News Feed 20120426

Financial Crisis
» Cost of Spain’s Housing Bust Could Force a Bailout
» Cyprus: 13th Salaries Next for the Cutting
» Eurozone Economic Confidence Falls Sharply in April
» Greece: Troika to Return to Athens After Elections
» Greece: Incomes Fall by a Quarter in a Year
» Greece: Income Down 25% in 2011, Says OECD
» Isolated Merkel Embraces Monti and Growth
» Monti Believes EU Will Move to Stimulate Growth
» Spain: Ticket Sales Down 42% in Cinemas, Productions Fall
» Spain: Port of Barcelona Economic Drive, 1 Bln Investments
» Turkey’s Year-End Inflation to be Around 6.5%, CB
 
USA
» Black Panics and White Hispanics
» Chrysler More Than Quadruples Profits in First Quarter
» Dallas Muslim Scholar, Dr. Kavakci, Reveals Misconceptions About Sharia Laws
» From Giant Fireball Over Calif., Tiny Meteorites
» Marine Critical of Obama on Facebook Expelled From Ranks
» Rights Groups See Politics Behind Rise in Muslim Hate Crimes
» Why a Mega-Mosque in the Bible Belt?
 
Canada
» Islam Open House in Sault Ste. Marie on Saturday
» Minority Lawyers in Canada Push for a Less White Bench
» Sharia Law Subject of Event at Library
 
Europe and the EU
» Denmark: Rare Fighter Plane Wreck Lifted From Seabed
» France 2012: Sarkozy to ‘Crush’ Hollande, No Accord With Fn
» France: Driver Mistakes Paris Metro for Parking Entrance
» France: Paris Police Protest Over Officer’s Arrest
» France: Marine Le Pen: Don’t French Jews Get it?
» France: Sarkozy: Ramadan Supports Hollande, Denied by Both Men
» France: The Rather Dangerous Monsieur Hollande
» French Mosques Accused of Backing Hollande
» Germany: Telekom: 100,000 WLAN Connections Unsafe
» Holland Ten Points Ahead of Sarkozy in French Elections
» Italy: Grillo Says That “Partisans Would Again Take Up Arms Today”
» Italy: Almost Half of Pensioners Get Less Than 1,000 Euros a Month
» Italy: 40 Million in ‘Ndrangheta Assets Seized
» Melanie Phillips: The New Intolerance
» Netherlands: Wilders Discovers Europe
» Norway: 40,000 Join in Oslo Anti-Breivik Singalong
» Norway Town to Build Toilets for Beggars
» Norwegians ‘Face Terror With Music’ As 40,000 Take to Streets to Sing Children’s Song Breivik Claimed Was Marxist Propaganda
» Schulz: EU Collapse is a ‘Realistic Scenario’
» St George’s Flag is a Racist Symbol Says a Quarter of the English
» Sweden: Second Suspect Arrested in Teen Stabbing Case
» The Hype Starts Here: Ukraine Protests at Energy Firm Football Advert
» UK: Cardiff Library Backs Down on Protocols
» UK: Crack Team of Ex-Servicemen Who Normally Protect High-Profile Celebrities Employed by Council to Catch Litter Louts
» UK: George Galloway Converted to Islam 10 Years Ago, Claims Jemima Khan
» UK: George Galloway’s Muslim Conversion: Why the Big Secret?
» UK: Labour Jews Still Critical But Endorse Ken Livingstone With a Week to Go
» UK: London Riot Ringleader Has ‘Unduly Lenient’ Four-Year Sentence Doubled by Attorney General
» UK: Manchester United Attack Facebook After Site Refuses to Take Down Sick Page Mocking Munich Air Disaster
» UK: Police Granted More Time to Quiz Terror Suspects
» UK: The Legacy of Victorian England’s First Islamic Convert
 
Balkans
» Kosovo: Hundreds of Additional NATO Soldiers Due for Elections
» Serbia: Belgrade Relocates Roma to Make Way for Street
 
Mediterranean Union
» Website Created for Emancipation of Arab Women
 
North Africa
» Egypt: End to Gas Sales to Israel Raises Questions About Camp David Accords
» Egypt: 13 Presidential Candidates, Shafik Back in Race
» Outrage as Egypt Plans ‘Farewell Intercourse Law’ So Husbands Can Have Sex With Dead Wives Up to Six Hours After Their Death
» Ransom Money Finances AQIM
» Tunisia: Gannouchi Attacks State Media, Not Impartial
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» 64th Anniversary, Peres Warns “Enemies”
» Israel: From Darling of the Left to Pariah State
 
Middle East
» Syria: UN: Annan Has Budget of Almost 8 Mln USD
» Syria: Erdogan to Damascus, We Have Powerful Army
» U.S. Seen as Iran ‘Cyberarmy’ Target
» UAE: Lawyer Refers to Dictionary in Trial Accusing Man of Insulting Islam
» Video Shows Syrian Rebel Buried Alive
 
Russia
» Huge Green Cloud Over Moscow Has Terrified Russians Tweeting for Their Lives
» No Sharia Court in Russia
 
South Asia
» India: ‘TMC Terror’ Over Bhangar College Poll
» Indonesia: Lady Gaga Warned About Offending Muslims During World Tour
» Pakistan: Blasphemy Allegations: Suspect Taken Into Custody Following Violent Demo
» Pakistan: Bin Laden’s Family of Twelve Set to be Kicked Out of Pakistan Tonight
 
Far East
» China: Wen Announces $10 Billion Line of Credit
» How China Combats Product Piracy (Or Not)
» Indigenous Filipinos Battle for Their Land
 
Australia — Pacific
» Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens Unveils Moonshadow Musical
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Boko Haram Attacks Nigerian Newspaper Headquarters
» Twin Bombings Hit Nigerian Newspaper
» Uganda: Muslim Youth Storm Old Kampala to Unseat Mubajje
 
Latin America
» Walmart’s Mexican Morass: The World’s Biggest Retailer is Sent Reeling by Allegations of Bribery
 
Immigration
» Afghans Found Abandoned Off Calabria, One Dead
» Greece: Asking EU for Deal With Ankara
» Immigrants Deported: Algiers Complains With Rome
» Indignado Generation Finds Happiness Abroad
» Supreme Court Casts Doubt on Obama’s Immigration Law Claim
» The Netherlands Criticised for High Residency Permit Fees
» Young Men in Mexico Say the US No Longer Offers Them a Better Future
 
Culture Wars
» Respected Muslim Leader Warns Gay Marriage Threatens Civilisation and the World’s Population
 
General
» NATO Faced With Rising Flood of Cyberattacks
» Tiny Crystal May Hold Key to Future of Computers

Financial Crisis


Cost of Spain’s Housing Bust Could Force a Bailout

By any measure, the Spanish real estate boom was one of the headiest ever. Spurred by record-low interest rates, Spaniards piled into holiday villas along the Costa Blanca, gaudy apartments in Madrid and millions of starter homes throughout the country.

But since the frenzy drove Spanish home prices to a peak in 2007, they have fallen by at least one-fourth, and the bottom seems nowhere in sight. As Spain endures its second recession in three years and unemployment nears 25 percent, an increasing number of debt-heavy Spaniards can no longer meet monthly payments on the mortgages that their banks were all too eager to give.

With a rising portion of Spain’s 663 billion euros, or $876 billion, in home mortgages at risk of default, many economists say it is only a matter of time before some of Spain’s biggest banks will need a bailout. And the Spanish government, staggering under its own debt and budget deficit burdens, may not have the money to come to the rescue.

The implications of all this for the rest of Europe were a prime topic at last weekend’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington. The big fear is that the European Union will need to step in with a Spanish bailout — one much bigger than any of those already extended to Ireland, Greece and Portugal.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Cyprus: 13th Salaries Next for the Cutting

(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, APRIL 26 — Cyprus’ Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly neither denied nor confirmed yesterday whether cutting the public sector’s 13th salary was one of the measures the government was considering to plug a 150 million to 200 million euros shortfall from the 2.5% fiscal deficit target in 2012, as Cyprus Mail reports today. Unions oppose any moves on the 13th salary, which is given out at Christmas. “I cannot be clear; any measure would first be discussed with the social partners,” Shiarly told reporters when pressed whether the 13th salary was on the table. The minister stressed that any measures should be put in place as soon as possible because any delays could render them ineffectual.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Eurozone Economic Confidence Falls Sharply in April

Business and consumer confidence in the eurozone’s economy fell sharply in April, reversing gains at the start of the year, a European Union indicator showed on Thursday. The European Commission’s Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) dropped from 94.5 points in March to 92.8 points in April, returning to a level last seen in December in the 17-nation single currency area.

The ESI remained stable in the wider, 27-nation EU at 93.2 points. “The decline in the euro area was mainly driven by weakening confidence in the industry and services sectors,” the commission said, adding that only the retail sector saw an improvement in confidence.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Greece: Troika to Return to Athens After Elections

Council of Ministers tomorrow on bank recapitalisation

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos delivers a speech during a conference organised by the European Commission in Athens

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — After a brief pause due to the pre-election period in Greece, representatives of the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank) will once again be heading back to the country. Immediately after the formation of the new government resulting from the May 6 parliamentary elections. The troika will be heading back to Athens for an initial visit to the new staff of the Finance Ministry. It will then go back again later in early June to begin verification on the implementation of the plan for recovery of the Greek economy and the deciding on economic measures to bring in 11.5 billion euros in the 2013-2014 period provided for by the programme. According to Finance Ministry sources quoted by Greek newspapers, if the recession in 2012 surpasses the 4.7% foreseen by the state budget, then the troika may requests fresh measures during the June verification visit. Should this be the case, the finance ministry may request an extension for the period to reduce deficit to under 3%, for 2014 instead of 2013. Moreover, the same sources say that the Council of Ministers meeting scheduled for tomorrow will make decisions concerning the recapitalisation of banks and thereby prepare for a definitive solution to the problem for the post-election period.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Incomes Fall by a Quarter in a Year

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 26 — Real incomes in Greece dropped by a massive 25.3% in 2011 from the year before, according to an annual report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which uses data forwarded by the Greek Finance Ministry. It adds that Greek salary workers pay relatively low taxes but high social security contributions.

Maurice Nettley, senior tax policy economist at the OECD, told daily Kathimerini on Wednesday that the average gross salary in 2011 dropped from 20,457 euros to 15,729 euros. The reduction amounts to 23.1%, but actually grows to 25.3% when taking inflation into account. After-tax incomes (for unmarried workers) went down by 25.5% to 16,180 euros.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Income Down 25% in 2011, Says OECD

Central bank predicts further 20% fall in 2013-14

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — Despite the severe austerity measures imposed by the government in Athens, in line with international creditors, in a bid to restore to health the country’s disastrous national accounts, the recession in Greece is being felt with increasing force.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has announced today that income in the country fell by 25.3% last year compared to 2010. The figure comes in an annual OECD report, which features analysis of figures supplied by Greece’s Ministry of Finance.

Worse still, the future is far from positive. Only two days ago, the governor of Greece’s central bank, Giorgios Provopoulos, presented the bank’s annual report on the progress of the national economy, which predicts that the recession will reach a level of 5% for the current year, while the first timid signs of economic recovery will not be seen until at least the end of 2013.

For all of these reasons, the central bank predicts that income for public and public sector workers will suffer a further fall of around 20% between 2013 and 2014, while the rate of unemployment will remain above 19%. As the head of Greece’s statistics office (Elstat) recently announced, the unemployment rate in the country hit a new record high in January, rising to 21.8% after a figure of 21.2% in December. In essence, the number of people without work in Greece has almost doubled since 2010, the year that the impact of the crisis first began to be felt, and when the Athens government turned to the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency loans.

The OECD study also shows that Greek workers pay relatively low taxes but high levels of social contribution. Maurice Nettley, an expert in fiscal economy at the OECD, said that the gross average wage had fallen from 20,457 euros to 15,729 euros in 2011. The fall is of the order of 23.1%, but rises to 25.3% if inflation is taken into account. Net of tax on income (for unmarried workers), income fell by 25.5% to 16,180 euros per year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Isolated Merkel Embraces Monti and Growth

La Stampa, 26 April 2012

Angela Merkel doesn’t want to be left alone in the turmoil of the crisis. With her long time partner Nicolas Sarkozy on the way out after the first round of French elections, the chancellor is already looking for another ally, and Mario Monti seems to be her choice. German government’s spokesman Steffen Seibert has revealed that Merkel and Monti’s staff have already met to plan a series of joint German-Italian initiatives to promote economic stimulus measures to be discussed at the European council in June, La Stampa reports.

In addition to the possible loss of traditional stalwarts France and Netherlands (the Dutch government resigned following a row over austerity), Merkel’s fiscal discipline creed came under fire yesterday as ECB chairman Mario Draghi declared that fiscal consolidation cannot be achieved through cuts and taxes alone, and requires “structural measures to favour economic growth”…

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



Monti Believes EU Will Move to Stimulate Growth

‘Structural reforms needed’

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 26 — Italian Premier Mario Monti said Thursday he believed he had convinced the European Union that more must be done to stimulate growth in the eurozone. “That seems to be the case,” he told reporters at the European Business Summit in Brussels.

The German government said on Wednesday that it is trying to find common ground with Italy on a plan to stimulate growth in Europe, which most economists and heads of government now agree is necessary after having first implemented austerity packages. On Wednesday European Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi, who is Italian, called on Europe to agree on a pact for growth and on individual member states to be more ambitious in introducing structural economic reforms to promote it.

Merkel said Wednesday she agreed with Draghi’s appeal.

The Italian premier’s emergency government of non-political technocrats has made fixing the economy its top priority in the wake of the euro crisis which led to ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation last November. “Now Europe has to raise its growth potential using structural reforms,” he said, adding that it must “avoid policies that only in an ephemeral way give the impression of growth”. After introducing economic liberalizations and measures to cut red tape, Monti’s government has now presented controversial labor-market reform in Italy that would make it easier to fire workers with the aim of spurring growth and new hiring. “The bill is currently being reviewed by the parliament and I believe it will soon become law,” he said. The premier also reaffirmed his government’s plan to technically balance Italy’s budget in 2013, despite the deepening recession which has led some commentators to doubt the likelihood. Monti said that attaining the goal required “avoiding old-fashioned Keynesian policies that encourage expansion of budget deficits”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Ticket Sales Down 42% in Cinemas, Productions Fall

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 23 — Spanish-made films are doing poorly at the country’s box offices: since the start of the year there has been a 42% drop in sales in year-on-year terms, with turnovers down from 43.4 to 23.5 million euros. Such are the figures announced today by the Chair of the Federation of Spanish AudioVisual Producers, Pedro Perez, who calls the situation a worrying one, “even though it is not a complete rout”. As for productions, the Federation says that by April 20, twenty-five films had been produced in Spain, compared to the forty-two at the same point in 2011. Thirty-three films had been started, down by 47.6%. The sector is awaiting the enactment of a new law, possibly in January 2013, which proposes as mixed model of financing with tax breaks for producers. Fiscal support should be raised to 40%, compared to the present level of 18%, while the European average is 25%.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Port of Barcelona Economic Drive, 1 Bln Investments

New terminal awarded to Grimaldi for EUR 22 mln

(ANSAmed) — Madrid, 26 APRIL — In times of crisis, the Port of Barcelona reasserts its position as a driving force for the economy, with projects worth one billion Euros in progress, including the new ferry terminal awarded to Grimaldi by the Port Authority for EUR 22 mln yesterday. Out of total investments, EUR 826 mln are in private capital, while the Port administration will invest 193 mln in 2012, according to Port Authority sources quoted today by La Vanguardia. Among the main works there is the construction of the container terminal by Tercat, a branch of the Chinese Group Hutchinson, with an investment of EUR 500 mln, whose opening is due to take place next summer. Tomorrow, the enlargement of the Meroil-Lukoil facilities will be inaugurated; the operation cost EUR 50 mln and will increase the storage and transport capacity of oil products. The tender for the construction and use for 15 years of the new short sea shipping terminal awarded to the Italian company Grimaldi will be carried out on the Costa berth.

According to the company’s sources, thanks to this new installation the first stage of works will be completed in the summer of 2013. More attention will be paid to passengers and the number of operations will be increased. In 2011, Grimaldi transported 400,000 passengers on four lines based in Barcelona and connected with Livorno, Civitavecchia, Sardinia and Tangiers, in Marocco. The company is currently active in the ferry terminal in Barcelona, managed by Acciona Transmediterranea. The terminal will be built on a surface of 7.4 hectares and will be used for passenger traffic and for the transport of freight on ferries. Last year, Grimaldi also transported 100,000 trailers and 100,000 new vehicles. Barcelona is Spain’s short sea shipping leader. The project provides for a station on 3,000 square meters on the ground floor, which will also host a hall, an area for baggage invoicing , 18 windows and 5 automatic machines, a check room, a communication room, offices on the first floor; outdoors, three gangways will connect the terminal with the ships. Projects in process do not only aim at increasing industrial and trade activities, but also at improving urban areas; to this end, the Municipality of Barcelona is assessing the compatibility of Grimaldi’s project with the Municipality’s plan to transform this port area into a new neighbourhood of the city. Among other projects, the transformation of the Port Vell marina into a luxury yacht harbour with a capacity totalling 140 berthing places for large and medium-size vessels is provided.

The British group Salamanca decided to invest EUR 30 mln in the new yacht harbour. However, the inhabitants of Barceloneta are opposing the project, which is currently undergoing technical review by the Port Authority and needs to be incorporated in the Municipality of Barcelona’s city-planning programmes. The yacht marina is due to be built near the repair shops of Marina Barcellona 92, that has enlargened its facilities he with an investment of EUR 37 million and later confirmed itself as the point of reference in the Mediterranean Sea for this kind of service.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey’s Year-End Inflation to be Around 6.5%, CB

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 26 — Turkish Central Bank forecast on Thursday the year-end inflation around 6.5% in 2012, as Anatolia news agency reports. Bank governor, Erdem Basci, said that the year-inflation would be 5.3% the lowest and 7.7% the highest. “The year-end inflation will be around 5.3% in 2012,” Basci told a press conference in Ankara. Basci projected the year-end inflation in 2013 around 3.4% the lowest, 7% the highest and 5.2% the average. The governor also said that the inflation would be stabilized around 5% in the medium term

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


Black Panics and White Hispanics

Make no mistake about it: At issue in the Zimmerman case is not whether he had a right to overpower Martin. The power struggle in the Zimmerman case stems from race-baiters’ worry that Hispanics will overtake blacks as the most powerful racial interest group in America. That is why Jackson and Sharpton are clinging on to Martin like Marion Berry on a crack pipe.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Chrysler More Than Quadruples Profits in First Quarter

U.S. sales drive growth for Fiat-controlled automaker

(ANSA) — New York, April 26 — Fiat-controlled American automaker Chrysler more than quadrupled net profits in the first quarter of 2012, Fiat said Thursday. The gains were chiefly driven by U.S. sales, up 40% to $473 million. Revenue on the year was up 25% to $16.4 billion thanks to an overall sales increase of 33% for a total of 523,000 automobiles. Fiat took control of Chrysler in 2009 and now holds a 58.5% stake in the Detroit Number Three. CEO Sergio Marchionne told shareholders this month that Fiat this year may buy another 3.3%, lifting its stake to 61.8%, and that it has until June 30, 2016 to buy up the 40% stake held by the union-controlled fund VEBA. The two automakers are expected to formally merge before the end of 2015.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Dallas Muslim Scholar, Dr. Kavakci, Reveals Misconceptions About Sharia Laws

RICHARDSON (Texas, USA), 4 Jumada Al-Thani/25 April (IINA)-Irving-based Radio Azad’s Nikhat Qureshi presented a distinguished radio show on “Islamophobia and defending Sharia law” recently. One of her guests was the Muslim scholar, Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci, a Dallas prominent scholar-in-residence and Imam at Richardson’s Islamic Association of North Texas, and one of several North American Muslims included in the “500 most influential Muslims in the world.” Dr. Kavakci explained the history of the development and practice of Sharia, Islamic law, in Classical Islam and in the contemporary world, shedding the light on facts and misconceptions about Muslim penal codes, Muslim countries claiming to be practicing Sharia, and the compatibility of Sharia with the American constitution.

Dr. Kavakci was born in 1938 in Turkey. At the age of 9, he completed the memorization of the whole Qur’an. After completing training in Islamic sciences he became a nationally accredited Mufti (ordained and authorized to give Fatwa-religious opinion- and religious verdict in the Islamic field,) and he worked several religious positions like Imam and Waiz (preacher). Dr. Kavakci received a Bachelor degree in Law from the College of Law of Istanbul University and in Islamic Studies from the Institute of Higher Islamic Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic History and Culture from the Faculty of Arts in Istanbul University. He worked as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Institute of Islamic Research at Istanbul University, and helped establish the first College of Islamic Studies in modern Turkey, now part of Ataturk University. He has practiced law in Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. He has a number of books published in English and is working on several works in progress. For more details about Dr. Kavakci’s works and biography, please visit the IANT website from which this brief introduction was quoted.

Sharia literally means the road, path to water, Dr. Kavakci stated. It includes “the laws, rules and regulations, drawn from the Quran and Hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and tradition), understood [by Muslim jurists], and made applicable [in human relations pertaining to everyday’s living and worship rituals.]”These laws empower people before life [i.e. rules concerning the rights of a fetus in its mother’s womb], through life, and after death [i.e. burial rites.] Sharia covers moral values, family relations, respect of parents and elders, human transactions, worship, charity, etc…In a nut shell, Sharia “covers all of a human being’s actions and deeds.”

Through this overview of Sharia, Dr. Kavakci has already confronted misconceptions, like the false statement that Sharia is only about penal codes. As a matter of fact, “less than 10 percent of Sharia” is considered penal codes of crimes and offenses, like theft and highway robbery, clearly mentioned in the Quran. The rest of the Sharia laws, over 90 percent, are left to Muslim jurists to analyze and determine their legal rulings. In addition, Dr. Kavakci stated that penal code is only a part of the whole Islamic law, which also includes secular public and civil laws, all of which is left to democracy to handle; democracy here understood as the agreement of Muslim scholars.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



From Giant Fireball Over Calif., Tiny Meteorites

Robert Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years, so he knew he’d found something special in the Sierra foothills along the path of a flaming fireball that shook parts of Northern California and Nevada with a sonic boom over the weekend.

And scientists have confirmed his suspicions: it’s one of the more primitive types of space rocks out there, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago.

“It was just, needless to say, a thrilling moment,” Ward of Prescott, Ariz., told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday as he walked through an old cemetery in search of more meteorites about 35 miles northeast of Sacramento.

He found the first piece on Tuesday along a road between a baseball field and park on the edge of Lotus near Coloma, where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

Ward, who has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica and goes by “AstroBob” on his website, said he “instantly knew” it was a rare meteorite known as “CM” — carbonaceous chondrite — based in part on the “fusion crusts from atmospheric entry” on one side of the rock.

“It is one of the oldest things known to man and one of the rarest types of meteorites there is,” he said. “It contains amino acids and organic compounds that are extremely important to science.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Marine Critical of Obama on Facebook Expelled From Ranks

(AGI) Washington — Marine Sergeant Gary Stein was expelled from the corps after 10 years for having criticized Obama on Facebook. This was the decision made by the disciplinary commission of the Marine Corps after Stein’s criticism of the “Commander in Chief” on his Facebook profile, in a case which creates a precedent in the limits of free speech for service personnel on the social network. On March first Stein had, among other things, written on Facebook, “F**k Obama I won’t follow all his orders.” He then added an image of the President with the word “ass” superimposed.

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



Rights Groups See Politics Behind Rise in Muslim Hate Crimes

Amnesty International says politicians have been pandering to prejudice against Muslims in a quest for votes.

The Oslo courtroom where confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is on trial offers a look at a tragic outcome of anti-Islamic hostility. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, years of war and repeated calls for violence against the West stirred worldwide fears of Muslim extremism, but many human rights analysts say they find it difficult to explain a recent surge in anti-Islamic hate crimes other than political manipulation and fears that displays of Islamic faith herald new threats from radicals. In Europe and in North America, where incidents of Islamic extremism have been few and rarely fatal since the Sept. 11 attacks, anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased over the last two years as states enacted laws barring mosque construction and the wearing of veils, head scarves and beards meant to reflect the depth of Muslims’ faith, not fanaticism.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Why a Mega-Mosque in the Bible Belt?

Victoria Jackson takes her video camera into controversy over Muslim center

An Islamic Center and Mosque is being built in Murfreesboro, TN smack dab in the buckle of the Bible belt. The Imam, “Dr. Ossama Mohamed Bahloul, is a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Studies (Usool el Din) ranking top 4 in a class of 200.” Why did such a powerful Imam choose to settle in TN instead of say, Egypt, Jordan, even Los Angeles? Proselytizing? Terrorist Training Camp?

The new Mosque is being built about two feet away from the Grace Baptist Church. Odd choice of location, but there are acres of empty land surrounding the mosque that could be used for expansion.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Canada


Islam Open House in Sault Ste. Marie on Saturday

An open house to promote religious harmony, dispel misconceptions about Islam and to educate people about the true and peaceful teachings of Islam will take place Saturday at the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library. The Holy Qur’an Open House will be held at the main and Korah branches from noon until 4 p.m. The exhibition is sponsored by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association of Canada, an auxiliary wing of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. In a press release, a spokesman said it is a non-profit, charitable, religious organization established in more than 200 countries worldwide, with 65 chapters in Canada. “We have been promoting peace, condemning terrorism and dispelling myths about Islam as part of our nationwide campaign for the past year,” said Rizwan Rabbani. During the last 14 months, they have visited 337,374 homes in more than 200 Canadian communities, reaching out to an estimated 1,303,941 people with the help of 2,649 volunteers, he said.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Minority Lawyers in Canada Push for a Less White Bench

Minority lawyers, chafing at an overwhelming number of white appointees to federal judgeships, are mobilizing to press for a more transparent appointment process. They accuse the government of concealing its poor record of minority appointments behind an intolerably opaque process. “The demographics of the bench must be tracked and reported — who applies, and gets appointed and who makes the decisions,” the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers said in a statement Friday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sharia Law Subject of Event at Library

MIDLAND — A Muslim organization will pay another visit to Midland this weekend to tackle misconceptions and answer questions about Islam. Saturday’s information session will tackle the subject of “Sharia: The Misunderstood Islamic Law.” It will take place at the Midland Public Library from noon to 4 p.m. The event is being organized by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association of Canada, which is an auxiliary wing of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a non-profit charitable organization with 65 chapters throughout Canada. Part of its mandate is to promote peace, condemn terrorism and dispel myths about Islam. In the past 14 months, representatives have visited more than 200 communities, reaching out to an estimated 1.3 million people. This is the group’s third visit to Midland.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Denmark: Rare Fighter Plane Wreck Lifted From Seabed

The remains of a rare World War II German fighter plane, of which only one intact example exists, have been fished from the sea off northern Denmark, a nearby military museum announced on Wednesday.

The wreckage of the Heinkel He-219 night fighter, badly corroded by seawater, was recovered on Monday from Tannis Bay, on the Jutland peninsula, where it was lying at a depth of just three metres. Experts at the Danish Aalborg military museum are now examining it.

Just 268 of the aircraft were built, due to air raids on the Heinkel factory hindering production and internal squabbling in the Nazi government. The only survivor apart from the Danish example is in the US National Air and Space Museum.

The heavily-armed, radar-equipped He-219 was one of the most sophisticated aircraft of its time, featuring ejector seats and a pressurised cockpit, aviation historian Ib Loedsen said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France 2012: Sarkozy to ‘Crush’ Hollande, No Accord With Fn

President courts far right voters but not Le Pen

Nicolas Sarkozy is stirring up his fans in view of the final round of voting

(ANSAmed) — PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy has blocked the way for the National Front to enter his future government should he be re-elected on May 6, and is stirring up his fans in view of the final round of voting. “Hollande? I’ll blow him up, crush him down. Don’t be afraid to rumple your best clothes. Use even your own heavy artillery,” he reportedly said to his fans, according to a press leak in the well-informed satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé. The outgoing president is making no concessions, moving forward in an election campaign in which only days remain and with polls showing conflicting results.

Interviewed yesterday evening live on the TF1 television channel, Sarkozy did however say that he wanted to “listen to and understand those voting for the National Front (FN). I am not here to lecture on morality like the conformist gauche.

After four years in a crisis, I am not surprised by the results achieved by Marine Le Pen.” He went on to say that he did not consider it shameful for those “who voted for a candidate whose point of view I do not share (…) I don’t understand how one can censure the votes of people who are suffering”. Pushed into a corner by that 17.9% raked in last Sunday by the National Front, which could prove decisive in the second round, Sarkozy has been forced to court far-right voters but has not opened up to Marine Le Pen. He will not be making any agreement with her, not now nor in the legislative elections in June. The clarification came on the day after he had said that Marine Le Pen was “compatible” with the republic. In an interview on the France Info radio station, he said that “there will not be any agreement with the National Front nor the ministers within its ranks. I have never wanted this.” However, he rushed to add, “that 18% of voters casting their ballots for Marine Le Pen should not be demonised”. In his opinion, it may prove a gold mine of useful votes. “They do not belong to Marine Le Pen and it is my duty to address them. I do not see them as individuals with extremist ideas. There are no good and bad votes. The French made their choice and must once again do so.” Sarkozy also lashed out at Hollande, noting that the latter “claims that Marine Le Pen’s voters are wrong. I instead believe that, when people express themselves, they are not wrong.” Within the UMP itself some are wondering how long the dam separating the two parties on the right will hold. Some think that the borderline between the UMP and the FN has never been so fragile — especially since Sarkozy’s direction has become clear, and is headed straight for the right. Immigration and the votes of non-EU nationals have become his daily bread.

However, he is assuring his followers that he will never form an alliance with Marine Le Pen. The Socialist candidate is taking advantage of the situation, speaking out against the “numerous ambiguities” within Sarkozy’s party — especially in view of the parliamentary elections (June 10-17), in which the National Front hopes to achieve results similar to those seen in the presidential ones.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



France: Driver Mistakes Paris Metro for Parking Entrance

A driver looking for a parking lot drove down a staircase into a Paris metro stop. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. “There was a sign indicating ‘Parking Haussman Grands Magasins’ here, and there wasn’t anything blocking the way, so it was confusing. Luckily nobody was climbing the stairs,” 26-year-old driver Johan, told daily Ouest-France.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France: Paris Police Protest Over Officer’s Arrest

Hundreds of angry policemen demonstrated on the Champs-Elysées in Paris late Wednesday to protest charges laid against a colleague who had shot dead a serial offender in the capital’s suburbs.

As the policemen, some of them in cars with sirens blaring, paraded on the French capital’s best-known avenue and in the suburb of Bobigny where the drama occurred, Interior Minister Claude Guéant said he “understands their emotion.”

A delegation of the three policemen’s unions was received at the interior ministry and demanded that the accused officer should continue to be paid, a representative told AFP. The unusual show of solidarity by the police came after one of their number was arrested for voluntary homicide.

On Saturday night in the Noisy-le-Sec district of Bobigny one of four policemen tipped off about a fugitive said he was confronted with an armed man who flung a grenade at him. He fired four shots at the man who died shortly afterwards, the policeman said.

However an autopsy showed the victim had been shot in the back, according to court records. The grenade turned out to be a dud. The 33-year-old policeman pleaded self-defence.

“The police are really up in arms,” said Nicolas Comte, leader of the union of which the accused policeman was a delegate. “We do not deny that justice must be done, but the description of voluntary homicide by the judge is incomprehensible.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France: Marine Le Pen: Don’t French Jews Get it?

Israel’s former ambassador to France has expressed his dismay at support given by French Jews to Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National (FN). Ms Le Pen won almost one in 5 votes in Sunday’s first round presidential election. Danny Shek, who served in Paris from 2006 until last year, says that there is an increasing view among some Jews that Ms Le Pen is “cleaning house” and should be supported. Mr Shek said: “What worries me as a Jew and as an Israeli is that more and more Jews find her appealing. There is a growing popularity for the primitive formula, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. I wrote an article on the French elections for an Israeli newspaper, in which I said this, and I had 250 talkbacks. A good 70 — 80 per cent of them said I was a fool, picking up on this idea. They thought Le Pen was someone who was cleaning house. The fact that one in five French voters felt comfortable enough with a party that stands for xenophobia and antisemism is horrific.” France has the biggest Jewish community in Europe, numbering more than half a million. Richard Pasquier, the president of Crif (the French equivalent of the Board of Deputies) says he is relaxed about the FN. There are antisemites in the party “but they are not the majority…The antisemitism is no longer a main characteristic of the FN”.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



France: Sarkozy: Ramadan Supports Hollande, Denied by Both Men

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, APRIL 26 — Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Muslim intellectual and Swiss national, has never expressed his support for François Hollande in the French presidential election, as the outgoing President, Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed yesterday. The notion was denied today by both the Socialist candidate and Ramadan himself.

The two men reacted to comments by the President and candidate, who, talking about Ramadan yesterday on TF1’s flagship news programme, said: “This is a man who invites votes for Hollande. And I have never heard Hollande say that this bothers him”.

The Socialist candidate denied the accusation this morning. “This is completely false,” Hollande said on the radio station France Info. “Tariq Ramadan, who does not even vote in France, has never mentioned my name,” he added.

Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, also denied Sarkozy’s comments. “Never in my life have I called on people to vote for Hollande,” he told the AFP agency. “I am not French and I have never told people who to vote for. I said that there should be no instructions for Muslims on who to vote for, because this makes no sense. I only said that French citizens, Muslims or otherwise, should vote with their conscience and come up with an assessment of Sarkozy’s policy, which is very negative”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



France: The Rather Dangerous Monsieur Hollande

The Socialist who is likely to be the next French president would be bad for his country and Europe

Apr 26th 2012 | from the print edition

IT IS half of the Franco-German motor that drives the European Union. It has been the swing country in the euro crisis, poised between a prudent north and spendthrift south, and between creditors and debtors. And it is big. If France were the next euro-zone country to get into trouble, the single currency’s very survival would be in doubt.

That is why the likely victory of the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, in France’s presidential election matters so much. In the first round on April 22nd Mr Hollande came only just ahead of the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet he should win the second round on May 6th, because he will hoover up all of the far-left vote that went to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and others and also win a sizeable chunk from the National Front’s Marine Le Pen and the centrist François Bayrou.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



French Mosques Accused of Backing Hollande

The rightwing UMP party has accused Socialists of courting the Muslim vote and alleges that mosques are calling for the faithful to vote for leftwing candidate Francois Hollande.

“I want to condemn the conniving and irresponsible attitude of the Socialist Party and its candidate after religious leaders belonging to a network of 700 mosques called on followers to vote for Francois Hollande,” writes UMP lawmaker Eric Ciotti in a press release on Wednesday. Ciotti said the move was “serious and inacceptable” and said he “firmly condemned such practices”.

Muslim religious authorities in France however deny they have called on voters to support Hollande. In an interview with the newswire AFP, Abdallah Zekri, a leader of the French Council of Muslim Faith, says imams have called on followers to vote but have not given them instructions as to who they should vote for.

According to the weekly Marianne, only one mosque in France, located in Puteaux, west of Paris, has called on believers to vote for Hollande.

Relations between President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Muslim community are tense as Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, is taking a hard line on immigration. He also shocked French Muslims when he called on authorities to label halal meat in France.

Sarkozy lost to Hollande in the first round of the presidential election last week and needs the vote of the far right party the National Front if he wants to beat his Socialist rival in the second round next week.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Telekom: 100,000 WLAN Connections Unsafe

More than 100,000 Deutsche Telekom customers have been told to turn off their wireless internet routers after the company admitted their connections were wide open to being used by others.

Three router models were found to have a glitch in their programming which would enable just about anyone to infiltrate a particular WLAN network. No prior knowledge or technical ability is necessary, simply a particular PIN number which is being circulated on the internet.

The revelation means that Telekom customers may have been unwittingly granting access to their private wireless network for several months, Die Welt reported on Thursday. The problem affects the W 504V, W 723V (Type B) and W921V models, all manufactured by Speedport.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Holland Ten Points Ahead of Sarkozy in French Elections

(AGI) Paris — As the second round approaches, Francois Holland is ten points ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy in the most recent poll published by TNS-Sofres, with the incumbent president at 45% and his opponent at 55%. In the first ballot held on April 22nd Hollande won 28.63% of the votes against Sarkozy’s 27.18%

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



Italy: Grillo Says That “Partisans Would Again Take Up Arms Today”

(AGI) Rome — Beppe Grillo has commented on Italy’s current situation on his blog. “Today the parade of corpses honoured the Resistance. The crumbling picture of Fini, Monti, Napolitano and Schifani represents Italy. The old eyes of the partisans would survey the desert with bewilderment. Perhaps they would start crying. Perhaps they would once again take up arms,” Grillo writes. Beneath the photo of the four highest-ranking Italian politicians, Grillo points out: “In 1945, we won back freedom by fighting, as our fathers and grandfathers who fought and lost their lives thought. If they could come back from their graves, they would be dismayed at the ruin that they would see before them”.

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



Italy: Almost Half of Pensioners Get Less Than 1,000 Euros a Month

Nearly 30% under 65, Istat and INPS say

(ANSA) — Rome, April 26 — Nearly half of all retired Italians received less than 1,000 euros in monthly pension payments in 2010, a report said Thursday. National statistics agency Istat and pension agency INPS reported that 7.6 million pensioners, 45.4% of the total, received less 1,000 euros in retirement benefits every month. For 2.4 million pensioners, 14.4% of the total, monthly payments were less than 500 euros. The total government payout on pensions increased by 1.9% to 258.5 billion euros from 2009.

But the number accounted for 16.64% of GDP, compared to 16.69% in the previous year. The average annual payment for Italy’s 16.7 million pensioners was 15,471 euros. Over 70% of Italian retirees were over the age of 64, while nearly one third, 29.1%, were less than 65. Over one quarter of pension recipients were between 40 and 64, and 3.5% were under 40.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: 40 Million in ‘Ndrangheta Assets Seized

Hotel and Jaguar among items taken from Mob associate

(ANSA) — Cosenza, April 26 — Italian police on Thursday seized 40 million euros in assets from a convicted affiliate of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

Francesco Costa, 69, is in jail on a range of mafia charges.

Among the assets seized were a hotel, six plots of land, a company and three cars including a Jaguar.

Italy has stepped up its efforts to seize mafia assets and has set up a national agency to manage confiscated assets with a headquarters in Reggio Calabria and a recently opened office in Milan.

‘Ndrangheta is Italy’s richest mafia thanks to its domination of the European cocaine trade.

Recent investigations have shown its increasing penetration of the northern Italian economy as well as its spread overseas.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Melanie Phillips: The New Intolerance

To judge from what we are reading and hearing almost every day at the moment, it would seem Britain is in the throes of a war of religion. A war, that is, between religion and atheism. Professor Richard Dawkins, the Savonarola of atheism, regularly hurls his thunderbolts at believers. Christianity, says the church, is under siege. Christians are being prevented from wearing the crucifix at work, being barred from adoption panels. Even Delia Smith has now brought her rolling pin to the fight to defend the faith. At the heart of this great argument lies the assumption on the part of the anti-religion camp that this is a battle between reason and obscurantism, between rationality on the one hand and knuckle-dragging ignorance and prejudice on the other. And of course, that anti-religion camp is on the side of reason, and thus of intelligence, science, progress and freedom; whereas religious believers would undo the Enlightenment and take us all back to the dark ages of credulity, superstition and the shackling of the mind.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Netherlands: Wilders Discovers Europe

Trouw Amsterdam

Now that the Dutch Prime government has fallen, with elections likely for 12 September, political commentator Les Oomkes argues that Wilders’ railing against Europe might prove fortuitous: leading to Europe as the central theme of the election campaign and a shift in the political balance of power.

Lex Oomkes

Should the forthcoming elections in the Netherlands have the effect of reducing both the fragmentation of political parties and the electorate’s inclination towards the left and right-wing extremities, then the current crisis may ultimately prove a blessing in disguise.

However, one would have to be a born optimist to consider this a genuine possibility. Unfortunately, the latest indications do not bode well. There is currently nothing to suggest that there will be prospects for the formation of a politically sound coalition with a logical composition following the elections. Quite the contrary, fragmentation and further instability would appear to be on the cards.

Since 2002, just a decade ago, the Netherlands has had a string of five governments. And the political middle ground has all but been abandoned during this period. In fact, the previously dominant three major parties, PvdA (Labour), CDA (Christian Democrat) and VVD (Liberal) may perhaps even fail to jointly secure a majority in the Lower House.

Europe as the root of all evil

In the meantime, however, the odd ray of hope has also been spotted. For instance, in a statement issued on Saturday with a view to explaining his rather curious behaviour during the recent Catshuis negotiations, Mr Geert Wilders claimed that the EU is the root of all evil. He appears to be suggesting that Brussels had put pressure on the minority government to withdraw to the Catshuis in order to negotiate further extensive cost-cutting measures.

While Mr Wilders’ statement was the most obvious nonsense, this by no means suggests that it is insignificant. His PVV (Party for Freedom) has declared the EU the ‘ogre’, against which it eagerly looks forward to campaigning during the next few months…

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



Norway: 40,000 Join in Oslo Anti-Breivik Singalong

Tens of thousands of rose-waving Norwegians gathered in central Oslo Thursday to deride mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik by singing a song he hates, viewing it as Marxist indoctrination.

Some 40,000 people, according to police, massed in the rain at a square near the Oslo district courthouse where Breivik is on trial for his July 22nd attacks that killed 77 people, to sing “Children of the Rainbow” by Norwegian folk singer Lillebjørn Nilsen.

Inside the court, the 33-year-old accused right-wing extremist sat listening without showing emotion to powerful testimony from survivors of his bloodbath on the ninth day of his trial. Drawn by an internet campaign, the protestors streamed into Youngstorget Square wearing colourful raincoats and carrying Norwegian flags and roses, which have come to represent Norway’s peaceful response to the horrifying attacks.

The culture ministers of the Nordic countries were also at the square to participate, while other similar events were to take place across Norway. Nilsen led the chorus as the crowd, including many children who came with their nursery and elementary schools, sang along, waving roses in the air.

Afterwards they walked slowly together, still singing the song, to the courthouse to add their roses to the piles of flowers already lining the security barriers outside in memory of Breivik’s victims. Breivik last Friday told the court that Nilsen was “a very good example of a Marxist” who had infiltrated the cultural scene and that his song was typical of the “brainwashing of Norwegian pupils.”

In reaction to his comments, two Norwegians launched a Facebook campaign calling on the public to “reclaim the song” and sing it together near the courthouse. “I felt like he was trampling on a song I grew up with and that I sing to my child,” Lill Hjønnevåg, one of those who initiated the protest, told public television network NRK.

The song is an adaptation of US folk singer Pete Seeger’s “My Rainbow Race” and is very popular in the Scandinavian country. Its chorus goes: “Together, we will live, each sister and each brother, small children of the rainbow and a green earth.”

Nilsen has rejected Breivik’s interpretation of the song. “In fact, it’s not about people, it’s about protecting the environment,” he told daily Aftenposten.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norway Town to Build Toilets for Beggars

Kristiansand’s town council voted on Wednesday to install toilet and shower facilities that can be used by beggars operating on the streets of the town in southern Norway.

After a heated debated, the motion was passed by a slim majority of 28 representatives to 25. The town will now set aside 300,000 kroner ($52,500) for the construction of sanitary facilities for beggars.

Two parties, the Conservatives and the Progress Party, were deeply opposed to the move, newspaper Fædrelandsvennen reports. “The money beggars get in their mugs goes to men in suits who drive them around and decide where to place them,” said Conservative representative Odd Nordmo. “If we build sanitary facilities for beggars here in the town we are creating possibilities for the establishment of a new Christiania,” he said, referring to a hippie-like commune in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Progress Party group leader Tor S. Utsogn was in full agreement. “An ethnically segregated toilet like this will undoubtedly attract beggars,” he said. “We know that there are Romanian men sitting in cars keeping control over their beggars.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norwegians ‘Face Terror With Music’ As 40,000 Take to Streets to Sing Children’s Song Breivik Claimed Was Marxist Propaganda

1970s song Children of the Rainbow sung in central Oslo. Killer called song an example of ‘cultural Marxists’ infiltrating schools.

Thousands of Norwegians took to the streets today to sing a children’s song that deluded mass killer Anders Behring Breivik claimed was being used to brainwash youngsters.

Some 40,000 converged on Oslo’s central square to ‘face terror with music’ and sing the 1970s song Children of the Rainbow.

Just a few hundred metres away, Breivik continued to stand trial in the city’s courthouse for his July 22 bombing-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Schulz: EU Collapse is a ‘Realistic Scenario’

The collapse of the European Union is a “realistic scenario,” as member states are claiming back power, xenophobia is increasing and so are calls to reintroduce border controls, said the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz.

“In the past few months we have witnessed a disturbing trend towards renationalisation and ‘summitisation’: the Heads of State and Government are arrogating more and more decisions to themselves, debating and taking decisions behind closed doors and in disregard of the Community method,” thundered Schulz.

Speaking in front of the College of Commissioners he underscored the need for an even closer cooperation between the Commission and Parliament. That “is an important sign that we are defending the Community method with determination.”

Schulz complained that the latest crisis shows an acceleration in the creation of Parliament-free zones. “By means of the Fiscal Compact, an attempt was made to create a Fiscal Union beyond the control of Parliamentarians, by-passing the Commission,” he said.

“Together we can oppose the trend towards ‘summitisation’ and ‘renationalisation’. This development is extremely dangerous, as we were reminded again only last week by the Franco-German call for the reintroduction of border controls: any assault on freedom of movement is an assault on the foundations of the European Union,” he told the College.

His remarks come as the eurozone is shaken by a severe debt crisis and the 27-country bloc is divided by disputes over the Schengen Area and border control.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy echoed Schulz concerns as he warned in Romania that the “winds of populism” were affecting the free movement of persons within Schengen, one of the EU’s key achievements.

Worries about “populism” at the EU level have increased as National Front leader Marine Le Pen received a record number of votes in the first round of the French presidential elections held on Sunday. 17.9% of French voters cast their ballot for the far-right candidate.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



St George’s Flag is a Racist Symbol Says a Quarter of the English

The English feel far more patriotic about the Union Flag than the St George’s Cross, according to a new poll.

The survey found that while 80 per cent linked the British flag with such feelings, only 61 per cent associated them with English one. By contrast, the Scottish and the Welsh were far more likely to feel pride in their flag — the St Andrew’s Cross and Red Dragon respectively — than the English in theirs.

The survey was carried out by the think tank British Future as part of a report analysing how people from around the UK view their “national identity”. It will be released tomorrow, on St George’s Day.

The organisation say the results show that more needs to be done to encourage a sense of “English patriotism” if the Union is to survive. In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, signed by academics as well as MPs from all major parties, the think tank also calls for the introduction of a new English national anthem to help foster a greater sense of identity at sporting and national occasions.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Second Suspect Arrested in Teen Stabbing Case

Another person has been arrested in the investigation of the Landskrona killing on Monday in southern Sweden, where a 19-year-old woman was stabbed to death. “This is a woman born in 1973. She was apprehended at 6pm on Wednesday and was formally arrested at 8.45pm,” said police spokesperson Eva-Lotta Hermansson Truedsson to news agency TT.

According to prosecutor Magnus Larsson, the arrested woman could be described as close to the victim. He said that the woman is under suspicion of instigating the murder and that it is possible that the circle of suspects could widen. Currently, it doesn’t seem as if either of the two apprehended suspects will be released.

“Not the way it looks right now, but there are a number of measures being carried out and the situation could easily change,” said the prosecutor to TT. Police arrested the woman’s 16-year-old brother after finding him outside the apartment, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported on Wednesday.

It has been alleged that the boy killed his sister for disgracing their family by having several boyfriends and trying to build a life for herself away from home, but this has not been confirmed by police.

On Wednesday it became known that the 19-year-old had been feeling threatened for some time and had been in contact with a support group, which was trying to fix her up with sheltered accommodation in another municipality, through the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).

The national organization Glöm aldrig Pela och Fadime (GAPF), a group honouring two of Sweden’s most publicized cases of so-called “honour killings” has now reported the municipality handled the threats that the 19-year-old girl was living under. The group is questioning whether the authorities have been observant enough of the increased threats against the woman before her death.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The Hype Starts Here: Ukraine Protests at Energy Firm Football Advert

The Ukrainian authorities are angry at a Dutch energy firm advert which focuses on the forthcoming European football championships, according to Dutch media reports on Wednesday.

In the advert, a woman is shocked after looking online at photos of scantily-clad Ukrainian women. The voice over goes on to suggest Dutch women keep their men at home by switching to energy provider Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij, which is offering a free home beer keg system as an incentive.

The NRC quotes Ukrainian media as saying the advert is aimed at discouraging the Dutch from attending the football event this summer. It says Ukraine’s ambassador to the Netherlands is to raise the advert with the company.

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



UK: Cardiff Library Backs Down on Protocols

Anti-racism campaigners have urged Cardiff City Council to remove a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from a city library. Anti-racism campaigner Dave Shipper, 85, wrote to the library in February that the book was written to “foster hatred of Jews”. The edition of the antisemitic forgery, printed in 2010 in Milton Keynes, is the translation by Victor E Marsden and has no academic annotations or indication that the content is fraudulent, according to Mr Shipper. He said: “I hope it is by accident rather than design, and that this copy could have been donated and accepted [by the library] unwittingly. I am anti-censorship, and the text should be available for research, but this was on an open shelf, with nothing to modify it. It was alongside many textbooks on anti-racism.”

Cardiff Council has now agreed to remove the book from the open shelf, but will not restrict access to it when requested. A Cardiff Council spokesperson said: “Cardiff Library Service does not restrict access to publicly available material, unless it is against the law. We do not therefore exclude material on the basis of moral, political, religious, racial or gender grounds. However, following the correspondence with Mr Shipper, we have decided to remove the book from open shelves and make it accessible on application only.” Mr Shipper, whose father was Jewish, said library staff had told him that the book was clearly categorised as “racism”. He said: “If that is categorised as racism, then what on earth are the other books available in that category?” A spokesman for the Community Security Trust urged Cardiff to remove the book altogether. “It is outrageous that such a prominent antisemitic book should be available in a public library. CST urges the relevant authorities to remove it immediately. Failure to do so would be a moral disgrace.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Crack Team of Ex-Servicemen Who Normally Protect High-Profile Celebrities Employed by Council to Catch Litter Louts

A town hall has called in a crack squad of ex-servicemen trained in covert surveillance who specialise in protecting high-profile celebs to stop residents littering.

Basildon Council in Essex has hired private security firm Xfor to track residents, shoppers and dog walkers in the hope of stopping them littering, dropping cigarette butts or failing to clean up dog mess.

A team of three men and one woman will patrol the streets and parks of Basildon, handing out £75 on-the-spot fines to any offenders during the controversial six-month trial.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: George Galloway Converted to Islam 10 Years Ago, Claims Jemima Khan

George Galloway converted to Islam 10 years ago, Jemima Khan has claimed in an article for the New Statesman, out today.

Khan interviewed the MP for Bradford West for the magazine. In the article, she claims that he converted in a ceremony in Kilburn, north-west London, a decade ago.

She writes: “Those close to him know this. The rest of the world, including his Muslim constituents, does not.”

Galloway has also recently remarried in a Muslim ceremony, having come out of two previous Muslim marriages.

The revelation has led some to speculate that Galloway has not made his conversion public knowledge for fear of losing the “working-class white vote”.

However, Galloway has denied ever attending the ceremony in Kilburn that Khan writes of, issuing this statement:

“The opening paragraph of Jemima Khan’s piece in the New Statesman (referring to an alleged conversion ceremony) is totally untrue. Moreover I told her it was fallacious when she put it to me. I have never attended any such ceremony in Kilburn, Karachi or Kathmandu. It is simply and categorically untrue.”

The statement, however, does not deny that he is a Muslim.

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



UK: George Galloway’s Muslim Conversion: Why the Big Secret?

Why did George Galloway feel the urge to keep his conversion to Islam secret?

The New Statesman reveals today, in an interview by Jemima Khan with the fiery new MP for Bradford West, that Galloway converted 10 years ago at a ceremony in Kilburn, north-west London. On one level, it’s not surprising: he peppers his speeches with “inshallahs”, during his campaign, pamphlets were distributed (although he says he was not responsible for them) saying that “God knows who is a Muslim”, pointing out that his Labour opponent in the Bradford by-election, Imran Hussain, drank alcohol and that he, Galloway, did not and “never has”; he has had no fewer than three Muslim wives (though not, I must quickly add, at the same time).

But it is very odd that he kept this to himself for so long. His adopted religion, surely, is not a shameful secret. Certainly his appeal to the Islamic communities, first of Tower Hamlets and now of Bradford, is well known. But, as Khan points out, he has generally been referred to as a “Catholic” in the media, and that this might not have hurt his chances with the working-class white vote:

There must have been some white constituents in Bradford, who, although natural Labour supporters, preferred to vote for the white Catholic candidate rather than the brown Muslim one representing Labour.

Whether that’s true or not, there’s something strange about Galloway’s secretiveness on the matter. Perhaps, with all the accusations of divisive identity politics that have been flying around since his startling victory, he realised that his Respect Party’s claims to be a broad-based Leftist movement rather than a single-issue Muslim protest vote would be undermined. It would be nice to hear Galloway’s own explanation.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Labour Jews Still Critical But Endorse Ken Livingstone With a Week to Go

A group of prominent Jewish Labour supporters who expressed their concerns about Ken Livingstone have now endorsed his candidacy for London Mayor. A letter sent by the activists — Andrew Gilbert, Neil Nerva, Judith Bara, Jem Stein and Rabbi Danny Rich — to Labour leader Ed Miliband last month came after a meeting at which Mr Livingstone stood by his decision to embrace radical Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The group claimed that Mr Livingstone had also suggested Jewish voters would not back Labour because they are rich.

But endorsing him in their latest letter the activists say they are acting with “eyes open and breathing deeply, maybe with a sigh or two” in endorsing him. They acknowledge that as mayor Mr Livingstone would “irritate, upset and annoy”, but encourage Jewish supporters to back him over Conservative rival Boris Johnson. Mr Livingstone has “regularly upset” them with his position on Israel and his “inappropriate” approaches to political Islamists, they say. Their letter concludes that voting for the Labour candidate would lead to better results for the Jewish community than the election of Mr Johnson, who would provide “a few laughs, but little service and not much engagement”. “Under Ken as mayor, we will get irritated, upset and annoyed but we will get lots of services and lots of engagement and an improved London.”

[…]

[JP note: Don’t Labour Jews get it?]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: London Riot Ringleader Has ‘Unduly Lenient’ Four-Year Sentence Doubled by Attorney General

A riot ringleader who was at the heart of last year’s Croydon disorder had his sentence of four years detention nearly doubled today because it was too lenient.

Adam Khan Ahmadzai, 20, attacked police, robbed, pillaged and looted during a shocking orgy of ‘mayhem and carnage’ during last August’s mass disorder.

He was given 48 months in a young offender institution when he appeared at Inner London Crown Court in January.

But Attorney General Dominic Grieve referred the case to the Court of Appeal on the basis that the total sentence imposed for offences of violent disorder, robbery, burglary and criminal damage on the evening of August 8, 2011 was unduly lenient.

Today, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Openshaw and Mr Justice Irwin, agreed and said it should be increased to seven years.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Manchester United Attack Facebook After Site Refuses to Take Down Sick Page Mocking Munich Air Disaster

Manchester United have attacked Facebook for refusing to remove a sick page that mocks the Munich Air Disaster.

The group, named ‘I like to Munich Munich’, features the words ‘Ha Ha’ above a picture of the wreckage of the aircraft which crashed in 1958 while attempting a take-off from a snowy runway, killing eight United players and 15 others.

A spokesman for Manchester United has called the page ‘deeply offensive’ and one former player and manager has branded the group’s founder ‘an idiot’.

But the social networking site won’t take it down — because it doesn’t break their rules.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Police Granted More Time to Quiz Terror Suspects

Counter-terrorism officers have been granted further time to question five men arrested on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack in Britain, a Scotland Yard spokesman said today.

The men, aged 21, 23, 24, 30 and 35, were detained at five separate houses in Luton on Tuesday on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

The dawn raids followed police searches at some of the homes last September, when computer equipment was seized.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said they had been granted a week to question the men after a warrant of further detention was issued.

“All five were arrested at separate residential addresses in Luton. They have been taken to a central London police station where they remain in custody,” he said.

“On April 25 a warrant of further detention was issued, to expire seven days after their arrest.”…

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



UK: The Legacy of Victorian England’s First Islamic Convert

On a bleak, wet and windy day in Liverpool the old Georgian, white-stoned building which once housed England’s first registered mosque looks quite dull. The property on Brougham Terrace is just a few miles from Liverpool city centre but, in stark contrast to the newer council building next door to it, the paint is peeling off the front walls and the windows are boarded up, after years of vandalism. The house, one of three adjoining properties, was once owned by William Abdullah Quilliam, a solicitor and son of a Methodist preacher. In 1887, he became the first Christian to convert to Islam in Victorian England. Born William Henry Quilliam, he turned to the religion after a trip to Morocco, and adopted the name Abdullah. Two years later he opened the Liverpool Muslim Institute at 8 Brougham Terrace, as a mosque and hub for the growing Muslim community. He also opened a boys and girls school and an orphanage.

Professor Ron Geaves is author of the book Islam in Victorian Times. He gave the first Abdullah Quilliam Lecture at the Pakistan Community Centre in Liverpool earlier this month.

“William Abdullah Quilliam was brought up as a devout Christian and was part of the Temperance Movement which promoted abstinence from alcohol. One of the reasons he was attracted to Islam was that alcohol is forbidden for Muslims. He also had theological concerns about Trinitarian Christianity,” he said.

Muslim leader

Quilliam gained national and international recognition through his many writings and lectures about Islam and Muslims. Part of his house was converted into a publishing house for this purpose. In 1894 the title of Sheikh-ul-Islam, leader of Muslims in the British Isles, was conferred on him by the last Ottoman caliph, Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He was also appointed Vice Consul of Persia by the Shah. Prof Geaves said: “He was a royalist and was also recognised by Queen Victoria. He had sent her one of his books about Islam, apparently. She then ordered several copies for her children.” At the time of her son King Edward VII’s coronation, Quilliam was widely recognised as a leader of Muslims in the British Isles. Prof Geaves recounts an occasion when Quilliam, as Sheikh-ul-Islam, dressed in his long robes and turban, accompanied the Lord Mayor to greet foreign dignitaries arriving in England through the port at Liverpool. They included maharajas, royalty and world leaders. “Hundreds of guests had gathered in the Great Hall, in the Empire building, including foreign troops. When they saw him the whole regiment rose and offered him not the British military salute but the Islamic ‘Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar’. (God is great).”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Kosovo: Hundreds of Additional NATO Soldiers Due for Elections

Pristina, 24 April (AKI) — Around 5,000 NATO troops (KFOR) stationed in Kosovo will be reinforced by seven hundred more soldiers ahead of controversial Serbian elections in slated for May, KFOR spokesman Uve Novicki said on Tuesday.

General elections in Serbia are scheduled for 6 May, but Kosovo’s minority Serbs are set to hold municipal elections the same day, despite warning of Pristina authorities, Belgrade and the international community.

Kosovo majority Albanians declared independence in 2008, which Belgrade opposes and still operates “parallel institutions” in the Serb-populated north. Under international pressure, Belgrade has refrained from organizing local elections in Kosovo, but the call has been ignored by local Serbs, who accuse Belgrade of treason.

Germany and Austria have said they were asked to send 550 and 150 new troops respectively to Kosovo, which should be deployed this week. “Our demands have been met,” Novicki said.

The reinforcements were a “part of our careful planning and positioning to make sure that we have enough troops for our task”, Novicki said. KFOR has kept peace in Kosovo for the past ten years and intends to do so in the future, he added.

Kosovo authorities have threatened to prevent the holding of Serbian elections if necessary even by force. Kovicki said new troops would be stationed in mixed communities in predominantly Serb-populated north to prevent ethnic conflicts.

Serbia’s pro-European president Boris Tadic has made a number of concessions on normalizing relations with Kosovo at the request of the European Union. The EU has tied Serbia’s bid for membership to normalizing relations with Pristina and forced Belgrade to renounce elections there as a first step towards abolishing “parallel institutions” in the north.

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



Serbia: Belgrade Relocates Roma to Make Way for Street

Authorities have started removing about 250 Roma families from an informal city outside the Serbian capital. Rights groups have called the evictions human rights violations. The city of Belgrade started removing nearly 1,000 Roma from a settlement of tin and wood huts outside the capital, drawing sharp criticism from Amnesty International and other rights groups.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Mediterranean Union


Website Created for Emancipation of Arab Women

Initiative by European Council to favour dialogue

(ANSAmed) — STRASBOURG — A new website set up by the European Council’s North-South Centre is aiming to create a platform upon which European and Arab women can swap experiences. The Euro-Med Women Network website (www.nswomennetwork.org) has been put in place by the Italian MP Deborah Bergamini, the chair of the North-South Centre, and was presented in Strasbourg today to a selection of authoritative representatives of the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, who oversaw the launch of the website and begun efforts that will allow suggestions and demands emerging from online discussion to be implemented.

“The Arab Spring came about thanks to the Internet and this will also be our meeting place,” Bergamini said. “Any woman, Arab or European, will be able to contact other women, swap mutual experiences, but also send messages to civil society and to political authorities”.

“In this way, we want to help Arab women, who have thus far been deprived of any right to emancipate themselves,” Bergamini continued. “The initiative is one of the projects being carried out by the European Council to facilitate equality between men and women in southern Mediterranean countries”.

The parliamentary assembly yesterday approved a report prepared by Fatiha Sadi, a Belgian socialist MP of Moroccan descent, which asks countries that have recently set out on a road towards democracy to introduce reforms “elevating the status of women and removing any form of discrimination against them”, measures without which the Arab Spring would not be legitimised and, as a result, doomed to failure.

After the debate in the chamber, to boost the message of equality between men and women, there was an exhibition of paintings by the Palestinian artist Nadia Shihabi, who is involve in the struggle for women’s rights, and whose father was an activist in the movement for the liberation of Palestine.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egypt: End to Gas Sales to Israel Raises Questions About Camp David Accords

Anti-Israeli bluster rises on the anniversary of the Sinai’s return to Egyptian control. However, for experts people want to change, not end agreements with Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood is trying to keep extremism in check. The group wants the agreements to be more respectful of the Egyptians and provide greater security for Sinai’s Bedouins who are the victims of religious extremism and criminal gangs.

Cairo (AsiaNews/ Agencies) — The decision by the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) to stop selling gas to Israel marks a new beginning in Egyptian-Israeli relations. Although downplayed by both sides as commercial dispute, it does raise questions about the 1978 Camp David Accords, which the establishment in both Egypt and Israel considered untouchable.

In the meantime, to mark the day Egypt regained control of the Sinai peninsula from Israel in 1982, a group of protesters pledged they would cover a memorial to Israelis killed in the war with an Egyptian flag bearing the words, ‘Sinai — the invaders’ graveyard’.

The gesture will be one of the most public expressions of anger among ordinary Egyptians who have to cope with economic and energy crises after having to accept Mubarak’s pro-Israel policies.

“People want economic agreements with Israel changed,” said Nagui Damian, a young Coptic leader of the Jasmine Revolution. “They protected the political interests of the Mubarak government and never took into account the situation of poor Egyptian families.”

Egyptians no longer want the government to sell out national resources to a country accused of serious human rights violations against the Palestinians.

Despite the climate of tensions, neither side wants a breakdown in relations between the two states and a cancellation of agreements that have guaranteed peace for more than 30 years in the region and access to US economic aid.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood, which has always opposed relations with Israel, calls only for changes to the economic agreements in order to make them fairer, give Egyptians greater dignity and increase security in the Sinai Peninsula.

Yesterday, Waleed al-Haddad, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee of Egypt’s largest party, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party’s (FJP), told Israeli daily Haaretz that concerns over security are growing in the desert peninsula. Criminal gangs have blown up the gas pipeline that delivered gas to Israel 14 times in recent months. They have also attacked villages.

Sinai Bedouins have appealed to the Egyptian parliament to deploy more troops to the peninsula, accusing the government of failing to take them into account in its security plans.

The “peace deal with Israel isn’t [in the] constitution, it’s just an agreement that can be changed,” Haddad said. Egypt, he insisted, has the right to increase the size of its security forces on its territory where it should exercise full sovereignty. Equally, he also complained that Israelis were allowed into that area of Egypt without a visa.

Thousands of foreign tourists visit the Sinai every year, playing an important role in Egypt’s fledgling economy.

“Without the presence of the Egyptian military it will be impossible to maintain a routine life,” Haddad explained.

“Democracy is about responding to public sentiment and public sentiment has little interest in maintaining a real relationship with Israel,” said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center.

In view of the situation, Egypt should follow Turkey’s example, which cut back its relations with Israel without breaking them after the Mavi Marmara affair. At the same, anti-Israeli sentiments are not likely to go beyond anti-Israel bluster and symbolic gestures.

In fact, even the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the main party in the Egyptian parliament, needs Western backing and is concerned that Islamic extremism in the Sinai could lead to violent acts.

After Mubarak’s fall, a group called the Revolutionaries of Sinai had wanted the Dayan Rock memorial destroyed, but now said covering it in a flag would suffice.

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



Egypt: 13 Presidential Candidates, Shafik Back in Race

Salafist and ex-intelligence chief Suleiman exclusion upheld

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO — Thirteen candidates will stand for election in Egypt’s Presidential election, which is being held on May 23 and 24, the country’s electoral commission has announced in a news conference.

The readmission to the race of Ahmed Shafik, the last Prime Minister to serve under the ousted President, Hosni Mubarak, has been upheld. Shafik has been allowed once more to run for election despite a law ratified on Tuesday that bans all of the main exponents of the last 10 years of the Mubarak regime from standing for election. The exclusion of the former head of Egyptian intelligence under Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, has been upheld, as has that of the Salafist leader, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. The second-in-command of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater, has also been ruled out of the running.

The electoral commission last night readmitted Ahmad Shafik, who was appointed Prime Minister in the last few days of Mubarak’s rule, after accepting an appeal.The chair of the electoral commission, Faruk Sultan, explained in a press conference that Shafik had been allowed to re-enter the race in an attempt to avoid the postponement of the elections.

Shafik had earlier lodged an appeal citing the unconstitutional nature of the rule to ban the main exponents of the last 10 years of the Mubarak regime from standing for election. Faruk said that the commission had decided to readmit Shafik to avoid an appeal by the new President if the rule were to be found unconstitutional and had also passed it onto the constitutional court for a ruling on the matter.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Outrage as Egypt Plans ‘Farewell Intercourse Law’ So Husbands Can Have Sex With Dead Wives Up to Six Hours After Their Death

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives — for up to six hours after their death.

The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.

It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women’s rights of getting education and employment.

Egypt’s National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that ‘marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development’.

Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.

Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under ‘alleged religious interpretations’.

The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.

He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.

It seems the topic, which has sparked outrage, has now been picked up on by Egypt’s politicians.

TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty slammed the notion of letting a husband have sex with his wife after her death under the so-called ‘Farewell Intercourse’ draft law.

He said: ‘This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni?

‘This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?’

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Ransom Money Finances AQIM

Analyst, Western states paid millions of Euros

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, 26 APRIL — Several Western countries are to blame if Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb not only extended its activities all over the Sahel, but also cast its sinister shadow on several other countries in Western Africa; indeed, Western countries decided to pay the ransom for their fellow countrymen and women who had been either directly kidnapped by Al Qaida or given to the Jihadist group by other groups. This is what Serge Daniel maintains in the book he wrote on this characteristic of Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb, whose title is “AQIM, the kidnapping industry”, a sort of Bible for those who try to clear out the mystery surrounding this blood-thirsty and very determined group and its activities of.

In an interview on the site Maliweb, Serge Daniel talked about some elements which, in his own opinion, are objective and cannot be questioned. Western countries are ready to pay several millions of dollars or Euros for the release of their fellow countrymen and women whose kidnapping is managed by AQIM. The analyst provides a long and detailed list of paid ransoms, there are also some “voids” which may raise suspicions. According to Daniel, in recent years money from Spain (between EUR 8 and 9 mln), Canada (“some millions”), Austria (between EUR 2.5 and 3.5 mln), Germany (five millions) has flowed in AQIM’s cash. Italy is included in the list too: according to the expert, Italy paid EUR 3 mln for the release of its hostages. Switzerland’s position is quite peculiar: although it was the only country which did not provide exact figures, Daniel labels Switzerland as “very generous with kidnappers”.

A huge amount of money has circulated for all these years, although individual States have officially denied allegations and suspicions of having paid the ransom, they have actually created a way to negotiate with dangerous individuals, departing from the international principle which says “do not negotiate with terrorists”. But what has Al Qaida in Maghreb done and continues to do with the money? It funds its complex organisation structure, it buys weapons and equips the men it chooses to populate its ranks. We are talking about actual hiring, because it is hard to think that all militiamen are driven by a religious motivation; it is far more likely that they are “mainly and simply” attracted by money. Daniel does not write about this in his book, he just mentions an episode: among Jihadists entering Timbuktu there were some young men from his own Mali city who had moved to Libya to work. It was just found out that the money they used to send home were directly taken form the cash of one of Al Qaida’s Katibats (brigades) in Maghreb.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: Gannouchi Attacks State Media, Not Impartial

They are professedly hostile to gvt, Ennahdha chairman

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, 26 APRIl — Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the religious and government party Ennahdha, attacked state media, especially the State TV, on the grounds that they allegedly adopted a clearly anti-government line. Gannouchi’s statement to Express radio came a few hours after the end of the sit-in (during which some violence took place) organised by some fundamentalists who took the headquarters of the state TV under siege and asked for its purge. The sit-in had been going on since the beginning of March. According to Gannouchi, “people are very frustrated by the will of concealing the government’s activities”; the government is headed by Prime Minister Hamadi Djebali, the “right arm” of Ennahdha’s leader. According to Gannouchi, the state TV lacks professionalism: “it is not neutral, rather, it is the exact opposite of neutrality.” Going back to one of the requests that some of his party’s members repeatedly and forcefully made in recent months, Gannouchi stated that, given such unsatisfactory situation, privatisation would be the last solution is a global reform of the sector is not carried out.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


64th Anniversary, Peres Warns “Enemies”

Settlers’ outposts amnesty gift for independence, Minister

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV — President Shimon Peres warned “enemies” threatening Israel against “repeating the mistakes of the past” during one of the ceremonies for Independence Day, celebrating the 64th anniversary of the Jewish state. Today, during the official Tsahal (Israel’s armed forces) celebrations, in the presence of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the Chief of Military Staff, General Benny Gants, Peres stated: “To those who threaten Israel I say: do not repeat the mistakes of those who came before you.” Peres made indirect reference to Iran and recalled the wars that Israel won in the past.

According to the President, those wars “brought unexpected advantage to Israel and unexpected losses to attackers.” “Those who threaten us”, Peres continued, “do it because they want to conquer us”, while Israel is ready to defend itself, “but it aims at peace.” Another Independence Day tradition which has been going on for some time now is the annual contest on knowledge of the Bible, with the participation of young Jews from all over the world. This event, which is particularly dear to Prime Minister Netanyahu (one of his children is a top-level expert of this contest) risks to generate some controversies this year. It was Gideon Saar (Likud, right) the Minister of Education and Netanyahu party fellow, to prompt the controversy: during the event’s introduction, Saar labelled the recent and heatedly debated “amnesty” on the three illegal outposts of settlers in the West Bank occupied territories as “ Netanyahu’s gift for Independence Day”. The amnesty prompted the enthusiasm of the nationalist right and the fury of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), further weakening any hope left for the negotiations and was heavily criticised by the UN, the USA, the EU and by several foreign governments.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Israel: From Darling of the Left to Pariah State

By Dr. Norman Berdichevsky

April 26 this year, according to the corresponding date of the Jewish lunar calendar marks the 64th anniversary of Israel’s Declaration of Independence (May 15, 1948).

Since then, Israel has been constantly in the news and with the passage of time subjected to the growing myth never challenged by the media, that the United States was wholly or largely responsible for fully supporting Israel on the ground from the very beginning, a claim that is wholly without any foundation in fact.

The world has been inundated with a tsunami of Arab propaganda and crocodile tears shed for the “Palestinians” who have reveled in what they refer to as their Catastrophe or Holocaust (“Nakba” in Arabic). Their plight has been accompanied by unremitting criticism that the United States was the principal architect that stood behind Israel from the very beginning with money, manpower and arms.

The fact is that President Truman eventually decided against the pro-Arab “professional opinion” of his Secretary of State, General George Marshall and the Arabists of the State Department. He accorded diplomatic recognition to the new Jewish state but never considered active military aid. Truman’s memoirs revealed a bitter contempt for the professional “striped-pants” boys of the eastern Ivy League Colleges who were the old-timers in the State Department.

Although sometimes angered by Jewish pressure on the question of the Zionist movement’s goal of a Jewish state, Truman’s strong Baptist sentiments and basic human decency won out in reaching his decision against the “experts” to recognize the State of Israel and his comments that…

[Return to headlines]

Middle East


Syria: UN: Annan Has Budget of Almost 8 Mln USD

Six times more than envoy to Sudan and South Sudan

(ANSAmed) — NEW YORK, APRIL 26 — Special UN and Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan has a budget of almost 8 million USD to carry out his mandate, six times the sum established by the United Nations for the envoy to Sudan and South Sudan.

This sum, a document of which ANSA has received a copy reads, includes wages for his 18-strong staff (around 3 million USD) and operational costs (4,465,700 million). The operational costs include official visits, infrastructures, air and land transport, communication, computer equipment and other services and equipment.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Syria: Erdogan to Damascus, We Have Powerful Army

Russia concerned over Turkey’s call for Nato defence

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA — The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has fired a new warning shot to the Damascus authorities today, saying that Ankara “will take the appropriate measures, as a NATO country” if there are further incidents on the border between the two countries.

“We have powerful armed forces,” the moderate Islamist Prime Minister told Al Jazeera, according to the Hurriyet website. “Syria must know that if there are further border violations, Turkey’s reaction will not be the same,” he added.

Two weeks ago, Syrian security forces opened fire on Syrian refugees who were crossing the border into Turkey. Ankara protested and reported the incident to international organisations.

Speaking of current mediation by the former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, Erdogan said that two or three thousand observers are necessary to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire in Syria, rather than the current figure of 300.

“If the plan fails, I think that the UN Security Council will have a very important task”.

Russia on his part is concerned about the statements made by Turkey’s Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who

said that Turkey reserves the right to invoke the article that guarantees the collective defence of NATO countries against Syria. “Of course we are concerned about these statements, particularly considering the fact that the question implies the hypothetical application of a key article, article 5 of the Washington treaty, which deals with the collective defence of NATO countries in case of an armed attack against one of the NATO members,” spokesman for Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Lukashevich explained in a press conference.

The spokesman continued that the violence in Syria is not over, but that its intensity is diminishing even though the agreement on the cease-fire continues to be violated “both by the Syrian government and the opposition.”

Some groups, he underlined, “have shifted to a strategy of large-scale regional terrorism”.

In the meantime, in Syria 70 people have been killed since yesterday. Among the victims there were 11 children killed in Hama, the city most hit by the violences.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



U.S. Seen as Iran ‘Cyberarmy’ Target

Specialists to testify about threat

Iran is recruiting a hacker army to target the U.S. power grid, water systems and other vital infrastructure for a cyberattack in a future confrontation with the United States, security specialists will warn Congress on Thursday.

“Elements of the (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) have openly sought to pull hackers into the fold” of a religiously motivated cyberarmy, according to Frank J. Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Lawmakers from two House Homeland Security subcommittees will hold a joint hearing Thursday about the cyberthreat posed by Iran — as tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program continue at a high level and as a possible Israeli strike against it looms.

The Washington Times obtained advance copies of witnesses’ prepared testimony. In his remarks, Mr. Cilluffo says that, in addition to the recruiting by the Revolutionary Guards, another extremist militia, the Basij, “are paid to do cyberwork on behalf of the regime, (and) provide much of the manpower for Iran’s cyber-operations.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UAE: Lawyer Refers to Dictionary in Trial Accusing Man of Insulting Islam

The lawyer of an engineer jailed in Abu Dhabi for insulting Islam by referring to “damn” mosques has insisted a UAE court look up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Briton, an engineer who was in charge of a project to build gardens around mosques, is alleged to have asked a colleague “When will we finish with the damn mosques?” according to a police report. But the lawyer of the engineer this week asked a translator during the trial to look up the meaning of the word “damn.” “The first meaning for the word ‘damned’ says: ‘According to Christianity, a damned (person) is someone who God is angered with forever… the second meaning says ‘damn’ can be used for strong criticism in an unofficial way and is a way of expressing anger,” read out the translator at the Appeals Court, according to a report from The National. “You were accused of saying ‘damn mosques’ during a meeting, what do you say about that,” the Appeals Court judge asked the engineer, the newspaper reported. But the defense lawyer interrupted, saying the evidence was invalid and that the case should be dropped. “We have to carry out our procedures and ask the defendant,” the judge replied. “Are you afraid he will say something now that will give us proof? He has already been questioned in court before.” The Briton, named JM by the newspaper, has pleaded not guilty to insulting Islam and said he respects the religion. “I said it out of concern for the project because I wanted to be ready as soon as possible,” he said at the appeal trial, after already being sentenced to a month in prison by the Misdemeanor Court.

The Appeals Court and will announce its new verdict on April 30, the newspaper stated.

(Written by Eman El-Shenawi)

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Video Shows Syrian Rebel Buried Alive

Gruesome video footage allegedly showing a Syrian activist being buried alive at gunpoint by soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad’s regime has gone viral on Thursday and is considered to be the most horrific video to have emerged since the Syrian uprising began.

The footage, which was uploaded onto YouTube, shows a blindfolded man with only his head above ground and screaming for his life as Assad’s soldiers’ surround him.

In the video, the soldiers appear to point their gun barrels at the buried rebel. As the unit’s commanding officer approaches, one of the soldiers’ turns to him and says: “Yes sir, we placed him in there as you have ordered.”

The officer then asks: “What’s he got? Did you find anything with this damn animal?”

The helpless man, described as being from Al-Qussair, a city in western Syria near Homs, is then accused of carrying a camera to capture footage of Assad’s forces to send to television networks.

The rebel is called an “animal” and a “dog” several times before the order is given to bury him.

In the disturbing video, which was shot with a mobile video camera, the surrounding soldiers are shown shoveling dirt over the rebel’s head as the man cries, “I bear witness that there is no God by Allah.”

As his head disappears from view under the ground, the soldiers taunt him by ordering him to say: “Say that there’s no God but Bashar, you animal.”

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]

Russia


Huge Green Cloud Over Moscow Has Terrified Russians Tweeting for Their Lives

Anxious Russians have been bombarding Twitter today with fears about an ominous green cloud looming over Moscow.

Having awoken to the bizarrely tinged skies talk of chemical spills and ash clouds soon dominated the site, while some even connected the unusual scenes to today’s anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.

Because far from paranormal or the onset of war, according to officials in Moscow, it is nothing but pollen.

[…]

But some social network users are still far from convinced.

MadmanCrow said: ‘Green cloud over Moscow reported to be birch pollen? Sounds like B.S. to me.’

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



No Sharia Court in Russia

Human rights commissioner Vladimir Lukin saying that attorney Dagir Khasavov who suggested creating Sharia court in the country should be prosecuted. Attorney Khasavov said on TV that Muslims don’t accept Russian Court and therefore they have to have their own Court. Otherwise, the Attorney said, Moscow will be sinking in blood and become a dead sea.

Lukin replied that such a statement makes him feel hard. He said he wishes to remind everybody who lives in our country that we have the Constitution and the Law that we have to obey. And only the Supreme Court can make orders that must be taken to action.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

South Asia


India: ‘TMC Terror’ Over Bhangar College Poll

BHANGAR (SOUTH 24-PARGANAS): Teachers of a college on the outskirts of Kolkata have been living in terror for two days after an alleged assault by a band of Trinamool Congress men, reportedly led by former MLA Arabul Islam. Many teachers of Bhangar College allege that Islam threatened to strip them naked and beat them up. He allegedly hurled a jug of water at a lady professor, Debjani Dey, on Tuesday injuring her in the face. Islam denied all the charges and challenged journalists to remove Debjani’s plaster to check if there is any injury at all.

On Wednesday, there was a band of outsiders hovering ‘menacingly’ at the gates. Teachers stood outside for hours, unsure of whether they should go in and Islam’s “threats” the previous day. Many returned home. Eventually, a few mustered the courage to walk past the musclemen and the rest followed. There is still tension on the campus and the teachers and angry and frightened. The ruckus is apparently over election to the West Bengal College and University Teacher’s Association (WBCUTA). The college has five seats in the WBCUTA general committee. At the moment, the Left holds three and the Trinamool two. When the teachers walked in on Tuesday morning, they were told that Islam — who heads the college’s governing body — had issued a ‘whip’ asking teachers to vote for Trinamool in all five seats. This created a commotion in the staff room as teachers started protesting.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Indonesia: Lady Gaga Warned About Offending Muslims During World Tour

One Indonesian leader calls on Lady Gaga not to wear provocative outfits.

Lady Gaga has been warned about her provocative outfits ahead of her tour of Indonesia in June. The multi-million-selling artist, who is on a 110-date world tour to promote her album Born This Way Ball, is currently in South Korea. Indonesia is the world’s biggest Muslim nation and Islamic leaders have said her risque outfits will not be tolerated. “I call on Lady Gaga to respect our cultural and traditional values. Most people here are Muslims and we cannot tolerate her revealing outfits and sexy performances,” the Indonesia Ulema Council leader Amidhan told AFP. “It’s better for Lady Gaga to cancel her show in this country if she has no willingness to respect our demand. Please do not destroy our nation’s morality and ruin our dignity.” Lady Gaga — Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta — has courted controversy for appearing clad in outfits made of raw meat or on high heels. Big Daddy, the promoters for the concert in Jakarta, said tickets began selling in early March and were sold out within two weeks.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Pakistan: Blasphemy Allegations: Suspect Taken Into Custody Following Violent Demo

FAISALABAD: Saddar police on Monday rescued from his accusers a man suspected of defiling pages of the Holy Quran at a mosque near Toba-Gojra Road on Sunday night.

Police said the man, identified as Imran, was mentally-challenged. They said he would be produced in a court on Tuesday (today). Talking to The Express Tribune, Saddar Station House Officer Mian Muhammad Akram said the suspect had denied having burned any page of the Holy Quran. He quoted Imran as saying that he had burnt some worn out papers he collected from a mosque while cleaning the shelves on Sunday night. But, he added, he had no idea that the pages came out of the Holy Quran. He said he had started cleaning the shelves on seeing a lot of dust.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Pakistan: Bin Laden’s Family of Twelve Set to be Kicked Out of Pakistan Tonight

Osama bin Laden’s family was set to be kicked out of Pakistan last night — just days before the first anniversary of the terror mastermind’s death.

The slain al Qaeda leader’s three widows, their eight children and one grandchild are being flown to Saudi Arabia.

A Pakistani judge ordered earlier this month that the women be deported to their countries of citizenship after serving a six month sentence for illegally entering the country.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Far East


China: Wen Announces $10 Billion Line of Credit

China has announced a special line of credit worth $10 billion to fund infrastructure, technology and environmental projects in central and eastern Europe, one its fastest-growing trade partners.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Thursday said his government plans to set up a $10 billion (7.6 billion euro) special line of credit for central and eastern European countries as his trip to Europe comes to an end.

Speaking to thousands of delegates at the China-Central Europe economic forum in Warsaw, Wen said the credit line was “to boost practical cooperation with central and east European countries.” The investment projects are to include “a certain amount of concessional loans to support cooperation projects in infrastructure, high and new technologies and green economy.”

Wen Jiabao is opening a trade show in Hanover with Angela Merkel. Afterward, they will visit a Volkswagen factory. The agenda highlights the dominance of economic ties in Sino-German relations. (22.04.2012)

Wen pointed to the dramatic rise in trade between China and central and eastern Europe in the past decade, growing at an average annual rate of 27.6 percent and reaching $52.9 billion in 2011. He said he hopes to see bilateral trade hit $100 billion by 2015.

China is flush with cash and is seen as eager to invest more in stable ex-Communist countries like Poland. The Europe Union is the biggest importer of Chinese goods and services.

The Chinese premier began his tour of Europe in Iceland and made stops in Germany and Sweden before arriving in Poland. Thursday’s forum in Warsaw hosted 300 Chinese companies and 450 firms from across the region. Wen was scheduled to meet with 16 prime ministers from the region later in the day.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso spoke with Wen on the phone Thursday, releasing a statement saying China had restated its commitment to supporting Europe amid the debt crisis.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



How China Combats Product Piracy (Or Not)

Thursday was World Intellectual Property Day and China touted a very visible program supporting it. The authorities wanted to show how vehemently they were fighting product piracy. German firms are among the many international businesses, industries and individuals which have had to cope with the brazen theft and illegal reproduction of copyrighted or trade-marked goods.

Facing worldwide criticism, China has been keen to demonstrate the tough measures it has undertaken against intellectual property theft and product piracy. Unfortunately, not all their propaganda has unfolded they way they wanted it to.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Indigenous Filipinos Battle for Their Land

Small farmers and indigenous groups in the Philippines have been struggling for decades against big companies, corrupt officials and influential families to get land once promised to them.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Australia — Pacific


Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens Unveils Moonshadow Musical

The world premiere of Cat Stevens ‘Moonshadow’ musical will happen in Melbourne, Australia is May. Yusuf (Cat Stevens) has been working in Melbourne with the cast for the past months and has now spoken about his first musical. ‘The musical has been my baby for a while and its about to be born here in Melbourne. I’m really excited. It’s looking fantastic,’ he told a media gathering during rehearsals. Yusuf first indicated the musical was on the way when he performed at except during his Australian tour in 2010. ‘The beginning of this goes back, if you know my history, I was born in the West End of London,’ he said. ‘I was one of those who lived there and didn’t have to travel very far to get to Soho or into Piccadilly Circus at the other end of my road. From there I picked up the urge for things musical’. The story came from questions he asked as a child. ‘I used to look up at the night sky and one of the big questions that I had was ‘where does the sky end’. Everything seemed to have an end but where does the sky end. In a way that is the premise for this musical,’ he said.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Boko Haram Attacks Nigerian Newspaper Headquarters

(AGI) Abuja — The press is under attack in Nigeria where two attacks were carried out on the headquarters of three daily papers. Seven people were killed and a dozen wounded. The first attack took place at 11.30 a.m. in Jabi, a district in the capital ABuja. The suicide bomber managed to enter the compound where the important pro-government daily paper This Day has its office. Three people died in this attack after the suicide bomber entered the compound driving a Toyota jeep through a secondary entrance near the printing presses, while from the main entrance it is possible to enter the news desk areas which was filled with journalists at the time of the attack. A police officer told AGI that “This was an anomalous attack and choosing to blow himself up near a back entrance seems to indicate the wished to intimidate the reporters.” The second attack took place in Kaduna, the state capital in Northern Nigeria, where four people died and many were wounded. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks although investigators believe that the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram was involved.

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



Twin Bombings Hit Nigerian Newspaper

Two bombs have exploded at newspaper offices in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and the northern city of Kaduna in attacks bearing resemblance to others claimed by a radical Islamist group.

Twin bombings hit the offices of the Nigerian daily newspaper This Day in two cities on Thursday, killing at least three people, witnesses and officials said. A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at This Day’s offices in the capital, Abuja, while a man threw an explosive device at an office in the northern city of Kaduna that houses This Day, The Moment and The Daily Sun newspapers.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Uganda: Muslim Youth Storm Old Kampala to Unseat Mubajje

Police has fired tear gas to disperse a group of Muslims opposed to Mufti Shaban Mubajje’s administration who this Thursday afternoon started marching to Gaddafi National Mosque in Old Kampala, the official seat of Muslims in Uganda, to unseat the current administration, describing it as a disgrace to the community. The group first converged at Kibuli Mosque where top Muslim leaders including Sheikh Nuhu Muzaata, the head of Muslim propagation department at Kibuli, reiterated their decision to boycott tomorrow’s elections. The elections, which were expected to start at mosque level, are aimed at ushering in new representatives to the 110-member Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC) general assembly. The police has managed to disperse the crowds but they have broken into different groups, with most of them still marching to Old Kampala. A statement from Police says that they have “deployed at the Old Kampala mosque to ensure safety and security.”

The Kibuli factions says the elections cannot be held under the current administration, which they accuse of illegally disposing community property. Mufti Mubajje, 57, who assumed office in 2000, has been under fire since 2006 when a section of Muslims accused him of fraudulently disposing of Muslim property in Kampala. The conflict ended up in court, with Mubajje, Hassan Basajjabalaba and former secretary-general Edris Kasenene facing criminal charges in relation to the accusations. The trio was acquitted, but the anti-Mubajje faction rejected the ruling, saying that the magistrate’s pronouncement that Mubajje lied in the property dealings disqualifies him from leading the Muslim community. The anti -Mubajje faction responded by electing a rival Mufti, Sheik Zubair Kayongo, who’s based at Kibuli.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Walmart’s Mexican Morass: The World’s Biggest Retailer is Sent Reeling by Allegations of Bribery

Walmart’s Mexican arm, Walmex, stands accused of greasing local officials’ palms over several years to speed the granting of permits to open new stores. Managers at group headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, were apparently informed about the payments (which were said to be made through intermediaries) in 2005. They launched a probe, but wound it down without disciplining anyone. They did not disclose any of this to the authorities until last December. Walmart says it began an “extensive” investigation last autumn into its compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), America’s anti-bribery law. In a statement after the article appeared, it said: “If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”

Since venturing across the Rio Grande in 1991, the company has quickly come to dominate Mexican shopping. It accounts for half of Mexico’s formal retail market and has nearly four times as many stores as its nearest rival, Soriana. It is Mexico’s largest private employer, with 200,000 staff. And Walmex contributes nearly a quarter of Walmart’s foreign sales.

Corruption is a huge problem for businesses in Mexico…

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Afghans Found Abandoned Off Calabria, One Dead

Migrants possibly thrown overboard

(ANSA) — Locri, April 26 — Police on the coast of Calabria were investigating the death of an Afghan and the alleged beatings of four others who were rescued in a group of 35 immigrants believed to have been dumped by traffickers Thursday.

The surviving victims were in hospital where one was reportedly in critical condition from ingesting seawater and suffering lesions. Police, who found the Afghan group abandoned on the coast without any trace of a boat, suspect some were beaten by traffickers as they tried to resist being thrown overboard. Witnesses said roughly 50 were aboard the ship when it left Greece four days ago, leading investigators to worry that more bodies have yet to be recovered. photo: the coast of Calabria

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Asking EU for Deal With Ankara

Obligation needed for immigrant’s countries to reabsorb them

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 25 — The European Union must take steps to tackle the emergency of immigration in Greece and must sign the readmission treaty with Turkey, from whose border 90% of illegal immigrants heading for the EU arrive, according to Michalis Chrisochoidis, the Greek Minister for Civil Protection, who made the appeal to the European Parliament’s home affairs commission.

“We want obligations from Europe for deals with third-party countries from where migration flows arrive,” Chrisochoidis said. “The countries will therefore be forced to reabsorb their citizens, which at the moment they do not do at all”.

Underlining the serious humanitarian crisis in the country, the Greek minister described the old centre of Athens as a stomping ground for drug traffickers and criminal networks who enrol illegal immigrants. The minister asked for “cooperation” from all member states. The main problem is Turkey, which in exchange for the signature of the readmission agreement is demanding the liberalisation of visas for the Schengen area for Turkish citizens. In the meantime, Chrisochoidis explains, Ankara does not demand visas and opens its doors to citizens of other countries, such as Algeria or Somalia, who subsequently arrive in Greece. Athens is “determined” to protect the country’s borders, while Chrisoidis says that “isolated initiatives” to close national borders within the EU to push immigrants away, such as those mooted during the French election campaign, “are unacceptable”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Immigrants Deported: Algiers Complains With Rome

Italian ambassador summoned, ‘unacceptable and humiliating’

(ANSAmed) — ROME — Algeria has complained with Italy over the treatment of two of its nationals deported last week on an Alitalia Rome-Tunis flight, the photos of which — showing the men with scotch tape over their mouths — went viral on the web and sparked a great deal of heated debate in Italy as well. The Algerian Foreign Minister has today summoned the Italian ambassador to the country, Michele Giacomelli, to “protest vehemently on behalf of the Algerian authorities” against the treatment which Algiers called (according to the Algerian foreign ministry spokesman) “violent, humiliating and unacceptable”. The incident — with the two seated in the last row of the plane with plastic handcuffs on, mouths taped shut with packaging tape and a protective mask lowered over their faces — is one which Rome has already announced that it will be looking into thoroughly. This was reiterated yesterday by the Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, who wrote to the Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni — who had expressed “profound consternation” over the case — saying that the Italian government has already opened an administrative investigation into the matter and that the magistrature began a judicial one. This was in line with what had been said by Interior, Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who in reporting before the Chamber of Deputies on the events said that the use of “coercive measures” such as scotch tape on mouths was an “extemporaneous” behaviour, and above all one that is “offensive to personal dignity”. “It is entirely in the police’s interest” to make sure that light is shed on the case in all of its aspects, said the head of the interior ministry in announcing that an inquiry would take place.

It is a matter that the Algerian government has now asked to know more about, calling Ambassador Giacomelli to the foreign ministry, where he met with the Secretary of State for the National Community Living Abroad, Benattallah Halim. Reporting this was the spokesman for the Algerian ministry himself, saying that during the meeting “protest” had been expressed over the treatment suffered “by two of our fellow countrymen”, treatment called “violent, humiliating and inacceptable”, and that ambassador had been urged to “convey to the Italian authorities” Algiers’ position while awaiting “clarification”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Indignado Generation Finds Happiness Abroad

Polityka Warsaw

Thousands of young people, often educated, are leaving Portugal and Spain. Europe doesn’t need them while Africa and South America receive them with open arms

Aleksandra Lipczak

Ana Ferreira oozes optimism. She is twenty six, comes from the Azores and for almost four years now has been based in Africa, first in Angola, now in Mozambique. Contrary to what could be expected, she is not a volunteer but a paid employee at a corporate human resources department.

“When I look at my friends in Portugal, living on student grants, doing short-term jobs, completing successive graduate or postgraduate courses, I think they are detached from real life. I live in Maputo where I’m doing great and actually advancing career-wise. What am I supposed to be returning to?”

Gonçalo Jorge, a twenty-eight year old marketing executive from Lisbon, fought not for work but against frustration. After obtaining his degree, he got a job with a public transport company. “I wanted to do great things but all that was waiting for me was a sinecure”, he says. When he finally found an interesting opening at a private company, it was the terms of employment, with a contract for just a year, that proved a problem. So he moved to Angola and today is country manager for a Portuguese wine producer. He is responsible for the company’s entire operations in Angola and earns four times what he did in Portugal.

Portugal has already lost one in ten of its university graduates. The exodus has continued for several years now because the crisis and high unemployment hit the country much earlier than the rest of Europe. Youth unemployment in Portugal is at over 34 percent today and in Spain at over 50 percent. If it weren’t for emigration, it would be much higher…

.

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



Supreme Court Casts Doubt on Obama’s Immigration Law Claim

Supreme Court justices took a dim view of the Obama administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona from enforcing immigration laws, telling government lawyers during oral argument Wednesday that the state appears to want to push federal officials, not conflict with them.

The court was hearing arguments on Arizona’s immigration crackdown law, which requires police to check the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, and would also write new state penalties for illegal immigrants who try to apply for jobs.

The Obama administration has sued, arguing that those provisions conflict with the federal government’s role in setting immigration policy, but justices on both sides of the aisle struggled to understand that argument.

“It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said at one point.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The Netherlands Criticised for High Residency Permit Fees

The Netherlands charges non-EU nationals too much money for a residency permit, the European Court of Justice said on Thursday. The case was brought by the European Commission.

While legislation allows member states to set their own fees, the cost should not be so high that applicants cannot afford a residency permit and therefore don’t apply, the court said

It described the Dutch fees — currently between €188 and €830 — as ‘excessive and disproportionate’, pointing out that even the cheapest permit is seven times the price of a Dutch id card.

The Netherlands must now take action to meet the Commission’s objections or face a fine, a statement from the European Court said.

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



Young Men in Mexico Say the US No Longer Offers Them a Better Future

Seismic shifts in immigration and demographics leave towns full of young men who once would have dreamed of the US

In a typical year, the young men in this agricultural region of western Mexico would have made the journey north to America. But not this year or for this generation: a better future across the border is a promise they no longer trust.

“For years, we dreamed of America, but now that dream is no good,” says 18-year-old Pedro Morales, sitting in the elegant Spanish colonial square of Comala under the shadow of the spectacular Volcan de Fuego. “There are no jobs and too many problems. We don’t want to go.”

In an historic shift, the tide of immigration from Mexico to the US has stalled. Villages that were empty of young men are now full. A report published by the Pew Hispanic Center this week confirmed what was already anecdotally clear: the largest wave of immigration in US history has stalled and is now close to slipping into reverse.

Between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States, less than half the number that migrated between 1995 and 2000. At the same time, the number of Mexicans who moved to Mexico over the same period rose to 1.4 million, double the number over the previous five years.

Other research groups in the field say the narrowing gap in wages and relative costs of living between Mexico and the US, as well as improving education standards in Mexico, has tipped the calculation back.

“The great migration of the past five decades has been slowing for a decade,” says Doug Massey, founder of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University. “We’ve been at a point of stasis since 2009.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Respected Muslim Leader Warns Gay Marriage Threatens Civilisation and the World’s Population

GAY marriage is not just a “grave sin” but a threat to civilisation itself, according to one of Scotland’s most respected Muslim leaders.

Bashir Maan, the former Glasgow Labour councillor and spokesman for the Council of Glasgow Imams, also said it would lead to a decline in world population as governments “promote homosexuality”. His comments come as Glasgow imams urge Muslim voters to boycott May’s local elections if they cannot find a candidate who opposes gay marriage.

It would be better to withhold a vote rather than cast it for a candidate in favour of same-sex marriage, they argue, despite all of the main parties supporting the idea. A key fear among imams is that mosques could be sued or prosecuted if they refuse to conduct gay marriages, despite the Government insisting no-one will be compelled to conduct ceremonies. One worshipper, attending a mosque in Glasgow’s west end on Friday, confirmed the imam had been going “hell for leather” on the subject.

[…]

[JP note: I can think of a bigger threat to world civilisation.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

General


NATO Faced With Rising Flood of Cyberattacks

NATO cyberwarfare experts suspect that Chinese and Russian intelligence services are behind a recent uptick in cyberattacks against the Western alliance. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that NATO’s cyberwarfare unit registers up to 30 such attacks each day. Employees have been warned to be on their guard.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Tiny Crystal May Hold Key to Future of Computers

A tiny crystal could hold the secret to computers of the future, unimaginably more powerful than today’s most advanced supercomputers. Preliminary tests indicate that the new processor can eclipse the capacity of current computers by an extraordinary 80 orders of magnitude — a one with 80 zeros after it — potentially taking computing into a new dimension.

Trumping even the super-advanced computer from the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — a custom-made planet Earth — tests suggest the new device’s potential can be matched only by a conventional computer as big as the known universe.

“No classical computer could do what this simulator has the potential to do,” said University of Sydney experimental physicist Michael Biercuk, who developed the crystal with scientists from the US and South Africa.

Biercuk said applications of the system, or systems like it, could include analyzing photosynthesis at an atomic level and developing materials for power distribution that allow electricity to flow without resistance.

The system, a tiny crystal of beryllium ions, uses quantum mechanics rather than conventional computing technology. While it is not the first processor to do so, it is the first to break through a threshold of the number of atoms needed to exceed the capacity of classical computers for certain problems.

Biercuk said it would take 10 to 20 years for the processor to be incorporated in commercially viable machines, and that it would never be used for general-purpose computing. But scientists may be able to use the technology long before then for analysis.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120425

Financial Crisis
» Britain Slides Back Into Recession
» EU-17: Spanish and Greek Manpower Cost Below Average
» Eurozone Crisis: The People Have Become a Nuisance
» IMF Urges Further Spain Bank Reforms
» Italy: Angeletti: The Government is Getting Bogged, Unable to Move
» Italy: Milan Stock Exchange Gains Almost 3%
» Moody’s Warns the Netherlands on it Credit Rating
» S&P Downgrades Argentina’s Outlook After YPF Deal
» Spain: Minister: Q1 Deficit Targets Met
» Spain’s Economy Plunges Into Recession: Central Bank
 
USA
» “Mythological Beast of a Virus” Found in Californian Hot Spring
» George Zimmerman: Prelude to a Shooting
» Is America Embracing the 10 Tenets of the Communist Manifesto?
» New Private Space Plane Aims to Pick Up Where NASA’s Shuttles Left Off
» Pentagon Halts Class Teaching Anti-Islam Material
» Stakelbeck on Terror Show: Biological Terrorism Next Big Threat?
» The Bait and Switch That the Left Would Like for You to Follow
» The Sea Change: Obama’s Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
» Video: Allen West: Political Correctness Affecting Security
» Your Computer and Solar Flares
 
Europe and the EU
» Anders Breivik’s World: How Sick is Norway’s Mass Murderer?
» Backers of EU Treaty ‘Thatcherite’ — Adams
» Bossi Denies Northern League Took Money From Finmeccanica
» Dutch Queen Asks Prime Minister to Dissolve Parliament
» Everyday Goods and Services Attract Finns to Estonia
» Finnish Minister Proposes Visa-Free Travel to Russia
» France: Brussels: Investigation Into Aid at Nimes Airport
» Franceschi: French Doctor Investigated for Murder
» France: 64% of Sarkozy’s Voters Would Ally With Le Pen
» France 2012: Marine Le Pen Seduces Jewish Community
» Germany Seeking Agreement With Italy for Growth Plan
» Germany: Jews Welcome First Post-War ‘Mein Kampf’
» Germany: Parallel Societies, Parallel Justice
» Hollande: I’ll Give Foreigners the Vote
» Italy: Inspectors to Open Mobster De Pedis’ Tomb
» Italy: Rom Protest Blocks Highway
» Italy Slips to 23rd in OECD Wage Rankings
» Mind-Controlled Robot Unveiled in Switzerland
» Moroccan Muslim Brotherhood PM Refuses to Talk With Female Belgian Minister
» Muslims in Europe Face Discrimination, Amnesty
» Norway: Breivik Slams Experts for Insanity ‘Fabrications’
» Spain Busts Iran-Britain People-Trafficking Gang
» Sweden: Radio Host Axed for Likening Serbs to Breivik
» Swiss Woman Starved After ‘Eating’ Only Light
» Swiss Folk Hero William Tell Gets Own Musical
» UK: Hooded Mob Blatantly ‘Fired at Police Helicopter After Luring Officers to Scene by Firebombing Pub’
» UK: Pregnant Woman ‘Was Smothered to Death by Family Before They Claimed She Was Killed by an Evil Spirit’Nalia Mumtaz, 21, Was Found Lying Lifeless on a Bed at the Family Home
» Van Rompuy: ‘Winds of Populism’ Threaten Free Movement
 
North Africa
» Algeria: Students Stabbed, Others Block City Streets
» Egypt: Saudis Arrest Activist, Protests in Cairo
» Libya Puts a Bans on Religious Parties and Foreign Funds
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Netanyahu Legalises Outposts, PNA Wants Sanctions
» Road Map for Palestinian Economic Independence
 
Middle East
» Traitors: American Professors Go to Tehran to Help Mad Mullahs
» Turkish Oil Firm to Start Drilling in North Cyprus
» Turks Invested Abroad 25 Bln USD in 10 Years, Report
 
Russia
» ENI Inks Deal With Russia’s Rosneft
» Moscow’s Islamic Clerics Reject Creation of Shari’a Courts
» Moscow Announces Massive Metro Building Plan
» Putin Invites Italian PM to Next St Petersburg Forum
 
South Asia
» India: Gujarat: Forced to Abort by Her Husband Six Times, They Were All Female Fetuses
» Indonesia: ‘Two Politicians’ Sex Tape Circulated Online
» Italy Compensates Families of Dead Indian Fishermen
» Myanmar Seeks Partnership With Italy, Terzi Says
 
Far East
» N. Koreans Arrive in South From Russia: Reports
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» South Africa: Video Gang-Rape Trial Set to Begin
 
Latin America
» Bones of Early American Disappear From Underwater Cave
 
Immigration
» 78 Somali Migrants Land at Linosa
» Almost 6% of Dutch Couples Are Mixed Nationality
» Immigration Debate in Switzerland: Politician Sparks Uproar With Call to Limit German Workers
» NATO: No Images, No Responsibility
» Spain: Half-a-Million Illegal Migrants Stand to Lose Health Coverage
» Supreme Court Skeptical of Striking Down Arizona Immigration Law
» Work in Germany — A Nightmare for Bulgarians
 
Culture Wars
» Catholic Schools Face ‘Indoctrination’ Claims Over Gay Marriage
 
General
» Does Rain Come From Life in the Clouds?
» Organic Farming is Rarely Enough
» Superstars of Botany: Rare Specimens
» The United Nation’s Useless Genocide Trials

Financial Crisis


Britain Slides Back Into Recession

Britain was back in recession Wednesday after its economy shrank in the first quarter while Prime Minister David Cameron said the country was being buffetted by the European downturn.

Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent between January and March, after a 0.3-percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

That technically placed Britain in recession, which is defined as two successive quarters of contraction, amid a broader downturn that appears to be taking hold across Europe and notably in members of the eurozone.

“We are in a difficult economic situation in Britain,” Cameron said in reaction to the data, adding that he stood by government spending cuts despite worries that they undermined growth.

“Just as you see now recessions in Denmark, in Holland, in Italy, in Spain, that is what is happening in the continent that we trade with. What is absolutely essential is we take every step we can to help our economy out of recession,” Cameron told parliament.

Britain, which is not a member of the eurozone, clawed its way out of a record-length recession in the third quarter of 2009 caused by the global financial crisis.

“A second quarter of falling GDP combined with the likelihood of a weak current quarter means we are firmly in double-dip (recession) territory for the first time since the 1970s,” said Deutsche Bank economist George Buckley.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



EU-17: Spanish and Greek Manpower Cost Below Average

Eurozone 2011 hourly cost at EUR 27.60

(ANSA) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 24 — Spanish and Greek manpower are among those costing the least in the eurozone. This was confirmed by the latest Eurostat data, which show that the average hourly compensation costs in 2011 in the EU-17 were at 27.6 euros, compared with 20.6 in Spain in the same year and 17.5 euros in Greece in 2010. Among EU countries in the Mediterranean, in top place is France at 34.2 euros per house, while Italy is at 26.8. Following are cheaper costs in Cyprus (16.5 euros), Slovenia (14.4), Portugal (12.1) and Malta (11.9). In the EU-17, the highest point was seen in Belgium (39.3 euros per hour), while in Germany an hour of manpower was paid at 30.1 euros and in Ireland 27.4. Looking at the average in the EU-27, the hourly labour costs dropped to 23.1 euros, with countries like Bulgaria (3.5), Romania (4.2 in 2010), Lithuania (5.5) and Latvia (5.9) seeing wages not even a fifth of what is seen in Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Eurozone Crisis: The People Have Become a Nuisance

A spectre is stalking the financial markets: what if the army of unemployed and poor no longer rubber-stamp the policies of the powerful? No wonder neither politicians nor business leaders want to risk too much democracy.

Stephan Kaufmann

The euro crisis is dormant; the trillion loan from the European Central Bank has calmed the waters. A new threat to the financial markets, though, has been spotted: democracy. “The French and Greek elections as well as the referendum in Ireland are sparking concerns among investors, businesses and consumers,” says Elga Bartsch of the U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley.

The euro countries are asking for huge sacrifices from their people. To bolster financial markets’ confidence in their creditworthiness they are laying off hundreds of thousands of state employees, increasing taxes, slashing state funding and rolling back pensions.

And to increase the states’ international competitiveness, wages are being forced down, job security weakened, and the power of unions eroded away. What’s more, rising numbers of people are losing their jobs. In countries such as Greece and Spain, half of all young workers have in the meantime joined the unemployment lines.

“The biggest risk for Europe right now is probably less a rise in interest rates on government bonds and more a political and social crisis due to the spectacular rise in joblessness,” believes Patrick Artus, an economist at the French bank Natixis.

At regular intervals, as required by the rules of democracy, the victims of the crises can vote in elections on the actions to be taken — and to refuse them. That this might happen is creating uncertainty in the markets. In recent months, therefore, politicians have done much to neutralise the will of the electorate. In Greece in November a referendum on the austerity measures was obstructed by the German and French politicians, who openly threatened Greece with its exclusion from the eurozone should the Greeks have voted against the measures.

Cut back on the tempo of austerity

In Greece and Italy the crisis forced elected leaders out of office. Into their chairs moved “technocratic” politicians who had not been elected and therefore did not depend on the will of the voters.

“The policy during the crisis resembles a permanent coup d’etat,” criticises literature professor Joseph Vogl. Informal circles of bankers, politicians and central bankers are increasingly setting those policies. “Financial Soviets,” as Vogel puts it, are making the decisions.

Yet the people are still being asked to vote — in Ireland, for example, where at the end of May they will vote on whether to join the Fiscal Pact. The Irish, however, are not being offered a lot of leeway. The country depends on funds from the euro bailout packages — and that money will only come through if Ireland signs up to the pact.

In early May the Greeks will vote in a new parliament. To immunise the austerity programme against the will of the electorate, the likely winners — the parties Pasok and New Democracy — were forced beforehand to commit themselves to continuing the reform course. The problem, however, is that the small opposition parties are getting stronger, and this is creating anxiety among investors, who want to avoid political controversy.

On Sunday the first round of the French presidential elections finally took place, and saw the socialist Francois Hollande emerge with a small lead over the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande wants to tax the rich more heavily, cut back on the tempo of austerity, and renegotiate the Fiscal Pact. The markets are already handing him the bill, and in a bond auction on Thursday France was forced to pay higher interest rates.

Freedom of markets vs freedom of democracy

Sarkozy for his part has sworn to keep the French on the path to reform. That means sacrifices for the people, but without reforms, Sarkozy warns, France risks “turning into Greece or Spain.” There is simply no alternative. Put in plain English, the French can indeed vote, but they have nothing to choose from.

“The talk about alternatives is a form of speech and thought control,” criticises the business ethicist Ulrich Thielemann. “If you can no longer talk about alternatives, it’s the end of democracy.” Formally, the vote will indeed then be taken. “But people are no longer to choose anything, just to rubber-stamp the fixed policy. That’s democracy as a statement of approval.”

The electorate is currently being disempowered by the markets, which come up with the credit needed — or refuse to give it. “It’s loss of sovereignty,” says Thielemann. Politicians bow down before the markets as before a force of nature. At the same time, “that capital they have to beg for so desperately today they could have also gotten simply by confiscating it: through taxes.”

The freedom of the markets runs counter to the freedom of democracy, Thielemann believes. “If the purpose of a state is only to become more competitive, then the central question of democracy is forbidden: how do we want to live?”

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



IMF Urges Further Spain Bank Reforms

The International Monetary Fund Wednesday urged Spain to push further ahead with banking reforms aimed at stabilising its troubled financial sector. IMF inspectors concluded Spain needs “to continue with and further deepen the financial sector reform strategy to address remaining vulnerabilities and build strong capital buffers in the sector,” it said in a report.

The conservative government that came to power in December has continued a clean-up of the banking sector prompted by the 2008 financial crisis, forcing banks to increase the amount of funds they have to cushion them in case of problems. The IMF acknowledged Spain’s efforts but warned it needs to urgently clean up some banks that are still financially weak.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Angeletti: The Government is Getting Bogged, Unable to Move

(AGI) Rome — The Government is “gradually getting bogged down, unable to move and take serious and incisive actions”. The statement was made by UIL Secretary General Luigi Angeletti on the microphones of the ‘La Telefonata’ broadcast by Canale 5.

“Lip-service increases as facts decrease — Angeletti emphasized — the only serious thing to be done is to cut taxes on the basis of the revenue from fighting tax evasion or from the cuts to public spending, starting with the spending for political parties”. “The only road to growth is by cutting taxes; with this level of taxes in Italy, the only thing that can grow is unemployment”, added the UIL leader.

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



Italy: Milan Stock Exchange Gains Almost 3%

Bond spread down eight points

(ANSA) — Milan, April 25 — The Milan stock exchange regained some lost ground in a positive day of trading on Wednesday, when the FTSE Mib index closed almost 3% higher than the previous day.

Italian stocks have suffered some big losses this month amid fears the eurozone debt crisis could be on the way back to its worse. The FTSE Mib dropped below the 14,000-point mark to 13,849 on Monday after European markets responded badly to Socialist candidate Francois Hollande coming out on top in the first round of the French presidential elections and the resignation of Dutch Premier Mark Rutte over budget cuts.

But it had climbed back up to 14,606 points by the end of trading on Wednesday, up 2.91% on Tuesday, after the release of positive data by several companies eased international investors’ nerves.

The yield spread between 10-year Italian bonds and the German benchmark, a key indicator of market confidence, dropped to 389.8 points, after closing at 397.7 on Tuesday, with a yield of 5.64%.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Moody’s Warns the Netherlands on it Credit Rating

The fall of the government and the failure to agree an austerity programme can have a negative affect on the Netherlands’ credit rating, credit ratings agency Moody’s said on Tuesday morning.

‘Despite its tradition of budgetary discipline, this development creates uncertainty about the future direction of the country,’ Moody’s said in its report, according to press coverage.

If the Netherlands does not get a grip on its budget, this will create pressure on its triple-A credit rating, the agency warns. Failure could also have a negative effect on the rest of the eurozone and hinder the introduction of stricter budgetary rules.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



S&P Downgrades Argentina’s Outlook After YPF Deal

Standard & Poor’s on Monday downgraded its credit rating outlook for Argentina from stable to negative, after Buenos Aires seized control of the country’s largest oil company YPF. “In our view, the recent government policies could increase risks to Argentina’s macroeconomic framework, squeeze its external liquidity, and hinder medium-term growth prospects,” the ratings agency said in a statement.

Spain and the European Union have warned that the move by Buenos Aires would damage relations, and others have voiced concerns of a chilling effect on capital investment in the region. World Bank head Robert Zoellick also has slammed Argentina’s move.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Spain: Minister: Q1 Deficit Targets Met

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 24 — Spain has already met its deficit-reduction objectives for the first quarter of this year: to bring it down from the 8.5% of GDP in 2011 to 5.3% set for 2012. So confirmed the country’s Finance Minister, Cristobal Montoro, in a reply given to Congress during a budget debate to PSOE leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba. The minister presented an amendment to the overall balance.

Montoro revealed that public debt as registered between January and March was at 0.83% of GDP, in line with the set objectives.

The Minister also blamed the previous government under Jose’ Luis Rodrigo Zapatero of having brought the country into its present difficulties. “They took this country to the 2010 limits. The left us a country whose credibility was in question, and we have to regain this credibility,” the Minister added.

The opposition PSOE party leader had called the 2012 budget forecasts “useless, impoverishing the country, and unjust”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain’s Economy Plunges Into Recession: Central Bank

Spain’s jobs-scarce economy plunged back into recession in the first quarter of 2012 as employment slumped even further, the Bank of Spain said Monday. Barely two years after emerging from the last downturn, Spain slid into recession again with two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, the central bank said in a report.

Gross domestic product fell by an estimated 0.4-percent in the first quarter of 2012 after a 0.3-percent decline in the last three months of 2011, the bank said. Spain, whose unemployment rate at the end of 2011 was already the highest in the industrialised world at 22.85 percent overall and nearly 50 percent for the young, suffered a further jobs slump.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

USA


“Mythological Beast of a Virus” Found in Californian Hot Spring

It’s not often that a scientist will say “mythological beast” with a straight face, but that’s exactly what virologist Ken Stedman told Nature News about a new virus. In a recent paper in Biology Direct, Stedman and his research team describe a genetic sequence that suggests the existence of a DNA-RNA chimera virus.

RNA and DNA viruses, referring to the type of nucleic acid they use to store genetic information, are two very distinct groups-probably more evolutionary distant than a lion and a snake. That’s why researchers were so surprised when they found a DNA virus sequence encoding a protein only ever found in RNA viruses. The sample came from a Lassen Volcanic National Park hotspring, where viruses prey on the bacteria living in the acidic water.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



George Zimmerman: Prelude to a Shooting

SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) — A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.

The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law’s dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show.

“Don’t use pepper spray,” he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. “It’ll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you,” he said.

“Get a gun.”

That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December, another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight weapon.

By June 2011, Zimmerman’s attention had shifted from a loose pit bull to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on his regular, dog-walking patrol — a violation of neighborhood watch guidelines but not a crime.

Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun — until two months ago.

On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly half the United States.

During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.

But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman’s past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.

Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather — the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”…

           — Hat tip: Takuan Seiyo [Return to headlines]



Is America Embracing the 10 Tenets of the Communist Manifesto?

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the purported founders of communism, established in the 19th century a government paradigm that transformed Europe and other regions in the eastern hemisphere, adding to an already expansive repertoire of political ideologies. And the seemingly farfetched assertion that communism could someday take control of America seems, quite simply, unfathomable. But is it really that improbable, or furthermore, has it already ensnared certain sectors of society?

Writing for The Blaze, Tiffany Gabbay recently produced a thoughtful exposé entitled “Are We Headed Toward the Constitution or the Communist Manifesto?” that breaks down the 10 tenets of Marx and Engels’ infamous 1848 publication and describes how those 10 steps or “planks” to establish communism are slowly being woven into American society.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



New Private Space Plane Aims to Pick Up Where NASA’s Shuttles Left Off

The new spaceship being built by private aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corp. may look like a miniature space shuttle, but while the design takes cues from the past, company officials are hoping this vehicle shepherds in a new era of commercial human spaceflight.

Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane is being developed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. The company is aiming to begin full orbital flights in 2016. But the Dream Chaser design, which is reminiscent of NASA’s space shuttle, is actually based on a concept vehicle, called HL-20, which was first looked at by the agency in the early 1980s.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Pentagon Halts Class Teaching Anti-Islam Material

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has suspended a course for military officers that officials say contained inflammatory material about Islam.

Defense Department spokesman Capt. John Kirby said Wednesday that among problems with the course taught at Norfolk, Va., was a presentation that asserted the United States is at war with Islam. Kirby noted that officials across two American administrations have stressed that the U.S. is at war with terrorists who have a distorted view of the religion…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Stakelbeck on Terror Show: Biological Terrorism Next Big Threat?

On this week’s edition of the Stakelbeck on Terror show, we examine the growing threat of biological terrorism on U.S. soil. From Al-Qaeda to Iran to Syria and North Korea, some of America’s greatest enemies have acquired or are working to acquire biological weapons.

Leading national security experts Chet Nagle and Clare Lopez join us to break down what a bioterror attack would look like, how it would affect America and why our leaders are unprepared to deal with this very real threat. Plus, what does the Bible say about it?

Click the link above to watch.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]



The Bait and Switch That the Left Would Like for You to Follow

Let’s take a look at Representative Congresswomen Barbra Lee for example. In 1983, when the U.S. Invaded Grenada, one of their government documents the Americans seized detailed an unusual government meeting: “Barbara Lee is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport done by [Congressman] Ron Dellums. They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make changes.”

At the time, now-Congresswoman Barbara Lee was a top aide to her predecessor in office, Rep. Ron Dellums. The document in question was a report written by Rep. Dellums, arguing that Grenada’s airport was being built for benign uses. When Ronald Reagan liberated Granada, we found communist officials from East Germany, Poland, North Korea, Cuba and the Soviet Union. That Was not the only document taken during the invasion and not the only time that Lee was cozy with the Castro government either. Lee visited Cuba again in 1999 and was praised by Castro. She served under her predecessor Ron Dellums who was known for his radical politics and stances.

[…]

Just as a spokesperson from the Communist Party U.S.A (CPUSA) pointed out in Politico recently that there are no actual card carrying members in Congress at the moment, that does not mean that there are not those that are not only sympathetic, but also those that are “progressing “ the like agenda.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Sea Change: Obama’s Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away

For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being “marginalized” held reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama’s eligibility to hold the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of “natural born citizen” applied to Obama was taboo.

The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables have turned.

Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The evidence of Obama’s forgeries is not going away.

Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the talking points and burden of proof.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Video: Allen West: Political Correctness Affecting Security

Environment of political correctness is preventing agents from doing their jobs to protect America.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Your Computer and Solar Flares

The amount of energy we receive normally from the Sun is almost beyond earthly comprehension. When something happens to greatly increase what we receive, it’s a question as to whether we can deal with it. So it is with the recent increase in electromagnetic solar flares.

Magnitude of the problem

The US has increased power consumption from 1950 to today by ten times, making the problem only worse. Nothing escapes the possible threat. Pipe lines, land lines, undersea cables, telephone networks, railways. Aircraft unable to fly. Without power, transportation is disabled.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Anders Breivik’s World: How Sick is Norway’s Mass Murderer?

Seventy-seven people died in the attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya last July. The central question in the trial of the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, is whether or not he is criminally liable. There is much to suggest that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Can a delusional person be punished for their crimes?

It is inadmissible to automatically conclude that someone who committed such a vicious crime must be insane. “A normal person doesn’t do something like this,” many are saying. But even so-called normal people have committed the most abominable crimes. Germans should be the first to recognize this.

But Breivik could be mentally ill. The schizophrenic disorders include a paranoid form characterized by delusional ideas, usually accompanied by delusional perceptions and acoustic hallucinations. It can progress in spurts or a person’s condition can deteriorate gradually. Listening to the defendant speaking in the Oslo courtroom, it isn’t difficult to become convinced that this man must have felt driven by a homicidal mania at the time of the massacre.

What other logical reason could there be to set off a 950-kilogram (2,094 pound), homemade car bomb that would indiscriminately rip people to pieces? Or to shoot participants at a Labor Party summer camp in the head — and in the eyes, the mouth, the back and the chest, often multiple times, but mostly in the head, as if Breivik’s aim had not only been to kill the young people on Utøya island, but also to extinguish their thoughts? There is no logical reason. Insanity is the only possible explanation.

Breivik speaks quietly, almost timidly at times. At the beginning of the trial, he occasionally smiles knowingly to himself. But eventually the smiles fade and his face becomes impassive. Referring to Breivik, Berlin forensic scientist Hans-Ludwig Kröber says: “It’s not uncommon for psychotic offenders to conceal or tone down their delusions, because they are certainly conscious of the fact that others think they’re crazy. There are orderly lunatics who get their bread from the baker and lead a quiet life at home, even as they write hundreds of pages detailing their notions of a new world order.” Breivik was one of those people, writing a 1,518-page document, his so-called manifesto, to disseminate his confused ideas.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Backers of EU Treaty ‘Thatcherite’ — Adams

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has portrayed supporters of the EU’s fiscal treaty as Thatcherite and Reaganite right-wingers.

Mr Adams said the choice facing the Irish public in the referendum on May 31st was between austerity and growth.

The Louth Deputy was speaking at the formal launch at the National Gallery of Sinn Féin’s campaign to urge the public to vote No on polling day. A pamphlet entitled Austerity isn’t working was also launched by the party.

Mr Adams asserted that proponents of the treaty were coming from a “a Thatcherite and Reaganite right-wing conservative ideological position.

He contended that if Ireland ratified the treaty, it would see the executive hand over powers “to unelected officials and bureaucrats in the EU Commission and allowing them to run this State, and to police fiscal as well as monetary matters.”

He said that austerity had not worked in Ireland, a point repeated by party deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who said that the national deficit had continued to grow since 2008 despite six austerity budgets.

Mr Adams said that providing a stimulus to create jobs was at the heart of Sinn Féin’s approach. “You cannot cut your way out of recession. This Government is for austerity. There is no jobs stimulus in the Government’s strategy,” he said.

He also dismissed as “complete and absolute rubbish” the arguments of Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil that Ireland will not be in a position to access emergency funding if the treaty is rejected.

He claimed that the emergency fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), needed to be given a legal basis in EU treaties. In order to do that, all 27 member states had to ratify it. That is not due to be done until after the referendum.

Mr Adams suggested that Ireland could exercise its veto on the ESM at European Council level.

While a Sinn Féin strategist accepted it would be a difficult course of action to take, it was argued there was “no way” the EU would deny emergency funding to a member state.

Ms McDonald said the new structural deficit ceiling of 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product proposed in the treaty would entail a further €6 billion in savings in addition to the €8.6 billion in cuts required over the next three years.

Asked how Sinn Féin proposed to find funding in the event of a No vote and a second bailout, Mr Adams said that Ireland would get it from the “current sources”, namely the EU, ECB and IMF. He rejected suggestions a No vote would make a second bailout more difficult to achieve.

He said Sinn Féin recognised the deficit had to be reduced and was proposing alternative plans. In the pamphlet, the party has put forward proposals for a radical Europe-wide reverse of current policies. It argues for all member states to put in a “once-off investment” into the European Investment Bank, that would then initiative a EU-wide investment programme. No sum is specified…

           — Hat tip: JLH [Return to headlines]



Bossi Denies Northern League Took Money From Finmeccanica

(AGI) Como — Former Northern League leader Umberto Bossi firmly denies the party ever took money from Finmeccanina. “No, I honestly don’t think so. It cannot be, I never heard about it” he replied when asked by the reporters about the inquiry set up by Naples’ prosecution office. “Mr Giorgetti used to work there and he’s an honest man”, he added, pointing out that the secretary of the party’s Lombard section, Giancarlo Giorgetti, refused money from Gianpiero Fiorani some time ago. “I have no doubts whatsoever — Bossi insisted — if someone tried to corrupt him, he would give the money back”.

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



Dutch Queen Asks Prime Minister to Dissolve Parliament

(AGI) Amsterdam — Two days after accepting the resignation of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands asked him to dissolve parliament so that the country can hold early elections, scheduled for Sept 12, a date already indicated by the prime minister, the government said in a statement. Rutte’s minority liberal government fell two days ago following failed negotiations on austerity measures in the nation’s budget. Considered one of the more stable countries in Europe, the Netherlands have had to face up to the economic crisis in Europe and in the months to come will be uncertain.

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



Everyday Goods and Services Attract Finns to Estonia

Lower price level continues to be the most important reason to visit Finland’s southern neighbour

According to a recent consumer survey commissioned by the Federation of Finnish Commerce, Finns plan to haul home trolley-loads of booze — and other goods besides — from Estonia in the current year, just as before.

Clothes, shoes, and bags are the most popular products imported from Estonia after alcohol and sweets, but increasingly, even food, tobacco, and medicines are being brought home from Estonia. In other words, ordinary everyday items. The same applies to services: in addition to restaurants, cafes, and hotels, Finns increasingly often visit spas and saunas across the Gulf of Finland, as well as hairdressing salons and beauty parlours.

Almost 70 per cent of Finns over the age of 18 living in Southern Finland visited Estonia in the course of the past year. This is a huge number by any standards.

Vendors in Tallinn regard Finns as very price-conscious customers. It is easier to sell to Russians, as their purchases are spontaneous. Both are good customers, but different, the vendors in Tallinn’s tourist centre say. As consumers, the Russians beat the Finns. While Russians snap up what they like spontaneously, and ask the price only later, the Finns count their money very carefully and are much more likely to ask around before they part with their cash. Today, Finns are by far the largest group of tourists in Estonia, but Russians are the fastest-growing group.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Finnish Minister Proposes Visa-Free Travel to Russia

Finland’s economic affairs minister Jyri Häkämies on Tuesday said Finland should introduce a three-day visa-free regime between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, reported Finnish news outlet Yle. “Visa-free travel would attract more Russian tourists-and money-to Finland,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France: Brussels: Investigation Into Aid at Nimes Airport

Located within 80 km of Marseille, received public money

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 25 — The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation to assess whether financial arrangements between public authorities and the airport of Nîmes (France), as well as rebates and marketing agreements concluded between this airport and Ryanair, are in line with EU state aid rules.

Nimes (FNI) is a regional airport, with a total traffic of 176,521 passengers in 2010. It is located within 80 km of Marseille airport. The civil part of the airport is owned by the French state, and was operated by the local Chamber of Commerce until December 2006. Afterwards, the operation of the airport was awarded to Veolia Transport. From 2000 to 2006, the Chamber of Commerce benefited from a range of public support measures for its activity as operator of Nimes airport, including subsidies of over 2 million euros and cash advances totalling over 9 million euros. Veolia Transport has also been granted public subsidies as the airport operator since 2007.

At this stage, the Commission considers that these measures, granted by several public entities (including the region, Conseil Général du Gard and local municipalities), may cover ordinary operating expenses of the airport operators and may therefore give them an undue economic advantage which their competitors do not have.

Finally, the Commission will examine the agreements between the airport operators and Ryanair, such as marketing support contracts and discounts on airport charges and will assess whether part of the aid to the airport operators has been passed on to the airline.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Franceschi: French Doctor Investigated for Murder

(AGI)Viareggio- A prison doctor in Grasse (France) and two nurses are the first three suspects in the death of Daniel Franceschi. The 36 year-old worker from Viareggio died in circumstances yet to be clarified on 25 August 2010 while he was in detention on the Cote d’Azur for using stolen credit cards in the casino in Cannes. This was revealed by Aldo Lasagna, the lawyer looking after the interests of the family of Daniel Franceschi.

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



France: 64% of Sarkozy’s Voters Would Ally With Le Pen

(AGI) Paris — At least 64% of French voters who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy would hold their noses and and ally themselves with the extreme right of Marine Le Pen than allow Francois Hollande to win the elections. This applies to the May 6 presidential elections as well as June’s legislative elections.

The same opinion was supported by 59% of those who voted for the Front National, the OpinionWay polling organization reports for the Les Echos financial newspaper. Officially, respecting the historical ‘conventio ad excludendum’ of the del Front National, the leadership of the UMP are conducting negotiating behind the scenes. But to know who will take the votes of the extreme right one will have to wait for May 1, when Marine Le Pen reveals all. Even Hollande is courting, if not openly, the hard right, whom he has called, in many cases, an expression of protest against the government more than support for the right.

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



France 2012: Marine Le Pen Seduces Jewish Community

Anti-Islam and immigration consensus after Toulouse murders

(ANSAmed) — ROME — With her father’s fiercely anti-Semitic rhetoric locked away, Marine has decided to focus her efforts on illegal immigrants and Islamists.

After the slaughter of Toulouse on March 19, when a Frenchman of Algerian origin killed four people, three of them children, in an attack on a Jewish school in the city, Le Pen’s approach convinced one in five French voters and even seduced part of the local Jewish community. Michel Thooris, a former member of national council for French Jewish organisations (CRIF), even chose to stand for Parliament on an FN ticket. “If you are Jewish, it is natural to turn to Marine Le Pen,” he said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “She fights crime and Islamism, which means that she protects Jews. The National Front has changed, Jews know this”.

However, not everyone sees it this way. Around a year ago, the Jewish community station Radio J was swamped with complaints for inviting the far-right leader to speak to the station, an invitation that was eventually withdrawn. Within the Jewish community, though, some critics spoke out against the boycott. The Union of French Jews (UFJ), an organisation for Jewish supporters of the National Front, was created a few months later.

“Marine Le Pen is the only one who wants to tackle uncontrolled immigration and its disastrous consequences,” the founder of the UFJ, Michel Ciardi, writes on the organisation’s website. “For so-called representatives of France’s Jewish community, Jews who support Le Pen are self-hating Jews, worse than the Jewish police in the ghettos. But if in some areas Jews are afraid to wear the kippah and the violent sermons heard in some French mosques are infused with an anti-Semitism that we thought had disappeared, it is certainly not Marine Le Pen’s fault”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Germany Seeking Agreement With Italy for Growth Plan

ECB governor Draghi calls for ‘pact for growth’

(ANSA) — Berlin, April 25 — The German government said on Wednesday that it is trying to find common ground with Italy on a plan to stimulate growth in Europe.

Last month 25 of the 27 European Union member states signed a so-called fiscal compact setting tighter budget rules to address the fundamental causes of the eurozone debt crisis.

Most economists and heads of government, including Italian Premier Mario Monti, believe Europe must now do more in terms of policies to boost sluggish growth.

“The European (Union) consultant of the German chancellor (Angela Merkel) and his Italian counterpart met this week precisely for an exchange of ideas about how to use the next European Council (summit) in June for growth,” said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

Earlier on Wednesday European Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi, who is Italian, called on Europe to agree on a pact for growth and on individual member states to be more ambitious in introducing structural economic reforms to promote it.

Merkel said she agreed with Draghi’s appeal.

“We need growth which, as Mario Draghi said, comes via structural reforms,” Merkel told a news conference.

Seibert also said it was important to obtain “sustainable growth” via reforms, like the liberalisations and labour-market measures the Italian government is pursuing, rather than by greater government spending and debt.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Germany: Jews Welcome First Post-War ‘Mein Kampf’

Germany’s Jewish community on Wednesday welcomed a landmark decision to republish Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” for the first time since World War II, in an annotated edition. The southern state of Bavaria, which holds the rights, has not permitted reprints of the vicious anti-Semitic tract and rambling memoir since the Nazi leader’s 1945 suicide.

But it said Tuesday it would release an edition with historians’ commentary as well as a separate version for schools in 2015 before its copyright runs out at the end of that year in order to beat commercial publishers to the punch. The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, called Bavaria’s decision “responsible” and a “good idea.”

“If it is going to be released, then I prefer seeing a competent annotated version from the Bavarian state than profit-seekers trying to make money with Nazis,” he told news agency AFP.

“I would of course prefer it if the book disappeared on a dust heap of contempt but that will not happen,” he added, noting that the text was already widely available to Germans on the internet. The book is not banned as such in Germany but because of Bavaria’s blanket refusal to permit sales of old copies or reprints — even taking potential publishers to court — the decision marks a historic step.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Parallel Societies, Parallel Justice

Systems of parallel justice threaten the rule of German law, say Christian Democrat politicians. At a conference in Berlin, they came together to talk with experts about how widespread Islamic arbitration is.

When conflicts emerge between Muslims in Germany, they may turn to Islamic Sharia courts rather than state authorities. These informal tribunals can get involved when families disagree about, for example, an inheritance or other financial affairs. But the self-appointed arbitrators have also been known to get involved in issues normally dealt with by the police and prosecutors, like assault, threats or theft.

When German authorities uncover evidence of such crimes, they are often met with a wall of silence by those preferring the system of parallel justice. People refuse to give statements, and due to a lack of evidence, no sentence can be reached. Perpetrators go unpunished by the legal system.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Hollande: I’ll Give Foreigners the Vote

Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande said Wednesday that if elected he will next year give foreigners from outside the EU living in France the right to vote in local elections. His rival President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has said there are “too many foreigners in France” and vows to reduce immigration, staunchly opposes giving voting rights to non-European Union foreigners.

Hollande, who is tipped to win the final round of the election on May 6, said in a television interview he planned the reform for next year so that non-EU foreigners would be able to vote in municipal elections in 2014. Nationals from EU countries can already vote in local elections in France.

Hollande, whose campaign programme says foreigners living in France for five years should be allowed to vote, noted that Sarkozy in 2008 said he was “intellectually favourable” to giving non-EU nationals the right to vote. Sarkozy and Hollande are battling for the six million votes that went to the far right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Inspectors to Open Mobster De Pedis’ Tomb

Magliana boss accused of killing Orlandi 29 years ago

(ANSA) — Rome, April 24 — Rome prosecutors announced Tuesday they will inspect and relocate the tomb of notorious mob boss Enrico ‘Renatino’ De Pedis, linked to the disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee almost 30 years ago.

De Pedis, a leader of the Rome-based Magliana mafia who was gunned down in 1990, was quietly buried next to a cardinal’s tomb in the Roman basilica of Saint Apollinaire, to the shock and confusion of many observers at the time.

In 2008 reports were leaked to the press that his girlfriend had allegedly accused the gang boss of killing Emanuela Orlandi, who went missing in 1983.

Anonymous calls to the press over the years have called on inspectors to look inside De Pedis’ coffin to see if Orlandi’s body were inside.

Prosecutors said the tomb would be moved to Rome’s Prima Porta cemetery by the end of May.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Rom Protest Blocks Highway

Demonstrators forced out of camp in Pesaro

(ANSA) — Ancona, April 24 — A caravan of Roma blocked a major highway in Ancona Tuesday to protest being kicked out of a camp in the central Marche region.

Hundreds of Gypsies, who had been ordered to move south from their settlement in Pesaro, used their trailers to block the A14 highway before being removed by police. The Roma were in Ancona, the region’s capital, for registration purposes after being told to leave Pesaro. The city said the they were forced to leave because designated spaces for Roma had exceeded maximum occupancy.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Slips to 23rd in OECD Wage Rankings

Down one place, average wage $25,160

(ANSA) — Paris, April 25 — Italy slipped from 22nd to 23rd in the latest wages rankings from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, behind Spain, Ireland and the leading European Union countries, the Paris-based organisation said Wednesday.

The average net wage of a single person without children was $25,160 last year, the OECD said, compared to an average of $27,111 across the 34-member OECD.

Italy fell from 5th to 6th in the tax-to-wage rankings, with the tax burden at 47.6% last year, up from 46.9% in 2010.

The countries with the highest tax burdens were Belgium (55.5%), Germany (49.8%), Hungary and France (both 49.4%) and Austria (48.4%).

Hungary was outside the top five last year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Mind-Controlled Robot Unveiled in Switzerland

A professor at a Swiss university on Tuesday unveiled a robot that can be controlled by the brainwaves of a paraplegic person wearing an electrode-fitted cap, news agency ATS reported. A paralyzed man at a hospital in the town of Sion demonstrated the device, sending a mental command to a computer in his room, which transmitted it to another computer that moved a small robot 60 kilometres away in Lausanne.

The system was developed by Jose Millan, a professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne who specializes in non-invasive interfaces between machines and the brain. The same technology can be used to drive a wheelchair, Millan said. “Once the movement has begun, the brain can relax, otherwise the person would soon be exhausted,” he said.

But the technology has its limits, he added. The brain signals can be scrambled if too many people are gathered around a wheelchair, for example. Besides making paraplegics mobile, neuroprosthetics could be used to help patients recover lost senses, researchers said.

Professor Stephanie Lacour and her team are working on an “electric skin” for amputees, a glove fitted with tiny sensors that would send information directly to the user’s nervous system.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Moroccan Muslim Brotherhood PM Refuses to Talk With Female Belgian Minister

Abdelilah Benkiran does not seem to conceive that a foreign government could send a female representative to talk with him. During the whole meeting he talked strictly with Belgian minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders and refused to speak with the Belgian minister of Justice…

English translation by Point de Bascule

[…]

Rabat (Morocco) — April 11, 2012

On that day the Moroccan Prime minister, Abdelilah Benkiran, received in audience Didier Reynders, Belgian minister of Foreign Affairs and Annemie Turtelboom, minister of Justice. Both Belgians got a cold reception.

Abdelilah Benkiran does not seem to conceive that a foreign government could send a female representative to talk with him. During the whole meeting, he talked strictly with Didier Reynders. Worse, the Moroccan PM explained to his visitor that he speaks French very well and that it was “useless to bring an interpreter with him”. The message is clear: I do not speak with a woman. Annemie Turtelboom could not believe it. All the dossiers she is responsible of (and they are not light ones: equality between men and women, forced marriages, return of convicted prisoners in their home country) were eventually tackled by Didier Reynders. Facing them, the Moroccan held to his prayer beads during the whole meeting.

After the meeting, Annemie Turtelboom was furious. If Didier Reynders had not been there and if she had not feared to provoke a major diplomatic incident, she would have left and slammed the door, she said.

The anecdote is significant. Abdelilah Benkiran is a member of the Justice and Development Party, the Islamist party that won the last elections. In the last few days, he even criticized the Moroccan king, Mohammed VI, something never seen before. “The Arab Spring is not over yet. It is still here and could well come back”, he said according to Reuters…

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Muslims in Europe Face Discrimination, Amnesty

France and Spain accused, impact on employment rate

(ANSAmed) — ROME — European states must do more to combat negative stereotypes and prejudices against Muslims, especially in education and employment. This is what Amnesty International urges European states to do in its latest report on discrimination against Muslims in Europe. The report mainly focuses on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain, here with specific reference to the “war of Mosques” in Catalonia.

“Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf”, Amnesty expert Marco Perolini pointed out, “while men lose their job because they wear a beard, which is associated to Islam”. Moreover, “instead of combating these prejudices, way too often political parties and public officials indulge them, in order to gain the general public’s approval.” The report illustrates the negative impact of discrimination on several aspects of Muslims’ life, including employment and education. “While everyone has the right to express one’s culture, tradition or faith by wearing a specific dress”, Perolini continues, “no one should be pressured or forced to do so. General bans on specific clothing items infringe the rights of those who freely choose to dress in a certain way and do not help those who are forced to do so in any way”.

Amnesty’s report highlights the fact that laws banning discrimination in employment have not been appropriately implemented in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Employers have been allowed to discriminate on the grounds that religious or cultural symbols will jar with clients or colleagues or that a clash exists with a company’s corporate image or “neutrality”.

As Amnesty points out, this directly conflicts with EU anti-discrimination laws which allow people to be treated differently at work only if the nature of the job specifically requires it. This contributes to higher unemployment rates among the Muslim, especially Muslim women of foreign descent.

As for the ban on wearing headscarves in schools enforced by several countries such as Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands is concerned, according to Amnesty’s expert any restriction must be based on assessment of the needs in each individual case. “General bans risk compromising Muslim girls’ access to education and violating their rights to freedom of expression and manifesting their beliefs”, Perolini points out.

The report also focuses on the right to establish places of worship, which is challenged in various countries. “In several European countries, it is widely maintained that Islam and Muslims are okay as long as they are not too visible. This attitude is prompting infringements of human rights and needs to be contrasted”, Perolini concludes.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Slams Experts for Insanity ‘Fabrications’

Anders Behring Breivik, who wants to be found accountable for his massacre of 77 people in Norway last July, on Wednesday accused a team of psychiatric experts of making things up to prove him insane.

“These are ill-willed fabrications,” Breivik said, referring to passages from a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation that concluded late last year that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He later added: “They may not be ill-willed, but they are in any case wrong.”

Psychiatrists Synne Soerheim and Torgeir Husby were appointed by the Oslo district court to carry out a first evaluation of the 33-year-old right-wing extremist’s mental health. Their conclusion in November that he was psychotic cleared the way for him to be sent to a closed psychiatric ward for treatment instead of prison.

Breivik wants to be found sane and accountable for his actions, so that his anti-Islam ideology will be taken seriously and not considered the ravings of a lunatic. He has already said that being sentenced to closed psychiatric care would be “worse than death”.

The first diagnosis caused an uproar in Norway, where many were astounded that the man who methodically planned his attacks for years and then executed them with precision could be found not responsible for his actions.

The court therefore ordered a second opinion by two other experts, who concluded earlier this month that Breivik was sane. It will ultimately be up to the panel of judges to determine whether he is sane when they hand down their verdict in July.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Spain Busts Iran-Britain People-Trafficking Gang

Spanish police bust a trafficking gang that charged Iranian migrants 20,000 euros each to smuggle them to Britain, authorities said Tuesday. Police said in a statement they had arrested 22 people, including the gang’s leader. The gang is accused of using false passports and credit cards to traffic the migrants via its base in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Some of the migrants reached the Canaries in the holds of trucks, while others flew. They then waited on the islands, mainly in Tenerife and Fuerteventura, to fly on to Britain, authorities said.

“There, the immigrants — whom the traffickers referred to as ‘animals’, ‘cattle’ and ‘sheep’ — were instructed on how to act at the British border and how to obtain legal residency,” the statement said.

The gang charged adults 20,000 euros ($26,000) for the journey, with a “discount” for children and no charge for babies under two, said the Spanish police, which broke up the ring with help from British immigration authorities.

Police raided the home of the gang leader in Tenerife and found various faked passports and forging equipment. As well as Spain, the gang had members in Iran, Greece, Germany and Switzerland, the statement said, adding they were “highly specialised” fraudsters.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Radio Host Axed for Likening Serbs to Breivik

A well-known Swedish radio personality who called Serbians “stupid” and compared them to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, has been suspended from work indefinitely. In mid-April listeners who tuned in to the show “Gerts Värld” (“Gert’s World”) could hear the host, Gert Fylking, say that Serbians were just like the mass murderer Breivik, currently on trial in Oslo.

“He is a controversial person, but this is probably the most serious thing he has done on radio,” said Christer Modig, CEO at MTG Radio to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Swiss Woman Starved After ‘Eating’ Only Light

A woman living in the east of Switzerland who believed she could survive on light alone was found starved to death, it has emerged. Anna Gut (not her real name) was in her early fifties when she saw the film, “In the beginning there was light,” a documentary in which two men claim to survive entirely on light, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.

The film, which ran in Swiss cinemas in 2010, portrayed two men, 62-year-old Swiss Michael Werner, an anthroposophist with a doctorate in chemistry, and 83-year-old Indian yogi Prahlad Jani. Both men claimed to derive sustenance from spiritual means rather than the intake of food.

Werner claims he has lived this way since 2001, while Jani says he has lived for 70 years not only without food but also without water.

Anna Gut started her long preparations for the process by reading a book by another proponent of “breatharianism”, 54-year-old Australian Ellen Greve, who also goes by the name Jasmuheen, or eternal air.

Anna Gut followed the instructions for the first stage to the letter: she had no food or drink for a week, and even spat her saliva out. For weeks two and three, she resumed drinking again, but she visibly weakened and her children became concerned.

She calmed them and promised she would stop should the situation ever become critical. But one day last winter, when she failed to answer the phone, the children broke down the door to find their mother dead inside.

The autopsy showed simply that she had died of starvation, ruling out any other contribution to the cause of death. Anna Gut was the first to die in Switzerland from attempting to live on “pranic nourishment”, as it is also known, but there have been others who have also died as a result of their spiritual convictions.

In 1997, 31-year-old Timo Degen from Munich died from circulatory collapse during an attempt to live on light alone. A 53-year-old New Zealander, Lani Morris, also died from a stroke caused by fluid loss in 1998, and in 1999, Verity Linn, an Australian was found emaciated in a lake in Scotland having tried to follow light nourishment practices, Tages Anzeiger reports.

Dr. Dee Dawson, a British specialist in eating disorders, was in no doubt about the dangers of breatharianism. “It’s suicidal,” she told The Local.

“These people must have some sort of psychological problems, I would say, to be doing this. They know perfectly well that you starve if you don’t eat. “They must see themselves getting thinner, getting weaker, yet they carry on, so presumably they know they are going to die and don’t mind.”

But proponents of light nourishment dismiss such deaths, sometimes accusing the deceased of acting negligently or otherwise saying the true cause of death had not been properly established. Others look for spiritual reasons.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Swiss Folk Hero William Tell Gets Own Musical

William Tell, the Swiss folk hero famed for shooting an apple off his son’s head, will be the subject of a musical that opens July 18, producers said Wednesday. “Tell the Musical” will be performed outdoors against the backdrop of mountain-ringed Lake Walensee, 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of Zurich, the play’s producers told a press conference.

It follows in the footsteps of other musicals celebrating Swiss nationalism, including one devoted to fictional heroine Heidi. According to legend, William Tell rose to fame in the 14th century for snubbing a man named Gessler, a hated bailiff who ruled over Tell’s central Swiss homeland on behalf of the Habsburg monarchy.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Hooded Mob Blatantly ‘Fired at Police Helicopter After Luring Officers to Scene by Firebombing Pub’

A hooded mob fired a gun at a police helicopter during last summer’s riots after ‘luring’ officers to the scene by firebombing a pub, a court has heard.

The group of armed rioters fired at least 12 shots at police in the air and on the ground after violence erupted in Birmingham last year, jurors were told.

It was claimed officers were forced to run for safety as windows behind them were shattered by bullets being fired from four different guns.

Police had been dispatched to deal with reports of a fire at the Barton Arms pub in the Newtown area of the city on August 9 last year.

When the officers arrived on the scene they were faced with a group of masked and hooded youths armed with bats and various items of furniture taken from the Grade II listed pub.

Prosecutor Andrew Lockhart QC said that, after getting into formation, officers heard gunshots and were forced to take cover before being given the order to retreat for their own safety.

The court heard police realised they were being shot at when they heard the windows of the building behind them being smashed by the gun fire.

Mr Lockhart said: ‘These were not imitation firearms with blank ammunition, these were bullets and they were going into the building behind them.

‘Those weapons, or some of them, had been aimed at those officers and the bullets went over their heads and impacted with that building.’

The court was shown CCTV of a large group of men fleeing from police, with two men at the rear of appearing to take aim and fire at officers.

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



UK: Pregnant Woman ‘Was Smothered to Death by Family Before They Claimed She Was Killed by an Evil Spirit’Nalia Mumtaz, 21, Was Found Lying Lifeless on a Bed at the Family Home

A pregnant wife was smothered to death by her husband, his parents and his brother-in-law who later all claimed she may have been killed by an evil spirit, a court has heard.

Nalia Mumtaz, 21, was pronounced dead at hospital after being rushed there by paramedics who found her lying lifeless and ashen faced on a bed at the family home. Her unborn child died with her.

Her husband Mohammed Mumtaz, 24, his father Zia Ul Haq and mother Salma Aslam, both 51, as well as his brother in law Hammad Hassan, 24, all deny charges of murder and manslaughter.

At Birmingham Crown Court today, prosecutor Christopher Hotten said the cultural context in which Mrs Mumtaz met her death on July 8, 2009 was of importance, as were the religious beliefs of the defendants, described as a ‘traditional Muslim family with an emphasis on religious observance’.

He asked the jury: ‘Was she or may she have been possessed by an evil spirit which took her life as the defendants were to suggest both at the time and after her death?

‘Or may she have died as a result of some unknown or undetected illness?

‘Or will you be sure that, as we say, she was assaulted, smothered, by these four defendants all of whom admit they were present when she died?’

Mrs Mumtaz was born in Pakistan and willingly entered into an arranged marriage with her husband, then a student at Wolverhampton University, in August 2007.

She came to Britain for the first time the following May after obtaining a visa and moved into his parents’ modern, three bedroom detached home in Birmingham.

Mr Hotten said she was attractive, bright and was ‘thrilled’ by the prospect of motherhood after falling pregnant in February 2009.

During her pregnancy, she was regularly seen by a GP and various midwives — the last time two days before her death — and both she and her unborn child appeared healthy.

But her parents said she phoned them at their home in the Jhellum district of Pakistan the day before her death and told them she was ‘not at peace’ living with her in-laws and was upset, Mr Hotten said.

The jury was also told that numerous telephone calls were made to Mrs Mumtaz’s relatives in Pakistan, the emergency services and other individuals in the hours before she was taken to hospital.

During the calls it is alleged that Ul Haq claimed that a ‘djinn’ — or evil spirit — had been sent from Pakistan, while a woman at the house was allegedly heard to say ‘don’t call an ambulance yet — we will cure her ourselves.’

Part-way through Mr Hotten’s opening speech, Mumtaz collapsed in the dock in a clearly distressed state and the jury was sent home until tomorrow.

The case continues.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



Van Rompuy: ‘Winds of Populism’ Threaten Free Movement

BRUSSELS — EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy has spoken out against the “winds of populism” threatening freedom of movement in the Union — a swipe at anti-immigrant discourse in French elections and on the Dutch political scene.

“It is the duty of each government to make sure that no-one — no member of any group or any minority — is treated as a second-class citizen. Regrettably, the winds of populism are affecting a key achievement of European integration: the free movement of persons within our borders,” he said in a speech in the Romanian parliament on Wednesday (25 April).

Keeping the EU’s inner borders open was a “sign of civilisation,” the EU official noted. “In that space, there is no room for stigmatisation of foreigners, as happens in certain countries nowadays,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Algeria: Students Stabbed, Others Block City Streets

Hundreds of university students paralyse Tizi Ouzou

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 25 — The city of Tizi Ouzou, where one of Algeria’s most prestigious universities — the Hasnaoua — is located, was paralysed from late yesterday evening through the night by hundreds of the university’s students after three of the latter were stabbed by people identified as “strangers”.

Having heard the news of the stabbing (the conditions of the three stabbed are not yet know), their fellow students gathered in front of the university and then blocked the streets, bringing the entire city to a de facto halt in the attempt to stop the three attackers from escaping. The attack, according to sources quoted by the website TSA, occurred around 9 PM in the perimeter of the university where, as usual, students had stayed long after the end of the day’s lessons.

The students managed to identify and get to the three attackers, who instead were immediately assisted by dozens of other people who came to their aid, leading to a violent scuffle that the police (despite being present) did not stop, according to the witnesses quoted by TSA.

After the scuffle the students went back to the area around the university and stayed on the outer edges of the building, continuing to block the streets surrounding the university.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Egypt: Saudis Arrest Activist, Protests in Cairo

Incident increases tension between two historic allies

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO — From historic allies during the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia and Egypt now find themselves in the midst of a diplomatic feud after an Egyptian activist was arrested upon his arrival at Jeddah airport on April 17.

Dozens of demonstrators protested outside the Saudi embassy in Cairo yesterday and outside the Foreign Ministry today, demanding the release of Ahmed Mohamed Sarwat El Sayed, known as Ahmed el-Gizawi, a lawyer and activist who was arrested as he arrived with his wife in Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage to Mecca.

According to some Egyptian human rights organisations, the man was arrested after being sentenced in absentia to a year in prison and 20 lashes for criticising the Saudi authorities for their heavy-handed treatment of Egyptians detained in Saudi prisons.

The reply from the Saudi ambassador in Cairo, Ahmed Adel Aziz Qattan, was immediate and clear, with the Saudi diplomat calling the reports in the Egyptian media “false” and claiming that the man had never been sentenced but had been arrested over possession of 21,000 anti-depressant pills, with the substance in question considered an illegal drug in the Kingdom. The ambassador added that the pills were hidden in powdered milk for children and inside the front covers of two copies of the Koran.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister has today moved to ask the Egyptian embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah to monitor El-Gizawi’s situation closely and constantly. The spokesperson for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said that “urgent” contacts were taking place, but el-Gizawi’s sister Shereen, also a lawyer, has slammed the Egyptian authorities for acting only a week after her brother’s arrest and after his appeal for help.

Shereen el-Gizawi said in an interview with Al Ahram’s website that she had only become aware of the situation involving her brother by chance on Facebook. “I have tried all legal avenues to help my brother. Now is the time for public pressure,” she explained, adding that her brother had spent two days in detainment at Jeddah airport before being taken to the Terman prison. “We do not know if he is still there or if he has been moved”.

The National Council for Human Rights, an Egyptian NGO, has today appealed to the Military Council to intervene as soon as possible to ensure the el-Gizawi’s release and the overturn of his sentence.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Libya Puts a Bans on Religious Parties and Foreign Funds

(AGI) Tripoli — Libya greenlighted a new bill to regulate the setting up of political parties while banning religious, regional and tribal political organizations, as well as their financing from abroad. A member of the Libyan National Transitional Council explained that “ political parties must not rest on a regional, tribal or religious basis,” and he also added that they will not be allowed to receive funds from abroad.

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

Israel and the Palestinians


Netanyahu Legalises Outposts, PNA Wants Sanctions

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, APRIL 24 — Three small nuclei of Israeli settlements on the West Bank — probably unknown to the majority of Israelis — are at the centre of a fresh quarrel between Israel and the Palestine National Authority.

The PNA leadership is now calling for punitive measures against Israel on the part of the Quartet (USA, EU, UN and Russia) calling for economic sanctions against the Israeli state. The attempt to restart talks between the two sides (with last week’s dispatch of a letter from President Abu Mazen to Premier Benyamin Netanyahu) would seem to have been denaturised once again.

Giving rise to Palestinian outrage is last night’s approval by an Israeli inter-ministerial committee of a ‘moratorium’ on the bordres for three Israeli outposts in the West Bank: Bruchim (100 households), Rachelim (50) and Sansana (50).

These trail blazers have been present on the ground for many years, but for formal reasons they have never been acknowledged as ‘settlements’.

Pressures exerted by the settlement movement on the Likud have yielded their fruit and Mr Netanyahu agreed to “make them official” once and for all. This terminology shocked Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who stated that “every Israeli settlement in the Territories is devoid of any legality and their construction represents a war crime”.

The Peace Now movement has also protested, accusing the Netanyahu government of having created three new settlements with yesterday’s decision.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Road Map for Palestinian Economic Independence

EU finances three-part program

(ANSAmed) — RAMALLAH — The obstacle-strewn political process is not the only road towards the eventual birth of a sovereign Palestinian state. An economic process also exists, for which, among other instruments, a programme for the “Diversification of Trade and Development of Competitiveness” in the Territories has been set up. Funded by the European Union, and in line with plans outlined by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), the scheme aims to support the development of a stable and independent Palestinian economy. Financed by the EU in partnership with the National Ministry of the Economy, the Palestinian Trade Organisation (PalTrade) and the association of Palestinian carriers (PCS), the scheme targets the facilitation and optimisation of the contribution already provided by the export of goods and services to the economic growth of the Palestinian Territories and the Gaza Strip.

“The programme consists of three stages that have already been agreed and well defined,” the chief executive of PalTrade, Hanan Taha-Rayyan, tells ANSAmed. “The first concerns the implementation of a trade corridor with neighbouring Arab countries through the promotion of less expensive routes and alternatives to Israeli ones”. This stage will see Jordanian and Israeli goods sorting centres compared for costs, bureaucratic obstacles and logistical hurdles. The possibility of creating a logistical goods sorting centre in the Jordan Valley will also be considered. The second stage of the project concerns the creation of a National Export Strategy (NES). The aim of the new body is to promote the development of new strategies in favour of Palestinian exports on the global market. The new development tool will be elaborated by PalTrade, the Ministry of Finance and by a group of associations from the Palestinian public and private sectors. “PalTrade will operate as a link between the public sector, the private sector and the ministry for a five-year period, helping the various players to produce a winning development strategy,” Taha-Rayyan adds. Finally, the third stage of the project aims to increase the production and supply of services within the Palestinian economy and on the European market. While the services sector is the most significant contributor to Palestinian GDP, and that which requires the greatest number of people, further development and broadening of the market appears easily achievable. With the Palestinian Territories already part of the EuroMed Free Trade Area, the creation of a common international platform for the exchange and sales of services appears a necessary and fundamental step for the complete development of the economy.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Traitors: American Professors Go to Tehran to Help Mad Mullahs

A couple of so-called American professors recently went to Tehran University to help the radical, anti-American, racist, Islamists propagandize about how wonderful the Mad Mullahs think the Occupy Wall Street “movement” here in America is.

Wonderful, no?

Anti-Americans Alex Vitae, professor at Brooklyn College; Heather Gautney, professor at Fordham University; John Hammond, professor at City University of New York all appeared at the terrorist’s little convention to speak glowingly of the hate spewed by both the OWSers and the Mad Mullahs.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Turkish Oil Firm to Start Drilling in North Cyprus

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 25 — Turkey’s state-run oil company is set to start drilling for oil and gas in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC, recognized only by Ankara) under an agreement signed last year in September as Anatolia news agency reports. The Turkish Petroleum Corporation, or TPAO, will start drilling on Thursday at a field neat to Gazimagusa (Famagusta) with a ceremony which will be participated by Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz as well as Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu. TPAO has said it planned to drill as deep as 3,000 meters at the well which has been named Turkyurdu-1. On September 21, Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Eroglu signed in New York an agreement on the delineation of the continental shelf between two countries in the East Mediterranean. Under the agreement, TPAO will be able to make three dimensional seismic research and drilling in TRNC land and sea more actively. The agreement follows a Republic of Cyprus move to start offshore drilling for natural gas and oil in the southeast of the Eastern Mediterranean island.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turks Invested Abroad 25 Bln USD in 10 Years, Report

(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL, APRIL 25 — Turkish businessmen have invested the highest amount of money in the Netherlands during the first 10 years of the new millennium, according to a report derived from official data by the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists of Turkey (TUSKON). Investments in the Netherlands, as daily Hurriyet reports, totaled about 20% of the more than 25 billion USD Turkish investments made abroad. The Netherlands has been famous for its openness to foreign investments and standing as one of only four eurozone countries to still retain its AAA status among the three main credit rating agencies. Yet the country may not keep its position as the top foreign nation for Turkish investments much longer, considering the recent resignation of the Dutch government on April 22 due to disputes over austerity measures with its far-right parliamentary partnership. President Abdullah Gul paid a three-day state visit to the Netherlands last week with some 100 businessmen, which may offset any economic instability that may stem from future potential political uncertainty in the country. A total of 3,641 business professionals have started businesses overseas, with some 165 Turkish business professionals have invested 5.3 billion USD between 2000 and 2010.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Russia


ENI Inks Deal With Russia’s Rosneft

Accord for fields in Arctic, Barents Sea, Black Sea

(ANSA) — Moscow, April 25 — Italian fuels giant Eni on Wednesday inked an accord with Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft to jointly tap oil and gas fields in the Arctic, the Barents Sea and the Black Sea.

Eni and Rosneft CEOs Paolo Scaroni and Eduard Khudainatov sealed the deal in the presence of Russian Premier and President-elect Vladimir Putin.

It is Russia’s second big offshore deal with a Western fuels giant in two weeks.

Earlier this month ExxonMobil of the United States teamed up with the state oil firm in a deal granting Rosneft access to the US firm’s projects outside Russia.

A similar agreement has been reached with Eni, sources said.

The Kremlin is aiming to expand Russia’s oil industry abroad while getting know-how to apply to domestic projects.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Moscow’s Islamic Clerics Reject Creation of Shari’a Courts

Russia’s Kremlin-backed Islamic clerics say Shari;a courts should not be created in the country. Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Central Religious Directorate of Muslims, and Moscow’s Chief Mufti Albir Krganov said such Islamically inspired courts would violate Russia’s legal separation of church and state.

They were responding to a proposal by Daghestani lawyer Dagir Khasavov, who said in an interview that Muslims in Russia want Shari’a courts because they do not trust the existing secular courts. The opposition Yabloko party says it will sue Khasavov for “inciting hatred and extremism.”

The Russian Interior Ministry is investigating whether Khasavov’s remarks included extremist words. But a spokesman for Russia’s Orthodox Church, Vsevolod Chaplin, said that Muslims in Russia should not be deprived of their customs — and that Shari’a courts could be established under the law.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Moscow Announces Massive Metro Building Plan

Moscow announced Wednesday plans to extend its ornate but overcrowded metro system by half as much again in the next eight years at a cost of 100 billion rubles ($3.4 billion) per year. The city hall presented a plan to increase the network by 70 stations and 150 kilometres (93 miles) of track, which it said would see the metro “increase in size by 50 percent.”

Deputy mayor in charge of town planning and construction, Marat Khusnullin, told a city government meeting that “no one has ever built a metro on such a scale in this country, even in the best Soviet years.”

Currently the Moscow metro, opened since 1935 and famed for its elaborate Soviet-era mosaics and chandeliers on station platforms, has 185 stations and 305.5 kilometres (189 miles) of track.

Although the Stalin-era decorative touches are now dingy and in need of restoration, the system is largely efficient and cheap. A single ticket costs 28 rubles ($0.96) and trains run as frequently as every 30 seconds at peak times.

The city has done little to modernise its overground services and has ripped up tramlines, forcing more passengers to use the metro, which carries nine million passengers on weekdays.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Putin Invites Italian PM to Next St Petersburg Forum

(AGI) Moscow — Vladimir Putin has invited Mario Monti to attend next June’s St Petersburg forum; it will be their first meeting. Speaking during today’s signing of the strategic collaboration deal between Rosneft and ENI for the development of fields in the Barents and Black Seas, Russia’s Prime Minister and incoming President said that if Italy’s Prime Minister’s engagements permit it and “if our first meeting were to take place in St Petersburg, it would make the Forum even more meaningful and would give us much pleasure.” Addressing ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni and the Italian Ambassador to Moscow, Antonio Zanardi Landi, Mr Putin underscored the fact that the Russian government “would do its

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

South Asia


India: Gujarat: Forced to Abort by Her Husband Six Times, They Were All Female Fetuses

The husband and his family were “dissatisfied”. The woman, 36, has denounced them and the doctors. A network of clandestine clinics uncovered, the government has already withdrawn the licenses of two gynecologists. Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life: “The female sex-selective abortions are altering the Indian population.”

Mumbai (AsiaNews) — Forced to abort six times, because “incapable” of giving her husband a male heir: it happened in the district of Ahmedabad (Gujarat) to Amisha Bhatt, 36. The woman reported all her captors: her partner and his family for harassment, the doctors and other clandestine clinics in which she suffered first the test to find out the sex of the fetus, and then the six abortions. “With my gesture — Amisha said — I hope I have helped many other women who are in the same condition.” Meanwhile, thanks to her complaint, the State of Gujarat has launched detailed investigations and already withdrawn the licenses to two doctors.

Since 1994, with the approval of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technologies (Pndt) Act in India it is illegal to use special tests — such as amniocentesis or ultrasound — to determine the sex of the fetus. By law, doctors are required to submit a list of patients who, for reasons of health, have conducted these tests. However, the Pndt was not enough to curb the spread of selective female abortions, and over the years clandestine clinics have spread. After having made a complaint, Amisha Batt has discovered that her name was not listed in any of the lists of gynecologists who carried out the six abortions on her.

Pascoal Carvalho, a physician and member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told AsiaNews that “selective female abortions, feticide and violence against women and girls” are the only thing in India “beyond the barriers of caste and class.” This, he adds, “reveals the brutal instances of widespread prejudice against girls.”

These practices have become a plague, tied the archaic cultural preference for male children. But this situation, says Carvalho, a member of the Commission for human life of the Archdiocese of Mumbai, “is altering the composition of the population. According to the latest government census (2011), an average of 914 girls born for every 1,000 males.” This is alarming, because in the very years in which the government has taken various measures and awareness campaigns on the theme, the gap between males and females has widened even more. In 2001, in fact, the sex ratio was 927 females per 1,000 males.

According to the doctor to change this situation and reverse the trend we need to first change people’s mentality. “Mother Teresa said: If we accept that a mother kills her child, how can we tell others not to do it?”.

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



Indonesia: ‘Two Politicians’ Sex Tape Circulated Online

Jakarta, 24 April (AKI/Jakarta Post) — A sex tape purportedly featuring two lawmakers from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle is being widely circulated online.

The sex tape was initially published on Tuesday on kilikitik.net, which was suspended shortly after the rumor widely spread.

The male politician reportedly comes from the Central Java electoral district, identified as A.B., while the female politician is from West Kalimantan.

The House of Representatives’ ethics council chairman M. Prakosa, also from the PDI-P, said that he had heard the rumors but has not seen the video.

“It is only rumor. I have only heard it from journalists. It is not clear yet who they are,” he told reporters at the House.

However, the council will further investigate the video to confirm the identity of the couple on the video, he said

“We have to be very careful because this issue is related to someone’s good name,” he added

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



Italy Compensates Families of Dead Indian Fishermen

‘We forgive our Italian brothers,’ relatives say

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 24 — The families of two Indian fishermen allegedly killed by two Italian anti-pirate marines on Tuesday received 10 million rupees (145,000 euros) each in compensation.

“We forgive our Italian brothers,” the families were quoted as saying after the out-of-court settlement. Italy has described the compensation as “an act of generosity” with no implication of guilt.

The marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, have been in jail for more than a month, accused of shooting the fishermen in February after mistaking them for pirates.

An Indian ballistics test has found bullets in the fishermen’s bodies compatible with rifles collected from the tanker the marines were guarding but Italy has requested another test.

Rome is trying to have the case tried in Italy, arguing the incident took place in international waters.

On Monday the Indian supreme court admitted Rome’s plea and set a May 8 date for the first hearing.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Myanmar Seeks Partnership With Italy, Terzi Says

‘Burma can be fundamental in Southeast Asia’

(ANSA) — Naypyidaw, April 25 — The European Union’s decision to suspend nearly all of its punitive sanctions against Myanmar has opened up new economic opportunities for Italy and Europe, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said Wednesday. “Myanmar can become a fundamental partner in Southeast Asia,” said Terzi after meeting with Thein Sein, the president of Myanmar, also known as Burma. The foreign minister said that suspending sanctions was producing “very interesting prospects regarding economic relations, not merely commercial but in terms of new entrepreneurial partnerships as well”. Suspending, not lifting, the sanctions also unlocks financial aid to the country but does not lift an arms embargo. Europe’s stance on Myanmar has softened recently as the once oppressive military-backed regime has responded to international pressure to support human rights and allow more open elections, which saw Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and 42 other members of her party join the parliament on April 1.

EU economic sanctions, which will be suspended this week, have restricted hundreds of companies from doing business and hundreds of people from travelling.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Far East


N. Koreans Arrive in South From Russia: Reports

Eight out of 40 North Korean loggers who fled their jobs in Russia and took refuge in the South Korean embassy have finally arrived in Seoul, media reports said Wednesday. Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the eight arrived on April 13 and are being interviewed by authorities. It cited a Seoul government official who declined to be named.

The remaining 32 are awaiting departure at the South’s embassy in Moscow, it said. Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said the eight spent between 18 months and two years in the diplomatic mission before arriving in Seoul. The workers fled logging sites in Siberia due to hunger, cold and torture by North Korean agents sent to the Russian region to monitor them, it said.

South Korea’s foreign ministry declined to confirm the reports, citing safety concerns for refugees and diplomatic sensitivities. The communist North sends thousands of workers to construction, logging and other workplaces overseas to try to earn foreign currency. Many are monitored by agents and much of what they make in earnings is confiscated by Pyongyang, according to media reports.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


South Africa: Video Gang-Rape Trial Set to Begin

Three men accused of raping a 17-year-old girl will go on trial, the National Prosecution Authority said on Wednesday. The case sent shock waves around the world after a video surfaced on the Internet.

The low-quality cell phone video shows the girl screaming and begging her attackers to stop as they take turns raping her, according to local media. It ends with one offering her two rand (26 US cents) for her silence and she is heard crying.

According to media reports, the teenage girl was repeatedly raped by the men. She is said to be mentally handicapped. The alleged perpetrators are between 14-20 years old. If convicted, they face a possible life sentence.

On Wednesday, South Africa’s National Prosecution Authority said that three of the four men suspected of carrying out the rape will appear in court. The fourth suspect is only 13 years old. Prosecutors are yet to establish his criminal capacity.

Women groups say that a woman is raped every 23 seconds in South Africa. The Jessica Ford Foundation Rape Center in Durban South Africa says Women in South Africa have more chances of being raped than learning to read. The center was established a few years ago by Jessica Ford — a young woman who was raped in 2008 by five men who forced their way into her home.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Bones of Early American Disappear From Underwater Cave

One of the first humans to inhabit the Americas has been stolen — and archaeologists want it back. The skeleton, which is probably at least 10,000 years old, has disappeared from a cenote, or underground water reservoir, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

In response, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico City has placed “wanted” posters in supermarkets, bakeries and dive shops in and around the nearby town of Tulum. They are also considering legal action to recover the remains.

The missing bones belong to a skeleton dubbed Young Hol Chan II, discovered in 2010. The cenote in which it was found had previously yielded another 10,000-year-old skeleton — the Young Man of Chan Hol, discovered in 2006.

The earlier find has anatomical features suggesting shared heritage with Indonesians and south Asians. Other skeletons found in cenotes in the area with similar features may date to around 14,000 years ago. Such finds imply that not all early Americans came from north Asia. This deals yet another blow to the idea that the Clovis people crossing an ancient land bridge between Siberia and Alaska were the first to colonise the Americas. Clovis culture dates to around 13,000 years ago.

Both skeletons were laid to rest at a time when sea level was much lower than it is today and the cenote, now about 8 metres below the water, was dry. Archaeologists have also found the remains of elephants, giant sloths and other animals in the caves, giving an indication of what the ancient humans ate.

INAH researchers have been aware of creeping theft of specimens from cenotes, but they lack the resources to guard the hundreds of sites that dot the peninsula.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


78 Somali Migrants Land at Linosa

(AGI) Palermo — This afternoon 78 migrants reached Linosa, but were held when they landed by the Carabinieri. According to the Coast Guard, the group consisted of 15 women and 63 men, all Somalis who said they left a location on the border between Libya and Tunisia. It is the same group of Somalis who had been lost track of, raising the alarm. They are in good condition. . .

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



Almost 6% of Dutch Couples Are Mixed Nationality

Around six in a hundred couples living in the Netherlands are made up of one Dutch national with a foreign partner, according to new figures from the national statistics office CBS.

In total, the Netherlands has 3.1 million married couples and a further 800,000 couples who officially live together. Of them, 265,000 are mixed nationality. Dutch-Indonesian, Dutch-German and Dutch-Surinamese are the most popular mixes, the CBS says.

In six out of 10 mixed couples, the man is Dutch. The CBS also highlights a sharp increase in the number of Dutch men marrying women from Thailand or Eastern Europe.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Immigration Debate in Switzerland: Politician Sparks Uproar With Call to Limit German Workers

A right-wing populist politician in Switzerland has prompted outrage by calling for limits on German jobseekers, saying on a television talk show that there were “too many Germans” in her country. The remarks have been slammed as “cheap grandstanding,” but Natalie Rickli insists that many Swiss agree with her.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



NATO: No Images, No Responsibility

Alliance send third clarification letter to rapporteur

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 24 — NATO is denying any responsibility for the deaths of 63 migrants in the Mediterranean in March of 2011. In a third letter sent to the rapporteur at the Council of Europe, Tineke Strik from Holland, the Atlantic alliance states that it is not in possession of any “satellite images that could help identify military, commercial or any other type of vessels” that may have been present in the sea area at the time in question. “NATO has not declared a ‘military zone’ in the Mediterranean and did not play a coordinating role in the search and rescue operations in the area,” spokesperson Oana Lungescu points out. While admitting that “helicopters from vessels under NATO command flew over the zone where the migrants’ boat was positioned at the time of the incident,” in its letter, NATO insists that “there is no evidence” in its possession “linking helicopters under NATO command to the time and place at which the survives state they were given water and biscuits”. At the time of the incident, the Alliance further states, “only eight ships under NATO command were in the Mediterranean to patrol an operational area of 61,000 nautical miles”. The Alliance promises that it will give the Council’s recommendations “their fullest attention” and that it is already examining how it may strengthen “reciprocal exchange of information and search and rescue procedures”. NATO and its allies assured that they will continue “to review the information carefully in order better to understand what happened during the two weeks during which the boat was at sea”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Half-a-Million Illegal Migrants Stand to Lose Health Coverage

Nearly half-a-million illegal migrants in Spain stand to lose their rights to free healthcare following the government’s move to revoke a provision in the current law that guaranteed that those without residency cards would be afforded medical treatment and prescription medicines.

The move, announced last Friday by Health Minister Ana Mato as part of the government’s far-reaching savings plans, has sparked a wave of criticism from the opposition.

“From a humanitarian point of view, this is a repugnant measure,” said Gaspar Llamazares, a United Left (IU) deputy in Congress and member of the health committee, on Monday.

The Popular Party (PP) government wants to eliminate the right to free healthcare for illegal migrants in order to curtail abuse by those who bring their family members from other countries to Spain for treatment, Mato said. “Registry on municipal rolls will no longer be the only valid requisite to apply for a health card,” Mato said after Friday’s Cabinet meeting. “Those applying for a health card will be checked out to see if they live here and, like us, work and pay taxes.”

The right to free healthcare for illegal migrants was first introduced in 1999 as an amendment to Spain’s Law of Foreign Nationals. It was slightly modified in 2000 under the government of José María Aznar.

According to the National Statistics Institute, there are 5,711,040 foreigners living in Spain. Of that number, an estimated 459,946 do not have residency papers.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Supreme Court Skeptical of Striking Down Arizona Immigration Law

The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments Wednesday over Arizona’s tough immigration law, suggested they were inclined to uphold parts of the state’s law but may block other parts. The Obama administration lawyer who wanted the entire law struck down ran into skeptical questions from most of the justices, who said they saw no problem with requiring police officers to check the immigration status of people who are stopped.

But the justices also said they were troubled by parts of the Arizona law that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not carry documents or seek work. The stop-and-arrest provision has been the most contested part of the law.

Before U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. could deliver his opening comments, chief justice John Roberts in an unusual move interrupted to say that “no part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Work in Germany — A Nightmare for Bulgarians

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Frankfurt

With the promise of jobs and income, more and more Bulgarians are being lured to Germany. There, however, they run into race-to-the-bottom wages and illegal accommodation. Frankfurt has become the centre of the so-called “Bulgarian industry”.

Katharina Iskandar

Perhaps it was the car. It had been there for weeks, a grey model from twenty years back with rust spots on the hood, looking somewhat lost among the neatly parked limousines, and the only one with a Bulgarian license plate in the whole neighbourhood. And there were the signboards on the mailbox with ever changing names, which eventually roused suspicion among the residents of the street.

The two-family house stands in the leafy middle-class suburb of Sachsenhausen in the south of Frankfurt. The front door of the house stands open. Stale heated air smelling of mildew wafts through the door of the flat and into the stairwell. Inside the musty flat, the Petrova family (their name has been changed) sits on mattresses in front of a small table in a room where the first thing that leaps to the eye is a huge mould stain in the corner.

About three weeks ago the family packed up and left their house in a village near the Bulgarian city of Varna. Father, mother and the three children got in their car and drove through almost the whole night. A man had called them up and said he had work and a place to live for them if they could make it to Frankfurt.

On arriving, after nearly twenty hours in the car, they had just to pick up the key. Since then, every month a kind of caretaker comes to the flat and collects the €600 in rent in cash. Sometimes, the Petrovas say, another man they know as “Micki” comes and takes the father and son to work on a construction site. With no contract. With no insurance. With no prospects of work the next day…

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

Culture Wars


Catholic Schools Face ‘Indoctrination’ Claims Over Gay Marriage

The Roman Catholic Church contacted its secondary schools in England and Wales asking them to enourage pupils to back the campaign aganist gay marriage.

Church education chiefs last night defended theselves against allegations of “political indoctrination” insisting they were “proud” to promote traditional marriage.

The Catholic Education Service contacted 385 secondary schools asking them to circulate the recent letter read in parishes defending the traditional definition of marriage. Schools were also invited to promote the petition organised by the Coalition For Marriage opposing the Government’s plans to allow homosexual couples to marry.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

General


Does Rain Come From Life in the Clouds?

Scientists are making their first forays into the mysterious world of biology miles up in the air. Their startling conclusion: That ecosystem in the sky might influence tomorrow’s weather and next year’s harvest.

The plane pitches violently as it plows through the milky innards of a cloud bank. A commercial pilot would fly high above these clouds over California’s Sierra Nevada Range, but this 63-foot Gulfstream-1 seems to invite the turbulence. Updrafts grab hold of the aircraft and shove it up even as the pilot noses it down. In the back of the plane, atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather wears headphones to muffle the roar of the propellers. She steadies herself with a hand on an instrument rack and focuses on the bobbing screen of her laptop. Readings from the clouds spool across it.

Those numbers tell Prather that these winter clouds are cold and heavy, -30 degrees Fahrenheit and just over 100 percent relative humidity. Yet despite being 62 degrees below the freezing point of water, the cloud droplets remain stubbornly liquid. As long as they don’t form ice crystals, these clouds won’t shed more than a few flakes of snow over the Sierras’ 13,000-foot peaks. They are typical clouds, teasers that won’t drop much of anything.

After two hours of flying, though, something changes. The voice of another researcher crackles over Prather’s headset: “Ice!” The plane has entered a cloud layer where suddenly every droplet is frozen. Prather’s instrument-a tangle of metal tubes, wires, and airtight chambers nicknamed Shirley-tick-tick-ticks as its laser blasts apart hundreds of microscopic cloud particles, one by one, that are drawn in from the air outside. The size and composition of each particle flash across Prather’s monitor. The specks at the heart of those ice crystals are high in aluminum, iron, silicon, and titanium, the chemical signatures of dust not from California but from faraway deserts in Asia or even Africa. There’s something else in the crystals too: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, telltale signs of biological cells.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Organic Farming is Rarely Enough

Conventional agriculture gives higher yields under most conditions.

Organic farming is sometimes touted as a way to feed the world’s burgeoning population without destroying the environment. But the evidence for that has been hotly debated. Now, a comprehensive analysis of the existing science, published in Nature1, suggests that farming without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides could supply needs in some circumstances. But yields are lower than in conventional farming, so producing the bulk of the globe’s diet will require agricultural techniques including the use of fertilizers, the study concludes.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Superstars of Botany: Rare Specimens

A handful of plant collectors has shaped the field of botany. Now they are disappearing, and there are no clear successors.

John Wood has had malaria twice, and Dengue fever once. He has shaved leeches off his legs with a machete in southeast Asia — “you’re supposed to use a lit cigarette, but I don’t smoke” — had his car stolen in Bolivia and lain face down in the Yemeni desert while local tribes exchanged gunfire over his head.

He encountered such inconveniences in the process of collecting more than 30,000 plant specimens over 40 years of travelling the globe, mostly as a hobbyist. More than 100 of his finds have become type specimens, from which new species are described. Those numbers elevate him to the ranks of a star collector — the top 2% of botanical gatherers, who have accumulated more than half of the type specimens in some of the world’s most important collections1.

These elite field workers have probably numbered fewer than 500 people throughout history. But they have contributed much of what scientists know about plant diversity, ecology and evolution, and have been crucial in the race to document the world’s plants before they are lost to deforestation, development, invasive species and climate change.

Many botanists, however, believe that the era of the superstar collector is drawing to a close, at least in the 200-year-old form of a man (or occasionally woman) setting out from Europe or North America to see what the tropics hold. As botany has moved away from taxonomy and towards molecular studies, few of the jobs available allow researchers to spend long periods in the field gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of plants. Tropical countries have also imposed restrictions on foreign researchers and are developing their own botanical expertise among home-grown scientists. “It’s possible that the days of the non-native plant collector are virtually at an end, and people like myself are the last examples,” says Wood.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The United Nation’s Useless Genocide Trials

United Nations is a threat to the United States and to freedom around the world.

Last year I completed a pamphlet on 10 Reasons to Abolish the UN for the Freedom Center, which you can find at its online bookstore that explores the reasons why the United Nations is a threat to the United States and to freedom around the world. You can learn more about the pamphlet from this video and this excerpt below that discusses the failures of the UN not only at preventing genocide, but at trying those responsible.

How effective is the United Nations at tackling genocide? When it happens or is about to happen, its peacekeeping forces usually find a good reason to be somewhere else. And the Security Council and General Assembly find some pressing Israeli matter to concentrate on. But what about after the fact?

The United Nations boasts of leading the charge against genocide through its tribunals. Warlords and generals who commit mass murder are supposed to fear the wrath of the international community. But how much wrath is there to fear?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120424

Financial Crisis
» European Finances Still in Bad Shape, Statistics Show
» Greece: Finance Ministry Site Hacked in Protest
» Italy Registers Biggest Real-Income Drop in 17 Years
» Spain: Treasury Auction Below Targets, But Greater Interest
 
USA
» April 25: “Rumors of War III” Debuts on Glenn Beck TV
» Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by James Cameron, Google CEO Larry Page
» Golden Apple; Silver Frame
» Media Protect Elizabeth Warren in Senate Race
» Mining Asteroids Could Boost Space Exploration
» Soros or Alec: Whom Would the Founders Support?
» Stakelbeck: New GBTV Documentary “Rumors of War 3” Premieres Tomorrow Night
» Video: Romney Obama the Same?
» Why Asteroid Mining Makes Huge Dollars and Sense
 
Europe and the EU
» 2012 — The Hollande Revolution
» AI Slams European Countries for Anti-Muslim Discrimination
» Amnesty International Denounces Catalonia’s ‘War on Mosques’
» Europe: New Amnesty Report Reveals Muslims Discriminated Against for Demonstrating Their Faith
» Europe: A Crisis of the Centre
» France’s Centre-Left is on the March, But So Are Darker Forces From the Far-Right National Front
» France: Boy, 14, Held in Cellar for €150 Ransom
» Germany: Scientists Unveil ‘Self-Changing Tyres’
» Italy: Bossi Wants an End to Hate and Disputes Within Lega Nord
» Italy: Belsito Diamonds Seized as Part of LNP Embezzlement Probe
» Italy: Finmeccanica Denies ‘Kickbacks to Northern League’
» Italy Introduces Ferrari on Rails
» Italy: Tax Decree Passed Into Law
» Muslims Discriminated Against for Demonstrating Their Faith
» Muslims Are Discriminated Against in Holland: Amnesty International
» Norway: Witness Relates Trauma in Anders Behring Breivik Trial
» Norway: One Dead After Blast in Fredrikstad
» Norway: Breivik Says Insanity Claims ‘Racist’
» Norway: Witnesses Describe ‘War Zone’ After Oslo Bomb
» Spain: Bilbao’s Guggenheim Continues to Divide
» Sweden: Stockholm Airport Bars Israeli Airline Over Security Inspection Methods
» Sweden Shows off Garbo, Bergman Banknotes
» Sweden: Teen Boys Arrested After Filming Alleged Gang Rape
» Switzerland: Prosecutor Pursues SVP Chiefs Over ‘Racist’ Ad
» The Missionary Zeal of Germany’s Salafists
» UK: Five Terror Suspects Held in Britain
» UK: Five Men Arrested in Luton on Terrorism Charges
» UK: In Breivik’s “War Zone” Luton, Fear — And Scorn
» UK: Islamic School Will be ‘The Best’ Insists Head as Parents Rush to Apply for Places
» UK: Mosque Health Clinics Could Stop Dozens of Stroke Deaths
» UK: Secret Life of Shoe Bomber Saajid Muhammad Badat Funded by the Taxpayer
» UK: Tower Hamlets: Dead and Incarcerated People Vote
 
Balkans
» Croatia: ‘Islam in Europe’ Conference Held in Zagreb
 
North Africa
» Chaos Ahead of Egypt’s Presidential Elections
» Egypt’s Search for a Leader Plunges Into Chaos
» Egypt: Election Law Changes, Mubarak’s Last PM Out
» Egypt: Cinema Star’s Sentence Upheld, Insulting Islam
» Tunisia: Corruption and Nepotism Like in the Past, Blogger
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Hamas Leadership Shifts to Haniyeh, Press
» Israel Ready to Strike Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Says Israeli Armed Forces Chief of Staff
» Netanyahu Renews Alarm, Far West in Sinai
 
Middle East
» Lebanon: Tyre Bombing Connected to Sale of Liquor, Not UNIFIL
» Turkish Airline Courts Israelis With Cheap Flights
 
Russia
» On the Way Out, Medvedev Vows Reforms
 
South Asia
» Afghanistan: Soldier’s Kit Stops Taliban Bullets Dead
» Afghanistan: UK Troops Expose Bomb-Making Mosque
» Female Circumcision Anger Aired in India
» Pakistan: Grand Ulema Convention Demands End to Vulgarity
» Pakistan and Iran Are Accused of Exerting Influence on the Afghan Media
 
Far East
» Report Says China Policy is Stirring South China Sea Dispute
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Armed Groups in Northern Mali Raping Women
» Mali: Al Qaeda: Algerian Diplomats Soon to be Freed
» South Sudan Leader Says Khartoum Has Declared War
» Sudan: Muslims Burn Down Catholic Church in Sudan
 
Latin America
» Panama Denies Lavitola Corruption Allegations
 
Immigration
» Migrants: Council of Europe, Report on Mediterranean Deaths
» Senate Dems Pushing Bill to Block Arizona Immigration Law if Supreme Court Upholds It
» Spain: Health Cuts for Non-Regular Immigrants
» Switzerland: Monasteries Should Take in Asylum Seekers: Priest

Financial Crisis


European Finances Still in Bad Shape, Statistics Show

EU countries in 2011 managed to reduce their deficits, but they accumulated more debt compared to the previous year, the bloc’s statistics office said Monday (23 April). Overall government deficit in the EU stood at 4.5 percent of the gross domestic product, down from 6.5 percent in 2010, while in the eurozone the drop was from 6.2 to 4.1 percent in 2011.

The worst figures continued to be registered in Ireland (13.1%) and Greece (9.1%), two bailed-out countries, followed by Spain (8.5%), the UK (8.3%) and Slovenia (6.4%), well above the three-percent deficit threshold set out under EU rules. At the other end of the spectrum, Germany’s deficit shrank to one percent of GDP in 2011, while Estonia and Sweden recorded a surplus.

Hungary also has a surplus (4.3%). But the EU commission deemed that the surplus was not due to a sustainable budget policy as it resulted from the nationalisation of a pension fund. Budapest is the first country to face sanctions under the strengthened economic surveillance rules if it does not pass “sustainable” budget cuts.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Greece: Finance Ministry Site Hacked in Protest

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 24 — Hackers broke into the servers of Greek finance ministry, police officials said on Tuesday, in protest at government plans to fight tax evasion by tapping into citizens’ bank data. The incident — as Athens News daily reports — marks the third attack by hackers on government websites since February as anger grows over spending cuts the country has pledged to implement as part of its troika bailout. The police said the group was associated with the Anonymous activist group responsible for similar hacking attacks in the past. The hacking was prompted by a government decision last month to fight endemic tax evasion by tapping into households’ bank, telephone and credit card data to detect people that spend more money than justified by the income they declare. The General Accounting Office (GLK) — a finance ministry arm overseeing spending — was checking to gauge the extent of the breach, which at the moment seems minor, a finance ministry official said. Three university websites were also attacked, according to a police official. The incident comes after 1.5 million fake prescriptions were entered on Friday into a new data system of the health ministry, a key instrument to contain the country’s burgeoning health costs, causing it to crash.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Registers Biggest Real-Income Drop in 17 Years

Salaries up 1.2% in March, inflation 3.3%

(ANSA) — Rome, April 24 — Real incomes in recession-hit Italy in March suffered their biggest drop since August 1995, Istat said on Tuesday.

Last month hourly wages were 1.2% higher than in March 2011, while the annual inflation rate was 3.3%, the national statistics agency said.

That means that Italian households’ spending power fell by almost 2.1% in March compared to the same month in 2011.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Treasury Auction Below Targets, But Greater Interest

Compared with previous auction

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 24 — The Spanish Treasury has today placed 1.93 billion euros in 3 and 6-month bonds, some way below the fixed target of 2 billion, though there was significant demand and a greater rate of interest than during the previous auction. some 729 million euros in 3-month bonds were issued, with demand 7.6 times the amount and interest of 0.63% compared to 0.381% at the previous auction. A total of 1.21 billion euros in 6-month ‘bonos’ were also issued, with profitability of 1.5% compared to the 0.836% figure at the previous auction. Today’s auction took place in a climate of great market pressure on Spanish public debt, a day on from a black Monday, which saw the Ibex market index go below 7,000 points and a spread between the 10-year Spanish bono and the reference German bund at 430 base points at the opening of the day’s trading.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


April 25: “Rumors of War III” Debuts on Glenn Beck TV

by Diana West

On Wednesday evening, I will be on live with Glenn Beck to discuss “Rumors of War III,” a new documentary Glenn’s documentary unit, Mercury Radio Arts, has produced, and which I had the pleasure of appearing on along with such luminaries as my Team B II colleagues Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, Andrew C. McCarthy, John Guandolo, Frank Gaffney, and also CBN’s esteemed Erick Stackelbeck. Gen Boykin, Andy and I will all be be on the post-documentary show, along with Buck Sexton, National Security Editor of The Blaze.

The show starts at 7pm EST.

           — Hat tip: Diana West [Return to headlines]



Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by James Cameron, Google CEO Larry Page

A group of high-tech tycoons wants to mine nearby asteroids, hoping to turn science fiction into real profits.

The mega-million dollar plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals like platinum and gold out of the lifeless rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. One of the company founders predicts they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for rich asteroid targets.

Several scientists not involved in the project said they were simultaneously thrilled and skeptical, calling the plan daring, difficult — and highly expensive. They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An upcoming NASA mission to return just 2 ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion.

But the entrepreneurs announcing the project Tuesday in Seattle have a track record of making big money off ventures into space. Company founders Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis pioneered the idea of selling rides into space to tourists and, Diamandis’ company offers “weightless” airplane flights.

Investors and advisers to the new company, Planetary Resources Inc. of Seattle, include Google CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and explorer and filmmaker James Cameron.

The mining, fuel processing and later refueling would all be done without humans, Anderson said.

“It is the stuff of science fiction, but like in so many other areas of science fiction, it’s possible to begin the process of making them reality,” said former astronaut Thomas Jones, an adviser to the company.

The target-hunting telescopes would be tubes only a couple of feet long, weighing only a few dozen pounds and small enough to be held in your hand. They should cost less than $10 million, company officials said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Golden Apple; Silver Frame

The US Constitution is much more important, and in much greater danger than most people realize. I will discuss both issues in this article, and I hope that those who are unfamiliar with our founding documents, or who may feel a bit rusty in their knowledge, will take a few minutes and familiarize/re-familiarize themselves with them.

I aim to make this experience as helpful, short and pain-free as possible, so I will limit myself to what I consider to be the most important elements in the Constitution.

In the interest of keeping things “short and sweet” I will cut to the chase and tell you that some people believe, and I am one of them, that there is one short passage in our founding documents that encapsulates, enshrines, and defines what is so unique and important about the US Constitution, and the United States of America. Oddly enough it is not to be found in the Constitution at all—it is in “The Declaration of Independence.”

I am talking about the preamble to the Declaration—specifically the first sentence. You cannot get much simpler than that—boiling things down to one sentence. Yet there it is—the heart and soul of the American experience. Without that one sentence the US Constitution loses most, if not all of its moral authority, and the United States becomes a shadow of itself.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Media Protect Elizabeth Warren in Senate Race

Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has picked up the endorsement and fundraising support of entertainer Harry Belafonte, whose reputation as a calypso singer has been superseded by his service to international Marxism. During the Cold War, Belafonte sang at a “Concert for Peace” in communist East Germany, where he attacked President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy.

A long-time supporter of the Castro dictatorship, he has more recently been singing the praises of Venezuelan Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez.

The April 19 Warren fundraiser, which included Belafonte’s name on the letterhead, was held at the Manhattan penthouse of HBO executive Michael Fuchs, another indication of how Warren has the support of the media in her critical race. HBO recently ran the Sarah Palin-bashing film “Game Change.”

A radical in her own right, Warren proudly claims to be the intellectual author of the Occupy Wall Street movement and is running as a “consumer advocate.” But she had previously benefitted from a fundraiser hosted by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund operator linked to the 2008 housing-market collapse.

[…]

Belafonte claims he never joined the Communist Party USA but acknowledges in his book My Song: A Memoir that he used to attend lectures in 1947 at the Jefferson School in New York City, “which openly billed itself as an institute of Marxist thought affiliated with the American Communist party.” He says he heard such speakers as I.F. Stone, the so-called “independent journalist” later unmasked as a Soviet intelligence agent.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Mining Asteroids Could Boost Space Exploration

Talk of mining asteroids was once the preserve of corduroy-flare-clad, optimists of the Apollo era. Now the idea is making a comeback thanks to enterprising tech billionaires and a nascent commercial space industry.

The company Planetary Resources is due to outline today in Seattle, Washington, its aims to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals. “The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system,” company founder Eric Anderson, also of Space Adventures, told Wired Science.

Anderson’s co-founder is Peter Diamandis of the X Prize foundation, which runs competitions to stimulate privately funded space technology. The pair are backed by billionaires from Google, Microsoft and Dell and are advised by film director James Cameron and ex-NASA employees.

Planetary Resources says its first step is to launch a small fleet of space telescopes within the next few years to identify potentially valuable near-Earth asteroids. While asteroids are known to be rich in platinum, nickel and other precious metals that are steadily rising in value, it’s still the start of a daunting task.

First off, there’s the question of how to get there. Just returning a few grains of dust from an asteroid almost defeated the Japanese space agency. Their Hayabusa probe was hit by a violent solar storm on the way to the asteroid Itokawa and lost contact during landing. On top of that, the sampling device did not work correctly. Nevertheless, the spacecraft limped home and delivered its precious cargo of asteroid dust in June, 2010.

A better idea might be to go to an asteroid that has become temporarily trapped in Earth’s orbit. A recent New Scientist feature story details investigations into how to reach such mini-Moons.

Even so, drilling, mining, refining in zero gravity has never been tried. Without gravity to help keep rocks on conveyor belts, for example, ore will have to be transported in whole new ways.

There’s also the tricky question of who owns an asteroid. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty appears to make asteroid mining a difficult proposition.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Soros or Alec: Whom Would the Founders Support?

Who would the Founding Fathers have trusted with the future of the nation they created, George Soros or ALEC? And just who (or what), you may be asking yourself, is ALEC? Well, I’m glad you asked. And don’t feel ill informed, because until a few months ago, ALEC was not on my radar screen, either.

ALEC is an acronym for “American Legislative Exchange Council.” It was started by conservative activist and icon Paul Weyrich in 1973 and now bills itself as “the nation’s largest nonpartisan individual membership association of state legislators, with over 2,000 state legislators across the nation and more than 100 alumni members in Congress.” ALEC’s leadership says its mission promotes “free markets, limited government and federalism throughout the states.”

Sounds good to me, but I can certainly see why they are so vilified by the loony left.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Stakelbeck: New GBTV Documentary “Rumors of War 3” Premieres Tomorrow Night

A few weeks ago, I told everyone to be on the lookout for a hot upcoming project that I was honored to be a part of: GBTV’s groundbreaking new documentary, “Rumors of War III: Target U.S.” Well, the moment of truth is finally here. “ROW3” debuts tomorrow night, April 25th, at 7 pm EST live on GBTV.com. The hour-long expose of jihad on America will be followed by a post-show at 8 pm featuring Glenn Beck and a distinguished panel of experts, including General Jerry Boykin and former Department of Justice prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who will answer your questions.

In Rumors of War III, you’ll see how:

  • Members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups that are sworn to the destruction of America have assumed influential positions in the U.S. government. Incredibly, these same radical Islamists are helping to direct the Obama administration’s counterterrorism and Muslim outreach policies.
  • Hezbollah operatives are attempting to link up with Mexican drug cartels along America’s porous southern border in order to infiltrate and attack the U.S. homeland.
  • Iran is linking up with anti-American, Marxist regimes throughout Latin America in an effort to establish a forward base to strike at the United States.
  • Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons and its rapidly advancing long and medium-range missile programs pose an existential threat not just to Israel but to the U.S. as well.
  • The coming Middle East War will spark worldwide chaos, quite possibly by the end of 2012.

If you haven’t already done so, I strongly urge you to sign up for a free, 14-day trial subscription to GBTV.com and tune in tomorrow night.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]



Video: Romney Obama the Same?

Same old choice: Anyone but Obama.

But, what happens when the machine does everything to shove an Obama clone down your throat as the GOP nominee?

Comparing side by side the words and political stances of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Why Asteroid Mining Makes Huge Dollars and Sense

Science fiction dreams of mining riches from asteroids only make sense if humans can make it worth their time and effort. The new Planetary Resources group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires and Hollywood moguls is now betting on the fact that there is big money in mining space rocks.

Nobody knows exactly how much asteroid wealth exists, but early estimates point to riches beyond Earth’s wildest dreams. Just the mineral wealth of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter could be equivalent to about $100 billion for every person on Earth, according to “Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroid, Comets, and Planets” (Addison-Wesley, 1996) — perhaps slightly less now after accounting for the Earth’s population growth over the past 15 years.

“The near-Earth asteroid population could easily support 10 to 40 times the population of Earth, with all the necessary resources to do that,” said John Lewis, a professor emeritus at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona and author of “Mining the Sky.”

Even smaller space rocks can have mineral prizes worth tens of trillions of dollars. The smallest known metallic asteroid that is an accessible near-Earth object has 40 times as much metal as all the metal in Earth’s history, Lewis pointed out. He has joined Planetary Resources as perhaps the most recognized expert on asteroid wealth.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


2012 — The Hollande Revolution

El País Madrid

He is dull, pragmatic, consensual. And yet, if elected president of France, the Socialist candidate may be able to change the course of politics in Europe, a Spanish columnist believes.

Javier Valenzuela

If someone had said not so long ago that a character like François Hollande might embody the hopes of millions of Europeans for the beginning of a rebellion against the suffocating status quo, he would have been thought mad.

Nothing in Hollande’s bearing — an upright official or businessman — in his pragmatic and consensual character, or in his lukewarm centre-left political vision makes him a genius with panache like Cyrano de Bergerac, a historical giant like De Gaulle, or a Florentine artist of politics like Mitterrand.

And yet, as a sign of these sad and mediocre times, Hollande is now perceived across the depth and breadth of the Old World as the only Asterix possible that, from the ever indomitable village in Gaul, can rise up against the Germanic imperium of austerity and cutbacks and propose to stimulate growth and employment as the primary collective economic goal.

No French presidential election in recent memory has been on such a continental scale as this one. Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, London, Rome, Madrid and all the other European capitals, the so-called “markets” as well and not a few ordinary people know that what’s at stake in this election is whether the Merkozy duo, with its dogma of a balanced budget at all costs, will stay in charge, or whether the first serious attempt will be made to push the goal of expanding or reactivating job creation to the top of the European Union’s agenda…

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



AI Slams European Countries for Anti-Muslim Discrimination

A new Amnesty International report criticizes some European countries for their treatment of Muslims. It singles out bans on headscarves and minarets as particularly damaging. Several European countries have made policy decisions in recent years discriminating against their Muslim citizens, according to a report from the human rights organization Amnesty International released Tuesday.

The report, titled “Choice and Prejudice: Discrimination Against Muslims in Europe,” singles out Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland for particular criticism. It cites bans on face-covering veils or other religious symbols in schools as being among the most damaging measures. “Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes,” Marco Perolini, Amnesty’s expert on discrimination said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Amnesty International Denounces Catalonia’s ‘War on Mosques’

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 24 — Human rights organization Amnesty International has spoken out against the discrimination of Muslims in Europe and in Catalonia, where the followers of Islam are forced to worship in the street, exposed to the elements due to a lack of mosques. According to a report presented by Amnesty simultaneously in Brussels and in Barcelona and quoted in today’s media, in the Catalan region there were 40 legal disputes between 1990 and 2008 between Muslim associations and citizens’ associations or municipal councils. All requests to open mosques have run up against “technical obstacles, rejection by the public and even opposition by political parties openly stating that the construction of temples dedicated to the Islamic religion is incompatible with respect for Catalan culture and traditions”.

In the eyes of Amnesty International, all of this is “contrary to the freedom of religion, which includes the right to community worship in adequate places”. The human rights organization also spoke out against the ban on the burqa introduced by a number of Catalan municipalities for reasons of safety and equality, given that there have been “no reports of any woman entirely covered posing a threat to public safety or who has refused to identify herself”. Inside the report named “Elections and Prejudice: Discrimination against Muslims in Europe” the NGO states that the efforts put forward by governments to put a halt to negative stereotypes suffered by Muslims are extremely limited in number and insufficient, especially in countries such as Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Europe: New Amnesty Report Reveals Muslims Discriminated Against for Demonstrating Their Faith

European governments must do more to challenge the negative stereotypes and prejudices against Muslims that are fuelling discrimination across the continent, a new report by Amnesty International reveals today. Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination, said: “Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf. Men can be dismissed for wearing beards associated with Islam. Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes. There is a groundswell of opinion in many European countries that Islam is alright and Muslims are ok so long as they are not too visible. This attitude is generating human rights violations and needs to be challenged.”

The report Choice and prejudice: discrimination against Muslims in Europe, exposes the impact of discrimination on the ground of religion or belief on Muslims in several aspects of their lives, including employment and education. It focuses on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland where Amnesty International has already raised issues such as restrictions on the establishment of places of worship and prohibitions on full-face veils. The report documents numerous individual cases of discrimination across the countries covered.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Europe: A Crisis of the Centre

Francois Hollande celebrates his victory in the first round of the French presidential election Francois Hollande has declared that the world of finance is his enemy

Last December Europe decided to outlaw expansionary fiscal policy. Twenty-five countries pledged to get their debts below 60% of GDP, and their “structural deficits” down to 0.5% — and keep them there — by 2014.

David Cameron vetoed an attempt to write this into the fundamental treaty of the European Union, so the participants — everybody except Britain and the Czech Republic — signed up to a “Fiscal Stability Treaty”.

Now, long before ratification, it has brought down the government of The Netherlands and looks set itself to be blown out of the water by a Francois Hollande victory in France.

Even though Mr Hollande has rowed back from his pledge to “renegotiate” the Treaty, in favour of “adding growth clauses”, the Germans in the shape of CDU chief whip Peter Altmaier on Newsnight last night, point out this cannot be done without killing the Treaty. For the Irish are set to vote in a referendum on the Treaty as unamended, within six weeks.

I said when the Treaty was designed that it might bring stability, but not growth. Now Europe is probably in the third quarter of a double dip recession. As economist Nouriel Roubini pointed out (13 April):

“Front-loaded fiscal austerity — however necessary — is accelerating the contraction, as higher taxes and lower government spending and transfer payments reduce disposable income and aggregate demand. Moreover, as the recession deepens, resulting in even wider fiscal deficits, another round of austerity will be needed. And now, thanks to the fiscal compact, even the eurozone’s core will be forced into front-loaded recessionary austerity.”

And so it has come to pass that French growth has ground to a halt, French official unemployment has passed 10%, and the French people have voted in large numbers against the Merkel-Sarkozy strategy of upfront austerity. Indeed six million of them voted against the euro.

Of course countries with a fiscal Luger held to their head have rushed to ratify the Treaty: Greece, Portugal, the Slovenian parliament voted it through with just two abstentions. For them, signing the Treaty was easy because they had no choice.

Treaty revision

What is emerging now though is a concerted attempt to re-look at the Treaty’s terms. Two weeks ago, in a little noticed move, the Socialist Party in Portugal, who voted for ratification, proposed the addition of “growth clauses” similar to those advocated by Mr Hollande. These were rejected, but will no doubt come back on a European level if Ireland votes the Treaty down.

But what could a “growth clause” mean? Europe’s problem is that it has to rely on upfront austerity because the euro’s design has limited the power of the central bank to use monetary policy to promote growth.

Though its impact is now flagging across the globe, monetary expansion has proven the effective lifeline in the first four years of the Great Recession. Printing money allows you to save the banks, keep stock markets buoyant and — surreptitiously — export the crisis to your trade rivals by tanking your own exchange rate.

It does not actually boost demand much directly, but if combined with fiscal expansion — as in the US — it can produce a weak recovery even in a country with a massive debt overhang.

Poor Europe, however, cannot even get to first base. It cannot do proper monetary expansion; its banks are “saved” but lending is contracting; its new fiscal rules tell it to keep budget deficits to a minimum, even as GDP contracts. And crucially it cannot get the unofficial benefits of monetary expansion, which is a lower exchange rate…

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



France’s Centre-Left is on the March, But So Are Darker Forces From the Far-Right National Front

by Mary Riddell

Ed Miliband should not celebrate yet — Marine Le Pen may well be mightier than Mr Milk Pudding, Francois Hollande.

The job of French president is grim, but someone has to do it. Such was the view of Charles de Gaulle. “My mission seemed clear and terrible,” he once said. “At this moment, the worst in her history, it was for me to assume the burden of France.” François Hollande, the first-round victor in the race for the presidency, is more upbeat. The Socialist leader, nicknamed “Monsieur Flanby”, after a milk pudding, senses triumph against Nicolas Sarkozy. Adieu, Mr Bling; enter the human blancmange. “Change is afoot,” Mr Hollande tweeted. “Nothing will stop it now.” We shall see. Mr Sarkozy, who will fight to the end to prove him wrong, may yet prevail.

If, however, France elects its first Socialist president since 1988, Mr Hollande will shoulder not only internal problems but also the dreams of those leaders, Ed Miliband included, who hope the centre-Right’s grip on Europe is weakening. Angela Merkel, who has campaigned for Mr Sarkozy, faces possible ejection in the forthcoming German elections. David Cameron, on a media charm offensive to shore up his floundering government, may wish that he had been less dismissive of Mr Hollande, whom he declined to meet either in Paris or in London. Mr Miliband, while not yet waving a tricolore or sporting strings of onions, is cautiously delighted. Though he and Mr Hollande had not met until a few weeks ago, the Labour leader has become so close to his French counterpart that Lord [Stewart] Wood, a key Miliband adviser, has been invited to spend election night at the Paris headquarters of Mr Hollande, who recently attended a roast beef lunch with Team Miliband in Westminster.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



France: Boy, 14, Held in Cellar for €150 Ransom

A 14-year-old boy was kidnapped overnight the Pontoise area of Ile de France, North West of Paris — for a €150 ransom. The 14-year-old had been locked in a cellar in the area without light, food or a toilet for a night on Monday last week. His kidnappers threatened him with burgling his family’s house if he didn’t give them €150.

Scared that his kidnappers would carry out their threats, the boy didn’t return home until Wednesday, staying at a friend’s house on Tuesday night. The kidnappers’ motive is still unknown, but the boy’s mother claims the kidnapping is linked to an incident at Pontoise train station last Sunday, during which a group of boys took her son’s phone.

“They promised him they would give it back when they met up the next day, then they took the phone,” the boy’s mother told Le Parisien. “This time they didn’t beat him up, but what happens next time?”

The boy is currently staying away from the family home to avoid a repeat. Police have confirmed they have launched an investigation to find out who the kidnappers are.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Scientists Unveil ‘Self-Changing Tyres’

Are you fed up of having to change your summer tyres for winter tyres at the first sign of snow? A group of German researchers have developed a tyre that “changes itself.” The researchers at Leipzig university are developing the world’s first-ever “intelligent” tyre which automatically adapts itself to the prevailing weather conditions even while you are driving.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Bossi Wants an End to Hate and Disputes Within Lega Nord

(AGI) Milan — Bossi said he doesn’t want to see any more disputes within his party, as love for the Lega Nord must prevail. “I don’t want to see any more disputes or hate: it’s time for love for the Lega Nord and brotherhood to prevail.

Now, we must stay united for Padania!”, Umberto Bossi said in a statement circulated by the party. Bossi also denied that he would take part in an event, called ‘Bossi Day’, to be held in the province of Brescia on Sunday.

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



Italy: Belsito Diamonds Seized as Part of LNP Embezzlement Probe

(AGI) Milan — Eleven diamonds returned to the LNP party’s coffers by former treasurer Belsito have been seized as evidence. Probed on embezzlement allegations as part of broader investigations into the LNP’s handling of public party funding, Francesco Belsito delivered the diamonds just days ago. The seizure was triggered by LNP legal advisors’ denial that the diamonds were purchased with the party’s funds. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the initial batch of diamonds comprised 12 items.

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



Italy: Finmeccanica Denies ‘Kickbacks to Northern League’

‘No irregularities’ by ‘copter unit Augusta-Westland

(ANSA) — Rome, April 24 — Italian defence giant Finmeccanica on Tuesday denied press reports that it paid kickbacks to the populist Northern League party.

In a statement, it stressed that its helicopter subsidiary Augusta Westland had “never committed any type of irregularity” in the sale of ‘copters to India.

This had been “confirmed” by a recent Indian defence ministry probe, Finmeccanica said, threatening legal action against anyone who repeated the allegations. Finmeccanica has been hit by an investigation into allegations that its managers were involved in issuing false invoices and the creation of slush funds to bribe politicians.

Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, who had been Finmeccanica’s chairman and chief executive since 2002, was forced to resign in December after being named as one of the managers being probed.

The Northern League denied the kickback reports earlier Tuesday and also threatened legal action to protect its reputation.

The formerly secessionist party is at the centre of a separate probe into alleged fraud by former treasurer Francesco Belsito that led to Umberto Bossi quitting as leader at the start of this month and other party heavyweights resigning from their posts.

Tuesday’s media reports claimed that “other parties” also received Finmeccanica kickbacks but the League was the main beneficiary.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Introduces Ferrari on Rails

Italy’s burgundy red Ferrari on rails is finally going into service. Starting on April 28, the “Italo” will travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour between Milan, Rome and Naples. The new high-speed train is more environmentally friendly and also cheaper than its competitors — on both the rails and roads.

The burgundy red Italo train departs Naples Central Station punctually at 2 p.m., with rain pouring down from the sky. Within a few minutes, it is trundling past backyards at 160 kilometers per hour, then gathers speed. By 2:14 p.m., the train is whizzing along at 200 km/h and reaches 260 just a few minutes later.

The ride is quiet and smooth, and the only indication of the high speeds at which we are traveling are the large LED signs in the cars. By 2:16 p.m., we’re up to 300 km/h (186 miles per hour). The train has no locomotive and the motors are equally distributed throughout each car, making for a quieter ride. The train is also capable of traveling at speeds of 360 km/h — the only problem is that Italian tracks aren’t built to support such high speeds.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Tax Decree Passed Into Law

TV frequency auction part of package

(ANSA) — Rome, April 24 — A tax decree ordering the auction of six new digital frequencies was passed into law by the Italian parliament on Thursday.

The airwaves, which were designated by the former Silvio Berlusconi government to be assigned through a so-called beauty contest free of charge, could bring in an estimated 1.2 billion euros for the government, say experts.

The plan is part of an effort to boost competitiveness in the Italian TV sector.

Berlusconi’s Mediaset group has challenged the cancellation of the beauty contest in an Italian court.

Also included in the bill are new property taxes, tourist fees, airport taxes and cuts to ministry spending.

The decree was approved by a confidence vote with 228 ayes, 29 nays and two abstentions.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Muslims Discriminated Against for Demonstrating Their Faith

“Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf” Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination.

European governments must do more to challenge the negative stereotypes and prejudices against Muslims fuelling discrimination especially in education and employment, a new report by Amnesty International reveals today.

“Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf. Men can be dismissed for wearing beards associated with Islam,” said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination.

“Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes.”

The report Choice and prejudice: discrimination against Muslims in Europe, exposes the impact of discrimination on the ground of religion or belief on Muslims in several aspects of their lives, including employment and education.

It focuses on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland where Amnesty International has already raised issues such as restrictions on the establishment of places of worship and prohibitions on full-face veils. The report documents numerous individual cases of discrimination across the countries covered.

“Wearing religious and cultural symbols and dress is part of the right of freedom of expression. It is part of the right to freedom of religion or belief — and these rights must be enjoyed by all faiths equally.” said Marco Perolini.

“While everyone has the right to express their cultural, traditional or religious background by wearing a specific form of dress no one should be pressurized or coerced to do so. General bans on particular forms of dress that violate the rights of those freely choosing to dress in a particular way are not the way to do this.”

The report highlights that legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment has not been appropriately implemented in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Employers have been allowed to discriminate on the grounds that religious or cultural symbols will jar with clients or colleagues or that a clash exists with a company’s corporate image or its ‘neutrality’.

This is in direct conflict with European Union (EU) anti-discrimination legislation which allows variations of treatment in employment only if specifically required by the nature of the occupation.

“EU legislation prohibiting discrimination on the ground of religion or belief in the area of employment seems to be toothless across Europe, as we observe a higher rate of unemployment among Muslims, and especially Muslim women of foreign origin,” said Marco Perolini.

In the last decade, pupils have been forbidden to wear the headscarf or other religious and traditional dress at school in many countries including Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

“Any restriction on the wearing of religious and cultural symbols and dress in schools must be based on assessment of the needs in each individual case. General bans risk adversely Muslims girls’ access to education and violating their rights to freedom of expression and to manifest their beliefs.” Marco Perolini said.

The right to establish places of worship is a key component of the right to freedom of religion or belief which is being restricted in some European countries, despite state obligations to protect, respect and fulfil this right.

Since 2010, the Swiss Constitution has specifically targeted Muslims with the prohibition of the construction of minarets, embedding anti-Islam stereotypes and violating international obligations that Switzerland is bound to respect.

In Catalonia (Spain), Muslims have to pray in outdoor spaces because existing prayer rooms are too small to accommodate all the worshippers and requests to build mosques are being disputed as incompatible with the respect of Catalan traditions and culture. This goes against freedom of religion which includes the right to worship collectively in adequate places.

“There is a groundswell of opinion in many European countries that Islam is alright and Muslims are ok so long as they are not too visible. This attitude is generating human rights violations and needs to be challenged,” said Marco Perolini.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



Muslims Are Discriminated Against in Holland: Amnesty International

Muslims face discrimination in the Netherlands and other European countries which breaches their human rights, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The report, which focuses on the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and France, states the conclusions should not be taken to imply only Muslims are subject to religious discrimination.

And it stresses that criticism of Islam in line with freedom of speech principles is not the same as ‘specific discriminatory patterns’ against Muslims.

Nevertheless, Muslims do face discrimination, particularly in education and on the jobs market, the report said, adding that governments should do more to dispel misconceptions about their Muslim populations.

Schools

In terms of the Netherlands, the report singles out the case of a Muslim girl banned from wearing a headscarf to a Catholic school. The government should ensure educational establishments based on religious or political principles do not break human rights legislation, the report said.

The report also criticises the pending ban on the burqa, or face-covering Islamic garment, on public safety grounds. In particular, the report said the government has not taken the rights of women who face social exclusion into account when drawing up the ban.

In the Netherlands, some 5.5% of the population is classed as Muslim and this is expected to rise to 8% by 2030, the report says.

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



Norway: Witness Relates Trauma in Anders Behring Breivik Trial

Anders Behring Breivik arrived in court with his lawyers to hear the evidence against him Continue reading the main story

A security guard has described the trauma of seeing last July’s car bomb blast set off by Anders Behring Breivik at Norway’s government headquarters.

Tor Inge Kristoffersen told the Oslo court he watched on CCTV as a car parked and a man wearing what looked like a guard’s uniform got out.

Mr Kristoffersen said he zoomed in on the number plate before the vehicle exploded killing eight people.

Breivik has admitted the bombing and subsequent shootings on Utoeya island.

The police officer who co-ordinated the response to the explosion, Thor Langli, also took the witness stand and described how the bomb squad started to look for further bombs.

Mr Langli said the police were told a witness at the scene had seen a small car leaving the area, but he felt he could not take any officers away from the site to follow this up.

The number plate of the small car was reported at a fairly early stage, he said, but if CCTV footage had been relayed live to the police, this might have saved vital minutes and could have given them the opportunity to pursue it, he added.

Earlier, during his evidence, Mr Kristoffersen gave more details of the moment the bomb exploded: “Half of our screens, the images disappeared. There was a deep rumbling, the entire block shook, the ceiling bent like water.”

Mr Kristoffersen also spoke of one colleague who died in the blast, and of others who were no longer able to work as a result of the psychological effects of the bombing.

Another witness, civil engineer Svein Olav Christensen, spoke about the impact of the explosion.

He showed a picture of a 2m-wide hole created by the bomb that went straight down into the underground parking area.

Breivik emotionless

Breivik watched the witnesses in court without any visible emotion.

He spent the past week giving his own version of events, saying his plan was to kill as many people as possible.

He said he had hoped the car bomb would cause the whole government building to collapse.

After the explosion he went to Utoeya island where he killed a further 69 people at a Labour Party youth camp.

He denies criminal responsibility for the killings, saying he was defending Norway from multiculturalism.

The trial in Oslo will decide whether he is sane. A state psychiatric commission requested further clarification on the second of two psychiatric reports, which concluded he was sane and accountable for his actions.

The first report found him legally insane.

Depending on whether he is found sane or not, he faces either prison or committal to a psychiatric institution.

Breivik said he would do “anything to prevent” committal to a hospital.

Breivik was allocated five days in total to give evidence, with the entire proceedings expected to last 10 weeks.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: One Dead After Blast in Fredrikstad

An explosion ripped through the Mills food products plant in Fredrikstad on Monday, leaving at least one person dead and several injured. Emergency crews were still searching through the rubble Monday night.

Mills officials said they had accounted for their employees, but search and rescue crews using specially trained dogs continued their work in the event others were trapped in the ruins.

Extensive damage

The blast occurred late Monday afternoon and caused extensive damage to the plant, also to nearby buildings and homes on the eastern side of town. The large, sprawling plant of the food producer perhaps best known for its mayonnaise is located over the bridge from downtown Fredrikstad, along the street that turns into Oldtidsveien, an historic two-lane road running southeast that’s dotted by ancient sites featuring rock carvings and stone circles that resemble miniature Stonehenges.

The cause of the blast was unclear and Fredrikstad police were getting assistance from a bomb squad from Oslo. Even though the danger of further explosions was believed to be over, police set up a security zone around the plant as a precaution.

“We view the situation as under control, but we’re evaluating it constantly,” Sven Roger Gundersen of the Østfold Police District told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).

Blast linked to maintenance work

A Mills executive told NRK that a gas truck had been in the area to empty a gas tank and carry out some maintenance. The person confirmed to have been killed was involved in the maintenance work.

“When the gas tank was empty, something happened that we think set off the explosion,” factory chief Hilde Fløkstad told NRK. Police said a technical crew would determine the cause of the blast.

The dead person was identified as Dan Vigbjørn Larsen, age 62 and from Lunner in Hadeland. He worked for the company carrying out the maintenance work.

Three persons were sent to the local hospital in Fredrikstad. One had also been working on the maintenance project, while the two others were passersby. Their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Says Insanity Claims ‘Racist’

CONFESSED mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has vehemently defended his sanity after a forensic panel found flaws in a psychiatric report that declared him sane in the eyes of the law.

As the trial for Breivik’s bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people entered its second week, the far-right fanatic told a court that he was the victim of a “racist” plot to discredit his ideology. He said no one would have questioned his sanity if he were a “bearded jihadist”.

“I know I’m at risk of ending up at an insane asylum, and I’m going to do what I can to avoid that,” Breivik said.

Two psychiatric examinations conducted before the trial reached opposite conclusions on whether Breivik is psychotic — the key issue to be resolved during the trial, since the 33-year-old Norwegian had admitted to the deadly attacks.

But the second of those reports, which found him sane, has not yet been approved by the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine. On Monday, the panel highlighted several shortcomings in that assessment, and requested additional information from the two psychiatrists who wrote it.

In particular, the forensic board said it could not be established whether Breivik had adjusted his behaviour during the examination as part of a strategy to be declared mentally competent.

Paal Groendahl, a forensic psychologist who is not involved with the case but has followed the trial in court, said the panel’s queries underscore the difficulty in assessing Breivik’s state of mind.

“I don’t think it’s any closer to being resolved,” he said.

If found sane Breivik would face 21 years in prison, though he can be held longer if deemed a danger to society. If sentenced to psychiatric care, in theory he would be released once he’s no longer deemed psychotic and dangerous.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Witnesses Describe ‘War Zone’ After Oslo Bomb

A security guard and an explosives expert described in court on Tuesday the massive blast that rocked Oslo when Anders Behring Breivik bombed a government building last July, killing eight people.

Tor Inge Kristoffersen, a security guard in the Norwegian capital’s government quarter, told the court that on July 22nd he saw a white van park at the foot of the tower housing the offices of Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. He said he was in the operations centre in the basement of the building and was using surveillance camera images to check whether the van was authorized to be there.

“When I was zooming in on the number plate, the car exploded,” he testified, adding that “half of the images disappeared from our screens because the cameras had been destroyed in the explosion.” “There was a huge roar. We were so close that we did not hear a blast, but a roar, and we noticed the shockwave in the ceiling over us,” he said.

Kristoffersen, a former soldier who served in the Middle East and in the Balkans, continued to work in the government district after the attacks, and likened the area to “a war zone.”

In his testimony, Kristoffersen stressed that long-overdue construction was under way to block off traffic in the street outside the government building, but that in the meantime “illegal parking” was frequent in the area. “We chased cars away from there every day,” he said.

Svein Olav Christensen, a government explosives expert, meanwhile told the court that a reenactment and simulations showed that Breivik’s bomb had the energy equivalent of between 400 and 700 kilos of TNT. “The main charge is easy to make,” he said, adding though that “the detonator is more difficult.”

The 33-year-old confessed killer used fertilizer, diesel and aluminium to make his 950-kilo bomb, which killed eight people working in the building and passers-by and injured dozens more. Stoltenberg, who was working from his official residence that day, was not harmed in the attack.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Spain: Bilbao’s Guggenheim Continues to Divide

For Bilbao in the Basque Country, 2012 is a year of celebration. The world-famous Guggenheim museum there is now 15 years old. While some deride it as a symbold of gentrification, the “Guggenheim effect” is undeniable.

In the 1920s, the writer Kate O’Brien said that Bilbao was a place where no real tourist ever went. And that might have been true, even as recently as 15 to 20 years ago. But now the city is one of the biggest tourist magnets in Europe, largely because of the extraordinary building.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Stockholm Airport Bars Israeli Airline Over Security Inspection Methods

Swedish port refuses to allow Israeli methods of security inspections dictated by Shin Bet, which inlcude ethnic, personal profiling, extensive questioning.

Arkia has to stop flying to Stockholm because the Swedish capital’s international airport now refuses to allow Israeli methods of security inspections dictated by the Shin Bet security service, TheMarker learned on Wednesday. Thus, Stockholm’s airport joined those in Malmo, Sweden and in Copenhagen in refusing to allow Israeli security inspections, which involve ethnic and personal profiling, extensive questioning and selective inspections based on the perceived degree of risk to security.

Arkia, the only Israeli airline flying to Sweden, had to move its operations to Malmo and Stockholm this year after Denmark refused to permit Israeli security procedures at its airports last summer. Arkia elected to fly passengers to Sweden and take them by land to Denmark. Now this avenue is closed.

The foreign and transport ministries are working with the Shin Bet to resolve the dispute, especially since thousands of Israelis bought tickets to the region for summer.

“It seems from the international media that additional European countries waving the flag of civil rights and equality will refuse the Israeli security demands, which I’ve warned would happen,” said Arkia CEO Gadi Tepper. Arkia and other Israeli airlines would face serious difficulty if much of Europe is blocked to them, he said.

“We are talking with security authorities in Sweden and other countries where problems have surfaced, to understand the meaning of the new restrictions imposed on Israeli flights,” said the Transport Ministry, noting it was working with the Foreign Ministry, the embassy in Stockholm and Israeli security authorities.

“The Transport Ministry intends to continue allowing Israeli companies to fly to all destinations without restrictions, while providing for all aspects of security and safety,” it said…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Sweden Shows off Garbo, Bergman Banknotes

Sweden’s Riksbank on Tuesday released the long-awaited designs of new banknotes featuring the likes of Greta Garbo, Ingmar Bergman, Astrid Lindgren, and other cultural giants of the 20th century. The notes were designed by Göran Österlund, whose colourful “Journey of Culture” (Kulturresan) design was selected from among eight finalists.

Thursday’s presentation of the new designs by the Riksbank comes a year after the bank first announced the six 20th century Swedish icons whose profiles would grace the new bills.

The face of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman will adorn the new 200 kronor note, while children’s author Astrid Lindgren will be the new face on the 20 kronor note, replacing the popular Selma Lagerlöf.

Former United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld will feature on the 1,000 kronor note, opera singer Birgit Nilsson on the 500 kronor, film star Greta Garbo on the 100 kronor, and musician Evert Taube on the 50 kronor note.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Teen Boys Arrested After Filming Alleged Gang Rape

Stockholm police have arrested several teenage boys suspected of gang raping an underage girl and filming the act. The boys were arrested on Monday and taken in for questioning over the incident. “A preliminary investigation into aggravated child rape has been launched,” prosecutor Mikael Karlsson told the Expressen newspaper.

Karlsson refused to confirm how many boys were suspected for taking part in the rape, which is believed to have occured in a Stockholm suburb in late February or early March. He also refrained from divulging the ages of the suspects beyond saying that several were younger than 15-years-old, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden. “I can’t say how many people have been questioned. All who have asked for legal representation are younger than 15,” Karlsson told the paper.

According to Expressen, the boys are believed to have filmed the incident. The recording has since been obtained by police and constitutes the bulk of the evidence gathered against the boys. Because the matter involves a sex crime with both suspects and a victim under the age of 15, few details have yet to emerge about the case.

According to Expressen, a similar incident took place in 2010 in which a 14-year-old girl was raped by five young perpetrators who also filmed the attack. The boys were sentenced to youth community service and court ordered care after being convicted of aggravated rape and sexual molestation.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Prosecutor Pursues SVP Chiefs Over ‘Racist’ Ad

A Zurich prosecutor has initiated criminal proceedings against some of the top figures in the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) for infringement of anti-racism laws. Last August, an incendiary advertisement claiming that “Kosovars slash the Swiss” was released as part of the SVP’s campaign to “stop mass immigration”. Two Kosovar people made public complaints about the ads on the grounds that they discriminated against an entire ethnic group.

A criminal investigation was then launched in October last year, online news site 20 Minuten reported. The ad described an incident, which took place on August 15th 2011 at Interlaken, a tourist resort in the Bernese Alps. According to news reports, a Kosovar man killed a Swiss Alpine wrestler by cutting his throat with a knife.

Some newspapers refused to publish the ad in its original form but agreed to go to press with a toned down version that read: “A Kosovar slashes a Swiss”. However, the original ad was widely distributed online by the SVP as part of its initiative.

Now Zurich prosecutor Hans Maurer is opening criminal proceedings against some of the SVP’s top politicians for infringement of Switzerland’s anti-racism laws. Those listed in the proceedings include the SVP’s president Toni Brunner, vice president Christoph Blocher and parliamentary leader Adrian Amstutz.

Maurer now wants to find out how the party arrived at the controversial text. It is possible that several of those implicated will seek to rely on parliamentary immunity, which prevents a politician from having to answer charges where he can show a link between his work as a parliamentarian and the issue in question.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The Missionary Zeal of Germany’s Salafists

Salafists in Germany have attracted increasing attention in recent weeks with their campaign to hand out millions of free Korans. What, though, is their ultimate goal? Some sell Islamism like it is pop-culture and openly call for holy war, even under the watchful eye of the authorities.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Five Terror Suspects Held in Britain

LONDON — British police arrested five men Tuesday on suspicion of terror offences in Luton, in pre-planned raids.

The men, aged 35, 30, 24, 23 and 21, were arrested “on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism,” Scotland Yard police headquarters said.

They were arrested at five residential addresses in Luton, Bedfordshire, and were taken to a central London police station where they remain in custody.

The arrests by officers from the Counter-Terrorism Command were a part of a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation, Scotland Yard said.

The men were arrested at houses in the Bury Park area, which has been home to a large Muslim Pakistani community since the 1970s. It is also home to Luton Central Mosque, one of the first purpose-built mosques in Britain.

The local Bedfordshire Police force said the arrests were made by unarmed officers.

“Full consideration has been given to treating those arrested, and especially their families, with appropriate respect for cultural and religious identity as far as is possible,” a spokeswoman said.

Searches are being carried out at the five houses and are expected to take at least a day. The families of those arrested have been advised to find alternative accommodation.

“There is no danger to other nearby residents,” the spokeswoman said.

In recent years, Luton has emerged as a flashpoint for tensions between radical Islam and the far right.

Around 15 percent of the population of nearly 200,000 are Muslim.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



UK: Five Men Arrested in Luton on Terrorism Charges

Five men have been arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, Scotland Yard said.

Anti-terror police swooped on a series of different addresses before dawn as part of a ‘pre-planned, intelligence-led’ operation.

The men, aged 21, 23, 24, 25 and 30, were all arrested at separate homes in Luton this morning and have been taken to a central London police station for questioning.

Searches under the Terrorism Act 2000 are taking place at all five of the addresses and inquiries are ongoing, Scotland Yard said.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism command said: ‘Officers from the counter-terrorism command have today, Tuesday April 24, arrested five men on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

‘All five were arrested at separate residential addresses in Luton. They have been taken to a central London police station where they remain in custody.

‘The arrests were a part of a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation.

‘Search warrants were also executed under the Terrorism Act 2000 at five residential addresses in Luton in connection with this inquiry and searches are ongoing.’

Police said that there was no danger to nearby residents after their swoop on five homes in Luton as part of anti-terror raids.

Bedfordshire Police assisted with the early morning operation, which was led by Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command.

‘No roads have been closed and there is no danger to other nearby residents,’ said a spokesman for Bedfordshire Police.

‘Families of those people who have been arrested have been advised to find alternative accommodation while the searches go on to minimise inconvenience to themselves, and if necessary the police will assist them with this.’

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: In Breivik’s “War Zone” Luton, Fear — And Scorn

(Reuters) — Shouting taunts and trading expletives, a Muslim teenager and the leader of Britain’s most prominent anti-Islam nationalist group are seconds from a fight. “Why are you talking to this racist?” the youth asks a reporter walking with English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon in Luton, the British town cited as “war zone” with Islam by Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik at his trial. As a group of Muslim youngsters surrounds Lennon, another starts a heated discussion with him about Islamic religious law. Onlookers, fearful of trouble, peer out from down-at-heel shops in this small city in rural Bedfordshire, 35 miles (55 km) north of London, where the industries that once drew in large numbers of Asian immigrant workers have seen better days. The goading turns out to be bluster and Lennon leaves, unscathed but with abuse ringing in his ears. “This is what I’ve been telling you about,” he said as he walked off, arguing there were parts of Luton where non-Muslims could no longer venture. Breivik, justifying killing 77 people as part of a war to halt a Muslim takeover in Europe, has cited Luton, which he does not appear to have visited despite travelling to London some years ago, as a place of strife, fear and “Muslim no-go areas”.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Islamic School Will be ‘The Best’ Insists Head as Parents Rush to Apply for Places

IF the Al-Madinah School achieves a percentage of what its principal-in-waiting is predicting, then as an education centre it will be a force to reckon with. Andrew Cutts-McKay, who officially takes up the headship when the school opens in September, is passionate and animated about the new venture, whose culture and ethos “will match his own thinking”. According to Shazia Parveen, one of three trust board members behind the project, despite being a non-Muslim, Mr Cutts-McKay was “the best person for the job”. She said: “He came through a very rigorous process from an initial application pool of 15 candidates, including one from Saudi Arabia and another from Moscow. “But Andrew stood out because he was confident and clearly cared about the school, as well as wanting to achieve what we want to achieve here.”

Clearly, Mr Cutts-McKay is going to be the driving force behind the school’s day-to-day organisation and intends to be ready for whatever happens by always being available to parents and children alike. He has consciously chosen not to engage in point-scoring with the two main teaching unions who criticised the school — the National Union of Teachers and National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. Mr Cutts-McKay said: “It would have been easy to respond to their criticisms and get involved in back-biting. But I have been getting on with trying to make this school the best there is and to drive forward its ethos, which is based on Islam. It is an excellent moral code governed by respect, diversity and selflessness.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Mosque Health Clinics Could Stop Dozens of Stroke Deaths

LIFE-SAVING health checks were given to more than 100 people — on a bus outside Bolton Council of Mosques. They are part of a campaign, organised by NHS Greater Manchester, aimed specifically at South Asian people aged 50 or over to raise awareness of stroke. This group is more likely to develop high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol due to hereditary and dietary factors compared to the rest of the population — all risk factors in strokes. Research has shown South Asian people attend hospital threeand- a-half hours after the onset of symptoms, which is significantly longer than the admission time for white people.

Stroke affects up to 12,000 people annually in the North West, causing £2.3 billion to be spent on long-term disability each year. Janet Ratcliffe, director of the cardiac and stroke network, said: “Reducing the number of deaths and disabilities caused by stroke is a health priority and we’re particularly keen to address the issue amongst South Asian communities. The more people who know about stroke and its signs and symptoms the more people we can save.” Guest speakers included Lesley Jones, acting director of Public Health NHS Bolton and Dr Anis Ahmed, a stroke consultant from Oldham, who provided information about how to spot the signs of stroke and reduce its effects.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Secret Life of Shoe Bomber Saajid Muhammad Badat Funded by the Taxpayer

The British taxpayer has paid for a new home and funded the business interests of a convicted terrorist after he agreed to turn supergrass against al-Qaeda in a secret deal with the authorities, a court heard on Monday.

Saajid Muhammad Badat, 33, has been re-housed using money from the public purse and has been given money towards the cost of office space and education courses to help him find a new job. He even had his mobile phone and internet bills paid for by Scotland Yard. Details of the deal, which have been kept secret by the British government and police, only came to light as he gave evidence of a Bosnian-born US citizen accused of a New York subway suicide bomb plot. The disclosures follow accusations that the Home Office has mishandled the deportation of the extremist preacher Abu Qatada and will add to the row about the government’s plans to expand “secret justice” — where sensitive cases are heard in private.

Badat, who was sentenced to 13 years for an airline bomb plot in 2005, was freed just five years later after a secret court hearing authorised his formal agreement to become a co-operating witness. On Monday he admitted that his links to al-Qaeda were far stronger than previously known. Speaking by video-link from London in testimony filmed on March 29 this year, he told the US Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, that he was involved in another bomb plot involving a group of Malaysian terrorists. He also disclosed that he had planned attacks against Jewish targets in South Africa on behalf of al-Qaeda and travelled to Belgium to meet with potential martyr.

The court heard that Badat was personally instructed by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, ahead of the “shoe bomb” plot in 2001. He is expected to give evidence at Mohammed’s trial later this year. He was released in March 2010 but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) kept the fact of the plea deal secret until forced to announce it on the eve of Badat’s US testimony. Under questioning from US attorneys, Badat revealed further details of the deal. He said: “Upon release I have been provided accommodation and also funding for courses to assist with my reintegration into society.” Asked about the specifics of the deal Badat agreed that he had been given “job seekers allowance by the Metropolitan Police” and “financial assistance in relation to work space rent, development of your business” and help “obtaining additional qualifications to help your training”. He also agreed that the Metropolitan Police has “financially supported training courses for your chosen employment.” Badat told the court that he had found a new job, but did not elaborate on what it was.

Badat was also asked whether he had received “housing and tax benefits”, “travel costs to visit family” — some of whom are based in Gloucester — and “money to cover the cost of internet and mobile phone costs”. He agreed that all the funding had been given to him by the Metropolitan Police, saying that the US authorities, whom he is currently testifying on behalf of, have contributed nothing.

Disclosure of the deal will increase suspicions that important security cases with potential implications for nationals security are being kept secret from the public. Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, said last night: “It is in the public interest that the Home Office should disclose information of this kind will be relevant in our fight against terrorism. I am very disappointed that we had to wait for an American court to discover what is happening to someone in Britain.” The court heard that Badat, who had memorised the Koran by the age of 12, was so trusted by the al-Qaeda hierarchy he was allowed to stay at top secret locations used by bin Laden in Afghanistan. He told the court he was first enticed by Jihad after meeting the suspected terrorist Babar Ahmad and a group of extremists known as the Tooting Circle when he ran away from his Gloucester home to live in London at the age of 17.

In 2005 he was jailed after admitting to plotting to blow up an aeroplane with shoe bomber Richard Reid. Four years later, however, his 13 year sentence was reduced to 11 years after he agreed to turn “supergrass”. Badat is testifying against Adis Medunjanin, a terror suspect who is accused of plotting to blow up the New York subway system in a plot similar to the July 7 bombings in London. Scotland Yard has attempted to have sections of Badat’s evidence redacted and sought to ban publication of any recent images, including artists’ impressions, of him.

Badat told the court that he travelled to Afghanistan in 1999 and stayed until 2001, using the name Abu Isa al Pakistani and becoming heavily involved with al-Qaeda. He said that for two years of his stay he had been paid a salary of 1,000 Pakistani rupees a month (£7) from al-Qaeda and additionally was paid a further 1,000 Pakistani rupees a month by the Taliban for running a magazine on its behalf. Badat was in Afghanistan for three years in total and said he received up to eight months of terror training, injuring himself at one point. He listed several duties he carried out which included taking bomb making classes and transcribing speeches by bin Laden from Arabic into English. Badat said he has instructed up to 15 potential suicide bombers on how to make explosives. He said that he met Osama bin Laden on more than one occasion and also met with Abu Hafs al Masri, bin Laden’s number two. Al Masri had instructed him to carry out an operation which involved naming potential Jewish targets al Qaeda could attack in South Africa.

The court heard that Badat was personally briefed ahead of the mission by bin Laden. He said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who plotted the 9/11 attacks, also advised him ahead of the shoe bomb plot. He agreed to cooperate with the UK authorities about his own case, but refused to give evidence in other cases until 2008. He told the court that he was initially happy with the 13-year sentence he had been given in exchange for his co-operation. Badat is thought to have testified in the UK against approximately 18 other terrorists and hopes to testify against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when he faces a US military trial at Guantánamo Bay. On Monday, however it was revealed that after agreeing to co-operate fully with Scotland Yard in 2008, Badat told them he did not ever want to testify against Babar Ahmad. The court later heard he has no choice in who he testifies against and must give evidence against anyone if asked.

Badat was arrested in Britain in 2003 after he backed out of a 2001 plot to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam in a shoe bomb plot with Richard Reid. Reid has been convicted of the plot in the US. The court heard that Badat was personally briefed ahead of the mission by bin Laden. He told the court that bin Laden had told him: “The American economy is like a chain. If you break one link of the chain, the whole whole economy will be brought down. So after the September 11 attacks the [shoe bomb] operation will ruin the American aviation industry and in turn the whole economy will come down.” He said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 master, had advised him ahead of the shoe bomb plot. Badat revealed that during the preparation for the attacks he met with some Malaysian men plotting a similar attack and he had provided the men with a spare shoe bomb. But upon returning to the UK ahead of the attack Badat pulled out, telling the court he was afraid to carry out a suicide bomb attack. He was arrested two years later, in 2003, and admitted that even by then he had not abandoned the philosophy of al-Qaeda. He agreed to cooperate with the UK authorities in respect to his own case, but refused to help in cases against others until 2008. He told the court that his reasoning for this was that he was happy with the 13-year sentence he had been given in exchange for his co-operation.

But following news of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrests and charge, he offered to testify against the man he referred to as “KSM” — saying he believed he and others had been manipulated by the 9/11 ringleader. He said that he wanted to “make it apparent that I had relinquished my al-Qaeda views….This was the only way I could convince people I had done so.” He told the police that he now believed that al-Qaeda was a “bulls — — cause”. Badat also told the court that one reason he wanted to testify against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was because he believed that the 9/11 hijackers were victims of the atrocities too having been brainwashed by al-Qaeda. Asked whether he believed this, he said: “To a lesser extent, a much lesser extent, but yes.”

Asked whether he was currently testifying out of a “moral imperative” or because of his agreement with the British government, he replied “a bit of both”. Badat has previously told the court that he did not want to travel to the US to testify in person as he feared being arrested on outstanding charges relating to the shoe bomb plot. On Monday, pressed on this, he admitted that he had not been told by the US authorities he would be arrested upon landing in the country, but said that a Scotland Yard officer had told him this is what the US authorities intended to do. Badat is thought to be living in Gloucester or London following his release but is not in the witness protection scheme. He said that following his co-operation he received a “favourable parole hearing”. Badat said his original lawyer who helped negotiate his deal was Imran Khan. Khan no longer deals with the case.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Tower Hamlets: Dead and Incarcerated People Vote

by Andrew Gilligan

On Sunday I brought you news of alleged postal vote harvesting by Ken Livingstone’s backers in Tower Hamlets. Bengali voters in the borough’s Spitalfields ward told me how their postal voting papers were collected by workers for Gulam Robbani, a Ken-supporting candidate in a council byelection in Spitalfields on Thursday. This practice — which allows candidates to fill in their own votes on blank ballot papers, or destroy already-completed ballot papers which do not favour them — is prohibited by the Electoral Commission. Now I learn that a gentleman called Shahidul Islam, of Hanbury Street, visited a Spitalfields polling station in Thursday’s election. There’s only one problem: Shahidul Islam is currently in prison awaiting trial on charges of murder. And no, though remand prisoners can apply to vote, he hasn’t done so.

Another voter from Chicksands House has also voted in person. This voter is said by three sources to be dead — another person says, however, that he is merely seriously ill, which is why I’m not naming him. Whatever his state of health, he is certainly in no condition to get down to the polling station. I’ve spent the day looking at turnout figures in some of Spitalfields’ more postal-vote-heavy blocks and I hope to bring you the results of my inquiries tomorrow. Overall turnout in the ward last Thursday was 31 per cent — suspiciously high for a council byelection. The last time they had a council byelection in Tower Hamlets — also in Spitalfields, as it happens, eighteen months ago — turnout was less than 17 per cent. The postal vote papers have already gone out in Tower Hamlets for next week’s Boris v Ken mayoral election. With the latest poll suggesting a very close race, the implications of what appears to be happening in the borough are frightening.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Croatia: ‘Islam in Europe’ Conference Held in Zagreb

Two day International Scientific Symposium ISLAM IN EUROPE — POSITION AND PERSPECTIVE was held in Zagreb on the occasion of the 25 th. anniversary of the opening of the Zagreb Mosque. This Scientific Symposium was sponsored by the President of the Republic of Croatia, Ivo Josipovic. About the importance of the 18 th. International Scientific Symposium is best explained by the fact that more than 30 scientists from 15 countries from the region and the world took participation in two- day session. Beside the Islamic Community in Croatia, one of the organizers is a very active and respected Science Research Institute Ibn Sana who gave great support and contribution to the Symposium.

Among the participants dominates the opinion that meetings like this must have a specific message, which must continue to act even after meetings like this are finished. Good European Muslim is one who is humiliated because of his faith, but he must keep on smiling. Good European Muslim is one who puts up with the fact that his Prophet is humiliated and mocked in movies, cartoons and novels, or his child is being humiliated and mocked at school, or his Koran is being torn and burned, and he admits that he is the citizen of the third order. He even tells a joke against himself so that his European friends would laugh. Hopefully this International Scientific Symposium will send a positive message. People need to understand and get to know each other without any fear and without any prejudice.

[JP note: Gibberish.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Chaos Ahead of Egypt’s Presidential Elections

A month ahead of the vote, the situation remains unclear. After 10 candidates were blocked, tens of thousands, including the Muslim Brotherhood, protested against the ruling military council.

Since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) began governing Egypt over a year ago, the military council seems to have turned most of the population against it. The revolutionary youth are angry because they see the same old elites still determining the country’s future.

But older Egyptians are also dissatisfied. A recent survey shows a quiet majority of the population is looking for a new authoritarian figure as head of state — a response to months of chaos in the country.

Even the Salafists are upset — despite winning a surprising fifth of the votes during parliamentary elections — because their presidential candidate was denied. The Muslim Brotherhood long withheld criticism of the military council but now publicly expresses their dissatisfaction. Last Friday, members of the group stood for the first time in many months together with liberal and young protestors at Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand various political reforms.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Egypt’s Search for a Leader Plunges Into Chaos

Despite its victory in parliamentary elections, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has been weakened in the race to elect a successor to former President Hosni Mubarak, after its two most promising candidates were disqualified. Meanwhile ordinary Egyptians, who care more about making a living than about religion, are looking for a strong leader for the country.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Egypt: Election Law Changes, Mubarak’s Last PM Out

New rules for presidential candidates in force today

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, APRIL 24 — The last prime minister in office under Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, Ahmad Shafik, has been excluded in from the presidential race following the changes in the law taking effect today. The definitive list of candidates will be released this Thursday.

Shafik is the last in a series of well-known candidates excluded from the presidential elections, the first round of which has been set for May 23 and 24.

The Egyptian election committee has already removed the main candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, Khaiter El-Shater, the Salafi candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail (whose supporters have been occupying Tahrir Square for the past two days to protest the decision) and the former head of Egyptian intelligence and Vice President to Mubarak in the last days of the regime, Omar Suleiman.

The candidates who appear more likely to win are former Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, Abdel Monein Abdel Fotouh (moderate Islamist who left the Muslim Brotherhood) and Mohamed Morsi, one of the main members of the Brotherhood whose candidature was presented as the second choice in the event of El Shater being excluded from the race.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Egypt: Cinema Star’s Sentence Upheld, Insulting Islam

Adel Imam accused by Salaphite lawyer for film ‘Terrorist’

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, APRIL 24 — A Cairo court has confirmed the three-month prison sentence for Egyptian cinema star Adel Imam for having insulted Islam. The actor was found guilty in the first instance in his absence on an accusation presented by a Salaphite lawyer.

A particular target of the case was the film ‘The Terrorist’, in which Imam has the role of an Islamic fundamentalist who ends by rebelling against his group and is killed by them. Also criticised was the play ‘The Leader’.

Imam also had a role in the filming of the book by Alaa el Aswani, ‘Yacoubian House’.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: Corruption and Nepotism Like in the Past, Blogger

Parties in power have changed nothing, Leena Ben Mhenni

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS — Leena Ben Mhenni arrives at the appointment in front of a Tunisian café in the centrally-located Rue Bourghiba and looks around warily, as if afraid of being followed. The tiny, strong-willed 28-year-old Muslim girl is one of the most well-known faces of the Tunisian uprising in her home country and abroad. She was the blogger who followed the first protests against Ben Ali’s dictatorship first hand and reported on them to the world, speaking out against the regime’s corruption and violence and describing its end. Over a year later, while the Constituent Assembly is trying to draw up a road map for the future, Leena bitterly claims that “in reality nothing has changed. To the contrary: the situation is even worse than when Ben Ali was in power.” She told ANSAmed that “it is true that the people have shed their fear and express their opinions more freely, something that was impossible during the 23 years of the regime. However, the situation in general has not actually changed. When young people took to the streets in December 2010 and January 2011, they called for work, the fight against corruption and nepotism.

With Ennahdha (the moderate Islamic party) and other parties in power, corruption and nepotism have returned and nothing has been done about unemployment.” While the transitional government “cannot even manage to keep Salafi fundamentalists under control”, noted the blogger, “the police have instead resumed using strong-armed tactics on demonstrators calling for transparency and democracy. “Exactly like in the times of Ben Ali. I would never have imagined finding myself once again in this situation,” said Leena.

Scenes from a distant past were repeated a few weeks ago, “when security forces used truncheons and even stones to beat the protestors gathered to celebrate the ‘Martyrs of the Revolution’ on April 9. I was also beaten. Three policemen held onto me while another bludgeoned me on the head and back. They even groped me to humiliate me at the sexual level, touching me all over my body in the middle of Tunis, in front of everyone,” she said. These are tough times for young bloggers. There isn’t censorship any longer, but Leena said that “militants paid by government forces manage sites on which they slander and spread false information”. Those who continue to fight on the media for democracy are often taken to court on “trumped-up charges”, claims the activist. As for herself personally (she was also a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, later given to a Yemeni activist alongside two women from Liberia), she said that she “is not afraid”, despite having been threatened and included on a list of people to eliminate by a number of Muslim extremists. “I have lost my personal life,” she said. “Everything is being watched. I am attacked and insulted, targeted.” Meanwhile a huge man wearing a baseball cap recognises her on the street and begins making fun of her, kissing her hand and insisting that she do the same to him. “If you want equality between men and women, why don’t you kiss my hand?,” he continues to repeat. The blogger is embarassed. “See how it is? In any case, I assure you that I will not stop and I will continue to tell the world that ‘elections’ do not automatically mean ‘democracy’ here.”

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Hamas Leadership Shifts to Haniyeh, Press

‘Moderates’ out, Meshaal’s ‘reconciliation’ line defeated

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, APRIL 24 — The leadership of the Palestinian Islamic faction in the Gaza Strip may soon become even more radical, with imminent changes in store. Anonymous sources within Hamas have been reported by the online version of the Israeli Haaretz newspaper as saying that a secret vote for the top positions of the group had taken place a few days ago, appointing as the new leader of the movement Ismail Haniyeh (Gaza’s prime minister) in the place of Khaled Meshaal (representative of the diaspora), signalling the defeat of the more pragmatic candidates.

According to these sources, the choice of Haniyeh seals the win for the Gaza nomenklatura, less inclined towards the reconciliation agreements signed by Meshaal over the past few months with the moderate head of the National Palestinian Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas and his recent statements (less aggressive than usual) towards the peace process with Israel.

And with it, that of Hamas’s military wing. Within the leadership are such figures as Mohamed Ali Jabari (head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigade, the armed faction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip) and other militia heads such as Yehia Sanwar, one of the prime suspects behind the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Ghilad Shalit.

Also part of this new group is Gaza’s ideologist Mahmud Al-Zahar, whose words strongly oppose the reconciliation peace process with Al-Fatah, the more moderate party led by Mahmoud Abbas now present only in the West Bank government after the violent split within the Palestinian front in 2007.

It seems that people have been left out who are generally considered to represent Hamas’ moderate side, such as Razi Hamed, Salah Al-Bardawil (one of the reconciliation negotiators) as well as the English-speaking ‘diplomat’ Ahmed Yusef.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Israel Ready to Strike Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Says Israeli Armed Forces Chief of Staff

Lt Gen Binyamin Gantz spoke to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. This will be a crucial year. As Iran’s nuclear threat must be stopped, Israel is preparing for a possible conflict.

Tel Aviv (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Israel is ready, if necessary, to strike Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, Israeli Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lt Gen Benny Gantz said in an interview with top Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. For him, the year 2012 will be critical to halt what Israel and much of the international community believe is an Iranian nuclear arms programme. “We think that a nuclear Iran is a very bad thing, which the world needs to stop and which Israel needs to stop-and we are planning accordingly,” Gantz said on the eve of Israel’s 64th anniversary as a state.

An attack against Iran’s nuclear plants has been openly discussed in Israel for years. In the past few months, papers have carried both pro- and anti-attack views.

For the Jewish state and much of the international community, Iran’s nuclear programme has a hidden military component. Conversely, Tehran has always claimed that it is peaceful in nature.

For now, the United States has kept to a diplomatic strategy, coupled with ever tightening sanctions.

“Our intelligence assessment asserts that given the strategic reality and instability in the region, the chance of deteriorating to a war is higher than in the past,” Gen Gantz said in the interview. “There are no indications of war, but the chances of the situation deteriorating into one are higher than in the past.”

In view of a possible wider conflict, Israel’s Defence Forces are preparing to respond to threats from Lebanon and Gaza as well.

“I can’t promise no missiles will be landing here. They will be falling, many of them. It won’t be a simple war, neither on the frontlines nor ion the home front,” he said. “However, I don’t advise anyone to test us on this front.”

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



Netanyahu Renews Alarm, Far West in Sinai

Terrorist traffic with help from Iran, Egyptian concerns

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, APRIL 24 — Israel is viewing the situation in Sinai with increasing alarm against a background of the turbulence in post-Mubarak Egypt. The Israeli government believes that over recent months, the peninsula on Egyptian territory and its borders have been turning into an open and lawless area, roamed by the left-overs of terrorist organisations of every hue. Speaking in an interview on military radio today, Isreal’s Premier Benyamin Netanyahu stressed how the military junta in power in Cairo has been in contact with Israel about the issue and is committed to defusing the time bomb.

“Sinai is turning into a kind of Wild West,” Mr Netanyahu claimed, saying that within the area “terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda are roaming about, and with help from Iran are using the place for arms trafficking, transport and planning attacks on Israel”.

Tensions have risen along this border over recent months, with shootings and attempted raids, which have led, as was the case in 2011, to the killing of eight Israelis north of Eilat.

According to Mr Netanyahu, Israel, which has authorized the deployment of Egyptian battalions into the area in violation of peace accords between the two countries, “is acting” to tackle the threat by strengthening its frontiers. But also by “keeping permanent contacts with the current authorities” in Egypt, who are also “concerned” about what is afoot in Sinai.

This point appears to come as a nod towards Cairo, which just yesterday called for clarification of an opinion attributed by a newspaper to the country’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, according to whom the new Egypt risks turning into a “worse danger than Iran” for Israel.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Lebanon: Tyre Bombing Connected to Sale of Liquor, Not UNIFIL

BEIRUT: The latest bomb explosion to strike a restaurant in Tyre appears to be connected to a spate of attacks against outlets selling alcohol rather than another attempt to strike at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The bomb, which according to security sources caused considerable damage, wounded at least five people when it exploded at midnight in an elevator on the fourth floor of a building where the Nocean restaurant is located. UNIFIL has been bracing for another attack given that it has been more than four months since the last bombing to target the peacekeeping force when a bomb exploded beside a jeep carrying French soldiers near Tyre, wounding five of them. The rate of threat warnings received by UNIFIL from various sources remains high, reflecting general security concerns in Lebanon mainly as a result of tensions emanating from the crisis in Syria. One recent warning that was taken seriously was a plan to attack a French UNIFIL convoy between Damour and Beirut. The target was thought to be a bus carrying soldiers on troop rotation at the end of their tour. The perpetrators were suspected to be militants from Ain al-Hilweh.

Prior to Sunday night’s bomb attack in Tyre, the peacekeeping force was warned of a non-specific attack being planned against “officers” which led some to speculate it could refer to an attempt to kill off-duty soldiers in Tyre. However, the bombing of the restaurant appears to be connected to the rash of attacks against shops and restaurants selling alcohol. The last one occurred on Dec. 28. The perpetrators of these alcohol-related bomb attacks remain unknown, although Sunni Islamists have been cited as the chief suspects. The bombings echo a campaign in the late 1990s in the area of Sidon and Iqlim al-Kharroub when members of Osbat al-Ansar, the Salafist jihadist group based in Ain al-Hilweh, bombed several off-licenses.

Tyre, however, has a reputation for a laid-back easy going existence, a reflection of its pluralistic community composed of Shiites, Christians and Sunnis. The laissez faire attitude of Tyre’s residents is one reason why the Amal Movement has retained its popularity against the more austere Hezbollah. But the bombings in Tyre appear to have coincided with the gradual increase in a Salafist presence in the Palestinian refugee camps in the vicinity of the town, particularly Rashidiyeh. One group alleged to have emerged in Rashidiyeh, according to security sources, includes individuals wanted in connection with a bungled bomb attack against UNIFIL at the Qasmiyeh bridge north of Tyre in July 2007. The group is composed of some 10 to 20 members most of whom are thought to have previously belonged to other groups based in Ain al-Hilweh such as Fatah al-Islam, Osbat al-Ansar and Harakat Islamiyya al-Mujahidda. Rashidiyeh is under the control of the Fatah faction and surrounded by villages loyal to Hezbollah making the camp a less than secure base for the emergence of an active cell of Al-Qaeda-inspired militants. Nonetheless, residents of the camp say that there is a small and quiet Salafist presence in the camp based around one of the mosques. It remains to be seen whether this presence is a concerted attempt to establish a militant cell in Rashidiyeh to carry out attacks or is simply an example of proselytizing by peaceful Salafists.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Turkish Airline Courts Israelis With Cheap Flights

(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL, APRIL 24 — The recent drop in the number of Israeli tourists traveling to Turkey and the ongoing diplomatic rift between the two countries has not stopped Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines from announcing Tel Aviv as its newest destination. As Turkish dailies reported quoting Israel Travel website, the low-cost air carrier is set to launch its Istanbul-Tel Aviv route on June 18. Tickets, which have already gone on sale, are to start at 69.99 USD one way, including taxes and fees. The airline is to operate six weekly flights each way.

Travelers wishing to continue to destinations beyond Istanbul are given the option to purchase the additional flight for a moderate fee. Despite the fact that ties between the two countries reached a historic low following an Israeli army raid on a Turkish Gaza-bound maritime flotilla in May 2010, and the subsequent expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Ankara, Turkey continued to woo Israelis at the annual International Mediterranean Tourism Market in Tel Aviv earlier this year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Russia


On the Way Out, Medvedev Vows Reforms

Dmitry Medvedev hands the Russian presidency next month back to his hawkish mentor, Vladimir Putin. Yet despite giving up his office, he has vowed to push for more liberalization in the economy and politics. Outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev summed up his four years in office on Tuesday as he prepares to take over as prime minister, vowing to push for more economic and political liberalization.

Medvedev’s speech to the State Council, televised across the country, comes two weeks ahead of current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. The swap of offices is widely seen as a cynical formality, as Putin has been the dominant figure in Russian politics for more than a decade.

“The development of civil and economic freedoms is my primary objective,” Medvedev told a meeting of Russia’s political elite at the Kremlin. “Everyone needs freedoms — this is an axiom.” Medvedev promised to submit a list of state-owned enterprises that could be privatized, not to raise taxes on businesses and to fulfill “everything that was promised” while he was president. “The state’s intervention in the economy should be minimal and transparent,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Afghanistan: Soldier’s Kit Stops Taliban Bullets Dead

A British soldier has spoken of the moment his body armour saved him from a Taliban bullet fired from an AK47 rifle. Trooper Tom Thorne, 20, from the Queen’s Royal Hussars, was shot in the side by an enemy fighter while on operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The 7.62mm bullet struck one of the side plates of his body armour, which stopped the round completely. Trooper Thorne, who was providing overwatch for an IED clearance team, said: “I was lying on the roof of a compound building. We came under fire but obviously cover was pretty limited up on the roof. “I knew instantly that I’d been hit — it felt like a very hard punch in the ribs,” he continued. “The body armour is pretty heavy, especially when combined with all the other kit you are carrying, but it clearly works as it’s supposed to. I just couldn’t believe that the small side plate could stop a 7.62mm bullet at fairly close range — it is very reassuring for all of us.” C Company of the Queen’s Royal Hussars were taking part in Operation Zamary Takhta — an IED clearance operation — in a hostile region of the Lashkar Gah area, when the incident happened.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Afghanistan: UK Troops Expose Bomb-Making Mosque

British troops in Afghanistan have helped uncover 250 kilograms of explosives and bomb-making equipment in Helmand province. Members of 12 Brigade Reconnaissance Force were supporting Afghan soldiers in an operation which also yielded a large number of pressure plates and other bomb making components. The Light Dragoons make up much of the Force along with 12 other British units. As part of an Afghan-led operation intelligence reports prompted a swoop on a Nahj-e-Saraj Mosque being used as an IED bomb making factory. According to Task Force Helmand the raid caught the insurgents off guard with freshly made tea and flip flops left behind as they fled. Explosives and detonators were destroyed at the site while some ready made devices were taken to Camp Bastion for analysis.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Female Circumcision Anger Aired in India

NEW DELHI: Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.

The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God. “We claim to be modern and different from other Muslim sects. We are different but not modern,” Bano, a 21-year-old law graduate who is angry about what was done to her, told AFP in New Delhi. She vividly remembers the moment in the party when the aunt pounced with a razor blade and a pack of cotton wool. While the sect bars other Muslims from its mosques, it sees itself as more liberal, treating men and women equally in matters of education and marriage. The community’s insistence on “Khatna” (the excision of the clitoris) also sets it apart from others on the subcontinent. “If other Muslims are not doing it then why are we following it?” Bano says. For generations, few women in the tightly-knit community have spoken out in opposition, fearing that to air their grievances would be seen as an act of revolt frowned upon by their elders. But an online campaign is now encouraging them to join hands to bury the custom.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Pakistan: Grand Ulema Convention Demands End to Vulgarity

KARACHI: Jamiat Ittehad-e-Ulema Pakistan (JIUP) Chief Maulana Abdul Malik has said that evil forces had come together against Islam and it was imperative that the entire Muslim Ummah stood united to combat the evil forces bent upon tarnishing the Islamic norms and values by promoting nudity and obscenity. He expressed these views while addressing the Grand Ulema Convention at the Idara Noor-e Haq on Sunday. He further said that evil forces wanted to disparage the Islamic mores, however, the Ulema of the Ummah would never allow this to happen and continue struggle for the prevalence and protection of Islamic values. The entire nation carries responsibility to boycott the promoters of nudity and vulgarism through commercials, billboards and electronic media. It was the sole responsibility of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to ensure complete blockage of such immodest commercials and initiate stern action against those involved in promoting the menace. Malik in his address said that the anti-Islam forces wanted to impose culture of vulgarity and tarnish the modest culture of Islam. The increasing vulgarity in society is a result of the lack of Islamic rule, he added.

[…]

[JP note: Some might think that Islam itself was vulgar.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Pakistan and Iran Are Accused of Exerting Influence on the Afghan Media

Iran and Pakistan are accused of pursuing their own interests in Afghanistan by influencing the media. Hamid Karzai’s government has now slammed the practice.

Afghanistan boasts some 170 private radio stations, 60 television channels and 100 newspapers and magazines. But few of them can finance themselves and much of the funding comes from abroad, as was recently revealed by a National Directorate of Security (NDS) report.

At a press conference, NDS spokesman Lutfallah Mashal was unusually concrete in his criticism. “For about a month now, the television channel Tamadon (“Progress”) has been broadcasting reports, which supposedly tell the truth about crimes committed by NATO and US soldiers in Kandahar. But the fact is they have been made available to the channel by Iranian sources for propaganda purposes.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Far East


Report Says China Policy is Stirring South China Sea Dispute

An International Crisis Group report blames Chinese structures for the failure to resolve South China Sea dispute. It adds that regional nationalism is exacerbating the tension.

The territorial dispute over the islands, atolls, shoals, reefs and sandbars of the South China Sea goes back decades. Even though most of the islands are uninhabited, the region, which straddles several key shipping lanes, is thought to be extremely rich in natural resources.

In 2009, tension rose again when Beijing presented a “nine-dotted line” (also known as the “U-shaped line” or “nine-dash map”), to the UN to officially lay claim to the region. Chinese sources say the document dates back to 1947. Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia officially registered their protest.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Armed Groups in Northern Mali Raping Women

NIAMEY , Apr 24, 2012 (IPS) — Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since the beginning of year, expelling all government troops from the region.

According to Corrine Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, who is currently on a mission in Mali, there have been reports of rape and sexual violence taking place in towns and villages across the region. “We’re very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north,” Dufka told IPS. “Since rebel groups consolidated their control of the northern territory they call the Azawad, Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of rape and many others cases in which girls and women have been abducted from their homes, towns and villages, and very likely sexually abused.” Dufka reports that most of the abuses have been, “perpetrated by rebels from the MNLA and to a lesser extent Arab militias allied to them.” The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Mali: Al Qaeda: Algerian Diplomats Soon to be Freed

(AGI) Bamako — The seven Algerian diplomats kidnapped by al Qaeda terrorists in Gao, Mali, will be released soon, A spokesperson for the militants of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) stated “We have agreed to (their) release,” adding “we made an agreement with our brothers from Ansar Dine.” The latter is the Muslim fundamentalist group shares with the Tuareg the control over most of Mali.

Previously, a security official involved with the negotiation had already confirmed that Ansar Dine was fully included in the process.

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



South Sudan Leader Says Khartoum Has Declared War

Khartoum has declared war on South Sudan, according to the South’s leader. His comments came as the violence between the two countries intensified despite international calls for restraint.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir said Tuesday that Sudan had declared war on his country. He made the comments during a visit to China to boost ties between Juba and Beijing. Kiir told his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, that his trip came at “a very critical moment for the Republic of South Sudan, because our neighbor in Khartoum has declared war on the Republic of South Sudan.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sudan: Muslims Burn Down Catholic Church in Sudan

Hundreds of Muslims incinerated a Catholic church complex in the capital Khartoum amid growing hostilities between the Arab-dominated Muslim government of Sudan and the newly independent, predominantly Christian nation of South Sudan. A mob of several hundred shouting insults at southerners torched the church in Khartoum’s Al-Jiraif district Saturday, The Associated Press reported. The church complex, which included a school and dormitories, was mostly used by southerners. Fire fighters could not put out the fire, according to witnesses.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Panama Denies Lavitola Corruption Allegations

Berlusconi aide suspected of illegal prison contracts, bribes

(ANSA) — Rome, April 24 — Panamanian Security Minister Jose’ Raul Mulino on Tuesday denied allegations that his government engaged in corrupt contracts with Berlusconi associate Valter Lavitola.

“There was no corruption,” he said in Rome, “neither with contracts nor with prison construction. And there was not any involvement or criminal intent on the part of our officials”. Lavitola, who returned to Italy last week after living for over six months in South America as a fugitive of Italian justice, is being investigated for alleged corruption with Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli and his government regarding contracts for the construction of prisons in the Central American country.

“Lavitola was brought to Panama by Silvio Berlusconi,” said Mulino. “This is how things are done in such instances.

President Martinelli treated him with respect given he was the premier’s envoy”. The security minister also denied accusations that Lavitola, acting as an alleged middleman for Italian defense giant Fineccanica, “could have offered bribes or a helicopter, as it’s been said, as a gift to Martinelli”. Lavitola, the former editor of daily newspaper L’Avanti!, is under multiple investigations.

Prosecutors say he bribed a witness to lie about Berlusconi’s alleged ‘bunga bunga’ sex parties.

He is also suspected of criminal association related to the use of Italian public funds for the media along with several other people, including Sergio De Gregorio, a Senator with Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Migrants: Council of Europe, Report on Mediterranean Deaths

Blame for tragedy placed on Italy, other countries and NATO

(ANSAmed) — STRASBOURG, APRIL 24 — The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has approved with 108 in favour out of a total of 151 the report which places blame on Italy and other European countries (such as Spain) as well as NATO for the death of 63 migrants in the Mediterranean in March 2011. In voting on the report, the assembly rejected all of the amendments presented by PPE representatives of the Italian delegation which aimed to eliminate part of the text in which Italy (as the first country to have received the call for help) was to be held responsible for assistance coordination. This is the reason for which 9 of the 13 members of the Italian delegation in the chamber voted against the report by the Dutch parliamentarian Tineke Strik. “With this report a precedent has been set establishing that the first country to receive an SOS has the duty to provide rescue assistance,” underscored Luigi Vitali (PDL), president of the Italian delegation, adding that “in any case this is not a principle contained in any regulation in force”. According to its sponsor, the regulation exists but has no binding value.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Senate Dems Pushing Bill to Block Arizona Immigration Law if Supreme Court Upholds It

Senate Democrats are pushing new legislation aimed at nullifying Arizona’s controversial immigration law — just in case the Supreme Court, which hears the case Wednesday, upholds the policy.

The proposal, announced Tuesday by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would stand virtually no chance of passing in the Republican-controlled House. But it marks the latest preemptive challenge by Democrats to a high-stakes Supreme Court decision.

The immigration case arrives at the high court Wednesday just weeks after the justices heard arguments in the multi-state challenge to the federal health care overhaul. Though the justices are not expected to rule in that case until summer, President Obama had cautioned the “unelected” judges against overturning his landmark domestic policy accomplishment — claiming such a move would be “unprecedented.”

Schumer’s fallback option on the Arizona immigration case holds a similar message. If the high court upholds the law, the congressional proposal would be a direct rebuke to that decision.

“Immigration has not and never has been an area where states are able to exercise independent authority,” Schumer said Tuesday at a Capitol Hill hearing, where he announced he would introduce the proposal should the Supreme Court “ignore” the “plain and unambiguous statements of congressional intent” and uphold the Arizona law.

He said the proposal would only allow states to arrest illegal immigrants if they are operating under an “explicit agreement” with Washington and are being supervised by federal officials. Plus he said the proposal would preempt state governments from enacting their own employment verification laws.

“States like Arizona and Alabama will no longer be able to get away with saying they’re simply helping the federal government … to enforce the law when they are really writing their own laws and knowingly deploying untrained officers with the mission of arresting anyone and everyone who might fit the preconceived profile of an illegal immigrant.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Spain: Health Cuts for Non-Regular Immigrants

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 24 — Irregular immigrants in Spain have received a hard blow with cuts for them in health expenses.

As written today in the “Boletin Oficial del Estado” (BOE) the official Spanish government journal, these people will remain without their health card from the August 31 should they not be able to prove their contribution to the national insurance. Up until now foreigners only had to sign up at the local registry office to obtain the card which entitles you to a basic medical service. However, government sources claim that any immigrant will continue to have access to Emergency and First Aid, especially minors and pregnant women who will continue having full access to the healthcare system as the law states. According to a survey published today by El Pais it is calculated that 150,000 cards will be terminated should these immigrants be unable to prove their enrolment with the national insurance and the proof of tax payment in the country. The average savings in health are estimated to be around 250 million euros instead of the 500 million initially predicted by PM Mariano Rajoy’s government. At the moment there are 459,946 foreigners registered at the local councils, of which the majority (306,477) are EU residents who are not obliged to sign up at the foreigners’ registry office and who therefore are excluded from the decree. At the same time the decree states that “the administrative bodies dealing with immigration will be able to communicate to the National Insurance Institute the information necessary to prove the status of the immigrant also without the person’s consent.” The new law contains “urgent measures to guarantee the sustainability of the national health system”, with which the government is aiming to reduce by 7 billion euros a year in order to make this year’s mark of 5.3% GDP set by Brussels. It also introduces grants for chemist purchases, that being 10% for pensioners, up to 60% for salaries over 100,000 euros a year — and the payment of prosthesis, dietary products and non urgent health transport which are considered to be added services paid by the user. Autonomous communities will have up to June 30 to change their financial output to the new decree. Protests against these restrictions to healthcare for immigrants in an irregular position have come from associations such as SOS Racismo who calls the decree “unconstitutional” and pose the threat of increasing “Social exclusion and conflict”. The State federation of associations for immigrants and refugees considers the health cuts for foreigners to be “an aggression” and reminded that this minority is the one that makes less use of healthcare and medicine compared to the rest of Spaniards.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Monasteries Should Take in Asylum Seekers: Priest

Monasteries should offer accommodation to asylum seekers, Catholic priest Andreas Rellstab believes, but his proposal has met with resistence from other clerics. “For us as a Christian community, it’s a shame that no one wants to take in the asylum seekers,” Rellstab told the Catholic television programme “Das Wort zum Sonntag” (‘Sunday Word’).

The 46-year-old Swiss priest argued that there were plenty of places and facilities available, with the numbers of people living in monasteries dropping all the time, newspaper Blick reported.

But the proposal has received very little support. “Of course we have the space. But they would not fit into our community,” Franciscan monk Rene Fox told the newspaper. Sister Rut-Maria Buschor of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Andreas in Sarnen, near Luzern, is also against the idea.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120423

Financial Crisis
» 25 Signs That Middle Class Families Have Been Targeted for Extinction
» France 2012: Hollande Now to Reassure EU
» IMF Doubles Its Funds, Warns Europe
» Italian Stocks Down After Dutch Premier Resigns
» Italy Could Balance Budget by Next Year, Bank of Italy Says
» Nigel Farage: Euro Break-Up Inevitable, Just a Question of How
» Qatar Royal Family Member Buys Greek Island
» Spain: Economy in Recession, Unemployment at 24%
» The Coming Chaos From the Obama-Soetoro Playbook
» The Spanish Dilemma: Euro’s Fate Hinges on Austerity in Madrid
» There is Not Going to be a Solution to Our Economic Problems on the National Level
» Tunisia: Road to Recovery Still Long
» US and EU Attack Swiss in Economic War: Ermotti
 
USA
» “We Can’t Wait”: Obama Embraces Executive Orders to Bypass Congress
» How Much Skepticism Can the Climate Take?
» John Edwards Goes on Trial Over Mistress Money
» Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Training: Their Target is the Tea Party
» One-World Governance Policies Begin in New Rochelle, NY
» Political Extortion of America
» Private Spaceflight Company Spacex Has Lofty Goal: Help Save Humanity
 
Europe and the EU
» Anti-Jihadist Raid Through Italy, Italian Convert Arrested
» Bossi Calls for Lega Nord to Stay United and Fix Problems
» Center-Right Czech Coalition Dissolves Itself
» Dutch Prime Minister Submits Government’s Resignation
» Europe Rings Alarm Bell After French Far-Right Success
» Foreign Flags Hurt Our Feelings: Swiss Patriots
» German Military Rethinks Exporting Democracy
» Germany: First Wolf in Rhineland for 120 Years Shot Dead
» Germany: Chinese PM Opens Hannover Trade Fair
» German Scientists Use Fungi to Clean Soil, Water
» Italian Islamist Arrested, 10 More Probed
» Italy: Profumo on Education: No Time for Reforms, We Need Stability
» Italy: Lega MP Maroni Calls for Unity to Weather the Crisis
» Lars Man Standing, Final Score
» Norway Killer Picked Victims Who Had “Leftist” Look
» Norway: Breivik Offers Apology to Non-Political Victims
» Norway: Breivik Apologises to the ‘Non Politcal’ Victims
» Norway: Oslo Muslims Pained by Breivik’s Testimony
» Sarkozy Says Le Pen Supporters Must be Respected
» Spanish Royalty in Crisis After King’s Antics
» Storms to Hit Central and Northern Italy Then Intense Heat
» Sweden: ‘Laziness is Not a Disability’: Council
» Switzerland Home to Kim Jong-un ‘For Nine Years’
» UK: Pakistani Students Raped Woman, 20, After She Fell Asleep on Night Bus on Way Home From Night Out
» UK: Renovation Tax Will Harm Our Churches, Warns Hurd
» UK: Terror Case Lawyers Who Fight Fanatics’ Deportation Land £110m Bill in Legal Aid
» UK: Takeaway Boss ‘Tried to Recruit Girls as Young as 12 to Work as Prostitutes in His Brothel’Azad Miah ‘Hounded and Stalked Girls to Have Sex for Money’
» UK: Western Allies of MI6 ‘Kept in Dark’ Over Mosque Sting Plan
 
North Africa
» Egypt Stops Gas Supplies to Israel
» Egypt Scraps Gas Deal With Israel
» Tunisia: Director Mourad Ben Cheikh, Too Many Foreign Funds
 
Middle East
» Bomb Blasts in Blue Helmet Hang-Out in Lebanon
» Turkey: Great Ambitions But Lacking Resources, Study
» Turkey: Fazil Say Contemplates Exile, ‘Insulted as Atheist’
» Yemen: Army Offensive Kills 16 Al Qaeda Militants
 
Russia
» Moscow: Tens of Thousands With Kirill in Defense of the Faith
 
South Asia
» India Shooting Ship Release Delayed
» India’s Top Court Admits Italy’s Appeal on Marines
» Indian Military Makes Strategic Stride With the Agni-V
» Indonesia: West Java: Islamic Extremists Attacked an Ahmadi Mosque
» Over 3 Thousand Former Maoist Guerrillas Join Nepalese Army
» Sri Lanka Backs Monks in Fight Over Mosque
» US-Afghan Strategic Partnership Finalized
 
Far East
» Pyongyang Threatens to Turn Seoul to Ashes
» Tension is Expected to Remain in the South China Sea
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Jihadists in Mali Ready to Release Kidnapped Swiss Woman
» Sudan President Bashir Vows No Peace Talks as Missles Strike
 
Latin America
» Brazil: Actor Playing Judas Dies After He Accidentally Hanged Self in Passion Play
 
Immigration
» France and Germany Push to Suspend Free Movement
» Immigrants Deported, Algiers Complains With Rome
» Sweden: Cop Blames Colleagues’ Racist Slurs on ‘Stress’
» Switzerland: Berne Closes the Door on East Europeans
» We Only Deport a Third of Illegal Migrants We Catch: New Figures Deliver Another Blow to UK Border Agency
 
Culture Wars
» Professor Depicts Blood-Dripping Knife, Machine-Gun, While Talking Population Control
» Shaping America Into Progressivism

Financial Crisis


25 Signs That Middle Class Families Have Been Targeted for Extinction

The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out, and most people don’t even realize what is happening. Every single year, millions more Americans fall out of the middle class and become dependent on the government. The United States once had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class is rapidly shrinking and government dependence is at an all-time high. So why is this happening? Well, America is becoming a poorer nation at the same time that wealth is becoming extremely concentrated at the very top. At this point, our economic system is designed to funnel as much money and power to the federal government and to the big corporations as possible. Individuals and small businesses have a really hard time thriving in this environment.

To most big corporations these days, workers are viewed as financial liabilities. Most corporations want to reduce their payrolls as much as possible. You see, the truth is that most corporations want to be just like Apple. If you can believe it, Apple makes $400,000 in profit per employee. Big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and provide for your family. Their goal is to make as much money as possible. And most of the control freaks that run our bloated federal government don’t care much about middle class families either. To many politicians and federal bureaucrats, middle class families are “useless eaters” that are constantly damaging the environment with their “excessive” lifestyles. In this day and age, neither the federal government nor the big corporations really have much use for middle class Americans, and that is really, really bad news for the the future of the middle class family in America.

There are three key factors that are constantly chipping away at the middle class…

-Globalization

-Inflation

-Taxes

Labor has become a global commodity, and American workers are often 10 to 20 times as expensive as workers on the other side of the world are. Middle class jobs (such as manufacturing, etc.) have been leaving this country at an astounding pace. Competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely fierce, and this has driven wages down. The following is from a recent article in the New York Times…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



France 2012: Hollande Now to Reassure EU

‘Re-orientate Union in name of European values’

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, APRIL 23 — Following his victory in the first round of the French presidential election and today’s crash of European stock markets, Francois Hollande knows that the eyes of EU leaders and of his partners in Europe are directed at him. Thus, as soon as he was back on the campaign trail once more in Brittany today, Mr Hollande was careful to send these spectators a message. In it, he reaffirmed his pro-European faith alongside a criticism of the new EU structure constituted by the Merkel-Sarkozy partnership.

“It is in the name of European values that I want to redirect the construction of the Union,” he told supporters in Lorient, Brittany. The none-too veiled reference was to the promise in his manifesto to renegotiate the fiscal treaty by inserting growth alongside rigour. This idea he repeated shortly after in an attack on the decision to subject budget decisions made by individual countries to those made in Brussels: “France deserves respect; it is the French people who should decide on their future, and they alone,” Mr Hollande declared. “We need the country to take its destiny into its own hands”.

These are strong words and they are aimed at preparing European partners and financial markets of the Socialist candidate’s behaviour should he be crowned at France’s presidential palace. But at the same time, the message aims to persuade as many electors as possible to transform his first-round success into a final one, pushing his supporters to remain mobilised.

The response from financial markets was immediate: the phantom of crashing indexes repeatedly evoked by Sarkozy appears to have come true today — at least in part. Despite a paradoxically mild level of loss on the Paris stock market (down by 2.83%), most markets suffered on a day made more nervous by a government crisis in Holland.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



IMF Doubles Its Funds, Warns Europe

Finance ministers from emerging countries over the weekend joined Europe in doubling the coffers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while asking for a bigger say in its governance and warning the eurozone to speed up anti-crisis measures.

Chaired by Singapore’s finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the IMF meeting on Saturday (21 April) concluded that “continued progress” in the eurozone is needed to lower the borrowing costs of governments and “secure financial stability.”

“Undertaking bold structural reforms will be crucial to boosting confidence and productivity, facilitating rebalancing within the monetary union, and promoting strong and balanced growth,” the final communique says.

For his part, US treasury secretary Timothy Geither noted that more action is needed from the European Central Bank (ECB). “The success of the next phase of the crisis response will hinge on Europe’s willingness and ability, together with the European Central Bank, to apply its tools … aggressively to support countries as they implement reforms,” he said.

The Frankfurt-based ECB has already poured €1 trillion worth of cheap loans into eurozone banks to prevent a credit crunch and to allow them to buy more government debt, a move which temporarily lowered Spain and Italy’s borrowing costs.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Friday managed to raise €326 billion extra for her institution’s general intervention budget. The money could be used for further euro-bail-outs.

The US and Canada declined to chip in. Meamwhile, in return for their — so far unspecified — extra contributions, Brazil, China, India and Russia want a bigger say in the way the IMF takes its decisions.

Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega pointed out that even though his country could be described as the third largest economy in Europe behind Germany and France, its voting power at the IMF is equivalent to the Netherlands and smaller than Spain, Italy or Britain.

The UK also said that its €11 billion contribution will only become available once IMF reforms are completed. “I take reforms one step at a time,” Lagarde told reporters on Saturday. “Everybody wants to have a bigger share of the same pie, so there will have to be give and take.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italian Stocks Down After Dutch Premier Resigns

Spread above 400

(ANSA) — Milan, April 23 — The spread rose and the stock market shrank in Italy on Monday after European markets responded badly to Socialist candidate Francois Hollande coming out on top in the first round of the French presidential elections and the resignation of Dutch Premier Mark Rutte over budget cuts. The yield spread between 10-year Italian bonds and the German benchmark, a key indicator of market confidence in Italy’s ability to weather the eurozone crisis, climbed back above the psychologically important 400 mark and went up to 410 before dropping to 408.6 at the close of trading. Milan’s FTSE Mib index lost 3.83% of its stock value and dropped below the 14,000-point mark to 13,849.

Markets across Europe suffered big losses as nearly 160 billion euros went up in smoke in a 2.34% loss on the Stoxx Europe 600 index. photo: Dutch Premier Mark Rutte after tendering resignation

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Could Balance Budget by Next Year, Bank of Italy Says

‘Better asset management needed’ says Rossi

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — The Bank of Italy said Monday that the recession-hit country could balance its budget in 2013 by managing public assets better.

Bank of Italy Deputy Director-General Salvatore Rossi said in a House hearing that market volatility required “better public-asset management” in order for Italy to hit its target of balancing the budget next year.

A deepening recession has led some commentators to say it will be harder to balance the budget in 2013, but Premier Mario Monti has said that the goal remains unchanged.

Commenting on the government’s Economic and Financial Document (DEF), Rossi said Italy could show growth by the end of the year if investor confidence comes back and if taxes are lowered.

“We need to find a way to reduce the tax burden on workers and businesses”, he said.

The International Monetary Fund says that the Italian economy will shrink in 2013 by 0.3%.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Nigel Farage: Euro Break-Up Inevitable, Just a Question of How

* Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Co-President of the ‘Europe of Freedom and Democracy’ (EFD) Group in the European Parliament

Transcript:

“It’s a great shame Mr Van Rompuy’s not here because a month ago he told us the worst was over, we’d reached the turning point. He even told us that he’d solved the Euro crisis! Well, today we’ve got a more realistic Mr Barroso who says if we follow his policies and stick together we can solve this in the end!

Sorry! No one believes you anymore, and actually, in the face of the rapidly deteriorating situation these comments look ridiculous.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Qatar Royal Family Member Buys Greek Island

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 23 — A member of Qatar’s royal family has purchased a Greek island for 5 million euros, according to a report in a Qatari newspaper. The 1,236-acre island, named Oxia, was initially advertised by owners the Greek-Australian Stamoulis family for 6.9 million euros, Greek daily Ekathimerini reported, citing unnamed sources. The island’s new owners are expected to develop part of the island, it added. The island is located in the Ionian Sea, near Ithaca, and is protected by the Natura 2000 ecological network, the newspaper said. Greece’s government has been under pressure to privatise the country’s islands in the wake of its sovereign debt crisis. The sale follows a week after Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund announced it had signed an agreement to acquire Smeralda Holding, owner of luxury hotel resorts on Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. Qatar Holding said it will acquire a portfolio consisting of four luxury hotels with a total of 372 rooms, the Porto Cervo Marina, the Porto Cervo Shipyard, the Pevero Golf Club, a 51% interest in 2,290 hectares of adjacent undeveloped land and various other real estate assets in Costa Smeralda. “We intend to continue supporting the on-going development programme which will see Costa Smeralda strengthen its position as one of the world’s top resort destinations,” Ahmad Mohamed Al-Sayed, managing director and CEO of Qatar Holding, said in a statement.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Economy in Recession, Unemployment at 24%

Outlooks by international bodies confirmed

(ANSAmed) — MADRID — The Spanish economy is once again technically in a recession, after a first quarter with a drop in GDP of 0.4%, in addition to that of 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011. The data released today by the Bank of Spain, before those published by the national statistics institute, confirm the outlooks by international bodies, which predicted that the recession would grow worse before the end of the summer. In the same period, unemployment affected almost 24% of the active population. On an annual basis, GDP dropped in the first quarter by 0.5%. This is the second recession seen in the Spanish economy in about 3 years, although the previous one in 2009 was much worse, at -3.7%. According to the bulletin published by Spain’s central bank, the drop in GDP was caused by the latest 0.4% drop in domestic demand and a lesser contribution from the foreign sector — which saw an increase but a lesser one than the previous quarter. In the first quarter, employment was down by 4%, adding to the 3.3% drop seen in the last quarter of 2011.

The central bank said that the backdrop (with 290,000 new jobless between January and March), was “compatible” with an unemployment rate of around 24% in the first quarter of 2012.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



The Coming Chaos From the Obama-Soetoro Playbook

America and the world today is in chaos. Wars, rumors of wars, high gasoline prices, increasing food prices, growing divisions among races and between classes, current and impending financial collapses dominate the headlines. Critics and detractors of Barack Hussein Obama claim that it is a result of his failed policies that our house and much of the world is in such disarray. Investigation into the man known as Barack Hussein Obama II and the people behind him suggests otherwise.

The chaos that presently exists domestically and across the globe is destined to get worse, but it’s not due to Obama’s inexperience or failed policies. Rather, it is the direct result of the implementation of his successful policies. The chaos in which we find ourselves is exactly what has been planned for decades. Chaos is the tactic, the means to an end, and not the result of failure of policy by the man known as Barack Hussein Obama II.

We have seen only the tip of the full frontal assault of the chaos planned for this country. Actually, we haven’t seen anything yet.

Investigative findings suggest that our present state of disorder was crafted long ago, compliments of a shadowy cabal of government leaders and their often unwitting lackeys, complicit media moguls and their eye-candy mouthpieces, and ideologues intent on changing the United States and thus the world. While this might sound like a bad fictional plot from the film noir genre, a good bit of investigation indicates otherwise.

Before dismissing such musings as delusional fodder, carefully consider the current state of our country — and the world — and start to connect the dots, stepping backwards chronologically.

[…]

Our founding fathers had the vision to understand that the biggest threat to our Republic is from within. That’s the reason that the founders placed a natural born restriction clause for President at the time the U.S. Constitution was drafted. They understood that there was a contemporaneous threat from a Trojan Horse president, as well as a future threat, despite the other checks and balances constructed within our government. Over time, however, communist influence in our schools and media continued to dilute the literal interpretation of the Constitution. Such revision changed or ignored history altering events, such as the infiltration of Communists into our federal government in the post World War II era. History has been revised. As the famous novelist George Orwell once stated, “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” That has never been so true as today.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Spanish Dilemma: Euro’s Fate Hinges on Austerity in Madrid

Spain in recent days has taken center stage in the euro crisis. The country’s banks are threatened with collapse and the government in Madrid has not been successful in efforts to get the national budget under control. Will the country be forced to request aid from the euro bailout fund?

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



There is Not Going to be a Solution to Our Economic Problems on the National Level

Once you understand how Washington works, it becomes easier to understand why our politicians do such stupid things.

For example, big corporations tend to donate large amounts of money to political campaigns and they love the “free trade” globalization agenda.

They love to import massive quantities of super cheap foreign goods so that they can undercut the prices of goods made in the United States.

They love to set up manufacturing facilities on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to workers.

The “free trade” agenda is great for the largest corporations, but it is horrible for the average American worker.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion of goods that are imported from overseas.

Trade with other countries can be good as long as it is balanced. Unfortunately, the U.S. trading relationship with the rest of the world is tremendously imbalanced.

In 2011, the United States bought more than 550 billion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they bought from us.

This trade deficit has enormous consequences that most Americans simply do not understand.

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars have left our country.

Our industrial base is being dismantled and we are rapidly becoming poorer as a nation.

According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day closed down in the United States during 2010.

Just think about that.

Every single day we lost 23 more.

Overall, America has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

Why do you think cities like Detroit are dying?

[…]

The Federal Reserve is supposed to keep inflation low, but the truth is that the Fed has absolutely killed the value of the U.S. dollar. Just check out the chart below which was produced by the Fed itself. It shows how dramatically the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined over the years…

[…]

By any measure, the Federal Reserve has been a colossal failure for the American people. Since the Fed was created, our currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: Road to Recovery Still Long

Report by central bank sends out contrasting signals

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 19 — Tunisia has not been spared by international difficulties linked to a crisis that for years has dealt particularly heavy blows to the economies of countries that do not produce raw materials. The country has also been marked by political upheaval in the last year, with the transition from dictatorship to democracy, but this may be better interpreted as the crossover from one power system centred entirely on a rapacious oligarchy to another, with Tunisia forced to reset itself almost entirely, as it continues to search for an identity and a position in the region. Tunisia’s economic figures for the first quarter of 2012 were awaited with great apprehension, amid hope that the timid signs of recovery seen fleetingly in the last few months of last year could be interpreted as a consolidation of Tunisia’s road to revival.

The report by Tunisia’s central bank has shed some light on the matter and, though it reported encouraging factors, also confirmed a state of crisis, particularly in certain export sectors.

The bank says that tourism and equipment exports continue to be “positive”, while exports in the manufacturing and services sectors (transport in particular) continue to suffer.

While there has been a fall in exports, which have always represented a strategic sector for the economy of a country that specialises in transformation and has few raw materials, imports have risen, particularly in the manufacturing sector, with mechanical and electrical goods, textiles and clothing leading the way, a factor that has worsened Tunisia’s payment balance.

The overview is made more delicate by the situation of the country’s reserves. In the first quarter of the year, net reserves totalled 9.947 billion dinars (around 4.5 billion euros), the equivalent of 101 days worth of imports, against 113 days at the end of 2011. At the end of 2010, meanwhile, the figure stood at 147 days.

With regard to the banking sector, there was a fall in the number of deposits and a rise in non-performing credits, which has put inevitable pressure on the liquidity of banks and therefore upon their ability to finance the economy.

As a result, the average interest rate on the monetary market has been forced up to 3.73% at the start of April, from a figure of 3.48% in March, despite the “injection” decided by the central bank’s monetary system (3.4 billion dinars at the beginning of March).

As far as inflation is concerned, prices have largely remained the same, with the figure reaching 5.4%.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



US and EU Attack Swiss in Economic War: Ermotti

Switzerland’s financial industry could lose 20,000 jobs in the coming years due to the “economic war” being waged by the EU and US against its top banks, the head of UBS warned in an interview Sunday.

“Switzerland has been attacked since 2008,” Sergio Ermotti, the head of Switzerland’s leading bank, told the SonntagsZeitung. This was partly because it offered more favourable tax rates than its international competitors, he added.

“We are in the middle of an economic war,” he said. “The idea is to weaken the two great Swiss banks, which have seen international success,” he argued, referring to UBS and Credit Suisse.

His comments came after French prosecutors on April 12th opened a probe into whether the bank had helped its French clients avoid taxes. UBS has said it is fully cooperating with French authorities in the inquiry.

In the United States, 11 Swiss banks are being investigated on suspicion that they encouraged their clients to channel undeclared assets into Swiss accounts.

The coordinated campaign to undermine Swiss finance would lead to a loss in high-value accounts, Ermotti said. “I am expecting Swiss finance to lose around 20 percent of its jobs in the coming years, being about 20,000 jobs,” Ermotti told the paper.

Switzerland has recently signed deals with Austria, Britain and Germany to toughen up penalties on tax cheats, but negotiations with Paris have stalled amid the ongoing French presidential elections.

Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf met with the US Attorney General Eric Holder on Saturday on the sidelines of an International Monetary Fund meeting for informal talks on the tax evasion issue.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

USA


“We Can’t Wait”: Obama Embraces Executive Orders to Bypass Congress

COMMENT: Apologists here for Obama’s use of executive orders point out the other recent presidents who’ve also overreached their use of executive orders. This makes the abuses more important, not less, as this has been an on-going deviation from the Constitutional limits of the president since at least FDR in the 30s. An executive branch run wild makes the abuses of kings and dictators almost inevitable. That is why it must be reined in; that’s why the framers constructed limited powers in their document. On the otherhand, there’s clear evidence that all of Obama & co.’s study of the Constitution must have been focuses on tactics to skirt its limitations.

“In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” -Thomas Jefferson

WASHINGTON — One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.

“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”

[…]

But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



How Much Skepticism Can the Climate Take?

Influential skeptics continue to challenge the scientific consensus that CO2 emissions are responsible for climate change. Have they got a point?

In January this year, 16 scientists wrote in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that they saw no scientific arguments supporting the need for urgent action to combat climate change.

They included prominent climate skeptics like MIT Atmospheric Science professor Richard Lindzen as well as the scientists, and former ExxonMobil employees, Roger Cohen and William Happer.

Even in Germany, where climate skeptics have less political influence than countries like the USA, a book called “Die kalte Sonne” (The Cold Sun) has been making waves since its publication earlier this year.

The authors Fritz Vahrenholt und Sebastian Lüning, employees of Germany’s second-biggest energy company RWE, maintain that less than half the world’s warming to date is human-made. They say solar activity, sunspots and magnetic fields, which change in cycles, are responsible.

As the sun is about to go into a cold cycle, they say, this will counteract global warming and we need not fear the worst. Calls for urgent action are no more than “panic-mongering”. “I feel duped on climate change”, Vahrenholt told the media. The German boulevard paper “Bild” ran the headline “The CO2 lie”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



John Edwards Goes on Trial Over Mistress Money

Opening statements were heard Monday in the trial of John Edwards, a two-time presidential hopeful accused of illegally using political campaign money to hide a love affair from the public and his cancer-stricken wife. Edwards, a former Democratic senator who was White House candidate John Kerry’s vice presidential choice in 2004, arrived at the court in Greensboro, North Carolina around 1300 GMT accompanied by his eldest daughter Cate.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Training: Their Target is the Tea Party

Hundreds of OWS training workshops took place this month throughout the country, in all 50 states, including small rural areas. Inside one of the training workshops, attendees report that OWS is “specifically instructed to go to any and all Tea Party gatherings, rallies, etc., to be confrontational and create havoc and disruption.”

They are being trained to recruit and enlarge their numbers in their assigned geographic locations, to use the correct messaging, to incite any opponents, engage in confrontation, employ tactics to evade police blockades and create gridlock.

OWS workshops are extremely organized and clearly well funded. Each workshop had a trainer, DVD’s, handouts and a training manual.

OWS has deep pockets and they will be providing food, water, entertainment and more… just as we saw last Fall with the gourmet meals, tents, hotel rooms and printing presses for their newspapers.

OWS is not a grassroots movement, as demonstrated by the training, resources and coordination at their workshops. OWS is orchestrated and organized by George Soros’ MoveOn.org and Media Matters, Van Jones, Steve Lerner, Francis Fox-Piven, Barack Obama, Union leaders (e.g. SEIU, AFL/CIO, UAW), Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other radical far-left anti-American organizations who are dedicated to the destruction of our free market system and the overthrow of our Constitutional form of government.

Eric Holder, Barack Obama, the Democrat Party — including the Marxist/Communist members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — and the news and print media are all in bed with OWS. Ordinary Americans cannot and should not expect that OWS will be held accountable for inciting riots, raping women (as they did the last time around) or for any other crimes they may commit.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



One-World Governance Policies Begin in New Rochelle, NY

The revolutionary and Luciferian (he dedicated his book “Rules for Radicals” to Lucifer…aka Satan) Saul Alinsky said “True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.“ Alinsky also taught that community organizing (aka ‘teaching radicalism and Satanic concepts’) must begin at the local level and in a forceful manner. Karl Marx, his partner Frederich Engels and Vladimir Lenin wrote and believed the same. Adolph Hitler, along with Marx and the rest, also believed that environmental elements and ‘saving the planet’ were excellent ploys to be brought into every speech and were needed in order to shame and bully a population into submission. It worked — and still works—remarkably well.

Today, in the USA and the rest of the world, we now have the UN Agenda 21— which, in New Rochelle, NY (as well as other towns and cities throughout the nation), is attempting implementation via ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). At one fell swoop, a city becomes part of the “international community” and is no longer accountable to its State or nation. And without the population realizing it, the city becomes part of the international order and one-world government commences with its attendant end to freedom, self-determination and the right to make any life decisions on one’s own. Thus, the end of liberty—and life as we know it—begins.

[…]

Robert: My deepest concern with ICLEI in New Rochelle is that our Mayor and his supporters have gone to great lengths to misrepresent ICLEI as a homegrown association of local governments staffed by eager 30-something staffers who want to do good. The Mayor has repeatedly denied any association between New Rochelle and the United Nations despite the undeniable and rather obvious fact that New Rochelle is a member of ICLEI and CLEI is a part of the UN system to implement Agenda 21.

When an ICLEI representative appeared before our City Council she flat-out lied in responding to a direct question on the origins and funding of ICLEI.

I might add that our City Council never held a vote to authorize joining ICLEI. When asked about this at a public meeting by Council Member Louis Trangucci, our City Manager said that joining ICLEI was implied when the ICLEI representative spoke before Council.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Political Extortion of America

One of these days Americans will either realize the treachery of the parties, or fail to make the hard decision for liberty and enable the completion of the transformation of this nation into something the Founding Fathers never intended. One of these days Americans will realize they have been so conditioned to believe that the politicians are a ruling elite that they will demand a return to a day when the politicians were servants of the people, or the transition to slavery will be complete. One of these days Americans will decide that the political games the statists play is extortion, or they will become the very peasant class the elitists are orchestrating into existence.

A conversation with an American Liberal can be quite illuminating. When the law of the land, constitutional authorities, and the importance of the sovereignty of the States are brought into the discussion, the liberal will always fall back on the rosy intentions of the government’s machinations. They will use terms emphasizing how their plans are good for the community, good for the people, and is good for the public trust. The legality, or the coercive nature, of their policies never seems to cross their minds. Even worse, when confronted with the constitutional legalities, they have been so conditioned by the liberal education system, liberal media, and liberal political force that they scoff at any notion that there may be a lack of constitutional authority.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Private Spaceflight Company Spacex Has Lofty Goal: Help Save Humanity

SpaceX plans to launch a historic demonstration mission to the International Space Station next week, but the company’s ambitions extend far beyond low-Earth orbit.

If all goes according to plan, SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon capsule will blast into space on April 30, lifting off the pad at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Once aloft, Dragon will berth with the orbiting lab — a first for a private spaceship — offload supplies and take some different items on for the trip back to Earth.

The mission is a test to see if the Falcon 9/Dragon combo are ready to start making contracted cargo runs to the station for NASA. A successful flight would be a big step forward for private spaceflight, and it would set SpaceX more firmly on a path toward its ultimate goal: helping save humanity from extinction.

“I think it’s important that humanity become a multiplanet species,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an interview that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month. “I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That’s really why I started SpaceX.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Anti-Jihadist Raid Through Italy, Italian Convert Arrested

(AGI) Rome — A vast anti-terrorism operation was launched by the Cagliari Police early this morning in several Italian cities. Operations were coordinated by the UCIGOS Police Prevention Central Directorate with the aim of dismantling a network of Islamist extremists active on the Internet in the dissemination of documents making an apology of Jihadist terrorism. A 28-yr old Italian convert to Islam was arrested in Pesaro under the charge of training for international terrorism.

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



Bossi Calls for Lega Nord to Stay United and Fix Problems

(AGI) Asti — Umberto Bossi said he resigned as party leader to let the party solve its problems. “I resigned to give a free hand to whoever had to fix the problems within the party”, Umberto Bossi said during a party rally in Asti in support of mayoral candidate Pierfranco Verrua. Bossi said he had feared, at the beginning of the election campaign, about possible negative reactions after what happened over the past few weeks: “I was afraid for a while, but I thank you for looking at the Lega Nord’s good side”. “If we don’t want to help those who caused this chaos, we must close all passages”, he added.

“Let’s solve the problems now. Whoever caused this chaos within the Lega Nord wanted its destruction. This is not an attack on one or another member. It is an attack on the Lega Nord”.

Referring to the prospect of Roberto Maroni becoming the new party secretary, he added: “This is something different. It depends on the party congress”. “All the mess between me and Maroni is over now”, he said.

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



Center-Right Czech Coalition Dissolves Itself

The Czech Republic’s center-right coalition government teetered on the verge of collapse over the weekend, as it sought to scrape together a parliamentary majority in the face of massive anti-austerity protests. The Czech Republic’s prime minister announced on Sunday that his center-right coalition had agreed to dissolve itself, after the smallest party in the coalition government split into two factions.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Dutch Prime Minister Submits Government’s Resignation

After talks with a far-right party to form a parliamentary partnership broke down over the weekend in the Netherlands, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has submitted his government’s resignation to Queen Beatrix.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his cabinet submitted their resignations to Queen Beatrix Monday after talks to reach an agreement on reducing the country’s budget with a far-right party collapsed over the weekend.

The Dutch information services in The Hague said the Queen had accepted the resignation and has asked Rutte to attend to the business of the state with a caretaker government for now.

Rutte’s resignation is not much of a surprise after he revealed over the weekend that the minority coalition had not reached an agreement with the anti-Islam Freedom Party of Geert Wilders on budget talks.

The Freedom Party is not a member of the coalition but had been siding with it for the past 18 months, securing the government’s majority. However, the budget rift meant early elections were likely. The next scheduled election would have been in May 2015.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Europe Rings Alarm Bell After French Far-Right Success

Europe rang the alarm bell on Monday over the far-right National Front’s historic score in the French presidential election, the latest anti-EU party to make big gains on the continent. Germany led a chorus of concerns after National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen finished third with a surprising 18 percent of the vote in Sunday’s first round.

“This high score is alarming but I expect it will be ironed out in the second round,” said a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, adding that she continued to support French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the election.

Le Pen’s strong showing was not enough to take her to the May 6 runoff but it shocked European Union foreign ministers holding talks in Luxembourg the day after the vote.

Danish Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal said the French election result was “extremely worrisome” and followed the rise of the far-right across Europe, including in his own country and Finland.

Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt said: “I’m concerned with the sentiments that we see that are against open societies, against an open Europe, that does worry me, not only in France.”

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Sarkozy was partly to blame for Le Pen’s success after he campaigned for tighter immigration controls and reform of the Schengen passport-free travel area.

“If you repeat every day that we must change Schengen, that we must have a strong immigration policy, that we have to speak about French exception, this is all grist for the FN mill,” said Asselborn, a socialist.

Belgium’s Didier Reynders said far-right gains in France and the rest of Europe “is always a concern” in the continent. “We must be very watchful about this,” he said.

Extreme right parties have made great electoral strides in several EU nations, from Sweden to Finland and the Netherlands, while others remain strong in Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and Hungary. Even though Le Pen fell short of the second round, she nearly doubled the 10.4 percent her father Jean-Marie took as her party’s 2007 presidential candidate.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Foreign Flags Hurt Our Feelings: Swiss Patriots

Conservative nationalist party, the Ticino League, wants to make the raising of the Swiss flag mandatory for anybody hoisting a foreign flag in Switzerland. “All foreign flags hoisted publicly should be accompanied by a Helvetic banner of at least the same size,” the party announced on Thursday before the cantonal parliament, newspaper Le Matin reported.

The proposal led to two hours of lively debate in the Ticino assembly in the Italian-speaking part of the counrty, which finally rejected the idea on the grounds that imposing such regulations about flags would restrict freedom of expression. In addition, it was determined that flags do not cause any danger to public safety.

The proposal’s champion, National Councillor Lorenzo Quadri, now intends to bring the issue to the national parliament. “Some have become used to hoisting foreign flags without doing the same with the Swiss flag,” he said.

Quadri maintains that the sight of foreign flags without the equivalent Swiss representation is hurting some Swiss peoples’ feelings. Raising the Swiss flag would be a sign of respect for the host country, he said, and would be the very least foreigners could do to show their willingness to integrate.

Swiss People’s Party politician, Oskar Freysinger, agrees. “Displaying two flags gives a double positive message: the person is proud of his roots and loves Switzerland and its values,” he said.

But some, including Green Party parliamentarian Antonio Hodgers, think little of the idea. “Obliging people to give the impression that they like our country is nonsense,” he told Le Matin.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



German Military Rethinks Exporting Democracy

The German military may soon adopt new guidelines that call into question the export of democracy, SPIEGEL has learned. In the future, the Bundeswehr is to take greater account of local traditions and institutions, even if they are violent and corrupt.

In his second inauguration address, US President George W. Bush vowed to redouble American efforts at exporting democracy around the world. “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,” he said in the January, 2005 speech, “with the ultimate goals of ending tyranny in our world.”

Seven difficult years later, however, the situation in Afghanistan continues to demonstrate the challenges facing the spread of Western-style democracy. And Germany, for its part, has now begun to adjust its military policy accordingly.

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, overseas missions undertaken by the German military are no longer to be focused on exporting Western conceptions of democracy. Political systems are only viable, read new draft guidelines for overseas military missions, when they are founded on “local concepts of legitimacy.”

The draft guidelines “for a coherent policy relative to fragile states” were developed jointly by the German foreign, defense and development ministries. The paper indicates that intervention strategy must take into account local traditions and institutions, even if they don’t correspond to concepts of liberal democracy.

In some cases, the new concept even supports cooperating with corrupt or violent elites. The paper says that it is the responsibility of each country to choose its leader and authorities and that it is difficult to influence such decisions from the outside. “An overly dominant role played by the international community can be harmful,” the paper reads. In the future, foreign military missions in “fragile states” are to be coordinated by a task force headed by the Foreign Ministry.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: First Wolf in Rhineland for 120 Years Shot Dead

The first wolf seen in the Rhineland for more than 120 years has been found shot dead, probably by a hunter, it emerged on Monday. The Rhineland-Palatinate Hunting Association was “99 percent sure that the dead animal is the wolf,” a spokesman for the Rhineland-Palatinate Hunting Association told The Local.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Chinese PM Opens Hannover Trade Fair

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao officially opened the Hannover Messe, the world’s biggest industry and trade fair, on Sunday evening. China is this year’s guest of honour at the gigantic annual week-long trade fair, which brings together 5,000 manufacturing and technology companies from 69 countries in this northern German city from April 23-27.

As many as 500 companies are from China alone. And the motto of this year’s Hannover Messe is “Green Intelligence” with the focus on environmentally sustainable innovations and technologies.

“As two of the most important manufacturing countries in the world, China and Germany are committed to working closely to promote dialogue and cooperation of the global industries,” Wen said during a lavish and colourful opening ceremony held under tight security in Hannover’s concert and congress centre.

Merkel, for her part, noted that it was her third meeting with Wen in less than a year and that “little by little, we’re understanding better how things function in the two countries.”

Bilateral trade between Germany and China stood at €144 billion last year and “we’re working on making this even more,” she said.

According to the head of the German VDMA industry federation, Thomas Lindner, China was staging “the largest single showcase of industrial technology ever outside the People’s Republic” at this year’s fair.

“This impressive and extensive presentation shows us China both as a trading partner, but also a business competitor,” Lindner said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



German Scientists Use Fungi to Clean Soil, Water

Fungi get a bad rap, but they can actually be quite useful. German researchers are developing new ways of using fungus to clean soil and water.

Fungi have earned their reputation as a homeowner’s nightmare. Once they’ve settled into wood and been exposed to moisture, all that’s left are brittle remains that turn into dust at the slightest touch.

Fungi get their destructive abilities from enzymes that break down lignin, a complex chemical compound that is largely responsible for holding wood together. Enzymes in fungi, including the so-called laccase enzyme, are among the few compounds capable of decomposing lignin.

B tapping into the power of these enzymes, German scientists are finding new ways to use fungi to break down toxins, including at sewage treatment plants.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italian Islamist Arrested, 10 More Probed

Suspect linked to Moroccan in ‘Milan synagogue plot’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — An Italian convert to Islam was arrested in the north-eastern city of Pesaro on Monday on suspicion of distributing material on waging ‘jihad’ or holy war and 10 other suspected militants were placed under investigation across the country.

The arrested man, a 28-year-old factory worker whose Muslim name was given as Abdul Wahid As Siquili, was detained because he was about to flee the country for Morocco, police said.

Police said As Siquili had “close ties” to a Moroccan militant arrested in March on suspicion of planning an attack on Milan’s synagogue, Mohamed Jarmoune.

The Pesaro worker allegedly sent Jarmoune and the others an Internet link where they could download material on guerrilla warfare and bomb attacks.

Raids were made in Milan, Cuneo, Pesaro, Cagliari, Salerno and Palermo.

The 10 probed, whose nationality was not immediately divulged, were “gravitating in the Islamist fundamentalist galaxy,” police said. In Cagliari, an Italian literature teacher was under investigation for allegedly translating material from Internet sites inspired by al Qaeda.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Profumo on Education: No Time for Reforms, We Need Stability

(AGI) Turin — “This government will soon end its tenure, we do not have enough time to complete reforms. What we can do is streamline some obsolete procedures we still find education. We can also make things steadier.” This is what the Italian Minister of Education Mr. Francesco Profumo said during the first regional conference on education organized by Piedmont bishops’ association in Turin. In particular, Mr. Profumo stressed that “We need do make plans: many things have been done in the last few years but a bit at random. Instead, we need to make plans to keep things steady”. He also added that “ We need to have a better time perspective: the last competitive test in education dates back to 1999. We need to send a clear message, thus helping people to plan their own life. The country needs to be fairer, I would say more forseable to help people make plans for the future”.

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



Italy: Lega MP Maroni Calls for Unity to Weather the Crisis

(AGI) Milan — Lega MP Roberto Maroni and Umberto Bossi Met near Varese on Saturday. Emerging from the meeting, former Interior Ministry Maroni said he was very pleased with the words of esteem Bossi addressed him. Moreover Mr. Maroni pointed out that, “if the Lega Nord remains united, it will not have to fear for its future.” Together with Lega President Bossi, Mr.

Maroni stopped to talk with the media and stressed the powerful feeling of pride attached to “being part of the Lega Nord.” The MP went on to say, “unlike other parties in Italy, that need to change their logo, leader and name, we — the Lega Nord — do not need to resort to such tricks of the trade,” and concluded, “we are the only ones who have a true project for the North, we demand federalism to be fulfilled. We are the number 1 party in Northern Italy.”

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



Lars Man Standing, Final Score

By Mark Steyn

I’ve written previously about Lars Hedegaard of the Danish Free Press Society, my host in Copenhagen in 2010. Lars was charged, acquitted, re-charged, convicted and fined 5,000 kroner for remarks about Islam made during a conversation in his own home. He appealed to the Danish Supreme Court, and late on Friday they struck down his conviction 7—0.

But the relevant provision of Danish law remains in place, and Lars can never get back the years of his time that this disgusting prosecution consumed. Restraints on free speech and individual liberty in the name of identity-group rights are now routine in much of the Western world. If it weren’t for the First Amendment, the American Left would do as the Euroleft does on freedom of expression. At America’s wretchedly conformist college campuses they already do…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Norway Killer Picked Victims Who Had “Leftist” Look

OSLO (Reuters) — The man who killed 77 people last summer to protest at Muslim immigration to Europe said on Monday he believed he could tell the ideology of his prospective massacre victims by looking at them, and tried to spare one who appeared “right-wing”.

“Certain people look more leftist than others,” Anders Behring Breivik said on the sixth day of a trial that has transfixed Norway, explaining how he picked off “Marxists” with his rifle and pistol while passing over a young man he thought looked conservative.

“This person … appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That’s the reason I didn’t fire any shots at him,” said Breivik, 33, whose sanity or lack of it is a prime issue to be determined in the trial.

Breivik has given a detailed account of his car bomb attack at government headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and a follow-up gun massacre at a Labour Party island camp where he killed 69, mostly teenagers, all within a few hours on July 22.

Most Norwegians have reacted with contained horror to the content of Breivik’s testimony, delivered in a cold, matter-of-fact manner, while there is wide public acceptance of his right as a defendant to give it.

Breivik has had almost free rein to issue warnings against immigration and explain how he scoured the Internet for bomb-making recipes while writing a 1,500-page document declaring himself part of a secretive group that is Europe’s answer to Al Qaeda — a group the police have said likely does not exist.

Breivik has denied criminal guilt, insisting that his victims were “traitors” whose multiculturalist views facilitated what he saw as a de facto Muslim invasion of Europe…

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Offers Apology to Non-Political Victims

Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people last July, said Monday he wanted to apologise for killing “innocent” people in his Oslo bombing, but offered no similar apology for the Utøya massacre.

He also insisted that not only his victims and their families had their lives ruined on July 22nd: “I also lost everything,” he lamented to the court.

For the first time since his trial started on April 16, the 33-year-old right-wing extremist voiced a small ounce of regret for his actions.

Breivik said: “I would like to offer a large apology” to those who were injured or killed in the bombing of an Oslo government building, as they were just passing by and had no political connections.

But when prosecutor Enga Bejer Engh asked if he wanted to say the same to any of the 69 people — mainly teens — he slaughtered in his shooting massacre on the nearby island of Utøya after the bombing, Breivik said: “No, I do not.”

He reiterated that the youngsters attending a summer camp hosted by the ruling Labour Party’s youth wing were “legitimate targets”, since he claims they were “political activists” working for the “deconstruction of Norwegian society” through the multiculturalism he insists is leading to a “Muslim invasion” of the country.

Instead, he insisted that “everyone who is linked to the (government) and the Labour Party … should issue a large apology” to the Norwegian people.

In his own apology, Breivik mentioned in particular Kai Hauge, a 32-year-old man who was killed as he walked past the government building when it was bombed.

Hauge’s mother Sølvi rejected the apology. “It is of course not enough,” she told the Aftenposten daily’s online edition, adding: “We will never get Kai back.”

Jon Hestnes, who represents survivors and family of the victims of the Oslo bombing, meanwhile described Breivik’s apology as surprising and insincere.

“I think it was pathetic. It doesn’t help that he said that. There was no expression in his body language showing that he meant what he said,” he told public broadcaster NRK.

On Friday, Breivik gave his account of events on Utøya, providing chilling details of how he calmly walked across the island, picking off his victims, one by one, shooting most of them point-blank in the head.

And on Monday, the sixth day of his trial, he faced cross examination from the prosecution about the deadliest massacre ever committed by a sole gunman.

He again described his massacre showing no emotion, and insisted it was “cruel but necessary.”

He stressed the shooting spree had been a “gruesome” experience for him as well, and that he had to force himself to carry it out since it felt so “against human nature.”

It was almost like “being asked to eat a plate of excrement,” he said.

He explained his years of meditation to “de-emotionalize” himself as an “indoctrination technique … where I look at all political activists as monsters.”

Yet when he was there, walking among the dead bodies, “I thought to myself that it was gruesome… I have never done anything so gruesome before,” he said, acknowledging though that “it was probably more gruesome for the people I was hunting.”

But, he insisted, “this is a small barbarity to avoid a larger barbarity.”

He also stressed that not only the families of his victims had had their lives ruined.

“One should remember that on July 22nd I also lost … my entire family, all my friends… I also lost everything,” he told the court.

When asked if he meant that people should feel sorry for him, he quickly responded: “Of course not.”

Breivik, who was dressed as a policeman during his more than hour-long shooting spree, also told the court he tried to lure a large group out into the open at one point by telling them he was there to evacuate them.

While many seemed skeptical, “two or three seemed relieved (and) came towards me… Then I raised my Glock (pistol) and shot a girl in the head… There was panic (and) I shot the others too,” he said.

He said he had not realized that so many people on the island would be under 18 — 33 of those killed were minors — but that he only considered the two 14-year-olds as children.

And even if he had known there would be so many youngsters present “I would do it again,” he said, reiterating that he had wanted to kill all 569 people on the island that day.

He reiterated that he had spared the lives of two people, a girl and a boy, whom he deemed too young, and said he had not shot one man, Adrian Pracon, as “He did not look like a Marxist… He looked like someone like me.”

“The reason he gave for not killing me was shocking,” Pracon told the VG daily’s online edition, recalling how the killer had pointed his rifle at him and then suddenly walked away.

“It is sickening that he played my god, that he decided over who would live and die,” he added.

The confessed killer said several others in Norway were “more deserving of execution than the Labour Party youth,” adding that if he had managed to attack a journalists conference, as originally planned, “I might have enjoyed” the slaughter.

Breivik had been scheduled to testify on Monday about his sanity, which is the main issue of contention during the trial, which is scheduled to last 10 weeks. But that was postponed until later so he could finish testifying about Utøya.

He has been charged with “acts of terror” and faces either 21 years in prison — a sentence that could thereafter be extended indefinitely if he is still considered a threat to society — or closed psychiatric care, possibly for life.

A first court-ordered psychiatric exam found him insane, while a second opinion came to the opposite conclusion.

The confessed killer wants to be found sane and accountable for his actions, so that his anti-Islam ideology, as presented in the 1,500-page manifesto he published online just before the attacks, will be taken seriously and not considered the ravings of a lunatic.

He lamented on Monday that his sanity was being questioned.

“If I had been a bearded Jihadi there would be no report at all… There would not be a need for a psychiatric evaluation,” he said, maintaining he was the victim of “clear racism.”

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Apologises to the ‘Non Politcal’ Victims

(AGI) Oslo — Breivik has issued an apology directed solely at the “non-political” casualties of the Oslo bomb attack. The sixth day of the trial of ultra-nationalist Anders Breivik Behring in Oslo opened with this ‘apology’ to the passers-by caught up in the explosion on 22 July last year in the Norwegian capital. Breivik had planted a bomb in a van- near office of the Prime Minister and other officials. “I would like to offer them my biggest apologies,” he said at the beginning of today’s hearing, an apology he failed to extend to those who died or were injured in subsequent shootings on the island of Utoya, where he attacked a summer camp for Labour Party youth.

Breivik killed a total of 77 people in the two attacks.

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



Norway: Oslo Muslims Pained by Breivik’s Testimony

“He is evil. Pure evil. A robot,” Sihen Naidja says, her voice trembling, when asked how she experienced the first week of Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s trial.

Basim Gozlan, who runs the Norwegian website www.Islam.no, meanwhile insists that it is a good thing that Breivik has been given so much time to explain his worldview.

“I think it is good and healthy that this comes out,” he told AFP in a telephone interview, arguing that Breivik built his ideology largely on the basis of Islam-critical writings in the media and online and rumours he has heard about violent Muslims.

“This should help show people that this kind of rhetoric can be very, very dangerous. It is a wake-up call, and I think many people will moderate the way they talk about these things,” Gozlan said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sarkozy Says Le Pen Supporters Must be Respected

(AGI) Paris — Nicolas Sarkozy has reached out to Marine le Pen supporters ahead of the French presidentials. Alluding to the 18% of votes gained by the Front National candidate, he said “We must respect the voters’ will, it is our duty to listen.” With regard to the results of the previous consultation in 2007, which won him the Presidency, he added “There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another, an answer must be given to this crisis vote.” ..

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



Spanish Royalty in Crisis After King’s Antics

The Spanish royal family is in the middle of its worst crisis in years following a series of scandals, including the revelation that King Juan Carlos went on an extravagant trip to Africa despite the recession. Many people in Spain are now asking tough questions about the role of the monarchy.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Storms to Hit Central and Northern Italy Then Intense Heat

(AGI) Rome — Storms are expected for tomorrow in Central and Northern Italy, then Spring will set in at its fullest. ‘ Hannibal’ the anticyclone rising from Africa, is due to make temperatures jump up 12-13 degrees. As of Tuesday night, violent storms will hit Italy’s Northern-Western regions then to move on to the rest of the North, central Italy and Sardenia during the day. Strong winds and hail are expected. Snow will fall on the Alps at low altitudes — between 800 and 1000 meters. Violent downpours are due to hit Rome on Tuesday afternoon but will not last for long. However it is Spring and as it always happens in springtime, the weather can change suddenly. Fine weather is expected on 25 April to be followed by a wave of hot air. ‘Hannibal’ will first blow hot air over Sardenia and Sicily and the South and eventually across the country until the end of the month. It will give Italy a taste of Summer with temperatures rising and reaching 30 degrees in the South and 25 degrees everywhere else.

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



Sweden: ‘Laziness is Not a Disability’: Council

Disability Council members of a Swedish town have had enough of “lazy” drivers who park their cars in the disabled spaces, and want the erection of signs stating that laziness is not a recognized form of disability.

“Laziness is not a disability” say the proposed signs aimed at motorists in Nordmaling, northern Sweden. Below is a picture of a person in a wheelchair. Members of the municipality’s disability council (handikapprådet) are now lobbying to see the signs be used around the local area.

“People don’t respect disabled parking signs,” said Margareta Gustavsson of the council to the Västerbottens Kuriren newspaper. “They seem to think that laziness is a disability, but it’s actually not at all.”

Gustavsson added that the Nordmaling community centre has already claimed one of the signs to erect in their own car park. However, community development officer of the municipality, Sune Höglander, sees things differently, and has no intention of implementing the signs.

“It’s just a fun thing they’ve got for themselves, but I don’t think that those kinds of road signs will be found in our catalogue. Signs must be accurate, factual, and not emotive,” he said. Höglander also pointed out that he didn’t consider “lazy parkers” taking disabled spaces to be a large problem in Nordmaling.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Switzerland Home to Kim Jong-un ‘For Nine Years’

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un lived in Switzerland from the age of seven, arriving two years earlier than previously thought, the Swiss paper Le Matin Dimanche reported on Sunday. Previously Swiss media had placed his arrival in Switzerland in 1993 when he was around nine years old.

But the paper cited documents it had obtained from federal police archives at the public ministry to show he had stayed in Switzerland between late 1991 and early 2001. The paper said it had obtained a document showing a request for accreditation of a certain Nam Chol Pak to work as a bureaucrat for North Korea’s foreign ministry.

The document showed that the official arrived on November 25th 1991, with his wife, two sons and a daughter. The two boys were the two youngest sons of Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 until his death in December last year.

But they used the pseudonyms Chol Pak and Hun Pak while in Switzerland, and Hun Pak was Kim’s alias, the paper said.

Little is known about the boy’s formative years in the country. Schools where he was reportedly enrolled have refused to discuss his time there. According to Swiss and foreign media, he was a pupil at an international private school in Guemligen, near the Bern suburb of Muri, and later attended a public school in Liebefeld, also near Bern. Le Matin Dimanche, quoting an unnamed former classmate, reported early this month that he scored poor grades and was often absent.

The boy’s false father initially worked for North Korea’s mission to theUnited Nations in Geneva and was later transferred to the North Korean embassy in Muri, the paper said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Pakistani Students Raped Woman, 20, After She Fell Asleep on Night Bus on Way Home From Night Out

Two ‘despicable’ sex predators who raped a woman after she fell asleep on a night bus have been jailed for a total of 18-and-a-half years.

Pakistani students Rizwan Ahmad, 24, and Hassan Siddique, 19, targeted the 20-year-old as she made her way home from a night out in central London.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard how Siddique got off the number 55 bus while Ahmad began chatting to the woman when she realised she had missed her stop.

Ahmad persuaded her to get off at the next stop and said he would call her a taxi. He then phoned Siddique, a student at the London College of Business Management and Information Technology, to summon him to the scene.

The two men lured their victim down a secluded alleyway off Leabridge Road in Leyton, east London, and took turns to rape her in the early hours of June 4 last year.

During their trial Ahmad and Siddique insisted their victim had encouraged them, but the jury found both defendants guilty of rape and attempted rape.

Judge Tudor Owen said he believed the pair should be kicked out of Britain once they have served their jail terms, adding: ‘The sooner you are deported from this country, the better.’

In an impact statement the victim said the attack will ‘stay with her for the rest of her life’.

But she is determined to ensure her ordeal does not dictate her future.

Sentencing, Judge Owen told the two rapists: ‘What you did was despicable. Your story was simply ludicrous.

‘You claimed she instigated the whole thing, that it was she who wanted to engage in sexual activity with you.

‘Unsurprisingly, the jury rejected your account.

‘Women travelling alone at night are entitled not to be accosted in the way you two did.

‘She had a lot to drink but that does not mean she should have been treated in the way she was.

‘She was an easy target because she was so drunk.

‘She is now frightened of travelling alone at night, this has damaged her life.’

Jailing Ahmad for 10 years, and Siddique for eight-and-a-half years, Judge Owen added: ‘If it is necessary I will recommend most strongly that you are deported at the conclusion of your sentence.’

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Renovation Tax Will Harm Our Churches, Warns Hurd

A Conservative grandee and former foreign secretary has launched a scathing assault on one of the Coalition’s tax changes.

In his first major criticism of the Coalition, Lord Hurd, who served in the governments of Baroness Thatcher and Sir John Major, has attacked the Chancellor’s plans to introduce VAT on church renovations. The peer’s intervention heightens pressure on George Osborne and follows damaging rows over the taxes of pensioners, pasties and charitable donations. It comes at an awkward time for David Cameron. Labour now boasts a six-point opinion poll lead over the Conservatives — their largest since June 2010. Speaking of the VAT plan, Lord Hurd said: “I think it needs to be looked at in the light of the whole scheme of relations between the Church and the state. “The Church has on the whole a pretty raw deal and this is just one example of it. “We are governed by people who are vaguely sympathetic to the Church and would be horrified if it started to disintegrate, but don’t quite understand that in order to keep it all going it needs a bit of effort and a bit of sympathy. It is taken for granted and that, I think, is a pity.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Terror Case Lawyers Who Fight Fanatics’ Deportation Land £110m Bill in Legal Aid

Lawyers working regularly for terrorist suspects have billed the taxpayer more than £110million in a decade, estimates suggest.

Among the big earners are firms that have fought to prevent the deportation of terror suspect Abu Qatada to face trial in Jordan and to halt the extradition of hate preacher Abu Hamza to the U.S.

A small group of legal firms are thought to have effectively cornered the market, with the result that they have secured high earnings from the taxpayer-funded legal aid system, which usually pays the legal bills for terrorists and suspected terrorists.

The highest-paid firm of solicitors is thought to be Arani &Co, based in Southall, West London.

Led by Mudassar Arani, 47, it is best-known for representing Abu Hamza, who spread hatred from Finsbury Park mosque in North London, and who has been fighting extradition for eight years.

[Return to headlines]



UK: Takeaway Boss ‘Tried to Recruit Girls as Young as 12 to Work as Prostitutes in His Brothel’Azad Miah ‘Hounded and Stalked Girls to Have Sex for Money’

A takeaway boss tried to recruit six girls as child prostitutes, one as young as 12, in a ‘cold, clinical, exploitation of the desperate and vulnerable’, a court heard today.

Azad Miah, 44, is said to have ‘hounded’ and ‘stalked’ girls to have sex for money while at the same time allegedly running a brothel from his city centre premises in Carlisle, Cumbria.

A jury at Carlisle Crown Court was told he also paid regularly for the sexual services of a girl over a four-year period from when she was aged 14.

Opening the case, Tim Evans, prosecuting, said: ‘This is a case in which this defendant sought to persuade a variety of young girls, some of whom he knew were under 16, to have sex with him for money via the provision of drugs or drink.

‘Those requests were either made face to face when girls either came into the The Spice of India in Botchergate or were made by telephone calls and texts.

‘The attempted persuasion was persistent. He would hound young girls for periods of weeks or months face to face or over the phone. Perhaps most worryingly, he would stalk some of them, following them home.

‘Some of the girls that he had made approaches to did indeed have sex with him for money.’

Mr Evans said many of the alleged victims aged from 12 to 16 were told by Miah that their friends were also having sex with him for money.

He told the jury it would hear ‘in essence’ that The Spice of India, since closed, not only operated as a takeaway restaurant but as a brothel ‘where women attended and prostituted themselves’.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Western Allies of MI6 ‘Kept in Dark’ Over Mosque Sting Plan

MI6 and Col Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan intelligence service set up a radical mosque in a Western European city in order to lure in al-Qaeda terrorists, it can be revealed.

The joint operation, which was undertaken as Britain attempted to secure a deal with Col Gaddafi to reopen diplomatic relations, shows how closely Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service was prepared to work with his regime’s spies despite widespread allegations of human rights abuses. At the time, Britain was encouraging Col Gaddafi to give up plans for weapons of mass destruction. Four months later, the dictator and Tony Blair, then prime minister, struck the 2004 “deal in the desert” which ended Libya’s pariah status. The cooperation extended to recruiting an agent to infiltrate an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in the Western European city, which cannot be named for security reasons. The double agent, codenamed Joseph, was closely connected to a senior al-Qaeda commander in Iraq and had been identified as a possible spy by the ESO, Libya’s external intelligence service, on a visit to Tripoli. MI6 began recruiting the agent without telling its allies in the European country where he lived.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egypt Stops Gas Supplies to Israel

(AGI) Cairo — The Egyptian authorities canceled an agreement signed in 2005, allowing the East Mediterranean Company to export gas to Israel. The measure has been motivated by alleged provision violations. The news was provided by the Egyptian natural gas state company, Egas. The pipeline that connects Egypt to Israel and Jordan has been targeted by 14 attacks since the fall of Honsi Mubarak’s regime.

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



Egypt Scraps Gas Deal With Israel

The Egyptian partners in a joint natural gas endeavor with Israel have cancelled a deal governing commercial relations between the two sides. The gas deal with Israel has long been a source of controversy in Egypt.

Israel’s Finance Ministry on Sunday criticized Egyptian energy companies for terminating a gas deal with the Jewish state, saying that the “unilateral” move overshadowed the two neighbors’ long-standing peace agreement.

“This is a dangerous precedent that overshadows the peace agreements and the peaceful atmosphere between Israel and Egypt,” Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a press release.

The Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation and Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company reportedly scrapped the deal on Thursday, accusing Israel of failing to pay its bills for the past four months. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has denied that charge.

The two Egyptian energy companies were partners with the Ampal-American Israel Corporation in the bi-national East Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG), which operates the pipeline that supplies Israel with natural gas. Ampal said on Sunday that the termination of the deal was “unlawful and in bad faith.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: Director Mourad Ben Cheikh, Too Many Foreign Funds

Funds to Salaphites from abroad, but more than one secular road

(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 23 — The Salaphites in Tunisia? They are “a fringe phenomenon” and a minority, limited to around 2,000. But the real problem is “the foreign countries that support and finance them with huge resources, putting the country’s internal balance at risk and influencing politics”. The speaker is the Tunisian film director Mourad Ben Cheikh, who made the documentary on the revolution in his country entitled “No more Fear” which has, since debuting at Cannes, done the rounds of at least a hundred film festivals in the world. One and a half years ago, Ben Cheikh filmed the crowds and the flags of the revolution in Avenue Burghiba. Now, in an interview with ANSAmed, he takes stock of how the country has changed. He says he is not sure whether it is the Saudis who are behind the new prominence of the Salaphites in Tunisia, a country that had been the most secular in the region before the revolution. “But I do know that through its economic and religious policies, Saudi Arabia has become a cancer in the flesh of the Arab World”. On the other hand, it is in Riyadh that the deposed president Ben Ali has found hospitality, “because they are very keen that a former head of state does not face a trial”. Another player in Tunisia’s future is the small Emirate of Qatar. They “are doing their utmost to influence politics in the Arab World,” and not only there. In short, from tyranny of a police state under the overthrown regime, the country risks moving to “a political stalemate” under the influence of foreign finance for Islamic movements, the director notes. Ben Cheikh would like to see his country keep its right to find its own way towards democracy. “Every Tunisian should be free to choose their own approach to politics and to religion,” and a democracy that shuts out one part of its population would not be a democracy. Just as “every country should be able to find its own answer to the problem of laity. For example, Queen Elizabeth is head of the Church of England, but individual liberties are respected all the same. And the same happens in Italy, despite its Lateran Pact with the Vatican”. But the West looks at the Arab revolutions through the lens of its own fears and prejudices. Ben Cheikh has seen this in the different reactions of various audiences to his documentary, reactions that “vary according to the country”. In Spain and in Greece, for example, the revolution in Tunisia is seen with a feeling of geographical “closeness” but also with one of continuity between the economic crises and the mode of “resistance”. But in Germany it is the fear of Islam which prevails, and in France the questioning over the secular nature of the state. “Frace cannot manage to see Tunisia for what it is: it always sees it through its own current concerns”. Even though, it is thanks to organisations in that very country such as Amnesty International, that has enabled his documentary to be shown in cinemas as part of a regular programme.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Bomb Blasts in Blue Helmet Hang-Out in Lebanon

(AGI) Beirut-The casualty toll of an explosion that occurred at around midnight near a restaurant in Tyre is of at least 7 injured. The city is on the Southern coast of Lebanon. The explosion was reportedly caused by a bomb that unknown subjects placed on the elevator to the 4th floor of the building in which the restaurant is located. The restaurant is locally famous for the dance parties organized there and because it sells alcoholic drinks. This turns it into one of the favorite destinations of foreigners, including the ‘Blue Helmets’ of UNIFIL II, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

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



Turkey: Great Ambitions But Lacking Resources, Study

Influence in Middle East superficial and short-lived, USAK

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 19 — Despite the fact that the country has started to play a much more important role in the Middle East over the past decade, Turkey still has to close a wide gap between its ambitions and its possibilities to become a real “regional power.” This claim is made in a study carried out by the Turkish think tank USAK that was published today. The report underlines that Turkey only has superficial influence because of its reduced diplomatic corps, its low level of exports and scarce use of the Arabic language. The report of the International Strategic Research Organization, as USAK writes on its website, examines Turkey’s power in the diplomatic, economic and “soft power” areas, the ability of a country to convince other countries through its intangible resources like culture, values and political institutions. The report calls for a comprehensive joint efforts by the state, the private sector and civic society in all three fields (diplomacy, economy and soft power) as “a great disparity exists between the role that Turkey wants to play and the capacity it has” to do so. USAK also warned that Turkey’s newly-found regional influence could be short-lived. “We cannot say that regional actors, be them small or big, are following Turkey’s lead,” the report claims. “The current attention accorded to Turkey is at the level of just sympathy. Any mistakes or Arab misunderstanding of certain rhetoric or policies hold the potential of quickly eroding the favourable attitudes that Turkey enjoys.” The Turkish Foreign Ministry, according to the study, was severely underfunded and understaffed when compared to those of leading nations. Its budget of 436 million euros is the lowest among several countries, including both global heavyweights and emerging powers, such as India and Brazil. With 5,533 employees, Turkey’s ministry is better staffed than Brazil and India, but lags well behind Britain and France, who employ 17,100 and 15,008 people respectively. Only 26 diplomats spoke Arabic, USAK point out, which hampers the “penetration of local information resources.” In the economic field, trade with countries in the region is booming, but Turkish exports are easily-replaceable with other, cheaper goods, with high-technology products making up only 3.5 percent of the total. USAK claims that Turkey had failed to determine any “centre of gravity” for trade, which could turn into a major disadvantage in the future.

Focusing on soft power, Turkish soap operas enjoy vast popularity in the region and tourism is flourishing. The Turkish media, however, is almost absent from the Arab-language realm and Turkey has little power in influencing the regional news agenda, USAK continues, adding that TRT’s Arab-language channel lagged behind competitors from Iran, France, Germany, China and the United States.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Fazil Say Contemplates Exile, ‘Insulted as Atheist’

Pianist and composer may escape Islamic pressures to Japan

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 23 — One of Turkey’s best known artists internationally, pianist and composer Fazil Say has said he has been thinking for some time of moving to Japan because of the pressure he is under in an Islamic environment, where his statements about atheism are causing him trouble.

“Even though we are speaking the same language, we fail to communicate, “Mr Say is reported as saying on the English language site of Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper. “The best thing to do is to keep away for some time. I would like to go to Japan, but I don’t know if I will be able to do so,” as “it’s too far away” and living there “means reducing the number of concerts given in Europe and in Turkey. And of course, I want to see my daughter growing up and she will remain here,” in Turkey.

According to the summary given in Hurriyet, Mr Say spoke of how it has become difficult to live in Turkey over recent years, where he has been exposed to insults over opinions he has expressed on Twitter.

As the AFP agency cites from the hard copy of the newspaper, this is a reference to “when I said I was an atheist”, “I was insulted. The law intervened over what I had said on Twitter. I am perhaps the first person in the world to have come under a judicial inquiry for having expressed my atheism”. Given the three month prison sentence Turkish law reserves for the crime of “insulting religious values”, “if I am sentenced to imprisonment, my career will be over,” the 41-year-old musician said.

A leading MP in the prime minister’s party, Samil Tayyar, insulted Mr Say by saying that his mother was “an escapee from a brothel”. The phrase itself gave rise to controversy. The pianist also said that lay people have become a minority in Turkey that is exposed to pressure from an Islamic majority which is imposing its own religious values more and more openly.

“I habe been shut out of Turkish society 100%”.

According to the Hurriyet website, the musician has lived in the USA for seven years and is currently writing his third symphony (“Evren”, the Universe) which follows those with the titles: “Istanbul” and “‘Mesopotamia”. The latter symphony is to be performed in Istanbul on June 23, while Evren is scheduled to be premiered in Austria in October.

Declared by its leading politicians to be “99%” Muslim, Turkey has a secular constitution drawn up by its founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who proclaimed the republic in 1923 on the rubble of the Ottoman Empire.

Over the past fifteen years, Turkey’s internal politics has partly seen a rediscovery of the nation’s Muslim soul, by Premier Erdogan. The case of Say forms part of a series of frictions between secular values, which are defended by the country’s military cadre and Islamic ones, represented by the AKP party of the Premier, which is enlarging the space inside the country for religious conservatism.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Yemen: Army Offensive Kills 16 Al Qaeda Militants

(AGI) Sanaa — At least 16 Al Qaeda militants have been killed during an offensive by the Yemeni army in the south of the country. The offensive has been underway for several days to re-take positions in the south, for months in the hands of groups tied to the terrorist network. The report came from the Sanaa Ministry of Defense. Sunday evening the army bombarded the area of Loder, in the southern province of Abyan, killing 13 militants. Another three lost their lives during an air raid carried out against several vehicles in the eastern province of Marib. Last week 40 Al Qaeda militants were killed in offensive launched by the army. Zinjibar, the capital of the troubled Abyan province, was seized last May by the so-called “Partisans of the Sharia”, an Islamic integralist group tied to Al Qaeda.

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

Russia


Moscow: Tens of Thousands With Kirill in Defense of the Faith

After weeks of media scandals, the Patriarch of All Russia leads a procession and a prayer at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: “Protect the Church from the anti-Russian forces.”

Moscow (AsiaNews) — Thousands of people took part in the day in defense of the faith yesterday in Russia, organized by the Moscow Patriarchate to “protect the Church from the attacks of anti-Russian forces”, as stated by the same Patriarch Kirill, center of a series of media scandals which are compromising his image.

At least 40 thousand people arrived for a prayer led by the patriarch at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. The same church, where in late February the Pussy Riot group sang their “punk prayer”, in which they condemned the close relations between the Patriarchate and the newly elected President Vladimir Putin. The gesture cost the band’s three girls custody on charges of “hooliganism”. The incident has raised a heated debate over the role of the Church in politics and exposed Kirill to harsh criticism. “We are under attack by anti-Russian force,” said the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in front of the crowd of priests and faithful. “The danger is that blasphemy and mockery of religion are presented as a legitimate expression of human freedom, which must be protected in modern society,” he added.

Media and internet criticism of Kirill intensified after his open support for the third nomination of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin. The religious leader had called the 12-year reign of the politician and former KGB agent at the head of Russia as “a miracle of God”, but shortly after he railed against the Pussy Riot, demanding exemplary punishment. On 20 April, Moscow’s court ordered that the three girls, held since March, remain behind bars until at least June 24, to allow investigators to complete investigations. In fact, it is a case of detention without trial, note human rights activists, who point out that the three women face up to seven years in prison.

According to many believers, the “punk prayer “ was nothing more than the beginning of a series of “acts of vandalism” against the Orthodox Church. Some of these have brought to light, in the Russian media, Kirill’s life of luxury and privilege prompting the Patriarch to hold a Day of Prayer. “The reason for this hostility -, according to Pyatigorsk theology student Anastasia Pavlukhova — is that the Church now supports the state more explicitly and so they attack it to indirectly affect the authorities.” On 6 March, as news agency Reuters recalls, a man with an ax lashed out against icons in Veliky Ustyug, north-east of Moscow. Two weeks later, an attacker armed with a knife, attacked and desecrated a priest at the altar in the Church of Nevynnomyssk, in the south-east of the country.

“I came here because there is a risk that Russia will return to its past without God,” said Olga Golubeva, 54, a lawyer, who has participated in the procession and prayer led by Kirill yesterday. According to the Patriarchate, the participants were 50 thousand, 65 thousand for the Ministry of the Interior, and 40 thousand for the international press. Other similar events with thousands of people were held in Yaroslavl, Krasnodar and St. Petersburg.

“The Church needs this kind of events to prove it has more supporters than detractors — says Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for political technologies in Moscow — but also to consolidate the support of clergy and faithful.” “Within the Church itself — he adds — opinions are divided on what was worse: the performance of Pussy Riot or the reaction of the Patriarchate, the scandal or the demand for punishment for the girls.”

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

South Asia


India Shooting Ship Release Delayed

Hearing postponed to April 30

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 20 — The Indian supreme court on Friday postponed a hearing regarding the release of an Italian tanker held for two months in a case involving the shooting deaths of two Indian fishermen, allegedly by two Italian marines on anti-pirate watch aboard the vessel.

The judge was prepared to order the release of the Enrica Lexie when he noted the absence of a notification document intended for the wife of one of the dead fishermen and delayed the hearing until April 30.

On March 29 a lower court said the ship could be released as long as certain conditions were met, including the payment of a deposit.

But the process has undergone a series of delays, including earlier this month when an Indian appeals court overturned a release order. The marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, are at the centre of a diplomatic dispute between Rome and New Delhi over jurisdiction, which intensified when the two were sent to prison at the beginning of March.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



India’s Top Court Admits Italy’s Appeal on Marines

Hearing set May 8

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 23 — The Indian supreme court on Monday admitted Italy’s appeal against the detention of two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen while protecting a ship from pirates.

It set a hearing for May 8.

Italy says the case of Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone should be tried in Italy because the incident took place in international waters.

An Indian ballistics test said bullets found in the fishermen’s bodies were compatible with rifles seized from the ship.

Italy has requested another ballistics test.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Indian Military Makes Strategic Stride With the Agni-V

India has made history with the successful testing of its much awaited Agni-V long-range ballistic nuclear-capable missile, nicknamed the ‘China killer,’ that can accurately hit targets more than 5,000 km away.

Thursday’s launch from a test range at Wheeler Island off the coast of the eastern state of Odisha thrusts the emerging Asian power into a small club of nations with intercontinental nuclear weapons capabilities. The three stage, all solid fuel powered and17-meter missile blasted off according to the script at 8.07 am.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Indonesia: West Java: Islamic Extremists Attacked an Ahmadi Mosque

Police patrol the place of worship, targeted in a raid last April 20 a few hours after Friday prayers. There are no injuries, but the building was seriously damaged. Controversy on the security and protection provided by the authorities. For Minister of Religious Affairs the Muslim minority is heretical and should be banned.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — A mob of Islamic extremists brutally attacked an Ahmadi mosque in the village of Cipakat in the town of Singaparna in Tasikmalaya regency, West Java province. Indonesian police departments have been deployed to protect the security of the place of worship and there is still a state of considerable tension in the area. The raid occurred on April 20, a few hours after Friday prayers, the holy day for Muslims. Local sources report that the attack was attended by at least 80 people affiliated with local Islamic extremist movements, the building was repeatedly hit with rocks and stones, while some of the assailants stormed into the building destroying objects. After the attack there were no injuries, but the structure was seriously damaged.

Human rights activists and members of civil society criticize the actions of the police, unable to “block” the attackers and defend the Ahmadi mosque, belonging to the Muslim religious minority considered heretical by Sunni — and official — Islam because they do not consider Mohammed as last prophet. However, the deputy spokesman of the National Police Gen. Muhammad Taufik rejected the accusations, adding that the crowd wanted to protest against the community for its “illegal” teachings and a practice of faith that “deviates” from the traditional doctrine.

The controversy was sparked by the delivery of a formal letter of protest from the Baitul Rahim Mosque of Representatives, which urged the protesters to attack the Ahmadi place of worship.

Djoko Suyanto, the Minister with responsibility for legal affairs and security condemned the incident and confirmed that a full investigation is underway to shed light on the matter. His words, however, have not placated public opinion and according activists the comment is not “genuine” but an empty promise, devoid of any concrete action to stop the violence.

The Minister for Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali has instead issued a stern warning against the Ahmadi minority, “inviting” them to respect Indonesian law. The reference is to a joint ministerial decree dating back to 2008, which outlaws the practice of worship for religious minorities and prohibits any form of spreading the faith. Unlike others, minister Ali is not seen as impartial compared to his predecessors, and has repeatedly called the Ahmadi movement an “offense” that must be banished from the country.

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



Over 3 Thousand Former Maoist Guerrillas Join Nepalese Army

Official as of today, a total of 6 thousand ex-combatants join the army. Internal divisions of former Maoist rebels threaten the peace process with the government. Weapons disappear from some camps. Former rebel cadres attacked by extremist wing call for the protection of the military.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — 3,128 former Maoist guerrillas are now part of the regular army as Nepalese soldiers and officers. In recent days the military has officially taken possession of the 15 training camps still in the hands of the rebels scattered throughout the country. The Maoist Prime Minister Bhattarai said that this event marks the end “of the two armies for one state” and gives hope for a general reconciliation after 10 years of civil war between Maoists and supporters of the Hindu monarchy.

In the coming months 3500 other fighters will be integrated. The number respects the agreements between the UN, the Nepalese government and Maoist leaders. For the remaining 13 thousand a program of integration into the world of work and a subsidy of up to 50 thousand dollars for high-ranking leaders has been proposed. However, part of the former Nepal People’s Liberation Army (Npla) considers the delivery of weapons and abandonment of the struggle an affront to the ideals of the 11-year Maoist war against state powers represented by the conservative parties still close to the monarchy.

Experts point out that such a division could stop the program of reintegration of militias into the army and society. According to military sources there are at least 3 thousand guerrillas who are pushing to get into battalions of the Nepal Army (NA), rejecting the option of civilian resettlement. Thousands more have opted instead for voluntary withdrawal, but without surrendering their weapons. In recent days, the Nepalese army has denounced the disappearance of several weapons and ammunition from old camps. The weapons were taken by men close to Mohan Baidhya, a former Maoist, contrary to the disarmament of rebel troops.

Last week, the leader has attacked some camps with his men and wounded four Maoists officers, forcing the former guerrillas to seek the protection of the army.

Interviewed by AsiaNews, Bidhya, defines the plane of reinstatement “an insult to the People’s Liberation Army and the war that allowed the liberation of Nepal. He points out that the Maoists “can not surrender to the elite who for years have oppressed minorities and the weakest”. “The leaders announced a general strike in view of the delivery of the new constitution, whose term expires May 27.

The 11 year civil war in Nepal pitted the army and the Maoist guerrillas, who fought with the aim to overthrow the kingdom and establish the People’s Republic of Nepal. The conflict ended with the fall of the absolute Hindu monarchy which was followed by a comprehensive peace agreement between the army and Maoists signed November 21, 2006 in front of UN and international community. The war has claimed more than 12,800 lives and created about 100 thousand refugees.

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



Sri Lanka Backs Monks in Fight Over Mosque

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s government has advised the trustees of a 60-year-old Muslim mosque north of the capital to relocate the structure after angry protests by Buddhist monks.

Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne reacted after demonstrations by monks and their followers on Friday triggered tension in the pilgrim town of Dambulla. “The prime minister as minister of Buddhist and religious affairs advised the trustees to have their mosque elsewhere,” the premier’s spokesman Sisira Wijesinghe told AFP. “They have been offered the choice of three alternate locations. Steps are being taken to immediately shift the mosque.” The Indian Ocean island nation, emerging from decades of ethnic war, is a majority Buddhist nation where monks are politically influential.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



US-Afghan Strategic Partnership Finalized

With the Chicago NATO summit approaching, the US and Afghanistan have put the finishing touches on a strategic partnership to govern their relations after the 2014 troop withdrawal. The agreement comes despite tensions.

The United States and Afghanistan on Sunday finalized an agreement on a strategic partnership, after months of negotiations that nearly broke down under the pressure of rising tensions between the two nations.

The text, which was initialed by the countries’ top negotiators, still has to be signed by US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Washington has said it hopes to ratify the pact before the NATO summit in Chicago next month.

The US has agreed to provide military and financial support to Kabul for the decade after international forces withdraw in 2014. Despite the planned troop withdrawal, Washington is expected to maintain a large presence in Afghanistan, including special forces, military advisors and governance programs.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Far East


Pyongyang Threatens to Turn Seoul to Ashes

North Korea has threatened to turn its southern neighbor to “ashes.” Pyongyang is apparently miffed at comments made by South Korea’s president about the North’s recent failed rocket test.

A military statement released by North Korea’s official state news agency said it would reduce the government of South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak as well as the country’s media outlets to ashes” through what it described as “unprecedented, peculiar means.”

“The special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors,” the statement said.

The statement represented a new spike in tensions between the communist North and capitalist South following Pyongyang’s unsuccessful rocket launch on April 13, which had been timed to coincide with celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung. The rocket exploded a couple of minutes after lift-off.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Tension is Expected to Remain in the South China Sea

The United States and Philippines have started joint naval manoeuvres as the diplomatic row between Manila and Beijing continues over territorial claims in the South China Sea. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea go way back. The riparian states — Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Brunei — lay claim to some of the same islands and reefs there.

China lays claim to almost all of the territories in the South China Sea. That led in 1974 to a military conflict between China and Vietnam over the Paracel Islands. Now the Islands, which are called Xisha in Chinese and Hoang Sa in Vietnamese, are administered by China, although Vietnam still claims the islands as part of its territory.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Jihadists in Mali Ready to Release Kidnapped Swiss Woman

(AGI) Bamako — The Swiss woman kidnapped in Mali may be in the hands of Islamist group Ansar Dine. The Swiss woman who was kidnapped one week ago in Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu is said to be in the hands of Islamist group Ansar Dine (whose name translates as ‘Defenders of the Faith’) which helped Tuareg separatists take control of northern Mali. The kidnappers are said to be ready to release her. It was revealed by sources of Mali’s security forces who explained that the woman, identified as Beatrice Stockly, was initially kidnapped by “members of a private militia who wanted to sell her to the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, a regional branch of the terror network. The woman is in her forties and is believed to be a missionary.

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



Sudan President Bashir Vows No Peace Talks as Missles Strike

Sudanese war jets launched four missiles into this key South Sudanese state capital Monday, killing at least one and wounding 10 others as tensions continued to rise along the disputed South Sudan-Sudan border.

The jets appeared to be targeting a bridge on the only road linking Bentiu with the conflict zone to the north, where Sudanese and South Sudanese troops last week fought a pitched battle for control of Heglig, an oil town that had long been controlled by Sudan.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Brazil: Actor Playing Judas Dies After He Accidentally Hanged Self in Passion Play

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian actor playing Judas who accidentally hanged himself during a scene in “The Passion of Christ” has died. A hospital in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state confirms on its website the death of 27-year-old Tiago Klimeck. An autopsy is being performed Monday following his death the previous day. The actor had been in a coma since the accident on Good Friday earlier this month in the city of Itarare.

Investigator Jose Victor Bacetti told the G1 news website Klimeck accidentally hanged himself during a scene in which his character Judas commits suicide. About four minutes passed before anyone noticed, believing he was playing his role. Police are examining the security apparatus that was meant to support Klimeck during the scene. It’s unclear if any charges will be filed.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


France and Germany Push to Suspend Free Movement

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 April 2012

France and Germany want to limit the free movement of people in Europe. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has published a joint letter from the French and German interior ministers calling for “the possibility of re-establishing internal border controls.” The matter could be raised at the next meeting of European politicians on April 26.

In the letter Claude Gueant and Hans-Peter Friedrich suggest that suspension of the Schengen treaty is justified where security is insufficient at some of the EU external borders, and to address internal security matters and safeguard national sovereignty, the Munich daily writes.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung adds that the resumption of border monitoring would aim to combat economic migration, and suggests this could foster anti-European political sentiment —

What is the value of it, open borders without restrictions? […] What is the point of freedom of movement if European governments are able to limit it? If member states withdraw into their national territory when there are problems, they are demonstrating that they believe their small nation state is far better than Europe. In this case we should not be surprised if nationalist parties, populist and the extreme right are on the rise throughout Europe. The temporary closure of internal borders is a continuous advertisement for the enemies of Europe.

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



Immigrants Deported, Algiers Complains With Rome

Italian ambassador summoned, ‘unacceptable and humiliating’

(ANSAmed) — ROME — Algeria has complained with Italy over the treatment of two of its nationals deported last week on an Alitalia Rome-Tunis flight, the photos of which — showing the men with scotch tape over their mouths — went viral on the web and sparked a great deal of heated debate in Italy as well. The Algerian Foreign Minister has today summoned the Italian ambassador to the country, Michele Giacomelli, to “protest vehemently on behalf of the Algerian authorities” against the treatment which Algiers called (according to the Algerian foreign ministry spokesman) “violent, humiliating and unacceptable”. The incident — with the two seated in the last row of the plane with plastic handcuffs on, mouths taped shut with packaging tape and a protective mask lowered over their faces — is one which Rome has already announced that it will be looking into thoroughly. This was reiterated yesterday by the Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, who wrote to the Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni — who had expressed “profound consternation” over the case — saying that the Italian government has already opened an administrative investigation into the matter and that the magistrature began a judicial one. This was in line with what had been said by Interior, Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who in reporting before the Chamber of Deputies on the events said that the use of “coercive measures” such as scotch tape on mouths was an “extemporaneous” behaviour, and above all one that is “offensive to personal dignity”. “It is entirely in the police’s interest” to make sure that light is shed on the case in all of its aspects, said the head of the interior ministry in announcing that an inquiry would take place.

It is a matter that the Algerian government has now asked to know more about, calling Ambassador Giacomelli to the foreign ministry, where he met with the Secretary of State for the National Community Living Abroad, Benattallah Halim. Reporting this was the spokesman for the Algerian ministry himself, saying that during the meeting “protest” had been expressed over the treatment suffered “by two of our fellow countrymen”, treatment called “violent, humiliating and inacceptable”, and that ambassador had been urged to “convey to the Italian authorities” Algiers’ position while awaiting “clarification”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Cop Blames Colleagues’ Racist Slurs on ‘Stress’

Racist slurs uttered by Malmö police officers while responding to disturbances in the city’s Rosengård district can be attributed to “stress”, according to an officer who was present at the December 2008 incident. “It was an expression of extreme stress,” police officer Paul Juhlin said on Svergies Television (SVT), which on Tuesday will start airing a reality television series about the Mälmo police force.

Juhlin was one of the officers present during the Malmö police’s response to December 2008 disturbances in the city’s Rosengård district, which is home to a high concentration of immigrants. During the police action, riot police called young people “blattajävlar”, an ethnic slur which translates roughly into “damn coloured people” or “damn immigrants”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Berne Closes the Door on East Europeans

Tribune de Genève, 19 April 2012

Starting on 1st May, workers from eight EU countries (Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) will be once again subject to quotas, reports the Tribune de Genève. Berne has decided to reactivate the “safeguard clause” included in the Swiss-EU agreement on the free movement of people signed a year ago. The Swiss Federal Council, which is hoping to reduce immigration from the EU (EU nationals now account for 1.1 million of the country’s 7.9 million population), believes that the annual influx of 38,000 additional EU migrants have prompted difficulties with regard to integration, as well as respect for working conditions and the minimum wage.

“Switzerland closes the door on East Europeans”, announces the front page headline of the Tribune de Genève, which argues that the measure “amounts to grandstanding”, because “free movement needed to be subject to control to remain acceptable”. Le Matin argues that the initiative will have “little practical impact”, while Le Temps insists that it is a “purely cosmetic” measure —

In activating the clause included in the agreement on free movement with the EU, the Federal Council wanted to send a clear message to those who are increasingly concerned by the upsurge of European immigration in Switzerland.

In German-speaking Switzerland, the press is mainly concerned about the effect the move will have on EU relations. Tagesanzeiger predicts a decline “in good will towards Switzerland, which is increasingly perceived as recalcitrant”, while St-Galler Tagblatt remarks that for the Federal Council, it was important to show the people that it is not intimidated by the prospect “of upsetting the EU”.

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



We Only Deport a Third of Illegal Migrants We Catch: New Figures Deliver Another Blow to UK Border Agency

Fewer than one in three of the illegal immigrants caught last year have been deported, according to figures disclosed yesterday.

They showed that of 21,298 individuals discovered in Britain unlawfully, only 6,232 were returned to their countries in the same year.

The figures threatened to deepen the troubles at the UK Border Agency, the organisation responsible for policing immigration law.

Border officials have also been found to have abandoned checks on arrivals into the country without seeking the clearance of ministers.

The unapproved relaxation of passport controls meant 500,000 passengers who came on Eurostar trains entered the country without being checked against lists of suspected terrorists and criminals.

[Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Professor Depicts Blood-Dripping Knife, Machine-Gun, While Talking Population Control

A video has popped up showing University College’s Emeritus Professor John Guillebaud, patron of the UK-based “Population Matters”, standing before a screen depicting among other things a machine-gun, a hospital bed, and a knife dripping with blood, as examples of “natural” population control as opposed to “artificial” methods such as contraception and family planning.

The professor also impressed upon his audience to hide the true nature of their efforts by never ever using the phrase “population control.”

Guillebaud gave the lecture on October 14 2010 in front of a group of scientists at Cambridge University’s Triple Helix Society. On the top of the screen of Guillebaud’s slide show we read the words: “guide to “population control” methods”, showing on the one hand a contraception pill, which is described as an artificial method of population control. On the right hand side we see the machine-gun, the knife, and the hospitable-bed as examples of “natural” methods of population control (from 1 minute onward).

“It either happens the gentle way, through family planning (…), or it happens the nasty ways (…) excessive heat, hurricanes, flooding and so on. To me that’s the ultimate inconvenient truth”, the professor stated.

This is classical neo-Malthusian talk we hear from the mouth of professor Guillebaud. Reduce human numbers voluntarily, or else… Also typical of modern-day eugenicists is the urge to conceal their true purpose (population reduction and control) with euphemistic phrases which vary from “family planning” to “reproductive health”. In this video the professor admits to this deception:

“Will you all undertake a little project today, for me, and that is never from the 14th of October onwards will you say those words up there (pointing towards the text on the slide: “population control”). You will never find me in any situation except in the context of this slide saying: population control. So will you for the rest of this meeting, and for the rest of your life, never put those two words together. They have been so damaging. They instantly make your hair up… think of India in the 1970s and of China at time present. Use any other way you would like to say, like my phrase “population matters”. Please don’t say “population control”. So there’s one thing you can all do.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Shaping America Into Progressivism

Liberals took control of education and imposed political correctness, which silenced conservatives and any possible opposition lest they be labeled racists and anti-children.

The curriculum changed from year to year, becoming more secularized and socialist, pushing religion completely out of the public schools. Prayer at football games, singing the national anthem, and the recitation of the pledge of allegiance to our country were scorned. Atheists objected to traditions that made this country great but interfered with their agenda. Being Green, the worship of Gaia, Mother Earth, and activist environmentalism became the new religion.

Teaching methodologies changed yearly, according to the latest fashion from teacher colleges in New York, Boston, California, like a new dress, more outrageous and less conducive to learning but easy on testing and highly experimental. The curriculum became more “socially just.” Standards were so relaxed that some students graduated who could not read or write on an elementary level. Education was dumbed down to include even the laziest students, test results worsened, dropouts increased, while knowledge retention declined.

Multilingual education and multiculturalism were forced upon schools in order to accommodate the burgeoning illegal immigrant student population.

[…]

I was shocked when the entire student body was required to attend two-hour indoctrination into the peaceful religion of Islam, presented by a Palestinian imam. A rapt audience of innocent and ignorant high school students was told how respected and cherished Muslim women were. The faculty did not protest but sat stony faced although they all knew the lack of rights and worth of Muslim women. Nobody asked questions about the hangings, stonings, decapitations, and cutting limbs of women under Islam. The religious presentation had been organized by the principal, the same person who said repeatedly that there is a separation of church and state, and refused to allow students to wear crosses to school because it might make students uncomfortable who did not believe in God.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120422

Financial Crisis
» Chimps Throwing Poop and 29 Other Mind Blowing Ways That the Government is Wasting Your Money
» China: Bankruptcy in Building Trade; State Companies Profits Plummet by 13.6 Percent
» Dutch Government on Brink of Collapse
» Italy: Monti: We Can Make it, But No Exceptions to Fiscal Rigour
» One Nation Under Debt With Endless Debt Slavery for All
» S&P Concerned About Banks’ Stability in Serious Crisis
» Turkey: Asian Investments Up, EU Investments Down
 
USA
» [Photo] Earth Day 2012 — Measuring Cow Farts
» Chicagoans Warned to Evacuate Before Globalist Instigated Riot During NATO Summit
» Democrats Manipulated the 2008 Election Results
» Department of Homeland Security Buying Up Enough Ammo to Wage Seven-Year War
» Forbes Writer Scoffs at Infowars “Freak Out” On Mandatory Black Boxes
» Green is Red
» Influential Senator Warned in ‘75: “NSA’s Capability Could be Turned Around on the American People”
» Marijuana-Infused Wine Produced at Calif. Vineyards: Dangerous?
» Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case
» TSA’s Mission Creep is Making the US a Police State
» Van Jones: ‘Progressives Have Another Century to Win!’
» Why is it Necessary for the Federal Government to Turn the United States Into a Prison Camp?
 
Europe and the EU
» 100,000 British Women Mutilated
» 100,000 Women Undergo Brutal Genital Mutilation Illegally in Britain (And Some of the Victims Are as Young as Ten)
» British National Party Leaders Hook Up to Produce Book on the ‘Islamization of Europe’
» France 2012: Anti-Politics in the Streets in Paris
» Italy: Seven Arrested After October Riots in Rome
» Italy: Alfredo’s: Rome Eatery With Heroic Past, Delicious Present
» Italy: Renaissance Library Impounded After Massive Book Theft
» Italy: Balduzzi Signs Decree, C Bracket Drugs Also in Shops
» Italy: Father of Pakistani Baby Girl Killed in Modena Arrested
» Italy: Bossi: Maroni Good for Party, Those Who Took Money, Out
» Italy: Bossi Seeks Lega Nord Unity and Agreement With Maroni
» Italy: US Securities and Deposit Certificates Confiscated in Rome
» Right Wingers in Europe Just Fired Off Two Huge Torpedoes
» Senior British Diplomat Loses Eye After Being Mugged as He Walks Through a London Cemetery
» U.K. Police Refused to Chase Quad Bike Gang Who Stole Kayak … Because Thieves Had No Helmets
» UK: Bundling Bearded Windbags on to Jets Won’t Solve Anything
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» The New Anti-Semitism
 
Middle East
» Turkey: Coming Soon: ‘Feline Big Brother’ For Van Cats
 
Russia
» Italian-Russian Fuel Deal Applauded by Terzi
 
South Asia
» Nepalese Muslims Claim Their Rights in New Constitution
» UK Aid Helps to Fund Forced Sterilisation of India’s Poor
» Untested Vaccines Causing New Wave of Polio-Like Paralysis Across India
 
Far East
» Fukushima is Falling Apart: Are You Ready?
» Japan: TEPCO: Not Enough Money to Handle Fukushima Nuclear Reactor 4 Problems
» Taiwan Will Buy 4 US Warships to Deter China
 
Latin America
» Drug-Related Shooting in Mexico, 15 Killed in a Bar
 
Immigration
» UK: Second Hate Cleric is Allowed to Stay — and He’s So Dangerous He Was Banned From as-Level Chemistry
 
Culture Wars
» All the Morals of a Bulldozer
 
General
» Treacherous Treaties
» Trinity Versus Tyranny — Final Battle Over Fate of Man

Financial Crisis


Chimps Throwing Poop and 29 Other Mind Blowing Ways That the Government is Wasting Your Money

Why do chimpanzees throw poop? The federal government would like to know and is using your tax dollars to investigate the matter. Every single year, we all send huge amounts of our hard-earned money to the federal government.

We hope that they will spend that money wisely. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. You are about to read some examples of how the government is wasting your money that are absolutely mind blowing. Anyone that claims that there is not a lot of waste that can be cut out of the federal budget is lying to you. Our politicians have racked up the biggest pile of debt in the history of the world and they are spending our money on some of the stupidest things imaginable. It is imperative that the American people be educated about all of this outrageous government waste, because right now the political will to change this corrupt system is simply not there among the current crop of politicians in Washington. We are stealing trillions of dollars from future generations and many of the things that our politicians are wasting that money on are almost too bizarre to believe.

The following are 30 mind blowing ways that the government is wasting your money…

[…]

#6 If you can believe it, the federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

#7 The U.S. Agency for International Development spent 10 million dollars to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.

#8 The Obama administration has plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars to help students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.

#30 At this point, China is holding over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. But that didn’t stop the United States from sending 17.8 million dollars in foreign aid to China in 2011.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



China: Bankruptcy in Building Trade; State Companies Profits Plummet by 13.6 Percent

Two construction companies have declared bankruptcy because of inability to pay debts. 50% of buildings remain unsold and Chinese banks credit crunch prostrates cash-strapped companies. State-owned industries weighed down by decrease in demand from abroad. Some shipping companies see transport almost to zero and profits decline by almost 100%.

Beijing (AsiaNews) The signs of difficulty in the Chinese economy are growing more serious, with a series of bankruptcies declared by some construction companies in Guangdong and Hangzhou. At the same time, in first quarter State owned industries profits fell by 13.6%.

Guangdong in the south, Shunde’s Guangdeye Property development filed for bankruptcy two days ago because of inability to pay its debts. The private company has not built new projects since 2008, when it started having financial problems.

In Hangzhou, the Hangzhou Jinxiu Real Estate, engaged in construction of luxury apartments, has declared bankruptcy. In recent years, thanks to a loan facility of the State banks, construction companies have created projects above and beyond the real needs. According to economist Andy Xie, China now has more houses than needed. Already, the housing space per person, while serving 650 million urban residents, is higher than Europe and Japan. The amount of buildings could provide home ownership to another 200 million people, the equivalent of the increase in urban population over the next 15 years. In Beijing and Shanghai, the average price per square foot exceeds the value of five months’ average wages, and according to calculations a few months ago, at least 50% of new buildings remained empty and unsold. To curb the speculative bubble, the government has imposed limits on bank lending and the purchase of second and third homes, , prostrating the cash-strapped construction companies.

Analysts expect a wave of bankruptcies in Beijing and Shanghai.

Today, data on the profit margins of state firms were circulated, which in the first quarter of 2012 decreased by 13.6%. The weak result was expected given that companies like China Cosco, maritime transport experienced a loss in profits of 98.84 in the first quarter 2012, after a total loss in 2011.

The Chinese economy is suffering because of reduced demand from abroad, but also an obsolete model of development and authority’s corruption (see: 30/11/2011 As China’s govt cheats, its economy is “on the brink of bankruptcy”, Chinese scholar says “).

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



Dutch Government on Brink of Collapse

The Dutch government is on the brink of collapse after politicians hit an impasse on implementing austerity measures required to secure a bailout.

As the economic and technical data points to financial Armageddon looming in Spain Dutch politicians are deadlocked over the decision to implement brutal austerity measures to secure an economic bailout or to tell the bankers to shove it and take the path of Iceland.

Dutch politicians have announced they can not come to an agreement on austerity limits required to secure the bailout to save the Dutch economy.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Italy: Monti: We Can Make it, But No Exceptions to Fiscal Rigour

(AGI) Milan — Mario Monti while paying a visit to Milan’s furniture trade show said that he is an optimist and “Italy can make it. It will soon restore growth”. Nevertheless he kept a low profile by saying that “there will be no exceptions to economic discipline”. He also ruled out another tax on property. The Italian Prime Minister and his wife paid a surprise visit to the show that is currently taking place in Milan’s exibition centre. He had lunch with Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri and furniture industry’s businesspeople.

After an exchange of opinions with furniture industry’s businesspeople a press conference was organized. Monti did not hide that “some difficulties are still there” but he said that “Italy can make it”. He added that “We still need to be cautious about the country’s budget but there are some signs for hope and optimism”.

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



One Nation Under Debt With Endless Debt Slavery for All

Debt is a “soft” form of slavery. In America today, it is not legal to bind people up with chains and force them to work for you, but that doesn’t mean that there are not millions upon millions of slaves in this country. When you borrow money, you willingly become a servant to the lender. Sadly, there are millions of Americans that will spend the rest of their lives working to pay off their debts but they will never escape the endless debt slavery that they have gotten themselves into. When you add up all forms of debt in the United States at this point, it comes to more than 54 trillion dollars. That is more than $178,000 for every man, woman and child in America. We truly are one nation under debt, and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet. Unfortunately, all debt bubbles eventually burst, and when this one bursts the consequences are going to be unlike anything ever seen before.

When most Americans think of the “U.S. debt problem”, they tend to only think of the U.S. national debt. Well, that certainly is horrifying, but it is only a small part of the overall problem.

The chart posted below shows the growth of total debt in the United States over the last several decades. Total credit market debt owed was less than 5 trillion dollars back in 1980, but now it is over 54 trillion dollars…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



S&P Concerned About Banks’ Stability in Serious Crisis

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) analyst Alois Strasser has warned that a crisis worse than the most recent one could “totally demolish” Austrian finance institutes’ capital.

Strasser — who is in charge of the US American rating agency’s economic estimations for the Austrian economy — told Die Presse today (Fri) that the Republic of Austria could have to spend 23 per cent of the gross domestic product in such a dramatic scenario. Strasser explained that S&P assumed a recession of six per cent of the GDP, a 60 per cent collapse of stock market trading values and a rise in unemployment of 15 per cent. He admitted that such a situation would be “extreme”. Strasser claimed that S&P had to consider such circumstances to make predictions.

The Upper Austrian analyst warned that Austria’s banks — of which some are highly active in the Eastern European region (EE) — were weakly capitalised in international comparison. Speaking to Die Presse, Strasser said a scenario as dramatic as investigated by S&P for its effects on the state and the various banks was “not very likely” since the credit rating of Austria and the country’s banks would be much different otherwise.

S&P lowered Austria’s rating from the best possible estimation of AAA by one grade to AA+ in January. People’s Party (ÖVP) Vice Chancellor Michael Spindelegger labelled the decision as “wrong and unfair”. Austrian National Bank (OeNB) Governor Ewald Nowotny claimed in a first reaction to the step that the New York-based agency acted “politically motivated”. The OeNB chief said the decision must have political grounds as it was made public only a few days ahead of a crucial crisis gathering of the government and state leaders of the European Union’s (EU) 27 members in Brussels, Belgium.

S&P’s decision to strip Austria of its AAA was succeeded by a disputed move of rival rating agency Moody’s.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Asian Investments Up, EU Investments Down

(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL, APRIL 20 — Investments of Asian countries were up while investments of European Union (EU) countries were down in Turkey in the first two months of 2012, as Anatolia news agency reports today. According to direct foreign investment figures, investments of EU countries in Turkey declined by 200 million USD while investments of Asian countries rose by 413 million USD year-on-year in the first two months of 2012. Capital inflow in Turkey was up 15% to 1.2 billion USD year-on-year in the first two months of the year.

Capital inflow from EU countries decreased 22% to 716 million USD. This figure was 913 million USD in January and February 2011. France was the country from where direct investments to Turkey declined the most among EU member states in the mentioned period. France, which made 193 million USD of investments in Turkey in January and February 2011, only made 8 million USD of investments in the first two months of this year. Capital inflow from Asian countries was up 34% from 21 million to 434 million USD in the first two months of 2012.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


[Photo] Earth Day 2012 — Measuring Cow Farts

This is an example of how stupid the entire cult of environmentalism is. Some “scientists” measured the amount of methane in cow farts by way of saving the Earth from something or other.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Chicagoans Warned to Evacuate Before Globalist Instigated Riot During NATO Summit

Residents of a Chicago condo received a letter from management last week informing them that they should move out of their homes during the upcoming NATO confab to be held in the Windy City next month. If the residents decide to remain, they will be subjected to a lockdown.

“In the event of a riot or the potential of one near the building,” the letter states, “all access doors will be locked including the garage door. For everyone’s safety we will be instructing anyone in the building to stay in his or her unit.”

Aaron Klein, writing for WorldNetDaily on Saturday, said radicals with ties to Obama plan to riot during the NATO summit.

In August of 2011, Klein said the founders of a “radical group that teaches tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation” were among a “slew of extremist organizations, some tied to President Obama, preparing protests to coincide with major NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago.”

Klein quoted Joe Losbaker of the United National Antiwar Committee, one of the groups planning protests, who warned, “The wars and economic policies of the NATO and G8 nations are not just and will be met by protest.”

Losbaker and his wife, Stephanie Weiner, worked as leaders of the Chicago New Party. It was formed by the Democratic Socialists of America, ACORN and the labor union SEIU. The Communist Party USA breakaway group Committees of Correspondence and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) were also involved in forming the New Party.

[…]

The IPS is a Marxist organization formed in the early 1960s. It has received funding from the banker James Warburg, the son of the infamous banker Paul Warbrug. The elder Warburg was instrumental in creating the Federal Reserve and was chosen by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as one of its first members.

It may seem odd for an international banker to fund a Marxist organization supposedly advocating the destruction of finance capital. “If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all,” writes the late Gary Allen. “Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Democrats Manipulated the 2008 Election Results

(Business Insider) John McCain’s 2008 campaign staff allegedly had evidence that Democrats stuffed ballot boxes in Pennsylvania and Ohio on election night, but McCain chose not to pursue voter fraud, according to internal Stratfor emails published by WikiLeaks.

In an email sent on November 7, 2008, and titled “ Insight — The Dems & Dirty Tricks ** Internal Use Only — Pls Do Not Forward **,” Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton wrote…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Department of Homeland Security Buying Up Enough Ammo to Wage Seven-Year War

(NaturalNews) As we recently reported, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency that says its main purpose now is to thwart “homegrown terrorism,” has awarded a contract to ammunition manufacturer ATK for acquiring 450 million rounds of .40 caliber hollow point ammo. You can view the announcement of the ammunition purchase at this press release: www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-co…

Our initial coverage of the story is at: www.naturalnews.com/035607_government_checkpoints_Martial_Law…

Many NaturalNews readers may not know this, but “hollow point” ammunition is never purchased for practice or training. This ammunition is purchased for the sole purpose of being used in active fighting. At the same time, it is a violation of the Geneva Convention to use hollow point ammunition on the battle field.

This is crucial to understand. It means the occupying federal government is acquiring this ammunition to be used against the American people. Furthermore, DHS does not fight wars overseas. It is a domestic agency with domestic responsibilities. Its purchase of .40 ammunition is a clear and obvious indication that DHS plans to wage war on the American people.

How big of a war? Here’s where this investigation gets really interesting.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Forbes Writer Scoffs at Infowars “Freak Out” On Mandatory Black Boxes

Forbes writer Kashmir Hill responds to our report about black box data recorders becoming mandatory in all new cars under a bill set to be passed by the House by accusing Infowars of engaging in a “freak out” and claiming the legislation is “good for privacy” when in reality it destroys privacy.

[…]

Hill’s attitude seems to stem from the mind set that the state has already eviscerated our privacy, so why should we bother fighting back to salvage what’s left of it? She brazenly dismisses fourth amendment rights as “roadkill” simply because having a black box in your vehicle might help the authorities work out who was responsible for an accident.

The most chilling aspect of this approach is that Hill bills herself as a privacy expert yet she has no idea about the ‘slippery slope’ principle and has seemingly failed to read the ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act’ (MAP-21), on which her article is based.

The point of our original story was not that the black boxes will merely be in all new cars from 2015 onwards if this bill passes, it’s that it will be mandatory to activate them and anyone who attempts to deactivate them will be hit with civil penalties under section 31406 of the bill. This is about creating the groundwork for a future tax by the mile system which has been aggressively promoted by the Obama administration.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Green is Red

The news is out that Obama-Soetoro, his unindicted co-conspirators in the Democrat Party, and their running dog Republican toadies have, in just three years and a few months, run up a mindboggling $5,000,000,000,000.00 in new debt.

That is significantly more spending than was done by all previous presidents, from Washington to Bush. But what is really scary here, is how few people, including otherwise knowledgeable conservatives, understand that this was not simply Keynesian economics gone wild, or fiduciary irresponsibility, or incompetence, but a radical Marxist strategy aimed at ending free, capitalist America. That trillions have gone to line the pockets of corrupt, already filthy-rich Democrats, with jobs lost, rather than created, recession deepened, rather than abated, makes these traitors dance with glee, like the Palestinians after 9/11.

People who have failed to grasp this fairly obvious truth, also have, since it is an integral part of the strategy, been unable to understand why the Obama-Soetoro cabal has relentlessly attacked the oil, gas, and coal industries, and poured billions into worthless “green” energy schemes. They don’t understand why he has done zip, zero, nada to stem the rise of gas prices (or any of the myriad other rising prices, either). Jeez, Louise, he seems like such a nice guy…?

May I repeat: this is all part of a radical Marxist strategy aimed at ending free, capitalist America.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Influential Senator Warned in ‘75: “NSA’s Capability Could be Turned Around on the American People”

Senator Frank Church — who chaired the famous “Church Committee” into the unlawful FBI Cointel program, and who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — said in 1975:

“Th[e National Security Agency’s] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”

Now, the NSA is building a $2 billion dollar facility in Utah which will use the world’s most powerful supercomputer to monitor virtually all phone calls, emails, internet usage, purchases and rentals, break all encryption, and then store everyone’s data permanently.

The former head of the program for the NSA recently held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state

So Senator Church’s warning was prophetic.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Marijuana-Infused Wine Produced at Calif. Vineyards: Dangerous?

(CBS News) Just in time for 4/20, reports have surfaced that an increasing number of California winemakers are turning to another locally produced intoxicant. The Daily Beast reports several California winemakers are creating blends of marijuana-infused wines on the sly.

According to The Daily Beast, pot wine is made by placing a pound of marijuana in a cask of wine, leading to about 1.5 grams of marijuana per bottle. The fermentation process converts sugar from grapes into alcohol, and the alcohol extracts the THC from marijuana over a nine-month process.

TIME reports the process dates back to the 1980s when the drug was blended with rose. Now vintners are more likely to infuse marijuana cabernet and syrah.

[…]

“This is a dangerous combination, with accentuates the effects of both substances,” Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told HealthPop in an email.

Side effects of consuming the substances together may include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, agitation, and paranoid ideation, Glatter said.

According to Glatter, marijuana, a hallucinogen, and alcohol — a stimulant initially that is a potent depressant — may be dangerous together because the additive marijuana will likely allow people to consume more alcohol than they normally would, potentially leading to breathing difficulties and low blood pressure.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case

Alton L. Hayes III, a west suburban man charged with a hate crime, told police he was so upset about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida that he beat up a white man early Tuesday.

Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.”

The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



TSA’s Mission Creep is Making the US a Police State

This callous disregard for travelers’ rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old,Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying “people [who] want to travel by some other means” have that right. (In other words: if you don’t like it, don’t fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA’s snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations — and even running checkpoints on highways — never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA’s air marshal training center since the agency’s inception: “Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Van Jones: ‘Progressives Have Another Century to Win!’

(Rolling Stone) Van Jones, one of the most effective organizers and strategists on the left, is out with a new book. Rebuild the Dream, which debuted last week on the New York Times bestseller list, takes its name from the organization Jones helped found a year ago to stir up a grass-roots insurgency against the plutocrats we now call “the 1 percent,” and which now seeks to harness the insurgent energies expressed by the Occupy movement into lasting institutional reform.

Jones has some harsh words for his critics, those he dismisses as “cheap patriots” …

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Why is it Necessary for the Federal Government to Turn the United States Into a Prison Camp?

The federal government could turn the entire country into one giant prison camp, but that would still not keep us safe. It is inevitable that bad stuff will happen in life. But we have a choice. We can choose to live in fear or we can choose to live as free men and women. Our forefathers intended to establish a nation where liberty and freedom would be maximized. But today we are told that we have to give up our liberties and our freedoms and our privacy for increased security. But is such a trade really worth it? Just think of the various totalitarian societies that we have seen down throughout history. Have any of them ever really thrived? Have their people been happy? Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has decided that the entire country needs to be put on lock down. Nearly everything that we do today is watched and tracked, and personal privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Many of the things that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 are becoming a reality, and that is a very frightening thing. The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, we are rapidly becoming the exact opposite of that.

I don’t know about you, but I never signed up to live in North Korea. When I was growing up I was taught that repressive regimes such as North Korea are “the bad guys” and that America is where “the good guys” live.

So why do we want to be just like North Korea?

When they put in the naked body scanners at U.S. airports and started having TSA agents conduct “enhanced pat-downs” of travelers, I decided that I was not going to fly anymore unless absolutely necessary.

Then I heard about how “random bag checks” were being conducted at Metro train stations in the Washington D.C. area, and I was glad that I was no longer taking the train into D.C. anymore.

But now the TSA is showing up everywhere. Down in Houston, undercover TSA agents and police officers will now “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


100,000 British Women Mutilated

As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported.

Investigators from The Sunday Times said they secretly filmed a doctor, dentist and alternative medicine practitioner who were allegedly willing to perform circumcisions or arrange for the operation to be carried out. The doctor and dentist deny any wrongdoing.

The practice, which involves the surgical removal of external genitalia and in some cases the stitching of the vaginal opening, is illegal in Britain and carries up to a 14 year prison sentence.

It is also against the law to arrange FGM.

Known as “cutting”, the procedure is traditionally carried out for cultural reasons and is widespread across Africa.

It is thought to be needed as proof of a girl’s “purity” for when she marries, but victims are rarely given anaesthetic and frequently suffer long-term damage and pain.

Research suggests that every year up to 6,000 girls in London are at risk of the potentially fatal procedure, and more than 22,000 in the UK as a whole.

The Metropolitan Police said since 2008, it had received 166 reports of people who fear they are at risk of FGM.

It is the same story for all 43 forces across England and Wales with no convictions for the offence ever taking place, according to The Sunday Times.

The newspaper added that only two doctors have been struck off by The General Medical Council since 1980.

According to Forward, a charity which campaigners against FGM, an estimated 100,000 women in the UK have undergone mutilation.

Supermodel Waris Dirie, who was mutilated as a child, is a vociferous opponent of the practice.

Calling for a crackdown on FGM, she said: “If a white girl is abused, the police come break down the door. If a black girl is mutilated, nobody takes care of her. This is what I call racism.”

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



100,000 Women Undergo Brutal Genital Mutilation Illegally in Britain (And Some of the Victims Are as Young as Ten)

As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported.

Investigators from The Sunday Times said they secretly filmed a doctor, dentist and alternative medicine practitioner who were allegedly willing to perform circumcisions or arrange for the operation to be carried out.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



British National Party Leaders Hook Up to Produce Book on the ‘Islamization of Europe’

The British National Party have announced that they are selling a “great new book on the Muslim tide, and how to turn it”. The book is titled Inch’Allah? The Islamization of Europe, its author is Vlaams Belang leader Filip Dewinter, and the English version is translated and edited by none other than the BNP’s own would-be führer Nick Griffin. Indeed, it would appear that Griffin’s role in the production of the book went even further than that — he is now boasting about the new sections he introduced to improve Dewinter’s original text.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) — Enthusiasm for Inch’Allah? evidently transcends the deep divisions within the BNP itself. Griffin’s leading political opponent in the party, Andrew Brons, has published a glowing review of the book on his own Nationalist Unity Forum, hailing it as “one of the most comprehensive and well-researched works on the Islamic colonisation of Europe yet published on the continent”. Mind you, that may have been before Brons realised Griffin had a hand in writing it.

Some of us will recall that the US Islamophobic bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were sharply criticised by their former ally Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs for their participation at the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 conference alongside Filip Dewinter. Johnson accused Vlaams Belang of being white nationalists with fascist links.

Geller and Spencer indignantly denied this. Geller argued that “Vlaams Belang is the only party that has gone out of its way to support Israel. No political party in Belgium has supported Israel. Vlaams Belang has been the only party staunchly behind Israel for the past 10 years.” Spencer agreed that VB are “the only ones in Flanders standing against the jihad and for Israel”.

Given these expressions of support for Vlaams Belang, and their shared views on the threatened “Islamization” of the West, will Geller and Spencer be promoting the English edition of Dewinter/Griffin’s book in the US? And if not, why not? I think we should be told.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



France 2012: Anti-Politics in the Streets in Paris

(AGI) Paris — On the day of pre-elections silence, on the eve of presidential elections, youth go down in the streets in Paris.In the heart of Paris an anti-politics demonstration was set up by a crowd made up mostly of young people who walked across the city heralding, “They do not represent us!”, referring to the ten official candidates running to lead the Elysee .

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



Italy: Seven Arrested After October Riots in Rome

‘Day of Rage’ left dozens hurt

(ANSA) — Rome, April 20 — Italian police on Friday arrested seven people across Italy in connection with a rampage in Rome in October in which anti-capitalists torched cars and broke windows in the worst violence in the Italian capital for years.

The October 15 rioting by groups linking themselves to the so-called Indignati (Indignant Ones) staging a ‘Day of Rage’ against global financial elites left dozens of police and demonstrators hurt. On Friday security police raided homes in Rome, Teramo, Ancona, Civitanova Marche, Padua and Cosenza, targeting known anarchists as well as soccer hooligans.

“It’s an operation that will shine light on what happened,” said Interior Minister Annamaria Cancellieri.

A warrant issued by a preliminary-investigations judge said the arrests could lead to charges of “attempted homicide” for one incident, an attack on a police armoured car, which was torched.

Among those arrested in Teramo was a leftist militant, Davide Rossi, who narrowly failed to win a place in council elections for the Communist Refoundation party last year.

The seven taken into custody were later released to house arrest.

Another six were served orders not to leave their cities of residence.

Probes since the October violence have led to a total of 34 arrests and eight convictions but investigators intend to track down more people suspected of being involved in the trouble.

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno thanked the police and prosecutors for their work on finding the perpetrators.

“This shows that even months after the event it is possible to find the culprits for these deeds, which must never happen in our city again,” Alemanno said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Alfredo’s: Rome Eatery With Heroic Past, Delicious Present

Owners helped Jewish families during World War II

(ANSA) — Rome — Italians named Alfredo often hear the glib exclamation Fettuccine! when they introduce themselves to foreigners, especially North Americans.

Alfredo Di Lelio, a Roman chef and restaurant owner from the early 1900s, may not have invented pasta al burro (pasta with butter), but his interpretation, the iconic Fettuccine Alfredo, carries his name and has been savored worldwide since the 20s. Millions of recipes are floating around, including one in the classic US cookbook Joy of Cooking and many believe that the creamy sauce is an invention of Italian Americans. “Not so,” the current owner of Rome’s famous Vero Alfredo restaurant, Isa Di Lelio, granddaughter of Alfredo I, told ANSA.

“My grandfather Alfredo’s pasta, made even richer with three parts butter instead of two, was prepared for his wife when she was pregnant with my father, before he added it to his restaurant’s menu in 1908”. Yet Alfredo’s rich and nutritious creation went on to feed much more than his wife and the paying public. “We went underground in 1944 when occupying forces in Rome began to round up Jewish families,” one of those people, 84-year old Donatella Limentani, told ANSA. “We had no game plan, no extra food supplies, we just knew that our only chance to live was to go into hiding”.

Alfredo’s son Armando, later known as Alfredo II, was a long-time friend of Limentani’s uncle Bruno and did not hesitate to help the family, along with many others in need. “The risks were not only imprisonment, but torture and even death. Regardless, they made sure we had food,” recalled Limentani, her voice wrought with emotion after more than 50 years. “In the worst of times, they may have only had two spoonfuls themselves, but one went to us”. Before the war, Armando and Bruno had been the classic, bon vivant friends, arm-in-arm, reveling in the finer side of Rome’s social life. It was, after all, a time when Hollywood stars flocked to the city and entertainment poured from the city’s many venues.

As early as the 1920s Hollywood personalities began to frequent Alfredo’s. Among the first were Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, who gifted the golden fork and spoon to Alfredo that have now become part of the restaurant’s logo. Upon returning to Hollywood, they gushed about Alfredo’s culinary finesse so much that the restaurant became a “must do” on the list of stars and VIPs visiting the Eternal City.

Some 90 years later, the significance of the golden cutlery has become even more symbolic. Eliana Pavoncello, daughter of Donatella Limentani, told ANSA: “I had been working with the restaurant for events, looking at the logo every day and seeing their cutlery, then, one day at my mother’s. “I realized that the knife I was about to set the table with was the same design as the one used at Alfredo’s — identical to the original gift from Pickford and Fairbanks,” she said, smiling. “It was like a bulb lighting up. One of the cornerstone symbols of the restaurant came from my grandparent’s store, Limentani’s. “Our families were somehow bonded even before they knew it”. To celebrate the daily sustenance they received as children in hiding, then 14-year old Limentani and her seven-year-old brother wrote a rhyme they would sing when their aunt Margaret would return from Alfredo’s restaurant with their daily bread. “It is a children’s song,” she reminisced. “But it was part of our ritual that kept us hopeful. It let our minds feel free… hunger is a physical sensation, but also the lack of freedom was insatiable. “In a time when it was hard to know who was truly your friend the proof of one family’s friendship came to us every day wrapped in a checkered table cloth”. Di Lelio said simply that: “my father was a generous person. I am moved by stories I hear about him to this day”. Fettuccine Alfredo is a ubiquitous part of Italian cuisine worldwide. Just as the restaurant on Piazza Augusto Imperatore, with its volumes of guest books and snapshots of stars, politicians and personalities spanning 10 decades, is engraved into Roman culinary history, so will Alfredo and son remain in the unwavering memories of the families they helped save. Rhyme by Donatella Limentani while in hiding, 1944: Dring Dring Dring Di chi e’ la suonatina Che sentiamo ogni mattina? E’ la tua Margaretina Con la borsa col faggoto Tu di corsa entri in cucina E ci porti da mangiare Con amore Margaretina.

Translation: Jingle jingle jing Whose is that ring We hear every morning? It is yours, little Margaret With your purse and tiffin you rush to the kitchen And you bring us our food With love, little Margaret.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Renaissance Library Impounded After Massive Book Theft

Thousands of volumes missing from Girolamini in Naples

(ANSA) — Naples, April 19 — One of Italy’s oldest libraries was impounded Thursday as part of a police investigation into thousands of stolen antique books. The Girolamini Library, known for its vast collection of writings on theology and philosophy, lost the books several days ago, according to Director Marino Massimo De Caro who reported the incident to police. Management of the building has fallen under the auspices of the director of the Vittorio Emanuele III National Museum in Naples for the time being. First opened in 1586, it contains roughly 160,000 volumes, 5,000 of which date back to the 16th century.

The library, which was famously frequented by 18th-century political philosopher Giambattista Vico, adjoins the Girolamini church complex and convent.

In addition to its trove of rare volumes, the library is treasured for four well-preserved 18th-century rooms. photo: archive pic of police in a library

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Balduzzi Signs Decree, C Bracket Drugs Also in Shops

(AGI) Rome — Medecines in the C bracket will be sold also in shops, not only in pharmacies, but only when “delisted”, which means when the obligation to have a prescription is abolished.

Health Minister Renato Balduzzi, signed today, within the 120 days deadline as the law prescribes, the decree implementing art. 32 of the “Salva Italia” decree-law, concerning the sale of C bracket medecines, which are those paid directly by the citizens. The decree was signed after technical assessment by the AIFA, the Italian agency for medecines.

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



Italy: Father of Pakistani Baby Girl Killed in Modena Arrested

(AGI) Modena — 32-years old Mohammad Tubassam ended up in jail accused of murdering his 2-years-old Pakistani daugther. The baby girl died on wednesday at Modena’s hospital after 13 days of sufferings. The baby girl had already been hospitalized in Miralndola last january for head injuries due to a fall. She came to Modena’s hospital with very serious injuries all over her bodies, including her head, that were immediately considered as incompatible with an accidental fall in the bathroom, as the mother said. The mother is now under investigation for child injury and abuse, but according to the evidence gathered she was in another room of the family’s house in Concordia. Police investigators are persuaded that the man acted on his own, once he was back from work and the baby girl was crying. He took the baby girl to the hospital himself, denying any abuse and supporting the mother’s version.

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



Italy: Bossi: Maroni Good for Party, Those Who Took Money, Out

(AGI) Rome — In a surprise visit to Roberto Maroni’s electoral meeting Bossi declared, “They want to try and break the League.” The “Senatur” defended Maroni, “He is good for the League.” He then remarked, “We were a bit ashamed of what happened, but the people understood. If something went wrong it’s because there was deception.” “We believe in the League and the project. I resigned, a first step, but to tell the truth I’ve gone up in rank, from Secretary I’ve become President….”, explained the former Reform Minister, “We must be strong and show that it won’t pass. Our enemy is the centralism of Rome. Today the League is compact and is returniing to be a principal political force in the country.” Umberto Bossi continued, “If one gets to the bottom of things they discover than no-one has gotten rich. But for those who have taken money, it is right that they step aside.” . .

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



Italy: Bossi Seeks Lega Nord Unity and Agreement With Maroni

(AGI) Arese — Asked whether he is planning to leave his Lega Nord party, Umberto Bossi said he actually wants to unite it.

“I want to unite the Lega Nord”, Umberto Bossi said when asked whether or not he is planning to leave the party and found a new one. “I want to reach an agreement with Maroni”, he added.

Bossi also confirmed that he has not yet decided whether or not to stand as candidate for federal secretary of the party.

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



Italy: US Securities and Deposit Certificates Confiscated in Rome

(AGI) Rome — US securities with a face value of 1,5 billion Dollars and deposit certificates amounting to about 1000 tons of gold. This is the result of an operation performed by Rome’s tax police dubbed “Million Dollar” triggered by the suspicion that they were of doubtful origin. The operation took place both in the provinces of Rome and Viterbo and led to the reporting to judicial authorities of a man, 70, persistant offender, allegedly accused for introducing into Italy currency and securities which are probably forged.

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



Right Wingers in Europe Just Fired Off Two Huge Torpedoes

The big news out of the French election: Marine Le-Pen, the head of the far right wing National Front party, secured 20% of the vote in the first round of voting.

Le-Pen is now out of the race (the runoff on May 6 will be between Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Hollande), but a 20% showing for the anti-immigration, Euroskeptic candidate is a lightning bolt for France and all of Europe.

Sarkozy is now in a desperate situation, where he may have to pander to hardliner in order to win (a move that could alienate more moderate voters).

The other big event in Europe this weekend was int he Netherdlands, where a budget deal collapsed thanks to a revolt lead by another right winger: Geert Wilders.

From AFP:…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Senior British Diplomat Loses Eye After Being Mugged as He Walks Through a London Cemetery

A senior British diplomat has lost the sight in one eye after being attacked as he walked through a cemetery.

Bermuda’s new governor George Fergusson took a short cut through Hammersmith Cemetery at 7.30pm on Friday evening as he was late for a dinner party where his wife was waiting.

Keen to make up time, the father-of-three was searching for the address on his BlackBerry when he was punched so hard he fell to the ground.

The attacker failed to prise the mobile phone from his hand, but made off with a small quantity of cash, police said.

The 56-year-old, whose family has a proud history in the British Army and diplomacy, was left dazed and bleeding from his left eye.

The old Etonian was able to get to feet and call his wife Margaret to excuse his absence from the party before staggering to Charing Cross hospital for help.

Yesterday, he underwent surgery at the Western eye hospital in London, but it was too late to save his eye, it was reported in the Sunday Times.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



U.K. Police Refused to Chase Quad Bike Gang Who Stole Kayak … Because Thieves Had No Helmets

When Rebecca Jones directed police towards a gang of thieves making their getaway on quad bikes she naturally expected officers to tear off in hot pursuit.

But she was left speechless when they called off the chase moments later — on the grounds of health and safety.

They told her that they did not want to risk causing an accident because the gang were not wearing crash helmets and were driving wildly.

Instead, the officers simply gave up and let the thieves disappear into the distance with the £700 kayak they had stolen from Miss Jones.

The legal executive said the gang struck as she and her boyfriend joined her parents on the water of a weir on the River Dearne at Harlington, in South Yorkshire.

As the group prepared to set off, the quad bikers raced up and snatched her kayak before driving off with it strapped to one of their machines.

Miss Jones, 28, and her boyfriend, Mark Skirrow, 27, gave chase and tracked the thieves across fields in the hope that the police would take over once they arrived. ‘The police were called immediately and they also followed the gang and caught up with them on the road,’ said Miss Jones, from Swinton, near Rotherham.

‘But they had to abandon the pursuit because of health and safety concerns as the quad bikers were driving erratically and not wearing helmets.

‘My boat was stolen and there is nothing much I can do about it.’

The police are not understood to have made any arrests.

Miss Jones and her boyfriend had gone to meet up with her parents, both retired teachers, when the thieves pounced during the Easter holidays.

‘I stayed at Mark’s house and we went out for a few drinks,’ she said yesterday. ‘When we woke up the following morning the weather was so nice we decided to take our kayaks to the weir on the River Dearne. After arriving at the car park we unloaded our boats and got changed.’

She said they were never more than ten yards from their boats.

‘Moments later a group of quad bikers came tearing down the road and made off with my brand new boat. I was only standing on the other side of a single lane carriageway. After another member of the public had spotted them, we followed the group, who made off across the fields still with my kayak tied to the front of their bike.

‘The police were called immediately and they followed the gang and caught up with them on the road but then they called it off.’

Health and safety rules have been blamed for inaction by the emergency services in a number of incidents — many of them much more serious.

[…]

A South Yorkshire Police spokesman said of the kayak theft: ‘Officers were instructed not to begin a pursuit. An area search was conducted and all lines of enquiry were explored, unfortunately without gain.

‘South Yorkshire Police perform a risk assessment based on the circumstances of each incident.’

           — Hat tip: McR [Return to headlines]



UK: Bundling Bearded Windbags on to Jets Won’t Solve Anything

Theresa May, one of nature’s soppy liberals, is struggling to seem decisive over the deportation of the Bethlehem-born windbag Abu Qatada. The trouble is, Mrs May isn’t even any good at pretending to be tough.

[…]

It has all gone wrong for Mrs May because she and her department are not very good at what they do. But really the British people ought to have seen through this fake controversy by now.

The real Islamist threat to Britain and the rest of Europe comes from uncontrolled mass migration from Muslim countries. Combined with our national refusal to defend our British, Christian culture, this is rapidly creating a powerful and influential Muslim vote which will increasingly change our country.

Given a few more decades, it will have profoundly altered this country. I have long suspected that this island will be more or less Muslim within a century, and it will be the fault of this generation. It would be perfectly legitimate for a respectable, law-abiding and civilised political party to act now to prevent this.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


The New Anti-Semitism

by Moshe Dann

It’s Jew-hating time, again. No cross-burnings or bomb-wearing psychos screaming for Allah. It’s sophisticated, draped by UN and EU glitz, banal reports about Israeli atrocities, and Palestinian liberation. It’s so holy, so morally pompous, and fashionable.

Criticizing Israel doesn’t lack for issues: “apartheid,” “war crimes,” “stealing Palestinian land,” “oppressing Palestinians,” “the occupation,” etc.

NGOs funded by European governments, the UN, and most Arab and Muslim organizations and countries, condemn Israel as a pariah state, unworthy of existence. In this pogrom of conscience they wear no hoods. Their masks are self-righteousness.

The mechanism for vilification and de-legitimization, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, is coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, an umbrella organization for dozens of Palestinian organizations, located in Ramallah and supported by the Palestinian Authority. A global movement, it is behind the spread of anti-Israel actions by churches, unions and student groups.

The mantra chants are easy: “End the Occupation,” “Justice for the Palestinians,” “Peace Now.” No need to think about complicated issues; just blame Israel. And Hate. Hate.

Anti-Israel campaigns overlap anti-Jewish sentiments. This explains why hate-Israel campaigns garner support from atheists, anarchists and even some Christians, why young people wrap themselves in checkered scarves, like Arafat, and come to Israel in order to fight alongside Arabs, some placing themselves in danger, and why EU countries with hard-hit economies spend hundreds of millions of Euros every year supporting anti-Israel organizations.

Backed by Islamists, especially Muslim Brotherhood-supported student organizations, hating Israel has become the campus rage. Meanwhile, university administrators have been obsessively neutral and Jewish organizations, excessively polite.

In addition, Israel has produced its own uber-critics — columnists who condemn Israel as “racist,” editors who recommend “raping” Israel, academics, literary figures, and artists who support BDS against Jews living in Judea and Samaria.

Hence, in order to understand de-legitimization, we need to distinguish between those who seek Israel’s destruction, in one form or another, and those with legitimate, honest criticism. As one of the pillars of democracy is freedom of speech, drawing the line between what is acceptable, and what is not, is often difficult. Self-criticism is essential; without it there cannot be growth. But self-criticism without limit, unbalanced and exaggerated, is self-destructive.

Challenging Israel’s identity as a nominally Jewish state might be acceptable if all states with official religions were rejected. Singling out Israel, therefore, is not only bigoted; it is a form of de-legitimization, a softer denial of Israel’s right to exist.

State-sponsored immorality

The soft deniers protest their link with hard-line de-legitimizers, arguing that they support Israel, but are critical of its “racist policies,” its “illegal occupation of Arab lands,” its “colonialism.” But the connection between criticism and full-blown hatred deepens when biased news stories and distorted rhetoric about Israeli “atrocities” and “war crimes” become self-defined truths, distortions of reality.

Decrying “the occupation as a moral disaster” for Israel therefore identifies Jews as immoral, a state-sponsored immorality, a legal and historical fraud that sharpens the sword of de-legitimization, justifies BDS campaigns, and anti-Jewish violence.

When the Gaza Strip is portrayed as “a vast prison,” for example, then attacking the warders is heroic, overthrowing the system that produced that prison is justified, and Hamas missiles become “self-defense.”…

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Turkey: Coming Soon: ‘Feline Big Brother’ For Van Cats

Rare cats, two colour eyes, stars of reality show

(by Rodolfo Calo’) (ANSAmed) — ANKARA — Next month will see the launch of a kind of cat version of ‘Big Brother’ to celebrate this specially telegenic cat. The multimedia potential of the breed has been explained to ANSAmed by a leading expert in the field, Professor Fetih Gulyuz, director of the research centre dedicated to the Van at the ‘Centenary University’ on the banks of a very blue lake, that bears the same name as the cat, in eastern Turkey. As the professor said, “as far as we know, there are no other” breeds apart from the “Van Cat” having herterchromia of the eyes. The characteristic is apparently due to “a genetic anomaly” Prof.

Gulyuz notes, pointing out that “Van kedisi” has three kinds of pupil coloration: both yellow, both blue, and — most characteristic — “one blue and one yellow”. This rare feature is in danger of disappearing. As the Professor told the Anadolu press agency, the Van research centre was created specifically to safeguard the Van kedisi from extinction. As you can see from the Wikipedia article on this cat, the completely white version has not yet received recognition in Europe as a breed apart from the more common versions whose heads and tails are of a different colour. Although the rare white exemplars are rare, we will soon be able to enjoy watching them on the internet. As Prof. Gulyuz announces: “within the next two months”, a “live transmission” will start on a website currently under construction. According to the centre’s deputy in charge, Mehmet Karaca, twelve TV cameras will be located in various parts of the kennels. Dating back to 1997, there are just over one hundred cat residents at the moment and cameras will concentrate on interaction between the “mothers” (there are around eighty of these) and their kits. A two-storey building set next to two roofed-over cage compounds, the breeding kennel did not suffer any damage in the two earthquakes of last October and November that led to nearly 650 deaths and left 60,000 local families without their homes in the province of Van, which lies on Turkey’s border with Iran. As soon as four hours after the quakes, “the cats were back to their normal behaviour” the Professor says, and three of the four staff members “continued to feed them as ever: there was no problem here”. Throughout the human ordeal, the cats were never neglected. This cat is the symbol of the region of Van: its face is to be seen in the luminous displays on the entrance to the city and there is a four-metre high statue of the cat in the main thoroughfare. So proud is Turkey of this cat that even Ankara chose its dual-coloured eyes as a logo for a recent tourism campaign. The myth of the Van cat is further fed by the belief that — unlike any other cat — these ones love water. There is a tradition that it learned to swim by jumping off Noah’s Ark even before the Ark docked at its berth by Mount Ararat, and there are plenty of references to it on the Web as the “swimming cat”. But the Prof. is sceptical: “In my opinion, it’s a myth.

It hasn’t been proven by any scientific study” that this cat loves water. There is, the Professor says, no substance to the story that its soft fur sheds water. Just like a dog, finding itself in water, it will do its best not to drown, “but does that mean it enjoys swimming?”. Professor Gulyuz elaborates: Van cats “are sensitive”: “they love being treasured” and they enjoy the domestic life: but they are also very fond of “their freedom” and so “they have the need to wander,” in the garden, for example. The breeding station attached to the university is the only official breeding kennel for this cat. There are bureaucratic obstacles to exporting Van cats and the centre sells just 10-15 kittens a year at between 85 and 210 euros apiece. Private citizens or pet shops in the area have them on offer for around 50-60 euros.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Russia


Italian-Russian Fuel Deal Applauded by Terzi

‘Step forward’ for bilateral ties

(ANSA) — Moscow, April 20 — Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said on Friday that the deal by Italian fuel giant Eni and electricity group Enel for natural gas production in Siberia represents a “step ahead” in bilateral relations between Italy and Russia.

Gas from the acrtic field in the autonomous district of Yamals-Nenets, located more that 3,000 kilometers from Moscow, could fill one-third of Italy’s annual fuel needs, said Terzi. But Terzi specified that the gas from the Eni and Enel joint-venture with Russian counterparts Novatek and Gazpromneft, called Severenergia, is not necessarily destined for the Italian market.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Nepalese Muslims Claim Their Rights in New Constitution

A campaign to raise awareness among political parties. Fear of anti-conversion laws. Muslims, Catholics and Protestants united against discrimination and persecution.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — Nepali Muslims have launched campaign to defend and respect the rights of all minorities in the new constitution. They threaten protests if the new constitution does not comply with such requests. In view of the deadline for submission of the text intended for May 27, Muslim community leaders have launched the National Muslim Alliance (Nmsa). The group consists of 31 representatives of various organizations and politics. Among them are also members of the Maoist and the Nepali Congress Party (Conservative Party). Yesterday, leaders of Nmsa handed over a memorandum to the Constituent Assembly complaining about the marginalization of minorities, including Christians, Catholics and Protestants.

Rahamutullah Miya, Nmsa secretary, said that “for years Muslims and Christians, were the country’s most affected minorities. The new constitution must secure our identity and our rights in the name of the secular state. Nepal is a confessional country, but the religions other than Hinduism continue to be persecuted. “ “The various religious groups — he adds — must unite into a single force. We invite all religious minorities, including Christians, to fight this battle with us.”

With the fall of the Hindu monarchy in 2007, Nepal became a secular state. The interim constitution guarantees freedom of worship, but prohibits proselytizing. However in recent years there have been several murders and attacks against religious minorities, usually at the hands of Hindu extremists. In 2008, gunmen of Nepal Defense Army (NDA) shot dead Fr. Prakah John, a Jesuit priest. On 26 April 2008, the NDA detonated a bomb inside the Birantnagar mosque, killing two people. On May 23, 2009, the same group, placed a bomb in the Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption in Kathmandu. The toll was two dead and 13 wounded. The threat of anti-conversion laws, proposed by some conservative parties, are also hanging over minority communities, which if approved will be included in the new penal code under consideration in parliament together with the constitution. The penalties include arrest and sentence of five years for those who preach and disseminate religious material that might offend the Hindu religion. Among the acts that could lead to arrest is the slaughter of cattle near Hindu sacred areas.

Before proposing the new laws the government failed to consult the religious minorities. The Catholic Church has learned of the law from the Nepali media. To lobby the authorities and raise public awareness, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Baha’is organized several events in 2011 and handed over a memorandum to the authorities asking for a revision of laws. In August, the Catholic Church translated the drafts of the new code and circulated the articles that violate religious freedom on the Internet.

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



UK Aid Helps to Fund Forced Sterilisation of India’s Poor

Money from the UK’s Department for International Development has helped pay for a controversial programme that has led to miscarriages and even deaths after botched operations

Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A number of pregnant women selected for sterilisation suffered miscarriages and lost their babies.

The UK agreed to give India £166m to fund the programme, despite allegations that the money would be used to sterilise the poor in an attempt to curb the country’s burgeoning population of 1.2 billion people.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Untested Vaccines Causing New Wave of Polio-Like Paralysis Across India

(NaturalNews) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is financially backing and publicly endorsing mass polio virus vaccinations in India. In case you didn’t hear him yourself, Bill Gates publicly announced that vaccines could help reduce the world population by 15%.

Gates also proclaimed that every newborn should be registered for vaccinations immediately to assure the goal of 90% of the population getting vaccinated for his “century of the vaccination.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation program in India was promoted as “The Last Mile: Eradicating polio in India.” The promotional video displayed numbers showing thousands of cases of polio in India decades ago, with the number of cases dropping to 42 by 2010. But it appears that wild polio virus stats have been traded for polio from vaccines and non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).

In India, over 47,000 cases of NPAFP were reported in 2011. The paralysis symptoms of NPAFP are practically the same as what’s attributed to “eradicated” wild virus polio. Apparently, vaccine polio viruses also cause polio paralysis.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Far East


Fukushima is Falling Apart: Are You Ready?

Thirteen months have passed since the Fukushima reactors exploded, and a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there.

What he saw was horrific.

And now he is saying that we are in big trouble.

See the letter he sent to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Ichiro Fujisaki, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NRC’s Chairman Gregory Jaczko here.

But what is so ironic about this is that we have been in this heap of trouble since March of 2011. March 17th, to be exact, when the plume of radioactive materials began bombarding the west coast of California.

And Oregon. And Washington. And British Columbia. And later Maine, Europe, and everywhere in between.

Independent researchers, nuke experts, and scientists, from oceanography to entomology and everywhere in between, having been trying to sound the alarm ever since.

The scientists most upset are those who have studied the effects of radiation on health. I’ll say it again, so its really clear: we are in big trouble.

[…]

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has only recently confirmed that there were three meltdowns, and they have been ongoing, unabated, for thirteen months, and no effort has been made to contain them.

[…]

In fact the kelp from Corona del Mar contained 40,000,000 bcq/kg of radioactive iodine, as reported in Scientific American several weeks ago.

If you don’t know your becquerels, its a lot. That’s what your pacific fish feed on. And that was only ONE isotope reported. There were up to 1600 different isotopes that have been floating around in our air, pouring out of the reactors, and steaming out of the ground, every second of every day, for 13 months.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Japan: TEPCO: Not Enough Money to Handle Fukushima Nuclear Reactor 4 Problems

The problems at reactor 4 are the greatest short-term threat to humanity and has the potential to destroy our world and TEPCO doesn’t have the money to fix them.

The problem at Fukushima nuclear reactor 4 which is being dubbed as the greatest short-term threat to humanity and has the potential to destroy our world and civilization as we know it.

Now nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen who is one of the only people providing objective scientific analysis about the Fukushima nuclear fallout believes based on his analysis of the problems that TEPCO simply doesn’t have enough money to deal with the issues there.

He says this at about 25:00 minutes into a recent program on WBAI’s Five O’Clock Shadow.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Taiwan Will Buy 4 US Warships to Deter China

(AGI) Taipei — Taiwan is ready to buy 4 warships from the US to face China’s menace. According to local media, a meeting took place last month between the US Defense secretary and president Ma Ying-jeou. If the deal will go through, Taipei’s navy will count 12 warships in total. This move could stiffen again the relationship with China, which had improved at the start of Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency in 2008.

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

Latin America


Drug-Related Shooting in Mexico, 15 Killed in a Bar

(AGI) Ciudad Juarez — In Chihuahua, Northern Mexico, 15 people were killed in a bar. An armed commando entered the bar and opened fire on a group of people, potential rivals, perhaps, in the drug-trafficking control. This phenomenon, which has buckled Mexico, caused two more crimes in another bar, with a total death toll of 17. Since 2008, Chihuahua, and especially Ciudad Juarez on the border with Texas, are the cities where the war between gangs has been most atrocious, following by the attempt of repression trigerred by President Felipe Calderon two years before.

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

Immigration


UK: Second Hate Cleric is Allowed to Stay — and He’s So Dangerous He Was Banned From as-Level Chemistry

An Iraqi Muslim cleric suspected of being involved with Al Qaeda and radicalising young Britons has used the Human Rights Act to continue to live in the UK — despite Government efforts to deport him.

Taha Muhammad is regarded as one of Britain’s most dangerous security threats. He was even banned from studying AS-level chemistry because of fears he would use the knowledge to commit terrorist acts.

The decision to let him stay is another setback for Home Secretary Theresa May, already under pressure after attempts to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan descended into chaos.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


All the Morals of a Bulldozer

To be genuinely outraged about something, you need to actually believe in something. Without principles, outrage is just tactical anger, or bullying in plainer language. Principles, values and codes, are universal. That is if you are angry about a dog being mistreated by riding on top of a car, then you should at least be equally angry at dogs being eaten.

If a man shooting another man after a confrontation and not being charged for it angers you, then it should anger you regardless of the color of his skin. For that matter, if racism or sexism offends you, then it should offend you regardless of whether it is directed at a woman or a black man who is a liberal or a conservative.

It’s child play to notice that the game doesn’t work this way anymore. That the media engages in displays of tactical anger, serious-face inquiries into issues that they are concerned about only when they benefit their side, manufactured outrage that is not based on any deeply held beliefs, but only on the need to score some points.

[…]

Boiled down to its essence, the liberal message is that “we are good people, because they are bad people”. The new Democrats sticker which reads, “Not a Republican” aptly sums up this void. It follows that good people cannot be bad and that bad people cannot be good, and once you accept this message, no further ethics or morals are needed. The very goodness of your side is all the moral code you need.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

General


Treacherous Treaties

So the interesting question is, do all treaties reduce the sovereignties of the nations that enter into them? I am certain the answer is yes. Treaties which are entered into in hopes of preventing wars ultimately expand them and nations find themselves fighting wars they never conceived of because an insignificant member of a treaty can somehow start a war that then extends to all of the treaty’s signatories.

In fact, World War I started in exactly that way. The war which killed more than 15 million and wounded more than 20 million was started by the assassination on June 28, 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, by a Yugoslav nationalist. Because of it, Austria went to war with Serbia. Alliances formed over previous decades, brought the major powers into the war within weeks. How many of these nations would have gone to war over that assassination had the treaties not existed? No one will ever know!

None of the nations except Austria had a hand in deciding to go to war. The decision for every nation involved, except perhaps the United States, was made in Vienna. By signing these treaties, each of these nations gave up their sovereignties. They were no longer masters of their own fates.

[…]

However balance of power treaties are not the only culprits. Trade agreements are just as bad. Look at what the Maastricht Treaty which established the European Union has done to Greece and threatens to do to other European countries. Today’s Quisling Greek government is now little more than a tool of Europe’s more prosperous states. When Greece’s former socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou proposed a popular referendum on the Greek sovereign debt bailout, the European Union scotched it. Now Greece no longer has the power to call an election that the Union objects to. Greece has even lost its democracy.

But the effect of trade agreements is far more extensive than the EU.

[…]

“According to the W.T.O., 125 of its 153 member countries have made varying degrees of commitments to the financial services agreement. Now, these pledges could easily be used to undermine new rules intended to make financial systems safer.”

So now, nations may not even have the power to regulate their financial institutions which, in fact, extends to their economies as a whole. The World Trade Organization rules all.

So how did that happen? Well, people have been trying to create a world government for a long time. To do that, nation states must be rendered effete. Consider what David Rockefeller said at a Bilderberg meeting in 1991:

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

Well given what the “intellectual elite and world bankers” did to the global economy in 2008, do you really want them to rule all? World government, in order to work, requires that ethnic and religious distinctions be expunged.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Trinity Versus Tyranny — Final Battle Over Fate of Man

We have a conundrum. While today Muslim nations are repressive, yet Islam boasts a rich history of intellectual achievements. So which claim is true? In fact, both represent certain historical facts. Islam was an incubator of past innovations, technologies and arts, as well as heirs of the Greek classical literary canon. But whether Islam was a creator of unique intellectual achievement is a different story.

According to Edward Hungerford, in an essay in the Atlantic Monthly, The Intellectual Mission of the Saracens, the legend of Islam’s creativity is overstated. Instead, he claims as Islam swept across the Middle East, etc, Muslims preserved learning. But for original scholarship they left practically zero record of novel discoveries or intellectual breakthroughs. Their innovations were borrowed from previous cultures. Hungerford states,

“The heights of culture actually attained were reached in spite of the restraints of Islam rather than through encouragement given by it. The religion of Mohammed, founded in opposition to liberal learning, never ceased to oppose that learning. Science made headway against a religious fanaticism which manifested itself in the destruction of libraries, the burning of condemned books, the persecution of philosophers. Imprisonment, banishment, popular violence, threats of house-burning, fears of death,—to these were men exposed who cultivated the ancient learning under the rule of princes, who, actuated either by their own prejudices or by the desire of popular favor, used their influence in the interest of religious intolerance.”

But, if true—Why would this be?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120421

Financial Crisis
» Albania: Economy Growing, But 60% Population Suffering
 
USA
» “Stand Your Ground” Law Not Invalidated by Zimmerman Shooting
» Chamber of Commerce — Change Agent Since 1912
» Cook Stoves and Climate Change
» Dershowitz Comments on the Zimmerman Case
» Gunman Who ‘Stalked Couples at Motels and Forced Them to Have Sex’ Is Caught… After Showing Up at Court Over Traffic Violation
» Muslim Students Celebrate Culture at Tate [Plaza]
» Obama’s Counterterrorism Chief Praises NYPD Operation That Targeted N.J. Mosques
» Prostitutes Involved in Secret Service Sex Scandal ‘May Have Been Underage’ As Senator Demands Investigation Into Involvement of Obama’s White House Staff
» South Florida’s Muslim Bashing
» What is Earth Day?: Earth Day and Agenda 21
 
Europe and the EU
» France: Bayrou: We Need a Technical Government Like Monti
» French Muslims ‘Likely to Vote for Far Left’
» Germany and Islam: Koran Study
» Italian Beer Getting Just Desserts at Home and Abroad
» Italy: Venetian ‘Gutenberg’ Hands Down Tradition
» Italy: Ducati to be Sold to Audi, Owners Confirm
» Italy: More Italian Readers Gather News From Internet
» Italy: N. League’s Bossi Did Not Know of Maroni Dossier
» Italy: Prosecutors Seize 350, 000 Euro From Northern League Notary
» Something Smells Funny? Gorgonzola Popularity Spawns Bogus-Zola
» UK Cab Company Boss Claims Cyclists Deserve to Die
» UK: Langley Green Church Converts to New Mosque
» UK: Muslim ‘Cultural Sensitivity’ Runs Amok
» UK: The ‘Omnishambles’ And the Power of Political Language
» UKIP Doesn’t Have a Grassroots and Has to Fight to Keep the Loonies Out. Wavering Tories Should be Careful
» Vatican and Breakaway SSPX Seek Common Ground
» We Can’t Reform the European Court of Human Rights, So Let’s End This Nonsense
 
Balkans
» Serbia: Roma People’s Position Improves
 
Mediterranean Union
» EU Project Offers Training to 1,200 Journalists
 
North Africa
» Algeria: Woman in Surgery Clinic, Dies After Kidney “Stolen”
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Jewish Studies Center, Soon Gay Rabbis in Israel
 
Middle East
» Bahrain Grand Prix: Protesters Block Roads as Teargas Fired
» Islam’s Sacred Geography
» Kuwait: Blasphemer Injured, MPs Demand Probe — Assailant Charged With Attempted Murder
» Kuwait: Islamists Propose Morality Police
» Qatar: Soccer Meets Politics at Doha’s Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque
» Saudi Arabia: Narrowing Islam-West Cultural Gap
 
Russia
» ENI, ENEL Start Joint Production of Gas in Siberia
 
South Asia
» Bollywood Star Kidnapped and Beheaded by Two Colleagues
» ‘Enforced Disappearances’ Haunt Bangladesh
» For India’s Central Government, The Enrica Lexie Was in International Waters
» Indian Attorney Supports Italy’s Claim in Shooting Case
» India: Hindu Radicals Use the Law to Persecute Christians in Andhra Pradesh
» Indonesia: Latest Attack Damages Mosque in W. Java
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Cameroon: Army Deployed Against Poachers
» Gabon/OIC: Information Ministers From OIC Member States Issue a Final Communique at the End of the 9th Icim
» Nigeria: R-E-V-E-A-L-E-D! How Boko Haram Import Arms From Apapa Wharf, Borno
 
Latin America
» Wal-Mart Hushed Up Vast Mexico Bribery Case After Top-Level Struggle
 
Immigration
» Greece: Reception Centre to Open in Next Few Days
» UK: Illegal Immigrant Raped Young Woman Three Years After Judge Ordered Him to be Deported the 33-Year-Old Raped the Woman Twice and Battered Her So Severely She Had 17 Injuries
 
Culture Wars
» Irish Government TD (Member of Parliament) Blames ‘Fornication’ For Unwanted Pregnancies
» Why Hate Speech Should Not be Banned

Financial Crisis


Albania: Economy Growing, But 60% Population Suffering

(ANSAmed) — TRIESTE, APRIL 18 — The economic crisis has affected the majority of families in Albania, with 60% of Albanians saying that they have noticed a “significant” effect on the progress of the economy, compared to an average of 50% in south-eastern Europe.

The figures are included in the ‘Transition Report 2011’, by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which presented the document on Albania in the capital Tirana today. The event was held at the House of Culture and was organised by the EBRD office in Tirana and the Central European Initiative (CEI), in collaboration with the Italian embassy.

The report states that suffering amid the economic crisis is felt despite the fact that Albania’s economy is growing, and is due to rise by 1.2% in 2012, the EBRD says. Since 1992, the CEI Fund at the EBRD has supported 27 technical assistance projects, worth a total of 6 million euros, in the energy, transport, agriculture and institutional development sectors.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


“Stand Your Ground” Law Not Invalidated by Zimmerman Shooting

Suppose some leftwing activists told you that you should not use guns because you have no right to protect yourself from a murderous criminal? If you’re like most right-thinking people, you would be outraged. Yet, liberals are using the shooting of Trayvon Martin as an excuse to say exactly that. They want to use the Martin case to repeal “stand your ground” laws.

A provision of Castle Doctrine legislation, “stand your ground” laws state that you don’t have to retreat from an attacker, that you can stay on your home or neighborhood premises and fight to defend yourself. That law replaced “duty to retreat” laws, which stated you must run away from your would-be murderer, so you do not kill him.

Leftists use the Martin case to urge repeal of “Stand your ground” laws which implies a revival of “retreat” laws. “Retreating” from your would-be murderer means not being able to use your gun to protect yourself. That, in turn, negates the right of self-defense. One example, of how liberals are arguing the “retreat” viewpoint is ex-President Bill Clinton.

That, of course, represents the false claim long made by liberals. It’s false because a lack of police training and the mere possession of a gun do not transform conscientious citizens into cold-blooded murderers. Lacking such training, civilians have their commonsense and deeply ingrained conscience that prevents them from becoming murderers. In fact, the data on shooting incidents between citizens and criminals shows that gun-owning citizens have thwarted crimes, protected themselves and protected their families from burglars. There are even cases where concealed carry permit-holders saved the lives of cops who were about to be murdered by thugs. So, time and again we see law-abiding gun owners continue being law-abiding. They don’t become the crazed murderers that dumb liberals say they will become.

Clinton’s concern about “Stand Your Ground” law “encouraging” murders reflects a poor understanding of that law. That law does not encourage murders. It protects self-defense killings. “Stand your ground” law enables a law-abiding gun owner to use a gun in his own self-defense—and protects him from being unjustly prosecuted for doing so. If you commit murder, “Stand” laws wont protect you from incarceration.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Chamber of Commerce — Change Agent Since 1912

In the 1930s and 1940s the Chamber of Commerce blanket organizations went for planning in a big way. Control of supply and demand was seen as the answer to “problems” of unequal distribution. Unequal distribution was seen as the main cause of war. The quotes that follow are but a few examples of plans for change proposed by the U. S. and International Chambers of Commerce.

“America thus far has trusted to rugged individualism, but now that rugged individualism is selling below par, America is beginning to think more realistically. Men like John Dewey, Charles A. Beard, and Stuart Chase are spreading the idea of planning. Mr. Swope of the General Electric Company has widely publicized his plan to organize the various industries in national units under government supervision. According to Mr. Swope’s plan, industries employing over fifty men and failing to come into the plan within three years would be compelled to do so.

“The United States Chamber of Commerce has conducted a national referendum on a programme and, as a result, the Board of Directors has voted in favour of a national voluntary economic council. The Chamber would modify the anti-trust laws so as to legalise combinations that could control supply in relation to normal demand. Government tribunals are called for, with power to control production in certain natural resources, such as coal, oil, lumber, and copper. The plan also includes private and voluntary unemployment insurance. The plan of the Chamber of Commerce is interesting, as showing the growing recognition of the need for planning. Excepting the Russian system, the ‘New Deal’ is the world’s largest effort at planning.”[1]

In 1933 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was a leading promoter toward restoring diplomatic relations with Russia:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Cook Stoves and Climate Change

The United States was in the platinum donor category with $5 million dollars, the Department of Energy, EPA, the Department of State were in the gold donor category with $1-5 million each, along with socialist European nations such as economically troubled Spain and Ireland, the World Bank, and many UN affiliates.

The Department of Energy awarded “Clean Biomass Cookstove Technologies” grants of $100,000 and $750,000 at a time when our country could ill-afford it, unemployment was at an all time high, taxpayers were unhappy, and the administration was demanding that we reduce our consumption of energy.

According to Washington Post, the U.S. has pledged $105 million in the last two years toward the project and Hollywood provided a spokesperson, Julia Roberts. Replacing cook stoves with “clean cook stoves” with chimneys would help 100 million households by 2020.

The “science” provided under the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves consisted of two articles, one published in Le Monde by Bertrand d’Armagnac on November 13, 2011, and another published in Bloomberg by Jonathan Alter on November 24, 2011.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Dershowitz Comments on the Zimmerman Case

To begin with, George Zimmerman, accused of 2nd degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, may have been at least partially vindicated by a photograph which shows the back of Zimmerman’s head badly injured and bleeding.

[…]

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School stated upon release of the arrest affidavit that it was “so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge … everything in the affidavit is completely consistent with a defense of self-defense.”

After the release of the photo, however, Dershowitz went much further, telling Breitbart News that if the prosecutors did have the photo and didn’t mention it in the affidavit, that would constitute a “grave ethical violation,” since affidavits are supposed to contain “all relevant information.”

Dershowitz continued, “An affidavit that willfully misstates undisputed evidence known to the prosecution is not only unethical but borders on perjury because an affidavit swears to tell not only the truth, but the whole truth, and suppressing an important part of the whole truth is a lie.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Gunman Who ‘Stalked Couples at Motels and Forced Them to Have Sex’ Is Caught… After Showing Up at Court Over Traffic Violation

A man who police believe has been following couples into several New Jersey hotels, forcing them to have sex with one another before he sexually assaulting the women has finally been caught.

Rasheed Powell, 36, has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault.

Police believe Powell targeted at least six couples that were checking into hotels along Routes 1&9 and were able to catch him when he arrived at court for a traffic violation.

‘Powell is clearly a sexual predator who acted quickly and viciously,’ Union County First Assistant Prosecutor Albert Cernadas Jr said to the Star-Ledger.

Powell would allegedly target couples as they walked toward their rooms.

When they entered the room, he would force his way inside and, at gunpoint, order the man and woman to perform sexual acts on one another as he watched, police said.

He would then lock the man in the bathroom so he could sexually assault the woman, authorities claim.

Powell stalked the Swan and Benedict motels in Linden, NJ, and the Royal Motel in Elizabeth, NJ, beginning his attacks on weekend nights in early March and continuing until last weekend, police said…

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Muslim Students Celebrate Culture at Tate [Plaza]

The Muslim Culture Fest brought students together Thursday in the Tate Plaza. The all-day event was hosted by the Muslim Student Association, and aimed to educate students about the religion and its diverse culture. “A lot of times people will stop by and say they’ve learned things they never knew, so being a part of that is really great,” said Umarah Ali, a junior from Augusta and president of MSA.

The first culture fest since 2010, this year was different in that many more countries, including China and Italy, were represented in the informational posters and food. “This year we really want to broaden the culture and show that the religion goes beyond just a few countries,” Ali said. “People don’t realize they come from all over the world.” MSA also wants the event to show students a different part of Islam.”It spreads the message of Islam, the real one that the media doesn’t portray — the peaceful side,” said Rafah Zaigham, a junior from Athens.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Obama’s Counterterrorism Chief Praises NYPD Operation That Targeted N.J. Mosques

President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser praised the New York Police Department’s work on Friday, saying the agency has struck an appropriate balance between keeping people safe and protecting their rights. “It’s not a trade-off between our security and our freedoms and our rights as citizens,” John Brennan said in an appearance at NYPD headquarters. “I believe that the balance that we strike has been an appropriate one. We want to make sure that we’re able to optimize our security at the same time we optimize those freedoms that we hold and cherish so deeply.”

The comments from the top counterterrorism official in the White House following months of debate over an NYPD domestic intelligence operation that placed Muslim businesses, student groups and mosques, including one in Paterson and several in Newark, under surveillance. The Associated Press revealed the details of the program in a series of articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting earlier this week.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Prostitutes Involved in Secret Service Sex Scandal ‘May Have Been Underage’ As Senator Demands Investigation Into Involvement of Obama’s White House Staff

The prostitutes involved in the Secret Service scandal that cost six agents their jobs may have been underage, according to a new report.

A Colombian government official told a newspaper group that investigators from the Colombian attorney general’s office have questioned employees of the hotel in question, and the taxi driver who drove home the woman who triggered the scandal, to find out more.

The U.S. agents and military personnel involved could face criminal charges if is proven that they had sex with girls under the age of 18.

When Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, was asked if any of the men had done so, he said neither he nor Mr Sullivan could be certain.

‘In the case of the 11 agents, the primary determination is you can’t determine to charge or not charge somebody until you know whether a crime is committed,’ he said, according to The Daily Beast.

‘Under U.S. law, if any of these women are under 18—I can tell you we do not know and Director Sullivan does not have actual contact/picture matched up to verify that as far as I know. When he does, I would expect a call, because that would be a relief to many of us to not have on top of everything else.’

Issa stressed that it was a crime to sleep with minors abroad — although there is no suggestion that any of the men who have been named did.

‘U.S. laws passed in 2003 and 2006 were designed to prevent sex vacations causing harm to underage women,’ the Republican Representative added. ‘We have to respect some things, but going internationally anywhere to have sex acts underage is prohibited under U.S. law.’

It comes as a senior Republican, Senator Charles Grassley, urged the investigation to extend to presidential staff who were preparing for Barack Obama’s visit.

Also on Friday, Mr Obama received a personal briefing on the state of the investigation from Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service.

Mr Grassley urged investigators to check hotel records for White House advance staff and communications personnel who were in Cartagena for the Summit of the Americas.

In a letter to Mr Sullivan and the inspector general at the Homeland Security Department, Mr Grassley asked whether hotel records for the White House staffers had been pulled as part of the investigations.

He wrote: ‘Have records for overnight guests for those entities been pulled as part of the investigation? If not, why not?’

Additionally Mr Grassley, top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked whether rooms were shared by Secret Service, the communications agency and the presidential advance staff.

After three agents resigned on Friday, the number of men forced out by the scandal rose to six.

Five more are suspended during the investigation, while one man has been cleared of serious misconduct but could still face disciplinary action.

Mr Sullivan visited the White House late on Friday to brief Mr Obama in the Oval Office.

Meanwhile, the lawyer of the two ousted Secret Service supervisors David Chaney and Greg Stokes said that President Barack Obama’s safety was never at risk and criticized leaks of internal government investigations in the case, signaling their strategy for an upcoming legal defense.

Lawrence Berger said he could not comment on the woman’s claims about being paid for sex, but added: ‘I don’t think anything she has said is material to any of the issues I am pressing with my clients.

‘Nothing that has been reported in the press in any way negatively or adversely impacted the mission of that agency or the safety of the president of the United States.’

The scandal came to light when a 24-year-old high-end escort fought with an agent who slept with her at a Colombian hotel but then refused to hand over the $800 they had agreed upon…

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



South Florida’s Muslim Bashing

by Shabbir Motorwala

Last year U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York had a congressional hearing on “Radical Muslims in America.” One of the issues debated most during that hearing was assimilation of Muslim youth in American society. What is assimilation, exactly? How is assimilation defined? One positive that emerged from the hearing was that Minnesota law enforcement officials praised the Muslim community’s outreach as well as cooperation with law enforcement. Locally, U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer and John Gillies of the FBI praised the outreach by local Muslim organizations going so far as to specifically mention that the outreach by the Coalition of South Florida Muslim Organizations (COSMOS) should be a model for the entire country.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



What is Earth Day?: Earth Day and Agenda 21

Officially, Earth Day, correctly termed “International Mother Earth Day” was established in 2009 by the UN’s General Assembly under Resolution A/RES/63/278 and the “International Mother Earth Day promotes a view of the Earth as the entity that sustains all living things found in nature. Inclusiveness is at the heart of International Mother Earth Day; fostering shared responsibilities to rebuild our troubled relationship with nature is a cause that is uniting people around the world.” (Wikipedia)

The true origins of Earth Day date much further back in history, perhaps to the flower children generation of the 1960s. At the 1969 counterculture music festival at Woodstock, near Bethel, NY, some 500,000 city dwellers congregated for a three-day event. It was a giant love-in of music and “nature.”

[…]

Now, the UN has found a new goal in Agenda 21 with its symbolic Mother Earth Day (MED), set for April 22nd. While nature slowly re-awakens from its winter slumber, the MED will mostly be celebrated by the flower children left over from the sixties and by the new socialistic-inclined cadre of Agenda 21 proponents. Agenda 21 intends to de-carbonize and to de-industrialize the world to conditions prevailing in the 1800’s, preferably under an UN mandate of world governance. The numerous Agenda 21 goals include the elimination of individuals’ right to property.

April 22nd also happens to be Vladimir Lenin’s birthday — perhaps not coincidentally — as noted by Alan Caruba in a recent post. Comrade’s Lenin promise of “Peace, Bread, and Land” was the initial stage of the collectivization of agriculture as later finalized by Josef Stalin. A more recent example of the collectivization of agriculture was under Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


France: Bayrou: We Need a Technical Government Like Monti

(AGI) Rome — Francois Bayrou said the road to a new government in France is the one drawn out by Mario Monti in Italy. The centrist presidential candidate explained to MoDem: “In France we could have a selected government like yours and for me it is a very interesting experience because it is a technical government of national unity.” “In Italy,” he added, “the three big forces have said ‘we must work together to get out of this situation’ and have put their trust in Monti who must take the necessary decisions. But it is a government that has political support. There is political agreement, even if implicitly. In France, we might decide something similar during the elections.

There is a dangerous bipolarisation that reinforces the weight of the extremists. The right is put under pressure by the extreme right and the left by the far left. The only political force that resists the extremists is the one that I represent before the French people. Neither the left nor the right can get us out of this by themselves.” .

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



French Muslims ‘Likely to Vote for Far Left’

Al Jazeera speaks to M’hammed Henniche about the reaction of France’s Muslims to politicians’ preoccupation with Islam.

Le Raincy, France — Throughout the duration of the campaign for France’s presidency, one issue has come up over and over again.

Islam, and whether it has a place in French society, has been a favourite issue of the two right wing candidates, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen and Nicolas Sarkozyof the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Al Jazeera’s Yasmine Ryan spoke with M’hammed Henniche, head of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis (UAM 93) [Fr], about how all the negative attention had affected Muslim voters in the run up to the first round of voting — to be held on Sunday, April 22.

Yasmine Ryan: Why do you think there has been so much focus on Muslims during the campaign, even before the shootings in Toulouse carried out by Mohamed Merah?

M’hammed Henniche: The problem is that for nearly two years, we [French Muslims] have really been at the centre of the French political conversation. The headlines in all the newspapers for the past two years have been “Muslims, Muslims, Muslims”. It’s difficult to understand why this is the case in France, when there hadn’t been any attacks, there hasn’t been any “French September 11”. The constant television debates on the full veil [the burka or chador] lasted a year. Then they passed the law, and we said: “Fine, even if we do not agree with it, let’s just move on.” Then they said we should not build mosques with minarets, and we said: “That’s fine, we will build mosques without minarets.” Then they continued, saying Muslims were praying in the streets, as if we even want to pray in the streets. That created lots of problems and they passed a law banning praying in the streets.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Germany and Islam: Koran Study

Some Germans worry about the distribution of free Korans

THE Gideons in Germany give away 2,000 Bibles a day and nobody complains. The Koran is another matter. A group called the True Religion has handed out 300,000 copies, many from “information stands” in shopping areas. All told, it wants to give away 25m in German-speaking Europe. Intelligence agencies are alarmed; politicians have condemned the plan. The printing firm has even cancelled its contract. “The public pressure was too great,” it explained.

The problem, critics say, is not the gift but the giver. The True Religion espouses Salafism, a fundamentalist branch of Islam. Its leader is Ibrahim Abu Nagie, a Palestinian-born, Cologne-based preacher with intolerant views and a knack for getting others to embrace them. The Cologne prosecutor wanted to try him for inciting violence against Christians and Jews but could prove nothing worse than predictions that they would end in hell. The case was dropped in January.

[…]

The True Religion is seen as a propaganda-based “political” Salafist group, not a violent “jihadist” one. But even the political variant can inspire violence. Arid Uka, who murdered two American soldiers last year, had internet contacts to groups similar to Mr Abu Nagie’s. When the Koran row broke, supporters of its distribution posted a video cursing critical journalists as “apes and pigs”. Fundamentalists are delighted by the shift in attention away from their ideas to their rights. “Where is religious freedom? Where is your democracy?” demands a spokesman in a video posted on the True Religion website. Pro-NRW, an anti-Islam party that is standing in the state election taking place on May 13th, wants to display caricatures of Islam near mosques. That could win the Salafists even more recruits than handing out any number of free Korans.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Italian Beer Getting Just Desserts at Home and Abroad

Big brands winning fans overseas, craft-beer scene thriving

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Italians are not famed for being a nation of great beer makers or drinkers. But Italy’s brewers have developed a proud tradition of producing fine beers over the last 200 years which is finally getting its just desserts at home and abroad. If you had asked people what their favourite Italian drink was a few years ago, for example, the most popular tipples would have been a drop of Chianti or Barolo, or perhaps a tot of a spirit like grappa or amaretto. Nowadays, the answer is increasingly likely to be an ice-cold glass of a beer such as Peroni, Nastro Azzurro or Moretti. On the home front, Italy’s rich variety of crisp, refreshing pale lagers is even starting to rival wine as the nation’s most popular accompaniment when Italians dine out.

Indeed, beer is neck-and-neck with wine as the favourite choice to go with dinner at weekends, according to Italian beer-producers’ association Assobirra. And around two-thirds of that beer is made in Italy, says Assobirra, whose members produce 98% of the nation’s brews. The international success story is impressive too.

Spearheaded by Peroni, which was taken over by London-based brewing giant SABMiller in 2005, Italian beer exports have doubled over the last five years. “For over a century our light lager with a relatively low alcoholic content has accompanied the Italians and this type of beer continues to be the most popular with them,” said Assobirra Director Filippo Terzaghi. “But we are pleased to see that Italian beer is increasingly becoming synonymous with lager abroad too. “Our companies export over 1.7 million hectolitres a year, twice as much as five years ago, and it’s being appreciated more and more in nations with great beer traditions — Great Britain, France and the Netherlands in Europe and countries like the United States, Australia and South Africa further afield. “We hope this trend can continue”. Foreigners are probably most familiar with brands such as Peroni and Nastro Azzurro, which belong to the same group, and Moretti with its distinctive label featuring a mustachioed Alpine gent in a hat. They are all smooth, well-balanced drinks, but there are plenty of other fine ones to enjoy. Menabrea, produced at the northern town of Biella in Piedmont, is one of the best with its distinctive, slightly sour aftertaste that has helped win it a host of international prizes. Another top northern beer is Forst Premium, a zestful brew that its producers from the mostly German-speaking South Tyrol near Austria promise “offers a sense of freshness and joie de vivre”. Other great lagers include Trieste’s Theresianer Premium, Sardinian brew Ichnusa and Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s Castello. All the aforementioned beers are pale lagers, but Italy also produces a big range of dark ‘red’ lagers that have a stronger, more bitter flavor and higher alcoholic content.

Examples include Moretti’s La Rossa, which has a caramelised flavour and the aroma of roasted malt, and Forst’s Sixtus. Italy has a thriving microbrewery scene for those seeking something different too. Good Italian craft beers include Almond 22, whose flavor is enriched by honey and spices, the Baladin company’s Isaac and its punch-packing Elixir, and the herb-hinted Admiral, one of the highlights of the range served by the 32 Via dei Birra brewery. Views of beer are changing so much that some Italian chefs are encouraging Italians to drink it with more dishes than its traditional food partner here — pizza. “I often recommend a lager for cold, more delicate dishes, especially when it’s hot,” said Sandra Salerno, a personal chef and foodblogger. “It can stand up to being paired with salami, Parmesan and other rich cheeses. “I tell the skeptics to try it with artichokes, squid and shrimp and then see what they think”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Venetian ‘Gutenberg’ Hands Down Tradition

Gianni Basso fashions handmade prints using methods of past

(ANSA) — Venice, April 17 — Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei are appearing together, albeit not in a new Hollywood film. The movie stars are just two of the elite clients whose business cards adorn the Venice shop window of master printer Gianni Basso, the man who fashions handmade prints using the methods and instruments of the Gutenberg era. “I simply don’t like modern electric printers,” he tells ANSA. “They have no soul. To make prints by hands is poetry”.

Perhaps such is the quality that attracted clients like the late Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky and contemporary author Danielle Steele. Basso’s presses and plates are pre-industrial, recalling the 16th century when Aldus Manutius copied numerous works from the Greek and Latin secular canon to type for the first time in history, turning Venice into one of Europe’s great renaissance printing capitals. When he was just 15, Basso studied his craft on the Venetian island of San Lazzaro, known for its printing heritage and the ancient library where Lord Byron studied Armenian in 1816. Thirty years ago, Basso recuperated several presses from the island and elsewhere in Venice and brought them to their current location in the historic Calle del Fumo, or “Alley of Smoke,” a reference to a string of workshops that still line the walkway. In today’s era of mass information, Basso says his clients are interested in the personal, handmade touch he instills in his craft work, something he says is lacking in xerox copies and digital prints. Despite a global recession, and the ever-increasing trend to mechanize and reduce cost, Basso says business is booming. “I don’t even advertise. The quality of my work is what keeps people coming,” he says as he pulls down a series of 35 incised plates from the first printed edition of Pinocchio. The exquisite renderings of Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket, dating to 1880, catch the eye of four visitors who promptly insist on purchasing a series of Pinocchio prints. Basso’s antique workshop on the north side of Venice is charmingly quaint at 30 square meters, barely large enough for his six printers, himself, and his 25-year-old son Stefano, who until two years ago was studying to become a marine biologist. “I liked coming into my father’s shop more than the sea,” he says as he organizes the inverse typeset on his workbench.

“Printing seems to be in my blood,” he adds with a grin. “The poetry continues”. Gianni and Stefano Basso are located at 5306 Calle del Fumo, Venice 30121, Italy.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Ducati to be Sold to Audi, Owners Confirm

Iconic motorcycle company reported to go for 860 million euros

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — The investment fund that controls Ducati confirmed Wednesday that it has reached a deal to sell the Italian motorcycle company to German automobile-maker Audi. Media reports said that Audi and its parent company Volkswagen had agreed to pay 860 million euros to buy the Bologna-based brand from the outgoing owners Investindustrial. “Ducati is known worldwide as a premium brand among motorcycle manufacturers and has a long tradition of building sporty motorcycle,” Audi Chairman Rupert Stadler said in a statement.

“It has great expertise in high-performance engines and lightweight construction, and is one of the world’s most profitable motorcycle manufacturers. That makes Ducati an excellent fit for Audi”.

The motorcycle company was founded by Adriano and Marcello Ducati in Bologna in 1926. It initially built parts for radios and did not move into the two-wheeler market until 1949.

Ducati, who are sometimes seen at motorcycling’s equivalent of Ferrari, employs 1,100 people and sold some 42,000 motorcycles in 2011, generating revenue of around 480 million euros.

Its elite range of machines includes cruisers, supermotos, adventure bikes, naked bikes and superbikes.

The deal makes Ducati Audi’s third Italian operation after it acquired legendary sports carmaker Lamborghini and design enterprise ItalDesign.

Ducati’s sexy image is boosted by its race division, which competes in the MotoGP championship and Superbike World Championship. The team has won the Superbike manufacturers’ championship 17 times and the pilots’ title 14 times.

Ducati won the 2007 MotoGP world title with Australian Casey Stoner but they are struggling in the class at the moment despite the arrival of Italy’s nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi last season.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: More Italian Readers Gather News From Internet

Daily papers suffering losses in earnings and advertising

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Online news readership shot up 50% between 2009-2011, said a report by the Italian newspaper publishers association FIEG on Wednesday.

In 2011, six million readers preferred to glean their news from papers’ Web editions as compared to four million in 2009.

Daily newspapers still garner 22 million readers, while weekly magazines tally in at 33 million, but dailies suffered a 2.2% drop in earnings and 5.7% drop in advertising.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: N. League’s Bossi Did Not Know of Maroni Dossier

(AGI) Alessandria — Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, when asked if he know of the dossier on Moroni, answered “no”.

Bossi, having just arrived in Alessandria for an electoral appointment added, “If they had asked me before they would have finished sooner, because I knew that Maroni had the boat. I knew where he had it too, he had it in Sicily.” And to those who asked him if he thought there were dossiers on other persons Bossi responded, “I don’t think so. I hope not. I hope the film comes to an end. This is a bad movie, but it is a movie.” “I don’t know,” was Bossi’s answer this evening to the question of whether he would run again for the leadership of the Northern League. “The Federal Council has expelled him. I don’t want to comment.” .

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



Italy: Prosecutors Seize 350, 000 Euro From Northern League Notary

(AGI) Milan — Prosecutors investigating electoral funds have reportedly seized 350,000 euro from Northern League’s the notary in Rovigo. According to reports, the amount seized is part of a 1.2 million euro investment made in Cyprus by the consultant Paolo Scala, also under investigation with the party’s former treasurer Francesco Belsito and entrepreneur Stefano Bonnet. Of that sum, only 850,000 euro were allegedly brought back to Italy. In the meantie, this afternoon prosecutor Paolo Filippini questioned Northern League representative Pierluigi Stiffoni.

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



Something Smells Funny? Gorgonzola Popularity Spawns Bogus-Zola

As Gorgonzola exports begin to boom, formaggio fraudsters try to get a cut of the action with fake versions of the cheese. One trick is to give the imitation variety a name that has a familiar ring.

All over Europe, the whiff of Gorgonzola is getting stronger and stronger. Thanks to aggressive advertisement campaigns featuring top chefs, sales of the zesty, blue and green-marbled cheese are rising fast. For instance, sales in Poland have increased 82% over the past year…

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



UK Cab Company Boss Claims Cyclists Deserve to Die

(AGI) London- UK cab firm boss John Griffin claims cyclists deserve to die. The head of Addison Lee, which has a team of 3,500 drivers, made this inflammatory statement less than 2 weeks before the election for London’s mayor, which will be held on May 3. Mr Griffin has it in for cyclists because, according to him, they are irresponsible and feel that they are above the highway code. His words triggered a heated controversy; last year alone, 16 cyclists were killed in London.

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



UK: Langley Green Church Converts to New Mosque

A MUSLIM group has purchased a church — which has now become a mosque.

The building in Langley Drive, Langley Green was used by the Elim Pentecostal Church. It was sold to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, with the church moving services to Ifield. The building’s new residents are already using it for prayers — and an open day is being held, as part of plans to make the mosque as welcoming as possible to the whole of the local community. Ahsan Ahmedi said the association took steps to avoid any ill feeling over the change of use. He said: “One of the conditions we asked was it was put in writing that the church was happy for us to use the building as a mosque. Christianity is the main religion in England and it is very important for us not to hurt other people’s religious feelings.”

Simon Newham, team rector of the Ifield parish, said it was not unusual for churches in Crawley to be multi-faith centres. He said: “St Leonard’s in Langley Green is used as a multi-faith centre and we as a parish are involved in an inter-faith group. “There has been a lot of work between religious groups in Crawley for some time. It allows for various cultures and faiths to live together and work together.

“Because we come into contact with different groups we have developed an understanding of differences and similarities.”

Because the building itself is fairly modern there is very little which needs to be done to change it from a church to a mosque. Some subtle adjustments will be made such as new carpets. The church has been paid for by the 150 members of Crawley’s Ahmadiyya community. The open day will be held on May 2 and invites are being sent to neighbours of the new mosque. There will be an exhibition on the day about Islam and the Ahmadiyya faith, a reformist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Muslim ‘Cultural Sensitivity’ Runs Amok

by Soeren Kern

The largest university in London plans to impose a ban on the sale of alcohol on campus to accommodate the “cultural sensitivity” of its Muslim students. London Metropolitan University’s Vice Chancellor, Malcolm Gillies, says it would be unwise to “cling” to a “nostalgic” view where the vast majority wants alcohol to be available. Instead, he says that he believes the university should take account of diverging views, namely those of Muslims, who now comprise 20% of the university’s 30,000 students. “Many of our students do come from backgrounds where they actually look on drinking as a negative. We therefore need to rethink how we cater for that 21st-century balance,” Gillies declared in an interview. “What we don’t want is the tyranny of a majority view,” he added.

Gillies’ proposals to re-engineer social life on campus have, not surprisingly, generated a mostly negative response from students, many of whom say a ban on alcohol smacks of politically correct pandering run amok. Muslims, too, are unhappy with Gillies. Far from thanking him for his multicultural activism, Muslims say they are “offended” by his “generalizing about their beliefs.” To be sure, London Metropolitan University is not the first institution in Britain to bend over backwards to avoid “offending” Muslims. In fact, hardly a day goes by in which Britons are not surrendering some aspect of their culture and traditions — not to mention their rights of free speech and free expression — in order to make Britain safe for Islam.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: The ‘Omnishambles’ And the Power of Political Language

by Allan Massie

“Omnishambles”, appropriated from “The Thick of It” by Ed Miliband to describe the Government, is not a bad word, if a bastard one. Not that anyone cares much about that these days, when there are fewer classically educated pedants about. (They used to deplore television — the word, not the thing, though doubtless that too — because it was a hybrid: tele being Greek, vision Latin.) Omnishambles is a hybrid too, and the words “shambles” has come to mean simply a mess or muddle, and has more or less lost its more vivid meaning of a fleshmarket, slaughterhouse, or place of carnage. But omnishambles is OK. It says neatly what most of us think of most governments. The only wonder is that Ed Miliband dares to use it, thus inviting the suggestion that he should look in the mirror.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UKIP Doesn’t Have a Grassroots and Has to Fight to Keep the Loonies Out. Wavering Tories Should be Careful

by Damian Thompson

The United Kingdom Independence Party is so obsessed with race, immigration and Islam that it might as well merge with the BNP. That’s the opinion of a professor at the London School of Economics. No surprise there, you’re probably thinking. The LSE, like the rest of London University, is crawling with Left-wing dons who suck up to radical Muslims. Of course they hate Ukip, which this week edged into third place in the opinion polls. But hang on a moment. The LSE professor I’m quoting actually founded Ukip. Alan Sked is an expert on the 19th-century Habsburg empire; in 1991 he set up a new party, then called the Anti-Federalist League, as a Eurosceptic alternative to the muddled Tories. It fielded candidates in the 1992 general election and as a result may have cost Chris Patten his seat, a historic achievement by any standards. To cut a long story short, Sked fell out with Ukip after the 1997 election, saying that he’d created a Right-wing monster. He’s stuck to that line ever since. The stuff about Ukip merging with the BNP (“which it increasingly resembles”) comes from a letter to The Times in 2010.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Vatican and Breakaway SSPX Seek Common Ground

By Peter Wensierski in Rome

The Vatican may be close to a deal with the breakaway Society of St. Pius X.

For decades, the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X has been on the outside of the Catholic Church and looking in. Now, with Pope Benedict XVI intent on healing the schism, the group — known as SSPX — has written a letter that could pave the way for an agreement.

For the pope’s 85th birthday on Monday, his own brother showed up in Rome empty handed. But the brothers of the controversial Catholic splinter group Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) were more generous. They sent a letter — and its contents may be the greatest gift yet to the papacy of Benedict XVI. The pope has long wanted to heal the schism with the SSPX and bring the conservative followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre back into the fold. That hope may now become reality.

The Catholic traditionalist Lefebvre founded the SSPX in 1969 in answer to the reforms pushed through by the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, earlier that decade. The group has grown to include tens of thousands of followers and hundreds of priests — a “painful wound in the body of the church,” Benedict XVI has said.

Even when SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson made global headlines in 2009 by publicly denying the Holocaust, the pope remained steadfast. Indeed, talks between the Vatican and the SSPX continued a short time later once Williamson, a native of Great Britain, had been marginalized. Now, it looks as though an agreement may be imminent.

Not everyone in the church is likely to be pleased by such a rapprochement. Liberal and left-leaning Catholics have long been opposed to the idea of allowing the SSPX back into the fold, granting them the right to once again consecrate priests and letting them celebrate mass according to the old rites. The Bishops’ Conference of France is likely to protest as well. But the German pope Josef Ratzinger is determined.

Utmost Discretion

The friendly letter from the SSPX to Benedict XVI arrived at the Vatican during Easter. In the Vatican’s Secretariat of State — the source of several documents that were leaked in recent months in the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal — has classified the SSPX letter as secret and the issue is being handled with the utmost discretion. It is only to be made public following the pope’s birthday celebrations.

Sources say that the letter is currently being analyzed. Not everyone within the Secretariat is supportive of Benedict’s desire to reunite with the SSPX. Currently, talks with the St. Pius brothers are focused on several outstanding details as well as the timing of the pending agreement.

Following lengthy negotiations between the Catholic Church and the SSPX regarding a possible reunification, the Vatican had requested a response by Sunday. Specifically, the SSPX was to rethink its strict opposition to the Second Vatican Council — which began 50 years ago this year — as well as “several doctrinal principles and criteria relating to the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.”

Cardinal William Levada, in his position as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had communicated the ultimatum to SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay during talks at the Vatican and asked him to once again reexamine its positions.

The new letter is significant in that it seeks to tone down the conflict. Points of disagreement are no longer to be seen in terms of who is “more Catholic” than the other. The letter makes clear that conflicting positions on Vatican II is “not decisive” for the future of the Catholic Church. In short, the Society of St. Pius X is no longer demanding that the Vatican II reforms be repealed…

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



We Can’t Reform the European Court of Human Rights, So Let’s End This Nonsense

by Charles Moore

The interminable Abu Qatada affair proves Britain needs to bring home the rule of law.

Yes, there is even a European Convention on the Calculation of Time Limits. And yes, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, acting on poor advice from government lawyers, appears to have misunderstood it. The Convention was drawn up in 1972 by the Council of Europe “to achieve a greater unity between its members, in particular by the adoption of common rules”. It defines the dies a quo and dies ad quem — the start and end of any time-limit. Forty years on, it would seem that the desired unity has still not been achieved, so instead we got the dies irae. Mrs May and her team believed they had pulled off a parliamentary coup on Tuesday — when, she thought, the dies ad quem had passed — by saying she was going to deport Abu Qatada without any more appeals to Strasbourg. Piqued, Strasbourg seems to have hurried to tell Abu Qatada’s lawyers that they did, in fact, have time. His appeal was duly lodged on Wednesday night.

As Mrs May implicitly admitted, the whole thing was a piece of nonsense anyway, since the end of the time-limit would not have meant that all appeals to Strasbourg were automatically ruled out. She was really only looking for good political theatre, and she got it. But on Thursday, it was replayed as farce. All of which makes Westminster-watchers gleeful. What does this say, they ask, about her judgment, about Home Office official competence, dingy legal advisers and an accident-prone Coalition? All such questions are reasonable or, at least, inevitable.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Serbia: Roma People’s Position Improves

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 20 — The position of the Roma people in Serbia has improved thanks to the Decade of Roma Inclusion, it was said Friday at the opening of a three-day congress of the World Roma Organization — Romanipen.

“The position of the Roma people in Serbia has significantly improved during the Decade of Roma Inclusion, but I am confident that many members of the Roma population have reasons to be dissatisfied,” said Slavica Denic, the state secretary in the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, Public Administration and Local Self-Government.

The members of the Roma population can be dissatisfied bearing in mind that there are still unhygienic settlements in Serbia, that few children go to kindergartens and that quite few Roma people are employed, Denic said at the congress held at the Serbian parliament building. However, Serbia can be proud of the improvement in the field of education. Since 2003 the country got more than 1,000 Roma graduates, she underlined.

Denic qualified the congress as important, since it brought together representatives of 25 countries with the aim to exchange experience and find solutions jointly.

President of the World Roma Organization Jovan Damjanovic said that the Decade of Roma Inclusion “has yielded results” in Serbia.

“We have to get to grips with problems and bring about an intellectual Roma revolution,” Damjanovic said. He underlined that there are 12 to 15 million Roma people in Europe, but that they do not have any status.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Mediterranean Union


EU Project Offers Training to 1,200 Journalists

‘Media Neighbourhood’ targets 17 neighbouring countries

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 17 — The European Commission has officially launched a project aiming to offer world-class training to over 1,200 journalists across 17 EU neighbouring countries and territories over the next three years.

According to the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), ‘Media Neighbourhood’ is implemented by BBC Media Action, which is leading a consortium of international media organisations to deliver journalism training and networking activities. “This — Alice Morrison, Team Leader for Media Neighbourhood said — is a broad and ambitious project. We’ll be offering the opportunity for world-class training to a diverse group of journalists and editors across an enormous geographical area. It is a chance to really make a difference by boosting skills, especially in the areas of media independence and online media”.

A particular focus will be given to freedom of expression and its role in countries engaged in the process of democratisation.

The project has a budget of 4.5 million euros and the consortium delivering it is BBC Media Action, IREX Europe, Fondation AFP, L’Orient-Le Jour, CFI, French Televisions Group, LDK and the Media Development Center. The focus countries are: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Palestinian Territories, the Russian Federation, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Algeria: Woman in Surgery Clinic, Dies After Kidney “Stolen”

Aged 47, dies after serious infection

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 17 — A woman admitted to a private clinic for the removal of her gall bladder is said to have had a “kidney” stolen and died a few hours later in a hospital in Oran after her condition worsened. The extraordinary story has been reported in the online edition of the newspaper Le Temps d’Algérie. The 47-year old woman had been admitted to the private clinic in the City to have her gall bladder removed. Her condition gradually deteriorated following the operation and it was decided that she would be transferred to the department of nephrology and urology at the hospital in Oran, where she immediately underwent emergency treatment, which proved unsuccessful.

When doctors at the hospital realised that a kidney had been stolen from the woman (or removed without her knowledge, as an inquiry will now be asked to show), a report was sent to the chief prosecutor of Oran, who was told by relatives of the victim, still in shock at the news of the “theft” of the organ, that the woman had gone to the clinic to have her gall bladder removed after a series of routine tests. The inquiry will not shed light on the incident and, above all, show how the woman’s kidney was “stolen”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Jewish Studies Center, Soon Gay Rabbis in Israel

Stir in Jerusalem among orthodox rabbis

(ANSA) — JERUSALEM, APRIL 20 — A well-known institute for Jewish studies (the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem) established yesterday that homosexual and lesbian students will be allowed to follow studies as early as next year. The decision has immediately caused a controversy.

The innovating current of Judaism, with a strong spirit of modernisation, has much influence in the U.S. but not so much in Israel.

And yet the decision — supported by 17 votes and just one abstention — has found a large group of followers in Jerusalem, where the orthodox establishment continues to see homosexuality as a “repulsive” phenomenon that has to be fought. The orthodox current also opposes the appointment of female rabbis.

Newspaper Haaretz, which carries this story on its front page, specifies that the innovators in Israel agree with the choices that were made years ago by the U.S. branch of Judaism. The two currents, the newspaper continues, were about to break apart, but now the rift seems to be healed. “This is an important development for ‘halacha’ (orthodoxy)” rabbi Mauricio Belter, president of the Council of innovating rabbis in Israel, told the newspaper. “We have all been created in the image of the Lord, and therefore we are all equal.” The religious press expects that these new developments will widen the gap in Israel between Jews that support modernisation (most of them from the U.S. and South America)and the more orthodox rabbinate in Jerusalem.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Bahrain Grand Prix: Protesters Block Roads as Teargas Fired

Anti-government protesters in Bahrain flooded a main highway in a march stretching for miles and security forces fired tear gas in breakaway clashes as the country’s leaders struggle to contain opposition anger ahead of the Grand Prix.

The government allowed the massive Friday demonstration in an apparent bid to avoid the hit-and-run street battles that are the hallmark of the Gulf nation’s 14-month uprising — and an embarrassing spectacle for Bahrain’s Western-backed rulers as F1 teams prepare for Sunday’s race. But violence flared as small groups in the march peeled away from the route to challenge riot police, who answered with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades. Some protesters sought refuge in a shopping mall and nearby shops about 12 miles north of the Formula One track, where practice runs took place and Bahrain’s crown prince vowed the country’s premier international event would go ahead. Last year, a wave of anti-government protests by the island’s Shiite majority and a crackdown by the Sunni rulers forced organisers to cancel the 2011 Bahrain GP.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Islam’s Sacred Geography

by Talmiz Ahmad

A lavishly illustrated coffee table book combines high standards of scholarship to produce the most valuable compendium on the Hajj

Every principal world religion has pilgrimage as a significant tenet. This pilgrimage is central to the “sacred geography” of the faith and provides an opportunity to the believer to traverse this physical space and seek to interact directly with the Divine. Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, attracts a few million Muslims every year from all over the world to the town of Mecca, about 70 kilometres from the port city of Jeddah on the Red Sea.

Hajj can be approached in terms of its complex history; the belief system that is its motive force; the journeys that have been undertaken by pilgrims over the last 1,500 years from different parts of the world, and the arrangements made for the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who congregate at the same time in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. All these aspects are presented in the book in some detail.

The book begins with an excellent introduction by the distinguished scholar of religion and Islam, Karen Armstrong. She looks at the place of pilgrimage in different religious traditions and points out that all pilgrimages are made up of arcane rituals that have a unique symbolic value for the believer even as they seem “hopelessly archaic” to the outsider. A study of the Hajj, she concludes, will enable us not only to learn about Islam but also “to explore untravelled regions within ourselves”.

[…]

HAJJ — JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF ISLAM

Editor: Venetia Porter

Publisher: Lustre (Roli Books)

Pages: 288

Price: Rs 2,975

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Kuwait: Blasphemer Injured, MPs Demand Probe — Assailant Charged With Attempted Murder

KUWAIT: A prisoner who attacked his cell mate who is jailed for blasphemy now faces attempted murder charges after being referred to the Public Prosecution Department for further actionto be taken, according to news reports received yesterday .

Hamad Al-Naqqi, who has been charges with posting offensive remarks against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) on Twitter suffered minor injuries on Thursday afternoon after he was attacked with a sharp object. According to a security source, a dispute arose between Al-Naqqi and his attacker when the former refused to join inmates for Al-Asr (afternoon) prayers. The attacker reportedly stabbed him three times before other inmates and security officers stepped in to break up the fight. Al-Naqqi was treated for minor wounds which did not require hospitalization. Meanwhile, the attacker, who was heard repeating the word ‘infidel,’ according to the source, was placed in solitary confinement.

The suspect confirmed the attack during interrogation, saying that he was provoked by the ‘insults’ Al-Naqqi spewed against him during their dispute. He remains in custody pending further action,reported Al-Jarida.

The Ministry of Interior confirmed the incident in a statement released late Thursday. They noted that ‘necessary legal measures’ were taken against the attacker. In the meantime, Al-Naqqi’s attorney Khalid Al-Shatti told Al-Qabas that authorities from the Central Jail refused to meet his client following the attack.

According to a security source, the attacker’s name was present in the list among those benefiting from Amiri amnesty. According to its terms, his original seven year jail term was commuted to three and a half years, adding that the recent incident will surely cost him the amnesty, reported Al-Qabas.

Meanwhile, three Shiite MPs commented on the incident by holding the ministry responsible for the inmate’s safety, and demanded that a complete investigation be held into the case. “The Ministry of Interior should held accountable for the provocation and attempted murder of Hamad Al-Naqqi,” said MP Adnan Al-Mutawa’a . He insisted the fight was not spontaneous. Meanwhile, MP Saleh Ashour demanded that efforts be made to maintain Al-Naqqi’s safety as well as an investigate the reasons behind “why he was placed in the same cell as high risk prisoners,”

In the meantime, MP Abdulhameed Dashty claimed to be in possession of evidence to prove that senior ministry official Khalid Al-Dayeen was responsible issuing orders to transfer Al-Naqqi to the Central Jail “using his connections with extremist MPs,” reported Al-Watan.

           — Hat tip: R [Return to headlines]



Kuwait: Islamists Propose Morality Police

KUWAIT: Six Islamist MPs yesterday submitted a draft law calling for the establishment of a special committee that exclusively deals with public morality crimes. It also calls for a special police force to handle such crimes.

The bill, submitted by MPs Mohammad Hayef, Jamaan Al-Harbash, Osama Al-Munawer, Mohammad Al-Hatlani and Bader Al-Dahoom, proposes setting up a ‘Morality Crime Public Prosecution Department’ under the jurisdiction of an Attorney General to deal with felonies and misdemeanors related to committing public immorality.

It also stipulates the establishment of a special Ministry of Interior (MoI) police department to take legal measures to prevent crimes of public immorality. The department will be headed by a lieutenant-general, who will assisted by a number of officers and policemen, according to the draft law. The bill will be reviewed by National Assembly committees before being put up for voting.

In the explanatory note, the lawmakers said the bill aims at unifying authorities investigating all public morality crimes. Presently, serious morality crimes and felonies are investigated by the public prosecution department while minor crimes are investigated by the Ministry of Interior investigation department. Unifying investigations into these crimes under the public prosecution department is in line with modern legislation, which authorize the public prosecution department to investigate all types of violations.

The lawmakers said the draft law also aims at creating a special department in the MoI to be fully devoted to combating public morality crimes. The bill does not define public morality crimes or name them.

MP Harbash, head of the National Assembly educational committee, said yesterday it has carried out all necessary amendments to the law calling to establish the Jaber University of Technology. The law for the university was approved by the Assembly about two weeks ago in the first reading, but the second and final vote was postponed until the amendments are carried out. The law stipulates the establishment of the Sheikh Jaber University for Science and Technology to specialize in technology.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah said yesterday that all questions about the foreign transfers issue have been answered, and that the parliamentary investigation committee will be provided with all of the necessary documents. Opposition MPs accused former Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, of transferring millions of dinars of public funds into his private overseas bank accounts.

           — Hat tip: RR [Return to headlines]



Qatar: Soccer Meets Politics at Doha’s Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque

Qatar’s increasing engagement in European soccer and international sport is just one leg in the small Gulf State’s high-risk attempts to position itself as a global player ‘on the right side of history’, James M. Dorsey writes in his analysis on the Gulf State’s growing influence in international sport.

A multi-domed, sand-coloured, architectural marvel, Doha’s newest and biggest mosque, symbolizes both Qatar’s bold storm into the 21st century and the pitfalls that that march entails. It’s not the mosque itself that raises eyebrows but its naming after an 18th century warrior priest, Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Islam’s most puritan sect. Ironically, the mosque owes its naming to the debate Qatar’s winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup has sparked. It is a debate that goes to the heart of the energy-rich Gulf state’s identity and the place its ruler, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, wants to carve out for his tiny city-state.

The World Cup constitutes a centrepiece of a strategy that seeks to reshape the identity of the world’s only state outside of Saudi Arabia that adheres to Wahhabism, one of Islam’s most austere and restrictive interpretations of Islam; position Qatar as a global player capable of punching above its weight; create opportunities to leverage its enormous wealth in a bid to reduce its reliance on the export of one commodity; and enhance its security by establishing mutually beneficial relations with friend and foe and ensuring that it is at the cutting edge of history.

The sports leg of Qatar’s broader, high-risk geo-political, economic and media strategy — involving the creation of a world class airline, Qatar Airways; Al Jazeera as a cutting edge global broadcaster; a far more liberal interpretation of Wahhabism than that of Saudi Arabia and support for many of the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa — is emerging as a driver of imminent restructuring of the region’s soccer landscape as well as of social change.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Saudi Arabia: Narrowing Islam-West Cultural Gap

The two-day seminar, to be organized by the Ministry of Higher Education in collaboration with the King Abdul Aziz University, is another major step in support of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s call to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogues as a means to establish world peace.

The discussions on the first day of the seminar today will focus on Arab and Islamic studies at French and European universities. The topic will cover the extent of Arab and Islamic cultures being taught in the universities and institutes of higher learning. It will also discuss intellectual and historical achievements that led to conflicting viewpoints on understanding Arab and Islamic cultures and the emergence of contemporary concepts that did away with the Orientalist approach to understand the Islamic culture.

Another of the seminar’s major topic of discussion is the role of translation in bringing Islamic and Arab thought to Europe. The topic aims to discuss the role of translation in enabling scientific and intellectual contacts between the West and the Arab Islamic East. The topic will also be discussed from the perspective of exchange of knowledge between civilizations. It will also shed light on the important stages of development of the translation movement down the centuries between the two civilizations on the one hand and the intellectual and scientific motivations that led to vast accomplishments in translation on the other. The session will also explore the role played by translation in bringing about close relations and constructive exchange of ideas between the two civilizations, or, to the contrary, the growth of misunderstanding and the clash between the two civilizations.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Russia


ENI, ENEL Start Joint Production of Gas in Siberia

First time ever for fuels, electricity groups

(ANSA) — Rome, April 20 — Italian fuels giant Eni and electricity group Enel have started producing natural gas for the first time in their history, at a field in Siberia.

The Samburskoye arctic field, more than 3,000 km from Moscow, is in the autonomous district of Yamals-Nenets, the world’s biggest gas-production area.

Eni and Enel have sizeable stakes in an Italian-Russian consortium.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Bollywood Star Kidnapped and Beheaded by Two Colleagues

(AGI) London — A tragic end for 26-year-old Bollywood star Meenakshi Thapar, who has been kidnapped, killed and beheaded by two actors who wanted to ask her family for 1.5 million rupee (22,000 Euro) ransom. According to the Daily Telegraph, the young woman was convinced by her two colleagues, 36-year-old Amit Jaiswal and his lover Preeti Surin to join them on a trip to Gorakhpur, a small town along the border between India and Nepal. Here the girl was kidnapped and shut in a hotel room. The victm’s mother managed to put together 60,000 rupees, but the sum was considered insufficient by the kidnappers. The two lovers strangled the girl, then beheaded her, and departed leaving the body and the head in two different places of the small town.

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



‘Enforced Disappearances’ Haunt Bangladesh

Over a few horrifying hours one night last December Sabira Islam went from dancing with her husband at a party to frantically searching the streets of Dhaka after he had been abducted. His body was found on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital early the next morning — he had been strangled. Nazmul Islam was a local leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and his wife is convinced his death was politically motivated. But she says she has lost her faith in Bangladeshi justice: “On the night when my husband was abducted, I went to the police and pleaded with them to find him. But no-one helped us. Even two months after… we don’t have any clue regarding his murder,” Mrs Islam says.

Nazmul Islam’s murder was not an isolated incident. Human rights groups say it is just one of a growing number of “enforced disappearances and secret killings” in Bangladesh. Almost four months on and the anger over disappearances is intensifying in Bangladesh. The main opposition has called for a countrywide strike on Sunday to protest against the disappearance of a senior leader in Dhaka a few days ago.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



For India’s Central Government, The Enrica Lexie Was in International Waters

A Kerala High Court lawyer confirms that the Indian government has submitted a note to the Supreme Court saying that Kerala state police did not have the authority to stop the oil tanker or arrest the Italian marines. In his response, Kerala’s Chief Minister said, “We took every action after consulting the central government. The incident took place inside our territory. We have all rights to take action.”

Kochi (AsiaNews) — Italian oil tanker Enrica Lexie was not in Indian territorial waters at the time of the incident that claimed the lives of two Indian fishermen, the Indian government said in a note submitted to the Supreme Court of India. Kerala High Court lawyer Vincent Panikulangara confirmed the report to AsiaNews.

In its submission, Indian authorities explained that Kerala police did not have authority over the Italian oil tanker, or jurisdiction to investigate the incident.

In his response, Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy, said, “We took every action after consulting the central government. The incident took place inside our territory. We have all rights to take action.”

For the lawyer, “The whole affair comes down to one factor, namely location, where was the ship was when the fishermen were killed?”

“If the Supreme Court accepts the central government’s argument, the marines will not have to face a trial under our law,” he told AsiaNews. “However, we will know more about it only later.”

In the meantime, Italian authorities and the families of the dead fishermen reached an out-of-court settlement. Italy will pay 10 million rupees for each victim (€ 145,000, US$ 190,000).

“This financial agreement is not the ‘right thing to do,’ but is part of the legal process,” Panikulangara explained. “Only civil cases launched by a victim’s next of kin, like in this case, can be settled out of court.” (GM)

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



Indian Attorney Supports Italy’s Claim in Shooting Case

‘Police lacked authority in international waters’

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 20 — An Indian state attorney on Friday said police in southern India did not have proper jurisdiction to block an Italian tanker after the shooting deaths of two Indian fishermen, allegedly by two Italian marines on anti-pirate watch aboard the vessel.

“It did not have the authority because the incident occurred in international waters,” said the attorney arguing at the Indian supreme court in New Delhi. The argument supports the position of Italy, which claims it should have jurisdiction for the case, not India, as the incident took place aboard an Italian vessel in international waters.

Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone have been at the centre of a diplomatic row between the countries since being detained in February after an incident that took place while they were guarding the Enrica Lexie tanker. The pair are being held in a special section of a jail in the city of Thiruvananthapuram.

The Italian government also believes that, regardless of who has jurisdiction, the marines should be exempt from prosecution in India as they were military personnel working on an anti-piracy mission.

Italy has said the marines fired warning shots from the Enrica Lexie after coming under attack from pirates.

It said they followed the proper international procedures for dealing with pirate attacks, which are frequent in the Indian Ocean.

The Indian authorities, on the other hand, said the marines failed to show sufficient “restraint” by opening fire after mistaking the fishermen for pirates.

Indian ballistic experts said earlier this month that the bullets recovered from the bodies of fishermen are compatible with Beretta rifles confiscated from the Enrica Lexie.

Italy has said it would like another ballistics test. photo: Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



India: Hindu Radicals Use the Law to Persecute Christians in Andhra Pradesh

The Indian state does not have any anti-conversion law, but enforces three ordinances that ban non-Hindus from proselytising near Hindu temples. A Pentecostal clergyman could go to jail because of calendars found in his possession. Meanwhile, a court convicts 11 Christians on forced conversion charges that date back to 2007.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) — Even without anti-conversion laws, ultranationalist Hindus have a legal tool to persecute Christians, said Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), namely the Worship or Prayer (Prohibition) Ordinance of 2007, which empowers the State to prohibit propagation of other religions in particular places of worship or prayer than the religion traditionally practiced there. Recently, a group of activists from the Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh (RSS) used it to demand the arrest of Rev Ahron, a Pentecostal pastor accused of trying to convert Hindus near the Hindu temple in the city of Dharmapuri.

On Monday, the clergyman was visiting the city to meet Kople Easwar, a member of the state’s legislative assembly. As he waited for his friend, a group of Hindu radicals saw him and the pocket calendars he carried.

After attacking him, they forced him to hand over the calendars and dragged him to a police station, where they filed a complaint against him on the basis of Government Order 746, which bans propaganda by other religions near the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams temple and 19 other Hindu temples across the country.

For the GCIC president, these ordinance and orders “violate rights protected by the Indian constitution.” For this reason, the “chief minister of Andhra Pradesh should change them.”

On a related story, a local court convicted 11 Christians from the village of Kyatamballi on the basis of these rules on charges of forced conversions that go back to 2007.

Two of the accused received a 20-month sentence and 5,000-rupees (US$ 100) fine. The other nine were given a 12-month sentence and a 2,000-rupee fine (US$ 45) each. (NC)

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



Indonesia: Latest Attack Damages Mosque in W. Java

A crowd of around 150 people from various Islamic organizations, including local residents, reportedly vandalized on Friday the only mosque left for Ahmadiyah followers in Singaparna, Tasikmalaya, still used to hold their prayers. The attack was reported to have taken place around 10 a.m. Ahmadis Enda Juanda said the situation was tense from around 9 a.m. as the crowd began to assemble and some began wearing white and green robes. “They shouted and yelled, but only at the start, before they eventually started throwing rocks, shattering glass windows, and breaking into the mosque,” Enda told The Jakarta Post by phone. Enda was inside the mosque with fellow Ahmadis Didi, while around 25 others were watching the attack from outside the mosque. He said the crowd burned carpets and praying mats. He fled with Didi when the attackers tried to chase them. “I knew I had to save my life. I’m sure there is nothing wrong with my faith,” said Enda.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Cameroon: Army Deployed Against Poachers

(AGI) Yaounde’ — The Cameroon government deployed the army against the poachers hunting in the Bouba Ndjida National Park.

Some 120 soldiers will be added to the park rangers interdicting the entrance of poacher illegally crossing from bordering Sudan and Chad. The troop deployment is part of a plan — which includes better water and vegetation management — to protect the elephants and avoid their migration toward non protected areas.

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



Gabon/OIC: Information Ministers From OIC Member States Issue a Final Communique at the End of the 9th Icim

LIBREVILLE (Gabon),29 Jumad Al-Awwal/20 April (IINA)-Concluding the 9th session of the Islamic Conference of Information Ministers (ICIM) Friday in Libreville, Gabon, the Ministers or their representatives from 57 member States of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC),issued the following final communiqué:

I. At the kind invitation of the Republic of Gabon, the 9th Session of the Islamic Conference of Information Ministers (ICIM) under the theme “Information Technologies in the Service of Peace and Development” was held in Libreville, Republic of Gabon on 19 and 20 April, 2012 under the distinguished patronage of H. E. Ali Bongo ONDIMBA, President of the Republic of Gabon.

[…]

VII) The Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, delivered a statement which he started by expressing profound gratitude to the Republic of Gabon and the wise leadership of His Excellency President Ali Bango Andimbam who continued on the path of his late father El Haji Omar Bango in the fields of development, reform and progress which has made the Republic of Gabon a modern and prosperous country. He lauded the efforts of the Republic of Gabon in making excellent arrangements for the 9th Session of the ICIM. The Secretary General stressed the continuous support of the OIC for the question of Palestine and Al-Quds Al-Shareef which is a top priority for the OIC. He condemned the judaization of the city of Al-Quds, the construction of Israeli settlements and the continued unjust blockade of the Gaza Strip which flout all international laws. The Secretary General touched upon the issue of Islamophobia which fuelled by misconceptions about Islam and Muslims and incites hatred and discrimination against them on religious and ethnic grounds. He emphasized the initiatives of the OIC and the UN in this regard. He underscored the need to come out with innovative ideas for the restructuring the International Islamic News Agency (IINA) and the Islamic Broadcasting Union (IBU) which represent OIC’s media arm. On the other hand, the Secretary General insisted on the need to attach special importance to the African continent from the media, commending the proposals made to the session in this regard. The Secretary General called upon the Member States to support the different other draft resolutions submitted to the session for consideration.

[…]

XIV) The Conference noted the utmost importance of the recommendation made by the Kingdom of Morocco on Countering Defamation of Religions and called on OIC Member States to support tabling the proposal at the UN so that a draft recommendation could be adopted calling on all States to respect the image of religions in all the various media and not to cause prejudice to religious symbols and sanctuaries, in demonstration of Islamic solidarity.

[…]

XVI) The Conference discussed and lauded the proposal submitted by the OIC General Secretariat upon the request of the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) on the adoption of the “Draft Course in Training Journalists to Counter Stereotypes about Islam and Muslims in Western Media”. It called upon the Member States to implement the course in coordination with the OIC General Secretariat and ISESCO.

[…]

XX) The ICIM praised the efforts exerted by the OIC Secretary General and the close coordination with the authorities concerned in the Republic of Gabon in order to ensure that the conference is held under the best conditions possible, which in turn ensured its anticipated success to further serve joint Islamic media action.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Nigeria: R-E-V-E-A-L-E-D! How Boko Haram Import Arms From Apapa Wharf, Borno

DETERMINED to consolidate and perpetrate their reigns of terror in the northern states of the country against all known security apparatus put in place by the federal government, members of the Islamic fundamentalist sect otherwise known as Boko Haram, now move their arms and ammunition from one state to another in petrol tankers. Crime Guard authoritatively scooped that the group also uses designated mosques as their armory. According to sources, most of the sect’s weapons entered the country through the Apapa Wharf and the northern borders of Chad, Mali and Niger Republic and are evacuated into tankers with the alleged assistance of some members of the authorized security agents at these borders suspected to be members of the group.

Camels to the rescue

The tankers would normally sail through all checkpoints until they get to their destination where the contents are again evacuated into designated mosques. Camels are said to be equally used in this movement of arms and ammunition. Sources said a curious policeman attached to Wuronu Division in Borno state stopped some of these beasts of burden normally loaded with grains coming into the country through these northern borders only to discover l54 ammunition and two AK 47 Assault riffles carefully hidden in babaringa of two members of the sect escorting the camels. Both the animals and the sect members were arrested and have been transferred to the Force headquarters, Abuja for further investigation.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Wal-Mart Hushed Up Vast Mexico Bribery Case After Top-Level Struggle

An investigation by The New York Times examines a vast bribery case by Wal-Mart in Mexico and describes a prolonged struggle within the company that pitted its much publicized commitment to the highest moral and ethical standards against its relentless pursuit of growth.

Wal-Mart became aware of the situation in Mexico from a former executive, who explained how the company’s Mexican division had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. But instead of deciding to expand an internal investigation, Wal-Mart’s leaders decided to shut it down.

[Return to headlines]

Immigration


Greece: Reception Centre to Open in Next Few Days

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 20 — The first Greek reception centre for illegal immigrants will open in the next few days in the area of Amigdalesa in the outskirts of Athens. The Greek minister for citizens’ protection Michalis Chrisochoidis gave the news at the end of a meeting with the Finnish interior minister Paivi Rasanen and Ilkka Laitinen, Executive director of Frontex, the European agency for border control. A memorandum between Greece and Frontex was signed during the meeting which signals the cooperation between both parts and the support from the EU with regards to border control in Greece.

“The first reception centre” said Chrisochoidis “will be able to host about 1,000 people. Their transfer will be initiated at the start of next week.” The centre in Amigdalesa is situated nearby the Greek police officers’ school. “We want to prove there’s no risk involved for anyone and that we all have to support this effort in order to solve the problems which arise from immigration” the minister concluded.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



UK: Illegal Immigrant Raped Young Woman Three Years After Judge Ordered Him to be Deported the 33-Year-Old Raped the Woman Twice and Battered Her So Severely She Had 17 Injuries

The Home Office came under fire yesterday when it emerged an illegal immigrant brutally raped a young woman — three years after a judge ordered him to be deported.

Abdikarim Abbas Abdisamad, 33, originally from Somalia, befriended a 24-year-old woman in a nightclub claiming he had just lost his job and was penniless.

The victim took pity on Abdisamad and invited him to her home where he raped her twice and battered her so severely she suffered 17 separate injuries.

He was jailed for ten years after being convicted of rape at Coventry Crown Court on Monday.

But during the hearing, it emerged Abdisamad was already a convicted criminal and a judge had ordered his deportation in 2009 when he was jailed for six months for grievous bodily harm.

But he was allowed to remain in Britain because of his immigration status and civil war in his home country of Somalia.

Now bungling Home Office officials are working to finally deport him.

Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of Migration Watch, said: ‘Anyone who doesn’t have the right to be here who has been told to get out should leave and leave quickly.

‘In essence I would say that those who have no right to be here and who have been sentenced for horrific crimes should go quickly.

‘Unfortunately we do have to abide by certain agreements. We should do rather more to change the attitudes and rules and regulations that prevent some people being deported.

‘I think there are far too many obstacles put in our way that need to be removed.’

Abdisamad, who gave the court an address in London, was in the country on a working visa.

The Home Office say that to deport a criminal, certain criteria needed to be met and in Abdisamad’s case that had not happened.

But they refused to reveal what part of his immigration status prevented his removal.

A spokesman said: ‘We always seek to remove foreign offenders convicted of a serious crime once they have been punished.

‘That is why we removed more than 4,500 of them last year.

‘Removal can be a challenging process and we have to operate within the law.’

Abdisamad’s rape victim suffered a broken cheekbone and several deep cuts — requiring stitches after the attack.

He was arrested in October after police used items left in his victim’s home in Coventry to trace him to a location in London.

Det Con Sunita Sharma, from Coventry Public Protection Unit, said: ‘To see this man be given such a long custodial sentence is extremely satisfying for both his victim and those of us who have investigated the case and supported her throughout.

‘The young lady thought he was a genuine guy, down on his luck and unaware of what fate lay in store.

‘She has been left afraid to stay in her own home and unable to trust her own judgement or any man again.

‘I hope this sentence offers some relief to the victim, and we admire her courage in speaking up to bring her attacker to justice.’

Abdisamad, who admitted one count of rape but was found not guilty of another, was also put on the sex offender’s register for life.

A count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm was ordered to lie on file.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Irish Government TD (Member of Parliament) Blames ‘Fornication’ For Unwanted Pregnancies

‘Unwanted pregnancies caused by fornication’

A Government TD has blamed “fornication” as the single biggest cause of unwanted pregnancies and questioned what damage the sale of condoms has done to society.

Mayo TD Michelle Mulherin’s comments came as she and coalition colleagues voted down a private members bill to allow abortion in Ireland to save the life of the expectant mother.

The constituency colleague of Enda Kenny shocked observers as she claimed women did not own their own sexuality in the same manner that men did. She raised questions about whether the legalising of homosexuality had been damaging to society.

Ms Mulherin stood over her comments last night and said she had received massive response, both positive and negative.

The proposed bill brought by Independent TDs to offer abortion in limited cases to avert risk to pregnant women’s lives was defeated by 111 to 20 votes.

Ms Mulherin said the legislation could not just be passed because of “sad stories” about women who had procedures. She welcomed the chance to speak on “a very sensitive issue, particularly for women because women do not own their own personal physical integrity and sexuality in the same manner that men do”.

She said she was against abortion in any form.

Ms Mulherin went further and questioned what changes to society had arisen from the legalising of the sale of condoms and their sale from vending machines.

“Moreover, how destructive was that change, if at all, given these were foundations of our religious beliefs in the past? Homosexuality is yet another example of this,” she said.

“Abortion as murder, and therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful from a scriptural point of view than all other sins we do not legislate against, such as greed, hate, and fornication; the latter — fornication — being probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

When contacted last night, the first-time TD stood over her remarks: “I was basically asking has that been destructive or has it not. How has society brought us to this point?”

She said her speech was about opening debate about abortion and sexuality.

“I don’t have a problem about the legalising of homosexuality. I’m putting the questions out there.”

Socialist Party TD Clare Daly had launched the bill this week, saying the State had failed to legislate for the X court case in 1992, where judges ruled abortion was legal where a pregnancy posed a real and substantial risk to a woman’s life.

It was a “ludicrous suggestion” that passing the bill would “open the floodgates” and lead to abortion on demand, Ms Daly claimed.

Coalition partners Labour and Fine Gael voted it down, saying ministers would await the outcome of an expert group. Fianna Fáil also opposed the bill while a number of Independents refrained from voting. Rebel Labour party member and TD Patrick Nulty voted in favour of the bill.

           — Hat tip: McR [Return to headlines]



Why Hate Speech Should Not be Banned

by Kenan Malik

I gave an interview last year to Peter Molnar for a book on the regulation of hate speech that he was editing with Michael Herz. The book comes out of a series of conferences and seminars organised by New York’s Cardozo School of Law and the Central European University in Budapest. (I presented a paper at a seminar in Budapest). Other contributors include Jeremy Waldron, Ronald Dworkin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nadine Strossen and Bhikhu Parekh. The book is finally published this month under the pithy title of The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses . And here is the interview.

Molnar: Would you characterize some speech as ‘hate speech’, and do you think that it is possible to provide a reliable legal definition of ‘hate speech’?

Kenan Malik: I am not sure that ‘hate speech’ is a particularly useful concept. Much is said and written, of course, that is designed to promote hatred. But it makes little sense to lump it all together in a single category, especially when hatred is such a contested concept.

In a sense, hate speech restriction has become a means not of addressing specific issues about intimidation or incitement, but of enforcing general social regulation. This is why if you look at hate speech laws across the world, there is no consistency about what constitutes hate speech. Britain bans abusive, insulting, and threatening speech. Denmark and Canada ban speech that is insulting and degrading. India and Israel ban speech that hurts religious feelings and incites racial and religious hatred. In Holland, it is a criminal offense deliberately to insult a particular group. Australia prohibits speech that offends, insults, humiliates, or intimidates individuals or groups. Germany bans speech that violates the dignity of, or maliciously degrades or defames, a group. And so on. In each case, the law defines hate speech in a different way.

One response might be to say: Let us define hate speech much more tightly. I think, however, that the problem runs much deeper. Hate speech restriction is a means not of tackling bigotry but of rebranding certain, often obnoxious, ideas or arguments as immoral. It is a way of making certain ideas illegitimate without bothering politically to challenge them. And that is dangerous.

[…]

PM: What do you think about proposals for restricting defamation of religion?

KM: It is as idiotic to imagine that one could defame religion as it is to imagine that one could defame politics or literature. Or that the Bible or the Qur’an should not be criticized or ridiculed in the same way as one might criticize or ridicule The Communist Manifesto or On the Origin of Species or Dante’s Inferno.

A religion is, in part, a set of beliefs — about the world, its origins, and humanity’s place in it — and a set of values that supposedly derive from those beliefs. Those beliefs and values should be treated no differently to any other sets of beliefs, and values that derive from them. I can be hateful of conservatism or communism. It should be open to me to be equally hateful of Islam and Christianity.

Proponents of religious defamation laws suggest that religion is not just a set of beliefs but an identity, and an exceptionally deeply felt one at that. It is true that religions often form deep-seated identities. But, then, so do many other beliefs. Communists were often wedded to their ideas even unto death. Many racists have an almost visceral attachment to their beliefs. Should I indulge them because their views are so deeply held? And while I do not see my humanism as an identity with a big ‘I’, I would challenge any Christian or Muslim to demonstrate that my beliefs are less deeply held than theirs.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120420

Financial Crisis
» Can Italy be Far Behind?
» Greece: Tourism Revenues Fall 17.5% in Jan-Feb
» Greece: Private Islands Sold for Bargain Prices
» Spanish PM: ‘We Have No Money for Health or Education’
» Speculation Has Pushed up Spread Says EU
 
USA
» CAIR-PA ‘Concerned’ About Temple Univ Anti-Islam Hate Event
» Judge Sets Bail at $150,000 for Shooter in Trayvon Martin Case
» Stakelbeck: Media Matters vs. Christianity and Israel
 
Canada
» How the American and Canadian Far Left Won the Release of Terrorist Killer Omar Khadr
 
Europe and the EU
» EU Delays Vote on Labeling Oil Sands Oil Dirty
» France 2012: Sarkozy-Hollande, Socialist Candidate Ahead
» Italy: Diamonds Were Bought by Stiffoni and Rosy Mauro
» Italy: Berlusconi Calls House Parties ‘Burlesque Shows’ Not Sex
» Italy: Carabinieri Report Northern League Paid Calderoli’s Rent
» Ministers Ponder Creation of EU Super-President
» Norway: Breivik Studied Terror on Internet
» Norwegian Far-Right Extremist Anders Behring Breivik Used the Internet to Learn How to Carry Out a Bombing-and-Shooting Rampage, Studying Attacks by Al-Qaeda, Oklahoma Bomber Timothy McVeigh and the 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Centre.
» Norwegian Gunman Describes Hunting Down Teenagers
» Scotland: Coastguard Helicopter Pilot Suspended Over Orkney Butcher Trip
» UK: “After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?”
» UK: Lords Proposed Move to Salford Meets With Cautious Optimism
» UK: New Director Hired to Improve Student Life at University of East London
» UK: Tower Hamlets Mayor Rahman’s Candidate Beats Labour in Spitalfields by-Election
» UK: The Scandalous Lies of Hope Not Hate
» Young Israel’s New Love Affair With Germany
 
North Africa
» Tens of Thousands Protest Military Rule in Egypt
» Tunisia: 500 Million Dollar Loan From Qatar
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Palestine: Quartet and UNESCO in Head-on Collision
 
Middle East
» Caroline Glick: The Elephant of Jew Hatred
» Qatar Holding Seals Costa Smeralda Deal
» Sri Lanka Woman Accused of Sorcery Could be Beheaded in Saudi Arabia
» Syria: First Assad Report to ICC for Crimes Against Humanity
» Yemen: CIA Wants Free Rein in Use of Drones Against Terror
 
South Asia
» Families of Imprisoned Marines Visit Indian Jail
» Sri Lankans Protest Mosque in Buddhist Sacred Area
» ‘The Asian Arms Race is Starting to Look Ominous’
 
Australia — Pacific
» Cola ‘Contributed to Woman’s Death’
 
Latin America
» The Tab for U.N.’s Rio Summit: Trillions Per Year in Taxes, Transfers and Price Hikes
 
Immigration
» EU States Slam Swiss for Immigrant Worker Caps
» France Moves to Bring Back Border Checks
» Franco-German Schengen Proposal: A Vote of No Confidence in Europe
» Put Qatada on a Plane and Quit the European Court
» Sweden: Two Arrested for Asylum Home Male Gang Rape
» The Sun Says: Abu Bye-Bye
 
Culture Wars
» Genocidal Green Quotes

Financial Crisis


Can Italy be Far Behind?

What is going on in the Eurozone impacts, and will continue to some perhaps significant degree impact, everywhere else. Two recent articles, reported that on April 17 The International Monetary Fund released its 2012/2013 forecast for Italy. That forecast is reported as targeting:

  • Italy’s deficit as a % of output at 2.4% and 1.5% in 2012 and 2013 respectively, as contrasted with the Italian Government’s current forecasts of 1.6% in 2012 and a balanced budget in 2013;
  • Italy’s public debt, said to be 2nd highest to Greece in the Eurozone, at 123.4% in 2012, and 123.8% in 2013;
  • Italy’s economy to shrink by 1.8% in 2012, and by a further 0.3% in 2013;
  • Italy’s ‘primary balance’, being the budget balance excluding debt service costs, at +3.0% and +4% of GDP in 2012 and 2013 respectively, as contrasted to higher recent Italian Government targets of 3.4% and 4.9% respectively; and,
  • Italy’s ‘tax burden’, being fiscal revenues expressed as a % of GDP, at 48.3% and 49.0% of GDP in 2012 and 2013 respectively, as contrasted to lower the recent Italian Government target of 43.8% in both years.

Only about three months ago, shortly before Greece Sovereign Debt was restructured, I began to warn about Spain as the next Eurozone country to focus on. That has turned out to be ‘all the news’, and reports abound every day on Spain’s:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Greece: Tourism Revenues Fall 17.5% in Jan-Feb

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 20 — Revenues from tourism services in Greece declined by a considerable 17.5% in the first couple of months of 2012 year-on-year, according to data released on Thursday by the Bank of Greece and reported by daily Kathimerini. This is attributed to the 11.1% drop in foreign arrivals in January and February that left even popular resorts emptier than usual. There was also a 26.1% slump in Greeks’ travel expenditure abroad, the data showed. The country’s Central Bank further said that the current account deficit shrank by 44.1% year-on-year, dropping from 4.65 billion euros to just 2.6 billion in the first two months of 2012. There was also a net outflow in direct investment, amounting to 305 million euros.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Private Islands Sold for Bargain Prices

Owners forced to sell due to high taxes

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — After a 3-year period without any activities, sales in the exclusive sector of Greek private islands saw a sharp increase. Experts active in this peculiar market, as newspaper Kathimerini recently reported, say that several owners, particularly those who have hired the islands, are trying to get rid of them because of the high taxes that were recently introduced by the government. As a consequence, prices have fallen substantially and owners are willing to give interesting discounts. This is also true in the case of the presumed sale of Oxia, an island that is owned by the Greek-Australian Stamoulis family, to a member of the royal household of Qatar. The island has a surface area of around 500 hectares (half the size of Capri) and was initially put on sale for 6.9 million euros. But the final sale price is said to be less than 5 million euros. The island is situated in the Ionian Sea, 38km from Itaca, the Homeric island of Ulysses.

Part of Oxia falls under the protection of environmental organisation Natura 2000 but the rest of the island is open for tourism development. Another sale, well-informed sources say that about to be concluded, regards the island of Patroclo, just 3km away from Cape Sounion, the beautiful promontory 70km south-east of Athens. Patroclo has a surface area of 260 hectares (half the size of Oxia) but, because of its position near the capital, the airport and the Greek coast (from which it receives drinking water), has an immense potential for tourism development and an official price of 150 million euros. The same sources add that the owner of the island (the Giatrakos family) are currently working together with a Canadian investor and the Greek authorities to find out exactly what part of Patroclo can be developed commercially. But earlier attempts to sell the island failed due to a lack of planning for the island’s use and building as well as the presence of several archaeological sites. The Giatrakos family are reportedly doing all they can to solve the existing problems and to find the island a new owner. The sale of another island has also encountered obstacles.

This island, Skorpios, is currently owned by Athina Onassis, granddaughter of the magnate Aristotle who bought it in 1963 for 15 million USD. Aristotle Onassis, his son Alexander and daughter Cristina (mother of Athina) lie buried on the island, which is situated in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Lefkada.

Earlier it was rumoured that Skorpios would sell the island for more than 200 million dollars and that Bill Gates was interested in buying it. In September 2010 Giorgio Armani denied having bought the island for 150 million euros. It is said that Athina Onassis wants to get rid of the island for financial reasons. But well-informed sources told the newspaper that the transaction was difficult because of a clause in the testament of her grandfather that forbids the sale of the island. The clause only allows it to be sold if its maintenance becomes impossible, which the Onassis heir now claims to be the case. Considering these legal complications, Athina’s lawyers are now reportedly studying the option of leasing the island to an investor for a period of 99 years.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spanish PM: ‘We Have No Money for Health or Education’

Spain has approved €10 billion of spending cuts and higher fees for education and health in a bid to show investors it is getting its deficit under control. Speaking on the eve of the cabinet decision on Friday (20 April), centre-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he does not have enough money.

“It’s necessary, imperative because at this moment there is no money to pay for public services … There’s no money because we have spent so much over the last few years. So we have to do this so that in the future we can get out of this situation,” he told national media. Rajoy said people will have to pay “just a few euros a month” more for medication than they do now. The wealthy will pay more than the poor, while those who do not have a job and do not qualify for state aid will be exempt.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Speculation Has Pushed up Spread Says EU

‘Confident’ about Italy’s ability to cope with debt crisis

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 20 — Short-term market speculation has pushed the spread between Italian and German bonds above 400 points, an EU spokesman said Friday.

The EU remains “confident” about Italy’s ability to cope with the eurozone debt crisis, he added.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


CAIR-PA ‘Concerned’ About Temple Univ Anti-Islam Hate Event

Muslim civil rights organization supports students challenging hate speech

PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Philadelphia) today expressed concern about the hostile learning environment that may result from an upcoming event at Temple University featuring a speaker who claims Islam is a “poison to a society” and others who are leaders of organizations designated as anti-Muslim hate groups and who were cited by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

SEE: Occupy Activists to Protest Anti-Muslim Event at Temple bit.ly/JgR5DL

The April 23 “Islamic Apartheid Conference” features Nonie Darwish, a notorious Islamophobe who has stated that Islam must be “annihilated.” In a video of Darwish speaking at a protest in Florida, she states: “Islam is a poison to a society. . .Islam should be feared, and should be fought, and should be conquered, and defeated, and annihilated, and it’s going to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, Islam is going to be brought down. . .Because Islam is based on lies and it’s not based on the truth. I have no doubt whatsoever that Islam is going to be destroyed.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Judge Sets Bail at $150,000 for Shooter in Trayvon Martin Case

Judge Kenneth R. Lester Jr. of Seminole County Circuit Court set bail at $150,000 for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who was arrested last week in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The judge also set conditions, including a curfew, on his release.

Mr. Zimmerman will not be released from jail on Friday. The judge said that he wanted to make sure security measures were in place for Mr. Zimmerman, who has received death threats.

[Return to headlines]



Stakelbeck: Media Matters vs. Christianity and Israel

The influential left-wing group Media Matters has a direct line to the White House and mainstream media.

Yet the group’s attacks on Christian organizations have been well-documented.

Now CBN has obtained an IRS document showing that Media Matters’ anti-Christian agenda is part of its very foundation.

My new report examines that and Media Matters’ anti-Israel rhetoric.

Click the link above to watch.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]

Canada


How the American and Canadian Far Left Won the Release of Terrorist Killer Omar Khadr

Breitbart’s Awr Hawkins is right on the money when he writes that …”the Obama administration is pushing the deal” to transfer convicted al-Qaida terrorist and American soldier killer Omar Khadr from Guantanamo to Canada, where he can be out on the streets on parole as soon as next year.

But it’s more chilling than even that: The return of Khadr to Canada by the end of next month is proof positive that the far left in the U.S. works— successfully—hand in hand with the far left in Canada with a Barack Obama now in the White House.

From the get-go, left wing politicians, their fellow traveller celebrities and the mainstream media portrayed convicted killer Khadr as a “child soldier”, and on Nov. 19, 2007, in a CBS newscast, as an “obedient son”. In a video showing the then 16-year-old being interviewed by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents in Guantanamo Bay in February, 2003, the weeping teen begged the agents, “Promise you’ll protect me from the Americans”. (CFP, July 15, 2008).

It showed on hidden camera how the vulnerable victim act was dropped the moment Khadr realized that the Canadian agents weren’t there to help, but to fish information.

[…]

And now convicted terrorist and killer Omar Khadr is coming home to Toronto to a family aptly described by his brother Abdurahman as “an al Qaeda family”.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


EU Delays Vote on Labeling Oil Sands Oil Dirty

The European Commission will delay asking members to approve a measure that would label oil from oil sands as worse for climate change than crude oil — a proposal that had been vigorously opposed by Canada, where such oil is produced.

The Commission will ask the EU’s 27 environment ministers to vote on the measure early in 2013 rather than this June, Isaac Valero-Ladron, a spokesman for EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard, said Friday.

In the interim, the Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will study the proposed fuel quality law’s impact on business and markets, as some EU countries had requested.

The delay reflects an attempt to build support for a proposal that has been the subject of intense lobbying by Canadian officials, and the recipient of only shaky support within the European Union. In February, an EU committee failed to reach a definite decision on the measure, neither approving it nor killing it.

“The idea is to present members an even more solid basis for decision,” Valero-Ladron said of the study. Canada’s minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, welcomed the proposed review and said Canada would cooperate with it.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France 2012: Sarkozy-Hollande, Socialist Candidate Ahead

According to last polls 2 days before vote

(ANSAmed) — PARIS — A few hours ahead of the election silence imposed on the eve of the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, polls are being furiously unleashed and scenarios imagined in France, with the two favourites — Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande — preparing to go head to head.

The Socialist challenger has consolidated his advantage over Sarkozy, according to a poll by BVA, which puts him at 30% of voter intentions, against 26.5% for the outgoing President.

The National Front’s Marine Le Pen and the far-left Front de Gauche party’s Jean-Luc Melenchon have been left behind on 14%. Projections suggest that Hollande would earn 57% of the vote in the run-off, with Sarkozy on 43%.

The TNS-Sofres institute, meanwhile, says that Sarkozy and Hollande are level on 27%, with the Socialist 10 points ahead of Sarkozy in the run-off (55% against 45%).

A third pollster, IPSOS, gives Hollande a more significant first-round lead (29% against 25.5%), and a 12-point lead in the run-off (56% against 44%).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Diamonds Were Bought by Stiffoni and Rosy Mauro

(AGI) Milan — The signatures of Rosy Mauro and Piergiorgio Stiffoni appear on receipts for payment of 300,000 euro for diamonds according to reports on investigations concerning electoral funds for the Northern League. Prosecutors are trying to discover with what money the precious stones were bought.

Documents acquired by the Financial Police indicate that the Deputy Speaker of the Senate and the Senator opened two bank accounts last January. It was using those accounts, created for that purpose, that they bought 300,000 euro worth of diamonds through an intermediary company; 200,000 euro worth for Stiffoni and 100,000 euro worth for Mauro. Certificates were signed personally by the two MPs. Investigators wish to understand whether these were personal investments or whether other funds were used.

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



Italy: Berlusconi Calls House Parties ‘Burlesque Shows’ Not Sex

Admits to paying money to ‘support ruined lives’ of guests

(ANSA) — Milan, April 20 — Former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday that alleged sex parties at his house were nothing more than entertainment. “They were burlesgue shows,” he told reporters during a court recess in Milan. Berlusconi is currently on trial for allegedly paying for sex with Karima ‘Ruby’ El Mahroug, an underage Moroccan-born runaway, after several of the parties at his villa at Arcore outside Milan and allegedly coercing police into releasing her after an unrelated theft claim to hush up the fact.

On Monday, Moroccan model Imane Fadil was the first witness to testify to attending a so-called ‘bunga bunga’ party and said she was offered 2,000 euros to stay the night. Fadil recalled an evening in which a model allegedly engaged in a strip-tease while dressed as a nun along with Nicole Minetti, Berlusconi’s former dental hygienist who is now a Lombardy regional councillor for his People of Freedom (PdL) party and is one of three people accused of supplying the premier with prostitutes.

“Minetti organized the evenings,” said Fadil, who described the performance as a sort of “Sister Act sexy dance in the bunga-bunga room,” with Minetti and Faggioli both dressed in “black habits with a white cross on the headdress”.

At another party she allegedly saw a young Brazilian model “with an AC Milan jersey and a Ronaldinho mask who stripped down to her thong”. The Brazil ace played soccer for Berlusconi’s AC Milan from 2008-2011. The other two accused of supplying prostitutes are bankrupt talent scout Lele Mora and long-time Berlusconi news anchor Emilio Fede, a close friend of the media magnate’s.

Prosecutors say Berlusconi had sex with 33 prostitutes at his villa over the course of several evenings.

Berlusconi, who says his parties were innocent and “elegant” affairs, has stressed that both he and Ruby deny having sex, and has quipped “33 women in two months is too many even for someone who likes pretty girls, like me”.

On Friday Berlusconi was confronted by journalists who noted bank records that show the ex-premier is still depositing money into the accounts of some of the women who attended his parties, now listed as injured parties in the case. “Yes, I’m taking care of all the girls whose lives have been ruined by the prosecution,” he said. “The only thing they did wrong was accept a dinner invitation to my home”. The ex-premier claims to be the victim of biased prosecutors who have allegedly been conducting a witch-hunt against him since he entered politics in 1994.

The charge of having sex with an underage prostitute carries a jail term of up to three years, and abuse of office 12 years.

The Ruby trial, which opened last April, is expected to run for years, with dozens of witnesses called by the prosecution and defence including George Clooney and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Carabinieri Report Northern League Paid Calderoli’s Rent

(AGI) Milan — Within the framework of investigations carried out by prosecutors in Milan, Naples and Reggio Calabria concerning the Northern League’s electoral funds, the Carabinieri have reported that former Minister Roberto Calderoli’s rent in Rome was paid for using party funds.

Calderoli is one the party’s three leaders now that Umberto Bossi has resigned. Calderoli commented that, “For over a year and a half the Northern League has paid the rent for an apartment in Rome that was assigned to me as my residence and my office, so I could also meet privately with the party’s leaders and other politicians. Most of the decrees concerning fiscal federalism were studied and drafted there.” “In Rome I did not work just as a senator or a minister, or rather as four ministers since I was assigned additional responsibilities,” he emphasized, “but I also did my best to comply with requests from the party, hence its coordinating activities in the capital’s institutions, relations with other political movements, acting a spokesman for the party within the government, as well as complying with all other requests made by Umberto Bossi for the activities and good of the movement.” “One the basis of agreements with the Northern League I am also paid 3,000 euro a month by the party and I pay for the expenses i have has Party Coordinator. All this information has been openly supplied and can be proved and is also known to the Northern League’s current CFO.”

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



Ministers Ponder Creation of EU Super-President

BRUSSELS — Ideas kicking around in a reflection group of select EU foreign ministers include merging the roles of the EU Council and European Commission presidents. A senior EU source told this website following a meeting of the club in the Val Duchesse stately home in Brussels on Thursday (19 April) that the new supremo would have more power than either Herman Van Rompuy or Jose Manuel Barroso do today but also more “democratic legitimacy” because he or she would be elected by MEPs.

In other reforms, the new figure would “streamline” the European Commission into a two-tier structure. Every EU country would still have its own commissioner with their own vote in the college of 27 top officials. But as in some national set-ups, some commissioners would have more than one dossier while others would be the equivalent of ministers without portfolio.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Studied Terror on Internet

Anders Behring Breivik acquired the knowledge to carry out a bomb and shooting rampage on the internet, he told a Norwegian court today.

He said he studied case studies of al Qaida and other attacks and read more than 600 bomb-making guides.

On day five of his trial in Oslo, the confessed mass killer said he studied the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York and Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 in particular.

Breivik said of al Qaida: “I have studied each one of their actions, what they have done wrong, what they have done right.”

He has admitted the July 22 attacks that killed 77 people, but pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, saying his victims had betrayed Norway by embracing immigration.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Norwegian Far-Right Extremist Anders Behring Breivik Used the Internet to Learn How to Carry Out a Bombing-and-Shooting Rampage, Studying Attacks by Al-Qaeda, Oklahoma Bomber Timothy McVeigh and the 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Centre.

On Friday, the fifth day of his trial, the confessed mass killer told a Norwegian court he paid close attention in particular to the World Trade Centre bombing in New York and McVeigh’s 1995 attack on an Oklahoma City government building, which killed 168 people and injured over 600.

Breivik also said he read more than 600 bomb-making guides.

About al-Qaeda, Breivik said: “I have studied each one of their actions, what they have done wrong, what they have done right.”

He called the Islamist group “the most successful revolutionary movement in the world” and said it should serve as an inspiration to far-right militants, even though their goals are different.

“We want to create a European version of al-Qaeda,” Breivik said.

Breivik has admitted to the July 22 attacks that killed 77 in Norway but pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, saying his victims had betrayed Norway by embracing immigration.

His lack of remorse and matter-of-fact description of weapons and tactics during his testimony have deeply disturbed families of the victims, most of whom were teenagers.

The 33-year-old Norwegian said he was deliberately using “technical” language as a way to keep his composure.

“These are gruesome acts, barbaric acts,” he said.

“If I had tried to use a more normal language I don’t think I would have been able to talk about it at all.”

A lawyer representing the bereaved, who are watching the proceedings in the Oslo court and in 17 other courtrooms in Norway, asked Breivik why he didn’t show any empathy for his victims.

“I can choose to remove the mental shield but I am choosing not to do it … because I would not survive,” he said.

Comparing himself to a Japanese “banzai” warrior during World War II, Breivik said too many Norwegian men were “feminised, cooking food and showing emotions”..

The victims’ lawyer noted that he showed emotions on the first day of the trial, when he cried as prosecutors showed an anti-Muslim video he had created.

“I wasn’t prepared for that film,” Breivik said. “It’s a film that represents the fight and everything I love.”

Breivik has admitted to the bombing in Oslo that killed eight people and the shooting massacre at the Labor Party youth camp that left 69 dead.

He claims to belong to an alleged anti-Muslim “Knights Templar” network. Many groups claim part of that name but prosecutors say they don’t believe the group described by Breivik exists.

The main goal of the trial is to figure out whether Breivik was sane or insane.

If declared sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society.

If found insane, he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he’s considered ill.

[Return to headlines]



Norwegian Gunman Describes Hunting Down Teenagers

OSLO, Norway — Norwegians who lost loved ones on Utoya island relived the horror Friday as far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik described in harrowing detail how he gunned down teenagers as they fled in panic or froze before him, paralyzed with fear. Survivors and victims’ relatives hugged and sobbed, trying to comfort each other during the graphic testimony.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Scotland: Coastguard Helicopter Pilot Suspended Over Orkney Butcher Trip

The pilot of a coastguard helicopter in Shetland has been suspended after dropping in on a butcher in Orkney to pick up meat.

The incident came to light after a video of the aircraft landing in a field was posted on YouTube.

It has emerged that the Shetland-based helicopter landed near Craigie’s butchers in the east of mainland Orkney to pick up a consignment of meat.

The aircraft’s operators, CHC, confirmed the pilot had been suspended.

Mobile phone footage — which has now been removed from YouTube — showed two crew getting out of the helicopter and walking over to a group of butchers, who handed over the bag of Orkney beef.

‘High standards’

A CHC spokeswoman: “We can confirm that a pilot has been suspended pending the results of a formal investigation.

“We expect high standards of professionalism from all our employees and, if we find these have not been met, we will take the appropriate action.

“While the aircraft was previously engaged in a training exercise, it was operating a non-revenue flight at the time of the incident in question.”

The butcher at the centre of the incident said he was horrified that the pilot had been suspended.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



UK: “After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?”

by Bruce Anderson

[…]

There is another area in which the quality of government is under threat, and it is the most vital of all: national security. Despite all the evidence, there seems to be a widespread belief that we are not living in a dangerous world: that those responsible for security are deliberatley exaggerating the problems to justify their own salaries: that some of them may be James Bond manques who are confusing fantasy and reality. This is such a travesty. Those who live with dangers and warn of dangers are not like small children who are afraid that there is a monster lurking under the bed. They are outstanding public servants who have a firm grip on reality. We are menaced by lurking monsters.

In 1517, Martin Luther sparked off the Reformation. Within a very few years, Catholics and Protestants were killing one another, which they continued to do for decades and centuries. In Ireland, it is not yet certain that the wars of religion are over. Today, there is turmoil in much of the Islamic world, often accompanied by a growth in religious intensity. As a result, many Muslims have far more resemblance to John Calvin or Philip II than to the average modern Anglican who potters along to Church once a month for a pleasant service and a glass of sherry with the vicar. Many Muslims have come to hate the West, to believe that we are the authors of their misfortunes and that they are entitled to strike at us without restraint.

There is no easy response to all that. The natural Western instinct is to pursue dialogue: to negotiate; to see what scope there is for compromise and concession. There is nothing wrong with any of that, as long as we do not delude ourselves that all will then be well. If you are tempted to indulge in optimism, think Catholics and Calvinists in 1550. Whatever the outcome of any negotiations, there will be a sizeable residue of ruthless opponents, who simply want to kill us.

[…]

It is time for the elder statesmen to intervene again, warning the younger politicians that squeamishness is not an antidote to terrorism. There is a choice. Either the West responds realistically to the threats that we face, or our opponents will exploit our lack of realism.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Lords Proposed Move to Salford Meets With Cautious Optimism

Barbara Keeley, MP for Worsley and Eccles South, gives backing to Lord Adonis’s suggestion to move the House of Lords

Lord Adonis’s comments about relocating the House of Lords 200 miles north in Salford or Manchester have been greeted with cautious optimism. Speaking from the Commons, Barbara Keeley, the MP for Worsley and Eccles South, said she welcomed the suggestion that the House of Lords should consider moving to Salford Quays. “The BBC move to its new base at MediaCity in Salford Quays has been a great success despite attempts by some to talk it down. “Debates on legislation can and should take place in areas outside London. With an important broadcasting base already at Salford Quays, those debates would be well covered in the media.” She said the Lords were very short of space so it seemed to make sense “to take a serious look at the idea”.

Nick Bowles, an MA student at Salford University, adjacent to the BBC at MediaCity, said: “It’s not very often I find myself agreeing with the privileged few at the House of Lords — indeed, I don’t agree with whole system — but Lord Adonis’s comments about the effects of such a centralised government are decades overdue.” He said there was a “metro-centricity” surrounding London and that “every other city” had been diminished by centralised government. “We can’t even build a bridge in Manchester without permission or change improve our transport to meet our needs. Housing projects have to signed off by central government. It’s ludicrous to allow so few people, often privileged people, to have such control over the majority of the country.”

Barbara Spicer, the chief executive of Salford city council, said: “The BBC’s relocation to Salford has proved that moving north can be a really positive experience for businesses.”

She said she had had some fantastic feedback from BBC staff who have come to MediaCity who are “really making the most of having a new base in the north”. Spicer added that the north has a lot to offer and said: “We welcome opportunities that will give the region an economic boost.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: New Director Hired to Improve Student Life at University of East London

A new director’s post has been created to make student life better at the University of East London. The ‘Director of Student Life’ job beginning later this summer has been given to Gareth Smith, currently Head of London 2012’s Further & Higher Education unit. His responsibilities will include “corporate initiatives to improve the quality of student life and impact on the student experience.” The ex-National Union of Students executive member previously worked for Labour MP Gareth Thomas and the late US Senator Edward Kennedy.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Tower Hamlets Mayor Rahman’s Candidate Beats Labour in Spitalfields by-Election

Labour has been narrowly defeated in a hotly-contested by-election at Spitalfields in London’s East End in its bid to regain a seat it lost on Tower Hamlets Council by defection.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s nominated independent candidate Gulam Robbani took the seat last night with 1,030 votes. Robbani, one of the Mayor’s former aides who had been contracted to advise him on social care before quitting in February, beat Labour’s Ala Uddin into second place by just 43 votes out of a total 2,315 cast. Labour had pinned its hopes on former council deputy leader Uddin to retake the seat it lost when Cllr Shelina Akhtar, who won it for them in 2010, defected last year to Mayor Rahman’s independent administration.

The by-election was caused by Akhtar being jailed in January for council benefit fraud. The Mayor was out campaigning himself in the week, door-knocking with Robbani who is now almost certain to be offered a place in his cabinet. Conservatives came third and Greens fourth, pushing Lib Dems into fifth place.

The results:

Gulam Robbani (independent) — 1,030 [elected]

Ala Uddin (Labour) — 987

Matthew Smith (Conservative) — 140

Kirsty Blake (Green) — 99

Richard Macmillan (Liberal Democrat) — 39

The turn-out was 31 per cent.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: The Scandalous Lies of Hope Not Hate

by Bruce Bawer

The list reads, in large part, like an honor roll of courageous truth-tellers. In the U.S., people like David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Ibn Warraq, Mark Steyn, Robert Spencer, and Andrew McCarthy. In Canada, Ezra Levant. In the U.K., Roger Scruton. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders. In Denmark, Lars Hedegaard. And so on. But no, this isn’t meant as an honor roll. It’s a list of individuals — and organizations, too, among them the David Horowitz Freedom Center — that, according to a new “Counter-Jihad Report” by a British group called Hope Not Hate, make up a nefarious network of Islamophobic extremists who inspired the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring-Breivik.

It’s no coincidence that this “report” was issued to coincide with the beginning of Breivik’s trial, which started on Monday. For the people at Hope Not Hate seek to draw an explicit cause-and-effect connection between writings by various critics of Islam and the atrocities of July 22. One thing’s clear: Breivik has been a terrific gift to those who, for whatever reason, have long been eager to shift focus away from the danger of Islam and to argue that it’s the criticism of Islam that’s the real danger. It hasn’t been easy for these folks. Over the last decade, as a result of one brutal jihadist atrocity after another — 9/11, Madrid, London, Beslan, Bali, Mumbai, etc., etc. — Islam has been associated in the Western mind with bloodthirsty slaughter. Then, on July 22 of last year, a single man, acting alone, killed dozens of people, purportedly in the name of anti-jihadism. His actions provided everyone who’d like to whitewash Islam with an opportunity to associate not Islam, but its critics, with savage violence.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Young Israel’s New Love Affair With Germany

Marco-Urban.deGerman passports, Berlin DJs and language lessons: After decades of wariness, Israelis have discovered a new love for Germany. For a new generation of confident, young Israelis, the country has become one of their favorites.

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On his first night in Germany, Tomer Heymann, an Israeli, sleeps with a German. He met him — Andreas Josef Merk, blond and Catholic — at Berghain, a Berlin club. Heymann — film director, Jewish and gay — at first takes him for a Swede. He thinks Germans must look different, perhaps more sinister perhaps, jagged or cruder.

The next morning, the camera is already rolling, and the Israeli asks the German: Are you proud to be a German? Have you ever spoken with your grandparents about the Holocaust? No, says the German, but it’s very possible that they were Nazis. A long silence follows. It’s the only time they broach the topic.

Shortly thereafter, the German travels to Tel Aviv with two suitcases and a one-way ticket. The two men celebrate Passover and Christmas together. The German demonstrates how to flip pancakes in the air; the Israeli shows him how to stand still on Holocaust Remembrance Day, with your arms pressed tightly against your body while you observe two minutes of silence. These and many other scenes eventually become a film: a 56-minute record of the new, unencumbered way in which many Israelis and Germans are now relating to each other.

“I Shot My Love” is a declaration of love — that of an Israeli, whose grandparents fled Berlin in 1936, to a German dancer from Bavaria. The remarkable part: just how normal this love seems to be.

A New Stance toward Germany

Something has changed about the way Israelis and Germans interact, far removed from the endless German debates in which old men wrestle with their ghosts and politicians struggle to perform the mandatory rituals: the obligatory visit to Yad Vashem here, the obligatory visit to Dachau there. For quite some time now, there’s been a new Israeli-Germany reality beyond the routine of shock and dismay — primarily in Israel.

Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, the last survivors are passing away, and this is changing how younger Israelis view Germany. Relatively free of historical taboos, they are redefining what this country means to them. This new generation no longer finds it odd that a company like Birkenstock promotes its products in Israel with “Made in Germany,” and a short trip to Berlin is the most normal thing in the world. For them, Germany is not just a country like any other — it also happens to be one of their favorites.

It mainly has to do with a feeling, a new Israeli self-assurance vis-à-vis Germany, one characterized by curiosity and a yearning for discovery. Young Israelis no longer insist on constant remembrance but, rather, on the right to be allowed to forget sometimes.

The sheer scale of this transition is perhaps best expressed in figures: Two years ago, one-quarter of all Israelis were rooting for Germany to win the soccer World Cup. In a survey conducted in 2009, 80 percent of all respondents qualified Israeli-German relations as normal, and 55 percent said that anti-Semitism was no worse in Germany than elsewhere in Europe…

           — Hat tip: Hermes [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Tens of Thousands Protest Military Rule in Egypt

Egypt’s Islamist and secular forces sought to relaunch the street uprising against Egypt’s ruling military Friday, packing Cairo’s Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of protesters in the biggest rally in months and accusing the generals of manipulating upcoming presidential elections to preserve their power.

But attempts by protest organizers to form a united front against the military were blocked by competing agendas. The protest was riven by distrust and resentments that have grown between Islamists and liberals during the rocky, military-run transition process since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak more than a year ago.

Liberals and leftists accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of abandoning the “revolution” months ago and allying with the military in hopes of securing power. In Friday’s rally, many said the Brotherhood was only turning to the streets after the generals proved more powerful in decision-making even after an Islamist-dominated parliament was elected. The liberal groups warned that the Brotherhood could accommodate the military again for a chance to govern.

“The Brotherhood are here for the throne, that’s all. We tried them before and they rode the revolution and the blood of martyrs,” said Mohammed Abu-Lazeed, an accountant who took part in a march to Tahrir led by communists and socialists.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: 500 Million Dollar Loan From Qatar

Critics say interest rate is non privileged

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 19 — 500 million dollars have arrived into the Tunisian Central Bank’s account following a loan from Qatar. The announcement was given from the Central Bank itself.

The loan has sparked much criticism in the past few months due to the fact that it had originally been presented with a privileged interest rate, whereas sceptics say instead that it has actually been set with a rate of 2.5% which is not, after all, a particularly privileged one considering it is basically on a level with normal rates.

The loan will last five years and is to be sent returned within April 18 2017 “in one payment”, says a note by the Central Bank.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Palestine: Quartet and UNESCO in Head-on Collision

UNESCO’s recognition that Palestine is a State has now been totally refuted by the Quartet — America, the Russian Federation, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).

The Quartet — in its latest statement — has now endorsed the view of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (OTP) just a few days earlier — that Palestine is not a State.

“The Quartet reaffirmed its commitment, as expressed in its 23 September 2011 statement, to examine possible mechanisms it can actively support going forward, individually and together, to advance peace efforts and strengthen the Palestinian Authority’s ability to meet the full range of civil and security needs of the Palestinian people both now and in a future state.”

The Quartet’s use of the words — “both now and in a future state” — was clear and unambiguous .

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Caroline Glick: The Elephant of Jew Hatred

Hatred of Jews is the central animating feature of the political and strategic reality of the Middle East. It is hatred of Jews that dictates the legal regimes, foreign policies, military aspirations, cultural mores, educational themes and even public health policies of our neighbors from Ramallah to Tehran.

Despite the centrality of Jew-hatred in all aspects of public life in the Arab and Muslim world, our neighbors’ unrelenting and irrational abhorrence for Israel and the Jewish people remains a dirty secret that you aren’t supposed to mention in polite company. From Washington to Brussels, talk of the policy implications of Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred is prohibited.

Omar Abu-Sneina, a convicted terrorist murderer, is one of the thousand Palestinian terrorists that Israel released from prison in order to secure the release of Israeli hostage IDF Sgt.- Maj. Gilad Schalit. Originally from Hebron, Abu-Sneina was released to Hamas-controlled Gaza…

           — Hat tip: Caroline Glick [Return to headlines]



Qatar Holding Seals Costa Smeralda Deal

Jet-set properties injected with funds

(ANSA) — Rome, April 19 — Qatari emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani has sealed a deal for the acquisition of luxury properties on Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda, ANSA sources said on Thursday.

Qatar Holding, the Gulf country’s 46-billion-euro sovereign wealth fund, now reportedly holds over 51% of the indebted Smeralda Holding, which manages five-star hotels, the majority of the yacht marina, the famed Porto Cervo villa, the Pevero Golf Club and 2,400 hectares of seafront land.

The properties were built in the 1960s by the hugely wealthy businessman Aga Khan. The deal is reportedly part of a plan for a relaunch, including recapitalization, in order to reel in Smeralda Holding’s 200-million-euro debt. Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda is one of the world’s most exclusive tourist areas, frequented by celebrities, business leaders and other affluent visitors.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sri Lanka Woman Accused of Sorcery Could be Beheaded in Saudi Arabia

She was arrested after a man complained that his daughter started acting strangely during a trip to a shopping centre in Jeddah after they came close to the Sri Lankan. Since September, two people have been put to death for the same reason.

Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) — A Sri Lankan woman accused of casting a spell on a 13-year-old Saudi Arabian girl could be beheaded if found guilty, local Daily Okaz newspaper reported.

The case began when a Saudi man complained his daughter had started acting strangely during a trip to a shopping centre in Jeddah after they came close to the Sri Lankan. He then notified a specialised unit of the police, which acted swiftly and arrested the woman.

Police spokesman Mesfir al-Juayed confirmed the details of the woman’s arrest.

Saudi Arabia has no written criminal code. Court rulings are based on judges’ interpretation of Sharia, the Islamic code.

For crimes like sorcery, witchcraft or apostasy, the punishment is death by decapitation with a sword.

Conviction is also not unusual in the country. A Sudanese man was executed last September for sorcery; a Saudi woman was put death in December for the same reason.

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



Syria: First Assad Report to ICC for Crimes Against Humanity

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, APRIL 20 — The first report against the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, has been presented to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a Lebanese lawyer, Tareq Shandab, in the name of 12 Syrian refugees on Lebanon, the lawyer has told ANSA today. The accusations levelled against Assad include “crimes against humanity”.

Shandab, who has a doctorate in international criminal law, practices in the city of Tripoli, in the north of Lebanon, to where thousands of Syrian refugees have fled. The report filed by the lawyer last week to the ICC in The Hague is “against Assad, around 15 army officials and the political leaders of the regime,” who are accused of “crimes against humanity and war crimes”.

The lawyer says that he has gathered evidence and witness accounts of violations committed by the regime. Some of the 12 refugees whom he represents claim to have been kidnapped by forces loyal to the regime, 7 to have had siblings and children killed, while one other claims that his daughter was raped. The 12 are from the regions of Homs, Hama and Damascus. Shandab, a Sunni, said that his initiative “has the sole aim of defending the law, and has no religious or political motivation”. The majority of Syrians are Sunnis, though President Assad belongs to the minority Alawite branch of Shia Islam.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Yemen: CIA Wants Free Rein in Use of Drones Against Terror

No need to identify targets, suspicious behaviour enough

(ANSAmed) — NEW YORK — The CIA wants greater freedom in Yemen. The US secret service wants the authorisation to strike using drones, the lethal unmanned aircraft, even against presumed terrorists whose identities remain unknown. The CIA bases its demands on models of intelligence known as “suspicious behaviour”, such as images showing militants gathering in an Al Qaeda camp or during operations of loading or unloading explosives.

The practice, known as “Signature Strikes”, is widely used in Pakistan, and the head of the CIA, David Petraeus has asked for it to be applied against the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, which is currently seen as the greatest terrorist threat to the US, the Washington Post reports.

For the Obama administration, though, agreeing to such a demand could be a serious risk, given the complexity of the current political situation in Yemen, where it is hard to distinguish between international terrorism and internal uprising.

Although Obama has said on several occasions that drones are a fundamental instrument for the fight against terrorism, he has also recognised that “there is a perception that we are carrying out a series of random raids”, underlining recently that “these are targeted efforts, concentrated against people who feature on a list of active terrorists who are trying to strike against Americans”.

Recent estimates by the Obama administration suggest that since the President took office in the White House, more than 1,500 presumed terrorists have been “eliminated” by drones in Pakistan alone. Eight of the 20 supreme Al Qaeda leaders have also been taken out thanks to the remote-controlled aircraft, while around 60 civilians have lost their lives in so-called “collateral damage”. In Yemen, the use of drones dates back to last year and has been more contained, with a total of 8 attacks in the last 4 months.

Thanks to the use of drones in Yemen, however, the CIA has been able to eliminate one of Al Qaeda’s most senior figures, the ideologist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in America and had been hiding in a remote mountainous region in the country. Some senior officials, who preferred to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the issue, say that the CIA’s request has also been presented to the National Security Council, but no decision has yet been taken. The White House has refused to comment, but plenty of people remember Obama’s assertion that everyone should understand that drone operations are conducted “on a tight leash”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Families of Imprisoned Marines Visit Indian Jail

Parents express ‘deepest condolences’ to slain fishermen’s kin

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 19 — Two imprisoned Italian marines in India who allegedly shot two Indian fishermen last February were visited in jail in Thiruvananthapuram by family members on Thursday.

Five family members spent over two hours with Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who are being held in a special section of a jail.

Maria Ferrara and Michele Girone, Girone’s parents, and his wife Vania Ardito, as well as Latorre’s sister Franca Latorre and his nephew Christian D’Addario were “moved and emotional,” said the Indian press.

Speaking to journalists following the meeting, Girone’s parents expressed their “deepest condolences” to the families of the two Indian fisherman who were killed.

The anti-piracy marines have been at the centre of a diplomatic row between Italy and India since being detained in February after an incident that took place while they were guarding an Italian merchant ship.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sri Lankans Protest Mosque in Buddhist Sacred Area

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka-Thousands of Buddhist monks and lay supporters have protested the construction of a mosque and a Hindu temple being built in an area designated as a Buddhist sacred zone. Local journalist Kanchana Ariyadasa says about 2,000 protesters, including 300 monks, shouted slogans and waved the Buddhist flag Friday in the central town of Dambulla. Monk Inamaluwe Sri Sumangala Thera said that the construction area was inside the Buddhist sacred zone and that erecting houses of worship for other religions there was illegal. He demanded the authorities stop the construction immediately. About 7 percent of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people are Muslims. About 74 percent are Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhists, while about 18 percent are Tamils, who are predominantly Hindus or Christians.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



‘The Asian Arms Race is Starting to Look Ominous’

India added itself to the short list of nuclear-armed countries with ballistic missile capability on Thursday. More importantly, though, the country’s successful test marks a new chapter in the developing Asian arms race. German commentators express deep concern on Friday.

Conservative daily Die Welt writes:

“There is much movement on the multi-dimensional, Asian chess board. Just a few weeks ago the United States distinctly said that they are, and plan to remain, players in this game. But amid all the saber rattling, the basic structure of this chessboard remains stable so far, with the exception of Pakistan, which is plagued by internal fighting.”

“All of the Asian powers are playing their own game. … Unlike the Cold War, this is a multi-polar system, where arms controls and trust-building measures are foreign words. It is an Asian power system unlike any ever seen before — an open-ended one. And, incidentally, one without any kind of participation from the Europeans.”

Left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

“India isn’t joining an arms race. It is arming itself but slowly. Its military budget is at most a quarter of China’s. It is as far behind China as China is behind the USA. That’s why nobody in Delhi wanted to celebrate the rocket test as a challenge to Beijing’s power. Rather, the test resulted in a naïve outbreak of patriotic pride: Finally, the country sees itself as belonging to the club of nuclear powers.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Australia — Pacific


Cola ‘Contributed to Woman’s Death’

A New Zealand woman’s two-gallons-a-day Coca-Cola habit probably contributed to her death, experts have said.

Natasha Harris, a 30-year-old mother of eight, from Invercargill, died of a heart attack in 2010.

Fairfax Media said a pathologist has now said she probably suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which was caused by excessive consumption of Coke and overall poor nutrition.

Ms Harris’s partner said she drank up to 2.6 gallons (10 litres) of regular Coke every day. He also said she ate little and smoked about 30 cigarettes a day.

The coroner’s office is compiling a final report on Ms Harris’ death.

A spokeswoman for the soft-drinks giant said its products are safe and pointed out that even water can be deadly in excessive amounts.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

Latin America


The Tab for U.N.’s Rio Summit: Trillions Per Year in Taxes, Transfers and Price Hikes

The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined by Fox News.

The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything-or, as one of the documents puts it, “a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.”

Among the proposals on how the “challenges can and must be addressed,” according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

  • More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, “ “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.
  • New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


EU States Slam Swiss for Immigrant Worker Caps

Many of the eight EU countries whose citizens have been singled out by Switzerland for immigration restrictions have reacted with fury to the move.

Polish foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, was reported in the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, as saying that he was “deeply disappointed”.

The decision, he said, was “discriminatory and illegal”, since more than 90 percent of the EU nationals in Switzerland come from the “old” EU countries, rather than the eight new members from Central and Eastern Europe that have been singled out, newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported.

Sikorski also asked the Polish people to think twice in future before planning their holidays in Switzerland after the country invoked a “safeguard clause” in its bilateral agreements with the EU.

The move means Switzerland will reduce by two thirds the number of work permits it issues to citizens of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia.

A joint statement was released on Thursday by Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, calling for Switzerland to reverse its decision.

“If in the future an agreement with Switzerland is negotiated by Brussels, I do not know if we Slovaks will enthusiastically support it,” Ján Foltín, the Slovakian ambassador to Switzerland, told NZZ.

Various EU politicians, including the EU president, German Social Democrat Martin Schulz, and a spokesman for the Liberals in Europe, as well as Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign representative, believe that the move infringes freedom of movement and breaches the bilateral treaties in place between Switzerland and the EU.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France Moves to Bring Back Border Checks

France and Germany have begun moves to reclaim powers to close their borders for up to 30 days in a simmering battle over immigration pressures on Europe’s passport-free Schengen travel zone.

In a joint letter to the European Union’s Danish chair seen by AFP ahead of talks among interior ministers in Luxembourg on April 26, France’s Claude Guéant and Germany’s Hans-Peter Friedrich say the Schengen set-up, which abolished frontier controls in 1995, needs a radical revamp.

Schengen refers to an area that is home to 400 million Europeans and covers 25 states.

Guéant and Friedrich said that where a government within the area fails to meet its obligations to manage external frontiers — Greece for one is under intense migratory pressures at Europe’s south-eastern fringe — partners should have “the possibility, as a last resort, to reintroduce internal frontiers for a period not greater than 30 days”.

Currently, only the European Commission, or EU civil service, can decide short-term emergency blocks on individual frontier pressure-points.

The ministers also insisted that such decisions should not be left to permanent Brussels officials — but be left as the sole preserve of national ministers voting in the European Council of EU member states.

Fighting to hold onto power ahead of Sunday’s first-round election, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a rally last month that without “serious progress” on a rewrite of the Schengen treaty over the coming year, “France would then suspend its participation in the Schengen accords until negotiations conclude”.

Once inside Schengen, illegal immigrants can theoretically move freely between the participating states.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Franco-German Schengen Proposal: A Vote of No Confidence in Europe

Germany and France’s joint proposal to allow Schengen-zone countries to temporarily reintroduce border controls as a means of last resort might sound harmless. But doing so would damage one of the strongest symbols of European unity and perhaps even contribute to the EU’s demise.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Put Qatada on a Plane and Quit the European Court

by Stephen Pollard

ENOUGH is enough. It’s time to put the Abu Qatada farce to bed, once and for all. Were David Cameron to stand up in the House of Commons and announce that the government had decided to pull the UK out of the European Convention on human Rights he would not only guarantee a cheer from the vast majority of the country, he would also do more for human rights than any prime minister since Churchill. Because in pulling us out of the wretched ECHR and telling the judges of the European Court of human Rights that we are no longer prepared to bow down before them, he would make a stand for the human rights of those of us who do not wish to live in a country that is prevented by a foreign court from protecting its citizens from terrorists. A sequence of events that had already become what Westminster wags dubbed an “omnishambles” has over the past few days entered another realm of idiocy altogether.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Two Arrested for Asylum Home Male Gang Rape

Police on Wednesday arrested two men in connection to a suspected gang rape of a 20-year-old man, carried out by three other men, in a home for asylum seekers in northern Sweden.

“All I can say is that they are all between 18 and 20, apart from one of the suspects who is under 18,” said Inga-Lis Adervall Åström, prosecutor at the Umeå prosecution chamber to local paper Norrländska Socialdemokraten (NSD).

Adervall Åström was unwilling to elaborate on the case or even confirm the sex of those involved due to the delicate nature of the on-going investigation.

According to the paper, the suspected rape took place in a flat in one of the apartment buildings that the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) rents house asylum seekers.

The berths in the apartments are divided into two asylum seekers per room, meaning that a three bedroom flat could house up to six asylum seekers of different nationalities and backgrounds.

The paper reports that there are five names on the door of the flat in question, which has been cordoned off by police.

The incident is said to have occurred in the early hours between Tuesday and Wednesday and according to a newspaper source, the attack could have been triggered by ethnic or religious motives.

According to the Migration Board’s Ann-Gerd Malmström, the agency tries to take these things into consideration when they allocate housing.

“But personal conflicts can break out between all people regardless of their ethnicity and religion. We are all individuals. I have no idea of this particular case and I have no wish to speculate into that,” said Malmström to NSD.

Police have arrested two of the three suspects so far. They are under suspicion of aggravated rape and robbery. The prosecutor must file remand orders by Saturday or the men will be free to go.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The Sun Says: Abu Bye-Bye

THERE is one simple solution to the Abu Qatada shambles. Take him to Heathrow today and stick him on a plane to Jordan. Home Secretary Theresa May faces embarrassment over claims her officials got their dates muddled, leaving the door open for the hate preacher to escape the boot. But she should ignore lectures from Labour. They let in most of the fanatics here today. Let’s take a leaf out of France’s book. When it suits them they ignore Strasbourg and put terror suspects on the next flight out. David Cameron, limp-wristed as ever when it comes to Europe, bleats: “I sometimes wish I could put Qatada on a plane and take him to Jordan myself.”

Don’t just say it, Prime Minister. Grow a pair — and do it.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Genocidal Green Quotes

As Earth Day 2012 occurs on Sunday, April 22, I offer a selection of quotes from leading figures in the environmental movement that are worth reading so that you can draw your own conclusions.

[…]

Truth meant (and means) little to environmentalists.

“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” — Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-CO)

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” — Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace.

Many of the environmental movement’s leaders harbored genocidal dreams as the best way to “save the Earth.”

“We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!” — Steward Brand, writing in the Earth Catalog.

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” — Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120419

Financial Crisis
» Barroso Believes Eurobonds Are Solution to Crisis
» IMF is a Troublesome Ally
» Italy: PM Monti: Fighting to Avoid Dramatic Fate of Greece
» Italy Will be ‘Close’ To Balancing Budget in 2013
» Spain: Cuts: Pensioners to Pay 10% of Prescription Medicines
 
USA
» A War by Any Other Name is Still War
» Alabama Legislature Considering Anti-Agenda 21 Legislation
» Alcohol Banned for Visitors on Peanut Island
» ANWR: It’s Been 10 Years, We Could Have Been Reaping Rewards Now
» Bishop Says Obama on Hitlerian Path
» From Hackers to Slackers
» Levon Helm: Drummer and Singer for the Band, Dies at 71
» Liberty is Null and Void
» NASA’s Space Shuttle Museum Flights: Complete Coverage
» Negroes With Guns
» Tea Party vs. Netroots Nation — Game on?
» ‘The Office’ Star’s Anne Frank ‘Jokes’ Appal TV Viewers
» The Guardian Gives a Platform to a ‘Self-Confessed Terrorist’; Using CIF to Defend the Killing of US Troops
» Urban Outfitters Selling T-Shirt That Features Holocaust Imagery
 
Canada
» Electricy Sector Merger a Liberal Red Herring
 
Europe and the EU
» 48% of Brits Want to Get Out of the UK
» Antitrust Rules Against Alitalia Rome-Milan Monopoly
» Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm
» Blood Libel Not Bad Enough for UK Court
» Britain’s Duty to the Palestinian People
» Even More Oil Found Off Norway
» French-German Relations: What a Hollande Victory Would Mean for Merkel
» French Muslims Mobilizing to Unseat Sarkozy
» Germany: Minister Slams Salafism at Islam Conference
» Italy: Northern League to Sell Party’s Ex-Treasurer’s Diamonds
» Italy: Berlusconi Probed for Inducing Sex-Party Witness to Lie
» Merkel Ally Says Islam Not Part of Germany
» Norway: Breivik Planned to Behead Ex-Prime Minister
» Salafists Worry German Islam Conference
» The UK’s Leading Publisher [The Guardian] Of Jew-Haters
» ‘Tortured’ US Muslim Seeks Asylum in Sweden
» UK: Breaking: Lord Sugar Comes Out Against Ken Livingstone
» UK: Don’t Ban Alcohol — We’ll Get the Blame, Say Muslim Students
» UK: Five Arrested Over ‘Race Hate’ Internet Posts
» UK: Galloway and Livingstone: Twins in So Many Ways
» UK: Lord Sugar: Nobody Should Vote for Ken Livingstone as Mayor
» UK: Police Visit Mosque in Community Initiative
» UK: William Hague: Britain Will Have a Global Diplomatic Network and the Best Diplomatic Service in the World
» UK: Will Respect Thwart Labour Gaining Control of Bradford Council?
» Victoria Cross Awarded to Scots Skipper Who Fought ‘David and Goliath’ WWI Battle to be Auctioned
 
North Africa
» Tunisia: Blasphemous Film Trial, Tensions Before Courthouse
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Israel at a Halt to Mark Holocaust
 
Middle East
» UAE: Dispute Over Islands; GCC to Support UAE, Says Official
 
South Asia
» Italian Base in Afghanistan Attacked, No Soldiers Hurt
» Jail May Await Afghan Women Fleeing Abuse, Rape — HRW
» Leaving Afghanistan: NATO Members Spar Over Post-Withdrawal Financing
» Pakistan: Three Hindu Women Forced to Convert Have to go Back to Their Muslim Husbands
» Taliban Post on-Line Request for Donations
 
Australia — Pacific
» I Am Also a Victim, Tyrannical Wife Murderer Zialloh Abrahimzadeh Tells His Son
» Jeff Kennett Decries Prayer Rooms at Footy
» Outback Opal Community Fights Ban on Alcohol
» Without Consent
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» As Sudanese Clashes Escalate, So Do Bellicose Exchanges
 
Immigration
» Arizona: Countdown to the Showdown on S.B. 1070
» EU Irked as Swiss Clamp Down on Immigration
» Italy: Police Probed for Taping Deportees’ Mouths Aboard Flight
» UK: Abu Qatada Deportation: Appeal Was Made ‘Just in Time’, Says Council of Europe Official
» UK: Abu Qatada Deportation: Theresa May Did Get Date Wrong, Claim Legal Experts
» UK: May’s Bid to Deport Qatada Descends Into Farce
» UK: Theresa May and an ‘Understanding’ On Abu Qatada
» UK: Theresa May Versus Qatada
 
Culture Wars
» Eco-Communism Celebrated Annually on Earth Day
» Marriage and Family Are Obscene, Says School
» Only the Old Embrace God in Former East Germany
» The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain
» UK: Lord Carey: Christians ‘Vilified’ By Courts
 
General
» Al-Qaeda Bomb-Making Expert Publishes Magazine
» Heavy Elements Key for Planet Formation, Study Suggests

Financial Crisis


Barroso Believes Eurobonds Are Solution to Crisis

(AGI) Strasbourg — The President of the E.U. Commission, Jose’ Manuel Barroso has said that Eurobonds are a valid solution for overcoming the debt crisis that is far from being resolved. “I never said that the crisis was behind us,” reiterated the former Portuguese prime minister during a debate at the European parliament, emphasizing that Europe must still complete its long-term recovery that might be helped by a common financial system. This proposal, however, has many opponents in Europe, starting with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who believes that issuing eurobonds would simply allow weaker states to continue to fund themselves continuing to spend as before, raising financing costs for other states that respect European budget rules.

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



IMF is a Troublesome Ally

The International Monetary Fund, which recently warned Europe of the possibility of another crisis, forms part of the troika charged with rescuing countries in financial difficulty. However, over the last year under the presidency of France’s Christine Lagarde, the organisation which is often presented as a saviour has adopted a less conciliatory tone.

Last Christmas, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde offered the German Chancellor a trinket from Herme’s. Angela Merkel also had a small gift for Christine Lagarde: a CD of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven.

Notwithstanding this thoughtful behaviour, the personal relationship between the two women is now being sorely tested: in the wake of two years of intense involvement in the struggle to overcome the crisis in Europe, the IMF has begun to openly express its discontent.

In the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) era, it was reasonable to assume that China, Canada and Brazil would also adopt a similar line, but this is no longer the case. Today’s IMF is very different to the IMF of one year ago. For DSK, who had his sights set on the French presidency, a leading role in the campaign to save the euro was a godsend. Under Christine Lagarde, the IMF has become “a less stable partner”, points out a European civil servant.

A second-tier partner

The difference in personality between economist and politician DSK — who resigned amid rape allegations in May 2011 — and the lawyer and corporate CEO, Christine Lagarde, who succeeded him, only partly explains this change.

Perhaps more importantly, the IMF is increasingly uncomfortable with the role that has been attributed to it in the “troika” formed with the ECB and the European Commission. In the eurozone, the organisation, which is used to a high degree of autonomy, has become a “second tier partner”.

The Europeans in the troika, who are extremely strict in their approach, mainly take their orders from Germany. In the event of a divergence of opinion, the IMF is often the only member of the troika to argue in support of Greece.

“The IMF should never have allowed itself to become involved in this situation”, remarks Charles Wyplosz, of the Graduate Institute of Geneva. “It has been politically implicated.”

Already, under Dominique Strauss-Kahn, non-European countries were protesting, and critical voices were also raised from within the organisation. But the IMF’s second in command, America’s John Lipsky, was unable to to effectively counter his inspired European chief…

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



Italy: PM Monti: Fighting to Avoid Dramatic Fate of Greece

(AGI) Rome — PM Mario Monti said, “We are fighting every day to continue to avoid the fate of Greece.” Monti was speaking during a press conference at the close of the Council of Ministers meeting. He initially spoke of lives which have been dramaticly interrupted and then used directly the term “suicides”, updating the number. Mario Monti did not attempt to hide “the dramatic consequences of the crisis” and that it painted a grave picture which “in Italy we are trying to turn around, under very difficult conditions”. “Today, economic growth is the principal worry of the citizens. The word ‘growth’ is the term most used by Italian and European political leaders, but I would say by the G8 and the G20 as well. We see the dramatic effects of an economic and financial crisis,” Monti stated in the press conference. “We are paying an extremely high price in economic, social and human terms for families, businesses and workers,” the Prime Minister said. “We know how desperate Italy would have been if she had defaulted,” he recalled, underlining how the “ability act together in the spirit of civic responsibility” is “a resource to preserve”.

Monti says that “international conjecture is and remains difficult. Italy still finds itself in a difficult situation,” Monti repeated. “The task of renewing Italy’s ability to grow has just begun.”

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



Italy Will be ‘Close’ To Balancing Budget in 2013

Govt fighting to ‘avoid dramatic destiny of Greece’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Premier Mario Monti said on Wednesday that recession-hit Italy would be “close” to hitting its target of balancing the budget next year.

Media reports had said on Tuesday that the government intended to delay by a year its plan to balance the budget because of the country’s low growth prospects in the short term.

The reports cited a leaked draft of the government’s Economic and Financial document (DEF).

Monti has repeatedly said that Italy will not need any more austerity measures to balance the budget in 2013 on top of those in its tough 30-billion-euro austerity package passed in December.

“In last summer’s grave financial emergency the previous government (of Silvio Berlusconi) had to, and wanted to, accept the goal of balancing the public accounts in 2013,” Monti told a press conference after his Cabinet approved the DEF and a so-called National Reform Plan to boost long-term growth. “It’s an ambitious target that we made realistic with the efforts and sacrifices demanded from the public (in the austerity package)…

“We have only just started the job of making Italy capable of growing again. We are fighting every day to avoid the dramatic destiny of Greece”.

Monti, who took power at the helm of an emergency administration of technocrats after Berlusconi resigned in November, said earlier on Wednesday that the Italian economy would return to growth in 2013.

The International Monetary Fund, however, forecasted in a report released on Tuesday that the Italian economy would shrink by 0.3% next year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Cuts: Pensioners to Pay 10% of Prescription Medicines

Healthcare Ministry plan aims to save 3.7 billion

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 18 — Spain’s Healthcare Ministry will today be presenting to the Inter-regional Health Council (in which regional governments are represented) a plan for the co-payment of pharmaceutical expenditure aiming to save 3.7 billion as part of a budget measure worth 10 billion in cuts to reduce the public deficit, announced by the government for the Health and Education Ministry. According to PP government sources quoted today by the media, pensioners currently exempt from paying for medicines will have to pay 10% of the prescription cost, with a limit of between 10 and 20 euros per month, while those in the workforce (who currently pay 40% of prescription medicines) will see the percentage rise to 50 or 60% depending on their income level. The proposal, after being debated today in the Inter-Regional Health Council, will be approved on Friday by the Cabinet.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


A War by Any Other Name is Still War

According to Kevin D. Freeman, “Events of the past dozen years clearly show that America’s adversaries have gained ground in non-military ways. Could the 9/11 terror attacks, high gas prices, market volatility and the U.S. credit rating downgrade all be linked to the same strategy?”

The recently published 150-page United Nation’s “World Happiness Report” is attempting to indoctrinate us into Fabian Socialism as an absolute giver of wellness, which must be imposed on the entire population of the globe. Happiness no longer comes from within, it comes from socialism.

Indoctrination worked well with our children in the last fifty years. We are witnessing the result of dumbing down of American education and the blatant move toward open socialist and communist indoctrination in schools and universities. If you tell a lie often enough to children and ignorant adults, they will eventually believe it to be the truth.

A book by two Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Wiangsui, “Unrestricted Warfare,” published by the People’s Liberation Army, listed several variables of “war by other means:” (The American Legion Magazine, Kevin D. Freeman, April 2012):

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Alabama Legislature Considering Anti-Agenda 21 Legislation

Anyone that resides in Alabama should consider contacting their Representative in Montgomery and urge them to support HB 861. Alabama Legislature Considering Anti-Agenda 21 Legislation.

The Alabama Legislature is finally taking up a measure that will effectively shut down parts of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 program in Alabama. First introduced by Majority Whip Gerald Dial on April 5, 2012, Senate Bill 477 contains strong language in support of property rights and due process for property owners. This bill passed the Senate last week, but the companion bill (HB 861) is still stuck in the Alabama House of Representatives.

In effect this legislation would prevent governmental policies that would violate the U.S. and Alabama Constitutions. Especially the issues surrounding the dissolution of due process of property owners by taking their land for environmental and developmental reasons. The legislation calls out Agenda 21 by name, and restricts all types of contracts with organization that are defined within it.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Alcohol Banned for Visitors on Peanut Island

Palm Beach County Officials announced they are banning visitors from drinking alcohol on the popular weekend hot spot, Peanut Island, The Palm Beach Post reported Monday.

Starting May 18, visitors will not be allowed to drink on the land unless they have a permit to use the county’s campsite, Eric Call, the Parks and Recreation Director told the Post.

But drinking onboard an anchored boat offshore is still allowed. “We want people to enjoy themselves on boats,” Call told the Post. “As long as they are acting responsibly, that’s fine.”

Call also said water taxis operators will not transport visitors to the island if they have alcohol with them. The reason for the ban? Call said that department has received a lot of complaints from police and the residents about the “inappropriate behavior of those engaged in alcohol consumption,” the Post reported. This was the last straw for officials after multiple offenses have occurred here.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



ANWR: It’s Been 10 Years, We Could Have Been Reaping Rewards Now

Well, it’s ten years, folks, and because the Democrats continually defeat new efforts to drill or explore for oil on American soil we are once again out of luck for exploiting our own sources of energy. Thanks to Obama and his party we stay dependent on foreign sources of energy.

The Illinois Review reminds us that gas was about $1.37 per gallon in 2002 when the ANWR drilling bill went before Congress but now that gas is edging toward $5 per gallon, it is certain that we sure could be using that ANWR oil today, right?

Once again, the left harms America in favor of its fealty to the religion of environmentalism.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Bishop Says Obama on Hitlerian Path

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky: Taking aim at Obama, Hollywood and the media.

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, President Obama—with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.”

[…]

This is a story that just won’t go away. And it has the potential to alert the public, Catholic and non-Catholic, to the grave constitutional crisis we find ourselves in.

The notion of Obama as an “extreme secularist,” if not a dictator wannabe, is widely shared within the Catholic Church. A Priest recently told me that the Catholic Bishops, who usually divide into liberal and conservative factions, are united against Obama in this controversy.

He said Obama is viewed as someone who believes in freedom of worship, not freedom of religion, an important distinction that Jenky was alluding to. In other words, Obama believes Christians should be free to worship within the confines of their church, but that when they exercise their freedom of religion in public life, they must conform to the secular dictates of the federal government. In this context, however, the ability to exercise freedom of religion, as the Constitution means it, becomes essentially meaningless.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



From Hackers to Slackers

How a federal law can be used to prosecute almost anyone who uses a computer

by Jacob Sullum

If you are reading this column online at work, you may be committing a federal crime. Or so says the Justice Department, which reads the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) broadly enough to encompass personal use of company computers as well as violations of fine-print website rules that people routinely ignore.

Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rightly rejected this view of the CFAA, which Chief Judge Alex Kozinski noted could make a criminal out of “everyone who uses a computer in violation of computer use restrictions—which may well include everyone who uses a computer.” Unfortunately, other appeals courts have been more receptive to the Justice Department’s interpretation, which gives U.S. attorneys the power to prosecute just about anyone who offends or annoys them.

Congress passed the original version of the CFAA in 1984, when the Internet was in its infancy and the World Wide Web did not exist, to protect government computer systems and financial databases from hackers. As a result of amendments and technological developments, George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr explains in a 2010 Minnesota Law Review article, “the law that began as narrow and specific has become breathtakingly broad,” potentially regulating “every use of every computer in the United States.”

The 9th Circuit case involved David Nosal, who left the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International in 2004 and allegedly enlisted two former colleagues to feed him proprietary client information with an eye toward starting a competing business. In addition to conspiracy, mail fraud, and trade secret theft, Nosal was charged with violating the CFAA, which criminalizes unauthorized computer access in various circumstances.

Although Nosal’s confederates were authorized to use Korn/Ferry’s database, federal prosecutors argued that improperly sharing information with him retroactively rendered their access unauthorized. As Judge Kozinski noted, “the government’s construction of the statute would expand its scope far beyond computer hacking to criminalize any unauthorized use of information obtained from a computer.”…

           — Hat tip: DS [Return to headlines]



Levon Helm: Drummer and Singer for the Band, Dies at 71

Levon Helm, who helped forge a deep-rooted American music as the drummer and singer for the Band, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Woodstock, N.Y.

His death was announced by a spokeswoman for Vanguard Records, for which he had recorded several albums. He had been suffering from cancer for several years.

[Return to headlines]



Liberty is Null and Void

Unless we rebuild the reality of a balanced federal system we will soon find ourselves locked in the embrace of an all-powerful central government.

[…]

Today this debate over the relationship between the central government and the States has resurfaced. As an administration moves aggressively to transform America beyond any semblance of a federal structure into a centrally planned and totally controlled socially engineered society citizens from sea to shining sea are searching for ways to return to the limited government won by the Revolution and supposedly safe-guarded by the Constitution.

One of the most revolutionary proposals is a direct descendant of the Doctrine of Nullification. The Repeal Amendment is supported by citizens and their representatives in every State and in the Federal Congress. This proposed amendment states, “Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.” As of today, no State has passed the Amendment, and it has not gained enough support in Congress to advance past the proposal stage.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



NASA’s Space Shuttle Museum Flights: Complete Coverage

The final chapter is about to close on NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program.

The space agency’s three remaining orbiters — Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis — each made their last flights in 2011, and are now being prepped for retired life in museums. Discovery has been gifted to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., while Endeavour is bound for the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Atlantis is due to stay close to home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Additionally, the prototype orbiter Enterprise, which never flew to space, is set to move from its current home at the Smithsonian to New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

UPDATE for 5 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 19

Space shuttle Discovery is officially property of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., today, marking the end of its storied career as NASA’s most traveled space plane. Discovery arrived at Dulles International Airport near the Smithsonian annex, which is just outside Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and was removed from its carrier plane on Wednesday. NASA signed the space shuttle over to the Smithsonian during an emotional ceremony today.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Negroes With Guns

Liberals have leapt on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida to push for the repeal of “stand your ground” laws and to demand tighter gun control. (MSNBC’S Karen Finney blamed “the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point.”)

This would be like demanding more funding for the General Services Administration after seeing how its employees blew taxpayer money on a party weekend in Las Vegas.

We don’t know the facts yet, but let’s assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black.

If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization.

Apparently this has occurred to no one because our excellent public education system ensures that no American under the age of 60 has the slightest notion of this country’s history.

Gun control laws were originally promulgated by Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. This allowed the Democratic policy of slavery to proceed with fewer bumps and, after the Civil War, allowed the Democratic Ku Klux Klan to menace and murder black Americans with little resistance.

(Contrary to what illiterates believe, the KKK was an outgrowth of the Democratic Party, with overlapping membership rolls. The Klan was to the Democrats what the American Civil Liberties Union is today: Not every Democrat is an ACLU’er, but every ACLU’er is a Democrat. Same with the Klan.)

In 1640, the very first gun control law ever enacted on these shores was passed in Virginia. It provided that blacks — even freemen — could not own guns.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Tea Party vs. Netroots Nation — Game on?

International Socialists and their Washington D.C. politicians have successfully divided the once United States into competing factions, both ready for all-out war in 2012.

As the Tea Party still struggles to find an identity, unity and direction, the international left steam rolls ahead, forcing the United States towards an economic abyss via policies that promise to enslave every citizen for generations to come. It no longer requires any imagination to see the Cloward-Piven Strategy in full bloom.

In a recent missive from DSA USA, (The Democratic Socialists of America) which operates through both the Progressive and Black Caucus’s in congress and the Obama White House, the marching orders are clear…

“Netroots Nation is an important gathering of the American progressive movement. It started in 2006 as a meeting of liberal bloggers organized by Daily Kos, but it has evolved into something much more. It is place where bloggers, labor activists, environmental and community groups, and progressive office holders can come together to discuss issues, develop strategies, and learn new organizing tools—both social media and conventional.” — DSA Memo

Democratic Socialists now in control of nearly every aspect of government, media and academia in America, keep their friends close and watch their enemies closely…

“Remember the December Pew survey showing that more and more Americans have a positive view of socialism. And that absent a strong socialist voice in the progressive movement and American politics, even the most moderate reforms to rein in corporate power will be red-baited off the map. (Not to mention that the Right continues to call even mildly progressive politicians socialist as a scare tactic.)” — DSA Memo

The subject Pew Poll provides some frightening statistics concerning America’s new attitude towards socialism. The left-wing Huffington Post sums it up by simply stating — “socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.”

The dots are easily connected today, unlike the movement that operated in the shadows during the McCarthy era, when being a communist or socialist could get you black-listed in almost any industry, including Hollywood.“Young people — the collegiate and post-college crowd, who have served as the most visible face of the Occupy Wall Street movement — might be getting more comfortable with socialism.” — Huff Po

Contrary to the totally divided and grossly un-funded Tea Party operation, the leftist Netroots Nation is very united and very well-funded. Netroots is an international operation complete with wealthy financiers and big corporate sponsors like:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



‘The Office’ Star’s Anne Frank ‘Jokes’ Appal TV Viewers

Viewers have threatened to boycott shows by Ricky Gervais, after he joked that Anne Frank’s family went into hiding from the Nazis because they did not want to pay rent. The comedian has been harshly criticised in the UK and across the Atlantic for using Anne Frank as “comedic fodder” on The Daily Show in the US. Host Jon Stewart, who is Jewish, looked visibly uncomfortable when Mr Gervais joked how the Nazis must have been “stupid” not to have found the 15-year-old diarist and her family sooner. Speaking about his TV show, An Idiot Abroad, with Karl Pilkington, Mr Gervais said Mr Pilkington had genuinely believed the family had been trying to avoid paying for their apartment. The Frank family were discovered, after two years in hiding, in August 1944. Anne, her mother and sister died in the concentration camps. Mr Stewart told Mr Gervais: “She didn’t live in a Nazi’s house… they didn’t come in every day,” before advising him to “read the book”. Mr Gervais has previously included jokes about Anne Frank in his stand-up routines, such as: “She had time to write a novel; mind you, it ends a bit abruptly. No sequel. Lazy.” Gillian Walnes, director of the Anne Frank Trust, said the jokes could be dangerous if viewers were not informed about the Frank story.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



The Guardian Gives a Platform to a ‘Self-Confessed Terrorist’; Using CIF to Defend the Killing of US Troops

Even one of the more sympathetic jurors who laments Mehanna’s long prison sentence acknowledges that he was a radical obsessed with violence, jihad and on the killing of U.S. troops. Perhaps Caputi’s defense of Mehanna would be less robust if it had been he that was targeted — or perhaps in such an extreme case, it would have driven him even further.

But ‘free speech’ is always the elephant in the room in cases like this. What is to stop The Guardian, Ross Caputi or even Tarek Mehanna from speaking their minds on such issues — even if it leaves the bitterest of tastes in our mouths?

The legal implications are complex, but in Britain, Caputi’s statements of support for Mehanna, including we assume from his words, his trip to Yemen and interest in fighting in ‘the resistance’ in Iraq is not just endorsement of terrorism but also proliferation, glorification and tantamount to incitement. His piece supports the killing of American soldiers abroad and could indeed be criminal under USC 2339A — ‘providing material support to terrorists’ and in Britain ‘inciting murder for terrorist purposes overseas’.

In Mehanna’s case under U.S. law, a 1969 Supreme Court case which the ‘Brandenburg test’ is derived from sets a precedent. For criminality of speech to be inferred, you have to be able to show that it would lead to ‘imminent lawless action’. Mehanna’s defence argued that he did not do this, but rather he was prosecuted for conspiring to kill American soliders and supporting Al-Qaeda — far more heinous crimes.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Urban Outfitters Selling T-Shirt That Features Holocaust Imagery

Marketing Nazi propaganda to impressionable youth doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident for Urban Outfitters.

In what can be considered yet another sign of the times that liberal ideology is elevating anti-Semitism back to mainstream acceptability once again, the international retailer Urban Outfitters is selling an item of clothing that can best be described as “Auschwitz chic”. It is a yellow t-shirt featuring a blue patchwork Star of David on the left breast pocket that harkens back to 1930s and 40s Europe where Jews were forced by the Nazis to wear a yellow badge in public until they were rounded up and sent off to the concentration camps.

While the reference might be lost on some Americans, the vintage yellow color of the shirt and homemade looking Star of David would serve as an unmistakable allusion to the Holocaust for most Europeans, where the practice of making the Jews visually distinguish themselves in public dates back over a millennia. For hundreds of years Jews have been made to wear yellow and sometimes blue, as was the case in Poland in 1939, badges in order to mark them as outsiders. Considering the long history of the practice in Europe, there is little doubt that the Danish brand Wood Wood, which produced the t-shirt for Urban Outfitters, could be ignorant of the anti-Semitic connotations that their design clearly conveys.

[…]

A few weeks ago it was revealed that they also carry the Obey Clothing brand which specializes in communist inspired themes and Christian bashing as evidenced by their upside down cross shirt. While Urban Outfitters doesn’t have a problem carrying merchandise that insult and defame Judaism and Christianity, curiously a review of their website revealed no such products that do the same for Islam.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Canada


Electricy Sector Merger a Liberal Red Herring

The Ontario PC party would scrap the OPA altogether. It was formed seven years ago as a 15-person ‘transitional’ body created by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government to manage Ontario’s energy supply. Today it’s a 235-person permanent entity where 87 people earn over $100,000 and the CEO earns over $570,000.

In just seven years, it has burned through over $375 million in expenditures, and its expenses have risen from $14 million in 2005 to $76.4 million today.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


48% of Brits Want to Get Out of the UK

Shock Sun survey shows almost half are ready to emigrate overseas

ALMOST half of all Britons are “seriously considering” moving overseas, an exclusive survey for The Sun has found.

Australia is top of the relocation wish list followed by the US, Canada and New Zealand.

The cost of living, weather, unemployment and crime are the most common reasons for wanting to quit Britain.

Pollsters YouGov quizzed 1,650 adults after The Sun told last week about Dave and Jackie Jones who emigrated to Australia with their 12 kids.

The family from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria — who have never claimed benefits — quit in despair at what they see as soft-touch Britain’s emphasis on state handouts instead of opportunities.

Dave, 42, said: “I have to do the best for my kids and I feel the opportunities I want for them will not be in the UK.”…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Antitrust Rules Against Alitalia Rome-Milan Monopoly

High-speed rail line ‘not competition’ says ruling

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Italy’s antitrust authority has ruled that Italy’s flagship carrier Alitalia must give up an unspecified number of slots on its monopoly Rome-Milan route by October 28.

Alitalia said it would appeal the ruling that said the airlines “must open itself up to effective competition” during peak transit hours before 8am and after 6pm.

The ruling overturns an ad hoc legislative decree that amended the suspended antitrust laws in 2008, allowing Alitalia an attempt to salvage its leading position in the Italian market and repay a government bridge loan of 300 million euros to the then almost insolvent carrier.

Probes carried out by the antitrust authorities that led to the ruling said that there is “a lack of proper competition between rail and air transport” and that Alitalia, along with its unit AirOne, was running a monopoly.

Alitalia Chief Executive Andrea Ragnetti said he was “surprised” by the ruling.

The airline said that it lost 2 million passengers and 50% of its earnings in the space of three years as a result of high-speed rail companies like the Frecciarossa, effectively confirming the competitive threat.

Citizens’ rights organisation Cittadinanzattiva said that the ruling shook the “absolute dominance of Alitalia on one of the most popular Italian routes” and was a step forward in protecting citizens’ right to choose.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm

Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.

It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.

In fact, Beelogics’ company information states that the primary goal of the firm is to study the very collapse disorder that is thought to be a result — at least in part — of Monsanto’s own creations.

[…]

It appears that when Monsanto cannot answer for their environmental devastation, they buy up a company that may potentially be their ‘experts’ in denying any such link between their crops and the bee decline.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Blood Libel Not Bad Enough for UK Court

by John Ware

A libel barrister once gave me some very good advice. I was producing a TV documentary about a senior member of the IRA who’d sanctioned a series of bombings and shootings. He was also an elected politician and I wanted to call him all the names under the sun. The barrister wisely counselled caution. Peering over his rimless spectacles, and drawing heavily on a Turkish cigarette, he mused: “Look. Why don’t you just report the facts?” So, what are the facts in the imbroglio over Raed Salah, the most prominent Arab leader living in Israel today? The most significant one is that the Home Secretary lost on all counts in her attempt to persuade the Upper Immigration Tribunal that Sheikh Salah’s presence in the UK was not conducive to the public good. Her case that he’s a rabble rousing antisemitic preacher was “not a fair portrayal” of his views or words as a whole” and that there was no evidence that his presence had caused “any difficulty of any sort”.

Salah’s presence, maybe. But the attempt to remove him did create a very nasty situation in north London. Extremists stormed into a mosque visited by MP for Finchley and Golders Green, Mike Freer and called him a “Jewish homosexual pig” because he supported the ban on Salah. He had to retreat to a locked room for his safety. As if anticipating such events, the previous day, the lower immigration tribunal had found Salah’s “words and actions” did indeed have a tendency to be “inflammatory, divisive, insulting, and likely to foment tension and radicalism”. Their colleagues in the Upper Tribunal have now completely overturned this.

Hailed by his supporters as the “Ghandi of Palestine”, Raed Salah’s main purpose in visiting Britain was to promote the view that Israeli governments have been stealthily conspiring to destroy Islam’s third most holy site, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and replace it with a third Jewish Temple. The slogan ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ was made up by Hitler’s wartime ally Hajj Amin al-Husseini,to instigate anti-Jewish riots and to raise funds. Nonetheless, if Salah’s allegation is true today, or even contains a wisp of truth, the right to freely express it would quite properly trump any concerns about how angry it might make British Muslims.

So I want to pose a simple question: does it seem even remotely likely that an Israeli government would plot such a sacrilegious act knowing it would inflame not only its 1.7million Arab citizens, the 2billion Muslims beyond its borders, and alienate almost the entire globe? However far-fetched Salah’s imagination might seem, several MPs and members of the Lords were keen to give him and his supporters a platform in Parliament. Ismail Patel, who heads the Leicester-based Friends of Al Aqsa, said the Home Secretary’s decision to try to deport Salah because he was an inflammatory antisemite was based on “nothing more than hearsay”. Other Islamist organisations, several MPs and Baroness Tonge suggested likewise. For the Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn, Salah was a potential “partner for peace”; for a former associate foreign editor of the Guardian, the Home Secretary was being “absurd” in banning a “much respected” leader; the Guardian itself brushed aside the allegations against him of antisemitism and incitement, publishing instead several apologias; the New Statesman said he had been “the target of a vicious and concerted smear campaign by the pro-Israel lobby in the UK.”

So who is the real, so-called “Ghandi of Palestine”? The Israeli Police say that, in a sermon in 2007 outside the Al Aqsa mosque, Salah invoked the infamous “blood libel” that Jews used the blood from the ritualised murder of gentile children to bake bread at Passover. Salah’s hosts — the Middle East Monitoring Organisation (MEMO) — initially quoted Salah as having denied making these comments or that he had been charged with racism and incitement. When it was pointed out to MEMO that Salah had in fact been charged, MEMO said he was never convicted “due to lack of evidence.” Also untrue: the evidence has yet to be tested in an Israeli court. In court in the UK, Salah denied that his reference to “blood” being used in “holy bread” was a reference to the blood libel against Jews. “I have never invoked the blood libel” he protested and “would not do so.” The judges in the Upper Tribunal found that he had and that his 10-paragraph explanation as to what he actually meant, with his obscure references to the Spanish Inquisition and the conflict in Bosnia, was “all wholly unpersuasive.”

And yet, to these judges, this mattered not too much. They concluded that, with the exception of the blood libel, overall, Salah’s language — albeit “intemperate” — was in fact directed at the Israeli state “rather than Jews as such.” They based this on the fact that, in his sermon, Salah had offered Jewish synagogues protection when, as he evidently believes, Israel succumbs to a Caliphate. The judges came to a similar view over a poem that he had written in 2002 in which he spoke of “oppressors” who “decayed our land” and were “germs and monkeys”.Salah’s behaviour could not be defined as unacceptable, the judges concluded. Really? I don’t know how much the judges know about the Middle East but even the dogs in the street know that it is not uncommon for Muslim hate preachers to refer to Jews as a kind of bacillus and to regurgitate Qu’uranic references to Jews as monkeys. The judges did find Salah’s speech had promoted the idea of “violent protest” because he had called for an “intifada” and referred to the virtue of “bloodshed” and martyrdom as “the most beautiful moments of our destiny.” But because Salah had yet to come to trial in Israel, even though he had been charged, the judges held that the Home Secretary should not have taken the Israeli indictments into account. Again, I pose a simple question: if, as the judges accept, Salah said these truly dreadful things, can it be right that the safety of British Jews and the state of communal tension generally should be contingent upon the tardiness of an overseas judiciary?

Reading the judgment, one gets the impression that the judges consider that Jews are just a bit too touchy about criticism. Otherwise, why dignify the suggestion from Salah’s side that the CST (which provided accurate material to government lawyers) “may be oversensitive in its detection of antisemitism (in the sense of anti-Jewish rather than generally antisemitic attitudes).” I struggle to see the distinction, just as I imagine a Palestinian might struggle to see a distinction between Islamophobia and “anti Muslim attitudes.” But references to Jews as child killers, blood baking monsters, germs and monkeys — whether or not “germs” and “monkeys” relates to the Israel state or its citizens? This comes across as the language of deep, visceral, racist, loathing.

So for me, this cases raises not only some awkward questions about the insouciance of the Tribunal but also about the way the Government’s legal team prepared and presented the evidence. The judges asserted that the evidence was “not a fair portrayal” of Salah. The blood libel, and invocation to martyrdom was “not a sample (of the evidence before them), or ‘the tip of the iceberg’: it is simply all the evidence that there is.” In fact, the evidence before them was only the evidence that was tested in court. I understand the Treasury Solicitors had several examples of other alleged Jewish libels by Salah but, for whatever reason, chose not to put them before the court. For example, in October 2001, an article published in Salah’s name by the journal of his Islamic Movement, promotes another grotesque antisemitic libel, with its clear implication of Jews being behind 9/11: that “4,000 Jews… 4,000 Jewish clerks” were warned to avoid the Twin Towers that day. “On the other hand”, Salah is reported to have said, “this warning did not reach the 2,000 Muslims who worked in the World Trade Centre…”

And then, just last year, after the death of Osama bin Laden, Salah’s Islamic Movement described the Al Qaeda leader as “the sheikh, the martyr, bin Laden” and said the US special forces that killed him were “mercenaries who have sold their consciences to cursed Satan.” The Treasury Solicitors also chose not to use evidence from the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Arab riots of October 2000, which found that Salah was “responsible… for the transmission of repeated messages encouraging the use of violence and the threat of violence as a means to achieve the goals of Israel’s Arab sector.” In those riots, 12 Arab Israelis were killed, and one elderly Jewish man was stoned to death after an Israeli Arab mob went on the rampage using firebombs, gunfire, rocks, and slingshots against both Israeli citizens and police. At a “Peace” rally two weeks earlier organised by Salah’s Islamic Movement on his forever theme “Al Aqsa is in Danger”, Salah is reported to have told the crowd: “the Islamic world has exclusive rights to all the holy sites in Jerusalem and Israel has none.” The crowd is said to have responded: “In spirit and blood, we shall redeem Al Aqsa.”

None of this was put before the judges even though the Home Secretary was advised that the evidence against Salah was “very finely balanced.” Whether that applied to all of the evidence available to the lawyers, or just the few pieces they chose to test, I cannot say. Legal issues aside, one might reasonably have expected the Guardian — of all newspapers — so often in the vanguard of exposing racism, at least to have remarked upon Salah’s wild Jewish conspiracy theories and his movement’s praise for bin Laden. But it did not. Neither did the Independent, nor the New Statesman. Indeed, the latter expressed jubilation. The Independent is now a marginal newspaper, the once great New Statesman even more so. But the Guardian? It could not even bring itself to report the first immigration tribunal’s verdict that Salah had a tendency to be an “inflammatory, divisive” and “insulting” preacher “likely to foment tension and radicalism”.

The “Ghandi of Palestine” is now back in his home town of Umm al-Fahm Uhmm, just inside Israel where he has been the thrice elected Mayor. He spent 10 months here fighting to clear his name and, when victory came, it was followed by an explosion of righteous fury by his supporters. Before departing from London Salah was the guest of honour at a party for 350 at a West London location. According to his hosts, the “most poignant words” came, not from any of the many speakers queuing up to pay their respects, but when the Supreme Guide to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood telephoned to congratulate him personally. As most JC readers will know, the Brotherhood is the parent organisation of Hamas, to which the government lawyers said Salah’s Islamic movement in Israel is linked.

Mohammed Sawalha of the British Muslim Initiative, said the Home Secretary should resign “or be sacked by the Prime Minister.” Several others referred to what they clearly regard as the malign and disproportionate power of what they call the “Israel lobby. Jeremy Corbyn, supported by Salah’s lawyer, Tayyab Ali, has demanded an inquiry under the Public Inquires Act of 2005. With the greatest respect to Messrs Corbyn and Ali, this 2005 Act is intended for disasters of considerably greater significance than the banning of a single preacher whose views have yet to capture the imagination of the wider British public. To put it mildly. Still, it is a fact that many of those supporting the Home Secretary were indeed “Pro-Israel” to the extent that they would like to see a national homeland for one of the world’s smallest populations whose people have been persecuted throughout much of their history. It’s also a fact that those who habitually assign the “Pro-Israel” prefix to others, do so from what they consider to be a superior moral position. But whether one is “Pro-Israel” or “Pro-Palestinian”, why any British citizen, let alone MPs or liberal national newspapers, should have objected so passionately, and with such primeval fury to the Home Secretary putting the evidence against Salah to the test, is beyond my understanding. And that’s a “Pro British” view, by the way.

John Ware is a broadcaster

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Britain’s Duty to the Palestinian People

by Raed Salah

I came to the UK to talk about the plight of the Palestinians but ended up fighting deportation. This is what I wanted to say

In June 2011 I came to Britain to begin a speaking tour to draw attention to the plight of my people, the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The tour was meant to last 10 days. Instead I had to stay for 10 months in order to resist an attempt by the home secretary, Theresa May, to deport me — itself the result of a smear campaign against me and what I represent. I fought not just for my own sake, but for all who are smeared because they support the Palestinian cause.Since 1990 I have visited the UK several times to speak publicly. On this occasion I was arrested, imprisoned, and told I was to be deported to Israel because my presence in the UK was “not conducive to the public good”. A judge later ruled that I had been illegally detained, but bail conditions continued to severely restrict my freedom, making it impossible for me to speak as I had intended. After a 10-month legal battle, I have now been cleared on “all grounds” by a senior immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that May’s decision to deport me was “entirely unnecessary” and that she had been “misled”. The evidence she relied on (which included a poem of mine which had been doctored to make it appear anti-Jewish) was not, he concluded, a fair portrayal of my views. In reality, I reject any and every form of racism, including antisemitism. I have no doubt that, despite this, Israel’s cheerleaders in Britain will continue to smear my character. This is the price every Palestinian leader and campaigner is forced to pay.

My people — the Palestinians — are the longstanding victims of Israeli racism. Victims of racism, anywhere, should never condone or support the maltreatment of another people, as Israel does. The suffering of the Palestinian citizens of Israel has been ignored for decades. But there is today a growing awareness of it, which partially explains this smear campaign against me. In December 2011, EU ambassadors in Israel raised serious concerns about Israeli discrimination, noting that “not only has the situation of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel not improved, but it has further deteriorated”. There are around 1.5 million Arabs in Israel. We make up 17% of the population, but we face a barrage of racist policies and discriminatory laws. We receive less than 5% of funds allocated by the government for development. Public spending on children in Arab municipalities is one-third lower than that of children in Jewish municipalities. The average hourly wage of Arab workers is about 70% of that of Jewish workers. Any Jew, from any country, is allowed under Israel’s law of return to migrate to Israel; Palestinian refugees are not allowed to exercise their right of return. While a Jew can live anywhere in Israel, a Palestinian citizen cannot. Jews can marry whoever they wish and live with them in Israel, Palestinian citizens cannot.

In the criminal justice system, a 2011 study commissioned by Israel’s courts administration and Israel bar association revealed that almost half of Arabs receive custodial sentences for certain crimes, compared to a third of Jews. While 63.5% of Arabs convicted of violent crimes were sentenced to prison, only 43.7% of similar Jewish offenders were.

Education is only one of several areas in which Palestinian citizens face discrimination in Israel. The Israeli government allocates less money per head for Arab children’s education than it does for that of Jewish children. One devastating consequence is that the drop-out rate from schools is three times higher among Arabs than among Jews. Nowhere is the injustice more striking than in the Negev. Living in poverty in “unrecognised” villages, the Arab Bedouin are ineligible for basic services such as water, electricity, and healthcare. The Negev village of al-Araqib has been demolished 35 times by the Israeli government; on every occasion it was rebuilt by its inhabitants.

Despite the Israeli policy of “transfer” — another term for ethnic cleansing — the Palestinians will not go away. The Israeli state can occupy our lands, demolish our homes, drill tunnels under the old city of Jerusalem — but we will not disappear. Instead, we now aspire to a directly elected leadership for Palestinians in Israel; one that would truly represent our interests. We seek only the legal rights guaranteed to us by international conventions and laws. The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy and truly adhere to the universal values of justice and fairness. Britain has a special responsibility in this, because it is uniquely responsible for our suffering: our national tragedy began with the Balfour Declaration. While Britain enforced the first part of the declaration, which promised Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, but ignored the part that states: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” If there is any lesson to be learned from this sordid affair, it is that there is nothing to gain from putting false words into my mouth, or casting me out of the mainstream of public discourse.

• In the thread below, there has been some discussion about statements that Raed Salah allegedly made. The Comment editor Becky Gardiner has commented, setting out the judgement here and here. Raed Salah has also replied here.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Even More Oil Found Off Norway

Wintershall, the largest internationally active German crude oil and natural gas producer, has struck oil at one of its licenses in a mature area of the North Sea. The discovery from a wildcat well at the Skarfjell prospect may be worth more than NOK 100 billion.

A 30-year-old Norwegian geophysicist is getting much of the credit for the latest in a series of new oil discoveries off Norway. Kari Langvik Østhus was given responsibility five years ago to survey the license Wintershall held on the site in the northeastern portion of the North Sea, which is off the west coast between Bergen and Florø.

“There’s always a team behind these projects,” Østhus told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN). “But for me, it’s also very exciting that this was my first license, my ‘darling,’ in a way. I was of course really glad when I heard there was an oil discovery.”

So were the top executives at Wintershall, which has been investing heavily in Norway’s oil and gas industry. Wintershall is Germany’s largest producer of oil and gas and logged historically high operating profits last year.

“The Skarfjell discovery is another important milestone for Winterhall and adds further growth potential to our portfolio on the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” said Martin Bachmann, a member of Wintershall’s board of executive directors responsible for exploration and production. “We’re confident of the quality of our projects, both in exploration and development, and continue to pursue ambitious targets for the northern North Sea.”

Wintershall has a portfolio of more than 40 licenses off Norway with operating rights on more than 20. The company aims to raise its daily production on both the Norwegian and British continental shelf by more than 10-fold by 2015.

Svein Ilebekk, managing director of license partner Agora, said Østhus was responsible for seismic interpretation, among other things, and is among the youngest in the organization of license partners. “I sent her a message of congratulations,” he told DN.

Wintershall Norge is known for having a solid staff of women, who make up nearly half of its employees in an industry dominated by men. DN reported recently that the company’s roughly 150 employees in Norway come from 17 different countries. Several have come from large companies, attracted by the opportunity to work for a smaller operation that’s building itself up in Norway.

Norway’s oil and gas industry continues to boom, with major new discoveries and expansion of new oil fields. Government officials last week approved development, for example, of the so-called Edvard Grieg field, valued at an estimated NOK 1,900 billion. Oil & Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe called the move “the start of a new chapter in Norwegian oil history. These are enormous values.”

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



French-German Relations: What a Hollande Victory Would Mean for Merkel

German Chancellor Merkel has made it clear that she would like to see French President Nicolas Sarkozy win a second term. Indeed, if his challenger François Hollande emerges victorious in the country’s upcoming election, she could face isolation in Europe. But a Sarkozy re-election might be problematic, too.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



French Muslims Mobilizing to Unseat Sarkozy

PARIS — France’s Muslim community is mobilizing voters to reject President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s election to punish the conservative leader for his anti-immigrant/anti-Islam rhetoric.

“[French] Muslims can’t stand it anymore. They are fed up with these debates about national identity, Halal meat, the veil or fundamentalism all over the place,” said Francoise Lorcerie, a sociologist with the Institute of Studies on the Arab and Muslim World near Marseille..

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Germany: Minister Slams Salafism at Islam Conference

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich condemned domestic violence, forced marriage and the fundamentalist Muslim branch the Salafists at the latest Islam conference on Thursday. Speaking at the opening of the conference in Berlin, Friedrich said, “We won’t allow the Salafists to set our agenda with their propaganda,” but he added that an “important signal” needed to be sent.

The Salafists, one of the strictest branches of Islam, caused a media controversy last weekend by handing out free copies of the Koran in several German cities.

This year’s Islam conference is to concentrate on the position of Muslim women in German society, but a number of politicians, including Lower Saxony state Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann, had called for a “clear signal” to address the Salafist Koran giveaway.

Friedrich also said that the conference’s declaration against domestic violence and forced marriage was the first time that Muslims of various backgrounds had “agreed on a text that unambiguously condemned such practices.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Northern League to Sell Party’s Ex-Treasurer’s Diamonds

(AGI) Rome — The diamonds handed back by former Northern League treasurer Belsito “will be sold”. Piedmont governor Roberto Cota, of the Northern League, said so speaking at the talk show Ballaro’, adding that “the proceeds will be given to the party’s constituencies”. According to Cota, “the Northern League is the injured party. Belsito is the only one being probed and he has been expelled. Bossi is not under investigation and he stepped down”.

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



Italy: Berlusconi Probed for Inducing Sex-Party Witness to Lie

Ex-premier’s lawyer hopeful case will be dropped soon

(ANSA) — Rome, April 19 — Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi is under investigation in the southern city of Bari over accusations he induced a witness to lie about his alleged sex parties, judicial sources said on Thursday.

Berlusconi is suspected of bribing Bari businessman Giampaolo Tarantini to lie to magistrates about the role the latter allegedly played in supplying prostitutes to parties at the media magnate’s homes.

The ex-premier has been under investigation since October but the news only emerged in media reports on Thursday and was confirmed by judicial sources, who said prosecutors were notifying Berlusconi that the probe has been extended.

Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo’ Ghedini told Thursday’s Corriere della Sera that the ex premier had not been informed he was being probed, but added that he was expected to be put under investigation for procedural reasons.

“At this point we can only hope that the case is dropped as soon as possible,” added Ghedini, who is also an MP for Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party.

The case is related to an ongoing trial concerning allegations Berlusconi paid to have sex with an underage prostitute, Karima ‘Ruby’ El Mahroug, at his Arcore villa outside Milan and abused his power to try to cover the affair up.

Valter Lavitola, a Berlusconi associate who returned to Italy on Monday after living for over six month in South America as a fugitive of Italian justice, is also being probed for allegedly getting Tarantini to lie to magistrates.

Prosecutors suspect Tarantini denied that Berlusconi knew the women he took to the parties were paid during a 2009 interrogation because Berlusconi had given him money via Lavitola.

The Prosecutors had initially hypothesized that hundreds of thousands of euros had been extorted by Tarantini to not reveal the details of sex parties Berlusconi allegedly held in 2008 and 2009.

But subsequent investigations led them to suspect Berlusconi bribed Tarantini to lie.

Tarantini is suspected of providing at least 30 women for the former prime minister in a bid to exchange sex for public contracts.

Lavitola, the former editor of daily newspaper L’Avanti!, accompanied Berlusconi on some foreign trips during his time as premier even though he had no official government position.

Upon ending his exile this week Lavitola was told that he is also being investigated for alleged corruption with Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli and his government regarding contracts for the construction of prisons in the central American country.

Lavitola was told he is also being probed for criminal association related to the use of public funds for the media along with several other people, including Sergio De Gregorio, a Senator with Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party.

In addition to the Ruby case, the former premier is also on trial in two other cases.

One concerns accusations of fraud at his media empire while the other regards alleged involvement in the publication of an illegally obtained wiretap in his brother Paolo’s conservative newspaper Il Giornale.

He could also face another trial after Rome prosecutors requested that he be indicted along with 11 other people for alleged fraud at a subsidiary of his Mediaset broadcasting empire -Mediatrade.

In the ongoing and several other previous trials, Berlusconi has always denied wrongdoing, claiming he is the victim of a minority group of allegedly leftwing prosecutors and judges who he says are persecuting him for political reasons.

In more than a dozen cases, the premier has never received a definitive conviction, sometimes because of law changes passed by his governments, while some other charges were timed out by the statute of limitations.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Merkel Ally Says Islam Not Part of Germany

(Reuters) — A leading conservative politician said on Thursday that Islam did not belong in Germany, fuelling tension at a conference on integrating Muslims that also debated a controversial Salafist campaign to hand out copies of the Koran across the country. “Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany,” Volker Kauder, head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, told the Passauer Neue Presse.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik Planned to Behead Ex-Prime Minister

The gunman behind Norway’s massacres told court on Thursday he had planned an even bigger killing spree, with three car bombs, the beheading of an ex-prime minister, and more shootings on Utøya island and at targets across Oslo.

Anders Behring Breivik told an Oslo court he meant “to kill everyone” in his Utøya massacre, not just 69.

“The goal was to kill everybody,” the 33-year-old right-wing extremist told the court, adding he had first planned to capture former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and behead her on camera, before posting the video online.

Breivik also said he had once spent a year playing video games, including role-playing online game “World of Warcraft”, and a shooting game to prepare for what he believed would be a suicide mission.

The far-right extremist also testified he had named his murder weapons after terms from Norse mythology, calling his rifle “Gungnir” after Odin’s magical spear and his Glock pistol “Mjølner” after Thor’s hammer.

Breivik is on trial for the July 22nd twin attacks, when he killed eight people with a van-bomb targeting buildings housing the offices of Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was not present at the time.

He then travelled to Utøya island where, dressed as a police officer, for more than one hour he methodically shot at hundreds of people at a Labour Party youth summer camp, taking 69 lives, mostly teenagers.

On Thursday, the fourth day of his trial, the 33-year-old said that originally “the plan was three car bombs followed by a shooting”, describing the initial plan as a “very large operation.”

He said he had considered placing a bomb near Labour Party headquarters.

For the third location, he considered parliament, Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper and City Hall, before deciding on the royal palace, although he insisted he had planned to warn the royal family so they would not be hurt.

He said that, had he survived all three bombings, he would have used a motorcycle to drive first to a far-left squatter community, then to the Dagsavisen daily and finally to the headquarters of the Socialist Left Party, “executing as many people as possible” in each place.

“The plan was to not surrender before the whole plan had been carried out,” he told the court. “It was a suicide mission where the probability of survival was equal to zero.”

Breivik also answered questions from the prosecution about the year 2006, when he isolated himself to spend an average of 16 hours a day to play video games after returning to live with his mother at the age of 27.

“Some people dream about sailing around the world, some dream of playing golf. I dreamt of playing World of Warcraft,” he told the court.

He insisted the game was a very social, not very violent strategy game, which was “pure entertainment (and) has nothing to do with July 22.”

Instead, he said, it was a “hobby” and he decided to play it for a full year so as not to regret leaving a dream unfulfilled after his attacks.

“I felt it was right to do this to prepare myself mentally to sacrifice my life,” he told the court.

Breivik also mentioned another game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, which he said he had used as actual training for the shooting spree.

“It is a war simulator. It gives you an impression of how target systems work,” he explained, adding he used it to practice “shooting other people”.

Calm and more cooperative than Wednesday — when he refused to answer questions about a network of far-right militants he claims to be part of called the Knights Templar — Breivik smiled several times while discussing target shooting techniques.

When confronted about his smiles by prosecutor Svein Holden, he acknowledged the survivors and victims’ families watching were probably reacting “in a natural way, with horror and disgust”.

At the start of the day, the defendant refrained from making his habitual far-right salute — touching his chest and extending his clenched right fist in front of him — after objections from survivors and families.

Breivik, charged with “acts of terror”, entered a plea of not guilty at the start of his trial, saying his actions were “cruel but necessary”.

The gunman has told the court he wants to be executed or acquitted, deriding Norway’s maximum 21-year prison sentence as “pathetic”.

Breivik will only get prison if the court deems him sane — something he is fighting for so as not to delegitimize his Islamophobic and anti-multicultural ideology.

While the sentence then would be the maximum 21 years, it could be extended indefinitely if he was still considered a threat to society.

If found insane he could be sentenced to closed psychiatric care, possibly for life.

Meanwhile, Oslo police said they had deported a German woman expressing support for Breivik, amid reports she claimed to be the gunman’s lover.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Salafists Worry German Islam Conference

After the acrimony and uproar last year, Germany’s annual Islam conference this time around was more harmonious, but mistrust between the government and Muslims remains.

For German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich this year’s Islam conference was very constructive. During a break in meetings, he told journalists in Berlin that there was broad agreement among the conference participants. For example, Friedrich said, there was a consensus that forced marriage and domestic violence “did not come from religion, but from the patriarchal structures and traditions in the countries of origin.” Equality between the sexes was a key topic at this year’s conference. “No tolerance” was the watchword against domestic violence and forced marriage demanded by the participants in a joint position paper. “It is the first time that so many Muslim organizations and individuals were able to agree on such a declaration,” Friedrich emphasized.

No joint press conference

Nevertheless, the relationship between Friedrich and Muslims remains tense, after he said a year ago upon taking office that Islam, historically, did not belong to Germany. He faced some sharp criticism for those remarks from Muslims at last year’s press conference after the meeting. He was making a reference to former German President Christian Wulff who had urged more tolerance toward Muslims and who said that “Islam belonged to Germany.” This year, there was no joint press conference “for purely organizational reasons,” said Friedrich.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



The UK’s Leading Publisher [The Guardian] Of Jew-Haters

So, you’re a poisonous antisemite who admits to peddling dangerous blood libels against Jews. You have something on your mind. Where would you go to get it published? Who would you give a column? The Guardian, of course. Who else? Well, to be fair, maybe the New Statesman would be worth a try. This is what the Court had to say about Salah’s antisemitic incitement:

The appellant is clearly aware of the blood libel against Jews. If his intention had been to draw an analogy between events of the Spanish Inquisition and actions of the Israeli state he could have said so in clearer terms that did not require over ten paragraphs of explanation for his true meaning to be made clear. If he had meant to refer to Christians using the blood of others to make bread, which he seems to consider less offensive than referring to Jews doing so, then he could have inserted the word “Christian” into the text of his the sermon as he does in paragraph 175 of his explanation. Allusion to historical examples of children being killed in religious conflict does not require reference to their blood being used to make “holy bread”. The truth of the matter is that the conjunction of the concepts of ‘children’s blood’ and ‘holy bread’ is bound to be seen as a reference to the blood libel unless it is immediately and comprehensively explained to be something else altogether.

UPDATE:

Here’s an article the Guardian didn’t publish. And would never publish.

John Ware on Raed Salah

Why wouldn’t the Guardian publish a piece like this? Simple. It is a promoter of vicious Jew-hatred.

Update: The comments thread, which was hijacked by a couple of nasty and unenlightening commenters, has been closed, and those commenters have been banned.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



‘Tortured’ US Muslim Seeks Asylum in Sweden

A US citizen who claims he was imprisoned and tortured at the behest the American FBI is seeking political asylum in Sweden. Yonas Fikre, a 33-year-old American Muslim, is currently in Sweden awaiting word on his application for political asylum after having been imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates where he claims he was tortured for 106 days at the request of American government agents.

“He told me to lie down on the floor and he started beating the soles of my feet,” he said in a video clip published on the YouTube channel of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group for American Muslims which has supported Fikre throughout his ordeal.

“This guy looked at me and said, ‘Look, your government doesn’t care about you. You’re in our hands now. You do what we tell you to do and you’ll get out of here as soon as possible. Otherwise you’re going to sit here for years and years to come and your government will never, ever find you.’“

Fikre’s problems first started back in 2009 while he was visiting Sudan and stem from his association with a mosque in Portland, Oregon in the western United States.

While he was in Sudan, Fikre, a naturalized US citizen from Eritrea who converted to Islam in 2003, was “harassed” by FBI agents from Portland looking for information about Portland’s Masjid as-Sabr mosque.

According to Fikre’s Swedish lawyer Hans Bredberg, the agents thought Fikre could help them learn more about the mosque, where Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali American charged with plotting the “Christmas tree bomb” attempt in 2010, had once worshiped.

“He refused to cooperate so they started harassing him,” Bredberg told The Local. “I think these agents were sort of working on their own initiative, that it wasn’t officially sanctioned, but the FBI isn’t saying anything.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Breaking: Lord Sugar Comes Out Against Ken Livingstone

by Andrew Gilligan

One of Labour’s biggest donors and supporters, Lord Alan Sugar, has today tweeted: “I don’t care if Ed Miliband is backing Livingstone. I seriously suggest NO-ONE votes for Livingstone in the Mayoral elections.” And: “Livingstone must NOT get in on 3rd May.” Lord Sugar donated a total of £69,424 to Labour or to Mr Miliband’s office in 2011, including £12,576 as rcently as December. He is of course a prominent member of the Jewish community and was believed to have been extremely angry at Ken’s behaviour towards Jews.

Ken’s campaign is in crisis now.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Don’t Ban Alcohol — We’ll Get the Blame, Say Muslim Students

Muslim students at a university considering banning alcohol from parts of its campus have hit out at the plan — fearing they will be blamed for the move. Students at London Metropolitan University said banning alcohol in the name of Muslims will cause tension on campus, divide the community, and could be exploited by far-Right groups such as the English Defence League. Malcolm Gillies, Vice Chancellor of London Met, has said he might stop alcohol being served in parts of the university because some religious students view it as “immoral”. But Syed Rumman, vice president of the Student Union, warned that any ban would be “catastrophic”. Mr Rumman, who is a Muslim, said: “I do not drink, but it doesn’t mean that I will deprive another student from having alcohol.” He added: “It is unethical, catastrophic and it will isolate Muslims further in society. This will go against the ethos of London Met where students are so diverse but also socialise together. Students who do drink will resent Muslims. It will divide the student body. We must not allow this to become a religious issue. Muslim students never asked for this ban.” The debate began after a decision was made to close The Hub, a student bar on the university’s Aldgate campus.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Five Arrested Over ‘Race Hate’ Internet Posts

Five suspected far-right extremists were arrested by counter-terror detectives today after race-hate material was posted online. They are being held after raids by the North-East Counter Terrorism Unit in North Tyneside, County Durham, Merseyside, Barnsley and London. A spokeswoman for the unit said: “All five men have been arrested on suspicion of offences under the Public Order Act, publishing or distributing written material which may stir up racial hatred.” The arrests are being linked with a splinter group of the English Defence League known as the North West Infidels. A 43-year-old from North Tyneside, a 46-year-old from County Durham, an 18-year-old from Birkenhead, Merseyside, a 21-year-old from Barnsley and a 56-year-old from Holloway, north London, are being held.

A spokeswoman said: “They have been taken to local police stations for interviewing. “Searches have now begun at the addresses, together with searches at an address in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, and Leeds, West Yorkshire On a North West Infidels Facebook page, a message posted at lunchtime said: “Heads up if you have posted any thing you might get in trouble for delete it now … while you still can … and don’t post anything considered racist folks you are responsible for your own actions.” Elsewhere on the page, there was a lengthy message explaining “Who are the Infidels of Britain?”. It said the group was an alliance of “right wing nationalists, patriotic and loyalist groups from different parts of the UK”.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Galloway and Livingstone: Twins in So Many Ways

by Nick Cohen

Step outside party politics and the differences between the two disappear like the morning mist

On the face of it, Ken Livingstone and George Galloway could not be further apart. Livingstone is the Labour candidate in the contest to be mayor of London. The party’s leaders defend him against every critic, and indulge his every excess. George Galloway hates Labour, and Labour hates him. He accuses it of being a nest of warmongers and capitalist lackeys. Labour replies that he is a dictators’ stooge, and adds that he is the worst possible politician to represent the urban poor because the record of the last parliament showed he preferred mewing like a cat on a reality TV show to turning up for work in the House of Commons. Step outside party politics, however, and the differences between the two disappear like the morning mist. For its contemptible willingness to exploit the suffering of others for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, no politician can beat Galloway’s claim that his by-election victory was the “Bradford spring” — West Yorkshire’s imitation of the uprisings against tyranny in the Arab world.

[…]

Labour’s grubby leaders bite their tongues because they hope Livingstone will help restore their fortunes by flirting with the language of sectarian strife. Some of us have been warning for a while that they and the rest of the left cannot have it both ways. They cannot condemn evangelical leaders in America and orthodox Jewish leaders in Israel for keeping their followers in a state of religious paranoia, while staying silent about the manipulation of the faithful in Britain; they cannot condemn conservatives’ sexism, racism and homophobia while excusing or encouraging sexism, racism and homophobia for their own ends. After its defeat in Bradford, Labour will be tempted to follow Livingston’e lead and outflank Galloway on the religious right. It is for this reason that it is important that Londoners reject Livingstone, not just for London’s sake or Britain’s sake but for the sake of the Labour party.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Lord Sugar: Nobody Should Vote for Ken Livingstone as Mayor

A high-profile Labour peer has publicly stated that voters should not back Ken Livingstone to be mayor of London. Lord Sugar, the Apprentice boss and millionaire entrepreneur, wrote on Twitter: “I don’t care if Ed Miliband is backing Livingstone. “I seriously suggest NO ONE votes for Livingstone in the Mayoral elections.” In another message to his 1,848,793 followers on the social networking site, the former market trader wrote: “Livingstone must not get in” on May 3. Lord Sugar, who was made Baron Sugar of Clapton in July 2010, served as a government enterprise “tsar” under Gordon Brown. Adding further criticism, the Jewish businessman reposted a message from Conservative pundit Guido Fawkes that said: “Ken has claimed that he has no idea how much his wife earns. He is the director of the company that pays her.” However Lord Sugar did not offer himself up as an alternative. “It’s been suggested I run for mayor,” he wrote. “Not possible, too many commercial conflicts, no time, more to the point I would not know where to start.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Police Visit Mosque in Community Initiative

Keighley Neighbourhood Policing Team will have a mobile exhibition van outside a mosque tomorrow as part of a venture to build better relations with communities across the town.

The unit, plus various police vehicles, including an off-road bike, will be at the Markazi Jamia Mosque, in Emily Street, between noon and 4pm. Residents are invited to call in to speak to officers, who will visit the mosque itself to encourage people to raise issues. In addition, the team will be fitting anti-tamper screws to car number plates in the neighbourhood.

The initiative is the latest of several staged by the police to develop community relationships. Others have included a mentoring scheme with the national Mosaic charity project and Keighley schools, in which officers worked with young Asian girls and mums to raise their aspirations. The scheme was the first of its kind in Britain to break down barriers for young Muslim women and was backed by the Prince of Wales. Acting Inspector Craig Marshall, of Keighley NPT, said: “We are always working to make ourselves as accessible as possible and hope visiting the mosque and taking the exhibition van to Emily Street will encourage residents there to pop in and see us.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: William Hague: Britain Will Have a Global Diplomatic Network and the Best Diplomatic Service in the World

Last week the Foreign Affairs Select Committee published a report on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It praised the Department’s “impressive performance” representing the UK’s interests across the globe on a relatively small budget while arguing that the Foreign Office is underfunded. I welcome the report and the implication that the Foreign Office would make good use of a larger budget. But this is simply not possible at a time when our country is facing huge economic pressures. The Foreign Office has to shoulder its share of the burden of reducing the deficit. In any event it is not the size of the Foreign Office budget that matters, but what we do with it. Its budget will always be small compared to the expenditure needed to maintain our Armed Forces or the NHS. The real value of the Foreign Office lies in the power of the ideas it develops and the unique connections it forges overseas.

The Foreign Office I inherited in May 2010 was in a weakened position. Years of being sidelined by Labour Prime Ministers had taken their toll on its influence in Whitehall, as had endless ministerial changes. More than 30 British High Commissions, Embassies or posts had been shut in the space of ten years. The Foreign Office language school had been closed so that language skills declined. In an astonishing blunder, Labour Ministers stripped the Foreign Office of its protection against exchange rate movements — even though more than half its budget is spent in foreign currencies — leading to a raft of unplanned cuts to Embassies and to travel and training for diplomats. These bad decisions — which we highlighted in Opposition — diminished the Foreign Office and weakened British influence in the world. We promised to reverse them and to inject the long-term strategic vision for British diplomacy that had been missing for a decade.

My personal objective as Foreign Secretary is to strengthen the Foreign Office and to improve our country’s capacity to pursue effective foreign policy in the decades to come. We must do this while at the same time making the right decisions on Afghanistan and Iran, and using the best of our diplomacy to help stem the appalling bloodshed in Syria.

Britain is an outward-looking nation, highly integrated into the world economy and with a leading role in global affairs. Our country’s economy — and our international influence — both depend in part upon a strong Foreign and Commonwealth Office and effective British diplomacy. Like building a strong economy, maintaining a strong foreign policy requires a vision for the future, not just dealing with immediate crises.

Looking twenty years ahead, we can see that our country needs good economic and political ties with the new and emerging powers of the 21st century alongside our traditional alliances. We will need to be just as effective in Beijing, Brasilia, Pretoria, Delhi and Jakarta and other flourishing centres of influence as we are in Brussels and Washington. Fast-forwarding to the future, we must plug Britain into the world’s vibrant networks such as the G20, Commonwealth and ASEAN, seeking new partners as well as new opportunities. Britain’s engagement with the world needs constantly to break new ground, not to shrink in reach or ambition. A confident and capable Foreign Office with a global presence as well as highly skilled diplomats is critical to our national interest. This is our government’s vision and it is the path that the Foreign Office is now firmly on.

Today the Foreign Office is building the networks, alliances, and connections that our country needs to thrive long into the future. We have opened or are opening up to eight new Embassies and six Consulates and sending more diplomatic staff to over 20 countries, particularly in Asia. We are funding this by closing some small Consulates in Europe and making other savings. We have begun the biggest drive ever seen to reinforce the traditional diplomatic skills and institutional strength of the Foreign Office. We are re-opening an FCO language school. We will soon have 40% more Chinese language speakers in our Posts in China than in 2010, and the same increase in Arabic speakers across our network.

The foundation stone for this was restoring financial stability to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This we did, securing a tough but fair flat-cash settlement in the current spending round and introducing a new protection against exchange rate movements so that the Foreign Office could once again plan sensibly for the future.

The results are there to see. We are reinvigorating neglected diplomatic ties from the Middle East to Latin America. Our increased emphasis on the Gulf meant that we were able to work with countries in the region when we intervened in Libya — a big change from the recent past. Our increased focus on using diplomacy to support jobs in our economy, led by the Prime Minister, is producing strong results. British exports of goods were up by £50bn last year, including significant increases to China, to Brazil, to Russia, to India and to South Africa.

So even with a constrained budget, today we are expanding British diplomacy in vital parts of the world while not moving Britain away from our indispensable alliance with the United States and deep partnership with the European Union. Our aim is that in twenty years time Britain will work highly effectively with new partners alongside our traditional allies on the shared problems of our time from piracy to cyber security to climate change. We will have increased Britain’s trade relations, supporting future generations of Britons. We will have a global diplomatic network and the best diplomatic service in the world. And we will continue to play a central role in averting conflict, addressing crises and advancing our values of human rights and democracy. This is British diplomacy on the advance, and it is the right course for our country.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Will Respect Thwart Labour Gaining Control of Bradford Council?

Labour currently run Bradford City Council as a minority administration. Last year a third of seats were up for election and they made five gains. This year another third are up for election. Gaining overall control in Bradford should be among Labour’s most modest objectives. They have 44 councillors out of a total of 90. The Conservatives have 28. But the victory of Respect’s George Galloway in the Bradford West byelection puts this in doubt. The Party are contesting a dozen wards. Most are safe Labour wards although one is Conservative held and a couple are held by the Lib Dems. Socialist Worker reports that some of the Respect candidates are former labour Party members. Labour gains from the Conservatives and Lib Dems might offset by losses to Respect. Some might welcome this difficulty for the Labour Party. I do not. Respect are a divisive and extremist party offering an equivalent brand of poison to the BNP. They are not democrats but are out to destroy our way of life. Conservative councillors are putting forward some strong positive messages about their approach — including proposing to save £438,000 currently spent employing 15 union officials at Council Taxpayers expense. But what is needed is for the mainstream parties to ensure that the people of Bradford are aware of the true nature of the Respect Party — an unpleasant alliance of Communists and Islamic fundamentalists. Faced with that sort of threat negative campaigning is a duty. Nick Cohen offers plenty of material.

[Reader comment by Faceless Bureaucrat on 19 April 2012.]

STOP PRESS!: Bradford spends past 20 years growing its Muslim population — now they unsportingly vote for pro-Muslim politicians!

Who could possibly have forseen that happening?…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Victoria Cross Awarded to Scots Skipper Who Fought ‘David and Goliath’ WWI Battle to be Auctioned

A VICTORIA Cross awarded to a Scots fishing boat skipper for taking on a cruiser five times bigger than his ship in WW1 is to go under the hammer.

The medal awarded to Joseph Watt is expected to sell for up to £160,000.

His medals and a gold pocket watch are up for sale at Spink in Bloomsbury, London, tomorrow.

Captain Watt, from Gardenstown, Banffshire, was awarded the VC in 1917 for his part in one of the great David versus Goliath battles of the war.

He became a national hero on May 15, 1917, when he engaged the Austro-Hungarian cruiser Novaro in his 87ft fishing boat Gowanlea.

The cruiser was 428ft long — five times bigger than the Gowanlea.

The attack happened in the Strait of Otranto between Italy and Albania after the Novara ordered Watt to back down.

But he instead urged his men to fight, telling them: “Three cheers lads and let’s fight to the finish.”

The Gowanlea then made straight for the cruiser and opened fire with her six-inch gun. The Novaro returned fire, with one shell detonating a box of ammunition, wounding Watt.

Two further shells landed on the boat before the Gowanlea limped away under her own steam after stopping to help remove the dead and wounded from their sister ship, the Floandi.

For his gallantry, Watt was awarded the VC, the Croix de Guerre and the Al Valore Militare.

The citation for the VC said Joseph was given the medal “for most conspicuous gallantry when the Allied Drifter Line in the straits of Otranto was attacked by Austrian light cruisers on the morning of May 15, 1917”.

Joseph returned to Scotland after the war but he never spoke about his wartime exploits. He died of cancer, aged 67, in February 1955.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Tunisia: Blasphemous Film Trial, Tensions Before Courthouse

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 19 — Tensions were high this morning before the courthouse in Tunis where a hearing is being held for the director of Nessma TV, Kabil Kaorui accused of having aired the film Persepolis last October during the electoral campaign for the constituent assembly. The film in question is considered to be blasphemous.

Websites in the capital report of an ongoing dispute in front of the courthouse between the supporters of freedom of expression (backing Karoui) and those who are there instead to protest against the violation of the symbols of Islam.

The trial follows the accusation signed by 140 Tunisian lawyers for “attacking holy values and traditions”, presented after the transmittion of the animated feature film Persepolis by the Iranian director Marjane Satrapi in which Allah is depicted with human features, something which is strictly forbidden by the laws of Islam.

After the film (translated into Tunisian dialect) finished being aired, protests sprang all over the country and Kaorui’s home in Tunis was literally put under siege by dozens of Salafis who also set it on fire. Luckily his family escaped the attack unharmed.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Israel at a Halt to Mark Holocaust

The wail of air raid sirens has sounded across Israel as the country came to a standstill in tribute to six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.

For two minutes this morning, pedestrians stopped in their tracks and motorists stood next to their vehicles, heads bowed. In homes and businesses, people suspended their daily tasks to pay homage.

The day is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants and places of entertainment shut down, and radio and TV programming focuses on Holocaust documentaries and interviews with survivors.

At the opening state ceremony yesterday, Israel’s leaders — president Shimon Peres and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — linked the Nazi genocide to Iran’s suspected drive to acquire nuclear arms and urged the world to stop it. Iran denies such intentions.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

Middle East


UAE: Dispute Over Islands; GCC to Support UAE, Says Official

Oil-rich monarchies meeting today on policies towards Iran

(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, APRIL 17 — The outcome of today’s meeting in Doha between the seven oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) can easily be foreseen: support will be given to the United Arab Emirates in the dispute with Iran over the occupation of the three islands on the Strait of Hormuz.

“There is no doubt that the bloc will support the UAE, since the islands belong to it,” said the deputy secretary general for political affairs of the GCC, Sa’ad Al-Ammar, to the UAE daily Gulf News, describing the visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Abu Musa (the largest of the three islands) as “irresponsible and provocative”. Already on Sunday the six countries of the GCC — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman — had jointly condemned the act, calling it a violation of the UAE’s sovereignty “not in keeping with good neighbourly relations withy Iran”. Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb are the three rocky islands measuring just 24 square kilometres but rich in energy resources and strategically positioned at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40% of the world’s crude oil transits and which in the past Ahmadinejad had threatened to close were international sanctions against him to grow harsher. In 1971, just a few days before the official constitution of the United Arab Emirates, British troops withdrew from the three islands and Iran immediately occupied them. Since then, the UAE has tried in vain to resolve the dispute in a friendly manner.

A number of analysts also predict that today’s meeting will see the GCC draw up a coordinated policy line to be taken as concerns Iran.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Italian Base in Afghanistan Attacked, No Soldiers Hurt

Insurgents repelled by ‘immediate’ response

(ANSA) — Rome, April 19 — An Italian base in western Afghanistan came under attack from insurgents late on Wednesday but no military personnel were hurt in the incident.

The attack was repelled by the “immediate” response of Italian and Afghan soldiers, the command of the Italian contingent that is taking part in the NATO-led ISAF mission said on Thursday

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Jail May Await Afghan Women Fleeing Abuse, Rape — HRW

KABUL, March 28 (Reuters) — For Afghan women, the act of fleeing domestic abuse, forced prostitution or even being stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver by an abusive husband, may land them in jail while their abusers walk free, Human Rights Watch said.

Running away is considered a “moral crime” for women in Afghanistan while some rape victims are also imprisoned, because sex outside marriage — even when the woman is forced — is considered adultery, another “moral crime”.

“From the first time I came to this world my destiny was destroyed,” 17-year-old Amina, who has spent months in jail after being forced into prostitution, told researchers from Human Rights Watch in a report published on Wednesday.

Despite progress in women’s rights and freedom since the fall of the Taliban a decade ago, women throughout the country are at risk of abduction, rape, forced marriage and being traded as commodities.

It can be hard for women to escape violence at home because of huge social pressure and legal risks to stay in marriages.

“The treatment of women and girls accused of ‘moral crimes’ is a black eye on the face of the post-Taliban Afghan government and its international backers, all of whom promised that respect for women’s rights would distinguish the new government from the Taliban,” the New York-based group said.

“This situation has been further undermined by President (Hamid) Karzai’s frequently changing position on women’s rights. Unwilling or unable to take a consistent line against conservative forces within the country, he has often made compromises that have negatively impacted women’s rights.”

The influential rights organisation said that there were about 400 women and girls being held in Afghanistan for “moral crimes”, and they rarely found support from authorities in a “dysfunctional criminal justice system”.

The plight of a woman called Nilofar illustrates the problem. She was stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver in the head, chest, and arms by her husband who accused her of adultery for inviting a man into the house, the rights group said.

But afterwards, she was arrested, he was not.

“The way he beat her wasn’t bad enough to keep him in jail. She wasn’t near death, so he didn’t need to be in prison,” the prosecutor of the case told Human Rights Watch.

“HE WILL KILL ME”

The dire treatment of women was the main reason Western countries gave for refusing to recognise the Taliban government as legitimate when it was in power.

As Afghan and Western leaders seek a negotiated end to more than 10 years of war, the future for women is uncertain.

The United States and NATO — who are fighting an unpopular war as they prepare to pull out most combat troops by the end of 2014 — have stressed that any settlement must ensure the constitution, which says the two sexes are equal, is upheld.

A law, passed in August 2009, supports equality for women, including criminalising child and forced marriage, selling and buying women for marriage or for settling disputes, as well as forced self-immolation, among other acts.

But women, especially in rural areas, lack shelters to flee abuse while only one percent of police are female, according to the report based on interviews from October to November with 58 women and girls as well as prosecutors, judges, government officials and civil society.

The ordeal for women does not stop with jail though.

Once leaving prison, women and girls face strong social stigma in the conservative country and may be killed in so-called “honour killings”.

“I just want a divorce. I can’t go back to my father because he will kill me. All my family has left me behind,” 20-year-old Aisha, who was sentenced to three years for fleeing an abusive husband she was forced to marry, told researchers. (Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Robert Birsel)

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



Leaving Afghanistan: NATO Members Spar Over Post-Withdrawal Financing

NATO has promised it will provide significant financial support to Afghanistan over the next decade. Reaching agreement on who will pay how much is proving difficult, however. Aside from the US, all member states are doing their best to keep their share as small as possible.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Pakistan: Three Hindu Women Forced to Convert Have to go Back to Their Muslim Husbands

Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules against all three. Abducted back in February in Sindh province, they were forced to marry Muslim men. Families complain about pressure from powerful Muslim groups. All three received death threats.

Islamabad (AsiaNews) — Three young Hindu women abducted in February and forced to convert to Islam and marry three Muslim men must return to their husbands, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled. For the justices, the three women freely chose their fate. Their families object that they were placed under huge pressure from Muslim religious groups.

On 26 March, one of the three women, Rinkle Kumari (pictured), told the judges that she wanted to go back to her family. In her statement to the court, she said, “there is justice only for Muslims; there is no justice for Hindus. Kill me here in court, but don’t send me to Darul-Aman (Qur’anic school). All these people are hand in glove, they will kill us”.

The other two women expressed a similar desire to go back to their family.

“This is a great injustice,” said Hindu activist Dilip Kumar. “Three weeks ago, the three women said they wanted to go back to their parents, but the judges chose to send them to prison to put pressure on them.” If they had not returned to their husbands, he believes, Muslims would have killed them.

For Fr Anwar Patras, a priest from the diocese of Rawalpindi, the court bent to the will of Muslim groups who kidnap young Hindu and Christian women to force them to convert and become prostitutes.

“The government must adopt a law against forced conversions,” he said. “It is clear that the young women were put under pressure to convert. The Supreme Court was their last hope and it let them down.”

Rinkel Kumari, a 19-year-old Hindu student was abducted on 24 February in Mirpur Mathelo, a small village in Sindh (southeastern Pakistan), by a thugs hired by a rich Muslim scholar.

The two other women, Lata and Asha, were abducted in Jacobabad and Larkana.

In order to get their daughters back, the parents filed a petition with the Supreme Court to avoid the local Islamic court.

On 26 March, the three women appeared before the court, testifying that they had been forced to convert and that they wanted to go back to their families.

The justices incarcerated them to allow them “to reflect” on their choice without the possibility of meeting their parents.

Each month, 25 to 30 young women are abducted for a total of about 300 forced conversions and marriages a year.

Young Hindu but also Christian women and teenage girls are taken away from their families and handed over to their would-be husbands and torturers.

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



Taliban Post on-Line Request for Donations

(AGI) Kabul — The Taliban have posted a modern on-line an appeal to the Muslim world, requesting donations to finance their Holy War, jihad, against the “infidel invaders”. The message includes various toll-free numbers and email addresses so as to make things easier for “benefactors.” “According to Shari’ a, all Muslims everywhere have the duty to unite in jihad with money and with the spirit” says the request. “The Taliban are still carrying out their legitimate jihad alone and with no support, only the help of ordinary and honest believers of Islam and we urgently need financial aid from Muslim brothers all over the world for military and other expenses.” .

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

Australia — Pacific


I Am Also a Victim, Tyrannical Wife Murderer Zialloh Abrahimzadeh Tells His Son

IN a ranting letter to his son, murderous husband Zialloh Abrahimzadeh condemns those who “put wealth and materialism” before “integrity, principles and dignity”.

Yet Abrahimzadeh did exactly that when he murdered his wife, Zahra, in front of 300 shocked witnesses inside the Adelaide Convention Centre in March 2010.

He was, at the time, obsessed with the belief that she had blocked the sale of their Iranian home and denied him thousands of dollars.

Yesterday, Supreme Court judge John Sulan jailed Abrahimzadeh, 57, for at least 26 years.

He said there was no doubt the March 2010 crime was the deliberate act of an “autocratic” man who repeatedly abused his family.

He said the letter, sent by Abrahimzadeh to his son, Arman, showed his lack of remorse.

“It demonstrates how you are completely self-absorbed and fail to have any regret for the misery you have caused to your family,” Justice Sulan said.

In the letter, released to The Advertiser, Abrahimzadeh tells Arman he “deplores” enemies “who laid the foundation” for the murder.

“I condemn those who put wealth and materialism ahead of integrity, principles and dignity,” he says.

He blames Zahra and her family for driving him “towards insanity” by denying him three quarters of the equity in their former Iranian home. “How much do you think the body and mind of a human being can tolerate?” he says.

“How long can a human being live with fear and anxiety, and with no security?”

Abrahimzadeh fills 11/2 pages with details of the family’s possessions, including televisions, jewels and gold. “I will not allow anybody to take what is rightfully ours,” he says.

“When someone is trying to destroy you in any possible way, you would defend yourself and sometimes this defence results in the destruction of the opposing party.”

He closes the letter by asking Arman “as an Eastern man” to judge him fairly.

“In any case, I am really sorry about what happened,” he says.

“I think I am also a victim of what happened.”

In sentencing, Justice Sulan said Zahra’s decision to divorce Abrahimzadeh also fuelled his murderous mentality.

He rejected Abrahimzadeh’s claim that, at the time of the stabbing, he was hallucinating about his youngest daughter, Anita, being attacked by “dark, ugly men”.

“That was, in my view, fanciful … I am satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that your act was premeditated and deliberate,” he said.

“You were motivated by the fact you had lost control of your family, in particular your wife.

“You took action because she continued to disobey your demands that she not proceed with the divorce.

“I accept you were distressed by the family situation … that may go towards explaining your conduct, but it can never excuse it.”

Justice Sulan said he had reduced the non-parole period by 12 months because Abrahimzadeh pleaded guilty in the middle of his trial.

He also took into account incidents when Abrahimzadeh:

SLAPPED his wife and daughters on the face and shoulders.

THREW Zahra into a window.

BROKE a cordless telephone aerial across Atena’s throat.

WHIPPED Atena with a belt for an hour.

SMOTHERED Atena will a pillow.

DEMANDED Atena beg, on her knees, for his forgiveness.

BURNED Atena’s fingers for biting her nails.

VERBALLY abused Arman.

VOWED to kill his entire family by burning their house down while they were inside.

SAID he would rather kill a family member than be dishonoured by them.

           — Hat tip: Russkiy [Return to headlines]



Jeff Kennett Decries Prayer Rooms at Footy

HAVING succeeded in convincing the AFL to introduce prayer rooms at all venues, Bachar Houli was unfazed last night by a stinging backlash sparked by former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, who called the idea “stupid” and “political correctness gone mad”.

Football fans took to websites to condemn and ridicule the move, but at his home in Melbourne the AFL’s first Muslim player told The Australian: “The main thing is we’ve got what we want, and you can’t change that. “At the end of the day, people want to go and enjoy the footy as well as continue with their beliefs, and if it means they have to pray once a day at the footy, we’re not asking for much.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Outback Opal Community Fights Ban on Alcohol

ASHLEY HALL: Residents of the South Australian outback town of Mintabie are up gearing for a fight against the State Government over new laws aimed at banning alcohol in homes.

It’s part of a new lease agreement, which forces anyone living or moving there to undergo criminal history checks. It also seeks to make it illegal to sell many foods with a high sugar content in local shops. The State Government says it will bring the town, about 100 kilometres south of the Northern Territory border, in line with other communities in surrounding APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Aboriginal lands.

Nicola Gage reports.

NICOLA GAGE: While it’s a far stretch from the bustling mining town it was 30 years ago, about 80 people still live and work in Mintabie. It has a State Government-run school, outback pub, and several operating opal miners. But under the new town lease, residents won’t be able to drink an alcoholic beverage outside of that pub.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Without Consent

What happens when young, educated, Australian-born girls are forced into unwanted marriages — often with relatives overseas?

Samia was just seventeen when her father announced he was taking her on a holiday overseas. But this was a holiday with a difference. Back in the family’s village in rural Pakistan, Samia watched in horror as the local Imam walked in ready to conduct her marriage to her first cousin — without her consent. With pressure from her extended family, she was given papers to sign and threatened.

Returning to Australia, Samia sought help from local religious authorities in Sydney — but they ignored her and told her to accept the marriage.

For the first time young women, the victims of forced marriages, are speaking out — without disguise and despite the risks of backlash from their communities. Are these women entitled to the same protection as other Australian girls?…

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


As Sudanese Clashes Escalate, So Do Bellicose Exchanges

LAMU, Kenya — Less than a year after the nation of South Sudan was born out of a delicate peace agreement with Sudan, the two countries have plunged into war, a Sudanese government spokesman said Thursday.

Recent fighting between Sudan and South Sudan has grown from a struggle over the contested, oil-rich region of Heglig to inflame a number of areas along the border and beyond.

This week, Sudanese planes struck “deep into South Sudan,” hitting an important town, according to Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations. A United Nations compound inside South Sudan was also hit by bombs.

For its part, South Sudan has claimed to have shot down Sudanese jets and killed hundreds of Sudanese soldiers in battles over Heglig, which it said it captured from Sudan last week.

The African Union has condemned South Sudan’s seizure of Heglig as illegal, and the United Nations Security Council has demanded an immediate end to the fighting, a withdrawal of the South’s troops from Heglig, an end to Sudanese aerial bombardments and a halt to repeated cross-border violence.

But Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman, said Thursday that his nation was “fed up” with South Sudan’s leaders and would “make them learn a lesson” for seizing Heglig.

The two sides fought one of Africa’s longest civil wars before signing a landmark peace agreement in 2005 that ultimately led to the South’s independence. But Mr. Atti said the two nations were now back at war.

“We are not initiating this war,” Mr. Atti said. “The only way for us to teach them is to drive them and chase them out of Heglig and tell the people of the South to get rid of those people.”

The comments echo recent statements by Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who said that Sudan would “liberate” South Sudan from its governing party, and that the “boundaries of the old Sudan can no longer fit us together,” according to news reports.

The Sudanese government and South Sudan’s army have stepped back from the brink many times before. The two sides have clashed over the disputed area of Abyei and fought each other in Malakal, another oil-producing area.

Mr. Bashir is notorious for his fiery tongue, once saying that under no conditions would the United Nations be allowed into the vast, troubled region of Darfur and that Darfur would become a “graveyard” for foreign peacekeepers. That region is now home to one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world. And several United Nations officials said they work closely with their Sudanese government colleagues.

The fighting that is now spreading along the north-south border is by far the most serious confrontation in years.

Ambassador Princeton N. Lyman, the American special envoy who has been talking with both sides in recent days, said the South’s seizure of Heglig was “a dangerous act that had to be reversed.”

“This was an extremely dangerous step by South Sudan, and it threatened a much wider conflict,” he said in a call with journalists.

Despite the “very emotional, very powerful rhetoric coming out here from Khartoum, raising the stakes in many ways,” he said it was still possible to head off outright war.

Other analysts agreed that a wider war could still be avoided. “Neither side gains from a wider war,” said E. J. Hogendoorn, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, “but both leaders are daring the other to blink first.”

[Return to headlines]

Immigration


Arizona: Countdown to the Showdown on S.B. 1070

Dan Stein, president of the Federation of American Immigration Reform, www.fairus.org , talked about what Arizona’s S.B. 1070 law faces at the Supreme Court level.

“Beginning next week, Americans will be bombarded with coverage of Arizona’s first-in-the nation immigration enforcement law being heard in the Supreme Court,” said Stein. “SB 1070 is the bill which has become the focal point for the showdown between federal and state authority to enforce immigration laws, and the bill other states have replicated. FAIR’s position on SB 1070 is clear: The law is constitutional and effective and due to its efficacy, the Obama Administration has labeled it, and other state laws, a threat to its non-enforcement policy.”

In a Nutshell

“The question for the Court is going to be this: can the federal government stop states from participating in immigration enforcement; is it exclusively the role of the federal government?” said Stein. “A favorable ruling will pave the way for more states to enact bills, thus limiting the scope of the Obama Administration’s non-enforcement policy. An unfavorable ruling will mean continued dismantling of immigration enforcement at the federal level with no available legal means for states to protect themselves.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



EU Irked as Swiss Clamp Down on Immigration

European leaders expressed consternation on Wednesday as Switzerland re-introduced quotas for immigrants from eight Central and Eastern European countries.

The decision was taken by the Swiss government on Wednesday to activate a safeguard clause in its bilateral agreement witrh the EU, which will restrict the number of work permits available to people from Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.

“The safeguard clause is not the ultimate solution that will solve the problems alone, but it is one of the instruments at our disposal and that is why we will use it,” Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga said on Wednesday, newspaper Tribune de Genève reported.

The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, opposed the invocation of the clause, which she said infringed the rights of EU citizens to move freely in Switzerland. “I regret the decision of the Swiss Federal Council”, she said on Wednesday.

The new EU president, Martin Schulz, also criticized Switzerland for violating the spirit as well as the text of the agreement with the EU, and accused Switzerland of discrimination against these eight countries. No citizen from one EU country should be treated any differently than a citizen from another member state, he said. Switzerland has been considering activating the clause, which is contained in its bilateral treaty with the EU, for some time.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Police Probed for Taping Deportees’ Mouths Aboard Flight

Image posted on filmmaker’s Facebook page

(ANSA) — Rome, April 19 — Rome prosecutors opened an investigation Thursday into the case of two Tunisian men being deported from Italy on an Alitalia flight who had their mouths sealed with duct tape and their hands cuffed with plastic bands.

The story came to light Wednesday when Italian filmmaker Francesco Sperandeo posted on Facebook the photo he took of a plain-clothes policeman standing over a seated man with his mouth taped.

“The indifference of the other passengers” was the worst part, Sperandeo said, adding he was ordered to return to his seat by officers when he requested that the deportees be treated humanely. Sperandeo said he was told that the methods used were “normal”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



UK: Abu Qatada Deportation: Appeal Was Made ‘Just in Time’, Says Council of Europe Official

A Council of Europe official says Abu Qatada’s lawyers made his appeal ‘just in time’, adding to concerns that Theresa May misinterpreted the appeal deadline date when she ordered the radical cleric Abu Qatada to be arrested and deported.

Mrs May ordered the rearrest and deportation of the extremist cleric on Tuesday morning, believing a time limit in which his lawyers could appeal against his removal had elapsed. However, Labour released advice from the research department of the Council of Europe — which is responsible for the court — suggesting it may have just beaten the deadline. The note, sent to the House of Commons Library, stresses that the final decision on whether the appeal is admissible now rests with a panel of five judges from the court’s Grand Chamber. “The Othman (Qatada) case was supposed to become final on 17/04/2012 and, according to the information provided by the European Court, the applicant requested a referral to the Grand Chamber on the 17/04,” the note said. “So I would say that it just in time but of course the Court (panel) may decide otherwise.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Abu Qatada Deportation: Theresa May Did Get Date Wrong, Claim Legal Experts

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, did misinterpret the appeal deadline date when she ordered Abu Qatada to be arrested, legal experts claimed today.

Mrs May ordered the rearrest and deportation of the extremist cleric on Tuesday morning, believing a time limit in which his lawyers could appeal against his removal had elapsed.

But yesterday, to the surprise of the Government, officials at the European Court of Human Rights said the deadline was 24 hours later and that it had received an appeal application from Mr Qatada’s legal team with an hour to spare. Now it has emeged that under European guidelines for calculating deadlines in legal disputes the time limit actually ran out at midnight on Tuesday 17 April because it requires deadlines to run to corresponding days of the month. However it is up to the Grand Chamber Panel to decide whether the referral was actually made in time. Writing on his blog barrister and former government lawyer Carl Gardner said: “I think their view of the time-limit is correct. They’re in time, which is all that matters.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: May’s Bid to Deport Qatada Descends Into Farce

The deportation of Abu Qatada descended into farce after a potential blunder by the Home Office allowed his lawyers to lodge a last-minute appeal which could extend his stay in Britain and derail attempts to remove him from the country.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, ordered the rearrest and deportation of the extremist cleric on Tuesday morning, believing a time limit in which his lawyers could appeal against his removal had elapsed. But yesterday, to the surprise of the Government, officials at the European Court of Human Rights said the deadline was 24 hours later and that it had received an appeal application from Mr Qatada’s legal team with an hour to spare. As the situation descended into chaos on the eve of a government-hosted conference in Brighton to reform European human rights laws, the Home Office was accused by Labour of potentially acting illegally by starting the deportation process apparently before the deadline had passed.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, described the situation as a “shambles”, while MPs last night lined up to attack the situation as “chaotic”, “farcical” and “a big mistake” just a day after Mrs May was cheered in the House of Commons as she announced Mr Qatada’s rearrest. As Mrs May was forced to deny repeatedly any mistake by the Home Office, David Cameron last night intervened to declare his intention to have Mr Qatada deported, no matter how long it took. The latest twist in the case means the Government’s nine-year attempt to deport the man once described as Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe” will be delayed even further.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Theresa May and an ‘Understanding’ On Abu Qatada

by Simon Hoggart

Yvette Copper tries to be merciless with the home secretary, playing the X Factor party card

Unlike omnibuses — you wait for ages then three arrive together — omnishambles just keep coming for this government, one after the other, regularly and frequently. Poor Theresa May was obliged to appear at the Commons on Thursday to explain the latest: the screw-up over dates that allowed lawyers for Abu Qatada to refer his case back to the European court of human rights. Mrs May is pretty tough. Home secretaries are like rodeo riders on bucking broncos — there is little elegant about the performance, but the audience gasps with admiration at anyone who can stay in the saddle at all. And Mrs May has been there for almost two years. But she was distinctly evasive on the matter of dates — had she not checked the deadline before she made her victory statement on Tuesday? Hadn’t scores of people — officials, the BBC, the Home Office cleaning ladies — not warned her that she was jumping in a day early?

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Theresa May Versus Qatada

by Tim Montgomerie

If you wanted to criticise Theresa May over the last few months in her handling of the Qatada case then you might fairly say that she was too submissive to the ECHR and too keen to follow the letter of the law. I think those would have been unfair criticisms — a Home Secretary cannot ignore or even bend the law. A Home Secretary must uphold the law and be seen to do so. I read yesterday’s news that Qatada has been allowed to appeal as proof (if further proof was needed) that the Strasbourg court will bend over backwards to help someone like Qatada — popularly known as Osama bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe. The Home Office is absolutely clear that his window to appeal expired at midnight on Monday. The officials at the Strasbourg court are saying that “within three months” from 17th January equalled Tuesday night. On the Today programme the leeway is apparently explained by the court receiving so much correspondence every day.

David Cameron made it clear that Qatada will be deported: “He is a threat to our security, he has absolutely no further call on our hospitality and he should be deported. That is what we are determined to achieve, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how long it may take.”

The Prime Minister must understand the importance of this issue. For many Eurosceptics the Qatada issue is an issue of sovereignty. Do we rule our own country or do ‘judges’* from foreign lands run Britain? It is also becoming an issue of competence, however. I have huge respect for Theresa May and believe she’s one of the Government’s most effective ministers. The papers aren’t giving her much benefit of the doubt this morning, however, because this episode follows numerous others in which the Coalition’s “grip” and effectiveness has been questioned. The papers are also hostile to the Coalition, in general, and this is another opportunity for them to kick David Cameron. What this latest episode will do is reinforce the increasing view that Britain will have to leave the ECHR. In his column for yesterday’s Evening Standard Matthew d’Ancona wrote that making the British Supreme Court the court of final appeal “is not loopy talk confined to dining groups of angry Right-wing Tories… increasingly — and crucially — this is mainstream Conservative thinking.” If the PM is looking for an issue to reunite the unhappy Conservative family he can’t get too tough towards the ECHR. The Lib Dems will protest but doomed in the opinion polls, let them.

* I use the inverted commas deliberately because many of the ECHR’s countries send politicians rather than legal experts to be their representatives at the court.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Eco-Communism Celebrated Annually on Earth Day

In the run-up to Earth Day on April 22nd—the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union’s first dictator—Brian Sussman, author of the bestselling “Climategate”, has a new book, “Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America” ($25.95, WND Books). If you read no other book about the relationship between environmentalism and communism this year, you must read this one.

Sussman has brought together all the relevant facts. “Karl Marx founded a philosophy that inspires dictators and demagogues,” writes Sussman. “Commencing with the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the present, Marx’s tyrannical ideology has been responsible for the documented deaths of more than 110 million individuals around the world.”

“Pollution,” writes Sussman, “never has been Earth’s most troubling foe— Marxism had. And Marxists have always seized upon pollution, both real and imagined, as an effective weapon in their unrelenting war on freedom.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Marriage and Family Are Obscene, Says School

What will it take to convince America’s Christian parents to stop sending their children to the public schools?

Earlier this month, a girl at Pilgrim High School in Warwick, Rhode Island, had her artwork censored by “educators.” The student had painted a mural that was deemed objectionable because it depicted a boy growing up, marrying, and having a child. In fact, the “educators” found it so offensive that they ordered it blotted out by painting over it.

The girl’s parents called a local radio talk show to complain, and the fat was in the fire. (Full story, plus photos)

Responding to public outrage, the superintendent of schools overruled the high school censors and allowed the student to paint her mural as she pleased, and the school board chairwoman said “the order to paint over the traditional marriage portion of the artwork should never have happened.”

Had the parents not called the radio show, and had the school district not been dragged onto center stage as an example of political correctness run amok, the censorship order would have stood. Marriage and the family, at Pilgrim High School, would have remained, for all practical purposes, obscene.

The story is not that the censorship was overruled. The story is that public educators think that marriage and the family are obscene. Really—what if kids should have to pass by that mural on their way to a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting? They shouldn’t have to see something like that!

School officials didn’t actually use the word “obscene.” What they did say was, “[S]some of the members of the Pilgrim High School community suggested that the depiction of a young man’s development may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School,” and that therefore the assistant principle “asked” the student “to look at other ways to show the outcome of the subject’s progression to adulthood.” Need we ask what “other ways” would have been found acceptable?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Only the Old Embrace God in Former East Germany

Belief in God varies greatly between different countries, but the percentage of believers in the former East Germany is lower than anywhere else, “anchoring the secular pole” internationally, according to a new report by an American research organization. But even in this unpious region, the rate of believers increases with age.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain

A demotic egalitariansim, allied with multiculturalism, has rendered civility passé.

By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

A few days ago at a crowded bus-stop in the city of Nottingham, a fat youth of about 13 started to throw food at a friend. Some of it nearly hit me and landed on the ground just beyond me, making a mess.

“Excuse me,” I said to the youth, “could you pick that up?”

“Shut the f— up!” he snarled, with real hatred contorting his face.

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, in England, come—obscenities. No one at the bus stop dared say, much less do, anything. For increasingly, the English are a people who know neither inner nor outer restraint. They turn to aggression, if not to violence, the moment they are thwarted, even in trifles. And those who are neither aggressive nor violent are by no means sure that the law will take their side in the event of a fracas. It is better, or easier, for them to pretend not to notice anything, even if it means living in constant fear…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



UK: Lord Carey: Christians ‘Vilified’ By Courts

Christians are being “vilified” by British courts and “driven underground”, Lord Carey, a former archbishop of Canterbury, has said.

In a written submission to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), he blames judges for treating some worshippers as “bigots”.

He also warns that believers are being sacked for expressing their faith.

The criticism is part of an appeal to Strasbourg judges to protect religious freedom ahead of a landmark case.

Lord Carey — who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002 — has voiced concern that a recent “secular conformity of belief and conduct” has meant that conduct in keeping with the Christian faith is effectively being “banned” in the public setting.

In his submission, he says the “the State and Courts… not parliament” are destroying the legal right to freedom of religion of “any substantive effect” by insisting on stringent readings of equality law.

He also argues that if rulings against wearing crosses and expressing Christian faith are not reversed it could lead to believers facing a “religious bar” to employment.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

General


Al-Qaeda Bomb-Making Expert Publishes Magazine

A top al-Qaeda bomb-making expert this week has joined his fellow terrorists in publishing information on the World Wide Web, but this time its an Internet magazine instructing readers on how to build bombs and other deadly devices.

“The webmaster of death” is veteran Islamist and explosives maven Abdullah Dhu al-Bajadin, who is considered al-Qaeda’s most feared weapons creator. In fact, law enforcement officials have told the Law Enforcement Examiner that al-Bajadin can go into any modern kitchen and within minutes create some type of offensive device.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Heavy Elements Key for Planet Formation, Study Suggests

Planets form more commonly in star systems with relatively high concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a new study suggests.

Such heavier elements are necessary to form the dust grains and planetesimals that build planetary cores, according to the study, which was carried out by researchers Jarrett Johnson and Hui Li of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Additionally, evidence suggests that the disks of dust that surround young stars don’t survive as long when the stars have lower concentrations of heavy elements, or lower “metallicities” in astronomers’ jargon. The most likely reason for this shorter lifespan is that light from the star causes clouds of dust to evaporate.

The planet epoch

Our cosmic history has several defining epochs, one of which is the point at which star systems began to form planets. Heavy elements such as carbon, silicon and oxygen first needed to be created from huge star explosions called supernovas and the stellar cores of the first generations of stars before the first planets could form.

“Our calculation is an estimate of the minimum amount of heavy elements that must be present in circumstellar disks before planets can form,” Johnson said. “Because these heavy elements must be produced by the first stars in the universe, the first planets could only form around later generations of stars.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120418

Financial Crisis
» A New Dispute Over Euro Rescue Fund: Spain Wants Billions for Its Banks
» Balanced Budget Enshrined in Constitution
» EU Gives €1mn to Orange Order Ahead of Irish Referendum
» EU on Greek Statistics Scandal: ‘Never Again’
» EU: Banks Gorging on Sovereign Bonds Shifts Risk
» Hungary Bows to EU Pressure on Central Bank Law
» Italian Family Debt Lower Than EU Counterparts Says IMF
» Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire, In Scandal That Dwarfs ACORN and Gsa, Says New Report
» One Jobless Person Per Day Kills Self in Italy
» Portugal: Possible Extension Financial Support, Premier
» Premier Monti is Grateful to Italians for Their Courage
» Showdown in Washington: Emerging Nations Vie for Power at IMF
» Slovenian Public Servants Strike Over Austerity Measures
 
USA
» 3 Out at Secret Service in Colombia Prostitution Scandal
» A Progressive Perverts the Commerce Clause; But O’Reilly Gets it Right
» Comic Books as a Method of Missionizing for Islam (Da’wa)?
» Dick Clark: TV Impresario, Is Dead at 82
» Helter Skelter Manufactured Crisis = Manufactured Race Wars
» Liberal “Political Psychology” Propaganda
» Man Charged With Murder in Beating Death of Stepson, 10
» Media Hysteria and the Remolding of the American Mind
» Middle Class San Franciscans Fleeing City
» NASA Requests Inspiration for New Mars Quests
» Obama’s Illegal Alien Uncle Gets Driver’s License After DWI
» Stakelbeck on Terror Show: Is the Muslim Brotherhood Winning?
» What Passes for Intelligence — SPLC Intelligence Report, Spring 2012
» Wolf Blitzer Should Apologize to Allen West
 
Europe and the EU
» Accusations Against Lord Ahmed Merely Highlight a Vile Anti-British Career
» Cyprus’ Church Set to Start Private Power Station
» Europe Needs to Profit From Human Spaceflight
» Germany: Father Gets 17 Years for Killing Daughter With Axe
» Greece: Riot Police Warned on Press Attacks
» Italy: Medical Association’s President Probed for Investment Fraud
» Italy: Ex-League Treasurer Belsito Hands Over Gold and Diamonds
» Italy: Berlusconi Party Slams Minister Over TV-Frequency Auction
» Italy Hopes Sponsoring Can Save Cultural Treasures
» Italy: Soccer: Radu Denies ‘Fascist Salute’
» London Celebrates 100-Day Countdown to Olympics
» Norway: Judges Right to Let Killer Have His Say: Survivors
» Norway: ‘The Knights Templar Doesn’t Exist as You Describe It’
» Real Estate: Berlin Rivals London in Attracting Greek Money
» Sweden: Museum Evacuated After ‘Racist’ Bomb Threat
 
Balkans
» Macedonia: Mysterious ‘Army’ Threatens ‘Liberation of Albanian Lands’
 
Mediterranean Union
» EU Launches ‘ENPARD’ For Southern Neighbours
 
North Africa
» Egyptian Presidential Hopefuls Banned
» Group of 100 Tunisians Kidnapped Close to Libyan Border
» Italian Hostage Freed in Algeria
» Turks to Get Same Rights in Europe’s Economy as EU Residents — Commission Decision Taken Last Week — Brussels Bringing Turkey Into EU Under the Radar
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Cyprus, Israel Discuss Exploitation of Hydrocarbons
 
Middle East
» Bahrain: Amnesty Report, More Human Rights Violations
» Exclusive: Iran Ships “Off Radar” As Tehran Conceals Oil Sales
» Jordan’s Parliament Bans the Muslim Brotherhood’s Party
» Muslim Brotherhood Plans to Take Over Kuwait by 2013: Khalfan
» Saudi to Create 12,000 Security Jobs for Women
» Spengler: Recall Notice for the Turkish Model
» Syria: As Rebels and Regime Violate the Ceasefire, Kofi Annan’s Plan Collapses
» Yemen: Drone Strike Kills ‘At Least 7’ Militants
 
South Asia
» 150 Afghan Schoolgirls Seriously Ill After Being Poisoned in Anti-Education Attack by Muslim Extremists
» How Pakistan Makes US Pay for Afghan War
» India: New Delhi Ready to Launch a Nuclear Missile That Can Reach China
» India: Series of ‘Acid Attacks’, But Cops Inactive
» Indonesia: Aceh’s New Governor Zaini Abdullah Pledges More Sharia
» Pakistan: Karachi Violence Heats Up Leaving at Least 7 Dead
» Pakistan: Bin Laden’s Family to be Expelled Wednesday
» Pakistan: Muslims Strip Christian Woman in Punjab Because She “Dressed Up”, Shoot at Her Son
» Poison Scare Highlights Threats to Girls’ Education in Afghanistan
 
Far East
» Volkswagen Builds New Car Factory in China Trouble Region
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Extended Somalia Pirate Plan Creates Waves
» Germany Expands Military Mission Against Somali Pirates
 
Latin America
» Asian Investment Boom Seen in Latin America
» ‘Latin America Must Open Up’
 
Immigration
» Germany: Deportation to Kosovo Means a Life in Misery
» Italy: Deportees on Alitalia Flight With Taped Mouths
 
Culture Wars
» Switzerland: Sex Box for Kids Sparks Call to Action
 
General
» Italy: Another Northern League Heavyweight Resigns
» ‘Rogue’ Alien Planets May Circle Billions of Stars

Financial Crisis


A New Dispute Over Euro Rescue Fund: Spain Wants Billions for Its Banks

A number of euro zone countries and senior officials at the European Central Bank would like to see the euro bailout fund changed so that it can provide direct aid to banks. This could help Spain, which has emerged in recent days as a new center of the euro crisis, but Germany is opposed.

With an eye on the growing banking crisis in southern Europe, particularly in Spain, an increasing number of goverments as well as senior represenatives of the European Central Bank are pleading for the European Union’s temporary euro backstop fund to be used to provide financial institutions with direct assistance.

Sources familiar with the discussions told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the parties would like to see the criteria used by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to allocate aid be relaxed to include financial institutions in the event they represent a greater problem than a country’s government finances. So far, this aid has been paid to governments, which in turn provided some forms of assistance to beleagured banks.

Such a move would enable the temporary euro-zone rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), to directly transfer money to these banks, bypassing national governments.

Süddeutsche reports that the primary supporter for the calls is the Spanish government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, which is having increasing difficulty raising money on the markets to fill the country’s budget shortfall. Relaxing the rules could help ease the burden of the banking crisis his government faces and it would enable Spain’s comparably low debt-to-GDP ratio to remain constant. In addition, it would mean that his country wouldn’t be forced to implement strict savings and reform measures that are stipulated by the rescue fund in exchange for aid. As some observers have noted, austerity measures appear to be contributing to Spain’s slide into recession.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Balanced Budget Enshrined in Constitution

Extended austerity proposal passes Italian Senate

(ANSA) — Roma, April 17 — On Tuesday the Italian Senate passed a balanced budget law, to be written into the Constitution without the need for a referendum.

The extended austerity proposal, which is part of the European Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, will become national law after it gained two-thirds of the Senate vote, hence avoiding referendum.

Premier Mario Monti took part in the vote, which he called “important”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



EU Gives €1mn to Orange Order Ahead of Irish Referendum

Victims of republican violence during The Troubles in Northern Ireland are to get help from a €1.1mn EU grant paid to The Orange Order, a Protestant-unionist movement, the Press Association reports. The news could rouse anti-EU feeling in Ireland in the run-up to the May referendum on the fiscal treaty.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



EU on Greek Statistics Scandal: ‘Never Again’

BRUSSELS — The EU commission has proposed new rules on how to shield national statistics bureaus from political influence, three years after Greece lied about its deficit, triggering its first bail-out and marking the start of the eurozone crisis.

Under the new regime, unveiled on Tuesday (17 April), EU governments will have to sign written pledges that they will not make political appointments in the sector and on the independence of national number-grinders more broadly.

Failure to comply would lead to legal action at the European Court of Justice and potential fines, apart from the market turmoil that such a breach of confidence can trigger. MEPs and member states still have to bless the scheme. But for his part, taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta told press in Brussels: “We want to ensure that, (that) never again, will we have any political influence on our statistics.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



EU: Banks Gorging on Sovereign Bonds Shifts Risk

Rome, 18 April (AKI/Bloomberg) — Italian, Spanish and Portuguese banks are loading up on bonds issued by their own governments, a move that shifts more of the risk of sovereign default to European taxpayers from private creditors.

Holdings of Spanish government debt by lenders based in the country jumped 26 percent in two months, to 220 billion euros ($289 billion) at the end of January, data from Spain’s treasury show. Italian banks increased ownership of their nation’s sovereign bonds by 31 percent to 267 billion euros in the three months ended in February, according to Bank of Italy data.

German and French banks, meanwhile, have cut holdings of those countries’ bonds, as well as Irish and Greek debt, by as much as 50 percent since 2010 in some cases. That leaves domestic firms on the hook for a restructuring such as Greece’s last month and their main financier, the European Central Bank, facing losses. Like Greece, governments would have to rescue their lenders with funds borrowed from the European Union.

“The more banks stop cross-border lending, the more the ECB steps in to do the financing,” said Guntram Wolff, deputy director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute. “So the exposure of the core countries to the periphery is shifting from the private to the public sector.”

ECB Lending

The jump in sovereign-debt holdings by Spanish and Italian banks has been fueled by the ECB’s 1 trillion-euro long-term refinancing operation, or LTRO, initiated in December, to provide liquidity to the region’s lenders. Encouraged by their governments to take the money and buy bonds, banks borrowed 489 billion euros on Dec. 21 and 530 billion euros on Feb. 29.

For lenders in so-called peripheral countries — Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy — profit also was an inducement: They could borrow at 1 percent to buy government bonds yielding between 6 percent and 13 percent.

Lenders in those five countries have taken about 715 billion euros from the ECB through emergency programs, including the LTRO, according to the most recent data provided by the central banks of those nations. Irish and Greek lenders have borrowed an additional 83 billion euros from their central banks, using collateral that isn’t accepted by the ECB.

The bond purchases helped bring down borrowing costs at first. The yield on Spain’s benchmark 10-year bond dropped below 5 percent in January from more than 6.5 percent in November. Concerns that a deepening recession will lead the government to default on its bonds have driven yields back to 6 percent and the cost of insuring Spanish debt to levels that prompted other European countries to seek bailouts.

Ireland, Portugal

Irish banks increased ownership of that nation’s sovereign debt by 21 percent in the three months ended in February, according to the Central Bank of Ireland.

Government-bond holdings by Portuguese banks jumped 15 percent to 30 billion euros in the same period, according to ECB data. While the central bank doesn’t provide a breakdown of the holdings by country, most debt sold by Portugal in recent months has been snapped up by its own lenders, according to two primary dealers who serve as middlemen in the sales and who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

French and German banks bought the sovereign debt of other European countries last decade as the region’s financial sector became more integrated and interest rates declined. That process has been fragmented by the debt crisis.

Since 2010, banks in France and Germany have retreated, cutting lending to the governments of Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece 42 percent, according to data compiled by the Bank for International Settlements. Dumping Italian sovereign bonds began more recently, with German lenders reducing their Italian holdings 13 percent in the second and third quarters of 2011, BIS data show. French banks shrunk their holdings of Italian government debt about 25 percent in the third quarter.

Debt Relief

While French and German banks lost money on Greece’s restructuring last month, a delay of more than a year allowed a similar shift of risk to the public sector. When the exchange took place, the debt relief was capped at 59 billion euros because fewer bonds were held by the private sector, including banks outside the country. If Greece had defaulted in 2010, the reduction could have been as much as 232 billion euros.

Greece had to borrow an additional 49 billion euros from the International Monetary Fund and the EU to recapitalize Greek banks that couldn’t handle losses on their sovereign-debt holdings during the restructuring.

“If there’s a private-sector restructuring of Portuguese sovereign debt, then Portugal’s banks will need a bailout like Greek banks did,” Dimitri Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, said in an interview.

Regulatory Pressure

In Spain, stronger banks such as Banco Santander SA (SAN), the country’s largest lender, can handle losses from their sovereign holdings, while weaker savings institutions stung by soured real estate loans will need help, Papadimitriou said. Italian banks probably are buying more of their country’s debt because they can sell it to retail customers who still have an appetite for the securities, he said.

Lenders in peripheral countries are facing pressure from regulators and the ECB to buy government debt, according to two executives and a banking supervisor who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. German and French regulators, meanwhile, have said they asked banks to cut lending to those nations.

“As German banks reduce their exposure and the domestic banks pick up the slack, credit is becoming national again,” said Michael Dawson-Kropf, a Frankfurt-based senior director at Fitch Ratings. “But in most cases, like Ireland, there aren’t enough domestic deposits to do that, so they need external financing.”

‘Backdoor Exposure’

That’s when the ECB and other public lenders step in, creating a “backdoor exposure” for wealthier nations such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, said Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

“Private-sector banks offloading their obligations to the public sector doesn’t get the German taxpayer off the hook,” Egan said. His firm downgraded Germany’s sovereign credit to A+ in January, four levels below the top rating, amid worries that the country will have to rescue other EU nations.

Before the 2008 crisis, banks in Ireland held almost no Irish government debt. They owned about 20 percent of that nation’s sovereign bonds as of Dec. 31, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Institute of International Finance. In the meantime, the Irish government has pumped 62 billion euros into its banks to cover losses on real estate loans and now owns most of the banking system.

Tied at Hips

“The Irish government and the banks are tied at the hips,” said Constantin Gurdgiev, a finance lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin. “Banks get money from the government, which turns around and borrows from the banks. But how long can this game go on?”

Portuguese banks’ ownership of that country’s sovereign bonds jumped to 12 percent at the end of 2011 from 5 percent in 2007, according to IIF data. Spanish banks’ share of their government’s debt rose to 35 percent from 24 percent.

Meanwhile, foreign banks’ holdings of Spanish government debt dropped to 64 percent at the end of September from 74 percent a year earlier, IIF data show. In Ireland, the share declined to 23 percent from 27 percent, and in Portugal it fell to 19 percent from 26 percent.

‘National Fragmentation’

“This national fragmentation of credit is beginning to undo the financial integration that was one of the biggest benefits of the monetary union,” said Hung Tran, deputy managing director of the IIF, which represents more than 400 banks worldwide. “It’s not reducing the vulnerability of the banking system to the sovereign risk either.”

The ECB’s emergency-lending programs can provide indirect support for governments, “but only if sovereigns are perceived by markets to be going in the right direction,” David Mackie, chief European economist for JPMorgan Chase & Co., wrote in an April 10 note to investors.

“If there are doubts about the path ahead for sovereigns, then longer-term financing for banks will not necessarily provide much support as domestic banks may be reluctant to buy and other holders of sovereign debt may be keen to sell,” wrote Mackie, who is based in London.

Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece relied on banks in countries with stronger economies to finance their budget deficits for a long time, said Jan Hagen, a banking professor at Berlin’s European School of Management and Technology. With those lenders now weakened by losses and pressed to reduce risk, governments will struggle to finance themselves as the rest of the world stays away, he said.

“Governments loved the banking sector’s growth in the last two decades because they could borrow so easily,” Hagen said. “It was like a drug addiction. But like all addictions, it probably will end in a bad way.”

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



Hungary Bows to EU Pressure on Central Bank Law

(BUDAPEST) — Hungary’s government said Wednesday it is altering legislation that the EU had criticised as curbing the independence of the central bank, in the latest attempt to unblock talks on financial aid. “The Hungarian government has tabled changes to the central bank law concerning several points contested by the European Commission,” the economy ministry said in a statement.

A government representative will now not take part in meetings of the central bank’s rate-setting committee, which will no longer be obliged to send to the government the minutes of these talks, the ministry added.

In addition, a constitutional change has also been tabled excluding a merger of the central bank with Hungary’s financial regulator, which critics had said would have further increased government control over monetary policy.

“These changes have been sent to the European Commission, which has taken note of them,” the statement added.

The announcement followed talks on Monday at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt between officials from the Hungarian government, the European Commission and the ECB.

In November Hungary approached the European Union and the International Monetary Fund about a possible 15-20-billion-euro ($20-26-billion) credit line after the forint currency plunged and Hungary’s borrowing costs soared.

But talks have snagged on EU objections to a raft of legislation passed by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban that Brussels worries increases state control on the judiciary, the media — and the central bank.

In March the European Commission gave Hungary a month to amend the judiciary and data protection laws or face court action, saying financial aid depended on Budapest proving its commitment the EU’s democratic principles.

Orban on Friday accused Brussels of “blackmail”, but behind the combative rhetoric his government has moved to assuage the European Commission’s concerns, submitting in late March changes to its legislation on the judiciary.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italian Family Debt Lower Than EU Counterparts Says IMF

Only 51% of GDP

(ANSA) — Washington, April 18 — Italian families have lower household debt than other eurozone countries and the US an International Monetary Fund report released on Wednesday said.

Italian family debt was registered at 51% of GDP, while in the US it was 88% of GDP and in the UK 99%.

Financial institutions in Italy were at 97% of GDP while non-financial institutions 122%, reported the IMF.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire, In Scandal That Dwarfs ACORN and Gsa, Says New Report

Billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Newly recently released tax documents, examined and analyzed by Tina Trent of sorosfiles.com, reveal how billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. Soros and Obama worked hand-in-glove through the stimulus, which has been called the largest single partisan wealth transfer in American history.

The new report has been released by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), publisher of the Soros Files website, and posted under the title OBAMA STIMULUS DOLLARS FUNDED SOROS EMPIRE. The release of the report coincides with an Internet advertising campaign on CanadaFreePress.com, a global source of news and information, drawing attention to how the transfers of federal funds to the Soros empire constitute a bigger scandal than ACORN.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



One Jobless Person Per Day Kills Self in Italy

Unemployed male suicides up 45% in three years

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — Joblessness is driving nearly one person everyday to commit suicide in Italy, a new report showed Tuesday. In 2010, 362 people who killed themselves were out of work, up from 357 in 2009, both a significant rise from an average 270 in the three previous years, according to the Eures think tank’s report ‘Suicide in Italy in a Time of Crisis’. Of the total number of those who committed suicide from 2008 to 2010, 39.2% were unemployed. The rise in suicides among the unemployed was particularly apparent among the male population. In 2008, 231 jobless men killed themselves; in 2009 the number went up to 303; in 2010, it went up again to 310: a 45.5% jump in only three years. The authors of the report credited men’s tendency to identify themselves with their occupations as a factor for the disproportionate toll on men compared to women. The suicide rate is also up among those aged 45 to 64, corresponding to the so-called ‘esodati’ (‘exiled’) demographic, who are laid-off employees who are ineligible to receive a pension because they are younger than the minimum retirement age. That age group suffered a 12.6% rise in 2010, following a 16.8% rise in 2009. Artisans and merchants suffered the greatest suicide toll among sectors in 2010 with 192 total deaths. Businessmen and independent contractors accounted for 144 suicides.

The industrial north of Italy leads the country in total suicides, with the Lombardy region surrounding Milan in first place, the Veneto region second and Emilia-Romagna third. photo: demonstrators protesting lay-offs

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Portugal: Possible Extension Financial Support, Premier

Due to events out of our control, article in Financial Times

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 18 — The premier of Portugal, Pedro Passos Coelho, has warned that the country may need financial aid for a longer period due to “circumstances that are outside the government’s control.” In an article published today by the Financial Times, Passos Coelho underlined that Portugal will respect its international commitments and will be financially autonomous again in 2013, despite the risk that factors outside the government’s control may keep Portugal from reaching its targets.

“It is important to say something that will sound controversial, but is in fact not controversial at all: in an age of uncertainty there are no guarantees,” the Portuguese premier wrote. “There are no guarantees and we cannot legislate for events out of the government’s control”, he continued. The premier referred to external factors that may cause Portugal “to rely on the commitment of our international partners to extend further support” if circumstances beyond Portugal’s control obstruct its return to market financing. Portugal has received 78 billion euros in support of its economy from IMF, the European Commission and ECB. The country is implementing the agreed financial restructuring programme.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Premier Monti is Grateful to Italians for Their Courage

(AGI) Rome — “I am deeply grateful to Italians for the awareness with which they are facing this difficult moment”.

The statement was made by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti during the ceremony for the award of the Goldan Necklace for Sporting Merit and the Honors Diplomas at the CONI, the Italian Olympics Committee facilities. In order to restore hope to the Country, Monti went on to say, “it is the ruling class that must do more: this is the commitment that I share with everybody and also what you give Italians through your achievements is a message of hope”, Monti added addressing a public of male and female athletes. Monti also recalled the closing of the year celebrating the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy: “throughout the year, million of flags have been hung from the windows and homes of Italians and our Mameli national anthem has been played frequently. Our hope is that in 2012 our tricolored Italian flag and Mameli’s anthem will continue to wave and echo in the homes of Italians”.

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



Showdown in Washington: Emerging Nations Vie for Power at IMF

The European Union would like to see the International Monetary Fund provide billions in additional funds to help relieve the debt crisis. However, a number of emerging economies are resisting the plans, accusing the West of abusing its power within the organization and creating a “North Atlantic Monetary Fund”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Slovenian Public Servants Strike Over Austerity Measures

Slovenian public servants have walked off the job to protest against the government’s austerity measures, which they say they are being forced to bear the brunt of. Prime Minister Janez Jansa says his hands are tied. Civil servants went on strike in Slovenia on Wednesday to protest against planned pay cuts.

The strike closed schools and other public services across the small European Union country. Around 80,000 public sector workers took part in the general strike, according to union officials.

The center-right government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa, which took office just two months ago, is planning to cut public sector wages by more than seven percent as part of its austerity drive aimed at wrestling down Slovenia’s high budgetary deficit. Jansa’s government is hoping to reduce the deficit from 6.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 to 3.5 percent in 2012. That’s still well above the three-percent ceiling set out in the European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact, which is designed to safeguard the bloc’s common currency, the euro.

The unions, though, argue that it is unfair for civil servants to have to shoulder the bulk of the burden through wage cuts. “This is the wrong idea for Slovenia to grow,” Branimir Strukelj, the head of the confederation of public trade unions said. “The strike is a serious message to the government that we are determined to defend the social state and the acquired standards in education,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

USA


3 Out at Secret Service in Colombia Prostitution Scandal

Three Secret Service employees are leaving in the prostitution scandal that has rocked the agency, and eight other employees remain on administrative leave, the agency announced Tuesday evening. One supervisor was allowed to retire, and another faces termination proceedings. The third, a non-supervisory employee, resigned, the agency said. It is unclear if more firings are imminent, but one federal law enforcement official said the number of firings would be between two and “a handful.”

The scandal was made public Saturday. As many as 11 agents and 10 military servicemembers allegedly brought prostitutes back to their hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, while doing advance work before the president’s arrival for a trade summit. The swelling scandal has raised questions about the “secret” culture at the nation’s elite protection agency — and few are feeling the heat more intensely than its director, Mark Sullivan.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



A Progressive Perverts the Commerce Clause; But O’Reilly Gets it Right

Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) made our Framers proud when, on March 26, 2012, he correctly explained [probably for the first time ever on TV] the genuine meaning of the interstate commerce clause. O’Reilly’s guest was Big Government Progressive Caroline Fredrickson, Esq., of the inaptly named “American Constitution Society.” In trying to defend obamacare, she said that our Framers intended to grant to Congress extensive powers over the “national economy”:

“When the Founding Fathers adopted the Constitution, they put in the commerce clause ah specifically so that Congress could actually regulate interstate commerce. They envisioned a national economy, and we really have one now, and to the tune of over two trillion dollars, health care makes up a big big part of that and so it’s completely within the power of ah Congress to pass this legislation [obamacare] and to attempt to provide some reasonable regulation…”

But what she said is not true! Accordingly, O’Reilly responded:

The interstate commerce clause was put in so individual States could not charge tariffs [for] going from one state to another. So, for example, Pennsylvania would say to New Jersey, ‘Hey, you can’t bring in anything here from New Jersey unless you pay us 2% on it.’“

Bravo, O’Reilly! That is precisely the purpose of the interstate commerce clause.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Comic Books as a Method of Missionizing for Islam (Da’wa)?

Yes. One year ago, Harvard University hosted a workshop to teach comic book artists how to address Americans’ “unease with Islam and the Middle East.” And later this week, Georgetown University will air a PBS documentary, Wham! Bam! Islam! celebrating a comic book called The 99.

[…]

But a closer look reveals the Islamic nature of the comic book. The title, 99, refers to Islam’s concept that God has 99 names, each of which appears in the Koran and embodies some attribute of His character: the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Kind, the Most Holy, and the All-Peaceful, but also the Avenger, the Afflicter, and the Causer of Death.

[…]

Likewise, Barack Obama praised the comic books for having “captured the imagination of so many young people with superheroes who embody the teachings and tolerance of Islam.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Dick Clark: TV Impresario, Is Dead at 82

The television legend Dick Clark, who originated “American Bandstand” and the perennial New Year’s Eve celebration on ABC, died Wednesday morning, his representative Paul Shefrin said.

Mr. Shefrin said that Mr. Clark, 82, had suffered a massive heart attack.

[Return to headlines]



Helter Skelter Manufactured Crisis = Manufactured Race Wars

As the economic pressures increase in the United States and across the world, people have a tendency to retreat into tribal, ethnic and racial groups. That tendency is amplified by radical groups on both the right and the left , who seek to use racial conflict as a means to maintaining and acquiring political power. The stage is being set by the media and other powers in the United States for all-out class warfare. It started months ago with powerful television images of gangs of African American girls brutally beating up a white girl in a fast food restaurant.

The programming of mass consciousness is accelerating with stroboscopic intensity: television images of the New Black Panther Party, Neo-Nazi groups parading in uniform, Trevor Martin, George Zimmerman and on it goes. It seems the mass media, or the people who control the media, want a race war. This should be obvious to anyone who is not wacked out of their mind on drugs or television. The 24/7 news cycle seems intent on stirring the pot with powerful and hateful emotions.

[…]

Images and messages that stir up racial violence can easily to lead to race wars and then to class wars. Is that their purpose? I believe it is.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy was developed in the 1960s by a pair of radical leftist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The Cloward-Piven Strategy is to force political change through manufactured crisis. Specifically, a manufactured crisis like race wars is intended to create the fall of capitalism by triggering class warfare and violence. It is classic Marxist strategy and that is why we hear terms like the 99% and the 1% repeated like mantras hypnotically through the media.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Liberal “Political Psychology” Propaganda

Blatant propaganda attack on conservatism, tea party, religious beliefs, and intellectual ability of Americans who disagree with liberals Liberal “Political Psychology” Propaganda.

Chris Mooney wrote an article for the Washington Post on “why Republicans and Democrats don’t just vote differently — their brains work differently too.” He is the author of “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why they Deny Science — and Reality.”

Mooney, who has an English degree from Yale, wrote two other books, “Republican War on Science” and “Unscientific American.”

According to Mooney, political differences are no longer just about divergent philosophies, wealth, or lobbying, but about “political psychology.” “Political psychology” is psychobabble for pseudo-science. We know how many times throughout history real science has been wrong.

“Political psychology” is the ultimate euphemistic leftist talking points interpretation of why liberals and conservatives “hold wildly incompatible views on issues ranging from global warming to whether the president was born in the U.S. to whether his stimulus package created any jobs.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Man Charged With Murder in Beating Death of Stepson, 10

A 10-year-old boy was found dead in the basement of his Guilford Street home late Tuesday and his stepfather, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, has been charged with second-degree murder, Chief of Detectives Dennis J. Richards announced this afternoon.

Mohamud, 40, took his stepson, Abdifatah Mohamud, into the basement of the family home, which is near the Broadway Market, to discipline him and proceeded to beat him to death, possibly with a blunt object, police said.

Ferry-Fillmore District Police Officer Christopher Fields responded to a missing person call at 10:40 p.m. and was let inside the house, where, moments later, he found the boy’s body in the basement.

The stepfather, Richards said, had left the house earlier in a red Subaru Forester and Fields radioed a “pick-up” request for the vehicle, which was spotted parked in the vicinity of Washington and Scott streets.

Investigating officers learned that Mohamud worked as a security officer for U.S. Security Associates at The Buffalo News, where he was arrested within an hour of the initial call and without incident, the chief added.

The News is located at the intersection of Washington and Scott.

“The suspect made a statement to police indicating his involvement in the death of his stepson,” Richards said. “There are certain indications the victim had been beaten. It was a disturbing scene.”

A neighbor said the family, which consists of three older children and three younger children, is from Somalia. Mohamud, Richards said, has been in the country for a decade.

The neighbor added that Mohamud is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Homicide Det. Sgt. James Lonergan is heading the continuing investigation into the killing.

           — Hat tip: MS [Return to headlines]



Media Hysteria and the Remolding of the American Mind

During the Cold War, Soviet leadership counted on fear and terror—the Stockholm Syndrome—to implant socialist sympathies in the hearts of Americans for their cause. Americans, who felt helpless before their dark fears of impending doom, started to look to the Soviets for relief from this fear. To some extent Reagan slowed this process in the two key ways suggested in Part I of this article—strong defense and values. Knowing what we stood for helped us stand against tyranny, and with SDI, for the first time it seemed like there was an alternative to living in fear. But both of these things were made light of by the liberal media who considered SDI a “star wars” fantasy and American values somewhat corny—like Reagan himself. So with certain Americans, the Soviets still enjoyed considerable success.

Watching angry “peace” demonstrations must cause most Americans to scratch their heads in wonder. Nothing America does seems to satisfy these people. Jeane Kirkpatrick described them as people who “blame America first.” What’s really going on is straightforward enough; living with fear and resentment, many Americans were going through what Patty Hearst experienced—a conversion. Forty years or so of intimidation have transformed the thinking, feeling, emotional lives of these Americans. Through fear, rage, and intimidation, they have developed a subconscious affinity with the other side.

The technique is simple enough. Place a person under extreme pressure. Threaten his or her life over a long period of time without rest, and just as you see the terror transforming the victim, change the face of cruelty and smile sweetly at your victim; you become his friend after the terror does its work. Now you reward the slavish submission with approval and validate your victim’s altered belief system as the truth, and give them new direction. Police sometimes use this bad guy/good guy routine to break down a suspect and obtain confessions.

Of course, you can’t terrorize people if you can’t reach them. The point is, the media must bear great responsibility for what has happened in America. They are supposed to report the news, but not in a distorted manner that frightens people. I remember during the Second World War in England the calm, matter-of-fact manner of the newscasters. They told us the most unpleasant truth with great dignity. They didn’t try to panic the British people as they reported the Nazis were overrunning France and poised at our doors. On the contrary, the honesty and the dignity with which the bad news was presented seemed to bolster British morale. It made us all the more resolute to fight “the Jerries,” as we called them to make light of the matter.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Middle Class San Franciscans Fleeing City

Tony Bennett famously left his heart in San Francisco. And, for thousands of middle class residents in the City by the Bay, their hearts may be the only part of them they can afford to leave there.

Like all great world cities, San Francisco is an attractive destination for tourists, businesses and workers from all walks of life looking to better their lives in a diverse and thriving environment. But, the city’s popularity does have a side effect. It’s creating a cost of living so high that it’s chasing away the middle and low-income immigrants and minorities who make the city tick.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



NASA Requests Inspiration for New Mars Quests

“Have a good idea about Mars exploration? We’d like to hear about it.” So tweeted NASA’s John Grunsfeld. Following budget cuts, the US space agency is rewriting its Mars exploration programme and clearly needs all the inspiration it can get.

The programme was hit hard by the proposed 2013 US federal budget, and so NASA pulled out of European-led missions planned for 2016 and 2018. It has two other missions in progress — the rover CuriosityMovie Camera, pictured during take-off (see right) and set to land on Mars in August, and the orbiter MAVEN, which should launch in 2013.

NASA is looking to the public and the wider science community to help decide what happens next. On 13 April, the new Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG) announced that it wants ideas from researchers, government and industry for how to reach Mars cheaply. The ideas will be presented at a workshop in June in Houston, Texas.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Obama’s Illegal Alien Uncle Gets Driver’s License After DWI

After pleading guilty to driving while intoxicated, President Barack Obama’s illegal-alien “Uncle Omar” was handed a Massachusetts driver’s license by the Motor Vehicles Registry, making it legal for him to drive again in that state in spite of protests by law enforcement officials. In addition, federal officials continue to say Uncle Obama doesn’t belong in the United States in the first place.

“Onyango Obama, 67, who lost his regular license for 45 days last week, gained his driver’s license yesterday from the Registry’s Wilmington branch, after telling a hearing officer that life without wheels would have posed an undue hardship on his livelihood as a liquor-store manager. Obama bolstered his case with a letter from his employer, Conti Liquors, as well as proof that he’d enrolled in an alcohol-treatment program,” said John Zaremba and O’Ryan Johnson of the Boston Herald.

There are many who have become highly suspicious of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s complicity in the decision to give a license to a man just convicted of drunk driving. Patrick is a staunch Democrat and was appointed the co-campaign manager for President Obama’s re-election run the same week Uncle Obama got his driver’s license.

“How is it possible that a previously deported illegal immigrant stripped of his driving privileges after getting busted for drunken-driving gets his license reinstated? Hint; his beloved nephew lives in the White House,” stated the Judicial Watch blog.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Stakelbeck on Terror Show: Is the Muslim Brotherhood Winning?

On this week’s episode of the Stakelbeck on Terror show, we examine the Muslim Brotherhood’s alarming recent strides in the United States—including a visit by a Brotherhood delegation to the White House to meet with Obama administration officials.

We also show how radical, Brotherhood-linked American groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are benefiting from the group’s newfound “mainstream” status.

Plus, General Jerry Boykin joins us for an exclusive interview about CAIR’s pressure campaign against him and we also sit down with a leading Egyptian dissident—a former Muslim turned Christian—who warns about the Brotherhood’ rise.

And you won’t want to miss Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert as he calls the Obama administration on its open door policy for Islamists.

Click the link above to watch.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]



What Passes for Intelligence — SPLC Intelligence Report, Spring 2012

The spring “intelligence” report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been released and as usual it has little to do with intelligence and more to do with fear mongering and misdirection. As an intelligence analyst I know what an intelligence report is and this is not that.

They start off with identifying what they call “Patriot” groups in the United States in 2011. Now in my 56 years in this country I always thought of myself as a Patriot. I have served in the military, went to war, was awarded the Purple Heart, swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and always thought being a Patriot was a good thing.

Not these, ahem, intelligence analyst of the SPLC — they classify these groups as anti-government. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of anti-government groups around but just because citizens are wishing to hold government accountable, which is their duty, is admirable and does not make them “anti-government.” Maybe anti-unlawful government.

So how does a group get on this prestigious list? Evidently not hard at all; I personally know of a number of these “groups” that have only just started and have done nothing so far, and I mean absolutely nothing. In fact one group, and I’ll get to them later, has a total of 3 people involved, have only had a handful of meetings and have set up a rudimentary web page — that’s it. They must be very dangerous and scary to the “intelligence” folks at the SPLC.

[…]

Everything I have placed in this article can be found with a simple search on the internet. What really worries me is not that the SPLC publishes such unfounded misinformation; it is that the current administration and especially the Department of Homeland Security have a history of communication and sharing with the SPLC and that the SPLC is taken seriously by our government when so much of what they “report” is just plain wrong. The SPLC has been cited numerous times in state fusion center and DHS literature as being a credible source of their information. That, to me, is what is really scary.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Wolf Blitzer Should Apologize to Allen West

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer played the role of wise guy during a segment last Thursday on Rep. Allen West and communism. West “sounds like McCarthy,” Blitzer said, referring to his allegations of communists in Congress. The comment was designed to ridicule West, a combat veteran of the Iraq War and a man considered by many Republicans to be vice-presidential material. Blitzer urged West to issue a public apology.

But Blitzer is the one who should apologize, for he did not offer West’s comments in context. Blitzer also ignored clear and convincing evidence that the Communist Party USA, once funded by Moscow, regards the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Democratic Party as allies in the “struggle” for socialism in the U.S.

“What’s the difference between the CPUSA and progressive Democrats?” asked CPUSA writer Dan Margolis. “The CPUSA has worked to get Democrats elected, fought for health care reform with the public option, and embraced most of what organized labor has been doing.”

[…]

Although Blitzer used the phrase “sounds like McCarthy” in order to mock West, it bears repeating that the communist threat was much greater than even Sen. Joseph McCarthy had feared. The Venona transcripts of communications among Soviet spies in the U.S., many recruited by the Communist Party, and Moscow, demonstrated as many as 350 infiltrators, including numerous high-level government officials.

With some prominent exceptions such as Democratic Rep. Danny Davis, members of Congress do not advertise their work or affiliations with the CPUSA these days. However, as West noted, the party has referred to “our allies in Congress, the Progressive Caucus, and John Conyers,” the Congressman from Michigan who participated in events sponsored by the U.S. Peace Council, the CPUSA front.

The problem is actually much worse than that.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Accusations Against Lord Ahmed Merely Highlight a Vile Anti-British Career

Lord Ahmed exemplifies ‘Labour appointments to the Lords in the 1990s designed to make Parliament more ‘multicultural’, a deliberate project by Labour to make Parliament represent ethnicity over the love of our country.

Lord Ahmed was suspended by the Labour party yesterday for allegedly putting a bounty on the heads of President Obama and former President GW Bush while supporting the man indicted for the Bombay terror attacks.

It is unclear whether Ahmed actually said this. However his past record is not unblemished.

In 2005 he invited well-known anti-semite Israel Shamir to the House of Lords to talk about ‘Jews and Empire’.

In 2007 he savagely attacked Tony Blair for giving Salman Rushdie a knighthood, by oddly stating: ‘he’s honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations’. It’s excellent that we have a Peer that has such an awful regard for our tradition of freedom of speech, who believes that literary merit cannot be praised if a minority might be offended.

In 2008 he ran over and killed a man on the M1 after texting on his mobile phone. He was given a prison sentence for dangerous driving, which was later suspended.

In 2009 he threatened to mobilise 10000 Muslims to prevent democratically elected Dutch MP Geert Wilders from speaking in Parliament, this is despite his own invite of the anti-semitic Israel Shamir who has been accused of denying the holocaust.

It is clear that Ahmed is a character that consistently shows dubious moral judgment, and Miliband should show some strength to move to annul his Peerage altogther.”

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Cyprus’ Church Set to Start Private Power Station

(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, APRIL 17 — The Church of Cyprus has signed preliminary agreements to start the island’s first private power station, Cyprusnewsreport.com wrote quoting Archbishop Chrysostomos II as saying on Orthodox Easter Sunday.

The station will start using mazut fuel and then switch to natural gas, with the Church offering its land and foreign companies offering technology and know-how, according to the Archbishop. Due to the economic recession, the Church’s revenues have dropped by 60%, he said, and the planned electricity plant will bring new income and create new jobs. There is a crisis in the energy market in Cyprus due to the deadly explosion last July, which critically damaged the island’s largest power station, Vassiliko’. Electricity prices have increased by at least one third as the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) added a 6.95% charge to cover the costs of hiring generators to take over some of the missing power. But in an overall economic crisis, consumers have had difficulty paying their bills, which frequently reach hundreds of euros. As one of the island’s largest landowners, the Church is possibly the most likely candidate to compete against the EAC, which has been criticised for failing to adapt to changing technologies and was left financially and technically vulnerable by the damage to Vassiliko’. When the EAC’s board of directors presented the authority’s 1.8 billion-euro 2012 budget to Parliament — with a 66 million-euro surplus — DIKO MP Nikolas Papadopoulos said that the EAC should make radical changes if it wants to be competitive in the near future. He backed the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority’s (CERA) call to rationalise and reorganise the company’s structure to make it more efficient. The EAC’s monopoly is the reason that consumers pay the highest electricity rates in the EU, and this was true before the explosion at Mari naval base which critically damaged the Vasiliko power plant, he said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Europe Needs to Profit From Human Spaceflight

As the final space shuttle lands at a US museum, Europe’s top astronaut says keeping humans in space is important for Earth-based research — and that it makes financial sense.

The European Space Agency (ESA) director of human spaceflight and operations, Thomas Reiter, said there was a simple reason why Europe should continue space missions: European countries have already invested considerable sums in the International Space Station, particularly the Columbus laboratory that permanently attached to the ISS, and “now it is time to reap the harvest.”

The Columbus laboratory, which was launched in 2008, provide space for research into material science, fluid physics and life science as well as an external payload facility for experiments the fields of space science, Earth observation and technology. Reiter’s remarks came following Italy’s decision to cut financing for ESA projects due to the ongoing economic crisis.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Father Gets 17 Years for Killing Daughter With Axe

The 53-year-old Pakistani man who killed his 16-year-old daughter, Swera, at their home in Zurich-Höngg in 2010 has been sentenced to 17 years imprisonment. The Zurich District Court found the father guilty of murder, and concluded that although it had not been an honour killing in the sense most commonly understood, the man had killed his daughter “to get out of a humiliating situation and to restore his honour”.

The court stated that the father, referred to as Scheragha R, had used “really excessive violence” and that he had killed his teenaged daughter with “reckless brutality”, newspaper Tages Anzieger reported.

The court listened as the defence lawyer, Matthias Brunner, described a man who had reached the end of his tether, both physically and emotionally, having been particularly burdened by his two younger daughters’ psychological, behavioural and developmental problems.

The discovery that his favourite eldest daughter wanted to move out of the home finally destroyed the family ideal he had held and sent him over the edge, Brunner said. But the prosecution, represented by Ulrich Krättli, went in hard and asserted that the father “had downright massacred his daughter”.

The court found that the brutality was such that Scheragha R deserved a life-sentence, although this was partially reduced because the 53-year-old had confessed to the murder and demonstrated feelings of remorse.

Each of the remaining children will receive between 12,000 and 15,000 francs in compensation for suffering. The murder took place on May 10th 2010, not long after 16-year-old Swera had been picked up at a Zurich police station by her parents. She had been caught stealing cigarettes.

It was the first time the girl had seen her father for two weeks: she had run away after her father had allegedly tried to electrocute her by throwing a hairdryer into the bath, online news site 20 Minuten reported.

Once back at their apartment Swera said she wanted to leave home permanently and started to pack a bag. She then went down to the basement of the building to get a pair of shoes. While she was gone, her father allegedly retrieved an axe from the balcony and hid it in the bedroom he shared with his wife.

Once she was back in the apartment, the girl went into her parents’ bedroom to pick up some of her belongings. When she bent down to retrieve some items from the wardrobe, her father hit her with the axe on the back of the head, the prosecutor says. The man struck his daughter 19 times with the axe: 12 times with the blade and seven with the blunt end.

The teenager did not die instantly, but lay on the ground in agonizing pain for several minutes until her life finally slipped away. After washing his hands, Scheragha R left the apartment and called his wife to say he had killed his daughter. Fifteen minutes later, he called the police, who arrested him shortly after near his apartment.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Greece: Riot Police Warned on Press Attacks

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 17 — Greek police officers have received a written warning from senior officers to stop attacks against journalists, after a veteran photographer was brutally beaten by riot policemen suffered a fractured skull, as daily Athens News reported. “While carrying out police duties, news media professionals must be treated with respect for the role that they must fulfil,” the written notice to officers said. “We must always display understanding and act professionally and responsibly.” Photographer Marios Lolos was seriously injured earlier this month after being confronted by riot police in Syntagma Square, during demonstrations that followed the suicide of retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas. Lolos, who colleague says was struck with the handle of a riot police truncheon, suffered a fractured skull and has still not recovered full use of his left arm. It was the latest in a series of recent incidents that have seen photographers and other news staff beaten by police, in several cases what appeared to be targeted attacks.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Medical Association’s President Probed for Investment Fraud

Investigators say scheme put 500 million euros at risk

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — The president of the Italian physicians’ insurance agency and pension fund Enpam, Eolo Parodi, is being investigated for alleged real estate investment fraud along with three others, police said on Tuesday. Raids on 47 homes, real estate studios, investment brokers and Enpam offices were conducted for probes into the alleged mismanagement of high-risk property acquisitions worth approximately 500 million euros.

Investigations into the president’s alleged misdeeds were initiated in May 2011 at the request of Enpam board members from the Catania, Ferrara, Bologna and Latina branches, and also include abuse of office.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Ex-League Treasurer Belsito Hands Over Gold and Diamonds

200,000 euros in jewels still missing, investigators say

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — The former treasurer of the scandal-plagued Northern League came forth on Tuesday with some of the diamonds and gold bars that were allegedly bought illegally with public election funds, ANSA sources said. Francesco Belsito, under multiple investigations for fraud and money laundering, gave his lawyer gold bullion and diamonds valued at hundreds of thousands of euros. But investigators say that 200,000 euros in diamonds are still unaccounted for. The items handed over Tuesday are said to be 11 gold bars weighing a total of five kilos and 11 packaged diamonds, which were passed on to party representatives who then handed them over to police. Prosecutors said Monday that bank records for the jewels and gold surfaced as part of an investigation into Belsito for allegedly channeling public funds to the family of ex-leader Umberto Bossi, who stepped down at the beginning of April.

Belsito is accused of buying the items along with former Senate Deputy Speaker Rosy Mauro, expelled last week from the party, and League Senator Piergiorgio Stiffoni.

In addition to turning over gold and diamonds, Belsito also handed over an Audi A6 sedan which at one point belonged to Bossi’s son Renzo, who stepped down last week as councillor in the Lombardy regional assembly.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Berlusconi Party Slams Minister Over TV-Frequency Auction

Passera ‘made a mess’ of plan says predecessor Romani

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — Ex-premier and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party on Tuesday slammed Industry Minister Corrado Passera for making “a mess” of a plan to auction off six new digital TV frequencies.

PdL heavyweight and former industry minister Paolo Romani said the approval of the plan, passed by the House finance committee with the PdL voting against, was a “serious” issue which would have to be taken up by a summit of the parties backing the government Tuesday night.

Romani claimed Passera went back on an original draft and framed the new plan, which would reportedly exclude Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire and state broadcaster RAI, with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) over the head of the PdL. The previous Berlusconi-led government was to have given the frequencies free to big media players including RAI and Mediaset in a so-called ‘beauty contest’.

The European Commission on Tuesday voiced approval for the auction plan, saying it would boost competitiveness in the Italian TV sector. Experts say the sale should bring in an estimated 1.2 billion euros for the government, which has imposed stiff austerity measures in a bid to balance the budget next year.

The original beauty contest for the frequencies had been opposed by critics of Berlusconi, who accused him of a conflict of interest.

The row over the frequencies is the latest sign of mounting tension between the PdL and PD over the economic policies of the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, which replaced Berlusconi’s executive at the peak of Italy’s euro debt crisis in November.

The PdL and PD are the main backers of Monti’s government.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Hopes Sponsoring Can Save Cultural Treasures

With the country mired in debt, Italy’s cultural budget has been slashed in recent years, spelling trouble for several historic sites. Many local politicians have turned to corporate sponsorships to raise the money necessary for vital upkeep. The trend has attracted considerable criticism.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Soccer: Radu Denies ‘Fascist Salute’

‘Doesn’t even know what Fascism is’ says Lazio defender’s lawyer

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Stefan Radu on Wednesday told an Italian soccer disciplinary panel he had no intention of making a Fascist salute when he directed a stiff-armed gesture at celebrating fans after Lazio’s 3-1 win over Napoli at the Stadio Olimpico on April 7.

“(Radu) doesn’t even know what Fascism is,” the Romania defender’s lawyer told reporters after the hearing.

The lawyer said he was “convinced” that, even if found guilty, his client would be “let off with a fine”.

Lazio has a section of hard-core rightist fans and former striker Paolo Di Canio was fined for Fascist salutes to them twice in 2005.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



London Celebrates 100-Day Countdown to Olympics

It is 100 days until Britain hosts to the 2012 Olympics games and celebrations have been in full swing. Organizers have been keen to build Olympic fever after some trepidation over London’s ability to stage the event.

Britainmarked the 100-day countdown to the London Olympics on Wednesday with a series of celebrations around the country.

Some 20,000 flowers were planted in the shape of Olympic rings in London’s Kew Gardens and were visible to planes flying into London Heathrow airport. With some 31 out of 42 sports test events completed so far, dress rehearsals for wheelchair rugby, synchronised swimming and shooting were also scheduled to take place on Wednesday.

“There is a groundswell of support and excitement, not just in the UK, but internationally as the final countdown to the London 2012 Olympic Games begins,” former Olympic gold medallist and London Games chairman Sebastian Coe told reporters at Kew Gardens.

“Whether it’s the competing athletes or people getting ready to join their communities in supporting torchbearers on the streets of the UK, the whole world is getting ready for London.” “Expectations are high, and we won’t disappoint,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norway: Judges Right to Let Killer Have His Say: Survivors

Anders Behring Breivik must be allowed to speak about what pushed him to kill 77 people in Norway last year, even if it is painful to hear, survivors and relatives of the victims say.

Telling the court on Tuesday that he “would have done it again” if he could, Breivik read a prepared text on his xenophobic and anti-Islam ideology for an hour and 13 minutes, much longer than the 30 minutes initially granted.

Chief judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen occasionally reminded Breivik to wrap up quickly and tone down his comments, but nonetheless allowed him to finish, a decision backed by survivors and relatives of the victims at the courthouse.

“He was allowed to finish yesterday, which was important for the court to be able to determine who he really is, why and how he was radicalized to the point of becoming a terrorist,” Trond Henry Blattmann, the head of a support group for the families of victims killed in the July 22 twin attacks, told AFP.

“Breivik has been treated correctly, in line with existing legal principles in Norway,” he added. The head of the Norwegian Lawyers’ Association, Berit Reiss-Andersen, agreed. “He’s being treated like any other accused in Norway,” she told AFP, saying that was absolutely crucial.

“Of course, he could have been stopped occasionally on some of the sensitive points, but the important thing was for the court to hear him. Especially to determine whether or not he can be held accountable for his actions,” Blattmann said on Wednesday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norway: ‘The Knights Templar Doesn’t Exist as You Describe It’

Lawyers rubbish claims mass killer Breivik was part of militant group

Lawyers in the trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik today set about rubbishing his claims that he was part of a sophisticated anti-Muslim militant group.

Prosecutors said they believed the 33-year-old’s so-called Knights Templar group did not exist ‘in the way he describes it’.

Breivik grew visibly irritated and refused to answer questions about the group, as his trial on terror charges for the massacre of 77 people entered its third day.

He insisted the group did exist and blamed police in ‘not doing a good enough job in uncovering it’.

He added: ‘It is not in my interest to shed light on details that could lead to arrests.’

Observers said the issue was of key importance in determining Breivik’s sanity.

It could ultimately decide where he is sent to prison or compulsory psychiatric care for the bomb-and-shooting massacre that shocked Norway on July 22, 2011.

Breivik claims to have carried out the attacks on behalf of the organisation, which he described in a 1,500-page compendium posted online before the attacks as a militant nationalist group fighting a Muslim colonization of Europe.

Prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh pressed him about details on the group, its members and its meetings.

Breivik claimed to have met a Serb ‘war hero’ living in exile during a trip to Liberia in 2002, but he refused to identify him.

‘What is it you’re getting at?’ Breivik told the prosecutor, then answered the question himself, saying prosecutors want to ‘sow doubt over whether the KT network exists’.

The main point of his defence is to avoid an insanity ruling, which would deflate his political arguments.

One psychiatric evaluation found him psychotic and ‘delusional’, while another found him mentally competent to be sent to prison.

If found sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society.

If declared insane he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he’s considered ill.

Breivik also refused to give details on what he claims was the founding session of the Knights Templar in London in 2002.

He conceded, however, that he embellished somewhat in the manifesto when he described the other three members at the founding session as ‘brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe’.

Breivik testified that he had used ‘pompous’ language and described them instead as ‘four people with great integrity’.

Bejer Engh challenged him on whether the meeting had taken place at all. He replied: ‘Yes, there was a meeting in London. I haven’t made up anything. What is in the compendium is correct.’

Later, he answered with more nuance, adding: ‘There is nothing that is made up, but you have to see what is written in a context. It is a glorification of certain ideals.’

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Real Estate: Berlin Rivals London in Attracting Greek Money

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 17 — Greek capital transfers for the purchase of property abroad, particularly Germany, have acquired a steady pace in recent months, daily Kathimerini reports. “We are doing business with people interested in properties that are taxed less and yield higher returns than those at home,” says ImmoConsult’s Konstantin Vollbach. He notes, however, that most prospecting investors find it hard to sell a property they own in Greece in order to buy one abroad because of lack of interest and low prices. “Most investors have sums of around 250,000-300,000 euros and make up for the remaining required amount with a bank loan. As a rule, the preferred city is Berlin, where prices are relatively low compared to other cities,” Vollbach says. One of the main advantages of the German property market is easy access to financing. Banks cover up to 50% of the value of the property but tend to be particularly strict in scrutinizing the legitimacy of the origin of the funds transferred. London has traditionally been the top preference of Greek property investors, who account for about 3% of foreign purchases. The trend has tended to abate in recent months, in favor of cheaper destinations, including France, Switzerland and Turkey — which offers a wide price differential. According to Greek realtors, the average annual return of a local apartment now stands at 2-3%.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Museum Evacuated After ‘Racist’ Bomb Threat

A Stockholm museum was evacuated on Tuesday afternoon after receiving a “racially motivated” bomb threat, just days after a controversial piece of artwork had been revealed. Stockholm’s Moderna Museet received the call on Tuesday at 4pm, directly after Queen Silvia and the Finnish prime-minister’s wife Jenni Haukio had been visiting.

“The person who rang spoke English and said that there was a bomb and that it wasn’t a joke. He said the museum was a racist one,” said Lotta Guffhe of the Stockholm police to Aftonbladet newspaper.

The building was evacuated and a bomb squad was called in, complete with sniffer dogs. By 8pm, the police confirmed that the threat was false. The Moderna Museet has caught the public’s attention in Sweden this week after the Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth carved up a cake depicting a naked black woman.

The move by the minister, who claimed her actions were “misinterpreted”, sparked outrage amongst the National Afro-Swedish Association, resulting in spokesperson Kitimbwa Sabuni calling for the minister’s dismissal.

As part of the installation, which was reportedly meant to highlight the issue of female circumcision, the culture minister began cutting a large cake shaped like a black woman, symbolically starting at the clitoris.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Macedonia: Mysterious ‘Army’ Threatens ‘Liberation of Albanian Lands’

Skopje, 17 April (AKI) — Tensions were high in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on Tuesday, less than a week after the murder of five Macedonians near the capital of Skopje, as a mysterious “army” threatened a “liberation of occupied Albanian lands”

Recently unknown “The Army for Liberation of Occupied Albanian Lands”, in a statement published by Macedonian media, gave the government an ultimatum to withdraw in two weeks from what it called “occupied Albanians lands” or face reprisals.

The “army’ said it has decided at the meeting of its “general staff” it would attack “Slavo-Macedonian police and military structures” if they don’t withdraw from the territory inhabited by ethnic Albanians.

Ethnic Albanians, who make about 25 percent of Macedonia’s two million population, are concentrated mostly in the west of the country bordering Albania, but there are numerous cities, like Skopje, with mixed population.

Five Macedonian youths and a middle aged man were killed last week near a lake north of Skopje while fishing and local media speculated the murders were ethnically motivated.

The police still haven’t discovered the perpetrators and about one thousand Macedonians protested in Skopje Monday evening, smashing windows on the government building and clashing with police.

Six people, including three policemen, were injured in the clashes and fourteen protesters were arrested as police blocked demonstrators from marching onto Albanian section of the city.

Ethnic Albanians rebelled in 2001, demanding more rights and regional autonomy, gaining concessions from the government under international mediation. But tensions have been running high ever since.

Macedonians are Slavs and the mysterious army has accused prime minister Nikola Gruevski of “daily violations of the rights of Albanians”, of “spreading anti-Albanian ideology, staging attacks on innocent Albanians and of blocking Albanian villages”.

“We have been silent long enough, the silence is now over,” the statement said. It vowed to “revenge brothers” and to “respond on fire with fire, an eye for an eye and an arm for an arm”.

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

Mediterranean Union


EU Launches ‘ENPARD’ For Southern Neighbours

Supports agricolture in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 17 — ENPARD is the new programme launched by the EU aiming to support agriculture and rural development in the southern Mediterranean, as part of its response to the Arab Spring under the renewed European Neighbourhood Policy.

According to the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), with the launch of this programme the EU aims to meet the needs of Southern Mediterranean countries and to further a more inclusive growth, through the identification and implementation of operations that can be funded under its new SPRING programme and that answer three objectives: to improve farmers’ revenue and rural employment, in particular among young people; to increase the productivity of production systems, improving at the same time the quality of products and the capacity to adapt to changes; to reinforce organizational and institutional capacities and adherence to the operational principles of good governance. To achieve these objectives, a multi-annual work programme will be set through a dialogue with national partners.

The Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier of the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Studies (IAMM-CIHEAM) has been tasked with the mission of accompanying this initiative in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan. This mission will last 30 months (January 2012-June 2014) and will be divided into two phases: a preparatory phase to identify the initiatives to be reinforced and to prepare the countries’ action plans by June 2012; the second phase will include the starting of a national dialogue to implement ENPARD by June 2014.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egyptian Presidential Hopefuls Banned

The candidates that were barred from standing in the upcoming Egyptian elections have lost their appeals, marking another twist in the Egyptian presidency saga.

Ten candidates in the Egyptian presidential election, including Hosni Mubarak’s spy chief Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat el-Shater and Islamic preacher Hazem Abu Ismail, lost appeals Tuesday against their disqualification.

“All appeals have been rejected because nothing new was offered in the appeal requests,” a member of the investigating judicial committee said.

The committee had spent all day hearing the candidates’ appeals. The three individuals were banned from standing for different reasons.

Suleiman was barred because of his failure to get enough endorsements from all 15 provinces, as the law demands.

Shater was rejected because of a law that stipulates that candidates linked to criminal activity in the past cannot stand in elections until they have been released or pardoned for six years; he was imprisoned last year for terrorism and money laundering.

Abu Ismail was disqualified because his mother holds a foreign passport. Election rules say that the parents of candidates must be solely Egyptian citizens.

The development is a boost for the country’s secular liberals and for other Islamists standing in the election.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized political organization in Egypt, is still in the race. Mohamed Mursi, who heads the group’s political party, was nominated as a back-up candidate in the event of Shater’s disqualification.

The presidential election is scheduled to kick off with a first round of voting on May 23 and 24. Commentators expect that to lead to a run-off in June between the top two candidates. The ruling military council is scheduled to transfer power to the new president on July 1.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Group of 100 Tunisians Kidnapped Close to Libyan Border

(AGI) Tunis — Some 100 Tunisian workers were kidnapped on Monday in north-western Lybia’s Zauia, close to the Tunisian border. The incident was reported by the Tunisian Human Rights League.

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



Italian Hostage Freed in Algeria

Maria Sandra Mariani kidnapped last year by Al Qaeda affiliate

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — Italian hostage in Algeria Maria Sandra Mariani was freed on Tuesday, the Italian foreign ministry confirmed. “She is free. I have just informed her family. I join them in their great happiness and relief over this wonderful news,” said Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi. Mariani, a 54-year-old tourist, was in the hands of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which seized her in the Algerian Sahara near the border with Niger last February.

The Italian foreign ministry has been closely following the case, under tight reporting restrictions, with Algerian authorities.

AQIM, who have staged several kidnappings in the area between Mali, Mauritania and Niger in the last several years, had not issued any known demands for Mariani’s release.

The kidnapping was the first in Algeria since 2003, when 32 Western tourists were taken hostage.

Mariani is not believed to have been the initial target of the AQIM group that came into a tourist camp at Alidena, 2,000 km south of Algiers, reportedly looking for a party of Westerners.

Mariani, from Tuscany, had been going to the Djanet oasis city for five years, for spells of one or two months.

The foreign ministry is still working to free Italian aid worker Rossella Urru, abducted on October 23 in southwestern Algeria.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turks to Get Same Rights in Europe’s Economy as EU Residents — Commission Decision Taken Last Week — Brussels Bringing Turkey Into EU Under the Radar

Detailed plans to extend the same rights to Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Israel

The Slog has obtained sight of an official Brussels Commission document which, while not confidential, has not as far as I can tell been the subject of MSM coverage, or indeed any vote at all among MEPs. Although dated March 30th 2012 as a ‘proposal for a decision’, I can reveal that the decision has been approved and is already going ahead. It is to grant Turkish citizens the same residency and labour rights in Europe as existing EU citizens.

The unelected European Commission has repealed the 1980 Ankara Accord between what was then the EEC and Turkey, and replaced it with a major change to the rights of Turkish citizens in the EU. The proposal was presented to a working group (we know not who) eleven days ago on March 30th, and approved by that same anonymous gathering. It specifically adds that ‘A first package with similar proposals in respect of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Israel was adopted by the Council in October 2010’ and that this too will be updated to bring it into line with the Turkish proposals.

I was certainly not aware of the October 2010 ‘package’, and I doubt very much if even the eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party is up to speed with the fact that this Turkish grant of rights is about to pass quietly into law — as so many of these lunatic Commission decisions have a tendency to do. But the clauses in relation to non-eurozone members like the UK (already sinking under the weight of unrestricted migration) are truly mind-boggling. For example: (my emphasis)

‘this [Turkish accord] will facilitate the application of these provisions by Member States’ social security institutions. This Decision shall apply:

(a) to Turkish workers who are or have been legally employed in the territory of a

Member State and who are or have been subject to the legislation of one or more

Member States, and their survivors;

(b) to the members of the family of workers referred to in point (a) provided that these

family members are or have been legally resident with the worker concerned while

the worker is employed in a Member State;

This gives Home Secretary Theresa May-and-very-probably-will something of a problem: despite her protestations of ‘cracking down’ on migrant numbers and the rights of their dependents, as a Member State Britain will have to obey the diktat. Does Theresa even know about it, I ask?

I do not employ the phrase ‘ lunatic Commission decisions’ above lightly. Any unelected and yet sovereign body happy to take on the welfare needs of these workers at a time of euro meltdown must be deranged at least. To enumerate the idiocy involved here:…

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Cyprus, Israel Discuss Exploitation of Hydrocarbons

Announcement of the two Foreign Ministers, accord soon

(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, APRIL 17 — The Cypriot and the Israeli Foreign Ministers discussed here today the issue of shared development and exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits in the cross median line of the two countries and a mutual agreement soon to be signed between the two sides. The Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman, in Cyprus on a two-day official visit, today met with his Cypriot counterpart Erato Kozakou Markoullis. Speaking to the press after the meeting which lasted an hour, as CNA reports, Markoullis said they had a discussion on some of the pending agreements currently under negotiation, “especially the one on the shared development and exploitation of hydrocarbon reservoirs in the cross median line”, noting that “we are in the final stages of the negotiations on this agreement and hopefully soon we will have the opportunity to sign it”. She described the visit of the Israeli FM and the talks they had today as an indication of the very high level of bilateral relations and of what the two countries have achieved during the past two years, especially with the exchange of visits and the signing of very important agreements and cooperation in a number of very important areas. The two Ministers also discussed other regional issues, the situation in the Middle East, the Cyprus problem and threats from Turkey as well as the situation in the countries of the Arab spring. Lieberman described the discussion very fruitful and expressed his satisfaction over the fact that a lot of tourists from Israel visit Cyprus, hoping that this tourist flow will increase. The Israeli FM said that they discussed water management and energy issues, stressing that “we will have more investments and more activities in these fields”. He expressed hope that both sides will reach an agreement on double taxation and the protection of investment, saying that the Israeli Finance Minister is expected to visit Nicosia in the coming months, “to accelerate on these talks regarding economic issues”. Regarding the situation in the region, Lieberman said that both Nicosia and Tel Aviv monitor the situation very closely and “hope to see a peaceful transition period in all our neighboring countries”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Bahrain: Amnesty Report, More Human Rights Violations

Reforms lacking, abuse victims have not received justice

(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 17 — Human rights violations in Bahrain are continuing and the reforms implemented risk appearing hollow, according to a report published today by Amnesty International, as the emirate prepares to host the Formula 1 Grand Prix next weekend, after last year’s race was suspended because of the uprising in the country. In the 58-page document, entitled “Bahrain: Flawed reforms and absence of justice for protesters”, Amnesty reports that the reforms have not ensured justice for the victims of human rights violations, despite the government’s insistence that it would learn its lesson from the disorder of February and March 2011. “While the world’s eyes are focussing on Bahrain as it prepares to host the Formula 1 Grand Prix, no-one should be under the misapprehension that the human rights crisis has passed,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “The authorities are trying to depict a country on the road to reforms, but we continue to receive new of torture and of excessive and unnecessary use of force against protesters,” Sahraoui said. “The reforms have only scratched the surface”.

Following last November’s publication of the report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), known as the “Bassiouni Commission”, Amnesty International has concluded that, despite a few institutional and other reforms, the government’s overall response has been inadequate. The special department set up to assess the work of the security forces responsible for human rights violations against protesters is lacking independence and impartiality and no member of the security forces has been called to answer for their actions, while dozens of prisoners, detained after unfair trials, are still in prison and subject to torture and ill treatment. The report, which is available in English on Amnesty’s website (http://www.amnesty.it), says that the actions of the country’s security forces have remained largely unchanged. Amnesty International has asked the Bahraini government to release immediately and without conditions all political prisoners and to ensure that all individuals suspected of torture and killings, including those with responsibility for such individuals, be called to answer for their actions.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Exclusive: Iran Ships “Off Radar” As Tehran Conceals Oil Sales

LONDON (Reuters) — Iran is concealing the destination of its oil sales by disabling tracking systems aboard its tanker fleet, making it difficult to assess how much crude Tehran is exporting as it seeks to counter Western sanctions aimed at cutting its oil revenues.

Most of Iran’s 39-strong fleet of tankers is now “off-radar” after Tehran ordered captains in the National Iranian Tanker Co (NITC) to switch off the black box transponders that are used in the shipping industry to monitor vessel movements, oil industry, trading and shipping sources said.

“Iran, helped by its customers, is trying to obfuscate as much as possible,” said a senior executive at a national oil company that has done business with Iran.

And Iran may have countered a reported reduction in its oil sales in March by offering big discounts in the form of free freight, finance and insurance and generous credit terms, the sources said.

Europe’s July 1 oil embargo, and U.S. and European financial sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program have seen Tehran’s oil sales drop to most Western destinations and drawn promises from some Asian buyers that they will cut purchases.

But cheap, covert sales may have curbed or even reversed the reduction in shipments, the sources say.

Discretion is paramount.

Ship captains steering NITC supertankers have switched off recognition systems and customers are keeping business strictly under wraps.

“People are being very secretive right now. They are not talking about this on email, Yahoo or mobile,” said the head of a crude oil desk at a top oil trading houses.

A Reuters’ survey of the Iranian fleet via the ship tracking system AIS (Automatic Identification System) Live shows only seven of its 25 very large crude carriers are still operating on-board transponders, allowing computers to track vessels.

Only two of NITC’s nine smaller Suezmax size tankers now have their tracking systems in operation, shipping sources say.

“NITC oil tankers are going to operate in stealth mode,” said a shipping official, who declined to be identified.

Under normal circumstances, tankers would generally not turn off their tracking systems, which were introduced to improve safety at sea and allow marine authorities to locate vessels.

Ships are obliged by international law to have a satellite tracking device on board when travelling at sea. However, a ships’ master has the discretion to turn off the device on safety grounds with the permission on the vessel’s flag state.

Some tankers turned off their trackers to avoid detection last year during the Libyan civil war in order to trade with the Gaddafi government.

As sanctions make it harder to pay for and ship oil from Iran, it is increasingly difficult to gauge how much is moving out of the country’s main terminal at Kharg Island.

Iran’s Oil Minister, Rostam Qasemi, has said Tehran’s crude exports are steady at last year’s rate of 2.2 million barrels per day. But that has been hard to square with tanker tracker data and market intelligence.

Expert opinion is that Iran’s visible crude oil sales fell to about 1.9 million bpd in March.

These calculations are backed by some of the best oil industry forecasters in the business including the International Energy Agency and Geneva-based Petrologistics, the respected tanker tracking consultant which monitors global oil shipments.

New estimates for April put Iranian exports down by as much as 500,000 bpd from last year.

The trouble is there is no hard evidence that Iran’s oil production has actually fallen or that it is going into storage.

Millions of barrels of Iranian oil that were in storage in Iranian tankers a few weeks ago now seem to have disappeared, ship tracking data shows.

So where is it going? Has it been re-routed, has production been shut in or is the oil being stored somewhere else? Is it all being stored at sea?

“It’s the million-dollar question — the billion-dollar question even,” a senior executive in Asia at a large oil trading house said.

The hunt is getting more complicated as OPEC’s second biggest producer comes up with a range of tactics to avoid scrutiny.

“Some big Asian companies may be taking oil on Iranian ships provided they switch off the transponders,” said another European shipping industry source.

A trader in Singapore said Iran has managed to sell all the crude stored on half a dozen vessels floating off Singapore earlier in the year. The buyers were mainly Chinese and South Korean.

Given the lack of visibility of NITC’s fleet, it will become increasingly difficult to measure floating storage. Industry sources say parts of the fleet were storing up to 12 million barrels of crude in March. That has now disappeared.

An NITC official, contacted by Reuters, declined to comment. NITC have declined to give press interviews for several weeks…

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Jordan’s Parliament Bans the Muslim Brotherhood’s Party

Under the country’s proposed political parties law, parties based on religion and ethnicity are banned. The Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood’s and the main opposition party, will thus be excluded from the next parliamentary elections.

Amman (AsiaNews/ Agencies) — The Jordanian parliament has banned the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the country’s main opposition party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. In the lower house, 46 out of 83 members yesterday voted to outlaw any political party based on religion or ethnicity. Now the vote goes to the upper house for final approval. Effectively, this means that the IAF will not be able to take part in next parliamentary elections.

For the leaders of the Islamist movement, the government is trying to silence the opposition to ensure the continued dominance of tribal groups loyal to the regime.

“This is only the latest in a series of measures by deputies to limit the influence of political parties and any dissenting views in parliament,” Zaki Bani Rsheid, head of the IAF’s politburo, said.

“We believe all Jordanian citizens-not only Islamists-should have the right to form a political party without conditions,” he added.

The proposal was made by Mamdouh Abbadi, deputy speaker of the lower house, and is part of a draft political parties bill presented to parliament in response to last year’s Arab spring protests by pro-democracy parties and later embraced by the Islamist opposition.

Starting on14 January 2011, people began protesting against poverty, youth unemployment and corruption with demonstrations continuing until the present.

Faced with the emergency, King Abdullah II changed prime minister twice. Then Prime Minister Samir Rifai resigned in February 2011 after two weeks of protests amidst accusations of corruption. His successor, Marouf Bakhit, who held office in 2005, quit on 17 October 2011 also because of corruption charges.

Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh, a judge and former vice president of the International Court of Justice, is the current prime minister.

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



Muslim Brotherhood Plans to Take Over Kuwait by 2013: Khalfan

KUWAIT: General Dhahi Ben Khalfan, Dubai Police Director General, warned of the dangers against ruling systems in the Gulf by the Muslim Brotherhood, after their successes in a number of Arab countries.

His information to the media extended to saying that the Muslim Brotherhood are conspiring against the GCC ruling systems, and they will be in control by the year 2016.

He said they will start with Kuwait in 2013.

“They are concerned only with ruling chairs and have nothing to do with implementing Islamic Jurisprudence. Whoever become one of them after they ruled Egypt is a traitor. They are also secret soldiers for America and they are executing plans to create tension,” he said.

Additionally, he described them as corrupt and very far from religion. He said they are morre dangerous for the GCC countries than Iran.

Khalfan released some declarations lately which met reactions in most of the GCC states and particularly in Kuwait. General Dhahi Ben Khalfan has a high ranking post, and people are not used to a man in his position speaking publicly. -Al-Watan

           — Hat tip: RR [Return to headlines]



Saudi to Create 12,000 Security Jobs for Women

(ANSAmed) — GEDDA, APRIL 18 — Saudi Arabia plans to generate 12,000 job opportunities for female security guards over the next five years, it has been reported. The scheme, which will be implemented by Jeddah’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), is part of the gulf state’s government’s drive to get more Saudi nationals working in jobs, Arabian Business online reports.

The chamber will meet with the Minister of Labour, Adel Fakieh, at the end of April to discuss ways to encourage both male and female Saudi citizens to work as security guards, said Abdul Hadi Al-Qahtani, chairman of the security guard committee at the JCCI.

“We’re determined to remove all obstacles security guards face in the private sector and we will ensure that proper regulations are in place to serve this purpose,” he added. Saudi Arabia, the most populous nation in the GCC, is one of the few countries in the world where strict gender segregation is still largely enforced.

While Saudi women are permitted to work in some cases, social convention prevents them from driving cars and forbids them from associating with unrelated males and taking part in a large array of other social activities.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spengler: Recall Notice for the Turkish Model

Among all the dumb things said about the so-called Arab Spring last year, perhaps the dumbest was the idea that the new democracies of the Arab world might follow the Turkish model.

In fact, if you had invested in the Turkish model (that is, in the Turkish stock market) at the outbreak of the Arab revolts, you would have lost about half your money. If you leave your money in Turkey, you probably will lose the rest of it. Turkey is not a model. It is a bubble, and it is bursting, starting with the stock market and national currency.

Full disclosure: I shorted the Turkish market after I published my obituary for the country’s economic boom (see “Instant Obsolescence of the Turkish model”, Asia Times Online, August 10, 2011). And I was denounced as a Zionist plotter in the Turkish media. As a matter of record, I wish to state that I am shorting Turkey not for any political motivation, but only because the Turkish government economic policy is a clown show. I make a point, however, of contributing some of the profits to Zionist causes…

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



Syria: As Rebels and Regime Violate the Ceasefire, Kofi Annan’s Plan Collapses

Speaking to AsiaNews, sources describe a chaotic, unstable and dangerous situation. Extremists who flocked to Syria only to kill are among the opposition. UN-Arab League observers begin their mission.

Damascus (AsiaNews) — “Kofi Annan’s ceasefire has failed. Fewer deaths were reported in the first two days, but now shooting has restarted. More than 50 people were killed yesterday in clashes between the military and rebel groups,” sources told AsiaNews. They describe the situation in Syria as “chaotic, unstable and dangerous. [. . .] An Assad government official told us that neither side wants to end the violence. The war will last for a long time.”

Six observers from the joint UN-Arab League arrived in Syria yesterday. Their task is to monitor the ceasefire that came into effect on 12 April, and to implement Kofi Annan’s peace plan.

Today, after setting up their operational base the officials began contacting regime officials and rebel leaders. When the team sent by United Nations Security Council is up to full strength, it will have 250 members.

Annan’s plan calls for an end to the violence, gradual implementation of the ceasefire, shipment of humanitarian aid, release of people held without trial, free movement for journalists, and political talks between the government and the opposition.

Despite the best efforts by the UN-Arab league envoy to broker talks between the Assad government and rebels, sources say that people inside the country are pessimistic about its future. Even the capital Damascus is affected by explosions, clashes and violence.

“As described in the media, the opposition does not exist,” sources say. “Rebels are divided in various factions. They include groups of common criminals moving around the country, and foreign terrorists who have come to Syria only to kill.”

“The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is considered the opposition’s official representative, but in reality it is just one many armed groups fighting against the regime,” the sources added. “Both sides are violating the ceasefire. (S.C.)

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



Yemen: Drone Strike Kills ‘At Least 7’ Militants

Sanaa, 17 April (AKI) — At least seven Al-Qaeda militants were killed early Tuesday during an overnight drone attack in different locations in southern Yemen, according to news reports.

The strikes took place in Yemen’s southern Shabwa province, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The drone strike hit several militant hideouts, training facilities and arsenals in the insurgent-controlled town of Azzan, around 150 kilometres east of Ataq, the provincial capital of Shabwa, the report said.

Among the dead are “foreign jihadist leaders,” from Syria and Algeria, the report said, citing unnamed security officials.

The Yemeni Defence Ministry on Monday said at least 11 militants were killed in a drone strike on Saturday.

The United States is increasingly depending on unmanned armed aircraft to target militants.

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

South Asia


150 Afghan Schoolgirls Seriously Ill After Being Poisoned in Anti-Education Attack by Muslim Extremists

Ultra-conservative extremists have been blamed for poisoning the drinking water at a high school in north Afghanistan — making more than 150 girls seriously ill.

Students in the northern province of Kunduz suffered nausea and vomiting and some were left in a critical condition, a government education chief said.

Radicals who are fiercely opposed to female education may have carried out the attack — the official added.

Some of girls were allowed home after hospital treatment, but many remain unwell.

‘We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk in their classes was poisoned. This is either the work of those who are against girls’ education or some other irresponsible armed individuals,’ said Jan Mohammad Nabizada, a spokesman for education department in northern Takhar province.

They said they knew the water had been poisoned because a larger tank used to fill the affected water jugs was not contaminated.

‘This is not a natural illness. It’s an intentional act to poison schoolgirls,’ said Haffizullah Safi, head of Takhar’s public health department.

Since the overthrowing of the Taliban government in 2001, females have largely returned to schools especially in Kabul.

The Taliban had enforced a six-year ban on education for women and girls between 1996 and 2001.

There are now thought to be around 2.7 million girls in school, compared to only a few thousand under Taliban rule.

Girls, teachers and school buildings frequently suffer attacks from insurgents; usually in the more conservative south and east of the country where radicals draw most of their support.

Government officials have not blamed any particular group for the attack, fearing retribution.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



How Pakistan Makes US Pay for Afghan War

By Dilip Hiro

The following ingredients should go a long way to produce a political thriller. Mr M, a jihadi in an Asian state, has emerged as the mastermind of a terrorist attack in a neighboring country, which killed six Americans. After sifting through a vast cache of intelligence and obtaining a legal clearance, the State Department announces a $10 million bounty for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Mr M promptly appears at a press conference and says, “I am here. America should give that reward money to me.”

A State Department spokesperson explains lamely that the reward is meant for incriminating evidence against Mr M that would stand up in court. The prime minister of M’s home state condemns foreign interference in his country’s internal affairs. In the midst of this imbroglio, the US decides to release $1.18 billion in aid to the cash-strapped government of the defiant prime minister to persuade him to reopen supply lines for US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces bogged down in the hapless neighboring Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Alarmingly, this is anything but fiction or a plot for an upcoming international sitcom. It is a brief summary of the latest development in the fraught relations between the US and Pakistan, two countries locked into an uneasy embrace since September 12, 2001.

Mr M is Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a 62-year-old former academic with a tapering, hennaed beard, and the founder of the Lashkar-e Taiba (the Army of the Pure, or LeT), widely linked to several outrageously audacious terrorist attacks in India.

The LeT was formed in 1987 as the military wing of the Jammat-ud Dawa religious organization (Society of the Islamic Call, or JuD) at the instigation of the Pakistani army’s formidable intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The JuD owes its existence to the efforts of Saeed, who founded it in 1985 following his return to his native Lahore after two years of advanced Islamic studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the guidance of that country’s grand mufti, Shaikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz.

On its formation, the LeT joined the seven-year-old anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, an armed insurgency directed and supervised by the ISI with funds and arms supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Saudis. Once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the Army of the Pure turned its attention to a recently launched anti-Indian jihad in Indian-administered Kashmir and beyond.

The terrorist attacks attributed to it range from the devastating multiple assaults in Mumbai in November 2008, which resulted in 166 deaths, including those six Americans, to a foiled attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi in December 2001, and a successful January 2010 attack on the airport in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar.

In January 2002, in the wake of Washington’s launching of the “war on terror”, Pakistan formally banned the LeT, but in reality did little to curb its violent cross-border activities. Saeed remains its final authority. In a confession, offered as part of a plea bargain after his arrest in October 2009 in Chicago, David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American operative of LeT involved in planning the Mumbai carnage, said: “Hafiz Saeed had full knowledge of the Mumbai attacks and they were launched only after his approval.”

In December 2008, the United Nations Security Council declared the JuD a front organization for the banned LeT. The provincial Punjab government then placed Saeed under house arrest using the Maintenance of Public Order law. But six months later, the Lahore High Court declared his confinement unconstitutional.

In August 2009, Interpol issued a Red Corner Notice, essentially an international arrest warrant, against Saeed in response to Indian requests for his extradition. Saeed was again put under house arrest but in October the Lahore High Court quashed all charges against him due to lack of evidence.

It is common knowledge that Pakistani judges, fearing for their lives, generally refrain from convicting high-profile jihadis with political connections. When, in the face of compelling evidence, a judge has no option but to order the sentence enjoined by the law, he must either live under guard afterwards or leave the country.

Such was the case with Judge Pervez Ali Shah who tried Mumtaz Qadri, the jihadi bodyguard who murdered Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer for backing an amendment to the indiscriminately applied blasphemy law. Soon after sentencing Qadri to capital punishment last October, Shah received several death threats and was forced into self-exile.

Aware of the failures of the Pakistani authorities to convict Saeed, US agencies seemed to have checked and cross-checked the authenticity of the evidence they had collected on him before the State Department announced, on April 2, its reward for his arrest. This was nothing less than an implied declaration of Washington’s lack of confidence in the executive and judicial organs of Pakistan.

Little wonder that Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani took umbrage, describing the US bounty as blatant interference in his country’s domestic affairs. Actually, this is nothing new. It is an open secret that, in the ongoing tussle between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his bete noire, army chief of staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, the Barack Obama administration has always backed the civilian head of state. That, in turn, has been a significant factor in Gilani’s stay in office since March 2008, longer than any other prime minister in Pakistan’s history…

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



India: New Delhi Ready to Launch a Nuclear Missile That Can Reach China

The Agni-V will have a range of over 5 thousand miles and can reach all of Asia and some parts of Europe. If the launch proves successful, India will become the seventh country with intercontinental ballistic missiles in its arsenal, along with the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France and Israel.

Mumbai (AsiaNews / Agencies) — India is ready to test Agni-V, a long-range nuclear missile, capable of reaching across Asia (including China) and the eastern parts of Europe. In fact, the rocket will have a range of over 5 thousand miles and will be launched from Wheeler Island in the eastern state of Orissa. If the launch were to be successful, India would become the seventh country to have intercontinental ballistic missiles in its arsenal, thus joining the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France and Israel.

Costing more than 2.5 billion rupees (480 million dollars), Agni-V is 17.5 meters long and weighs 50 tons. It carries a single nuclear warhead weighing up to 1.5 tons that can penetrate up to China.

While waiting for the launch, the Indian authorities continue to insist that the country has a policy of “no first strike” and that the country’s missile program is purely defensive. However, many consider this launch a way to assert India’s supremacy in Asia. “This missile — said Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy commodore and analyst of the National Maritime Foundation in New Delhi — will neutralize the threat of China and create equality between the two countries.”

The Agni missile (the name of the Hindu god of fire) is the spearhead of the Indian arsenal and one of the most sophisticated weapons. The first was tested in 2002 and had a radius of 700 kilometers.

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



India: Series of ‘Acid Attacks’, But Cops Inactive

NAGPUR: A brief entry on April 15 at the Ajni police station diary is all that cops have to show for a series of attacks on girls with a corrosive liquid, suspected to be acid, that leads to deep irritation and burning sensation.

The incidents took place at Kunjilal Peth, Chandramani Nagar and Rameshwari in the southern part of the city. Though the pain has subsided, the girls are still running scared. One of them told TOI, “Fear of the unknown assailants has compelled us to remain passive, instead of register offence.”

This is the second acid attack within a month. In the earlier incident, a woman professor suffered serious burns after her jilted lover threw acid on her near Telangkhedi. The culprit was let off with simple preventive action by Ambazari cops as the woman’s kin were not interested in lodging a complaint.

In the latest case too, police have cited the same excuse of uninterested complainants to wash their hands of any responsibility.

Puja (name changed), a first year student, said the incident took place in Kunjilal Peth when she was returning with family members from a programme. “Initially, I smelled thinner, then suddenly I started feeling the burning sensation on my back. The pain was so much that tears started flowing out of my eyes,” said Puja. She said the culprit seemed to have a spray can in his hand. “What surprised me was that the culprits were in no hurry to leave the place,” said the girl.

Puja says a neighbour too was attacked and sustained a big reddish swollen burn on her back. “We did not want to report the matter but approached the cops with the help of a neighbour to ensure the perpetrators do not feel they can get away with it,” said the student of arts.

A similar attack also took place on a girl in a mob at a fair at Chandramani Nagar. She was taken to Government Medical College and Hospital by cops after she raised an alarm. Similar incidents have also taken place at Rameshwari.

Assistant commissioner of police (Ajni) GM Sakharkar said that he would look into the matter. “It is a serious issue,” he said.

Former district government pleader Prashant Sathianathan said that police are bound to register an offence of cognisable nature upon being informed by a complaint under section 154 of Criminal Procedure code. “If the victim is ready to furnish a statement and there is a medical evidence then police can always register a complaint and start an enquiry,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Indonesia: Aceh’s New Governor Zaini Abdullah Pledges More Sharia

With his deputy Muzakir Manaf, Abdullah will run the province for the next five years (2012-2017) after winning 55.75 per cent of the vote. His programme includes fighting corruption and full implementation of Sharia in Indonesia’s most extremist province.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — For the second time in its recent history, the Indonesian province of Aceh will be led by a former separatist rebel leader. Zaini Abdullah, a doctor who spent many years in exile in Sweden, won by a landslide (55.75 per cent) the election of 9 April. He will take the place of outgoing Governor Irwandi Yusuf, also a former separatist leader. Together with his deputy Muzakir Manaf, Abdullah will be responsible for policy-making and administration in a province, where Islam is extending its grip on society in more radical and fundamentalist ways. Both ran for the newly established Aceh Party.

Until a few years ago, Zaini Abdullah topped Indonesia’s most wanted list. He was forced to flee to Sweden in 1981, where he spent the subsequent 24 years. In exile, he was the ‘foreign minister’ for the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) under the late Hasan Tiro, a hero to many Aceh nationalists.

Last night, the new governor gave a brief speech to his supporters in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. He told them that he would fight corruption, one of the most serious problems afflicting Indonesian society, and that he would fully implement Islamic law.

Indonesia is famous for its moralisation campaigns in the name of Sharia and Islamic customs. In Aceh, the latter have taken on a special character. Recently for example, a proposal was made to ban short skirts, local ulema launched a moralisation campaign against yoga and tobacco, and police cracked down on people wearing jeans and tight skirts.

During the fight between the pro-independence GAM and Indonesian Special Forces sent by then President Suharto, who ran the country from 1967 to 1998, claimed the lives of at least 15,000 people, mostly civilians.

However, the devastation caused by the December 2004 tsunami couple with the need to bring humanitarian aid to the affected areas created a window of opportunity that led to a hitherto unthinkable peace agreement.

The first gubernatorial election under the agreement reached by the Indonesian government and GAM was held in December 2006 and saw the victory of Irwandi Yusuf.

Protected by thousands of police officers deployed in 9,754 polling stations, last week’s election had been scheduled in 2011 but had to be postponed over a dispute concerning the right of independent candidates to run. After four postponements, threats and extremist intimidations, the poll went off without a hitch on 9 April.

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



Pakistan: Karachi Violence Heats Up Leaving at Least 7 Dead

Karachi, 18 April (AKI) — At least seven people have been killed and dozens injured in separate shooting incidents in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, according to news reports.

In one incident, a pair of bodies were found with their hands bound and police say their are signs of torture before the victims were killed late Tuesday, Pakistan’s Geo TV reported.

Demonstrators took to the streets on Wednesday to protest what they consider a lack of action by police to put an end to the violence that has left hundred dead in Pakistan’s business hub.

Ethnic and political violence is closely linked in Karachi’s numerous incidents of widespread violence between people of different ethnicity including Urdu, Balochs and Pushtun backgrounds.

The sprawling city accounts for over 60 percent of Pakistan’s revenue. The country’s main financial institutions, multinational corporations and industry are located there

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



Pakistan: Bin Laden’s Family to be Expelled Wednesday

Islamabad, 17 April (AKI) — Osama bin Laden’s family is due to be expelled from Pakistan Wednesday, the AFP news agency reported, citing their lawyer and an intelligence official.

“They will go tonight or tomorrow early in the morning. After 12 tonight they can be deported any time,” their lawyer Mohammad Aamir told AFP on Tuesday.

The deportation of the 12 family members, including three widows, comes 11 months after American special forces flew by helicopter from neighbouring Afghanistan and killed the world’s most wanted terrorist at a compound where he was living in the city of Abbottabad, north of Islamabad.

A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed to AFP that the family was expected to be deported “sometime around midnight” and said “most likely they would be flown to Saudi Arabia,” AFP said.

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



Pakistan: Muslims Strip Christian Woman in Punjab Because She “Dressed Up”, Shoot at Her Son

A family in Gojra is attacked by some Muslims because they like to “dress up”. The mother is brutally beaten whilst her son is shot at, luckily without consequences. Police and the courts fail to apprehend the offenders. The local priest says that such violence is used to maintain people in “conditions of inferiority”.

Faisalabad (AsiaNews) — A Christian woman was harassed, beaten and stripped in public by some Muslims belonging to the local land mafia because in her family people like to dress up too much. Her son almost suffered a worse fate. When he tried to help her, they fire at him but narrowly missed. As tragic as this is, it is typical of the violence and persecution Christians endure. More than a month after the incident, which occurred in mid-March, both police and the courts have not brought any redress or punished the offenders. “These thugs pursue their own interests,” a local priest said; in so doing, they violate the rights of the “weakest elements in society.”

Shamin Bibi, a 42-year-old mother of five, works in a brick kiln. She is originally from Chak 179 G.B., in Gojra, a town in Toba Tek Singh District (Punjab), where several Christians died in an attack in 2009.

During her brutal assault, her attackers badly beat her and ripped her clothes off. When her 22-year-old son Naqshaq Masih tried to intervene, they attacked him with bricks and shot at him. Luckily, they missed.

Two Muslim landlords, brothers Sajid Ali and Abid Ashan, were responsible for the attack. They exert a mafia-style control over the area.

The reason for their action appears even more absurd than the action itself. They do not want Christians to “dress up”, even on holidays or Sunday for Mass.

As second-class subjects, not much better than animals, minority Christians are not allowed to wear elegant clothes. They can only dress rough garments. In the past, they have often been subject to mafia-styled threats and “warnings”. In fact, another of Shamin Bibi’s sons had to flee to avoid being killed.

On the day of the atatck, the Christian woman was at home alone with a daughter, and pleaded to the men to go away because there was no male member of the family present.

Initially, police opened a first information report and arrested the offenders. However, a week later they were released after paying off the police.

On Monday, Shamin Bibi filed a suit against her attackers, appearing before a district judge in Gojra. The latter however rejected her application. Her family plans to continue their battle for justice but their chances in court are slim.

A resident in her town spoke to AsiaNews on condition of anonymity. “Landlords have no pity,” he said. “They can only waste the wealth” their parents accumulated. They engage in violence and abuse the poor. “If the latter refuse to follow their orders, they are beaten.” These people “walk around with guns and have no respect for Christians,” he said.

Fr Yaqub Yousaf, a parish priest in Gojra, agrees. “Social injustice and divisions are used by cruel landlords to protect their vested interests and maintain people on the margins of our society in conditions of inferiority.”

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



Poison Scare Highlights Threats to Girls’ Education in Afghanistan

More than 100 schoolgirls have been rushed to hospitals in northeastern Afghanistan after drinking what is feared to be poisonous water from a tank at their school. More than 100 schoolgirls in Afghanistan have fallen sick after drinking water that is suspected to have been poisoned in the small town of Rustaq in the northeastern Afghan province of Takhar.

In what appears to be an attempt by opponents of education for girls, the poison scare incident highlights threats to girls’ education in Afghanistan. “I think some radical elements who oppose girls going to school are behind this act,” said district governor Mohammad Hussain, adding that police were investigating the incident.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Far East


Volkswagen Builds New Car Factory in China Trouble Region

The German auto giant is due to sign an agreement with China for a new car plant to be built in the western region of Xinjiang. The region is home to the Uighurs — a Muslim minority opposed to Chinese central power.

The new Volkswagen (VW) car factory is to be set up in the provincial capital Urumqi with a production capacity of up to 50,000 vehicles per year, German news agency DPA said Wednesday.

Funding for the project worth 2 billion yuan (240 million euros) would be provided by a joint venture between VW and Chinese automaker Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), the agency said.

In addition, news agency Reuters quoted a German government source as saying that the agreement for the plant would be signed in Germany on Monday in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

The Urumqi plant, which is scheduled to start production in 2013, will be Volkswagen’s fifth car factory in China with an additional four plants on the drawing board. The German auto giant already has six component factories in the Asian country.

In China, Volkswagen reached a new sales record of 633,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2012, and has announced investments in China to the tune of 14 billion euros until 2016.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Extended Somalia Pirate Plan Creates Waves

Germany could fly bombing missions into Somalia to destroy pirate bases, if a plan set to be discussed in cabinet on Wednesday is adopted. The idea has infuriated opposition parties who described it as senseless and dangerous.

The European Union anti-pirate mission “Atalanta” which has for the last three years been patrolling around the Horn of Africa, currently involves up to ten ships at any one time — in an ocean area nearly the size of Europe.

Expanding the mandate to include airborne missions up to two kilometres inland to target “logistic facilities of the pirates” as the text describes it, has infuriated German opposition parties.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet approved the expansion on Wednesday, which Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere denied was a radical transformation of the initial mandate.

“This is a small, useful, additional military operation — it doesn’t take the mission to a new level,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels. “This is about additional action on the beach, not inland.”

But Green Party defence expert Omid Nouripour said it was “a bad, senseless adventure,” while his counterpart from the Social Democrats, Rainer Arnold said his party would either vote against or abstain in a parliamentary poll. Despite opposition, the mandate is expected to be approved in the vote on May 11.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany Expands Military Mission Against Somali Pirates

The German cabinet has agreed on new rights for the Bundeswehr in the fight against piracy off the coast of Somalia. If parliament approves, the mission — previously restricted to the sea — will be taken inland.

The German government agreed to expand an EU mandate on Wednesday to allow the Bundeswehr to target inland Somali pirate bases as part of the European Union anti-piracy Atalanta mission.

The German military had previously been restricted to only carrying out missions at sea, but the cabinet has now advocated that airborne attacks be allowed up to two kilometers inland. In line with an EU amendment in March, pirates’ weapons, ships or fuel depots can all be targeted. The mandate does not sanction the deployment of any military personal on the ground.

“It is a small, useful additional military option,” German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said as he arrived at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Asian Investment Boom Seen in Latin America

Selling soybeans, iron and copper ore and other commodities to Asian countries has transformed Latin America over the past decade, stabilizing economies despite worldwide crises and lifting tens of millions of people into the middle class. Now, say officials from both Asia and Latin America, a second gold rush is under way.

Asian investors flush with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash now see Latin America as a top business opportunity, and they’re flooding into manufacturing, construction and other industries, particularly in up-and-coming countries such as Brazil, Peru and Mexico. That’s transforming the lucrative relationship that was based primarily on exporting raw materials to Asia, an arrangement that frustrated governments eager to stimulate their own manufacturing.

Government and business officials meeting this week at the World Economic Forum in Mexico said the investment surge means Asia is poised to overtake the United States and the European Union as Latin America’s top trading partner over the next decade. Asian representatives have been an unmistakable presence at the forum, with South Korean, Chinese and Japanese investors making the rounds at this seaside city’s gleaming white convention hall.

“We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars in just Korean banks looking for a destination,” said Kevin Lu, Asia Pacific regional director of a World Bank Group agency that insures foreign investments against political risk. “When I meet with investors, Latin America is in every conversation about this.”

Already, Chinese investment in Latin America has jumped from a few million dollars just a few years ago to about $15 billion in 2010, with most of the money going into mining and other extractive industries in Brazil, Peru and other nations, said Alicia Barcena, executive secretary for the Chile-based United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Chinese investment in the region jumped again last year, to about $23 billion, Barcena said.

Japan, meanwhile, surpassed even that figure last year and displaced China as the region’s top Asian investment and trade partner, Barcena said. She didn’t provide a precise number for Japan’s total.

China already ranks among the top three trading partners with Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, and Asian investment in auto and other manufacturing in Mexican industrial cities has greatly expanded the middle class.

“I don’t have any doubt that Asia will soon become the region’s top trading partner,” said Mexican Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari Garcia de Alba. “In Mexico, we believe we need to get closer and closer to Asia.”

According to the U.N. economic commission, 17 percent of Latin America’s exports went to Asian-Pacific countries in 2010, more than tripling from 5 percent in 2000. Over the same span, the share of the region’s total exports that went to the United States dropped from 60 percent to 40 percent.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



‘Latin America Must Open Up’

The opening of the World Economic Forum on Latin America is overshadowed by a row over Argentinian plans to nationalize a Spanish-owned oil company. Spain has reacted with anger.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s visit to Mexico began on an unexpected note. As he arrived in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta for the opening of the World Economic Forum for Latin America, there was only one issue on the agenda — Buenos Aires’ plans to nationalize YPF, Argentina’s biggest oil company which is controlled by Spanish energy giant Repsol.

Dozens of camera teams lay in wait, hoping for a statement from the Spanish delegation. But Rajoy was in no mood for a press conference.

On Monday, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner asked her country’s Congress to put 51 percent of YPF- Argentinina’s biggest oil company — in state hands, ousting flagship Spanish energy firm Repsol as the majority shareholder.

The decision likely took the Spanish delegation at the WEF unawares, and counter-measures were hurriedly discussed on the long flight from Madrid to Mexico. Prime Minister Rajoy however did use strong words as he took the stage at the WEF.

“This decision by Argentina will cause lasting damage to the economic relations between the two countries,” Rajoy said at the opening, which was originally meant to focus on the state of the global economy. “If laws are simply changed, when rules are not upheld any more — that will have consequences for investments by Spanish companies in Argentina.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Germany: Deportation to Kosovo Means a Life in Misery

Deportation to Kosovo from Germany often threatens young people’s mental and physical health, says a new UNICEF report. Ardian Canaj was repatriated against his will and is now living in misery, he says.

Peja in Western Kosovo is a miserable slum area that’s drowning in garbage; rubbish piles are being burnt carelessly in the streets. This is where Ardian Canaj is supposed to feel at home now. The 20-year-old was born and raised in Germany, but seven months ago he was deported to his parents’ home country.

“I went to school in Germany, but that’s over now. I have to work to pay my rent,” Canaj explained. He earns a mere 100 euros a month — and rent costs 120. “I’m feeling awful here. I don’t have my family here or anybody who’s close to me. I don’t see a future here for me” he said.

Germany received permission to deport Kosovars in 2009. Kosovo was considered safe enough now for them to return. And so, in 2010, German interior minister Thomas de Maizière signed a repatriation agreement with the Republic of Kosovo, which foresaw the return of some 12,000 members of minority groups to the Balkans — among them 6,000 children and teenagers. UNICEF, the UN’s child protection organization, says the deportation of young people should be stopped if it threatens their mental and physical health.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Deportees on Alitalia Flight With Taped Mouths

Italian film director posts picture on Facebook

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — A photo of two Tunisian men being deported from Italy on an Alitalia flight, their mouths sealed with duct tape and their hands cuffed with plastic bands, was posted by Italian film director Francesco Sperandeo on Facebook Wednesday.

Under the picture showing a policeman in street clothes standing over a seated man with his mouth taped, Sperandeo commented that the worst part of the incident was “the indifference of the other passengers”.

Sperandeo said that he was ordered to return to his seat by police when he requested that the deportees be treated humanely and was told that the methods used were “normal”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Switzerland: Sex Box for Kids Sparks Call to Action

Politicians from different parties have joined forces for an initiative aimed at preventing children under the age of nine from receiving sex education just months after the use of educational “sex boxes” sparked uproar in Basel.

“Increasingly, our children are being molested in kindergartens and primary schools with pornography and sex education,” a committee of parents and civic leaders told newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The committee, made up in large part by members of the far-right Swiss People’s Party, launched the initiative on Tuesday to “protect against sexualization in kindergarten and primary schools”.

The proponents of the initiative no longer want children younger than nine to be taught any sex education at all, although certain education relating to child abuse would be permitted. From ages nine to twelve, the committee wants sex education to be non-compulsory so that families can choose to either opt in or out.

From age twelve onwards, the initiators say, children would receive education about sex and reproduction during biology lessons, which they argue is the proper place for such instruction.

The root of the initiative lies in the canton of Basel City, which came to media attention with reports of “sex boxes” being used as educational tools. The boxes contained various materials for teaching young children about sex, including wooden replicas of penises and fabric vaginas.

Benjamin Spüler of the Basel City Parents Committee believes such materials to be pornographic, he told news agency SDA. He says giving children such tuition when they are so young serves only to sexualize them at an unnecessarily early age.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

General


Italy: Another Northern League Heavyweight Resigns

Lombardy regional assembly chief Davide Boni probed for graft

(ANSA) — Milan, April 17 — Another Northern League heavyweight resigned Tuesday when Lombardy regional assembly president Davide Boni stepped down.

Boni, 50, was placed under investigation for fraud and corruption last month.

Earlier this month League leader Umberto Bossi resigned after an unrelated probe into his party’s treasurer appeared to show party funding had been diverted to the personal use of his family.

Bossi’s son Renzo, who was being groomed for a top political career, also resigned from the Lombardy regional assembly.

The scandal about alleged misuse of taxpayers’ money has dealt a hard blow to the image of the League, which had always stood against corruption.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



‘Rogue’ Alien Planets May Circle Billions of Stars

Billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy have captured rogue alien planets that once cruised freely through interstellar space, a new study suggests.

Many wandering alien worlds, which were ejected from the solar systems in which they formed, likely find new homes with different suns, according to the study. The finding could explain why some alien planets orbit extremely far from their stars, researchers said.

“Stars trade planets just like baseball teams trade players,” study lead author Hagai Perets, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

Perets and co-author Thijs Kouwenhoven of China’s Peking University simulated the evolution of young star clusters containing about as many free-floating planets as stars. They found that 3 to 6 percent of the stars would grab a rogue over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120417

USA
» America’s Quiet Muslims
» AP Wins Pulitzer for Exposing NYPD’s CIA-Linked Intel Program, Leading Widespread Spying on Muslims
» CAIR: Mo. Jailers Forcibly Remove Muslim Woman’s Hijab
» Video Shows Agonising TSA Pat-Down — as Woman Sobs in ‘Sexual Violation’ At Hands of TSA Agent
 
Europe and the EU
» Belgian Doctor Suspended for Alleged Anti-Semitism
» Czech Republic: Hanif Kureishi — The Famous British Author on Prague, Islam and Multiracial Societies in Europe
» Italy: A Head of the Best, Milan’s Master Hatmaker
» Italy: Luxury at Its Best: ‘Made in Veneto’
» Michael Gove, Celsius 7/7, And the Mainstreaming of the Counter Jihad
» Netherlands Profile [BBC News]
» Norway: Judge in Breivik Trial Dismissed
» Norway: In Breivik, Troubling Echoes of West’s Views of Islam
» Sweden: Minister in ‘Racist Circumcision Outrage’
» Sweden Democrats ‘Unchanged’ In Wake of Breivik Terror: Expert
» Switzerland: Trial Begins for ‘Honour Killing’ of Teen Daughter
» UK: Find Out About Islam at M Shed
» UK: George Osborne Puts the Fabric of Britain at Risk With the ‘Heritage Tax’
» UK: Human Rights Debate Suffering ‘Democratic Deficit’
» UK: Ken Livingstone Refuses to Stump for Labour Candidate
» UK: Mayor for Muslims or the Rich?
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Third of Britons: Dislike of Jews Understandable Because of Israel
 
Middle East
» Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
» UAE: Man Who Insulted Islam on Facebook ‘Not Sane’
 
South Asia
» Taliban Commander Turns Self in… For Reward on ‘Wanted’ Poster
 
Latin America
» Barack Obama Makes Falklands Gaffe by Calling Malvinas the Maldives
 
Immigration
» Abu Qatada Arrested Pending New Extradition
» Abu Qatada Deportation Case: As it Happened
» Abu Qatada is a Microcosm of Everything That’s Wrong With Britain’s Dimwitted Immigration and Welfare Systems
» It’s Qatada D-Day

USA


America’s Quiet Muslims

by Karen Lugo

Muslims who value American liberty must oppose an insidious new campaign.

If America is going to fare better than Europe in halting the development of a de facto sharia society, the unabashed efforts of Muslims who understand the unique value of America’s legacy of liberty will be crucial. Estimates indicate that more than half of American Muslims are quietly appreciative of constitutionally guaranteed individual rights. The challenge lies in persuading them to take a public stand. The stage is now set for all freedom-supporting Muslims to step up and counter the Islamic Circle of North America as it rolls out its $3 million campaign to convince Americans that the goals of sharia law and the objectives of the United States Constitution are one and the same. As enunciated in a fatwa by the Islamic Fiqh Council of North America, which interprets Islamic law for this continent, Muslim authorities claim there is “no inherent conflict between the normative values of Islam and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights” (emphasis added). The proclamation also asserts that “secular legal systems in Western democracies generally share the same supreme objectives, and are generally compatible with Islamic Shari’ah” (emphasis added).

The ICNA campaign to soften sharia for American consumption is based on dizzying historical spin, as demonstrated by Zulfiqar Ali Shah (also known as Al Fokkar Ali Shah and Tho Al Fokkar Ali Shah), the former president of ICNA and current executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America. His showcase essay, “Founding Father’s [sic] of America’s Indebtedness to Islamic Thought,” makes the specious argument that John Locke, the authority behind much of the Founding philosophy, had a “political outlook [that] closely resembled the Islamic teachings.” For evidence, Shah sprinkles into his fable some odd incidentals, like the assertion that the inquisitive Locke owned a copy of the Koran and had friends who were Muslims or Muslim sympathizers — as if these happenstances could prove that Locke was “greatly influenced by Muslim philosophers.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



AP Wins Pulitzer for Exposing NYPD’s CIA-Linked Intel Program, Leading Widespread Spying on Muslims

We speak with Matt Apuzzo, co-author of the Associated Press series that revealed the New York City Police Department has extensively spied on Muslim Americans not only in the tri-city area, but throughout the eastern United States. The series won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Beginning last August, the AP detailed how the NYPD established a vast operation to monitor Muslim neighborhoods after the 9/11 attacks. Hundreds of mosques, businesses and Muslim student groups were investigated, monitored and, in many cases, infiltrated. Police observed and cataloged daily life in Muslim communities, from where people ate and shopped to where they worked and prayed. Police used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even without any evidence of wrongdoing. Also falling under NYPD’s scrutiny were imams, cab drivers and food cart vendors. According to the AP, many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans. In the process, the NYPD became “one of the nation’s most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies,” targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. The revelations sparked a national controversy that only grew as the AP continued to reveal more details of the NYPD’s actions. “We try to provide that information so people can make informed decisions,” Apuzzo says. “This wasn’t a series we set out to do … I think it continues if more information makes itself available. And we’ll go where the story leads.” [includes rush transcript]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



CAIR: Mo. Jailers Forcibly Remove Muslim Woman’s Hijab

Muslim civil rights group asks jail to grant religious accommodation

ST. LOUIS, April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The St. Louis chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-St. Louis) is calling on the St. Louis County Jail in Clayton, Mo., to grant religious accommodation for Muslim inmates who wear a religious headscarf, or “hijab.” CAIR-St. Louis made that request after a Muslim woman who was jailed recently for several hours because of an unpaid traffic ticket reported that an officer forcibly removed her hijab. The officer allegedly told the woman, “take it (the hijab) off or we will take it off for you.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Video Shows Agonising TSA Pat-Down — as Woman Sobs in ‘Sexual Violation’ At Hands of TSA Agent

A traveller’s sobs were left ignored this weekend, as she was subjected to an invasive pat-down despite her cries — in another blow to the TSA.

A video posted to YouTube captures the weeping woman’s ordeal during the security checkpoint at an airport in Madison, Wisconsin.

Jim Hoft, who runs the political blog Gateway Pundit, posted the video on the site, as well as YouTube yesterday.

Mr Hoft wrote: ‘This morning at a Midwest airport I witnessed this poor woman suffering through this horrible sexual violation’.

It’s the latest in a long line of disturbing behaviour during security checkpoints.

Loud sobs can be heard as the woman, wearing a pink sweater, is patted down by a female TSA agent.

The woman’s hands are shaking as the agent moves her hands down the woman’s legs.

The woman is then left alone, and can be seen hunching over, her arms crossed across her body in humiliation.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Belgian Doctor Suspended for Alleged Anti-Semitism

Surgeon an Brussels hospital allegedly abused a Jewish colleague, hurling Nazi slogans and racial slurs at him.

A hospital in Brussels on Monday suspended one of its surgeons for allegedly hurling Nazi slogans and racial slurs at a Jewish colleague.

The surgeon later offered apologies via emails sent to the management of the hospital, Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, and to Belgium’s main Jewish publication which first reported on the incident, Joods Actueel.

The surgeon reportedly called out “sieg heil” and told his Dutch-born, Jewish subordinate to “head back into the gas chambers,” according to a complaint which the Jewish doctor filed with the Center for Equal Opportunities, a watchdog on discrimination.

The incident reportedly happened on Monday morning at the hospital during an argument between the suspended physician — specializing in orthopedic surgery — and the younger Dutch-born doctor.

The complainant, who recently returned from a vacation in Israel, further said the surgeon told him to “go back to the Dead Sea and be dead.”

Edgard Eeckman, spokesperson for the hospital, said that hospital management would investigate the incident by hearing both sides and witnesses to “quickly determine whether to sanction the man.”

Hospital authorities identified the man as Dr. Frank H. Eeckman added he was “a difficult man,” referring to a previous complaint against the surgeon for alleged violent behaviour in July.

Michael Freilich, editor-in-chief of the paper Joods Actueel, said that in his mail to the newsroom, the surgeon said he “never meant what was said in a moment of rage,” adding that a relative of his had spent four years at a prisoners camp under Nazi occupation. He added he had “a lot of respect for the Jewish people and Israel.”

Additionally, the surgeon sent an apology to the Jewish doctor he is accused of verbally attacking.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



Czech Republic: Hanif Kureishi — The Famous British Author on Prague, Islam and Multiracial Societies in Europe

Undoubtedly the most famous guest at this year’s Prague Writers’ Festival, the British novelist, screenwriter and playwright Hanif Kureishi rose to international fame in 1985, with his screenplay for the film “My Beautiful Laundrette”. Since then, he published the novel “The Buddha of Suburbia” to great acclaim and continues to write extensively, both for the screen and works of fiction. Ahead of his first reading at the festival, I asked him about his work, why he enjoys the short story form and if he had previously visited Prague.

“I came to Prague probably about 20 years ago, and it’s a great literary city for me. There are many writers here that I am interested in, like Kafka and Kundera, and I am interested in the history of the city under communism. So I am very happy to be here, to meet people and talk about their lives here.”

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Italy: A Head of the Best, Milan’s Master Hatmaker

Clients travel from around the world for Lorenzo Borghi’s shop

(ANSA) — Milan — Via dei Piatti is a narrow street hidden in a labyrinth of picturesque alleys behind the Duomo, the landmark cathedral in the centre of Milan. It seems an unlikely location for a modest shop that welcomes clients from all over the world.

There is nothing more than a single display window with a handful of striking hats and a small sign to mark the entrance.

Inside his shop the master hatmaker Lorenzo Borghi has been working for nearly 60 years, creating elegant hats for clients ranging from well-heeled Milanese women to international royalty, including the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II who received one of his hats a decade ago. Borghi, who is in his 70s, can still be found working in the shop at least six days a week. Among the stunning creations inside his shop are a wide-brimmed violet hat with a profusion of purple feathers and a maroon beret covered with vibrant purple and red silk flowers the size of marbles. Using a special machine he created himself — a Cimbali espresso maker which he turned into a steam machine — Borghi heats pieces of felt before fitting them to one of the dozens of wooden hat forms lining the walls. Once this foundation is ready, Borghi painstakingly decorates it with feathers, pearls, ribbons, lace or whatever other materials he thinks will work best, sometimes responding to his client requests, but often drawing on his own creative instincts. “With artistic hats, the client doesn’t always know best,” says Borghi. “Usually they have to be guided, helped along with their choices. “I ask a client to provide some basic details like color, materials and information about what she will be wearing, and she lets me exercise my creativity”. Borghi was born into a poor family in wartime Milan in 1940. His earliest memories are of scouring the local marketplace at dusk with his siblings, looking for shattered fruit crates their mother could burn as firewood. “In those days, everybody had to make do. We all learned to turn necessity into a virtue,” he says. Borghi’s father abandoned the family shortly after World War II and he was forced to leave school and find work to help support the family. The only professional artisan he knew, a local milliner, was willing to take on an apprentice, but Lorenzo was barely 13 and Italian law forbade children under the age of 14 from working. Desperate for a job, the young man lied about his age to secure a spot in the hat maker’s shop. When the owner learned the truth, Borghi had proven his worth in the atelier. The young Borghi had creative flair and a knack for selecting the right materials. A quick learner, he was also humble enough to keep a close eye on his employer, picking up whatever tricks of the trade he could. “That’s how it was done,” says Borghi with a wink. “You had to pay attention and copy the master. I learned some of my best tricks by watching him when he thought no one was looking.” Before long, the young apprentice learned to be critical as well and developed the courage to experiment. He moved past the more traditional styles embraced by his master and began adding details in silk, organza and stiffened lace that exploded in a burst of color. These flourishes continue to distinguish Borghi’s most elaborate hats, eye-catching creations that can sell for as much as 400 euros. They also caught the eye of some of Italy’s most best-known designers — big names including Valentino and Gianfranco Ferre’. After more than half a century of hat making, Borghi still believes the creation he loves the most is the hat he “hasn’t made yet”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Luxury at Its Best: ‘Made in Veneto’

Bottega Veneta has unusual recipe for success

(ANSA) — Vicenza — It’s in the name. Bottega Veneta, one of the most exclusive Italian brands with double-digit growth and understated marketing strategy.

While Made in Italy is the headline, the subtitle Made in Veneto is equally, if not more, indicative. Founded in 1966 and famous for its ‘intrecciato’ or woven handbags, the brand was purchased in 2001 by Gucci Group and has become the best performer of the parent company.

The magic of these bags that fetch from 2,000 to 75,000 euros each, comes from “the passion that creative director Tomas Maier and the craftspeople that work closely with him instill in the products”, says 48-year old CEO Marco Bizzarri. Bizzarri requires Bottega Veneta sales-force members from around the world to visit the workshop in Vicenza, “because only seeing the way our products are made you can understand their peculiarities and transfer it to the consumer”.

Eighty percent of the brand’s bags are handmade and all are woven in the northern Italian region of Veneto. Despite joining the company in 2009, on the eve of the global luxury crisis, Marco Bizzarri has guided Bottega Veneta through surprising growth. In 2010, revenues rose 27% to 510.6 million euros and earnings rose 45% to 133 million euros (before interest and tax). Because of the demand fueled by this growth, production capacity had to be increased in 2011, adding on to the 100 artisans already working in the Vicenza factory. “For us it is very difficult to find skilled labor, and bearing in mind the growth in recent years, this is starting to become a problem”, says Bizzarri. The answer, he found, was right in front of him. With local unemployment in the company’s hometown of Vicenza on the rise, and a once-thriving artisan community pulling down its shutters, Bottega Veneta decided to stay local.

“The goal was to create jobs and know-how, and so…we established the Women’s Cooperative Montana. They all have previous experience in working leather and fabrics and were further trained by our master craftsmen”. The special weaving technique that gives Bottega Veneta bags their midas touch is called ‘intreccio infilato’ and has been used by ‘Vicentini’ (from Vicenza) artisans for centuries. Bottega Veneta has accomplished two deft moves with the production cooperative.

Says Regional Councillor Marino Finozzi, “It is an example of how to employ those who have dropped out of the work circuit, restoring strength to a disadvantaged area, while maintaining and revitalizing traditional skills that are disappearing”. Now that sales of luxury goods are expected to rise through 2015, Bizzarri remains confident that the brand will continue its growth. As it is, the Vicenza factory can hardly produce to keep up with demand. Bizzarri doesn’t hide the fact that “one of the reasons why we did this operation is to ensure production capacity”.

That said, the initiative is proving so successful that it will most likely be replicated to meet the increasing demand for one of the country’s, and region’s, most subtly famous brands.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Michael Gove, Celsius 7/7, And the Mainstreaming of the Counter Jihad

Hope not Hate recently released a report about the Counter-Jihad movement, perhaps not by accident on the eve of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. There has been a systematic effort since last July to try to implicate the Counter-Jihad movement in Breivik’s reprehensible actions. Such efforts have been acts of political opportunism undertaken in the poorest possible taste and those who have tried and continued to try to score cheap political points on the back of tragedy and suffering should be ashamed of themselves. This has happened despite the fact that the concerns of the Counter-Jihad are a matter of mainstream political discussion.

The Counter-Jihad is primarily concerned about the growing political power of those who want to make our societies sharia compliant. Organisations like the International Civil Liberties Alliance are concerned about the human rights implications of the rise of sharia compliance in the West and the actual exercise of sharia law elsewhere in the world. The efforts of those who seek to demonise and misrepresent Counter Jihad activists may therefore have sinister motives of their own for doing so.

Western Governments seem to be actively promoting the agenda of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) whose campaigns implies that it wants to institute a new order of global sharia compliance which could adversely affect the freedoms of the whole of society including those of Muslim minority communities. Later this year the European Union plans to host a meeting of the ‘Istanbul Process’ that seeks to make freedom of speech sharia compliant. Of course, reasonable mainstream opinion would rightly label the idea of sharia compliant free speech as an oxymoron but this does not seem to deter some Western political leaders. Outlawing freedom of speech has huge implications for society but discussions with the OIC will of course more than likely focus on how to shut up dissidents who ask awkward questions.

A stifled atmosphere has been created since 9/11 in which expressing concern about sharia has become taboo. Fear rather than reason has begun to permeate our society and sensible policy making is rendered impossible. Some factions within the Western elite clearly do not want to discuss the issues, and opinion formers have been unleashed to conduct campaigns of demonization, misrepresentation, and outright nastiness against those who acknowledge the pressing need to discuss them.

However, some members of the political elite have had the courage to speak out and this illustrates how Counter-Jihad ideas have had a place in the political mainstream for many years. The current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, wrote a book called Celsius 7/7: How The West’s Policy of Appeasement Has Provoked Yet More Fundamentalist Terror — And What Has To Be Done Now back in 2006. The Counter-Jihad was in its infancy at that time and its ideology was not yet developed. Books like Celsius 7/7 had an impact on the formation of that ideology, an ideology that, contrary to the rantings of the modern day Torquemadas who revel in hunting down an demonising the heretics of our age, is peaceful and law abiding. Counter-Jihad ideology is treated as new heresy by some factions in the establishment and that is why there are well funded efforts to link it and its advocates to the appalling and inhuman actions of Anders Behring Breivik. It is much easier for opponents of the Counter-Jihad to actively demonise it than it is to openly discuss the issues raised, issues that they want to cover up. Back in 2006 Mr Gove himself identified this serious problem — on page 3 of Celsius 7/7 he wrote:…

[Return to headlines]



Netherlands Profile [BBC News]

Head of state: Queen Beatrix

Prime minister: Mark Rutte

Mark Rutte heads a minority government propped up by the controversial anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders. His government — a coalition of his liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) — was installed in October 2010, following lengthy negotiations after elections in June. Elections were called after the former CDA-led government of Jan Peter Balkenende collapsed in February in a dispute over continued military support to NATO forces in Afghanistan. The VVD-CDA coalition commands only 52 seats out of 150 in the lower house of parliament, but has made a deal with the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) for the support of its 24 MPs to pass policy through parliament. The party does not hold any government positions. The PVV is headed by Mr Wilders, who campaigns for an end to Muslim immigration and a ban on new mosques. He has faced charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims. Mr Wilders’ party made significant gains in the June elections, nearly tripling its support from nine seats previously. Observers said the new power wielded by Wilders would test the Netherlands’ reputation for multi-cultural tolerance. On taking office, Mr Rutte said his government’s priority was to revitalise the economy and to meet election promises on burning issues such as immigration. Mr Rutte is a former human resources manager at Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Norway: Judge in Breivik Trial Dismissed

One of five judges in the Breivik trial has been dismissed following revelations he had called for the death penalty for the man who killed 77 people in Norway last July.

After a 30-minute recess to reach a decision this morning, chief judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said lay judge Thomas Indreboe was unfit to continue because of comments he posted on a website the day after the attacks and would be replaced by one of two substitute judges already in court.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Norway: In Breivik, Troubling Echoes of West’s Views of Islam

Editor’s note: Timothy Stanley is a historian at Oxford University and blogs for Britain’s Daily Telegraph. He is the author of the new book “The Crusader: The Life and Times of Pat Buchanan.”

(CNN) — The trial of mass murderer Anders Breivik has confirmed one thing so far: He seems quite mad. Looking plump and dumb, with a slightly receding hairline, the Norwegian gave a right-wing salute as he entered the courtroom and smirked his way through CCTV footage of his handiwork. Breivik claims that he killed 77 people as an act of self-defense against the Islamification of Norway, that he is a member of the Knights Templar and part of an “anticommunist” resistance to multiculturalism. Reading his insane manifesto, it is tempting to dismiss him as a nut with a gun.

Nevertheless, there’s no denying the political context to what Breivik did. Since 9/11, fringe and mainstream politicians in Europe and America have spoken of Islam as incompatible with Western values. Breivik quoted many of them in his manifesto. This is not to say that he took direct inspiration from those public figures, or that they bear personal responsibility for his crimes. But Breivik’s paranoia does conform to a popular — wholly negative — view of the twin problems of Islam and multiculturalism. Tragically, it is a view that few mainstream politicians have been willing to challenge.

Breivik makes two false claims. The first is that Islam is ethically inferior to Christianity and cannot exist peacefully within the secular democracies of the post-Enlightenment West. That is the open view of the Dutch Party for Freedom, the French National Front, the English Defense League and the Finnish True Finns. It was implicit in Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s aversion to the building of mosques. We might also infer it from much of the testimony presented at Rep. Peter King’s congressional hearings into the radicalization of American Muslim youth. King has opined that there are “too many mosques” in the United States and that roughly 80% of American Muslims are radical.

The mistake being made by all these people is to conflate a tiny minority of political Islamists — whose precise ideology has only really emerged in the last 30 years — with the entire global and historical community of Muslims. It is true that Islam has never undergone a total Reformation, but it has experienced mini-enlightenments. The most celebrated is the Islamic Golden Age (750- 1258), centered in Baghdad, in which the arts and sciences flourished in a manner that left Dark Ages Europe far behind. (You can also find humanist poetry and art in Persia and even a small amount of erotica in Northern Africa.) Islam never outright rejected scientific empiricism but instead tried to reconcile and integrate it into its religious beliefs, with a surprising amount of debate about the primacy of either faith or reason. It preached that divine revelation could be found in other religions and so practiced tolerance in the lands that it conquered — a kind of Islamic multiculturalism. One of the giants of the European Enlightenment, Voltaire, favorably opined that Islam was more tolerant in its treatment of minorities than Christianity (consider the comparative persecution of Catholics in Ireland or of Jews in Spain).

Today, Islamic society looks different in every region where it is found. The royal families of Saudi Arabia have promoted ultra-conservative Wahhabism, which discourages personal vice, idolatry, veneration of saints, etc. The Bangladeshis prefer the more mystical Sufism, which places greater emphasis upon a subjective experience of Allah and is traditionally more tolerant of human foibles and dissent. Almost every part of the Islamic world has produced progressive movements, some headed by women. Pakistan gave the world Benazir Bhutto and Indonesia Megawati Soekarnoputri. In all cases, the political development of Muslim countries has been as much shaped by poverty and the legacy of colonialism as it has Islam. Iran might have continued on a course toward liberalism had the West not sponsored an anti-democratic coup in 1953. In short, there is no monolithic Islamic history or experience, which makes it hard or even disingenuous to talk about the challenge that Islam as a whole poses to the West. Put another way, no American would want anyone to think that the Westboro Baptist Church spoke for all of Christianity.

Breivik’s second, equally fallacious claim is that Islam’s growth in the West has been encouraged by liberal elites as a means to destroy traditional Christian culture. Indeed, multiculturalism has been strongly critiqued by two British prime ministers — Tony Blair and David Cameron. Cameron said that it had “failed” because it did not demand submission to the liberal principles of gender and sexual equality. But multiculturalism is not a Marxist ideology carefully plotted by the “Saul Alinksy radicals” so loathed by Newt Gingrich. Rather, it was free-market economics and globalization that caused the mass migration of Muslims from East to West — and multiculturalism was simply a policy response. The aim was to protect the cultural integrity of both host and guest populations by allowing them separate spaces in which to develop.

Far from intending to threaten the religious or civil liberties of the majority Christian population (which remains vastly superior in numbers), the goal was to create a common framework of laws but otherwise leave everyone to their own devices. If Christianity has declined in the West, it’s the fault of the Christians who stopped going to church — not the small groups of Muslims quietly attending their local mosque. And yet Muslims in Western countries now live under the pressures of anti-terrorist surveillance and social ostracism. They are forced to defend their Britishness, their Frenchness or their Americaness — even if they are third- or fourth-generation citizens of those countries. Breivik’s attack has raised the threat level against the West’s Muslims: They are now the target of our politically engaged sociopaths. Given how widespread the condemnation of both Islam and multiculturalism is across the West, perhaps it is apt to describe Breivik as a symptom of Western psychological angst. It is a condition of neurosis about decline and paranoia about foreign invasion that is in desperate need of remedy.

[JP note: Troubling signs of an historian holding the wrong end of the stick.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Minister in ‘Racist Circumcision Outrage’

Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth’s participation in a “racist spectacle” in which she carved up a cake depicting a naked black woman has sparked outrage and prompted calls for the minister’s dismissal. “In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden,” Kitimbwa Sabuni, spokesperson for the National Afro-Swedish Association (Afrosvenskarnas riksförbund) told The Local. “This was a racist spectacle.”

Sabuni’s comments come following Adelsohn Liljeroth’s participation in an art installation that took place at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in connection with World Art Day on April 15th.

As part of the installation, which was reportedly meant to highlight the issue of female circumcision, the culture minister began cutting a large cake shaped like a black woman, symbolically starting at the clitoris.

Makode Aj Linde, the artist who created the installation and whose head is part of the cake cut by the minister, wrote about the “genital mutilation cake” on his Facebook page. “Before cutting me up she whispered, ‘Your life will be better after this’ in my ear,” he wrote in a caption next to the partially eaten cake.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden Democrats ‘Unchanged’ In Wake of Breivik Terror: Expert

While the far-right Sweden Democrats initially distanced themselves from the deadly attacks by Anders Behring Breivik, currently on trial in Norway, the party hasn’t undergone a major transformation, the AFP’s Nina Larsson discovers. Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s deadly attacks in Norway sent shockwaves through the serene Nordic lands, rocking their populist parties and prompting at least one to clean up its act.

In the nearly nine months since Breivik massacred 77 people on July 22nd, such parties have experienced several setbacks amid accusations their criticism of immigration and Islam helped pave the way for the tragedy. “There has been a very infected debate. It is a very uncomfortable feeling to be accused of such a thing,” Mattias Karlsson, party secretary for the Sweden Democrats, told AFP.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Trial Begins for ‘Honour Killing’ of Teen Daughter

A 53-year-old Pakistani man known as Scheragha R goes on trial on Tuesday for the vicious murder in 2010 of his 16-year-old daughter, Swera. Almost exactly two years have passed since Scheragha R killed his teenage daughter in their family apartment in Zurich Höngg.

At first, it was assumed that the murder was a so-called honour killing in response to the shame that the father claimed his daughter had brought upon the family.

But recent psychiatric reports suggest that this theory does not fit with the killer’s profile, and that he may instead have killed his daughter a fit of emotion. These are the questions that the court will examine on the first day of the trial.

The fact that Scheragha R deeply regrets his actions and no longer wishes to live are factors that will be advanced by the defence and which point away from the honour killing theory, online news site Blick reported.

The prosecutor, Ulrich Krättli, will nevertheless argue that this was an honour-killing, carried out consciously and deliberately, and brought about by the father’s inability to bear his daughter’s wayward and un-Islamic behaviour. He is looking for a sentence of between 10 years and life imprisonment.

The murder took place on May 10th 2010, not long after 16-year-old Swera had been picked up at a Zurich police station by her parents. She had been caught stealing cigarettes.

It was the first time the girl had seen her father for two weeks: she had run away after her father had allegedly tried to electrocute her by throwing a hairdryer into the bath, online news site 20 Minuten reported.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Find Out About Islam at M Shed

VISITORS to M shed next Sunday can learn more about Bristol’s Muslims through a free, hands-on fun and creative “Journey of the Heart”. The event is a partnership initiative with Bristol’s Muslim community and supported by the British Museum. The one-day event runs from 10.30am to 4.30pm and visitors of all ages will be able to take part in a range of activities including arts and crafts, food samples, Islamic artefacts on display, short films and opportunities to ask questions about Islam. Visitors can also find out more about belief, prayer, fasting, charity and Hajj — the sacred journey to Mecca. There will also be a chance to record personal messages about special journeys made in Bristol or throughout the world.

[JP note: Shame on the British Museum for assisting in this proselytizing campaign.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: George Osborne Puts the Fabric of Britain at Risk With the ‘Heritage Tax’

by Philip Johnston

Levying VAT on repair work is a very bad idea, whether for cathedrals or country cottages.

From the same Budget production team that had us cowering at the granny tax, recoiling from the pasty levy and watching the charity shambles through our fingers comes the latest spine-chilling horror: the heritage tax. The Chancellor’s decision to impose VAT at 20 per cent on alterations to listed buildings was, like closing the supposed philanthropy loophole, motivated by a belief that the rich are not paying their fair share. The Treasury says it is ending an “anomaly” that allows millionaires to install swimming pools without paying VAT just because they happen to own a Jacobean manor house. How often does that happen?

However, it is not only the wealthy living in grand country homes who can carry out restoration work free of VAT. Many of the buildings that have benefited from the zero rate are the very fabric of our nation — its cathedrals, churches and about 400,000 listed properties up and down the land, many of whose occupants are by no means well off. Church leaders spotted the likely impact of the new tax early on and have bombarded MPs and ministers with protest letters, as well as setting up an e-petition on the Downing Street website.

The dean and chapter of the 12th-century Wakefield Cathedral in West Yorkshire have been planning a £3 million restoration project for several years, raising money from charity events and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The work began in early March — but within days the Budget had pushed up the cost by £200,000 and the scheme may have to be halted while more money is found, assuming it can be.

Given their great age, most cathedrals and ancient churches need millions of pounds spent on them every year if they are not to fall apart. This money has to be raised from congregations, donations (which could be also be hit by the cap on charitable tax relief) and special events. The Church of England reckons the Chancellor’s decision will cost up to £20 million a year extra on works to its 12,500 listed buildings, if they go ahead at all. The Treasury said it would make up the shortfall by increasing grants for alterations, but the Church says these are already inadequate and will simply be divided into even smaller amounts among a larger group of claimants. Anthony Priddis, the Bishop of Hereford, said: “There has been more anger about this decision than any other I have witnessed for a very long time.”

You have to wonder sometimes what goes on in the Treasury ahead of a Budget. Clearly, officials want to maximise the revenue and hang the consequences. It is the job of the politicians to ensure this rapacity does not lead to disproportionate pain or is simply self-defeating. The boneheadedness of the revenue collectors is nothing new, of course. We can still see buildings with their window spaces bricked up to avoid a tax introduced in 1696. It is thought the term “daylight robbery” originated from this time, though its first known usage was much later. How might the churches remember this Budget 300 years from now — the Destruction of Gideon, perhaps? In the West Country, they are calling it the “thatch snatch” because of its potential impact on the region’s thatched cottages.

[…]

[JP note: To be expected from a dhimmi government pandering to the Ummah.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Human Rights Debate Suffering ‘Democratic Deficit’

Unelected judges do not take the views of politicians seriously enough in the increasingly “ferocious” debate about human rights, an academic report suggests today.

Murray Hunt, legal adviser to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, warns that action must be taken to address a “debilitating democratic deficit”. He says that although elected governments express their commitment to human rights, these rights are enforced by “profoundly undemocratic” unelected judges, leading to “genuine concerns” that “unaccountable” figures are “sidelining Parliament”. “As a result, there is a genuine and profoundly felt impression that elected decision-makers and not taken sufficiently seriously by courts, and human rights discourse is everywhere bedevilled by a permanent crisis of democratic legitimacy.”

His report, published by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, found that politicians’ interest in human rights has increased markedly in recent years. Between 2000 and 2005 there were only 23 references to reports of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in parliamentary debates, but there were 1,006 during the 2005-2010 Parliament. Most were about terrorism and criminal justice. Two-thirds of the comments were made in the House of Lords. There were a “staggering” 23,343 references to human rights in court reports since 2001 but only 72 references to the Joint Committee by judges. But Prof Hunt, visiting professor of law at Oxford University, adds that the question of “who decides” and has the ultimate authority is an “obstacle” and an “unhelpful distraction” from the more important matter of making sure rights are protected. His comments come on the eve of a rare opportunity for the British Government to bring about lasting reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Ministers have been left exasperated by rulings from the Strasbourg justices that have paved the way for prisoners to have the vote and prevented terrorists and convicted criminals from being deported. Meanwhile attempts to replace Labour’s Human Rights Act with a more limited Bill of Rights have been delayed while ministers have ignored calls from backbench Tories to ignore the ECHR’s rulings.

But an a conference in Brighton later this week, Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, will lead attempts for the Council of Europe to agree ways in which the number of cases reaching Strasbourg can be cut and more power given back to national courts. Just 45,000 cases went to the court during its first 40 years, but in 2010 alone 61,300 applications were made. There is now a backlog of more than 160,000 cases awaiting consideration. Prof Hunt’s report states that the “problem” regarding the idea of human rights and who is their “legitimate guardian” is not new. But he goes on: “Today in the UK, however, it is a debate which is being played out with a new ferocity.” He says that court rulings are “widely criticised”, even by ministers, while lawyers themselves have called for the Government to ignore some of the decisions made by Strasbourg. However Prof Hunt insists there is also a “new consensus” that human rights are important, that they must be protected by law, and that Parliament, Government and the judiciary have a “shared responsibility” for protecting them.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Ken Livingstone Refuses to Stump for Labour Candidate

by Andrew Gilligan

Ken Livingstone at one stage promised to campaign in every London council byelection — and he’s certainly been to the vast majority, including hopeless Shortlands in Bromley (where Labour got 10%), Worcester Park in Sutton (11%), Southfields in Wandsworth (17%), and so on. But there’s one byelection coming up the day after tomorrow which Ken has not so far managed to fit into his busy schedule — even though Labour has an able candidate, a big operation on the ground, and an excellent chance of gaining back a seat from the opposition. This seat, indeed, was won by Labour at the last council election with 43 per cent of the vote and a majority of more than 500, but the sitting Labour councillor defected to the opposition before being sacked from the council for housing benefit fraud.

Ken has been repeatedly asked by the Labour Party to come and help its candidate in this byelection. Sadly, according to local Labour councillors, he has refused, even though he knows the area all too well and has campaigned here before. The problem, you see, is that when Ken campaigned here before, it was… for the opposition, and against Labour.

This byelection is in Tower Hamlets — fiefdom of the Livingstone-backed and extremist-linked executive mayor, Lutfur Rahman, thrown out of the Labour Party for his close relationship with the Islamist group, the IFE. In this very ward, Spitalfields, Lutfur was himself once a councillor — and still maintains at least an official residence. In this very ward, Ken was filmed endorsing Lutfur and dissing Labour’s own candidate for the mayoralty, Helal Abbas. In this same ward, Spitalfields, the IFE has helped secure some truly astonishing swings to Ken — from 29 per cent of the vote in the 2004 mayoral election to 68 per cent in the 2008 one — and with London voters in general proving resistant to the Livingstone message, that sort of assistance is especially badly needed as Ken’s own election day nears. No wonder there’s a conflict of loyalties!

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Mayor for Muslims or the Rich?

Does Boris not care for poor Londoners? A new question in today’s Evening Standard polling reveals that 40 per cent of voters believe that Boris is the candidate to aid rich Londoners. Ken has also carved his own niche, successfully winning over many Muslin voters — around 20 per cent state he is particularly keen to help them. Here are the full numbers: […]

But such perceptions have made little difference to either candidate’s chances. The headline voting figures remain steady at 53 per cent for Boris and 47 per cent for Ken, despite the above and also the recent tax saga.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Third of Britons: Dislike of Jews Understandable Because of Israel

More than a third of Britons believe dislike of Jews is understandable given the actions of Israel. According to a Europe-wide survey on prejudice and discrimination on the continent, conducted by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 13.9 per cent of people in the UK believe that Jews wield too much influence in this country. Although 71.5 per cent of those surveyed said that they believed Jews enriched British culture — the second highest number out of the eight countries included in the report — more than a fifth claimed that Jews “try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era”. Nearly 23 per cent supported the view that Jews “in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind”.

More than two out of five Britons asked agreed that Israel was “conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians”, and nearly 36 per cent said that considering Israel’s policy, they could “understand why people do not like Jews”.

The study, entitled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination,” will be officially presented in Tel Aviv at the start of May but has been published this week to coincide with Yom Ha’Shoah. About 1,000 people were survey in each country, including in Poland, France and Hungary. The authors also looked at attitudes toward immigration and Muslims, with questions on social issues including homophobia, sexism and other forms of extremism. In their conclusions, the authors noted that “the data also shows antisemitism often appearing in the guise of criticism of Israel”. They added: “Antisemitic criticism of Israel comes close to majority support in all European countries. “In that context we also need to discuss whether secondary antisemitism — refusal to acknowledge the crimes of the Holocaust — has taken the place of traditional antisemitism.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

by Ed Voves

Byzantium and Islam, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, addresses two of history’s most amazing developments. This landmark exhibition, organized by Helen C. Evans, the Metropolitan curator responsible for two previous presentations of Byzantine art, brilliantly surveys historical themes of vital interest to the contemporary world.

The Eastern Roman Empire, known to historians as Byzantium, lasted over one thousand years. From its foundation by Emperor Constantine I in 330 A.D. to its conquest by the Turks in 1453, Byzantium was the most influential and resilient Christian state during the Middle Ages. From its capital city of Constantinople, Byzantium projected a political and cultural example that profoundly affected the peoples of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Several centuries into this long-lived span, Byzantium was challenged by a sudden and totally unforeseen event. Having struggled for survival against the Goths, Vandals and other barbarian invaders, as well as the revived Persian Empire, Byzantium now faced a formidable spiritual foe. Islam, whose precepts were set down by the Prophet Muhammad during the early years of the seventh century, spread with lightning speed. In a few short decades following the death of Muhammad in 632, the zealous adherents of this new faith swept westward from Arabia to Spain by 711 and then reached the border provinces of China in the east in 751. The Byzantine Empire staggered and nearly collapsed, as the armies of Islam conquered key provinces such as Syria and Egypt. Many of its citizens embraced the new faith or willingly accepted Islamic rule while adhering to Christianity. Yet Byzantium endured, even as a vibrant culture took shape in the vast regions dominated by the successors of the Prophet Muhammad.

[…]

Byzantium and Islam is not merely an outstanding exhibit in its own right, but serves as a perfect introduction to the Metropolitan Museum’s New Galleries for the Art of Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, opened on November 1, 2011. No work of art on display in the Byzantium and Islam exhibit better illustrates how the culture of the ancient world was transformed into a new and vibrant dispensation than the display of pages from the fabled Blue Qur’an, dating to ca. 900-950. Byzantine scribes had earlier written in gold and silver upon purple-dyed parchment, producing luxury books, including copies of the Gospels. Here Muslim scribes followed the Byzantine lead, while producing a unique expression of their own religious faith. One cannot help admiring the priorities of these Muslim scribes and scholars, taking a color traditionally reserved for the robes of kings and emperors and devoting it to the word of God.

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition March 14 — July 8, 2012, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY 10028

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UAE: Man Who Insulted Islam on Facebook ‘Not Sane’

ABU DHABI // A man who insulted Islam on Facebook is not responsible for his actions, a court heard today. A medical report presented to the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court found that an Egyptian graphic designer, who posted indecent pictures next to the titles of Quranic chapters, could not be considered sane. The court asked for the medical report after a previous hearing in which the man admitted it was “possible” that he was suffering a psychological illness. He confessed to posting the images, telling Chief Justic Sayed Abdulbaseer, head of the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court, that he would withdraw his actions if he could. Police arrested the graphic designer after members of the public complained about the posts. In one of them, he posted a photo of three naked women next to An-Nisa (women) chapter. In another he posted a photo of a table topped with alcoholic drinks next to Al Maeda (table) chapter, and in another, a cow next to Al Baqara (the cow) chapter. The court adjourned the case to May 1.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Taliban Commander Turns Self in… For Reward on ‘Wanted’ Poster

Sometimes, capturing a Taliban commander requires vast resources and complex operations. Last week in eastern Afghanistan, it required neither.

Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Paktika province, strolled toward a police checkpoint in the district of Sar Howza with a wanted poster bearing his own face. He demanded the finder’s fee referenced on the poster: $100.

Afghan officials, perplexed by the man’s misguided motives, arrested him on the spot. Ashan is suspected of plotting at least two attacks on Afghan security forces. His misdeeds prompted officials to plaster the district with hundreds of so-called “Be on the Lookout” posters emblazoned with his name and likeness.

When U.S. troops went to confirm that Ashan had in fact come forward to claim the finder’s fee, they were initially incredulous.

“We asked him, ‘Is this you?’ Mohammad Ashan answered with an incredible amount of enthusiasm, ‘Yes, yes, that’s me! Can I get my award now?’“ recalled SPC Matthew Baker.

A biometric scan confirmed that the man in Afghan custody was the insurgent they had been looking for.

“This guy is the Taliban equivalent of the ‘Home Alone” burglars,” one U.S. official said.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Barack Obama Makes Falklands Gaffe by Calling Malvinas the Maldives

Barack Obama made an uncharacteristic error, more akin to those of his predecessor George W Bush, by referring to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives.

President Obama erred during a speech at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when attempting to call the disputed archipelago by its Spanish name.

Instead of saying Malvinas, however, Mr Obama referred to the islands as the Maldives, a group of 26 atolls off that lie off the South coast of India.

The Maldives were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965 and the site of a UK airbase for nearly 20 years.

Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine president, has renewed her country’s sovereignty claim to the Falklands in the build-up to the 30th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands, which triggered the Falklands War, on April 2.

She has accused David Cameron of maintaining a “colonial enclave” in the South Atlantic and taken Argentina’s claim to the UN.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Abu Qatada Arrested Pending New Extradition

Hate cleric Abu Qatada has been arrested and returned to custody pending a fresh attempt to deport him to Jordan.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is expected to tell MPs this afternoon that an agreement has been reached with Jordan to ensure his removal.

Assurances have been sought to allay fears by the European Court of Human Rights that he will face trial with evidence obtained by torture.

However, despite facing a fresh deportation order, Qatada’s lawyers will be able to launch a fresh legal challenge against his removal.

He is expected to appear at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission on Tuesday afternoon, when the home secretary will update MPs on his case

A Home Office spokesperson said: “UK Border Agency officers have today arrested Abu Qatada and told him that we intend to resume deportation proceedings against him.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Abu Qatada Deportation Case: As it Happened

Hate cleric Abu Qatada has today been arrested and returned to custody pending a fresh attempt to deport him to Jordan. Follow the Telegraph’s live blog for the latest updates on the case.

  • Abu Qatada arrested at his home
  • He has appeared before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission
  • Theresa May tells Commons she believes Qatada can be deported
  • Jordan has agreed assurances to allow deportation
  • Home Office intends to remove him on or around April 30
  • Qatada’s lawyers say they will appeal

Latest

17.20 This concludes our live blog for today. Thank you very much for joining us and please do keep checking the Telegraph website for more updates.

16.55 Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, has said: Since the Court of Human Rights ruled that Abu Qatada should not be sent to Jordan for a trial based on torture, the Home Secretary faced many calls to deport him and flout the law. Shame on them. She has not courted popularity by doing this and has recognised there will be new legal scrutiny of the latest assurances that she has obtained from that country. Credit must go where it is due and it is due to the Home Secretary today. We don’t always agree on the application of human rights but she seems to understand that if the Government does not respect the rule of law, why should anyone else?

16.41 Donna Bowater adds: Justice Mitting said: “The only possibility of the deportation going ahead in accordance with the intention of the secretary of state is if the application is certified and if any challenge to that certification is turned down by the courts in short order.” Mr Tam told the court there was an increased risk that Qatada would abscond. He said: “He has wide and high levels of support, which of course has consequences if he were to abscond in terms of what could and would be provided to him.” He added: “Given where we are in the deportation process, this is a time when conventionally the risk of absconding increases.”

16.32 Donna Bowater reports from SIAC: Arguing that Qatada’s deportation was compatible with the ECHR ruling, Mr Tam said there had been talks at ministerial and prime ministerial levels — involving the King of Jordan — to address Strasbourg’s concerns. He said: “These are changes of real weight…these are meetings which are not liable to produce inaccurate information that has been put together merely to put together a case. There’s real substance behind the secretary of state’s view that the deportation can now be carried out compatible with the convention.”

16.23 Theresa May has said the government could not simply have ignored the decision of the European court. She said putting Qatada on a plane would involve ministers, Government officials, the police, law enforcement officers and airline companies all breaking the law. The Government would also have risked being ordered to bring Qatada back to Britain and pay out compensation, she added.

Instead, our approach will bring an enduring solution.

16.16 The English Defence League are protesting outside the Home Office, central London, this afternoon.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Abu Qatada is a Microcosm of Everything That’s Wrong With Britain’s Dimwitted Immigration and Welfare Systems

by Ed West

Is Abu Qatada finally on his way home? The Telegraph reports that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is expected to tell MPs this afternoon that an agreement has been reached with Jordan to ensure his removal. Abu Qatada’s case was a microcosm of everything that was wrong with how the British state dealt with a range of issues, such as immigration, welfare, Europe and extremism. He arrived in Britain from Jordan, with his five children, and was able to claim asylum on account of “religious persecution”, not because the Jordanians were extreme but because he was. As I wrote in last week’s Spectator, Britain does little to help Christians in the Middle East escaping persecution but neither do we help our fellow liberals of any religion. Rather than helping our friends, we help our enemies; only the most dim-witted individual would claim that radical Islam is not a threat to Britain.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



It’s Qatada D-Day

May in new bid to deport cleric

THE Home Secretary will today reveal new plans to get hate preacher Abu Qatada booted out of Britain.

In an emergency statement to the Commons, Theresa May will say she believes a deal with Jordan will let the UK deport the al-Qaeda suspect. Her comments will raise hopes the vile Islamic militant could be back behind bars within days. But a fresh legal battle means it could be months before he is thrown out of the country. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in January that Qatada could not be deported. Mrs May’s statement will come after the deadline to appeal against that decision passed at midnight. Ministers must now move swiftly to launch a fresh bid to kick out the fanatic — once dubbed Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe.

The Sun — which has launched a campaign to kick out Qatada — told last month how his lawyers are set to make a legal bid to axe tough restrictions imposed on the cleric when he was released in February. But Ministers plan to short-circuit this move by starting their new drive to deport the fanatic. They will also ask judges to put him back behind bars again.

The European Court of Human Rights’ ruling said Qatada, 51, could not be deported if there was a risk evidence extracted by torture would be used against him. Home Office officials have spent weeks thrashing out a deal with Jordan. Mrs May last month travelled to Amman to ask for a water-tight pledge that they will not use torture evidence. But her handling of the affair was last night condemned by Labour. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “There has been too much drift and delay. The Home Secretary needs to explain urgently to Parliament what she is doing to get Abu Qatada deported, and to make sure there are safeguards to protect public safety.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120416

Financial Crisis
» EU Employment Chief Hails Italy Labor Reforms
» EU: Spain Prompts Leaders to Seek Bigger IMF Support
» Greece: Healthcare Assistance Now a Privilege
» Greece Pins Recovery Hopes on Solar Energy
» Greeks Oppose EU-IMF Economic Programme
» Hungary Complains of EU ‘Blackmail’ On IMF Loan
» Italy: Monti Announces More Hard-Hitting Labour Reforms
» Moody’s Sees Nokia on the Wane, Cuts Rating
» Plan to Set Up European Rating Agency Under Threat
» Rising Interest Rates: Spain Slides Further Into Crisis
» Sarkozy Wants New Role for Euro Bank
» Soros Calls on Germany to Pay or Leave Euro
 
USA
» 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
» Caton: Tampa ‘At Risk’ Of Islamic Takeover
» Charlottesville’s First Constructed Mosque Has Its Ribbon Cutting
» Forgerygate: Demand a Special Counsel Appointment
» Hacking Expert David Chalk Joins Urgent Call to Halt Smart Grid
» Obama’s Open Mic Comment
» Occupy: New Violent Phase Begins to Use Germany’s Black Bloc Tactic
» Oklahoma City Bombing Anniversary
» Stakelbeck: Elites Failing America in Battle Against Jihadists
» Trayvon Case Unlikely to Change US Gun Laws
» US Physician Kim Voted World Bank Head
» US Vigilant in Fight Against Chocolate Eggs
 
Canada
» Thousands Visit New Mosque
 
Europe and the EU
» British Library Buys $14.3m Ancient Gospel
» EU Authorities Accused of Blindness on ‘Counter-Jihad’
» EU Pledges Extra Funds for Energy in Developing Nations
» Fuels From Waste: A New EU Project
» Germany: Vegan Sex Shop Offers Responsible Romping
» Germany: Kurds Try to Hijack Rhine Pleasure Boat
» Italy: Chinese Names in Top Ten of Milanese Surnames
» Italy: Rome’s Famous Gelato Finds New Ways to Tease the Tastebuds
» Italy: Stripper ‘Nuns’ Danced for Berlusconi: Trial Witness
» Italy: Witness Tells of ‘Incriminating’ Berlusconi Sex Tape
» Italy: Fugitive in Berlusconi Sex Scandal Arrested After Months on Run
» Italy: Lega Nord Money Used to Buy Diamonds, Investigators
» Italy: De Gregorio’s Accountant, He Was Paid to Defect to the PDL
» Mentally-Disabled Boy in Italy Denied Communion for “Not Understanding” Rite
» ‘Muslims Being Discriminated in UK’
» Nordic Populists Search Souls After July Attacks
» Norway: Anders Behring Breivik: The Boy Next Door Turned Serial Killer
» Norway: Terror Trial Gets Underway in Oslo
» Norway: Film Unleashed Tears From Breivik
» Norway: Breivik’s Tears Flow on First Day of Trial
» Sweden: Police Arrest Three Over Slain Malmö Teen
» Tax Deal Rewards Germans With Swiss Bank Accounts
» Taxes Never So High in Germany Since 1995, 10,000 Eur. Each
» UK: “If You Look at What Labour Did to Our Country Why on Earth Would You Let Them Anywhere Near Your Council?”
» UK: Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin Faces Death Penalty in Bangladesh
» UK: The Evils of Secrecy in Our Family Courts
 
Mediterranean Union
» Anna Lindh Foundation: Deadline 2012 Call Extended
 
North Africa
» Interview With German Intelligence Chief: ‘We Must be the First to go in and the Last to Leave’
» Morocco: EU, Nine Energy Efficiency Projects Launched
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» IDF: Attack on Activist Doesn’t Represent Army Conduct
» Israel’s Other Temple: Research Reveals Ancient Struggle Over Holy Land Supremacy
 
Middle East
» Ashton Says Iran Nuclear Talks ‘Constructive’
» ‘Both Sides Must Move or There Will be War’
» Qatar: Multimedia Plan for Arab and Western Mutual Understanding
» Turkey: Modern Turkish Designs Spread Across Globe
» UAE: Islam is Key to Peace, Convention Concludes
» We Want to Invest in Italy, Emir Says
 
Russia
» European Court Faults Russia Over Katyn Massacre
 
South Asia
» Afghanistan: Taliban ‘Spring Offensive’ Dampens Optimism
» Himalayan Glaciers Are Not Melting, Study
» India: Chandy’s Communal Card Will Kill Kerala’s Political Culture
» Indonesia: Jakarta: Hundreds of Christians Ask President for Justice on Places of Worship
» Italian Marines’ Incarceration Extended by Two More Weeks
» Karzai: NATO Failings Led to Attacks by Taliban
» UK: Leading British Muslim Leader Faces War Crimes Charges in Bangladesh
 
Far East
» British Businessman’s Death Spurs Probe Into Murder, Greed and China’s Leadership
» China Eases Currency Controls in Long-Awaited Move
» Global Nuclear Production Dropped After Fukushima, IAEA
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Swiss Woman Kidnapped in Timbuktu: Confirmed
 
Latin America
» US, Haiti Kick Off Vaccination Campaigns
 
Immigration
» Asylum Requests Surge in Switzerland
 
Culture Wars
» UK: London Mayoral Elections Gay Hustings: Ken Livingstone Urges Muslims to be Treated Fairly
 
General
» A Brave Telling of the Koran’s Human Stories
» Best Evidence Yet That a Single Gene Can Affect IQ
» Blind Hydra Relies on Light to Kill Prey
» Salt Levels in Fast Food Depend on Where You Buy it

Financial Crisis


EU Employment Chief Hails Italy Labor Reforms

‘Important objectives’ says Andor

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 16 — The European Union Employment Commissioner hailed Italy’s labor-market reforms on Monday. “Their objectives are very important,” said Lazslo Andor.

The endorsement is a boon to Premier Mario Monti’s emergency government which is currently trying to push the reforms through parliament and make it easier for firms to fire workers.

Monti says the measures will boost growth and productivity and reduce unemployment because companies will be more inclined to hire workers if they know they can dismiss them if they need to.

Before presenting the bill to parliament earlier this month, the government reinstated the possibility of rehiring, and not just compensation, for workers deemed to have been unfairly dismissed for business reasons under Article 18 of the labour code. Monti apparently bowed to pressure from the centre-left part of the government’s broad coalition and the change has angered employers who, despite other changes to Article 18, believe it will still continue to be tough to shed workers in hard times.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



EU: Spain Prompts Leaders to Seek Bigger IMF Support

Brussels, 16 April (AKI/Bloomberg) — European officials travel to Washington this week seeking a bigger global war chest to combat the debt crisis as Spain’s government battles to quell renewed market turmoil over its finances.

Three weeks after European leaders unveiled emergency euro- area funding exceeding the symbolic $1 trillion mark, concerns about Spain’s position have ratcheted the nation’s borrowing costs to the highest levels this year. Crisis-fighting resources will dominate talks at the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting in Washington from April 20-22.

While the U.S. insists that Europe can overcome the crisis using its own financial firepower, euro-area officials say they’ve done enough to trigger additional global assistance. The urgency was underscored last week as Spanish and Italian yields jumped, challenging assumptions among the region’s leaders that the worst of the fallout was behind them.

“After three months that were calmer than expected, the euro crisis is back,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London. “The speed of the recent surge in yields has elements of a renewed market panic.”

Spain’s 10-year bond yield climbed 19 basis points last week to 5.98 percent, while similar-maturity Italian yields increased seven basis points to 5.52 percent. The euro declined to a one-month low against the dollar today. The 17-nation currency fell 0.4 percent to $1.3022 at 2:05 p.m. in Tokyo, after touching $1.3009, the lowest since March 15.

The surge in borrowing costs prompted one of Spain’s deputy economy ministers, Jaime Garcia-Legaz, to call on the European Central Bank to resume its direct intervention in the markets.

Increase Bond Purchases

“They should step up purchases of bonds,” Garcia-Legaz said in an April 13 interview, wading into a debate that has split the ECB. While Executive Board member Benoit Coeure signaled April 11 the ECB may buy up Spanish bonds, his Dutch colleague Klaas Knot said two days later that the ECB is “very far” from reactivating the measure.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is pushing through an austerity agenda targeting spending on health and education, won backing from his party’s regional leaders over the weekend. People’s Party chiefs from regions including Madrid, Valencia and Galicia agreed to streamline bureaucracy and write deficit targets into budget laws.

“We need to manage a reality that is very tough,” Maria Dolores Cospedal, the deputy party head and president of Castilla La Mancha, told reporters after a party meeting. Rajoy’s government has struggled to convince investors after last month saying it would not meet budget deficit targets set by the European Commission and the previous government.

Spanish Auctions

European governments are banking on a bigger safety net to soothe markets as the crisis continues to simmer, with Spanish borrowing nearing the level that prompted Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts. Sentiment will be gauged again on April 19, when Spain auctions two- and 10-year debt.

The Europeans’ appeal for funds may find more success after IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde last week scaled back her request for $600 billion in new contributions. Lagarde said April 12 that she is hoping to make “real progress” at this week’s meetings. She has also said the IMF needs more cash to quell economic risks separate from Europe’s woes, such as higher oil prices and slowing U.S. growth.

Her retooled strategy reflects international and particularly U.S. reluctance to deliver more cash amid suspicion Europe isn’t doing enough to save itself. The IMF has less than $400 billion available to lend.

‘Non-European Friends’

Bowing to international pressure to do more while stopping short of a bolder proposal, European governments agreed last month that 500 billion euros ($654 billion) in fresh money would be placed aside 300 billion euros already committed to create an 800 billion-euro defense against contagion.

By also offering to give the IMF 150 billion euros, “European governments have done their part,” ECB Executive Board Member Joerg Asmussen said April 13. “I would now expect our non-European friends and partners to contribute their part to IMF resources.”

Foreign governments have been slow to rally, although emerging markets including Brazil and Mexico have indicated they are willing to participate.

Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said April 11 that “if we’re asked if we’re 100 percent satisfied with Europe’s efforts, I would say they need further efforts.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has already ruled out more support for the IMF from its largest shareholder, saying last month the lender already has “substantial financial resources.”

French Elections

After spending or committing at least 386 billion euros to bailing out Greece, Portugal and Ireland, Europe now has the money to fully finance Spain through the end of 2014 if needed, according to Schmieding at Berenberg Bank. Italy — with a sovereign debt of 1.9 trillion euros — is not so easily saved and would require the ECB to intervene if faced with an investor revolt, he said.

Added to the mix are the looming French presidential elections, with the first round due on April 22. EU officials and investors will be looking to see how the Franco-German partnership could be altered if Socialist candidate Francois Hollande beats President Nicolas Sarkozy in the second-round vote on May 6.

Both candidates addressed supporters in Paris yesterday after Hollande extended his advantage in a possible head-to-head race by two points to 56 percent against 44 percent, according to a TNS Sofres survey published April 13.

“France faces a highly intriguing election, which could add to market woes,” Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, wrote in an e-mailed note to clients.

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



Greece: Healthcare Assistance Now a Privilege

After years of recession, huge cuts to state budget

(ANSAmed) — ATENE, APRIL 16 — Four years of a recession and two years of wide-ranging cuts to the state budget to reduce expenditure and balance accounts is making healthcare in Greece into ever more a luxury for the privileged few. With public healthcare spending at around 10 billion euros, 25% less than in 2009, staying healthy “risks becoming a privilege”, said Haralambos Economou, who teaches sociology at Athens’ Panteion University. Two years of harsh austerity have led to over a million officially unemployed people in Greece, over 20% of the workforce. Sector experts say that up to 10% of the population, when in need of treatment, are now forced to dip into their steadily-diminishing savings.

In the past, most Greeks (whenever possible) made use of private healthcare facilities, even if they had to pay almost 40% of the total treatment costs out of their own pockets, one of the highest rates in developed countries. Now, however, the demand for treatment in public hospitals has risen by 20-30%, with expenditure once again falling on a state system already suffering due to a cut in costs. However, even worse, many people try to get round the system (and reduce costs) by showing up at the emergency room in order to get immediate treatment instead of requesting an appointment in advance for which they would need to pay. Hospitals are trying to do their best to deal with the situation. “After the recent reforms forced us to request money from patients who are not covered by health insurance, ever more people avoid making appointments because they do not have the money for them,” said Dr. Meropi Manteou, specialist in pneumology at Athens’ Sotiria hospital. “They come here with the flu and try to pass it off as an emergency. We do what we can to help the poorest, but I don’t know how long we will be able to close a blind eye.” However, the problems are not only for the less well off, with the situation now difficult even for those who have made contributions into the healthcare system for years, since — due to the crisis — the health ministry has reduced the list of medicines and medical tests that can be reimbursed by the social security institute, which is going through a very difficult period due to bad past financial management as well as chronically low contributions, a problem now worse due to growing unemployment levels. Public hospitals are every day having to fight against reduced financing, doctors’ salaries cut by a quarter, a chronic lack of nurses and no payment of overtime hours since December. This is also a reason why many Greeks have begun to go to the centre run by Doctors of the World NGO, which have been working in the country for over 20 years and which until recently worked almost exclusively with immigrants and emarginated groups. “Since the end of 2010 ever more Greeks, and not only immigrants, are coming to us,” said Christina Samartzi, spokesperson of the NGO, “and now they number more than 100 per day, the people who are requesting assistance solely in Athens.

This is a new phenomenon, and is a consequence of the economic crisis.” Most Greeks requesting assistance from the NGO are unemployed, pensioners or families that can no longer afford the compulsory vaccinations for their youngest children. “We are seeing a lot of elderly people suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes who cannot buy the medicines that they need every month,” said Giorgos Papadakis, a young diabetologist. “They come to us and ask whether we can give them to them.” But the worst thing, as many of the volunteers from the NGO confirmed, is that ever more Greeks are asking not only for medicine but also for food.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece Pins Recovery Hopes on Solar Energy

Economically depressed Greece is working to become the EU’s largest exporter of solar-generated electricity, the Greek energy minister said. Talks with investors from Italy and Luxembourg are already underway. The planned state-sponsored project “Helios” is expected to pour annual revenues to the tune of 15 billion euros ($19.5 billion) into empty Greek state coffers and create 60,000 jobs, Greece’s Energy Minister George Papakonstantinou said on Monday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Greeks Oppose EU-IMF Economic Programme

A majority of Greeks is against the EU-IMF austerity programme being imposed in return for bailout money, a poll showed Saturday, reports Ekathimerini. The MRB poll found 66% favoured Greece staying in the eurozone but adopting an alternative recovery plan, while 13.2% said the country should drop the euro.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Hungary Complains of EU ‘Blackmail’ On IMF Loan

Imposing political conditions on a desperately needed EU-IMF loan is unfair, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. “Creating political conditions — for example over the justice system — would amount to blackmail, which is unacceptable within the European Union,” Orban told national radio MR.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Monti Announces More Hard-Hitting Labour Reforms

(AGI) Rome — Mario Monti has said the labour reform bill is “much broader and more incisive than the November proposal.” Speaking after his meeting with the Emir of Qatar, he said “this bill is much more far-ranging than the one I outlined to the Chamber during the 17th November planning session. I spoke then about greater flexibility for new employees only, and on a trial basis, but this latest bill, which was drawn up just a few days ago, applies to all workers, not just new employees.

It is a definitive bill, not an experimental one.” It is significant that Monti should have added “some people felt that this bill did not go far enough.” .

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



Moody’s Sees Nokia on the Wane, Cuts Rating

International ratings agency Moody’s has cut the credit rating of mobile phone maker Nokia, describing an investment in the Finnish firm as speculative. The move comes in anticipation of ‘disappointing’ sales. Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the creditworthiness of Nokia from “Baa2” to “Baa3,” meaning that the Finnish mobile phone maker has fallen to the bottom of the agency’s “speculative, non-investment” category.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Plan to Set Up European Rating Agency Under Threat

The project to set up a European rating agency to challenge the dominance of American firms is at risk of collapsing, the German business daily Financial Times Deutschland reported on Monday. International consulting firm Roland Berger can’t find enough investors for its plan, the report said. But it hasn’t completely given up hope.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Rising Interest Rates: Spain Slides Further Into Crisis

The situation on the financial markets is getting tougher for Spain. The interest rates the country must pay on longer-term, 10-year bonds rose on Monday to over 6 percent for the first time this year. The government in Madrid is also warning that Spain has fallen back into recession.

Spain is once again experiencing tremendous pressure from the financial markets. With the economy sliding and Spanish banks no longer able to finance themselves independently, doubts are growing among investors that the country can service its debts without outside help. Some are already speculating that Spain will have to request aid from the European Union’s euro rescue fund.

On Monday, the interest rate on 10-year government loans rose for the first time this year to over the 6-percent mark, increasing by 0.13 points to 6.12 percent. Investors are demanding increasingly higher risk premiums in order to buy Spanish bonds.

The cost for credit loss insurance also rose to a record high. For securities with a five-year term and a face value of $10 million, insurers are demanding an annual premium of $520,000.

“We’re back in full crisis mode,” Rabobank strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor said, according to Reuters. “It is looking more and more likely that Spain is going to have some form of a bailout.” For weeks now, markets have been rife with speculation that Spain may have to borrow money from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in order to shore up its foundering banks. Figures ranging from €50 billion to €100 billion are being bandied about.

The Spanish banks are so saddled with a mountain of non-performing real estate loans that few other European banks are willing to continue to lend them money. Instead they must rely on the European Central Bank (ECB) for fresh infusions of cheap money. In March, the banks borrowed a record €316 billion from the ECB — close to twice the amount borrowed in February.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sarkozy Wants New Role for Euro Bank

With just a week to go until the presidential elections, French incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday (15 April) said the European Central Bank should get a new mandate on reviving economic growth — a no-go area for Germany.

“On the question of the ECB’s role in boosting growth, we French are going to open the debate,” Sarkozy told supporters in central Paris during the biggest rally of his re-election campaign to date.

He said that there must be “no taboos” in discussing the rules of the eurozone, including a more growth-oriented role for the ECB: “We cannot have taboo subjects. We cannot have banned debates.”

The Frankfurt-based ECB was a political target for Sarkozy five years ago during the 2007 presidential election campaign. Since then he has regularly spoken out in favour of a more active role by the bank in saving ailing governments in the eurozone.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Soros Calls on Germany to Pay or Leave Euro

US billionaire investor George Soros called on Germany to contribute more or leave the eurozone. “The Germans should decide if they want the euro or not. If so, they have to carry out financial transfers. If not, they should leave the eurozone,” he told Welt am Sonntag in an interview.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

USA


2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The New York Times won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, one for its reporting on Africa and another for an investigative series on obscure tax code provisions that allow wealthy corporations and citizens to avoid paying taxes. But the bigger surprise this year came from new media. Online news outlets The Huffington Post and Politico both won their first Pulitzer Prizes, a sign of the changing media landscape.

Also notable this year was the lack of prizes in some categories. The Pulitzer Prize board did not name a winner in the editorial writing category and more notably declined to name a winner in the coveted fiction category for the first time in 35 years.

[Return to headlines]



Caton: Tampa ‘At Risk’ Of Islamic Takeover

The head of a Florida-based pro-family organization is deeply concerned that the “Islamization” of Tampa is not far behind that of Dearborn, Michigan. The Florida Family Association (FFA) has been instrumental in warning parents that a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had been invited several times to Steinbrenner High School in Tampa to indoctrinate children with Islamic propaganda, including sharia law. But The Tampa Tribune has criticized the family group for doing so and supported CAIR, whose Florida office is located in Tampa.

David Caton, president of the FFA, says there is a reason the radical Islamic group has taken up residence in the area. “Tampa has a very large population of Muslims,” he explains. “We’ve had numerous public officials embrace various political aspects of Islamist extremism and changes of policy that trend more toward sharia. Tampa is at risk; it’s one of the top five cities at risk.” And the pro-family advocate warns that the Islamization of the city is not far behind that of Dearborn, Michigan, which Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries has nicknamed “Dearbornistan.” “Dearborn is almost lost because 50 percent of their population is Arabic-Muslim,” Caton reports. “They can elect and dominate the government there. But we have a smaller population [of Muslims] in Tampa than Dearborn, and we’re already having non-Islamic leaders embracing their progressive agenda.” So he contends that the Islamization of Tampa must be brought to a halt.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Charlottesville’s First Constructed Mosque Has Its Ribbon Cutting

A Charlottesville Muslim group finally has a home of its own. The Islamic Society of Central Virginia had been fundraising for a dozen years to make the new mosque a reality. Of the three stories in Charlottesville’s first purpose-built mosque, one is complete, the other two remain largely in the rough. “If you go inside, you’ll see a lot of it’s unfinished, but we still have a place to call our own,” Irtefa Binte-Farid, who will soon be entering graduate school, said. Emaad Abdel-Rahman cited help from people in Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. in raising funds for the building. He joked that people now develop sudden allergies whenever he brings up fundraising, but said efforts will have to continue to finish the inside of the building. The Quran forbids borrowing money at interest, which means the group has to have all the money in hand before it can undertake a given piece of work.

Among those in attendance for the building’s ribbon cutting Saturday were Charlottesville Mayor Satyendra Huja and City Councilor Kristin Szakos. “Things don’t happen by themselves,” Huja said. “People make it happen.” City Councilor Dave Norris was unable to attend, but sent a message. “I am thrilled, as I know you are,” he wrote. Members of the Islamic Society of Central Virginia did express happiness at their new facility, which replaces a home that had been housing the program while members raised money for the new Pine Street mosque. “The ISCV and this mosque, for us, is really a grounding point,” said University of Virginia fourth-year Mohib Tora of the Muslim Students Association. The group works closely with the MSA, and the new facility will also mean more space for students. The mosque will offer five daily prayers, including the especially important Friday prayers. The new facility, which will eventually include a kitchen in the basement, will also have enough capacity for big holiday events, said Khan Hassan, the group’s treasurer and a member of its board of directors. The society lists spreading the word of God and correcting misperceptions about Islam among its missions

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Forgerygate: Demand a Special Counsel Appointment

Barack Hussein Obama aka Barry Soetoro aka Barry Dunham aka Barack Dunham — all known aliases of the occupant in the White House. I will refer to him as Barry Soetoro since that appears to be the last known legal name of the mystery man.

Over the past four years I have followed every case filed, read every brief submitted and a million words on the constitutional meaning of ‘natural born citizen’. Only those in denial or whose ideological agenda depends on Barry staying in office refuse to acknowledge that Soetoro was born with dual citizenship. He was ineligible in 2008 and he’s still ineligible in 2012.

In the only oral arguments to actually take place out in Georgia, the end result has been the same. Two weeks ago, the Georgia Supreme Court checked their manhood at the door and ruled against all the plaintiffs. Those judges followed the cowardly path taken by Judge Mahili in his original decision to allow Barry on the Georgia ballot despite the undeniable legal facts presented by plaintiffs during the original hearings. However, what the Georgia Supreme Court did was even more reprehensible according to Van Irion, Liberty Legal Foundation, who represented David Welden:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Hacking Expert David Chalk Joins Urgent Call to Halt Smart Grid

“100% certainty of catastrophic failure of energy grid within 3 years”

The vulnerability of the energy industry’s new wireless smart grid will inevitably lead to lights out for everyone, according to leading cyber expert David Chalk. In an online interview for an upcoming documentary film entitled ‘Take Back Your Power’ ( www.ThePowerFilm.org ), Chalk says the entire power grid will be at risk to being taken down by cyber attack, and if installations continue it’s only a matter of time.

“We’re in a state of crisis,” said Chalk. “The front door is open and there is no lock to be had. There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking — if not already infected — with some sort of trojan horse that can cause the grid to be shut down or completely annihilated.”

“One of the most amazing things that has happened to mankind in the last 100 years is the Internet. It’s given us possibility beyond our wildest imagination. But we also know the vulnerabilities that exist inside of it. And then we have the backbone, the power grid that powers our nations. Those two are coming together. And it’s the smart meter on your home or business that’s now allowing that connectivity.”

Chalk also issued a challenge to governments, media and technology producers to show him one piece of digital technology that is hack-proof.

“The computer companies that are involved, the manufacturers that are involved, bring forward a technology and I will show you that it’s penetrable,” said Chalk. “I’ll do it on national TV, I’ll do it anywhere. But I can guarantee you 100% that there is nothing out there today — nothing — that can’t be penetrated.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Obama’s Open Mic Comment

Believing himself off the record, President Obama, then in Russia, leaned over to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and said in reference to prospective negotiations on reduction of American missile defenses: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” In response, Medvedev replied in English, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladmir,” meaning to incoming President (and de facto Russian dictator) Vladmir Putin.

The comment is problematic for at least five reasons. First, President Obama is revealing to the Russian president that Obama will act after his re-election in less of a representational capacity, but more on his own behalf as if he too were a dictator. Second, President Obama is signaling that he presently maintains a public position that will change after the election albeit the intended change is one not to be revealed to the American public. Third, President Obama is suggesting that he will move to reduce American missile defenses, thus making the United States more vulnerable to nuclear attack. Fourth, President Obama’s statement in this instance suggests that he may well have a hidden agenda on a host of other vital issues that will become apparent only after he is re-elected. Fifth, the President is confiding in an enemy of the United States in a rather casual manner, revealing that he fails to recognize that when he appears abroad he represents at all times and in all places the United States of America.

The fickle statement of the President is an embarrassment for the entire nation. It proves once again that President Obama cannot be trusted.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Occupy: New Violent Phase Begins to Use Germany’s Black Bloc Tactic

A black bloc is a protest tactic where the point is to cause destruction and chaos to the system with organized violence. It was named in Germany where Anarchists developed the tactic. The protesters wear black clothing and mask their faces to make it harder for police to pick out individuals.

This weekend in New York where the Occupy movement began the tactic was employed for the first time. New York Times reported a long-time Occupy organizer was one of those arrested for attacking a NYPD officer with a metal pipe. 41-year-old Alexander Penley, is an attorney and has been an Occupy Wall Street organizer since the movement began in the fall. The group tried to use eight-foot-long galvanized metal pipes to smash windows.

[Return to headlines]



Oklahoma City Bombing Anniversary

Hamas comes from the MB, and in Steven Emerson’s American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, he listed Hamas as having groups and conventions in Oklahoma City. Relevant to the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995 (anniversary this coming Thursday), Jim Crogan in “An Oklahoma Mystery: New hints of links between Timothy McVeigh and Middle Eastern terrorists” (L.A. Weekly, July 24-30, 2002) wrote that “an undated intelligence report by [Director of the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare Yossef] Bodansky discusses alleged terrorist training inside the U.S. that included some ‘Lily Whites.’… Bodansky states the training was ordered by Iran and conducted by Hamas operatives… Bodansky’s sources also report that at least two of the 1993 participants came from Oklahoma City.”

[…]

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s alleged bombing partner, Terry Nichols, first met Ramzi Youssef (Al Qaeda 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind) in the Philippines on December 17, 1991. The FBI could have prevented the 1993 bombing, because the bomb designer asked his FBI contact to give him fake bombmaking material, but the contact didn’t. The FBI also could have prevented the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, but it prevented the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) from its planned raid of Elohim City to arrest Andreas Strassmeir, described as the bombing “instigator.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Stakelbeck: Elites Failing America in Battle Against Jihadists

It’s the first rule of war: know your enemy. Yet the U.S. government refuses to use terms like “jihadists” or “radical Islamists” to describe the terrorists who attack us.

My new report examines how America’s “elites” in government, academia and the mainstream media are misleading the American people about the threat we face—and endangering our national security as a result.

Click the link above to watch the report, which features interviews with Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Israeli govt. advisor Michael Widlanski.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]



Trayvon Case Unlikely to Change US Gun Laws

In February, an unarmed teenager was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer. The man has been charged with second-degree murder, but the incident is not likely to change liberal gun laws in the US. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black American, was on his way home when he became a target of George Zimmerman.

Because the youth seemed “suspect” to him, Zimmerman, a member of an armed neighborhood watch group, decided to follow him. The situation then apparently escalated, and Zimmerman and shot and killed Martin.

Police summoned to the scene first checked whether the victim had a criminal record. Zimmerman, who claimed to have acted in self-defense, was allowed to walk free, in accordance with Florida law, as gun laws in the state are — even by American standards — particularly “generous.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



US Physician Kim Voted World Bank Head

The World Bank has chosen public health expert Jim Yong Kim of the US as its new president. The South Korean-born physician will assume the top post at the international development agency in July. The World Bank announced on Monday that Kim had been chosen to lead the Washington-based institution. Kim, 52, will replace Robert Zoellick, who is stepping down after a one five-year term. He is currently head of Dartmouth College in the US state of New Hampshire.

His nomination by President Barack Obama came as a surprise. As a physician and pioneer in HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis treatment in the developing world, he was an unorthodox choice. In the past, political, economic and legal figures have led the bank. The choice of Kim cements the tradition of an American leading the 187-nation development agency. Developing countries had unsuccessfully lobbied to have one of their own named president.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



US Vigilant in Fight Against Chocolate Eggs

Bringing Kinder Surprise eggs into the US can incur a fine of hundreds of dollars because the famous chocolates with toys inside are illegal there under a 1938 law. Seizures of the eggs have doubled since 2010, but egg-lovers are now petitioning for the ban to be lifted.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Canada


Thousands Visit New Mosque

Thousands of Hamiltonians, most Muslims but many not, came out to celebrate the city’s newest and largest mosque Friday. And as the guests flooded into the main prayer hall at the Hamilton Mountain Masjid, Kamran Bhatti was especially emotional. This mosque — the first in the city to be built from the ground up — had been a dream of his father’s, who moved to Hamilton from Pakistan in the 1970s. Looking around the room, he said his story is special but not unique. “There are 3,000 owners of this place, 3,000 personal connections to this place,” said Bhatti, a spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Hamilton. Last Friday, it was a full house. More than 3,500 took advantage of the statutory holiday to come out for prayers at the mosque. This week, more curious faces — many from outside the Muslim community — gathered to celebrate the milestone. Worshippers and visitors alike strolled around, admiring the finished product.

Sabeeha Quader was just thrilled. The 29-year-old woman has called Hamilton home for two years, and has seen how much this project means to the city. “It’s just a really nice feeling to have a facility that can accommodate so many people,” she said. “Just the diversity of this community … so many new faces coming in and out of these doors.” In his sermon Friday, Imam Hamid Slimi spoke of the undeniable excitement in the air. “No one doubts there is a mood in this masjid today … a spirit of happiness, of celebration … a spirit rarely seen except on these occasions like Ramadan, weddings and new birth.” The mosque fell silent only for the sermon and prayers, and then a buzz quickly filled the space as people toured the new facilities.

The old Stone Church Road East mosque was based in a former racquetball club on the site that held 500 people. Now, thousands can worship there. A special mezzanine was built upstairs for the women with additional areas for children. On the main floor are a ‘wadou’ or washing area, conference and board rooms, a community centre and a kitchen.

But beyond the physical improvements, Friday was all about community. Hamilton is home to 30,000 Muslims from 35 nationalities. There are seven mosques across the city. Khadija Krichel moved to Hamilton from Morocco in 1978. She was thrilled to see the new space, but more than anything, “I’m just so happy because everyone is here to share it.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


British Library Buys $14.3m Ancient Gospel

The British Library has paid 9 million pounds (US$14.3 million) to acquire the St. Cuthbert Gospel, a remarkably well-preserved survivor of seventh-century Britain described by the library as the oldest European book to survive fully intact.

The palm-sized book, a manuscript copy of the Gospel of John in Latin, was bought from the British branch of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), the library said Tuesday.

The book measures 96 mm (3.8 inches) by 136 mm (5.4 inches) and has an elaborately tooled red leather cover. It comes from the time of St. Cuthbert, who died in 687, and it was discovered inside his coffin when it was opened in 1104 at Durham Cathedral.

The British Library said the artifact is one of the world’s most important books.

“To look at this small and intensely beautiful treasure from the Anglo-Saxon period is to see it exactly as those who created it in the seventh century would have seen it,” said the library’s chief executive, Lynne Brindley.

“The exquisite binding, the pages, even the sewing structure survive intact, offering us a direct connection with our forebears 1300 years ago,” she added.

Cuthbert’s coffin arrived in Durham after monks had removed it from the island of Lindisfarne, 330 miles (530 kilometers) north of London, to protect the remains from Viking raiders in the ninth and 10th centuries. The book will be displayed at the British Library in London and then in Durham, northeast England, next year.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



EU Authorities Accused of Blindness on ‘Counter-Jihad’

Security services in Europe have neglected the kind of right-wing extremism which inspired Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik to commit mass murder, a UK-based rights group has warned.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



EU Pledges Extra Funds for Energy in Developing Nations

(BRUSSELS) — The European Union vowed fresh funds Monday to help developing nations provide sustainable energy to 500 million people by 2030.

“Today, while one part of the planet lives in the digital era and in the times of digital communication, the other part has still no access to basic electricity, power or energy,” said European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

“Being in the dark every day is the tragic reality of 1.3 billion people in the world today.”

Speaking at a sustainable energy summit attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Barroso pledged 50 million euros ($65 million) over two years for technical assistance and said EU nations would seek hundreds of millions of euros more to support investments in sustainable energy for developing countries.

“With today’s strong pledge that we will assist developing countries in providing energy access for 500 million people by 2030, we are demonstrating our own commitment and hope that others will join us in making sure that by 2030, energy access is no longer a privilege but the right of all.”

The UN chief welcomed what he described as “a very ambitious initiative” in the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in June.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Fuels From Waste: A New EU Project

(AGI) Brussels — Reducing the quantity of waste sent to European dumps is the aim of a new project on bioenergy, that has just started and is funded by the Eu. The project ‘BioenNW’ (‘Delivering Local Bioenergy to NW Europe’), puts together researchers from Belgium, Germany, France, The Netherlands and UK, who will study how waste materials, like straw, wood, algae and sewage could become sources of biofuels, calcelling out the dependance on the production of food crops to be used for producing fuels. The details nof the initiative were published in the Cordis newslatter. BioenNW is partly funded, with 4 million Euros, as part of the INTERREG IVB North Western Europe of the European fund for regional development (EFRD) .

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



Germany: Vegan Sex Shop Offers Responsible Romping

A Berlin sex shop has taken clear-conscience consumerism to an intimate new high, with organic, vegan sex aids. “Other Nature” a women-orientated eco-friendly sex shop offers organic lubricants, silicon vibrators, and whips recycled from old bike tyres as an alternative to mainstream sex shop wares.

Their manifesto is a brave one — to bring customers away from big name sex shops, which they believe sell poor quality, potentially hazardous sex toys. They say fun, healthy sex can be environmentally responsible.

A wide range of dildos, hand selected in every for colour and size are set out across the counter and they all have one thing in common — nothing was created using animal products, nor was any ingredient tested on animals. Because, unlike organic foods, there is no official framework for assessing intimate toys, the women check personally that everything they sell passes strict guidelines.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Germany: Kurds Try to Hijack Rhine Pleasure Boat

Ten members of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) attempted to hijack a pleasure boat on the Rhine in Cologne, western Germany, on Sunday, hoping to use loudspeakers to propagate their manifesto. The pleasure boat was on a tranquil, Sunday afternoon cruise when suddenly half the approximately 20 passengers turned out to be Kurdish activists in disguise.

Some of the group shoved the boat’s captain and driver to one side. “They demanded that the crew steer the boat along the bank, and wanted to read out their manifesto through loudspeakers,” police spokesman Bruno Ethen told Der Spiegel magazine.

No-one was injured in the incident, and the activists, who were unarmed, have been interviewed and are expected to be released on bail, according to police.

In September last year more than 30 PKK sympathizers briefly occupied the studios of commercial TV channel RTL in Cologne. They tried to get the broadcaster to air a report on captive PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan who was arrested in Germany in 1999 and deported to Turkey.

The PKK is fighting an armed struggle in eastern Turkey in an attempt to establish an autonomous Kurdistan and greater rights for Kurds in Turkey. It is listed as a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Italy: Chinese Names in Top Ten of Milanese Surnames

(AGI) Rome — Brambilla is no longer synonymous with being Milanese, which has been replaced by Hu. Rossi still sits at the top of the list, but Hu now comes second in the register.

That is not the only surprise. The first ten most common names at the Municipality of Milan’s registry are Chinese, which shows how the demographics of the city are changing. The Milanese name Brambilla has slipped to 9th place and Fumagalli to 30th. It was very different 25 years ago with not a single foreign name among the top 30 names against 4 today. The only name that still dominates is Rossi. The top ten Milanese names are; 1) Rossi 4,379, 2) Hu 3,694, 3) Colombo 3,685, 4) Ferrari 3,568, 5) Bianchi 2,784, 6) Russo 2,337, 7) Villa 1905, 8) Chen 1,625, 9) Brambilla 1,536, 10) Zhou 1,439.

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



Italy: Rome’s Famous Gelato Finds New Ways to Tease the Tastebuds

Italian capital is heaven for ice-cream lovers

(ANSA) — Rome, April 13 — Dripping with chocolate, covered with strawberries or laden with cream, there is a gelato to tease the tastebuds of every ice-cream lover. It’s no surprise to learn that thousands of foreign tourists who come to Rome take time out to scour the cobbled streets of the Italian capital in search of the perfect gelato.

Historians seem to be divided about whether it was the Greeks or the Egyptians who pioneered the icy delight. Some even claim that Alexander the Great had holes dug along his ancient battle routes that were then filled with snow and fruity flavours, while the Chinese are rumoured to have had their own version of flavoured ice. But most experts agree that the Italians have perfected the art of gelato making and have exported their expertise around the world. Giolitti (Via degli Uffici del Vicario 40, near the Pantheon) was established in 1890 by Giuseppe and Bernadina Giolitti and is a Rome institution. After three generations it still delivers the same authentic flavours today and attracts thousands of children and adults. Among the gelateria’s legendary ice creams is the Coppa Giolitti, a sinful blend of chocolate ice-cream, custard and chilled zabaglione, all topped off with cream and hazelnut shavings. The more eclectic customers can be seen mixing classical flavours such as rich stracciatella with a scoop of lemon or chocolate combined with strawberry. Across town exhausted tourists leave the Vatican Museum and line up outside The Old Bridge (Viale dei Bastioni di Michelangelo 5, just off Piazza Risorgimento). This tiny gelateria makes truly delicious ice-cream, dishes out generous, creamy portions of caramel, nutella, coffee, pine nuts and refreshing fruit — all for less than two euros. And, since it’s made with cream and not milk, it won’t even drip. The highly-recommended La Gelateria dei Gracchi (in Via dei Gracchi 272), offers luscious combinations such as peach and fig, apple and cinnamon as well as pear and ricotta cheese. An alternative to the traditional aperitivo is their popular Cubano, made with rum and chocolate ice-cream. The popular Italian food guide, Gambero Rosso, recommends La Gelateria del Gracchi as well as Il Gelato (Viale dell’Aeronautica 105) in the EUR distric in the south of Rome.

The latter offers over 100 flavours, even catering for those with more exotic taste, offering eccentric tastes such as celery and peperoni or an espresso and sambuca ice cream. In the trendy San Crispino (Via della Panetteria 42) back in Rome’s historic centre tourists will find no cones as the ice cream is always served in coppe, or cups. Service isn’t always with a smile and it’s a little more expensive, but it is a still a legend and prides itself on its quality and home-made ingredients. Established in the 1800s, it is said that the preparation of the ice-cream still follows the secret traditions of an ancient recipe once popular with the 16th-century Italian noblewoman and French Queen consort, Catherine de Medici. Al Settimo Gelo (Via Vodice 21, close to Piazza Mazzini) produces a range of exceptional ice creams and sorbets. Sorbet flavours include chestnut, date, mandarin and even hibiscus flavours. Apart from their popular tiramisu and a Sicilian cream gelati, this gelateria creates chilli chocolate, bergamot, ginger and cardamom flavours and an unusual Iranian ice-cream, made with saffron and rose water. The Gelateria Artigianale Corona (Largo Arenula 27, Piazza Argentina) is also regarded as an ice-cream innovator serving refreshing scoops of lemon and basil and even biscuit flavours.

For a taste of Brazil, you can try their Pitanga, made from bittersweet Brazilian fruits or their dark chocolate gelato, made from Amazon nuts. Others popular gelaterie include: Vice (Via Gregorio VII 385) specialising in ricotta, orange and chocolate mixes and Fata Morgana (Via Lago di Lesina 9) with its irresistible Muller Thurgau wild strawberry and Kentucky chocolate (sprinkled with coffee, liquorice and tobacco) flavours. According to the Istituto del Gelato, a staggering 95% of Italians have a soft spot for their national dessert, and 56% confess they eat it at least once a week in summer. In 2010 some 589 million portions of take-away cups and cones were sold throughout Italy (an average of around 4 kilos of ice cream for every Italian), with more ice-cream sold on Sunday than any other day of the week

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Stripper ‘Nuns’ Danced for Berlusconi: Trial Witness

Strippers in nun costumes danced in front of Silvio Berlusconi at his villa, a witness told a Milan court where the former Italian prime minister is on trial for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute.

Model Imane Fadil said today that the first time she went to a party she was given 2,000 euros ($2,600) in cash by Berlusconi, who told her: “Don’t be offended.”

That night she said she saw two young women in nun costumes with “black tunics, white veils and crosses” stripping in front of the then prime minister.

One of the two was Nicole Minetti, now a regional councillor for Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in Milan, Moroccan-born Fadil said.

She said Minetti and the other woman ended up staying the night at the villa near Milan and alleged that women who stayed were paid more for sex.

Fadil said she had heard of Berlusconi having sex for money with at least two of the women invited to his parties, Italian media reported.

Fadil also said she had come under pressure from a mysterious man to go back to the villa last year when the Berlusconi trial had already started.

“A man stopped near my house and gave me an untraceable phone to organise a visit to Arcore. But I didn’t want to,” she told the courtroom.

Berlusconi is charged with having sex with an underage prostitute, Karima El-Mahroug, and then allegedly abusing his powers by getting police to release her when she was arrested for theft so that his crime would not be revealed.

El-Mahroug, a dancer who was 17 when she allegedly had sex with the then prime minister, is better known by her stage name of “Ruby the Heart Stealer”.

Berlusconi rejects all charges and El-Mahroug denies having sex with him.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Italy: Witness Tells of ‘Incriminating’ Berlusconi Sex Tape

‘Ruby could have taken revenge’

(ANSA) — Milan, Aril 16 — A new witness told a Milan court Monday she had heard that Karima ‘Ruby’ El Mahroug, the underage Moroccan-born runaway accused of taking money for sex with Silvio Berlusconi, has compromising photographs and videos of the former premier. “(Ruby) could have taken revenge,” said Imane Fadil, a Morroccan model who says she refused offers to attend Berlusconi’s alleged ‘bunga bunga’ sex parties. Fadil said in a deposition that Barbara Faggioli, another guest at Berlusconi’s home, told her that Ruby “had very compromising videos and photos of the parties”. Berlusconi is currently on trial for allegedly paying for sex with Ruby after several of the parties at his villa at Arcore outside Milan and allegedly coercing police into releasing her after an unrelated theft claim to hush up the fact. Fadil, who is listed as an injured party in a separate case involving three people who allegedly provided Berlusconi with prostitutes, is the first witness to testify that she turned down offers to participate in the parties. She told the court she first heard of Ruby two years ago from Faggioli, who “was nervous about this girl who could get Berlusconi and all of us in trouble”. Fadil said that Berlusconi personally offered her an envelope with four 500-euro notes inside to “stay over” the first time she visited his villa in Arcore north of Milan. “There were specific handouts for girls who stayed the night. They got the most. They did everything they could to stay,” she said. Fadil recalled one evening in which Faggioli allegedly engaged in a strip-tease while dressed as a nun along with Nicole Minetti, Berlusconi’s former dental hygienist who is now a Lombardy regional councillor for his People of Freedom (PdL) party and is one of the three people accused of supplying the premier with prostitutes. “Minetti organized the evenings,” said Fadil, who described the performance as a sort of “sexy dance in the bunga-bunga room,” with Minetti and Faggioli both dressed in “black habits with a white cross on the headdress”. The other two accused of supplying prostitutes are bankrupt talent scout Lele Mora and long-time Berlusconi news anchor Emilio Fede, a close friend of the media magnate’s.

Fadil, who said she did not come forward sooner out of fear, said Fede told her to keep quiet. “Fede told me that I could not speak about what I had seen at Arcore. He told me ‘I’ll take care of it’,” she said. Fadil also testified that she was “pressured” to go back to Arcore as recently as May and June of last year, after the current trial of the former premier had begun. “A man met me close to my home to give me an untraceable telephone in order to organize meetings in Arcore, but I didn’t want to,” she said. Prosecutors say Berlusconi had sex with 33 prostitutes at his villa over the course of several evenings. Berlusconi, who says his parties were innocent and “elegant” affairs, has stressed that both he and Ruby deny having sex, and has quipped “33 women in two months is too many even for someone who likes pretty girls, like me”.

He claims to be the victim of biased prosecutors who have allegedly been conducting a witch-hunt against him since he entered politics in 1994.

The charge of having sex with an underage prostitute carries a jail term of up to three years, and abuse of office 12 years.

The Ruby trial, which opened last April , is expected to run for years, with dozens of witnesses called by the prosecution and defence including George Clooney and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Fugitive in Berlusconi Sex Scandal Arrested After Months on Run

Rome, 16 April (AKI) — A fugitive accused of involvement in corruption and a sex scandal involving billionaire Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi was arrested Monday after six months on the run.

Ex-director and editor of Socialist newspaper Avanti! Valter Lavitola at 6:40 am local time was arrested at Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport upon the arrival of his flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina before being transferred to a prison in Naples.

Prosecutors in September issued an arrest warrant for Lavitola for suspicion of having the job of passing hush money from Berlusconi money to Bari businessman Giampaolo Tarantini and his wife Angela Devenuto. The couple allegedly were blackmailing the former prime minister over a sex scandal involving prostitutes investigators say Tarantini provided for Berlusconi’s sex parties.

On 24 August Lavitola allegedly telephoned Berlusconi from Sofia , Bulgaria to ask him if he should come home to answer prosecutors’ questions.”What should I do, return and clear everything up?” he said, according to excerpts of wiretaps released Thursday by left-leaning weekly L’Espresso magazine and republished on the front page of many of Italy’s major newspapers . “Stay where you are,” Berlusconi advised him, according to the published transcripts.

Blackmail charges against Tarantini and Devenuto have been dropped. Prosecutors now say Berlusconi paid money to Tarantini to offer false testimony that Berlusconi didn’t realize the women were prostitutes.

Berlusconi is on trial in Milan for allegedly paying a minor for sex.

All the accused say they have done nothing wrong.

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



Italy: Lega Nord Money Used to Buy Diamonds, Investigators

(AGI) Milan — Rosy Mauro, Piergiorgio Stiffoni and Belsito may have used Lega Nord money to buy 400,000 euro worth of diamonds. It emerges from ongoing investigations into the Lega Nord’s alleged financial misdealing. Investigators said 200,000 euro of party money were also spent to buy 5 kg of gold ingots.

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



Italy: De Gregorio’s Accountant, He Was Paid to Defect to the PDL

(AGI) Naples- De Gregorio’s defection from the IDV, for which he was first elected in 2006, to the PDL, was “handsomely rewarded”. The senator’s accountant, Andrea Vetromile, who was heard on 29 February this year as a person informed of the facts, revealed this to Naples’ magistrates. “It was Lavitola who endorsed Sergio De Gregorio with Berlusconi. De Gregorio is a former socialist like Lavitola”. The Senator was due to stand in 2005 on the Forza Italia lists, but Fulvio Martusciello, “didn’t think well of him and managed to exclude him.” De Gregorio stood with Di Pietro and was elected with about 80,000 votes. “Once elected he went over to the ranks of the centre-right. So it was Lavitola, with his strong personal relationship with Berlusconi, who made this agreement happen. I heard Lavitola endorsing the defection operation … I would also like to point out that the defection agreement was very ‘lavishly remunerated …. (omitted). Also it was the job of Lavitola like De Gregorio to ferry many more possible MPs from the centre-left to the centre-right.” .

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



Mentally-Disabled Boy in Italy Denied Communion for “Not Understanding” Rite

Near the northern city of Ferrara, a priest has denied communion to a mentally-disabled child, saying that it can only be offered to those who “understand the mystery” of the rite. The parents are taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights — and the Vatican.

Giacomo Galeazzi

Controversy has erupted both inside and outside the Catholic Church after a parish priest in northern Italy refused to offer communion to a disabled child. Father Piergiorgio Zaghi of the Immaculate Conception church in Porto Garibaldi, a village near Ferrara, denied the sacrament at Easter mass, saying that the mentally-disabled boy was unable to “understand the mystery of the Eucharist.”

The parents of the boy in the Emilia-Romagna region have taken their case both to the European Court of Human Rights and to the higher authorities at the Holy See in Rome. Antonio Marziale, a sociologist and head of the Children’s Rights Observatory as well as a consultant for the Italian Parliamentary Committee for Childhood, denounced the denial of the rite as “cultural obscurantism from the Middle Ages.”

Parishioners are divided between those who share the priest’s view and those who disagree, and are calling for Pope Benedict XVI to weigh in and defend the right of the mentally disabled to receive the sacrament. A boy who attends catechism classes with the disabled child wrote a letter to the priest: “If he was with us, it would be a great joy for him, and we would see the actual value of Communion.”…

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



‘Muslims Being Discriminated in UK’

London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone has called on the Londoners to be united after stressing that it is the Muslims’ turn to be discriminated against. Labour party’s candidate for mayor of London declared that he would like to see Muslim residents of the capital be represented in a “better balance.” Livingstone, who is competing to take back his former post from Conservative mayor Boris Johnson, said that Britain’s “right-wing politicians pander to bigotry.” He insisted that in 1906 Daily Mail’s front pages mostly covered the headlines about “Jews bring crime and disaster to Britain.” However the headlines then were about the blacks, Irish and later the lesbians and gays. He accused the right-wing politicians of aiming to show that there has always been an enemy in the society. “I remember the deputy leader of the Tory group at the GLC, when we launched our lesbian and gay policies, said to me ‘Every time I make a homophobic speech in Ruislip-Northwood I get an extra 1,000 votes’. It is the Muslims’ turn now. Don’t be divided,” he said. “No Muslims ever came to me and said ‘I want homosexuality banned’. Muslims came to this city to flee oppressive culture. They came here so their children could have democracy, that they could achieve their best.” Meanwhile, while visiting Finsbury Park Mosque last month, Livingstone promised to turn the capital into a “beacon” for the words of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him.) he considered Prophet’s last sermon as “an agenda for all humanity.” He insisted that he wanted to spend the next four years ensuring that “every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [its] words and message.”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Nordic Populists Search Souls After July Attacks

Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s deadly attacks in Norway sent shock waves through the serene Nordic lands, rocking their populist parties and prompting at least one to clean up its act. In the nearly nine months since Breivik massacred 77 people on July 22nd, such parties have experienced several setbacks amid accusations their criticism of immigration and Islam helped pave the way for the tragedy.

“There has been a very infected debate. It is a very uncomfortable feeling to be accused of such a thing,” Mattias Karlsson, party secretary for the Sweden Democrats, told AFP.

In the 1,500-page manifesto he published online shortly before the attacks, Breivik claimed to be on a crusade against multi-culturalism and the “Muslim invasion” of Europe.

He hailed the sentiments expressed by Norway’s Progress Party, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) and members of the Finns Party.

Horrified to find themselves mentioned in the document and to find the confessed killer voicing support for some of their cherished ideas, the parties immediately distanced themselves from Breivik.

“I resent everything that he stands for. I resent his actions and will not be associated with this guy. Really, I will not,” Progress Party chief Siv Jensen told AFP shortly after the attacks.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Norway: Anders Behring Breivik: The Boy Next Door Turned Serial Killer

Anders Behring Breivik came across as your average guy but behind his courteous exterior lurked one of history’s most gruesome killers, fuelled by a hatred of multiculturalism and Islam.

Tall, blond and with piercing blue eyes, the 33-year-old right wing extremist has confessed to killing 77 people on July 22, 2011, when he gunned down youths attending a Labour party camp after setting off a bomb outside the government offices in Oslo. The massacre was “a preventive attack against state traitors” guilty of “ethnic cleansing” due to their support for a multicultural society, Breivik told a court hearing in February. His trial opens in Oslo on Monday.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Norway: Terror Trial Gets Underway in Oslo

WITH VIDEO FROM THE TRIAL: Confessed Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik showed predictable disregard for the Norwegian court system when his trial began on Monday, leading off with a Nazi salute and objecting to the court’s legitimacy. Many of those involved otherwise praised the “quiet, dignified” nature of proceedings on opening day, while Breivik showed no emotion when forced to listen to the details of all 77 of the murders he committed last summer.

Breivik, well-groomed and wearing a dark suit and tie, was handcuffed when he entered the Oslo City Court Monday morning. Police removed his handcuffs just before the trial began, and Breivik immediately made a Nazi salute to those assembled in the packed courtroom. When the court took a break, Breivik refused to stand when the judicial panel hearing his case left the courtroom.

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen began by introducing the prosecution and defense counsel, the judiciary panel hearing the case (two professonal judges including herself, three lay judges and two reserve lay judges), the court-appointed psychiatrists and, finally, the defendant. Breivik immediately objected, saying he did not recognize the legitimacy of the court because its “mandate” comes from “political parties that support multi-culturalism” in Norway.

Breivik formally identified himself by name and birthdate and corrected Arntzen when she suggested he was unemployed. He claimed he was a skribent (writer) and was working from prison.

Breivik also objected to Arntzen herself, claiming she is a “personal friend” of Hanne Harlem of the Labour Party, a former Norwegian justice minister and younger sister of former Labour Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The party and Norway’s Labour-led government were Breivik’s foremost targets when he bombed government headquarters and carried out a massacre at Labour’s youth summer camp on July 22.

Breivik’s objections were, however, deemed “informal” by his own defense counsel and thus merely taken under advisement by the court. He then had to listen, along with everyone else, to the formal reading of the charges against him. It took prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh nearly 90 minutes to name all 77 of his victims, where they were when attacked, and how they died. While some family members of the victims quietly cried in their seats inside the courtroom, Breivik showed no emotion, refusing to look at the prosecutor as she spoke and demonstrably fixing his gaze on the table in front of him.

When asked by Arntzen whether he would plead guilty to all or any of the charges, Breivik responded by saying he acknowledged the factual evidence but declared himself innocent of punishable crimes, adding that he acted out of necessity and could justify his attacks.

Breivik will be allowed to defend and explain his attacks over the next five days starting on Tuesday. Many Norwegians, including the head of the Labour youth organization AUF and the spokesman for a victims’ group, have complained that Breivik will be given a public platform to spread his anti-Muslim ideology. Others, from legal experts to Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, agree that Breivik’s testimony will be difficult to hear but that it’s “absolutely necessary” he be accorded the same rights as all other criminal defendants in the Norwegian legal system.

“I can understand that many feel he’s getting too much attention,” Stoltenberg told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) early Monday morning. “But it’s important that a full court case moves forward.” Stoltenberg and other state officials argue Breivik’s trial “must be as normal as possible.”

It continued Monday with introductory remarks by the prosecution and defense counsel, including an overview of the events of July 22 and an overview of Breivik’s life from 1995 to 2006 and then from 2006 to 2011. The trial is scheduled to run until June 22.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Film Unleashed Tears From Breivik

SEE THE VIDEO: Terror defendant Anders Behring Breivik displayed little if any emotion when his trial started in the Oslo City Court on Monday. He broke into tears, though, when prosecutors showed the court a 12-minute propaganda film Breivik had made about his own battle against multi-culturalism.

Breivik earlier in the day had been stoic, showing no emotion at all when prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh spent around an hour-and-a-half reading off the names of all his victims and how they died during his attacks of July 22.

On a few occasions he smiled, otherwise he barely flinched when legal proceedings got underway.

Just before the court recessed for lunch, however, Engh’s co-counsel Svein Holden made introductory remarks including an overview of Breivik’s life from 1995 until last year, when he bombed government headquarters and massacred 69 persons attending a Labour Party summer camp. He killed a total of 77 persons.

Breivik has repeatedly said he has no regrets, and he showed no remorse at his custody hearings either. But when Holden thought the court should see a short propaganda film Breivik made that was related to his fears of Muslim dominance in Norway and Europe, Breivik started to cry.

Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), one of two broadcast outlets allowed to air Monday’s proceedings, had opted against showing the propaganda film itself. NRK cut back in with video from the courtroom, however, when Breivik’s eyes welled up with tears.

A psychiatrist following the proceedings was surprised by the first sign of emotion from Breivik, but suggested it indicates that he is “extremely pre-occupied with himself and his own cause.” She also believed the video showed signs of narcissistic tendencies. An NRK commentator notes that Breivik’s tears were among the “most dramatic” events to come out of Monday’s proceedings.

           — Hat tip: The Observer [Return to headlines]



Norway: Breivik’s Tears Flow on First Day of Trial

Anders Behring Breivik, whose trial opened on Monday for the killing of 77 people in Norway’s twin attacks last July, welled up in tears as the court viewed a film he posted online the day of the attacks.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Sweden: Police Arrest Three Over Slain Malmö Teen

Three teenagers have been arrested in Malmö, in southern Sweden, under suspicion of the murder of 15-year-old Ardiwan Samir in the Rosengård district on New Year’s Eve. “We are happy that the police have arrested them, but it isn’t going to bring Ardiwan back,” said his cousin Catrin Fadhul, to daily Aftonbladet, when she heard of the arrest.

According to the police, all the suspects are under 18 but over 15 years old. A warrant had been issued for their arrest a few days ago and they were brought in by police on Monday morning. All three are under suspicion of murder or accessory to murder, according to a police statement.

Samir died shortly after arrival at the hospital after having sustained gunshot wounds to the head and chest while out enjoying the fireworks. Despite a number of revellers being out and about at the time of the shooting, it was initially difficult for investigating officers to find witnesses willing to come forward to discuss the incident.

“We have interrogated a large number of people in this case. Motives have been investigated. We have now arrested three people and they have been taken to the police station at Davidshall,” said Bertil Isberg of the police during a police press conference on Monday.

The murder, the fourth to be committed in Malmö over the course of a month, was followed by two additional shootings in a wave of violent crime that hit the city. There were also several demonstrations in Malmö against the growing violence in the area following the incidents, one of which was held in connection to the funeral of the dead 15-year-old.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Tax Deal Rewards Germans With Swiss Bank Accounts

Berlin wants to make life easier for German tax evaders. Under a new agreement, those who have hidden their assets in Switzerland can now make them legal while remaining anonymous. But some experts question whether the move is constitutional.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Taxes Never So High in Germany Since 1995, 10,000 Eur. Each

(AGI) Berlin — The German Revenue system is ever more greedy.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Work, an average German worker paid around 9,943 Euros in personal income tax and social contributions in 2011, 553 euros more than the previous year, an absolute record since 1995. The heaviest rise was for the personal income tax, which increased 300 Euros for each German taxpayer, while the average net income was 17,650 Euros, 16 Euros less compared to the previous year 2010.

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



UK: “If You Look at What Labour Did to Our Country Why on Earth Would You Let Them Anywhere Near Your Council?”

by Tim Montgomerie

Back from his overseas trip (for which the Prime Minister made an excellent defence in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph) David Cameron will today launch the Conservative Party’s local election campaign. His key message is the one at the top of this post:

“If you look at what Labour did to our country why on Earth would you let them anywhere near your council?”

A very, very good question.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin Faces Death Penalty in Bangladesh

Andrew Gilligan, in the Daily Telegraph reports:

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, director of Muslim spiritual care provision in the NHS, a trustee of the major British charity Muslim Aid and a central figure in setting up the Muslim Council of Britain, fiercely denies any involvement in a number of abductions and “disappearances” during Bangladesh’s independence struggle in the 1970s.

He says the claims are “politically-motivated” and false. However, Mohammad Abdul Hannan Khan, the chief investigator for the country’s International Crimes Tribunal, said: “There is prima facie evidence of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin being involved in a series of killings of intellectuals. We have made substantial progress in the case against him. There is no chance that he will not be indicted and prosecuted. We expect charges in June.”Mr Mueen-Uddin could face the death penalty if convicted.

Readers of Harry’s Place will be well aware of the nature of the evidence against Mr Mueen-Uddin, which has been extensively covered on this and other blogs. It was the subject of a documentary on Channel 4, and has also been reported on by The Guardian. On each occasion that such allegations were reported, Carter Ruck would swoop, and the offending article swiftly removed, pending litigation.

It is an inevitable peculiarity of any system of libel law that, the more serious the allegation, the more serious the potential libel. Where facts are easily proved, that is no deterrent to reporting of the evidence. But where the alleged wrong-doing has taken place overseas, the costs of defending any litigation make such matters effectively unreportable. It is, perhaps, for that reason that Mr Mueen-Uddin managed to establish, in the United Kingdom, a British ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’: the organisation which ran death squads in Bangladesh in the 1970s, that murdered intellectuals, patriots and democrats. Here is a snapshot of the organisational reach of the man:

Since moving to the UK in the early 1970s, Mr Mueen-Uddin has taken British citizenship and built a successful career as a community activist and Muslim leader.

In 1989 he was a key leader of protests against the Salman Rushdie book, The Satanic Verses. Around the same time he helped to found the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe, Jamaat-e-Islami’s European wing, which believes in creating a sharia state in Europe and in 2010 was accused by a Labour minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, of infiltrating the Labour Party. Tower Hamlets’ directly-elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman, was expelled from Labour for his close links with the IFE. Until 2010 Mr Mueen-Uddin was vice-chairman of the controversial East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE, in which capacity he greeted Prince Charles when the heir to the throne opened an extension to the mosque. He was also closely involved with the Muslim Council of Britain, which has been dominated by the IFE. He was chairman and remains a trustee of the IFE-linked charity, Muslim Aid, which has a budget of £20 million. He has also been closely involved in the Markfield Institute, the key institution of Islamist higher education in the UK.

Here, from the Daily Mail, is a photograph that says it all [Mueen-Uddin with Prince Charles]

It goes without saying that Mr Mueen-Uddin’s lawyer is Toby Cadman, who will also be familiar to readers of this site as a speaker at Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood dominated rallies. In this instance, however, his activities are entirely respectable. He is representing a man who is awaiting charges on a serious criminal matter. Moreover, the criticisms that Toby Cadman makes of the conduct of the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh are wholly proper and, indeed, correct. There is no way that Mr Mueen-Uddin should be extradited to Bangladesh, and I would oppose and indeed campaign against any such extradition myself, despite what I know about this man. It is fair to say, sadly, that Bangladesh has pointlessly and stupidly vandalised a process which ought to have brought justice and closure to the victims of the Bangladesh genocide.

Notwithstanding the dismal failure of the Bangladesh process, it does appear to be the case that it is now possible to write about, and discuss, the evidence against Mr Mueen-Uddin. I encourage you to do so. If these allegations are true, they throw a stark light on this man’s legacy in the United Kingdom. He left his home country, wrecked by religious extremism, sectarianism and bloodsheed. So we should be wholly unsurprised at what he has achieved, here.

[Reader comment by billy on 15 April 2012 at 10:18 pm.]

The New York Times wrote about him in 1972

“to his fellow reporters on the Bengali-language paper where he worked, Chowdhury Mueenuddin was a pleasant, well-mannered and intelligent young man…there was nothing exceptional about him except perhaps that he often received telephone calls from the leader of a right-wing Moslem political party. But, investigations in the last few days show that those calls were significant. For Mr. Mueenuddin has been identified as the head of a secret, commando like organization of fantatic Moslems that murdered several hundred prominent Bengali professors, doctors, lawyer and journalists in a Dhaka brick yard. Dressed in black sweaters and khaki pants, members of the group, known as Al-Badar, rounded up their victims on the last three nights of the war…Their goal, captured members have since said, was to wipe out all Bengali intellectuals who advocated independence from Pakistan and the creation a of a secular, non Moslem state.” More here: www.genocidebangladesh.org/fact-sheet-on-chowdhury-mueen-uddin/

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: The Evils of Secrecy in Our Family Courts

by Bruce Anderson

A few days ago, I was feeling complacent. Although I wrote that there were moments when we all felt that the country was going to the dogs, I was in too mellow a mood to mean it. A few hours later, no more complacency, and forget about moments. It was as if the United Kingdom had been renamed the United Kennels. Five fire engines and 25 firemen arrive at a pond to rescue a seagull. Why does it take 25 men to rescue one bird? I refer my honourable readers to the renaming of the UK, as mentioned above. There used to be some not especially funny jokes about how many Jewish American princesses it took to switch on a light-bulb. But there is a difference. In those jokes, the light bulb was turned on. In this true joke from the fire service of the United Kennels, 25 firemen stood there. For an hour. And did nothing. They decided that health and health and safety would not like it. Water can be wet.

[…]

Then we come to another story, where the mockery has to end. In the last few days, there has been a lot of debate about the question of secret trials for terrorist suspects, to protect intelligence sources. As usual, the argument comes down to the two contending Latin tags. Fiat justitia, ruat coeli and salus populi, suprema lex. “Let justuce be done, even if the heavens fall” and “the safety of the people is the supreme law”. In the course of that recent dispute, we have overlooked the fact that secret trials are already taking place in Britain: over 200 of them every week, in our so-called “family courts”. As a result of the trials, parents can be sentenced to lose their children: innocent children can be parted from their parents.

The defendants are denied many of the normal safeguards which they would enjoy if they were merely charged with armed robbery or murder. Hearsay evidence is admissible, which it would not be in a criminal trial. The prosecution — social services departments — can spend large sums on expert witnesses. Not only are the parents unable to counter this; there is the suggestion that in many cases, these experts have never actually seen the children concerned, and are simply relying on social workers’ reports. Expert witnesses are well paid.

It is easy to understand why this has happened. Those heart-rending photographs of Baby P, in the days when he could still stretch out his arms in the expectation of a cuddle, rather than to ward off a beating; none of us wants to think about the tortures which that little boy endured. All of us want to ensure that there will never be another Baby P. But safeguarding the innocent must not mean punishing the innocent. In order to prevent a repetition, social workers are seeking twice as many care orders as in 2008. Is this to protect children, or to protect themselves?

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Mediterranean Union


Anna Lindh Foundation: Deadline 2012 Call Extended

A total of 1.35 million funds, 50 projects to finance

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 12 — The deadline for application to the Anna Lindh 2012 Call for project proposals has been extended to Thursday 19 April 2012 (16.00 Egypt time), to take into consideration the timing of local religious festivities.

The Call, worth a total of 1.35 million euros, is aimed at supporting projects that promote the mobilisation and empowerment of civil society. According to the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), around 50 projects are expected to be awarded through this call.

The duration of the project must be between a maximum of 12 consecutive months and a minimum of 8 consecutive months, and the duration of the implementation must fall within the period between 18 July 2012 and 18 October 2013. Applicants can download the guidelines of the call at http://grants.annalindh.org/guidelines. To apply for the Call for Proposals: http://grants.annalindh.org.

The Anna Lindh Foundation for Inter-Cultural Dialogue promotes knowledge, mutual respect and inter-cultural dialogue between the people of the Euro-Mediterranean region, working through a network of more than 3,000 civil society organisations in 43 countries. Its budget is co-funded by the EU and the EU member states.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Interview With German Intelligence Chief: ‘We Must be the First to go in and the Last to Leave’

The new head of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service, Gerhard Schindler, 59, tells SPIEGEL he wants the agency to become more willing to take risks. He also says al-Qaida is becoming more influential in northern Africa and that the killing of Osama bin Laden hasn’t significantly weakened it.

SPIEGEL: A year ago a US special forces unit killed Osama bin Laden. What impact did that have on al-Qaida?

Schindler: That was definitely a blow to the structure of the core group. But we don’t have the impression that the terrorism network or its structures have become significantly weaker.

SPIEGEL: The Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri has officially claimed to be the successor to bin Laden. Is the doctor now the uncontested Number One?

Schindler: According to what we know, yes. Zawahiri had very much influence within the network even while Bin Laden was alive. Its structure hasn’t changed since then: with the core al-Qaida at the top and many branches for example in Iraq, in Yemen or in the Maghreb. They remain closely connected with each other.

SPIEGEL: So the fragmentation of al-Qaida is not a weakness but a strength?

Schindler: This network is highly flexible. Where the pressure becomes too great, al-Qaida withdraws. Where conditions are more favorable, it expands its activities. The terrorist threat has definitely increased in North Africa in recent months. In Nigeria the terrorist group Boko Haram has joined al-Qaida. In Somalia it’s the Shabab militia.

SPIEGEL: So the Islamist terrorist scene has moved?

Schindler: There are indeed signs of a relocation towards Somalia and into Yemen. We are also observing that al-Qaida is reorientating itself in North Africa. I think there are good conditions for a terrorist oreganization there: We have high unemployment in these countries, in some areas the population isn’t being provided with basic services and there aren’t proper security structures based on the rule of law .

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Morocco: EU, Nine Energy Efficiency Projects Launched

Challenge will be responding to a new demand by 2020

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 12 — Nine energy efficiency pilot projects for buildings in the social housing and tourism sector were launched in Morocco. The projects are funded by the European Union, in partnership with Morocco’s National Agency for Development of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ADEREE), for a total amount of 83.5 million dirhams (around 7.5 million euros).

According to the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), the energy sector plays a very important role in the partnership of the European Union with the Southern Mediterranean countries, and particularly Morocco, said a press release on the EU Delegation’s Facebook page. One of the biggest challenges that Morocco is facing now is a demand for energy that will double by 2020, which can be tackled by a rapid increase of its production capacity in renewable energy, and by adopting large-scale measures of energy efficiency to curb the growth of energy demand. Therefore, the promotion of pilot initiatives that will stimulate the interest of the players and test the results before applying them on a larger scale is essential. These nine projects “show that it is possible to make interesting energy savings with relatively small investments” said Ambassador Eneko Landaburu, Head of Eu delegation to Morocco. This launch fits into a larger partnership of the EU with Morocco, and in particular in a support programme to the national energy strategy that has been running since 2008 and that covers electricity, renewable energy, energy efficiency as well as the oil and gas sectors.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


IDF: Attack on Activist Doesn’t Represent Army Conduct

The IDF on Monday condemned an officer filmed striking a pro-Palestinian activist, but stated that the incident should not be taken out of context to misrepresent the values of the Israeli army.

According to a video, posted on YouTube by the International Solidarity Movement, Lt.-Col. Shalom Eisner, deputy commander of the Jordan Valley Brigade is seen taking his M-16 and slamming it in the face of a blond-haired activist. The demonstrator, a Danish national, falls to the ground and is carried away by fellow activists.

The protester, named as Andreas Ias, was treated in a Palestinian hospital for light injuries and told Israeli media on Monday that he was well.

“We were just walking slowly towards the soldiers, we were chanting Palestinian songs calling for the liberation of Palestine. I don’t believe that is a provocation,” he told Israel’s Channel 10 television.

Related: •Israel pleased ‘flytilla’ fails to disrupt airportSpeaking to Israel Radio, IDF Spokesman Brig.- Gen. Yoav Mordechai said that “these are harsh pictures, but I still can’t divorce the filmed episodes from the incident that lasted over an hour and which included violence by the anarchists and Palestinians.” At one point there were over 200 demonstrators, he said, indicating that the video was being taken out of context.

Nevertheless, Mordechai called the event “grave” and said it could not be taken as a representation of the values of the IDF.

The IDF’s OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Nitzan Alon ordered the opening of an investigation into the incident. Upon receiving the preliminary results of the investigation Sunday night, Alon suspended Eisner until the completion of the probe.

In addition, the Military Advocate-General’s office decided to open a criminal investigation into the incident, which IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz said Sunday evening was not representative of the IDF’s ethics and morals and would be fully investigated and treated with the utmost gravity.

Yesha Council chairman Danny Dayan on Monday condemned what he termed an “overwhelming hysteria” in Israel over the incident. Speaking to Israel Radio, Dayan said that the officer who struck the activist should not have been judged by a 7-second video from an incident that lasted two hours. Moreover, the fact that the IDF had already condemned the officer just hours after the incident displays a loss of control on the part of the IDF and an irresponsible course of action taken by Israeli political leaders.

Dayan called the pro-Palestinian activist an enemy of Israel and implied that the Jewish state is more concerned with its image abroad than protecting its soldiers.

Dayan also condemned the Israeli political and military establishment for its “hysteria” over the incident, saying there was no reason for the prime minister, the defense minister, and other high-ranking political authorities to be involved.

Such violence by a senior officer is rare in the West Bank and soldiers serving in the West Bank are generally trained to show restraint during demonstrations or civil disturbances.

According to the Palestinians, the incident took place on Saturday during a cycling tour around the Jordan Valley by European, Israeli and Palestinian activists.

The Wafa news agency said that the IDF stopped the 250 participants along Road 90 near the West Bank village of al Ouja and refused to allow them to continue. When the cyclists refused, scuffles broke out. A number of the participants in the demonstration were injured and taken to hospital in Jericho. The IDF arrested a number of the activists.

           — Hat tip: KGS [Return to headlines]



Israel’s Other Temple: Research Reveals Ancient Struggle Over Holy Land Supremacy

The Jews had significant competition in antiquity when it came to worshipping Yahweh. Archeologists have discovered a second great temple not far from Jerusalem that predates its better known cousin. It belonged to the Samaritans, and may have been edited out of the Bible once the rivalry had been decided.

Clad in a gray coat, Aharon ben Ab-Chisda ben Yaacob, 85, is sitting in the dim light of his house. He strikes up a throaty chant, a litany in ancient Hebrew. He has a full beard and is wearing a red kippah on his head.

The man is a high priest — and his family tree goes back 132 generations. He says: “I am a direct descendent of Aaron, the brother of the prophet Moses” — who lived perhaps over 3,000 years ago.

Ab-Chisda is the spiritual leader of the Samaritans, a sect that is so strict that its members are not even allowed to turn on the heat on the Sabbath. They never eat shrimp and only marry among themselves. Their women are said to be so impure during menstruation that they are secluded in special rooms for seven days.

Outside, on the streets of Kiryat Luza, near Nablus, a cold wind is blowing. The village lies just below the summit of Mount Gerizim. There’s a school, two shops and a site for sacrifices. This is home to 367 Samaritans. It’s a small community.

Everyone here is required to attend religious services in the synagogue on Saturdays. “Every baby boy has to be circumcised precisely on the eighth day,” says the high priest — not beforehand, and not afterwards.

Most important of all: the sect only believes in the written legacy of Moses, the five books of the Pentateuch, also commonly known as the Torah. They reject all other scripture from the Bible.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Ashton Says Iran Nuclear Talks ‘Constructive’

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton over the weekend said talks with Iran on its nuclear programme had been “constructive and useful.” She is due to meet the Iranian delegation again in Baghdad on 23 May, with Iran recently subject to a series of EU-imposed economic sanctions.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



‘Both Sides Must Move or There Will be War’

Amid ongoing tension about Iran’s nuclear program, representatives from Tehran and six global powers held talks in Istanbul on Saturday. Despite cautious optimism from diplomats, German commentators warn on Monday that the specter of war still haunts the region.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Qatar: Multimedia Plan for Arab and Western Mutual Understanding

Sheikha Mozah presents Loghati (‘My language’) project

(ANSAmed) — ROME — To preserve and promote Arab cultural heritage and lead to greater mutual understanding between it and the West is the purpose that characterises much of the activity of Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser, president of the Qatar Foundation, who at Rome City Hall this afternoon presented the ‘Loghati’ project, which will share the rich heritage of the Arab world using multimedia and multilingual formats. This is an electronic communication platform developed by the Scientific and Technological Park of Qatar (STPQ), which is part of the Foundation chaired by the second wife of the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is on an official visit to Italy. “At such a delicate and complicated time in relations between the West and the Arab world — said Sheikha Mozah — the dissemination of knowledge and mutual understanding are much needed to break down mistrust and fears.” Loghati (in Arabic, my language), allows the construction of virtual libraries, including ancient and modern texts, where each document contains information that can be multi-dimensional exploited, corrected and instantaneously translated from Arabic and vice versa. Moreover Loghati can contain audio and video, thus creating a multimedia interface for knowledge of texts and documents of different cultures, previously inaccessible to millions of people.

The project may be an unprecedented cross-cultural exchange and can contribute to the emergence of new forms of collaboration between academics, researchers, and institutions. All this is to make a positive contribution to the development of relations between countries based on knowledge.

At the presentation of the project followed by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the STPQ were a number of Italian partners including Giunti Editori, In Lucina Associati, the European Norman Study Centre and the Oriental University of Naples. The purpose of the agreement is to undertake a series of projects to demonstrate the influence of Arab culture on Western culture. “It takes intelligence — said the Sheikha on the sidelines of the ceremony — to seize new opportunities for collaboration and Italy has this intelligence.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Modern Turkish Designs Spread Across Globe

Zeynep Fadillioglu is one of a new breed of Turkish designers unafraid to embrace their country’s heritage.

When we hear the word “Ottoman” in Britain, we can’t help but think of luxurious furniture and lavish fabrics, with an exotic flavour. But in Turkey it doesn’t just conjure up a design aesthetic, but an entire period of history. While most leading cities have been the centre of a great cultural empire, Istanbul has been the heart of two. As Constantinople it was the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and as Istanbul it was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. This history has made the country rich with different textures, styles and interiors. Sumptuous palaces sit next to modern offices and condominiums. There are malls and all the usual international chains, but there is still little to rival the bustle of the hawkers in the Grand Bazaar, whose haggling can hardly have changed in 500 years. In other words you might think it was the perfect place for architects and interior designers to create their own striking idiom. Until recently they have been surprisingly slow on the uptake. This is all changing now. As Turkey’s economy steams ahead (growth was 6.6 per cent last year), its designers are too. Design shows and exhibitions abound, and striking new buildings are shooting up all over the city. In October, a literary festival launched on the banks of the Bosphorus, at the Ciragan Kempinski hotel, will become the latest affiliate of the Telegraph Hay brand. Modern Turkish culture is spreading itself globally.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UAE: Islam is Key to Peace, Convention Concludes

DUBAI — Concluding three days of lectures and activities, the second edition of the Dubai International Peace Convention affirmed that Islam is the key to peace much sought after these days.

Altogether 150,000 people of different nationalities and religions attended the 16 lectures delivered by 12 scholars and spiritual gurus during the event. The world congress, held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, is aimed to create a climate of intellectual cooperation and share the teachings of Islam in order to guide the world towards peace. Dr Hamad Al Shaibani, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for World Peace, said the convention has been a wonderful platform for leading thinkers in the Muslim world to come together. ‘They have had a massive impact in raising awareness of our main objective, and we are delighted to have brought together different races and religions under one roof to create an interactive environment that perpetuates our vision of peace.’ ‘Brotherhood in Islam’, the ‘status of women in Islam’, ‘Muhammad (PBUH) — the ambassador of peace’, ‘One world… One way… One God’, ‘action plan to achieve world peace’, the ‘role model for peace’, ‘how to build a peaceful family’, ‘the solutions for global crisis’, ‘peace in the light of the Holy Quran’, and ‘Peaceful coexistence… myth or reality’ were some of the issues spotlighted during the convention.

Some of the prominent figures who participated include Dr Zakir Naik, an internationally respected scholar in comparative religions, and Shaikh Yusuf Estes, prominent in the Islamic community in the United States; Shaikh Abdur Raheem Green from the UK; Shaikh Tawfique Chowdhury from Australia; Shaikh Muhammad Alshareef from Canada; Shaikh Hussein Yee from Malaysia; Advocate Mayan Mather from India; Said Rageah from Somalia; Dr Muhammad Salah and Abdul Bary Yahya, both from America.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



We Want to Invest in Italy, Emir Says

Sovereign meets Napolitano and Monti. Friendly ties says PM

(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 16 — The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) is looking for ways and methods to invest in Italy: these are the words of Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani after meeting the Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti in Rome today.

“It has been an important visit which has consolidated the friendship between the two countries” commented Monti after a meeting with the Emir in which numerous deals were struck extending the countries’ bilateral economic cooperation.

The Emir was also received by the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata was also present as pointed out by a statement issued from the Presidency of the Republic.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Russia


European Court Faults Russia Over Katyn Massacre

Russia has been reprimanded for its ‘inhuman’ handling of a 1940 massacre of thousands of Poles. The European Court of Human Rights said it was unable to issue a complete ruling, because Moscow failed to cooperate.

In the case brought by 15 relatives of people killed in the 1940 Katyn massacre, the Strasbourg court said Russia violated its commitments to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Moscow’s “response to most victims’ relatives’ attempts to find out the truth about what happened … amounted to inhuman treatment,” the court stated.

However, it said it could not rule on a further charge — that Russia had allegedly failed to properly investigate the 1940 massacre — because the Kremlin had not made vital documents available.

Russia, a successor state that emerged from the Soviet Union, had rebuffed the 15 plaintiffs in their efforts to get information from a probe into the massacre.

The Soviet secret police killed around 22,000 Poles in the Katyn forest near Smolensk and other places in April and May 1940. The massacre, in which Poland’s intelligentsia was virtually wiped out, is viewed as a national tragedy by Poles.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Afghanistan: Taliban ‘Spring Offensive’ Dampens Optimism

Not for the first time on Sunday, official optimism on the future of Afghanistan came face-to-face with the remorseless nihilism of the Taliban suicide bomber.

Even as the attacks began, Afghan officials and their American allies were congratulating themselves on the progress made in establishing order in the country.

A statement issued by the interior ministry on Sunday morning praised the outcome of a mission over the previous three days to deter the annual “spring offensive” it knew would come.

Nearly 100 opposition fighters had been “taken out” in operations across the country, it said — 47 killed, 31 wounded and 21 captured. Quantities of arms had been seized.

It took less than two hours from the release of that statement for the reality of the “spring offensive” to overtake expectations, optimistic or otherwise.

The first indication of what was to come was a roadside bomb in Mahmud-i-Raqi, capital of the eastern province of Kapisa. With telling accuracy, it hit the second car of a police convoy which contained the city’s police chief, named as Jan Agha Faizi, killing him and three others.

The full assault — a combined attack on Kabul and three other major cities without parallel in the 11 years since the Nato invasion —began at about 1.30pm local time, when the sound of automatic gunfire and explosions rang out across the capital.

The initial target came as no surprise: the central and diplomatic triangle district of Wazir Akbar Khan, home to major embassies, including those of Britain and the US, the local United Nations headquarters, and a Nato base.

Insurgents stormed a half-finished tower block and made it their base for an aggressive operation that used rocket-propelled grenades and bombs to attack the symbols of Afghanistan’s backing in the West.

Within minutes, smoke was rising from the German embassy, while the streets were raked with gunfire, causing passers-by to dive for cover.

A house used as a residence for British embassy officials was the next target, hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, though the Foreign Office later said all British diplomats “had been accounted for”.

Then the US embassy and the Japanese embassy compound — which was hit by three rockets — came under fire. Smoke billowed from the windows of the nearby newly opened Kabul Star hotel as it was targeted.

Camp Eggers, headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Nato-led coalition army backing the Afghan government, came under rocket attack.

As the terror unfolded in Kabul’s most exclusive district, about a mile to the south west, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai had been holding a routine meeting to discuss the government budget with a group of MPs inside his presidential palace. Upon hearing the gunfire, his bodyguards put the palace into lockdown, moving him into what was described as a “secure area”.

Among the meetings he had to cancel was one with a delegation from the Hezb-i-Islami, the militant insurgents led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan’s most feared warlords, which is discussing peace terms with the government.

Twenty years ago, in a previous round of Afghanistan’s long civil war, Mr Hekmatyar’s artillery pounded Kabul.

Meanwhile, security forces near the home of one of Mr Karzai’s two deputies, Mohammad Karim Khalili, managed to stop three would-be attackers who were heading there armed with suicide vests, guns and other explosives, a spokesman for the main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said. On the western side of town, rockets were fired at the Russian embassy and the parliament, prior to a full-blown assault.

In a development that gave some comfort to Mr Karzai’s Western allies, parliament’s guards, helped by some MPs who took to the rooftops with their own weaponry, managed to beat the attackers off, forcing them to take refuge in a building, where they came under sustained assault. “I shot up to 400 or 500 bullets from my Kalashnikov at the attackers,” Mohammad Nahim Lalai Hamidzai, an MP for Kandahar, told reporters. “They fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the parliament.”

Then on the Jalalabad Road, to the south east, another ISAF base, Camp Warehouse, came under mortar attack.

By this time, the Taliban was already crowing about its responsibility for the onslaught. Zabiullah Mujahid sent a text message to reporters saying “a lot of suicide bombers” were involved.

While Kabul has come under sustained and multi-pronged attack before, most recently last September, on Sunday the Taliban were able to launch raids on major targets elsewhere in the country.

In Pul-e-Alam, in Logar province, south of Kabul, suicide attacks and gun battles hit the provincial governor’s office, the police headquarters, and a US military base.

In Jalalabad, a major city in the east, three suicide bombers were shot dead at the gates of the military airport, and two more at the nearby Nato base. Others managed to cause an explosion inside the base. In Gardez, south of Kabul, bombers hit a police training facility, while last night a number of suspected suicide bombers were being surrounded in a building near the university.

In the northern city of Kundoz, 15 suspected militants were arrested over an alleged plot to launch attacks.

By last night, fighting was continuing in parts of Kabul, with militants still occupying the half-built tower block that had served as a base.

“They’re still resisting in two areas, one near parliament and the other close to the Kabul Star hotel,” Kabul police chief Gen Ayoub Salangi told Reuters.

The attacks come just a month before a Nato summit at which the US and its allies are supposed to put finishing touches on plans for transition to Afghan security control.

Western leaders will now have to consider whether the withdrawal of all international forces can realistically go ahead in 2014, as planned, without leaving the country at the mercy of Sunday’s attackers.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Himalayan Glaciers Are Not Melting, Study

(AGI) Paris — French researchers claim that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are not being affected by global warming.

Unlike glaciers in the Alps, Himalayan glaciers are not melting, despite the effects of global warming. A team of French researchers came to this surprising conclusion after studying 3-D satellite pictures of the Himalayan mountains between 2000 and 2008. According to the study, whose results were published on Nature Geoscience, glaciers there are actually growing by 0.11mm a year. They studied a 5,615 sq. km area on the Karakorum mountain range, between the Yarkant river, in China, and the Indus river, in Pakistan. “The situation in the Karakorum seems to be different (from the situation elsewhere), which means that glaciers are stable here”, said Julie Gardelle of the University of Grenoble, without rejecting the global warming theory.

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



India: Chandy’s Communal Card Will Kill Kerala’s Political Culture

by G Pramod Kumar

For students of international development, Kerala has been an exceptional case study for human development: unparalleled social and land reforms, human development indicators comparable to western nations, the first democratically elected communist government and spontaneous community movements. Plus the verdant nature, high-brow literature, art-house cinema and performing arts that brought laurels from all over the world. But, under Oomen Chandy, the present Congress chief minister leading a United Democratic Front (UDF), the state adds one more to the list of its exceptions: outrageous communal appeasement for political expediency.

The source of outrage is the recent cabinet reshuffle in which Oomen Chandy had to yield to the blackmail and threats of pullout by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) for a fifth cabinet post. Chandy and the Congress have been resisting it for almost a year, ever since the UDF came to power, but finally gave up to save his government. Traditionally, the Muslim League, a formidable Congress ally in north Kerala, gets four ministers; but this time, the helplessness of the Congress in running a government with a thin majority has emboldened them to ask for more, even if it meant blatantly open brinkmanship. In fact, they not only have asked for five ministers, but also went ahead and announced their names and portfolios, a prerogative of the chief minister.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Indonesia: Jakarta: Hundreds of Christians Ask President for Justice on Places of Worship

“Peaceful” protest launched by the faithful of the Yasmin Church and Hkbp Philadelphia joined by human rights activists and parliamentarians. The faithful ask for enforcement of law on protection of religious freedom. Protests provoked by the seizure of places of worship by local officials and inertia of institutions.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — More than 200 Protestant Christians, belonging to two different communities for a long time victims of persecution, gathered yesterday in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta — the seat of the Head of State Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — to demonstrate “peacefully” against the expropriation of places of worship and seek the application of laws on “religious freedom”. In particular, the faithful denounce the abuses and violations of dozens of Islamist groups, the manipulation of the law to their liking and the inertia of the state and institutions, including the same Yudhoyono, who have not taken steps or concrete measures to restore legality. A battle supported by many human rights activists and local NGOs, concerned by the continuing deterioration of the situation.

The protest march held yesterday (pictured) was attended by the faithful of the Gki Yasmin Church (YC), from the Bogor regency in West Java, and Christians from Hkbp Filadelfia, also in Bekasi regency in West Java. For three years the faithful of YC can not access the place of worship, sealed at the behest of local authorities and the Mayor Diani Budiarto, who has denounced alleged irregularities in the release of IBM, the necessary building permit to build in Indonesia. A similar situation to that of the faithful of Hkbp Filadelfia, who for years fought in vain against the officials of Bekasi.

The Christians who gathered in front of Merdeka Palace — the Presidential Palace, — were given the full support of the President of the World Council of Churches, Reverend SAE Nabadan, solidarity was also expressed by Eva Sundari, the Indonesian parliamentarian, who attended the event and Sites Musdah Mulia, prominent figures in the struggle to defend human rights.

However no significant official position was taken by President Yudhoyono, who months ago had stated that he could not “interfere” in the “internal affairs” of Bogor. A position criticized by activists, who claim the head of state does is afraid of “alienating” the Islamic fringe in the fear of losing votes and support.

The Yasmin Church, a Protestant church, is the victim of an apparent violation of the law and religious freedom perpetrated by the local mayor Diani Budiarto that, contravening the dictates of a constitutional court ruling in favor of Christians, has banned all religious celebrations on the site. The building was designed according to the criteria established by law and has the building permit (IMB) required for the construction of places of worship. Last October, the mayor deployed security forces against the faithful, who can no longer use the place of worship and can not even pray in public.

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



Italian Marines’ Incarceration Extended by Two More Weeks

Anti-piracy servicemen accused of killing Indian fishermen

(ANSA) — New Delhi, April 16 — The detention in prison in southern India of two Italian anti-piracy marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen was extended by two more weeks by a magistrate on Monday.

Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone have been at the centre of a diplomatic row between the countries since being detained in February after an incident that took place while they were guarding an Italian merchant ship.

The pair are being held in a special section of a jail in the city of Thiruvananthapuram.

A separate court is considering Italy’s claim that it should have jurisdiction for the case, not India, as the incident took place aboard an Italian vessel in international waters.

The Italian government also believes that, regardless of who has jurisdiction, the marines should be exempt from prosecution in India as they were military personnel working on an anti-piracy mission.

Italy has said the marines fired warning shots from the merchant ship they were guarding, the Enrica Lexie, after coming under attack from pirates.

It said they followed the proper international procedures for dealing with pirate attacks, which are frequent in the Indian Ocean.

The Indian authorities, on the other hand, said the marines failed to show sufficient “restraint” by opening fire after mistaking the fishermen for pirates.

Indian ballistic experts said earlier this month that the bullets recovered from the bodies of fishermen are compatible with Beretta rifles confiscated from the Enrica Lexie.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Karzai: NATO Failings Led to Attacks by Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused NATO of failing to prevent the multiple attacks staged by the Taliban insurgents across Afghanistan on Sunday. NATO says the attacks will not affect its long-term exit planning.

The Taliban’s coordinated attacks that gripped Afghanistan on Sunday lay bare intelligence failures by both NATO and Afghan troops, Afgan President Hamid Karzai said Monday.

“The terrorists’ infiltration in Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO and should be seriously investigated,” said Karzai in a statement.

But Karzai lauded what he called the “bravery and sacrifice of the security forces who quickly and timely reacted to contain the terrorists.” “Afghan security forces proved to the people that they can defend their country successfully,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Leading British Muslim Leader Faces War Crimes Charges in Bangladesh

by Andrew Gilligan

One of Britain’s most important Muslim leaders is to be charged with war crimes, investigators and officials have told The Sunday Telegraph

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, director of Muslim spiritual care provision in the NHS, a trustee of the major British charity Muslim Aid and a central figure in setting up the Muslim Council of Britain, fiercely denies any involvement in a number of abductions and “disappearances” during Bangladesh’s independence struggle in the 1970s. He says the claims are “politically-motivated” and false. However, Mohammad Abdul Hannan Khan, the chief investigator for the country’s International Crimes Tribunal, said: “There is prima facie evidence of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin being involved in a series of killings of intellectuals. We have made substantial progress in the case against him. There is no chance that he will not be indicted and prosecuted. We expect charges in June.” Mr Mueen-Uddin could face the death penalty if convicted. Bangladesh’s Law and Justice Minister, Shafique Ahmed, said: “He was an instrument of killing intellectuals. He will be charged, for sure.”

For 25 years after independence from Britain, the country now known as Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, even though the two halves were a thousand miles apart with India between them. In 1971, Bangla resentment at the “colonial” nature of Pakistani rule broke out into a full-scale revolt. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were massacred by Pakistani troops. Mr Mueen-Uddin, then a journalist on the Purbodesh newspaper in Dhaka, was a member of a fundamentalist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which supported Pakistan in the war. In the closing days, as it became clear that Pakistan had lost, he is accused of being part of a collaborationist Bangla militia, the Al-Badr Brigade, which rounded up, tortured and killed prominent citizens to deprive the new state of its intellectual and cultural elite.

The widow of one such victim, Dolly Chaudhury, claims to have identified Mr Mueen-Uddin as one of three men who abducted her husband, Mufazzal Haider Chaudhury, a prominent scholar of Bengali literature, on the night of 14 December 1971. “I was able to identify one [of the abductors], Mueen-Uddin,” she said in video testimony, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which will form part of the prosecution case. “He was wearing a scarf but my husband pulled it down as he was taken away. When he was a student, he often used to go to my brother in law’s house. My husband, my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, we all recognised that man.” Professor Chaudhury was never seen again.

Also among the as yet untested testimony is the widow of another victim, who claims that Mr Mueen-Uddin was in the group that abducted her husband, Sirajuddin Hussain, another journalist, from their home on the night of 10 December 1971. “There was no doubt that he was the person involved in my husband’s abduction and killing,” said Noorjahan Seraji. One of the other members of the group, who was caught soon afterwards, allegedly gave Mr Mueen-Uddin’s name in his confession. Another reporter on Purbodesh, Ghulam Mostafa, also disappeared. The vanished journalist’s brother, Dulu, said he appealed to Mr Mueen-Uddin for help and was taken around the main Pakistani Army detention and torture centres by Mr Mueen-Uddin. Dulu Mostafa said that Mr Mueen-Uddin appeared to be well known at the detention centres, gained easy admission to the premises and was saluted by the Pakistani guards as he entered. Ghulam was never found.

Mr Mueen-Uddin’s then editor at the paper, Atiqur Rahman, said that Mr Mueen-Uddin had been the first journalist in the country to reveal the existence of the Al-Badr Brigade and had demonstrated intimate knowledge of its activities. After his colleagues disappeared, he said, Mr Mueen-Uddin had asked for his home address. Fearing that he too would be abducted, the editor gave a fake address. Mr Rahman’s name, complete with the fake address, appeared on a Al-Badr death list found just after the end of the war. “I gave that address only to Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, and when that list appeared it was obvious that he had given that address to Al Badr,” Mr Rahman said in statements given to the investigators. “I’m sure I gave the address to no-one else.” Mr Rahman then published a front-page story and picture about Mr Mueen-Uddin, who had by that stage left the city, naming him as involved in “disappearances.” This brought forward two further witnesses, Mushtaqur and Mahmudur Rahman, who claim they recognised the picture as somebody who had been part of an armed group looking for the BBC correspondent in Dhaka during the abductions. The group was unsuccessful because the BBC man had gone into hiding.

Toby Cadman, Mr Mueen-Uddin’s lawyer, said on Saturday: “No formal allegations have been put to Mr Mueen-Uddin and therefore it is not appropriate to issue any formal response. Any and all allegations that Mr Mueen-Uddin committed or participated in any criminal conduct during the Liberation War of 1971 that have been put in the past will continue to be strongly denied in their entirety. For the Chief Investigator to be making such public comment raises serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation. The Chief Investigator will be aware that the decision as to the bringing of charges is made by the Prosecutor and not an investigator. Therefore, the comments by the Chief Investigator are highly improper and serves as a further basis for raising the question as to whether a fair trial may be guaranteed before the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh. The statement by the Bangladesh Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs is a clear declaration of guilt and in breach of the presumption of innocence.”

Since moving to the UK in the early 1970s, Mr Mueen-Uddin has taken British citizenship and built a successful career as a community activist and Muslim leader. In 1989 he was a key leader of protests against the Salman Rushdie book, The Satanic Verses. Around the same time he helped to found the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe, Jamaat-e-Islami’s European wing, which believes in creating a sharia state in Europe and in 2010 was accused by a Labour minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, of infiltrating the Labour Party. Tower Hamlets’ directly-elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman, was expelled from Labour for his close links with the IFE. Until 2010 Mr Mueen-Uddin was vice-chairman of the controversial East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE, in which capacity he greeted Prince Charles when the heir to the throne opened an extension to the mosque. He was also closely involved with the Muslim Council of Britain, which has been dominated by the IFE. He was chairman and remains a trustee of the IFE-linked charity, Muslim Aid, which has a budget of £20 million. He has also been closely involved in the Markfield Institute, the key institution of Islamist higher education in the UK.

The International Crimes Tribunal, a new body set up to try alleged “war criminals” from the 1971 war, has already begun trying some Bangladesh-based leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami.

Trials were originally supposed to start soon after the war but were cancelled by the military after a coup. The new tribunal was welcomed by most Bangladeshis and international human rights groups as finally bringing justice and closure for the massive abuses suffered by civilians in 1971. However, it is now subject to growing international criticism. Human Rights Watch said that the ICT’s proceedings “fall short of international standards” with a “failure to ensure due process” and “serious concerns about the impartiality of the bench.”

“The chairman of the tribunal was formerly one of the investigators,” said Abdur Razzaq, lead counsel for the defence. “As chairman, he will be pronouncing on an investigation report he himself produced.” The law minister, Mr Ahmed, denied this. Mr Razzaq described the tribunal as “vendetta politics” by Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League against its political opponents.

Any trial of Mr Mueen-Uddin would also be fraught with practical difficulties. There is no extradition treaty between Britain and Bangladesh and the UK does not extradite in death penalty cases. Many of the witnesses are elderly and some have died. However, Mr Hannan Khan said that Mr Mueen-Uddin was likely to be tried in absentia if he did not return.

“We have a duty to bring alleged perpetrators to justice,” he said. “They must know the fear, however long ago it was. What happened here forty years ago is on the conscience of the world.” “I have waited 40 years to see the trial of the war criminals,” said the widow, Noorjahan Seraji. “I have not spent a single night without suffering and I want justice.”

[JP note: See also Martin Bright: “The Foreign Office is not aware of any alleged war criminal from Bangladesh living in the UK. I wonder if anyone out there can help out here.” at http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/6489248/the-foreign-office-responds.thtml ]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Far East


British Businessman’s Death Spurs Probe Into Murder, Greed and China’s Leadership

A British businessman was murdered after he threatened to expose orders from a Chinese leader’s wife to move money abroad, sources close to a police investigation tell Reuters. Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai — who was hoping to expand his power in the Communist Party during a leadership transition this fall — asked Neil Heywood to help her move a large sum of money abroad.

But after Heywood, 41, saw the size of the transaction and demanded to keep a bigger portion of cash as part of the deal, Gu became outraged. Heywood responded by threatening to expose her actions, Reuters reports.

“Heywood told her that if she thought he was being too greedy, then he didn’t need to become involved and wouldn’t take a penny of the money, but he also said he could also expose it,” the first source told Reuters.

Heywood’s body was found Nov. 15, 2011, at the mountaintop Nanshan Holiday Hotel on the southern outskirts of Chongqing, according to people briefed on the investigation. The body was cremated without an autopsy being performed, and the hotel’s remote location adds to the mystery surrounding Heywood’s final hours.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



China Eases Currency Controls in Long-Awaited Move

China has doubled its currency’s trading band against the US dollar for the first time since 2007. From Monday, the yuan’s exchange rate with the dollar will be allowed to fluctuate by 1 percent, up from 0.5 percent.

China’s central bank will allow its currency to fluctuate twice as much against the US dollar in daily trading, starting on Monday.

The yuan’s trading band with the dollar will rise from 0.5 percent to 1 percent from Monday, which will allow the currency’s value against the US currency to trade a little more freely.

The long-anticipated move came a week before of the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, where pressure is usually stepped up for China to loosen its currency controls.

Although the increase is small, it may indicate Beijing is willing to make concessions to the US and other western nations, who have long argued that China’s currency controls mean that their currency is so weak it gives China a competitive edge by making their exports cheaper abroad.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Global Nuclear Production Dropped After Fukushima, IAEA

(AGI) Vienna — The global quantity of electricity produced by nuclear plants dropped around 4% in 2011. The main reason has been of switching off of the Japanese reactors, following the disaster at the Fukushima plant and the subsequent German decision to dismantle its own oldest nuclear plants. The total production of electricity from nuclear plants in 2011 was 2518 TWh, 4.3 less compared to 2630 TWh generated in 2010, according to data provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As a direct consequence of the March 2011 tsunami, 13 Japanese reactors were closed. Moreover, by the end of 2011, 31 of the 54 Japanese reactors were still switched off, due to inspections or replacements of equipments and have not been restarted yet. As a consequence, the production of nuclear energy in Japan dropped 44.3% in 2011, going down to 152.6 TWh, compared to 280.3 TWh in 2010.

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

Sub-Saharan Africa


Swiss Woman Kidnapped in Timbuktu: Confirmed

Switzerland on Monday confirmed that a female national had been kidnapped in Mali’s Timbuktu, the fabled city seized by Islamists after a coup in the west African nation. A statement by the federal department of foreign affairs (FDFA) in Bern said that authorities were in contact with the woman’s family and “were making every effort to ensure the kidnap victim is released unharmed,” but did not identify her.

Local reports said she was a Christian woman in her 40s named Beatrice who had lived in the ancient city for years and was active in the local community. Officials at the Swiss government’s Agency for Cooperation and Development office in Bamako and at the Swiss embassy in Dakar, which is also responsible for Mali, are in touch with local authorities, the FDFA said.

The government said it had advised its nationals to leave the country temporarily following the March 22nd coup and had been advising against travelling to Mali since December 2009 because of a higher risk of kidnappings.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Latin America


US, Haiti Kick Off Vaccination Campaigns

Haitian and U.S. officials are launching a nationwide vaccination campaign that seeks to curb or prevent the spread of infectious diseases in the impoverished Caribbean nation. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the effort to vaccinate Haitians is critical because the country remains vulnerable to infectious diseases brought from outside.

The campaign seeks to vaccinate Haitians for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio and other diseases. Sebelius kicked off the campaign Monday after she toured a hospital in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Asylum Requests Surge in Switzerland

Some 7,150 people sought asylum in Switzerland in the first three months of the year, up 63 percent from a year ago, according to data released Monday by the Federal Migration Office. Eritreans made the biggest number of requests with 1,151 applications, 336 more than in the previous quarter.

They were followed by Nigerians with 677, up 55 from the previous quarter and Tunisians with 664, 215 fewer than in the last three months of 2011. Despite ongoing unrest in Syria, asylum applications made by that country’s nationals rose by just 20 from the previous quarter to 296 during the first three months of 2012.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


UK: London Mayoral Elections Gay Hustings: Ken Livingstone Urges Muslims to be Treated Fairly

Ken Livingstone has called for Londoners to be united after claiming that it is “the Muslims’ turn now” to be discriminated against. Mr Livingstone said he would like to see Muslims depicted in a “better balance”. Labour’s London mayoral candidate, who is competing to take back City Hall from Conservative Boris Johnson, also claimed that right-wing politicians “pander to bigotry”. He said: “In 1906 the front page of the Daily Mail’s headline was ‘Jews bring crime and disease to Britain’. “Then it was the blacks, then it was the Irish, then it was the lesbians and gays — there has always got to be an enemy. Right-wing politicians pander to bigotry. I remember the deputy leader of the Tory group at the GLC, when we launched our lesbian and gay policies, said to me ‘Every time I make a homophobic speech in Ruislip-Northwood I get an extra 1,000 votes’. It is the Muslims’ turn now. Don’t be divided. No Muslims ever came to me and said ‘I want homosexuality banned’. Muslims came to this city to flee oppressive culture. They came here so their children could have democracy, that they could achieve their best.” Mr Livingstone was referring to comments he made while visiting Finsbury Park Mosque on March 16. He is reported to have said he wants to make London a “beacon” that demonstrates the words of the Prophet Mohammed — particularly his last sermon, which preaches equality.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

General


A Brave Telling of the Koran’s Human Stories

Charles Moore reviews In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland (Little, Brown) .

Most of the attention given to this book so far has, rightly, been favourable. But it has skirted round the key point. Tom Holland is attempting to show that much of what Muslims believe about the Koran is incorrect. Since their belief is rigorously literal — they hold that the Koran is the uncreated word of God recited (the word Koran means “recitation”) directly through the mouth of Mohammed — any Muslim who accepted Holland’s evidence would have to reconsider many aspects of his faith. This painful process of textual inquiry into scripture has been well known to Christians since the 19th century, when the Bible came under similar scrutiny. It has caused anguish, but many have been able to reconcile their faith with the discoveries of scholarship. No such process has taken place in Islam. Indeed, the suppression of questioning has actually got worse. Until 1924, for example, seven different versions of the text were considered canonical, so areas of doubt were implicitly acknowledged. Now there is only one normative text, and it is inconsistent in many particulars, but Muslims dare not say so. Holland is being brave.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Best Evidence Yet That a Single Gene Can Affect IQ

A massive genetics study relying on fMRI brain scans and DNA samples from over 20,000 people has revealed what is claimed as the biggest effect yet of a single gene on intelligence — although the effect is small.

There is little dispute that genetics accounts for a large amount of the variation in people’s intelligence, but studies have consistently failed to find any single genes that have a substantial impact. Instead, researchers typically find that hundreds of genes contribute.

Following a brain study on an unprecedented scale, an international collaboration has now managed to tease out a single gene that does have a measurable effect on intelligence. But the effect — although measurable — is small: the gene alters IQ by just 1.29 points. According to some researchers, that essentially proves that intelligence relies on the action of a multitude of genes after all.

“It seems like the biggest single-gene impact we know of that affects IQ,” says Paul Thompson of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the collaboration of 207 researchers. “But it’s not a massive effect on IQ overall,” he says.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Blind Hydra Relies on Light to Kill Prey

THE blind hunter sees. It may not have eyes, but the hydra — a centimetre-long relative of the jellyfish — still senses light to detect and kill its prey. This finding is part of efforts to uncover the evolutionary origins of sight.

Two years ago, David Plachetzki of the University of California at Davis showed that Hydra magnipapillata has genes that are involved in light detection. These include the gene coding for opsin, a protein that is key to all animal vision. To find out how the hydra uses these genes, Plachetzki and his colleagues looked at which cells expressed them. This pointed to a complex of cells that is connected to the hydra’s hunting equipment.

The hydra kills its prey with stings that are propelled like harpoons. When Plachetzki’s team exposed tanks of hydra to periods of bright and dim light, the hydra ejected twice as many stings under dim conditions. This, the team says, shows that hydra use light levels to hunt (BMC Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-10-17).

H. magnipapillata may have been one of the first creatures to develop sensitivity to light. Possible explanations for this sensitivity could be that the hydra hunts at dusk when food is more plentiful or by sensing changes in light intensity — releasing stings when the shadows of prey pass overhead.

Dan-Eric Nilsson, whose group studies the evolution of vision at Lund University in Sweden, says: “This light sensitivity must have evolved very early among the first primitive animals, and then become incorporated into many different functions, eyes being just one of them.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Salt Levels in Fast Food Depend on Where You Buy it

An order of Chicken McNuggets in Europe might be slightly healthier than one in the United States, in terms of the salt content, a new study suggests.

In general, salt levels were higher in the United States and Canada than in the United Kingdom and France.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120415

Financial Crisis
» Everything is Going to be Alright?
» Greece: Unemployment Hits New Record High of 21.8%
» Greece: As Quiet as a Eurocrat in Athens
» Italy: Monti Shifts to Corruption, The ‘Hidden Tax”
» New Banker Bailout to be Funded by Giant Tax Hikes
» The Church of Malthus
 
USA
» America Elected an Ignoramus
» Interview With Deneen Borelli — Author of “Blacklash”
» Who Owns the West?
» Why America is Devolving Towards Absolute Government Control
 
Europe and the EU
» Amanda Knox: The Publishing — and P.R. — War is on
» Britain for Sale: How Long Before a Foreign Power Turns Out Britain’s Lights?
» British Peer Lord Nazir Ahmed Suspended After ‘Offering £10m Bounty on Barack Obama and George Bush’
» British Muslim Leader Faces War Crimes Charges in Bangladesh Over Murders During Country’s Independence Struggle
» EU: Audit Court: Corruption Key Problem for Candidate States
» France: Police Raid Flat and Arrest Suspected Serial Killer After Spate of Paris Murders
» Italy: Milan House Museum Basks Visitors in Renaissance Luxury
» Italy: Discrimination Against Roma Persists in Italy, Say Amnesty
» Italy: Over One Million in EU Funds Embezzled in Calabria
» Italy: Moving ‘Ruby’ Trial Unconstitutional, Court Says
» Italy: Fincantieri Said to Want to Buy Ship Maker STX OSV
» Italy: Temperatures Drop to a Low of 9 in Rome and Florence
» The British University Head That Seeks to Force Islamic Values on All British Students
» UK: Human Rights Laws Are a Charter for Criminals, Say 75% of Britons
» UK: Muslim Woman Let ‘Secret’ Baby Die Then Dumped Her Body for Fear of Dishonouring Her Family
» World Remembers Sinking of the Titanic
 
North Africa
» Algerian Opens Election Period in Bid to Ease Discontent
» Egypt: Hubby Watching Porn Online Finds Film Starring His Wife
» Intimate Scenes to be Banned From Egyptian Public TV
» Saudi Wahhabism Expands Into Libya
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Pacifists Headed to Israel Stopped in European Airports
 
South Asia
» Afghanistan: Explosions & Shots in Kabul Embassy District
» Bangladesh: Ex Imam Convert to Catholicism Almost Killed
» India: Hindu Radicals Attack Christian Pastors During Easter as Police Stand Idly by
» Nepal: Maoist Government Gains Control of Iconic Pashupatinath Hindu Temple
» Taliban Militants Free 400 Prisoners Including ‘Dangerous’ Insurgents in Dramatic Attack on Pakistan Jail
» Taliban Launch Assaults Across Afghanistan
 
Far East
» A Revolt, the Quiet Japanese Way
» Japan — Great Britain: Noda and Cameron Meet, Talk Defence
» North Korea Celebrates First President’s 100th Birthday
» North Korea Launches Long-Range Rocket… But it Blows Up 90 SECONDS After Take-Off (So What Went Wrong?)
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Reports: Omar Hammami Executed
» South African President Zuma to Wed 4th Wife
 
Immigration
» Belgian Xenophobic Website Reflects Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Europe
» Revealed: How HALF of All Social Housing in Parts of England Goes to People Born Abroad
 
Culture Wars
» California and the Subversive Teaching Radicals
» UK: And After Double Maths it Will Be… Paganism: Schools Told to Put Witchcraft and Druids on Re Syllabus
» US Children Born Out of Wedlock on the Rise
» Video: Cultural Marxism: Understanding the Origins of Political Correctness

Financial Crisis


Everything is Going to be Alright?

Is the U.S. economy going to be okay? Well, if the only source you listened to was the mainstream media, you would be left with the distinct impression that the U.S. economy is heading toward a full recovery and that everything is going to be alright. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The United States is rapidly becoming poorer as a nation and less competitive in the global marketplace. At the same time, consumer debt levels are rising, corporate debt levels are rising, state and local government debt levels are rising and the U.S. government is indulging in a debt binge unlike anything the world has ever seen. Considering the insane amount of money the U.S. government has been pumping into the economy, we should have seen a much more robust recovery by now. Instead, the employment statistics have barely moved and government dependence is at an all-time high. That is really sad, because this is as good as “the recovery” is going to get. The next major economic downturn is just around the bend, and in future years millions of us will desperately yearn for the “good old days” of 2012.

Below, I have compiled a list of things that I have entitled “Everything Is Going To Be Alright?”

It is composed in the form of a song, but it really isn’t meant to be sung. It is probably actually more of an economic horror poem than it is a song. What I have tried to do is to point out the absurdity of what we are all being told by our politicians and by the media. Hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Greece: Unemployment Hits New Record High of 21.8%

Almost doubled since 2010

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — Greece’s unemployment rate rose to a new record of 21.8% in January from a revised 21.2% in December, Greek statistics service ELSTAT said on Thursday, as daily Kathimerini reports. This means Greece’s unemployment rate has roughly doubled since 2010, when the impact of the crisis began to be felt and Athens turned to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for emergency loans. Budget cuts imposed by the EU and the IMF as a condition to save the debt-laden country from a chaotic default have caused a wave of corporate closures and bankruptcies. Starting this month, Greek unemployment figures are adjusted for seasonal factors. The average jobless rate in the 17 countries sharing the euro rose slightly in January to 10.7%, from 10.6% in December.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: As Quiet as a Eurocrat in Athens

Le Temps Geneva

Their mission: to bring the Greeks onto the path of budgetary virtue. Their method: to shake up established practice and insist on sacrifices. The risk: they may be targeted by anyone with a gripe against the EU.

Richard Werly

On one side of the room, a window gives onto the ruins of the Acropolis and the scaffolding assembled by the team of archaeologists with a brief to watch over this crucible of European civilisation.

On the other, the two screens Yannis Siatras uses to monitor the stock market, one of which is intermittently displaying the front cover published by German magazine Focus in February 2010. It shows Vénus de Milo giving the finger and is accompanied by a headline that announces, “Cheats in the EU family”: a highly symbolic image that is associated with EU diktats and contempt.

“Show that! And then try to explain that the Union is on our side”, complains Yannis, a former financial editor, who is tempted to run for a seat at the next general election in May.

Silence as a first line of defence

We had already been warned by Kostas Pappas, a spokesman for the permanent representation of Greece in Brussels, “Beware of cliche’s that poison the atmosphere”, so it was no surprise to hear the same view expressed at the the European Commission delegation in Athens, which is located just behind the parliament building. On the other side of the street, the Evzones, soldiers in the traditional partisans uniform of white tights and pom-pommed hobnailed boots, were changing the guard, watched by handful of tourists.

One of them, a Greek American, was incensed by the display of the blue and gold-starred flag of the EU. “They have no place in the country of Socrates,” he says. “They are immoral servants of banks.”

Panos Carvounis is no longer bothered by this type of accusation. The genteel 50-year-old head of the European Commission Representation in Greece is well used to criticism. “I live at home. I go to the cinema without any fuss, while Greek politicians who have had bad press are afraid to leave their homes. I am often questioned, but never vilified”, he says.

In contrast, other members of the contingent of Eurocrats, who have been posted in Athens since the beginning of the crisis in the spring of 2010, have made silence their first line of defence.

Some 15 experts are deployed in the Greek capital as part of the Commission’s tasks force to help the country take advantage of EU funds [Greece has only managed to tap less than a third of the funds made available to it as part of the EU’s 2007-2013 budget]. A further 30 work for the EU delegation, and also serve as a secretariat for the troika, the tripartite agency (Commission, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank) with a brief to implement the agreement that was finally accepted by Greek leaders in mid-March.

This latter group are charged with supervising the second €130 billion European bailout that will finance Athens until the end of 2014: a sum that has been made available in addition to the first €110 billion lent by the 27-member EU in 2010, and the €107 billion of debt that the country’s private creditors accepted to write off within the framework of a bond swap which will be completed by 18 April…

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



Italy: Monti Shifts to Corruption, The ‘Hidden Tax”

Rome, 12 April (AKI/Bloomberg) — Prime minister Mario Monti is shifting his focus from overhauling Italy’s economy to tackling corruption, a problem highlighted by the recent resignation of one of the country’s best-known political leaders amid a party- financing scandal.

Monti’s government is readying a package of anti-corruption measures, including broadening the criminal definition of corruption to include cases in the private sector and tightening procedures to prevent failed prosecutions due to the statute of limitations, said a person with knowledge of the proposals, who declined to be identified because an official announcement hasn’t been made yet.

Officials from the nation’s three biggest parties met last night to draft a joint bill that would make the use of public funding for political parties more transparent. Justice Minister Paola Severino said April 7 the government is “ready to intervene” on party financing unless Parliament takes action.

The Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption, known as GRECO, called on Italy yesterday to amend its criminal code in areas such as party financing and corruption penalties. That came after Umberto Bossi resigned as head of the Northern League April 5, caught up in the biggest wave of corruption scandals since the “Bribesville” cases in the 1990s led to the demise of Italy’s dominant political parties.

Fighting fraud “is a priority for the Monti government,” Democratic Party Deputy Donatella Ferranti said in an interview yesterday. “It weighs on the economy, on the recovery, but also on the credibility of our country abroad.”

Attracting Investment

The Democrats, the People of Liberty and the centrist Third Way are the three main parties in a broad coalition set up when Monti, 69, took over as unelected prime minister in November.

Monti said March 17 that Chancellor Angela Merkel told him increased efforts to fight corruption would lure more German investment to Italy. “It’s essential for the government to attract foreign investment,” he said.

Corruption in Italy amounts to a “hidden tax” of 1,000 euros ($1,310) to 1,500 euros per person each year, Ferranti said. Italy scored the worst of all euro-area countries except Greece in Transparency International’s global corruption ranking last year. Corruption accounts for 1 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product, which would amount to 16 billion euros for Italy, the European Commission said in a June 6 report. That compares to damages of 90 million euros won by Italy’s state audit court in corruption rulings last year, according to a Feb. 16 report.

Berlusconi

While the media has focused mostly on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s legal battles, including a case with corruption charges, allegations have been leveled against officials from all of the country’s main parties this year.

Ten of the 80 legislators in Lombardy’s regional assembly are being probed, several for alleged kickbacks, including Speaker Davide Boni. Berlusconi has maintained his innocence of all charges in cases against him. Boni said March 20 he’s “totally extraneous” to any alleged wrongdoing.

Bossi’s son Renzo resigned from the regional legislature April 10 amid a criminal investigation that led to allegations that Northern League funds were siphoned off to the Bossi family. Neither Umberto Bossi nor Renzo Bossi is under investigation and both have denied using party funds for personal expenses.

There are “critical shortcomings in the party funding system of Italy which must be addressed as a matter of priority,” GRECO said yesterday. Italian parties spent 570 million euros from 1994 to 2008 out of 2.25 billion euros of public financing, the GRECO report said.

Influence Peddling

While Italy signed the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption in 1999, Parliament hasn’t fully ratified it. GRECO has recommended that Italy classify private-sector corruption and influence peddling as crimes, and lengthen the statute of limitations for corruption offenses.

One of Monti’s first tasks when he took office was to clean house at state-controlled defense company Finmeccanica SpA (FNC), whose chairman and other officials were involved in corruption probes. Chairman Pier Francesco Guarguaglini quit in December amid a probe involving a company unit run by his wife. Guarguaglini and his wife Marina Grossi have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Finmeccanica isn’t under probe.

“Illegality, corruption and graft are widespread and their size is much larger than what comes to the surface,” Luigi Giampaolino, chairman of the state audit court, said Feb. 16.

Italy came in 69th in the Corruption Perceptions Index ranking, Berlin-based Transparency International said Dec. 1, placing the country level with Ghana and lower than Saudi Arabia. Seventeen percent of Italians said they were asked to pay a kickback in the previous 12 months, a Eurobarometer poll in 2009 showed, almost double the European average.

The government plans to present an amendment on April 17 to address the GRECO recommendations, the person familiar said.

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



New Banker Bailout to be Funded by Giant Tax Hikes

In the video below, Alex breaks down how billionaires like Warren Buffett are the biggest beneficiaries of the “rule” they are now forcing through Congress. The net effect? Stealing the expanded tax revenue via banker bailouts and shutting down the middle class to eliminate competition for the big boys.

The same criminal mega banks that pulled off the banker bailout heist are set to run an even bigger scam. Billionaire scammer Warren Buffett was the biggest beneficiary of taxpayer money stolen in the bailout now he wants more. Please get this report out to everyone via Facebook, twitter, and every other media system. Together we can expose this fraud for what it is a mafia driven crony capitalism takeover! This is hidden in front of our faces; get this report out to talk radio as well.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Church of Malthus

Hating humanity is their creed, corporate-fascists its patriarchs, pseudo-scientists its priest-class, brain-addled cultists its practitioners.

Paul Gilding describes himself as an “independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change.” He is not a scientist, nor does he appear to participate in any sort of productive industry. He is a modern day Malthusian evangelist — preaching the limits of population growth as hysterically as Thomas Malthus did over 200 years ago, warning of imminent societal collapse. Gilding’s contemporaries include John P. Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who in 1977 ludicrously concluded that the United States would collapse when its population reached “280 million in 2040.”

America’s population stands well over 300 million today, and the only collapse it faces is due to a maniacal government attempting to carry out global imperial conquest through trillion dollar decade-spanning wars, and mega-trillion dollar banker bailouts paid to the order of institutionalized degenerate gamblers.

Clearly, whatever “science” men like Gilding and Holdren are basing their system of beliefs on is divorced from the science that gives us technology and progress. It is analytical, theoretical, and compiled by men who have little experiential knowledge of how the world actually functions. They are priests and evangelists perched in ivory towers and behind podiums shouting out their patently false conclusions to the crowds before them. Their resumes are devoid of accomplishments in applied science and technology, and instead filled with ridiculous predictions and “academia” that have humiliatingly and repeatedly been proven false.

Worst of all, their work is carried out on behalf of a “Green Vatican” of sorts — not based in Rome, Italy, but on Wall Street and in the financier capital of London — who in reality are the greatest purveyors of environmental catastrophe. Like many cults and organized religions before them, they shift the burden of reconciling “sin” onto its growing flock of followers instead of taking responsibility for its own actions, resultant from perpetual greed.

[Return to headlines]

USA


America Elected an Ignoramus

I do not write unpleasant things about Barack Hussein Obama because he is a Democrat, a far-left liberal ideologue, a confirmed liar, or the sock-puppet of whatever cabal that chose him long ago to be the President. I write unpleasant things because he is all of these things, but also because he is the most stupid man to have ever held the office of President.

[…]

Here’s just a quick look at some of them:

Hans Bader, a scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, addressed recent examples of Obama’s ignorance when he mocked Republicans as members of the Flat Earth Society in Columbus’ day for their skepticism of his green energy policies, among which was a hearty endorsement of algae—pond scum, but Columbus’ contemporaries knew the Earth was round, but doubted he could reach Asia via the Atlantic Ocean. Bader noted that Obama “falsely attributed to Muslims the invention of printing and even falsely claimed that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as a new nation.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Interview With Deneen Borelli — Author of “Blacklash”

In a recent interview with Accuracy in Media, author and political activist Deneen Borelli called Al Sharpton an “ambulance chaser,” citing the Tawana Brawley case. Borelli is the author of the new book Blacklash: How Obama and the Left are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation. In the book, Borelli exposes the Left’s attempt to silence black conservatives who are battling against the Obama administration’s goal of expanding the government and increasing the number of people dependent on the welfare state.

Borelli considers the book as a call to action to empower Americans to help stop the cycle of government dependency, which deprives citizens of their rights to freedom and prosperity. Not only is she an author, but she’s a Fellow at Project 21, a network of black conservatives, which is an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, based in Washington, D.C.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Who Owns the West?

It’s a fair question. The federal government claims ownership of most of the western states. Why?

In eleven western states, the federal government claims ownership of more than 50% of the land. Utah intends to get its land back. Utah’s HR148, recently signed into law by the Governor, tells the federal government that federal land in Utah, other than specified national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas, will be taken by eminent domain by the state of Utah if it has not been transferred to the state by the end of 2014.

Democrats and environmental organizations say this Law is an exercise in futility, a waste of time. Republicans and producers believe that Utah was granted statehood on an “equal footing” with the original states. “Equal footing” means that the federal government should own no land in the state of Utah, since none of the original states contained land owned by the federal government. Republicans and business leaders contend that this is exactly what the term means. Democrats and environmentalists disagree.

[…]

The Constitution provides no authority for the federal government to own more than half of Utah and 10 other western states.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Why America is Devolving Towards Absolute Government Control

With America Headed Towards Socialism, Most Care Not Enough to Resist.

The relentless encroachment of socialism upon America’s economic, cultural and governmental landscape is like a bad dream to most red-blooded Americans. When society changes it can seem like the ineluctable drift of evolution or chance. But in the case of America’s ongoing continued expansion of government powers, spiking taxes, and shrinking military, it’s all part of a planned elitist push into socialism. And one need not believe in secret conspiracies when contemplating this shift. In fact, for those paying attention, it was all outlined long ago by the Fabian Socialist society, and other groups such as the Frankfurt School, as explained below.

[…]

Congressional Record January 10, 1963

On January 10, 1963, Florida US Representative Albert Sydney Herlong, Jr gave a speech outlining what he believed to be the 45 methods communists were using to take over America. Ponder the staggering number of these goals already achieved, much to our mortal damage.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Control schools. Use them to transmit socialist & Marxist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Infiltrate teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

[…]

Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School were a group of German intellectual Marxists who established the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University, modeled after the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. This became known as the “Frankfurt School.” After Hitler came to power, these Marxist professors fled to the West to preserve their lives. Setting up shop in Columbia University, they decided to launch a mission to convert America to Marxism via a soft war. According to one source they did certain things to aid this:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Amanda Knox: The Publishing — and P.R. — War is on

Amanda Knox will publish her account of being accused — and cleared — of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher. Her ex-boyfriend has a book deal too. But the victim’s father, who still believes the pair murdered his daughter, is fighting back with his own memoir.

The trial in Perugia is over, but the battle for the truth is only just beginning. Amanda Knox has already signed a $2.5 million book deal with publishing house Harper Collins. With the help of ghost writers, the former American exchange student in Perugia, Italy will write a memoir to be published in 2013, offering her story of being accused of sexually assaulting and murdering her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher.

Knox and her boyfriend were convicted and jailed in 2007, but cleared in 2010.

But John Kercher, the father of the slained student, will have his say first. On April 26, Kercher will publish a book about his daughter, focusing on her life rather than her horrendous death. In the 304-page-long book, he tells the story of their travels around the world — as well as how he coped with the murder.

A freelance journalist, John Kercher remains convinced that Amanda Knox is “unmistakably guilty” of his daughter’s death, despite an Italian court clearing the American woman and her Italian boyfriend of sexual assault and murder charges. Kercher says Knox’s “publicity stunt” is making it “much harder” for his family to grieve.

On top of that, Rafaelle Sollecito, Amanda Knox’s former boyfriend, has also signed a book deal to tell his version of the story. The Italian signed a contract with Gallery Books to publish Presumed Guilty: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox. The publishing house advertises the book as “the story of an involuntary protagonist,” victim of a hasty trial despite the lack of evidence. The book is written with the help of British journalist Andrew Gumbel, author of a book on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings…

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



Britain for Sale: How Long Before a Foreign Power Turns Out Britain’s Lights?

On Saturday in the Mail, our City Editor Alex Brummer revealed the price we’re all paying in higher bills for having sold off half our companies to foreign owners. Here, in the second extract from his devastating new book, he warns that with so much of our vital utility companies in foreign hands, we are now at the mercy of conglomerates that could bring Britain Plc to a shuddering halt.

Everyone feels it’s their right to have water when they turn on a tap — just as we all assume a flick of a switch will produce light.

These are public services we take for granted. We also expect our airports to function properly and care homes to treat the elderly with respect.

True, most are now owned by private companies, but we tend to assume the public interest always comes first — such as plugging leaks and renewing water pipes, rather than providing fat profits for shareholders.

But what happens when most of Britain’s essential public services are no longer run by the British? It’s a crucial question that politicians dodge, as one company after another is sold off to foreign masters.

Roughly half of all our essential services — from water to bridges and ports — now have overseas owners. And in many cases, there’s disturbing evidence to suggest the public is losing out — and will continue to do so.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



British Peer Lord Nazir Ahmed Suspended After ‘Offering £10m Bounty on Barack Obama and George Bush’

A controversial British peer has been suspended from the Labour Party amid reports that he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama and his predecessor President George W Bush.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, 53, who in 1998 became the first Muslim life peer, was reported to have made the comments at a conference in Haripur in Pakistan.

A Labour Party spokesman said: “We have suspended Lord Ahmed pending investigation. If these comments are accurate we utterly condemn these remarks which are totally unacceptable.”

According to Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper Lord Ahmed offered the bounty in response to a US action a week ago.

The US issued a $10 million reward for the capture of Pakistani militant leader Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, who it suspects of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people died as terrorists stormed hotels and a train station.

The British peer reportedly said: “‘If the US can announce a reward of $10 million for the (capture) of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of £10 million (for the capture of) President Obama and his predecessor, George Bush.”

Lord Ahmed reportedly said he would arrange the bounty at any cost, even if he had to sell his own personal assets including his house.

He was said to have made the comments at a reception arranged in his honour by the business community of Haripur on Friday.

A former Pakistani foreign minister and a provincial education minister were said to have been present at the reception…

[Return to headlines]



British Muslim Leader Faces War Crimes Charges in Bangladesh Over Murders During Country’s Independence Struggle

One of Britain’s top Muslim activists is facing war crimes charges in Bangladesh.

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, the director of Muslim spiritual care provision in the NHS and a trustee of the charity Muslim Aid, is accused of involvement in the abduction and murder of ‘intellectuals’ during Bangladesh’s struggle for independence in the 1970s.

Mr Mueen-Uddin has denied any involvement in the crimes he has been allegedly linked with — but faces the death penalty if convicted.

Mr Mueen-Uddin moved to Britain from Bangladesh in the early 1970s and has since become a British citizen and forged a successful career as a community activist and Muslim leader.

In 1989 he was a key figure in the protests against Salman Rushdie controversial book, The Satanic Verses.

And he was photographed with Prince Charles when the heir visited a Islamic centre in Leicester in 2003.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



EU: Audit Court: Corruption Key Problem for Candidate States

Can undermine accession process, important to set priorities

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 11 — “Corruption is the main problem for a number of candidate countries [for integration into the EU]” and “could seriously undermine the entire process,” according to Karel Pinxten, a member of the EU Audit Court, who has been speaking today at the Foreign Affairs Commission at the European Parliament.

Speaking of funds allocated by the EU to prepare candidate countries prior to their integration, Pinxten underlined the economic efforts being made by member states during the current financial crisis, with the figure reaching almost one billion euros in 2011, another reason for which “it is important to use every euro in the best way possible,” Pinxten said. “The time factor is key. Preparation for EU entry is a marathon, not a sprint. Croatia has shown this, almost ten years on from its request to join,” in 2003. According to Pinxten, past experience suggests that “it is important to identify intelligent objectives, which means specific, significant and measurable priorities, with defined time frames”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



France: Police Raid Flat and Arrest Suspected Serial Killer After Spate of Paris Murders

A suspected serial killer was in custody in Paris last night following the murders of four people in almost as many months with the same pistol.

Armed detectives swooped on a flat in the Essonne area, just south of the capital, yesterday and arrested a 33-year-old man.

The suspect, who is known to be an amateur gun user and to have psychological problems, was not named.

A second man was also thought to have been arrested in central Paris in connection with the murders.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Italy: Milan House Museum Basks Visitors in Renaissance Luxury

Bagatti Valsecchi residence a treat for history, art lovers

(ANSA) — Milan, April 10 — When the Hapsburg viceroy Maximilian was forced to abandon rule over Lombardy and Veneto in 1859, and retreated from Milan to his castle in Trieste, the Milanese barons Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi were teenagers. As the highborn brothers matured, they bore witness to the consolidation of the Kingdom of Italy under Savoy rule, and by the time they neared middle age, one of the great cultural challenges of the time was to forge an Italian identity. The freshly minted nation did not speak a common language: what is now considered Italian was Florentine dialect. The kingdom’s first king, Victor Emanuel II, spoke almost entirely Piedmontese and French. In keeping with the spirit of new patriotism, the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers turned to Lombard roots in the High Renaissance when they renovated their family palazzo in heart of Milan. Assiduous collectors of Renaissance objects, decor and art, they sought to create a seamless environment that harkened back to Lombardy’s artistic golden age of the 15th and 16th centuries — the era of Ludovico il Moro, Leonardo da Vinci and Ambrogio Bevilacqua. “Compared to the wide-ranging eclecticism that had been in vogue just a few decades earlier…this exclusive predilection was part of the broader context of post-unification Italy, which relied on the evocation of that glorious period for the construction of a new national identity,” wrote Lucia Pini, director of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in the catalogue for the 2010 exhibit “Unexpected Guests”. “The close link between container and content — that is, between the house and objects — was a defining feature of the brothers’ operation from the start,” she continued. “The house was…meant to provide them with a convincing and flawless setting. “We did not want to make a museum or a collection, but rather the reconstruction of a refined home of the mid-1500’s, where one could find objects from the 15th and 16th century of genres of all types: pictures, tapestries, carpets, furniture, weapons, pottery, bronzes, glass, jewelry, shoes, household utensils of every kind collected by careful study and returned to their original use,” Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi once explained. Renaissance paintings like Christ the Redeemer by Giampetrino and Madonna with Child by Ambrogio Bevilacqua flank 15th-century chests and engraved leather trunks. Flemish tapestries, cabinets of various shapes, tables and chairs with inlaid wood-carving, golden pill boxes, 15th and 16th century Venetian glass, ivory sundials and ancient musical instruments are spread throughout the lavishly decorated rooms.

Cutting-edge conveniences of the late 19th century, like water taps, showers and electrical lamps are camouflaged in neo-Renaissance form. The entire collection and its tailored setting remained private, part of the home of the brothers’ heirs until 1975. At that time, Pasino — one of Giuseppe’s sons — donated the entire collection to the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation. It is now hosted in perpetuity in the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum on the main floor of the original palazzo in Milan’s Via Santa Spirito.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Discrimination Against Roma Persists in Italy, Say Amnesty

International day celebrates culture and raises awareness

(ANSA) — Rome, April 6 — Amnesty International said on Friday in preparation for the International Roma and Sinti Day that Roma, sometimes called Gypsies, continue to face “persecution and human rights abuses” in Italy.

The non-governmental organization criticized the discriminatory climate against Roma, specifically the 2008 Nomad Emergency decree that gave government representatives in the regions of Lombardy, Lazio and Campania the authority to waive human-rights legislation and allowed forced evictions of Roma communities.

The decree was declared unlawful by the country’s highest administrative court in 2011.

Discrimination against Roma is one of Italy’s biggest human-rights problems, Amnesty International said in the country’s section of its 2010 annual report.

The Italian government has consistently denied applying discriminatory practices regarding Roma. Celebrations for the International Roma Day focusing on raising awareness of the issues facing Romani people will kick off April 9 and include events throughout Italy. Amnesty will release a CD featuring 21 songs by Romani musicians from around Europe called Listen to Roma Rights.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Over One Million in EU Funds Embezzled in Calabria

Money used for private homes and gifts, say police

(ANSA) — Vibo Valentia, April 12 — Over one million euros in EU funding earmarked for the development of tourism accomodation in the region of Calabria was spent on private homes, said police on Thursday. Sixty-three people, including public officials, allegedly pocketed the EU money for personal use and as gifts to family members, including wedding presents, said police.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Moving ‘Ruby’ Trial Unconstitutional, Court Says

‘Obligated’ to try Berlusconi in Milan

(ANSA) — Milan, April 12 — The Constitutional Court said Thursday it would have been unconstitutional to move a trial in which former premier Silvio Berlusconi is accused of paying an underage Moroccan-born runaway and belly dancer known as Ruby for sex.

In a statement explaning its decision in February to keep Berlusconi’s hearings in Milan, the court said it was “constitutionally obligated” to do so. The decision went to the Constitutional Court after a court in Milan rejected a defense plea to move it to a special tribunal for ministers in Rome.

In addition to the charge of paying for sex with a minor, Berlusconi is charged with abusing his office by allegedly pressuring police to get Ruby out of custody after a friend claimed she stole money from her.

Berlusconi and Ruby, whose real name is Karima El Mahroug, deny having sex and he says he phoned police to avoid a diplomatic incident, having been told she was the niece of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Therefore, lawyers and Berlusconi’s political supporters argued, the case should be tried by a special ministerial court and not by the Milan court.

Backed by a parliamentary majority, in September the government won the second of two parliamentary votes on asking the Constitutional Court if Milan judges should have jurisdiction.

In the Senate, six months after a House vote, 151 Senators voted in favour of putting the matter to the Constitutional Court and 129 voted against.

The vote on the issue on April 5 in the House was closer, with 314 ayes and 302 nays, a margin of 12.

She admits attending parties where he gave her gifts.

The trial is one of three involving the ex-premier, who has claimed for years he is the victim of judicial persecution.

Paying for sex with a minor carries a jail term of three years and abuse of office 12 years.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Fincantieri Said to Want to Buy Ship Maker STX OSV

Rome, 11 April (AKI/Bloomberg) — Fincantieri SpA, the Italian state- controlled shipbuilder, is among final bidders for a stake in STX OSV, the world’s biggest maker of offshore support vessels, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

An investment fund also submitted an offer, one person said, declining to identify the fund. South Korea’s STX Group, which is seeking to sell its 51 percent stake in Singapore- listed STX OSV, may reach a deal to divest the holding next month, the person said, asking not to be identified because the process is confidential.

STX Group’s stake is worth S$1.02 billion, or $809 million, based on yesterday’s closing price, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Singapore’s takeover guidelines require any buyer of more than 30 percent of a publicly traded company to make an offer for the rest of the stock. STX OSV has a market value of S$2 billion.

STX OSV, headquartered in Alesund, Norway, may benefit as depleting resources push oil companies to develop new offshore oil fields. Deep-water explorers are projected to spend a record $232 billion on new equipment in the next five years, according to Canterbury, U.K.-based researcher Douglas-Westwood.

Fincantieri, which builds cruise ships, ferries and luxury yachts, is owned by Fintecna, a company controlled by Italy’s finance ministry. A spokeswoman at Fincantieri declined to comment on the company’s interest in STX OSV.

Asset Sales

STX Group, owner of the world’s fourth-largest shipbuilder, said in October it plans to raise more than 1.3 trillion won, or $1.1 billion, early this year by selling overseas assets and bonds to repay maturing debt. In January, the company said it hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Standard Chartered Plc to arrange the sale of its STX OSV stake.

STX OSV won orders worth 11.1 billion kroner , or $1.9 billion, last year, including 6.03 billion kroner in the fourth quarter. Its order book stood at 16.7 billion kroner at the end of December with deliveries stretching into 2016.

The offshore-vessel builder was bought by STX Group through the takeover of Aker Yards ASA, completed in February 2009. It sold a stake in an initial public offering in November 2010. Och-Ziff Capital Management Group owns 20 percent of STX OSV, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

STX OSV’s products include vessels that are used to move or supply oil rigs. The company has yards in Europe, Asia and Brazil. It is building a second facility in the South American nation as Petroleo Brasileiro drills new wells off the country’s coastline.

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



Italy: Temperatures Drop to a Low of 9 in Rome and Florence

(AGI) Rome — During the night temperatures dropped to a low of 9 in Rome, Bologna and Florence, 10 in Venice and Milan. In Palermo the lowest did not drop under 14 degrees Celsius and in Siracusa it reached a low of 17.

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



The British University Head That Seeks to Force Islamic Values on All British Students

Professor Malcolm Gillies, the Vice-Chancellor of London Metropolitan University, is considering banning alcohol from the University’s premises as it causes offence to Islamic students.

This is despite only a fifth of the University’s students being of the Islamic faith.

The problem with such an alcohol ban sponsored by a tax-payer funded University, is that goes contrary to the British Enlightenment’s tradition of rational choice, and responsibility. These principles should be at the heart of all Western and British educational institutions.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Human Rights Laws Are a Charter for Criminals, Say 75% of Britons

Nearly three quarters of Britons think human rights have become a ‘charter for criminals’, a poll has revealed.

It showed a strong majority of 72 per cent hold negative views about the role of human rights laws.

Only one in six said human rights had not become a charter for criminals and the undeserving.

The YouGov poll, published today, will heap pressure on ministers to secure major reforms to the European Court of Human Rights.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Muslim Woman Let ‘Secret’ Baby Die Then Dumped Her Body for Fear of Dishonouring Her Family

[WARNING: Disturbing content.]

A mother who gave birth to a baby girl in ‘secret’ following an affair, let her newborn die before burying its body in the ground.

Fatima Ali, from Bury, Greater Manchester, feared she would bring shame upon her devout Muslim family for having the child out of wedlock.

And after giving birth to the infant — alone her bedroom, she cut the umbilical chord and left it to die.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



World Remembers Sinking of the Titanic

The world has been marking the 100th anniversary of the most famous disaster in maritime history, the sinking of the Titanic. More than 1,500 people lost their lives in the tragedy. Services took place on both sides of the Atlantic on Sunday to remember the sinking of the “indestructible” cruise liner Titanic 100 years ago to the day.

Passengers held a minute’s silence on board the deck of MS Balmoral, which has been retracing the route of the voyage across the North Atlantic. Floral wreaths were thrown into the water at the site where the ship went down. In Belfast, where the Titanic was built, a memorial garden with all the victims’ names was unveiled during a commemorative service. Thousands had attended a memorial concert held a day earlier.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Algerian Opens Election Period in Bid to Ease Discontent

The campaign for Algeria’s parliamentary elections has begun, with voting set to take place on May 10. The poll is seen as a test for reforms aimed at preventing an Arab Spring-style uprising in the ex-French colony. Campaigning began in Algeria on Sunday for elections that are being viewed as a litmus test for the ruling elite’s ability to avert a popular uprising similar to those in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

The poll would be “a decisive gamble which it is incumbent on us to win, because we have no other choice but to succeed,” President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in an advance message to mark Algeria’s Day of Knowledge on Monday. Deadly rioting in January 2011 coincided with an uprising in neighboring Tunisia that toppled Zine el Abidine Ben Ali from his role as president.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Egypt: Hubby Watching Porn Online Finds Film Starring His Wife

An Egyptian man who went online to watch a porno film for the first time got the shock of his life when he found that the woman in the film was his own wife.

The man, identified as Ramadan, instantly collapsed in disbelief on the floor at an internet shop before coming round and rushing home to face his unfaithful wife.

The woman first denied his allegations and started to swear at him, prompting her husband to face her with the film.

Unable to deny it any more, she confessed to have betrayed him with her pre-marriage boy friend, telling him she had never loved him although they had four children during their 16-year marriage.

“I found 11 films showing my wife in indecent scenes with her lover….it was the first time I watched a porno film and I did this just out of curiosity,” Ramadan told Egyptian newspapers at his house in the northeastern province of Dakhalia.

“She first denied it and accused me of being insane before I faced her with the films…she then confessed to be still in love with her boyfriend, saying he is as young as her and that I am an old man.”

Ramadan said he had been happy during his marriage life until he logged on to that website. Newspapers did not say whether he decided to divorce her.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Intimate Scenes to be Banned From Egyptian Public TV

(AGI) Cairo — A group of Islamic supervisors of the Egyptian Public Broadcaster will be in charge of removing ‘immoral ‘ footage from films the network has in its archives. The ban will apply to scenes featuring hugging, kissing and belly dancing. As reported by the daily Kuwait al-Anba, which quotes sources from inside the Network, such a decision could bring about either the removal of important scenes from movies that are an integral part of Egypt’s cinema or their complete ban from any TV programming. Such movies have been aired several times in the past already. The daily believes that the setting up of a supervising authority on cinema and TV content is a clear indication of the ground which the Islamic parties have been gaining in post- Mubarak Egypt. According to the daily’s sources, censorship will be applied to the last 50 years of filmmaking.

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



Saudi Wahhabism Expands Into Libya

Since the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011 and in the chaos that has gripped Libya since, fundamentalist Libyans have been pushing for a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Under the umbrella of lawlessness, gunmen calling themselves Salafis broke into the Saif al-Nasr Mosque in Tripoli on November 8, 2011, smashed open the wooden sarcophagus and removed the remains of el-Nasr, a scholar who died 155 years ago, as well as that of a former imam, Hammad Zwai. The gunmen moved the bodies to a Muslim cemetery and, with the help of graffiti left on the walls, explained their disapproval of the Sufi Muslim tradition of burying scholars and teachers in mosques to honor them.

The estimated 200 to 400 members of the local Salafi movement in the small town of Zuwara near the Tunisian border have demolished shrines belonging to adherents of the Ibadi sect, long considered heretics by orthodox Sunni Muslims. In the town’s cemetery, large blocks of stone surround what was once a mausoleum. The large, conical-shaped structure that once adorned it now lies collapsed in the debris.

In January 2012, extremists bulldozed through a wall of an old cemetery in the eastern city of Benghazi, destroyed its tombs, and carried off 29 bodies of respected sages and scholars. They also demolished a nearby Sufi school.

A group of Salafis angered by the burning of the Koran at a NATO military base in Afghanistan entered the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Benghazi on February 24, 2012, and shattered headstones of British and allied servicemen who fought in North African desert campaigns against the Nazis during World War II.

Salafis are intolerant of other schools of Islam and have physically attacked Muslim minorities in other parts of the Arab world, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Many Muslims frequent the shrines of saints, believing the holy men have powers of intercession with the divine. Salafis, however, believe these are pagan rites that must be obliterated from Islam, in line with the teachings of the founder of the Salafi movement, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd el-Wahab (1703-1792) whose philosophy has been the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia since the end of the eighteenth century. Its adherents prefer to call themselves Salafis.

The Wahhabi teachings disapprove of the veneration of historical sites associated with early Islam on the grounds that only God should be worshipped and that veneration of sites associated with mortals leads to idolatry. Many buildings associated with early Islam, including mausoleums and other artifacts, have been destroyed in Saudi Arabia by Wahhabis from the early nineteenth century through the present day.

Indeed, this version of fundamentalist Islam is not typical of Libyan Islam. Moderate Libyan and North African Islam has receded in the face of Wahhabi Islam coming from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. Under Gaddafi, the regime succeeded mostly in containing the Salafi push. But in areas remote from the center (Benghazi), the Salafis, together with al-Qaeda elements that apply a strict Wahhabi Islam, succeeded not only to survive the persecutions of the Gaddafi regime, but also succeeded in proselytizing their school of thought among the Libyans who were the backbone of the fighters in Afghanistan.

Throughout Libya, Gaddafi’s fall has emboldened Salafis, who were persecuted and imprisoned under the now deceased leader. They have increased their public presence, taken over mosques, and even raised the flag of al-Qaeda over the courthouse in Benghazi where the revolution began eleven months ago. Gaddafi’s disappearance and the link between the Qatari regime and the fighting militias particularly exposed the connection with Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the head of the Tripoli Military Council and former Guantanamo Bay inmate, and has created a situation where the military commanders of Libya are part and parcel of the Salafi-Wahhabi school of Islam. This explains their attitude towards the prevalent Sufi Islam in North Africa.

Moreover, for thirty years, massive amounts of oil money have been used to drown the Middle East and North Africa in Wahhabi ideas. The purpose of this support for the Wahhabi school of thought is basically political, in that the Saudi system of government depends on an alliance between the ruling family and the Wahhabi sheikhs. Hence, spreading the Wahhabi ideology reinforces the political system in that country…

           — Hat tip: JCPA [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Pacifists Headed to Israel Stopped in European Airports

(AGI) Rome — Hundreds of pro-Palestinian pacifists headed in Israel to take part in the Welcome to Palestine 2012 stopped in Europe. They were denied boarding on flights taking off from several European airports. Upon the request of Israeli authorities, the airline companies cancelled their plane tickets. Seven activists have been blocked at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, about one hundred in Geneva, and a dozen more in Paris. Some seats have been cancelled also on a flight taking off from Manchester airport.

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

South Asia


Afghanistan: Explosions & Shots in Kabul Embassy District

(AGI) Kabul — Eyewitnesses report at least seven explosions and a series of shootings in the embassy district of Kabul. The attacks took place near a supermarket frequented by foreigners.

The US embassy sounded its warning siren to tell all staff to move away from the windows. The shots seemed to come from different directions, which suggests a coordinated attack.

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



Bangladesh: Ex Imam Convert to Catholicism Almost Killed

Muslim leader first becomes Presbyterian abroad. After meeting a Catholic woman, he marries her and converts to her religion. Back in Bangladesh, he is totally rejected by his community. Despite the violence and social banishment, his faith remains strong: “I believe in Christ. I welcomed him” for “he is my saviour”.

Dhaka (AsiaNews) — “I believe in Christ. I welcomed him” for “he is my saviour,” said Vincent (not his real name for security reasons), a former Bangladeshi imam who is now Catholic and for this reason has endured persecution for a long time in his native community.

His journey towards conversion began abroad, far from Bangladesh. It led him first to baptism in the Presbyterian Church. After that, he fell in love with a Catholic woman, married her and then converted to her faith. Once they were back in Bangladesh, Vincent and his wife were welcomed by threats and violence. Members of his community beat him almost to death.

Islam in the state religion in Bangladesh but the constitution does not recognise Sharia and guarantees freedom of worship. This makes it one of the most open Muslim states, where conversions can occur in an atmosphere of general tolerance.

However, Islam’s social and cultural ascendancy is such that in many communities all sorts of pressure is put on people. In some cases, notaries refuse to sign papers testifying to conversions. In other cases, like that of the former imam, people resort to physical and psychological violence.

After almost two months in hospital, Vincent is back home. But the same Muslims who followed him and held him in high esteem when he was their imam now cannot accept his new “status”.

Beating is also not enough. Other forms of violence can be used. Both husband and wife have been ostracised, forced to move from home to home. Vincent eventually lost his job and now has to do odd jobs to survive.

Today he is a troubled man. Yet, his community’s banishment has not pushed him away from Jesus. He continues to attend Mass now more than ever, and repeat, “I believe in Christ. In him, I was reborn. He is my Saviour.”

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



India: Hindu Radicals Attack Christian Pastors During Easter as Police Stand Idly by

Two incidents are reported in Karnataka, one in Andhra Pradesh. In both states, members of Hindu ultranationalist groups have insulted, beaten and proffered death threats against believers and clergymen. Law enforcement officers filed cases against persons unknown even though the victims knew their attackers. For the president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, the Christian minority lives in a “climate of terror”.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) — India’s Christian minority is living in a “climate of terror,” this according to Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) who spoke about the violence visited upon some Christian communities over the Easter break.

In Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Hindu ultranationalist groups have attacked, beaten and made death threats against the pastors and members of three Pentecostal churches. Although each incident is distinct, they all have one thing in common, namely the “utter failure” of the police to act. For all intents and purpose, they are accomplices of Hindutva extremists.

The first incident occurred on 5 April in Mangalore (Karnataka) when a group of Hindus hurled stones at a congregation that had gathered for Maundy Thursday prayers at St Sebastian Church in the city’s Bendore area. A 46-year-old woman, Claret Pinto, suffered head injuries and was rushed to Colaco Hospital. Police later filed a report against persons unknown.

On Easter Sunday in Chamrajnagar (Karnataka), police went to the home of Rev Rajesh, 27, a pastor in the Indian Pentecostal Church of God (IPC) who had just finished a prayer service. They asked him under what authority he conducted the service at his home. Then, they insulted and eventually ordered him to vacate his home.

Later that day, Rev Rajesh and five other pastors went to the local police station to file a complaint about the incident. As they were briefing the attending officer, about 100 activists from the Bajrang Dal stormed the station and attacked the clergymen and a parishioner. The latter, named Babu, was wounded to the head and needed 24 sutures. Police present at the scene stood idly by.

Also on Easter Sunday, Hindu ultranationalists from the Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh (RSS) broke into the home of Rev Ratnababu, a pastor with the Christu Asinadu Prathana Mandir Church.

As some gagged and bound his son Madhu, others attacked the clergyman, throwing chilli powder into his eyes to blind him. They then physically assaulted him and his wife. When some neighbours began coming to the house in response to her screams, the attackers fled. Madhu was rushed to hospital.

Police filed a report against persons unknown even though the young man could identify the attackers.

Rev Ratnababu has been serving his Pentecostal community for 15 years. This attack by Hindu ultranationalists was not the first of its kind. In October 2011, there were three attempts to torch his church and numerous death threats against him. In the past six months, RSS activists were also able to get the police to arrest him, twice.

According to Sajan George, anti-Christian incidents are occurring on a regular basis. This and the lack of justice are a “serious threat” to the country’s secular backbone.

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



Nepal: Maoist Government Gains Control of Iconic Pashupatinath Hindu Temple

After almost 1000 years, management of one of the holiest Hindu temples goes to the civil authority. Priests and vendors salaried by ministry. The measure is to prevent corruption among the temple authorities.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — The management of the Pashupatinath temple has passed to civil authority, after almost 1000 years. As of April 8 priests (bhattas) and shopkeepers (bhandaris) are employees of the Ministry of Culture. The salary for the highest office is about 3 thousand Euros per month. The government must also collect the million dollar of offerings left by pilgrims. The measure aims to prevent corruption among the staff and any waste of the believers’ donations.

Narottam Baidhaya, treasurer of the Pashupatinath Area Development Trust (PADT), says that the temple collects an average of 45 thousand Euros per month in contributions to which are added vessels of gold and silver. In addition each believer is charged a puja, or special fee for services, and upkeep of the sacred place. The expenditure for salaries and maintenance of the premises amounts to about 25 thousand Euros per month. The official points out that the revenue triples during major Hindu festivals: Teej, Balachaturdashi and Mahashivaratri.

Since its founding in the eleventh century, the temple has been self-managed and has always refused the interference of civil authority. To date, Pashupatinath was administered by five bhattas, including the Mul Bhatta (high priest) and 101 bhandaris. According to tradition, they have full authority over the collection of offerings. However, the temple authorities have never stated the exact amount of donations.

In recent months, the Supreme Court urged the government to regulate the receipts and expenditures of the temple, following a number of allegations of corruption against bhattas and bhandaris. On 21 March the Maoist government announced the transfer of the economic management of the Unesco site to a the civil authority.

The government decision sparked protests from the PADT and Hindu activists, who consider the act as a misappropriation by the executive led by secular Maoists. Already in 2008, the then Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda, had attempted to interfere with the activities of the temple by prohibiting the appointment of Indian priests under the new pro-Chinese policy in the country. To test the sincerity of the religious PADT allowed a television crew to film the process of collection and submission of bids.

Gopal Kirati, Minister of Culture emphasizes that the PADT has grown disproportionately and become difficult to control. He explains that in this moment of crisis, “there is need for transparency. Every Hindu should be proud of this decision.”

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



Taliban Militants Free 400 Prisoners Including ‘Dangerous’ Insurgents in Dramatic Attack on Pakistan Jail

Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades stormed a prison in north west Pakistan and freed 400 prisoners, it emerged today.

The raid by more than 100 fighters was a dramatic display of the strength of the insurgency gripping the nuclear-armed country.

Police said at least 20 of the inmates set loose were ‘very dangerous’.

Authorities fear the escaped prisoners may now rejoin the fight, giving momentum and a propaganda boost to a movement that has killed thousands of Pakistani officials and ordinary citizens since 2007.

The attackers battled their way into the prison before dawn in the city of Bannu close to the Afghan border and near Peshawar.

Bannu prison superintendent Zahid Khan said they used explosives and hand grenades to knock down the main gates and two walls.

‘They were carrying modern and heavy weapons,’ said Mr Khan. ‘They fired rockets.’

Once inside the building, the attackers headed straight to the area of the prison where death-row prisoners were being kept, he said.

Police officer Shafique Khan said they fought with guards for around two hours, setting part of the prison on fire before freeing the 380 inmates, including at least 20 ‘very dangerous Taliban militants’.

One escaped prisoner, Adnan Rashid, was on death row for his involvement in an assassination attempt against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said Zahid Khan.

The prison in Bannu housed 944 inmates.

A Taliban spokesman, Asimullah Mehsud, claimed the movement’s fighters freed 1,200 of their comrades. The group is known to make exaggerated claims.

Pakistan’s military has launched a series of operations against the Pakistani Taliban group in the northwest, where it is strongest and has forged alliances with al-Qaida and other transnational militant movements based there along the Afghan border.

The movement is closely linked to the Afghan Taliban, which is battling U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Soldiers and police have killed or arrested hundreds of militants, but the insurgency has proved resilient.

Insurgents have carried out suicide bombings and other attacks across the country in retaliation, raising doubts in some quarters over whether the county can survive.

Prison breakouts like the one Sunday have been rare.

Bannu city is the main gateway to North Waziristan, the most militant-infested region along the border.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Taliban Launch Assaults Across Afghanistan

Suicide bombers have struck in Kabul and other sites across Afghanistan. The attacks show that militants still remain a potent force capable of hitting at the heart of the capital. The Taliban on Sunday launched a number of near-simultaneous attacks on at least seven sites in the Afghan capital, Kabul, as well as elsewhere in the country. In Kabul, the militants mainly attacked an area close to the embassies of Germany, the United States, Britain and Iran, as well as offices of the United Nations and other international organizations.

The French, Turkish and Chinese embassies are not far from the site. Bombs and gunfire were heard in the diplomatic enclave. Militants also took over buildings and tried to enter parliament.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Far East


A Revolt, the Quiet Japanese Way

New revelations seeped out about the control Japan’s nuclear industry had over its regulators. In early 2006, five years before the apparently preventable meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), an “independent” agency, began studying the enlargement of disaster-mitigation zones around nuclear power plants—from Japan’s standard 8-10 km to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s standard of a 5-km “top priority zone” and a 30-km “priority zone.”

But the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), which is under the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (METI), demanded the study be shelved, claiming in emails that were just released that the expansion “could cause social unrest and increase popular anxiety.”

It worked. But if the expansion of the zones had been implemented, it could have prevented the chaos of the evacuations from the areas around the Fukushima plant—and the deaths that occurred during it.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Japan — Great Britain: Noda and Cameron Meet, Talk Defence

The two leaders met on Tuesday and Wednesday in Tokyo. Defence was at the centre of their talks. Great Britain will be only the second country after the United States to cooperate with Japan on weapons development. Cameron calls on Japan to agree to an EU-Japan free trade agreement.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) — Defence was at the centre of talks between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his British counterpart, David Cameron, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Initially scheduled for last October, it was postponed because Cameron had to attend a European summit in Brussels.

Talks were important because they were centred on bilateral defence cooperation even though Article 9 of Japan’s constitution says, “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation”.

Japan has a long-standing ban on arms export and weapons development and production with other countries; however, last December its government decided to relax the ban on joint weapons development and production. This would be the first time Japan developed weapons with a country other than the United States.

Since his country is a member of the European Union, the British prime minister could also speak on important issues of common interest, including defence.

After he arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday, Cameron went first to the Imperial Palace for an audience with Emperor Akihito who recently underwent major surgery.

After their meeting, Noda and Cameron reiterated the importance of cooperation between Japan and Britain, including their position on how to deal with North Korea and its planned rocket launch, which many countries view as a missile test.

Before leaving Britain, Cameron told reporters that Great Britain is keen to become “Japan’s partner of choice” alongside the United States for defence industry collaboration.

“There are many opportunities for defence cooperation (between Britain and Japan) — for instance, in the area of helicopters,” Cameron said. “I hope to discuss these issues with Prime Minister Noda so that we can pave the way for our defence ministers to agree more formal cooperation when they next meet”.

“I believe stronger cooperation on defence will provide benefits for both countries in terms of jobs and investment as well as reducing the cost of defence equipment upon which we both rely,” the prime minister added.

Britain will be only the second country after the United States to collaborate with Japan in this sector.

Speaking about the Fukushima nuclear accident triggered by last year’s earthquake and tsunami, the British leader said, “I greatly admire and respect the way the Japanese have overcome the enormous challenges of recovery.” British companies, he added, can lend their “significant expertise” in nuclear decommissioning as Japan tackles the triple challenge of cleaning up after the earthquake, tsunami and the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

Here Cameron was referring to a meeting on the nuclear challenge that Britain’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington will host during the prime minister’s visit to Japan, bringing together British companies with their Japanese counterparts and government officials.

According to The Japan Times, Cameron has been pushed for a free-trade area between the European Union and Japan.

“I really hope that we can formally open negotiations later this year,” Cameron explained. “But in order to win the argument in the European Union, Japan needs to demonstrate its readiness and commitment to tackling nontariff barriers that keep European companies from doing business in Japan.”

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



North Korea Celebrates First President’s 100th Birthday

A military parade marking the centenary of Kim Il-Sung, the founding president of North Korea, was held in the capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday. Television images broadcast by North Korean television showed thousands of soldiers carrying red flags and marching into Kim Il-Sung Square in the capital. Kim Il-Sung’s grandson, Kim Jong-Un, delivered his first ever public speech during the parade.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



North Korea Launches Long-Range Rocket… But it Blows Up 90 SECONDS After Take-Off (So What Went Wrong?)

North Korea’s rocket scientists have been forced to hang their heads in collective shame following the spectacular failure of their latest long-range missile which blew up moments after launch.

Military leaders had hoped to show off their nation’s technological prowess by blasting a satellite into orbit in what the West had called a covert test of missile technology and a flagrant violation of international resolutions.

But in deeply embarrassing episode for the communist country and its new leader Kim Jong-Un, the Unha-3, or ‘Milky Way’, rocket exploded 90 seconds after blast off and came crashing down into the Yellow Sea.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Reports: Omar Hammami Executed

Mogadishu (RBC) — Today, unconfirmed reports that a Daphne native who joined an Al-Qaeda linked terror group in Somalia may be dead.

Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki joined Al-Shabaab in 1999 and eventually became one of the group’s top commanders.

The rumor is that he was executed by other commanders over a dispute about the terrorist group’s future.

The reports have been unconfirmed by NBC News and by Al-Shabaab, which has its own press office.

In the last few weeks, Hammami said he thought his life was in danger — but Al-Shabaab said they posed no threat to him.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



South African President Zuma to Wed 4th Wife

(AGI) Johannesburg — Next weekend, the South African president Jacob Zuma, known polygamist, will marry a 4th wife. The wedding with Bongi Ngema will be celebrated with a private traditional ceremony in Nkandla. Zuma, 70, has three wife and some 20 children. In 1998 he divorced Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a South African candidate to the presidency of the African League, whereas another wife, Kate, committed suicide in 2000.

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

Immigration


Belgian Xenophobic Website Reflects Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Europe

Vlaams Belang, a Belgian far-right party, has recently launched a website urging citizens to report crimes committed by illegal immigrants in a bid to mirror a similar Dutch website set up by a far-right party in Netherlands, Press TV reports.

According to European activists, the site is the latest example of growing anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, which is no longer limited to extremist parties.

Vlaams Belang claims illegal immigration is being encouraged through services such as counseling and legal assistance, adding that illegal immigrants abuse social security.

This comes while European activists say illegal immigrants are denied their basic rights and cannot have access to social security.

Meanwhile analysts cite economic crisis as a major reason behind anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe at a time when the average EU unemployment rate is at an all-time high, that is over 10 percent and European countries struggle with huge debt loads.

They also argue that Europe cannot afford to foster this negative attitude towards immigrants because its population is declining and it is in need of immigrants from other nations.

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



Revealed: How HALF of All Social Housing in Parts of England Goes to People Born Abroad

British people who have paid their taxes should get priority in the social housing queue over new migrants, David Cameron’s poverty tsar has said.

Frank Field, the senior Labour MP, has called for a shake-up of the way housing is handed out as it emerged that nearly half of all social housing in parts of the country were given to immigrants.

Nearly five million families are languishing on waiting lists for subsidised housing in England.

But in parts of London, which has the most expensive rents and property prices in the country, nearly half the social housing is allocated to foreigners.

Some boroughs did not record nationality details of social tenants which made it nearly impossible to properly scrutinise who is at the top of the queue.

Mr Field described the trend as a ‘scandal’ that ‘must stop’.

‘For years we have been told that British people on the waiting list for social housing are getting a fair deal,’ Mr Field said.

‘Yet, when the situation in London is examined, we find that, in reality, nobody has any idea how many new lets are going to foreign nationals and how many to British citizens.’

‘This scandal must stop. I have a bill before parliament that will ensure that those citizens who have made most contribution to society, who have paid their taxes and whose children have not caused trouble, for example, will have first choice of any housing available.

‘This would be a major change in our welfare state whereby benefits have to be earned rather than automatically allocated on need.’

The numbers of social housing tenants who were foreign have increased in the last four years to 8.6% in 2010-11, according to Department for Communities and Local Government figures.

But in London, where the waiting list has soared by 60% to 362,000 in the last decade because of rising house prices, a far greater proportion of housing is handed out to new migrants.

In Haringey, 43% of new tenants in social housing are foreign while in Ealing the figure is 45%.

Some councils failed to release information based on nationality but on average at least 11% of social housing lets in London are given to foreign nationals.

Mr Field, a former Social Security Secretary, demanded that the Government should also carry out an inquiry into ‘who gets the available social housing and when’.

In 2010-11, 8.6% of all new social housing tenants were foreign nationals, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) figures showed.

Ministers have tried to stop far right parties from exploiting concerns about the impact immigration has had on housing.

They have pointed to a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) which in 2009 said migrants arriving in the UK over the previous five years made up less than 2% of the total of those in social housing.

But MigrationWatch said boroughs with large immigrant populations had been the least cooperative in providing information on who was being allocated social housing.

Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch said, ‘The present situation is a scandal. The records are in chaos. British people who have lived in the area for many years are given little or no priority.’

‘What is clear is that the proportion of new lets going to foreign nationals in London is far higher than has previously been admitted.’

He added that only British citizens — including those who were foreign born but had taken up citizenship — should be considered for social housing.

He added: ‘Foreign nationals would still get housing allowance but not social housing; there is no reason why they should be entitled to subsidised housing provided by British taxpayers while British citizens spend years in the queue.’

David Cameron recently unveiled plans to expand the ‘right to buy’ scheme for council tenants.

The flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher helped millions of poor families realise their dreams of owning their own home.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


California and the Subversive Teaching Radicals

If the red shoe fits… The masks are dropping altogether in the Universities and the schools that teach our future, our children. Zombie last week attended a lecture: “Teaching as a Subversive Activity — Revisited.” The title is self-explanatory unfortunately. You should read Zombie’s entire post — it is enlightening and terrifying to say the least.

The normalcy of radicalism, as Zombie puts it, is the order of the day in universities across America, not just California. California is just very blatant about it. They have basically become a communist state and hope to swing the nation that way as well.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: And After Double Maths it Will Be… Paganism: Schools Told to Put Witchcraft and Druids on Re Syllabus

Paganism has been included in an official school religious education syllabus for the first time.

Cornwall Council has told its schools that pagan beliefs, which include witchcraft, druidism and the worship of ancient gods such as Thor, should be taught alongside Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

The requirements are spelled out in an agreed syllabus drawn up by Cornwall’s RE advisory group.

It says that from the age of five, children should begin learning about standing stones, such as Stonehenge. At the age of 11, pupils can begin exploring ‘modern paganism and its importance for many in Cornwall’.

The syllabus adds that areas of study should include ‘the importance of pre-Christian sites for modern pagans’.

And an accompanying guide says that pupils should ‘understand the basic beliefs’ of paganism and suggests children could discuss the difficulties a practising pagan pupil might face in school.

But the council’s initiative has dismayed some Christian campaigners, who are alarmed that a religion once regarded as a fringe eccentricity is increasingly gaining official recognition.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



US Children Born Out of Wedlock on the Rise

(AGI) Atlanta — During the last decade 1 in 4 children was born out of wedlock, the Centers for Disease Control report. With previous US government reports pointing to 40pc of children born of unmarried mothers, the report clarifies that the figure signals an increase in children born with unmarried couples.

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



Video: Cultural Marxism: Understanding the Origins of Political Correctness

In light of some of our posts this morning that deal with this nasty American infection called political correctness, it’s worthwhile to understand the roots of political correctness and its purpose is in America. To do that I have two videos for you, the first being a more full explanation of the origins of political correctness, how it came to be and why, its implementation and how it came to America. I know it sounds dry, but it really isn’t. In fact it is very enlightening.

The second video is Bill Whittle on the very same topic, tying it into present day narratives driven by the MSM. Whittle sums up what you get in the first video as well, but I highly recommend watching both videos to get a more full understanding of it.

It opens up a whole new world of understanding as to why our culture is all out of whack.

Comment by aPLWBinAK:

A student at Texas A&M won a competition seeking the most appropiate definition of a contemporary term with this submission: “Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120414

Financial Crisis
» Chinese Growth Slows Down to Lowest Pace in Three Years
» Greece: Athens Hotels See Revenue Fall (-19.1%)
» Greece: Easter Feast 10% Cheaper This Year, Say Traders
» Slovenia: Government Support Slides After Cuts
 
USA
» Coke, Pepsi and Kraft Stop Helping Enact Vote Fraud Laws
» Defamation Suit Dropped Against Larry Sinclair, Other Defendants
» Ferragamo Reopens New York Flagship Store
» Islam & Rick Warren
» Jolted by a Rare Truism of Muslims in America
» New York Exhibit Puts Spotlight on Ancient Middle Eastern Power Clashes
» Power Grab for Natural Gas — New Executive Order
» The Ring of Fire is Roaring to Life and There Will be Earthquakes of Historic Importance on the West Coast of the United States
 
Europe and the EU
» As Final Preparations Are Made for Trial of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway Families Fear it Could Become a Circus
» Germany: US Comedian Tells Tales From the Mosque
» Greece: 57 Bags of Third Reich Marks Found
» Italy: New Probe Against Puglia Governor
» Italy: Police Remove ‘Centurions’ From Colosseum, Fight Ensues
» Italy: Medical Student Examinees Cause Traffic Snarls
» Italy: Industry Ministry Official Arrested for ‘Attemped Bribe’
» Italy: Urban Planning Councilor Arrested for Corruption
» Italy: Fake Blind Woman Nabbed in Viterbo
» Italy: Rimini Jeweler ‘Didn’t Declare Income Since 2005’
» Italy Must Become a “Predictable” Country — Prime Minister Mario Monti Speaks
» Italy: Tax Police Carry Out Search Warrant at LNP’s ‘SINPA’ HQ
» Italy: San Raffaele: Milan Prosecutors, Indictment of 7 Accused
» Italy: Lega Nord Young Members Protest Outside Ex-Treasurer Home
» Lega Nord’s Maroni: “Clean-Up Not Over, No Score-Settling”
» Norwegian Mass Killer Anders Breivik to Argue ‘Self-Defense’ When Trial Begins Monday
» Spain: 500:000 Signatures for Law to Restore the Corrida
» Swedish Town Rocked by Second Child Exorcism
» Turkish President Calls Wilders Islamophobe
» UK: ‘Insane’ Husband Who Stabbed Wife 120 Times in Frenzied Killing Walks Free From Court Less Than a Year Later
» UK: Bully Road Rage Van Driver Who Rammed Into Terrified Horse Rider Simply Because She Asked Him to Slow Down is Jailed
» UK: How Liberal Conservatives Repeatedly Misrepresent Mainstream Conservatives
» UK: Muslim Taxi Driver Dumps Family Out of His Cab After Spotting an Unopened Bottle of Wine Saying it Was Against His Religion
» UK: Some Secrets Must be Kept — And No One Needs to Apologise for That
 
Balkans
» Macedonia: Killing of Five People Sparks Ethnic Tensions
 
North Africa
» Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race
» Was the Arab Spring Really a Facebook Revolution?
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Airlines Cancel Israel Flights for Over 60 Percent of Pro-Palestinian Fly-in Protesters
 
Middle East
» Beirut Hotel at Florence Festival, Spy Story Banned in Lebanon
» Iran Holds ‘Constructive’ Nuclear Talks With Britain and Other World Powers as They Return to Negotiating Table
» U.N. Security Council Agrees to Send Ceasefire Monitors to Syria
» UAE: Scholars Share Message of Peace
 
South Asia
» Pakistani Schoolbooks Full of Contempt and Bigotry Against Christians, Hindus and Sikhs
» Pakistan: Lahore: Christians and Hindus Against “Religious Fascism” And Forced Conversions to Islam
 
Far East
» China: Forced Expropriation and Home Demolitions Continue Communist Party Abuses
» Demand for Rhino Horns Threatens Species
 
Latin America
» Brazil: The Death Cult Brazilians Who Killed and Ate Two Women ‘To Purify Their Souls’
 
Culture Wars
» Got Quickie Aborsh: Comedienne Sarah Silverman Supports Pro Choice Debate Tweeting Abortion Photos
» UK: Islam Has Made London a More Conservative Place Than it Was 50 Years Ago
 
General
» 4.4 Bln Clicks for Xvideos Porn Site, 30% of Traffic
» How Earthly Life Could Populate Space by Panspermia
» Islamutopia: A Very Short History of Political Islam
» Women and Children First? Not Since the Titanic

Financial Crisis


Chinese Growth Slows Down to Lowest Pace in Three Years

GDP grew by 8.1 per cent in first quarter of 2012. Exports and domestic demand remain low. Government raises bank reserve ratio stoking inflation. World Bank sees a slower Chinese economy.

Beijing (AsiaNews) — China’s economy grew by 8.1 per cent in the first three months of 2012, its slowest pace in nearly three years, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, because of the “complex” global situation and the “enormous” pressure on exports growth.

Growth still exceeds this year’s government target of 7.5 per cent, as China’s economy remains one of the best in Asia and the world. However, the slower pace is a sign of falling domestic and foreign demand, especially in Europe and the United States, which are still in the middle of a deep economic crisis. The net effect is plant closures, higher unemployment and rising social tensions.

China’s central bank in February cut the amount of cash banks must hold in reserve for the second time in three months to increase lending and boost domestic consumption.

For analysts, lending should further increase. In March, it rose sharply, with banks issuing 1.01 trillion yuan in new loans (US$ 160 billion), up from 710 billion yuan (US$ 110 billion) in February. Greater lending however raises the threat of higher inflation.

Consumer prices in March rose by 3.6 per cent from a year earlier, lower than the government’s target of 4 per cent for the year. However, the figures are not very reliable. A few months ago, the government had reported a higher rate of inflation at 4.2 per cent, more so for basic items and food prices, which increased by up to 30-40 per cent.

For its part, the World Bank recently forecast that the Chinese economy could slow down even further.

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



Greece: Athens Hotels See Revenue Fall (-19.1%)

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 13 — The average revenue per room per night at three-, four- and five-star hotels in Athens dropped by 19.1% in February compared with the same month last year, coming to just 36.50 euros, according to a survey conducted for the Athens-Attica Hotel Association ans published by daily Kathimerini. In comparison, Istanbul hotels enjoyed an average revenue of 71 euros per room, almost twice that of their Athenian counterparts. The occupancy rate in the Greek capital dropped by 16%, amounting to just 41.3%. Athens hotels had the lowest room prices among 10 European cities that the survey covered, with the average rate coming to 88.30 euros per night after a 3.7% decline from February 2011.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Easter Feast 10% Cheaper This Year, Say Traders

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 13 — The Easter feast will cost Greek families 10.5% less this year compared to 2011, as daily Kathimerini reports quoting figures from the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE). ESEE has collected prices from open-air markets, super markets and the central meat market in Athens, which suggest that prices of both meat and vegetables have dropped slightly since last year. Despite the lower prices, traders expect their turnover to drop this Easter as a result of the recession. They expect overall Easter purchases to reach roughly 4.5 billion euros, down from 5 billion last year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Slovenia: Government Support Slides After Cuts

(ANSAmed) — LJUBLJANA, APRIL 11 — The number of Slovenians supporting the new centre-right government under Prime Minister Janez Jansa has dropped by almost half in a single month, after the announcement of a budget law aiming to cut the deficit with sharp reductions in public spending, including a cut in state employees’ salaries. According to a poll carried out a few days ago, only 26.9% of those interviewed say that they support Jansa’s government, compared with the 44.6% a month ago. The sharp drop in support is due to — according to the press — the austerity measures and the cuts totaling over 800 million euros in public spending called for by the budget law due to be voted on over the coming days. The government intends to bring the deficit from the 6.1% recorded in 2011 to 3.5%, to achieve a level of below 3% in 2013 in order to comply with the EU Stability Pact.

Salary cuts within the public sector are expected to be between 7 and 10%, and there will be a drop in unemployment benefits and maternity ones, lay-offs of staff with term contracts and cuts to political costs and funding for culture.

These measures are supported by 20% of those interviewed, while 40% say they partially back them.

Tomorrow a large demonstration will be held by public sector workers unions opposing the salary cuts.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


Coke, Pepsi and Kraft Stop Helping Enact Vote Fraud Laws

Last summer the hard-left social progressive community activist organization, ColorOfChange.org (whose management is comprised of a hodgepodge of Saul Alinsky-type community activists and organizers) decided to go after ALEC for pushing anti-vote fraud legislation which ColorOfChange says suppresses minority voting (which suggests by their rhetoric that minority voting—for whatever reason—increases only when minorities are allowed to cheat—or they’re lying with malevolent intent). ALEC is a behind-the-scenes conservative group of legislators and corporate leaders working together to push for legislation to reduce voter fraud by requiring voters to have State-issued photo IDs, and require States to physically verify identity of the voter is who he or she claims to be. ALEC has been the catalyst to have Voter ID laws passed in seven new States this year, and has introduced Voter ID laws in 27 other States.

As they push corporate sponsors to distance themselves from ALEC, ColorOfChange, which is attempting to force the government to give minority Black voters in American the majority political voice through threats and intimidation. As their slogan says, they are attempting to change the color of democracy in America. They justify the intimidation of corporate America because, they say, “major companies that rely on business from Black folks shouldn’t be involved in suppressing our vote.”

On the ColorOfChange website, they insist that “for years, the right wing has been trying to stop Black people…from voting…and now some of America’s biggest companies are helping them do it. Supporters of discriminatory voter ID laws claim they want to reduce voter fraud (individuals voting illegally or voting twice). But such fraud almost never actually occurs, and never amounts large enough to to affect the results of elections.”

The three corporations ColorOfChange singled out with allegations of racism to force them to agree to stop sending checks to ALEC—even though none of those corporations were funding the vote fraud initiative. It’s all about draining ALEC’s financial resources enough to force them to have to make up the money they are losing from Coca Cola, Kraft Foods and Pepsico with funds that might otherwise be used to lobby for Voter ID legislation in the 27 States currently debating this type of legislation.

In point of fact, none of the statements made by ColorOfChange in the former paragraph are true.

[…]

In 2008, according to CBS News, 12 States raised serious red flags about more than 10 thousand fraudulent voter registrations in each of the States that had been submitted by ACORN. Project Vote workers were re-registering people who told them they had already registered to vote “…maybe 10 to 15 times.” Charles Barkley, a Pizza Hut worker in Cleveland said the Project Vote workers told him he was paid for each registration he turned in and Barkley could register as many times as he wanted. Barkley said he registered 15 times. Testifying under oath before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, 21-year old Lateala Goins also admitted to registering several times. She had no idea how many times she signed her name to a voter registration card. Goins justified her crime by saying that, although she registered over and over again, she only wrote down her name. She never put down an address. The Cuyahoga County “winner” in 2008 was Freddie Johnson with 72 fraudulent voter registrations (that they were able to find)—and 72 Democrat absentee ballots cast. According to the State of Ohio, Barkley, who said he registered 15 times filled out 41 fraudulent voter registration cards. So, between Barkley and Johnson, they voted for Obama 115 times.

[…]

I found the answer on the last line of the form (which would exist for another 10 days before the FEC 2008 Election Results document got a face lift. On the last line of the form it said: “Number of votes counted: 132,618,580.” Whoa, Trigger—Hi-yo, Silver. What’s wrong with those numbers? There appeared to have been 35,626,580 more votes counted than registered voters voting.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Defamation Suit Dropped Against Larry Sinclair, Other Defendants

In 2008, when Sinclair first made his allegations about Obama’s past homosexual activity known to the public, the Hillary Clinton campaign made contact with Sinclair during the primary seeking further details. WMR was told that a scenario of mutually-assured destruction was laid down by the Obama campaign to Clinton campaign senior staffers: if the Clinton people brought up the gay issue with Obama, they would respond with past lesbian accusations against Mrs. Clinton.

This year, the fact that Sinclair has managed to defeat one of Washington’s most powerful and politically-connected law firms, Patton Boggs, by arguing his case pro se, means that the Romney campaign may have seen the festering allegations against Obama as a weak point to be exploited. The dismissal of the original complaint and appeals against Sinclair et al obviously has the White House hoping the “gay issue” with Obama will simply “go away.”

[Return to headlines]



Ferragamo Reopens New York Flagship Store

Revamped space covers 2,000 square meters and two floors

(ANSA) — New York, April 13 — After three months of renovations, Salvatore Ferragamo’s Fifth Avenue flagship store reopened on Thursday.

The expanded store stretches across 2,000 square meters and two floors, making it Ferragamo’s biggest worldwide. Interior designers revamped the space with walnut wood, dark oak, polished steel and minimalist display shelves. Ferragamo is available in 36 stores throughout the US and recently opened a mono-brand boutique in San Diego, California.

“The location will be a base-line for the rest of our locations, used to inspire future renovations,” Vincent Ottomanelli, US regional director of Ferragamo, told ANSA.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Islam & Rick Warren

Islam — a PEACEFUL religion? A courageous young English lady walked amongst verbally abusive Muslim demonstrators in her former hometown, Luton, England. The lack of respect shown towards her by many of the picoting Muslims, and the insults hurled at British Authority (police and judicial law) is shocking to witness (see clip below).

But in the light of these overtly aggressive Muslim sentiments of non-peace towards non-muslims one wonders why the naivety of Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback, the 8th largest Church in USA and other Christian leaders continues as they seek peace with Muslims who won’t settle for peace outside of conversion to Islam? Why would Rick Warren think the behaviour of British Muslims any different to American Muslims? Yet, Warren continues to suppose the religious view of Islam can somehow be separated from its very fabric, Sharia Law, an ingrained essence that combines Islam’s political constitution, legal, economic, military, dietary, social and cultural system of life?

Perhaps Western culture is able to untangle religious legalism from daily living but Sharia Law doesn’t allow that privilege which only comes with a freedom Islam won’t permit its followers. Instead Sharia Law demands its people dress in a certain manner (women must wear legally instated religious covering), there are certain protocols attached to eating (not only in food choice but how it must be served), certain laws of taxation towards those who aren’t Muslim, property rights against women and children, and so go the dictates of Sharia. (SEE BOOK: Slavery Terrorism & Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat by Peter Hammond)

Rick Warren, along with hundreds of Christians, confuse Islam and Sharia’s intolerance with the fantasy notion that Muslims will unite with non-muslims for the “common ground” and reconciliation and work together in social programs for global peace. Rick Warren’s delusion, and that of Christian leaders who are leading the sheep astray, is imbedded in their not recognising that Muslims will not cooperate with non-muslims in any agenda that doesn’t promote conversion to Islam, because Muslims believe the world’s problem is that the whole world isn’t submitted to Sharia Law and aren’t Muslims! Despite this Islamic mandate Rick Warren pressed on regardless saying at the 2009 Islam Conference:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Jolted by a Rare Truism of Muslims in America

Barack Obama himself never has had the guts to say it. Indeed, while it is famously difficult to prove a negative, it seems apparent few people in all of politics and media have had the guts to say it. Did John McCain ever say it? Did Rick Santorum or Bill O’Reilly? So let us plant a little flag for, mark with a yellow highlighter, the thing Rep. Raul Labrador said Sunday on “Meet the Press”: that “it wouldn’t matter” if President Obama were a Muslim. And if it seems rather much to be handing out medals for such a modest statement of principle, well … the principle has been under fire for so long that even a modest statement feels momentous.

In recent years, public figures have made news for refuting (like McCain) or failing to refute (like Santorum) the canard that Obama is a follower of Islam. But outside of Colin Powell, who did so a few years back on “Meet the Press,” it is difficult to think of many — or any — who have dared to confront the notion implicit in the lie. Namely, that being a Muslim is incompatible with being an American.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



New York Exhibit Puts Spotlight on Ancient Middle Eastern Power Clashes

[.]

“Clash of civilization” part of the exhibit, tells a great story of a countless moment in history, deliberated through plenty of stunning items left from that time. As it turns out, that clash was less disruptive than once thought. The script illustrates that after the Prophet Muhammad established Islam in the seventh century, Muslims began expanding out from Mecca and Medina. The religion therefore, rapidly swept across the broader region and reaches diverse ethnic and religious communities. “Within religions, hugely different communities are bumping into each other. Karaite Jews and Rabbinical Jews, Samaritans,” Evans told NPR. The Christian sects included Syriac, Orthodox, Coptic and Church of the East. Constantinople’s Orthodox Christian rulers had tried to stamp out rifts. The newly converted Muslims were more tolerant of other faiths. These varied religious communities flourished under Muslim rule. “Christians served the new polity quite well. And the Christian churches and the Jewish community were given more rights,” Evans further explains.

[…]

The exhibit opens with a display of a splendid Byzantine Bible, written in gold on pages tinted royal purple. In the last gallery, a Quran, written 300 years later, in gold on pages dyed dark indigo. Evans aims to preserve this rich cultural heritage and share it with larger audience. “They want to be sharing in a way that they feel they are adequately respected,” she says. “I think what we are not going to have is ‘look at the interesting exotic people at the edge of nowhere.’ That’s not the way to look at them.” Evans hopes to convey a message of a shared civilization rather than a clash at the Met’s exhibit.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Power Grab for Natural Gas — New Executive Order

White House: We must interfere and impose federal power and control over the states. We cannot let cheap natural gas interfere with our plan for expensive alternative sources of energy.

It was Friday the 13. If you are superstitious, then the new Executive Order issued yesterday, “Supporting Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources” must give you pause.

The order states, “While natural gas production is carried out by private firms, and States are the primary regulators of onshore oil and gas activities, the Federal Government has an important role to play by regulating oil and gas activities on public and Indian trust lands, encouraging greater use of natural gas in transportation, supporting research and development aimed at improving the safety of natural gas development and transportation activities, and setting sensible, cost-effective public health and environmental standards to implement Federal law and augment State safeguards.”

Because natural gas produced 25 percent of our energy in 2011, the federal government must control this source of energy in order to deliver on the promise of making gasoline prices rise to $10 per gallon, bankrupt the coal industry, and cause energy prices to skyrocket.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Ring of Fire is Roaring to Life and There Will be Earthquakes of Historic Importance on the West Coast of the United States

Does it seem to you like there has been an unusual amount of seismic activity around the world lately? Well, it isn’t just your imagination. The Ring of Fire is roaring to life and that is really bad news for the west coast of the United States. Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire. Considering the fact that the entire west coast of the United States lies along the Ring of Fire, we should be very concerned that the Ring of Fire is becoming more active. On Wednesday, the most powerful strike-slip earthquake ever recorded happened along the Ring of Fire. If that earthquake had happened in a major U.S. city along the west coast, the city would have been entirely destroyed. Scientists tell us that there is nearly a 100% certainty that the “Big One” will hit California at some point. In recent years we have seen Japan, Chile, Indonesia and New Zealand all get hit by historic earthquakes. It is inevitable that there will be earthquakes of historic importance on the west coast of the United States as well. So far we have been very fortunate, but that good fortune will not last indefinitely.

In a previous article, I showed that earthquakes are becoming more frequent around the globe. In 2001, there were 137 earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater and in 2011 there were 205. The charts and data that I presented in that previous article show a clear upward trend in large global earthquakes over the past decade, and that is why what happened this week is so alarming.

On Wednesday, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia and that was rapidly followed by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. Fortunately those gigantic earthquakes did not produce a devastating tsunami, but that doesn’t mean that those earthquakes were not immensely powerful.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


As Final Preparations Are Made for Trial of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway Families Fear it Could Become a Circus

The man accused of mass murder in Norway last year has called a bizarre array of expert witnesses and threatens to use his trial to spread his poisonous ideas.

For months now, the Bjorkavag family of Alesund have been dreading the start of a trial that few Norwegians really want.

There is no doubt who was responsible for killing their son, Sverre Bjorkavag, and 76 others last July, most of them young people barely out of childhood. Almost every detail of that terrible day, 22/7 as Norwegians now call it, has been endlessly pored over and retold; the car bomb in central Oslo, the slaughter of young people at their summer camp on Utoya island, and the incompetence of the police and security services, before, during and afterwards.

Yet on Monday in Oslo’s main criminal court, and for the next ten weeks, Anders Behring Breivik will glory in the chance to justify his killing spree, while his every flourish, gesture and smirk will be followed by the media in Norway and in the world in forensic detail.

“We are worried that it will be a circus,” said Sverre’s father Bjarte, a civil servant who lives with his wife Torild Flate, a primary school teacher. Their 28-year old son is buried in the family graveyard within view of their home, which overlooks a fjord with snow-covered mountains behind. They do not think the forthcoming trial will help the grieving process. In fact they cannot wait to get it behind them.

“There is no need to know why he did it,” said Mr Bjorkavag. “We know that already — madness. What we do want to get out of this trial is justice.”

The last time The Sunday Telegraph spoke to the Bjorkavag family was just a week after the killings, when their grief was still raw, and the shock of what had happened was still etched on Mr Bjorkavag’s face. They told how on the day of the attack, shortly after a newsflash first alerted to them to reports of gunfire on Utoya, they received a text message from Sverre. “Shooting here, we are running, hiding on the lakeshore,” it read. Then, 20 minutes later, there was one more text — the last communication they ever had with their son. “Jeg elsker dere”, it said in Norwegian — “I love you all”.

Now, just like eight months ago, it is noticeable that they still cannot bring themselves to mention Breivik by name. As Mr Bjorkavag puts it: “We have no feeling towards that person. He is a man who destroyed so many lives, as well as his own.”

For the Bjorkavag family, and dozens of other families across Norway who lost sons and daughters, the quest for justice in the weeks ahead is likely to open as many wounds as it heals. Instead of just laying bare Breivik’s crimes, the trial appears likely to give the self-styled “Knight Templar” the opportunity he craves to justify his atrocities as necessary to “save” Europe from Islam. In Breivik’s twisted mind, he was a hero, killing traitors from the Norwegian Labour party who had opened his homeland to immigration, and firing the first shots in a war against Islamic invasion.

To help him explain all this, Breivik has called a bizarre series of expert witnesses, many of them from the fringes of Norway’s political life — old Nazis, a notorious Islamist who met Osama bin Laden, an anarchist, a gay rights activist who has warned of intolerant Islam, and extreme left-wingers. He has also called a series of more mainstream writers, academics and politicians, many of whom have written about multiculturalism in Norway.

Hanne Nabintu Herland, a best-selling Norwegian author, thinks she was called as a witness because some of her books have been critical of Norway’s stifling culture of political correctness.

“I don’t really know what they want me to speak about in the trial,” she said, adding that she did not want to attend but had to in law.

“This lunatic said he was defending European values and then killed a load of defenceless people.” At least one other witness, an anti-racism campaigner, has said he will refuse to show up, even if that means he has to go to jail.

There was speculation that some of the British writers and Far-Right figures who Breivik claimed inspiration from would be called to the trial, but so far that has not happened, probably because the court cannot compel them to attend.

Ms Herland believes that neither the massacre, nor the trial, have been dealt with competently, mainly because safe little Norway has been unable to cope with the terrible reality of what Breivik did.

“I think Norway has been traumatised in a serious way by what has happened,” she said. “We will be for years.”

The trial will be the biggest in Norwegian legal history, costing an estimated 97 million krone (£10.5 million). Places are reserved for 200 journalists in the bright, modern courtroom in the centre of Oslo, less than five minutes walk away from where Breivik’s car bomb went off.

The accused will get his chance to explain his actions, although whether his testimony from the dock is broadcast to the world will depend on a ruling by Norway’s Supreme Court expected on Monday. Some Norwegians believe that broadcasting him will expose his ideas as laughable: others fear that extremists and the mentally ill may be inspired by his rants for years to come if it ends up on YouTube.

Breivik will not be able to speak to witnesses from the dock, but he will be allowed to question them via his lawyers.

Adding to the sense of unreality surrounding the trial before it has even begun, Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, a father of eight and himself a member of the Norwegian Labour Party, told Time magazine: “I feel I have lost my soul in this case. I hope I get it back afterwards,”

[…]

Most Norwegians are thoroughly sick of hearing his name. “They should just lock him up and forget him,” said one man in a café as he pored over a newspaper with a photograph of Breivik on the front page. There have even been a few calls for his execution, almost unheard of before in liberal Norway.

Many of the survivors of Utoya island are deeply worried that the trial could give Breivik an opportunity to grandstand.

Eric Kursetgjerde, 18, a high school student who survived the shooting spree, said: “What concerns me the most is that Right-wing extremists, many in Germany and France, see him as some kind of hero. Sometimes you see expressions of support for him on blogs and on Facebook, not usually people who support him 100 per cent but there are those who think he had a point.”

In pre-trial hearings, the defendant has actually looked far from heroic, according to one lawyer who has observed him. “When you see him in court you realise he is not a tough guy at all,” said Brynjar Nielsen Meling.

“He fiddles with his clothes, his eyes dart around. He has no charisma and he looks anxious all the time. He looks like the weakest boy in class. I wonder if he will be able to manage the pressure of a ten week trial.”

The prospect of attending the trial is a forbidding one for the Bjorkavag family, but they have decided that they must, probably on May 10 when their son’s murder will be dealt with. Each fatality is being dealt with one by one.

They are angry about his witness list — “just to get him publicity,” said Mrs Flate — and have no doubt that Breivik should go to hospital, not prison. “We would hope that he can be helped, and perhaps one day understand what he has done and have to live with it,” she said. “You can tell that he doesn’t now. His eyes are cold.”

[…]

One of the most controversial aspects of the massacre, that they refuse to discuss, is the performance of the police. When The Sunday Telegraph last met the family, Norway was united in grief, and nobody thought of apportioning blame to anyone except one man.

Now it is clear that there were a series of avoidable disasters: there was no helicopter to fly armed police to the island when the shooting started; nearly all Oslo’s police were unavailable because they were on holiday on July 22; a police telephone operator failed to accept Breivik’s “surrender”; and for three hours after Breivik’s car bomb narrowly missed killing government ministers in central Oslo, the prime minister had no security . The city was apparently considered so safe that it was normal for him to have no secret service protection on duty.

The head of the intelligence service, which was fixated on the Islamic threat and virtually ignored Right-wingers, has been forced to resign…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Germany: US Comedian Tells Tales From the Mosque

An American comedian who spent 30 days visiting Mosques across the US is bringing his stand-up show about the trip to Germany. Aman Ali spoke to The Local.

Aman Ali, a New Yorker of Indian heritage, said stopping at a different Mosque on each day of 2010’s holy month of Ramadan had given him a broad outlook on how Muslims were living in America. His current tour — he has just performed in Copenhagen and is heading for Germany next week — was showing him interesting things about the differences between Muslim life on either side of the Atlantic. “The big difference is that the American culture is one of immigration, it is very easy to immigrate and integrate,” he told The Local ahead of bringing his show “30 Mosques in 30 Days” to Germany. “In Europe national identity is different. You go to parts of Europe and identity is more defined, like in Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Norway. Although, I was in the UK recently, and people are very open — and the favourite national dish is chicken tikka masala.”

[…]

[JP note: I wonder if Aman Ali will be using the Hawaiian jihadi joke in his shows.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Greece: 57 Bags of Third Reich Marks Found

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 10 — The Finance Ministry is setting up a committee to decide what the state should do with the 57 bags of German currency from the time of the 1941-44 occupation during World War II that it has in the Treasury. In the context of seeking any relevant documents regarding the requirement of war damages from Germany, the ministry — as daily Kathimerini reports — has decided to create a six-member committee to propose what should happen with the 14,334,000 Deutsche marks left over from the occupation and now held by the Bank of Greece. The committee’s task concerns “the inspection of the 57 bags and the submission of a proposal as to whether there remain any reasons for their further retention, their possible use for other purposes or their destruction, given that their value today can only be historic,” the decision by Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis reads. Sources say that the Bank of Greece had informed the ministry of the German money about a year ago, but given that it is only of historic value, the ministry had then decided against taking any action. However, as a result of the war reparations debate that is currently raging, Sachinidis has now decided to see what can be done with it.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: New Probe Against Puglia Governor

Six others involved in hospital funds transfer investigation

(ANSA) — Bari, April 13 — Further investigations have been opened against Italian left-wing politician and Puglia Governor Nichi Vendola, along with six others, for alleged irregularities in the transfer of regional funding to a local hospital between 2002-2009. On Wednesday, Vendola called an emergency press conference to announce that he was being probed for alleged abuse of office regarding the appointment of a local chief of surgeons, Paolo Sardelli, at Bari’s San Paolo hospital in 2010. Vendola said that the “resentment-fed” accusations were based on testimony against him from Lea Cosentino, the former head of Bari’s health board whom Vendola fired in 2010 after she was placed under house arrest during a graft investigation. The latest allegations of fraud, forgery and embezzlement involve the unfinished transfer of 45 million euros from the Region of Puglia to Bari’s Miulli hospital, said investigators.

The probes also include Senator Alberto Tedesco, ex-local health councilor Tommaso Fiore, the bishop of Altamura-Gravina-Acquaviva delle Fonti Monsignor Mario Paciello and the Muilli hospital director Father Mimmo Laddaga.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Police Remove ‘Centurions’ From Colosseum, Fight Ensues

Protester threatens to set self alight

(ANSA) — Rome, April 12 — Costumed centurions got into a scuffle with police Thursday after officers removed two of the fake warriors who had scaled the Colosseum in protest against being banned from working there. Two men climbed up to the second tier of the 2,000-year-old structure asking the city to “let us work at the Colosseum, give us certain rules and let us stay here”.

As police carried them away, fellow costumed supporters intervened to free them, leading to pushing and swinging on both sides, witnesses said.

Paramedics took one of the centurions to hospital after he fell during the confrontation, police said.

The city’s costumed gladiators and centurions staged a similar sit-in at the site at the weekend after Rome city council last month launched a task force to keep the men dressed in leather tunics and armour from asking money from tourists for posing for pictures.

The centurions and gladiators are still allowed to work elsewhere in Rome such as along the road leading up to the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain or in the Renaissance Piazza Navona where they are a mainstay.

While the performers say they only ask for small donations, police say they can take home as much as 200 euros per day, income for which they allegedly never pay taxes.

Over the years, the city has gone back and forth on enforcing its policy against the fake warriors.

In 2003, 25 performers protested for months and scaled the Colosseum when the city refused to authorize work permits in the area.

The spat ended when the council decided they could return to the ancient site, agreeing that their trade was “akin to that of traditional traveling minstrels”.

The current protest at the Colosseum was still ongoing Thursday as one costumed demonstrator threatened to set himself on fire. Police are stationed at the entrance to prevent any further infiltration.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Medical Student Examinees Cause Traffic Snarls

Rome’s Aurelia thoroughfare immersed in chaos

(ANSA) — Rome, April 11 — Over 8,000 aspiring medical students caused traffic jams and commuter woes Wednesday morning as they arrived in Rome for admission exams being held in a hotel near one of the capital’s main thoroughfares, via Aurelia.

Commuters travelling to the city for work were affected by the chaos, which continued to create problems throughout the day despite efforts by traffic police.

Applicants from around the country waited hours in traffic snarls, while many abandoned their vehicles and walked kilometers to sit for tests that could secure entry into the prestigious Catholic University’s medical faculty.

Only 3% of the hopefuls will be admitted based on the multiple-choice exam of 120 questions that lasted two hours.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Industry Ministry Official Arrested for ‘Attemped Bribe’

Bruno Colantonio allegedly demanded 20,000 euros

(ANSA) — Rome, April 12 — An official at the industry ministry was arrested Thursday on suspicion of demanding a bribe to spare a businessman a fine.

The official, Bruno Colantonio, was taken into custody after the unnamed businessman claimed he asked him for 20,000 euros ($26,400), police said.

A probe has been opened to see whether Colantonio, who risks 4-12 years in jail, allegedly committed other such acts.

The official will be given an immediate trial, which police said was “very rare” in cases of alleged extortion.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Urban Planning Councilor Arrested for Corruption

Another probe involving Northern League

(ANSA) — Milan, April 13 — Ex-Northern League councilor for civil protection in the northern town of Piacenza and current councilor for urban planning in the town of Cortemaggiore, Davide Allegri, was arrested Friday morning for alleged corruption and misappropriation of funds.

The Northern League party has been rocked by scandal starting with former treasurer Francesco Belsito, who is under investigation for allegedly channelling public funds to the family of ex-leader Umberto Bossi, who stepped down at the beginning of April.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Fake Blind Woman Nabbed in Viterbo

Cheat ‘has to repay 110,000 euros claimed since 1979’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 13 — Italia police on Friday unmasked a woman who had falsely been claiming benefits for blindness since 1979 worth some 110,000 euros.

The woman, 71, was arrested in Viterbo north of Rome after police filmed her going about her business without assistance.

A rash of similar cases has come to light in the last few months.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Rimini Jeweler ‘Didn’t Declare Income Since 2005’

Fake luxury watches found in shop

(ANSA) — Rimini, April 11 — A jeweler in Rimini was cited for fraud Wednesday after police discovered he hadn’t declared any income since 2005.

Police also found counterfeit Rolex and Cartier watches in the city-centre shop run by the man, 68, who had no till for issuing receipts or invoices.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy Must Become a “Predictable” Country — Prime Minister Mario Monti Speaks

Following the volatile reign of Silvio Berlusconi, the longtime European “technocrat” and economics professor Mario Monti has achieved surprising consensus both inside and outside of Italy. But can he make it last if he doesn’t stick around?

Mario Calabresi

Italy must become a predictable country. That is the concept Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti identifies as the key for the country’s economic recovery and long-term credibility.

More than four months after his arrival as head of “technical” government, and fresh from a whirlwind tour of Asia, Monti sat down for an extensive interview with La Stampa at the official prime minister’s residency, Palazzo Chigi. Usually, being predictable is not considered a compliment. But Monti’s trademark is normality — it’s part of why he was chosen to replace the embattled and often controversial Silvio Berlusconi. Italy must become a normal country, the former professor explains, in order to attract investors and achieve growth. Monti’s desk in Rome is overflowing with print outs of reports and competitiveness ratings of his troubled country. His mission is nothing short of changing Italy’s image across the world.

LA STAMPA: You are just back from Asia, after earlier trips to the United States and the major European capitals. What was the reaction in these places to the changes taking place in Italy?

MARIO MONTI: I was particularly struck seeing how the Chinese president, and the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers were so well informed about our actions to contain the deficit and about how quickly we approved the first series of reforms. There is a clear feeling that Italy can make a difference on the financial health of the euro zone.

In this new and evolving world, what is Italy missing in order to be competitive and to attract foreign investments?

I would say that we miss a methodical and long-term attention to the country’s image. Not in a superficial way, but in order to make the major investing countries and their companies understand how Italy works, and to make them think about our economic policy as predictable and stable. It is important that the international economic and political elite sees Italy as an understandable and predictable reality, which — despite its complexity — is similar to them.

In concrete terms, what do we have to do?

We need to create a favorable environment for investment. Then, progress has to be achieved in security and the fight against crime. There is also the reduction of the bureaucracy, a more efficient justice system, the lack of infrastructures and the crucial point of having predictable rules. If we could achieve this… we would give a signal of confidence abroad. This would mean that Italy is really changing, beyond just the short term of this peculiar (technical) government.

You are pointing out how the rest of the world is asking Italy to be predictable, but at the same time you are mentioning that this is a short-term government. You know that there is a huge question mark over what will happen one year from now. Who can guarantee that this virtuous behavior won’t end?

No one can guarantee it. But I’m confident that it won’t happen. If these parties have been able to agree, and to find common ground even without the benefit of being at the center of the attention, then in a new phase of political governments, when they have the responsibility to govern with their own leaders, the goal to achieve a positive outcome will be even stronger.

You speak about the importance of cultural changes for the country…

In this phase we have seen how Italians react when they are told, in a straightforward way, that it is necessary to do some things that have some real consequences. Every time that I think about the changes in society and politics, I am ever more convinced that the virtuous behavior won’t stop. It will be beautiful to see all of this from the outside.

Why must Italy have such a challenging goal?…

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



Italy: Tax Police Carry Out Search Warrant at LNP’s ‘SINPA’ HQ

(AGI) Milan — Tax police have seized documents at the registered offices of LNP party SINPA trade union offshoot. The search warrant was carried out in conjunction with enquiries into the misappropriation of public party funding by several high ranking members of the LNP party, among whom SINPA founder and Deputy Senate Speaker Rosi Mauro.

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



Italy: San Raffaele: Milan Prosecutors, Indictment of 7 Accused

(AGI) Milan — Milan prosecutors have requested the indictment of seven people in the San Raffaele case. These include businessmen Pierangelo Dacco’, the former managing director of San Raffaele Mario Valsecchi, and businessmen Pierino and Gianluca Zammarchi, father and son, accused variously of conspiracy and reckless bankruptcy in the investigation into the hospital group. The preliminary hearing will open on 26 April before the preliminary hearings magistrate Maria Cristina Mannocci.

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



Italy: Lega Nord Young Members Protest Outside Ex-Treasurer Home

(AGI) Genoa — A group of young Lega Nord members staged a protest outside the house of the party’s former treasurer in Genoa. “Shame, shame”, “Clean-up” are some of the slogans chanted this afternoon by some twenty young members of the Lega Nord in region Liguria who staged a protest outside the house of former party treasurer Francesco Belsito. A small demonstration was held in the late afternoon in Genoa’s Sampierdarena neighbourhood to protest against the party’s financial misdealing which is at the centre of an ongoing probe. Demonstrators eventually marched to the city centre staging an about 15-minute protest outside Belsito’s house.

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



Lega Nord’s Maroni: “Clean-Up Not Over, No Score-Settling”

(AGI)Sondrio- Lega Nord is not done expelling its corrupt members said Roberto Maroni: “we’ll keep going as long as is necessary”. Maroni spoke to journalists upon his arrival at a rally in Sondrio and discussed the possible disciplinary sanctions against Lega Nord members involved in the scandal over electoral reimbursements. “But since we are law-abiding citizens we don’t want any ‘settling scores’, bloodshed or witch-hunts” Maroni stated. “We’re examining accounts to ascertain liabilities,” he explained, “and we’ll act as quickly as possible to complete this clean-up.” .

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



Norwegian Mass Killer Anders Breivik to Argue ‘Self-Defense’ When Trial Begins Monday

NORWEGIAN mass killer Anders Behring Breivik plans to argue that his July 2011 shooting spree — in which he killed 77 people, most of them teenagers — was carried out in self-defense when his trial begins Monday.

The 33-year-old, who has a strong desire to be judged as sane, according to one of his lawyers, is looking forward to detailing why he carried out his bloody spree in downtown Oslo and at a political youth camp on nearby Utoya Island, Dagbladet newspaper reported.

“He wants to explain everything with why he did what he did,” lawyer Tord Jordet said. “It’s a pretty long and complicated explanation, with lots of historical elements, experiences from his own life and political persuasions. It is not easy to explain in a concise manner.”

He said the notion that the attack was carried out in “preventative self-defense” was important to Mr Breivik.

…”If he can explain himself freely, he will begin to say why he has done as he has done. The most important thing for him is what he calls ethnic deconstruction and that he believes he has acted in preventive self-defense,” Mr Jordet said.

Mr Jordet’s colleague Geir Lippestad said he wanted to forewarn Norwegians about the shocking defense Mr Breivik will mount.

“We as defenders have heard it many times,” he said, “but it will be different for those who have not heard him before. It was therefore important to say something about what is to come.

“Technically, we have no choice other than to note his arguments about why he did what he did. We of course understand that will not succeed, but we are obliged to present his arguments.”

He added, “I think we’re going to hear many very provocative statements from him.”

Mr Lippestad warned earlier in the week that, “He will not only defend [his actions] but will also lament, I think, not going further.”

He also said Mr Breivik was “pleased with the conclusion” of a new report that declared he was legally sane and criminally responsible for the twin attacks…

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Spain: 500:000 Signatures for Law to Restore the Corrida

(ANSAmed) Madrid — The party in favour of the Spanish Corrida has struck back by presenting a popular initiative in order to safeguard all bullfights within the country after the practice was abolished in Catalonia from January 1 2012. The Central Electoral Council approved over half a million signatures today necessary to initiate the parliamentary procedure towards the Congress of Deputies of the people’s law project, according to statements made to the media by the President of the Federation of bullfight associations of Catalonia and promoter of the initiative, Luis Maria Gilbert.

The Federation hopes the parliamentary procedure conclude itself before the summer holidays, in order to bring back the corrida to the Plaza de Toro de la Monumental in Barcelona already by September. He is counting on the support of the parliamentary project by the People’s Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) who together make up 300 of the 350 seats in parliament. At the same time Gilbert has also called on the Constitutional Court to take a decision on the appeal presented by the bullfight associations of Catalonia regarding the law which prohibits bullfighting in the region and approved by the Catalan parliament in July 2010 following the popular initiative brought forward by the animal rights lobby group Prou! (Enough!).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Swedish Town Rocked by Second Child Exorcism

Another teenage girl in Borås, western Sweden, has been subjected to physical abuse such as kicks, beatings and electric shocks, as her parents tried to exorcise her from evil spirits.

“I can confirm that the investigation is under way and we are hoping to complete it before the summer as there is a risk the statute of limitations will come into effect otherwise,” said prosecutor Daniel Larsson to daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

According to the paper, the girl, who was ten at the time, had been too frightened to let anyone know what was going on at the time.

However, when the parents approached the Swedish social services with an application for a grant in order to take their daughter back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to have her properly exorcized, she was taken into protective custody by the state.

It wasn’t until last year, when the girl was thirteen that she finally plucked up the courage to tell her foster parents about the torture-like treatment she had been forced to endure.

According to DN, the girl spoke about being kicked and beaten badly with electrical cables. At one point her parents held her down and tried to stick live wires in her mouth to release the evil spirits through electrical shocks.

At one point she was beaten so badly that the parents were forced to bring her to the hospital where they made her say she had been assaulted by other school children, when in fact it had been her father striking her.

After hearing her story, the foster parents reported the girl’s biological parents to the authorities.

This is not the first case of child exorcism reported in the Borås area. The verdict against another set of parents as well as two priests in a local congregation — all accused of a similar crime — will be given on Monday.

Both set of parents are originally from the Congo-Kinshasa area.

According to Dagens Nyheter they are also connected to the controversial religious community in Borås called The River, where the two priests in the previous exorcism case were active.

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



Turkish President Calls Wilders Islamophobe

Turkish President Abdullah Gül has called Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders an islamophobe. In an interview with Dutch mass-circulation daily De Telegraaf, President Gül said Mr Wilders represents an extreme voice, which feeds radicals.”

He continued, saying because of Wilders “a negative us-against-them climate is developing in the whole of Europe, which is laying the foundation for ethnic religious discrimination.” Nevertheless, the president said he would shake the hand of the leader of the anti-Islam party if he met him.

President Gül is in the Netherlands on a three-day trip in the coming week to mark 400 years of relations between Turkey and the Netherlands at the invitation of the Dutch government.

A number of months ago, Mr Wilders said President Gül was not welcome in the Netherlands as far as he was concerned. In 2010, Turkey decided not to receive a parliamentary delegation which included Wilders. At the time, a Turkish spokesperson said that Wilders was “such a fascist that besides in Turkey, he would not be welcome in other European capitals.”

In response, Geert Wilders has indicated that President Gül’s comments do not bother him. “Turkish humour: Christian-teaser, Kurd-basher, Hamas-friend and Islamist Gül complaining about tolerance.”

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



UK: ‘Insane’ Husband Who Stabbed Wife 120 Times in Frenzied Killing Walks Free From Court Less Than a Year Later

A killer declared insane after stabbing his wife to death less than a year ago walked free after a court heard he has recovered.

Farrukh Malik knifed Sarwat, his partner of 37 years, more than 120 times during the frenzied attack at their north London home after suffering ‘depressive psychosis’ following the death of his mother.

But the 66-year-old accountant, who is now living with his brother in Slough, Berkshire, was set free after a judge ruled he had no power to detain him because of medical reports which state he is no longer a danger.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Bully Road Rage Van Driver Who Rammed Into Terrified Horse Rider Simply Because She Asked Him to Slow Down is Jailed

A white van driver who rammed his vehicle into a horse and rider has been jailed.

A judge branded Nadeem Hussain a bully and said he had used his vehicle as a weapon.

Hussain was driving along a country lane when Charlotte Watmough signalled for him to slow down. Instead, the father of five skidded to a halt and got out of his vehicle.

Words were exchanged before Hussain got back into his van and drove forwards a few feet, past the horse and rider.

He then slammed it into reverse and drove into Miss Watmough’s mount, Merlin, pushing him into a wall.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: How Liberal Conservatives Repeatedly Misrepresent Mainstream Conservatives

by Tim Montgomerie

I don’t know quite what he meant by it but Tory MP and climate change minister Greg Barker is quoted in today’s Telegraph warning the party against adopting UKIP’s “swivel-eyed rhetoric”. Perhaps he meant some of the rude speeches made by Nigel Farage? Anyhow, I agree with Iain Dale that it’s not a sensible way of winning back Tory-to-UKIP defectors. I made clear in my Times piece last Wednesday that I’m no fan of UKIP but because “kindness effects more than severity” I prefer Aesop’s sun to wind in winning UKIP’s voters back to the Conservative fold.

[…]

One of the great weaknesses of the Liberal Conservative project is that it worries too much about the opinion of the commentariat and not enough about opinion beyond the ‘beltway’ ofthe Westminster village. The No2AV campaign — universally derided by the pundits — triumphed and proved yet again that market research and not Big Society-style hunches should lead Tory strategy. This precoocupation with elite opinion led Project Cameron to focus too much on the gender and ethnicity of candidates and not enough on their regional identity and social class. Too much about climate change and not enough about electricity bills. Too much about civil liberties and not enough about public safety. In recent years Mainstream or Right-wing Tories (Michael Gove on schooling, IDS on social justice, John Redwood on practical environmentalism, Bill Cash on third world debt, Mark Pritchard on animal welfare etc etc) have done much of the modernising. When the Liberal Conservatives stop misrepresenting all of these things (attacking, for example, the caricatured Tea Party Tories) the real argument about winning the next election could take off.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Muslim Taxi Driver Dumps Family Out of His Cab After Spotting an Unopened Bottle of Wine Saying it Was Against His Religion

A Muslim cab driver has been fired after he threw out a family carrying an unopened bottle of wine because he said ‘it’s against my religion.’

Adrian Cartwright, 46, had hired the taxi to take his family out for dinner at an Indian restaurant near Oldham, Greater Manchester.

But before they could make the five-minute journey the driver, in his 20s, spotted the bottle of white wine and promptly refused to take them.

The family was turfed out onto the pavement and he drove off.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Some Secrets Must be Kept — And No One Needs to Apologise for That

by Charles Moore

‘Human rights’ are undermining the whole concept of national security.

[…]

“Human rights” have changed all that. The European Court of Human Rights, to which Britain has subjected itself, is based on universalist principles and is a supranational authority. In that environment, judges become, in effect, the paid opponents of national governments. Individual rights are seen as trumping the rights not only of states, but of everyone else. Our national security represents the aggregated right of 60 million people to live in safety. But that means almost nothing to the ECHR. The Council of Europe, which invented the court, says it should be “an arbitrator between the States and their citizens”. In a system with such a remit, run by judges from 47 countries, who will bother to uphold the national security of any one state? I hope someone says this when the Council meets for its conference in Brighton next week.

Under the ECHR, the moral underpinning of justice weakens. In a powerful new book, Facing Up to Human Rights, the lawyer and former MP Fred Silvester points out that many of those who most readily claim their human rights are people who have behaved reprehensibly. While legal rights exist for bad people as well as good ones, there is also the old common-law principle of equity that “the person claiming justice must come with clean hands”. When our intelligence services are forced to settle in advance rather than betray their secrets to a court, they are pressing public money into some of the dirtiest hands in the world.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Macedonia: Killing of Five People Sparks Ethnic Tensions

Skopje, 13 April ( (AKI) — The killing of four Macedonian young adults and a middle-aged man north of the capital Skopje, has sparked ethnic tensions in a small Balkan country, and police has appealed for calm, local media reported on Friday.

The bodies of four youths, aged between 18 and 20 years, were found Wednesday night near a lake north of Skopje, where they went fishing, the police said. Another fisherman, aged 45, was found dead some hundred meters away. All victims had bullet wounds, the police said.

The brother of the dead fisherman told the police the man didn’t know the youths, but was most likely killed because he witnessed their murder. The police was looking for the perpetrators and appealed to local population to help in the investigation.

Skopje media speculated that the killings were a possible revenge for a recent killing of two ethnic Albanian youths in western town of Gostivar. A Macedonian policeman killed two young ethnic Albanians there, after they allegedly attacked him and his minor daughter.

In the meantime, people in the Skopje section of Radisani, the home of four youths, have set up barricades, protesting the killings and demanding a swift investigation and punishment of perpetrators.

The police appealed for patience and calm and called on media to refrain from speculations, which could further inflame ethnic tensions.

Ethnic Albanians make about 25 per cent of Macedonia’s two million population and quarrels between the two ethnic groups have been on the rise. Ethnic Albanians rebelled in 2001, demanding more rights and regional autonomy, but the conflict was brought under control through international mediation.

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

North Africa


Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race

Egypt’s election commission on Saturday disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including the three front-runners, from running in a surprise decision that threatened to upend the already tumultuous race.

Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, told The Associated Press that those barred from the race included Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman; the chief strategist for the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater; and hard-line lawyer-turned-preacher Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He did not give a reason.

The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners. They now have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26.

[Return to headlines]



Was the Arab Spring Really a Facebook Revolution?

WHEN emotive pictures of violence in Tunisia and its neighbouring countries were posted online, they spread rapidly and helped to catalyse months of revolutions throughout 2011. The western world was quick to celebrate the success of new media, and the idea of the Arab Spring as a “Facebook Revolution” spread as fast as the tweets. One Egyptian couple even named their baby Facebook.

Was social media a vital component that stirred long-brewing resentment into action, or did it merely speed inevitable revolutions on their way? A year on, as researchers continue to sift the evidence, the debate continues.

Kathleen Carley of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, carried out the latest analysis with intelligent software she developed to comb though media articles from the archive LexisNexis. Carley’s team looked for articles and social media posts about the Arab Spring in 18 countries over a period of 10 months.

The program identified terms that occurred together in the same article, such as “Egypt” and “Twitter”, and rapidly built a picture of the most important by looking at the relationship between them in all 400,000 articles it analysed. When the team carried out a statistical analysis on these results, only terms related to human rights and international relations came up as significant causes of the revolutions. While social media correlated with uprisings in some countries, the link wasn’t universal.

The conclusion? While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube certainly played a role in the way the Arab Spring unfolded, their influence was far less critical than many had suggested. “Social media was not causal. It told people to go here, to do this, but the reason was social influence, not social networking,” says Carley, who presented her results at the AAAS meeting in Vancouver, Canada, in February. “Social influencers tend to act across all media, regardless.”

Some believe that is an obvious conclusion. “Social media wasn’t a catalyst. The events it describes were the catalyst,” says computer scientist Huan Liu of Arizona State University in Tuscon. Filippo Menczer of Indiana University in Bloomington agrees. “We have a history of thousands of uprisings without social media,” he says.

Philip Howard of the University of Washington in Seattle, who has published an analysis that found a strong link between social media and the Arab Spring isn’t so sure. “In each of those other revolutions, there is some sort of media that is new and not controlled by the state. Even newspapers at one point caught dictators off guard.”

And Egypt and Tunisia, he points out, had been having problems for many years before shocking photos and stories of abuse by government agencies went viral. “The individual risk assessments (before people go out) to face rubber bullets and tear gas are informed by digital stories,” he says.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Airlines Cancel Israel Flights for Over 60 Percent of Pro-Palestinian Fly-in Protesters

Activists threatening to sue airlines, including Lufthansa, Air France and Easyjet, for ‘bowing to Israeli pressure’; PM’s Office releases sarcastic ‘thank you’ letter to be given to activists on arrival.

More than 60 percent of the 1,500 pro-Palestinian activists due to arrive in Israel on Sunday to take part in a fly-in protest have received notifications from airlines that their flights were canceled, the spokesman for the “Welcome to Palestine” protest told Haaretz on Saturday.

The activists were planning to arrive in Israel to participate in a protest against West Bank settlement construction that was scheduled to take place on Sunday. Last July, a similar “fly-in” took place, with more than 300 international activists arriving in Israel. Of those activists, 120 were detained.

Among the airlines that notified the activists of flight cancelations were Lufthansa, Air France and Easyjet, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Bethlehem-based spokesman for the protest said, adding that the activists are threatening to take legal action against the airlines.

“Israel passed lists of hundreds of activists to companies, along with a letter in which it claimed that they were coming to carry out a provocation and disturb the peace, and this is just not true. It is very unfortunate that these companies bowed to Israeli pressure,” said Qumsiyeh, who added that he has no doubt that some of the activists and Palestinian organizations — including his own — will pursue legal action against the companies.

According to the spokesman, hundreds of activists will manage to board flights to Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, and declare their intention to travel on to the West Bank upon their arrival.

Dozens of Israeli activisits are due to await the arrival of the fly-in protesters at the airport. In a notice published on Saturday, Israeli activists said they will await for the fly-in protesters with “welcome signs” and “open arms.”

Dozens of pro-Palestinian activists were prevented from boarding Israel-bound flights on Friday, due to the fact that their names appeared on the blacklist distributed by the Israeli government to a number of European airlines.

Police are planning to intercept participants in the “Welcome to Palestine” actions at the airport and prevent their entry into the country. Hundreds of police officers are expected to be stationed at the airport ahead of their arrival, most of them unarmed and clothed in civilian dress.

‘Thank you for choosing Israel’

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office published on Saturday the text of a sarcastic letter that will be handed out to the pro-Palestinian activists upon their arrival. The letter “thanks” activists for “choosing” to make Israel the object of their “humanitarian concerns.”

“We know there were many other worthy choices,” it says, and goes on to list a number of other such “choices”: Syria, Iran and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

“You could have chosen to protest the Syrian regime’s daily savagery against its own people, which has claimed thousands of lives,” the letter says.

“You could have chosen to protest the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent and support of terrorism throughout the world.”

“You could have chosen to protest Hamas rule in Gaza, where terror organizations commit a double war crime by firing rockets at civilians and hiding behind civilians”, says the letter.

The letter states that activists chose “to protest against Israel, the Middle East’s sole democracy, where women are equal, the press criticizes the government, human rights organizations can operate freely, religious freedom is protected for all and minorities do not live in fear.”

The text concludes by suggesting that the activists “solve first the real problems of the region, and then come back and share with us your experience,” before wishing them “a nice flight.”

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Beirut Hotel at Florence Festival, Spy Story Banned in Lebanon

Director Arbid: ‘we live in fear’

(ANSAmed) — FLORENCE, APRIL 13 — “Censorship is the only thing that works perfectly in Lebanon. It is a country where everyone is living in fear: citizens and institutions included”.

There is no beating about the bush with Danielle Arbid, the young Lebanese director who will present hert filme Beirut Hotel at Florence’s Middle East Now review. The film, banned by the Lebanese authorities, is a speculation on the murder of former Premier Rafiq Hariri. A cross between a love story and a spy film, Beirut Hotel tells of a highly complex and fleetingly brief love affair — lasting ten days in all — between Zoha, a singer in a restaurant in the Lebanese capital, and Mathieu, a Paris-based lawyer on his way to Syria, whose business is somehow linked to the Hariri affair.

In reality, it is a film about fear, told by a young director who left Lebanon behind when aged 17 as the civil war develops.

“My third full-length film is a film about the fear of being left behind (Zoha’s fear), the fear of falling in love (Mathieu’s fear) and the fear of those living permanently in Beirut”.

It is a fear that can be sprung on all at any moment. The Lebanese authorities do not like the film because “it endangers national security”. It can be lethal to touch in the Hariri question, “even if the subject is given thorough treatment in the newspapers”. Ms Arbid describes a country in which artists, “are not free, despite what people carry on believing outside the country”. To shoot the film, she explains, a script has to be presented to and approved by the security forces. “And woe betide you if you introduce any changes while shooting”. Which is what happened in the case of Beirut Hotel. “I submitted a provisional screenplay and started filming. Then, of course, as things progressed, the film took on the shape it wanted”. The conclusion: the film gets banned in Lebanon and is shown at last summer’s Lucerne Festival and in Dubai in December, while it is broadcast by Arte in France. In the meantime, Ms Arbid has opened an appeal process against the Lebanese State. There is no law in Lebanon that obliges film directors to present the script of their film before they can start filming.

“They are the ones acting outside the law. And now I would like to prove this. I am the only person to have had the courage to do such a thing”. Also her second film, “A Lost Man” (2007), was subjected to censorship. “They wanted 17 scenes cut because they were too sensual.

In that case I put up no opposition”. But this time she feels like rebelling. Everything is allowed in Lebanon, she says.

“Everyone does everything. But there is a great deal of hypocrisy”.

Once around here they used to say that “Egypt did the writing, Lebanon the editing and Irag read the result”. But it isn’t like that any more. “I think the Lebanese authorities look down on artists.

Lebanon cannot hold itself up as a model of freedom for other Arab countries”. This is her view at present, “I will never return to live in Lebanon. Not in this Lebanon, at any rate”.

This disaffection is not shared by her Lebanese audience. “Beirut Hotel did not go down well in Lebanon. Of course not; it shows a side of their society that they don’t want to see”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Iran Holds ‘Constructive’ Nuclear Talks With Britain and Other World Powers as They Return to Negotiating Table

Iran resumed discussion over its controversial nuclear programme today after a break more than a year — and an EU spokesman has described early talks as ‘positive’.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili met with six world powers, The US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, in Istanbul, Turkey this morning — 15 months after the last attempted at talks failed.

There’s huge pressure to reach agreement with Iran over it’s nuclear plans with US President Barack Obama calling the discussions ‘the last chance’ for diplomacy to work.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



U.N. Security Council Agrees to Send Ceasefire Monitors to Syria

The United Nations Security Council on Saturday unanimously authorized the deployment of ceasefire monitors to Syria. Russia and China joined the other 13 council members and voted in favor of the Western-Arab draft resolution. The first 30 unarmed military monitors are expected to leave within days.

The vote had been expected Friday but was held up by Russian objections to much of the text. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said Saturday that “substantive changes had been made to make it more balanced.”

[Return to headlines]



UAE: Scholars Share Message of Peace

Some attendees disappointed that main speaker for occasion did not show up. People urged to adhere to natural way of life

Dubai Thousands of people converged at the Dubai World Trade Centre in anticipation to hear Shaikh Abdul Rahman Sudais, Grand Imam of Masjid Al Haram, Makkah, who was scheduled to give a a sermon Friday. However, the Grand Imam was conspicuous by his absence both on Thursday and Friday, leaving many people disappointed. The organisers failed to give any explanation. “I was looking forward to see the shaikh and I came all the way from Ras Al Khaimah just to hear him speak. I was disappointed because the organisers had promised that he will be here today [Friday],” said Ahmad Abdullah. Meanwhile, scholars said that Islam is the only solution to the problems of humanity and lasting peace can be attained by following the teachings of the Quran and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), at the Dubai International Peace Convention (DIPC).

[…]

[JP note: No surprises there then — when in non-Muslim countries, non-Muslims should abide by Muslim customs, mores, and laws appears to be the message.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Pakistani Schoolbooks Full of Contempt and Bigotry Against Christians, Hindus and Sikhs

Pakistani curricula and textbooks promote extremism and violate minorities’ rights. An NCJP study notes distortions and requests a revision of the educational system, the first source of marginalization. Although minorities are guaranteed the possibility to deepen their own religion.

Lahore (AsiaNews) — School textbooks that promote religious fanaticism, discriminate against minorities and trigger religious conflicts: Pakistani schools are — once again — the object of attention and study of Catholic NCJP activists who, in a detailed report, have examined the basic elements of discrimination of sectarian origins. In the report titled “ Fanatic Literacy or Education,” the National Commission for Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church invites a rethink of school curricula, so that even Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and those belonging to minorities in Pakistan can deepen the study of their religion. Currently they are obliged to learn the basics of Islam, as practiced in some areas of the country, including Punjab.

The report shows that thousands of non-Muslim students are “forced” to study Islam and elements of the Muslim religion, for fear of discrimination. Among these, the decision taken by the Parliament of Punjab — one of the provinces of Pakistan — and approved “unanimously” that makes the study of the Koran mandatory. And non-Muslims “are not offered a viable alternative.” At the same time, even in subjects like social sciences and linguistics about 20% of the content is linked to Islam. Again: the non-Muslim students are given the extra bonus of 20 points, reserved to those who deepen Islamic studies.

AsiaNews has long stressed the importance of education as a factor of redemption and growth for Pakistan, and even devoted a thorough dossier to schooling and education (see, Education can stop the Taliban in Pakistan). Peter Jacob, NCJP executive secretary, explains that “education and educational policy in Pakistan” are among the sectors in which sectarian nature of discrimination and violations of basic human rights clearly emerge. In addition there is a chronic “lack of initiatives” and complications caused by “widespread corruption and inefficiency.”

In the study prepared by Christian activists they recall article 20 of the Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom, and article 22 that states that “ no person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or take part in any religious ceremony, or attend religious worship, if such instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own”. However, the school and education system in general seem to “forget” these two fundamental laws of the Charter of the State, while diligently applying Article 31, under which “shall be binding upon the study of Islam and the Koran” so that — add Christian activists — there are no substantial differences between public institutions and the madrassas, or Islamic schools.

Finally, the report says that religions other than Islam are viewed “with contempt and prejudice.” Faced with a situation that is becoming increasingly critical, Justice and Peace calls for a substantial change in the educational policy and the opportunity for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and students of other religions to deepen the knowledge of their own faith or, alternatively, have access to ethics and civic education.

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



Pakistan: Lahore: Christians and Hindus Against “Religious Fascism” And Forced Conversions to Islam

Young Christian and Hindu women are being abducted, forcibly converted and married off against their will. Young Christian men and boys are being forcibly circumcised. Young Hindu men are jailed for befriending young Muslim women. In the past five years, between 400 and 500 Christians have been forced to convert to Islam.

Lahore (AsiaNews) — “Several young Hindu women have been kidnapped from their homes in the dark of night, and dragged off to be forcibly converted to Islam. Usually, this conversion is accompanied by a signing of the nikahnama or marriage contract, which strengthens the kidnappers side of the story,” said Dilip Kumar, a Hindu activist. The kidnappers want complete freedom to convert, but “We can’t just sit back and watch what our community is going through,” he added.

Yesterday, together with dozens of Hindus and Christians and representatives of human rights NGOs, Kumar took part in a demonstration against the forced conversion of young men and women and the government’s slow response to what has been called “religious fascism”.

“It is a shame that Christian and Hindu girls are kidnapped and forced to convert, in most cases they are latter sold in sex slavery / prostitution,” said Fr John Mall. “This is becoming a hideous business and the authorities have kept a blind eye on the whole matter.” He was referring in particular to the case of Rinkle Kumari, a young woman who was abducted, converted and forced to marry a Muslim.

“Appearing before the court, Rinkle said: ‘Kill me but don’t send me back to prison or to the person who converted me.’ What did the Supreme Court? Instead of allowing her to meet her family, she was sent to jail for three weeks to think about converting to Islam. Had she said that she had converted, the court would have sent her to her husband.”

“In the last five years, there have been up to 400 to 500 conversions of Christians,” said Peter Jacob, national director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace. “And something equally horrifying: I know of forcible circumcision of young men in Punjab and one in Baluchistan. Where are we going, one asks?”

“Two months ago, a Muslim girl became friends with three Hindu boys. The Muslim family got the boys arrested and the Hindu families killed. This is barbarianism,” activist Diyal Singh said.

In yesterday’s rally, demonstrators also shouted slogans against Lahore’s police chief, who recently appeared before a court in connection with the demolition of the Catholic-owned Gosh-e-Aman building.

One of the parties to a lawsuit against the police official is a Christian woman, Zenobia Richard, who accuses him of desecrating Bibles, a statue of Our Lady and rosaries.

The court ordered him to submit a report of the incident within three weeks.

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

Far East


China: Forced Expropriation and Home Demolitions Continue Communist Party Abuses

Police attack residents in the village of Wugou who want justice after their land is seized. A married couple in their seventies are thrown out of their home because it was “the order of the party.” The regime’s violence is crushing ordinary Chinese.

Beijing (AsiaNews) — More than 1,400 people demonstrated on the streets of Mudan City in Heilongjiang Province, protesting against the illegal expropriation by Communist officials of village land for commercial purposes. In Nanning, local authorities demolish the home of an elderly couple without compensation or prior notice.

In Mudan, residents from Wugou village marched through the city’s streets last Monday waving banners that read, “Safeguard the interests of the people, punish corruption and return our farmland”.

They accuse village officials of illegally expropriating about 750 mu (about 0.5 sq km) of orchard to build commercial properties. They were met by police, which cordoned off the streets, dispersed the protestors, injuring a number of them, and took into custody about 20.

Yesterday, hired thugs, government officials and police burst unannounced into the home of Wei Yaorong and Yu Linlian, respectively 79 and 78. After they were forcibly removed from their home, they had to be taken to hospital.

When their son asked the demolition crew to present government documents that might have authorised the action, the heads of the Liangqing District and the district’s legal affairs office told him simply that it was the order of the Liangqing Party and the Liangqing district government.

Across the country, local Communist officials continue to take land and property away from ordinary people, this despite appeals to the central government,

In China, economic development is driven by a desire for rapid industrialisation. This tends to increase the value of farmland if it is located in areas favourable to manufacturing.

Often, local residents are opposed to such change. When they do stand up, local authorities turn to physical violence with no respect for the law.

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



Demand for Rhino Horns Threatens Species

Experts say Vietnam’s surging demand is threatening to wipe out the world’s remaining rhinoceros populations, which recovered from the brink of extinction after the 1970s thanks to conservation campaigns. Illegal killings in Africa hit the highest recorded level in 2011 and are expected to worsen this year.

This week South Africa called for renewed cooperation with Vietnam after a “shocking number” of rhinos have already been reported dead this year.

China has long valued rhino horn for its purported — though unproven — medicinal properties, but U.S. officials and international wildlife experts now say Vietnam’s recent intense craving, blamed partly on a widespread rumor that rhino horn cures cancer, is putting unprecedented pressure on the world’s estimated 28,000 remaining animals, mainly in South Africa.

“It’s a very dire situation,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said by telephone. “We have very little cushion for these populations in the wild.”

Although data on the global rhino horn trade is scarce, poaching in Africa has soared in the past two years, with American officials saying China and Vietnam are driving the trade that has no “significant” end market in the United States.

Wildlife advocates say that over the last decade, rhino horn has become a must-have luxury item for some Vietnamese nouveau riche, alongside Gucci bags and expensive Maybach cars.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Brazil: The Death Cult Brazilians Who Killed and Ate Two Women ‘To Purify Their Souls’

A karate expert and two women have been arrested on suspicion of killing at least two women, before eating their flesh to ‘purify the soul’, police revealed today.

The Brazilian trio, who were seized in Pernambuco in the northeastern part of the country, were said by police to be part of a sect which believes in the ‘purification of the world’.

Jorge da Silveira, 51, a graduate and karate expert, along with Isabel Pires, 51, and Bruna da Silva, 25, planned ot kill three women each year, according to Brazilian police.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Got Quickie Aborsh: Comedienne Sarah Silverman Supports Pro Choice Debate Tweeting Abortion Photos

Comedienne Sarah Silverman joined America’s current War on Women yesterday after she tweeted a hoax before-and-after abortion photo.

Reigniting the women’s rights movement via Twitter, the 41-year-old wrote: ‘Got a quickie aborsh in case R v W gets overturned.’

The controversial comment captioned two photos of Miss Silverman made to look like she was pregnant before getting an abortion — and quickly divided opinion.

While she caused a wave of support from hundreds of people voicing liberal pro-choice beliefs, she also drew criticism for her ‘insensitivity’ for a subject that is ‘no laughing matter’.

           — Hat tip: Van Grungy [Return to headlines]



UK: Islam Has Made London a More Conservative Place Than it Was 50 Years Ago

by Ed West

One of the most common mistakes people make about cultural and politics is suggesting that history is inevitably heading in one direction. We hear it most commonly in the argument made that “we can’t turn the clock back” to the 1950s, as if anyone is planning to ban garlic bread or continental lager. (I don’t see why achieving 1950s levels of crime would be either undesirable or impossible).

History does not work like that, and in a strange way London today is even more conservative than it was in the 1950s — thanks to liberals.

This week London Metropolitan University’s vice-chancellor suggested that parts of the campus be made alcohol-free because some Muslim students believe it is “evil” and “immoral”. This paper reports:

Prof Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University said he wants to create alcohol free areas on campus out of “cultural sensitivity”. About a fifth of students at the university come from Muslim families — many of them young women from traditional homes. For many of them, the drinking culture among students marred rather than heightened their student experience, he said.

In principle there’s nothing wrong with this. If one university wants to make itself more attractive to teetotal students, then heavy-drinking students (ie 99 per cent of them) can go to the many colleges where cheap beer flows abundantly. That’s the free market. Muslims aside, many people would prefer a less boozy environment. But I can’t help but feel that this new puritanism is not what the young people who once shouted “disembowel Enoch Powell” in opposition to immigration restrictions had in mind.

The new conservatism of London has already had profound effects, as demographic changes gather pace. Stonewall’s bus adverts, for example, would be better concentrated in Tower Hamlets, where there were 47 anti-gay attacks in 2008, rather than being wasted on the rest of us. Young gay men in the provinces no longer need to run away to London, one of the most religiously conservative places in England now (and not just among Muslims — African Christians too).

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

General


4.4 Bln Clicks for Xvideos Porn Site, 30% of Traffic

(AGI) London — Xvideos, the world’s largest pornographic website, is clicked 4.4 billion times each month and has 350 million unique visitors. Only Google and Facebook manage to do better, according to a study by ExtremeTech, a website specialized in the monitoring of internet, claiming that 30% of the web’s global traffic is exclusively connected to sex.

Suffice it to see the success of Laura Maggi’s photo galleries on the web, the sexy barmaid from Brescia, who has been monopolizing the users’ attention for weeks.

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



How Earthly Life Could Populate Space by Panspermia

For years, scientists have imagined that microbial life may have ridden to Earth on the back of a comet or meteorite, planting the seed for the diversity of life we know today. But could so-called panspermia have gone the other way? Could Earth have given other worlds life?

It’s an old idea, but Tetsuya Hara of Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan and colleagues now have new calculations suggesting it’s possible. “The only planet which we know has life is Earth,” they write in a paper posted to the arXiv physics preprint site. “Therefore, Earth would be a likely source to seed other planets with life.”

Microbes could be knocked out of the atmosphere into space by high-speed ions after a solar storm, but without protection, the microbes would be irradiated to death by those same charged particles.

Perhaps a safer way for seed to spread would be for whole rocks to travel other worlds. Previous research has showed that, theoretically, a massive meteorite impact could blast up and scatter tonnes of rock across the solar system.

In their recent paper, Hara and colleagues considered one of the biggest meteorite hits known in Earth’s history: the Chicxulub impact 65 million years ago, usually blamed for killing off the dinosaurs. The 10-kilometre-wide asteroid weighed well over a trillion tonnes, and could have excavated as much mass from the surface of the Earth.

The team calculated how much of that stuff could have ended up on the bodies in the solar system thought most likely to be hospitable to life: Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa, both of which are thought to have subsurface oceans of liquid water.

Under certain conditions, as many as 300 million individual rocks could have ended up on Europa, and 500 on Enceladus, they calculated. Even more could have ended up on the moon and Mars.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Islamutopia: A Very Short History of Political Islam

by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

This article is an introduction to a special series of posts commissioned by LSE IDEAS exploring Islamism and the Arab Spring. The series also includes articles on Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, with a concluding post on the geostrategic implications of the Islamist moment following the Arab Spring. These articles will be published on the site over the coming weeks.

Whenever contemporary Islamists ponder their own genealogy, there are two pivotal figures that invariably come up to invigorate their imaginings. These two reference points of contemporary political Islam are Sayyid Jamal al-din al-Afghani (or Asadabadi)(1838-1897) , and his disciple Mohammad Abduh (1849-1905). Afghani and Abduh lived through a tumultuous period for the ummah whose decline as an organised political entity they tried to prevent in theory and in praxis. They were battling against the inevitable, however, and did not live long enough to witness the abolishment of the caliphate in Turkey in 1924. Now with the Arab revolts yielding a new spring for the Islamists, parallels to these pioneers of the Islamic revival are being dusted down. Are we at the dawn of a new Islamic era in West Asia and North Africa (WANA)? With the Muslim Brotherhood fielding a candidate in the forthcoming presidential elections in Egypt, the electoral victory of Ennahda in Tunisia, the emergence of “neo-Ottoman” politics in Turkey, “neo-Shia” authoritarianism in Iraq and the continued influence of the Islamic republic in Iran the headlines almost write themselves. There is no doubt that there is something ‘Islamic’ about what is happening. But what is it exactly?

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Women and Children First? Not Since the Titanic

The chivalrous code “women and children first” appears to have sunk with the Titanic 100 years ago. Long believed to be the golden standard of conduct in a shipwreck, the noble edict is in fact “a myth that has been nourished by the Titanic disaster,” economist Mikael Elinder of Uppsala University, Sweden, told Discovery News. Elinder and colleague Oscar Erixson analyzed a database of 18 peace-time shipwrecks over the period 1852-2011 in a new study into survival advantages at sea disasters.

Looking at the fate of over 15,000 people of more than 30 nationalities, the researchers found that more women and children die than men in maritime disasters, while captains and crew have a greater chance of survival than any passengers.

Being a woman was an advantage on only two ships: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic in 1912. Indeed, it was the sinking of the troopship HMS Birkenhead off the coast of South Africa in 1852 that inspired the tradition of “women and children first.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

News Feed 20120413

Financial Crisis
» Greece: Easter: Poorest Migration in Years Begins
» Italy’s Budget Adjustment ‘Less Urgent’ Says OECD
» Monti Clears the Air With Spanish Premier
» Obama and Redistribution of Your Wealth
» The Keynesian Spending Spree is Over
» The North-South Mortgage Divide: Negative Equity Map of UK Shows Clear Disparity
» UK: The £54bn Pensions ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ That Could Drive Up Council Tax
 
USA
» Allen West Exposes Red Influence in Congress
» Americans Oppose Anti-Islam Nominee to USCIRF
» FBI Led to Anonymous Hacker After He Posts Picture of Girlfriend’s Breasts Online
» Google Founders Tighten Grip on Firm and Record Profits
» How Racially Divided is the United States Today?
» Judicial Cowardice — A Stench Rolling Across America
» Massachusetts “Educational Center” Uses Violent Electroshock on Teenager
» Mosque Growth Study Good News for Americans
» Obama Admirer to Teach ‘Understanding Obama’ Class at Harvard Law School
» Repeat After Me: The Identity Thief is a Socialist
» Strike Two for Marlin Manager Ozzie Guillen
» The Heart of the Problem is in the Heart
» You Feel Me, My Fellow Americans?
 
Europe and the EU
» Children Stolen by the State Needlessly, Causing Utter Misery in One of Britain’s Most Disturbing Scandals
» Conversion to Islam Growing Dramatically in Austria
» Danish Court Puts Four Men on Trial on Terror Charges
» Denmark: Mohammed Cartoons Have Lasting Effect
» France: Abdennour Bidar: Mohammed Merah, A Monster Created by Islam’s Illness
» German Civil Servant Says ‘He Did Nothing for 14 Years’
» Greece: Ex Defense Minister Tsochatzopoulos Arrested
» Greece: Bakoyannis Immunity to be Lifted, Asks Supreme Court
» Italy: Scandal-Hit Northern League Expels Senate Deputy Speaker
» Italy: Ruby: Ghedini: Berlusconi Payments Not Connected to Trial
» Sweden: Welcome to Ikea-Land: Furniture Giant Begins Urban Planning Project
» The New German Problem
» The Nation as a Family
» UK: 25 Firemen Who Scrambled to Rescue a Seagull From a 3ft-Deep Pond Refused to Wade in Because of Regulations — Leaving it to Joe Public to Save the Bird
» UK: British Muslims Have Given David Cameron an Object Lesson in Democracy
» UK: Great-Grandmother, 94, Suffers Horrific Injuries After Falling Out of Hospital Bed Because ‘Elf and Safety Rules Ban Side-Bars
» UK: London Metropolitan University Mulls Alcohol Ban for ‘Conservative Muslim Students’
» UK: Mehdi Hasan: A Beacon for Islam [Reader Comments Only]
» UK: New £1m Mosque to Open Its Doors to 1,000 Worshippers in Moss Side
» UK: Oxford Child Sex Trafficking Probe Widens as Number of ‘Victims’ Doubles to 50 Girls, Some as Young as 11
» UK: Stamp Collectors Shouldn’t Keep Their Lonely Pleasures to Themselves
» UK: The Hollow Men of British Politics
» UK: University to Have Alcohol-Free Areas for Muslims
» UK: Watchdog Criticizes Scotland Yard Over Phone Hacking Scandal
 
North Africa
» Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists Bar Former Mubarak Regime Officials
» Egypt Candidate: Moderate Islamist, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh
» Libya: So it Was All About Oil After All!
 
Middle East
» Osama Bin Laden’s Three Wives and Two Daughters to be Deported to Saudi Arabia, After Ruling by Pakistani Court
 
Russia
» Leading Member of Moscow’s Muslim Community Killed
 
South Asia
» Indonesia: West Java: Yasmin Church Members Celebrate Easter Underground
» Pakistan: Forced Conversions Spark Anger
 
Far East
» China Censors Bo Xilai Debate, But Chinese Work Around it
» Defectors Link North Korea’s Weapons Program to Food Shortage
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» ENI Nigeria Facilities Attacked by Oil Militants
 
Immigration
» Students From Pakistan Face Tough Tests to Enter Britain as Four in Ten Applicants Could be Bogus
 
Culture Wars
» Boris Blocks Christian Anti-Gay Poster Campaign on London Buses That Claimed Homosexuality Could be Cured
» Britain’s Christians Are Being Vilified, Warns Lord Carey
» Last Hope for the Left
» Liberals or Conservatives: Who’s Really Close-Minded?
» The ‘Bus Advert Storm’ Confirms That Christians Are Now More Progressive Than Gay Rights Activists
» Why Liberals Don’t Understand Conservatives
 
General
» Islam’s Real Origins?
» New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

Financial Crisis


Greece: Easter: Poorest Migration in Years Begins

Lack of money, Greeks buy only what they strictly need

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — The Easter exodus of Greeks from the major cities begun yesterday and has continued this morning, although those leaving are perhaps as poor as they have been in decades as a result of the serious economic crisis gripping the country. Greek Orthodox Easter will be celebrated on Sunday April 15 this year. After the strike by maritime workers on Tuesday and Wednesday, that caused huge disruption for those due to travel to the islands, boats and all other means of transport are functioning as usual today. The effects of the economic crisis, though, are being felt.

The lack of money is forcing Greeks to buy only what they strictly need, despite the fact that ingredients for the Easter meal cost 10.5% less than last year, according to figures provided by the Greek Confederation of Trade.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy’s Budget Adjustment ‘Less Urgent’ Says OECD

Market reaction bigger issue says senior economist

(ANSA) — Rome, April 12 — Italy’s need for budget adjustment is lower than other eurozone members, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says.

“The need for budget repositioning may be considered less urgent than other countries,” Douglas Sutherland, author of the Paris-based organisation’s latest policy paper on Italy, told ANSA.

“The biggest issue now are the markets and their reaction.

Aside from that, the Italian situation would be less worrying,” said OECD Senior Economist Sutherland.

Italy has approved austerity measures to balance the budget next year.

Markets are renewing pressure on Italian bonds amid Spanish debt doubts and fears about lack of growth.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Monti Clears the Air With Spanish Premier

Rajoy calls for ‘prudence’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 12 — Italian Premier Mario Monti phoned Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy to clear up comments allegedly made by Monti linking the Italian spread increase to the Spanish economic situation, reported Spanish newspaper El Pais on Thursday.

Speaking before a Spanish parliament meeting on Wednesday, Rajoy cautioned European leaders to exercise “prudence”. On Thursday Rajoy, while speaking to the press, called for leaders to act with “intelligence, will and courage,” and to avoid “unnecessary alarmism”.

Monti’s government, like Rajoy’s, is trying to steer Italy away from debt-crisis contagion and introduce reforms to strengthen their economies.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Obama and Redistribution of Your Wealth

In a speech earlier this week (April 10), President Obama said the following: “So these investments — in things like education and research and health care — they haven’t been made as some grand scheme to redistribute wealth from one group to another…this is not some socialist dream.”

Yet, in 2008, Obama summarized his plan to make the tax code fairer by saying “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Obama may not be cut out of the same cloth as Lenin, but he is a socialist and socialism is his agenda.

Marxism spawned Socialism. Marxism produced the foundation of European welfare state socialism. The European model tried to nationalize Socialism, as with the Bolshevik revolution, but with less success. After the failure of nationalization through revolution, European socialists realized that free enterprise in private hands produced capital (money) which they could then steal through taxation and then redistribute to all through social programs, thereby achieving socialism. Where European socialism prevails, there is a cost. According to Paul Roderick Gregory, “The European welfare state takes one half of national output to provide state health care, pensions, extended unemployment benefits, income grants, and free higher education.” Obama feverishly promotes socialism as just described.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Keynesian Spending Spree is Over

John Maynard Keynes taught that it helps our economy when the government borrows so it can spend more than it is taking in. Generations of spendthrift politicians, economists, and ordinary citizens, who enjoyed government benefits beyond the means of the present generation, funded by borrowed money, have been very eager to believe in it. Many have questioned this view. If Keynes were right, then the massive deficit spending represented in the $10 Trillion plus in new official US debt since Bill Clinton left office early in 2001 ($5 trillion during Bush IIs 8-year watch, and another $5 trillion in just over 3 years of Obama’s watch), not to mention all the off budget promising, should have produced massive improvement in the economy. It hasn’t. QED: Keynes is wrong. See my previous article “The Central Fallacy of Keynes and Our Politicians.”

Even for Keynesians, however, the party has to end when people will no longer loan to the government by purchasing US Government debt. Recent news reports make clear that that day arrived some time ago, but that the government and Fed are doing everything they can to disguise the fact.

As reported by Lawrence Goodman in his March 27, 2012 Wall Street Journal article, the recently released Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report for all of 2011, reveals that the Fed (not real buyers) purchased a stunning 61% of all new US Debt issued during 2011, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis. This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits.

This is a crucial fact.

Real buyers willing to buy US Treasuries have already headed for the exits, and have been out of the market for some time. This includes foreign and domestic governments and private buyers (the Chinese, for example, have been reducing their holdings of dollars and US Debt, according to several reports in recent months). See Lawrence Goodman’s article, “Demand for US Debt is Not Limitless,” in Wall Street Journal Online (April 27, 2012).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The North-South Mortgage Divide: Negative Equity Map of UK Shows Clear Disparity

Plunging house prices have triggered a new negative equity crisis, with the North bearing a far greater burden than the South, a report revealed yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands more families have become trapped in the nightmare of having a mortgage bigger than the value of their home over the last 18 months.

The report, from the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s, said 3.6 per cent of mortgage-holders were in ‘negative equity’ during the spring of 2010. By the end of last year, the number had risen to 5.6 per cent.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: The £54bn Pensions ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ That Could Drive Up Council Tax

Britain is sitting on ‘a ticking time bomb’ created by the generous pensions enjoyed by council workers, a report warns today.

The shocking analysis reveals councils across the UK have a pensions deficit of £54billion — amid warnings it could get even bigger.

Experts warn council tax bills will have to rise sharply in the future to pay for pensions paid to council workers, from bin men to town hall staff.

The equivalent of around £1 in every £5 of council tax is already spent on local authorities’ contributions to their workers’ pension scheme, according to the report by campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

The average pension paid to a council worker is around £4,200 a year, which covers all council workers, many of whom are on very low pay. But more than 2,700 scoop pensions worth at least £37,000 a year and more than 35,000 get at least £17,000 a year, according to official figures.

By comparison, most private sector workers do not have a pension — and it is worth only £1,400 a year to those who do.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

USA


Allen West Exposes Red Influence in Congress

Rep. Allen West’s comments about alleged communists in Congress have led to what West calls “A lot of buzz and inaccurate reporting” in the media. Some reporters have nitpicked West on whether he has concrete proof of actual card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA in the Congress.

Politico called him a McCarthyite and actually quoted a spokesman for the Communist Party as saying that West didn’t know what he was talking about.

But the alternative media, led by www.rebelpundit.com, have been covering the story of how the international communist movement, responsible for about one hundred million dead, is very much alive and has collaborators in the U.S. Congress. Rebel Pundit is the work of Jeremy Segal, a disciple of the late Andrew Breitbart who produced the recent video of Rep. Danny K. Davis being honored by the People’s World at the Communist Party U.S.A.’s headquarters in Chicago for a lifetime of “inspiring leadership.”

Davis serves on the Homeland Security Committee where his subcommittee assignments are the Subcommittee on Transportation and the Subcommittee on Oversight. He is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

When Segal started questioning the congressman outside the party headquarters, CPUSA members and a Davis handler wearing an Obama jacket tried to intervene to protect Davis from further questioning, with one person calling Segal “disgusting.” Segal protested, “Don’t touch me!”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Americans Oppose Anti-Islam Nominee to USCIRF

A broad national coalition of 64 organizations and individuals sent a letter to Senators Inouye, McConnell and Durbin expressing “deep concern” at the recent appointment of Zuhdi Jasser to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). “The USCIRF promotes the freedom of religion and belief, and it seeks to combat religious extremism, intolerance, and repression throughout the world. In contrast with these laudable goals, Dr. Jasser believes, ‘operationally, Islam is not peaceful.’ His consistent support for measures that threaten and diminish religious freedoms within the United States demonstrates his deplorable lack of understanding of and commitment to religious freedom and undermines the USCIRF’s express purpose.” The coalition noted that Jasser’s organization, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, “applauded” an amendment to Oklahoma’s constitution that both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals 10th Circuit have held is in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by clearly favoring all other religions over Islam. That amendment specifically targeted Islam for official censure.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



FBI Led to Anonymous Hacker After He Posts Picture of Girlfriend’s Breasts Online

This is the picture that led the FBI to a catch prolific hacker allegedly responsible for releasing the personal information of scores of police officers throughout the United States.

Higinio O. Ochoa III has been charged with illegally hacking into at least four U.S. law enforcement websites — feats he allegedly boasted about across social networking sites.

[…]

At the bottom of the website, there was the picture of the woman wearing the sign. Data taken from that picture showed it was taken by an iPhone, according to the FBI.

GPS co-ordinates embedded in the photo — as are found in all pictures taken by a smartphone — showed authorities the exact street and house in Wantirna South, Melbourne where it was taken.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Google Founders Tighten Grip on Firm and Record Profits

The online search leader has reported a 61 percent increase in net income for the first quarter of 2012 and has said it will issue a new class of stock aimed at helping Google’s senior leaders keep control of the firm.

Google’s first quarter revenues rose to $10.6 billion (8.04 billion euros) in 2012 — up 24 percent from the same period a year ago, and the second consecutive quarter in which revenues surpassed the double-digit billion dollar mark, the California-based firm announced Thursday.

Net profits came in at $2.89 billion after $1.8 billion in the first quarter of 2011, marking a staggering 61 percent increase in the course of last year.

Speaking of “another great quarter,” Google Chief Executive Larry Page said that the firm saw “tremendous momentum from the big bets we’ve made in products like Android, Chrome and YouTube.”

“We are still at the very early stages of what technology can do to improve people’s lives and we have enormous opportunities ahead,” he added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



How Racially Divided is the United States Today?

As the national debate over the killing of Trayvon Martin rages on, a new poll suggests that a majority of Americans believe the country is divided by race. The Newsweek/Daily Beast poll shows that 72% of whites and 89% of blacks say the country is racially divided.

And almost four years after the election of the nation’s first black president, majorities of whites and blacks say race relations have either stayed the same or gotten worse.

There continue to be fundamental disagreements about when blacks will achieve racial equality. Whites are much more likely to think blacks have the same chance as they do to get housing and jobs.

As for the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black Florida teen, there are more differences along racial lines. Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to say Martin’s death was racially motivated. African-Americans are convinced that Martin was targeted because he was a young black man, while whites are divided.

Blacks overwhelmingly approve of how President Obama has handled the controversy, while a majority of whites disapprove. The differences go on and on. It’s a sad statement on race relations in the U.S. in 2012.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Judicial Cowardice — A Stench Rolling Across America

“Is there anything more shameful than the man who lacks the courage to be a coward?” — Peter Blaunder

On April 10, 2012, another Obama/Soetoro ballot access hearing took place in New Jersey. Objectors were represented by superior legal counsel, Mario Apuzzo. Barry Soetoro’s attorney’ argument can only be described as delusional:

“Obama’s attorney made a motion to dismiss the Objection in its entirety. She argued that it was not relevant to being placed on the ballot whether Mr. Obama is a “natural born Citizen,” where he was born, and whether he was born to U.S. citizen parents. She said that no law in New Jersey obligated him to produce any such evidence in order to get on the primary ballot.”

What Ms. Hill is saying is that anyone can be a presidential candidate on their state ballot. Doesn’t matter where the individual was born or whether he was even born to U.S. citizen parents. The hell with the U.S. Constitution and why the framers grand fathered in the clause about ‘natural born citizen’.

The implications behind such lunacy, never mind stomping on the U.S. Constitution, are horrendous. But, of course, the useful fools who serve their master don’t give a damn. They care only for their paychecks and protecting the empty suit camped out in our White House.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Massachusetts “Educational Center” Uses Violent Electroshock on Teenager

[WARNING: Extremely disturbing content.]

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is a facility that provides services for children and adults with “severe developmental disabilities and emotional or behavior disorders”. In the past decades, the Center garnered negative criticism due to its use of aversives such as electric shock, the withholding of food, spanking with a spatula, pinching of the feet and forced inhaling of ammonia.

The recent release of disturbing footage from the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center — featuring a restrained teenager who gets electroshocked 31 times — brought the controversy to a whole other level. While the Center claimed that the use of electroshock was a form of “therapy” to change behavior, the footage shows an all-out torture session under the watchful eyes and laughs of Center employees.

Here’s a news report on the recently released of the footage from 2002 (the administration of the Center somehow managed block the broadcasting of the tape in the past).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Mosque Growth Study Good News for Americans

New York, New York — You don’t have to be Muslim to find good news in a recent study on mosque growth in the United States. Co-sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Hartford Institute on Religion, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), this national survey of mosque leaders in the United States found that more than 900 new mosques have been built in the United States since 2000-a period of increased scrutiny by government officials and increased controversy over mosque building. Of the 2,106 Muslim centres across the United States, a quarter of them were built in the last 10 years.

The first piece of good news in this discovery for non-Muslim Americans is that the First Amendment of the US Constitution-the part stating “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — is in considerably better working order than it appeared in the summer of 2010. At that time, protests raged against a planned Islamic centre near the site of the World Trade Center and erupted into a national debate; anti-mosque demonstrations stretched from Tennessee to California. The too-commonplace anti-Muslim vitriol on the airwaves and over the internet that summer — similar in content and tone to the anti-Catholic tirades of the early 19th century-was, it now appears, a momentary setback in our 235 year on-going struggle for a more perfect union.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Obama Admirer to Teach ‘Understanding Obama’ Class at Harvard Law School

According to the Harvard Law School course catalog, professor Charles Ogletree will be teaching a reading group called “Understanding Obama” for one classroom credit during the 2013 spring term.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991. He was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. Ogletree was a mentor to both President Obama and Michelle Obama while they were Harvard law students.

In an interview, Ogletree explained to The Daily Caller that the reading group will deal with both the positive and negative issues surrounding Obama and his presidency.

According to Ogletree, his personal experience with the president, as Obama’s mentor, will not be a part of the reading group, though he made no bones about his admiration for Obama.

“I’m an Obama fan, I love the president — love him and his wife,” he explained. “They were wonderful people to serve as a mentor when they were here in the law school at separate times in the 1980s. There’s a lot to learn.” He asserted that none of his personal feelings about the president will be a factor in the class and that there will be no grade, paper requirements or exam requirements.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Repeat After Me: The Identity Thief is a Socialist

by Diana West

Now that Election 2012 is shaping up as a contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney, an observation and a prediction.

Our nation heads into a presidential campaign with an incumbent whose online birth certificate and Selective Service registration card are almost certainly forgeries, and this is a nonissue. (Don’t ask about the subpoena from a Georgia court that Obama ignored. Everyone else did, too.)

That’s the observation. The prediction is that unless voters come to view Barack Obama as a “socialist” — even a “democratic socialist” — and, as such, an existential threat to our (in theory) constitutional republic, President Obama, funny papers and all, will be re-elected in November.

The two stories are related. Both turn on the relative power of “evidence” vs. “narrative.” By evidence, I mean the facts and clues that support an argument or hypothesis. By narrative, I mean propaganda. For example, there is evidence of fraud in Obama’s identity documents, but such evidence does not fit the narrative that Obama’s identity documents are authentic. In the face of narrative, We the People are supposed to ignore the evidence. All of our officials and elites do.

Similarly, there is plentiful evidence of Barack Obama’s socialist beliefs and ties — Stanley Kurtz’s 2010 book “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism” meticulously lays it out — but the narrative insists that Obama is anything but a socialist. And, as with the evidence of identity fraud, woe and besmirching to anyone who mentions it.

Now, what do I mean by socialism? Too often, and sometimes by design, defining socialism becomes an absurdly contentious exercise. If we narrowly define socialism as “government ownership of the means of production,” however, we’ll never know what hit us until it’s too late. I found it helpful to learn that Alexander Solzhenitsyn recognized there was no “single precise definition of socialism” out there. This is probably due to vagaries of time and place, and to the fact that, short of a violent revolution, socialism is a complex, messy work in progress. What’s vital to identify is the direction of that progress. If the progress tends toward increasing economic collectivism and political centralization, the movement is socialist. If the progress is in the other direction, the movement is known as capitalist.

By leaps of collectivism and bounds of centralization, Barack Obama has been taking the country in a socialist direction since he took office…

           — Hat tip: Diana West [Return to headlines]



Strike Two for Marlin Manager Ozzie Guillen

Last week Miami Marlin’s manager Ozzie Guillen told Time magazine that he “loves and respects” Fidel Castro. This week, reacting to outrage by Americans of Cuban heritage (i.e. a huge chunk of Marlin ticket-buyers,) the Marlin’s suspended Guillen for five games. Apparently eager to head-off worse retribution (and damage—control ticket sales) on April 9th a moping Guillen issued a groveling apology at a Miami press Conference.

“I am here on my knees,” he whimpered. “I am here to say I am sorry with my heart in my hands…I hurt a lot of people’s feelings. Now I want to apologize because I did the wrong thing. It was a very stupid comment…If I don’t learn from this mistake, then I will call myself dumb.”

As if hailing a Stalinist dictator who jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin himself during the Great Terror, murdered more Cubans than Hitler murdered Germans during the Night of Long Knives, repeatedly craved to nuke Ozzie’s adopted country and shattered the lives of half of Miami’s families were some kind of offense in this country! (except for ticket-sales.)

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



The Heart of the Problem is in the Heart

Benjamin Franklin told us, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Socialism is a debilitating confidence game dressed up as an ideology used by demagogues and want-to-be dictators to fool its victims into believing it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. Those who fall under the spell of the charlatans singing this siren song actually come to believe it is fair and just to force some people to labor for the good of others. This is the same type of sophistry and rationalization that was used by the clergy and philosophers of the Antebellum South to justify unending human bondage for an entire race of people because it was for their own good.

This twisted tool of central planners and bureaucratic tyrants teaches those who have not that it is fair and just to take from those who have and re-distribute the plunder as the government decrees. This is not fair! This is not just! To teach that it is raises up generations of people who believe they have a birth-right to that which is not their own forfeiting their true birth-right: the opportunity to succeed through their own efforts. The products of such an educational system are citizens without virtue voting pawns without honor. Not because they have made a personal decision to live without these two attributes but because they have been programmed to believe taking the fruit of someone else’s labor is permissible as long as it will be given to someone else. Theodore Roosevelt said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



You Feel Me, My Fellow Americans?

Last time I checked, conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, were racist Neanderthals engaging in a “war on women” as a hobby, which is not to be confused with their full-time jobs of screwing over the 99 percent by not paying their “fair share” of taxes. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when a couple of outbursts from the oh-so-tolerant precincts of the left upset the proverbial apple cart.

Exhibit A is the well-mannered and even-tempered chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party, Michelle Williams. Expressing her frustration with the fact that the George Zimmeman/Trayvon Martin case has insufficiently ignited the kind of racialist passion Ms. William deems necessary, she offered America the kind of level-headed reasoning we were promised as an integral part of the Obama administration’s post-racial 2008 hope and change campaign. In a call to a radio program, Ms. Williams said the following:

“I just want to say to all the listeners on this phone call, that if you are having any doubt about getting suited, booted, and armed up for this race war that we’re in that has never ended, let me tell you something the thing that’s about to happen these honkies, these crackers, these pigs, these people, these motherf*er it has been long overdue.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Children Stolen by the State Needlessly, Causing Utter Misery in One of Britain’s Most Disturbing Scandals

[WARNING: Disturbing content.]

Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that applications to take children into care in England have soared to an all-time record, for the first time topping 10,000 in just 12 months.

Since 2008 alone, the figure has much more than doubled, to some 225 cases a week — bringing the total number of children in care in the UK as a whole to at least 90,000.

The official reason given for this explosion in the number of children being removed from their families by social workers in only four years is that 2008 was the year when the nation was shocked by the events leading to the death of Baby P — later named as Peter Connelly.

He was just 17 months old when he died in North London at the hands of his mother Tracey and her violent partner, suffering more than 50 injuries.

The story goes that social workers have become much more eager to take children into care because they do not wish to see any repetition of the scandal surrounding their failure to save Baby Peter, even though they and other officials had visited his home 60 times.

But one hugely important ingredient is missing from the way this version of events is being put across by the authorities responsible for ‘child protection’.

Evidence is accumulating on all sides to show that far too many children are now being removed from their parents wholly unnecessarily, often for laughably inadequate, even absurd, reasons.

No one could object if the rise in the number of families being torn apart was simply due to the increased determination of our social workers to intervene in situations likely to lead to another Baby P tragedy.

But the fact is, happy children are today being snatched from loving parents for reasons they cannot begin to fathom, leaving all concerned in a state of utter misery. And this can constitute a tragedy in its own way scarcely less heart-rending than those where a child has been genuinely abused.

Having investigated scores of such cases over the past three years, I do not hesitate to describe this as one of the most disturbing scandals in Britain today.

The manner in which, every week, dozens of families are wantonly ripped apart has become truly horrifying. And the only reason this does not itself make headline news is that our so-called ‘child protection’ system has become so ruthlessly hidden from view by the wall of secrecy built round it by our family courts.

[…]

Meanwhile, countless children find themselves living with strangers in foster homes, where all the evidence shows — despite many shining exceptions — they may risk physical abuse or emotional harm far worse than anything their parents were accused of inflicting on them.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Conversion to Islam Growing Dramatically in Austria

Official records suggest a dramatic growth in conversions from Christianity to Islam, in the predominantly Christian European country of Austria, Press TV reports.

“We see that people have spiritual longing that they feel there is something missing in their lives, if there is no dimension, no horizon as to the hereafter, or where am I? Why am I here?” Says Mr. Bagajati, an Austrian convert to Islam. Austria is a predominantly Catholic Christian European country of over eight million people with strong and deep historical roots in Christianity. Many Christians express that they were disillusioned and had lost their faith in Christianity, and of course the recent recurring sexual scandals of Catholic Church has played a major role in their exodus, which at the end led to many of them convert to Islam, where they could find comfort. Most non-Muslim, European citizens have always been presented with an ugly and awful image of Islam, linked mainly to extremism and fundamentalism, by the Western culture. Meanwhile, Ms. Bagajati believes that it is the “perfect time” for Islam to show its “peaceful nature” to non-Muslims, in a time when the United Nations has expressed concerns over growing religious discrimination and violence against religious groups. Estimations show that almost half a million Austrian Christians have converted to Islam since roughly two years ago, with the numbers of conversions keeping thriving.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Danish Court Puts Four Men on Trial on Terror Charges

Four men have been put on trial in Copenhagen for allegedly trying to attack the offices of a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. The 2005 cartoons sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

Four men accused of plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad have gone on trial in Denmark.

If convicted, the three Swedish citizens and one Tunisian resident of Sweden could face a maximum of 16 years in prison.

All four men were arrested in December of 2010. At the time of their arrest, three of the suspects were allegedly on their way to the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in downtown Copenhagen, where police said they planned to “kill as many people as possible.”

Police, who had been wiretapping the three suspects, said they arrested the them after hearing one of them say they were “going to” the newspaper’s offices.

During the arrest, police found a machine gun with a silencer, a revolver and more than 100 bullets. The fourth suspect was arrested in Stockholm and subsequently extradited to Denmark. Danish security officials described the men as “militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Denmark: Mohammed Cartoons Have Lasting Effect

The trial of four men suspected of plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons considered offensive to Islam begins Friday. The cartoon controversy marked a turning point for political cartooning. The editorial headquarters of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen resembles a maximum security facility, with plenty of gates, metal detectors and guards intended to keep undesired guests out.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



France: Abdennour Bidar: Mohammed Merah, A Monster Created by Islam’s Illness

A great French Muslim philosopher asks whether salafist violence — like that which killed the children of Jewish school in Toulouse — is not a symptom of something deeply wrong with the Muslim tradition. A religion that has closed in on itself. To renew Islam today, the challenge of modernity and humanism must be accepted. “Who will have that courage? Who will take this risk?”. The analysis of Fr. Samir Khalil.

Beirut (AsiaNews) — Mohammed Merah, killed at age 23, is infamous as the author of the slaughter of Jewish children at the school of Toulouse (France), on March 19, and a few days earlier the killing of French paratroopers in Montauban. Besieged by police for hours in the house where he was imprisoned, he died in shoot-out on March 22.

Abdennour Bidar is a French Muslim philosopher[1], I have had the joy of knowing. On 23 March, he published an article in the newspaper “Le Monde”, entitled: “Merah, a monstre issu de la Maladie de l’Islam (Merah, a monster created by Islam’s illness).” Given its importance, I would like to present it here.

“When the killer of Toulouse and Montauban was identified as’ Salafi jihadist ‘… the declarations made by Islamic dignitaries in France were careful to avoid any’ amalgam ‘between the radicalism of this individual and the peaceful nature of France’s Muslim community to “clearly” distinguish between Islam and Islamism, Islam and violence. “

However, a serious question remains: “On the whole, can the religion of Islam be declared alien to this type of radical action? … Or perhaps, is this gesture the extreme expression of an illness within Islam itself?”.

Bidar recallsr that in Islam there is a “degeneration” that takes multiple forms: “ritualism, formalism, dogmatism, sexism, antisemitism, intolerance, religious illiteracy or ‘subculture’ are ills which afflict it”.

These diseases are prevalent, but there are also “Muslims morally, socially, spiritually enlightened by their faith.” One can not say therefore that “Islam is essentially intolerant.” You can however say that Islam contains — beside certain moral demands — elements of intolerance that at times reappear in different circumstances. He adds: “All of these ills I have enumerated alter the health of the Islamic culture in France and elsewhere.”

Faced with this situation, Muslims must respond with courage. The author says that Islam must recognize “that this kind of gesture, despite being outside its spirituality and culture, however, is the most serious, most outstanding symptom of the deep crisis that it is experiencing.” And he asks: “Who will have that courage? Who will take this risk?”

One may wonder why the author speaks of courage. The reason is that for “several centuries” Islam has been stuck in its certainties. It does not dare to question itself. It is content to affirm and reaffirm its “truth”. The more it states this with force, the more it reveals its internal weakness. Before a world which contests it, it responds with violence, because it dare not face the outside world, except to declare it evil and corrupt. It “is incapable of self-criticism,” says Bidar.

This is Islam’s illness: “considering with paranoia that any calling into question of its dogmas is a sacrilege. The Koran, the Prophet, Ramadan, halal, etc. ..: even among educated people, cultured, ready for dialogue in many areas, the slightest attempt to call into question these totems of Islam, meets with a final refusal. “

In their majority, Muslims deny anyone to be able to call into question their traditions, their rituals, their customs and habits. They have walled themselves in to their own world, which they worship, declare absolute and sacred. “Most Muslim consciences refuse and even to refuse anyone else the right to discuss what tradition established as untouchably sacred thousands of years ago: rituals, principles, customs, which, however no longer meet all the spiritual needs of the present time. “

They have remained deeply attached to these traditions, set in the 7 th century, in a Bedouin context and “do not realize that ever more frequently even they themselves and their demands have changed in nature.” The values that they claim as authentically Muslim, because faithful to the practice of the “Ancients” (the Salaf, hence the word Salafi), no longer meet the current criteria of all Muslims, established criteria “in the name of completely profane values: the right to difference, tolerance, freedom of conscience. “

And our author adds: “Is it no wonder that in this general climate of frozen and schizophrenic civilization, some ill spirit would transform and radicalize this collective closure into murderous fanaticism?”.

In fact, for the Salafists, the model remains fixed to the past, to the era of the “Prophet”, the seventh century, the model of Bedouin society. The model goes backward and not forward. The true Muslim, according to these Salafists, to find the true essence of Islam, must go back to the past and not look ahead to the future, this “forward” represented by Western culture, is branded as corrupt and depraved.

The average Muslim reacts by saying that these Salafis are the exception, they do not represent true Islam, an Islam that is retrograde, etc. …. At the same time, the Salafis, present themselves as the only “authentic” ones because they are faithful to the “Tradition of the Prophet” (sunnat al-Nabi), and that the Prophet is presented in the Koran as the model par excellence (Koran 33: 21 ). In turn, the average Muslim says that true Islam is peaceful Islam, in accordance with the Koran that says “there is no compulsion in religion” ((Koran 2, 256).

The average Muslim says that “a similar fanaticism is [only] specific to an individual and is the tree that hides the forest of a peaceful Islam.’“

But Bidar raises the question: “What is the real state of the forest in which trees like this take root? Could a healthy culture and a true spiritual education create such monsters?”

These cases are too numerous to be just a tree in the forest! How come there are so many “fanatics” who are often educated people who, far exceeding the Muslim average? How is it that so many Western converts to Islam, or Muslims who live in the West for so long, feel attracted to this extreme?

And even more so, how is it that so many imams and guides, trained in the best and most authentic Islamic centers worldwide, go on to promote this form of Islam?

“Some Muslims — says the author — sense that this type of issue has been delayed for too long. They are gradually becoming aware [over time] that it will become more difficult to remove responsibility from Islam for its fanatics, and behave as if it is enough to draw the distinction between Islam and radical Islam. “

Faced with frequent manifestations of radical Islam it is only too easy to say that this is not Islam. The “Arab spring” that we see developing before our eyes is too often turned into an “Islamic autumn.” And Islamism is likely to bring us back to the civilization of the desert.

And Bidar proclaims: “But for many more Muslims it should now become clear that in this religious culture, the roots of the sick tree are too absorbed and too numerous for it to continue to believe it can be satisfied with simply denouncing its black sheep… ‘Islam must accept the principle of its complete re-establishment or — without doubt — its integration into a broader humanism, which leads eventually to overcome its frontiers and horizons. “

It is therefore a case of superseding itself, “its borders and its own horizon,” says Prof. Abdennour. The choice is this or death. A case of a “complete re-establishment” in a “broader humanism.” And at this point he asks the question: “But will [Islam] agree to die in this way so that a new form of spiritual life can be reborn from its legacy? And where can we find the inspiration for this?”.

As a good philosophy professor, Abdennour (“the servant of the Light”), gives this answer: “As a specialist of Islam’s deepest thoughts, I see that the philosophical and mystical thought of Averroes (1126-1198) and Ibn Arabi (1165-1241) [have] a wisdom that has been lost — the majority of Muslims do not even know their names. However, it is not a case of resurrecting them, or repeating them. It is now too late for that . It is about finding their equivalent for our time. From this point of view, it is not enough to be ready to admit that ultimately there is “a general illness within Islam” and that we must return to these “wisdoms of the past.”

So there is a “general illness of Islam”. For several decades, Islam has been facing a crisis of the strongest nature. Most of the intellectuals and enlightened thinkers have said it and repeated it. Many are trying to emerge from this crisis, but the fundamentalist trend is stronger and blocks any effort to renewal or reform, as Bidar says. The point is that the leap forward is a leap into the unknown, with all the risks this entails, while going backwards appears more certain, in accordance with the Sunnah and it is reassuring. For Bidar, Islam “has to re-invent itself a spiritual culture.” This last word is one of the key words of our philosopher, in all his works: spirituality. Thus we quote his conclusion:

“The challenge is much more important. Islam should come to this completely new lucidity in which to understand that it must reinvent a spiritual culture from the ashes of the material death of its traditions. But, another important problem, it can not do by itself and for itself: today it would serve no purpose to establish an “Islamic humanism” next to a “Western humanism” or “Buddhist humanism.” If the tomorrow of the twenty-first century is spiritual, this will not occur in separate modalities between the different religions and worldviews, but on the basis of a common faith in man. To be found together. “

————————————————————————————————————————

[1] Born in Clermont-Ferrand 13 January 1971 to a French Muslim mother. Educated by his grandfather, an extreme secularist, he sought his path in a reflective and spiritual Islam. I personally met Bidar on July 12, 2007 at the Senate in Paris, during the Colloquium, “East Europe: Dialogue with Islam,” sponsored Christian Poncelet, President of the Senate (see:

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Abdennour-Bidar:-Mohammed-Merah,-a-monster-created-by-Islam’s-illness-24478.html

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



German Civil Servant Says ‘He Did Nothing for 14 Years’

A German civil servant has admitted that he “did nothing for 14 years” in frank retirement email sent to colleagues.

The man, aged 65, sent a farewell message to 500 colleagues on his retirement day after learning his job was axed due to cuts. In the email round robin to other civil servants in Menden, in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia, he boasted that he had earned £613,000 (745,000 euros) for doing no work. “Since 1998, I was present but not really there. So I’m going to be well prepared for retirement — Adieu,” he wrote, in an email leaked to the Westfalen-Post newspaper. The admission that a civil servant could be paid for 14 years without doing any work is embarrassing for Germany because it is leading calls for austerity cuts to the public sector in eurozone countries such as Greece and Spain.

The unnamed man, who has worked in a municipal state surveyor’s office since 1974, accused the municipal authorities of creating inefficient, overlapping and parallel structures, even employing another surveying engineer to do the same job, leaving him with nothing to do. Of course, I well benefited from the freedom that came by to me,” he wrote. He also accused the Menden city authorities of buying unusable computers and software but has since refused to publicly detail his allegations. “I do not wish to say anything else. That email was not intended for public view,” he said. Volker Fleige, the mayor of Menden, said that he had felt a “good dose of rage” when he saw the email, as the employee had not once complained about not having enough to do during his 38 years of employment. “This kind of behaviour is very worrying,” he said. Mr Fleige said that there would be no sanctions against the former civil servant and that following budget cuts his job would not be filled.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Greece: Ex Defense Minister Tsochatzopoulos Arrested

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 11 — Former Greek Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos was arrested on Wednesday in connection with charges of failing to declare a property he owns in central Athens on his origin of wealth form in 2010. Tsochatzopoulos, as daily Kathimerini website reports, was arrested outside his home on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street and taken to the headquarters of the Athens police, known by its acronym GADA, shortly before noon. The minister made no statements to reporters. His arrest came swiftly after the decision by judicial authorities on Wednesday morning to issue an arrest warrant. Officers of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) were immediately dispatched to the former minister’s home. According to sources, warrants have also been issued for the arrest of other individuals alleged to have helped Tsochatzopoulos conceal his assets. Appeals prosecutor Galinos Bris had recommended on Tuesday that Tsochatzopoulos stand trial for declaring an income of almost 251,000 euros, which included two bank loans totaling 150,000 euros, but not the building on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street. Tsochatzopoulos insists the property came into his possession after the form was submitted.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Greece: Bakoyannis Immunity to be Lifted, Asks Supreme Court

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 12 — Greece’s Supreme Court has asked for Parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity of Democratic Alliance leader Dora Bakoyannis so she can be investigated in connection with the alleged non-declaration of 1 million dollars, as daily Kathimerini website reports. The sum relates to money that Bakoyannis’s husband, Isidoros Kouvelos, made on the US stock market and then used to buy a ship in the UK. Kouvelos has been accused of not declaring the amount on the source of wealth form that the couple submitted. Bakoyannis insists that there was no wrongdoing and that she has been victimised. As elections were announced on Wednesday, Parliament has now been dissolved so the Supreme Court’s request will not be examined until after the May 6 elections.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Scandal-Hit Northern League Expels Senate Deputy Speaker

Rosy Mauro latest victim of party-funding furore

(ANSA) — Milan, April 12 — The scandal-hit Northern League on Thursday expelled Senate Deputy Speaker Rosy Mauro for her rumoured role in the alleged financial misdealing that has damaged the image of the party.

The League also expelled former treasurer Francesco Belsito, who is under investigation for allegedly channelling public funds to the family of ex-leader Umberto Bossi, who stepped down a week ago.

Mauro, who has denied all wrongdoing, has been boycotted by Senators since the allegations broke

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Ruby: Ghedini: Berlusconi Payments Not Connected to Trial

(AGI) Rome — Niccolo Ghedini denied any connection between payments made by Silvio Berlusconi and evidence in the Ruby case. Ghedini explained: “In relation to the article published today in Corriere della Sera on certain payments made by Silvio Berlusconi we would like to point out that they are clearly sums paid by bank transfer, fully tracked, from a personal account of the same Prime Minister Berlusconi. The juxtaposition between contributions and the status of witnesses in the so-called Ruby case is absolutely preposterous and devoid of merit. Moreover, it is very normal and unproblematic for there to be economic relations existing between persons suspected or accused persons and witnesses. Just consider the owner of a company with employees or witnesses who are family members or relatives. Actually Mr Berlusconi with his usual generosity decided to help, in total transparency and clearly through his bank, persons who, owing to the hype created on non-existent legal events, are going through times of great family, professional and economic difficulties. So there is nothing in the least illegitimate.”

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



Sweden: Welcome to Ikea-Land: Furniture Giant Begins Urban Planning Project

Would you like to feel that way all the time? The people who run the Swedish home-furnishings behemoth are launching a bold push into the business of designing, building and operating entire urban neighbourhoods. Where once they placed a couch in a living room, the Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. Their bold, high-concept notion of an urban ‘hood could be an important solution to the housing-supply shortages that plague many large cities — but it could take some getting used to.

I recently made the long drive into the vanguard of Ikea’s city-building ambition, in a triangle of post-industrial wasteland surrounded by goods-shipping canals and highway ramps in the far reaches of East London, not far from the 2012 Olympics grounds. Here is the site of Ikea’s effort to bring a very Scandinavian model of urban design and managed living into the English-speaking world.

Amid this 11-hectare expanse of ancient rusting machinery, waste piles and grinding construction equipment is a converted brick sugar warehouse where a team of Swedes and Brits are poring over blueprints and renderings. LandProp Services bought the land in 2009. Their vision is to turn this grey netherworld, once planning approval is done, into a tightly packed neighbourhood they’ll call Strand East.

It will look, once complete, like a reproduction of the sort of historic, chic downtown neighbourhoods you find in the far more central parts of London or Paris, not in this distant expanse of former dockyards and bloodless public-housing project. At its core are straight, car-free streets lined with simple townhouses and ground-floor-access flats in five-storey rows. In the alleyways behind — an imitation of the classic London backstreet, the mews — will be little two- and three-storey homes, all with direct access to the street.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



The New German Problem

Christopher Caldwell knows how to grab our attention:

“Once again, Europe has a country at its centre that is too big for its neighbours. Merely by keeping on its best behaviour, Germany has managed to reawaken the historic ‘German problem’.”

However, as his troubling article for Standpoint makes clear, today’s German problem is very different to its earlier incarnations. While Germany once threatened the sovereignty of its neighbours, the German response to the current crisis in the Eurozone is to sacrifice its own independence on a European altar:

“Germany is in a position where it is going to haemorrhage either cash or sovereignty. The government has decided it would rather haemorrhage sovereignty. Voters will notice it less. They get to accumulate money in the short term. The EU gets to accumulate sovereignty in the long term.”

A transfusion of power from Berlin to Brussels might not be such a bad thing if accompanied by German qualities of discipline and efficiency. However, as Caldwell point out, these qualities are under threat:

“Germany is experiencing more political tumult now than you would expect from perhaps the world’s most successful major economy. The country is clearly moving left.”

By way of evidence, he cites the electoral collapse of the free-market FDP (so much for liberal conservatism), the strength of the Greens and the resurgence of the Left Party (successors to the East German Communists):

“Chancellor Merkel can read the writing on the wall… she must now audition a new cast of coalition partners. The Social Democrats, with whom she shared power to the satisfaction of the public between 2005 and 2009, appear most likely to get the role… Observers speak of a “Social Democratisation” of the CDU.”

What changes Germany changes Europe; and that — one way or another — includes us.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



The Nation as a Family

As well as introducing us to Jonathan Haidt’s work, David Goodhart’s review is an important article in its own right, exposing the extreme universalism of Britain’s cultural elite:

“My fellow partygoers were all too representative of a part of liberal, educated Britain. Shami Chakrabarti, of the human rights group Liberty, has argued: ‘In the modern world of transnational and multinational power we must decide if we are all ‘people’ or all ‘foreigners’ now.’ Oliver Kamm, the centrist commentator, said to me recently that it was morally wrong to discriminate on grounds of nationality, ruling out the ‘fellow citizen favouritism’ that most people think that the modern nation state is based on. And according to George Monbiot, a leading figure of the liberal left, ‘Internationalism… tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington… Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of British people [before the Congolese]. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How… do you distinguish it from racism?’“

The obvious answer — at least to a conservative — is that the nation is analogous to the family. One presumes that Chakrabarti, Kamm and Monbiot feel a particular attachment and responsibility to their own families, but does that mean they consider people in other families to be of lesser worth? Of course not. If such a principle can apply to one’s family, then why can’t it apply to one’s country?

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: 25 Firemen Who Scrambled to Rescue a Seagull From a 3ft-Deep Pond Refused to Wade in Because of Regulations — Leaving it to Joe Public to Save the Bird

It looked like a major emergency — 25 firemen standing at the water’s edge assessing the life-threatening situation before them.

Stranded 200ft out and struggling for survival was the victim they had come to rescue…a seagull.

And if that scenario were not ludicrous enough, there was worse to come.

The firemen were then barred from going into the 3ft-deep water because it was judged to be a health and safety risk.

As crews from five fire engines stood beside the pond in South London for up to an hour, it fell to a member of the public to pull on his waders and rescue the bird, which was caught up in a plastic bag.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: British Muslims Have Given David Cameron an Object Lesson in Democracy

by Parveen Akhtar

In Indonesia, Cameron called for Islam to embrace democracy; the young Muslim voters of Bradford West would agree

In his speech in Jakarta on Thursday, David Cameron told Muslims in the east that “democracy and Islam can flourish together”, the implication being that they often don’t. Especially with a focus on Britain, these comments are not without irony. Exactly two weeks previously, Muslims in a northern city of Britain had exercised their democratic right to vote, helping to elect George Galloway as MP for Bradford West. In so doing, they highlighted that although the issues of Islam, Muslims abroad, the east and the Middle East matter to them, of equal importance is local life.

Galloway’s “Bradford spring” saw politicians and journalists bandying about terms such as “biraderi”, “clan” and “kinship politics”. Biraderi, which literally translates as “patrilineage” is commonly used by Pakistanis to refer to networks of individuals who share a common ancestry. Kinship networks are indeed an important form of social organisation amongst British Pakistanis, a type of internal welfare system for family and blood relations. However, the biraderi politics referred to in comment pieces discussing Bradford West is a very British phenomenon. Biraderi politics in the UK refers to the practices of British politicians of using community leaders in British constituencies with significant Pakistani voters to attain bloc votes. Roy Hattersley, who held the Sparkbrook constituency in Birmingham with a large Pakistani population, once remarked that whenever he saw a Pakistani name on a ballot paper he knew the vote was his.

In Bradford West, Galloway’s supporters are largely young, British-born Bradfordians of Pakistani Muslim descent. They are the children and grandchildren of postwar economic migrants: manual labourers in the textile mills and manufacturing industries of the north. Biraderi-based politics had a successful run for nearly 40 years in these areas, but the children of the pioneer generation, born and bought up in the UK, do not identify with this kind of politics. They believe that community leaders do not engage with the issues that concern them.

The whole point of patronage-based politics is that politicians don’t have to work for their votes. Alienated by this system, these young people were drawn to George Galloway. Galloway’s oratorical skills and abilities in public debate have led some to suggest that Bradford West was a one-off result engineered by a truly individual politician who is a “standard bearer” for British Muslims in a constituency with a large Muslim population. Galloway is certainly regarded as a hero among British Pakistanis, because he is seen as the only politician to challenge the status quo with regards to Iraq and other issues of Muslim concern. This may have won him the election in 2005 in Bethnal Green and Bow, but it would be misleading to think that he won in Bradford West because young British Muslims are preoccupied with the war. They may have an interest in Muslim issues abroad, but international politics plays only one part in their attitudes. What really matters is the unglamorous world of local politics: street lighting, children’s schools, rubbish collection, the problems of vermin and drugs, the lack of opportunities: the bread-and-butter issues of life in the UK.

In electing George Galloway, some Pakistanis made a cognitive leap and reasoned that if Galloway is speaking positively about Muslims abroad, he will also care about them here, and help fight a fight which they believe the older generation of Pakistani community leaders has abandoned, by accepting patronage roles from mainstream politicians who want to stay propped up in their constituencies. Trying to explain the defeat in Bradford West, John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, blamed the party for having no strategy in the area. On the contrary: the party did have a strategy. The problem was that it was an old strategy, based on the belief that community leaders could guarantee the local Labour candidate a win.

What the Bradford West byelection highlighted so dramatically was that Labour, and indeed all the mainstream political parties, can ill-afford to rely on the patronage-based relationships they enjoyed with the older generation of Pakistanis. Young British Pakistani Muslims are actively participating in British democracy. Religious identity and local concerns flourish side by side. Politicians have to earn and not expect their votes. That is democracy, in east and west.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Great-Grandmother, 94, Suffers Horrific Injuries After Falling Out of Hospital Bed Because ‘Elf and Safety Rules Ban Side-Bars

[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]

A great-grandmother looked like she had ‘been beaten up’ after falling out of bed at her care home — because of ‘stupid’ new health and safety rules banning bed bars, her family claims.

Elderly Jane Jones, 94, was rushed to hospital after cutting her head, arm, hand and nose when she fell three-and-a-half feet out of her care home bed.

The sides of her bed had not been put up after a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) warning against using side bars because they restrict ‘free movement’ — allowing Mrs Jones to freely tumble out of bed.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: London Metropolitan University Mulls Alcohol Ban for ‘Conservative Muslim Students’

A London University may become the first in the country to ban alcohol from part of its campus to attract more Muslim students, its Vice Chancellor has said.

London Metropolitan University is considering banning the sale of alcohol from some parts of the campus because a “high percentage” of students consider drinking “immoral,” Prof Malcolm Gillies said. One-fifth of the University’s students are Muslim, and of those the majority are women. It is an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to provide drink-free areas, Prof Gillies told a conference, adding he was “not a great fan of alchol on campus”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



UK: Mehdi Hasan: A Beacon for Islam [Reader Comments Only]

by Rod Liddle

[…]

[Reader comment by YA on 12 April 2012 at 5:03pm]

The phrase “rational message of the Quran” reminds other pearls of islamist propaganda, as “secular muslims”, “islam is indigenous to Britain”, “science of the Quran” and alike.

another method of making news from Islam is calligraphy jihad — “kaffar”, “Maccah”, “Mashaal”, all that countless “Etihads” and “Emirates” looking at you from every wall today.

Basically, the message to unbelievers is “we are here already in big numbers, not only to colonize your lands, but also to suppress and deform your minds”. For which purpose islamists are skilled in hijacking words. And to keep it interesting, they will continue hijacking airplanes. Hasan is much more dangerous than Qatada or Hook, because he has the same goals but also a voice in the UK granted to him by “progressive” traitors — no other conclusion might be made from all of the above. Thanks Rod for Your honesty.

[Reader comment by Redneck on 13 April 2012 at 11:53am]

Henry, YA, Master Cobbett, Nicholas & Wilhelm

Agree with your posts. How do those who support open-door immigration think this is all going to pan out? If you look around, in most parts of the UK, there are significantly increasing numbers of people who have no reason to feel loyalty to our country. Presumably all enjoy our freedoms at present but many, sadly, want to radically change them.

They are being aided by far too many who should be able to see the logical conclusion. Part of this is the ability to castigate any attempt at debate on the value of mass immigration. Any attempt to open this discussion is immediately branded as “racist”: this is effectively the most toxic label with which to be branded in the UK and US now. It silences completely dissent from the “party line”.

I do not see any way “the Left” can integrate these radical-religious groups into mainstream UK life. These groups are intolerant, aggressive and broadly cohesive in their aims. I am yet to be convinced of a single benefit they’ve brought to me or my fellow UK citizens. I don’t hate them but regard their intolerance and clearly expressed distaste for my way-of-life as an unequivocal threat. I fear them but will not take their belligerence passively: I think we (the UK population) are signing our own death warrant, should we allow this to continue.

I am fearful that too many on the Left are patsies and grossly naive if they think this can be a peaceful integration, bringing untold benefits for our country and at the same time cleanse their souls of past-colonial “stains”. They, like the rest of us, are going to rue the day when we “kaffars” are brought to heel.

[Reader comment by AY on 13 April 2012 at 1:49pm]

daniel maris –

de facto all normal people in the country already feel like they are “coalition”. the only way to bring counterjihad movement to political domain is to vote for BFP party. Paul Weston is an example of decency and loyal service to people. Why do I know that — because he says explicitly that he doesn’t mind if even BFP policies and solutions would be “borrowed” by conservatives or whatever. BFP are patriots, not greedy for power, and with clear vision of country’s protection from islamic enslavement. listen to Paul’s latest speech at BFP meeting 7 April — it is remarkable. He is British Geert Widers.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: New £1m Mosque to Open Its Doors to 1,000 Worshippers in Moss Side

A major new mosque to serve Muslims across the region is set to open within weeks after a three-year building project. The £1m Darul Aman Mosque in Moss Side, Manchester, will accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers. Built to serve the revisionist Islam movement Ahmadiyya, it will be the sect’s second largest mosque in western Europe. Work to create the new building, complete with domed roof and minaret, began three years ago, funded mainly by donations from worshippers. The existing building at the site on Greenheys Lane has also been refurbished and incorporated into the new design. The Ahmadiyya movement, which has around 1,000 members in Manchester, focuses on promoting peace and understanding between Islam and other religions. Working with the motto ‘Love for all, hatred for none’, the mosque’s name translates as ‘abode of peace’.

[…]

[JP note: While public houses continue their unwelcome decline in the UK, ‘abodes of peace’ flourish unchecked.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Oxford Child Sex Trafficking Probe Widens as Number of ‘Victims’ Doubles to 50 Girls, Some as Young as 11

A suspected sex trafficking ring in which girls as young as 11 were allegedly targeted was far larger than previously feared, according to police.

As many as 50 young girls have come forward claiming to have been sold for sex in Oxford, detective confirmed today.

It was originally thought that 24 girls, aged between 11 and 16 years, were the only victims but more youngsters have since contacted the police alleging they were also victims.

Oxford police commander, Acting Superintendent Chris Sharp, said more ‘potential victims’ had come forward as a result of the publicity the case had received.

A total of 13 men were arrested when more than 100 police swooped in the raids across Oxford, codenamed Operation Bullfinch.

A group of six Asian men — including two sets of brothers — have been charged by police in connection with allegedly running the sex trafficking ring in the university city known for its dreaming spires.

Since the initial dawn raids last month, officers had made a further two arrests as part of the probe, a police spokesman said.

A 39-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman were detained on suspicion of ‘grooming’ this week.

The man has been freed on police bail to return to a police station in May, pending further inquiries and the woman was released without charge.

Police arrested 13 men in raids across Oxford on Thursday, March 22, after investigating the suspected ring since May last year.

Six men were charged and appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court, sitting at Amersham on Friday, March 30, for a preliminary hearing and were all remanded in custody.

Father of two Kamar Jamil, aged 26 years, of Summertown, Oxford, who is charged with four counts of rape, two counts of arranging the prostitution of a child, one count of making a threat to kill and one count of possession with intent to supply class A drugs, has since been granted conditional bail by the court.

Seven men returned to a police station to answer bail on Thursday and had their bail extended for a further eight weeks.

High Wycombe Magistrates Court heard during the first hearing last month how the accused men are believed to have groomed 24 girls for sex between May 2004 and March, this year.

Four girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were allegedly given alcohol and drugs, and forced to have sex with some of the men.

Clare Tucker, prosecuting, said during that hearing: ‘These charges relate to the sexual exploitation of girls between 11 and 16 across the Oxford area over a period of several years.’

Zeshan Ahmed, 26, is charged with ten counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child.

Anjum Dogar, 30, is charged with one count of conspiring to rape a child, one count of arranging prostitution of a child and one count of trafficking.

His brother, Akhtar, 31, is charged with three counts of rape, one count of conspiring to rape a child, three counts of arranging the prostitution of a child, one count of making a threat to kill and one count of trafficking.

Mohammed Karrar, 37, has been charged with two counts of conspiracy to rape a child and one count of supplying a Class A controlled drug to a child.

His brother Bassan, a 32-year-old father of two, is charged with one count of raping a child in 2006.

Detective Inspector Simon Morton, of Thames Valley Police, said at the time of the arrests: ‘We are working closely with social services to make sure the young girls involved are safe.’

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Stamp Collectors Shouldn’t Keep Their Lonely Pleasures to Themselves

by Harry Mount

Philatelists are up in arms about the Royal Mail for a very odd reason — because they’re issuing too many stamps. This year, with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, the Royal Mail are releasing more stamps than ever before. Each collector has to get — or feels like they have to get — the complete set: postcard, international stamp and recorded delivery stamp. The expense, they say, is getting too much. Military memorabilia collectors don’t complain when a cache of Waterloo artefacts appears on the market. And addicts — stamp collectors, like all collectors, are addicts, usually male ones — should be delighted when their drug of choice is made more widely available. In any case, stamps are not for sealing away in mausoleum-like albums, but for sending, and for looking at in their real habitat: on the tear-drenched envelope from your first girlfriend, or the last postcard your granny sent from Hastings.

How nice it is to look at the latest issue from the Royal Mail — a charming collection of UK landmarks from A to Z. Presumably, those raging philatelists would have preferred a collection that went from A and stopped at B. The pleasure in the landmarks collection comes from the same quality that brings the collectors such pain — their number and variety. Some of the heritage greatest hits are there: the Roman Baths in Bath, York Minster, the White Cliffs of Dover. But, because the collection is dictated by the random nature of the alphabet, there are also some oddities. Not many tourists make their way to Manchester Town Hall — one of the featured sites — but it is one of the great municipal buildings of Britain. Inky, bristling and spiky, Alfred Waterhouse’s 1877 Town hall is English Gothic Revival at its most self-confident; it represents the British Empire’s trading cities at their most prosperous; and it takes you back — stamps have an inherently nostalgic quality; all those weeping girlfriends and grannies in Hastings again — to a time when municipal government was a vital, reforming force for good, not the bloated, council tax collection service they now are.

Not everything in the landmark collection is as distinguished as Manchester Town Hall. Handsome as Narrow Water Castle, County Down, is, it isn’t out of the ordinary: a plain, 16th century, crenellated tower house, familiar throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic. And the Kursaal in Southend is, almost at its own admission, a joke building — the first ever theme park, built in 1901, with the first female lion tamer, it is frothy Edwardian classicism gone haywire, with Dutch gables cheerfully matched with a baroque dome and banded columns. Illuminate it with candy-striped lighting, stick a ten-pin bowling lane inside, and you have gloriously silly British seaside architecture at its best.

It would be perverse to say that British architecture ever hit the original heights of the Italian Renaissance (although our Gothic cathedrals and country houses are unmatched). But we are unique in so many other architectural fields: in our seaside buildings, in the range and quality of our medieval castles, in our obsession with follies. More than any other country, we have mined the past to produce original confections of ancient styles borrowed from other countries. Only in Britain do you get this odd mixture of form clashing so happily with function: with a tea-house disguised as a pagoda, say, as in Sir William Chambers’s 18th century folly in Kew Gardens; or a prison wrapped in the skin of a medieval castle, as at Victorian Holloway Prison in north London.

Portmeirion, Gwynedd, also featured in the stamps, is the perfect example. Here in north Wales — natural home to mammoth invaders’ castles, nestling next to small native, Gothic and Italianate chapels — Clough Williams-Ellis built an architectural historian’s dream model village. A mock Gothic castle huddles next to a baroque church tower, alongside an Ionic portico and a Bavarian onion dome. A crazy combination — utterly unsuited to the Welsh climate, and foreign in all its influences, except one: the sometimes infuriating, sometimes engaging, British desire to entertain. As the summer season begins, a lot of these places, like Portmeirion, will fill up and lose some of their appeal. It’s hard to appreciate Roman and Regency Bath, when you’re swamped by Jane Austen obsessives and French teenagers with their lethal, swinging rucksacks.

But plenty of Britain’s unsung beauties are empty, even at the height of August. On high summer days, I have had Pembrokeshire beaches and the chapel of Queen’s College, Oxford — an under-appreciated college, also on the Royal Mail list — to myself. It is when they are empty that buildings and natural scenery are at their most affecting, with a near-religious power to calm and enchant. Stamp collectors know that power of lonely pleasure better than most. But there’s no shortage of lonely pleasures to go round, and no need to ration them or selfishly keep them to yourself.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: The Hollow Men of British Politics

by Melanie Phillips

A poll of voters in the south London borough of Bromley, taken by the Times (£) to gauge support for Labour’s Ken Livingstone and the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral contest, is fascinating — not just for what those polled were saying about the two candidates but also about the Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron:

‘“All the time things were going quite well, Mr Cameron seemed quite impressive,” Graham said. “But as soon as they don’t, he doesn’t come across so well…When things go wrong he doesn’t seem to know what to do. He pretends he’s a man of the people but he’s not.”

‘“We need a strong leader, another Margaret Thatcher. At least she had the courage of her convictions. She’s like Boris Johnson, but in a different way. In a dress,” Gary said.’

This chimes with the opinion expressed in the Telegraph by Don Porter, former chairman of the National Conservative Convention and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Board, who writes that the party has lost sight of its true values and disconnected itself from its grass-roots through a ‘loss of clarity, principle and policy direction’. Such opinions will undoubtedly be causing concern to the Tory leadership — but on past form, are unlikely to lead them to draw the right conclusion. This is that their entire strategy of decontaminating the brand to regain power was totally misconceived. As I have been writing consistently since this strategy was first developed when the Tories under Cameron were in opposition, it was based on a fundamental misreading of why they had lost the previous three general elections, and a corresponding misreading of why Tony Blair had won them.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: University to Have Alcohol-Free Areas for Muslims

A university Vice-Chancellor is planning to ban the sale of alcohol in parts of the campus because some Muslim students believe it is “evil” and “immoral”.

Prof Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University said he wants to create alcohol free areas on campus out of “cultural sensitivity”. About a fifth of students at the university come from Muslim families — many of them young women from traditional homes. For many of them, the drinking culture among students marred rather than heightened their student experience, he said. Prof Gillies, an eminent Australian music scholar, said that he was consulting with staff and students about creating alcohol-free areas on the universty’s two campuses as part of a major redesign. It is expected that the informal dry areas will be created within the next six months.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Watchdog Criticizes Scotland Yard Over Phone Hacking Scandal

An inquiry into senior police officials in connection with the News of the World phone hacking scandal has found no evidence of corruption. The watchdog, however, criticized the officials for unprofessional conduct.

An independent watchdog on Thursday rejected allegations of corruption against senior former officials at London’s Metropolitan Police in connection the News Corp. phone hacking scandal, while criticizing them for using poor judgment and becoming too cozy with journalists.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said that senior people at Scotland Yard had been “oblivious to the perception of conflict” when they hired former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis as media advisor.

Wallis joined the Metropolitan Police in 2009, shortly after leaving the Sunday tabloid, which faced mounting allegations that it had hacked the voicemails of public figures. The former deputy editor was arrested in July 2011 in connection with the hacking scandal.

“It is clear to me that professional boundaries became blurred, imprudent decisions taken and poor judgment shown by senior police personnel,” IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists Bar Former Mubarak Regime Officials

Parliament passed the bill yesterday but the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces must still approve it. Any prime minister or top official from the Mubarak regime is barred from active politics for ten years. Various presidential candidates could be excluded.

Cairo (AsiaNews/ Agencies) — Egypt’s parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, has approved a law that would bar members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s party from running for office. Anyone who has served as prime minister or was a senior member of the old regime would be barred from political activity for 10 years.

Adopted yesterday, the law still needs to be ratified by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), but the Justice Minister has already described it as unconstitutional.

The new law comes a few days after Omar Suleiman, a former vice president and intelligence chief under Mubarak announced that he was seeking the presidency in the upcoming elections. In order to attract the support of secular votes, he said he was running to prevent Egypt from becoming an Islamic state. If adopted, the law could jeopardise May’s presidential elections.

Experts say the race is dominated by Islamist parties and former officials in Mubarak’s regime and his National Democratic Party, who have come out of the shadow after a year of silence. Pro-democracy parties, which led the Jasmine Revolution, are de facto excluded from the election.

Out of 23 candidates, only three moderate figures have any chance of challenging the stranglehold of the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and old Mubarak cronies. They are: Khaled Ali, a lawyer and human rights activist and a former director of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights, Ayman Abd el Aziz Nour, head of the El-Ghad Party (a liberal secular party) who first challenged Mubarak in the sham 2005 election, and Amr Moussa, a former secretary general of the Arab League and a onetime foreign minister under Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood is putting forward Khairat and l-Shater, a rich businessman and the party’s treasurer who was released from prison in 2011.

Salafists are presenting Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. A fixture on national TV, he is one of the radical Muslim leaders with the largest followings, especially among young Islamists who recently organised demonstrations across the country against his exclusion from the race on a technicality.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, secretary general of the Arab Medical Association and a former member and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, is one of the independent candidates.

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



Egypt Candidate: Moderate Islamist, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fatouh was a prominent figure within Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood but was forced to leave after he declared his intention last year to stand for the presidency.

At that stage, the mainstream Islamist group, which was keen to show it did not seek to monopolise the new political scene, had said it would only nominate candidates for the parliamentary vote. Dr Aboul Fotouh, a respected moderate who is head of the Arab Medical Union, decided to run for office as an independent. Speaking to a crowd of thousands of supporters after handing in his candidacy papers in early April, he presented a presidential platform focusing on social justice with plans for development and security. “We can realise our dreams and the co-operation of the great Egyptian people,” he said, promising to make use of the country’s “most valuable source of wealth”, human potential, if elected. “Let us work as groups, not as individuals, the era of the all-inspiring president and all-knowing leader is over,” he added. His plans include establishing a minimum standard income, restoring security within 100 days of taking office, re-equipping the Egyptian military from sources not funded by the United States and appointing a young vice-president, aged under 45. He has attracted the support of many Muslim Brotherhood youth who have grown weary of the group’s hierarchical structure and hostility to change. This remains a source of contention with the Brotherhood leadership. It has now put up its own presidential candidate and demands that members of the group support him.

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Libya: So it Was All About Oil After All!

Last year NATO countries bombed Libya, demanding “democracy” in the country. But now it’s clear it was all about oil and it’s not like the Americans and Brits are going to be democratic about it, and share those spoils equally with France and Italy.

So… oil giants Total from France and ENI from Italy are just going to have to wait in the sidelines while the hungry American and British big boys take their juicy oil slices first… ExxonMobil, Chevron, Texaco, BP, Shell…

It’s no surprise then to read in The Wall Street Journal that the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), together with the puppet Libyan “authorities” are launching “investigations” into both companies’ “financial irregularities” in their shady dealings during the forty-two years of Gaddafi’s power. Now who would have imagined this! An Italian oil company involved in kick-backs? Corruption at the highest echelons of the French oil industry?!? Tsk, tsk!!! Unheard of…! The US and UK would never do something like that!! Just ask Enron, ask Halliburton, ask BP…

Clearly, major oil companies will now be judged on how close or how far they were from the Gaddafi’s, and on how much their respective countries contributed to last year’s war effort. Perhaps even on how much and how far and wide they shared their huge ill-obtained profits. It seems that scorecards must now be completed…

It’s worth remembering that at the height of the Libyan fighting last year, the “rebels” found the necessary time, between their “freedom fighting” shifts, to set up a new national oil company. As Bloomberg reported on 22nd March 2011, “The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.”

And just as big oil and big finance always dance together, that report then went on to explain that “The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, or Abelard and Eloise, Oil and Money are probably the West’s most universal and paradigmatic duo. Their love affair has been going strong for many decades.

Oil is a mighty powerful global business. Oil companies can make or break governments and entire countries. Nationalizing a foreign oil company like Iran did in the early fifties can put the CIA and MI6 spy agencies into full-gear ousting democratically elected governments and replacing them with “more suitable leaders’.

Trading oil in any currency other than the US Dollar as Saddam Hussein dared to do in November 2002 can get you invaded just a few months later. Even weak Argentina’s finger-pointing at illegal British oil escapades in the Falkland Islands resulted in the Royal Navy dispatching super destroyers and nuclear subs to the region…

Libya is the world’s 9th largest oil producing country and holds Africa’s largest oil reserve. Gaddafi was planning to introduce a new currency for Libyan and regional oil: the Gold Dinar which, contrary to the US Dollar, would have had true intrinsic value. Gaddafi’s central bank, in turn, was fully independent of the global financial usury-based system presently in global free-fall. Gaddafi was using oil revenues for his own people and not for the US/UK/EU/Israeli war efforts in the Middle East and further afield.

So, when the Persian Gulf became the very, very hot spot it is today, the global oil cartel together with the mega-bankers who shuffle those trillions upon trillions of Petro-Dollars all over the world, had to make sure that their respective governments would put their military on red-alert, as the oil giants scrambled for new sources…

The focus is increasingly on oil fields lying in “kinder, gentler” parts of the world: the Falkland Islands, the Brazilian Coasts, and Libya that lies smack in the middle of that easy-to-attack “it’s our-bloody-Mediterranean-Sea” North African Coast.

Last year’s destruction of Libya was a reflection of just this type of complex behind-the-scenes engineering of all these key oil, financial, military, media and political players. It’s the kind of Real News that seldom if ever hits the headlines… just because it is the Real News!

During the better part of last year until the public execution of Muhamar Gaddafi by the Western Power’s proxies inside Libya — i.e., mercenaries, criminals, thugs and CIA/MI6/Mossad agents, aka “Freedom Fighters” — the Western media repeated time and again how very bad Gaddafi had suddenly become overnight; how the poor Libyans were clamouring for “democracy”; and how the heroic Libyan “freedom fighters” based, armed, trained and financed in Benghazi were battling to “liberate” Libya and impose Clintonite “democracy” and “human rights”. Actually these “freedom fighters” overshot their runway: now that Libya is finally “free”, they’re asking for the Eastern Cyrenaica region to secede from the rest of the country.

Was civil war part of the West’s plan for Libya? Last year, after securing full UN backing via Resolution No. 1973 allowing NATO air strikes to devastate the country and impose the most violent regime change seen in recent times, NATO-backed thugs have plunged the country into chaos.

As the “Libya Business News” publication mentions on Tuesday, “About 3,000 people gathered in Benghazi last month to announce that Barca (Cyrenaica) was an autonomous region within a federal state. Barca is at the centre of Libya’s oil industry, with two thirds of production and three quarters of reserves there.” It is one of the three historic regions into which the country is divided. And while Barca has the most oil, the other two is home to two thirds of the population. So the question now is how the rich revenues from rich oil reserves will be “democratically” distributed among the population.

Adrian Salbuchi for RT

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Osama Bin Laden’s Three Wives and Two Daughters to be Deported to Saudi Arabia, After Ruling by Pakistani Court

Osama Bin Laden’s family will be forced to take a flight from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia next Wednesday, following a court decision in the capital of Islamabad.

Two of the terrorist leader’s former wives — Khairiah Sabar and Siham Sabar are Saudi nationals, while the third — Amal Ahmed Abdul Fateh is from Yemeni.

According to their lawyer Aamir Khalil, the relatives of the dead terrorist leader will be deported as soon as their 45 day house arrest was served.

All three, along with Bin Laden’s 17 and 21 year old daughters, were placed under house arrest earlier this month having pleaded guilty to living illegally in Pakistan.

Just a few days ago the Al Arabiya television network released footage from inside the ‘guest house’ in Islamabad, where Bin Laden’s family members have been holed up .

Toddlers and children are seen playing with teddy bears and cricket bats, while the three widows of Bin Laden look on or read the Koran.

But the boarded-up windows and a heavy armed presence outside given an indication that while the place may serve as a home for the occupants, it is also a prison for Osama’s relatives.

It is still not clear whether the Yemeni widow, Amal Ahmed Abdul Fateh, would stay in Saudi Arabia or would be transported on to her own country of origin.

According to CNN a source familiar with the widows’ case said the Yemeni government has expressed a willingness to let Fateh return to her homeland.

The three former wives of Bin Laden have been in Pakistani custody since U.S. Navy SEALs raided the terrorist’s compound in Abbottabad and killed the al Qaeda leader in May 2011.

All the women confessed to impersonation, illegal entry into Pakistan and staying illegally, so a trial was not required. Mr Khalil said his clients would not appeal the ‘lenient” sentence.

Fateh told Pakistani investigators that Bin Laden spent years on the run in Pakistan after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, moving from one safe house to another and fathering four children.

A deposition taken from Fateh gives the clearest picture yet of bin Laden’s life while international forces hunted him. He and his family move from city to city with the help of Pakistanis who arranged ‘everything’ for them. she is reported as saying.

She told police she never applied for a visa during her stay in Pakistan.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]

Russia


Leading Member of Moscow’s Muslim Community Killed

Metin Mekhtiev was from Azerbaijan. Suspicions of yet another racially motivated attack perpetrated by militant ultranationalist. In 2011, 21 murders were racially motivated.

Moscow (AsiaNews) — A leading exponent of the Russian Muslim community was stabbed and killed in Moscow near the Belorusskaja station. Many suspect that the crime was perpetrated by militant right-wing ultranationalists. Metin Mekhtiev (pictured) was a native of Azerbaijan. According to preliminary reports, on the night between 10 and 11 April, he was waiting for the arrival of his wife and son of two months at the station. Ria Novosti agency police sources report that his body bore several stab wounds on the neck and face.

Mekhtiev was head of international department of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Russia, an organization founded in the Federation in 1991 with support from the Saudi embassy and banned by the Russian Supreme Court last year. According to the group, the judges’ initiative was instigated by the Russian secret services. According to website Aze.az, Mekhtiev worked with all major Muslim organizations in the country and was very active in working with students and young people from the Caucasus. “It is a brutal, barbaric and medieval murder,” reported the head of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Moscow, Abdul-Wahid Niyazov, according to whom the man was attacked by a gang of five persons, one of which was a young woman.

For now, the police have released no details on the possible motive for the killing, but among the Russian bloggers many support the hypothesis that crime is linked to the ultra-nationalists.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia experienced a sharp rise in nationalist sentiment. Racially motivated violence killed 21 “non-Slavic-looking” people in 2011 alone, a figure down from 42 similar murders recorded in 2010, according to data organization Sova.

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

South Asia


Indonesia: West Java: Yasmin Church Members Celebrate Easter Underground

Forced by extremists and the authorities to meet in secret, churchgoers still hold Holy Week services, meeting at various private homes to avoid attacks. The head of the Synod of Indonesian Churches appeals to the authorities to respect religious freedom.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Against a background of threats from Muslim extremists and great pressure from the authorities of the city of Bogor (West Java), especially the major, the members of a Protestant community, the Taman Yasmin Church (GKI), celebrated Holy Week and Easter services in secret, opting to meet and hold services in different private homes. In one case, at least 78 GKI members met in great secret on Easter Sunday for an underground ceremony to mark the Resurrection of Jesus. “This time, the secretary general of the Synod of Indonesian Churches (PGI), Rev Gomar Gultom was also present,” a GKI spokesperson told AsiaNews.

Since church members have been prevented from holding their services in public, prayers and celebrations have been held underground. Although churchgoers “have been targeted by hard-liners,” the police has refused to protect them, GKI spokesperson Bona Sigalingging said. “This is really a paradox. When we informed them [the police] of the place where we wanted to worship, fundamentalists would easily find us and attack us,” Sigalingging explained, without eliciting any police intervention.

Speaking to his fellow Christians, Rev Gomar Gultom expressed his strong appreciation for their strong commitment to practice their Christian faith despite intense attacks and violence.

The Protestant leader also made an appeal to Bogor authorities to uphold the law and protect human rights, including religious freedom.

The Yasmin Protestant Church has been the scene of open violations of the law and the principle of religious freedom by Bogor mayor Diani Budiarto. In total contempt for a ruling by Indonesia’s Supreme Court in favour of the local Christian community, he has prevented Christians from holding their services.

In spite of the fact that it was built by the book and had all the building permits necessary for places of worship, the authorities seized the church.

In October, the mayor ordered the security forces to remove worshippers who, deprived of their church, had opted to hold their services in the street. Now even that has been denied to them.

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



Pakistan: Forced Conversions Spark Anger

Lahore, 13 April (AKI/Dawn) — Prof. Ashok Kumar is not afraid of taking a prominent stance on the Rinkle Kumari issue.

Fear, he says, is secondary compared to what is happening to the Hindu community in Pakistan, in particular Sindh. “We can’t just sit back and watch what our community is going through,” he says.

The recent case of Rinkle Kumari is not altogether an uncommon occurrence. Several young Hindu girls have been kidnapped in the dead of night from their homes, and dragged off to be forcibly converted to Islam, as they and their family members have later alleged. Usually this conversion is accompanied by a signing of the ‘nikahnama’ which strengthens the kidnappers’ side of the story, but still does not provide any kind of proof whether the marriage was done under duress or not.

On Thursday, protesters belonging to the Hindu and Christian communities in Lahore, accompanied by representatives of the Joint Action Committee (a group of social organisations), gathered outside the Lahore Press Club and shouted slogans in response to the slow treatment of the case, venting anger at religious fascism, forcible conversion, and a lack of support from the government.

Ashok Kumar, a professor of Sindhi language in the Linguistics Department of the Punjab University, is one of the protesters.

There are others too, students, professionals, young women, social workers, but the turnout has not been very high.

“We only decided this last night so couldn’t inform everyone on such short notice,” said Shahtaj Qizalbash from AGHS Legal Aid.

But Tanveer Jahan, also a member of the JAC, gives a more direct reply. “When it comes to minority rights, or any such sensitive issue, one just cannot expect any mass participation in Pakistan,” she says.

“You can just forget about the masses.” She says that both sides of the picture are grim — one side which does not support, and only watches the situation passively, while the other side which does come out on the streets but does so for its own vested interests and exploitation. “It is social workers like us who are stuck in the middle.”

“Down with mullah-ism!” shout the protesters, and a small number of drivers slow down on the busy section of the Simla Hill roundabout to see what the commotion is about. While many simply shake their heads and carry on, some are affected nevertheless, like Mehr Muhammad, a contractor.

“It is a sin to take away anyone’s rights like that,” he says, as he stands by watching the protest. “No religion allows this trampling of religious freedom. These girls should not be kidnapped and converted through force…how is it even conversion?” he questions, his brow furrowing over the worrying situation.

But another man has a completely different opinion. “Isn’t it a blessing if anyone is being converted into a Muslim?” he questions.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected two petitions, one filed by Rinkle’s husband, and the other filed by the father of another Hindu girl Dr Lata, from Jacobabad.

The two wanted to meet the girls, but the apex court observed that the two girls should be allowed to make a decision on whether they want to go with their parents or husbands based on a freewill therefore they were sent to Panah, a shelter home run by human rights lawyer Dr Majida Rizvi, where they will stay isolated till the court summons them again. The matter is to be taken up again on April 18.

The matter has been tangled yet further with the alleged involvement of Mian Mithu, a PPP MNA from Ghotki, where Rinkle was kidnapped, and also one Naveed Shah, who was a close associate of Mithu.

“Even when Nafisa Shah and some other PPP MNAs tried to move a resolution against this issue in the assembly, Mian Mithu did not support it,” says Tanveer Jahan. “I simply ask if an FIR has already been lodged against these two then why are they not under arrest?”

Another girl, Asha is still missing and Dr Ashok says: “The state of the Hindu girls being converted is terrible. Since January there have been at least 47 kidnappings. Another point to observe is that this is only happening to young girls, never boys or elders.”

Peter Jacob, worker for minorities’ rights, says this forcible conversion is not restricted to just Hindus and in Sindh. “In the last five years, there have been up to 400 to 500 conversions of Christians. And something equally horrifying, I know of: forcible circumcision of young men in Punjab and one in Balochistan…where are we going, one asks.”

In feudal terms, owning another party’s woman is having the upper hand. That coupled with marriage, gives the perpetrator more strength. No one knows what becomes of many of the girls after being married. Meanwhile, many Hindus feel that they are simply being harassed so they leave the country forever.

“But this is not just an issue restricted to Sindh,” says one. “This protest is meant to be calling out to the whole nation…Why does no one raise their voices for our rights too?” he asks.

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

Far East


China Censors Bo Xilai Debate, But Chinese Work Around it

In a sign of how sensitive the issue is for the ruling Communist Party, censors blocked online searches for the name of Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party boss who fell from grace this year amid scandal.

Chinese on Wednesday streamed onto the Internet in forbidden debate over China’s biggest political upheaval since the 1980s after a top official was flung from the inner circle of power and his wife detained over the murder of a British businessman. In a sign of how intensely sensitive the issue is for the ruling Communist Party, censors continued to block online searches for the name of Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party boss cast out of the party’s Central Committee, according to state media reports late on Tuesday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Defectors Link North Korea’s Weapons Program to Food Shortage

North Koreans living in South Korea say the North’s military program is responsible for the country’s poverty and hunger and they fear their countrymen in the North will not even find out the mission failed.

North Korea’s failed attempt to launch a rocket into space on Friday is a grim reminder to those who’ve fled the repressive nation that nothing has changed under the leadership of Kim Jong Un. Some defectors had hoped that when Kim, who is only in his late 20s, assumed power last December that the lives of ordinary North Koreans might improve. That’s because as a boy, Kim studied in Switzerland and might have learned a thing or two about human rights.

But that appears not to be the case, says Han Gi-hong of the Committee for Democratization in North Korea, an organization comprised of refugees in Seoul.

“Kim Jong Un has no interest in the lives of the people. He is only interested in the survival of the regime,” he said during a press conference on Friday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


ENI Nigeria Facilities Attacked by Oil Militants

MEND rebels say well and pipeline ‘destroyed’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 13 — Oil militants in Nigeria on Friday attacked facilities belonging to the Italian fuels giant ENI.

The rebels, belonging to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said they had “destroyed” a well and a pipeline run by ENI subsidiary Agip.

ENI confirmed the attack and said it was trying to establish the amount of damage.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Students From Pakistan Face Tough Tests to Enter Britain as Four in Ten Applicants Could be Bogus

Every Pakistani student wanting to come to Britain will face tough new tests after a pilot scheme found that as many as four in ten applicants may be bogus.

Home Office figures have revealed that thousands of student visa applicants cannot speak English, despite claiming they want to study here.

Home Secretary Theresa May has now decreed that anyone wanting to come to study in Britain from Pakistan must be interviewed by border agency officials before a visa is granted.

An estimated 10,000 students apply to come to the country from Pakistan every year.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Boris Blocks Christian Anti-Gay Poster Campaign on London Buses That Claimed Homosexuality Could be Cured

Boris Johnson has blocked Christian campaigners from using advertisements on London buses to promote their message on homosexuality.

The London mayor personally vetoed the campaign, which was due to start next week, because he said it suggested gay people can be cured.

The Christian adverts, which mimic an initiative by pro-gay group Stonewall, were intended to advertise ‘gay conversion’ through therapy.

[…]

The adverts were expected to appear for two weeks on five routes covering top tourist destinations including St Paul’s Cathedral and Oxford Street.

They were a direct response to Stonewall’s most recent campaign, which suggested being gay is innate and unchangeable.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Britain’s Christians Are Being Vilified, Warns Lord Carey

Christians are being “persecuted” by courts and “driven underground” in the same way that homosexuals once were, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

Lord Carey says worshippers are being “vilified” by the state, treated as “bigots” and sacked simply for expressing their beliefs.

The attack is part of a direct appeal to the European Court of Human Rights before a landmark case on religious freedom.

In a written submission seen by The Daily Telegraph, the former leader of more than 70?million Anglicans warns that the outward expression of traditional conservative Christian values has effectively been “banned” in Britain under a new “secular conformity of belief and conduct”.

His comments represent one of the strongest attacks on the impartiality of Britain’s judiciary from a religious leader.

He says Christians will face a “religious bar” to employment if rulings against wearing crosses and expressing their beliefs are not reversed.

Lord Carey argues that in “case after case” British courts have failed to protect Christian values. He urges European judges to correct the balance.

The hearing, due to start in Strasbourg on Sept 4, will deal with the case of two workers forced out of their jobs over the wearing of crosses as a visible manifestation of their faith. It will also take in the cases of Gary McFarlane, a counsellor sacked for saying that he may not be comfortable in giving sex therapy to homosexual couples, and a Christian registrar, who wishes not to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

Lord Carey, who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002, warns of a “drive to remove Judaeo-Christian values from the public square”. Courts in Britain have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians”.

They show a “crude” misunderstanding of the faith by treating some believers as “bigots”. He writes: “In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by State bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong.

“It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good.”

He outlines a string of cases in which he argues that British judges have used a strict reading of equality law to strip the legally established right to freedom of religion of “any substantive effect”.

“It is now Christians who are persecuted; often sought out and framed by homosexual activists,” he says. “Christians are driven underground. There appears to be a clear animus to the Christian faith and to Judaeo-Christian values. Clearly the courts of the United Kingdom require guidance.”

He says the human rights campaign has gone too far and become a political agenda.

Keith Porteous-Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: “The idea that there is any kind of suppression of religion in Britain is ridiculous.

“Even in the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to religious freedom is not absolute — it is not a licence to trample on the rights of others. That seems to be what Lord Carey wants to do.”

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]



Last Hope for the Left

by David Goodhart

The liberal, secular world view may hold sway over western elites, but it is struggling to answer the conservative challenge

Elite colleges produce WEIRD people: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic

The Righteous Mind

by Jonathan Haidt (Allen Lane, £20)

Together

by Richard Sennett (Allen Lane, £25)

A few years ago I was at a 60th birthday party for a well-known Labour MP. Many of the leading thinkers of the British centre-left were there and at one point the conversation turned to the infamous Gordon Brown slogan “British jobs for British workers,” from a speech he had given a few days before at the Labour conference. The people around me entered a bidding war to express their outrage at Brown’s slogan which was finally triumphantly closed by one who declared, to general approval, that it was “racism, pure and simple.” I remember thinking afterwards how odd the conversation would have sounded to most other people in this country. Gordon Brown’s phrase may have been clumsy and cynical but he didn’t actually say British jobs for white British workers.

In most other places in the world today, and indeed probably in Britain itself until about 25 years ago, such a statement about a job preference for national citizens would have seemed so banal as to be hardly worth uttering. Now the language of liberal universalism has ruled it beyond the pale. My fellow partygoers were all too representative of a part of liberal, educated Britain. Shami Chakrabarti, of the human rights group Liberty, has argued: “In the modern world of transnational and multinational power we must decide if we are all ‘people’ or all ‘foreigners’ now.” Oliver Kamm, the centrist commentator, said to me recently that it was morally wrong to discriminate on grounds of nationality, ruling out the “fellow citizen favouritism” that most people think that the modern nation state is based on. And according to George Monbiot, a leading figure of the liberal left, “Internationalism… tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington… Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of British people [before the Congolese]. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How… do you distinguish it from racism?”

It is not only people on the left who think like this. On a recent BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze programme about development aid, the former Tory cabinet minister and born-again liberal Michael Portillo had this to say: “It is quite old fashioned to think about national borders, and rather nationalistic to say we must help people who are only moderately poor because they happen to be in the UK rather than helping people who are desperately poor because they happen to be a long way away.” All of the above are, in the formulation of a group of North American cultural psychologists, WEIRD-they are from a sub-culture that is Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. They are, as we have seen, universalists, suspicious of strong national loyalties. They also tend to be individualists committed to autonomy and self-realisation. Balancing that they are usually deeply concerned with social justice and unfairness and also suspicious of appeals to religion or to human nature to justify any departure from equal treatment-differences between men and women, for example, are regarded as cultural not biological.

This is what one might call the secular liberal baby boomer worldview and it is in many ways an attractive and coherent one. It is also for historical reasons, to do with empire, unusually ingrained in the British cultural and political elite, the default position in much of the education system (especially higher education) and the public services more generally, plus significant parts of the media. The Daily Mail is dedicated to a Kulturkampf against it precisely because it is so powerful. In the neat slogan about British politics since about 1975, “the right won the economic argument, the left won the cultural argument.” But is the left now losing the cultural argument too? Or, to put it another way, is the WEIRD elite coming up against some of the boundaries of everyday morality?

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           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Liberals or Conservatives: Who’s Really Close-Minded?

by Andrew G. Biggs

Conservatives understand their ideological opposite numbers far better than do liberals.

To be “close-minded” is, according to the dictionary, to be “intolerant of the beliefs and opinions of others; stubbornly unreceptive to new ideas.” To be conservative and close-minded, according to popular portrayal, is a redundancy-a package deal that liberals can and do take for granted. But University of Virginia Professor Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Righteous Mind doesn’t simply suggest that conservatives may not be as close-minded as they are portrayed. It proves that the opposite is the case, that conservatives understand their ideological opposite numbers far better than do liberals.

Haidt’s research asks individuals to answer questionnaires regarding their core moral beliefs-what sorts of values they consider sacred, which they would compromise on, and how much it would take to get them to make those compromises. By themselves, these exercises are interesting. (Try them online and see where you come out.) But Haidt’s research went one step further, asking self-indentified conservatives to answer those questionnaires as if they were liberals and for liberals to do the opposite. What Haidt found is that conservatives understand liberals’ moral values better than liberals understand where conservatives are coming from. Worse yet, liberals don’t know what they don’t know; they don’t understand how limited their knowledge of conservative values is. If anyone is close-minded here it’s not conservatives. Haidt has a theory regarding why this is the case, based on the idea that conservatives speak a broader and more encompassing language of six moral values while liberals embrace three of the six in a narrow set of core values. I see nothing wrong with this explanation.

But let me present a complementary, more practical explanation: If you’re a conservative who lives in a major metropolitan area or who simply reads the New York Times, you get used to being outnumbered by liberals. Liberals, by contrast, get used to being surrounded by other liberals, both in person and in culture and the media. As a result, liberals speak their minds freely, often in ways that are harshly condemnatory of conservatives and their stands on issues. As a conservative, you can defend your values against friends and acquaintances who essentially just called you stupid and evil or you can keep quiet.

Most conservatives, most of the time, choose the latter. That is, they stay in the closet to avoid being accused of hating the poor, gays, or polar bears. As a result, liberals aren’t gaining any commensurate information. In fact, the silence of their conservative friends helps reinforce their views. Much of the time, liberals’ views of conservative positions and values are simply a caricature that bear little resemblance to what conservatives actually think and, more importantly, why they think it. But during that time when conservatives’ mouths are shut, their ears are open. They’re listening and understanding what liberals think-and what liberals think of them. Conservatives understand their own world-whether it’s of religious organizations, talk radio, Fox News, or whatever-along with the New York Times, network news world of liberals. That helps explain why a conservative’s reaction to a liberal critique often isn’t “you’re wrong.” It’s “you don’t even know what I’m trying to say.” Haidt’s research seems to show that this reaction is warranted.

Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



The ‘Bus Advert Storm’ Confirms That Christians Are Now More Progressive Than Gay Rights Activists

by Brendan O’Neill

The fuss over the anti-gay bus advert confirms that there has been an extraordinary shift in the debate about homosexuality. Once upon a time, conservatives and Christians argued that homosexuality was a genetic trait, while gay-rights activists insisted it was a lifestyle choice. Now, in an eye-swivelling turnaround, their arguments have reversed. Surely, this is the most comprehensive position swap in the history of culture wars? The reason the bus advert riled gay-rights activists was because it implied that homosexuality is a phase that some people go through — one that can be rectified with therapy. The ad was designed by a Christian outfit called the Core Issues Trust in response to a Stonewall ad. It reads: “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” Transport for London has now blocked it.

The ban has delighted gay activists since they claim it is wrong to depict homosexuality as something “freely chosen”. The assumption is that the Christian lobby is backward and the gay-rights lobby is correct. But is it really? The idea that homosexuality is a determined trait is new in gay-rights activism. It would have been anathema to the gay campaigners of yesteryear. Indeed, they once kicked against the idea. In the bad old days, the conservative side claimed homosexuality was “an involuntary physical condition”, arguing that there was something different in the “cerebral cortex” of homosexuals — that they were somehow diseased.

Today’s trendy belief in the “gay gene” echoes these old ideas about a “gay germ” that carried through to the 1950s. We see this in 1955 when the British Christian theologian Derrick Sherwin Bailey described gayness as “an inherent condition” with “biological, psychological or genetic causes”. And then again, as late as 1980, when Catholic writers like the American John Boswell (who was very sympathetic to homosexuals) referred to homosexuality as something that was “biologically predetermined”. So for much of the twentieth century it was only those who were disgusted, confused or pitying of homosexuals who thought it was biological.

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           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Why Liberals Don’t Understand Conservatives

It is, for many conservatives, a familiar feeling — the sense that our counterparts on the liberal left not only disagree with us, but don’t even understand us.

Well, it seems there is hard evidence to support our suspicions. It comes from an unlikely source — the American psychologist (and political liberal) Jonathan Haidt. The basis of his research is a framework of five moral ‘foundations’: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and sacredness/degradation. Gathering masses of survey data (to which you can contribute here), Haidt and his colleagues have built-up a detailed picture of the degree to which these various foundations underpin the liberal and conservative worldviews.

In a book review for Prospect, David Goodhart provides an excellent summary of Haidt’s findings:

  • “His main insight is simple but powerful: liberals understand only two main moral dimensions, whereas conservatives understand all five.
  • Liberals care about harm and suffering (appealing to our capacities for sympathy and nurturing) and fairness and injustice. All human cultures care about these two things but they also care about three other things: loyalty to the in-group, authority and the sacred.
  • As Haidt puts it: ‘It’s as though conservatives can hear five octaves of music, but liberals respond to just two, within which they have become particularly discerning.’“

Haidt’s recommendation to his fellow liberals is to make a greater effort to understand conservative concerns:

  • “For example, if you want to improve integration and racial justice in a mixed area, you do not just preach the importance of tolerance but you promote a common in-group identity. As Haidt puts it: ‘You can make people care less about race by drowning race differences in a sea of similarities, shared goals and mutual interdependencies.’“

For David Goodhart — a prominent liberal opponent of multiculturalism — the Haidt approach is the “last chance for the left.” However, one might also argue that if you start acting upon conservative moral insights you might as well become a conservative.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

General


Islam’s Real Origins?

In the Shadow of the Sword: the battle for global empire and the end of the ancient world by Tom Holland (Little, Brown, £25)

Memory is a double-edged sword in the human consciousness. We relish, and even idolise, memories of the past, but we often overlook memory’s enduring partner: forgetfulness. Our memories are rife with deliberate amnesia, and history, at best, is a selective remembrance. Historians edit and repackage the past, sometimes invidiously omitting those “inconvenient truths” which could upset their preferred interpretations. Memory’s imperfect fabric is the platform from which Tom Holland plunges into the story of the rise of Islam in his latest book, In the Shadow of the Sword.

Ostensibly, Islam was born “in the light of history” — the details of Islam’s origins and rapid expansion in the Near East purportedly have been faithfully remembered by the Muslim tradition. But Holland questions whether Islam’s version of history can be trusted: after all, most Arabic primary sources were written some centuries after Muhammad and naturally were subject to the selective biases of Muslim historians and theologians. In a direct challenge to the tradition’s authenticity, Holland marshals alternative sources, principally Byzantine and Persian, to explore how others saw Islam’s rise and he weaves a complex historical critique into a dramatic narrative.

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           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

Robert Spencer, professional Islamophobe, has a new book coming out in which he attempts to show the historical problems with the historical record of Muhammad and Muslims. Unfortunately, the Islamophobia industry will likely get the book wide exposure. A press release about the book, lays out several “questions” about Muhammad and the origins of Islam. I show below why the book is really a “so what” rather than a “oh wow.”

How the earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from at least 125 years after his reported death.

Yep. Any decent historian or scholar of religion will tell you this. It’s like asking why earliest biographical material about Jesus dates from at least two generation after his life. Welcome to the wonderful world of pre-modern history. Literacy is not such a big deal. A good resource for learning about this is Monty Python’s “Holy Grail.” It’s probably a more accurate portrayal of Medieval English history than anything Spencer concocts.

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           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]