There’s an overwhelming number of news items here tonight — almost a hundred. If you all think that this operation is becoming unmanageably large, please let me know.
With all the juicy items that people send me, it’s hard to pick which ones to leave out.
Thanks to Abu Elvis, C. Cantoni, CSP, heroyalwhyness, Holger Danske, Insubria, islam o’phobe, JD, KP, Reinhard, TB, TC, The Frozen North, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Euro Finance Chiefs: No Sign of Economic Turnaround
BRUSSELS, March 9 (Reuters) — There are no indications of a turnaround in the euro zone’s deep recession and downside risks to growth are materialising, top officials from the 16-country currency bloc said on Monday.
“We have seen a considerable deterioration in the economic situation since (our) February meeting and no … indicator gives reason to believe the situation is turning around,” the chairman of euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, said.
“All forecasts available are extremely gloomy. This is a deep recession, deeper than at the beginning of the 1990s,” he told a news conference after a monthly meeting of ministers from the countries sharing the single currency.
The European Commission forecast on Jan. 19 that the euro zone economy would shrink 1.9 percent this year. The European Central Bank, however, forecast last Thursday the contraction could be between 2.2 percent and 3.2 percent.
The bank cut interest rates by 50 basis points to 1.5 percent, the lowest level ever, to support sagging demand amid waning inflationary pressure.
“Since the January 19 forecasts, downside risks have increased,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told the news conference.
“There are problems on one hand concerning the situation in credit markets with very low flows of credit and tightening of credit conditions, and on the other hand with weakness of the real economy,” he said.
“In other areas, external demand has weakened so the recovery will take longer than we expected a few months ago.”
Almunia said he now believed a gradual recovery would take place only in 2010 rather than late 2009 as forecast earlier.
But the euro zone finance ministers rejected calls from the United States to boost the fiscal stimulus packages already announced in the 27-nation European Union, which currently amount to between 3 and 4 percent of EU gross domestic product.
“Europe and the Eurogroup have done what they needed to do .. we take the view that we don’t need to make a further effort for the moment. We are going to see the effect of the recovery package. These are effects that will only come to light gradually,” Juncker said.
“It will be possible to gauge the effect during 2010, we mustn’t pile deficit upon deficit,” he said.
He said the ministers agreed they needed a strategy to bring public finances back in order after the extra recession-related spending boosted budget deficits in many EU countries to above the bloc’s ceiling of 3 percent of GDP.
“We agreed to say again that we need an exit strategy to move away from this downward spiral in our public finances. We are working very hard (so) that by the end of the first half of the year we can be a little bit more precise on exit strategy,” Juncker said. (Editing by Dale Hudson)
| — Hat tip: Reinhard | [Return to headlines] |
India: Exports Collapsing, at Least 10 Million Jobs at Risk
In recent months, the country has suffered the effects of the global economic crisis to a much greater extent than predicted. Now there are questions about the consequences for the farming industry, and for the 220 million people already under the poverty level.
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Contraction continues in India’s exports, which in January fell by 15.9% compared to January of 2008. Experts are already speaking of the worst crisis in decades, while government initiatives are not showing concrete effects.
Exports in January totaled 12.3 billion dollars, compared to 14.7 billion one year ago. But what is especially worrying is the rapid deterioration in the figure, after the decline of 12.1 in December of 2008 and 9.9 in November of 2008. India mainly exports textile products, clothing, jewelry, and other manufactured products. A drop in orders from abroad will have serious effects on employment. The Federation of Indian Exporters Association expects a loss of at least 10 million jobs in the export sectors by March 31.
Imports have fallen by even more, down by 18.2% in January. Experts predict that exports will remain low for a number of months, as a result of lower foreign demand, especially from the United States and Europe.
The main concern is that government efforts to foster exports, including tax breaks and incentives for the hardest hit sectors, seem to be having no effect. New Delhi has announced robust investments to support production: in January, it announced investments to support production, employment, and infrastructure totaling 200 billion rupees (4 billion dollars) for 2009. But it has difficulty providing further subsidies, because it has to deal with a budget deficit estimated at 11.4% of gross domestic product.
The Indian economy grew by 5.3% in the third quarter of the fiscal year (from October to December), compared to 8.9% in the same period in 2007. It expanded by 7.6% in the quarter from July to September of 2008. It is the lowest rate in six years, after three consecutive years of growth above 9%. The result has disappointed expectations that the country might be more resistant to the global crisis because it has an economy aimed mainly at production for domestic demand.
Analysts observe that the real rate of growth is even lower, since the estimate is based on the previous year. In reality, in the past quarter the manufacturing sector saw a decline of 0.2%, and agricultural production dropped by 2.2%. About 60% of the 1.2 billion inhabitants live in villages of less than 5,000 people, with an economy that is primarily agricultural, and experts are still uncertain about the effects this crisis will have on them.
Also worrying is the effect on the many people living in poverty: in February, the World Food Program of the United Nations estimated that 220 million people in the country are still suffering from hunger, with 56% of Indian women anemic, and about half of the children underweight.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Recession Knocking at Indonesia’s Door, Exports Drop by 30 Per Cent
Government forecasts maximum 4 per cent growth. Exports decline, pushing up unemployment. In August 2008 almost 10 million people were jobless, a number bound to rise. Finance minister calls for urgent measures to check currency depreciation.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — With sharply decreasing exports and troubled credit loans, Indonesia is now facing a possible recession. Economists from the Bank of Indonesia (BI), Indonesia’s Central Bank, have warned that economic growth might not exceed 4 per cent in 2009.
The downturn in the economy is due to a variety of factors, first of all the drop in exports, down by 30 per cent between January and April, mostly in commodities and manufacturing items.
According to Toto Dirgantoro, the secretary general of the Association of Indonesian Exporters, orders from importing countries has sharply decreased for a wide range of Indonesian products including crude palm oil, rubber, textiles, garment, footwear, fishery product and furniture.
Unemployment has mirrored declining exports, rising to 9.39 million people in August 2008. and due to ailing economic growth, the figure is feared to be rising again.
Falling prices have led China and Pakistan to cancel contracts signed last year.
The Indonesian Textile Association reported slower exports, consequence of a sharp drop of 20 per cent this year from US$ 10.48 billion.
The textile industry is the country’s largest employer with an estimated 3.5 millions workers in more than 4,500 factories.
The Indonesian Statistics Bureau (BPS) recorded fewer foreign orders in January with a drop in 17.7 per cent. It was the biggest month-to-month decline in more than 22 years.
The most significant component to suffer from decreasing export volume was oil and gas exports, which fell by 23.85 per cent, whilst non oil-gas exports decreased by 16.67 per cent.
Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani expressed concern about the impact on the value of Indonesian rupiah, down 12.033 against the US dollar.
He urged the Bank of Indonesia governor to intervene to protect the national currency and avoid further depreciation.
Meanwhile Indonesia was able to secure US$ 5.5 billion in loans from Australia (US$ 1 billion), Japan (US$ 1.5 billion), the World Bank (US$ 2 billion) and the Asian Development Bank (US$ 1 billion).
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
World’s Biggest Banks to Meet in London
TOKYO (Reuters) — Chief executives of leading Japanese, European and U.S. banks will meet in London to discuss the future of the financial system, the Nikkei newspaper reported, as the global financial crisis prompts a barrage of new regulatory proposals for the sector.
Invitations to the meeting of bankers had been sent to leading institutions including JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, the newspaper said, without naming any sources.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Catholics Angry Over Proposed Law
Lawlor said the bill would revise a 1955 religious corporation act by requiring churches to open up financial records, if the parish set up its own board of directors. If passed into law, parishes would be governed by an elected board of laypersons that would have the power to establish and approve church budgets, manage all financial affairs, provide for auditing of financial records, develop and implement strategic plans and develop outreach programs.
The pastor of the congregation would report to the board of directors on all “administrative and financial matters,” the proposed bill reads.
According to the measure, the bishop and priests would remain in charge of “matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Embrace Enemies, Slap Friends
As the new president and the Democrat-controlled Congress take an inherited recession and turn it into a depression, a parallel meltdown is occurring in matters of foreign policy.
The core of Obama’s foreign policy can be expressed simply as “Embrace enemies, slap friends.”
Examples of this are legion in just the first 50 days of this administration. While Obama embraced Hamas, Russia, Cuba, Iran and the Taliban, Israel and Britain got the slap.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Director Mueller: a Mumbai-Style Attack Can Happen in the U.S.
How many cities around the world could fall prey to a Mumbai-style attack? How many cities here in the United States? Could a similar attack happen in Seattle or San Diego, Miami or Manhattan?
These were the questions posed by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in an address before the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. last week.
Muller said that the terrorist attacks that killed more than 170 and wounded more than 300 others in Mumbai three months ago “reminds us that terrorists with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact” and that “the simplest of weapons can be deadly when combined with capability and intent.”
Mueller warned that while the United States continues to face threats from al Qaeda, we must also focus on lesser-known terrorist groups—particularly extremists from ‘visa-waiver countries,’ who are “merely an e-ticket away from the United States.”
In the aftermath of September 11th, the United States was principally focused on al Qaeda, Mueller said. He emphasized that our primary threat continues to come from the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but noted that “we are seeing persistent activity elsewhere, from the Maghreb and the Sahel to Yemen.”
The FBI is increasingly concerned with pockets of people around the world that identify with al Qaeda and its ideology although they have little or no actual contact with—or connection to—al Qaeda. Mueller went on to say that there is a real threat from “homegrown” terrorist activities, and that a balance must be struck between acting early to disrupt a plot in its planning stages, and “continuing to investigate until we are certain that the individuals in question are poised to attack.”
“In each of the plots the FBI has disrupted since September 11th,” Mueller said, “some have asked whether the individuals in question had the intent and the capability to carry out their plans. Take the planned attack against Fort Dix, for example. The men we convicted had engaged in target practice in the woods of Pennsylvania. They had watched Al Qaeda training videos. They had a map of the base, and a plan to get in. And they had purchased semiautomatic weapons from an FBI sting operation.”
Like the attackers in Mumbai, the men who plotted to attack Fort Dix wanted to inflict as much damage as they could, Mueller said.
While the FBI continues to work closely with intelligence partners around the world, Mueller said that the agency is redoubling its efforts here in the United States. He said that part of that effort involves breaking the barriers that exist between law enforcement and the community it serves, particularly within immigrant communities where young men are likely to become indoctrinated and radicalized and then carry out attacks either here or overseas.
“Too often, we run up against a wall…based on myth and misperception of the work we do. We know that the best way to tear down that wall is brick by brick, person by person. Yet we understand the reluctance of some communities to sit down at the table with us. They may come from countries where national police forces and security services engender fear and mistrust.”
| — Hat tip: KP | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: Farewell to Britain
London: The British are understandably mystified. Long accustomed to a “special relationship” with the United States, they are trying to figure out why the latter’s likeable new president would be going to such lengths to distance himself from the country that has for generations been America’s closest ally.
First, there was Barack Obama’s decision to return the Churchill bust that had graced the Oval Office since then-Prime Minister Tony Blair gave it to George W. Bush as a post-9/11 gesture of solidarity. Then, there were the successive affronts during the visit by Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, to Washington last week: A seemingly thoughtless official gift (a set of DVDs of popular American films); a painfully chilly and brief press availability before the start of the two men’s private meeting; and no formal joint press conference of the kind Bush afforded Blair on all but one of numerous visits to Washington (the exception a hastily arranged trip right after the September 11 attacks).
The British press has offered several face-saving explanations for these serial rudenesses. Perhaps Obama is “exhausted.” Alternatively, he is simply “focused elsewhere” in the midst of cratering capital markets, collapsing automakers and skyrocketing unemployment.
The real answer, however, was supplied by an unnamed State Department official whom London’s Sunday Telegraph reported on March 8th “reacted with fury” when asked by the paper why the Brown visit was so, er, “low-key.” According to the Telegraph: “The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship. ‘There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.’“…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Minn. State Agency Offers Islamic Mortgages
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — For many Minnesota Muslims, it’s been virtually impossible to buy a home, because Islamic law forbids the paying or charging of interest. To help close the home ownership gap among Muslim immigrants, the state’s housing agency has launched a new program offering Islamic mortgages.
Islamic law does make exceptions to the ban on interest, if one’s family is at stake. But the exceptions are open to interpretation and for many observant Muslims, conventional mortgages are strictly taboo.
Nawawi Sheikh is one of them. The Somali-American said he and his wife just couldn’t go against their beliefs, even if it meant giving up their dream of owning a home. Still, he grew tired of moving from one rented apartment to another.
“One thing I hated was moving. I don’t like to move all the time,” he said.
He has no plans to move again anytime soon. Sheikh is the first home buyer to get a loan through the state’s New Markets Mortgage Program. That’s because, program manager Nimo Farah said, he has all the makings of a successful homeowner.
“I had lots of applications, but he’s the first one, because really, he was ready. He has been working at the same job for quite a while; he took care of his credit; he had the right size family, and he had all his documents together,” she said. “He was basically ready to go.”
The program is targeted at low-to-moderate income families. Qualified applicants have to complete first-time home buyer education classes. The goal is to help Muslim home buyers build wealth and reap the benefits of home ownership.
Here’s how the mortgage, known as Murabaha financing or “cost plus sale,” works:
The state buys a home and resells it to the buyer at a higher price. The down payment and monthly installments are agreed to up front at current mortgage rates.
The deal is identical to a thirty-year fixed-rate loan, except there’s no additional interest, because the higher up-front price factors in payments that would have been made over the life of a traditional mortgage.
A handful of private banks and lending institutions offer Islamic mortgages in the U.S., but Minnesota Housing is the first state agency to offer such a product. The program is the brainchild of Hussein Samatar, director of the African Development Center in Minneapolis.
“The process is different, but the outcome will look the same,” Samatar said. “We wanted to be as conventional as possible, while respecting the tenets of Islam.”
Samatar, who used to work for Wells Fargo, tried for years to launch Islamic financing. He said the fact that Minnesota Housing has agreed to participate is a nod to the Muslim community’s growing economic power.
Chicago-based Devon Bank is underwriting the loans for the New Markets program. Devon is one of the largest Islamic lenders in the country. Corporate Counsel David Loundy said he expects the demand for Islamic financing to grow as more Muslims make their home in the U.S. Loundy said Muslims tend to be good risks.
“If they worked so hard to get to this country, they don’t want to screw it up now that they are here, so they tend to pay their debts pretty promptly,” said Loundy. “In addition, you have a population that is religiously and culturally predisposed against having debt, so they want to pay down their debts as quickly as they can.”
The numbers back this up. In its five and a half years offering Islamic lending, Loundy said Devon Bank hasn’t lost a penny, though he admits the recession could make that record difficult to sustain as more borrowers face job loss.
But the bad economy is also offering opportunity. With housing prices at rock bottom, officials say the timing couldn’t be better to match first-time Muslim buyers with foreclosures that need new owners.
Nawawi Sheikh’s new three-bedroom south Minneapolis home is a former foreclosure. The African Development Center’s Hussein Samatar said there are thousands more potential buyers like Sheikh out there. He said the New Markets Mortgage Program will help the Minnesota Muslims community put down strong roots.
“It is great news for the country, and it really sends a great signal that the United States is our country,” he said.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Obama is Addicted to the Teleprompter
Barack Obama may soon be known as the Teleprompter President as his dependence on his teleprompters get more notice every day. He goes nowhere without them and is not usually seen speaking without their help.
Onlookers have found that Obama with and without his teleprompter becomes two different men. While the President is fluid in his speech and shows total poise in a prepared speech, his unscreened answers or extempore speech are too full of the universal filler “umm”. It has become obvious that he cannot go beyond the scripted words without a good deal of stuttering, causing a fresh wave of criticism of the president who cannot speak off the cuff.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sara Jane Olson is Ready to Come Home
Olson, 62, is to be released from a central California prison on March 17, nearly a decade after she was arrested in her minivan in St. Paul for militant acts committed during the tumultuous 1970s in California.
After hiding in plain view in St. Paul for many years, the onetime Symbionese Liberation Army radical spent the last seven years in prison for plotting to bomb Los Angeles police cars and for taking part in a bank robbery near Sacramento in which one woman was killed.
Whether she’ll be on parole for one year or three remains under debate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Public Schools Teaching Children Pro-Islamic Propaganda
By Marc Sheppard
Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus and the 9/11 murderers were not Islamic Fundamentalists but simply a generic “teams of terrorists.” That’s the caliber of politically corrected crap many of our children are being taught in American public schools — and it’s past time all parents took serious notice.
A five year study by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research cites hundreds of such errors and distortions found in “28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States.” Their book, The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion, examines the pro-Islamic disinformation they uncovered, including the assertion that Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew.
Ybarra claims that the textbooks also treat Islam with special privilege and tend not to criticize or challenge it, as they do Judaism and Christianity. He offers this example…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
When Obama Talks to the Taliban
The imagined dialogue between Obama and the Taliban begins with the demands that all Westerners leave Afghanistan and Pakistan, that all Israelis be marched into the Mediterranean Sea and drowned, and that insults to Islam be made a capital crime worldwide. Then, there’s this:
[Taliban rep.] President Obama, thank you for setting up this meeting so that we could voice our demands. Frankly, we thought you knew. Now, we are prepared to hear your demands.”
Sitting cross-legged on a blanket in a tribal village square, President Obama looks around and mentions how the bright sunlight at the 8,ooo-foot level forces his eyes to water.
“I want to help the Taliban make the changes necessary to take full advantage of the richness of modern life. I offer you hope for the future.”
At a White House press briefing later, it’s announced that talks with the Taliban are going smoothly…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Wikipedia Scrubs Obama Eligibility
Mention of citizenship issues deleted in minutes, ‘offending’ users banned
Wikipedia, the online “free encyclopedia” mega-site written and edited entirely by its users, has been deleting within minutes any mention of eligibility issues surrounding Barack Obama’s presidency, with administrators kicking off anyone who writes about the subject, WND has learned.
A perusal through Obama’s current Wikipedia entry finds a heavily guarded, mostly glowing biography about the U.S. president. Some of Obama’s most controversial past affiliations, including with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers, are not once mentioned, even though those associations received much news media attention and served as dominant themes during the presidential elections last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S.
Why the latest assault on Bush antiterror strategy could make us less safe.
Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.
In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building?
In these extraordinary circumstances, while our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios — even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized. This was not reckless. It was prudent and responsible. While government officials worked tirelessly to prevent the next attack, lawyers, of which I was one, provided advice on unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures.
Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days — released this week by the Obama administration — this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers “rush into sweeping away this country’s most cherished rights.” “Irresponsible,” harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.
According to these critics, the overthrow of constitutional government in the United States began with a 37-page memo, confidentially issued on Oct. 23, 2001, which concluded that the September 11 attacks triggered the government’s war powers and allowed the president to use force to counter force. Alexander Hamilton saw things differently than critics of the Bush administration. He wrote in Federalist 74: “The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength, and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.”
Congress agreed with Hamilton. Restrictions on deploying the military for domestic law enforcement (originally passed to end Reconstruction in the South) did not apply to self-defense of the nation. Congress blessed military action on Sept. 18, 2001, when it authorized President Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” connected to the September 11 attacks, “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” Passed as the sound of Air Force combat air patrols flew over the Capitol, Congress must have understood that its words included stopping domestic attacks, since the hijacked airliners of 9/11 took off and crashed on American soil.
The government faced another fundamental question, which we addressed in our memo. Does the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a search warrant based on probable cause regulate the use of the military against terrorists on our soil. In portraying our answer, the media has quoted a single out-of-context sentence from our analysis: “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”
This line deliberately misrepresents the memo. The sentence only summarized a 1931 holding of the Supreme Court in the case of Near v. Minnesota concerning press freedom: “When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” The Court continued: “No one would question but that a government might prevent actual obstruction to its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops.”
Our memo had nothing to do with the First Amendment. It only referred to the case to show that constitutional rights apply differently during the exigencies of warfare than during peacetime. The 1931 case bolstered a point that the Supreme Court recognized in 2000 in Indianapolis v. Edmond, striking down random traffic stops to search for illegal drugs. “The Fourth Amendment would almost certainly permit an appropriately tailored roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack,” the Court wrote. Courts have understood that law-enforcement standards could not govern military operations against wartime enemies. They have rejected, to take one example, claims that the Constitution required compensation for the destruction of oil facilities before the invading Japanese in World War II.
Imposing Fourth Amendment standards on military action would have made the Civil War unwinnable — combat occurred wholly on U.S. territory and enemy soldiers were American citizens. The military does not have the time to obtain warrants before soldiers fire upon enemy targets and personnel; the battlefield does not provide the luxury to collect evidence needed to meet probable cause standards in civilian courts. Even if the Fourth Amendment applied, we believed that courts would judge military action under a standard of “reasonableness” — as they might review a police officer who fires in self-defense — rather than demand a warrant to use military force to stop a terror attack.
In releasing these memos, the Obama administration may be attempting to appease its antiwar base — which won’t bother to read the memos in full — or trying to look good for the chattering classes.
But if the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today’s intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future. President Obama has said he wants to “look forward” rather than “backwards.” If so, he should not restore risk aversion as the guiding principle of our counterterrorism strategy.
Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting professor at Chapman Law School. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Canada: Caf Chief Alleges ‘Zionist Campaign’
E-mailed message cites attempts to ‘demonize’ Canadian Arabs, Muslims
TORONTO — The Canadian Arab Federation says it is the victim of a “well-planned Zionist campaign” to intimidate and silence Arab Canadians, according to an e-mail obtained by the National Post.
The CAF has found itself embroiled in controversy recently over remarks made by its president, Khaled Mouammar. Mr. Mouammar, a defender of Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups on Canada’s terrorist list, recently called Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a “professional whore” over his support for Israel. Ottawa has threatened to cut the group’s funding.
Mr. Mouammar sent the e-mail to about 20 Arab organizations across Canada at the end of last week, in a bid to marshal forces against the alleged campaign.
“The Zionist campaign is being waged by the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith supported by some politicians,” his e-mail said, adding that the movement “was developed after the Lebanon war of July, 2006, to suppress all criticism of Israel and equate it with anti-Semitism.”
Since Mr. Mouammar’s assumption of leadership of the CAF, the organization has taken a more hardline stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The federal government now considers it a mouthpiece for anti-Semitism and unworthy of receiving public funding. The CAF had frequently worked with Jewish groups on issues of mutual concern in the past.
“This e-mail, by specifically naming the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith, again shows he does not just disdain Zionists, but the Jewish community as a whole,” said Alyhhan Velshi, a spokesperson for Mr. Kenney, who did not receive a copy of the e-mail.
“It’s the ugliest, most vile sort of language. It’s not surprising to us that he is again engaged in this sort of reprehensible rhetoric trying to pit community against community.”
Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called Mr. Mouammar’s comments disturbing and “bizarre.”
“Jews are all too familiar with conspiracy theories, we have been the victims of conspiracy theories for a long time in history,” he said. “I speak more out of sadness than anger. This was a once-proud organization that has turned into nothing but a group whose sheer focus seems to be to attack Jews and Israel.”
In the e-mail, Mr. Mouammar called for an emergency conference to bolster a strategy to confront the alleged campaign. Mr. Mouammar told the National Post that a statement will soon be released to the media.
The e-mail contains what appears to be a working version of this statement, referencing “Islamophobia” and expressing concern over Mr. Kenney’s “inflammatory remarks” which have “inflamed a campaign to marginalize and demonize the already targeted Arab and Muslim Canadian communities.”
The e-mail, which singles out the two Jewish groups, Mr. Kenney, and the National Post, states that the alleged campaign has targeted other organizations including CUPE Ontario, CUPW, and the Canadian Federation of Students.
“The campaign of intimidation launched by the Israeli lobby and their supporters is seeking to de-legitimize Arab Canadian institutions, services, access to public funds and to silence all criticism of Israel,” the e-mail said.
The message concluded with a call to the Prime Minister to “restrain” Mr. Kenney and “put an end to his dangerous campaign of attacking CAF with slanderous and damaging accusations for which he has provided no evidence.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
“Friday Prayers Should be Said in Two Languages”
Mohamed Bechari (President of the FNMF) talks to Marco Cesario
“Friday prayers should be said in two languages, in Arabic and in the language of the country in which Muslims live. If the message is spread in an incomprehensible language the objective of the Friday sermon is not achieved.” This is the opinion expressed by forty-two year old Mohamed Béchari, President since 1992 of one of Islam’s most important organisations in France, the Fédération Nationale des Musulmans de France. Former Vice-President of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM) and Secretary General of the European Islamic Conference, Bechari has also published a book entitled “L’image de l’islam dans les médias occidentaux” [Islam as seen by the Western Media]…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Academics Warn MPs That British Universities Are Dumbing Down Degrees
A group of university lecturers have painted a bleak picture of the falling standards of British higher education in a 500-page dossier presented to an MPs’ inquiry.
The academics warn of an across-the-board dumbing down with degrees becoming increasingly easy, widespread plagiarism and institutional pressure from university bosses to award students higher grades than they deserve.
The lecturers come from a wide range of universities including Oxford, Birmingham, Cardiff, Sussex and Manchester Metropolitan, reported The Sunday Times.
The aim of the dossier, which blames the problems on university expansion without adequate funding, is to force Universities Secretary John Denham to take action to safeguard standards of higher education.
One academic to give evidence is Stuart Derbyshire, a senior lecturer in psychology at Birmingham University.
‘When I complained, he [an external examiner] stated that it was no longer 1986 and that we cannot mark like we did in the past.
‘“We must,” he said, “look harder for excellence.”‘
Alan Ryan, warden of New College at Oxford University said: ‘Anyone who remains awake and is tolerably well-organised can get a 2:1.’
He also described university education as ‘remedial secondary education passed off as something else’.
Peter Dorey, a politics academic at Cardiff University, blames the students themselves.
He said: ‘They often sit in seminars with only their mobile phone in front of them on the desk… but no books or notepads. Many of them are semi-literate.
He added that he sometimes feels ‘as if I am wasting my time with todayâ€(tm)s students’.
Sue Evans, an economics lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, recalled an incident when a student begged her: ‘Donâ€(tm)t dumb down the subject any more than you already have.’
Another time an underwhelmed Slovakian student approached the veteran academic and said: ‘This university is like high school in Slovakia.’
Miss Evans gives examples of numerous occasions when exam paper marks were increased without justification. She alleges that her many complaints to university authorities went without one reply.
However a spokeswoman for Manchester Metropolitan said: ‘Miss Evans expresses a lot of very personal views but presents very little objective information.
‘There is no evidence staff are put under any pressure to bump up grades. We are extremely disappointed and upset that a colleague has chosen to raise these issues externally.’
Shadow universities secretary David Willetts said: ‘A lot of students who get in touch with me are raising issues such as how crowded their seminars are, how rapidly they get work returned with a mark.
‘Those are the types of issues students and parents really worry about. Universities have to listen.’
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Climate ‘Denial’ is Now a Mental Disorder
How odd that, last Monday, none of our media global warming groupies should have bothered to report what was billed to be “the largest ever demonstration for civil disobedience over climate change”. There was talk of hundreds of thousands of protestors converging on Washington to hear Jim Hansen, the scientist who talks of coal-fired power stations as “factories of death”, call yet again for all coal plants to be closed. Perhaps the lack of coverage was due to the fact that, before Hansen arrived to address a forlorn group of several hundred hippies, Washington was blanketed in nearly a foot of snow.
It was generally another bad week for the warmists. The Met Office, which has been one of the chief pushers of the global warming scare for 20 years, had to admit that this has been “Britain’s coldest winter for 13 years”, despite its prediction last September that the winter would be “milder than average”. This didn’t of course stop it predicting that 2009 will be one of “the top-five warmest years on record”.
US climate sceptics such as those on the Watts Up With That website, for whom the predictions of the UK Met Office have become a regular source of amusement, recalled its forecast that 2007 would be “the warmest year on record globally”, just before global temperatures dived by nearly a full degree Celsius, cancelling out the entire net warming of the past 100 years.
Ever wilder wax the beleaguered warmists in their rhetoric. Our science minister Lord Drayson said last week he was “shocked” to find how many of the captains of industry he meets are “climate deniers”. This was the same Lord Drayson who, as our defence procurement minister, assured Parliament in 2006 that Snatch Land Rovers afforded “the level of protection we need”. The continuing death toll of soldiers in these unprotected vehicles approaches 40.
Even Drayson is outbid, however, by the groupies in The Guardian, who now suggest that people like Christopher Booker should no longer be compared to “Holocaust deniers” but consigned to even more outer darkness by branding them as climate “Creationists”, the dirtiest word they know. Meanwhile at the University of the West of England in Bristol this weekend, a conference of “eco-psychologists”, led by a professor, are solemnly exploring the notion that “climate change denial” should be classified as a form of “mental disorder”.
I myself am off this weekend to New York, to join all the top “deniers”, “creationists” and victims of psychic disorder at a conference organised by the Heartland Institute. It is an honour to be asked to speak alongside such luminaries as Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr Fred Singer, founder of the US satellite weather forecasting service, and the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus (not to mention those two revered climate bloggers, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and Anthony Watts). I shall report on this historic event next week.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus: Lack of Energy Policy Will Cost Millions, Report
(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, FEBRUARY 23 — Cyprus’ lack of a satisfactory energy policy is set to cost taxpayers hundreds of millions, Scientific and Technical Chamber ETEK has warned. According to the Chamber’s predictions, 400million euro will be lost through lost energy savings and EU fines for violating C02 emissions laws, as Sunday Mail reportd. ETEK has called on the government to apply a proper energy-saving policy as soon as possible so as to ease the blow. Regarding delays in supplying the island with natural gas, ETEK projects the most conservative scenario, which is that Cyprus will lose 12 million euro for each year’s delay. In total, Cypriot consumers will be called to pay at least 48 million euro. In an announcement on Friday, the Chamber explained that the initial plan was to have natural gas in Cyprus by 2009. This date was expanded to 2013 and recently, when the government started taking real action to prepare the grounds for its arrival, state officials said it could even be 2015. And it doesn’t end there. If the state had applied its policy for buildings’ heating insulation in time, it would have saved 150 million euro. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Republic: a Few Good Speeches From Pres. Vaclav Klaus This Weekend
www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=mbjBqLuA8THt
Mar 6: Notes for Santa Barbara: “Is Environmentalism a Bigger Threat to Humanity than Global Warming?”
www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=ZwzUbvi1gcxw
Mar 7: Is Capitalism in Crisis?
www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=oWwyM2CjH0OG
Mar 9: No Progress in the Climate Change Debate
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: F-16s Triple Airspace Defence
The country has now taken over defence of a third independent air space, making the country the Nato member with most international air defence operations
Denmark became the only Nato country to be responsible for surveillance of three countries at once when four of its F-16 fighters took over air monitoring duties for Iceland today.
The three-week mission officially began at 8 a.m., with Denmark paying a large part of the operation’s costs due to Iceland’s economic crisis.
In addition to surveillance of Iceland and of Denmark itself, the Danish Air Force is also currently patrolling the skies of Lithuania.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Police: Anti-Gang Efforts Working
After several weeks of shootings in Copenhagen, there has been a week of calm in the capital.
Four people have been remanded in custody in the past week on charges of weapons possession and police are finding fewer weapons when they search people on the streets, according to Copenhagen Police Spokesman Flemming Steen Munch after a week without a gang-related killing.
Fewer weapons Munch says police efforts appear to be working.
“We will continue the operations we started last week. Our investigations are in top gear and it has begun to help. We are finding fewer weapons when we search people and we have a big presence in the area. We believe it will work,” he tells politiken.dk.
Special Gang Crime Unit Investigation Chief Henrik Svindt is also guardedly optimistic.
“We have a major presence in the city. We find weapons and are investigating. We believe it is having an effect. But so far it’s a week, so we will be continuing with our presence,” he says.
Killers at large A week ago, a 30-year-old man was shot and killed at a café in Amager. According to the police he had no connection to the ongoing gang war.
A week previously another man was shot and killed in Mjølnerparken in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. He too was an innocent victim who police said was unconnected to the Copenhagen criminal environment.
The killers of both men are still at large.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Increase in Illegal Knife Charges
There has been a heavy increase in the number of charges for illegal knife possession in the first two months of 2009.
The Copenhagen Police has never charged as many people with carrying illegal knives as in the first couple of months of 2009.
Some 126 people were charged with carrying illegal knives in public in January and February, compared with only 19 charges in the second half of 2008.
Visitation zones “I see this as an indication that the visitation zones throughout the city centre, which enable police officers to search people for weapons without due cause, have played a major part in explaining why we have charged so many in the first couple of months,” Copenhagen Police Chief Prosecutor tells 24timer.
The law forbids carrying knives with a blade of over seven centimetres in public.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Copenhagen Residents Intimidated by Gangs
Residents have become more fearful in light of gang conflict, despite a recent government gang package introduced to crackdown on crime
A new poll from Gallup for Berlingske Tidende newspaper shows that the gang conflict in Copenhagen is frightening people away from some of the most affected districts.
Sixty percent of the 1,016 Copenhagen respondents said the conflict had created certain ‘off-limit’ areas in the city, with women feeling particularly unsafe. Almost half of all female respondents said their movements had changed directly as a result of the fighting, which has seen 30 shooting incidents and three dead.
Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard called the effect on ordinary citizens ‘unacceptable’. ‘It’s clear that all the weapons and shooting in the streets have left people worrying that they will end up in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said Bjerregaard.
And it does seem that local residents have had enough of the gang conflict and are now planning a protest march for this coming Sunday.
Residents of Nørrebro and local interest organisations will march at 1pm from Blågårds Plads Square to City Hall Square, where they will hold a concert under the name ‘Music for Peace’.
‘We think it’s important to get out on the streets and show that we mean it when we say that enough is enough. It’s important to show that we want to take the streets back,’ said Anne Alstrup Avnby, one of the organisers of the event.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
France: Wine? No Thank You, Consumption to Drop by 2012
(ANSAmed) — PARIS — It looks like hard times are ahead for the French wine market. According to a recent survey carried out by Vinexpo/Iwrs, reports the Italian Foreign Trade Commission (ICE) office in Paris, consumption is expected to fall by 2.2% between 2008 and 2012, after declining by 1.1% between 2007 and 2008. The decline will be more significant for still wines (-2.9% volume between 2008 and 2012). Consumption of sparkling wine and rose’, which together represent 22% of the market, is expected to rise by 4.5% from now to 2012. For spirits, a 3.1% rise is expected between 2008 and 2012. France remains the biggest consumer of scotch whisky, while vodka and rum should also increase their market share and national spirits continue to see a decline in consumption, with an forecasted -4.4% for 2012. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Man Sentenced for Immigrant Attack
Rome, 6 March (AKI) — An Italian man who was accused of a racist attack against Bangladeshi immigrants has received a one-year suspended sentence and will serve no time in prison for the crime. According to Italian media reports 20-year-old Ivan Balzanella was sentenced for making threats and drug possession charges.
However, the prosecutor dropped additional racism charges, a move backed by public prosecutor Erminio Amelio and court president Paolo de Fiore, who said the incident was related to drug trafficking and a territorial dispute.
Amelio also said that Balzanella had many immigrant friends, especially in the neighbourhood where he lives.
“They were the ones who attacked me,” said Balzanella told Italian daily, Corriere della Sera. “I am not a racist, my room is full of anti-fascist stickers.”
Balzanella plans to appeal his one-year suspended sentence.
Following the attack in February, Italian media reports claimed that Balzanella and two others tried to set alight three teenage migrants with a spray can and a lighter using it as a flame-thrower in what was described by the police as a racist attack.
Balzanella was arrested by police and accused of making threats and attempting to carry out racially motivated violence. The attack took place in the multi-ethnic Esquiline neighbourhood in central Rome.
Balzanella had reportedly ‘warned’ the same migrants last November to leave the area.
In February, the alleged attacker returned, with two others. The Bangladeshi migrants quickly called the police, but Balzanella fled.
“Go away immigrants or I will burn you,” Balzanella reportedly told the migrants.
One of the victims of the attack, described only by his first name, Naimal, told an Italian newspaper that Balzanella also tried to attack them with a fork. But police arrived and intervened.
When Balzanella was arrested, he reportedly told police, “You are not supposed to take me, you are supposed to arrest those immigrants.”
Balzanella — who had been previously arrested in December for racially motivated attacks — was released. He claimed he had been attacked by the Bangladeshi migrants.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Messina Bridge; Works May Begin in 2009, Minister
(ANSAmed) — ROME, FEBRUARY 25 — “The vast majority of works provided for in the 16.6-billion-euro plan approved by the government may begin by the end of 2009, even the bridge over the Strait of Messina”. This was the announcement made by Infrastructure Minister Altero Matteoli to Radio Anch’io, adding that the Interdepartmental Committee for Economic Planning (CIPE) will be deciding on the matter on Friday. The minister warned that “if we begin with works costing 16.6 billion, there will be 140,000 more jobs. Otherwise 65,000 jobs will be at risk.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Living Will: Franceschini, PDL Barracks Divided
(AGI) — Rome, 26 Feb. — The PD (Democratic party) has chosen the ‘‘fair line’’ on living wills. These were the words of Dario Franceschini, at the end of a meeting with the PD Senator Umberto Veronesi, as he compared the situation of the PD and the PDL and confirmed that the splits are only in the mid-right. “There must be freedom of conscience on ethical issues”: this is the PD line and the fact that it is a fair position is being shown in the fact that the central right is experiencing great division”. The PD secretary said that in fact, “you cannot follow the party whip line on themes like this, you can obey the party line but you have to listen to your own conscience.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lufthansa Challenges Alitalia With Three New Routes
Flights to link Milan with Rome, Naples and Bari.
ROME — Lufthansa is taking on Alitalia in Italy, and specifically on the Milan-Rome route. The German airline is about to open three new Italian services, all based at Milan Malpensa. The new flights will start operation in April.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Nearly 3, 000 March in Brussels for Catalonia’s Independence
[Comment from Tuan Jim: Anyone have insights on this one? I hear a lot about the Basque movement, but this is a first for me on Catalonia.]
Some 2,900 supporters of independence for the Spanish region of Catalonia marched through Brussels on Saturday to draw international attention to their cause, police said.
BRUSSELS — While most the marchers were from the northeastern Spanish region, the demonstration also drew supporters of independence movements elsewhere in Europe such as Spain’s Basque region, Venice, Corsica and Scotland.
Some marchers bore signs saying “Catalonia, the next state in Europe” or “Catalonia is not Spain” while one said: “Freedom cannot be stopped: 1944 Iceland, 1990 Lithuania, 2006 Montenegro, 2008 Kosovo, 2014 Catalonia”.
A police spokesman said that the demonstrators marched from the Brussels North train station to the Brussels South station without any particular incidents.
Catalonia’s independence movement seeks a state running from the French border to the coastal city of Valencia, and including the Balearic Islands as well as the wealthy and populous region’s main city of Barcelona.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sharia’s Inroads in Europe — Italian Court: ‘Beaten Up for “Her Own Good”‘
(Mar. 2) — Pakistan recently gave in to the pressure of Islamist militants. Indeed to buy off peace, Pakistani authorities allowed the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) in the Swat valley.
How long the cease-fire Swill last is anyone’s guess. But Pakistan has allowed a precedent that could extend to other provinces; in fact the Swat valley is only about 100 miles away from Islamabad, the capital.
But Sharia is not just making inroads in Pakistan but actually creeping in the West — particularly in Europe.
One area especially touched by this phenomenon is the judicial system in Europe. Two recent cases in Italy and France are particularly troublesome. First, in Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating up and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she wanted to live a “Western” life.
In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and bad treatment. The court acknowledged that the teenager was “brutally beaten up” for having “dated” a non-Muslim and in general for “living a life not conforming with the culture” of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman was beaten up for “her own good.” The Bologna public prosecutor’s office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.
Interestingly two Italian political leaders on the opposite side of the political spectrum, Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister agreed to condemn the Supreme Court decision: “This verdict writes one of the darkest pages of history of the law in our country.”
Isabella Bertolini was upset that the court “allied itself with radical Islam” and Barbara Pollastrini is pushing for parliament to pass as soon as possible a law condemning violence against women: “Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture.”
Muslim women were quick to denounce the supreme court’s decision. Among them, Souad Sbai, president of the Organization of Moroccan Women in Italy.
She said, “It is a shame, this verdict is worthy of an Arab country where the Sharia would be in vigor. In the name of multiculturalism and respect of traditions, the judges apply two kinds of rules: one for the Italians and one for the immigrants. A Catholic father that would have acted this way would have been severely sentenced.”
According to her organization, recently at least nine Muslim women have been killed in Italy by one of their close relatives. The number of young girls forced to wear the hijab “as early as eight or 12” is on the rise as is the number of female teenagers fleeing home and “lots of them are looking to flee to France.”
But France might not be the panacea either. Indeed in one very publicized case, last June, a French judge ruled in favor of a Muslim man who wanted the annulment of his marriage because his wife turned out not to be a virgin. What this decision amounted to was the endorsement of the repudiation concept.
This decision triggered a huge outcry from politicians, and various organizations. In November, a French court of appeal overturned the decision. Interestingly, a large majority of French Muslims, about 80 percent are very secular and totally reject any kind of Sharia law being implemented in the homeland of human rights.
But the United Kingdom is a different story, indeed there close to 40 percent of young Muslims are in favor of Sharia law being implemented in Britain. The idea seems to be also making headway among non-Muslims. So, last year, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave his support for the courts in Britain, saying that the legal recognition of them “seems unavoidable.” He added, the United Kingdom has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Williams argued that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt within a Sharia court.
But contrary to what Williams advanced, Sadiq Khan, a British Muslim MP said that Sharia courts would discourage Muslims from developing links with other cultural and ethnic groups. He feared also that women could be “abused” by Sharia courts, which may give unequal bargaining power to the sexes.
In Switzerland, echoing Williams, Christian Giordano, an anthropology professor at the Fribourg university wrote that a special jurisdiction for Muslims could be envisioned in Switzerland. He added that including elements from Islamic law could allow to better manage the multiculturalism issue. Other occurrences of Sharia law taking precedence over the law of the country have been reported: For example, in Denmark, some imams have allegedly sentenced delinquent Muslims, hence bypassing Denmark’s judicial system.
Islamists, much to the detriment of the majority of Muslims in Europe seem to be making headway in Europe in pushing Sharia law into the judicial system.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Madrid Court Says Franco Statue Removal Illegal
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 4 — The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid has ruled that the removal of the equestrian statue of Francisco Franco from Nuevos Ministerios Square in the Spanish capital null and void. The removal of the equestrian statue in March 2005, was the first removal of a Francoist symbol shortly after the approval of an historical memory law. According to legal sources cited by the EFE press agency, the court ruled in favour of an administrative appeal presented at the time of the National Francisco Franco Foundation. Citing administrative infractions by the Infrastructure Minister, who ordered the statue to be removed, the high court ruled the full “invalidity” of the order, but did not order the statue to be returned to its former location, which was requested by the foundation, because “it lacks a practical purpose”. The equestrian statue, 6.5 metres in height, was located on a pedestal for 46 years, and was removed amid the protests of nostalgic Francoists, and placed in a warehouse in March 3 years ago, immediately after a historical memory law became effective, which gave administrative powers’ to remove symbols that exalted the Francoist period. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Bishop, Don’t Remove Cross, Not Symbol of Franco
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 5 — The removal of Civil War symbols unleashed a harsh reaction in Cuenca, where the archbishopric filed a complaint with the Guardia Civil (the civil guard) relating to the removal of a cross that was located next to the San Miguel Arcangel church by the Municipality of Mota del Cuervo (Cuenca). The cross was inscribed with the names of people who faced the firing squad during the civil war for religious reasons. The cross was removed on Tuesday in accordance with an order that had been unanimously approved by the town hall in full session. The municipality, governed by a Isquierda Unida/Psoe coalition, applied the Law on heritage. The order provides for the “removal, in all public spaces, of any remaining symbols of Franco still existing in the municipality”. The municipality, which counts 6,500 inhabitants, experienced tense moments when a substantial group of citizens attempted to oppose the removal of the cross by stepping between the monument and the large vehicles sent by town authorities. In the end, with the help of a police line, the operation was carried out and the cross was removed to a town storage unit. On December 14, according to a press release by the archbishopric cited by Efe agency, the order to remove the symbol was notified to church authorities, with the remark that the cross was standing “in the public path located right next to the church”. According to the archbishopric, “the removed monument can in no way be construed as an exaltation, be it personal or collective, of the military uprising, the Civil War, the dictatorship or even of Franco’s repression”, as provided by the law. Hence the complaint against the town authorities was filed with the Guardia Civil, and the archbishopric reserves the right to exercise ‘any legal recourse that it may deem necessary’’. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden’s Anti-Israel Apartheid Policy is About More Than Sport
Neutral Sweden’s mixed World War II legacy is still debated by historians. On the one hand it supplied Nazi Germany with iron ore and ball bearings and allowed the Wehrmacht to use the Swedish railway system to transport soldiers. On the other hand, spurred on by the Danes, it accepted Danish Jews marked for mass murder by the Nazis. Ultimately, the good name of Sweden was redeemed by the unparalleled heroics of one of its own — Raoul Wallenberg, who, using the cover of a Swedish diplomat, helped save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews destined for Auschwitz, only to disappear into the Soviet Gulag. For decades, no Swedish government had the courage to demand his return from the jaws of the neighboring Russian bear.
Masked anti-Israel protestors clash with police outside the Baltic Arena in Malmo, Sweden, Saturday.
While this Swede will forever be revered by the Jewish nation, it is brutally clear in 2009 that Jews and especially those uppity ones from Israel are of little concern to Swedish authorities, as their policies become more reminiscent of apartheid South Africa or Berlin in the 1930s than a 21st-century Scandinavian democracy.
| — Hat tip: Reinhard | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden ‘Anti- Semitic’ for Tennis Fan Ban
Sweden has been accused of anti-Semitism in a leading Israeli newspaper, following the weekend’s Davis Cup tennis match between Israel and Sweden, which was held behind closed doors in Malmö.
In an article in the Jerusalem Post, writers Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman say the decision not to allow spectators at the match was dictated by biases “that have echoes in Nazi Europe’s anti-Semitism.
The writers accuse politicians on Malmö Council’s sports and leisure committee for giving in to pressure from the city’s anti-Israeli Muslim minority by refusing to allow spectators into the match.
“The security card was invoked not to protect but to stigmatize Israeli athletes as pariahs,” they write, adding: “None of this is about sports. It’s about Jews.”
Malmö’s mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, said the criticism was unwarranted.
“It’s absurd. We’ve made it clear from the outset that this was about security, not about Jews. And after what happened on Saturday it is clear to everyone that a dangerous situation could have arisen if we had been forced to evacuate 4,000 people from the hall into what was going on outside, with stones being thrown at the police,” Reepalu told news agency TT.
Nine people were arrested in the disturbances outside Baltiska Hallen, where the match was being played. A 22-year-old man was detained on suspicion of attempted serious assault.
Police say that several of the masked activists who took part in the disturbances have now been identified.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Crowd Ban ‘Risks Bolstering Extremists’
The City of Malmö’s decision to hold the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup tennis match behind closed doors is ill-conceived, short-sighted and potentially dangerous, argues freelance Israeli journalist David Stavrou.
I have never been a big tennis fan. In fact, the odds are that I wouldn’t even have heard of the Davis Cup match between Sweden and Israel, taking place this weekend in Malmö, if it wasn’t for the “Stop the Match-Boycott Israel” campaign which has been underway since December. The campaign organizers are doing their best to mobilize thousands of demonstrators to Malmö this weekend and according to Malmö police chief, Håkan Jarborg Eriksson, some extremists have stated that they want to “stop the match at any cost”.
Like it or not, sporting events are part of our culture and official matches between national teams often become political events. This is particularly true in Sweden. Many Swedes were in favor of boycotting the Olympic Games in China, for example. Others wanted to boycott the 2006 Football World Cup because it promoted prostitution and human trafficking in Germany. The Davis Cup itself has also been a source of controversy in the past. When Sweden played Rhodesia and Chile in the late sixties and early seventies there were many calls for cancellation and mass demonstrations were organized.
Many sports fans may object to it, but in reality sports and politics are both part of the public arena, and cannot always be separated. In a democracy people have the right to mix them together, to demonstrate and even call for boycotts. Still, municipal officials are expected to live up to their minimal responsibilities even in the face of an angry crowd. This is the reason that the decision made by Malmö’s sports and recreation committee, to hold the Israel-Sweden match behind closed doors is so outrageous.
According to Bengt Forsberg, chairman of the committee, there was no political motive behind the decision. Though police had said the match could go ahead and that the public could be admitted, Forsberg’s committee decided not to take the chance. “This is absolutely not a boycott”, he explained, “We do not take political positions on sporting events. We have made a judgment that this is a high-risk match for our staff, for players and for officials”. In other words, someone made a threat and the city of Malmö decided to cave in.
To many this may seem reasonable at first sight. Why take unnecessary risks? If there are concrete threats, it could be claimed, everything must be done to avoid casualties. But in this age of terror and violence where does this end?
Anyone who has been anywhere near a Stockholm derby football match, for example, couldn’t miss the extensive police presence. Policemen on foot, on horse and in helicopters above try to maintain the peace, at an enormous cost to the tax payer, while large groups of drunken young men throw objects at the field, terrorize other spectators and get involved in large scale fights. The authorities, quite rightly, have decided time and again to fight hooliganism and protect peaceful football fans. It is, after all, a basic civil right to engage in sporting activities without being subjected to threats and violence. There has been talk of anti-hooliganism legislation, and the National Council for Crime Prevention even proposed treating hooliganism as organized crime. But in the case of the tennis match in Malmö, the combative rhetoric disappears and the ones who are punished are the fans instead of the hooligans. Why is this?
One explanation is that Mr. Forsberg and his committee aren’t being entirely honest or they may be extremely naïve. Despite their claims, any decision at this level is political. Obviously, no one will stop the money making and extremely popular football league because of threats. In this case, freedom and democracy will prevail against the dark forces of violence. But when it comes to a tennis match against Israel the attitude changes. Mr. Forsberg obviously doesn’t care much about a match against a team from a country that a large part of his constituency hates anyway. I wonder if the good citizens of Malmö would approve of banning fans from a Malmö FF game because someone said he’s so pissed off that he might hurt someone.
At the risk of being accused (yet again) of promoting paranoid theories of Anti-Semitism I’ll add the following point: after giving in to threats such as the ones made by angry Anti-Israel demonstrators, why shouldn’t the City Council of Malmö close down the Jewish cemetery and synagogue since they were already attacked and are definitely at a high risk of being attacked again? Why shouldn’t pro-Israel demonstrations be banned since demonstrators are often met by angry stone-throwing mobs? In fact, why shouldn’t local authorities close down the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm or the Jewish centre in Helsingborg, both of which have recently been attacked?
This scenario may have sounded unrealistic a few months ago, but the decision to ban the public from the Davis Cup match shows that it is more than possible. A few Jewish or Israeli targets may not affect most Swedes but it’s a slippery road. If a few threats on a relatively minor sporting event can empty a 4,000 seat arena, just imagine what a real terrorist attack would do to Swedish society. Would a terrorist attack on a local bus close down the public transport system? Will night clubs and restaurants lose their licenses if they are targeted by terrorists? Will municipalities say they prefer not to risk going on with daily life even when the police clearly say they can handle the work load? Regardless of political convictions, there must be a consensus that a modern freedom loving democracy has to protect itself against violent extremists. In the post 9/11 world, perhaps it’s time for local authorities to realize that the times, they are a’changing.
Another explanation for Malmö’s City Council decision may derive from the very nature of the objections to the match. It’s a discriminating decision that is a result of a discriminating campaign. Make no mistake, “Stop the match — Boycott Israel” is a legitimate campaign. I don’t agree with what they say or with their political allies but no one can take away their right to express their objections to Israeli policies or to publicly sympathize with the Palestinians in Gaza. It’s true, some of them have said terrible things and spread vicious lies (such as comparing Israel to the Nazis); some have actively supported terrorist organizations, but their right to express themselves remains. Still, anyone who wants to see the bigger picture should be careful with boycotts. They are seldom effective and tend to end up hurting the wrong people, and although it is tempting to make comparisons to boycotts like the one against South African apartheid, the analogy is wrong.
The conflict in the Middle-East is nothing like that in South Africa and a boycott policy against one side in it is simplistic at best and biased, unbalanced and hypocritical at worst. This is not to say that Israel cannot be criticized, but Swedes should be careful when using a tool as powerful as boycotts. Sweden had no problem participating (and winning twenty medals) in the 1936 Berlin Olympics under Hitler or participating in the Beijing games despite China’s massive violations of Human Rights. Hundreds of demonstrating students were killed by government forces just days before the 1968 Mexico-City Olympic Games, but that didn’t “Stop the Match” for Swedish athletes just like the British soldiers who shot unarmed civil right activists in Derry, Northern Ireland didn’t bring about any boycotts against English products or English cultural and sporting events. Does this make the calls for boycotting the Davis Cup match against Israel invalid? Of course not. But it would imply that Israel is worse than Nazi Germany and that Israeli policies brought about events more severe than the Irish Bloody Sunday, the Mexican Tlateloco Massacre and the events of Tiananmen Square all combined! It is clear what kind of people make claims like this.
And here’s one last thought for the demonstrators in Malmö who must be very proud of the exposure their campaign has received these last couple of months. They gained support, their case is all over the media and they even forced local officials to close the controversial match to the public. But here is a word of advice: don’t be too pleased with Malmö’s decision to give in to threats. The same authorities that cannot stand up to today’s threats will not stand up to those of tomorrow. What started as threats against tennis players and fans could easily lead to threats by ultra nationalists against immigrants or Neo-Nazi threats against Mosques and Madrasahs. “The ultimate weakness of violence”, Martin Luther King once said, “is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it”.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: ‘Baby Bonus’ Would Pay Swedish Parents to Have Children
[Comment from Tuan Jim: Is this likely to have the desired effect or simply to increase the welfare rolls?]
In an effort to boost Sweden’s birthrate, the Christian Democrats are considering a proposal that would pay families 10,000 kronor ($1,085) for every newborn child.
“There are simply too few children being born and that’s regrettable,” said Anders Sellström, a member of the Christian Democrats’ governing board, to the Svenksa Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.
Sellström also leads a working group within the party tasked with formulating a revised family policy ahead of the 2010 parliamentary elections.
According to figures from Statistics Sweden (SCB), 109,301 children were born in Sweden last year. But the Christian Democrats want to see that number increase.
“We want to find incentives and have looked at how it’s done in other countries. Many have some sort of baby bonus and society must send the signal that ‘We need more children,’“ Sellström told SvD.
Sellström hopes the 10,000 kronor handout will help give families “a good start”, and help defray the costs of expensive items such as strollers, car seats, and cribs.
The proposal would cost taxpayers about one billion kronor per year, but Sellström sees it as money well spent.
“From a national economic perspective, it’s money that we more than make back again, that’s something I’m convinced of,” Sellström told the newspaper.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Looks to Toughen Conditions for Development Aid
Dismay over the how several United Nations (UN) organizations have used development aid from Sweden has led the government to propose tougher conditions for allowing aid groups to receive Swedish funding.
Sweden will not only finance international aid projects, but also wants the right to participate in how operations are managed, Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson has proposed.
If aid agencies are ineffective or don’t work toward Swedish goals and priorities, Sweden will reconsider its support.
The government has reviewed roughly 20 of the organizations which receive the most support from Sweden, and several UN-related groups are in danger of losing Swedish funding.
In the review, particular importance was placed on how the groups prioritize democracy and human rights, the environment and climate, as well as gender equality and the role of women in development.
In addition, Sweden also assessed the efficacy and results of the various organizations.
According to Sweden’s review, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is in effective and suffers from too much top-down management.
However, as the FAO is currently in the midst of a reform, Sweden has elected not to withdraw its funding of the organization.
“In other cases where Sweden has been working for improvements but hasn’t been heard, we have reason to review both the size of our aid and the level of continued engagement,” writes Carlsson in an article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.
The government plans to follow several other organizations closely because of their lack of effectiveness.
If the groups don’t undertake reforms and changes to improve their performance, Sweden may decide against continued long-term cooperation.
The specific agencies in danger of losing financing from Sweden include the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), the UN Development Fund for Women, UNAIDS, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Tourism: Italy Guest of Honour at Brussels Vacation Expo
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, FEBRUARY 13 — This year Italy is the guest of honour at the Brussels Vacation Expo which started on February 9. This role also conferred to Italy the privilege of appearing on the entry tickets to the event, another occasion, ENIT reports, to multiply the favourable echos which Italy has in the countries of Northern Europe, Belgium in particular. The regions of Lazio, Lombardy, Piedmont, Apulia, Sardinia, Umbria Valle d’Aosta and Friuli Venezia Giulia are hosted in an equipped area of 483 square metres, together with the city of Stintino and another six personalised spaces. The stand, inaugurated with the Italian ambassador to Belgium, Sandro Maria Siggia, is enriched by historic advertisements from past promotional campaigns that the institute organised, but also by symbols from design and made in Italy’ including a Fiat 500 and a Vespa Piaggio, cult objects that are repeatedly used in the world of cinema and fashion to invoke Italian style. The Brussels Vacation Expo, has taken on a more important role over the past few years, and is considered not to be missed. The last edition was host to 102,000 visitors and 742 exhibitors, with an increase of 30% over 2007, testimony to the complete success of the event. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Care Blunders ‘Failed to Stop’ Knifeman Who Went on Stabbing Spree
A catalogue of damning failures in the treatment of a paranoid schizophrenic who embarked on a stabbing spree in London is exposed today.
An independent inquiry highlights the series of blunders that led up to the attacks which left one person dead and five others injured in the space of one hour.
It also accuses a psychiatric nurse of altering medical records at a later date.
Ismail Dogan, 32, from Tottenham, had stopped taking medication six months before going on a killing spree. Turkish-born Dogan, now in Broadmoor, claimed a bird had spoken to him telling him to carry out the attacks.
On 23 December 2004, between 8am and 9am, he killed father-oftwo Ernest Meads, 58, and stabbed five others around Tottenham, Wood Green and Edmonton.
He admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was found guilty of attempting to kill five others in March 2006.
A report into Dogan’s treatment is due to be published today as a result of pressure from the victims and their relatives.
The inquiry into Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust and Haringey Teaching Primary Care Trust is expected to reveal a number of opportunities missed by health professionals which could have prevented the stabbings taking place.
Dogan had been well known to mental health services. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2000 after suffering “persecutory and grandiose delusions” of being touched by spirits.
Six weeks before going on his rampage, Dogan attacked his mother at their home and the family tried to get help from social services.
They were referred to the family doctor but he refused to visit and told them Dogan should come to his practice. The GP, vilified at the time for refusing to make a home visit, is exonerated in the report.
But the report, commissioned by NHS London, identifies 23 “ critical junctures” in Dogan’s treatment including:
- a failure to use the Mental Health Act effectively and to put in place a proper care in the community plan,
- a lax attitude to monitoring whether Dogan was taking his medication,
- poor communication between the police and various professionals supposed to be treating him,
- ignoring pleas by Dogan’s parents as he became increasingly violent — not least because his mother spoke little English and translators were not routinely employed.
The psychiatric nurse who was Dogan’s “care co-ordinator” is accused of altering medical notes at a later date.
The report states: “The apparently amended notes … would lead the reader to think that Mr D received a more robust assessment and treatment package than the one he did actually receive.”
The inquiry concluded that Dogan’s care was “severely compromised by a lack of consistent medical management throughout the period of his care and treatment at Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust”.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: How Will the Tories Fill Our Power Shortfall?
When, as seems ever more likely, David Cameron enters Downing Street as prime minister, he will find himself facing two major national crises. One, our collapsing economy, he knows about, although it is not certain what he plans to do about it. To the other, however, he seems totally oblivious.
There is no secret about the fact that within a few years Britain will be faced with a terrifying and unprecedented shortfall in its electricity supplies. All but one of the nuclear plants which provide a fifth of our power are so old they will have to close. Nine more major coal and oil-fired power stations are rapidly running out of the hours they are allowed to remain open by Brussels.
The combined output of these plants is 22 gigawatts (GW). At peak demand we need 56GW. We thus face a 40 per cent shortfall in the supply needed to keep our economy functioning. There is no way that gap can be filled in time by new nuclear plants. Building more gas plants, when we are fast running out of our own gas and prices are likely to soar, all the experts agree is crazy.
So what does Mr Cameron propose? There is no more alarming gap in Tory thinking than the complete vacuum that represents their energy policy. For three years they have indulged themselves making “green” noises about the need for a “low carbon economy”, “smart meters”, more wind turbines, without giving any indication that they have the slightest practical knowledge of where our electricity actually comes from.
This was devastatingly brought home in January 2006 when the media were summoned to watch Mr Cameron and his shadow cabinet colleagues sitting in front of laptops to sign up with “green electricity” suppliers. Clearly they imagined that if you sign up to a “green” tariff, all your power will somehow come from nice eco-friendly windmills and solar panels. In fact it all still comes through the National Grid, where the derisory amount of power from windmills just gets mixed in with all that “dirty” electricity from grown-up power stations.
Mr Cameron himself signed up with a company called “npower juice”, which boasts that it gets most of its power from a windfarm off the north Welsh coast. The deal is fine for npower, which makes £9 million a year in subsidies from its turbines through selling Renewable Obligation Certificates, on top of much the same from the electricity itself. But most of the power entering Mr Cameron’s home via the grid is no more “renewable” than anyone else’s.
From the electricityinfo website we can actually see the sources from which supply companies derive their power. Npower gets 38 per cent from coal, 46 per cent from gas, only 3 per cent from renewables. Mr Cameron’s energy adviser Zac Goldsmith, also present in 2006, happily explained that he is signed up with Ecotricity, which likes to boast that it is the “greenest” of all supply companies. But even Ecotricity only derives 37 per cent from renewables, the remaining two-thirds coming from nasty, polluting, ungreen coal, gas and nuclear.
The point of this story is that it reveals the almost fathomless naivete of the Tory leadership about one of the two most serious issues which will confront them if they come to power. They babble on about the wind turbines which very intermittently provide barely 1 per cent of the electricity we need and are unlikely ever to produce significantly more. But they show not a glimmer of grasping the scale of the crisis now roaring down on us, let alone give any sign they have an answer to it, Unless they grow up very fast on this issue, Mr Cameron could go down in history as the man who left Downing Street shortly after the lights went out.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim PC Sues After Workmates ‘Laughed at His Beard’
A Muslim police officer claims he was forced out of his job by colleagues who made fun of his beard and called him a ‘f***ing Paki’.
PC Javid Iqbal, 38, said white officers openly discussed in front of him how they were ‘ better’ than their ethnic-minority colleagues.
The married father of two also claims officers pulled faces at each other if told they had to go out on patrol with him and forced him to walk home from a job instead of picking him up.
PC Javid Iqbal: ‘My beard is an important part of my identity’
Mr Iqbal says he was sacked after fellow-officers in Luton launched a ‘smear and witch-hunt campaign’ during which they lodged a string of complaints about his performance.
He is taking the Bedfordshire force to an employment tribunal claiming he is the victim of racial and religious discrimination and unfair dismissal.
The claims will add to concern about institutional racism in police forces.
An employment tribunal in London recently heard evidence that an ‘apartheid culture’ was operated at Belgravia police station, with separate vans for white and black staff.
Mr Iqbal, who was born and raised in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, told the Daily Mail: ‘My beard is an important part of my identity which helps other Muslims relate to me.
‘I am disgusted that I was bullied by other officers because of my beliefs. I became a policeman because I believed in putting something back into society.
‘I have found that institutional racism is still very much around.’
Mr Iqbal was working in Hertfordshire County Council’s finance department when he became a special constable for the Bedfordshire force, one day a week.
Following the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, he volunteered to go on patrol every night after work for two weeks to help reassure the large Muslim population of Luton, who were concerned about revenge attacks.
In October that year he was accepted on to a training course to become a full-time constable.
He says the first racist incident came in early 2006. He claims he was in a van with seven PCs and three ‘tutor’ constables — including one other Muslim — which stopped for food at a shop which did not sell halal products. When he asked if they were stopping anywhere else, he was told: ‘This is it.’
One officer allegedly mimicked his accent and pretended to have a beard similar to his in an ‘ offensive’ incident.
Matters worsened in September 2006 when eight officers presented ‘negative statements’ to superiors about Mr Iqbal, including an allegation that he failed to help a colleague arresting a violent offender.
He said he was cleared the following June when CCTV showed he was dealing with other people at the time.
But relations with fellow officers hit a new low in February 2008, three months after he officially lodged his grievances. A sympathetic officer told him the document had been left in the duty room where anyone could read it.
Subsequently, he said, an officer had openly referred to him as a ‘f***ing Paki’.
Mr Iqbal had only recently returned to work after a ninemonth leave of absence on full pay owing to depression when he was sacked for poor performance in August last year. He says he was the victim of untrue allegations, such as failing to report a rape claim. He insists the woman complained only of harassment at the time.
Mr Iqbal’s wife, Surhya, 30, a preschool headmistress, said: ‘Javid has gone through depression quite badly. There were times when he was asleep continuously for three days. Previously, I felt if something was wrong we would be able to rely on the police. Now I know how it works on the inside I’ve lost faith.’
A source at Bedfordshire Police claimed Mr Iqbal was sacked because he was ‘not cut out to be a police officer’. A spokesman added: ‘We can’t comment on a case that is yet to be heard but the evidence will speak for itself.’
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Nearly 7m Maths Dunces Are Baffled by Sums That a Child Could Do
Almost seven million adults have maths skills below the level of the average 11-year-old, a worrying survey has found.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sensitivity to Religion Cannot Dictate the Course of the Law
Consistency demands that Hizbollah’s spokesman be banned from entering Britain.
As The Sunday Telegraph reports today, the Government has yet to decide whether it will allow Dr Ibrahim Moussawi into Britain to give a talk at the University of London next month. Dr Moussawi is a spokesman for Hizbollah, the Islamist group responsible for a string of kidnappings, murders and bombings in Lebanon, and for violent jihad against Israel. He has yet to apply to the Home Office for permission to enter Britain for next month’s lecture, but he has applied for, and been granted, a visa to visit this country twice before.
Not surprisingly, there have been some profound objections raised to allowing him into Britain again. Baroness Neville-Jones, the Conservatives’ security spokesman, has noted in a letter to the Home Secretary that there should be “no double standards” on extremists, a view echoed by Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion. The Government, having banned Geert Wilders, the Right-wing Dutch MP who compares the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, from entering Britain, should not allow Dr Moussawi to come here.
As defenders of the right to free speech, we take the view that it would be better that both individuals should be allowed to speak in Britain, rather than that neither should. However, the objectors to Dr Moussawi are correct when they say that consistency in the application of the law is essential to its credibility and its justification. There can be no consistent justification for the Home Office allowing Dr Moussawi into Britain after it has prohibited Mr Wilders.
Inconsistency of that kind, however, seems likely. The Government has demonstrated before that it is reluctant to antagonise some of the more vociferous sectors of the British Muslim community. There was a particularly blatant example of that kind of behaviour two weeks ago, when the Charity Commission published its report into whether a London-based Palestinian charity, Interpal, had violated the rules governing charitable status. The report resulted from a BBC Panorama programme which alleged that Interpal donated money to causes linked to Hamas, the group designated as a terrorist organisation by the European Union. The BBC programme’s claim that Interpal donations were ending up with organisations affiliated to Hamas was emphatically denied by Interpal, but apparently confirmed last year by the US Treasury: it stated that the “Union of the Good” — a coalition of charities of which Interpal is part — “facilitates the transfer of tens of millions of dollars a year to Hamas-managed associations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
And yet the Charity Commission, despite a two year investigation, simply declined to scrutinise that evidence — although it would not merely breach charity guidelines if Interpal was donating money that found its way to Hamas: it could even be a criminal offence. Instead, the Commission contented itself with suggesting to Interpal that it “dissociate” itself from the Union of the Good. The contrast with the way the Charity Commission treats other British charities — private schools, for example — where a smallest infraction of the code is sufficient to generate the immediate threat that charitable status will be withdrawn, is obvious. The Commission insists it is not influenced by ministers. It is difficult to believe, however, that in this case, the importance to the Home Office of not offending a large and powerful part of the Muslim community did not dictate the outcome of the investigation.
This approach discredits the Government and it discredits the law. No group in Britain has the right to special treatment. We hope that, in future, the Government applies the law consistently and fairly to everyone.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: the Children Who Think That Auschwitz is a Brand of Beer
Some schoolchildren think the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was a brand of beer, a religious festival or a kind of bread.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Women Should be Hit for Wearing Sexy Clothing in Public, One in Seven Believe
One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in “sexy or revealing clothes in public”, according to the findings of a survey released today.
A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is “nagging or constantly moaning at him”.
The findings of the poll, conducted for the Home Office, also disclosed about a quarter of people believe that wearing sexy or revealing clothing should lead to a woman being held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted.
Although a majority of 1,065 people over 18 questioned last month believe that it is never acceptable to hit or slap a woman, the poll found that those aged 25-39 were more likely to consider that there were circumstances in which it was acceptable to hit or slap a woman.
Men and women over 65 and those in the lower social class groups D and E are more likely to believe that woman should be held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted, Ipsos Mori telephone poll found.
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “Violence against women and girls is unacceptable in any form no matter what the circumstances are.”
Ms Smith said that more needed to be done to challenge attitudes that condoned violence against women and girls.
She was speaking as she launched a police lead review of whether new laws are needed to tackle serial domestic violence abuses and whether there is a link between the early sexualisation of young girls and violent abuse.
One idea being considered is to allow women to ask police if a new partner has a record of domestic violence. A pilot scheme that allows women to request information on whether a new partner has a history of child sex abuse is currently underway in four police force areas of England and Wales.
But Ms Smith was confronted at a working breakfast at which she launched the campaign by a veteran domestic violence campaigner.
Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, accused Ms Smith over breakfast at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster of using “gimmicks” and “spin”.
She said that government action so far had been “piecemeal” and condemned plans for a database of serial domestic abusers.
Ms Horley said: “We have had enough talking — we need action. As for the perpetrators’ register, it is a gimmick and doesn’t address the root problem.
“The majority of violent men don’t come to the attention of police and it won’t keep women safe.
“Police can’t be expected to monitor relationships and love lives of offenders.”
She went on: “The Government is hoping to get away with useless initiatives like this register and it is hypocritical to sound tough and do little.”
She said that the cases of Sabina Akhtar and Katie Summers showed that not enough was being done.
Ms Smith tried to interrupt the tirade but was shouted down before Vera Baird, the solicitor general, stepped in to argue the Government’s case.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican Paper: Washing Machine Liberated Women Most
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — Feminists of the world sit down before you read this. The Vatican newspaper says that perhaps the washing machine did more to liberate women in the 20th century than the pill or the right to work.
The submission was made in a lengthy article titled “The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Women — Put in the Detergent, Close the Lid and Relax.”
The article was printed at the weekend in l’Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, to mark international Women’s Day on Sunday.
“What in the 20th century did more to liberate Western women?,” asks the article, which was written by a woman.
“The debate is heated. Some say the pill, some say abortion rights and some the right to work outside the home. Some, however, dare to go further: the washing machine,” it says.
It then goes on to talk about the history of washing machines, starting with a rudimentary model in 1767 in Germany and ending up with today’s trendy launderettes where a woman can have a cappuccino with friends while the tumbler turns.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Bosnian-Serb Arrested Over Srebrenica Massacre
(ANSAmed) — SARAJEVO, MARCH 4 — The Bosnian police has arrested Zeljko Ivanovic today in Pale, near Sarajevo, after a warrant for his arrest was issued three years ago by the State Prosecutor’s Office. Ivanovic is charged with genocide, reported the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Sarajevo. Ivanovic, 37 years old, known as Arkan, is accused of having participated in the summer 1995 massacre of more than 800,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, which has been defined as genocide by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The tragedy took place after the city — which was a protected UN zone — was conquered by Serbian troops under general Ratko Mladic, who is now in hiding and wanted by international law on charges of genocide and war crimes, as well as crimes against humanity. Ivanovic, a former Bosnian Serb military policeman, is charged with participation in the murder of more than a thousand Muslim prisoners in the village of Kravica, on the road between Srebrenica and Bratunac. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Indian Companies Seek to Manufacture Tractors in Serbia
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 4 — Serbian Agriculture Minister Sasa Dragin said that Indian companies Mahindra and Sonalika are interested in tractor production in Serbia, reports BETA news agency. After signing an agreement on agricultural cooperation with the Indian Agriculture Ministry, Dragin said that the value of the greenfield investment is yet to be determined and that talks are under way. “We have held preliminary talks and have presented the Indian side with the terms on which Serbia enables investors to acquire land and infrastructure,” Dragin said. Head of the Indian delegation and Agriculture Ministry official Nanda Kumar said that the signed agreement envisages cooperation in science, the transfer of technologies and economic cooperation between the two countries. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Russia’s Gasprom to Open Bank
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 6 — The head of Serbia’s Chamber of Commerce, Milos Bugarin said that Russia’s Gazprom will set up its own bank in the country to bolster and facilitate its operations in the Serbian energy sector, reports weekly Ekonomist. Following its 400 million euro acquisition of Serbia’s oil monopoly NIS through subsidiary Gazprom Neft, Gazprom has already initiated its 547 million euro investment program in NIS, seeking suppliers and contractors for one of NIS refineries. Gazprom Neft became the 51% owner of NIS, as part of a wider Serbian-Russian energy deal that will include Serbian territory in the Russian-backed South Stream gas pipeline project and also help upgrade Serbia’s main gas storage facility in Banatski Dvor. Serbia’s largely privatized banking sector has been dominated by the Austrian, German, Greek and Italian groups, with the first Russian venture in the sector launched only in the second half of 2008 when the Bank of Moscow requested and received a license to operate in the country. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Cooperation: Delegation From Lazio in Western Sahara
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, FEBRUARY 19 — Saharawi press agency SPS has reported that a delegation from the regional government of Lazio in Italy, led by Regional Council President Guido Milana, this week made a visit to the Saharawi camps near Tindouf in the Algerian Sahara, where they met with the president of the SADR (self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic), Mohamed Abdelaziz. “I believe that the Saharawi people need more than humanitarian aid” said Milana at the end of the meeting, “also political aid, in particular from European countries”. The delegation also visited some of the projects that have been co-financed by the Lazio region in the five camps, that since 1975 have accommodated about 150 thousand refugees from the former Spanish colony of western Sahara now occupied by Morocco. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Cooperation: Partnership Agreements for Sicily and Algeria
(ANSAmed) — PALERMO, MARCH 6 — A series of partnership agreements were signed today by Sicily and Algeria in the sectors of renewable energy, tourism, real-estate, food and agriculture, and cosmetics, during a series of international workshops, promoted by the Standing Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership of the Local and Regional Authorities (Coppen) and hosted by the Terre di Sicania Consortium. The objectives stated in the agreements include technology sharing, training in the renewable energy sector in Algeria, planning and construction of tourist infrastructure in the cities of Batna and Setif with Roman and Phoenician archaeological sites, training Algerian beauticians, in exchange for raw materials offered to Sicilians. This morning at Orleans Palace, the contents of the agreements were announced to Regional Vice-President Giovambattista Bufardeci, Coppen Secretary General Carmelo Motta, and the head of the Algerian delegation Noureddine Sbia. “One of the protocols that was signed,” said Bufardeci, “is focused on development in the tourism sector. Cooperation between Sicily and Algeria will involve not only training provided by Sicilian tourism workers, but also the realisation of tourism infrastructure in Setif and Batna and expert training for the preservation of Algerian cultural heritage. Sicily is to become a centre of congress tourism in the Maghreb.” (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Algeria, Italy Guest of Honour at ‘Electro’ Show
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, FEBRUARY 19 — Italy will be “guest of honour” at the international Electro-Automation-Energy show in Algiers from February 22 to 25. A note issued by the Ice (Italian Institute for Foreign Trade) office in Algiers explains that fifteen Italian companies will present their recent innovations in the sectors of power production, electrical components, automation, lighting and security systems during the “Italian day”. In the first 10 months of 2008, Italy exported high-precision machinery and electrical appliances to Algeria for more than 186 million euros, 44% more than in the same period in 2007. Exports also increased for power lines (20 mln euros, +425%), engines, generators and transformers (74.5 mln euros, +218%), electronic distribution and control instruments (44 mln euros, +120%) and instruments for the production and use of mechanical energy (337 mln euros, + 63%). In 2008, Italian companies signed contracts for over 120 million euros in this sector. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Sicilian Consortium at Tripoli Oil&gas Fair
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, FEBRUARY 19 — Sicily, and in particular the Sicilian Mechanical Zone consortium (bringing together over 160 companies on the island), is looking towards the Libyan market as the land of future opportunities. The consortium’s designs on the Libyan market were made obvious in its first and much-trumpeted attendance at the Oil&Gas and Infrastructure Fair which opened in Tripoli on February 16 and closes today. The consortium, which was established in the province of Siracusa and has been declared a Production Zone in the framework of European regulations, brings together companies involved in the planning, supply, assembly, installation and maintenance of industrial plants as well as methane, oil and gas pipelines, in addition to hydro networks and quality, security, software and logistics. In Tripoli representatives of the zone have already begun their first official meetings with members of the Libyan government in charge of awarding contracts, and have also discussed water treatment and industrial and urban waste management plants. Simona Falsaperla, from Confindustria Sicilia (the Sicilian branch of the Confederation of Italian Industry), defines the fair as “an initiative which arose from the combined efforts of the Chamber of Commerce, Confindustria (Confederation of Italian Industry) and the Province of Siracusa.” The director of the zone, Francesco Piluso, explained that “Libyans are more open towards us because they are aware of our forty-year experience in the Oil&Gas sector. For our part, we are ready to welcome opportunities and to satisfy all the requirements of Libyan bureaucracy.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Equal Opportunities: New Programme for Mediterranean Started
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 2 — The new programme for equal opportunities for men and women in the Euromed region funded by the EU focuses on countries in the southern Mediterranean. The new initiative is based on another Euromed programme, ‘The Role of Women in Economic Life’ (RWEL), which ended in January 2009. The new programme has a budget of 3,342,000 million euros. Its goal is to involve Euromed countries in projects that have equal opportunities as basis for development. The programme also wants to come to a consensus on the concept of ‘violence against women’ and it wants to develop appropriate plans to fight this phenomenon.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
EU-Turkey: Three Grants to Support Occupation to be Launched
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, FEBRUARY 26 — The European Union and Turkey have joined forces to increase employment and facilitate continuing education for adults in Turkey. EU and turkish partners will launch soon three grant programmes worth more than 30 million euro, to support activities of Turkish non-profit organisations that promote women’s employment, registered employment and lifelong learning. Organisations such as NGOs, local authorities, trade unions, employers’ organisations and universities can apply for the grants. The purpose of the grant programmes is to support activities that foster cooperation between employers and the institutions providing education and consultancy services to the labour force. The programmes cover three areas of activity: promoting women’s employment; supporting actions aimed at improving women’s employability, supporting women’s entrepreneurship and diminishing cultural and other obstacles that hinder the participation of women in the labour market. Second area wants to promote registered employment through innovative measures and the third area wants to promote lifelong learning in line with EU practices and to increase access to education and employment opportunities for Turkish citizens. The grants will benefit 43 provinces of Turkey with the goal of eliminating regional disparities. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Tunisia: Electricity, Elmed Station Online by End 2016
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, FEBRUARY 20 — The electricity power plant planned by the Elmed project is to go online between 2015 and 2016, combining the efforts of Tunisia’s Steg and Italian company Terna. An occasion to present an update on the project has been provided by a forum in Tunis on matters Euro-Mediterranean. The 1,200 MW station will dedicate 800 MW of its output to the Italian market, with the rest going to Tunisia. The fuel — which is to be chosen by the Tunisian partner — could be either gas or coal. The two points’ on the production line will be the Tunisian coast and Sicily, where a sub-station is to be constructed, supplied by electric power along an undersea cable around 200 km in length. Among Elmed’s objectives are the development of electricity exchanges between Italy, the Maghreb and Europe and the creation of a technical environment for a future integration of the North African and European electricity markets.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
A Special Form of Islamic Feminism
Die Zeit 05.03.2009
In an interview with Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg, Egyptian jurist and preacher Suad Saleh describes a special form of Islamic feminism. As one of the first women to study at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, she obtained the right to issue fatwas — for example, the death sentence against Mohammed Hegazi and his wife for their conversion to Christianity: “If someone converts to Christianity — or vice versa — without causing a disturbance in the society, that’s his right. The death sentence stems from the social unrest he caused. Mohammed Hegazi used the media to declare his conversion to Christianity publicly, and in doing so, he attacked Islam.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptians Stone Anti-Israel British MP Galloway
(IsraelNN.com) Egyptians stoned a humanitarian convoy at Rafiah that was led by anti-Israel British Member of Parliament George Galloway on Sunday. The incident occurred at El Arish, approximately 28 miles from the Rafiah border at Gaza. Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans, and several people in the convoy were injured in the attack, according to convoy organizer Yvonne Ridley, quoted by French news agency AFP.
The convoy included 110 vehicles carrying nearing $2 million worth of goods. Egyptian officials delayed the convoy because it was carrying non-medical supplies that officials said must pass through Israeli crossings. Ridley said that MP Galloway is negotiating with officials and that its non-medical aid might be forwarded to Gaza through the Egyptian Red Crescent agency.
The convoy left Britain under police surveillance following MP Galloway’s attempt to include three terrorists in a convoy
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: George Galloway Stoned
A convoy led by the maverick MP George Galloway carrying supplies for Gaza has been attacked in Egypt, apparently injuring several people travelling in his party.
The convoy, carrying aid worth £1 million, was pelted with stones and vandalised with anti-Hamas slogans after it stopped overnight in El-Arish, a small town around 28 miles from the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
The attack comes weeks after Mr Galloway, of the Respect party, described Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak as a “tyrant” and “criminal” and demanded that he be overthrown by his country’s armed forces.
Mr Galloway’s party confirmed that Egyptian officials had also become embroiled in a dispute with the party over what type of goods they would be allowed to take into the territory through the Rafah crossing.
They were due to cross over into the Hamas-run territory today, but were so far believed to have been detained at Rafah this morning for more than an hour.
The biggest attack faced so far by the the 110-vehicle convoy, organised and led by the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, came after it arrived in El-Arish on Saturday.
During a power cut — which is a frequent occurrence in the town — children had pelted the convoy with stones, a security official said.
“It’s an absolute disgrace,’’ convoy organiser Yvonne Ridley told the AFP news agency. “The power was cut. Under cover of darkness members of our convoy were attacked with stones.
“Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans. Several people in the convoy were injured in the attack.”
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
300,000 Israeli Settlers to Move Into Territories
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, MARCH 2 — According to the Israeli peace movement Peace Now, the Israeli Ministry for Construction is planning to build housing in the West Bank and Jerusalem for an overall 300,000 people. If the plan goes through, the number of settlers in the Territories will double. Peace Now has said that there are to be a total of 73,300 housing units, 15,000 of which have already been authorized. The movement added that thousands of homes are to be built in the E-1 zone between Jerusalem and the Maaleh Adumin settlement in the West Bank, in the direction of Jericho. The plan has given rise to alarm within the Palestinian leadership, since in its opinion the project would bring in a de-facto separation between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. In an interview with the military radio station, Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer said that if the plan were to be authorised and carried out, then “it will no longer be possible to build a Palestinian state” in the Territories. However, Peace Now believes that it is still possible to put a halt to the plan while the latter is still undergoing the necessary bureaucratic procedures. The Ministry for Construction claims that Peace Now has not understood the information which came into its hands, and said that for all Israeli territory plans for potential development are drawn up for the following ten years, and that the settlement plans in question had existed for a number of years. Whether they are actually carried out (even in partial manner) or shelved is a government prerogative. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Senior Hamas Leader Unsure if Shalit is Dead or Alive
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, MARCH 9 — Hamas second-in-command, Mussa Abu Marzuk, who lives in exile in Damascus, has denied news that he delivered a video of Ghilad Shalit, a prisoner of Hamas in Gaza since June of 2006, to the Syrian Foreign Minister. “I do not have any information on Shalit. I do not know if he is dead or alive,” he said, adding that those who are holding him prisoner will not provide any information about him “for free”. News on the delivery of the video was circulated in the press after Marzuk’s visit to Gaza at the end of last month. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Fake Wedding Cerimony Ends in Real Marriage
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, FEBRUARY 26- An Israeli boy, who jokingly held a fake wedding ceremony with his 14 year-old girlfriend found that he was legally married and was forced by his parents to divorce the girl. According to reports in the Israeli press today, the 17 year-old boy had jokingly recited the Hebrew ritual wedding vows before his girlfriend, and even put a wedding ring on her finger in front of two witnesses. It was intended to be a joke, but it ended up being a real wedding, since the Rabbi experts declared that the wedding was valid to all purposes, especially as the wedding’ was consummated afterwards by the young spouses. The boy’s parents, shocked to learn about the wedding, wasted no time in forcing boy to divorce his young wife, who apparently only reluctantly granted the divorce in exchange for 10,000 shekels (about 2,000 euros). (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Olmert: Divide Israel’s Capital
Says no peace unless Jewish nation splits holiest city
JERUSALEM — There can be “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians unless the Jewish state is willing to divide Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said this past weekend.
“There will be no peace if a significant part of Jerusalem is not the capital of the Palestinian state,” Olmert declared at a speech in front of residents of the Israeli north.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Building: Dubai, Initiatives to Safeguard Investments
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, FEBRUARY 26 — RERA, the Dubai building authority, has announced the launch of an online programme to safeguard purchasers and investors, says daily newspaper The National. From March the RERA website (www.rpdubai.com) will provide a monthly report on the house building situation in the Emirates and the progress of projects which are under way, with information about expirations, delays and photos of building sites to document the status of the works. The report will only include projects with guarantee accounts, 695 out of a total of 875 registered with RERA. The authority also said that builders must own the land 100% before being able to sell ‘on paper’’ and must make a down payment of at least 20% of the value of the finished project before starting work. This measure is aimed at protecting buyers, hundreds of whom poured enormous sums into projects in the past without the property ever being built. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Health: Turkey’s Infant Mortality Highest in OECD Countries
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 20 — A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has revealed that Turkey still has the highest infant mortality rate among OECD countries, Hurriyet Daily reported. “Infant mortality rate in Turkey has fallen dramatically over the past few decades, down from about 190 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 22.6 deaths in 2006. Nevertheless, the rate of infant mortality in Turkey remains four times higher than the OECD average of 5.2”, OECD said in a report titled “OECD Health Data 2008: How Does Turkey Compare”. Life expectancy rates have increased in Turkey in recent years, narrowing the gap with the average across OECD countries, but not surpassing it. In 2006, life expectancy in Turkey was 71.6 years, just seven years less than the OECD average while this gap was 20 years in 1960. Among the problems in the Turkish health care system noted in the report were a low-level of health care spending and a low number of physicians per capita, both of which were the lowest seen in the OECD. Turkey also has fewer nurses than many other OECD countries, with 2.1 nurses per 1,000 population compared to an OECD average of 9.7. According to the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of Turkey, Professor Mehmet Ceyhan, the activities of “infection control committees” established at State hospitals two years ago have not developed to the desired level and this plays an important role in the spread of infectious diseases. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Tareq Aziz’s Acquittal Upholds the Rule of Law, Says Iraqi Christian
Special Iraqi court rules that there is no evidence of Aziz’s direct involvement in massacre. The decision shows a desire to “uncover the facts” without “political pressures”. Saddam’s former deputy is in danger of possible vendettas. Many Shias are angry at the verdict.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) — Tareq Aziz was acquitted because there is “no direct evidence that he was materially involved in the murders,” a Catholic Chaldean told AsiaNews. It is also a signal that the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal wants to “uncover the facts’ without “political pressures”. Tareq Aziz, the source pointed out, “used to send people before a court for judgement and never took on the onus of killing or ordering mass killing.”
A former deputy prime minister, and a one time foreign minister under Saddam Hussein, the close loyalist of the late Iraqi leader was acquitted for his alleged role in a brutal crackdown against Friday prayer protesters that followed the assassination of a Shia cleric, Muhammad al-Sadiq al-Sadr, and his son in 1999. The action by security forces left 42 people dead, gunned down; their bodies removed and found only in 2003 after the fall of Hussein’s regime.
Conversely, Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hasan Majid, a former Baa’th chief in northern Iraq known as ‘Chemical Ali’, was sentenced to death.
The source said that the court tried to “find the truth of the facts” based on the principles of “honesty and transparency.”
“Tareq Aziz,” he said, “was a special case. Everyone knows that he is Christian. In reality he was not that interested in religion. He was closely associated with the Socialist-Marxist movement and was always loyal to the party. He was a political figure, prone to dialogue and thinking, but saw very little action. For this reason he was never directly involved in killings. Saddam Hussein himself did not see him as the right man for punitive raids.”
Born in a village near Mosul in 1936, Tareq Aziz has always lived in the shadow of his master. So far he is the only Saddam loyalists to have been acquitted.
He surrendered to allies forces on 24 April 2003 after the fall of Saddam’s regime. Since the start of his trial he has tried to move public opinion, appearing in court in pyjama, looking sick, contrite.
He still faces two more trials and could still be the target of attacks or retaliation.
“In Middle Eastern and Arab culture, vengeance is sacred. If he were to be freed and left on his own, without protection, he could get killed,” the source said.
“Even if he is acquitted in the other cases, he will ask for political asylum in a Western country with which he had good relations, or will ask for protection from the Iraqi government. Many Shia leaders reacted angrily to his acquittal.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Crosetto, 360 Degree Appreciation for Unifil
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, MARCH 2 — A three day visit to Lebanon by Undersecretary for Defence Guido Crosetto ended today; the aim of the visit was to get an overview of the situation and an exchange of ideas between the Commandant of the UN force in Southern Lebanon (UnifiL) and the Italian military who are part of the force, parliamentary leaders and the Lebanese armed forces. “It was important to hear their thoughts about the prospects, work and objectives of the Unifil mission”, in the light of the coming campaign for the elections in June, Crossetto told ANSA before leaving for Rome. “Of course, I’m going back with a 360 degree appreciation for Unifil’s activities in general, and for those who are responsible for it (General Claudio Graziano, ed.), and for the Italian contingent in particular” and also “with informal messages of friendship towards Italy” he added. Following yesterday’s visit to the Unifil bases, Crosetto went with Italy’s Ambassador to Lebanon Gabriele Checchia, Commander of the interforce operation Giuseppe Valotto, and an Italian military delegation to Beirut for institutional meetings with Vice Commander of the Lebanese armed forces, General Chawki Al Masri, and the Defence Commission of the Lebanese Parliament, led by the Honourable Samir Jisr. “We have given our willingness to continue to contribute to the formation of their armed forces” he said, adding that Italy “is well aware that they have a very important part to play in Lebanon’s stabilisation process”. He concluded that “we have received an invitation to the Security Middle East Show (Smes)”, which is the first trade fair in the Middle East dedicated to internal and border security, infrastructure and anti-terrorism, and takes place in Beirut on April 20 and 22. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
My Fellow Arabs
by Sami Alrabaa
Arab regime leaders and their affiliates swim in wealth (luxury private palaces with the finest and mot expensive man has ever produced, private jets, i.e. flying palaces), ignore the poor, repress the population, blame local backwardness on the West, and support fundamentalist Muslims.
Arab regimes have always been despotic and totalitarian. They have never believed in egalitarianism, economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and self-criticism. They have used medieval forces of governance: tribalism, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, authoritarian traditionalism, and most recently Islamic fundamentalism. Arab schools and universities turn out more graduates in Islamic studies, falsified history, and void nationalism than in science, engineering, and medicine. Critical studies and scientific research have screeched to a halt. The majority of Arab professors translate works and research done in the West and claim they are their own. Empirical work is almost non-existent. Students graduate without having the slightest clue about what is really going on in the Western world. The only things the majority of them know about the West is that it produces good car, but it is decadent; people drink much alcohol and women sleep with everybody.
Billions of barrels of oil, fertile land along the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates valleys, which in the past helped creating great civilizations, yield an excess of misery rather than riches like in North Korea or Hong Kong, for instance. Billions of dollars are squandered on armament and a lavish life-style enjoyed by corrupt despotic rulers of the Arab world and their affiliates. Totalitarian oil rich Arab grandees from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, and Qatar, who plunder their countries’ resources, invest their billions of dollars in the West. Countries like Egypt and Jordan, which receive billions of dollars as aid from the America and Europe, spend the money on strengthening their regimes.
Tragically, prospects of improvement are dismal. Arab government spokesmen and the predominantly state-owned media entertain the illiterate and semi-literate population with anti-Western and anti-Israel propaganda.
The Arab media are a great charade and a simulacrum of the West. They lack life-giving spirit and self-criticism. The state-controlled media and the private ones, owned by rich Arabs affiliated to Arab regimes, like the Saudi tycoon Al Waleed Bin Talal, give the appearance of being modern and Western. But their reporters and anchormen and women are by no means journalists by Western standards of free and truthful inquiry.
For example, while BBC makes a point of talking to the victims of a suicide bomber in Baghdad and Kabul, al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and the other Arab TV stations would never interview the mother of an Israeli blown apart by a Palestinian terrorist. To add insult to injury, Arab journalists call Palestinians who clash with Israeli forces and die: Martyrs.
Most Arab television stations would never broadcast freewheeling debates, like Meet the Press style talk show permitting criticism of the government, or critical, liberal interpretation of Islam. Commercial TV stations quibble over a high degree of anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism and obfuscate criticism of official Islam.
Creative novelists, cartoonists, and bloggers like Najeeb Mahfouz, Salman Rushdie, Flemming Rose, and Alaa Fattah received death Fatwas (ruling) for blasphemy. Four Egyptian editors of four Egyptian newspapers, Ibrahim Issa, Adel Hammouda, Wael el-Ebrashi and Abdel-Halim Qandil were sentenced to a year’s hard labour for offending the president, Hosni Mubarak. Instead of getting a prize for literary creativity and civic courage, critics receive a prison or death fatwa and a mob at their courtyard.
No wonder that a culture of zero-creativity and silence is pervading the Arab world. On the other hand, a culture of demagogy is spreading across the Arab world. Prime examples are the Islamist preacher Amr Khaled and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darweesh. The Arab current furor is scripted, whipped up, and mercurial.
The Arab regimes and their media focus on and exaggerate the number of Arabs killed in clashes with the Israeli army and the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, they deliberately ignore the thousands of Shiites, and Kurds butchered by Saddam Hussein and Hafez Asad of Syria.
The murder of some100.000 Muslims in Algeria by fellow Muslims, not by infidels, did not provoke so much indignation and violent demonstrations among Muslims as the so-called “Mohammed cartoons” did, although according to the holy Koran, “If someone kills a human being, it is as if he had killed the whole mankind.”
All the conferences held in the Arab world about alleged Western bias and media distortion, and all those open-letters signed by Muslim leaders to Christians for dialogue cannot hide the self-inflicted catastrophe — and the growing ostracism and suspicion towards Arab regimes and evil forces in the Middle East. The Arab-Muslim message: “You accept our Shari’a or die” will never be accepted by the world community. The gloat over that Islam is engulfing the world is mere self-deception, vulgar and hallucination, at best. What is engulfing the world is extremism and terrorism. And the world will never accept a religion that approves of bloodshed and carnage.
Yet, in sum, Arab regimes remain objectively powerful, at least in one respect, not because of greater courage, higher IQs, or stronger economy, but because of their unique skills in cultivating fanatics and breeding terrorists. The cultivated West has not yet been able to find an antidote to the culture of terrorism. That is an area where Arabs and Muslims have proved to be superior.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Saudis Order 40 Lashes for Elderly Woman for Mingling
(CNN) — A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.
According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, “Fahd” and “Hadian.”
Fahd told the policeman that he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.
Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism and punishes unrelated men and women who are caught mingling.
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, feared by many Saudis, is made up of several thousand religious policemen charged with duties such as enforcing dress codes, prayer times and segregation of the sexes. Under Saudi law, women face many restrictions, including a strict dress code and a ban on driving. Women also need to have a man’s permission to travel.
Al Watan obtained the court’s verdict and reported that it was partly based on the testimony of the religious police. In his ruling, the judge said it had been proved that Fahd is not the Sawadi’s son through breastfeeding.
The court also doled out punishment to the two men. Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes; Hadian was sentenced to six months in prison and 60 lashes. In a phone call with Al Watan, the judge declined to comment and suggested the newspaper review the case with the Ministry of Justice.
Sawadi told the newspaper that she will appeal, adding that Fahd is indeed her son through breastfeeding.
A top Saudi human right lawyer, Abdulrahman Al-Lahem, has volunteered to defend the woman and the two men and has been given power of attorney by them. He told CNN he plans to file an appeal in the case next week.
Efforts to reach Saudi officials at the Justice Ministry, religious police and other agencies were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said he had no details on the case.
The case has sparked anger in Saudi Arabia.
“It’s made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother,” Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN. “Forty lashes — how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it.”
| — Hat tip: The Frozen North | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Politician Speaks Kurdish, State TV Cuts Broadcast
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 24 — Turkish state television TRT cut its live broadcast from the parliamentary group meeting of pro-Kurdish party DTP on Tuesday after the party leader Ahmet Turk continued his speech in the Kurdish language, NTV private television reported. Pro-islamic ruling party AKP labeled Turk’s move as a “provocation” against democratic reforms. TRT said under the law no language other than Turkish could be used when making parliamentary speeches or group addresses. “The constitution and the law on political parties prohibit the usage of any language other than Turkish in the parliament and in the group meetings. Therefore we had to cut the live broadcast and we apologize for this,” a TRT announcement made on the incident said. A former deputy from a pro-Kurdish party had been jailed in 1995 for speaking Kurdish at an inauguration ceremony in parliament. Ahmet Turk said in his address in the meeting that he will continue his speech in Kurdish “in the name of the brotherhood and beauty of the languages”. Turk told reporters after the meeting that he did not inform the parliament speaker about the issue ahead of time. “If it is not allowed to speak in a native language, then women in chadors should not be allowed in parliament as well,” he added. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Marriages on the Rise Despite the Crisis
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 3 — Despite the global economic turmoil, marriages are on the rise in Turkey where 650,000 weddings have been celebrated in 2008 with an increase of 4% if compared to previous year’s figures, daily Todays’ Zaman reported. According to data from Interior Ministry’s General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs, 98,495 wedding ceremonies were performed in Istanbul in 2008 with a 3% increase if compared to 2007. According to figures produced by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) at the beginning of 2009, the average age for women who get married is 23 while for the men is 26. Marriage, including the expenses of setting up house, costs in Turkey between 15,000 TL (7,500 euros) and 50,000 TL (25,000 euros) and the wedding industry is a sector that brings together a number of separate sectors by creating demand for event planning, furniture, jewelry and wedding dresses. Representatives at wedding planning companies seem to be responding to couples’ preferences for cheaper weddings and people with marriage plans have started to look to spend less money and so prefer more unpretentious weddings due to the impact of the crisis.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UAE: Hookah Pipes Banned in Dubai’s Public Places
Dubai, 6 March (Aki) — The emirate of Dubai on Friday banned smoking — including the popular hookah water pipe — in public places, the UAE’s official news agency WAM reported. The ban covers parks and and beaches in Dubai, and will force local people to change their smoking habits, WAM said.
“The anti-smoking campaign we began in May, 2007, is now complete. We decided to extend the smoking ban to parks and beaches, because families go to these places,” WAM quoted a senior city council official, Salim Muhammad bin Mismar as saying.
The ban will protect children from the harmful effects of passive smoking and stop them picking up the “bad habit” at an early age, bin Mismar claimed.
Tobacco mixed with molasses and fruit flavours is smoked in hookah pipes.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Chechnya Asks Newborns be Named Mohammad
The southern Russian republic of Chechnya has asked parents of boys born on Prophet Mohammad’s birthday to name their children after the Muslim prophet, Russian media reported on Monday.
Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov added that every boy born on March 8 and March 9 will also receive 50,000 roubles ($1,394) — a hefty sum more than double Russia’s average monthly wage.
State television channel Vesti 24 showed rows of newborn babies sleeping in a hospital in Chechnya’s capital Grozny who will be named Mohammad on Monday. Earlier, the capital sent fireworks into the early morning skies around a lit-up mosque.
I ask their parents to name the boys after Mohammad,” Interfax news agency quoted former rebel turned Kremlin-loyal leader Kadyrov as saying.
Some analysts say that in return for quelling rebel attacks, the Kremlin has let Kadyrov usher in some Islamic-inspired rules, such as requiring women working in government offices to wear headscarves and long skirts, and imposing periodic alcohol bans.
Chechnya, on Russia’s southern border, is now relatively peaceful after two wars fought by separatist rebels and militants against Moscow’s rule in the area.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
India: Orissa: Violence Continues, Another Christian Killed
Hrudayananda Nayak, 40, disappeared Wednesday evening. His lifeless body was found in the forest near the village of Rudangia whose residents are predominantly Christian. Eyewitnesses say that a group of Hindu extremists stopped him on his way home. This is the third murder since October after widespread anti-Christian violence in August and September of last year.
Bhumbaneswar (AsiaNews) — Another Christian has been killed in the State of Orissa. The lifeless body of Hrudayananda Nayak was found yesterday in the forest near the village of Rudangia, near Ghumusar Udayagiri, a city in the district of Kandhamal. The 40-year-old man had disappeared the day before.
Sajan George, national president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), told AsiaNews that after Nayak accompanied his sister to a place five kilometres from the city he was stopped on his way back by a group of Hindu extremists and vanished thereafter.
Yesterday afternoon around 4 pm some Christian residents from local villages walking along the path Nayak had taken saw some blood and a slipper in a roadside bush.
Aware that a man had disappeared they informed police who came to investigate.
After a brief search by police and the Christians, Nayak’s body was found, lifeless.
Rudangia is a predominantly Christian village, some 260 kilometres from the State capital of Bhubaneshwar
Rudangia was the scene of a lot of violence and was virtually under siege at the height of the campaign of persecution against Christians in Orissa in August and September of last year.
On 30 September a mob of some 3,000 people was able to storm the village, torching houses and the local church.
A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) platoon was dispatched to the village which was turned into a fortress. Christian residents have not dared leave it for fear of attacks.
Despite tight security measures violence has not ebbed in the area. Nayak’s death is the third such incident since 30 October.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesian Porn Law Turns Off Folk Dancers
BANDUNG, Indonesia (AFP) — Gyrating her hips to traditional gamelan music on a makeshift village stage, Indonesian folk dancer Sri Wulandari ignores the leers and wolf whistles of the drunk men below as she plucks grimy rupiah notes from their outstretched hands.
Her nightly routines rage into the wee hours in villages across West Java province but the 30-year-old dancer said the excited punters respected the golden rule of “look but don’t touch.”
“The men say naughty things and ask me to marry them but I’m a professional dancer, not a prostitute. Dancing jaipong is not a dirty job,” she said.
The jaipong dance is one of several Indonesian art forms in the sights of social and religious conservatives after parliament passed a controversial anti-porn law in December.
West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan raised hackles when he warned dancers — who perform mainly at official ceremonies and cultural festivals — to tone down their provocative moves and hide their underarms to comply with the law.
But while artists, audiences and civil society groups are appalled at such comments, Islamic parties trying to boost their popularity ratings ahead of April general elections have championed the anti-porn campaign.
“The dance shouldn’t be too erotic,” said Tifatul Sembiring, a senior leader of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party.
“It’s true that in the 80s the jaipong dancers danced on tables in seedy places. Even now you can see them wearing tight clothes dancing at roadside bars,” he told AFP.
“The worry is that once the anti-porn bill is fully implemented, the dance may be banned because it’s too erotic.”
Outraged and insulted, professional dance groups have called on Indonesians to teach the self-appointed guardians of morality a lesson at the ballot box come April.
“What are they talking about? The dancers are all covered up in long-sleeved traditional kebayas, not sexy tubes,” said Mas Nanu Muda of the Jaipong Care Community, representing 20 dance groups.
“The dance is fast and energetic… If dancers limit their moves and do everything in slow-motion, wouldn’t they appear lewd instead?” he asked, swivelling his hips in a slow, exaggerated manner to illustrate his point.
The West Java dancers are not alone in their battle against the anti-porn law.
From animist Papuan highlanders wanting to protect their right to wear “koteka” gourds on their penises, to Hindu Balinese opera dancers worried about their shoulder-showing outfits, and Christian Minahasa people from North Sulawesi fearing an intrusion of Islamic values — many people across Indonesia’s cultural and religious melting pot want the law scrapped.
Even the sultan of Yogyakarta has declared his opposition.
“The leader of our nation must be able to build tolerance between the citizens so they live side by side in peace. For me, this cannot be negotiated,” Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, a candidate for presidential elections in July, told foreign journalists.
The anti-porn law was “the most terrible thing in the process of building our nation,” he said.
The law criminalises all works and “bodily movements” including music and poetry that could be deemed obscene and capable of violating public morality, and offers heavy penalties.
The Constitutional Court threw out a petition against the law by the Minahasa people in February, but the ruling was based on a technicality and the Christian plaintiffs are expected to try again.
Wulandari said politicians should keep their noses out of art and repeal the law immediately.
“Just kill it. The jaipong dance reflects our culture and there’s nothing pornographic about it,” she told AFP in the home of her choreographer in Bandung, south of Jakarta.
“I’m angry at officials who misuse the law to attack us and our art.”
Created by Sundanese artist Gugum Gumbira in the 1960s, Jaipong is a mix of older forms of community folk dances and the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat.
To untrained eyes, it combines the graceful arm and hand movements of Thai classical dance with hip gyrations reminiscent of Turkish belly dancing. It is not meant to be sexy, and the dancer’s full-length kebayas reveal little.
“It’s a popular dance performed at prestigious events in hotels and malls. Even children are taking lessons,” said Bandung tourism and culture chief Askary, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.
“Without shaking and gyrating, you can’t call it jaipong. I don’t consider it erotic, titillating or lustful. That’s all in the mind. If people want to think of something as erotic, it will be erotic,” he added.
Yusoff Hamdani, a teacher of Islamic studies, said jaipong was “a good form of exercise” for young girls — including his five-year-old daughter.
“It’s not just about understanding and preserving culture. My daughter used to be sick all the time but has become fitter after taking jaipong lessons,” he said outside a school in Bandung.
“I don’t know why anyone would view the dance so negatively.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Islam: Italy and Indonesia Hold Joint Inter-Faith Conference
Rome, 4 March (AKI/The Jakarta Post) — The Indonesian and Italian governments and an Italian Catholic lay organisation were to hold a cultural conference on Islam and coexistence in Rome on Wednesday.
Musurifun Lajawa, a counsellor at the Indonesian Embassy in Rome, told Indonesian state news agency Antara that the conference, themed “Unity in Diversity: The culture of coexistence in Indonesia”, was aimed at introducing Indonesia as model for a moderate Muslim country where people of religious beliefs and culture can live side by side.
Lajawa said that the conference, hosted by the Communita di Sant’ Egidio, was expected to help create dialogue between representatives of Indonesian Muslim organisations and Italian experts.
Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini and his Indonesian counterpart Nur Hassan Wirajuda were scheduled to give speeches at the conference’s opening session.
There were to be two main sessions in the conference, one themed “Christianity and Islam for a culture of coexistence” and “Civil Society, Islam, Coexistence.”
Among the main Indonesian speakers at the event were Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the country’s largest Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama, and Bachtiar Effendi and Azyumardi Azra of the State Islamic University.
Indonesia is an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands and 240 million people from 45 ethnic groups who practise all of the world’s major religions.
However, more than 85 percent of the country’s inhabitants are Muslim
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Singapore: Repatriation of Workers Foiled
POLICE on Monday moved in to stop a group of nine foreign workers from being repatriated. All packed and ready, they were barred from leaving for the airport. A representative of their employer, marine services company K7 Engineering, told police that the men were being sent home because they had refused to work.
The workers had a different story: They claimed there had been no work for up to five months.
They told The Straits Times they did not want to leave before collecting the salaries due to them.
K7 had planned to repatriate a dozen men on Monday. It engaged repatriation company UTR Services, which managed to move nine workers from their dormitory in Jurong to K7’s Serangoon Road office. Three workers fled.
The Straits Times understands that K7 cancelled the permits of these workers, some of whom had gone to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) last week over allegedly unpaid salaries.
A K7 spokesman told police he was unaware of a pending MOM case.
The ministry said it will call K7 soon regarding the workers’ claims, and that it takes a serious view of employers who repatriate workers without settling their outstanding salaries.
Under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, employers convicted of doing so may be fined up to $5,000 and jailed up to six months.
They could also be barred from hiring foreign workers.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sri Lanka: President Rajapaksa Launches Campaign Against Use of Child Soldiers
The government and Tamil rebels are accusing each other of enlisting minors. The Catholic Church and civil society assert that 60% of the combatants for both factions are children with an average age of 16.
Colombo (AsiaNews) — A national campaign against the exploitation of child soldiers. The “special initiative” is promoted by the government of Colombo. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, illustrating its contents yesterday, asserted that it is “necessary for preventing child recruitment, in tandem with the freeing of all children already recruited and brutalized.” For the leader of the Sri Lankan government, this campaign “is at the core of our final thrust to eradicate the scourge of terrorism from our nation.” The aim of the initiative is to put an end to the forced enlistment of minors, and create programs to recover and reintegrate former child soldiers.
The use of adolescents in the conflict between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is an issue about which the two factions have repeatedly exchanged accusations. The international community, on a number of occasions, has also warned the army of Colombo and the Tamil rebels against using child soldiers. Recently, UNICEF claimed that the LTTE has intensified its recruitment work in recent months, and released figures according to which, from 2003 to 2008, the rebels forcibly enlisted at least 6,000 adolescents. The figures provided by the UN agency confirm the repeated accusations from various organizations of civil society on the island, and the various Christian Churches of Sri Lanka.
Referring to the UNICEF data, Rajapaksa’s government accuses the rebels of instituting a genuine “Baby Brigade,” and says that 6,288 children under the age of 18 had been enlisted by the LTTE as of December of 2008. The Tamil Tigers respond to Colombo by saying that they have sent home more than 2,000 adolescents among their ranks, and accuse the army of recruiting minors itself, and using them for paramilitary brigades. The Catholic Church and organizations of civil society in the country assert that 60% of the combatants in both factions involved in the conflict are children with an average age of 16.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Asia: N. Korea Warns Intercepting ‘Satellite’ Will Prompt Counterstrike
PYONGYANG/BEIJING, March 9 (AP) — (Kyodo)—North Korea warned Monday that any move to intercept what it calls a satellite launch and what other countries suspect may be a missile test-firing would result in a counterstrike against the countries trying to stop it.
“We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means,” the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army as saying.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Beijing on Alert Against Revolts in Tibet and Xinjiang
by Wang Zhicheng
Accusations of separatism against the Dalai Lama and the Uyghurs. Soldiers, policemen, security personnel on the increase to prevent any attempts at uprising. The foreign minister criticizes countries that welcome the Dalai Lama, seen as merely “a political leader.” The Dalai Lama is asking only for autonomy in order to save the Tibetans from cultural genocide. An Uyghur academic asks for more help for the Muslim group, in the grip of unemployment.
Beijing (AsiaNews) -The Chinese authorities have deployed troops and strategies to prevent any revolts in Tibet and Xinjiang, both of them guilty, together with “hostile forces,” of wanting to destroy “national unity.” The Dalai Lama says he is concerned about the tension; moderate Uyghurs accuse the government of impoverishing the population.
In a study group connected to the National People’s Congress (NPC), underway at the capital, the governor of Tibet, Qiangba Puncog, stated yesterday that his government has implemented preventive measures to monitor any threat against security in the region. “There won’t be another riot as big as what happened on March 14 last year . . . That said, it is still likely that some individual supporters of the Dalai Lama may take the risk of making reckless moves.” Qiangba Puncong has continued to criticize the Dalai Lama and his government in exile, saying that they constitute a threat to stability in the region. Today, foreign minister Yang Jiechi also accused the Dalai Lama of not being “by any means a religious leader, but political,” who is seeking to “separate Tibet from China.” Yang also criticized those countries that invite the Tibetan religious leader. “Other nations,” he said, “should not permit visits by the Dalai, and should not permit him to use their territory for secessionist activities.”
For years, the Dalai Lama has reiterated his desire to return to Tibet, asking only for cultural and religious autonomy in order to save the Tibetans from cultural genocide, but Beijing accuses him of separatist activities. In recent weeks, the Tibetan religious leader has often said that he is concerned about the increasing tension in Tibet, which could lead to clashes and more deaths and arrests, as happened last year. This year is also the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan revolt in 1959, which was suffocated with military repression and led to the exile of the Dalai Lama. “It’s necessary to increase the number of the armed police, police, firemen, border forces and public security,” Qiangba Puncong says.
In Xinjiang as well, where the Uyghur community is asking for greater autonomy, Beijing is providing extra military control. This year, China wants to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the “peaceful liberation” of Xinjiang, with the entry of the Chinese army into the region. But many Uyghurs see this as an invasion. Yesterday, again during a study group at the NPC, the governor of Xinjiang, Nur Bekri, said that “the task of security will be more arduous, and the struggle more fierce in the region this year . .. . It’s a time of celebration for Xinjiang people, but hostile forces will not pass on such an opportunity to destroy it.” Last year, in order to prevent “terrorist attacks” at the Olympics, Beijing arrested more than 1,000 Uyghurs.
But personalities of this Muslim ethnicity accuse the Chinese government of being insensitive to the group’s basic economic necessities. According to Ilham Tohti, professor of economics at the central university for the nationalities in Beijing, the most serious problem for the Uyghurs is unemployment. This is due to the marginalization of the group from administrative structures and state industries, and to the policy of colonization, which every year transfers thousands of Han Chinese to the region. In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Tohti accused Governor Behkri of insensitivity toward the Uyghurs: “He’s always stressed the stability and security of Xinjiang and threatened Uyghurs. Xinjiang has developed, but the people are living in poverty, especially Uyghurs.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China Emerges as Threat to U.S.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union as a superpower, we in the United States became complacent, at least to a certain degree. I think we have forgotten what it is like to live each day knowing that there is a nation on Earth working just as diligently against our interests as we work for them. In the post-Cold-War era, that nation is communist China. The battlegrounds on which we prosecute a not-so-cold war with China are not proxy conflicts in third-world nations; they are the twin fields of endeavor most vital to continued human progress. These are technology and industry.
Anyone familiar with the state of contemporary manufacturing is familiar with how things are done in China. From photocopiers to pocket knives, anything and everything that can be made is made by Chinese manufacturing facilities. For the longest time, the factor holding the Chinese back in the world market was the critical issue of quality control. The Chinese have largely overcome this, however, and now an American company farming out its manufacturing to China can essentially pay for the level of product quality it desires. The Chinese will simultaneously, quietly copy anything and everything submitted to them for manufacture, of course; this is expected and even tolerated, if not appreciated.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Websites Sell Fake Aussie Passports
WEBSITES are selling fake state-of-the-art Australian passports for as little as $1250, boasting they’ll pass the most rigorous border checks.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says the sites are just another money-making scam but admit they are “the subject of ongoing discussions’’ with Australian Federal Police.
DFAT also warns that people who use such documents are guilty of a serious criminal offence.
One of the sites boasts it is a unique producer of quality fake documents.
“We offer only original high-quality fake passports, driver’s licences, ID cards, stamps and other products for following countries: Australia, UK, USA,’’ the site says.
Sample pictures of a blank Australian passport show where buyers’ personal details will be entered after supplying a digital photo, signature and other particulars.
The site asks for 750 euros ($1500) to be sent in instalments to Chisinau, Moldova via money order services, Western Union or money gram.
Australian passports on another site cost $US800 ($1250).
The website operator said via email that their passports would “successfully pass all existing tests, like UV-test, MRZ (Machine Readable Zone) check, machine check and so on’’.
“In fact we haven’t got any complaints from our customers on the problems with customs, airports or any other law authorities during travelling.
“‘We also provide (the ability) to affix almost all kind of stamps into the passports to make you feel more confident.’’
A DFAT spokesperson said making false or misleading statements in connection with Australian travel documents was a serious criminal offence.
The websites in question were the subject of ongoing discussions with Australian Federal Police.
“Websites that offer access to genuine Australian passports are typically scams, as all applications must be submitted through official channels and are subject to … (a) highly secure issue integrity process,’’ the spokesperson said.
“Australian passport documents are among the most technically advanced and secure in the world.’’
But as Australia’s passport security measures improve so too do the scammers.
An Australian Immigration Department spokesperson said intercepting travellers using fraudulent passports was part of Australia’s layered approach to border security.
“Effective document examination is a cornerstone of good border security,’’ the spokesperson said.
“Knowing how to spot a fake passport is crucial to maintaining the integrity of Australia’s border.’’
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Mauritania: Junta Supports Black-African Victims Solutions
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, MARCH 9 — The military junta which has been in power in Mauritania since August 6 2008 has agreed to find a “speedy solution” to the issue of black-African victims of inter-racial clashes in the country between 1989 and 1991. So said the President of a victims’ group, Sy Abou. According to human rights NGOs the clashes caused hundreds of deaths among the black-African population, including soldiers accused by the then President Maaouiya Ould Taya (1984-2005) of planning a coup d’etat against his regime. Sy Abou said that a report containing the requests of the victims’ group had been passed to the President of the Higher State Council (the junta in power), General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and that the General “is commited to finding a speedy solution which meets our requirements”. Several Ulema (Muslim scholars) and Islamic rights specialists worked with the group, giving them “their moral support for a fair solution”, according to Sy Abou; the victims are asking in particular for a recognition of the actions on the part of the State and moral and material compensation for the victims. “The procedure risks being extremely long in terms of getting a full and definitive agreement, which is why we decided to propose rulings in stages, starting with compensation for widows and orphans”, he added, saying that requests for the construction of a memorial to the victims and the exhumation of their bodies were declared inadmissible by the Muslim religion and had therefore been abandoned by the collective. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
This is What a Collapse Looks Like
Some of you may not realize that Argentina, a country rich in natural resources with a generally well-educated population, has undergone an economic collapse since 2001.
The primary reasons for this collapse are corrupt politicians, and fraudulent banking institutions that colluded to put the country into massive DEBT!
It is true that Argentina is much smaller than the United States, so I am not trying to say this is a perfect parallel to our current situation. What I am saying is that the root cause of our troubles appear to be similar to Argentina’s.
I am presenting for you three short clips from a documentary (there are 12 in total, but you need only watch the first three to get the idea) that graphically details what an economic and banking collapse looks like.
| [Return to headlines] |
Canada: Ottawa Urged to Review Immigration Board Cases
Arab group’s chief accepted 100% of refugees from Middle East
The government is being urged to re-examine all refugee cases heard by Khaled Mouammar, the current president of the Canadian Arab Federation, following the revelation that his acceptance rates were nearly twice the national average during a decade-long stint on the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Mr. Mouammar, an outspoken supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, recorded an acceptance rate of 100% when it came to refugees from North Africa and the Middle East during his time with the IRB between 1995 and 2005, according to statistics obtained by the National Post. Although cases from the Middle East represented only a tiny fraction of his overall caseload, the 68-year-old orthodox Christian, who was born in Palestine, also accepted each claim he heard against Israel during the period, while the rest of the IRB accepted just 10% of Israel claims.
“I would like to see some close scrutiny of who this fellow accepted because his numbers are off the radar screen, even in comparison
to the generally questionable record of the IRB. Obviously no one was monitoring his performance because he was there for 10 years,” said Martin Collacott, a former diplomat who follows immigration and refugee issues for the Fraser Institute.
Alykhan Velshi, spokesman for Jason Kenney, the Minister of Immigration, said the government acknowledges those concerns.
“Without knowing the full details of the individual cases, I can’t comment beyond saying that the numbers speak for themselves,” Mr. Velshi said.
“I think it’s fair for Canadians to ask why Mouammar’s acceptance rate was so much higher than the IRB average for the same countries, as well as whether he was letting people in who he shouldn’t have.”
When contacted at home, Mr. Mouammar referred all questions to the IRB. “I have nothing to add to that,” he said. A spokesperson for the IRB said the board did not comment on the performance of past or current members. “However, statistics on individual acceptance rates cannot be used to draw conclusions or inferences.”
Mr. Mouammar has found himself in hot water in recent months because of his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. The CAF advocates both be taken off a list of banned organizations because they are “legitimate political parties,” while it considers Israel a genocidal regime, guilty of “war crimes.”
Mr. Mouammar also hit the headlines for calling Jason Kenney, the Minister of Immigration, a “professional whore” over his support of Israel, a move that prompted Mr. Kenney to say he intends to review the CAF’s public funding.
The Post reported this week that Mr. Mouammar spent much of the late 1990s and early 2000s sitting on the refugee protection division of the IRB. He was appointed when Sergio Marchi was the Liberal immigration minister in Jean Chretien’s first term in 1994 and reappointed on four successive occasions.
Sources have forwarded statistics on the number of cases he handled during that period and the number of refugees that were admitted to Canada as a result.
In his first few years with the IRB, the norm was for two or three members to sit on a panel and hear refugee cases. In those years, Mr. Mouammar heard 912 cases, recording an acceptance rate of 50%, compared to an IRB average of 30%.
One person who heard cases alongside Mr. Mouammar on the refugee board said that when he presided over a case, he routinely accepted claims, and it was only when the other member presided that he would agree to deny claimants.
After the IRB streamlined the hearing process to one member, Mr. Mouammar’s acceptance rate rose dramatically. Of the 1,092 cases he heard on his own, he accepted 88%, compared to a 49% average for the rest of the IRB. When it came to cases from Algeria, Iraq, Israel, Morocco and Tunisia, that number rose to 100%.
“My conclusion is that, statistically, you definitely wanted him in the room with you if you were from Algeria or Iraq, or if you were making a claim against Israel,” said immigration policy analyst and lawyer Richard Kurland.
Mr. Collacott noted that Canada accepts three times as many refugees as most other countries.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Most Finnish Municipalities Get Migration Surplus
One third of people moving from abroad are returning Finns
full 94 per cent of Finnish municipalities are getting more inhabitants coming from abroad than they lose to emigration. “Immigration seems to be the key anchor of population development in the 21st century, at least in many municipalities”, says population researcher, Dr. Timo Aro. Aho was asked by Helsingin Sanomat to analyse what impact immigration has had on individual municipalities between 2000 and 2008. He used data from Statistics Finland as his resource material. The immigration statistics also include information about Finns who have moved abroad, and Finnish citizens who have returned to Finland after living outside of the country; the latter account for about a third of all immigration, although there is great variation from one year to another.
Of Finland’s 414 municipalities, 389 experienced net growth in the migration statistics from 2000 to 2008. There were 24 municipalities that experienced a net loss in immigration, and in one community the number of immigrants and emigrants were the same. For many communities, immigration has been the only way to maintain overall population growth, and in some communities, like the cities of Kotka, Kajaani, Mikkeli, and Kouvola, the population declined in spite of the immigration surplus.
When the number of emigrants is subtracted from the number of immigrants, Finland had a net population gain of 73,147 people during the period studied. The immigration surplus has grown in recent years. In 2008 it was many times greater than it was in 2000. Advance figures by Statistics Finland indicate that last year, 27,147 people moved to Finland, and 13,411 emigrated from Finland. Among those leaving Finland, 8,986 were Finnish citizens. The figure among the arrivals was 8,199.
The Helsinki region — Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa — accounted for a third of all immigration. The population of the three cities grew by 63,539 in 2000-2008. A third of the increase is attributable to growth in immigration. “The main part of immigration flows targeted large cities, for understandable reasons. However, migration does not extend to the communities surrounding large cities, contrary to what is the case in migration inside the country”, Aho points out. In his view, population gains from immigration are spread evenly throughout the country, but eventually he expects immigrants to start moving to the same areas, which will be emphasised further in the internal migration flows of cities with a migration surplus.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Helping Migrants Live Their Faith
Bringing foreigners together, but allowing them to live their own faith, is a big challenge for the Swiss Catholic Church, says its director of migration Marco Schmid.
Integration is not always easy, Schmid tells swissinfo, which is why the church has opted for creating more than 100 foreign language parishes within the country.
These missions hold their own masses and often have their own priests. The largest ones come from southern Europe, but eastern Europe and Asia are also represented.
There are around 1.7 million foreigners in Switzerland, and 50 per cent of them are Catholics, making them an important group for the Church, says Schmid.
As head of the Swiss Bishops Conference Migratio commission, 33-year-old Schmid is in charge of coordinating pastoral care for foreigners and dealing with social and ethical migration issues. A second-generation immigrant himself, Schmid took up the post last September…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Illegal Immigrants Might Get Stimulus Jobs, Experts Say
LOS ANGELES — Tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up filled by illegal immigrants, particularly in big states such as California where undocumented workers are heavily represented in construction, experts on both sides of the issue say.
Studies by two conservative think tanks estimate immigrants in the United States illegally could take 300,000 construction jobs, or 15% of the 2 million jobs that new taxpayer-financed projects are predicted to create.
They fault Congress for failing to require that employers certify legal immigration status of workers before hiring by using a Department of Homeland Security program called E-Verify. The program allows employers to check the validity of Social Security numbers provided by new hires. It is available to employers on a voluntary basis.
“They could have deterred this, but they chose not to,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies…
| — Hat tip: TC | [Return to headlines] |
UK Migrant Total is ‘Three Times the World Average’
The proportion of people living in Britain who were born overseas is more than three times the international average, it emerged last night.
Eleven per cent of British residents were born abroad, against the global figure of 3 per cent.
The campaign group Migrationwatch UK said the findings dispelled the Government’s ‘misleading’ claims that very high levels of immigration to Britain had been consistent with world trends.
Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch, says that Labour is to blame for out of control migration.
It said Labour had been using the claims as a ‘smokescreen’ to disguise policy failures, such as its inability to get a grip on the asylum system.
Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: ‘The Government seems to make a habit of blaming current ills on “global forces”, but our analysis shows this problem is almost entirely home grown. It could, and should, have been more competently managed, so preventing the rising tide of resentment among the public.’
A report by the group shows the percentage of the world population who are international migrants rose from 2.5 per cent in 1960 to 3 per cent in 2005 — the most recent global figure. In Britain, it went from 4.5 per cent in 1961 to 9.3 per cent in 2005.
According to the Office for National Statistics, it now stands at 11 per cent — one in nine of the population and the equivalent of 6.49million people born overseas living here.
Sir Andrew said the Government was to blame for outofcontrol migration for a number of reasons.
These included the policy, adopted by Labour in 1997, of trebling the number of work permits handed out every year to a record of 150,000 last year.
Overall, net migration — or the number of people arriving compared to those leaving each year — has trebled from 107,000 to 317,000 in that time.
He highlighted the loss of embarkation controls, which count migrants in and out of the country, and Labour’s decision in 1997 to axe the Primary Purpose Rule — a requirement for people seeking to enter by getting wed to show that the marriage was not a ruse to get into the country.
Immigration by spouses has increased by more than 50 per cent since then.
Sir Andrew also said control of the asylum system was lost for several years, ‘so contributing considerably to net immigration’, and that the Government had failed to predict the influx from Eastern Europe.
Ministers did not impose any restrictions on citizens of the Eastern Bloc states, unlike most of our EU neighbours.
Sir Andrew added: ‘The Government has held public opinion in contempt for years.
‘Despite having dismantled border controls, they deliberately encouraged immigration, partly to make the economic growth figures look better.’
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘We’ve always said that we would run our immigration system for the benefit of the UK.
‘We have put in place the biggest shake-up of immigration in over a generation, including the introduction of the points-based system.
‘This means only foreign workers we need — and no more — can come here.
‘The number of Eastern Europeans coming here to work is falling and research suggests many have gone home.’
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Illegal Immigrant Numbers Higher Than Official Estimates
There are nearly three quarters of a million illegal immigrants in Britain, research has suggested.
A study by the London School of Economics suggests that the number of people living in the UK without permission is much higher than previously thought.
The last official estimate of illegal immigration, a Home Office report in 2001, put the figure at 430,000.
Because of the nature of illegal immigration, accurately charting numbers is difficult. The LSE team said the figure lies somewhere between 524,000 and 947,000, with a “midpoint” figure of 725,000.
The LSE study was commissioned by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who is advocating a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants, something both the Government and the Conservative Party leadership oppose.
Many illegal immigrants work without paying taxes. Mr Johnson said that it is not realistic to try to find and expel all illegal immigrants, so it is better to try to bring them into the system and make them pay taxes.
“What I am trying to get people to recognise is that there are limits to what the policy to expulsions is able to achieve at the moment. Failing that, and it is failing, we need to think of a better alternative,” Mr Johnson told the BBC.
“If people are going to be here and we’ve chronically failed to kick them out it’s morally right that they should contribute in their taxes to the rest of society.”
He said that illegal immigrants would have to meet “tough” criteria before being made legal. No one with a criminal record would be eligible, and applicants would have to show they were able to support themselves and their family, and to demonstrate a long-term commitment to British society.
Mr Johnson is the most senior politician to support an amnesty, which has also been backed by trade unions and Church of England bishops.
But Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, rejected the “earned amnesty” plan, saying it would only lead to more illegal immigration.
“What unfortunately would happen is that people traffickers and others would see that as a pull factor to get people to the United Kingdom illegally and we would end up with a bigger problem not just for our society, but for the people themselves involved,” Mr Woolas said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Labour Runs Away From Consequences of Immigration Policy
The tirade by Phil Woolas , the Immigration Minister, against the Office for National Statistics, must rank as one of the most gratuitous pieces of government bullying seen in many a year.
Mr Woolas said he was “appalled” by the decision of Karen Dunnell, head of the ONS, to release figures last week showing the proportion of foreign born people living in Britain. He said he found this “politically embarrassing”. He called the decision to release the data as “at best naive or, at worst, sinister”. He even admitted he sought to block the publication of the data on the grounds that they were “neither new nor informative”. How does he explain, in that case, why every newspaper and media outlet found the figures both sufficiently new and informative to give them prominent coverage?
The statistics were included in the general run of population statistics that are routinely published by the ONS. Mr Woolas appears to believe that their publication resulted in the government being accused of “whipping up anti-foreign sentiment when it is the independent ONS who are playing politics”.
Why is it “playing politics” to issue this figure? Does the Government want to conceal it? It is, after all, the direct result of the immigration policy the Labour party has pursued since taking office in 1997. Why are ministers no longer prepared to defend it? Mr Woolas was given his current portfolio not to manage immigration but to try to defuse its potential for causing political damage to the Labour party. He has been encouraged to show that the Government shares the concerns of voters over the number of foreign workers taking jobs in a recession and about the impact on infrastructure and social cohesion of a growing foreign population in the inner cities. Labour is rightly worried that extremist political groups like the BNP will step into this breach if it is not filled by mainstream parties.
But it is, frankly, extraordinary to find the Government trying to disavow the ramifications of its own actions. What did it think would happen as a result of an open-door immigration policy? To try now to browbeat the independent ONS into covering up the consequences of the Government’s own policies is, in Mr Woolas himself might put it, “at best naïve or, at worst, sinister.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Lorne Gunter: the Real Deniers
William Happer is hardly a climate change “denier.” A physics professor at Princeton, he is a former director of energy research for the U. S. Department of Energy, where he supervised work on climate change between 1990 and 1993. He is also one of the world’s leading experts on “the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases,” and on carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Two weeks ago, he told the U. S. Congress, “I believe the increase of CO2 (in the atmosphere) is not a cause for alarm.”
Claims that an increase of atmospheric CO2 will lead to catastrophic warming “are wildly exaggerated,” according to Prof. Happer. While a doubling (we have seen about a 35% rise since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) might lead to a 0.6C rise in global temperature, he told Congress, “additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 … that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.”
Prof. Happer added that while CO2 concentrations have risen steadily for more than 100 years, warming began before that — 200 years ago — and even during the time when temperatures and carbon concentrations have risen together, the link has hardly been consistent. For instance, while CO2 was rising rapidly from 1950 to 1970, temperatures were going through an especially cold period.
Over the past decade, while carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to grow, there has been “a slight cooling,” according to the Princeton physicist. Any warming in recent decades, then, “seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide.”
Why then do organizations such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue to put faith in climate supercomputer models that show disastrous warming in the coming century? Because, as Prof. Happer explained, the IPCC believes in what is called a “positive feedback loop.”
In short, water vapour and clouds account for about 98% of the greenhouse effect versus less than 2% for CO2. The IPCC believes, though, that a doubling of CO2, while not significant on its own, will trigger a huge increase in the greenhouse impact of water vapour. But so far, in the real world, “the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative.” Prof. Happer testified.
The significance of Prof. Happer’s statement is not that it proves global warming is false, but rather that it shows there is no consensus among respected scientists. The notion that the “science is settled,” as claimed by global warming advocates, is not true.
Also, two weeks ago, three of five independent scientists asked by Japan’s Society of Energy and Resources to assess the current state of climate science concluded that global warming, to the extent it is still occurring, is a natural phenomenon, not manmade.
In his official contribution, Kanya Kusano, program director at the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, called the IPCC’s warming theories “an unprovable hypothesis” and likened the current supercomputer models to ancient astrology.
Even the Discovery Channel, never a fan of scientists who dissent from climate orthodoxy, reported last week on a University of Wisconsin study that shows global temperatures have at least flatlined during the past decade and that that trend could continue for another 30 years. The authors of that report — Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis — think rapid warming could resume after that. But for now, warming has ceased.
Against this legitimate scientific doubt, recent statements by environmentalists and alarmist scientists sounds positively hysterical.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and demanded their CEOs be jailed “for all eternity.” Michael Tobis, a climate modeller at the University of Texas labelled as “palpably evil” anyone who questioned the wisdom of former U. S. vice-president Al Gore and suggested that doubting Mr. Gore was “morally comparable to killing 1,000 people.”
U. S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu claimed warming will lead to “no more agriculture in California.” Meanwhile Susan Solomon, of the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead scientist with the IPCC, said even if carbon emissions are stopped, temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000 and within 10 years “the oceans will be toxic, and all life in them will die.”
Ironic, isn’t it, that those who doubt the warming theories are the ones called the “deniers.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: ‘White Male’ Kept Out of Police Chief Job
Home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst has refused to name a new police chief in the Zuid-Holland Zuid region because officials want the job to go to a white male, various newspapers report on Monday.
Ter Horst has agreed with the mayors of the big cities (who are effectively the head of police in their area), that 25% of the police force’s top jobs should be held by women within four years.
‘If you don’t resist the automatic reflext to name men, white men, you will never get a diverse police force,’ Ter Horst told tv show Buitenhof on Sunday.
Since the target was set, 17 men and three women have been appointed to senior functions. ‘If we carry on at that speed, we will never reach 25%,’ the minister said.
But many MPs are unhappy with the minister’s decision. ‘It is all about the best man in the right place,’ said Christian Democrat MP Coskun Çörüz in the AD. ‘We are already finding it hard to get good people for police vacancies.’
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Out of Chaos, a New World Order
Henry Kissinger wrote a very important article in the International Herald Tribune Jan. 12.
I believe it was meant as a signal — marching orders, if you will, for a disparate band of elitists determined to bring about a new form of global rule that will supersede our notions of national sovereignty, limited government and personal freedom.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Steve Janke: Um, You Know All That Stuff About Global Warning? Nevermind.
As many people have heard, a new study admits that the Earth has not been warming as predicted, but actually cooling off.
Originally reported on Discovery News, the study admits that the Earth is, in fact, not warming as environmentalists have feverishly hoped:
[According] to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
“Free variation” is the code phrase for “can’t be blamed on industrial economies of the West”.
In other words, just regular climatic change that the Earth undergoes.
But the funniest bit is the prediction for the future:
[Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee] thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said. “Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
So let me get this straight. Climate scientists are puzzled that their precious models have not successfully predicted the non-warming (ie, cooling) that has happened over the last few years, but they expect us to believe yet another prediction, this one being a full thirty years into the future?
Right.
And this one has global warming just popping up out of the ether. How does that work again?
But when you think about it, this thirty-year prediction makes a lot of sense. For the next three decades, if these people are to be believed, global warming will be lurking on the sidelines, waiting to pounce on us. We won’t actually see any warming, but apparently that’s now to be expected.
If in thirty years, the temperature spikes, then these guys win!
And if, as I suspect, nothing notable happens in thirty years? Well, then all that means is that all the money spent on semi-plausible carbon dioxide reduction programs, as well as all the money transfers to third world countries, did the trick, and that’s why the temperature has remained stable.
Gee, good thing we listened to them, eh, instead of spending thirty years on something like increasing the food supply or wiping out childhood diseases.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
This weekend, I had the misfortune to watch the film adaptation of the famous graphic novel The Watchmen. It was a movie I had every intention of enjoying — the trailers looked fantastic and everything pointed to it being a thrilling, if gruesome, ride through yet another untapped franchise. Sadly, it proved to be nothing more than a pretentiously dark and high-mindedly nihilistic piece that would be more forgettable if its images weren’t so pervasively disturbing.
Those who claim that the West owes much to the East are right in many cases, but also exaggerate this debt in others. Space travel was not so much a “mutual exchange of ideas” as an overwhelmingly European and Western creation based on science and technology that did not exist nor develop anywhere else in the world. It is true that the concept of a “rocket” was invented in Asia. The Chinese used rockets for military purposes for centuries, and they were known in other regions such as the Indian subcontinent, where Europeans encountered them.
According to Arnold Pacey in his book 
Space travel depended upon a host of scientific and technological innovations and in many ways represented the culmination of centuries of Western advances in these fields. It is unthinkable that you could have had space travel without the European Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. The chemical revolution which facilitated the discovery or invention of the materials and fuels needed for space technology started in the eighteenth century or earlier. The first device for generating an electrical current was created by the Italian Alessandro Volta in 1800. Electromagnetism was discovered by a Dane, Hans Christian Ørsted, and developed by people from Germany, Britain, France and other European nations.
While the materials and electrical equipment needed to launch human beings into space, communicate with them and bring them safely back home could not have been made without prior advances in electricity, electromagnetism, chemistry and other fields, we must not forget the importance of mathematical tools as well. Without modern branches of mathematics such as calculus it would have been more or less impossible to bring people to the Moon and back, or to send robotic probes to Mars and other planets. Indeed, the very concept of “gravity” was only developed in Europe during the Scientific Revolution, by Sir Isaac Newton in England.
The developments which would lead to space travel began in the late nineteenth century. Writers such as the Englishman H. G. Wells (1866-1946) and the Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905), the fathers of the science fiction genre, inspired many people, including scientists who would develop practical rockets, to envision visits to the Moon and elsewhere. Rocket technology developed so much that space travel went from science fiction to fact.
When the Soviet Union with Korolyov launched the Sputnik 1 into orbit in October 1957, they ignited the Space Race between the two superpowers within the Cold War. The Americans responded quickly and established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. There was a large military component to this as rockets and missiles could be equipped with nuclear warheads, but the Space Race was also a competition for global prestige which generated peaceful benefits such as weather and communications satellites, too. Above all, it opened up the possibility of placing observatories outside of the Earth’s atmosphere and of sending probes to explore other bodies in our Solar System.
Historians have found a mass grave in Huda Jama near the town of Laško, Slovenia. The victims were supposedly killed on the spot, but it isn’t yet known where they were brought from.