Hot on the heels of the Daily Spew grovelling to the McCanns yesterday, the Sun and the Daily Mail (or Scum and Snail Trail as they’re known around these parts) have withdrawn articles from their websites based on the Policy Exchange report of last year, which alleged that extremist literature was being sold in mosques in the UK. This happened after a Newsnight investigation demonstrated that much of the evidence on which that report was based was in fact forged, but not before several major newspapers had “given prominent and extremely biased coverage to the report”; the BMI had complained to the Press Complaints Commission about the coverage. The Sun also printed a letter from Muhammad Sawalha of the BMI and Mohammed Kozbar of the North London Central Mosque (i.e. Finsbury Park mosque). (HT: Islamophobia Watch.)

Plus: in this week’s New Statesman, former editor Peter Wilby on the contradictory stories of the events last Friday:

The brothers who lived there were planning a terrorist attack using cyanide, sarin, anthrax, or bubonic plague germs. The noxious substance would be released from a vest or a canister. It would be a suicide attack or a remote-controlled explosion. The “bomb” was inside the house or “out there”. Its use was imminent or it was nowhere near completion. The information came from an MI5 informant or a police informant. The police operation was code-named Volga or Volgo.

Officers entered the house by smashing a window or battering down the front door. One brother was shot by the police (either after a warning or not after a warning, and either after a scuffle or not after a scuffle), or he was shot by the other brother. The shot came from a Glock pistol or a Heckler & Koch sub-machine gun. Both brothers had criminal records or they didn’t.

I have heard them shouting that their rivals, Tottenham [Hotspur, or Spurs], are “the Yids”. Charming.

Strange, that, for a team that’s just signed a promotional deal with the Israeli tourism authority, putting them in the same class as Man U and Chelski as teams whose opponents I’d support, no matter who they were.

I’ve not normally got much time for George Galloway and his party nowadays, but my attention was drawn to this story about how Mazhar Mahmood, a journo with the salacious Sunday Murdoch rag the News of the World (AKA News of the Screws) tried to stitch up Galloway with a date at the Dorchester and some suggestive remarks:

The MP and Big Brother evictee had been invited out to a late night meal by two men apparently keen to help Mr Galloway’s party, Respect. The pair, introduced as Pervaiz Khan and Sam Fernando, described themselves as “Islamists” which, given that neither had a beard, also seemed peculiar.

An “Islamist” introducing himself as Sam Fernando?

Soon the conversation turned, according to Mr Galloway, to the issue of just how they could help - along the lines of “can we sponsor members of parliament? … fund political parties?” What could they mean? “I told them absolutely not, it’s completely illegal,” said Mr Galloway yesterday.

Then the men starting making remarks about Jewish people, said the MP, “and invited me to agree with them. For example, when I said the Daily Express was the worst pro-war, anti-Muslim paper in the land, they asked ‘because it’s owned by a Jew?’. ‘No,’ I said, ‘because it’s owned by a pro-war pornographer’.”

“Parveiz” turned out to be Mazhar Mahmood, who normally specialises in dressing up as an Arab sheikh (despite being of Pakistani origin and not speaking Arabic) and enticing celebrities to backbite people and spill secrets, which he reproduces in the News of the Screws. (Also see Umm Zaid’s Make a Fast Buck the Mozrab Way list of other ways to drag the Muslims’ name through the mud.) (More: here, here.)

Technorati Tags: george+galloway, mazher+mahmood, news+of+the+world

From Gene at Harry’s Place: “Let the conspiracy-mongering begin”

To paraphrase a headline from the Sun, was Slobba clobbered?

Who gives a damn? He’s dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

• Warning to Muslims about pseudo-Islamic 419 scam attempts
• Scams targeting Muslim women by Sara Umm Zaid - includes a piece on “distressed Muslimahs” who want your money.

I have to admit I’ve started to warm to David Davis although Cameron is too much of a neo-con for my liking with all his talk of a “school leaver programme” (read: conscription for all school leavers, male and female) and his interventionism, even if he is “soft on drugs”. It seems that even the Tories think New Labour’s getting too authoritarian, something further evidenced by their crazy “National Curriculum for toddlers” wheeze everyone was talking about today. I mean, imposing it on childminders? I thought childminding was meant to be between them and the parents, and was not meant as an educational experience unless the parents want it to be.

In case anyone was wondering what a 90-day detention, with or without “judicial oversight”, would lead to, Gareth Pierce, who was instrumental in gathering the evidence that freed the Guildford Four, wrote for today’s Guardian about what anti-terrorist detentions lead to already:

Where is the detainee meanwhile? I find it impossible to believe that the grim unpleasantness of the cells can be anything other than intended, especially given the costly revamp. It has left 365 hideous white tiles on the walls of each cell (as an Irishman counted some years ago). There is a hard plastic mattress on a wooden plank, with an open toilet at one end. A bare light in the high ceiling is difficult enough to read by, but the life-saving distraction of reading matter is more often than not forbidden. There is no natural light; the 14 days of detention are spent in an underworld without fresh air or proper ventilation - an inescapable part of the anticipated experience. In warm weather, heat comes from pipes under the bunk. In cold weather, unpleasant-smelling oil heaters are pushed uselessly into the corridors.

At the end of a 14-day period of interviews, lawyers themselves are often ill and exhausted. Effects on detainees are far more drastic: in a number of cases, police have had to pay compensation to innocent detainees who suffered permanent trauma after their release; one woman’s menstrual cycle was drastically altered after a seven-day detention, and her partner suffered alopecia; many students have never resumed their studies; one man succeeded in committing suicide, and many others have tried.

Given that “judicial oversight” was touted as a safeguard, perhaps people might be reminded that judges very rarely refuse ASBO applications? Has anyone forgotten that the unjust imprisonment of the Guildford Four, etc., were the result of confessions extracted under duress (such as sleep deprivation) made easier by extended detention time? Frankly the thought of spending fifteen years in jail for a terrorist attack when I’m innocent is far more horrifying than losing an eye or leg or two to a bomb. Risk is the price we pay for freedom.

As for the second and, so we’re told, final departure of the unmissed David Blunkett, I don’t think anyone need be depressed by the loss of a “role model” for disabled people. I remember the Sangatte stowaway affair, when truck drivers were being charged £2,000 for each stowaway found in their trucks, whether found at the port or on the motorway, and depending on how many stowaways there were, the fine could put the driver into bankruptcy or out of his (and his family’s) home. Plonketty Plonk showed his contempt by saying the drivers who protested were “squealing”. One might ask whether the arrogant clod was really blind, or just a cover for Bliar having a dog in his cabinet. Good riddance to bad rubbish.