“What sort of woman freely converts to a religion which supports the oppression, torment and murder of thousands of Christians, homosexuals and spirited women, worldwide, every year? The sort of woman who writes love letters to a serial killer, I reckon. Still, might as well look on the bright side. Go on, Lauren, treat yourself to a full-face and – most essentially – mouth-covering burka!”
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Republican candidate who killed unarmed Iraqis welcomes Geller’s backing
Ilario Pantano, who is standing as a Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 7th congressional district in the US midterm elections.
The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons.
Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them – some 60 rounds in total. Over the corpses, he left a placard inscribed with the marine motto: “No better friend, No worse enemy.”
Six years later Pantano is on the verge of a stunning electoral victory that could send him to the US Congress in Washington. He is standing as Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 7th congressional district, which was last represented by his party in 1871.
With the help of the right-wing Tea Party movement, and with the benefit of his image as a war hero acquired from what happened on that fateful day in 2004, he has raised almost $1m (£630,000) in donations and is now level-pegging with his Democratic opponent, Mike McIntyre.
Pantano is fighting the election on a national manifesto for change. He wants to cut back on government spending and clamp down on extremist Islam. He recently spoke at Ground Zero in New York where he opposes plans to build an Islamic cultural centre nearby. “America objects to what’s happening there. The folks in this district think it’s an abomination,” he said.
He has been endorsed by Pamela Geller, one of the leading opponents of the cultural centre who has built bridges between her group Stop Islamisation of America and the British far-right group the English Defence League. “I don’t have any anxieties about Pam Geller,” Pantano said. “She is a patriot. I’m thrilled to have her endorsement.”
Tea Party leader defends call to oust Keith Ellison for being Muslim
A prominent member of the Tea Party movement is defending a statement he made about the Muslim representative of Minnesota’s 5th District.
On Saturday, Judson Phillips, who heads the Tea Party Nation, published a column suggesting Representative Keith Ellison is unfit to serve because he is Muslim.
“I am not going to apologize because I’m bothered by a religion that says kill the infidel, especially when I am the infidel,” Phillips said on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday.
“If you read the Koran, the Koran in no uncertain terms says some wonderful things like, ‘Kill the infidels,'” said Phillips. “It says it on more than one occasion. I happen to be the infidel. I have a real problem with people who want to kill me just because I’m the infidel.”
“A majority of Tea Party members, I suspect, are not fans of Islam,” he added.
“The Tea Party has featured congressional candidates that dress up as a Nazi, have ties to a criminal biker gang, have called for the violent overthrow of government, and now the leadership is disgracefully telling voters to vote against someone solely on the basis of their religion,” a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement. “The American people will reject this reckless Right Wing extremism that has unfortunately been embraced by the Republican Party.”
See also “Tea Party Nation founder: I have a real problem with Islam”, Salon, 27 October 2010
Paladino proposes ‘bleeding’ Park51 developers ‘to death’
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has signed a pledge to support a group of construction workers opposed to a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero.
Wearing a hard hat, Paladino made the pledge while standing with a few construction workers across the street from the World Trade Center site Wednesday. He said if elected, he would use any legal means available to him to stop the construction of the mosque a couple blocks north of ground zero.
Paladino said there were “many, many alternatives” to stopping the project, including “bleeding” the developers “to death”.
Family ejected from flight at Memphis airport because they were ‘dressed in attire that would indicate some Muslim-type religion’
Comments about seeing people on a plane who appear to be Muslim got National Public Radio analyst Juan Williams fired last week.
Some cannot help but think their appearance had something to do with a family’s removal from a plane Tuesday morning at Memphis International Airport. “My understanding is they were dressed in attire that would indicate some Muslim-type religion,” said airport vice-president Scott Brockman.
The Delta flight in question was operated by Comair and made a stop in Memphis on a journey from Dallas to Toronto. “On taxi, the crew became concerned when a passenger exited the lavatory after an extended period of time and damage was found in the lavatory,” said a Comair spokesperson in a written statement.
“The family was asked to leave the aircraft, which they did peacefully,” said Brockman. “At that point, the aircraft was inspected and cleared,” he added. A bomb-sniffing dog and other measures resulted in a two-hour delay. The family was placed on a later flight following an interview with the FBI.
Psychologist with anti-Muslim views informed expert testimony in Guantanamo trial
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — A Danish psychologist who believes Muslims are raised to be aggressive and that inbreeding has damaged their genes informed a damning expert opinion of the risk Omar Khadr poses to public safety, court heard Wednesday.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyers, Dr. Michael Welner said he talked to Nicolai Sennels before coming to the conclusion that the Canadian-born Khadr was “highly dangerous” – an opinion he gave Tuesday on the first day of Khadr’s sentencing hearing.
Sennels, who is based in Copenhagen, has written extensively on Muslims, including one article introduced into evidence Tuesday. “If a Muslim does not react aggressively when criticized he is seen as weak, not worth trusting and he thus loses social status immediately,” Sennels wrote.
In another article, Sennels, 34, attributed a host of problems within the Islamic world to intermarriage among first cousins. “Massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1,400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool.”
The seven military officers on the jury will decide on a sentence for Khadr, who pleaded guilty on Monday to five war-crimes charges.
‘Mosques take over our cities’
ENGAGE responds to hysteria in the right-wing press about an Anglican diocese in Bradford having to merge with a neighbouring diocese because of a decline in church attendance supposedly due to an “influx of Muslims”.
EDL defends Christmas against Muslims
A far-right group has vowed to “close down” any town that ditches British traditions and shows favouritism to Muslims.
The English Defence League said it has written to every council in the country threatening a mass invasion if they ban the word “Christmas”. It includes using the term “winter festival” in case Christmas upsets Muslims.
EDL leader Stephen Lennon said “working class people” in the UK were “at boiling point” over what he says is the “Islamisation of Britain”. His declaration comes after yesterday’s Daily Star poll found 98% of readers fear that Britain is becoming a Muslim state.
He said: “If the politicians aren’t going to stick up for us, we will make them, because we will cause so much fuss and so much noise they are going to have to listen. We will not back down or be beaten into submission. We don’t care if you call us racists. We are coming anyway.”
Expansion sparks mosque rage on Long Island
You don’t need Ground Zero to stoke a New York mosque controversy. Residents of Selden, LI, have been swamped with fliers denouncing the expansion of the Islamic Association of Long Island.
The fliers list a litany of complaints, including calls to prayer being broadcast over loudspeakers and snarled traffic. The notes warn that the expansion of Long Island’s oldest Muslim house of worship will force residents to deal with “rude, aggressive people when you confront them to move their cars away from our driveways.”
Mosque members argue that the fliers are ill-informed attempts at fear-mongering and that the expansion is simply an effort to accommodate a burgeoning Muslim population in Suffolk County. Supporters say one flyer attempts to whip up hysteria by pointing out a child abuse rap against a former Mosque employee.
Wilders’ party called for immigrants to be banned from amateur football leagues
According to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, the PVV, also known as The Freedom Party, proposed a ban on immigrants in amateur soccer leagues in the Hague, claiming that soccer clubs with many immigrants are facing violence and “Islamization.” The group withdrew that proposal when it appeared to provoke outrage among other politicians.
The Hague PVV party asserted that many soccer clubs with a high number of immigrant members must deal with violence on the field and a shortage of volunteers.
The Councilor of Sports Karsten Klein responded by calling their claim “utter nonsense.” “Violence in soccer is definitely not an immigrant problem, as the Freedom Party would like people to believe,” he said. Soccer clubs have to be accessible to everyone, according to Klein.
The conflation of soccer violence with Islamicization and the influence of immigrants along with the proposed ban constitute an absurd attempt to polarize opinion on a topic as localized and unpolitical as amateur sports leagues. Luckily, the Dutch national soccer association, the KNVB disagrees: “Soccer plays a significant role in integration in the Netherlands,” it claimed in a statement responding to the ban.