Cultural Enrichment in Paris

Cultural Enrichment News


A report from France, kindly translated by regular Gates of Vienna reader and commenter Robert Marchenoir:

Paris, June 26, 2009 — A 31-year old woman has been arrested in Paris because she is suspected of stabbing a passenger who was too slow to get out of a Metro carriage.

The incident, reported by police headquarters, happened on June 19th around 8.30 p.m., at the Gare du Nord station on line n°4 [Gare du Nord is one of Paris main railway stations].

The woman, of Haitian descent, who was travelling with her partner, struck a 56-year old man in the chest with a kitchen knife, slightly wounding him. She complained because she thought he was too slow to step out of the carriage.

– – – – – – – –

Using CCTV images, the regional transport police were able to identify and arrest the woman on Wednesday. She is well-known to the police. [This cookie-cutter formula usually refers, in the media, to repeat offenders guilty of regular assaults, robberies or drug dealing, who are seldom if ever convicted, either through lack of evidence or judges’ leniency.] At the time she was arrested, she was hiding a kitchen knife in her underwear.

She was taken into custody and was expected to be presented to the public prosecutor on Friday.

John Bolton Opines on Obama

The news is full of Michael Jackson and of the non-coup in Honduras, and, of course, Michael Jackson. Poor MJ always appeared a sad, pathetic figure; this feeling drove me to avoid his music, though others’ estimations of his talent seem plausible,but not compelling enough to make me want to hear him. And since the “coup” in Honduras turned out not to be toppling the government, this first public fisking of the Obama administration by John Bolton is far more compelling than either of those stories.

Mr. Bolton has taken his time going public on his views of Obama. His anger at Bush’s lack of action in his second term has been more obvious; Mr. Bolton was and remains clearly perturbed at the lack of clear policies. If Bolton doesn’t mind airing his views on the President under which he served (now that Bush is out of office), it makes one ponder just what Dick Cheney is planning to say in his forthcoming book about those eight years in office as the Vice President. Both men are equally judicious and equally plain-spoken.

But Cheney’s opinions will have to wait for the book. What we have now is an article by John Bolton in Standpoint, a British magazine. Why he chose this as his venue isn’t clear, but I’d sure like to know why he didn’t choose to go with a conservative American publication.

John BoltonAt one point in his essay, “The Post-American President”, Bolton calls Obama “the un-Bush”. It’s true that Obama spends an inordinate amount of time verbally distancing himself from Bush’s policies while he continues to implement them: Gitmo is still open despite his big signing ceremony (where it became obvious he was clueless as to the contents of his own executive order); the troops are moving out of Iraq on a schedule arranged by Bush and the Iraqi government; a buildup of troops in Afghanistan has been ordered by a president who made his reputation on being against war. Nor has the un-Bush had any more luck in engaging Iran or North Korea than did his predecessor.

What qualifies Obama as the first post-American president is his refusal to acknowledge American exceptionalism:

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

Nice level playing field you have there, Mr. President. Is that why you’ve ignored the Greek economic implosion and dissed the Brits repeatedly? Do you dislike them as much as you dislike America?

American exceptionalism is a fact. What with our demoralized economy that characteristic may indeed be melting faster than an ice cream cone in August but for the length and breadth of its history, that exceptionalism has been a defining fact for America. Obama is busy trying to erase it.

Do Americans care a great deal about this characteristic? Do they care that Obama wants to erase it? Probably not a whole lot. Not anymore. As a people, we are under economic assault by this administration and we’re tired of the potshots across our bow from the rest of the world. If we could just rein in our foreign aid (let’s start with the UN!), the whole country would be better off for it.

Bolton did his research:
– – – – – – – –

It fell to an admiring media commentator to lift the cover more fully, and indeed unknowingly since he intended a compliment. Following Obama’s D-Day 65th anniversary speech, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas contrasted him with Ronald Reagan in 1984:

“Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn’t felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task….Reagan was all about America….Obama is ‘we are above that now’. We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something. I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God…He’s going to bring all different sides together.”

Thomas was dramatically wrong about Reagan’s speech, which included sustained praise for America’s allies, and equating Obama to God was breathtaking even for the US press corps. But Thomas’s central observation was unquestionably correct: Obama is above all that patriotism stuff.

Which is why I’m glad we’re going to another Tea Party on the fourth of July this year. I think the White House is having a barbeque. They invited the Iranians – Obama is notoriously without a sense of irony – but Iran sniffed. They wouldn’t be caught dead at a White House event.

Bolton again:

Two other elements in Obama’s thinking are critical. First, he is not George W. Bush. He is Barack Obama, a man who has already written two autobiographies and who has ascended continuously and effortlessly to ever-higher public office. Hence, Obama need do little except show up and “change” will occur in the global arena, without the need for “chauvinistic” exertions on behalf of “parochial” American interests, which, as embodied by President Bush, are inevitably arrogant and disrespectful of others. Second, Obama has not yet adjusted to governance rather than campaigning or to being in the Executive rather than the Legislative branch of government. Campaigning is now continuous, but not since Reagan has a President struck the right balance with governance. Moreover, failing to shift psychologically from Senator to President is a perennial US problem. Being President actually means governing, as opposed to flitting from speech to speech and vote to vote, which “showhorse” Senators (contrasted with their “workhorse” counterparts) are all too happy to do. Moreover, whether as legislator or as campaigner, Obama has concentrated on, and manifestly feels more comfortable with, domestic rather than foreign policy (with the singular exception of opposing the Iraq war in the 2008 campaign).

Bolton nails it there. It’s something I’ve noticed before: Obama flits. He’s restless and impatient. He has no executive experience, and foreign policy bores him. I wish it interested him more than the drastic hemorrhages he’s inflicting on us with his statist domestic avalanches of legislation.

We’ve had the stimulus attack (so where’s the money? Who knows…they say it’s coming any time now), the House just passed that job-killing “energy” bill, and before the Senate can consider it, everyone will have to do another left turn into the morass of health care legislation. Imagine the thousands of pages of closely-worded, complex formulations the Dems will generate for purposes of obfuscation.

Of North Korea, Bolton says that the script didn’t go according to Obama’s plan. But did anyone besides Obama think it would? Only an idjit would expect change from the North Koreans:

Pyongyang’s behaviour left the young Administration in a quandary. This was not the script Kim Jong-il was supposed to follow and the resulting policy options were perplexing to Obama’s mindset. Should he reverse Bush’s twin decisions to remove North Korea from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and to allow it access to international financial markets? Doing so would, stunningly, leave him pursuing a harder line than Bush when he left office. Should Obama, in addition, press for meaningful new sanctions in the UN Security Council, and, if so, could he persuade Russia and China to support him? And what would other proliferators conclude if North Korea successfully called the American bluff? Where was North Korea’s open hand, and why wouldn’t it return to the Six Party Talks?

Duh. Only someone with a background in community organizing would ever have fallen for his own political posing. Sometimes Obama is breathtakingly naive.

Bolton looks at the situation with Iran before moving on to Israel. I urge you to read that section. I am more interested in what he has to say about our relations with the Israelis:

What is making a significant difference is the dramatic change in America’s attitude toward Israel and the seemingly endless “Middle East peace process”. Obama has, among other sea changes: adopted the European view that solving the Arab-Israeli dispute will facilitate solving all other Middle East problems; demanded adherence to the “two-state solution” with no tolerance for heresy; taken the hardest US position against expanding Israel’s West Bank “settlements” since the 1967 war; and insisted on speeding up the “peace process” in ways that can only work to Israel’s disadvantage. And, most importantly, Obama has leaned heavily on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to use military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite the overwhelming evidence that Tehran can now fabricate nuclear weapons at a time of its choosing, indifferent to external considerations or pressure.

Israel has never been more distant from a US Administration, but politically Obama has so far covered himself effectively with the pro-Israel community, suffering few if any adverse political consequences. He may read that community more astutely than others, sensing a weariness with Israel’s struggles that he can exploit, or at least use to protect his political flanks. America’s strategic priorities are, of course, independent of domestic constituencies, but the basic political fact is that if the pro-Israel community tolerates Obama’s policies, it should not be surprising that many other Americans simply lose interest. That is what Obama may be counting on, as he whips Israel along the road to Damascus, Tehran and other exotic destinations.

Nice phrase that, “as he whips Israel along the road to Damascus”. In other words, as the Israelis are suddenly knocked off their horse and begin to think differently (a reference all readers of Christian scripture would recognize).

The various fig-leaves Obama is using to cover himself while posing for the “pro-Israel community” are going to shrivel soon, if they haven’t already. Tehran rolls on with its nuclear build up. America or no America, Israel will have to make its own decision at some point. Given its reputation for excellent intelligence, no doubt that beleaguered country will do whatever it has to do to survive.

Will that make Israel a pariah? How would we be able to tell? There has never been a country in its position that has managed to survive this long with such organized hatred arrayed against it. What its detractors don’t recognize is that these tactics feed Israel’s determination. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” seems to be its motto and standard operating procedure.

Mr. Bolton gives Obama credit for his focus on Pakistan, but wonders how long he can hold out, while I wonder who is advising him on this:

Here, Obama has, to his credit, made Pakistan a far higher US priority, bolstered American assistance to its government, and assigned a Special Envoy on “Af-Pak” issues to highlight their prominence. Here, being the “un-Bush” is a plus, but how long the current Obama approach will continue remains to be seen. As noted above, many Democrats are quite unhappy with his Afghan policy, and the same applies to a tough approach in Pakistan. This is a major question, since of all the “front burner” issues now confronting Obama, Pakistan and its nuclear weapons may turn out to be his greatest and most important test.

Mr. Bolton ends with a prediction and a warning:

If there were just a single issue to watch for major developments in this Administration’s future, it would unquestionably be the UN and multilateralism, both on political questions and on the international “norming” of policies heretofore properly considered domestic in nature, such as gun control, the death penalty, abortion and many others, starting with climate change. Europeans, so amenable to stripping their democratically elected governments of one competence after another to express mail them to Brussels, will soon find soulmates hard at work in Washington trying to do something similar with multilateral bodies. [my emphasis – D]

In all the foregoing areas, Obama is daily acting out his worldview, and the prospect of more of the same should be deeply troubling to America’s global allies. The conceptual road map until at least 2012 is now plainly in evidence, if only incompletely realised to date. Obama simply does not see America’s strength as a particular asset, or its causes and interests as more than many other causes and interests competing in the world out there somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe. Long after global Obamamania has worn off, the geostrategic consequences of this insouciance will be sorely felt. Of course, by then it may be too late.

The imposition of transnational values will not sit well with the large parts of the American population who consider themselves Jacksonians. The Wilsonians (or the Neville Chamberlains) are fine with severe gun control, international law, and all the rest of the utopian ideas they’ve been selling so hard for the last seventy years. They aren’t any closer to convincing the rest of us, but given their long march through our media, politics and educational systems they have more power now. It remains to be seen how permanent that power is and whether they can wield it successfully.

Yes, I’m rooting for the Jacksonians. Obviously Mr. Bolton is, too.



Hat tip: Zonka

The Pace of Islamization

“A group that knows how to obtain more privileges than other groups will for that reason gain a higher status and gradually become more dominant.”

Translator’s note: The essay below from Het Vrije Volk combines parts II, III and IV of “Hoe snel zal Nederland veranderen?” (How fast will the Netherlands Islamize?), which are here renumbered I, II and III respectively.

The actual first part of the series is about the conflicting calculations of how many Muslims there are at the moment in the Netherlands (estimates vary between 6% and 11% of the population), and how many there will be in the future (in 2050: between 14% and 25% — exclusive of, for instance, the compounding effect of an EU membership of Turkey, the EU’s mass immigration policy, etc.).



How fast will a country like the Netherlands Islamize?
by Encina Navan

Translated by VH

I.

To derive the influence of Islam from the percentage of Muslims in the Netherlands is misleading. Islam means the expansion of the influence of religion on other spheres of life — that is the true meaning of “surrender to Allah.” The Islamic countries demonstrate that Islam works that way, and that it is inevitable that Europe will feel that impact. Moreover, there is a study that shows that Islamization also took place in earlier times in the same way that it is happening now in Europe.

Around 2050 there will be at least two million Muslims out of 16 million in a country like the Netherlands, and probably more. A large minority, but not a majority, and therefore Islam can never play a dominant role in the Netherlands, according to the belief of the mainstream apologists. This idea is based on the assumption that the dominance of one group depends on a percentage, and that is a dangerous misconception. Even now, while the group is much smaller than two million, the influence of Islam is already widespread in the West. At the very least, Islam, Muslims, and Islamic and Muslim issues are dominant. Also the fault line is being drawn ever more clearly between critics and appeasers, between those who want to stand for Western norms like freedom and the separation of state and religion and those who believe in multiculturalism.

It is often claimed that Islam is no danger because it forms a minority in the West, and Muslims are divided amongst themselves. This also implicitly assumes that Islam is “only” a danger once it forms an absolute majority (51%), or when Muslims would operate in a more united fashion.

Both points of view are based on no more than one assumption — and thus invalid as an argument. For they assume exactly that which should be proved. There are examples, such as Bosnia and Lebanon, which show that Muslims even as a minority show dominant behavior.

On the internet, a clear definition for Islamization (or Islamicization) is virtually untraceable.

Islamization (or Islamicization) is the psychological process (and not first of all a demographic or political process) whereby Muslims increasingly impose religious rules on their environment, in which conversion to Islam only plays a subordinate role.

This religious character is demonstrated:
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  • By changes in the form of the state (a theocracy, like Iran, or state religion, like most of the other members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference);
  • By changes in daily life (many rules that do not follow from the everyday reality, but from a symbolic reality, i.e. the religious frame of reference)
  • By changes in the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims (the dhimmi status in Muslim countries; parallel societies for Muslims in non-Muslim countries; the reformulation of universal human rights in a way that enables Muslims to demand more rights than non-Muslims are effectively able to do).

Islamization is based on Tawhid. Tawhid is the most important concept of all in Islam, according to the Encyclopedia of Islam: “It is believed that the entirety of Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.”

This means that life as a whole is subject to both “god” and “religion”*, not only as a known fact, but also in the active sense that a Muslim must dedicate his life to the commandments of his god. Tawhid not only means the unity of God and all life, but also the unity of God, therefore the denial of the Trinity as it exists in Christianity. Tawhid also means unity of life (called Tawhid-ar-Rububbiya): all matter exists due to Allah. The phrase “Allahu akhbar” should not (only) be understood as “God is powerful” [or “God is Great”], but also in the sense that God includes everything that already exists.

The denial of this unity is the denial of the nature of Allah and affects the main central understanding of Muslims. Secularism and nation states are unacceptable within Tawhid and are therefore to be struggled against by Muslims.

The influence of a group within a population not only depends on its numerical size, but also to its status within the whole population and the inner conviction of the group.

The status of Muslims in the West both is low and high. Socio-economically, it is low: Muslims are on average less educated than Westerners and enjoy on average a lower socio-economic position. For Muslims, however, this is of little importance compared to the fact that they are Muslim. Being a Muslim means a privilege which they prefer over all others. It reinforces the previously added value of being a Muslim rather than weakens it, because for a Muslim there is no reason to assume that the causes of a low socio-economic position must be attributed to Islam.

Muslims often prefer symbolic statements above actual causal statements. Islam [like Socialism] is a system whereby symbolic statements can be raised above factual statements. Because to Muslims it is much easier to explain the socio-economic situation as a symbol of the will of Allah, rather than to actually change this situation. The first explanation is also much more attractive for the removal of cognitive dissonance than the second explanation. [It also serves to attract and blind gutmenschen, willing dhimmis, who bring welfare payments and subsidies that may be viewed as zakat or jizya.]

The status of Muslims in other respects is high. They have achieved many privileges: maintaining their own language and culture, special education, grants to organizations, political goodwill, and so on. Despite the their regularly-expressed dislike of Western civilization, they enjoy many benefits and do not have the need to adjust more than is strictly necessary. A group that knows how to obtain more privileges than other groups will for that reason gain a higher status and gradually become more dominant.

This leaves the inner conviction of the members of the group. Muslims are apparently divided into numerous “variations” of Islam. This division is used as an argument that Muslims cannot be a threat to Western civilization, because they have been divided into different movements, directions, and law schools. To some extent this argument is valid: Shiites and Sunnis are happy to kill each other. The Druze are often not regarded as Muslims, nor are the Alawites. Moroccan Muslims and Turkish Muslims for instance have little contact with each other.

First of all, all Muslims share the central propositions of Islam: Tawhid, the other pillars of their faith, and their hatred towards to the West and Christianity. The division in streams is less wide than is often assumed: around 85% of all Muslims belong to the main flow, the Sunnis.

Secondly, the four law schools have equal status in Islam and differ only in minor points. This hardly causes any argument amongst Muslims.

The divisions that we do regularly observe among Muslims usually have no religious basis, but are the results of conflicting regional interests.

Thirdly, while the “streams” in Islam prevent Muslims from advancing against the West in unity, this does not mean that they have different positions regarding the West.

If every “stream” of Islam pursues Islamization on its own, the final result will still be more Islamization, whether this happens in streams or not.

II.

Historian Richard Bulliet (born 1940) specializes in the history of Islam and in 1979 published the study Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. In this work he describes the manner and speed at which the original population of the territories conquered by the Arabs went over to Islam.

In all areas Bulliet studied — Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Iran — it appears that the transition to Islam happened in the same way, with Iran being clearly the frontrunner. The first groups converted to Islam between 50 and 100 years after the conquest. These groups consisted of mobile professionals like traders or people who for one reason or another managed to get to the cities where the Arabs had established centers of power, and the social control of their former religious fellows had become minimal. This manifested for instance in giving biblical names to children, because they were viewed as “correct” within the Jewish, Christian and Muslim experience.

In the following century the middle class of the population followed gradually. Eventually around the year 900, half of the population had become Muslim. After 1200 there were hardly any Jews or Christians to be found in the Muslim areas. This pattern is confirmed by studies of developments in Spain.

In that era the Arabs were the top layer, the élite, of the population and did not take much trouble to encourage conversion to Islam. In this phase, Islam (in that period usually called Hagarism) was only for the Arabs and was an ideology which had as its main objective unity among the Arabs and the protection of their elitist position.

At first glance, a comparison between the position of Muslims over a thousand years ago and the Muslims in Europe today is not possible. The European of the 21st century will not convert to Islam to become part of the elite or to gain other benefits, such as the avoidance of taxation.

As argued in section I, the socio-economic position of Muslims hardly plays any role at all. Here the Thomas theorem is coming into effect: if a reality is experienced as real, the consequences will also affect the empirical world — even when the differences between experienced reality and empirical reality seem particularly high.

This means that if Muslims are of the opinion that Islam will rule Europe in the future and subsequently the world, that a Caliphate will be created and a great reward awaits those who patiently work towards this future, they will act accordingly. It is therefore irrelevant to note that they are divided or do not have a dominant position, as long as their inner motivation broadly points in the same direction.

In this way there arises a spontaneous organization as it occurs on the road. Participants on the road are not aware of intentions and interests of other participants, but they all have a common overall objective, namely to arrive at the place of destination. This creates a pattern that resembles cooperation, without the need of a formal organization.

The major driving force behind this is cognitive dissonance. Every Muslim will have a greater level of experience of cognitive dissonance (inner dissatisfaction) in relation to the West than between himself and (many of) the other Muslims. As long as there is not an assimilative pressure from Western society that can make the cognitive dissonance between Muslims greater than the cognitive dissonance towards the West, the Muslims tend to join with other Muslims and thereby create an incentive to achieve Islamization and a parallel society. [It will even be worse when they are supported, encouraged and appeased by those they despise.]

The historian Hamid Enayat borrowed the following quote from the Islam Scholar Gibb: “The very basis of Sunni political thought excludes the acceptance of any other theory [than the Caliphate] as definitive and final. What is it lays down a principle: that the Caliphate is that form of government which safeguards the ordinances of the Sharia and sees that they are put into practice.”

This fact has to a large extent controlled the political thinking of Muslims since 1924, when the Caliphate was abolished by Ataturk. For the Muslim Brotherhood it is a central point. Modern thinkers like Abd ar-Raziq, who viewed the Caliphate as an outdated institution that did not result from the Koran, were confronted with huge trouble.

The Caliph must ensure the enforcement of Sharia, so that every Muslim can live an Islamic way of life. The percentage of Muslims under such a regime is less important than having Islamic Sharia accepted by the non-Muslims.

And this latter process, as we daily see around us, is in full swing.

III.

With the knowledge of the previous parts, we can estimate how the Islamization of a country like the Netherlands will proceed.

It starts with not having to adapt, with only marrying Muslims, only socializing with Muslims, going to a Muslim butcher and a discrete mosque. The next step is to obtain privileges that are at odds with the values of Western societies, but still may be understood as a right within the same Western society. This includes the wearing of a headscarf, asking for halal food in a factory canteen, requiring a separate room for non-Muslims to eat during Ramadan, et cetera. The mosques that are built are becoming progressively larger and more challenging, looking more determined.

There gradually appears a separate mental room for Islam. Other religions and lifestyles take considerations of Islam into special account in a way that is not mutual. The other ways of life have thus Islamized their behavior. This is all the more bitter because these practices have nothing to do with religion, but are detours to psychologically condition non-Muslims to become dhimmis and to permeate their unconscious with the superiority of Muslims. Whether that superiority is based on anything or only exists in their own experience is not important. The only thing that matters is that conduct is grounded in fulfilling a relationship in which one party is gradually forcing the other party to modify its behavior without something in return.

Islamization means that Muslims achieve a special status because non-Muslims conform to the requirements of Islam. Those who adhere to another’s requirements thereby give the other a higher status.

Conversion to Islam and the emergence of a demographic majority of Muslims are the consequences of Islamization and not vice versa. When Amr Khaled talked about “a Muslim majority within twenty years”, he was referring to a “moral majority”, i.e. a minority that is able with continuing social pressure to force the majority to make concessions.

Muslims are aware of the Islamization of the famous Dutch tolerance. Examples:

  • Separate classes for men and women, and Muslims and non-Muslims.
  • Education in Islam at all schools, to remove the “fear of Islam”.
  • Integration will increasingly become interpreted as “respect for Islam”, which in practice will mean that non-Muslims must learn to spare Muslims in all ways to prevent “insulting” them.
  • Dogs will gradually disappear from the streets.
  • Pork will no longer be allowed in the same freezer as halal meat, and perhaps not even be stored in the adjacent freezer.
  • Cakes will increasingly be taken off the shelf. Among immigrants the rumor circulates that sometimes pork fat is mixed with the fat that is used in cakes and that is haram. Maybe halal cakes will appear on the market.
  • Separate showers for Muslims in sports facilities will become normal. Muslims wish not to viewed by unclean pigs with something as intimate as showering.
  • The Holocaust, the Crusades, the role of the Christian church as a cultural medium after the collapse of the Roman Empire — all these are issues that will gradually be discussed less broadly during history classes. They will be replaced with a fresh look at history. Children will learn that the humanities have emerged from Islam (the adab). That the Renaissance in fact arose from the culture of al-Andalus. That the troubadours and rhetoricians copied their art from Islamic predecessors. That Copernicus had stolen his idea from Tusi. That science should serve Islam. Muslim students in France already require all these things, as it appears in a report from 2004.
  • It will be standard that companies set up prayer rooms for Muslims.
  • Employees are not allowed to wear crosses or Stars of David so as not to offend the Muslims.
  • Non-Muslim women will start wearing a headscarf, just as they often drive during daytime with their headlights on: “It does not matter to me and gives me a feeling of safety.”
  • Islamization is advertised with the help of newspeak like “Islam is becoming Dutch” (is there also a Dutch Catholicism? Argentinean Confucianism?) or “European Islam” (Tariq Ramadan is very strong in this area). The combination “Dutch Islam” scores 3000 hits on Google, “polder Islam” 1970 hits and “European Islam” 5660 times.

Press “freedom” will greatly increase. Expressing negatively on Islam (“insult”) will be a thing of the past, but the slandering of Jews and calls for the destruction of Israel will no longer surprise anyone. Falls under freedom of expression. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam will be closed down (because of “renovation”) and subsequently will find a multicultural equivalent: the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel (the Nakba), will get a prominent place — for didn’t many more people suffer there?

Some groups, including students, non-Western immigrants from non-Islamic countries, and certain professions, such as representatives, will gradually convert to Islam. In this stage Islam is a still relatively superficial religion and the conversion will be without many formal requirements, other than reciting the shahada and the compulsory circumcision of men. Left-wing teachers, social workers and journalists will convert to Islam to be “better able to perform in their profession”.

Other groups will move to Muslim-free areas to avoid the risk of ever “insulting” Muslims.

The latter seems rather unlikely because the Left is associated with the rejection of religion. However, left-wing thinking is highly idealistic (in the philosophical meaning as opposed to realism) of character and is strongly determined by an inner desire for social planning as a counterweight to the chaos around them as they perceive it. People who think like that feel attracted to the mystical and abstract character of Islam because they believe that ideas really do exist as realities, and that a religion is only another way to express the same principles. The aversion towards Western religion by leftist thinking is the dislike of the church and the power of that institution in the Middle Ages, but, strictly seen, not of religion as a personal experience. German socialism took a much more general argument against religion than French socialism.

There are reasons why a country like the Netherlands is more vulnerable to Islam than most other European countries.

The Netherlands is an anomaly in European history. It started as a republic, and became a kingdom just as in other European countries the monarchy was returning.

1.   Calvinism, with its abstract religious idea of God and a strongly considering impact has certain agreements with Islam, but is much less defensible.
2.   The ancient egalitarianism of the civil mentality hinders an ideological defense against mental usurpation.
3.   Pillarization, although has largely become redundant, has inspired a near endless consultation mentality.
4.   The overpopulation and the multitude of confrontations and over-stimulations that come with it make Islamizing only one of the many problems that seem to need attention.
5.   The Netherlands urbanizes rapidly and Islamization is much easier in an urban environment because of the conformist and anonymous nature.
6.   The Netherlands has since the 18th century developed a loser’s mentality, which makes it inclined to identify itself with underdogs from around the world and is therefore insufficiently able to assert its own identity.

More and more the situation will arise in which the majority gives in to a minority out of fear of reprisals. The circumstances suggest that Lebanizing and finally Somalizing will determine the route for the Netherlands will after 2035. Already a generation of schoolchildren is growing up who find it normal to daily see headscarves around them. A whole generation that is growing up under a government without authority.

With ever more low-skill and unskilled Muslims, the question is whether a country that thrives on services and information technology can sustain its prosperity. The huge retirement wave that will be launched from 2012 on will probably be a turning point. Gradually, the Netherlands will slide down economically. Politicians will again resort to the tool of immigration to provide new orders for the construction sector. Time and again new waves of immigrants will make the birth rate rise again, long enough to change entire areas into overseas provinces of Morocco. I have described this scenario in “Rise and fall of the new pillarization.”

Politicians will always try to sell unpleasant developments as inevitable and as a new form of an existing tradition because their interest is solely in maintaining their very own position.

Finally, it is good to remember that Islam is a process without end. Countries like Pakistan and Egypt are still busy Islamizing. The dynamic arises from the denial of “the self” — the opposite of the submission to God’s will — that makes ever increasing sacrifices necessary to be able to claim unity with Allah. The ultimate sacrifice is the end of earthly existence (death) and the beginning of heavenly life. With this finally the unity with God (Tawhid) that is so central for the Muslim will be reached. The striving for unification with Allah has two major manifestations: the hate of the West and the death-wish of many Muslims.



* In Dutch it says godsdienst, which means “religion” but also means the abstract word “god” and “(religious) service” combined.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/28/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/28/2009The fierce crackdown against demonstrators in Iran has caused dissidents to find creative new ways of expressing themselves. The latest phenomenon is known as the “wailing of wolves”, in which people cry out against the regime from the rooftops of the city. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises severe purges as soon as the election results are certified.

In other news, a new report says that Swedes have developed much more positive attitudes towards refugees in the last two decades.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Gaia, heroyalwhyness, islam o’phobe, JD, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – –

Financial Crisis
Beijing Reaffirms the Urgent Need to Replace the Dollar With a Global Currency
 
USA
Alarm Rings as Michelle Flexes Muscles
Communist U.N. Boss Praises “Mother Earth”
Obama Speech Inspires Mass Quran Distribution
Roberts: Supreme Court Not Setting School Rules
 
Canada
No Sane, Free Person Would Choose to Wear a Burka
 
Europe and the EU
Amid Jewish Revival, Poland Gets Openly Gay Rabbi
Britain is No Longer a Christian Nation
Former East Germans Miss Failed Communist Dictatorship
Italy Expels Palestinian Hijacker to Syria
Swedes More Positive to Refugees: Report
The Shocking Picture of a White Boy Aged 11 Being ‘Converted’ To Islam by Radical Preacher
UK: Anger as Government Sends Out 2,000 Bogus Job Applications to Unmask ‘Racist’ Companies
UK: BBC Sends 407 Staff to Glastonbury Festival
UK: Doctors Want Right to Talk Faith
UK: Darling Tries to Hide Labour Cuts From Voters
 
Balkans
Serbia: Balkan Leaders Back EU Integration
 
Israel and the Palestinians
Barry Rubin: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s Response: A Narrative He Dares Not Speak
Why the Germans Are Particularly Qualified to Tell the Israelis How to Behave
 
Middle East
Ahmadinejad Threatens Obama
Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Regime Plots Purge After Election Protests
Iran: ‘Wailing of Wolves’ As Cries of Allahu Akbar Ring From Roofs
Iran: Leading Demonstrators Must be Executed, Ayatollah Khatami Demands
Lebanon: Hariri Steps Out of His Father’s Shadow
Muslim World Grieves for Michael Jackson
Saudi Arabia: Police Arrest ‘Homosexuals’ At Party
Turkish Parliament Paves Way for Civilian Courts to Try Army Personnel
 
Russia
Vodka Kills as Many Russians as a War, Says Report in the Lancet
 
South Asia
Revealed: The Chilling Words of the Mumbai Killers Recorded During Their Murder Spree
US Changes Tack on Afghan Poppies
 
Far East
South Korea Getting U.S. Missiles to Boost Defences: Report
 
Australia — Pacific
Australia: Indian Community Outraged Over Jail Terms
Australia: War on Chronic Disease to Shift Out of Hospitals
Australia: Aged-Care Safety Policy Too Costly, Says Watchdog
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
MP’s Arrest Halts Exposure of Zimbabwe Blood Diamonds Massacre
Somalis Taste South Africa Xenophobia
 
Latin America
Argentine Army in Torture Ruling
Why Doesn’t Obama Care About Freedom?
 
Immigration
Police Clash With Immigration Protesters in Calais
 
Culture Wars
UK: Dawkins Sets Up Kids’ Camp to Groom Atheists
 
General
Facebook, Twitter and Peers for Sale — Privately

Financial Crisis


Beijing Reaffirms the Urgent Need to Replace the Dollar With a Global Currency

The 2008 Report of the Central Bank of China suggests the of the International Monetary Fund’s SDR. This should also have control over the foreign exchange reserves of member countries. Criticism of the U.S..

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) — The Chinese central bank has reiterated the need to replace the dollar with a new currency for international trade. The 2008 report of the Bank of the Chinese people, issued yesterday, suggests the launch of “super-sovereign” a currency. The report also demands more rules for nations that emit currency in support of the global financial system. “An international monetary system dominated by a single currency — the report says — increases the concentration of risks and the spread of the crisis.”

In March, the Governor of Central Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, had already expressed the idea of replacing the dollar with SDR (Special drawing right), a measure introduced 40 years ago by the International Monetary Fund (see Goodbye dollar? G20 summit to discuss a single world currency). The SDR is based on a unit account of currencies including the U.S. dollar, the Euro, Japanese Yen and British Pound. China seems to want to broaden the account to include the Yuan.

According to the report, the world should not only adopt the SDR, but entrust the IMF with the administration of a portion of foreign currency reserves of its members. In a veiled criticism of the United States, the report states that it is difficult to balance national needs with international requirements.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

USA


Alarm Rings as Michelle Flexes Muscles

Democrats are fretting as the first lady seeks a wider role in the White House

Over the past five months Michelle Obama has basked in some of the most flattering reviews ever earned by an American first lady. Yet the first stirrings of discontent are beginning to surface as President Barack Obama’s wife emerges from her newly installed White House vegetable garden in search of a meatier political role.

Reports last week that she is seeking to expand her influence in her husband’s administration set alarm bells ringing among Democratic veterans.

Despite denials from White House officials that Michelle Obama is suffering from “Hillary-itis” — a burning desire to help her husband run the country — her long-running interest in healthcare has raised painful memories of 1994, when Hillary Clinton presided over a political debacle as her health reform proposals collapsed in Congress.

As a Harvard-educated lawyer and a former hospital administrator from Chicago, Michelle Obama has been dealing with the shortcomings of US healthcare for much of the past decade.

Yet since her husband became president in January she has mostly steered clear of the contentious debate over the soaring costs of treatment, insurance and care for the poor.

Instead she has emerged as a fashion icon, a model mother and a symbol of African-American achievement. The angry black woman who once suggested she had not been proud of her country until her husband ran for president has since been hailed as the most glamorous first lady since Jackie Kennedy.

To the astonishment of Republicans, who regarded her as a potential liability to her husband’s campaign last year, her approval ratings have consistently outstripped her husband’s.

Yet Democratic insiders have long suspected that Michelle Obama was ill-equipped for a background role as a dutiful spouse. “You know when she was happiest during the election?” asked one party strategist.. “When Barack had to go back to Hawaii for his dying mother and Michelle took over his campaign.”

Earlier this month she caused a minor stir in party circles when she abruptly replaced her White House chief of staff after only four months in the job.

Jackie Norris, 37, had been Barack Obama’s campaign co-ordinator in the early primary state of Iowa and had apparently hit it off with his wife. But Norris later fell out with Desiree Rogers, a Chicago businesswoman and close friend to Obama who had become the White House social secretary.

When Norris was quietly shipped off to a different job, Michelle Obama turned to Susan Sher, 61, another old friend and her former boss at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Sher told The Washington Post last week that her first move as Michelle’s new chief of staff was to tell David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, that he needed to return her calls immediately.

Since Sher took over, Michelle Obama has become perceptibly more vocal about healthcare and community issues. Last week she visited San Francisco to launch a summer volunteer programme.

She also sent an e-mail to millions of Democratic supporters urging them to support her husband’s healthcare proposals, then gave a television interview to discuss her role in fighting childhood obesity.

Urging Americans to embrace a healthier lifestyle, she added: “Government can’t do it all . . . my hope is that if I play a role in sort of ringing the bell of prevention and wellness and exercise . . . I think that can be helpful.”

Acutely conscious of the Clinton precedent — which not only scarred Hillary’s reputation but also set back the cause of healthcare reform for a decade — White House officials insist the president’s wife will steer clear of policy controversy.

“It has never been our interest in having the first lady play a prominent or leading role in advancing our policy positions,” said one official. “You are not going to see her out there on the stump.”

Oprah Winfrey recently described Michelle as “an authentically empowered real woman who looks and feels like a modern woman in the 21st century”. Others have praised her as a symbol of middle-class, feminist accomplishment and stylish working motherhood.

Michelle Obama gave up her $300,000 (£182,000) a year job to be a stay-at-home president’s wife. To expect a woman of such substance to bite her tongue on controversial issues may prove unrealistic. She has already instructed her staff to think “strategically” about maximising her impact on the issues she addresses; she is also hiring her own speechwriter.

Sher insisted Michelle Obama was not about to turn into Hillary Mark Two: “My own perception of it is that she doesn’t want to get involved in . . . wonky policy issues \ the kind of contentious legislative proposals that are going on at any given time.”

Other Democrats are beginning to wonder how long she can restrict herself to such uncontroversial subjects as her daughters’ enthusiasm for vegetables.

“Sasha likes peas,” she said last week. “And Malia is a pretty big broccoli fan.”

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Communist U.N. Boss Praises “Mother Earth”

Armed with a new sex scandal that can further damage Republican opponents of the Obama Administration, our media haven’t found much time to cover the U.N. Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis underway at the world organization’s headquarters in New York. But the Obama White House is working hand-in-glove with a Communist Catholic Priest who gave a bizarre speech on Wednesday devoted to saving “Mother Earth” from evil capitalists…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Obama Speech Inspires Mass Quran Distribution

CAIR plans to give ‘holy texts’ to 100,000 local, state leaders

The Council on American-Islamic Relations intends to launch a nationwide campaign to distribute copies of the Islamic Quran to 100,000 local, state and national leaders, a campaign the organization’s public relations department claims was inspired by President Obama’s speech to Muslims earlier this month.

In a statement released prior to a planned news conference next week announcing the “Share the Quran” campaign, CAIR described the scope of the outreach:

“In the multi-year initiative, American Muslims will sponsor Qurans for distribution to governors, state attorneys general, educators, law enforcement officials, state and national legislators, local elected and public officials, media professionals and other local or national leaders who shape public opinion or determine policy,” the statement said.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Roberts: Supreme Court Not Setting School Rules

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Don’t look to the Supreme Court to set school rules, only to clarify them when officials have abdicated that responsibility, Chief Justice John Roberts said Saturday.

At a judicial conference, Roberts was asked how school administrators should interpret seemingly conflicting messages from the court in two recent decisions, including one Thursday that said Arizona officials conducted an unconstitutional strip-search of a teenage girl. In 2007, the justices sided with an Alaska high school principal, ruling that administrators could restrict student speech if it appears to advocate illegal drug use.

Roberts told the audience there was no conflict in the court’s rulings, just clarity intended to deal with narrow issues that surface from government actions.

“You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad,” Roberts said. “We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”

In the Arizona case, the high court said school officials violated Savana Redding’s rights when they strip-searched her for prescription-strength ibuprofen. The court said educators cannot force children to remove their clothing unless student safety is at risk.

Roberts said administrators should take comfort in the 8-1 ruling, which also found that officials could not be held financially liable when carrying out school policy.

“We recognized that they didn’t have very clear guidance,” Roberts said. “We laid down a rule about what they can and can’t do, but we said they don’t have to fork over damages from their own personal funds if they guess wrong.”

Roberts also defended the court’s diversity — all nine justices are former federal appeals court judges. The issue has surfaced in light of Justice David Souter’s decision to retire.

Senators from both parties have said the court needs justices who don’t come from the federal bench, or the “judicial monastery,” as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has called it. Leahy is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will begin hearings next month on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to succeed Souter; she, too, is an appeals court judge.

Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice and the third woman ever on the court.

Roberts said the current justices have a range of legal experience despite their shared background on the appeals level.

“I consider myself a practicing lawyer,” Roberts said, noting he was a judge for only a short time. He served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2003 to 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated him to be chief justice.

Other justices have academic and political experience, he said, adding that Justice Clarence Thomas ran a federal agency.

“We’re also a pretty diverse bunch,” he said.

Roberts did not refer directly to Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the court.

Asked about his desire for more consensus among justices in the court’s opinions, Roberts said he wasn’t suggesting that justices compromise, but that agreement gives clearer guidance.

“The more we can speak with a broader degree of agreement, it looks a lot more like law,” he said.

Hinting at his legal philosophy, Roberts said one of the Supreme Court’s most monumental cases in underscoring how “things went terribly wrong” was an 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case that said blacks, whether or not they were slaves, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be U.S. citizens.

Roberts said that in contrast to previous decisions that sought consensus, the chief justice in the Dred Scott case pushed an outcome “that really had no basis in the Constitution.” Roberts’ comments came days after a surprisingly unified Supreme Court ruled narrowly to preserve the Voting Rights Act.

While in some instances, justices may have to step in to decide cases of “great political significance,” in many others “there are going to be huge consequences if you do leap ahead and involve the court in politics,” he said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Canada


No Sane, Free Person Would Choose to Wear a Burka

By Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald

A while back I was asked to give a talk at my kids’ school about my December 2003 trip to Afghanistan.

As I waited to be introduced, I hid in an auditorium storage room wearing a burka I bought in that war-ravaged country, thinking I’d be out in a minute, maybe two. But the introduction took a lot longer than I had anticipated and by the time I came out to greet all those shining faces, I was very nearly hyperventilating from the oppression of it. I didn’t time my self-imposed confinement to the burka, but I probably wore the suffocating tent-like garment with mesh over my eyes for no more than 10 minutes. I told the kids I felt like I was buried alive.

I also told them that while in Afghanistan, I asked all of the many women I met there whether they liked wearing a burka. Not one said yes. In fact, they all said they hated it almost as much as they hated the Taliban.

It’s no wonder. The burka’s toll on these women was harsh. Many had lost most of their teeth and hair as a result of not having enough vitamin D, which comes from the sun. During the time of Taliban rule—from September 1996 to November 2001 —no portion of their skin, save their hands, was ever allowed to be exposed to sunlight. Think about the horror of that. The Taliban insisted that homes with women in them had to blacken their windows, lest a man pollute his delicate sensibilities by gazing upon the uncovered face of a woman behind the glass.

On Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated during the first presidential address to a joint session of France’s two legislative houses of Parliament in 136 years, that the burka was “not welcome” in France.

“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity,” said Sarkozy.

He’s right. Women in burkas don’t seem human. After just a short while in Afghanistan, women in their blue burkas seem like ghostly apparitions devoid of a face, individuality or humanity.

At first, when my translators would tap me on the shoulder and suggest I “take a picture of that burka over there,” I would gently correct them by saying, “you mean, that WOMAN in the burka?” In a couple of days, however, I too was referring to them as simply burkas.

In France—where it’s already illegal to wear any conspicuous religious symbol in state schools including a head scarf—a parliamentary committee is studying the issue of whether or not to allow women to cover their faces for supposedly religious reasons. As Sarkozy said, the burka is “not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience.” The Muslim Canadian Congress agrees and urged Canada’s government to ban the burka.

“The decision to wear the burka is by no means a reflection of the genuine choices of Muslim women,” said MCC president, Sohail Raza in a news release. “The argument that Muslim women opt to wear the burka does not withstand scrutiny when considering the repressive nature of orthodox Muslim society in general.”

Reached at his Calgary home, Mahfooz Kanwar, Mount Royal College professor emeritus of sociology and criminology, says many well-meaning Canadians believe it is “tolerant” to allow Muslim women the “choice” of wearing the burka.

“There is no choice involved in this, and allowing it will lead to intolerance,” said Kanwar.

“Some people say banning the burka would be a slippery slope and would lead to the banning of wearing a scarf over your mouth in the winter while outside,” said Kanwar. “But the real slippery slope can be seen in some Islamist ghettos in Paris or in Denmark, where non-Muslim women are harassed for not covering their hair to the point where they have been forced to start doing so to prevent verbal and physical attacks by semi-literate Muslim men. That’s the real slippery slope.”

Kanwar, a Muslim who has written eight books, including one on the sociology of Islam, echoes Sarkozy’s comments. “The burka is not mandated by Islam or the Qur’an and is therefore not religious and protected under the Charter. In Canada, gender equality is one of our core values and faces are important identifying tools and should not be covered. Period,” added Kanwar, who is also a director with the MCC.

Many French politicians are on the side of a burka ban including some prominent Muslim politicians like Fadela Amara, France’s cities minister. Amara has called the burka “a coffin that kills individual liberties,” and a sign of the “political exploitation of Islam.”

Funny, but “coffin” was a word several women I met in Afghanistan used to describe their burka. Consider the words of Massooda, a 36-year-old widow, who looked more like 60 as a result of her harsh life. “I will never wear a burka again,” she said defiantly. “They will have to put me in a coffin before I walk around in one again.”

That’s choice. No sane, free person would ever “choose” the burka.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Amid Jewish Revival, Poland Gets Openly Gay Rabbi

WARSAW, Poland — When Rabbi Aaron Katz walks the streets of Warsaw’s former Jewish quarter, scenes of that lost world fill his imagination: Families headed to synagogue, women in their kitchens cooking Sabbath meals, his father as a boy with the sidecurls of an Orthodox Jew.

But Katz’s life could hardly be more different from that prewar eastern European culture, at least in one key respect: He is Poland’s first openly gay rabbi.

Born in Argentina 53 years ago to parents who fled Poland before the Holocaust, Katz is the latest rabbi to play his part in reviving a once vibrant Jewish community that was all but wiped out by Hitler.

He settled into Warsaw’s historic Jewish district in March with Kevin Gleason, a former Hollywood producer on such reality TV shows as “The Bachelor” and “Nanny 911,” with whom he entered into a registered domestic partnership in Los Angeles two years ago.

They live only three streets from the birth home of Katz’s father in a modern and spacious apartment with their dogs, two gentle brown boxers. Katz says he is moved by the links to his past, but keeps his focus on the future.

“I don’t think we will come back to this great Jewish life,” he said, referring to prewar Poland, a country where one person in 10 was Jewish and where synagogues, yeshivas and shtetls defined the landscape. “But I hope we will have a normal Jewish life in Poland.”

Katz is certainly an anomaly in conservative Poland, where to be either Jewish or gay is challenge enough — at least outside the cities. Of a population of 38 million, about 5,000 are registered as Jews, while thousands more have part-Jewish ancestry, and some have returned to their roots since Poland shed its communist dictatorship.

Katz is the second rabbi to serve Beit Warszawa, a Reform community with 250 members that was founded in the capital 10 years ago by Polish and American Jews who felt little affinity with some Orthodox practices, such as separating men and women during Sabbath services. The Reform movement ordains gay rabbis.

Homosexuals have won acceptance at differing levels throughout post-communist Eastern Europe. The Czech Republic and Slovenia recognize same-sex partnerships, as will Hungary from July 1. Poland hasn’t gone that far. It has an active gay rights movement and gay nightclubs in the cities, but the Catholic church and some conservative politicians still publicly describe homosexuality as abnormal and immoral.

Katz, a citizen of Argentina, Israel and Sweden, says so far he has not faced anti-Semitism or homophobia in Poland. But some community members, speaking in private, reveal a degree of discomfort.

One woman at a Sabbath service whispered that she found Katz’s open sexuality too “aggressive.” A longtime male member counseled against writing about the rabbi, lest anti-Semites use it against the community.

A third member, Piotr Lukasz, said he himself supports gay rights, and marched with an Israeli flag during a recent gay rights parade in Warsaw. But he said he had heard others complain that it would weaken an already small and fragile community.

“They say that Poland is not a ready for a gay rabbi because the outside society is very conservative,” said Lukasz, a 23-year-old student of cultural anthropology. “An openly gay rabbi is something very controversial.”

Others, though, seem comfortable, as evidenced by a recent string of dinners where Jews and non-Jews joined Katz and his partner at their home, digging into goulash or chicken-and-potato meals around the dining room table and socializing through the evening.

Katz is the chief cook — it’s because he likes to be in charge, says Gleason, who instead welcomes guests warmly at the door and keeps their wine glasses filled through the evenings.

“I think the rabbi’s home should be open,” Katz said. “The moment that you take a position, your family takes the position too. It’s a role.”

Katz’s life as a rabbi has been an evolution from one world to another.. In the 1980s and early 1990s he was Sweden’s chief Orthodox rabbi, married to a woman with whom he had five children now aged 16 to 31. Later he lived and worked in Berlin and Los Angeles. He had a dark beard, but today is clean-shaven.

The only photograph in their living room shows Katz and Gleason on the day they sealed their partnership — which they refer to as a marriage — surrounded by both their families, including Katz’s sons and daughters, who are close to the couple and who showed their acceptance of the union with a gift of a ketubah, a traditional Jewish wedding certificate..

Katz’s journey away from Orthodox Judaism was part of his “coming out process,” he explains, but also was influenced by the realization that some of his children were not attracted to Orthodox worship. He concluded that Reform Judaism was more attractive to the young.

Still, he insists that as modern as he is, he loves tradition.

He keeps a kosher home and has enthusiastically embraced the Jewish tradition of matchmaker, using his dinners to introduce singles — usually heterosexuals but not exclusively.

Asked how many marriages have resulted, he said “a couple,” but Gleason jumped in to correct him: “You’re being modest,” he said.

Gleason, 50, was born into a Catholic family but converted to Judaism for Katz. He left Hollywood and now does administrative and fundraising work for the synagogue. He attends services, sitting in the back and tapping on his watch when he feels the rabbi’s lively sermons are getting too long.

Still, the openness of their relationship can catch people in Warsaw off guard.

“I introduce him as my partner they say, ‘Oh he’s also a rabbi?’“ Katz said. “When I say ‘my partner’ they think I mean like in business. So I say ‘no, no, no, we are living together.’“

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Britain is No Longer a Christian Nation, Claims Church of England Bishop

The Rt Rev Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead”.

He criticised his fellow bishops for failing to appreciate the scale of the crisis and warned that their inaction could seal the Church’s fate.

As one of the Church’s longest-serving bishops, the comments by the assistant Bishop of Newcastle are set to fuel the debate over its future.

The General Synod, the Church’s parliament, will next month consider proposals to cut the number of bishops and senior clergy amid fears over the Church’s finances.

Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, Bishop Richardson said: “Many bishops prefer to turn their heads, to carry on as if nothing has changed, rather than face the reality that Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

“Many of them think that we are still living in the 1950s — a period described by historians as representing a hey day for the established church.”

He said that the Church had lost more than one in ten of its regular worshippers between 1996 and 2006, with a fall from more than one million to 880,000.

“At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility,” said Bishop Richardson.

Nearly half of the population in England regard themselves as belonging to the Church of England, while seven in ten described themselves as Christian in the last census.

However, the Bishop said that the fall in church marriages and baptisms revealed that Britain was no longer a Christian nation.

The number of babies being baptised has fallen from 609 in every 1,000 at the turn of the twentieth century to only 128 in 2006/7 and church marriages have also dropped.

Bishop Richardson said: “The church is being hit by a double whammy: on the one hand it confronts the challenge of institutional decline but on the other hand it has to face the rise of cultural and religious pluralism in Britain.”

He says that the way the Church responds to this will be “crucial in determining whether it will be able to survive as a viable organisation and make a contribution to national life”.

“At present church leaders show little signs of understanding the situation. They don’t understand the culture we now live in.”

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]



Britain is No Longer a Christian Nation

If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter.

By the Rt Rev Paul Richardson

But these figures are just about the only signs of hope for the church and certainly not the first green shoots of a revival. Other statistics make for gloomy reading.

Annual decline in Sunday attendance is running at around 1 per cent. At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility.

In the short term we are likely to see more closures of buildings as the church battles to meet a big pension bill, pay clergy, and maintain a large bureaucracy.

To its credit, the church has been successful at getting members to give, but larger donations cannot offset the fall in numbers. At present the church is struggling to maintain 16,200 buildings, many of them old and listed with 4,200 listed Grade I.

If decline continues, Christian Research has estimated that in five years’ time church closures will accelerate from their present rate of 30 a year to 200 a year as dwindling congregations find the cost of keeping them open too great.

Perhaps the most worrying set of statistics for the Church of England is the decline in baptisms. Out of every 1,000 live births in England in 2006/7 only 128 were baptised as Anglicans.

The figure rises by a small amount if adult baptism and thanksgiving services are included but it is hard to see the Church of England being able to justify its position as the established church on the basis of these numbers.

By way of contrast, out of every 1,000 live births in England in 1900, 609 were baptised in the Church of England. Figures for church marriages show an equally catastrophic decline.

The church is being hit by a double whammy: on the one hand it confronts the challenge of institutional decline but on the other hand it has to face the rise of cultural and religious pluralism in Britain.

How it responds to the second challenge will be crucial in determining whether it will be able to survive as a viable organisation and make a contribution to national life.

At present church leaders show little signs of understanding the situation. They don’t understand the culture we now live in.

Many bishops prefer to turn their heads, to carry on as if nothing has changed, rather than face the reality that Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

Many of them think that we are still living in the 1950s — a period described by historians as representing a hey day for the established church.

The coronation brought church and nation together in a way which will never be repeated. School assemblies had a definite Christian tone and children still sang familiar hymns.

The church could function as chaplain to a nation that was nominally Christian and Anglican, even if many actually only attended for baptisms, weddings and funerals. That world has gone for good.

Gordon Brown’s unilateral decision to take no part in nominating bishops to the Queen (a matter he did not discuss with David Cameron or Nick Clegg, in breach of constitutional protocol) makes it less likely that bishops will retain their place in a reformed House of Lords.

Rather than try to cling on to their places in the House of Lords, they should take the initiative by withdrawing, which would show that they appreciate Christian Britain is dead.

The church can try to fight the forces of change or it can see the crisis as an opportunity to give itself a clearer sense of identity.

One reason for increased attendance at Christmas and Easter may be that people are looking for a way of affirming identity in a pluralist society.

So far its leaders are choosing to resist but doing so in a very Anglican way: making concessions when necessary and hoping by small, strategic retreats to buy time and preserve the status quo.

The reason offered for upholding establishment is usually that it gives the church a sense of responsibility to the whole nation. In practice it often looks as if the church is really trying to keep its special privileges on false pretences.

For a time other faith communities may welcome the special position of the established church as a bulwark against secularism.

The Chief Rabbi is a forceful defender of the valuable role the Church of England can play in bringing faith communities together and fostering understanding across creedal barriers.

But the church would be a more effective bulwark against secularism if it was stronger and the role the Chief Rabbi has mapped out is likely to disappear as different faith communities get used to dealing with each other directly.

Disestablishment will actually pose major problems for society. Every country needs shared rituals and celebrations to foster a sense of community and provide a backdrop to major national occasions.

We are going to have to invent a new civil religion. Already the process has begun with the observance of Holocaust Day and increasing focus on Human Rights as providing a shared basis for morality.

If Anglicans could acquire a stronger sense of who they are and what they believe they might slow the rate of decline and possibly even stabilise their numbers.

They would still be a minority but they could be a creative minority. The trick will be to reach this situation without falling into a fundamentalist trap or cutting off links with the wider world.

Other organisations, particularly Roman Catholics with their three-hundred year history of persecution and minority status, can be a guide, showing both the dangers to avoid and the opportunities to seize.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



Former East Germans Miss Failed Communist Dictatorship

More than half of Germans from the former communist east see the failed dictatorship in a positive light, according to a new survey conducted for the government.

The daily Berliner Zeitung reported on Friday that 20 years after the joyous scenes of the Berlin Wall being torn down, 49 percent of easterners asked agreed with the statement: “The German Democratic Republic had more good than bad sides. There were a few problems but one could live well there.”

A further eight percent chose the statement: “The GDR had overwhelmingly good sides. One lived there better and happier than today in reunified Germany.”

The result of the survey, conducted by polling company Emnid, disappointed Wolfgang Tiefensee, the government’s representative for the reconstruction of eastern Germany.

He called for school education about the politics of the GDR to be improved, telling the paper that the survey results showed: “we cannot allow ourselves to fall behind in the re-examination of GDR history.”

He said he had written a letter to the education ministers of all German states calling on them to ensure that their schools were doing a good enough job teaching children about the former east and the peaceful revolution of 1989-1990.

The survey further showed that Germans from the former west and east, with only 56 percent of those in the former east saying reunification had brought them equality before the law, and the rule of law. Only 37 percent agree with the idea that the influence of individual citizens on politics is a given. And just over half say they are experiencing the increased material wealth they had hoped to have.

Those from the former west are said to see reunification more positively, with 78 percent praising the rule of law and more than half the influence of citizens.

Westerners were not asked about the enormous amounts of money that has been poured into the east, among other things, via the solidarity part of income tax.

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]



Italy Expels Palestinian Hijacker to Syria

ROME — A lawyer says Italian authorities are set to expel to Syria one of the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed an American passenger in 1985.

Attorney Gianfranco Pagano said Youssef Magied al-Molqui was about to be flown from Palermo, Sicily, to Rome and then on to Damascus on Saturday.

In April, Al-Molqui was transferred to a holding center for immigrants in Sicily after spending 23 years in prison.

Al-Molqui was a member of the four-man team that hijacked the Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast. He was convicted of shooting Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly Jewish man from New York, and ordering him to be dumped in the sea while in his wheelchair.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Swedes More Positive to Refugees: Report

Opposition among Swedes to accepting refugees into the country has declined, a new report shows.

“The trend is that opposition to refugees is in decline,” said professor in political science Marie Demker to the news agency TT.

A new survey, to be published by the SOM institute at Gothenburg University in a couple of weeks, shows that the proportion of Swedes that think it is a good idea to accept fewer refugees has declined from 49 percent to 45 percent over the past year.

Marie Demker, who is responsible for the survey, says that the figures collated through the years indicate a gradual, steady decline.

“We had a significantly greater opposition in the beginning of the 1990s.”

She says that the results of the new survey can be considered somewhat unexpected considering the advance of a party such as the far-right Sweden Democrats, which advocates tighter restrictions.

The survey also indicates that factors such as education, age and place of residence also affect attitudes towards refugees.

For example 57 percent of those who lack high school (gymnasium) or university education consider it a good idea to accept fewer refugees. Among those with higher education only 28 percent agree with the statement.

“Education is the single strongest explanatory factor to attitudes regarding the acceptance of refugees,” Marie Demker said.

The full report from the SOM institute will be published on July 7th.

The survey involved 6,000 people interviewed during the autumn of 2008.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



The Shocking Picture of a White Boy Aged 11 Being ‘Converted’ To Islam by Radical Preacher

This is the shocking picture of a young, white schoolboy being converted to Islam by a cleric linked to a radical Muslim hate preacher.

The bewildered 11-year-old, who gives his name as Sean was filmed repeating Arabic chants and swearing allegiance to Allah.

The boy is prompted throughout by controversial cleric Anjem Choudary, a follower of exiled hate-preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed.

The incident was filmed during a demonstration by Choudary’s Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah group in Birmingham city centre earlier this month.

Choudary, 42, was one of the masterminds behind the protests at the homecoming parade of heroic British soldiers in Luton earlier this year.

He praised protesters who branded British troops ‘murderers’ and later appeared at a press conference flanked by thugs who took part in the demo.

Choudary defended the young boy’s ‘reversion’ to Islam but admitted his parents were not with him and were not consulted.

He said: ‘The child was genuinely interested in Islam.’

‘The boy told us he wanted to become a Muslim and, of course, some people are intellectually more mature than they are physically. I don’t see there is any harm in this.

‘He was with his friends, but I didn’t see if his parents were there,’ he added.

A message on Choudary’s website offers advice for those who become Muslim at his Islamic Roadshow.

‘Conversion packs are already provided to those who revert to Islam in the Islamic Roadshows,’ it says.

‘They include a booklet on ‘Everything a Muslim must know’ and a free DVD with a brief guide on how to pray in Islam.’

Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah, is a splinter group of the controversial Al Muhajiroun sect.

Al-Muhajiroun, which has recruited hundreds of fanatics in the Midlands, fell apart in 2004 just months before Bakri was stopped from coming back to the UK under terror laws.

It has been revealed that the sect is planning to reform.

Bakri has now set his sights set on a return for the extremist group, though the Home Office is understood to be closely monitoring its activities.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Anger as Government Sends Out 2,000 Bogus Job Applications to Unmask ‘Racist’ Companies

Ministers were embroiled in a row last night over an extraordinary covert operation to expose racist businesses.

Civil servants have fabricated more than 2,000 job applications and concocted hundreds of false names to try to catch out bigoted managers.

Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper’s department has secretly applied for 1,000 separate jobs with made-up CVs.

The bizarre operation — condemned as ‘unethical and underhand’ by business leaders — is designed to reveal whether employers turn down applicants simply because of their names.

It could lead to a law banning firms from asking for job applicants’ names until the interview stage, amid claims that such a measure will also help women combat sexism.

A DWP spokesman said the department had responded to 1,000 job vacancies using false identities but with very similar CVs to see if a person’s name was a factor in whether they were given an interview. ‘The names are made up,’ she said.

Typically, officials put in two or three applications per job, with one under a traditional Anglo-Saxon name and others using an ethnic minority-sounding name, The Mail on Sunday understands.

Applications under women’s names were also submitted to ‘keep it realistic’, the spokesman said.

‘We can’t tell you what jobs, what companies, which sectors have been involved. There were 1,000 jobs involved. If someone gets an interview call, it goes through to a mobile phone number which politely declines an interview.’

The research is due to be published later this summer but Vera Baird, the Solicitor General, last week revealed the initial findings. ‘There was quite a strong sense that there is race discrimination going on,’ she said.

‘If you call yourself Patel, as opposed to Smith, then you get less opportunity.’

Ms Baird, now piloting Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill through the Commons, confirmed the no-names job application rule could be added to the Bill. ‘It could theoretically help, particularly young women. It might help because we are sure there’s a lot of pregnancy discrimination,’ she said.

However, the project was condemned by business leaders.

Gareth Elliott, of the British Chambers of Commerce, said it had strongly advised against the research because it was ‘unethical and a complete waste of time’.

‘We are completely shocked to hear the DWP has gone ahead. Businesses have enough on their plate without having to deal with the underhand tactics of the DWP.’

Theresa May, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, also criticised the operation as a ‘waste of taxpayers’ cash’. She backed moves to clamp down on discrimination but said the idea of banning bosses from initially requiring the names of job applicants was ‘unworkable’.

Challenged to justify the ethics of the operation, Ms Baird said: ‘Well, I don’t know because I wasn’t party to that research. I’ve only discovered it since I have been responsible for the [Equality] Bill. It’s a piece of legitimate research, isn’t it?’

The DWP said it was ‘right to find out if there was an issue regarding people being discriminated against because of their ethnicity when applying for jobs’.

Employers’ organisation the CBI called the proposals ‘unrealistic’. ‘Job applicants are already protected from discrimination when going through the recruitment process and can take legal action if treated differently,’ it said.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: BBC Sends 407 Staff to Glastonbury Festival

The BBC has sent 407 people to cover this weekend’s Glastonbury festival, almost as many as it flew out to film last year’s Beijing Olympics.

The corporation has admitted that 125 staff and 150 freelancers are at the festival, either as presenters, producers, directors or technical crew in order to broadcast across its digital television and radio channels and website.

They are joined by about 130 short-term contractors hired to offer support at the 1,100-acre Somerset site. The total operation is estimated to cost the BBC around £1.5 million.s

Also attending the festival are a clutch of senior corporation executives, who earlier this week were forced to disclose their expenses and earnings. They received free passes to attend in a “work capacity”.

The corporation has sent so many staff that it has had to block book hotels within a 10-mile radius of the festival. At the Wessex hotel in Street, Somerset, where prices range from £40 to £160 a night, the BBC has booked all 51 rooms.

Television audiences for the festival on BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 reach a fraction of the number achieved by Wimbledon, where the men’s final attracted 12.7 million viewers last year.

There will be 111 hours of television coverage across these minority channels and the BBC’s interactive service, known as the “red button”. This compares with 3,050 hours coverage for Beijing, where the BBC sent just 30 more workers.

Critics have accused the BBC of needlessly duplicating its output. Conservative MP Philip Davies, who sits on the House of Commons Culture Select Committee, said: “I can’t imagine any other broadcaster sending this many people to cover one festival.

“This demonstrates once again that the BBC is a bloated organisation. It doesn’t operate according to the rules that other broadcasters have to follow.”

Last year the corporation was criticised after it sent a 437-strong team to China to cover the Olympics at a cost of £3 million.

Similarly, last year’s US Presidential Election was covered by 175 BBC staff. In contrast, ITV sent only 20 people while Sky News sent a team of 40.

A spokesman for the BBC said: “Our coverage of the festival is not comparable with the Olympics. We are the official broadcast partner to Glastonbury and are responsible for all broadcast infra-structure and transmission. Our pictures will be used around the world.”

Last week the corporation was forced to reveal under freedom of information legislation that its top 50 bosses are paid a combined total of up to £13.6 million, with most of them earning more than the prime minister.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Doctors Want Right to Talk Faith

Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them.

Medics will tell the British Medical Association conference this week that staff should not be disciplined as long as they handle the issue sensitively.

The doctors said recent cases where health workers had got into trouble were making people fearful.

But atheists said it was wrong to mix religion and health care.

The doctors, who are behind the motion being discussed at the Liverpool conference, are unhappy about the guidance that has been issued.

The General Medical Council code suggests that discussing religion can be part of care provided to patients — as long as the individual’s wishes are respected.

But at the start of this year the Department of Health issued guidance warning about proselytising.

It said that discussing religion could be interpreted as an attempt to convert which could be construed as a form of harassment.

It comes as NHS trusts have taken a hard-line in a number of recent cases.

Last year community nurse Caroline Petrie was suspended by North Somerset NHS Trust after offering to pray for a patient, although the 45-year-old was later allowed to return to work.

And only last week a Gloucestershire nurse said she had left her job at a local hospital after being told she could not wear a crucifix — although the hospital said it was because of health and safety rules, not religion.

Cancer specialist Dr Bernadette Birtwhistle, who works in hospitals across Yorkshire and is a member of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: “I think it is getting to the point where many of us feel we cannot talk to patients about their spiritual or religious needs or ask them about praying.

“Christianity is being seen as something that is unhelpful.”

And she added: “Freedom of speech is being curtailed too much and I don’t think that is always in the benefit of patients.”

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]



UK: Darling Tries to Hide Labour Cuts From Voters

ALISTAIR DARLING will keep voters in the dark about the government’s true spending plans for the next parliament, provoking a new row with the Tories.

The chancellor has abandoned plans for a comprehensive spending review, which should have been held this year, until after the general election.

The move is designed to wrong-foot the Conservatives who have conceded that they will cut spending if they return to government.

The delay in producing detailed figures will anger the government’s critics, who have accused Gordon Brown of lying over Labour’s true intentions. This will be seen as a further example of government dishonesty.

Philip Hammond, the shadow Treasury chief secretary, said: “The argument comes down to a choice between the Conservatives who are telling the truth that it is going to be tough and a Labour party who cannot face up to the facts.”

The scrapping of the spending review means the public will have no precise idea of what Labour’s plans would mean for public services if the party were reelected. Instead, the government will confine any detail to areas where spending will be maintained or increased.

There are likely to be vague pledges over schools and health-care in the chancellor’s prebudget report, but silence on areas such as defence, transport and crime where the axe will have to fall.

Darling’s strategy, which he will argue is because of continued economic uncertainty, will deny the Tories information to draw up their own plans.

Spending reviews are normally held every two years; the last was in 2007. The cancellation of the review until after the election means the next government will need to rush through its spending plans.

The political row over spending has been raging for almost three weeks since Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, admitted that the Tories might have to cut spending by 10% to slash the £175 billion budget deficit. The Tories maintained he was quoting the government’s own figures.

Darling’s ploy signals that Labour intends to persist with its “investment versus cuts” battle with the Tories. Yesterday Liam Byrne, Treasury chief secretary, said Labour would “continue to grow day-to-day current spending”.

An admission on Friday by Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, that his department would face cuts was slapped down by Downing Street. Whitehall officials said he was referring to reductions in existing published plans.

The prime minister will this week attempt to open a new front in the debate over spending with the launch of his long awaited “national plan” for public services.

The document, officially entitled Building Britain’s Future, will offer a “guarantee” to all parents that if their children fall behind in maths or English they will be provided with private one-to-one tuition paid for by the state.

Brown hopes the promise will woo middle-class parents who send their children to state schools but pay for extra out-of-hours lessons to coach them for exams.

The prime minister will also offer a “guarantee” that cancer patients will see a specialist within two weeks of referral. Should local National Health Service hospitals be unable to see a patient, he or she will be sent private, with the cost paid by the primary care trust.

In the foreword to the policy document, Brown will say: “We stand for fair rules and believe a strong economy and strong society go hand in hand. This will involve a radical dispersal of power: in the future, patients and parents must drive the system, with real rights of redress where minimum standards are not adequately met.”

The long-awaited government relaunch was undermined yesterday with the announcement that Alan Milburn, the Blairite former health secretary, is planning to retire from the Commons at the age of 51.

His departure reflects the growing fear that Labour is headed for an electoral defeat so severe that it will take the party a generation to win back power.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Serbia: Balkan Leaders Back EU Integration

Novi Sad, 19 June (AKI) — Leaders of 14 central European countries at a summit in northern Serbian city of Novi Sad on Friday voiced strong support for the integration of west Balkans countries into the European Union. Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, attended the summit focusing on EU membership, cooperation in economy, energy and EU integration.

“Italy strives for and supports the integration of the western Balkans into the EU,” Napolitano told the summit. “We are all Europeans,” he added.

“In the new Europe all countries must be equal, regardless of whether they are founder-countries, new members or candidate countries,” Napolitano stated.

But he stressed that Europe is a community based on the rule of law, social justice and respect for human and minority rights.

Addressing the summit, Serbian president Boris Tadic called for governments to “to abolish all sanctions against citizens and the countries of the west Balkans region.”

“We want to become a part of Europe, not only because of our central geo-strategic position in the Balkans peninsula and economic prosperity of our country, but also because of common values we share with other European nations,” Tadic said.

Croatian president Stjepan Mesic said his country was striving for the EU membership of all western Balkan countries. “United Europe would make no sense if in its southeast there was a grey island isolated from everything that European integration stands for,” Mesic said.

Croatia began membership talks with the EU in 2005 and hopes to join the 27-nation bloc by 2011. Among the countries of the former Yugoslavia only Slovenia has so far become an EU member.

“We must all together knock on the European door even more forcefully if we want to enter,” the head of Bosnia’s rotating state presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, told the meeting.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Barry Rubin: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s Response: A Narrative He Dares Not Speak

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s big policy speech received global attention. Not so that of his Palestinian counterpart, Salam Fayyad. Fayyad’s June 22 presentation deserves careful analysis.

Fayyad is prime minister for one reason only: to please Western governments and financial donors. Lacking political skill, ideological influence, or strong support base, Fayyad does keep the money flowing since he’s relatively honest, moderate, and professional on economic issues.

But his own people don’t listen to him. Most PA politicians want him out. International pressure keeps him in.

So here’s the Fayyad paradox. If he really represented Palestinian stances and thinking, there’d be some hope for peace. Since he’s so out of tune with colleagues, though, Fayyad sounds sharply different from them. And even he’s highly restricted by what’s permissible in PA politics, limits which ensure the PA’s failure, absence of peace, and non-existence of a Palestinian state.

His first problem is that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and seeks the PA’s overthrow in the West Bank. Most Fatah and PA leaders prefer peace with Hamas rather than Israel. Make no mistake: this is a mutually exclusive choice. If Hamas merged with the PA the resulting would be far too radical to negotiate a solution, not to mention being en route to becoming dominated by Tehran-allied radical Islamism.

Moreover, to keep the door open for such conciliation, the PA can’t come closer to making a deal with Israel. But that’s not all. In veiled—an appropriate word here—language, Fayyad says Palestinians must avoid “politicizing” the Gaza issue so that any sanctions continue against the Hamas regime there.

By not opposing the suicide bombers, Fayyad follows suicidal policies…

           — Hat tip: Barry Rubin [Return to headlines]



Why the Germans Are Particularly Qualified to Tell the Israelis How to Behave

Die Welt 20.06.2009

Henryk Broder has noticed a creeping delegitimisation of Israel in recent years. And German critics of the Jewish state are working hand in hand with the “useful idiots”, he declares, in a speech which is printed in Die Welt. “With the murder of six million Jews, the Germans have qualified themselves for the job of ensuring that the survivors of the Holocaust behave properly. This is balsam to the wounded souls of those Germans who can only get over their past by pointing out that the Jews are no better. This is why German Anti-fascist groups are fighting the ‘fascism’ which determines Israel’s politics. If the invitation to do so comes from Jews themselves, then the fight is even more fun, after all it’s kosher. “

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Ahmadinejad Threatens Obama

Nearly lost in the exchange of invective between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama is the former warning to put the latter on trial. Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin offer details at “Iran’s President Rebukes Obama; Candidates Reject Election Review” in the Washington Post today.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Regime Plots Purge After Election Protests

The supreme leader’s brutal crackdown has crushed dissent on the streets

Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, are bracing themselves for a purge if, as expected, he returns to office following the country’s bitterly disputed presidential election.

His defeated rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who came a distant second in a poll he insists was rigged by the regime, has continued to defy what he has called “huge pressures” to halt his campaign for a new vote.

Last week his communications with the outside world were severely restricted, his web page was taken down and his newspaper was closed, with 25 of its employees arrested.

Supporters said they feared Mousavi could become another Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.

Mousavi inspired hundreds of thousands of Iranians who poured onto the streets to demand that the results of the June 12 election should be annulled. Yesterday, however, the regime’s brutal crackdown, which has seen at least 17 demonstrators killed and about 3,000 detained, appeared to be succeeding.

Observers said they believed that after his inauguration, due by early August, a vengeful Ahmadinejad would oust anyone in government who had favoured the opposition or simply failed to support him.

“There will be a purge, no doubt about it,” said Ali Ansari, director of the Iranian Institute of St Andrews University, who until recently often travelled to Iran for research.

“There are people in Tehran who think, now that the regime has won, they will be left alone. I can’t tell you how far from the truth this is.”

The purge may already have begun. Akbar Torkan, the deputy oil minister and a rising star in the government, was sacked after writing sympathetically in an opposition newspaper.

Iranian sources said 17 senior officers in the elite Revolutionary Guard had been “reassigned” because their loyalties were suspect.

It is not a new tactic for Ahmadinejad. Since he became president in 2004 he has replaced every ambassador and all but one of Iran’s provincial governors with cronies, as well as filling important ministries with allies.

“I expect Ahmadinejad to continue the purge he started when he became president,” said Amir Taheri, an Iranian analyst. “He will go for the parliament, the Guardian Council, where four members were against him, and even the expediency council, which oversees the office of supreme leader.”

The analysts pointed out that Ahmadinejad was able to move because he had the public backing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

The streets of Tehran were quiet yesterday, with riot police in camouflage uniforms and basiji, the volunteer militia, on the main squares and patrolling on motorcycles and in trucks.

Mousavi, fearing more violence, said he would request official permission for rallies, which the regime has routinely refused. It gives the protesters little opportunity to keep their momentum going within the law.

Their fears increased dramatically when Ahmad Khatami, a hardline mullah, said the arrested protesters should be treated “ruthlessly and without mercy” — and that some should be executed.

The Guardian Council, the unelected group of 12 clerics and legal experts charged with monitoring the election, is to announce by tomorrow whether it will certify the results. It has already said it has found no evidence of fraud so its decision seems a foregone conclusion.

The protest movement has been severely undermined by the crackdown. During a demonstration last Wednesday near the Majlis, or parliament, security forces outnumbered protesters four to one.

The regime has blocked mobile phones, texts and networking sites such as Facebook, and Mousavi’s isolation has deprived the opposition of leadership.

All last week families sat huddled on newspapers in hot sunshine outside the feared Evin prison as they waited for the updating of a handwritten notice giving the names of prisoners. Some carried money or deeds to their homes, hoping to be able to post bail.

A retired teacher said he was looking for his 19-year-old son, Ardalan, who had been home on leave from the Revolutionary Guard when he went missing. They feared the worst because he was a conscript.

He had last been seen in Vanak Square on June 18, and they had found out he was in prison only because his frantic fiancée had been phoning his mobile, even though it was turned off. Finally, last Monday, a stranger answered.

“It was like he began interrogating me: ‘Who are you? What is your relation to Ardalan?’ When Ardalan finally got on the phone, all he could say was that he was in jail but ‘fine’,” his fiancée said.

“I thank God he is not dead, but what I am afraid of is that if they want to take him into tough interrogations he may have to sign and agree with things that he has not done at all,” said his mother, weeping and sweating in her hot black overcoat and hijab.

For now, the struggle has largely moved from the streets to a behind-the-scenes political tussle between two distinct camps in the Islamic republic.

Khamenei, the most powerful man in Iran, and Ahmadinejad lead the hardline camp that wants to continue strict social rules and defiant international policies. These are the legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini, who overthrew the shah in 1979.

Mousavi is supported by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the wealthy former president who heads the expediency council. Their vision of a more relaxed social atmosphere and a moderation in Iran’s isolationist foreign policy is anathema to the hardliners.

The reformist ranks have been swollen by a strong “Anyone but Ahmadinejad” group of conservatives, clerics and even some Revolutionary Guard generals. “They all hate Ahmadinejad with a vengeance,” Ansari said.

The Assembly of Combatant Clerics, an influential group of mullahs in the holy city of Qom, sent an open letter saying: “The people of Iran, who with thousands of hopes and wishes and excitement came to the voting boxes, are now gathering the bodies of their youth out of blood and soil and are in mourning.

“Should these justice-seek-ing objections be answered with bullets that rip through the hearts of their children?”

Despite their disparate vision of Iran’s future, both camps want the Islamic republic to continue so they were still talking at the weekend.

One compromise supported by Rafsanjani at the height of the protests was that rather than insisting on removing Khamenei, the supreme leader should remain in office but have some of his powers passed to a three-man committee.

No one believes the confrontation is over. “The government may have won the first round, but there is fire under the ashes,” said a senior reform leader.

Mother weeps at dusty grave of shot Neda

There is no headstone on grave number 32, in section 257, column 41, in the dry, dusty new section of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Only the photograph of Neda Soltan reveals who lies beneath the mound.

Footage of the 26-year-old music student dying on a back street in Tehran shocked the world, turning her overnight into a global symbol of suffering under the brutality of the Iranian regime.

Protesters in Tehran and in capitals around the world last week held up placards and wore T-shirts proclaiming, “I am Neda.” At her grave, however, the scene was one of aching, personal grief. The regime banned her family from holding a funeral, but last Thursday her mother and brother sat in the dirt by the grave weeping. “Something was ravaged in her mother’s face,” said Mohsen, a 35-year-old PhD student. “She was doing her best to control herself, but she couldn’t. I can still hear her sobs in my ears.”

About 200 mourners laid flowers in the dirt and offered quiet words of condolence to her mother, dressed in a black manteau and hijab (headscarf)..

They murmured to each other, still in shock at the mobile phone footage that caught Neda’s death throes after she was shot in the chest by a basiji militiaman during a protest against election results.

As the crowd in the cemetery grew, security officers moved in, ordering the mourners to leave. Relatives picked up Neda’s mother from the ground, where she was still sobbing.

They may have cleared mourners away for one afternoon, but nobody doubts that the grave of the pretty young woman who had wanted to be a tour guide has already become a shrine to what her family said she wanted: justice.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Iran: ‘Wailing of Wolves’ As Cries of Allahu Akbar Ring From Roofs

At about 9pm each day Nushin, a young housewife, performs the same curious ritual. She climbs up the stairs to the roof of her Tehran home and begins shouting into the night. Allahu akbar,” she cries, and sometimes “Death to the dictator”.

She is not alone. Across the darkened city, from rooftops and through open windows, thousands of others do the same to form one great chorus of protest — a collective wail of anger against a reviled regime that no amount of riot police and Basiji militia can stop. “It sounds like the wailing of wolves,” said one Tehrani.

And each night, as the street demonstrations are crushed with overwhelming force and the regime cracks down on all other forms of dissent, it grows steadily louder and more insistent, not just in Tehran but in other densely populated cities of the Islamic Republic.

“It’s the way we reassure ourselves that we are still here and we are still together,” says Nushin, a woman who has never dared to rebel before.

“This is what people did before the revolution and I hope it warns the regime about what could happen if it doesn’t change its way.

“And because I’m a religious person the sound resonating in the neighbourhood makes me feel better. Even my little daughter joins me, and I can see how she feels that she is part of something bigger. It is our unique way of civil disobedience and what’s interesting is that it increases every time they do something that makes people angrier.”

Ever resourceful, the opposition has developed other ways of showing dissent short of wearing green or taking to the streets. They honk their horns, and they drive their cars and motorbikes with their headlights on. But the hour of chanting is anonymous, safe and almost impossible for the security forces to stop. Who could arrest someone for shouting their praise of God? Hossein, a young engineer, is another nightly participant. “The first time I did it, it was in protest to the theft of my vote, the insult that the President had made towards us,” he told The Times. But after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, ruled out any compromise in his sermon last Friday, “it has become much more than that. It is the people’s way of saying that they are still together and will stay that way until they reach their goal. It has become a way of getting out our anger when we can’t protest and to keep it going . . . It makes me happy to hear others, it reminds me that I’m not alone.”

In many ways this has been a high-tech rebellion, with the opposition using video clips shot with mobile phones, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the internet to generate outrage around the world. But the rooftop protests are the precise opposite and a deliberate and resonant throwback to an earlier age.

It is what Iranians did before the revolution of 1979. From their roofs, they would shout Allahu akbar” to support Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in his battle against the tyranny of the former Shah. That a later generation should now be using the very same weapon against the regime that Khomeini helped to establish is an irony lost on no one.

Frontline tweets

16.00 A girl was shooted in Baharestan Sq, they don’t allow people to help shooted girl 16.00 See many people with broken arms/legs/ heads blood everywhere — pepper gas like war

16.30 They were waiting for us — they all have guns and riot uniforms — it was like a mouse trap — people being shot like animals

16.40 Saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground — sure that she is dead

16.45 All shops closed — nowhere to go — they follow people with helicopters — smoke and fire is everywhere

17.00 Rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users — must move from here now

17.15 In Baharestan we saw militia with axe chopping people like meat — blood everywhere — like butcher — Allah Akbar

17.30 They pull away the dead into trucks — like factory — no human can do this — we beg Allah for save us

18.00 Don’t know when we can get internet — they take one of us, they will torture and get names — now we must move fast

22.00 Baharestan Sq was Tiananmen Sq today!

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Iran: Leading Demonstrators Must be Executed, Ayatollah Khatami Demands

A hardline cleric close to the Iranian regime demanded the execution of leading demonstrators yesterday as the opposition ended the week in disarray.

In a televised sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called on the judiciary to “punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson”. He said that those leaders were backed by the United States and Israel. They should be treated as mohareb — people who wage war against God — and deserved execution.

In a clear warning to all other dissenters, he declared: “Anybody who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, fight him until complete destruction.”

The Ayatollah claimed that Neda Soltan, the woman shot during a demonstration last Saturday, had been killed by fellow protesters because “government forces do not shoot at a lady standing in a side street”.

Ayatollah Khatami’s address came at the end of a week in which the regime has brutally suppressed all street protests and arrested hundreds of opponents for daring to challenge President Ahmadinejad’s re-election.

The Guardian Council, which oversees elections and is controlled by regime loyalists, said that it had found no major irregularities in the election on June 12, and described it as the “healthiest” since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It offered the losing candidates the sop of a special commission but nobody believes that it will annul a result that has been unambiguously endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader and Mr Ahmadinejad’s main sponsor.

Regime operatives appeared to have sabotaged the main website through which Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate, communicates with his supporters. The former Prime Minister has not appeared in public for nine days and his movements are said to have been curtailed by a large, unwanted security force.

The regime’s ubiquitous security groups now break up even the smallest gatherings before they can gain critical mass. Its agents have become adept at spreading misinformation about when and where protests are taking place, and intimidating Tehranis with telephone calls warning them not to join rooftop protests at night. They have also shut opposition newspapers.

The regime blocked a day of mourning for the victims of the demonstrations that had been organised by Mehdi Karoubi, another of the defeated candidates, and pressured Mohsen Rezai, the fourth candidate, into dropping complaints about electoral fraud.

The opposition had planned to release thousands of green balloons over Tehran yesterday bearing the message “Neda you will always be in our heart”. The protest failed to get off the ground.

“The opposition is in retreat, pondering its next move,” an analyst in Tehran said. “People are demoralised to some extent and just don’t have the bounce in their step they had a week ago . . . The regime thinks it’s got them on the run and can finish them off.”

The most outspoken criticism of the regime is now coming from outside Iran. On Thursday President Obama called the regime’s suppression of dissent “outrageous”. He admitted that his hopes of opening a dialogue with Iran had been damaged but rejected Mr Ahmadinejad’s demand that he apologise for criticising the crackdown.

Speaking after talks with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, he said that their two countries spoke with “one voice” in condemning the regime’s behaviour.

The foreign ministers of the G8 powers, meeting in Italy, issued a statement deploring the crackdown and urging Iran to resolve the crisis over the disputed election through democratic dialogue. “We deplore post-electoral violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression,” the G8 ministers said in a joint statement.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “The violence we have seen over the last ten days and the killings and the beatings are deplorable and they show a failure to protect their own people.

“There is a crisis of credibility not between Iran and the West, but between the Iranian counting of the votes and the Iranian people.” Even Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, which is helping Iran to develop nuclear power, said that he was seriously concerned by the regime’s use of force, and urged Tehran to settle all issues in a democratic way.

The regime appears impervious to such criticism. For now it is concerned only with survival. “They believe the world will eventually have to deal with it,” an analyst said.

Iran’s obscene denial

It is the oldest trick in the Iranian book: discredit opponents by painting them as dupes of great, middling or little “Satans”.

All week the state media have been filled with tales of foreign powers whipping up protests to bring down the mullahs. Many vices are prohibited in this bastion of Islamic virtues but evidently not bald-faced lying.

Nothing has been more obscene, however, than the campaign to avoid blame for the death of Neda Soltan, the innocent demonstrator fatally shot last Saturday.

It gagged her family and stopped them mourning or burying her with dignity. Then it started accusing foreign agents and their Iranian stooges of killing her. Jon Leyne, the BBC correspondent in Tehran, allegedly hired a thug to shoot her so that he could get good pictures. Officials have variously claimed she was shot by fellow protesters, foreign agitators or the CIA..

Arash Hejazi, the doctor who was standing next to Miss Soltan and tried to save her life , has now risked permanent exile to tell the truth. She was shot in her chest by a basij militiaman on a motorcycle, he told The Times.

The man was caught by the crowd. He escaped with his life because, unlike the regime and contrary to its lies, the protesters eschew violence.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Lebanon: Hariri Steps Out of His Father’s Shadow

The Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has designated the 39-year-old leader of the Sunni majority, Saad Hariri, as the country’s new prime minister, asking him to form a new government.

Saad Hariri’s pro-Western alliance won a majority of seats in the June parliamentary election, beating the Iranian-backed opposition led by the Shiite military group Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s new prime minister is already among the country’s most prominent public figures.

The young billionaire businessman Saad Hariri heads one of the largest business conglomerates in the Middle East and has powerful allies in Saudi Arabia and the West.

But he is best known for being the son of Rafik Hariri — Lebanon’s former prime minister who was killed in Beirut in 2005.

The assassination, which altered the course of Lebanon’s history, marked the beginning of Saad Hariri’s own political career.

Softer rhetoric

Rafik Hariri’s heir emerged at the forefront of the campaign for justice for his father. Along with his supporters at home and in the West, he blamed Syria for the car bomb that killed his father and forty others.

Damascus denied any involvement, but the assassination sparked such outcry that Syria was forced to withdraw its troops, ending its 30-year domination of Lebanon. But more recently Saad Hariri has softened his anti-Syrian rhetoric and following the parliamentary election in June, he vowed to work together with the pro-Syrian opposition led by Hezbollah.

“His rhetoric now is much more reconciliatory, and is very different from what it was two years ago, when he was clearly a divisive figure,” says Rami Khoury, the director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy at the American University of Beirut.

Playboy

Prior to his political career, Saad Hariri was best known for his playboy lifestyle, but many say that over the years he has transformed himself from a rich and inarticulate young man into a much more seasoned and assertive politician.

“He has made mixed impressions, and he still has to prove himself, but I think he has shown himself as a smart man who is up to the task,” says Mr Khoury.

But the task is daunting — Saad Hariri will need to create a unity government in the country, which remains deeply divided along sectarian lines.

On the eve of his nomination as prime minister, Saad Hariri met with one of his main opponents, the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah. At the end of their rare, four-hour meeting, the two men vowed to work together.

New dialogue

But like everything else in Lebanon, Saad Hariri’s success, or failure, as the prime minister will depend largely on what happens outside Lebanon..

This tiny country has always been the battleground of regional powers.

Many here believe that the success and calm of the June parliamentary election is the direct reflection of the new dialogue between the old regional foes — Syria, which supports Hezbollah, and Saudi Arabia, which backs Saad Hariri.

Equally, the recent events in Iran, Hezbollah’s biggest backer, have undermined the potential for a dialogue between Tehran and Mr Hariri’s allies in Washington — and that too could have a real impact on what happens in Lebanon.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Muslim World Grieves for Michael Jackson

Arab world mourns death of “Muslim King of Pop”

Michael Jackson’s sudden death at age 50 provoked an outpouring of emotion from Muslims and Arabs who paid tribute to the pop star whose conversion to Islam and brief residence in the Gulf helped cement his popularity among a global fan base.

Despite ruling the charts and dazzling audiences with trademarks like the “moonwalk” in the 1980s, Jackson’s career was overshadowed by his physical transformation and multiple allegations of child abuse. But his fans seem to prefer remembering him as an entertainer who transcended cultural boundaries and became one of the best-selling artists of all time

Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Isa Al Khalifa, the Bahraini prince who had a falling out with the “King of Pop” in 2008, publicly mourned his death as a tragic loss to the music industry in a statement in the Gulf Daily News.

Jackson moved to Bahrain with his children after his 2005 acquittal of child molestation charges and lived there for a year as a guest of the royal family. But after disagreement over plans for a concert comeback fell through his benefactor filed a lawsuit against him for $7 million that ended in an out of court settlement in 2008.

Yet Bahrainis, many of whom were accustomed to glimpsing the reclusive Jackson sporting a black women’s abaya, a black over garment,, connected to Jackson on a cultural level as many felt he was one of them.

“He had many faults but he came to the Middle East and felt at home here. I respect his cross-cultural awareness which knew no bounds,” a Bahraini fan said on Facebook page dedicated to the star.

“I grew up with Jackson’s music…he was my window to the world of pop culture and I grieve for his sudden death,” Haritha Moulid from Bahrain, said on a Remembering Michael Jackson Facebook page.

“It’s hard to overestimate the impact Jackson had on the world in general, much less the Muslim world,” Zahed Amanullah, associate editor of the London-based altmuslim.com, wrote in an article on his website.

“Like young people elsewhere around the world, many Muslims simply loved Michael, for his gentle persona, his raw talent, or the pop culture seed planted in their subconscious,” said Zaid Shakir, a renowned American imam, adding that he hoped his faith “cushioned” his fall.

“Michael was an icon, a pain-filled, troubled icon, and like many of comparable stature before him, and inevitably many after him, his fall was sudden and unexpected,” Shakir wrote on his website. “Hopefully, the tears he cried in the privacy of his oftentimes lonely world, tears described by Smokey Robinson as those of a clown, shed when no one’s around, had dried,” Shakir said.

Jackson’s appeal to the Arab world went beyond his musical legacy and smooth dance moves amid rumors in 2008 of his conversion to Islam, the Arab world’s predominant religion.

Rumors that Jackson died as a Muslim intensified when Jermaine prayed for Allah to have mercy on him. “May Allah be with you, Michael, always,” the brother said in a statement available on You tube.

In early 2007, Jackson’s brother Jermaine Jackson, a Muslim and the family’s official spokesman, announced that Michael would embrace Islam. Last November press reports said that Jackson had formerly converted to the religion.

Jermaine Jackson explained that it was the experience of touring the Gulf that brought his late brother into contact with Islam and that the singer found Islam’s anti-racist universalism resolved some dilemmas about culture and race that Jackson had combated all his life.

Yet Jackson the Muslim remained shrouded in mystery and at best a rumor. Muslim folk singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, denied press reports that he had attended Jackson’s conversion ceremony.

“Contrary to persistent press rumours, I was not at any kind of conversion ceremony for Michael Jackson. Nor, I believe, was Dawud Wharnsby or any of the others mentioned in connection with the story,” Islam said in a statement on his website, adding, “I hope that he finds inner peace and can return to making the kind of music that has inspired generations.”

Nonetheless, Muslims were keeping an eye out for signs of his faith in death that may not have been visible in life.

“If anybody hears about a janaaza prayer (Islamic funeral) being held for Michael Jackson, Allah yarhamuh (May Allah have mercy on him), please pass it along. If it happens, I encourage all who are able to attend in full Islamic dress,” a Muslim fan requested of others on a Muslim listserv.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Saudi Arabia: Police Arrest ‘Homosexuals’ At Party

Riyadh, 17 June (AKI) — Saudi Arabian police are reported to have arrested 71 foreigners accused of homosexuality in the capital Riyadh. According to a report in the Arab daily, al-Quds al-Arabi, police raided a party in the al-Manar district of the capital and arrested the group.

Several residents are reported to have notified police about people who were doing things that did “not conform” with Islamic sharia law.

When police arrived they reportedly found people wearing “indecent” clothes and conducting themselves in an “indecent” manner.

Seventy Filipinos and one Yemeni were arrested by police.

A few weeks ago police arrested 55 young men accused of homosexuality at a party at a farm in the Sihat area.

Homosexuality and cross-dressing are widely seen as immoral acts and are treated as serious crimes.

While the kingdom has faced criticism from human rights organisations, it insists that it always acts in accordance with Sunni Islamic law.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Turkish Parliament Paves Way for Civilian Courts to Try Army Personnel

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s parliament has passed legislation aimed at meeting European Union membership criteria to ensure military personnel are tried in civilian courts during peacetime rather than in military courts.

The legislation passed on Friday requires civilian courts to try members of the armed forces who are accused of crimes including threats to national security, constitutional violations, organizing armed groups and attempts to topple the government, according to parliament’s website.

The legislation comes amid renewed tensions between the powerful military and the government after a newspaper published a document this month that allegedly outlined an army plot to undermine the ruling AKP, which traces its roots to an outlawed Islamist movement.

Chief of the Military General Staff Ilker Basbug on Friday said the document was a smear campaign against the armed forces. A military prosecutor ruled this week there was insufficient evidence for an investigation, but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has vowed that civilian prosecutors will now take over the probe.

The change to the penal code also says civilians cannot be tried in military courts unless the country is in a state of martial law or at war.

It was not clear if the changes to the penal code will affect the trial of military officers who have been charged in the so-called Ergenekon case investigating an alleged right-wing network that sought to topple the government

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Russia


Vodka Kills as Many Russians as a War, Says Report in the Lancet

The terrible cost of Russia’s love affair with vodka was laid bare in a study published yesterday. It blamed alcohol addiction for more than half of all deaths among Russians in their prime years and said that the scale of the carnage was comparable to a war.

The report, which appeared in The Lancet, said that three quarters of deaths among men and half of deaths among women aged 15-54 were attributable to alcohol abuse. The mortality rate in Russia in this age group was five times higher for men and three times higher for women than in Western Europe.

Professor David Zaridze, who led the international research team, calculated that alcohol had killed three million Russians since Mikhail Gorbachev tried and failed to restrict sales in 1987. He added: “This loss is similar to that of a war.”

The study analysed the deaths of almost 49,000 people between 1990 and 2001 in Tomsk, Barnaul and Biysk, three industrial cities in Siberia with typical mortality rates. It concluded that alcohol was the cause of 52 per cent of mortalities; 13 times greater than the worldwide average.

The Russian, British and French researchers said that “excess mortality from liver cancer, throat cancer, liver disease and pancreatic disease is largely or wholly because alcohol caused the disease that caused death”.

The findings will fuel the debate about a slump in life expectancy in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly among men. The average Russian man now lives little more than 60 years, compared with 77 years for men in Western Europe, while Russian women die on average at 73, nine years earlier than their European counterparts.

Soaring poverty and stress associated with the Soviet collapse, and the loss of jobs and security, have been blamed. The study highlighted a doubling of alcohol consumption in seven years between 1987 and 1994 to about 10.5 litres annually per person.

“Alcohol consumption is always connected with poverty. It’s been associated with social crisis. If we take our mortality statistics, it will be obvious that it’s parallel to our social crisis,” said Professor Zaridze, head of the Russian Cancer Research Centre.

Consumption has continued to rise sharply. A report in 2007 by Gennadi Onishchenko, the Chief Public Health Officer, said that Russians were drinking the equivalent of 15 litres of pure alcohol each year. His report said that almost 30,000 people died annually from alcohol poisioning and that at least 2.3 million people were alcoholics.

Attempts to limit Russians’ thirst have never enjoyed much success. Mr Gorbachev almost lost public support for his reforms by launching an antialcohol campaign in 1985, whichmerely encouraged a black market and put a hole in the state budget from lost revenues on official sales.

As President, Vladimir Putin ordered the introduction of a strict licensing system to fight illicit alcohol sales. It provoked complaints that poorer Russians were risking death by turning to industrial cleaners.

Even so, vodka remains remarkably cheap by European standards and supermarket shelves are lined with brands costing as little as £2 per bottle. Beer sales have tripled since 1998, but most do not regard beer as a “serious” alcoholic drink and it is common to see people consuming a bottle on their way to work in the mornings.

Drink that bites back

? Vodka can be produced from grain, potatoes, molasses, beets or other plants

? The name comes from the Russian word woda meaning water

? Normal vodka is about 40 per cent alcohol but the Balkan brand comes in at 88 per cent

? Deadly fake vodka, often made from industrial wood alcohol, has plagued Russia and Eastern Europe in recent years since production was liberalised

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Revealed: The Chilling Words of the Mumbai Killers Recorded During Their Murder Spree

This is Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, caught on film as he unleashed a devastating and indiscriminate attack in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. But this picture is not the most dramatic record of that day. During the raid, the Indian intelligence services intercepted mobile phone calls between Kasab, his terrorist comrades and a mysterious handler hundreds of miles away, who issued commands to shoot civilians without mercy. These shocking tapes reveal the sinister mind control used to turn young men into killing machines — and the casual, off-hand brutality of the men who masterminded the massacre

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



US Changes Tack on Afghan Poppies

The United States is to change the way it deals with the massive poppy growing industry in Afghanistan.

Instead of destroying the crops it will spend money encouraging Afghan farmers to grow different ones.

US special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, at a G8 meeting in Italy, said current measures against poppy growers had been “a failure”.

The conference of foreign ministers in Trieste also called for credible elections in Afghanistan in August..

Mr Holbrooke said that existing programmes of eradication had not reduced by one dollar the amount of money the Taliban earned from production.

“Spraying the crops just penalises the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else. The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban.”

“On the contrary, it has helped them recruit. This is the least effective programme ever,” Mr Holbrooke added.

‘Sad joke’

Mr Holbrooke said in future destruction of poppy fields would be phased out and the money instead redirected to farmers to grow different crops.

The move was welcomed by delegates at the G8 conference.

One said the policy of eradication had been a “sad joke”.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said the G8 backed President Hamid Karzai’s appeal to the Taliban to take part in the Afghanistan elections in August.

Richard Holbrooke said the fairness of the elections would determine the legitimacy of the government.

“We have just seen a spectacularly bad example just next door in Iran”, he said.

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]

Far East


South Korea Getting U.S. Missiles to Boost Defences: Report

SEOUL (Reuters) — South Korea is acquiring 40 U.S.-made missiles for an Aegis destroyer this month to boost its defenses amid reports North Korea may soon test-fire missiles, Yonhap news agency on Sunday quoted a military source as saying.

North Korea, which rattled regional security with a May 25 nuclear test, is preparing to test a long-range missile that could hit U.S. territory and mid-range missiles that could hit all of South Korea, a South Korean presidential Blue House official said last week.

The surface-to-air missiles for the Aegis destroyer, designed to track and shoot down objects including missiles, can hit targets up to 160 km (100 miles) away, Yonhap quoted the source as saying.

North Korea has also warned ships to stay away from waters off its east coast city of Wonsan, Japan’s Coast Guard said last week, in a possible indication of a missile test.

North Korea launched in April a rocket it said was carrying a satellite. The move was widely seen as a disguised test of its long-range Taepodong-2 missile and a violation of U.N. resolutions barring the reclusive state from ballistic missile testing.

The U.N. Security Council punished it for the missile launch by tightening existing sanctions and imposing new ones after the nuclear test to halt its arms trading, one of the few items the cash-short state with a broken down economy can export.

The U.S. Navy has said it is monitoring a North Korean ship under the new U.N. security resolutions imposed after the nuclear test. A South Korean intelligence source said the ship is likely carrying missiles and parts, and it could be heading to Myanmar, broadcaster YTN said.

At the weekend, the prickly North warned in an official media report it would shoot down any Japanese military plane that breached North Korean air space.

South Korean officials have said the North’s recent saber rattling may be a way for leader Kim Jong-il to build internal support as he prepares for succession in Asia’s only communist dynasty.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Australia — Pacific


Australia: Indian Community Outraged Over Jail Terms

THE Indian community has reacted with outrage after a magistrate ruled that the young thugs who beat an Indian man almost to death will walk free after serving only six months.

On Wednesday, Magistrate Kay Macpherson said five teenagers acted “like a pack of animals” when they bashed Indian student Sukhraj Singh in December and left him in a coma for three weeks.

But she sentenced four of them to only 12 months’ youth detention — meaning they will be eligible for parole within weeks after serving more than six months on remand.

Another youth involved in the attack escaped custody, instead being sentenced to a 12-month youth attendance.

One of the youths — who at 14 already had an earlier conviction for armed robbery — had been involved in 12 violent incidents since he had been on remand, Ms Macpherson noted in sentencing him.

Mr Singh was initially speechless when told of the sentences.

“I don’t understand this at all,” he said.

But a source revealed that all four of the youths had been involved in violence while on remand at the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre.

The source said the youths had been kept apart at the centre.

“We would have had no hope of controlling them if they had been together,” he said.

Mr Singh was bashed by the gang in December in a grocery store in Sunshine.

The five youths, then aged between 14 and 17, were originally charged with attempted murder over the attack, which fractured Mr Singh’s skull on three sides.

But the attempted murder charges were dropped when the five agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of intentionally causing serious injury.

The five also pleaded guilty to armed robbery over the attack.

Another man and a youth have pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and will be tried later.

Indian community leaders reacted with outrage to the leniency shown by the court.

“What sort of a sentence is this?” said Vasan Srinivasan, president of the Federation of Indian Associations, Victoria.

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]



Australia: War on Chronic Disease to Shift Out of Hospitals

HIGHER taxes on cigarettes and tighter controls on food and drink promotion to counter obesity and alcohol abuse are likely to be among measures recommended tomorrow to turn health spending away from hospitals.

The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said the proposals were likely to trigger a “difficult” debate.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission and two separate taskforces on prevention and primary health will propose much greater reliance on non-hospital, community measures to combat chronic diseases.

The Government is expected to delay any decision on any federal takeover of public hospital funding until it has considered the findings of its reform experts.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, pledged before the election that by the middle of this year he would propose a federal takeover if state governments failed to show they were improving public hospital standards.

Some states, including NSW, are struggling to show signs of overall improvement although they have reduced elective surgery waiting lists with the help of increased funding.

In its report to the Government, the health reform commission is thought unlikely to urge a federal takeover of hospitals but is expected to call for a bigger federal role in funding for primary care outside hospitals.

In an interview with the Herald, Ms Roxon said it was time for Australians to have a “difficult conversation” about choosing the most effective and affordable health system.

“We cannot keep funding every new drug and [medical procedure] and have no concern about whether it is a cost-effective treatment,” she said. “There has not really been a genuine debate about this issue for a long time.”

Ms Roxon said she and Mr Rudd had made it clear that they wanted to assess the recommendations of the health reform commission and the taskforces to gauge workable ideas.

The Government had already made significant advances in broadening care options through its GP “super clinics”, 20 of which should have contracts signed by next month, and on legislation to empower midwives and practice nurses to take over some roles reserved for doctors, she said.

“The key part of the debate is about how to modernise medicine and make sure it is focused on patient outcomes,” she said.

The doctors’ fee for service system would remain central to Medicare, she said.

“But I think we need a debate about what the add-ons [to Medicare] might be,” she said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Australia: Aged-Care Safety Policy Too Costly, Says Watchdog

A PRODUCTIVITY Commission report has savaged the Department of Health and Ageing, arguing that intrusive new regulations for aged-care facilities have driven up costs for providers but deliver limited benefits.

The efficiency watchdog said the Federal Government department was pursuing an overly cautious “zero-risk” approach to safety at aged-care facilities following a handful of incidents.

This approach showed “little concern for minimising the costs of compliance” to operators.

Proposed government rules are subject to a regulatory impact statement to ensure that only regulations that bring a net benefit to the public are introduced. But in aged care there was “little evidence” that these processes had motivated the department to consider unnecessary compliance costs and adverse side effects.

Among the regulations criticised by the commission was a strengthening of police-check requirements for staff, the requirement to report missing residents and an increase in the number of unannounced visits to facilities..

“Meeting regulatory requirements can come at the expense of providing better care as staff are directed to paperwork, a perverse outcome in a regulatory system that is designed to improve the quality of care,” the report says.

The finding was backed by Aged and Community Services Australia, which said that some aged-care facilities were struggling to stay afloat.

“The human and financial costs of red tape are unnecessary, unreasonable and unsustainable,” its chief executive, Greg Mundy, said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


MP’s Arrest Halts Exposure of Zimbabwe Blood Diamonds Massacre

A Zimbabwean MP who was about to reveal to an international delegation the site of a mass grave of diamond diggers, allegedly killed by government troops last November, has been arrested and jailed.

Shuwa Mudiwa, whose Mutare West constituency covers the Marange diamond fields where the killings occurred, was expected to disclose details of the massacre to a delegation from the Kimberley Process, a certification scheme aimed at preventing the sale of “blood diamonds”. It is due to visit Zimbabwe this week.

However, Mudiwa is now being held on a charge of kidnapping first lodged during last year’s fraudulent and violent election that returned President Robert Mugabe to power. The charge is widely thought to be trumped up.

Several other people the delegation wants to interview have been harassed and intimidated, making it unlikely the Kimberley Process group will be able to establish the truth.

Some of the diggers were reportedly shot by soldiers firing from helicopters to clear the diamond fields and bring them under military control.

As a result, Zimbabwe has been accused of trading in blood diamonds, a charge it denies. Human rights organisations have evidence that as many as 250 people died but the government says no massacre took place.

The deputy minister for mines, Murisi Zwizwai, admitted at a meeting of the Kimberley Process in Namibia last week that a “special operation” to clear the illegal miners had taken place. He denied any killings had occurred.

One official who attended last week’s meeting and who favours Zimbabwe’s suspension from the scheme, said: “I am concerned that if the team comes back and writes a report that is very partial because it has not been able to see anything, the Kimberley Process will accept that and will be endorsing a lie and misrepresentation.”

The Kimberley Process has come under mounting criticism for being toothless towards Zimbabwe and other governments such as Venezue-la that allegedly conduct an unethical trade in diamonds.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Somalis Taste South Africa Xenophobia

CAPE TOWN — Muhidin Hajji Mohammed, a Somali immigrant, was sorting out goods at his small shop near Cape Town when a group of mob showed up.

“I was balancing my day’s sales when a mob of people came shouting on the top of their voices kill the Somali, kill the dog,” Hajji Mohammed, 45, told IslamOnline.net.

In a flash of a minute, the mob started to take away whatever their hands could carry from the hawking sweets shop in the Mfuleni township.

His son was shot when he tried to prevent the mob from stealing the shop.

“My son who tried to intervene was shot twice in the stomach as my wife was raped by a group of youth,” recalled a teary Mohammed, who arrived in South Africa from Somalia in 2001.

“My shop the only hope I had in life was swept clean, my dear son was shot and my lovely wife raped all because we are foreigners trying to make a decent living in this country.”

The assault on the Somali immigrant is the latest in unabated attacks targeting the Somali community in South Africa.

Nine Somalis were killed in western Cape Town in a single weak this month.

“We Somalis are being witch hunted because we are hardworking compared to locals,” said Abdihakim Mohammed Sheikh, the head of the Somali Community board of South Africa.

“They accuse us of frustrating their businesses by selling our goods cheaper compared to them.”

More than 600 Somalis were killed in South Africa since 2002.

“Somalis are very hard working people, who arrive in South Africa with nothing but in a year they normally have money to open shops or buy cars, which makes locals jealous and they are killed,” said Abdihakim.

South Africa is home to a Somali community of 20,000.

Xenophobia

Somali immigrants are now living in panic over attacks targeting their community.

“We are totally surprised that our community is being targeted by these ruthless people,” Abdihakim said.

“Somalis don’t do crime like other foreigners. We are people who strive to make a halal, honest living. So I don’t know why we are being targeted.”

Jody Collopen of the South African Human rights Commission called for action to stop attacks against Somali immigrants.

“I appeal to the Government to immediately intervene in this matter as we shall not tolerate another blood bath in this country which belongs to all who live in it,” he told IOL.

At least 62 people were killed last year in xenophobic attacks that displaced tens of thousands of people.

Anti-Somalis attacks have also drawn strong condemnation from South African President Jacob Zuma.

“South Africans don’t know that the weapons that fought here against apartheid were being kept in Somalia,” Zuma told a Somali delegation.

“The late Somali President Mohammed Siyad Barre helped us during our first half of the liberation struggle.”

Somalia has been without an effective government since the ouster of Barre in 1991.

Since then, the Horn of Africa country sank into deadly violence that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

But for Hajji Mohammed, he aspires for the day he returns to his home town Mogadishu.

“Although I have northing to go back to, I’m happy Allah has saved me and my family,” he said.

“We are all still alive and wish to return home for it is better to die there than being harassed here.”

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Argentine Army in Torture Ruling

About 70 Argentine army officers can be charged with torture of their own soldiers during the 1982 Falklands War, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Over 80 cases are under investigation, including allegations of murder and causing death by starvation.

The court upheld an earlier ruling that the alleged torture could be considered crimes against humanity and rejected a petition to abandon proceedings.

An Argentine veterans’ group welcomed the ruling.

“We have been fighting for 27 years for this to become known, we are really satisfied,” said Ernesto Alonso, president of the Centre for Falkland Islands Veterans.

“Next week, more soldiers will report about abuses they have suffered.”

Cases that are being investigated include the alleged execution of one soldier and the fatal abandonment of another.

Veterans who brought the legal action — all conscripted into service — also say four soldiers starved to death, while several others were staked to the ground as punishment.

Britain and Argentina fought a 10-week war over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, under British control since 1833.

           — Hat tip: islam o’phobe [Return to headlines]



Why Doesn’t Obama Care About Freedom?

… the Post editorial raised questions about Obama’s indifference toward Cuban freedom fighters in the context of his treatment of other Latin American Marxists.

The paper commented, “It’s not that the president is too busy to concern himself with Latin American politics. The White House arranged for a Spanish journalist to ask a question at Tuesday’s news conference; reporter Macarena Vidal pressed Mr. Obama on whether U.S. allies such as Chile and Colombia were doing enough to help with ‘less democratic countries.’ The president replied by heaping praise on visiting Chilean President Michele Bachelet, a socialist who has been promoting Cuba’s readmission into the Organization of American States and who has gone out of her way to avoid offending Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. ‘Chile is leading by example,’ Mr. Obama said, adding that its good relationship with Washington despite political differences ‘points the way for other countries…where the democratic tradition is not as deeply embedded as we’d like it to be.’“

The Post said that the message from Obama to Chávez and the Castro brothers was that “We can work with you” while the message to Cuba’s democratic opposition was “We don’t have time for you.”

This is an extraordinary indictment of Obama from the viewpoint of a liberal newspaper that now recognizes the far-left nature of the President’s policies toward Latin America.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Police Clash With Immigration Protesters in Calais

Protesters calling for thousands of illegal migrants to be allowed into Britain from France have again clashed with riot police in Calais.

The brawls followed threats by a group calling itself No Borders to “tear down the borders” to England. The 2,000 demonstrators were met by a similar number of French riot squad officers, who deployed tear gas in efforts to disperse troublemakers.

Last month Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, said Britain’s “lax asylum system and benefits culture” had imposed thousands of illegal migrants on the port town. A tense atmosphere has gripped the town all week, with a spotter helicopter circling overhead, roads blocked, and mobile police patrols circulating constantly. “Protestors have turned up looking for trouble,” said a police spokesman.

France calls on Britain to help close illegal migrant squat in CalaisChris Morgan, 31, who was among British activists in the demonstration, said: “There should be nothing preventing immigrants traveling from one country to the other. The borders between the UK and France should not exist, and we’re fighting to get rid of them.”

A tense atmosphere has gripped the town all week, with a spotter helicopter circling overhead, roads blocked, and mobile police patrols circulating constantly.

As protesters pitched tents and marquees on an official camp site to the east of Calais, some of the 2,000 odd migrants sleeping rough in the Calais area joined them.

This prompted the local authorities to obtain an official order preventing anyone buying or possessing anything which might be used as a weapon — including substances which could start fires or be used to make Molotov cocktails.

They said they had received email threats by protesters pledging to destroy wire fences and other security measures around the Channel Tunnel.

There were also threats to burn “symbols of capitalism” including local government offices, and hotels run by prominent global chains.

Local prefect Pierre de Bosquet said: “We received intelligence about widespread violence and could take no chances.” Last month Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, said the UK’s lax asylum system and benefits culture had “imposed” thousands of illegal migrants on her town.

In a blistering attack in which she also called for millions in compensation, Mrs Bouchart said the UK was entirely to blame for the those who use the port as a staging point.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


UK: Dawkins Sets Up Kids’ Camp to Groom Atheists

GIVE Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life.

The author of The God Delusion is helping to launch Britain’s first summer retreat for non-believers, where children will have lessons in evolution and sing along to John Lennon’s Imagine.

The five-day camp in Somerset (motto: “It’s beyond belief”) is for children aged eight to 17 and will rival traditional faith-based breaks run by the Scouts and church groups.

Budding atheists will be given lessons to arm themselves in the ways of rational scepticism. There will be sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology along with more conventional pursuits such as trekking and tug-of-war. There will also be a £10 prize for the child who can disprove the existence of the mythical unicorn.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

General


Facebook, Twitter and Peers for Sale — Privately

NEW YORK — Scott Painter makes his living betting on startup companies, having played a role in launching 29 of them over the years. But with the bad economy choking initial public offerings and acquisitions, Painter is now backing an idea that makes it easier for insiders like him to sell shares in their companies even before they go public.

SharesPost, which was founded by Painter’s business partner, Greg Brogger, launched publicly in June. Through SharesPost’s Web site, Painter is trying to sell shares in several companies he helped found, including car pricing startup TrueCar.com. He also wants to buy shares in companies that are far from an IPO, like short-messaging site Twitter and business-networking site LinkedIn.

SharesPost is one of a few private stock exchanges that are emerging to fight what venture capitalists call a liquidity crisis. These exchanges give stakeholders an alternative way to trade their shares in hot startups like Facebook for cold, hard cash — without having to wait years for an IPO.

Employees at startup employees often put in long hours but get salaries that can be 20 percent less than their peers at public companies. In return, they get stock or options that they hope will be a path to sports cars and summer homes after their company goes public or is bought out.

Given this, services like SharesPost could help startup workers get some cash while awaiting a distant IPO that might never even get off the ground. Most people won’t be in on the action, though, since these exchanges are only open to a small pool of buyers.

And it’s not clear how much — or how little — stock has changed hands through them. In its short life, Santa Monica, Calif.-based SharesPost said it has executed one $25,000 transaction, while another service, New York-based SecondMarket, said it has completed about 40 transactions in the past year worth about $150 million.

Still, if they manage to thrive, these exchanges could help the economy. By selling shares on a private exchange, an investor can free up funds to put into other startups. And institutional investors could use these services to broaden their holdings to include fast-growing companies that have yet to go public.

The methods of these private exchanges vary. SharesPost uses an online bulletin board to introduce buyers and sellers. SecondMarket links the parties and lets companies set up their own mini-markets that they control, while Redwood City, Calif.-based XChange is rolling out an online system that will allow buyers and sellers to connect and directly trade shares for cash.

All are open just to institutional investors — organizations like venture capital firms or pension funds that manage at least $100 million in assets — and individual accredited investors. That category includes people with a net worth of at least $1 million, or salary of at least $200,000 for the last two years.

The concept is not entirely new. Nyppex, formed in 1998, facilitates private-company stock trades, and a few companies with similar offerings emerged during the last economic downturn but failed to gather much steam. Among the problems: Determining a fair price for a private company’s stock is tough without much public information.

This time, however, employees and investors are more aggressively looking for a way to get a return on their dedication and funding. More than a dozen companies have priced IPOs in the U.S. this year, down from 35 in the first half of 2008, according to research firm Renaissance Capital. In the same period of dot-com-crazy 2000, there were 219 IPOs in the U.S.

Besides the economy, startup investors say the high costs and regulatory requirements associated with going public have also stymied many smaller, younger companies. According to the National Venture Capital Association, the median span from a company’s founding to its IPO was 9.6 years in 2008.. In 1998 it was 4.5 years.

One factor is compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law, which was enacted in 2002 after accounting scandals at companies like Enron Corp.. and WorldCom Inc. A key part of this law requires public companies to file reports on the strength of internal financial controls and fix any problems — steps that can be costly for a startup.

Issues like this have “just made it more and more difficult for companies to make it to that next step,” said Thomas Foley, chief executive of XChange, which he developed with venture capitalist Tim Draper.

SharesPost founder Greg Brogger believes his site has one solution to the slowdown in IPOs: Bulletin boards for more than 100 startups that allow buyers and sellers to post the price and number of shares they want to purchase or unload, and the ability to e-mail one another directly.

Parties wishing to make a deal can find the relevant contracts on the site to sign, and an escrow company completes the transaction, charging both sides $2,500. So far, a $25,000 deal — the site’s minimum transaction size — has been completed for 2,500 shares of electric car startup Tesla Motors at $10 apiece.

That reflects a great deal of optimism for a company that has only sold roughly 500 cars and had to get additional funding from the U.S. Energy Department. A report from one of SharesPost’s research providers, NeXt Up Research, valued Tesla at $1 billion, or $9 per share. The car company had no comment.

Anyone can sign up for free to see startups listed on SharesPost. Only qualified investors can buy shares, and SharesPost makes money by charging buyers and sellers $34 a month.

XChange, meanwhile, enables buyers and sellers to share confidential information necessary for making informed purchases, and it has a platform for users to trade shares. When it is fully launched later this year, XChange will be an automated online exchange, much like E-Trade, where users can instantly trade shares for cash.

But while these services may be able to speed up dealmaking, users must still grapple with another key issue: how to determine a fair price for stock in a company that isn’t required to regularly disclose its financial information and doesn’t have that many potential buyers or sellers.

At SharesPost, Brogger wants to solve the problem by offering as much information as possible about companies it lists, from analysts at Next Up Research and VC Experts. SecondMarket CEO and founder Barry Silbert said companies can decide to share some details with investors and potential bidders on his site.

SharesPost doesn’t believe the research on its site will cause any problems should the company file for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as these types of analyses are published by investment banks during the IPO process.

Still, the lack of public disclosure and limited number of traders on these services makes Kathy Smith bristle. A market with limited transparency, participation and disclosures “is not a solution to the markets we have now,” said Smith, a principal at Greenwich, Conn.-based Renaissance Capital..

And trading is not always as simple as posting a sales opportunity and an asking price. Startups often restrict what their employees can do with their shares and stock options — commonly imposing the “right of first refusal.” That generally means employees who find buyers for their shares have to let the company decide if it wants to buy the stock back instead, for the same price. Companies can use this stipulation to keep competitors from snagging a stake.

Even if these services help startup employees and investors, they’re not likely to eliminate the need to someday go public.

For one thing, this kind of market can only get so big. Private companies with more than $10 million in assets are required to file annual reports with the SEC if they have more than 500 shareholders of record. This rule prodded Google Inc. into filing for its IPO in 2004, and it could happen to others as these exchanges distribute shares among more shareholders.

Several of the private exchanges say it’s up to companies to keep track of their total shareholder count. Foley said XChange helps companies keep tabs by revealing who their shareholders are at any given time.

Another reason IPOs won’t vanish: Companies usually go public first to raise cash for their operations, and then to set a price that will eventually let insiders turn their holdings into cash. While some of the private exchanges do let startups themselves — and not just their employees and investors — sell stock, it’s not likely to be lucrative without a large base of potential buyers.

Still, some buyers, sellers and startups may see trading through these services as the way to go until the IPO market improves.

“At the very least, it’s going to be spring training for companies before they go public,” SecondMarket’s Silbert said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

More Danish Enrichment

Cultural Enrichment News


Here are two more news stories of cultural enrichment in Denmark. The first concerns a shooting in Odense, and two separate MSM articles on the topic have been translated for Gates of Vienna. The first is from Politiken, and was translated by our Danish correspondent Kepiblanc:

Shoot-out in downtown Odense

Today seven or eight rounds were fired against two persons in a car in Odense. The police showed up in force

A shoot-out took place in Odense this afternoon, says TV2, Fyn [Funen]. Seven or eight rounds were fired against two persons driving a car in Ejbygade [Ejby Street].

The two men — aged 34 and 36 — bore some resemblance to “biker types” according to the police, but have nothing to do with the present gang war.

Police showed up in force

Around 3 PM the two were encountered by two other cars. In those cars were people described as “of-an-ethnic-origin-other-than- Danish” who fired seven to eight rounds at the car. The two men who were fired at got away unharmed.

The police showed up in force in bullet-proof vests and secured the area.

Another version of the same incident, this one from BT.dk, as translated by our Danish correspondent TB:
– – – – – – – –

Shootout in Odense

The police from Fyen confirm that shots were fired this afternoon in Odense. According to information that BT received, the incident took place in the neighborhood of Ejbygade close to Vollsmose [Muslim ghetto — translator]. At 18.50 today it was not clear whether anyone was hit, but according to Fyen’s Police department, the investigation has been taken over by the homicide bureau.

According to TV2 Fyen, seven or eight shots were fired at two persons driving in their car in Ejbygade. The two men, a 34-year-old and a 36-year-old, could according to the police look like “biker types”, but have nothing whatsoever to do with the gang war, the police say.

At around 15.00 they were passed by two cars. In the cars were people — described as being of another ethnic origin than Danish — who fired seven to eight shots at the car. The two men who were shot at got away and later made their way back to inspect their car. They called the police who immediately started a huge operation.

Numerous police officers in bullet-proof vests arrived at the crime scene and sealed the area.

The second incident occurred in Copenhagen. According to Ekstra Bladet, also translated by TB:

Man arrested for rape

An hour ago, a witness observed a man lying on the top of a screaming woman in a park in Copenhagen. The man has now been arrested on the suspicion of rape.

“A witness saw a man of African origin lying on top of a screaming woman in Hyrdevangen in Brønshøj,” Hans Erik Raben from the Copenhagen Police says to ekstrabladet.dk.

Police received the call at 18.20, and the suspect was been arrested shortly thereafter.

Exactly what happened the police do not know yet.

“That’s what we are going to find out now,” Hans Erik Raben says.

Non-Coup in Honduras

What is being reported by the MSM (not to mention the Obama administration) as a “coup” in Honduras is not a coup at all, but a successful attempt by the military and the courts to keep President Manuel Zelaya from ramming through an unconstitutional referendum that would have allowed him to remain president indefinitely.

Mr. Zelaya’s aim seemed to be to install himself as a new caudillo, but in a partnership with Venezuela — one in which Hugo Chavez would be the suzerain and Mr. Zelaya the vassal. Hugo is hopping mad, and vows that the Hondurans will rue the day they arrested President Zelaya.

I’m not up to scratch on Latin American affairs, but Fausta is; she reads both English and Spanish news sources. For the latest on the situation, check out her frequently-updated Honduras post.

[Nothing follows]

Halal Food is Compulsory in Dutch Prisons

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Elsevier about the recent imposition of halal meals on all inmates held in many Dutch prisons. The interesting thing about this story is that a prisoner of Dutch ethnicity is leading the legal battle against the Islamization of the prison system:

Dutch Justice Ministry closes deal: all prisoners must eat halal food

By Maartje Willems

In ‘many’ of Dutch prisons there will be only halal food on the menu. Justice has closed advantageous contracts with suppliers that only deliver halal food.

BaconServing two menus would become too expensive, the newspaper De Telegraaf writes today. Prisoners can get ritually slaughtered cattle or sheep, or nothing. Pork is not on the menu, because it is unclean meat according to Muslims.

Lawyer

Lawyer S. van Berge Henegouwen has filed a lawsuit against the prison in the city of Sittard [in Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands], because his client complained about the forced halal menus. “My client does not want religion forced upon him, he just wants a meatball.” The lawyer insists that his client must be paid 25 euros per halal menu that he gets presented. The Ministry of Justice reported after “intensive research” in the prison in Sittard that there will be pork back on the menu immediately.

– – – – – – – –

“Islamization”

Sietse-Fritsma, member of parliament for the PVV, calls for a halt to “the umpteenth sad example of the Islamization of society.” “It is known that the Dutch prisons are overcrowded with Muslims, but that of course does not mean you must present all of them meat from ritually slaughtered animals”.

Portuguese Cultural Enrichment

Cultural Enrichment News


In the comments section of last night’s post, Afonso Henriquetrs posted three translations of articles describing cultural enrichment incidents, taken from the Portuguese media. He notes that all of them happened in the last ten days:

A gang attacked ten couples at night in Caparica:

Gang of Brazilians beat and robbed couples dating at the Beach of Costa da Caparica

The girls were forced to remain seated inside the car; the boys were forced outside, pushed to their knees with their heads down. If they moved, they were assaulted in the head with pistols and revolvers. All this while the three robbers stole everything they could. It has been so the last two weeks on the beaches of Caparica, Almada, with ten couples caught dating at night.

It all ended yesterday, with two illegal Brazilians and one Portuguese, car repairmen in Almada, imprisoned by the National Republican Guard (GNR).

Next, an excerpt from a newspaper article posted on a blog. Afonso notes:

Keep in mind that “arrastão” derives from the verb “arrastar” meaning “to drag”. “Arrastão” is a big mob of criminals going over its targets and dragging all as they pass, robbing what they can, beating if they want.

The impunity is total for the Afro-Portuguese criminal community — mass theft, without brakes, total tranquility in the face of the law and the security forces to such a point that bands of robbers just came into shops and calmly grabbed new clothes and shoes.

And be aware — as you can read in the paper, this is “the fifth arrastão to take place in this mall, that opened doors recently.” — Actually, this Commercial Centre just opened early this June! and they say it’s the biggest in all of Portugal and Spain.

And the article:
– – – – – – – –

Arrastão at Dolce Vita nets more than 10 thousand Euros in robberies

A group of 30 individuals took part in an arrastão yesterday at the Dolce Vita Tejo in Amadora and have practically emptied the entire Staples shop. The robbers took photo and video cameras with the value of more than ten thousand Euros and ran away, with the Public Security Police (PSP) and Private Security companies present powerless to stop them.

Before the arrastão of yesterday, four groups, ranging from 20 to 50 individuals swept the mall and robbed whatever pleased them.

“In the face of such a great number of individuals we stayed quiet,” a girl working at one of the shops told 24 Hours, saying that “(I) was dying of fear.”

Another newspaper article:

24-year-old girl shot in the head by African immigrants

At the age of 24, ‘Ana’ lived a true nightmare from 01.30, next to the gas station of Galp in Palhais, Charneca da Caparica. The victim, in a Chevrolet Matiz, stopped her car in a street contiguous to the gas station. And it was then that two men, with one shotgun and their faces covered, took advantage to attack her. They shouted threats to her in Crioulo [mixed Portuguese and African language spoken by Cape Verdans] — and, frightened, ‘Ana’ started buzzing the car’s horn, asking for help.

One of the robbers, with a shotgun, raised the weapon — and, in one movement, shot at the head of the young driver. She was shot superficially, bleeding abundantly, and the robbers entered the victim’s car.

[…]

She was forced to drive across all Charneca of Caparica, at gunpoint, stopping at many ATMs. The robbers ended up making only 50 Euros. ‘Ana’ was then abandoned at the Forestal Road in Costa de Caparica, close to the beach of the Mata, soon after 03.00.

The robbers left the victim and the car and walked away. Panicking, ‘Ana’ phoned her parents, who called the GNR of Costa de Caparica.

The Walking Wounded

Cultural Enrichment News


Our Danish correspondent TB, who translated the following article, includes this comment:

I don’t know whether this might be a Hells Angels action or an immigrant-on-immigrant incident. There is a lot of internal fighting amongst immigrant groups as well (just like in the countries they come from). My feeling is that these incidents happen so often now that the situation is comparable to a low-intensity civil war. Or at least it will be in the very near future.

Anyway, a cultural enricher got himself shot last night.

From Ekstra Bladet:

Walked around the street with a gunshot wound in his head

21-year-old in a shootout in Copenhagen

Last night, when police arrived at Ørnevej in the northwestern area of Copenhagen after reports of a shootout, they found a 21-year-old man on the street. He walked around holding his hands to his head.

“He had been hit by a shot in the right side of his head,” Peter Steffensen, spokesman for the Copenhagen Police Department, says to ekstrabladet.dk.

– – – – – – – –

Police were called at 01:17 when locals heard shots in the area.

“At this point we do not know what is behind this incident,” Peter Steffensen says.

The 21-year-old is of foreign origin but was not previously known in connection with gang activity.

He went into surgery last night. The latest news from Rigshospitalet [main hospital in Denmark] is that he is in critical condition, but that he is stable. Police hope that they will be able to interrogate him later today.

No one has been arrested.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/27/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/27/2009The global financial crisis continues its ravages. Foreign investment is rapidly fleeing China. The average Australian has lost 36% of his net wealth. And the United Auto Workers are seeking another government bailout — for their golf course.

In other news, Michael Jackson’s fans among the inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines will honor the late singer by reprising their dance version of Thriller.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, Islam in Action, JD, PatriotUSA, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – –

Financial Crisis
Australia: We’ve Lost 36% of Wealth
Foreign Investment Flees China
Italy: No to Pensions Move, Berlusconi
UAW Seeks Another Bailout
 
USA
Conyers Backs Off Probe of ACORN
Iran Has Come to America
Obama Admin Appoints Envoy to Muslim World
Obama, The African Colonial
Our Democratic Socialist Party
 
Europe and the EU
Abaya Gets a Makeover From John Galliano and Blumarine
BBC Laid Low by Tales of State-Funded High Life
European Leaders Mark Iron Curtain Fall in Hungary
France: Veil Flouts Secular Principles Says Mosque Chief
Gordon Brown’s Bid to Lead World on Global Warming
Italy: Bonino, Burqa is Against Principle of Responsibility
Italy: Police Close in on Mafia Kingpin
Nazi SS Officers Sentenced to Life for Second World War Massacre in Italy
Spain: Bishops, State Saves Billions Thanks to Church
Sweden: Iran Slams ‘Terrorist Attack’ On Embassy
Vatican: Report Raises Questions About Internal Debate
 
North Africa
Tunisia: Conference Warns of Decline in Arabic Instruction
USCIRF Expresses Concern Over Reported Attacks on Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt
 
Israel and the Palestinians
Gilad Shalit Soon to be Transferred to Egypt
UCSB Prof Cleared of Any Misconduct
 
Middle East
Jihadist Urges Muslim Soldiers to Cannibalism
Lebanon: First Italian Ice Cream Shop Opens in Beirut
Money Floods Out of Iran as Election Crisis Continues
Obama’s Praise for Iran’s Mousavi
Slaughter of Foreigners in Yemen Bears Mark of Former Gitmo Detainee, Say Experts
Turkey: Sex Workers Seek to Establish a Trade Union
Turkey: Court Sentences Man to Lifetime for Killing Italian
Turkey to ‘Never Give Up’ EU Bid
US Says Turkish Help Needed in the Region
 
Russia
NATO and Russia Expected to Resume Military Ties
 
South Asia
Karzai Tells Taliban to Vote in Afghan Elections
 
Far East
Michael Jackson is Dead: Prisoners to Recreate Dance Tribute
North Korea Threatens to Shoot Down Japanese Spy Planes
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
Horror of Kenya’s ‘Witch’ Lynchings
 
Immigration
EU Summit: Cooperation With Country of Origin

Financial Crisis


Australia: We’ve Lost 36% of Wealth

AUSTRALIAN households have lost an extraordinary 36 per cent of their financial wealth since the economic crisis began.

Estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics put combined household wealth at just short of $787 billion at the end of March, down from a peak of $1246 billion in September 2007.

The total includes household wealth held in cash, bank deposits, bonds and shares, but net of borrowing. Significantly it excludes wealth held in the form of superannuation and real estate, and both of these have also dived since the crisis began.

Financial wealth per household as measured by the Australian Financial Accounts has slid from $159,000 to $98,000 — its lowest point for more than three years. Per person it has slipped from $58,900 to $36,200.

“It’s the result of the collapsing sharemarket,” said Savanth Sebastian, a Commonwealth Securities economist. “Australians are more exposed to shares than the citizens of virtually any other country.

“Up until March our share prices had dived 43 per cent.”

In the early 1990s recession wealth collapsed sharply during the first quarter of 1991 and then bounced around rather than sliding relentlessly as it has done this time.

“Back then our wealth wasn’t so tied up in shares,” said Mr Sebastian.

“We weren’t as exposed.” The good news is that share prices are climbing again. Since March they have rebounded a further 10 per cent, leading CommSec to expect an end to the slide in financial wealth when the next figures come out in three months.

“We think household wealth will tread water for two quarters and then pick up towards the end of the year,” Mr Sebastian said.

As our sharemarket slid, more and more of our wealth has been switched into cash and bank deposits, with the total either held under beds, in safes or in banks and credit unions reaching a record $487 billion in March, roughly 60 per cent of household wealth.

However the amount that we owe has continued to climb throughout the crisis, jumping a further $15 billion in the March quarter to a record $1306 billion.

“Our ratio of debts to liquid assets has hit 154 per cent, meaning we don’t have the readily available cash we would need to cover our debts in the event of a sharp downturn.

“We are vulnerable,” Mr Sebastian said.

In contrast, Australian companies have strengthened their balance sheets, reducing debt by a further $11 billion the March quarter.

“As a result their net assets have climbed to their highest point in two years. This should give investors confidence,” he said.

The Australian Financial Accounts show foreign investors demonstrating that confidence, lifting their ownership of Australian shares to 42 per cent, the highest proportion in 12 years.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Foreign Investment Flees China

Direct foreign investment in China is down by 17.8% in May, for an eighth straight month of decline. The flight of foreign capital is hard on the manufacturing industry resulting in heavy job losses.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Foreign direct investment in the mainland dropped 17.8 per cent year-on-year in May for the eighth straight monthly fall, commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian, revealed today.

The decline compared with a fall of 22.5% in April from the same month in 2008. Experts say it may indicate that the economy is reaching the lowest point of the crisis, but that there are no certain elements to guarantee a quick recovery.

For years the Chinese economic boom was favoured by massive foreign investment by companies who were encouraged to move production to the mainland because of its low manufacturing costs: a low cost labour force with few rights, lands conceded to industries for minimum rents, generous fiscal policies in favour of the foreign companies. But in the wake of the market contraction, caused by the global financial crisis, foreign investors have preferred to cease production and close down factories.

A direct consequence of this is the grave increase in unemployment, particularly in the labour industry: official data records 30 million migrants who have been made jobless because of factory closures. Companies financed by foreign investors represent 30% of all industrial output, but over 55% in exports.

The Chinese economy grew by 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, but analysts believe that the expansion is insufficient to satisfy the increased demand for work.

Experts note that Beijing’s stimulus plan of 4 trillion Yuan (400 billion euro) has so far failed to have any affect on the number, and how it obviously does not benefit foreign investment.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Italy: No to Pensions Move, Berlusconi

‘Not right time, ‘ premier says

(ANSA) — L’Aquila, June 25 — It is not the right time to raise the retirement age for public-sector women in line with men, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday.

Reacting to a European Commission warning that Italy should comply with European Union gender parity rules in the public sector, the premier said: “We’ll think about it, but in a financial crisis it does not appear to be the right time for such a measure”.

Earlier, Civil Service Minister Renato Brunetta’s announcement that Italy would comply with the EU directive spurred protests from the centre-left opposition who said the government should first do more for working women, including equal pay and workplace creches.

One leftwing party said the warning from Brussels “came from the bosses and banks who helped create the EU”.

photo: Berlusconi addresses drug industry conference in L’Aquila Thursday

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



UAW Seeks Another Bailout

The auto executives have had to give up most of their perks in exchange for the federal bailout money. No private jets. No lavish sales outings.

But the United Auto Workers seems to have slipped under the radar.

The UAW still owns and operates a $33 million posh golf resort on Black Lake near Cheboygan that ostensibly serves as an education center but provides an elegant getaway for union leadership.

And now the union is appealing to the state Tax Tribunal for $3 million in property tax relief from Waverly Township, disputing the assessment of the property. If the UAW wins, schools will be hurt.

“Once again, the next generation is getting cheated out of a quality education — a chance at a brighter future — because the UAW doesn’t want to pay its fair share of taxes,” Drain Commissioner Dennis Lennox said.

The waste watchdogs at the White House’s auto task force should note that the resort has lost $23 million over the past five years, and has been kept alive by loans from the union’s strike fund.

           — Hat tip: PatriotUSA [Return to headlines]

USA


Conyers Backs Off Probe of ACORN

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. has backed off his plan to investigate purported wrongdoing by the liberal activist group ACORN, saying “powers that be” put the kibosh on the idea.

Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, earlier bucked his party leaders by calling for hearings on accusations the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style “protection” racket.

“The powers that be decided against it,” Mr. Conyers told The Washington Times as he left the House chambers Wednesday.

The chairman declined to elaborate, shrugging off questions about who told him how to run his committee and give the Democrat-allied group a pass..

Conyers spokesman Jonathan Godfrey said late Thursday, several hours after the first request for comment, that the chairman had been referring to himself as “the powers that be.”

Pittsburgh lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, whose testimony about ACORN at a March 19 hearing on voting issues prompted Mr. Conyers to call for a probe, said she was perplexed by Mr. Conyers’ explanation for his change of heart.

“If the chair of the Judiciary Committee cannot hold a hearing if he wants to, [then] who are the powers that he is beholden to?” she said. “Is it the leadership, is it the White House, is it contributors? Who is ‘the power’?”

The comment spurred similar questions by House Republicans, who asked whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in blocking the probe.

“Chairman Conyers has a responsibility to explain who is blocking this investigation, and why. Is it Speaker Pelosi? Others in the Democratic leadership? Who in Congress is covering up ACORN’s corruption?” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, ranking Republican on the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties, said the chairman should be calling the shots.

Mr. Conyers, who heard the allegations against ACORN, was sufficiently impressed to realize a future hearing was needed to thoroughly investigate the matter,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that people who didn’t hear the testimony are making the decisions. The Democratic leadership should step up to disclose who instructed Mr. Conyers to drop his plan.”

The office of Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, did not respond to questions about Mr. Conyers’ comments.

Capitol Hill had bristled at the prospect of hearings because it threatened to rekindle criticism of the financial ties and close cooperation between President Obama’s campaign and ACORN and its sister organizations Citizens Services Inc. and Project Vote.

The groups came under fire during the campaign after probes into suspected voter fraud in a series of presidential battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada.

ACORN and its affiliates are currently the target of at least 14 lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election and a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act complaint filed by former ACORN members.

The group’s leaders have consistently denied any wrongdoing and previously said they welcomed a congressional probe.

The group did not respond to questions about Mr. Conyers being convinced to drop those plans.

Ms. Heidelbaugh, who spearheaded an unsuccessful lawsuit last year to stop ACORN’s Pennsylvania voter-registration drive, testified in March that the nonprofit group was violating tax, campaign-finance and other laws by, among other things, sharing with the Barack Obama campaign a list of the Democrat’s maxed-out campaign donors so ACORN could use it to solicit them for a get-out-the-vote drive.

ACORN also provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from targets of demonstrations through a shakedown it called the “muscle for the money” program, said Ms. Heidelbaugh, a member of the executive board of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Mr. Conyers, a fierce partisan known for his drive to continue investigating President George W. Bush’s administration, had been an unlikely champion for opponents of ACORN.

Before calling for the probe, he frequently defended ACORN. In October, he condemned an FBI voter-fraud investigation targeting the group, questioning whether it was politically motivated to hamper a voter-registration likely to turn out supporters for Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

But in March, Mr. Conyers dismissed the argument made by fellow Democrats that accusations of voter fraud and other crimes should be explored by prosecutors and decided in court, not by lawmakers in Congress.

“That’s our jurisdiction, the Department of Justice,” Mr. Conyers said in March. “That’s what we handle voter fraud. Unless that’s been taken out of my jurisdiction and I didn’t know it.”

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Iran Has Come to America

The nation of Iran is presently balanced on the precipice of civil war over the recent stolen elections returning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term as president. And what do we hear from the leader of the free world, President Obama? Nothing but weak, tepid words amounting to acquiescence to mass slaughter by the autocratic mullahs who acutely feel their power slipping by the day.

As millions of Iranians march in the streets of Tehran and throughout other cities, I am struck by the dichotomies between their righteous indignation over the sham elections versus America’s indifference and apathy concerning our own stolen elections six months ago by Obama (who’s most likely not even a natural born citizen), the Democrat Party and the government-controlled media. Other than hundreds of “tea parties” that broke out in cities and towns across America to memorialize the Boston Tea Party of May 10, 1773, there have been no mass demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in front of the White House expressing outrage that 62.7 million voters, 54 percent of the voting population willfully elected a neo-Marxist with fascist tendencies as president of the United States.

Iran has come to America. In my home state of Michigan, a federal judge has recently upheld a decision by festival organizers in Dearborn, which is about 30 percent Muslim, to ban a Christian ministry from handing out religious tracts on public sidewalks. If America wasn’t already a benign dictatorship, Congress would have immediately drawn up articles of impeachment against this renegade judge for so blatantly abridging freedom of religion and freedom of association protected by the First Amendment.

[…]

“He’s got a very delicate path to walk here,” said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. “You don’t want to take ownership of this,” defending Obama’s effeminate stance against Iran’s brutal political repression. That’s not Reagan’s “Peace through strength”; that’s not inspired leadership; that’s licking your finger, holding it up in the air and seeing which way the wind blows. Leaders lead! It’s time for Obama to stop being a man-child in the Promised Land and be a Man. But he can’t — why?

Obama is enslaved by his neo-Marxist, socialist ideology, which hates American exceptionalism, or the idea that America, by her unique history, religious traditions and Constitution is better than other countries possessing inferior historical and political traditions.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Obama Admin Appoints Envoy to Muslim World

White House appoints Farah Pandith as rep to Muslim world

The United States State Department announced Friday the appointment of a Muslim woman from Indian origin as a new envoy to deal with the Muslim world, following a previous appointment of an Egyptian-born advisor in April.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Farah Pandith to serve as Special Representative to Muslim Communities,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appointed the 41-year-old to interat with Muslims across the globe, said in the statement.

“Farah brings years of experience to the job, and she will play a leading role in our efforts to engage Muslims around the world,” Clinton added.

Pandith, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child from Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, will “be responsible for executing the administration’s efforts to engage with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organizational level,” the department said in a statement.

Previously, Pandit has been a senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs on outreach to Muslim communities in the West. She has also served on the National Security Council and with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on assistance projects for Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

“She has said that she sees her personal experience as an illustration of how Muslim immigrants to the U.S. can successfully integrate themselves into American society,” the statement added.

President Barack Obama has made improving U.S. relations with Muslims around the world a signature theme of his presidency.

In his inauguration speech on Jan. 20, Obama vowed to seek a “new way forward” with the Muslim world “based on mutual interest and respect,” after eight rocky years under his predecessor George W. Bush.

Not sure if Muslim

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed Thursday that Pandith had been appointed, and promised a statement later.

Asked why the State Department had not formally announced Pandith’s appointment, Kelly noted it had been disclosed in an internal memo.

Kelly said he could not say whether Pandith was a Muslim, although two U.S. officials said privately that they believed she was. Pandith was not immediately available for comment.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government has labored to improve its image with Muslims abroad.

Afeefa Sayeed, another American-Kashmiri, has been working as senior

adviser in the Obama administration’s international aid agency USAID.

Egyptian-born American Dalia Mogahed, who heads the Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies, became the first Muslim veiled woman to be appointed to a position in the White House in April. Mogahed advised Obama on his Cairo speech.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Obama, The African Colonial

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama’s skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign “isms”, instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America’s racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

[…]

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC’s have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC’s use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama’s Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC’s strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It’s when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the “will of the people” becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Our Democratic Socialist Party

For all practical purposes, the Democratic Party in the United States has become the Democratic Socialist Party of the United States. With Barack H. Obama at its helm, the Democrats have launched an agenda the socialists have pursued for a century. While employing just the right rhetorical tone, Obama ridicules those who call him a socialist, while he is advancing his unprecedented socialist agenda.

Obama is a better salesman than his socialist predecessors, but the result is the same: Government control must trump individual freedom in order to achieve economic balance, environmental protection and social equity. Obama and his socialist Democrat congressional majority are transforming America more dramatically, and faster, than anyone could have imagined.

The Americans who created the government of the United States, accepted by the majority of Americans when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, expressly limited the power of the federal government and reserved all power not granted to the federal government for the states, and for the people. The purpose of the government was to protect the freedom of its citizens from all enemies, whether foreign or domestic.

The Democratic socialists in Washington reject this purpose, and are rapidly constructing a government in which the expression of individual freedom — as in peaceful assemblies such as the recent tea parties — is labeled a threat, a potential threat, or “low-level terrorism.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Abaya Gets a Makeover From John Galliano and Blumarine

Top European fashion labels, including John Galliano and Blumarine, have sent models in couture abayas down the runway in an effort to lure wealthy Muslim women.

A horsewoman in a flowing, made-to-measure Islamic gown atop a snorting steed opened the fashion show on Thursday at the George V Hotel in Paris.

Abayas are the body-covering black robes some Muslim women don over their clothing in public, usually accompanied by a head scarf or niqab, the face veil that covers all but the eyes.

Designers who tried their hand at making over the abaya, which is required in Saudi Arabia, included Christian Dior’s artistic director John Galliano, French luxury labels Nina Ricci and Jean Claude Jitrois and Italian houses Blumarine and Alberta Feretti.

The show began with a bang, as the carrot-topped cavaliere — decked out in a Galliano-designed abaya exploding with firework of coloured sequins and dangling fringe — rode her mount into the hotel’s subterranean salon.

Twenty models followed on foot, wearing abayas heavy with rhinestones or airy in gauzy fabrics.

“I realised that most of the Saudi clients are wearing designer brands, but they’re covered by a black abaya,” said Dania Tarhini, the show’s organiser and a general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue in Saudi Arabia. “It is an obligation to wear the abaya there, but let them feel good about it.”

The timing of the Paris show was propitious: four days earlier, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, struck a nerve in the Muslim world by declaring that full-body veils such as the burka are “not welcome” in France, saying they make women prisoners. A top Muslim group in Britain called Mr Sarkozy “patronising and offensive.” Lebanon’s most influential Shia cleric called on Mr Sarkozy to reconsider his comments.

Ms Tarhini, a Lebanese who has lived in Saudi Arabia for the past seven years, acknowledged “it wasn’t easy” to convince designers to take part in the project.

At first, “they couldn’t imagine how to make a designer abaya,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “I explained to them the concept is to (make women) look good and also to promote their brands … Then they accepted.”

She said the initial batch of made-to-measure abayas — worth between â‚4,000-â‚8,000 ($5,500-$11,150) — would be given as presents to Saks’ most faithful Saudi clients.

Ready-to-wear versions of the robes by the 21 designers featured in the Paris show are expected to go on sale in Saks stores the Saudi Arabian cities of Jeddah and Riyadh in September. The gowns, which are to retail for â‚1,800 ($2,500), could later be sold in the store’s branches in neighbouring Bahrain and Dubai, she said.

Most of the gowns on display adhered to standards considered appropriate for wear in Saudi Arabia: all were black, most were floor-length and many had a built-in head covering or matching veil.

The few translucent abayas, like a bell-sleeved gown embroidered with white and yellow flowers by Carolina Herrera, the Venezuelan designer favoured by Renée Zellwegger, were meant to be worn over evening gowns, Ms Tarhini said.

“Everybody’s waiting for a change in a good way,” she said. Some women in Saudi Arabia “don’t want to feel obliged (to wear the abaya). They want to wear it to look fashionable, as well.”

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



BBC Laid Low by Tales of State-Funded High Life

From wrapping paper to iPods and luxury jets, the expenses of BBC executives have been thrown open to public scrutiny

The lifestyle and pay packets of top executives at the BBC were laid bare yesterday, revealing how the Corporation’s senior staff used public money to pay for everything from wrapping paper and iPods to flowers and champagne for its highest-earning stars.

Luxury hotels, a private jet and even gifts for fellow BBC staff members also appeared. Details revealing the finances of the BBC’s top team also show that many were paid more than the Prime Minister, while executives spent £20,978 last year entertaining other members of staff.

Most of its 50 highest-paid executives were paid more than £200,000, with the director general, Mark Thompson, earning £647,000 a year. The lowest paid of the group earned an annual salary of at least £160,000. MPs predicted last night that the publication of the expenses would heap pressure on other public bodies, such as the NHS and quangos, to follow suit. The embarrassing documents appeared on a day that the private sector announced thousands of job losses and pay cuts, underlying the growing disparity between the public and private sectors. British Airways announced a voluntary pay cut for up to 7,000 workers, while steelmaker, Corus, said that it was cutting around 2,000 jobs.

Despite widespread anger over the claims, the BBC last night ruled out the possibility of executives repaying money. It said there had been one repayment made since 2004 in the form of a voluntary £1 donation to Unicef originally claimed as part of a hotel bill by the BBC’s director of vision, Jana Bennett. A spokesman said that all other expenses had been approved by the BBC’s internal auditing system and that the returned £1 would remain the sum total of funds handed back to the taxpayer.

Details of the expenses emerged after a long Freedom of Information campaign for the release of details to spell out how the BBC was using public money. The expenses will be published online every three months from now on. And further details are on the way, with around 100 BBC executives eventually being included in the process.

In a day which saw the row over the use of publicly-funded expenses shift from Westminster to White City, the BBC’s base, the eye-opening list of expense claims included:

* Jonathan Ross, whose contract is said to be worth £18m, handed a £100 bouquet of flowers.

* A publicly-funded £1,137 party to celebrate Terry Wogan’s knighthood.

* £99 for a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvee champagne, given as a present to Bruce Forsyth for his 80th birthday.

* Flights costing £2,200 to fly back Mark Thompson, the director general, and his family from holiday in the wake of the controversy over the prank phone call made to the actor Andrew Sachs. He also claimed £1,277 to charter a private jet to return from holiday to deal with an expenses row.

* Jana Bennett, director of vision, claimed a gift-wrapped Harrods bear costing £47.50 and a pair of engraved Tiffany cufflinks for £85..25 as a “talent gift”.

* Ashley Highfield, the former head of Future Media, bought a £238 iPod “for testing with BBC services”.

Other items included in dozens of pages of documents dating back to 2004 included claims from Dame Jennifer Abramsky, the former director of Audio and Music, for wrapping paper for a leaving present costing £5.96, and a £20 picture frame.

Mr Thompson was also under pressure after it was revealed that he had claimed to stay in a hotel in London. A spokesman said that Mr Thompson only did this when he was unable to commute to and from his Oxfordshire home as a result of late or very early meetings. He has claimed £77,823.35 in expenses over the past five years.

Though Mr Thompson said the BBC had published the details in order to be open with the public, he said that pay packets agreed with big names and funded by the taxpayer, including Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman, would remain secret.

“It has been our view that it does not make sense for the BBC to disclose individual talent fees,” he said.

“Why? We operate in an industry where confidentiality is the norm in which only one of our competitors is themselves subject to Freedom of Information. There’s a real danger that talent would migrate to broadcasters where confidential information about how much they are paid will not be disclosed.”

The Tories hinted that they would subject the BBC to a budget squeeze in the wake of the claims. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow Culture Secretary said that the embarrassment caused over the publication of the claims, along with the prospect of a less generous financing deal under the next government, would see the lavish claims disappear.

“At this time, it’s not the best time for MPs to be criticising other people over expenses, but I think what this demonstrates is that the best way to make sure people are wise to the way they use public money is transparency,” he said. “The combination of that with a new negotiation over the licence fee in 2013 will put the BBC under huge pressure to be incredibly careful with its spending.”

John Mann, the Labour MP who has campaigned over the publication of expenses for MPs, said last night that the BBC needed to go “further down the line” in exposing the way taxpayers’ money was spent.

“The more is published, the better behaviour we will get,” he said. “Everyone needs to justify what they are spending public money on. The public has a right to know. This is the start of a revolution that will spread throughout the public services.”

Don Foster, the Culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said that “the veil of secrecy” over spending also needed to be lifted on spending by executives at Channel 4, which is publicly owned, and the industry’s regulator, Ofcom.

He also called on the National Audit Office to be allowed to investigate the BBC’s spending on big- name stars without revealing the value of their contracts in its findings…

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



European Leaders Mark Iron Curtain Fall in Hungary

BUDAPEST, Hungary — European leaders marked the 20th anniversary of the symbolic fall of the Iron Curtain, often described as the first crack in the Berlin Wall and one of the key episodes leading to the end of communism in Eastern Europe, in Budapest on Saturday.

The presidents of Germany, Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Switzerland, as well as high-ranking officials from Poland, Britain and more than 20 other countries will participate in a commemorative session at the Hungarian parliament and a gala event at the Hungarian State Opera House.

On June 27, 1989, the then-foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through some barbed wire on the border between the two countries, putting a symbolic end to a physical and psychological boundary of which by then there was little left.

“Looking at the entire chain of events, we rightfully and deservingly celebrate June 27 as the day in which the partitioning of Europe came to an end,” Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom said at the start of the special session in parliament. “We have every reason to celebrate together. The cut barbed wire fence was an immediate symbol that helped the whole world understand what was happening here in the center of Europe.”

Hungary had begun to dismantle the Iron Curtain nearly two months earlier, on May 2, 1989 — partly because border guards said it was in such poor condition that even small animals were setting off false alarms along the electrified fence.

With most of it already gone, officials had trouble finding even a small section of the Iron Curtain for Horn and Mock’s staged photo opportunity with wire cutters.

“What happened at the end of June was a nice symbolic gesture … but the border continued to be strictly controlled,” Swiss-Hungarian journalist and historian Andreas Oplatka said on state radio.

Still, pictures of the event were published around the world and inspired tens of thousands of East Germans to leave their country, find temporary refuge in Hungary, Poland or Czechoslovakia and wait for an opportunity to travel to West Germany.

By the end of the summer, thousands of East German “tourists” were living in tents on the grounds of the West German embassy in Budapest and in several other locations around the city, including church yards and the site of a communist youth camp.

After allowing some of the “Ossies” to leave for West Germany via Austria in August and then some more a few weeks later, Hungary finally decided to let all East Germans out from Sept. 11, 1989.

Within two months, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany’s reunification was formalized in October 1990.

On Saturday, German President Horst Koehler thanked the Hungarians for their solidarity with the East Germans and their contributions to German unity.

“I would like to express my gratitude to the Hungarian people for their bravery, attitude and support toward the East Germans,” Koehler said.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer drew parallels between the 1989 transition to democracy in Eastern Europe and the current protests in Iran.

“1989 was a dramatic year but it had a peaceful outcome,” Fischer said.. “No dictatorship, however solid it may seem, can ever feel truly safe.”

“These were events which can motivate people in Iran to feel that their democratic opinions can be expressed,” Fischer said, drawing applause from hundreds of guests in the upper chamber of Hungary’s parliament on the banks of the Danube River.

Speaking at a Friday evening memorial on the border with Hungary, Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger characterized the 1989 events as “the great triumph of the citizens of the former Eastern Bloc states.”

“Today, watchtowers and barbed wire are a part of the past. The ‘peace project Europe’ has prevailed with much success,” Spindelegger said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



France: Veil Flouts Secular Principles Says Mosque Chief

Paris, 23 June (AKI) — French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s rejection of the burka and the face veil are “in keeping with the republican spirit of secularism,” according to the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, quoted by media.

Boubakeur said he supported a proposal by French MPs for a panel of deputies to look at the wearing of the burka “on the condition that they listen to what the experts on Islam have to say”.

The burka marked “a return towards Islam’s past, in line with the preaching and vision of fundamentalists” added Boubakeur (photo).

But he also said many women chose to wear a full-body covering as a way of asserting their Muslim identity in host societies they felt were hostile to any kind of Islamic headscarf.

In a speech he gave at the Palace of Versailles on Monday, Sarkozy said that the burka or head-to-toe Islamic garment for women was not a religious symbol but one of oppression.

“The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,” he told members of both parliamentary houses gathered for his speech.

Sarkozy’s comments followed an appeal last week by 65 French MPs for a parliamentary commission to examine whether Muslim women who cover themselves fully in public undermine the secular tradition in France as well as women’s rights.

France’s housing minister Fadela Amara, a Muslim-born women’s rights campaigner, weighed into the debate saying “we must do everything to stop burkas from spreading, in the name of democracy, of the republic, of respect for women.”

“The worrying thing is that we are seeing more and more of them,” she said, describing the burka as “a kind of tomb for women.”

But the head of the official French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), Mohammed Moussaoui, insisted full-body veils remain a rare exception among France’s Muslim community, Europe’s largest.

An inquiry by a French parliamentary commission would be “a way of stigmatising Islam and the Muslims of France,” he said.

Moussaoui’s view was shared by Ahmed Jallah, head of the European Institute of Humanities in Paris, who said he was “stunned” by Sarkozy’s comments.

Amid intense public debate, a 2004 law outlawed religious symbols in French schools. These included the Islamic veil, Sikh turbans, prominent Christian crosses and Jewish Stars of David.

Youths in high-immigrant areas of France’s inner cities rioted for several weeks in 2005, after two youths were electrocuted in the northern Parisian suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois during a police pursuit.

Analysts say high unemployment, poor public services and overcrowding in schools were some of the root causes of the problems plaguing the economically deprived suburbs of Paris and other major French cities.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Gordon Brown’s Bid to Lead World on Global Warming

Gordon Brown yesterday bid to lead the world in tackling global warming by launching a groundbreaking initiative to set up a 100bn dollar-a-year fund, rescuing deadlocked international negotiations on a new climate treaty.

In a landmark speech in London the Prime Minister publically broke with the position of other developed countries by proposing that they provide “around 100 billion dollars” (£60bn) a year to help developing nations combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

It would be used to help fund their measures both to reduce their emissions of the pollution that causes global warming and to defend themselves against the consequences of increasing temperatures and rising seas.

Such financial aid is one of the key Third World demands in the negotiations, but until now no rich country has been prepared to make a concrete response. It has been one of the main reasons why talks convened by the United Nations — which two weeks ago concluded their second abortive session so far this year in Bonn, Germany — have so far failed to make progress.

Setting out the Government’s manifesto for international climate change talks in Copenhagen at the end of the year, the Prime Minister said it was essential to cap damaging carbon emissions in order to stabilise global warming.

Speaking at the manifesto launch at London Zoo, Mr Brown committed Britain to paying its “fair share” of the global total and said he expected other developed countries to do the same.

“Over recent years the world has woken to the reality of climate change. But the fact is that we have not yet joined together to act against it. Copenhagen must be the moment we do so,” he said.

“If we act now, if we act together, if we act with vision and resolve, success at Copenhagen is within reach. But if we falter, the earth itself will be at risk.”

Mr Brown’s initiative was immediately welcomed yesterday by Denmark — which will host the crucial final session of the negotiations in Copenhagen in December — and by the key developing world governments of Bangladesh and the Maldives, two of the countries most threatened by inundation from the higher sea levels that will result from global warming.

And it received unaccustomed praise from hitherto critical environmental pressure groups. WWF-UK (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) said Britain should be “loudly applauded for being the first country to begin to break the stalemate that has dogged international talks.”

Greenpeace added that “by becoming the first major leader to put a figure on how much money is needed” the Prime Minister “has shown signs of leadership on climate change that have so far been sorely lacking”.

Mr Brown will now phone the leaders due to attend a climate change summit in Italy next month — starting with President Obama — to muster support for the plan. The summit, which will immediately follow the annual meeting of the heads of G8 countries, will bring together major developed and developing nations in an attempt to breathe new life into the UN negotiations.

So far European finance ministers have twice refused to come up with a figure for the amount of money they are prepared to offer, fearing that it will only be bid up by Third World countries.

Some goverments, including France, tried to persuade Mr Brown not to make today’s announcement. But he decided that it was needed both to revive the negotiations and to provide a realistic proposal around on which the talks could focus.

In his speech, the Prime Minsiter described the £100 billion a year sum as “a working figure” and “a credible number against which countries can develop their plans”.

He added that the negotiations “are not moving at the pace we need” and hoped his proposal would “help us move forward towards agreement.”

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Italy: Bonino, Burqa is Against Principle of Responsibility

(ANSAmed) — ROME, JUNE 24 — The Deputy Speaker of the Italian Senate, Emma Bonino has today spoken out against the burqa, saying that “in a liberal society in which the principle of individual responsibility rules, it is not acceptable to go around without being able to be recognised, so therefore neither the niqab nor the burqa”. Bonino was addressing a seminar entitled ‘The Arab Woman in the 21st Century: Prospects for Gender Equality’, set up by the Italian Institute for Africa and the East (ISIAO), the League of Arab States and the Foreign Ministry. Religion does not even enter the equation according to Bonino, not that you can make an issue over state secularism like in France “seeing as we even have crucifixes in courtrooms”. Instead, reiterated Bonino, it is “a question of individual responsibility, which must be present everywhere, in the street, at the bar, and of respect for the rules and the law”. As for the situation of women in the Arab world, the deputy speaker said that “here, a stereotyped image prevails, whilst the lives of women in Turkey or Morocco are very different to the lives of those living in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the road of gender equality is an uphill one in Italy too, where women’s status is absolutely pathetic. Just think about access to the job market compared to the European Union average, the gap between the North and the South, the chance of taking on leadership roles. Indeed, the women of Italy are making a silent revolution — that of not having children any more”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Police Close in on Mafia Kingpin

Arrests ‘drying up water where Messina Denaro swims’

(ANSA) — Trapani, June 16 — Thirteen Mafia suspects were arrested Tuesday in an operation police said had helped them close the net on fugitive kingpin Matteo Messina Denaro.

“Today’s operation is part of a strategy of capturing Messina Denaro by drying up the water he swims in,” said Palermo Chief Prosecutor Francesco Messineo.

The arrests took place in the provinces of Trapani, Palermo, Rome and Piacenza.

The 13 had been active in helping the 47-year-old Messina Denaro elude capture, police said.

Some 37 inmates in 15 jails were also searched after evidence they had been sending messages to Messina Denaro, who is believed to be the Sicilian Mafia’s top boss.

The Cosa Nostra chieftain based in this western Sicilian city, who has been on the run since 1993, is believed to be expanding his criminal empire abroad and police found evidence of trips to Austria, Greece, Spain and Tunisia.

Messina Denaro is suspected of travelling under fake ID papers supplied by the Rome-based head of a showbiz security firm, Domenico Nardo.

Nardo was arrested along with the courier suspected of taking messages from Trapani to Palermo in the aftermath of the April 2006 arrest of long-time fugitive superboss Bernardo Provenzano.

Palermo boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo appeared to be vying with Messina Denaro for control of Cosa Nostra but his arrest in November 2007 has left the scene clear for the Trapani boss to take command, police say.

Also arrested in Tuesday’s sweep, which involved 300 police, was a former finance guard, Achille Felli, who had been working as an aide to a leading former member of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Carlo Vizzini.

Vizzini, who sacked Felli after his arrest, recently stepped down after being named in a probe into the suspected misappropriation of a hoard left by Vito Ciancimino, Sicily’s first mayor to be arrested for Mafia links.

Messina Denaro, who is reportedly idolised by Cosa Nostra younger troops because of his charisma and ruthlessness, has managed to become one of the world’s top drug dealers despite being on the run for 16 years, the FBI says.

Notes found in Provenzano’s farm hideout in 2006 showed that the Trapani boss had been in constant touch with the ‘boss of bosses’.

The young boss sent more messages than any other Mafia leader to the sheepfarm outside Corleone where Provenzano, 73, was smoked out after 43 years in hiding.

In all of them he addressed the widely venerated Don in “intimate” terms and signed off each note as “your nephew Alessio”.

All these were signs that the Armani-clad, Ray-Ban-wearing ‘playboy’ had poked his nose in front of the older Palermo rackets king Lo Piccolo in the line of Mob succession, police said.

Denaro may look like a slick manager on the make, police say, but he sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months pregnant girlfriend.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Nazi SS Officers Sentenced to Life for Second World War Massacre in Italy

Nine former members of the Nazi SS were sentenced to life in prison for a series of massacres during the Second World War by an Italian court, according to news reports.

The court also ordered Germany to pay damages to some of the families of the hundreds of victims, the ANSA news agency reported.

The nine suspects, aged between 84 and 90 were tried in absentia and found guilty of the murders of more than 350 civilians in the summer of 1944..

A tenth defendant was acquitted and another died during the trial, the agency said.

The victims, including many women and children, were rounded up by Nazi troops ostensibly on the hunt for partisans and shot in separate killings that occurred in the area around the Tuscan town of Fivizzano in August, 1944.

Germany will have to pay damages to some fifty families of the victims, ANSA said. The total amount will be fixed later, though the court ruled an initial â‚1.25 million (£1 million) should be paid immediately, the agency reported.

Italian law allows victims and their relatives to attach civil lawsuits to criminal cases to obtain damages. It is not the first time a court has ordered Germany to pay compensation for Nazi massacres and for the thousands of Italians sent to Nazi Germany as slave labourers during the war.

In some cases, judges have suggested that, if the government refuses to pay, German assets in Italy could be auctioned off.

The compensation suits have become a sensitive issue in Italian-German relations.

Germany has refused to pay, arguing that, under international law, claims by individuals cannot be used to pursue compensation from nations and that Germany has already paid reparations for Nazi crimes under international treaties with Italy.

German has also taken the matter to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Spain: Bishops, State Saves Billions Thanks to Church

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 9 — The Spanish government saves “several dozen million euros per year” thanks to the church, and 3.372 billion thanks to the education sector alone, not counting health care, cultural, liturgical, and pastoral assistance, said the vice-secretary for economic affairs of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Fernando Jimenez Barriocanal, presenting the 2007 “Annual record of the activities of the church in Spain”. Barriocanal, cited by El Mundo’s website, said that almost 20,000 Spanish priests dedicate “over 46 million hours of spiritual attention to people in Spain”, performing over 5 million Eucharistic ceremonies per year and teaching “about one million children and young individuals in parishes”. With a notary’s precision, he explained that each year in Spain, 325,271 baptisms are celebrated, 256,587 first communions, 96,766 confirmations, and 113,187 marriages, “not counting confessions”. The Catholic church may even be in a crisis in the former “spiritual reserve” of the West, but priests still have plenty of work. In the education field alone, the church is present with 6,022 private or state-recognised schools, where 1,277,256 students are educated. Barriocanal stressed that in this way, the Catholic church allows the state to save three billion euros per year “because the cost of a seat in a public school is almost double that in a state-recognised school “managed by the ecclesiastical community”. In the cultural sector, ecclesiastical institutions own 30% of the public monuments in Spain, which “is not a source of revenue”, said Barriocanal, it is a service to the community that costs the church 54 million euros per year in restorations. The church also plays an important role with its charities and assistance networks, such as Caritas, which helps almost 3 million people in Spain per year. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Iran Slams ‘Terrorist Attack’ On Embassy

Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, described a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Stockholm on Friday as a “terrorist attack” after around 100 protesters stormed the compound and a staff member was injured.

Iran summoned Swedish Ambassador Magnus Werndstedt following the incident.

“Following the terrorist attack by anti-revolutionary groups on Iran’s embassy in Stockholm on Friday, the Swedish ambassador was summoned immediately,” the IRNA report said.

The employee, whose nationality was not known, was hurt when protesters entered the compound and attacked him, according to Stockholm police.

He was punched and kicked and received medical attention at the embassy.

The protest outside the Iranian embassy in Stockholm broke out on Friday afternoon. Around 150 demonstrators, some of them wearing masks, began throwing rocks and trying to break into the embassy.

“People were yelling chants and cheers at the Iranian embassy for about an hour, and then about an hour later around 100 of the protesters entered the embassy compound through a gate,” Massood Mafan, a witness at the scene, told news agency TT.

“In the building itself they were stopped by guards.”

Mafan said that he had seen at least three people who were injured, including an older woman who was hit in the back with a nightstick.

The three to four police offers who were initially at the scene couldn’t stop the protesters from storming the embassy. Around 20 patrol cars were later dispatched to the scene.

“It was a little chaotic out there. We have had demonstrations there for several days and it has been extremely calm. But (then) they started to put on masks and throw rocks and try to break into the compound,” said Janne Hedlund, commander on duty at the Stockholm police.

By 6:30 pm the situation outside the embassy was calm. Between 150 and 200 people remained outside yelling chants.

“We are here because we demand that Sweden shut down the embassy and suspend all relations with Iran,” Mohammad Mohammad Bagheri, 29, told TT.

Ulf Höglund of the Stockholm police said the number of protesters inside the compound remains unconfirmed. Two people have been arrested on suspicion of vandalism.

According to police, there is no information about injured protesters, but one woman showed bruises she claimed were from a baton.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Vatican: Report Raises Questions About Internal Debate

Vatican City, 25 June (AKI) — The Vatican is beset by a number of internal conflicts that risk paralysing the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, according to a report in the Italian magazine Panorama. The weekly magazine, due to be published on Friday, says several cardinals in senior positions are divided over issues including dialogue with China, relations with the Jews and the beatification of former pope John Paul II.

Inside the Vatican, the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Levada, is reported to be in conflict with the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Antonio Canizares.

Former secretary of state Angelo Sodano and former personal secretary of Pope John Paul II, Stanislao Dziwisz, are also reported to be “duelling”, while another cardinal Achille Silvestrini is accused of challenging the power of the Vatican’s influential secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone.

According to the article Pope Benedict has had positive medical tests in recent weeks, including a magnetic resonance test and his heart is said to be functioning well.

However, the magazine article is suggesting that manoeuvres have already begun for the next papal conclave to determine his successor.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Tunisia: Conference Warns of Decline in Arabic Instruction

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JUNE 25 — In a conference held in Tunis by the Arab Organisation for Education, Culture and Science (ALESCO), scholars and specialists from nine Arab countries have said that the teaching of the Arabic language is in decline. The participants looked into the possibility of setting in motion an ALESCO-run project for various methodologies used for Arabic instruction, for the use of information technology and linguistic research. The experts all agreed that the Arabic language is suffering due to insufficient teaching and a mediocre use of the language itself, in particular in modern communications and on the internet, and that it must be strengthened at all educational levels for wide-ranging social and linguistic development. According to ALESCO (which has its head offices in Tunis) director Mohammed Aziz ben Achour, there is an urgent need to restructure the teaching of the Arabic language in universities and institutions. At the end of the works a general recommendation was released to create a national centre in Tunis in charge of promoting the teaching and learning of the Arabic language. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



USCIRF Expresses Concern Over Reported Attacks on Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is concerned at reports of attacks targeting Coptic Orthodox Christians in the small Egyptian village of Ezbet Boshra-East.

USCIRF has learned that Egyptian authorities reportedly have released from custody all those suspects who were originally arrested earlier this week. Local authorities reportedly are conducting an ongoing investigation even though persons involved in the violence appear to be free.

“This latest incident is another example of the upsurge of violence against Coptic Christians we have seen in the past few years,” said Felice D. Gaer, chair of the Commission. “The Commission has long expressed concern that the Egyptian government does not do enough to protect Christians and their property in Egypt, nor does the government adequately bring perpetrators of such violence to justice.”

On June 21, Muslim villagers looted and attacked private homes and a building used for Christian gatherings and religious services in Ezbet Boshra-East. According to reports, a group of Christians from Cairo were visiting a pastor who lives in the building. This apparently caught the attention of local residents, particularly Muslims. Soon after, it is alleged that a group of Muslims began looting. Several Christians and Muslims sustained injuries and some of the homes and the building were damaged. In addition, crops were uprooted by Muslim rioters on property owned by Christian farmers. A curfew reportedly is in place, although most Christians remain in their homes for fear of additional attacks.

Initial reports say that state security services did little to prevent the violence from occurring. This repeats the established pattern that security services do not adequately protect Christian citizens in many localities.

For all Christians in Egypt, government permission is required to build a new church or repair an existing one, and the approval process for church construction is time-consuming and inflexible. Even some permits that have been approved cannot be acted upon because of interference by the state security services at both the local and national levels.

“The Commission recommends that the Egyptian government implement procedures to ensure that all places of worship are subject to the same transparent, non-discriminatory, and efficient regulations regarding construction and maintenance,” said Ms. Gaer. “If the Egyptian government would pass and implement such a law, it may help in stemming some of the violence targeting Christians who are forced to convert private homes and buildings into churches because they cannot get permission to build an appropriate place of worship.”

Egypt has been cited by the USCIRF “Watch List” as a country with serious religious freedom violations, including widespread problems of discrimination, intolerance, and other human rights violations against members of religious minorities, as well as non-conforming Muslims.

[Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Gilad Shalit Soon to be Transferred to Egypt

The captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, might be transferred to Egypt very soon as part of a prisoner-exchange deal with the Hamas movement.

The move is considered as the ‘first step’ towards a prisoner-swap deal mediated by Egypt, and conducted in cooperation with the United States and Syria.

According to the plan, Shalit will be entrusted to the Egyptian intelligence, and his parents will be allowed to visit him. He will be returned to Israel after an agreement is reached regarding the list of Hamas prisoners to be released.

Besides prisoner exchange, the deal would also include internal Palestinian reconciliation as well as Israel’s opening of the Gaza crossings.

Meanwhile, Egyptian security officials have confirmed that a deal on the issue would be signed by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other factions by July 7.

The notion to transfer Shalit to Egypt in exchange for the release of Palestinian captives was raised about a year ago when former US president Jimmy Carter paid visits to Damascus, al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Gaza.

In exchange for the soldier, Hamas has demanded the release of 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, including about 450 long-serving inmates.

Gilad Shalit — now 22 — was captured on June 25, 2006 as Israeli forces engaged in a cross-border raid with Palestinian resistance fighters in June 2006.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



UCSB Prof Cleared of Any Misconduct

A UC Santa Barbara professor of sociology who drew national attention for sending materials to his students that compared Israeli actions against Palestinians to Nazi abuses during the Holocaust has been cleared of any wrongdoing by university officials after a lengthy investigation.

A committee set up to investigate alleged faculty misconduct found no cause to take disciplinary action against professor William Robinson, according to a letter sent to the professor on Wednesday from Gene Lucas, the university’s executive vice chancellor.

“I have accepted the findings of the charges committee,” Lucas wrote in the short, straightforward message. “Accordingly, this matter is now terminated.”

In the wake of the decision, an organization established to defend Robinson criticized UCSB for not clearing his name earlier, while critics of the professor called the decision “disturbing” and called for greater protection of the academic rights of students.

Robinson has been at the center of a whirlwind of discussion surrounding academic freedom and allegations of anti-Semitism since January, when he sent an email to students in a course on sociology and globalization that included a photo essay comparing images of Israeli abuse to photos of Nazi atrocities.

Two students dropped the course and issued formal complaints against the professor, saying they felt intimidated by the emailed material, which Robinson countered was designed to prompt open discussion and debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A student-led group calling itself the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB jumped to the professor’s defense and questioned the lengthy investigation into what it deemed a clear-cut case of academic freedom.

“University officials might believe this case is closed, but we will pursue the matter until full justice is achieved,” Yousef Baker, a spokesman for the group, said in a news release yesterday. “Unless those that violated university procedures and effectively politicized this case are held accountable and punished accordingly, this episode will have set a precedent for impunity and will leave in place a chilling atmosphere of censorship on campus.”

Although he could not be reached yesterday, Robinson said in the same statement that he is waiting for a public apology from the university to clear his name, adding that university officials acted “deceitfully and shamelessly.”

Paul Desruisseaux, vice chancellor of public affairs for UCSB, said the university couldn’t comment on the specific case, citing privacy policies surrounding personnel matters.

“We would like to underscore that the university places great importance on the defense of academic freedom,” he said. “That isn’t incompatible with an inquiry into whether the Faculty Code was violated.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which called on the university to look into possible faculty wrongdoing on the part of Robinson, expressed disappointment with the decision to drop any possible disciplinary action against the professor.

Cyndi Silverman, the ADL’s regional director, said the issue was improperly cast as a discussion of protecting academic freedom when it should have been approached from the viewpoint of student rights being violated.

“Not pursuing this issue by conducting a further investigation, as the committee decided, sends a disturbing message that only the rights of faculty are to be respected, not the rights of individual students,” she said in a news release. “If students who are understandably feeling intimidated and excluded by actions such as these by a faculty member — this was not a mere difference of opinion about what happened in Gaza — conclude that there is no recourse for their concerns, it will create a climate in which true academic freedom will not be able to endure.”

The email in question went out to students in Robinson’s Sociology of Globalization course on January 19.

One of the students who dropped the course and filed a complaint stated that she found the material “intimidating,” “disgusting,” and “horrific,” particularly one passage that stated, “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw.”

The ADL also sent a sternly worded message to Robinson and the university in the weeks after the professor sent out the email, calling the juxtaposition of Nazis and Israelis “offensive” and arguing that no accurate comparison can be made between the two groups.

“We also think it is important to note that the tone and extreme views presented in your email were intimidating to students and likely chilled thoughtful discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” according to the ADL statement.

However, Robinson responded to the official complaint and corresponding inquiry into any possible misconduct by noting that his classes are designed to spark open debate on global affairs, even if the views expressed by students are contrary to his own.

He called any the investigation “a grave an ominous threat to academic freedom on this campus and in the University of California, with potentially chilling effects not only on said academic freedom but as well on the ability of the university community to engage in open debate and exchange of ideas on contemporary matters free from intimidation and the threat of sanctions.”

Robinson said he plans to file his own grievance with the university’s Academic Senate for alleged violations of his faculty rights.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Jihadist Urges Muslim Soldiers to Cannibalism

Muslim fighters are being told they may be justified in cannibalizing U.S. soldiers, it emerged Friday.

The chilling message is contained in a recent jihadist Internet entry that quotes from the work of a prominent jihadist ideologue, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.

In one section of his work, Maqdisi discusses the idea of having to do something that is otherwise forbidden, including eating food “sacrificed for an idol,” according to the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group, which translates jihadist “chat” sites. Maqdisi adds some scholars believe this has evolved to mean that Muslims, faced with hunger, are allowed to kill an enemy and “cannibalize him.”

In a bid to instil fear into U.S. soldiers, the entry says Americans should be told that Muslim fighters “smack their lips to eat the flesh of . . . the eaters of hamburgers and Pepsi.”

But some jihadist respondents made light of the entry, which appeared on the al-Fallujah forum June 12. “If we are forced to eat Americans, we will make them (into) kabsa,” said one posting, referring to a family of rice dishes served mainly in Saudi Arabia. This contributor said the kabsa would have “the taste of gunpowder,” and added that the “limbs of apostates” could be turned into appetizers.

Another jihadist said the “slaughter” of Americans must be carried out in accordance with Shariah law, and posted a picture of the beheading of Nick Berg, an American businessman murdered in Iraq in 2004 after he went there to seek telecommunications work.

           — Hat tip: Islam in Action [Return to headlines]



Lebanon: First Italian Ice Cream Shop Opens in Beirut

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, JUNE 23 — To export Italian culture to the Mediterranean through handmade ice cream, one of the country’s marks of excellence, is the purpose of the managers of ‘Franco Gelato & Caffe”, the “first genuine Italian ice cream shop” to open in Beirut today. And this is simply the first stage of a plan to expand into the region. Francesco Cesario, one of the managers of Franco Gelato, guaranteed that “The development of our product is followed, step by step, by experts working with the Carpigiani Ice Cream University”. Speaking to ANSA from the second floor of the ice cream shop located in the central Hamra street, Cesario added that “there are dozens of flavours, creams and fruit, crushed ice drinks, and a wide variety of coffees: these are our main products. Our aim is not only to sell ice cream, but also to spread Italian culture in Lebanon and the regions by setting up events to attract a growing local crowd. In future we plan on opening in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities”. Cesario is in business with two Lebanese entrepreneurs. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Money Floods Out of Iran as Election Crisis Continues

Millions of pounds in private wealth has begun flooding out of Iran in the wake of mass demonstrations which have paralysed commercial life after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fears of a new round of crippling sanctions are also thought to have fuelled the movement of money out of the country.

Western intelligence agencies have reported that prominent private businesses and wealthy families have moved tens of millions of dollars out of Iranian banks into overseas accounts.

The Italian foreign intelligence service is said to have detected multiple transactions, each of up to $10 million dollars, by Iran’s big four banks on behalf of Iranian families seeking a safe haven for funds.

Iran has already been hit by three rounds of financial sanctions from the UN over its nuclear programme, which have limited its access to international finance and world trade

A spokesman for HM Treasury hinted that further action could be taken, particularly in relation to Mojbata Khamenei, the powerful son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who runs his father’s office.

“We do not have this person on the sanctions list and while we do put people on the list on human rights grounds we do it very much in conjunction with the EU and the UN,” the spokesman said.

“We can be very aggressive in pushing within those bodies, though I’m not saying we’re doing so in this case.”

It came as one of Iran’s leading foreign investors, the Austrian oil and gas firm OMV, said it would not invest any more money in a large offshore gas project and gave warning that it would pull out of the country if Iran demanded more cash.

Helmut Langanger, its Iran representative, said the political environment would have to improve before it put any move money into the giant South Pars offshore gas field.

“They are proceeding with the project on their own without us,” he said.

In the US, Republican congressman Mark Kirk has claimed there is growing support for a bill he is sponsoring which would strip American support for foreign companies supplying refined petroleum to Iran.

Iran is a large oil producer but decades of financial isolation means it must import petrol and other end products from abroad.

Reliance, the Indian operator, provides one-third of Iran’s daily needs while also enjoying a massive trade loan from the US.

Another bill that would exclude companies involved in the trade from doing business in the US was put on hold earlier this year as a gesture from President Barack Obama to improve relations.

The fallout from the pro-democracy demonstrations is expected to embroil Iran and the Gulf in a new cycle of instability.

Sami Alfaraj, a leading Gulf expert, warned Iran was unpredictable and that meant the stability of the oil-rich region was in the balance.

“Iran could launch foreign attacks,” the director of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies said. “It could disrupt the shipping lanes of the Gulf, drive up the cost of doing business, use its cells in Egypt and Iraq or Jordan to create havoc, trigger a new confrontation with Israel. All these options would have an economic impact. We have all reached an affinity of threat from Iran.”

The leading contender in the rigged presidential election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi has targeted the influential business class by calling on merchants to close their businesses. Tehran’s bazaar, which covers two square miles and plays an economic role similar to the City of London, is mostly closed but some shops have opened.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Obama’s Praise for Iran’s Mousavi

US President Barack Obama has praised the opposition candidate in Iran’s disputed presidential election.

Mr Obama said Mir Hossein Mousavi had captured the imagination of groups in Iran that were interested in opening up to the world.

He spoke of the bravery of protesters in the face of “outrageous” violence.

Mr Obama’s comments came hours after foreign ministers from the G8 nations issued a statement “deploring” the post-election violence in Iran.

In Iran itself, a spokesman for the powerful Guardian Council — which is due to give its final ruling on the election on Sunday — said there had been no election fraud.

And a member of Iran’s top clerical body urged the judiciary to deal ruthlessly with the leaders of the protests.

Some 17 people are thought to have died in street protests in the past two weeks, and Tehran has imposed severe restrictions on journalists and the internet.

Rights group Amnesty International called on Iranian leaders to release more than two dozen journalists arrested since the polls.

‘Condemn it’

Mr Obama made his comments at a news conference in Washington after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

IRAN UNREST

12 June Presidential election saw incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected with 63% of vote

Main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi called for result to be annulled for electoral fraud

Street protests saw at least 17 people killed and foreign media restricted

Mr Mousavi had become the representative of protesters on the streets who, he said, had displayed “extraordinary courage”.

“The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous,” Mr Obama said. “In spite of the government’s efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it and we condemn it.”

In Italy, meanwhile, G8 foreign ministers said they respected the sovereignty of Iran, but deplored the post-electoral violence.

“We express our solidarity with those who have suffered repression while peacefully demonstrating and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights,” their statement said.

“The crisis should be settled soon through democratic dialogue and peaceful means.”

But the G8 leaders said the door to dialogue with Iran must remain open. And the G8’s comments were not as strong as France and Italy had wanted, after Russia warned against isolating Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said engagement with Iran was “the key word”.

He stressed the need to focus on “the main task — to move toward resolving the issues of the Iranian nuclear programme”.

ANALYSIS

Jeremy Bowen BBC News, Tehran

The Guardian Council is due to give its definitive verdict on Sunday.

But the remarks by its spokesman are yet another indication that it will be a formality.

The question though is whether the fracture in the ruling elite that this crisis has caused will heal.

When you ask Iranians about the way this might go, a phrase keeps cropping up. They say it might seem quiet to an outsider but there is fire below the ashes.

Before the G8 issued its statement, a spokesman for Iran’s top election body, the Guardian Council, said the vote had been fair.

“We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had,” Abbasali Kadkhodai told Irna news agency.

Meanwhile, a senior hard-line cleric said in his Friday sermon that the leaders of the protests should be dealt with “severely and ruthlessly”.

“I want the judiciary to… punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson,” Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran university in comments broadcast nationwide

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



Slaughter of Foreigners in Yemen Bears Mark of Former Gitmo Detainee, Say Experts

The fate of three of nine foreigners abducted in Yemen last week is known — their bodies were found, shot execution style. The whereabouts of the other six — including three children under the age of 6 — remain a mystery.

But terrorism experts say their abductors and killers are almost certainly not a mystery. They say the crimes bear the mark of Al Qaeda, and they fear they are the handiwork of the international terror organization’s No. 2 man in the Arabian Peninsula: Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamic extremist who once was in American custody — but who was released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And if al-Shihri is behind the gruesome murders and abductions, they say, it raises grave concerns that the scheduled January 2010 closing of the Guantanamo prison and the release of most of its prisoners to foreign countries will galvanize Al Qaeda and compromise American national security.

The nine foreigners — four German adults, three small German children, a British man and a South Korean woman — were abducted on June 12 after they ventured outside the city of Saada without their required police escorts, according to a spokesman from the Yemeni Embassy in Washington. Days later the bodies of Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald, German nurses in training, and Eom Young-sun of South Korea were found shot execution style in the Noshour Valley in the province of Saada, an area known to be a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity.

Stumpp and Gruenwald attended a Bible school, and Young attended a Christian missionary school in South Korea. Other members of the group had ties to missionary organizations, and all six adults worked for World Wide Services Foundation, a Dutch international medical relief group.

No one has claimed responsibility for the abductions and murders, but experts say killing women and children is considered off-limits among many jihadist groups — though not to al-Shihri, a Saudi national who was released from Guantanamo in November 2007 and sent to a Saudi Arabian “rehabilitation” program for jihadists. It wasn’t long before a “cured” al-Shihri was released from the program, crossed into Yemen and rejoined Al Qaeda, with whom he quickly rose to deputy commander.

In addition to last week’s kidnappings, he is believed to have been behind the September attacks that left 16 dead at the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of San’a.

“This bears the marks of al-Shihri’s activity and bears the signs of his beliefs and assumptions of his behavior that are not viewed by other jihadists,” said Robert Spencer, terror expert and director of Jihad Watch, referring to the killing of women and presumed killing of the three small children.

Defense officials said that “while there is suspicion that Said Ali al-Shihri is involved in these latest attacks, we can’t confirm it.”

“There is great presumption of his involvement, but it’s not open and shut,” Spencer said.

“If he believed that these people picnicking in Yemen were aiding in the war against Islam, then he can justify these killings as legitimate — it’s this kind of perspective that this guy holds to, that it’s right to kill people who would normally be considered off-limits,” Spencer said.

“Christians aren’t allowed to proselytize in the Muslim world, and if that’s what was going on here … well then, there you go.”

Gregory Johnsen, the editor of a forthcoming book, “Islam and Insurgency in Yemen,” agreed. “The most likely scenario is that Al Qaeda’s responsible,” he said. “And if it does turn out that Al Qaeda is responsible, then it would be that al-Shihri had a hand in the operation whether behind the scenes or up front.”

And that involvement is an ominous sign for critics, who say the release of detainees from Guantanamo, under President Obama’s plan to close the detention center by January 2010, could lead to future and more severe terrorist attacks.

The United States is negotiating with Yemen, according to Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in Washington, over the possible transfer of the more than 100 Yemeni nationals currently behind bars in Gitmo.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Ranking Member on the House Homeland Security Committee, opposes closing Gitmo and says Obama is rushing “helter skelter” to find homes for the remaining detainees to meet his “arbitrary deadline,” which he says may come at the cost of national security.

“The president’s policies are very very disturbing. He appears to have decided to close Guantanamo without any idea of where these detainees are going to go and is now trying desperately to find countries and places for these people to go,” King told FOXNews.com.

“By far largest number of detainees comes from Yemen, and they are hardcore dangerous people. Sending them back to Yemen, where prisoners who have been held there before somewhere magically escaped from prison, and is in many ways the centerpiece of the Al Qaeda movement — returning them to Yemen is just inviting disaster.

“Sending them to Saudi Arabia to the rehabilitation center is just putting off the inevitable threat to the United States,” King said. “I am very concerned that these prisoners will soon be back in the battlefield hurting Americans.”

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Sex Workers Seek to Establish a Trade Union

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, JUNE 26 — Activists and sex workers in Turkey are working on a project to establish Turkey’s first sex workers union, daily Hurriyet reports. Several activists plan to establish a trade union to protect the health, security and education rights of sex workers in Turkey, where the majority of them work without licenses or social security. “People should have the right to voluntarily choose to be a sex worker and to have sovereignty over his or her body”, Buse Kilickaya, an activist from Ankara-based Pembe Hayat Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender association (LGBT), said. “We are against forced sex labor but this is the oldest profession on earth and this will continue to be done by some people; this is why those people’s rights need to be protected”, the activist declared. Prostitution is mentioned in the Turkish Penal Code and sex workers have to be registered according to the law. “Only 126 sex workers are registered in Istanbul but the real number is much higher”,Muhtar Cokar, a doctor who helps sex workers access free and easy medical support, said. “The number of registered sex workers in Turkey is 3,500 according to police data while Ankara Trade Chamber said there are around 100,000 unregistered”, the doctor revealed. “There is a social consensus that if you are a sex worker then you deserve to be exposed to violence, sexual harassment and discrimination”, Kilickaya said, adding that “this approach has to change”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Court Sentences Man to Lifetime for Killing Italian

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, JUNE 25 — A criminal court in Turkey gave sentenced to life in prison a man who was found guilty of raping and killing an Italian performance artist, Anatolia news agency reports. The Italian artist, Pippa Bacca, was found dead on April 11, 2008 after being raped and then killed by Murat Karatash, a Turkish truck driver. Bacca departed from Milan in March 2008 together with a fellow artist Silvia Moro on a “Brides on Tour” journey, with both wearing bridal gowns and hitchhiking from Italy through southern Europe and the Middle East, with the intention of meeting up together at the end in Jerusalem. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey to ‘Never Give Up’ EU Bid

Turkey has urged France and Germany to back its bid to join the EU, rejecting calls for a special partnership rather than full membership.

“We will never give up,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Brussels.

Turkey’s EU accession talks are going at a glacial pace and risk suspension if Ankara fails to open its ports and airports to Cyprus this year.

France and Germany want to give Turkey a “privileged partnership” with the EU.

But Mr Erdogan insisted “our goal is full membership”.

He also said it was “populist and wrong” to use Turkey’s bid as an election issue.

Some right-wing parties opposed to Turkey’s bid made gains in the recent European Parliament elections.

Slow progress

The BBC’s Oana Lungescu says both opposition inside the EU and insufficient democratic reforms in Turkey are hampering its bid.

Next week will see a small step forward, when Turkey is due to start talks on taxation, one of the 35 areas where it is negotiating EU entry terms.

Turkish diplomats argue that their country is of strategic importance to Europe and that its eventual accession would send a positive signal to the whole Muslim world.

So far, Turkey has opened talks on 10 out of the 35 “negotiation chapters” in the accession process, which started in October 2005.

But eight chapters have been frozen because of Ankara’s refusal to open up its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, an EU member.

Turkey says it will not do this until the EU takes steps to end the Turkish Cypriot community’s economic isolation.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



US Says Turkish Help Needed in the Region

ISTANBUL — Washington is seeking to work with Turkey actively for improving the political stability of Iraq, says a visiting senior American official. Turkey may be also included in the withdrawal plan of US troops from Iraq and in anti-terrorism efforts in Pakistan, she adds

The U.S. administration is attributing a crucial role to Turkey in its withdrawal plan from Iraq and in tackling key terrorism issues in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, a senior American official said Friday.

Washington is seeking to actively work with Turkey on improving the political stability of Iraq and the economic development of the warn-torn country, said Anne Marie Slaughter, the director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department.

“More broadly, it [Iraq] has been a very important market for Turkey before the war. Iraq needs economic development and political stability and [in] both of those areas, Turkey has a very important role [to play],” Slaughter told a group of journalists at a roundtable meeting in Istanbul.

Under a security pact between Baghdad and Washington, the Americans must pull back from Iraqi cities by June 30 and from the entire country by the end of 2011. But the continued violence has raised concerns about the readiness of the Iraqi security forces to protect the people.

‘Equipment bigger problem than troop withdrawal’

“The question of how to move heavy equipment out of Iraq is bigger than that of the pullout of U.S. troops,” Slaughter said, adding that officials have been engaged in talks with relevant countries on the issue.

When asked about the possibility of withdrawing troops or heavy equipment via Turkish territory, she responded: “We are negotiating with various governments about what will be possible or not, which is also a matter for Turkey as well.”

Slaughter is currently visiting Turkey to hold talks with her counterparts on key policy issues, including the Middle East, Pakistan-Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. She arrived Tuesday and is set to leave Saturday. On Tuesday, Slaughter held various talks with officials in Ankara; on Wednesday, she met with representatives of the Turkish business community in Istanbul.

A former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Slaughter was appointed to her State Department post by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January.

Though Slaughter had never traveled to Turkey before being appointed, since January, she has visited the country twice. “That should tell you something about the importance of Turkey in the way President Obama and Secretary Clinton see the world,” she said.

Slaughter also expressed her government’s desire to work with Turkey in tackling key issues facing the world and to see the country as part of the solution.

According to the State Department official, Turkey has an important role to play in the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Syria Ğ and particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan Ğ as well as the Balkans, Caucasus and Black Sea region, as Washington focuses on education and strengthening democracy in those parts of the world.

“Turkey has very important diplomatic roles to play because it has the confidence of the Pakistani government. It also has an important social and educational role to play particularly,” she said. “The Turkish education system is more relevant to the Pakistani education system than the American educational system.” She added that Turkish schools could be important in Pakistan in terms of educating girls.

In regard to Iran and President Obama’s overtures to the country, Slaughter said that the U.S. administration would review its new approach to the Islamic regime once the post-election situation is stabilized in that country. She said the White House was in a wait-and-see situation until Iran has a stable government that it can engage with.

The United States rescinded invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 parties at U.S. embassies following the violent suppression of protests in Iran, she added.

‘Obama seeks more multidimensional Iran policy’

President Obama came under fire over his initial stance on the disputed Iranian elections after he said that his government does not want to be seen as meddling in another country’s internal affairs. Supporters of the reformist candidate launched mass demonstrations in the Iranian capital after incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad overwhelmingly won the elections.

Although the U.S. disagrees with a number of the policies that Iran pursues, the Washington administration does not seek to challenge or change the government of Iran, Slaughter said.

The difference between the administration of former President George W.. Bush and the Obama administration is that the latter seeks a much more multidimensional policy, she said, adding: “There is a perception in Obama’s administration that we have to engage in whole range of issues and we have to be thinking about building ties with societies in many countries..”

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Russia


NATO and Russia Expected to Resume Military Ties

CORFU, Greece — NATO and Russia are set to resume military ties Saturday and agree to cooperate on Afghanistan, counterterrorism and anti-piracy patrols at their first high-level meeting since last year’s war between Russia and Georgia, Western officials said.

Relations between the alliance and the Russian military were frozen in the aftermath of the five-day war last August. Although political ties have thawed considerably over the past five months, there have been no formal military contacts since then.

“I’ve come in an optimistic mood,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said ahead of a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his counterparts from NATO’s 28 member nations on the Greek island of Corfu.

“I expect (the meeting) will be the restart of our relationship, that we can see where we can more intensively work together, not shying away from the differences of opinion that we have,” the NATO leader said.

The talks are being held in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council, a panel set up in 2002 to improve ties between the former Cold War rivals.

The meeting comes as President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev prepare to hold a summit next week, and is likely to reflect the trend toward improved relations.

“What we would like to see is cooperation in areas where we have clearly identified interests,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on usual condition of anonymity. “We hope today’s meeting is the beginning of the process of reviving military-to-military cooperation.”

Despite last year’s disruption of ties with NATO, Russia has continued cooperating with individual NATO nations such as the U.S., France or Germany by allowing them to use Russia’s rail network to resupply international forces in Afghanistan, and its navy has worked with NATO warships on their joint anti-piracy patrols.

Officials said participants are expected to give a go-ahead Saturday for formal military ties to be restarted with meetings of defense ministers and military chiefs of staff.

NATO commanders are particularly interested in Russia’s cooperation on the transshipments of military supplies to the rapidly expanding U.S.-led force in Afghanistan. The normal supply route to landlocked Afghanistan via Pakistan has come under repeated Taliban attack, and the generals are keen to have an alternate overland supply route available through Russia and the Central Asian countries.

Saturday’s meeting coincides with preparations for Afghanistan’s presidential elections Aug. 20, seen as a key indication of whether the U.S. and NATO are succeeding in their efforts to stabilize the nation. NATO also wants Russia to provide more assistance to the war effort, including helping the government army with arms and airlift.

The U.S. official said that in addition to Afghanistan, other areas of military-to-military cooperation range from anti-piracy patrols off Somalia and counterterrorism activities, to missile defense and other issues.

Lavrov is expected to brief the NATO ministers on Medvedev’s proposal for a new European security structure, including a stability treaty encompassing Europe and North America.

Contentious issues such as Georgia and a key European arms-control treaty will also be discussed, but none is seen as an obstacle to improving relations.

“We expect a vigorous discussion on areas where we disagree,” the U.S. official said. “But at the same time we would like to see agreement on how to move forward on a range of issues.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was expected to meet with Lavrov in Corfu, was forced to cancel those plans after she fell and broke her elbow at the State Department. Deputy Secretary of States James Steinberg will replace her.

The NATO-Russia meeting will be followed Sunday by a meeting of foreign ministers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose rotating chairmanship Greece currently holds.

The OSCE talks, which start Saturday night with a dinner, will be followed Sunday afternoon by a meeting between EU ministers to discuss Iran, the Greek Foreign Ministry has said.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Karzai Tells Taliban to Vote in Afghan Elections

KABUL (Reuters) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban and their allies on Saturday to vote in August’s elections rather than attempt to disrupt the nation’s second presidential poll.

The August 20 vote is seen as a crucial moment for Karzai’s government and for Washington, which is sending thousands of extra troops this year as part of President Barack Obama’s new regional strategy to defeat al Qaeda and stabilize Afghanistan.

“I appeal to them (the Taliban) again and again to avoid any conflicts, not only during polling days but forever,” Karzai told a news conference at his heavily guarded palace.

“Through elections we can bring peace and security, and through elections we can bring development,” he said.

The Taliban, whose strict Islamist government was ousted after a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, have repeatedly rejected the election as a Western-inspired sham.

The Taliban have also rejected Karzai’s calls for them to join the peace process, saying no talks can take place until all foreign troops have left the country.

Washington has already almost doubled the number of its troops from the 32,000 in the country in late 2008 in order to secure the elections and to combat a growing Taliban insurgency.

Karzai has ruled since the Taliban’s ouster and won the nation’s first direct vote for president in 2004.

A clear favorite to win again, he welcomed meetings held by foreign officials and diplomats with some of the 40 candidates opposing him, particularly his main rivals, former senior ministers Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.

But he also called on the international community not to interfere and to play an impartial role. Most of the more than $230 million the Afghan election will cost is being provided by Washington and its allies.

An unflattering report by leading think tank the International Crisis Group this week said poor security and failure to capitalize on gains since the 2004 poll meant widespread fraud was possible in the voting.

The Taliban-led insurgency has reached its most violent level since 2001, U.S. military commanders have said. It has grown out of traditional Taliban strongholds in the south and east into the once relatively peaceful north and to the fringes of Kabul.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Far East


Michael Jackson is Dead: Prisoners to Recreate Dance Tribute

Prisoners in the Philippines who spawned a worldwide internet hit with their version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video are to recreate their dance in tribute to the dead star.

Michael Jackson’s epic performance will be recreated on Saturday inside the provincial jail in Cebu, the country’s second-biggest city, quoting Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre officials.

The global hit on YouTube, shows 1,400 inmates wearing saffron prison uniforms performing their own version of one of Jackson’s most famous hits.

Crisanto Niere, a balding, gap-toothed drug dealer who impersonated Jackson in the YouTube dance, “is sad his idol died,” a prison official said.

“For now there’s no word yet how the performance will be affected” by the news of Jackson’s death.

Cebu prison officials introduced dances as a way of improving physical fitness and to relieve stress among inmates.

The four-minute video of the original prison dance has so far generated more than 23 million hits on YouTube.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]



North Korea Threatens to Shoot Down Japanese Spy Planes

North Korea threatened today to shoot down any Japanese planes that intrude into its airspace, accusing Tokyo of spying near one of its missile launch sites.

The North has designated a no-sail zone off its eastern coast from June 25 to July 10 for military drills, raising concerns that it might test-fire short- or mid-range missiles in the coming days, in violation of a UN resolution.

North Korea’s air force said Japan’s E-767 surveillance aircraft conducted aerial espionage near the Musudan-ri missile site on its northeast coast on Wednesday and Thursday.

The country’s official Korean Central News Agency said the air force “will not tolerate even a bit the aerial espionage by the warmongers of the Japanese aggression forces but mercilessly shoot down any plane intruding into the territorial air of the (North) even 0.001 mm.”

Officials of Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force were not immediately available for comment today.

The threat against alleged Japanese aerial espionage is rare, though the North has regularly complained of US spy missions in its airspace.

Japan is very sensitive to North Korea’s missile programs, as its islands lie within easy range. In 1998, a North Korean missile flew over Japan’s main island. Tokyo has since spent billions of dollars on developing a missile shield with the United States and has launched a series of spy satellites primarily to watch developments in North Korea.

But in April, another rocket flew over Japan’s main island, drawing a strong protest from Tokyo. Pyongyang claims it put a satellite into orbit, while the US and its allies say it was really a test of the country’s long-range missile technology.

The launch was one of a series of missile tests in recent months, and the communist regime has further raised tensions by conducting a second underground nuclear test. Its actions have drawn harsh international condemnation and new UN sanctions.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Horror of Kenya’s ‘Witch’ Lynchings

Villagers, many straight from their farms, and armed with machetes, sticks and axes, are shouting and crowding round in a big group in Kenya’s fertile Kisii district.

I can’t see clearly what is going on, but heavy smoke is rising from the ground and a horrible stench fills the air.

More people are streaming up the hill, some of them with firewood and maize stalks.

Suddenly an old woman breaks from the crowd, screaming for mercy. Three or four people go after her, beat her and drag her back, pushing her onto — what I can now see — is a raging fire.

Burned alive

I was witnessing a horrific practice which appears to be on the increase in Kenya — the lynching of people accused of being witches.

I personally saw the burning alive of five elderly men and women in Itii village.

“ They point at me saying — that is a son of the witch “

Joseph Ondieki

I had been visiting relatives in a nearby town, when I heard what was happening. I dashed to the scene, accompanied by a village elder.

He reacted as if what we were watching was quite normal, which was shocking for me.

As a stranger I felt I had no choice but to stand by and watch. My fear was that if I showed any sign of disapproval, or made any false move, the angry mob could turn on me.

Not one person was protesting or trying to stop the killing.

Hours later, the police came and removed the charred bodies.

Village youths who took part in the killings told me that the five victims had to die because they had bewitched a young boy.

“Of course some people have been burned. But there is proof of witchcraft,” said one youth.

He said that a child had spent the night walking around and then was unable to talk the following morning — except to one of the so-called witches.

I asked the youths whether or not people involved in this supposed witchcraft should be punished.

“Yes, they must be punished, every one,” said the first youth.

“We are very angry and that’s why we end up punishing these people and even killing them.”

His friend agreed: “In other communities, there are witches all round but in Kisii we have come up with a new method, we want to kill these people using our own hands.”

I later discovered that the young boy who had supposedly been bewitched, was suffering from epilepsy.

His mother had panicked when he had had an attack.

All too common

The village elder was dismissive of my horror, saying that this kind of thing happens all the time in the western district of Kisii.

He told me about Joseph Ondieki, whose mother had been burned to death less than two months earlier.

I found Joseph and his wife Mary Nyaboke tending vegetables in their small shamba, or homestead.

“ If I visit my neighbours I fear they might poison my food “

Joseph Ondieki

Mary told me that on the day her mother-in-law had been killed she had been visiting her own parents.

She had heard a noise and discovered the truth when she came home.

She said that in the 20 years she had been married, she had never had any reason to believe her husband’s mother was a witch.

Joseph told me he has suffered a lot since his mother died.

“I was born here, but at this stage I feel as if this is not my home any more,” he said.

“I cannot visit neighbours or relatives.

“Even when they see me standing by the road side, they point at me, saying: ‘That is a son of the witch’.

“And when I go to town they also start wondering what has taken me there. Is it that I am going to give evidence against them?

“When I come back, they say I’ve been seen at the police station, but I’ve never been there. I’ve never reported the matter.

“If I visit the neighbours, I always fear that they might put poison in the food.

“So when I’m forced to visit, I make sure I don’t eat anything.

“If I can’t get my own food I just have a glass of water and sleep.”

I set off with Joseph up the hill towards his house, which was far from the centre of the village.

On the way we passed his mother’s house.

A neighbour was reluctant to talk to me and denied even knowing Joseph’s mother.

“Here in Kisii, people are being burned on mere allegation and most of them are old,” Joseph said.

“We now don’t have any old people in the village to consult.

“Even me I’m now approaching 50 years old — I’m afraid that they’ll come for me also.”

Warning signs

I spent three days in Kisii trying to speak to the authorities, but nobody, neither the police nor the local government officials would talk to me.

As night drew in, and it was time for me to leave, Joseph walked with me from his village to where my car was parked.

When we arrived, he begged me to take him with me to Mombasa, where I am based.

It was very difficult for me to leave him behind.

As I drove away I passed signs pinned to trees, warning witches that they would be tracked down.

“We know you by your names”, someone had typed in bold.

To listen to the full broadcast of Kenya’s Witch Lynchings , tune in to African Perspective on the BBC World Service. The program is first broadcast on Saturday 27 June at 1106 GMT. It will be available online from 2106 GMT, for one week.

           — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness [Return to headlines]

Immigration


EU Summit: Cooperation With Country of Origin

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, JUNE 19 — A ‘significant strengthening” of cooperation with the primary countries of origin and transit for immigration flows in the Mediterranean is necessary, sustain Europe’s leaders, in Brussels for an EU summit. The issue was addressed in the final draft of conclusions in the part dedicated to illegal immigration requested above all by Italy. The heads of European governments urged the European Commission to ‘explore concrete cooperation with third countries” with the ‘priority” of a conclusion to negotiations for agreements on readmission with primary countries of origin and transit. ‘Until that moment, the bilateral agreements that are already in existence should be adequately implemented,” the draft reads. The 27 countries are asking for the coordination of measures for internal redistribution for those that benefit from international protection in EU territory ‘exposed to specific and disproportionate pressure.” In particular the council took notice of the intention of the EU to adopt initiatives in Malta. For European leaders, it is also necessary to strengthen the border control operations coordinated by Frontex, as well as ‘clear rules on the organisation of shared patrols and for the landing of rescued immigrants and the increase in the use of shared repatriation flights.”(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Cultural Enrichment, Coming to a Country Near You

Cultural Enrichment News


Earlier today I posted TB’s translation of two appalling “cultural enrichment” news items from Denmark. This prompted an email back-and-forth between us. After I posted his translations, TB said this:

I am actually thinking about making it a habit to translate all these “of-an-ethnic-origin-other-than-Danish” articles every time they appear. I’m telling you: it will not be long before Hells Angels and Jønke are no longer the only ones to strike back against these fascist psychopaths.

In the meantime, though, it might be in the interest of ordinary Danes to get all these small everyday stories out to as many people as possible. Just to enhance foreign understanding of the reaction that will for certain be a reality some time in the nearest future…

This is an unbearable situation. And the water is reaching its boiling point.

I suggested that we might make it a regular “Cultural Enrichment” series, and that perhaps other countries would eventually contribute their own articles to it. TB agreed, and said this:
– – – – – – – –

I was actually thinking about that myself when I did the translations. All these small, everyday stories that fill up our local newspapers and describe the politically-imposed so-called paradise making the lives of so many ordinary citizens a living hell.

Actually, these small stories are of great importance. I guess if the world knew what everyday life was like in, for example, the Balkans in the years leading up to the war, the depiction of Muslims as innocent victims would never have happened.

He suggested that the new feature be called “The International Cultural Enrichment News”, which gave me the opportunity to make a new logo and add it retroactively to this morning’s post.

But in order to make this feature truly international, I’ll need the help of our readers. Refer to the Danish news stories to get an idea of the sort of items we’re looking for. When articles like this appear in the newspapers in your country, please send me a tip.

As of right now I can generally obtain translations of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish, thanks to our tireless volunteers. French, Romanian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Portuguese are a bit dicier, but probably doable (even if I have to do the French myself).

So send them in, and I’ll get them translated if I can, and post them under the new header.

The UK, Sweden, and the Netherlands should provide plenty of material. But there’s a hitch: newspapers in those countries often don’t specify the ethnicity of a criminal suspect. So if you have to deduce that a particular event is a case of cultural enrichment, please include an explanation of the clues in the news article that led you to draw your conclusions.

I don’t know if this project will get off the ground, but it’s worth a try. Even if Denmark ends up as the only participant, it’s a useful exercise to shine a light under the refrigerators and behind the baseboards of the postmodern multicultural state.

Their Very Own Envoy

President Barack Hussein Obama has made a big deal of his outreach to the “Muslim world”. His speech in Cairo was a major example of this ongoing effort, and he has repeatedly emphasized his respect and solicitude for the world’s 7.9 septillion Muslims.

Mr. Obama’s latest outreach to Islam has taken the form of appointing an envoy to Muslims. According to Al Arabiya:

Obama Admin Appoints Envoy to Muslim World

The United States State Department announced Friday the appointment of a Muslim woman from Indian origin as a new envoy to deal with the Muslim world, following a previous appointment of an Egyptian-born advisor in April.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Farah Pandith to serve as Special Representative to Muslim Communities,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appointed the 41-year-old to interat [sic] with Muslims across the globe, said in the statement.

[…]

Pandith, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child from Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, will “be responsible for executing the administration’s efforts to engage with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organizational level,” the department said in a statement.

Notice what’s going on here: the world’s Muslims are considered to be a single entity.

We don’t give that kind of treatment to Jews and Hindus. The former aren’t that numerous, and the geographic concentration of the latter — even though there are hundreds of millions of them — may make a special envoy unnecessary. But what about Buddhists? They’re scattered all over the place.

And what about Christians? President Obama recently said that the United States shouldn’t be considered a Christian country. Well, where’s our envoy to the “Christian World”?

Needless to say, no such office will ever be created. Christianity has been fragmented almost since its inception, and there’s no unitary entity to which an envoy could be assigned.

Muslims, however, are unitary. There is a single organization, the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference), representing 57 Muslim countries. The leaders of those countries consider their nations Muslim nations. Is there a single leader of a majority Christian nation who considers his country to be a Christian nation?

Outside of Vatican City, that is.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


One interesting thing about Ms. Pandith, according to Al Arabiya, is that she may not even be a Muslim:
– – – – – – – –

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed Thursday that Pandith had been appointed, and promised a statement later.

Asked why the State Department had not formally announced Pandith’s appointment, Kelly noted it had been disclosed in an internal memo.

Kelly said he could not say whether Pandith was a Muslim, although two U.S. officials said privately that they believed she was. Pandith was not immediately available for comment.

So she might be a Muslim, and she’s going to be the U.S. envoy to the Muslim world. My guess is that she knows how to say the shahada, and will go veiled when she meets the Saudis or the delegates to the OIC. She’ll be at least as Muslim as her boss is.

And what about the Organization of the Christian Conference? Is there going to be an OCC?

My advice is: Don’t hold your breath for that one.



Hat tip: TB.

Today’s Cultural Enrichment News

Cultural Enrichment News


Both these stories are from today’s Danish MSM, and were translated by our Danish correspondent TB.

Denmark is notable among Western countries in that it still publishes descriptions of criminal suspects that identify their ethnic appearance. In stories like these, almost anywhere else in Europe the word “Arab” would have been left out. In Sweden the perpetrators’ height, weight, hair color, and apparent age would be included, but readers would be left to guess from subtle contextual hints that the criminals were immigrants practicing their cultural enrichment.

The first article is from Jyllands-Posten:

Mentally ill man shot in the face by group of youngsters

Soft gunA 65-year-old mentally ill man was surrounded by a group of 7 or 8 youngsters while he was on his way from his residency on a nursing home to the Q8 gas station in Hundige Main Street.

One of the youngsters pointed a soft gun directly against the head of the aging man and shot him at least 12 times in the face with hard plastic bullets.

“He has been taken to the hospital for treatment for the gun wounds and we are now using every resource we have to find the group of youngsters, who are of an ethnic origin other than Danish — possibly Arab,” spokesman Jan Lauritzen from the police states.

Pure evil

The badly upset and mentally ill man was not robbed during the assault.

“It is not a robbery and I will not describe it as just boyish prank. It looks more like pure evil,” Jan Lauritzen states.

The assault happened yesterday around 9 pm, and the police would like to hear from citizens who might have information about the group of youngsters who are all described as being around 15 years old.

A witness who saw the boy who fired the gun describes the perpetrator as being around 15 years old, of Arab origin and wearing a cap. He is strongly built and “walked around like he was carrying two loaves of bread under his arms”.

And from Ekstra Bladet:
– – – – – – – –

Jabbed a screwdriver into the thigh of victim

29-year-old dragged into staircase and robbed

A 29-year-old man was assaulted yesterday and exposed to a very brutal robbery, the police report.

The man was walking down Rantzausgade in Copenhagen when he passed a group of youngsters who are described as being of foreign origin.

Suddenly several of the youngsters grabbed the 29 year old and dragged him up the stairs in a stairwell. Here he was beaten in the face until his lip split while they demanded his money.

The victim had no money, however, and it ended with the group cutting the shoulder straps of his rucksack and jabbing a screwdriver twice into the back of his thigh, policeman Henrik Vedel says to eb.dk.

Bleeding, the victim staggered down the stairs and got help from bystanders, who called an ambulance.

Now the police are searching for witnesses. The 29-year-old was attacked near Rantzausgade 30, but they have not yet found the actual staircase into which the victim was dragged. The assault happened around 01:40.

Please contact the Copenhagen police if you have any information.