Anti-terror plan to spy on toddlers ‘is heavy-handed’

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan. Critics said the idea was “unworkable” and “heavy-handed”, and accused the Government of treating teachers and carers as “spies”.

The document accompanies the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently before parliament. It identifies nurseries and early years childcare providers, along with schools and universities, as having a duty “to prevent people being drawn into terrorism”.

The consultation paper adds: “Senior management and governors should make sure that staff have training that gives them the knowledge and confidence to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas which can be used to legitimise terrorism and are shared by terrorist groups. They should know where and how to refer children and young people for further help.”

But concern was raised over the practicalities of making it a legal requirement for staff to inform on toddlers.

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MP urges Czechs: Walk your pigs near mosques

Tomio OkamuraTomio Okamura, who heads the Czech opposition Dawn of Direct Democracy movement, has called on people on Facebook to bother Muslims in the Czech Republic by “walking pigs” in the vicinity of mosques, for example, which, he emphasised, is no incitement to intolerance.

The Dawn discussed the text of the appeal with lawyers before releasing it, he told the iDnes.cz server.

In the past, Okamura repeatedly asserted that he is not a xenophobe, in spite of his controversial statements about Romanies and foreigners in the Czech Republic. For example, Okamura once visited a man convicted of a racially motivated murder in prison.

The text that Okamura released on Facebook is the Dawn’s “instruction for the protection against Islam.” It is signed by Dawn member Jiří Kobza.

The Dawn advises people to keep dogs and pigs and to go to walk them in the vicinity of mosques and other sites visited by Muslims. People should also lead [seedy-looking] homeless people to such places, Dawn recommends. It says people should not buy kebabs, a meal often offered by Muslim vendors.

The article is also aimed against immigrants in general. It calls on people not to vote in support of politicians who promise advantages to immigrants.

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Henry Jackson Society funded by the Islamophobia industry must be stripped of its charitable status

HJS logo

In the aftermath of the anti-Islam Henry Jackson Society’s removal from its role as secretariat to two all-party parliamentary groups, because of its refusal to reveal the sources of its funding, Coolness of Hind urges the Muslim community and other interested parties to “complain to the Charity Commission with an aim to instantiate a statutory investigation into the HJS to verify it’s compliant with its charitable objects”.

Islamophobia on the rise in Czech Republic

IVCR Czech Controlled ZoneThe Czech Republic experienced a spike in Islamophobia in 2014 despite there being a very small number of Muslims in the country, Petr Zídek writes in the daily Lidové noviny (LN) today.

Although President Milos Zeman’s popularity plummeted in the past year, he is still highly respected by Islamophobes, Zídek writes.

In mid-December, the Islamophobes wrote a letter to Zeman in which they praised his open “objections to the Islamic theocratic and totalitarian ideology.” They highly appreciated Zeman for opposing “the efforts by influential groups in Czech and European society to pursue a policy of appeasement towards this old-new totalitarian threat.”

Leaders of the anti-Islam initiative, which has more than 93,000 supporters on Facebook, have asked Zeman to veto a planned bill that is to extend the powers of the ombudsman. They criticize the current ombudsman, Anna Šabatová, for having defended two female Muslim students whom a Czech secondary school did not permit to wear head scarves earlier this year, Zídek writes.

The Czech Islamophobes fail to understand that the core of the dispute was not Islam and its habits but the question of whether school rules may be at variance with the constitution, Zídek writes.

The Islamphobes say if the ombudsman’s powers were extended, Šabatová would use her new powers to “persecute the critics of Islam and thereby strengthen the presence of Islam in the Czech Republic,” Zídek quoting them as saying.

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Rightwing thinktank pulls funds for Commons groups after disclosure row

HJS logoA rightwing thinktank, accused of pushing an anti-Muslim agenda, has pulled funding for two parliamentary groups which focused on homeland and international security after refusing to disclose its donors to the Commons’ standards watchdog.

In a ruling earlier this month the parliamentary commissioner for standards upheld complaints against the homeland security and transatlantic and international security parliamentary groups for taking secretariat support from a neoconservative thinktank where Tory chief whip Michael Gove was a former trustee, without getting assurances over its funding.

The Henry Jackson Society, a registered charity, had provided an office and staff to organise meetings for the two groups, chaired by Tory MP Bernard Jenkin and Labour MP Gisela Stuart. The arrangement also saw the society’s political director, Davis Lewin, and its events manager, Hanna Nomm, given Commons passes as part of this support.

The agreement was terminated after the standards’ commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, said the society should “make available on request a list citing any commercial company which had donated more than £5,000 either as a single sum or cumulatively in the last 12 months”. The society declined and pulled the funding. A spokesman said: “Our donors are entitled to privacy. We do not wish to expose them to unwarranted funding requests by publishing their details.”

The thinktank has attracted controversy in recent years – with key staff criticised in the past for allegedly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments. Its associate director, Douglas Murray, complained last year that London had “become a foreign country” because white Britons were a minority in 23 of 33 London boroughs. Murray has also been pictured with Robert Spencer, the far-right US anti-Islam campaigner banned last year from Britain by the Home Office.

In 2012 its then director William Shawcross, who runs the Charity Commission, said “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”.

The complaint was lodged by Spinwatch, which campaigns for greater transparency in public and corporate life. It said it was concerned the society would not even “comply with Parliament’s modest new transparency rules”.

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Australian broadcaster ordered to pay $10,000 for racial vilification

Alan JonesBroadcaster Alan Jones has been ordered to pay Muslim community leader Keysar Trad $10,000, ending a nine year battle over a radio segment found to have “stimulated listeners to hatred” of Lebanese men.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal found comments broadcast on 2GB in April 2005 “portrayed Lebanese males as criminals and … as posing a threat to the Australian community”.

The tribunal found Mr Trad’s complaint of racial vilification over the comments, which Jones described as being a letter from a listener, was substantiated.

The letter said Lebanese men “simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that’s taken them in”. The radio segment followed a story on A Current Affair about a group of men, who Jones said “announced themselves as Lebanese Muslims”, gathering at Brighton-le-Sands and The Rocks.

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Wilders tried to claim legal fees from parliament: Volkskrant

Pipes and WildersAnti-Islam politician Geert Wilders last year tried to claim between €500,000 and €600,000 as parliamentary expenses for legal fees incurred during a trial for inciting hatred, the Volkskrant said on Saturday.

Sources told the paper Wilders’ claim was rejected after discussions between members of parliament’s management committee, known as the presidium and on the advice of an accountant.

Parliamentary parties are allowed to submit expenses claims to the presidium if they are for services needed to support their work.

Civil servants and most members of the presidium decided the legal fees for the trial were private expenses. In addition, the claim itself was “not very concrete”, the paper said.

Wilders’ was represented at his trial by celebrity lawyer Bram Moszkowicz who has since been struck off. The bill was not broken down into daily costs and there was no proper explanation of all the charges, a source told the paper.

One member of the presidium told the paper: “I saw the bill and I thought ‘well there is someone who understands about expenses’. There was no supporting evidence. It was an amount between €500,000 and €600,000.”

Three other members of the presidium have also confirmed the story, the paper said.

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Boycott Halal movement in Australia set to escalate

Boycott Halal in Australia

The virulent Boycott Halal movement in Australia is set to escalate with a petition to federal parliament in the New Year demanding the Corporations Act 2001 be changed to mean only Muslims bear the cost of halal certification on everyday products.

Halal products are those deemed permissible for Muslims to eat or use under religious law. Many mainstream products in Australian stores are halal certified including food from SPC, Nestle, Kelloggs and Kraft. Supermarket chains pay for certification for some products, as do dairy factories and meat processors.

Worldwide the halal industry is worth $US 2 trillion and is growing 20% a year. Companies are keen to capitalise on the boom, so halal certification is increasingly common. All products exported to Muslim countries are certified before they go.

Australia has 21 Islamic groups approved by the federal government to issue halal certificates. Of the 21 only four, with one in Melbourne and three in Sydney, get most of the work, including Indonesian contracts.

The new Indonesian government has begun to dismantle an Islamic agency which is facing corruption allegations and which approves halal imports from Australia. Halal exports are worth $12 billion with growing competition from China and Brazil.

The Boycott Halal campaign is led by New South Wales farmer Kirralie Smith and supported by extremist groups including the “Islam-critical’ Q-Society, Restore Australia, the Australian Defence League and the Patriots’ Defence League.

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ACLU supports free-speech rights of anti-Islam group

Bible Believers display pig's headA civil rights organization is defending the free-speech rights of a Christian group that hates Islam, saying its members were unfairly removed from the Arab International Festival in Dearborn in 2012.

In a legal brief filed this month, attorneys with the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that Wayne County sheriff’s deputies violated the First Amendment by ordering a group of Christian evangelists from California called the Bible Believers to leave or face citations for disorderly conduct.

At the annual festival in June 2012, the Bible Believers brought a pig’s head mounted on a pole and signs with anti-Islam messages that denigrated Islam’s prophet. Observant Muslims consider pigs to be unclean.

They also shouted crude messages at festival attendees, many of whom were Muslim. In response, members of the crowd hurled water bottles and rocks at the Christian group, who walked away to avoid being hit. As they walked away, some in the crowd followed and continued to pelt them.

Attorneys for the Bible Believers filed a lawsuit against the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, which was thrown out last year by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan in Detroit, saying deputies were justified in removing the evangelists “because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”

In August, a three-judge panel with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Duggan’s decision. But in October, the full court vacated that decision, saying the 15 judges will reconsider the case in March.

It was a rare move, one that was praised by attorneys with the American Freedom Law Center, a conservative group co-led by Ann Arbor attorney Robert Muise that is representing the Bible Believers.

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UKIP official retweets pro‑PEGIDA comments

The PEGIDA demonstration in Dresden last Monday, in which an estimated 17,500 people protested against immigration and the “Islamisation of the west”, was widely condemned as a shocking example of xenophobia and intolerance that has no place in Germany.

Needless to say, on the British far right PEGIDA has been hailed as an inspiration in the fight to stem the Muslim takeover of Europe. It has certainly renewed the enthusiasm of former English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) for Islamophobic street protests, and he has tweeted his intention to try and emulate PEGIDA’s success when his ban on associating with members of the EDL runs out next July.

Another person to be impressed by PEGIDA’s achievements is Helen Hims, who is chair of the Wells branch of UKIP and vice-chair of the party in Somerset. She retweeted a number of approving comments on Monday’s demonstration (“German anti muslim protestors demand an end to Islamisation with record high turnout”, “Growing Anti Muslim marches in Germany….Excellent!”) earlier this week, including one from Lennon himself (“Germany is waking up, are we?”)

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