Yearly Archives: 2012

BNP supporter who sent hundreds of racist letters denies she’s a racist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Margaret Walker (2)A Hampshire gran has denied being a racist – despite sending hundreds of letters containing racial slurs. Pensioner Margaret Walker sent the handwritten mail to parish councils, MPs, businesses, pubs and clubs nationwide.

The targets of her anonymous campaign ranged from politicians – including Prime Minister David Cameron, who she claimed was “flooding the country with ethnic people” – to the BBC, which she claimed was a “Marxist organisation”. Walker, 73, of Walnut Drive, Fareham also referred to Scottish people as “scum”, called people of Pakistani origin “scroungers” and used a variety of racist terms.

Continue reading →

CAIR releases profile of Islamophobe Pamela Geller

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today released the second in a series of Islamophobe profiles documenting the individuals and organizations involved in spreading anti-Muslim bias in the United States.

This profile examines Pamela Geller, the “caustic mouthpiece” of the Islamophobia movement. She was cited today in an exclusive report by Reuters news agency exposing the American anti-Islam groups that support the extremist anti-Muslim views of Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Geller is also the person behind anti-Islam public advertisements going up in cities nationwide.

Continue reading →

U.S. groups helped fund Dutch anti-Islam politician Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes and WildersAnti-Islam groups in America have provided financial support to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration campaigner who is seeking re-election to the Dutch parliament this week.

While this is not illegal in the Netherlands, it sheds light on the international connections of Wilders, whose Freedom Party is the least transparent Dutch parliamentary group and a rallying point for Europe’s far right.

Wilders’ party is self-funded, unlike other Dutch parties that are subsidized by the government. It does not, therefore, have to meet the same disclosure requirements.

Continue reading →

10 myths about Muslims in the West

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Myth of the Muslim TideDoug Saunders, author of the recently published book The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West?, debunks 10 common myths about Muslims in the West.

Huffington Post, 10 September 2012

Not that this will prevent the likes of Bruce Bawer and FrontPage Magazine continuing to publish ridiculous articles about the impending Muslim demographic conquest of Europe.

£200,000 bill for policing protests over Scout hut in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police have spent £200,000 supervising protests against plans to turn a disused Scout hut into a community centre. The cost of the operation in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester, is rising daily as discussions continue to resolve the building’s future.

Officers from city stations and as far afield as Hinckley and Coalville have had to be redeployed from their normal duties to oversee regular protests – occasionally lasting late into the night – against a plan by the Muslim group As-Salaam Trust to convert the Nursery Road building into a community centre.

The protests, which began early last month, have taken place outside the nearby community centre in Thurncourt Road, where members of As-Salaam have been meeting for the past two-and-a-half years.

Leicester Mercury, 10 September 2012

For previous coverage see here, here and here.

Fascist graffiti on French mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Agen mosque swastikaThe Collectif contre L’Islamophobie en France has reported that a swastika and Celtic cross were sprayed on the entrance to a mosque at Agen, in southwestern France, last week.

CcIF notes that gunshots were fired at the same mosque in 2005 and that last year a mosque in nearby Villeneuve-sur-Lot was the target of an arson attack. In 2010 a mosque at Marmande, also in southwestern France, was sprayed with fascist graffiti.

See also La Dépêche and Europe 1.

EDL to return for rematch in Walthamstow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Walthamstow anti-EDL demonstration

The English Defence League was planning to hold a demonstration in Norwich on 27 October, the primary purpose of which was to express solidarity with a notorious right-wing Christian Islamophobe, the Rev Alan Clifford, whose church has been refused permission to hold a stall on local authority premises after a well-founded complaint that it was distributing anti-Muslim hate literature.

However, having held a meeting with regional organisers to discuss the way forward following their organisation’s recent humiliation in East London, the EDL leadership has announced that the Norwich protest has been postponed and they intend to return to Walthamstow and hold a further demonstration there on that date.

Continue reading →

Daily Star claims security services saw Newham mosque as potential terrorist threat to Olympics

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It looks like the right-wing press is resuming its hysterical campaign against the proposed Tablighi Jamaat markaz at the Riverine Centre in Newham. “Bomb fear at mega mosque” is the shock horror headline to an article in the Daily Star Sunday, which follows the recent scaremongering report in the Evening Standard.

Continue reading →

California governor signs law protecting Sikhs, Muslims, from workplace bias

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jerry Brown at Sikh rallyCalifornia employers face new restrictions against shunting Sikh and Muslim workers to backroom jobs out of public view based on their wearing of turbans, beards and hijabs, under a law signed Saturday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

“This bill, AB 1964, makes it very clear that wearing any type of religious clothing or hairstyle, particularly such as Sikhs do, that that is protected by law and nobody can discriminate against you because of that,” Brown told some 400 Sikhs and supporters at a rally of the North American Punjabi Assn. on the steps of the Capitol.

Continue reading →

EDL member who attacked anti-racism gig to be thrown out of army

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cavan LangfieldA soldier who smashed up an anti-racism event with his English Defence League pals is set to be kicked out of the Army.

Cavan Langfield, 18, and a gang of mates stormed a Rock Against Racism gig in Leeds last year. They smashed windows and hurled bricks and bottles, knocking a teenager’s tooth out.

Langfield, from the Yorkshire Regiment, and eight other members of the gang were convicted at Leeds Crown Court last week.

A source at the Ministry of Defence said: “The wheels are in motion to get him thrown out. That’s a whole promising career up in flames.”

Continue reading →