Police in Castleford are launching an operation to combat racist abuse. Plain clothes officers from minority ethnic backgrounds will be out on foot on in all areas of Castleford.
The officers will be selected from other areas of the District and Force so that they will not be recognised locally as police. The Castleford Neighbourhood Police Team (NPT) have been working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to ensure that the opportunities to prosecute are maximised with quality evidence.
Inspector Ian Williams of Castleford NPT said, "It is important not only that we look after the interests and welfare of minority groups in the community but are seen to do so.
"The majority of Castleford and Airedale residents are from a white background so I can understand how people from these groups can feel intimidated. We take all hate crime very seriously but it is often difficult to get victims to come forward and give evidence. This pro-active approach to dealing with such incidents protects the victims from having to do so."
"These operations will continue for as long as it takes to get the message across that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated. I am hoping that by taking a direct approach, more victims will come forward to tell us about the abuse they have suffered. It is vital that people from minority groups have confidence in the ability of the police to deal with their concerns."
Gaynor Zeki, Community Prosecutor for West Yorkshire said, "Hate crime of any kind is abhorrent, whether it is based on race, disability, gender or sexual orientation. The CPS will prosecute these cases robustly and vigorously.
“If a case has hate crime elements in addition to other offences, CPS prosecutors will bring this to the Court’s attention so that it can be taken into account at sentencing. This is very likely to result in an increase in the offender’s penalty.
If you have suffered from or witnessed any type of hate crime whether it is as a result of race, disability, sexuality or religion you can get in touch with Castleford NPT on 01924 206210 or anonymously at crimestoppers on 0800 555111
Saturday, 27 February 2010
UK politicians fall victim to Twitter scam
The micro-blogging website has seen hit by a wave of so-called "phishing scams,'' which lure users to a bogus website where they're enticed to part with their passwords.
Those tracking the Twitter account of Ed Miliband, the British energy minister, were surprised by a message carrying an unusually direct reference to the politician's sex life. "Oh dear it seems like I've fallen victim to twitter's latest 'phishing' scam,'' Miliband posted shortly afterward.
He wasn't alone. On Thursday, House of Commons leader Harriet Harman told lawmakers her account had sent a bogus message to opposition lawmaker Alan Duncan.
timesofindia
'Kill whites' call sparks hate speech frenzy
The demeaning and often violent comments were still on the page on Friday despite promises by the party on Thursday that the page would be removed and its administrator disciplined.
Racist invective, which in many cases amounted to hate speech, from both sides were entertained by page administrator Anwar Adams, who earlier refused to remove comments calling for whites to be killed, saying it was free speech.
PAC spokesman Andiswa Majali said this week Adams could face disciplinary steps and promised on Thursday that the party would remove its Facebook page. He said Adams was a member of the party, but did not have the party's blessing to create the page.
Cape Times
Google Video and Italy: Is there nothing we won't watch?
Following Google's conviction in Italy, Robert Colvile suggests that internet users hold the key to controlling inappropriate content.
On September 8 2006, a new item was added to Google Video in Italy. It showed an autistic schoolboy in Turin being abused, physically and verbally, by his classmates. On Wednesday, three executives from Google – who had never worked in Italy, or had any idea of the video's existence before it was deleted two months later – were found guilty (in absentia) of invading the teenager's privacy, and given six-month suspended sentences by an Italian court, after charges were brought by a local Down's syndrome charity.
The outrage was immediate. David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, and one of those convicted, claimed the ruling "poses a grave danger to the continued freedom and operation of the many internet services that users around the world – including many Italians – have come to rely on". A coalition of supporters was quickly assembled ahead of the inevitable appeal, including Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders, and the US government.
Why the fuss? Everyone agrees that the video was unacceptable and disgusting. The prosecutors argued that Google had a duty to ensure that such videos complied with privacy law before they were made public, that comments beneath the video suggesting that it was inappropriate were ignored, and that it should have been spotted when it made the "most viewed" list on the site.
Google countered that it took the video down within three hours of being alerted by the authorities, that European (and Italian) law states that responsibility for such videos lies with those who post them, and that taking a random set of executives from its hierarchy to court was hardly the way to resolve the issue.
Whatever the merits of the case, there is a broader point. It is not just that this ruling implies that Google – or anyone else who operates a website – is responsible for every offensive video, photo or comment that appears there. It is that this is only the latest of a seemingly endless series of instances in which the internet has been used to spread misery.
In Canada, for example, a video of an obese child miming a lightsaber fight – the so-called "Star Wars Kid" – attracted millions of views and made his life a misery (in this case, the teenager, Ghyslain Raza, sued the classmates who put the video online, rather than the firms who hosted it). In Italy, Facebook groups have been removed for advocating the assassination of Silvio Berlusconi, or the use of children with Down's syndrome for target practice – "an easy and amusing solution" for disposing of "these foul creatures". And an inquest heard this week that Emma Jones, a British teacher in Abu Dhabi, drank cleaning fluid – either deliberately or accidentally – after becoming panicked that naked photographs of her had been posted online, which could have led to her being condemned as a prostitute.
Faced with this kind of unpleasant material, the layman might ask why it can't just be blocked before it is uploaded, as the Italian court wants. There are two objections, one philosophical and one practical. The first is whether we want internet companies to have the power to decide what is tasteful or ethical. Everyone would agree that child pornography should be removed from Google's search database and the perpetrators brought to trial. But what when Apple decides – as it recently has – that it does not want "titillating" content on its online store? Who decides what meets that vague guideline and what doesn't?
It is the practical objection, however, that is most significant. YouTube, the video service bought by Google in 2006, receives 20 hours of video every single minute – a torrent of information that no human being could reasonably pre-screen. It is not just video, either. Bill Eggers, the global director of Deloitte Research, points out that it took the Library of Congress more than 200 years to amass a collection of 29 million books and periodicals, 2.4 million audio recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts. The same amount of data is now being added to the internet every five minutes.
Google, of course, has built its success on making sense of this chaos. It is the firm's proudest boast that no human hand governs the placement of search results on your screen – it is all down to the "algorithm", the impossibly complex formula that runs the site. So committed is Google to this idea that it refused to remove a racist image of Michelle Obama that was ranking highly from its image search function, arguing that the image was perfectly legal and its high placement reflected the reality of what people were linking to and interested in.
This is also why the fact that the European Commission is investigating Google over its search results – as disclosed in The Daily Telegraph this week – is about far more than the threat of billions of dollars in fines. If it is true that companies Google disapproves of, or is threatened by, are pushed down its rankings then it would destroy the belief – almost an article of faith within the firm – that its algorithm is the most perfect, and
most objective, way yet found to make sense of the world's information.
However, when it comes to screening out inappropriate content, even the mighty Google falls short. After YouTube in particular was criticised for relying on content pirated from elsewhere, such as TV shows or music videos, the firm developed a system called "Google Content ID". This compares YouTube videos with copyrighted material in Google's database and lets its creators decide whether to block the pirated material or impose their own advertising on it (a far more popular option). But the system is not yet sophisticated enough to tell when a video is displaying inappropriate content, such as pornography or racist diatribes. Nor can Google rely on the "tags" people use to identify their content: a video marked "hot sex" or "Britney Spears naked" can often turn out to be footage of a cat on a piano, which has been mislabelled to drive up traffic.
The only practical solution, then, is for users to alert companies such as Google and Facebook to inappropriate material being hosted on their sites. And here is where things become even more disturbing. Think back to that video from Turin. Here was a disabled child being mocked and beaten by other pupils – a repulsive spectacle. Yet it still became one of the most viewed items on the site. And even though some of those thousands who watched it posted comments underneath suggesting it was inappropriate, Google insists that not a single one bothered to click on the button, displayed on every video, that would alert it to the existence of inappropriate content.
In other words, Google, Facebook and the like are at the mercy of human nature. They can act when there have been clear-cut breaches of laws or standards, such as pornography on YouTube, or Facebook groups that advocate the murder of the disabled, or profile pictures that display Nazi regalia (if that is illegal in the relevant country). But they can do less about people's instinctive tendency towards voyeurism or cruelty – hence the estimates that a fifth of the pupils in Britain's schools and a seventh of the teachers have become the victims of some form of "cyber-bullying".
"Wherever like-minded people gather into a mob, you can bid farewell to nuance, empathy or good manners," wrote the Sunday Telegraph columnist Jemima Lewis recently, recalling the "astonishing rudeness" with which dissenters from parenting orthodoxy are treated on the Mumsnet website. One mother who expressed dismay that her daughter's primary school had been discussing lesbianism and civil partnerships was told she was "homophobic", a "d---head" and to "Go and live with the Amish if you can't deal with the real world."
Executives at Facebook believe this kind of behaviour will dwindle as people come to use their real names online (as they must do on its network), rather than hiding behind anonymity. But Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, thinks they should go further. "I understand that it's very difficult, if you want a quick and speedy and free internet, to say there must be massive obligations on companies to vet things before they go up. But they could go a lot further than they currently are, in terms of taking their responsibilities to educate and warn people more seriously."
Ultimately, however, it comes down to how we behave. "People can be thoughtless, people can be reckless, people can be hurtful, and the web, despite being wonderful in all sorts of ways, is a new – and in some ways more dangerous – medium for that," says Chakrabarti.
"It's fashionable to bang on about a Big Brother state, but we're all capable of being pretty nasty little brothers and sisters to each other as well."
The Telegraph
The outrage was immediate. David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, and one of those convicted, claimed the ruling "poses a grave danger to the continued freedom and operation of the many internet services that users around the world – including many Italians – have come to rely on". A coalition of supporters was quickly assembled ahead of the inevitable appeal, including Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders, and the US government.
Why the fuss? Everyone agrees that the video was unacceptable and disgusting. The prosecutors argued that Google had a duty to ensure that such videos complied with privacy law before they were made public, that comments beneath the video suggesting that it was inappropriate were ignored, and that it should have been spotted when it made the "most viewed" list on the site.
Google countered that it took the video down within three hours of being alerted by the authorities, that European (and Italian) law states that responsibility for such videos lies with those who post them, and that taking a random set of executives from its hierarchy to court was hardly the way to resolve the issue.
Whatever the merits of the case, there is a broader point. It is not just that this ruling implies that Google – or anyone else who operates a website – is responsible for every offensive video, photo or comment that appears there. It is that this is only the latest of a seemingly endless series of instances in which the internet has been used to spread misery.
Faced with this kind of unpleasant material, the layman might ask why it can't just be blocked before it is uploaded, as the Italian court wants. There are two objections, one philosophical and one practical. The first is whether we want internet companies to have the power to decide what is tasteful or ethical. Everyone would agree that child pornography should be removed from Google's search database and the perpetrators brought to trial. But what when Apple decides – as it recently has – that it does not want "titillating" content on its online store? Who decides what meets that vague guideline and what doesn't?
It is the practical objection, however, that is most significant. YouTube, the video service bought by Google in 2006, receives 20 hours of video every single minute – a torrent of information that no human being could reasonably pre-screen. It is not just video, either. Bill Eggers, the global director of Deloitte Research, points out that it took the Library of Congress more than 200 years to amass a collection of 29 million books and periodicals, 2.4 million audio recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts. The same amount of data is now being added to the internet every five minutes.
Google, of course, has built its success on making sense of this chaos. It is the firm's proudest boast that no human hand governs the placement of search results on your screen – it is all down to the "algorithm", the impossibly complex formula that runs the site. So committed is Google to this idea that it refused to remove a racist image of Michelle Obama that was ranking highly from its image search function, arguing that the image was perfectly legal and its high placement reflected the reality of what people were linking to and interested in.
This is also why the fact that the European Commission is investigating Google over its search results – as disclosed in The Daily Telegraph this week – is about far more than the threat of billions of dollars in fines. If it is true that companies Google disapproves of, or is threatened by, are pushed down its rankings then it would destroy the belief – almost an article of faith within the firm – that its algorithm is the most perfect, and
most objective, way yet found to make sense of the world's information.
However, when it comes to screening out inappropriate content, even the mighty Google falls short. After YouTube in particular was criticised for relying on content pirated from elsewhere, such as TV shows or music videos, the firm developed a system called "Google Content ID". This compares YouTube videos with copyrighted material in Google's database and lets its creators decide whether to block the pirated material or impose their own advertising on it (a far more popular option). But the system is not yet sophisticated enough to tell when a video is displaying inappropriate content, such as pornography or racist diatribes. Nor can Google rely on the "tags" people use to identify their content: a video marked "hot sex" or "Britney Spears naked" can often turn out to be footage of a cat on a piano, which has been mislabelled to drive up traffic.
The only practical solution, then, is for users to alert companies such as Google and Facebook to inappropriate material being hosted on their sites. And here is where things become even more disturbing. Think back to that video from Turin. Here was a disabled child being mocked and beaten by other pupils – a repulsive spectacle. Yet it still became one of the most viewed items on the site. And even though some of those thousands who watched it posted comments underneath suggesting it was inappropriate, Google insists that not a single one bothered to click on the button, displayed on every video, that would alert it to the existence of inappropriate content.
In other words, Google, Facebook and the like are at the mercy of human nature. They can act when there have been clear-cut breaches of laws or standards, such as pornography on YouTube, or Facebook groups that advocate the murder of the disabled, or profile pictures that display Nazi regalia (if that is illegal in the relevant country). But they can do less about people's instinctive tendency towards voyeurism or cruelty – hence the estimates that a fifth of the pupils in Britain's schools and a seventh of the teachers have become the victims of some form of "cyber-bullying".
"Wherever like-minded people gather into a mob, you can bid farewell to nuance, empathy or good manners," wrote the Sunday Telegraph columnist Jemima Lewis recently, recalling the "astonishing rudeness" with which dissenters from parenting orthodoxy are treated on the Mumsnet website. One mother who expressed dismay that her daughter's primary school had been discussing lesbianism and civil partnerships was told she was "homophobic", a "d---head" and to "Go and live with the Amish if you can't deal with the real world."
Executives at Facebook believe this kind of behaviour will dwindle as people come to use their real names online (as they must do on its network), rather than hiding behind anonymity. But Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, thinks they should go further. "I understand that it's very difficult, if you want a quick and speedy and free internet, to say there must be massive obligations on companies to vet things before they go up. But they could go a lot further than they currently are, in terms of taking their responsibilities to educate and warn people more seriously."
Ultimately, however, it comes down to how we behave. "People can be thoughtless, people can be reckless, people can be hurtful, and the web, despite being wonderful in all sorts of ways, is a new – and in some ways more dangerous – medium for that," says Chakrabarti.
"It's fashionable to bang on about a Big Brother state, but we're all capable of being pretty nasty little brothers and sisters to each other as well."
The Telegraph
Youths Carve Cretan Teacher Arms with swastikas (Crete)
Police on Crete yesterday were seeking the two men who carved swastika symbols on the arm of a 27-year-old teacher on Wednesday night – the latest in a string of racist crimes on the island in the past two months.
The woman was attacked while getting into her car in the Halepa suburb of Hania by two masked youths who used a razor blade to carve two Nazi symbols onto the skin of her left arm and another three on her jacket sleeve. Police said they believe the perpetrators had targeted her as she had been offering Greek language lessons to the children of immigrants. Nikos Tzaras, a spokesman for the Cretan Migrant Forum condemned the attack as “barbaric and cowardly” and said he believed the assault and other racist attacks were being coordinated by “a center in Hania.” Wednesday’s attack follows a string of assaults on migrants and two attacks on a synagogue in Hania last month
Kathimerini
Kathimerini
Bosnian Serb ex-general Tolimir in genocide trial
A prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal said Mr Tolimir had "assisted, supervised and authorised" killings of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims).
Genocide is among the charges he faces for his alleged role in the massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica.
He was a top aide to commander Ratko Mladic, who is still on the run.
Mr Tolimir, 61, is the last suspect in custody to go on trial, because the court is scheduled to close its doors by 2013. He is also charged with crimes against humanity including persecution and deportation. He was arrested in May 2007.
Gen Mladic is also accused of genocide at Srebrenica in 1995.
He is thought to be hiding in Serbia, but Belgrade's failure to track him down and send him to The Hague remains an obstacle in the path of Serbia's bid to join the European Union, the BBC's Geraldine Coughlan reports.
One other top fugitive, the former Croatian Serb leader, Goran Hadzic, is also still at large.
BBC News
Merseyside Black Police Association chief Vinny Tomlinson to resign over race allegations (Liverpool, UK)
THE head of Merseyside Black Police Association said he plans to quit his post amid alleged “race-related bullying and coercion” within the force.
Vinny Tomlinson told the ECHO he will resign as chairman at May’s annual general meeting.
The 42-year-old also blamed a newly-imposed Service Level Agreement which now governs how the Merseyside Black Police Association (BPA) and other social networks within the force must operate.
Mr Tomlinson insisted that racism still existed within Merseyside Police and said he was leaving due to what he perceived as moves to decimate the BPA by senior bosses.
One female police civilian told the ECHO she twice tried to commit suicide after suffering “overt racism”.
Two colleagues were reprimanded after she was racially abused in the Canning Place HQ control room.
One black female constable said she considered leaving her job on countless occasions after alleged persistent racist abuse.
Other black and ethnic minority staff talked about “a culture of prejudice and discrimination” where they allegedly had to work harder to gain recognition and faced bigger hurdles than white colleagues if they wanted to progress.
Today, Merseyside Police denied there was a culture of racism and bullying within the force.
They said the force supported the BPA which was “about its members, not one individual”.
Assistant Chief Constable Patricia Gallan also urged staff to report their concerns.
And she said other networks within the force, including those which support women, Christians and gay and lesbian workers, had fully accepted the new agreements designed to help them operate.
liverpooldailypost
POLICE TO RIDE SCHOOL BUSES TO SAVE GIRLS FROM RACISM (uk)
Merseyside police last night said community police officers would now board buses in the area to deter the racism and would work with city schools to remind pupils “racial abuse is a criminal offence.” But police stressed the issue of drivers failing to stop for the girls was a matter for Merseytravel. Merseytravel said it condemned “all acts of racism” and, after probing the claims, has “now drawn up an action plan to deal with and prevent any further incidents”. It was not, however, able to release details of the measures which might be implemented. Members of the Muslim community said the problem was a long-running one. Amina Ismail was approached by Holly Lodge pupils while overseeing a widening participation event for Hope University last year. Ms Ismail, now employed by Liverpool John Moores University, said: “They said people driving past were being abusive because they were wearing the hijab (head scarf) at the bus stops on Queens Drive or West Derby Road.” She said bus drivers refusing to stop were “cowardly” and that “they should not push their own personal prejudices on young people.” And with pupils now frequently travelling farther afield to the school of their choice, she urged people to “see past the scarf or skin colour and look beyond this”.
Around 10% of the 1,274 Holly Lodge pupils on roll are from ethnic minorities, and the school has won praise from Ofsted for its “promotion of equality and diversity”. Head teacher Julia Tinsley said: “There have been a small number of cases where ignorant people have directed racist comments at our pupils while they are on buses. It is completely unacceptable and very upsetting for those involved and we have provided support to those affected. “We welcome the assistance from Merseyside Police in tackling the mindless minority who think it is acceptable to make racist comments.” Merseyside Police Authority committee member and city councillor, Paul Clein, said any driver deliberately failing to stop was “guilty of racism and bullying”. But Colin Carr, regional advisor for the North West branch of giant union Unite – whose members include bus drivers – said he would be surprised if they were failing to stop. “The union would condemn this kind of action, and equality and diversity is something we promote across the spectrum,” he said. A Merseyside police spokesman said the force was committed to tackling racism and added: “We will be putting police community support officers on public buses during the periods these incidents are happening to reassure passengers and deter would-be offenders. CCTV will be routinely checked following allegations of any criminal offence.” The police are also looking at ways for people to anonymously pass on information so they could catch the culprits.
liverpooldailypost
MAYOR OF MALMÖ: 'I WASN´T INFORMED' (Sweden)
The police in the Skåne province have noted that hate crimes against Jews doubled last year. This has sparked an increasing number of Jews in Malmö to leave Sweden. Comments made by Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu in news interviews has been interpreted as that he believes that the Jews themselves has debt in the harassment against them, because they had not clearly distanced themselves from Israel's war in Gaza. Reepalu claims that he has been misquoted and deliberately misunderstood. But when the U.K. newspaper the Daily Telegraph yesterday drew attention to Malmö's problem with anti-Semitism in a reportage, some kind of line had been passed. Reepalu was then criticised by Mona Sahlin, the party leader of his own party, the Social Democrats. “The Jews deserve to have strong support, and you should never confuse the debate about anti-Semitism and Zionism,” Sahlin said to news agency TT. “There were some unfortunate statements by Ilmar which came to be perceived that way,” Sahlin adds. “I have asked him to have a proper dialogue with the Jewish community in Malmö so that it is sorted out”. That dialogue was held today, on Reepalu's initiative.
Not informed
“We should have had this meeting a long time ago. I have not been sufficiently informed about the seriousness of the situation”, Mayor Reepalu said after the meeting with people from the city's Jewish congregation. For one and a half hours Reepalu talked with the congregation chairman Fred Kahn and Information Officer Frederick Sieradzki. “Words of seriousness have been exchanged. But we had a good discussion climate and could be very honest with each other," Fred Kahn said afterwards. The parties also willingly allowed themselves to be photographed together. Reepalu admitted that he has not known enough about the Jewish population's vulnerability in the city. Now he has received facts from both the police and the Jewish congregations own security people. He says he is ready to act. A letter will be sent to all local authorities with the call to be vigilant against signs of anti-Semitism or xenophobia. Kahn and Sieadzki welcomed the initiative with a cautious comment. “This is the beginning of a process. We'll see where it leads.”
stockholmnews
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