Police probe anti-Muslim website attacking Wrexham Mosque plan

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

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

Immigrants cleaning Swedish cities

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

Hitler abortion poster sparks anger in Poland

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

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

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

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

The Telegraph

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

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

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

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

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

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

written by Rachel Wearmouth thenorthernecho

Israel angry over anti-Semitic postcards sent by Spanish schoolchildren

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racist incidents, protests spread at UC campuses (USA)

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

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

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

The Guardian

To BNP or not to be?

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

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

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

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

Daily Mirror

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC News