I am sure readers have read the many accounts of innocent individuals scooped up by questionable security services and dumped in Gitmo, but this account is even more troubling, Salon reports:

“Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret. ”

Part three is disturbing:

“Chess is a game of strategy, art, and mathematics. It takes deep thinking, and there is no luck involved. You get rewarded or punished for your actions, your moves. [ ? ? ? ? ?] brought me a chessboard so I could play against myself. When the guards noticed my chessboard, they wanted to play me. When they started to play me, they always won. The strongest among the guards was [ ? ? ? ? ?]. He taught me how to control the center. Moreover, [ ? ? ? ? ?] brought me some literature, which helped decidedly in honing my skills. After that the guards had no chance to defeat me.
…
“Now you understand how chess must be played,” he commented. I knew [ ? ? ? ? ?] had issues dealing with defeat, thus I didn’t enjoy playing him because I didn’t feel comfortable practicing my newly acquired knowledge. [ ? ? ? ? ?] believes there are two kinds of people, white Americans and the rest of the world. White Americans are smart and better than anybody. I always tried to explain things to him by saying, for instance, “If I were you … or … If you were me,” but he got angry and said, “Don’t you ever dare compare me with you or compare any American with you.” I was shocked then, but I did as he said. After all, I didn’t have to compare myself with anybody. [ ? ? ? ? ?] hates the rest of the world, especially the Arabs, Jews, French, Cubans, and others. The only other country he mentioned positively was England.

After one game of chess with him, he flipped the board.

“Fuck your nigger chess, this is Jewish chess!” he said.

“Do you have something against black people?” I asked.

“Nigger’s not black, nigger means stupid,” he argued.

We had discussions like that, but we had only one black guard who had no say, and when he worked with [ ? ? ? ? ?] they never interacted. [ ? ? ? ? ?] resented him. [ ? ? ? ? ?] has a very strong personality, dominant, authoritarian, patriarchal, and arrogant. “

Guantánamo Bay must be closed.

If you ever wanted to understand bigotry in Britain then this UKIP poster from South Shields is a fine example.

It sums them up nicely, scaring people and putting out a simple xenophobic message.

Logan Smith wrote an intelligent piece on casual comments and racism.  I think it has a wider application in society and in particular relationship to UKIP:

“It’s that the people I retweet – the vast majority of which appear to be teenagers – genuinely don’t understand whether they’re being racist. It’s a generation that never had to grow up during the times of Jim Crow, civil rights marches or apartheid, and has never been confronted by the institutional racism that older generations saw on a daily basis. As a result, many teens seem to think racism simply means active hatred of another race, and not the apparent prejudices and stereotypes displayed by the people I retweet. “

Speaking of prejudice, the BBC’s has not helped itself over the years, when it comes to the Jewish community, according to a recent poll:

“36% – The proportion of Jews who believe BBC news coverage is “heavily” biased against Israel, according to the report

14% – The number who say that the corporation reporting is “balanced” “

Over the years I have watched Jeremy Bowen display an unsophisticated vista of the Middle East, so I am surprised the 14% figure is that high.

The full report is here, Jews and the News: News consumption habits and opinions of Jews in Britain. Some 79% of those sampled replied they felt the BBC is biased against Israel. That is a lot, for one community to perceive the BBC’s way of reporting the news.

A reminder of where such prejudice leads, murder in Eltham.

Finally, Doreen Lawrence’s words.

Update 1: A reminder of Richard Dawkins’ stupid words from 2007:

“”When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous, I am told – religious Jews anyway – than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.”

Such views are common on the Far and Extreme Right. This essay explains the antecedents of such beliefs, What are “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? I do wish that Professor Dawkins would educate himself on these issues and not assume he knows everything.

Update 2: Any Richard Dawkins’ supporters who can not see the possible racist connotations here should examine the evidence and come to some reasoned conclusion.

• Firstly, bring up Google
• Next, enter the term “Jewish lobby” in quotes into Google and click on search
• Thirdly, slowly go through the sites provided and notice about the sixth to eight ones down are from the IHR
• Fourthly, research the IHR, major suppliers of Holocaust denial material, and ponder why, they of all people would hold such views
• Fifthly, if that does not convince then you put “Jewish lobby” david duke in Google and read his foul material

Finally, try and work out why neo-Nazis would proffer such views?

Update 3: Apparently, UKIP banned extremists from its ranks, good first start but did not seem to inform its lay officials, Stand for Peace explains:

“Evidence has emerged that a senior UKIP figure, the Chairman of UKIP Hillingdon, Cliff Dixon has links to the English Defence League (EDL), a far-Right group with a long history of attacking Muslims.

Dixon, formerly involved with the English Democrats party, boasted on his blog, in 2011, that he has ”joined my friends from March for England to tag along on the EDL Tower Hamlets demonstration.”

Colin Cortbus, a Stand for Peace fellow, notes: “If Mr Dixon thinks extremists should get off our streets, perhaps he should lead by example.”

Mr Dixon’s blog also records his attendance at a number of nationalist marches, mainly through the relatively small ‘March for England’ group. One event was co-organised by the British Patriots Society, which is described by anti-extremism campaign Hope not Hate as “a tiny splinter of the English Defence League”.

One photo shows Dixon posing with EDL leader Kevin Carol and other EDL and BNP figures.”

Q:Can any of my readers suggest why UKIPers might be found associating with the neofascists in the English Defence League?

A reminder of how EDL supporters conduct themselves. HOPE Not Hate has more on another EDL member:

“A former organiser for the English Defence League has been jailed for five years after being found guilty of firearm offences.

Police discovered a Webley pistol, ammunition, CS gas and amphetamines following a raid on the house of Paul Duffy in Washington, Tyne and Wear.

Prosecution told Newcastle Crown Court that the gun, which had been manufactured in Italy and adapted in the UK, was tested by experts who confirmed it had “lethal potential.”

The bullets were also live and capable of firing.

Paul Duffy, 47, told police he was looking after the gun in order for a drug debt to be paid off.

Duffy admitted possessing a prohibited firearm, live rounds of ammunition, a prohibited weapon and a small amount of amphetamine.

Judge Brian Forster told him: “Anyone who has in their possession a prohibited firearm commits a very serious offence.

“Parliament has decided that judges must impose a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment in such cases and the reason is clear.

“There must be a deterrent sentence to ensure that people do not take such weapons into their possession.

“Weapons such as this are usually carried in offences of robbery.

“While they are carried there is a real risk of death or serious injury to those who may be the victims of such crime.”

Paul Duffy, a convicted Heroin dealer, along with his younger brother Peter ran the North East region for the EDL until a violent split saw the two brothers breakaway and form the North East Infidels. “

His dignified and measured interview on Channel 4 is one man’s summation of Thatcherism, which speaks to us all.

They are mostly vanity projects, but may as with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s or JFK’s libraries be of wider significance and they do fall under the supervision of the NARA.

Whilst the American tax system encourages philanthropic gestures from the excessively wealthy to help create and maintain such libraries, that is not true in Britain.

That is part of the reason why I can not see it coming off, at least in the short term. There is a significant reluctance amongst the obscenely rich in Britain to put their hand in their own pockets for the benefit of others.

We are going to witness this next week, as Margaret Thatcher’s funeral will be paid for, mostly, by the State, which is extraordinary.

Not for nearly 50 years taxpayers have had to pay for an ex-Prime Minister’s burial and then only for the exceptional Winston Churchill, when he died in 1965. Even the matchless Clement Attlee, creator of the NHS along with Nye Bevan, had private funerals, which their families paid for.

It is more probable that any Thatcher Memorial library be sponsored or maintain, in part, by Her Majesty’s Government, directly or indirectly. Those who made a packet out of Thatcher’s misrule, bankers, speculators and spivs would only begrudgingly part with money if they can share in some of the reflected glory.

Even if it gets built, with private money and no state sponsorship, then how would it continue running? Who would bear the costs?

Certainly, Thatcher’s estate rumoured to be worth in excess of £60 million could afford it, but her mean spirited offspring are unlikely to give up any significant funds. And if it could be built, money found to keep it going, what would it contain?

Some tawdry copies of the Daily Mail? Or perhaps the knife, which the Tories plunged into Thatcher’s back in 1991, causing her resignation, would be made a prime exhibit?

All in all, it is a terrible idea, based on questionable assumptions, for a political philosophy more accustomed to closinglibraries than opening them.

Update 1: Apparently, the political comedian behind the Thatcher Memorial library is Donal Blaney. He’s a questionable individual, only too willing to make excuses for the fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet. This link to Tory HQ shows the political pathology at the heart of British conservative thinking, the relativising of Pinochet’s atrocious regime.

Update 2: The Beeb seems to approve of this idea, or at least that is the tone of this news piece.

Thatcherism changed all of that.

Two of its key aims were to sell off the family silver and enrich its supporters, so it was with Major’s breakup of the railways.

The net result is a poorer, accident prone railway system which rewards management failure and pays individual workers a pittance.

More examples of this Thatherite attitude has been seen recently:

“Network Rail has paid out £630,000 to four of its executive directors as a portion of their long-term incentive plan (L-tip) to reflect the organisation’s performance in the period 2009-12.
…
However, Network Rail’s remuneration committee decided to reduce the award by 20% to take into account specific safety and train performance issues.
…
Patrick Butcher, finance director, was awarded £168,000, while Robin Gisby, managing director of network operations and Simon Kirby, managing director of infrastructure projects, were awarded £158,000, and Paul Plummer, group strategy director was awarded £148,000. Chief executive David Higgins did not qualify because he was not with the organisation in 2009.”

In July 2012 even the Torygraph was moved to comment:

“The taxpayer-backed company is once again at the centre of a political row, after it put forward plans to pay five directors an extra £2.6 million under two new schemes.
…
Under the proposals, three directors at the company will get payments of £300,000 each in 2014 just for turning up to work for the next two years.”

It pointed out the dismal record of Network Rail’s management:

“Two months later, the operator was fined £4 million over the Grayrigg rail disaster that killed one person and seriously injured 28 others.

Within the last two years, Network Rail has also been fined £1 million over the deaths of two school girls at a level crossing in 2005 and £3 million over the Potters Bar crash in 2002 that left seven dead.

The company is also under pressure over its punctuality, leaving it in danger of a £42 million fine. It has a target of running 92 per cent of trains on time – or less than ten minutes late.

At the moment, it is only providing 89.2 per cent of services within these limits, risking a £1.5 million fine for each 0.1 per cent below the target. “

In the wake of bonuses for Network Rail senior management, the company was fined for penny pinching which led to a preventable death:

“During the trial, the jury was told Network Rail had failed to install an automatic barrier locking system at the site, when improvements were made in 2009, due to its expense.

The court heard the equipment would have cost an extra £40,000, although the firm said the true cost could be 10 times as much.

Prosecutors said Maund had raised the barriers after mistakenly thinking the Manchester Piccadilly to Milford Haven passenger service had already passed.”

Fined some £450,000 yet the management was rewarded. Thatcherism in action.

But now on reflection I am not sure I could do the same. That is not to say I do not loathe every facet of Thatcher’s governments, but I feel we should avoid overly simplifying our reactions to her demise.

I think it is necessary to separate out the person from the politics and the wider consequences.

Consequences

Looking at the latter first. It is hard to describe to contemporary generations what Britain was like some 40 years ago. Not only in terms of lack of technology, variation or the comparatively insular nature of society back then. Whole books have been written on the political, economic and social legacy of Thatcherism, instead I would sum those changes up in two words, privatisation and profit.

When you look at fragmented British society with its extremes of wealth and poverty that is a legacy of Thatcherism. Where other European countries have public utilities running public services Britain has a range of private monopolies, which yearly attack people’s pockets. Other countries have joined up transport and infrastructure, Britain has Thatcher’s legacy.

Nevertheless, she cannot take all of the blame, numerous politicians, some even found in public life today (Michael Portillo is but one example) were key advocates of Thatcher’s myopic policies back then.

The politics

Thatcherism has had a profound political influence in Britain, all major political parties eventually succumb to its ideas, one way or the other. The notion that the market could fix everything, or nearly everything, has been adopted by both Conservative and Labour Party. Tony Blair, was obviously from the outset an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, brought those maligned policies into the Labour Party. This can be seen by the fool hardly and dangerous changes to the NHS over the past 16 years.

But the adoption of manic pro-market politics cannot be blamed solely on Thatcher. While she was a vehicle and obvious face of those wretched ideas, others chose to pick up the policies and articulate them, with the resultant mess that we see in Britain today: scarcely any manufacturing, poor public services, poorer infrastructure and a seriously divided society

The person

Margaret Thatcher was a singularly clever individual, who crawled her way to the top of the Conservative Party. When they had no use for her she was stabbed in the back and thrown aside.

If newspaper reports are to be believed, she suffered numerous ailments, the loss of a husband and serious dementia which is punishment enough for one person

But the other individuals, who articulated or benefited from her policies, have greater culpability.

Thatcher alone was not to blame for Britain’s adoption of vicious pro-market attitudes. Thatcher alone was not to blame for profiteering. Thatcher cannot be blamed, solely, for a financial sector, which is a law unto itself. She, alone, cannot be blamed for the lifelong misery, unemployment and destitution which resulted from her and subsequent governments’ policies.

Many, many others are to blame, as well.

She died as a sad, confused individual. A failure.

More is the pity that the pro-market nonsense she articulated can not be buried at the same time.

Update 1: The Guardian letter’s page provides a fair selection of views on Thatcher’s legacy. Dr J Frank Walsh is probably the wisest, although Martin Pugh is a close second.

Update 2: This is worth reading, Inequality before and after Thatcher: what really happened.

Update 3: Russell Brand has some surprisingly good observations:

“The blunt, pathetic reality is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear.” What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neoliberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn funeral are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate. “

Update 4: Channel 4′s FactCheck: the Thatcher myths.

Update 5: MPs get to claim for eulogising, or something like that!

Update 6: Roy Hattersley is far too polite, but makes a fair point on compassion and Tories.

Update 7: One of the best compilations thus far, 42 reasons why Margaret Thatcher will not be fondly remembered.

Update 8: Thatcher was said to be very friendly with Jimmy Savile, who spent much time at Chequers with her.

Update 9: Glenda Jackson is magnificent:

““But by far the most dramatic and heinous demonstration of Thatcherism was certainly not only in London, but across the whole country in metropolitan areas, where every single shop doorway, every single night, became the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom for the homeless.

“They grew in their thousands. And many of those homeless people had been thrown out onto the streets from the closure of the long-term mental hospitals.

“We were told it was going to be called Care in the Community. What in effect it was was no care at all in the community.

“I was interested to hear about Baroness Thatcher’s willingness to invite those who have nowhere to go for Christmas. It’s a pity she did not start building more and more social houses after she entered into the right to buy, so perhaps there would have been fewer homeless people than there were.

“As a friend of mine said, during her era London became a city Hogarth would have recognise. And indeed he would. “

Update 10: Giles Fraser points out the consequences of Thatcher’s deliberate policies:

“The financial crash of 2008 was largely her doing. In deregulating the stock exchange, tearing down the regulatory checks and balances that kept the City in check, and by encouraging a “greed is good” mentality, she sowed the seeds of a terrible hubris that reached its nemesis as banks had to be part-nationalised in order to be saved. How ironic. “

Update 11: Huff Post on MPs’ allowances and Thatcher.

Update 12: Who can forget Thatcher and the fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet? They had a strong friendship.

Update 13: This clip from Glenda Jackson is marvellous:

Update 14: The National Archive released papers, albeit censored, on Savile and Thatcher’s close relationship:

“The 21-page dossier released under the 30-year rule by the National Archives shows Savile’s extraordinary access to the highest echelons of British society, chronicling lunches and personal letters between Mrs Thatcher and the DJ in the 1980s.

They show how Savile curried favour in political circles and was granted invitations to Chequers with the then Prime Minister. Savile, who was invited on the basis of his fundraising for Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, where it has subsequently been suggested he also carried out abuse, wrote a letter of effusive thanks to Mrs Thatcher after one lunch in 1981. Written on headed notepaper featuring a picture of himself and advertising a charity run completed two years earlier, Savile wrote: “My girl patients pretended to be madly jealous and wanted to know what you wore and what you ate. All the paralysed lads called me ‘Sir James’ all week. They all love you. Me too!!” “

Update 15: This has a certain grim humour, Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral: Her 9 Friends Who Sadly Won’t Be Able To Make It.

Update 16: Apparently, Thatcher has inspired one aspect of popular culture. The song ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ has almost reached number 1, or so the Indy reports:

“Lady Thatcher’s death could propel The Wizard Of Oz track “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead to the top of the charts.

Those who saw her death as a cause for celebration have prompted a download surge for the track.

Within 48 hours of the former Prime Minister’s death, the song has entered the official UK chart at number 10.

It is expected to climb higher as a result of a Facebook campaign being set up to encourage sales.

The Facebook group, encouraging people to download the “Witch” song to get it to number one, already had 664 members and was originally set up back in July 2007.

The BBC said it would decide whether to play Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead during Radio 1′s top 40 countdown when places are finalised this weekend.”

Update 17: New Yorker’s Neruda, Pinochet, And The Iron Lady is interesting:

“In 1980, the year after Thatcher took office, she lifted the arms embargo against Pinochet; he was soon buying armaments from the United Kingdom. In 1982, during Britain’s Falklands War against Argentina, Pinochet helped Thatcher’s government with intelligence on Argentina. Thereafter, the relationship became downright cozy, so much so that the Pinochets and his family began making an annual private pilgrimage to London. During those visits, they and the Thatchers got together for meals and drams of whiskey. In 1998, when I was writing a Profile of Pinochet for The New Yorker, Pinochet’s daughter Lucia described Mrs. Thatcher in reverential terms, but confided that the Prime Minister’s husband, Dennis Thatcher, was something of an embarrassment, and habitually got drunk at their get-togethers. The last time I met with Pinochet himself in London, in October, 1998, he told me he was about to call “La Señora” Thatcher in the hopes she could find time to meet him for tea. A couple of weeks later, Pinochet, still in London, found himself under arrest, on the orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. During Pinochet’s prolonged quasi-detention thereafter, in a comfortable home in the London suburb of Virginia Water, Thatcher showed her solidarity by visiting him. There, and in front of the television cameras, she expressed her sense of Britain’s debt to his regime: “I know how much we owe to you”—for “your help during the Falklands campaign.” She also said, “It was you who brought democracy to Chile. “

Update 18: Mehdi Hasan asks the question,Was Thatcher a ‘Champion of Freedom and Democracy’? Don’t. Be. Silly:

“Forget the row over who gets credit for the fall of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev or Reagan and Thatcher. If (wo)man is judged by the company (s)he keeps, then Thatcher – self-professed friend to generals Pinochet, Suharto and Zia, ally of Saddam Hussein, admirer of the Saudi royals, soft on apartheid - must be judged a champion of despotism and dictatorship, not of freedom or liberty. The historical record is so clear and indisputable that to believe otherwise is wilful blindness. “

Update 19: Hansard has Glenda Jackson’s speech. Her summing up of Thatcherism as  essentially “selfishness [and] sharp elbows” is something which can not be said often enough:

“In coming to the basis of Thatcherism, I come to the spiritual part of what I regard as the desperately wrong track down which Thatcherism took this country. We were told that everything I had been taught to regard as a vice—and I still regard them as vices—was, in fact, under Thatcherism, a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees, all these were the way forward. We have heard much, and will continue to hear over next week, about the barriers that were broken down by Thatcherism, the establishment that was destroyed.”

Update 20: Mike Sivier’s post is simply superb and his graphics deserves a wider audience:

Update 21: Left Foot Forward reminds us, Thatcherism saw child poverty grow by 121 per cent.

Update 22: Bonnie Greer makes an intelligent and critical comment on Thatcherism that most of us had missed:

“The irony of it all is that Thatcherism was among the forces -not solely – that destroyed the theatre that trained Glenda. In her day it was possible to get a grant to attend RADA, for example. Grants for higher education are now gone. This is affecting one of the industries that Britain is without equal in the world. The majority of the great British actors/actresses from the recent past and now trained or were educated in the subsidized sector. Now that this is largely gone…”

Update 23: Iain Macwhirter looks at Scotland and Thatcher:

“No prime minister in history, Labour or Conservative, has generated so such hostility for so long from so many in Scotland. Almost from the moment that Thatcher entered N0 10 in 1979, the Scottish Tories went into a tailspin from which they never recovered. They were wiped out in the 1997 general election and to this day there is still only one Scottish Tory MP in the whole of Scotland, the moleish David Mundell. Had it not been for the proportionately elected Scottish Parliament – which the Tories, naturally, opposed – Scottish Conservatism might have disappeared altogether, along with the Communist Party and the old Scottish Progressives. And it was all down to Margaret Thatcher’s unique political personality.
…
Thatcher was a sincere Unionist who thought she understood the Scots, and that they would eventually come round. Her enduring legacy, however, may be the disintegration of the British state she loved. “

Update 24: Sturdy Alex is precise:

“Saying she was the greatest ever Prime Minister, is not a personal eulogy. It is a political comment on the course of action she pursued while in post. It is not disrespectful to point out that not everyone feels this way. That the parking of millions on sick benefit was a cruel act, the consequences of which reverberate in today’s welfare debate. That the decimation of entire mining communities is directly related to the current discussion of “problem families that have not worked for [insert dramatic number] generations”. That her claim of turning the City into “the financiers of the world” has a direct impact on the magnitude of the 2008 financial crisis with which we still struggle. That her selling off of utility companies gave birth to current discontent about energy companies profiteering and fuel poverty. That her imposition of the poll tax on Scotland a year earlier than the rest of the UK revitalised today’s appetite for an independence referendum. That her attitude to Europe set the deeply adversarial tone with which every subsequent administration has had to contend. That the sinking of the Belgrano was seen by much of the rest of the world as needless loss of life, rather than patriotic act of defiance, and the hostility it engendered is one of the obstacles to forming close trade relations with the developing economies of Latin America.”

Read it all here.

Update 25: The FT revealed how the Tories fiddled the figures during Thatcher’s premiership:

“Geoffrey Howe proposed massaging unemployment figures to keep the figure below 3m as jobless levels grew to almost three times that of the Winter of Discontent two years earlier.

In a series of exchanges with Margaret Thatcher, Mr Howe, then chancellor, proposed 2.9m as the unemployment forecast for 1982-3, while admitting the Treasury’s actual figures suggested it would be 3.1m-3.2m.

“Obviously we should prefer to avoid publishing … a figure of over 3m,” he said, adding that 2.9m was the lowest figure they could publish and still remain “credible”.

He exercised similar creativity with the inflation forecast, proposing 10 per cent, even though that was “at the bottom end” of the Treasury’s internal forecasts. “

Update 26: The Ballots and Bullets blog has a large selection of Margaret Thatcher related material.

Update 27: Mark Steel is funny and to the point:

“Before long came the complaints, such as Tony Blair saying: “Even if you disagree with someone very strongly, at the moment of their passing you should show some respect.” Presumably then, when Bin Laden was killed, Blair’s statement was: “Although I didn’t agree with Osama’s policies, he was a conviction terrorist, a colourful character whose short films were not only fun but educational as well. He will be sadly missed.”

The disrespect was inevitable, as millions were opposed to her not because they disagreed with her, but because she’d helped to ruin their lives. If someone robs your house, you don’t say: “I disagreed with the burglar’s policy, of tying me to a chair with gaffer tape and stripping the place bare, even taking the pickled onions, which I consider to be divisive. But I did admire his convictions.” “

Update 28: A reminder of Thatcherite nepotism:

“His departure in 1984 followed the first of what were to be many scrapes. A career as a would-be rally driver ended when he got lost in the Sahara desert, and had to be rescued at considerable expense. Then, following a political scandal, it was decided by the then prime minister’s PR advisers that Mark would do well to leave the country.

He had been exposed by the Observer for trading on his mother’s name in the Middle East, over a contract to build a £300m university in Oman. A company controlled by construction magnate Victor Matthews employed Mark Thatcher as a secret consultant, who would get a large commission if the firm landed the contract. He travelled to the British client state of Oman to join his mother, who was on an official mission there. She strenuously lobbied the sultan to award a building contract to her son’s firm, Cementation Ltd.

Her behaviour caused such concern to diplomats that it leaked back in London. In the ensuing political uproar, Mrs Thatcher was unable to deny that she had been well aware of the way her son stood to gain from her conflict of interest. She beat down opposition, however, by claiming she was “batting for Britain”. “

Update 29: Colin Fitzpatrick recalls Thatcherism:

“In the early part of Thatcher’s reign I worked in the engineering industry on Merseyside, the jobs disappeared, I left engineering but was a fish out of water for 20 years. One evening in Liverpool I witnessed a sight that will be with me to my dying day. Miners came knocking on the doors of the people of Huyton, a place in the outskirts of the City of Liverpool. Proud working men, gaunt with hunger and with their families and communities being starved out in Thatcher’s “Great Britain” were forced to knock on the doors of strangers for food. At that moment I knew I’d never even consider voting for a party that inflicted such misery on human beings and almost 30 years later their faces remain indelibly etched on the minds of those that helped. Thatcher left the North of England and Scotland to managed decline, her policies were divisive and she created conflict at home and in Ireland with bombing after bombing. Her own kind couldn’t wait to get rid of her yet they now fall over themselves in fake admiration; we all know what she was. “

That’s not me saying it, he boasted about it.

Di Canio even praised Mussolini.

So it’s all the more surprising that senior management in Sunderland football club can’t find the links to Di Canio’s own words and verify them for themselves.

However, as a public service, I will help those incapable or unwilling to see the bleeding obvious.

Carl Packman tackles the issue of Italian fascism and racism straight on, Can you be a fascist, Paolo Di Canio, without being a racist?

Bonnie Greer is succinct, Stupidity and Anti-Semitism, Thy Name Is Legion.

Even the right-wing Torygraph, for once, can spot this fascist:

“Di Canio, though a wonderfully gifted former footballer, is a fascist. That’s not a slur or a smear, but a statement of fact. “I’m a fascist, not a racist,” is how the new Duce of the North East describes himself.

He has a tattoo with DVX on his shoulder, the symbol of the former Italian dictator. In his autobiography he wrote “I think he [Mussolini] was a deeply misunderstood individual. He deceived people. His actions were often vile. But all this was motivated by a higher purpose. He was basically a very principled individual.”

And in 2005 he was banned for giving a straight-arm fascist salute to Lazio fans after scoring in his side’s 3-1 win over bitter rivals Roma.

Alessandra Mussolini, the former dictator’s granddaughter, praised Di Canio, saying “How nice that Roman salute was. It delighted me so much … I shall write him a thank-you note.”

Paolo di Canio is obviously a complex character. From what I’ve read about him, his attraction to fascism is as much historical as it is political.

In an in-depth article for the Independent in 2011, an associate of Di Canio’s is quoted as saying “Paolo is not, and has never been, a bad person, or an ideological fascist. Certain things he has said and done – like the salute with the Lazio fans – have to do with his psychological history, particularly his former compulsive tendencies and pronounced mood swings.”

All of which may be true. But he’s a fascist all the same.”[My emphasis.]

In the Guardian, Matthew Goodwin provides a slightly more academic approach:

“In their quest to avoid relegation from the Premier League, Sunderland Association Football Club have appointed a self-declared fascist as manager. By hiring Paolo Di Canio, the Sunderland board appears to have thrown its club (and by extension the whole English game ) back to an era in which the dividing line between extremism and football was far from clear.

It would be surprising if Sunderland tried to claim political naivety, as Di Canio’s statements of political belief are on record. These include a number of public fascist salutes, which in several European countries would earn him a lifetime bans from the sport. There is Di Canio’s description of Benito Mussolini as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” who was “deeply misunderstood”. And in case of any lingering doubt, there is also the ‘Dux’ tattoo on Di Canio’s arm, a reference to the dictator’s epithet, Il Duce. “

Eurosport via Yahoo, Premier League – ‘I’m a fascist, not a racist’: Di Canio in quotes. All the more damning.

A rather weak, Paolo Di Canio told to clarify political beliefs after Sunderland appointment. I think we are past that by now.

BBC News reports, Paolo Di Canio refuses to answer fascism questions.

Finally, if you are in any doubt, ask what the tattoo on Di Canio’s back stands for.

Update 1: There is a false idea doing the rounds that Di Canio’s been misquoted, presumably he’s been misphotographed too? Doing the fascist salute!

Update 2: Graham Spiers puts a favourable case for Di Canio but notes:

“Sunderland’s blundering attempts to smooth over their decision to appoint Di Canio has been a side-show in itself. Did no-one actually brief Margaret Byrne, the club’s chief executive, on the Di Canio back-story, as she issued statements which were either contradictory or senseless?

“To accuse him [Di Canio] now, as some have done, of being a racist or of having fascist sympathies, is insulting both to him and to the integrity of this football club,” proclaimed Byrne.

Eh, Margaret…it is Di Canio himself who said: “I am a fascist.” And so far – though this might come – the Italian has yet to make any clear statement renouncing these views.

Some are trying to claim that this controversy is a contrivance – that when Di Canio was at Swindon Town for 22 months all this seemed to matter not a jot.

This is no counter-argument at all. This is how the world works: out of sight, out of mind. By definition, the higher profile a personality gains, the more his or her character will be exposed to scrutiny. “

Update 3: James Bloodworth at LeftFootForward, Paolo Di Canio: “a fascist but not a racist”. That’s ok then.

Update 4: Dave Trifunov has produced an informative Storify story: Sunderland hires Di Canio, Twitter reacts.

Update 5: Regrettably, Trifunov’s piece for the Global Post doesn’t mention that Di Canio’s propensity to give the fascism salute was not limited to a single football match, as the above photos show.

“…[Henry Sherlock] had been “bullied and harassed” by Atos Healthcare, the French firm slammed for carrying out the humiliating eligibility tests for the Department for Work and Pensions.
…
Henry worked for the DWP for 18 years until he was forced to retire on medical grounds eight years ago. He lost his sight after suffering meningitis and also has chronic heart disease, diabetes and depression. He said: “I found it such a shock being on the other side of the fence.

“Being a claimant, you are treated with total disrespect.

More begging is what the Tories want:

“When I worked for the DWP it was the case that the client came first and they were given the best support possible but now all they are interested in is cutting costs. “

MSPs were told how a blind former health worker, Henry Sherlock, was reduced to begging after being interviewed and reassessed by the Department of Work and Pensions and Atos Healthcare, the private firm paid to carry out fit-to-work medical assessments, claiming both of them had “harassed and bullied” him.

He told how he had been threatened with having his benefits stopped after refusing to provide personal information after receiving an unannounced call from Atos one Saturday evening.”

Read what he said.

Brain-damaged amputee fit for work, says Atos:

“An amputee who cannot walk, struggles to talk and is brain damaged has been passed “fit for work” and had his benefits cut under government reforms.

Mark Evans, from Daubhill in Bolton, said his incapacity benefits were cut by £440 a month and has been left with just £220 to pay his monthly rent, bills and food.

The 50-year-old had received incapacity benefits, now known as employment and support allowances, since 1993 when he had a brain tumour. He also had his left leg amputated below the knee in 2004 after contracting deep vein thrombosis. “

Anxiety over Atos fit-for-work test brings on father’s heart attack:

“The controversial assessments by the French IT firm are part of a benefits shake-up by the Con-Dem Government, who are looking to cut billions from the welfare bill.

Former welder Jim, who had worked all his adult life until he suffered a heart attack 18 months ago, said: “It was very clear that I wasn’t 100 per cent.

“I was sweating profusely, my breath was very laboured and I had been confused during the interview.

“I wasn’t able to concentrate on a lot of what they were saying.

“They gave me a glass of water but that was it.

“They were more concerned with asking me questions such as, ‘Can you walk 200m and can you raise your arm up in the air?’”

Jim, of Cambuslang, near Glasgow, added: “I was telling them I was stressed and that I was anxious, and that I didn’t feel like I could go out and work at that moment.”

The very next day, he had a heart attack as he was walking down a street in Glasgow’s west end. “

Cecilia Burns:

“Ms Burns, a mother of two boys, was diagnosed in 2011. After surgery, she underwent months of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and was on the drug Herceptin until her death.

In March 2012, her employment support allowance was reduced by £30 and she was told she was fit to work, even though she was still undergoing treatment. “

Some posters at Liberal Conspiracy indulge in such activities without a moment’s recrimination or actions from the site’s moderators or post’s author.

I am not surprised that racists mount their pathetic hobbyhorses, rather that the non-racists who read that material at Liberal Conspiracy can’t see a problem or are willing to let it go unchallenged. If I were charitable I might conclude that most at Liberal Conspiracy don’t understand racism, and in particular anti-Jewish racism.

Shorter version: maligning Israelis and Jews gives the game away. Particularly if there is a pejorative reference to the “Chosen”, or consciously linking to Rense, a site which proffers conspiracy theories, anti-Jewish racism and approvingly advertises David Duke.

This is not an isolated incident at Liberal Conspiracy as I have covered such poor behaviour before.

Even George Orwell spotted this form of usage in the post war period.

In an under reported topic on the British media, Asiya Islam looks at discrimination faced by Muslims, as seen by five women:

“Sam Ambreen
…
I wrote a piece called ‘White Feminists: Now will you listen?’ and it received a lot of attention. I was stunned to be confronted by a white woman who was offended by the title and said she often fought for the rights of ‘other’ women but felt she ought not bother if that is what we thought of them. She actually wanted gratitude. And some of the feminists I knew actually defended her. Apparently she was a nice person and it was all a big misunderstanding. Also many people make the assumption I’m younger than I am or at least, it feels like they’re talking down to me. She repeatedly used the word girl to refer to me; I’m a 30 year old woman for the record. They think of us as those poor women suffering those savages from that strange place over there. They fail to understand that oppression is the same everywhere, only the methods differ.

In a Twitter conversation about rape, a man randomly jumped into it and, defending another man, said “Before you accuse him of racism, he’s right.” The implication here obviously was that, being an ethnic minority person, I was bound to bring up the ‘race card’ to defend myself. I was not expecting it all and was completely unprovoked. “

The F word on Afghan refugee women in Pakistan is revealing:

“Life for Afghan refugees has not been easy in Pakistan. The UNHCR has found that less than one quarter of them are employed and almost three quarters of children do not attend school. Women refugees are the worst off as a combined result of their gender and refugee status. Becoming a refugee means losing legal and social status and also the traditional community-based structures, which have often protected women. Due to this, refugee women are vulnerable to trauma, sexual violence, deepening poverty and an increased burden of care work. According to an estimate, one-third of Afghan refugee women are widows, yet little is done to address their special needs. Tribal and political leaders also restrict women’s mobility in a new ‘alien’ land, meaning few women are able to go out in search of employment or better opportunities. Women’s voices are missing from policies around the formation and planning of refugee camps despite the fact that women account for seventy-five percent of the refugee population. “

Mark Steel explains modern economic theory, Bankers caused the crash, let’s tax the poor, but in a humorous way:

“It’s an imaginative approach, because less qualified types might imagine the banking crisis may have been caused, in some part, by bankers. But it takes a trained mind to understand that the people who robbed us are the poor. If a government minister stormed into a bank in the middle of an armed robbery, he’d yell: “There are the robbers; those bastards lying on the floor tied up and snivelling that they don’t want to die. And someone help out this man, the poor chap’s trying to carry a sack AND a sawn-off shotgun, he’ll pull a muscle.”

It’s a tricky argument to pull off, that the poor caused the debt so they should pay it back. Maybe that’s why most weeks there are stories in certain newspapers about a woman with 45 kids on benefits, who then bought a giraffe and now that’s on benefits but she said it was cramped so the council has put it up in the Shard, and two of the kids have got Compulsive Potting Disorder so they’ve been given a snooker table but she couldn’t be referee because she’s allergic to white gloves so the mayor has to do it, otherwise he’d be put in jail by Europe. “

April, the cruellest month or how the Tories will screw the poorer, George Eaton explains why.

In Britain, food banks are one of the biggest growth areas, so much so that even the BBC has had to admit the problem:

“In the last 12 months, the number of food parcels issued by Trussell Trust centres overall has reached almost 300,000 – more than double the year before.”

Patrick Butler at the Guardian put it mildly:

“The UK is about to enter an unprecedented period of benefit cuts and, as a result, the state will increasingly direct vulnerable citizens to charity help, whether food banks, breakfast clubs or soup kitchens.”

Just as ASDA and Birmingham council come to a deal, Suzanne Moore stuck home with:

“The further stigmatising of poor people via food stamps, authorised by a cabinet of millionaires, is deeply disturbing If we think this is acceptable, what next? Food-drops out of helicopters over areas of high unemployment?

Elsewhere, the sorry tale of institutional racism in UCU continues:

“In addition, a significant number of UCU members and former members, both Jewish and non-Jewish, provided witness statements supporting Fraser’s complaint of anti-Semitism in the UCU. Almost all were called to give evidence. They told the Tribunal about their own experiences and perceptions of contemporary anti-Semitism in the union, and the union’s indifference to it. Some of those who were former members of the union told the Tribunal that they had resigned from the union because of, and citing, anti-Semitism in the union. Their evidence served to demonstrate the extent of the anti-Semitism within the UCU, and also served to show that Fraser’s subjective perception of anti-Semitic hostile environment harassment was a “reasonable” one, as required by the law, s. 26 Equality Act. “

Finally, Susan Donnelly’s case is replicated across Britain:

“Susan Donnelly dreads April’s welfare reforms, fearing they will leave her impoverished and in despair. Donnelly, 54, from east London, lives with her dog, Charlie, in a two-bedroom bungalow adapted for use by people with a disability. She has emphysema, asthma and is doubly incontinent.
…
“I’m looking down a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. Unless they get rid of Cameron and revoke all of the cuts, I don’t think I’ll see this year out. I can’t afford to put my heating on. I don’t use my oven any more. I’m scared to run up any bills. By 7pm I’m huddled up in bed with my dog. I have a halogen heater in there which goes on at night – I can’t afford to heat the whole house.” “

Update 1: On Saturday there was a range of demonstrations against the bedroom tax, eventually even BBC News covered it, but not on their front page.

A reminder of a Tory scrounger, James Clappison. He owns some 24 houses yet claimed over £100,000 in expenses, even the Torygraph in 2009 was surprised at his cheek.

The Guardian thoughtfully provides a page about Tories with their noses in the trough.

Their coverage is better too:

“Chief executive Leslie Morphy said: “Our poorest households face a bleak April as they struggle to budget for all these cuts coming at once. People are already cutting back on the essentials of food and heating but there is only so much they can do.

“The result will be misery – cold rooms, longer queues at food banks, broken families, missed rent payments and yet more people facing homelessness – devastating for those directly affected, but bad for us all.” “

Inside Housing reports:

“In an email sent earlier this month to councils across England, Communities and Local Government department officials said its expert advisors were to be disbanded from 31 March.

The team of four regional advisors and two rough sleeper and youth specialists have provided councils with expert consultancy guidance on how they should meet their statutory homelessness duties – a service described as ‘valuable’ by council bodies – since 2007.

The decision comes in the wake of a 10 per cent increase in homelessness in the last year, and amid warnings from councils that welfare reforms mean they will struggle to house homeless families in expensive areas, such as London. It also follows the departure of another homelessness special advisor Andy Gale last November.”

Update 2: Iain Duncan Smith enjoys a very comfortable life, according to the Mirror:

“The man behind the controversial bedroom tax lives rent-free in a £2million aristocratic country house… with at least FOUR spare bedrooms.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is a tenant of the landed gentry Fremantle family.

But unlike the 660,000 families in social housing who are being forced to pay an average of £14 a week extra for a spare bedroom, Mr Duncan Smith can live happily knowing he has to pay no rent or mortgage.

The 16th-century Tudor house on a sprawling estate in Buckinghamshire originally had five bedrooms but has had wings added down the centuries.

With a swimming pool, tennis courts and set in acres of countryside, it’s a far-cry from the social housing his bedroom tax victims live in.

It’s also a world away from the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green’s London constituency – and is sure to further enrage the thousands of protesters who marched around Britain against his hated tax yesterday.

But Old Etonian IDS lives free on the estate like a Lord. “

Update 3: Antisemites (and I use that word rather carefully) are drawn to threads on the Middle East, to express their angst and prejudices, so it continues at Liberal Conspiracy:

“101. t fletcher 11:37 pm, April 1, 2013

ALTHOUGH COMMON SENSE AS PREVAILED HERE ,THIS CASE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN HEARD ,IF YOU ATTACK SOMETHING THAT IS EVIL, WHICH ZIONISM AS PROVED ITSELF TO BE MANY TIMES OVER, HOW CAN IT BE WRONG.
IN MANY WAYS THIS WAS JUST LIKE WHAT HAPPENED IN AMERICA , WHEN JEWS OPPOSED THE CHUCK HAGEL NOMINATION.
IT WAS MORE ABOUT JEWS TRYING TO IMPOSE THERE WILL ON FREE SPEECH.
WHERE DO THEY GO, NOW ZIONISM IS NOT CLASSED AS BEING ANTI-SEMITIC, CLAIM THE JUDGES WERE BEING RACIST?”

Still, I imagine that the author of the sneering post (Ben White), wouldn’t understand the antisemitic overtones of the above comment.

Rory Carroll’s narrative gives a subtle favour of Chavez, Venezuela and the reality of life there.

The Miami Herald reviewed his book, which the radio programme is based on:

“In his latest book, Irish journalist Rory Carroll delivers an authoritative account of the complicated legacy of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died this month. In Comandante, Carroll — who served as The Guardian correspondent in Caracas from 2006 until 2012 — describes in minute detail how Chávez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death on March 5, created something unique, “an authoritarian democracy . . . . a hybrid system of personality cult and one-man rule.” Here is Chávez not as a one-dimensional symbol but in all his complexity: The utopian socialist, the voracious reader, the vainglorious militarist, the bad husband, the doting father.

Even as he describes how Chávez empowered poor communities in Venezuela by creating communal councils and building homes for thousands of people who had never known decent shelter, Carroll succinctly outlines how the president squandered the great opportunity for durable development afforded to him by record-high oil prices, failing to diversify the country’s economy.

At the heart of this failure proves to be a desire — above all else — for power.

Chávez had a digital record of the names of three million people who had voted against him in a 2004 recall referendum, which was then used “to purge signatories from the state payroll, to deny jobs, contracts, loans, documents, to harass and punish, to make sectarianism official.” The mastermind behind the list, Luis Tascón, went on to become a strident critic of government corruption and was banished from Chávez’s inner circle before his own death in 2010.

Chávez’s opposition — a diffuse and disorganized group of former military allies, civil libertarians, the country’s besieged middle class and what Chávez would doubtless refer to as the country’s rancid oligarchy — never managed to unseat him. This is perhaps not surprising. They were faced with the cheerleading omnipotence of the ubiquitous state media — the result of Chávez’s war against Venezuela’s virulently hostile private media — and massive slush funds paid for with money siphoned from the state oil company.

Chávez did not ascend to and retain power alone, though, and contained in Carroll’s book are revealing snapshots of those who accompanied the president: The Machiavellian academic-turned-government-official Jorge Giordani; the gruff bus driver who would become foreign minister (and now president) Nicolás Maduro; the slippery former army officer Diosdado Cabello.”

Apparently, Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise will be broadcast on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on 25 March.

Update 1: Who can forget Nye Bevan’s lovely quote on the Tories:

“That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through.

But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.”

I wish the modern Labour Party had remembered that, particularly when it came to workfare.

He didn’t have to write it, but made a concious choice to combat antisemitism. So commendable:

“To claim that your jail sentence for dangerous driving is the result of a Jewish plot is bigoted and stupid. The peer has since been suspended from the Labour Party and forced to stand down as a trustee of the Joseph Interfaith Foundation. I’m not sure how many “Jewish friends” he has left – if, that is, he had any to begin with.

Full disclosure: I know Lord Ahmed and have defended him in the past. In 2007, he flew out to Sudan to help free the schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons from the clutches of the odious Islamist regime in Khartoum. In 2009, an Appeal Court judge noted how the peer had “risked his life trying to flag down other vehicles to stop them colliding with… his car”. He is not a latter-day Goebbels. But herein lies the problem. There are thousands of Lord Ahmeds out there: mild-mannered and well-integrated British Muslims who nevertheless harbour deeply anti-Semitic views.”

I wish others would stand up to anti-Muslim bigotry with the same vigour.

To paraphrase someone else, you can’t combat antisemitism or anti-Muslim attitudes if you are hard on one but not the other.

You can’t be selectively antiracist.

Most of us have thought they were a relic of the past where Kings and despotic rulers locked up dissidents and their opponents, but they are very much alive in the 21st century, as the BBC reports:

“The Zhuzhou Baimalong Labour Camp is an imposing sight, built like a prison.

At the front there’s a giant, curved facade, lined with classical columns, where the main gate stands. Behind it is a sprawling collection of white buildings, some six or seven storeys high, with workshops, vegetable gardens and a parade ground, all surrounded by a high wall and watchtowers.

The camp is just one component in China’s sprawling gulag system, known as “laojiao”. These camps are a throwback to the years just after China’s Communist revolution, and many outside China don’t even know they still exist.

There’s a constant flow of police vehicles and buses in and out of the camp. It’s big enough to hold hundreds of inmates, all sent here to undergo “re-education through labour”. You see them every now and again, in lines, walking from one building to another, performing exercises.

Drifting on the wind you can hear the chants of inmates, undergoing their forced re-education. Just an order from a policeman is enough to have you locked up here for as long as four years.

Tang Hui, a former inmate, guides us closer to the huge camp gate. Her incarceration here last year caused outrage in China.

“It was living nightmare. A real nightmare would have been better. I could have woken up from that,” she says, dissolving into tears.”

The Tories were caught breaking the law, by those dastardly radical High Court judges, but with boundless gall they are now changing that law, to prove they are innocent:

“The Department for Work and Pensions has introduced emergency legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision and “protect the national economy” from a £130m payout to jobseekers deemed to have been unlawfully punished.

The retroactive legislation, published on Thursday evening and expected to be rushed through parliament on Tuesday, will effectively strike down a decision by three senior judges and deny benefit claimants an average payout of between £530 and £570 each.

Last month the court of appeal ruled that science graduate Cait Reilly and fellow complainant and unemployed lorry driver Jamieson Wilson had been unlawfully made to work unpaid for organisations including Poundland because the DWP had not given jobseekers enough legal information about what they were being made to do.

The ruling meant that hundreds of thousands of jobseekers who had been financially penalised for falling foul of half a dozen employment schemes, including the government’s flagship Work Programme, would have been entitled to a full rebate if a final government appeal was rejected by the supreme court.”

Golden Dawn’s growth has galvanised its supporters as Giorgos Katidis showed, openly giving a Nazi salute. I can’t help feeling that the lessons on the grotesque and propulsive nature of fascism never really sunk in, and that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its resurgence.

Finally, it might sound cruel but I feel more politicians should spend time in prison, to better understand the realities of life and meet some of their future constituents. No doubt it would be hard on them, but they would probably write a book and make a small fortune from their, temporary, incarceration.

Still, I wasn’t at all surprised that Chris Hulne and Vicky Pryce were given cushy billets within Her Majesty’s Prison Service.

It is their release that worries me.

They will probably put themselves forward as both experts and victims of the penal system, as Jonathan Aitken did.

A similar point should have been made in the British media when killers deliberately sought out Mumbai’s Chabad House, however, given the peculiar nature of the British press, it wasn’t.

Tell MAMA takes on Richard Dawkins:

“Naturally, Dawkins, his supporters, and the broader movement of self-identified ‘liberal, nice, decent people’ may yet defend themselves as critics of Islam who do not adopt the violent extremist attitudes of EDL members. Many of them may well be decent people though it is important that they realise that their actions may feed into the rhetoric of hate organisations like the EDL.

Sometimes, the language and comments used may well be perceived by Muslims as being identical to groups like the EDL and whilst they are coming from different places, the impact and perceptions on Muslim individuals may be the same – whether from the liberal or political left or whether from the Far Right.

Any form of speech that lumps groups of individuals together and abuses them collectively is unacceptable in a tolerant, diverse, and equal society.

Furthermore, these ‘decent, nice and liberal people’ need to understand that some in society attack Islam to undermine and dehumanise Muslims. Some genuinely believe that by attacking Islam, they are having no impact on the perception of Muslims by others.

It is therefore not a simple issue and saying that hating and attacking Islam does not impact or affect Muslims in our communities is naive.”[My emphasis.]

Spot on.

Having scanned Richard Dawkins’ timeline on Twitter I can see the issues.

It is peppered with questionable argumentation, fields of straw men and a depressingly simplistic approach to the issue of racism. It would take a whole blog post to pick them apart, but his failure to understand that religious identities can be used as a way to attack ethnic minorities is surprising.

Even President Hollande got that point fairly quickly and he is not a professional academic.

Elsewhere, Atos’s callousness knows no bounds, as the Independent reports:

“A Thalidomide victim with a brain tumour who is blind in one eye and has trouble walking is battling against a decision by Atos that she is capable of “work related activity”.

Martine White, 50, is due to appear at a tribunal in which she will appeal against the decision which she fears could force her to take employment or face losing up to half of her benefits.

The mother of four from Burnley, Lancashire, is one of a number of victims of the morning sickness drug which left more than 500 people in Britain with severe birth defects who claim they are being unfairly treated by the Government’s controversial back-to-work assessors.

Mrs White, who has deformed arms and is facing spinal surgery which she fears could put her permanently in a wheelchair, was assessed by Atos and moved from incapacity benefit to the new employment and support allowance last year.

She was placed in the category which deemed she was capable of “work-related activity” which can require attending a “work-related interview” once a month and putting together a CV in order to continue receiving her benefits of £212.70 a fortnight.

Mrs White, whose late husband Michael was also affected by Thalidomide, has twice appealed against her assessment but has now been told to argue her case in front of a judge. “

Konstantinos Georgousis’s film on Channel 4 is a a reminder to never underestimate the boldness, stupidity or vileness of neofacists:

Update 1: The JC has a worrying development:

“Leaders of the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party have announced plans to open nursery schools.

The decision comes after the organisation ran a pilot class at the party’s offices in Artemida last month.

More than 20 children, aged six to 10, were taught “Greek ideals” and mythology in accordance with the ideological values of the third most popular party in Greece.

A spokesperson described the class as a “national awakening” on the party’s official website. Educators across the globe have drawn comparisons to indoctrination methods used by the Nazis. “

We should not underestimate or diminish the extent of anti-Muslim bigotry in Europe.

In Britain, long-standing animosity towards immigrants has been rekindled and focused on Muslims. Police forces and other organisations have been slow to catalogue, detail and deal with this pernicious form of racism.

However, one excellent organisation is MAMA, as they say:

“When reporting an anti-Muslim prejudiced incident to TELL MAMA by SMS, Email or Facebook, please include Your Name, Contact number and Location of the incident. One of our caseworkers will endeavour to contact you within 12 hours. In case of emergency please dial 999.

1. By filling in this form
2. Phone TELL MAMA on 0800 456 1226
3. Text TELL MAMA on 01157070007
4. Email TELL MAMA at info@tellmamauk.org
5. Tweet TELL MAMA @tellmamauk
6. Message TELL MAMA on Facebook at TellMamaUK

Our caseworkers will be able to assist you in a number of ways, including (i) providing a ‘listening ear’, (ii) signposting, (iii) casework and referrals to mainstream partners like Victim Support or Neighbourhood Watch and (iv) working with you to collect evidence that can be used by the police in possible prosecutions. We also have a range of solicitors that provide pro-bono advice that you may be able to access through the project if you have suffered an anti-Muslim incident. “

The report on Anti-Muslim ‘Cultural Racism’ is a must read for those serious about combating racism.

Update 1: Rob Ford takes Trevor Kavanagh to task.

Update 2: Some time ago, Giles Fraser identified the problem of slippage and the comparatively subtle nature of racism in Britain:

“No one actually comes out and directly says “I hate Muslims” – at least, not on the liberal dinner party circuit that was the target of Lady Warsi’s speech. Conversations generally begin with the sort of anxieties that many of us might reasonably share: it cannot be right for women to be denied access to education in some Islamic regimes; the use of the death penalty for apostasy is totally unacceptable; what about the treatment of homosexuals? The conversation then moves on to sharia law or jihad or the burqa, not all of it entirely well informed. Someone places their hands across their face and peers out between their fingers. Another guest giggles slightly. Someone inevitably mentions 9/11. Later, guests travel home on the tube and look nervously at the man in the beard sitting opposite.

The problem Warsi identifies is the problem of slippage. What can begin as a perfectly legitimate conversation about, say, religious belief and human rights, can drift into a licence for observations that in any other circumstance would be regarded as tantamount to racism. Like the 19th-century link between anti-Catholicism and racism towards the Irish, one can easily bleed into the other.”

Update 3: Tell MAMA’s blog asks the question, Problem? What problem? America and Islamophobia.

I looked in at the PSC’s site, to see if they had covered the recent death of Palestinians in Syria, but alas couldn’t find anything. Conceivably, just possibly, something is hidden beneath the mountain of vitriol aimed at Israelis, but I doubt it.

I couldn’t see any genuine concern for Palestinians, outside of the West Bank and Gaza. Even Google couldn’t draw out any articles on the on-going slaughter in Syria from the PSC.

The PSC’s feed on Twitter was barren and bereft of any mention of Syria over the past month.

As Reuters reported a few weeks ago, some 10,000 Syrians have been killed since the start of 2013.

Still, the PSC were probably more interested in organising “Don’t buy from the Jews week” and must have missed what has been going on in Syria.

I think we know where the PSC’s priorities lie, all in all, David Hirsh was too kind to them.

Update 1: Liberal Conspiracy has surprisingly given Matt Hall the chance to put a persuasive argument, Pro-Palestinian activists are wrong to shut down debates by pro-Israelis.

BBC World Service has a marvellous programme on Rosa Parks:

“The programme also features a never before broadcast interview with Rosa Parks in which she tells biographer James Haskins what it was really like during the years of segregation in the Deep South. In this recording she describes her upbringing and the events that led her to become a civil rights activist. She dispels many of the myths that have grown up around her 1955 ‘act of disobedience’, by revealing that she had already been active in fighting against racial injustice for over a decade; and that she believed even as a child that she was the equal of any white person.”

It is available on Iplayer.

A podcast, Docs: Rosa Parks – Quiet Revolutionary 23 Feb 2013, can be downloaded too.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott site is superb.

Lest we forget, Huff Post has photos of the period.