Friday 27 February  2009 
Institutional racism is still alive and thriving in Britain
Letters, Guardian
We believe that Mr Phillips's assertions are wrong and precipitate in their timing, and believe that his public positions on race relations in Britain are so out of step with the day-to-day experiences of our community members as to place his credibility at risk. It is becoming difficult to regard him as having the authority, irrespective of his job title, to adjudicate on these matters or to represent the black British experience.

Racism 'alive and vile' in Metropolitan Police, says Boris Johnson
Adam Fresco, Times
Racism is “alive and vile” in the Metropolitan Police and must be stamped out without allowing it to threaten the fight against crime, Britain’s most senior officer was warned today. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, told Sir Paul Stephenson, the Commissioner of the Met, that “a culture of personal grievance and endless litigation” could end up debilitating the police and weaken their ability to tackle crime.

Pickled Politics has an Internal Memorandum (Talk Islam)
More minorities scanned for ID (BBC News)
Sun pays £30,000 damages to Muslim bus driver accused of fanaticism (Islamophobia Watch)

Sunday 22 February  2009 
An all-too familiar affair
Rahila Gupta, Guardian CiF
The 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Rushdie has been publicly debated by almost the same chorus of voices, now a little older and with some welcome recantations.... Dissenting women's voices are little in evidence although it is women who are the first to feel the chill of religious fundamentalism when their precarious freedoms begin to atrophy. This does not mean that these voices do not exist, just that their position can be inconvenient for the dominant narratives driving the public debate.

The ethics of global branding
Shahnaz Habib, Guardian CiF
Every time I visit India, more and more international brands seem to have set up shop. A few months ago while waiting in my dentist's office, I leafed through the tattered copy of a women's magazine. The inner front cover was graced by the ubiquitous fairness cream advertisement. A flawless pale face smiled at me from inside the front inner cover, promising double perfection – less spots and radiant skin. The product: L'Oreal Paris White Perfect Re-Lighting Whitening Cream.

Straw: Met is 'no longer racist' [but I'm still a snivelling lump of shit] (BBC News Online)

Saturday 21 February  2009 
Revealed: the full extent of Labour's curbs on civil liberties
Michael Savage, Independent
The full extent of state powers to detain people without charge, cover up Government errors, hold the DNA of the innocent and share personal data between public bodies has been revealed in a devastating analysis of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain over the past decade. Almost 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament have whittled away at freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Human Rights Act and Magna Carta, according to a new audit of laws introduced since Labour came to power in 1997.

Galloway seeks inquiry into convoy arrests
Duncan Campbell, Guardian
The Respect MP George Galloway has called for an investigation after police stopped a convoy taking aid, toys and medical supplies to Gaza and arrested nine people under anti-terror laws. All nine men arrested on the M65 near Preston last Friday have been released without charge, but the organisers of the Viva Palestina convoy, which is headed by Galloway, said that aid donations dropped by 80% after news of the arrests.

A tale of two missives
Andrew Brown, Guardian CiF Belief
There is an entertaining row developing on the Fulcrum site which puts one of the most prominent anti-Muslim Christians in Britain in a rather poor light. Patrick Sookhdeo is the author of a 700 page work on Islamism which takes the view that Islam is essentially a violent and intolerant religion. Although he is an evangelical Christian, his views on Islam get him an approving mention in the God Delusion. Less surprisingly, they have made him a popular authority on the American right.

Alarm over rise of BNP (Nigel Morris, Independent)
Muslim schools ban our culture (Islamophobia Watch)

Thursday 19 February  2009 
Rimington is right. This is a recipe for creating terrorists
Seumas Milne, Guardian
I never imagined I would say this, but Stella Rimington is right. The former head of MI5 who made her career running the security service's dirtiest operations in the 1980s, against the miners' union and the IRA, has warned that the government has given terrorists the chance to find "greater justification" by making people feel they "live in fear and under a police state". Naturally, ministers described her remarks as nonsense...  

This religious sect is steeped in racism and hatred
Andrew Horn, Guardian
Your article on Bishop Richard Williamson, like many which have reported on the Lefebvrist Society of Saint Pius X movement, greatly understated its adherents' views. They are the followers of the late French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1906-1991), an antisemitic wartime collaborationist, and founder of the SSPX. At issue is not just monarchism, the Latin Tridentine mass, or even schism within the Catholic church, but the exploitation of religious faith for inhumane social and political policies.

'Everybody knows it doesn't work'
Aida Edemariam, Guardian G2
The breakfast room of the Hôtel Balzac on the Champs-Elysées is slowly filling up with the murmuringly well-heeled when Dambisa Moyo makes her entrance, in an oyster-coloured sheath dress and platform heels half as high as her calves. She is, if not demure, very ladylike; tightly controlled and girlishly friendly - she was at a party here last night so knows most of the people making their way to their €76 breakfasts, and has to keep saying "hello", in her quiet, American-accented voice.

Murder of Aasiya Zubair: American Muslims Call for Swift Action Against Domestic Violence (City of Brass)
Afghanistan: Corruption and incompetence cripple reconstruction effort (Clancy Chassay, Guardian)

Wednesday 18 February  2009 
Abu Qatada has rights too
Victoria Brittain, Guardian CiF
The law lords' decision to uphold the Home Office appeal to deport Mohamed Othman, also known as Abu Qatada, to face a military trial on terrorism charges in Jordan marks a low moment in British justice. The meaningless George Bush phrase "war on terror" may have now been expunged from the official discourse, but, in their different ways, figures as distinguished as the former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, and the former senior law lord Lord Bingham have pointed out this very week, the erosion of civil liberties in Britain under the justification of combating terrorism continues apace.

Hot dates and headscarves
Laura Barton, Guardian G2
Buses roll by outside, the day unfolding in a succession of sirens and shouts, and in her small flat in west London, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is discussing how she came to find her husband. Janmohamed is better known as spirit21, a blogger who has provided a unique perspective on the life of a British Muslim woman over the last three years, addressing issues that range from the political role of Turkey to Jack Straw's comments about women who wear the veil.

Rescue or surrender? Local hero brings sharia law to troubled region
Saeed Shah, Guardian
With his long, flowing white beard and black turban, Sufi Muhammad cut an imposing figure as he walked through the crowds in Mingora town, north-west Pakistan yesterday. Tribesmen and mullahs jostled to be at his side, then raised him aloft. All around, black-and-white flags fluttered - flags of the religious group founded by Muhammad, the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi. The organisation was banned in 2002 after Muhammad led hundreds of young men across the border to fight alongside the Taliban against the US-led coalition.

Labour's cricket test for British Muslims
Inayat Bunglawala, Guardian CiF
So, almost 20 years after Norman Tebbit devised his famous cricket test for immigrants to the UK, we learn that the Labour government is seriously discussing how to set up its own modern version for British Muslims. According to a report in yesterday's edition of the Guardian the government – as part of its Contest 2 counter-terrorism strategy – is considering proposals that would classify British Muslims as being extremists if:

Libraries put Bible on top shelf in a sop to Muslims (Islamophobia Watch)

Tuesday 17 February  2009 
Anti-terror code 'would alienate most Muslims
Vikram Dodd, The Guardian
The government is considering plans that would lead to thousands more British Muslims being branded as extremists, the Guardian has learned. The proposals are in a counterterrorism strategy which ministers and security officials are drawing up that is due to be unveiled next month. Some say the plans would see views held by most Muslims in Britain being classed by the government as extreme.

Lawyers condemn UK over torture in 'war on terror'
Afua Hirsch guardian.co.uk
The United Kingdom is one of a number of countries that has undermined international law and fallen into a "trap set by terrorists", according to a three-year study by senior international jurists released today. The report, by the International Commission of Jurists, expresses "deep concern" over the findings of changes to the legal landscape since September 11 in more than 40 countries including the UK, the US, and countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
[Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees -- Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian]

The talented Mr. Butt
Zahed Amanullah, Alt. Muslim
During the long debate on the use of torture to extract information from prisoners, serious intelligence professionals have argued that torture provides unreliable information, as demonstrated numerous times at Guantanamo, most recently in the Binyam Mohamed case. With the incentive of staving off bodily harm, prisoners have been willing to simply say what their captors have wanted to hear.

Metropolitan Police: We tinkered with the system but the attitudes are the same
Andy Hayman, Times
In February 1999 I was present at a briefing that Sir Paul Condon, then the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was giving to senior officers. You could have heard a pin drop as he told us that the Met was institutionally racist and that we had failed to investigate the murder of Stephen Lawrence properly. There was to be a major overhaul to achieve lasting change. Behind me a cynical colleague whispered: “No chance.” He was shouted down, but who was right: the commissioner or the cynic?

France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court
Lizzy Davies, guardian.co.uk
France's highest court put an end to decades of legal timidity and moral taboo yesterday when it issued a ruling recognising the state's responsibility in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews during the second world war. Citing "mistakes" made by the collaborationist Vichy regime, the council of state said the government's share of blame was clear in acts which had not been forced on it by the occupiers and which "allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of antisemitism".

Scum-watch: More heartlessness over Binyam Mohamed (Obsolete)
Rohingya Muslims and injustice: a security issue? (Islam, Muslims and an Anthropologist)

Julaybib Ayoub would like to apologise for the interruption to Terror coverage during the first part of February 2009.

Saturday 31 January  2009 
Mediators called in as wildcat strikes spread across UK
Robert Booth, Guardian
The government called in mediators from Acas last night in an urgent attempt to end the dispute over the exclusion of British workers from construction contracts which led to a wave of wildcat strikes across the country yesterday. The attempt to halt the protest came as it emerged that hundreds more workers were ready to join the nationwide strike action. Bosses at Sellafield nuclear power plant confirmed that 900 contractors will vote on a walkout on Monday morning...

Nicky Reilly, Muslim convert, jailed for 18 years for Exeter bomb attack
Adam Fresco, Times
A vulnerable Muslim convert who was persuaded by extremists to attempt a suicide bomb attack was jailed for a minimum of 18 years yesterday. Nicky Reilly, 22, who has Asperger’s syndrome and a mental age of 10, was described by his lawyer as the “least cunning” person ever to have been charged with terrorism. He was directed online to build nail bombs, which he tried to set off at the Giraffe restaurant in Exeter in May. After his conviction, counter-terrorism officials said that extremists had taken advantage of his low IQ to groom him.

Travelling Culture (Alternarrative)
Muslim plot against tiny tots – now Nintendo game says 'Islam is the light' (Islamophobia Watch)
The Impossibility of Male Feminism (Alternarrative)

Thursday 29 January  2009 
The PR president
Zahed Amanullah, Alt.Muslim
During the eight year presidency of George W. Bush - and particularly after September 11, 2001 - a new emphasis was made on selling America to the Muslim world. Bush first enlisted advertising executive Charlotte Beers before settling on his trusted friend and advisor Karen Hughes. Both made attempts to emphasize the positive aspects of American society through traditional media - while glossing over the foreign policy elephants in the room.

Muslim Council of Britain boycotts Holocaust day
Hélène Mulholland, Guardian News in Brief
The Muslim Council of Britain boycotted yesterday's national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in protest at the Israeli offensive in Gaza this month. The decision not to send representatives from the umbrella body, which represents 500 Muslim organisations in Britain, was made at an MCB committee meeting last week. The committee overwhelmingly ruled out attendance at events marking the Holocaust due to take place over the next few days, but the decision has not been officially announced. The MCB believes that the memorial day will be used to "silence criticism of Israel".

Understanding Muslim Identity, Rethinking Fundamentalism (new book) (Tabsir)
BBC's help for Israel helps the Palestinians (JSF)
Women from the Global South speak out about Climate Change (The F-Word)

Monday 26 January  2009 
Sick, bewildered and angry
Tony Bayfield, Guardian CiF
I am feeling sick, bewildered and angry this morning. I have just seen confirmation that Pope Benedict XVI has welcomed back into the Roman Catholic church Richard Williamson, who was ordained as a bishop by the breakaway French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. This doesn't sound like something a Jewish faith leader should get involved with, let alone feel sick, bewildered and angry about. But here is why I do.
[Replacing dialogue with deafness - Jonathan Romain, Guardian CiF]

Israel occupies BBC? (Rebellion Sucks!)
7588 Ikhwan prisoners in one year in Egypt  (Angry Arab News Service)
Saad Abdullah, put up or shut up and fear Allah! (Indigo Jo Blogs)

Friday 23 January  2009 
Obama shuts network of CIA 'ghost prisons'
Suzanne Goldenberg & Ewen MacAskill, Guardian
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush's war on terror, shutting down the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush's thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East. Obama's decision to permanently shut down the CIA's clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the widely anticipated move...

BBC refuses airtime to Gaza aid appeal
Jenny Percival, Guardian
The BBC has refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group for 13 aid charities, launched its appeal yesterday saying the devastation in Gaza was "so huge British aid agencies were compelled to act". But the BBC made a rare breach of an agreement dating to 1963, saying it would not give free airtime to the appeal.

Accentuate the positive
Daniel Davies, Guardian CiF
In the universe of thinktanks, the Runnymede Trust (pdf) are pretty close to being good guys. They don't abuse official statistics, they often commission well-designed surveys of their own, and they frequently commission Danny Dorling, who is one of the few genuine straight-shooters working in their subject area. So their latest report, Who Cares about the The White Working Class? was always going to be worth reading.

Thursday 22 January  2009 
Trevor Phillips under fire for saying Britain is increasingly segregated
David Batty, Guardian
The head of Britain's equalities watchdog has come under fire for undermining race relations with "bogus and alarmist" claims that Britain is an increasingly segregated society. The charge against Trevor Phillips, chairman of the equality and human rights commission, is made in a new book that also condemns him for propagating myths that Britain is blighted by race ghettos and threatened by extremism fostered in isolated Muslim communities. The book, Sleepwalking to Segregation, by two Manchester University academics, says there is no statistical evidence of "white flight" from inner-city areas...

Finkelstein to face more US teaching restrictions?
Press TV
Outspoken academic Norman Finkelstein has stepped up his criticism of Israel in spite of being banned by the US freedom of speech system. Finkelstein's sharp criticism of the Zionist occupation of the native lands of the Palestinians has left him without tenure in the DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois despite his exemplary academic record. Following the 27 December launch of Israel's Operation Cast Lead on Gaza, universities across America have come under increasing pressure to cancel Finkelstein's fiery lectures on Tel Aviv's war on Gaza.

White House plans open government
BBC News Online
Searching for data about the Obama administration should get easier as the Whitehouse.gov website gets overhauled. Mr Obama's new media team is letting search engines index almost everything on the site. By contrast, after eight years of government the Bush administration was stopping huge swathes of data from being searchable. The move is part of President Obama's larger push to make the US government more open and transparent.

Obama signs order to close Guantánamo Bay (Mark Tran, Guardian)
Falk likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto (Press TV)
'The horror comes home' – Martin Bright on the Gaza war (Islamophobia Watch)
Mail on Sunday replies to complaint over Azad Ali story (Islamophobia Watch)

Wednesday 21 January  2009
Now we've all seen through the Israeli government's excuses
Mark Steel, Independent
The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there's every chance it could start up again. The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is shocking. For example Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack...

Geert Wilders to be charged with inciting hatred (Islamophobia Watch)
Inside the Mind of a Mail Reader Part 2 (Secret Diary of a Cub Leader)

Monday 19 January  2009 
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
Guardian CiF
"An act to make provision about offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds."
Main provisions
• Creates new offences of stirring up hatred against persons on religious grounds.
• Requires that the words, behaviour, written material, recordings or programmes must be threatening and intended to stir up religious hatred.
• Defines religious hatred as hatred against a group of persons on the basis of their religious belief or lack of religious belief.
• Amends the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 so that the powers of citizen's arrest do not apply to the offences of stirring up religious and racial hatred.

Muslim civil servant suspended for hardline blog attacking Government over Gaza
Richard Edwards, Telegraph
The blog of Treasury official Azad Ali, who is president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, accused ministers of failing to condemn the “Zionist terrorist state of Israel” and quoted an Islamic extremist who said it is his “obligation” to kill British and American soldiers in Iraq. Writing about moderate British Muslims on a website, it said: “The government is engaging with individuals who have no credibility in the community..."
[Muslim civil servant 'backed fanatic's call to kill our troops in Iraq' -- Julie Moult, Daily Mail]
[UK Right witch-hunts Azad Ali -- Islamophobia Watch]

MoD investigates race hate on web
Matthew Taylor & Shane Croucher, Guardian
The Ministry of Defence launched a fresh inquiry into racism in the army last night after the Guardian uncovered a series of extreme and offensive comments on the social networking site Facebook. The racist remarks were posted by people claiming to be serving soldiers. One writer's espoused political idea was to "kill the paks", while another listed having an interest in "ethnic cleansing" and enjoying "SS marching music".

Phillips clears police of racism (Dominic Casciani, BBC News Online)
Response to Umar Lee on Shaikh Hamza Yusuf (Indigo Jo Blogs)

---

Sunday 11 January  2009 
Thousands of Gaza houses destroyed and damaged by Israeli strikes
Press release, Al Mezan/ Electronic Intifada
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continued its military campaign against the Gaza Strip for the 16th day. The IOF also continue to act in violation of the rules of international law relevant to conflict and belligerent occupation, motivated by the failure of the international community to stand for the principles and rules itself had set. In particular, there is much evidence indicating the perpetration of grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War.

Saturday 10 January  2009 
Winning the media war
Twitter, YouTube, blogs – Israel has proved a master of networking. Shame it's being used to promote a bloody conflict
Rachel Shabi, Guardian CiF
One of the things that annoyed Israel about the second Lebanon war was that it ended prematurely – without a clean Israeli victory against Hezbollah. The Jewish state considered that this, in part, was the result of a lily-livered international community balking at the sight of more than 1,000 civilian deaths – not to mention the devastation of Lebanese infrastructure – and deciding that enough was enough. Consequently, one of the recommendations of an Israeli committee investigating the war was that Israel set up an information/propaganda coordination body, to keep those pesky liberals on message even when bloody images of the victims of Israeli assaults were relayed across world media.

Tuesday 6 January 2009 
This brutality will never break our will to be free
For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start
Khalid Mish'al The Guardian,  Article history
For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.