and 21 percent for Le Pen, meaning France would be very close to selecting the far right leader to go to the second round head-to-head against the Socialist candidate.
DW-World
French police say they have arrested some 100 Tunisians who landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa last week as they tried to enter France. The arrested immigrants, each carrying a document provided by the Italian authorities, are being held in detention centers across southeastern France. Should these immigrants request political asylum, their demands would more than likely be turned down, and France would be under no obligation to allow them to stay. On Friday, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Laurent Wauquiez made it clear that immigrants from Tunisia should expect no special treatment. "The Interior Ministry will examine on a case by case basis those who qualify for the right to immigration. Those cases can only be very marginal," Wauquiez told a news conference.
Good news for the National Front
The government is taking a hard line on these immigrants - but that is not preventing Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the far right National Front party, from making political capital out of what she says is the beginning of a new immigration crisis. In an interview with French public radio on Friday, Le Pen said the "great wave of migrants" was one of the consequences of the revolutions taking place in the Arab world. "We have to reform our immigration policy and stop the system that's pumping immigrants into our country. That means revoking the automatic right of anyone born here to French nationality and stopping the insanely easy access to social security benefit, housing benefit, retirement pensions and free schooling," Le Pen said. According to an opinion poll published Friday, if presidential elections were held tomorrow, 26 percent would vote for Socialist hopeful Dominique Strauss-Khan, 23 percent for incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy and 21 percent for Le Pen, meaning France would be very close to selecting the far right leader to go to the second round head-to-head against the Socialist candidate.
DW-World
French journalist convicted on racism charge over drug dealer comment (France)
The controversial French journalist Éric Zemmour has been found guilty of incitement to racial hatred after telling a TV chatshow that drug dealers were mostly "blacks and Arabs".
The Paris trial sparked a fierce debate over freedom of speech and the extent of France's racism problem, which is poisoning the republican ideal that all citizens are equal regardless of colour.
Zemmour, a well-known media commentator and columnist for Le Figaro, prides himself on his outspoken defiance of what he deems political correct, woolly liberals.
He appeared on a chatshow last year when the debate turned to the question of the French police's excessive use of stop and search powers against minorities. He said: "But why are they stopped 17 times? Why? Because most dealers are blacks and Arabs. That's a fact."
According to the French model, where everyone is theoretically equal under a state blind to race or religion, it is illegal to count ethnic minorities or race statistics. So there are no figures on the ethnic identity of criminals.
Zemmour was also fined for telling another TV channel that employers "had a right" to turn down black or Arab candidates. Job discrimination over race and ethnicity is thought to be widespread in France.
Zemmour, whose parents were Jewish Berbers who emigrated from Algeria in the 1950s, told the court he was not a "provocateur" but a faithful observer of reality who refused political correctness. He was backed by several centre-right politicians and some on the left.
The state prosecutor accused him of using the "old stereotype that linked immigration to crime".
The Zemmour case has reflected an increasingly uneasy debate over immigration in France as Nicolas Sarkozy tries to win over the far-right vote before his difficult re-election battle next year.
The Front National, led by its new, young, female face, Marine Le Pen, is scoring its highest ever ratings in the polls after exploiting mistrust of Islam by criticising Muslim street prayers and halal-only restaurants.
After what was attacked as a disastrous national debate on "immigration and national identity", Sarkozy is now seeking to outmanoeuvre the extreme right by launching a nationwide consultation on the role of Islam in the French secular state.
The debate, to be run by his ruling UMP party, will begin in April and will seek to impose rules on how Islam should work in France, which has the biggest Muslim population in western Europe. Sarkozy told party members it was crucial because "yesterday's racists are today's populists".
He said: "I don't want prayers in the streets, or calls to prayer." He said the decision to ban the niqab in public places from April was a good thing and now "we need to agree in principle about the place of religion".
The Guardian
Friday, 18 February 2011
White supremacist was early focus of police attack probe (Hemet, USA)
Midway through the investigation into a series of attacks on Hemet police last year, detectives were focused on violent white supremacist gangs as suspects, according to newly released search warrants.
Police were serving search warrants to investigate several members of a prison-based neo-Nazi gang, including the alleged "shot caller" of the Hemet chapter, according to the documents police filed to obtain those warrants.
The documents were released this week after attorneys for The Press-Enterprise filed a request last year that multiple search warrants be unsealed.
Though several of those mentioned in the March and April search warrants were arrested as part of an April raid, police did not find evidence to link members of the gangs to any of the attacks.
By June, suspicion turned to two other men, Nicholas Smit and Steven Hansen. Based on a tip to police and DNA evidence, they were arrested in July on suspicion of targeting Hemet Detective Chuck Johnson with attacks that started in December 2009. Authorities have said the motive was to stop Johnson from testifying against Smit in a marijuana case.
Smit has been charged in five attacks and Hansen is charged with assisting him in one attack -- aiming a rocket at the Hemet Police Department in June.
Police have not said whether either man had ties to any white supremacist gangs. The district attorney's office has not filed gang charges against them.
The initial suspect in the case was Joseph Matthew Zito, who police thought was "bent on revenge" against officers who had arrested him, detectives said in the unsealed documents.
Zito was sentenced last month to eight years in prison for a weapons charge related to the April raid but unrelated to the attacks.
In late 2009, Zito was released from prison after Johnson had arrested him for possession of tear gas. He went to the Hemet Police Department and told detectives that authorities in a previous weapons case against him "bore false witness" and that "he had a moral and religious right to 'bring sinners to justice,' " the warrants say.
Zito was described in the warrants as the leader or "shot caller" for the Hemet region of a white supremacist gang called Public Enemy No. 1. Formed in Orange County, it is a sect of the Aryan Brotherhood, police said.
Part of the reason Hemet police suspected white supremacist involvement was that an investigator found instructions on how to make some of the devices used in the attacks in an online white supremacist manual.
One such device was a homemade gun rigged to the gate around the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force building February 2010, which fired when an officer opened the gate, narrowly missing him.
The next day, as task force members moved out of the building, police found Zito staking out the building, according to the warrants.
Detectives began a surveillance operation in March on Zito and his gang associates. The warrants state Zito was never found at the scene of any of the attacks but was thought to have been orchestrating them.
Video surveillance was conducted on Johnson's home, where a similar homemade gun was attached to his car on March 4.
While the gun found on Johnson's car was being defused by the bomb squad, an associate of Zito's was seen staking out the officers.
When the Hemet police firing range was burned down April 12, police believed it was retribution for the arrest of another gang member hours earlier.
Detectives eventually ruled out Zito's involvement due to a lack of evidence.
PE.com
Police were serving search warrants to investigate several members of a prison-based neo-Nazi gang, including the alleged "shot caller" of the Hemet chapter, according to the documents police filed to obtain those warrants.
The documents were released this week after attorneys for The Press-Enterprise filed a request last year that multiple search warrants be unsealed.
Though several of those mentioned in the March and April search warrants were arrested as part of an April raid, police did not find evidence to link members of the gangs to any of the attacks.
By June, suspicion turned to two other men, Nicholas Smit and Steven Hansen. Based on a tip to police and DNA evidence, they were arrested in July on suspicion of targeting Hemet Detective Chuck Johnson with attacks that started in December 2009. Authorities have said the motive was to stop Johnson from testifying against Smit in a marijuana case.
Smit has been charged in five attacks and Hansen is charged with assisting him in one attack -- aiming a rocket at the Hemet Police Department in June.
Police have not said whether either man had ties to any white supremacist gangs. The district attorney's office has not filed gang charges against them.
The initial suspect in the case was Joseph Matthew Zito, who police thought was "bent on revenge" against officers who had arrested him, detectives said in the unsealed documents.
Zito was sentenced last month to eight years in prison for a weapons charge related to the April raid but unrelated to the attacks.
In late 2009, Zito was released from prison after Johnson had arrested him for possession of tear gas. He went to the Hemet Police Department and told detectives that authorities in a previous weapons case against him "bore false witness" and that "he had a moral and religious right to 'bring sinners to justice,' " the warrants say.
Zito was described in the warrants as the leader or "shot caller" for the Hemet region of a white supremacist gang called Public Enemy No. 1. Formed in Orange County, it is a sect of the Aryan Brotherhood, police said.
Part of the reason Hemet police suspected white supremacist involvement was that an investigator found instructions on how to make some of the devices used in the attacks in an online white supremacist manual.
One such device was a homemade gun rigged to the gate around the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force building February 2010, which fired when an officer opened the gate, narrowly missing him.
The next day, as task force members moved out of the building, police found Zito staking out the building, according to the warrants.
Detectives began a surveillance operation in March on Zito and his gang associates. The warrants state Zito was never found at the scene of any of the attacks but was thought to have been orchestrating them.
Video surveillance was conducted on Johnson's home, where a similar homemade gun was attached to his car on March 4.
While the gun found on Johnson's car was being defused by the bomb squad, an associate of Zito's was seen staking out the officers.
When the Hemet police firing range was burned down April 12, police believed it was retribution for the arrest of another gang member hours earlier.
Detectives eventually ruled out Zito's involvement due to a lack of evidence.
PE.com
Neo-Nazis and leftists clash at assault trial (Germany)
Right-wing extremists and leftists clashed in a Nuremberg courtroom on Thursday, spurring the judge to clear the hall in order to continue a trial against a neo-Nazi charged with beating a teenage boy so severely that he remains permanently disabled.
As the trial began a group of leftists reportedly chanted “Antifa, Antifa, get out Nazis!” in attempt to keep the defendant’s supporters from entering the courtroom. Antifa in German refers to “anti-fascist” supporters.
The courtroom, number 600, was used to try Nazi war criminals after the Second World War, and the leftist demonstrators said they did not want it occupied by modern right-wing extremists.
Court officials' demands to keep apart were ignored and met with verbal sparring between the two sides, and the courtroom was cleared amid loud protests.
A 24-year-old man with admitted ties to the neo-Nazi scene in Fürth faces charges of attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm after beating a 17-year-old student apprentice nearly to death in April 2010 in a Nuremberg U-Bahn metro.
The man became enraged when the teenager allegedly made a disparaging remark about a bum bag worn by his girlfriend from Thor Steinar, a well-known neo-Nazi clothing label.
The 24-year-old from Fürth denied he intended to maim or kill the teen before the court on Thursday, but did acknowledge beating the boy after he remarked “aggressively” on the bum bag. The defendant also said he regretted the incident, in particular the disabilities sustained by his victim.
The now 18-year-old was injured so severely that his heart stopped and he had to be repeatedly resuscitated by rescue workers. After a lengthy hospital stay he remains severely disabled and unable to work in his chosen field of carpentry.
Because he can’t remember the assault, the teen appeared in court as a joint plaintiff.
Though he has no memory of it, he told the court that he could certainly imagine making such a remark about the Thor Steinar bag.
“Because I think it’s wrong to wear this label that is used mainly by neo-Nazis,” he said, adding that he is an active supporter of the city's leftist scene.
Another four days have been reserved for the trial, with a verdict expected on March 3.
The Local Germany
As the trial began a group of leftists reportedly chanted “Antifa, Antifa, get out Nazis!” in attempt to keep the defendant’s supporters from entering the courtroom. Antifa in German refers to “anti-fascist” supporters.
The courtroom, number 600, was used to try Nazi war criminals after the Second World War, and the leftist demonstrators said they did not want it occupied by modern right-wing extremists.
Court officials' demands to keep apart were ignored and met with verbal sparring between the two sides, and the courtroom was cleared amid loud protests.
A 24-year-old man with admitted ties to the neo-Nazi scene in Fürth faces charges of attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm after beating a 17-year-old student apprentice nearly to death in April 2010 in a Nuremberg U-Bahn metro.
The man became enraged when the teenager allegedly made a disparaging remark about a bum bag worn by his girlfriend from Thor Steinar, a well-known neo-Nazi clothing label.
The 24-year-old from Fürth denied he intended to maim or kill the teen before the court on Thursday, but did acknowledge beating the boy after he remarked “aggressively” on the bum bag. The defendant also said he regretted the incident, in particular the disabilities sustained by his victim.
The now 18-year-old was injured so severely that his heart stopped and he had to be repeatedly resuscitated by rescue workers. After a lengthy hospital stay he remains severely disabled and unable to work in his chosen field of carpentry.
Because he can’t remember the assault, the teen appeared in court as a joint plaintiff.
Though he has no memory of it, he told the court that he could certainly imagine making such a remark about the Thor Steinar bag.
“Because I think it’s wrong to wear this label that is used mainly by neo-Nazis,” he said, adding that he is an active supporter of the city's leftist scene.
Another four days have been reserved for the trial, with a verdict expected on March 3.
The Local Germany
Religious leaders join forces against violence (Denmark)
Recent reports of violence and harassment against religious groups has inspired groups of Christians, Muslims and Jews to unite in the fight against intolerance, reports Berlingske newspaper.
An increase in religiously motivated violence has led the three main religious communities in Denmark to join forces to encourage mutual respect and tolerance.
“Judaism, Islam and Christianity all have common roots,” said Rev Peter Skov-Jacobsen, the bishop of Copenhagen. “And when the root is the same, it must be possible for them to live and prosper side by side.”
The bishop’s views are supported by Det Mosaiske Troessamfund (MT), an officially recognized Jewish society, and the Muslim Joint Council (MF).
“Islam does not warrant harassment,” said MF spokesperson Zubair Butt-Hussain. “Such harassment is horrible whether you are religious or not. Engaging in it would amount to abuse of the Koran.”
On March 21, the City Council will schedule a campaign against religious harassment in connection with the UN’s anti-racism day.
CH-Post
An increase in religiously motivated violence has led the three main religious communities in Denmark to join forces to encourage mutual respect and tolerance.
“Judaism, Islam and Christianity all have common roots,” said Rev Peter Skov-Jacobsen, the bishop of Copenhagen. “And when the root is the same, it must be possible for them to live and prosper side by side.”
The bishop’s views are supported by Det Mosaiske Troessamfund (MT), an officially recognized Jewish society, and the Muslim Joint Council (MF).
“Islam does not warrant harassment,” said MF spokesperson Zubair Butt-Hussain. “Such harassment is horrible whether you are religious or not. Engaging in it would amount to abuse of the Koran.”
On March 21, the City Council will schedule a campaign against religious harassment in connection with the UN’s anti-racism day.
CH-Post
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Norway rules to extradite mentally-ill Russian neo-Nazi
A Norwegian court in Oslo has ruled to extradite mentally-disturbed Russian neo-Nazi Vyacheslav Datsik, the local NRK television broadcasting corporation said on Wednesday.
Datsik, 33, was detained at an immigration office in Oslo where he appeared with a weapon seeking asylum on September 21. In late December, a local court sentenced him to eight months in prison for carrying a weapon.
Hearings on Datsik's extradition, which Russian prosecutors had been seeking since October 20, began in Oslo on February 14. Justice Minister Knut Storberget said in court that the Norwegian authorities were not interested in having Datsik on their territory.
Datsik, a former mixed martial arts fighter, was arrested in 2007 after a series of robberies in cell phone stores. But psychiatric examinations concluded that he was mentally ill and was therefore cleared of all criminal charges.
The martial arts fighter was involved in political activities as a member of the ultranationalist movement, Slavic Union, which was banned in Russia last year but had reportedly opened its office in Norway.
RIA Novosti
Datsik, 33, was detained at an immigration office in Oslo where he appeared with a weapon seeking asylum on September 21. In late December, a local court sentenced him to eight months in prison for carrying a weapon.
Hearings on Datsik's extradition, which Russian prosecutors had been seeking since October 20, began in Oslo on February 14. Justice Minister Knut Storberget said in court that the Norwegian authorities were not interested in having Datsik on their territory.
Datsik, a former mixed martial arts fighter, was arrested in 2007 after a series of robberies in cell phone stores. But psychiatric examinations concluded that he was mentally ill and was therefore cleared of all criminal charges.
The martial arts fighter was involved in political activities as a member of the ultranationalist movement, Slavic Union, which was banned in Russia last year but had reportedly opened its office in Norway.
RIA Novosti
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