The biggest news story of the evening is the earthquake that occurred early this morning in Italy, killed more than 100 people, and made thousands homeless.
In other news, the Swedish National Library was reported to the police for having easily accessible child porn on its shelves.
Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CIS, CSP, DC, Diana West, Gaia, Henrik, Insubria, TB, The Frozen North, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Serbian Economy Suffocates in Insolvency
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 3 — Serbian economy is “suffocating” in insolvency, because so much as 71% of businessmen are not able to charge their claims within agreed deadlines, the research of the Belgrade Institute for Market Reseach (IZIT) indicated. IZIT associate Sasa Djogovic pointed out that 69% of the surveyed industry charge their claims within three months, whereas one fifth take half a year to do that, in some cases even longer. In the conditions of global lack of capital, this kind of situation jeopardizes regular business activities of enterprises, Djogovic said at a press conference, adding that the research is based on the sample of 200 enterprises. He underscored that 89% of surveyed businessmen have suspicious claims with a high possibility that they will never be able to charge them. In addition, 68% of businessmen stated that they will have trouble with returning loans in 2009. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Have a Happy New Tax Year
May I wish you a Happy New Year? If such felicitations seem a bit late or far too premature, today marks the beginning of the new tax year; and there is not a great deal to be happy about, in truth. For historical reasons, the financial, or fiscal, year for personal taxation and benefits ends on April 5 and starts again on April 6. This is because English quarter days — four religious festivals roughly three months apart — are traditionally the dates on which rents and rates were due. One of these is Lady Day (March 25), on which the old tax system ended. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the UK in September 1752 in place of the Julian calendar, 11 days were lost — but, to the chagrin of the populace, not the taxes. The 1752-53 tax year was extended by 11 days so that it began on April 5. A further Julian leap day in 1800 changed its start to April 6.
So here we are, at the start of Labour’s last full fiscal year in office. In the 12 years since taking over in 1997, annual income tax revenue has increased from £69 billion to £147 billion in 2007, partly because more Britons have been in work or earning more but mainly because of fiscal drag, where greater numbers of taxpayers are drawn into higher rates even as the basic rate falls (it is now at 20p). Even if the recession is now reducing the number of top-rate taxpayers, no peacetime government has ever extended income tax on the scale that Gordon Brown engineered in his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is a school of political thought that considers anyone who questions the eye-watering levels of tax that we currently endure to be slightly bonkers. The suggestion that people should be allowed to keep as much of their own money as is commensurate with running efficient public services is seen as only just short of seditious. After all, the Government knows best what to do with our money, where to invest it, who to give it to and how much to return in benefits and credits, doesn’t it? Most people subscribe to the notion of a progressive tax system, where those who earn more pay more; and we are, by and large, content to fund improvements to schools and hospitals, to help the truly destitute (though not the feckless), to ensure the safety and cleanliness of our streets and the security of the country. Need there be any more call on our money than those essentials?
My local council evidently thinks there is. Driving around the neighbourhood at the moment requires much concentration and many rat-run detours because there are road works everywhere. So many humps are springing up that the terrain looks like a field of drumlins left behind by the Ice Age. Everywhere, it seems, roundabouts are being widened, repainted or extended and bollards replaced. Near our home a new junction has just been completed when there was nothing obviously wrong with the one that was there before.
What on earth is going on? How has the local authority got the money to do this in the midst of an economic meltdown whose like we have not seen for 30, 50 or is it 100 years? And it always happens at this time — when the old tax year ends and the new one begins. If the money is not spent, then next year’s roads budget is likely to be cut. So, instead of simply not spending it and sparing us the council tax rises that are about to take effect, the money is splurged around on useless projects and pointless schemes.
It is no mystery either where the councils find the funds to pay 1,000 senior town-hall executives more than £100,000 a year, as revealed in a report today by the Taxpayers’ Alliance. That is 200 more than the previous year — and, yes, it was the same year that local councils managed to jeopardise almost £1billion by investing with dodgy Icelandic banks.
We are told they have to earn so much because they have big responsibilities and large budgets to control. Yet 16 of them are paid more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £194,250. There are now 182 people in local authorities being paid more than Cabinet ministers, though without the second-home allowances. But, hey, the money comes out of taxes, so who cares?
Tax is always considered in terms of its proportion of GDP, something referred to, appositely, by economists as the burden. Tax revenues may rise, but, provided they do not go up as a proportion of GDP, this is seen as a Good Thing, though reducing them as a proportion of GDP is surely a better thing. The reason they aren’t going down is because the state spends too much; yet anyone who tries to construct a political narrative that challenges the need for high taxes, or the benefits of low taxes, is crushed under the wheels of the juggernaut of “progressive” politics, whose weight is far greater than the support it has in the country.
In his book Squandered, Daniel Craig observed how, over the past 10 years or so, our taxes have risen two-and-a-half times faster than our earnings so Labour could embark on a spending spree designed to inflate the public sector and create a client electorate to keep the party in office. Beyond that, what is there to show for it? Last week, we learned of more than 20 hospital trusts where hygiene is so bad that departments are threatened with closure, and of hundreds of thousands of children who are still reaching the age of 11 without basic literacy and numeracy skills. What was the extra money raised for if not to tackle those failings?
Over Labour’s 12 years in office, Mr Brown has had close to £1 trillion more to spend than if he had allowed public expenditure to grow only in line with inflation. Here we are now, just three weeks from the Budget, facing the biggest current account deficit for generations, a debt that will have to be paid back in higher taxes by our children and by theirs. The Government has already taken huge amounts of our money, made investments in the country’s future (the results of which are already fraying at the edges), wasted a great deal on bureaucracy, quangos and excessive public sector pay; and now, having got us into this position, ministers have the brass neck to denounce anyone who calls for tax cuts.
The Conservatives are broadly as confused as everyone else, brow-beaten into accepting the twin nostrums for all modern ills — high spending and excessive taxes. They say their instincts are for lower taxes, but, unless they are prepared seriously to cut public spending, these simply cannot be delivered.
There is a fundamental case to be made for low taxation that feeds both a desire for smaller government and for greater personal freedom, both of which are central Conservative tenets and should be at the heart of the party’s appeal. There is a moral imperative that goes far beyond merely trimming away wasteful fat but which should be an end in itself. Tax cuts create incentives to wealth creation and stimulate hard work, thereby generating income and extra revenues. Low taxes allow people to make their own decisions, to save when they wish, to give if they choose, and to spend on what matters to them. The words of the wisest man to hail from Kirkcaldy (and, no I don’t mean Gordon Brown, but Adam Smith) still hold true: “It is the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expensee_SLpsThey are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.”
It was clear almost from the time when spending began to soar in 1999-2000 that the country simply could not afford to go on transferring ever-increasing amounts of money from the efficient and productive private sector and pouring them into largely unreformed, unproductive public services delivered by a state monopoly. The trouble, now, is that it is almost certainly too late to do anything about it because the public finances are in such a mess that the accumulated debt will have to be paid off by yet more tax rises or eaten up by runaway inflation in the years to come. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies demonstrates in a study today, average tax rises of £1,000 a year will be needed just to balance the books.
The victims in all this will be the “hard-working families”, who are the bedrock of the nation’s prosperity and who pay most of the taxes. For them — us — it will be a long time before there is a new fiscal year to be happy about.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: Reality Checks— Obama’s Unreal Initiatives Meet the Real World
Two images last week contrasted sharply with President and Mrs. Obamas’ otherwise adulatory treatment in Europe and Turkey. The images show how out of touch with reality Team Obama is on two of the most important national security threats of our time: 1) the totalitarian theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls “Shariah” and 2) the proliferating danger of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that will deliver them.
The first image was reportedly captured by a cellphone camera in the Swat Valley of Pakistan’s Northwest Territories. According to Saturday’s New York Times, a two-minute video recorded the agony of a seventeen year-old girl being flogged by a “Taliban commander.”
The Times could not ascertain the exact “crime” that precipitated this brutal beating. One source said that it could have been that the girl “stepped out of her house without being escorted by a male family member.” Another said that “a local Taliban commander had falsely accused the teenager of violating Islamic law after she refused his marriage proposal.”…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Non-Discrimination in Border Enforcement
By Mark Krikorian
EXCERPT: No, I don’t mean avoiding profiling of people at the border. Instead, the Obama administration is avoiding profiling of borders themselves. The kind of camera towers that are part of the ‘virtual fence’ along segments of the Mexican border are now planned for the northern border as well.. On its own, this is probably a good idea, but DHS Secretary Napolitano revealed the administration’s thinking behind the move when she told a border conference last week that ‘One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border.’ In other words, this is just the global application of the Norman Mineta Doctrine that Norwegian-American grannies from South Dakota pose exactly the same risk as single, young, Muslim men from Saudi Arabia.
| — Hat tip: CIS | [Return to headlines] |
Debate Urged After Historic HIV Murder Verdict
TORONTO — In a historic verdict on the weekend, an Ontario man became the first Canadian to be found guilty of murder for spreading the virus that causes AIDS.
But legal observers cautioned Sunday that Canada needs more dialogue on whether murder is an appropriate charge for the crime.
A jury of nine men and three women deliberated for 2 1/2 days before finding Johnson Aziga guilty Saturday on two counts of first-degree murder and 10 of the 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault that he faced.
Aziga, 52, was found guilty of attempted aggravated sexual assault in the case of one of his former partners.
Legal observers say Aziga could very likely be the first person in the world to be found guilty of murder for lethally infecting a partner with HIV, but that doesn’t sit well with some experts who say Canada is setting a dangerous precedent.
“We need to figure out why these charges have escalated from criminal negligence to assault to aggravated sexual assault and now murder without there ever having been an informed public debate,” said Alison Symington, with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Symington would like to see an evaluation of the case by the attorney general and clear guidelines established for prosecutors to know how to proceed with an HIV non-disclosure case. She also wants an open dialogue on the issue.
“Do we as a society think not telling someone you’re living with about a sexually transmitted infection is the equivalent of murder? We really need to stop and have this debate.”
The Crown maintained two women, who can only be identified as H.C. and S.B., were essentially injected with a “slow-acting poison” that destroyed their immune systems and, because they didn’t know Aziga had HIV, they were unable to seek effective treatment, leading to their cancers and to their deaths.
But a University of Toronto professor argues criminalizing people who have unprotected sex that results in HIV transmission raises ethical concerns.
The risk of criminal prosecution may deter people from seeking treatment or disclosing their HIV status to public health authorities, says professor Mariana Valverdes, adding that criminalization may also create a stigma for people living with HIV.
“We know that some diseases can be transmitted inadvertently — we know this from the tainted blood scandal,” she said. “It is much better public policy to institute universal measures of protection, rather than assuming that diseases spread mainly because of some people’s intentionally evil behaviour.”
After the verdict came down, Crown Attorney Karen Shea acknowledged the case set a precedent because it is the first conviction for first-degree murder involving HIV transmission.
“Normally, we have no interest in what is going on in the bedrooms of HIV positive individuals,” said Shea. “But when you have circumstances in which the individual is engaging in conduct knowing full well that he is endangering the health and lives of others it’s not only appropriate but completely warranted to invoke the criminal law.”
The Crown said Aziga endangered the lives of 11 women by having unprotected sex with them and failing to disclose he had HIV.
Seven of the women tested positive for HIV and two died of AIDS-related cancers, the jury heard. The four other women tested negative.
Prosecutors painted Aziga as a callous and arrogant man who “outright lied” about having HIV to women with whom he had sex, and in some cases, convinced his partners condoms were no longer necessary.
Aziga’s lawyers argued their client did not have the “mental wherewithal” to deliberately endanger his former lovers, citing a brain disorder, heavy drinking and post-traumatic stress.
“If you have a brain disorder, then you do things that people who do not have that kind of condition do,” defence lawyer Davies Bagambiire said after the verdict was handed down.
“Did it deprive him of the capacity to form the intent to commit murder? Obviously, the jury found otherwise.”
A native of Uganda and former research analyst at the Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario, Aziga was diagnosed with HIV in 1996.
He was counselled not to have unprotected sex and to tell partners of his health status, jurors heard during testimony from public health officials.
Despite several warnings and being served with an order under the Health Protection and Promotion Act to wear condoms and inform his partners he had HIV, Aziga continued to have unprotected sex, jurors heard.
In order to find Aziga guilty of aggravated sexual assault, the jury had to find the women did not have HIV before they had sex with Aziga and would not have agreed to sex had they known he carried the virus that causes AIDS.
To return with a verdict of guilt on the two first-degree murder charges, jurors had to conclusively find Aziga infected his two former partners and that their deaths stemmed from an aggravated sexual assault.
Following the verdict Shea spoke to some of the women who were infected and the families of deceased women.
“They’re relieved it’s over and they just want to move on with their lives,” Shea said.
A murder conviction carries a life sentence with no parole eligibility for 25 years.
Aziga will be sentenced May 7.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Doctors Can Treat Burned Quebec Girl Against Mother’s Wishes: Judge
MONTREAL — Doctors will be allowed to treat a severely burned teenager for the next two years, even though her mother wants her taken off life support and brought home, a Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled.
Kirkland Casgrain made the ruling Thursday after hearing testimony from one of the doctors treating the girl in the intensive-care ward of the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
The 15-year-old girl suffered burns to 15% of her body, as well as to her airways, in a March 7 house fire. Her mother, who suffered minor burns in the fire, blames doctors for keeping her daughter in the hospital, claiming the girl would be better off at home.
“She thinks we are causing the problems,” Dr. Sam Shemie testified Thursday, under a publication ban that was lifted Friday.
The mother has refused consent to continued treatment and wants her daughter to go home, even though she’s hooked up to a respirator, needs surgery, and is on antibiotics and medication for severe pain, Dr. Shemie said. He added the hospital has been “handicapped” by the mother’s refusal to consent to treatment.
Robert Cox, the hospital’s lawyer, asked the judge to allow doctors to continue treating the patient indefinitely.
The judge agreed to 24 months of treatment, with progress reports to be filed every three months.
“You’ve effectively removed the parental authority of a mother,” Mr. Cox said, addressing the judge.
“Yes,” Judge Casgrain replied.
The mother was not present, nor represented by a lawyer.
Before the hearing began, Mr. Cox wanted the news media barred, citing privacy concerns. Instead, the judge allowed reporters to stay, but ordered them not to report anything about the hearing until further notice.
After listening to arguments Friday by Mr. Cox and media lawyer Mark Bantey, who represented the Montreal Gazette and La Presse newspapers, Judge Casgrain lifted the publication ban. The only stipulation was that anything that could identify the minor or her mother be left out of news coverage.
In his brief testimony, Dr. Shemie said the mother had taken to visiting her daughter “at odd hours” — 2 a.m., in one instance — and has now been barred anytime between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Security guards have been posted 24 hours outside the patient’s door to keep the mother out.
Since her daughter was brought in, the mother has been observed trying to clean the girl’s face with “industrial wipes, the kind you clean counters with,” Dr. Shemie testified. She has also been seen touching the girl’s ventilator.
On March 12, when the girl was found to have severe anemia, the hospital gave her a blood transfusion, despite the lack of her mother’s consent, because doctors deemed it an emergency.
The father couldn’t be reached at the time, but subsequently gave his consent. He and the mother are divorced.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
CSU Criticises Obama’s Support of Turkey
The centre-right sister party of the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU) sharply criticised US President Barack Obama’s support for Turkey’s entry into the European Union on Monday.
The CSU’s main candidate for the European Union elections, Markus Ferber, reacted against what he considered US meddling.
“We don’t need advice or demands from outside,” he said, adding that it is “the business of the Europeans alone” how the EU conducts its relations with Turkey.
Obama called on the EU’s heads of government to accept Turkey’s membership at a USA-EU summit in Prague on Sunday. The US President had previously helped to persuade Turkish President Abdullah Gül to accede to the nomination of Danish head of state Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new NATO Secretary General.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy would prefer to give Turkey what they call a “privileged partnership” with the EU, rather than full membership.
While the US government might have “a say in the running of NATO,” decisions about membership “in its own club” should be decided by the EU alone Ferber said.
“Transatlantic relations between the EU and the USA are very important. But a part of that is that we keep out of our partner’s domestic business,” Ferber added.
Meanwhile CSU representative in the European parliament Bernd Posselt used even stronger language: “The EU is not Obama’s football. He is trying to reward the Turks at the expense of the Europeans, and simultaneously to weaken or undermine European integration.”
If that’s what he wants, Posselt ranted, “Obama should make Turkey the 51st state of the USA.”
The European Commission announced Monday that Obama’s statement would have no effect on the ongoing negotiations with Turkey for EU membership. “There is nothing new to report,” a Commission spokeswoman said in Brussels, “We are in the middle of a process.”
The framework for negotiations for new EU membership was decided at the end of 2004, and the negotiations began in 2005. Ten “chapters of negotiation” began then, one of which has been completed.
The spokeswoman also said that Turkey’s membership has nothing to do with NATO’s internal decisions.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
France: Greek Company to Re-Paint Eiffel Tower
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 1 — Stelma SA, a Greek company based in Salonika has succeed with its bid for the contract for a project to re-paint the Eiffel Tower in Paris in honour of its 120th anniversary. The world-famed monument was opened on March 31, 1889. Stelma SA is to be entrusted with the 19th re-painting of the Tower, which is given a different shade every seven years. The new colour is has been given the official label of “Eiffel Tower Bronze”. Company founder and Chair, Elefterios Mamatzis, expressed “joy” at having been assigned the project contract, which he defined as “the dream of a lifetime”. According to a report on the Ana-Mpa press agency, sixty tonnes of paint will be needed to cover the entire surface of the tower. The paint job will take at least twenty months and its cost has been put at 4.5 million euros. The tower will stay open to the public for the whole period of the works.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Carry Out Anti-Terror Raids Across Country
Rome, 2 April (AKI) — Twenty-six foreigners suspected of links to international terrorism as well as aiding and abetting illegal immigration are being investigated by Italian police, after raids carried out on Thursday in various Italian cities.
The raids were carried out in properties around the northern cities of Vicenza, Venice, Padova, Brescia, Como, Cuneo and Trento, the central city of Florence and the southern city of Caserta.
The anti-terrorism and organised crime investigators in March 2007 began probing alleged Islamic fundamentalists attending the Via Dei Mille mosque in Vicenza in the northern Veneto region.
The mosque was led by a Yemeni imam, who is also being investigated for terror links.
However, most of the 26 foreigners arrested are Algerian.
Three of them, who lived in Naples, are though to be Islamist radicals sympathetic to the radical ‘Takfiri’ ideology.
The three radicals had already been involved in falsifying documents to aid jihadist groups.
Takfiris believe contemporary Muslim society has reverted to a state of unbelief (‘kufr’) and thus considers legitimate both rebellions against the state and acts of violence against Muslim citizens.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Abruzzo Earthquake — 100 Die, Hundreds Injured and Thousands Evacuated
Numerous buildings destroyed and 40-50,000 people displaced. The earthquake, which registered 5.8 on Richter scale, occurred at 3.32 am and was felt all over central Italy
L’AQUILA — An earthquake that registered 5.8 on the Richter scale shook the Abruzzo region at 3.32 this morning. The epicentre was about 10 kilometres from L’Aquila and the tremor was felt distinctly all over central Italy from Romagna to Naples. Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has already proclaimed a state of emergency, mobilising the army and air force, and appointing Guido Bertolaso to manage operations. Mr Berlusconi has indicated that he will visit L’Aquila at once, as will the interior minister, Roberto Maroni. Mr Bertolaso, who is Italy’s civil defence supremo, is already in L’Aquila and said the “situation is dramatic, the worst tragedy since the start of the new millennium”.
THE POPE AND THE PRESIDENT — Benedict XVI and Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, have sent messages of solidarity to communities hit by the earthquake.
EARTHQUAKE DATA — The earthquake occurred 8.8 kilometres below ground level. Giulio Selvaggi, director of the earthquake centre at the national institute of geophysics and vulcanology (INGV), said that earthquakes like this are classed as “moderate, with an intensity 30 times lower than the one that devastated Irpinia in 1980”. Abruzzo has been the focus of a seismic swarm that became active on 16 January, causing hundreds of shocks, the most serious of which, with a magnitude of four, took place on 30 March.
CASUALTIES — The interim count of casualties is already dramatic and destined to rise: 100 deaths, hundreds of injured and thousands of people displaced. At least five children are among the victims. Hundreds of buildings collapsed completely or in part, and thousands more were damaged or left unsafe. There could be as many as 40-50,000 displaced persons. Rescue work is hampered by continuing aftershocks that could cause damaged buildings to collapse and by the total destruction of the prefecture, which should have coordinated the rescue effort. Only the four pillars at the prefecture’s entrance have been left standing. The buildings of the provincial and regional authorities also suffered severe damage.
NEARBY TOWNS — News of devastation is starting to come in from towns and villages around L’Aquila that were cut off until this morning. The situation is particularly desperate in towns like Onna, where 50% of homes have been destroyed, and Paganica. Rescue workers on the spot say the situation is “appalling” and reminiscent of the earthquake in Umbria. A number of buildings were damaged at Sulmona and Castel di Sangro but there are no reports of casualties. Meanwhile the courthouse at Avezzano has been declared unsafe.
RESCUE WORK — Early today, it was already clear that the situation in the regional capital was dramatic. In the middle of the morning, the sheet-covered corpses of victims extracted from the rubble still lay on the ground. Hundreds of people wandered the streets in a state of shock, many huddled in blankets and many more still wearing pyjamas. Those who abandoned their homes were directed to the football ground area, where a reception centre will be set up, but others, who have taken to the streets for fear of being trapped if aftershocks demolish their already damaged homes, are hampering rescuers’ efforts. Civil defence authorities have invited residents to keep the streets clear to allow rescue work to proceed. L’Aquila hospital, whose drinking water supply was cut off, began work under emergency conditions. Doctors were administering first aid in the open air outside the A&E department. Only one operating theatre was functioning, the others having been rendered unsafe. A field hospital is now on its way from the Marche region and the more seriously injured victims have been flown by helicopter to hospitals elsewhere in Abruzzo, in Rieti and in Rome. In the early hours of the day, there was chaos at L’Aquila hospital as ambulances and in private cars continued to ferry in casualties.
BUILDINGS DESTROYED AND DAMAGED — Early estimates by civil defence put the number of unsafe buildings at 10-15,000. Four complexes were razed to the ground: the student residence, one building in Via Sant’Andrea and two in Via XX Settembre. Various other buildings were damaged or partially demolished in other parts of L’Aquila and the Duca degli Abruzzi hotel was totally destroyed. Rescuers are attempting to reach a family of four trapped in a small house opposite the student residence. A woman of about 50 was recovered alive from the ruins of a three-storey building in Piazza della Repubblica and one youth was rescued alive from the student residence but another ten or so are thought to be still trapped. Rescuers are digging with their hands as mechanical diggers are unable to reach the site. One Greek student and about ten Israelis are missing, according to communique’s from the respective foreign ministries. Parts of the façade and apse of the church of Santa Maria del Suffragio in Piazza Duomo also collapsed.
DAMAGE ELSEWHERE — Falling cornices and other damage, but no casualties, were reported in the province of Pescara. A seriously damaged building was evacuated at Sora, in the province of Frosinone. Further damage was reported in the province of Rieti.
COMMUNICAITONS — The mobile phone and landline networks in the earthquake-hit areas are back in operation. Electricity supplies to 80% of the 15,000 premises that were cut off had been restored by 9 am. The main railway lines are all in operation and checks are under way on regional services. Checks are also being carried out on motorways, where some sections have been closed. Repairs are being carried out on the water supply network in the Teramo and Pescara areas.
AID — Offers of aid have flooded in from other regions of Italy, from other countries and from the European Commission. “At this time, we can say that the Italian machinery is perfectly able to deal with the emergency”, said civil defence executive, Agostino Miozzo. “If we encounter problems during operations, our friends will be ready to step in”.
APPEALS — The Abruzzo regional authority chair, Gianni Chiodi, launched an urgent appeal for blood donors. Italy’s chief of police, Antonio Manganelli, asked drivers “not to clog roads that from now own will be used by rescue convoys”.
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Muzzled Scientist Who Predicted Quake
ROME (Reuters) — An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L’Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing more than 100 people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic.
The government on Monday insisted the warning, by seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani, had no scientific foundation but Giuliani said he had been vindicated and wanted an apology.
The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Rome.
Vans with loudspeakers drove around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after Giuliani, from the National Institute of Astrophysics, predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor’s anger.
Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.
“Now there are people who have to apologize to me and who will have what has happened on their conscience,” Giuliani told the website of the daily La Repubblica.
Giuliani, who lives in L’Aquila and developed his findings while working at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in the surrounding Abruzzo region, said he was helpless to act on Sunday as it became clear to him the quake was imminent.
“I didn’t know who to turn to, I had been put under investigation for saying there was going to be an earthquake.”
AGENCY REASSURED TOWNSPEOPLE
As the media asked whether, in light of his warnings, the government had protected the population properly, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seemed on the defensive at a news conference.
He said people should concentrate on relief efforts for now and “we can discuss afterwards about the predictability of earthquakes.”
Italy’s Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L’Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.
“The tremors being felt by the population are part of a typical sequence … (which is) absolutely normal in a seismic area like the one around L’Aquila,” the agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.
It said it saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless carrying out “continuous monitoring and attention.”
The head of the agency, Guido Bertolaso, referred back to that meeting at Monday’s joint news conference with Berlusconi.
“There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community,” he said.
Enzo Boschi, the head of the National Geophysics Institute, said the real problem for Italy was a long-standing failure to take proper precautions despite a history of tragic quakes.
“We have earthquakes but then we forget and do nothing. It’s not in our culture to take precautions or build in an appropriate way in areas where there could be strong earthquakes,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Transport Workers to Hold Anti-Violence Protest
Demonstrations were held around the country today as part of a ‘day against aggression and violence’ called by FNV, the Dutch trade union federation. The day of action came in response to concerns about a perceived increase in aggression towards public service workers, particularly in transport and the emergency services.
At 11.55am, fire engines, police cars, trains, buses and trams all over the county sounded their sirens, horns and bells. The noisy protest was timed to come five minutes before the emergency siren, which is tested nationwide at 12.00pm on the first Monday of each month. It was followed by rallies in major cities organised by public sector union ABVAKABO. Speaking at the rally in Amsterdam, Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst said every case of violence should be reported to the police. She said she believed courts should hand down double sentences to those found guilty of assaulting public sector workers. ABVAKABO called for employers to pay compensation to victims, recovering the cost from the perpetrators at a later stage.
The demonstrations follow a number of incidents of violence against public transport workers, the most recent of them at the weekend in the town of Almere, 30 kilometres east of Amsterdam. On Sunday, a man caught travelling on the train without a ticket assaulted two railway workers at the station, threatening to push one of them under an oncoming train. On Saturday in Almere a bus driver was assaulted by two youths.
A complaints centre set up in March by the FNV Bondgenoten trade union received more than 300 reports from bus drivers who said they had at some time been abused, spat at or assaulted by aggressive passengers.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: VVD Wants Pepper Spray for Bus Drivers
The conservative VVD party wants bus drivers to be equipped with pepper spray, so they can retaliate against violent attacks by passengers. Party leader Mark Rutter proposed that drivers be permitted to attend voluntary training courses in how to use the spray. Currently, only police officers are permitted to use it. Mr Rutte also believes a special transport police unit needs to be set up, similar to that in existence on the railways.
In the past few weeks, several bus drivers throughout the country have been the victims of aggression by passengers. FNV, the Dutch trade union federation, is planning to hold a national day of action against violence on public transport on Monday.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Bomb Explodes in Malmö
A powerful explosion destroyed windows and the entrance to a restaurant in central Malmö on Sunday night.
The explosion also ripped through the roof of the al fresco dining area of the restaurant, located on Möllevångstorget in central Malmö.
Malmö police received a number of calls from witnesses who had heard the powerful explosion.
Malmö police on Monday morning had not yet managed to make any arrests or developed any suspects in connection with the attack.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish National Library Reported for Child Porn
The Swedish national library will on Monday afternoon be reported to the police for the possession and distribution of child pornography.
The police report will be made by two Swedish child protection groups, Hand i Hand (‘Hand in Hand’) and the Föreningen Anhöriga Till Sexuellt Utnyttjade Barn (ATSUB — The Association of Relatives to Sexually-abused Children).
Birgitta Holmberg at ATSUB told The Local on Monday that the purpose of the police report is two-fold.
Firstly to put a stop to the distribution of the National Library’s collection of child pornography, and secondly to expose how much of the library’s collection has been copied.
“We want the report to demonstrate that the same laws apply for all regardless of whether it is a state institution,” Holmberg said.
The existence of the National Library’s collection of child pornography emerged after a visit by the writer Valentin Bart in November 2008.
Bart, who spent a year working in a pornographic book shop in central Stockholm in the 1970s, told The Local that he wanted to see if the law which requires the library to archive a copy of everything printed in Sweden, also applied to child pornography.
He found that not only did the library hold large quantities of pornography, featuring children as young as 10-years-old, but access to the material was straightforward.
“All I did was sign up to check out books and send a letter explaining my reasons for wanting to view the material. Anyone could have done the same thing,” Bart told The Local.
The large collection at the library was built up in the years between 1971, when the possession, distribution and display of child pornography was legalized in Sweden, and 1980, when the law was repealed.
Until Valentin Bart’s November visit brought the issue to the library’s attention, the material had remained easily accessible to the general public.
The library has since launched an internal review of its guidelines for lending sensitive material.
“We are not happy with the library’s reaction. Every picture that is distributed is a new violation against the abused child,” said Birgitta Holmberg to The Local.
“Is it really possible to conduct an internal investigation into this. This matter requires open debate and a legal process. Should a state institution retain child pornography in breach of the law?” Bart queried on Monday.
Both Holmberg and Bart argue that there could be grounds for allowing the collection of the material for research purposes.
“But then we want strict licensing and control of researchers,” Holmberg said.
“One can also say, that we all know what a child’s body looks like naked and we all know what sex is. Do we really need to view the pictures to learn about this,” Holmberg added.
Valentin Bart also pointed out the sensitive issue of the National Library — which is called ‘Kungliga Biblioteket’ or ‘Royal Library’ in Swedish — holding material that directly challenges the work of ECPAT — an international charity working against the exploitation of children, and whose patron is Queen Silvia.
The Local contacted Sara Bengtzon at the National Library on Monday and informed her of the police report that will be submitted later today.
“I think that the relative support groups have to do what they think is right.”
“Our internal inquiry into this issue will be completed in May and a police investigation into the issue will only help this process in trying to straighten out the guidelines and map out the situation.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Inland Revenue Staff ‘Told to Ignore Mistakes’ in Tax Records to Hit Government Targets
The Inland Revenue’s telephone service is a ‘massive mess’ with mistakes ignored and letters binned, according to a whistleblower. Staff are told to ignore errors in people’s records to save time and ensure call targets are met, the woman has told ITV’s Tonight programme. Queries sent in by post often disappear or are thrown in the bin, without being looked at by revenue staff, it is also claimed.
She said: ‘Staff have actually been told that when someone rings in with a tax inquiry and you spot a mistake on a person’s record, you have to ignore it unless they have actually asked you to look at that mistake.
‘It’s all about the Government target of answering so many calls in a day.’ The whistleblower added: ‘And if you write in, the post often goes missing. It just disappears, just gets binned… some letters simply aren’t seen by anyone.’ Hundreds of phone calls are lost when people give up or are cut off, and staff have little time to read up on new tax rules, she said. The worker added: ‘Last week we had a situation where half-a-million payment reminder letters were sent out late, meaning people were being threatened with surcharges and penalties they might not even owe.
‘It’s a massive mess. A lot of revenue staff are really thinking “how [much] worse can it get”? ‘I think it’s going to get worse. It’s very scary.’ The Inland Revenue work force has been cut by 17,000 since 2005 in an ‘efficiency’ drive, and ITV said complaints to the independent Adjudicator’s Office have doubled in that period, mainly due to problems in the working tax credit system. The programme includes an account from Robert Wailes, 63, from West Yorkshire, who was sent a series of letters claiming he owed increasing amounts of tax, culminating in a visit from a debt collection agency and demands for £15,000. It later emerged that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) owed him £800. He was offered £25 compensation. Chris Trebble, 65, from Taunton, Somerset, decided to use £29,000 redundancy pay to set up his own business — but was incorrectly told that he owed £8,000 in tax, and he claims tax office staff implied they could charge him double that as a penalty. Mr Trebble said: ‘It was a disastrous thing to happen. I was considerably stressed as a result of it.
‘I went to my accountant to get advice from him and he indicated that it was a very unusual situation and he could see no reason why the tax men were taking the approach they were taking.
‘I did get back on the phone to the tax man and said, “Look you’re asking for this… I don’t actually have that kind of money available”, and the advice they gave me was to re-mortgage the house.’ Eventually HMRC apologised and offered him £120 compensation. A spokeswoman for HMRC said: ‘HMRC provides a very good service to its millions of customers. We receive over thirty million customer contacts every year, many on extremely complex topics. ‘We constantly monitor our performance across the board and where it falls below standard we move resources to improve.’ She said that the Inland Revenue receives 100 million letters per year and that any member of staff caught throwing away mail would face disciplinary proceedings. A new contact centre has recently been opened in Cumbria to increase capacity, the spokeswoman added.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: It’s Centralised, It’s Nutty, It’s Miles From Reality
A small protest in Oxford about cash-strapped probation services reveals more about the nation than any G20 demo
Forget the G20 circus. On Saturday afternoon there was a politer protest meeting, in the old railwaymen’s club in Oxford. Only a hundred or so people (small children skidding about in the next room too mobile to count) but a microscope is a better diagnostic instrument than a fisheye lens. The theme of the meeting chimed with the wider unease: a huge, arrogant, yet strangely incompetent body was gratuitously messing up ordinary lives. Not a bank this time but Noms, the National Offender Management Service: founded 2004, revamped 2008.
Under government policy of controlling everything from vast distant HQs, run by frazzled people who don’t get out much, Noms brought together HM Prison and Probation Services in the name of “coherence” and blethers about a “vibrant mix” of “service-level agreements”. But in effect, in January last year the Prisons element more or less took over the Probation Service, which became a Cinderella.
According to Napo, the probation officers’ union, Cinderella must cut its budgets by between 13 and 25 per cent and lose more than 2,000 jobs over three years. The national post of director of probation no longer exists, and in the Ministry of Justice business plan the amount spent at Noms headquarters is, the union claims, as high as the cost of the entire Probation Service for England and Wales. Yet you would think, given government rhetoric, that probation officers would be a priority. What they do is to supervise, mentor and (really quite often) reform the lives of the paroled and criminals on community sentences.
So much for the wider picture. Zoom back in on the Railway Club and the neighbourhood of Mill Street, Oxford. This — where I spend a fair amount of time — is not one of those chic addresses in the leafy North or a modish Jericho. It is a long cul-de-sac, a terrace of brick houses on the edge of the city beyond the railway. These are small homes for young families, new couples and lone pensioners.
Pleasant but not posh. There is one pub, and at the far end a small office block by the river, needing refurbishment. But a week ago Mill Street learnt that the Probation Service is about to sign a lease on this building, extending it into a “mega-centre” of 100 staff, replacing the city office and others in neighbouring towns. Thus every week 350 clients, from petty thieves to violent and sex offenders, would arrive for their interviews or group sessions. That’s 70 a day from all over Oxfordshire, walking the long quiet street or approaching by a track through a churchyard and past two nursery schools.
No notice was given: this was a leak. The Probation Service confirmed it when pressed, but coyly refuses to meet residents. City planners are told it is just an office, class B1A under the Town and Country Planning Act, so no change of use is needed. You could argue that by covering “non-resident adult learning” it is actually category D1 — but then, of course, there would have to be democratic public notification, which the Ministry of Justice’s agency seems keen to avoid. Mill Street is not amused, though there was shocked laughter when Evan Harris, the local MP, read out the response from Noms: “We doubt the value to the residents of meeting with us before we sign the lease.” Which is a bit like selling the house before mentioning it to your wife.
The protest is not sensationalist or illiberal (indeed, one leading campaigner got so interested in the Probation Service that he plans to volunteer with ex-offenders). It breathes reasonable anger at arrogance, secrecy and a cavalier attitude to citizens’ concerns. The local councillor Susanna Pressel, the Lord Mayor of Oxford, confirms that such an office should be in the city centre, near courts and police. Dr Evan Harris concurs, though drily admitting that he has often in his right-on Lib Dem way taken sides against residents’ groups (including his own parents) over unpopular but vulnerable groups such as asylum seekers and council tenants. But even he is on Mill Street’s side. This is a bum idea: its only merit must be cheapness. For all the mission statements about “focusing on individuals at a local level” it is a secretive and probably false economy of scale.
False? Well, consider the offenders’ plight too. A powerful voice at the meeting was Joe, a veteran former prison officer and mental health worker who — not living locally — spent 48 hours worrying whether to stick his head above the parapet. But he did, and is worth hearing. Offenders, he says bluntly, dread having conspicuously to “run the gauntlet” of a quiet street for appointments.
Sex offenders, ordered to keep away from children, will find it difficult to do so up this street. Moreover, Banbury is nearly 30 miles away, Bicester 15, Abingdon a long bus ride. Promises about local needs are oddly served, Joe reckons, by “taking probation officers away from their communities, where in the past they had good relationships with police, even with offenders’ families. The work is about building relationships.” Sadly, he predicts many missed appointments: in chaotic or addicted lives a long round trip is not simple. Nor is taking a full day off every week if you’re lucky enough to have work.
People will bunk off, and be chucked back into prison for failing to meet probation conditions. How much of a public economy is that, eh?
The whole thing is a bit nuts, reeking of panicky, furtive, distant decisions unrelated to reality. Curiously, it brought to mind the equal nutty waste-through- centralisation I saw when out with the Metropolitan Police for a night of stop-and-search in London. Our vanful of elite officers spent two thirds of its time crawling miles through traffic with the latest felon sulking in the passenger seat, just to find the last vacant cell in a distant mega-station “custody suite”. The police were visibly frustrated. Once there were small local stations, Dock Green-style, with a couple of handy cells each.
But in the past decade more than 650 stations have been closed nationwide. I am told that when you get arrested in Penzance you now score a 45-minute ride to Truro to be locked up. Your mates can continue fighting undisturbed while the cops rack up their carbon footprint.
So there you are. Economies of scale that in the end cost money… managerialist bean-counting from plush London offices… ideas that look good on spreadsheets and lousy on the street. That hour in the Railway Club was, in its way, a more informative snapshot of Britain than all the G20 demonstrations.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Terror Suspects Get Jobs Benefits
TERROR suspects under house arrest are claiming up to £60.50 a week in Jobseeker’s Allowance.
In the latest example of soft-touch Britain, 22 out of 23 extremists who applied for the state benefit received it.
Yet none of them is available for work. Severe restrictions are placed on their movement because they are deemed a risk to national security.
The taxpayer-funded handouts last night sparked outrage among politicians and campaign groups who said it was yet another reminder of why extremists hellbent on destroying Western civilisation make a beeline for Britain.
Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former Army officer and chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism subcommittee, said: “Surely this is nonsense. If they are under control orders they will not be seeking jobs.
“All we are doing is pouring more taxpayers’ money into a bottomless pit. In times of economic crisis, this will infuriate hard-pressed people.”
Control orders are only given to suspects regarded by MI5 to be so dangerous that they are a risk to the nation’s security. Some are under a curfew for up to 13 hours a day.
The Home Office admits all but one of 23 suspects who claimed the benefit were successful. In a case that calls into question whether Government departments talk to each other, the Department for Work and Pensions says that people can only receive Jobseeker’s Allowance if they show they are “capable of working, available for work and actively seeking work”.
Suspects’ families often also get financial help from charities such as Helping Households Under Great Stress, an Islamic group supporting families affected by terror arrests.
| — Hat tip: The Frozen North | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Serbia: Unioncamere; Consortium for Italian Firms
(ANSAmed) — TRIESTE, APRIL 1 — Unioncamere, the Union of Italian Chambers of Commerce, will look at the possibility of creating a Confidi (collective guarantee consortium) to support Italian businesses which may operate directly in Serbia, in the same way as in Croatia, said Unioncamere’s representative for the Balkans and Mediterranean, Antonio Paoletti. Mr Paoletti was speaking during a forum on investments in Serbia organised by Unioncamere and Aries, the special agency of the Trieste Chamber of Commerce. The Confidi could be one of the responses to the demand for liquidity of Italian businesses in Serbia, as highlighted by Italian Ambassador to Belgrade, Alessandro Merola. The idea has already won itself a partner, in the form of Finest, a finance house which has Serbia as its third biggest country in terms of aid quantity (20 million euros which have generated 160 million of investments), says Finest president, Michele Degrassi. According to a memo, Merola and the Serbian Ambassador to Italy, Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, emphasised the opportunity for Italian investments in various Serbian business sectors during the forum. The note points out the imminent definition of a trilateral accord between Romania Serbia and Croatia for the creation of an industrial district across the border between Vojvodina and Romania, a few kilometres from Timisoara and the Romanian area which hosts the operations of more than 3,000 Italian businesses. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: 450,000 Roma Living in Tough Conditions
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 2 — In a statement issued on the occasion of April 8, World Roma Day, the Human and Minority Rights Ministry announced that Roma in Serbia are subject to poor living conditions and that state efforts focus on providing them with housing and education. According to the 2002 census, around 108,000 Roma live in Serbia, but their actual number is estimated at around 450,000, the ministry said. The majority of Roma children are not in the school system, their parents are unemployed, and a large number of families live in slums and face poverty, racially motivated violence and discrimination. The ministry said that this year Serbia is presiding over the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, which aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination against Roma and ensure their inclusion and integration in social trends. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: EU; Djelic, Lloveras Sign 168 Million Euro Agreement
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 1 — Serbian Deputy Premier in charge of european integrations Bozidar Djelic and the head of the Europan Commission’s delegation in Belgrade, Josep Lloveras, met in Valjevo to sign an agreement on 168 million euro of on-repayable funds out of the EU’s pre-accession IPA fund. Speaking after the signing ceremony, Djelic said that in question is yet another installment of the total of one billion euros of non-repayable EU funds earmarked for Serbia for the 2007 — 2012 period to be used for carrying out the reforms in the process of Serbia’s accession to the EU. Djelic stated that the funds would be used to finance 36 projects in various spheres to secure a better future for Serbia and its citizens. “The bulk, amounting to 45 million euro, will be allocated to the local self-government in Serbia, like Valjevo,” Djelic set out. Lloveras stated that today’s signing represents a strong sign of EU support to the reforms in the process of Serbia’s european integrations, adding that the EU non-repayable aid is intended for the development and strengthening of democracy in Serbia, the implementation of EU standards and strengthening the legal state. Lloveras recalled that the European Commission has so far approved about two billion euros in aid to Serbia through various forms of donations and loans.(ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Tunisia, Link to European Power Network
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, MARCH 27 — The conference organised today in Tunis by the ‘Centre Mediterraneen des Energies reouvelables’ and chaired by Industry and Energy Minister Afif Chelbi focused on the role of the power link between Tunisia and Italy in the development of renewable energy. Italy was represented by the general director of the Italian Ministry of the Environment, Corrado Cini. The Medrec project and the underwater power line project, a partnership between Tunisia and Italy, were discussed during the conference. The 1000 mW line will be accessible for private operators as well, allowing them to export electricity to Europe up to a maximum of 200 mW. In his speech Minister Chelbi said that the experience of the two countries with energy, regarding Tunisia, is positive. The country has expanded its solar panels from 8,000 in 2004 to 80,000 square metres in 2008. Cini said that Italy wants to integrate Tunisia into the European electricity network. This, he pointed out, explains why Italy is interested in the Tunisian programmes for the development of biofuels and biomass. European countries should encourage imports of green energy from the southern side of the Mediterranean. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Industry: Tunisia, Clairis Technologies Opens Branch Office
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, APRIL 1 — Clairis Technologies, subsidiary of the French group Sogeclair and specialised in the aeronautics, car and industrial sectors, will be opening its first Mediterranean branch office in Tunisia. Clairis Technologie Mediterranee aims to foster the development of low-cost projects in the region, as reported by Cercle Finance. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Libya: Scajola in Tripoli to Open Pavilion
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, APRIL 2 — The annual Tripoli International Fair got underway today. Once again this year the Italian Foreign Trade Commission (ICE) has organised the collective Italian participation in the event with a pavilion which will see the presence of about 40 small and medium-sized Italian enterprises, many of which already work in Libya. The fair, which is dedicated to widely consumed, durable instrumental goods, is considered to be the most important showcase for Italian-manufactured products in Libya. This year Italian Economic Development Minister, Claudio Scajola, will be opening the Italian pavilion. Scajola is on an official visit to Tripoli where he has met the local Economy, Industry, Trade and Planning ministers, as well as the prime minister and the newly elected minister of Foreign Affairs. The Italian pavilion will be presenting its machines used for the mass production of bricks and the working of wood, marble and travertine, as well as those for construction, agriculture, motor-driven pumps, and cement mixing. Also on show are metal and glass panels, filters for irrigation and water treatment, external sheathing, sports fields designs, the designs and assembly of industrial plants, electrical systems, lifts, escalators, sea transport services, assistance for naval machinery, fish farming, boats, and flour products. The Italian participation is being organised by the exhibitors brought in by the ICE and the director of ICE offices in Tripoli, Umberto Bonito. Those present are essentially small and medium-sized Italian companies who are presenting their know-how and expertise to the Libyan market. The fair closes on April 12. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Saudi Arabia: Defence and Crime Fighting Agreement
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 27 — The Council of ministers authorised a cooperation agreement between Italy and Saudi Arabia in the defence sector and another for fighting crime. A note reports that the defence agreement is another sign of attention for Italy in the context of its international strategic policy, topics related to security in the Arabic peninsula and more in general to stabilise the area. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: Confindustria Looking South, Syria New Frontier
(by Pierluigi Franco) (ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 1 — After Libya and Algeria, Confindustria has set its sights on Syria. The reason the Confederation of Italian Industry is focusing on the Mediterranean is simple: experts say the area will be at the centre of the post-crisis economy, since it has been virtually untouched by the toxic funds doing so much damage to the global economy. “The Mediterranean area is in constant development with a substantial growth capacity,” explained Pier Luigi d’Agata, director of Confindustria’s Assafrica & Mediterraneo. “ It’s the only area where exports have increased and is of strategic importance for Italian SMEs”. The opportunities in the country were also stressed during the presentation of the Paese Guida (Country Guide) on Syria published by Banca Ubae. The guide showcases this country little known by entrepreneurs, despite its being “of great importance from a political and economic standpoint,” said diplomat Michele Tommasi of the Head Office for the Middle East and the Mediterranean of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. “Italy has always remained in contact” with Syria, whose “isolation has not produced any results,” as Tommasi pointed out. Now, thanks to the continuing dialogue, Italian entrepreneurs can look to the Syrian market with optimism. “Relations between Italy and Syria are excellent,” confirmed Souha Jamali of the Syrian embassy, “and it’s no coincidence that the only Syrian Chamber of Commerce abroad is located in Milan”. Jamali announced some ambitious plans: “in the next ten years, Syria will have to invest 45 to 50 billion dollars in infrastructure”. An interesting opportunity for Italian business which already supplies 70% of machinery to Syrian industry. On the other hand, Italy ranks fourth on the list of countries Syria exports to, and third on the list of Syrian imports, following Saudi Arabia and China. But Italy is the first European country with exports for over a billion euros, a 74% increase from 2004. Imports from Syria, a total of 728 million euros, largely consist of fuels (87%). The Syrian government clearly wants to carry out economic reforms for a market economy by liberalising trade and promoting investments. On March 10 the Damascus Stock Exchange was opened, with six listed companies and nine brokers. The year 2009 will not be a very good one for the Syrian economy, with crop levels halved by the serious drought of the past months and falling oil output. But on the mid-term, the country’s economy is expected to grow and diversify substantially: a challenge for Italian businesses, which could play a leading role in this development. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Founding Members Call for Terrorists to Surrender
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, APRIL 2 — Following repeated calls by Hassan Hattab, the well-known leader of the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC, today known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), another four founding members of the armed group have launched an appeal for fighters who are still active, inviting them to lay down their arms. One week before presidential elections, the ‘turncoats’ have made their appearance in the election campaign of outgoing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, which focuses on his policy of ‘National Reconciliation” promising amnesty to anyone arrested. “This is our advice to our brothers still in the mountains,” reads a letter signed by Abou Omar Abdelbar, Abou Zakaria, Mosaab Abou Daoud and Abou Hodeifa published today by the Algerian press, “come back to your lives and your families, who are waiting for you. Years have passed and every single one of us is waiting for the day when this tragedy will be over, because blood can dry, wounds can heal and fighting must stop between sons and brothers”. The appeal continues by saying that “our enemies want to divide us to destroy our country”. The message released by the four, who are amongst the fiercest members of the Algerian Salafite movement, came just a few weeks after Hassan Hattab’s audio appeal broadcast on the satellite television channel Al Jazeera. Hattab, who in 1998 founded the GSPC, is said to have made the appeal on the advice of Osama Bin Laden in order “to clean up” the bloody image of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), considered guilty of civilian massacres in the 1990s. Following the 1999 Civil Concord Law, which resulted in the release of thousands of Islamic fighters, Bouteflika, who is running for a third mandate, initiated the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in 2005. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Presidential Election Pure Formality, Belhimer Says
(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 3 — ‘Lord of Algeria’ is the title of a dossier on the upcoming presidential elections in Algeria available on the ResetDoc.org website (Dialogue on civilizations). ResetDoc is an association which intends to promote dialogue while respecting differences directed by, among others, Giuliano Amato and Giancarlo Bosetti. The introduction reads as follows: “The winner of the April 9 elections in Algeria is already known. It is outgoing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had the constitution amended so that he could run for a third consecutive term. The country finally made it out of the civil war in this last decade, but still has to embrace the path to modernisation. The political system remains desperately closed, with ‘pluralist’ elections which will not lead to change. To protest against the president’s sleight of hand the main opposition groups will boycott the vote”. The introduction is followed by an analysis by Mahmoud Belhimer, editor of the Algerian daily ‘Echourouk’, who believes that the elections will be a “pure formality. There will be no surprises, there is nothing at stake, and there is no competition whatsoever”, there will only be “a pure formal activity under the mark of continuity” given that nothing will prevent president Bouteflika from being his own replacement. In effect the opposition “has already realised that the game is over” and their role will be limited to affording some credibility to the already-won elections. Thus the boycott decided by a number of leaders and the silence preferred by other potential candidates, while many predict “a substantial drop in participation which could mark an all time low in the history of Algerian elections”, also because of the “social turmoil generated by the failure of economic and social policies” in the last decade and the 13% unemployment rate. The author believes that the five alternative candidates (three of which threatened to step down in recent days) “in truth can count on no real social and political base”, while “the Islamists who chose not to run will show up in loose formation. It appears that the Algerian regime is anything but an exception to Arab regimes dominated by lifelong leaders” despite the fact that “Algeria’s political life is viewed as the most dynamic in the region”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Secret Courts in Terrorism Cases
A new anti-terrorism Bill prescribes electronic tags for wayward foreigners and secret courts for sensitive intelligence information.
The Minister for Integration Birthe Rønn Hornbech (Lib.) is preparing legislation that would allow sensitive Intelligence Service evidence against terrorism suspects to be presented in secret courts. At the same time, the legislation would allow foreigners on exceptional leave to remain in Denmark, who do not fulfill location requirements, to be tagged.
Sensitive The new legislation comes following the refusal of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) to divulge intelligence in the case of two foreigners suspected of planning to kill one of Denmark’s Mohammed cartoonists. PET said it could not provide information in court, for fear of compromising its working methods and sources.
Of the two men who were administratively expelled from Denmark in the case, one left the country voluntarily while the other was given exceptional leave to remain in the country as he could not be expelled to Tunisia for fear of torture.
If the minister’s legislation passes through Parliament, it will be possible for the Service to provide information in secret.
“I am satisfied that there is now an effective model to handle cases of administrative expulsion in court,” Hornbech tells Ritzau.
Tagging The legislation also calls for tagging to be used for those on exceptional leave to remain in Denmark who do not obey requirements to present themselves at certain times at the Sandholm Camp in Northern Zealand.
The Bill would make it possible to attach leg tags for a month on those who ignore location requirements at least four times.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: Sicilian Delegation, Committment to Western Sahara
(ANSAmed) — PALERMO, APRIL 3 — The visit of a Sicilian delegation to Morocco continues. At the centre of the institutional meetings of the president of the Sicilian regional assembly, Francesco Cascio, is the difficult issue of Western Sahara, currently on the agenda of the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Cascio emphasised that “thanks to the Sicilian Statute we have won many battles for the defence of our people and starting off from the assumption that the Kingdom of Morocco views us as privileged mediators in the analysis of instruments aimed at attaining constitutional reforms able to bring about a democratic process, which revolves a great deal around the resolution of requests for autonomy made by Western Sahara”. “The Sicilian parliament, whose commitment is strengthened by that of the Italian ambassador to Rabat, Umberto Lucchesi Palli, has established”, Cascio explained, “a direct connection to the Moroccan Chamber of Representatives President, Mustapha Mansouri”. The president of Royal Council for Sahara Affairs (CORCAS), Jalehena Ould Rachid, “expressed”, Cascio concluded, “worries for the repercussions of the situation in the Sahara regarding human rights as well as the economic fallout, stating that there needs to be the involvement of international bodies in order to find a solution”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: Mamounia Hotel Furniture in Marrakesh Auctioned
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, APRIL 1 — Furniture, furnishings, tableware, and calashes from the famous Mamounia Hotel in Marrakesh, currently being renovated, will be sold at an auction from May 21-24, announced the commission responsible for selling the items, Claude Aguttes. Opened in 1023, the hotel, which should reopen this summer after three years of renovations work, will auction 99.5% of its old furniture at the Marrakesh exposition centre, with items selling from a few hundred to 2,000-3,000 euro. Thousands of glasses, plates, and sheets, hundreds of armchairs, lamps, tables, and end-tables, from art-deco to Hispanic-Moorish in style will be sold. The catalogue can be consulted on mamounia.com, while the exposition will take place on May 19 and 20. Owned by the Moroccan Railway, for over 70 years the hotel was the destination for dozens of celebrities in show business, but also politicians like Winston Churchill, who normally spent his winter vacations in Marrakesh at the Mamounia Hotel. Architect Jacques Garcia was given the responsibility of directing work to modernise the building. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
BBC Ends Training for Gaza and West Bank Journalists
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 1 — The BBC World Service Trust concluded a specialised training course in television news production for two television stations in the West Bank and a series of consultations for five local radio stations in the Gaza Strip, as part of the ‘Support to the palestinian media sector’ project funded by the European Union and the dutch government. The two-week television training, which combined theoretical and practical sessions targeted reporters, camera operators and picture editors working in the news room of Palestine TV and Al-Quds Educational TV in Ramallah. The project as well, concluded consultations for five radio stations in the Gaza Strip including Fursan Al-Erada, Gaza FM, Al-Eman, Alwan and Sawt A-Shaab radios. The consultations focused on news programs and the approaches radio stations take in producing their news. This two-year project’s total budget of 850,000 Euros is funded by the European Union (80%) and the Dutch Government (20%). The project will soon launch an interactive website to promote greater networking between media professionals, which will feature discussion forums and social networking tools as well as on-line training and information resources for media professionals. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Health: Lombardy Doctors Study Emergencies in Israel
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, MARCH 24 — From the use of information to logistics, from eco-terrorism to toxic emergencies, to military health: doctors from Lombardy are in Israel to study themes tied to the management of mega-emergencies, a field in which Israel is considered to be the most advanced in the world. The initiative, a course which involved a group of 24 doctors and health workers in Tel Aviv and which ended today, is the result of a health sector cooperation agreement for 2008-2010 signed by the Lombardy governor Roberto Formigoni and Israel’s Health minister Yaakov Ben Yizri in March 2008. The goal of the agreement is the exchange of information and documentation on emergency and trauma, telemedicine and medical technology. Councillor for Health in the Lombardy region, Luciano Bresciani, will meet the heads of the Israeli health service in Tel Aviv tomorrow, said a statement, for an update and exchange of technical information, which will be useful for studying and further developing the agreement. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel-Italy: Netanyahu Calls Berlusconi
(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 3 — Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, phoned Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Friday for an exchange of views on the situation in the Middle East, a statement from the premier’s office said. Berlusconi was said to have expressed his condolences for the victims of Thursday’s terror attack on the Bat Ayin Israeli settlement in the West Bank, in which Palestinian armed with a knife and ax killed a 13-year-old boy and injured a 7-year-old boy. Netanyahu thanked the premier and then illustrated to him the foreign policy guidelines of his new conservative government. Berlusconi gave the Israeli prime minister his best wishes for the success of his government and explained the initiatives Italy intends to take, also in its role as the current rotating president of the Group of Eight, in favor of peace and economic development in the Mideast. During their conversations, the two government leaders also agreed to meet as soon as possible, the premier’s office said. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinian Moderates Want Peace—With Hamas, Not Israel
by Barry Rubin
To see what’s happening—and what’s wrong—with Palestinian politics, consider Muhammad Dahlan. In him is embodied the ideological and strategic straitjacket, preventing Palestinians from making peace and getting a state of their own.
Dahlan, 48, is one of the two most able young Fatah leaders, the other being Marwan Barghouti. Dahlan, an architect of the first intifada in the late 1980s, became PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Yasir Arafat’s favorite proteges. A decade later, however, Dahlan broke with Arafat because he thought his boss was letting Hamas get too strong. If Arafat had heeded him, Fatah and the PA would be far better off today.
For many years, Dahlan was the key PA-Fatah “general” battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So when Hamas totally defeated Fatah in a 2007 coup and seized control there, Dahlan was responsible for the debacle. Now he’s back as special advisor to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Aside from his anti-Hamas credentials, Dahlan has been considered a relative moderate on the peace process. But what does this mean in practice? Dahlan told al-Sharq al-Awsat that the second (2000-2005) intifada and terrorism against Israeli civilians harmed Palestinian interests. His critique, though, was based not on moral considerations but because such acts hurt the Palestinian image and made Israel react more toughly.
He also complains that the uprising lacked a clear goal. Yet Dahlan never defines what that objective should have been. Here’s the movement’s fatal flaw. Neither he nor the PA nor Fatah tell Palestinians to accept Israel’s existence and build their state alongside it in permanent peace. Such a notion is outside the actual Palestinian debate.
Next, Dahlan talks of his hatred for Hamas but not because it blocks any deal with Israel. He accuses Hama of murdering hundreds of Palestinians; being an Iranian tool, a gang that is building a radical Islamist state in Gaza.
So what’s his solution? Merely that Hamas and the PA unite. Yet, given what Dahlan says about Hamas, what possible joint strategy and activities could such a coalition pursue?
Clearly, peace with Hamas is more important for Dahlan than peace with Israel. And make no mistake: these two alternatives are mutually exclusive…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Tennis Body Targets Malmö Over Fine
The Swedish Tennis Association said on Monday it is considering billing Malmö city council for 330,000 kronor ($25,000) if it loses its appeal against a fine incurred for playing Sweden’s Davis Cup match against Israel behind closed doors.
Swedish Tennis Association general secretary Henrik Källen told AFP an appeal would be launched within the next month.
“Our first step is to appeal those fines that we are obliged to pay.”
“If the appeal is not approved then we have to ask ourselves: can we go back to the city of Malmö and charge those fines to them?” Källen said.
The International Tennis Federation’s (ITF) Davis Cup Committee ruled on April 2nd that the Swedish governing body should pay $25,000 after local authorities refused to allow spectators to attend the March 6-9 tie which was won by Israel.
The ITF has also banned Malmö from holding Davis Cup matches for five years after local officials only allowed teams, officials, guests and media to watch the tie fearful of demonstrations taking place over Israel’s bloody December offensive in Gaza.
An ITF spokesman said the Swedish association had until May 2nd to lodge a complaint and that any appeal would be discussed during the French Open that takes place in Paris this June.
“The matter will then be discussed at the next meeting of the board of directors, which takes place during Roland Garros (the French Open tournament),” the spokesman said.
He refused to be drawn on the Swedish Tennis Association’s possible plans to bill the local authorities for the fine.
As well as a five-year ban, Sweden was warned it would suffer an automatic loss of choice of ground for the next tie were a similar situation to occur in the future.
Furthermore, all host city contracts entered into by the Swedish Tennis Association must guarantee that the tie will be open to the public.
The ITF has also denied the request of the Swedish Tennis Association to waive its obligation to provide a minimum of $15,000 dollars against gate receipts.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama Can’t Make Rogues Like North Korea Play by His Rules
So the White House got its headlines: “Obama promises nuclear-free world”; “Obama: ‘We will put an end to nuclear weapons’.” Yes sir, this guy is good. Barack Obama “promised” what it was not in his power to deliver and everybody believed him.
Does he (or anybody else) really think he can persuade India and Pakistan to give up their beloved nuclear capability while they glare at each other over an ever more hostile and terrifying border?
Does he think that any amount of rhetoric about a future based on hope rather than fear will convince China that possession of the Bomb doesn’t give it more global clout than it has had for centuries? Or that the new kids on the nuclear block, North Korea and (any minute now) Iran will dismantle their toys in response to an American undertaking to reduce its arsenal by a fraction?
But, as I say, the man is gifted at making what can be said sound like it can be done. And what is more, he is positively brilliant (I am not being sarcastic here) at embedding hard truths in a package of liberal rhetoric.
For the one concrete, deliverable promise that Mr Obama made in his Prague “end of nuclear weapons” speech was to continue one of the most unpopular Bush policies: the deployment of the missile defence shield in Europe. So long as Iran remains a threat, he said, the US would maintain its commitment to the missile defence programme which has (he tactfully did not say) been so unpopular in Eastern European countries such as the one in which he was speaking. And the enormous Czech crowd which stretched as far as the eye could see, cheered him. Were they listening carefully? Was his meaning lost in translation? Were the people who could be heard cheering actually Czechs? Well, never mind. He said it — and that is good news. For all the CND blah, there is still a firm grasp of reality — and resolve — at the heart of American foreign and defence policy. Not surprising really when you consider that it has been sub-contracted to Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates who were both supporters of the Bush White House on these matters (Gates having been Bush’s Defence Secretary before becoming Mr Obama’s).
But the pledge to continue with missile defence strategy was not the only throwback to the previous administration. Mr Obama made it clear that his plan to rid the world of nukes was not wide-eyed or credulous. It would rely, he said, on a system of rigorous inspection to ensure that suspect countries were not breaking the new international rules.
In fact, the world would have to be ready to provide “more resources to strengthen international inspections”. And those inspections — or presumably a refusal to submit to them — would have to have, he said, real consequences: “Violations must be punished”. But hang on — isn’t this precisely the situation we found ourselves in with Iraq? A rogue state which was believed by virtually all the world to have weapons of mass destruction (not nuclear in this case) refused to permit proper inspection, in spite of being given warning after warning by the UN — and then was punished. Mr Obama and most of the people who are applauding him around the globe disapproved, didn’t they? On the basis of his own words in Prague, what would he do differently if, say, Iran were to forbid inspections, or failed to abide by international warnings?
For that matter, what does he propose doing right now about North Korea? There was lots of heavy talk about how unacceptable that country’s belligerent tour de force had been in firing what could have been a nuclear-armed missile over Japan — but talk, as they say, is cheap. What might the “punishment” be for such a “violation” of the coming nuclear-free world order? And who would be responsible for administering it? The US? Not presumably on its own, since Obama’s America is busy assuming a new identity as humble participant in an international dialogue. A “coalition of the willing” perhaps, representing the “free peoples” of Europe and America now happily united under a leader who can provide a morally credible gloss to what sounded, under Bush, like a cowboy sheriff gunning down outlaws? Judging by the meagre response from Nato to the Obama appeal for a bit more military help on the ground in Afghanistan — the instability of which, as the President rightly said, is more of a threat to Europe than it is to the US — I wouldn’t bet on that. Good luck with the EU, Mr President: if you think Nato was pusillanimous and stingy, wait till you come up against Strasbourg.
That brings us to the question of just how much Mr Obama’s worldwide popularity is worth in real money. Europe listens with shining eyes, it mobs him in its thousands and claps and cheers — but when he says it’s time they shared a bit more of the burden, they stare at their shoes. What Mr Obama meant when he told Nato that “we would like to see Europe have much more robust capabilities” was: the free ride is over.
Post-war Europe has built its comfortable, deeply cushioned, welfare-state social democracy with the money it had once spent on armaments. Beating their swords into benefit payments has worked very nicely for all those peace-loving Europeans who turned their backs on militarism even as the Cold War raged. But it only worked because America was providing the arms and the defence protection that Europe highmindedly disdained.
Then the Cold War was over and Europe proceeded to divert even more of its defence budget into domestic spending (the “peace dividend”). But the collapse of the single Big Threat gave way to a more anarchic epidemic of irrational global instability. And now the emollient liberal Mr Obama is saying: “We’re looking to be partners with Europe, and the more capable they are defensively, the more we can act in concert on the shared challenges we face.”
This translates as: “You have built your healthcare systems and your welfare programmes on the back of our undertaking to defend you. While you got big-spending social democracy, we got the bill for protecting the whole show. Well, I’m planning to provide Americans with the sort of public health service that you guys have — and nobody knows better than you how inefficient and monstrously expensive that will be. So get ready to fend for yourselves. It’s our turn to waste money at home now.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Daniel Pipes: Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?
Smack on its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem — that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.
Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.
With the end of the Cold War, NATO’s mission changed and some saw Islamism as the new strategic enemy. Already in 1995, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes compared Islamism to the historic foe: “Fundamentalism is at least as dangerous as communism was.” With the Cold War over, he added, “Islamic militancy has emerged as perhaps the single gravest threat to the NATO alliance and to Western security.”
Indeed, NATO first invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on “collective self-defense,” to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks launched from that country.
More recently, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar argues that “Islamist terrorism is a new shared threat of a global nature that places the very existence of NATO’s members at risk” and advocates that the alliance focus on combating “Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” He calls for “placing the war against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy.”
Claes and Aznar are right; but their vision is now in jeopardy, for Islamists have penetrated the 28-state alliance, as was dramatically illustrated in recent days…
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Israel-Syria, Lieberman Against Golan Pull-Out
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM — The new Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has today said that Israel will not be withdrawing from the Golan Heights, and that Israel is willing to offer Syria only peace in exchange for peace. In an interview published in today’s Haaretz, Lieberman said that on the subject of “peace negotiations with Syria, there are no resolutions by the Israeli government and we have already said that we will not be withdrawing from the Golan Heights.” “There will only be peace in exchange for peace,” said Lieberman, taking a stance in contrast with the principle followed up until now of peace in exchange for territory, on which the peace talks between Israelis and Arabs were based. Syria has demanded that, in exchange for peace, Israel withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, which was occupied in the 1967 conflict. Israel considers the Golan Heights of strategic importance due to its geographically dominant position, as well as for its water resources. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Praises Turkey as East-West Bridge
ANKARA, Turkey —President Obama, directly addressing a majority Muslim country for the first time in his presidency, spoke up strongly in favor of Turkey’s accession into the European Union.
In a wide-ranging speech before the Turkish Parliament, Mr. Obama painted himself, in stark terms, as a man who understands the Muslim world and will seek to build a bridge between Islam and the West.
Introduced as “Barack Hussein Obama” Mr. Obama told the Turkish legislature that “America’s relationship with the Muslim world cannot and will not just be based on opposition to Al Qaeda. We speak broader relationship, based on mutual interests and respect.”
He drew applause when he said “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.”
“The United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans,” Mr. Obama said. “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them.”
And then he paused. And waited. And, after about five seconds, as the translator caught up, the applause came.
It was a politically risky line for Mr. Obama to use because back at home, there remains chatter, particularly on right-wing internet Web sites, that accuse Mr. Obama of being Muslim, and may try to interpret that line as proof of those views.
But Mr. Obama, who has become increasingly confident and sure-footed as his one-week maiden overseas trip is drawing to a close, is seeking to use Turkey—a secular Muslim democracy which is pivotal to American foreign policy goals on everything from Iraq to Afghanistan to Middle East peace—as an example of the type of relationship that can be struck between the United States and an Islamic population.
Mr. Obama also threw his weight firmly behind Turkey’s accession to the European Union, an issue that has split Europe, with France and Germany lobbying against Ankara. “Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union,” Mr. Obama said. “We speak not as members of the E.U., but as close friends of Turkey and Europe.”
Mr. Obama also waded into the fraught issue of Turkey’s relations with Armenia, and the genocide of more than a million Ottoman Armenians beginning in 1915. Turkey acknowledges the killings but says they did not amount to a systematic genocide, and has vehemently opposed the introduction of a bill in the United States Congress that would define it that way.
Back when he was a Senator, Mr. Obama said he supported that view, but he during a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul before the Parliament speech, he did not use the word genocide and said that Turkey and Armenia had made progress in talks.
During the Parliament speech, he spoke eloquently of the Armenia issue, saying that “history unresolved can be a heavy weight.”
“Our country,” he said, “still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans.”
Many in Turkey took pride in the fact that Mr. Obama had chosen Turkey for his first visit to a Muslim country, and said that recognition would help Turkey in its relations with the West and with other Muslim countries.
“It makes me happy that the Islam lived in Turkey is seen as a better version compared with other countries and that the message would be sent out from here,” said Samet Yildirim, a 26-year-old sandwich shop worker in Ankara.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama paid tribute to the memory of modern Turkey’s founding father, laying a wreath at the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is due to visit Istanbul before returning to Washington on Tuesday.
The visit was the latest of Mr. Obama’s efforts to change the tone of American relations with the Muslim world. In his inaugural address in January, Mr. Obama pledged to extend a hand of respect to the Muslim world, a sentiment which he also repeated in his interview with the Al Arabiya satellite television network later in January.
At a meeting on Sunday in Prague, he called on leaders of the European Union’s 27 nations to seek greater cooperation and closer ties with Islamic nations, including allowing Turkey to join the European Union — a contentious subject for some European countries.
Mr. Obama told Turkish officials that he strongly supported Turkey’s bid to join Europe. But in Prague, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said after Obama’s remarks that the decision was the EU’s to make, not Washington’s.
| — Hat tip: DC | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Assad Says Golan Heights Will be Freed by ‘Peace or War’
Doha, 2 April (AKI) — Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has launched a warning to Israel, saying the disputed Golan Heights will be liberated by “peace or through war”.
“There is no escaping the fact that the day will come when we will free the Golan, through peace or through war, said Assad in an interview with Qatari daily al-Sharq, in light of the swearing in of Israel’s new right-leaning government led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“From the war of Palestine (in 1948) to the occupation of the Golan (in the Six Day War in 1967) people are becoming more hostile towards Israel. There may come a generation that is unwilling to talk peace.”
Assad also said that Israel does not want peace, and instead said ‘resistance’ was the alternative.
“This enemy does not want peace. What is the alternative? The parallel route to the peace process is resistance. The Israeli will not come by his own will, so there is no alternative but for him to come from fear.”
He also accused all Israeli governments, both from the liberal left and the conservative right of carrying out violent policies against the Palestinians.
“All Israeli governments are the same: Ariel Sharon carried out a massacre in Palestine, and [Ehud] Barak aided the war in Gaza in that there is no difference between the right and the left in Israel.”
On Thursday, however, Israel’s new foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman ruled out any Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
“There is no cabinet resolution regarding negotiations with Syria, and we have already said that we will not agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights,” said Lieberman in an interview with Israeli daily Haaretz.
“Peace will only be in exchange for peace,” he said.
A day earlier during a transfer ceremony at Israel’s foreign ministry, Lieberman said that only war will lead to peace.
“Whoever thinks that he will achieve something by way of concessions — no, he will only invite more pressure and more wars,” Lieberman said. “If you want peace, prepare for war.
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights and annexed it in 1981. Syria and Israel have been technically at war ever since.
Last May, Israel and Syria launched peace talks aimed at a comprehensive peace agreement, under the auspices of Turkey.
Negotiations reached a stalemate in September after the resignation of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.
Syria then withdrew from the talks in protest against Israel’s three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip in late December 2008 and January 2009 in which at least 1,330 Palestinians were killed and 5,400 others were injured.
The offensive sparked outrage across the Arab world and worldwide protests against Israel.
Before May 2008, the last time both countries initiated peace negotiations was in 2000, but both sides failed to reach agreement over the future of the Golan Heights plateau and the nearby shore of the Sea of Galilee bordering the Golan
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: 54 Detained in Operation Against Market Manipulation
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 3 — 54 suspects have been detained as part of an investigation into alleged market manipulation at the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Aksam daily newspaper reports. The suspects have been captured at the end of six-month-long investigation. The suspects reportedly have made profits totaling 20 million lira (9,3 million euro) by spreading rumors to manipulate the prices of stocks traded at the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Aksam says that six of the suspects were owners of brokerages. The paper adds that a member of parliament also was said to be linked to the manipulations. The operation was verified by the Istanbul Police Financial Department Office; however no information regarding the details of the investigation has yet been released. The Istanbul Stock Exchange has not yet made an announcement on the issue. Referans daily newspaper says that the suspects were involved in the biggest manipulation in Turkish stock exchange history. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: A Bridge Way Too Far
by Diana West
If you want to know why US policy, from Bush to Obama, is cataclysmically wrong on pushing the European Union to make Turkey a member, you couldn’t do better than by reading this book, A Bridge Too Far, by Philip Claeys and Koen Dillen. The authors, members of the European Parliament from the Vlaams Belang party in Belgium, make the compelling historical, religious, cultural, and economic argument against Turkish membership in clear and logical prose.
Hint: It all has something to do with the fact that Turkey is a part of Islamic civilization, not Western civilization. If it joins the EU, it becomes the largest EU state, suddenly adding 70-plus million Muslims—presto—to “Europe.” In other words, Creeping Sharia becomes Leaping Sharia.
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Police Arrest 31 Suspected Terrorists
Sanaa, 2 April (AKI) — Police have arrested a total of 31 suspected terrorists in an operation that began on Sunday in the southern coastal Abyan governorate of Yemen, against local Al-Qaeda cells, a senior police official told the Arabic-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. Many of the suspects were detained in the Jiaar district.
“This is an important result, because we captured 31 out of 40 suspects we believe are operating in the area,” said the local head of police, Ahmad al-Maisari, quoted by the daily.
“We will continue with our efforts to capture the suspects who are still at large,” he said.
The police operation targeted two jihadist groups believed to be operating in the area: Jamaat al-Jihad and The Army of Aden.
Eight policemen were injured in gunfights with militants during the operation, according to the Yemeni authorities.
Some independent analysts claim nine policemen were killed during clashes in which heavy weapons and helicopters were deployed to flush the suspected militants out of their hideouts.
Yemen has developed a reputation as a haven for Islamist militants in recent years and there have been several attacks there against western targets.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: UN Slams Law Curtailing Women’s Rights
New York, 2 April (AKI) — A new law in Afghanistan seriously curtailing women’s rights, even explicitly permitting marital rape, is a “huge step in the wrong direction,” the United Nations human rights chief said on Thursday, calling for its repeal.
Not yet published, the law, which was passed by the two houses of Afghanistan’s parliament before being reportedly signed by president Hamid Karzai earlier this month, regulates the personal status of the country’s minority Shia community members, including relations between men and women, divorce and property rights.
It denies Afghan Shia women the right to leave their homes except for ‘legitimate’ purposes; forbids them from working or receiving education without their husbands’ express permission; weakens mothers’ rights in the event of a divorce; and makes it impossible for wives to inherit houses and land from their husbands, even if husbands can inherit property from their wives.
“This is another clear indication that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is getting worse, not better,” said Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Respect for women’s rights — and human rights in general — is of paramount importance to Afghanistan’s future security and development.”
That such a law has been passed in 2009 targeting women in this manner is “extraordinary, reprehensible and reminiscent of the decrees made by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s,” she stressed.
Afghanistan’s Shia community, composed mainly of the Hazara minority, comprises some 10 per cent of the country’s total population, and the new law has the strong support of the Hazaras’ male leadership, even though it has been vigorously opposed by others in the group as well as Afghan human rights campaigners.
There are concerns that the law will set precedents adversely affecting all Afghan women.
In addition to women’s rights, there have been other setbacks to the country that have been undermining efforts to consolidate the rule of law in Afghanistan, such as both freedom of expression by the media and civil society activists being increasingly threatened, Pillay said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia’s Islamic Forces Full of Hate, Former President Abdurrahman Wahid Says
JAKARTA: Islamic extremists have infiltrated deep into Indonesia’s government, businesses, schools and religious bodies, and are using cunning new tactics to seize control of mosques and preach radicalism, former president Abdurrahman Wahid has written in a new book.
Mr Wahid, who was president of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, said hardliners were transforming Indonesia’s traditionally moderate brand of Islam into one that is “aggressive, furious, intolerant and full of hate”.
Writing in The Illusion of an Islamic State, Mr Wahid said the extremists were systematically infiltrating Indonesian institutions in order to remake Indonesian society “in their own harsh and rigid likeness”.
Mr Wahid, also known as Gus Dur, said the hardliners were strongly influenced by transnational Islamic movements from the Middle East, such as Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood, and many are financed by massive amounts of Wahhabi petro-dollars.
The 68-year-old wrote that the hardliners have penetrated to the heart of Indonesia’s Government, and warned of opportunistic politicians who work with extremist political parties and groups.
“They have joined the extremists in driving our nation towards a deep chasm, which threatens destruction and national disintegration,” he wrote.
The book is based on more than two years of research by the LibForAll Foundation, a non-government organisation set up to promote religious tolerance and discredit extremism.
The Indonesian Council of Religious Scholars had largely fallen into the grip of radicals and is now dictating to — and in many ways controlling — the country’s government, he wrote.
As Mr Wahid noted in the introduction, researchers for the book uncovered evidence of several cunning schemes extremists use to seize control of mosques.
Under one scheme, a group of youths offer a mosque a free cleaning service. Actually “extremist agents”, the cleaners aim to impress a mosque’s management with their piety, and eventually gain a spot on the mosque’s board.
Once on the board, they consolidate their power, stack it with other radicals and eventually come to control who can serve as imam, deliver sermons or give religious education.
The groups were also involved in strenuous efforts to seize control of Indonesia’s mainstream Islamic organisations, particularly Muhammadiyah and the Nahdatul Ulama, in order to use them as vehicles to spread extremism, Mr Wahid said.
About 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 240 million people are Muslims. Mr Wahid, Indonesia’s fourth president, was kicked out of office and impeached in 2001 amid accusations of incompetence and corruption.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Religious Extremists Threaten Country’s Existence Says Petraeus
Washington, 2 April (AKI) — Religious extremists operating along the Pakistan-Afghan border pose a direct threat to Pakistan’s existence, the commander of US forces in the region, David Petraeus, has warned
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on US president Barack Obama’s new strategy to defeat Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Petraeus on Wednesday also vowed to take the fight to insurgents in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He did not explain how he planned to do so. However, Obama said last week that the United States would pursue ‘high-value’ terrorist targets inside Pakistan but would consult Islamabad before doing so.
Also last week, Obama’s national security adviser James Jones indicated that the US would continue drone attacks inside Pakistan as they had proven ‘effective’ against the militants.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups based in the border area were “an ever more serious threat to Pakistan’s very existence,” Petraeus told the Senate panel.
The Pakistani military, he said, had stepped up operations against the militants but more action was needed.
Petraeus noted that the situation in Pakistan was closely linked to that of Afghanistan. He praised Obama’s new plan for developing a regional approach to resolve the issue of militancy, describing it as a step in the right direction.
Petraeus acknowledged that militants in Afghanistan were growing in strength and audacity but vowed to fight them “relentlessly and aggressively.”
But Petraeus and top US defence department official Michele Flournoy were greeted with sceptical questions from senators about how willing the Pakistani government is to fight extremists hiding in the country’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Committee chairman Carl Levin warned that he did not agree with the administration’s claim that progress in Afghanistan depended on success on the Pakistan side of the border.
Afghanistan’s future should not be tied totally to the Pakistan government’s decisions, he said, adding that he remained doubtful about Pakistan’s ability to secure its border.
“I remain sceptical that Pakistan has either the will or the capability to secure their border,” he said.
Levin earlier urged Pakistan to prove it’s willing to take on extremists within its own borders before the US delivers financial aid or weapons to Islamabad. The senator said he did not believe the United States can buy stability in Pakistan.
Petraeus, however, insisted that the US assistance would help Pakistan fight the insurgents.
Flournouy, a top Pentagon policy official, also called for expanded aid to Pakistan. But she said: “Military and economic support will be limited if we do not see improvements in Pakistani importance.”
The question of how to treat Pakistan has emerged as a key disagreement between the Obama administration and Levin, one of his party’s most influential voices on defence.
Levin has been largely supportive of the Obama administration’s new strategy and backed the decision to send about 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
Petraeus warned that stronger insurgents threaten not just Afghanistan and Pakistan, but other nations in the region, including India, and raise the chances of terrorist attacks in the United States.
And he called expanded operations against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan ‘imperative’ in weakening that effort, and defended Pakistan’s efforts to fight extremism within its borders.
The success of the Taliban led insurgency in Afghanistan, where violence has increased, was directly linked to dissatisfaction among the Afghan people with their government’s performance and frustration with government corruption, Petraeus stressed.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Govt Announces Modest Troop Increase in Afghanistan
Madrid, 3 April (AKI) — The Spanish government announced on Friday it would increase from 780 to 1,000 the number of its troops in conflict-wracked Afghanistan. Spain’s foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said his country would send a “small number” of extra soldiers to Afghanistan, said Spanish-language news agency Europa Press.
Th announcement came as a NATO summit took place in Strasbourg, France, amid a US push for countries to send more troops and civilian support staff to Afghanistan.
However, the extra Spanish troops are not expected to become part of the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan (ISAF). Their their mission will be to train Afghan armed forces officials.
Moratinos (photo) also said that Span’s prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will announce during the NATO summit extra battallion troops to beef up security during Afghanistan’s upcoming presidential elections on 20 August 2009.
There are almost 53,000 troops in Afghanistan from around 40 countries that make up ISAF. It is NATO’s largest ground operation outside Europe.
Moratinos remarks come as thousands of new US troops are due to arrive in the country. President Barack Obama has pledged to send 21,000 extra US soldiers to Afghanistan to battle the emboldened insurgency.
Under the new US strategy in Afghanistan unveiled by Obama last week, Washington is considering deploying thousands more troops and US personnel who will train and bolster the Afghan army and police
Spain is currently the tenth largest contingent in Afghanistan and also has armed forces personnel in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Kosovo and Chad, and off the coast of Somalia
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China: Migrant Worker Blows Himself Up Because He Was Not Paid
Han, 42, worked in 2007 but said he had not received 4,500 yuan (450 euros). The company denies the debt. Labor rights have little protection in China, and workers often take to the streets to protest or perform extreme actions.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, a migrant worker has blown himself up because his boss did not pay him. In the China of the economic miracle, workers have little protection, and injustices often lead to protests, some of them serious.
Yesterday afternoon, Han Wushun, a 42-year-old ethnic Chinese migrant worker from Sichuan, asked his bosses at Xinjiang Beixin Road and Bridge Construction Company for back pay of 4,500 yuan (about 450 euros). When he found out that he would not receive this, he blew himself up with a homemade bomb he was carrying in his backpack. The explosion killed him and injured the two managers, who were trying to get away.
Han had worked for the company in 2007, for three months. He sued for the back pay in 2008, but last July the court rejected his request.
Company sources say that he received what was due to him.
In the country, it is not unusual for companies to fail to pay their workers, and the phenomenon has increased because of the current economic crisis: according to official data, in Shenzhen alone in 2008, about 370 companies did not pay 102 million yuan in wages to 39,200 workers. The problem is so bad that in this city, the municipal office for social security and labor has put under observation all of the companies that are in trouble and have not paid salaries for at least a month.
The phenomenon is so widespread that in recent years, the government has preferred to reimburse back pay of hundreds of millions of yuan, in order to prevent unrest. In 2008, official sources admitted that at least 87,000 mass protests took place for economic reasons, often connected to injustices suffered by workers.
Recent official data are not available. At the end of 2006, 1.63 billion yuan in back pay was said to be owed to about 800,000 migrants in Beijing, 1.84 billion to more than one million migrants in Guangdong alone, and 130 million to 130,000 migrants in Gansu. The numbers are high if one considers that at the time, the monthly salary was 1,000 yuan. Those who do not receive their salaries face long and costly civil suits, with the risk that in the meantime the employer could drop out of sight: for this reason, most migrants are ultimately willing to settle for a portion of what they are owed. Protection for migrants is also difficult because less than two thirds of them sign a regular contract, according to a study by the ministry for labor and social security. During the Asian financial crisis at the end of the 1990’s, there were many suicides by unemployed workers.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Ignore Our Christian Values and the Nation Will Drift Apart
Britain is suffering because we have been too willing to forget what made us who we are, writes Michael Nazir-Ali.
I have resigned as Bishop of Rochester after nearly 15 years. During that time, I have watched the nation drift further and further away from its Christian moorings. Instead of the spiritual and moral framework provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we have been led to expect, and even to celebrate, mere diversity. Not surprisingly, this has had the result of loosening the ties of law, customs and values, and led to a gradual loss of identity and of cohesiveness. Every society, for its wellbeing, needs the social capital of common values and the recognition of certain virtues which contribute to personal and social flourishing. Our ideas about the sacredness of the human person at every stage of life, of equality and natural rights and, therefore, of freedom, have demonstrably arisen from the tradition rooted in the Bible.
Different faiths and traditions will not necessarily produce the values and virtues which have been so prominent in the history of this country. It is quite wrong to presume that they will, as Gordon Brown appeared to do last week in his speech calling for “value-based” rules at St Paul’s Cathedral. Some faiths may emphasise social solidarity more than personal freedom, others publicly enforce piety over a nurturing of the interior life and yet others stress honour and shame rather than humility, service and sacrifice. It may be, of course, that there is a useful overlap among these traditions in terms of values by which to live. It may also be that people of different faiths can “own” many of the values produced by a Christian framework in this nation, but this cannot take place in a vacuum.
One of the surprising aspects of what you could call our values vacuum is the historical amnesia which is so prevalent today — or, rather, a selective sort of amnesia. The perfectly virtuous pages of history, such as Magna Carta, the campaign to abolish the slave trade and, later, slavery itself, the easing of conditions of labour for men, women and children and the introduction of universal education, which all took place under the inspiration of the Christian faith, are forgotten or ignored. Instead of which we get large doses of guilt along with an emphasis on our involvement in the slave trade, religious and ethnic persecution, exploitative colonialism and other wrongs which certainly need repentance. But repentance for past wrongs without the celebration of what has been good has deprived people of a common vision by which to live and a strong basis for the future.
The churches in general, and the Church of England in particular, have, of course, been concerned about these developments; but in many cases, they have had to stand by and watch the erosion of the Christian tradition in this land. The so-called “reform” of abortion laws, the disappearance of a public recognition of marriage and family in the fiscal and social spheres and the erosion of a Christian presence in public institutions, in terms of chapels and chaplaincies, have all occurred while the Church has either looked on impotently or, sometimes, been complicit in bringing about the change it has subsequently regretted. For example, the 1965 Church report on abortion reform left the door open for the 1967 Act to include provisions which would later be used to widen considerably the availability of abortion.
I have, for a long time, been a supporter of the continuing establishment of the Church of England on the simple grounds that, if the State wishes the Church to have a voice in its councils, why should the Church refuse such an opportunity — as long as it is without compromising Christian integrity. I have often had cause to remember what St John Fisher, one of my distinguished predecessors, had to say about the Royal Supremacy, “insofar as the Law of God allows it”.
What a contrast this view of the Church’s pre-eminence makes when compared to the beliefs of today’s prominent political and even religious figures. Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, went so far as to say recently that the establishment of the Church of England depends on “staying in tune” with British society. The Church is seen as simply the religious aspect of society, there to endorse any change or chance which politicians deem fit to impose on an unsuspecting nation, rather than being the guardian of the Christian tradition which has provided for nearly everything valuable in this country.
Against this, the Church worldwide is growing rapidly and is very aware of its counter-cultural situation. In many parts of the Middle East, South and Central Asia, China and Africa, the expression of Christian faith and life is restricted at best and, in some cases, there is active persecution, both official and unofficial. I have for long been involved in assisting these brothers and sisters in the faith with advocacy of their cause; now I plan to devote more of my time to their struggle. It is crucial for the future of world Christianity that they survive and flourish; and in their clear and sacrificial witness, they have a great deal to teach the churches of the West.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Canadian Warship Thwarts Somali Pirate Attack
A Canadian warship based at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt thwarted a pirate attack in the Arabian Sea Saturday and on Sunday came to the rescue of Somali refugees.
HMCS Winnipeg, part of a NATO-led counter-piracy mission known as Operation Allied Protector, saw three small pirate skiffs closing in on an Indian merchant vessel, the Pacific Opal, in the Gulf of Aden.
The warship was escorting another vessel nearby when the Pacific Opal radioed for help.
The Canadian ship’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Craig Baines, immediately ordered the ship’s Sea King helicopter to investigate. The helicopter flew between the threatened vessel and the pirates to scare them away.
The helicopter crew hung a two-foot-by-three-foot red stop sign from the side of the aircraft that says “Stop” in Somali.
“We hung it right beside [the chopper’s] C-6 machine gun and they [got] the idea that we don’t like what they’re doing,” said Cmdr. Baines, in an interview with the Times Colonist from the ship Sunday.
It was enough to make the skiffs pull back, but the helicopter stayed with the vessel until the pirates were no longer a threat.
Pirates are common along the coast of Somalia, threatening commercial vessels travelling through the Horn of Africa, said Cmdr. Baines.
He said the pirates try to overtake a ship and hold it ransom until the owner gives them money.
“There’s huge amounts of money at play so they are willing to take large risks to be successful,” said Cmdr. Baines.
But pirates are deterred by any military presence because they know the navy can overpower them, said Cmdr. Baines.
“They want nothing to do with us, so as soon as we come on scene, they’ll break away and do something else,” he said.
The pirates often disguise themselves as fishermen, he said.
They are often toting AK-47s or grenade launchers, but Cmdr. Baines said there was no indication these men had weapons.
Cmdr. Baines said he was surprised to see so much action since the crew just arrived in the Gulf April 2.
“This highlights the importance of our mission and the efforts to make a difference with our coalition partners in the fight against piracy and international terrorism,” said Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, commander of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, in a news release.
A day after warding off the pirates, HMCS Winnipeg brought supplies to a vessel full of hungry and thirsty Somali refugees who had been at sea for two days.
The helicopter crew spotted an overcrowded vessel of 51 people including women, children and a baby, trying to get from Somalia to Yemen.
HMCS Winnipeg, with a crew of about 240 officers and non-commissioned members, has been at sea since Feb. 5 and is expected to return to Esquimalt Aug. 21.
The majority of the crew’s families are in the Victoria-area, said Cmdr. Baines, who is originally from Comox, B.C.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Automatic Asylum for Somalis to Stop
Deputy Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak says she wants to stop granting automatic asylum to Somalis claiming refugee status. She says abuse and fraud no longer make the procedure viable. Some, she claims, deliberately mutilate their fingers so no reliable prints can be taken. Others are said to come with children they falsely describe as adopted. The justice minister stressed, however, that the situation in central and southern Somalia remains so troubling that legitimate asylum seekers remain welcome. Last year nearly 4,000 Somalis applied for asylum in the Netherlands.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Must Aid Somalia Against Pirates
The Somalian prime minister asks Norway to help in the fight against pirates. He believes more patrol crafts is not the solution for ending piracy.
Prime minister Omar Abdirashi Ali Sharmarke is surprised that countries choose to send navy crafts to Somalia to protect the merchant vessels.
Instead of more ships, he asks for help in strengthening the country’s government and the patrol forces.
A Norwegian tanker has now been held ransom by pirates for ten days.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Pirates Hijack British-Owned Cargo Ship in Gulf of Aden
Somali pirates have hijacked a British-owned cargo ship, after 48 hours of plunder at sea.
The 32,000-tonne Malaspina Castle, which flies a Panamanian flag, was taken on Monday morning in the Gulf of Aden.
She was the fifth ship snatched in two days off the Somali coast despite naval patrols along main shipping lanes.
The European Union’s Horn of Africa maritime security centre, based in Northwood, north west London, said: “Few details are known at this stage, but the mixed-nationality crew are believed to be safe.”
The vessel has a crew of 24, from Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Philippines.
The Foreign Office said it was looking into the matter which is also being monitored by the London-based International Maritime Organisation.
Somalia’s pirates had been having a quiet year after their bumper haul in 2008, when they took almost 50 vessels. High seas kept their small skiffs ashore and only two attacks were reported during both January and February.
That all changed in the past fortnight with a spate of attacks. The Malaspina Castle was taken at the end of a busy weekend for the pirates. In the space of two days they also snatched a French yacht, a German container ship, a Yemeni tug and a Taiwanese vessel, according to Andrew Mwangura, who monitors piracy for the Seafarers Assistance Programme in the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
“We have seen times like this when they have taken so many vessels but what is different is that they are going further afield,” he said.
Pirates are currently holding at least 15 vessels with some 250 crew members.
Recent attacks have shifted from the Gulf of Aden, now heavily patrolled by warships, to Somalia’s east coast and far out into the Indian Ocean.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia: American Al Qaeda Hold Rare ‘Press Conference’
Two young Americans who left their homes to join an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia held a rare “press conference” in southern Somalia on Sunday, saying they want to be killed “for the sake of God,” according to a U.S. law enforcement official and a report posted on a Somali news Web site.
For several months the FBI has been investigating at least 20 Somali-American men from the Minneapolis area and elsewhere in the United States who traveled to war-torn Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabaab, which has been warring with the moderate Somali government since 2006.
Last month, a source familiar with the FBI investigation told FOX News that “several” of the men had returned to the United States, while others “are still there [in Somalia].” Today is the first time any of these men have spoken publicly.
“We came from the U.S. with a good life and a good education, but we came to fight alongside our brothers of al-Shabaab … to be killed for the sake of God,” one man said at the press conference, as translated by Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn.
According to the news report, two men, identifying themselves as Abu-Muslim and Abu Yaxye, said they are “Somali youth” from the United States who are now stationed near the city of Kismayo, more than 300 miles southwest of Mogadishu, according to Jamal. The men said they are talking to media for the first time so others can learn why they joined al-Shabaab, he said.
Sources told FOX News there is a video of the press conference.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Illegal Immigrant Surge Has Customs on Alert
BORDER protection authorities have intercepted a boatload of 63 unauthorised arrivals, bringing to 187 the number of boatpeople detained this year.
The interception by Customs, 31 nautical miles southwest of Ashmore Island, took place last Thursday — a day after authorities were forced to assist a second boatload of 50 illegal immigrants whose boat had run aground in the Torres Strait.
The latest boatloads mean the number of unauthorised passengers to arrive this year has exceeded the total of 179 for the whole of last year.
The increase in the number of boatpeople comes after the Rudd Government last year softened Australia’s treatment of unauthorised arrivals, shutting down the so-called “Pacific Solution” of offshore processing centres and abolishing temporary protection visas.
People who make protection claims outside Australia’s migration zone enjoy greater appeal rights, although they do not have access to Australian courts if their claims are unsuccessful.
The Opposition has said people-smugglers have registered the Government’s changes to immigration policies as a softening of the rules, leading to an increase in boatpeople.
The delay in announcing the latest boatload of arrivals, believed to contain a number of children, prompted Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone to accuse the Government of seeking to bury politically sensitive news.
“You have to ask, are they deliberately trying to manipulate the public to try to reduce the impression that we do have a major new surge on our hands?” Dr Stone said.
“The public really does have a right to know. Or is it a case that ministers (Chris) Evans and (Bob) Debus didn’t know what was going on four days ago?”
A spokeswoman for Mr Debus, the Home Affairs Minister, defended the delay in announcing the interception, citing “operational” considerations.
“Due to the number of people on board, we waited until they were safely on their way to Christmas Island,” the spokeswoman said. Mr Debus said Thursday’s interception showed Australia’s border security arrangements were working.
Dr Stone said it was clear there had been a surge in people-smuggling.
“The fact that boats are getting bigger would suggest it’s a tried-and-true measure,” Dr Stone said.
“We’re back on the map.”
This year’s boatpeople tally of 187 and last year’s of 179 represent significant increases on the 148 who arrived in 2007 and 60 in 2006.
Last Wednesday, a boat carrying 50 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers had to be assisted after it ran aground 65 nautical miles northeast of Thursday Island.
The boat was being monitored by Border Protection Command, an inter-government agency, before it hit the reef.
Sources have told The Australian those in the Sri Lankan vessel are believed to have sailed without the assistance of people-smugglers.
About 115 of the 282 unauthorised arrivals to pass through Christmas Island have been granted protection visas, an immigration department spokeswoman said yesterday.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Iceland: Protestors Seized Outside Home of Director of Immigration
Seven protestors were arrested outside the home of Haukur Gudmundsson, head of the Directorate of Immigration, yesterday. Between 20 and 30 people participated in the demonstration, protesting against the treatment of asylum seekers in Iceland.
Eyewitnesses told Morgunbladid that the protests had been peaceful until police asked demonstrators to leave the area. Seven protestors did not comply with the police’s demands and were subsequently arrested.
Gudmundsson, who had met with the group of protestors on an earlier occasion to discuss the position of asylum seekers in Iceland, was not at home during the demonstration.
“I had decided to neither allow protestors to make me a hostage in my own home nor allow them to force me to leave it,” Gudmundsson said. “I was simply at a confirmation party, like so many others on this day, and decided not to let [the protests] disturb me.”
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, a traditional day for Lutheran confirmations in Iceland.
Gudmundsson said the cause does not justify the means in this instance. “The cause aside, which is certainly worthy in many aspects, society cannot accept that people gather outside the homes of certain individuals who are involved in difficult cases, regardless of whether they are judges, policemen or journalists. Such actions could end badly.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: OIM, Survivors Have Kidney Problems
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, APRIL 1 — The twenty survivors of the boat which sank last Saturday off the Libyan coast are now at a reception centre in the Tripoli suburb of Tuisha, where they are being treated for kidney problems following their long ordeal at sea: 12 hours travelling and eight waiting to be rescued, clinging to the stern of the boat which stayed afloat after the boat capsized. Laurence Hart, the representative of the International Organisation for Migration (OIM), related some of the survivors’ stories to ANSA. They are almost all men between 18 and 24, apart from one Tunisian woman, who has been admitted to hospital for back pains caused by kidney problems. ‘They must be treated to avoid the problems caused by drinking sea water getting worse” said Hart but the doctors are predicting that they will all recover”. The survivors say that 70 women and two children drowned, all of whom were on board the boat which was crammed with 257 people. ‘We have had no official confirmation that a hundred bodies were recovered by the Libyan authorities, as some people have written” said Hart. ‘Nor are We in a position to confirm whether the departed boats consisted only of that of the survivors and the one rescued by the Italian tug. Nobody can say whether it is true that of another two boats, one reached Italy and another was sighted off Malta”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Report Says Education Gap Threatens Democracy
Educational level has replaced social class as the main division in society, according to a report published on Monday entitled Diploma Democracy. The report by professors Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille of Utrecht and Leiden universities says that because the political elite is entirely made up of people with a high level of education, less educated people feel excluded from the democratic process. They describe what they see as a new meritocracy as ‘diploma democracy’.
The report, produced for the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, suggests that the key division in society is no longer between the working and capitalist classes, but rather a political gulf between well-educated and less educated people. As a consequence, people with lower qualifications feel excluded from the established political parties such as the Labour Party or the conservative VVD, and are switching their support to new populist parties like the Socialist Party on the left, or the Freedom Party led by controversial anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders on the right.
The authors say attitudes to immigration and integration reveal the political gap most starkly. Well-educated people tend to see the multicultural society in a positive light, while people with a lower level of education are more likely to oppose immigration and be more nationalistic. There is a similar divide between well-educated ‘cosmopolitans’ and less educated ‘nationalists’ in their attitudes to the European Union.
The report says that even though overall educational levels have risen, the better-educated minority still dominates the political arena because of ‘educational inflation’. The authors take the view that established political parties need to be more responsive to the less educated 60 percent of the electorate to take account of the educational divide in society. They propose that referenda could be a means to include a wider section of society in the political process, and that compulsory voting would also offer way to draw less educated people back to the polls.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Asylum Seeker Sets Himself Alight
A man who had his application for asylum rejected has sustained serious injuries after setting himself alight.
The 26-year-old man set himself alight on Friday afternoon in a Migration Board (Migrationsverket) detention centre in Alvesta in central Sweden.
His life is now in the balance as a result of his injuries.
The man had finished talking with his administrator at around midday when he walked passed the reception and into a toilet, locking the door.
“After a while a bang was heard and the man came out of the toilet like a walking torch,” said Fredrik Svärd at Kronobergs police to news agency TT.
Staff at the centre managed to extinguish the fire, but the man had already sustained serious injuries.
Police were unable to confirm on Friday the nature of the inflammable liquid that the man had used.
The 26-year-old was rushed to Växjö hospital and was later transferred to the burns unit at Linköping University Hospital.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
David Frum: Holocaust Denier Drops Denial, Says Jews Are Hated Enough
“The new anti-semitism” is the name given to the more pathological forms of anti-Zionism often found in the Middle East, in Europe and alas on North American university campuses. Obsessive hatred of Israel serves the same purpose as the more explicit hatred of Jews that went out of style with the end of World War II.
As a result, one of the world’s leading Holocaust deniers now concedes that there is no more reason to deny historical fact: Lies about Israel have now led people to hate Jews so much that it’s no longer necessary to lie about the Holocaust. Lawrence Auster tells the story:
In an article posted this past January at the website of the Institute for Historical Review, Mark Weber, the director of that organization and for decades the editor of its journal and the leading Holocaust denial publication, The Journal of Historical Review, announced his abandonment of Holocaust revisionism. The real motive of the Holocaust denial enterprise, he writes, has always been to weaken and delegitimize the “Jewish-Zionist power.” …
[But] Holocaust denial is no longer necessary in carrying out the war against the Jews, because, Weber says, anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism have been increasing worldwide. … As a result, a direct attack can now be made on the Jews themselves, rather than the indirect attack through Holocaust denial.
It’s a jaw-dropping story, and a sad tribute to the enduring power of history’s most murderous hatred.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Kay on Paul Collier’s “Wars, Guns, and Votes”: Democracy May Not be Such a Great Thing After All
[Comment from Tuan Jim: I’ll look for this book this week.]
In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has signed into law legislation that would allow men who follow the Shiite branch of Islam to rape their wives. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has turned one of Africa’s richest nations into a dysfunctional, cholera-infected charity case. In neighbouring South Africa, the ruling party is led by Jacob Zuma, a creepy populist with a grade 5 education. In Gaza, Hamas PM Ismail Haniya has transformed history’s first truly autonomous Palestinian territory into a war-ravaged pariah.
Four leaders — all incompetent, brutal, corrupt, or all three. And here’s the kicker: Every one of them stakes his power on democratic credentials.
During the Cold War, Western governments took their Third World allies as they were. But beginning in the early 1990s, we commanded our impoverished friends and aid recipients to hold elections. Democracy became the be-all and end-all of legitimacy on the world stage. A decade later, George W. Bush raised the stakes further by blaming terrorism on the culture of tyranny entrenched in Muslim nations. Spread democracy to the Middle East, he prophesized, and the violence would end.
But as British researcher Paul Collier writes in a startling new book, the idea that democracy stabilizes at-risk societies and discourages violence — the blind assumption at the heart of Western foreign policy these last 20 years — is wrong.
In Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, Collier — an Oxford University professor with twinned passions for international development and number-crunching — analyzes nation-by-nation political and military data going back to 1960. His results betray an extraordinary pattern. Wealthy nations, like our own, do indeed benefit from democracy: Political freedom systematically reduces the risk of civil war, insurgency, and other forms of violence. But in poor nations, the effect is the opposite. In sub-Saharan Africa and the poor Muslim nations of the Middle East and Central Asia, democracy can be expected to render societies more violent, not less.
The threshold, Collier found, is about US$2,700 per capita per year. At income levels below that, a nation that takes its political cues from Beijing or Riyadh will be less likely to fall into civil war than one that takes its cues from Washington or Ottawa.
What explains the phenomenon? In poor nations, education levels tend to be low, and the electorate tends to be poorly informed — conferring an advantage on the sort of crude, unstable populist who would never gain power in the West. Think of Hugo Chavez, and the millions of uneducated slum-dwellers who voted for him, captivated by his “Bolivarian revolution.”
An impoverished electorate looking for scapegoats will often vote for the shrillest demagogue on the ballot — or, failing that, someone who just happens to be from one’s own tribe, even if he’s a terrorist or a criminal. Hamas legitimizes its rule with Jew-baiting. For Mugabe, it’s the whites. For Afghanistan’s government, its women and infidels. In Kenya’s recent election, Collier notes, 98% of Luo voters voted for a Luo opposition candidate.
In poor societies with strong ethnic and sectarian cleavages, democracy can be especially disastrous (think Iraq between 2004 and 2007) — because elections are seen as winner-take-all contests that put the machinery of state (complete with police and prisons) into the hands of the winning tribe or sect. Typically, the most dangerous period begins to build up after an election, when the losing side resorts to violence in a desperate bid to avoid the grim fate they assume awaits them.
Here in Canada, many of us got misty-eyed at the sight of Afghan voters holding up their purple thumbs, exercising their democratic rights after years of Taliban rule. But elections, in and of themselves, are meaningless — and possibly even destructive — if the country in question doesn’t have the trust and social cohesion that underpins the democratic system. Our own reverence for democracy is so ingrained that we’ve come to assume humans are pre-programmed for it. They aren’t.
Collier writes in a modest way, but the foreign-policy implications of his book are profound. Rather than focus on organizing elections in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor and Haiti, a better strategy, his analysis suggests, we should be developing these nations’ economies and infrastructure first — even if that means putting power in the hands of a benign autocrat on a temporary basis.
This is an important book — but also a depressing one. After reading Wars, Guns, and Votes, it becomes impossible to take at face value any politician’s or soldier’s sunny claim that we are “bringing democracy” to this or that benighted country. In the poorest corners of the world, wars often start at the ballot box.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |