"Coming to this country is a privilege. If you can't live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded..."- UK Home Secretary Jacqui "O'Brien" Smith
Named and shamed: the 16 barred from UK
By Beverley Rouse, Press Association
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 79127.html
Wow...Sixteen people banned from entering the UK were "named and shamed" by the Home Office today.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.
The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host...
..."We are publishing the names of 16 of those that we have excluded since October. We are telling people who they are and why it is we don't want them in this country."
She said the number of people excluded from Britain had risen from an average of two a month to five a month since October.
The list of the 16 "least wanted" includes radio talk show host Michael Savage, real name Michael Weiner.
"This is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country," Ms Smith told BBC Breakfast.
Also named are American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, who have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and claimed the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.
"If people have so clearly overstepped the mark in terms of the way not just that they are talking but the sort of attitudes that they are expressing to the extent that we think that this is likely to cause or have the potential to cause violence or inter-community tension in this country, then actually I think the right thing is not to let them into the country in the first place. Not to open the stable door then try to close it later," Ms Smith said.
"It's a privilege to come to this country. There are certain behaviours that mean you forfeit that privilege."
Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe are also on the list released today.
Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, the former leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang which committed 20 racially motivated murders, are also banned from coming to Britain. Both are currently in prison.
Making up the rest of the 16 named by the Home Office today are preachers Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi and Amir Siddique, Muslim activist Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), murderer and Hezbollah terrorist Samir Al Quntar and Kashmiri terror group leader Nasr Javed.
...and Savage's response...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov ... y_id=39618
While not a regular Savage listener, I've heard his diatribe. To categorize his speech along with Phelps, KKK leaders, murderers and overt anti-semites, however, is lunacy.Savage told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview this morning that he was shocked to learn the news that he was included in the British government's first-ever list of nearly two dozen people from across the globe who are banned from entering the nation for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred.
"When I woke up and saw this this morning ... my first thought was, damn, there goes the summer trip where I planned to have my dental work done," the "Savage Nation" host joked. "My second thought was, darn ... there goes my visit to the restaurants of England for their great cuisine."
But, he added, the issue is no laughing matter -- and represents a serious threat to free speech.
"Today it's me. Tomorrow it's someone else," he said. "My first reaction is, this can't be happening ... that the land of the Magna Carta has now become the land of the mini-Carta."...
...Savage told The Chronicle that being included in such a crowd is no laughing matter -- and he is now preparing legal action against Smith, he said.
"This lunatic ... is linking me up with Nazi skinheads who are killing people in Russia, she's putting me in a league with Hamas murderers who kill Jews on busses," he said. "I have never advocated violence ... I've been on the air 15 years. My views may be inflammatory, but they're not violent in any way."
He said he has been defamed and endangered by the British government action. "She has painted a target on my back, linking me with people who are in prison for killing people," he said. "Does she not think people might hunt me down?"
Savage said he has had no contact with the British government or with Smith's office and has no idea how he ended up on the British Home secretary's list.
And he said he is working with attorneys and supporters who have called from around the world in an effort to find out.
"Is it the government's investigation? Who did this? If she didn't draw it up, who did?" he said.
But he said that even liberals should be disturbed at the move by the British government taken this week because they should wonder "who's next?"
"All I've done is expressing strong political opinions that happen to be quite patriotic to a large generation of Americans. They're not really out of the mainstream with most of America. Yeah, they're out of the mainstream with San Francisco and Los Angeles," he said.
Hope Ms. O'Brien gets cornholed by the press, and Savage sues her into oblivion. Unethical Orwellian conduct MUST be stopped in it's tracks via a concerted bi-partisan political voice...
...it's about liberty, not ideology.
