"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold" - W.B. Yeats.
"We're doomed !" - Private Frazer.
"Like scrolling through a decade's worth of Daily Mail editorials in 20 minutes" - TheLoonyFromCatford
Showing posts with label low intensity warfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label low intensity warfare. Show all posts
The new keep-on-scrolling-down-the-page-and-hope-you-see-something-interesting-before-you-die-of-boredom layout is useless. You used to be able to take in a lot of information from the old multi-column layout. I've only used the single-column version for five minutes and I'm hating it already.
Others arrived on foot and piled shopping trolleys high with looted televisions and other electronic goods, a woman who has lived locally for 10 years but did not want to be named said.
A member of staff at The Carphone Warehouse next door said every phone in the shop had been stolen.
The contents of the stock room were spilled across the pavement outside from the smashed in door.
Outside JD sport shop, broken mannequins lay on the ground, plastic legs and torsos scattered here and there.
The front window of Currys electrical store was smashed and smithereens of glass covered the ground outside.
Next door, Argos's door had been smashed in and broken glass covered the floor inside and out after looters apparently raided the stock room.
Discarded flat screen television boxes and other unwanted packaging covered paved areas outside the electronic goods stores.
The looters had evidently removed the products from their boxes to create more space in their shopping trolleys and cars, which were said to number up to 100.
Fragments of glass from the smashed in door of PC World littered the ground.
The scene outside Comet was similar and outside B&Q - one of the few stores that did not appear to have been looted - staff stood uncertainly, waiting to hear from head office whether they would be working today.
If employed white men had been rioting B&Q's power tool section would have been the first to go.
First rioting in Bristol. Now, a tad delayed, North London. It all feels terribly familiar ...
It's obviously a terrible thing that a man has been shot by police. While in modern Britain there can never be such a thing as a cast-iron guarantee against being shot by the police (ask the late Harry Stanley), and I don't know the facts of this particular case, a useful general rule is not to shoot at them first.
Even the mildest of men resents being shot at. If that man is a trained marksman, who just happens to have a loaded weapon on him and several similarly armed mates in attendance, then you're really pushing your luck.
A family friend of Mr Duggan, who gave her name only as Nikki, 53, said the man's friends and relatives had organised the protest because "something has to be done" and the marchers wanted "justice for the family."
"They're making their presence known because people are not happy," she added. "This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things but he was not an aggressive person. He had never hurt anyone."
Soon it'll be time for my daughter's school trip to the local mosque, which all pupils get when they hit year 9. I do wonder whether her Muslim classmates get a trip to a Sikh temple, a Catholic Church or a Jehovah's Witnesses assembly (to be fair, they're exposed to Catholicism-lite as pupils at a Catholic school).
"Four men launched a horrific attack on a teacher in which they slashed his face and left him with a fractured skull because they did not approve of him teaching religion to Muslim girls. Akmol Hussein, 26, Sheikh Rashid, 27, Azad Hussain, 25, and Simon Alam, 19, attacked Gary Smith with a Stanley knife, an iron rod and a block of cement. Mr Smith, who is head of religious education at Central Foundation Girls' School in Bow, East London, also suffered a fractured skull."
I remember wondering if it was just a coincidence or if he was targeted. What's weird is :
"Detectives made secret recordings of the gang's plot to attack Mr Smith prior to the brutal assault. The covert audio probe captured the gang condemning Mr Smith for 'teaching other religions to our sisters', the court heard."
Couldn't they have stopped it ? Just imagine if police had been monitoring the planning of some semi-mythical white supremacists before they succeeded in an attack - the conspiracy theorists would be all over the Guardian opinion pages. I would have thought Mr Smith would be consulting his union* - and his lawyers.
* yes, I know they'd have the squits over a case like this and would probably rather a dozen teachers were incapacitated than do anything that could possibly be seen as inimical to the rainbow nation narrative. But they are, formally, supposed to look after the interests of their members. This guy's been seriously injured for teaching the national curriculum.
At least one person was killed and two were injured yesterday in two explosions in central Stockholm that caused panic among Christmas shoppers.A Swedish news agency said it had received an email warning, ahead of the explosions, in which a threat made against Sweden and its population was linked to the country's military presence in Afghanistan. The TT agency said the warning, which comprised sound files in Swedish and Arabic, was also sent to Sweden's security police (SAPO) and was received 10 minutes before the blasts. It also referred to caricatures of the prophet Mohammed by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who became the subject of death threats and at least one assassination plot after cartoons appeared in a Danish newspaper.
The first explosion at around 5pm local time, near the busy shopping street of Drottinggatan in the centre of the Swedish capital, was in a car containing gas canisters. The dead man was found at the site of the second blast about 300 metres away. Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper reported that the man was carrying pipe bombs, as well as a backpack full of nails, although this was not confirmed by the authorities. "The car exploded with a series of minor explosions and there was also some kind of explosion close to where we found the dead man," Ulf Johansson, a police spokesman, told the BBC. "We need more investigation and of course we need more witnesses to give us the information of what actually has happened."
If it is true that the deceased nail-carrier is an Islamist who appears to have gone off prematurely (always a hazard for a shy young man in liberated Sweden), and that the car bomb was the traditional petrol and gas canister type which failed so dismally to take out any 'dancing slags' in London just before the Glasgow Airport attacks, then the Swedes can at least take confidence from their incompetence - and go back to reading Stieg Larsson and worrying about the 'far-right'.
"Youths" were (relatively) quiet in France last summer, although seasonal traditions such as the New Year car-burnings are still well-supported.
Every summer, like King Arthur's men at the feast of Pentecost, the youths await a sign - some strange portent or happening after the schools break up which means that the car-burning season may commence. That sign has now been given :
Karim Boudouda, 27, was one of two men believed to have held up a casino, escaping with more than 20,000 euros (£17,000). He was killed in a shoot-out with police following the robbery. Violence flared after his memorial service. Mr Boudouda, 27, had three previous convictions for armed robbery. The other suspect escaped and is still on the run.
And the season commences :
The incident begun in the early hours of Saturday morning when rampaging youths stoned a tramway and attacked it with baseball bats and iron bars. The gangs then set cars on fire and opened fire against officers. The officers returned fire.
Four young men found guilty of shooting at the police during riots on the outskirts of Paris in 2007 were jailed for between three and 15 years early Sunday. Defence lawyers denounced the sentences as “extremely harsh” and claimed that political considerations had influenced the cases.
Some Muslim students at City University in London are praying in the street in a row over prayer room facilities. The university closed a prayer room after Muslim students were attacked in November. A new multi-faith room was opened the following month. A group of Muslim students now refuse to use the facility as they say they cannot pray in a multi-faith room. The university says it goes against its philosophy to provide a room for just Islamic students.
For some time now, the leaders of City ISoc have relentlessly pushed a separatist and intolerant version of Islam, repeatedly promoting apologists for terrorist violence and the most reactionary social attitudes. They have consistently and insidiously played the role of victimised innocents in order to gain sympathy, without any solid evidence, to further their cause.
This time last year, the main treat advertised for the ISoc’s annual fundraising dinner was a video link-up with none other than Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni preacher who was spiritual mentor to three of the 9/11 suicide-murderers (and a contact of the December 2009 pants bomber to boot).
The university authorities objected and al-Awlaki’s virtual appearance never happened. But was the ISoc deterred? No way. Next up was an ISoc meeting in autumn 2009 addressed by two other reactionary Islamist preachers, Abu Usamah, who is on record stating that gays should be killed, and Murthadah Khan, who is on record describing Jews and Christians as "filthy". The university Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Society and the campaigner Peter Tatchell objected, saying that the ISoc was whipping up hatred, but the meeting went ahead. At the end of last year, after it was reported that al-Awlaki had been killed by a Yemeni air attack on a meeting of al-Qaida leaders, the ISoc website praised him and the "staunch al-Qaida fighters" targeted by the raid...
In the meantime, the ISoc complained that the university’s Muslim prayer room was not safe. In November last year there was a street fight outside it, in the course of which some Muslim students were badly hurt by local youths, though it remains unclear what the fracas was about. (The building where the prayer room was is on to a dimly lit back street and is rarely used by other students in the evening.)
The university’s acting vice-chancellor, Julius Weinberg, responded, entirely reasonably, by setting up new multi-faith prayer and reflection rooms in the main university block where there is 24-hour security and no exit that can be identified as being used only by Muslims.
Some weeks later, after another controversy over an ISoc speaker meeting at which another gay-hating preacher was billed as the star attraction, Weinberg told the ISoc that its speaker meetings – as opposed to prayer meetings – could not continue to be segregated between men and women and would have to be open debates if they were to take place on university premises.
The ISoc’s next step was to assume the role of aggrieved victim. How could anyone have the temerity to suggest that Muslims should share a space (even if use of it were carefully timetabled) with others? Such arrangements are, of course, the norm in most further and higher education institutions – but the ISoc declared that the new set-up was an outrage against the tenets of Islam and started holding Friday prayers outside the university’s main entrance as a protest, to which it invited supporters from every Islamist group in London to boost numbers.
There is no evidence that the Islamic Society at City has been recruiting for terrorist organisations, or that former members have gone on to commit terrorist acts (although the same cannot be said of other student Islamic societies in the UK of a similar ideological bent). But its insistent pleading for special treatment, its consistent policy of inviting the most inflammatory separatist preachers, its repeated smearing of critics and its refusal to discuss its views in an open and civilised fashion are all intolerable in a university.
".. the ISoc will no longer remain silent and take a back seat whilst innocent students and readers are manipulated into blindly following what some may say are Islamophobic secularists. No, it is time the ISoc stands up, defends itself and fights back against the likes of Ms Waterhouse and Mr Anderson; two confused secularists that promote significantly preposterous views. So where do we go from here? Well, a new vice-chancellor is due to take over in August, indeed it will be a brave vice-chancellor who confronts this issue."
It will indeed. I see a new Vice-Chancellor, geographer Paul Curran, takes over in the autumn. I can't for the life of me imagine what was wrong with previous Vice-Chancellor, Julius Weinberg. Most odd.
I must confess that I haven't noticed an enormous surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric or action by "the establishment" recently. Indeed, after 9/11 and 7/7 their response was to visit mosques, give them extra police protection, talk a lot about a religion of peace and even define terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity".
But then I'm not as close to the establishment as Yasmin Alibhai Brown. Apparently the Chilcot enquiry, the sentencing of various hotheads for rioting, vandalism and attacking the police during a London demo, the Channel Four documentary on Islamic 'entryism' in East London politics, and, er ... er ... - well anyway , as Shameless Milne puts it, this tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all.
The Yazztastic One cranks up the threat level as only she can. After all, I doubt that Shameless hangs out with many Muslims outside of his political activity. And I bet he doesn't pray before starting his column.
I can see that for the British establishment Muslims are contemptible creatures, devalued humans. As I prayed before starting this column I felt tears stinging my eyes and my face was burning as if I had been slapped many times over. Do they expect me to turn the other cheek? Millions of other Muslims must have felt what I did. And some may well go on to do things they shouldn't. Their acts will intensify anti-Muslim prejudices and will be used to justify injustice. The cycle is vicious and unrelenting.
Oh dear.
Once again at weddings and birthday parties, in quiet, tranquil mosques, at dinner tables across the land, including those of millionaire Muslims, I am hearing murmurs of trepidation and disquiet – voices kept low, sometimes vanishing into whispers, just in case; you never know if they will break down the door. These people are, like myself, well incorporated into the nation's busy life. Some own restaurants and businesses, others work in the City or law firms and chambers. At one gathering a frightfully posh, Muslim public school boy (aged 14), an excellent cricketer, said in his jagged, breaking voice: "I will never live in this country after finishing my education. They hate us. They'll put us all in prison. Nothing we do is OK. Do you think I am wrong Mrs Yasmin?" No I don't, though his hot young blood makes him intemperate.
Where do I start?
No, where do I start ? I can just see the Met top brass salivating at the thought of breaking down a few Muslim millionaires' front doors, can't you ? Excellent career move.
"This week, I have been at three events where the majority of people in the audience were educated, sharp Muslims, some exceedingly rich and good friends with key politicians and Prince Charles. Guantanamo Bay and Iraq are topics that now madden even these establishmentarians.
One gentleman took my elbow, shuffled me to a discreet corner and whispered 'I have been here for 40 years, dined with royalty. Today, if I was young, I would go straight to Bin Laden. Mr Blair is a war criminal. Don't put my name down, but tell him we detest him'".
One of the things I love about Yazza is that she shoots straight from the hip. Can't say we've not been told. Pray God that she is, while wonderful, a self-centred hysteric with a 56-pound chip on her shoulder, unrepresentative of the wider Muslim community. Because if she's right that millions of Muslims feel anything like she does, there is indeed cause for concern.
"Richard T. Antoun, author of "Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Movements", was a caring and gentle man who spent his life trying to dispel stereotypes about different cultures, especially Middle Eastern cultures, his colleagues at Binghamton University said Friday."
It's unfortunate then that his death should reinforce them.
Saudi national Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Binghamton University Professor Richard T. Antoun.
As I said in my Brum post, there's a 'provocation' and then a disproportionate response. The provocation, as in the Bradford riots, doesn't have to actually exist. Rumour is sufficient evidence.
LONDON (Reuters) - A group of 200 Asians attacked a police patrol team with fireworks in Luton, north of London, where a right-wing march had been planned, police said on Sunday. In a statement Bedfordshire Police said 50 officers and six police horses had been called in the afternoon after a small team of constables and police community support volunteers had been attacked by about "200 members of the younger Asian community" in the Bury Park area of Luton.
Two people were arrested but nobody was injured, a spokeswoman for the police told Reuters. The incident occurred on the day far right-wing groups had planned to march through the town. A three-month blanket banning order on marching in the town, approved by the home secretary a week ago, prevented the march. It is the third banning order of the kind issued in the town in the last four years, the police spokeswoman said.
Chief Superintendent Andy Frost said: "There has been extensive public consultation and work behind the scenes to ensure Luton was not the chosen venue for any kind of march or protest but it would seem that for no apparent reason disorder has broken out in Bury Park." Policing of the area returned to "normal levels" at around 7 pm, "with the disorder dealt with and the crowds dispersed." police said.
My reading of this is that after the earlier unpleasantness in the town the youth were all fired up for a rematch. Why put the game off just because the other side's not turned up ?
Were it not for the police, who stopped the youth heading for the town centre, I imagine, as in Brum, that assorted natives would have been kicked, robbed and beaten for the crime of shopping while 'looking like BNP members'.
I don't think Telegraph or BBC news readers are going to be joining Casuals United or whatever en masse (or at all) when they read the story. But a few more multicultural illusions get dented each time, support for the BNP inches up incrementally, and the feedback continues.
I asked several people (white and Asian) what was going on. The response was invariably, "the BNP are in town". It doesn't take much for a general response like that to take on more substance. And once the police get in the way, they become the enemy - protecting the invisible BNP. (Of course we have heard exactly the same story from the right about the police protecting the Muslims.) And both are right!
Fair do's though. In what native community would a bunch of rioters go home when the local vicar chalked them off ?
Eventually an iman, an elder, came and was able to calm things down.
Amir Rehman, 18, shouted racial abuse as 51-year-old Ronald O'Connor walked to a shop for a loaf of bread, near the gates of Lister Park, Manningham, last December.
Leeds Crown Court heard that Rehman shouted: "Manningham belongs to Muslims. We dont want whites. We rule Bradford. We are going to get you out."
His victim tried to get in the shop, but Rehman ran towards him and stabbed him twice in the upper arm with a four to five-inch bladed knife. Rehman, of Manningham, tried to slash Mr O'Connor's face and the victim also had the palms of his hands slashed as he tried to defend himself.
Hmmm. On that evidence, and if the reporting is correct, Jonathan Devlin seems to be a man with exceptionally limited powers of analysis and deduction. I suppose there's a chance he's referring to the robberies of children rather than the racist attack.
Mr Gioserano said Rehman attended Bradford Crown Court for a preliminary hearing of the case in March, but went straight from court to Pudsey, with two other men, Amar Farooq and Tanveer Hussain, where, later in the day, they committed a series of robberies on children on their way home from school.
I, like the vast majority of people in Birmingham love the fact that our city is so diverse and vibrant. I felt that this was worth defending, especially from a bunch of trouble makers many of whom were from outside the city.
Unfortunately it turned out the UAF were no more interested in our community than the racists many of us turned out to oppose!
The young Muslims who rampaged through the city streets were incited to violence by UAF activists. I was near the front of the rally in Rotunda Square and I saw how they worked and I saw how it got out of hand.
The UAF should have switched rhetoric when they saw that the young Muslims were getting restless and angry. Instead what they did was get increasingly aggressive speakers to talk about ‘smashing the BNP’ (who not directly involved with the protest) whilst sending agitators into the crowd, with megaphones, to whip up anger there.
Nevertheless it was clear that despite a majority of peaceful protesters there was a group of trouble makers intent on causing a fight. The UAF completely ignored this state of affairs and led a series of inflammatory chants and speeches calling for blood shed. When the expected march did not materialise the crowd of youths became restless. UAF agitators in the crowd stirred up trouble using megaphones and some bottles and pieces of wood were thrown at the crowd watching the protest. A great way to get people onside. Eventually the dam broke and the protest crowd surged forwards. I followed as they ran down the street, 'looking for the BNP' scattering both the Police and innocent shoppers, throwing glass bottles and damaging street furniture. As the Police pushed back I returned to the place where the protest had started. The UAF had vanished, their work as agents provocators done, a riot was now in full swing. The UAF's actions were insensitive and I believe that they have set the cause of race relations and anti-far right extremism in Birmingham back by years. The sight of young Asian men beating people up and running through the streets seemingly proves everything the BNP says. I have come away with the impression that the UAF is a cowardly organisation that seeks only to provoke violence and causes more harm than good.
Now to be fair, if I understand it correctly, the bottles and bits of wood were thrown - initially, anyway - at the four or five 'come on then' youths the other side of the police cordon - which our writer may not have been able to see. But I take the general point. 'Smash the BNP' to an audience like that translates as 'beat them up' - as approved by Billy Bragg.
And if you can't find any 'BNP', try any young white male. Or middle aged one. Or a bunch of girls and boys out for a drink*. At some point on this continuum - and not very far along it - protest turns into robbery with racist violence.
I wonder if the Guardian will print the letter above ? I wouldn't hold your breath.
(*I have received reports that young people arriving in Brum later that evening for a Saturday night out were beaten and robbed of wallets, mobiles etc by a large gang of doubtless sincere anti-fascists).
'I am shocked and upset that a member of the Labour Party in this day and age could even think something like that, let alone say it.
'People should not be allowed to make racist comments like that. If someone in the party feels I cannot represent them because of my colour or religion, that's ridiculous.
'I felt particularly aggrieved because I have worked across all sections of the community, particularly with the Muslim section, and have been on official visits to Pakistan.'
Elaina Cohen may well be a terrific Labour candidate for the East Handsworth and Lozells ward. But she does strike me as somewhat unworldly. The fates of Lorna Fitzsymons and Oona King seem to have passsed her by. In Mr Blair's immortal words 'the rules of the game have changed'.
I suppose it could have been a lot worse. The guy has a degree in industrial chemistry. Perhaps he got it at The University of Wiltshire (formerly Cricklade Garden Centre). He sounds a somewhat distrurbed chap. Maybe, like poor Martin James (but for different reasons) living in the White City area of Gloucester wasn't good for his mental health.
The FT finished on Friday only about 50 points above its November low, the Dow's just hanging on above 7000.
Yesterday it dropped another 5% to a new low for this crisis. But given that the 2003 bottom (3300-ish ?) was caused by evaporating dot-com illusions, whereas this one's more down to various major structural unpleasantnesses, I'd have thought shares have a way to go - say to 2500-ish ?
It strikes me that someone like myself - on a smallish pension but with a chunk of savings in the bank - has only one chance to preserve any value. I need the FT100 to get down to 2500 as quickly as possible (at which point I get out of cash and into shares) before Gordon's printing-presses render both pension and savings worthless.
Wednesday's meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee will be shown the letters and then King will be allowed to take the Bank into the unknown. Normally the nine members of the MPC discuss interest rates, but having cut them to just 1 per cent this month, they have almost reached the end of that road. Now, instead of debating the price of money, the MPC will concentrate on the amount of it.
Quantitative easing allows the Bank to buy gilt-edged securities or corporate bonds from City institutions or through the market. As the Bank will not itself borrow the £100bn or more necessary, it is in effect printing money.
“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome. We've already talked about why China and the United States are in an embrace they don't dare end. If Russia is looking for trouble the way Mr. Putin seems to be, I still have some doubt as to whether it can really make this trouble, because of the weakness of the Russian economy. It's hard to imagine Russia invading Ukraine without weakening its economic plight. They're desperately trying to prevent the ruble from falling off a cliff. They're spending all their reserves to prop it up. It's hardly going to help if they do another Georgia.”
“I was more struck Putin's bluster than his potential to bite, when he spoke at Davos. But he made a really good point, which I keep coming back to. In his speech, he said crises like this will encourage governments to engage in foreign policy aggression. I don't think he was talking about himself, but he might have been. It's true, one of the things historically that we see, and also when we go back to 30s, but also to the depressions 1870s and 19980s, weak regimes will often resort to a more aggressive foreign policy, to try to bolster their position. It's legitimacy that you can gain without economic disparity – playing the nationalist card. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of that in the year ahead.
It's just that I don't see it producing anything comparable with 1914 or 1939. It's kind of hard to envisage a world war. Even when most pessimistic, I struggle to see how that would work, because the U.S., for all its difficulties in the financial world, is so overwhelmingly dominant in the military world.”
Nothing, to be honest, that thee or me couldn't speculate on. Everyone knows that you need "a grand theme to appeal to the masses" at such times. The question is, what will that be? I can't see the EU, or even Putin (at present) annexing the Ukraine. In the UK I think we'll see more reality TV shows as HMG desperately try to keep the circuses running.
But there will be political consequences nonetheless. I particularly admire the attempts of the 'Scottish Government' to raise political awareness (and boost Carlisle and Berwick supermarket sales) by raising the price of alcohol. In today's Britain, a sober man will be an angry man.
The Economist has noted, two years on, the Government's retreat (which I blogged here) from the policy of engagement with (i.e. state funding of) the Muslim Council of Britain.
Now that system, and its unspoken compromises, lies in ruins. It was jettisoned in the autumn of 2006, when the government downgraded existing ties with the Muslim Council of Britain (in which movements close to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists of Pakistan were strongly represented) and tried to find different interlocutors.
They've also noted that they've found no suitable replacement.
Nearly three years on, the government’s biggest problem is that it is struggling with two big questions at once. One is the set of problems described under the catch-all term of “cohesion”—narrowing the social, economic and cultural gap between Muslims (especially in some poor urban areas of northern Britain) and the rest of society. The second is countering the threat from groups preparing to commit violence in Britain or elsewhere in the name of Islam.
Alas, as I've pointed out many a time, the govts attempts at 'cohesion' merely show modern British culture - or lack thereof - in all its threadbare shame - not exactly an enticing prospect. This story will run and run.
It was January 11, 2007, when Henry, then 15 and a ginger-haired star rugby player, popular with his class mates and with no history of being disciplined for poor behaviour, arrived at the tennis court at The Ridgeway School in Swindon to settle, "one on one", an argument with a fellow pupil. Only it was a baying mob and not a single opponent waiting for him.
What happened next, witnessed by more than 100 pupils – and even filmed by one on a mobile phone – was an ambush so vicious that, at the subsequent court case, the judge described it as a ''savage and sustained attack".
It was, said Judge Carol Hagen when she passed sentence on 13 boys and young men who set upon Henry, a ''miracle'' that Henry had survived.
Though the 13 Asian teenagers and young men who attacked Henry – all members of a gang who called themselves the ''Asian Invaders'' – were given sentences of between eight months and eight years for grievous bodily harm and conspiracy to commit GBH, no independent inquiry into how Henry was brutally assaulted, while at school, in an attack that was described in court as ''something out of a Quentin Tarantino film".
During the trial, Judge Hagen was highly critical of the school, asking why there were no staff present in the tennis courts at the end of the school day, since it was known there had been trouble earlier in the day.
For the past 14 months Henry's mother has battled for a full inquiry and, after gaining support from the Government, has now won the right to a Serious Case Review on the attack.
The inquiry, which does not seek to apportion blame but to investigate what happened and evaluate what lessons can be learned, is expected to last four months and will, for the first time, lift the lid on alleged racial tensions within a school.
''I've fought hard to find out all the facts,'' said Mrs Webster, who is also suing The Ridgeway School for neglect. ''And it's been an excruciating wait.
"The school might say otherwise but the fact is that the attack on my son was a racial one. The school knew there were tensions – there have been numerous similar attacks before but nothing was ever done.
"Everything was swept under the carpet. Neither Henry or I am racist. But I feel my son was badly failed by a school that believes racism is only ever something that is carried out by white pupils."
It took a sustained campaign before the review was instigated by Mr Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
After a meeting with Mrs Webster he wrote to her saying that it was ''unacceptable that there has not been any full investigation of such a serious incident which left your son with permanent injuries".
Henry was repeatedly kicked, punched and battered before being beaten on the head with a claw hammer, fracturing his skull in three places and leaving him with permanent brain damage.
The Swindon local authority referred the case to their Local Safeguarding of Children Board, which has now sanctioned the review.
The headteacher of The Ridgeway School, Mr Steven Colledge, has said that he welcomes the investigation.
The case has highlighted the extent of racist incidents in our schools and, in particular, the reluctance on the part of some to treat attacks as racist when they are carried out by minority cultures.
Mrs Webster was not aware that, when those who carried out the crime came to court, it was up to the prosecution to cite the attack as racist.
Had that been proved, the sentences meted out – especially to Wasif Khan, 19, described in court as ''the hammer man'' and who was jailed for eight years for wielding the weapon that fractured Henry's skull – may well have been much stiffer.
What is particularly worrying, however, for parents in Swindon, is the light the case has shed on the number of racists attacks in the city's schools and how such incidents escalate.
Between November 2006 and November 2008 police dealt with 337 crimes – 137 of them violent incidents – at Swindon schools.
The highest number of those attacks, some 58, occurred at Churchfields school while 52 were recorded at Ridgeway school.
In the past 12 months, admittedly, perimeter fences and bans on mobile phones has helped the school reduce its number of violent crimes.
Henry, bleeding heavily from his head, was taken to hospital and, within 35 minutes, police had rounded up several of the gang members. It was Joe, Henry's younger brother, who telephoned his mother.
He had been standing at a bus stop when a passing pupil told him Henry had been beaten up. ''You can't imagine how it feels to see your son soaked in blood,'' Mrs Webster said, tears threatening.
''I just couldn't believe that no one from the school had called me to say there had been trouble earlier. All the pupils knew something was going on.
"When I was with Henry at the local hospital's accident and emergency unit one of Henry's friends telephoned me to say the same thing had happened to him some time before but he had managed to get away.
"All the children knew that these 'Asian invaders' were terrorising white pupils.''
For Mrs Webster the Serious Case Review will, she hopes, give some insight into how such a violent attack happened on the school premises.
''As far as I can see there was no control and no discipline,'' she says. ''Bullying and violence were rife when Henry was attacked and I want the school to admit that.''
Mr Colledge, the headteacher of The Ridgeway School, was unavailable for comment.
'Anti-racist' Lib Dem councillor blots her copybook. Her 'coconut' jibe is doubly offensive - to the (Asian) Conservative councillor at whom it was directed, and in its implication that white = bad. She's accusing Ms Jethra of being a traitor to her skin colour - an accusation that levelled by a white Lib Dem councillot at another white councillor would see them drummed out of the party once people had stopped laughing. Whatever happened to the colour of a man's skin being no more significant than the colour of his eyes ?
She's an ignorant woman too, arguing that whiteness is the reason why a councillor wouldn't be interested in commemorating slavery at taxpayer expense. Doesn't she know about the thousands of white slaves shipped from Bristol to the Viking kingdoms of Ireland after the Norman conquest, and the saintly bishop who fought against the trade ? As William of Malmesbury put it :
‘You might well groan to see the long rows of young men adn maidesn whose beauty and youth might move the pity of a savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold. It was a damnable sin, a piteous reproach, that men, worse than brute beasts, should sell into slavery their own lemans (sweehearts or lovers - LT), nay, their own blood.’
Eventually the saint’s preaching was so successful that not only did the people of Bristol abandon the trade and become ‘an example to all England’, but they blinded and drove out one slave trader who entered the city.
A man sprayed a mixture of urine and faeces in two supermarkets, a pub and a bookshop in Gloucestershire, a jury at Bristol Crown Court has heard. Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, of Bibury Road, Gloucester, is alleged to have caused damage estimated at £700,000 last May.
Mr Daifallah pleaded not guilty to four charges of contaminating goods and two of damaging property. He also denied possession of material to contaminate goods and possession of an offensive weapon.
Nice chap. Seemed to target alcohol, pubs (and barmaids) and frozen chips. What could his motivation be ? There's more that the BBC don't see fit to report, including that the bookshop attack concentrated on the children's section, and the chap's nationality (Algerian).
On searching the house they found messages scrawled all over the walls with what the prosecution say are fantasies about biological weapons.
One message said: "The ants get out to every direction to get food, then they bring it back to Tesco and Asda. If you poison those then you kill the ants."
Police also found a camcorder bag containing sachets of excrement each labelled with the name of a city or town – Bristol, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Worcester, Cardiff and Gloucester. Bottles containing faeces and urine were also found in his kitchen and car.
Daifallah told police that someone else had written the messages on his walls and said that he used the spray for his garden.
Mr Dent also revealed that Daifallah had been questioned by police about four incidents in February last year when brown liquid was sprayed in the toilets and around the tables of four pubs in Stroud.
Two shop-owners were today fined for selling chocolate cake - which had been sprinkled with human faeces. A horrified customer ate the foul-smelling gateaux but noticed that it didn't taste or smell "quite right" and handed the cake to public health scientists.
The analysts soon established that the sweet treat was covered in faeces and legal proceedings against the shop owners were started. Shop owners Saeed Hasmi, 25, and Jan Yadgari, 23, were fined £1,500 for selling food unfit for human consumption.
The pair - who ran the Italiano Pizzeria in Roath, Cardiff - admitted the charge but did not say how the chocolate cake was contaminated.
The takeaway is a favourite with late-night revellers and students living around the takeaway close to Cardiff University.
Amazingly they weren't prosecuted for anything else and no DNA samples were taken.
At the moment our leaders are terribly worried that political parties may gain votes by appealing to the worst instincts in voters - those of hatred for some "other", usually of a different ethnic group.
There was also a by election in Redbridge yesterday, which the Liberal Democrats won. Their literature concentrated on Redbridge Council’s foreign policy and used some pretty unpleasant pictures of Gaza. Interestingly they broke a cardinal rule by naming an opponent, just one - the Leader of the Council, Cllr Alan Weinberg.
I am also told from friends campaigning in the ward, that there were people knocking on doors, speaking of Gaza and mentioning what Conservative Cllr Weinberg and the Labour Foreign Secretary have in common - which was why their respective parties were not campaigning on the council’s foreign policy.
The Lib Dems have plenty of previous when it comes to this sort of thing - I remember they campaigned in those bits of Brum with large Muslim populations a few years back using pictures from Abu Ghraib. But to be fair to them, I don't think they're institutionally anti-semitic. They're just giving the voters what they want, as they always try to do.
And what's all this about Redbridge Council having a foreign policy ?
This is another one of those stories that make me think we may in a few years (given time for another million or so new young names on the electoral roll) be in a situation where one community has a veto on on our foreign policy - and particularly on our relationship with Israel.
As I've said before, if it's all a conspiracy, said conspirators are making a pretty poor fist of it. Mr Cock-up is no respecter of ethnic origins - or of intelligence either.
