The report that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has Jewish roots is now revealed as a hoax — or, more likely, as disinformation deliberately circulated by Mad Jad’s enemies in an attempt to discredit him.
In other news, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi once again made jokes about Barack Obama’s “suntan” (this time including Michelle in the joke — “They must have been to the beach together”). And, predictably, he is again being denounced as a racist for making the jokes.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Diana West, DS, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Pundita, Sean O’Brian, Steen, VH, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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A Poisonous Cocktail
by Peter Schweizer
As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here’s a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists.
Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill.
The White House and Congress want to expand a 30-year-old law—the Community Reinvestment Act—that helped to fuel the mortgage meltdown. What the CRA does, in effect, is compel banks to seek the permission of community activists to get regulatory approval for bank expansions and mergers. Often this means striking a deal with activist groups such as ACORN or unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and agreeing to allocate credit to poor and minority areas that are underserved.
In short, the CRA encourages banks to make loans they would not ordinarily make. What’s more, these agreements often require that banks offer no-money-down mortgages and remove caps on how much debt a borrower can take on. All of this is done in the name of “financial democracy.”
Liberals pooh-pooh the idea that a 30-year-old law could have contributed to the current subprime crisis and credit crunch. But what they ignore is the massive expansion of CRA-commitments forced on banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in the first 20 years of the act, up to 1997, commitments totaled approximately $200 billion. But from 1997 to 2007, commitments exploded to more than $4.2 trillion. (Keep in mind this is more than four times the size of the current health bill being debated in Congress.) The burdens on individual banks can be enormous. Washington Mutual, for example, pledged $1 trillion in mortgages to those with credit histories that “fall outside typical credit, income or debt constraints,” and was awarded the 2003 CRA Community Impact Award for its Community Access program. Four years later it was taken over by the Office of Thrift Supervision. In 2004 Bank of America agreed to provide $750 billion in CRA loans to applicants with poor credit who had previous difficulty obtaining a mortgage. By 2008 Bank of America was reporting that CRA loans represented only 7% of its portfolio but 29% of its losses. Numerous large banks are now in the middle of enormous CRA commitments. In 2004 J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to provide $800 billion of such loans over the course of 10 years.
For all the talk of unsold condos in Miami and foreclosed McMansions in California, the epicenters of the mortgage crisis are inner-city urban areas—precisely those areas where the CRA was most applicable. As the Boston Federal Reserve put it in a massive 2008 study, “In the current housing crisis foreclosures are highly concentrated in [urban] minority neighborhoods.” The study found that borrowers in these areas were seven times more likely to be foreclosed on than the general population. Analysis by the Pew Research Center and another by The New York Times found that mortgage holders in these areas had foreclosure rates four times higher than the national average.
In short, the CRA is compelling banks to make trillions in loans to individuals who have poor credit and who often can’t or won’t make their payments…
| — Hat tip: DS | [Return to headlines] |
IG Report Finds Paulsen, Bernanke Misled Public on Bank Rescues
Report says then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials were wrong to contend that all nine banks receiving the first round of bailout support — $125 billion — were sound.
WASHINGTON — The credibility of the government’s $700 billion financial rescue program was damaged by claims a year ago that all of the initial banks receiving support were healthy, a new report contends.
Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky generally found that the government had acted properly in October 2008 as it scrambled to implement the Troubled Asset Relief Program to avert the collapse of the U.S. financial system.
But the report said that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials were wrong to contend at an Oct. 14 press conference that all nine institutions receiving the first round of support — $125 billion — were sound.
“These are healthy institutions, and they have taken this step for the good of the economy,” Paulson had declared at the time.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Mediterranean: From Meda to Enpi, 12 Bln Euro in Support
(by Luciana Borsatti) (ANSAmed) — CAIRO — The five year period of investment flows from Europe to the Mediterranean area has seen the 4.6 billion euros administered by the MEDA scheme in the period 1995-2000 leap to the 12 billion available for the 2007-2013 period under ENPI (European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument). To be added to this commitment by the European Commission to Euro-Mediterranean cooperation are the funds from the European Investment Bank, which have gone from loans of 3.4 billion in the first period to 8.7 billion for the current five-year period. These figures have been on the agenda in Cairo today at the first Euro-Mediterranean Conference & Exibition on Donor Funding, Banking and Novel Financial Instruments for Investment. Promoted by Invest in Med, which is supported by the EU Commission, and the Medalliance consortium with a series of other partners, the meeting has provided a showcase for various sector operators from institutional “donors” to financial institutions whether they be banks or others: all aiming to break down barriers to communication, the lack of awareness of the availability of such instruments on the part of investors and the difficulty of making the demand to meet up with the offer. Raffaella Iodice de Woolf outlined the Commission’s commitment in this area, stressing that the scope of the contributions, which are carefully targeted, “is of building partnerships, and not supplying aid”. Compared to the funds set aside for 2000-2006, there has been a 45% increase in nominal terms and of 32% in real terms, but other resources are to be added to the 12 billion in “grants” up to 2013. Beneficiaries are governmental and non-governmental bodies across a total of nine countries on the southern shore: from 2007 to 2010 2.4 billion went to bilateral accords divided between Algeria (179 million), Morocco (731), Tunisia (330) Libya (18), Egypt (568), Syria (130), Lebanon (187), Jordan (260) Israel (8) and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (over 1.3 billion). The areas concerned range from the three chapters of the Barcelona Process to political cooperation (justice, security and migration, the Middle East peace process), to sustainable economic development (support for SMEs, energy, transport), to social and cultural projects. There has also been a commitment to simplifying and speeding up access to the funds (although Raffaella Iodice stressed, in light of the nature of the financing: “bureaucratic controls cannot be completely by-passed”). Financial instruments offered by the EIB are to be added to the Commission’s contributions: these include the Femip project (Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership) which between October 2002 and December 2008 made 8.5 billion euros available. 8.7 billion euros have been ear-marked for the 2007-2013 period with a further two billion for the financing of projects of common interest for the EU and partner countries in the Mediterranean. The EIB’s policy for the Mediterranean is to stimulate private sector growth in the region as a means of creating employment. And while the EIB is looking mainly to entrepreneurial projects in the areas of clean energy, transport and the environment, as its Deputy Chair Philippe de Fontaine Vive Curtaz stressed, others such as healthcare, education and professional training are not being ignored. Nor are manufacturing industry, tourism and the service industries. The instruments concerned are long-term loans and private equity for strengthening capital structures of companies and catalysing joint venture projects, but the Mediterranean project also aims at providing micro finance and supporting the local financial sector. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Surrendering Sovereignty
While all eyes were on the rantings of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, the United States — under President Barack Obama — was surrendering its economic sovereignty at the G-20 summit. The result of this conclave, which France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed as “revolutionary,” was that all the nations agreed to coordinate their economic policies and programs and to submit them to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for comment and approval. While the G-20 nations and the IMF are, for now, only going to use “moral suasion” on those nations found not to be in compliance, talk of sanctions looms on the horizon.
While the specific policies to which the U.S. committed itself (reducing the deficit and strengthening regulatory oversight of financial institutions) are laudable in themselves, the process and the precedent are frightening. We are to subject our most basic national economic policies to the review of a group of nations that includes autocratic Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Even though our GDP is three times bigger than the second largest economy (Japan) and equal to that of 13 of the G-20 nations combined, we are to sit politely by with our one vote and submit to the global consensus. Europe has five votes (U.K., France, Germany, Italy and the EU) while we have but one.
And the process will be administered by the IMF, whose counsel to less developed nations over the past two decades has consistently called for social pain and economic austerity. The IMF’s misguided policies have been responsible for more revolutions than Marx, Engels and Lenin combined. Its bureaucrats’ arrogance is legendary and their search for appropriate punishments to fit the crime of spending too much on the poor smacks of colonialism and imperialism. They are our new overseers. This combination of the IMF and the G-20 will not only work to structure national economic policies but to limit executive compensation at financial institutions. The watchful, wise leaders of such nations as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia — among others — will monitor Wall Street to assure themselves that its compensation is not out of line. One particularly looks forward to the views of the Saudi monarchy on this question of excessive personal enrichment.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Fed Fighter: Dealbook’s Ron Paul Interview
The fallout from the credit crisis has put the financial system of the United States under a microscope. Banker pay, lending practices and regulatory oversight are now topics of mainstream interest for the first time since the Great Depression.
As Congress debates whether or not to give more power to the Federal Reserve to watch over the financial system, Ron Paul, the Republican congressman from Texas, is arguing, as he has for years, for the government to go in the opposite direction and actually cut the Fed’s powers.
In an interview with DealBook on Thursday, Mr. Paul discussed his new book, “End the Fed,” as well as his views on Wall Street.
The outspoken lawmaker contends that the government is essentially controlled by the Fed and in collusion with Wall Street, and has created an unsustainable economic system through the excess printing of money. He predicts that the system will eventually break down and the dollar will collapse, creating economic chaos.
Here are edited and condensed excerpts from DealBook’s talk with Mr. Paul.
[…]
Q: Which brings us to your bill to audit the Federal Reserve. What would an audit show, and why do you think that information is important?
A. It is going to show what kind of promises the Fed made, what kind of loans they made, which companies benefited, which companies did not. We want to know about these international arrangements. You know if they can enter into arrangements with other countries and other central banks and issue new money and credit — they are literally a government unto itself.
The Fed is making appropriations that are off the books and didn’t go through Congress. That should be unconstitutional. They are making agreements with other governments. That’s treaty-making and we don’t even know about it. They always say it is to maintain an orderly financial system, but there is nothing orderly about it. They created problems, and it is something we deserve to know about.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Where Are the Jobs Congressman? I’ll Tell You
October 1, 2009. Boehner to Obama: ‘Where are the jobs?’ — “While the president is in Copenhagen tomorrow,” House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today, “the American people are going to wake up and find out that hundreds of thousands more Americans have lost their jobs. “The administration’s trillion dollar stimulus plan clearly is not working. Americans were promised that this plan would create jobs immediately and keep the unemployment rate below eight percent. But Americans are asking, where are the jobs?”
John Boehner has been in Congress for ten terms (20 years). Boehner voted for the unconstitutional North American Free Trade treaty (NAFTA — No American Factories Taking Applications). That treaty has been the biggest killer of domestic jobs in the history of this republic.THOUSANDS of factories closed within the first few years after NAFTA was unlawfully ratified. Boehner voted for the unconstitutional GATT — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which has done nothing but erode our sovereignty and cost American companies huge fines. GATT has been a killer for our industries while enriching banana republics and our enemies.
Where are the jobs, Boehner? You helped kill them with your votes.
The Republicans held power from January 1995 until the “new” Congress was sworn in January 2007. For eight years a Republican (Bush, Jr) was president. Yet, not a single step was taken to get us out of those destructive treaties. MILLIONS of jobs to communist and third world countries while Americans stand in unemployment lines. Boehner, Bush, Pelosi — all of them have simply allowed the bleeding to continue year after year after year.
The Democrats have done nothing to bring our jobs home since they took “power” almost three years ago. Those destructive treaties remain in tact while 15 MILLION Americans are now out of work. The Democrats, like the Republicans, have done NOTHING to stop the work visas bringing in foreign workers while American workers sink further into debt and poverty:
August 19, 2009. 125,000 brand new foreign workers with work permits each month. “Here is the explanation and justification for saying that the federal government brings in 1.5 million new foreign workers each year (125,000 a month) to take U.S. jobs while Americans lose theirs. (This is a key number in our national TV ad campaign.) For months, the open-borders blogosphere has insisted that NumbersUSA is telling tall tales when we talk about these numbers. Most of the commentators and open-borders politicians even claim that we have no source for our information. So, once again, let us lay out the federal government’s own data.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will California Become America’s First Failed State?
Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?
But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster — his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kenneth Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: “California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.”
[…]
… Much has been made globally of the problems of Ireland and Iceland. Yet California dwarfs both. It is the eighth largest economy in the world, with a population of 37 million. If it was an independent country it would be in the G8. And if it were a company, it would likely be declared bankrupt.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Pack of Raccoons Attack Florida Woman in Her Yard
Animal control officers hope to trap a pack of raccoons that mauled a 74-year-old Florida woman who tried to chase them from her yard.
The sheriff in Polk County, east of Tampa, says Gretchen Whitted fell when five raccoons surrounded and attacked her Sunday. She was taken to a hospital with extensive cuts from her neck to her legs.
“We’re not talking about a lot of little bites here,” Sheriff Grady Judd said. “She was filleted.”
A neighbor called for help after hearing the woman’s cries and seeing her covered in blood.
Whitted was treated for rabies, though officials doubt the animals were infected.
Fire crews flooded nearby drains to drive the animals out, but none appeared. Animal control officers hope to catch them using cat food and sardines as bait.
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Barack Cancels Meeting With Dalai Lama to Keep China Happy
The decision came after China stepped up a campaign urging nations to shun the Tibetan spiritual leader.
It means Mr Obama will become the first president not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington in 1991.
[…]
Samdhong Rinpoche, the Tibetan prime minister-in-exile, has accused the United States and other Western nations of “appeasement” toward China as its economic weight grows.
“Today, economic interests are much greater than other interests,” he said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Chuck Grassley and the RINO Wing
For decades, the federal and state governments understood the Constitutional protections afforded religious group such as churches, charities and other organizations. The First Amendment declares religious groups’ autonomy from government interference or intrusion. And who more than a self-professed conservative Republican should be cognizant of that legal protection.
According to critics—many of whom are registered Republicans—Sen. Grassley’s long-armed amendment will use a religious group’s tax-exempt status as a rational for government officials to force unconstitutional disclosures. In other words, Grassley wishes to corner religious groups into a Catch 22 position: a church or faith-based group may retain their tax exemption, but they must also give up their First Amendment rights by yielding up excessive information about their internal policies. Or they may exercise their constitutional rights, but lose their 501(c)(3) status.
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Diana West: Dar Al-Yale
[see link for video]
For the record:
Yale should have honored Kurt Westergaard with applause, accolades and gratitude for the Dane’s brave, unflinching, unqualified defense of freedom of speech. Instead — and I say this having read multiple reports and heard several first-hand accounts — Yale as an institution treated Westergaard as an object of unconcealed derision, the distasteful and unfortunate consequence of a free society in which the right to free speech requires lip service even as the exercise of that right inspires only scorn and disapproval.
Yale’s treatment of Kurt Westergaard, however, reflects on Yale, not Kurt Westergaard. Once again, in the wake of the Yale-Yale University Press decision to censor Mohammed imagery from its new book about Mohammed imagery (namely, but not exclusively, the Danish Mohammed cartoons), Yale has revealed a willful disregard for freedom of speech, particularly in regard to Islam — indeed, particularly in deference to Islam. Given Islam’s role today as the leading ideological opponent of free speech, this is a grave and shameful development.
Just as the Danish Mohammed cartoons revealed the cowardice of Western media, Westergaard’s visit to Yale served to confirm the rot at the core of academia. At Yale, free speech about Islam has become a liability, something to censor, as with its book about the Motoons, something to oppose and denounce, as with comments from assorted campus voices. It has also become something to eradicate, physically, from the campus itself. Such is the symbolism of holding Westergaard’s talk far from the heart of the campus, and imposing security precautions so extreme that they would seem to stand as an intimidating lesson of what happens to those who dare critique Islam. These extreme security measures — dogs, SWAT teams, etc. — may also have been so engineered as a bit of theater to justify Yale’s decision to censor the cartoons in the first place out of fear of Muslim violence.
Having shrouded speech in the Islamic veil, Yale stands exposed.
On the other hand, Kurt Westergaard has emerged unbowed, unbroken, unphased, and as strong and unapologetic a defender of free speech as ever. See for yourself, in the interview with Kurt Westergaard and International Free Press Society president Lars Hedegaard below, conducted by James Cohen of the IFPS (Canada) at the end of Westergaard’s US tour.
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: Cartoon Convergence at Yale
Somehow, and I do not know how, both Kurt Westergaard and Jytte Klausen ended up speaking at separate appearances at Yale yesterday, also the same day the alumni group, the Yale Committe for a Free Press, sent off a second letter to Yale protesting the censorship of all Mohammed imagery, including Westergaard’s cartoon, in Klausen’s Yale University Press book The Cartoons That Shook the World.
Not exactly a harmonic covergence, but a convergence nonetheless.
What follows are highights from some of the reports tracking these criss-crossing events…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: What Was Obama Thinking?
US Joins UN in Criminalizing “Defamation of Religions”
A far more important exercise in “What was Obama thinking?” arises from another of his recent, dubious diplomatic initiatives: Last week, the United States joined Egypt in sponsoring a resolution in the UN Human Rights Council — the odious anti-Western, -U.S. and -Israel organization which the Obama administration recently had this country rejoin. For the first time, America has taken a leading role in promoting an international threat to its citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of speech…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Liberal Rules Don’t Apply to Liberals
It’s bedrock liberal feminist teaching that when a male in a superior position in the workplace has sex with a female in a subordinate job, the sex is non-consensual. The male is using his position to extort the sex. Every time. No exceptions. Many a male has lost his job over this. Don’t think this applies to you? Consult your workplace “sexual harassment” code.
On his national TV program the other night, David Letterman admitted having sex with (much) younger female staffers in subordinate jobs in his production company “Worldwide Pants, Inc.” We shoulda known by the name.
Letterman still has his show and his job. In fact, his confession got a loud laugh from his New York studio audience.
They’re the same laughs Dave gets when he makes fun of the Palin family — or of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dave reacted to news that Arnold had once groped eight women by remarking “He’s presidential material.”
Liberal rules don’t apply to liberals.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism’ Box-Office Bust
Report: Destined to become director’s worst performing film since 2002
Michael Moore is destined to really hate capitalism, for his new movie “Capitalism: A Love Story” appears to have totally flopped at the box office.
This comes despite all the gushing and fawning by Moore-loving media members prior to the film’s October 2nd release.
Take heart, fellow capitalists, for according to Deadline Hollywood this could be a flop of epic proportions…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
President Obama Keeps Repeating Climate Falsehoods
Obama’s speeches follow a pattern. Invoke a big name from the past: here he used John F Kennedy, “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.” The problem is global warming or climate changes are not man-made. Next he presents a few ‘facts’ to substantiate the threat. Then he exaggerates the situation to justify draconian intervention. Here he repeats Moon’s inaccurate message. The “threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing.” Throughout he repeats a claim for emphasis; in this case it’s the false claim that CO2 is a pollutant. He makes seven references.
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St. Louis U. Cancels Speech by Activist David Horowitz
Conservative activist David Horowitz will not be speaking at St. Louis University this month after school officials raised objections about the title and content of his speech, “Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights.”
The SLU College Republicans, a student group, had invited Horowitz to speak on campus. The event would have been paid for out of student activity fees.
SLU said in a statement that it did not “ban” Horowitz from campus. Rather, the school was concerned that the event could be viewed as “attacking another faith and seeking to cause derision on campus.”
Horowitz, reached by phone on Friday, called the university’s decision “outrageous.” He said his speech is about what he sees as a campaign against Jews and the state of Israel on many college campuses.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
WSJ: More Insults, Please
Blocking Muslim cartoons and other attempts at Web censorship.
In today’s world of instant global communication, disagreements happen more quickly and resentments get established in real time. Just as the British and Americans have been called two nations divided by a common language, today we all share the Internet, yet we are divided by the instant communicating that digital technology makes possible.
Recall the incident in 2005, when a Danish newspaper printed a dozen cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed, including one with a bomb in his turban. Posting the cartoons on the Web resulted in protests in much of the Muslim world, including riots and deaths. The bomb-in-the-turban cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, has received death threats and lives under 24-hour police protection in Copenhagen. Last week he visited the U.S., with the message that when it comes to insult and humor, there is little common ground around the world.
“As the Danish tradition is for satire, we say you can speak freely, you can vote, you can speak out any time, but there’s only one thing you can’t do—you can’t be free of being mocked or being offended,” Mr. Westergaard said in a speech in New York City. “That’s the condition in Denmark.”
Insults are a longstanding part of free expression in much of the West but are under pressure in our digital era of instantaneous communication. Instead of the Internet adding to freedom as we usually assume it does, its global reach makes it an excuse for censorship. Many governments lobby for anti-insult laws, even though insults are a key means of criticism. Leaders of several Muslim countries have tried to get perceived insults to their religion reclassified as offenses.
The Jyllands-Posten newspaper solicited cartoons after threats to Danes by Islamists, including physical attacks on authors, musicians and academics. “In this situation the paper felt that it was imperative to test whether we still enjoyed free speech,” Mr. Westergaard wrote in Princeton University’s student newspaper last week. This included “the right to treat Islam, Muhammad and Muslims exactly as you would any other religion, prophet or group of believers. If we no longer had that right, one could only conclude that the country had succumbed to de facto sharia law.”
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Jonathan Kay on Kurt Westergaard, Free Speech, And Leftist Refuseniks
Has Jack Layton converted to Islam? That’s what activist Tarek Fatah asked himself last month after the NDP leader sent out an effusive Eid message to Muslim supporters, urging one and all to “renew the spirit and faith in Islam.”
“I am waiting with bated breath to see Layton ‘renew’ his faith in Islam,” Fatah wrote. “Has he already embraced the Shahadah [oath of Islam]? He goes on to say, ‘We are not celebrating the end of Ramadan, but thanking Allah for the help and strength given throughout this special month’ We? May I suggest a new name for Layton: Jack AsSalaam.”
Layton’s Eid stunt wasn’t a one-off: For years, the NDP consistently has courted Canadian Muslims — even selling out the party’s otherwise dogmatic embrace of gay marriage and hard-core feminism by running candidates who support Sharia law.
Nor is Layton alone. The post-9/11 shotgun marriage between leftists and fundamentalist Muslims has generated some bizarre juxtapositions. At anti-war demonstrations, militant feminists lock arms with women in Burkas. A group called “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” marches in solidarity with Islamists who regard homosexuals as vermin. And the Socialist Worker (yes, it’s still around), recently ran a column urging readers to support the Taliban’s fascistic movement because it’s “the face of anti-imperialist resistance in Afghanistan.”
That last one pretty well sums up the emotional bond between Islamists and Marxist enablers: a shared hatred of capitalism and globalization, and a romantic embrace of any fighting faith — no matter how bigoted or reactionary — that stands in opposition to Western civilization.
But the Left also has produced “refuseniks” (to borrow a term from self-described Muslim refusenik Irshad Manji) with the backbone to resist this ideological reflex. In the United States, Christopher Hitchens, who once wrote a book about the war crimes of Henry Kissinger, now rails against Islamofacism full-time. The aforementioned Tarek Fatah is a refusenik. So is Terry Glavin, a B.C.-based activist who’s become of one of Canada’s leading voices in support of our Afghanistan campaign.
Last week, I met with one of Europe’s most famous refuseniks, Kurt Westergaard — the Danish artist behind the famous 2005 image of the Prophet Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban. In 2008, he was the target of at least one assassination plot. The man now lives a Rushdie-esque existence, in a house equipped with steel doors and surveillance cameras.
In the four years that have passed since the Danish cartoon controversy sparked deadly riots, the proudly unrepentant Westergaard has become an important European voice in the fight against Islamic-inspired censorship…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Offered Gaddafi £14m to Stop Supporting the IRA
Britain offered to pay Colonel Muammar Gaddafi £14m in return for Libya ending its military support for the IRA, secret papers seen by The Independent have revealed.
The deal, worth £500m today, was part of a package of compensation measures to appease the Libyan leader and help open up trade with the North African state during the late 1970s.
Discovery of the secret offer, detailed in a letter sent by the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, raises fresh questions about whether Britain has ever paid Gaddafi compensation.
Jason McCue, the lawyer currently negotiating with the Libyans on behalf of victims of IRA bombings, said he was astonished that Britain was prepared to agree to such a pay off. “This all goes to support why our peace and reconciliation delegation is keen to meet and discuss matters in Tripoli. We believe that Anglo-Libyan relations should be flourishing but that certain human tragedies in the past have been overlooked and never reconciled.”
Daniel Kawczynski MP, the chairman of the Libyan all-party group, accused the former Labour government of breaching the trust of the British people. “We should never entice other states away from terrorism by offering them taxpayers’ money,” said the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury.
The Foreign Office maintained it was not aware of the £14m offer to Col Gaddafi and the Ministry of Defence said there were no “live issues” regarding compensation for Libya.
The documents, transferred from the Foreign Office to the National Archives in Kew, include telegrams and secret policy documents setting out the terms of a settlement with Libya.
They include Wilson’s “personal message” to Col Gaddafi from 1975, in which he makes clear that in return for ending material support for the IRA, Britain was prepared to give the Libyan leader money. Wilson wrote: “I do not want to anticipate the results of the forthcoming talks, which we shall enter into in a truly constructive spirit, but it might be helpful nevertheless to mention two questions of particular importance to us. The first of these concerns Northern Ireland.”
The Prime Minister’s message added: “Secondly, there is also, of course, a history of unsettled financial claims between Libya and Britain. I hope that these and any other bilateral matters can be speedily dealt with during the forthcoming talks between our officials and the way cleared for close and mutually beneficial relations between the United Kingdom and Libya.”
[…]
By the end of 1976, with the £14m offer still on the table, British interest was dominated by a desire to capitalise on Libyan trade.
A Foreign Office memo reads: “The arguments for ending the dispute are, if anything, more powerful than … in July 1975. Our share of the Libyan trade has fallen by half in the last five years, although it has remained steady over the past 12 months. Prospects of getting a share of the latest Libyan five-year plan, which has an investment budget of dinars 7bn are correspondingly poor.”
But at the close of the decade, it was clear the policy of appeasement towards Col Gaddafi had failed. Libya had rejected the offer and was holding out for a more generous payment of £51m — £1.5bn today. Britain’s ambassador in Tripoli, Donald Murray, wrote to London: “HMG made a genuine ex gratia offer in order to improve relations, even though they had no call to do so. It has been categorically rejected. There is still discrimination against our bilateral trade. Despite the discussion which Colonel Qadhafi had with HM ambassador in October 1975, there is no indication that the Libyan government wants to understand our problem on Ireland and we are now invited to interpret Libyan government policy from nothing more substantial than one remark which Colonel Qadhafi made to an American journalist.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Civil Defence: Cyprus, Italy Agree to Strengthen Cooperation
(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, SEPTEMBER 21 — Cyprus and Italy have signed a memorandum of understanding on issues concerning civil defence and strengthening cooperation between the two countries. The memorandum, as CNA reports, concerns immigration and asylum, as well as cooperation in handling emergencies during natural disasters, such as fires, earthquakes and floods. The memorandum was signed by Cypriot Minister of the Interior Neoclis Sylikiotis, who was in Italy at the invitation of his Italian counterpart, and the Head of the Italian Civil Protection Department, Guido Bertolaso. During his contacts in the Italian capital, Sylikiotis discussed with Italian Minister of Interior Roberto Maroni ways to further strengthen cooperation between the two countries in the field of immigration and asylum. The two Ministers agreed that the priorities they had set should be included in the new Stockholm Programme, aiming at defining the framework for EU police and customs cooperation, rescue services, criminal and civil law cooperation, asylum, migration and visa policy for the period 2010-2014. In addition, the two Ministers agreed to extend an invitation to Spain to become a member of the four Mediterranean countries (Italy, Cyprus, Greece and Malta) for joint action on issues concerning immigration and asylum. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Foreign Family in Troublesome Situation in West Sweden
A foreign family with two small children moved to Sweden in 2007. After a long time of problems with their neighbours, there was a housebreak into their apartment and they had to move out. The family has had difficulties in getting help and support from the local authorities and now they are forced to live in a small cabin in a camping ground. The smallest child is three months old.
Irina and Alex met on the internet in 2002. Irina (originally from Russia) was living in Australia and in 2004 she moved to Alex who lived in Iceland. In 2007, they moved to Sweden and settled down in Charlottenberg in Värmland, western Sweden. It is located close to the Norwegian border. (see map)
It became however soon clear for the family that this was going to be problematic. They live a life very conscious about their health. They eat healthy food, they drink no alcohol and they do not smoke. According to the mother Irina, their neighbours on the other hand live a life full of drugs, alcohol and smoking.
The frictions between the newcomer family and the locals started almost directly. When Irina told off a young girl for smoking too near her baby son, the tensions became stronger.
The first real incident was when the family had their car-window smashed after a while and they tried to get the police attention for this but with no results. The family decided to rent a house in Norway for a while to get away from this but then again they met some problems when the house was sold.
Back in Charlottenberg the problems continued. Irina gave birth to their second child three months ago and felt she was treated badly by the hospital nurses. The peak of the problems came when there was a break-in to their apartment. The flat was vandalized with red paint spread out on the walls and on different personal belongings.
The break-in was preceded by a dispute with their landlord, Gert-Ove Axelsson. The house keys were lost or stolen at some point. The keys were found and returned to the family but they suspected that they had been taken and copied. When the family demanded that the locks should be changed, he is supposed to have told them that keys cannot be copied in Sweden so they should not worry.
The family moved out after the break-in. Their landlord did, according to Irina, promise them to arrange a new flat for them but nothing happened. So now they live in a small cabin in a camping ground in the area.
The family has met difficulties each time they have turned to the local authorities for help. When the turned to the social service after they lost their home, they were told that they were not poor enough and the insurance company could not compensate them.
All these issues together shows that coming to a small municipality in Sweden as a foreigner can be really difficult if conflicts arises with neighbours and other people in the area. It is difficult to speak with authorities because of language and cultural differences.
This situation on the other hand indicate that it is something more behind than only problems related to culture or language. This family has gone through a lot of difficulties with seemingly harassments from neighbours but has gotten a passive or even cold response from the local authorities.
According to Irina the cold treatment from for example the social service is connected to the fact that the family has a Jewish background. The general perception is often that Jewish people are business-men with a good economy. Irina felt that this was the attitude when she appealed for help from the social service centre.
————————————————
Note: Stockholm News has tried to reach the police in the area without result. We also called the landlord Gert Ove Axelsson but he had no time to speak with us.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Publisher Shelves Honour Killing Book in Fear of Islamist Retaliation
A Düsseldorf publisher has cancelled print of a murder mystery because of fears that its subject matter — an honour killing — would put employees at risk for Islamist retaliation, according to news magazine Der Spiegel.
The Droste Verlag was supposed to begin selling the book, entitled Wem Ehre gebührt, or “To Whom Honour is Due,” in September. But shortly before it went to print, the publisher removed it from its list because author Gabriele Brinkmann (pseudonym W.W. Domsky), refused to censor certain passages, the magazine said.
Owner Felix Droste apparently had the book examined for content that could potentially endanger the security of his family and employees, and asked Brinkmann to change end passages.
Brinkmann told daily Bild am Sonntag on Sunday that she was outraged by the decision.
“It’s a scandal for a publisher to tuck its tail between its legs,” she said.
But Droste said publisher have to be careful about what they market.
“One knows after the latest Mohammed cartoons that one can’t publish sentences or drawings that defame Islam without assuming a security risk,” he told Der Spiegel.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
How the EU Got the Irish to ‘Yes’
Too bad the rest of Europe’s voters don’t have a say.
By ANNE JOLIS
[…]
After Irish voters spurned the treaty in a referendum last year, the European Commission—the EU’s unelected legislative, regulatory and executive branch whose power would be cemented under the treaty—left little to chance this time around. Here is how Brussels did it:
1. Don’t let a good crisis go to waste: Playing to voter apathy backfired in Ireland last year, but in the fall of 2009 a much more powerful tool presented itself for the Commission and its Dublin backers: fear. Specifically, fear of economic isolation.
An Irish Times reporter asked Commission President José Manuel Barroso at a victory press conference on Saturday about allegations of fear mongering. Mr. Barroso was all innocence: “Scare tactics? I don’t know what you mean by that.”
Perhaps Mr. Barroso forgot the interview he gave to the Irish Times two weeks ago, where he seemed concerned that “some people”—still unnamed—had asked him whether Ireland would leave the EU, adding that “For investor confidence, it is important that there is certainty about the future of Ireland in the EU.” So while Mr. Barroso knew Ireland could reject Lisbon without risking full EU and euro membership, he calculated that in an era of 12.6% Irish unemployment, stoking nerves over capital flight would have a big impact.
That message was clear enough to Ruairí Brennan, a 24-year-old student who explained his Yes vote to me over ale at the Sackville. “We have no money, that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “If we go against them, they’ll go against us.”
He produced a pamphlet from Ireland For Europe, a coalition of Yes-ite business and civic leaders. The leaflet states that the EU has invested more than €70 billion in Ireland. Mr. Barroso gave the Irish a well-timed reminder of such largesse last month, when he announced €14.8 million to help laid-off Irish workers. It’s true that Ireland received €566 million more from EU coffers last year than it contributed, but this difference accounted for only 0.36% of Ireland’s gross national income, by the Commission’s own figures—hardly the lynchpin of the health and wealth of the Celtic Tiger.
The pamphlet also echoes the Yes campaign’s claim that approval of the treaty will mean jobs. But Lisbon’s promise that a reformed EU will be “aiming at full employment” is no guarantee that Mr. Brennan will graduate to a host of job offers. The best hope for that happy prospect is, rather, his own hard work and Ireland’s own pro-growth tax policies—which Lisbon could give other EU countries the power to thwart. No question, the monetary discipline that came with Ireland’s adoption of the euro will also brighten Mr. Brennan’s future, but contrary to Mr. Barroso’s insinuations, Mr. Brennan would not have been risking this had he voted No.
2. Activate the herd mentality: Alongside the economic threats, Irish voters were subjected to the even more vague minacity that Ireland would somehow be shunned by the rest of the bloc. After the Republic rejected the treaty last year, Brussels mandarins ignited the rumor that a two-tier Europe could be the solution. Though such isolation within the EU is impossible, the rumors stuck, cemented by Yes campaign posters telling voters to say “Yes to Europe,” rather than to the 294-page document on offer.
“We wouldn’t have the same authority, we’d be out on the fringes,” said Hugh McGinn, a teetotaling taxi driver, when asked what arguments had most swayed his Yes vote.
Such arguments are incorrect, but one can forgive Mr. McGinn for believing them. The official “Statement for the Information of Voters,” prescribed by Ireland’s Oireachtas (or Parliament) and distributed to voters and posted at polling stations, opened by saying a Yes vote would “(a) affirm Ireland’s commitment to the European Union” and “(b) enable Ireland to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon and to be a member of the European Union established by that Treaty.”
So much for informed democracy. Ireland’s “commitment” to the existing EU was not up for a vote, and without Irish ratification there would have been no reformed EU for Ireland to be, or not be, a member of.
But the contrary point was central to the peer pressure targeting Ireland: That if Ireland voted no, it would spoil reforms for the rest of Europe’s 500 million citizens, as if they too had been given a say in the matter (they hadn’t). This awkward position of serving as proxies for democracy for half a billion people weighed on the minds of Irish voters. At the Sackville, 19-year-old student Shane Gaynor asserted that his Yes vote was as much for Europe as for Ireland. “After all Europe has given us, it’s time to give something back,” he said.
Lauren Bacon, also a student and also 19, saw it differently. “We’re the only country that even got a vote on this. We shouldn’t throw away what other countries didn’t even have.”
3. Move the finish line: Perhaps the single greatest factor determining the outcome of Friday’s referendum was that it was held at all.. Democracy means adhering to the will of the majority of the day. Do-overs and give-backs not only mock the voting process, they convince many that going to the polls is an exercise in futility. This was the case for many, who told me they had voted against the treaty last year but hadn’t bothered on Friday.
“I’m not voting, I voted No last time,” said Shane Masterson, a 22-year-old builder outside the Sackville. “I wasted dear, valuable time waiting in line, and they threw it away. They’re going to keep asking until they get their way, so what’s the point? We chose to speak and they chose to ignore.” They won’t now of course—Brussels has the answer it wants.
There remains some hope for those who believe Europe deserves a better treaty. Senators in the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus has yet to sign the document, have filed an eleventh hour challenge to Lisbon in the country’s Constitutional Court. Depending on how long the court takes to issue a verdict, the move could buy time for British Conservative leader David Cameron to make good on his promise, repeated on Saturday, that if his party wins general elections next year before the treaty is ratified by all EU countries, they will hold a British referendum.
If so, Mr. Cameron should take note of the tactics employed by Mr. Barroso & Co. As any Irish bookie would tell him, “democracy” in the hands of an unelected central bureaucracy is not a safe bet.
| — Hat tip: Pundita | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland Surrenders Again
So, it was all for nothing. All the pain, bloodshed and sacrifice has gone for naught. The Rebellion of 1878, the Young Irelanders, the 1919 War of Independence, Sunday, bloody Sunday, the bombings in Belfast, the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, last year’s “No” vote and every other aspect of the long and bitter struggle for Irish independence was to no purpose. On Oct. 3, 2009, the voters of the Republic of Ireland threw away their hard-won sovereignty out of fear, naiveté and greed for nothing more than the deceitful promises of the Eurocrats.
Only 15 months ago, the Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty, which establishes the European Union as a sovereign, constitutional, supra-national political state, by a respectable majority of 53 percent to 47 percent in a national referendum. Since the European Union is less democratic than National Socialist Germany, where Adolf Hitler at least gave the German people the opportunity to express their will on important matters in four separate plebiscites between 1934 and 1938, the referendum yesterday will likely be the last time the Irish will be permitted to do so. In Europe’s imperial bureaucracy, the masses are only allowed to vote until they have turned over sufficient power to the unelected European Commission to preclude any need for further voting.
This is not to say that Europeans will not be permitted to cast ballots for their national and European parliaments, of course. The superficial form of representative democracy will be preserved to deceive the former electorate into believing that the substance remains.
How were the Eurocrats able to turn around the vote so quickly, with 20 percent of voters changing their “No” vote to “Yes”? What could possibly have changed since June 2008? The answer, of course, is the Irish economy. Prior to the global economic meltdown, Ireland had enjoyed one of the biggest investment booms on the planet; housing prices tripled between 2000 and 2006. This investment boom was mostly the result of the usual expansion of bank credit, but subsidies from the European Union played a significant role in overstimulating the Irish economy as well. Since 1973, Ireland has received between 3 and 4 percent of its GDP every year in European subsidies. The equivalent, in U.S. terms, would be annually pumping an additional $494 billion into the economy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Judge Rules PM ‘Responsible’ In Fininvest Graft Case
Rome, 5 October (AKI) — Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was declared jointly responsible for a corruption charge by his investment company Fininvest in a 1991 battle to buy publisher Mondadori and will have to pay more than 1.1 billion dollars in compensation.
“First of all, we must assert the responsibility of the defendant (Fininvest) for the conduct of Silvio Berlusconi,” said a single presiding judge of an administrative civil court in the northern Italian city of Milan, Raimondo Mesiano.
“Silvio Berlusconi is co-responsible in the corruption issue… as a logical consequence (of) the principle of civil responsibility.”
The judge was giving the arguments behind a ruling under which Fininvest will have to pay 750,000 euros (almost 1.1 billion dollars) in damages to CIR (Compagnie Industriale Riunite), a holding company of rival media mogul Carlo de Benedetti, owner of the left-leaning La Repubblica daily.
La Repubblica is one of the newspapers Berlusconi is suing for libel and intrusion of privacy. The daily has been at the forefront in reporting Berlusconi’s scandals involving prostitutes, and has even pioneered a campaign to support freedom of the press in Italy by collecting more than 500,000 signatures, including those of 11 Nobel laureates.
Fininvest, however, can still appeal the ruling and has sought a suspension of the court order made public on Saturday.
Part of the 140-page-long ruling, said that “CIR also has the right to receive compensation from Fininvest for the damage of a non-patrimonial nature suffered in the same affair. The settlement of these damages will be made in a separate ruling.”
“After almost twenty years since the fraudulent action that caused our group to lose its legitimate ownership of Mondadori and following the verdict which confirmed definitively in the criminal court that a judge had been corrupted, at last we have justice in the civil court as well,” said De Benedetti in a media release on CIR’s website.
“The ruling of the Milan Law Court…does not in any way make up for me not being able to implement the business plan which would have created the first publishing group in Italy, but it has established unequivocally that the action that prevented me from doing so was illegal.”
There was no comment from Berlusconi immediately after the ruling, however, the leader in the lower house of the Italian parliament, Massimo Donadi, from the Italy of Values opposition party said in any other country, the prime minister would have resigned.
“If we were in a normal country, or even a slightly abnormal country, after the Mondadori ruling, Berlusconi would have stepped down. Here in Italy, on the other hand, a protest to defend the guilty is organised,” said Donadi on Monday.
This week, Italy’s Constitutional Court will decide whether a law granting immunity to Berlusconi is illegal.
The law — called Lodo Alfano — was approved in June last year and gives the four highest offices of state — including the prime minister — immunity from criminal prosecution.
Until the law was introduced, Berlusconi was a defendant in the case involving British tax lawyer, David Mills, who was sentenced in February to four and a half years in jail for accepting a 600,000 dollar bribe from the prime minister for giving false evidence in corruption trials.
The 73-year old leader also proposed further legislation stating that if immunity were ever lifted, the conviction of Mills and the evidence on which it is based could not be used against him.
Recently, Giampaolo Tarantini, a businessman from Bari and an acquaintance of Berlusconi has told prosecutors he supplied women — some of whom were paid for ‘sexual services’ — for 18 parties at Berlusconi’s residences in Rome and Sardinia between September last year and January this year.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Once Again Calls Obama “Suntanned”
[translation by VH]
By Maartje Willems
The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for the third time made a “joke” about the color of the U.S. president Barack Obama.
Berlusconi made the joke at a celebration of his party Popolo delle Libertà. “Apropos, I have to you send you greetings of a gentleman, a gentleman with a tan. His name is … his name is … Barack Obama …,”
Berlusconi said to his audience. [“Vi porto i saluti di un signore, di un signore abbronzato. Si chiama…si chiama…Barack Obama.”]*
The much-talked about Italian Prime Minister went on a bit: “…They must have been to the beach together, for his wife Michelle is suntanned as well. You will not believe it but it us true.” [“In spiaggia vanno in due perchè è abbronzata anche la moglie Michelle Non ci crederete ma è vero”]*
During the G20 summit last week the American First Lady Michelle Obama avoided being greeted with a kiss from the Italian Casanova by firmly sticking out her hand forward when he walked towards her. Other leaders — including the Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende — were greeted by him with a kiss.
It is not the first time that Berlusconi has tried to be funny by remarking on the skin color of the American president.
A few days after the election he called Obama young, handsome and even suntanned. The Italian opposition took that statement as racist. Berlusconi himself called it a “little loving joke”.
Soon afterwards he repeated this with a smile: “For sure we all want to be as suntanned as Naomi Campbell and Barack Obama”.
[*Quotes from La Stampa“]
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Make or Break. The Italian Bishops at the Final Tally
The stakes are the “cultural project” conceived and realized by cardinals Ruini and Scola. There are some who are giving it up for dead. But the facts prove that it is more alive than ever. With three big new developments: a proposal to the country on the “educational emergency,” a new school of theology applied to a “pluralist” society, an international conference on “God today”
ROME, September 21, 2009 — The executive board of the Italian bishops’ conference is meeting in Rome this evening for the usual early fall session, with shock waves still spreading over the resignation of Dino Boffo as director of “Avvenire,” the newspaper owned by the CEI, after he was defamed by public attacks against his person.
During the firestorm, the Church hierarchy, both in Italy and at the Vatican, demonstrated that they were divided and disoriented. The attack against “Avvenire,” in fact, was also leveled by some against the approach that they personify: that of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the CEI for fourteen years, until 2007, and of the “cultural project” that he conceived and realized, to a great extent through the newspaper directed by Boffo.
But the idea that this approach is disappearing is contradicted by various signals — all in recent days — that prove its vitality.
***
One of these signals is the widespread diffusion in Italy, beginning on September 17, of a book produced by the committee for the cultural project of the CEI, entitled “La sfida educativa [The challenge of education].”
The book is presented as a report on what has been called, including by Benedict XVI, an “educational emergency.” A report, that is, on the dramatic incapacity that today’s society demonstrates in educating the new generations.
But in addition to being a descriptive and analytical report, the book is also a proposal on how to face this emergency and overcome the challenge. In the preface, Cardinal Ruini writes that what is at stake are “the fundamentals of the existence of man and woman, the very meaning that we attribute to man and to our civilization.”
The educational challenge therefore does not concern only the family, the schools, the Church, but society as a whole. Chapter after chapter, the book examines it in various areas and through the work of different specialists: including the areas of work, business, commerce, mass media, entertainment, sports.
The question of education will be the linchpin of the pastoral action of the Italian Church during the decade of 2010-2020, as established by the bishops’ conference. But with the cultural project, the intention is to involve the entire nation. One piece of evidence is that the printing of “La sfida educativa” was entrusted not to a Catholic publishing house, but to one that is “secular” to the core, Laterza.
And it is at the Rome offices of Laterza that the official presentation of the book will take place, on Tuesday, September 22. With Cardinal Ruini, with the education minister, Mariastella Gelmini, with the president of the industrial confederation, Emma Marcegaglia, and with the president of the publishing house, Giuseppe Laterza, acting as moderator.
***
A second signal is coming from Venice, and also has a cardinal as its inspiration: not Ruini, but Angelo Scola, patriarch of the city.
Both cardinals — not by accident — are part of the committee for the cultural project instituted by the CEI in 2008, with Ruini as president. Scola, in Venice, is living proof of how the cultural project can be realized in original forms, creatively, and productively in a model diocese.
On September 5, Cardinal Scola opened in Venice an international conference entitled “The pluralist society,” with lectures by Italian and foreign scholars from different disciplines, Catholics and non-Catholics, from Massimo Cacciari to David Novak, from Ottfried Höffe to Cesare Mirabelli, from Ignazio Musu to Steve Schneck.
The conference marked the opening in Venice of a new study center called the “Alta Scuola Società Economia Teologia,” ASSET, which has the purpose of promoting interaction among the various disciplines, including theology, in confronting the crucial questions of a culturally “pluralist” world.
In introducing the conference, Scola invited Christians to identify and propose “common ground” on which to enact “noble compromises” among different positions. But this does not change the duty of these same Christians, whenever compromise is not possible, as in the case of abortion or of the family, to make use of conscientious objection and otherwise continue their “proclamation” in society at full voice, in the hope of a positive change.
The new Alta Scuola is the latest of a constellation of initiatives organized over the past five years by Cardinal Scola and collected under the banner of the Studium Marcianum, named after the holy patron of Venice, the evangelist Mark, including the international magazine “Oasis.” It will operate with seminars, cultural laboratories, summer courses, publications, annual lectures. The inaugural lecture, next December 17, will be delivered by the philosopher Robert Spaemann, of the University of Munich.
***
A few days earlier, on December 10, Spaemann will speak at a major conference organized in Rome by the committee for the cultural project of the CEI, meaning by Ruini himself.
And now we come to a third signal.
The conference will be entitled “Dio oggi. Con lui o senza di lui cambia tutto [God today. With him or without him, that changes everything].” This has already been covered by www.chiesa. There is a striking convergence between the theme of this conference and what Joseph Ratzinger indicated as the “priority” of his pontificate: “to make God present in this world, and provide man with access to God.” With all the more reason at a time “when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel.”
Last September 9, Cardinal Ruini — in Milan to present a book in which he talks with the secular intellectual Ernesto Galli della Loggia — emphasized the importance of this next conference on God.
On that occasion, at Ruini’s table, the director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” Giovanni Maria Vian, recalled how at its beginning ten, fifteen years ago, the cultural project launched by Ruini seemed like “a phoenix,” no one knowing what it is and where.
The rector of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Lorenzo Ornaghi, told him again that in reality the cultural project later revealed itself to be “a giant effort to transform the Christian message in popular culture.”
The Catholic University was and is a crucible of this project. It is no coincidence that the appointment and reconfirmation of the “Ruinian” Ornaghi as its rector was one of the most hotly contested episodes of the Italian Church in recent years.
Another crucial instrument of the cultural project was and is “Avvenire.” It is no accident that Ornaghi’s opponents were the same ones who in recent years also opposed Boffo as director of the bishops’ newspaper, having inflammatory false accusations circulated against both of them. This has also been reported in recent articles from www.chiesa.
The choice of Boffo’s successor as director of “Avvenire” will therefore be indicative of whether or not the Italian bishops’ conference intends to continue on the path of Ruini’s project.
Of course, Cardinal Ruini has always worked in complete harmony with the current pope and with his full support, just as he did with his predecessor.
And so does the current president of the CEI, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco. Who spoke last Friday with Pope Benedict XVI, in view of the permanent council that begins this evening with its highly anticipated inaugural address.
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nazism and Socialized Medicine
Don’t you dare point out in polite company that socialized medicine in Germany provided the mechanism for the Holocaust.
Don’t do it.
Even though it’s undeniably true from a historical standpoint, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the Big Media will vilify you, ridicule you and accuse you of minimizing the tragedy of the Holocaust.
But I don’t really care if they play that card with me. They’ve already played the race card. They’ve already played the Nazi card. They’ve already played the “extremist” card. Consider me inoculated from the venomous poison of these vipers.
Here are the facts you should know before accepting a nationalized health-care system that will place in the hands of government the very keys to your life and liberty.
Adolf Hitler didn’t launch national socialist health care in Germany. It began in the latter part of the 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, ironically as part of his “anti-socialist” legislation. Bismarck, like many of today’s U.S. politicians, believed introducing a form of what I call “socialism lite” would stave off he more virulent forms of the disease.
[…]
When a worldwide economic crisis hit in 1929, government expenditures for health care were slashed as were those for public housing, welfare payments and creation programs. The government health-care system began to apply cost-efficiency calculations to medical treatments.
The first victims of were those considered weak and “unproductive” to the interests of the state. The eugenicist ideas of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a hero of today’s collectivists promoting socialized medicine, were studied and adopted by the Germans. Charles Darwin’s notions about “survival of the fittest” were applied to social engineering policies.
Before Hitler ever came to power, Germans were already euthanizing or sterilizing large numbers of the mentally ill and the mentally retarded.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Bishops Open Facebook Page With Casino Ads
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 30 — In an attempt to establish direct contact with the faithful and spread the Gospel, even Spanish bishops are using the Internet’s social networks. The Spanish Bishops Conference opened a page on Facebook and in the first day received at least one hundred contacts. The newspaper Publico points out that surprisingly ads for casino gambling appear on the bishop’s page as well as ads to challenge Homer Simpson in an intelligence test. According to Publico, in opening a Facebook page, the bishops are following the doctrine of Pope Benedict XVI, who recently said that new communication technology is “an authentic gift for humanity” to put “at the service of all human being and all communities, especially the needy and vulnerable”.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Result in Ireland Shows That Europe’s Usurpers Have Succeeded
Eurosceptics always feared that the mechanisms of monetary union would force recalcitrant states to knuckle down in the end. This has occurred exactly as they predicted. Only a fool can believe that the Irish people have genuinely embraced the European Constitution (now Lisbon) as a “positive good”. They acquiesced with their backs against the wall.
The Irish economy contracted by 11.6pc in the 12 months to June. Nominal GDP shrank by nearer 13pc, which is what matters for debt dynamics. It is not for outsiders to judge those such as radio star Eamon Dunphy for switching sides to save “jobs and livelihoods”. The country is in deep depression.
The reason why this crisis is so grave is intimately tied to euro membership, even if this is not obvious to Irish voters. They appear to have believed the great lie — repeated by Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary — that Europe saved their country from Iceland’s fate. It did no such such thing.
Iceland’s economy contracted by 6.5pc to June (less than Germany) and is already turning the corner. Exports are surging. Unemployment fell in August to 7.7pc. Such is the magic of a floating currency. The plunging krone acted as a shock absorber. Icelandic society remains in tact.
The euro did indeed shield Ireland from the storm, but it is not the storm that does the damage — any more than 1929 crash caused the Depression. The country no longer has the means in EMU to counter debt deflation, as will become painfully clear over the next two years. It has become a laboratory for the roll-back of the modern welfare state.
There is something demented about this Lisbon drive. The EU has already pushed the integration of Europe’s states beyond viable limits. It obsesses over institutional machinery even as it ignores the social crisis of youth unemployment at 39pc in Spain, 31pc in Lithuania, 28pc in Latvia, 26pc in Ireland and Slovakia, 25pc in Italy and Hungary, 24pc in France.
It cannot run Europe’s fisheries, farms, aid projects, and budget with a minimum of competence. Yet it presses for more and is willing to sell its political soul to get its way. “The EU seems blind to a central insight of liberal democratic thought — that the means of reaching public decisions are just as important as the ends,” says Oxford professor Larry Siedentop.
The means were to ignore the verdict of the French and Dutch people when they voted no to the original text in 2005, with half Europe waiting do exactly the same had Brussels not called off the kill for the sake of decency.
Common sense called for a halt then. But no, they tried to slip it through by parliamentary majorities in the House of Commons, Holland’s Tweede Kamer, Denmark’s Folketing, and France’s Chambre, with the specific and sole of purpose of denying citizens the chance to express their will, confirming what we long suspected — that the EU’s authoritarian habits are spreading to our national legislatures. Dublin alone was left grapple with its voters, obliged to do so by its Supreme Court. And when they too said no last year, the political classes refused to accept the verdict yet again.
It is worth remembering how this Lisbon monster came to life. It was supposed to be the answer to the Danish and Swedish no votes to EMU, the Irish no to Nice, and anti-EU riots that set Gothenburg in flames.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
The Vatican Bank Has a New Laissez-Faire President: Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
The new president of the IOR is a staunch proponent of a capitalism inspired by Christianity. For him, a high birth rate is the main engine of the economy. Meanwhile, in Italy, another important replacement is being prepared: at the head of the media outlets owned by the bishops
by Sandro Magister
ROME, October 1, 2009 — At the same time when in Italy, between August and September, a dramatic ouster was underway for Dino Boffo, the sole director of the media owned by the Catholic Church, on the other shore of the Tiber there were silent, subdued preparations for a change at the top of another key organization, the IOR, Institute for Works of Religion, the Vatican bank.
The IOR itself is going through stormy times. A book describing its misconduct, with indisputable documentation, has for months been at the top of the best-seller lists. But in it, the villain is not so much the IOR as such, but its black sheep of former times, bishops Paul Marcinkus and Donato De Bonis. The banker Angelo Caloia, president of the IOR over the past fourteen years, is instead depicted in the book as a knight in shining armor, the hero who kicked out the crooks, cleaned out the stalls, and brought a virtuous image back to the pope’s bank. His resignation, and his replacement by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi (in the photo), were announced in peace and with mutual esteem between the two, on the morning of September 23.
That same day, the executive board of the Italian bishops’ conference — its thirty most prominent cardinals and bishops — met in Rome behind closed doors to discuss many issues, including the successor to Boffo. But neither that summit nor the secretive meetings that followed have produced a unified stance.
Boffo was much more than a media professional: he was the “cultural project” of Cardinal Camillo Ruini as implemented in the field of communications, he was the bridge by which the Church’s message became part of “popular culture.”
Ruini was president of the CEI for sixteen years, from 1991 to 2007, and with him the Church had become a participant in the public sphere as never before. His project was the perfect application in Italy of the global vision of John Paul II.
With him gone, opposition to the Ruini plan regained strength among the bishops, the clergy, the Catholic laity, as well as in the Vatican secretariat of state. Boffo was there to hold the line of resistance, at the editor’s desk of the newspaper “Avvenire,” at the television station Sat 2000, with the radio stations. Now that he is gone too, mowed down by Vittorio Feltri and Silvio Berlusconi’s “il Giornale,” not to mention being sidelined by influential Catholics who were among his best writers, from Vittorio Messori to Giovanni Maria Vian, the latter being the current director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” the choice of his successor will also reveal the strategy of the Italian Catholic hierarchy for the future.
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At the IOR it’s a completely different tune. There the replacement has already taken place, and in full transparency, at the wishes of the secretariat of state and with the consent of Benedict XVI.
If Angelo Caloia revealed little about himself, made only rare public appearances, and kept his thoughts hidden, the exact opposite is the case with his successor as head of the Vatican bank. With Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, we know his life and legacy, friends and acquaintances, agenda and ideas.
His most recent appearance, before his appointment, was on September 19 at the Palazzo della Borsa in Genoa. Together with the archbishop of the city and president of the CEI, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, he discussed the encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” by Benedict XVI. He said that the current global economic crisis “originated in the failure to follow the guidelines of ‘Humanae Vitae’, that is, in the rejection of life and the suppression of childbirth.”
Gotti Tedeschi had expressed the same idea in an editorial in “L’Osservatore Romano” last June 6. If the economic hegemony of the world passes from the West to China, he wrote, it will be because of their different birth rates and population densities. Demographic trends determine the increase or decrease of an economy’s productive capacity.
Gotti Tedeschi has five children, “all from the same mother,” he specifies. He lives in the countryside of Piacenza, where he was born 64 years ago, in Pontenure, not from from the Po river. He gets up very early in the morning, like a monk. In his BMW, he gets to Milan by dawn. He reads the newspapers in his office as president for Italy of Banco Santander, the biggest private bank in Europe, owned by a lay Spanish family, the Botíns. Then he goes to Mass, every morning, without fail.
He teaches financial ethics at the Catholic University of Milan. But he is also a board member of Banca San Paolo in Turin and of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the operational wing of the treasury ministry.
On September 23, while the Vatican was making public his appointment as the new president of the IOR, Gotti Tedeschi was in Rome for a decisive meeting of the Cassa, to approve a 50 billion euro infrastructure and residential construction project. The Cassa Depositi e Prestiti is the pet project of treasury minister Giulio Tremonti, for whom Gotti Tedeschi is an advisor “on economic, financial, and ethical problems in international systems,” a post instituted specifically for him.
Before his appointment, Gotti Tedeschi had never set foot in the IOR, or even paid any attention to it. But he had already been at home at the Vatican for some time. Secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had asked for his help last year, to straighten out the financial management of the Vatican’s central administration, which had a shortfall of more than 15 million euro in 2008.
The cure seems to have worked. The main culprit of the mismanagement, the secretary general of the administration, Bishop Renato Boccardo, was sent away to be bishop of Spoleto and Norcia. He had aspired to one of the top nunciature positions, and because of this had even turned down the see of Vienna. In his place now is Carlo Maria Viganò, from Lombardy, who will soon rise to the highest position of the central administration, replacing Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo.
Gotti Tedeschi was formed as a banker in the American McKinsey school of international finance. As a Catholic, he converted from “superficial” to fervent in the 1960’s, under the spiritual direction of the traditionalist thinker Giovanni Cantoni. The books that revealed his thought to the general public are “Denaro e Paradiso [Money and Paradise],” published in 2004, with a preface by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, and “Spiriti animali. La concorrenza giusta [Animal Spirits: The Right Kind of Competition],” published by Università Bocconi and with a preface by Alessandro Profumo, president of the largest Italian bank, Unicredit.
But after this there were other publications that were less prominent, but no less revealing. In 2007, Gotti Tedeschi, the most Catholic of the bankers, signed an ultraliberal manifesto in 13 points, spearheaded by the former secretary of the highly secularist radical party, Daniele Capezzone. The manifesto proposed a single 20 percent “flat tax,” presidential government according to the American or French model, tax credits for health care and education, the requirement that the public administrator pay for all damages incurred, the changing of the retirement age to 65, tax exemption for overtime work, the abolition of professional associations and of the legal status of study certificates.
Years ago, Gotti Tedeschi proposed awarding the Nobel prize in economics to John Paul II, for his encyclical “Centesimus Annus.” More recently, he nominated Benedict XVI for “Caritas in Veritate,” which he participated in writing.
He also wished the Nobel prize for English prime minister Gordon Brown, for supporting his ambitious proposal in “L’Osservatore Romano,” “advantageous” for all, of investment in poor countries, on behalf of the two or three billion people who are only waiting to improve their lives.
The IOR seems too narrow for a new president with such vast and explosive proposals. But the adventure has just begun.
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Killed for ‘Not Saying Bye’
A father of two was kicked to death by three teenagers in Cambridgeshire for asking for a light and “not saying goodbye”, a jury has heard.
Piotr Bielicki, 25, was walking home in Peterborough when the men attacked him, Cambridge Crown Court heard.
Erikas Cicienas, now 20, Ricardas Kozevnikovas, 19, and Augustinas Baltrunas, 19, all of Peterborough, deny murder.
More than 60 injuries were found on Mr Bielicki’s body, the court heard.
Prosecutor Nigel Goldsmark said the attack, on 13 September last year, was “savage”, “casual” and “mindless”.
Imprint of shoe
Mr Bielicki’s alleged attackers, who were then aged 18 and 19, kicked him so hard in the stomach that blood vessels broke, he added.
One stamped on his head and left an imprint of a shoe before the group took his mobile phone and left him on the floor, the court heard.
Mr Godsmark said all three had denied knowledge of the attack when questioned by detectives.
But Mr Baltrunas had told friends how Mr Bielicki had been set upon after asking for a light and “not saying goodbye”.
Fibres matching the victim’s clothes had been found on Mr Baltrunas’s clothing and blood matching Mr Bielicki’s had been found on shoes worn by Mr Cicienas and Mr Kozevnikovas, said Mr Godsmark.
Mr Cicienas had also taken the SIM card from Mr Bielicki’s mobile, transferred it to his phone, then made a call to his girlfriend, the court heard.
Captured on CCTV
The three men had been sitting on a bench drinking beer when Mr Bielicki walked by at about 2100 BST.
“He was attacked, punched and kicked and left lying on the ground close to the bench and the beer cans from which these three defendants had been drinking,” said Mr Godsmark.
The three men were filmed by CCTV cameras as they made their way around Peterborough after the attack, and Mr Kozevnikovas was seen to kick a homeless man in the head after he asked for change, Mr Godsmark said.
The court heard Mr Bielicki had moved from his native Poland — where he had studied business management — in 2005 to look for work.
The trial continues.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tories Offer a ‘Pick Your Doctor’ Health Revolution Using Ebay-Style Rating System
Patients will be able to choose their hospital consultant as part of a health revolution to be unveiled by the Tories today.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will pledge to give far more choice over how you are treated — and by whom.
He will also promise to publish ward-level data on superbug rates and more details on the number of mixed- sex wards in hospitals, enabling patients to make an informed choice over where they are treated.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Serbia: Diplomas Given to Officers Trained in Cesena
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 29 — Thirty officers part of the Serbian highway police force successfully completed a training course at the Scuola CAPS in Cesena and today they received their course completion certificates from the Italian authorities. The ceremony took place at the Italian Embassy in Belgrade where, alongside Ambassador Armando Varricchio, undersecretaries to the Interior Ministry from both countries were present. Nitto Francesco Palma for Italy and Dragan Markovic, the head of the Serbian highway police administration , General Balduino Simone, the head of the Ministry of the Interior at the central training department all attended the event. The 30 Serbian police officers will carry out their duties along Corridor 10, the nearly 800km strip connecting Belgrade with Thessaloniki, Greece. “Today’s ceremony is further evidence of the concrete friendship and collaboration between Italy and Serbia, a collaboration which is destined to become even stronger also to fight organised crime, a common threat that is preventing social growth and development,” said Nitto Francesco Palma, who yesterday and today took part in a regional conference on fighting organised crime in the Balkans, held in Belgrade. Ambassador Varricchio stressed how “the affirmation of the value of the law” is an indispensible condition for a profitable development of relations, which are already excellent, between Italy and Serbia. Thanks to Italy and the recognition of the professionalism of our police forces were given by Undersecretary Markovic and General Jovanovic. Serbian police officials took a 4-week training course at the state police training centre in Cesena (CAPS), one of the five schools of its kind in Europe, together with institutes located in Lubeck (Germany), Warsaw (Poland), Imatra (Finland), and Klagenfurt (Austria). (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Imam Al Azhar, No Full Veil in Schools
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, OCTOBER 5 — The great imam of the University Al Azhar in Cairo, Mohammed Said Tantawi, banned the use of full veil during classes. The imam spoke during a visit in a girls’-only school, a subsidiary to the great Sunnite theological centre close to the Egyptian capital. The news was reported today by independent newspaper al Masri el Yom. The imam, who was visiting the school to get updates on the situation of the new H1N1 flu, was surprised “when he saw a girl wearing the niqab (the full veil which cover all but the eyes)”. Tantawi then told the girl to immediately take off the veil, explaining that “it is a habit that has got nothing to do with religion”. Visibly “irritated”, the imam announced his intention to forbid the use of niqab in all subsidiary institutions of the al Azhar University. Still according to the newspaper, the Further Education Minister, Hani Helal, decided to ban access to youth hostel to girls wearing the niqab. Most Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab, a veil covering the hair, but the increasing diffusion of the full veil is now raising concerns. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Police Arrest Christian Father for Attempting to Free Kidnapped Daughter
by Mary Abdelmassih
Alexandria, Egypt (AINA) — At dawn on Saturday, October 3, 2009, Egyptian State Security forces arrested a group of Christian Copts in different parts of the city in Alexandria, after severely assaulting them in front of their neighbors. Their wives were also arrested, but because of intense objection protests by neighbors at the way they were handled and of the screams of their terrified children, they were released. The men who were arrested are relatives of Rafaat Girges Habib, a man who helped a Coptic father free his kidnapped daughter from her Muslim husband’s home. The arrests continued until Habib turned himself in to the police.
Egypt4Christ, based in Alexandria, reported that what started this incident was a telephone call on September 30 from Myrna, the only daughter of Coptic accountant Gamal Labib Hanna, in which she begged him to come and save her from her Muslim husband, Mohamad Hefnawy.
Myrna was abducted 10 months ago, forced to convert to Islam and married by a ‘customary marriage contract’ by Osama Hefnawy to his son Mohammad. Being 19 years old at the time, Myrna was under-age for a girl to be married. According to Islamic Sharia a woman cannot get married before she reaches the age of 21 years; she can only get married before through a mandate from her father or uncles alone. Those requirements can be waived for the benefit of a non-relative only through a court ruling, which was not obtained in Myrna’s case.
On their way to free his daughter, the father, together with his brother and brother-in-law, passed by a cafe near St. George’s Church, Sidi Bishr, where Rafaat Girges Habib, a plumber who has done jobs in the father’s home, volunteered to accompany them to bring Myrna back.
As they went to the apartment where Myrna was held, they were met by Osama Hefnawy, father of Mohamed and five other Muslims, who threatened them. A struggle ensued, and Myrna left with her father. She was taken away to an establishment dealing with abduction cases like hers, especially that it was found out that she was six months pregnant.
Osama Hefnawy immediately filed a report with the police and the State Security Headquarters in Al-Farana, Alexndri downtown. Myrna’s paternal uncles were arrested and charged with abduction, together with her father. Myrna’s family apartment was broken into and the shop of Rafaat Girges Habib was completely demolished by the police.
Myrna’s father was forced to go to the police station to negotiate the release of his relatives and “for matters to be resolved amicably” as he was told by Lieutenant Ahmed Mekki, of the Police Department of Investigation, who contacted him on his cell phone.
Myrna’s uncles were forced to go and bring her back to the police station, where she was handed over to Osama Hefnawy. In addition the police took the necessary commitments from her relatives not to harass him. Coptic father Labib was released Friday morning.
Lawyers reported to Egypt4Christ that the arrested Copts were tortured and their clothes were smeared with blood, especially Romany, brother of Rafaat Girges Habib.
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Egypt Cleric ‘To Ban Full Veils’
Egypt’s highest Muslim authority has said he will issue a religious edict against the growing trend for full women’s veils, known as the niqab.
Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, called full-face veiling a custom that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.
Although most Muslim women in Egypt wear the Islamic headscarf, increasing numbers are adopting the niqab as well.
The practice is widely associated with more radical trends of Islam.
The niqab question reportedly arose when Sheikh Tantawi was visiting a girls’ school in Cairo at the weekend and asked one of the students to remove her niqab.
The Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yom quoted him expressing surprise at the girl’s attire and telling her it was merely a tradition, with no connection to religion or the Koran.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Restored XII Century Malaga Koran Presented in Rabat
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, OCTOBER 1 — During Andalusia in Morocco Week, in Rabat the Tres Culturas del Mediterraneo Foundation presented the restoration, the copy and the introductory study of a XII century Koran found in Cutar (Malaga) in 2003. A statement was released by the foundation which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. At the meeting in the National Library of the King of Morocco, where the reproduction copy of the ancient Koran will be kept, the president of the Foundation Tres Culturas and royal consultant André Azoulay, representing King Mohamed VI, expressed the hope that the institution would become a conclusive part of Mediterranean cohabitation. Discovered in June 2003 in Cutar during the restoration of an ancient building, the Koran came to light after centuries with two manuscripts on judicial and religious topics. The document, unique in its characteristics and invaluable, was restored by a commission formed by the foundation and the cultural councilor of the Council of Andalusia, as per an agreement signed in 2007. The actual restoration took place at the Malaga provincial Historic Archive. Aside from the reproduction there is also a 170 page historic and analytic introductory study produced by the foundation. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas Children’s TV Program Again Calls for the ‘Slaughter of Jews’
A popular Hamas children’s program that usually gives advice to youngsters, such as instructing them to listen to their parents, aired a call for the “slaughter” of Jews in Israel late last month, according to Palestinian Media Watch.
All Jews must be “erased from our land,” Nassur, a stuffed bear who hosts the weekly program, Tomorrow’s Pioneers, on Hamas’s Al-Aksa television, explained to a child who called in to a September 22 show. “We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land… we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Hamas and Fatah to Sign Unity Deal in Middle East Peace Boost
Hamas and Fatah, the feuding Palestinian factions, have agreed to reconcile later this month, which could remove a significant obstacle to a Middle East peace deal.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What Temple? Fatah Says ‘Only a Muslim Holy Site’
‘U.S. partner’ demands Jews, Christians be banned from praying on Mount
JERUSALEM — The Temple Mount does not exist alongside the Western Wall, and neither Jews nor Christians should be allowed to pray on the Mount site, Dimitri Diliani, the spokesman for Fatah in Jerusalem, told WND in an interview.
Fatah, once named by the U.S. as a Mideast “peace partner,” is the party led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Diliani spoke hours after Fatah and PA officials were accused of inciting a riot on the Temple Mount, claiming Jews were threatening the site.
“Don’t use the term Temple Mount,” Diliani lectured WND. “It doesn’t exist. I don’t know where it is. I cannot see any Temple. Can you? No one can find any trace of it. The area you refer to is only a Muslim holy site.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ahmadinejad Has No Jewish Roots
In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s meteoric rise from mayor of Tehran to president of one of the most influential countries in the Middle East took everyone by surprise. One of the main reasons for the astonishment was that so little was known about him.
One recently published claim about his background comes from an article in the Daily Telegraph. Entitled “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past”, it claims that his family converted to Islam after his birth. The claim is based on a number of arguments, a key one being that his previous surname was Sabourjian which “derives from weaver of the sabour, the name for the Jewish tallit shawl in Persia”.
Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. “There is no such meaning for the word ‘sabour’ in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name,” he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word “tzitzit” to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article’s findings that the “-jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending,” he stated.
Upon closer inspection, a completely different interpretation of “Sabourjian” emerges. According to Robert Tait, a Guardian correspondent who travelled to Ahmadinejad’s native village in 2005, the name “derives from thread painter — sabor in Farsi — a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan is situated”. This is confirmed by Kasra Naji, who also wrote a biography of Ahmadinejad and met his family in his native village. Carpet weaving or colouring carpet threads are not professions associated with Jews in Iran.
According to both Naji and Tait, Ahmadinejad’s father Ahmad was in fact a religious Shia, who taught the Quran before and after Ahmadinejad’s birth and their move to Tehran. So religious was Ahmad Sabourjian that he bought a house near a Hosseinieh, a religious club that he frequented during the holy month of Moharram to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hossein.
Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad’s mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.
The reason that Ahmadinejad’s father changed his surname has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.
The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.
According to Ahmadinejad’s relatives the new name emphasised the family’s piety and their dedication to their religion and its founder. This is something that the president and his relatives in Tehran and Aradan have maintained to the present day. Not because they are trying to deny their past, but because they are proud of it.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan: Our Goal is Restoration of Ottoman Empire Might
Turkey’s goal is to live in peace with all countries and restore the might of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “I believe that each Turkish family should have at least three children. We believe in Turkey’s future and call on everybody to believe,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Kirkuk: A Christian Nurse Killed. Archbishop Sako: The Situation is “Worrying”
Yesterday, the police discovered the corpse, which showed “signs of torture.” On the evening of 3 October three people shot at Imad Elias Abdul Karim, then seized him. The man, a 55 year-old father of two, is known within the world of healthcare. Archbishop of Kirkuk: Christians are targets of kidnappings and assassinations”.
Kirkuk (AsiaNews) — Imad Elias Abdul Karim, 55 year-old Christian nurse who was kidnapped on 3 October in front of his home in the suburb of Mualimin in Kirkuk, has been found dead. Local sources tell AsiaNews that yesterday evening, at about 11, police found the body of man “thrown” on the road between the district and Dumez and Asra Mafqudin Wa: the same place where in the past Risq Aziz — a Christian and ranking official of the city — and two other women were killed. From an initial medical report, the body “has obvious signs of torture.”
Yesterday, Msgr. Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, appealed to authorities and local papers for the man’s release, calling the situation of Christians “worrying” because in recent months they have increasingly become the “target of threats, kidnappings and assassinations.” The attack took place on the evening of October 3. During the hectic assault, the group — made up of three people — opened fire, wounding the man, a husband and father of two children. Local sources state that Imad Elias Abdulkarim was on his way to his car when a “group of three people who shot” at the man appeared. The assailants kidnapped him, disappearing without trace.
“Imad — says a Christian — was well known in the health circles in Kirkuk”. Requests for a ransom or the man’s professional activity could be behind the seizure”.
The Christian community confirms the climate of “fear” for the numerous cases of kidnappings and killings this year. “Following the kidnapping of Doctor Samir Gorj”, reveals a local source, “some families have left the city. The government does nothing and Christians — he complains — have become an easy target”. Yesterday afternoon, the Archdiocese of Kirkuk had launched an appeal for the liberation of 55-year old nurse. In a message to the media and city officials, Msgr. Louis Sako confirmed that “Christians are a target of violence” and denounced those who “seek political gain” or are “taking advantage of a lack of order” to commit kidnapping and demand “ransom.” “Everybody knows — the prelate recalled — that Christians are citizens of this country and this city and no one has any doubts about their devotion to their country or their sincerity.” He speaks of “acts against Christians who want to have a role in rebuilding the nation,” of “a culture of humiliation that we reject with force” and “calls on government authorities, the decent people of Iraq and Kirkuk, to do everything to protect all citizens, whoever they are”. Renewing the call for “dialogue and sincere cooperation”, Msgr. Sako asked “the kidnappers of Imad Elias Abdul Karim to fear God” and to release the hostage so he could “return to his family and children as soon as possible.” An appeal that went unheard. (DS)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Foreign Aid in July at 719 Million Dollars
(ANSAmed) — ROME, OCTOBER 5 — Foreign financial air to Lebanon in the first seven months of 2009 amounted to 718.58 million dollars according to the ICE office in Beirut citing data from the Lebanese Ministry of Finance. In July and August financing was 94 and 77.4 million dollars respectively. The August amount includes a donation of 2.1 million dollars and 10.1 million dollars in financing allocated by Italy. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Muslim Women Boxers to Wear Hijab at 2012 Olympics
THE burqa boxers are coming. Young women are training in Afghanistan to fight in Islamic dress at the 2012 London Olympics.
Wearing hijabs beneath their headguards and clothes that cover their bodies, 25 female pugilists are preparing for their bouts in gruelling training sessions at Kabul’s Olympic stadium, once the scene of public executions by the Taliban.
The team, whose ages range from 14-25, were recruited by their coach, Fadir Sharify, a former professional boxer. He persuaded the girls’ families that it would not be inappropriate for them to take to the ring.
The 2012 summer Games will be the first time women have been allowed to box under the Olympic banner.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama Angry at General Stanley McChrystal Speech on Afghanistan
The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal’s comments on strategy for the war.
He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to “Chaos-istan”.
When asked whether he would support it, he said: “The short answer is: No.”
He went on to say: “Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.”
The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Billions in U.S. Aid Never Reached Pakistan Army
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India.
Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008, while Al Qaeda regrouped, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals tell The Associated Press.
The account of the generals, who asked to remain anonymous because military rules forbid them from speaking publicly, was backed up by other retired and active generals, former bureaucrats and government ministers.
At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a Washington ally, served as both chief of staff and president, making it easier to divert money intended for the military to bolster his sagging image at home through economic subsidies.
“The army itself got very little,” said retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani, who was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. under Musharraf. “It went to things like subsidies, which is why everything looked hunky-dory. The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Billions in Aid Never Reached Pakistan Army
Sources say U.S. funds diverted to domestic economy, fighting India
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India.
Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008, while al-Qaida regrouped, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals tell The Associated Press.
The account of the generals, who asked to remain anonymous because military rules forbid them from speaking publicly, was backed up by other retired and active generals, former bureaucrats and government ministers.
At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a Washington ally, served as both chief of staff and president, making it easier to divert money intended for the military to bolster his sagging image at home through economic subsidies.
“The army itself got very little,” said retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani, who was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. under Musharraf. “It went to things like subsidies, which is why everything looked hunky-dory. The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget.”
Generals and ministers say the diversion of the money hurt the military in very real ways:
- Helicopters critical to the battle in rugged border regions were not available. At one point in 2007, more than 200 soldiers were trapped by insurgents in the tribal regions without a helicopter lift to rescue them.
- The limited night vision equipment given to the army was taken away every three months for inventory and returned three weeks later.
- Equipment was broken, and training was lacking. It was not until 2007 that money was given to the Frontier Corps, the front-line force, for training.
More money for Pakistan The details on misuse of American aid come as Washington again promises Pakistan money. Legislation to triple general aid to Pakistan cleared Congress last week. The legislation also authorizes “such sums as are necessary” for military assistance to Pakistan, upon several conditions. The conditions include certification that Pakistan is cooperating in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that Pakistan is making a sustained commitment to combating terrorist groups and that Pakistan security forces are not subverting the country’s political or judicial processes.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia Bans the Comedy “Bruno”
[translation by VH]
“Bruno”, which the comedy in which the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen plays the fairy Austrian fashion reporter Brüno, will not be show in OIC member state Malaysia. The censorship commitee choked several times on scenes in the film and finally decided to ban the whole thing.
According to the distributors there was no reason given for the ban, but it is not a surprise. The censorship committee of the Muslim majority country has for a long time been criticized for excessively cutting films.
Malaysia has issued bans before: “Babe”, “Pig in the City,” “Saving Private Ryan” and comedies like “Zoolander” and “Austin Powers” were also hit by this.
The Minister of Information, Communications and Culture, Rais Yatim, does think that the distributors should have the ability to appeal against the decision though. But the true Malaysian fans will not to let this just pass by, and probably will see if they can get illegal copies of “Bruno”.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia: Woman Will Still Receive a Beating for Having a Beer
[translation by VH]
A woman in Malaysia will receive beatings for having had a beer. A religious court has upheld the verdict today, as the Malaysia state news agency Bernama reports. The Appeals Court of the State of Pahang has not yet determined when the sentence will be carried out.
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old mother of two children, will be the first woman to receive lashes under Islamic law, which only applies to Muslims. She will receive six lashes because she drank a beer in a nightclub. Alcohol is strictly forbidden for Muslims in Malaysia.
Malaysia is member of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The case against Kartika has drawn international attention. Human rights groups have criticized the verdict. Minister for Women Affairs in Malaysia, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, said the punishment is rather “too harsh and disproportionate to the offense.”
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Eight Foot Long Crocodile Jailed for Loitering in Outback Town
A crocodile has been thrown behind bars at a country police station after it was caught ‘loitering’ in a residential area.
The 8ft saltwater crocodile was taken into custody by police near the tiny outback town of Gunbalanya after residents reported it was ‘hanging around’..
The female crocodile was clearly disoriented and had been spotted trying to fight a fence, attempting to get it into a ‘death roll’ — the term for when crocodiles spin their prey around underwater until they drown.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Sydney Nightclub Ban Turns Race Row
IT DIDN’T matter that Dr Saade Saade is hard-working and well-educated — when he tried to get into a trendy Sydney nightclub he claims it made a decision to bar him simply because he is Lebanese.
The Balmain dentist has accused Bungalow 8 at King St Wharf of being “patronising, humiliating” and acting illegally when it bounced him at the door in September and again in November 2007.
He took the club to the Anti-Discrimination Board for mediation. When that failed he went to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, which last week ruled his account was “credible” but he did not have enough evidence to uphold his complaint.
Dr Saade said the first time he tried to enter the club a staff member of Mediterranean appearance stopped him and said: “You know what it’s like, they don’t let us in.”
He said the man continued: “It’s our fault, we have created this reputation for ourselves and that’s why we are not allowed into clubs.’We have no one else to blame, it is our fault.”
Dr Saade left and wrote an email to the venue’s management complaining of race discrimination. A manager wrote back offering him entry next time if he called in advance.
But Dr Saade declined and said: “I want to be able to line up like anyone else and get let in like anyone else. I don’t want preferential treatment.”
Dr Saade said he and his brother returned two months later to meet female friends in the half-empty club. They were refused entry on the grounds they were “not on the guest list”.
When they said their female friends who were allowed in were not on the list either, the doorman said they must have “slipped through”.
“It’s extremely patronising,” he said at his Balmain surgery. “We’re not silly people, we know what’s going on.
“I’m a credible person in society. I help people on a daily basis.
“A lot of people have this experience. I believe in equal opportunity.”
In tribunal hearings, Bungalow 8 denied its staff told Dr Saade people of his appearance were unwelcome. It also denied having a policy of refusing to serve people based on race.
But Dr Saade said the club was one of many with an unofficial policy of refusing service to people of certain ethnic backgrounds.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Piracy: Alakrana Capture, Spanish Agents to Negotiate
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, OCTOBER 5 — The Spanish government sent a mission of agents from the National Intelligence Centre to Somalia today to negotiate the release of Basque fishing boat, Alakrana, and its 36 crew members who were captured 6 days ago by pirates in the waters of the Indian Ocean, report sources from the Defence Ministry cited by Spanish National Radio. The Foreign Minister contacted Somali authorities to “seek a rapid solution to the capture” of the boat, which has been monitored closely by Spanish frigate, Canarias, and another French naval vessel. Spanish ambassador to Kenya, Nicolas Martin Cinto, in statements to El Mundo, said that “Spain has no way out other than negotiating” with the pirates. Cinto played a key role also in negotiations with pirates when fishing boat, Playa de Bakio was captured. The situation was resolved after 6 days with an alleged ransom payment. In the meanwhile, the two pirates associated with the capture of Alakarana, arrested yesterday by Spanish authorities and held on the Canarias frigate, will be transferred to Spain on the order of the Audiencia Nacional to face trial. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hispanic Caucus Calls for Ending Program That Identified 100,000 Illegal Aliens, Many With Criminal Records
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has asked the Obama administration to “immediately terminate” a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program that has identified more than 120,000 illegal aliens over the past three years.
[…]
As this story went to press, the congressional representatives had not responded. However, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) commented on the Hispanic Caucus’s letter about 287(g), telling CNSNews.com: “This is just another ploy by amnesty advocates to open our borders and stop enforcing the rule of law. This program has been an effective tool in cracking down on illegal immigration and enforcing our laws. We should make it a nationwide effort instead of shutting it down.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How Immigration and Multiculturalism Destroyed Detroit
For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash everywhere! Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and ignored it.
Tens of thousands and then, hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps! With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and in once case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press—all on American taxpayer dollars. A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” flourish in Detroit. If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.
Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees. He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance. As a black man, he said, “I am the MFIC.” The IC meant ‘in charge’. You can figure out the rest. Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.
As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state. Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit.
As the Muslims moved in, the whites moved out. As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! Detroit may be one our best examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike and total separation from America.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Juveniles: Fewer Foreigners to Reception Centres
(ANSAmed) — NAPLES, OCTOBER 5 — For the first time in six years the number of Italian minors entering the first reception centres, the centres where juveniles in state of arrest or in custody are held until the validation hearing, is higher than the number of foreign minors. A report issued by the ISMU foundation, the institution that carries out research on, and develops initiatives for the Italian multiethnic and multicultural community, shows that number of Italian juveniles entering these centres has remained stable (between 1,500 and 1,600 per year), while the number of foreign juveniles fell below 1,400 in 2008, after 2,300 in 2004, 2,100 in 2005, 2,000 in 2006 and 1,800 in 2007. Most foreign minors entering first reception centres were Rumanian: 381, almost half the number recorded in 2007 (726). In 2008, 198 Moroccans were received in the centres, 177 Serbs from Montenegro, 125 citizens from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 123 Croatians. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Cabinet Raises Requirements for Marriage Migration
THE HAGUE, 03/10/09 — The cabinet announced a package of measures Friday to reduce marriage migration.
Marriage between nephews and nieces will no longer be permitted. “A legislative amendment will be drawn up to ensure that new marriages between blood relatives up to the third and fourth degree are no longer accepted as grounds for admission,” according to a cabinet statement.
The Dutch language test, which has to be taken before departing for the Netherlands at the country’s Dutch embassy, will be made more difficult (A1 level). “A written test will also be added to the exam,” which currently only covers speaking and comprehension skills.
Also, the Netherlands will place liaison officers from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) at its embassies to prevent forced marriages. “Here, simultaneous hearings with both marriage partners are being considered in the case of suspicions of a marriage of convenience, before the foreign partner leaves for the Netherlands.”
The IND will also tighten up checkups within the first year after the arrival of the marriage partner in the Netherlands on whether the partners still comply with the existing income requirements. For example, the ‘importing’ partner must earn at least 120 percent of the minimum wage.
The cabinet will also study a series of other measures. For example, whether family migrants can be asked to make a “supplementary integration course effort” after arrival in the Netherlands will be “considered”. Additionally, the cabinet is “investigating” whether the importing partner “can be made responsible for the entire integration process for the foreign partner.”
The cabinet will also investigate “the possibility of raising the minimum age for recognition of marriages concluded abroad from 15 to 18 by means of a treaty amendment.” At the moment, the marriage of a minor concluded abroad can still be recognised in Dutch law.
Regarding polygamy, “possibilities will be explored for no longer recognising polygamous marriages concluded abroad in the Netherlands.” At the same time, the “desirability will be considered” of giving the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) powers to launch prosecutions of polygamy committed outside the Netherlands by aliens living in the Netherlands.
Finally, “whether an age threshold of 24 years can be introduced” in the European family reunification directive, to be updated in 2010, will be investigated. In any case, the Netherlands will “propose an educational requirement for the partner in the Netherlands as a condition for family reunification.”
The cabinet says the labour market participation of marriage migrants is only 25 percent. These are often women who are “sometimes deliberately kept at home.” Due to a lack of knowledge of the Dutch language and their low educational level, “the risk exists that they will not be able to bring up their children adequately,” which can lead to “school dropout, nuisance and in the worst cases, crime.” These “problems (…) put pressure on the (government) budgets.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: More Landings in Murcia and Alicante
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, OCTOBER 5 — A new wave of illegal immigrant landings has taken place on Spain’s coasts, where in the past 12 hours, eight boats with 70 migrants onboard have been intercepted. The landings, report sources from the Marine Rescue group, occurred on the coast of Cartagena (Murcia) and Santa Pola (Alicante). In Murcia, 48 immigrants travelling on four vessels were intercepted at dawn 50km from the coast of Cartagena. The migrants, all Algerians, were stopped and sent to temporary holding centres where they will stay until they are repatriated. Another 10 migrants, including three minors, were intercepted yesterday afternoon 5 miles from the Calblanque (Murcia) beach. The wave of arrivals, aided by good weather after last week’s storms, also occurred off the coast of Alicante, where four boats with about 30 people onboard were stopped at dawn by security officials in Santa Pola and on the island of Tabarca. According to sources from the Red Cross, all of the migrants are in good physical condition except for a 15-year-old with second degree burns who was treated at the Santa Pola hospital. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘Gay’ Sex Morally Good, Says Obama Pick
Tapped to head Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
“Gay” sex is morally good and is as “wonderful” as heterosexual relations, according to Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s nominee to become commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“Gay sex is morally good,” she said. “Now you may think that might be a little crazy to go out there and say gay sex is good. But think a second. Society definitely believes that heterosexual sex is good. Right. Heterosexual sex within a certain framework — marriage — I mean, you can’t get more dewy-eyed and romantic in this society about how wonderful that is.”
Continued Feldblum: “If you’re not being cynical for the moment, I think that does reflect a correct understanding that sex is often a basic building block for intimacy and that intimacy and connections within couples and within families are integral building blocks for a healthy society.”
Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown law professor. She offered her sex remarks at a UCLA symposium on homosexuality available on YouTube.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ministers of Euthanasia, Part 1
Responding to the charge that President Obama’s national health care proposals would include “death panels,” John Meachem of Newsweek wrote, “I Was A Teenage Death Panelist” (Sept. 12, 2009) in which he remarked that “the origins of what became the dreaded death panels show the idea to be sensible and humane… We have to think about death differently… Without a shift from late-in-life overtreatment to a wider use of the hospice model, costs will continue to grow to a likely unsustainable level.” In the same edition of Newsweek, Evan Thomas (who said Obama is “sort of God”) wrote “The Case for Killing Granny,” in which he commented: “Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable… A significant portion of the savings will have to come from the money we spend on seniors at the end of life.”
The global PE for well over 100 years has been promoting euthanasia. In an earlier NewsWithViews column, I quoted H.G. Wells in Anticipations (1901) describing the coming “world state” where there would be “the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless” people. And in Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World (1907), he said there would be Ministers of Euthanasia (like Jack Kevorkian) in 1998 under American Socialism.
That the PE had the beginning of the 21st century as the time Socialism would be adopted in the U.S. fits with what John Loeffler, host of Steel-on-Steel, referred to as an 80-year period for cultural change. For example, German culture began to change in the mid-1800s, so that by the 1930s, Germans were willing to accept National Socialism (Nazis). Therefore, with the change in American culture beginning in the late 1920s with Socialists like John Dewey, Norman Thomas, etc. the 80-year movement toward Socialism here would be complete about now.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Nominee Praised Polygamy
Contended traditional marriage shouldn’t have privileged status
President Obama’s nominee to become commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission signed a manifesto praising polygamy and arguing traditional marriage should not be privileged above other forms of union.
Chai Feldblum, an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor, is a signatory to an online petition entitled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships.”
[…]
Among the stated “partnerships” the petition seeks to protect is “households in which there is more than one conjugal partner.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New Shar’iah Charity Fund: Underwriting Radical Islam?
(IsraelNN.com) A new global Islamic charity fund set to launch in early 2010 may become the vehicle to support something entirely different, according to Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who warned that the new charity must be watched carefully.
In an exclusive interview Monday with Israel National News, Jasser expressed deep concern that the World Zakat Fund, established in part by the Malaysian government, may be “nothing more than a ruse to give transnational Islamist movements and their controlling Muslim theocrats an economic power base.”
The new fund will collect donations from the 2.5 percent “zakat” set aside under Shar’iah law by observant Muslims who have the wherewithal to save money. According to a statement released to the media, it is the first Islamic charity fund ever to be established.
The fund is hoping to raise nearly a billion dollars by the end of its first year. Humayon Dar, CEO of BMB Islamic, the Shar’iah adviser to the fund, said last week that donors have made soft commitments of approximately $50 million thus far.
That could grow to as much as $10 billion within the first decade, however: Dar estimated there are some 40,000 high-net-worth Muslims in the Middle East alone, including 400 billionaires. He added that between $20 billion to $30 billion in zakat is distributed in the Muslim world each year.
‘Giving the Fox the Keys to the Henhouse’
Jasser told INN that he believes the fund would simply serve to consolidate financial power “in vast orders of magnitude” and then hand it over to the member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)…
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Should Christians, Muslims and Jews Unite?
Everywhere we turn these days, Muslims, Christians and Jews seem to be making calls for interfaith unity. The spirit of the age seems to be of the opinion that to be true “peacemakers” we must join together for various prayer initiates or justice-related issues. On the surface, these efforts have a certain appeal. Religious pluralism is after all the new, if unspoken global religion.
[…]
According to the rabbis, the primary reason for befriending and working together with devout Muslims of good-will such as Mr. Oktar is to make a unified stand with righteous and devout gentiles against the increasing global tide of secularism, materialism and unbelief. For the rabbis, this is an issue of justice and fostering peacemaking friendships.
[…]
Consider the reality: At last week’s gathering of a couple thousand Muslims on Capitol Hill, there was not a single unified denunciation of the recent terrorist plots that were uncovered throughout the U.S. the very same week. Beyond the complete silence at the recent gathering of Muslims in our nation’s Capitol, consider also that among Warren’s co-speakers at the ISNA conference was Warrith Dean Umar, whose book “Judaiology” features the following statement:
[Jews] are an amazing people who can steal you blind as you watch. If you discover the theft, they can put you to sleep. If you wake up to them, they can put you back to sleep with mind games, tricks of fancy, smoke screens, and magic. Henry Ford almost uncovered them.
As I said, the devil is always in the details. While Warren used his open platform at the ISNA conference to declare his fight against the negative stereotyping of Muslims, the very same conference also gave an open platform to a disgusting racist, a brazen anti-Semite and supporter of violent jihad.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will California Become America’s First Failed State?
Living in this state, I’m at the forefront of what is happening. Watching it in slow motion, though quickly gaining speed, I find this disheartening. However it’s all too clear what is happening and far too clear on the whom is repsonsible. Arnold, despite his power as Governor, presence, popularity, and shear elan, cannot combat the hordes of looters and entrenched bureaucrat enablers (the two feed each other in a very sick dance of death) which have done nothing but suck the life out of this state. They prevent the people and institutions from saving themselves, and when they inevitably fail, they claim more regulation is needed…and thus more power as they feast on the carcass of whatever is left. A smash and grab…who loot and yet require those of us who make the things they loot to give value to said loot. When we’re all gone, as is happening now, they’ll find themselves in a most interesting position.
Yes, I’m quoting Ayn Rand, but why try to reinvent the wheel when she already described it most elegantly? Scary she saw this coming so many years ago in such abysmally accurate detail.
The article, however descriptive, unfortunately degenerates into leftist dogma in an effort to offer a solution to the problems plaguing this state. Problems inflicted by the very leftist dogma that is proposed to save us; I’d call it irony if it weren’t so screwed up.
I see the possibility in our future whereby we are like the Spanish in the times of the Reconquista. It may be that one day, after we’ve put this country back together in some semblance of what it was, though different as it must be, we will have to come back here and retake this plot of land by force of arms. Should this unfortunate set of events come to pass, I for one would like to be with those at the forefront, because this is a beautiful place; and to see it destroyed as it would be…as it likely will be as those who have no capability of caring about it move in and desecrate it…is not something that should be suffered.