I LIVE AND BREATHE THE BNP!! School governor's vile boast (UK)

Primary school governor Debra Kent is facing the axe after The People unmasked her as a racist.

Kent - standing as an MP for the BNP - peddles her vile views on far-right websites.
She even brags: "I live and breathe the BNP!!!!" A People probe found mum-ofone Kent, 30, has branded Britain a "multicultural hellhole" and said immigrants act "like savages".
She is part of an online group called "Stop the ethnic cleansing of Britain", has joined a campaign to ban non-white British footballers and another calling for halal meat to be outlawed.

She supports a group named "If you don't like our country GET OUT" and another called "NO MORE MOSQUES".
And we can reveal she went to a British National Party rally where racists torched a gollywog.

Writing on Facebook, Kent later dubbed the rally "fab".
We launched our probe after parents at Latchford C of E Aided Primary School in Kent's hometown of Warrington, Cheshire, voiced alarm when she was chosen as BNP candidate for the new constituency of Fleetwood and Lancaster at the General Election.

Partner James Clayton will fight Blackpool North and Cleveleys.
Education chiefs pledged Kent will be booted out because by law school governors have a duty to work for racial harmony.
School head Jacqui Wightman said: "The views of the BNP go against all those we hold dear."

And Warrington education boss Pinaki Ghoshal said: "We would not support the continued presence of a BNP candidate on a school's board of governors."
Kent, who has a seven-year-old son, bragged: "I'm young, I'm successful, I'm a woman and I'm standing up for Christian values by standing as a BNP candidate. Get over it."

The People

Home Secretary powerless to stop English Defence League protests in Midlands (UK)

THE Home Secretary has admitted he is powerless to stop extremists who have wreaked havoc across the Midlands demonstrating in the region during Easter.

The English Defence League (EDL) plans to hold a rally this Saturday in Dudley to protest against plans for a new £18 million mosque .
Previous EDL marches, including ones in Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Nottingham, have erupted into violent clashes between rival groups, including United Against Fascism (UAF).
Shoppers have been left horrified as yobs took over their city centres and several arrests were made by police.
And Alan Johnson has condemned extremists whose aim it is to divide communities
Yet he said there are no laws available to allow him to halt the incendiary group from demonstrating next Saturday.
“The police can in certain circumstance apply to me to stop a march, a demonstration that is physically moving along,” Mr Johnson told the Sunday Mercury.

“They have no such powers on static demonstrations if they are on public land.


“They have powers to ensure people can go about their daily business, powers to say make sure you are not in the middle of the road, but the power to stop it doesn’t exist.”

And he defended the right of all groups to demonstrate.
He said: “I deplore any attempt to cause disruption and disharmony in communities but because I disagree with the views of people demonstrating it doesn’t mean I should stop them.

“This is a democracy quite rightly the power of politicians to stop people demonstrating is limited.

“There are rules about what they can say, about inciting racial hatred, laws that we have introduced, but there is not a law that says because we don’t like their views we can ban their static demonstration.”

Dudley residents were warned to “prepare for the worst” when it was announced the EDL was planning to march in their town.
The council’s deputy leader Les Jones said: “It’s not particularly unexpected and so now we’ve just got to prepare for the worst case scenario.”
And council leaders from the three main political parties and UKIP signed a public notice calling on residents to stay away from the demonstration.
But supporters of the EDL, who are travelling from as far away as Bolton in Lancashire and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, have been arranging their plans through the group’s website.

One from wolves15 reads: “Can’t wait, been waitin for ages for one close to home that i can go to.”

Dudley Council originally turned down plans by the Dudley Muslim Association to build the mosque in 2007, after a petition opposing the scheme raised 22,000 signatures.
But the association took their fight to a public inquiry and now a government planning inspector has ruled in its favour, granting its appeal against the council’s refusal of outline planning permission in July 2008.

The Sunday mercury

DOZENS RALLY IN WARSAW TO PROTEST PLANS FOR MOSQUE (Poland)

Dozens of people are protesting plans by the country's Muslim community to build a second mosque in Warsaw. The protesters gathered Saturday at the mosque's construction site in the city's outskirts. They chanted "Radical Islam, no thanks" and held up banners saying "Stop the Radicals" and "Political Islam is threat to Europe." A tiny group of counter-protesters turned out carrying banners reading: "Warsaw is for everybody" and "Stop Islamophobia." Poland's Muslim population is tiny but growing. It includes not only Tatars, an ethnic group that settled in Poland centuries ago, but also a growing number of students and businessmen from Arab countries. So far Poland has been spared the tensions over Islam that Western Europe has experienced in recent years.

Associated Press

TORY MEPS SHAME LEADER OVER WOMEN AND GAY RIGHTS (uk)

David Cameron faced fresh embarrassment over Europe last night, after it emerged that Conservative MEPs have consistently voted against a string of measures to protect women's rights. Analysis of the record of 25 Tory members of the European Parliament this year shows they voted against, or abstained, eight times on issues relating to sexual equality, family-friendly working hours, maternity leave and reproductive health – often in clear defiance of official Conservative Party policy. The MEPs also failed to back an EU resolution expressing concern about homophobic attacks in Croatia, which is seeking EU membership. The disclosures come amid new pressure from Brussels on the Conservative leader after the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, called for a new EU treaty on closer European economic co-operation – a move that would force a Tory government to hold a referendum on Europe within months of taking office. To the annoyance of Eurosceptics in his party, Mr Cameron ruled out a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty last year, but promised a nationwide vote on future treaties. Labour has also committed to a referendum on a new treaty. Ms Merkel's intervention on Friday means that the difficult issue of Europe will loom sooner than anticipated for Mr Cameron, should he win the election. The Tory leader has found the stance of his MEPs, many of them hardline Eurosceptics, including the controversial critic of the NHS Daniel Hannan, difficult to balance with his promises of a socially progressive Conservative government. Last week, TV footage emerged of Mr Cameron's interview with Gay Times in which he appeared flustered over separate votes by Tory MEPs and Tory peers opposing gay rights. Now the IoS can reveal details of eight votes on women's rights and a further vote on homophobia in the European Parliament last month, compiled by the Liberal Democrats.


On 25 February, 22 out of 25 Tory MEPs voted against a resolution calling for the EU to become a party to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. The remaining three did not vote. On 10 February, seven measures on a report on equality for women in the EU saw the majority of Tory MEPs voting against or abstaining. The measures included giving better protection to women on maternity leave, backing women's easy access to contraception and abortion, and making men more aware of their responsibilities for sexual and reproductive health. Also on 10 February, one Tory MEP opposed, with 16 abstaining, a motion calling on the Croatian government to do more to crack down on homophobic attacks in the country. No Tory MEPs voted in favour. Fiona Hall, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Europe, said: "For the Tories to suggest that it is in women's interests to vote for them is downright cheek. We have looked at the voting record of Conservative MEPs and one thing is very clear: the Conservatives are a danger to women." A spokesman for Tory MEPs said: "We have repeatedly made it clear in the European Parliament that we fully support equality. However, we believe that it should be for sovereign nation states to legislate on social issues in their own countries, and not the EU. "Matters relating to reproductive rights are conscience issues and therefore members are given a free vote."

The Independant

Before you start mouthing off about Hitler, you'd better know your Nazis

A great item has appeared in the Guardian about Goodwins law and how it used falsely to counter any criticism of far right neo-Nazi beliefs.
Godwin's law states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1". This is both funny and true, like John Prescott having bulimia. Although, to be pedantic for a second, it applies to literally any comparison or topic of conversation: the probability approaching 1 just means it becomes more likely, so, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone suggesting that I'm having an affair with Angelina Jolie approaches 1. Perhaps not very quickly, but it approaches it. In an infinite discussion, the notion is bound to come up. (I deny the rumours.) (How do these things get started!?)

Anyway, that's what my half-remembered A-level maths suggests to me. But they've probably changed the way they do maths since I was at school. Bloody national curriculum, it's like something the Nazis would have come up with.
But apart from being a statistical truism, Godwin's law is often used to trump irresponsible playing of the Nazi card. When person A compares something or someone they dislike to Hitler or the Nazis, person B cites Godwin's law to shut them up.
I can see why this is handy. A lot of amateur rhetoricians seem to confuse the terms "Nazi" and "nasty", or to have noticed that, in between bouts of warmongering and mass murder, Hitler also ate, drank, slept, laughed and oxygenated his blood. This exposes a vast number of people to being likened to him.

Gandhi was like Hitler because he too was hated by Churchill. Lord Adonis is like Hitler because he's also commissioned road-building. Harold Shipman is like Hitler because he's also a murderer. Co-presenter of Homes Under the Hammer, Lucy Alexander, is like Hitler because she also has opposable thumbs and is therefore much more like Hitler than, say, a toaster or Droitwich. And lacrosse is like Hitler in that I think they both only have one ball.
Nazi, Hitlerian, fascist and totalitarian references abound. I stumbled across three last Tuesday: the first was a photograph of a protester waving a Hitlerised caricature of BA chief executive Willie Walsh – by which I mean she'd taken a photo of him and drawn on a Charlie Chaplin moustache and hair a bit like mine. The amount of pen she'd used only served to demonstrate how unlike Hitler Walsh looked to start with. She'd also coloured his eyes in red for some reason. Maybe to suggest the sleepless nights that Walsh will currently be enduring, much like Hitler in the bunker days? I struggle to find anything else meaningful that the two men have in common, other than the professed enmity of the protester.

The second was Queen guitarist Brian May saying a proposed cull of badgers in west Wales, aimed at controlling bovine TB, "would be genocide". He didn't even say "like genocide". I disagree with, but concede the coherence of, the argument that animals, including badgers, should be accorded similar rights to humans. May goes further and suggests that they actually are humans. He said the cull would be like killing all ginger-haired people if it were found that that would eradicate smallpox. The flaws in this comparison centre around the words "all" and "people" being substituted for "some" and "badgers".
The third was a former member of the BNP saying that senior members of that party "have Nazi, Naziesque sympathies". This is where using Godwin's law as a corrective falls down – sometimes Nazi comparisons are well used. While the crimes of the BNP are incomparably smaller than those of the Nazi party, as thankfully is its degree of electoral success, its views are comparable and history suggests that it would be naive to assume that, were the BNP given the opportunity of power, its actions wouldn't also be.
The Godwin's law attitude is a well-meaning rule of thumb, designed to discourage abusive and hyperbolic remarks, but we mustn't be seduced into thinking that nothing really is like the Nazis any more – that that kind of evil has passed. When references to fascism and totalitarianism are accurate, just as when a responsible shepherd boy cries: "Wolf!", it's important to pay attention.

All of which just makes me angrier with irresponsible criers of "Hitler!", including both ends of the American political ZX Spectrum (by which I mean the far right and the nearly-as-far right). As many Americans go into a tailspin, coming to terms with the notion that poor people shouldn't be left to die of easily treatable diseases – even though, the USA being such a lovely meritocracy and everything, they must on some level deserve it (and, after all, what incentive is there to make something of your life if it's not the fear of an agonising, peritonitis-induced uninsured demise?) – there's been a frenzy of swastika-slinging.

It started relatively gently with Sarah Palin's dark allusion to almost eugenicist "death panels" being the inevitable consequence of state-sponsored healthcare, but now hysterical bloggers on both sides are labelling each other Nazis more often than they call themselves patriots. One particularly depressing website referred to the vandalism committed by opponents of the healthcare bill to five Democratic offices across the whole country as "Kristallnacht".

The internet is full of people desperate to be heard. Comparing things to Hitler is the online equivalent of shouting, and quoting Godwin's law is like refusing to listen to people who shout. By nature, I favour the latter camp and find most online shouting unpleasant and ignorant.

But sometimes people who shout are right and some circumstances warrant shouting. We mustn't ignore them all because of a law of probability. The wearying truth about the internet is that it requires readers to scrutinise the authorship, bias and reliability of everything they read more than ever before. So, to know if a Hitler comparison is apposite, you have to know more about Hitler than that he wasn't a nice guy.

The shortcuts to reliability that the old established more or less responsible media provided are being closed off. In the online future, we'll be on our own, in a whirl of conflicting assertion and opinion. It's going to be easy to be bamboozled and lied to. We're going to wish we'd spent more on education.

Written by David Mitchell in the The Guardian

Russia bans Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' over fears it fuels rise of far-Right

Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" has been banned in Russia in an attempt to combat the growing allure of far-Right politics.

Russian prosecutors on Friday banned the 1925 semi-autobiographical book, saying its outline of racial supremacy encouraged extremist and violent behaviour.

Despite including tracts that are both anti-Jewish and anti-Russian, it has become increasingly popular among Russia's far-Right groups.

Russian extremists have attacked migrant workers from poor nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus who come to Russia and often have menial jobs and squalid living conditions. African and Asian students and Russians who do not look Slavic have also been targeted.

At least 60 people were killed and 306 injured in hate attacks in Russia last year, according to Sova, a Moscow-based non-governmental organisation that tracks racist violence.
The ban was initiated after a regional office of the prosecutor sought new ways to combat extremism and found the book was being distributed in the Ufa region.
Hitler dictated the book to his aide Rudolf Hess while in prison in Bavaria after the failed Munich "Beer Hall" putsch of 1923. It sets out his doctrine of German racial supremacy and ambitions to annex huge areas of the Soviet Union.

"Mein Kampf" has been banned in Germany since the Second World War. In Germany, it is illegal to distribute it except in special circumstances, such as for academic research.
The Telegraph

Suspected far-right extremists set fire to politician's car (Germany)

Unknown perpetrators believed to be far-right extremists set fire to the car of a Berlin politician with Kurdish roots early on Friday morning, city authorities reported.

Evrim Baba, who has repeatedly taken a stand against far-right activity in her political career, is a member of the Berlin city parliament for the socialist Left party.

The politician said she believed the attack came from the neo-Nazi scene after recently receiving a number of threats. Several days ago a smelly liquid was also thrown inside the 39-year-old’s car, rendering it unusable.

City politicians from both Baba’s party and the centre-left Social Democrats condemned the attack.
Baba fled with her family from the Turkey's then military regime as an eight-year-old child and worked as an interpreter before becoming a member of the Berlin legislature in 1999.

She is the Left party’s speaker on women’s issues in the capital.
The fire attack on Baba’s car follows a similar crime in which two cars were burned outside conservative Berlin politician Robbin Juhnke’s home in the summer of 2009. In that case left-wing anarchists claimed responsibility
The Local De

Closet-Nazi´ in running for Austrian president

A far-right candidate for Austria´s presidential election has brought the country´s dark past to the surface once more.

A far-right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface once more, after denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial.

Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional party leader for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) who was nominated last week, looks to be the sole candidate to run against incumbent President Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, on April 25.

But her comments supporting the scrapping of Austria's tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a Nazi heritage the small alpine country has never fully come to terms with.

Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country's image abroad.

Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years.
But Rosenkranz, a mother of 10 and the wife of an outspoken figure in Austria's far-right scene, insists the law constitutes "an unnecessary restriction" and that, on the contrary, people should be allowed freedom of opinion.

In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights already allowed a journalist's description of her as a "closet-Nazi", noting that her attitude towards Nazism was ambiguous.

Such comments from a woman running for the country's highest office prompted scorching criticism from politicians of all colours, civil groups and the Catholic Church.

Rosenkranz's own supporters also did what they could to limit the damage.
"Somebody like this is not eligible for election," said Vienna's Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, while the Jewish community described her as "an embarrassment for Austria."

"Rosenkranz challenges the Republic's anti-fascist foundation, that is unacceptable," added Social Democrat Defence Minister Norbert Darabos.
Meanwhile, Hans Dichand, publisher of the influential tabloid Kronen Zeitung, reversed his earlier position and urged Rosenkranz to "distance herself from all national-socialist ideas", just days after he had called on voters to support her.
The leader of the FPOe, Heinz-Christian Strache reacted Friday in a last-minute attempt at damage control.

"Nobody in our party is talking about scrapping the prohibition law", hed said.

"Nobody in the FPOe approves of anything relating to Nazism", he added. Rosenkranz's comments he said, "could have maybe been worded better."

While the Austrian president has a mostly ceremonial role and Fischer is widely expected to win a second term, Rosenkranz's candidacy has been seen as a test for the FPOe's party programme.

Strongly anti-EU and anti-immigrant, Rosenkranz also advocates strict family values and traditional gender roles.
This image took a beating when her local priest revealed she had left the Church years ago and that none of her 10 children -- who carry old German names like Mechthild, Hildrun, Arne or Sonnhild -- had been baptised.
She has also come under fire over her husband's connections with top figures in the Austrian and German far-right scene.
Horst Jakob Rosenkranz, who was once a member of the now banned neo-Nazi NPD party, still publishes a far-right newspaper called Fakten (Facts).

Barbara Rosenkranz has never distanced herself from his activities, but in an interview with the daily Die Presse published Sunday, she insisted: "I have never shown I was close to Nazism.

"Reports that I favour scrapping the prohibition law are false and misleading."

She nevertheless maintained: "Those parts (of the law) that deal with expressed opinions are in conflict with the basic right of freedom of opinion."
Commentators already fear the "horror scenario" of a far-right presidential win -- especially if turnout remains low as expected -- while anti-Semitic comments have already appeared in her support in online forums.

"Is that a foretaste of the elections campaign?" asked the Austrian weekly News.

BNP goes upmarket to target white middle class

The British National Party is attempting to cloak its image as a party of violent, racist thugs by appealing to middle-class voters at the general election.

Nick Griffin, the BNP's leader, has signalled a radical change in strategy for the forthcoming campaign after his widely derided performance last October on BBC1's Question Time, which draws a large middle-class audience. It will attempt to capitalise on disillusionment with both Labour and the Conservatives over the expenses and lobbying scandals.

The BNP's legal officer, Lee Barnes, in an article sent to activists, claims the BNP has "won over" the white working class and that it is now time to use "propaganda" to reach out to a wider circle of voters.

Yet the strategy remains targeted at white voters, with Mr Barnes telling activists they must appeal to the "white liberal middle class" and the "white Tory middle class".

The move is a sign that the court defeat inflicted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over the BNP's ban on non-white members has forced the party to modify its election campaign strategy away from race to broader issues of class.
Yet critics described the plan as a cosmetic move to cover up its racist beliefs and showed that the BNP had gone as far as it could in picking up working-class votes.

Last week Robert Grierson, a barrister, was selected to stand as a candidate for the BNP in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, where the Conservatives have a majority of more than 12,000. After his selection Mr Grierson was forced to resign from St Philips Chambers in Birmingham where he has worked as a tax barrister for 10 years. "I felt I had to stand up and take the flak I will no doubt get. This shows that the BNP is not a party of skinheads and knuckle-draggers," he said.

But Sutton Coldfield's MP, the Tory frontbencher Andrew Mitchell, described his BNP opponent as "an extremist in a suit".
The BNP's top target seats remain the working-class constituencies of Stoke Central and Barking, and the strategy is unlikely to have a significant effect. Last year, however, a BNP candidate won a shock victory in a council seat in Sevenoaks, Kent, the heart of Middle England.

In his article, Mr Barnes dismissed the "smug, selfish, apathetic, politically correct parents" of middle-class voters, but said it was time to appeal to the next generation who are under 45. He claimed this group were suffering "racial discrimination" when applying for university places.

He wrote: "As a result of the Equality Commission case we must now refocus our propaganda on a new front – that of the Nationalist Classless Society and the creation of a meritocracy as opposed to the racist multi-cultural system. Even though we have failed to market ourselves properly to the White Working Class we have won them over.
"But we must now also reach out [to] the children of the White Liberal Middle Class and White Tory Middle Class and explain to them how mass immigration, New Labour and Cameron's Tories and multiculturalism have betrayed them."

The BNP is fielding 300 candidates at the general election, expected on 6 May, and more than 1,000 in the local elections on the same day.

A spokesman for Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said: "This is an indication of Nick Griffin's desperation as he is unable to break through to the extent he had hoped following the European elections and he is casting around for a new strategy. This will inevitably increase divisions within the BNP which have already been created by his disastrous Question Time performance and his defeat at the hands of the Equality and Human Rights Commission."
The Independant