Father jailed after violent EDL protest in Hanley (UK)

An English Defence League demonstrator who was at the forefront of a group which broke police lines has been jailed for 16 months.

Mark Doel became involved in violence at the demonstration in Hanley city centre on Saturday, January 23.

Prosecutor Paul Spratt told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court yesterday that at about 1.30pm, items were being thrown at police including glass bottles, cans and a smoke cannister.

"About 100 people had broken free from the group being cordoned to come round the rear of the police lines," said Mr Spratt.
"A police dog handler became aware of a group of men at the rear of the police unit.

"He then saw the defendant run to the front and shout abuse at the officers.

"He (Doel) kicked out to the back of a slightly built female officer and punched her to her helmet, causing her to fall to the ground.

"She was later assaulted by another individual and was kicked and stamped on."

The court heard the police dog took hold of the defendant. He kicked out and struck the dog and others tried to drag him back into the crowd.

But the dog maintained its grip and Doel was arrested.

In his police interview, he admitted being present at the demonstration but denied violent disorder and assaulting a police officer.

He pleaded guilty to affray at an earlier hearing.

The pleas were accepted by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Peter McCartney, for the defence, said Doel was not a member of the EDL and visited the Potteries on the invitation of a friend.

He said the 43-year-old, who has numerous convictions for violence and disorder but none for 15 years, regrets getting into trouble.

"It was the first demonstration he has attended," said Mr McCartney. "He came along. He did not intend to involve himself in violence, but the situation carried him along and he did get involved."

Judge Granville Styler said an immediate custodial sentence had to be passed.

"This was a very serious matter," the judge told Doel, a father-of-one from Primrose Hill, Batley, West Yorkshire.
"You travelled to Stoke-on-Trent and, I take the view, you travelled in order to take part in a demonstration. You consumed five pints of lager.

"You knew the police were having difficulties restraining an increasingly violent crowd.

"You were at the forefront of a breakaway group. You attacked a policewoman from behind and knocked her to the ground. It was an extremely dangerous situation. And it encouraged others to attack this officer while on the ground, and she was stamped on.

"It is clear to me you have not put your violent past behind you."

Judge Styler said he would like the Chief Constable to commend the dog handler for his bravery.

This is Staffordshire

University of Texas poised to re-title dormitory named for KKK leader (USA)

A college dorm named after a notorious Ku Klux Klan leader has officials at a Texas university in a tizzy.

Simkins Residence Hall, an all-male dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin, was named for beloved law professor and Confederate War veteran William Stewart Simkins, who spent over 30 years mentoring students before his death in 1929.

But it also turns out that Simkins is the co-founder of the Florida branch of the KKK, and university administrators are looking to see if his legacy should be erased.

In March, former UT law professor and historian Thomas Russell cast a harsh spotlight on Simkins with the online publication of an academic paper delving into his violent background.

After serving in the Confederate Army where he was even rumored to have fired the first shot of the Civil War, Simkins moved to Florida and organized the local Klan chapter with his brother. Russell writes that Simkins - who described himself as the Florida Klan leader — claimed he never drew blood but did openly speak of having assaulting freed blacks.

The university has responded by assembling a 19-member panel that will meet for the first time Thursday to deliberate on whether the dorm should be given a new scandal-free name.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the panel, which includes students, faculty, staff members, alumni and civic leaders, will meet roughly four times before making its recommendation to UT President William Powers Jr. at the end of June.
These meetings, headed by UT's vice president for diversity, Gregory Vincent, will be closed to the public.

Russell hypothesizes, reports the Post & Courier, that the university originally named the dorm for Simkins as a calculated move in protest of the Supreme Court's landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" decision in 1954, which pushed UT to begin integration. The dorm opened just one year later in 1955.

So how did the name last this long? Over the years, Russell says, Simkins' white supremacist history faded from memory and instead he gained a reputation as "colorful and eccentric."

In fact, according to the Post and Courier, naive UT students used to rub a bust of the professor for good luck on their way into exams.

NY Daily News

New rules for restoring stolen property to Nazi victims

European leaders have agreed to a uniform set of guidelines for making restitution to the heirs of Holocaust victims whose property was seized by the Nazis. It's the first international agreement of its kind.
Germany and 42 other countries have agreed to a new system of guidelines for making restitution for Jewish-owned property stolen by the Nazi's during World War II.

The non-binding agreement, signed by 43 countries in Prague on Wednesday, is the first set of international guidelines addressing the restitution of real estate seized from Jews between 1933 and 1945.

Under the new recommendations, countries should compensate victims or their heirs for property that cannot be returned. If no heir comes forward, a fund should be established. The agreement also said that heirs wishing to claim confiscated real estate should be given free access to all relevant archives.

Time for action
Stuart Eizenstat, a special adviser for Holocaust issues to US President Barack Obama, urged the countries involved to act immediately, as many Holocaust survivors desperately need the money.


"Of the 500,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide, at least half live at or below the poverty level," Eizenstat said.
According to a study by US economist Sidney Zabludoff, the collective wealth of European Jews prior to the Holocaust was between 8.3 and 12.4 billion euros, about 145 billion euros in today's economy.

More than sixty-five years after the end of the Second World War, many countries have yet to make restitution for properties that were either stolen or purchased at artificially low prices from Jews during the war.

About six million Jews were systematically killed by Nazis during the Holocaust.

du-world

UK monitors suspected radicals as part of European surveillance project

The UK is taking part in a European surveillance programme which is designed to gather personal information about suspected "radicals" from across the political spectrum.

Confidential documents reveal how an initiative to gather data on "radicalisation and recruitment" in Islamic terrorist groups has been expanded to incorporate other organisations.

Political activists who have no association with terrorism could now find themselves monitored by authorities mandated to discover information about their friends, family, neighbours, political beliefs, use of the internet and even psychological traits.
Police and security agencies have agreed to monitor "agents" who adhere to ideologies potentially involving violence. The documents define targets for the surveillance as people involved in "extreme right/left, Islamist, nationalist, anti-globalisation" groups.

Europol, a EU law enforcement agency, has been asked to produce a list of people involved in either promoting such groups, or in trying to recruit members.

The documents, obtained by Statewatch, the EU civil liberties monitoring NGO, set out a programme of "systematic data collection" ostensibly geared towards terrorism. But the inclusion of such a broad array of political interests will add to growing concerns that legitimate protest organisations are being subjected to state surveillance.

In the UK, the police have developed a centralised monitoring apparatus to spy on "domestic extremists", an umbrella term with no legal definition which, in practice, includes law-abiding environmental protesters, anti-war activists, and anti-racist campaigners.

The scheme has a central database held by the national public order intelligence unit, a secretive body funded by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo). Monitoring of political activists is a task filled by the terrorism and allied matters division of Acpo.

The advice lists "environmental extremists" alongside far-right activists, dissident Irish republicans, loyalist paramilitaries, and al-Qaida inspired extremists, as among those "currently categorised as extremist [that] may include those who have committed serious crime in pursuit of an ideology or cause".

The UK government has also been criticised over Prevent, a programme aimed at stopping Muslims being lured into violent extremism. The initiative was branded a mass surveillance project after it was found it was being used to gather intelligence on innocent people who were not suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Under the new, approved, EU scheme, states have acquired a 70-question list on "agents of radicalisation" under their watch. Much of the information presumes a high-degree of intrusive monitoring, obtainable only via covert surveillance techniques, such as phone tapping.

It is assumed, for example, that law enforcement agencies will obtain information about a person's "feelings" about a group that could be "considered as the enemy". One section asks for information about "oral comments" made by targets, while others ask about religious knowledge, behaviour, and socio-economic status.
Under "relevant psychological traits", law enforcement agencies are asked to collate and share information on "psychological disorders, charismatic personality, weak personality, etc". Another question asks: "Is there a prior relationship between the agents? Schoolmates, friends, relatives, shared time in prison, etc."

This latest data-sharing agreement is the culmination of long-standing attempts to create a pan-European database of individuals whom police suspect could cause trouble at large demonstrations.

EU officials, principally led by Germany, have tried repeatedly to widen the shared data on suspected terrorists and serious criminals to include political activists, defined in documents as "troublemakers" who attend "large public gatherings".

The moves were stalled by objections from some member states, including the UK, concerned about civil liberties and data protection. But they reappeared as a firm commitment in the EU's five-year Stockholm programme.

Guardian

Anti-Semitic, racist graffiti found in Dollard des Ormeaux (Canada)

A spate of anti-Semitic and racist graffiti in Dollard des Ormeaux Sunday night spurred police into a door-to-door campaign asking for the public to be on alert.

"We went door-to-door, asking people to call us if they see anything suspicious," said Montreal Police Constable Chantal Castonguay.

On Sunday, a few cars, garage doors and fences on Choquette, Ernest and Einstein Streets were sprayed with graffiti displaying swastikas as well as racially offensive words.

Police believe the vandalism is most likely the work of hooligans, one police source said.

"The swastikas were painted backwards and in some cases, the people who lived in the home were not Jewish," said the source.

In another case, the graffiti featured anti-black slurs. Police said the investigation continues.

Montreal Gazette

UK BRINGS IN ENGLISH TEST FOR MIGRANT SPOUSES

The British government is introducing a new English test for anyone outside the European Union hoping to live in the UK as a husband, wife, fiance or civil partner of a British citizen. The exam will become part of the marriage visa application process in September. People intending to migrate to Britain to marry or reside with their partners will have to satisfy the Home Office that they have a basic grasp of the English language. The new test will assess a person's ability to introduce themselves, ask simple directions, and understand what is said by someone speaking slowly. In 2009, another 21,000 migrants were given the right to stay indefinitely. The British government hopes the change will help combat sham marriages and ensure that new arrivals better integrate into British society.


ABC News

CALL FOR ACTION OVER FAR-RIGHT WEBSITE (Wales, uk)

A teaching union has called on education chiefs to act after a 16-year-old Welsh schoolboy was found running an extreme right-wing website. A report by the Western Mail’s sister paper Wales on Sunday revealed a website called The Carmarthenshire Front has been written and run by a GCSE pupil in the county. His school, Queen Elizabeth High, and the local education authority have sought to distance themselves from the website. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said the revelations were “deeply disturbing” and urged the authorities to take responsibility. “It is clear that there is still much more to be done to protect young people from having their attitudes poisoned in this way,” she said. “Families, schools, communities and government all have a responsibility to combat and challenge these unacceptable views. “It is not acceptable for either the school or local authority to claim to have no responsibility in this matter. They clearly do and the NASUWT will be seeking to ensure that this issue is taken seriously.” On Saturday, the country’s largest teaching union spoke out in support of the Unite Against Fascism group, who were marching against the far-right English Defence League’s anti-Muslim protest in Cardiff. NASUWT Wales organiser Rex Phillips said: “Given that schools are cited as one of the places to ‘hit’ in the spread of this extremist propaganda, the local authority must work with the Carmarthenshire schools to ensure this cannot happen.

Wales Online

FIFA WORLD CUP 2010: SAMUEL ETO’O EXPECTING TO ERADICATE RACISM WITH THIS WORLD CUP

He might be one of the best strikers in European Club and perhaps the best African player playing in Europe  but the bottom line is that he is black! Samuel Eto’o who became a star with Barcelona and went onto score a treble for Inter Milan this season under Jose Mourinho’s command says that he did faced a lot of problems in Europe for his skin colour but hopes that this World Cup will change the scenario. Eto who landed in Spain in 1996 and played for teams like Real Madrid followed by Real Mallorca and Barcelona said that he has always faced some sought of opposition for his coloured skin. Talking to Guardian, the 29-year old striker was quoted saying: It has never been easy and until the end of my career it won’t be easy. But maybe thisWorld Cup , being the first in Africa, can change attitudes. I hope so but I suffered a lot in Italy this year. So it’s not just one country where there is racism. But to obtain these rewards you have to go through that. And that’s why it’s incredible we’re playing in the country where my idol, Madiba [Nelson Mandela], lives.” He also talked about some of the incidents in Spain stating: “When I played against Real Zaragoza they chanted like monkeys and threw peanuts on the pitch. So when I scored I danced in front of them like a monkey. When the same thing happened against Real Madrid I scored and held my fist in a Black Power salute.” But the striker is confident with the World Cup in South Africa things are bound to change as he is expecting his team to give a stellar performance in this edition of the tournament.


Entertainment and Showbusiness

BOSNIAN MUSLIMS THANK SERBS FOR HELPING RECONSTRUCT MOSQUE

Bosnia's Islamic Community has expressed its gratitude to Serb authorities for assisting with the reconstruction of a 16th century mosque destroyed by Serbs during the country's 1992-95 war. The leader of the Islamic Community, Mustafa Ceric, said Tuesday in Banja Luka, the largest town in Bosnia's Serb majority region, that the activities by the government there, in particular the more than €600,000 it provided for the reconstruction of the 16th century Ferhadija mosque, were a signal that “better times have come.” Ceric spoke after meeting with Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik at the site in Banja Luka where reconstruction of the Ferhadija mosque is ongoing. The mosque was one of Europe's most beautiful heritage sites protected by UNESCO before being razed to the ground in 1993. Although Banja Luka saw little combat during Bosnia's war, all sixteen mosques in the city were destroyed and nearly all of its 30,000 Muslims expelled. Initially, the intention by Bosnia's Islamic Community to rebuild the Ferhadija mosque was met with strong resistance by Bosnian Serbs. The cornerstone laying ceremony for the mosque in 2001 triggered Serb nationalist riots in which one person was killed. However, the Bosnian Serb authorities have over the years started supporting the project, including by providing financial assistance for the reconstruction work.

“We are now meeting here without any obstacles, there is no more violence and that is a great success of tolerance in Bosnia and Herzegovina which we achieved together,” Dodik said. “Ferhadija is an important religious and cultural symbol of this city, of Bosniak people and all other people who live here,” he added. Bosnian Serb Minister of Education and Culture Anton Kasipovic said that Muslims should feel good in Banja Luka because “this is also your city”. “I wish we did not need to talk about Ferhadija today, because if we had been [civilized] people we would not have destroyed it and there would have been no need to rebuild it,” Kasipovic said. “For me it is more than just a mosque, it is part of my childhood and my youth,” he added. The Banja Luka mufti Edhem Camdzic said the Serb support for rebuilding of the Ferhadija mosque was “a message that the century of violence and disrespect is behind us.” “We expect the authorities, current and future, to make Bosnia and Herzegovina an example of coexistence,” Camdzic said. Under the Dayton peace agreement which ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country was divided into two highly independent entities – the Serb dominated Republika Srpska and the Croat-Bosniak federation. The two entities are united by weak central institutions, but each has its own government, parliament and presidency.

Balkan Insight

Geert Wilders could be kingmaker in Dutch parliament after coming third

Geert Wilders, the controversial anti-Islamic Dutch politician, came third behind tied Liberal and Labour parties after elections in the Netherlands left no obvious winner or combination for a coalition government.

Results from Dutch exit polls show that Mr Wilders and his hard-right Freedom Party, PVV, could become the kingmakers in a new coalition, which is likely to take months to emerge.
Mr Wilders campaigned to halt immigration from Muslim countries, to ban new mosques and the Koran in a bid to "stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands". He increased his share of seats from nine to a "magnificent" 23.
Mark Rutte, the leader of the centre-right Liberal VVD, had been expected to be the clear winner but drew with Job Cohen, Labour's leader, with 31 seats apiece.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, the former Christian Democrat, CDA, resigned his party leadership and parliamentary seat after his party came in fourth place with 21 seats.

The figures show that a right-wing coalition between the VVD, Mr Wilders' PVV and CDA, with 74 seats out of 150, is only possible if the usual margin of error between exit polls and the final result benefits any of three parties.

Otherwise, Mr Rutte and Mr Cohen would be forced to seek a "Purple plus" coalition of the VVD and Labour in coalition with small parties, the left leaning GroenLinks, 11 seats and the radical liberal D66, with 10 MPs.

The draw between the Liberals and Labour, both on the opposite ends of the political spectrum when it comes to public spending, will make agreement on a Dutch austerity package more protracted.

Fiscal austerity overtook immigration as the central campaign theme after the Greek debt crisis threatened the stability of the euro zone, of which the Netherlands is a member.

Telegraph

ELECTION TRIUMPH PUTS ANTI - ISLAM WILDERS IN LINE FOR DUTCH CABINET ROLE

The Freedom Party of the anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders emerged as the third force in Dutch politics last night, more than doubling its number of seats in Parliament in the country’s general elections. Exit polls predicted that Mr Wilders would command 23 seats, up from 9 — pushing the Christian Democrats, led by the outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, into fourth place. With the Dutch Labour Party running neck-and-neck with the cost-cutting right-wing Liberal Party (VVD), it was unclear who would form the next government. A late rally by Labour led by Job Cohen, the former Mayor of Amsterdam, saw them forecast to win 31 seats in the 150-member Parliament — the same number as Mark Rutte’s VVD party. The VVD was expected to gain nine seats, not enough to claim the victory forecast by opinion polls in the run-up to an election that has left the complexion of the new Dutch Parliament split almost exactly between the Left and Right.

Mr Wilders, who wants to ban Muslim veils and the building of new mosques, is constitutionally bound to take part in coalition talks. He could be offered a place in a Cabinet chosen by Mr Rutte, who has said that the Freedom Party is “just another party”, but Mr Cohen has ruled out on moral grounds sharing power with the controversial critic of Islam on moral grounds. “We really want to be part of government, We want to participate. I don’t think the other parties can escape us,” Mr Wilders said. The biggest losers were the Christian Democrats, who plummeted from 41 seats to 21 in a damning indictment of Mr Balkenende’s eight years in charge. He resigned as party leader last night. There are several main options for a new government, depending on the exact results: a “purple” coalition of Mr Rutte’s VVD with Labour and two other parties; a right-wing alliance of the VVD with the Christian Democrats, the Freedom Party and one other party; or a left-wing grouping of Labour with some or all of the Christian Democrats, the left-wing Liberals of D66, forecast to have ten MPs (up from seven) and the Greens (with eleven MPs, up from four), or the Socialists (with sixteen MPs, up from nine).

The election was triggered when Labour walked out of a coalition government with the Christian Democrats in protest at plans to extend the mission of 1,950 Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Mr Rutte, 43, promised to cut public spending by about €45 billion (£37 billion) over the next four years and by €20 billion a year from 2015 — the highest cuts proposed by any party.

Times Online