Boneheads say ‘Happy Birthday Mister Hitler!’

Above : (L-R) Jeff, Doug, Kerry & James on the piss

Well, try to. In New Zealand / Aotearoa, boneheads associated with the NZ Hammerskins and Blood & Honour NZ will tonight be tapping their toes to the sound of Douglas Schott and his band Blood Red Eagle singing about Vikings; and wondering why members of Satan’s Slaves won’t talk to them any more…

Talia Dekel, ‘Hitler concert angers New Zealand Jews’, The Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2007. Note: “Another member of Wellington’s Jewish community told the Jerusalem Post that Jews “didn’t want an article [regarding the event] to be published in New Zealand,” fearing that such publicity would attract “new recruits” who were interested in joining [n]eo-Nazi groups. Young people, who otherwise may not have known of their existence, she said, may read the article and think, “here’s a group that I can align myself with”.”

Er… right.

In Lisbon, Portugal, police have apparently temporarily detained the bonehead organisers of a trans-European knees-up / anti-immigrant conference also scheduled to take place on Uncle Adolph‘s birthday (April 20, 1889). Well, according to an anonymous account in The Portugal News Online anyway — which also claims that this august occasion was scheduled to be the first (major?) public gathering of the extreme right in Portugal since the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974:

In a nationwide operation, law enforcement authorities conducted close to a hundred house searches and made more than 30 arrests as they clearly looked to send out a warning to extreme right-wingers gathering at a secret location in Lisbon this weekend… Around 13 European [fascist] groups are expected in Lisbon this weekend to celebrate National Youth Day, which the PNR [National Renewal Party] says will be [o]ne of the biggest [fascist] events in decades. However, the British National Party (BNP), Austrian Freedom Party (FPI) and Jean Marie Le Pen‘s National Front have indicated that their representation in Lisbon will take place only in [an] unofficial capacity… The only major party expected to bring its leadership to Lisbon is Germany’s NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland) [which] said [it] will be promoting [fascist activism] in Portugal. The NPD is widely considered in democratic circles in Berlin as a threat to constitutional order, and several parties have been insistent in calling for its prohibition. Other groups to have confirmed their presence are Spain’s Alianza Nacional and Forza Nuova of Italy. In the meantime, a number of police forces are set to be monitoring every movement of the attendees of the conference. Police have also indicated that security will be boosted at synagogues in the Greater Lisbon Area as well as the Israeli Embassy…

Another report from EUX-TV (‘Far-right leader jailed in Portugal’, April 20, 2007) states:

Mario Machado, leader of the Portuguese far-right movement National Front (FN), was imprisoned Friday after 14 hours of questioning, a spokesman for the court said.

A Lisbon judge decreed preventative prison for Machado. His lawyer did not give details, saying the charges against him were “public knowledge.”

Nearly 30 far-right militants, including Machado, were detained Wednesday for possession of weapons and racist activities. Police searched some 60 addresses around the country.

Three of the detainees were placed under house arrest pending trial. Six were ordered to report regularly to the authorities. The rest were released.

Machado was sentenced to four years in prison in 1997 for participating in the killing of Alcino Monteiro, a Portuguese citizen of African origin, in Lisbon in 1995…

See also : Mario de Queiroz, ‘Extreme Right to Host Anti-Immigrant Conference’, IPS, April 6, 2007.

In Russia, authorities have informed potential victims of neo-Nazi birthday celebrations — in this case, foreign medical students at a Moscow university — to stay locked inside their dormitories (‘Students: Moscow university orders foreign student lockdown before Hitler birthday’, AP, International Herald Tribune, April 19, 2007), while Putin’s little helpers remain free to roam the streets outside.

Same old story.