Anti-neo Nazi shirt seller fined

A German judge on Friday fined the seller of a range of anti-neo Nazi t-shirts and badges because the products bear the infamous swastika symbol — with a large red line through it.

The logo — a red circle with a line across it superimposed on the Nazi emblem — is a popular image among left-wing activists and anti-neo Nazi campaigners in Germany and can be purchased on lapel-pins and items of clothing.

However, Wolfgang Kuellmer, a Stuttgart judge, ruled on Friday that its increasing popularity risked making the Nazi hooked cross acceptable again in Germany, over 60 years after it was outlawed following Hitler’s defeat.

“In particular this mass market business risked undermining its taboo status,” Kuellmer said.

Under German law, performing a Hitler salute, wearing Nazi uniform or displaying the swastika can carry a penalty of a fine or up to three years in prison.

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Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

That is one of the disclosures in the 1,200-page report released last week after a two-year Canadian investigation of Mr. Arar’s case found him to be innocent of any terrorist ties. The report urges the Canadian government to formally protest the American treatment of Mr. Arar, a recommendation Canadian officials are considering.

Mr. Arar, 37, who now lives in British Columbia, has a lawsuit against United States officials and agencies that is on appeal, and he has demanded an explanation for his treatment from the Bush administration.

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Since the Iraq war began, the U.S. Army has quadrupled the number of soldiers it trains each year to be detainee interrogators, according to Army officials involved in the program.

Next year, 1,200 interrogators are set to be trained at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., up from about 300 in 2003. “The number being trained is based on the current need of interrogators in theater,” said Angela Moncur, deputy public affairs officer at the intelligence center.

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Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

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Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered in the British city of Manchester calling for Tony Blair’s resignation and an end to the country’s involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The protest comes on the eve of the Labour Party conference in the city, and security in the city is tight.

Stop The War Coalition, which helped organise the event, says more than 80 percent of Britons think Prime Minister Blair should stop supporting the United States’ foreign policies.

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Swimming against a swelling tide of popular anger, disillusionment and despair, Germany’s corrupt and self-serving political elites are reacting with horror to the quiet revolution that is taking place in the heartlands of the German nation.

Galvanised by a growing rage at the massive annual transfers of taxpayers’ money to the state of Israel and the European Union against the backdrop of Germany’s biggest tax hike in history, a bankrupt and collapsing health sector, failed education system, mass unemployment and a tidal wave of immigration, voters are terrifying their ruling masters by switching their allegiance to radical patriots.

Michel Friedman, a notoriously sleazy Jewish politician, wealthy activist lawyer and heavily promoted television personality with a criminal record for cocaine abuse and a penchant for vicious anti-German tirades, was among the first to condemn voters for sending nationalist candidates to the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern last Sunday.

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Mel Gibson has returned to the spotlight to promote his upcoming movie “Apocalypto,” and to criticize the war in Iraq, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Almost two months after he railed against Jews when he was arrested for driving drunk in Malibu, the actor made a surprise appearance Friday at Fantastic Fest, an event in Austin, Texas, devoted to new science fiction, horror and fantasy films, the trade paper said in its Monday edition.

He presented a work-in-progress screening of his Mayan adventure tale, and then took questions. About one-third of the full house gathered for the film gave him a standing ovation. The film is scheduled for a December 8 release via Disney.

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Dear Altermedia readers

Tomorrow, September 21th at 10:30pm European time (3:30 US Central time), we will have our first online live radio show. I, Emmanuel d’Aubignosc will interview Kris Roman, a Flemish nationalist from Belgium.

Kris has close ties to Russia. He married a Russian woman and he every year spends several months in Russia where he gets in touch with Russian nationalists. In order to help us understand this great white country, he decided to setup a Euro-Russian think tank.

He’ll tell us more tomorrow.

The subjects of our interview will be

-Free speech and repression in Flanders
-The need to reflect about Europe’s future
-Why is Russia so important to Europe
-Why Euro-Rus

I will interview Kris in French, Dutch and English. You will find and Icon at the end of this text where you can ask us questions live!

Please keep in mind that even if Kris and I speak quite fluent Dutch, French and English, Kris is a native Dutch speaker and I am a native French and German speaker. So we do have an accent and we do make grammar mistakes from time to time.

Thank you for reading me. I hope to see you online.

E.d’Aubignosc

AlterMedia Live Radio

AlterMedia Live Chat:

BBC History Magazine was forced to remove an online poll after it was targeted by a project aimed at influencing internet opinion in Israel’s favour.

The Give Israel Your United Support (GIYUS) website hosts a downloadable desktop tool called Megaphone. The program alerts users to opinion polls and “talkback” features on news sites so they can respond with pro-Israel views. In turn, users can alert GIYUS operators to any opinion polls they think should be targeted.

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The story has been filled out but human remains are scarce Eight times humans came to try to live in Britain and on at least seven occasions they failed - beaten back by freezing conditions.

Scientists think they can now write a reasonably comprehensive history of the occupation of these isles.

It stretches from 700,000 years ago and the first known settlers at Pakefield in Suffolk, through to the most recent incomers just 12,000 years or so ago.

The evidence comes from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project.

This five-year undertaking by some of the UK’s leading palaeo-experts has reassessed a mass of scientific data and filled in big knowledge gaps with new discoveries.

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