Lewington is only the latest in a long line of white terror suspects who have “disappeared” from the mainstream media. Have you heard of Robert Cottage? He is the former British National Party candidate jailed in July 2007 for possessing explosive chemicals in his home – described by police at the time of his arrest as the largest amount of chemical explosive of its type ever found in this country. The national coverage of Cottage’s arrest in October 2006 amounted to exactly 56 words in a single “news in brief” item in the Sunday Times. There is, too, the case of Martyn Gilleard, the Nazi sympathiser jailed in June 2008 after police found nail bombs, bullets, swords, axes and knives in his flat
-- New Statesman

There will be no editorials calling on moderate whites to stand up and be counted. We will not see leading moderate white Vince Cable taking on Jim Davidson (via live video feed in Dubai). I, as a white person, will not feel any more uncomfortable walking past my non-white neighbours. Churches will not be daubed with racist graffiti. The BNP will not be brought in to liaise with the government on how to turn young white males from violent extremism. No one will suggest that white people are destroying our way of life.
-- Pickled Politics

Her husband, who was in Germany on a research fellowship, came to her aid and was also stabbed by the neighbor and shot in the leg by a security guard who initially mistook him for the attacker, German prosecutors said. He is now in critical condition in a German hospital, according to al-Sherbini's brother.
-- Huffington Post

It is here I will ask the same question asked of Muslims every time a Muslim some place in the world commits a crime. Where are the moderate Germans I ask? Where are the moderate Westerners? Where is their outrage at the acts of hate by one of their own? Why is the burden of being outraged at the actions of “one of our own” only placed on Muslims? Why can we not expect fellow Germans as complicit in some manner as all Muslims are assumed to be complicit?
-- Muslimah Media Watch

Marwa Sherbini took advantage of the court system of her new country to defend her rights under its democratic system. These are the values and behaviors that Europeans say they want in their Arab and Muslim minorities. And she was murdered for it.
-- VS the Pomegranate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/05/hiv-circumcision-africa-who-un

Dear Editor,

your reporter Alex Renton claims there are double-blind trials to show that circumcision reduces the transmission of HIV. In a double-blind trial, neither the researcher nor the participant know whether they have had the intervention, in this case “circumcision”. However distracted I am by the lack of basic scientific literacy in British news media, I feel certain that if somebody cut the skin at the end of my penis off, I would notice, if not immediately, then at some stage in the years that followed.

Yours

Ben Goldacre
(Bad Science)

linkspam

cetera

There's a quote commonly attributed to Margaret Atwood, though I'm failing on my Google-fu and can't seem to find a reference. Regardless:

"Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them,"

If I assume that any man I meet may rape me, the worst that happens to you, as a male, is that your feelings get hurt.

If I don't assume that any man I meet may rape me, I might get killed.

Sorry, folks, I'll keep up the vigilance.

...

Discussions on rape can be intimidating for everybody, even men. Oftentimes, there will be hostility displayed on the part of women. There may be some "angry" statements out there, seemingly directed at men.

Can you really blame us? Fact is, we seem angry because we are angry. And you should be, too.

Why? Well, because I have to stop and wonder if you're gonna rape me, and that sucks for both of us.

"True valour deserves respect ­regardless of a person's ethnic origin, and everyone who serves or has served their country deserves nothing less ... [our national chairman] appealed to your sense of honour. But you have responded by continuing to wear the poppy. So now we're no longer asking you privately. Stop it, Mr Griffin. Just stop it."

spiralsheep

If one merely imbibes the media coverage of the issue, one tends to get the impression that America is awash in abortions. The truth is that in most places in the United States abortions are technically legal, but they are often nearly impossible to obtain. A mere 13 percent of counties in the nation now offer the service. The state of Mississippi, for instance, home to nearly 3 million people, has a single abortion clinic. Meanwhile, the state’s counseling provisions also require that patients be told that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer, despite the fact that the National Cancer Institute, the British medical journal the Lancet, and faculty members of Harvard Medical School have found no such link. Mississippi is also one of only two states that require a minor to get the consent of both parents to have an abortion (though if the minor has been impregnated by her father, she needs only the consent of her mother).

"Are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er...," asked the now Worst Person-ed Mark Krikorian, a National Review blogger and the executive director of the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies. "Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English," he went on, "and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to."

• Rip them up and post them back to head office.
  
• Rip them up and post them back to head office along with iStockphoto terms of use (h/t)
  
• Rip them up and post them back to head office along with a helpful letter explaining all the reasons that they are a bunch of racist scumbags and this ten-generations-or-so-in-England white girl has no interest in being part of any 'we' that includes them. (In this case it is probably best to leave out the parts where I am a Filthy Queer and dating a Filthy Jew. Who, I might add, is TOTALLY failing at this whole controlling-world-finance-and-buying-me-shinies plan)
  
• Errrr...
  
• That’s it.
  
• Help

People - ironically, it's often the exact kind of people who would be deliberately simplistic about issues like crime, claiming that kids who nick a penny chew from the pick'n'mix are 'feral' and so on - like to get all complicated about the reasons why people vote BNP.

First, they blame the lefties. That's the most important group to blame. People who believe in something other than what the BNP believe in are somehow to blame for the rise in the BNP, because they are not doing what the BNP wants. The logic goes like this: we haven't given the BNP what they want, therefore they are getting more support. I'd say this: you shouldn't give the BNP what they want, because on almost every subject ever, they're as wrong as wrong can be. Whether you give them more or less support because you deny them what they want isn't really relevant if what they want is completely and utterly discriminatory, unfair, unpleasant, nasty, racist and anti-freedom.

It's easy to consider a civil discourse when you've never had your ass grabbed by a colleague, been called "young lady" in front of your peers, or been asked about your reproductive plans. It's easy to ask the participants to be calm, and minimize profanity, when you don't have to keep in the back of you mind which which men to avoid at a meeting when they've been drinking.
I am confident that, if men were placed in this position, the discourse would be anything but civil. I think there would be open brawling in the streets. And, frankly, I have more respect for a man who will stand up to misogyny with me with a hearty "fuck you" than a man who will tells me he agrees with me, but then also question whether my anger was expressed in a way that contributed to his development.