This is the latest in a series of guest-essays by El Inglés on controversial topics. In this installment he considers the politically charged issue of race, examining it in the context of heuristics.

We should all be grateful to him for coining an excellent new acronym, DIPC: Deeply Internalized Political Correctness.

Racists ’R’ Us
by El Inglés

Introduction

Given that the cry of “racist” is the most frequently-encountered obstacle to those who would oppose the Islamization of their countries, the spurious nature of this allegation must be laid bare. There is no one way of doing this but, prompted by the Baron’s recent forays in this area, I would like to offer my own two cents on the subject.

Heuristic Reasoning

In considering racism, let us first consider something else. A heuristic, insofar as I understand the general meaning of the term, is a cognitive device by means of which rules of thumb are applied to complex problems in which restrictions on information, time, or analytical capacity preclude the use of pure deductive reasoning or drastically reduce its utility. This definition might suggest that a heuristic is an esoteric and complex beast in its own right, but nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, human reasoning is fundamentally heuristic in nature, and non-heuristic reasoning is relatively uncommon, difficult, and unintuitive.

Why this should be the case becomes clear when one considers the nature of the problems facing human beings (or indeed any other cognitively advanced creatures) trying to survive and thrive in their natural environments. I mentioned above the three fundamental restrictions of information, time, and analytical capacity. Let us consider these restrictions in the context of a game that many of us will be familiar with. Chess is probably the archetypal, best-known game of analytical reasoning. Though other games such as Go and Shogi exceed it in complexity, they cannot approach it in popularity, so let us examine it here.

Chess is a game in which the rules are simple, and the moves available to each player easily determined in any given situation on the basis of those rules. However, the game is one of mind-boggling complexity due to the effectively infinite combinations of move sequences and therefore games. It is also played, at least under match conditions, with time restrictions which allow a certain total time for each player to make a certain number of moves within. We can therefore classify chess as a game in which all information is available (the rules are known), time is limited (the available time is much less than a player would use to formulate what they considered the optimal moves given the luxury of no time restrictions), and the analytical capacity of any normal human is woefully inadequate to the task of seeing more than the murkiest glance of what lies a few moves ahead (as anyone who has ever played will know).

It is humbling to note that even in a game as open to deductive reason as chess, heuristics have a hugely important role in playing it. To be sure, the better one is, the further one’s ‘sight’ into the future of the game can be extended, on the basis of one’s own goals and the goals of one’s opponent. The better the player, the less heuristic his play. However, a vast number of heuristics are very well-known by all serious chess players, and will be applied by players far better than rank beginners.

Build a strong interlocking pawn structure to dominate the centre of the board. Exchange a bishop (heuristically assigned 3 points in value) for a knight (also assigned 3 points) or vice versa, but neither for a rook (5 points), and certainly not for a queen (9 points). Knights are stronger in the early stages of the game, bishops stronger in the end game. Keep your king behind a shield of other pieces if possible, and so on and so forth.

In contrast, adding two three-digit numbers together is a task to which heuristics are not usefully applied, because the answer can so easily be obtained through deductive reasoning. This problem has no restrictions on information (given the well-understood rules of arithmetic), or time (under normal circumstances), and the analytical capacity required to solve it is possessed by all psychologically normal human beings (assuming they paid even a modicum of attention at school).

It will be clear upon a moment’s reflection that the subset of all analytical problems amenable to algorithmic solution in this manner is rather small in comparison to the full set. Indeed, human reasoning processes are overwhelmingly heuristic in nature due to the omnipresence of the above three restrictions, which sometimes force us to make decisions on issues of real importance with meagre information, on time-scales of no more than a second, and with analytical capacities simply not up to the task. Stuck in the middle of nowhere in the rain, I am offered a lift by a stranger. Do I accept? I will be more likely to if the stranger is a woman, because my heuristic reasoning processes tell me that women are less dangerous than men. I cannot deduce that any specific woman will not be dangerous, but applying fairly simple heuristics will allow me, on the whole, to make sensible decisions in this type of situation.

If it sounds like I am stereotyping women as being not physically dangerous, that is because stereotype is simply an unfairly derogatory word used to describe heuristic processes applied to subjects deemed politically sensitive. Virtually all human reasoning is heuristic and cannot be otherwise. This is not only true because of the significant limitations on deductive processes as applied to most problems. It is also true because these heuristic processes have, through the action of natural selection upon their results, been incorporated as the main building block of our reasoning processes, whether we like it or not. To be sure they are not, and could not be, perfect, but evolutionary principles and ongoing research by psychologists both suggest that they are an exceptionally powerful decision-making tool.

Anyone who doubts this conclusion can try going through life flipping a coin each time he needs to make a decision and see how he likes the results. Heuristics work well enough, and better than anything else available with respect to 99% of what human beings face.
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Heuristic reasoning then is the extraction from past experience of general rules of thumb and the application of those rules to future decisions. It is fundamentally probabilistic in nature, dealing with the likelihoods of various eventualities occurring in response to various decisions on the part of the agent in question. Its utility in comparison with other decision-making mechanisms improves as the three restrictions outlined above increase and make deductive decision-making hard if not impossible.

Race and Heuristics

Human beings are, always have been, and always will be required to make a vast number of decisions every single day of their lives, virtually none of which are tractable via deductive reasoning alone, if it all. Phrased differently, this means that virtually all the decisions we make will be heavily reliant upon heuristic reasoning, and this includes any and all decisions that touch upon the thorny subject of race. Were it to be observed that behavioural and attitudinal differences did not in fact exist between racial groups in any given society (whatever the causes of those differences might be), then it could be argued that there were no such decisions to be made at all, as race would be about as relevant to the functioning of our societies as lactose tolerance.

However, it is of course a fact that such differences do exist, and that they can be very considerable indeed. Crime rates, incarceration rates, school drop-out and expulsion rates, levels of educational and professional achievement, attitudes towards the type of behaviour acceptable in public: in all these respects and more we can observe very considerable statistical differences between racial groups in societies in which different racial groups coexist.

In my own country, we have a small Jewish minority which, predictably, has very high rates of educational and professional achievement and low crime rates. We have other high-performing and law-abiding minorities such as ethnic Chinese and non-Muslim Indians and the generally productive and civilized behaviour of the native population and Eastern European immigrant population. Descending the scale slightly further, we have the significantly underperforming and over-incarcerated South Asian Muslim population, originating predominantly in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and then finally the hugely underperforming and massively over-incarcerated community referred to as Afro-Caribbean (the word black seemingly having fallen out of favour in our post-racial Utopia). This last group can broadly be split up into Africans, who are its leading lights (apart from the Somalis), and the Jamaicans who constitute the bulk of the Caribbean community and are by some margin the most criminal, dysfunctional racial group in the country (again, apart from the Somalis).

This brief racial taxonomy of the UK is not disputed by serious people, based as it is on easily verifiable Home Office statistics. But it is not, of course, brought up by decent people if they can possibly avoid it, and even when it does force its way through into the consciousness of the chattering classes, its significance is denied. Of course there are statistical differences in the behaviours of different races, if one is vulgar enough to believe in the existence of such groups in the first place. But we must treat people as individuals, must we not?

In truth, to make this objection is the jump the gun rather. To ask whether we must treat people as individuals is meaningless until we have established that we can in fact treat them as individuals. Converting a decision best made via heuristics (i.e. treating people as members of groups) to one best made through the application of deductive reasoning (i.e. treating them as individuals on the basis of individual information) requires that the three restrictions on deductive reasoning are weak and that we have the information, the time, and the analytical capabilities to render heuristic reasoning the worse of the two options.

We are all required to make decisions in our lives that have the potential to impact, sometimes very significantly, the welfare of ourselves, our families and loved ones, our communities, and our countries. Insofar as the term racism is used to describe all applications of race-based heuristics to these decisions, I claim that its use is essentially vacuous, in that it takes an integral and essential part of the human decision-making apparatus and presents it as being something intrinsically undesirable.

If one heard it claimed that the mechanism via which the lungs reoxygenate the blood were wicked, or that the structure of the human rib cage were immoral, one would surely dismiss the speaker as a fool or worse. So it must be with those who argue that the application of the only useful form of human reasoning on many race-related questions is, by its very nature, ‘racism.’

Applying Race-Based Heuristics

In saying this, have I argued then that the application of race-based heuristics can be considered inappropriate? Have I, in effect, abolished racism? Or have I established that it exists, but was actually a noble endeavour all along? I hope to demonstrate here that I have done none of these things, by considering how profitably, fairly, and accurately race-based heuristics can or cannot be used to make decisions in a variety of realistic contexts. Let us start with two relatively straightforward examples to demonstrate the basic ideas.

1) Dark Street at Night

If I am walking home down a dark street in London and have to either cross the path of three black teenage males or three Chinese teenage males, I will choose the latter option every time, due to my lack of interest in being mugged, stabbed, or killed. This is, obviously, an application of heuristic reasoning. Should I decide not to apply it, what are my options? Can I just treat the three black youths as individuals? The answer must be no, simply because I do not have any information about them as individuals. They are unknown to me, except insofar as they can be identified as belonging to a group that is statistically unusual in certain regards. Time and analytical restrictions that may exist are rendered irrelevant by the massive information restrictions already present.

Note that my decision to avoid the three black male teenagers is not based on the fact that they are black. It is based on the fact that they are black, male and teenagers. If they had been black, male, and old age pensioners, I would, without hesitation, have chosen to pass them by rather than the three Chinese teenagers. If they had been black, female teenagers, I would not have been that concerned one way or the other. Of the three most important heuristics for those who would avoid being victimized by criminals, race is the least important, as sex and age are far more useful in this regard. However, race is still of great heuristic value where are other variables are held equal.

In a low-information situation such as this, particularly one in which the consequences of a poor choice may be extreme, I would suggest that we are forced to rely on heuristics and that doing so is therefore morally unimpeachable. No sane person with the slightest familiarity with modern Britain will choose proximity to black teenagers on a dark street at night over proximity to Chinese teenagers, even, I am reasonably confident, if they happen to be black themselves. Those suffering from that peculiar insanity known as DIPC (Deeply Internalized Political Correctness) may do so, but they will not do so because their heuristic processes are any different than anyone else’s. On the contrary, they will do so only because they have made a deliberate effort to ignore the heuristic alarm bells going off inside their own heads, in adherence to their suicidal and self-destructive world view.

These people’s decisions are their own, as are the consequences of those decisions. The point to be made here is simply that to describe the application of heuristics geared towards self-preservation as racist would be to strip the term of all meaning. If trying not to get mugged or stabbed by unusually criminal racial groups is racist, then I am a racist, I sincerely hope all my family and friends are, and I would think little of anyone who was not.

Note that no less a white supremacist than the Reverend Jesse Jackson has himself said that he is relieved, when hearing footsteps behind him on the street, if he turns round to see a white man standing there rather than a black man. Same heuristic, same answer.

2) Job Interview

Imagine a scenario in which a U.S. bank were to receive 10,000 applications for 250 places on its graduate trainee scheme in a given year. Assume also that the demographic breakdown of the applicants were representative of the graduating classes of the best universities in the country, and therefore disproportionately Jewish, Asian, and white, with disproportionately low numbers of blacks and Hispanics.

Given the widely varying educational and professional achievements of these groups, we might think that it would be valid to apply a simple heuristic and bin the résumés of the blacks and Hispanics, hire the Jews, Chinese, and Koreans and fill the rest of the vacancies with whichever white candidates had managed to tie their ties properly on the day of the interview.

However, though this heuristic would surely yield better results than selecting candidates at random due to the type of statistical achievement difference already discussed, it seems to lack a certain je ne sais quoi. Let us consider how we might improve upon it slightly.

Any reasonably well-written résumé will contain a great deal of pertinent information about the candidate in question, ranging from grades and universities attended to extracurricular activities and personal statements. Many recruitment processes are now quite complex and time-consuming affairs, which allow a great deal of candidate information to be gathered and analyzed over a period of several months commencing well before the relevant positions are due to start. This is testament to the degree of investment companies make in their personnel and the costs imposed on them by poor decisions in this regard. More significantly, it also renders meaningless such simple (though occasionally indispensable) heuristics as we use to try and avoid getting attacked in the streets. Information, time, and analytical capacity all exist in abundance in such a case.

Also relevant here is the moral dimension of the question. It may be the case that some young black males grow tired of having people cross the street to avoid proximity with them, but if people choose to act in this manner to optimize their safety on the basis of previously discussed heuristics, it is hard to see what criticisms can be made of them. In contrast, taking the résumés of black and Hispanic candidates who have just graduated from four years’ hard study and feeding them straight into the shredder seems like it would be rather bad form, ethically speaking. A set of very simple heuristics relating to the productivity, capabilities, and behaviour of a certain racial group cannot be applied with equal justification in two such different settings, and one assumes that it is not in fact applied in recruitment processes to any significant extent in 21st-century America.

These two examples are, I hope, relatively uncontentious. I now propose to examine two more examples, both considerably more controversial, to try and see how we might apply the above principles to more thorny issues.

1) Refusal of Service

Various polities at various times have allowed the proprietors of retail and similar businesses to turn away potential customers on the basis of race. If this is done of the basis of naked racial hostility, it is hard to see how it might be justified. If, however, certain racial groups seem to be statistically more likely to engage in criminal or otherwise undesirable behaviour and the heuristic decision-making processes of the proprietors suggest that they should therefore refuse service to at least some potential customers of those races, what might we make of this?

By way of a concrete example, I can offer an experience of my own. I used to live and work in Japan, and, while there, decided on a whim one night to go out to a nightclub. Having taken the train across Tokyo and arrived at the entrance, I was informed by the burly but impeccably well-mannered doorman that I could not, as a lone white male, go in. He explained to me that the number of fights and other problems caused by non-Japanese males was so great that they could only enter if accompanied by a Japanese female, who would presumably be their girlfriend and therefore reduce the likelihood of them trying to steal someone else’s. This was quite clearly the application of a decision-making mechanism similar to that discussed in the Dark Street at Night example above, in which race-based heuristics are used along with others, in this case sex-based heuristics.

Was the policy immoral? I am inclined to think that it wasn’t. It is fairly obvious that nightclub proprietors not only have the right to try and avoid the damage caused, directly and indirectly, to their businesses by physical violence, but also an obligation to try and provide a safe environment for other patrons. The entrance granted to foreign males accompanied by Japanese females was evidence of a good-faith attempt to try to finesse the policy with another simple heuristic designed to recognize people unlikely to cause trouble and find a reasonable compromise. It was hardly suggestive of racial animus, and my irritation was felt only towards those who had necessitated the policy in the first place through their drunken oafishness.

Lest anyone think I am providing an across-the-board moral justification for the use of race-based heuristics in deciding who to serve and who to turn away, let us remind ourselves of the sort of country Japan is. Over 98% of the population is ethnically Japanese, with the remainder consisting mainly of long-term Chinese and Korean communities and a very small indigenous Ainu population in Hokkaido. In other words, Japan is exceedingly Japanese and the Japanese seem to be very keen on keeping it that way. The aggregate social and economic costs of allowing nightclubs to refuse entry to a white Englishman or a black American are very limited, and the Japanese are undoubtedly of the opinion that anyone unhappy with the arrangement can go and live somewhere else.

The same could hardly be said of a country like America. Even assuming it were legal, the significance of a hypothetical New York nightclub turning away black Americans would be orders of magnitude greater than a Tokyo nightclub doing exactly the same thing. The black population of America is there, overwhelmingly, because its descendants were carried there in slave ships to satisfy the demand for slaves in a portion of white America. White America in effect willed black America into existence and treated it somewhat less than kindly for a very long time. Heuristic reasoning might lead some businesses in America to want to bar certain ethnic minorities as and when it seemed appropriate, and it may well be that the heuristics in question are at least as accurate as the ones that occasionally lead to foreigners being turned away from Tokyo nightclubs. But there is more to be said. The America that allowed these policies a legal existence in some southern states is long gone, and may simply not have been a viable entity in the first place. I am inclined to suggest that a significantly multi-racial country cannot enjoy a general peace and prosperity if it allows the refusal of service on grounds of race. Of course, it may be that a multi-racial country cannot enjoy such peace and prosperity even if it does not allow such refusal, but that is a question for another day.

2) Immigration

Immigration is a thorny subject in general, and what I am about to say on it would be considered rather unpleasant in some quarters. Before I get into the nitty-gritty, though, let me distinguish between screened and unscreened immigration. Screened immigration is that type of immigration in which potential immigrants have been carefully vetted in some fashion to ensure that they meet certain race-independent standards of achievement and ability, the most obvious type being that which allows highly skilled professionals to enter a country to work, temporarily or permanently, on the basis of advanced degrees or similar qualifications. Unscreened immigration is that type of immigration in which immigrants enter the target country having been vetted either barely at all, or not at all. It would include most, if not all, family reunion, all illegal immigration, asylum (in which potential immigrants will have been investigated, but on an entirely different basis), and immigration allowed to fill perceived gaps in the market for unskilled labour.

The key difference between the two types of immigration is that screened immigration results in an influx of an unrepresentative sample of the source country’s population, whereas unscreened immigration effectively recreates the population profile of the source country in microcosm in the target country. If we insist that immigrants must have an IQ of at least 150 and a PhD in the physical sciences, then in certain key regards, we can presumably expect the behaviour and attitudes of fifty Taiwanese to be similar to that of fifty Nigerians in certain key regards, such as attitudes to the law and professional productivity.

However, if we insist that immigrants need only be in good physical health and able to tie their own shoelaces, then our sample of fifty Nigerians can be expected to display, as a group, marked differences in comparison with our fifty Taiwanese. Note that screening is not an on/off affair; rather, degree of screening can possess a continuous range of values, with more intensive screening resulting in ever less representative immigrant populations. Ignoring cultural and ideological factors (such as Islam) and focusing only on race, I conclude that any country can be made to produce immigrants as productive as those of any other if the degrees of screening are adjusted to engineer this result.

I reiterate here that certain races tend to be socioeconomic high performers while others languish at the bottom of the social pile, disproportionately poor, criminal, and dysfunctional. Taking America as an example, it is hardly a secret that Ashkenazi Jews, East Asians, and whites tend to drift towards the top in that order, while blacks, native Americans, and Hispanics tend to drift towards the bottom. However, very similar trends (insofar as the groups in question actually exist in the relevant countries) can be witnessed in the UK and Europe, in Canada, in areas of Southeast Asia with large Chinese or Indian populations, in the South Asian populations of East and Southern Africa and other places besides. Some would doubtless argue that these performance gaps can be at least partially explained by cultural and environmental factors, and I have no doubt that this is the case. Still, the fact remains that the statistical regularities across time and space are so profound as to provide the basis for some robust and powerful heuristics.

As argued in the above examples, simple race-based heuristics constitute the only appropriate decision-making mechanism when one or more of our three restrictions of time, information and processor power is significant, which will certainly be the case when faced with an unknown potential immigrant. Furthermore, there is a factor which makes the use of these heuristics much more reliable than in the Dark Street at Night example above. Even someone as hard-headed on these issues as me might feel a pang of guilt at trying to avoid someone at night due to their race, knowing as I would that the chances of any given person attacking me would be very low. In the case of immigration, however, which deals with very substantial numbers of people, such uncertainty disappears. We can predict with almost complete confidence the behavioural profile of a hypothetical immigrant population, down to crime rates and annual income, on the basis of extant data. Allowing 10,000 Jamaicans into the UK without screening will result in a swelling by 10,000 of the current Jamaican population, whose alarming violent crime and incarceration rates will exert an even greater effect on the rest of the country as a consequence. How could it be otherwise?

On this basis, I conclude that unscreened immigration of low-performing races, most obviously blacks, into the UK, should not be permitted under any circumstances, as it will result only in the recreation of their source countries in miniature in the target countries. Other considerations permitting, and assuming immigration was considered desirable in the first place, high-performing races would not require screening to perform at the native level, though screening would still result in higher human capital per immigrant. Screened immigration from low-performing races could be acceptable in principle, but the lower-performing the race, the greater the degree of screening that would be needed.

I suggested in the earlier Refusal of Service example that if there were extenuating social considerations, the application of even valid heuristics might have to be legislated against. Are there any such factors at work in this example that might force me to adjust or abandon the conclusion just stated? I am convinced that there are not. The black population of the UK is put at 2%-3%, but its pathologies are already a readily observable feature of, and topic of much discussion in, modern Britain. I am at a loss to determine what broader, compensatory social goals might be achieved by allowing unscreened blacks to continue to immigrate to the UK, even under the asylum system, which reminds us time and time again what the path to hell is paved with. It might be that blacks and other ethnic minorities would feel uncomfortable if the application of race-based heuristics with respect to immigration became obvious. But it would be surreal to suggest that immigration policy should be designed to make immigrants feel good about their status in UK society, irrespective of the costs imposed by immigration on that society. The long-term prognosis of a country that effectively handed control of immigration policy to immigrants in the name of maintaining their self-esteem would be a frightening thing to contemplate.

Conclusion

I have tried in this essay to present the rudiments of a way in which questions pertaining to race can be discussed in a useful, measured and non-hysterical fashion, one which takes into consideration important and undeniable racial characteristics without veering towards giving a stamp of approval to base and unfair prejudice. In closing, I would like to consider the question of what, if anything, racism might mean in the context of the analytical framework I have described at such length here.

Certain types of behaviour that would normally be considered racist have not only been defended in this essay, but unashamedly advocated as prudent and responsible behaviour. If asked in response whether I thought myself a racist, I would reply that the insane obsession over racism so overpowering in the West, yet so conspicuously lacking in other societies, has left me suffering from racism fatigue on a personal level. The intellectual incoherence of the prevailing orthodoxy, coupled in unholy fashion with the ferocity with which it is enforced, has left me wholly uninterested in the question of whether I might indeed be a racist. I have tried to navigate the minefield of thinking about race in a humane yet level-headed fashion, and am happy to let others draw their own conclusions about what I have written.

That said, the question of what, if anything, racism is still demands an answer, so I answer as follows: “racism” is what results when the exceedingly fuzzy and complex boundary between the reasonable application of race-based heuristics and downright racial malice is crossed. There is no answer beyond that. Those of us who take such a position may never be able to convince the legions of hysterical witch-hunters that we are not wicked beyond redemption. But people of good faith, tired of the intimidation and moral blackmail brought to bear by self-publicizing “anti-racists”, may prove to be more receptive to such ideas.

This news report from India doesn’t mention the religion of the people involved, but the names indicate that they are probably Muslims:

Description:

IBNLive reports “Eleven-year-old Nazmeen can barely speak. She suffered 99 per cent burn injuries after her neighbour set her on fire – all because she dared to wear lipstick. Nazmeen was attacked by the man she called nana (grandfather). On Friday, Saleem told the little girl not to wear lipstick. When she defied him, in a fit of rage he allegedly molested her before pouring kerosene on her and setting her on fire. “He was beating me and when I said that I would complain to my father, he started abusing him. Please punish him,” says Nazmeen. Police have arrested 55-year-old Saleem, who runs a shop in the Ghatgate area.”

Hat tip: DJ.

[post ends here]

The American Prospect has suggested a new restriction on language. Basically, it purports to prove that any perception of Barry Obama’s policies as rising from his socialist political philosophy is… racist. That’s right, the new racism is calling out a leftist — pardon me, a “progressive” — regarding the danger inherent in socialist programs that grow government and impoverish those who pay for its upkeep.

Here is the definition of the S word according to Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: so•cial•ism

Function: noun

Date: 1837

1:		any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2:		a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3:		a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Ah, but that’s not what The American Prospect claims. No, indeed. In an essay entitled “What Right Wingers Mean When They Call Obama a ‘Socialist’“ we are treated to an exposition of mind-reading of the lowest order:

In recent months, conservatives have sounded increasingly retro with their attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or communist. In some ways, this accusation is typical far-right boilerplate. Obama certainly isn’t the first Democrat running for president to be accused of communist sympathies. And as usual, the accusations are rarely linked to policy specifics. But the difference with Obama is that, in the eyes of the right, it’s not just his political affiliation that implicates him as a socialist. It’s his ethnic background.

The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like “socialism” are used to describe the threat.

So first there is the basic assumption that in conservative language “socialist” equals “black” — as though we are forced into these linguistic convolutions because we may no longer use the N word (as if we ever did), thus we are reduced to grasping for the S word to get our salient point across to our interlocutors about their God-given inferiority.

Notice that this contention regarding the socialism label is fenced round with disparaging terms like “hysterical accusations” (that replaces a fairer term, i.e., the alarm with which conservatives assess Obama’s repeated promise to redistribute the wealth), “retro” (meant to imply our wish to return to the good old plantation days), and, of course, “far-right boilerplate” (which is anything a conservative says that may address their concerns about some of Obama’s edgier notions -e.g., the idea that he should engage in a tête à tête with the leader of Iran in order to render the man less bellicose).

The author’s claim is cleverly laid. First, he dismisses the concern that “Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist…” as though that were meaningless for Americans… in order to make his feint to: Obama’s “election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law.”

The author conveniently fails to mention the historical fact that it was conservatives who led the fight to for racial equality enforced by law. The Democrats fought legislation all the way down to the goal line. And when it had been accomplished, these FDR socialists grabbed the goal posts and moved the game to include room for aggrieved entitlement. This “progress” permitted them to buy minority votes with minority set-asides. The fact that their minority-motivated social legislation did great damage by planting the seeds of distrust in those it claimed to help was — and still is — hotly denied.

It was no longer enough to carve out a initial rough equality. Such a limited view was tossed in order to move the goal line to a place that was going to be “better than equal”. Aggrieved, polarized resentment replaced the desire for inclusion. “Whites Only” became illegal as “Blacks Only” groups began to flourish — e.g., the Black Caucus in Congress or the Negro-then-Black-then-Afro-American-then African-American college clubs and fraternities that sprang up across the cultural landscape like mushrooms after a rain. And some of those mushrooms were poisonous indeed.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one Democrat who foresaw clearly what havoc these socialist programs would create.
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He predicted the break-up of the black family, the rise of illegitimacy, and the formation of the underclass. Of course, his fellow Dems ignored him. Listening would have cost them the votes of twelve percent of the electorate. An aggrieved, resentful twelve percent who were played like violins by the Democrat Party, to the everlasting shame of both sides.

Nor was Moynihan a lone dissenter. Not many people have studied Edward C. Banfield. How could they when his ideas are being pushed down into the darkness of the memory hole where academic progressives inter ideas which contradict their orthodoxies?

Banfield was an iconoclast:

Banfield was a political scientist who insisted on asking large and unfashionable questions. His formative years were spent at the University of Chicago, where he had gone to study the politics and economics of planning with Rexford G. Tugwell, one of the New Deal’s biggest brain-trusters. Banfield wanted to know why so many of the New Deal’s agricultural experiments had failed. He found the answer not in the programs’ implementation but in the planners’ assumptions. They hadn’t calculated the unintended consequences of their actions, the ripple effects of change in a complicated economic and political system, the inability of reason to dictate social reality. Ed developed these themes as a scholar and teacher at the University of Chicago, where he was a friend and colleague of Leo Strauss and Milton Friedman, and later at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.

His greatest book was one of his earliest, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, published in 1958. Researched and written with his wife, Laura, the book asked why a hilltown in Southern Italy, where Ed and his family had spent nine months living among and interviewing the inhabitants, was so poor. It wasn’t because of class structure, as Marx would have insisted, nor because of the lack of national economic planning, as the New Dealers and contemporary development economists would have claimed. Ed argued, instead, that the region’s poverty had a “moral basis.” He showed that at the root of their squalor was the inhabitants’ refusal to trust, and hence to cooperate, with anyone who was not a member of their immediate family.

This “amoral familism,” as Ed called it, doomed the people to economic backwardness and political irrelevance. Unless this culture could be changed (and Banfield did not think it could, except slowly and over time), no amount of economic planning, income redistribution, or moral exhortation would turn these fatalistic villagers into eager citizens and entrepreneurs.

For progressive elites who pander to the black underclass (the white underclass being undeserving of redemption) this is heretical thinking. It is also antithetical to their grasp on the levers of power, a grasp that no mere truth is going to release any time soon.

Thus, the dialogue on places such as Gates of Vienna must be made anathema to the church of the progressive family. Progressives deeply distrust anyone who raises questions about their family orthodoxies. This distrust causes the fear that drives their smear campaigns labeling conservatives as modern heretics.

The polarization of America continues apace, fueled in part by the fear displayed in the essay at The American Prospect. Those who distort history are doomed to live in the detritus of their distortions. It is an ugly landscape.

What never ceases to amaze and appall me is the ongoing attempt to silence dissent by fiat: ordinary words that cannot be intellectually countered can be arbitrarily ruled off the turf with no possible appeal to reason. In the case of Obama, any criticism at all is a priori “racist” by the very nature of its critical form. And reason is the one faculty that will not be allowed in play. It’s all about “feelings” and having “dreams” and “fairness”.

George Orwell could not have conceived such a fabulist scheme. Nor would anyone have bothered to read anything so… so predictable and yet so beyond the realm of even satire. Some ideas are just too far-fetched… that is, until you are forced to live them or suffer ostracism for your refusal to bow down to the self-appointed little emperors who man the language gates.

Such shenanigans have made our blog a pariah, even to many on the right. The fact that the left loathed us was an indication we were on the correct path. But when we dared to put into words what might happen in Europe because of the horrific, unparalleled immigration tsunami rolling over that continent we saw those on the right cave to the politically correct.

Perhaps it is because organizations like Pajamas Media originate in Hollywood that they are so susceptible to whatever is blowing in the PC wind. The threat of “no work” in Hollywood for failing to toe the party line is a real one. Ironically, this pressure to conform to leftist rules mirrors the infamous “Black List” of the mid-20th century which threw so many actors, writers and directors out of work. The new Hollywood has its own black list now, but its lines are occupied by conservatives, not by mindless leftists, of whom Barbra Streisand is probably the icon.

Pajamas Media didn’t need the little headache we induced in their organization. And, frankly, being pushed out was a relief given the onerous skyscraper ads we had to mount on our sidebar. Both sides breathed easier after we were gone.

What remains troubling is the decision to push us out because one of our guest writers dared to write a “what if” that the owners found offensive. It is a worrisome example of how crippled our language — and thereby our critical faculties — have become, thanks to the pressure that the PC rules exert on all of us, from Larry Summers to Joe the Plumber to you and me.

And now, slouching toward us, is the Fairness Doctrine, breathing righteous fire.

And beyond that beast is Google’s overt desire to be part of the crackdown on blogs in the EU, just as it was in China (the EU “Constitution” has draconian measures in mind for bloggers. Things like jail and loss of livelihood, pension and medical care).

Thus, Google’s CEO has endorsed Obama. Could it be the anti-trust matters facing Google, Yahoo, etc that drive his endorsement? In other words, is he attempting to jump aboard the winning ship while it is still in the harbor so he won’t look quite so obvious in his pandering?

Is Obama a forecast of censorship by the Left? How many times do you censor your own conversation for fear of being considered “one of them”? Back during our fundraising, I received a very sad note from a businesswoman in Berkeley who was a conservative with absolutely no one to talk to in an honest way about her political philosophy. She felt as though she were drowning in her own unspoken words.

What will happen to all of us when the words are gone?

What is the outcome when that unique human faculty, speech, has become strangled down to a handful of stuttered sanctioned syllables?

Will our ability to think critically and to form independent opinions simply fail to take form, the way cortical blindness occurs in a mammal kept in darkness during the crucial development of its optic nerves?

These are not rhetorical questions. Remember that the Gramscians in our universities — as exemplified by Obama’s friend, the urban terrorist Bill Ayers — want to change the very underpinnings of the American spirit. This is not about changing laws, this is about Gramscian hegemony over our culture.

The news feed is being published early today because I’m going out of town again overnight, this time to visit the Future Baron in his den of infamy at graduate school.

Once again, there are items from the backlog included in this post, and I’m not done yet — if I get to them before they’re completely stale-dated, there will be more.

I have in hand a new essay from El Inglés, but ran out of time before I could post it. With luck I will get to it tomorrow evening.

Thanks to Amil Imani, C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, KGS, TB, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –

	USA
	10,000 Absentee Ballots in Gwinnett Are Flawed
	Al Qaeda Supporting McCain? No, Not Really
	Ayers’ Influence Off-Limits at News Briefing
	Furor Over Acorn Allegations Gaining Momentum
	House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(K) Tax Breaks
	Law Threatens Thousands of Military Votes
	Muslims in U.S. Praise Powell’s Remarks
	Obama: Mystery Man on Energy
	Our $700 Billion Gift to China
	Canada
	Durban 2 From Canada’s National Post
	Europe and the EU
	Britain: Five Terror Suspects Arrested
	Denmark: Two Men Found Guilty of Terror Plot
	Flanders: Morelleke Forelleke
	Italy: Berlusconi Defends Separate Classes for Immigrant Pupils
	Mortgage Crisis: Spain Out of G8, Diplomatic Pressure
	Murky Truth Behind Swiss Suicide ‘Clinic’ Dignitas
	Nobel Laureate: Palestinians Need a State, Israelis Need Peace
	One-Third of Swedes Want to Live in Gated Communities: Study
	Plumbers and Electricians Asked to Report Signs of Child Abuse
	Spain: Constitutional Court Says “No” to Basque Referendum
	Sweden: ‘Laser Man’ Calls on Supreme Court to Lower Sentence
	Balkans
	Immigration: Albania, Death Toll of Sunken Boat Reaches 4
	Mediterranean Union
	European Takes Closer Look at Islamic Financing
	Immigration: Italian Ambassador to Libya, Cooperation Needed
	Italy-Libya: Italian Ambassador, First in Import and Export
	Italy: Aeroplanes, Deal Between Finmeccanica and Mubadala
	PNA: EU Funds to Help Improving Electricity Network
	North Africa
	Egypt: Internet, Blogger Condemns Repressions
	Egypt: First Sentence for Molestation of a Woman
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Israel: Shas Out of Gov’t Coalition, Livni in Trouble
	Middle East: PNA, Without Own State Instability Will Remain
	Middle East: Palestinian Stabs Two Israelis in Jerusalem
	Middle East
	Chaldean Bishop of Kirkuk: Christians Being Driven Out of Mosul for Political Reasons
	Concerns Over Health of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
	Iraq: ‘Terrorists’ Infiltrated Mosul’s Police, Claims Christian MP
	Lebanon: Shoot-Out Between Political Activists, 4 Injured
	More Violence in Mosul: Father and Son Killed Because They Were Christian
	Turkey: EU Reforms Rescue Governing AKP From Being Closed
	Russia
	‘Troika’ to Coordinate Gas Exports
	Caucasus
	The “Super-Projects” of Sargsyan, and Energy Dependence on Russia
	South Asia
	Afghanistan: Student Gets 20-Year Term for Downloading Rights Material
	Far East
	China Calling for International Help to Arrest Eight “Muslim” Terrorists
	Australia — Pacific
	Raped ‘For Reading Holy Bible’
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Senegalese President Wade Opposes Idea of Sanctions
	Task Force to Fight Somali Pirates
	Uganda: An Editorial Targets Western ‘Double Standards’
	Immigration
	Controversial Housing Opens for Asylum Seekers
	Health of Migrants and “Security Bill”: Increasing Concerns
	Immigration: Boat With 250 Rescued South of Lampedusa
	Immigration: 43 Somalis Rescued Off Malta
	Immigration: Morocco; 28 Non-EU’s Rescued Off Tangiers
	Islam: Cardinal Warns Against Alienating Immigrants
	Malta-Cyprus: Immigration, Interior Ministers Agree Policy
	Culture Wars
	Climate Alarmism’s Flimsy Foundation
	Kindergarten Sex Ed Mandatory in England
	General
	Russian Observers to Monitor U. S. Vote
	Stalin’s Army of Rapists: the Brutal War Crime That Russia and Germany Tried to Ignore

10,000 Absentee Ballots in Gwinnett Are Flawed

Votes will have to be transferred to new ballots

Gwinnett County elections officials will have to hand-copy votes from at least 10,000 absentee ballots onto new ballots that can be read by a machine.

The original ballots, designed to be filled out by hand, are flawed because of a printing error. The circle beside the candidate’s name is too thick and somewhat misshapen, and consequently an optical scanning machine won’t be able to read the votes on Election Day.

The county discovered the problem last week during routine testing.

Gwinnett had already mailed out 19,700 flawed ballots before it realized the problem.

Of those, 10,000 have already been marked and sent back by voters, said Lynn Ledford director of Voter Registration and Elections for Gwinnett County.

The printing mistake was not apparent to the naked eye, Ledford said.

The elections office will now have to transfer the votes from those 10,000 ballots onto new ballots so an optical scanning machine can read them, Ledford said. If more of the flawed ballots come back, that number will increase.

County spokesman Joe Sorenson said correcting the errors could be complicated.

“[Election workers] are going to have to take the bad ballots, take a look at what each choice is, and mark that choice for the second ballot,” Sorenson said. “There will be two sets of eyes on each ballot.”…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Al Qaeda Supporting McCain? No, Not Really

The media embraces a silly theory based on Internet forum posts by “desktop jihadists.”

Lefty bloggers and pundits are ecstatic over a Washington Post article published Wednesday which reported that online forums frequented by al-Qaeda enthusiasts have expressed support for John McCain. According to the article, forum postings gloat over the present economic downturn, and hope that a McCain presidency and a continuation of the war on terror would play into their quagmire strategy:

In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting credited Al Qaeda with having lured Washington into a trap that had “exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy.” It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

The reality, however, is that this is just more wishful thinking on the part of the establishment media trying to give Barack Obama cover for his wrong-headed opposition to the surge in Iraq.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Ayers, Dohrn: ‘White Supremacy’ Responsible for America’s Troubles

New book blames race for ‘bigotry’ in society

Unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and his wife, onetime federal fugitive Bernardine Dohrn, are releasing a new book that blames whites for the problems in the U.S. since its independence from Great Britain more than two centuries ago.

According to Amazon.com, the soon-to-be released book, “Race Course Against White Supremacy,” includes personal essays “by two veteran political activists” on “white supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life.”

“Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days — and that it is still very much with us — the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education,” the Amazon posting states…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Ayers’ Influence Off-Limits at News Briefing

‘No comment’ to question about Obama’s terrorism links

The influence that unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers has over Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, a potential future president, is off-limits at White House news briefings.

“That’s it. I’m not going to answer it,” Dana Perino, the president’s spokeswoman, told Les Kinsolving, WND’s correspondent at the White House, just as he had begun asking a question.

Kinsolving had opened with a question about U.S. Secret Service bans on security clearances for individuals with known associations with terrorists.

“This morning a spokesman for the Secret Service told me that to be an agent you have to have a Bachelor’s degree, three years in law enforcement, and undergo a complete background check. When I asked if the applicant had any record of association with terrorists, I was told that would not be tolerated. And my first question is, is that the White House office’s understanding of the qualifications to be a Secret Service agent?” he asked.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Furor Over Acorn Allegations Gaining Momentum

WASHINGTON — The furor over ACORN’s national voter registration drive exploded with new controversies Friday, including a call by Barack Obama for an independent prosecutor, a Supreme Court ruling over voter access and the disclosure of a death threat against an ACORN worker.

What remains unclear is whether the campaigns of Obama and John McCain will reach a truce over voter access to the polls by Election Day or whether their legal and rhetorical battles will persist to the finish line — or beyond.

Republicans allege that the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now is engaged in rampant voter fraud, but they’ve offered no proof of such a systematic effort. The GOP does have evidence that some of the group’s 13,000 canvassers submitted fraudulent applications, but ACORN says it alerted authorities to most of the phony forms.

Democrats counter that the GOP is trying to whip up fears of voter fraud so it can knock students and low-income minorities off the voter rolls to enhance McCain’s chances of victory.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled an attempt by Republicans to challenge the validity of 200,000 voter registrations in Ohio, saying that the party lacked the standing to sue.

The Republicans had sued to force Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, to provide county election officials with lists of registrants whose personal information did not exactly match Social Security or driver’s license data, a step that would leave those voters vulnerable to eligibility challenges.

Tensions began to escalate Thursday with disclosures that the FBI is investigating ACORN and the possibility that it’s engaged in a vote-fraud scheme…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(K) Tax Breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal.

At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Law Threatens Thousands of Military Votes

SPRINGFIELD — An obscure state law and an ambiguous federal ballot form are combining to invalidate some of the thousands of absentee votes being cast this fall by Virginians overseas, most of them in the military.

State officials confirmed Thursday that they’ve instructed local registrars to set aside any vote submitted on a federally furnished write-in ballot unless the ballot includes both the name and address of the person who witnessed the vote. An advisory to registrars was distributed earlier this week, said Susan Pollard, a spokeswoman for the State Board of Elections.

Every absentee ballot requires the signature of a witness, who vouches for the identity of the voter. The witness address requirement is specified by Virginia law but not spelled out on the federal form.

Virginia voters: Let your public official know how you feel about this issue.

Follow the 2008 races at Military.com’s Election Center.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the state does not require the witness address for absentee voters who opt for a different, state-furnished form.

“I want to count these votes, but under the law we cannot,” said Rokey Suleman II, the voter registrar in Fairfax County, where the problem came to light.

“The law stinks…. That said, I cannot ignore the law,” he added…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Muslims in U.S. Praise Powell’s Remarks

For many Muslim- and Arab-Americans, comments former Secretary of State Colin Powell made over the weekend about what in their view is the Islamophobia surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy were a much-needed salve on a festering sore.

On Meet the Press Sunday, Powell said what many Muslims and Arabs said they have waited to hear from a prominent figure like Powell throughout the 2008 presidential campaign.

Addressing the false rumor that Obama is a Muslim, Powell said: “The really right answer is: What if he is? … Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council of American Islamic Relations’ Chicago office, called Powell’s comments “a real morale booster.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Obamanomics

By Amil Imani

Obama’s economic plan is a recipe for long-lasting disaster. Keep in mind that wrecking anything, as opposed to building things, requires very little time and effort. Obama’s plan is deceptively attractive, while in reality it is a huge wrecking ball that will capsize the already listing ship of our economy. Here is a partial list of reasons why. Judge for yourself.

Obama is proposing a trillion dollars in new spending. Where is he going to get the money, given the government’s present huge budget deficit? From the filthy rich and blood-sucking corporations, that’s where, he says. A terrific vote-getting scheme. But will it work?

Obama doesn’t tell you that in the present world money is like water. It flows to the lowest ground. And the lowest ground for money is found in places where it can make more money — not locations where it is seriously tapped by government. For example, Ireland where the corporate income tax rate is 11% and not the United States, which has the second highest rate in the world. As it is, one of the biggest reasons that many corporations set up their businesses abroad is the high cost of doing business here at home. Hence, a great many jobs are lost to overseas enterprise…

— Hat tip: Amil Imani

[Return to headlines]

Obama: Mystery Man on Energy

By Max Schulz

In his speech at the Republican National Convention, former Senator Fred Thompson said that one question people will never have to ask of John McCain is, “Who is this man?”

In truth, the comment was intended to say more about Barack Obama than McCain. It goes to the heart of many people’s reservations about Obama — namely that after two years of campaigning, Americans have at best a vague sense of who this man is. As Victor Davis Hanson has pointed out, Obama remains a mystery, and it’s difficult to say what we know about how he will govern.

That is particularly the case on energy — among the most compelling issues in this long campaign. If the polls and the conventional wisdom are to be believed, Obama will sweep to victory in two weeks along with sizable majorities of Democrats in both houses of Congress. Anyone trying to get a read on what his energy policy would be will have a hard time reaching real conclusions. The more one studies his positions and his campaign performance, the more likely one is to ask Fred Thompson’s question: Who is this man?…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Our $700 Billion Gift to China

It should surprise no one that Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked so tirelessly on behalf of the $700 billion bailout of troubled financial institutions.

After all, the Democrat leadership had plenty to cover up — about 30 years of policies that led inevitably to the collapse of the mortgage industry.

But, why, some wondered, did the plan get such enthusiastic support from Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell?

My theory is simple: This wasn’t so much a bailout of American financial institutions as it was a bailout of China. And McConnell, in particular, has a long, inglorious track record of voting in China’s best interests.

Let’s review some history…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Durban 2 From Canada’s National Post

In an earlier post to Vlad I placed an article by a former CSIS man making the claim that the NDP party of Canada had been bought by Islamist forces for an Islamic agenda. I believe this National Post story may provide evidence for that claim…

— Hat tip: Vlad Tepes

[Return to headlines]

Britain: Five Terror Suspects Arrested

Birmingham, 21 Oct. (AKI) — Five terror suspects were arrested by British police in the central city of Birmingham on Tuesday. The five men, aged between 29 and 26, were arrested under anti-terrorism laws on suspicion of being involved “in the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism,” police said in a brief statement.

Police raided five homes and two businesses early on Tuesday but stressed that the raids were not in response to an immediate threat to the public. Police released no information about the nationality or identity of the arrested men.

Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 says on its website that the current terror threat level is ‘severe’. It said there is a strong likelihood of future terrorist attacks and a continuing high threat level to the United Kingdom.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Two Men Found Guilty of Terror Plot

Copenhagen, 21 Oct. (AKI) — A Danish citizen of Pakistani origin and an Afghani national were found guilty on Tuesday of preparing a terrorist attack after they were filmed mixing explosives.

Hammad Khuershid was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Abdoulghani Tokhi was sentenced to seven years by a court in the town of Glostrup, just outside the capital of Copenhagen. Both are in their early 20s.

The men were arrested after an anti-terror raid that saw Danish agents filming them as they were carrying out a test blast. The explosives were reportedly the same as those used in the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people.

Both men claimed the explosives were going to be used for fireworks.

At the trial prosecutors alleged that Khuershid had ties to an Al-Qaeda operative but they were unsure whether the attack was going to take place in Denmark or abroad.

Investigators claimed to have found bomb-making manuals in the men’s homes.

Tokhi has a residency permit to live legally in Denmark, but authorities said he would be deported after completing his sentence.

There have been several anti-terrorism raids, arrests of terrorism suspects and a terrorism trial in Denmark since 2005. That was the same year that the country attracted widespread condemnation from Muslims around the world after Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Denmark is also involved in the war in Afghanistan and maintains a small contingent of troops in Iraq.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Flanders: Morelleke Forelleke

Things have looked better for Marie-Rose Morel, the former Miss Flanders who became a member of the Flemish Parliament in 2004. Shortly before, Vlaams Blok (VB) had welcomed Morel as a new icon. She was meant to represent the respectable face of Vlaams Blok. (In fact the party changed its name into Vlaams Belang later that year.) Morel immediately set to lure away voters from the N-VA, the party she herself had turned her back on. In those days, Vlaams Belang party president Frank Vanhecke lovingly called her Morelleke Forelleke, a pet name that is hard to translate (my little trout?). If her political opponents did not take her seriously at first, her slick debating skills soon changed that. These days, however, headlines no longer focus on Morel’s political instinct, but rather on her private life. Readers are presented with sordid details about her messy divorce, as rumors of an affair with Frank Vanhecke (which she vehemently denies) just will not go away. This, combined with a power struggle within the prty’s highest ranks, prompted De Standaard to call her “the Yoko Ono of Vlaams Belang”. A recent book by former VB sympathiser Jurgen Verstrepen has rekindled these old rumors. Back in 2004, Verstrepen supported Morel as the respectable face of VB. Now that he has defected to Lijst Dedecker, Verstrepen does not hesitate to wash Vlaams Belang’s dirty linen in public. Morel has announced she will sue Verstrepen, which just reinforces the impression that she is forever on the defensive. No wonder she sympathises with Sarah Palin!

Morel’s story is symbolic of the VB saga. For years, this party for the disgruntled attracted voters who were unhappy about just about anything (francophones, immigrants, criminals or politics in general). To the dismay of more traditional parties, it became “the party that never loses an election” and in 2004 gained no less than 24% of the votes.

The first cracks appeared in 2006 in Antwerp, when the mayor Patrick Janssens (Flemish socialist SP.A) halted its seemingly unstoppable rise. But now a far greater threat is showing up on Vlaams Belang’s horizon: Lijst Dedecker (LDD) and its loudmouth president Jean-Marie Dedecker have become the new champions of the disgruntled. Next to LDD, Vlaams Belang looks like something it abhors — traditional, old school politicians. Opinion polls show that LDD may become even bigger than Vlaams Belang at the 2009 Flemish elections. Anticipating this, Vlaams Belang activist Filip Dewinter now claims a “moral” victory, because more people are warming to the idea of Flemish independence. Just like Morel, he is on the defensive.

— Hat tip: TV

[Return to headlines]

Italy: Berlusconi Defends Separate Classes for Immigrant Pupils

Rome, 22 Oct. (AKI) — Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday denied that his government’s decision to introduce separate school classes for immigrant children who fail language and other admission tests are racist. “They are accusing us of racism but this is not true at all. We are talking about a common-sense measure to aid integration,” Berlusconi told journalists in the Italian capital, Rome.

“ There are classrooms where pupils are speaking ten languages. They need to master Italian. The first thing is to teach Italian. Then the children can study other subjects,” Berlusconi said, adding that the separate classes will actually aid integration.

Italian MPs voted last week to introduce separate classes in state schools for immigrant children who fail language and ‘general evaluation’ admission tests.

The anti-immigrant Northern League tabled the legislation which has been criticised by immigrant leaders, Italy’s opposition and Catholic churchmen.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Mortgage Crisis: Spain Out of G8, Diplomatic Pressure

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, OCTOBER 22 — Steady nerves and diplomatic pressure on all sides: Spain does not want to be left outside the G8 summit on the financial crisis in November in the USA, something that Madrid is greatly concerned about and which is now almost a personal challenge for Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero. The Spanish Government today welcomed statements made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said that he was “convinced that Spain will have a place in the coming summit, considering its weight in the world economy”. Sarkozy is ready “to defend the case for Spanish participation with the American hosts of the summit”. So all is not yet lost. Yesterday it was Sarkozy himself who chilled Madrid when he remarked in a European parliamentary debate that an invitation to Madrid could “create problems with Poland and its 38 million inhabitants” (Spain actually has a similar population, that is, 40 million), saying further that it would not be him who “decides the G8 member countries”. The exclusion from the next ‘conclave’ is made worse by the fact that China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico will probably join the G8 countries, as the G20 countries: the club of the ‘big ones’ has opened the door to countries which for many are now ex emergingy countries (Beijing and Delhi being real powers), while Madrid — eighth largest economy in the world — could remain outside the group. The wound is even more painful when you consider that the ‘Super G’ will not be just any summit, but a chance to redefine capitalism for the next few years. Confirming that the ‘G8 dossier’ is now one of Spain’s foreign policy priorities was the news that Zapatero will take part in the EU-ASEM summit this weekend in Beijing instead of Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega: the aim is to gain support from other European leaders. For now Zapatero can ount of the support of Britain’s Gordon Brown, as well as the clear message announced by Sarkozy today. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Murky Truth Behind Swiss Suicide ‘Clinic’ Dignitas

Dignitas is operating at present in a building on a shabby industrial estate

The Swiss call it the Gold Coast, the string of silent, discreetly guarded villas fringing Lake Zurich. Bankers, tycoons and the heirs to family fortunes live here, so the lakeside is fenced off and there is only one narrow rocky strip where the public can plunge into the water.

That is where hundreds of small fragments of bone were recently washed ashore, the macabre flotsam from leaking crematorium urns. Who is dumping human ashes in the lake in such industrial quantities? Accusing fingers were, rightly or wrongly, pointed at the assisted-suicide organisation Dignitas, which claims to have helped 100 Britons to die. These include, most controversially, a 23-year-old rugby player who had been paralysed in a training accident.

The Crown Prosecution Service is deciding whether to press charges against the parents of Daniel James after it learnt that they had accompanied him to Dignitas, where he ended his life last month. The case has provoked sympathy and condemnation in almost equal measure because, unlike most previous cases, Mr James was not terminally ill. But that is not the only cause for concern about the organisation.

“I calculate that about 300 Dignitas customers have had their ashes dropped into the lake over the years,” said Soraya Wernli, who once worked in a senior position there. Police were unable to pursue an investigation because no laws were broken but the authorities did issue Dignitas with a warning that too much human ash could pollute the Gold Coast, against local regulations.

One thing is for sure: it is not how British families imagined the final resting place for their relatives. But then so little about about the workings of Dignitas matches its idealised image…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Nobel Laureate: Palestinians Need a State, Israelis Need Peace

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari said Saturday it is a disgrace that the international community has not managed to resolve the conflict in the Middle East, blaming the failure on a lack of political will.

In an interview with Swedish Radio, Ahtisaari said he was ashamed that neither Europe nor the US have been capable of reaching a solution yet.

“How can we, year after year, seriously say that we are trying to reach a solution when we aren’t?” he asked. “I’m ashamed, I have to admit that.”

The broadcaster also quoted him as saying he hoped the next US president would use his first year in office to try find a permanent solution in the Middle East…

— Hat tip: KGS

[Return to headlines]

One-Third of Swedes Want to Live in Gated Communities: Study

One in three Swedes wants to live in a gated community which prohibits unauthorized people from entering, a new study shows.

Most interested in the security provided by such living situations are young singles, of which 41 percent reported wanting to live someplace surrounded by fences or requiring a door code for entry.

Meanwhile, only 26 percent of families with small children said they desired the additional security measures.

The study also reported that less than one fourth of the survey’s respondents — 23 percent — want to live in areas which feature cultural, ethnic, and social diversity.

The results come from a report entitled BoTrender 08 (‘Living Tends ‘08’) carried out by the Tyréns Temaplan consulting company and based on responses gathered in August from 5,000 Swedes aged 18- to 70-years-old who live in apartments or are considering living in apartments in the future.

“I don’t think that those who answered the study were thinking of barbed wire, high walls, and guards, but rather a more secluded area with checks on who enters,” said Tyréns Temaplan’s Mia Wahlström to the Svenska Dadbladet newspaper.

Göran Cars, a professor of urban studies at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), said the study shows people place a high value on safety and security when it comes to where they live, but expresses his reservations about what a proliferation of gated communities might mean for Sweden.

“I would consider it deeply tragic of there was a propagation of gated communities. That would mean my city would lose some of its appeal; its diversity of people and activities. The city’s services would become impoverished and it would lose its international competitiveness,” he told SvD.

Pointing to trends in the United States, a country in which gated communities have become increasingly popular, Cars added that the trend can actually result in public places becoming less safe.

He believes that society has a choice to make when it comes to dealing with rising rates of crime and violence.

“On the one hand, we can accept the increase violence and insecurity. Then everyone who can afford to will choose to live in protected area. On the other hand, we can vigorously combat the violence and abuse which damages our security and safety by giving police and social services more resources,” he said.

— Hat tip: TB

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Plumbers and Electricians Asked to Report Signs of Child Abuse

Council workmen who have regular access to people’s homes are to be trained to detect early signs of child abuse.

Repair men, plumbers, electricians and housing officers will be urged to report seemingly unexplained injuries, or behaviour patterns which could indicate neglect or abuse.

One of the first such schemes in the country is expected to be approved by councillors in Lincoln at a meeting next week.

Around 200 staff from City of Lincoln Council will be trained taught to recognise a checklist of possible warning signs and pass them on to social services.

Possible “indicators” of abuse they will be asked to look out for range from cigarette burns and scalds to habits such as rocking back and forward or girls constantly twisting their hair.

They will be taught that children who insist on wearing long sleeves even on hot days could be concealing injuries…

— Hat tip: JD

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Spain: Constitutional Court Says “No” to Basque Referendum

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 12 — With a decision unanimously taken yesterday, the Spanish Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the law approved in June by the Basque Parliament, on proposal by the regional government’s president, Juan José Ibarretxe, for the calling on October 25 of a people’s consultation on self-determination. The Basque government, according to the ruling reported today by the media, is not competent to call a referendum on sovereignty, a faculty which the Constitution assigns exclusively to the state. The Supreme Court ruled on the appeal presented by the government, through the state public prosecutor’s office, and on the appeal promoted by the People’s Party to the Basque law of consultation. In the 34 page-long ruling, the Court blocks the way to new initiatives on self-determination which might be promoted by other regions, which, as in the case of Catalonia, have regulated in their Statute of Autonomy the right to promote people’s consultations. According to the ruling, in fact, “the respect of the Constitution imposes that the projects of revision of the constitutional order are carried out openly and directly through the path which the Constitution envisages for these purposes”. Therefore, “implementations through other ways are not allowed, neither by the autonomous communities or any other body of the state, because above everything there is always the will of the Spanish people, exclusive holder of the national sovereignty”. The ruling is based on three arguments mentioned in the appeal presented by the state public prosecutor’s office: the incompetence of the Basque legislator to promote a referendum with these characteristics; the procedure followed for the calling of the consultation and the basic ‘material’ unconstitutionality of the questions which the president of the Basque government plans to ask the electorate of the Basque countries. The Basque executive power criticised the ruling as “a further demonstration of the perverse effects generated by the politicisation of justice”. The ‘lehendakari’ Ibarretxe, who in the past few days had announced his intention to appeal “from a personal point of view” to the Strasbourg Court if the Constitutional Court rejected his referendum proposal, called today an extraordinary meeting of the Basque government, at the end of which he will read an “institutional declaration”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Sweden: ‘Laser Man’ Calls on Supreme Court to Lower Sentence

A man serving life in prison for a series of brutal attacks on immigrants has turned to Sweden’s Supreme Court in a bid to have his sentence reduced.

court after his request for an early release was refused by the Örebro District Court in April this year.

Prosecutors highlighted the seriousness of Ausonius’s crimes and stressed the likelihood of him returning to a life of violent crime if released. The Court of Appeal later upheld the decision.

Ausonius was convicted in 1995 for one case of murder and ten attempted murders of immigrants, as well as eight bank robberies.

Born in 1953, Wolfgang Zaugg was the son of German and Swiss immigrants. As an adult he changed his name to John Ausonius in order to appear more Swedish. He also dyed his black hair blond.

In 1979 he became a Swedish citizen. He combined a successful flirtation with stocks and bonds with a deep-seated hatred of immigrants.

Some ill-advised investments put a serious dent in his comfortable lifestyle and he began robbing banks to maintain his position.

At the end of the summer of 1991, Ausonius targeted his first immigrant victim. Two Eritreans saw a circle of red light rest on their compatriot’s body before he was hit.

The man survived but Laser Man terrorized Stockholm’s immigrant population for a further eighteen months.

In November 1991 he shot his fifth victim, Jimmy Ranjbar, an Iranian student. Ranjbar did not survive the attack.

In all Ausonius shot eleven immigrants in the Stockholm and Uppsala areas. Many of his victims were shot in the head and experts believe further casualties were only prevented by Ausonius’s incompetence when modifying his weapon.

— Hat tip: TB

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Immigration: Albanian Mother and Child Drown Near Greece

(ANSAmed) — TIRANA, OCTOBER 20 — A 20-year-old woman and her three-month-old baby girl have drowned in a lagoon in southern Albania, after the boat carrying them capsized. Onboard there were 13 people trying to avoid police checkpoints and cross the border with Greece. Albanian police have said that the incident occurred while from 20 to 25 people onboard two wooden boats were crossing the lagoon before reaching the village Xarre, near the border with Greece. The woman’s husband has survived and has been hospitalized in a state of shock. Albania banned the use of motorboats three years ago in order to stem human trafficking across the Adriatic to Italy. Since then, poor Albania looking for a better life use land routes towards Greece. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Immigration: Albania, Death Toll of Sunken Boat Reaches 4

(ANSAmed) — TIRANA, OCTOBER 21 — The number of victims has risen to four in Sunday’s accident in a lagoon in the south of Albania close to Greece when a boat with illegal immigrants sank around 50 metres from the shore. Apart from a 23 year old mother and her three month old daughter found yesterday evening, at midday today two more bodies were brought out of the water by divers, while a 17 year old boy is said to be missing. The news was announced by Tirana News 24 and confirmed to ANSA by the police. The bodies found today are of two men, one around 30, the other between 24 and 25 years old, and according to police they could have been the organisers of the trafficking of the immigrants. Initial investigations have identified four persons believed to be responsible for the accident which happened while the 20 to 25 people on board two wooden boats were crossing the lagoon to reach the village of Xarre on foot, close to the Greek border and separated from the rest of the country by a channel. The route from one shore to the other is made by barge and is almost always controlled by police. To avoid being discovered the immigrants used local fishing boats hoping to reach the other shore and continue towards Greece by land. One of the boats, with 13 people on board, capsized due to the weight. Albania has banned the use of motorboats for human and drugs trafficking over the Adriatic to Italy for three years. Since then poor Albanians looking for a better life abroad having been coming over land to Greece. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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European Takes Closer Look at Islamic Financing

PARIS: With commercial bank financing tight, Europeans have been taking a closer look at Islamic banking.

“The potential is there,” Ahmad Jachi, the first deputy governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, said at a conference this past week in Paris. “It’s a matter of really enabling and creating the market.”

Islamic banking has already been integrated into the British and German banking systems, and banking executives at the conference said efforts were under way to allow Muslims in France to bank and invest under regulations that conform to Shariah, the legal code of Islam.

Estimates of the Islamic banking market’s current size vary from $500 billion to $1 trillion. It has only about 5 percent of the overall banking market, but attendees at the conference, which was sponsored by The Economist, said Islamic banking has a huge potential for growth, since one-sixth of the world’s population is Muslim.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that the Islamic banking sector has grown 10 percent to 15 percent a year over the past decade.

— Hat tip: JD

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Immigration: Italian Ambassador to Libya, Cooperation Needed

(ANSAmed) — PALERMO, OCTOBER 24 — “The agreement signed on August 30th between Italy and Libya will surely bring important results on the illegal immigration front. It is already active in some places, in others they are waiting for the ratification from the two Parliaments, but surely relations between the two countries, thanks to this agreement, have greatly improved”. This was said by the Italian ambassador to Libya, Francesco Trupiano, today in Palermo to meet with entrepreneurs of the Sicily branch of the Confindustria (Confederation of Italian Industry), as well as economic and cultural operators of the island. “We are not talking about strategic-military alliances yet — said Trupiano — but about collaborations for defence and security in the Mediterranean, also from an international terrorism perspective”. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy-Libya: Italian Ambassador, First in Import and Export

(ANSAmed) — PALERMO, OCTOBER 24 — “Despite the forceful entrance into the market of China and Korea, Italy continues to be the top country which exports to Libya. With 21% of the market it is clearly ahead of the second exporter, Germany, which follows with 7%”. This was said by the Italian ambassador in Libya, Francesco Trupiano, today in Palermo. “Furthermore, Italy — he continued -, is also its top importing country. We import mainly gas and oil from Libya”. Relations between the two countries are good on a cultural level as well. “Over the years — explained Trupiano — important collaborations between universities and experts, particularly in the field of archaeology have developed. Relations with the population are excellent and we hope that political problems will be resolved as well with the agreement signed on August 30”. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Aeroplanes, Deal Between Finmeccanica and Mubadala

(ANSAmed) — ROME, OCTOBER 20 — Finmeccanica and Mubadala, an investment and commercial development firm based in Abu Dhabi (capital of the United Arab Emirates), have announced the signing today, in the presence of Gianni Letta, undersecretary to the Prime Minister, of an industrial partnership agreement in the high technology sector. Finmeccanica and Mubadala — a statement reads — will collaborate in the production of aeronautical components in compound materials for the civilian sector at the new plant in Abu Dhabi. Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica subsidiary, will supply technology, technical assistance and specialised training and will relocate aero-structure production to the new plant. Activities are to begin this year, and are to reach full output before 2011. “This agreement is a part of our group’s strategy to develop new alliances and consolidate our international presence, in particular in the Middle East”, Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, president and chief executive officer of Finmeccanica, comments. “Mubadala is a prestigious partner with noteworthy resources and commercial abilities, and whose expansion policy combines with Finmeccanicàs objective of establishing a solid and profitable alliance in this — concludes Guarguaglini — rapidly growing market”. Mubadala Development Company is a sovereign fund, that is, a company which is entirely controlled by the UAE government in Abu Dhabi with a large investment portfolio in many sectors. Its interest in Italy isn’t new: Mubadala holds, in fact, 5% of Ferrari, which it bought from Mediobanca three years ago, and 35% of the aeroplane manufacturers Piaggio Aero Industries, bought in 2006. The company manages in total a portfolio worth billions of dollars, and for its international partnerships, like that sealed with Italy’s Finmeccanica today, Eads, Rolls Royce, Northrop Grumman and SR Technics can be counted. (ANSAmed).

2008-10-20 14:29

— Hat tip: Insubria

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PNA: EU Funds to Help Improving Electricity Network

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 21 — The Palestinian National Authority has awarded six contracts worth over 10 million euro, provided by the European Union through PEGASE, to buy vital supplies to upgrade the electricity network throughout the occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinian Energy and National Resources Authority (PENRA), which is part of the Palestinian Authority, will soon begin a widespread programme to rehabilitate the electricity network, making it safer and more efficient, in 168 camps, villages and cities across the West Bank. The European Union contribution of 10.15 million euro will procure the necessary equipment (poles, cables and transformers) to enable this vital rehabilitation work to go ahead. PEGASE is the main financing mechanism of the European Union, the largest donor to the Palestinians. In 2008, the European Union has committed over 67 million euro to support the development of infrastructure projects. The funds are part of an overall EU assistance package that was pledged at the Paris donor conference in December 2007. The European Union’s assistance programmes through PEGASE address the priority needs of the Palestinian people, as identified by the Palestinian authority.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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PNA: EU Funds to Help Provide Clean Environment

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 21 — Eleven Palestinian governorates will get a helping hand in providing a cleaner environment, with the procurement of rubbish collection vehicles, containers, and heavy equipment to help manage dump sites. The Palestinian Authority has now awarded the contracts for the procurement of the equipment, using just over 5 million euro provided by the European Union as part of its ongoing programme to support the development of Palestinian infrastructure through PEGASE. The contracts will be managed by the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government. The EU’s EUR 5.23 million contribution will enable the Palestinian Authority to purchase a total of 2758 garbage containers, 38 solid waste collection trucks and 15 pieces of heavy equipment for solid waste management, which will serve 26 municipalities in the West Bank. The 26 municipalities were identified by the local authorities as those in most urgent need for support in managing the disposal of solid waste.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt: Internet, Blogger Condemns Repressions

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, OCTOBER 23 — While a well-known Egyptian blogger, Nora Younis, received a prize for human rights from the US organisation Human Rights First, others are arrested or are persecuted in their homes. The Arab Network for Information on Human Rights reported that Younis received the prize for “her extraordinary efforts in the defence of human rights and for the promotion of democracy in Egypt”. But in the same days the security services “are carrying out an aggressive campaign against bloggers and Internet activists in many cities around Cairo”. One of the targets is Christian blogger Hani Nazeer Aziz, whose brother was arrested and whose sister was threatened with arrest unless they handed him over to security forces. After Aziz was arrested his blog was cancelled. The campaign is also against Islamic bloggers like Mohamed Khairi, Mohamed Adil, Bilal Alaa (with the blog ‘The country is ours’) and Husam Yahia (‘The voice of freedom’). Khairi and a student from the faculty of engineering at Cairo University arrested at his home at dawn on 22 October: his computer was confiscated. The other three escaped but their homes have been searched. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt: First Sentence for Molestation of a Woman

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, OCTOBER 22 — For the first time an Egyptian court sentenced a man to three years in prison and the payment of a fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds (a little less than 700 euro), for having touched a woman’s breast and propositioning her obscenely. The man, Sherif Gomaa, came across his victim, a film director, in the residential quarter of Heliopolis and, after having followed her, reached out for her proposing an intimate relation. The woman reported the episode to police and the investigation which followed brought with it Gomaa’s arrest and his sentencing, which occurred yesterday. Some weeks ago, having news of the case, the Egyptian Centre for Human Rights (ECHR) requested the sentence that was then applied to the case. For months, an intense campaign to define what exactly constituted the crime of sexual molestation and its judicial regulation has been in course by human rights organisations, among them ECHR and ECWR, the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights. The latter released statistics according to which 82% of Egyptian women and 93% of foreign women are victim to molestation in the street, at work or on public transport. Until now, no sentence has ever been issued for these crimes. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Israel: Shas Out of Gov’t Coalition, Livni in Trouble

(by Aldo Baquis) (ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, OCTOBER 24 — The current Israeli premier, Tzipi Livni (Kadima), has registered a resounding lack of success when the orthodox Sephardite party, Shas, reported today that it will not stay in the coalition government when she takes control, substituting the outgoing premier, Ehud Olmert. One month ago, with a victory in the primary elections of the Kadima party, Livni seemed on top. Some one already called her the “new Golda Meir”. Now, after weeks of unnerving negotiations with Labour and other minor parties, they are facing a fork in the road that wherever it may lead, will go in an undesired direction: they can settle for a restricted government, or inform the head of state, Shimon Peres, of having failed in the objective to create a new coalition. In this case, even if it is not automatic, it is probable that the legislature be dissolved two years early, and Peres announce elections, which will have to be carried out within three months. To decide on these dramatic developments was in good measure an 87 year old rabbi, Ovadia Yossef, for 20 years the spiritual leader of the orthodox and proletariat Shas party. Early in the morning he called the top leaders of the party. After prayer, the latest proposals from Livni were put on the table regarding the two vital questions for Shas: assistance to the under-privileged classes and the exclusion of Jerusalem from future negotiations with the Palestinians. Livnìs positions appeared disappointing. After a quick few phone calls to members of the Council of Sages of the Bible, the attack on the Kadima leader began: Shas will remain out of its government. Now time is running out. Livni was hoping to announce the formation of a new government on Monday, with the re-opening of Knesset (Parliament) after the summer break. Maybe, say her collaborators, they can hope for an agreement with Shas. But the feeling is that behind the scenes the leader of the right wing opposition, Benyamin Netanyahu (Likud), has made sone very inviting promises: in case of anticipated elections, according to polls, he would come out the winner. And in Kadima, number 2, Shaul Mofaz is rowing against Livni, impeding her in various ways. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Middle East: PNA, Without Own State Instability Will Remain

(ANSAmed) — RENDE (COSENZA), OCTOBER 24 — The Palestinian people are “asking for a fair and total peace”, which can only be reached “through the proclamation of a sovereign State, with Jerusalem as its capital and within the territory occupied in 1967. This is the basis for “peaceful coexistence with the Israeli people”. Otherwise, “the region will encounter yet further problems and will remain a cause of instability in the world”. These are the words of the Palestinian National Authority’s Vice-Minister for Youth and Sport, Musa Abu Zaid, who was speaking today in Rende at the Euro-Mediterranean conference on the charity sector, which is linked to the 2008 Rexpò forum on social responsibility. “The Palestinian people”, added the PNA’s government representative, “have played an active and guiding role in the resistance of the occupation of Israel, acting in the love of liberty and independence. Consequently, they have paid a high price in terms of martyrs, wounded people, and those who have been arrested and expelled, just as they have suffered the destruction of economic, social and educational infrastructures, which has had a serious impact on the younger generations, in particular”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Middle East: Palestinian Stabs Two Israelis in Jerusalem

Jerusalem, 23 Oct. (AKI) — A Palestinian man stabbed an elderly man to death and injured a policeman after he was stopped for a security check in Jerusalem in Thursday. The attack took place in the southern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo. Mohammed Salem al-Badan was allegedly stopped in the street for a security check by two police officers. The man is then reported to have pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the policemen.

The assailant, a Palestinian from the village of Tuqu near Bethlehem in the West Bank, was shot in the stomach by the injured policeman as he fled from the scene.

As he was being captured, he stabbed an elderly man who later died of his wounds.

Al-Badan, 20, as well as the police officer were taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

Palestinian news agency Maan reports that Israeli forces immediately raided the small West Bank town of Tuqu and threatened to demolish al-Badan’s home.

Later Israeli forces are reported to have arrested the man’s sister, Maysa, as well as another young man named Mohammed ash-Shair.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Chaldean Bishop of Kirkuk: Christians Being Driven Out of Mosul for Political Reasons

The prelate launches an appeal, calling upon all to defend the minorities in Iraq, and the Christian minority, the target of many attacks, especially in Mosul. For the bishop, the Christians are victims of a political game connected to the upcoming elections, and to the project for a Christian enclave in the plain of Nineveh. An appeal to the Christians of the West as well, that they denounce every act of violence and to demonstrate solidarity and fellowship.

Kirkuk (AsiaNews) — Since the beginning of October, Mosul has seen yet another wave of violence against Christians. The city and the community of the faithful have already paid a high price in blood in the past, with the killing of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, Fr. Ragheed Gani, and dozens of others. Mosul, a multiethnic city, is inhabited by Christians of various confessions, Sunnis and Shiites, Yazidi, Arabs, Turkmen, and Kurds. These killings of a confessional nature make coexistence increasingly difficult, and are increasing the accusations between the Kurdish government, responsible for order in Mosul, and the central government. Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, wanted to share with the readers of AsiaNews his concerns about these events.

What is happening in Mosul? How can this constant carnage be defined? In one week, there have been 12 deaths; 1,000 families have left their homes for villages in the plane of Nineveh; 5 homes have been destroyed in explosions. Fear, solitude, and apprehension dominate the Christian minority. The memory of Dora [1] has not disappeared in Baghdad. If the situation continues in this way, Christians will be forced to a new “mass emigration.”

But the attacks in Mosul have a special character: they do not seem to be connected to gangs of criminals, because this time they are not asking for any ransom. It is possible that there are fundamentalists behind the killings. But how can the indifference of the local and central authorities be explained when a vehicle with a loudspeaker is driven around the neighborhood of Sukkar, ordering the Christians to leave?

I think that there is a political motive behind all this violence.

This campaign to drive out the Christians could conceal benefits of a political nature ahead of the upcoming elections in January of 2009, and the controversy over the approval of the provincial election law. The current law eliminates the quota reserved by tradition for Christians (and other minorities). Intimidating them and driving them out goes hand in hand with denying them representation. But the hypothesis cannot be excluded that the violence against the faithful also serves to reinforce the proposal for a Christian enclave in the plane of Nineveh.

We forcefully ask for government intervention to protect all Iraqis in difficulty, but above all the Christians, who are currently the most vulnerable. This is also a responsibility of the forces of occupation.

We are calling for the intervention of the international community to protect the minorities in Iraq, especially in the upcoming provincial elections. And we ask with particular urgency for the intervention of the United Nations and the European Union, that they call upon the Baghdad government to respect minorities in the upcoming elections.

The Iraqi parliament has approved a law that does not recognize the rights of minorities. This will lead to the definitive destruction of ethnic and religious minorities in this country, and will accelerate the exodus of the Christians.

We ask the Christians of the West not to be concerned solely about stock markets and the economy, but to denounce every form of violence and demonstrate solidarity and fellowship with us.

[1] Dora is a Baghdad neighborhood where in recent years there have been killings of Christians, abductions of faithful and priests, and attacks on churches. This violence has led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people. Greater security was restored after the “surge” by the American and Iraqi military.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Concerns Over Health of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

A string of cancelled appearances has led to speculation about the health of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This week alone the usually hyperactive leader cancelled a keynote speech at the last minute and a cabinet meeting had to take place without him. A speech to a martyr’s commemoration event was also called off.

A senior aide, Amir Mansour Borghei, told journalists the president was “indisposed”.

The absences have sparked rumours that Mr Ahmadinejad, 52, is suffering from a long-term illness that may stop him running for re-election next year.

Shahab, the Iranian news website, reported that this week’s events were the latest in a series of cancellations and said the president had previously pulled out of engagements because of listlessness caused by low blood pressure.

In May, Mr Ahmadinejad failed to appear at events in three consecutive weeks, including a rally where he was due to meet voters face-to-face. Aides blamed an overcrowded schedule.

Citing “sources close to the government”, Shahab said doctors had advised the president to cut his workload if he wanted to avoid becoming sick.

The reports will be a blow to the pride of a leader who is known for his energetic style and micro-managing of government affairs.

They come at a time when Mr Ahmadinejad is wrestling with acute political problems including near 30 per cent inflation, rising unemployment and plummeting global oil prices.

Issa Saharkhiz, an Iranian political analyst, said the reports could have been fanned by opponents who are preparing to run against the president.

“I’m not sure if these health problems are permanent or just a result of tiredness,” he told the Guardian…

— Hat tip: JD

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Iraq: ‘Terrorists’ Infiltrated Mosul’s Police, Claims Christian MP

Baghdad, 24 Oct. (AKI) — An Iraqi Christian MP claims that terrorists have infiltrated the police forces of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where many Christians live. “We ask that security agents in Mosul be replaced, because many terrorists have infiltrated its ranks,” said Christian MP Younadim Yousef, quoted by Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq in the wake of several murders of Christians in Iraq in recent weeks.

Yousef also asked the Iraqi government to do its best to allow Christian families to return to their homes and grant them financial compensation for their woes.

At least 12 Christians have been murdered in Mosul in the past few weeks, a number of Christian homes have been destroyed, and hundreds of families have fled.

Sunni groups have accused Kurdish militias of seeking to alter the ethnic composition of northern Iraq and of responsibility for the recent murders of Christians in Mosul.

Mosul is home to the second-largest community of Christians in Iraq after capital Baghdad.

The Chaldean Catholic Church is one of the oldest Christian churches in the world, but hundreds of thousands of Christians have been forced to flee Iraq to escape the violence and the economic crisis caused by the war.

There are now around 800,000 Christians in Iraq, compared with over a million before the US invasion in 2003, according to censuses carried out by the country’s dioceses.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Lebanon: Shoot-Out Between Political Activists, 4 Injured

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, OCTOBER 20 — Four people were injured last night in a shoot-out which took place in the Borj Haidar area of Beirut among activists of the movement Mustaqbal of the Sunni leader Saad Hariri and supporters of the Shia movement Amal under Parliament speaker Nabih Berri. According to pres reports, the public disorder started out as a simple argument and rapidly degenerated into a shootout. Among those injured, according to the website of daily an Nahar, are al Mustaqbal activists, one of whom was injured by a firearm and two others by knives. The shoot-out ceased when the army intervened and the two groups were separated. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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More Violence in Mosul: Father and Son Killed Because They Were Christian

Despite the hopes of the government and part of the population, the massacre of Christians continues in Iraq. The killing could be another signal for the Christians to leave the country. Prime minister al Maliki promises to “punish the guilty and their supporters.”

Mosul (AsiaNews) — The Iraqi government is asking Christians to remain in Iraq, but is doing nothing to stop them from being slaughtered. Yesterday in Mosul, in the Sanaa neighborhood, a father and son were killed: no further details are available at this time on the method of the attack or the identity of the two victims, but their death must be seen in connection with the violence in recent weeks against Christians in the city.

The pogrom of the Iraqi Christians resumed at the beginning of October, and in a couple of weeks there have already been 14 deaths, plus 10,000 people who have fled from the massacre, toward the plain of Nineveh. Five homes have been destroyed in bombing attacks. An apparent calm has been seen in recent days, so much so that appeals have been launched calling for exiles to “return to their homes.” According to a source for AsiaNews in Mosul, yesterday’s murder could be “a signal to the Christians from terrorists or extremist groups,” making clear to them that “they must leave the city.”

Although half of the Christian population has left the city of Mosul because of fear of the violence, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is calling on them to “stay” and to “collaborate in the reconstruction of the country.” Yesterday the prime minister (in the photo) met with a delegation of religious leaders, to whom he confirmed that “the violence in Mosul is part of a precise political plan in the country,” although he did not specify who is responsible for the attacks.

Al Maliki Is asking the Christians “not to give in to the criminal plan,” and to remain in Iraq in order to contribute to the rebuilding of the country: in order to do this, he expresses his hope that there may be “the help and collaboration of the entire society,” so that it may be “the Iraqis themselves who defeat those who want to drag the nation into chaos and wipe out the presence of Christians.” The prime minister also promised that the guilty “will be punished,” and that their supporters will also be stopped.

Finally, the prime minister promises that “the presence of Christians among the security forces and police will be increased, including at the officers’ level”: previously, the rank of officer had always been reserved for Muslims. Al Maliki says that the presence of Christians within the army should help them to “remain in their homes and on their land,” feeling safer and better protected. He recalls that the destruction of the community would do “enormous damage to the entire Iraqi people,” and calls upon the Iraqi ministry for migrants to do everything it can “to facilitate their return home.”

Yesterday, Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, once again denounced the campaign of extermination against the Christians, emphasizing “the political game connected to the upcoming elections,” and to the plan, which he has always opposed, to create “a Christian enclave in the plain of Nineveh.” Now it is a matter of understanding what concrete action the central government will take in order to defend the Christians from persecution. On October 21, a delegation of the faithful from Mosul met with local and national political leaders, including the deputy prime minister, Rafeaa al-Eissawi, the mayor of the city, and the governor of Nineveh. The Christian delegation gave the deputy prime minister a letter asking for the return home of families that have fled, action from the government to protect them, complete security for students returning to school and adults returning to work, and compensation for the people whose homes have been destroyed.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Turkey: EU Reforms Rescue Governing AKP From Being Closed

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, OCTOBER 24 — Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) survived from being banned by the Constitutional Court because of its reforms on the European Union and boosting woman rights. The reasoning in the closure case against AKP was published Friday in the Official Gazette, as Hurriyet daily website reports today. The Court decided to reject demands to ban the AKP in its critical ruling at the end of July. The Court, however, issued a serious warning for the AKP for being “focal point of anti-secular activities.” The Court considered Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks on lifting the headscarf ban saying “What if it is a political symbol” as an activity that harms secularism. On the other hand AKP’s EU reforms and steps it took to boost women as well as non-Muslim minorities rights were the policies that rescued the ruling party from being closed. The reasoning said although AKP took some steps that harm democratic and secular structure of the Turkish republic, it did not promote or use violence acts to do that. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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‘Troika’ to Coordinate Gas Exports

Three biggest gas reserve holders meet to discuss joint decision-making on gas sales. Their goal is to maintain high prices and control the market the way OPEC controls oil.

Tehran (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Representatives from Russia, Iran and Qatar, respectively the world’s 1, 2 and 3 gas reserve holders, met in Tehran on 21 October to discuss trilateral cooperation and the possibility of forming a cartel of gas-exporting countries, similar to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhussein Nozari said the three “have almost 60 per cent of the world’s total gas reserves” and are “seriously interested in forming an organisation of gas-exporting countries.”

But wanting a deal and striking it are not the same thing since “gas, unlike oil, is not sold on the world market,” Charles Esser, an energy analyst, told Radio Free Europe. The exception is “liquefied natural gas, LNG, which is still a very small share of the market.”

“The transportation of natural gas to consumers also differs greatly from transporting oil,” Esser noted. “Most of the [gas] market is [. . .] ‘stranded’,” requiring land infrastructures like pipelines “from certain suppliers with whom” consumers “have very long-term contracts, sometimes 25-year contracts,” Esser said.

Furthermore, the three countries have different interests to address, and it is doubtful that all parties are really interested in a global gas cartel.

For this reason Russia, which has been trying to build a cartel to set prices, might fall back on a ‘Gas Troika’.

“We have agreed to hold regular—three or four times per year—meetings of the ‘big gas troika’ to discuss key issues of gas market developments,” said in Tehran Gazprom Chief Executive Aleksei Miller.

A committee of technical specialists would meet in Doha, Qatar’s capital, next week, he added.

For Esser though Russia might not be that keen on the idea anyway, more interested instead in holding down its own hegemonic position than in allowing other countries to sell more gas,

“A more likely result would be a kind of coordination to maybe restrict some competition” and “keep market prices higher,” Esser said.

Concern about gas price hikes this and last year and OPEC’s refusal to increase oil output have led consuming countries to oppose such a possibility.

Europe already uses a huge amount of gas—more than 300 billion cubic metres annually—and one of its main suppliers, Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, said that the price of gas for Europe could reach US$ 500 per 1,000 cubic metres next year.

Meanwhile Russia has invited—along with Iran and Qatar—Algeria, Indonesia, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela to forum of gas-exporting countries on 18 November.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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The “Super-Projects” of Sargsyan, and Energy Dependence on Russia

Armenian President Sargsyan announces “ambitious economic projects,” like a new rail line to Iran, and a nuclear power plant. Debate is growing over whether this means an intention to break free from Russian control, or to solidify it. Experts: Yerevan does not import gas from Iran because Moscow “doesn’t want this.”

Yerevan (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, speaking to parliament on October 2, stated that “the time has come for Armenia to implement ambitious economic projects, super-projects,” including a new rail line to Iran and a new nuclear power plant, which will soon be begun by an investment foundation “that will fund large-scale programs.” Meanwhile, no details are being provided about these projects, and discussion is growing about whether they represent a desire to break free from Russian hegemony, or to solidify it.

The news agency Eurasianet reports that opposition member of parliament Stepan Safarian, a supporter of closer relations with the West, maintains that “an attempt is being made to strengthen Armenia’s foreign policy.” Armenia’s invitation for a visit from Turkish President Abdullah Gul last September is also interpreted in this light.

But Sevak Sarukhanian, deputy director of Yerevan’s Noravank Foundation for Strategic Research, observes that “on the contrary, it will deepen Armenian-Russian strategic cooperation, since Russia will have its share in both construction projects.” He notes that the country’s railway system is already managed by Russian Railways, and that Armenia depends on Moscow for nuclear fuel and technology for its existing nuclear facilities.

And above all it must be remembered that about 80% of Armenia’s electrical grid is under direct Russian control, including the hydroelectric facility in Hrazdan, one of the largest in the southern Caucusus.

Years ago, Yerevan announced the opening of the 140-kilometer gas pipeline from Iran, to bring 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas into Armenia each year, to be increased to 2.3 billion by 2019. The project is strongly supported by Tehran, which is believed to want to create a pathway for its own gas into Europe. On October 7, Rasoul Salmani, director of Iran’s national gas company, announced that it would begin working on October 13. For each cubic meter of gas, Armenia must pay 3 kilowatt hours of electricity. But following this, Lusine Harutiunian, a spokeswoman for Armenia’s energy ministry, said that the country already has enough energy provided by Russia through Georgia (2 billion cubic meters of gas in 2007), and that “there is no need to import additional gas,” adding that she does not know when Iranian gas would begin to be used. In any case, it would be converted to electricity and given back.

Analyst David Petrosian comments that “it is clear that Armenia refused to receive Iranian gas as a result of Russian pressure. Russia controls almost the entire energy system of Armenia through its state corporation. It seeks to keep Armenia in a state of dependence. Armenia will receive gas from Iran only when Russian gas is in short supply.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Afghanistan: Student Gets 20-Year Term for Downloading Rights Material

Kabul, 21 Oct. (AKI) — A journalism student who downloaded and distributed an article on women’s rights from the Internet has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Afghanistan.

Seyyed Parwiz Kambakhsh, arrested a year ago, was sentenced to death by a court in Balkh. But a Kabul appeals court on Tuesday reduced the sentence to 20 years in prison.

“This is an unjust sentence,” defence lawyer, Mohammad Afzal Nourestani, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

“We will appeal to the Supreme Court. During the hearing they did not consider that my client is not the author of the article, that it was downloaded from an Iranian site and he had to ask several friends to read it.”

During the appeals process, Parwiz Kambakhsh was tortured and mistreated.

“My client says he was tortured in Balkh prison and during interrogation was forced to admit to being the author of the article that appeared to be the work of an Iranian blogger.”

On 28 November Seyyed Parwiz Kambakhsh will receive the Information, Safety & Freedom watchdog’s Press Freedom award in Siena.

Last year the award was given to Iranian Kurdish journalists, Adnan Hassanpour and Hiwa Boutimar, both of whom have been sentenced to death by an Iranian court.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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China Calling for International Help to Arrest Eight “Muslim” Terrorists

An eight-name list of alleged Xingjian terrorists is released. They are accused with carrying out attacks during the Olympics. But for experts Beijing has failed so far to come with any evidence. The Uyghurs living in the oil- and mineral-rich region have been victims of a virtual cultural genocide.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — In an unprecedented move Chinese authorities today released a wanted list of eight Xingjian “terrorists” it said had carried out attacks aimed at the Beijing Olympics, calling on the international community for help in capturing them.

“The eight are all key members of the ETIM, and all participated in the planning, deployment and execution of all kinds of violent terrorist activities targeting the Beijing Olympics” and foreign objectives, said Wu Heping, a spokesman with the Ministry of Public Security, who did not however go into details about they are supposed to have done. The ETIM stands for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and, according to Beijing, is linked to al-Qaeda.

One of the suspects, Memetiming Memeti, is considered the ETIM leader. A police statement said that he received help from “certain western Asian countries”, including explosives to carry out terror attacks on targets in China and overseas. The other suspects were involved in attacks as well as training and recruiting terrorists.

Strategically located resource-rich Xingjian has been rocked by attacks this year, including the killing of 16 armed police just before the August Olympics. Beijing blames Islamic militants for the incident.

In April mainland authorities also arrested tens of alleged terrorists accusing them of being involved in terror plots targeting the Olympics, including suicide bomb attacks and the kidnapping of athletes. None of these claims could be independently verified.

China has in turn been accused of carrying out cultural genocide in the region by trying to eliminate the language and culture of indigenous Uyghur to the benefit of ethnic Han immigrants who hold positions of power and privilege. The end result of this policy has turned the Uyghurs into a minority, eight million of the region’s 19 million people or 46 per cent.

Beijing has also issued a series of edicts that have made life difficult for Muslim Uyghurs. For example, sermons at Friday prayers cannot run longer than a half-hour. Prayers in public areas outside the mosque are forbidden. Government workers and non-religious people cannot be “forced” to attend mosque services—a generous wording of a law that prohibits government workers and Communist Party members from going at all. Imams may not teach the Qur’an in private. Studying Arabic is allowed only at special government schools. Students and government workers are compelled to eat during Ramadan. Passports have been confiscated to force Uyghurs to join government-run hajj tours rather than travelling illegally to Makkah. And when they can travel official trips can cost US$ 3,700. And last but not least, anyone applying for Hajj must be vetted by police and show that they have the means to go.

For Dilxat Raxit, spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, the terrorist “list has political motives [. . ..]. They [Chinese authorities] have produced no evidence to support these claims.”

For the same reason the United States has refused to repatriate about 255 Chinese Muslim Uyghur who fled Afghanistan to Pakistan after the US attacked it in October 2001.

After their capture they were sent to Guantanamo where they have been held for years. But now they are on the verge of being freed but will not be repatriated for fear that China might jail them without cause.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Raped ‘For Reading Holy Bible’

‘Let your Jesus help you’

AN Iraqi Muslim man allegedly raped a Muslim woman as “punishment” for her reading the Bible.

Campbelltown District Court in Sydney’s west yesterday heard Abdul Reda Al Shawany twice sexually assaulted the woman, a practising Muslim, and then said to her: “Let your Jesus help you.”

Al Shawany, 52, has plead not guilty to two counts of having sexual intercourse without consent between September 1 and 27, 2002, at a unit in Warwick Farm.

At the first day of the week-long trial yesterday, Crown prosecutor Michael O’Brien outlined the case and told how the woman allegedly kept the clothes and underwear she was wearing on the day of the alleged rape in a plastic bag for about three years.

The woman initially reported the matter to police but did not want to take it further because she felt “ashamed”, Mr O’Brien said. She later changed her mind and Al Shawany, of Hillsdale, was arrested in July 2005 and the woman provided police with the clothing.

The Crown alleges swab samples from the accused had the same DNA as the semen sample taken from the woman’s clothing.

“The complainant was born a Muslim and raised a Muslim and was a Muslim all her life,” Mr O’Brien said.

He said when the woman came to Australia from the Middle East she began listening to Christian teachers and reading the Bible.

He said the woman — who wears the Muslim hijab — had received threats from members of her faith for reading the Bible but had not converted to Christianity.

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Senegalese President Wade Opposes Idea of Sanctions

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is opposed to the idea of international sanctions threatened against Mauritania by the European Union and African Union. On the sidelines of a conference in Dakar, Wade stressed that “sanctions never touch the leaders… It’s the people who end up being sanctioned”, though making it clear that “Senegal does not condone the August 6 coup in Nouakchott”. The President added that he prefers “personal mediation” to the application of sanctions, explaining that there are institutions in Mauritania that have not been dissolved, such as the National Assembly and Senate, and “they should be consulted”, considering many members expressed support for the coup. Following a meeting a few days ago with a delegation of Mauritania’s military junta, the EU gave a one-month deadline to restore constitutional order or face “appropriate measures”. The European stand, rejected by the junta that said it would “not move backwards”, was fully backed and shared by the AU. Sporadic protests against the coup have been broken up by security forces in the capital, while news arrived yesterday of the arrest of former government minister Isselmou Ould Abdel Kader, accused of defaming the country’s military leadership for comments made during a programme broadcast on state television.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Task Force to Fight Somali Pirates

Seven ships led by Italian move in

(ANSA) — Nairobi, October 21 — An Italian-led NATO task force is sailing into place to stop pirates off Somalia, military sources told ANSA Tuesday.

The seven warships have reached Djibuti and are gearing to move against the pirates who have made Somali waters the most dangerous in the world.

More than 60 ships have been hijacked by pirates off Somalia this year, more than double last year’s total.

The mission is under the command of Italian Admiral Giovanni Gumiero on board his flagship, the destroyer Durand de la Penne.

There are six other ships: two German, one American, one British, one Greek and one Turkish.

As well as fighting pirates the task force will escort cargo ships carrying United Nations food to the starving population of Somalia, wracked by a seemingly endless civil war.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Uganda: An Editorial Targets Western ‘Double Standards’

“Some of these economists were amazed that the US, UK and other European governments that were the ones forcing the Ugandan government to divest itself of business and not interrupt the market forces are now instead scrambling to save their private sector companies that have been run into insolvency by imprudent management.”: such is the introduction of an editorial that was recently published by the ‘Monitor’, a Kampala daily newspaper, which captures the doubts and ‘bad feeling’ of African politicians and observers confronting the possible consequences of the high risk ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis that originated in the United States. “the rush by Western governments to rescue their distressed financial institutions has provoked disbelief and wonder among economists here who view those interventions as contradictory” says the Monitor. In the article, entitled ‘The Western response to crisis reflects double standards’ mentions the government efforts to use taxpayers’ money to save the banks authorized by the US Congress in early October: “a massive $700 billion spending package that will be pumped into several key financial institutions and pull them back from the brink of collapse. The UK has also announced plans to pour vast amounts of cash into the national financial system and partially nationalize some of the country’s biggest banks Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of Scotland and others.” Such policies, says the Monitor, contrast sharply with the economic policies that were imposed on Uganda to be able to rely on financing from financial institutions dominated by the US and their European allies. “In 2002 — says the article — World Bank and IMF, which mostly tout the preferred economic policies of influential western governments, forced the NRM to sell Uganda Commercial Bank, Uganda’s largest bank then, to South Africa’s Stanbic at $19 million, a price said to have lower than its true value. The two institutions argued that UCB had to be sold because it was badly managed and was tottering on the brink of bankruptcy.” Lawrence Bategeka, a professor of economic policy at the University of Makerere, has denounced the ‘hypocrisy’ of many western governments: “which compels poor countries like Uganda to part with some of their most prized public commercial institutions because governments are not supposed do business while the same governments are currently doing the opposite of what is expected.” The editorial, published by The Monitor, considered to be close to the opposition, concludes with a quotation from the ‘shadow’ minister of finance: “Any reasonable government will support companies that play a major role in the economy. UCB was a countrywide bank, the largest in the country but the NRM foolishly allowed silly advice from the IMF and World Bank to sell them”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Controversial Housing Opens for Asylum Seekers

Containers are being used as emergency accommodation for asylum seekers as Switzerland experiences an influx of new applicants.

The eastern canton of Graubünden has adopted this solution and has set up three containers on a patch of waste ground in the industrial area of Waldau/Landquart, not far from the cantonal capital, Chur.

The first eight occupants have already been in Switzerland for some time, and their request for asylum has been turned down.

The men, four Algerians, three Iranians and an Afghan, all aged between 30 and 40, are waiting to be sent back to their own countries.

For some, this is the last stage in a long saga. Before being moved to the containers they had been accommodated in a holiday home in Valzeina, a hamlet at the top of a mountain overlooking Landquart. Some of them had been there for up to ten months.

Ahmed, a 36 year-old Algerian, had already lived in the canton for several years: he even has a seven-year-old son, born to a Swiss mother.

“It’s my son who keeps me here. Otherwise, how could anyone put up with such treatment?” he says.

His friend Moncef, who came to Switzerland six years ago, stays silent, whether because he is weary of the whole business or because he is afraid that anything he says might be used against him…

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Health of Migrants and “Security Bill”: Increasing Concerns

“It is an idea that blatantly breaches the Constitutional right to health and yet another message of rejection to migrants”, said to MISNA Berardino Guarino, director of projects for the Astalli Centre in Rome, run by the Jesuit Refugee Service for the assistance of asylum seekers and migrants, commenting the recent news of an amendment to decree no. 733, the so-called ‘Security bill’, in discussion in the Senate Joint Constitutional Affairs and Justice Committee, which aims to eliminate the principle for doctors of “not reporting to authorities” when immigrants seek medical care. Substantially, it wants to eliminate a fundamental passage of decree 286/1998 that establishes: “access to the health care system for foreigners not complying with laws related to legal entry and residence should be guaranteed without any type of indications to authorities, save for cases in which a medical report is mandatory, under the same conditions of an Italian citizen”; on eliminating the article, doctors would be obliged to report the irregular immigrants. According to Guarino, after absurd proposals on migrants presented in the past months by the government, important issues are still not being addressed: “No serious political proposal has been made on integration, an increase in migrant quotas, refugee protection”. If the amendment should be passed, some are even speaking of a sort of a conscientious objection: “doctors should object; their duty is providing care and not police work”, said to MISNA Sister Valeria Gaudini, a Comboni missionary, who in Verona works in the rehabilitation of victims of the prostitution ring. According to Father Beniamino Rossi, a Scalabrinian missionary and organiser of the International meeting of Loreto on migrations, the proposal is merely fruit of “an institutional racist culture, which today consents racist behaviours that are passed off as reasonable. This is what is occurring in Europe, with concepts being passed such as that of ‘useful migration’ as the only legitimate one”. Numerous organisations of the judicial and health fields have also expressed concerns on the amendment. According to the Judicial Studies Association on Immigration, the amendment “is in complete contrast with art. 32 of the Constitution that safeguards health as a fundamental right of the individual and as a collective interest, and guarantees free medical care to the indigent”; Doctors Without Borders also warns against “posing barriers to access to medical care” with the consequence of “condemning these people to a dangerous health marginalisation”. The risk of distancing migrants from the public health system is the creation of a “parallel health service system, beyond the control and verification systems of public health”, emphasised the Italian Association of medicine of migrations; the doctors also underline the short-sightedness of a measure that, distancing needy people from health care “will have repercussions on collective health, with the risk of eventual outbreaks of infective diseases”, thwarting continuous progress made in the treatment of diseases migrants contract in Italy due to difficult living conditions.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Immigration: Boat With 250 Rescued South of Lampedusa

(ANSAmed) — LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO), OCTOBER 24 — A boat with about 250 migrants on board was hooked this morning by a patrol boat from the Palermo harbour office some miles south of Lampedusa. The craft was spotted last night and was, therefore, kept under surveillance. Another two units from the harbour office are on the scene helping to de-board the non-EU’s. For some days now, landings have not been recorded in Lampedusa due to bad weather conditions. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Immigration: 43 Somalis Rescued Off Malta

(ANSAmed) — VALLETTA (MALTA), OCTOBER 20 — Forty-three Somali immigrants were rescued over the night by the Maltese Marine about 88 miles south of Malta. The group — of 30 men and 13 women — were reached in time after an SOS from a satellite telephone was picked up by the central operating unit of port authorities in Rome, who in turn sent on the emergency message to Malta. A Maltese military plane immediately spotted the rubber dinghy in very precarious condition, and a motorized patrol boat was sent to take on the immigrants. The latter had been at the mercy of the waves after losing its motor overboard, and the craft was already starting to sink. All of the immigrants are in good condition and were initially taken to Valletta to then be transferred to the Safi detention centre. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Immigration: Morocco; 28 Non-EU’s Rescued Off Tangiers

(ANSAmed) — RABAT, OCTOBER 21 — A vessel that was adrift with 28 Moroccan nationals on board was rescued off of Tangiers (Morocco). It was the passengers who made the call for help from a cellular phone (without however being able to say exactly where they were), when the boat’s motor stalled in open waters and the weather conditions started to worsen. The rescue operation, which included a helicopter and more than one patrol boat, finished in the rescue of the castaways and their arrest. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Islam: Cardinal Warns Against Alienating Immigrants

Brussels, 21 Oct. (AKI) — Second and third generation Muslim immigrants in Europe risk serious alienation from the societies in which they live, France’s Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard told a conference in Brussels on Tuesday. The youngsters suffer “a lack of success at school, unemployment, the feeling of not truly belonging or having a stake in the future,” said Ricard, whose diocese covers the southwestern French city of Bordeaux.

Ricard argued that Islam may appear to offer young Muslims an identity and pride that their societies do not. He said the anger and violence they feel towards what they perceive as an unjust ‘police state’ (photo) can drive them into the arms of extremists.

“They risk being attracted by most conservative and anti-Western strands (of Islam), and Muslim communities can be tempted to form an anti-society,” he said.

This can lead to “a radical rejection” of the West by Muslims and the resulting rejection of Muslims by non-Muslims in Europe, Ricard warned.

He called for communities and politicians to work together to prevent situations that can spark violence and to integrate young Muslims in the countries in which they live.

France has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe — five to six million out of a population of 62.3 million people or 8 to 9.6 percent.

French-born descendents of African and Arab immigrants complain of being marginalised, denied educational opportunities and forced to live in grim high-rise tower-block ‘ghettos’ on the outskirts of towns and cities.

Relations between young people and police are traditionally tense in some high-immigrant suburbs of Paris and other major French cities. Less than a year ago, the deaths of two teenage boys, whose motorbike collided with a police car last November, sparked riots in a northern Paris suburb.

The accidental death by electrocution of two immigrant youths in 2005, allegedly while they were hiding from police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, sparked several weeks of rioting in cities across France — the worst it has seen.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Malta-Cyprus: Immigration, Interior Ministers Agree Policy

(ANSAmed) — LA VALLETTA, (MALTA) OCTOBER 24 — Malta and Cyprus have committed to tackling the problem of illegal immigration in the Mediterranean, in line with the European Union agenda. The activation of the measures agreed upon in the new Pact on Immigration is among the priorities of the two Mediterranean island-countries. The issue was discussed in Nicosia by the Maltese Minister for the Interior, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, and his Cypriot counterpart, Neoclis Syliciotis. The two men came to an agreement over the necessity of implementing the joint system for the immediate repatriation of immigrants that do not have international protection. Further, Malta and Cyrus will insist with the EU that the agreements with third countries for the repatriation of immigrants be sped up. Finally, the two ministers will insist that the mechanism for moving immigrants in smaller member countries to other countries be put in place immediately.. The Maltese minister also met the Cypriot Minister for Justice, Kypros Chrsytomides, for a meeting over the consolidation of the relations between the police forces of the two States and also about the exchange of legal information and the fight against organised crime. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Climate Alarmism’s Flimsy Foundation

Forget pretty much any news reporting you see that attributes disastrous phenomena to global warming, because it’s all designed to create a fog surrounding the core issue: is climate change human-caused or not?

A most recent example is from Monday’s Washington Post, in which alarmist reporter Kari Lydersen (who has a long record of such journalism, in addition to work she does for leftist publications such as In These Times and the Progressive, on topics including “environmental racism”) told about how waterborne diseases are expected to multiply due to future climate devastation:

Now, scientists say, it is a near-certainty that global warming will drive significant increases in waterborne diseases around the world.

Rainfalls will be heavier, triggering sewage overflows, contaminating drinking water and endangering beachgoers. Higher lake and ocean temperatures will cause bacteria, parasites and algal blooms to flourish. Warmer weather and heavier rains also will mean more mosquitoes, which can carry the West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever. Fresh produce and shellfish are more likely to become contaminated.

The inevitable devastating consequences, as in so many environmentalist reporter articles, dominate the opening paragraphs of Lydersen’s piece. She follows by asserting that a trend of heavier rainfalls “will accelerate,” citing the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I asked Lydersen where in the IPCC report it states with certainty that heavier rainfalls would rapidly increase, and she promised to get back to me on that — “That was paraphrasing, not a direct quote from the report,” she told me in an email. I’m sure…

— Hat tip: JD

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Kindergarten Sex Ed Mandatory in England

LONDON — It’s a controversial idea in a land known for prudishness about sex — teaching kids as young as 5 about the birds and bees.

But with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, the British government is bringing sex education to all schools in England — including kindergartens.

While countries like France, Holland and China already require sex education, few places demand that it be introduced at such a young age.

‘‘It’s vital that this information doesn’t come from playground rumor or the mixed messages from the media about sex,’’ Schools Minister Jim Knight said Thursday, announcing that sex ed would be added to the national curriculum.

English schools now are required to teach basic lessons on reproduction as part of the science curriculum. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have separate education departments and standards. Only Scotland makes sex education voluntary.

— Hat tip: JD

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Russian Observers to Monitor U. S. Vote

Stung by international criticism of its presidential and congressional elections, Russia is striking back by sending a team of observers to monitor the U. S. presidential poll on Nov. 4.

Andrei Nesterenko, a spokesman with Russia’s Foreign Ministry, says Moscow will have eight election observers attached to a monitoring mission conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The OSCE, which has infuriated the Kremlin in the past by criticizing elections in Russia and other post-communist states, is sending 62 election observers to the United States.

The mission, headed by Audrey Glover, the top British diplomat, includes a core of 13 international experts from the OSCE’s office in Washington and 48 international observers who will be deployed in teams of two around the country.

In addition to visiting polling stations on Nov. 4, they will study the election campaign, media coverage and issues of voter registration, identification and voters rights…

— Hat tip: JD

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Stalin’s Army of Rapists: the Brutal War Crime That Russia and Germany Tried to Ignore

Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin’s nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse.

A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget. Yet it is right that the ghastly truth should finally be acknowledged.

The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers and depicts the horror of the Red Army’s capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April and May 1945.

A German girl walks past Soviet troops in a scene from A Woman In Berlin

Marta was one of two million German women who were raped by soldiers of the Red Army — in her case, as in so many others, several times over.

It was a feature of Russia’s ‘liberation’ and occupation of eastern Germany at the end of World War II that is familiar enough to historians, but which neither country cares to acknowledge took place on anything like the scale it did.

For Russia, the episode besmirches the fine name of the Red Army that had fought so hard and suffered so much in its four-year campaign against the Wehrmacht.

The courage and resilience of the ordinary Russian in what they called the Great Patriotic War is incontestable, and for every five German soldiers killed in action in the whole of World War II, four died on the Eastern Front.

Yet the knowledge that the victorious Red Army committed mass rape across Prussia and eastern Germany as they closed in on Berlin degrades its reputation, which is unacceptable to many Russians today.

When the historian Antony Beevor wrote about it in his book Berlin: The Downfall, the Russian ambassador to London, Grigory Karasin, accused him of ‘an act of blasphemy’, saying: ‘It is a slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism.’…

— Hat tip: JD

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The third part of Fjordman’s series on the origins of modern medicine has been published at Europe News. Some excerpts are below:

The Chinese medical tradition developed along somewhat different lines, with less emphasis on surgery than in India. At least from Shang Dynasty in the second millennium BC, the earliest documented phase of what would eventually become Chinese civilization, the concept of humors, or elements, appears.

There were five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, but the number five also applied to other objects, planets, colors, flavors, seasons, directions etc. Chinese pharmacology was wedded to the idea of five categories. Red medicine was like fire and was used to treat the heart, which is fiery. The five-element theory applied to cosmology and philosophy as well as to medicine. In Confucian philosophy, Confucius talks about five relationships: Sovereign to subject, parent to child, husband to wife, elder to younger sibling and friend to friend. In the first four categories, the latter owes loyalty and obedience to the former, whereas the relationship between friends should be on equal terms.

Kennedy writes in A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine:

– – – – – – – – –

“Since the world was composed of five elements, there were five chief organs, the yin organs: the heart, liver, lung, kidney and spleen. Then there were five auxiliary organs, the yang organs: the large intestine, small intestine, gall bladder, stomach, and bladder. The relationship of these organs between each other was influenced by the relationship of the elements. The kidney, as the organ of water, must be antagonistic to the heart since that was the organ of fire. Each organ had a specific planet and season.. The heart had a relationship with summer. The interplay between yin and yang, concepts going back to the Shang Dynasty, were important as was the role of Tao, the world spirit. The world spirit entered the body with air, through the lungs, and earth, through food taken into the intestines. It moved through a system of arteries and nerves that do not correspond to human anatomy. Note the absence of the brain in the list of important organs. When the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems were discovered in the nineteenth century some speculated that the forces of yin and yang had correlated with these pathways.”

The Chinese were far from unique in not understanding the importance of the human brain, a mistake which was common in cultures from ancient Egypt via Polynesia to medieval Islam. In fact, the seeds of a scientific understanding of the brain can be traced to Europe during the Scientific Revolution. The Englishman Thomas Willis (1621—1675), a doctor and co-founder of the Royal Society of London, with his studies at Oxford in the 1660s is often considered the founder of neurology. In his groundbreaking anatomical works in the sixteenth century based on human dissections, Vesalius did not describe the brain in any great detail. Willis, on the other hand, removed the brain from the cranium and was able to describe it more clearly.

Read the rest at Europe News.

Robert Spencer has leapt to the battlements in a spirited defense of Fjordman against charges of neofascism and white supremacism:

The learned European essayist Fjordman here reviews Ali Sina’s Understanding Muhammad. Since Fjordman has been accused of being a white supremacist and a neofascist, some people have also accused me of being a white supremacist and neofascist, because I publish his fine essays on jihad and the Islamization of Europe. So I thought I would take this opportunity to say that while white supremacism and neofascism are wrong and should everywhere be opposed, I do not believe Fjordman is a white supremacist or a neofascist. What many have taken as “white supremacism” is his interest in trying to stem the tide of immigration into Europe, which threatens to make Europeans into minorities in their own countries, and — because the immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim — to create a series of Sharia states across Europe. In 2006, well before he began to be accused of race supremacism, Fjordman wrote this:

We shouldn’t idealize mass-immigration too much. When one group of people move into a territory where another group of people already live, this has usually throughout human history ended in war. Either the newcomers will be expelled, or they will subdue or wipe out the previous inhabitants, or the groups will divide the country between them.

I see little reason to expect any different result where the indigenous population happens to be white. […]

– – – – – – – – –

More recently (two weeks ago), the genuinely neofascist VNN Forum (an evil site to which I will provide no link) criticized one of Fjordman’s articles about Europe for not blaming Jews for the problem. VNN Forum writers called Fjordman “a neocon jew-ass-kisser who is either oblivious of the fact that jews are responsible for what is happening or is aware but doesn’t have the guts to name the jew.” They also pointed out that “the Brussels Journal is never critical towards the Jew” and went on to complain that “multiculturalism stops when the Jew is down and out. Those Islamophobic ‘nationalist’ parties accomplish nothing….I would rather see anti-synagogue marches over anti-mosque ones. The mosques become a non-issue if you defeat the wretched sheeny.”

I would rather stand with Israel, and Fjordman, than with those racist neofascists.

Go over to Jihad Watch to read Fjordman’s review.

Hat tip: Paul Green.

Some of the backlog of news tips is included in this batch, so not everything in tonight’s news feed is part of the steaming pile of up-to-the minute news.

Also, there may be duplicates in here. If Dymphna didn’t delete everything she used, it may pop up again.

Notice the story from Pittsburgh about the disturbed young woman who charged that a man beat her up and carved a “B” in her face after he found out that she was a McCain supporter. I was suspicious as soon as I saw the photo, which shows that the “B” on her face was backwards. It turns out that, as reported in a later article, she actually disfigured herself, and is now in jail.

Thanks to Abu Elvis, Archonix, C. Cantoni, CSP, DJ, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Steen, TB, turn, Yaacov Ben Moshe, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –

	USA
	Ayers’ Group Foresaw Genocide of Capitalists
	Democrat: Obama’s Grandma Confirms Kenyan Birth
	Markets Vote No Confidence in Obama
	Pittsburgh: McCain Supporter Robbed, Assaulted
	Pittsburgh: Woman Admits Making Up McCain Sticker Attack, Police Say
	Possible Future?
	Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?
	Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn on the Lights?
	Europe and the EU
	Christians in Kabul Are Warned: You Are Being Watched by Taliban Agents
	Coup D’Etat!!!! Sarkozy to Renew His European Presidency for Another Year
	Denmark: Women Molested at Asylum Centres
	Denmark: Torture Accused Sent to Psych Hospital Indefinitely
	Haider Widow Believes Death ‘Not an Accident’
	Italy: Iranian Dissident Leader Visits Rome
	Netherlands Plunges in Ranking Order for Press Freedom
	‘Swastika’ Flower Arrangement Causes Consternation
	Swedes Cool Towards Ethnic Diversity
	The Netherlands: Dumping Brides Could Become Illegal
	Balkans
	Rai Mediterraneo; Sarajevo, the Birth of European Islam
	Serbia: Pro-European Party & Milosevic’s Ex-Party Make Peace
	Mediterranean Union
	Syria: Asma Assad, No More Excuses for Poverty
	North Africa
	Egypt Expects Oil Price to Fall to USD 60 Per Barrel
	Oil: Libya Favourable to Reduce Production
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Israel & the Palestinians: Ending the Stalemate (PDF File)
	Middle East
	Iran Economy Facing ‘Perfect Storm’
	Iraq: US Hands Back Control of 12th Province
	Jordan: Poet Arrested for “Insulting Islam”
	Oil: OPEC Ready for Big Cut, Even Two Mln Barrels
	Saudi Arabia: Man Decapitated for Killing Wife
	Terrorism: Saudi Arabia, Almost 1,000 on Trial
	Turkey: Erdogan Involved in Anti-Secular Activities
	Russia
	EU Says Gas Cartel Would Force Rethink
	South Asia
	In Malaysia Fatwa Condemns Tomboys
	Pakistan Rejects ‘America’s War’ on Extremists
	Pakistan Christians Slam Violence in India
	Far East
	Liaoning: 1,500 Dogs Killed by Melamine-Tainted Feed
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Mauritania: Junta Refuses to Bow to EU Ultimatum
	Immigration
	“Arizona Voters: Don’t be Deceived!”
	Immigration: 41 Migrants Rescued Off Lampedusa
	UK: City MP in Racial Tension Warning
	UK: Hapless Immigration Minister is Hit With a Custard Pie as He Repeats Pledge to Keep Uk’s Population Below 70 Million
	Culture Wars
	Felony ‘Hate Crime’ Against Christian Dropped
	Spain’s Ex-Prime Minister Blasts ‘New Religion’ of Climate Change
	Stop Climate Hysteria
	General
	Economic Crisis: OPEC Cuts Oil Output by 1.5 Million Barrels
	Solution to Global Financial Crisis is in Quran Says Worldwide Islamic Leader

Ayers’ Group Foresaw Genocide of Capitalists

Informer says communist U.S. envisioned, re-education centers, 25 million ‘eliminated’

[See link for video]

While many defenders of Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers have sought to minimize his bomb attacks on the U.S. Capitol and other landmarks because they purportedly did not target people, a former FBI informant who penetrated the group claimed he witnessed a meeting in which members discussed a future communist takeover of America in which some 25 million “diehard capitalists” would need to be killed.

Larry Grathwohl recalled his experience in the 1982 documentary “No Place to Hide,” noted the weblog Confederate Yankee.

In a session with members of the radical group, founded in 1969, Grathwohl said discussion centered on a future in which the communist nations of Cuba, North Korea, China and the Soviet Union would occupy various parts of the U.S., with “re-education centers” established in the Southwest to prevent counterrevolution.

“I asked, ‘Well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?’ And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.”

Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign has made Ayers an issue, charging Obama has had ties to an unrepentant domestic terrorist, including service together on two nonprofit boards. Critics also maintain Obama’s political career was launched at the home of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a former Weather Underground leader. Ayers, now a college professor, has said in interviews over the past decade he has no remorse for his 1970s terrorist activities, saying he only wished he could have done more.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Democrat: Obama’s Grandma Confirms Kenyan Birth

‘This has been a real sham he’s pulled off for the last 20 months’

The Pennsylvania Democrat who has sued Sen. Barack Obama demanding he prove his American citizenship — and therefore qualification to run for president — has confirmed he has a recording of a telephone call from the senator’s paternal grandmother confirming his birth in Kenya.

The issue of Obama’s birthplace, which he states is Honolulu in 1961, has been raised enough times that his campaign website has posted an image purporting to be of his “Certification of Live Birth” from Hawaii.

But Philip J. Berg, a former deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania, told the Michael Savage talk radio program tonight that the document is forged and that he has a tape recording he will soon release.

“This has been a real sham he’s pulled off for the last 20 months,” Berg told Savage. “I’ll release it [the tape] in a day or two, affidavits from her talking to a certain person. I heard the tape. She was speaking [to someone] here in the United States.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Markets Vote No Confidence in Obama

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

An Obama Panic? Pollsters tell us that the world is enamored with Obama but the markets certainly are not. The closer an Obama presidency comes to materializing, the lower the markets drop. The phenomenon has become so obvious that pundits can no longer avoid mentioning it even if only to downplay it importance as the WSJ editorial does:

Credit markets have started to thaw, yet stocks and the larger economy keep sliding. What’s going on? Among the problems are the reality of recession and the uncertainty over Barack Obama’s policies.

US News and World Report blogger muses that The Barack Obama Discount May Be Real Indeed it may. Not only are his Socialist “spread the wealth” policies bound to depress an already depressed economy but the prospect of another world crisis so candidly predicted by Joe Biden is sure to add fuel to the depression fire. If there is anything that is bound to rattle markets more than predictions of an upcoming international crisis, it is a prediction of a crisis involving directly the US, another 9/11.

Why are world governments unable to contain the market tsunami regardless of the huge sums of public money they are throwing at it? Because prospect of an inexperiened radical American president during these troubled times leaves them jittery and rightly so.

— Hat tip: Yaacov Ben Moshe

[Return to headlines]

Pittsburgh: McCain Supporter Robbed, Assaulted

A knife-wielding man robbed a McCain-Palin campaign volunteer and etched a “B” into her face after he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the woman’s car, Pittsburgh police said.

Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, was using an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street in Bloomfield just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her, put a knife to her throat and demanded $60, police said.

Todd handed the man $60 she had in her pocket and stepped away from him, investigators said. The man then noticed the bumper sticker on the woman’s car, which was parked in front of the ATM. The man became very angry, made comments to Todd about John McCain and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, police said.

“He continued to kick and punch her repeatedly and said he would teach her a lesson for supporting John McCain,” said police Chief Nate Harper.

The man then carved the “B” into Todd’s right cheek.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Pittsburgh: Woman Admits Making Up McCain Sticker Attack, Police Say

Police say the 20-year-old has a history of mental problems

(CNN) — Bail was set at $50,000 Friday night for a GOP campaign worker who made up a story about being attacked by a man angered by a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.

Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, a police report said.

Todd, who is being held at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, did not enter a plea when she appeared in court Friday night. She did not post bail.

She is scheduled to appear in court again October 30, when she is expected to enter a plea.

If she posts bail, Todd must be evaluated at a behavioral clinic.

“This has wasted so much time. … It’s just a lot of wasted man hours,” Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a briefing.

Todd was a volunteer for a John McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, the campaign said.

— Hat tip: DJ

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Possible Future?

[…]

“ And the prospects for the future look even bleaker. When people still talked about Professor Bill Ayers a couple of years ago, they didn’t realize that he wasn’t just an Obama ally; he was an allegory. He represented the thousands of Gramscian fellow travelers in academia and elsewhere who were waiting in the left wings for a sympathetic president. Many of these people have now been appointed to governmental positions, and many others have the Chosen One’s ear. They are the type of social engineers who authored speech codes in colleges and corporations and hate-speech laws (designed to stifle politically-incorrect dissent) in Canada, and now this import from the Great White North is in the White House… and beyond.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Red Herring: the Depression and the Communist Party

by Dr. Paul Kengor (professor of political science, and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College)

Given the current economic turmoil facing America and the world, the Great Depression is suddenly back in the headlines. It goes without saying that the Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in American history, and no doubt one of the worst crises ever to face the nation—wars included. Beginning in 1929, intensifying through the 1930s, and arguably not fully recovering until as late as 1954—when the stock market at long last returned to its pre-depression level—the nation witnessed soup lines and employment lines, dust bowls and closed shops everywhere, a plummet in national morale and the response by the New Deal. The nation’s unemployment rate reached an unprecedented 25%.

Anything so severe was bound to have numerous consequences, foreseen and unforeseen. The rise of the New Deal and its historic expansion of the federal government was one such consequence.

Today, pundits, economists, and historians jockey to inform modern Americans of the causes and results of the Great Depression.One such result, we are told, was the rise of domestic communism in the United States. Or so we are told. And that is the subject of this paper…

— Hat tip: turn

[Return to headlines]

Republican HQ Manager’s Home Shot Up Over McCain Signs

‘Democrats Far More Aggressive in Seminole County,’ Victim Says

LONGWOOD, Fla. — The home of a Central Florida Republican headquarters manager was shot up and damaged over his support of Sen. John McCain, the man told police.

Rog Coverely said several pellets pierced his Longwood home. Coverely showed several spiderwebbed-holes in the front windows of his home.

The Republican manager said he is convinced he was targeted because of new McCain signs he added around his home.

“All I can tell you is this, I have a very good relationship with my neighbors,” Coverely said. “I mow my lawn. The only thing that has changed is I have two McCain signs in my front yard.”

Coverely said he has taken about 300 calls concerning stolen or vandalized McCain signs in the area.

“It says this campaign is getting vicious,” Coverely said.

Coverely said it appears Democrats are becoming more aggressive in the county.

“I wouldn’t say slipping, but I would say the Democrats have become far more aggressive in Seminole County because it is such a heavy Republican area,” Coverely said.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?

The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.

Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn on the Lights?

By Orson Scott Card

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Christians in Kabul Are Warned: You Are Being Watched by Taliban Agents

Kabul’s Christian community is on high alert amid claims that their congregations are under surveillance by Taliban agents after Monday’s killing of Gayle Williams, the Christian charity worker shot dead in the street on her way to work.

Afghan intelligence officials have warned Christians they may be followed home from church. Investigators close to the murder inquiry said yesterday they were considering the possibility that Ms Williams knew her killers.

Friends revealed that Gayle had asked to be buried in the Christian cemetery in Kabul. Her body is being kept in a makeshift morgue at Kabul University until her London-based mother, and her sister who lives in South Africa, arrive for the funeral.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday, her mother Pat Williams said: “I am still trying to cope with what happened and it is very hard. The only thing that gives me comfort is knowing that she was doing what she loved most when she was taken from us. I have heard that Gayle was thinking of coming to see me for Christmas, but she did not tell me that so it must have been meant as a surprise. I say to myself that at least Gayle is with Our Lord.”

Yesterday, police were patrolling the road where Ms Williams lived and the street where she was shot. A regular churchgoer in the same neighbourhood said his staff had been warned not to walk outside because of threats against Christians. He said: “All of us are having to be careful about what we do, where we go and what we say.” Sayed Ansari, a spokesman for the secret police, said officials would try to protect Westerners, but he warned: “People need to be vigilant when they leave their homes, especially if they are on foot.”

A coffee shop close to where Gayle was killed, which was popular with Christians, was closed yesterday “until further notice”. Staff at the cafe said they did not want Westerners congregating in one place while security was sketchy.

The Taliban said they murdered Ms Williams because she was converting people from Islam, a capital offence under Afghan law. The South African aid worker, who had moved to Britain, was volunteering for Serve Afghanistan, a UK-based Christian charity. Staff insisted she was running a project to help disabled children and had never tried to proselytise. At the spot where Gayle died friends left flowers, ribbons, a photograph and prayers.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Coup D’Etat!!!! Sarkozy to Renew His European Presidency for Another Year

Le Monde has the real story of Sarkozy’s speech to the European Parliament we all missed yesterday, which is that Nicolas Sarkozy effectively suggested to continue as EU president for the euro zone for another year. The logic behind the argument is as follows: Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the financial crisis led to a common understanding that the EU currently needs a strong leadership. The Irish No vote to the Lisbon Treaty means that there is no quick fix for this in the near future. The altering presidencies are to be replaced, by what is subject to a roadmap to be worked out by Sarkozy’s presidency in December. One option would be an elected president, the far more easier option is to let Sarkozy continue to preside but at the euro zone level. It would circumvent the (widely feared) Czech and the Swedish EU presidency in 2009 until the next eurozone country, Spain, takes over in 2010. In principle Jean Claude Juncker, the current president of the informal Eurogroup, would also qualify for the job, but the proposal of a Eurogroup presidency is seen as a de facto coup d’etat by Sarkozy against the Ecofin, writes Wolfgang Proissl in the FT Deutschland. France did (obviously) not coordinate this subject with Germany, awaiting now the verdict of Angela Merkel.

Le Monde editorial argues that this is nothing but a method to extend his own influence in Europe beyond the French EU presidency. Apart from this presidency, he also suggested a European wealth fund and a new European industrial policy. Sarkozy knows too well that not all of his proposals get through but believes that some proposals will survive in the end. Le Monde warns that this tactic worked well in the crisis but when the calm sets in Europe might as well return to its traditional working method of moderation and compromise.

Jean Quatremer reports that the European Parliament favours by a large majority Sarkozy’s proposal of a euro area governance. In a resolution adopted yesterday by 499 against 130 votes and 69 abstentions the MEPs consider that the first eurozone summit held in October calls for further development. Quatremer also clarifies that Sarkozy’s proposal is not to institutionalize the eurozone governance but to preserve the initiative for a Eurogroup summit to euro area members during times when the EU presidency falls on a non-eurozone member. The French would thus pass on this role to Spain in 2010.

— Hat tip: Gaia

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Women Molested at Asylum Centres

The Red Cross says that single women at asylum centres are sexually molested and need a special centre.

Single women at asylum centres are subjected to unwanted sexual advances and abuse by male residents , according to a report in Berlingske Tidende.

The Red Cross Asylum Department says that the 150 single women in the centres are at risk, and police have received four reports of rapes and indecent exposure in the past year.

Fear

All of the cases reported took place at the Sandholmlejr asylum centre.

“Divorced women are particularly at risk because men think that they are simply available. Some of the women are extremely scared,” says Red Cross Asylum Department Head Jørgen Chemnitz. Chemnitz wants to set up a centre solely for women.

The Socialist People’s Party and the Social Democrats say they plan to discuss the issue with the Minister for Integration Birthe Rønn Hornbech

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Unrest in Greve

Police were called out during the night to disturbances at the Askerød Estate in Greve.

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Large numbers of police officers were called out to the Askerød Estate during the night where a group of young people had set fire to tires and other objects and set off fireworks.

“We arrested three people and spread the rest of the group,” said Duty Officer Bent Stavad Andersen.

Throughout the night

Eyewitnesses told police they had seen young people running around carrying petrol cans. Police remained in the area throughout the night to ensure unrest did not start again.

The three young people detained were charged with disorderly conduct, and were released after being taken down to the police station.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Torture Accused Sent to Psych Hospital Indefinitely

A mentally ill man found guilty of torturing his girlfriend will be indefinitely held in a psychiatric hospital

A Frederiksberg court has found a young man guilty of torturing his girlfriend and will place him in a psychiatric hospital indefinitely.

The 21-year-old Lebanese-Danish man was found guilty on all charges in the extensive case, including rape, imprisonment and torturous abuse. His defence team is now considering whether to appeal the case to the High Court.

The man, who was declared to be mentally ill and showing signs of schizophrenia, will be placed in the secure unit of the Nykøbing hospital in Zealand.

An experienced medical examiner testified yesterday that he had never seen such extensive injuries as those sustained by the 19-year-old female. She was locked in a shed for more than a week last year and subjected to various forms of torture, including having one of her fingers cut off.

The accused had pleaded not guilty to the charges, telling the court he had never wanted to cause her any harm. He maintains that the two are still in love with each other.

The teenage girl has been awarded compensation in the amount of 678,000 kroner, to be paid by her attacker.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Haider Widow Believes Death ‘Not an Accident’

The widow of Joerg Haider believes the far-right Austrian politician’s death in a car crash may not have been an accident and has saved his body from cremation for a second post mortem, a Vienna newspaper has reported.

Today cited senior members of Mr Haider’s party as claiming that his widow Claudia had doubts about the official explanation of her husband’s death and wanted a further examination by a coroner, possibly in Italy.

The paper suggested that Mr Haider’s body was abruptly withdrawn from a planned cremation on Saturday. It said Mrs Haider feared her husband may have been drugged.

Theories that the charismatic politician, 58, was assassinated have simmered in Austria since the crash on Oct 11.

Party sources pointed to the fact that there were no tyre skid marks as evidence Mr Haider was unconscious when he crashed, Today said.

Last week, a Volkswagen spokesman said the speed at which Haider was driving — 88mph — although nearly double the speed limit, should ‘‘not have been a problem for the car’s physics’’ on the curved road.

Mr Haider’s car, a VW Phaeton, struck a pillar and flipped near the city of Klagenfurt. The governor of the state of Carinthia, was nearly four times over the legal blood alcohol limit.

Stefan Petzner, his protégé, has been linked to Haider romantically by Austrian media after Mr Petzner said: “We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Me and Jorg were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life.”

Mr Petzner briefly succeeded Mr Haider as leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria but was sacked after his tearful revelation.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Italy: Iranian Dissident Leader Visits Rome

Rome, 23 Oct. (AKI) — A prominent Iranian dissident leader, Maryam Rajavi, was in the Italian capital Rome on Thursday to appeal for support for her resistance movement. Rajavi’s visit coincided with a crucial legal victory that could see her resistance group the People’s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran legitimised.

Rajavi is the the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the PMOI, which is banned in Iran.

A European Union court ruled in Brussels on Thursday that European governments illegally froze the funds of the Iranian opposition group with which she is affiliated.

While the money belonging to the People’s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran will remain frozen, the decision by the EU’s second highest court, the Court of First Instance, could eventually see it removed from a terrorist blacklist.

On her organisation’s website, Rajavi described the court ‘s decision as an acknowledgment of the Iranian people’s right to resist against dictatorship and religious fascism, and a triumph of justice over politics, economic dealings and interests.

The case was brought after a British court decided last year that the group should be removed from London’s list of banned terror groups, concluding it had not conducted any military activity in Iran or anywhere else since August 2001.

After a visit to the Italian Chamber of Deputies or lower house of Parliament, she received a warm welcome from supporters who greeted her on the streets outside

She visited France and Italy in July in a bid to generate support for her cause from European MPs.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Netherlands Plunges in Ranking Order for Press Freedom

THE HAGUE, 24/10/08 — The Netherlands has in two years’ time plunged from the first to 16th place in a ranking of countries with the most press freedom drawn up by press organisation Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF).

Last year, the Netherlands came 12th, while the year before, it was still the joint leader. Now it is sharing 16th place, below 15 other European countries.

The first 20 places on the list are taken by European countries, led by Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway. Languishing at the bottom are Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.

The criteria used by RSF to assess to what degree press freedom obtains in a country include the number of people active in the media, how many of them are murdered, arrested or abducted and the degree to which the state influences what the media publishes. According to RSF, war is the leading factor that restricts press freedom.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Netherlands: Moroccan Teen Crime Summit Yields Nothing

THE HAGUE, 24/10/08 — A top-level meeting between the government and mayors on Moroccan teenage crime has failed to produce concrete proposals for tougher action.

‘Nuisance’ caused by Moroccan youngsters in Gouda prompted the top meeting between ministers Guusje ter Horst (Home Affairs), Ernst Hirsch Ballin (Justice), Ella Vogelaar (Integration) and Andre Rouvoet (Youth and Family) and the mayors of the major cities and other ‘Moroccan municipalities’ such as Gouda, Ede, Eindhoven and Nijmegen.

Ter Horst claimed after the meeting that most mayors indicated that problems with Moroccan youngsters have recently been reduced. She did say the seriousness of the nuisance has increased. “A small hard core is increasingly causing serious problems.”

Hirsch Ballin announced that the Gouda police region will receive six extra temporary detectives to process 400 robberies and assaults that are still in police station drawers. The meeting produced no other results, apart from pleas for more ‘care’ for the ‘deprived youngsters.’

The cabinet, municipalities, police and justice are together looking for instruments to combat the nuisance by youngsters effectively, said Vogelaar, the widely criticised integration minister who was appearing in the media for the first time in many weeks. She said the cabinet wants to accelerate the introduction of a number of measures already announced, such as obligatory child-rearing support and more powers for mayors. But what the content of this is remained unclear.

Generally, it has recently been recognised by media and politicians alike that young Moroccans, sometimes no older than 8 or 9, are increasingly causing nuisance in the towns. The debate was sparked weeks ago when bus-drivers in Gouda refused to drive through the Oosterwei immigrant district any longer. Gouda’s Labour (PvdA) Mayor Wim Cornelis initially criticised what he saw as a hype, but then asked for 10 million euros to solve the problem.

If the cabinet should opt for the tougher action it has been promising — most insiders believe the government parties want to continue with their dialogue strategy — then it will run up against objections by the Council of State, the government’s highest advisory body on legislative proposals.

A number of mayors want to be able to impose ‘child-rearing support’ on unwilling families without the intervention of the courts. The Council of State has looked at this possibility at the cabinet’s request, but says this would violate international human rights treaties protecting the right to an undisturbed family life, said Minister Rouvoet. He will therefore “look for other options.”

— Hat tip: TB

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‘Swastika’ Flower Arrangement Causes Consternation

Residents of the small town of Aneby in southern Sweden reacted angrily this week to a floral display on a roundabout in front of the town hall that appeared to depict a swastika.

The council’s head gardener was dispatched to the scene on Wednesday to rearrange the flowers in a more appropriate manner.

“We got reactions at lunchtime yesterday and immediately went out and changed it,” council spokesman Bo Davidsson told Sveriges Radio.

“People thought it looked like a swastika but I didn’t really think it did. It was more like a wheel with twisted arms,” he added.

The head gardener said he had been inspired by a similar traffic roundabout in Helsingborg. But the pattern looked somewhat different when scaled down to fit the smaller Aneby roundabout.

— Hat tip: TB

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Swedes Cool Towards Ethnic Diversity

Greater numbers of Swedes are expressing hostility towards ethnic diversity, according to a new study.

According to the annual diversity barometer carried out by researchers at Uppsala University, the percentage of the Swedish population with extremely negative attitudes toward ethnic diversity has increased by 50 percent since 2005.

“The extremely negative attitudes are increasing, and we believe it’s in line with what’s happening in Europe. It’s not only older, but also younger who are negative,” said Orlando Mella, a sociology professor from Uppsala University, to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

However, Mella added that in comparison to the rest of Europe, Sweden is generally quite positive toward diversity.

Overall, 5.7 percent of the population in Sweden indicated they have extremely negative attitudes toward diversity, up from 3.8 percent in 2005.

Among men, the instance of negative attitudes has increased from 5.3 to 7.5 percent since 2005.

Unexpectedly, however, the prevalence of negative attitudes toward ethnic diversity among Swedish women has nearly doubled from 2.3 percent to 4.1 percent.

“It’s surprising for us that there are more women in the group [expressing negative attitudes]; that’s not something we expected. Swedish women tend to be quite positive toward diversity,” said Mella.

Despite the growth of unfavourable views towards diversity in Sweden, Mella believes the country is better equipped to integrate immigrant groups than other European countries and that public perceptions of social exclusion among immigrants in Sweden is exaggerated.

“The large number of immigrants are on the way to or currently are being integrated,” she said.

Nevertheless, Mella said that continued growth in the number of Swedes expressing hostility toward ethnic diversity has the potential to affect Swedes’ attitudes more widely, noting that rising unemployment presents a challenge for politicians.

“But we should remember that there aren’t deep ethnic conflicts in Sweden like there are in France or Great Britain,” she said.

— Hat tip: TB

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The Netherlands: Dumping Brides Could Become Illegal

The Dutch government is going to get tougher with the dumping of immigrant women and children in their lands of origin. Every year, dozens of women and girls are left behind in countries such as Morocco, Turkey or Egypt by their husbands or parents. In a parliamentary debate on the issue, Deputy Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak (pictured right) pledged to deal with the offenders.

In 2001, legislation designed to improve integration was introduced denying Dutch residence rights for the first three years to women brought to the Netherlands from abroad for marriage. Exceptions were made for women who were the victim of violence which was documented by a doctor and reported to the police.

Powerless

A foundation supporting returned migrants recorded 40 cases of wife dumping during holidays in 2006, and 36 women failed to return home to the Netherlands in 2007. Sometimes, men bring a new bride back to the Netherlands, using their wife’s passport. The women are left behind without any rights. They have no papers, and their families are too ashamed to do anything about the situation.

Statement

Now politicians want to introduce measures to change all this. Labour MP Khadija Arib (pictured below) thinks that girls who are threatened with arranged marriages should be able to sign a statement voicing their opposition. The idea comes from Great Britain.

“I’m heartened to see how they are dealing with this kind of problem there. The government tries to get girls left behind back to Britain. Something like that should be possible in the Netherlands.”

Arib has strongly advocated a helpline, so that teachers can phone in if a girl does not return to school after the summer holidays. The helpline could also be available to the girls themselves. Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak is looking into how best to set up the helpline.

Dumped

Thirty-eight-year-old Myriam Menehb is pleased with the political initiative. Her husband dumped her in Morocco a number of years ago. Now she helps women in the Netherlands who fear the same might happen to them. Ms Menehb says the main problem for these women is that they don’t know how to get back to the Netherlands:

“I think there should be a special desk at the Dutch embassy for these women and girls, which can tell them exactly what to do. That would be the ideal solution.”

In her own case, Ms Menehb was told that there was nothing the Dutch consulate could do.

Legal process

Meanwhile the government has decided that in some cases women will receive a residence permit more quickly. If a woman is the victim of domestic violence for example the chance is greater that she can remain in the Netherlands. The deputy justice minister does not just want to focus on the victims. During the debate, she said the perpetrators should be dealt with too:

“I think you can use the little information you have to prosecute the men. For example if a man takes his wife’s documents so that she cannot return to the Netherlands, he is deliberately restricting her freedom. You can consider using criminal law.”

The Lower House is pleased with the deputy minister’s statement.

— Hat tip: TB

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Rai Mediterraneo; Sarajevo, the Birth of European Islam

(ANSAmed) — PALERMO, OCTOBER 24 — Modernity and tradition together. Prayer following the rules of the Islamic religion and daily life according to western ways. Sarajevo, the capital of the Bosnia Herzegovina, is an ever growing European capital in which religious fundamentalists and freedom to worship live side by side. There have been episodes of intolerance, but the city is transforming into a place in which European Islam is developing. With a story filmed among children and their friends and in more traditional Muslim zones as their protagonists, the episode of “Mediterraneo” will open, the weekly show of the Regional Newspaper realised in Palermo by the Rai network — France 3 — Rtve Spain with Entv in Algiers, on the air tomorrow at 13:20 on Rai Tre and at 21:00 on Rai Med. From Bosnia “Mediterraneo” will move to Spain to tell the story of those in exile on the losing side in the second civil war who looked for shelter in France. Protagonists will speak about this dramatic chapter in Iberian history. Then to France for Bebelmed, a musical demonstration, which collected 1,700 musicians and workers in the sector from both shores of the Mediterranean. Together they managed to create a fresh, diverse, and multiethnic style. The magazine will also deal with the experience of workers in the marine sector, which in the recent exposition in Genoa, presented initiatives of economic collaboration with entrepreneurs from the Mediterranean shores. They aim at the growth of a sector that is in continuous expansion, despite the crisis of the markets. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Serbia: Pro-European Party & Milosevic’s Ex-Party Make Peace

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, OCTOBER 20 — Serbiàs Democratic Party (DS) led by the pro-European President, Boris Tadic, and the socialist party of the (now dead) Slobodan Milosevic which govern the country in coalition, have signed an official agreement of reconciliation. The document, which emphasises how the two parties have “a shared responsibility for the construction of a Serbia that is democratic, free, and equipped with a developed economy and equable social justice”, was signed by the leaders of the two parties: Tadic for the DS and the Minister of the Interior and vice-premier, Ivica Dadic, for the SPS. “We intend to propose a platform for a national reconciliation which will reunite all those who hold the future of Serbia dear”, continues the document, which brings to a close the political crisis that has lasted since the day after the general election of May 11. The two parties have always seen themselves as opposed. The DS, when it was run by Zoran Djindjic, the premier that was assassinated in March 2003, had a decisive role in the arrest and extradition of the former dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in jail in Aja in 2006 where he was being tried by an international court for war crimes in former Yugoslavia. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Syria: Asma Assad, No More Excuses for Poverty

(ANSAmed) — RIMINI, OCTOBER 20 — “By now we live in a globalised world: we grow together, we suffer together, we are all connected. We must raise the poverty threshold, so that nobody has to live in extreme poverty. There are no more excuses, there is no more time”. The first lady of Syria, Asma al-Assad, said this when receiving the golden medal yesterday from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in the context of the international day of the Pio Manzù Centre, dedicated this year to poverty. “Poverty is a disease” the wife of Syrian president Bashar Assad added. “This is the reason why we have wars and terrorism. Terrorists, fundamentalists find in poverty a reservoir on which to hit, where to find followers. We Arab we say that one hand cannot applaud without the other. Therefore the work of the Pio Manzù Centre is important, it must be supported by all of us. We need a coalition of consciousness, of justice, for humanity. This is the right moment to act”. The Pio Manzù Centre has awarded Asma al-Assad “For her approach to dialogue, for her open and communicative vision, for her tireless activities in social work”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt Expects Oil Price to Fall to USD 60 Per Barrel

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, OCTOBER 20 — Egypt’s Oil Minister Sameh Fahmy said he expected oil prices to fall to $60 per barrel in the medium term because of the international financial crisis. US crude closed at about $72 a barrel on Friday while London Brent crude settled at about $70. “The international financial crisis will lead to a decline in the price of oil to $60 a barrel in the medium term, said Fahmy. The Egyptian government will not now reduce the subsidies it pays on fuel sold inside Egypt, he added. Egypt is a medium-sized producer of oil and gas and a net export of energy. The Egyptian government spends more than LE 50 billion a year on subsidizing petrol, gas and other fuels. The subsidies bill makes a major contribution to the government’s budget deficit. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Oil: Libya Favourable to Reduce Production

(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, OCTOBER 21 — Libya said that it was favourable for a reduction in oil production of more than 1 million barrels a day, from the crude oil producing countries (Opec) which will meet in an extraordinary meeting on October 24th. A reduction in production of 1 million barrels a day is not sufficient to re-stabilize equilibrium on the markets”, said Libyan Oil Minister, Chokri Ghanem to the Afp. “A million barrels is not much. Supply exceeds than demand by more than 1 million barrels”, added Ghanem who is also president of Libyan oil company Noc. “Our scope is that of reaching equilibrium”, he explained saying that he was against a lowering of production for in phases as suggested by the Iran representative to Opec Mohammad Ali Khatibi. The cartel at the moment produces 28.8 million barrels of oil a day. In front of the fall in oil prices, Opec has decided to hold an extraordinary meeting on October 24th in Vienna. The price of crude oil, which reached 147 dollars a barrel last July, settled in at 70 dollars a barrel last week due to the international financial crisis which has provoked an economic slowdown and a lowering of demand. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Israel & the Palestinians: Ending the Stalemate (PDF File)

by Caroline Glick

Originally published in The Journal of International Security Affairs (Fall 2008-No. 15)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s July 30, 2008, announcement of his intention to resign from office and the recent upsurge in internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah operatives in Gaza has thrown a monkey wrench in the Bush administration’s goal of seeing Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority sign a peace treaty laying out the borders and powers of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. But even in the unlikely event that such an agreement is reached, far from stabilizing Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, it will likely have either no impact on the Palestinian conflict with Israel, or a profoundly negative one.

Indeed, even if the outgoing Bush administration and the lame duck Olmert government manage to sign a peace treaty with the increasingly powerless remnants of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, that achievement is liable to be quickly eclipsed by violence that will follow the signing ceremony. The likely upsurge in Palestinian violence against Israel, in turn, will demonstrate that the Administration’s stated aim of establishing a Palestinian state-an aim which is supported by the Israeli government-has little relevance to the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Moreover, seeking such a state today will likely exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the conflict. Indeed, the aftershocks of such an agreement will make clear that both Israel and the United States are basing their policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on false assumptions about the nature of that conflict.

— Hat tip: CSP

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Iran Economy Facing ‘Perfect Storm’

For the past three years, he has been the lucky president.

Everything seems to have fallen the right way for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

There was international disarray over his country’s nuclear programme; Israel’s ill-thought-out attack on Lebanon in 2006 that spurred support for Hezbollah and the president; and the perhaps fortuitous capture of a group of British troops off its coast last year.

Above all, record oil prices have enabled Mr Ahmadinejad to go on an unprecedented spending spree at home and abroad, including buying support, according to his critics.

But now his luck may be turning. In fact, in a few months Iran could face an economic “perfect storm”.

Budget deficit

The maths is simple. For every dollar on the price of a barrel of oil, Iran earns approximately a billion dollars a year.

The real trouble for the president is that the crunch will probably come just a couple of months before he stands for re-election in June next year

In the past few weeks and months, the price of Iranian oil has dropped between $50 and $60 a barrel.

The head of the Central Bank of Iran has warned that revenues could be cut by $54bn, effectively halving the country’s income from oil, which accounts for the vast majority of both its export earnings and government revenue.

Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC), has even warned that it could go into bankruptcy.

As the effect of those lower oil prices works through, Iran will face a growing budget deficit. The International Monetary Fund said in August that Iran would face unsustainable deficits should prices for its oil fall below $75 a barrel.

Mr Ahmadinejad will have the choice of cutting spending or printing more money. But with inflation already over 25% and unemployment around 10%, neither is an attractive option.

Election concern

The real trouble for the president is that the crunch will probably come just a couple of months before he stands for re-election in June next year.

Mr Ahmadinejad has been working on a scheme to replace subsidies on basic items with a system of cash payments to the poor. It is a change most orthodox economists would support, but the idea has a distinctly Iranian twist…

— Hat tip: Abu Elvis

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Iraq: US Hands Back Control of 12th Province

Baghdad, 23 Oct. (AKI) — The US military on Thursday relinquished control of the Iraqi province of Babil, near Baghdad, to local security forces.

The southern province includes Sunni areas once known as the “triangle of death”. It is the twelfth of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqis.

The handover came as at least 10 people were killed in a devastating bomb blast that targeted Labour and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Jawad al-Radi in Baghdad on Thursday.

The attack occurred during the morning rush-hour in Baghdad’s central Bab al-Sharji district when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into al-Radi’s convoy.

While control of Babil has been handed over to Iraqi troops, US forces will remain in the region to support local security forces.

At a ceremony held near the ancient city of Babylon, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the number two US commander in Iraq, said security gains had been remarkable — with the number of attacks down by about 80 percent from an average of 20 per week a year ago.

Babil was once at the centre of sectarian violence. One of the worst incidents was a suicide attack in Hilla, the provincial capital, which killed more than 100 Shia pilgrims in March 2007.

Anbar province, once the centre of a revolt by Sunni Muslims, was handed back to Iraqi control in September.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Jordan: Poet Arrested for “Insulting Islam”

(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, OCTOBER 21 — A Jordanian court has ordered the arrest of a Jordanian poet on charges of blasphemy after he allegedly depicted verses of the holy Quran in one of his poems, according to a judicial source. In his poems, Grace like a Shadow, Islam Samhan likened his suffering to that of prophet Youssef when incarcerated in Egypt, as mentioned in the Quran. The poem has been in the market since six months, said the source who requested anonymity. But the case was brought to public attention after the grand mufti of the kingdom said his action represents “mutiny” against Islam, prompting officials from the government run press and publication department to file charges against him. The court sentenced him for two weeks and order his immediate arrest as prosecutor general prepares other charges against him, said the source. A recent amendment to press and publication law in 2007 has banned the arrest of journalists in press related cases, but the court used provisions in the penal code that allows arrest of individuals who insult religious sentiments, said the source. Press activists called on authorities in a letter published in local press on Tuesday to release Samhan saying press freedoms has been greatly jeopardized by his incarceration. (ANSAmed).

2008-10-21 15:24

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Oil: OPEC Ready for Big Cut, Even Two Mln Barrels

(ANSAmed) — ROME OCTOBER 20 — The “important” thing will be how oil producing Countries will react to the fall of oil prices, which plunged from a high of 147 dollars a barrel in July to about 72 dollats at the end of trading last Friday. Algeriàs Chakib Khelil, the Chairman of OPEC, said it in a very straight way: in the extra-ordinary meeting summoned in Vienna on October 24 the Organization will decide “a production cut”. And it “will have to be a major reduction to balance demand and supply”. There will be nop hesitaytion. “If the reduction is to be of 1.5 million barrels a day, it will be 1.5 million barrels. If it is to be two millions it will be two millions”. The oil price dropped below 70 dollars a barrel last Thursday, the lowest since June 2007, and then recovered ground the next day on strong buying on expectations of a production cut. Opec now confirms. Pressures by several producer Countries will bear fruit, worries concerning wildly swinging prices (down some 50 pc in four months with a reversal of trend after a strong surge upward) will lead to a production cut to balance demand and supply. Prices have been falling on fears demand may shrink owing to the slowing down of economy triggered by the financial market crisis. Iran might lose more than 50 billion dollars in the wake of falling oil prices, the country’s Central Bank head Mahmud Bahmani has said. “Iran’s proposal to the extraordinary Opec meeting is for oil suplly to be reduced by the same size as shrinking demand. Global oil demand has fallen, so supply should be reduced to safeguard balance and stability in the market”, said Iran’s delegate to OPEC in Vienna Mohammad Ali Khatibi, who described the oil price fall as “disquieting”. Iran is the second largest crude producer among OPEC members, behind Saudi Arabia. The oil cartel whose members account for 40% of global oil output, moved ahead to October 24 the extra-ordinary meeting previously scheduled on November 18 to debate the effects of the world financial crisis and its imapct on oil demand. OPEC, said the Organization’s President Chakib Khelil, who is also Algeriàs oil minister, regards an oil price ranging from 70 to 90 dollars a barrel as a minimun threshold . (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Saudi Arabia: Man Decapitated for Killing Wife

(ANSAmed) — RIYADH, OCTOBER 21 — A Saudi Arabian condemned to death for having beaten his wife to death was decapitated with an axe today in Gedda on the western coast of Saudi Arabia. This was announced by the Interior Minister. “Omar Ben Abid Wakdani beat his wife to death during a family argument”, specified the minister in a message. This decapitation brings the number of known executions in Saudi Arabia to 81 this year. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Terrorism: Saudi Arabia, Almost 1,000 on Trial

(ANSAmed) — RIYADH, OCTOBER 21 — The Saudi minister of the interior, Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, announced that 991 people have been arrested and will be brought to trial for crimes of terrorism. ‘‘We began bringing to justice 991 people involved in terrorism cases, after the accusations were formalised’’, the Minister said yesterday in a quote from the Saudi agency SPA. All of these suspects have been accused of crimes of terrorism dating back as far as May 12, 2003, when attacks began in the kingdom. ‘‘The cases will be examined in stages’’, the Prince said, without specifying the date that the trials will begin, the first of its kind since the country was victim to bloody attacks, all attributed to al Qaeda in 2003 and 2004. These attacks — Nayef said giving the most complete balance ever by a Saudi official — killed 74 and left 657 wounded among security forces and 90 killed and 439 wounded among civilians, both Saudi and foreign. More than 160 terrorist attacks were thwarted. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turkey: Erdogan Involved in Anti-Secular Activities

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, OCTOBER 24 — The Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, together with members of his party (Akp — Islam in power), including the Minister of Education, Huseyin Celik, were involved in anti-secular activities. The Constitutional Court, the highest court in Turkey, published today the motivation behind the sentence and the decision last July not to close down Erdogan Ak’s party for Islamic activity, cutting, however, half of the public funding allocated to it. ‘‘The party had become the focal point for anti-secular activities due to the decision to change some of the constitution’s articles’’, reads a document released by the Court referring to the attempt to abolish the ban on wearing the veil at university, blocked by another court ruling in June. The criticism that has emerged after the sentence against the Premier, that according to recent polls is still the most popular politician in Turkey, risks inflaming the tension in the country together with the consequences of the world financial crisis. In the motivation for the sentence, released today, the Minister of Education, Huseyin Celik, is cited as having taken part in anti-secular activities. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turkey: 86 Defendants Stand Trial in Ergenekon Case

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, OCTOBER 20 — A criminal court in Istanbul decided today to continue hearing the Ergenekon case in Silivri prison, as reported by Anatolia news agency. “The court has decided to hear the statements of suspects who are under arrest and who are not under arrest in separate sessions,” Koksal Sengun, the head of the court delegation, said. Sengun also said that the suspects under arrest would make statements first, each defendant would be represented by only three lawyers. Some 86 defendants including retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, Labor Party (IP) Chairman Dogu Perincek, journalist Ilhan Selcuk and former rector of Istanbul University Kemal Yalcin Alemdaroglu are accused of attempting to remove the Turkish government by force. Some 46 of the defendants are under arrest. An alleged criminal network that came to be known as Ergenekon was revealed after police seized 27 grenades, TNT explosives and fuses in a shanty house in Istanbul on June 12, 2007 and Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into weapons. Police waged operations in several provinces and detained a number of people, including retired senior army officers, journalists and businessmen, for their alleged involvement in the network. So far, 68 people were arrested in the probe, 46 of them are standing trial now. The remaining will appear in the court later. The 2,455-page indictment regarding the Ergenekon probe carried out by prosecutors Zekeriya Oz, Mehmet Ali Pekguzel and Nihat Taskin charges 86 people for attempting to overthrow Turkish government of premier Tayyip Erdogan by force and inciting murder. The trial is to continue on Thursday. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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EU Says Gas Cartel Would Force Rethink

Superficially it’s about the EU flailing around tyring to create a coherent energy policy, but the key point is:

“Russia, Iran and Qatar made the first serious move toward forming a cartel with a meeting Tuesday. Together, they account for 60 percent of the world’s gas reserves.”

— Hat tip: Archonix

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In Malaysia Fatwa Condemns Tomboys

Young women are told not to crop their hair or walk, dress and act like males. Last year Muslims were told not to go and see a movie in which the leading actress sported a shaved dome.

Kuala Lumur (AsiaNews/Agencies) — In an unusual move Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council issued a fatwa or edict banning tomboys. At a meeting Thursday in northern Malaysia, the Council ruled that girls who act unlady-like violate the tenets of Islam.

One of the members who attended at the meeting, the mufti of the northern Perak state, Harussani Idris Zakaria, slammed such behaviour saying it showed little respect for the faith.

Harussani, who chaired the meeting, noted that the behaviour and dress of this growing number of “disrespectful” young women can turn some of them to homosexuality.

Whilst not explicitly banned in Malaysia, homosexuality is effectively illegal under a law that prohibits sex acts “against the order of nature.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a law or not. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong. It is a sin,” Harussani told said. “Tomboy (behaviour) is forbidden in Islam.”

Under the fatwa girls cannot sport short hair and dress, walk and act like boys, Harussani said. Boys too must respect social norms.

For Harussani everyone has a duty to respect God and act according to nature.

The tomboy fatwa comes after recent cases in which scenes of young women bullying and carousing showed up online.

A well-known Malaysian Muslim actress caused uproar last year when she shaved her head bald for a film.

At the time Harussani and other muftis urged Muslims not to watch the movie, harshly chastising the actress for violating Islam by making herself look like a man.

Muslims make up some 60 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million people, and are subject to Islamic laws and the council’s edicts, even if the rulings have not been enshrined in national or Sharia law.

It was not immediately clear what kind of punishment awaited those who violate the tomboy fatwa, unless the edict is incorporated into national or Sharia law.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Pakistan Rejects ‘America’s War’ on Extremists

Serious doubts multiplied yesterday about Pakistan’s commitment to America’s military campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban after parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for dialogue with extremist groups and an end to military action.

The new strategy, backed by all parties, emerged after a fierce debate in parliament where most parliamentarians said that Pakistan was paying an unacceptable price for fighting “America’s war”. If implemented by the government, support for Pakistan from international allies would come under severe strain, adding further instability to a country facing a spiral of violence and economic collapse.

“We need to prioritise our own national security interests,” said Raza Rabbani, a leading member of the ruling Pakistan People’s party. “As far as the US is concerned, the message that has gone with this resolution will definitely ring alarm bells, vis-a-vis their policy of bulldozing Pakistan.”

The resolution, passed unanimously in parliament on Wednesday night demanded the abandonment of the use of force against extremists, in favour of negotiation, in what it called “an urgent review of our national security strategy”.

“Dialogue must now be the highest priority, as a principal instrument of conflict management and resolution,” said the resolution. “The military will be replaced as early as possible by civilian law enforcement agencies.” It also said Pakistan would pursue “an independent foreign policy” and, in a pointed reference to US military incursions into Pakistani territory, proclaimed that “the nation stands united against any incursions and invasions of the homeland, and calls upon the government to deal with it effectively”.

The force of the resolution was unclear last night, with differences in interpretation between the ruling People’s party and opposition. The document is not binding on the government even though it was party to it. The army remains the ultimate arbiter of security policy. Some analysts believe that differences between the parties will see a tussle over implementation that could temper the resolution’s thrust. The US response was muted, with officials saying they considered it rhetoric for domestic consumption.

But the intense American pressure on Islamabad to take on the militants was underlined yesterday by another US missile strike inside Pakistani territory, an instance of the heavy-handed intervention that parliament railed against. The attack came in Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan, at an Islamic school being used by suspected extremists, killing 11. The madrasa was linked to Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who has an extensive network in Pakistan.

— Hat tip: JD

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Pakistan Christians Slam Violence in India

A human rights activist and lawmaker condemns anti-Christian violence by Hindu fundamentalists and calls on the United Nations to intervene. The National Christian Party organises demonstration in front of the Karachi Press Club to raise awareness in the media about the problem.

Islamabad (AsiaNews) — Pakistani Christians last Sunday expressed their solidarity towards their brethren in India. They strongly condemned the anti-Christian violence perpetrated by Hindu fundamentalists.

In a statement released from the headquarters of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) in Islamabad, National Assembly Member and APMA Chairman Shahbaz Bhatti condemned the mistreatment of religious minorities in India and called on the United Nations to protect the lives and properties of minorities in India.

The Catholic lawmaker condemned attacks on Christians and their places of worship and said that religion is being used to discriminate in India, ostensibly a secular state, yet scene of acts of persecution that have left many people dead and injured, churches set on fire, places of worship desecrated, and more than 50,000 Christians forced into refugee camps.

“While violence continues in Orissa, [. . .] anti-Christian extremists have unleashed another wave of attacks on Christians in Karnataka” and “in Jharkand and other states,” he said, adding that this violence against minorities in India had surged as fanatic Hindu extremist elements go unpunished.

He expressed fear that violence against vulnerable minorities could escalate and urged the Indian government to take stringent action against those elements that are causing harm to ethnic and religious minorities in the country.

Bashir Shafqat, leader of the National Christian Party, on Sunday staged a demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club to raise awareness in the media about the genocide of Christians by extremist Hindus in India.

Speaking to protesters, Mr Shafqat slammed the atmosphere of insecurity that surrounds Christian places of worship and the flight of thousands of people who have become homeless.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Liaoning: 1,500 Dogs Killed by Melamine-Tainted Feed

A dog feed scandal comes on top of the powdered milk affair in which four children died and tens of thousands got sick. China’s Health Ministry pledges greater controls.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — About 1,500 dogs have died in the last two months in Liaoning after eating animal feed tainted with melamine.

The revelation comes at a time when the government is trying to reassure the population and limit the effects of the crisis over dairy products tainted with melamine that has been linked to the deaths of four infants and caused kidney stones in 54,000 newly-born mainland children.

The dogs, known as raccoon dogs, were raised for their fur to trim coats and other clothing and died of kidney failure.

“First, we found melamine in the dogs’ feed, and second, I found that 25 per cent of the stones in the dogs’ kidneys were made up of melamine,” said Professor Zhang Weikui, a veterinary professor at Shenyang Agriculture University.

Last year, wheat gluten, a pet food ingredient made on the mainland that was tainted with melamine, was blamed for the deaths of dozens of dogs and cats in North America.

According to the local press, the firm that produced the feed tried to hush the whole affair by trying to compensate breeders.

The Health Ministry pledged to increase its inspections on feed companies but many of them are small and operate illegally and can thus bypass controls and rules.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Mauritania: Junta Refuses to Bow to EU Ultimatum

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, OCTOBER 21 — General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, head of the military junta which seized power in Mauritania on August 6, has responded to the EU ultimatum to return to constitutional order within a month, saying that “Mauritania cannot go backwards, the democratic process continues, the people support us”. The current French presidency of the EU has threatened the junta with sanctions from Brussels in a meeting between the EU and a Mauritanian delegation led by their nominated prime minister, Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf. “If there is no change in the situation within the month — reads a note that was released by the EU at the end of the meeting — the talks will be closed and appropriate measures will be proposed to the decision making elements of the Union”. The Cotonou Accord, which ties the EU to the countries of the Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, states that sanctions can include a freeze on cooperation, stopping short of affecting humanitarian aid. The EU has accused the junta of continuing to ignore calls for the immediate and unconditional freedom of the legitimate president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, elected in March 2007 in the country’s first democratic elections. General Abdel Aziz has said that the resolution of the crisis “is the internal business of Mauritania and States General of the democracy scheduled for the end of November will be significant”, affirming that “only a few will boycott them for personal reasons”, and that he does not intend “to go backwards”. Shortly before this, the French Secretary of State for Cooperation, Alain Joyandet, said that he was optimistic about the situation, indicating that the meeting in Paris had taken place in an atmosphere of “talks between partners and not the interrogation of one country by another”. There does, however, remain a block on the constitution and the junta, said Joyandet, insists that it has “made an amendment”, while the EU continues to call the action of the junta a ‘coup’. Joyandet is favourable to a constitutional compromise however and claimed on Friday that “even in Mauritania, human rights linked organisations are not requesting outright that the President Abdallahi returns to complete his mandate, which runs until 2012”. This claim was however denied by the Mauritanian National Front for the Defence of Democracy (anti-coup) which has instead asked the EU to return the legitimate president to power, defining the States General of the democracy, a “farce”. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

“Arizona Voters: Don’t be Deceived!”

by Tom Tancredo

The opponents of immigration enforcement have stooped to a new low in Arizona with their latest attempt to undermine the state’s workplace verification laws. After exhausting their usual tactics, they are resorting to outright and intentional deception of the voters. This November, Arizonans will vote on Proposition 202, which will be described to them as such:

“Stop Illegal Hiring” Act is an initiative designed to crack down on unethical businesses who hire illegal immigrants. This initiative targets employers who hire workers and pay under-the-table in cash, which fuels illegal immigration in Arizona. It revokes the business license of employers who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants. This initiative increases penalties for identity theft, as illegal immigrants often use stolen identities to conceal their undocumented status. ?

If this were all I knew about Prop 202, I’d wholeheartedly support it; and the initiative backers are hoping that voters won’t learn anything about the initiative beyond the title.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Immigration: 41 Migrants Rescued Off Lampedusa

(ANSAmed) — LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO), OCTOBER 21 — A vessel with 41 migrants on board was intercepted 15 miles off the coast of Lampedusa. The migrants, including four women and as many children, were rescued by the Coast Guard, the Guardia di Finanza (financial police) and an Italian Navy vessel. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

UK: City MP in Racial Tension Warning

THE economic slowdown could lead to racial tension in Birmingham unless immigration is cut, a city MP warned today.

Rising unemployment will mean Britain needs fewer workers from overseas, Roger Godsiff (Lab Sparkbrook & Small Heath) said.

Speaking in the House of Commons, he said he represented one of the most ethnically diverse parts of the country.

But he told Ministers: “We must be careful that we do not undermine the excellent community relations that we have built up in that city.”

The MP warned that refusal to have a serious debate about immigration had helped the BNP.

Ministers also heard demands for men who marry under false pretences to gain residency in the UK, to be deported.

Rob Marris (Lab, Wolverhampton South West) said a constituent had come to him for help after marrying a man from Pakistan who then demanded a divorce after gaining British residency.

The debate took place after Immigration Minister Phil Woolas launched a stinging attack on the Government’s own record on managing migration.

He said: “Our failure to resource the asylum processes has caused untold human misery and division within our communities.”

Although he insisted he was attacking previous Conservative governments as much as Labour ones, the comments amounted to a criticism of his predecessor in the immigration job, Liam Byrne MP (Lab, Hodge Hill).

Mr Godsiff told the House of Commons: “The constituency I represent — Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath — is probably the most diverse and multi-cultural in the country.

“We must be careful, however, that we do not undermine the excellent community relations that we have built up in that city. The spectre of rising unemployment poses the greatest threat to multi-cultural cohesion because it is self-evident that if unemployment rises, we need fewer people coming to the country, especially when in parts of my constituency, in Sparkbrook, the unemployment rate has remained above 15 per cent.”

— Hat tip: Steen

[Return to headlines]

UK: Hapless Immigration Minister is Hit With a Custard Pie as He Repeats Pledge to Keep Uk’s Population Below 70 Million

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was hit with a custard pie at Manchester University in a protest against plans to eject more asylum seekers.

The Labour MP was speaking at a debate on environmental issues when a female member of the crowd raced onto the stage and slammed a pie in his face.

The Oldham East and Saddleworth MP looked stunned and was taken away and cleaned up — but he returned a short time later to continue the debate.

Mr Woolas hit the headlines earlier this week after making a string of controversial remarks about his new role.

He appeared to call for a limit on immigration to keep Britain’s population under 70 million and criticised the failure to spend enough on asylum removals.

Members of the group ‘No Borders’ claimed responsibility for the stunt. The pie thrower rushed up and threw what what was described as a ‘vegan pie’ at Mr Woolas from a distance of 1-metre and scored a direct hit on his chin.

The group say they believe in free transport regardless of borders and say their actions were a response to the Minister’s recent comments.

Gaffe-prone: Phil Woolas denies he has been gagged by his party and defends his controversial promise to keep UK’s population below 70 million

Outspoken Mr Woolas has risked further controversy by reviving his promise that the population will not rise above 70million.

Mr Woolas, who has come under fire following a recent series of gaffes, insisted his pledge did not amount to a ‘numerical cap’ but said Britons had to be reassured that immigration would be controlled.

He added that he was responding to predictions that the UK population will soar from 61million to 70million.

He also insisted that he had not been gagged by his bosses.

There were reports that he had been pulled from the BBC’s political flagship Question Time.

The minister has barely been out of the headlines since his appointment in this month’s reshuffle.

Last weekend, he suggested the population of Britain could be capped at 70million, only to backtrack 24 hours later.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Felony ‘Hate Crime’ Against Christian Dropped

Student pushed homosexual who got ‘in his face’

A Christian college student who was accused of a felony hate crime and faced up to three years in jail after a confrontation with a homosexual who got “in his face” has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count and the hate crime has been dropped.

According to a report in the Champaign, Ill., News Gazette, Parkland College student Brett Vanasdlen, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to two years of court supervision.

WND reported when it happened Peter LaBarbera of the activist group Americans for Truth said it appeared it was a confrontation between two students: one hollering at the second, and the second pushing the first away.

According to reports, on April 12 Vanasdlen and a friend saw two homosexuals leaning on each other and holding hands, walking toward them on the sidewalk. Vanasdlen commented on “two guys holding hands.”

Then, reports said, one of the “two guys” grabbed Vanasdlen by the shoulder and shouted at him. Brett told him to go away, then pushed him away, the reports said. The homosexual fell to the ground and called police.

Vanasdlen not only was the only one arrested, he was accused of a felony because the alleged victim is homosexual, reports said.

[Return to headlines]

Spain’s Ex-Prime Minister Blasts ‘New Religion’ of Climate Change

“In these times of global cooling of the international economy … the

standard bearers of the climatic apocalypse demand hundreds of billions of

euros” to combat global warming, said Aznar, who was conservative prime

minister from 1996 to 2004.

“They want to throw onto the bonfire anyone who, like Vaclav Klaus,

questions the new religion,” he said.

“The slightest doubt on the man-made origin of climate change is cause of

automatic ex-communication.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Stop Climate Hysteria

by Geert Wilders

Global climate change is often subject to heated debate, not just in the scientific community but also in the political arena.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by the United Nations, says that there is overwhelming evidence that recent climate change is caused by human activity and will have catastrophic effects in the future.

Critics believe that the underlying data of climate models used by the IPCC are unreliable, since temperature data from historic times were reconstructed through secondary sources like ice-cores and tree rings and have been compared with accurate

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Economic Crisis: OPEC Cuts Oil Output by 1.5 Million Barrels

Vienna, 24 Oct. (AKI) — The price of oil fell to 64 dollars a barrel on Friday — its lowest level in 16 months — despite a move by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut oil production.

Oil ministers from the 13 OPEC nations agreed on Friday to reduce output for the first time in two years by 1.5 million barrels a day at an emergency meeting in Vienna.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in an interview after Friday’s meeting that the cut in output would take effect from 1 November.

The cut will be from the existing quota of 28.8 million barrels a day.

Crude oil has fallen 57 percent from a 11 July record of 147.27 dollars a barrel with the impact of the global financial crisis and a gloomy world economic outlook for 2009.

The International Energy Agency recently predicted that demand among industrialised nations would fall 2.2 percent this year, reducing overall world demand growth to 0.5 percent.

On Friday, US light crude — a standard benchmark — for December delivery was down 3.23 dollars and trading at 64.61 dollars a barrel in early trading.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Solution to Global Financial Crisis is in Quran Says Worldwide Islamic Leader

LONDON, October 24, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — — Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Leads Prayers Following Historic Reception in Houses of Parliament

A worldwide Islamic leader yesterday addressed MPs and ministers in the House of Commons with a faith-inspired solution to the global credit crisis.

Before leading prayers in the seat of Parliament, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, voiced his fears to 40 MPs, Ministers, Peers as well as ambassadors of a number of countries, that a third world war was a distinct threat.

Political and economic injustice was at the root cause of this threat. The Khalifa said:

“If we survey the last few centuries impartially, we will notice that the wars were not really religious wars. They were more geopolitical in nature. Even in today’s conflicts and hostilities amongst nations, we notice that they arise from political, territorial and economic interests.

“It is my fear that in view of the direction in which things are moving today, the political and economic dynamics of the countries of the world may lead to a world war. It is not only the poorer countries of the world, but also the richer nations that are being affected by this. Therefore, it is the duty of the superpowers to sit down and find a solution to save humanity from the brink of disaster.”

He added that the solution to the global credit crisis was in religious texts including Quran bestowed to humanity thousands of years ago. Usury, he said, was a fundamental evil — akin to one that Satan had smitten with insanity.

“A major issue today is the economic crisis of what has been termed as the credit crunch. The Holy Quran guided us by saying avoid interest because interest is such a curse that it is a danger for domestic, national and international peace.”

Describing the community as ‘a standard bearer for the true teachings of Islam’ the Khalifa concluded that every Ahmadi Muslim was loyal to the host country, as per Islamic injunction. He condemned extremism and violence perpetrated in the name of religion as having no basis in Islam

— Hat tip: Steen

[Return to headlines]

I spent the last four days working at my real job off-site in the exotic banlieues of Toronto. I went up there fully expecting mild climatic discomfort, since the nighttime temperature was predicted to hover between 32° and 45° F (0° and 8° C), with rain expected.

The rain, however, turned out to be snow. Although it didn’t stick, there was a bitter damp wind blowing the whole time I was there, and the howling gale sometimes blew the snow horizontally along the concrete canyons of greater Toronto. The place was cold enough to be mistaken for Chicago, and it made me long all the more for the palm trees and coral lagoons of Central Virginia.

A Sikh taxi driver brought me from the airport to the hotel, and I discussed with him briefly the difficulties he had run into right after 9/11 when many Sikhs were mistaken for Muslims.

The first night we all went out to dinner at the Bombay Palace in downtown Toronto. Being a great fan of Indian cuisine, I was in hog heaven. The restaurant has an extensive and varied menu, and I tried lamb nilgiri there for the first time. I highly recommend the place to those willing to brave the rigors of downtown Toronto to get there.

Most of the staff at the Bombay Palace are Sikhs. The proprietor’s father, now an old man, tells the story of his experience in India at the time of the Partition, when he was caught on the Pakistani side of the new border. During the horrendous carnage that ensued, he barely escaped with his life. He was forced to hide under a mound of Sikh corpses and lie quietly until nightfall. After that was able to cross over into India, and later emigrated to Canada. Now he sits at a table near the entrance of his son’s restaurant and greets the customers who come in, and occasionally tells his story to those who are interested.

Toronto is one of the more Multicultural cities of North America, rivaling New York in its rainbow of diversity. Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, Jews, Indians, Somalis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese — virtually every ethnic group is represented and has its own neighborhood in Greater Toronto.

I passed through Muslim areas, where the women wear hijab as they wheel their babies in strollers on the sidewalks. But the area in which I worked was right in the middle of an enormous Orthodox and Hasidic neighborhood. This past week was the high holiday of Sukkot, and most of the stores up and down the street were closed. All day long the families would go by, the men and boys dressed in black coats and hats, the men with beards, and the women wearing their finest dresses. All those Orthodox Jews with their children, and every single one of them a big middle finger held up before the shade of Adolf Hitler.
– – – – – – – – –
It made me happy.

One of the first things you notice after you pass through customs at Pearson International in Mississauga is that every luggage cart in the airport advertises vacations in Cuba. Each one bears a photo of an attractive young couple in bathing suits sporting in crystalline blue water that breaks gently on sparkling white sand. The ad invites the reader to vacation in sunny and friendly Cuba, and offers a URL to help the prospective traveler with his planning: www.gocuba.ca, the Cuba Tourist Board in Canada

Welcome to the official Web site of the Cuba Tourist Board in Canada. Our mission is to provide you with the most Comprehensive, up-to-date bank of information for planning your Trip to Cuba.

The largest Caribbean island, Cuba offers breathtaking beaches and scenery; fascinating history; rich culture; ecological wonders and more. Bookmark this site, then start your tour!

Canada has a “special relationship” with Cuba, and is possibly the island’s largest trading and tourism partner since the Soviet Union rang down the curtain and joined the choir invisible in 1991. Huge numbers of Canadians escape to Cuba every year, bringing the Castro regime (Raul, not Fidel) infusions of much-needed foreign currency.

So the next time a Canadian gives you a lecture about human rights, remind him of the extent to which his country props up one of the most despotic regimes on the planet.

When I was looking for the Cuba Tourist Bureau website, I originally went by mistake to www.gocuba.com, which is evidently a completely different site. It’s basically a shell, with almost nothing in it. The photo in the header, with the very young party-girl frolicking on the left side, is obviously — at least to me — a subliminal reminder of the notorious prostitution industry in Cuba’s tourist resorts. Uncle Raul pimps out hundreds of underage girls just like the one in the photo in order to rake in more dollars and euros to keep the Politburo in its accustomed style.

Except for the “News” tab, there’s nothing on the www.gocuba.com website. But the news items are an indication that this really is an official Cuban government site, and not just a scam designed to siphon off would-be tourists who happen to type the wrong URL into their browsers.

An example, picked at random, from March 8, 2008:

Fidel Castro Choice Noble, Veterans

The Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution said that Fidel Castro’s decision to neither aspire to nor accept the Council of States Presidency ennobles him.

In a message published by Granma daily, the ACRC lauded the Commander in Chief’s determination as “far reaching, legitimate, and honorable.”

We convey our support and decision to keep up our struggle along the people and Raul Castro, elected by the sovereign will President of the Council of States and of Ministers, adds the document.

The Association pledged to brace the unity of which the revolutionary leader taught them, backing every action of solidarity with the five Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned in the US since 1998.

Baroque agitprop of this ilk this died out in the Soviet Union long before 1991, but it’s still alive and well in the People’s Paradise of the Caribbean. It serves as a reminder of the grim reality just a few miles inland from the sparkling sand and the lambent surf in front of the tourist hotels. While the tourists play in the lagoons, drink rum in the bars, and take their pleasure with the comfort girls, real life goes on unabated in the slums and peasant hovels not far away.

With the help of Canadian loonies and European euros, true Socialism — honest-to-Marx Communism — is alive and well in Cuba.

But don’t expect any of the visitors from the Frozen North (or Eurabia) to remember that while they’re on vacation. Poking the Great Satan in the eye is good enough for them, and besides, the Cuban people have great health care, and they’re happy, right? They love Uncle Raul!

Ask the waiters and busboys and maids who work in the high-rises on the beach. Just look at them smile!

Update: Jörg Haider’s widow does not believe that his death was an accident, and has prevented his cremation so that there may be a second post-mortem, possibly outside of Austria (hat tip: JD):

Haider Widow Believes Death ‘Not an Accident’

The widow of Joerg Haider believes the far-right Austrian politician’s death in a car crash may not have been an accident and has saved his body from cremation for a second post mortem, a Vienna newspaper has reported.

Today cited senior members of Mr Haider’s party as claiming that his widow Claudia had doubts about the official explanation of her husband’s death and wanted a further examination by a coroner, possibly in Italy.

The paper suggested that Mr Haider’s body was abruptly withdrawn from a planned cremation on Saturday. It said Mrs Haider feared her husband may have been drugged.

[…]

Party sources pointed to the fact that there were no tyre skid marks as evidence Mr Haider was unconscious when he crashed, Today said.

[…]

Mr Haider’s car, a VW Phaeton, struck a pillar and flipped near the city of Klagenfurt. The governor of the state of Carinthia, was nearly four times over the legal blood alcohol limit.

Stefan Petzner, his protégé, has been linked to Haider romantically by Austrian media after Mr Petzner said: “We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Me and Jorg were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life.”

Mr Petzner briefly succeeded Mr Haider as leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria but was sacked after his tearful revelation.

According to some of my Austrian contacts, the fact that Jörg Haider was gay — or at least bisexual — had been an open secret in Austria for years. It was something that political insiders knew but which did not generally appear in the press.

Now that Mr. Haider is safely dead, certain details of this previously obscure aspect of his life are surfacing. The man who succeeded him as leader of the BZÖ, Stefan Petzner, has been forced to step down from his position after revealing that he and Mr. Haider were lovers.

According to the Times Online:

Far-right Austrian leader sacked for revealing gay affair with Jörg Haider

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.

In emotional interviews with the national broadcaster and a tabloid newspaper Stefan Petzner spoke openly about his affair with Haider, who died at the age of 58 in a high-speed car crash after heavy drinking session at a gay club this month. Haider’s party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, captured 11 per cent of the vote in national elections last month.

“He was the man of my life. Our relationship went far beyond friendship,” Mr Petzner, 27, said after only a week in the job, adding that Haider’s wife, Claudia, 52, “did not object” to their relationship.

“I only had him. Now I am all alone. I would spend nights with him and his family and that was important for me because I often was afraid to be alone in the dark,” he added.

Regardless of one’s opinion on homosexuality, this last tidbit of information indicates that the BZÖ was wise to oust him. How could a man with an acknowledged fear of the dark be fit to lead a major political party?

The article continues:
– – – – – – – – –

Mr Petzner’s appointment as party leader was widely seen as a fulfilment of Haider’s last wish, as he had frequently said in public that he would like his young protégé to take his place one day. Mr Petzner dropped out of university when he met Haider at a party. At that time he was working as a journalist, writing about cosmetic treatments.

Outraged by the interviews, the party felt compelled yesterday to dismiss its leader amid reports of his alleged role in Haider’s tragic death. Local papers said that, on the night of his accident, Haider and Mr Petzner had a row at a magazine launch party. Haider left in a hurry and drove to a gay club in Klagenfurt, his home town, where he drank vodka with male escorts. The reports said that he was hardly able to walk to his car.

But Stefan Petzner is not leaving the BZÖ completely. In fact, he will be the deputy to the new party leader:

The new leader of the Alliance, Josef Buchner, 43, a hotel owner and a divorced father of two, is seen as a more conservative choice. Mr Petzner will serve as his deputy.

Am I being over-fastidious in thinking that this whole affair is a bit peculiar? Mr. Haider’s deputy obviously had duties that extended beyond the mere conduct of party affairs. His placement in the same position within the entourage of the new leader would suggest a continuation of his former role. After all, Jörg Haider had a wife and children, too.

Or maybe I just have a dirty mind…

I just got home. This is actually Dymphna’s October 22 news feed material, being posted early on October 24. So truth in advertising is not exactly operative right now…

I’ll collect all the additional material — there’s a lot of it — and try to get it ready for Friday’s edition.

Thanks to BEP, C. Cantoni, E.R.R., Insubria, JD, Steen, TB, Yorkshire Miner, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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	USA
	WORLD MILITARY OFFICIALS MEET IN THE ADIRONDACKS
	Europe and the EU
	CARDINAL JEAN PIERRE RICARD AT THE CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM CONFERENCE
	EU FUNDS FIVE SCHOOLS IN EAST JERUSALEM
	MAURITANIA: JUNTA REFUSES TO BOW TO EU ULTIMATUM
	MUSLIM CARTOON CASE FAILS IN DANISH HIGH COURT
	PROTECTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY VIOLATED BY SPAIN’S LAWS
	THE ECONOMIC WEATHER FORECAST FOR EUROPE
	North Africa
	JORDAN: POET ARRESTED FOR “INSULTING ISLAM”
	Israel and the Palestinians
	PERES AND BARAK AIM FOR REGIONAL PEACE DEAL
	Middle East
	3,700 POTENTIAL TERRORISTS LIVE IN LEBANON
	NOW SAUDI ARABIA HAS ALMOST 1,000 ON TRIAL FOR TERRORISM
	OPEC IS READY FOR “THE BIG CUT”
	REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON ABUSED WOMEN HELD IN JORDAN
	Far East
	AND NOW FOR THE MANCHURIAN MICROCHIP
	Immigration
	WILL A RECESSION SOLVE THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM? Not Bloody Likely
	Culture Wars
	BEATLES SONGS EXPLAIN CHRISTIANITY BETTER THAN THAT BANAL BIBLE
	DUBAI RADIO HOST FIRED FOR IMPERSONATING GOD IN A SKIT
	SWISS COURTS CONVICT ON DENIAL OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
	WESTERN WOMAN ASSASSINATED BY TALIBAN IN KABUL

WORLD MILITARY OFFICIALS MEET IN THE ADIRONDACKS

no such thing as a secret meeting anymore, is there?

Generals and admirals from five of the most powerful nations on Earth met this weekend at the Whiteface Lodge in Lake Placid [New York] after flying into the Adirondack Regional Airport in Lake Clear on Friday.

Among the passengers of a large Boeing 757 airplane with “United States of America” printed on its fuselage were top members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and their counterparts from France, Germany and another country, possibly Great Britain, according to Barry DeFuria, a town of Harrietstown councilman and Airport Committee member who was there when the plane landed.

A top military delegation from Italy flew in on a separate Falcon airplane, DeFuria said.

Security was tight Saturday night at the Whiteface Lodge, where the military officials were staying, according to three separate sources who asked to remain anonymous to protect their jobs.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is the leadership council of the U.S. military, comprised of the top general or admiral of each branch of the armed services. Its current chairman is Admiral Michael Mullen.

Harrietstown Supervisor Larry Miller, who is on the town’s Airport Committee with DeFuria and was also there when the U.S. plane landed, confirmed which nations’ officials were on which planes, but he said he did not know what kind of officials they were or where they were going from the airport. He said he and DeFuria had to get security clearances to be present and that soldiers were guarding the 757 around the clock at the airport, which is owned and run by the town of Harrietstown.

— Hat tip: Yorkshire Miner

[Return to headlines]

CARDINAL JEAN PIERRE RICARD AT THE CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM CONFERENCE

Hint: there was no water turned into wine at this conference

“Christians and Muslims can build a Europe for the future together, allying themselves against every attack on religious freedom in the name of secularism and intolerance against all racism:”

This was said [editor: if you can actually figure out WHAT he was saying] in Brussels during the European Christian-Muslim Conference promoted by European bishops (Ccee) and the Conference of Churches (Cec).

“European states”,- said French Cardinal Jean Pierre Ricard, archbishop of Bordeaux, and vice-president of the Ccee, “ always tend to assume a neutral attitude towards religion, without distinguishing among them, but benevolent neutrality and hostility exist”, he observed , “ which tend to close religion into a private sphere.”

[This is]”A situation with which Christian churches have had to deal with for some time, revisiting their theological system like they did in Second Vatican Council.”

“I do not believe”, he said, “ that believers of other religions can insert themselves into Europe without undertaking an analogous work, without revisiting their tradition. It is through this work of adapting that Christian and Muslims can become active partners in European society — mainly in three fields:

1.the defence of the freedom of religion and conscience (which implicates also liberty to build mosques and for families to choose their children’s education),

2. the refusal of exclusion and the promotion of the transcendent.

3. Human values and the aspiration for peace can constitute immediately a common ground for the two religions…

… but Ricard reminds that on other continents and in eastern Europe, religious tolerance is not a given: he cites Algeria, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia to recall European Muslims to a necessary reciprocal attitude, for a “profitable collaboration” which extends its benefits outside of the confines of Europe.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

EU FUNDS FIVE SCHOOLS IN EAST JERUSALEM

The European Commission together with Save the Children Sweden and the Faisal Husseini Foundation celebrated today the renovation of five schools in East Jerusalem, through funding provided by the European Union (EU).

The renovation of all five schools under the Comprehensive School Upgrading project included the upgrading of electricity networks, sanitation facilities, sewage systems, carpentry and mechanical works and general classroom conditions (paint, floors, and ceilings). The project also provided the schools with new school equipment that included computers, fax, and copy machines, in addition to school management software.

Furthermore, the schools are benefiting through educational support that includes extracurricular classes and training for teachers, support to headmasters in school vision development, and training for teachers and school counselors with a focus on learning disabilities and other special needs.

The schools, Al Nahda, St. Dimitri school, St. Tarkmanchatz Secondary School, Dar Al Awlad, and Al Doha, are located in the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounding area. The project is part of an ongoing 2 million euro programme, financed by the European Union, to help improve the infrastructure and provision of services to the people of East Jerusalem.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

MAURITANIA: JUNTA REFUSES TO BOW TO EU ULTIMATUM

General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, head of the military junta which seized power in Mauritania on August 6, has responded to the EU ultimatum to return to constitutional order within a month, saying that “Mauritania cannot go backwards, the democratic process continues, the people support us”.

The current French presidency of the EU has threatened the junta with sanctions from Brussels in a meeting between the EU and a Mauritanian delegation led by their nominated prime minister, Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf. “If there is no change in the situation within the month — reads a note that was released by the EU at the end of the meeting — the talks will be closed and appropriate measures will be proposed to the decision making elements of the Union”.

The Cotonou Accord, which ties the EU to the countries of the Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, states that sanctions can include a freeze on cooperation, stopping short of affecting humanitarian aid. The EU has accused the junta of continuing to ignore calls for the immediate and unconditional freedom of the legitimate president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, elected in March 2007 in the country’s first democratic elections.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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MUSLIM CARTOON CASE FAILS IN DANISH HIGH COURT

Muslims Get an ‘A’ for Persistence, Though

Denmark’s justice ministry rejected Tuesday a bid by seven Muslim lobby groups to take the Jyllands-Posten to the Supreme Court for publishing controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammed.

The Danish newspaper caused a furore in September 2005 when it published the cartoons, triggering anti-Danish protests in several Muslim countries.

One of the 12 cartoons portrayed Muhammed as a terrorist wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

The judicial commission, which decides if cases can be heard by the Supreme Court, rejected the groups’ claim without giving reasons. It was the third attempt by the group to take the case to the Supreme Court.

The case had already been defeated in Denmark’s Court of Appeal in June this year, which upheld a lower court ruling from October 2006.

In its ruling, the Court of Appeal said the caricatures did not aim to insult followers of Islam, as the claimants alleged.

The court emphasized that “terrorist acts have been committed in the name of Islam, and it is not illegal for these acts to be made the object of satirical representation.”

The seven groups say they will continue their legal action by pursuing the case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Editor:

[Who’s making book on Strasbourg vs. Copenhagen?]

— Hat tip: TB

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PROTECTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY VIOLATED BY SPAIN’S LAWS

You own your house until we decide you don’t

The Spanish government’s hard line approach in the application of the coastal protection law risks causing a diplomatic incident.

The British and German embassies, El Pais reports today, have requested an explanation from the Environment Ministry for the expropriations, which they consider illegal, of the property of their co-nationals along the coast.

The law, passed in 1998, started to be enforced in 2004 by the former minister in charge, Cristina Narbona. It provides for the demarcation of state property in the protective strip of the first one hundred metres of coast, with the institution of mandatory protection. Houses built before 1998 on state-owned land become state property, which in turn gives the property back to the original owners in the form of concessions for a period of 30 years, with a possible extension to 60.

The former owners are not permitted to sell the house, they need a special license to carry out modifications and are, in any case, subject to state decisions which at any given moment can expropriate the lodgings at below-market prices.

Thousands of Spaniards and British and German tourists, in particular pensioners who took advantage of the real estate boom by choosing the Spanish coast for its investment value, are now subject to dispossession and have asked their diplomatic representatives for help…

The problem involves citizens from different countries, whose representatives are now considering a diplomatic lobby, on the national and regional scale, to try to give the highest level of judiciary security to the property rights of their co-nationals. But, sources underline, ‘‘No one can interfere with the laws of a sovereign state’’.

The owners who consider themselves damaged have organised nationwide association, whose president, Carmen del Amo, calculates about 45,000 houses which could be expropriated, 15% of which were bought by foreigners.

For their part, sources from the Environment Ministry say that they don’t understand the chaos created by the application of a normative ‘‘that is 20 years old’’ and that was ignored by the People’s Party during its eight years in power, until 2004. The same sources remind that the Ministry has won 97% of the cases put forward in court by the owners of expatriated property and that the majority of the sentences declared by the Audiencia Nacional are in favour of the government.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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THE ECONOMIC WEATHER FORECAST FOR EUROPE

click link for the forecast map

Stormy conditions prevail across Europe’s economies, blackening the outlook after the arrival of a full-blown banking sector crisis this month sent confidence plummeting and threatened widespread-economic damage.

Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, warned late on Sunday on French television of a “strong slowdown”.

The recent turmoil has hardened expectations that 2009 will see little, if any, growth across much of the Continent.

…

— Hat tip: BEP

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JORDAN: POET ARRESTED FOR “INSULTING ISLAM”

…just in case you thought Jordan was relatively sane…

A Jordanian court has ordered the arrest of a Jordanian poet on charges of blasphemy after he allegedly depicted verses of the holy Quran in one of his poet, according to a judicial source.

In his poems, Grace like a Shadow, Islam Samhan likened his suffering to that of prophet Youssef when incarcerated in Egypt, as mentioned in the Quran. The poem has been in the market since six months, said the source who requested anonymity.

The case was brought to public attention after the grand mufti of the kingdom said his action represents “mutiny” against Islam, prompting officials from the government run press and publication department to file charges against him. The court sentenced him for two weeks and ordered his immediate arrest as prosecutor general prepares other charges against him, said the source.

A recent amendment to press and publication law in 2007 has banned the arrest of journalists in press related cases, but the court used provisions in the penal code that allows arrest of individuals who insult religious sentiments, said the source.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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PERES AND BARAK AIM FOR REGIONAL PEACE DEAL

Ah, Hope Springs Eternal. And the older you get, the higher it springs

In the calm of his residence the tireless president of Israel, Shimon Peres (85 years old) has spun out a new peace plan. His objective is a general agreement between Israel and the Arab world. Peres has discussed it discreetly with Premier Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who encouraged him.In the past weeks, during the General Assembly of the United Nations, he tested the ground with members of the Arab countries, some of which not on speaking terms with Israel.The Israelis were informed for the first time on the opinions of the president by a leak to the daily Maariv. Shortly after Barak, in an interview to the military radio, confirmed that the moment has come for Israel to “work out its own general plan for peace in the region, through multilateral negotiations”.Maariv found out that Peres thinks the negotiations of Israel with the PA and Syria (through Turkish mediation) are pointless. According to the president, a different approach is needed, starting with the Saudi peace initiative of 2002.Israel, according to Peres, should relaunch this peace plan and develop a package deal which is confirmed and guaranteed by the Arab League. “I have been talking about these ideas with Shimon for months” Barak confirmed. “We agree on most points”. Barak is convinced it is possible to involve the Western countries and the moderate Arab countries in order to stop “Iran’s race to nuclear weapons” and contain the activities of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza. In his opinion, in the region exist “profound interests” in peace agreements.According to Maariv, also Livni essentially agrees with this approach though she sees a dangerous element in the Saudi peace initiative: the question of Palestinian refugees. A month after winning the primaries of Kadima, Livni is in contact with several parties to give life to a new government coalition which guarantees stability, reaching a broad agreement with Barak’s Labor Party. She is also talking with Meretz (leftwing Labor Party), the pensioners party GIL and a small orthodox Ashkenazi party (Torah Front). Her real hope is to convince the orthodox Shas Sephardic Jews to stay in the government. But she needs more time to tone down their economic demands. Livni will visit Peres to ask for a two-week extension, which she needs to form the new government.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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3,700 POTENTIAL TERRORISTS LIVE IN LEBANON

hey, but we know where they all live, right??

Some 3,700 potential ‘terrorists’ live in Lebanon and belong to “operational cells and sleeper ones”, the Beirut daily an-Nahar reported today quoting “authoritative sources” in the Lebanese army. According to the sources, “they are Lebanese nationals and of other Arab nationalities but very few of them are non-Arab foreigners”.

The alleged terrorists are organized into “operational cells and sleeper ones” and “are to be found in the main cities, in the countryside and in the various Palestinian refugee camps in the Country”, the military sources were quoted as saying. They also said that “most of these elements are skilled with explosives” but security agencies “have a reliable map of how these people are distributed in the territory”.

“Authorities — the newspaper said — also know about some of the channels through which the various groups get weapons and funds, and also know the links between the various groups”. The sources said “competent authorities keep constantly in contact with Syrian and American security agencies”.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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NOW SAUDI ARABIA HAS ALMOST 1,000 ON TRIAL FOR TERRORISM

The Saudi minister of the interior, Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, announced that 991 people have been arrested and will be brought to trial for crimes of terrorism.

‘‘We began bringing to justice 991 people involved in terrorism cases, after the accusations were formalised’’, the Minister said yesterday in a quote from the Saudi agency SPA. All of these suspects have been accused of crimes of terrorism dating back as far as May 12, 2003, when attacks began in the kingdom.

‘‘The cases will be examined in stages’’, the Prince said, without specifying the date that the trials will begin, the first of its kind since the country was victim to bloody attacks, all attributed to al Qaeda in 2003 and 2004.

These attacks — Nayef said giving the most complete balance ever by a Saudi official — killed 74 and left 657 wounded among security forces and 90 killed and 439 wounded among civilians, both Saudi and foreign. More than 160 terrorist attacks were thwarted.

[Editor’s Note: This is quite an increase since yesterdays’ report of 70 people in the docket]

— Hat tip: Insubria

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OPEC IS READY FOR “THE BIG CUT”

The “important” thing will be how oil producing Countries will react to the fall of oil prices, which plunged from a high of 147 dollars a barrel in July to about 72 dollats at the end of trading last Friday.

Algeriàs Chakib Khelil, the Chairman of OPEC, said it in a very straight way: in the extra-ordinary meeting summoned in Vienna on October 24 the Organization will decide “a production cut”. And it “will have to be a major reduction to balance demand and supply”. There will be no hesitation. “If the reduction is to be of 1.5 million barrels a day, it will be 1.5 million barrels. If it is to be two millions it will be two millions”.

The oil price dropped below 70 dollars a barrel last Thursday, the lowest since June 2007, and then recovered ground the next day on strong buying on expectations of a production cut.

Opec now confirms. Pressures by several producer Countries will bear fruit, worries concerning wildly swinging prices (down some 50 pc in four months with a reversal of trend after a strong surge upward) will lead to a production cut to balance demand and supply. Prices have been falling on fears demand may shrink owing to the slowing down of economy triggered by the financial market crisis.

Iran might lose more than 50 billion dollars in the wake of falling oil prices, the country’s Central Bank head Mahmud Bahmani has said. “Iran’s proposal to the extraordinary Opec meeting is for oil supply to be reduced by the same size as shrinking demand. Global oil demand has fallen, so supply should be reduced to safeguard balance and stability in the market”, said Iran’s delegate to OPEC in Vienna Mohammad Ali Khatibi, who described the oil price fall as “disquieting”.

Iran is the second largest crude producer among OPEC members, behind Saudi Arabia.

The oil cartel whose members account for 40% of global oil output, moved ahead to October 24 the extra-ordinary meeting previously scheduled on November 18 to debate the effects of the world financial crisis and its imapct on oil demand…

— Hat tip: Insubria

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REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON ABUSED WOMEN HELD IN JORDAN

The elephant in the room at this conference was the Koran

Jordanian and regional specialists on family protection and violence against women in the Middle East and Europe are meeting in Amman to find ways of protecting victims of domestic violence.

The conference, which started yesterday and continues today brings activists from Iran, Egypt, Italy, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Mauritania, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Jordan, with each side sharing his country’s experience in abuse.

“While Arab society prides itself on its values and the strength of the family unit, unfortunately violent and abusive behaviour against women and children exists,” head of the Family Protection Department (FPD), Colonel Mohammad Zùbi, told participants. “These negative practices target the weak and vulnerable members of the household and not only destroy the family’s sense of security, but also violate their human rights,” he added.

The FPD official urged representatives of police authorities and specialists from 28 Participants to agree to create greater networking among child protection agencies in the region, enhancing partnerships with international specialists and NGOs, and a follow-up conference.

A recent report on domestic violence in Jordan showed that husbands who hit their wives often manage to get away with no legal ramifications. The report, titled, “Evaluation of National Policy, Measures and Actual Facts on Violence Against women”, noted that wives are “fearful of filing complaints of domestic abuse (under the general law of assault and battery) as society would end up rejecting [their] behaviour rather than condemning [their husbands’]”.During today’s meetings, participants will discuss vital issues on women abuse such as activating joint Arab action towards domestic abuse.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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AND NOW FOR THE MANCHURIAN MICROCHIP

Better start learning Chinese, fellah

The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator — at the risk of compromising national insecurities — would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) — and it is hugely significant.

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

All computers on the market today — be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM — are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China’s military intelligence services, the PLA.

“It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up,” the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. “It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system — on everyone’s system — from e-mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn’t mean to say they’re sucking data from everyone’s computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead — and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes.”

Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as “Trojan Horse on a Chip” or “The Manchurian Chip,” Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches — techie-speak for bugs and gremlins — with a view toward microchip verification.

Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing.

Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community.

“It is the hottest topic concerning the FBI and the Pentagon,” a retired intelligence official told The Investigator. “They don’t know quite what to do about it. The Chinese have even been able to hack into the computer system that handles our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system.”

Another senior intelligence source told The Investigator, “Our military is aware of this and has had to take some protective measures. The problem includes defective chips that don’t reach military specs — as well as probable Trojans.”

— Hat tip: JD

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WILL A RECESSION SOLVE THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM? Not Bloody Likely

Briefing paper 1.20 from Migration Watch UK

Summary

1 No. The record shows that the effect is only temporary.

Introduction

2 It has recently been suggested that the problem of large scale immigration will resolve itself if, as expected, a recession occurs. This note examines the facts.

Recession

3 There have been three recessions in the past 38 years — 1975/6, 1981/2 and 1993. These show up clearly on the bar chart… which plots the annual growth in GDP from 1970 to 2007.

Immigration

4 Net immigration (in thousands) is shown as a graph over the same period. It is clear that it has fluctuated about a strong upward trend for nearly three decades.

Conclusion

5 We conclude that the current downturn in the economy may also lead to a reduction in net international migration into the UK but, assuming the economy recovers, the reduction is likely to be short-lived unless action is taken to limit the number of migrants who are allowed to settle in the UK. A long term recession would be a very expensive way to control immigration.

Editor’s Note: Click Link for the bar chart

— Hat tip: Steen

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BEATLES SONGS EXPLAIN CHRISTIANITY BETTER THAN THAT BANAL BIBLE

Gimme that old time rock ‘n roll to save my soul

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has urged churches to use hits by bands such as U2 and the Beatles in their services.

In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, he argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation.

Hundreds of evangelical churches have already turned to guitar-based songs instead of traditional hymns, but the bishop suggests that clergy still need to be more creative in appealing to non-churchgoers.

Artists highlighted for exploring Christian themes in their music include Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, who famously claimed the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

“For many people the language of the Bible has become inaccessible and yet pop song writers can make a connection with people because their language is fresh,” he said.

“They are able to open our imagination to a way of thinking about God that we’ve become deaf to in church language.

“The Bible is an amazing collection of books that we’ve allowed to become banal. For many people it is a closed book and asking them to read it is a lost cause, which is a tragedy.

Bishop Baines said that music is influential in challenging people to think of some of life’s big questions.

“Songs get more into the soul than simply reading an ancient book,” he added. “I hope that they would be awoken to God and it would lead them to want to read some of the stories in the Bible.”

Editor’s. Note: Right you are, guv. I want some of whatever it is you’re smoking.

— Hat tip: JD

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DUBAI RADIO HOST FIRED FOR IMPERSONATING GOD IN A SKIT

“South African was unaware of local sensibilities” He was maybe living under a rock?

A Dubai radio station fired the host of its morning show for insulting religion after he impersonated “god” in on on-air skit, local press reported Wednesday.

Arabian Radio Network sacked Revin John, host of the Breakfast Xpress on Virgin 104.4, because of an offensive segment on Monday where he played the role of ‘god’ in a skit he acted out with his co-host, al-Emarat al-Youm reported Wednesday.

The skit was about a story published in the Western and Arab press in which an American court had rejected a lawsuit against God.

Listeners were not amused, and said John’s dialogue derided religion and insulted god. The seven-minute act aroused the resentment of listeners, including Westerners, the station’s general manager Mahmoud Rashid told the paper.

— Hat tip: TB

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SWISS COURTS CONVICT ON DENIAL OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

A Swiss district court has found three Turkish defendants guilty of denying the Armenian holocaust during the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago.

They were ordered to pay up to SFr6,500 ($5,630) each for violating Swiss anti-racism legislation, but part of the fine was suspended over three years according to a statement by the Winterthur court on Tuesday.

The defence lawyer said he would appeal the verdict, although it is milder than the sentence demanded by the prosecutor.

Last year the leader of Turkish Workers’ Party, Dogu Perinçek, was ordered to pay a fine of SFr13,000 for a similar offence. During a visit to western Switzerland he publicly denied that the killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians amounted to genocide.

The case caused diplomatic tensions between Switzerland and Turkey. However, both countries recently decided to forge closer ties following a visit by the Turkish foreign minister to Switzerland.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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WESTERN WOMAN ASSASSINATED BY TALIBAN IN KABUL

Taliban fighters killed a South African female aid worker on Monday as she was going to her office in the western part of Kabul, officials said.

The attackers, who were riding on a motorbike, fled the area after the shooting, Interior Ministry spokesperson Zemarai Bashary said.

“She was a South African national and was working with an aid organisation that was helping disabled people in Afghanistan,” Bashary said, adding that she worked with Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises.[SERVE — ed]

Officials from the organisation were not immediately available for comment.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack through its spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid, who said the Islamic fundamentalist former rulers of Afghanistan killed the woman because she was preaching Christianity.

“She was under pursuit for a long time and finally was punished today,” Mujahid said in a statement posted on a rebel website, adding that the perpetrators were able to escape.

— Hat tip: E.R.R.

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I recently discovered a blogger, The Mojo Bison, via our trackbacks in the first Iran Death Ship post. I was curious about his reaction; on reading his post it was obvious we hadn’t impressed him much for speculating about the booty those radioactive Somali pirates had taken from a ship on the high seas. To the Mojo Bison’s way of thinking, our loose talk put us in the same shaky airplane as some of the left wingnuts who jump to conclusions using parachutes consisting of slim evidence…you know, it’s not the jump, it’s the landing…

Today, on the second Death Ship post Mr. Mojo Bison cautions us again:

One must be careful. While other explanations for the cargo are equally speculative, none are so volatile as the Fallout Bomb line. It makes the casual observer go, “Wow, those people at Gates of Vienna are real nutballs!” And thus are you instantly put into the Dustbin of the Irrelevant and Marginal. You risk becoming an echo chamber of true believers…

Oh, Mojo B, your kind warnings have come too late. We have long since been relegated to the Dustbin of the Irrelevant and Marginal. In fact, my dear man, we have been living here for quite some time now. Our readers even donated generously for the renovations, and it’s a rather charming neighborhood once you learn your way around. Maybe a kind of Dan-Rather-Charming neighborhood?

Of course, ol’ Dan did much more than simply speculate. That boy held onto his piece of “evidence” with a death grip that scorned reality – in the same way that oak trees will hang onto leaves past the last vestiges of reasonable Autumn. It was sad, wasn’t it?

However, I repeat: the original post, and the second one, too, are but speculation. And I still fail to comprehend what is wrong with thinking out loud as long as one does not impugn another’s motives, forebears, etc. Do you think our speculation rises to the level of, say, the professionalism of the MSM when they speculate about Sarah Palin’s family? How about the recent New York Times piece on Cindy Cain? Has this behavior relegated them to the Dustbin? (I fervently hope not. They’d ruin the neighborhood and our taxes would go up.)

What about the zillions of words raised so far in speculative argument about the causes of global warming? Even if we were ever able to slam the lid back on that can of worms, what are we now to think of the shrinking heliosphere? Surely speculation will arise about the long reach of evil mankind, so long we can harm even the sun? There seems to be no end to our ignorant narcissism.

Wait! Perhaps we’d better look a little closer at this word we’re tossing around. Maybe you and I define differently this activity of speculating. After all (as Peter Drucker said and I repeat ad infinitum), communication is the act of the recipient. So maybe when I say “speculation” you have in mind a meaning for this word that I don’t intend.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the verb form this way:
– – – – – – – – –
1.to meditate on or ponder a subject;

2.to reflect;

3.to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively

That dictionary phrase “often inconclusively” is key here. In these posts, we have reached no definitive conclusions, though everyone is quite curious — and curiosity is a sign of intelligence, as I’m sure you know. In the first case, the Baron’s curiosity was immediately aroused by the radiation deaths of those Somali pirates. Didn’t that information grab your attention? Didn’t you wonder what they’d stumbled upon?

When I found Shirat Devorah’s Part Two of the story, I became even more curious. As I said at the conclusion of my essay on the new information:

…if this blogger’s prediction regarding Bush’s post-election plans to open a US “Interest Section” in Tehran turns out to be true, then perhaps this revelation will lend credence to the rest of his story. Since we’re dealing with a short time frame here, his thesis will be up for examination very soon.

I would be most interested to hear what those more expert in matters of intel have to say about this “Part 2”. Anyway, the comment thread on the “Death Ship” post was getting long, so this might be the place to begin anew with your contemplations on the subject.

Mojo, during the first post you described us in this process as stepping from stone to stone; I found that visual metaphor an apt portrayal. However, you forgot to say, or didn’t notice – we knew well and stated such – that we were traversing a fever swamp into which we could tumble were we to claim anything more than the tentative bits of what little was actually known – i.e., those dead pirates had expired due to radiation poisoning and they did so because of something they came into contact with on a stolen ship. We found this turn of events alarming.

If you look at t the comments on both posts you will see many people disagreeing with what few conclusions were drawn. Like you, some questioned the wisdom of even discussing it. Those disagreements and deep reservations were not taken down…thus proving that we are not an “echo chamber”. Loud and contentious sometimes, but no echoes.

The rules here are simple: stay on topic and no incivility or profanity. Though a few readers find our reasons for this last standard implausible, it is indeed the case that some homeschoolers send their older children over here to read. Having homeschooled our own son, I can understand why they do so. Thus, civil discourse is a must…though some people skirt the edges of the mud pond. In fact, a few have fallen in.

If you think we’re an echo chamber, do read some of commenter Afonso’s remarks. He is young and his English is a bit wonky (a darn sight better than my non-existent Portuguese, which is limited to “vinho verde”), but more than that he is often outrageously offensive…at least I think he might be so when I can actually get the gist of what he’s saying. And I speculate that he may be a misogynist, too.

You could sample some of Conservative Swede’s arguments – acute, aggressive, and iconoclastic. Think of him as an extremely intelligent and widely-read pit bull, but a pit bull with surprising streaks of generosity and compassion running through his feisty spirit.

So…no echo chamber here, Mojo B. Our commenters range from the disdainful (Nodrog), to the thoughtful (the great majority of our commenters) to the historically knowledgeable (e.g., Yorkshireminer), to the skeptical (in this case, Henrik, who thinks the information on this subject is too thin for speculation), to the energetic and persistent (zenster), to the kind and curious (Natalie). And so on, through kepiblanc and Archonix and rohobo and heroyalwhyness to joe six pack and xlbrl — some of whom are willing to contemplate what that radioactive material might mean for us and for those possibly in harm’s way.

I love our commenters. Conservative Swede is allergic to echo chambers. And Fjordman was badly betrayed by the members of one such group. He would not be here if he thought this chamber echoed.

Then there is El Ingles, who got us into trouble for daring to speculate on possible horrific scenarios if Europe continues on its present course – he wrote out loud what the p.c. elites have ruled verboten. But we knew full well what was likely to happen when we put his post up. And it did transpire as we thought: Pajamas Media ripped off our epaulettes and defrocked us for our temerity. That ouster from the Group of Worthies permitted free speech to flow.

Previously, Chas at Little Green Footballs had already consigned us to the outer darkness for daring to support the Flemish and the Swedes in their desire for the liberty to form political parties and to vote. But Chas simply happens to be a leftist who was bowled over by September 11th. His leftist social doctrines haven’t changed and his definitions of what it is permissible to say or even to believe appear to be as narrow as they must have been on September 10th. To boot, his understanding of things European seems to be skimpier than our speculations on things radioactive.

It was our readers and commenters who held things together when larger blogs were utterly silent during these public trials. You could hear the crickets chirping back then. Small blogs like ours — those who knew that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose — were quite supportive when we were attacked or ignored. Our gratitude to them, and to our donors, remains deep and wide.

So, Mojo Bison, here we are, already consigned to the ignominy of living amongst those who populate the Dustbin of the Irrelevant and Marginal. I must warn you that commenting here on a regular basis could land you in the same perfumed compost pile we inhabit. Remember what your momma told you: people judge you by the company you keep.

Hanging out at Gates of Vienna is not for the faint of heart.

To our readers: May I recommend for your enlightenment, The Mojo Bison’s post on “higher” education? My only problem with his essay is that he wrote it first. I swear, the man must be reading my emails or listening to me rant to the Baron. Education in this country is simply a bureaucratic corporation. Help your children avoid it if you can.

His money quote:

But I digress. Colleges are money-making machines, and most students don’t need half of what they are forced to learn, prepared or not.

Mr. Bison didn’t use the word “corrupt” but I will. And I’d question whether the kids actually “learn” when they are merely forced to regurgitate on demand for some safely-tenured twit the nonsense said professor pontificates in class or office.

By the way, I exempt Hillsdale College from this blanket condemnation. Could the secret of their success be that they don’t accept federal funding?

No doubt our readers could speculate on that.

The computer ate my news feed. After several hours’ work on the tips, the Baron’s computer decided to wipe my screen. Thus, all the stories disappeared into the bowels of this monster. I can see them in Access, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out how to retrieve them.

So apologies to TB, JD, Insubria, C. Cantoni, E.R.R., Steen, REP, Yorkshire Miner and all the rest of you who took the trouble to send in those stories. Perhaps they will be made to reappear when the Baron returns.

Meanwhile, here are a few highlights, totally denuded of their URLs. That’s probably a blogging flogging offense, but there you go. No pain spared in bringing you the news:
– – – – – – – – –
Here’s one of the more intriguing stories that went missing: there’s some big confab going on at Lake Placid among top-ranking military leaders from a number of Western countries. No one knows what it’s about, though some are guessing it might be to consider the ramifications of the death ship sent from China and captured by the Somalis. A bunch of these leaders came in one plane, but the Italians arrived separately. The little airport in the Adirondacks is crawling with military guards.

In another story, Russia and America are purportedly in secret meetings also — about the same issue. However, one is supposed to demur that the information is coming from Debka. I don’t think they are meeting anywhere as accessible as Lake Placid, though.

And then there are the 3,700 terrorists currently living in Lebanon. Who would have thought there could be so few? That must reassure Israel no end.

In England, the church is suggesting that the Beatles replace that banal old Bible as a source of spiritual inspiration for today’s young. Yes, that’s what the priest called it: “banal”.

As you may have guessed, since oil prices are dropping, OPEC has rescheduled its regular meeting to an earlier date to discuss cutting production in order to keep the choke hold on the world economy. Meanwhile, America the brain-damaged still isn’t drilling for its own oil or building nuclear power plants. The only thing to be said for the US is its refusal to sign the Kyoto blackmail. Go enjoy the lowered petrol prices while they last.

Let’s see…the Taliban killed a Western aid worker in Kabul. Supposedly she was proselytizing, though the real story seems to have been that she worked with the disabled. The Taliban reaction is understandable given that their vocation is creating the disabled.

Oh, and the Chinese are asking for help with some Muslim terrorists while at the same time they appear to be planting microchips in all our computers. These chips can call home whenever the Chinese bid them do so, proving once again that all God’s plagues aren’t crazed, sword-swishing, unemployed young Arab males. Some of them are paranoid Chinese nerds with big ideas.

A radio host in Dubai was fired for playing God in a live skit on the air. People objected to such blasphemy and he was promptly booted. His excuse? He was from South Africa and wasn’t aware of local sensibilities. The guy must live under a rock larger than the one I use.

Saudi Arabia now has about a thousand terrorists on trial. Yesterday it was seventy miscreants. The story from today doesn’t say how they came up so quickly with the other nine hundred or so prisoners.

Here’s a good one: Jordan is holding a regional conference on the problems of wife abuse by Middle Eastern men. There was nary a mention of the elephant in the room: the Koran. As long as they insist on following the program, wife abuse will continue unabated, but these showy conferences allow everyone involved to feel good about “doing something” for battered women.

A request: does anyone have access to some good news out there? Surely there is some? Please share.

This post began life as a short response to NJArtist’s comment on last night’s news feed.

However, my “brief” response took on a life of its own and grew very quickly. As I’ve said to Afonso on more than one occasion, “if a comment is longer than five hundred words it is not a comment, it is a post.” When I did a word count, this thing had become more than a thousand words (including the excerpt). Thus it morphed itself into a post.

[Hint to Afonso: start your own blog for windy comments-cum-posts. Then you can go and do likewise. We would be most appreciative and would gladly link to you in our blog roll, especially if you write it in English for the mono-linguists among us, me included.]

Now for the story…

The link in last night’s news feed was to further information on that radioactive pirate ship which killed off a number of its looters. When the Baron first posted his speculation on the incident it caused a fair amount of comment.

In fact, Iranian Death Ship drew a goodly share of doubtful response, including outright ridicule. Just read the titles of some of the trackbacks in that post of the Baron’s to get a flavor for what other bloggers thought of our wisdom — not to mention integrity — for even talking about it.

That’s why I put the link up in last night’s news feed to a post entitled “Iran Ship was a Dirty Bomb, Part 2”. As I said in the feed, this story is quite long. It brings in a number of plausible motivations for maintaining a shroud on the whole incident.

Not being particularly a critic of George Bush (as commenter, pleas, has noted) this story is not one I enjoyed reading.
– – – – – – – – –
On the other hand, as y’all have maintained, it’s all rather speculative. But what are we left with besides speculation when any “news” available has been so thoroughly blocked? The usual cover-up steps seem to have been taken, but does that make the more ominous aspects of this story less accurate? It is hard to say.

Blocking all news leaks and then ridiculing the messenger contaminates whatever evidence might be available for verification. People tend to yawn and wander away as all the now-corrupted details are slowly sucked down to their tomb in the memory hole. Not a pleasant sound.

If you’ll note the trackbacks to the first post, among other ummm…”tepid” responses is a blog whose owner condescends to title his reaction “A Reminder Of Why I Have Gates of Vienna On The Same List As Boing-Boing”. I haven’t a clue as to what/who Boing-Boing is, but obviously he didn’t put us in good company for being so rash as to put this story up for all to see while speculating about its veracity.

But, again, isn’t that how information gets buried in the first place? Enough heaps of ridicule and stone-walling and we end up with segments of the population who become sensitized to conspiracy theories. That is one of the sequelae of being lied to and misdirected.

Obviously, this is not my area of expertise. Were the Baron around, I’d leave it to him to ponder the implications of the various claims presented in “Part 2”. However, is his absence I will say that this has an Occam’s Razor feel to it.

Among other points, Part 2 says:

Russian sources indicate that the ship was carrying a “highly radioactive” cargo in specially built” containers and that this cargo was falsely listed in the ship’s manifest. Also, there were many falsities in the manifest, to include a false listing of the cargo, “chemicals,” “rocks,” “oil,” or “iron ore” and other fictions, and the destination of it. A subsequent investigation into the alleged German firm to whom the ‘chemicals and ‘machine parts’ were to be delivered proved that there was no such German firm involved. At the request of American authorities, the Russians have refused to release any further information.

I have a correct copy of the ship’s real manifest that a U.S. Navy source faxed me about two hours ago. There was no rocket fuel on board. Her cargo contained “a significant quantity” of radioactive waste from China, in lead-lined and secured cargo containers. The ship was never boarded by anyone from the time she left Nanjing in China until the Somali pirates grabbed her. Sixteen pirates died within two weeks, of heavy radiation poisoning, and three more are expected to die. An international force consisting of American, Russian, French and Dutch ships were involved in blockading the ship and preventing her from leaving Somalian waters.

A “ransom” of $250,000 was eventually paid by the U.S., the ship boarded by the Navy, her cargo secured and the crew interrogated and eventually released and the ship was moved, under her own power and with an American crew, to the Muscat port where the U.S. Navy has docking rights. Her manifest was entirely false. The ship was not going to Rotterdam and there was no “German businessman” to take charge of the fictional cargo.

The entire matter has been shut up and you will never see any mention of it in any mainstream media. The matter is now considered closed.

There still remain a number of questions that need to be answered. [my emphasis here – D] Both [in] Israel, and at her behest, from Washington, there has been a great outpouring of animosity directed at Tehran, and many threats; for economic sanctions by the United States and overt attacks by Israel. In light of this past behavior, the most important question is why this incident, with its horrifying implications, has been studiously ignored, even shut down, by both countries.

Perhaps the reason might lie in the fact that Bush is planning to announce his intention to open a ‘US Interest Section’ in Tehran just after the presidential elections on November 4th. This would follow a period of almost 30 years when diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken off. The movers behind this effort are U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and a number of high-level officials in the Department of State, the CIA and more recently by Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He compares the US behavior here with how we handled the debacle in Georgia. Bush’s part in both makes for intriguing reading…if this blogger’s prediction regarding Bush’s post-election plans to open a US “Interest Section” in Tehran turn out to be true, then perhaps this revelation will lend credence to the rest of his story. Since we’re dealing with a short time frame here, his thesis will be up for examination very soon.

I would be most interested to hear what those more expert in matters of intel have to say about this “Part 2”. Anyway, the comment thread on the “Death Ship” post was getting long, so this might be the place to begin anew with your contemplations on the subject.

I second NJ artist: at the very least please read the story.

Thanks to Brian Herring, C. Cantoni, ERR, Insubria, JD, Marathon Pundit, other cheek, TB, Trouthunter, and all the other tipsters who sent these in, or whose stories were referred here by Larwyn and Doug Ross.

Not having the Baron’s dexterity with his Access program, my meager attempts at building the newsfeed for tonight (and the next few evenings) will only serve to make you appreciate him more when he returns. For some obscure reason known only to programmers, the headline feature seems to grab the first paragraph and insert that instead. I “fixed” most of them, but after a while, the screen began to look strange, so you’ll have to sort through the items as best you can.

Patience, everyone. The man who makes it look so easy has promised to return. Really, he did.

Meanwhile, below the fold you will find the headlines and articles that I did manage to get through, though a few are somewhat mangled.

And if you’re wondering why Syria is in the US section, this program “automatically” picks out key phrases for the sections. If one fails to notice this trick, then the categories can rearrange themselves in bizarre ways. So notice what Syria’s first lady has to say and you’ll see why this intelligent program went with the US as its choice.
– – – – – – – – –

	USA
	End run around obstacles to Kyoto
	Obama campaign selling Chicago election night coverage packages to news outlets
	SYRIA: FIRST LADY, COMMON DEFINITION ON TERRORISM NEEDED
	Europe and the EU
	BANKS: MED PACT, INVESTMENTS FROM EMIGRANT REMITTANCES
	Bin Laden’s Plans
	EGYPT TO SIGN COOPERATION ACCORD WITH EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
	Guilty of Planning Terrorism
	More EU Status Battlegrounds
	MORTGAGE CRISIS: SPAIN PROPOSES DEBT ACQUISITION TO ARABS
	Two New Chapters in Turkey’s EU Accession Talks Will Open in December
	Why Europeans Love Obama
	North Africa
	Iran Ship Was a Dirty Bomb, Part 2
	Middle East
	Iran Says Price of Oil Could Reach Just Under 40 Dollars a Barrel.
	Two Suspected “Spy Pigeons” Arrested Near Iran’s Controversial Uranium Enrichment Facility
	Terrorism Trial Begins for 70 in Riyadh
	Conservative Islam Grows in Cairo.
	Russia
	Gaddafi Off to See the Wizard in Moscow
	Far East
	Japan’s young turn to Communist Party
	Australia — Pacific
	Attempted Abduction of Philippine Priest
	Culture Wars
	One of the Fall’s Most Anticipated Video Games for the Playstation 3, Sony’s “Littlebigplanet,” Had to be Yanked From Shelves at the Last Minute Monday Because it Might Accidentally Offend Muslims.
	the Jericho Kids club on the West Bank now has a music laboratory

End run around obstacles to Kyoto

An Obama offer you won’t be able to refuse.

…Well, well. For years, Democrats — including Senator Obama — have been howling about the “politicization” of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called “endangerment finding” on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside…

— Hat tip: other cheek

[Return to headlines]

Obama campaign selling Chicago election night coverage packages to news outlets

From Marathon Pundit’s blog

The Obama campaign is putting a hefty price tag on the best camera and reporting positions for news organizations covering Barack Obama’s outdoor election night activities in downtown Chicago. If a reporter wants access to the file center—which will be the best place to find Obama officials and spokesmen—be prepared to write a check for $935. The cheapest place a reporter could stand on a riser with a view is $880.

The campaign could not have made going to the free space more unappealing. If will be “outdoors, unassigned and may have obstructed views. General Media Area credentials do not include access to riser positions, satellite truck parking or the press filing center.”

Obama’s top donors—not the masses who donated the $5, $10 and $25 the campaign brag about—will have VIP access throughout election night and received an early heads up a week ago to plan to spend Election Night in Chicago.

— Hat tip: Marathon Pundit

[Return to headlines]

SYRIA: FIRST LADY, COMMON DEFINITION ON TERRORISM NEEDED

Madam, both candidates are “part of the problem”. Get over it.

When asked which of the candidates for the White House she preferred out of Barack Obama and John McCain, Asma al-Assad, the wife of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, said: “the important thing is that the next American president is part of the solution, not part of the problem”…

…the Syrian first lady then underlined the necessity to find a common definition on terrorism. “Everyone should agree on the origins and nature of the terrorist phenomenon, but this is seldom the case”, said Mrs. al-Assam, recalling that in the 1980s, “President Reagan called the Taliban ‘Warriers of God’ because they fought against the Soviets. Nowadays, the Taliban are merely terrorists”. She explained: “perhaps we should reconsider these definitions and find one on which everyone agrees to define what a terrorist is, and what a terrorist is not”.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

BANKS: MED PACT, INVESTMENTS FROM EMIGRANT REMITTANCES

Ahead of July 13, when the Union for the Mediterranean will be launched in Paris, nine financial institutions from the northern and southern Mediterranean coasts set up a workgroup to ease and reduce the cost of the money transfers from immigrants living in Europe, to favour their saving in order to become a “productive investment”, to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to fund new infrastructure projects on the southern coast.

Every year, the transfers of money from emigrants living in Europe towards the southern Mediterranean coast amount to over ten billion euro, with a nearly 15% annual growth. A considerable part of these transfers are carried out through non-banking circuits (money-transferring companies, posts or informal networks) and are subject to relatively high fees…

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Bin Laden’s Plans

A Global Fireball

The documents, uncovered during an operation led by the British intelligence service MI6, have been described by experts in that agency as “the most worrying [plot] that the world is facing.”

The catastrophic wildfires would not only produce an environmental disaster but would stretch emergency services often beyond their limit and leave insurance companies facing multi-billion-dollar claims…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

EGYPT TO SIGN COOPERATION ACCORD WITH EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

Egypt will sign a cooperation protocol with the European Space Agency to be able to make better use of satellites in regulating traffic in its air space. The document will be inked on Wednesday by minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafiq and European Commission Ambassador in Cairo Klaus Ebermann, the chairman of the Egyptian air navigation company said, Ahmed Said. Under the agreement, the ESP will help Egypt establish a satellite data processing station at Alexandriàs El-Nozha Airport to monitor traffic in the Egyptian skies. The agency will finance the cost of the station’s construction which is estimated at around 1.5 million pounds (some 200,00 euro), he said.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Guilty of planning terrorism

Two young men of Pakistani and Afghan origin have been found guilty of preparing a terrorist attack and were only stopped after police arrested them and searched their apartment, according to the Glostrup Court.

Magistrates later sentenced Hammad Khürshid, 22, to 12 years in prison while his comrade Abdolghani Tohki was sentenced to seven years in jail. Khürshid is a Dane of Pakistani descent, while Tohki is of Afghan descent. Tohki is to be extradited after serving his sentence and will be barred from Denmark for life.

In its summing up of the case earlier in the day, the court emphasised that the two men had explosives manuals and martyr videos and that one of the accused, HK, had been to an al-Qaeda training camp.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

More EU Status Battlegrounds

The “advanced status” granted a few days ago by the European Union to Morocco could represent “a real danger for the evolution of the question of the Western Sahara and for the future, stability and peace in the Maghreb region”.

The president of the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (Rasd), Mohamed Abdelaziz, addressed EU on-duty president Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that “a prestigious institute as the European Union cannot, risking to lose credibility, become the accomplice, in the 20th [sic] century, of the politics of colonisation and repression Morocco has been responsible for in the Western Sahara for decades”.

“Signing a special and privileged status with Morocco”, the letter of the president continues, “the European countries cannot have assessed its risks seriously”…

— Hat tip: Insubria

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MORTGAGE CRISIS: SPAIN PROPOSES DEBT ACQUISITION TO ARABS

Step up and get your dhimmi country right here.

Spain has offered the public debt to finance the Treasury institute fund in order for the government to inject liquidity into the financial system to foreign Arab investment groups , according to what was said today in an Reuters interview with Industry, Tourism, and Trade Minister, Miguel Sebastian.

“Spain is a very interesting country for investments and for this reason we are offering the possibility to these foreign investment groups to acquire Spanish shares, not only for businesses but also for the public debt”, said Sebastian.

According to Sebastian, among these countries, those adhering to the Council of cooperation for the Gulf “for the evolution of the prices of raw material, are those with the greatest surplus and the greatest necessity to be invested in”. The Spanish government in the past weeks has approved the institution of a 50 billion euro fund, by means of the Treasury, to give businesses and families liquidity through the banking system.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Two New Chapters in Turkey’s EU Accession Talks Will be Opened in December, During the Presidential Term of France (Who is One of the Biggest Opponents to Turkey’s EU Membership), EU Diplomats in Ankara Told Anka News Agency.

France took over the six-month rotating EU presidency from Slovenia on July 1 and vowed to open at least two more chapters with Turkey during its term. Turkey reiterated that it expects France to act in line with the pacta sunt servanda principle.

Although the opening of two new chapters signals progress in membership negotiations, 15 of 35 chapters remain suspended. Turkish officials have accused the European Union of dragging its feet on Turkey’s membership bid and “breaking” its motivation, as the bloc has made a routine of opening only two chapters in each presidency term.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Why Europeans Love Obama

French provocateur Bernard-Henri Lévy on how the left is being destroyed by tolerance

…Lévy’s latest literary publicity blitz coincides with the publication of his newest book, “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism.” When Levy wrote “Barbarism With a Human Face” 31 years ago, his sworn enemy — the barbarism he spoke of — was Marxism. In the new book, the author has focused on his own intellectual autobiography, examining his ideological and political history and identity. He believes a segment of his political family (the left) is being led astray and he rakes his extended kin over the coals for becoming too tolerant — especially on issues like Islamic radicalism — and letting their anti-imperialistic attitudes and loathing of America cloud their vision and damage their democratic values. He is unusual in French terms, because he’s pro-American when a lot of Europeans think the U.S. behaves like it owns the world. Lévy has a fondness and understanding of American culture. He gets us, and attempted to prove it in “American Vertigo,” his report on the state of the USA…

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Iran Ship Was a Dirty Bomb, Part 2

Nothing to see here, move along…

After her capture and removal to a Somali port, the Deyanat’s cargo containers were broken into by the pirates in search of loot.

The result? Sixteen of them died of extreme radiation poisoning.

Once this bizarre and frightening information emerged, a blackout was imposed inside the United States and from the date of capture until today, not one word of this has ever been seen in or on the American media…

The ship was released by Somali pirates on October 10, after a $250,000 cash bribe was paid by the U.S. Navy for her release…

I have a correct copy of the ship’s real manifest that a U.S. Navy source faxed me about two hours ago… Her cargo contained “a significant quantity” of radioactive waste from China, in lead-lined and secured cargo containers…Sixteen pirates died within two weeks, of heavy radiation poisoning, and three more are expected to die…

[continued, very long]

— Hat tip: Brian Herring

[Return to headlines]

Iranian Media Said on Monday That the Price of Oil Could Continue to Plummet and Could Reach Just Under 40 Dollars a Barrel.

“Reducing daily production by a million barrels is not enough to stop the collapse of prices,” said Iranian news agency ILNA, quoting an unnamed source from the Organisation of Oil Producing Exporting Countries or OPEC.

Experts consulted by ILNA said that reducing output alone will not make the price of oil not fall from 80 dollars per barrel, instead, extraordinary measures would have to be taken.

Meanwhile, Iran’s representative to OPEC, Mohammad Ali Khatibi said that the cartel is planning to gradually reduce output, starting at one million barrels per day in the first stage, but cuts could reach up to three million barrels per day.

The cartel is expected to stabilise the price of oil at 80 dollars per barrel.

Last week, oil prices fell to less than 80 dollars for the first time in a year, closing at 77 dollars on Friday.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Security Forces in Natanz Have Arrested Two Suspected “Spy Pigeons” Near Iran’s Controversial Uranium Enrichment Facility, the Reformist Etemad Melli Newspaper Reported on Monday.

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the report cited an unnamed informed source as saying, adding that some metal rings and invisible strings were attached to the bird.

“Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings,” the source was quoted as saying of the second pigeon.

— Hat tip: ERR

[Return to headlines]

Terrorism Trial Begins for 70 in Riyadh

“The General Court in Riyadh has set up a 10-member bench to look into the cases of 70 terror suspects including Saudis and foreigners,” an informed source said to Arab News. The militants were involved in terrorist attacks that killed 200 people as well as 70 security officers…

…Interior Minister Prince Naif announced plans to transfer cases of suspected terrorists to Shariah courts. “God willing, they all will be transferred to the judiciary to give its verdict on them in accordance with what God has ordained to prevent sedition…”

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

The Muslim Call to Prayer Fills the Halls of a Cairo Computer Shopping Center, Followed Immediately by the Click of Locking Doors as the Young, Bearded Tech Salesmen Close Shop and Line Up in Rows to Pray.

[oh…and law of gravity continues to be in effect]

The Muslim Call to Prayer fills the halls of a Cairo computer shopping center, followed immediately by the click of locking doors as the young, bearded tech salesmen close shop and line up in rows to pray…

Business grinding to a halt for daily prayers is not unusual in conservative Saudi Arabia, but until recently it was rare in the Egyptian capital, especially in affluent commercial districts like Mohandiseen, where the mall is located.

But nearly the entire three-story mall is made up of computer stores run by Salafis, an ultraconservative Islamic movement that has grown dramatically across the Middle East in recent years.

“We all pray together,” said Yasser Mandi, a salesman at the Nour el-Hoda computer store. “When we know someone who is good and prays, we invite them to open a shop here in this mall.” Even the name of Mandi’s store is religious, meaning “Light of Guidance.”

Critics worry that the rise of Salafists in Egypt, as well as in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, will crowd out the more liberal and tolerant version of Islam long practiced there. They also warn that the doctrine is only a few shades away from that of violent groups like al-Qaida—that it effectively preaches “Yes to jihad, just not now.”

In the broad spectrum of Islamic thought, Salafism is on the extreme conservative end. Saudi Arabia’s puritanical Wahhabi interpretation is considered its forerunner, and Saudi preachers on satellite TV and the Internet have been key to its Salafism’s spread.

Salafist groups are gaining in numbers and influence across the Middle East. In Jordan, a Salafist was chosen as head of the old-guard opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In Kuwait, Salafists were elected to parliament and are leading the resistance to any change they believe threatens traditional Islamic values.

The gains for Salafists are part of a trend of turning back to conservatism and religion after nationalism and democratic reform failed to fulfill promises to improve people’s lives. Egypt has been at the forefront of change in both directions, toward liberalization in the 1950s and ‘60s and back to conservatism more recently.

The growth of Salafism is visible in dress. In many parts of Cairo women wear the “niqab,” a veil which shows at most the eyes rather than the “hijab” scarf that merely covers the hair. The men grow their beards long and often shave off mustaches, a style said to imitate the Prophet Muhammad.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Gaddafi Off to See the Wizard in Moscow

He’ll be there on Hallowe’en, in costume as Gaddafi

Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi Will be in Moscow on October 31 for an Official Visit, According to the Newspaper, Vedomosti.

Gaddafi will be received by President Dmitri Medvedev, and the topic of discussions will be the acquisition of Russian weapons, as well as other aspects of trade between the two countries.

The Libyan leader’s last visit to Moscow goes back to 1985, in the Soviet era. According to Vedomosti, Gaddafi is interested in the acquisition of Sukhoi 30 aircrafts and T90 tanks. Moscow could also negotiate with Tripoli on the sale of M2 land-air missile systems. Press agency Interfax, citing a source in the Defence Ministry, calculated the weapons ‘shopping’ that the Libyan leader intends to do in Russia at about 2 billion dollars.

Another topic in the meetings with Gaddafi with Russian leaders will probably be energy, after the memorandum agreed upon between Libya and Russian state giant Gazprom for a joint venture to begin in Africa.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Japan’s young turn to Communist Party

they decide capitalism has let them down

New recruits are signing up at the rate of 1,000 a month, swelling its ranks to more than 415,000. Meanwhile a classic proletarian novel is at the top of the best-seller lists, and communist-themed “manga” comics are enjoying soaring success.

Earlier this month, crowds of up to 5,000 young Japanese workers marched through the streets of central Tokyo to express their growing discontent with the government over working conditions.

And the job losses, financial insecurity and social dissatisfaction that are expected to go hand in hand with the current global credit crisis are expected to increase the ranks of the party further…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Attempted Abduction of Philippine Priest

The archbishop of Basilan strongly reiterated his support for the police and marines involved in upholding the law in a province under attack from armed gangs and Islamic rebels.

For Mgr Martin Jumoad the presence of police forces helps prevent the abduction of men and women religious and attacks against the civilian population.

The statement issued by the archbishop of Basilan, a province in southern Philippines, comes a day after Fr Felimon Libot was almost abducted. A group tried to kidnap the Claretian priest, who heads the Claret School in Isabela City, as he travelled along the road that connects this city to Maluso and Sumisip on his way to Tumahubong, 92 kilometres from the provincial capital, where he was supposed to say Mass.

About seven kilometres from his destination four people attacked the car in which he was travelling, but thanks to the immediate reaction of his escort of Filipino marines and the intervention of security forces, the attempt failed.

During the incident the priest was slightly wounded, and four members of his escort were hurt.

A security vehicle eventually drove Father Libot to his destination as a military helicopter took the wounded to a hospital in Zamboanga.

At present it is not clear who the kidnappers are. For some they are tied to the Abu Sayyaf group, al-Qaeda’s cell in the area. Others suspect a local armed gang involved in ongoing factional conflict over mismanagement of land reform cooperative funds.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

One of the Fall’s Most Anticipated Video Games Yanked From Shelves Because it Might Accidentally Offend Muslims.

Well, that’s a bummer.

One of the fall’s most anticipated video games for the PlayStation 3, Sony’s “LittleBigPlanet,” had to be yanked from shelves at the last minute Monday because it might accidentally offend Muslims.

“One of the background music tracks that was licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Quran,” Sony said in a statement Monday. “We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense this may have caused.”

The piece of music in question is “Tapha Niang” by the Grammy-winning Malian musician Toumani Diabaté, who sings and plays a West African stringed instrument called the kora.

Devotional music doesn’t raise eyebrows in many Muslim countries, including several in West Africa including Mali, but it’s a no-no for some strict Sunnis, who frown upon instrumented music of any sort.

“LittleBigPlanet” had been scheduled to hit shelves in North American on Oct. 21, the day after Sony’s surprise announcement.

— Hat tip: Trouthunter

[Return to headlines]

the Jericho Kids club on the West Bank now has a music laboratory

Muslims are allowed music? Who knew?

A new music laboratory for children was officially opened in the Jericho Kids club, as part of an EU-funded project to support the Palestinian arts. The project is a joint cooperation between the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) and UCODEP, an Italian non-governmental organisation.

A room in the Jericho Kids Club was renovated and sound-proofed to be used as a music laboratory, and musical instruments and equipments were provided for the benefit of the music students of the outreach programme of the ESNCM. The total cost for the rehabilitation and equipment of the laboratories is around 5000 euro. The Italian Municipality of Castagneto Carducci and the Tuscany Region provided some of the funds.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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