Our Austrian correspondent ESW has translated an interview with a Muslim convert from the German Islamic website Islamische Zeitung, as published on July 28, 2009:

Using Ramadan for “spiritual revival”

Silvia Horsch has a PhD in Arab and Islamic studies and works as a research assistant at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2003 she has hosted the website al-sakina.de, and, together with two other German Muslim academics, the website nafisa.de.

Ms. Horsch has written and published articles on the topic of Islam. The Islamic Newspaper spoke to her about her life as a Muslim German and academic.

IZ:		Ms. Horsch, what fascinated you about Islam and made you convert?
SH:		I was a Christian, raised Christian, and I was also active as a Christian, having participated in children’s’ masses and later in a youth group. I have always believed in God. I got to know Islam through my husband. It was only then that I realized that Islam is a religion that addresses all humans, not only Turks and Arabs. When I began to examine Islam more closely, I had to ask myself whether the Prophet Mohammed was truly a prophet. For me, as a believer in God, this was naturally a crucial question: Was this a new message? I then intensified my studies, learned and read a lot, especially the Quran, back then in an old and bad translation. The more I read and studied, the less I was able to deny the claim that Muhammad revealed God’s last message. At some point the consequence was my becoming a Muslim. Islam solved a few theological problem I always had with Christianity, especially the concept of the Trinity and Jesus dying for our sins. Those were things I was never able to reconcile for myself, and I was relieved to get a different answer to the essence of God and the responsibility of humans.
IZ:		What are your experiences have you had as a Muslim woman and academic regarding people associating with you? Has the reaction of society in response to being Muslim really deteriorated in the last few years?

– – – – – – – – –

SH:		I was lucky in that I embraced Islam at a young age, when I was just starting my studies of Spanish literature. I then switched to Arab and Islamic studies and in May I finished my dissertation on the topic of martyrs in early Sunni literature. I am currently conducting research on martyr figures at the center for literature and cultural research in cooperation with the Institute for Arab and Islamic studies at the University of Berlin. I became a Muslim in 1996. The headscarf debate back then was already present, albeit not in as bad as after 2003. Actually, my experiences in the academic field have been positive. I was already wearing a hijab when a female associate professor asked me whether I wanted to run a tutorial; later I found a professor who supported me. The academic area is actually one of the more open areas, with less prejudice than in other areas. I have never had any problems, not with other students or colleagues. As a family we have experienced that those people in our immediate vicinity have a positive attitude, for instance our neighbors. My parents respect my decision regarding Islam even though they may not be able to relate to it. There are, however, problems with strangers, with people on the street, on the bus or on the subway. I see this as a direct connection with the public and media debates as well as with certain incidents. At the peak of the headscarf debate, and in the aftermath of 9/11, I was frequently harassed and insulted. In my opinion, the climate has deteriorated due to the fact that existing resentments are addressed more openly. I believe that recently the clichéd view has changed from the hijab-wearing woman to the suppressed victim to a potential danger. I was frequently asked whether my husband forces me to wear the hijab; nowadays it is more that I am eyed strangely when I enter the subway with a backpack. This feeling is reduced after “incidents”, but it flares up again following the next debate or attack.
IZ:		You have recently written that the hijab is overrated by Muslims and non-Muslims and given a symbolism is doesn’t have.
SH:		It has always been seen as a symbol — a negative symbol signifying Islamism and suppression of women, etc. — by those in favor of banning the hijab. And many Muslims react to this by themselves seeing the hijab as a symbol, namely a symbol for morality, for chastity, for religiousness. If you make the headscarf a symbol — it is an article of daily use and not a symbol — and overdo the whole thing by adding significance that it doesn’t have, it leads to an overestimation. That is the wrong direction. At the end of the day the headscarf is just a formality, it’s dress code, a prescription, but not a pillar of Islam, as one might believe when listening to Muslims talking about the hijab. The hijab alone reveals nothing about the woman wearing it, nor about the society in which it appears more or less often. That said, we do have to react when hijab-wearing women are denied the right to work in certain jobs or are subjected to blanket judgments. But the point is not really the hijab. The debate should center on a woman’s right to choose her clothes and should be restricted, neither by Muslims nor by non-Muslims. […]
IZ:		Islam and Muslim identity is still seen by many as being an immigrant issue and not as something indigenous. How do you see this problem and how do you think this may change over time?
SH:		This relates closely with the way people “with an immigrant background”, in media speak, are accepted as indigenous. It is, after all, the immigrants who make up the largest group within the Muslim community; the converts are a small — although growing — minority, which, however, cannot shape and mold the whole picture. That is why I believe that recognition of Islam as indigenous [to Germany] will not be effected by a larger proportion of German Muslims, but by the acceptance of people “with an immigration background” as indigenous Germans. Of course, this process needs to be supported by the mosques by concentrating less on the countries of origin [of their followers], but on Germany. That has already started and there have been positive developments in recent years. There needs to be preaching in German language, just as preaching in England is done in English. I also think that a focus on the historical perspective in Islam important. Islam must be taught as part of European tradition — which it is, as seen historically in Andalusia and the Balkans — in history classes. As a result, Islam would be seen less as foreign or antagonistic in Europe, but rather as part of European culture, history, and the present.
IZ:		Ramadan will start soon. What does this month of fasting mean to you and how will you spend it with your family?
SH:		When I became a Muslim, Ramadan took place in winter and one had a lot of time in the evenings. We received many invitations and cooked for many guests. The collective aspect of Ramadan was particularly strong. Of course, now this is much harder if Iftar starts at 9.30 or 10 p.m. and the tawarih prayer is after 11 p.m., making it harder to get up in the morning and go to work. I find Ramadan particularly impressive because it forces one to realize how much time is spent preparing and cooking food. Take that away during Ramadan and you suddenly have much more time and I hope that, just like last time, I will be able to use this time revive spiritually. Now that I have a small son it will be different again: before, I was able to concentrate on myself during Ramadan, but now I also have to take care of my child since he wants to eat. However, I will definitely take a week or two off from work and try to concentrate on the Quran — things that are sometimes missed out during the daily routine.

Our Norwegian correspondent Zylark has a follow-up report to Fjordman’s recent account of a violent incident involving homophobic Muslim immigrants in Oslo.

A Dead Rat in the Kitchen
by Zylark

The drama continues…

Norway is in the midst of an election campaign, so the recent Muslim gay-bashing episode is a gift basket of opportunities for politicians who dare to chip away at the wall of political correctness.

A short recap of the episode: last Sunday a gay couple strolling peacefully along holding hands was assaulted by a Muslim man in his forties. The assault happened in Grønland, a district of our capital that has a majority Muslim population. The Muslim in question approached the couple, asked, “What is that?” whilst pointing at their hands, and later exclaimed, “I don’t like it, this is a Muslim part of town!” whereupon he immediately after assaulted the couple.

Most politicians of course give us the old song and dance about cultural differences, how we should try to understand the poor assailant and his less-than-favorable life experience. That this was an individual episode, and by no means part of a larger picture in which Islamic notions of supremacy are front and center. That this can all be solved by showing more tolerance and singing kumbaya. In more direct terms, what they are saying is to bury our heads in the sand and pretend the tendencies we see are really just some silly mirage.

The one Islam-critical party we do have, the Progress Party, is of course not part of this deception. No surprises there. What is more surprising is that individuals from other parties also seem to have opened their eyes somewhat. Understandably, quite the few of these are themselves immigrants. They know radical Islam when they see it. It is why they fled to begin with.

One such brave individual is Akhtar Chaudhry from the Socialist Party. In no uncertain terms he stated that “we can not endure such a Talibanization of Oslo and Grønland!” Given that the Socialist Party could just as well change its name to the Multicultural Party, such a statement is akin to letting Christopher Hitchens give the sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on Easter Sunday. It does not go down well with the believers…

So the reaction was more or less anticipated. Today, a representative of the Social Democratic Party, Hans Christian Lillehagen, decided to put Chaudhry into the shame-corner for stating the obvious and factual.

To VG, our largest newspaper, he stated:
– – – – – – – – –
“I was shocked! To me this is even less credible than when Siv Jensen [Leader of the Progress Party] warned of stealth-Islamisation and sharia tendencies in Norway last winter. It is worse than that. Think of the oppression the Taliban stand for in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They set off bombs on election day and cut the fingers off those who vote, to give a couple of examples. It is as far from Norwegian reality as you can get. I think of those who had to flee to Norway from the Taliban regime, what they may think when hearing this.”

It never entered Lillehagen’s mind that what the Taliban stand for is Islamic law followed to the letter. A law that forbids many things, democracy being one, freedom for women another; and as for gays — well, it is not so much frowned upon as an immediate death sentence.

He has failed to look at how Islam is practiced in the world today. Nowhere in the Muslim world and Western Muslim enclaves do you find even a semblance of a tolerant culture such as that found in our Western societies.

His biggest failure is separating the measures enacted by the Taliban from their ideology. Islamic ideology leads to puritan supremacist totalitarianism, just as sure as day follows night.

But it gets better. He continues:

“This is what we’ve grown to expect from the Progress Party, not from the Socialist Party. By his statement, Chaudhry intensifies the hateful tendencies. When he talks about Talibanization, he does not know what he is talking about. It might have been meant in good faith, but it was entirely wrong and not serious.

“Instead of a value-based debate on how to fight prejudice towards minorities, the opposite has occurred. One minority has been set against another. It is not as if gays and Muslims are two irreconcilable minorities!”

*Cough*

But they are. Islam has no room for gays; it is quite explicit about this.

Furthermore, it is not as if this is two minorities are engaged in combat. It is one minority enforcing their ideals of supremacy on another by means of violence and the threat of violence. It is not about prejudice against a minority, or pitting two minorities against each other. It is about defending our tolerant culture against those seeking to destroy it.

Chaudhry knows this; he lived in a “Muslim paradise”, and did not like it much.

The irony, of course, is that Lillehagen is himself gay. Arguing out of personal incredulity, he seem to forget that the Islamic Council of Norway (a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood) has declined to issue any statement on the death penalty for gays now for years. He seems to forget how gays are treated in all Muslim countries. He seems to forget that assaults such as the one we saw in Oslo are quite common throughout all major European cities with a sizeable Muslim population.

Other immigrants and their descendants have few problems with our societies once they get over the language barrier. Only Muslims seem intent on seditious behavior, with their parallel societies, abject hatred for all things Western, and supremacist enforcement of Muslim law and traditions wherever they feel they are in the majority.

There is a dead rat in his kitchen, but Lillehagen is so stuffed up with politically correct Multiculturalism that he cannot smell the stench.

Our Danish correspondent TB has translated the following editorial from today’s Jyllands-Posten. It’s about the craven decision by Yale University to remove of Mohammed illustrations from a soon-to-be-published history of the Motoon crisis:

Capitulation

The American publisher Yale University Press has decided, after advice from experts, to remove illustrations of the prophet Mohammed from a book about the Mohammed crisis.

This applies both to a reprint of the page in the Jyllands Posten newspaper showing the cartoons as well as a range of examples of illustrations of the prophet made by, among others, Gustave Doré and Auguste Rodin. The book was written by Danish-born Jytte Klausen, who during the affair acted with the view that the crisis, despite death threats and demands of censorship, was about mocking a cowed minority. It is the irony of fate that professor Klausen is now herself subjected to censorship because a bunch of consultants thinks that it could incite violence if drawings are printed in her book. Unlike in Denmark, where painters and writers remained cautiously silent when colleagues were subjected to threats and censorship, the American Association of University Professors has protested on behalf of their members because we are here talking about an assault on academic freedom. As the professors sarcastically formulate it, the publishers have indirectly, with their in-advance censorship, said no to negotiations with terrorists but have instead chosen to accede to the terrorists’ demands up front. The capitulation, in other words, is total.

– – – – – – – – –

Two things stand out clearly in this insane debate, which started with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie twenty years ago. Firstly, the offense-fundamentalists’ lack of ability to distinguish between offender and victim. In the publishers’ defense of censorship, and in hundreds of articles and comments, it is stated that the drawings incited violence. Meaning that those who print the drawings hold responsibility. The CEO of the publisher even stated that if anyone should be harmed as a consequence of the reprint, he would have blood on his hands. But the fact is such that if anybody reacts with violence and threats in response to a legal act, then it is the perpetrator, and he alone, who bears the responsibility, and it is the responsibility of the state and the public to defend the right of the individual to do and say as it like as long as this does not violate the law. This also includes the right to violate religious feelings. The absurdity in the logic of the publisher CEO’s logic can be illustrated with an example: if a terrorist says that he will kill anyone who predicts rain next week and some citizens who dare to repeat the weather forecast get killed thereafter, then the meteorologist has blood on his hands, and the citizens themselves bear responsibility for losing their lives. The madness is obvious, but apparently not when it comes to Islam.

It is disturbing that the publishers and their like-minded colleagues have adopted this ‘culture-of-threats’ point of view. Large parts of the Western world have internalized the fatwa against Rushdie while proposing toasts in favor of freedom of speech. The message to the practitioners of the ‘culture-of-threats’ is clear: if you threaten us we will do as you say, and we acknowledge that, if we do not, the violence is our responsibility. Could anyone think of a more obvious way to incite violence? The publishers think that by censoring they are showing consideration, but in reality they violate and discriminate against Muslims. Because their censorship is built on the assumption that Muslims are a mob of disruptive assailants and fanatics which should not be treated as other citizens. What kind of humanity is that? It is time to stop this totally unacceptable mocking of Muslims.

The alliance of Islam and the Left — which I call the Demonic Convergence — is only a temporary one. The compound formed by combining Social Marxists with Mohammedans is inherently unstable, and will break down under the slightest environmental stress.

The radical Left in Europe is using Islam as its battering ram against what remains of European democracy. Presumably the lefties think — to the extent that they think at all — that when last redoubts of European civilization are a smoking ruin, they will somehow be able to push the Muslims to one side as they get on with the business of creating a Socialist utopia.

If I had to place a bet, however, I’d bet on the Islamists. They are more ruthless and more brutal, and are willing to die for their cause. The “anti-fascist” forces are effete punks who are accustomed to the tacit support of the Social Democratic state, and they perhaps do not realize how pitiful and helpless they will be if they succeed in their aims and actually overthrow that state.

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The rift between Antifa and the Muslims seems to have opened up earlier than expected in Sweden. The Demonic Convergence is well on the path to destroying Sweden, but it’s still got a ways to go before the job is done. So last night’s violent encounter between AFA (Antifascistisk Aktion) and the “youths” they ostensibly intended to help comes as a bit of a surprise, and provides a grim foretaste of what is to come.

Regular readers will remember Rosengård, an all-immigrant suburban ghetto in Malmö in southern Sweden. I had the opportunity to visit Rosengård back in May, and became familiar with the area in which last night’s ruction occurred. In this video you’ll see the blackhoods of Antifa being culturally enriched by the immigrant youths from the tower blocks in the background:

I admit to a certain frisson of satisfaction at seeing those young thugs place well-aimed kicks on Antifa backsides. But still, this is not something that we really want to see — the “youths” make no particular distinction between the AFA goons and the rest of the Swedes. Kuffar are kuffar, and you can expect the same youths to put the boot in with Svensson as soon as the opportunity arises.

This article in the The Local has more information about this little instance of cultural enrichment, although it very carefully avoids identifying either the political or the ethnic aspects of the encounter. To the Swedish media, the masked Antifa goons are “activists”, and the violent young Muslims are “residents of Rosengård”:
– – – – – – – – –

Residents Thwart Rosengård Street Festival

A street festival held in the Rosengård district of Malmö deteriorated into a fight on Saturday evening as activists were forced out by area residents.

The “Reclaim Rosengård” street festival, which was conceived as a protest against the social conditions in Rosengård, didn’t exactly go according to organizers’ plans. The event was supposed to get underway at 8pm on Saturday, but after about 15 minutes the activists who had gathered to participate were pushed out by Rosengård residents.

The activists’ floats with music were also barred from entering the predominantly immigrant neighbourhood.

“There were quite a few who had gathered, not only young people, but also a lot of parents. I think that patience has run out among the residents of Rosengård,” said municipal district representative Inger Leite to the TT news agency.

According to Leite, the Rosengård residents had made it clear previously that they didn’t want people to feel they had the right to come and speak to the residents who live there.

Instead, the activists gathered in front of a nearby petrol station where they threw stones, bottled, and burning objects at police cars.

By 2am Sunday morning, the disturbances remained in full swing. Several small fires were burning, including a hedge near the petrol station which had also had its windows broken.

Thirty minutes later, most of those involved had gone home and the situation had calmed down.

Other than a few small fires and the damage to the petrol station, no other serious incidents were reported, according to Skåne police spokesperson Lars-Håkan Lindholm.

No one was injured during the night’s disturbance and no arrests have been made.

Hat tips: TB for The Local, Steen for the video.

Our regular tipster JD sent us a link to the website of the Toronto District School Board, whose logo bears an uncanny resemblance to you-know-what. A larger version is reproduced below:

Is this merely a coincidence?
– – – – – – – – –
A careful look shows that the logo is a stylized representation of an apple either cut in half or with a bite taken out of it. The idea was presumably to symbolize the pupil’s time-honored practice of bringing an apple to his teacher. As an added bonus, the seed in the center probably represents the seeds of knowledge that are planted by dedicated teachers in the minds of their young charges, which then grows to be the tree of wisdom, bearing fruit for others to pluck, etc., etc.

It’s interesting, however, that the apple in the design is a green apple, and will likely give the teacher a stomach-ache.

And the result seems to look remarkably similar to the well-known symbol of the Religion of Peace.

But that’s just my overworked paranoid Islamophobe imagination. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

The first installment of Fjordman’s History of Beer has been published at the Brussels Journal. Some excerpts are below:

As always when writing about a specific topic, I have used a combination of different sources when doing research for this essay, but the single most important source of information was A History of Beer and Brewing by I. Hornsey. His book is perhaps a little bit too much focused on Britain but is overall very comprehensive and well worth reading. It traces the history of brewing from prehistoric times until the turn of the twenty-first century. Another work I found valuable was Richard W. Unger’s book Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Unger’s text contains a little information on brewing-practices in the ancient world and even less of the scientific-industrial brewing that we know after the Industrial Revolution. However, his coverage of the Middle Ages and the early modern period is quite good, and I will quote his work extensively when writing about this period.

Exactly when humans first began making alcoholic beverages is not known with certainty. A major turning point in human history was the transition from an extractive economy (foraging and collecting) to a productive, agrarian economy with domesticated plants and animals, the so-called Neolithic Revolution, a term coined in the 1920s by the Australian scholar Gordon Childe (1892-1957). This gradual transition from the life of nomadic hunter-gatherers to more settled communities of food producers happened independently in several parts of the world, but very early (ca. 9000-7000 BC) in the Near East and the Fertile Crescent, where many useful plants and animals were naturally available. It is theoretically possible that alcoholic beverages could have been made prior to this. Some raw materials of fermentation (i.e. sources of sugar) were naturally available to pre-Neolithic peoples, primarily wild berries and fruits, tree sap and honey. These raw materials and end-products were unstable and not available for consumption at all times of the year. However, it is unlikely that reproducible beers could be brewed until after the invention of some sort of pottery vessels. The earliest pottery containers we currently know of were produced before 10,000 BC in China and Japan, somewhat later in other regions.

– – – – – – – – –

In temperate zones there were relatively few abundant sources of sugar. According to Hornsey, “Thus, for much of Europe, at least, honey is the logical candidate for being the basis of the original fermented beverage, some sort of mead. According to Vencl (1991), mead was known in Europe long before wine, although archaeological evidence for it is rather ambiguous. This is principally because the confirmed presence of beeswax, or certain types of pollen (such as lime, Tilia spp., and meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria), is only indicative of the presence of honey (which could have been used for sweetening some other drink) — not necessarily of the production of mead. For more southerly parts of Europe, and for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, the fermentation of the sap and fruits of tree crops, such as the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), offers the most likely means by which alcoholic drinks were first produced with any degree of regularity. The date palm was one of the first fruit trees to be taken into cultivation in the Old World (ca. mid-4th millennium BC), and its sap and fruits contain one of the most concentrated sources of sugar (60-70%) known on the planet.”

Moreover, as Hornsey states, “In more temperate zones, mature specimens of trees such as birch (Betula spp.) and maple (Acer spp.) were bored early in the year (January or February) and sap was collected until the trees set bud. In early spring it has been reported that a mature birch can yield some 20-30 litres of sap daily (with a sugar content of 2-8%, plus some vitamins and minerals), some of which can be stored until summer. Such activities are historically attested for in North America, Scandinavia, and eastern Europe, and in many instances it would appear that the sap was consumed ‘neat’….It is thought that sap was more important than fruit juices in prehistoric times, especially in northern Europe, something that can be gleaned from the fact that the Finnish word for sap is mahla, and that this gave its name to the month of March in both the old Finnish and Estonian languages. The sugar levels of tree sap can be concentrated by boiling, and it is of note that maple sugar was manufactured in Europe until the early 19th century (and still is in North America in the 21st century).”

Archaeologist Merryn Dineley claims that ritual brewing in Neolithic ceremonies in Scotland dates back at least to 3000 BC. Meadowsweet, the addition of which can extend the shelf-life of such early beer by several weeks, was one component of a number of possible prehistoric brews discovered in Scotland. This ale would have been flavored with meadowsweet in the manner of a kvass made by various northern European tribes, including the Celts and the Picts. We know of several ancient, simply prepared fermented drinks that might have been precursors of what we today know as beer. One of these is braga (or bosa), which has been made until recent times over a huge area of Europe, from Poland to the Balkans and eastwards into Siberia. Kvass or kvas is a fermented beverage, typically with an alcoholic content as low as 1%, which has been produced and consumed in Russia, the Ukraine and many Eastern and Central European countries for a very long time, often flavored with fruits or herbs. It may constitute a “fossil beer,” and there are those who believe that the beers consumed in early Mesopotamian literate civilizations may have been a form of kvass.

Recorded human history begins with the rise of urban literate civilization in Mesopotamia and the Middle East, starting with the Sumerians and the cities of Uruk, Ur, Lagash and Kish in the fourth millennium BC. These civilizations had access to barley and wheat, which by consensus would be regarded as the preferred grains by most brewers. The origin of wheat and barley is believed to lie in the Fertile Crescent. Wild barley grew in Israel and Syria, the Jordan Valley with the extremely ancient Neolithic town of Jericho via eastern Anatolia to northern Mesopotamia and western Iran. Apart from barley, all of the major cereal crops such as wheat, oats, rye, millets, maize, sorghum and rice can and have been used to make beer. Some of the oldest written texts in the world contain lists of grains and ingredients for making beer. Sumerian Mesopotamia produced a great variety of beers, most of which were probably weaker than the European beers of medieval times. Wine was made in the Zagros Mountains in Iran and imported to the main urban sites. Beer was a popular drink in Mesopotamia during all eras and was consumed by all social groups, interlinked with mythology, religion and medicine, synonymous with happiness and a civilized life. Both filtered and unfiltered beers were brewed in the region.

Read the rest at the Brussels Journal.

As rumors about the most recent desecration of the Islamic holy book reached the Muslim street, angry crowds rampaged through the downtown areas of several major cities, breaking shop windows, burning cars and rubbish bins, and chasing hapless Jews down side streets. Embassies were set ablaze in…

No, wait! Sorry! Wrong story!

I was reading from some old copy left over from the Koran-flushing hoax of several years ago. Here’s the correct account of this latest atrocity:

When the news of the most recent desecration of a Koran — which was hollowed out and used to smuggle heroin — reached the Muslim street, believers all over the world reacted by…

…doing absolutely nothing.

Maybe that’s because the heroin was being smuggled into Indonesia by Muslims. The Sky News article doesn’t name the smugglers or identify their religion, but the lack of Islamic outrage tells us that they are almost certainly Muslims:

Indonesian Smugglers ‘Hid Heroin in Koran’

A man and his mother-in-law have been arrested for attempting to smuggle thousands of pounds worth of heroin concealed within a copy of the Koran.

Custom officials at Jakarta’s international airport seized the book, the religious text of Islam, as it arrived by DHL express mail delivery from Cambodia on Tuesday.

Their suspicions were raised when a routine X-ray of the parcel exposed a series of holes in the book.

A closer inspection revealed 60 grams of heroin secreted in four small plastic bags near its front and back covers.

– – – – – – – – –

Police valued the hoard at 600 million rupiah, or £35,000.

Maman Sulaeman, head of customs at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, said an Indonesian man was arrested soon after the discovery.

“He claimed that he was just a courier and that he did not know the contents of the package,” Mr Sulaeman said.

The suspect’s mother-in-law, thought to be an accomplice, was also apprehended.

The pair, from Jakarta, are now being held by the Indonesian National Police.

Under the country’s tough narcotics law, they could be sentenced to death if found guilty of attempted drugs smuggling.

Hey, there’s nothing un-Islamic about all this! The Prophet himself said it’s perfectly OK to smuggle heroin in a Koran.

It says so somewhere in the hadith; I’m sure I can find it…

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

The Man of Many Spellings, Moamar Qadafi, had a meeting with with the released Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi. The convicted terrorist returned to Libya as a national hero.

In other news, there will be no pilgrimage to Mecca this year for French Muslims, due to the swine flu.

Thanks to Aeneas, C. Cantoni, A Greek Friend, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Sean O’Brian, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –

	USA
	Judge Tosses Deportation Case Against Egyptian Man
	Kennedy Tries to Change Law So Wife Can Succeed Him
	Open Borders Critics Report Cyber Attack
	Snake-Oil Salesmen Always Lie
	Teen Christian Convert to Stay in Florida
	Europe and the EU
	Condemning Totalitarianism of All Colours
	Germany: Police Union Stokes Fear of Left-Wing Extremists
	Italy: Berlusconi-Linked Teen Quits Sardinia
	Italy: Family Feud Overshadows Berlusconi ‘Summit’
	Lockerbie Bomber: An Ill-Conceived Gesture
	Ramadan: Islam Divided on Its Beginning in Italy
	Ramadan: ‘Night of Doubt’ At Paris Great Mosque Tonight
	Swedish Naval Vessel Jumps Göta Canal Banks
	Swine Flu: French Moslems, No Pilgrimage to Mecca
	Switzerland: New Tunnel Will Barely Ease Road Freight
	UK: An Overdraft? That’ll be £200 at Lloyds Tsb (But Only £15 if You’re a Muslim)
	UK: Council Puts Christmas Lights Up Four Months Early ‘To Save Taxpayers Money’
	UK: Dark Days Ahead
	UK: NHS Staff Paid Overtime When Off Sick
	North Africa
	Egypt: Rula Jebreal in TV Interviews During Ramadan
	Finance Crisis Sinks Price of Egypt ‘Obama’ Date
	Libya’s Gadhafi Meets Freed Lockerbie Bomber
	Lockerbie: Arab League, New Page After Al Megrahi Release
	Ramadan: Tunisia, Negative Impact on Tourism From Maghreb
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Gaza: Suicide Bombers Back But Killing Palestinians
	Israel Awaits Stronger Reaction From Bildt
	Poll Shows Israelis’ Confidence in Obama Still Low
	Visa Restrictions for West Bank, US Criticism
	Middle East
	Baghdad Blasts ‘Were Inside Job’
	Iran Defense Minister a Terror Suspect
	Iranian Boy Who Defied Tehran Hardliners Tells of Prison Rape Ordeal
	Jordan: Ramadan, Consumer Association Boycotts Red Meat
	Jordan: Two Men Sentenced for Plotting to Kill Israeli
	Lebanon: Hindu Burial Rite for Cow That Strayed From Israel
	Lebanon: Head of Al Qaeda-Linked Terrorist Group Arrested
	Lebanon-Syria: More Border Collaboration After Shooting
	Obama: Autobiography in Arabic as Part of Emirates Project
	Row Over Iran’s Women Ministers
	‘Saudi Arabia Planning Nuclear Plant’
	Syria: Why the West Needs it, According to Analist Moubayed
	Turkey: Erdogan Open on Minorities, Makes First Visit to Disputed Patriarchate Buildings
	Yemen: Army Advances Against Shia Rebels
	Russia
	Religion is Back in Russian Schools, But Under the Aegis of the Kremlin
	South Asia
	Indonesia: Terror Attacks ‘Funded From Middle East’
	Pakistan Taliban Name New Chief
	Violations of Human Rights in Pakistan: 75% of Cases Remain Unpunished
	Far East
	N. Koreans to Meet South’s Leader
	Vietnam: 2-Month-Old Killed to Stifle ‘Religious’ Dissent
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Nigeria Rebels Hand Over Weapons
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Judge Tosses Deportation Case Against Egyptian Man

MIAMI — An Egyptian man who was acquitted of terrorism-related charges earlier this year should not be deported, a judge in Florida ruled Friday.

Youssef Megahed, 23, was not immediately released following the decision by Immigration Judge Kenneth Hurewitz. He was due back in Hurewitz’s courtroom Friday afternoon for a bond hearing, but Megahed attorney Charles Kuck said his client would likely remain behind bars if the government files an appeal, as expected.

Still, the decision was a victory for Megahed, who was found not guilty of federal explosives charges in April, but then was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“He was stunned,” Kuck said, saying his client didn’t initially understand the decision. “Then we explained it and a big grin came on his face. He was very grateful.”

Elaine Komis, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the U.S. Department of Justice, confirmed Hurewitz’s decision to terminate the case, but did not comment further. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he could not immediately comment.

Megahed is a legal permanent resident who moved to the United States with his family when he was 11.

The former student, who is one class shy of an engineering degree at the University of South Florida, was arrested with a fellow Egyptian national during a traffic stop near Charleston, S.C., in August 2007.

Prosecutors claimed the lengths of PVC pipe packed with a common homemade explosives mixture found in the trunk of their car could have been used to build a destructive device.

A defense attorney argued the items were engines for homemade model rockets that were put into the car without Megahed’s knowledge before an innocent college road trip to the Carolina beaches.

The three-week trial did not include details about the apparent terrorist leanings of Megahed’s older companion and fellow USF student, Ahmed Mohamed. Mohamed, 27, pleaded guilty in December to providing material support to terrorists by making a YouTube video that demonstrated how to convert a remote-controlled car into a bomb detonator.

He spoke in Arabic on the video, saying he wanted to teach “martyrdoms” and “suiciders” how to save themselves so they can continue to fight invaders, including U.S. soldiers.

Megahed was not charged in connection with the video. A judge ruled it was irrelevant and could not be used as evidence against him at trial.

“The judge did the absolutely correct thing,” Kuck said Friday, “just like the jury did four months ago.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Kennedy Tries to Change Law So Wife Can Succeed Him

There is absolutely nothing that will cause a dead liberal politician to roll over in his grave faster than having the voters replace him with a conservative. In 2004 when anti-war leftwing Sen. John Kerry was running for President, the legislators in that State realized that if he prevailed in the general election, under State law at the time, moderate Republican governor Mitt Romney would be allowed to appoint Kerry’s replacement for the remaining four years of Kerry’s 4th term as a US Senator.

The Massachusetts legislature hurriedly changed the law, requiring a special election to be held within 5 months of any vacancy to replace the legislator whose seat was now vacated. In point of fact, Kennedy wants the State legislation to change the allow, again, to benefit the Democratic Party and, in this instance Vicki Kennedy, the Senator’s wife. Kennedy wants her appointed to replace him, giving her a three year head start on those interested in the seat in 2012 when she would come up for reelection as the incumbent junior senator from Massachusetts (even though she told the Boston Globe that she has no interest in replacing her husband either temporarily or permanently.) Yeah, I’ll believe that one—when pigs fly.

— Hat tip: JD

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Open Borders Critics Report Cyber Attack

‘We are seeing orchestrated pattern of censorship’

An organization critical of plans percolating in Washington, D.C., to create amnesty for the tens of millions of illegal aliens estimated to be in the United States now is reporting a cyber attack it describes as both targeted and orchestrated.

“Google’s own software admits we have no viruses or malware on our site,” said William Gheen of ALIPAC. “The readings indicate that Google scanned our site on the 19th and we were clean and now they are arbitrarily blocking us for the second time this week. Our technicians tell us our site is clean and Google will not offer us any explanation or assistance despite multiple attempts to reach out to them.”

The organization said its tens of thousands of pages of archived evidence on the issue of open borders and amnesty were being flagged as containing software viruses.

[…]

“We are seeing a clear and orchestrated pattern of censorship across American emanating from the Obama administration and the open borders lobby that plans to launch new amnesty legislation within two weeks,” said Gheen.

— Hat tip: JD

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Snake-Oil Salesmen Always Lie

Exclusive: Henry Lamb compares free-market health care to ‘public option’

It’s true, there is no health plan; there is only a dream. Obama and his socialist cronies dream about a 100 percent government-run health-care system. This is socialism in its purest form. Once heath care is taken over by the government, other segments of the economy will fall more easily.

Obama is quick to say publicly that he doesn’t want to take over health care; he wants to lower costs by increasing competition. Obama said he didn’t want to take over GM, but he did. He said he didn’t want to take over financial institutions, but he did. Snake-oil salesmen always lie. Obama is a master snake-oil salesman.

There is no health plan. Congress is in the process of creating a health plan. Obama wanted a health plan before the August recess, but it didn’t happen. The bills that are now floating around in Congress contain various proposals for elements to be included in the health plan.

— Hat tip: JD

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Teen Christian Convert to Stay in Florida

Judge determines he’ll keep jurisdiction, sets next hearing for September

A judge in Florida has determined arguments over a young Christian who ran away from her Muslim parents in Ohio when her father allegedly threatened her life will continue in Florida, and she will not be returned immediately as her parents wished.

Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, an honor student and cheerleader, was raised in a Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio. She became a Christian four years ago as a result of her interactions with children at school.

But Bary, a native of Sri Lanka, hitchhiked to a bus station and ran away from home July 19 because she says her family will murder her in what is known as an “honor killing.” In Islamic tradition, an honor killing is the killing of a person believed to have brought dishonor upon his or her family.

— Hat tip: JD

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Condemning Totalitarianism of All Colours

The 23rd August is “European Day of Rememberance for the Victims of Nazism and Stalinism”, to condemn totalitarianism. A noble cause perhaps, but one which has provoked controversy in Russia, where Stalin is still a national hero. They point out that Russia in fact saved many lives threatened by Nazism. Yet the Russians remain cagey about their Soviet Union archives, a stumbling block for ex-Soviet states to really understand their totalitarian pasts.

In Vilnius in July, 20 years after the collapse of communist regimes in Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) passed a resolution entitled “Divided Europe Reunited.” The OSCE document, which was hardly reported by the press, acknowledges “the uniqueness of the Holocaust,” and notes that “in the twentieth century European countries experienced two major totalitarian regimes, Nazi and Stalinist, which brought about genocide, violations of human rights and freedoms, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” It further recommends that member countries “clearly and unequivocally condemn totalitarianism” (one of the stipulations of the 1990 Copenhagen Document), on the basis that “an awareness of history” will help “to prevent the recurrence of similar crimes in the future.” It was adopted by large majority of delegates — 202 of the 214 present — in spite of vehement opposition from Russia.

The OSCE initiative parallels the European Parliament resolution on “European conscience and totalitarianism” passed in April, which chose to establish a “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism and Stalinism” on 23 August — which also happens to be the the anniversary of the signature of 1930 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It is not a coincidence that the EU has decided to honour the memory of the victims of deportation and mass extermination on a day that establishes a link between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Placing Nazism on the same level as Communism is identified as an important step in the “European conscience and totalitarianism” text, which also calls for the opening up of secret police and intelligence agency archives, and the adoption of wide-reaching measures to facilitate research and the re-examination of the past.

Russia “against falsification of history” refuses to open archives

Russia reacted strongly to the “A Divided Europe Reunited” resolution, which a spokesman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs described as “an unacceptable attempt to distort history for political goals.” The Russian parliament also issued a statement condemning the resolution as “a direct insult to the memory of millions of Russian soldiers” who “gave their lives to liberate Europe from Nazi domination.” For the Russians, Stalin is still a real hero. For the peoples of Eastern Europe, he is responsible supporting communist regimes with blood on their hands.

Russia’s outrage at the equation of Stalinist and Nazi regimes reflects a reluctance to come to terms with its totalitarian past, which is also evident in the revival of the Soviet tradition for the organisation of massive military parades. Among other post-communist states, Russia has also been the one that has made least effort to take responsibility for the crimes of communism (and that includes Stalinist communism) — on the contrary the current administration has even sought to reinforce the structures of the former KGB and their control of the political process. It also responded to what it perceives as academic aggression with the establishment of a “Commission to counter the falsification of history to the detriment of Russia’s interests” in May 2009. It is on this basis that the Russian Academy of Sciences has now sent an official order to the directors of its institutes in its history and philology section demanding an annotated list of cultural-historical falsifications in their fields of study and proposals for the scientific confutation of the falsifications in question.

With its call for the opening of archives, the OSCE resolution draws attention to the policy of Russia, which has yet to grant access to its secret police records. Not only does this situation affect the work of Russian historians, but it also hampers the research of their colleagues in former Soviet republics. When they withdrew in 1991, KGB staff took all of the most important documents from the former Soviet republics back to Moscow, and in so doing, denied the citizens of those countries the right to understand their recent past. Since its independence, post-communist Estonia has only had access to secret police catalogue files, but no access to the reports to which they refer. The catalogue files list names, but do not specify if the people concerned were informers or surveillance targets— and a critical need for access to further data is highlighted by the fact that a number of politicians’ names have been discovered in these catalogue files. In Lithuania, the KGB removed almost all of the archives from Vilnius, but historians have been able to conduct research using documents from other KGB document sources outside the city. Notwithstanding these differences, all of the Baltic states would benefit from a better understanding of their history if they were granted access to the Soviet archives in Moscow.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Germany: Police Union Stokes Fear of Left-Wing Extremists

The German Police Union has warned of an increasingly violent extreme-left scene, which it claims is likely to start attacking politicians just as the now defunct Red Army Faction (RAF) did in the past.

Rainer Wendt, head of the union, told the website of daily paper Bild: “It is only a question of time before violent left-wingers attack a politician.”

He said the level of violence shown among left-wing activists was increasing. “The entire appearance of the new violent left-wing criminals is like the spirit of the RAF and their fight against the German state.”

But his comments were firmly contradicted by the Interior Ministry, from which a spokesman said: “There is no current knowledge of the existence of a left-wing terrorist organisation.”

He also said that, “Crimes with the aim of assassinating people,” were considered to be, “unlikely.”

But Wendt said he was convinced of the threat. “Those who do not stop at arson attacks on cars and houses, and throw Molotov cocktails at policemen, they see the lives of people as cheap,” he said.

He added that there were clear parallels to the RAF heydays in the 1970s. “The willingness to use violence, the hatred of the state and the social-revolutionary ideals of the violent left-wingers are the same,” he said. “And the methods such as arson attacks are the same as the RAF.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Italy: Berlusconi-Linked Teen Quits Sardinia

Porto Rotondo, 21 August(AKI) — Noemi Letizia, the teenage lingerie model linked to Italy’s scandal-plagued prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has ended her holiday on the island of Sardinia, Italian daily Corriere della Sera quoted PR agent Roberto Paradiso as saying on Friday. Letizia reportedly left the exclusive Costa Smeralda the same day Berlusconi’s daughters Barbara and Eleonora arrived for drinks at her favourite beach club, ‘Blubeach’.

In an interview with Italian daily Libero on Friday, Letizia said she did not see Berlusconi while she was in Sardinia and claimed she was a virgin.

“No, I didn’t see him or hear from him. In any case, I don’t want to talk about him any more,” said Letizia, who is reported to be back home in the southern city of Naples.

“It’s well known that I am very proud to be a virgin,” she stated, denying rumours that she is romancing Italian showman Umberto Ammirati.

“I’m single and have other things on my mind at present,” Letizia said, hinting she may soon be starting a TV career.

Letizia, aged 18, had appeared to enjoy the intense media interest in her week-long stay at Porto Rotondo, just a few hundred metres from Berlusconi’s luxurious estate.

She arrived on a friend’s yacht last weekend and was staying as house guest of Daniele Sepe, a former colleague of talent agent, Lele Mora.

Berluconi was reported to be at his residence in Arcore near the northern city of Milan this week, “working on Italy’s national economic recovery plan and the restoration of Villa Gerneto too in Brianza,” according to an unnamed friend.

Letizia attended a New Year’s Eve party at Villa Certosa and in April the left-leaning Italian daily La Repubblica published a report about Berlusconi attending her 18th birthday party (photo) and the 6,000 euro gold and pearl pendant he gave her.

She calls Berlusconi ‘Papi’ or ‘Daddy’ but claims their relationship is wholly platonic.

Berlusconi on Wednesday denied allegations of sexual misconduct saying he never had “relations with minors” and only attended parties that were morally acceptable.

He has in recent months been at the centre of lurid allegations that prostitutes attended parties at his homes in Rome and in Sardinia and that he slept with 42-year-old escort Patrizia D’Addario last November.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Italy: Family Feud Overshadows Berlusconi ‘Summit’

Punto Lada, 18 August (AKI) — The absence of Italian prime minister and billionaire Silvio Berlusconi’s two eldest children from the family villa in Sardinia is reportedly complicating moves to reach a settlement between Italy’s wealthiest man and his estranged wife Veronica Lario.

But legal progress has been overshadowed by a bitter feud between the media magnate’s 43-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Marina, and her half-sister Barbara.

The quarrel is said to have badly soured the atmosphere at Villa Certosa, where Berlusconi arrived on Monday to try and resolve family differences.

Marina was on Tuesday reported to have taken off from the family’s exclusive villa on the Costa Smeralda aboard her yacht Besame, after an acrimonious row with 25-year-old Barbara during her birthday party at the villa last week.

She was reportedly riled by comments Barbara made in a recent magazine interview in which she staked a blatant claim to Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing house, part of Berlusconi’s publishing empire, which is run by Marina.

Barbara also said in the interview with the Italian issue of Vanity Fair that if her father was “even-handed” there would be no dispute between his children over his fortune.

She appeared to criticise her father’s scandal-plagued private life in the interview, saying: “I don’t think a politician can allow himself to make a difference between his private and public life”.

Her comments reportedly angered other members of the Berlusconi family.

Berlusconi’s son from his first marriage, Piersilvio, who heads the prime minister’s Mediaset television empire, is also absent from Villa Certosa. He is reportedly vacationing in the Bahamas with his girlfriend.

Lario in May announced plans to file for divorce and is seeking a 20 percent share of Berlusconi’s 8.1 billion euro fortune for each of their three children with the remaining 40 percent stake to be divided between his children from his first marriage, Marina and Piersilvio.

The inheritance is currently split 50-50 between Berlusconi’s children from his first marriage, Marina and Piersilvio on the one hand and their younger step-siblings Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi on the other.

Berlusconi has in recent months been at the centre of embarrassing allegations that he slept with prostitutes, threw parties attended by escorts at his various residences, and frequented under-age girls.

Lario announced her plans to split from Berlusconi after the left-leaning daily, La Repubblica, published a report on his attendance at the 18th birthday party of lingerie model and aspiring actress, Noemi Letizia.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Lockerbie Bomber: An Ill-Conceived Gesture

The release of Lockerbie bomber Abdulbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is an unnecessary snub to America

The Scottish Nationalist executive in Edinburgh yesterday waved its little fist at the might of America and showed it would not be pushed around. For it is hard to see the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds as anything other than an ill-conceived gesture of national assertiveness. Both President Obama and, more forcefully, Hillary Clinton had pleaded with the executive not to do it. How good it must feel in Edinburgh to cock a snook at the superpower.

Yet have the Nationalists thought this through? It is not just the worldwide revulsion they will engender by releasing a convicted terrorist responsible for the biggest act of mass murder in Britain. There could be more concrete, unintended consequences. The US is Scotland’s largest source of inward investment, with more than 500 American-owned businesses employing 90,000 people. Yesterday’s decision may not mean any of these depart, but it could make it harder to attract more — American sensitivity on the issue of terrorism cannot be overstated.

The most puzzling aspect of this case has been the position of the British Government. While it had no legal locus in the case, it must have had a view. Yet from Gordon Brown and his ministers there has been a deafening silence. This will inevitably fuel the suspicion that they were happy to see al Megrahi released because it will improve British relations with oil- and gas-rich Libya without implicating the Government in the release of a convicted terrorist. Such a stance would be staggeringly cynical as well as utterly misguided. The nuances of the devolutionary settlement will not be appreciated across the Atlantic, where the message will be that the UK is a soft touch for terrorists.

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Ramadan: Islam Divided on Its Beginning in Italy

(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 19 — Not only across the Islamic world, but also in Italy, the starting date of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting associated with the lunar calendar, is not traditionally set until the appearance of the new moon. This year the beginning will take place between Friday and Saturday, but in Italy, some groups have already decided that fasting will begin at dawn on August 21. The date has been chosen officially by the Union of Islamic communities in Italy (UCOII), adhering to a recent fatwa from the European Council for Fatwa and Research, stating that the astronomical calendar must be obeyed instead of the orient moon. “This was an important decision based on the choice to follow science,” said Ezzedine Elzir, the UCOII spokesperson, “made with wisdom and courage. We hope that this is also the beginning of a European and Italian Islam.” The Islamic Cultural Centre, which manages the Grand Mosque of Rome decided differently, and is waiting for tomorrow at around 6PM for the official announcement by Saudi TV, which will put an end to doubts on whether the date is August 21 or 22. “We are adhering to the tradition of waiting for the appearance of the crescent moon,” said ambassador Mario Scialoja, board member of the centre, “that does not have an actual basis in doctrine and is based on Saudi traditions dating back to the 7th-8th century.” Abdalsabur Turrini, the director general of the Islamic Religious Community (COREIS) is not in agreement. He believes that the need to see the moon comes from “Islamic tradition and the sacred texts”. He distances himself also from the choice of the UCOOI which is “not based on sacred law”, since the beginning of Ramadan, which will therefore be different in each country, “depends on precise divine signals, like the visibility of the moon. It cannot depend on personal initiatives or bureaucratic decisions”. Since not drinking and eating can reduce productivity at work, “respecting the fast depends only on a person’s own conscience, it has to do with a personal relationship with God,” said the UCOII spokesperson, “and cannot be subject to external rules”, like the requirement of agricultural workers to drink in the Mantua area. “Muslims are free to decide,” he concluded, “also to stop fasting while they work.” (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Ramadan: ‘Night of Doubt’ At Paris Great Mosque Tonight

(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 20 — Friday, or more likely Saturday morning: the French Council for Muslim Devotion (CFCM) will meet this evening at the Grand Mosque in Paris for the “Night of Doubt”, when they will decide the starting date for Ramadan. Other “Nights of Doubt” will take place in the country’s main mosques: some will line up with the date chosen by Turkey or Saudi Arabia, which often come before the French date, but at the Grand Mosque in Paris they stress that the trend is more and more for a “French consensus”. Of the 5 million Muslims living in France, 88% say that the observe the holy month of fasting, while 49% say that they “never go” to the mosque, according to a 2006 survey Csa-La Vie. 94% of under-30s say that they observe the fast. Many foreign preachers are expected in France for Ramadan to lead prayers in the some 2,000 mosques spread throughout the country. According to President of the CFCM Mohammed Moussaoui, around 150 imams are arriving from Morocco, 70 from Turkey and over 90 from Algeria, the three main countries of origin for Muslims who have settled in France. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Swedish Naval Vessel Jumps Göta Canal Banks

A Swedish military boat took an unexpected turn up onto shore on Saturday, startling attendees of a festival held along the shores of the Göta Canal.

The accident occured when a Combat Boat 90 traveling at high speed attempted to perform a sudden stop in front of throngs of onlookers at Kanalfest in Söderköping in eastern Sweden.

But something went wrong during the maneuver, sending the Swedish Navy vessel up over the banks of the canal before it skidded to a stop on the ground.

“First the boat went off from the locks toward the E22 motorway bridge. Then it came back at full speed,” Fredrik Jonson, a photographer for Norrköpings Tidningar (NT), told the newspaper.

“The boat began to wobble back and forth and the bow was very low in the water. Then the boat drove right up on land on onto the canal bank.”

The boat came to rest about 50 metres from the crowd of onlookers sat at outdoor tables to watch the day’s exhibitions.

Military spokesperson Anders Kallin told the TT news agency that there were no injuries or damage to equipment as a result of the incident.

He added that an investigation has been launched to determine exactly what went wrong.

— Hat tip: TB

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Swine Flu: French Moslems, No Pilgrimage to Mecca

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, AUGUST 18 — Faced with the epidemic of swine flu, the Council of the Moslem Faith in France (Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman) has today “advised” the faithful “against” setting off on their traditional Mecca pilgrimage, saying it could be put off to next year. “Given the health risks, we advise France’s Moslems against going”, said the Chair of the CFCM, Mohammed Moussaoui. There have been 14 deaths so far in Saudi Arabia Saudita due to the A/H1N1 virus. The CFCM recommendation presently affects only the “omra”, the little pilgrimage to Mecca, which is undertaken to coincide with Ramadan and whicb “is not a religious obligation”. But it could be extended to the big pilgrimage, the haj, which is undertaken in November, two months after the end of Ramadan, “if no vaccine is found”, Moussaoui said. Between 25,000 and 30.000 Moslems leave France each year to partake in a pilgrimage to Mecca. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Switzerland: New Tunnel Will Barely Ease Road Freight

The completion of a new rail link through the Swiss Alps will not significantly reduce the amount of freight transported by road, an environmental group has warned.

That was the key finding of a study into the likely impact of the 57-kilometre-long Gotthard Base Tunnel, carried out for the organisation Alpine Initiative.

The tunnel, which will be the longest in the world when it opens in 2017, will only increase rail’s share of freight haulage from its current 62 per cent to 64.5 per cent, the group said.

The Gotthard is the major conduit for people and goods travelling Switzerland’s north-south axis.

The new tunnel is set to increase freight capacity and offer better connections to trains but according to the Alpine Initiative’s own calculations, it will do little to decrease the cost-per-kilometre of shipping by rail. The longer the journey, the more negligible the savings become.

The lobby group says extra financial disincentives must be introduced to keep cargo off trucks.

It used the findings to push again for the introduction of a so-called Alpine Crossing Exchange. This would include a quota on trans-alpine freight and a system allowing haulage companies to purchase credits for their journeys.

Government intervention

But Alpine Initiative president Alf Arnold foresees little role for the private sector in developing a policy.

“We do not need to negotiate with the transport industry but with politicians to set out a framework,” Arnold told swissinfo.ch after a news conference on Thursday.

The national road hauliers association, Astag, said the results of the study “contain no new insights”. It argues that financial disincentives are the wrong way to reduce the number of trucks on the road.

“The demands for even more tariffs and coercive penalties against road transport are old illusions,” Astag said in a written statement. The group wants a “reorientation” of transport policy to introduce competition into the rail cargo sector.

The Alpine Initiative says that the new Gotthard tunnel will increase freight capacity and offer better connections. Astag has called the project a utopian endeavour that will gobble millions of francs.

Switzerland already has the densest rail coverage in Europe, the group adds.

Trains losing steam

In 1994, Alpine Initiative’s efforts to protect the mountain environment from increasing road traffic and to transfer trans-alpine freight from road to rail ended with a surprising win at the ballot box.

Up to the end of 2000, trucks exceeding 28 tons were banned from Swiss roads. That changed in January 2001, when the limit was increased to 34 tons.

The government introduced quotas for vehicles weighing 40 tons but offered subsidies for using rail transport.

The Alpine Initiative has led calls to reduce the number of trucks passing through the Swiss Alps from its current 1.3 million per year to 650,000 by 2018-2019. It’s a goal that Astag calls unrealistic.

Amid the ongoing debate, Switzerland is the envy of its neighbours.

About two million trucks crossed Austria’s Brenner Pass alone last year, which was an increase of more than five per cent from 2006.

swissinfo.ch

GALLERIES

Gotthard railway line

The Gotthard railway line offers a feast for the traveller’s eyes.

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ALPINE INITIATIVE

The Alpine Initiative group was founded in 1987 and claims to have about 50,000 members and supporters.

It aims to protect the alpine environment from increasing road traffic.

The group forced a nationwide vote on the issue, which was approved by the Swiss voters in 1994.

As a result, parliament and the government decided to introduce fees for heavy-goods vehicles, increasing the maximum weight of trucks from 28-40 tons and subsidising tickets for trucks which use rail transport.

The group also helped defeat a proposal in 2004 to build a second road tunnel through the Gotthard in central Switzerland.

————————————————————————————————————————

TRANSPORT POLICY

Swiss transport policy calls for most goods transport to be taken off the road and put on trains.

The number of trucks transiting Switzerland is supposed to drop to 650,000 by 2018-2019 (one million in 2011).

Last year parliament decided to delay the initial target date of 2009 by ten years.

Presently about 1.3 million trucks per year pass through the Swiss Alps.

The Gotthard is on the main north-south artery through Switzerland. There are two other routes: through the Lötschberg-Simplon tunnels in the west of the country as well as the San Bernardino in eastern Switzerland.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UK: An Overdraft? That’ll be £200 at Lloyds Tsb (But Only £15 if You’re a Muslim)

Many Lloyds TSB customers are being hit with charges of up to £200 a month if they go into the red — while Muslims who use the bank are only being charged £15.

The part-nationalised bank has been accused of religious discrimination over the disparity between overdraft charges on its standard current account and its Islamic account.

The Islamic account was set up by the high street bank to attract Muslim customers by allowing them to keep faithful to their religion.

Sharia law does not permit the payment of interest so the ‘typical’ Islamic account at Lloyds TSB has been set up without an overdraft facility.

If a Muslim customer who has insufficient funds in the account tries to make a payment, it is blocked and a ‘return item fee’ is charged.

However, on some Islamic accounts such a payment is authorised and an ‘unplanned overdraft fee’ of £15 is then levied.

The bank says this is a management fee, not a payment of interest, so does not contradict Sharia law.

Meanwhile, customers with standard current accounts who go into the red by at least £100 without authorisation are hit with an ‘unplanned overdraft fee’ of £20 a day for a maximum of ten days. This could mean a customer has to pay £200 in one month.

The Islamic account is available to all customers at Lloyds TSB. In theory, anyone who does not need a permanent overdraft facility could switch to this account to avoid being hit by interest charges for going into the red.

The disparity between the two accounts emerged after the bank sent its customers a booklet this month explaining its charges.

Graham Milne, a customer and chartered accountant from Norham, Northumberland, said difference in fees was tantamount to ‘religious discrimination’.

He added: ‘This means that all the non-Islamic account holders are subsidising those with such an account. It strikes me as something which is bordering on illegal.

‘One cannot help feeling the organisation is bending over backwards to help Muslims to the detriment of everybody else.

‘The man in the street would say this is a form of theft. Whether you call it a management fee or an interest fee, it makes no odds because they mean the same thing.’

In the past few years, millions of customers at all the major high street banks have demanded the return of money which has been taken from their account in various forms of bank charges.

Many got their money, or the majority of it, back. A test case — designed to rule if such charges are illegal — is going through the House of Lords.

Until it is resolved, the subject continues to remain hotly contested.

A Lloyds TSB spokesman said: ‘The Islamic current account is for customers who cannot receive credit or debit interest due to their religious beliefs.

‘All of our Islamic accounts comply with Islamic law and are available to anyone regardless of background or faith.

‘These accounts are structured differently to our traditional accounts and are designed to help prevent a customer slipping into the red. A comparison with the overdraft charging structure on other accounts is meaningless.’

Earlier this month, it emerged that losses at Lloyds had escalated to £13.4billion — largely due to the reckless lending of Halifax Bank of Scotland, which it bought for £9.6billion in January.

The disastrous merger led to a £17billion taxpayer bail-out. The newly-formed Lloyds Banking Group is 43 per cent owned by the taxpayer.

— Hat tip: A Greek Friend

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UK: Council Puts Christmas Lights Up Four Months Early ‘To Save Taxpayers Money’

Shoppers in Rochdale were stunned to see workmen putting up neon decorations including a bobble-hatted penguin on skis, holly leaves and a giant Noel sign.

The council defended the move by saying the display will be also be used to mark festivals celebrated by other faiths — including the Muslim festival of Eid next month.

But locals said the idea is ‘ ludicrous’. Mo Ali, who runs a newsagent’s shop in the village of Milnrow, said: ‘I think it’s far too early to be putting decorations up like this when we’re still enjoying summer weather.

‘A lot of people are not at all happy about it.’

Tinsel town: Rochdale council said the lights celebrate different religious festivals, despite most being Christmas-related

Tom Whitaker, 19, said: ‘It’s ludicrous. It’s the height of summer and they’re putting up Christmas lights. A worker told me they had to be up in time for all the religious festivals, but most of the lights refer to the Christian Christmas.’

Another villager said: ‘Seeing the lights makes me feel depressed. I know we haven’t had much of a summer, but let’s get it out of the way first.’

A spokesman for Rochdale Borough Council said: ‘These lights will be used to celebrate a number of festivals, commencing with Eid next month.

‘At the moment it is just the lights themselves that have been installed. In many cases the cabling is not yet in place, but we wanted to ensure that everything was in readiness in plenty of time.’

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: Dark Days Ahead

A shortage of power-generation capacity could lead to blackouts across Britain—and a dangerous reliance on foreign gas

SOUTH AFRICAN burglars pay close attention to electricity. A moratorium in the early 1990s stopped new power stations from being built, and by 2007 demand was overwhelming the country’s electricity grid. So Eskom, the national power company, began cutting supplies to specific suburbs for hours at a time. One side-effect of the rolling blackouts that afflicted Cape Town and Johannesburg was that they disabled the electric fences, spotlights and alarms that adorn richer people’s houses, making them easy pickings for thieves. At first the blackouts were announced in advance; later, aware of the risks, Eskom imposed them without notice. Fortunately for South Africans, the economic slump has trimmed demand (and a huge, rushed building programme boosted supply), but it will be 2013 before order is properly restored.

Britain is running short of power too—so quickly that some economists claim, only just tongue-in-cheek, that the economic slowdown is useful. “A recession is the best demand-reduction policy ever invented,” says Dieter Helm, an energy economist at Oxford University…

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: NHS Staff Paid Overtime When Off Sick

NHS workers who take sick leave are claiming tens of millions of pounds a year in overtime and anti-social hours allowances while off work, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

More than one million NHS staff are paid well above their basic salary when they are ill under a contract which guarantees them a far better deal than those working in the private sector.

The generous terms mean that when they are on sick leave they receive full pay, plus a selection of benefits. These include supplements for unsocial hours and overtime for six months, with half pay for a further six.

The deal means when an NHS worker — such as an ambulance worker, nurse, porter, or midwife — goes off sick they are paid according to an average of their total pay for the previous three months, rather than just their basic salary.

In many cases, workers have boosted their income by working nights or extra hours, or are paid a ‘recruitment and retention’ bonus, which can add tens of thousands of pounds to the basic salary of a middle grade worker living in London.

The NHS has higher sickness rates than the rest of the public sector and enjoys the most generous terms and conditions while off work. The service loses 10.3 million working days annually due to sickness absence alone, costing £1.7 billion per year.

Critics have said the scheme is “morally and ethically wrong” and should be reviewed.

However, supporters said NHS workers are exposed to unique pressures, with 56,000 physically attacked each year, and they deserve to be looked after.

The news comes after a report this week found that, of the 1.4 million workers in the NHS, 4.5 per cent or 45,000 call in sick per day.

Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the sick pay terms should be reviewed, especially in light of the recession when all workers are being asked to make sacrifices.

He said the organisation has been ‘caught out’: “To have sick pay going for six months and include overtime and extra payments does seem to be overly generous; an employee in the private sector would not expect that.

“NHS staff do a sterling job and there is huge stress involved in the work but the pensions are good, the sick leave is good, it is not brilliantly paid, but there is security of tenure.

“In the private sector the stress comes with the fact the job may not be there the next day.”

The average NHS worker takes 10.7 days off sick a year, compared with 9.7 days for the public sector as a whole and 6.4 days in the private sector.

The Telegraph has received allegations of NHS workers asking managers when their six months on full pay expires so they know when to return to work, people booking holidays and then taking sick leave to cover the time off, and posting photographs on Facebook of themselves out with their children while off sick.

The terms and conditions on sickness absence are included in the Agenda for Change contract which covers nurses, midwives, hospital porters, paramedics, ambulance workers and administration staff, but not doctors. The wage bill for the contract in England was more than £28bn in 2007/8, according to the National Audit Office.

Under the contract, full pay is paid for the first six months off sick and then a further six months at half pay after five years’ service. Before then, the length of paid time off is on a sliding scale.

Overtime, over the standard 37.5 hours a week, and unsocial hours, for working nights or weekends, is payable at time and a half with public holidays paid at double time, or lieu time can be requested instead.

Staff can also receive around £3,205 in ‘recruitment and retention premia’ where employers find it difficult to fill posts, while those in inner London are paid a ‘high cost area supplement’ worth 20 per cent of basic salary, to a maximum of £6,080.

In the private sector, standard sick leave normally includes a short period on full pay, around one month or six weeks, followed by statutory sick pay paid at £79.15 per week for people earning £95 or more. In many cases employees are automatically put on statutory sick pay, once they qualify — which is when they have been off sick for four days.

Dr John O’Sullivan, an occupational health consultant in the private sector, said the NHS terms were ‘morally and ethically wrong’ and there was little incentive for staff to return to work.

“This is taxpayers’ money. The NHS has the expertise to get people back to work but they just do not use it on their own staff.”

The Health Service terms and conditions also eclipse other areas of the public sector: police receive full pay for six months and then half pay for a further six, but do not receive any overtime. Teachers get full pay for 25 days off sick then half pay for 75 days in their first year, rising to 20 weeks’ full pay and 20 weeks on half pay after four years working.

Neil Carberry, Head of Employment Policy at employers’ group, the Confederation of British Industry, said: “The inclusion of overtime and other extras makes this a more generous scheme than the private sector norm, and the overall approach in the NHS to the management of absence and long-term sickness is a real concern.

“Firms use occupational health provision to ensure all absence is genuine, and innovative rehabilitation policies that get people back to work sooner. The NHS should do the same.”

However, Sian Thomas, director of NHS Employers, said: “There is no evidence that withholding pay leads to increased efficiency and improved staff morale. In fact, it can be counter productive because it leads to feelings of resentment and de-motivation among all staff.

“In order to successfully tackle sickness employers need to address the long-term problem. In the NHS this includes preventing injury from lifting and handling, helping staff build up their emotional resilience and reducing physical and mental abuse from patients.”

A spokesman for Unison, the union, said overtime was “very much a thing of the past” : “We have to look after our NHS staff. If they are not fit and safe they cannot look after patients. If you go to any A&E department at night at weekends you can see the levels of violence and abuse staff face. Paramedics in particular are at risk of attack.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Agenda for Change provides a fair pay system that recognises the dedicated work that over 1.1 million NHS staff do every day to help us deliver high quality patient care to all.

“We take the health of NHS staff seriously. The ongoing NHS Health and Wellbeing review is crucial to achieving our ambition to develop world class health and wellbeing services for all NHS staff.”

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Egypt: Rula Jebreal in TV Interviews During Ramadan

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, AUGUST 18 — The Palestinian journalist and naturalised Italian citizen, Rula Jebreal, is to appear for the first time on Egyptian television during the month of Ramadan, which starts on August 22 in Egypt, to present a series of interviews with famous Egyptian public figures. The programme, called ‘Bab el Shams’ (Door of the Sun), will be screened on the independent Al Qahira Wal Nas channel, belonging to Egyptian advertising magnate, Tarek Nour. The network, which is to begin transmitting officially at the start of the Moslem holy month, has presented Rula Jebreal to its viewers — a figure up to now unknown in Egypt — as “the most daring Arab journalist of international renown”. In promoting the programme, Al Qahira Wal Nas has broadcast interviews with the journalist, tracing her career, her successes and her battles on the Italian screen. The journalist herself spoke of her confrontations over the so-called ‘conflict of civilisations’ with Italian Minister Roberto Calderoli, who referred to her as “a tanned lady’. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Finance Crisis Sinks Price of Egypt ‘Obama’ Date

Named after U.S. President Barack Obama who chose Cairo to deliver a landmark speech to the world’s Muslims in June, the popular date was expected to sell for 25 Egyptian pounds (around $4.5) a kilogram (2.2 pounds).

“People can’t afford dates this year, we had to bring the price down to 15 pounds ($2.7),” said Mohammed, a fruit vendor in the bustling Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood.

Emulating the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims traditionally eat a date and drink milk to break the dawn-to-dusk fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, whose beginning is set according to the sighting of the moon.

A savvy shopper knows that the good dates are light brown, shiny and sweet.

Competing with “Obama”, the second-most expensive date on the market after the “High Dam” which sells for 18 pounds, are the “Abutrika” variety named after popular midfielder Mohammed Abutrika who plays for local team Al-Ahly, showing that politics and football are never far from Egyptians’ minds.

At 10 Egyptian pounds ($1.8) are the “Columbo” dates, named after the 1970s American TV series starring Peter Falk as homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo, re-runs of which have played regularly on Egyptian television.

— Hat tip: TB

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Libya’s Gadhafi Meets Freed Lockerbie Bomber

Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi embraced the convicted Lockerbie bomber and promised deeper cooperation with Britain in gratitude for his release, as London and Washington condemned his “hero’s welcome” home.

Meeting Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and his family late on Friday, Gadhafi thanked British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth for “encouraging” Scotland to release the dying prisoner from a Scottish jail, said Libyan news agency JANA.”This step is in the interest of relations between the two countries … and of the personal friendship between me and them and will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of cooperation between the two countries,” the Libyan leader said.

Scotland’s government on Thursday released him from a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland because he has terminal prostate cancer. The attack killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

Libyan state TV showed Megrahi arriving at Gadhafi’s home by car. Gadhafi embraced the former intelligence agent, who was accompanied by members of his family, and the two sat down and talked.

More than 1,000 young Libyans gathered at an airport in Tripoli on Thursday to welcome Megrahi home, cheering and waving national flags.

— Hat tip: TB

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Lockerbie: Arab League, New Page After Al Megrahi Release

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, 21 AGO — The Arab League applauded the release for humanitarian reasons by Scotland of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, an agent who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the Lockerbie massacre. The decision was praised, said official Egyptian press agency MENA, by assistant secretary Ahmed Ben Hilli, who underlined that the release was due to serious health reasons and after “long diplomatic efforts”. Ben Hilli also said that he hopes that the release “opens a new page in the Lockerbie crisis and that Libya is granted compensation for their suffering over the years due to the event”. But the hero’s welcome given yesterday to al-Magrahi upon his re-entry to Libya was called “deeply disturbing” by British Foreign Minister David Miliband. The man was welcomed at the airport in Tripoli by hundreds of young individuals who were waving Libyan and Scottish flags while loudspeakers played patriotic songs. US President Barack Obama called Scotland’s decision “an error” yesterday. “We are in contact with the Libyan government and we want to be sure that (al-Megrahi) does not receive a warm welcome, and that he is put under house arrest,” said Obama. The former Libyan agent was sentenced to life imprisonment for the death 270 people in the explosion of a PanAm flight on December 21 1988. The only individual convicted for the massacre, al-Megrabi has terminal cancer. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Ramadan: Tunisia, Negative Impact on Tourism From Maghreb

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, AUGUST 17 — Tourism is set to suffer from Ramadan, which should start between August 20 and 22. This is based on the fact that hundreds of thousands of Libyans and Algerians choose Tunisia’s beaches for their summer holidays. And it is taken for granted that most of them will go back home to spend the holy month in their own communities. In recent days, local press has reported that many of the most popular resorts (Djerba, Hammamet, Sousse, Sfax), which are usually booked solid until September, are still vacant because of Ramadan. Another slightly worrying element reported by the papers is how to treat foreign guests in the country’s hotels. The recommendation is not to let them suffer the inevitable fatigue, the result of fasting and the altered rythmn of life which characterises the tiring days, not helped by the heat. For example, the average temperature in September in Tunis is around 30 degrees Celsius.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Gaza: Suicide Bombers Back But Killing Palestinians

(by Giorgio Raccah). (ANSAmed) — GAZA, AUGUST 17 — Suicide bombers have made a reappearance, but this time Palestinians are the ones to pay the price. Sources in Gaza have reported that during the bloody clashes which broke out on Friday in Rafah (in the southern part of the Gaza Strip) between Hamas militants and fighters from the ultra-radical Salafite group Jund Ansar Allah (‘God’s Warriors’), allied with Al-Qaeda, the latter group made use of two suicide bombers. In the battle — the worst since Hamas took control of Gaza from its rival, Fatah, two years ago — and the subsequent hunting down of the Islamic extremists, 22 were killed — including five civilians and six Hamas militants — and over 120 injured. According to ANSA sources, during the battle it was allegedly a suicide bomber who blew himself up before being able to strike against Hamas (Abu Abdallah al-Suri, a pro-Al-Qaeda militant who had escaped from Syria to Gaza) to kill the Jund Ansar Allah leader Abdelatif Mussa, a doctor-turned- Islamic preacher. Hamas sources instead say that Mussa chose to blow himself up along with some of his followers in his own home instead of giving himself up. The second suicide bomber was reportedly a Palestinian named Abdallah Awadallah, who was attempting to kill Hamas members but did not succeed. Before the clashes began, Mussa gave rise to Hamas’s fury in a Rafah mosque by proclaiming the establishment of an Islamic emirate and accusing Hamas of weakness in the application of Islamic laws, as well as acting in the manner of a secular government. Hamas reacted ruthlessly to what it saw as a challenge to its authority in the Gaza Strip. Militants surrounded the mosque where Abdelatif and his followers were, about a hundred of whom were armed, and ordered that they give themselves up. Instead, a battle broke out which continued for hours with much use of heavy weaponry, including machine guns and rockets. Rafah inhabitants spoke of a “day of horror”. The Palestinian organisation for human rights in Gaza Al-Dameer has requested a thorough inquiry and accused Hamas of using excessive force. Taher An-Nunu, spokesman in the de facto government of Hamas, said that Jund Ansar Allah was responsible for a series of attacks using explosives on internet cafes, restaurants, hairdressers and Western meeting places. Hamas, which prevented the press from closely following the battle and conducting interviews in hospitals, said that it would not tolerate the presence of rival Islamic groups and that it would use harsh measures to prevent any such groups constituting themselves. According to Hamas, Jund Ansar Allah was also supported by other Arab regimes and elements connected with the secret services of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas. In Ramallah, the latter denied any such involvement.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Israel Awaits Stronger Reaction From Bildt

Israel doesn’t plan on canceling a scheduled visit by Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, despite his refusal to apologize for a controversial newspaper article alleging that Israeli soldiers harvested organs from dead Palestinians.

But Israel said it still expects Bildt to clearly distance himself from the article, published earlier this week in the Aftonbladet newspaper.

“The ball is in the court of the Swedish foreign ministry. We expect them to act or answer. No answer is also an answer, of course, and if there is no answer we’re going to be very disappointed and it will cast a shadow over the visit and our political relations,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesperson for Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, to the TT news agency on Saturday.

Israel is bothered by the Swedish government’s refusal to condemn Monday’s Aftonbladet article, which describes suspicions that Israeli soldiers took organs from dead Palestinians.

In a statement, Lieberman said that it “reminds us of Sweden’s conduct during World War II when it also did not intervene”.

Lieberman’s comments in turn irritated the Swedish foreign ministry, resulting in a Friday meeting between Israel’s ambassador in Stockholm, Benny Dagan, and Swedish cabinet secretary Frank Belfrage.

Bildt spoke carefully on Saturday about Israel’s criticism in his first public comments about the incident other than statements published on his blog.

“I’m not passing judgment on it at all,” he said as he made his way to Vaxholm to listen to attend a speech by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

He also commented on how the matter may affect relations between the two countries.

“I don’t think it will affect bilateral relations. We have an interesting and good dialogue when it comes to the peace process in the Middle East. But what I am concerned about is that the Israeli public has gotten the idea that there are anti-Semitic views which are tolerated in Sweden. That idea is wrong according to my view,” Bildt told TT.

“It’s important to say that anti-Semitism isn’t tolerated in Sweden.”

But the Swedish government nevertheless has no plans to issue an apology.

“No, it’s Aftonbaldet’s job to take responsibility for what Aftonbladet publishes,” added Bildt.

He explained that others sometimes have a hard time understanding Sweden’s principles on freedom of speech, adding that there may be reason to more clearly explain what rules apply in the country.

Reinfeldt also commented on Israel’s critique of the Swedish government’s reaction to the matter.

“No one can ask the Swedish government to violate its own constitution. Freedom of speech is an inalienable part of Swedish society,” he said.

Bildt is expected to visit Israel in just over a week. While there had been speculation that the visit would be scrapped, spokesperson Palmor said there are no plans from the Israeli side to cancel the trip.

According to reports in the Israeli media, however, Israeli representatives are instead considering talking only about the article when Bildt arrives in the country.

“The visit happens in ten days and we’ll see what comes up on the agenda,” Palmor told TT.

“Whether it will be the only thing on the agenda will be decided later — it depends also on the reactions of Mr. Bildt.”

He added that no further official protests from Israel are expected other than the opinions expressed by Ambassador Dagan to cabinet secretary Belfrage on Friday.

“We’ve already said everything we have to say,” said Palmor.

Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak had previously asked a legal advisor to explore whether or not it would be possible to sue Aftonbladet reporter Donald Boström for the article.

“We checking all the possibilities right now,” said Shlomo Dror, a spokesperson for Barak, to TT.

— Hat tip: TB

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Poll Shows Israelis’ Confidence in Obama Still Low

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV — Confidence in US President Barack Obama among Israelis is still very low, with support from only 12% of those interviewed in a poll conducted jointly amongst Israelis and Palestinians by the Truman Institute at the Jewish University in Jerusalem and the Centre for Policy Studies in Ramallah (West Bank). The results show that 40% of Israelis are convinced that the new leader of the White House is well-disposed towards the Palestinians, whereas the Palestinians believe that the current American administration — although more popular than the previous one — is still predominantly pro-Israel: as asserted by 60% of people interviewed in the West Bank. Israelis, contrary to public opinion in most western countries, have so far received Obama with scepticism. The current American administration has committed itself in recent months far more than previous governments in putting pressure on Israel to freeze all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem (considered illegal by the international community), as a condition to the relaunch of the peace process with the Palestinians. This pressure seems to have opened a chink of hope for a compromise with Benyamin Netanyahu, who has so far been reluctant, but it has also triggered off a reaction by a fringe within Netanyahu’s Likud party which is favourable towards the settlements movement and against any concession towards Washington. This fringe group has found a voice in Minister and former general Moshe Yaalon, irritating the prime minister. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Visa Restrictions for West Bank, US Criticism

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM — The United States has criticised Israel for the “unacceptable” restrictions placed on the entrance of foreigners headed for the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan, a crossing point controlled by Israel. Reports were published in today’s Haaretz, which a few days ago released the news that Israeli border authorities had begun to put entrance stamps prohibiting entrance into Israel on the passports of foreigners headed into Palestinian territory, especially if of Palestinian origin. The United States has asked Israel for clarification on these restrictions, and yesterday the US State Department said that “the United States expects all American citizens to be treated equally, independently of their nation of origin or other citizenship.” It also said that the US “has told the Israeli government that the restrictions hit American Palestinian and Arab travellers unfairly, and for this reason are unacceptable.”(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Baghdad Blasts ‘Were Inside Job’

Iraq’s foreign minister has said that members of the security forces may have collaborated with attackers in two huge truck bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Hoshyar Zebari said the militants must have been helped to get through checkpoints to foreign and finance ministry buildings in the city centre.

The blasts and other attacks in Iraq’s capital killed at least 95 people.

Mr Zebari also warned violence may rise in the coming days, six weeks after US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities.

Blast wall row

“According to our information, there has even been collaboration between security officers and the murderers,” Mr Zebari told reporters on Saturday.

He said the attacks had been well planned, and asked how the trucks had been allowed into central Baghdad — a no-go area for heavy vehicles.

“We will investigate that,” the minister said.

However, he offered no direct evidence to back up his accusations.

Mr Zebari also said “that there has been a deterioration in security and the coming days may be worse”.

He criticised a recent decision by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to remove most blast walls protecting government buildings and shopping centres in Baghdad.

“The removal of blast walls and checkpoints due to a false sense of security is also a reason” for Wednesday’s blasts, Mr Zebari said.

The decision to take down the walls by mid-September was reversed after the attacks.

The authorities have also detained 11 security officers on suspicion of negligence following the blasts.

Correspondents say the attacks raise concerns about the ability of Iraqi authorities to ensure security after taking over responsibility for protecting urban areas at the end of June.

Though violence in Iraq has declined since the peaks of 2006 and 2007, it continues to be the target of frequent bomb attacks.

Mr Maliki blamed the latest strikes on al-Qaeda in Iraq and supporters of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled after US-led forces invaded in 2003.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Iran Defense Minister a Terror Suspect

Ahmad Vahidi, nominated Thursday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to serve as Iran’s defense minister, is a suspected international terrorist sought by Interpol in connection with a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina.

Mr. Vahidi, a former commander of the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force, was one of 15 men and three women named to Cabinet posts by Mr. Ahmadinejad as he begins his second term in office. The choice is likely to further chill relations between Iran and the international community, especially Israel.

— Hat tip: JD

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Iranian Boy Who Defied Tehran Hardliners Tells of Prison Rape Ordeal

The 15-year-old boy sits weeping in a safehouse in central Iran, broken in body and spirit. Reza will not go outside — he is terrified of being left alone. He says he wants to end his life and it is not hard to understand why: for daring to wear the green wristband of Iran’s opposition he was locked up for 20 days, beaten, raped repeatedly and subjected to the Abu Ghraib-style sexual humiliations and abuse for which the Iranian regime denounced the United States.

“My life is over. I don’t think I can ever recover,” he said, as he recounted his experiences to The Times — on condition that his identity not be revealed. A doctor who is treating him, at great risk to herself, confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story. The family is desperate, and is exploring ways of fleeing Iran.

Reza is living proof of the charges levelled by Mehdi Karoubi, one of the opposition’s leaders, that prison officials are systematically raping both male and female detainees to break their wills. The regime has accused Mr Karoubi of helping Iran’s enemies by spreading lies and has threatened to arrest him.

— Hat tip: JD

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Jordan: Ramadan, Consumer Association Boycotts Red Meat

(By Mohammad Ben Hussein) (ANSAmed) — Its hot, not only because of weather, it’s the high prices too,” said 47 year old taxi driver Ali, whose sun burnt face told a story of a typical Jordanian struggling against all the odds to make it to the end of the month. Ali arrived to the bustling market of Sweileh, a town where an army of civil servants live, to purchase necessary items ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, due within a few days.”Every year life is getting more expensive,” said Ali shaking his head as he paid at the cashier. In this town, and all around Jordan, the aura of Ramadan can be felt in the air. The markets are louder and streets are busier, as citizens scramble to make final preparations before the fasting month knocks on the door. Consumption levels soar and with that prices of basic food items, including red meet, which nearly doubled in the past one month in anticipation of a higher demand. With the purchase power of the dinar already losing foot under a weakening dollar and soaring inflation, citizens are feeling the squeeze. The semi-independent Consumer Protection Society (CPS) has launched a campaign to boycott red meat ahead of Ramadan in desperate bid to pressure local producers to contain their excitement and reduce prices. The price of one kilogrammes of local fresh meet stands at unprecedented JD12 (almost USD 17), an astronomical figure if compared with the average per capita income of USD 2000 a year. Prices of other basic items have also jumped over the roof, with some items such as tomato and potato doubling, say traders. The fire of high prices also reached table eggs, rice, sugar and many other basic items. The government, armed with dilapidated mechanisms to reign in high prices, moved to assure citizens the market will be under control. Minister of trade and industry Amer Hadidi toured the markets of the capital on Monday blamed “greedy suppliers” for part of the increase. Businessmen witnessed a sudden surge in level of consumption in the past week, and anticipate more action as the month draws nearer everyday. “People see expensive prices and get shocked. They end up buying basic items, which are also expensive, but they have no choice,” said Abu Ali, who runs a small food supply shop in the town’s main market. In a country deprived of natural resources and heavily depends on international aid, poverty is on the rise and so unemployment. The government, burdened mounting debts and an army of civil servants that counts for one nearly one fifth of the population, is unable to help boost the economy. Officials from the CPS said the campaign could be the only way to force a decrease in the market prices. According to them, the campaign to boycott red meat has led to a drop in sales at butcheries by 80 per cent. The society, which has little power in this security minded country, sent an appeal to citizens to stop buying local and imported red meat for a week. However, Foodstuff Traders Association (FTA) President Khalil Haj Tawfiq attributed the surge in prices to an increasing demand and lack of liquidity. Jordanians consume around 5,000 tonnes of red meat in Ramadan, 20-30 percent more than the other parts of the year. Ramadan is due on Friday or Saturday, depending on the moon sighting. Until then it will be wait and see game between consumers and producers, said Ali before heading off in his yellow cap. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Jordan: Two Men Sentenced for Plotting to Kill Israeli

(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, AUGUST 20 — A military court yesterday sentenced two men to 12 year behind bars for plotting to kill Israelis living in the kingdom, a judicial source said. The two men were identified as Lawai Shehadah, 36 and Mohammad Awdallah, who are originally Palestinians. The two men are believed to have scouted an area in the northern part of the kingdom where Israeli investor lives, said the charges sheet, made available to ANSA. The men were found guilty of possession weapon and planning an attack on a foreigner. They were initially handed life behind bars, before the military judge commuted the sentence to 12 years. The men are believed to have planned the attack to avenge the war on Gaza earlier this year, which lead to the killing of 1330 and injury of around 5000. Jordan is home to nearly 3.5 million Palestinians who arrived after successive Arab Israeli wars in 1948 and 1967. Jordan is only the second Arab country to make peace with Israel after Egypt.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Lebanon: Hindu Burial Rite for Cow That Strayed From Israel

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, AUGUST 20 — After days of controversy between Lebanon and Israel, a sacred cow that died in the disputed territory between the two countries, monitored by Indian UNIFIL (the UN force in southern Lebanon) soldiers has finally been buried, “with all honours” according to Hindu ritual. Beirut daily an Nahar reported today that the animal carcass was buried near the Hassan Gate, a disputed area not far from the hills of Kfar Shuba in the eastern area of the interim border, by Indian soldiers after they “prayed for the cow, sprinkled it with salt, and then covered it with a white cloth”. The animal fell into a small depression in the land about a week ago after crossing from the zone occupied by Israel and entering into Lebanese territory controlled by UNIFIL soldiers in search of water. The carcass then was preyed upon by birds and wild animals, but no one from either of the countries had any intention of moving it. It was then buried by Indian UNIFIL soldiers, who are almost all Hindu, making the cow a sacred animal to them that must be buried with all honours. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Lebanon: Head of Al Qaeda-Linked Terrorist Group Arrested

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, AUGUST 20 — Lebanese secret services have captured a member of Jund Al Sham (Soldiers of the Levant), an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist group suspected of involvement in the simultaneous killings of four Lebanese judges in 1999. Reports were in the local press today, and said that Wissam Tahbish, of Palestinian origins, had been arrested yesterday at the entrance to the Ain al Helwe refugee camp near Sidon, 40 kilometres south of Beirut. Tahbish is a high-ranking member of Jund Al-Sham, a terrorist group active in Ain el-Helwe, which — as is the case with ten other refugee camps in Lebanon — have become a haven for militants of radical Islamic groups since they are not under Lebanese state control. Over the past few years, numerous arrest warrants have been issued for Tahbish in relation to terrorist attacks across the entire country, including the murder of four judges in the Sidon courthouse in 1999. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Lebanon-Syria: More Border Collaboration After Shooting

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, AUGUST 13 — After a shooting took place on Saturday on the Syrian-Lebanese border in which two people were killed, Damascus and Beirut have decided to intensify their border collaboration to avoid similar incidents taking place and to facilitate farmers’ passage between the two zones. Government press in the two countries this morning reported that a delegation of the Lebanese army and a delegation from the Syrian police met yesterday on the Syrian side of the main border pass of Jdeidet Yabus, along the Beirut-Damascus motorway. According to Lebanese daily An Nahar, the delegations decided that the results of an inquiry into Saturday’s shooting are to be released within a week. Perhaps as a result of an argument about the right of passage on farming land, a Syrian farmer and a Lebanese one were killed in a shootout in the north west section of the Lebanese border. The two delegations also agreed to create a “direct line” of communication between the Lebanese army and the border guard to prevent similar incidents and to impede the use of weapons by farmers in the border area. Damascus and Beirut then exchanged list of Lebanese and Syrian farmers present in border zone who are authorised to cross the central sector of the border without passing through the official border pass. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Obama: Autobiography in Arabic as Part of Emirates Project

(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 19 — American President Barack Obama’s biography ‘Dreams from My Father’, which is already an international bestseller, has been translated into Arabic. The translation and publication, reports Middle East online, was carried out as part of the Kalima project, sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH). “Concentrating on translating more important books from an historical and literary perspective is ADACH’s strategy. They plan to present ‘other’ cultures with their diversities and differences in order to open new channels to Arab readers and to resume translations from other languages into Arabic,” explained Ali bin Tamin, the Kalima project manager. The American president’s autobiography, which has already been translated into various languages, has posted sales, along with his other book, ‘The Audacity of Hope’, of over two and a half million dollars in revenue. ‘Dreams of My Father’ was translated by Hiba Njaeeb Maghrebi and by imam Abdul Ghani Najem, who have already published various translations. At least 100 books per year from all over the world will be translated as part of the Kalima project. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Row Over Iran’s Women Ministers

Conservative clerics in Iran have criticised a proposal by re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to include three women in his new cabinet.

“There are religious doubts over the abilities of women when it comes to management,” said hardline lawmaker Mohammad Taghi Rahbar.

He said his views were shared by many MPs from his clerics’ faction, which dominates Iran’s parliament.

The Islamic republic has not had female ministers since the 1979 revolution.

President Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term on 5 August after a disputed poll in June.

He unveiled his cabinet on Wednesday. MPs are expected to begin voting on a 21-member list at the end of the month.

‘Considerable opposition’

On Saturday, Mr Rahbar said that leading Iranian clerics — including Grand Ayatollahs Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani — had “doubts about choosing female ministers and want Ahmadinejad to reconsider”.

He said his parliamentary faction would be seeking the opinion of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the issue.

Aytollah Yousef Tabatabai, a top cleric in the central city of Isfahan, also expressed his opposition to Mr Ahmadinejad’s decision.

“We hope what the president said about the women ministers is not recognised by parliament,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s conservative Tehran Emrouz newspaper.

Women included in Mr Ahamdinejad’s list would head up the country’s health, social welfare and education ministries.

Analysts say Mr Ahmadinejad is also expected to face opposition over the list from moderates, who say his government lacks legitimacy.

Separately, Mr Ahmadinejad has been criticised by Argentina and Israel for nominating Ahmad Vahidi as new defence minister.

Mr Vahidi has been on on Interpol “wanted” list since 2007 in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina, in which 85 people died.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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‘Saudi Arabia Planning Nuclear Plant’

With the world seemingly unable to stop Iran’s nuclear march, other countries in the region are now pushing forward with their own plans to build nuclear power plants.

The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Thursday that the Saudi minister of water and electricity, Abdullah al-Hosain, said the kingdom was working on plans for its first nuclear power plant. The US inked civil nuclear power deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last year.

Israel had no official response to the Saudi minister’s announcement.

Over the last two years, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt have all indicated an interest in developing nuclear programs, with Israeli officials saying, off the record, that if these countries did not want the programs now for their military capabilities, they wanted the technology in place to keep “other options open” if Iran were to develop a bomb.

Israel has been careful not to take a public stand on civilian nuclear programs in neighboring states, partly because as one of the few countries in the world that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is not keen on lobbying against nuclear know-how for peaceful needs going to countries that are willing to sign the treaty, since that would focus the limelight on Israel’s own unique situation.

There is also a sense that if the programs were under the supervision of the US or France, which pledged two years ago to help Morocco develop a nuclear program, then there would be little concern that they would later be turned into military projects.

Nevertheless, defense officials said that Saudi interest in nuclear power was connected to Teheran’s continued race toward nuclear power.

“The Saudis are genuinely scared of what will happen if Iran turns nuclear,” one official said. “This is part of their response.”

On the other hand, the officials said that Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program was not of concern at the moment for Israel since the project was being established jointly with the United States and in the framework of International Atomic Energy Agency regulations.

Israeli defense officials have warned for several years that one potential outcome of Iran’s success in defying the international community and establishing a nuclear program would be that other countries in the Middle East would follow suit.

— Hat tip: Aeneas

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Syria: Why the West Needs it, According to Analist Moubayed

(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 13 — “Obama has finally understood that Syria plays a fundamental role: Damascus has become the axis of a possible agreement between conflicting interests in the Middle East. Syria is in a position to build a new equilibrium between the USA and Iran, and between Iran and Saudi Arabia”, said Sami Moubayed, a political analyst and professor at the Faculty of International Relations at the al-Kalamoun University in Syria, in an interview on the website of magazine ‘Reset.Doc’, by ‘Dialogues on civilizations’ association. “Syria currently enjoys a wide range of allies: France, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United States. It has never been the perpetrator of break-ups and divisions. It was Saudi Arabia who took an aggressive attitude on the outcome of a possible threat from Iran. The same thing happened in Cairo”. As for Iran, Syria has been one of its allies since 1979, but the international community began to see this as a threat “only starting from 2003”. Syria has always given priority to its national interests, and despite the current large number of allies, its “ultimate goal” is “the reannexation of the Golan Heights”. Syria also expects the Arab leaders “to discard their hostile attitude towards resistance groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The only way to negotiate with Hamas is through Damascus”. One of the latest interviews on Reset.Doc (whose scientific committee includes former minister Giuliano Amato) includes an analysis by Lorenzo Trombetta called “Beirut is divided again. And Syria is smiling”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turkey: Erdogan Open on Minorities, Makes First Visit to Disputed Patriarchate Buildings

Prime minister makes surprise visit to Bartholomew I and Büyükada Island, home to buildings owned by the Patriarchate, seized by the Turkish government, but recognised as Orthodox Church property by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Turkish prime minister continues on his path as a Janus-faced leader, in favour of democracy and minority rights on the one hand and playing the Turkish nationalist card on the other.

Istanbul (AsiaNews) — An important event took place on 15 August, feast day of the Dormition (Assumption) of Mary. For the first time a Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited the orphanage and monastery of Ayia Yorgi (Saint George) of Kudunas on Büyükada (Prince or Foremost) Island in the Sea of Marmara.

Although each April Muslims come on pilgrimage to the reputedly ‘miraculous’ monastery, the importance of Erdogan’s visit lies in a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which in June 2008 attributed ownership of the disputed property to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

On his arrival Erdogan and four of his cabinet ministers was met by Patriarch Bartholomew I who welcomed them. The prime minister’s visit, the first one ever by a Turkish head of government to either building, is seen by many as an implicit recognition of the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Just before the meeting with Bartholomew, Erdogan had lunch with representatives of Turkey’s religious minorities (Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Assyrian Orthodox and Catholic), invited by the administration that run the Princes’ Islands, a group of islands inhabited in the past by non-Muslims.

The prime minister told the minority leaders that he hoped that his presence “could help find a solution to the difficult issues that minorities face in the country since the principles of our party, the AKP, are against every form of discrimination, be it regional, religious or ethnic.”

“In our country there should be no differences between the various ethnic groups like the Kurds, Laz, Circassians, or Georgians,” he said, adding that “as a secular state Turkey does have some shortcomings but it also has the capacity to overcome these shortcomings. And we shall do all we can to fulfill the tasks we have undertaken.”

In an ecumenical spirit, Erdogan cited what could be considered the essence of the Mevlevi Order1 namely that “my neighbour must be met with love because he too was created by God.”

In ending his address Erdogan cited a Persian saying: “They gathered, talked and dispersed.’ We should not be of those who gather, talk and disperse. A result should come out of this.”

“He gave us a lot of hope and so we are optimistic,” Patriarch Bartholomew I told AsiaNews when asked to comment Erdogan’s visit and words. “Let us hope that with the help of Our Lady everything works out in the end. His [Erdogan’s] presence honoured us and gave us an opportunity to directly voice our concerns even if he already knows them.”

Lastly, “We invited the prime minister to come to the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to Halki,” the patriarch said. “He thanked us for that.”

In covering the visit Turkish newspapers described the prime minister’s move as the second initiative taken by his party to further democratisation.

In Istanbul’s diplomatic circles the gesture is seen as important, as something of great significance, but it must be viewed in light of Erdogan’s Janus-faced reputation2.

For instance, by December of this year, the prime minister must report on Turkey’s progress in meeting demands for European Union membership. He will have very little to show though, for little has been achieved since the 2007 parliamentary elections, which is a great disappointment since his party successfully used the EU membership in its campaign against Turkey’s Kemalist establishment, centred on the military, currently paralysed by the Ergenekon affair3.

This said, diplomatic sources have also noted Erdogan’s other face, one, which “with ill-concealed nostalgia, hints at the rebirth of the Ottoman Empire thanks to the new trans-Caucasian pipelines backed by Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, with Turkey as hub, now even willing to acknowledge (on its own terms) the Armenian genocide.

The election of a nationalist AKP leader, Mehmet Ali Sahin, as speaker of the Turkish parliament in replacement of the more progressive Köksal Toptan is another sign of this two-faced policy.

Minority leaders have reacted to Ergogan’s visit to Büyükada Island with cautious optimism. “Time will tell,” said Father Dositheos, an Orthodox priest.

Devlet Bahçeli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), instead reacted angrily to the visit, telling the prime minister that the European Union really wants to destroy Turkish identity and undermine the integrity of the Turkish state.

The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also said that by seeking international legitimacy Erdogan is trying to shield himself from problems within his party.

(Photos by Nikos Manginas)

1 A Shia confraternity founded in the 13th century in ancient Iconium, where the Christian presence was strong, and influenced the Mevlevi Order and the Alevi.

2 The god Janus is known for his two faces, hence terms like two-faced, Janus, Janus-faced. Erdogan has been dubbed Janus-faced because of contradictions in his politics.

3 Ergenekon is the name of an underground nationalist organisation accused of terrorism with close ties to the Turkish military. Last year some prominent individuals were charged with encouraging attacks and stirring up popular unrest in order to promote a coup.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Yemen: Army Advances Against Shia Rebels

Sanaa, 20 August (AKI) — Yemeni security forces are regaining control over Shia militants in the north of the country, the defence ministry’s website claimed on Thursday. “Army and security forces units have taken control of many areas which were in the hands of the rebels and are conducting cleaning up operations” according to a military source cited by the ministry site.

Military sources said the government’s latest campaign has been been extended backed by air raids on rebel positions in Saada and Amran provinces.

“The eagles of the air force continue to land painful blows on the saboteurs, destroying their fortifications,” one source said, without giving figures for losses amongst the rebels or the army.

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh pledged on Wednesday to crush the Shia rebellion in the north as the army continued its offensive in Saada province in the country’s northwest.

The campaign, dubbed Operation Scorched Earth, is targeting Zaidi Shia rebels, in the rugged mountainous region, local officials said.

Fighting broke out ten days ago between government forces and supporters of Shia rebel leader Abd al-Malik al-Hawthi in Saada province on the border with Saudi Arabia and has since spread to Amran province to the south.

Around 100 rebels have reportedly been killed in the recent conflict, and another 300 have been arrested, a security source said.

This is the sixth major conflict between Shia militants and government forces in Saada province since 2004.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Religion is Back in Russian Schools, But Under the Aegis of the Kremlin

A new subject will be introduced this year into 12 thousand schools across the Federation: “spiritual and moral formation”. By 2012 all Russian schools will have to offer the course that provides the opportunity to study Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism. For religious minorities it is another sign of the alliance between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate.

Moscow (AsiaNews / Agencies) — More than 90 years after the Soviet revolution, religion will become an official discipline in public schools in Russia within three years. Elementary school students will be able to follow courses of “spiritual and moral formation” by choosing to study four traditional religions: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism. The lessons will develop along three formative lines: the foundations of religious culture, the foundations of one of the traditional religions, the foundations of public ethics.

The return of religion to schools in Russia is taking place under the aegis of the Kremlin. President Dmitry Medvedev in person made the announcement at the meeting with the leaders of traditional religions in the country on July 24. Andrei Fursenko, Federation Minister for Science and Education, is refining the details of the pilot project, starting in September, that will cover 18 regions and 12 thousand schools, one fifth of the institutions of the Federation. The cost will be “hundreds of millions of rubles” that will be partly covered in the federal budget. The Minister is anxious to stress that “this money will not be wasted” but used to produce new textbooks and to cover the salaries costs for 44 thousand teachers, who will be selected from among the teaching staff already in service and will follow a specific training for the school year 2009-2010. After the ban of the Soviet period, religion is back at school. In fact already in August 2006, the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga and Smolensk had included the history of Russian orthodoxy in their optional study courses. In response to complaints raised by religious minorities, particularly the Muslim community, Minister of Education Fursenko responded at the time that “children should know the history of religion and religious cultures,” adding that “the textbooks would have dealt with the religions of the world as a whole, with particular attention to Russian Orthodoxy” .

Three years after that first experiment, the announcement of the introduction of the “spiritual and moral formation “ in schools has again alarmed minority confessions who see the new project as a Kremlin attempt to affirm the orthodoxy as the key pillar of national identity. According to recent polls, 72.6% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, but only 3% of them go to church every week. Despite this, the Kremlin supports and promotes the emerging protagonism of the Patriarchate of Moscow. In this way, Medvedev intends to cement common values and national identity while seeking support for government policies to stem the disintegration of social fabric and to respond to the disorientation of Russian youth.

Medvedev assures that “all force and pressure [to attend the courses] will be considered completely unacceptable and counterproductive,” the minister Fursenko stresses that “all learning materials will aim to please the different denominations, as well as atheists.” The same applies to the textbooks: “Even if they are prepared by the Orthodox — says Fursenko — representatives of religions will be free to express their opinion regarding them”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Indonesia: Terror Attacks ‘Funded From Middle East’

Jakarta, 20 August (AKI/Jakarta Post) — Funding for a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including last month’s twin hotel bombings in Jakarta, has come from the Middle East, local police have claimed.

Police confirmed in Jakarta on Wednesday they had detained a Saudi Arabian national suspected of trafficking cash funds to fugitive terror suspect Noordin Mohamed Top and Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group believed to be the regional arm of Al-Qaeda.

Malaysian-born Noordin Mohamed Top was a key figure behind the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings in Indonesia and remains one of Asia’s most wanted fugitives.

Insp. Gen. (ret) Ansyaad Mbai, a senior counter-terrorism official, said the money for key attacks in Indonesia could have originated from personal or charitable sources in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.

“The problem is that the money was not transferred via banks. This has happened in Indonesia and other countries [in the past] and it makes it difficult to trace the source,” Ansyaad said.

“They [terrorists] understand the government could freeze any money if it was transferred through the banking system. Therefore they use couriers to channel the funds.”

While information on suspected foreign sources of funding is rare, Ansyaad said Indonesian officials had been aware of the involvement of overseas donors from the Middle East since the bomb attacks in Bali in 2002 and those against the Marriott hotel in 2003.

Indonesian police are intensifying their efforts to trace the money used to fund the 17 July attacks on the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people and wounded more than 50.

The police confirmed Wednesday that they had arrested two people, identified only as Ali and Iwan, in different parts of West Java.

“The police are investigating the involvement of the two suspects in channelling the money used in the recent bombings,” national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said at a media conference on Wednesday.

“We suspect he [Ali] is a Saudi Arabian citizen, but we still need to prove whether his citizenship is fake or not,” he said.

Nanan said the police originally planned to follow Ali and Iwan but a media leak forced them to arrest the suspects instead.

A police investigator earlier identified the two men as Ali Mohammad bin Abdullah, a Saudi Arabian national, and Iwan Herdiansyah, a Kuningan resident in West Java. Both are suspected of acting as couriers for the money used to fund the Jakarta bombings in early July.

Intelligence expert Dynno Chreesbon said the police were still hunting another Saudi Arabian citizen who together with Ali allegedly passed on funds to Syaifudin Zuhri bin Djaelani Irsya. The latter is suspected of having recruited the suicide bombers for the attacks.

The head of the Financial Transaction Report and Analysis Center (PPATK), Yunus Husein, said his office had detected at least 80 financial transactions between 2004 and 2009 allegedly related to terrorist activities.

Police have also announced the names of three individuals suspected of involvement in July’s bombings.

They are Mohammad Syahrir aka Aing, Bagus Budi Pranoto aka Urwah and Ario Sudarso aka Suparjo Dwi Anggoro.

Noordin Mohamed Top, survived a recent police raid by police after the 17 July attacks.

Bagus has been convicted on terrorism charges in the past for harbouring terrorists Azhari and Noordin M. Top, but has since been released.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Pakistan Taliban Name New Chief

Pakistan’s Taliban movement has named a new leader, its deputy head Maulvi Faqir Mohammed has told the BBC.

He said Hakimullah Mehsud, a close associate of ex-leader Baitullah Mehsud, had been unanimously appointed at a meeting in northern Pakistan.

Pakistani and US officials believe Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike in early August.

However the Taliban continue to insist that he is still alive, despite their decision to appoint a new leader.

Hakimullah Mehsud, who is in his late 20s, is a military chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) organisation formed by Beitullah Mehsud in an effort to unite the various factions under one umbrella.

He controls an estimated 2,000 fighters in the Orakzai, Kurram and Khyber regions.

‘Ruthless and rash’

The announcement by Maulvi Faqir Mohammed follows weeks of speculation, and rumours of shootouts and disarray in Taliban ranks.

“Baitullah Mehsud, has been in hiding and he is very ill. He expressed his will that the next Taliban chief should be elected by the Taliban Council while he is alive,” Mr Mohammed told BBC Urdu.

“The council held its meeting in the Orakzai tribal area… the council has decided that Hakimullah Mehsud will be the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan,” Mr Mohammed said.

But the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Islamabad says many will see the naming of a new leader as confirmation that Baitullah Mehsud is dead.

Our correspondent says Hakimullah Mehsud is a young commander in Baitullah’s own image, and is reported to be equally ruthless.

Some believe he could be an even bigger threat to Pakistan, and to foreign troops across the border in Afghanistan, she adds.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Violations of Human Rights in Pakistan: 75% of Cases Remain Unpunished

In three years 11 thousand complaints, of which 8 thousand are still pending. Provincial governments unable to prosecute the guilty. Record of violations in the province of Sindh, where out of 6 thousand cases only 783 have obtained justice. Pakistani Minister for Human Rights admits financial difficulties and lack of funds.

Islamabad (AsiaNews) — In the last three years there have been more than 11 thousand cases of human rights violations in Pakistan, 8 thousand of which are still pending and waiting for justice. These were the facts presented by Syed Mumtaz Alam Gilan — Minister for Human Rights — to the National Assembly, the Pakistani parliament, during a question and answer session.

The minister admitted the “disastrous” results of provincial governments in “bringing those guilty to justice” and responding to a question from a member of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) the major opposition party, he explained that “the situation appears worst in Sindh (province in south-east), where out of some 6 thousand cases of human rights violations, only 783 offenders were punished”.

In the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where the army hand Taliban have been waging war against each other, out of 2 thousand violations only 730 cases have been resolved. Punjab recorded 2131 complaints, in which 814 led to the initiation of legal action. In Balochistan, finally, courts have resolved 305 cases compared with 823 complaints of human rights violations.

Gilani has stated that legal actions have been undertaken directly by the courts and not on the initiative of the Ministry, which has serious financial difficulties and depends on aid from national and international non-governmental organisations to survive. The Minister added that he has put forward a draft law to create a national commission on human rights. It has already received the go-ahead from the executive, and now awaits the verdict of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Rights, to become effective.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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N. Koreans to Meet South’s Leader

South Korean leader Lee Myung-bak is set to receive senior North Korean officials for the first time since taking office last year.

The talks are being seen as a significant thaw in relations. President Lee is routinely denounced as a lackey and traitor by the North.

The delegation from Pyongyang is to attended the funeral of late ex-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

The six senior envoys say they want better relations between the Koreas.

“The North Korean delegation is scheduled to pay a visit to President Lee Myung-bak before 10am (0100 GMT) Sunday,” Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said.

The meeting will take place just a few hours before the funeral of Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts to promote reconciliation on the Korean peninsula.

The talks between Unification Minister Hyun In-taek and the North Korean envoys was the first high-level meeting between the two sides since conservative President Lee took office in February 2008, promising to take a tougher line with Pyongyang.

Relations chilled as he cut aid to the North, tying its resumption to progress on nuclear disarmament.

‘Ties must be improved’

The six officials from North Korea were sent to pay respects for Kim Dae-jung. On Friday they laid a wreath at the National Assembly in Seoul, where Mr Kim’s body is lying in state.

They were also reported to be carrying a message from their leader Kim Jong-il to Mr Lee.

“While meeting many South Koreans here, I came to believe that inter-Korean ties must be improved at the earliest possible date,” said Kim Yang-gon, the North’s official in charge of inter-Korean relations.

“We’ve had little opportunity to talk… I hope that these first high-level official talks under the Lee Myung-bak administration will provide a chance to have frank talks,” he told his Southern counterpart Mr Hyun.

The words mark a turn around for the North, which earlier this year conducted an underground nuclear test and fired a long-range missile over Japan.

But more recently, there has been a series of conciliatory gestures. Two US reporters and a South Korean worker were released from detention and last week Pyongyang said it was interested in resuming cross-border tourism and industrial projects.

Some observers believe that, with UN sanctions beginning to bite, the North is keen to boost cross-border tourism and trade that bring in badly needed foreign currency, says the BBC’s John Sudworth in Seoul.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Vietnam: 2-Month-Old Killed to Stifle ‘Religious’ Dissent

Reports cite victim being used for ‘target practice’

An international Christian group has reported a horrifying episode of Christian children being abducted and killed in an apparent effort to stifle “religious and political” dissidents in Laos during the runup to a visit by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.

Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, recently visited several nations, including some that often have earned high rankings among nations that persecute Christians. His trip included visits to Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Now comes a report from International Christian Concern about the newest atrocities.

“International Christian Concern has just learned that Lao soldiers captured, mutilated and decapitated a two-month-old girl during recent military attacks against Hmong and Laotian civilians,” the group said. “Survivors of the attack said the infant was used for target practice.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Nigeria Rebels Hand Over Weapons

Hundreds of militants in Nigeria have handed over weapons at a ceremony in the southern Delta region.

The handover in Yenagoa, west of the oil city of Port Harcourt, took place after regional rebel leaders accepted an amnesty offer from the government.

However a faction of Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), the main rebel group, denounced the offer and said it would resume attacks.

Unrest in the region has seriously affected Nigeria’s oil production.

The weaponry handed over on Saturday included hundreds of assault rifles, a number of rocket launchers, and at least 12 gunboats.

The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Yenagoa says it is unclear how many heavy weapons have been handed over, and many of those put on display appeared to be old and rusty.

The senior Mend commanders who have accepted the amnesty offer include Ebikabowei Victor Ben, also known as General Boyloaf.

“So long as the government has said they will give the people what the people want, I think we have to give peace a chance and see how soon or how real they will perform,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme.

Fighting on

Gen Boyloaf has in the past been blamed for spectacular attacks against the oil industry in Bayelsa state.

But earlier this month he met Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua and accepted his offer of an amnesty for Niger Delta militants.

Gen Boyloaf and other militants have been fighting for a fairer share of the region’s oil wealth for local people.

Our correspondent says they have also made huge amounts of money from kidnappings and the theft of crude oil.

But some Mend factions in neighbouring states have refused to sign up to the amnesty.

One rebel group on Saturday said accused the government of “deceit” and said it would resume “ferocious attacks on the oil industry at the end of our ceasefire” on 15 September.

Militant attacks have reduced Nigeria’s out to 1.3m barrels per day. Nigeria’s Opec quota is 2m.

The rebels say proceeds from oil production have not benefited the region.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Franceschini: Xenophobia and Racism by Government

(AGI) — Rome, 21 August — Dario Franceschini, head of the Democratic Party, states that “Unfortunately the facts and statements show the truth of the tragedy of the deaths of the Eritreans at sea. It is no longer an issue of left or right, of different policies concerning illegal immigration. We are facing a tragedy which was predicted, caused by immoral and unjust laws contrary to international rights which have the effect of stopping rescue at sea. When 80 human beings are lost at sea their legal status is irrelevant. What is legitimate is to ask: if they were 80 tourists left for 20 days at the mercy of hunger and thirst in the middle of the Mediterranean what would the reaction of the politicians and the public have been? The government is making choices stained with xenophobia and racism: it is impossible not to be outraged by this horror. The same outrage which we should feel when faced with the Lega’s Facebook pages, which Bossi’s son is responsible for, where all this pain is turned into a game called ‘Bounce the Illegal immigrant’. It is no longer enough to file this away as silliness or summer propaganda: this is called racism”.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Migrants Treated Like Holocaust Jews, Say Bishops

Rome, 21 August (AKI) — Italy’s Catholic bishops have likened the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum in Europe to the treatment of Jews deported during the World War II Holocaust. The Catholic bishops’ daily, Avvenire, on Friday published a strongly worded editorial in which it referred to the tragic deaths of 75 Africans who perished off the coast of Sicily as they crossed the Mediterranean in their bid for asylum.

Only five people were rescued on Thursday by Italian coastal police from the motorised rubber dinghy, which had been carrying 80 people, mostly Eritreans. The boat which set off from Libya had been adrift for at least 20 days and seen between Malta and the tiny island of Lampedusa.

Avvenire accused the West of having “its eyes closed” and failing to hear cries for help, comparing the situation to those that heard the Jews’ and others who sought help when they were being deported by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

“When we read of the deportation of the Jews under Nazisim today, we wonder. Certainly people did not know, but those convoys, the voices, the cries, did no-one see or hear them in the transit stations?” the editorial said.

“There was totalitarianism and terror to make you close your eyes. Today there is not. There is a quiet resigned indifference, if not an irritating aversion in the Mediterranean.

“The West has its eyes closed. Five survivors arrived to tell us about sons and husbands who died of thirst after days of agony. On the same seas where we holiday. A tomb at the bottom of our happy ocean.”

The article also raised fresh concern about Italy’s harsh immigration law that makes it a crime to enter the country illegally and includes stiff penalties.

“No immigration control policy allows an international community to leave a boat full of castaways to their fate. There is a law of the sea, which is older than those written according to treaties. And that law says you save at sea,”read the editorial.

“On land there are other laws such as the right to asylum, welcome, and later deportation later. But lives must be saved.”

The editorial ended saying: “An old law has been violated, that threatens our own roots. Our foundations. The idea of what is man, and how much man is worth”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Judge Requires Statement That Abortion Ends Life

Split decision on South Dakota law, appeal promised

A judge in South Dakota has concluded Planned Parenthood must tell potential abortion customers that the procedure will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier ruled this week in the case that was launched in 2005 when state lawmakers approved the new consent law and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

More crime news from the Sultanate of Yorkshire. Here’s the brief account from the Beeb:

Man Charged Over Town Stabbings

A 19-year-old man has been charged with seven counts of attempted murder following a number of stabbings in Keighley, police have said.

Raheem Nawaz is due to appear before magistrates on Monday following two separate incidents in which eight people were injured.

A 44-year-old woman is in hospital in a serious but stable condition, and a 24-year-old man is described as stable.

The attacks were in Victoria Street and North Street on Thursday and Friday.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

[Post ends here]

Manfred, who blogs at “Manfreds politische Korrektheiten”, has translated one of his own posts — originally published in German as “Mutter Staat” — which describes the actions of the modern welfare state as the infantilization of an entire populace.

Below are some excerpts from “The Motherly State”:

I propose to conceptualize as “feminization” the mentality change that spread all over the West during the second half of the twentieth century, leading to an equivalent change of basic political ideology.

I think it is plausible to assume that the socially accepted idea of God (who epitomizes all that is good) mirrors the socially dominant mentality. It is therefore more than just a marginal curiosity that leftist theologians imagine God as a woman (or, at least, not as a God insisting on norms and punishing disobedience, i.e. a fatherly God).

There is a remarkable analogy between this idea of God and the expectations towards the state which is no longer seen as a law-and-order state, and as a nation state (defining and defending its borders), but as a state helping, giving welfare, moderating conflicts, embracing anyone — in one word: a motherly state. The state, as leftists imagine it, is a gigantic mother’s breast. A destructured and de-differentiated society — the core of the left-wing project — resembles an unstructured and undifferentiated brain of a baby. It is the social objectification of that baby brain.

– – – – – – – – –

As this social dominance of motherly attitudes emerged first among the children of the war generation, I assume that the cause of this feminization is the long absence of the father especially in this generation (or his death, his invalidity, his psychic breakdown etc.) as a consequence of the war (which includes that America may be less affected than Europe.). Many women had to be the head of the family. Therefore, the increased role of mothers and of feminine attitudes resulted in a feminized society and its favouring left-wing “solutions” of social problems.

The Left transformed this glorification of female attitudes into political ideology. Anyone determined to stop the decline and decay of our society, i.e. the process of de-structuring and de-differentiating, should be aware that he has to cope not only with leftist elites and their ideology, but also with a collective mentality steeped in this ideology.

Our Swedish correspondent CB has translated an article from Världen Idag (one of Sweden’s Christian newspapers) about the former poet and now radicalized Muslim Mohammed Omar.

First, this introductory note from the translator:

Mohammed Omar is at it again — and now he promotes a Muslim lauding Adolf Hitler and for some reason feels persecuted in Sweden.

Mohammed Omar is apparently working hard to speak for all Muslims and become one of the leading Islamists in Sweden. If not the leading one! He does have a public platform like no other Muslim, and the support of Swedish public media, so he might pull it off.

This article is about Omar’s desire to create an anti-Zionist people’s movement, where he hopes to be able to activate thousands of youth. He claims that the movement will only function intellectually, but we all know what happens these days when somebody activates youth in anti-Zionist movements. It turns ugly, arson ensues, property is smashed, and people get hurt while the police are onlookers.

Once again we see Muslims and Islamists aligning themselves with Nazism. As Knut W. Nygaard says: today it is politically correct to bash Israel in Sweden.

It’s welcome to see that some Social Democrats have reclaimed their honor and established a pro-Israel association. Especially at this time, since they have a party leader who participates in Hamas demonstrations. Even the Christian wing of the Social Democrats wants closer contacts with Hamas. The question is for how long the Israel-friendly members will have a platform in their party.

The fact is that in Sweden people in public employment have been fired for supporting Israel in their leisure time, but people denying the Holocaust get radio and TV time. So, Nygaard is correct; this is reminiscent of the 1930s!

And now for CB’s translation of the article in Världen Idag:

Omar invites convicted Anti-Semite

The poet Mohammed Omar has invited Ahmed Rami, convicted of racial agitation [hets mot folkgrupp, hate speech], to speak at a study circle in Uppsala.

Omar lauds Rami as a martyr and now wants to gather thousands of youths in an anti-Zionist popular movement.

“Israel’s dominion in Sweden” was the subject when Rami spoke at the first lecture, says UNT [local newspaper in Uppsala].

The purpose of the lectures is to “reveal” Zionism as a threat against freedom of speech in Sweden, explains Mohammed Omar when Världen Idag phones him.

– – – – – – – – –

Do you support what Ahmed Rami has said and done?

“I can’t make a statement about that, because I don’t really know what he has said and done. But I support his right to express himself.”

So, you have invited a lecturer who has been convicted of racial agitation, without even checking what views he has?

“I don’t think you need to know everything. It’s enough that I know some things.

“Salman Rushdie was convicted for racial agitation by an Iranian court. But that hasn’t stopped people from inviting him to conferences. They see that as a merit. By the same token I see it as a merit that Ahmed Rami has been convicted for criticizing Judaism. It elevates his status among Muslims.”

Do you mean that all Muslims support Ahmed Rami?

“The majority of them support Rami. The only ones who have anything negative to say about him are either bought or hypocrites. But all true Muslims admire Ahmed Rami. We see him as a martyr; he has shown what a destructive influence the Jews have in Sweden.

The study circle in Uppsala is arranged by Mohammed Omar and the association Friends of the Uppsala Mosque. According to Omar the association has 258 members, most of them between 15 and 25 years old.

The circle, according to Rami [should be Omar — translator] will continue non-stop for several more years. Besides Ahmed Rami, he and other lecturers will participate as speakers.

“We hope to be able to activate thousands of youths against Zionism. This will be the beginning of an anti-Zionist people’s movement. Our work will be solely intellectual, through enlightenment and the education of people.”

The previously acclaimed poet Mohammed Omar has been under fire since the beginning of the year when he denied the genocides in Cambodia and Sudan. He also partially questioned the Holocaust.

Ahmed Rami became famous in the 1980s as the legally responsible editor for the local radio station, Radio Islam. There Rami made statements denying the Holocaust and praising Adolf Hitler. In 1989 he was convicted of racial agitation and sentenced to six months in prison.

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at Atlas Shrugs. Some excerpts are below:

The fact that the anti-Israeli and anti-American writer Helle Klein, for many years the political editor of Aftonbladet, at her blog also speaks warmly of “free speech” is such an extreme case of hypocrisy that it simply cannot go unanswered. Free speech does not exist in Sweden. Although some countries such as Britain and Belgium are trying hard to claim the title, I would personally rate Sweden as being probably the most totalitarian and politically repressive country in the entire Western world as of 2009, and Aftonbladet has made substantial contributions to this repressive climate. Sweden has huge problems caused by mass immigration, and Muslim immigration in particular, but speaking honestly about this is absolutely taboo among the mainstream media. According to journalist Karen Jespersen, Helle Klein has stated that “If the debate is [about] that there are problems caused by refugees and immigrants, we don’t want it.” Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, yet not one party represented in parliament has been genuinely critical of the immigration policies, and there is virtually no real debate about Multiculturalism and Islam.

As I have stated in my essay Why Europeans Should Support Israel, the demonization of Israel should be rejected not just because of Israel, but because of Europe. The very same people who are demonizing Israelis are also demonizing native Europeans who resist the Islamization of their lands and the state-sponsored colonization of their countries by alien peoples. The truth is that Israelis defend themselves so that their daughters do not have to suffer rape at the hands of Muslim Jihadists, the way the authorities in Western European countries, and in Sweden in particular, allow to happen every single day. Here are a few relevant quotes from the chapter The Case of Sweden, taken from my book Defeating Eurabia. I suggest that Israelis send some of these quotes to Aftonbladet, Helle Klein and Carl Bildt and challenge them with the information it contains:

The Swedish organization Expo has demonstrated a willingness to “share information” with radical groups of “anti-Fascists” in Antifascistisk Action (AFA). The thugs of AFA in the spring of 2008 destroyed the car of an elderly woman and wrote “nasse” (Nazi) on top of it. As it turned out, they picked the wrong car. Yet years of such attacks against private citizens have not prompted the authorities to crack down on their activities.

– – – – – – – – –

Leading newspaper Aftonbladet has close ideological ties to the Social Democrats, the country’s dominant party for most of the past century. Helle Klein, its political editor-in-chief from 2001 to 2007, during a demonstration organized by Islamic and anti-racist organizations in December 2006 stood in front of a banner which read “A Sweden for all — Stop the Nazi violence” and held a speech warning against Islamophobia in the media. Klein has voiced sympathy for terrorist organization Hamas in her editorials while warning against the threat posed to world peace by Israeli aggression and the Christian Right in the USA. Hamas is a Fascist organization openly calling for mass murder of Jews. Violent attacks against Jews in Europe in 2008 are to an overwhelming degree caused by Muslim immigration, which is encouraged by the EU and the national political elites. The irony of warning against “Nazi violence” while showing sympathy for an organization that wants to finish what the Nazis started apparently doesn’t strike Ms. Klein.

One of Klein’s fellow columnists at Aftonbladet, the long-time Communist Robert Aschberg, is the publisher of Expo magazine. Leading Expo member Charles Westin in October 2007 published the book Brunt! (“brown,” as in “Fascist”), where he let members of AFA contribute some of their intelligence regarding “right-wing extremists,” among them people associated with the legal party the Sweden Democrats. In addition to Mr. Westin, the book was co-authored by Mats Deland, who is a journalist in Aftonbladet. Why is it considered OK that a representative of one of Scandinavia’s largest newspapers, with ties to the country’s largest political party, thus associates himself openly with an organization known for physically assaulting members of a legal opposition party, even in their private homes?

Read the rest at Atlas Shrugs.

According to official statistics, immigrants to Vienna in record numbers are taking advantage of educational opportunities offered by the Austrian state.

Our Austrian correspondent ESW has translated an article from the print edition of Die Presse, July 23, 2009, page 10:

Migrant Coaching: Ninety percent attend courses

Whether the new educational offerings are effective, remains unclear, as are its evaluation methods.

In the first half of 2009, ninety percent of those who have immigrated to Vienna since October 2008 have taken advantage of the city’s advisory services as well as educational courses. These numbers document the migrants’ increasing interest in taking advantage of support during their first months in their new home — Vienna. However, that’s as yet the most conclusive statement extracted from the data presented by Vienna’s integration secretary, Sandra Frauenberger. (SPÖ)

The problem is: It is not possible to tell how many of the 3,000 “clients” taking advantage of the new courses — which, according to Frauenberger are “a success” — have really learned something they find useful in their daily lives.

– – – – – – – – –

The city offers those with a settlement permit not only coaching on an individual basis, but also health and German language courses. There are no precise evaluation methods regarding the effectiveness of these courses; at least, Frauenberger is maintaining a low profile in replying to a question on whether the attendants will be interviewed about the courses: “That might be a possibility.”

It is a fact, however, that the majority of “New Viennese” appear to be greatly interested in further education. Two thirds of those polled want to continue their education in Austria, fourteen percent already have a university degree, while twenty-eight percent finished high school. That nineteen percent of those polled “do not want to work at all” is a result that screams for follow-up action. Frauenberger has to concede the point.

Notice the highlighted section: a full nineteen percent of those who attend the classes do not even intend to work. That is, a fifth of immigrants to Vienna avail themselves of state-financed education as guests of the Austrian nation, and yet they have no plans to do anything afterwards except live on welfare benefits, funded by the Austrian taxpayer.

A system this perverse is unstable and cannot persist. Something has to give.

Not everything that came while I was gone is included in this news feed. I had to leave out most of yesterday’s tips, but even with those gone, there are more than a hundred items tonight.

Concerning the brouhaha over the Swedish “blood libel” article: notice that the Swedish government is now vigorously defending freedom of the press. One might have wished for as principled a response to the Motoon crisis, during which Sweden joined much of the rest of the world in condemning Danish newspapers. Sauce for the goose and all that…

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Lurker from Tulsa, Sean O’Brian, TB, Tuan Jim, TV, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – – –

	USA
	America Sits Back as Others Rush for Black Gold in Gulf
	B. Hussein in History Wonderland
	Beware Obama’s Fabian Window
	Big Labor Administration Focused on 20 Million New DNC Union Thugs
	Black Market, Here We Come
	Christian Girl Begs State: Don’t Let Them Kill Me!
	Health Care Reform Contains Hidden Gift to HMOs
	In Government We Trust?
	Islamization of Yale: A Partial Chronology
	Judge Denies Request for GPS Monitoring for Convicted Child Rapist
	Language Freedom Law Heads to Schwarzenegger
	Obamacare Could Cost You $4,000 a Year
	Oklahoma: Jenks Schools Gets $1.5 Million for ‘Chinese Initiative’
	On Dishing it Out…
	Senior Citizen’s “Death” Warrant
	Text-and-Drive Bans Belong in State Legislatures
	The Sotomayer Scare
	‘Tintin’ Deemed Racist, Removed From Shelves
	Trial Lawyers Are the Fourth Branch of Government
	Trial Under Way in Black-on-White Carjacking Murders
	Why Pharma Wants Obamacare
	Woodstock’s Poisonous Legacy
	Yes, Grandma, There is a Death Panel
	You’re a Racist! The Ultimate Emotional Intimidation
	Canada
	Canada Flies NATO Flag in Arctic Showdown
	This Just in From Mohamed Elmasry: Christian Slavery = Bad. Islamic Slavery = Empowering !
	Europe and the EU
	Anti-German Jihadist Videos Flood Internet
	Antwerp: Report on Extremist Mosques and Organizations
	Arctic Sea: Freed Russian Seamen Questioned in Remand Prison
	Denmark: Lawyers Banned From Iraqi Interrogations
	Denmark: Officer and Rapper Shot During Hash Fine
	Denmark: Police Dog Killed in Shootout
	Denmark: Scarcity of Workplace Prayer Rooms
	Denmark: Burka Ban Causes Govt. Tumult
	Finland: Severe Belt Tightening in Specialist Care
	Finland: Coming Home: Registered Male
	Finland: Coming Home: Rushing to Take a Breather
	Finland: Coming Home: Good Bureaucrats
	France: Workers Striking, Threatening to Poison Seine
	Germany: Arranged Marriage Ends in Tragedy
	Germany: Green Party Minister Angers German Auto Industry With Car Comments
	Germany: Muslim Man Sentenced to Life in Jail After Killing His German-Born Wife Because She Was ‘Too Independent’
	Ireland: Lobby Group Says Yes Vote Would Jeopardise Farm Succession Rights
	Ireland: US Giant to Spend Thousands Backing ‘Yes’ Camp
	Italy: Venice Cemetery Tourist Complaints
	Muslims in Sweden Celebrate Ramadan
	Netherlands: Muslim Group Republishes Punishable Cartoon
	Netherlands: AEL Puts Holocaust Cartoon Back on Its Website
	Netherlands: Low Language-Skill Children Get Cheaper Daycare
	Norway: Pre Election: Information — Progress Party Candidate Commentary
	Sweden: Girl, 14, Gang Raped on Internet Date
	Sweden Summons Israeli Ambassador
	Sweden: Bildt Rejects Israeli Call for Official Condemnation
	Sweden Defends Press Freedom Amid Israeli Furor
	Sweden: Israeli Minister Fires Up the Debate
	Sweden: STIs a Sign of Manhood?
	UK: BBC Race Row as Sikh Listeners Threaten Muslim Radio Presenter Who ‘Denigrated Holy Symbol’
	UK: Oxford Won’t Fire Rotterdam’s Rejected Advisor
	UK: Revealed: The Areas of Britain Where There Are More Migrants Chasing Jobs Than Locals
	UK: Seven Charged Over Iraq Protest
	UK: Two Charged Over BNP Members Leak
	UK: Why Do We Keep Betraying the Victims of Terror?
	UK: Why Are We Giving Child Molesters Viagra on the NHS?
	World’s First Muslim Superheroes, The 99, Are Headed for British Television Screens
	North Africa
	Egyptian Coptic Priest Banned From Village, Under Death Threat
	Lockerbie Bomber Home in Libya Amid US Anger
	Lockerbie Bomber Returns to Libyaabdel Baset Al-Megrahi Returns Home to Libya
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Israeli Ambassador ‘Upset and Furious’
	Israel Grapples With a New Kind of Violence
	Middle East
	Iran Missile Said to Pose Europe Threat in 3-4 Years
	Iran ‘Minister’ On Interpol List
	Iraq: Iranian Rockets Used in Attack on U.S.
	Romans Didn’t Destroy Jerusalem
	Russia
	Leftist Journalist a Spy for Stalin
	South Asia
	French Tourist Freed in Pakistan
	No Sign of Voters on Election Day in Afghanistan Despite Official Claims
	SAS Escape as Chinook is Shot Down ‘By Enemy Fire’ In Afghanistan
	Sri Lanka to Train Pakistani Army
	Thailand: Man Shot Dead at Mosque
	UK: BBC’s Flagship Asian Radio Station in New Race Row
	Far East
	China ‘Used U.S. Reporters’ Film to Crack Down on N. Koreans’
	Japan to Celebrate Italy
	Koreas: The Trouble With Hyun’s N. Korea Visit
	South Korea: Ulchi Freedom Guardian
	Australia — Pacific
	Australia: Bligh Widens Abortion Law as Doctors Revolt
	Australia: Farmers Flee as Turbines Trigger Despair
	New Zealand: No Spanking Law Lifted?
	NZ Votes Against Child Smack Ban
	Latin America
	Behind the Shadowy World of Narco-Terror
	Brazil Calls Obama Over US Bases
	Immigration
	17 Illegal Immigrants Land on Southern Sardinia
	Algeria: 22 People Headed for Italy Stopped
	Controversy in Italy After Death of 73 Eritreans
	Finland: Challenging Asylum Cases for Finnish Authorities
	Psychiatrist Gets 10 Months, Gave Fake Citizenship Waivers to 492
	Remains of Immigrants Found
	UN Shock at Migrant Boat Deaths
	UN to Monitor Swedish Migration Board
	Culture Wars
	EU: Gynecologists in Spain Plan to Choose Jail Before Performing an Abortion
	Obama Echoes Cain, Not Christ
	Obama: ‘No Taxpayer-Funded Abortions in Health Bill’
	General
	7 Reasons to Skip Upgrade to Windows 7
	Climate: UN: Re-Examine Agriculture Southern, Eastern Med
	Economic Scene: Is Population Growth a Ponzi Scheme?
	Not All Cultures Are Good
	‘Save the Planet’ Sounds a Lovely Idea But…
	The Web’s Masquerade Ball is Over

America Sits Back as Others Rush for Black Gold in Gulf

Major new offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico will soon be a reality. The big question is whether Americans will be part of it. Brazil, China, India, Norway, Spain and Russia have all signed agreements with Cuba and the Bahamas to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico within the next two years. So the prospect of seeing Russian oil rigs 45 miles off the Florida Keys — where American oil companies are now forbidden to drill — is a very real possibility.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the eastern Gulf region contains 3 billion barrels of oil and more than 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Last summer, President George W. Bush lifted the executive branch moratorium his father signed in 1990 on new drilling in 85 percent of America’s territorial waters.

The Democratic Congress then wisely let the congressional ban expire. So the only thing keeping U.S. firms from drilling off our own continental shelf is President Barack Obama and his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, who is slow-walking the approval process that must be cleared before work can begin. Meanwhile, foreign nations are jockeying for the best spots.

The Obama administration, incredibly enough, is giving Brazil a $2 billion loan from U.S. taxpayers to finance its development of offshore energy resources in the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, the development of America’s coastal oil and gas resources would generate more than $1.3 trillion in new government revenue and 160,000 high-paying jobs during the next two decades.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ark., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., are bipartisan co-sponsors of a bill that provides coastal states like Florida their fair share of revenue produced by offshore drilling and production. The same thing should be done for states on the East and West coasts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California lawmakers hope to tap deposits off Santa Barbara to generate billions in royalties, and front-running gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell has made drilling 50 miles off the Virginia coast a key component of his energy plan.

Many environmental objections to deepwater drilling have been overcome. For example, 4-D seismic surveys provide pinpoint accuracy for well location. New technology also enables one drilling platform to reach deposits 40 miles away in water up to 10,000-feet deep. (The same technology could help other nations drill just outside our coastal limits while tapping into resources inside the boundary.)

According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, less than 0.0001 percent of the 1.4 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore since 1980 has been spilled. That’s a remarkable safety record and a tribute to American energy ingenuity.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

B. Hussein in History Wonderland

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in Washington this week to press flesh with the president. In an interview, Mubarak told PBS television that Barack Obama’s speech had shown him that “America is not against Islam.”

The address Mubarak was referring to was delivered by a grandiose Obama in Egypt’s capital, early in June. There, the president prostrated himself before the Muslim world, offering up prolix praise for the religion of peace — a tradition that his predecessor established.

Frankly, I got the impression that Mubarak himself was a little wary of Islam — this is the Egyptian’s first sojourn to Washington since 2004, after breaking up with Bush. “W” would not stop bugging Mubarak about democratizing Egypt. Fortunately, Mubarak was not about to help catapult the Wahhabist Muslim Brotherhood to power, which would be the likely outcome of a democratic election in Egypt.

But I digress.

In that memorable speech, the president also lauded the compendious knowledge spread far and wide by the Al-Azhar and Cairo Universities. Nary a reference was made to “Islam’s bloody borders,” as Samuel P. Huntington put it in “The Clash of Civilizations?” Or, for that matter, to Al-Azhar’s bloody borders. According to Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, officiating as Grand Sheikh for this much-exalted institute of Islamic learning is a chap by the name of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. In the tradition of Islamic Enlightenment, Tantawi has given his approval — on strict Islamic grounds, mind you — to suicide bombing.

After mentioning the value and universality of human rights, our self-styled “student of history,” as the president had dubbed himself on the occasion (he also made a point of repeating his middle name a lot), B. Hussein went on to declare that “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles.”

The choice to draw parallels between a country and a faith was a curious one. Was Obama intimating that Islam, like America, was a political system? In that case, we are agreed about the project of Islam.

Still — and for all Obama’s heavy hinting to the contrary — Islam has no “human rights.” The ideas of individual rights and the dignity of man are distinctly Western, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. And while dialogue is dignified; dhimmitude is not, even if it achieves a desired, if temporary, effect.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Beware Obama’s Fabian Window

If you feel the ground shaking under your feet; if the America you once knew seems to be changing daily; if you feel that you have less and less control over your life and the country is being governed from the top down, then you should take heed. Someone is “remoulding the world nearer his heart’s desire,” and he has the biggest hammer in the world. If you want to understand Obama’s agenda, you need to peer into the Fabian Window.

[Comments from JD: Click on the image of the stain glass window for a larger version.]

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Big Labor Administration Focused on 20 Million New DNC Union Thugs

While the nation is focused on stopping Obama’s Marxist health scare plan, Obama’s DHS is quietly moving forward on amnesty, free health care and voting rights for some 20 million illegal migrants.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Black Market, Here We Come

After I received an e-mail from my close friend David Axelrod, I dutifully glanced through the “Reality Check” about Obama’s health care plan, prompting hysterical laughter as I wondered how in the world the Obama camp thinks this will help their case. Of course, I had also just received an e-mail from my Ohio senator, Sherrod Brown, featuring more joking points.

Among Senator Brown’s claims was that since Big Insurance is fat and greedy, it really needs some healthy (no pun intended) competition. Guess where that’s going to come from? The federal government! As we all know, the feds are running a really tight ship these days.

Which brings to mind a prediction about Obamacare that has gotten little or no coverage: the likely creation of a black market.

This is virtually guaranteed, because industrious Americans are not going to sit still for this nonsense. Once the real “Reality Check” happens and Joe the Health Consumer sees that he has only pathetic options with Obamacare, he will begin to seek other choices. And side-lined health professionals in this country will figure out a way to give him some.

[…]

The irony is that, while it will be easy to get an abortion, under Obamacare some Americans will be told their premature newborns do not deserve costly neonatal intensive care. Mature Americas who are a long way from death will be denied knee replacements, bypass procedures and pacemakers.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Christian Girl Begs State: Don’t Let Them Kill Me!

Judge decides fate of honor student, cheerleader who fled Muslim parents

A young Christian runaway in foster care awaits her hearing tomorrow when Florida authorities will decide whether she will be forced to return to her Muslim parents — whom she says will kill her for converting to Christianity.

Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, an honor student and cheerleader, was raised in a Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio. She became a Christian four years ago as a result of her interactions with children at school.

Atlas Shrugs’ Pamela Geller has followed Bary’s case closely, reporting that the girl’s friends accompanied her to the school counselor after they noticed bruises covering her arms and legs that allegedly resulted from beatings by her father and brother.

“The middle school, in a serious dereliction of duty, did not report these beatings to child welfare services,” Geller reported. “Beatings were random, violent, unprovoked. Take, for example, when Rifqa and her father Mohamed were driving in the car. He would force her to wear the hijab (head covering), which she hated. In her discomfort she would slouch down, embarrassed, and her father would haul off and sock her in the face so that she never forgot to sit up straight in her costume. The beatings were regular and so much a part of the landscape of Rifqa’s life, she became inured to them …”

[…]

Fox News reported that legal experts have said she will almost certainly be forced to return to her parents’ home in Ohio where she will be required to live with her parents since Ohio does not have an emancipation statute. According to the report, Florida has such a statute, but it requires parental consent.

[…]

Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” told Fox News Bary’s life will be in danger if she is forced to return to her parents.

“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” she said. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘presuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”

Chesler continued, “She escaped from her family’s brutal tyranny and shamed her family further through public exposure. Muslim girls and women are killed for far less.”

Meanwhile, International Christian Concern is urging Florida officials to retain custody of Bary.

In a statement, ICC said it is concerned about Rifqa because the Columbus police officer who investigated the case told the press that Rifqa’s father “comes across to me as a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”

However, ICC reveals that a source who spoke with the same investigating officer said the officer indicated earlier that he has spoken with 20 different people who warned him that the girl’s life was in danger.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Health Care Reform Contains Hidden Gift to HMOs

Did you know that if your job-based HMO wrongly denies you coverage for a medical treatment and that denial leads to injury or death, federal law may protect that insurer from paying any damages to you or your family?

Did you know that House Democrats’ health care “reform” bill would cement this extraordinary legal immunity for health insurance companies?

Commerce Committee Republican Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona objected during the bill’s markup to a provision that benefits insurers at the expense of patients — namely, one that explicitly preserves insurers’ immunity when they harm patients by wrongly denying care.

HR 3200, the House “reform” bill, creates a “Health Insurance Exchange,” or heavily regulated markets in which individuals may buy insurance without going through their employers. Section 151(a) of the bill includes some legislative language about plans “not offered through the Health Insurance Exchange,” which largely means employer-provided health insurance.

Paragraph 1 of the section states that all the bill’s regulations and restrictions on the insurer do not supersede current regulations of health care. Paragraph 2 says, “Nothing in paragraph [1] shall be construed as affecting the application of section 514 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.”

What does that mean?

ERISA was the federal law that built upon the employer-based health insurance system that currently dominates today’s insurance market. Section 514 of the law made it clear that ERISA’s rules superseded state insurance regulations. In effect, states would regulate individually purchased insurance plans and Washington would regulate most employer-based health plans.

Touted as a consumer-protection regulation, ERISA had particularly perverse consequence that came to light when Florence Corcoran’s unborn child died in 1989.

A doctor had determined that Corcoran should be placed on bed rest in a hospital, with around-the-clock fetal monitoring because of medical problems that made hers a “high-risk pregnancy.”

Nine days after entering the hospital, Corcoran left after learning that UnitedHealth had denied coverage of her hospital stay. Two weeks later, her child went into distress and died. The Corcorans filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Louisiana, claiming UnitedHealth’s negligence led to their child’s death.

But federal courts ruled that it didn’t matter if UnitedHealth caused the baby’s death, state courts had no jurisdiction over ERISA plans. Further, federal courts ruled that ERISA plans could only be sued under the rules specifically laid out in the 1974 ERISA law.

That law didn’t include any avenue for victims of HMO negligence to recover compensatory damages such as cash for wrongful death. Courts have consistently reached this conclusion in similar cases.

In short, this federal law immunized the health insurers whose denial of coverage caused harm or death. And now the House reform bill appears explicitly to preserve that immunity for employer-based plans.

Shadegg tried to strike this provision in the Commerce Committee markup last month. Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, expressed sympathy for Shadegg’s argument, but turned the amendment away on the grounds that ERISA was not under the committee’s jurisdiction.

Waxman’s office did not return a call asking about the provision. Waxman is second among House members for money from HMO political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The ERISA-immunity preservation might just be another negotiating point in the backroom dealings between Big Pharma and Big Insurance on one hand and Democratic “reformers” on the other hand. Or, it could just be an oversight. Or, Shadegg could be misreading the law.

In any event, ERISA immunity highlights another relevant lesson for “reformers” and their backers: Laws passed under the banner of protecting consumers and regulating industry typically end up helping industry and hurting consumers and small businesses.

Increasingly, health care “reform” is looking like good news for HMOs and bad news for the rest of us.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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In Government We Trust?

I believe Madoff’s massive and destructive breach of trust had an effect on the public mind that carried beyond the tragedy of its immediate victims. After Madoff, John Q. Public set the bar really high for anyone seeking a big commitment of trust with money. But that’s exactly what the ambitious Obama health plan did.

President Obama in his public pleas for the plan appears to be truly upset that his benign view of it isn’t obvious to all. In his op-ed Sunday for the New York Times he said, “We’ll cut hundreds of billions in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.” Hundreds of billions? Just like that? This is nothing but an assertion by one man. It’s close to Peter Pan telling the children that thinking lovely thoughts will make them fly.

Most people are aware that the big three entitlements we’ve got are underfunded. Medicaid is wrecking state budgets, Medicare goes broke in eight years, followed by the flatlining of Social Security.

— Hat tip: JD

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Islamization of Yale: A Partial Chronology

by Diana West

[click link to see photo]

No, I have not just raised the curtain on a new Mel Brooks musical number, with the “imam,” center stage, about to break out singing: “Autumn … at Ya-le … means Ram-adan….”

Behold Yale’s Coxe Cage where in October 2008 hundreds of area Muslims, including Yale students, gathered for an Islamic service. (Story and slide show here.) I found this stunning East-meets-absorbs-West image while researching this week’s column in which I make the case that Yale probably censored the Motoons in accordance with Islamic law to please potential Muslim donors who fund the extension and entrenchment of such law.

Along the way, I found a bumpy trail of disjointed factoids that, even though they don’t all connect, nonetheless mark an increasing accommodation of Islam, including jihad and sharia culture, at Yale. It is a progression that is impossible to assess without also assessing Yale’s disgraceful pursuit of money from the bastions of sharia — namely, from some of the world’s leading, if super-wealthy, Islamic villains, including UAE’s Maktoum family, & Saudi Arabia’s Talal bin Alwaleed — which I have also tried to track.

This Islamization of Yale is perhaps best captured by the absolutely surreal picture above. I call it “surreal” because there is a science fictional and, indeed, cartoonish aspect to this mass importation of a non-Western, anti-liberty society right smack into the middle of a once strongly defined and, by definition, extremely exclusive bastion of Western, pro-liberty society — Yale’s Coxe Cage, not only an athletic center since 1915, but also site of alumni luncheons in the fall…

— Hat tip: Diana West

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Judge Denies Request for GPS Monitoring for Convicted Child Rapist

A Middlesex Superior Court judge today refused to order a convicted child rapist on probation to wear a GPS monitoring device, citing a ruling Tuesday by the Supreme Judicial Court.

[…]

A divided Supreme Judicial Court ruled Tuesday that sex offenders convicted before 2006 cannot automatically be forced to wear GPS devices because it creates an unconstitutional burden on their freedom. In a 4-to-3 decision, the court said a 2006 law mandating GPS devices on all sex offenders placed on probation cannot apply retroactively, the Globe reports today.

— Hat tip: JD

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Language Freedom Law Heads to Schwarzenegger

California would protect the freedom of a person to speak any language he or she chooses in a business establishment under a measure approved by the state Legislature on Thursday.

The bill, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, is the lawmaker’s response to a controversial proposal by the LPGA last fall requiring golfers to speak “effective English.” The organization scuttled the proposal after loud objections by Yee and others, and the Democrat says this legislation will ensure it does not happen again.

“No one in the state of California should be compelled to speak a particular language to get service,” Yee said. “It just boggles the mind that in the year 2009, when we are constantly talking about global trade and bringing customers from other countries to California, that we would not have a law that protects everyone’s ability to speak.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Obamacare Could Cost You $4,000 a Year

If the public insurance option is dropped, that’s likely to leave many employees with a big bill for their coverage.

If the public option had evolved into a program resembling Medicare for most working Americans —what Conservatives feared and many Democrats wanted — it might have provided rich coverage, at bargain premiums, for people with moderate incomes.

That won’t happen with the proposed alternative, medical co-ops, because they won’t pack nearly the purchasing power of a government-run plan to push down prices. Nor will the co-ops get the government subsidies that would likely radically lower premiums under a public option, just as they do under Medicare.

So let’s dissect Obamacare by the numbers, assuming that Americans will not have the choice of a public option. The question is basic: Would middle-class Americans be better off with their existing plans or under the new regime? To answer that question, I’ll estimate what most middle-class employees pay today for coverage, and what they’re destined to pay if Obamacare becomes law.

The conclusion is shocking. Middle- and upper-middle class Americans could face an enormous increase in their premiums. The hit could easily approach $4,000 for someone earning less than $90,000 — or more than double that increase as soon as the worker’s pay hits six figures. That’s because Obama’s plan would collect hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes at the expense of medium earners, and re-channel the money into subsidies for the uninsured, low-income earners, and union retirees over age 55.

And those big new taxes would pay for gold-plated plans that would become required coverage for everyone, whether they like it or not. “This is a tax game designed to squeeze money out of the middle class,” says Joseph Antos, a health-care economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

[Comments from JD: If you live in the US — Read this article. It contains an excellent illustration of the numbers involved.]

— Hat tip: JD

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Oklahoma: Jenks Schools Gets $1.5 Million for ‘Chinese Initiative’

JENKS, OK — Jenks Public Schools has been awarded about $1.5 million to fund the first Chinese language immersion program in Oklahoma, according to Jenks Director of Communications Tara Thompson.

The grant is funded through a U.S. Department of Education program that develops intensive study of languages considered critical to U.S. national security.

The Jenks project, called “The Chinese Initiative,” will create a partial Chinese language immersion program at Southeast Elementary School. The immersion program will roll-out gradually over the next five years and eventually serve at least one class (30 students) per grade, kindergarten through fourth grade.

The grant will also provide teachers and administrators substantial professional development and training in immersion instruction from nationally acclaimed experts in the field, as well as train and certify the Chinese speaking teachers needed in the immersion program.

The project includes the development of a University of Oklahoma Chinese language curriculum so students can continue the intensive study through college level.

The school learned of the grant Wednesday from Senator Jim Inhofe, according to Thompson.

— Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa

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On Dishing it Out…

What is weird about the liberal hysteria to the obstreperous (and occasionally rude) town meetings is the complete amnesia about what constitutes reckless public discourse.

At one time not so long ago, those on the Left, and mainstream Democrats as well, apparently believed inflammatory language, Hitler parallels, and perverse expressions of real hatred were acceptable means to the noble end of discrediting the Bush presidency.

During the bleak days of Iraq, demonstrators carried swastikas and Hitler portraits of Bush habitually. Nicholson Baker wrote a novel in which characters are contemplating killing Bush. Films were praised imagining the assassination of the president. Michael Moore, courted by the Democratic elite, lamented that bin Laden on 9/11 had hit a blue state — and once compared the killers of Americans in Iraq to Minutemen.

Al Gore customarily used excessive language like “brown shirts.” Senators Durbin, Kennedy, and others compared our soldiers to Saddamites, Pol Pot’s killers, and Nazis. Ward Churchill compared the victims in the Twin Tower to “little Eichmanns.” Sen. Robert Byrd likened Pres. George W. Bush’s policies to what transpired in Nazi Germany. Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros agreed with Fidel Castro, the Iranians, and North Koreans in comparing Bush to Hitler.

Jonathan Chait wrote in the New Republic on why “I hate George W. Bush.” Garrison Keillor likened Bush’s Republicans to “brown shirts in pinstripes.” Even old hero Sen. John Glenn said of the Bush agenda: “It’s the old Hitler business.” In 1984, the Guardian’s Charles Brooker declared:

On November 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?

Democrats were furious that Rush Limbaugh wanted Obama’s agenda to fail, but I think it was their National Chairman Howard Dean himself who went way beyond Limbaugh when he said publicly, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” and, “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

Didn’t NAACP chairman Julian Bond once declare of the Bush administration, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side?”

In comparison to all that, the outrage of a few private citizens — none of them in government, prominent in the arts, or political commentators — seems rather mild. In truth, the 2000s marked the liberal reversion to the hateful speech of the 1950s extreme Right, but with a twist. In the 1950s, there were liberal humanists who rose up to deplore the cheap slurs of Joe McCarthy & Co.; by 2001, there were none to object to the above sort of speech.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Senior Citizen’s “Death” Warrant

Within a quietly inserted piece of Legislation which was touted a needing immediate passage, (remember, the one of many that no one read) lured an addition that also was formed and funded called in the Bill “TITLE XIII— HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY” which creates the “AGENCY FOR HEALTHCARE RESEARCH AND QUALITY”. The purpose of this inclusion (from the Bill)” That the funding appropriated in this paragraph shall be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies, through efforts that: (1) conduct, support, or synthesize research that compares the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, disorders, and other health conditions; and (2) encourage the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data:” This is the beginning of our execution warrants. The Government still says that they plan to cut $500,000,000 + from Medicare and Medicaid. Where will the adjustments be made, with the senior population increasing around 30%(baby boomers)?

— Hat tip: JD

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Text-and-Drive Bans Belong in State Legislatures

Six months into their term, the 111th Congress is hard at work trampling over the states. Congress is again using the highway reauthorization bill to force states to enact their pet legislation.

Recently, Senators Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation mandating states to enact bans on text messaging and driving, or lose a portion of federal highway funding. Not to be outdone, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently called for a national conference on texting while driving.

Only 14 states have banned texting while driving. The reason many states have rejected these laws is because they have already criminalized distracted driving. If a person is swerving in and out of lanes while driving and talking on a cell phone, combing their hair, or eating a cheeseburger-they will be ticketed. This is just one reason why a number of states have chosen not to enact bans on texting, but unfortunately, if Congress has their say the states will lose the right to make this decision.

It is unfortunate that the federal government continues to coerce states to enact policies by dangling transportation dollars in front of them. This was clearly not Congress’ intent in 1956 when it created the Federal Highway Trust Fund.

In fact, at the time the Trust Fund was created it was only “temporary,” allegedly for a 13-year period to help construct the national highway system. However, like most programs in Washington, D.C., this program now has an infinite life-span.

Congress continues to create more and more requirements for states to receive federal highway funds. To name just a few, Congress currently mandates that states enact seat-belt laws, establish a drinking age of twenty-one, establish a .08 blood alcohol standard for drinking and driving, pay prevailing wages on road construction projects, establish drug-free workplaces, and maintain a problem driver points system.

While some of these may be good laws that states should adopt, do we need or want the federal government constantly preempting our state and local elected officials? And doesn’t this sort of coercion undermine the role of the states and the federal government established by the Founding Fathers?

There is a good reason the Founding Fathers inserted the Tenth Amendment in the Constitution, which reserves to the states all powers not designated to the federal government. They believed state lawmakers were better equipped to create their own laws.

The founders never intended for the Tenth Amendment to be circumvented by using transportation funding to micromanage the states. Even more outrageous is that the very transportation dollars the federal government is threatening to take away from states came from taxpayers in the states paying gas taxes.

In fact, under the current system, the federal government is really only a middleman who collects gas taxes from the states and redistributes them in an uneven manner. A number of states like Arizona and Texas pay more money into the Transportation Trust Fund than they get back.

Issues like texting while driving should be left to state lawmakers. Washington should stop circumventing the Tenth Amendment by coercing states.

The Transportation Trust Fund should be used to improve our roads and not as the federal government’s tool to write state laws. Doesn’t the federal government have enough to worry about already?

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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The Sotomayer Scare

Certainly we should care about who sits on the US S CT bench. However, the time has come in our Confederate Republic (the USA) to acknowledge and understand that the power to govern ourselves justly and constitutionally is in the hands of the people of the several states of America—NOT in the hands of the branches of federal government. What most people in America have been duped to believe is that the US S CT is the final arbiter in all matters concerning government actions related to the US Constitution.

When it comes to US S CT rulings that contradict the US Constitution and that reject the historical facts and principles of our Republic, people feel hopeless and think that regaining freedom somehow means replacing the “liberal” judges with “conservative” judges. Such an approach to preserving freedom is not only un-American; it is fruitless and ineffectual. History now proves this. Additionally, this approach proves that the vast majority of Americans have been indoctrinated into the centralist-ideology imposed on us by not-so-innocent advocates of such a political belief system.

Let me state this clearly: the US Constitution does not grant to the US S CT the power to interpret the Constitution in contradiction to the terms of the Constitution, and it does not strip the powers of the States to actively arrest and resist tyrannical federal actions. The US S CT can no more violate the Constitution than the Legislative and Executive branches can. What sense does it make that the US S CT is bound by an oath to support and defend the Constitution and then has the power to interpret it however the heck they want to? Do you think our founders were so near-sighted and unlearned that they would have given to the US S CT this unchecked and unlimited power in the very document that states its purpose is “to secure the blessings of liberty”?

— Hat tip: JD

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‘Tintin’ Deemed Racist, Removed From Shelves

A banned book in Brooklyn, New York City, NY, USA? In a move that pushes us closer to totalitarianism, Brooklyn’s chief librarian condemned ‘Tintin Au Congo,’ one book in the nearly 80-year-old series by Georges (Herge) Remi, the Daily News reports.

After a reader complained that it was “racially offensive,” library authorities decided the book depicted Africans as “monkeys” and chose to remove it from library shelves. It is now locked behind secret doors in Brooklyn’s central library and can be viewed only by appointment.

While it’s true that Herge’s work seems to promote an imperialist and racist attitude towards African people, what’s more offensive is that librarians don’t think readers are mature enough to understand the racism as a product of its time. The Tintin books are beloved classics, and their racist elements can in fact be instructive. The News quotes Brooklyn resident Karina Estedan, who supports the ban, as saying, “The public library caters to the sensitivity of the community. People are trying to erase the mistakes of the past.” Those “mistakes” are still alive in the present, and erasing their documentation dooms us to repeat them.

It’s no secret that classic—and modern—works of literature depict and even condone offensive attitudes. The Odyssey, that greatest of great texts, supports a misogynistic attitude. Even Sixteen Candles, the John Hughes classic, portrays an Asian exchange student in an extremely and relentlessly racist manner. Banning one book isn’t going to solve anything.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Trial Lawyers Are the Fourth Branch of Government

Ten years ago, notorious trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs, apparently frustrated with elected officials’ inaction on health care, decided to take matters into his own hands, filing class-action lawsuits against HMOs.

Reporting on the suits, Time magazine asked Scruggs whether the plaintiffs’ bar was trying to run America. His response, accompanied by laughter, was, “Somebody’s got to do it.”

Today, even though Scruggs is in jail, his manifest-destiny vision of private lawyers making public policy has become a troubling reality. To borrow a phrase from author and legal commentator Walter Olsen, trial lawyers have become “an unelected fourth branch of government.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyers, cloaking themselves in the veil of “public interest,” have earned billions from class-action and other private suits aimed at imposing new taxes or regulations. But these lawyers have found that bringing the same types of suits on behalf of public entities, instead of private individuals, is a far more effective and lucrative way to advance their policy agendas.

Scruggs certainly understood this. In the 1990s, he and a cadre of other lawyers sold their anti-tobacco litigation strategy, and their professional services, to state attorneys general on a contingency basis (i.e., fees paid only upon victory).

The states’ embrace of these crusading lawyers, and their win-at-all-costs tactics, legitimized public officials’ delegation of sovereign power to attorney mercenaries. Plaintiffs’ lawyers now routinely lobby state and local officials, holding out the promise that their aggressive lawsuits can transfer millions from businesses to ailing government treasuries.

This plaintiffs’ bar-government alliance presents defendants with unprecedented challenges, and many targets simply settle. Some businesses, though, have fought back, and a small but growing number of state courts have rejected trial lawyer-government arrangements as contrary to state laws or constitutional provisions.

Last year, one judge in Pennsylvania decided to swim against the tide by affirming an especially egregious agreement between the state and out-of-state trial lawyers. In 2006, Gov. Ed Rendell hired Houston’s Bailey Perrin & Bailey on a contingency-fee basis to sue drugmaker Janssen Pharmaceutica based on a flimsy legal theory the firm had concocted.

The representation contract provides Bailey Perrin & Bailey with virtually unchecked authority to manage the suit. And perhaps worst of all, Pennsylvania awarded the contract without going through a competitive bidding process. This is especially troublesome considering the more than $100,000 Bailey Perrin & Bailey partner Kenneth Bailey contributed to Rendell and a partisan governors’ association prior to finalizing the contract.

After the trial judge rejected Janssen’s motion to disqualify Bailey Perrin & Bailey from the litigation, the company successfully appealed to the state Supreme Court. Oral arguments are set for Oct. 21.

Washington Legal Foundation filed a brief in the case last week, arguing that Rendell’s contingency-fee contract makes a mockery of limits that Pennsylvania law and its constitution place on the “exercise of contractual favoritism by members of the executive branch.”

The legal foundation brief also emphasizes that attorneys acting on the government’s behalf “must be held to a higher standard than the ordinary lawyer.”

Public officials claim that contingency-fee litigation is a cost-effective way to recoup allegedly lost government revenue. But if government-endorsed suits succeed, states or cities must pay millions in fees and costs to trial lawyers — money that could instead fund public programs.

It’s certainly possible that government lawyers could bring such suits just as effectively, and at a lower cost. One of America’s most aggressive state attorneys general, Eliot Spitzer, never delegated law enforcement out to contingency-fee lawyers.

Contracting out activist litigation has a seriously corrosive effect on the economy. Governments’ embrace of trial lawyers and their job-killing lawsuits increase legal risks for commerce and deter companies’ desire to build plants or do business in certain states or localities.

Our judges must protect the rule of law and reject these trial lawyer-government alliances. But ultimately, the public must demand that willfully reticent politicians step forward and recapture their constitutional authority.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Trial Under Way in Black-on-White Carjacking Murders

Man set on fire, girlfriend repeatedly raped, doused with bleach to destroy evidence

Jurors in Knoxville, Tenn., have begun hearing arguments in a trial over the grisly deaths of a white couple — allegedly at the hands of a gang of black men and one woman who tried to conceal DNA evidence by dousing one victim with bleach.

The victims of what apparently started out as a carjacking were Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23. Authorities have said the couple was out on a Jan. 6, 2007, date and were in the process of leaving a friend’s apartment complex.

Christian reportedly was sitting at the wheel of her Toyota SUV and Newsom was at her side in the open door, kissing her, when they were attacked by the armed gang members.

According to court documents, the two were tied up, blindfolded and taken to one defendant’s rental home. Shortly thereafter, Newsom was sexually assaulted, shot in the head, set on fire and his body was left beside railroad tracks. The attackers allegedly took 24 hours to kill Christian, raping her multiple times and spraying bleach in her mouth to destroy evidence before stuffing her in plastic and dumping her in a closed trash can.

The case has stirred further controversy by its conspicuous lack of coverage in many national media outlets. While local news agencies have covered the attack, few national outlets have documented the alleged attack by a black gang on the white couple.

Media critics have noted the massive coverage given to the alleged white-on-black Duke lacrosse rape case that had developed about the same time.

— Hat tip: JD

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Why Pharma Wants Obamacare

Despite all the Sturm und Drang emanating from town hall meetings, there’s still a very good chance some kind of health care reform bill will pass this year. And one of the biggest forces working toward that goal is America’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, which are expected to pour as much as $150 million into advertisements supporting the reform effort.

If that last sentence makes you flash back to Bill Murray’s line in Ghostbusters about the end times, mass hysteria, and dogs and cats living together, you’re not alone. On Tuesday, John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, issued an open letter in which he implored drug companies “to halt this short-sighted, misguided campaign and listen to the American people, rather than continue to collaborate on an effort to spin them.”

The only reason anybody is shocked is because they weren’t paying attention. The truth is that the drug industry is fundamentally different than it was in 1993, when Big Pharma was a powerful enemy of Hillary Clinton’s 1,000-page plan to reform health care. This time, drug companies aren’t likely to be hurt by any politically feasible plan and are unlikely to contribute to growing health care costs. This might even repair their broken reputation, at least a little. And whatever landscape emerges from health care reform may actually be more hospitable to drug companies.

The reason: The drug industry has transformed from a business that tries to sell pills to the masses to one that markets very expensive treatments to small groups of sick people—and that changes everything.

— Hat tip: JD

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Woodstock’s Poisonous Legacy

The media has already begun unrolling its wave of commemorations for Woodstock, or what is euphemistically referred to as “The Legacy of Woodstock”, which for some reason is described in vague terms as “Peace and Love”, instead of more accurately, hundreds of injuries, of which only three were fatalities, not counting the miscarriages, the rapes, the drug addictions and all of Sullivan County being shut down.

— Hat tip: JD

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Yes, Grandma, There is a Death Panel

Brother O and the Democrat Party’s media propagandists and Internet lackeys are promoting disinformation and parroting half-truths concerning the Obamacare “death panel”—an overseers board of bureaucrats that determines the value of a person’s continued existence and whether treatment will be cost-effective.

— Hat tip: JD

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You’re a Racist! The Ultimate Emotional Intimidation

I am on the email list of a dear black friend of 20 years. He is a minister, writer, and professor. He has mentored and advised me with great wisdom on numerous occasions. With me being a black conservative Republican and he a Democrat, we avoid talking politics. Since the election of Obama, my friend will talk about nothing else. He is in Baltimore. I’m in Florida. Every time he calls me, he turns the conversation into trashing all who oppose Obama’s agenda. Thank God for caller ID.

— Hat tip: JD

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Canada Flies NATO Flag in Arctic Showdown

It has all the trappings of the Cold War except a vituperative war of words, or dark hints of Armageddon. Canada’s show of military might north of its icy shores is a flag-waving exercise to assert not only Canadian sovereignty but also NATO’s rights over the arctic territory. The audience? Russian military in their full paraphernalia of hardware, also engaged in more or less similar pursuits.

Of all the nations currently ensconced in the arctic, Russia is the only power outside NATO or Western alliances. It is the only arctic neighbor Canada has had angry exchanges with in recent months.

[…]

Canada wants to demonstrate it is fully capable of controlling its northern territory and warding off Russian advances. Senior Canadian government leaders exchanged heated words with Russian counterparts after accusing Russia of bullying and airspace violations.

Canadian officials warned Moscow they would counter any Russian incursions with superior — albeit American — air power.

Everything that happens in the arctic can potentially impact Canada’s national security, say analysts. The arctic represents 40 percent of Canada’s landmass, and more than 36,000 islands in the Arctic Archipelago hold about 13,000 Canadian citizens.

Critics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper have urged restraint on ministers engaged in inflammatory attacks on Russia, lest things get out of hand, Cold War-style.

— Hat tip: JD

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This Just in From Mohamed Elmasry: Christian Slavery = Bad. Islamic Slavery = Empowering !

By Jonathan Kay

This just in from former Canadian Islamic Congress chief Mohamed Elmasry: Islamic slavery wasn’t all that bad.

Writing in The Canadian Charger — a newly formed internet-based grab bag of anti-Western articles published by hard left Canadian activists — Elmasry works hard to distinguish the evils of Christian slavery from the purportedly enlightened race-mixing that resulted from its Islamic equivalent.

Some snippets: “Islam, with no church, teaches that all humans, irrespective of their gender, skin color, and ethnic origin are capable of doing good; there is no original sin. The One God is the Lord of all, not of special people or tribe … Islam and Africa have made something of each other that is quite extraordinary … Islam teaches that slaves, who were then the result of wars, Africans or not, should be treated well and set free as soon as possible … Islam also teaches that slaves can buy their freedom in-kind. Thus many of them excelled to be teachers and even scholars … Islam teaches a slave is a victim of circumstances who should be helped to be free and treated fairly in the mean time. Trading in slaves is a sin. This is in contrast to the teachings of the Bible, ‘Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.’ … The Arab Muslims called Africans Zanji (hence the island of Zanjibar or Zanzibar), Habashi (from Habasha, Arabic for Ethiopian) or Sudani (Arabic for black). Such names “were not derogatory but simply ethnographic … Some [slaves] achieved high rank and status …” And so on.

The basic theme is that Islamic slavery — to the extent it was bad at all (and it’s not really clear that Elmasry thinks it was) — was an enlightened, almost consensual, win-win exercise in regional multiculturalism. In his characteristically absurd elevation of Islam over Christianity, he makes no mention of the fact that religious Christians led the abolition movement in the West — while slavery persisted wholesale in the Arab world until late in the 20th century, and still survives in parts of Islamic Africa, including Sudan. Indeed, one wonders what the Christian tribespeople from southern Sudan who have been abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and enslaved by Arab Muslims in recent years would make of Elmasry’s historical fantasies.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? Our Christian leaders seem to do nothing but apologize these days — for every historical sin under the sun. But here you have a man who recently led the most prominent Muslim activist group in Canada, and he thinks it’s just dandy that his Arab forebears colonized and enslaved great swathes of Africa over the course of many centuries — a colonial situation that essentially persists in Sudan and regions of the Maghreb.

Remember this the next Elmasry or one of his fellow travelers denounces Western “imperialism.”

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Anti-German Jihadist Videos Flood Internet

With just over a month to go before Germany’s general election, daily newspaper Die Welt reported on Friday that an unprecedented number of Islamist videos encouraging holy war against the country have flooded the internet.

Most recently, two Moroccan brothers from Bonn have appeared in terrorist propaganda videos online. The two men, 27-year-old Mounir Chouka and 24-year-old Yassin Chouka, are thought to be currently in hiding on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The brothers have produced several videos for the terrorist organisation the Islamic Jihadist Union dressed in military outfits and white robes, but the latest is the first in which they show their faces, the newspaper reported. The are part of growing trend of online Islamist threats intended to encourage Germany to pull its troops out of Afghanistan.

Preaching under the names Abu Adam and Abu Ibrahim since the start of the year, the brothers attack the infidel American and European occupation forces in Muslim nations. They speak in German with Turkish and Albanian subtitles.

“Come and die an honourable death,” proclaims Mounir, encouraging his German Islamist brothers and sisters. Yassin Chouka then encourages all German Muslims to swear allegiance to the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar.

Jihadists in Afghanistan would “delight to stand in a hail of bullets from NATO or under German Tornado planes,” his brother adds.

According to the paper, the brothers are known to have come from the suburb of Kessenich in Bonn, taking a journey of radicalisation that led them to the Hindu Kush mountain range on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, in the majority of cases, the real names of German Muslims in such videos remain unknown. Most choose pseudonyms such as “Abu Abdullah,” “Ahmad” or “Commander Mohammed,” reported the newspaper. The latter of these is seen in one video to announce “Ich bin kein Berliner,” in a sarcastic reference to John F. Kennedy’s famous declaration of solidarity with the residents of West Berlin.

Much of this information has been published in a 15-page report produced by the Israeli International Institute for Counter Terrorism, based in Herzliya. Keen to make the trend for aggressive references to Germany known, the group’s report lists a range of videos and Muslim forums making specific reference to Germany.

The latest wave of propaganda attacks began in January with videos published by another German of Moroccan origin, Bekkay Harrach. The newspaper reported that the 31-year-old Harrach appears on a video announcing in German that he would “blow himself up for Allah.”

His appearance in an al-Qaida video, entitled “The Rescue Package for Germany,” has reportedly caused concern for the German security services. In it he makes a specific reference to September’s election as the point when the German people will decide their own fate.

“Recently, more people have been travelling from Germany to ‘terror camps’,” Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told the newspaper. He said this trend poses a threat not only to the German armed forces stationed in Afghanistan “but also for us in Germany.”

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Antwerp: Report on Extremist Mosques and Organizations

The following report was written by the Flemish Committee for Ex-Muslims and posted by Filip Dewinter, of Vlaams Belang, on his site. It’s a long report and so I will break it up into several parts.

It is obvious this was written by one person and not by a ‘committee’. My guess would be that this comes from P., a Flemish convert to Islam, who seems to be the source of most news about extremist Islam in Antwerp. Belgian Dutch-language weekly Knack published a similar report last year (see Antwerp: The Jihadis of Antwerp North (1) and Antwerp: The Jihadis of Antwerp North (2)), based on interviews with P. This report repeats much of the same information but it is much more detailed.

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Extremist mosques and organizations in Antwerp

Almost half of the Antwerp mosques are in the hands of the fundamentalist Islamic movement Deobandi, which calls on Muslims to ‘shed blood’ for Allah and whose leaders reject Western norms and values, and disdain Jews, Christians and Hindus. The Deobandi sermons are impregnated by deep-rooted hatred towards Western society, admiration for the Taliban and martyrdom. Deobandi forbid art, television, sport and music; demand that women be completely covered and see football as a ‘cancerous tumor infecting our youth’ (frightening, keeping in mind the candidacy of Belgium as co-organizer of the World Cup 2018). In sermons it is said that music is a method of Jews to weave the ‘satanic web’ to lead young Muslims down the wrong path…

— Hat tip: TV

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Arctic Sea: Freed Russian Seamen Questioned in Remand Prison

Russia flew the crew and hijackers of the hijacked freight vessel, the Arctic Sea, from Cape Verde to Moscow in three military planes on Thursday.

Russian television showed footage in which the crew briefly told about their ordeal.

One crew member said that the captain had been forced at gunpoint to cancel an earlier emergency call.

The crew members were not allowed to go home on Thursday: like the hijackers they were taken to the Lefortovo remand prison for questioning.

In Arkhangelsk the families of the crew waited for their loved ones with their eyes glued to their televisions. However, there was no indication of when the men would get home.

“I only know what was said on television. I hope that I can se my husband as soon as possible”, said mechanic Vladimir Kazhinin’s wife Olga to Helsingin Sanomat by telephone.

Vazir Fazylov, the father of seaman Dmitri Fazylov was surprised that his son was not even allowed to call home. “Nobody is saying anything. We’re just watching TV. This is stupid.”

The company Solchart Archangelsk is responsible for the operations of the Arctic Sea. The owner and CEO of the Finnish shipping company Solchart Management, Viktor Matvejev, is also from Archangelsk.

Solchart Archangelsk was not established until October last year. Before that, the Arctic Sea was operated by the Latvian company Aquaship.

On Thursday, Solchart Archangelsk director and shareholder Nikolai Karpenkov was making preparations in his office to send a new crew to the ship. However, he was still waiting for the go-ahead from the Russian Navy.

So why didn’t Karpenkov insist that the ship should have proceeded to the nearest port after the hijacking that took place in Swedish waters.

“The captain said that the ship was not damaged. We did not suspect that the hijackers were still on board.”

Karpenkov says that the communications equipment of the Arctic Sea was in working order until the ship had left the English Channel on August 1st. “Until then we followed the movements of the ship every day, and nothing appeared to be going wrong.”

On August 2nd the ship disappeared, and this is the point where Karpenkov clams up. “I will not comment on what happened after that.”

The task of reassuring the families of the crew members was left to Alexandr Krasnoshtan, chairman of the Archangelsk Seamen’s Union, who praised the initiative shown by the wives of the missing crew.

“When the ship disappeared, the wives were active and sent messages to the prosecutor. Thanks to the wives, the state apparatus started to work”, he says.

According to Krasnoshtan, Solchart Management and Sergei Zaretski, the captain of the Arctic Sea, have good reputations in maritime circles. Zaretski was left on the ship on Thursday, along with three members of the crew.

Russia said that the ship would proceed to Novorossiiski on the Black Sea for inspection.

Krasnoshtan says that it will be interesting to see who pays Stora Enso the insurance compensation for the cargo if the ship ends up in Russia.

“If the ship continues to Russia without stopping in Algeria first, it could be possible that suspicions of a secret cargo might be true.”

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Lawyers Banned From Iraqi Interrogations

Rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers have been refused the support of their lawyers in meetings with an Iraqi delegation.

Rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers, who are to be presented before an Iraqi investigation delegation in Denmark, are not to be allowed to have their court-appointed Danish lawyers present at interrogations.

Two of the court-appointed lawyers, who represent several of the Iraqis incarcerated at the Sandholm Camp, say the decision is a major problem. Both have unsuccessfully applied to be present during interrogations.

“We want to be in there to ensure just treatment for our clients. We have no idea what goes on in the room, and it is important to be a fly on the wall and make sure that the interrogations are carried out properly and in a civilised tone,” says Lawyer Kåre Traberg Smidt.

What’s going on

Traberg Smidt represents 10 of the Iraqis, including several of those whom police evicted from the Brorson’s Church in Copenhagen last week.

“Denmark is party to all of the conventions on the protection of individuals and minorities. So we also need to know what goes on when we allow a delegation to interrogate people in a closed room without witnesses,” Traberg Smidt says.

About face

A court decision was required before the Iraqis could be forced to appear before the Iraqi delegation, and in court hearings in which lawyers Traberg Smidt and Helge Nørrung took part, police representatives said there was no reason not to allow counsel to be present during hearings.

But Traberg Smidt and Nørrung say police have since changed their minds, and in order to stop the interrogations, one of the cases has now been appealed.

Trust

Several of the Iraqis involved — among them 23-year-old Shalaw Jaza — say they feel unsafe having to meet the delegation.

“I don’t know why I have to talk to them. I don’t trust them. They do nothing for Iraqis in Denmark, that’s for sure,” Jaza says.

He adds that he does not believe that the Iraqi delegation will tell the truth about the security situation in Iraq.

“They say that Iraq is safe. But that’s not true. They can’t control the situation. If Iraq is safe, then why are so many people killed each day?” asks Jaza.

The Police Department for Aliens has not been available for comment.

— Hat tip: TB

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Denmark: Officer and Rapper Shot During Hash Fine

Nationwide search for gunmen who shot and wounded an officer and a civilian.

An officer was wounded and an innocent civilian bystander injured in the Copenhagen district of Nørrebro during the night when a banale body search for hash developed into a shooting episode.

A nationwide search is under way for the unidentified gunmen, whom police say were seen running from the scene, while other witnesses suggest were in a vehicle.

The plain clothes police officer, who is reported to have been shot in the arm and stomach is said to be stable. The civilian, who is reported to be a well-known rap artist, has been treated for a graze wound to the face.

“We are interested in all witnesses coming forward. Anyone who has seen anything . Did the gunmen leave on a bicycle , did they run away or did they get into a car. Anyone who knows anything,” Police Spokesman Tommy Keil tells politiken.dk.

Hash

Trouble is said to have started when plain clothes officers stopped a small group of young men to search them for narcotics. As one officer drew one young man aside in order to issue a fine for a small amount of hash, shots rang out.

“Officers saw the shadows of two or three men running away. First of all it was as if time stood still, and then chaos broke loose,” Keil says.

Rapper

Ekstrabladet.dk says that the civilian who was also grazed by a projectile was the well-known Northern Jutland rapper Niarn.

Immediately prior to the events in Nørrebro, another shooting episode took place in Tingbjerg, a few kilometres from Nørrebro when 20-30 shots were fired, but no-one was hit. It is not clear whether the Tingbjerg incident was an attempt to draw police away from Nørrebro.

Anyone with information on the night’s incidents can contact police on 3314 1448.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: Police Dog Killed in Shootout

There has been shooting in connection with an armed robbery near Århus. A police dog has been killed.

Shots were exchanged this morning between robbers and police following an armed bank robbery at a Nordea bank branch near Århus. A police dog was killed during the exchange, which took place as the robbers made their getaway.

A large number of officers had been sent to Hasle, which is just west of Århus, during the bank robbery at the Nordea branch on Hasle Torv (square). The police dog was killed during the chase following the robbery.

It is unclear how much money was taken from the bank, although there have been reports that the proceeds were wrecked by security ink. The area between Denmark’s School of Journalism and the Hasle ringroad has been cordoned off as police search the area.

Police say a 32-year-old Lithuanian was detained after the robbers dumped their Audi vehicle and ran off on foot. Another two suspects are being sought — both believed to be from Eastern Europe.

On Tuesday of this week, the Danske Bank branch in Lystrup north of Århus was the target of an armed robbery by three French-speaking men. Their torched vehicle was eventually found in Holland after a Europe-wide search.

— Hat tip: TB

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Denmark: Scarcity of Workplace Prayer Rooms

Only four of the country’s 20 largest companies supply a room where employees can practice worship

As the Islamic holiday of Ramadan begins today, Muslims across the country are preparing for a month of prayer and fasting.

According to public broadcaster DR however, only four of Denmark’s 20 largest companies offer prayer room facilities at work for employees wishing to pray during their working day.

Danfoss, Ecco, TDC and AP Møller Mærsk all have rooms available for Muslim employees working in Denmark. Integration and employment researcher Anika Liversage at the Danish National Centre for Social Research was disappointed by the low number of prayer rooms and praised those who had introduced them.

‘It’s a very good signal to send to Muslim colleagues,’ said Liversage. ‘It makes them feel welcome and not feel like they have to hide part of their personality from their co-workers.’

Ecco said it had an employee prayer room because a large part of production had moved to Asia and the company had become more globalised.

Danish Crown on the other hand said it had no plans to introduce a prayer room at the workplace, even though one of their factories employees 49 different nationalities.

A spokesperson said that the company didn’t focus on the differences between staff members but rather that they were all employees.

The news comes just days after the government’s Conservative Party launched a controversial integration policy, which included banning women from wearing a burka.

As part of their policy, the Conservatives said they wanted to ban prayer rooms at schools because, ‘they are a way of pressuring students that don’t want to be part of a religious environment while in school.’

The party also recommended that schoolchildren not be forced to fast during Ramadan as it had given rise to religious bullying at many schools.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Denmark: Burka Ban Causes Govt. Tumult

Senior government politicians are in uproar over the prime minister’s decision to order a commission on whether to ban the burka in Denmark.

The decision by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Lib) to set up a commission to study his Conservative minority coalition partner’s proposal to introduce a ban on the Muslim burka and niqab, has caused dismay within his own Liberal Party.

“More than50,000 people have lost their jobs in the past six months and we may be seeing a further 100,000 in the next nine months. We have an economic crisis that has to be handled, we have a climate conference, we have people who cannot be treated due to waiting lists, we have children with psychological problems who can’t be treated, we have a gang war in which people are shooting at each other — an officer was shot last night — and people are wasting time talking about burkas. It’s out of all proportion,” says former Liberal integration spokesman and current Environment Spokesman Eyvind Vesselbo.

Schall Holberg Another senior Liberal politician, Former Home Affairs and Agriculture Minister Britta Schall Holberg, says ‘we’ve reached rock bottom’.

“While hundreds of people are losing their jobs. While many farmers and other companies are at their knees and battling each day to survive. While young people are unable to get traineeships and too few get an education. While the government is gearing up for a budget that for the first time shows a deficit — almost of the size that toppled Anker Jørgensen’s (Soc. Dem.) government in 1982, the government sets up a burka commission,” Schall Holberg says in an e-mail to Ritzau.

Conservatives At the same time, what was billed as Conservative parliamentary group unity on the ban issue was broken today when the party’s Ecclesiastical and Education Spokeswoman Charlotte Dyremose turned her back on the proposal, which appears to have been fostered by the party’s newcomer and newly-appointed Integration Spokesman Naser Khader.

Dyremose tells Berlingske Tidende that she fears that a burka ban will do more harm than good for the relatively small number of women who wear the burka or niqab, adding that some of the most important Danish rights are those of the freedom of religion and speech.

Conservative Parliamentary Group Chairwoman Henriette Kjær, says she is surprised at Dyremose’s statement.

“I don’t understand it. After a longer debate during our group meeting (last) Friday I concluded as Group Chair that as a group we supported a ban on the burka. And no-one objected. Hers is a strange attitude. But she’ll have to take it alone,” Kjær tells Berlingske Tidende.

Dyremose says she made her views clear to the party leadership prior to its announcement of the ban proposal.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Finland: Severe Belt Tightening in Specialist Care

Hospitals offering specialised medical care will have to make deep cuts in spending this year.

The special care centres of the Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District provide services to well over 700,000 people. Over the past few days, negotiations on savings measures have gone through the operations of its clinics one by one. Seven million euros in costs must be trimmed from this year’s budget. There is talk of staff layoffs and of closing some wards. Management wants to restructure operations. The Board of Directors will decide where and how the cuts will be made on Monday.

Local governments are no longer willing to pay make up budget deficits in specialised medical care services. The toughest situation is being faced by the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), where operational costs have already pushed the budget 35 million euros into the red.

HUS is trying to find a solution in more centralization of services.

A significant share of the nationwide problem springs from higher prices for medications and other care supplies. This means, that for example in Oulu, an even closer look is being given at the need for angioplasties and pacemakers. Planned equipment purchases are being reviewed with an eye to meet care criteria, but to eliminate “extras”.

Many hospitals will be reopening wards next week that were closed for the summer months. New closures, as a cost savings measure, are being planned, for example during autumn school holiday. And, over the Christmas holidays this year, no hospital will be providing specialised care for any but seriously ill patients.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

Finland: Coming Home: Registered Male

A former foreign correspondent sees things back home through new eyes

After my return to Finland, one of the first things I had to do was to get a season ticket for the buses, trams, and Metro of Helsinki City Transport.

At the point of sale, the official behind the desk asked me my name. This seemed a bit odd, but I obliged.

The person behind the counter-window tapped a few keystrokes into her computer terminal and then looked up and said:

“And your official place of residence is still…”

I was gobsmacked.

Well, yes, it is. But why do you know that? You sell bus tickets!

More registers reared their heads when I went to renew my department store loyalty card.

The customer service clerk did a bit of tap-dancing on the keys and announced:

“Your credit details seem to be all in order.”

Oh. Well, thank you for telling me. I don’t have the faintest idea how I would go about getting my own credit rating details, but it is nice to know that it can be done quite so efficiently.

I got the card, and silently swore to myself that I would never use it.

I came back to Finland from China, a country that is described as authoritarian, bureaucratic, and “controlled”.

It seems odd that only back here in Finland have I had the feeling that somebody wants to write down every move I make in some register or other.

Of course, this is not to say that the authorities in China did not show any interest in my doings there. In the archives of the Ministry of State Security in Beijing there is a file with my name on it that undoubtedly contains more information about me than I would care to divulge.

But one thing about China — you can buy a bus pass there without having to show a personal ID.

In Finland that ID has already been required in several everyday situations: borrowing books at the library, checking in to a hotel, or when I try to have a flutter at an online betting site.

It gives me the sensation that my entire life is in The System somewhere. In an instant, any and every official could whisk up out of the registers all the details of my life to date.

And hey, it doesn’t have to be an “official” as such. A shop assistant will do just nicely.

“Have you got an S-bonus card?” It is such a common question in modern Finland — and not just in shops but also in bars — that it might well have been the first sentence in Finnish I ever learnt, if I didn’t speak the language already.

I have not got myself into the bonus card thing. If I did, then The System would also know exactly what I have been buying, and where and when.

In China I used to lie quite a bit. I would never have dreamed of giving my correct personal details when asked.

If I was obliged to show my passport and at the same time fill in some form or other, I tried to fudge it by writing doctor-style so that my handwriting was almost illegible and indecipherable.

That was born out of a lack of confidence. As with many Chinese citizens, I believed that somebody would in any event be misusing my personal or contact details.

At the very least I would get a bunch of contact attempts from eager-beaver Chinese entrepreneurs suggesting some common business venture.

There is no fear of this in Finland.

And I suppose no other fear, really.

And that is a very nice thing. We all agree to feed our details into the gaping mouth of The System, because we trust it. We trust the State and above all we trust other people.

When buying my bus pass, in the end I did not put up any resistance — I’m a Finn, after all — but told the sales clerk everything she wanted to know.

All the same, I’m still not completely sure what purpose the information serves.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Finland: Coming Home: Rushing to Take a Breather

A former foreign correspondent sees things back home through new eyes

Here in Finland, everybody talks about busy-busy-busy. People complain about the insane rush at work, and even in their free time things are so hectic that they don’t have time even to read the newspaper or look after the flowerbeds, let alone nurture their personal relationships.

What the hell are they on about?

People in Finland are always free, or so it seems.

The working days are reasonably short, Sundays are a day off for most people, and every so often the calendar throws up some odd religious holiday that further shortens the working week.

When I study my acquaintances, the impression is that half of the Finnish population are constantly on some kind of maternity- paternity-, job alternation-, official-, or some other kind of leave from their workplace.

As for annual vacations, the Finns have them by the weekload, and in some cases by the monthload.

A Chinese worker would get about as much time off in a decade.

In China, people have statutory leave from work of ten days a year — and this includes public holidays. Many workers in factories or on construction sites effectively do not have any time off.

If they want to rest, they quit work.

It’s quite awful.

Then again, it’s easy for the Finns to have a rest, in a finished society.

The 1.3 billion people in China are living through a complete upheaval in the society, and that’s enough to keep head, hands, and feet busy.

The hardworking nature of life means that the Chinese society is dynamic.

It also lives every day to the full and well into the evening. In the view of the Chinese it would be completely senseless to keep shops and restaurants closed at just the times when people have the time to frequent them.

There is in the hard work also an aspect of the different attitude to life in Asia.

Japan may already be a developed society, but to the Japanese the Finnish — or Nordic — lack of haste in life is a tourist sight.

Many a Japanese tourist comes here specifically to wonder at the Finns’ ability to take it easy.

Oh look at that, look how they live in peace in their pine forests with their animals all around them. What harmony!

By contrast with the Chinese model, the restful nature of life in Finland lends itself towards stagnation and inactivity.

Given that frame of mind, it suddenly seems quite normal and natural that one would spend a quarter of a century mulling over whether or not it is worth building a Western Metro out to Espoo.

When I worked in China, it was always safe to come home to Finland for a holiday.

There was never any sense of excitement or worry that something might have changed while I’d been away.

The same bars were all there where they used to be, and they all had the same names. One knew to avoid certain construction sites, because they were still in the same place they’d been a couple of years before.

The government changed, but the politics didn’t.

When I eventually moved back to stay, I thumbed through the evening tabloids with some interest, only to find the same old familiar names were there: Matti [Nykänen], Spede [Pasanen], Kirka, Juice [Leskinen]…

This gave me a funny turn: weren’t Spede, Kirka, and Juice all dead — in fact, hadn’t they all turned up their toes quite some time ago?*

I could just about understand that Saturday night TV still included a Finnish Have I got News For You. But how to explain the fact that Happy Days was still being shown, or those old Der Alte cop series — German police in their pastel 80’s blazers.

Popeda are still being played on the radio.

Yup, the 1980s are still going strong in Finland.

Naturally, when it comes down to it, it’s all good.

You’d imagine more people would pick a laid-back life over one of constant hurry and pressures, if they had the choice to make.

A Chinese acquaintance nevertheless said that whilst Finland is a very nice country, he still couldn’t take living here.

“Altogether too peaceful for me.”

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

Finland: Coming Home: Good Bureaucrats

When I moved back to Finland from Russia, I had to take care of a tax matter.

I was flabbergasted when I discovered that I did not have to go in person to the local tax office. I could do it all perfectly easily over the phone! Amazing!

Finnish bureaucracy works. People are not endlessly bounced from one office or department to the next, and the official does not require more and more papers in triplicate. Getting one matter sorted does not take an entire day as it does in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

Someone who has lived the entire time in Finland might beg to differ, but at least from the viewpoint of a returnee, Finland still enjoys relatively good public services.

For example, simply the post-natal clinic system is an adequate reason for a family with kids to return to Finland from abroad. And you can get to the clinic on the bus with a pram — free!

On the other hand… Finland’s bureaucracy is somewhat short on flexibility. If there is a rule, then it will be adhered to.

For instance, I had to time my return to Finland such that at least six months would pass before the calculated date of the birth of my child. Otherwise I would not qualify for any paternity benefits.

Then at some summer event, the security staff brusquely tossed our family out of an area licensed to serve alcohol.

The reason was that we sinners had with us our 7-month-old baby, who was underage.

The security gonzos could also have added to our list of wrongdoings that the infant in question had come into the area equipped with her own beverages — in her mother’s breasts.

In Russia, bureaucrats are horrible creatures and exercise their own arbitrary personal power, but there is always room for negotiation with them.

In its most brutal form this means providing a pecuniary reward for the civil servant’s time and services.

A Russian would be quite unable to understand for instance the fuss that is raging around the bribery allegations against the state-owned arms supplier Patria.

The company’s lads pulled off some excellent deals with Slovenia as far as Finland is concerned, and then the national broadcaster goes and blabs on about some bribery nonsense.

Laws in Russia are strict, but obeying them is a more liberal matter.

The laws exist there only for safety’s sake — in order that everyone can if the need arises be shoved into prison.

For this reason, the Russians would prefer that as little as possible is known about them. Name, home address, and telephone number are often jealously guarded secrets.

In Finland, everything is wide open. Nearly everyone’s mobile number can be found from directory enquiries or over the Net.

A car’s owner — for example if you’ve bumped him or suspect he’s bumped you in the car park — can be got in an instant with an SMS message to the registration people, and you can even access tax information via the Net.

And the mailbox actually has the home-owner’s name on it.

Wild stuff!

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

France: Workers Striking, Threatening to Poison Seine

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, AUGUST 20 — About sixty workers from the French transport company Serta, which is about to declare bankruptcy, have threatened to dump 8,000 litres of toxic products into the Seine near Rouen, Normandy, in order to get severance pay of 15,000 euros, according to union sources. “It is the only weapon we have,” explained Jean-Pierre Villemin, a union representative of the workers, on strike since the end of last week, “we are not making an ultimatum, and we are not about to carry out the threat, but we are asking for 15,000 euros per worker.” Workers have threatened to poison the waters of the Cailly river, which passes near the plant and flows into the Seine. “We are making this threat,” said the unionist, “because everything we say falls on deaf ears and blind eyes.” (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Germany: Arranged Marriage Ends in Tragedy

Brutal Murder Case Reveals Immigrant Culture Clash

A Kurdish man killed his German-born wife, who was also his cousin, because she was too independent. He stabbed her in the eyes, beat her with a billiard cue and then ran over her in his car. His mother-in-law had told him to be “strict” with her strong-willed daughter.

“Damn it, we’re not on some television court show here! You keep your mouth shut!”

The presiding judge is shouting like a trucker. A foreign spectator had called out something in the direction of the bench, something harmless and not insulting.

One of the Kurdish witnesses was in the courtroom at the beginning of the trial, which is not permitted under German law. He is related to the defendant and the victim. “This is a case that involves my family. I have to be here,” he said, explaining his presence.

“You don’t have to do anything!” the presiding judge said, interrupting the man. “You need to stay home until you’re summoned.”

This isn’t a TV courtroom, but the courtroom of the judge presiding over the 10th Higher Criminal Chamber of the Bielefeld District Court, Jutta Albert, a woman with peroxide blonde hair and a voice capable of grinding stone. The way she treats people from different cultures is a little strange, to say the least.

‘Or Else You Can Go Back to Turkey!’

As she walks out of the courtroom just before a half-hour recess, the mother of the victim turns around, faces the defendant, and screams: “You disgraceful murderer! You pimp!”

After the break, the judge serves up her next reprimand. “One more remark from you and you’ll be removed!” she says. “Do you think you can behave here as if you were in a Turkish bazaar? We won’t let you treat us with such a lack of respect! Our proceedings are conducted in accordance with German laws, and if you are in this courtroom, you will abide by those laws. Or else you can go back to Turkey!”

This isn’t the way to reassure agitated people who have lost a daughter, a niece, a sister, and who have no other outlet for their feelings of hatred, sadness and perhaps even shame. This trial is dragging things out into the open that the family has always kept quiet, shining a bright light on its failings and on the fact that it has brought dishonor and shame upon itself.

At the beginning of the trial, young men with grim expressions on their faces and weeping girls are sitting in the visitors’ gallery. The mother of the murdered victim reacts to the court with disdain, turning her back on the judge. She seems consumed by hatred, and perhaps by self-loathing and desperation over the notion that she was partly responsible for provoking the incident. The police keep a close watch on the potentially explosive scene.

Stabbed in the Eyeballs

The defendant is a 27-year-old Kurd identified only as Önder B., who was never officially a resident of Germany. According to the indictment, on New Year’s Eve 2008 he stabbed his 18-year-old wife Müjde 46 times and beat her with a billiard cue. And, as he later told a psychiatrist, because she was already so disfigured from the stabbing and beating that she would hate him for the rest of her life, he got into his car and ran over her body several times.

It was an excessive act, an unparalleled outbreak of violence. Was it a crime so inconceivable that it must have been committed in a state of temporary insanity? Twice, the presiding judge pointed out that she was considering a conviction both for murder arising from base motives and cruelty, because the defendant stabbed his wife in both eyeballs while she was still alive, causing them to leak out of their sockets.

One of the details of the conflict-laden background to the crime is that Önder’s father is the older brother of Müjde’s father. The two men arranged the marriage after Önder saw the 15-year-old girl on a wedding video. When asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, Müjde’s father said: “Yes, but my daughter has to agree.”

But the girl, born and raised in Germany, wasn’t interested in marriage. At the same time, she didn’t want to oppose her parents. She was uncertain and undecided. But for the father, her apprehension was no cause for concern. Things will turn out for the best once the two are married, he thought to himself. After all, he reasoned, we are all part of the same family.

Considering Himself Perfect

Although Önder finished school, he doesn’t have any vocational qualifications and never learned a trade. What kind of a person is he? “He’s my nephew,” says one witness. “I don’t know anything bad about him.” “He believes his thoughts are correct,” says another uncle. Önder tells the psychiatrist that he considers himself “perfect.”

The defendant came to Germany for the first time, as an asylum seeker, in 2001. He was 19 and Müjde was 11 at the time. He married a Turkish woman 10 years his senior, but the couple soon separated. He returned home to Turkey in 2003, where he performed his mandatory military service. He lived in a hostel for unmarried Kurdish men in Istanbul for a while.

Önder returned to Germany to visit an uncle on his father’s side, followed by a visit to France to stay with a maternal uncle. Then he went back to Germany, then to Turkey to see his parents and, finally, returned to Germany. He visited Müjde’s family for three days in 2006. The two got along “fantastically,” he says, even though he was too “embarrassed” to talk to her. He sent her a text message asking whether she would like to get to know him. She responded that this wasn’t possible, but then she asked when he was going to come to visit her.

This went on for an entire year. On the one hand, says Önder, she wanted him to visit her. On the other hand, she didn’t want him. This offended him, he says.

Reports of Rape

Müjde’s parents were also sending mixed signals. The mother was not very enthusiastic about Önder at first. Nevertheless, the girl was sent alone to Turkey in May 2007 to visit relatives. The couple was married in a civil ceremony in Turkey two weeks later. By the time Müjde’s parents arrived, “the whole thing was over,” one witness said.

A paternal uncle told the court that Müjde wanted to marry Önder. But others say that Müjde had talked about rape.

When the victim’s 17-year-old sister is called to testify, her father orders her to leave the courtroom. This prompts another loud outburst from the judge, who says: “You have nothing to say here! Your daughter ought to be allowed to make her own decisions!” The judge’s disconcertingly sharp tone doesn’t exactly help to alleviate the tense mood in the courtroom.

On July 24, 2007, the young woman returned, disappointed, to Germany. Being married was not what she had expected. Önder apparently behaved the way men usually behave in places where a marriage is a contract between two families, and where the woman becomes the man’s property.

Önder remained in Turkey while Müjde stayed in Germany. From then on, they only communicated with each other via the Internet. Önder berated Müjde and her parents. Were his words threats or merely macho ranting? Müjde reported him to the police.

Her mother informed relatives that the wedding celebration they had planned to hold in Germany for friends and family had been cancelled. When Önder heard the news, he attempted to commit suicide. When he returned to Germany, Müjde went with him to an attorney so that he could apply for a residency permit. She also had hymen reconstruction surgery, perhaps to prepare herself for a future relationship — but with whom?

A Tragic New Year’s Eve

It was an emotional roller coaster ride for the estranged couple and their families. In October 2008, Önder wanted to take Müjde to Turkey with him so that they could have a “proper” wedding. He threw himself at his mother-in-law’s feet and humbly and respectfully begged her forgiveness for his mistakes. His appeal was successful. Müjde’s mother urged him not to give up and told him to be strict with her daughter.

Önder didn’t understand — or simply refused to believe — that the game had been over for a long time. Müjde spoke on the telephone with people he didn’t know, and she refused to bow to his authority, which convention required him to exert. It drove him crazy. Where he comes from, decent woman don’t behave the way she was behaving. He became obsessed with the notion that she was seeing someone else.

Despite their differences, they became engaged a second time. At the ceremony, Müjde was wearing a gold-colored gown as she put on their engagement rings. An uncle urged the couple to try to get along.

It was the end of 2008. Müjde, who had stopped wearing her engagement ring, went to a New Year’s Eve party without Önder. When he turned up at the party, she told him to go away, but then she followed him to another party at an uncle’s house. Önder said: “Next year the party will be at our house.”

He killed her as they were driving home that night.

Moral Values

He claims it was because she had turned up the car stereo when he tried to speak to her, that she had given him an incorrect PIN three times when he tried to check the calls on her mobile phone, and that she had refused to answer him when he asked whether she had been unfaithful. Perhaps she said nothing because she was scared to death.

He had taken along a knife from the uncle’s party, a fruit knife with a short blade. He stabbed her with such fury that the blade broke off in her skull.

He turned himself in after the murder. “The striking thing was that he desperately wanted to know whether it was possible to determine when and with whom she had last had sexual intercourse,” says a police witness.

His lawyer, Detlev Otto Binder, confronted the psychiatric expert witness with the diverse views of renowned forensic psychiatrists on the subject of “profound consciousness disorder” — an official defense under German law — and accused him of not knowing enough about the subject.

Müjde’s parents, for their part, refused to testify in court. Who will explain to them and their extended family that they must modify their moral values and give up their traditions if they want to live in Germany? Certainly not a court that shouts people down.

On Aug. 17, the court in Bielefeld sentenced Önder B. to life in prison for murder.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Germany: Green Party Minister Angers German Auto Industry With Car Comments

Renate Kuenast, one of the Green Party’s top candidates for the 2009 elections, angered the German auto industry Thursday when comments she made were interpreted as a call for Germans to buy Japanese cars.

In the interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper, Kuenast said that people should look to the German Motor Club’s (VCD) list of the most environmentally-friendly cars when choosing their next vehicle.

The top ten list features Japanese cars in the first six places.

“As a member of the Green Party I want people to buy modern cars with the lowest CO2 emissions,” she said, suggesting that the VCD list was a good reference point for these cars. She expressed regret that the highest-placed German car came in at number seven — the two-seater Smart car — and added that German manufacturers “should act as quickly as possible to provide different cars and to secure jobs.”

Kuenast found herself in similar trouble two years ago when she called on people to buy the Toyota Prius hybrid car for its low environmental impact in comparison to other cars. Her statement was seen as a vote of no-confidence in the German car industry.

She also said that she was annoyed with the executive committees at German auto manufacturers which continued to fight at a European level to keep CO2 emissions for cars at the highest level possible.

“If the Germans are too stupid to build modern cars, then one must recommend that people should buy a Toyota Prius,” she said.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Germany: Muslim Man Sentenced to Life in Jail After Killing His German-Born Wife Because She Was ‘Too Independent’

A Muslim asylum seeker has been sentenced to life in prison after killing his German-born wife because she was ‘too independent’, a court in Germany heard today.

The 27-year-old Kurdish man, identified only as Onder B, was found guilty today of stabbing his wife in the eyes, beating her with a billiard cue and then running over her in his car.

His mother-in-law had once told him to be ‘strict’ with her strong-willed daughter, Mujde — who was also Onder’s cousin.

On New Year’s Eve 2008 he stabbed his 18-year-old wife Mujde 46 times and beat her with a billiard cue.

And because she was ‘already so disfigured from the stabbing and beating that she would hate me for the rest of her life,’ he got into his car and ran over her body several times.

— Hat tip: JD

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Ireland: Lobby Group Says Yes Vote Would Jeopardise Farm Succession Rights

A YES vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum would jeopardise farm succession rights and would also lead to a massive influx of Turkish farmers into the European Union, according to a farm lobby group which is campaigning against the treaty.

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Ireland: US Giant to Spend Thousands Backing ‘Yes’ Camp

A multi-national technology giant will spend hundreds of thousands of euro campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

The Irish boss of Intel — one of the country’s largest employers — said he wanted to send a clear message that a ‘Yes’ vote matters to the future prosperity and growth of Ireland.

Despite planning to spend a six-figure sum on campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote, the company claims it is not getting involved in the political argument, but simply putting the business case.

Intel Ireland general manager Jim O’Hara said there was a strong link between Ireland’s EU membership and the level of inward foreign direct investment.

Destination

“Since Ireland voted to support the single European market, international investment has grown immensely. Ireland has become an important destination for inward investment into Europe,” he said.

“This has happened for many reasons — an English-speaking, well-educated workforce, low corporate tax and pro-business government policies.

“Most importantly, it has happened because of Ireland’s connectedness to Europe, along with free access to vast EU markets,” he said.

Admitting it was an unusual move for a company of this type to back a campaign, Mr O’Hara said Intel would be spending “a few hundred thousand euros” on its publicity campaign for Lisbon. He said he had informed the State ethics watchdog, the Standards in Public Office Commission, of its intentions and there was “absolutely no issue”.

Although Mr O’Hara did not object to any questions being put to him about the treaty’s contents and his company’s activities, Intel’s PR person attempted to block questions from the media.

“Jim is here today just to speak on the business perspective of the Lisbon referendum. We don’t want to get into the political side of the debate, nor do we want to broaden that debate,” the spokesman said.

Intel does produce computer chips, which have a military application. ‘No’ campaigners say the passing of the Lisbon Treaty means a drive towards the militarisation of Europe and greater military spending.

Mr O’Hara said he had no view on the militarisation arguments put forward by the ‘No’ campaign.

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Italy: Venice Cemetery Tourist Complaints

‘Island of Dead’ disturbed by visitors to famous graves

(ANSA) — Venice, August 20 — The enthusiasm of Venice’s tourists is trying the patience of some locals, angry with disturbances at the city’s so-called cemetery island. A growing number of visitors are now making the trip to the Isola di San Michele, known to locals as The Island of the Dead, which houses the remains of various well-known figures, as well as a beautiful chapel. Tourists are drawn by the tombs of US modernist poet Ezra Pound, who lived in Venice, and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky among others, but now local residents are complaining about the commotion when they visit the graves of loved ones. A local councillor, Sebastiano Bonzio of the Communist Refoundation party, has launched a plea for action to restore the peace. Speaking during council proceedings, he said he had received several reports asking him to address the issue. “People travelling to the cemetery to visit their loved ones have been disturbed by mass arrivals of groups with a guide,” he said. “Residents have asked me to protest on their behalf”.

Bruno Padoan, head of Venice’s cemetery services department, admitted there had been a growing number of tourists visiting the island in recent years. He attributed the increase to the fact the site now appeared in more guides than in the past, meaning there was a greater awareness of the famous people buried there. But he insisted that people visiting the island were usually educated individuals, interested in art and culture, rather than rowdy tourists insensitive to locals. “These are people interested in learning about the treasures the island has to offer: its church, which is currently being restored and the funerary monuments of various individuals,” he said. Furthermore, Padoan explained, the size of the island meant the only way to prevent disturbances would be to put an end to all visits. “It is simply impossible to monitor an area this big, in order to make sure no one’s ducked behind a tomb for a ham sandwich or is taking advantage of the quiet for a moment of relaxation,” he said. The stir over the Isola di San Michele is not the first clash between tourists and residents in Venice. In 2007, the council started a crackdown on behaviour deemed unacceptable on the part of tourists visiting St Mark’s Square. Under the rules, tourists who go bare-chested, sit on the pavement or eat sandwiches in the famous square can be issued with fines.

A team of seven women, known as ‘guardians of decorum’, seek to enforce the rules through gentle persuasion but have the power to call police to issue fines if tourists fail to comply. The team is part of Venice’s strategy to ensure the city stays clean and maintains its charm despite the presence of 20 million visitors a year.

It is also working on laws to stop the sale of fast food in the piazza so as to limit the amount of rubbish that accumulates there and which street cleaners can only remove once a day.

photo: the ‘guardians of decorum’ in St Mark’s square

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Muslims in Sweden Celebrate Ramadan

This is the beginning of Ramadan — the month of fasting for Muslims all over the world and for the 300.000 Muslims living in Sweden.

A salute to the profit Mohammed and his revelations and a time for good deeds and the donation of money to the poor.

It’s also a time when many Mulsim families everywhere stack up on food for those big evening meals following the day-light hour fasts — and for preparations for the big 3-day festivities at the end of Ramadan.

“Store owners neglect Ramadan…”

Speaking to Swedish Radio news Muslim Amina Daher — who lives in the immigrant-rich Stockholm suburb of Tensta — confirms that purchase of dates, meat, other fruit and vegetables are greatly increased because of all the expected guests.

But some observers note that the Swedish food chains are slow in reaping the benefits of what should be millions of dollars in extra sales.

With Ramadan coming early this year, many unprepared stores are still pushing that for Mulsims-forbidden pork on sale for those last-of-the-season grill parties so loved by the native Swedes — and this means the shortages of the Moslem favorite lamb are resulting in soaring prices and lost sales.

Meta Troell of the Swedish trade and commerce association maintains that says some Swedish store owners are getting a bit better when it comes to sizing up the special needs of the immigrant communities — but not much.

She agrees that some stores are bringing in extra supplies — but that they do not always advertise to the different consumer groups …relying on standard Swedish approaches that doesn’t always work.

And she concludes that there are still Swedish stores who don’t know what Ramadan and post-parties really mean for potential sales.

Other store owners in other branches area also missing Ramadan potential.

In that Tensta suburb, clothes, toys and gift-shop owner Berishi Muhammed confirms gladly that his sales boom with Ramadan enthusiasm — especially for the children.

But more Swedish shop owners will no doubt become more Ramadan-savy as the Swedish news media covers the event.

Some news stories note how some Muslim parents are concerned that younger siblings are too eager to follow older brothers and sisters into those day- time fasts — when perhaps their very young bodies are not ready for a long school day without food.

Others foresee growing worries over a Ramadan each year sliding ever deeper into the summer here — with the long, Nordic daylight squeezing out those evening hours of darkness … so that those Moslems living in the far north of Sweden will be facing a summer hot Ramadan with the midnight sun burning away all the time for meals.

— Hat tip: TB

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Netherlands: Muslim Group Republishes Punishable Cartoon

AMSTERDAM, 20/08/09 — The Arab European League (AEL) says political motives are behind the Public Prosecutor (OM)’s decision not to prosecute the organisation for publishing a controversial cartoon. In order to provoke the OM into taking the AEL to court after all, the Islamic group has republished the cartoon on its website.

On Tuesday, the OM decided that a cartoon showing two Jews ‘inventing’ the Holocaust is a punishable offence. Nevertheless, the OM decided not to prosecute the AEL, which made and published the cartoon on its website over three years ago.

The condition attached to this dismissal was that the website would not republish the cartoon. But in the meantime, the AEL has published the cartoon on its website a second time.

The AEL is republishing the cartoon in protest against the OM’s simultaneous decision, also announced on Tuesday, that cartoons portraying the Islamic prophet Mohammed are permitted. These are the political cartoons that were originally published in a Danish newspaper in 2005.

According to the OM, the ‘Danish cartoons’ are not punishable because they concern the prophet Mohammed and say nothing about Muslims as a group. “None of the cartoons is offensive towards Muslims or incite hatred, discrimination or violence against Muslims. Therefore their publication or distribution is not punishable either”, stated the OM.

On the other hand, the AEL cartoon about the ‘invented Holocaust’ is punishable. “By claiming that they invented the murder of six million Jews, Jews are being insulted as a group”, according to OM.

This explanation did not go down well with the AEL. Spokesperson Abdou Bouzerda is especially angry because the Danish cartoons were republished in the Netherlands by anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders.

“Wilders is judged right and may continue to publish cartoons that one and a half billion people perceive as offensive. While we have to remove political cartoons that could be offensive to Jews”, Bouzerda sneered.

Bouzerda claims that the OM is not prosecuting the AEL out of fear of Muslims. “The OM merely wished to prevent angry Muslim reactions if it became evident that we were being prosecuted and Wilders was not”.

Due to this “hypocrisy”, the AEL republished its cartoon. In doing so it implicitly provokes the OM into taking the matter to court. “Let the OM prosecute us by all means; we want a court verdict “.

The OM had in fact initially received the request to take the AEL to court from the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI). Following Tuesday’s OM decision not to prosecute the AEL despite its alleged crime, CIDI director Ron Naftaniel is starting an Article 12 procedure, which means he is appealing the OM’s decision not to prosecute.

Naftaniel considers it “disgraceful” that the OM took three and a half years to pass judgement on the AEL cartoons. He is also disgruntled that the OM deems another AEL cartoon as legal. This cartoon portrays Adolf Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. “A nightmare for the thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors still alive.”

— Hat tip: TB

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Netherlands: AEL Puts Holocaust Cartoon Back on Its Website

The Arab European League (AEL) has republished a controversial cartoon on the Dutch version of its website, despite an agreement with the public prosecutor for the removal of the image. The cartoon portrays two Jews inventing figures about the Holocaust.

On Tuesday the public prosecutor’s office ruled that AEL was liable to prosecution for publishing the cartoon, but no charges would be brought if the campaign group permanently removed the image from its website. Initially AEL appeared to have complied with this demand.

However, at the same time the public prosecutor’s office also ruled that there was nothing illegal about the publication of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad on the website of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders in 2006. Likewise, it decided that the TV programme Nova, which also showed the cartoons, had not broken the law.

The public prosecutor’s office concluded that the Danish drawings were not offensive to Muslims as a group and were not an incitement to discrimination or violence against them. However, it said the cartoon on the AEL website was indeed offensive to Jews as a group.

In response to this ruling, AEL decided to republish the cartoon. On its website, AEL chairman Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda accuses the public prosecutor’s office of applying double standards, adding that “Given the decision not to interpret the Muhammad cartoon as offensive to Muslims, the decision that the publication of the AEL cartoon is liable to prosecution is incomprehensible.” AEL claims the cartoon does not express its views and is not intended to offend a specific group.

The public prosecutors office says charges will be brought if AEL fails to remove the cartoon from its website within two weeks.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Netherlands: Low Language-Skill Children Get Cheaper Daycare

Toddlers with language deficiencies will be able to attend child daycare centres at lower rates, owing to a new subsidy by the Education Ministry.

Instead of the usual tariff of 645 euros a year, considered too expensive by many parents, they will only have to pay 105 euros. Attending daycare centres is thought to improve children’s linguistic abilities through guided play and learning.

Deputy Education Minister Sharon Dijksma is setting aside 20 million euros for the support measure. She says too many children arrive at primary schools with insufficient language skills because their parents found preschool daycare too costly.

The measure will be implemented at local authority level, rather than centrally by the ministry.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Norway: Pre Election: Information — Progress Party Candidate Commentary

On September 14th there will be elections to the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) and to the Sami Assembly in Norway. The Norway Post will try to present information and comments. Today: The political situation as seen by a Progress Party MP: Just three weeks before the election, Christian Tybring-Gjedde, Member of Parliament for the Progress Party asks the following question:

ARE WE ON OUR WAY TO SORIA MORIA?

(It should be noted that Soria Moria to Norwegians is both a fairy-tale castle glimmering over the horizon, and the name of the hotel where the present red/green coalition government set down their political programme. Ed. note)

As the September general election is fast approaching, the socialist Norwegian government is trying to convince the public that it is delivering on its promises made at the fairy tale hotel of Soria Moria four years ago. The Soria Moria government declaration contained grand classical socialist statements such as liminating poverty by redistributing income through higer taxes, make jobs available for everyone and laying the foundation for sustainable development in all parts of the country. The Government also promised to create a green economy and to introduce a more “humane and generous immigration policy” . The Government assured us that it would build on what they defined as “the Norwegian model”, where the forces of the market would be replaced by Government interventions by pouring petrodollars at every conceivable challenge.

Let’s assume that Government is delivering on its promises, and that things are moving in the right direction in Norway, as Prime Minister Stoltenberg claims. Why is it that most of us experience an underlying discontent among the public of where we as a nation is moving? Why is an increasing number of people worried about the future, despite the financial riches of this nation? Are the people mistaken? Don’t we understand our own best interest? Of course we do! The truth is that the people long has realized that the challenges the Norwegian society faces first of all is of a structural and cultural character, and that such fundamental challenges can not be solved by public spending alone.

Let me give you some examples. In Norway today there are more than 700 000 people between the ages of 18 — 67 who in different ways recieve their income from the Government through the social security system. This number is far higher than any other comparable European nation, and the number is growing by an accelerating speed! It is of little comfort that Norway is experiencing a low rate of registered unemployment (3%), when 25% of the population receives its main income from different forms of government benefits. This fact is one of the untold consequences of the socialist ideology put forth in the Soria Moria declaration.

Under the soscialist left Government, Norway is receiving about 20 000 immigrants from non western nations every year. About 5000 are being granted permission to stay through the asylumseeker process, while the greatest number arrive in Norway through the process of “familiy re-union”, where immigration through marriage constitutes a large number. Non-Western immigrants do often lack basic education, many are even illitterate on arrival, and they do in large pick Norway as their destination of choice due to our generous welfare system. At the same time many groups of immigrants have introduced cultural and religious practices which are challenging our fundamental values. In particular, values such as freedom of speech, equality between the sexes and individual liberties. The Governments policy of allowing a growing number of immigrants into Norway has resulted in an unsustainable demographic development which is not just undermining our welfare society, but is also challenging over values and our way of life. The long term consequences of this naive policy may be distratrous to our culture and to our nation. This fact is another of the untold consequences of the socialist ideology put forth in the Soria Moria declaration.

Norway is among the biggest spenders on public education. Our spending per student is among the highest in the world. At the same time, international comparisons conducted by the OECD show that Norwegian students are scoring poorly on knowledge based testing. The same tests however, show that Norwegian students are doing really well when it comes to measuring levels of disturbance and noise in the classroom. These students are the innovators of tomorrow. These are the ones that shall enable us to finance our welfare. It is not promising. This is also one of the untold consequences of the socialist ideology put forth in the Soria Moria declaration.

The incidences of violent crime is on the rise in Norway. The crime has also become more brutal and unscrupulous. Despite this development, the government insists on its policy of short prison sentences, focusing on rehabilitation of the offender, rather than being on the side of the victims of crime. Foreign criminals have so far had the opporunity to serve their time in Norwegian prisons, serial criminals are being offered shorter sentences than what the law implies and prison inmates are being released before their time due to lack of prison cells. At the same time, the police is lacking money and people, forcing investigators to make unacceptable compromises, even in cases where a perpetrator of a crime is known to the police. This is another untold consequence of the socialist ideology put forth in the Soria Moria declaration.

I have mentioned four fundamentally important political areas where the government is not able to deliver. Not because it is not possible, but because effective policies will violate socialisms dogmatic rethoric of solidarity. And I could have kept on. Today we have 270 000 Norwegians standing in line to receive a required treatment at a hospital, our public infrastructure is decaying, our communication infrastructure is one the least developed in Europe and according to our former Inspector General of the Army, is our Army barely able to defend a small area of Oslo if it was taken to the test. In order not to deliver these services, the socialist government is insisting on maintaining a high level of taxes, while our fees and duties are continously breaking new records.

The truth is that the Soria Moria declaration is not discussing the developments that most Norwegians find troublesome. The declaration is pompous in its message about community and solidarity, but does not mention that the solidarity in reality means that a growing number of people will be depended on government welfare. The declaration has an isolated focus on implementing new rights, but says nothing about what the society will demand in return.

While Prime Minister Stoltenberg and Finance Minister Halvorsen are busy implementing the Soria Moria declaration, are a majority of Norwegians dreaming about another society. A society where effort and creativity are being rewarded, a society where it is possible to make a decent living on your own income, a society where a sustainable immigration policy is being implemented, a society where our schools again will focus on disiplin and knowledge and a society where criminal behaviour will lead to fast trials and deterrence. These same people wish for a visionary government that will increase peoples possibility to choose, a government that appreciates private initiative and who will use our enormous oil and gas income to create a world class infrastructure. The Soria Moria declaration will never be able to deliver any of that.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Sweden: Girl, 14, Gang Raped on Internet Date

A 14-year-old girl was raped on Wednesday evening by at least two people in a bush by Grönkullagatan in Helsingborg.

The girl, who comes from outside of the city, had arranged on the internet to meet a boy.

But when she and a 14-year-old friend came to Helsingborg to meet the boy they were instead met by a gang of five men, all around 18-years-old.

According to initial reports the 14-year-old was raped by at least two of the men. Her friend witnessed the attack and called the police.

The police, with the help of dogs, managed to trace and locate the gang of men a short distance from the scene of the crime. The five men have been taken in for questioning and are all suspected of rape.

“We have secured samples and when the analysis is complete the various roles played by the men will become clear,” Peter Martin at Skåne police told the TT news agency.

— Hat tip: TB

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Sweden Summons Israeli Ambassador

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, has been summoned by Sweden’s foreign office to discuss the diplomatic discord following an article in a national newspaper claiming Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.

The meeting, with the foreign ministry cabinet secretary Frank Belfrage, had already been planned to discuss routine matters but has now taken on an altogether different importance, according to a TT news agency source.

The diplomatic spat has its source in the decision by the Aftonbladet newspaper to publish the article which details allegations of the systematic harvesting of the organs of Palestinian men.

The argument has escalated further after comments on Thursday by the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman slamming Stockholm for distancing itself from a statement by Sweden’s Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier expressing outrage at the article.

Lieberman compared the allegations in the article to old antisemitic lies, such as Jews offering up Christian children for the ritual sacrifice to collect their blood.

“It is regrettable that the Swedish foreign ministry does not intervene when it comes to a blood libel against Jews, which reminds one of Sweden’s conduct during World War II when it also did not intervene,” a Israeli government statement quoted Lieberman as saying.

The comments have caused irritation at the Swedish foreign ministry, according to the TT source.

Lieberman stated that he intended to send a strongly worded protest to Sweden’s foreign minster Carl Bildt, but this protest had not been received by midday on Friday.

Avigdor Lieberman, who is also the leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, also issued a sweeping criticism of Sweden and the foreign ministry over moves to distance itself from comments made by the Swedish ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, in which she condemned the newspaper’s decision to publish.

— Hat tip: TB

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Sweden: Bildt Rejects Israeli Call for Official Condemnation

Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt has rejected calls from Israel for the government to distance itself from an article in a national newspaper which claimed Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.

Writing on his blog, Bildt argued that Sweden’s free press and tradition of free speech are the best defence against “breaches of judgement, bad taste and transgressions of core societal values.”

“There are calls from some quarters in Israel that we in some way or another should take an official position to distance ourselves from this article or even to intervene to prevent such an article being published,” Bildt wrote on Thursday.

“But our country does not work that way — and neither should it.”

Bildt argues that were he to go in and correct all the eccentric contributions to debates in various media then he would have little time left over for anything else. He also argued that criticism against some could be understood as approval of others.

Carl Bildt drew parallels to the debate around the Muhammad cartoons that raged in a similar fashion in 2006. He argued that on that occasion Sweden gained respect for the position that tolerance and understanding are best constructed through an open society.

Bildt however expressed understanding for the feelings of the Israeli people over the article penned by photojournalist Donald Bodström in which he alleged that the Israeli Defence Force systematically removed and traded the organs of dead Palestinian men.

“That the accusations of the article’s author awoke strong feelings in Israel is not difficult to understand. Bitter historical experience has led to a natural and strong sensitivity to implications or accusations which could give anti-Semitism a chance to develop,” Bildt wrote.

The foreign minister concluded by defending the importance of maintaining a free press and protecting freedom of speech but said that there were lessons to be learned from both this and the Muhammad cartoon debate.

“We live in a world where the public debate spills over old boundaries and where we all in various contexts would be wise to be aware of the historical, national and religious sensitivities.”

— Hat tip: TB

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Sweden Defends Press Freedom Amid Israeli Furor

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on Friday played down a diplomatic row with Israel sparked by a Swedish newspaper’s claims that Israeli soldiers stole organs from dead Palestinians.

But Bildt declined to condemn the piece, saying the government has to respect the Swedish constitution’s principles on freedom of expression.

“As a member of the Swedish government, acting on the Swedish constitution I have to respect the freedom of the speech, irrespective of the personal views that I might have,” he said.When asked by reporters if the report published by the Aftonbladet tabloid would sour relations between the two countries, Bildt said: “I don’t think so.”

“We have very strong state relationship between Israel and our government. We are both open and democratic societies,” he told reporters during a meeting of Nordic and Baltic foreign ministers in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik.

Anti-SemitismOn Thursday, Stockholm distanced itself from a statement by Sweden’s Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier expressing outrage at the article, drawing a stinging response from the Israeli foreign ministry.

“It is regrettable that the Swedish foreign ministry does not intervene when it comes to a blood libel against Jews, which reminds one of Sweden’s conduct during World War II when it also did not intervene,” it said in a statement.

Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper sparked the row on Monday when it published a report claiming Israeli soldiers snatched Palestinian youths to steal their organs and returned their dismembered bodies a few days later.

The article implied a link between charges of organ theft from Palestinians and the recent arrest in the United States of an American Jew suspected of illicit organ trafficking.

Headlined “Our sons are plundered for their organs,” the story made news in Israel, where officials described it as racist and accused it of using “vile anti-Semitic themes.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he planned to make a “serious protest” to Bildt over the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s previous decision not to comment on the article.

“A country that truly wants to defend democratic values must strongly condemn deceitful reports with an odor of anti-Semitism of the kind published this week in Aftonbladet,” Lieberman said in a statement.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he would look into suing the reporter for libel.

Bildt rejected claims that Sweden harbors anti-Semitic feelings, adding that the condemnation of anti-Semitism was the only issue on which there has ever been complete unity in the Swedish Parliament.

Tensions between the two countries have been strained in recent years.

— Hat tip: TB

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Sweden: Israeli Minister Fires Up the Debate

The conflict over a Swedish newspaper’s article about Israeli organ trade is continuing to heat up diplomatic relations between the two countries. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has condemned the Swedish government’s decision to not comment on the article, likening Sweden’s silence with the spread of anti-Semitic rumors in Old Europe, including how Jews ritually sacrificed Christian children for their blood.

Moreover, the Foreign Minister equated the affair with “Sweden’s actions during the Second World War, when they didn’t intervene either,” reports Swedish news wire TT.

The article, published by the newspaper Aftonbladet, accused Israeli authorities of being aware of soldiers murdering Palestinians for their organs. But regardless of its content, the Swedish government has said that it won’t comment on it out of respect for the freedom of the press.

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on his blog on Thursday that certain voices in Israel have called on the Swedish government to distance itself from the article and even take action so that such an article can’t be published in the future. “But our country doesn’t work like that-and it won’t work like that either,” he writes in reply, appealing to Sweden’s traditions of free press.

[Comment from Tuan Jim: I understand freedom of the press, but aren’t there also slander/libel laws in Sweden when folks print blatantly false or deceitful articles? I don’t understand any of the comparisons I’ve seen between this article and the Mo-toons.]

Officials at the Swedish Foreign met with Israel’s ambassador to Sweden Benny Dogan on Friday to discuss the issue. Although the ambassador wouldn’t comment on the content of the meeting, he strongly criticized newspaper Aftonbladet when asked in an interview with TT if Israel would investigate the newspaper’s claims.

He said that it’s impossible to defend Israel against absurd allegations.

“Why don’t we investigate if Jews lay behind the attacks on the World Trade Center? Why don’t we investigate if Jews spread AIDS in Arab countries? Why don’t we investigate if Jews kill Jewish children in order to take their blood and organs? Why don’t your newspapers investigate all that? Those would certainly be good articles.”

The Swedish Foreign Ministry still would not comment on the case, saying instead that they stand by the freedom of the press.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Sweden: STIs a Sign of Manhood?

Some young men consider sexually transmitted infections a sign of manhood, new Swedish research suggests. A number of men become more careful after contracting a STI, while others just chalk it up to bad luck; a third group sees it as a sign of great seducer.

Kina Hammarlund, a researcher at Skövde College, based the study on interviews with men and women between 13 and 30 years old. She maintains that the positive attitude towards STIs is only found among men. “There are no girls who think that. Girls still obtain their sexual experiences in the dark,” she told news agency TT.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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UK: BBC Race Row as Sikh Listeners Threaten Muslim Radio Presenter Who ‘Denigrated Holy Symbol’

The BBC’s Asian Network has become embroiled in a race row after Sikh listeners accused the flagship digital radio station of being insensitive towards their religion.

The BBC was forced to remove a show from its website after Muslim presenter Adil Ray received threats from Sikhs who said he had denigrated one of their religious symbols.

Members of the Sikh community complained that Mr Ray had been disparaging about whether they really needed to carry kirpan daggers.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Oxford Won’t Fire Rotterdam’s Rejected Advisor

Oxford University says it sees no reason to break off ties with Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, who was fired earlier this week as a community advisor by the city of Rotterdam.

The city government said his work as a presenter of a state-sponsored programme on Iranian television was incompatible with his duties in Rotterdam.

Mr Ramadan is a professor of Contemporary Islam Studies at Oxford, a post which he has held for the past four years. The British university said in a statement that freedom of expression is a fundamental right. Yet the university adds that it disagrees with Mr Ramadan’s views.

The Swiss-Egyptian islamologist also lost his job as a visiting professor at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University. Mr Ramadan is furious about his dismissal from his jobs in Rotterdam and is taking the city to court. In his view, the decisions were politically motivated and inspired by the current wave of anti-Islamic sentiments in the Netherlands.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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UK: Revealed: The Areas of Britain Where There Are More Migrants Chasing Jobs Than Locals

The true extent of the huge influx of foreign workers into Britain is revealed in an investigation by the Daily Mail.

In some parts of the UK there are more migrants searching for jobs than native Britons — even at this time of soaring unemployment.

Nearly three quarters of a million National Insurance Numbers (NINOs), a prerequisite for getting employment, were handed out to foreign nationals last year.

The figure exposes as a sham the New Labour pledge of ‘British jobs for British workers’.

While a NINO can be used to access social benefits, most newcomers from abroad are not eligible for these payouts and use the number only to seek work. Therefore, it gives a highly accurate estimate of foreigners entering the job market.

The number of migrants receiving NINOs rose by more than a fifth in some areas in 2008.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Seven Charged Over Iraq Protest

Seven people have been charged with public order offences over disturbances at a parade in Bedfordshire for soldiers returning home from Iraq.

Anti-war protests erupted as soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton town centre on 10 March.

The seven will appear at Luton Magistrates’ Court on 16 September.

A further 12 people have been charged in connection with another disturbance in Luton town centre on 24 May.

They will appear at the court on 25 September.

All have been released on bail until their court appearances.

The seven charged over the parade are all from Luton and have been named.

They are Jalal Ahmed, 21, of Cavendish Road, Yousaf Bashir, 29, of Dane Road, Ibrahim Anderson, 32, of Warwick Road West, Jubair Ahmed, 19, of Beech Road, Ziaur Rahman, 33, of Nunnery Lane, Shajjadar Choudhury, 30, of Essex Close and Munim Abdul, 28, of Highbury Road.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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UK: Two Charged Over BNP Members Leak

Two people have been charged with breaching the Data Protection Act after a British National Party membership list was leaked on the internet.

Dyfed-Powys Police said a man aged 27 and a woman aged 30 were arrested in Brinsley, Nottinghamshire, on Thursday and will appear in court next month.

The names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of some 10,000 party supporters were leaked in November.

The BNP said it was “a serious offence” that had caused “a lot of distress”.

The list included the names of current and former servicemen, police officers, teachers and doctors.

The BNP said it dated from 2007 and many of those named were no longer members.

‘Treachery’

Party leader Nick Griffin lodged a complaint with Dyfed-Powys, his local force, on the grounds that publishing the list breached human rights and data protection laws, and could put at risk those who were named.

He called the leak as “a disgraceful act of treachery” by former BNP members who were subsequently sacked.

Earlier last year, the party obtained an injunction from the High Court in Manchester banning any publication of the list.

A police spokesman said the man and woman had been arrested following a joint investigation with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

They have been charged under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998, which makes it a criminal offence to “knowingly or recklessly obtain or disclose” personal information without consent.

A BNP spokesman said on Friday: “We are glad the police and the CPS have taken this seriously.

“It’s a serious offence and has caused a lot of distress.”

The pair will appear before magistrates in Nottingham on 1 September.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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UK: Why Do We Keep Betraying the Victims of Terror?

Shut up, move on and preferably forget. That is what society seems to expect of victims of terrorism.

They are lectured by politicians about the need to look at the big picture, preached at by churchmen about the virtues of forgiveness, and regarded by our liberal elite as emotionally incontinent because they harp on about the need for justice.

Yesterday, in freeing Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said loftily that because the Scots defined themselves by their humanity, he was happy to show compassion to a dying man by returning him to Libya and his family.

[…]

To their credit — because they take terrorist victims seriously — the U.S. authorities kicked up so much fuss behind the scenes that the UK Government was afraid to deliver its side of the deal.

But now, full of puffed-up nationalist anti-Americanism, the holier-than-thou Scottish executive has spurned the pleas of Al Megrahi’s victims and sent him home anyway.

‘The Libyans will be laughing,’ said one U.S. widow. ‘They will see this as weakness.’

And so they will, for our Government has been craven.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Why Are We Giving Child Molesters Viagra on the NHS?

If I’d written a spoof column about a serial paedophile given Viagra on the NHS and then being freed by a court after he was convicted of molesting an 11-year-old girl, you’d think I’d finally taken leave of my senses.

Steady on, Rich. You’ve gone too far this time, even by your standards. We all know things are bad, but this is Fantasy Island stuff.

Sadly not. Roger Martin appeared at Peterborough Crown Court this week and pleaded guilty to ‘inappropriately touching’ a girl who was cleaning his sheltered accommodation to earn some pocket money.

Martin, 71, has a string of convictions for assaults on minors, dating back to 1978 when he was caught having sex with a 15-year-old babysitter.

It was revealed in court that he was being prescribed Viagra by his GP to treat diabetes. The probation service said it had no powers or any inclination to stop him taking the drug.

— Hat tip: JD

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World’s First Muslim Superheroes, The 99, Are Headed for British Television Screens

The world’s first Muslim cartoon superheroes have taken the Arab world by storm, and now they are headed for British television screens.

Named the 99, as each possesses one of Allah’s 99 attributes, the characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful.

They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine.

Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths.

Until now, the superhero market has been dominated by the likes of Batman, Spiderman and Superman who have typically limited their crime-fighting abilities to America and the Western world.

They were created by Dr Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait, who felt Muslim children needed a new set of heroes to look up to, to counter jihadist role models.

“It hit me that the stories I was hearing were from men who grew up believing that their leader, Saddam, was a hero, a role model — only to one day be tortured by him,” he told The Times. “I decided the Arab world needed better role models.”

However, despite being called the 99, there will never be a full cast of 99 superheroes since it is forbidden to depict all Allah’s attributes

Dr al-Mutawa hopes the cartoons will have a universal appeal.

He said: “It is based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over.”

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Egyptian Coptic Priest Banned From Village, Under Death Threat

By Mary Abdelmassih

(AINA) — On August 14 Rev. Estefanos Shehata, a Coptic priest, sent a letter to the Middle East Christian Association (MECA) stating the Muslim elders of his village have issued a death Fatwa (religious edict) against him, and have banned him from entering his village because he wants to convert part of his family home into a hall where he can carry out funeral rites and marriage ceremonies. The village of Upper Ezbet Dawoud Yousef is 200 kilometers south of Cairo, in the Minya Governorate, and has no church; religious functions for the 800 Coptic Christians are performed on the street.

Rev. Estefanos said that after converting the 100 square meter room in his family’s home in the village into a prayer hall two years ago, he went to the state security to get the necessary permit, but has not been given an answer nor the permit.

“I finally went to the state security to get a definite answer to the permit application. They told me I need to obtain ‘permission’ of the village Muslims, as they (state security) want no problems in the village,” Father Estefanos told Waguih Yacoub of MECA, “I told them that I see no problems in getting this permission as we have always had good relations with the village Muslims and we love and consider them as our brothers.”

When he informed the Muslim villagers of his plan, they called for a meeting with the elders of the neighboring villages. “They were extremely angry at my proposal and instead of giving their permission, they issued a Fatwa calling for my death. They told the Copts in the village that it takes just one bullet to get rid of me since there is no ‘blood money’ for killing a Christian. I have been banned from my village for over a month now, I cannot even go my mother.”

In a video interview with Free Copts, a Coptic advocacy group, Rev. Estefanos said “Enough humiliation and persecution of the Copts, I do not fear death and issuing a Fatwa to spill my blood is an honor for me.” The interview is available on youtube.com.

“The Muslim elders also said that it is through grace on their part that we are allowed to go to the neighboring village to pray,” said Rev. Estefanos. The nearest church is five kilometers in the village of El-Tayebah.

He went on to express his dismay with his Muslims neighbors, asking “What harm is it to you if we have a hall? What harm is it to you if we build a church? This is one question. Secondly, why do we have to conduct a funeral in the street? Why do we have to celebrate weddings, with the bride and groom standing in the street? This is definitely not right. Why are Muslims angry when Christians want to pray?”

According to United Copts Great Britain, the Patriarch of the Coptic church, H.H. Coptic Pope Shenouda III, upon hearing of this news asked his secretary to contact Rev. Estefanos to get the details of the case.

The International Organization for Human Rights, based in Frankfurt, Germany issued a press release condemning the fatwa.

Minya Governorate has had the lion’s share of sectarian strife and violations against the Copts this year.

In view of the policy of impunity towards the Muslims perpetrators, Egypt has seen a new and escalating phenomenon of Muslim villagers who have given themselves the right to collectively prevent their Christian neighbours from praying even in a house. In

In June and July of this year the Upper Egyptian villages of Ezbet Bouchra, Ezbet Guirgis Bey, Ezbet Bassilious, El-Foqaii and El-Hawasla saw Muslim vigilante mobs, turning out in great numbers to destroy Christian properties they ‘suspect’ is being used for prayers, under the pretext that these properties do not have a ‘license for prayer’.

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Lockerbie Bomber Home in Libya Amid US Anger

The terminally ill Libyan convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing arrived home from Scotland on Thursday after being freed on compassionate grounds despite U.S. anger over the decision.

Hundreds of young people waving Libyan and Scottish flags greeted the aircraft carrying Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi as it landed in Tripoli amid heavy security and to the sound of patriotic music.

Loudspeakers pumped out patriotic songs ahead of a celebration later in the heart of the Libyan capital that Megrahi was expected to attend, said a source in the delegation that accompanied him from Scotland.

U.S. disappointmentMegrahi, the only person found guilty of blowing up a U.S. Boeing 747 airliner and killing 270 people, said earlier he was “very relieved” to be freed, but described his original conviction as a “disgrace.”

But the release was immediately condemned by the U.S. government, which asked Libya not to give a “hero’s welcome” to the Lockerbie bomber.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that the release of the dying Lockerbie bomber by the Scottish government was a “mistake” and that he should be placed under house arrest on return to Libya.

“We have been in contact with the Scottish government, indicating that we objected to this, and we thought it was a mistake,” Obama told a U.S. radio journalist, giving his first reaction to the decision.

“We’re now in contact with the Libyan government and want to make sure that if, in fact, this transfer has taken place, that he’s not welcomed back in some way, but instead, should be under house arrest.”

Justive vs mercyAskillScotland’s justice minister announced Thursday that he had granted release on compassionate grounds to the Libyan man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Kenny MacAskill said al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, could return to Libya to die because Scottish law required that “justice be served but mercy be shown.”

“For these reasons, and these reasons alone, it is my decision that (Megrahi)… be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die,” he said.

The United States fiercely opposed the release of Megrahi, jailed for 27 years over the murder of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown from the skies over the Scottish town of Lockerbie late on December 21, 1988.

Compassion and mercyAskillBut the Scottish minister insisted he had not taken political pressures into consideration.

“Our justice system demands that justice be imposed but compassion be available, our beliefs dictate that justice be served but mercy be shown,” he said.

And he added: “Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs that we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people no matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated.”

“It’s my decision and my decision alone … We have done so on the basis of following due process. I know that there will be those who disagree,” he said, adding that he made the decision “without political or economic consideration.”

U.S. expresses regretMeanwhile, the United States expressed deep regret and disappointment after the Scottish government ignored pleas from Washington and freed the dying Libyan man.

“The United States deeply regrets the decision by the Scottish Executive to release Abdel Basset Mohamed al-Megrahi,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement issued within minutes of the decision being made public.

“On this day, we extend our deepest sympathies to the families who live every day with the loss of their loved ones. We recognize the effects of such a loss weigh upon a family forever.”

As the Scottish government weighed whether to release al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, the Obama administration made repeated and blunt calls for him to stay in the jail.

— Hat tip: TB

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Lockerbie Bomber Returns to Libyaabdel Baset Al-Megrahi Returns Home to Libya

EDINBURGH, Scotland (Aug. 20) — The only man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 returned home to Libya to die after he was released from a Scottish prison Thursday, a decision that outraged some relatives of the 270 people killed when the jetliner blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, more than two decades ago.

President Barack Obama said the Scottish decision to free terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds was a mistake and said he should be under house arrest. Obama warned Libya not to give him a hero’s welcome.

Despite the warning, at the military airport in Tripoli where al-Megrahi’s plane touched down thousands of youths were on hand to warmly greet him. He left the plane wearing a dark suit and a tie and accompanied by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi. They immediately sped off in a convoy of all-white vehicles.

At home, al-Megrahi is seen as an innocent scapegoat the West used to turn this African nation into a pariah, and his return is a cause for celebration. There was a festive atmosphere with some wearing T-shirts with al-Megrahi’s picture and waving Libyan and miniature blue-and-white Scottish flags. Libyan songs blared in the background.

“I think it’s appalling, disgusting and so sickening I can hardly find words to describe it,” said Susan Cohen, of Cape May Court House, N.J., whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, died in the attack. “This isn’t about compassionate release. This is part of give-Gadhafi-what-he-wants-so-we-can-have-the-oil.”

But many in Libya view his homecoming as a moral victory for the African country and an end to a long-standing humiliation at the hands of the West. They say Libya was forced to surrender al-Megrahi to end years of crippling sanctions.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi lobbied hard for the return of al-Megrahi, an issue which took on an added sense of urgency when al-Megrahi was diagnosed with prostate cancer last year. He was recently given only months to live.

The 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence officer served only eight years of his life sentence.

Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of taking part in the bombing on Dec. 21, 1988, and sentenced to life in prison. The airliner exploded over Scotland and all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground died when it crashed into the town of Lockerbie.

He was sentenced to serve a minimum of 27 years in a Scottish prison for Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack. But a 2007 review of his case found grounds for an appeal of his conviction, and many in Britain believe he is innocent.

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Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who announced the release, said although al-Megrahi had not shown compassion to his victims — many of whom were American college students flying home to New York for Christmas — MacAskill was motivated by Scottish values to show mercy.

“Some hurts can never heal, some scars can never fade,” MacAskill said. “Those who have been bereaved cannot be expected to forget, let alone forgive … However, Mr. al-Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power.”

He said he stood by al-Megrahi’s conviction and the sentence for “the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed on U.K. soil.”

He added that he had ruled out sending the bomber back to Libya under a prisoner-transfer agreement, saying the U.S. victims had been given assurances that al-Megrahi would serve out his sentence in Scotland. But he said that as a prisoner given less than three months to live by doctors, al-Megrahi was eligible for compassionate release.

But U.S. family members of Lockerbie victims expressed outrage.

“I don’t understand how the Scots can show compassion. It’s an utter insult and utterly disgusting,” said Kara Weipz, of Mount Laurel, N.J. Her 20-year-old brother Richard Monetti was on board the doomed flight. “It’s horrible. I don’t show compassion for someone who showed no remorse.”

As his white van rolled down street outside Greenock Prison on his way to the airport in Glasgow, Scotland, some men on the roadside made obscene gestures. Al-Megrahi later appeared on the airport tarmac dressed in a white tracksuit, black shirt and white baseball cap. He covered his mouth with a white scarf as he slowly climbed the stairs up to an Airbus plane aided by a cane.

In a statement following his release, al-Megrahi stood by his insistence that he was wrongfully convicted.

“I say in the clearest possible terms, which I hope every person in every land will hear — all of this I have had to endure for something that I did not do,” he said.

He also said he believed the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing may now never be known.

“I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out — until my diagnosis of cancer,” he said, referring to an appeal against his conviction that he dropped in order to be freed. “To those victims’ relatives who can bear to hear me say this, they continue to have my sincere sympathy for the unimaginable loss that they have suffered.”

Al-Megrahi’s conviction was largely based on the testimony of a shopkeeper who identified him as having bought a man’s shirt in his store in Malta. Scraps of the garment were later found wrapped around a timing device discovered in the wreckage of the airliner. Critics of al-Megrahi’s conviction question the reliability of the store owner’s evidence.

A letter published Thursday showed that Libya had invoked human rights concerns in appealing to Scotland for al-Megrahi’s release.

Abdulati Alobidi, Libya’s Secretary of European Affairs, said under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — a U.N. treaty — all those deprived of liberty must be “treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Gadhafi engineered a rapprochement with his former critics following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He renounced terrorism, dismantled Libya’s secret nuclear program, accepted his government’s responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the victims’ families.

Western energy companies — including Britain’s BP PLC — have moved into Libya in an effort to tap the country’s vast oil and gas wealth.

Al-Megrahi was a well-known figure in the Scottish community near his prison, receiving regular treatment at the hospital and visited often by his wife and children, who lived in Scotland for several years.

Briton Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died on Flight 103, welcomed the Libyan’s release, saying many questions remained about what led to the bomb that exploded in the cargo hold.

“I think he should be able to go straight home to his family and spend his last days there,” Swire told the BBC. “I don’t believe for a moment this man was involved in the way he was found to be involved.”

Among the Lockerbie victims was John Mulroy, the AP’s director of international communication, who died along with five members of his family.

— Hat tip: Zenster

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Israeli Ambassador ‘Upset and Furious’

Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, has expressed fury at a Swedish newspaper article accusing Israel of trading in the internal organs of dead Palestinians.

The Ambassador says he is unable to fathom a decision by Sweden’s largest circulation newspaper Aftonbladet to publish a two-page spread alleging Israeli Defence Force and medical sector complicity in a sinister organ-harvesting ring.

“What’s the motivation behind publishing something like this, which implicates Israel, Jews, doctors and the authorities in a sort of vague conspiracy? What if somebody were to be stabbed now in Stockholm or Malmö. Are they trying to encourage that kind of act?

“You don’t have to be paranoid to draw comparisons with similar accusations made against Jews in the past, killing Christian for their blood, for example,” says Dagan.

The Aftonbladet article, published in its culture section on Monday, refers to a case in 1992 when a young Palestinian man was allegedly returned to his family five days after his death at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

Writer and photographer Donald Boström says the body had been dissected and stitched back together in the intervening period. He claims to have spoken to families who were certain that young Palestinian men were being used as involuntary organ donors for Israel, a charge Ambassador Dagan dismisses as absurd.

“Where is the meat here? Can you really hide something like that in a democratic country without there being criminal repercussions. Of course you can’t.”

Dagan questions whether the newspaper would have published similar accusations against non-Jews.

“It plays into a certain mode of thinking. And when you see how the article is phrased, how can you not be reminded of the sort of things that were published 60 or 70 years ago?”

The Israeli ambassador says he is sure that “not all Swedes agree with this kind of garbage” and hopes that people will speak out against the publication.

“It calls for real reflection and criticism on the part of quality, responsible journalists and Swedes on the whole. People might say that Aftonbladet has published things like this before but it’s about time to stop tolerating it.”

Dagan says he remains optimistic towards the possibility of a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

“With Obama we are currently on the threshold of a resumption of talks. What is the aim of publishing this article? To hamper such a development.”

Benny Dagan has worked in the Israeli foreign service since 1985. He has been stationed abroad on numerous occasions, including twice in the United States. He says he has enjoyed his first year in Stockholm but is dismayed by this week’s developments.

“Unfortunately we see a lot of articles like this in the Arab media, and often people don’t expect much more from undemocratic countries. But I don’t understand how it can happen here in Sweden, a country that has long been a beacon of democracy and human rights.

— Hat tip: TB

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Israel Grapples With a New Kind of Violence

Good, old-fashioned murder catches off-guard a country always prepared for war

TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.

Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword. The murderous gang beating type of violence. The dismembered women kind of violence. The homophobic hate crime sort of violence.

Earlier this month, an as-yet unknown masked gunman shot down two men at a Tel Aviv gay hangout. Two women’s bodies were last week uncovered chopped into pieces — one in a dumpster near Tel Aviv and the other in a river further north. This week, a landlady showing a potential tenant around a Jerusalem apartment was stabbed to death by the man she intended to evict.

But the biggest headlines were for the beating death of Aryeh Karp on the Tel Baruch beach, just north of Tel Aviv…

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Iran Missile Said to Pose Europe Threat in 3-4 Years

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Aug 20 (Reuters) — Iran could have the ability to strike most of Europe with a ballistic missile within three or four years if it made an all-out push, the former head of Israel’s missile defense program said on Thursday.

If correct, the timeline cited by Uzi Rubin, a leading authority on Iran’s program, puts a fresh note of urgency into a diplomatically thorny debate over building a multibillion-dollar anti-missile shield in Europe.

U.S. officials have cast the timeline further out, leaving longer to sort out defenses.

“If they push it — put all the budget, put all the engineers — three or four years” is all it would take to give Iran’s existing ballistic missile a range of 3,900 kilometers (2,438 miles), enough to hit London, Rubin told a U.S. Army-sponsored missile-defense conference in Huntsville, Alabama. “Will they do it? I’m not sure.”

The U.S. Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said in a report made public in June that Iran, with support from outside sources, could produce an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States within six years.

“Iran has ambitious ballistic missile and space launch development programs and, with sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015,” the report said.

BREAKTHROUGH

Rubin said Iran had achieved “a technological and strategic breakthrough” with its Sejjil, a two-stage, solid propellant missile. On May 20, Iran test-fired the Sejjil 2, which is said by Tehran to have a range of about 2,000 kilometers.

“Based on its demonstrated achievement in solid propulsion and staging, Iran will face no technological challenges” in close to doubling its range with a one-ton warhead, said Rubin, who oversaw development of Israel’s Arrow anti-missile system while running the Jewish state’s missile defense effort from 1991 to 1999.

“The predictions (about Iran’s growing missile reach) are coming true, perhaps sooner than anyone thought,” he added in reply to a question after a presentation. “I think there was an underestimation of Iranian capability.”

By contrast, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles by countries like Iran and North Korea was taking longer than the United States had predicted.

Cartwright’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

David Wright, a leading missile-defense critic, said the timeline advanced by Rubin “doesn’t sound crazy if Iran poured resources into it.”

“But there is a lot we don’t know about the program, and technical problems could stretch out the time,” said Wright, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent research group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Fitting any nuclear warhead to a missile is likely to take Iran six years or longer, experts agree.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Iran ‘Minister’ On Interpol List

Iran’s defence minister-designate is on an Interpol “wanted” list over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina, the agency has confirmed.

It says it has had a “red notice” for Ahmad Vahidi since 2007 over the Buenos Aires attack that killed 85 people.

Interpol uses red notices to inform its 187 member countries that an arrest warrant has been issued for an individual by a judicial authority.

Israel and Argentina have expressed concern over Mr Vahidi’s nomination.

“This is yet another of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s actions that prove he is a person you cannot deal with,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David told Bloomberg.

“It’s significant, this nomination, but no surprising,” Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman told the Associated Press.

“Iran has always protected terrorists, giving them government posts, but I think never one as high as this one,” he said.

Tehran rejected the criticism as a “Zionist plot”.

Iranian lawmakers still have to confirm the 21-member cabinet proposed on Wednesday by Mr Ahmadinejad — the declared winner of June’s disputed presidential elections.

But the nomination of Mr Vahidi is another sign of Mr Ahmadinejad’s defiance of the West, the BBC’s Caroline Hawley says.

‘Key participant’

Interpol says that Mr Vahidi has been on its “red notice” list since November 2007.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Iraq: Iranian Rockets Used in Attack on U.S.

New evidence of Tehran’s support for terrorists in Iraq

New evidence is surfacing in the Middle East documenting Iran’s continuing support of terrorist activity in Iraq, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Shiite insurgents fired Iranian-made rockets in an Aug. 17 attack on a U.S. military base near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, according to the World Tribune.

Iraqi security forces found in the eastern portion of Basra a launcher that appears to have been smuggled into Iraq from Iran with 13 Iranian rockets.

— Hat tip: JD

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Romans Didn’t Destroy Jerusalem

Speaking of the Roman attack of Jerusalem, Publius Cornelius Tacitus a senator and an important historian of this period, details the specific legions and the peoples that primarily composed the attacking army:

Titus Caesar … found in Judaea three legions, the 5th, the 10th, and the 15th. … To these he added the 12th from Syria, and some men belonging to the 18th and 3rd, whom he had withdrawn from Alexandria. This force was accompanied … by a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbors. …

“There are several important bits of information that we can gain from this reference. First, we learn the Roman legions that were used to attack Jerusalem had been stationed in Judea, Syria and Egypt. Secondly, we learn that beyond the Roman legions, there was also “a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews” and accompanied the soldiers. Little seems to have changed since the first century regarding the general Arab hatred of the Jewish people.”

Next there is the testimony of Titus Flavius Josephus, another irreplaceable historian from this period who also confirms the report of Tacitus:

“So Vespasian sent his son Titus [who], came by land into Syria, where he gathered together the Roman forces, with a considerable number of auxiliaries from the kings in that neighborhood.”

Once again, Josephus reveals the Roman legions used to attack Jerusalem were stationed in Syria. He also details that “a considerable number” of auxiliaries, or volunteers, from Syria and its proximate “neighborhood” were also gathered for the attack. Later, Josephus also tells us that there were over 6,000 Arabs who volunteered to join the attack. While the numbers of men that composed a legion fluctuated, during this time period, a legion contained approximately 5,000 men. So there were enough Arab volunteer soldiers to compose more than a full legion.

— Hat tip: JD

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Leftist Journalist a Spy for Stalin

Highly classified Soviet intelligence documents have recently proved that American writer I.F. Stone, an intellectual icon of the American political left, lived a secret, parallel life as a paid agent of the Soviet KGB and its predecessor, the NKVD. Unfortunately, many of Stone’s devotees have been unable to face this ugly truth and continue to depict him as a hero. Certainly that is true of D.D. Guttenplan, London correspondent for The Nation and author of the book “American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone.” Other commentators may not promote Stone’s cause so openly, but many of them are — perhaps unwittingly — putting forth flawed arguments in his defense.

Consider the Washington Post’s recent review of Guttenplan’s book. In it, reviewer Michael Kimmage, assistant professor of history at the Catholic University of America, points out that the book fails to answer the charges that Stone spent most of his professional life as a paid Soviet agent. That was a good start, but then he lets Guttenplan — and Stone — off the hook by writing: “If Stone was a spy, he was not a significant one.”

That argument, which frequently turns up in defenses of Stone, reflects a misperception about Soviet espionage. For most people, “spying” means stealing secrets. Soviet espionage, however, placed just as much emphasis on changing minds. Influence the media and you influence the public. Change enough minds among the public, and political policies will change as well. Changing minds constituted an extremely important part of NKVD/KGB operations. Changing minds was also Stone’s main task as a spy, and he was good at it.

[…]

Stone was a prominent writer in his day, and he was certainly a prize catch for the NKVD/KGB. It is more than coincidental that after 1944 his articles expressed the position of the Soviet Union on so many issues: criticizing U.S. efforts to prevent communist expansion in Vietnam; belittling the FBI and embarrassing J. Edgar Hoover; blasting Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to remove Communists from the government; maligning Pope Pius XII and faulting the Catholic Church for the Nazi persecution of Jews; supporting the Kremlin’s efforts to persuade the world that there was no Soviet involvement in the JFK assassination; demonizing the Korean policies of John Forster Dulles, Gen. MacArthur and President Truman; and many, many similar issues. Stone raised a number of issues for which he might be hailed today, including opposition to racial discrimination, but his arguments were really more about criticizing U.S. policies and therefore fell right in line with the Soviet position.

— Hat tip: JD

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French Tourist Freed in Pakistan

A French tourist who had been abducted in south-western Pakistan three months ago has been freed.

The 41-year-old Frenchman, Antoine Falsaperla, was released in the district of Dalbandin in Balochistan province, officials said.

He had been taken hostage in May by gunmen from a vehicle in which he was travelling with other tourists.

It is not clear who the kidnappers were or whether any ransom was paid for his release.

“He has been released this morning, he is safe and sound with Pakistani officials,” news agency AFP quoted an unnamed official as saying.

The agency quoted officials as saying that the tourist had been taken hostage by “local criminals” and not militants.

Officials said local elders helped secure the release.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his “deep relief” that the tourist had been freed, news agency Associated Press reported.

A statement from the president’s office thanked Pakistani authorities for their “decisive help” in securing the man’s release, it said.

The Frenchman was kidnapped on 23 May from the area where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are active.

Western embassies and the Pakistani authorities advise foreigners against travelling in the area.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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No Sign of Voters on Election Day in Afghanistan Despite Official Claims

At 8am, an hour after the Afghanistan’s presidential polls opened, the polling station at the Haji Janat Gul High School, a dusty collection half-finished buildings designated for use by Kuchi nomads, was entirely empty of voters.

But the apparent lack of voter activity was deceptive, insisted election officials; the ballot boxes were already full almost to the brim. “The people have already come. They came here with lorries at 7 o’clock, now they have gone to the fields with their sheep” said Lawan Geen proudly.

The grey bearded election worker from the Independent Election Commission seemed rather less than happy at the unannounced arrival of two Times journalists at his polling centre just outside Kabul.

The absence of voters witnessed by The Times yesterday in this centre on the edge of the capital was replicated across the country, with fearful Afghans staying away from the polls after repeated threats from the Taleban.

But the polling station in Pul-e-Charki painted a suspiciously different picture. In total 5,530 votes had already been cast for the Presidential Elections, according to the records being kept by the election staff beside each ballot box. In each box there were an oddly uniform 500 to 510 votes. More impressive still, some 3,025 of the ballots were women’s votes.

Assuming that the last voter disappeared at least two minutes before the Times arrived at 7.55am, the staff working on the 12 separate ballot boxes at the site must have been processing at least 100 voters per minute since polling began.

There were no sign of any election monitors at the site and nor were there any female staff to oversee the women’s ballot boxes, as the electoral commission required.

For an hour The Times waited at the polling site. The polling staff fidgeted. But no one came to vote.

“This area is controlled by Haji Mullah Lewani Khan. He is the chief of the Tarokhail tribe and an MP,” said Lawan Geen, the election official. “He said that there is a threat from the Taleban to cut the fingers off the people. So people came early in the morning,” he added, hopping from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable.

The tribal chief, he confided, was a supporter of President Karzai. “All the people here are Tarokhail, they are all voting for Karzai.” His co-workers were unhelpful. “You are not allowed to see these things, this is a woman’s area” said one male worker as The Times asked to see the lists of voter card numbers for ballots already cast.

Suddenly a lorry chugged into view. “Look there are voters!” shouted Lawan Geen, scampering towards the approaching vehicle. About thirty men were helped off the lorry, several were elderly and one was almost entirely blind. They trooped into the polling station and prepared to vote.

A burly middle-aged man called Lal Mohammad stepped forward and held out two voting cards. At the sight the election officials went into collective convulsion and shooed one back into his pocket.

After he had voted he explained that he had voted for President Karzai. Asked about the second voting card in his pocket he showed the contents of his several other pockets before finally pulling out the card. “It is my wife’s,” he said. “I will bring her later.”

Other voters also said they were voting for Mr Karzai. “If Doctor Abdullah wins it will be a shame on all Pashtun people because he is a Tajik,” said Haji Abdullah, a pistol-toting young man who looked about 16 but whose voter registration card put him at 21. He insisted that he was old enough to vote, pointing out that he had voted in 2004. “Maybe Afghanistan will be destroyed if he wins,” he added. “Certainly there will be fighting.”

As the thirty voters each made their way to the ballot box it became evident that the staff were able to process a maximum four voters every three minutes, or at best 80 voters per ballot box per hour, or 960 for the entire polling centre per hour. How was it possible then to process 5,530 in an hour, The Times wondered. Did the election officials suspect any sort of fraud?

Lawan Geen pursed his lips. “Maybe there has been a little bit by some people. Maybe 5 per cent,” he ventured.

Outside the polling station five policemen stood guard. They had been at the station since the night before and explained what they had seen. “At about 4am the IEC staff came to the polling station,” said one policeman named Iqbal. “Since then we haven’t seen a lot of people. Maybe four lorries of people and three or four Corolla cars. I have not seen any women here.” The other policemen corroborated the tale.

A mile away The Times found the tribal chief Haji Mullah Lewani Khan MP in his grand, high-walled compound. Thirty metres from his front door was another polling station in the Haji Janat Gul Madrassa. Both were buildings originally built by Mr Lewani in memory of his father.

Outside the madrassa polling centre stood half a dozen armed men, supporters of Mr Lewani. One of them wore a badge with Mr Karzai’s face on it.

Mr Lewani, a diminutive 35-year-old with a regal air, welcomed The Times with a large group of retainers at his shoulder, several of whom wore the blue armbands, meant to mark them out as Independent Election Commission workers. All such workers are supposed to be vetted for their impartiality.

“They are helping the IEC just for today,” said Haji Mullah casually. “They are not getting any wages.” His two phones rang continuously. “We need more ballot papers,” he shouted into one. “Call the election commission and tell them we need more.” Asked if he had voted, the MP replied: “Of course, for Karzai.” Oddly none of his fingers displayed any of the indelible ink used to identify those who had voted. “I washed my hands,” he said.

What did he think of suggestions that vote rigging might be taking place locally, wondered The Times. “These claims of corruption are just shit, maybe they are publicity against us by Dr Abdullah supporters,” he said without blinking.

An hour after voting closed last night sources from the Independent Election Commission admitted that an investigation had begun into allegations that up to 70,000 illegal votes had been cast in polling centres around the Haji Janat Gul polling centre, east of Kabul.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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SAS Escape as Chinook is Shot Down ‘By Enemy Fire’ In Afghanistan

A secret SAS patrol in Afghanistan came close to disaster when their RAF Chinook helicopter was shot down by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade.

The aircraft came under fire as it touched down under cover of darkness in Helmand Province late on Wednesday night.

As the elite troops disembarked the enemy rocket slammed into the side of the helicopter. Nobody was injured.

— Hat tip: JD

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Sri Lanka to Train Pakistani Army

Sri Lanka’s army has said it will be happy to give training to members of the Pakistani military.

It says Islamabad has requested the training because of the country’s success in defeating the Tamil Tigers.

In May, the government announced the end to a decades-long war with the rebel group.

The army’s new commander told the BBC that Pakistan had already asked if it could send its military cadets to train in counter-insurgency operations.

“We’ll give a favourable response,” Lt Gen Jagath Jayasuriya said of the request.

He said the Sri Lankan military envisaged specialist courses lasting up to six weeks, directed towards small groups from interested armies.

Lt Gen Jayasuriya said there was external interest in how the military had defeated the rebel group in practical terms.

The army now wished to construct a written military doctrine in English.

Mutual support

He said Sri Lanka had offered similar training, through diplomatic channels, to other countries including the United States, India, Bangladesh and The Philippines.

He dismissed reports that the Pakistanis might receive military training in newly recaptured parts of northern Sri Lanka, saying it would be more likely in the south-east.

But he did say new permanent military bases would be set up in those northern areas including the rebels’ former headquarters, Kilinochchi.

Sri Lanka and Pakistan have long enjoyed warm relations.

In late May, Pakistan — like India, China and Russia — helped Colombo defeat a motion at the UN which would have criticised both the government and the rebels for allegedly violating humanitarian law during the war.

But India, which is highly influential here, might well be uncomfortable at this news of the Pakistanis’ interest in being trained.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Thailand: Man Shot Dead at Mosque

YALA — A MUSLIM village chief was shot dead as he entered a mosque in Thailand’s deep south on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of drive-by killings in a region plagued by separatist unrest.

The attack took place before morning prayers in Pattani, one of three mainly Muslim provinces near the Malaysian border, where close to 3,500 people have died in violence since 2004.

A Buddhist man was gunned down outside his shop in the same province on Thursday, police said. A bomb left next to the body was detonated as investigators arrived, but no one was hurt.

A Buddhist defence volunteer and a female Burmese migrant worker were also killed by gunmen on motorcycles earlier this week. Police blamed Muslim insurgents for the attacks.

Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces were part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by Buddhist Thailand a century ago, and separatist tensions have simmered ever since.

Local Muslims largely oppose the presence of tens of thousands of police, soldiers and state-armed Buddhist guards in the rubber-rich region and many suspect the authorities of carrying out extrajudicial killings. — REUTERS

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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UK: BBC’s Flagship Asian Radio Station in New Race Row

The BBC’s Asian Network is at the centre of a race row after Sikhs accused the digital radio station of being insensitive towards their religion.

The BBC were forced to remove a show from their website after Adil Ray, a popular Muslim presenter, received threats from Sikh listeners who accused him of denigrating one of their religious symbols.

The row centres around a show broadcast earlier this month in which Ray discussed a Punjabi music concert in Canada where police had banned a number of Sikhs who refused to remove their “kirpan” dagger.

A number of listeners believed that Ray had been disparaging about whether Sikhs really needed to carry their kirpan — a ceremonial symbol that baptised Sikhs are expected to wear at all times — and began making complaints and threats against him.

The Birmingham-based network has strongly denied the accusations or any suggestion that Ray meant to mock Sikhism.

The row has nonetheless raised fresh questions over whether the digital network, which was set up eight years ago after the BBC’s then director general Greg Dyke described the corporation as “hideously white”, is serving its Asian listeners.

Earlier this year, the BBC Trust told the network that it needed to attract more listeners after its audience fell from half a million to 405,000 in a year.

Last year the Labour peer Lord Ahmed accused the network of being biased against Muslims in favour of Sikhs and Hindus, although an internal investigation by the BBC later exonerated it.

The Sikh Media Monitoring Group has written to the BBC asking for a full transcript of Adil Ray’s show and accused the station of being insensitive towards Sikh listeners.

“We should not be paying a licence fee for promoting the ignorance-based ramblings of those bent on self-promotion who sneer at Asian religion and culture,” Hardeep Singh, a spokesman for the group told The Independent.

A spokesman for the Asian Network told the newspaper: “Adil Ray did not make any judgement about people’s faith or the rights and wrongs of wearing the kirpan. We welcome the fact that Adil has listeners of all faiths who enjoy his humour and presentation.”

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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China ‘Used U.S. Reporters’ Film to Crack Down on N. Koreans’

Video footage shot by two TV journalists who were detained in North Korea after filming on the Chinese border was used by China to round up on North Korean refugees. China also deported one South Korean human rights activist who is seen in the footage and closed five orphanages that had protected North Korean children.

The two reporters were sentenced to 12 years hard labor but freed after a visit to North Korea by former U.S. president Bill Clinton on Aug. 5.

Chinese police also confiscated related materials including list of activists working for North Korean refugees in China, data on North Korean orphans, and video footage showing North Korean women who were sold into the Chinese countryside or appeared in porn videos.

The claims were made Thursday by Lee Chan-woo (71), a pastor with the Durihana Mission, a South Korean organization that aids North Korean defectors. Lee was caught and deported by Chinese police for helping the two reporters, who worked for former U.S. vice president Al Gore’s Internet news channel Current TV.

Lee said Laura Ling, Euna Lee and a man named Mitch Koss met him at a hotel in Yanji, in China’s Jilin Province, on March 14. They said they wanted to gather information about North Korean women who were working in adult videos at the North Korean-Chinese border area and on other North Korean women who were sold into the Chinese countryside.

They also wanted to know about children born to North Korean women and Chinese men. At the time, Lee was protecting some 21 children who had been abandoned by their Chinese families after their mothers were taken back to the North at five orphanages.

“I allowed them to collect information about the children on condition that they would not film their faces,” he said.

The three visited an orphanage the following day. Euna Lee, who speaks fluent Korean, asked children to send video messages to their mothers who had been deported to the North, and to bow to their mothers in front of the camera. But Lee said he stopped them from filming the scene.

The next day, the journalists filmed North Korean women at the border. They crossed the border and were arrested by North Korean soldiers on March 17. Ling and Lee were taken to North Korea, but Koss made it back and was arrested by Chinese border guards and handed over the video footage he was carrying.

On the early morning of Mar. 19, Chinese police raided Lee’s house and confiscated his computer, camera and various documents. “The documents contained the personal information of 25 North Korean orphans in addition to the children staying at the orphanages, and the phone numbers and addresses of human rights activists and their future plans,” he said. “I was interrogated intensively by three Korean-Chinese police officers until March 26. It was during interrogation that I found out that Chinese police had confiscated the video.”

Lee was deported to South Korea on April 8 after paying a fine of 20,000 yuan (approximately W4 million). “The five orphanages were forced to close down one by one,” he said. “I found Chinese relatives for 17 of the 21 orphans and a safe shelter for the remaining four, who have no relatives there.”

Koss declined to comment, and it was not possible to contact Euna Lee.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Japan to Celebrate Italy

More than 160 events kick off in September

(ANSA) — Tokyo, August 18 — The Japanese capital is gearing up for an autumn of festivities celebrating Italy and its links to the Land of the Rising Sun.

More than 160 events are planned over the course of three months, taking in the economy, tourism and culture. The initiative officially gets under way on September 17, with the inauguration of the largest exhibition on Ancient Rome ever staged in Asia.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano will attend the opening of the exhibit, whose star attractions will include a bronze statue of the goddess Minerva, thought to date to the 3rd century BC.

Unearthed in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1541, this will mark the first trip abroad for the statue, which has recently undergone an eight-year restoration.

This is the third edition of the ‘Italy In Japan’ celebration, which was first staged in 2001 and enjoyed a hugely successful follow-up in 2007. Unveiling details of the 2009 initiative, the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo, Vincenzo Petrone, explained there was a widespread fascination with Italian life in Japan. The previous events were so popular that 97% of the 35-million-euro bill for this edition is being footed by Japanese sponsors, he said. “And from this year onwards, we plan to make ‘Italy In Japan’ a biennial initiative,” the ambassador added. An array of different events are scheduled for autumn but the biggest draws are likely to be some of the cultural highlights. A tour by Milan’s La Scala opera house will bring performances of Aida and Don Carlos to Tokyo, and there are several exhibitions planned. Those exploring the past include ‘The Legacy of the Roman Empire’, which runs in Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art until December 13, and a show on Turin’s collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts, which is the second largest in the world.

Among the art events is an exhibition on the Macchiaioli, the Italian precursors of Impressionism, and a selection of 47 masterpieces from Rome’s prestigious Borghese Gallery, including work by Raphael and Caravaggio.

A show on mobility technology, named ‘Zig Zag’, has been organised by Italy’s Foreign Trade Institute, which has also planned a string of food and fashion events. The business side of ‘Italy In Japan’ will include the 21st assembly of the Italy-Japan Business Group, a bilateral initiative aimed at developing technical, business and scientific relations. The Automative and Aerospace Industry Project will feature around 20 events in the fields of science, technology and investments. Italy In Japan will close with a gala evening devoted to fashion in the Italian Embassy in December, which will showcase a series of dresses designed by top stylists and inspired by opera singer Maria Callas.

At least 2.5 million Japanese are expected to attend or participate in the event over the three-month period.

photo: an 1861 work by Macchiaioli artist Vincenzo Cabianca

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Koreas: The Trouble With Hyun’s N. Korea Visit

Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, during her recent visit to North Korea, won a five-point agreement from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, promising to resume package tours to Mt. Kumgang and Kaesong and reunions of families separated by the Korean War, and put the Kaesong Industrial Complex back on track. But the visit creates more problems than it solves.

The biggest problem is that Hyun made the accord strictly in her private capacity without consulting the government. Package tours to Mt. Kumgang, Kaesong and Mt. Baekdu and the revitalization of the joint Kaesong industrial park all require government decisions and management. Investments are made by businesses, but it is the government that is responsible for the personal security of citizens taking part in the projects.

It was irresponsible for the Hyundai Group to agree to the resumption of the package tours before the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist in the Mt. Kumgang resort and the detention of a South Korean staffer at the Kaesong industrial park have been properly resolved. Tours of Mt. Kumgang should not resume until the government’s demands — a joint investigation of the shooting death, an apology from Pyongyang and a pledge that such an incident will not happen again — are met.

With regard to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, cast-iron official guarantees must be worked out to prevent future arbitrary arrest of South Koreans.

Hyun’s North Korea visit compares to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s meeting in Pyongyang with Kim Il-sung during the 1994 nuclear crisis. The Carter intervention amid the tightening of sanctions against the North by the Bill Clinton administration only sapped the strength of the pressure and failed to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program. The Clinton administration was embarrassed and indignant by Carter’s visit, with some officials slamming it as near-treason. Clinton was so upset that he told Carter on arrival in Seoul not to visit Washington or telephone him.

During his own visit to the North, Clinton simply fulfilled his private humanitarian mission to win the release of two American journalists. He quietly brought them back without any written accord with the North. Although he briefed President Barack Obama on his meeting with Kim Jong-il, he evidently took care not to burden the Obama administration, probably because he remembered the Carter debacle.

Hyun’s visit seems only to result in helping North Korea, strapped for cash due to the sanctions, secure profitable business packages from the South Korean government. Thus, it must not set a precedent in inter-Korean dialogue. Due process is no less important than objectives in dialogue between the South and the North. It is because due process was thrown out of the window that the June 15, 2000 inter-Korean summit was criticized as being bought with money.

Needless to say, a major achievement of Hyun’s visit is that it proved that the North can no longer afford to boycott dialogue with Seoul. This shows that the South’s consistent North Korea policy and firm UN sanctions are working.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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South Korea: Ulchi Freedom Guardian

Ulchi Freedom Guardian is a joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States running Aug. 17-27. The drill is preparation for the handover of wartime operational command to Seoul in 2012. Ulchi is designed to improve joint operational capabilities to enable joint operations without difficulty even after the transfer. In short, the goal of the exercise is protecting the South Korean people’s right to live. Nevertheless, certain left-wing organizations claiming to stand for “anti-war and peace” are demanding an end to Ulchi, calling it a war exercise.

Fundamentally, an army is created for war. That means it should prepare for armed conflict. What matters is whether Ulchi is an exercise for attack or defense. The origin of the drill shows it is defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington began conducting the Ulchi Focus Lens exercise led by the U.N. Command in 1954, a year after the armistice ending the Korean War was signed. After North Korean commandos infiltrated the presidential office in South Korea in 1968, South Korea and the U.S. began an exercise that evolved into Ulchi Freedom Guardian. The claim by pro-North Korea groups that Seoul and Washington are conducting a war drill is groundless, just like the notion that their military exercises are preparation for an attack on North Korea.

This year’s exercise will see participation by 56,000 South Korean forces and 10,000 American troops in a computerized war game. Ulchi Freedom Guardian also includes drills to defend South Korea from North Korea’s cyber and terrorist attacks of bombs, chemical warfare, and biological and radioactive weapons. A series of provocations by Pyongyang have encouraged Seoul and Washington to strengthen such exercises. As in the past, the U.N. Command informed North Korea of the exercise last month. Yet Pyongyang blasted it as an “exercise for nuclear war” and threatened to retaliate with “ruthless and exterminatory attacks.” Pro-North Korea groups look as if they have joined forces with North Korea, saying they support “anti-war and peace” but never criticizing Pyongyang’s nuclear threat.

The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, the Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement and the Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of (South) Korea even held a protest against the exercise Monday. “Ulchi Freedom Guardian is the world’s most aggressive war drill designed to topple North Korea,” they said in a statement. They even claimed President Lee Myung-bak pursued the exercise even after proposing reduction of conventional weapons in his Liberation Day speech. A proposal usually does not result in an immediate cut in weapons, however. The two Koreas should find practicable measures on arms reduction based on mutuality.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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Australia: Bligh Widens Abortion Law as Doctors Revolt

THE Queensland government will rewrite part of its contentious law on abortion to avert a revolt by public hospital doctors refusing to perform drug-induced terminations.

Premier Anna Bligh signalled yesterday that a section of the Criminal Code, providing the basis of the common-law defence for doctors to sidestep a statutory ban on abortion, would be widened to cover the authorised use of drugs such as the abortion pill RU486.

But she insisted the government would not bow to pressure from doctors’ groups and the pro-choice lobby to decriminalise abortion in Queensland, in line with last year’s move by Victoria and the ACT.

Deputy Premier and Health Minister Paul Lucas told The Weekend Australian: “The government is not looking at revisiting the issue of abortion law in Queensland generally.

“If that was what we were seeking, it would only make it all the more difficult to resolve.”

The issue has been building since police charged a Cairns couple in March with illegally procuring an abortion, allegedly with contraband RU486.

It was brought to a head this week when obstetricians at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital suspended its medical abortion service.

This carries out about 80 medical abortions a year, mainly on women having terminations later in pregnancy because of medical complications or the discovery of birth abnormalities in the fetus. Elective abortions are generally performed in the first trimester of pregnancy,

and in Queensland take place

in private clinics, not public hospitals.

As reported by The Australian yesterday, specialists at RBWH’s Maternal Fetal Medicine Service acted after seeking advice from the Queensland Solicitor-General on a court ruling that raised fresh concern about whether section 282 of the Criminal Code, allowing doctors to perform otherwise banned “surgical” abortions to preserve the life or health of the mother, extended to recently developed medical terminations with drugs.

The Weekend Australian understands the section will be revised to take in wording covering medical terminations.

“What we are looking at is where a doctor provides medicine that is authorised for any purpose, that they should be entitled to the same protection already provided under the Criminal Code for any authorised surgery, whether it is in relation to termination of pregnancy or indeed any other surgery,” Ms Bligh said.

Queensland Health officials yesterday met doctors from RBWH, the state’s biggest hospital, to appeal to them to resume medical abortions.

A spokesman for NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca said any approach from Queensland to refer patients to hospitals south of the border would be considered individually “on clinical merits”. Victoria said mechanisms existed for Queensland to be billed if women were sent there for treatment.

A second medical abortion service, attached to the Cairns Base Hospital, is understood to be reviewing its position and will seek legal advice from the state government on Monday. The obstetricians at RBWH are still considering their next move.

“We have got some private legal advice from a criminal barrister who says it’s probably OK what we are doing, but then we have other advice saying it isn’t OK,” a senior practitioner with the Cairns service said.

“Trying to figure it out is very difficult. It is such a grey area … we have had a couple of premiers and attorneys-general say, ‘It’s all OK, trust us and it will be fine’, but they won’t actually release any legal advice.”

Queensland Deputy Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said the Liberal National Party would be prepared to support a limited amendment of section 282 to cover medical terminations, provided this did not make abortion more readily available.

But the Australian Christian Lobby said it would not let Ms Bligh off the hook on a commitment made ahead of the state election last March not to pursue wider abortion law reform.

“It was a very high-profile issue and the government made a clear statement that it wouldn’t change the existing laws,” said ACL head Jim Wallace.

The position Ms Bligh has adopted is an uncomfortable one: while she freely admits to being on the record as being personally in favour of decriminalisation of abortion in Queensland, and willing to vote for private members’ legislation to that effect, the former women’s activist says neither she nor her government would introduce such a bill.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

Australia: Farmers Flee as Turbines Trigger Despair

FOR 35 years, Noel and Janine Dean lived on a small western Victorian farm, where they raised crops, cattle and three children.

They planned to spend the rest of their lives on that lush, green plot of land, but that would change three years ago, when an executive driving a red BMW approached the gates of their property, wound down his window and asked: “You got anything against wind farms?”

“As long as they’re not noisy I don’t,” replied Mr Dean, who had no objection to his Waubra neighbours — most of them struggling farmers — earning tens of thousands of dollars a year leasing their pastures to Spanish-based renewable energy company Acciona.

Three months ago the first of 128 turbines started turning and almost instantly Mr Dean became sick. He started waking with headaches, initially dull but, over time, sharp and debilitating.

“I was waking up two days in a row with headaches, I’d have to take Panadol but they’d be gone by dinner time,” he said. “When the wind is blowing north I got a thumping headache, like someone belted me over the head with a plank of wood and I didn’t know whether to go to the hospital or what to do. You couldn’t really work.”

His wife also began experiencing an inexplicable malaise. At first she put her nausea, sleeplessness and uneasiness down to a new diet. Then she thought it might be menopause. It was only after the 57-year-old couple travelled to their other property, in Donald, in northern Victoria, and instantly felt well again, that they wondered whether the turbines were churning away at their health.

Now the couple have packed up and moved permanently to nearby Ballarat. They want the energy companies and policy-makers to stop and consider the possible health effects of wind farms before meandering lines of turbines start popping up across the countryside to meet the government’s 2020 renewable energy target endorsed by the Senate this week. In Waubra alone, a further 60 turbines are flagged for instalment.

US doctor Nina Pierpont has coined the term “wind-turbine syndrome” for a raft of symptoms, including insomnia, headaches, dizziness, nausea and depression, experienced by people living in close proximity to wind farms. The problems are said to be caused by constant exposure to low-frequency vibrations and inaudible sound pressure, as well as the constant flicker of light generated by the spinning blades.

To better understand the noises and vibrations being generated by the wind farm, Mr Dean purchased a decibel, or sound pressure, reader. In consultation with Graeme Hood, an engineer with the University of Ballarat, Mr Dean conducted tests over several days in his bedroom.

When he measured the sound pressure for audible noise the wind turbines registered a mere 20 decibels, equivalent to the sound of a whisper or the rustle of leaves. But when Mr Dean set the reader on another frequency, measuring audible and inaudible noises, he said the sound pressure from the turbines registered between 70 and 80 decibels, akin to being within proximity of a vacuum cleaner or power drill.

Now Mr Hood is undertaking a series of control tests of his own to determine more clearly how much sound pressure the wind turbines are creating in Waubra. “There is a possibility they (the turbines) are generating frequencies below audible tones,” Mr Hood said. “Many people say that if you can’t hear it, you’re not affected by it, but other people say things like infrasound — or inaudible noise — can resonate in body cavities and cause other types of problems.”

It is a notion that Acciona, the energy company behind the Waubra wind farm, firmly rejects. In a statement to The Weekend Australian, a spokesman said: “There is no clear, consistent scientific data, nor a peer-reviewed expert scientific consensus, to confirm a causal association between modern wind turbines, low-frequency noise and health concerns. That is the position of Acciona Energy in response to a resident’s allegation of ill health said to be associated with claimed low-frequency noise, or infrasound, generated by the company’s Waubra wind farm.”

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett last month released a wind farm policy statement to help energy companies navigate the layers of state and federal legislation relating to energy levels. As chair of the Environment Protection and Heritage Council, Mr Garrett will also work with state and territory governments to develop a set of guidelines for wind farms for consideration next year. His office was not able to say yesterday whether the council has considered regulating the level of low-frequency, sub-audible noise generated by wind farms as well as the audible noise.

In Waubra, it is not just the Deans who are experiencing worrying symptoms since the turbines began spinning. Chef Trish Godfrey ploughed her superannuation into a 4ha block at Waubra nine years ago. Like the Deans, she was paid a visit by the same executive who asked her if she would oppose a wind farm.

“We anticipated that there would be about 15 turbines around us, and that we could plant trees to screen them. All of the farmers around us wanted the wind farm and we didn’t want to argue,” she said.

Now, as Ms Godfrey prepares food for delivery from her kitchen inside her dream home, she looks out on 65 turbines that surround her on all flanks. She is convinced her health is suffering. “It feels like I have a head-cold coming the whole time. It’s like motion sickness that never goes away. Some days it’s worse than others. I am a very energetic person and by mid-afternoon all I want to do is sleep,” she said.

Ms Godfrey is devastated that the value of her property — now, as she describes, in the eye of an industrial estate — would have dropped through the floor. “We have no quality of life and who would want to buy our house now? What was to be our superannuation has now gone,” she said, sobbing.

Neighbour Maggie Reid, whose blood pressure has soared in the past three months, said the wind farm has been a sorely divisive venture for the community.

“It’s split the community into the haves and the have-nots. You try to raise your concerns and all you hear is, ‘You’re just jealous you don’t have them’,” Ms Reid said.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

New Zealand: No Spanking Law Lifted?

WELLINGTON (New Zealand) — NEW Zealanders voted overwhelmingly to overturn a law that prohibits parents from hitting children, according to the results of a nationwide referendum released on Friday, but the government says the law is working and won’t be changed.

Opponents of the 2007 law claim it is overly intrusive and could turn thousands of good parents into criminals. They won the right to hold the referendum, which is not binding, by signing up 300,000 eligible voters in support of it. They also drew up the question.

But the ballot measure has drawn widespread criticism, with Prime Minister John Key and main opposition Labour leader Phil Goff refusing to vote. Both said the question was so skewed as to make the results meaningless.

In a postal vote that closed Friday, 87.6 per ent of voters responded ‘No’ to the question: ‘Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?’

Just 11.81 per cent of voters said ‘Yes,’ according to the nation’s electoral office. About 54 per cent of registered voters cast a ballot. The final result will be declared on Tuesday.

‘John Key cannot ignore this result. The attempt by politicians to dismiss the referendum as ambiguous and irrelevant has also been rebuked by the voters,’ Family First director Bob McCoskrie, who advocated for changing the law.

He said the government should amend the law to allow light smacking and set up a royal commission of inquiry into child abuse. Mr Key said he would take note of the referendum result but won’t change a law ‘that is working.’ He would, however, take a proposal to the nation’s Cabinet on Monday to reassure parents they will not be criminalised. He did not elaborate on whether the proposal would alter the law — or how its applied.

The law, which Parliament passed overwhelmingly, prohibits parents from using force to discipline their children but gives police the discretion not to prosecute complaints ‘where the offense is considered so inconsequential there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution.’ No prosecutions have succeeded under the new law.

Deborah Morris-Travers, a spokeswoman for the Yes-vote coalition, was ‘unsurprised’ by the result.

‘We always expected it would go in favor of the no-vote because of the way that the question was phrased — it was loaded and misleading … suggesting that good parents are being criminalised when in fact they are not,’ she said. Police statistics show only serious cases are pursued and parents who lightly smack their children are left alone, she said. — AP

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

NZ Votes Against Child Smack Ban

New Zealanders have voted by a wide margin in favour of allowing parents to smack their children, two years after a law banned discipline by force.

The legislation was brought in two years ago to try to lower the country’s high rate of child abuse.

The referendum asked: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

The referendum is non-binding, and Prime Minister John Key has said he will not change the existing law.

Based on preliminary results, 54% of the voting population took part in the referendum, with nearly 90% responding No, the election commission said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, said in 2003 that New Zealand had the third-worst rate of child abuse and neglect of the OECD group of countries.

‘Ambiguous question’

The vote was held following a campaign by opponents of the 2007 legislation, which removed a provision allowing parents “reasonable force” to discipline their children.

The legal change was to stop people using “parental discipline” as a defence against assault changes but allowed police wide latitude to not prosecute cases seen as trivial.

Opponents of the law said it would result in good parents being prosecuted.

Referendum campaigner Larry Baldock said he was ecstatic at the vote’s result and hoped it would send a strong message to the prime minister that the current law was not working.

“There are an incredible number of people all over the country tonight who will be feeling really great about what they helped bring about with their vote.”

Many critics of the referendum, including the prime minister, said the question was loaded and ambiguous.

Mr Key, who did not cast a vote, said he would put some proposals on the issue to his cabinet on Monday.

“I think they will give New Zealand parents added comfort that the law is working,” he said.

The issue has provoked heated debate in the country, but the postal vote — at a cost of $6.1m (£3.7m) — is considered by many to have been a waste of time and money.

New Zealand is one of six countries to have banned corporal punishment of children in 2007.

The first country to take the step was Sweden in 1979, followed by Finland in 1983 and Norway in 1987.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Behind the Shadowy World of Narco-Terror

WASHINGTON — Last week’s brief “Three Amigos” summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, has been all but forgotten in the growing storm over “health-care reform.” That may be what the three North American heads of state, Presidents Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wanted. All three leaders did their best to ignore the skunk at their picnic — the serious threat posed to all of us by narco-terrorism. If comments after the confab reflect their thinking, thousands of dead and wounded at the hands of violent drug cartels warrant less attention than the “threat” of global warming and the H1N1 virus.

In his closing statement at the summit, Calderon devoted one sentence, just 43 words, to stopping “the traffic of weapons and of money that go from north to south that strengthen and nourish organized crime gangs.” Harper, who spoke first in French and then in English, said that Canada “recognizes the courageous commitment taken by President Calderon to combat organized crime in Mexico.” In English, he substituted “drug traffickers” for “organized crime.” That was it.

Mr. Obama did better, noting that the three leaders “resolved to continue confronting the urgent threat to our common security from the drug cartels that are causing so much violence and death in our countries.” He went on to assure that “Mexico has the support it needs to dismantle and defeat the cartels,” emphasizing “our commitment to reduce the demand for drugs” and promising “to stem the illegal southbound flow of American guns and cash that helps fuel this extraordinary violence.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Brazil Calls Obama Over US Bases

Brazil’s leader has called on US President Barack Obama to meet South American leaders to calm fears about the US military presence in Colombia.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed his concerns in a phone call to President Obama, Brazil’s foreign minister said.

He wants guarantees that US troops will be restricted to fighting drugs and terrorists within Colombia only.

The US and Colombia are finalising an agreement to give the US military greater access to seven bases.

‘Winds of war’

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said President Lula told Mr Obama it was “very important” that he attend a South American summit in Argentina starting next Friday.

The Unasur meeting has been specifically called to address the Colombian bases issue.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to calm fears by saying the US would not establish its own bases and would not increase troop levels in Colombia, where 800 US soldiers and 600 US contractors are already based.

Mrs Clinton said the accord would respect Colombian sovereignty and other countries would not be affected.

Venezuela and Ecuador had expressed fears the move amounts to preparation for an invasion of their countries by US forces.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that “the winds of war were beginning to blow” across the region.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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17 Illegal Immigrants Land on Southern Sardinia

(ANSAmed) — CAGLIARI, AUGUST 20 — Landings by illegal immigrants have resumed on the south-western coasts of Sardinia, and over the night Italian semi-militarised Carabinieri found 17 immigrants, presumably of Tunisian nationality, whose boat had landed on the island shortly before. The 17 illegal immigrants have been taken to the Elmas immigrant holding centre to be identified and given food and water.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Algeria: 22 People Headed for Italy Stopped

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, AUGUST 19 — Twenty-two illegal migrants were stopped by the Algerian Coast Guard off the coast of Annaba in eastern Algeria, where many boats headed to Sardinia leave from, reports APS, citing the head of the Maritime Station in Abbaba, Abdelaziz Zaidi. The migrants, all Algerians aged 20-70, departed last night onboard a small handcrafted boat. The price of the voyage, explained Zaidi, was between 80,000 and 120,000 dinars (800 and 1,200 euros), which the would-be migrants confessed paying before boarding. Since January about 300 people have been intercepted at sea off the eastern coast of Algeria while attempting to reach Italy.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Controversy in Italy After Death of 73 Eritreans

(ANSAmed) — ROME — “The West has its eyes closed” it does not want to see the immigrant boats that arrive, just as during Nazism no one saw the trains filled with Jews go to the concentration camps. After the death of 73 Eritreans at sea, reported by the 5 survivors rescued yesterday on Lampedusa, Avvenire compared the indifference of the illegal immigrants lost at sea to that of people during the Shoah with an editorial on the front page. There is, according to the Catholic paper, “at least an ambiguity in which it is not possible to fall. No immigration control policy allows the international community to leave a boat full of castaways to its fate. The law reads: at sea one is rescued”. On land one can look at the “right of asylum, acceptance or expulsion”. But first “the lives must be saved”. But “the empty boat” that arrived on the coast of Lampedusa shows that today it is “another law” that is respected, “don’t stop, keep going”, the “new law of not noticing”. “An ancient law has been violated”, it concluded, and this “threatens our very roots. Our foundation. The idea of what a man is and how much he infinitely values”. The vessel was intercepted on the border between territorial waters, after a signal from Maltese authorities to Italian authorities engaged in Frontex activities. The alarm was sounded only at dawn, when the boat was at the limit of Italian waters, risking the explosion of another diplomatic case between Malta and Italy. The tale of the castaways, particularly the lack of rescue from the crews of numerous vessels, is now in the hands of the prefect of Agrigento, in light of the international navigation code. The Agrigento prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation to look into the possible presence of human traffickers aboard. One of the many tragedies to have taken place in the Sicilian Channel, the event has already caused the reaction of numerous humanitarian organisations, from Save the Children to the UN High Commission for Refugees. “It is alarming”, Laura Boldrini, spokesperson in Italy for the UNHCR, “that for over 20 days these people drifted in the Mediterranean without being rescued, as if the message was passed that arriving by sea is a sort of “black hole”. “After the first repulsion that took place last May”, stated Christopher Hein, director of the Italian Council for Refugees, “the number of vessels has decreased drastically, but Italy told the European Commission in July that it would no longer resort to these tactics and it is not true, because has been reported that in the first part of August other repulsions took place. The same immigrants reported the events after being pushed back to Libya, where an immigration centre is present”. The controversy has inevitable repercussions on political forces: if Minister Roberto Calderoli defended the “hard line” stressing that thanks to repulsions, illegal immigration has “decreased sharply”, the secretary of the Italian Democratic Party, Dario Franceschini, said that he felt “horror” in the face of the tale of the 5 survivors, and invited the government “to clear up what happened in parliament”.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Finland: Challenging Asylum Cases for Finnish Authorities

Finnish immigration authorities report an increase in the number of asylum seekers this year. Officials are struggling to balance the treatment meted out to immigrants with authentic asylum claims, against dealing with opportunists looking for greener pastures.

Finnish authorities have reported a marked increase in the number of asylum seekers. Last year immigration services received applications from 4,035 asylum seekers, while in just the first six months of 2009, the number reached 2,679.

In most cases, refugees are coming from conflict “hotspots” and have valid claims for protection. The first six months of 2009 repeated a pattern observed last year, with most applicants coming from war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

However, another group of asylum seekers is attracting the attention of the authorities. So far this year, some 200 Bulgarians entered Finland asking for official protection, in spite of the fact that, coming from another EU country, their applications are likely to be rejected, says Marjo Mäkelä of the Finnish Immigration Services.

EU Nationals Seeking Asylum

“When a EU member state citizen seeks asylum in any member state, it’s considered a safe country of origin and we follow an accelerated procedure. And as far as I know we have not yet granted asylum to any EU citizen or any Roma ethnic group who has arrived recently to Finland,” she explains.

The Immigration Services official said most of the applicants in the group coming from Bulgaria belong to the Roma ethnic group. She points out that although their claims for asylum may be considered weak, there may be strong incentives for them to seek greener pastures outside their homeland.

“They can also work, without a special work permit after 3 months after lodging the application. They are also eligible for free accommodation. Maybe people also know that the waiting time has been a bit longer because of all the applications. So they know that have a longer time to be here.”

At the same time, Mäkelä points out that the number of EU citizens seeking asylum in Finland has remained more or less constant over the past few years.

Mäkelä says that Finnish immigration authorities are working hard to reduce the processing time for applicants waiting in the system. Currently some 4,500 asylum seekers reside at Finland’s reception centres, with roughly another 700 living in other accommodations, such as the homes of friends and relatives.

Finnish authorities are also trying to expand reception centre capacity, by introducing new reception centres in Helsinki, Imatra and Oulu, while 30 new employees have been recruited to the asylum unit to help speed up processing times.

Quick Decisions for Third Country Asylum Seekers

Apart from potential opportunists entering the system, officials are keeping an eye on people who have previously filed an application in another EU country and are still awaiting decisions.

Mäkelä explains that more so-called third country nationals are coming to Finland through Greece and Italy, and in the past some have come from Malta. Currently, however, no applicants have been reported from Portugal, Spain and the Canary Islands, or other locations where the asylum process is lengthy and strictly enforced.

For Finnish authorities, the rules here are clear — these applicants are usually deported to the country in which their original applications were filed. However, some advocates say there may be a compelling case to apply some exceptions to this rule.

Sanna Rummakko, Information Officer with the Finnish Refugee Advice Centre, says that the real situation for many of such refugees is very difficult.

“In a country like Greece for example, in reality they have no access to the asylum procedure; they can’t have their cases processed. There are no decent reception centres, so most of the asylum seekers are living on the streets,” Rummakko expands.

Asylum Process Not Evenly Applied

Rummakko says that regulations such as the Dublin Regulation, which requires EU members to return refugees to the country in which their original applications were lodged, is based on the assumption that the asylum process is consistent across the EU.

But this is an assumption that she contests: “Asylum seekers in many countries don’t really have access to the procedure and it should be guaranteed that the asylum seeker has a right to be heard and to have their case investigated,” she points out.

The Refugee Advice official added that authorities should be aware that in countries such as Italy, Greece and Malta, the commitment to a fair and transparent process is weak, and noted that NGOs in Finland and Europe are lobbying on many fronts for a fair process.

Meanwhile, the official channels represented by officers such as Mäkelä say that in Finland at least, all refugees, including those coming first through other EU states can be sure that they will have a fair shot at refuge.

“Each case is examined on its own merits. Our officials are experts in the areas that the applicants come from, and each case is examined individually to ensure a fair hearing,” she concludes.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

[Return to headlines]

Psychiatrist Gets 10 Months, Gave Fake Citizenship Waivers to 492

A West Bloomfield psychiatrist was sentenced to 10 months in prison today for conspiring to commit naturalization fraud, admitting he falsified diagnoses to help people gain U.S. citizenship without passing the English proficiency portions of naturalization exams.

Between 1999 and 2001, Chilakamarri Ramesh, 55, worked at a Dearborn immigration clinic called Four A’s Hope Global Psychological Evaluation Center and performed psychiatric evaluations on naturalization applicants, according to federal agents.

Ramesh falsely diagnosed applicants with mental retardation, post-traumatic stress disorder, learning disabilities and dementia.

According to the indictment in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Ramesh signed 953 false and fraudulent naturalization waiver forms for 492 citizenship applicants in Dearborn, Cleveland, St. Louis and Chicago. He pleaded guilty May 18 in front of Judge Julian Cook.

“We must be vigilant to prevent fraud in connection with citizenship applications,” said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg. “Those who seek the privilege of becoming U.S. citizens must do so honestly and without any misrepresentations.”

Brian Moskowitz, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office for Michigan and Ohio, said: “American citizenship is a privilege, not a right. Obtaining citizenship through fraud is an affront to every person who has played by the rules.

Ramesh has been an assistant professor at Wayne State University since 1990 and was chairman of the St. John Hospital department of psychiatry in 1995-2000.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leonid Feller and Jonathan Tukel.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Remains of Immigrants Found

Eritreans say Maltese patrol stopped them on Tuesday

(ANSA) — Rome, 21 August — Italian coastal patrols continued the search on Friday for the remains of 73 migrants reported to have died aboard a boat which ran out of fuel while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

The search got underway following the rescue of five Eritreans off the coast of the southern island of Lampedusa on Thursday who said that their fellow passengers had died of hunger and thirst during the three weeks in which their ship was adrift at sea. The five survivors said they had cast the bodies of overboard.

The migrants had set off from Libya — the usual departure point for boats trying to reach southern Italy — on July 28.

Maltese authorities confirmed Friday that border patrol aircraft had spotted eight bodies but that they had drifted into Lybian territory and could not be recovered.

The migrants said on Friday that a patrol boat from another country had intercepted them prior to their rescue on Thursday them but failed to help. One of the migrants told Italian officials that the crew of an unidentified patrol boat intercepted them on Tuesday — two days before the Italian coast guard — gave them fuel and told them to continue towards Lampedusa. He said he could not identify their nationality, saying only that they wore “shorts and dark-coloured shirts”. “They even provided us with five life jackets… one of the crew turned on the motor because we were too weak, and then indicated the route we were to follow. Then, mindless of our condition, they left.” Speaking to Italian rescue workers on Thursday, the migrants said several other boats had spotted them during their twenty days at sea, but had not stopped to help.

Italian coastal patrols pulled the five from the 12-metre-long boat on Thursday morning, as soon as Maltese authorities reported a sighting. Officials in Valletta told ANSA on Friday that a Maltese patrol boat had intercepted the migrants after they were spotted by a plane flying for the EU border agency Frontex. “The required assistance was provided, in keeping with Malta’s international obligations…Maltese officials did not influence the (boat’s) destination,” he said. The Italian interior ministry stressed in a statement on Friday that Italian patrol boats in the Mediterranean had not spotted the migrants prior to Malta’s alert. Italian boats carried out 13 rescue missions from June 1 to August 20 in the waters off Sicily and Sardinia, helping 420 people, the statement said. The ministry said it had asked prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Agrigento and police to investigate the migrants’ report.

News of the tragedy sparked a wave of condemnation from the Church and migrant organizations. The President of the Episcopal Commission on Immigration Mons. Bruno Schettino told reporters on Friday that the death of immigrants trying to reach Sicily “represented a grave offence to the Christian value of life”.

Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano observed that helping immigrants in distress was a moral duty and expressed concern about possible “violations of human rights” and over the “indifference” of those who could have given them aid.

In a front-page editorial in its Friday edition, Italian Catholic daily Avvenire accused the West of closing its eyes to the plight of immigrants at sea just as it had towards the victims of the Holocaust. “When we read about the deportation of the Jews during the Holocaust, we ask ourselves how anyone could say they didn’t notice the voices and cries coming from the trains at stations along the way.

“Then it was terror and totalitarianism which shut their eyes. Today it is quiet indifference, if not irritated distaste.” Christopher Hein of the Italian Refugee Council has suggested that it was improbable for “a 12-metre-long boat to remain adrift for so long without anyone noticing”.

“These people were deliberately left to meet their fate,” Hein said. A spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Andrj Mahemic, expressed concern on Friday that Italy’s tough new immigration policies were discouraging ship captains from stopping to help boats carrying immigrants.

Boat migrant landings in Italy have dropped significantly since the start of the government’s new ‘push-back’ policy in May. Nearly a thousand people have been sent back to Libya so far as part of an agreement between Rome and Tripoli.

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

UN Shock at Migrant Boat Deaths

The UN Refugee Agency has expressed shock at reports that other vessels passed by and did not help as a boat sank carrying illegal immigrants.

About 75 illegal immigrants from Africa died while travelling on a crowded rubber dinghy between Libya and Italy.

It is thought many succumbed to hunger or thirst. Five Eritreans survived the journey and said no-one offered help.

The UN said the failure of other ships to stop and help represented a betrayal of maritime tradition.

Earlier this year, Italy and Libya began joint naval patrols in the Mediterranean to try to prevent the passage of illegal migrants.

Italian coastguards picked up the five survivors from the 12ft vessel, found drifting in Italian waters between Malta and the tiny island of Lampedusa.

The five — a woman, a child and three men — told rescuers that they had set out from the Libyan coast three weeks ago but had run out of food, water and fuel.

They said many people had died after drinking sea water and their bodies had been thrown overboard.

‘Shocking tragedy’

A spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency — the UNHCR — said the survivors had told them that a fishing boat which came across their stranded vessel offered them some bread and water, but then left them.

Other vessels simply passed by, the survivors reported.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

UN to Monitor Swedish Migration Board

The United Nations refugee organ, the UNHCR, plans to spend nine months closely monitoring the work methods of the Migration Board (Migrationsverket). The UNHCR regularly directs criticism at Swedish migration policies.

An official from the UNHCR is set to spend nine months following 200 asylum cases on site at the Migration Board, and then formulate a report with recommendations based on the experience.

“This is an evaluation project where we invite the UNHCR to follow up our asylum decisions,” the board’s legal head Michael Ribbenvik told the TT news agency.

Together with a reference group, including staff from the board and the United Nations, the official will follow the handling of cases through to their conclusion, as well as participating in inquiries and decisions.

The UNHCR has previous been a stern critic of Swedish migration policies, specifically since deportations to Iraq were resumed.

The organ has directed criticism over deportations to Baghdad, among other places, which the UNHCR did not consider to be sufficiently safe.

But according to Ribbenvik, there are no existing conflicts at all between the UN organ and his own authority.

“We work together on a daily basis, and have the whole time been in agreement over the situation in Baghdad. UNHCR criticizes the actions of states, and this is to be welcomed, but we can not always follow the recommendations due to the nature of Swedish legislation,” Ribbenvik said.

“I can not think of a better partner in a development cooperation than the UNHCR,” he said.

— Hat tip: TB

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EU: Gynecologists in Spain Plan to Choose Jail Before Performing an Abortion

Dr. Esteban Rodriguez, spokesman for the organization Right to Life (Derecho a Vivir) in Spain, responded yesterday to comments by the country’s Minister of Justice, Francisco Caamano, who said there was no room for a conscience clause in the new law on abortion.

“We are willing to go to jail rather than following a criminal law, Rodriguez said, “and we are willing to commit the supposed crime of disobedience before the crime of abortion.”

“We will not kill our patients, nor will we commit a crime against the public health deliberately harming the heath of women, no matter how much the Minister of Justice threatens us and abuses his power,” the doctor said.

“We doctors are not soldiers, nor policemen, nor executioners. There is no civil disobedience in the refusal to kill a human being, but rather the fulfilling of our professional obligation,” he added.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama Echoes Cain, Not Christ

Wednesday, in a telephone conference call, Barack Obama spoke with faith-based groups in an effort to scare up support for his planned socialist takeover of the nation’s health care system. In a telling illustration of his idiosyncratic Christian walk, he referenced the biblical commandment against perjury to call opponents of his plan liars because they assert that the takeover would lead to “death panels” curtailing care to the elderly, or to expansive taxpayer funding of abortion.

By and large, Obama’s critics (like Tom Sowell in this recent WND article or FRCAction in this summary of evidence regarding abortion funding) have used facts and careful reasoning to substantiate their concern over the threat Obama’s takeover scheme poses to seniors and infants in the womb. What’s required to answer their concerns is an equally careful presentation of facts and reasoning. After all, the biblical standard is respect for truth. If you conscientiously seek and present reasonable grounds for your statements or observations, you may still be wrong, but you’re not bearing false witness. But Obama couldn’t help talking down to people of faith. He assumed that with them, bludgeoning his opponents with a little biblical rhetoric was good enough. Like so many socialist disciples of scientific materialism, he appears to assume that people of faith have abandoned rational thought.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama: ‘No Taxpayer-Funded Abortions in Health Bill’

Pro-life group calls president dishonest on coverage of procedure

In a conference call with his supporters Wednesday evening, President Obama accused critics of his health care “reform” of spreading falsehoods when they claim the plan would result in “government funding of abortions.”

[…]

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, or NRLC, said Obama brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation.

Johnson noted that according to the Capps-Waxman amendment passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 30, H.R. 3200 explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions.

“Obama apparently seeks to hide behind a technical distinction between tax funds and government-collected premiums,” Johnson said in a statement. “But these are merely two types of public funds, collected and spent by government agencies. The Obama-backed legislation makes it explicitly clear that no citizen would be allowed to enroll in the government plan unless he or she is willing to give the federal agency an extra amount calculated to cover the cost of all elective abortions — this would not be optional. The abortionists would bill the federal government and would be paid by the federal government. These are public funds, and this is government funding of abortion.”

— Hat tip: JD

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7 Reasons to Skip Upgrade to Windows 7

‘Still has all the security of a drunken teenager in a sports car’

Windows 7, which hits stores in October, is shaping up to be the best version of Microsoft’s widely used operating system yet.

But nothing’s perfect. Windows 7, like any product, has flaws — some of them big ones. Wired.com on Tuesday laid out a list of good reasons to upgrade to Windows 7, including an enhanced user interface, improved compatibility with newer hardware and a seamless entertainment experience. (For even more background, see our first look at Windows 7.)

Now let’s look at the other side of the story: The reasons you might consider skipping this upgrade altogether.

[…]

Built-In Support for Egregious Hardware-Based DRM Paranoid XP users won’t wish to upgrade to Windows 7 for the same reason they didn’t switch to Vista: Like Vista, Windows 7 includes support for digital rights management technologies that could potentially regulate how you use your media. Though some alarmists have called Microsoft’s DRM “draconian,” the implemented DRM hasn’t proved to bear significant consequences yet.

Ars Technica provides a thorough explanation of the DRM in question. In short, the technologies called Protected Video Path (PVP) and Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) provide secure playback of video and audio media, respectively. “Little or no media actually demands the use of the protected paths, so on most users’ systems, Windows never invokes them,” wrote Ars Technica’s Peter Bright. “Play back unprotected media on a Vista machine, and the DRM subsystems simply don’t get used.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Climate: UN: Re-Examine Agriculture Southern, Eastern Med

(by Chiara Spegni) (ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, AUGUST 19 — Less available water, reduced fertility, and desertification are some of the phenomena that are hitting the Mediterranean region, where climate change in the coming years will have an increased impact, hurting the area’s agricultural sector. The southern and eastern shores will be affected most severely by the climate emergency, where in most of the countries over half of the rural population work in the primary sector of the economy, including about 45 million people in 2005 in the agricultural giants of Turkey and Egypt alone. Differently than the countries on the northern shore, the rural population in the southern and eastern areas of the Mediterranean region will continue to increase until 2020. This was reported in an expert analysis by Blue Plan, a research centre part of the UN environmental programme for the Mediterranean, according to which, it is necessary to provide political and technical responses in order to assist an adaptation of the agricultural sector to the scenarios forecast by scientist, with incentives in particular for the research and development sectors, and encouraging the collective training and organisation of the region’s farmers. According to the Blue Plan document, the surface area irrigated in the countries of the Mediterranean basin have doubled over the past 40 years, exceeding 26 million hectares in 2005 while there are structure-related water deficit problems on the southern shore and in the eastern countries, as well as an increase, from now until 2070, of the areas that will undergo severe water stress on the northern shore, increasing from 19% to 35%. In the meanwhile, from 1961-2007, citrus production volume has increased fivefold, cereal production has increased threefold, and vegetable production has increased two and a half-fold. This is occurring while the land is increasingly fragile. The annual increase in the yield of cultivated land in the past 20 years has declined, cut in half for cereals, and declining by 20% for vegetables. In the coming decades, climate change projections for the southern Mediterranean countries forecast collapses in production. For example, a 30% decline in cereal production in Morocco has been forecast for 2030, while on average estimates indicate a 5.7% decrease in yields, with an almost 14% decline in Algeria. In a report on the climate emergency, Egypt estimates an 11% decrease in rice production in the 2020-2050 period. Erosion, loss of microorganisms, salinisation, and desertification have all worked to diminish the general health of the land in the past years. Since the beginning of the ‘60s, arable land available for each inhabitant in the Mediterranean region has been halved. All this while the region’s global food dependence continues to increase: in 2008, Egypt looked for new partners to rent land that could be cultivated or for large-scale cereal imports. Therefore, the primary sector should be modified and corrected. Although they are among the least paid, according to the World Bank the sector is four times more efficient compared to other sectors of the economy in combating poverty. In the Mediterranean region, agriculture is mainly a family-run activity: over 80% of businesses have less than 10 hectares. Also in light of the recent food crisis, according to UN experts, it is necessary to reaffirm the productive function of the agricultural sector. Climate changes are destined to accentuate the aridity of the Mediterranean countries with lands that have been cultivated for centuries. The ability of countries in the Mediterranean region to face the emergency will depend on technology, which today is not able to effectively sustain demographic growth, as well as their social and economic ability to adapt, which experts consider to be decidedly insufficient.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Economic Scene: Is Population Growth a Ponzi Scheme?

Forty-five nations face a population “bust” that has some leaders wringing their hands. They worry about the costs of supporting an aging society and the loss of national and economic power.

When US Vice President Joe Biden spoke of Russia’s “withering” population last month, Russian leaders bristled.

But notions that population growth is a boon for prosperity — or that national political success depends on it — are “Ponzi demography,” says Joseph Chamie, former director of the population division of the United Nations.

The profits of growth go to the few, and everyone else picks up the tab.

Here’s a look at the numbers: By 2050, countries as diverse as Cuba, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, and Russia will lose at least 10 percent of their people, UN estimates suggest.

This trend toward fewer births is accelerating.

In the rich, developed nations, the average age is rising at the fastest pace ever, UN demographers note. Today they have 264 million aged 60 or over. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 416 million.

By that time, the world’s population should stabilize, if UN predictions are correct. The population surge in poor countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East would be offset by declines in much of the developed world.

Some nations facing decline are fighting back with incentives for families to have more children. The United States is bucking the trend with its relatively high immigration rate.

Growth, whether through immigration or natural increase, is a plus for some groups. For business, it means a boost in the demand for products. It also means a surge in low- and high-skilled workers, which can keep a lid on wage pressures. Religious and ethnic groups want more immigrants of their own faith and ethnicity to raise their political and social clout. The military regards young immigrants as potential recruits.

But the public pays a cost for a bigger population.

Mr. Chamie speaks of more congestion on highways, more farmland turned into housing developments, more environmental damage, including the output of pollutants associated with climate change.

In the current healthcare debate in the US, one costly question is whether the insurance covers some 11 million illegal immigrants.

Of course, there are also costs for countries with stable or declining populations.

They will need to spend more looking after older citizens and, yes, some industries like housing will shrink. But governments won’t have to spend as much on children. And any labor shortage would fade if increasingly healthy older people worked an extra year or two before retiring to maintain their standard of living.

Raising the average retirement age does far more to increase the working population than increasing immigration levels, says Steven Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank opposed to high immigration. Industrial nations with large service industries have plenty of employment opportunities for seniors, as opposed to poor countries where many jobs — say, planting rice or other crops — are hard work.

The goal should be gradual population stabilization, Chamie says. The costs of an aging but stable population would be more manageable than those of a population boom.

He asks: Does America really need more than its current 309 million people? With immigration at present levels, it will have 439 million by 2050.

A stable or falling population, he says, “is not a disaster. It is a success.”

— Hat tip: Fjordman

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Not All Cultures Are Good

“WHEN I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol.” Whether Hermann Goering or someone else spoke those words is immaterial; the sentiment is clear. I feel the same when I hear the word multicultural. By now the language police will have concluded that I am a rabid racist not fit to mix in polite society. It is the standard epithet hurled at those who question multiculturalism. How has it come to this?

I became involved in politics almost 50 years ago with the prime motivation of fighting racism. However, I am aghast at the way multicultural advocates have taken control of the race debate by denouncing as racist anyone who disagrees with their view of the future of Australian society.

At this point it may be apposite if I detail my family’s ethnic mix. It includes Polish and Lithuanian Jews via South Africa, Celts from Scotland and Ireland, a handful of Thais and the very best British bloodstock.

Born in Griffith in 1935, by the time I was five World War II was well under way. At the time Australia was 97.5 per cent Anglo-Celtic and Christian. Those sectarian differences that did exist then were between Catholics and Protestants, many of whom were not far removed from the battles for Irish independence. As a small Jewish boy I wasn’t a threat; more of an oddity, really.

I first experienced anti-Semitism when sent to a Sydney boarding school to study for my bar mitzvah. On my first day at school I was involved in three fights with boys who had greeted me with the welcoming words, “You dirty f***ing Jew.” Hence my lifetime commitment to fight prejudice.

Sure, there were further incidents, often at the most unexpected times, but I remain convinced that Australia is one of the least racist countries.

It is not in the least surprising nonetheless that when Australia, under Ben Chifley, abandoned its practice of only seeking migrants from Britain, and turned to Europe there was some apprehension about how it would work. It was, as we know, a great success. First came the Italians, Poles, Germans, Balts, Dutch and others, followed by those from wherever there was suffering. Millions sought safe haven from wars, oppression, famine or poverty. They came to a country that offered the freedoms they had been denied, provided them with the opportunity to earn a decent living and enabled them to rear a family free from the threat of violence.

Each new wave of migrants followed the same pattern. Arriving with little, they gravitated to areas with cheap accommodation among people who spoke the same language, ate the same food, worshipped at the same church and were familiar with the same culture. Older Australians had doubts about these cultural “ghettoes” but in time they not only got used to them but grew to cherish them. Eventually there was hardly a nationality, religion, race or creed that didn’t have its own cultural identity and community in Australia. With a few exceptions the integration was seamless and tensions were rare. Adult immigrants found it hardest to assimilate into the local community. Differences became less obvious with each passing generation. Each group made their contribution towards a new, constantly changing Australian culture.

So why, I hear you ask, do I bridle at the word multiculturalism? We are a multiracial society and a harmonious one. What I object to is the idea promoted by the multicultural lobby that not only should we be a society of a hundred cultures but it is the government’s duty, nay obligation, to see that we remain permanently culturally divided. If some groups wish to remain separate from mainstream Australia, then that is their choice, but they should not expect governments to aid and abet those divisions.

Governments have a responsibility to assist new arrivals to settle in by helping them to find work, learn English, obtain housing and, if necessary, provide welfare. They should not help create the society from whence they escaped.

In return, migrants have a responsibility to learn about Australia’s history and culture, including indigenous Australia and those of Anglo-Celtic origin, which was the dominant culture for 150 years.

Strangely, it is the Anglo-Celtic culture that is continually denigrated. No culture is perfect but few can match the British tradition of equality before the law, respect for minority views, freedom of speech and association, political and civil rights and above all, democracy. The word that best fits that heritage is “tolerance”. Oddly, those most critical of that culture often come from the most oppressive and repulsive regimes, those ruled by feudal monarchies, military and theocratic dictatorships and one-party states.

The idea that all cultures are equally good is arrant nonsense. A glance at Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedom will attest to that. Australia ranks among the very best.

To those who believe it is the government’s responsibility to re-create the culture from whence they have escaped, I suggest they consider other options. Ours is a multiracial and tolerant society, and our culture should be a gradually evolving one, free from government interference and guidance. Let it remain so.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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‘Save the Planet’ Sounds a Lovely Idea But…

…if we try to deal with climate change by turning our backs on economic growth, the poor will pay the heaviest price

I took part in a Radio 3 discussion recently about the new age of austerity. A poet on the programme argued for the simple virtues. The recession, he said, would give consumers in rich societies an opportunity to rediscover thrift and conservation. The future of the planet depended on a curb to materialism and acquisitiveness.

That message is today’s green orthodoxy, and its advocates have a reassuring air of humanitarian concern. But it is a reactionary notion. To the student of economic history, it recalls nothing so much as the pocket sermons of the original do-nothing Republican, President Herbert Hoover. As the global economy succumbed to the Great Depression, Hoover looked on the bright side of financial panic. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system,” he declared. “High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life.”

Anti-materialism has perennial appeal, and there is a fringe of the modern green movement that specialises in smug jeremiad. “This time around,” writes a founder of Greenpeace International, “we’re not going to recover from global recession by consuming more resources and energy. Growth cannot solve the problems created by growth.”

Shome mishtake, shurely? A recession is, by definition, consecutive quarters of negative growth. Personal consumption is the biggest component of national income. If we consume more, then recovery will come. The question that less strident environmentalists raise is whether the use of resources can be made sustainable, so that present and future human needs are met while the environment is preserved. That sounds a moderate aim but it’s full of problems.

Green campaigners are rightly concerned with environmental degradation. There is copious evidence of global warming due to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat. The pace of glacial retreat and a rise in sea levels confirm it. The journalists and politicians who take issue with the science are no more credible than the ones (sometimes the same people) who dispute Darwin. Climate change poses not only environmental hazards. The desperately poor state of Bangladesh faces twin threats of catastrophic flooding and Islamist militancy. Amid the devastation of low-lying areas and a mass flight to higher ground, malevolent extremism might thrive.

For all that, environmentalism is a flawed idea. Its weakness is not that it lacks justice, but that it lacks a sense of priorities. How do you rank global warming relative to women’s rights in Afghanistan or the prevention of genocide in Darfur? “Save the planet” is an exhortation, not a policy, and it doesn’t get you far. In particular, it gives no guidance on how to weigh present needs, such as eradicating poverty in the developing world, against future constraints on natural resources. In short, it does not deal with trade-offs. That is a big omission.

If the planet faced catastrophe on the scale envisaged by the theorists of the “limits to growth”, then all public policy ought indeed to be subordinated to preventing it. But not even greens, beyond a few dystopian survivalists, argue that case. They instead invoke the Precautionary Principle (the capital letters are important, apparently).

Oddly, this has no fixed definition but is cited widely and vaguely by organisations such as Unesco as a strategy for guarding against serious, and especially irreversible, damage to natural resources. The problem, as Dick Taverne, the Liberal Democrat peer, has pointed out, is that because the Precautionary Principle “operates asymmetrically and emphasises possible harm, not benefit, it is bound to tilt the balance against innovation”. And if there is one resource that is almost infinitely renewable, it is human inventiveness.

It is not fanciful to expect substitutes for fossil fuels to be developed, to the benefit of the environment. It has happened continually. The alternative to environmentalist prescriptions is not the Pollyanna Principle. It is a recognition that our knowledge of the effects of climate change is limited, and that solutions do occur as innovation substitutes new products for old. If we elevate environmental concerns above all other goals, as a matter of policy, then there will be costs. Greens should be open that the biggest costs will almost inevitably be borne by the poorest people.

As the international economy recovers, policymakers will seek to stimulate domestic demand in the rapidly industrialising nations of China and India. Making people richer in previously poor nations is a good thing. But it will increase pollution and carbon emissions.

The relationship between living standards and pollution is complex. Some economists believe the relationship is like an inverted U-curve, in which pollution increases as per capita incomes in a developing country increase, but then declines once a certain standard of living is reached. It makes intuitive sense that people value the environment more when they have enough to eat and various material wants are satisfied.

If this is right, then the most effective long-term route to preserving the environment will be to encourage growth in the developing world. Insisting on unrealistic pollution targets now will work against that goal. But in any event, there is a short-run trade-off between environmental standards and an increase in economic welfare in the developing world.

It is far from obvious that the environment takes precedence. And there are ominous protectionist currents in green campaigns. The former Vice-President Al Gore has argued that “weak and ineffectual enforcement of pollution control measures should also be included in the definition of unfair trading practices”.

No, it shouldn’t. Integration into the global trading system benefits poor countries. They can specialise in what they produce, become more productive and thereby get richer.

That is also the long-term route to a cleaner environment. Closed economies in the developing world do not benefit from the advanced clean technologies used by multinational companies. China under Mao was an extreme case of a self-sufficient economy that emphasised local production and it was an environmental disaster. A blast furnace in every village produced unusable steel and toxic fumes. Growth and open trade are the route to a better quality of life. It is a surpassing irony that today’s green evangelists won’t recognise it.

— Hat tip: Tuan Jim

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The Web’s Masquerade Ball is Over

The fate of “Skanks in NYC” sends a message to anonymous posters: It’s time to shed your masks and start being yourself online.

Ever put on a Halloween costume and find yourself saying and doing things you’d never be comfortable with if you were just being yourself? It’s fun. Once a year, we show a different or imagined side of our personalities. Then we quietly pack away those masks and resume being responsible human beings. Online, however, people wear masks all the time. They have fake usernames (or “handles”), fake photos, and incomplete, inaccurate, or shaded descriptions of themselves. As soon as they put on these digital masks, they feel comfortable saying and doing virtually anything.

Not everyone uses a fake name or handle to do naughty things. For some, it’s a bulwark against identify theft. The less people know about you online, the less likely they can cobble together all the details of your life and assume your identity. But there are, as far as I’m concerned, too many people who use online anonymity as a license to say and do things they’d never do in the real world.

Anonymity is such an ingrained part of our online experience, people think it’ll never change. But like our polar ice caps, the certainty that we have the right to remain anonymous online may be slowly melting away. Just this week, a New York Supreme Court judge ordered Google to reveal the IP and e-mail address of one of its Blogger platform users. The blogger used a Google-powered blog to launch a site called “Skanks in NYC,” with the apparent purpose of conducting a vicious verbal attack on a magazine model. I won’t go into the details here beyond saying that it was harsh. Whoever launched the blog did not use a real name. The model’s lawyer fought to learn the identity of the blogger and Google pulled the site, and, when ordered, handed over the information.

While some experts note that forcing ISPs and other online intermediaries to deliver information for people who cross the line from free speech to bullying or worse, it is a slippery slope. The threshold for what’s considered abuse is a moving target.

Inevitably, this latest action helps set a precedent. It’s less likely that people will feel comfortable hiding behind the moniker “fancyman34” as they post mean-spirited comments on blogs or on sites like YouTube and Digg. Have you ever read any of those comments? They can be incredibly cruel and profane. Imagine someone walking up to you on the street and talking to you that way, or a co-worker venting like that in the office. Public discourse doesn’t work like this (though, sadly, I’m beginning to see some of it bleed over into everyday life—it isn’t pretty). As with most other forums and countless blogs, virtually all the posters have handles that tell you nothing about who they are—profile pages are usually fact-free, as well.

I can understand the free speech proponents who worry that there will be a chilling effect if anyone can be unmasked at any time. Insurgents living in oppressed societies might stop speaking out online. Maybe. On the other hand, that’s the minority. The majority doesn’t need the anonymity and often abuses it. If people had to represent themselves online, those who wanted to say something biting or controversial would be showing something akin to courage. The person who created “Skanks in NYC” was not courageous—just angry.

So let Google give up that information. As they say, if you have something to say to me, say it to my face. Just be sure to remove that mask first.

— Hat tip: Zenster

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