English Defence League demos 'feed Islamic extremism'
By Phil Mackie Reporter, BBC Radio 5 live
Right wing groups like the English Defence League are turning parts of
Britain into recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists, police have said.
The EDL emerged last year and has held demonstrations in a number of
towns and cities against radicalisation.
But the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit has told BBC Radio 5 live
there is evidence EDL events can encourage extremists.
Officers also say they are worried about radicalisation inside prisons.
The BBC was given exclusive access to the West Midlands Counter
Terrorism Unit - housed in one of the most secretive buildings in the UK.
Thousands of people will have walked or driven past the anonymous
offices, somewhere in the West Midlands, without realising that inside
lies a counter-terrorism hub.
The only clue is close-up where security is tighter than for
neighbouring buildings. But there are no armed guards, barbed wire or
guard dogs and, of course, there are no signs.
Det Ch Insp Alex Murray walks me through the gate and into the building.
"There's always a certain element within the violent extremist community
that may want to target a premise like this," he says. "So for that
reason it needs to remain discreet."
It took months of delicate negotiations before I was allowed in, and it
only happened under the condition that I did not reveal its whereabouts.
'Covert environment'
The intelligence community is beginning to believe that it is in its
interests to be more open.
Despite this, Det Ch Insp Murray admitted that people were nervous about
my visit, saying: "Historically, and for very good reasons, it's been a
covert environment. People don't want to become targets themselves."
Det Ch Insp Alex Murray Det Ch Insp Alex Murray took Phil Mackie on a
tour of the CTU
Some areas were strictly off limits. Next to a door marked with a sign
that indicated top security clearance was needed, I was told that "in
theory" I might be allowed in, but I would need to be vetted, specially
trained, and probably would not be allowed to reveal what I saw.
A lot of the building was accessible though. There is a large open
dining area, with kettle, microwave and vending machine. Nearby there
are changing rooms and a small gym. Upstairs there's office space where
more mundane work goes on and a large meeting room.
In the centre of its conference table were two phones with ultra secure
lines.
One, marked Tacit Secret, can only be used in this country. The other is
activated by a special key and can contact similar agencies around the
world.
'Classified info'
The West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit was set up six years ago, the
first outside London.
Its boss is Det Ch Supt Matt Sawers. He says: "We put together a small
group of about 80 people, but some of the threats that started to
present themselves meant that we needed to build up the numbers."
I asked how many people currently work for the West Midlands CTU, but
was told that the answer is classified.
The officers talk about current threats from what they call the al-Qaeda
"franchise" and how links to Somalia and Yemen are giving them as much
concern as more "traditional" areas like Pakistan and Ireland.
They are worried about radicalisation inside prisons as well as colleges
and universities, and they also fear that groups with an anti-Islamic
message, particularly the English Defence League, are acting as a
recruiting sergeant for Muslim extremists.
Many EDL demonstrations and counter-demonstrations have ended in
violence, and Det Supt John Larkin tells me that they have witnessed
signs of radicalisation afterwards.
"They look for the hook to pull people through and when the EDL have
been and done what they've done - perversely they leave that behind," he
explains.
Detection strategy
Inside the brightly-lit modern building, staff with police, military and
intelligence backgrounds work in two broad areas.
The first is detection. These are the officers who respond to any
incidents or threats. Operations are either intelligence-led or in
response to tip-offs from the public.
"There is normally a steady flow of information. You can quickly see
which are the calls that will lead to immediate action," says Det Insp
Darren Walsh, who is in charge of the Initial Response Team.
West Midlands CTU's biggest success so far came during Operation Gamble
in 2006, when a plot to kidnap and behead a serving British Muslim
soldier was foiled.
Hi-tech forensics Officers use hi-tech forensics to foil terrorist attempts
Its officers can be deployed anywhere and the unit's forensic team spent
many weeks in London after the 7/7 attacks.
Besides detection, the next area is prevention. This unit aims to build
strong links with communities to try to stop radicalisation taking place.
After considerable success, there has been a major setback. This summer,
West Midlands Police became embroiled in a scandal over surveillance
cameras which were erected in predominantly Muslim areas in Birmingham.
Residents were told they were part of a crime-fighting initiative, but
it emerged that they had been paid for out of counter-terrorism funds.
Everyone from the chief constable down has said sorry and the cameras
are due to be taken down. But it has affected relationships and CTU
knows they need to be rebuilt.
The government has also announced a national review of its Prevent
Strategy, which is expected to report in the new year.
Find out more about what goes on behind the scenes at the West Midlands
Counter Terrorism Unit on Radio 5 live Breakfast on Friday 19 November
from 0600-0900 GMT.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11787839
Hitler and the Germans: breaking the taboo
For the first time ever, a German museum is daring to put the Führer on show. But can it explain how a nation fell under his spell? The Telegraph’s former Berlin correspondent Harry de Quetteville went to find out.
VDARE.com: 11/09/10 - A Nail in the Fuse Box: The Persecution of the British National Party
A Nail in the Fuse Box: The Persecution of the British National Party
Telegraph
Secret papers reveal Nazis given 'safe haven' in US
A secret United States government report has offered fresh evidence that the CIA granted Nazi war criminals a "safe haven" in the US after the Second World War.
Senate Democrat leader battling to save Nevada seat
Harry Reid, the most powerful Democrat in the United States Senate, is battling to save his career after coming off second best in a bruising televised debate with his Tea Party rival Sharron Angle, a former teacher and grandmother with no national political experience.
Demonstrators demand destruction of Franco's tomb
Protesters will demand the removal of the cross that towers above the tomb of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco when they take to the streets on Saturday on the 35 anniversary of his death.
Political party issues image of naked models
A Right-wing political party in Switzerland has produced a provocative anti-immigration campaign in which a photograph of naked young models wading into Lake Zurich is contrasted with an image of headscarf-wearing Muslim women bathing in filthy water.
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Note: The logic of this is that no resistance can be made to Islam.
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19 November 2010 Last updated at 02:40
There are no poppies on sale in Berlin. No uniformed members of the armed forces standing proudly in the U-Bahn, collecting those annual donations for a society’s salute to the fallen. But that does not mean there is no Remembrance in Germany – quite the contrary.
Strolling away from the Brandenburg Gate, past the site where student followers of the Nazi Party burned thousands of books, it is not unusual to hear Hitler’s name on the lips of tourists. But to hear Germans discuss the man who governed every aspect of their lives, or parents’ lives, or grandparents’ lives, is much rarer. Yet these days in Berlin, Hitler’s name is once again on everyone’s lips. The reason is a new exhibition, “Hitler and the Germans – The Nation and Crime” that has opened at the German Historical Museum (DHM). It is the first time that Germany has ever mounted an exhibition about him.
Judging by the queues, which form outside the museum early before opening each morning, he remains a captivating figure – and of the 50,000 who have packed in to see the show in the two weeks since it opened, at least 30,000 have been German. Nazi history may have been confronted before in Germany, but all too often the process has been wreathed in self-loathing or denial. This sober, popular examination, however, testifies to a new era of greater confidence for Germany, a future that is not hobbled by the past.
“We had to be careful about what we put on the posters,” says Dr Simone Erpel, one of the show’s three curators. “There was a fear that Hitler’s face is still too strong an image.”
Elsewhere in the world, where his ranting speeches are the staple of every cable history channel, Hitler is almost de-fanged by his ubiquity. But for Germans, it seems, it is still too soon to display his face across the capital’s grandest avenue. Concerns over the sense and good taste of hanging portraits of Hitler on Unter den Linden are understandable. But there is another, darker, fear: that the show will become a place of veneration for neo-Nazis. As a result this is an exhibition about Hitler’s capacity for bewitchment in which that capacity is kept under wraps.
The curators have even decided to mute projections of him making speeches. Such concerns shape the whole presentation of the exhibition. “We wanted to display propaganda,” Dr Erpel says, “but we did not want to become a platform for that propaganda.” And so, as you descend to the basement galleries from the spare, airy lobby of the museum’s new wing, you feel as though you are penetrating a forbidden zone. It is as though the security guards, of whom there are a great number, ought to be wearing giant protective suits, like scientists handling polonium-210, to protect them from contamination.
But there, finally, is the face that above ground has been so notable by its absence. It is spotlit as a tiny blur in a photograph of the crowd that gathered in Munich to hear the declaration of war in 1914 and then, in unflinching close-up, as a triptych: Hitler as young soldier; as Führer; and, in a 1939 photomontage by the Danish photo-satirist Marinus Kjeldgaard, as a death’s head.
The three photo portraits are superimposed over images of the war in progress, which fade in and out of view, so that, in a literal sense, we get to see the bloody reality behind the Führer’s heroic poses. It’s an effect that emphasises how blind the Germans of the Thirties and Forties must have been not to see where Hitler would lead them.
Blind is too kind perhaps. “We have to ask why Hitler was possible,” Dr Erpel says. “Until today, Hitler was taboo and not-taboo.” What she means is that although Hitler has long been discussed in Germany, his dictatorship was often considered akin to that of Stalin or Mao – whose principal victims, led to ruin by a fanatic at the helm, were their own peoples. What was not mentioned was that, in Germany, those victims had selected and enabled their fanatic.
“This exhibition is not about moral guilt,” Dr Erpel says. “It is about the responsibility of a society, the interconnection between German society and dictatorship.” From abroad, particularly Britain perhaps, that connection seems self-evident, but it is something that Germany was long uncomfortable about facing.
“My grandfather was a high-ranking Nazi officer,” says Thomas Skapczyk, 52, who has brought his 13-year-old son, Philipp, to see the exhibition. “My uncles were soldiers on the Eastern Front. One of them came back with only one arm. When I was a child the topic of conversation was the war, the war and the war. But everyone was a victim. Nobody was the perpetrator, no one was the criminal.” Even Philipp, born 42 years after it ended, is well aware of the enduring stigma of the war. “It is not,” he nods, “a good topic to speak about.”
Little wonder then, that this exhibition has been staged with help from abroad. The guiding philosophy behind it is derived from the work of Sir Ian Kershaw, the British historian whose biography of Hitler, even in Germany, is described as “the definitive work”.
Sir Ian is a member of the exhibition’s board of historians, and describes, in an essay for the show, the “almost mystical link between the Führer and his followers”. “Everything you are, you are through me,” he quotes Hitler as saying in 1936. “And everything I am, I am only through you.”
This compact between Führer and people is relentlessly exposed. Visitors are walked through the process by which Hitler embraced his people and was embraced by them in return. A series of busts show how the Nazis recognised the German love of heroic leaders, from Frederick the Great to Siegfried. But it was the German people who snapped up the mass-produced busts of Hitler. A photo shows three women adding the final touches to a tableful of them.
It is individual, obscure objects of devotion that make the greatest impact. Items such as the 1935 tapestry from Rotenburg an der Fulda, a town in the very heart of Germany, that shows the whole populace assembling to take the swastika flag and hang it from their church tower. It is a painstaking work of patriotism to a country whose leader was himself an object of near worship. Veneration came in many forms: Hitler playing cards; Hitler board games; the stamps for his 50th birthday – all are here.
And then, halfway through, this exhibition loses its way. Having established the extraordinarily symbiotic relationship between Hitler and his people, the focus broadens from Hitler to images of the war that are, for the most part, familiar. Still, occasional exhibits do startle, such as the photograph of a slave labour camp that was built in central Hamburg, its fences ringed by apartment buildings – to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there, Germans would quite literally have had to overlook it.
And despite the footage of Soviet soldiers examining the dictator’s corpse, we are reminded, finally, that Hitler can never really be killed off in the imagination. “The political, social and intellectual legacies of the Nazi past weighed heavily on German society,” reads the introduction to the final room, whose exhibits detail the emergence of post-war fascination with him – from his faked diaries to the thriving market for memorabilia.
“Despite all demands for a final stroke under the past, each post-war generation has posed anew the question of what made Hitler possible. The confrontation with this Nazi past has become a component of contemporary political culture. And that is why there is no end to the discussion about Hitler.”
Such unflinching self-examination should be celebrated, in this of all weeks, as a noble act of remembrance. For Germans, the vast majority of whom were not even alive when Hitler died, the act of looking back is not a comforting reflection on an honourable past, as it is for us.
While we may look back on an era rich with sacrifice and, above all, animated by a just cause, Germans can only rue the destruction that their forebears helped Hitler wreak upon the world and, ultimately, upon themselves. How laudable then, that 65 years later, Germans queue around the block to stare at evidence of complicity in the shattering violence that lies, at best, two generations away.
On handing over their €5, visitors to the German Historical Museum’s new exhibition are not presented with a ticket. Instead they are given a round red sticker with the black crest of the DHM at its centre.
Philipp Skapczyk, in the way of most teenagers, has decided to avoid the conventional, and stuck his to his cheek. His father, however, has followed everyone else in the building and put his red sticker on his lapel. There, in the darkness of the museum basement, it appears that he, and the rest of the jostling throng, are all wearing poppies. And in a way they are.
“We are Germans,” he says. “We can never close our eyes to the past. The Third Reich is still current today. It is a chapter that we will never forget.”
November 09, 2010
By Sean Gabb
The suppression of political parties is becoming an interesting feature of life in the managerial superstate known as the European Union It happened six years ago in Belgium, to the anti-immigration Vlaams Blok. And in London, High Court hearings have just (November 8th and 9th) that will determine the fate of the British National Party. Since judgment was reserved, we do not yet know whether BNP assets will be seized and whether party leader Nick Griffin, who is an elected Member of the European Parliament, will be sent to prison. We do know what has become of England: it is now a soft totalitarian police state.
For those who may be unaware of it, the British National Party is what its name says it is. It opposes immigration and the associated political correctness and attacks on freedom of speechand association. It also opposes British membership of the European Union and British involvement in wars of military aggression that do nothing to secure the peace and prosperity of the British people. And it is contemptuous of the claims about man-made climate change that are an excuse for the massive enrichment of ruling classes everywhere.
Not surprisingly, the BNP is not popular with the British ruling class. This has been hard at work for at least two generations on destroying a constitution that, since the High Middle Ages,had been uniquely effective at restraining power. This is a ruling class that rejoices in having put common law protections through a shredding machine; and in alienating sovereignty to a mass of foreign and even unknown organisations, to the point where democracy has become a joke; and in sponsoring the mass immigration needed to reduce working class living standardsand to justify totalitarian “anti-racist” witch-hunts.
Yes, not surprisingly, the BNP is a witch that must be hunted. It is described as a “racist” party, and its members as violent and even psychopathic criminals. Its leader, Nick Griffin, is remarkable for his ability to assemble softly-spoken persons of quality into something like a baying mob.
To describe all the ways in which Mr. Griffin and his party are persecuted would take an essay which would also be a dissertation on the growth of the British police state. I have not the space to write such an essay. Therefore, I will look at the two chief current persecutions.
The ostensible reason for this is that members of the BNP cannot be trusted not to preach“hatred” in the classroom. Mr. Gove said:
“I don't believe that membership of the BNP is compatible with being a teacher. One of the things I plan to do is to allow headteachers and governing bodies the powers and confidence to be able to dismiss teachers engaging in extremist activity.”[BNP members to be barred from teaching |Education secretary pledges new powers for heads to dismiss teachers who are members of groups with 'extremist tenor', by Jeevan Vasagar]
Gove did add that this permission to dismiss would also cover members of other “extremist”organisations. However, it is to be doubted if radical Moslems and members of Trotskyitegroups will be at risk of losing their jobs. There are too many of them in teaching, and they are too well-organised and too well-connected.
The permission might eventually be extended to religious Jews and Christians who refuse to celebrate the rich diversity of sexual orientations that is part of our established faith in England. Or it might not. But the permission will certainly be used ruthlessly to seek out and remove all schoolteachers who are, or who might have been, members of the BNP.
There is in England a taxpayer-funded body called the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This was set up under the Equality Act 2006, and it ostensibly exists to ensure that people are treated fairly and have their rights respected. One of its main actual functions has been to sue the BNP to the verge of bankruptcy in the name of “human rights”.
In August 2009, the Commission began proceedings against the BNP under sections 24 and 25(5) of the Equality Act, on the grounds that BNP membership was confined to natives of the British Isles and white foreigners. Apparently, it was a violation of the Race Relations Act 1976 (as amended) that non-whites were not allowed to join a party committed to keeping Britain predominantly white.
Since then, the Commission has been lavishing the taxpayers’ money on an action that is supposed to vindicate the right of non-whites to join the BNP—a questionable cause of action, bearing in mind that few non-whites can really be aching to join an organisation like the BNP, and bearing in mind that the British State overall has been running the biggest budget deficit in the civilised world.
But vindicating abstract rights has not been the purpose of the action. Its real purpose has been to shut down the BNP. The legal proceedings could achieve this in three ways:
First, the BNP might lose and be compelled to admit large numbers of non-white members. These could then exploit its internal structures or take further legal action until there was no more BNP.
Second, the BNP might lose and then be sued again for breach of the final order. This could result in forfeiture of all party assets and the jailing of Mr. Griffin.
Third, win or lose, the BNP might be forced into bankruptcy by the costs of defending an action that had unlimited funding.
This real purpose became absolutely clear in the March of 2010, when the BNP did change its rules to admit non-whites, and the Commission immediately moved to the second option in its strategy for destruction. The BNP imposed two conditions on new members to prevent flooding attempts. First, prospective members should be visited at home, to see if they were suitable for membership. Second, all members should declare support for the “continued creation, fostering, maintenance and existence” of an indigenous British race, and should support action towards "stemming and reversing" immigration. The Commission argued that these conditions amounted to “indirect racial discrimination”.
The Commission won that round. On the 12th March 2010, a Judge outlawed the requirement for home visits, saying that this might lead to intimidation—though admitting that there was no evidence it ever had. He also outlawed the requirement to declare support for party principle and policy. He said:
“I hold that the BNP are likely to commit unlawful acts of discrimination within section 1b Race Relations Act 1976 in the terms on which they are prepared to admit persons to membership under the 12th addition of their constitution.” [New BNP membership rules judged to be biased, Manchester Evening News, March 12, 2010]
The reason for this, the Judge went on, was that no non-white person could support these policies without compromising his “personal sense of self-worth and dignity as a member of their racial group”.
And so the BNP changed its membership rules again—it would now accept members regardless of whether they agreed with its policies.
However, these conditions for membership were only suspended by the BNP, not removed. And so the Commission went to court again, this time arguing that the BNP was in contempt for not complying in full with the earlier judgment.
As I reported earlier, judgement has been reserved. We can, however, be sure that, if the Commission turns out to have lost, it will find some other grounds of continuing its taxpayer-funded vendetta against the BNP.
How much more of this the BNP can take before it goes bankrupt is hard to say. As of August 2010, the BNP was said to be £500,000 in debt. This is about a quarter of its annual income. Much of this debt appears to have been run up in legal costs.
Every time I write one of these articles about the persecution of the BNP, I get several dozen e-mails from people who claim that the party really is a national socialist organization, and thatits recent conversion, under Nick Griffin, is a convenient lie.
I find this an irrelevant claim. I happen to believe that the BNP is a white nationalist organization. Even if it were not, though—even if the BNP leadership really did believe that non-whites were less than human and that the Holocaust never happened, but should have—the rights and wrongs of this case would be unchanged.
It is unfair to treat people in this manner. What has been done, and is being done, to the BNP is oppressive. It is not the sort of thing that happens in a functioning liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy, people have an unquestioned right to say whatever they please on public issues—and they do not suffer even official discrimination, let alone legal harassment. In a liberal democracy, they have an unquestioned right to associate or not with whomever they please—and are not subject to administrative and legal bullying about “inclusiveness” and the unacceptability of “hate”. The fact that BNP members and the party itself are victims of state harassment—and, as said, there is much more than the two instances just given—indicates just how much England has moved towards totalitarianism.
I go further. If Nick Griffin and the BNP were openly avowed followers of Adolf Hitler, and if they met together in public to listen to the webcasts of Harold Covington, they would probably be more left alone than they are. They are persecuted for their opinions on race and immigration. But they are persecuted still more because of all else they oppose or stand for. For all it did badly in the elections of May 2010 (in terms of seats—as two left wing blogs perceptively noted here and here, it did strikingly well in terms of votes) the BNP remains the one possible voice for working class dissent from the established order of things.
And though unfair in itself, what is being done to the BNP should make any reasonable man worried about the future of England. Anyone who looks at the various manifestos and pronouncements of the BNP will see a party that claims to believe—and possibly does believe—in freedom of speech and association, in trial by jury, and generally in constitutional government as this has always been understood in England. It does not even advocate compulsory repatriation of those non-whites who are legally here. Whatever it may or may not believe in private, the BNP leadership is very distant in what it says from the Hitler-loving caricatures shown in the MainStream Media.
But destroy the BNP, and the result will not be a vacuum. Other movements will emerge. These will be less interested in organising to win elections and debates than in arguing their case on the streets. Already, there is an English Defence League that has no apparent interest in electoral politics. This is almost certainly less thuggish than the ruling class and the MSM claim it to be. Equally, though, it is less constitutional in its aims and methods than the BNP. And the English Defence League may be only the beginning of the next stage in working class dissent from the established order of things.
Until modern trip switches (circuit breakers) became the norm, household wiring in England was protected from overheating by wired fuses. Each ceramic fuse contained about an inch and a half of wire to a stated ampage. This connected power as it came into a property to one ring circuit. Any power surge or appliance failure would result in immediate burning out of the fuse. The fuses were deliberately the weakest point in the whole wiring system. One reason they have now been replaced with trip switches is because many people were in the habit of replacing fuse wires with nails. This meant that fuses never blew—instead, houses burned down.
What the British State is doing to the BNP is the political equivalent of sticking a nail in the fuse box. The destruction of the BNP will buy a few more years of life for the politically correct fantasy of England as a country of enlightenment and universal love.
The 600-page report, written in 2006 and which the US Justice Department has tried to keep secret ever since, describes what it calls Washington's "collaboration with persecutors".
Agents from the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations (OSI) found that war criminals "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the US, even though government officials were aware of their pasts, the report concluded.
"America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became – in some small measure – a safe haven for persecutors as well." The report, obtained by the New York Times, details cases of Nazis being helped by American intelligence officials.
In 1954, the CIA assisted Otto Von Bolschwing, an associate of Adolf Eichmann who had helped develop plans "to purge Germany of the Jews".
In a series of CIA memos, officials pondered what to do if Von Bolschwing was confronted about his past, debating whether to deny any Nazi affiliation or "explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances", according to the report.
The Justice Department sought to deport Von Bolschwing after it learned in 1981of his Nazi past but he died the same year.
Another case involved Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was brought to the US in 1945 for his rocket-making prowess as part of Operation Paperclip, an American initiative to recruit scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany.
The report highlights a 1949 note from a very senior Justice Department official urging immigration officers to let Rudolph back into the US after visiting Mexico because excluding him would be "to the detriment of the national interest".
Justice Department investigators later discovered that Rudolph was much more implicated in using Jewish slave labour at Mittelwerk than he or the CIA had admitted. Some intelligence officials objected when the Justice Department tried to deport him in 1983.
The report states that prosecutors filed a motion in 1980 that "misstated the facts" in insisting that CIA and FBI records revealed no information on the Nazi past of Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier.
Instead, the Justice Department "knew that Soobzokov had advised the CIA of his SS connection after he arrived in the United States", the report found.
The report details the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr Josef Mengele, the German SS officer and physician known as the “Angel of Death”. A piece of Mengele’s scalp was kept in the drawer of an OSI director in the hope that it would establish whether he was still alive.
Investigators used diaries and letters supposedly written by Mengele and German dental records to follow his trail. After the development of DNA, the piece of scalp, which had been handed over to Brazil, helped to establish that Mengele had died in Brazil in 1979, without ever entering the US, the report stated.
The US government has resisted making the report public ever since it was written four years ago. Under the threat of legal action, it provided an expurgated version last month to the National Security Archive, a private research group. The New York Times then obtained a complete version.
The US Justice Department told the newspaper that the report, which was the product of six years of research, was never formally completed, did not represent official findings and claimed there were "numerous factual errors and omissions" though it declined to detail these.
Since the creation of the OSI in 1979, several hundred Nazis have been deported, stripped of their American citizenship or excluded from entering the United States. The OSI was merged with another unit this year.
Stephen Lennon is arrested by police at a Remembrance Day protest on Exhibition Road in London
The founder of the English Defence League (EDL) has been charged with assaulting a police officer during clashes with Islamic protesters.
Stephen Lennon, 27, of Layham Drive, Luton, was held by police in Kensington, west London, as the nation stopped to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day.
Five others associated with his group were also arrested as members of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) burned remembrance poppies.
Two Islamic protesters, aged 30 and 25, were arrested for public order offences after the poppies were set alight and protesters chanted "British soldiers burn in hell" during the two-minute silence.
One officer was taken to hospital with a head injury during clashes as about 50 men linked to EDL were kept separate as they shouted abuse.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said Lennon had been released on bail and would appear at West London magistrates' court on November 22.
He said four other men, aged 41, 42, 19 and 18, all arrested on suspicion of affray, were released on bail until mid-December.
It is not yet known what happened to a fifth man who was held on suspicion of possession of class A drugs.
The spokesman added that the two members of Muslims Against Crusades had been bailed until mid-December pending further inquiries.
Meanwhile, parents of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan condemned the inflammatory protest by the hard-line group.
The Observer - Sunday 10th October 2010
English Defence League forges links with America's Tea Party
As the far-right group marches in Leicester, details are emerging of
growing contacts with extremist US groups in a 'war on Islamification'
by Mark Townsend
The English Defence League <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/english-defence-league> , a far-right grouping aimed at combating the "Islamification" of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/tea-party-movement> .
An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.
The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group's actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.
Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: "I share the EDL's goals.... We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west."
Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: "Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff."
Details of the EDL's broadening aspirations came as about 1,000 supporters yesterday gathered to demonstrate in Leicester, which has a significant Muslim population. Home secretary Theresa May banned marches in the city last week but the EDL said its protest would proceed, raising fears of violence. Parts of Leicester were cordoned off to separate a counter-protest from Unite Against Fascism. Officers from 13 forces were on hand to maintain order.
The Tea Party is expected to be an influential force in America's mid-term elections. Last month their candidate Christine O'Donnell romped to the Republican nomination in Delaware, following a stream of populist rightwing candidates who carry the movement's endorsement. Burghart says anti-Islamic tendencies have become far more marked in the grassroots organisation: "As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace."
Another Tea Party-associated grouping, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which campaigns against Sharia law, confirmed that EDL leaders have made "contacts with members of important organisations within the American counter-jihad movement". A statement said: "It seems now that America and Europe are acting as one, and united we can never fail."
With the Tea Party said to benefit from millions of dollars of funding from conservative foundations, experts warn an alliance between the EDL and extremist elements within the US movement could allow the English group to invest in wider recruitment and activism.
Shifren, a Californian senate candidate, said Britain's Jewish community should rally behind the EDL: "The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want. The people of England are in the forefront of this war ˆ and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish."
The EDL's website relaunched briefly last week with new US links. Currently shut down for "maintenance", the site featured prominent links to a site called Atlas Shrugs, which is run by Geller, and another US-based site, Jihad Watch, which compiles negative news coverage of Islamic militancy.
In addition, two members of the EDL leadership, a British businessman called Alan Lake who is believed to fund the group and a man known by the alias Kinana, are regular contributors to web forum 4Freedoms. The forum claims to be "organising US activities" and has links to the anti-jihad group, American Congress for Truth, which in turn has supporters within the Tea Party.
Lake is also believed to have been in touch with a number of anti-Islamic Christian evangelical groups in the US. One posting by Lake on 4Freedoms warns that the UK of the future will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves. Lake, believed to be a principal bankroller of the EDL, which claims to be a peaceful, non-racist organisation, is understood to be keen on the possibility of setting up the UK equivalent of the Tea Party. At an event organised by the Taxpayers' Allliance last month, US Tea Party organisers outlined how the movement emerged last year, partly in protest at the US bank bail-out.
Those present included Freedom Works and the Cato Institute, one of the Tea Party's main backers. However, Simon Richards, director of the Gloucestershire-based Freedom Association, which is looking at developing a pseudo-Tea Party movement in the UK, said he was concerned the project could be hijacked by elements such as the EDL. Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "The EDL is an integral part of an international campaign against Islam. While some are fighting in a cultural and political arena, the EDL are taking it to the streets. The images of the EDL allegedly taking on Muslim fundamentalists on the streets of Britain is also delighting right wing religious organisations in US."
Telegraph
A slew of recent polls have shown Mrs Angle taking a narrow lead for the first time in a race that symbolises the threat posed by the upstart conservative Tea Party movement to the political establishment.
With the Republicans targeting 12 Democratic senators in the midterm elections on Nov 2, the loss of Mr Reid’s Nevada seat, which he has held for 24 years, would be a stunning reverse. It could cost the Democrats control of the Senate and seriously hinder President Barack Obama’s chances of pursuing his agenda for the remaining two years of his term.
Mrs Angle, 61, spent months being portrayed by her opponent as an extremist, but she fought back in the debate in what was a confident display under the glare of television cameras.
So short in stature that she had to conduct the debate on a six-inch high platform, Mrs Angle nonetheless threw several hard rhetorical punches that justified the reputation of Las Vegas for box office pugilism.
She told Mr Reid, 70, to “man up” and face up to the problems in the indebted Social Security system that provides a government pension for all Americans.
Mrs Angle taught in schools for 25 years before serving in the state assembly for six years. She cast herself as an ordinary woman and her opponent as the ultimate Washington insider.
She demanded that Mr Reid explain how on a government salary he had accumulated his wealth, which has been estimated at between $4 million (£2.5 million) and $6 million.
A clearly annoyed Mr Reid called the challenge a “low blow” and said he had earlier worked as a lawyer and made good investments, implying that many others had done well in the Las Vegas boom years.
“Her suggestion that I made money from being a senator is false,” he retorted.
Mrs Angle’s populist approach has struck a chord with voters in Nevada, a state with the highest unemployment rate in the country and the second highest home foreclosure rate.
In common, with other Tea Party candidates, she has attracted negative publicity for flakiness and radical views. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and has recommended privatising the government benefit scheme for war veterans, as well as Social Security.
Analysts said she came across as a credible candidate in the debate. Taylor Marsh, a veteran political commentator, said: “Sharron Angle passed the 'I’m not crazy test’ with flying colours.” Bob List, a former Republican governor of Nevada, said: “She gave people comfort who had concerns or had seen terribly negative ads saying she was extreme.”
Separately on Friday, black political bloggers who held a briefing with President Obama responded by telling the White House that they did not intend to be used by the first black president. An attempt by Mr Obama to engage alternative media outlets backfired after some of the bloggers ignored a requirement to keep some of their half-day with the president and officials off the record.
Telegraph
A demonstration has been called at the gates of Valle de los Caidos – The Valley of the Fallen – a vast basilica carved out of living rock in the hills 30 miles northwest of Madrid to call for the monument to be destroyed.
The Federation for Historical Memory said that it considers the 500ft high granite cross a "symbol of death and vengeance" and is demanding it be "blown up as a public apology to the victims of Francoism."
The complex, which includes a Benedictine monastery, was built by political prisoners during the Franco era as a memorial to those who died fighting for the dictator's cause during the 1936-39 Civil War. But among the estimated 50,000 bodies buried alongside the generalissimo and Jose Antonio Prima de Rivera, the founder of the fascist SpanishFalange party, are those of Republican supporters whose corpses were added in order to fill the huge crypt.
Campaigners have long called for the exhumation of graves at the site and for the remains to be returned to the descendants of those who were killed fighting for democracy.
The Historical Memory Law, introduced by Jose Luis Zapatero's socialist government in 2007 in an attempt to heal the wounds of the past, banned political demonstrations on the square in front of the monument, where loyal followers of Franco gathered each year to commemorate the anniversary of his death.
But victims' associations claim the law has not gone far enough and say the continued existence of the memorial is "an insult to modern democratic Spain".
Telegraph
The campaign is meant to warn the Swiss of what could happen to the country if it allows greater immigration.
It comes as the Alpine nation prepares to vote on whether immigrants who commit serious crimes should be automatically expelled.
The online campaign was produced by a regional branch of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), the largest in parliament and the country's biggest political force.The first image shows a rear view of four young women holding hands and standing in the shallows of Lake Zurich.
The second shows a group of elderly women, possibly Albanians or Bosnians, wearing headscarves and smoking as they immerse themselves in muddy water. It is supposed to represent a vision of Switzerland 20 years from now.
A spokeswoman for the SVP told The Daily Telegraph that the controversial images had been created by party activists in Wohlen, west of Zurich, and would not be adopted nationally.
Switzerland will hold a referendum next week in which voters can decide whether foreigners who have been found guilty of murder, rape, drugs trafficking and other serious offences should be deported.
The expulsion initiative was put forward by the SVP, which has won support by capitalising on fears about foreigners, who currently make up more than a fifth of Switzerland's population of 7.7 million.
Recent polls show that 54 per cent of Swiss voters would vote in favour of the measure while 43 per cent are against it.
The federal Justice Ministry has warned that a "yes" vote on Nov 28 could bring Switzerland into conflict with international obligations such as the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion or nationality.
Switzerland drew international condemnation last year after voters backed a ban, proposed by the SVP, on the construction of new minarets.
The party also caused outrage with a poster showing a group of white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag.
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