In tonight’s news: Israel is poised to send ground troops into Gaza.
A Muslim family was removed from a plane before takeoff, and is being compensated by the airline for the error. CAIR is in high dudgeon about the incident.
Thousands of shoes were dumped on a Miami expressway — is that a message for President-eject Bush?
Thanks to Abu Elvis, Barry Rubin, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Blagojevich Pushes to Get Burris Seated in Senate
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — House Speaker Michael Madigan is speeding up the push to dump Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office, telling lawmakers to be prepared to vote on the governor’s impeachment as early as next week.
The move illustrates the dynamic playing out as leaders in Springfield and Washington pursue the same goal: denying a U.S. Senate seat to former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, Blagojevich’s post-arrest pick to succeed President-elect Barack Obama. Even as U.S. Senate leaders try to slow down Burris’ seating, state lawmakers are accelerating the pace of impeachment proceedings against Blagojevich with the idea that the new governor, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, could pick a senator without taint.
Knowing that’s the case, Burris asked the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday to act swiftly on his request to clear his path to the Senate. Blagojevich appointed Burris earlier this week, but Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has refused to co-sign the petition, which U.S. Senate leaders could use as an argument to refuse to let Burris into office Tuesday. Should the Senate refuse to seat him, Burris’ attorney said he plans to sue to force them to accept him.
Burris also will get an invitation to testify Wednesday before the state House impeachment panel about his U.S. Senate appointment. House Majority Leader Barbara Currie, the Democrat who chairs the impeachment committee, said the panel hopes to hear from Burris by invitation but that she and Madigan are “prepared to go along” with a request from Republican Rep. Jim Durkin to subpoena Burris if necessary.
Even so, Currie said she “cannot imagine” Blagojevich extended an improper offer to Burris following the governor’s arrest, nor would Burris have accepted one.
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Creative Borrowing Catches Up With California Cities
“They’re circumventing the intent of the law,” says Larry Stein, an Oxnard accountant and longtime activist, of the city’s sale and lease-back of its streets. “They’re indebting the taxpayers using future revenue streams that may or may not pan out in the long run. But the taxpayers have no say.”
[…]
Desperate for cash in a sputtering economy, local governments throughout California are digging themselves deeper into debt, and many are doing so through exotic financing schemes designed to sidestep the need for voter approval.
[…]
“Instead of saying we don’t have enough income to do what we need to do, we’ve resorted to debt,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Initiative, a nonpartisan group that studies the state’s budget priorities. “It’s time for elected officials to have an honest conversation with voters about what their tax dollars can buy.”
[…]
Oxnard’s sale of its streets in December 2007 was a variation on a borrowing technique known as a lease-back.
In a typical example in the private sector, a business sells a property to raise money, then leases it back from the buyer. In the public sector, lease-backs are more a financial sleight of hand. A city council that needs to raise money might sell its city hall to a council-controlled finance authority. The council would then rent, or lease back, the building from the finance authority.
The authority, meanwhile, would issue bonds using the city hall as collateral. It would pay back the bondholders with the “rent” it collects from the city.
The sale of the building is a legal abstraction, a shuffling of paper whose purpose is to keep the debt off the city’s books. That way, officials can circumvent the state Constitution’s requirement of voter approval for government borrowing.
“The reason they enter into these leases is so that they don’t have to get the debt voter-approved,” said John Kim, an advisor with Los Angeles investment bank De La Rosa & Co. who has set up lease-back deals for a number of California cities. “They’re so popular that a lot of cities then run out of assets to lease.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Family Booted Off U.S. Airline Gets Apology
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A Muslim family that was ordered off an AirTran Airways flight on New Year’s Day received an apology and refund on Friday from the airline, which said its decision to bar the passengers was necessary.
Atif Irfan said in an interview with CNN that federal authorities removed him, seven family members and a friend from the flight after passengers overheard members of the group talking about the safest place to sit on the plane. He said they were being careful to avoid any “buzzwords” like “bomb” that would trigger a security alert.
The group was flying out of Reagan Washington National Airport and was headed for a religious retreat in Florida when other passengers apparently overheard the conversation and reported it to authorities.
AirTran, a subsidiary of AirTran Holdings Inc., issued a statement apologizing to the nine and the other passengers who were inconvenienced by the incident. It said the airfare of the nine was refunded and other passengers would be reimbursed for expenses incurred by taking other flights.
“We apologize to all of the passengers — to the nine who had to undergo extensive interviews from the authorities, and to the 95 who ultimately made the flight,” the discount airline said in a statement.
“While ultimately this issue proved to be a misunderstanding, the steps taken were necessary,” it said.
An earlier AirTran statement said the airline complied with all Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security directives and had no discretion in the case.
All 104 passengers aboard the flight were taken off and rescreened and their baggage was checked again, AirTran said. Of the nine passengers in the group, six asked to be rebooked to Florida, AirTran said.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said it filed a complaint on Friday with the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Islamic civil rights group said in a statement it was working with the Muslim passengers and the airline to address the civil liberties issues related to the incident.
“We believe this disturbing incident would never have occurred had the Muslim passengers removed from the plane not been perceived by other travelers and airline personnel as members of the Islamic faith,” the group said in its complaint.
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New Year’s Resolutions for a Safer, Saner World
[Comments from JD: This is a marxist site and in that vein the article provides insight into what people may expect from Obama.]
That Barack Obama will take office rather than John McCain is the most hopeful event the people of the US and the world have this year. Here are ten resolutions for the new administration, “ripped from the headlines” of world events…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Minnesota Recount Folly
Something is wrong when a victorious candidate owes more thanks to vote counters than to voters. Such was the case in Washington in 2004, and Minnesota is poised to follow in its footsteps in 2008.
It need not be this way. After 2004, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation produced a 42-page report offering a dozen solutions. While a few were implemented, most were simply ignored by officials content to cross their fingers and hope the next close election is in someone else’s jurisdiction.
[…]
The man overseeing the Senate recount, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, was also endorsed by Acorn, and his election campaign in 2006 was funded in part by something called “The Secretary of State Project.” This latter group, founded by MoveOn.org’s former grass-roots director, exists solely to install far-left candidates as secretaries of state in swing states.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands of Shoes Dumped on Miami Expressway
MIAMI — Thousands of shoes were dumped on a Miami expressway causing significant traffic delays.
The Florida Highway Patrol received the report during rush hour Friday morning, Lt. Pat Santangelo said. A private contractor brought a front-end loader and a dump truck to the half-mile stretch of highway. Workers were able to clear at least one lane after a short time by sweeping all the shoes to shoulder, but delays were expected to last until all the shoes could be removed.
Santangelo said the shoes appear to be used, and most were tied together in pairs. He says he’s looking for a charity to take the shoes, rather than sending them to the dump.
Santangelo says he’s not sure where the shoes came from. There were no signs of a crash, and no one stopped to claim them.
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Britain’s ‘Betrayed’ White Working Classes Believe Immigrants Receive Better Treatment
White families on the country’s poorest estates believe they have been ‘betrayed’ and ‘abandoned’ by politicians who favour newly-arrived immigrants, a Government report acknowledged today.
It found that people on council estates think they always come second to immigrants for housing and benefits.
Many feel they have been shoved aside by politicians who use political correctness and allegations of racism to stifle honest discussion, it said.
The report for the Department of Communities and Local Government drew an admission from Communities Secretary Hazel Blears that white working class people ‘sometimes just don’t feel anyone is listening or speaking up for them.’
She said people should be allowed to talk about their worries ‘without fear of being branded a racist.’
The findings, produced by Mrs Blear’s ‘National Community Forum’, appear another step on Labour’s road away from multiculturalism, the left-wing doctrine that dominated ministerial thinking until the 2005 London July bombings.
Under multiculturalism, ethnic minority groups are encouraged to develop their own identity while critics say values associated with white groups are dismissed as racist.
Today’s report was based on interviews with 43 people on largely-white housing estates in Birmingham, Runcorn, Milton Keynes and Thetford in Norfolk.
It found that ‘by far the most frequent context for referring to ethnic minorities is that of perceived competition for resources — typically housing, but also employment, benefits, territory and culture.’
White working-class residents of some of the country’s most disadvantaged estates felt that immigrants were given priority in social housing
On the Milton Keynes estate, ‘feelings of anxiety around housing were so acute that respondents claimed they had voted against the regeneration of the estate, which meant pulling down all breeze block houses and rebuilding them with new and better materials, because they feared that their necessary displacement during building work would result in them losing their places on the estate to immigrants.’
Many residents were worried that refugees and single mothers could find council and housing association homes more easily than people whose families had lived in the area for generations.
It said they felt that if they complained they would be told the system was fair and they were racist.
The report said there was a ‘growing sense of unfairness and disempowerment among poor white people’ that was at its deepest in the most deprived areas.
It warned that the resentment could provide fertile ground for far right political groups.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Britain in Grip of Longest Cold Snap for 10 Years
Cold, mainly dry and frosty conditions, which set in on Boxing Day, are likely to continue for at least seven days as the weather is dominated by a huge region of high pressure coming from the Continent.
For this time of year, forecasters say it is likely to be the longest prolonged spell of cold weather — where temperatures barely rise above zero centigrade (32F) — since 1996.
Usually long spells of cold weather occur around February when the effect of warming from the Atlantic sea is reduced.
“We have another five to seven days of colder weather still to come which will make it the longest spell since 1996 at this early stage of winter,” said Philip Eden, the Daily Telegraph weather correspondent.
“Usually prolonged cold spells happen in late January and February because the weather in early winter comes from the warm Atlantic sea rather than the cold Continent.
“Over the last 20 years winters temperatures have risen quite substantially so we have perhaps forgotten what it is like to have this sort of spell of weather.
“They have become less common.”
Not only has the weather been cold but for huge swathes of the country, it has been extremely dry.
“Over a huge part of the UK it hasn’t actually rained since the 13th of December,” said Mr Eden.
“Three weeks without rain at the this time is very unusual and again has not happened since around 1996.”
The temperatures are likely to reach their coldest at 15.8F (-9C) on Sunday night when there is also likely to be some rain. Forecasters have warned commuters for the big return to work on Monday to be extra cautious.
“There could be some severe black ice patches on the road for the big return to work because there could be rain falling on frozen ground on Sunday night,” said a spokesman for the Met Office .
The relatively calm, cold spell is expected to break after next weekend with bands of rain, strong westerly winds and milder conditions spreading from the Atlantic.
The lowest temperatures this cold snap reached 10F (-12C) in the north of Scotland as freezing prevented the sun from heating the ground.
Manchester was the coldest major city with daytime temperatures persisting close to 27F (-3C) for much of the day. London and the South East were less cold.
These temperatures do not threaten long-term records. Just over a decade ago, in the last days of 1995, new low temperature records were being set in Scotland. The details of these temperatures place the current cold spell into perspective.
On December 30 1995 the UK national low temperature record of 17F (-27.2C) was equalled — on this occasion it was recorded at the small Sutherland village of Altnaharra. This temperature was previously recorded in 1895 and 1982 in eastern Scotland.
Remarkably, 1995 saw new record-low temperatures set for each day from December 27 to 30. Such “date-records” are not that difficult to achieve but this spell of intense cold, just over a decade ago, really shows how much colder the turn of the year can be — and how far from a record we are right now.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Gordon Brown Has Ruined Sterling But Now is Not the Time to be Lured Into the Euro
[…and other stories]
And aren’t we supposed to feel fools for not being part of it? Sterling, thanks to the idiotic economic policies of Gordon Brown, is a basket case. At this rate, anyone wanting a fortnight on the Costa del Sol this summer will have to remortgage their house to pay for it. If only we’d signed up for the euro: then we’d be smug too.
Actually, I fear we wouldn’t. The riots in Greece last month show what happens in countries where you can’t vote to change the economic policy. Taking to the streets is the only recourse open to nations that can’t devalue, and where the burden of debt is suffocating the economy. It isn’t just happening in poor countries like Greece, either. Italy, which statistics tell us is to have a higher GDP than ours this year, remains in the euro only by having every available rule bent to keep it there. In France, hyper-active President Sarkozy is watching much of his domestic industries forced to the verge of bankruptcy. Exports from the eurozone are cripplingly expensive. France’s aerospace business is tottering. Even its luxury marques like Chanel are having to lay people off. Before too long, there is going to be chaos in the eurozone, mark my words.
The confrontation between rhetoric and reality cannot be long delayed. The EU maintains that its currency will survive, not just because it bends the rules to keep unworthy economies within it, but because the European Central Bank will hold the line on interest rates. We’ll see. The bending of those rules cannot long escape the currency markets. They have picked off sterling and the dollar — the time cannot be far off when the short sellers go after the euro.
For a start, the ECB’s macho stance relies on Germany’s willingness to be, effectively, the lender of last resort for the ECB. The reserves of most other countries in the 16-strong eurozone aren’t worth having. Germany has already shown a readiness to operate a freelance economic and financial policy when the going gets tough. Being the crutch upon which at least eight or nine economies lean may not be an attractive option for much longer. And then there will be unrest in other countries, as they see unemployment rising and businesses being driven to insolvency, much as we did here before Black Wednesday in 1992, when we made our happy exit from the fixed exchange rate. Greece was just about manageable; but when this disease moves to economies such as Italy, France and Spain, then what? We forget, too, how hard things are for the Irish, locked into a crippling exchange rate in relation to their main export market — Britain. If the ECB and Brussels have to manage meltdown on several fronts at once, they will fail.
No wonder ministers discount any possibility of our entering this absurd system. No wonder the EU’s own attitude to its currency is one of pure propaganda — such as with the pitiful entry of gullible little Slovakia into the club this week — rather than of reason. For all I know, the pound will fall further against the euro; but the demise of the euro is being made more certain each day that the political reality of its members is ignored, and with every breach of the rules to allow unsuitable economies to remain part of it. When the secret does get out, the fall will be swift, ugly and contagious. But that cloud, like all others, will have a silver lining.. It won’t just make things cheaper on the Costas: it could well signal the collapse of the whole experiment for the European superstate itself…..
[…]
The couple betrayed by their own country
David and Fiona Fulton are British missionaries who, for several years, have been doing good works for the people of Gambia. Since 1994, that country has been run by one of Africa’s numerous tyrants, Yahya Jammeh.
The Fultons were accused of acting seditiously towards Jammeh’s cruel regime, which they strenuously denied, but when put on trial for this ridiculously 16th-century offence pleaded guilty in the hope of being let off. Instead, Gambia repaid their years of devotion to its people by sentencing this couple to a year’s hard labour each. Possibly even more disgusting was the Foreign Office’s comment that it could not become involved in the legal processes of another country.
That is fine when Britons have broken the laws of a civilised country: in this case it is outrageous and a betrayal of the Fultons. We should warn our people to get out of Gambia, withdraw all aid, and recall our High Commissioner at once. Cowardice on our part will only encourage this sort of savagery.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Radio Critic Finds Talk Show Time Slashed
Program host: ‘I’m just trying to bring to light what he’s said’
Politically active Barack Obama supporters in Michigan have tried to silence criticism of the president-elect on a talk program at a community radio station by cutting its air time, the program host says.
Officials with radio station WRHC told WND the dispute involved talk show host Martin Dzuris’ coverage of local issues as well as national issues.
But Dzuris explained in a lengthy interview with WND he attended at least one meeting where radio station officials discussed specifically how to reduce Dzuris’ criticism of Obama, which has linked Obama’s statements taken directly from his speeches to Marxism.
Dzuris said one issue raised was Obama’s demand in a Colorado Springs speech for a Civilian National Security Force, an issue on which WND has reported.
Dzuris, who spent the first half of his life under communist rule in Czechoslovakia, told WND, that concept isn’t new at all.
“We called them the ‘peoples’ militia,’ (in Czechoslovakia)” he told WND.
He said he’s reviewed Obama’s speeches in light of his upbringing under a Marxist-type government, and discussed those issues on his program.
“I’m just trying to bring to light what he’s said,” Dzuris told WND. “I’m just taking what he says, his influences, background?,” he said. “I lived all those things.” He said he was born in Czechslovakia and defected in 1989.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: It Was a Golden Elizabethan Age — We Won’t See Its Like Again
[TJ: For all the pessimists out there — you’re not the only ones who enjoy moaning ;p]
Most of us find plenty to dislike and complain of in the world we inhabit (which is just as well for us columnists, who find it hard to fashion 1,200 words about unmitigated good news).
But it is possible that the biggest and most difficult changes since the 1940s are now afoot. Since September 11, 2001, the West has had a feeling of living on borrowed time. In the course of 2008, it became clear that we could no longer live on so much borrowed money.
It does not follow that the resources of our civilisation are exhausted. Indeed, the chief reason that voters decided that Barack Obama should be the next President of the United States is that they decided to tick the box marked “hope”, rather than the one marked “fear”. But it does seem certain that the political, economic and cultural assumptions of the West will now be contested.
As this happens, the way we look at the last 60 years will change. When I was a boy in the 1960s, we grew up with an idea that the world before 1914 had been one of good order, progress and British cultural confidence. The word “Victorian” was not an unqualified positive — it stood, among other things, for sternness, prudery and imperialism — but it was inextricably linked with success and security.
I suggest that, for our grandchildren, the period from 1945 to 2008, and, more particularly, that of recovering prosperity from 1979 to 2008, will seem similarly blessed.
It is hard to imagine how important a freedom is if one is brought up to expect it. In Hope Against Hope, one of the best books written about life under totalitarianism, Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the Russian poet Osip, who died in Stalin’s purges, describes a conversation with fellow dissidents in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. For some reason, the talk turned to train travel, and she asserted that, in Britain (which she had never visited), people were free to buy a ticket for any destination they chose and travel without official permission. Her friends laughed this to scorn. How could this be possible, they asked. How could the authorities dare surrender so much power to the citizenry?
But she was right, of course, though we take it so much for granted that we barely think of it as a freedom at all. And in my lifetime — 52 years of it — our freedom to travel has grown and grown. Not only has it been officially unrestricted within our borders, it has been extended beyond them. There is freedom of movement within the European Union, and British citizens are allowed to visit the United States without a visa.
With the lack of governmental control has come much wider economic opportunity to travel. Most people have access to a car. Most people go on foreign holidays.
Money started to travel, too. In my father’s passport in the 1960s was a back page where he was required to record all the money he took out of the country (it was a criminal offence to take more than £50 per journey). In 1979, Mrs Thatcher abolished exchange controls and allowed money of any amount to move freely in and out of Britain. It was a bold statement of trust in the state of the world and the strength of our system of government.
If money can travel freely, so can goods. The contents of a Western supermarket are a daily miracle of global cooperation. In our fridge are dwarf beans from Egypt, red chillies from Kenya, blueberries from Argentina, flat-leaf parsley from Israel and red peppers from Spain.
Even the end of the Cold War was brought about partly by travel. People from the Eastern Bloc started trying to move freely to visit the West, and the authorities felt too weak to prevent them. The Berlin Wall stood in the way of such movement, so the people took it down.
It is not obvious that such freedoms will continue. The combination of terrorism and environmental anxiety has made travel more problematic. The way airports have become such fraught places in recent years is an indication of the greater restriction under which we shall all be made to live.
We have not yet reached the point of needing government permits to travel, but the age of electronic surveillance means that we now travel observed.. What the authorities can monitor, they will soon wish actively to control.. How much longer before you are forbidden to drive your car to certain places at certain times, or made to pay an extra tax on any journey which a bureaucrat does not consider “necessary”?
Perhaps when I tell my grandchildren that I used simply to get into my car and drive where I pleased, they will not believe me.
Throughout the life of most people reading this column, we have been free of war, suffered no revolution, pandemic, famine, or even economic depression. Until the last few years, our country (with the exception of Northern Ireland) has been untouched by religious fanaticism. Even as late as the 1980s, the idea that some of our fellow citizens would blow us and themselves up because they believed that the Koran told them to do so would have seemed preposterous. Today, it is in the back of every mind on every Tube journey.
Although we have been overtaxed and over-controlled, the rights of private property have been maintained, and the possession of it extended. In 1914, less than 15 per cent of the housing stock was owner-occupied. Today, the figure is not much short of
70 per cent. We can save money for ourselves (though there no longer seems to be much point in doing so), and spend it as we wish (a freedom we may have overindulged).
We can marry (and divorce) whom we please, decide how many children to have, complain in public about our government, and choose which media we prefer to inform and entertain us.
And standing behind all this, for more than 60 years, has been the idea that the world order is, in some sense, ours.
The nature of technology, the forms of law, business and stock markets, the rise of democracy, the character of sport, the favourite subjects of films, the spread of English as the language required for global citizenship, all these have reflected and reinforced the fact that the world has been our oyster. They have given us dominance, ease, freedom, opportunity and — metaphorically and literally — ownership.
And now — metaphorically and literally — we may be losing it. Seen from the perspective of the non-westerner, this may be a good thing (though I doubt we are moving into a new era of opportunity for the wretched of the earth), but most of us will not like it. “Oh, lucky Granny and Grandpa!” our future grandchildren may say: “They were Elizabethans.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Banned From Carrying Felt-Tip Pens
Wrote abusive comments about women on bus, bathroom walls
A man has been banned from carrying felt tip pens and spray paint in public after daubing abusive comments about women in lavatories and buses, police said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mr Brown Must End His Neglect of the Family
In his New Year message the Prime Minister appealed to the grit and resourcefulness of the British people to get us through a year that “won’t be easy”. While ticking off the formidable challenges that lie ahead in 2009, he made no mention of one of the key themes of his New Year message a year ago — “the great unfinished business of social reform in our country”.
Mr Brown’s reticence is understandable for, as a new report from the right-of-centre Civitas think tank reveals, the tax and benefit system of which he is the chief architect continues to undermine our social fabric. The perversity of the system means that parents are actually worse off living together than they are apart. And it is not a marginal difference. For example, a lone mother earning £10,000 a year with a partner earning £25,000 a year will be £100 a week worse off if they decide to live together. Far from offering an incentive to form strong family units, universally acknowledged to be the best environment for raising a child, the tax and welfare system actually punishes it.
Yet this Government not only refuses to acknowledge the malign impact of its welfare policies, it seems to revel in it. The family unit appears to have no place in its thinking. Mr Brown scrapped the married couples’ tax allowance a decade ago and has since introduced a fiendishly complex tax credit system that rewards single mothers over couples. The Tories are correct to put the righting of this wrong at the core of their social policy, for the cost of family breakdown to the country is immense.
The Prime Minister was silent, too, on that other glaring structural weakness, the size of Labour’s client state. As we report today, the public sector is becoming increasingly attractive to private sector employees. Who can blame them? Seemingly impervious to the economic storm, the public sector has never had it so good. Most of the new jobs created during the Brown boom were on the state payroll. And the days when the public sector put up with lower pay in exchange for job security and generous pensions are long gone. According to the independent Pensions Policy Institute, four-fifths of state employees are better paid than their private sector counterparts.. The average public sector salary is £25,600 compared with £25,300 in the private sector.
What a glorious triple whammy — job security, enviable pensions and bigger salaries. Is it any surprise that those working in the wealth-creating part of the economy would like a slice? Until this bloated sector is trimmed, our post-recession prospects, for all Mr Brown’s brave talk, will remain bleak.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: NHS Pays £116 an Hour for Temps But Agency Takes Half
The NHS is paying £116 per hour for agency nurses as the recruitment company takes almost half, it has been revealed.
Data released under the Freedom of Information Act found examples of agencies taking between a third and a half of the hourly rate they charge the NHS for providing doctors and nurses for shifts.
Hourly rates charged to the NHS for non-clinical staff range from £113 for an accountant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn to £157 for a senior manager at Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust in London. If this rate was paid full time for a year it is the equivalent of an annual salary of between £220,000 and £306,0000.
The hourly rates for clinical staff vary from £94 for a nurse paid for by Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust to £188 for an anaesthetics consultant at Whipps Cross University Hospitals in London.
The data was revealed in answers to the Conservatives.
Overall the latest figures show the NHS spent almost £800 million on agency staff in 2006-07.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Albania: Bill to Ban Ex Communists, Controversy
(ANSAmed) — TIRANA, DECEMBER 16 — A Parliamentary bill on the opening of an investigation into the former communist regime, which would impede those who held political office or were a part of the secret services in the past communist regime from holding institutional and public offices in the present government, has created a heated political debate in Albania. The measure, presented by the majority party of Premier, Sali Berisha, was opposed by the left wing opposition which yesterday walked out of Parliament. The vote, expected after midnight, has been postponed until next week. The bill expects the creation of a special institute with the responsibility of checking the history of all public officers (from the president of the republic to ministers, parliamentarians, mayors, and heads of schools) and magistrates. Penal trials are not expected, only a ban on holding public and political office for those who were part of the secret services or members of the communist regime. “The law is aimed at magistrates who are investigating corruption cases that involve the government”, commented socialist leader, Edi Rama, underlining that “the text violates the constitution”. “The opposition is a hostage of its own communist past”, replied Berisha. But today, The United States also stated that it is opposed to the project in an official message stating “serious constitutional problems” in the measure and proposed a revision of the bill with the assistance of international experts. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 499 Mln Euro for Development of Prijedor
(ANSAmed) — SARAJEVO, JUNE 12 — In the 2008-2013 development strategy of the town of Prijedor (Republika Srpska), adopted these days, a total of 975 million KM (some 499 million euro) will be invested in the improvement of infrastructures. The larger part of the investments, or some 860 million KM (430 million euro), are intended for the construction of the stretches Prijedor — Banja Luka and Prijedor — Kozarska/Bosanska Dubica of the motorway. The remaining 115 million KM (some 59 million euro) will be invested in various infrastructural projects, such as the construction of waterworks in areas that do not have ones as well as the modernisation of the existent ones, waste water treatment, modernisation and extension of the heating system, modernisation of the electric power infrastructures, development of the telecommunications system and improvement of the town planning. The announcement was made by the Sarajevo office of the Italian Foreign Trade Institute (ICE) via a statement. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Collective Cuts: Circumcision-by-Bulk in the Balkans
In the southern Balkans, a small Muslim ethnic group maintains its collective identity by means of mass circumcision. Once every five years, villagers gather to ordain their boys. And to party for four straight days.
The southern Balkans region is notorious for its history of vicious ethnic bloodletting. But it’s also home to one ethnic group that has traditionally preferred bloodletting of a rather more peaceful sort.
Indeed, when the former communist conglomerate of Yugoslavia crumbled over the course of the 1990s, the Gorani — a small Muslim ethnic group scattered across present-day Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania — weren’t among the groups clamoring for a nation-state to call their own. They just wanted enough freedom to maintain their cultural traditions. For those living in the mountain villages of Donje and Gornje Ljubinje in southern Kosovo that meant, above all, the quinntenial celebration of Sunet, the festival of mass circumcision.
The modest circumstances of the Kosovar Gorani may not seem to justify celebration: the 3,000 residents are poor, even relative to their Albanian and Serb neighbors. But, the mass circumcision is a tradition that goes back centuries and locals feel it helps differentiate them from the myriad neighboring ethnic groups.
“This is why we are not the same as the others, even when it does not help us,” Arif Kurtishi, a member of the Gorani diaspora who returned to Donje Ljubinje last year from Sweden for the festival, told the AFP…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Radovan Karadzic and His Grandchildren
Karadzic has been caught, but the war is not over yet for the heirs of Yugoslavia’s war criminals. By Dubravka Ugresic
I am not a monster, I am a writer!
(Radovan Karadzic)
One hundred and forty-one old men
Over the weekend of the 19th and 20th of July 2008, the town of Key West in Florida played host to one hundred and forty-one — Ernest Hemingways. Hemingways from all over America gathered in Key West in a competition for the greatest degree of physical resemblance between the famous writer and his surrogates. This year the winner was Tom Grizzard, in what is said to have been a very stiff competition. The photograph that went round the world shows a collection of merry granddads, looking like Father Christmases who have escaped from their winter duties, that is to say like Ernest Hemingway. The old men, who meet every year in Key West on Hemingway’s birthday, took part in fishing and short story writing competitions.
Another old man …
The following day newspapers in Croatia carried a photograph of an old man who has no connection at all with the hundred and forty-one old men from the previous article. In Croatia on 21st July 2008, Dinko Sakic died, at the age of eighty-six. Who was Dinko Sakic? Sakic was the commandant of the Ustasha concentration camp of Jasenovac, where Jews, Serbs, Gyspies and communist-oriented Croats were systematically annihilated. After the war he managed to escape to Argentina, and it was not until 1999 that the Argentinian authorities handed him over to Croatia, where he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
At that ‘historic’ moment, many Croats saw the sentence of Dinko Sakic as an injustice because for them that same Independent State of Croatia (in which Dinko Sakic had killed Jews, Gypsies, Serbs and unsuitable Croats) was ‘the foundation of our present Croatian homeland’, as the local priest, Vjekoslav Lasic, put it on the occasion of his death. The priest was in fact merely expounding a thesis put forward by Franjo Tudjman, the first President of Croatia (since Ante Pavelic), and the ‘father of the Croatian nation’. ‘That is why every decent Croat is proud of the name Dinko Sakic,’ announced the priest Vjekoslav Lasic, adding that he was ‘proud that he had seen Sakic on his bier dressed in an Ustasha uniform.’ The funeral of old Dinko Sakic at Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb on 24th July 2008 was attended by some three hundred people. Even aged criminals have friends. Three hundred people is a pretty decent number.
And another old man …..
On the day of Dinko Sakic’s funeral, another old man rose from the grave in Croatia. Zvonko Busic Tajko — the Croatian Mandela, or the most renowned Croatian emigre (as some Croatian newspaper headlines put it) — landed at Zagreb airport on 24th July, to an enthusiastic reception by a crowd of some five hundred people. Busic was returning to Croatia metaphorically from the grave, but in fact out of American prisons where he had spent thirty-two years. Way back in the 1970s, with his American wife, Julienne Eden Busic, he and a few friends had hijacked an American aeroplane on its way to New York, because ‘he wanted to draw the attention of the world to the unjust position of Croatia in the former Yugoslavia’.
This gesture of ‘political activism’ (as the Croatian papers defined Busic’s terrorist act) ended ingloriously, because Busic’s explosive device led to one American policeman being killed and another losing an eye, and Busic and his wife ended up in prison. Julienne was released on the eve of Croatian independence, she got a job in the Croatian Embassy in Washington, and later in Croatia, in Franjo Tudjman’s personal security service. The Croatian army built a villa on the Adriatic coast, so that she would be able to dedicate herself fully to writing her autobiographical novel ‘Lovers and Madmen’ and to her political activities, lobbying for her husband’s release from prison…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Readmission Smooth, Reintegration Problematic
BELGRADE — Some 600 illegal immigrants from Serbia to the EU have been returned to the country in the past year, the authorities are saying.
At the same time, they believe that the number of those who returned voluntarily is several times that, although Readmission Office Coordinator Zoran Panjkovic concedes that there is “no precise data”.
In 90 percent of the cases, he explained, families are returning, with 30 percent of all those who have come back to Serbia being children.
Most of the persons in the process of readmission arrive from Germany — some 60-70 percent — followed by those who resided in Switzerland. They are mostly without or with incomplete elementary education, while a minority has high school degrees.
67 percent of those readmitted are Romas, or Gypsies, followed by around 20 percent of Muslims. The remainder are Serbs, Ashkalis, Egyptians, Albanians, Goranis, and others.
Panjkovic spoke to Beta news agency to reject claims that between 100,000 and 150,000 Serbian citizens are currently seeking asylum or staying illegally in the EU, and put the number at “several tens of thousands”.
The readmission agreement, he explained, specifies that 1,000 persons would be forcibly returned each year, and that figure will not increase.
Once they are back in the country, most former illegal immigrants stay with their families, but some, according to Panjkovic, who were born abroad, having spent 20-30 years there without ever receiving citizenships, “have nowhere to go”.
Once they commit misdemeanors or felonies abroad, he added, their ties to Serbia are discovered, and they are deported.
Panjkovic also said that families are sometimes stripped of all their money before being sent back to Serbia, where they arrive destitute.
Still, this official says that the readmission process is going smoothly.
“The problem is how to reintegrate or integrate the returnees,” he explained.
The government will seek to make progress in this area soon with a strategy aimed at better integration of the persons brought back to Serbia in the readmission process.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Compagna (PDL), D’alema is Wrong, Hamas Anti-Semite
(AGI) — Rome, 30 Dec. — The disarming of Hamas is an objective that cannot be renounced. Not only for Israel. D’Alema is wrong to forget that the constitution of this terrorist movement is drenched in anti-Semitism, not just anti-Zionism. Frattini is right to point out that Hamas and Hezbollah can for no reason be considered interlocutors in any diplomacy’’ said PDL Senator Luigi Compagna, member of the Senate Foreign Commission, regarding the hearing in the Senate and Chamber Foreign Commissions on the crisis in the Middle East.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas Rockets Threaten Israel’s Nuclear Plant?
Top Hamas spokesman declares: ‘We can reach deeper and deeper’
Egypt would not be surprised if Hamas has a number of rockets in the Gaza Strip capable of reaching Israel’s main nuclear power station, an Egyptian intelligence official told WND.
The official’s estimates, which could not immediately be confirmed by Israeli defense sources, are instrumental since Hamas routinely smuggles weaponry in tunnels that snake underneath the Gaza-Egypt border. He said he believes Hamas could have rockets that can reach Israel’s nuclear plant in Dimona, which is about 40 miles from the Egypt-Gaza border.
Hamas is known to possess 122mm Katyusha rockets, which have a range of about 18 miles, and has fired improved 122mm Katyusha’s, with ranges up to 30 miles. The Egyptian intelligence official said Hamas may be saving larger, 220mm rockets, with ranges in the vicinity of 44 miles, which would place both Dimona and Tel Aviv within range.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
IDF Strikes Second Hamas Leader
(IsraelNN.com) The IAF hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Thursday evening. The strike targeted senior Hamas terrorist Nabil Abu el-Amrin.
Powerful secondary blasts were seen from the air after Amrin’s house was hit, confirming IDF intelligence according to which the building was used to store large quantities of explosives and ammunition. It was not immediately clear if Amrin was killed in the strike.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Looks for Gazan Spies; Drops Thousands of Leaflets Over Gaza
Gaza — Ma’an — Israeli airplanes dropped leaflets calling for Gazans to inform the Israeli military of the whereabouts of projectile launchers in return for aid and assistance.
The papers were found by the thousands all over Gaza Friday morning, and bear the signature of the Israeli military forces.
The leaflet reads:
Dear people of the Gaza Strip,
Bear the responsibility for your fate!
The Projectile launchers and the terrorist elements pose a threat on you and your families.
If you wish to provide help and assistance to your people in the sector, call the number below to provide us with the needed information.
The future of the massacre is in your hands
Don’t hesitate!
We will be glad to receive any information you have and it is not necessary to give us your personal information.
We will keep it as a secret.
Call us at the following number:
02-5839749
Or e-mail us at:
Helpgaza2008@gmail.com
To provide us with any information on the terrorist factions.
Note: To protect your safety we ask you to be secretive when you call us.
Head of the Israeli defense forces.
Israel has used similar tactics on several occasions, most recently during their 2006 war in Lebanon and earlier in 2003 during an attack on the West Bank. The fliers are meant to shake the civilian population and crush the spirit of the ‘home front.’
Israeli military personnel have also cut into broadcasts on the Voice of Al-Quds radio station in Gaza and broadcast announcements to Gazans on air that convey the same message as the leaflets.
At the same time the Al-Qassam Brigades, affiliated with Hamas, were able to cut into Israeli military radio channels and broadcast statements in Hebrew warning soldiers from entering the Gaza Strip.
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Israel May Keep Options Open on Gaza Ceasefire
JERUSALEM (Reuters) — World powers are pushing for a lasting ceasefire to stop the bloodshed in Gaza but some Israeli leaders are looking at a less binding option that would give them a free hand to hit Hamas again in future.
Israel’s seven-day-old air campaign has so far killed 424 Palestinians. If a ground offensive is launched and causes heavier casualties, Israel expects international pressure for an end to the fighting to intensify.
Officials close to the deliberations said a consensus has yet to be reached between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak on whether to pursue a ceasefire that would bind Israel and Hamas or to seek a more open-ended solution.
“Israel wants to have as free a hand as possible. So a diplomatic solution, given the mistrust that there is, doesn’t seem very realistic,” a senior European diplomat said.
Livni, a leading candidate to replace Olmert as prime minister in an election on February 10, has privately advocated a more unilateral approach under which Israel would step up the offensive and decide when to stop firing without the need for any binding, internationally recognized ceasefire.
Under this scenario, Hamas Islamists would be “dissuaded” from launching more cross-border rockets because of the threat of Israel launching more strikes in future, a senior official said on condition of anonymity.
“We would tell them, ‘Next time, think twice’,” he said.
This option has gained some traction within the Israeli government in recent days because it would keep Hamas on the sidelines, rather than confer legitimacy on the Islamist group as a formal ceasefire might.
It would not bind Israel to hold its fire in future — an advantage, advocates say, given that the current military campaign aims to weaken, rather than topple, Hamas’s government in the Gaza Strip.
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Israel Soon May Send Troops Into Gaza Strip if Cease-Fire Not Reached
The senior leadership in Israel has given the thumbs up for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, sources tell FOX News, though the latest developments still don’t mean such action is inevitable.
A ground invasion could happen soon if international diplomacy fails to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, who have been trading cross-border fire for the past week.
Israel launched its new round of airstrikes on Gaza in response to renewed missile attacks by Hamas after the two sides’ six-month cease-fire ended last month. A ground invasion of the territory has looked increasingly likely, as Israel has been bringing artillery, armor and infantry to the border.
Israel bombed a mosque it claimed was used to store weapons and destroyed homes of more than a dozen Hamas operatives Friday, but under international pressure, the government allowed hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports to leave besieged Gaza.
Meanwhile, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said from Damascus on Friday that his militant group was prepared for an invasion and could abduct more soldiers if Israel attempts the incursion.
Hamas, whose charter specifically calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, had ordered a “day of wrath” against Israel on Friday over the killing of a senior commander.
In last 48 hours, the U.S. government has helped 27 Americans get out of Gaza, and has heard no reports of any Americans being injured during the assault, according to State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid. Evacuated Americans were taken by bus to Amman, Jordan, but more Americans are believed to be in Gaza.
President Bush, in a radio address taped Friday, accused Hamas of an “act of terror” in its rocket attacks into Israel and suggested that no cease-fire would be acceptable without monitoring to halt the flow of weapons to terrorist groups.
In another strike Friday the Israeli Air Force bombed the house of top Hamas operative Imad Akel. The Israeli military reported hearing secondary blasts at the house, indicating the presence of a stash of weapons and explosives in the home, the Jerusalem Post reported.
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M. E.: Frattini, Hamas Broke Ceasefire, They Are Terrorists
(AGI) — Rome, 29 Dec. — “First of all there are Palestinian civilians who are suffering because of the ceasefire broken by Hamas. Italy is in contact with the Arab league and with the Israeli government. We asked them to alleviate daily living conditions for Palestinians. We asked the Israelis to absolutely avoid the death of innocent Palestinian civilians.
We appeal to the Arab league to put a stop to the launch of missiles by Hamas, which unfortunately is a terrorist organisation and it is proving itself such”. These are the words of foreign minister Franco Frattini during an interview aired on Tg1.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Source: Hezbollah Studying Whether to Join Hamas Fight
Seeking ways to complicate Israelis’ military campaign
The Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist organization is studying whether to join Israel’s conflict with Hamas by launching an attack from the Jewish state’s northern border, according to an Egyptian intelligence official speaking to WND.
The official said for the moment Hezbollah is confident Hamas can face Israel independently, believing Hamas’ continued rocket fire from the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s intensive air raids against the terror group’s Gaza infrastructure is working to maintain Hamas’ deterrent posture. Hamas’ rockets have been fired deeper and deeper into Israeli territory.
But Hezbollah is watching events closely and is concerned about a possible large-scale Israeli ground invasion, the Egyptian intelligence official said. He said Egyptian embassies in Beirut and Damascus have collected information indicating Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, is studying whether to join the conflict.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why Israel is Bombing Gaza
by Ephraim Sneh
When demands are made of Israel to halt its military activities in Gaza, a brief historical reminder is in order.
In September 2005, Israel vacated Gaza, dismantled all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and did not leave a shred of a presence there.
In January 2006, rule over Gaza passed to the Hamas government under Ismail Haniyeh. Instead of bringing investors to Gaza, the Hamas government brought the guerrilla-warfare trainers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Instead of launching economic projects, this government launched rockets every day at Israeli towns and villages across the border. They smuggled in vast amounts of explosives, weapons and rockets; they prepared themselves for battle.
In June 2007, in a brutal and bloody military coup, Hamas took control of Gaza and soon killed or chased out the leaders of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement. Gaza became nothing less than a military base for Iran.
Up until the Hamas takeover, 750 trucks would cross the border each day with imports and exports. As Israel’s deputy defense minister at the time, I was in charge of this activity and promoted this trade with Gaza, since the border crossings were being controlled by Abbas’s Presidential Guard, not by terrorists. The Hamas takeover is what in effect locked the gates of Gaza and forced its residents to suffer.
The rain of rockets on the citizens of Israel intensified. The cease-fire that lasted from June until Dec. 19 was used by Hamas to increase its military strength — mainly to smuggle in Grad-type rockets from Iran, which have a range of 20 miles. In recent days, these missiles have struck cities such as Ashdod, Israel’s main port, and Beersheva, the capital of Israel’s south. No sovereign state would have resigned itself to having its cities — cities such as Houston or Atlanta — bombarded. No sovereign state would allow itself to be hit by even a single missile. That is the reason for the military campaign that Israel launched this week in a series of aerial strikes.
But the campaign’s objective is not to end the rocket fire. The true objective should be the end of Hamas rule in Gaza. Israel cannot resign itself to having a missile and terror base five miles from one of its principal cities, Ashkelon…
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150 Iranians Protest at Home of Nobel Laureate Accused of Sympathy for Israel
Some 150 protesters stood outside the home and office of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi on Thursday accusing her of sympathy for Israel, Islamic state’s foe, a member of her human rights group said.
Abdulreza Tajik, of the Human Rights Defenders Centre led by Ebadi, said he believed they were student members of the Basij religious militia. The crowd tore down a sign of Ebadi’s law practice and trampled on it, he told Reuters.
“Israel commits crime, Ebadi supports (it),” Tajik quoted the protesters as shouting in reference to Israel’s attacks in Gaza. He said they dispersed after police intervened. It was not clear on what grounds they made the accusation.
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Tajik said Ebadi’s rights watchdog centre had condemned violence against Palestinians in the Gaza strip and called for international action to stop the Israeli campaign.
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Internet: YouTube Visitors Doubles in Turkey Despite the Ban
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 16 — The number of visitors to YouTube from Turkey, increased two-fold after the country’s Prime Minister said he has been visiting the video-sharing website, despite the ban implemented by courts for almost a year, Hurriyet daily reports. Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, said last month that he has been accessing YouTube, and confessed that he watched a video of the ceremony, in which veiled women became the members of the main opposition party, Chp, posted on the site. YouTube jumped to the ninth place, up from the fourteenth, as the most visited website in Turkey after Erdogan remarks. At the time, Erdogan had urged reporters that they should watch videos as well on the banned website. Two courts ordered ban on YouTube in response to videos that it deemed insulting to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Experts say there are many ways to access YouTube despite the ban; however they remind that all of these methods are illegal. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Fethullah Gulen Movement
by Bill Park
The Gulen movement is attracting increasing and sometimes hostile attention both inside Turkey and beyond as a result of its increasing activity, wealth, and influence. Inspired by the thoughts of its founder, Sufi scholar Fethullah Gulen, it has established hundreds of educational institutions, as well as media outlets, dialogue platforms, and charities. Well-established in Turkey, it has expanded into the wider Turkic world and, increasingly, beyond. Yet its structure, ambitions, and size remain opaque, making assessment of its impact and power difficult…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey May Buy Russian Helicopters to Fight PKK
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 15 — Turkey plans to buy 32 Russian MI 28 attack helicopters as a stop gap measure in its fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Pkk), which has intensified its attacks in the past year, daily Today’s Zaman wrote quoting Turkish defense industry sources. “Until the attack helicopters that Turkey will produce in cooperation with Agusta Westland over the next five years begin to enter service, Turkey plans to buy Russian attack helicopters to bridge the gap”, the same sources said. “Turkey has around seven Us Cobra Whiskey AH 1 attack helicopters out of around 12 in its military inventory, and the shortage in attack helicopters means that it is unable to fight effectively against the Pkk”, a retired turkish military source, revealed. Reliable sources from the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defense Industry (Ssm) declared they been conducting secret negotiations with a Russian company, Rosoboronexport, for the purchase of 32 attack helicopters at a cost of about $1 billion. Though Ankara signed a deal worth around $3.5 billion with AgustaWestland for attack helicopters in June this year, the Turkish Armed Forces (Tsk) have refused AgustaWestland’s offer of selling off-the-shelf A129 Mangusta attack helicopters as an interim solution. Tsk turned down the Italian offer on the grounds that the existing A129 helicopters would not have met its urgent requirements. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ukraine Accused of Stealing Gas Bound for Europe
Shortfalls were registered across the Balkans, as Europe began to feel the effects of the row which culminated in Moscow cutting supplies on New Year’s Day.
The vast majority of Russian gas imported by Europe passes through Ukrainian territory and Kiev has siphoned off supplies in the past.
There were fears last night that the escalating row could hit British households, who are already suffering from historically high fuel bills.
Last year the average family’s annual gas bill shot up by nearly 50 per cent to £834 after the big six gas suppliers blamed sky-high wholesale gas prices.
Many hoped that the gas companies would cut their bills in the coming weeks, but this now looks increasingly unlikely, experts warned.
Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state gas company, said it had slightly reduced the amount of gas travelling through its pipelines to maintain pressure inside the network.
But Sergei Kupriyanov, a spokesman for Russian state-run firm Gazprom, said: “The Ukrainian side openly admits it is stealing gas and has no shame about it.”
He said Gazprom would boost shipments through Belarus to make up for the shortfall.
Russia cut all gas to Ukraine after failing to sign a new contract on gas deliveries for 2009. In response, Ukraine said a contract governing the transit of Russian gas to Europe through the country was invalid.
Most European countries have built up adequate stocks to see them through a short disruption, after a similar dispute led to shortfalls across Europe for three days in January 2006.
However, Britain has far less storage capacity following years of underinvestment, which an influential committee of MPs has already warned could lead to “very, very frightening” gas prices over the next few years.
Britain can store between 10 and 12 days’ worth of gas, compared with an average of 70 days’ worth of storage in Europe.
Various projects to increase capacity in this country have run into trouble because of the credit crisis. Portland Gas, which was planning a major facility in Dorset, admitted at the end of last year that it will be seriously delayed.
Joe Malinowski of TheEnergyShop.com, a price comparison website said European customers could expect price hikes if Russia and Ukraine fail to resolve the row soon. He said: “If the gas gets shut and storage is depleted, prices could shoot up. If Russian gas to Europe is disrupted, the Europeans will have to find alternative sources — and compete for the same sources.
“The UK is absolutely not prepared for a massive supply disruption.”
Britain has increasingly relied on imports in recent years as North Sea gas supplies have been depleted. Last year Britain imported as much as 40 per cent of its gas, a figure expected to climb to 50 per cent this year.
One third of Britain’s imports come indirectly from Russia — around 16 per cent of total usage — having first landed in other European countries, before making its way across the Channel.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said today he hoped to reach a new deal with Gazprom by January 7. But talks between the two sides have stalled completely, prompting worries that the dispute may drag on, eventually affecting European supply and raising prices.
Kupriyanov said Ukraine had refused a Gazprom request to ship on Saturday 303 million cubic metres of gas to European customers, approving 296 million cubic metres instead. The two sides are negotiating transit contracts on a daily basis, in the absence of a long-term contract.
In the past 24 hours, the Balkans have registered shortfalls of 10 million cubic metres, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Gazprom has launched an all-out PR offensive to lay the blame for any shortfalls on Ukraine. Yet it has also toughened its negotiating position, ensuring a quick fix to the row will likely not be found.
Late on Thursday, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said the company was now asking Ukraine to pay the “European market price” of $418 per thousand cubic metres of gas — more than double what the country currently pays.
Gazprom had earlier requested $250 but Ukraine said it could only pay $201.
The country has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial crisis, and political bickering between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has further weakened the country.
Kupriyanov said Naftogaz still owes Gazprom $614 million in fines, after paying up a $1.5 billion debt.
The European Union has called on Russia and Ukraine to quickly solve the dispute, but the Czech presidency said it would not seek to mediate until the bloc itself was affected.
A Ukrainian delegation led by Energy Minister Yuri Prodan was due to tour European capitals at the weekend, meeting first with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek on Friday. Russia has said it is open to raising the issue in the European Parliament.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Weapons: Moscow Ready to But Drones From Israel
(ANSAmed) — MOSCOW, DECEMBER 16 — Moscow could buy drones (unmanned airplanes) from Israel, who also supplies them to Georgia, so announced General Nikolai Makarov, the Russian Chief of Staff. He confirmed the announcement made in Kommersant newspaper which stated that the decision has been made, but contracts still need to be negotiated for an estimated value of over 7-8 million dollars. “We are working on this. We are discussing a trial shipment of Israeli drones”, stated Makarov. “If our industry is not able to rapidly produce the drones that we need, then it is possible to buy a first shipment of them from Israel”, he added. According to Kommersant, Moscow intends to rectify its shortcomings that emerged during the lightning war with Georgia. According to the newspaper, Russia has not criticised Israel for its sale of arms to Tbilisi, which it did do for selling weapons to the Ukraine, in view of purchasing these drones. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Muchdi’s Acquittal, ‘Worst New Year Gift’
The acquittal of former top spy Maj. Gen. (ret) Muchdi Purwopranjono of all charges in the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib has incensed rights activists and observers.
They said the verdict, handed down Wednesday by the South Jakarta District Court, insulted the people’s sense of justice and gave credence to public perception that the country’s legal system and law enforcers, including police, prosecutors and judges, lacked credibility.
“It is the worst New Year’s gift from law enforcers to the people in their struggle for justice and human rights,” rights group Pijar Indonesia said Thursday in a statement.
“The verdict threatens the country’s human rights defenders by implying you can walk away after killing them,” it added.
The court decision has buried the truth of the mystery behind Munir’s murder, in which the judiciary was expected to uncover a “political conspiracy” involving the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Pijar said.
Setara Institute executive director Hendardi said the ruling preserved the legal impunity of certain officers in Indonesia, particularly military generals accused of rights abuses.
“We can see clearly the judges were under political pressure from those who wanted the case closed,” he said.
Munir’s widow, Suciwati, who was a witness during the trial’s last hearing, expressed shock at the verdict, saying she and Munir’s supporters would immediately go to the National Police headquarters and the Attorney General’s Office to discuss the next steps to take.
“I have already lost my husband, and now I lost justice. The outcome is being watched by the international community to see how seriously Indonesia enforces the rule of law,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion.
“This is very painful. Something that I feared has now come to pass. Today’s ruling proves that Indonesian justice still sides with human rights abusers.”
Usman Hamid, a prominent rights activist and a close friend of Munir’s, slammed the “poor prosecution” as one of the reasons for Muchdi’s acquittal..
He cited prosecutors’ failure to present tapped conversations between Muchdi and Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder, during the trial to strengthen their case against the defendant.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t present the voice records. We witnessed how scared the prosecutors were during the trials,” said Usman, who chairs the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), founded by Munir.
Kontras also expressed disappointment at prosecutors’ failure to view the Munir case as a conspiracy, thus resulting in a missing link between Pollycarpus and Muchdi.
This turned the focus of the investigation on Muchdi as an individual, particularly his motive for murdering Munir, thus blocking out the alleged involvement of other suspects, Kontras said.
Presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would summon National Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri and Attorney General Hendarman Supandji for clarification of the case and verdict.
Muchdi, a former BIN deputy chief, was released from detention on Wednesday evening, and later held a charity event to show his gratitude for the verdict.
“(The ruling) is a present for Indonesia,” he said.
Muchdi, currently deputy chairman of the Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), has long claimed he was a “victim of foreign intervention” in the Munir case.
His lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, said the defense team would sue Suciwati, Usman and other activists, including Hendardi and Poengky Indarti, for dragging Muchdi into the case.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sri Lankan Army Attacks Tamil Tiger Capital
Tigers suffered one of their heaviest defeats as Sri Lankan army fought its way into the heart of the insurgents’ capital.
The battle in the city of Kilinochchi marks a crucial moment in the island’s history. President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government launched a general offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last year after the collapse of an earlier peace agreement.
Since then, the army has inflicted a series of defeats on the rebels, dramatically reducing the amount of territory under their control. The defence ministry said the capture of their capital was now expected. “The fall of Kilinochchi is imminent as security forces have already entered into the town’s perimeter from the northern, southern and western edges,” said an official statement.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Gov’t Rejects Guantanamo Prisoner Request
Canberra, 2 Jan. (AKI) — The Australian government has rejected a US request to resettle inmates from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Australia.
The government said on Friday it was asked by the Bush administration to accept a small number of detainees from the detention facility in Cuba early last year.
Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that the proposal was rejected, and a second request was put to Australia and other US allies last month.
Gillard said Australia had been approached along with Britain to accept inmates to help President-elect Barack Obama fulfil an election promise to close the camp.
Gillard said the second request was under consideration but the government was unlikely to agree to it.
About 255 men are still held at Guantanamo, including 60 that the United States has approved for release.
They cannot be repatriated for fear that they will be tortured or persecuted in their home countries.
According to an Australian media report, the US State Department last week asked around 100 countries to help relocate the camp’s detainees.
“Australia, along with a number of other friends and allies of the United States, has been approached to consider resettling detainees from Guantanamo Bay,” Gillard said in a statement.
“This is a request from the Bush administration, and follows President Bush’s statement that he would like to see Guantanamo closed. This is not a request from President Elect Obama.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Miniscule Fail Rate for German Citizenship Test
Critics claimed Germany’s new citizenship test was too difficult when it was introduced last year. Now they are saying it’s too easy — officials have revealed the test has a 99-percent pass rate.
It’s easy to become a German. That, at least, is the conclusion to be drawn from the first set of results for Germany’s new citizenship test: Around 99 percent of those taking the test so far have passed.
Berlin’s interior minister, Ehrhart Körting, announced the results Thursday, welcoming what he called “the positive result.” The pass rate for Germany as a whole was 98.9 percent, while the Berlin pass rate was a spectacular 99.4 percent — of the 1,647 applicants who took the test in Berlin during September and November of 2008, only 10 failed.
The test was criticized ahead of its introduction in September 2008 by opposition politicians and representatives of the immigrant community. Prominent Green Party politician Hans-Christian Ströbele said at the time that he worried that “many Germans would not pass the test either” and claimed that many questions “miss the point.”
Now there are concerns that the test is too easy. “If everyone passes anyway, then we don’t need the test,” Green Party politician Bilkay Öney told the newspaper Die Tageszeitung. Rainer-Michael Lehmann from the business-friendly FDP party told the paper the test should be revised, “otherwise we can do without it.”
However Kurt Wansner, an expert on immigration issues for Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, defended the test. “Even if people have just learned the answers by heart, they might never have thought about such questions if the test didn’t exist,” he said.
To pass the test, which is one of several conditions for becoming a German citizen, applicants have to answer 17 questions correctly out of 33. The tests are drawn from a catalogue of 310 questions prepared by academics at Berlin’s Humboldt University, and they deal with topics ranging from dog registration in Germany, to the words of the national anthem to the meaning of the term “Stasi.” (Answer: the East German secret police.) Applicants can take the 60-minute test, which costs €25 ($35), as often as they like.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Defenders of Family Now in ‘Gay’ Bull’s-Eye
Licensing proposal could require lawyers to endorse homosexuality
One of the top lawyers in the nation in the battle to protect traditional marriage, historically Christian lifestyle choices, parental rights and the key freedoms provided by the U.S. Constitution is warning that there eventually could be no lawyers left to take up those disputes.
That’s because of a recommendation before the State Bar of Arizona — the organization that licenses attorneys — to require all new lawyers to swear they won’t let their personal religious perspective on homosexuality affect their representation of any client. Mathew Staver, chief of Liberty Counsel, warns that the proposal is just the “tip of the iceberg.”
According to reports in Arizona, the state bar is considering a major change to its existing oath that requires lawyers to affirm they won’t “permit considerations of gender, race, age, nationality, disability or social standing to influence my duty of care” to clients.
The proposal in Arizona is to add “sexual orientation” to that list.
The concept would demand that Christian lawyers affirm they would pursue child custody cases for lesbians and “marriage” rights for homosexuals just as they would pursue any other issue for clients, regardless of their religious perspective.
Not agreeing to the demand would end a Christian lawyer’s career before it even starts, since attorneys cannot practice law without bar association permission.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
It is a Sad Reflection of Our Time That Che Guevara is Seen as a Hero
In Steven Soderbergh’s Che, Benicio Del Toro takes the title role of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the bearded, asthmatic (though cigar chain-smoking) Argentine doctor who became the poster boy of Fidel Castro’s Cuban communist revolution, which took power in Havana 50 years ago this month.
Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, meanwhile, is a vehicle for Tom Cruise and a distinguished British supporting cast — Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and Eddie Izzard — to strut their stuff as the German officers who came close to killing Hitler in July 1944. Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg, the handsome aristocrat who planted the bomb and subsequently led the putsch that tragically failed to overturn Nazi rule.
Apart from their film-star good looks and the fact that they both perished by firing squad, Guevara and Stauffenberg have almost nothing in common: the diminutive middle-class doctor, despite his bourgeoisie origins, became a ruthless Marxist who identified himself with the struggle of Latin America’s toiling masses in general, and with Castro’s revolutionary vanguard in particular.
The towering Stauffenberg, in contrast, was a nobleman proud of his family’s ancestry; a conservative army officer who became a reluctant revolutionary because of his revulsion at what the Nazis had done to Germany.
It is a sad reflection of the warped moral mirror of our time that it is Guevara, the squalid killer and totalitarian tyrant, who remains, more than 40 years after his death, the iconic emblem of ignorant idealists the world over. His hirsute features still stare swooningly from thousands of walls and millions of T-shirts.
Meanwhile, Stauffenberg, the war-crippled soldier who sacrificed his life trying to free his people from a cruel dictator, is practically unknown to the mass of filmgoers outside his own country.
But a glance beneath the surface glamour of Alberto Korda’s 1960 beret-and-curls photograph of Guevara is enough to expose the less-than-romantic reality. At the time he posed for Korda’s camera, Guevara was jailer and executioner-in-chief of Castro’s dictatorship. As boss of the notorious La Cabaña prison in Havana, he supervised the detention, interrogation, summary trials and execution of hundreds of “class enemies”.
We know from Ernest Hemingway — then a Cuban resident — what Che was up to. Hemingway, who had looked kindly on Leftist revolutions since the Spanish civil war, invited his friend George Plimpton, editor of the Paris Review, to witness the shooting of prisoners condemned by the tribunals under Guevara’s control. They watched as the men were trucked in, unloaded, shot, and taken away. As a result, Plimpton later refused to publish Guevara’s memoir, The Motorcycle Diaries.
There have been some 16,000 such executions since the Castro brothers, Guevara and their merry men swept into Havana in January 1959. About 100,000 Cubans who have fallen foul of the regime have been jailed. Two million others have succeeded in escaping Castro’s socialist paradise, while an estimated 30,000 have died in the attempt.
There is little mention of this in the deification of Castro’s Cuba among the West’s liberal classes. The glorification of Guevara in Che and the earlier The Motorcycle Diaries film conveniently ignores it. Nor has the BBC found room, in marking the revolution’s half-centenary this week, to expose the reality behind the rhetoric.
Che made no secret of his bloodlust: “It is hatred that makes our soldiers into violent and cold-blooded killing machines,” he wrote. But he fell out of love with the revolutionary catastrophe he had created. After helping to ruin the island’s economy as minister of industry and president of the Cuban National Bank, he flounced off to bring revolution to Bolivia’s peasantry. They turned him over to the army, who shot him in October 1967.
Stauffenberg, too, died at the hands of his enemies, shot down after his bomb had failed to kill Hitler. He, too, was a failed revolutionary, but the sort of society that Stauffenberg was risking his life to create was the opposite of the tyranny embraced by Che. Stauffenberg wanted a return of the rule of law; political plurality; an end to the Nazi methods of arbitrary arrest, and torture and concentration camps; and the resumption of a culture guided by the values of Christian civilisation: the exact opposite of Che’s vision.
Guevara and Stauffenberg: two very different heroes. It is sad, but given the state of our society, somehow not so surprising, that we choose the wrong man to adorn our T-shirts.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Beyond the Age of Usury
As you read this, the American bailout is reaching epic and fatal proportions of more than 8 trillion and the worst is not over yet. Actually, the current trends are already much worse than depression, though because of some banking toxic tricks and frauds, risks are being constantly shifted down the social ladder deteriorating the consumers purchasing power for ever. There’s nothing that can rescue the system as the crisis was built into the system itself. Although this has not be aired on any major TV broadcast, when the world Leaders got together to discuss our fate last October, they admitted to being incapable of doing anything. That we are all scr*w*d. The Australian ministerial statement by Kevin Rudd sums it up pretty well while acknowledging that the global wealth destruction amounts to $27 trillion — and that is far from over. Among many other terrifying recent events, discount window borrowing (from the Fed. Reserve) in the week ended Oct 15 averaged a record $437.5 billion per day, surpassing the $420.2 billion rate in the prior week… please note that it is not included in the cumulative 8 trillion package!
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
It seems that publicizing the Swede’s challenge was a mistake on my part. Not only was there no serious engagement of the issue, but some of the commenters have descended to unfortunate levels of vitriol and invective, creating a poisonous environment which may well be contributing to the dearth of comments on subsequent threads.