Geert Wilders kicked off his American tour today with an appearance on the Glenn Beck Show. Thanks to Vlad Tepes for the video tip:
[Nothing follows]
Monthly Archives: February 2009
IFPS and Geert Wilders Call for an International First Amendment
The International Free Press Society and the Center for Security Policy are co-sponsoring a press conference for Geert Wilders at the National Press Club on Friday, as a part of the Washington DC leg of Mr. Wilders’ whirlwind tour of the USA. I’ll be present at this event and will report on it after I get home.
For more information about this and other events, consult the daily updates at the International Free Press Society. Today’s press release from IFPS/CSP is below:
International Free Press Society and Geert Wilders Call for An International First Amendment And Ban On All Hate Speech Laws
Washington DC — On Friday, February 27, 2009, Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, founder and floor leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), and the International Free Press Society (IFPS), in conjunction with the Center for Security Policy, will discuss recent attacks on free speech worldwide, especially the recent legal actions against Wilders and other political leaders and journalists.
The International Free Press Society will announce a global initiative to protect free speech from laws that criminalize any criticisms of Islam or the doctrines of Shariah.
The event will include a screening of Fitna, the controversial film which includes quotations from the Koran, documentary footage of Islamic leaders inciting violence (jihad) based on those quotations, and documentary footage of jihadist violence. The film can be viewed on the Internet here.
Mr. Wilders will discuss his efforts to show Fitna and to rally support for free speech and the right to criticize Islam.
Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, will discuss the dangers to America’s national security and civil liberties imposed by global oppression of free speech. CSP recently hosted a conference in London entitled “Free Speech, Jihad and the Future of Western Civilization.” Selected speeches from that conference can be found here.
Concerning recent attacks on free speech, Gaffney said: “The insinuation of Shariah legal codes and practices into Free World societies includes the effort to impose Shariah blasphemy, slander and libel laws in the West. According to Shariah, it is impermissible to engage in speech or writings that ‘defame’ Islam or otherwise offend its followers. We must oppose all these efforts.”
Lars Hedegaard, President of the International Free Press Society, will introduce Mr. Wilders and outline the IFPS 2009 campaign to ban hate speech laws and to work for an “International First Amendment.” Hedegaard said:
– – – – – – – – –
The hate speech and blasphemy laws that are now common in many European countries lack clarity as to precisely what they aim to criminalize. Recent experience with their implementation further shows that they are unequally applied. This state of affairs is intolerable and the IFPS must therefore demand that all such laws be repealed. The way to deal with controversial, offensive or even hateful statements — unless they are directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action — is to expose them to public debate and criticism.
M.P. Geert Wilders lives under 24 hour police protection. Following Fitna’s release online in March 2008, al-Qaeda issued a fatwa calling for Wilders’ murder. Wilders also currently faces prosecution in Holland for alleged “incitement to hatred and discrimination.” Wilders called the Dutch Court of Appeals’ decision to prosecute him an attack on freedom of expression. “Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted,” he said.
Mr. Wilders was recently arrested and deported from England, where he had traveled on the invitation of members of the House of Lords to speak and show the film. He is visiting New York, Boston and Washington DC this week, meeting with private organizations, political leaders and journalists to encourage their support for the campaign to protect free speech worldwide.
An extended question and answer session with all three speakers will follow their presentations.
Press Conference Logistics
- Date: Friday, February 27, 2009
- Security Check-in Time: 8:30 a.m.
- Press Conference: 9:30 a.m. — 11:00 a.m.
- Location: Lisagor Room, The National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW Washington, DC 20045
- Pre-registration required: Please email events@securefreedom.org or call Christine Brim at 202-835-9077 (office) or 202-379-6776 (cell) to pre-register. Space is limited and advance pre-registration is required. Anyone who is not pre-registered will not be permitted entry to the press conference.
- Security Check-in: Please allow ample time for security check-in. Personal identification and press credentials will be required. All bags, equipment and persons will be subject to inspection.
We’ve Got Mail!
The new email server was brought online this morning, and all the email we missed is slowly trickling in. According to our ISP, no messages have been permanently lost, but we shall see.
By the time it all arrives, there will probably be well over a thousand emails, not counting spam. So be patient with us if you don’t receive prompt responses. This is going to take a while.
[Post ends here]
Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/22/2009
The news feed remains light, since our email is still down.
Take a look at the news about the financial crisis: Ireland, California, the rest of the USA, and the price of gold.
Also take note of what an Egyptian cleric named Zaghloul Al-Naggar has to say about the Joooos…
Thanks to Aeneas, Gaia, Henrik, KGS, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –
Economic Crisis Transforming Finance Industry
(Op-ed) by Mark Cliffe (Chief Economist and Global Head of Economics and Strategy Research, ING Financial Markets)
The crisis is still far from over, and just when we think we understand it, another surprise pops up.
Nevertheless, there is broad agreement on at least some of the causes, and the responses to these will help define the future shape of the financial world.
The crisis has wrong-footed observers repeatedly. This should make us wary of firm predictions of the new financial world. This sense of humility is reinforced by the realisation that the full extent of the damage caused by the crisis has not yet been realised. Thus the current tally of losses incurred by banks worldwide is around US 700bn, but the final bill could be a mutiple. As a result, the rules of the game may change several times before the picture becomes clear.
The law of unintended consequences has been at work in spectacular fashion in this crisis. Just one example should suffice: the previous celebration of the efficiency gains from the risk-spreading arising from the global distribution of structured credit instruments has given way to an awful realisation that the risks were concealed, and through the application of leverage, effectively multiplied in the process. Sadly, the law of unintended consequences will continue to apply. The severity of the economic downturn sparked by the turmoil will make everyone determined to avoid a repeat. The hope is that the prospect of a more conservative and robust financial system will revive confidence. But the danger is that same prospect will make lenders and borrowers even more cautious in the short term, complicating efforts to revive the global economy. Thus banks, under pressure to raise their capital adequacy ratios to more ‘prudent’ levels in the face of a recession, will find it harder to step up their lending.
Some of tomorrow’s rules may look rather like yesterday’s. Now that the credit boom has turned to bust, the financial sector is reverting to more traditional conservative practices. High returns from investment banks and hedge funds turn out to have been based on high levels of borrowing; they have been brought down to earth, in some cases with a crash. Suddenly, conservatively run banks with diversified sources of funding and large pools of retail savings are looking smart. The outsourcing of risk evaluation to the now embattled credit ratings agencies has given way to the idea that in-house credit skills are to be prized. Lending multiples have been reduced, and the cost of loans has risen to better reflect their risks. Even if these trends start to reverse in the next economic upswing, the reversal will be more cautious than it was in the past. If the price of this is a slower recovery, it is widely seen as a price worth paying for more stable and sustainable growth.
The credit boom was based on the belief that risks could be sliced, diced and priced efficiently by the financial markets. Fair value accounting was founded on the notion that market prices are the best measure of ‘value’. Banks started to rely on the wholesale money markets, believing that they would always be a liquid source of funds. These beliefs have been shaken by the crisis, which revealed that the financial markets fell well short of the perfection of the economics textbooks. When it came to the crunch, they lacked the large numbers of fully informed buyers and sellers required to produce viable prices and continuous trading. Some financial markets, old as well as new, simply shut down as a cloud of uncertainty over the scale and location of losses descended on the financial sector. Crucially, this led to a collapse in lending between, and to, banks. This massive market failure will have to be addressed in the new financial world. Transparent securities on open exchanges will be essential to the creation of liquid markets.
Those who borrowed excessively are going through a painful learning experience. Some have been bankrupted as falling asset prices have combined with rising borrowing costs. Even those who escaped this fate will heed the lesson. In countries like the US and the UK, where consumers borrowed heavily to fuel their spending, thrift will become fashionable. More expensive credit and the wealth losses that consumers have suffered will stimulate a rebuilding of savings. For their part, the banks, having discovered that the money markets can be a fickle source of funds, will be keen to cultivate retail savers by offering attractive interest rates and services…
[continue reading at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Gold Hits the Thousand Mark
Gold over US$1,000 an ounce in New York
Gold futures for April delivery rose as much as $23.80, or 2.4 per cent, to $1,000.30 an ounce.
Analysts expect the gold rally will continue as investors lose confidence in their financial assets.
It is believed some investors are buying gold to protect their capital, fearing the fiscal stimulus packages which are being granted will not be enough to bring economies out of recession.
| [Return to headlines] |
Ireland Not Euro Zone’s Weakest Link, Says Trichet
by LARA MARLOWE in Paris
[…]
Speaking at the European-American Press Club in Paris, Jean-Claude Trichet [ECB president] said: “There is no weak link. The euro area is a very intertwined, single-market economy with a single currency. Speaking of any particular country in the euro area as a weak link is an error of judgment.”
The German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, suggested on Monday that members of the euro zone might have to bail out countries facing payment difficulties, though this was not foreseen in euro-zone regulations.
Mr Trichet seemed to discount the possibility. “I consider that it is extremely important that each government is fully responsible for its own policies, and for its own fiscal policies particularly,” he said.
“The first responsibility lies with the various governments concerned. It seems to me implicit in what minister Steinbrück said. I have no other comment.”
The European Commission on Wednesday initiated disciplinary procedures against Ireland, France, Greece, Latvia, Malta and Spain for running excessive public deficits. Mr Trichet did not mention any of the six by name but said that “the fact the commission has initiated excessive deficit procedures is a good thing”.
“The commission had to do it,” he added. “Confidence today depends on correctly calibrating decisions, and on the ability of leaders to demonstrate that . . . things will return to normal. We must never lose sight of the medium and long term.”
The ECB president chose his words carefully, speaking of “tension” rather than “crisis”, and “turbulence” instead of “recession”.
[…]
Mr Trichet called the crisis “the first full-scale, very, very difficult test of the globalised economy we built progressively, almost biologically, by spontaneous evolution, under the pressure of globalisation, extraordinary technological innovations and the unification of the world after the collapse of the Iron Curtain.”
Historic, economic, technological and scientific factors “contributed to profoundly change the structure of the world economy. He advised against looking for scapegoats, because the responsibility was diffuse and widespread.
“All must change. We must consider that the entire system has shown itself to be too fragile, not resilient enough. We must patiently build a world market system, with no quick fixes. Of course it will be a market, the only system that creates wealth, but with what is needed to resist crashes and fluctuations.”
The “primary objective” of the ECB was maintaining price stability, which Mr Trichet defined as price increases of below, but close to, 2 per cent. Since the euro was created, inflation in the euro zone has averaged 2.2 per cent The ECB is responsible for steering short-term interest rates, but since last September, when money markets virtually ceased to function, it has prevented a liquidity crisis by providing unlimited refinancing to the banks of the euro zone, Mr Trichet said.
The ECB has temporarily extended the list of assets eligible for use as collateral. Through an agreement with the US Federal Reserve, it is providing unlimited access to dollars. Because of these steps, “the Eurosystem’s balance sheet rose by around €600 billion since June 2007”, Mr Trichet noted.
ECB measures were able to overcome the liquidity shortage in the interbank market. “However, they cannot eliminate the increased concerns regarding credit risk,” he said. “In this regard, the conditions in the money market have not yet normalised and remain strongly affected by an elevated degree of risk aversion.”
Prior to the crisis, repeated warnings by central bankers were not heeded, Mr Trichet said. Now there is “an emerging consensus” that central bankers, who “have no short- or medium-term vested interests”, should be given more responsibility for economic policy-making.
“I have indicated publicly that we are available, if Europe thinks we can be useful. Article 105.6 of the Maastricht Treaty foresees the possibility of giving more responsibility to the European Central Bank.”
Mr Trichet referred repeatedly to the necessity of restoring confidence in economic and financial systems. It was “an abrupt loss of confidence striking simultaneously the financial system as well as the real economy, the industrialised countries as well as the emerging economies”, that precipitated the crisis last September.
“Confidence is the condition for returning to a normal situation. We are doing everything in our power to strengthen it,” he said.
| [Return to headlines] |
Obama Government to Weed Out Weaker Banks
In case of a deeper recession, the Obama government has decided banks will receive requests for additional information about their assets.
In the coming weeks, financial regulators will launch a campaign to determine which of the largest US banks should get bigger shares of cash from the US bank bailout.
While the largest US banks appear to be well capitalized for the moment, the Obama administration wants to ensure that they are robust enough to withstand a more severe economic downturn.
The administration has tried to ease market fears that the government was poised to nationalize some large banks.
| [Return to headlines] |
Thousands at Dublin Economy Protest
Up to 120,000 people have marched through Dublin in an emotional and angry national demonstration over the Irish Government’s handling of the economic crisis.
The sheer size of the turnout meant it had to set off earlier than was organised, with the parade stretching the entire length of its two kilometre route at one stage.
Hundreds more lined the streets of the city centre, many clapping and cheering, as both public and private sector workers came together under the banners of several trade unions for one the largest demonstrations ever seen in the capital.
The demonstrators marched past the Dail (Irish Parliament) for a rally at Merrion Square, where the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) general secretary David Begg accused a wealthy elite of “economic treason” by destroying the country’s international reputation.
Mr Begg told cheering crowds which thronged the wide Georgian avenue running down towards Leinster House that there was fear and anger throughout Ireland among school leavers, mortgage-holders and people finishing work without decent pensions.
“There is fear about how to keep body and soul together,” he said.
“There is anger then, because everybody knows that it is not our fault, that a business elite has destroyed our economy and has as yet to be made accountable for it.”
As the rally got under way at Merrion Square in the city’s southside, the last of the protesters were still setting off from Parnell Square, two kilometres away on the north side of the river Liffey.
The city centre was brought to a virtual standstill with several streets and roads closed down, in an outpouring of anger at the Government and banking chiefs.
Originally planned as a protest at public sector cutbacks and pension levies, organisers later called on all workers, from the public and private sector, to turn out in a “national demonstration” against the Government’s handling of the downturn.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration Sides With Bush on Prison Matter
The Obama administration has agreed with former president George Bush that detainees from the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan cannot challenge their detention in US courts.
The ruling upholds the former Bush administration’s policy on the issue.
Last year the US Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could file such court petitions because the United States has jurisdiction over that facility.
But the Justice Department has now ordered the US air base in Afghanistan is different because it is in a currently operating war zone.
President Obama last week ordered the continuation of another Bush administration policy when he backed the state secrets privilege, which calls for the dismissal of a lawsuit involving allegations that the CIA arranged for suspects to be flown overseas to be tortured.
| [Return to headlines] |
Prison Ministry on Lockdown
A Christian legal defense organization has filed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
The Rutherford Institute is representing Wingspread Ministries, a Christian prison outreach ministry that sends Bibles and other religious materials to prisoners. Attorney Doug McKusick is handling the case.
“Part of their ministry is to write personal letters to prison inmates and express their Christian religious beliefs to these inmates,” he explains, “and try to have a religious relationship and help the prisoners develop their religious beliefs and their personal relationship with Christ.”
The ministry also mails brochures and Bibles to inmates, but McCusick says prison officials recently brought that to a screeching halt. “They were told that they couldn’t send books and materials directly to prisoners, that this was a security risk,” he points out. “And they were also told that they couldn’t write personal letters to certain inmates.”
McKusick says the volunteers write about their own stories and relationship with Christ to help make the Bible more relevant to the inmates. The Institute argues the prison system actions violate the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).
[ed. note: how many Korans are permitted through those prison gates? Just askin’…]
| [Return to headlines] |
Pro-Marriage Speech Garners Professor’s Profane Wrath
After being called a “fascist” by his professor, a Christian California student has filed suit against his college for violations of his free-speech rights.
Less than a month after voters in California decided to amend their state constitution and protect traditional marriage, Jonathan Lopez — in a public speaking class — shared his beliefs on faith and marriage. David French of the Alliance Defense Fund picks up the story:
“Jonathan talked about his faith — and one of the things he talked about in context of his faith was…marriage,” says French. “He read from the dictionary definition of marriage. The professor stopped the class, called him a ‘fascist b_____d’ — [he] used the expletive — [and] told the class that anyone who wanted to could leave if they were offended….”
According to an ADF press release, when no one got up to leave, the instructor simply dismissed the class, effectively ending Lopez’s speech — which violated the student’s free-speech rights, adds the attorney, especially since other students made speeches on other subjects. Religious speech, notes French, apparently was excluded from the open-ended speech assignment.
“You just cannot shut down student speech like that,” states French, who explains that Lopez was well within the confines of his professor’s assignment, and that the professor’s actions not only constitute viewpoint discrimination but also comprise “retaliation” because he disagreed with Lopez’s religious beliefs.
According to the ADF attorney, the professor was not yet finished. “When [Lopez later] complained about what was an obvious act of censorship, he was threatened with expulsion by that same professor,” he says.
The speech professor is identified as John Matteson of Los Angeles Community College. ADF reports that after Proposition 8 (the marriage-related constitutional amendment) was approved on November 4, Matteson told his entire class: “If you voted yes on Proposition 8, you are a fascist b_____d.”
Ultimately Matteson refused to grade Lopez’s November 24 speech, and wrote on the evaluation: “Ask God what your grade is.”
| [Return to headlines] |
Schwarzenegger Terminates Public Spending
Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a $130 billion budget on behalf of the people of California.
Governor Schwarzenegger signed into existence the budget that will raise sales and income taxes across the board for the first time in 17 years.
With his pen, the governor has also slashed government spending by 11 per cent over a two-year period.
That brings the state’s budget back to the level it was in 2005, when California was riding high on housing sales.
| [Return to headlines] |
White House: Obama Opposes ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Revival
President Obama opposes any move to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a spokesman told FOXNews.com Wednesday.
The statement is the first definitive stance the administration has taken since an aide told an industry publication last summer that Obama opposes the doctrine — a long-abolished policy that would require broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.
“As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.
That was after both senior adviser David Axelrod and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs left open the door on whether Obama would support reinstating the doctrine.
“I’m going to leave that issue to Julius Genachowski, our new head of the FCC … and the president to discuss. So I don’t have an answer for you now,” Axelrod told FOX News Sunday over the weekend when asked about the president’s position.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
British Government Calls Summit Over Rising Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism has become such a problem that the Foreign Office welcomed nearly 100 legislators from 35 countries to a conference this week aimed at tackling the issue.
The inaugural conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA) is the first of its kind to receive such prominent Government support. The two-day summit was held in the Houses of Parliament and at Lancaster House.
The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said: “Anti-Semitism has been with us for millennia, but has mutated in form and expression through the ages. Today it has adapted to new technologies and has no defined borders.
“The internet age, with its manifold benefits, has the downside that hate is able to travel faster and further than ever before. Modern and innovative solutions are essential if we are to combat this. So is international co-operation.”
Attacks on UK Jews increased following the Israeli offensive in Gaza in December.
Speaking at the event, Irwin Cotler, a former Attorney General of Canada, said: “What we are witnessing today — and which has been developing incrementally, sometimes imperceptibly, and even indulgently, for some 35 years now — is a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 30s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of the Second World War.”
France’s Council of State took the opportunity to coincide their formal recognition of the countries role in deporting Jews to concentration camps. While the senior court admitted culpability beyond simple obedience of Nazi demands, they ruled out further reparations for the victims.
| [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: PM Condemns Council’s Cooperation With Muslim Group
The city council has been criticised for working together with a Muslim group accused of supporting extremist policiesPrime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen came out in support of fellow Liberal Party member Karen Jespersen, the social welfare minister, over her comments…
The city’s integration committee contacted the organisation, asking them to assist in the creation of educational material about extremism. But statements by the organisation’s imams that they would not condemn the practice of stoning and certain points regarding women, have prompted Jespersen to blast the group as well as the city’s proposed co-operation with it.
Three Liberal politicians on the city committee later strongly criticised the minister’s comments as being detrimental to relations with the nation’s Muslims.
But Rasmussen jumped to the defence of Jespersen.
‘I share Karen Jespersen’s concern about the organisation’s statements regarding women and stoning. As it has not been possible to get a clear rejection of these practices from the imams, I have to agree with Jespersen’s position,’ the prime minister told Information newspaper.
Jespersen has had several run-ins in the past with Muslims over her comments about the religious group.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Eurojust Supports Wire-Tapping of Skype Conversations
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — EU’s judicial cooperation agency Eurojust will take the lead in finding ways to help police and prosecutors across Europe to wiretap computer-to-computer phone conversations enabled by programs such as Skype.
“We will sit together with all member states to see how this can be done technically and legally,” Joannes Thuy, Eurojust spokesman told this website.
Mr Thuy stressed that the wiretapping would not affect “normal users”, but would have to be carried out only as part of a criminal investigation.
Eurojust’s talks with prosecutors and police officials from member states, as well as legal experts would be led by Italian prosecutor Carmen Manfreda.
“There are 30 different legal systems all across the EU, so we expect the talks to take several months before first results are presented,” Mr Thuy added.
Skype, an Danish-Swedish business developed by Estonian programmers that was sold to E-Bay in 2005 and has over 350 million customers worldwide, is said to be un-spyable by intelligence services.
In its press release, Eurojust says that “Skype has so far refused to share its encryption system with national authorities.”
However, Skype claims that it has “extensively debriefed Eurojust on our law enforcement programme and capabilities.”
“Skype cooperates with law enforcement where legally and technically possible. Skype remains interested in working with Eurojust despite the fact that they chose not to contact us before issuing this inaccurate report,” Brian O’Shaughnessy, head of corporate communications at Skype said in a statement.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Europe Opens Covert Talks With ‘Blacklisted’ Hamas
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
European nations have opened a direct dialogue with Hamas as the US intensifies the search for Middle East peace under Barack Obama.
In the first meeting of its kind, two French senators travelled to Damascus two weeks ago to meet the leader of the Palestinian Islamist faction, Khaled Meshal, The Independent has learned. Two British MPs met three weeks ago in Beirut with the Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usamah Hamdan. “Far more people are talking to Hamas than anyone might think,” said a senior European diplomat. “It is the beginning of something new — although we are not negotiating.”
Mr Hamdan said yesterday that since the end of last year, MPs from Sweden, the Netherlands and three other western European nations, which he declined to identify, had consulted with Hamas representatives.
“They believe they made a mistake by blacklisting Hamas,” he said, referring to the EU decision in 2003 to add the political wing of the movement to its list of terrorist organisations. “Now they know they have to talk to Hamas.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Helicopter Takes Prisoners From Greek Jail
A daring helicopter pick-up from a high security prison in Athens has resulted in the escape of two of Greece’s most infamous criminals.
The helicopter landed in Athens’ highest-security prison, Korydallos, to uplift serial armed robber and kidnapper Vassilis Paleokostas and his Albanian helper Alket Rizai.
It is the second time in three years that a helicopter has been used to help the same men escape from the same prison.
Three years ago the men managed to escape when a hijacked helicopter, arranged by Paleokostas’ brother, landed in Korydallos’ central yard at exercise time.
On that occasion, the guards simply thought it was a visit by prison inspectors.
This time, the men were able to clamber aboard after the helicopter pilot landed on the jail’s roof and threw them a rope ladder.
The aircraft has since been found abandoned with the men thought to have fled into the mountains.
| [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Weigh Bank Secrecy Options Amid UBS Deal
By MARTIN GELNAR
ZURICH — A deal between Switzerland’s largest bank UBS AG and U.S. authorities has Switzerland weighing the options of its banking secrecy laws and has triggered some protest.
Last week, Swiss authorities bowed to pressure from the U.S., consenting to the transfer of confidential data of around 250 UBS clients to the U.S. Department of Justice. The deal, reached under the threat that UBS would be indicted in the U.S., is likely to have far-reaching consequences.
Switzerland has declined to take part in a U.S. Senate hearing on offshore financial centers as a reaction to U.S. pressure, Sunday newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported.
However, Switzerland’s position in the row with tax authorities from the U.S. and other countries is considered weak. In fact, Switzerland’s government had no choice but to vet the deal, most observers say.
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to invite Switzerland to a meeting of G-20 countries on Apr. 2 in London, where information exchange between tax authorities is expected to be a prominent item on the agenda, Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag reported, despite intense Swiss efforts to take part in that meeting.
The deal between UBS and U.S. authorities is set to change the legal framework for Switzerland’s banking industry, experts say.
Beat Bernet, a banking professor at the university of St. Gallen, told SonntagsZeitung the country will have to rethink its banking secrecy laws, under which minor forms of tax evasion are punishable by penalties only.
After the UBS’s deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, the European Union will now push for similar concessions, Bernet said.
One consequence of the agreement may be the loss of client money at Switzerland’s big international banks UBS and Credit Suisse Group.
“There will surely be further outflows, also because clients will find the bank’s cant safeguard their private data in a critical situation,” Mr. Bernet was quoted as saying.
| [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Decline US Senate Invitation to Attend Hearings
[…]
Switzerland declined an invitation to the March 4 hearing by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Finance Ministry spokesman Roland Meier said.
The Internal Revenue Service is seeking to force UBS to turn over records for an estimated 52,000 U.S. customers who allegedly violated American tax laws by concealing Swiss accounts worth at least $14.8 billion.
The IRS lawsuit filed in Miami came only hours after UBS agreed Wednesday to pay $780 million and disclose up to 300 UBS account holders suspected of tax fraud, in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department.
“Switzerland notes that despite the agreement, U.S. authorities have launched a civil lawsuit against UBS,” Meier said. “Switzerland regrets that the Department of Justice has threatened UBS with unilateral measures, despite cooperation of UBS and Swiss authorities with the U.S. authorities.”
The topic of the March 4 hearing is “Tax haven banks and U.S. tax compliance — obtaining the names of U.S. clients with Swiss accounts.”
Swiss financial authorities have acknowledged that the disclosure of up to 300 suspected tax frauders occurred under intense pressure from the U.S. Justice Department.
The move prompted anger in Switzerland at UBS’ business practices and what many saw as heavy-handed treatment by U.S. authorities. It also sparked a nationwide debate over the country’s cherished banking secrecy, which some said they fear might come to an end.
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: Alarm Over Rise of BNP
Take action to stop far-right party winning seats in European elections, Brown is urged
By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor
The British National Party is on course to win its first seats in the European Parliament this year, Gordon Brown has been warned. Senior Labour figures have told the Prime Minister they believe two BNP candidates are likely to be sent to Brussels under the proportional representation system of voting, The Independent has learnt.
They fear Labour’s campaign for the European election in June has been too slow to get off the ground and its lack of preparation is allowing the BNP to win over disaffected Labour voters.
Yesterday, the far-right party was celebrating a surprise win in a council by-election in Swanley, Kent, where the BNP candidate took 41 per cent of the vote after Labour’s support collapsed.
It is the first time the BNP has won an election in a southern English county, and shows it is broadening its appeal beyond its traditional northern heartlands. The party also polled more than 28 per cent of the vote this week in a council by-election in Thringstone, Leicestershire — a seat it had never contested before.
Mr Brown has been told the BNP has a strong chance of fielding successful candidates in the North-west of England and Yorkshire and the Humber. A senior Labour source told The Independent yesterday: “We have got to get our act together — and very quickly. No one is focusing on the European elections; no one knows who is in charge.”
Last night, the former minister Peter Hain warned that every political party was guilty of “complacency” over the threat posed by the BNP.
He said: “Everybody across the political spectrum — especially the Labour Party — has to prioritise beating the BNP with a vigorous strategy based on grassroots politics to win local trust and also making sure we deliver on affordable housing and deliver on jobs.
“There is very fertile territory for [the BNP] now. When people are losing their jobs and there is an economic downturn… it’s heaven-made for them.”
Labour officials believe the BNP is well placed to attract support from the UK Independence Party, which won 16 per cent of the vote at the last European election, but has since imploded. They are also worried that disillusionment with the Government among traditional Labour voters will tempt them to support the BNP or not turn out at all.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: BNP Wins Seat on Sevenoaks District Council
The British National Party advanced into suburbia when it snatched a council seat on Sevenoaks District Council in Kent on Thursday night.
Paul Golding, who was once expelled from the party for allegedly attacking its only ethnic minority councillor, comfortably won Swanley St Mary’s ward, in a by-election caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor. Mr Golding called it an historic day for the BNP.
It is the first time that the far Right party has won a seat in the South East outside London, where its success has been limited to working-class areas.
The party narrowly failed to take a seat at nearby Bexley, southeast London, last month and on Thursday it made a strong showing in wards in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Lewisham, South London.
Related Links
Labour MPs fear BNP may take control of police
By all means name us, but you won’t shame us
One of the Lewisham seats was won by Duwayne Brooks, a friend of Stephen Lawrence, who was with the black teenager when he was murdered in a racist attack in 1993. Mr Brooks said that he hoped that being a councillor would give him a strong voice on issues such as knife crime.
In Swanley, Mr Golding hailed what he called “an outstanding result”. He added: “It has implications far beyond just Sevenoaks and bodes well for the entire South East and the upcoming Euro elections.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Gul Nawaz Khan Admits ‘Ghost Vote’ Local Election Cover-Up
Reading
A man admitted lying to an election court to cover up a fraud in which hundreds of “ghost” voters elected a Tory councillor. A jury heard that Gul Nawaz Khan, 57, of Slough, lied to the court last year to cover up the actions of the candidate Eshaq Khan and his supporters in the run-up to the Slough council elections in May 2007, in which Lydia Simmons, a former Labour mayor, was defeated. Eshaq Khan admitted conspiracy to defraud and pervert the course justice before the start of the trial. The trial of five other men continues at Reading Crown Court.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hazel Blears to Attack Political Correctness
Hazel Blears is to attack the “creeping tendency” of political correctness which has led to Christians being targeted for practising their beliefs.
In a hard hitting speech, to be made in the last week of February, the Communities Secretary will suggest that the pendulum has “swung too far” in favour of not offending minorities.
Her remarks will be seen as a thinly veiled attack on Harriet Harman, the Commons leader, who has made a series of left wing speeches and announcements in recent months about equal rights for minorities.
Ms Harman has faced accusations of manoeuvring herself for the leadership if Labour loses the next election.
It comes after a community nurse, Caroline Petrie, was suspended from after offering to pray for a patient. The story led to widespread criticism of her employer, North Somerset Primary Care Trust, who later offered Mrs Petrie her job back.
Ms Blears, who last week called on jostling cabinet minsters to “get a grip”, will say that public policy-makers are too anxious about offending people and need to be more robust in their approach.
She will point to a number of judgements recently which she feels were spurned by an overzealous commitment to political correctness.
A text of her speech, released to this paper, said: “This country is proud of our tradition of fair play and good manners, welcoming of diversity, tolerant of others. This is a great strength.
“But the pendulum has swung too far. It seems that every week we hear a new story — the nurse suspended because she offered to pray for a patient, the school banning Christmas decorations, the town hall reluctant to fly the Union flag — about people getting into a panic because someone, somewhere, might get offended.
“Worse, at times leaders have been reluctant to challenge absolutely unacceptable behaviour — forced marriage, female genital mutilation, or homophobia — because they are concerned about upsetting people’s cultural sensitivities.
“This flies in the face of another of our traditions — open debate, rational inquiry, and plain old common sense.
“We would do well to be a little less anxious and a little more robust.”
Ms Blears will say that minority beliefs and traditions should not go unchallenged in Britain when they break the law or harm others.
“There is a line when respect for other cultures is crossed and a universal morality should kick in.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Polygamy Claimants Keep the Money
Ministers decided not to force through plans to cut benefits to hundreds of polygamous families in the UK after officials advised that the move would be too politically sensitive.
Internal documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal that ministers from four departments ordered an “urgent review” of the position of up to 1,000 men with “multiple wives”, amid complaints that they were claiming millions in benefits.
However, the Government decided against altering the status of polygamous families after it was warned that it could contravene human rights legislation — and officials assured that the benefits system was geared to ensure there was “no financial advantage to claiming for those in polygamous marriages”.
Details of the response to the complaints came after the Tory frontbencher Baroness Warsi accused politicians of failing to deal with the issue because of “cultural sensitivity”. The Muslim peer urged the Government to consider the mandatory registration of all religious marriages to stop men in Britain from marrying more than one woman.
Four departments embarked on the review in 2006 following a parliamentary question on the benefits payable to polygamous families. Ministers were told that, before 1988, benefit was paid to anyone who could establish they were in polygamous relationships, but “this was narrowed to polygamous marriage following press interest in people in hippie communes living off the state”.
Britain recognises polygamous marriages from countries where such unions are legal, although a man is prevented from bringing another wife into this country if a woman is already living as his wife in the UK.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Revealed: the Full Extent of Labour’s Curbs on Civil Liberties
Audit report highlights ‘permanent erosion’ of freedoms since 1997
By Michael Savage, Political Correspodent
The full extent of state powers to detain people without charge, cover up Government errors, hold the DNA of the innocent and share personal data between public bodies has been revealed in a devastating analysis of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain over the past decade.
Almost 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament have whittled away at freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Human Rights Act and Magna Carta, according to a new audit of laws introduced since Labour came to power in 1997. The dossier, compiled by the Convention on Modern Liberty, criticises police powers to detain terror suspects for 28 days without charge, new stop-and-search powers handed to police (allowing them to stop people without reason at airports and other designated areas), and restrictions on the right of peaceful protest.
It is the first time such a picture of the erosion of rights under Labour has been published. The rise in surveillance in Britain is also documented, including new laws allowing individuals to be electronically tagged, and the legal interception of letters, emails and phone calls.
Control orders, designed to confine terrorist suspects who have not been found guilty, are also cited. The orders, created under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2005, can include the power of house arrest and electronic tagging.
“The right to privacy has been eroded, perhaps permanently, by broad powers to intercept, collect, store and share our private information,” the dossier states.
The Coroners and Justice Bill, currently going through Parliament, is accused of seeking to hand the state the power to prevent embarrassing revelations of Government failure becoming public. Coroners are currently able to criticise the Government and any of its agencies that cause a death. But the Bill would hand the state new powers to suspend inquests, or force them into secret. It would also allow Government agencies to share personal data.
David Davis, the Conservative MP who resigned as shadow home secretary and called a by-election to campaign against what he described as the Government’s growing attack on British liberties, said the measures cited in the report give hundreds of bodies the power to “snoop, spy and bug” on the public.
“It is a real, serious, systemic problem,” Mr Davis said. “I cannot believe it is happening. It’s up to us to make sure it is stopped.”
Mr Davis said that he did not regret leaving his post as shadow Home Secretary to fight the cause “for a second”. “We had to put a check on this process, dribbling away, salami slice by slice,” he said. “And if I’d found a cheaper way of doing it, I would have done it more cheaply.”
Henry Porter, one of the organisers of the Convention on Modern Liberty, said that there was “little doubt that there is a crisis of liberty in Britain”.
“We needed an account to show the legislative programme that swept away many centuries-old rights and transferred so much power from the individual to the state actually existed,” he said. “We now have that evidence [and can] oppose what is happening to one of the world’s oldest democracies.”
A spokesman for the Home Office said that CCTV surveillance and the use of a DNA database were “essential crime-fighting tools”.
“The Government has been clear that where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate,” he said. “The key is to strike the right balance between privacy, protection and sharing of personal data.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Terrorist Threat ‘Exploited to Curb Civil Liberties’
Security measures brought in after September 11 attacks ‘undermined the rule of law’
Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting public fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.
Her comments came on the same day as a report published by international jurists suggested that Britain and America have led other countries in “actively undermining” the rule of law and “threatening civil liberties” in the guise of fighting terrorism.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Dame Stella said that a series of increasingly draconian policies have led British citizens to “live in fear and under a police state”.
The 73-year-old said: “Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people’s privacy.
“It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.”
Dame Stella, who became the first female head of MI5 in 1992 and held the position until 1996, has long been a vocal critic of the Government’s plans to introduce ID cards and lengthen the amount of time terror suspects are held without charge to 42 days. In the interview yesterday, she also criticised the United States.
She said: “The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Blast in Crowded Cairo Tourist Area Kills 4
Bomb goes off outside café located near historic Hussein mosque; Egyptian police say two foreigners among the dead; several more injured
A bomb exploded Sunday in a crowded Cairo market frequented by tourists, killing four people and wounding several more, said police and medical sources.
Among the casualties were two foreigners, according to Egyptian police.
A security official who did not have an exact breakdown of the wounded said they included French and German tourists.
The blast took place in the famed Khan el-Khalili market in medieval Cairo, frequented by tourists and locals alike. Blood could be seen, on the marble paving stones in front of the historic Hussein mosque.
A police colonel at the scene said the small bomb went off outside a cafe near the mosque kicking up stone and marble fragments, which wounded the passersby.
Riot police cordoned off the area and sniffer dogs could be seen as worshippers were being evacuated. A security official said police were attempting to defuse a second bomb. Fire engines were also on the scene. The Egyptian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
MEMRI: Egyptian Cleric: I Am ‘Absolutely’ Calling to Wage Jihad Against Jews Egypt/Antisemitism Documentation Project
Egyptian Cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar: The Arab World Is Ruled By the Scum of the Earth and the Garbage of All Nations; I Am ‘Absolutely’ Calling to Wage Jihad Against the Jews, Who Are Devils in Human Form
The West Wanted To Avenge Its Defeat In The Crusades, So It Gathered These Dispersed [Jewish] Communities… And Planted Them In The Heart Of The Arab World”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “I have written about the conspiracy against the Palestinian people, and about how this abominable conspiracy was hatched by Britain and France, in collaboration with several Western countries. In our days, this conspiracy has been adopted by the U.S.
“This conspiracy has many causes. The West wanted to avenge its defeat in the Crusades, so it gathered these dispersed [Jewish] communities — the scum of the earth and garbage of the nations — and planted them in the heart of the Arab world, thus saying to us: ‘We’ve returned, after you drove us out of this blessed land.’
“The Jews used to live a life of squalor and humiliation, and were fought and persecuted in Europe and the whole world. I lived in Britain from the early 1960s, and many stores and restaurants still had a ‘no dogs, no Jews’ sign. The Jews wanted to escape the humiliation imposed on them by the West, and to shift it to the Arab nation. In this case, two goals coincided: The Jews’ goal was to have a state, which would protect them from their humiliation all over the world, and the goal of the West was to avenge its defeat in the Crusades, by returning to the region.
“This conspiracy began in the 17th century CE, when the Jews convinced the British to form the Zionist-Crusader Committee. This committee devised the general outlines of the conspiracy. Later, Europe, because of its hatred for the Islamic Caliphate, launched a fierce war of attrition against the Islamic countries, and the Caliphate eventually collapsed.
[…]
“In the tenth century CE, there was a kingdom called the Khazar kingdom, near the Caspian Sea, which was called the Khazar Sea back then. This kingdom was ruled by a tyrannical dictator, who fabricated lies about his neighbors, just as Israel does today. Throughout history, the Jews have excelled at getting close to rulers. They got close to Bulan, the king of the Khazars, and convinced him to convert to Judaism. King Bulan converted, and made Judaism the religion of the Khazar kingdom. Most of the people who belong to Judaism today are of Khazar origin. They come from Mongol Tatar races, which have nothing to do with the Arab region, or with Jacob, Abraham, and Moses. Therefore, the Jewish claim to a right to this land is totally groundless.” […]
I Am ‘Absolutely’ Calling To Wage Jihad Against the Jews “The Jews have never been faithful to agreements.”
Interviewer: “Right.”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “That is how they are described in the Koran. They are not faithful to treaties or agreements. They depend upon American and Western aid. We — the Arab states, governments, and officials — made a huge mistake in dealing with this as a political issue, when it is, in fact, a religious issue.”
Interviewer: “An issue of faith.”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘If [the enemy] treads upon even an inch of Muslim land, Jihad becomes a duty, and a child should set out on Jihad even without his parents’ permission, a wife without her husband’s permission, and a slave without his master’s permission.’“
Interviewer: “So are you calling to wage Jihad?”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “Absolutely. There is no solution…”
Interviewer: “But who has the right to declare Jihad?”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “Let me be clear. Jihad is the only way to resolve this issue. With the Jews, one cannot achieve anything by means of peace, or a settlement, or open borders, or diplomatic and commercial ties. They are devils in human form. Many people think that Judaism is a religion, but today’s Jews are not really Jews, and have nothing to do with Moses and the Torah. They are a gang of evil thieves who stole this land. By nature, a thief who knows he has no right to the land imposes his presence by means of force, by bloodshed, by excessive massacres, by excessive killings, and by destruction, in order to prove that he has rights in this region.”
Interviewer: “True.”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “This is the nature of thieves.”
Interviewer: “Right.”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “It is inconceivable that we deal with this band of thieves as a state. We made a big mistake by treating them as a state. This is not a state. These are gangs of evil thieves and murderers…” […]
“The Arab World is Ruled by the Scum of the Earth and the Garbage Of All Nations… Not a Single Arab Leader Understands or Implements Islam”
Interviewer: “Yes.”
Zaghloul Al-Naggar: “There is not a single Arab leader who understands or implements Islam.”By occupying the Arab and Islamic countries, the Western world has managed to exclude Islam completely from the decision-making. All kinds of impure scoundrels seized power. The Arab world is ruled by the scum of the earth and the garbage of all nations. We pray that Allah will guide them. Either that, or that He would relieve us of them all.”
[…]
I blame the Islamic countries as well, not just the Arab countries. I say to Iran: Where are your missiles? You raise the banner of Islam, but where are your missiles? Where are all the soldiers you parade in military marches? I say to Hizbullah: Where are your missiles? When will you use them, if not now? I say to Syria, part of whose land has been occupied for over 30 years: Where is your army? Where are your missiles?”
[…]
excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 6, 2009.
| [Return to headlines] |
Gaza, Palestine: Palestinian Man Dead, 6 Wounded and 2 Missing in a Tunnel
By Saed Bannoura
Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip reported on Saturday at night that one resident was killed and six other were wounded after inhaling gas apparently fired by Egyptian border police into a tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Eyewitnesses said that Egyptian forces fired a gas bomb into a tunnel in Al Salaam area causing one resident to suffocate to death, while six other were wounded and treated for gas inhalation, the Maan News Agency reported.
The eyewitnesses added that two residents are still in the tunnel; and that attempts to locate them were still underway.
Medical sources at Yousef Al Najjar Hospital in Rafah stated that the killed resident and the six wounded residents were all moved to the hospital.
| [Return to headlines] |
PA to Free Hamas Prisoners in W. Bank
The Palestinian Authority, ahead of reconciliation talks with Hamas set to commence Wednesday in Egypt, announced Sunday that it would release 80 Hamas prisoners currently held in PA jails in the West Bank.
A Fatah official quoted by Israel Radio confirmed the decision and senior Hamas official Salah Bardaweel said that the inmates would be released Monday.
The PA’s decision is “a step in the right direction, but still not enough,” Bardaweel added.
On Saturday, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said that for the talks to succeed, the PA must first release all “political prisoners” from its West Bank jails.
A PA official in Ramallah said over the weekend that the Obama administration has given the Palestinian Authority a “green light” to talk to Hamas about forming a Palestinian unity government.
The official said that Washington had also given Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the go-ahead to resume his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.
“The new administration has a different policy than that of [former US president] George W. Bush,” the official told The Jerusalem Post. “The administration of President Barack Obama believes that a Hamas-Fatah government is good for stability.”
Fatah and Hamas officials confirmed that the Egyptians had invited them to the talks.
| [Return to headlines] |
Palestinian Christians Urge Pope to Call Off May Visit to Israel
A group of Palestinian Christians has asked Pope Benedict XVI to call off his planned visit to Israel and the West Bank this coming May.
The 40 community activists wrote to the pope that his visit would “help boost Israel’s image and inadvertently minimize Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation.”
The group urged the pope to link his visit to a series of Israeli measures, including improved access to Christian places of worship and halting taxation of church properties.
Advertisement
Christians from the West Bank, like their Muslim counterparts, need special permits to reach Jerusalem and its holy places.
The pontiff is to visit the Holy Land May 8-15, including stops in Jordan, the West Bank and Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week confirmed the pope’s spring pilgrimage, avoiding any mention of tense Catholic-Jewish relations over the pontiff’s rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop. This will be first by a pope to the Holy Land since John Paul visited in 2000.
Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely tense since Jan. 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in 1988 when they were ordained without Vatican permission.
One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers.
The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so far has not done so, saying he needs more time to review the evidence.
Faced with Jewish anger over Williamson’s remarks on the Holocaust, the pope said during a meeting with American Jewish leaders on Thursday that “any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable.”
A detailed itinerary of the pope’s visit is not yet available.
It would be the third visit of a reigning pontiff to Israel since the state was created in 1948.
Pope Paul VI made a one-day stopover from Jordan in 1964, but since the Vatican and Israel did not yet have diplomatic relations, he avoided any statement or act that could be interpreted as even indirect recognition of the Jewish state.
In March 2000, Pope John Paul II made a five-day pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories, during which he visited Christian and Jewish holy sites.
| [Return to headlines] |
Iraq Invites France Back to Build Nuclear Plant
Iraqi minister of electricy Karim Wahid invited France Sunday to resume its aid to Iraq to build a nuclear power plant, three decades after a Paris constructed reactor near Baghdad was bombed by Israeli warplanes. Enlisting France’s help comes amid Iraq’s struggle to fund its way to 24-hour power coverage.
“We have had very good relationships with French companies,” the minister told AFP in an interview.
“ I am willing to enter into contacts with the French nuclear agency and to start to build a nuclear power plant, because the future is nuclear “
Karim Wahid, Iraqi minister of electricity”I am willing to enter into contacts with the French nuclear agency and to start to build a nuclear power plant, because the future is nuclear,” he said. “This is my perspective.”
Under former dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq sealed a 1976 deal with France to build the Osirak nuclear reactor, where construction started in 1979.
But in June 1981, during the Iran-Iraq war, Israel sent warplanes to bomb the unfinished reactor south of the Iraqi capital, charging that Saddam’s aim was to build nuclear weapons.
Then French premier Jacques Chirac cultivated a special relationship with Iraq during the 1970s. As French president two decades later, he opposed the US-led invasion which toppled Saddam over alleged weapons of mass destruction.
“ My coming here is to tell French companies the time has come, come and invest “
Nicolas Sarkozy, French President “France has not shown up yet (in post-Saddam Iraq). They will come hopefully,” said Wahid, adding that France, whose President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Baghdad on February 10, had “been a good friend to Iraq.”
“My coming here is to tell French companies: the time has come, come and invest,” Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on the first ever visit to Iraq by a French president.
Sarkozy said a large French business delegation would follow him to Baghdad by the end of the summer. Defence, energy and water were all key sectors for cooperation with Iraq, he said.
“We are ready to listen to the requests of the Iraqis.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Marnie Pierce: Dubai Adultery Case Briton is Behind Bars
A British mother convicted of adultery in Dubai has been taken to jail to start her three-month sentence after an emotional parting with her two young children.
A friend said Marnie Pearce, 40, was hysterical when she had to hand over her two sons to her former husband. She fears Ihab El-Labban, an Egyptian, will leave the country with Latih, seven, and Ziad, four, and she will never see them again.
The friend, who asked not to be named, said Miss Pearce, a teaching assistant, had given herself up and asked to be taken to jail after a spell in hiding in Dubai with her sons, following her failure to overturn her conviction in January.
Her former husband was present at the arranged meeting and took charge of their sons.
Before going to the authorities, Ms Pearce said: “Handing myself in is the hardest thing I have ever done, but for the sake of the children I have no choice.
“I have been waiting for three weeks in the belief that I may have been granted bail or the charges dropped. I still do not know, but for the sake of my babies we must move on.
“I don’t regret hiding away with them, to spend as much time as I can with them as I may never see them again. We have snuggled and cuddled and played and laughed.
“They have cried rivers and they will continue too. I have told them mummy must go to prison because if I don’t eventually the police will come and look for us.
“I can’t even begin to put into words the feelings of desperation, loss, fear and numbness that I feel.”
A friend of Miss Pearce added: “The hand-over was very emotional and Marnie was hysterical. She spent her first night in jail on Thursday. The hand-over was pre-arranged and took place at the Dubai prosecutor’s office.”
Miss Pearce has vehemently denied the charge against her. Instead, she alleges her former husband made false claims against her after their nine-year marriage broke down more than a year ago.
He, however, has denied acting illegally or maliciously. Mr El-Labban also denies that he intends to leave Dubai with his two sons.
Her ordeal began in March last year when she was arrested at her home in Dubai. Police, accompanied by her former husband, burst into her villa while she says she was having tea with a fellow Briton, who she insists was simply fixing her computer.
Miss Pearce, originally from Bracknell, Berkshire, was accused of adultery — an offence under Dubai law — four months after their marriage had broken down. In November, she was convicted of adultery and sentenced to six months in jail.
In January, the Emirate’s Appeal Court upheld her conviction but reduced her sentence to three months. The court also fined her 3,000 dirhams (£600) and ordered her to be deported after she completes her sentence.
Miss Pearce had been unable to leave the UAE after a travel ban was imposed on her and her passport was taken away. Her children’s British passports have been surrendered, but she fears her former husband will take their children out of the country using their Egyptian passports.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK and US Put Iran at Heart of the Agenda
In Hillary Clinton’s first meeting as Secretary as State with David Miliband, she emphasises a co-operative foreign strategy
Iran dominated Hillary Clinton’s first meeting as Secretary of State with another foreign minister, as she and David Miliband discussed ways of curbing its nuclear ambitions.
The two leaders met shortly after Iran launched a satellite, using technology that the Pentagon indicated could one day be used to develop a nuclear, warhead-carrying, ballistic missile. Asked whether the launch of the satellite posed a threat, Mr Miliband declared that “anything which adds to international tension should be of concern.”
The focus of Mrs Clinton and Mr Miliband’s remarks to the media was on urging the Iranian leadership to take up last week’s appeal by President Barack Obama that Tehran “unclench its fist” and rejoin the international community.
Mr Miliband described the Obama administration’s willingness to talk to Iran a “new dimension” in efforts to end Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and said that yesterday’s talks were “very positive indeed”.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
State Oil of Azerbaijan Looks to the West
Azerbaijan’s state oil monopoly has proposed a pipeline to Europe.
State Oil Company of Azerbaijan officials have suggested a pipeline could run from the Caspian Sea, across Turkey to the Balkans and the rest of Europe.
The European Commission has been trying to invest money in a pipeline which would bypass Russia, and a deal with Azerbaijan would help Europe reduce any dependence on Russian energy supplies.
In January, Russia cut natural gas to Europe through its Ukraine pipeline because of a contract dispute.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan to Hand Out Free Rifles
Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province officials have announced they will provide rifles to local residents as protection against the Taliban.
30,000 rifles, which have been confiscated from terrorists over the years, will be handed out to residents of rural areas in a province which is rife with Taliban and al Qaeda extremists.
The new ‘Village Defence Rifle’ program, has ordered the distribution of rifles to local residents, but has stipulated the guns will be taken back if not used against militants.
Extremist attacks in Pakistan have killed more than 1,600 people in the last two years.
Much of the violence has been concentrated in north-west Pakistan.
| [Return to headlines] |
Taliban Agree to ‘Permanent Ceasefire’ in Swat Valley … But Only if Sharia Law is Imposed
A ‘permanent ceasefire’ has been agreed between the Taliban and Pakistan in the north western Swat valley, a senior government official confirmed today.
Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah — who is also known as Mullah Radio because he uses illegal FM radio to spread his message — was expected to announce the ceasefire later today.
Syed Mohammad Javed, Commissioner of Malakand, said after a meeting with Swat elders: ‘They have made a commitment that they will observe a permanent ceasefire and we’ll do the same.’
About 1,200 people have been killed and between 250,000 and 500,000 people have fled the valley which lies within the Malakand division of North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
However the ceasefire will come at a cost as Pakistan agreed to the imposition of Islamic law as part of the ceasefire agreement.
Western governments, and many Pakistanis, have been alarmed by the government’s offer to reinstate Islamic sharia law in Malakand if the Taliban agreed to peace.
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
UK Hears of Bomb-Making Sympathizers in Afghanistan
British electronic components have been found in roadside bombs.
The Telegraph newspaper has revealed the devices which enable Taliban fighters to detonate roadside bombs come from the UK, either by mail or through British Muslim sympathizers who arrive in the country.
The crude, home-made devices are being used in attacks against British patrols.
They are either mobile phones filled with explosives and more sophisticated devices that can be used against military vehicles.
Last August, Brigadier Ed Butler, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, said there were “British passport holders” in the Taliban ranks.
It was also revealed that British surveillance monitors listening to Taliban radio had heard fighters speaking with regional British accents.
| [Return to headlines] |
Secretary of State Has Her Own Style
By Glenn Kessler
BEIJING, Feb. 22 — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s blunt and unadorned style of diplomacy has been evident throughout her maiden voyage the past week in Asia. She questioned the efficacy of sanctions against the repressive junta in Burma, spoke openly about a possible succession crisis in North Korea and admitted that she expected to make little progress on human rights in China.
To a certain extent, these comments crossed taboo lines in international diplomacy. U.S. officials generally do not say their sanctions have failed, or speculate about the future government of another country, or suggest that a carefully watched human rights dialogue is largely a farce.
Clinton’s willingness to speak frankly — combined with an extensive effort to get beyond ministerial meetings in order to hold town hall meetings and conduct local TV interviews in the countries she visits — suggests she will put a distinctive personal stamp on the Obama administration’s foreign policy. What is emerging is something less rigid, less cautious and more open.
Before her meetings in Beijing, for instance, Clinton said she would raise human rights issues with Chinese officials. “But we pretty much know what they’re going to say,” she said.
Clinton’s comments have stirred outrage in the human rights community, where she was once viewed as a hero for having confronted the Chinese government, in 1995, over its record. Activists say that without public, sustained international pressure on human rights issues, nothing will change in China.
Clinton says she does not understand the fuss. In her view, speaking clearly — and not obfuscating through diplomatic artifice — helps enhance the policy, rather than undermine it.
“I think that to worry about something which is so self-evident is an impediment to clear thinking,” Clinton told reporters traveling with her. “And I don’t think it should be viewed as particularly extraordinary that someone in my position would say what’s obvious.”
| [Return to headlines] |
Solar Revolution in Beijing
China has decided to power 30,000 homes with solar energy.
An experimental solar thermal plant, capable of generating up to 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year, will be constructed at a cost of $14.7 million.
The plant, to be built in a suburb of Beijing, should be running by 2010.
The plant will cover 32 acres and include 100 curved mirrors that track the sun and redirect the rays to a receiver.
The receiver’s solar thermal power will generate steam that will run through a power turbine.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pirates Seize Vessel Off Somalia
Pirates in the Gulf of Aden have seized a Greek-owned cargo ship.
The BBC’s Jonah Fisher, on board a UK warship 100km (60 miles) away, said the captain of the MV Saldanha radioed that pirates had boarded his ship.
The Saldanha is now heading to Somalia under pirate command after the UK navy’s HMS Northumberland judged it was beyond its remit to pursue the ship.
The warship is part of an EU task force patrolling the waters off the unstable Horn of Africa to deter pirate attacks.
But when the captain of the Saldanha made contact with HMS Northumberland, he told the ship that pirates had warned the British warship to stay away.
Trying to retake captured ships is not what the EU’s anti-piracy task force does, our correspondent reports from on board the UK vessel.
After sending a helicopter up to take a closer look, the frustrated commander of HMS Northumberland had to accept there was nothing more his men could do.
Rising tide
The MV Saldanha was reportedly sailing under a Maltese flag when it was hijacked.
The Greek merchant marine ministry confirmed the Saldanha was seized, adding that the ship was manned by a 22-strong crew, Reuters news agency reported.
The ministry said the ship was loaded with coal and was heading to Slovenia, Reuters said.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration Controls Tightened in Britain
The British Government has ordered the tightening of immigration controls to counter the rise in unemployment.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that the tough economic conditions have caused the government to re-think the immigration rules.
From April, non-EU workers without a job will need to have a masters degree, instead of the current bachelors degree, and a previous salary of at least $44,000 to enter Britain.
The Home Office has estimated the move will mean 12,000 fewer immigrants each year.
| [Return to headlines] |
Why Catholic Indulgences Are Making a Comeback
By Bonnie Rochman
It sounds too good to be true. Now, for a limited time — the year of St. Paul, to be specific, which ends in June — say a prayer, pop by a designated church and qualify for an indulgence that deducts time from your scorching sojourn in the cleansing fires of purgatory.
Indulgences…have been part of Catholic doctrine since the Crusades. When the Church offered them for sale in the 1500’s — call it mercy for money — religious reformer Martin Luther protested. These days, they can’t be bought. “How does that MasterCard ad go?” muses Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Some things are priceless.”
The pardons have fallen by the wayside in the past few decades, but they’re being revived in conjunction with a new emphasis on the importance of charity in Christian life. Catholicism, with 67 million followers in the U.S., is big on formulaic repetition of the Hail Mary and Our Father variety. But the Vatican is starting to move away from that and toward, according to the church’s Manual of Indulgences, a “greater zeal for the exercise of charity.”
It’s no longer enough to repeat a prescribed number of prayers; you also have to do good such as volunteer at a soup kitchen, help resettle refugees or donate to a worthy cause. Much like many high schoolers have to fulfill a community service requirement, Catholics too are being urged to become do-gooders. “The church’s teaching has evolved,” Walsh says. “Part of indulgences is not just saying special prayers, but also doing good works.”
At the core of indulgences is sin, which can lead to either eternal punishment, i.e., hell, or time spent in purgatory, a place of suffering where imperfections are scrubbed away in preparation for entering heaven. Confession erases eternal punishment, but temporal punishment remains. Plenary, or full, indulgences are the equivalent of a get-out-of-purgatory-free card. Partial indulgences simply shorten your stay…
[continue reading at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Geert Wilders: The American Tour
Geert Wilders’ schedule for next week is firming up. Here’s the latest word, a press release about his visit to Washington D.C. on Friday as part of the extended CPAC events:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 23, 2009
Contact: Pamela Geller, wildersevening@aol.comAn Evening With Geert Wilders
Geert Wilders, chairman of the Freedom Party in The Netherlands (PVV), maker of the film Fitna, and brave fighter for Western values, will speak in Washington, DC, this week.
Wilders, the foremost defender of free speech in the modern age, will deliver an address at a reception at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, site of the Conservative Political Action Conference, on Friday, February 27, at 6:00PM.
The reception will feature a screening of Wilders’s courageous and hard-hitting film Fitna, which demonstrates how Islamic jihadists use the Qur’an and Islamic teachings to justify acts of violence and terrorism, and which has become the focus of efforts by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to restrict and criminalize free speech about the global jihad threat. A question-and-answer period will follow.
– – – – – – – – –
The reception is sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, and Dr. Andrew Bostom. It is open to the public. In light of the multiple threats on Geert Wilders’s life, security will be very tight: no bags or coats will be allowed, all materials brought in to the room will be searched, and the event organizers reserve the right to deny entry to or eject anyone at any time.
For more information, contact Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com, wildersevening@aol.com.
Ireland’s Capital is No Longer Dublin
My late Irish mother-in-law used to tell this joke:
Q: Why is Ireland the richest country in the world?
A: Because its capital is always Dublin.
Alas, like the rest of the developed nations, Ireland is no longer quite so wealthy. It is not immune to the depredations of the current financial crisis, and has recently experienced a depletion of its national assets.
Perhaps its capital city should be renamed “Halvin”.
In any case, the Irish government is facing an imminent inability to meet its pension obligations, and has responded by cutting public expenditures and raising pension levies. This move does not sit well with the general public, since many of the wealthy bankers who are deemed responsible for the crisis continue to enjoy their plush lifestyles while unemployment and privation are raging amongst ordinary workers.
A wave of populist outrage has resulted, and Dubliners have taken to the streets. According to today’s Irish Times:
Up to 120,000 People March in National Protest
Up to 120,000 people have marched in Dublin in protest at how the Government is handling the economic crisis. The march, which was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), took nearly one and a half hours to make its way from Parnell Square to Merrion Square.
Ictu maintained that the protest today was the first step in a campaign in support of a fairer way to achieve economic recovery.
Addressing the demonstration Ictu general secretary David Begg said that “a business elite” had destroyed the economy and had not yet been held to account for it in any respect.
Mr Begg called on the Government to talk to the trade union movement on its alternative ten-point plan for economic recovery.
He said that Ictu’s ten-point plan was not perfect but that it was the best offer that it would get “and if you are sensible you will engage with us and talk to us about it.”
– – – – – – – – –
He said that no balance had been put forward by the Government in its solutions for dealing with the current economic crisis. He said that there was no sense of a sharing of the burden right across the economy “not alone that it should be shared by the people who were best able to bear it and who had done best in the Celtic tiger years”.
The president of Ictu, Patricia McKeown, said that the Government wanted workers who built the economy to make the sacrifices while it protected those who wrecked it.
“We are not prepared to live in that society,” she said.
Ms McKeown said that the time had come for Irish workers to demonstrate to the Government the power they really held.
“That power is today on the streets of Dublin, it is in industrial action but most significantly it is at the ballot box.
“If our Government and the elected politicians are not prepared here and now to pledge that they will act now and act on our behalf and act on the proposals we have placed before them then you must be prepared to deny them even a single vote and to send that message out loud and clear,” she said.
[…]
Mr Begg described the activities of people who led the banks as “economic treason”.
He said that the world outside did not see a vibrant economy in Ireland any more but rather an economy which was propped up by “crony capitalism” and nothing else.
[…]
The Ictu leader said that people who had been leaders of the banking system had also held directorships in other sectors.
He said that it was incongruous that people who had presided over “huge failures” in one area were able to maintain their positions in others.
Mr Begg said that if the taxpayer was taking responsibility for the cost of the €300 million in loans for the ten members of the so-called “golden circle” who were involved in investing in Anglo Irish Bank that the people were entitled to know their identities at the very least.
Mr Begg also said that sooner or later — and he believed sooner — that the whole of the Irish banking system would have to be nationalised.
“There is no other route to ensuring that we have an effective banking system in place and we cannot put off that decision indefinitely,” he said.
[…]
Mr Begg also said that history had shown that massive adjustment to economic conditions could only be achieved if there was social adjustment at the same time to ameliorate the effects on the population.
“If you do not do that you will not be able to retain in this country any sense of social cohesion and the alternative is a social disintegration and retreat into protectionism, out of which we can only see great damage to our future and to our country,” he said.
In a statement issued this morning, the Government said there was a considerable amount in Ictu’s Plan for National Recovery that was “entirely consistent” with its own agenda.
“In particular, it reflects the Government’s view that an integrated national response to the current crisis is not only desirable but essential if there is to be a sufficient impetus and coherence of approach to meet the scale of the challenge,” the statement said.
“The Government recognise that the measures which it is taking are difficult and, in some cases, painful. The Government is also convinced, however, that they are both necessary and fair,” it continued.
The statement described the pension levy as “reasonable” and said it reflected “the reality that we are not in a position to continue to meet the public service pay bill in the circumstances of declining revenue”.
Despite the bracing nature of this wave of popular revulsion, I feel compelled to point out that nationalizing Ireland’s banking system is not an effective solution. It would buy the country an express ticket back to the Third World stagnation it was mired in not so many years ago.
The reason this news story caught my eye is that it fits into El Inglés’ general schema of a “discontinuity” in the political economies of the Western democracies. After discussing the concept for a while, he and I came to the conclusion that the proximate cause of the discontinuity will most likely not be political, but economic, and that the systemic failure of the welfare state — as evidenced by its inability to meet its unemployment and pension obligations — would rouse the lumpenbourgeoisie of Europe from their torpor and launch a period of sustained social unrest.
The malaise in Ireland may be the first faint breeze portending the coming hurricane. The same process is underway simultaneously in California: in order to close a yawning budget deficit, Governor Schwarzenegger is terminating public spending and increasing taxes — and in the teeth of a recession, I might add, which is certain to send the state spiraling downwards into deeper fiscal ruin.
The elite leaders of our Western countries — who can’t remember a time when their citizens weren’t inattentive, passive, compliant, and somnolent — are facing a nasty surprise. Sudden poverty and deprivation tend to concentrate the mind, and not in a direction which bodes well for the ruling class.
Just ask Marie Antoinette.
To Stone or Not to Stone
Abdul Wahid Pedersen is a prominent Danish convert to Islam, and has been a controversial figure in the Danish media for quite some time. The latest uproar concerns an interview in which Mr. Pedersen refused to condemn stoning as a punishment, and the resulting reactions by politicians and in the media.
One thing you’ll notice in this interview with Abdul Wahid Pedersen is his use of the fallacy of equivalence: “Why don’t you ask a priest in the state church of his view of crucifixions? Should that be written out of the Bible, too?”
This is more fallacious than most arguments. Nowhere does the Bible prescribe crucifixion as a punishment. The crucifixion of Christ (and the two thieves) was not normative, and to assign it such equivalence is a vile canard.
But Mr. Pedersen, like Mohamed Elmasry, relies on never being called to account for his malicious and spurious analogies. Needless to say, his interviewer obliges him, and asks no hard questions.
Here’s the interview and accompanying article from last week’s Jyllands-Posten (subscription required), as translated by Henrik Ræder Clausen.
“I can’t change the fact that stoning is part of Islam”
by Morten Vestergaard
Extremist? Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen has been called ‘extremist’ based on his earlier statements on stoning and Sharia. But what does he think about stoning?
Abdul Wahid Pedersen is an imam in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, and on the board of directors of Muslimernes Fællesråd (Muslims’ Common Council). He is a frequently quoted imam in the media, and has repeatedly been criticized for not rejecting capital punishment by stoning. Last week Minister of Welfare Karen Jespersen (Venstre) called the imam ‘an extremist’ with reference to his statements on stoning.
Abdul Wahid Pedersen, what is your real view on stoning?
“Sharia is the set of rules surrounding Islam, concerning what to eat, how to pray etc. I consider Islam a whole, where you have no option of cherry-picking individual parts, for this would set one above God. When I’m asked about stoning, I must confirm that stoning exists in Islam. I’m no liar. I acknowledge that it exists, and I can’t change the fact that stoning is part of the Islamic system of justice. This, then, has been turned into my ‘supporting stoning’. Of course I’m not enthusiastic about stoning, but this is not an issue of my ‘supporting stoning or not’. The word ‘support’ gives the impression that it is something I find attractive and am aiming to have instituted.”
So stoning is not a form of punishment you think should be adopted?
“It has already been adopted elsewhere in the world, something I have no influence on. Of course it will never be adopted in Denmark, but I can only concern myself with things I can change, and I can’t change the fact that stoning exists in places like Afghanistan.”
But you could state your opinion about it being part of Islam?
“I do not like stoning, and I find it to be a very violent form of punishment. But it is a form of punishment instituted by God as a strong hint to stay away from each others’ spouses. Thus it is absurd to keep inquiring the opinion of me or other Muslims about it. If I would condemn stoning, I’d apostatize myself from Islam.”
– – – – – – – – –
Other Muslims have publicly condemned stoning. Why can’t you do this?
“It’s up to them what they say, I can’t interfere in that. I’ve made a choice, I’ve chosen Islam, and to me Islam is a package deal.”
How do you feel when you see and hear about cases of stoning in, say, Somalia?
“Like everyone else, I find stoning disgusting. But it is madness to spend newspaper ink on a hypothetical question. This is way out of proportion. Worldwide we may be seeing 3-4 cases of stoning annually, all while Denmark has contributed to killing of thousands in Iraq, and we hand over people to torture in Afghanistan. Why not concern ourselves with that, when we have an actual chance of influencing the politicians who decided that Danish forces should be in Iraq? I have no chance to influence the politicians in Afghanistan who adopted stoning. Let us discuss things that bear relevance to Danish society.”
Can you understand that many become confused over your explanations of stoning?
“I don’t know. People keep asking me about stoning, and people keep making me look like the bad guy. Why don’t you ask a priest in the state church of his view of crucifixions? Should that be written out of the Bible, too? It is as impossible for me to ‘condemn stoning’ as it is for a priest to write crucifixions out of Christianity. Both of these would constitute apostatizing from the religion.”
But isn’t the difference that crucifixion is not in use today?
“The theological dilemma remains the same, and then it makes no difference whether it is in use or not. As a Muslim it is not possible to write Sharia out of Islam, no matter how reprehensible we find stoning.”
The case in brief
Last week Minister of Welfare Karen Jespersen (Venstre) in an article in Jyllands-Posten accused imams Abdul Wahid Pedersen and Zubair Butt Hussein from Muslimernes Fællesråd of being Muslim extremists.
The minister criticized the municipality of Copenhagen for working with Muslimernes Fællesråd with a reference to Abdul Wahid Pedersen earlier having refused to condemn the practice of stoning.
The Mayor of Integration in the municipality of Copenhagen, Jakob Hougaard (Social Democrats) rejects the criticism: “We have taken the issue up front with him, and his response was not cause for any concern.”
[A brief English-language article is here.]
Below is a letter to editor of the newspaper Århus Stiftstidende on this topic (available only in the print edition), also translated by Henrik Ræder Clausen:
A stone’s throw from the Middle Ages
Religious texts must never become more important than our Danish laws, morality and common sense.
By Henriette Kjær
Member of Parliament, political spokesman for the Danish Conservative PartyStoning:
If a person commits adultery, the punishment according to Sharia law, and by implication imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, is execution by stoning.
Once again the debate about imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen and his opinion of stoning flares up, and even though it may look like a discussion we’ve had several times before, it never ceases to be relevant.
For in the statements of this imam we have a clear example of why we must never take our democracy or the Rule of Law for granted. Persons like Abdul Wahid Pedersen still exist, with their darkened view of humans, who do not respect the equal right of humans to life and the right to decide over their own bodies.
It is impossible to comprehend how one can actually stone another human being to death, setting aside every trace of empathy and common sense. This is beyond my understanding.
Abdul Wahid Pedersen has repeatedly justified his refusal to reject stoning by stating that stoning is a hypothetical problem in Denmark anyway, as this punishment would never be used.
But this justification is no less disturbing. For it does not change the fact that Abdul Wahid Pedersen would support stoning in Denmark if it were possible.
Therefore we have to react. Stoning is one thing. A different problem is that a person like Abdul Wahid Pedersen, born and raised in Denmark, by way of principle sets religious law above the law currently in force in Denmark.
To me, this way of thinking is not understandable, but Abdul Wahid Pedersen is free to think and say what he wants. We must defend freedom of expression, even when we do not like what the imam says.
But that does not imply that we should abstain from criticizing this contempt for humans that stoning constitutes. European human rights are built on respect for humans and a ban on capital punishment. In the same vein, we have a long tradition of freedom of religion, as well as criticism of religion here in Europe — we must protect both of these.
For this reason, we should use our freedom of expression to defend democratic principles and to make clear that religious texts never must become more important than our Danish laws, morality and common sense.
Why It’s Not Easy to Save the North
Ypp, a Russian reader and occasional commenter, was inspired by Srdja Trifkovic’s article “The North Worth Saving” to write the following essay for Gates of Vienna.
Why It’s Not Easy to Save the North
by YppUntil recently, I used to be one of the most devoted proponents of the idea of saving the West — or better, say “the North” — the region populated by whites. It seemed to me strange that such an obvious idea does not work well. However, recently I started to understand some not-so-obvious but significant difficulties in the implementation of this idea.
We all care about civilization. Our civilization probably began about 5,000 years ago, and it was only during the last 1,000 years, for known historical reasons, that its center moved to the North. Before that it had mainly developed in the Mediterranean region. That problem is, however, more theoretical than practical. Practically speaking, civilization is nowadays concentrated mostly in the North, and saving the North is almost identical to saving civilization.
The second problem is more practical. I would like to start with an example, which seemingly has nothing to do with our topic: prostitution.
– – – – – – – – –
Most people agree that prostitution is a social evil and it should be fought. However, if you look attentively at the prostitution fighters, you will find that the most fierce of them overreach to some extent. You will notice that they hate not only prostitution, but sex as such. For them, prostitution is only an excuse and a euphemism for fighting against sex.
In the USSR we all knew an infamous phrase of one educator: “There is no sex in our country.” But sex is a necessary part of life, something of the highest importance for reproduction and continuation of life. No country can survive without sex. Clearly, a country without sex could not last long, and USSR collapsed. Now, prostitution is on the rise in Russia, but it’s better to live with prostitution than to die out.
Of course, prostitution is not the same as sex. In the ideal world they should be separated. However in practice, there are too many people who use prostitution only as an excuse for attacking normal relationships.
Now return to the North and the whites. Sex is a ‘hot’ event, you can’t do it coldly. But the North is cold. Secondly, dark skin is considered by many as sexually stimulating. In Russia, we say “African passion”.
As wrong as they are, those are the cultural stereotypes, which cannot be easily overcome. And here is the problem: among fighters for the North and for the whites, there are too many fighters against sex.
They are hard to recognize. For example Hitler positioned himself as a fighter for whites. He had no problem, however, dealing with the Arabs or the Japanese. And he caused as many white deaths as anybody in history. He and most of Nazi leadership are also known to have had some complications in their sexual relations.
So if we learn anything from the collapse of the USSR and the Third Reich, it is that no society can survive if it is ruled by sex-haters. And the problem is that there are too many of them wearing the masks of fighters for the North and for whites.
Until we can clearly separate from such people, and separate cold Northern weather from the sexual meaning of the word “cold”, saving the North will be associated in public opinion with sexual perversions. And, if so, it will hardly become popular.
Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/21/2009
The news feed keeps getting skinnier and skinnier.
We still don’t have any email, so most tips aren’t getting through. I’m kind of enjoying the hiatus, but I know what I’ll be facing when it’s over. It’s like going on vacation, only without the suntan to show for it…
By the way, don’t miss the nude Brazilian samba dancer with the picture of Barack Obama painted on her thigh.
Thanks to Fausta, Fjordman, KGS, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –
White House Rejects Rumours of Bank Nationalisation
The Obama administration said Friday it was not trying to take over Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., the two ailing financial institutions.
‘This administration continues to strongly believe that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go, ensuring that they are regulated sufficiently by this government,’ said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
‘That’s been our belief for quite some time, and we continue to have that,’ he said, rejecting rumours of impending nationalisation of troubled banks.
On Wall Street, Citigroup plunged 20 percent while Bank of America dropped 12 percent in afternoon trading as rumours of nationalisation prompted investors to sell.
A Treasury Department spokesman also rejected the fears and said: ‘There are a lot of rumors in the market, as always, but you should not regard these as any indication of the policy of this administration.’
As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said, ‘we will preserve a financial system that is owned and managed by the private sector’, he said.
The US government has already provided significant aid to Citigroup and Bank of America in its efforts to save the nation’s financial sector, which has been choked by bad assets.
| [Return to headlines] |
Arrest Close in Chandra Levy Death
An arrest may be near in the nearly decade-old slaying of federal intern Chandra Levy, whose disappearance in 2001 ended California congressman Gary Condit’s career, several television stations reported.
The California Democrat was romantically linked to Levy, but was not considered a suspect in her death or disappearance. Television stations, KFSN and KCRA in California and WRC in Washington, D.C., reported that police were seeking an arrest warrant.
Levy’s parents said Friday outside their Modesto, California, home that police called them and told them an arrest was near.
“Your child is dead and gone and it’s painful, but we’re glad that the police and people are doing something, and investigating, and making a difference so somebody’s not on the street to do it again,” Chandra’s mother, Susan Levy, told KGO-TV in San Francisco.
The parents did not say when an arrest warrant might be issued.
The 24-year-old Levy disappeared in May 2001 and at the time, she was wearing jogging clothes when she left her apartment. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in Washington about a year later.
Authorities questioned the married Condit in her disappearance. He reportedly told police that he and Levy were having an affair, and while he was not considered a suspect, the negative publicity was cited as the main cause of the Condit’s re-election defeat in 2002.
Investigators also interviewed Ingmar Guandique, 27, a Salvadoran immigrant who has denied any involvement in Levy’s disappearance and killing.
Guandique was convicted of attacking two women in Rock Creek Park shortly after Levy disappeared and is serving 10 years at a federal prison in California.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier would not comment Saturday on the imminent arrest reports…
| [Return to headlines] |
Drought May Cut Off Federal Water to Calif. Farms
Federal water managers said Friday they plan to cut off water, at least temporarily, to thousands of California farms as a result of the deepening drought gripping the state.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing forcing them to completely stop surface water deliveries for at least a two-week period beginning on March 1. Authorities said they haven’t had to take such a drastic move for more than 15 years.
Note: California Drought Map
www.drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?CA,W
The situation could improve slightly if more rain falls over the next few weeks, and officials will know by mid-March if they can update their projections to release more irrigation supplies to growers from behind the mountain dams where water is stored.
Farmers in the nation’s No. 1 agriculture state said the shortages would wreak havoc on the rural economy, and predicted they would cause consumers to pay more for their fruits and vegetables, since they will have to be grown using expensive well water.
The drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion dollar loss in agriculture-related wages and eliminate as many as 40,000 jobs in farm-related industries in the valley alone, where most of the nation’s produce and nut crops are grown, said Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow.
California’s agricultural industry typically receives 80% of all the water supplies managed by the federal government — everything from far-off mountain streams to suburban reservoirs. The state, in turn, supplies drinking water to 23 million Californians and 755,000 acres of irrigated farmland.
| [Return to headlines] |
NAACP Calls for Firings Over Post’s Chimp Cartoon
(NECN/WABC: New York, New York) — In Harlem, some news stands were not selling the New York Post on Saturday, but others were, and clearly customers were still deciding whether or not to make the purchase.
It comes after several days of protest over a political cartoon in the Post, depicting a chimpanzee shot by white police officers with the words “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” President Barack Obama pushed the nation’s most recent stimulus package.
Now, the NAACP has joined the growing number of groups asking New Yorkers to stop buying the paper. On Friday, it was the Reverend Al Sharpton and on Saturday it was movie director Spike Lee making the call to boycott the paper.
“It seemed to me, an invitation to assassination of the President of the United States, told in the crudest, most ugly way,” NCAAP chairman Julian Bond said.
The Post, has already issued an apology and this statement which says “Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon, even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”
There are those who disagree, demanding that the Post fire it’s Editor-In-Chief and the cartoonist, or else they plan to demonstrate at some of Rupert Murdoch’s other news businesses around the country.
“This is not a one day stand; this is not a publicity stunt; this is for real,” Hazel Dukes of the NAACP said.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pa. Boy, 11, Charged With Killing Pregnant Woman
by RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI [Associated Press]
WAMPUM, Pa. — An 11-year-old boy has been charged in the death of a pregnant woman who was found shot in a bedroom of her western Pennsylvania farmhouse, police said Saturday.
A statement from state police said the boy was charged with criminal homicide and criminal homicide of an unborn child in the killing of 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk. The victim was 8 months pregnant…
[read rest of story at URL…very little information]
| [Return to headlines] |
Satanist Inmate Sues County
A Billings man in prison for drug possession has filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against Yellowstone County for alleged civil-rights violations, including interference with his satanic religious practices.
Jason Paul Indreland claims in the U.S. District Court lawsuit that county jail staff took from him a religious medallion, denied him access to religious material and ridiculed and punished him for his religious beliefs.
The lawsuit also alleges that Indreland was denied medical care for his drug addiction, that he was placed in situations where violence was expected and that he suffered harassment and retaliation while incarcerated.
Indreland said he has been a practicing Satanist for the past decade and the confiscated medallion was a “protective symbol” in his religion. The lawsuit claims jail staff refused to return the medallion or allow Indreland access to a “Satanic Bible or Book of Satanic Rituals.” Indreland, 35, is incarcerated at Montana State Prison for a term of five years, with two years suspended, for felony drug possession. Indreland was convicted of the crime after Billings police found him with 15 grams of methamphetamine in March 2007.
Indreland has previous felony convictions in Yellowstone and Stillwater counties for bad checks and theft…
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Source: Feds Interviewed Burris About Blagojevich
CHICAGO (AP) — Federal authorities interviewed U.S. Sen. Roland Burris on Saturday as they continued their corruption investigation of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Burris, who left his home for several hours Saturday, declined to talk to reporters standing outside. Earlier in the week, he said federal investigators wanted to talk to him about their probe into Blagojevich. Burris said his attorneys had been trying to set up a meeting with investigators for some time.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed Saturday’s meeting to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the matter was confidential.
Burris spokesman Jim O’Connor declined comment, as did U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Randall Samborn.
| [Return to headlines] |
‘Where Do You Draw the Line’
Quebec man accused of terror activities was expressing religious freedom: defence
MONTREAL — The videos found on Said Namouh’s computer when police raided his Quebec apartment in 2007 are brutal: point-blank executions of Westerners, suicide bombings, a charred soldier’s body dragged through the street in celebration. Others offered tips on bomb-making or threatened Western governments over the presence of troops in Afghanistan.
Over the past three weeks, a Quebec court has heard that Mr. Namouh worked tirelessly to ensure these images were widely available on the Internet to the global jihadi community, in some cases doing the editing and adding subtitles himself. Mr. Namouh’s work showed that he had “devoted his life to spreading the ideology of al-Qaeda and encouraging others to join the jihadist movement,” said Rita Katz, a Crown expert at the terrorism trial. What Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond will have to establish is whether those actions contravened Canada’s Criminal Code.
His defence lawyer, René Duval, is not contesting that Mr. Namouh was the user named Ashraf, who was so active on online jihadi forums that he earned praise for his “good work in the service of the [Global Islamic Media] Front, jihad and the mujahedeen.” But Mr. Duval argues that what his client did, while perhaps repugnant to some, was simply an exercise of his freedoms of expression and religion. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked outside the court.
Evidence before the court shows that Mr. Namouh was driven by a fervent faith, one that saw as enemies Christians, Jews and even Muslims who did not share a desire for the creation of pan-Islamic rule.
“I write to you my loved ones with tears falling from the intensity of my love to our mujahedeen protectors, and in hatred of the Crusaders and Shi’a and apostates,” Mr. Namouh wrote in 2006 on a password-protected, invitation-only online message board known as Khidemat.
From the time Mr. Namouh joined the Khidemat forum in November, 2006, to his arrest in September, 2007, he had become the second-most active participant, Ms. Katz, head of the SITE Intelligence group, a U.S. company that monitors online terrorist activity, testified. The forum appears to have been used exclusively by members of the Global Islamic Media Front, a jihadist propaganda wing. Ms. Katz, appearing as an expert witness for the Crown, testified that Mr. Namouh was part of the front’s “uploading and downloading brigade,” establishing Internet links so that people around the world could watch propaganda videos on their computers or cellphones.
She said evidence recovered from his computer hard drive showed that he was responsible for creating links to publicize a March, 2007, video warning the governments of Germany and Austria that they would suffer terrorist attacks if their troops were not withdrawn from Afghanistan. He provided art for a May, 2007, communiqué by the Army of Islam, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping in Gaza of BBC reporter Alan Johnston and demanding the release of prisoners, Ms. Katz said. He also made available propaganda videos with such titles as Jihad Academy and Top Ten, glorifying insurgent attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May, 2007, he announced on the forum that he had created his own compilation video of attacks in Iraq, a 50-minute film known as Final 1000.
“I worked for more than 50 hours in creating the publication, in which I slept only 5 hours,” he wrote on Khidemat. He apologized for the quality of the production, saying he lacked experience in editing and was limited because his computer was not very powerful.
The court has also heard that in August, 2007, Mr. Namouh’s Internet chats were intercepted, revealing what police believe were plans to explode a truck bomb at an undisclosed location outside Canada.
“I have the information and experience for acquisition of explosives in a country and the way to have them easily,” he said on Aug. 8. Later he was overheard discussing plans to travel to North Africa and saying, “Terrorism is in our blood, and with it we will drown the unjust.”
Mr. Namouh faces charges of conspiracy, participating in the activities of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity and extortion.
Mr. Duval said the trial is a crucial test of Canadian anti-terrorism law. “I question whether the fact of providing [Internet] links, especially when one is motivated by religious belief, is a violation of the Criminal Code,” he said in an interview. He said that even though the beliefs of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are “repugnant to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, still, are they not religious beliefs? A lot turns on that.”
Ms. Katz maintains that Internet jihadi propaganda is not just a matter of expressing one’s beliefs but an active effort to “indoctrinate, recruit and train followers.” In a report submitted to the court, another Crown expert, Reuven Paz, stated that the Global Islamic Media Front is at the forefront of these activities.
Its “independent media efforts amplify the extent and effect of terrorist propaganda by repackaging it into more sophisticated productions and disseminating them to the spectrum of jihadi forums,” he wrote.
The trial continues next week.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
English Church Bells Chime as One
Sixty-six churches across England have rung their bells in unison to mark the 40th anniversary of the Churches Conservation Trust.
Many bells were chiming for the first time in decades at 1400 GMT, following fundraising from volunteers — it costs around £7,000 to repair each bell.
It is easy for churches to fall into disrepair, something the Churches Conservation Trust works to prevent.
[…]
Rebecca Rees, who works for the Trust, said: “Around the country we have a variety of innovative uses we use these ancient spaces for. In Bristol we have a circus school company which uses a church, in Sheffield a rock group uses a church for its concerts.
“Friends and volunteers from all over the country use churches for art exhibitions and plays.”
North Yorkshire was due to have eight churches participating in the event, while seven were taking part in Somerset, and four in both Suffolk and Shropshire.
The Trust’s website says most church towers in England have six or eight bells, “traditionally rung for services, weddings, other special occasions, and for ringers’ practice and pleasure”.
[ed. note: the churches are dead, but the bells live on]
| [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Anti-Mafia Police Target Sicilian Windfarm Scam
Police on Tuesday arrested eight people, mainly local businessmen including a local politician who are suspected of involvement in mafia infiltration of windfarms in western Sicily. Ruling conservative Italian People of Freedom party politician Vito Martino was among those detained.
The suspects are accused of helping the local mafia family of Mazara del Vallo in the area around the western port of Trapani to gain control of the windfarm business.
The Mazara del Vallo controlled revenues, permits, contracts and distribution of electricity from the windfarms, by buying votes for politicians linked to the mafia, investigators allege.
The clan was also planning to build a new windfarm using a Genoa-based company called Enerpro. The scam also involved politicians, officials and businessmen from Sicily and other Italian regions including the southern Campania and the northern Trentino region.
Tuesday’s anti-mafia sting was carried out by over 100 policemen in areas around Trapani and the city of Salerno, south of Naples, as well as in Trento.
‘‘It’s clear that urgent legislation is needed to regulate tenders at all stages of the construction of windfarms — not only to close off this new avenue of mafia business,” said Italian environmental lobby group Legambiente’s president, Vittorio Cogliati Dezza.
“It will also ensure the healthy development of renewable energy that will offer employment and a future to a region (Sicily) already devastated by criminality and cronyism,” he added
| [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Muslim Leader Visits Former Nazi Camp
A leader of Italy’s largest Muslim organisation, the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy, the UCOII, has visited the former Polish concentration camp in Auschwitz for the first time.
“During these times, prejudice among Muslims denying the Holocaust is widespread. In this context, as a Muslim and a leader of the Muslim community, I went to Auschwitz to show that we, Muslims do not deny the Holocaust and we are not anti-Semites, even if we criticise Israel’s policies,” said Indian-born Zahoor Ahmad Zargar in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).
Zargar said his trip, which concluded on Sunday, was also a way of paying tribute to all the victims of the Holocaust.
“I went with my wife and daughter Zarina on the pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau, organised by the National Association of Former Deportees of Savona. I decided to go to Auschwitz to pay tribute to all people, Jewish and non-Jewish, innocent and peaceful people, that were subjected to the most horrible torture and died because of a project of extermination,” he said.
Zargar also said it was wrong to generalise about Muslims and their view of the Holocaust. He drew a parallel with Christians, saying that both communities are composed many different people, from different cultures.
He also told AKI that when he studied in India, there was very little information about the Holocaust.
“When I was still in my country I managed to read something about it (the Holocaust). But only when I arrived in Italy, did I realise the horrible tragedy suffered by Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, deportees and political prisoners, whose tragedy is discussed often here,” said Zargar.
In January, the imam from the southern city of Naples, Yasin Gentile, visited Auschwitz for the first time and vowed to pray for the victims. The trip was sponsored by the province of Naples to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January.
Auschwitz was the largest and most notorious Nazi concentration camp. An estimated 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were transported there from across Europe and died in the camp’s gas chambers or of disease, starvation, and abuse.
More than six million Jews and some two million Roma gypsies as well as unknown numbers of homosexuals, intellectually disabled and political opponents were murdered in Nazi extermination camps in Europe during World War II.
Zargar, born in the Indian city of Srinagar in Kashmir, has been living in Italy for more than 20 years and is also the president of the Muslim community in the northwestern region of Liguria.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pope Benedict XVI to Canonise 10 New Saints
[from AFP]
…Four Italian and one Portuguese — will be canonised, or established as saints, on April 26, with another five to follow on October 11.
Among the first group are Father Arcangelo Tadini (1846-1912), Sister Caterina Volpicelli (1839-1894), theologian Bernardo Tolomei (1272-1348) and Gertrude Caterina Comensoli, (1847-1903), all Italian.
The fifth is Carmelite monk Nuno de Santa Maria Alvares Pereira (1360-1431) of Portugal.
In the second group is Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879) of France who founded the order of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Alongside her will be Polish archbishop Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski (1822-1895), two Spanish monks — a Dominican, Francisco Coll y Guitart (1812-1875) and a Trappist, Rafael Arnaiz Baron (1911-1938) — and Jozef Damian de Veuster (1840-1889) of Belgium.
[ed. note: Jozef Damian de Veuster was known as “Father Damien,Priest to the lepers:
http://tinyurl.com/annd9e
Born Joseph de Veuster in 1840, he took the name Damien and went to Hawaii in 1864 to join other missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Nine years later he began ministering to leprosy patients on the remote Kalaupapa peninsula of Molokai island, where some 8,000 people had been banished amid an epidemic in Hawaii in the 1850s.
[He] eventually contracted [leprosy], also known as Hansen’s disease, and died in 1889 at age 49.
| [Return to headlines] |
Hamas: Some Prisoners Freed for Shalit May be Settled in Syria
Some Palestinian prisoners freed in a deal for abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit may be settled in Syria, Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar was quoted by pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat as saying Saturday.
Zahar’s statement could be interpreted as addressing Israel’s fears that prematurely released convicted terrorists might take up arms once they return to the Hamas-ruled territory.
A Popular Resistance Committee commander, meanwhile, was quoted by Al Hayat as saying that Shalit had been injured during the Israel Defense Forces assault against Hamas in Gaza last month, but refused to disclose his condition.
“Every piece of information about Shalit has a price tag on it,” Abu Abir was quoted as saying.
Jerusalem sources have said that Israel has prepared a new list of Palestinian prisoners it is willing to release and is ready to relay it to Hamas as quickly as possible. This is in order to advance a possible swap arrangement, after the cabinet decided Wednesday to make Shalit’s release a precondition to any cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
Zahar told Al Hayat that Hamas has yet to receive the new list.
| [Return to headlines] |
Lebanese Rocket Fire Raises Tension on Israeli Border
Lebanese security sources say Israel has fired artillery shells into southern Lebanon, after three rockets were fired toward Israel from Lebanon. Israeli sources say one of those rockets landed in northern Israel and wounded three people. Lebanese rocket fire is raising tension on the border with Israel.
Rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon, including one that slammed into an Israeli Arab village in Galilee.
“We heard a loud boom,” a resident of the village told Israel’s Army Radio. It was raining, and he said that at first people thought it was thunder. He said there was a lot of broken glass and damage in several houses.
Israeli artillery returned fire. There was no claim of responsibility but Israeli officials said such attacks could not take place without the knowledge of the Islamic guerrilla group Hezbollah which controls South Lebanon. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, said it was not involved.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora issued a statement condemning the rocket attack, saying it “threatened security and stability.”
Rocket fire has been rare since the Lebanon War in 2006, when Israel launched a 34-day assault on Hezbollah. Lebanon is still recovering and the western-backed Lebanese government does not want another war.
But the Israeli army says Hezbollah has rearmed with 40,000 rockets since the war, and military intelligence has warned that another conflict with Hezbollah appears inevitable.
| [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: First Female-Run Alcohol Factory Uncovered Say Religious Police
Saudi religious police say they have uncovered the country’s first female-run alcohol factory, in the eastern city of Dammam. Alcohol production and consumption is strictly forbidden in Saudi Arabia, which adheres to the fundamentalist Wahabi interpretation of Islam.
The alleged illegal alcohol factory was located inside an empty house, where religious police said they had in recent weeks noted a number of foreign women carrying containers into and from the house.
During a raid on the building on Thursday, police arrested a group of African women they allege were running the factory. All the women are aged between 35 and 45 years of age. Police did not state their nationalities.
Religious police said they seized over 600 bottles of alcohol in the raid — including wine — which were ready for sale.
The police said they also arrested a southeast Asian taxi driver who allegedly was one of the factory’s regular customers and who helped the women transport the alcohol.
| [Return to headlines] |
Arrests in India After Hepatitis B Kills 32
By Harmeet Shah Singh
CNN
Authorities were carrying out raids at medical stores in India’s western Gujarat state for bogus drugs and recycled syringes after a hepatitis B outbreak left 32 people dead, officials said Saturday.
Five medical practitioners were also arrested for violations, said Malayappan Thennarasan, the top administrator of the state’s Sabarkantha district.
One of those arrested is being held for allegedly reusing injection syringes, Thennarasan said.
Health authorities have recorded 111 cases of hepatitis B infection in the district over the past two weeks, he added.
“Of them, 32 have died,” he said.
Health officials have launched an awareness campaign in the district, Thennarasan said this week.
Hepatitis B is a contagious liver disease resulting from infection with the hepatitis B virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It usually spreads through blood, semen, or other bodily fluids, often through sexual contact or sharing needles or syringes with an infected person, the CDC says.
The disease can range from a mild illness lasting a few weeks to a serious, chronic illness resulting in long-term health problems or death, according to the CDC.
| [Return to headlines] |
Taliban Agrees ‘Permanent Ceasefire’ in War-Torn Valley
As Barack Obama launches new Afghan policy, America and Britain fear deal with Pakistan will provide a terrorist haven
Taliban fighters and Pakistani government officials have agreed a controversial deal which will lead to a “permanent ceasefire” in the troubled northwestern Swat valley, threatening to create an outpost of militant rule and a terrorist haven only 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
The agreement, between the militant commander Maulana Fazlullah and local administrators, was announced late yesterday and builds on a previous temporary deal.
“They have made a commitment that they will observe a permanent ceasefire and we’ll do the same,” Syed Mohammad Javed, commissioner of Malakand and local representative of the Pakistani government, told reporters late yesterday afternoon.
Around 1,200 people have been killed and between 250,000 and 500,000 have fled Swat in 18 months of fierce fighting over the beautiful valley that was once a centre of tourism. Three thousand militants have been battling up to 12,000 troops.
Western governments and many Pakistanis have been alarmed by the provincial government’s offer to reinstate sharia law in Malakand if the Taliban agreed to peace. Last week Richard Holbrooke, Barack Obama’s special envoy to the region, contacted Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, who has yet to ratify the deal, to express American concern. The US and Britain fear that a ceasefire could result in another sanctuary in Pakistan where al-Qaida and Taliban militants can move freely, and that Taliban fighters elsewhere in the region will be encouraged by the move.
The new US administration has launched a review of its policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and British officials are hoping the World Bank will set up a development fund to channel aid money to the violent border regions of Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding. The fund would receive hundreds of millions of pounds which the government hopes will be pledged this year to fund roads, clinics and schools.
The plan, which officials stress would have to be initiated by the Pakistani government, is part of a wide-ranging strategy aimed at boosting development in the tribal areas to fight Islamic militancy and counteract the effects of missiles fired by unarmed drones operated by the CIA. The attacks have eliminated a number of high-ranking targets but have enraged local people and are deeply unpopular throughout Pakistan.
Last week, however, the US signalled that such strikes would be broadened in scope. Two attacks in the past 10 days have killed dozens and targeted the network of Pakistani militant leader Baitullah Mahsud, suspected of organising the killing of Benazir Bhutto in 2007. It is the first time the drones, recently revealed to be based in Pakistan, have hit militant groups whose focus is not Nato troops or their allies in Afghanistan but Pakistan.
A list of 20 individuals was drawn up by the CIA and cleared with the Pakistani government in consultations last summer, despite public denials by Islamabad. Intensive strikes over recent months have pleased global intelligence services because they put al-Qaida “on the back foot”, provoking damaging internal witch-hunts and forcing senior leaders to take time-consuming and demoralising security precautions.
Of the massive American aid to Pakistan since 2001, little has been used for development. In recent months, the country has been forced to ask for emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund to avoid a default. The US Congress is considering a $1.6bn development aid request from the Obama adminstration. Officials at the World Bank said they had yet to hear of the plan for a fund.
One Whitehall source said the idea was to stop development money for the tribal regions arriving “in penny packets” and to make sure it reached its target.
| [Return to headlines] |
ADB to Loan China $400 Million to Rebuild After Earthquake
The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Board of Directors has approved a US$400 million emergency assistance loan to rebuild roads and schools that were demolished or badly damaged in last year’s devastating earthquake in China.
It is the first loan to China under ADB’s disaster and emergency assistance policy, and is designed to ensure that authorities on the ground can move swiftly with rebuilding work.
The loan will be used to rehabilitate and reconstruct over 350 roads and bridges, along with twelve schools, in the worst hit counties of Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. The project will benefit about 5.6 million people, including many poor rural dwellers that were left homeless, isolated and without livelihoods after the magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck last May.
The huge scale of the tragedy, which killed over 69,000 people and forced the evacuations of around 1.5 million others, prompted the PRC government to call for support from the international community for the first time. Direct losses from the disaster are estimated at CNY852.31 billion ($124.68 billion), or around 3.3% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2007.
“The project will help to revive economic activity in the affected provinces, enabling people to resume and improve their livelihoods and return to normal life,” says Manmohan Parkash, Project Team Leader and Principal Transport Specialist with ADB’s East Asia Department.
A key element of the reconstruction work is that it will incorporate earthquake-resistant designs, with roads and schools to be rebuilt to a higher standard than the original structures. Both Sichuan and Shaanxi are prone to natural disasters and public concerns were voiced about the quality of some buildings, including schools, after last year’s tragedy.
“The primary lesson (from the earthquake) is that new buildings, including schools, need to be designed to withstand seismic shocks and be built to a higher quality,” Mr. Parkash said.
The rebuilding of schools to include new facilities, such as dormitories, is expected to boost student enrolment numbers, particularly for girls, while the restoration of roads will help boost off-farm employment opportunities for people in remote areas.
| [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Pietersen Dubs Stanford a ‘Sleazebag’
Former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen has lashed alleged fraudster Allen Stanford as a “sleazebag” and revealed that he has lost money in torn up contracts.
Pietersen, who did not specify the value of the contracts he had signed with Stanford to be a cricket ambassador, described the Texas financier as a “sleazebag” and said his sponsorship of a tournament involving England made it seem as though “the England team had been sold”.
His comments to the News of the World weekly newspaper came after authorities seized the Bank of Antigua, one of Stanford’s assets, while Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia have also taken action against his banks.
“I was an ambassador for Stanford — a player face — but that contract has gone,” he told the paper.
The News of the World reported that Pietersen had signed a two-year deal with Stanford, with an option to promote Stanford’s winner-takes-all Twenty20 clash for a further three years.
“Stanford was a sleazebag,” Pietersen said. “I was very uncomfortable with the whole Stanford thing.”
“It was not that I was captain at the time, it was the uncomfortable situation of everybody thinking the England team had been sold. With the financial state of the world, people were talking about money instead of cricket.
“Those kinds of things just didn’t seem right to me, so it’s not a bad thing we are not going to have that tournament any more.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board terminated all contracts with Stanford on Friday, and will not be taking part in any further Stanford Twenty20 matches in Antigua or his proposed international quadrangular Twenty20 events in England, the first of which was due to be played at Lord’s in May.
Negotiations between the ECB and Stanford were suspended on Tuesday when it was revealed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had charged the Texan tycoon with an alleged $US9 billion ($A13.99 billion) fraud.
| [Return to headlines] |
Cholera Outbreak in Zimbabwe at Risk of Spinning Out of Control
The mounting death toll from Zimbabwe’s devastating cholera epidemic has reached almost 3,800, with more than 80,000 people infected, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported Friday.
Some 3,759 people have now died from cholera since the outbreak first hit the besieged southern African country in August last year, with all 10 of Zimbabwe’s provinces having been affected by the water-borne disease, which has spilled over to neighbouring countries.
WHO noted that South Africa, which has a relatively strong health care system, has been able to limit the number of fatalities to below one per cent of people infected by the deadly disease, compared to four per cent in Zimbabwe last December and between one and two per cent in recent weeks.
A high number of cholera cases have also been reported in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, all countries where the disease is endemic.
There are 365 cholera treatment centres operating in Zimbabwe and WHO has set up a Cholera Command and Control Centre in the capital, Harare, with its partner agencies to provide technical support in the areas of epidemiological and laboratory surveillance, case management, social mobilization, logistics, and infection control and water sanitation in treatment centres.
WHO warned that containing the rate of infection remains a significant challenge given the country’s dilapidated water and sanitation infrastructure and a weak health system.
| [Return to headlines] |
Carnival Queen Sambas With Obama’s Face on Thigh
SAO PAULO — A Brazilian carnival queen famous for her skimpy attire is grabbing headlines again for painting President Barack Obama’s face on her body.
Viviane Castro paraded nearly nude early Saturday with the U.S. leader’s visage on her right thigh. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s face was on her left thigh.
Castro’s stomach read “for sale” — a message she said represented the sale of Brazil’s Amazon to the U.S. Many here fear the U.S. wants to control the resource-rich region.
Castro appeared in last year’s Rio Carnival parade wearing nothing but a strategically placed piece of tape 1 1/2-inches (4-centimeters) long , violating a little-enforced nudity rule and drawing a penalty for her samba group.
She wore the same patch this year.
| — Hat tip: Fausta | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden’s Annual Immigrant Tally Hit Six Figures in 2008
More than 100,000 people emigrated to Sweden in 2008, marking the first time the country’s annual immigrant count hit six figures, according to new statistics.
Figures released by Statistics Sweden (SCB) on Tuesday put Sweden’s population at 9.25 million.
The number of immigrants was up by 1.7 percent from the previous year, SCB said, as Sweden’s overall population rose by 0.8 percent, or 73,420 people, to 9,256,347.
There were 55,877 more people who emigrated to Sweden than who left the country.
The number of births meanwhile rose by 1.8 percent to 109,301 from 107,421 in 2007.
Excluding Swedish citizens who returned home, the number of immigrants totalled 83,318 people. The overall number was 101,171 immigrants, compared to 99,485 in 2007.
Iraqis, who have in recent years become Sweden’s second largest community of foreigners behind Finns, account for the biggest rise, with 12,103 new arrivals.
That number is however down by 20 percent from 2007 after Sweden adopted stricter asylum criteria for Iraqis.
In 2008, the number of people born in Iraq and living in Sweden also passed the 100,000 mark, to 109,446 people, up from 97,513 in 2007 and some 49,000 in 2000.
In 2007, 58.7 percent of Iraqis in Sweden held Swedish nationality.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Atlantis Found on Google Earth, Official Explanation is Dubious
By Dan Nosowitz
The image you see above is purportedly traces of the ruins of the Lost City of Atlantis, found on Google Earth. Let’s weigh the evidence for and against, and see what we can conclude.
Conclusion 1: This Is Atlantis, Dammit!
The enigmatic lines were found under the sea off the north-western coast of Africa. This location is awfully close to one of the spots Plato, Legendary Smart Dude, had pinpointed as a possible resting place of Atlantis. In addition, the site is about the same size as Plato described. And if we accept Google’s explanation, why is this the first such grid we’ve seen, in this very suspicious location?
Conclusion 2: It’s Not Atlantis, Dammit!
Google claims that the lines are remnants of the sonar traces left by boats as they surveyed the area. Plus, Plato described Atlantis as being designed as a series of concentric circles, not a grid. Sub-argument: Plato’s description of Atlantis was fictional, and the entire internet is really bored.
I think the arguments speak for themselves. ATLANTIS IS OBVIOUSLY REAL!
[see article for image]
| [Return to headlines] |
Atoall.Com Makes English Knowledge Irrelevant for Net Surfers
[This] new Internet technology search engine invention will allow users to access all most popular websites by the use of simple shortcuts. For example, if a user wants to visit Google, he will have to type the following three consecutive letters in the keyboard, “gghhjj.com”. To visit Orkut, they will have to just type, ookkmm.com.
…The intention of this invention is to make the Internet and websites on the web accessible to all including the illiterates.
..This new internet technology search engine invention will make online surfing experience easy for English speaking users, non-English speaking users too can now access web pages without any difficulty, and it is possible for illiterate people to access websites of their interest.
[…]
While explaining this new technology, Sanjeev Singla the Managing Director of Atoall.com said that, “One has to type three letters twice on the computer keyboard which are in a straight line, ‘C’ or inverted ‘C’, ‘V’ or inverted ‘V’ twice followed by dot (.) com or ctrl+enter (its for www. .com). Shortcut keys are together on the keyboard e.g. rrddcc.com, ccddrr.com, mmjjnn.com, nnjjmm.com etc. We can earn 36 billions dollars annually from this invention because illiterate can also use the Internet by Atoall.com’s Angle Theory. So, non English persons can get benefits of internet technology.”
This new technology search engine invention does not only have keyboard shortcuts to Google, Orkut, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc., users will also be able to access their favorite games sites, access videos, etc. Language will no more be a barrier. People from all language backgrounds can use this new technology.
In their new invention, according to Rinkle Sharma, they did not violate any rules and regulations of the Internet. Everything is absolutely legal. Moreover, this new concept of interacting with the web does not require users to install any new software product.
This company is managed by a team of eight young Internet savvy Indians who have come up with a highly innovative technology that removes the language barriers on the World Wide Web. Their new system is capable of increasing the over all percentage of Internet users by another thirty percent.
| [Return to headlines] |
Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee
Our Canadian neighbors are somewhat more restrictive of political speech than we are here in the USA.
Up there in the Frozen North, it’s not permitted to speak out against Islam. In fact, if you’re not a Muslim, quoting the Koran is considered hate speech.
And you’d better not say anything negative about homosexuals. Unless, of course, you’re a Muslim, and then you can say pretty much anything you like about them — and also about the Jews, for that matter.
The issue of free speech in Canada has just been raised in an unusual context. An alleged terrorist named Said Namouh is on trial in Quebec, and the case against him is based entirely on his internet activities. The Crown maintains that what Mr. Namouh did — distributing jihad snuff videos, offering bomb-making instructions, and helping networks of mujahideen communicate — aided and abetted terrorism. The defendant’s lawyer doesn’t dispute these facts, but maintains that what his client did was protected by — wait for it — Canada’s hallowed traditions of free speech and freedom of religion.
Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn must surely be startled to hear such an assertion. And, coming from Canadian Muslims, this is a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-their-mouths moment.
Here’s the story from The National Post:
‘Where Do You Draw the Line’
Quebec man accused of terror activities was expressing religious freedom: defence
MONTREAL — The videos found on Said Namouh’s computer when police raided his Quebec apartment in 2007 are brutal: point-blank executions of Westerners, suicide bombings, a charred soldier’s body dragged through the street in celebration. Others offered tips on bomb-making or threatened Western governments over the presence of troops in Afghanistan.
Over the past three weeks, a Quebec court has heard that Mr. Namouh worked tirelessly to ensure these images were widely available on the Internet to the global jihadi community, in some cases doing the editing and adding subtitles himself. Mr. Namouh’s work showed that he had “devoted his life to spreading the ideology of al-Qaeda and encouraging others to join the jihadist movement,” said Rita Katz, a Crown expert at the terrorism trial. What Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond will have to establish is whether those actions contravened Canada’s Criminal Code.
His defence lawyer, René Duval, is not contesting that Mr. Namouh was the user named Ashraf, who was so active on online jihadi forums that he earned praise for his “good work in the service of the [Global Islamic Media] Front, jihad and the mujahedeen.” But Mr. Duval argues that what his client did, while perhaps repugnant to some, was simply an exercise of his freedoms of expression and religion. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked outside the court.
And here’s the crucial point:
– – – – – – – – –
Evidence before the court shows that Mr. Namouh was driven by a fervent faith, one that saw as enemies Christians, Jews and even Muslims who did not share a desire for the creation of pan-Islamic rule.
“Fervent faith” is the necessary characteristic. Those who possess it enjoy true freedom.
It is for this reason that the hateful speech of atheists enjoys no protection under the law. And Christians and Jews could never be fervent enough to qualify.
It seems that only Islam induces the pure flame of absolute zeal that entitles believers to do abominable things.
The court has also heard that in August, 2007, Mr. Namouh’s Internet chats were intercepted, revealing what police believe were plans to explode a truck bomb at an undisclosed location outside Canada.
“I have the information and experience for acquisition of explosives in a country and the way to have them easily,” he said on Aug. 8. Later he was overheard discussing plans to travel to North Africa and saying, “Terrorism is in our blood, and with it we will drown the unjust.”
Mr. Namouh faces charges of conspiracy, participating in the activities of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity and extortion.
Mr. Namouh’s lawyer maintains that his client’s religious belief is the main reason why these activities are protected:
Mr. Duval said the trial is a crucial test of Canadian anti-terrorism law. “I question whether the fact of providing [Internet] links, especially when one is motivated by religious belief, is a violation of the Criminal Code,” he said in an interview. He said that even though the beliefs of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are “repugnant to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, still, are they not religious beliefs? A lot turns on that.”
Needless to say, the Crown does not agree:
Ms. Katz maintains that Internet jihadi propaganda is not just a matter of expressing one’s beliefs but an active effort to “indoctrinate, recruit and train followers.” In a report submitted to the court, another Crown expert, Reuven Paz, stated that the Global Islamic Media Front is at the forefront of these activities.
Vlad Tepes notes that Said Namouh’s lawyer has provided a clarifying moment for Canadian jurisprudence, regardless of the disposition of the case:
First of all, I would like to thank the defense lawyer for suspected terrorist Said Namouh. He unwittingly, or perhaps with full knowledge and likely so, is doing the western world a massive service. He is doing something that urgently needs doing. His defense argument, that this accused terrorist is merely observing his religious rights, is forcing the western world to examine its legal and cultural axioms. To be clear…
I believe that this may well be the most important civil trial on the matter of terrorism; multiculturalism; immigration and western law that has ever taken place.
The defense is not saying this man has not done what he is accused of. On the contrary, he is quite plainly admitting it and is challenging the notion of religious freedom. This lawyer and his defendant is in fact admitting plainly that terrorism, hatred of the west and freedom, killing of innocents and the advocating and planning of same is intrinsic to Islam and therefore is covered under his right to religious freedom.
The implications of this are staggering. If the judge finds in his favour, it means anyone can dream up as vile an ethos imaginable (although it would tax my imagination beyond its limits to think of a more vile one than Islam) create a basis for it in a holy book and claim a right to behave according to that ethos on the basis of Canadian guarantees of freedom of religion.
[…]
The very idea that this kind of defence could be used is startling. It can only be brought in to a serious criminal trial because liberal democracies have become inured with the notion that all ideologies have equal rights so long as they have an irrational basis.
Indeed.
The case also illustrates how deeply irrational the Western judicial system has become. Not only do matters hinge on how fervently these destructive religious impulses are felt, but only Muslims are accorded the right to act on such impulses.
The cat’s out of the bag. The hitherto unstated premise — that Islam assigns irresistibly violent imperatives to its adherents — has now been stated openly.
No other religion has been granted such a privilege. It’s obvious that none ever will.
Are Canadians going to sit still for this?
We’ll soon find out.
The Islamophobia Machine
Mohamed Elmasry is an imam and a Canadian university professor. He’s somewhat of an activist on behalf of his Muslim faith, and writes occasional op-eds for the Canadian media. From time to time he has been known to butt heads with the kuffar — notably with Ezra Levant over Dr. Elmasry’s attitude towards Jews.
The good doctor’s most notorious public expression of opinion occurred when he appeared on Michael Coren’s television show on Oct. 19, 2004. He asserted on camera that every adult Jew in Israel was a fair target for Palestinian terrorists.
Afterwards, during the resulting controversy, he claimed that he didn’t say any such thing. When that didn’t work, he maintained that his words had been misrepresented, distorted, and taken out of context, and employed various other rationalizations and disclaimers, but to no avail.
Here’s a partial transcript of the program in question:
Elmasry: … and totally innocent people, obviously, is the children. But they are not innocent if they are part of a population which is total population of Israel is part of the army… From 18 on, they are part of the soldiers, even if they have civilian clothes. Coren: So if Israeli children are killed, that is a valid use of military force by Palestinians? Elmasry: No, they are not valid… Coren: So what are you saying? Elmasry: I’m saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK? Coren: What about women? Elmasry: The same, if they are women in the army… Coren: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target. Elmasry: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army… Coren: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target? Elmasry: Yes, I would say.
The pressure against him became so intense that Dr. Elmasry offered to resign as a spokesman for the Canadian Islamic Congress. But his resignation was not accepted, and he continues to speak on behalf of the group.
With that in mind, here’s the Mohamed Elmasry’s latest essay, as published last week in The Georgia Straight, with my comments interpolated:
The Islamophobia machine is a new growth industry
By Mohamed ElmasryJust as some Jews betrayed their coreligionists by aiding the Nazi propaganda machine before and during WWII, today there are Muslims just as eagerly and effectively helping the Islamophobia industry to stereotype and marginalize their brothers and sisters of the faith. These Muslims are very much appreciated and celebrated by those who stand to benefit from the promotion of Islamophobia; in fact, they are in such demand that the hate-and-fear industry can’t find enough of them.
OK, we’re off to a good start here. It’s a familiar meme: Muslims in the West face the same threat today from their host societies that Jews did in the 1930s. The Muslims are the new Jews, and the Islamophobes who object to them are the same as the Nazis.
As has often been pointed out, there are holes in this argument big enough to ride a camel through.
– – – – – – – – –
First of all, the Jews in the 1930s were almost suicidally non-violent. They did not publicly abuse their gentile neighbors. They made no threats against the community or the state. They did not start riots or blow things up because of their religious beliefs. The anti-Semitism that was so prevalent at time owed nothing to any rational fear of Jewish violence.
Secondly, in contrast to the Nazis, there is no official state-sanctioned anti-Islamic policy in the non-Muslim world. Quite the opposite, in fact: the governments of the West generally bow and scrape before Islam in an attempt to fend off more violent attacks.
So the comparison is spurious and invidious, designed to invoke the sacred icon of the Holocaust and cut off any further discussion of the topic.
Islamophobia has been around for quite some time, but since 9/11 it began to take on form and structure, supported by financiers, researchers, writers, and academics, many of whom were self-styled “experts” on Islam and terrorism. The Islamophobia industry directly filled a need created by right-wing politicians, war mongers, racists, lobbyists, and the military war business (from professional mercenary companies to arms dealers and manufacturers).
“Financiers”, eh? So where’s my funding? If I had known they pay people to do what I do, I wouldn’t nickel-and-dime our readers to death…
Every time a perceived need is revealed in a capitalist society, an industry is created, sometimes by design, to fill that need.
The West led by the U.S. saw and promoted the need for an Islamophobia industry; and now that it is established, it will be around for years to come.
“Sometimes by design.” Uh-huh. So the capitalists of the West saw the ragheads coming, and just couldn’t wait to create a whole new industry to market arms and other products to newly-indoctrinated Islamophobes.
I don’t know what universe Prof. Elmasry inhabits, but it’s not the same one I live in. The vast majority of people in my part of the world didn’t even know what a Muslim was before 9/11. And most of those who did pay pre-9/11 attention to Islam had been jolted into awareness by the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000, or the African embassy bombings in 1998, or the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, or the massacre at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, or the taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979.
In other words, Americans became aware of Islam because fervent Muslim believers repeatedly directed violence at Americans. Islam kept poking at the USA until it got our attention. It’s not like we were atavistic hate-filled toothless rubes, just waiting for an excuse to go after Muslims.
The “stereotype” of violent Islam owes its origin to routine Islamic terrorism.
The “Islamophobia industry” was created and is maintained by repeated mass violence on the part of devout Muslims directed at non-Muslims.
It’s an unhappy fact, Dr. Elmasry, but it’s true. Deal with it.
There are five central reasons for this phenomenon:
1. The Muslim world is rich in resources, especially crude oil, and the West is determined not to pay fair market value for it. Capitalist financial powers would rather rob Muslims and the entire Muslim world of this valuable resource, using violence if necessary, as in the case of Iraq.
This is a frequent canard, much beloved by the Left as well as by Muslim apologists.
If this is true, why did the hegemonic Great Satan not simply appropriate the oil fields of Kuwait and Iraq after two very expensive wars? It would have been easy enough to do — annex the appropriate real estate, bring in the multinational oil corporations, and hire Blackwater to guard the wells and shoot any natives that come near.
Why didn’t we do that? Two massively expensive wars, and we didn’t even get to keep a single lousy oil well!
Some hegemons we turned out to be.
And if the Iraq war was about cheap oil, why didn’t the price drop after we overthrew Saddam? Why did it keep rising right up until the real estate bubble popped and the current depression kicked in?
Really, the USA isn’t very smart when it comes to carrying out its nefarious global-capitalist schemes.
2. In geopolitical terms, the Muslim world covers a strategically vital area, in which the West is determined to establish a permanent presence; military occupation is one favoured means of doing so, as in the case of Afghanistan.
In geopolitical terms, the Muslim world is a worthless and fetid sandpile, not counting the oil. The Suez canal and the cashew trade from Iran — those are the only things in the region we’d be considering these days if it weren’t for the oil.
3. The Muslim world represents a huge market of close to 1.5 billion people, whose buying power is essential if the West is to succeed in controlling the one-way flow of its goods — no matter how inferior they may be, compared to those of emerging economies in Asia and the flow of accumulated Muslim capital the other way.
Once again, if the West didn’t ship half its wealth to the Middle East for oil, where would the capital come from that would allow Muslims to buy our stuff?
You’re contradicting yourself here, Dr. Elmasry. If we intend to sell gimcracks to the Arabs, the price of oil needs to remain high, because they have no other commodity or industry that they can use to acquire the capital.
So which is it that we want — cheap oil or eager Muslim consumers?
4. The Israeli factor wields a persistently strong influence in western politics, especially the powerful American Israeli lobby in Washington. The U.S. and its allies are determined to maintain Israel as a strong military outpost in the Middle East and ensure that its anti-Muslim policies are immune from any negative judgment; hence the Israel-can-do-no-wrong bias.
I’m forced yet again to wonder what planet Mohamed Elmasry lives on. For the last forty years the governments of the West have twisted Israel’s arm over and over again to force it to make concessions to the Arabs without any reciprocity. Thanks to the governments of the West, a “cease-fire in the Middle East” means “Israelis stop shooting at Arabs while the Arabs blow up as many Jews as they want”.
At the grassroots level, which group organizes violent and threatening demonstrations? The anti-Muslims or the anti-Zionists?
5. The U.S.-led “war on terror”, plus the politicization of all terrorist attacks dating from 9/11 and later, translates in practical terms to a need for Islamophobes and other organizations to work together in both the public and private sphere. This has led to the enactment of anti-civil-liberty laws, Muslim profiling by authorities, the restriction of Muslim immigration to the West, and the further marginalization of Muslim minorities already established in western society.
As for the scare quotes around “war on terror”, in this case I’m with Dr. Elmasry: I’d much rather my government would call a spade a spade, and refer to it as “the war on political Islam” or “the defense against the Great Jihad”.
But no, we have to pussyfoot around the issue with doubletalk to protect the feelings of Muslims. Such is the political climate today.
And the rest of this paragraph is nonsense. “Muslim profiling” is not only not practiced, it is actually against the law. In fact, the opposite is the case: police and other authorities engage in “anti-profiling”; that is, they investigate fewer Muslims than they might otherwise, in order to be safe from lawsuits and the wrath of the Muslim street.
American law enforcement bends over backwards to make nice to Muslims. Witness this photo of FBI agents engaged in outreach with members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra:
The occasion for this little confab was the 2005 American Muslim Scouts Summer Program, in which two FBI agents joined forces with the Muslims of America at the group’s national headquarters in Islamberg, near Deposit, NY.
That is, four years after 9/11 not only was the FBI not profiling, it was reaching out to terrorist-affiliated organizations like MOA and CAIR. It was actively consulting with them, asking for their advice, coordinating with their members, and otherwise being solicitous of Muslims, even dangerous ones. The FBI and American law enforcement in general are bastions of political correctness.
Since then the US government has issued directives that forbid the use of the words “jihad”, “Islamofascism”, and “Islamic terrorists” in its internal communications. Government functionaries are not even allowed to discuss the nature of the most pressing national security issue of our times.
What this means is that if we Islamophobes are right — if Muslims really are more likely to carry out a terrorist attack than non-Muslims — then our governments’ official policies make that eventuality even more likely. We have been abandoned and traduced by our own leaders.
Like other corporate entities, the Islamophobia industry has been very active in creating a public “branding” for its product and a new lingo or jargon to identify its artificially created place in our language. Thanks to the Islamophobia industry, terms like Islamist, Islamofascism, and Eurabia are commonplace.
Yes, this is true. Your point?
In order to draw public attention to a worthwhile cause, recognizable “brands” are a must. I’m proud to make my own occasional modest contribution to the cause, designing logos and minting phrases whenever possible, in hopes that some of them will catch on.
After all, someone has to counteract Islam Means Peace™.
[…]
The term Islamofascism became familiar after the September 2001 attacks as a way to describe any ideology based on Islam, even if it had no connection whatsoever to negative constructs.
The American group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) found in its search of a major reference database that Islamofascism was mentioned just twice before 9/11; both times in the British media. In 1990, a remark by Independent writer Malise Ruthven about governments in predominantly Islamic countries stated: “Authoritarian government, not to say ‘Islamo-fascism,’ is the rule rather than the exception from Morocco to Pakistan.”
Ironically, considering the term’s current usage, most of these authoritarian governments — including Morocco and Pakistan — were backed by the U.S. at the time. The second mention, also from the Independent in 1990, came in a response criticizing Ruthven for coining the term.
This is all too true: because it worships at the altar of “stability”, the US government has a tendency to support Islamic dictatorships. Not only that, the United States has intervened on behalf of illiberal Muslim guerrilla groups in places like Kosovo.
Like many leftists, Prof. Elmasry assumes that conservatives are all slobbering slope-browed morons who slavishly support any policy, no matter how stupid, put forth by the United States government.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives railed against the foolish and misguided policies of the Bush administration and will continue to oppose them under Obama.
Islamic fascism is the norm from Rabat to Jakarta, and our governments should refuse to give it support and sustenance in any form. Period.
[…]
The word Eurabia is another volatile word, coined to create a growing fear that every good thing in Europe (culture, economy, ethnic identity, et cetera) will end as its Muslim population increases. The term motivates violence against Europe’s Muslim minorities. Meanwhile, American Islamophobes are using it to promote the idea that “you have to deal with the problem before it comes here”.
FAIR also reported that “At Michigan State University, the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom invited a bona fide fascist — Nick Griffin, the head of the racist British National Party — to speak on how Europe is becoming ‘Eurabia’.”
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Nick Griffin indeed a fascist. Is that prima facie evidence that “Eurabia” is a misnomer?
If he says that “the Nile is a river in Egypt”, does that mean it’s not true?
Does the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian discredit the entire vegan movement?
These days, it seems any writer — including those who have never achieved much in the way of popularity, profile or status — can get a book, op-ed, article, or editorial letter easily published through the influence of the Islamophobia industry in western publishing and media. Books on such a “hot” topic as the Islamic/Muslim “threat” are sure to be widely reviewed from coast to coast, regardless of their accuracy or quality.
Yes, I noticed how easily Fjordman’s book gained traction. Not to mention how rich he became in the process…
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was Act I.
Funding Evil by Rachel Ehrenfeld was Act II.
The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones was Act III.
Western publishers have all gotten the message by now. Publishing books that “insult Islam” can be unprofitable, expensive, and even life-threatening. If they are not already established best-sellers, authors who wish to publish Counterjihad books can either self-publish or forget the idea.
Visit a Barnes and Noble or Borders and look at the books about Islam. If you care to take the time, add up the numbers of pro-Islamic and anti-Islamic titles.
The last time I did so —in the airport in Toronto last fall — the gushing pro-Islam books outnumbered the anti-Islam books by at least ten to one. The press is engaged in an organized whitewash on behalf of the Religion of Peace.
Mohamed Elmasry has written pernicious nonsense here. Every word that he writes — and that includes “a”, “an”, and “the” — is a classic example of taqiyya.
The Islamophobia machine is in pitiful shape. It’s out of gas and has four flat tires and a blown head gasket.
Compared to the streamlined modern jihad machine, it’s a real junker.
Hat tip: Holger Danske.
Fjordman: The History of Optics, Part 6
Fjordman has posted the sixth and final installment of his history of optics at Atlas Shrugs. Some excerpts are below:
According to Michael Kennedy, “Max Planck, writing in 1931, stated that while neither Faraday or Maxwell ‘originally considered optics in connection with their consideration of the fundamental laws of electromagnetism,’ yet ‘the whole field of optics, which had defied attack from the side of mechanics for more than a hundred years, was at one stroke conquered by Maxwell’s Electrodynamic Theory.’ Planck considered this one of ‘the greatest triumphs of human intellectual endeavor.’ Heinrich Hertz confirmed Maxwell’s and Faraday’s work with experiments measuring the speed of light and electromagnetic waves. He showed that the electromagnetic waves behaved exactly like light in properties of reflection, refraction and polarization and that they could be focused. The Germans took Maxwell’s theory and subtracted some of his tortured ideas about how these forces acted at a distance. Gauss had already worked on the subject of static charges and the way that they act at a distance. One issue was the speed of propagation of electromagnetic forces along a wire, through a vacuum and through air. The old theory, based on Newton, was that these forces acted instantaneously. Maxwell believed that all the forces acted at the same rate, the speed of light. Hertz proved this to be true.”
Albert Einstein (1879—1955) later stated that “The most fascinating subject at the time I was a student was Maxwell’s theory.” One of the key findings of the late nineteenth century was the Michelson—Morley experiment in 1887, conducted by Albert Abraham Michelson (1852—1931), an American physicist born to a Polish-Jewish family, and the American scientist Edward Morley (1838-1923). Michelson was a master of precision optical measurement. The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy tells the tale:
– – – – – – – – –
“His determination of the speed of light and the lengths of light waves were the best of his day, and his attempt of 1887 in collaboration with Edward Morley to detect the motion of the earth through the ether helped set the stage for Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. In 1907 Michelson became the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in the sciences. Born in Poland, Michelson emigrated to with his family while still a child. He grew up in gold rush towns in California and.Michelson and Morley’s null result seemed impossible to reconcile with the known facts of optics. George Francis FitzGerald in 1889 and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in 1892 independently proposed a striking solution: perhaps motion through the ether slightly alters the forces between molecules, causing Michelson and Morley’s sandstone block to shrink by just enough to nullify the effect they had been seeking. The ‘FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction’ later became an important part of relativity theory. Although scholars have often exaggerated the influence of Michelson and Morley’s experiment on Einstein’s thinking, Einstein knew at least indirectly of their result and it certainly loomed large in later discussions of his ideas.”
George Francis FitzGerald (1851—1901), a professor at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1890s hypothesized the Fitzgerald contraction — that distance contracts with speed — in order to account for the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) hypothesized that mass increases with velocity as well. Lorentz shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with the Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943) for the discovery and explanation of the Zeeman Effect, the splitting of lines in a spectrum by a magnetic field, later used to study the details of atomic structure. The experimental work of Hungarian physicist Loránd Eötvös (1848-1919) established the identity of gravitational and inert masses, which Einstein used for his general theory of relativity.
While it is certainly true that he benefited from the work done by others, the young Swiss bureaucrat Albert Einstein in the years before 1905 had no university affiliation, no access to a laboratory and was not at all a part of the mainstream of scientists, which makes his achievement all the more impressive. I have read conflicting accounts of his life, but it is likely that he knew about the Michelson-Morley experiment and some other developments.
Read the rest at Pamela’s place.
A Hatchet Job by the Swedish State Media
According to my Swedish contacts, the news story described below is so appalling that it has actually made it into the Swedish MSM.
The anti-Islamization party Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats) was infiltrated by agents of Swedish state television, who were secretly taping SD in order to make a damaging documentary that would be released just before the EU elections. The ruling party in Sweden, Moderaterna, is desperate to pull votes away from Sverigedemokraterna.
The following video gives an overview of these events, outlining the infiltration scheme and its links with AFA and Expo. It also discusses a possible connection with a recent assassination attempt on members of SD:
Below are excerpts from the blurb accompanying the video:
– – – – – – – – –
The Swedish government-owned and -controlled media Sveriges Radio (SR) was used to infiltrate and slander political opponents to the ruling party. They infiltrated the political party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) for six monthts and rigged a state employed agent with hidden video and audio equipment and taped as much as they could.
The state agent Caroline Stenman was discovered during a 3-day cruise with the SD party leadership.
SD confronted the criminal and she escaped leaving the video equipment behind and ran to another cabin where her producer was hiding. This happened in January 2009. Only a few days later the SD politician and a friend was nearly assassinated by assassins using knifes. The 2 SD politicians managed to flee to a restaurant and locked the criminals out. One of them has now been identified.
After research we found that the female producer of the show “Kaliber” Sanna Klinghoffer is friend with a known street terror promoter, Daniel Poohl. He has a website and its only purpose is to destroy SD and similar political parties.
Poohl has also listed the state media producer Sanna Klinghoffer as friend on Facebook and this information may disappear from Facebook in the very near future. Surely they would not want this link between them to become known.
Poohl is at this moment sending out Facebook invites to about 100 friends for a seminar about “how to stop SD from winning seats in the EU election.”
To summarize, the state media, and the extremists at Expo and the Moderaterna pary (M) are all three at this time just before the EU election driving campaigns against SD.
AND THEY ARE ALL CONNECTED AND PERHAPS COORDINATED.
Hat tip: Aeneas.
Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/20/2009
Our email is still out, so many of our usual tipsters are unrepresented here tonight. Sorry, everybody!
Dymphna did a lot of the work digging up these stories. Thanks to Holger Danske and Reinhard for sending theirs in via skype. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –
Annual Consumer-Price Gauge Hits 53-Year Low
By BRIAN BLACKSTONE
U.S. annual inflation vanished for the first time in over half a century, a government report showed, as the severe recession and sharp decline in energy prices since last summer led to a rapid reversal in price pressures.
Still, consumer prices advanced on a monthly basis in January for the first time in six months, easing fears somewhat that the U.S. might face a protracted stretch of falling prices known as deflation.
The consumer price index rose 0.3% in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Friday, slightly more than the 0.2% rise Wall Street economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey had expected.
The CPI slid 0.8% in December. That number was revised from a 0.7% drop earlier this week when the government released annual adjustments to the CPI data.
The core CPI was up 0.2% last month, also slightly higher than expected.
Unrounded, the CPI rose 0.282% last month. The core CPI rose 0.177% unrounded.
Consumer prices were unchanged compared to one year ago, the lowest rate of change since August 1955 and well below the 2% annual rate of inflation that most Fed officials think is consistent with their dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.
Core CPI was up 1.7% in the last year, however.
The core CPI increase “suggests the U.S. has not yet slipped into serious deflation,” said Zach Pandl, economist at Nomura.
In fact, as long as price declines stay centered in energy and commodities, it’s generally a plus for the economy by freeing up more disposable income for households to spend. It’s when those declines get embedded more broadly in inflation expectations and cause consumers and business already facing a severe recession to further delay spending and hiring that they become an economic headache known as deflation.
According to the Fed’s January meeting minutes released Wednesday, many officials saw “some risk” of “excessively low inflation” while “a few even saw some risk of deflation.”
Having already lowered official interest rates to near zero, Fed officials have two main options for combating deflation: quantitative easing through their myriad credit programs and communicating a more explicit inflation target.
The Fed’s balance sheet has already doubled in the past five months to almost $2 trillion, and the Fed recently increased by five-fold the size of its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, to as much as $1 trillion.
Meanwhile, in their January meeting minutes officials extended their inflation forecast horizon, which Fed watchers interpreted as a defacto target. The Fed’s longer-term inflation forecasts — measured by the price index for personal consumption expenditures — are centered between 1.7% and 2%, though most officials think 2% is appropriate. If that catches on with markets and the public, it could keep inflation expectations from turning negative…
[continue reading at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
GOP to Hound Pro-Stimulus Blue Dogs
by S.A. Miller
The handful of the House’s Blue Dog Democrats who switched their votes from “no” to “yes” on the huge economic stimulus are working overtime this week in their conservative-leaning districts to explain the change of heart.
None more so than freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr., whose reversal on President Obama’s $787 billion bill secured him a top spot on the Republican Party’s list of vulnerable Democrats targeted for defeat in 2010.
Fending off criticism that the Democrat-led Congress loaded the bill with unnecessary spending, Mr. Kratovil will be out every day of this week’s holiday break touring his sprawling Maryland district and touting success in trimming frivolous programs from the package and highlighting the jobs it’s estimated to produce.
Maryland freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr., is a member of the Blue Dog coalition.
“Although this bill is still far from perfect, in a crisis of this magnitude we can’t afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the necessary,” Mr. Kratovil said after the vote switch Friday.
[…]
Blue Dogs who backed the White House plan risk being viewed by conservative voters as tied to the Democratic Party’s more liberal leaders, such as Mr. Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
“There is a difference between the salesman and the product,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Democrats arrogantly proclaimed that Republicans who voted against the stimulus package did so ‘at their own peril,’ but now it appears that in many Democrat-held districts, there could be greater risk in actually having voted for Pelosi’s pork-laden package.” …
[lots more blather and excuses at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Minister Seeks Backing for Global Crisis Fund
Indonesia’s trade minister Mari Pangestu has asked Australia to back a proposal for the world’s rich nations to support developing countries through the global financial crisis.
Pangestu sought the support as Australia and Indonesia agreed to begin negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement.
The Indonesian minister’s comments were made during a visit to Australia, during which she agreed with her Australian counterpart Simon Crean to resume negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two countries.
Their discussions took place ahead of a high-powered conference in Sydney on Australia-Indonesia bilateral relations.
Crean called trade the best stimulus to economic growth, which is especially necessary during the global financial crisis.
But Pangestu said a free trade deal would bring clear benefits to Indonesia as long as it was based on a true partnership in which trade and market access were matched with capacity building, training and investment.
“Australia has already identified certain skilled worker areas they are in need of, they have a shortage of, so there’s a clear need from the Australian side,” she said.
“So, how do you actually combine this need with the capacity-building that will benefit Indonesia? It’s combined with the training [and] language training skills, and this will also have a positive impact on the training and education sector in Australia.”
According to media reports, the Indonesian government is still forecasting growth of between 4 and 5 per cent in 2009, a prediction that could prove to be optimistic as the global credit crisis worsens.
Jakarta last year organised a loan from international partners for budget support worth 5 billion dollars, a fifth of which has been pledged by Australia.
| [Return to headlines] |
Irish Mogul’s Empire Totters as Slump Tames Celtic Tiger
by Aaron O. Patrick
Sir Anthony O’Reilly long has been a symbol of Irish resurgence, a national rugby hero and raconteur who conquered the U.S. corporate world before returning home to oversee a sprawling business empire. That empire now shows signs of unraveling.
Sir Anthony, once America’s highest-paid chief executive while leading H.J. Heinz & Co., has seen the value of his holding in his Dublin-based global newspaper group, Independent News & Media PLC, plunge to $52 million from more than $1.1 billion just 18 months ago.
Concerns about a €200 million ($253 million) debt payment that Independent News faces in May have sent its shares down 90% over the past year to 18 European cents — less than the price of most of its newspapers. Facing declining advertising and readership in addition to its debt load, say analysts, the company could be forced into a fire sale of assets that could cost the firm its trophy publication: the London-based Independent.
In another corner of the O’Reilly world, Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the historic maker of fine china and crystal controlled by Sir Anthony and his brother-in-law, is in the equivalent of bankruptcy reorganization, and workers are occupying a shuttered factory. U.S. private-equity investor KPS Capital Partners LP is negotiating a possible purchase of the company that could be announced within days, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Sir Anthony is an example of how, for some business titans, the credit crunch and recession have become a brutal multifront assault. His big bets on newspapers, luxury goods and the remaking of Ireland itself made him the richest man in the country. Now each of those areas has boomeranged on him.
Mr. O’Reilly, 72 years old, sounds pessimistic about his prospects and Ireland’s, saying in a recent interview that the Irish economy will be “lucky” to contract just 4% this year and that there is little the country can do about it. “It is impossible that if Ireland does not do well, that any of us can do well,” he said.
The drama also finds Sir Anthony fending off a business nemesis, Irish industrialist Denis O’Brien. Sir Anthony owns 27.9% of Independent News & Media. Mr. O’Brien has acquired a 26.2% stake and is pressing for changes, in a move that could disrupt the possibility of Mr. O’Reilly’s being succeeded by his son, Gavin.
At Waterford Wedgwood, a sale to a foreign buyer such as KPS Capital would be another blow to Sir Anthony, who was deeply proud that he helped turn the 250-year-old Irish company into a global brand. KPS has acknowledged discussing a possible purchase of Waterford Wedgwood but wouldn’t comment further.
Sir Anthony’s problems are unfolding against a backdrop of Ireland’s severe downturn following a decade of boom. In the 1990s, the country’s low corporate taxes, business-friendly governments and English-speaking work force attracted huge amounts of foreign investment, driving up incomes and property prices. The global recession reversed the flow, puncturing the property boom and hammering major banks. The Irish economy is now one of the sickest in Europe.
[continue reading at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Outlook Bleak for Tourism Industry
The global economic downturn could wipe out 150,000 jobs and 13,000 businesses in Italy’s tourism sector, its main association of workers and employees, Confturismo, has warned.
In a grim portent of the looming crisis, association president Bernabo Bocca said in January alone, hotels in Italy employed 4.5 percent fewer people after a 7.2 percent drop in bookings that month.
The 150,000 jobs at stake in the sector is far higher than the 60,000 jobs at risk in the car industry as a result of the recession, he noted.
Travel agencies employed 3.2 percent fewer people in January, a figure that could rise to 10 percent by mid-2009 if holiday bookings do not pick up in the next few months, according to Confturismo.
“Only emergency incentive measures including the payment of an income-based bonus to families booking holidays in Italy can tackle this severe crisis,” said Bocca.
The global recession had less impact on Italian beach and mountain resorts than cities known for their artistic attractions and spa resorts.
Last year there were 7.8 million fewer bookings, especially from American, British and Japanese tourists. Cities known for art and culture were the hardest hit by the slump in foreign visitors.
“A weak dollar, yen and British pound have caused the collapse, and this year we’re expecting 40 percent fewer British visitors than last year,” said Bocca.
“Despite discounts of 30-50 percent being offered, hotels remain empty,” he added.
Hotel reservations in Italy’s northern business capital, Milan, slumped 30 percent in January.
Overall, hotel reservations from foreign tourists fell 5.8 percent in 2008, compared with a 0.9 percent drop by Italians.
Visitors to Italian cities such as Rome, Florence and Venice were down 6.9 percent and visitors to spa locations dropped by 9.9 percent last year.
“To get tourists flocking to Italy, we need infrastructure. Italy’s entire metro system is smaller than Madrid’s and its highways are strained to breaking-point,” Bocca said.
“We also need lower valued added tax (VAT) that entices visitors as well as more readily available credit facilities.”
Besides bonuses for Italian families and allowing businesses in the tourist sector to delay tax payments, Confturismo is seeking to urgent talks with the government, he said.
He wants the tourism sector to benefit from the kind of government incentives being offered to the car and electrical goods manufacturing industries.
The Italian economy entered recession last year after industrial output shrunk in the third and fourth quarters to reach its lowest level since 1980.
Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund warned that Italy’s recession could stretch into 2010 “in line with the rest of the euro area, … although its financial sector has remained relatively resilient.”
Italy’s tourism industry currently employs some two million people and accounts for 10 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product.
| [Return to headlines] |
Jindal to Refuse Some Stimulus Money
By Alexander Burns
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.
In a statement, Jindal, who is slated to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s message to Congress on Tuesday, expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on.
“The federal money in this bill will run out in less than three years for this benefit and our businesses would then be stuck paying the bill,” Jindal said. “We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached to the funding in this package. We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.”
Jindal is one of a small group of Republican governors, which includes South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, who have said they might refuse some or all of the stimulus money targeted to their states.
[details continued at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Jindal’s Refusal: Tell the Whole Story, Please
Think Progress and even some media outlets are reporting LA Gov Jindal’s refusal of some stimulus dollars without really telling the whole story. But the information is right there to be had.
Jindal is increasing unemployment payments from his state budget and refusing a bribe to alter State law that determines who is eligible for unemployment. If Washington simply wanted to help, why not just offer the dollars to support existing unemployment programs?
This is another example of DC looking to centralize power for state lawmaking at the Federal level. In short, it’s a power grab. And the suggestion that LA or whomever could just change the law back later is foolish. It puts the state government at a political disadvantage should it want to revert to its own law in 3 years. I can see the headlines now. LA Gov pushes move to cut unemployment insurance. Yeah, that will sell. Jindal is right to tell the Feds no. They should mind their own business. We’d all be better off.
“Today, Governor Bobby Jindal announced that the state will not change its law to use a part of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill that would result in an unemployment insurance tax increase on Louisiana businesses. The Governor also announced that the state will use a provision in the legislation to increase state unemployment benefits for recipients by an extra $25 per week, and reaffirmed his acceptance of the transportation funds included in the bill to fund shovel-ready transportation priorities in the state.”
His reasoning…
[ story continued at the URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Latvian PM Quits as Crisis Bites
Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and his government have resigned, amid political turmoil triggered by the Baltic state’s economic crisis.
President Valdis Zatlers has accepted the resignations.
Earlier the two largest parties in the ruling centre-right coalition had demanded the PM’s resignation.
International lenders, including the IMF, World Bank and EU, have pledged 7.5bn euros (£6.6bn; $9.5bn) to shore up Latvia’s struggling economy.
Protesters demanding the government’s resignation clashed with police in the capital Riga on 13 January.
But Mr Godmanis then survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote on 3 February.
Latvia’s economy is in recession, having shrunk at the fastest rate since the early 1990s, when it split from the Soviet Union. It is expected to contract by 12% this year.
Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 10.5% in the last quarter of 2008, compared with the same period a year earlier.
The Latvian economy had been booming for several years, but the global credit crunch hit the country hard.
| — Hat tip: Reinhard | [Return to headlines] |
“Nation of Cowards”: Is He Nuts?
by Heather Mac Donald
Attorney General Eric Holder, a Clinton administration retread, wants to revive Bill Clinton’s National Conversation on Race. (What’s next? Hillarycare?) Holder recently told his Justice Department employees that the United States was a “nation of cowards” for not talking more about race. “It is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in some ways understandable,” Holder said. “If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”
Is he nuts? Leave aside for a moment Holder’s purely decorative call for a “frank” conversation about race. The Clinton-era Conversation also purported to be frank, and we know what that meant: a one-sided litany of white injustices. Please raise your hand if you haven’t heard the following bromides about “the racial matters that continue to divide us” more times than you can count: Police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism; blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism; blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding; the black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism; blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism. I will stop there.
Not only do colleges, law schools, almost all of the nation’s elite public and private high schools, and the mainstream media, among others, have “conversations about . . . racial matters”; they never stop talking about them. Any student who graduates from a moderately selective college without hearing that its black students are victims of institutional racism-notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of black students there will have been deliberately admitted with radically lower SAT scores than their white and Asian comrades-has been in a coma throughout his time there.
Education bureaucrats maintain an incessant harangue on white racism because they see the writing on the wall: most students are indifferent to race and just want to get along. If left to themselves, they would go about their business perfectly happily and color-blindly, and the race industry would wither on the vine. Thus the institutional imperative to remind black students constantly about their victimization and the white students about their guilt. Last month, the elite Phillips Academy at Andover proudly announced a student presentation on White Privilege: A History and Its Role in Education. Would the student have come up with such a topic on her own without the school’s educators deliberately immersing her in such trivial matters? Of course not.
But if Attorney General Holder is really sincere about wanting a “frank” conversation about race, he should put the following items on the agenda…
[continued at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
American Muslims Call to Action to End Domestic Violence
By Fedwa Wazwaz
On Thursday February 12, 2009 — Aasiya Zubair Hassan, a 37 year old mother of four, was found decapitated in Buffalo, New York by her husband. Read on it here.
Today is the national event: American Muslims Call to Action to End Domestic Violence.
American Muslims are making a coordinated, unified, national effort to have all imams and religious leaders finally discuss this tragedy, as well as domestic violence and battery of women, for today, February 20, 2009 during the Friday’s Khutbah [Religious Sermon].
2-20-09. Imams Speak Out: Domestic Violence Will Not Be Tolerated in Our Communities.
The murder of Aasiya Zubair represents the most vile and barbaric example of its kind.
It is now a nationwide, unified, official event with support from a diverse INTERNATIONAL community: religious imams, mainstream organizations, community leaders, grassroots activists, and American and international citizens of all colors and religions are behind this.
There are amazing grassroots activists who pushed for this in 3 days. One notable activist behind this effort is Wajahat Ali, who even started a couple of facebook groups for this effort as well as wrote an article on several blogs and the guardian titled: A wake-up call for the community.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Attorney General Holder’s Speech on Race: “Nation of Cowards”
Every year, in February, we attempt to recognize and to appreciate black history. It is a worthwhile endeavor for the contributions of African Americans to this great nation are numerous and significant. Even as we fight a war against terrorism, deal with the reality of electing an African American as our President for the first time and deal with the other significant issues of the day, the need to confront our racial past, and our racial present, and to understand the history of African people in this country, endures. One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.
Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must — and will — lead the nation to the “new birth of freedom” so long ago promised by our greatest President. This is our duty and our solemn obligation.
We commemorated five years ago, the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. And though the world in which we now live is fundamentally different than that which existed then, this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past nor has it been willing to contemplate, in a truly meaningful way, the diverse future it is fated to have. To our detriment, this is typical of the way in which this nation deals with issues of race. And so I would suggest that we use February of every year to not only commemorate black history but also to foster a period of dialogue among the races. This is admittedly an artificial device to generate discussion that should come more naturally, but our history is such that we must find ways to force ourselves to confront that which we have become expert at avoiding.
As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. We work with one another, lunch together and, when the event is at the workplace during work hours or shortly thereafter, we socialize with one another fairly well, irrespective of race. And yet …
[continued at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Community Welcomes New Muslim Chaplain
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 For many people, the events of Sept. 11 caused them to question their faith, but for Mount Holyoke’s new Muslim chaplain, Tahera Ahmad, her faith only strengthened. Ahmad, who began at Mount Holyoke Feb. 1, was in high school when the terrorist attack occurred, and her prospective career path changed from pharmaceuticals to the ministry.
“I did some soul-searching after Sept. 11, and I wanted to answer not only other people’s questions [about Islam], but also my own,” she said.
Ahmad grew up in Chicago, and has been a member of the Islamic faith her whole life. She attended the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, Illinois, a residential institute with separate boys’ and girls’ campuses. She then received her graduate certificate in Arabic from Al-Diwan Institute in Cairo, Egypt. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in Islamic Chaplaincy/Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut.
While this is her first missionary job, Ahmad has worked at other colleges in Chicago and has spoken at numerous events. Having come from a family of a various professions, ranging from beat-boxers to doctors, her career in the field of ministry was an interesting addition. The decision led Ahmad to star in a video segment entitled, How To Stay True to Yourself, a McGraw-Hill video about diversity in America.
Ahmad was drawn to Mount Holyoke for its diversity and sense of community. “Some things that stuck out to me were the staff at the Eliot House, the diversity, and that it didn’t matter where I was coming from,” she said.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive: Postmaster Got $800,000 in Pay, Perks
Raise came amid calls for cuts in delivery
by Jim McElhatton
Postmaster General John E. Potter recently warned that economic times are so dire that the U.S. Postal Service may end mail delivery one day a week and freeze executive salaries. But his personal fortunes are nonetheless rising thanks to 40 percent in pay raises since 2006, a $135,000 bonus last year and several perks usually reserved for corporate CEOs.
The changes, approved by the Postal Board of Governors and contained in a little-noticed regulatory filing in December, brought Mr. Potter’s total compensation and retirement benefits to more than $800,000 in 2008. That is more than double the salary for President Obama.
The new compensation package, much of it deferred to later years, goes beyond a newly beefed-up salary, now $263,575, that Congress arranged for him as part of a 2006 law to make top postal salaries more competitive with those in the private sector. At least four other postal officials got more than a quarter-million dollars in total compensation in 2008, according to Postal Service records reviewed by The Washington Times.
Lawmakers, already trying to limit compensation of Wall Street executives, have taken notice of Mr. Potter’s good fortune when the Postal Service is posting nearly $3 billion a year in losses and now wants to raise the price of a stamp by 2 cents.
The House Oversight and Government Reform federal workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia subcommittee “will investigate during this Congress,” said Marcus A. Williams, a spokesman for the panel that oversees the Postal Service.
Outside analysts also said Mr. Potter’s recent vow to freeze postal executive salaries at 2008 levels means little when several got such generous compensation packages.
“It’s easy to freeze your pay when salaries were running as hot as a dragster the previous year,” said Pete Sepp, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, a nonpartisan groups that monitors spending of the government and its spinoff agencies like the Postal Service.
“There is something to be said for attractive compensation. But at the same time, the Postal Service has a government guaranteed monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail, and UPS and FedEx don’t have that. Because of that, there is a fundamental difference in the Postal Service’s business model and that of package delivery firms.”…
[Continue at URL
ed. note: be sure to read the usual excuse for gluttony in government service in last paragraph]
| [Return to headlines] |
Guantánamo Meets Geneva Rules
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concludes that the prison complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva conventions, but it makes many recommendations for increasing human contact among the prisoners, according to two government officials who have read portions of it.
[…]
The review, conducted by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, describes a series of steps that could be taken to allow detainees to speak to one another more often and to engage in group activities, the government officials said. For years, critics of the prison have said that many detainees spend as many as 23 hours a day within the confines of cement cells and were only permitted recreation alone in fenced-off outdoor pens.
The report, which Admiral Walsh is scheduled to discuss publicly at the Pentagon next week, is being presented to a White House that some government officials have described as caught off guard by the extreme emotions and political cross-currents provoked by Guantánamo. Some critics said that the report’s conclusions are likely to intensify the debate about the prison, and put the Obama White House for the first time in the position of defending it.
Included in the report are recommendations to increase social contact among the 16 prisoners described by the Bush administration as “high value detainees,” the men once held in secret overseas prisons by the Central Intelligence Agency. Among them are the accused architects of many major terrorist attacks, including those of Sept. 11, 2001…
[report continues at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Islamic Supremacism in New Jersey: Muslim Prayer in Public School
FINDING A PLACE TO PRAY New Jersey.com
WAYNE — Rola Awwad wants a private space for her 10-year-old son at Albert Payson Terhune Elementary School to exercise his right to Muslim prayer.
Adam Awwad, 10, praying at the Circassian Benevolent Association in Wayne after being driven there from school by his mother. The school district had offered to let him pray at recess — either outside or in a classroom while classmates are there. And that, says Awwad, is “unacceptable.”
All students are constitutionally guaranteed the right to pray during the school day as long as it doesn’t interfere with learning. But Wayne is struggling with what accommodations to make if a Muslim student requests privacy for prayer.
This is all about imposing Islam on infidels. This is creeping sharia. This is the march to Islamic domination.
This is about power. There is no special treatment for “special classes”. This is how they impose their Islam on a secular society. Muslim footbaths in airports and universities, Muslim cab drivers who refuse to take passengers with dogs or alcohol, prayer times in public schools, prayer times in the work place… this is how you lose your country…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
More Perks for United Auto Workers
by Henry Payne
As General Motors and Chrysler asked U.S. taxpayers for $21 billion more in loans this week, a press report here quietly revealed that the United Auto Workers have preserved for themselves the right to personal legal expenses — to file divorce papers, draw up wills, and so on — on the company dime.
Like the infamous jobs bank — which pays idled UAW workers not to work — the legal-services perk is unprecedented in any other industry and another indication that the Detroit Three auto companies are in trouble because their business models are disconnected from the real world. And you, dear taxpayer, are now picking up the tab.
“I’ve never heard of a company offering that,” John Challenger, head of a Chicago-based workplace-consulting firm told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s something you wouldn’t see anywhere else in corporate America.”
GM, Chrysler, and their union have failed to make hard choices for decades, which is precisely why they are in their present pickle. By seeking refuge in Washington, they only continue to defer hard choices. Even now, with GM kept alive by public drip, the UAW is drawing a line in the sand on personal legal expenses, when they should be offering concessions on major issues like health benefits. Uncle Sugar, they confidently assume, will be there to bail them out.
Last week, GM announced the termination of 10,000 salaried jobs, and forced cuts in white-collar health-care benefits, retiree medical coverage, and 401k matches. Yet, under contract, the company must negotiate with the UAW on similar emergency measures. So while UAW workers maintain their gold-plated retirement health benefits, their former bosses in management have had to go on Medicare.
Detroit apologists claim that public welfare is necessary for automakers that are otherwise on course for profitability once the credit crisis passes.
But if this is so, why did the UAW itself refuse Wednesday to accept GM’s offer of equity in exchange for precious cash to fund its health-care obligations?
Or why does Chrysler’s own owner — the private equity firm Cerberus — refuse to invest more money in its property? This week, it assured Washington of its future by pointing to its new alliance with Fiat — even as Fiat refused to take a equity share and made its involvement contingent on more public loans!
America’s taxpayers, in other words, are being asked to loan money to a company that its own union, owner, and suitor refuse to invest in. So far, Washington is taking its constituents for chumps. But as stories of legal-fee bon-bons for UAW workers leak out, the public is going to get educated real fast…
| [Return to headlines] |
Obama, Osama and Medvedev
By Pepe Escobar
For those who harbored any doubts, the Barack Obama administration’s adoption of the George W Bush framework of the “war on terror” — it does feel like a back-to-the-future “continuity” — here are two key facts on the ground.
Obama has officially started his much-touted Afghanistan surge, authorizing the deployment of 17,000 US troops (8,000 marines, 4,000 army and 5,000 support) mostly to the Pashtun-dominated, southern Helmand province. Justification: “The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention.” The marines start arriving in Afghanistan in May. Their mission is as hazy as it is hazardous: eradication of the poppy culture, the source of heroin (which accounts for almost 40% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product). There are already 38,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus 18,000 as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 50,000 contingent.
Obama administration nominees, in confirmation testimony that seemed to have disappeared in a black hole, stressed they are in favor of continuing the Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition practices and detaining — ad infinitum — “terror” suspects without trial, even if they were captured far, far away from a war zone. (Considering the Pentagon’s elastic definition of an “arc of instability”, this means anywhere from Somalia to Xinjiang.) That has prompted New York Times writers to come up with a delightful headline: “Obama’s War on Terror May resemble Bush’s in some Areas.”
When in doubt, bomb ‘em
Basically, the Obama administration’s strategy — for now — boils down to turbo-charging a war against Pashtun farmers and peasants. Poppy cultivation has been part of Afghan culture for centuries…
[story continues at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Durban Gambit
by Caroline Glick
While most Americans were busy celebrating Valentine’s Day, last Saturday the Obama administration announced that it would send a delegation to Geneva to participate in planning the UN’s so-called Durban II conference, scheduled to take place in late April. Although largely overlooked in the US, the announcement sent shock waves through Jerusalem.
The Durban II conference was announced in the summer of 2007. Its stated purpose is to review the implementation of the declaration adopted at the UN’s anti-Israel hate-fest that took place in Durban, South Africa, the week before the September 11, 2001, attacks against America.
At Durban, both the UN-sponsored NGO conclave and the UN’s governmental conference passed declarations denouncing Israel as a racist state. The NGO conference called for a coordinated international campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and belittling the Holocaust.
The NGO conference also called for curbs on freedom of expression throughout the world in order to prevent critical discussion of Islam. As far as the world’s leading NGOs — including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — were concerned, critical discussions of Islam are inherently racist.
In defending US participation in the Durban II planning sessions, Gordon Duguid, the State Department’s spokesman, argued, “If you are not engaged, you don’t have a voice.”
He continued, “We wanted to put forward our view and see if there is some way we can make the document [which sets the agenda and dictates the outcome of the Durban II conference] a better document than it appears it is going to be.”
WHILE THIS seems like a noble goal, both the State Department and the Obama White House ought to know that there is absolutely no chance that they can accomplish it. This is the case for two reasons.
First, since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to oversee the implementation of the first Durban conference’s decisions, and since those decisions include the anti-Israel assertion that Israel is a racist state, it is clear that the Durban II conference is inherently, and necessarily, anti-Israel.
The second reason that both the State Department and the White House must realize that they are powerless to affect the conference’s agenda is because that agenda was already set in previous planning sessions chaired by the likes of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. And that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. The conference agenda also largely adopted the language of the 2001 NGO conference that called for the criminalization of critical discussion of Islam as a form of hate speech and racism. That is, the 2009 conference’s agenda is not only openly anti-Israel, it is also openly pro-tyranny, and so seemingly antithetical to US interests.
Beyond all that, assuming that the Obama administration truly wishes to change the agenda, the fact is that the US is powerless to do so. As was the case in 2001, so too, today, the Islamic bloc, supported by the Third World bloc, has an automatic voting majority. Beyond chipping away at the margins, the US has no ability whatsoever to change the conference’s agenda or expected outcome.
SINCE IT came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel’s national security interests. From President Barack Obama’s intense desire to appease Iran’s mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible despite the Palestinians’ open rejection of Israel’s right to exist and support for terrorism; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan, which would require Israel to commit national suicide by contracting to within indefensible borders and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as citizens and residents of the rump Jewish state; to his decision to end US sanctions against Syria and return the US ambassador to Damascus; to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel.
At the same time, none of the policies that Obama has adopted can be construed as directed against Israel. In and of themselves, none can be viewed as expressing specific hostility toward Israel. Rather, they are expressions of naiveté, or ignorance, or — at worst — deliberate denial of the nature of the problems of the Arab and Islamic world on the part of Obama and his advisers.
The same cannot be said of the administration’s decision to send its delegation to the Durban II planning session this past week in Geneva. Unlike every other Obama policy, this is a hostile act against Israel. This is true first of all because the decision was announced in the face of repeated Israeli requests that the US join Israel and Canada in boycotting the Durban II conference.
Some could chalk up the US’s rejection of Israel’s urgent entreaties as an honest difference of opinion. But what lies behind Israel’s requests for a US boycott is not a partisan agenda, but a clearheaded acknowledgement that the Durban II conference is inherently devoted to the delegitimization and destruction of the Jewish state. And by joining in the planning sessions, the US has become a full participant in legitimizing and so advancing this overtly anti-Jewish agenda.
On Thursday, Prof. Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, demonstrated that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference’s anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva on Thursday, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference’s agenda. Their draft “calls for implementation of… the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel’s security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory.” …
[continue at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Durban Dalliance
Does an anti-Semitic conference deserve U.S. participation of any kind?
Last December, we wrote that an “early test” for the Obama Administration would be whether it participated in a forthcoming U.N. conference on racism, better known as Durban II. Uh, oh.
The first “Durban” — named for the South African city where the U.N. held its 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance — was chiefly notable as a virulent display of anti-Semitism. Yet last weekend, the Administration announced it would participate in “conference preparations,” while reserving judgment on whether to attend the conference itself. If this isn’t failing the big test, it’s flunking the pop quiz.
So here’s a make-up review. Back in 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to appear at Durban for fear that it would turn into a carnival of hatred and grievance. That’s exactly what happened, prompting Mr. Powell to withdraw the U.S. delegation. As he put it at the time, “I know that you do not combat racism by suggesting that apartheid exists in Israel.”
Undeterred, the U.N. has been merrily planning what it formally calls the “Durban Review Conference,” which is scheduled for April and whose purpose is to “reaffirm the Durban Declaration.” The preparatory committee is chaired by Libya. Vice chairs include Iran and Cuba, which does double duty as the committee “rapporteur.” The conference is organized under the auspices of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which the Bush Administration refused to join.
As for what this Review Conference is supposed to achieve, some clues are provided in the latest draft of the so-called Outcome Document. Israel’s “racial policies” are a major theme, as is “the plight of Palestinian refugees and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories,” meaning Israel itself. Under debate, however, is whether to include a line that the Holocaust “resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people.” Presumably Iran objects.
The draft also calls “on states to develop, and where appropriate to incorporate, permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation.” Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam, a.k.a. “Islamophobia.”…
[continue reading at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Pot Laden Truck Hits Border Agent
U.S. Border Patrol agents shot a suspected drug smuggler in the New Mexico desert after the man ran over an officer with a pickup truck, officials said Friday.
Doug Mosier, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso, said agents were trying to stop the truck on a desert road Thursday night when one of them was hit. At least one other agent opened fire, hitting the driver.
[…]
The FBI does not know who the driver is because he carried no identification, but believes he is a Mexican national, Mr. Hulsey said.
The truck contained 1,500 pounds of marijuana, wrapped in 25-pound bundles that filled the interior of the pickup “so that only one human being could fit inside of it,” he said…
[Full story at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
San Francisco: Bus Ads Aim to Shatter Muslim Stereotypes
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A Bay Area Islamic organization is turning to San Francisco Muni buses to educate people about their religion.
The group is posting advertisements on the outside of Muni buses. They include phrases like “you deserve to know” and “why Islam,” along with a phone number for more information.
Their goal is to urge more non-Muslims to learn about Islam and help remove negative stereotypes.
“We’re basically sick and tired of people labeling us, of defining us, framing us, so I think it’s time for us to stand up and basically inform the American public of who we are and what is our true identity,” said Muhammad Hanif with the Islamic Circle of the Bay Area.
The ads will appear on about 170 Muni buses and 10 cable cars.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
The New President’s Governing Style
by Tony Blankley
In the middle ages, when a young prince suddenly and prematurely became king, the royal court, the church leadership and other senior aristocrats would scrutinize his every word and habit for signs of what kind of mind would be deciding their country’s fate and their personal prosperity and safety. Today, around the world, President Barack Obama’s every word, every action, every inaction is being likewise scrutinized for similar reasons.
Prior to the November election, the only evidence we had of Mr. Obama’s managing style, and that evidence was indirect, was the management of his campaign — which was brilliant. But whether he was its active manager or merely took guidance from a shrewd Svengali remains to be known.
Since the election, we are beginning to get hints of his management style in four items Mr. Obama himself has described as of the highest priority to him — and thus, one presumes, items to which he would have given his personal attention: Cabinet selection, closing Gitmo, the stimulus package and bipartisanship.
Regarding the Cabinet selection, he famously said he “screwed up.” But from a management perspective the unanswered question is how did he “screw up”? Did he actively design the failed vetting process and actively assess the various negative information and fail to see its significance? Or, did he “screw up” by letting others design the failed system and assess the data inflow? The former would show poor substantive judgment. The latter would show he wasn’t paying sufficient attention to a presumably vital matter. We don’t know yet which kind of “screw-up” it was.
The second item, President Obama’s performance at the Gitmo executive order, provided a brief but revealing insight into the president’s personal involvement in vital decision-making. He had campaigned hard on closing Gitmo. His first public signing as president was of that executive order to close it down. The central issue of the Gitmo closing was, and is — what do we do with the dangerous inmates? President Bush kept it open primarily because his administration couldn’t figure out an answer to that question.
Thus it was breathtaking that at the signing ceremony, President Obama didn’t know how — or even if — his executive order was dealing with this central quandary:
President Obama: “And we then, we will then, uh, provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than, uh, one year from now. We will be… Uhhh … Ummm. … Is there a separate executive order, Greg, with respect to how we’re going to dispose of the detainees? Is that it, eh, uh, what we’re doing?”
White House Counsel Greg Craig: “We’ll set up a process.”
To be at the signing ceremony and not know what he was ordering done with the terrorist inmates is a level of ignorance about equivalent to being a groom at the altar in a wedding ceremony and asking who it is you are marrying.
Once again in the third item — the stimulus process — his lack of personal involvement in its design is curious. He has recently said (incorrectly, I believe) that his presidency will be judged only on whether he fixes the economy or not. Thus, as he has identified the stimulus as essential to the recovery process, his willingness to let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid design a bill that even after it passed, Mr. Obama has continued to criticize as needing improvement (on bank executive compensation) leaves one puzzled as to why he didn’t use his currently vast political clout with his own party allies to shape a bill more to his liking.
The final item to examine here is his repeated campaign and post campaign commitment to bipartisanship. While he was gracious in inviting leading Republicans to the White House for a Super Bowl party, he permitted his congressional allies to completely shut out (except for the three collaborators) all Senate Republicans and all House Republicans, including their leadership and the GOP’s titular leader, Sen. John McCain, in the drafting of the bill and the final conference committee.
He says he wants bipartisanship. Why would he permit his congressional allies to kill any hope of bipartisanship by their egregious conduct?
I can think of four possible explanations for this almost unprecedented presidential detachment from the decision-making of policies the president publicly declared to be vital to the country and his presidency:
[Read the four explanations of Obama’s governing style, and why they might be dangerous, continued at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
USA Turns Toward Religious Persecution
by Hamma Mirwaisi
The United States is known around the world as the “Land of Opportunity.” Millions of people from every end of the globe have strived to reach America, whether to escape unjust persecution due to religion, ethnicity, or corrupt governments, or simply out of a sense of adventure seeking a better life for themselves and their families. In 1976, I found myself in such a situation. I am a Kurd from Northern Iraq. I sought refuge from years of abuse at the hands of the Arabs who have come into the region under the guise of Islam all the while with a goal of stealing our lands. The Islamic army taught us that their religion is a “religion of peace,” but as it turns out, the religion is simply a pretext used for them to seize the region little by little.
Life for Kurds is very difficult in Iraq. It is even more so now in America where we are viewed as “Muslims” with Arabic origins by many people who have no knowledge or understanding of our origins. In my case, I fled Iraq just in time as my name was on a list of those to be executed by Saddam Hussein. I found this out by accident years later while working for the United States government as a translator.
After all of this time spent living in America, becoming a citizen, paying taxes, and even working for the government, I am being accused of not being loyal to the United States simply because I was born in Iraq. I am viewed by many within the government itself as a second class citizen. Unfortunately, this is not new to me. In my birthplace I am treated the same way by Arab and Turkish occupiers. The difference is that in America there are supposed to be laws to protect me and others like me. I will not accept second class status in the United States. I am here legally; I have been for over 30 years. I pay taxes; I have done so for over 30 years. And for over 20 years I have been a citizen of the United States.
This is why I am reaching out to the people of the US for help and hope to find a lawyer willing to take my case against the US Government as I do not have the resources to defend myself in this situation.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
“Think Like Bombers” Education Pack Withdrawn
The Government has apologised for causing offence as it withdrew a teaching pack telling children to think about the July 7 terror attacks from the bombers’ perspective.
The pack, put together by the borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, was displayed on the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Teachernet website as a way of addressing controversial issues.
But ministers decided to withdraw it after admitting it was “misguided and inappropriate”.
A DCSF spokesman said: “While the resource in no way looks to justify or excuse the terrible events of 7/7, and is designed to educate against violent extremism, we appreciate that it may not be appropriate for use in schools. It’s important young people discuss these difficult and controversial issues in a controlled environment but, in this case, ministers apologise for any offence caused.”
The resource, Things Do Change, looks at life in multicultural Britain.
The first module examines all faiths and the “golden rule” of treating others as you would want to be treated. But a later module focuses specifically on the July 7 bombings and the impact on different communities in Britain. It suggests students could: “Prepare a brief presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the perspective of the bombers.”
The resource also suggests pupils could look at the attacks from the perspective of Muslims in Britain, non-Muslim Asians in Britain and other Britons in general.
Sail Suleman, author of the pack, told the Times Educational Supplement (TES): “Radicals, extremists and fundamentalists come in all different forms. We’re looking at why people become extreme. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it justified? Why do young people go out and do what the bombers did? Was it pressure from individuals they were hanging out with? Hopefully, we’ll encourage pupils to stay away from those individuals.”
All of the 7/7 bombers — Siddique Khan, Shezad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Jermaine Lindsay — were originally from West Yorkshire.
The resource was adopted by the DCSF as part of a toolkit to help schools tackle violent extremism.
| [Return to headlines] |
Children as Young as Two ‘Must be Tested for Obesity’
By Laura Clark
Two-year-olds are to be checked for signs of obesity under Government plans, it has emerged.
Health officials have asked experts to develop suitable weight assessments for toddlers after checks on five-year-olds found a quarter were already overweight.
Advisers have claimed that primary school reception classes are ‘too late’ to start tackling the problem.
But parents said the plans risk stigmatising very young children and warned of difficulties in judging whether two-year-olds are becoming overweight.
Officials admitted that the age of two was a time of ‘rapid growth and change’.
It is thought that the proposals for the weigh-in scheme will be put forward within a year.
Children are already weighed and measured in reception class, when they are four or five, and in year six — when aged 11 — as part of a programme introduced three years ago.
Parents should be informed when children’s body mass index indicates they are overweight and are then encouraged to improve their offspring’s diets.
At a recent seminar hosted by the Westminster Health Forum, Dr Will Cavendish, from the Department of Health, said: ‘The evidence is pretty horrible that one in four children are overweight or obese at reception and one in three at year six.
‘Of course we know that child obesity doesn’t suddenly pop up at age four, five. We also know that we need to act on the early years, and indeed the pre-birth, family environment, in order to get at this really effectively.’
On the potential difficulty in finding measurement criteria for two-year-olds, he admitted that there were ‘very differing views’ on this.
‘We are asking the experts to bring back to us what would be the most appropriate measurement, if one is available, in order to assess early stage obesity at that age,’ said Dr Cavendish…
| [Return to headlines] |
Guantanamo Inmate Will Fly to UK
A British resident held at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years is expected to be flown back to the UK early next week.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said today the UK and US governments had “reached agreement” on the transfer of Binyam Mohamed.
The detainee will be returned to Britain “as soon as the practical arrangements can be made”, Mr Miliband said in a statement.
Ethiopian-born Mr Mohamed, 30, has been held at the controversial US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba since September 2004. He went on a hunger strike for more than a month at the start of this year and was described by his legal team as “close to starvation”.
A team of British officials who travelled to Guantanamo Bay last weekend said he was well enough to travel back to the UK.
The detainee, who lived in London before his arrest in Pakistan in 2002, alleges he was tortured into falsely confessing to terrorist activities and claims MI5 officers were complicit in his abuse. No date has been confirmed for his return to Britain, but reports suggest it could be as early as Monday.
Mr Miliband said: “The UK and US governments have reached agreement on the transfer of Binyam Mohamed from Guantanamo Bay to the UK. He will be returned as soon as the practical arrangements can be made.
“This result follows recent discussions between the British and US governments and a medical assessment, undertaken by a UK doctor, that Mr Mohamed is medically fit to return.”
The detainee’s return to Britain does not constitute a commitment from from Home Secretary that he can remain in the UK permanently, he added.
Mr Miliband said: “His immigration status will be reviewed following his return and the same security considerations will apply to him as would apply to any other foreign national in this country. As always, all appropriate steps will be taken to protect national security.”
| [Return to headlines] |
Health Chiefs’ ‘Obesity Tour’ of Supermarket Backfires — as No One Turns Up to Take Part
Health bosses were criticised last night for spending hundreds of pounds to take people around Asda to point out unhealthy food as part of an anti-obesity drive.
But despite advertising the scheme and having health staff on hand to offer advice, no one turned up for the nutrition class.
Undeterred, Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust says it will hold another at Asda in Canterbury next Tuesday.
Health chiefs’ ‘obesity tour’ of supermarket backfires — as NO ONE turns up to take partBy Daniel Martin
Last updated at 8:36 AM on 19th February 2009
Comments (0) Add to My Stories Health bosses were criticised last night for spending hundreds of pounds to take people around Asda to point out unhealthy food as part of an anti-obesity drive.
But despite advertising the scheme and having health staff on hand to offer advice, no one turned up for the nutrition class.
Undeterred, Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust says it will hold another at Asda in Canterbury next Tuesday.
An insider said: ‘There had been a really encouraging response and we expected a good turnout. We will, however, persevere with these tours.’
Maidstone MP Ann Widdecombe said: ‘This is a complete waste of money. It is not the role of a primary care trust to conduct tours of supermarkets.
‘People should be able to read the back of packets themselves to see the fat and sugar content of foods. And if the first event was cancelled it seems like a big investment for very little return.
‘It is all part and parcel of the same silly mentality of paying people to lose weight rather than paying for essential drugs.’
Susie Squire, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘This is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money and a prime example of government nannying.
‘Judging from the level of public interest, there is neither demand nor need for this expensive gimmick and some serious questions need to be asked about the spending priorities of this PCT.
‘At a time when taxpayers can’t get doctor’s appointments and the right cancer drugs, to fritter away precious funds on such a patronising and pointless initiative is a disgrace.’
But Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘Introducing people to the good, the bad and the ugly of food is very important. It is essential that this sort of education is considered so people know what to look for in supermarkets and understand labels.
‘I congratulate the PCT for doing this. They started the scheme to pay people to lose weight, and they are getting to be a very progressive PCT in this area.’
The trust said: ‘The idea is to help people build better understand of food labelling in a familiar environment.’
It was criticised last month for offering to pay £425 to fat people who hit a slimming target.
A quarter of UK adults are now obese — so fat that their health is in danger. Experts fear that unless the trend is reversed, more than 50 per cent will be obese by 2050.
| [Return to headlines] |
Medics Upset Over ‘Gender-Based’ Abortion
A doctor in Sweden has asked health authorities for clarification after a woman twice had abortions carried out upon learning her fetuses were girls.
The woman in question was already mother to at least two girls when she once again became pregnant and visited a health clinic in central Sweden.
Initially, the woman requested an amniocentesis in order to allay concerns about possible chromosome abnormalities. At the same time, she also asked to know the fetus’s gender.
While there was no medical reason to go through with the amniocentesis, the procedure was nevertheless carried out.
The test revealed normal chromosome development and that the woman was carrying a girl.
Six days later, the woman requested an abortion which was subsequently carried out.
Pregnant again at a later date, the woman returned to the clinic and once again requested an amniocentesis.
This time, however, her request was denied.
One month later, the expectant mother scheduled an ultrasound screening. During the procedure she asked to be told the gender of the fetus.
The midwife carrying out the examination told the woman the fetus was a girl.
The same day, the woman scheduled an abortion, which was performed four days later.
“The above matter has given rise to strong feelings among those involved who, perhaps justifiably, believe that the patient has gone through two abortions because of [the fetus’s] gender,” writes the head of the clinic, Kaj Wedenberg, in a letter to Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).
Wedenberg explains that his staff has asked him to draw up guidelines on how to handle similar requests in the future in which they “feel pressured to examine the fetus’s gender” without having a medically compelling reason to do so.
“In part, I wonder if a caregiver within the public health system has the right to make reference to their own views and the dominant view in our country about gender’s equal value, in preventing a patient, with perhaps a different valuation, from learning the gender of the fetus,” he writes.
Wedenberg adds that he wants the agency to provide additional direction on what his rights are as head doctor at the clinic to overrule other medical professionals which may have different appraisals of what sort of procedures ought to be performed for “medical, social, or psychological” reasons.
[ed. note: in other words, Muslim male preference has become a Swedish issue. Or is this “ethnic” Swedes who have suddenly started to prefer male offspring?]
| [Return to headlines] |
Police Race Quotas Scrapped Ten Years After Macpherson Labelled the Force ‘Institutionally Racist’
By James Slack
Police minister Vernon Coaker has decided central targets can be dropped
Police are to scrap controversial race ‘diversity’ targets that made it harder for white men to win jobs.
The decision could end the positive discrimination which has seen ethnic minority applicants selected where white rivals were at least as well qualified.
The targets were imposed after police were labelled institutionally racist in the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Forces were told to recruit ethnic minority officers in direct proportion to the make-up of their local community.
The targets, dictated by Whitehall, left many forces under severe pressure to employ thousands of black and other minority groups as soon as possible.
Some overstepped the mark into positive discrimination.
Gloucestershire Police even went to the extent of ‘deselecting’ more than 100 potential recruits purely because they were white.
The force later admitted it had acted unlawfully.
Now police minister Vernon Coaker has decided central targets can be dropped, even though few areas have met them. Individual forces will be able to decide their own recruitment pattern.
The news came as the Association of Chief Police Officers insisted the service was no longer guilty of institutional racism.
ACPO said repeating the charge now was ‘unfair and unhelpful’.
Since the blistering Macpherson Report, ten years ago on Tuesday, the number of ethnic minority officers nationwide has doubled.
But it is still only around 4.1 per cent, compared to seven per cent in the population as a whole.
Steve Otter, ACPO’s lead officer on race and diversity, welcomed the decision to axe the Whitehall targets.
| [Return to headlines] |
Public Support for Sweden’s ‘No’ to Saab
Swedes generally support the government’s refusal to rescue beleaguered carmaker Saab using taxpayer money, according to several polls.
Half of respondents to a survey by the Sifo polling firm don’t think the Swedish state should intervene to save Saab.
Only one third of those who participated in the study want the government to offer billions of kronor in financial support to the struggling automaker, according to results published in the Aftonbladet newspaper.
Of the 1,000 people interviewed on Wednesday night following a decision by Saab’s parent company General Motors (GM) to abandon the Swedish brand, young people are most positive toward the idea of supporting Saab with public money.
Around 40 percent of Swedes between the ages of 15- and 29-years-old think that the government should take action.
Among respondents over 65-years-old, only 20 percent support a taxpayer funded rescue.
In another survey carried out by the Demoskop polling firm for the Expressen newspaper, 70 percent said they don’t believe the Swedish state should provide Saab with economic support.
The Demoskop poll results are based on responses from an online panel of 550 people, a slight majority of which also believe that Saab will manage to survive its present crisis.
| [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Couple Suspected of Khat Smuggling Arrested in Malmö
Police in Malmö have arrested a man and a woman on narcotics charges after finding the pair had two suitcases filled with amphetamine-like substance khat.
Following a tip from customs officials, the two were apprehended after exiting a taxi around 2am on Thursday morning in Malmö’s Rosengård disctrict.
Something arose the customs officials’ suspicions when the couple crossed the Öresund Bridge connecting Sweden to Denmark.
Acting on the tip, police followed the taxi as it drove into Malmö.
The two were arrested on suspicions of drugs offences, according to the Malmö police department. The couple’s bags contained less than 200 kilogrammes of the drug, which is the minimum amount required to be charged with serious drugs offences.
Neither the woman nor the man were carrying passports with them and both remained unidentified when questioning began early Thursday morning.
| [Return to headlines] |
Swedes Abandon Political Parties in Droves
Sweden’s political parties continue to shed members, as parties on the right and the left together saw thousands drop from their membership rolls in 2008.
The Moderate Party lost 6,400 members last year, according to a study carried out by the Dagens Samhälle magazine.
Over the last two years, the party’s membership has shrunk by 20 percent, and now stands at 54,858.
Together, five of the seven parties represented in the Riksdag lost a total of 9,000 members last year,
Calculations for the Left Party and the Centre Party have yet to be completed, but both parties also forecast a drop in membership.
The Christian Democrats have lost 1,100 members, bringing their total to 22,919 at the turn of the year, and Liberal Party (Folkpartiet) membership has shrunk by 900 members to 17,799.
While the Social Democrats also continue to lose members, the rate of attrition has level-off since from 2007 when the party shed 19,000 members. In 2008, only 519 supporters left the party.
Only the Green Party experienced an upswing in members in 2008, adding a modest 65 members, for a total of 9,110.
Sweden’s traditional political parties have been declining since the early 1990s. Since then, the number of people who belong to the parties has been cut in half.
At the same time, smaller political parties not currently represented in the Riksdag have seen their memberships swell.
The Pirate Party has added a lot of members, but all that’s required to join is the click of a mouse in the party’s homepage.
As the debate out file sharing has raged over the last four months, the party has added 4,000 members, bringing its total to more than 10,000.
The far-right Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, added 400 members last year and now have a total of 3,300.
| [Return to headlines] |
Walking House
Artists in Denmark have teamed up with US scientists to create a walking house built on six hydraulic legs.
They say it would make the ultimate home for beating floods or neighbours from hell, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The 10ft high home is solar and wind powered and can stroll at walking pace across all terrains. It has a living room, kitchen, toilet, bed, wood stove and mainframe computer which controls the legs.
The pod is set to take its maiden stroll around rural Cambridgeshire at the Wysing Arts Centre in Bourn. It was built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in conjunction with engineers at MIT in Massachusetts, USA.
N55 artist Oivind Slaatto, who says he was inspired by meeting Romany travellers in Cambridgeshire, plans to live in the house when it returns to Copenhagen.
“This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living,” he said.
Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods.
The prototype cost £30,000 to build, including materials and time, but the designers believe it could be constructed for a lot less.
| [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Serb Leader Accused of Stealing State Funds
Bosnia’s state investigating agency SIPA intends to press criminal charges against the country’s Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, for allegedly embezzling 70 million euros of state funds, local media reported on Friday.
Dodik, prime minister of the Bosnian Serb entity, denies the charges, claiming they are a plot by his political enemies whom he called a ‘sect’ committed to his dismissal.
However, SIPA director Mirko Lujic denied the agency was pressing official charges against Dodik.
Nevertheless, the head of SIPA’s investigative department, Dragan Lukac, submitted a report to the state prosecutor accusing Dodik and ten others of having committed “criminal acts”.
The report said that Dodik, several government ministers and businessmen had been involved in “a number of criminal acts of organised crime, money laundering and abuse of office”.
Nikola Spiric, Dodik’s party colleague and president of Bosnia’s federal Council of Ministers said Dodik was a victim of “a special kind of war” which was being directed against the Serb entity by “parallel power structures” in Bosnia.
“If Serbs fill the jails in Sarajevo and the Hague, I’m afraid that this country has a poor chance of survival,” Spiric said.
He was referring to the fact that the Hague-based United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has charged 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for crimes allegedly committed during the 1990s Balkan wars that accompanied the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Rumours have circulated for the past year in the Bosnian media of financial impropriety in the construction of a government complex in the capital of the Serb entity, Banjaluka. The project is worth about 100 million euros.
Last year SIPA confiscated accounts relating to the Banjaluka construction project. These seem to have formed the basis of Lukac’s report to the state prosecutor.
Dodik said the charges coincided with the imminent appointment of the international community’s new top envoy in Bosnia, to replace outgoing Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak.
Observers say the autocratic Dodik has been the main obstacle to constitutional changes in Bosnia demanded by majority Muslims and the international community which would reduce the powers of the entities and strengthen those of central government.
Under the Dayton peace accord that ended the 1992-1995 war, Bosnia was divided into a Serb entity and a Muslim-Croat federation, each with most of the powers of a state.
Muslim leaders have called for the abolition the two entities, a move that has been strongly resisted by Serbs, whose leaders have threatened to secede from Bosnia.
| [Return to headlines] |
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic Has Expressed Concern Over Slovenia’s Moves to Block His Country’s Entry Into the European Union and NATO Over an Unresolved Border Dispute.
Slovenia is the only country of the former Yugoslavia that has joined the EU and NATO and Croatia is an official candidate for both organisations.
It has vowed to block Croatia’s integration into the two blocs unless a long-running border dispute is resolved.
“We have been put in an unfavourable position but it doesn’t mean that we should dramatise or give vent to negative emotions,” Mesic told Croatian television.
Croatia and Albania were invited to join NATO at a summit in Bucharest last year and were expected to join the alliance at a summit in Strasbourg in April.
But Mesic said Croatia might end up like Macedonia whose entry has been blocked by neighbouring Greece in a dispute over Macedonia’s state name.
Slovenia supported Croatia’s invitation at Bucharest but changed its mind as the border dispute worsened.
The Slovenian People’s Party leadership has initiated a drive for a public referendum which would block Croatia’s entry into NATO, after the Slovenian parliament refused to take a stand on the issue.
The party has to collect 40,000 signatures by 26 March.
| [Return to headlines] |
Hamas “Sends Letter to Obama” Via US Senator
The Palestinian group Hamas has sent a letter addressed to the US president via a US politician visiting Gaza, a senior UN official has said.
“A letter addressed to Obama was left at the gate of our offices in Gaza; it is believed to be from Hamas,” said Christopher Gunness of UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees.
Asked about the contents of the letter, Gunness said: “We are very polite at UNRWA, we don’t open other people’s mail.”
He said the letter was given to the influential senator when he met UN officials at the compound during his Gaza tour on Thursday.
Kerry did not meet any Hamas representative but stressed that his presence in the Palestinian territory, which no US official had visited for years, did not indicate a shift of US ignore towards Hamas.
Kerry, a 2004 Democratic presidential candidate who now heads the Senate’s foreign relations committee, was scheduled to hold talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Friday.
He planned to fly on to Syria on Saturday as part of a regional tour.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, who ran a campaign for president in 2004, and two members of the House of Representatives, Brian Baird and Keith Ellison, entered the Gaza Strip separately.
Ellison is the first Muslim member of the US House of Representatives. He was elected in 2006.
The visit follows a 22-day offensive which Israel launched attacks against the Gaza Strip. The bombardment killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, a third of them children in Decemcer 2008 on Gaza and wounded 5,300 Palestinians, and Gaza infrastructure suffered massive damage totaling at least 476 million dollars, according to Palestinian medics and officials.
Israel barred U.S. diplomats from entering the impoverished coastal enclave since 2003.
Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney attempted to travel to Gaza by sea in December, but the ship was rammed by an Israeli gunboat and diverted to Lebanon.
In 2008, former US President Jimmy Carter was denied permission to enter Gaza by the Israeli government. Carter did meet Hamas officials in Syria and Egypt.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Army Chief Apologizes to Turkey Over General’s Remarks
The Israeli army chief telephoned this week his Turkish counterpart to apologize for the harsh remarks made last week by the country’s Ground Forces Commander Avi Mizrahi, The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday. The Turkish military confirmed Friday reports of the phone conversation. (UPDATED)
Israel’s Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi spoke this week with Turkish military chief Gen. Ilker Basbug in an effort to prevent deterioration in military relations with Turkey, the newspaper said.
Mizrahi said last week Erdogan, who severely criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, “should first look in the mirror”, and accused Turkey of “committing a massacre of Armenians, as well as suppression of the Kurds”.
After Mizrahi’s remarks, Turkey summoned the Israeli ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and handed a note of protest demanding clarification, while the military denounced them as “excessive, unfortunate and unacceptable”.
A spokesman from the Turkish military confirmed that the Israeli military chief telephoned Basbug on Monday regarding Mizrahi’s remarks.
Ashkenazi told the Turkish army chief that he was disappointed and saddened over the incident, adding he would look into the matter, the spokesman said at a weekly press briefing.
The Israeli army chief also said in a letter sent to the Turkish military on Thursday that he followed up on the promises made to Basbug during their conversation and that he had dealt with the issue, the army spokesman added.
ASHKENAZI REPRIMANDS MIZRAHI
Ashkenazi summoned Mizrahi this week and reprimanded him for the comments he made during a lecture, The Jerusalem Post also reported Thursday. During a press briefing on Tuesday, Mizrahi was asked about the incident and said he was behind it, the paper added.
“IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi spoke with his Turkish counterpart this week and said that the remarks attributed to Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi were not the official IDF position and that IDF generals and commanders were permitted to only express opinions on military and security issues,” the Israeli paper quoted a statement released by the IDF Spokesman’s Office.
Mizrahi’s remarks did not reflect the IDF’s official position, and Israel highly valued the strategic relationship it had forged over the years with the Turkish military, officials told the paper.
The IDF did not expect the incident to impair relations, military sources also told the Jerusalem Post.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Army Says No Demands Yet From U.S. for Local Military Base
The U.S. has not knocked on Turkey’s door to set up a military base on the Black Sea coast after the Kyrgyzstan decision to close a key base for Afghanistan operations, a spokesman for the Turkish army said Friday.
Recent media reports have suggested that the U.S. may look at setting up a military base in the Turkish city of Trabzon as an alternative to the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan which is due to close later this year.
“There is no such demand as yet,” military spokesman Brig. Gen. Metin Gurak told a weekly press briefing.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed into law on Friday the closure of the Manas air base outside the Kyrgyz capital, a key U.S. military supply base for Afghanistan, making good on a decision that shocked Washington.
Bakiyev’s announcement last month for the closure came after Russia offered more than $2 billion in aid to the struggling Kyrgyz economy. The government has insisted that Moscow did not set the closure as a condition.
The U.S. Air Force has been deployed at an airbase in Turkey’s southern city of Incirlik since the signing of a joint agreement in 1954. The NATO base is currently home to the United States’ 39th Air Base Wing and some 5,000 U.S. service personnel.
Gurak also said the number of the Turkish troops could increase in Afghanistan, in line with the handover of the command of the Kabul Area Command to Turkey in August.
Foreign policy experts here suggest that U.S. President Barack Obama may have asked for more Turkish troops or other Turkish contributions in Afghanistan during separate phone conversations he had with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week.
Turkey currently has some 800 troops serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan, most of who are based in the capital, Kabul. Having the second biggest army within NATO and as the only Muslim country in the alliance, Turkey is uniquely placed to help.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. to Consider Russian Missile-Defense Stance, Gates Says (Associated Press)
Washington will take Russia into account when it decides on a European missile-defense plan, the U.S. defense secretary said Friday in comments welcomed by Moscow but certain to worry the former communist countries that agreed to host the system.
Robert Gates said at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Krakow that President Barack Obama hasn’t yet decided whether to carry through with a Bush administration-backed project to put missile-defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, a plan that outraged Russia.
Mr. Gates said Washington would review the plan “in the context of our relationship with both Poland and the Czech Republic, our relationship with the NATO alliance, the commitments we have made as members of the alliance in terms of European missile defense — and also in the context of our relationship with the Russians.”
The language marks a departure from the tone of the Bush administration, which enthusiastically promoted the plan and signed deals last year with Warsaw and Prague. The Bush administration offered to be transparent with Moscow as it proceeded with sites in Russia’s backyard — but never suggested that Russia’s position could play a role in the system’s fate itself…
[continue at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Both Sri Lanka Troops and Tamil Rebels Accused of Law Violations
Campaign group Human Rights Watch on Friday accused the Sri Lankan army and separatist ethnic Tamil fighters of violating international law. An estimated 2,000 civilians trapped in the northeastern war zone have died as casualties have soared in the fierce fighting seen over the past month, the group said.
In a new report on the long-running conflict, HWR urged the Sri Lankan government to “immediately cease its indiscriminate artillery attacks on civilians in the northern Vanni region”.
The 45-page report called on the Tamil rebels, also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to stop using civilians as human shields, cease deploying forces near populated areas and to allow civilians to safely leave the war zone.
The same plea was made on Thursday by a top UN humanitarian official during a visit to the area.
The report urged the government to end its policy of detaining homeless Sri Lankans in squalid “internment camps” just outside the war zone, which is off-limits to journalists and human rights observers.
About 30,000 ethnic Tamils are currently in government-run camps south of Sri Lanka’s war zone and tens of thousands of others are expected to join them in coming weeks.
Human Rights Watch also condemned the LTTE for “increased brutality” towards trapped civilians and for allegedly shooting at those trying to flee to government-controlled territory.
Top UN humanitarian official John Holmes is currently in Sri Lanka visiting camps in the northeast. He said on Thursday LTTE rebels should allow civilians safe passage from the war zone.
HWR said that both the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE were responsible for the dramatic increase in civilian casualties during the past month — approximately 2,000 killed and another 5,000 wounded, according to independent monitors.
The government and rebels both strongly deny targeting civilians. HWR said civilians have been forced into an increasingly narrow strip on the northeast coast of the island as the Sri Lankan army has advanced against the rebels.
The army claims it is close to its ‘endgame’ in the 26-year conflict in which at least 70,000 people have died.
“With each battlefield defeat, the Tamil Tigers appear to be treating Tamil civilians with increased brutality,” said James Ross, HWR legal and policy director.
“They’ve shot at those trying to flee and stepped up forced recruitment and forced labour.”
LTTE ‘conscripts’ include children forced to fight or work as porters on the battlefield, according to HWR.
The Sri Lankan government has indicated that the ethnic Tamil population trapped in the war zone can be presumed to be siding with the LTTE and treated as combatants, effectively sanctioning unlawful attacks, HWR said.
“The LTTE’s grim practices are being exploited by the government to justify its own atrocities,” the report stated.
“Sri Lankan forces have repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled areas crowded with displaced persons. This includes numerous reported bombardments of government-declared “safe zones” and of the remaining hospitals in the region.”
The humanitarian crisis has been made worse by the government’s decision in September 2008 to order most humanitarian agencies out of the Vanni region, said HWR. The hospital in Vavuniya “lacked even the most basic necessities” the report stated.
The report , entitled ‘War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni’ is based on a 10-day fact-finding mission to northern Sri Lanka conducted earlier this month.
About 50,000 government soldiers are pressing the Tamil Tigers into a patch of north-eastern jungle after taking the key areas of Kilinochchi, Elephant Pass and Mullaitivu.
LTTE militants have been fighting for a separate homeland in the north and east for a quarter of a century.
| [Return to headlines] |
India: Majority of Drugs Coming From Afghanistan, UN Says
More than 55 percent of the heroin which is being smuggled into India is coming from Afghanistan through Pakistan, claims a report by the United Nations.
The UN said the Taliban is earning millions of dollars annually from a surcharge it levies on illegal trade in that country.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that “the Taliban have an annual revenue of between $200-300 million dollars from a surcharge levied on illicit drug trade”.
This was revealed by International Narcotics Control Board in its report for the year 2008. The report was released on Thursday.
The report said security is “weak” in southern provinces of Afghanistan and an “overwhelming” majority of villages are involved in illegal opium poppy cultivation. It, however, said the illegal opium cultivation has dropped by 19 percent from its record level of 193,000 hectares in 2007 to 157,000 hectares last year. Despite this, the country accounts for 90 percent of illegal opium in the world.
The eradication efforts in Afghanistan are being “hampered” by a lack of security, the report said.
| [Return to headlines] |
Officials Find Afghan’s Ties to Terrorist
Citizenship papers fraud cited
by Ben Conery
Federal authorities arrested an Afghan national on Friday and accused him of lying on his U.S. citizenship application about his ties to a terrorist — a brother-in-law who was Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard.
Ahmadullah Sais Niazi was indicted on federal charges of procurement of naturalization unlawfully, use of passport procured by fraud, perjury and false statement. He could receive up to 35 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
He is not charged with taking part in any terrorist acts or belonging to any terrorist groups.
Mr. Niazi, 34, was arrested by members of the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force at his home in Tustin, Calif., and was scheduled to appear late Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif.
According to an indictment unsealed Friday, Mr. Niazi lied on his naturalization application in 2004 when he claimed no connections to any terrorist groups.
Authorities say Mr. Niazi’s sister is married to Amin al-Haq, who is described by prosecutors as one of bin Laden’s security coordinators. Prosecutors say Mr. al-Haq has ties to al Qaeda, the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, which links Mr. Niazi with those groups.
Prosecutors say Mr. Niazi also lied to authorities at Los Angeles International Airport in 2005 when he said he was returning from a trip to Qatar. In reality, prosecutors said, Mr. Niazi was returning from a trip to Pakistan, where he visited family including Mr. al-Haq…
[story continued at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Taliban Wants Amnesty for Militants in Exchange for Peace
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
The Pakistani Taliban is demanding an amnesty for jailed militants and the withdrawal of the armed forces from the Swat Valley in the country’s north-west before it endorses a peace agreement in the region. Taliban sources told Adnkronos International (AKI) that the Taliban’s shura, or tribal council, was expected to finalise its position late Friday and announce its response at the weekend.
Sources said that the leader of Sufi Mohammad, the leader of Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi, discussed details of the government’s proposal to Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, demanding that the Taliban lay down its arms.
But the Taliban expressed its concerns and demanded guarantees regarding the withdrawal of around 10,000 Pakistani army soldiers deployed in the Swat Valley.
The Taliban is also demanding the release of all prisoners including Maulana Abdul Aziz, a radical cleric linked to the Red Mosque seige that resulted in the deaths of more than 170 people in July 2007, as well as unconditional amnesty so that the Taliban can operate from its headquarters in Imam Dheri in Swat.
Leaders also want financial compensation for the families of members who were killed and for property damage caused by the Pakistani army.
After presenting the Taliban’s views, Fazlullah entrusted Mohamamad to negotiate with the government on the Taliban’s behalf.
Sources said that the Taliban and Mohammad had completed the third phase of their talks.
Fazlullah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat, is also said to be in contact with colleagues in North and South Waziristan and also consulted the head of the Tekrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud.
Meanwhile, a curfew was imposed and troops were deployed after a suicide attack in Dera Ismail Khan in North West Frontier Province killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 50 others on Friday.
Security forces have confirmed that the cities of Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore were also on high alert in case the Swat peace negotiations failed, as a Taliban backlash is expected in the bigger cities of the country.
The Pakistani government has dismissed growing criticism of a peace accord it endorsed with Mohammad’s Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi for the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in the Swat Valley.
The peace deal announced on Monday allows for the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in the former tourist region and surrounding districts, in exchange for an end to the Taliban insurgency which has killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Deadly Bomb Attack Strikes Funeral in Northwest
A bomb blast at a funeral procession in Pakistan’s troubled North West Frontier Province on Friday killed at least 25 people and injured 60 others. The attack took place in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, located 270 kilometres southwest of of the capital Islamabad, during a funeral procession of Shar Zaman, a Shia Muslim leader who was assassinated by unknown gunmen on Thursday.
It was not clear whether the attack — aimed at a crowd of 1,000 people — was carried out by a suicide bomber. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, there have been persistent clashes in recent years between the Sunni majority and the Shia minority.
Following the attack, angry mobs began rioting, shops were ransacked and buses were set on fire.
The Pakistani military then imposed a two to three day curfew and security forces have orders to shoot at sight, said Pakistan’s Geo News.
Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari and prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani strongly condemned the attack and said jointly that the government would not give into extremists, militants or terrorists and would take all necessary measures to establish law and order.
| [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Govt Dismisses Criticism Over Sharia Law Deal
The Pakistani government dismissed as speculative the growing criticism of the accord signed with the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi (Movement for the enforcement of Islamic laws) for introduction of Islamic Sharia law in the Swat valley, warning speculations would not be helpful.
“Establishing peace, security and stability are matters of highest priority for the Pakistani government and it will use all necessary means to achieve these objectives,” said Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit at a weekly media briefing on Thursday.
His comments came as the United States envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, in his fresh criticism of the peace accord said the US was ‘troubled and confused’ about what happened in Swat because “it is not an encouraging trend”.
He termed the situation very serious and cautioned against the area being ceded to “bad guys”.
The US is likely to take up the Swat peace deal with Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi when he visits Washington next week.
Previously, NATO and Britain had severely criticised the accord, both fearing that the situation in Swat would worsen. Basit said the government was engaged with the international community and putting across its viewpoint.
He said the accord was part of the government’s three-pronged strategy — dialogue, deterrence and development.
Monday’s peace deal allows for the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in the former tourist region and surrounding districts in exchange for an end to the Taliban insurgency which has killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
Allaying concerns about enforcement of Sharia in the valley, the spokesman explained that it meant a ‘system of justice’, which was linked to the restoration of peace and tranquillity.
He reassured the international community that Pakistan remained fully committed to rooting out terrorism. ‘Pakistan attaches immense importance to eliminating militancy and terrorism,’ he said
| [Return to headlines] |
Sri Lanka: Tamil Tiger Planes Target Colombo
Two planes operated by Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels attacked the capital Colombo late Friday, bombing a government building and injuring at least 40 people, the military said.
“One plane dropped a bomb at the inland revenue building in Fort, which resulted in a fire in the building,” defence ministry spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told the media.
One of two light planes was shot down near the international airport, which was closed to other traffic.
The raid occurred as the army claimed to be driving the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam into a small area on the north of the island as fierce conflict continues between government troops and separatist rebels.
Earlier on Friday the campaign group Human Rights Watch accused the Sri Lankan army and the separatist ethnic Tamil fighters of violating international law.
An estimated 2,000 civilians trapped in the northeastern war zone have died as casualties have soared in the fierce fighting seen over the past month, the group said.
The group urged the Sri Lankan government to “immediately cease its indiscriminate artillery attacks on civilians in the northern Vanni region”.
The 45-page report called on the Tamil rebels to stop using civilians as human shields and to stop deploying forces near populated areas .
The same plea was made on Thursday by a top UN humanitarian official during a visit to the area.
About 50,000 government soldiers are pressing the Tamil Tigers into a patch of north-eastern jungle after taking the key areas of Kilinochchi, Elephant Pass and Mullaitivu.
LTTE militants have been fighting for a separate homeland in the north and east for a quarter of a century.
The army claims it is close to its ‘endgame’ in the 26-year conflict in which at least 70,000 people have died.
| [Return to headlines] |
Thailand: Soldiers Killed and Beheaded in Troubled South
Two soldiers were killed and later beheaded on Friday in an ambush believed to have been carried out by Muslim separatists in southern Thailand. Police said the soldiers were shot dead on their motorcycles as they guarded teachers at a school in Yala, one of the three southern predominantly Muslim provinces at the centre of a long-running insurgency.
“At least 10 gunmen using army weapons ambushed the group, killing two soldiers,” a police official said. “Then they beheaded them and took away their guns and bullet-proof jackets.”
No-one claimed responsibility for the killings, the latest in a violent campaign which has killed more than 3,500 people since January 2004.
Earlier this month, two paramilitary police were shot dead and decapitated in the region and last week three policemen were killed in a bomb attack.
Yala is the southernmost province of Thailand and was part of a Muslim sultanate until annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.
Tensions have simmered in the region since Thailand annexed the mainly Malay sultanate in 1902.
The sultanate includes Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, which have a Muslim majority in the Buddhist country.
Demands by Thai Muslims include the introduction of Islamic law and making ethnic Pattani Malay (Yawi) a working language in the region, as well as the improvement of the local economy and education system.
| [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Officials Protest Sinking of Cargo Ship by Russians
by EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official said Friday that Russia had an unacceptable response after one of its warships sank a Chinese cargo vessel last Saturday.
The warship fired 500 rounds at the vessel, sinking it in stormy Russian waters near the eastern port city of Vladivostok. Seven sailors are still missing, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. The ship, named the New Star, was owned by a company based in Hong Kong and was flying a Sierra Leone flag at the time of the sinking.
Zhang Xiyun, director general of the Department of European-Central Asian Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, said the attitude taken by the Russian Foreign Ministry was “hard to understand and unacceptable,” according to Xinhua. Mr. Zhang made his opinion known on Friday to Morgulov Igor, the Russian minister counselor to China.
Li Hui, the deputy foreign minister, has also expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the way Russia has handled the episode, and has accused Russia of not making strong enough efforts to save the drowning sailors, Xinhua reported…
[story continues at URL]
| [Return to headlines] |
American Somali Children Join Jihad
By: Judy West.
Several Somali children have left the US to join the ‘jihad’ against foreign forces in Somalia, it has been reported.
According to the MidEast News Source, the children, mainly from Minneapolis and Minnesota left the country in secret, with one mother claiming that the first she knew of it was when her son called her from Mogadishu. She had earlier reported her son missing to police.
Somalia, which has been without an effective government since 1990, recently appointed a new leader, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a moderate Islamist cleric. But hopes for peace were rocked this week when a group of 300 clerics and elders set a deadline for the withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers.
Ahmed is hoping to work with the clerics to bring peace to war-ravaged nation, and they also called for Islamist fighters to back peace moves. They urged the militants to stop killing, abducting, robbing and harming foreign aid workers in the country.
However, the call for the removal of peacekeepers puts the nascent government in a difficult position, as it needs them to establish order.
Observers believe that American children are now joining the jihad, and they have suggested that some were involved in a string of suicide attacks in Somaliland and Puntland.
It seems that their involvement coincided with the arrival of Ethiopian troops, who defeated the Islamic Courts Union. Following the recent peace deal, the Ethiopian troops have now departed.
Most of the children appear to have links with Abubakar Alsiddiq mosque in Minneapolis. But the imam there, Sheikh Abdirahman Ahmed, claimed the accusations were baseless and denied that he was recruiting fighters. There are also concerns in Europe and other continents that children are leaving for jihad in Somalia
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Migrants and Sex Offenders Face Tough New Measures
The Italian government on Friday issued an emergency decree to crack down on illegal immigration and sexual violence, following a number of high-profile rape cases allegedly committed by Romanian immigrants. The emergency decree provides for a mandatory life sentence for the rape of minors or attacks where the victim is murdered.
It also speeds up trials for sex offenders, removes the possibility of house arrest, and offers free legal assistance for rape victims.
Rome’s mayor Gianni Alemanno said he was “satisfied” with the emergency decree, following several shocking rape cases that occurred in and around the Italian capital, Rome, recently.
“I am very satisfied,”Alemanno said. “We will organise a massive protest against sexual violence to support this cause and create a groundswell against this abominable plague of sexual abuse in all its forms, from family abuse to those that take place on the outskirts of the city.”
The decree, which takes effect immediately, must be approved by both houses of parliament within 60 days.
Under the decree’s provisions, illegal immigrants can be kept in preventative custody for up to six months — instead of the current two months. During this period, he or she will be properly identified and any asylum claims processed. Immigrants denied asylum or special protection who are not allowed to stay in Italy will be deported.
Another controversial measure provides for vigilante-style or unarmed ‘citizen street patrols’.
City mayors will be able to approve the patrols. Volunteer groups in charge of the patrols will have to register with the police. Priority for membership will be given to retired police and military on leave.
“They will not carry weapons, and will only be equipped with radio transmitters or mobile phones to alert police,” said Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni, who comes from the anti-immigrant Northern League party.
Video surveillance will be introduced in public places and an extra 100 million euros will be given to Italy’s ministry of the interior to pay for the recruitment of 2,500 new police and other measures.
Arrest will be mandatory in cases of rape with the possibility of a ‘summary judgment’ within 48 hours. Victims of sexual abuse will have all their expenses paid by the state as well as free legal counsel.
The crime of stalking that could lead to a sex-related crime or homicide carries a minimum sentence of six months and up to four years in jail.
The decree still has to be approved by both houses of parliament within 60 days, however, conservative Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and its coalition enjoy an ample majority.
The measures were adopted by the conservative government as racial tension and attacks against immigrants are rising throughout Italy. Gangs of thugs attack Romanians in a Rome neighbourhood following the rape last weekend of a 14-year-old girl by two Romanian suspects.
On 1 February, a homeless Indian labourer was savagely attacked and set on fire, in the coastal town of Nettuno, 70 kilometres south of Rome, allegedly by three young men.
In a separate incident in late January, four Romanian immigrants were arrested in the town of Guidonia, near Rome, for allegedly gang-raping an Italian woman.
A day after the attack, groups of Albanians and Romanians were beaten up by a mob and there were attempts to burn down Romanian-owned shops.
Last November, four youths beat up and set alight a homeless Italian man sleeping on a park bench in the northern city of Padova.
Official estimates say 68 percent of rape victims are Italian. However, 58 percent of rapists are Italian, while 9.2 percent are Romanian.
| [Return to headlines] |
‘Coffee Makes You See Things’
Drinking too much coffee dramatically increases the risk of hallucinating, according to new research.
Healthy young men and women who had more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hear or see things that were not there.
It is thought that caffeine boosts levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, reports the Daily Mail.
The Durham University researchers asked 219 students to document their caffeine intake, working on the principle that a cup of instant coffee contains 45mg of caffeine.
Coffee brewed at home contains more than twice as much, while that from cafes such as Starbucks can have almost 190mg of caffeine.
The volunteers were also asked how often they suffered hallucinations. The high caffeine users were three times as likely to have had problems as those who rarely drank coffee.
Large amounts of caffeine also made people more likely to think they could sense the presence of ghosts, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reports.
| [Return to headlines] |
Record Gamma-Ray Blast With Power of 9, 000 Exploding Stars Spotted in Space
Astronomers have detected the strongest radiation blast from deep space ever known, exceeding the power of almost 9,000 exploding stars.
The gamma ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away in the constellation Carina. Its light has taken most of the age of the universe to reach us.
Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe. Scientists believe they occur when exotic massive stars run out of fuel and collapse to form a black hole.
Jets of material powered by processes that are not yet fully understood are thought to blast outwards at nearly the speed of light, generating intense gamma rays.
The new explosion, designated GRB 080916C, was spotted last year by the American space agency Nasa’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which is designed to detect gamma radiation.
Astronomers soon discovered that the gamma ray burst belonged in the record books.
The short-lived blast, described today in the online version of the journal Science, was more powerful than nearly 9,000 ordinary supernovae, or exploding stars.
Scientists calculated that the material emitting the gamma rays must have been moving at 99.9999% the speed of light.
The explosion was enigmatic as well as spectacular due to a curious time delay separating the highest-energy emissions from the lowest.
Scientists are still trying to understand the reason for the time delay, which may have a straightforward physical cause or be due to peculiar quantum effects.
Professor Peter Michelson, a member of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team, said: ‘Burst emissions at these energies are still poorly understood.
‘This one burst raises all sorts of questions. In a few years, we’ll have a fairly good sample of bursts, and may have some answers.’
| [Return to headlines] |
Why Cows Point North
Cows automatically point north because they have their own in-built compasses, say scientists.
Their ability to find north is believed to be a relic from when their ancestors needed an accurate sense of direction to migrate across the plains of Africa, Asia and Europe.
Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA.
Although, in many cases, the images were not clear enough to determine which way the cattle were facing they were aligned on a north/south axis, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.
“We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment,” the scientists wrote in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
It is already known that many species use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate across the planet. Examples include migratory turtles, salmon, termites and birds.
Animals are thought to use their own internal magnets made of crystals of magnetite. Homing pigeons have a small amount of the substance on their beaks, which gives them their uncannily accurate powers of navigation.
| [Return to headlines] |