Attack of the EDL zombies

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Undeserved honor for Klan founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cotton planter and a trader in horses, cattle and black people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest, whose business dealings had made him wealthy, [he] raised a cavalry unit to fight for the Confederacy. He is remembered as an instinctive military genius whose daring and unpredictability gave Union forces fits.

He is also remembered for leading a rebel band that overwhelmed a Union stronghold, Fort Pillow, Tenn., massacring 300 mostly black soldiers and civilians, including children, after the soldiers had dropped their weapons. According to official reports, black soldiers were nailed to logs, buried alive, gunned down where they stood.

Finally, Forrest is remembered as a founder and the first "Grand Wizard’’ of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, is America’s preeminent terrorist group; in its various permutations, it has been responsible for countless acts of violence against African Americans and others it deemed inferior, including the notorious 1963 church bombing in which four little black girls were killed.

This is the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At this writing, the state of Mississippi is considering whether to honor that legacy through the issuance of vanity license plates. And perhaps an observer might be forgiven for wondering what in the world there is to consider.

The request to honor Forrest was made by the Mississippi branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group often found neck deep in attempts to rewrite and sanitize the odious history of the Confederacy.

For what it’s worth, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has said he doesn’t think the state legislature will approve the vanity plate. But he rejected a call by the Mississippi NAACP to denounce the idea. "I don’t go around denouncing people," he said, piously.

Presumably, he would be equally nonjudgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their legacies, after all, are combined in Forrest: terrorist, traitor, mass murderer.

On April 12, it will be 150 years since the Civil War began. That is the distance from telegraph lines to smart phones, from steam engines to space shuttles, from Lincoln to Obama. And yet even after all that time, some of us are still unable to conquer the moral cowardice exemplified by Gov. Barbour and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The South fought in defense of racism and slavery. It was soundly defeated, racism and slavery soundly repudiated. You’d think from that loss the South would have learned signal lessons of human rights and human dignity.

The past exists for one overriding purpose: to prepare us for the future. It is the great and wise teacher, though its lessons are often purchased at monstrous cost. Such was surely the case with the Civil War: 620,000 lives — 2 percent of the population — lost, the South left devastated.

Yet sometimes, you wonder if the South even knows it lost.

Because, instead of learning those costly lessons and moving forward, too much of the South has spent too much of the last century and a half denying them and looking backward. It did so first through the expedient of lynch mob violence and Jim Crow laws. Now it clings to discredited 19th Century symbols like driftwood, obsessively reworks history trying to make the facts other than what they are.

But the facts are immutable.

You wish the South would finally accept that and move on. Instead, too many in that storied region are still absorbed in fighting a war that ended in 1865, seeking to vindicate a cause long ago lost. A man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor.

It is pathetic that that even needs to be said.

Miami Herald

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

EDL partners with far-right US Jewish group

The head of the EDL’s Jewish division Roberta Moore has announced a partnership with far-right American group the Jewish Task Force on the EDL Facebook page.

The JTF leader Victor Vancier has also posted a podcast where he said: “We were contacted by the English Defence League last few weeks and we have agreed we want to work together on joint projects. They are a major organisation, with mass media coverage.

“I wanted to be sure they were not the BNP, we would never work Holocaust deniers or Nazis. They wave Israeli flags, they support the Jewish people. They want Jewish members. We are happy to work with them to save England from the millions of Muslim invaders. We want to work as a united front.”

He added: “The Jewish establishment in the UK, the ‘self hating Jews’ have condemned the EDL because they support the Muslim invasion. It’s pathetic, including the so-called Orthodox. They have to be politically correct, as we go to the gas chambers. We are not interested in this, and neither is the EDL. This will turn into something big.”

Mr Vancier is banned from entering Israel because of his allegiance to the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach party – outlawed in Israel in 1994 as “terrorist organisations.” The group now raises money for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

He spent five years in prison from 1987 for 18 bomb attacks against Soviet targets in the US to protest the treatment of Soviet Jews. His website claims US President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and calls Secretary of State Hilary Clinton “a vicious Jew hater.”

Jewish Chronicle

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

My father, the racist

Illustration by Jackie Parsons

Chris Fox and his Indian partner are having a baby. Her family are thrilled and so are his – all except his father, who votes BNP and can't see past skin that isn't white

A baby's birth is surely the most joyous of all family events. With a new life and fresh innocence, the bonding of two families cooing over the new arrival seems inevitable. My partner is expecting our first child and her liberal Indian family have gone into overdrive to help us prepare for the baby and move to a new home. They are carrying boxes, buying appliances, giving us things for the baby and delivering unbelievable homemade Indian food.

We're grateful, not just for the amazing dishes, but for the support they have given us during the stress of house-buying and pregnancy.

In contrast, I'm getting the opposite of support from my father.

I've always know my dad was racist. I've disagreed with him all my life, not that he's noticed. No one else in the family shares his views, but he is oblivious to the opinions of others.

When it became clear that Mira and I were committed to being together, I tried to ease my father into the news, first telling him of my Indian friend, who was born in Kenya. He wasted no time in registering his objection. "Don't introduce her to me. I'm trying to send them all back," he harrumphed, about the sweetest girl I'd ever known.

Meanwhile, I was meeting, and being welcomed by, Mira's family. We went to her cousin's wedding in Gloucestershire and I was struck by the fondness between the elder uncles and aunts and the young nieces and nephews. Everyone mucked in to help, all the generations danced and celebrated together. It hit me that this is what a family is supposed to be like. They had a lot of love for each other and weren't shy about showing it. They also knew how to enjoy themselves. The laughter and dancing went on all night, and one or two of the old boys could be seen loitering by the door in the hope that the young ones were smoking more than tobacco. The ladies howled as a saucy aunt took the opportunity to cop a feel of my backside as I shook my generous booty.

On returning to London I visited my parents. After spending three happy days with Mira's family, it only took an hour with my dad for me to despair. I was subjected to a relentless torrent of bitterness about the government, immigration, television, the NHS, Tuesdays … it was all terribly, irredeemably foul. And it was all better in his day when you could leave your door open and be a hateful racist without anyone batting an eyelid.

Out of earshot of Mum, my dad told me I should "be careful" with Mira. It was a bit late for that, as we had just found out we were to have a baby, though it was too soon to make an announcement. His warning wasn't based on any knowledge of the person she is but on his assumptions about race and immigration. He suggested I would soon be putting up her relatives, and, even more absurdly, harbouring terrorists.

Depressed by his descent into risible paranoia, I took my leave, wondering how he had become such an ogre.

"He wasn't always like this," Mum said at the door. "I don't know what happened to him."

My dad was born into a large, poor, south London family in the 1920s. Seventeen at the outbreak of the second world war, he became a stoker in the Royal Navy. By the time he was 21, he had sailed round the world, been sunk twice, seen good friends die and earned the eternal thanks of his country. By the time I was 21, the greatest suffering I had experienced was bleaching my hair.

When he introduced my mother to his parents, my grandfather walked out. My mother's from Tipperary and the Irish were "coming over here, taking our jobs" and all that jazz. A generation on, not much has been learned.

Dad worked hard all his life and retired in his 50s. He had no idea what to do with himself without work to define him and, still haunted by his experiences in the war, he became an alcoholic. It took the threat of divorce from his devout Roman Catholic wife to drag him back from the brink.

Since then, his world has narrowed. He mourns a lost England, unable to recognise the multicultural country it has become as the one he fought for. "That's not patriotism," I tell him. "It's nostalgia."

In the last couple of years, he's spent all his time in a wheelchair and has only left the house to vote – for the BNP. The Daily Mail, television and the occasional like-minded visitor inform his perspective. So he has become a sour, entrenched, dogmatic bigot who only hears views that chime with his own racist – and even fascist – position.

With Mira pregnant, I knew I had to introduce her to my parents before announcing our news, lest I expose her to an even more difficult scenario. ("Hi Hitler. Let me introduce you to the mother of your Indian grandchild.")The reaction of friends and siblings to our happy surprise has been joyous and life affirming. I was a little nervous about telling my 23-year-old daughter, Dixie, that she was going to have a brother or sister but she was pragmatic and honest. She didn't know how she would feel about sharing her father for the first time, but she wanted to be involved. She is the reason I know how uplifting raising a child is. She constantly fills me with pride, not because she's doing so well, but because she's a great addition to the world.

Her first reaction was, "Ha! Your life is over." Her second was, "What did Granddad say?"

Mum assured me Dad would behave when I brought Mira over to meet them. He would only have to be civil for five minutes before the three of us went out. "You're different to what I expected," he said, shaking her hand. "I heard you were from Kenya, so I thought you'd be a 6ft Zulu with a bone through your nose."

Really. That's what he said. And that's him on his best behaviour. If only Prince Philip had been there to laugh. He asked a few questions about her family background – very important to any self-respecting doctrinaire – and we parted. The introduction had gone well. Mum thought Mira was lovely and Dad hadn't expressed an opinion. I couldn't ask for more.

Mira had said it would be harder for me than for her, and she was right. She was untroubled before the visit and untroubled afterwards. She hasn't experienced much racism since coming to London at the age of nine and has a soft spot for old duffers. She's not easily offended and was quite happy to meet my dad and engage him, should he kick off. It might have been better than the faux civility.

Having breached introductions, it was time to drop the bombshell. I enlisted my brother and sister to join me, mostly so my dad could see how normal people react to good news.

Loyalty, respect and decency are central to his generation's values: loyalty to the country and your family. So could I expect him to be loyal, respectful and decent when I arrived to tell him that, after 23 years, I was to be a father again?

There's really only one way to put it. "Mira and I are going to have a baby!" Cue almost universal joy, screams and congratulations. Mum was thrilled and my brother and sister were delighted. "That's wonderful!" Mum said.

"Is it?" huffed my dad, who wheeled himself out of the room to calm down. The only person not to have congratulated me on the news was my father. He stewed all day, silently.

Meanwhile, Mira's family were cranking up to hysterical levels. Offers of help abounded and stamp-duty money was proffered for our new home. Food deliveries were increased, and I was getting progressively larger portions.

I was even more endeared to them by a tale from Mira's childhood. During the summer holidays, the extended family would cram into a car, including aunts, uncles and cousins. The kids would be in the boot and the adults squeezed into the seats as they headed excitedly for the airport. There they would sit in the departure lounge and watch the unfolding drama of people parting, while they had a picnic. For a treat they would go to arrivals.

I had to wait some weeks before my dad could broach the subject. He was "disgusted", he told me, that I was having a child "out of wedlock".

I laughed. "How could I marry an Indian girl with you?"

"I wouldn't come!" he barked, thinking it quite rational that I should marry because of his sudden bout of religious propriety, even if he wouldn't attend. But I knew it was his way of protesting without mentioning his real objection – her ethnicity was the problem.

There have been many mixed marriages in Mira's family, so race is not an issue for them. They, too, would like us to be married but accept that it is our choice.

Dad said he couldn't believe how "daft" I'd been, not even considering that I might be happy. He wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't want to know anything about the baby's progress. He maintained it was my Roman Catholic mother's feelings that concerned him, as according to him, she was secretly disgusted too.

That he hadn't even spoken to my clearly delighted mother about their imminent fifth grandchild seemed inhuman to me. I resented his lying about her to express his own opinions. I returned a similar level of vitriol, making clear that it was he, not me, who should be ashamed of his behaviour. We left it there. I told him not to bother getting in touch if he wasn't going to apologise and, predictably, I haven't heard from him.

For the first time in my 49 years we're not talking. We've never had much in common, but talked most weeks, making each other laugh about football and family. I wasn't surprised, or that hurt, by his diatribe, but I was disappointed to see his lack of interest in my happiness and disrespect for my choices. He didn't ask about the woman who will be the mother of his grandchild, or how happy we are. His concern was how he felt about my situation: a triumph of ideology over parental concern.

Some have questioned the wisdom of a dispute with a father who is 88, in case "something happens". I can understand that, but it doesn't allow me to forgive the unforgivable. Having provided for it, he has dominated the family, laying down the law, mostly unchallenged. I'm not going to allow him to disrespect the woman I love, her family and our unborn child, and then go on to chat about the woes of Charlton Athletic.

It's a shame he won't know Mira. He would love her to bits if he could see past the colour of her skin. To me, it's shameful he has attempted to poison such a proud and blessed moment in his son's life. I can only hope the sight of a new baby will soften his silly head, but I'm not confident.

It took another generation to put it into perspective. As my daughter Dixie said: "Think of it this way, Dad – he'll be the last racist in the family."

Names have been changed

Guardian

EDL thugs 'help' terror groups

The EDL: defending the right of all Englishmen to piss wherever they please

Far-right groups such as the English Defence League are driving people into the hands of terrorists, police said yesterday.

EDL activists claim they are fighting the rise of radical Islamists. But anti-terror police say the group's violent tactics are convincing British Muslims to join fanatical organisations waging a holy war against the West. The EDL, which emerged in 2009, has held several highly-charged demos that ended in trouble. Its hooligans threw a smoke bomb at police and clashed with anti-fascist protesters at a rally in Leicester last month.

Det Supt John Larkin, from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, said the places where the EDL has been active have seen a worrying rise in Muslims joining radical groups.

Nick Lowles, of anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, said: "The time has come for the authorities to start taking the gloves off with the EDL. They are not a legitimate protest group. They are thugs bent on sowing division and hatred in communities across the country."

Mirror

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

EDL in the toon

Today, Newcastle breathed a sign of relief as EDL "taliban hunters" poured in to rescue us all from terrorists. I was very pleased with this as although I hadn't seen any I heard there were a lot about.

Apparently, the best method of ridding your town of this societal menace is to get pissed and then start on the locals. There was a beautiful moment when one small, older lady (potentially a terrorist!) was being interrogated by a balaclava-wearing bloke (who was twice her size) who kept thrusting an England flag in her face. Nice work, EDL.

The day ended up with loads of EDL on one side and an equally-sized crowd of opposition on the other.

However, the vast majority of the EDL's crowd had to be bussed in from other parts of the country as Newcastle is actually a really tolerant city. Racists - go back were you came from. Newcastle is united.

anna at Indymedia

Hardcore Nazis Invited To Attend EDL Rallies

Liam Pinkham posting on the hardline national socialist chat site VNN, has just posted an insight into why the himself and Hitler-loving cohort Wigan Mike are always seen on EDL marches. His allegations are fatally damaging to the repeated "we are not neo-nazis" propaganda that Trevor Kelway and friends post regularly throughout the internet.

Click on image for full-size

The Allegations

While discussing the dirty habits of the EDL pissing on Westminster Abbey with former Blood and Honour administrator Beverley Kerry, convicted violent thug and regular straight-armed saluter on EDL rallies, hardcore unreconstructed nazi Liam Pinkham (Pino) posting on a thread on VNN, happened to let it slip that the EDL leadership from on-high, regularly telephones himself and bosom buddy "Wigan Mike" Heaton, (well aware of who they are), begging them to publically attend EDL gatherings.

The URL of the conversation is: http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1107755 Just in-case Chris Renton and a certain boggle-eyed far right pig farmer exerts immediate pressure on Bev Kerry to have the thread pulled, a screenshot is included with this article so you can see for yourself, and make up your own mind on the EDL's secret yet bizarre relationship to Pinkham and Heaton.

The more one considers the allegations, there seems little reason for Liam Pinkham to make such claims up in the context of the situation (regardless of his personal misgivings with the EDL set-up), which suggests, if true, the EDL's shadowy bigwigs don't just tolerate hardcore neo-Nazis. They actively encourage their presence.

Logically, the EDL leadership strive for their controversial racist and violent street gatherings to appeal to the traditional far right community of anti-black Jewish-hating, and Holocaust-denying skinheads, to which Pinkham and Heaton fall point-blank into this category.

Judging by the rammifications of the discourse on VNN, Pinkham himself personally regards the telephone callls he received from the EDL's big cheeses as evidence of the Islamophobic organisation's government backing, in-line with popular far right conspiracy theories about the EDL being a machination of the state, however if you have read the recent Searchlight articles about the EDL, or more damningly Lionheart's videos about the EDL leadership actively encouraging known neo-Nazis to attend EDL events, the allegations (if true) are totally and utterly damning, leaving EDL claims that they are not nazis or racists, totally and utterly discredited.

There has been plenty of recent debate on Indymedia and other antifascist forums about why exactly when the EDL repeatedly claim not to harbour nazi sympathies, highlighting scuffles with Combat18 and speeches condemning Blood and Honour, do they turn a blind eye to the involvement of the ultra-violent quasi-terrorist British Freedom Fighters and other hardcore neo-Nazis in their events, however Pinkham's startling claims that the EDL leadership physically ring up both Pinkham and Heaton, pestering them to attend rallies, startlingly implies that the EDL go out of their way to ensure hardcore facsists are part of the furniture.

To ignore the random presence of people who openly declare their love of national socialism (Pinkham/Pino88) attending EDL rallies is one thing, but actively inviting them to take part, is astounding. Whether or not Pinkham would wish to go public on the phone calls, if he has stored the messages, is another matter, especially if there is no truth in claims of the EDL being a government-sponsored "black-op". Nevertheless, if the calls could somehow be retrieved, the dictatorial EDL leadership team would be resigned to history overnight, causing a change of leadership in the organisation.

As VNN is fervently pro-BNP in outlook, and Bev is on speaking terms with Nicholas Griffin Esquire, judging by the strangehold Paul Ray alleges the BNP exacts over the EDL (via Chris Renton), such a damning stake through the heart is unlikely, however merely considering the possibility of the EDL leadership making regular phone calls to Pinkham and Heaton, makes the mind boggle, and adds an extra dimension to the understanding of what the EDL has become, and where it is aiming to go.

Let's hope these alarming allegations can be investigated further, rather than being swept under the carpet, as usually happens in far right circles.

Truth Seeker via Indymedia London

Muslim, but not guilty

I am not a criminal, nor am I likely to commit a criminal act in my lifetime. I am not a terrorist, nor do I support people who commit or incite others to carry out acts of mass murder. I am as likely to die in a terrorist attack as you are. There is no reason for me not be vigilant.

But these facts do not convince people who believe that, unless I speak out against terrorists, that I am also one of the bad guys. Condemnations from the Muslim Council of Britain, the British Muslim Initiative, the Ramadan Foundation and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee make me realise that the only way to distance myself from terrorists is by vocalising my contempt for those who want to kill us. Being a law-abiding, tax-paying and gainfully employed citizen does me no favours.

As a Muslim, I have to prove I am human and that I object to people blowing themselves up, murdering others and creating a climate of fear. Why would my reaction be different to anyone else's? Here's why: Islam connects me to the terror suspects. A religion is all we share but this link is enough to make my friends, my family and me guilty, as if we are somehow to blame for what is happening in Britain, that we should have seen it coming, that we could be doing more to help the police and the intelligence services.

Why should I bear responsibility for the actions and intentions of people I have never met? Two years on from 7/7 and Muslims are still held accountable for the actions of terrorists and the only way to remove this suspicion is to state the bleeding obvious. Condemnation does not change al-Qaida's plans, nor does it protect us from attacks, but it reassures people that all Muslims are not evil. There is an inevitable race that follows counter-terrorist operations: which Muslim organisation will be first to deplore the atrocities. Such kowtowing only confirms that we have something to hide and that we should apologise for being Muslim.

Comment is free

From race riots to civil war: What is the BNP preparing for?

“Welcome to Oldham, the front line of the race war,” a BNP officer told a party rally a few weeks before rioting broke out in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in summer 2001. After the riots the cover of BNP’s magazine Identity sported a map of Britain with flames indicating towns where BNP-instigated race riots had already taken place and those where the BNP was still working on it.

Since those days there has been a growing belief that the BNP was working to a secret agenda as well as its public one. Even party members are concerned at the build-up of the BNP’s private army of security guards and the large sums of money spent on their training.

After the European elections in 2004 when the BNP got 800,000 votes but no MEPs, Nick Griffin said that the party might have to consider alternatives to the ballot box. At the time this attracted no more than a ripple of interest. Clearly the BNP leader was harking back to his days running the National Front Political Soldiers faction, when he was happy to rub shoulders with extremists including terrorists of many political hues.

More recent developments add to the evidence about where the BNP might be heading if it fails to make any real breakthrough at the ballot box.

Last autumn the BNP organised its first clay pigeon shoot in Yorkshire, attended by Griffin and BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook as a fundraising and social event but also to build up a core of party members who know how to handle guns.

Then Matthew Single, a regular BNP election candidate in Essex, boasted to the local press that he had been promoted to third in Griffin’s personal security detail and claimed that he had undergone “intensive training”. He has also started training BNP activists in “anti-hijack evasive driving”. Single has twice escaped justice in the courts and was in hot water over a false entry on his election papers last May.

And last month Griffin made an interesting remark as an aside in his blog about his speaking tour of East Anglia, writing: “During the English Civil War (in due course, it will of course have to be called the First English Civil War, in order to differentiate it from the one to come) …”. Was it Griffin who inspired Robert Cottage to stockpile explosives for what he told Manchester Crown Court in February were preparation for the coming race war?

Finally, why has the BNP stated that it is especially keen to recruit serving and recently retired police and army officers?

Searchlight

The BNP: liars,terrorists, thieves and thugs

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A pdf file of the poster (50k) can be downloaded from here.