Black children do badly at school because they do not pay attention and have little support from their parents and not because of racism, a black educational expert has claimed.

Tony Sewell, a former teacher and consultant at Reading University, said young people fail their exams because they do not do their homework and are disrespectful to teachers.

He said black children in the 1950s and 1960s may have been "burned out in a racist schooling system" but that was no longer the case.

Sewell is director of the charity Generating Genius, which selected 60 African-Caribbean children from poor backgrounds over four years, and worked with them to get them in to university.

Writing in Prospect magazine, he said: "What we now see in schools is children undermined by poor parenting, peer-group pressure and an inability to be responsible for their own behaviour.

"They are not subjects of institutional racism.

"Instead of challenging our children, we have given them the discourse of the victim – a sense that the world is against them and they cannot succeed."

Although he accepted black youngsters still underachieve he said the reasons behind it "have changed", adding that one problem is that school leaders see such children as victims because they do not want to be perceived as being racist.

That has filtered through to the children themselves and led to inappropriate methods to combat it such as utilising black role models.

"This is desperate and patronising," he said. "Why can’t black boys be inspired by anyone around them who is positive, including white teachers?"

He added: "Young black boys are constantly on edge, feeling that the world is against them but unable to find the real source of their trouble.

"We have a generation who have all the language and discourse of the race relations industry but no devil to fight".

Another writer in Prospect magazine said schools were being made to spy on nursery-aged children by the Race Relations Act 2000.

Munira Mirza, a senior adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson, said more than 250,000 children have been accused of racism since it become law and teachers are being forced to report children as young as three to the authorities for using alleged racist language.

She added that a "heightened awareness of racism" creates "a climate of suspicion and anxiety" contrary to the belief that it helps to stamp it out.

A dispute over political protest is simmering in the wake of Toronto's Pride weekend, after a group supporting the Palestinian cause took part in Saturday's Dyke March, and the organization Queers Against Israeli Apartheid unfurled a banner alongside Sunday’s parade.

Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti, a staunch ally of Mayor Rob Ford, filmed the Dyke March and said he will use his footage to try to axe Pride’s $125,000 in city funding.

“You have the Jewish community that’s very upset at what’s going on. And so some of us thought we resolved this thing at City Hall by saying just have them not show up. But they did show up, and now we’ve got a decision to make,” Mammoliti told media on Monday.

Toronto Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti films Saturday's Dyke March in an attempt to get Pride's city funding revoked. (Courtesy Coun. Shelley Carroll)

A group called Dykes and Trans People for Palestine took part in Saturday’s march, holding up banners reading “We stand with queers in Palestine” and “Free Palestine” and chanting “We’re sexy, we’re hot, Israeli apartheid’s not.”

Mammoliti, the councillor for Ward 7 (York West), alleges the contingent consisted largely of people from Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which some Jewish groups say promulgates anti-Israel “hate speech."

The group said in April it wouldn’t participate in Sunday’s parade because it didn’t want to give Ford and his allies a pretext to cut Pride’s funding.

QuAIA did not make any commitments about Saturday’s Dyke March, however, an annual event that specifically defines itself as “a political demonstration” and “not a parade.”

Still, Mammoliti called the banners and chants “underhandedness” and “arrogance” and said he would raise the issue in a meeting with Ford on Monday or Tuesday.

'Creepy'

Coun. Adam Vaughan called Mammoliti’s filming “creepy,” while hundreds of commenters on Twitter started posting under the tag “PeepingMammoliti.”

Pride got $123,807 in municipal grants last year, or just under four per cent of its operating budget, according to the city. The city also provided $250,000 in free garbage pickup and cleanup for the festival, which generates an estimated $94 million in economic activity from tourists and $18 million in taxes.

For this year, city council’s executive committee opted to withhold funding until after Pride weekend, with Mammoliti vowing to “watch carefully” for any involvement by QuAIA.

An estimated million people took in Sunday's Pride Parade in Toronto, in which many participants mocked Mayor Rob Ford, who chose to spend the weekend at his cottage. (Ian Willms/Canadian Press)

Group members did show up alongside Sunday’s parade, unfurling a 12-metre-wide banner from atop a subway station along the route. It read, “Support Palestinian queers, boycott Israeli tourism.”

“We’re drawing attention to Israel’s use of LGBT rights as a propaganda tool to justify apartheid policies and the occupation of Palestinian territories,” QuAIA member Tim McCaskell said in a statement on the group’s website. “We’re saying to queer people, respect yourselves and others. Don’t be used. Don’t pinkwash apartheid. Boycott gay tourism to Israel until it ends its apartheid policies.”

McCaskell said the group acted on its own. Pride organizers confirmed they had no warning about the banner and did not approve it or have control over it.

“This is something that QuAIA has done on QuAIA’s own,” McCaskell said. “If Mammoliti wants to defund pride on the basis of this, it has to do with his own political opinions, nothing to do with the city.”

In a report in April, Toronto’s city manager found that the term "Israeli apartheid" does not violate Toronto's anti-discrimination policy, the Criminal Code’s provisions on hate speech or the Ontario Human Rights Code, and that the inclusion of QuAIA in the Pride parade should have no bearing on whether the festival itself receives funding.

Coun. Janet Davis said Mammoliti needs to "move on."

"This matter was reviewed by our city manager. He said unequivocally that they complied with the city's access and equity and human rights policy, and that there was no reason whatsoever to take away funding for Pride," she said. "They have complied with all city policies. Giorgio Mammoliti should put this aside."

Geneva - Tens of thousands of people living in Libya's western mountains region are running short of food and are increasingly dependent on food aid to survive, the World Food Programme said on Tuesday.

The first evaluation mission by the United Nations to this region "has found that food security is of major concern for the people there", said Emilia Casella, spokesperson for the UN food agency.

"People were depending entirely on food assistance for their survival," she added.

The mission travelled to Nalut, Wazin, Jadu and Zintan and "found only two cows during their entire mission, they found no sheep, no goats".

"People have been selling off their livestock or consuming their livestock," said Casella.

The mission was "really shocked there is really no trade going on, shops are closed, civils servents have not been paid since February," she described.

As a result, the people are left with a "very restrictive diet" with no access to eggs, meat or fish.

The WFP has sent 800 cubic metres of food in the region where it has reached 125 000 of the most vulnerable people.

The UN refugee agency warned in June that an aid crisis appeared to be looming in Libya and more international relief may soon be needed, as the prolonged conflict and sanctions stymie the regime's ability to deliver aid.

Days after the revelation that the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn was on the verge of collapse, France reacted with a mix of Gallic indignation at the American justice system, fevered speculation about his political rehabilitation and visceral anger by some  feminists that the former head of the International Monetary Fund was now being cast as a victim.

The almost overnight transformation of D.S.K. — as Dominique Strauss-Kahn is widely known in France — from alleged sexual predator to seeming victim of an unscrupulous accuser has riveted and divided the country. The news that the Sofitel maid who had accused D.S.K. of rape had repeatedly lied to prosecutors has also spurred talk of a political comeback for the one-time French presidential contender that only weeks ago was deemed impossible.

Citing a Harris Interactive poll in the French daily Le Parisien, Le Monde noted Sunday that 49 percent of the French people surveyed favored D.S.K.’s return to politics while 45 percent opposed it. Le Monde reported that despite the renewed support for D.S.K., only 43 percent wanted the Socialists to delay primaries to allow Mr. Strauss-Kahn — who cannot travel outside the United States because of the charges against him — to re-enter the race. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

“Let’s all stay calm,” Gérard Le Gall, a public opinion expert and a Socialist, said hours before a court in Manhattan changed the terms of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s bail, freeing him on his own recognizance. “The version of the story has changed before and could change again. It’s too early to draw any conclusions.”

Jean-Francois Cope, the secretary-general of the ruling center-right UMP party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sunday that the return of D.S.K. to French politics was a matter for the Left, the newspaper Liberation reported. But Mr. Sarkozy’s sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, was less diplomatic, insisting that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had undermined France’s image globally. “He has not given a very positive image of France in recent days, between his appetites for luxury and other things,” she said dryly.

Leading the charge of those seeking to rehabilitate D.S.K. is Bernard-Henri Levy, the French intellectual and darling of the Left in France, who was eviscerated by feminists in the aftermath of the arrest for defending a man accused of being a sexual predator. Mr. Levy has now cast D.S.K. in the role of a modern-day Dreyfus, insisting that he had been unfairly maligned by a frothing-at-the-mouth American media that he characterized as obscene to the point of being “pornographic.”

Writing in The Daily Beast, Mr. Levy said that there were five lessons to be drawn from the incident, which he said would soon be known as the “Strauss-Kahn non-affair.” Calling for the restoration of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s honor, along with his freedom, Mr. Levy said that justice in the case had been cannibalized by a grotesque sideshow during which the former banking chief had been globally humiliated, subjected to a perverse “perp walk” and denigrated by the media for a crime that had yet to be proved.

“The ‘shame on you’s’ that greeted Dominique Strauss-Kahn as he arrived for the hearing on June 6th, shouted by battalions of hotel chambermaids who knew nothing of the actual case and whose protest had been orchestrated and scripted, were obscene,” he wrote. “This vision of Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains, dragged lower than the gutter — this degradation of a man whose silent dignity couldn’t be touched, was not just cruel, it was pornographic.”

Warming to his theme, Mr. Levy contended that D.S.K. had been dehumanized and transformed into a global hate figure in the same manner that Maximilien Robespierre had been demonized during the French Revolution.

“America the pragmatic, that rebels against ideologies, this country of habeas corpus that de Tocqueville claimed possessed the most democratic system of justice in the world, has pushed this French Robespierrism, unfortunately, to the extremes of its craziness,” he said. “In this case, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was no longer Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was the symbol of arrogant France. He was the emblem of the world of the privileged, odiously sure of their own impunity.”

He noted that the D.S.K. affair had laid bare the grievous temptation the world over to sanctify the words of victims. He insisted that one of the biggest victims in the case was the very principle, in the United States, of the presumption of innocence.

“He was crushed, then, by that fraction of the American judicial apparatus that, by putting Dominique Strauss-Kahn in stocks, by humiliating him before the entire world, by ruthlessly pursuing him, has probably ruined his life,” Mr. Levy wrote. Invoking George W. Bush’s notion of pre-emptive war, he said that Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney who had pursued the case against D.S.K., had pioneered a new concept, scarcely less horrifying, of “pre-emptive penalty.”

Indeed, Mr. Vance’s conduct was subjected to scrutiny in the French media over the weekend, which reported that the Manhattan district attorney now faced the same media backlash that only days before had been directed against Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

An article in Le Figaro noted Sunday that now that the case had turned in Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s favor, Mr. Vance faced the ire of a voracious media. “The D.S.K. affair should have been the case of his life. Instead, it could prove a fatal blow to his career,” the paper said.

While some French critics attacked the American media and judicial system over the affair, others continued to expound the theory that Accor, the French hotel group that owns the Sofitel Hotel, was somehow linked to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. Francois Loncle, a Socialist member of Parliament, criticized the Accor Group, implying that its owners, had played a role in the arrest. “Not all is clear about the role of Sofitel’s management and the group Accor,” Mr. Loncle said, adding that there may be unspecified “links” between Accor and certain underground French political forces. The French media have reported a close connection between Accor’s owners and Mr. Sarkozy’s center right UMP Party.

Also underlying the debate in France has been whether the new revelations about Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser have undermined the cause of feminism in France. Many Frenchwomen have been outraged by the speed with which Mr. Strauss-Kahn has been once again embraced as a possible candidate for President, while the felony charges against him remain.

At a meeting of French feminists over the weekend near Paris, many of those gathered said that the contention that the maid was a liar changed nothing. “If journalists think that this moment of political theater changes our way of seeing things, they are wrong,” Caroline de Haas, one of the assembled, told Le Monde. “Why did the DSK affair have to happen for the political class and the media to discover that there are 75,000 women in France raped each year? That professional inequality is the rule? That equality is an illusion?”

DETROIT (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday struck down Michigan's ban on the consideration of race and gender in college admissions, saying it burdens minorities and violates the U.S. Constitution.

The 2-1 decision upends a sweeping law that forced the University of Michigan and other public schools to change admission policies. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law, approved by voters in 2006, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The court mostly was concerned about how the affirmative action ban was created. Because it was passed as an amendment to the state constitution, it can only be changed with another statewide vote. This places a big burden on minorities who object to it, judges R. Guy Cole Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey said.

The ban's supporters could have chosen "less onerous avenues to effect political change," the judges said in the court's opinion.

Michigan pledged to appeal. Arizona, California, Nebraska and Washington state have similar bans, but they won't be affected by the decision because the court ruling is limited to states in the 6th Circuit, which includes Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

The judges cited two U.S. Supreme Court cases, one in 1969 involving the repeal of a fair housing law in Akron, Ohio, and the other in 1982 involving an effort to stop racial integration in Seattle schools.

"They provide the benchmark for when the majority has not only won, but also rigged the game to reproduce its success indefinitely," Cole and Daughtrey said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of a coalition that challenged the Michigan ban, hailed the court's decision.

The "ruling has kept the door open for thousands of academically qualified students of color to continue to pursue the American dream through our state's colleges and universities," said Kary Moss, an ACLU spokeswoman in Detroit.

A dissenting judge, Julia Smith Gibbons, said there was nothing wrong with the ban or the way it passed.

"The Michigan voters have ... not restructured the political process in their state by amending their state constitution; they have merely employed it," she said.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, whose office defended the law, said he will ask the full appeals court to look at the case, a request that's rarely granted.

"Entrance to our great universities must be based upon merit, and I will continue the fight for equality, fairness and rule of law," said Schuette, a Republican.

Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who opposed the 2006 constitutional amendment, had no immediate comment. He was elected last year.

The ban, which also affected government hiring, was approved by 58 percent of voters. In 2008, a federal judge in Detroit upheld it, saying it was race-neutral because no single race can benefit.

Jennifer Gratz, a Michigan native who successfully sued the University of Michigan over racial preferences before the 2006 referendum, predicted Friday's decision eventually will be thrown out.

"It's just a blip. The full 6th Circuit or the Supreme Court will take it," Gratz said. "Judges are not supreme rulers. The people voted."

A business group, Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, praised the ruling.

"This is one place where government should be acting more like a business, and the 6th Circuit court decision gives governments and universities the tools they need to improve diversity and inclusion," said Debbie Dingell, a former General Motors executive.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn walked out of court without bail Friday, freed from house arrest, after prosecutors acknowledged serious questions about the credibility of the hotel housekeeper who accused him of sexual assault.

The charges, which include attempted rape, were not dropped, but the easing of his bail conditions signaled that prosecutors do not believe the accusations are as ironclad as they once seemed.

"It is a great relief," said Strauss-Kahn's attorney, William Taylor. "It is so important in this country that people, especially the media, refrain from judgment until the facts are all in."

After his arrest, Strauss-Kahn, 62, resigned from his post leading the International Monetary Fund and watched his presidential ambitions in France seemingly crumble. He had been confined for weeks to a luxury New York City loft on $6 million in cash and bond.

The 32-year-old hotel maid accused Strauss-Kahn of chasing her through his luxury suite in May, trying to pull down her pantyhose and forcing her to perform oral sex. Authorities have said they have forensic evidence of a sexual encounter, but defense lawyers have said it wasn't forced.

The stark turn in the case came after the woman admitted to prosecutors she had made up a story of being gang-raped and beaten in her homeland of Guinea to enhance her application for political asylum, prosecutors said in a letter to defense lawyers.

She also misrepresented what she did after the alleged attack — instead of fleeing to a hallway and waiting for a supervisor, she went to clean another room and then returned to clean Strauss-Kahn's suite before telling her supervisor that she had been attacked, prosecutors said.

She also misrepresented her income and claimed someone else's child as her own dependent on tax returns, they said.

The details speak to the maid's credibility and whether her story would stand up under oath in a prosecution that would rely heavily on her testimony.

The woman's attorney, Ken Thompson, fired back outside court, saying the district attorney's office was backing away from the case because it was too scared to prosecute it. He said she would come out in public to tell her story but didn't specify when.

Thompson said the woman went to the district attorney with information that her asylum application was flawed, but that she exaggerated on it because she was scared she would be sent back to Guinea. He said she came to the U.S. because she was a victim of female genital mutilation, and she worried her daughter, now 15, would be victimized as well. He also said she had been raped by soldiers there, but that attack did not occur as it was written in her asylum application.

Thompson said that Strauss-Kahn bruised the woman's genitals, tore a ligament in her shoulder and ripped her stockings, and that she fought to get away.

Investigators have said they found traces of his semen on her uniform.

"From day one she has described a violent sexual assault that Dominique Strauss-Kahn committed against her," Thompson said. "She has described that sexual assault many times, to prosecutors and to me, and she has never once changed a single thing about that encounter."

Thompson also said that news reports saying his client was involved with a drug dealer were lies.

The New York Times, quoting unidentified law enforcement official, reported that the woman was recorded on the phone with an incarcerated man around the day she made the allegations, discussing whether to press her case in court.

The newspaper said the man had been arrested on marijuana possession charges and had deposited cash in the woman's bank account.

"It is clear that this woman made some mistakes, but that doesn't mean she's not a rape victim," Thompson said.

Strauss-Kahn arrived at the courthouse Friday morning in a Lexus SUV and strode confidently up the granite steps with his wife, French journalist Anne Sinclair, at his side.

After the hearing, he slowly walked out the building with his arm on her shoulder, smiling at the throng gathered outside.

He was not given back his passport, and he will not yet be allowed to leave the country. His other attorney, Benjamin Brafman, said Strauss-Kahn would be free to travel within the U.S.

Prosecutors offered few details inside court on the turn in the case. Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said a further investigation caused them to reassess it.

"At the time this case came to the district attorney's office, we were faced with a credible claim of a serious sexual assault," she said, noting the accuser had promptly reported the alleged attack and had a "solid work history."

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus, in releasing Strauss-Kahn, said there would be no rush to judgment either way.

Illuzzi-Orbon said, "Although it is clear that the strength of the case has been affected by the substantial credibility issues regarding the complainant, we are not moving to dismiss the case at this time."

If the case collapses, it could once again shake up the race for the French presidency. Strauss-Kahn, a prominent Socialist, had been seen as a leading potential challenger to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's elections — until the New York allegations embarrassed his party and led to his resignation from the IMF.

"Those who know Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be surprised by this evolution of events," one of his French lawyers, Leon Lef Forster, told The Associated Press in Paris. "What he was accused of has no relation to his personality. It was something that was not credible."

New doubts about Strauss-Kahn's accuser would also revive speculation of a conspiracy against Strauss-Kahn aimed at torpedoing his presidential chances. Within days of his arrest, a poll suggested that a majority of French think Strauss-Kahn, who long had a reputation as a womanizer and was nicknamed "the great seducer," was the victim of a plot.

Strauss-Kahn was held without bail for nearly a week after his May arrest. His lawyers ultimately persuaded a judge to release him by agreeing to extensive — and expensive — conditions, including an ankle monitor, surveillance cameras and armed guards. He was allowed to leave only for court, weekly religious services and visits to doctors and his lawyers.

The security measures were estimated to cost him $200,000 a month, on top of the $50,000-a-month rent on the townhouse in the city's TriBeCa neighborhood.

Under New York law, judges base bail decisions on such factors as the defendant's character, financial resources and criminal record, as well as the strength of the case — all intended to help gauge how likely the person is to flee if released.

Strauss-Kahn is slated to return to court July 18.

The Dutch parliament has passed a bill banning the slaughter of livestock without stunning it first, removing an exemption that has allowed Jews and Muslims to butcher animals according to their centuries-old dietary rules.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, the FPOe, would win the most votes if there were a general election this weekend, according to the results of a new opinion poll released Friday.

The FPOe would secure 29 percent of the votes if there were a general election on Sunday, overtaking for the first time the Social Democrats with 28 pecent and the conservative People’s Party or OeVP with 23 percent, according to a poll by the OGM institute on behalf of the daily Kurier.

The environmentalist Green party and another far-right party, the BZOe, would each win 13 percent of the votes.

The current coalition government under Social Democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann, which took power in December 2008, is made up of the Social Democrats and OeVP parties in a power-sharing deal.

The head of the OGM institute, Wolfgang Bachmayer, attributed the FPOe’s current strength, not only to a wider disillusionment with politics, but with the current coalition government in particular.

Furthermore, “the showings have undoubtedly been influenced by the current debate over the statements by Erste Bank chief executive Andreas Treichl, the euro crisis and the Greek debt crisis,” Bachmayer told the newspaper.

Erste Bank chief Treichl triggered a storm of controversy this week by saying politicians were “too stupid” to understand the economy.

And FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache has been campaigning for months to kick Greece out of the eurozone.

Quizzed as to whom they would vote for if they could elect the chancellor directly, 24 percent of the poll’s 805 respondents said they would choose the current chancellor Faymann, 18 percent the current deputy chancellor Michael Spindelegger and 16 percent would vote for Strache.

The FPOe came second in local municipal elections in Vienna last October, winning 26 percent of the votes. The ruling Social Democrats finally opted for a coalition with the environmentalist Greens.

A poll at the beginning of May suggested that 43 percent of the population wanted the FPOe to participate in the next national government following the next general elections in 2013.

The far-right has already been in government in Austria: the FPOe under its charismatic leader, the late Joerg Haider, was the junior coalition partner with the conservative OeVP between 2000 and 2006 under then chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, and the President of PEN International, John Ralston Saul, today made the following joint statement to mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May. They added that they are making this joint statement to express their concern over the growing threats to freedom of expression.

"Journalists and writers across the world are imprisoned and silenced every year for saying or writing things that did not please those in power. Now we are witnessing the imprisonment of bloggers, citizen journalists, web-activists - even simple Internet users, for legitimately exercising their right to freedom of expression.

It has never been easier to exercise our rights to expression and information, but it has also never been easier to interfere with them.

When freedom of expression cannot be exercised fully by media professionals or by writers, the freedom of each of us, of every citizen, is endangered. Our rights to receive information and to freely form and to hold views and opinions are limited. Our right to informed participation is eroded. Ultimately, democracy is compromised.

Freedom of speech is one of the essential pillars of a genuine democracy, it requires extraordinary protection. This is enshrined in Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

We urge all governments, civil society actors, technical communities and the private sector to work together to protect freedom of expression in our common interest" Mr. Jagland and Mr. Saul said. "The Council of Europe and PEN International, drawing on our respective strengths, are currently looking at ways that we can cooperate to this end."

***

The Council of Europe is a political Organisation set up in 1949, the Council of Europe promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law throughout the continent. It develops common responses to social, cultural and legal challenges in its 47 member States, which are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights rules on individual or state applications alleging violations of the rights and freedoms it protects.


PEN International celebrates literature and promotes freedom of expression. Founded in 1921, its global community of writers now spans more than 100 countries. Its programmes, campaigns, events and publications connect writers and readers wherever they are in the world. PEN International operates in all five continents, with 144 PEN Centres in 102 countries. In 2010 it monitored over 700 cases worldwide of writers and journalists killed, disappeared, attacked, threatened or on trial.

Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an American organisation sympathetic to Afrikaners and South African whites, responds to media accusations that American Renaissance had links to the murderer of Tucson, Arizona, Jared Loughner:

This is so hopelessly wrong that it is hard to believe it is a genuine government document. No one by the name of Loughner has ever been a subscriber to American Renaissance or has ever registered for an American Renaissance conference. We have no evidence that he has even visited the AR website.

American Renaissance condemns violence in the strongest possible terms, and nothing that has ever appeared in it pages could be interpreted as countenancing it.

AR is not anti-government, anti-Semitic, or anti-ZOG, as is clear from the 20 years of back issues that are posted on our website. The expression “ZOG” has never appeared in the pages of AR, and we have has always welcomed Jewish participation in our work. Many of the speakers at American Renaissance conferences have been Jewish.

Although the name Gabrielle Giffords has appeared in news articles we have excerpted on our website, AR itself has never mentioned her and has certainly never criticized her policies.

Finally, Gabrielle Giffords is not the “first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government.” Barbara Boxer has represented California in the Senate from 1993, and Diane Feinstein has done so since 1992. There are at least six Jewish congresswomen listed by Wikipedia as currently serving in the House.

If this memo is typical of the research done by the Department of Homeland Security, our country is in serious danger.

I telephoned DHS today to try to get the bottom of this nonsense, but apparently there is no homeland security on Sundays. The person who answered the phone said no one is there and that I should call back on Monday morning.

Fortunately, some of the media organizations that have been reporting this story have contacted me, and have reported my assertion that American Renaissance knows nothing at all about Jared Loughner, that we condemn all violence, and that we cannot possibly be described as anti-Semitic.

Even Mark Potok of the SPLC was quoted today as saying, “Jared Taylor is not an anti-Semite.”