Nick Griffin denied entry to Buckingham Palace garden party

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has been denied entry to a Buckingham Palace garden  party after officials said he was using his invitation for party political purposes.
The far right leader, who is a Member of the European Parliament, had been invited along with 8,000 other guests to the event which is being hosted by the Queen and attended by the Duke of Edinburgh.

But officials withdrew the invitation after warning his attendance could increase the security threat and cause discomfort for others attending.
A Palace spokesman said: “Nick Griffin MEP will be denied entry to today's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace due to the fact he has overtly used his personal invitation for Party political purposes through the media

“This in turn has increased the security threat and the potential discomfort to the many other guests also attending.
“Mr Griffin's personal invitation was issued to him as an elected Member of the European Parliament. The decision to deny him entry is not intended to show any disrespect to the democratic process by which the invitation was issued.
“However, we would apply the same rules to anyone who tried to blatantly politicise their attendance in this way.”
Other members of the Royal Family who were due to attend the event included the Duke of York, The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent.

Mr Griffin described the decision as "an outrage" and "thoroughly anti-British".

The BNP leader said: "This is quite amazing news. At no time was I informed that I wasn't allowed to talk to the media about this. Other people have talked about attending. Why a double standard here?

"To say that one person in the country cannot speak to the media is an outrage."

Asked if he still intended to go to the palace, Mr Griffin initially said: "I don't know."

But he then added: "I'm not about to try and gatecrash the party, that is for sure."

Mr Griffin said he did not "blame the Queen" and claimed Buckingham Palace was under "enormous pressure from the Lib Con coalition" to withdraw his invite.

He maintained he had a mandate from a million British people and had a right to attend.

The BNP leader added: "I am held to a different standard to everyone else in the country - that is thoroughly anti-British."

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said later that BNP MEP Andrew Brons's invitation to today's garden party had not been revoked as he had not "exploited" it for political ends.

But Mr Griffin's guests - thought to be his wife and children - could not attend as he had been barred.


The Telegraph

Thirteen alleged neo-Nazis on trial in Moscow

A group of alleged Neo-Nazis is on trial in Moscow accused of killing dozens of people in ethnically-motivated crimes. Other charges they face include attempted terrorism and inciting ethnic dissension.

During the trial the prosecutors will state the indictment, while the accused will respond with their plea.

Possible sentences should the accused be found guilty range from years in jail to a life sentence.

Investigators claim the gang was part of the National-Socialist Society and wants to turn Russia into a Nazi state.

The society was subsequently banned for being extremist.


More information

Slowly getting better

Veronica Koroleva is a self-professed, deeply religious woman who is full of hate for those who are different. She despises immigrants and accuses them of occupying, disrespecting and contaminating her nation.

Russians she insists are fighting a race war motivated by love.

“Love for our homeland and our nation, love for our god. Pure families where people don't just date and then break up; but, rather, they get married in church; they don't practice abortions; they don't support inter-ethnic marriages,” Koroleva said.

“I believe everyone should live in their own homeland where they belong,” she reacted when seeing RT’s Staci Bivens.

Armed with this belief and inspired by racist bloggings, her husband Nikolay Korolev and two fellow students bombed Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market in 2006. They targeted it because of the number of traders that come from Central Asia and China. The blast killed 14.

Veronica’s husband is serving a life sentence for actions neither of them regrets and for a cause they both support.

Attacks against non-Slavic looking people are often brutal and, in cases like in Cherkizovsky market, they are deadly.

The deeds of angry mobs pummeling outnumbered victims are recorded by racists and then posted on nationalist websites.

Activists call the situation out of control, but Galina Kozhevnikova from SOVA Center for Information Analysis – a local, non-profit crime watchdog – does acknowledge it is slowly getting better.

“They started seizing the most odious groups that had been involved in systematic violence and terrorism. During the last two years, the largest formations in Moscow were dispelled, and the key activists and murderers were detained,” Kozhevnikova said.

She says 19 people have been killed due to hate crimes in 2010, which is down from 50 for the same time period last year.

However, that math does little to satisfy migrants, who feel self reliance is better than police protection.

“They won’t any longer walk alone, they will walk in crowds. People take care of their own safety. Law enforcement comes into action after a crime is committed, not before,” migrant labor rights activist Karomat Sharipov said.

RT News

Hate crime website tackles five-per cent reporting statistic

A website founded in Cambridgeshire is aiming to help decrease the huge number of hate crimes that go under-reported with local police.


Local support scheme Open Out – a third party reporting scheme that offers support, advice and information to the victims and witnesses of hate crime – launched openoutcambs.org in 2001 following the death of Stephen Lawrence, allowing members of the public to report incidents quickly and confidentially in order to access support.

But now they are reminding the public that it can also be used for gay hate crime.

“It is vital that anyone who hasbeen affected by this type of crime can get the help they need. We hope that this new website will make it easier for people to talk about what’s happened and access our service,” says Molly Blackburn, Open Out Co-ordinator.

If you or someone you know may have been affected by Hate Crime visit Open Out’s website: openoutcambs.orgor call: 01223 823553.

Pink News

OSCE rights office, Holocaust education task force formalize co-operation on combating anti-Semitism

The Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, today formalized the office's partnership with the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF) by signing, together with ITF chair Dan Tichon, a memorandum of understanding aimed at intensifying joint efforts to combat anti-Semitism.

At the signing ceremony in Jerusalem, Lenarcic stressed that ODIHR and the ITF, currently chaired by Israel, can build on several years of fruitful co-operation: "With the signing of this memorandum, we want to open a new chapter in our common work to promote Holocaust education."

Earlier this year, ODIHR published an overview of government activities on Holocaust memorial days across the OSCE region, which was developed in co-operation with the ITF. In November 2008, ODIHR and the ITF jointly hosted a meeting with international organizations in Vienna marking the 70th anniversary of the November pogroms in 1938.

ODIHR is tasked by OSCE participating States to advise them in their efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Participating States have repeatedly stressed the importance of education on anti-Semitism and committed themselves to encourage educational programmes in that field.

OSCE.org

With an eye toward cooperation, recalling the Holocaust heroism of Muslims

In April 1941, members of the Kavilio family of Sarajevo fled their house as Nazis rampaged through the city  destroying Jewish homes. As they ran toward the mountainside, a Muslim friend of the family, Mustafa Hardaga, spotted them and offered shelter.

Shortly after, when Josef Kavilio thought the family could be moved to safety, the Kavilios relocated to Mostar, an area under Italian control, but Josef stayed behind. He was arrested by the Nazis and held captive in chains in the freezing snow.

Hardaga's wife, Zejneba, found Kavilio and smuggled him food until she could help him escape to safety, where he stayed with the Hardaga family again. Kavilio later rejoined his family, but their relative security did not last. When the area fell under German control, the Kavilios again sought refuge with the Hardagas.

Decades later the Kavilios, by now living in Israel, petitioned the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem to recognize the Hardagas’ bravery and name them Righteous Gentiles.

Later, when Yugoslavia broke up and the region descended into war in the 1990s, the Hardaga family was rescued from Sarajevo and brought to Israel in 1994.

The story of the two families is among eight told in a new booklet produced by a British interfaith dialogue group and called “The Role of Righteous Muslims.” The 30-page booklet, produced by Faith Matters, focuses on stories of Muslims helping Jews during the Holocaust and is being distributed to educators, synagogues and mosques as a model for positive Muslim-Jewish interaction.

“We wanted to try to look at something that could bring greater understanding in both communities in the UK,” the director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal, told JTA. “We’re looking for bridging points, and we thought this fits the perspective of mutual understanding and shared history.”

Mughal said his organization detected a rift between the Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe and saw this booklet, which took the better part of a year to produce, as an opportunity to address it.

Jews see Muslims as inclined toward violence and uninterested in engagement, discussion of the Holocaust or mutual understanding, Mughal said. And, according to Mughal, Muslims believe that Jews don’t want Muslims to be heard. Muslims, he said, “feel that there is an overwhelming desire to protect the Middle East, and that the Jews don’t want to discuss anything else.”

By chronicling World War II stories in which Muslims went out of their way to help Jews -- 70 Muslims are named by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations” for aiding Jews in North Africa, Turkey and Albania during the Nazi era -- the booklet aims to change those perceptions.

Aside from physically saving people, the Muslims whose stories are retold in the booklet helped preserve Jewish life and culture, helping Jews obtain kosher meat before the Saabbath or saving the famed Sarajevo Haggadah.

Mughal said he hopes the booklet will demonstrate to Muslims and Jews that “life is not black and white, straight and narrow.”

“The histories are different but are intertwined," he said. "Our shared histories can overcome feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.”

Faith Matters, which has posted the booklet on its website, is working with partner organizations in both communities to distribute the booklet and have it used in community settings by educators and by individual readers.

“It is short and was written in an easygoing style, so that it can be read in 20 minutes,” Mughal said. “We want people to absorb it without having to revisit it.”

JTA

Religious offence earns ban (UK)

A 51 YEAR-old Brockmoor man has been handed a suspended prison sentence by Dudley Magistrates Court for religiously aggravated harassment.


Appearing on July 9, Kevin Peter Smith, of Leys Road, was jailed for eight weeks suspended for 12 months and ordered to pay £100 court costs, for intentionally displaying a sign, which caused religiously aggravated harassment towards the Muslim community.

The defendant was also handed an exclusion requirement, banning him from entering Castle Hill in Dudley for 12 months.

Dudley News

Neo-Nazi clothing label case doomed from the start (germany)

The Thor Steinar clothing label, popular among neo-Nazis, has all but lost its case against mock-brand “Storch Heinar” – a left-wing satirical label – after a Nuremberg judge warned late Wednesday that much of the complaint was unfounded.

Thor Steinar’s manufacturer, Media Tex, vowed nonetheless to press on with its case, which is due to be settled August 11.

The satirical version, featuring a stork with a silly Hitler-style moustache and haircut, is the work of the Social Democratic activist organisation Endstation Rechts, which aims to fight right-wing extremism in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Its shirts, which have sold well since being launched in 2008, also bear mocking anti-fascist slogans such as “Der Führer had only one egg.”

MediaTex, however, believes its brand is being damaged and its products ridiculed, and is therefore suing Endstation Rechts in Nuremberg.

But at the very beginning of the hearing, judge Horst Rottmann said there was not sufficient similarity between the stork and the Thor Steinar logo, which was therefore not being damaged.

The same went for the names: “Stork” and “Thor” aroused completely different associations, Rottmann said.

Rottmann also gave the Storch Heinar label latitude on artistic freedom grounds, pointing out that the intent of founder Mathias Brodkorb, an MP for the centre-left Social Democrats in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was satire, not to make a profit.

The Local Germany

Griffin set to attend royal garden party (UK)

British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin is expected to attend a Buckingham Palace garden party later.

The far-right politician intends to take three members of his family to the event in his capacity as an MEP for the North West.

Last year Mr Griffin withdrew from attending a similar event out of fear of embarrassing the Queen.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman confirmed that as an MEP Mr Griffin was eligible to nominate himself to attend a garden party, as part of the allocation of tickets to the European Parliament.

In 2009 Mr Griffin was invited to attend a Buckingham Palace garden party by his BNP colleague Richard Barnbrook who, as a London Assembly member, was nominated for two tickets by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

He bowed out of the event following a wave of public protest.

ITN News