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Our intention is to inform people of racist, homophobic, religious extreme hate speech perpetrators across social networking internet sites. And we also aim to be a focal point for people to access information and resources to report such perpetrators to appropriate web sites, governmental departments and law enforcement agencies around the world.

We will also post relevant news worthy items and information on Human rights issues, racism, extremist individuals and groups and far right political parties from around the world although predominantly Britain.

Saturday 21 August 2010

The US blogger on a mission to halt 'Islamic takeover'

New York blogger Pamela Geller is a key force in the campaign to stop Islamic centre near  Ground Zero
Pamela Geller is on a mission to save the free world and she's doing it, on this occasion, in a bikini as she writhes around in the sea.

"Here I am in my chador, my burka," Geller jokes to the camera in one of a string of video blogs campaigning against Islamic "world domination" shortly before kicking back in the waves. "There is a serious reality check desperately needed here in America and I'm here to give it to you, but I'm just not ginormous enough. What can I say? And on that note I'm going to go swimming in the ocean, and visit my mama, and fight for the free world."

This strange performance might suggest that Geller is a figure consigned to the margins of the widening and increasingly heated debate about the role of Muslims in America. Far from it.

The flamboyant New Yorker, who appears on her own website pictured in a tight fitting Superman uniform, has emerged as a leading force in a growing and ever more alarmist campaign against the supposed threat of an Islamic takeover at home and global jihad abroad – and never more so than in the present bitter dispute over plans to build an Islamic centre near the site of the World Trade Centre, brought down by al-Qaida.

Geller has been at the forefront of drumming up opposition to the centre, two blocks from Ground Zero, through an array of websites such as the Freedom Defence Initiative (FDI) and Stop Islamisation of America (SIOA). They have become increasingly influential as conservative politicians exploit anti-Muslim sentiment before November's congressional and state elections.

SIOA is behind a series of advertisements opposing the "Ground Zero Mega Mosque", as Geller calls it, which appeared on the sides of New York buses this week picturing a plane flying into one of the World Trade Centre towers and a mosque divided by the question: Why Here?

Geller's answer is that the planned centre is viewed by Muslims as a "triumphal" monument built on "conquered land".

As extreme as that may seem, Geller and her views have been embraced by leading politicians such as Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, and John Bolton, the conservative former US ambassador to the UN, who are scheduled to speak at a rally against the controversial New York Islamic centre organised by Geller for September 11.

Gingrich this week likened the planned centre to putting Nazi signs outside the Holocaust museum.

The campaign against the centre also has the backing of Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president and prominent conservative activist in her own right.

But while Geller has inserted herself into mainstream politics in America, she has also aligned herself with far-right causes across the globe including the English Defence League in Britain, white supremacists in South Africa and Serbian war criminals.

Geller says that after the September 11 attacks she "began to immerse herself in gaining a full understanding of geopolitics, Islam, jihad, terror, foreign affairs and the imminent threats to our freedoms that the mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss".

Civil rights groups have accused Geller of "hate speech" for her repeated warnings of a looming threat of "Islamic domination", including a claim that Muslim groups in America are working to impose sharia law on the entire population, and her assertions that the 9/11 attackers were practicing "pure Islam".

Geller has also compared the proposed mosque to a building a Ku Klux Klan shrine next to a black church in Alabama.

But she vigorously denies she is hostile to Muslims. "I'm not anti-Muslim. That's a slanderous slur and it's unfair," Geller said this week. "Secondly, I'm not leading the charge [against the Islamic centre near Ground Zero]. The majority of Americans – 70% – find this deeply insulting, offensive. To call it anti-Muslim is a gross misrepresentation and to say that I'm responsible for all this emotion, again a gross misrepresentation."

Geller, a former associate publisher of the New York Observer, is often found in the professional company of Robert Spencer, a bestselling author who is less generally visible but is taken more seriously as a scholar among conservatives.

Spencer, who describes himself as a consultant to the US military, the FBI and the government's joint terrorism taskforce, is the author of several books, including Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs. He also runs a high-profile website, Jihad Watch, which helped raise some of the tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the New York bus poster campaign.

Together the pair launched several organisations including the FDI, which says it is fighting "specific Islamic supremacist initiatives in American cities" and hunting down "infiltrators of our federal agencies", and SIOA, which calls itself a human rights organisation and is tied to a similar group, Stop Islamisation of Europe, which goes by the motto: "Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense".

One member of the board of the Freedom Defence Initiative is John Joseph Kay, who has written that all Muslims are out to kill ordinary Americans: "Every person in Islam, from man to woman to child may be our executioner. In short, that there are no innocents in Islam ... all of Islam is at war with us, and that all of Islam is/are combatant(s).(sic)"

Geller and Spencer wrote a book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, for which Bolton provided the forward.

Geller writes for an Israeli media network based in the occupied territories that is the voice of the Jewish settler movement and runs another website, Leave Islam Safely, which claims to offer guidance on how to escape the religion without being killed.

But her principal outlet is her blog, Atlas Shrugs, named after the philosophical novel by the arch-conservative Russian emigre, Ayn Rand, which promoted "the morality of rational self-interest".

In Atlas Shrugs, Geller lays bare her sympathies with extremist groups across the globe. She has vigorously defended Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president who died while on trial at The Hague for war crimes, and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps in the 1990s.

She has allied herself with racist extremists in South Africa in promoting a claim that the black population is carrying out a "genocide" of whites.

The website also carries a picture of Geller hugging Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician who advocates banning the Qu'ran and the construction of new mosques, and runs a support campaign for him as he faces trial for incitement to hatred.

Geller has also spoken out in favour of the English Defence League. When the anti-Islamic organisation was planning a rally outside parliament earlier this year, she wrote: "How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League".

Geller has claimed regular contact with the EDL leadership and recently published a screed by the organisation's spokesman, Trevor Kelway. She 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 and not leave it solely to fringe groups like the BNP."

Geller has also said the EDL is misrepresented. "The EDL is routinely smeared in the British media, as the Tea Party activists are smeared in the US media ... There is nothing racist, fascist, or bigoted about the EDL," she wrote.

While mainstream politicians in Britain and other parts of Europe generally steer clear of the likes of the EDL, Wilders and Serbian war criminals, Geller is providing a bridge between foreign extremists and prominent politicians in the US.

Wilders is scheduled to appear on stage at the September 11 anti-mosque rally alongside Gingrich, Bolton and Gary Berntsen, a candidate for the US Senate.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the most prominent hate monitoring group in America, said that the campaign against the Islamic centre near Ground Zero had mixed political exploitation with hate-mongering.

"The politicians and other opportunists are stoking the fires," said Marc Potok, who heads the centre's operation to monitor the extreme right. "The politicians are in it because they want to win more seats. The Pamela Gellers of the world apparently will do anything they can to attack Islam and this Islamic centre has provided them with a very large opening."

Potok says that Geller and others have crossed the line from legitimate debate.

"I think we have seen a great deal of hate speech. It is one thing to talk about the sensibilities of New Yorkers and of survivors and relatives of those who died.

"It is quite another to talk about conspiracies on the part of Muslims to dominate the United States, plots to insert sharia law into American statute books, and the idea that Islam is in of itself a great evil. Those things seem to be clearly over the line and we're hearing more and more of that," he said.

Geller did not respond to requests for an interview. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spoken out forcefully in support of the right to build the Islamic centre and mosque, said that Geller and others campaigning against the centre were equally protected by the constitution.

"Just as religious liberty is a core American value so too of course is free speech," said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU's freedom of religion programme.

"It's clear that many are exploiting this issue and the deep-seated anti-Muslim bigotry that underlies much of this controversy for bare political gain [but] there certainly is a constitutional right to speak out against this or any other project.

"We have a robust protection of free speech in this country including the right to speak hatefully."

The Guardian

Cops cuff armed white supremacist in Banana Costume (USA)

A Washington state US Marine reservist was earlier this week cuffed following a lively Tuesday afternoon which saw him dress in a child's banana costume, indecently expose himself and wave a shotgun in the street while shouting "something or other about white supremacy".

Carlton Jeffery Kohnert, 21, accompanied by Anthony Marks Maybury, 21, and an unnamed 18-year-old woman, began his trip to jail by flashing at a woman at the Port Angeles Wendy's restaurant.

The three then drove to Saar's Market on US Highway 101 on the east side of town where they entertained locals by "pulling 360s" in the car park.

The jaunt continued through the Four Seasons Ranch neighbourhood, where banana man jumped out out the car and allegedly gave forth loudly about the superiority of the white race.

Cops finally pulled the trio on a nearby highway. Sergeant Randy Pieper, of Clallam County Sheriff's department, explained to the Peninsula Daily News that Kohnert "couldn't really tell us why he was in the costume".

He added: "All we know is he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn't really have a reason for the costume."

Kohnert has been charged with "reckless endangerment, aiming or discharging a weapon and indecent exposure". Maybury was collared for "investigation of reckless endangerment", while the teenage girl escaped arrest since she was apparently just along for the ride.

Cops were on Tuesday awaiting a warrant to search the car since they spotted "two empty shotgun shells in the passenger seat", but Pieper was able to confirm that "the banana costume has been seized and put into evidence".

The Register

Home Secretary bans English Defence League march in Bradford

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has authorised a blanket ban on marches in a city on the day of a planned protest by the English Defence League (EDL), an right-wing campaign group.

The EDL had intended to demonstrate in Bradford on Saturday August 28 and Unite Against Fascism has planned a protest in the city on the same day.

A Home Office spokesman said: ''Having carefully balanced rights to protest against the need to ensure local communities and property are protected, the Home Secretary today gave her consent to a Bradford Council order banning any marches in the city over the bank holiday weekend.

''West Yorkshire Police are committed to using their powers to ensure communities and property are protected and we encourage all local people to work with the police to ensure community cohesion is not undermined by public disorder.''

The decision by Bradford Council to seek a marching ban followed a formal request by West Yorkshire chief constable Sir Norman Bettison.

Sir Norman said he was taking the action after considering the "understandable concerns of the community".

The move follows a high-profile campaign in the city to stop the EDL march, with some commentators saying they feared it could provoke a violent reaction to rival the riots which shook the city nine years ago.

Despite the ban, groups could still hold static demonstrations in the city.

A 10,000-signature petition opposing the EDL march was handed in to the Home Office earlier this month.

The Telegraph

FIRST ROMA EXPELLED FROM FRANCE REACH ROMANIA

The first 93 ethnic Roma who agreed to the "voluntary return procedure" have left France and landed in Bucharest on Thursday afternoon, as part of a plan of French authorities to expell people living in illegal camps. The 93 ethnic Roma who agreed to a "voluntary return procedure" landed in Bucharest on Thursday afternoon, as part of moves by Paris to expel foreign-born Roma living in France without a permit. Romanian President Traian Basescu said: "Romania has no objection to France's plans to tackle illegal immigration, but it is also supporting the right of any Romanian citizen to travel freely around European Union. 'We need to co-operate better with France on this issue." Kristalina Georgieva, the EU commissioner on International Co-operation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, expressed concerns over France’s decision. “France’s decision to deport Roma is worrisome for Brussels because it can lead to tension in Bulgaria,” she told local private television channel Nova TV. “Roma should not be assimilated. They should be integrated to become part of society’s productive capacity,” she added.

The French government began the deportation of around 700 Roma people of Romanian and Bulgarian citizenship from illegal camps earlier on Thursday. Those on the flight had agreed to the so-called "voluntary return procedure" under which each adult was granted €300 and each child €100. Around 412 Roma people will be repatriated to Romania by the end of the month, Romanian state secretary Valentin Mocanu has said. A total of 41 Roma are also being deported from France to Bulgaria, local broadcaster Darik Radio reported. The first group of 13 will return on a flight from Paris to Varna, the country's biggest seaside city, on August 25th, while the remainder will arrive on two additional flights on September 10th and 17th, said Bulgaria Air officials quoted by Darik radio.

Deyan Petrov, chairman of Amalipe, a Roma rights organisation based in the Bulgarian town of Veliko Tarnovo, said France’s decision was discriminative. He told Balkan Insight: “We should remember that during World War II Nazis in Germany killed many Roma, claiming that they were fighting crime. "I understand that there are probably some alleged criminals in Roma camps in France, but you can’t dismantle the whole camp just because of that.” “If there’s a mass return of [jobless] Roma to Bulgaria, this could turn into a social crisis.” The office of the French president said in a statement the camps were "sources of illegal trafficking, of profoundly shocking living standards, of exploitation of children for begging, of prostitution and crime". It added new legislation would be introduced soon to make the expulsion from France of illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe easier "for reasons of public order".

Rights groups across Europe have attacked France's decision, saying it violated human rights and the Roma were often treated like a sub-class of immigrants and targeted by police. The Roma community in Romania numbers about 535,000 people according to the national census. But non-governmental organisations, NGOs, say the figure is probably between 1.5 - 2 million as many do not declare themselves as Roma amid fears of being discriminated. Roma in Bulgaria number about 370,000 people according to government statistics. But NGOs say the actual number is nearer 700,000. The minority is extremely marginalised, they say, as most live in poor conditions, suffer widespread discrimination and racism and have difficulties finding a job.

Balkan Insight

CONTROVERSIAL SLOGANS NOT RACIST, SAYS AUSTRIA'S FAR-RIGHT

The far right has been making big gains in opinion polls in Vienna and could win close to a quarter of the  votes in October's election. But many are concerned by the party's use of xenophobic slogans.

Austria's far right Freedom Party (FPO) is causing outrage with its advertising campaign for upcoming Vienna city elections. Its posters have been described as racist, dangerous and reminiscent of Nazi slogans. The slogan causing all the fuss appears in bold letters across huge billboards next to the smiling face of Freedom Party leader Heinz Christian Strache. "Mehr Mut für Wiener Blut" - more courage for Viennese Blood. The next rhyming line goes on to say - too many foreigners does no one any good. The phrase draws on the title of a Strauss operetta popular early last century, as well as a hit song from the 1980's by Austrian rocker Falco. But the Social Democrats who currently hold power in Vienna say it's straight out of the Nazis' vocabulary, emphasizing purity of race and blood.

More than tradition
For Eric Frey, the managing editor of the Vienna daily Der Standard, the language is blatantly racist. "This is racist, it is openly xenophobic," said Frey. "It's part of the campaign strategy." "Strache is going to run a kind of a two pronged campaign, trying to mobilize his core voters and then trying to appeal to the working class voters who are generally not really happy about voting for FPO," said Frey. The Freedom Party claim they only intend to emphasize their support for Viennese traditions. They point out there's little that's more authentically Viennese than Strauss and Falco.

Carefully chosen words
But most commentators disagree. Benedict Narodoslawsky, the author of a book about the Freedom Party, says that although the party claims the slogans reference to Viennese culture, its leaders know just how provocative their words are. "They say no, that reminds us of Strauss, and Falco. That's just the automatic defense against the critics," said Frey. "Of course they are calculating that it has this negative connotation." The Freedom Party, long seen as the party of Jörg Haider, has enjoyed popular support under its new young leader, Heinz Christian Strache. A recent Gallup poll suggested it could win 23 percent of the vote in Vienna, where most of Austria's immigrants live. A win would have major consequences for the Social Democrats: they would lose their absolute majority and be forced to form a coalition with one of the smaller parties. It could also have implications for the Chancellor Werner Faymann, whose Social Democrats lead the federal coalition and who have suffered a string of losses in recent regional elections. According to Frey, Faymann is depending on Vienna May or Michael Häupl to minimise Freedom Party gains.

Migrant city
"The question of whether Häupl can keep the absolute majority or lose it partly because of the strength of the FPO can make or break Faymann's political future," Frey said. Vienna is a city where every second household has at least one member of migrant background. Even in the time of Johann Strauss, it was a city of migrants from all parts of central Europe. In eight weeks, the multi-cultural city will give its verdict on the Freedom Party's exploitation of one of their best known traditions.

DW-World

KOSOVO HURDLES FOR ROMA KIDS EXPELLED FROM GERMANY

For two teenage Roma sisters life has turned into a nightmare since they were forced to leave Germany, the only home they had ever known, and expelled to Kosovo, a country they had never seen. "I feel like I am in prison. I do not go out of the yard," said 13-year-old Bukurije Berisha in fluent German as she pointed to the high walls surrounding her dilapidated house. "I still hope I will wake up and see it was a bad dream." The girls were born after their parents sought asylum in Germany in 1993, fleeing a brutal crackdown on Kosovo by the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. They speak no Albanian, the dominant language in Kosovo, and only a bit of their parents' native Roma tongue. But last December, they landed with their parents and five brothers and sisters in a poor Roma settlement with filthy, narrow streets on the edge of the western Kosovo town of Pec. The Berishas are among some 14,000 Kosovars -- 10,000 of them Roma -- to be returned from Germany under a bilateral deal in April, nearly 11 years after the end of the Kosovo war. And those who will suffer most are children like Bukurije and her sister Lumturije, warn experts including Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, the pan-European rights body. On Tuesday, he singled out Kosovo as he urged member states to refrain from action that only worsens the exclusion of Roma, many of whom already live on the fringe as stateless people without documents and thus denied basic human rights. "For instance, western European states should stop forcibly returning Roma to Kosovo," Hammarberg said in a statement.

Rights groups have sounded the alarm about a new round of discrimination against what some call Europe's most hated minority. In France, controversy has dogged a government crackdown on illegal gypsy camps and moves to expel foreign gypsies breaking the law, after President Nicolas Sarkozy said some in the community posed security problems. Most Roma -- an ethnic group widespread in eastern Europe -- in France are thought to come from Romania and Bulgaria, both of which joined the European Union in 2007. European Justice and Rights Commissioner Viviane Reding already warned in April that "the situation of many Roma seems to have deteriorated over the years," adding "that is simply not acceptable." Last month, the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, noted that about half of the Roma to be deported from Germany to Kosovo are children, the majority of them born and raised in Germany. "Children are the ones most affected by these forced returns," Hammarberg warned in a foreword to the UNICEF report. "In Kosovo they are confronted with an entirely new reality. They feel lost and alienated." The home the Berishas left was burned down in the bloody 1999 war that ended the conflict in the former Serbian province, which declared independence in 2008 despite fierce Serbian opposition. Now the family lives in a cousin's house with no indoor plumbing or running water. The two sisters no longer go to school. They blame language trouble but also say they feel like outcasts with their urban European manners and fashionable clothes. "Children tease and call us names in school," Lumturije said. They long to return "home" and vow to do so when older. "I was born there and I feel German," a tearful 14-year-old Lumturije Berisha said, remembering her home in Arnsberg, western Germany. "I miss my school. I miss going to walk with friends in my city."

Analyst and prominent Roma journalist Kujtim Pacaku said it was an "illusion" to expect Roma children to integrate "after such a cultural shock". "To do so, they have to forget all their previous experience and knowledge and begin from zero," he told AFP. Germany has pressed for the refugees' return for years and despite the April deal, even Kosovo's Minister for Welfare Nenad Rasic conceded that his country simply does not have the resources to receive and integrate all returnees. Kosovo is considered one of Europe's poorest countries where official figures show nearly half the two million population is unemployed and living under the poverty line. Critics in both countries have charged that Kosovo is unable to guarantee basic human rights like access to adequate housing, health care or education to its own inhabitants, no less returning Roma. Kosovo "first must create conditions for their integration," said Roma member of parliament Danish Ademi, who opposes the return of gypsies. "Otherwise, people will have to beg or steal at once they are dropped at the airport in order to feed their families," he said. Families with special needs children have not been excluded from the expulsions from Germany, though the German embassy in the Kosovo capital Pristina was not available for comment. The nine-member Miftari family were returned after a 16-year stay in Germany where two of their sons, now seven and 11 and both profoundly deaf, were born. "In Germany the conditions were ideal. They went to a specialized school which picked them up from home each day and returned them," their father Shemsi Miftari said sadly. "Here they are forced to collect scrap metals and tin cans."

The Mulolli family has a similar tale. Their two-year-old daughter suffers from what they said is a congenital disorder that makes her "forget" to breathe in her sleep, though they could produce no verifiable medical documents, saying they were given only a short time to pack one bag per family member when they were expelled and had no time to gather medical documents. Selina's condition is controlled by special, expensive portable equipment attached to her chest at night to alert her parents if she stops breathing, they said. "The equipment uses replaceable and expensive diodes we cannot afford and which even do not exist here," her father Florim said. "Germany condemned Selina to death, but we will not let her die," he said bitterly, hugging the lively blonde girl on his lap. Florim's son Rrahman, 14, like the Berisha girls, said he felt like a refugee in Kosovo and was in constant touch with his German friends via Facebook. "When German police came to our flat to take us to the airport they said we're taking you home," he said. "I told them my home is here."

AFP

Jail for racist who called Scottish cops 'haggis-munching ginger b*****ds'

A racist who called Scottish police officers ‘haggis-munching ginger b*****ds’ after threatening to kill them has been jailed for 18 months.

Mohammed Amir shouted the abuse at members of Grampian Police when they tried to arrest him for attacking his girlfriend, a court heard.

He yelled ‘I’m going to kill 20 of you and blow you to bits,’ during the incident in Aberdeen in February.

Amir, 29, from Aberdeen, was jailed at the city’s sheriff court after admitting offences including assaults on his girlfriend and threatening to stab a taxi driver.

Metro

Alleged ICE Racism May Be Nation-Wide (USA)

A noose found hanging in an office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a letter left for a black employee asking him to check if he's a queer or a sissy who is filing a complaint.

Tre Rebstock is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

"It's ludicrous in this day and age to be targeting somebody else because of the color of their skin. Absolutely unacceptable," he says.

Rebstock says African American workers have endured racism and harassment by those in charge at Homeland Security in Houston.

"There are at least two managers who need to retire and get their personal preferences out the door with them," he says.
When we first reported about the alleged discrimination at Homeland Security, we began getting lots of calls.

African American federal workers from around the country 'claiming' they're experiencing the same type of treatment.
Congressman Gene Green viewed our report. He says because Homeland Security enforces immigration laws, it's crucial they're above board.

"That kind of activity is not to be tolerated in whether it takes a lawsuit or whether it takes ICE in Washington to hear enough about this to deal with the supervisors who allow this to continue," Green says.

Are the Houston allegations an isolated incident at the Department of Homeland Security?
We took a look at the national numbers.


From 2004 to 2009, there were 652 employees who filed racially-based complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Another 443 workers in that same period filed color-related complaints.

243 people also filed non-sexual harassment charges against Homeland Security.

"The leadership in ICE needs to know whether it's happening in Houston or LA or any other city because that's unacceptable for any federal agency," Congressman Green says.

FOX 26 News spoke with officials from homeland security on Wednesday.

They did not go on camera but issued a statement saying discrimination of any kind would not be tolerated.

A spokesperson also says if an employee feels victimized they have a complaint process in place to address the issue

My Fox Houston