Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/21/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/21/2009The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Britain to allow its prisoners in jail to vote. If the UK doesn’t comply with the ECHR directive for the next general election, the vote may be nullified as illegal.

In other news, Mexico City has become the first political entity in Latin America to legalize gay marriage.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CSP, Esther, Fjordman, Henrik, Insubria, JD, Lurker from Tulsa, Sean O’Brian, Steen, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Financial Crisis
Report: Oklahoma’s Revenue Shortfalls Worst in Nation
Spain: 47% Fewer Homes Build in Third Quarter
UK: Priest Outrages Police by Telling Congregation: ‘My Advice to Poor is to Shoplift’
 
USA
Frank Gaffney: START Over
General Defends Court Martial for Pregnant Soldiers
Record-Breaking Storm Closes US Federal Government
US Transfers 12 Gitmo Detainees to Home Countries
Yellowstone’s Plumbing Exposed
 
Europe and the EU
Bad Weather: Spain, Heavy Snowfall Alert
Bad Weather: Italy Still Suffering From Cold Snap
EU: Who’d Ha Thunk it? Italian Constitutional Court Tells ECHR to Take a Hike, Asserts National Sovereignty
France: Carbon Tax Raises Prices by 0.3% in Q1 of 2010
German Catholic Leader Criticizes Islamic Treatment of Christians
Italy: Palermo Drug Bust Nets 67
Italy: Major Asbestos Trial Opens
Italy: Millions Watch Berlusconi Discuss Marriage on TV Chat Show
Italy: Berlusconi Photos Vanish From Google
Italy: Facebook Asks for Govt Meeting to Discuss Internet Row
Klaus: Global Warming No Science But “New Religion”
Sarkozy Demands Eurostar Restart Tuesday
Spain: Telecinco and Cuatro Merger Forms Biggest TV Group
Spain: Corridas on the Decline, Catalonia Votes Tomorrow
Spain: Mosques: State Aid to Stop Radicalism
Spain: Christmas More Lay, Only 10% of Youths at Church
Sweden Boasts Record High Population Growth
Sweden’s Population Grows With Full Speed
Swiss Minaret Vote Was a “Lesson in Civic Spirit”
UK: Brussels Rules Cost UK £18bn a Year
UK: EU ‘Threat’ To Election
UK: Thug Walid Salem Boasts He is Untouchable as the Householder He Tormented is Jailed
 
Balkans
Defence: Croatia Has Problems Controlling Air Space
EU: Serb Citizens in Brussels After Schengen Opening Tomorrow
Serbia to Submit Bid to Join EU
Serbs Walk on Eggshells in Meeting With Dutch FM
 
North Africa
Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood, Conservatives Win Party Vote
Egypt Bans a Protest March Into Gaza
Tunisia: First Day of Hegira, Also With Traditional Food
 
Israel and the Palestinians
How the Auschwitz Sign Claiming That “Work Makes Free” Embodies Current Western Thinking and Policy
Israeli Military Admits to Organ Harvesting
Israel Harvested Organs in ‘90s Without Permission
Palestinians “Disgusted” And “Disappointed” By Bickering Between Hamas and Fatah
Shalit: Netanyahu Resumes ‘Marathon’ Talks
Trial Begins: Olmert Pleads Not Guilty
 
Middle East
140 Million Arabs Live in Poverty: UN
Defence: Turkey to Buy US Military Heavy Lift Copters
Lebanon: Bus With Syrian Workers Under Fire
Turkey-Syrian Military Manoeuvres Worry Barak
Turkey: Ergenekon Party to be Founded
 
South Asia
Karzai: Better if Dutch Troops Remain in Afghanistan
 
Far East
Beijing Prepares New Law on Expropriation
North Korean Jeans Label Opens Pop-Up Shop in Stockholm
 
Latin America
Mexico City Backs Gay Marriage in Latin American First
 
Immigration
Egypt: Promised Visas for Italy Not Obtained, Protests
France: Immigration, 20,000 Registrations This Year
Governments vs the People: Replacing the Population by Another One
Philippines: International Migrants Day: For Filipino Church, Emigration Destroys Families
 
General
There’ll be Nowhere to Run From the New World Government

Financial Crisis


Report: Oklahoma’s Revenue Shortfalls Worst in Nation

OKLAHOMA CITY — State Treasurer Scott Meacham will give an economic outlook for the rest of the fiscal year and preliminary projections for 2011 Monday, but already revenue shortfalls are forcing agencies to trim costs month after month.

A new report is even saying the state’s shortfalls are the worst in the nation. Oklahoma ranks No. 1 with Arizona falling close behind.

The National Conference of State Legislators said Oklahoma’s shortfall, so far, is 18.5 percent which amounts to a shortfall of $577.5 million.

State Lawmakers say this report is just further proof of Oklahoma’s finances and simply put, Oklahoma is in a lot of trouble.

“But the problem is they should’ve been cutting more from 17 to 18 percent if they wanted to sustain through the rest of the year and instead they choose the easy way out. I guess they thought something magic was going to happen to the economy, I’m not quite sure,” Rep. Mike Reynolds said.

With the continuing climb of the revenue shortfall and recent announcement of more agency funding cuts, some lawmakers said because the gas market is flat and there’s currently an over production of gas, the report is no surprise.

“This is the worst crisis since the Depression and 1982, back when we had that oil and gas problem. In that era it was just oil and gas. Now the entire economy has gone flat and we’re not going to be able to come out of this quickly. It’s going to be painful. That’s why I feel we all need to work together and solve these problems,” said Rep. Richard Morrissette.

Both state representatives do not expect state finances to recover any time soon, and they believe it will get much worse before they’ll be any sign of improvement.

           — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa [Return to headlines]



Spain: 47% Fewer Homes Build in Third Quarter

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 21 — The severe downsizing of the construction sector in Spain continues; the number construction projects for housing started in the third quarter of the year is 33,140, a drop of 47.2% compared to the same time period in 2008. The number of home built in the last 12 months is 444,544 or 35.1% less than last year, according to statistics published today by the housing ministry. About 50% of new properties are for social housing, which shows that the public housing sector drives the construction business currently in crisis. The number of uninhabited homes built in the third quarter was down 60.8% compared to the same period in 2008 and 19.3% compared to the second quarter. Public housing was down 20% from July to September and 18.3% compared to the same period last year. (ANSAmed)

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



UK: Priest Outrages Police by Telling Congregation: ‘My Advice to Poor is to Shoplift’

Father Tim Jones, 41, broke off from his traditional annual sermon yesterday to tell his flock that stealing from large chains is sometimes the best option for vulnerable people.

It is far better for people desperate during the recession to shoplift than turn to ‘prostitution, mugging or burglary’, he said.

The married father-of-two insisted his unusual advice did not break the Bible commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’ — because God’s love for the poor outweighs his love for the rich.

But the minister’s controversial sermon at St Lawrence Church in York has been slammed by police, the British Retail Consortium and a local MP, who all say that no matter what the circumstances, shoplifting is an offence.

Delivering his festive lesson, Father Jones told the congregation: ‘My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

‘I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

‘I offer the advice with a heavy heart and wish society would recognise that bureaucratic ineptitude and systematic delay has created an invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope.’

He added that he felt society had failed the needy, and said it was far better they shoplift than turn to more degrading or violent options such as prostitution, mugging or burglary.

He continued: ‘My advice does not contradict the Bible’s eighth commandment because God’s love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich.

‘Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.

‘Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt. Providing inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly.’

[…]

This isn’t the first time Father Jones has courted controversy.

He hit the headlines in May 2008 when he protested against a shop stocking Playboy stationery aimed at youngsters. He tossed the items onto the floor complaining they were ‘cynical and wicked’. The shop bowed to his one-man protest and agreed to stop stocking Playboy-branded merchandise.

[Return to headlines]

USA


Frank Gaffney: START Over

Amidst the late night machinations and parliamentary skullduggery that now passes for legislative process in what was once rightly known as “The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body,” a potentially decisive blow for freedom has been struck by forty-one Senators.

No, sadly I am not talking about a setback to the defective health care “reform” bill now trundling towards enactment. Rather, I am referring to an effort that suggests a critical block of Senators are determined to exercise quality control with respect to another of President Obama’s alarming agenda items: denuclearization of this country as a lubricant to his oft-stated goal of “ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”

As first reported by Bill Gertz, the Washington Times’ ace national security correspondent, every member of the Senate’s Republican caucus and Independent Joe Lieberman signed a strongly worded letter to Mr. Obama last week regarding the so-called “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on agreement.” The latter is an agreement the administration has been frantically trying to negotiate with the Kremlin, not simply to extend the now-expired, original START accord, but to replace it with a treaty making further, dramatic and controversial cuts in U.S. and Russian strategic forces…

           — Hat tip: CSP [Return to headlines]



General Defends Court Martial for Pregnant Soldiers

A US Army general in northern Iraq has defended his decision to add pregnancy to the list of reasons a soldier under his command could face court martial.

It is current army policy to send pregnant soldiers home, but Maj Gen Anthony Cucolo told the BBC he was losing people with critical skills.

That was why the added deterrent of a possible court martial was needed, he said.

The new policy applies both to female and male soldiers, even if married.

The male sexual partners of female soldiers who get pregnant would also “face the consequences”, he said.

It is the first time the US Army has made pregnancy a punishable offence.

Gen Cucolo told the BBC it was a “black and white” issue for him.

He said married soldiers in combat zones should either put their love lives on hold — or take precautions.

“I’ve got a mission to do, I’m given a finite number of soldiers with which to do it and I need every one of them.”

“So I’m going to take every measure I can to keep them all strong, fit and with me for the twelve months we are in the combat zone,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



Record-Breaking Storm Closes US Federal Government

The federal government was closed Monday after a record-breaking snowstorm swept across the northeastern United States and put a damper on one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year.

Just days before Christmas, the eastern seaboard from North Carolina to New England was digging out from the worst blizzard in years, which closed train and bus service, paralyzed air traffic, crippled motorists and left hundreds of thousands of residents without power in some areas.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



US Transfers 12 Gitmo Detainees to Home Countries

WASHINGTON — The U.S. has transferred a dozen Guantanamo detainees to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region as the Obama administration continues to move captives out of the facility in Cuba in preparation for its closure.

The Justice Department said Sunday that a government task force had reviewed each case. Officials considered the potential threat and the government’s likelihood of success in court challenges to the detentions.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Yellowstone’s Plumbing Exposed

Newswise — The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup.

A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Bad Weather: Spain, Heavy Snowfall Alert

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 21 — The first official day of winter has heralded in a state of alert across Spain due to heavy snowfall and freezing cold temperatures, under which the peninsula is suffering. Traffic gridlock is seen especially in the capital, where snow resulted in the closing early this morning of two of the four landing strips of the Madrid airport Barajas, giving rise to lengthy delays for at least 50 flights leaving from Terminal 4, according to airport sources. Inconveniences have also been seen in railway transport due to the interruption early this morning of the high-speed connection between Madrid, Seville, Malaga and Barcelona, which resumed at 9.45am. Alternative tickets or a reimbursement have been offered to the about 2,500 train passengers whose trains were called off. As concerns roads, in many zones chains are compulsory and numerous mountain passes have been closed due to snow and ice, as well as several arteries of the national road network, especially in the provinces of Teruel (A-23), La Rioja (N-126) and Burgos (N-629). The most copious snowfall is expected in the Madrid Sierra, where it could reached 15 centimetres and the thermometer may drop to as low as -13 degrees Celsius. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Bad Weather: Italy Still Suffering From Cold Snap

(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 21 — The northern and central areas of Italy are still suffering from freezing temperatures, which over the night fell to well below zero. Udine dipped as low as -18, while Bologna, Turin, Treviso and L’Aquila all saw -13. Intense cold was also felt in Bolzano (-12), Forlì and Arezzo (-10). The forecast leaves much to be desired since early this afternoon more snowfall is expected for — progressively — the Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, upper Tuscany and Abruzzi regions. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



EU: Who’d Ha Thunk it? Italian Constitutional Court Tells ECHR to Take a Hike, Asserts National Sovereignty

The first blow has been struck against the encroaching tyranny of the European Union and it is a significant one. In fact, one member state has defiantly drawn a line in the sand and signalled that it will not tolerate erosion of its sovereignty. Although it attracted little attention when it was published last month, now that commentators have had an opportunity to analyse Sentenza N. 311 by the Italian Constitutional Court, its monumental significance in rolling back the Lisbon Treaty is now being appreciated. (Hat tip, as they say, to Dr Piero Tozzi.)

The Constitutional Court ruled baldly that, where rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) conflict with provisions of the Italian Constitution, such decrees “lack legitimacy”. In other words, they will not be enforced in Italy. Although this judgement related to issues concerning the civil service, the universal interpretation is that the ECHR’s aggressive ruling in Lautsi v Italy, seeking to ban crucifixes from Italian classrooms, shortly before, was what concentrated the minds of the judges in the Italian Supreme Court.

In fact, sources close to the Italian judiciary have informally briefed that the decision was a warning that activist rulings by the ECHR “will not be given deference”. The juridical principle at issue here is nothing less than national sovereignty. Where an alien court has the right to overrule a national constitution, sovereignty has de facto ceased to exist. Citizens may go to the polls at a general election to elect an administration, but the “government” they choose will be no more than a municipal council. This, of course, was always the intention of the Lisbon Treaty and its supporters.

Europhile politicians and commentators in Britain, after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the ratting by the Vichy Tories on their promise of a referendum, were masochistically resigned to the United Kingdom becoming a province of Brussels. Now the Italians have overthrown the fatalistic notion of the irresistible march of Eurofederalism. They have simply said: if it encroaches upon our national sovereignty, it won’t fly here. This is excellent.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



France: Carbon Tax Raises Prices by 0.3% in Q1 of 2010

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, DECEMBER 21 — The ‘carbon tax’, the green tax on the consumption of polluting energy that will become enforceable in France on January 1, will raise inflation by 0.3% during the first quarter of 2010. The announcement was made today by the central statistics office, which expects for the first quarter of 2010 an increase in consumer prices equal to 0.7% before going back down to 0.3% during the second quarter.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



German Catholic Leader Criticizes Islamic Treatment of Christians

Cologne, Germany — One of Germany’s most senior Catholic leaders, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, criticized on Sunday what he described as restrictions on Christians in Islamic nations. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, Meisner, who is archbishop of Cologne, charged that this led to “an aversion against Muslims” among Germans.

The often outspoken cleric said he had been campaigning for the past two years for the Church of St Paul in Tarsus, Turkey to be permanently opened for worship by any Christian.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Italy: Palermo Drug Bust Nets 67

Mafia, Camorra and Spanish traffickers in joint venture

(ANSA) — Palermo, December 16 — Around 67 people were arrested in Palermo on Wednesday in a drug sweep targeting a consortium of Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Neapolitan Camorra and Spanish drug traffickers.

Hundreds of police were involved in the operation together with sniffer dogs, helicopters and army soldiers.

Investigators said the operation was made possible by the cooperation of a turncoat arrested last year in the nearby town of Bagheria with half a kilogram of pure cocaine.

The information he furnished helped police trace the cartel’s shipping lines from Spain to Naples, and from there to a network of processing and distribution centers in the Sicilian capital.

With an estimated turnover of 60,000 euros per day, the drug ring had deep roots in Palermo slums, where it recruited bagmen and pushers from neighborhood teens, police said. “This brilliant operation has exposed three powerful crime syndicates working together on a single joint venture,” said opposition Democratic Party Senator, Giuseppe Lumia, a member of the parliamentary anti-mafia commission.

The chairman of the Senate constitutional affairs committee, Carlo Vizzini, also lauded the operation as a “major blow” to the Sicilian drug trade.

He underlined that “the next step in fighting international organized crime is with more effective laws against money laundering,” a few of which are currently before parliament.

Palermo prosecutor Teresa Principato called attention to the city’s slums, which she said “were beginning to resemble Brazilian favelas”.

“Drug use is endemic in many parts of the city, particularly among children,” she said, adding that some of the drug peddlers and addicts singled out by police were as young as 13 years old.

Police captain Teo Luzi, a Palermo native, said “these are kids with little or no education and difficult families, who’ve spent most of their lives on the streets”.

“For them, drugs provide a temporary escape from an ugly reality”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Major Asbestos Trial Opens

Thousands arrive in Turin for trial of former Eternit heads

(ANSA) — Turin, December 10 — One of the world’s largest trials into asbestos-related crimes opened in Turin on Thursday, drawing thousands to the northern Italian city. Two former heads of Swiss cement giant Eternit have been charged with creating an environmental hazard and wilfully disregarding safety regulations at four asbestos-cement plants in Italy during the 1980s and early 1990s. Prosecutors say around 2,000 workers and local residents died as a consequence. Nearly 3,000 people have applied to join the criminal proceedings as plaintiffs in a linked civil suit, making this one of the largest ever asbestos trials in the world. The defendants, Eternit’s Swiss owner, Stephan Schmidheiny, 62, and former managing director, the Belgian baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, 88, both deny any wrongdoing and did not attend court.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the opening, Prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello, said the trial would “ensure justice, both for the victims and the defendants”. Guariniello claims asbestos dust in the air caused tumours among Eternit staff, their families and people living near the factories, and has left around 800 more seriously ill.

The prosecutor, who has been investigating the deaths since 2002, says Eternit’s products were also used to pave streets and courtyards, and used as roof insulation in the nearby towns without warnings about the dangers, resulting in decades-long exposure for the local population.

Over a thousand workers and relatives were outside the courthouse on Thursday morning, shuttled in by coaches from across Italy, as well as from France.

Associations representing French asbestos victims say they hope the Italian trial will set an example to France, where they have struggled to get civil suits off the ground. Hundreds more crowded into a nearby auditorium, on temporary loan from the provincial government, to follow the proceedings via a live video link. Three courtrooms have been turned over to the opening of the trial.

TV cameras and defence lawyers squeezed into the central courtroom, where the criminal proceedings got under way. Another hall housed the lawyers and representatives of the 700-odd plaintiffs already joined to the civil suit, while applications by others seeking to join the proceedings were processed in a third courtroom. Eternit ran asbestos-producing plants in Casale Monferrato in Alessandria, Cavagnolo near Turin, Rubiera in Reggio Emilia and Bagnoli near Naples.

Employees and their families say that Eternit did little or nothing to protect its workers and residents living around its factories from the dangers of asbestos.

Many contend that the Swiss company, which pulled out of the asbestos business more than a decade ago, failed to warn its employees of any of the dangers of working with asbestos.

Inail, a state institute which handles compulsory insurance coverage for workers, is among those seeking damages from Eternit after paying out some 246 million euros to former workers.

The Piedmont regional government, the Turin provincial government, environmental organization Legambiente and consumer rights group Codacons are also suing for damages.

Lawyers for Italy’s largest labour union CGIL are seeking damages on behalf of 1,610 workers and local residents. Only 315 of these are still alive. Legal experts say the trial is likely to take several years. If convicted, the defendants could face between three and 12 years in prison.

In 1993, four of Eternit’s former Casale managers were convicted of wilfully neglecting safety regulations and given sentences of up to three and a half years on suits filed by 137 workers.

In 2006, Eternit set up a fund of 1.25 million Swiss francs to help former employees in Switzerland suffering from asbestos-related illnesses.

Last year, the multinational agreed to pay out almost nine million euros in compensation to workers at another asbestos-cement plant in the Sicilian town of Siracusa.

Schmidheiny has also said he is ready to make tens of millions of euros available in compensation for victims at the multinational’s asbestos-producing plants in Casale Monferrato, Cavagnolo, Rubiera and Bagnoli.

Italy outlawed the use of asbestos in 1992.

Prior to the ban, it was one of its largest producers and importers of asbestos in the world, using over 20 million tonnes annually. Today, Italy is one of the western countries worst hit by asbestos-related illnesses, with around 1,350 cases of mesothelioma — a tumour associated with exposure to asbestos dust — reported each year.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Italy: Millions Watch Berlusconi Discuss Marriage on TV Chat Show

Rome, 6 May (AKI) — Record numbers of viewers watched Italy’s prime minister talk about his beleaguered marriage on the country’s most popular television chat-show and repeat a demand that his estranged wife Veronica Lario apologise in public for accusing him of frequenting “under-age girls”.

A total 2,693,000 people — 34 percent of TV viewers — watched Berlusconi deny allegations of a relationship with 18-year-old underwear model and would-be showgirl Noemi Letizia whose birthday party he recently attended.

“It’s a lie,” 72-year-old Berlusconi told the Porta a Porta chat-show on RAI, the public television network late on Tuesday.

“Would the prime minister be so crazy as to get into a situation like that?” he asked.

Lario had expressed anger that Berlusconi attended Letizia’s birthday party, saying he had never attended the 18th birthday parties of any of their three children, despite having been invited.

She also implied that Letizia had a relationship with Berlusconi, and said: “I cannot stay with a man who consorts with minors.”

Berlusconi repeated on Porta Porta his assertion that he had been invited to Letizia’s birthday party by her father, Benedetto Letizia, who he said was an old friend.

The premier said he had nothing to hide and had voluntarily been photographed at the party with Letizia’s parents and friends. The photos feature in the latest issue of the popular Chi magazine owned by Berluconi.

Berlusconi also reiterated his claim that Lario had “fallen into a trap” set by “the newspapers of the left” especially left-leaning daily La Repubblica.

“It displeases me that a matter that is finished or about to finish is made so public by the newspapers when it should remain a private affair,” Berlusconi said.

“Frankly, I was not expecting this storm. This would never have happened if the media had reported things correctly,” he lamented.

At one point during the programme, 4,492,000 people tuned into the show — 44 percent of viewers.

The very public marital problems of Berlusconi — Italy’s richest man — has gripped the nation and has made international news.

Lario and Berlusconi have retained lawyers for the impending court battle over his 4.5 billion euros fortune. Their marriage is reported to have been in trouble for some years.

Besides his three children by Lario, he has two from a previous marriage.

In an interview with daily La Stampa on Wednesday, a top Vatican cleric echoed an earlier editorial in the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire, urging Berlusconi to be more “sober” in handling the collapse of his marriage.

“A divorce cannot be a spectacle to be thrust under the spotlight,” Cardinal Walter Kasper told La Stampa.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Italy: Berlusconi Photos Vanish From Google

Rome, 16 Dec. (AKI) — The shocking photos of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi that flashed around the world immediately after he was attacked on Sunday have mysteriously vanished from the top Internet search engine Google. Photos of Berlusconi’s bloodied face now only appear in the ‘news’ section of the website which links web users directly to news articles published by the media.

Searches for images of the attack in English and Italian language containing key words such as ‘Berlusconi attack’, or ‘Berlusconi Duomo’ and other combinations, showed only pictures of a smiling Berlusconi or the photos of the premier meeting world leaders on Wednesday.

However, pictures of the injured prime minister taken immediately after the attack in front of Milan’s cathedral on Sunday can still be found on other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.

Google searches also fail to show the replica of Milan’s cathedral, the object which allegedly struck Berlusconi in the face.

The 73-year-old prime minister was expected to leave hospital on Wednesday with a broken nose, two broken teeth and other facial injuries but there was speculation he may spend another night in hospital.

Berlusconi lost more than half a litre of blood when he was struck in the face at a political rally with an alabaster replica of Milan’s Cathedral allegedly by Massimo Tartaglia, a man with a history of mental illness.

Meanwhile, Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni said on Wednesday that the government would introduce legislation to block or censor certain websites that according to the government induced the “climate of violence” that caused Sunday’s attack on Berlusconi.

The bill would also introduce new measures regarding street protests, he said.

The attack on Berlusconi occurred only a week after several hundred thousand people took to the streets of Rome for a protest entitled “No Berlusconi Day”, which was largely organised online via Internet social networks.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Italy: Facebook Asks for Govt Meeting to Discuss Internet Row

Rome, 18 Dec. (AKI) — The popular Internet social networking site, Facebook, is seeking a meeting with Italian senate speaker Renato Schifani to discuss the controversy over the site that arose after the attack on the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Director of European public policy for Facebook, Richard Allan, has sent a letter to Schifani requesting a meeting after he accused Facebook of an “instigation to violence” after the attack.

“I would be glad to further discuss the measures we have taken, with you, or anyone else from your staff, and to understand your point of view on how we can act more effectively,” said Allan, quoted by Italian media.

He said that he would be willing to organised a telephone conference or organise a trip from London to Rome to discuss the issue.

Schifani on Friday welcomed Facebook’s initiative calling it an “extremely constructive step”.

On Thursday, Schifani which holds the country’s second highest office said that Facebook is more dangerous than the terrorist groups of the 1970s.

Regarding Facebook, Schifani said “you can read real and proper anthems to the instigation to violence”.

He also said that Facebook had the potential to “feed the hate that flourishes in some fringe groups”.

The Berlusconi attack created a fierce debate among thousands of supporters and opponents on the social networking site Facebook and the government has blamed it for being a factor in the attack against the premier.

After the attack on Berlusconi on Sunday, Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni signalled tighter legislative measures to control Internet sites in a bid to reduce what it says is a “climate of violence” that caused Sunday’s attack.

Critics have compared the move to those by totalitarian regimes.

“Schifani thinks like Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao and Al-Bashir, the presidents of Iran, China and Sudan, where Facebook is banned,” said an opposition party chief whip in the lower house of parliament, Massimo Donadi, of the Italy of Values party.

Facebook has also responded to Italy’s threats to introduce legislative measures against the social networking site.

“Facebook is widely used to sustain noble causes and many people all over the world use it to improve society,” said Facebook’s spokeswoman Debbie Frost, quoted by Italian daily La Repubblica on Thursday.

“When opinions expressed on our site are turned into declarations of hate or threats against people, we remove the contents and we can also close the accounts of the people responsible. However, unfortunately, ignorance exists inside and outside of Facebook and this will not be defeated hiding it, but facing it,” she said.

The attack on Berlusconi occurred only a week after several hundred thousand people took to the streets of Rome for a protest entitled “No Berlusconi Day”.

It was largely organised mainly online through internet social networks.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Klaus: Global Warming No Science But “New Religion”

New York, Dec 19 (CTK) — Global warming is a “new religion,” not science, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said in an interview with the news server FoxNews.com.

Simultaneously with the end of the Copenhagen U.N. climate conference Klaus said mankind should not be dictated how to live on the basis on “irrational ideology” that is a product of political correctness, the server writes.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Sarkozy Demands Eurostar Restart Tuesday

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the head of the French train authority to get Eurostar traffic moving again by Tuesday.

Eurostar has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside the Channel Tunnel late Friday, trapping more than 2,000 people for hours.

On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and ordered him to get traffic moving again by Tuesday and present measures to assure such incidents don’t happen again.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

PARIS (AP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the president of the French train authority to get hobbled Eurostar traffic moving again by Tuesday.

Eurostar has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside the Channel Tunnel late Friday, trapping more than 2,000 people for hours.

On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and ordered him to get traffic moving again by Tuesday and present measures to assure such incidents don’t happen again.

           — Hat tip: Henrik [Return to headlines]



Spain: Telecinco and Cuatro Merger Forms Biggest TV Group

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 18 — The first radio television giant has been formed in Spain with the merger of the TV chain Telecinco, the Mediaset company, and Cuatro, of the Prisa group, publisher of Pais and owner of the digital platform Digital Plus. The announcement was done today in a joint statement from the two groups at the closing of the Madrid stock exchange after the Spanish SEC suspended trading in shares of the two companies in the run up to the agreement. The agreement includes for Mediaset the control of 22% of Digital Plus, the pay for view platform of Sogecable, a subsidiary of Prisa, in turn owner of 20% of the new holding made by the merger between Telecinco and Cuatro. The green light came yesterday from the respective boards with the signing of the three party agreement for the entry of Mediaset in Digital Plus shareholders, in which Telefonica purchased 21% at the end of November for 470 million euros. Mediaset will control 78% of the new holding and Prisa the remaining 22%. A successive capital increase for 500 million, completely underwritten by Mediaset will futher dilute Prisa participation to 18.3%. Prisa will receive new shares issued by Telecino valued at around 550 million euros and another 500 million in cash. The company born out of the merger will have a joint management even though the two television chains, Telecinco and Cuatro, will maintain their respective brands. According to sources cited by ABC, the company will be headed by Alejandro Echevarria, president of Telecinco, with two managing directors, Paolo Vasile, currently Telecinco managing director, and Giuseppe Tringali, head of publicity for the same chain. Prisa will get two advisors and the vice presidency. With the deal Telecinco becomes the first Spanish television company, going from one to two channel free to air, and with Digital Plus, the road to digital landline television opens up. But the big manoeuvres in the Spanish television market also include Antena 3, the network 44% controlled by a joint venture between Agostini and Madrid based Planeta, is one step from an agreement with the Mediapros La Sexta network.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Corridas on the Decline, Catalonia Votes Tomorrow

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 17 — On the eve of the vote on the people’s bill for the abolition of the corridas (bullfights) in Catalonia the for and against factions are closing ranks, while statistics point to a growing social indifference for a declining tradition that is not only due to the recession. Pro-abolition people, spurred on by the Prou! (Enough!) movement that sponsored the initiative with the support of 180,000 signatures, view the vote in Catalonia as the first step towards the elimination of bullfights. They surveyed 135 members of Catalonias parliament who tomorrow will have to express their views on the two full amendments to the proposal presented by the Socialist party (Psc) and by Convergencia i Union (CiU). Should they be approved, the people’s initiative will be forfeited, but in the opposite case the amendments will pass through the exam of parliament for a final decision (which at that point will be expected) that will be taken in May 2010. The vote will revolve around a handful of votes: in favour, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and IVCs eco-communists; against, the Peoples Party and Ciudadans; Psc and CiU instead will allow their members to vote freely. The anti-bull front adopted icons of the animal rights movement such as Brigitte Bardot and Pamela Anderson, while the pro-bull people who are sponsoring the defence of a tradition and a cultural asset chose José Tomas, the matador who returned to Barcelonas plaza de toros La Monumenal in 2004, and achieved a ticket sell-out in the same year that Barcelona turned anti-corrida. It also sponsored the Manifesto de la Mercé por la Libertad, undersigned by more than 280 celebrities of working in the world of culture, economy and education, including painter Miquel Barcelò, singers Joan Manuel Serrat and Joaquim Sabina, and philosopher Felix de Azua. It also found unexpected support in 133 politicians from the south of France which includes senators, mayors and MPs who signed a letter submitted to Catalan MPs which invites them to reject the people’s bill in the name of freedom and tradition. However, abolition or no abolition, it seems that the decline of bullfights in Spain is unstoppable. According to a survey carried out in 2006 by the Gallup institute which was quoted today by El Pais, 81% of those under the age of 21 is not interested in bullfights, and the same goes for 2 out of 3 Spaniards under the age of 34 and 78% of those in the 35 to 40 age range. Only 41% of those older than 65 are still interested. The scarce social appreciation is also shown by the increasingly smaller number of bullfights that are being held: 891 in 2009, according to figures provided by the ministry of the Interior, including normal bullfights and ‘novilladas’, fights with young bulls and picadores’, in other words 354 bullfights less than in 2008. The actual bullfights are growing increasingly shorter also because of the recession, which has to deal with a 16% VAT tax on such forms of entertainment and prevents the payment in full of the high wages requested by the bullfighters. To the point that the people who breed the fighting bulls report an excess of at least 2,000 bulls that are practically out of the market, since the bullfighting rules provides that the bulls must fight between the ages of 4 to 6. Juan Sanchez Fabres, owner of one of the traditional breeding houses, complains that “In any case, we will be forced to send bulls to the slaughterhouse”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Mosques: State Aid to Stop Radicalism

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 21 — Islam in Spain will receive more aid from the state, initiatives that have been implemented in order to stop the more radical currents of Koranic teaching and to favour an integration that avoids social friction, like the protests in Catalonia against the construction of mosques. The primary mosques of Spain, the M-30 in Madrid, that of Marbella and that of Malaga, depend on the Saudi capital and are a breeding ground for Wahabism, the most fundamentalist Islamic teachings, according to research published by El Pais. In Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, there is important Moroccan influence and the presence of the Tablig movement, a sect of preachers considered to be very close to Salafism. It is the preaching of Malequi school Sunni Islam, which is practiced in the Maghreb country, influenced also by the Spanish Federation of Islamic Institutions (FEERI), one of the two associations that represents Spain’s Muslims before the state. The doctrinal inspiration of many places of worship and their financing mainly comes from abroad, in spite of the progressive metamorphosis taking place in Europe’s Muslim communities. According to the Andalusian Observatory in 2008 the Union of Islamic Communities in Spain, which with FEERI and Spain’s Federation of Muslims (FEME), formed recently, represent this group of people, 37% of Muslims living on the Iberian Peninsula are already Spanish, including those who have converted and nationalised immigrants, and second and third generations. Greater ideological and financial independence from the league of the Islamic world, of Saudi origin spreading Wahabi doctrine in the world, does not coincide with this transformation. Among the activities financed in 2009 is an edition of Islamic religious texts, but also training courses with imams at the Uned university in Madrid and Arabic and Spanish lessons for imams and Muslim women, as a part of the Civil Alliance, launched by the Zapatero government. The funds will come directly from the financial bill, which in 2008 allocated 5 million euros to this end. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Christmas More Lay, Only 10% of Youths at Church

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 21 — Christmas is an increasingly lay holiday is Spain, where almost Spaniards (94.4%) will celebrate the holiday, but over 7 out of 10 (70.3%) will not attend a religious ceremony connected with the holiday. According to the survey published by the daily Publico, the phenomenon of secularisation in society is most evident among those aged 18-29, as 99% will celebrate the holiday, while 85% does not plan to participate in a religious ceremony. Even if Christmas continues to be the most celebrated holiday (86.7%), in the majority of cases within the boundaries of the home (58.2%), followed by the festival of San Silvestro (78.4%). Some 91% of youths will celebrate both the festivities of Christmas and New year’s Eve. More people will celebrate, but with fewer gifts due to the austerity imposed by the economic crisis, even if 8 Spaniards out of 10 (6%) will not give up on putting gifts under the tree. Only 13.9% will not be giving Christmas gifts and 15.5% does not plan on receiving any, above all those over the age of 60. For the exchange of gifts, Spaniards confirm preferring Epiphany, or Reyes Magos, (71.7%) to Santa Claus (36%) even if the tradition is slowly changing. Last year the percentage of the former was 73.6%. As always, children are the kings of the festivities, receiving 49.4% of the gifts, followed by (42.4%); while among youths a large portion of gift giving is reserved for sweethearts (44%). The crisis is most felt in the workplace, given that the old custom of colleagues exchanging gifts is on its way to extinction, having a residual presence in 1.3% of those interviewed. From the lay tradition to the religious one, rapidly in decline, given the data on faith revealed by the survey. If in 2007 80.2% of Spaniards declared themselves to be religious, today the percentage is reduced to 78.3%. In the same way, that the percentage of those who declare themselves to be practicing Catholics has decreased from 30 to 26.2%. Again in this case, the age group in which the church loses the largest number of believers is that of 18-29 years of age: practicing Catholics in this group passed from 15.2% in 2007 to 10.4% today. Along the same lines, those who define themselves as atheists or non-believers has increased, passing from 16.5% in 2007 to 18.9%, above all among the young (31.7% currently). Catalonia is the region with the highest number of atheists, against Andalusia which has the largest number of believers. Along with the decline in Catholics there is the increase in the number of sceptics on the fundamental beliefs of Christianity: in two years those who believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God has decreased from 47.1% to 44.4%; those that believe he was born of a virgin from 40.7 to 37.2%; and those that believe in his resurrection from 42.6% to 40.1%. The drop in Christian beliefs is directly proportional to the increase in pagan superstitions, with an increasing number of Spaniards believing in astrology (more than 5 points in 2 years), or the existence of witches or evil powers (+3 points). (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sweden Boasts Record High Population Growth

The Swedish population grew more in 2009 than it has in any year since 1946, according to new figures from Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån — SCB). The increase is attributed to high birth and immigration rates, as well as sharply reduced emigration and fewer deaths.

At the beginning of 2010, Sweden’s population will be 9.34 million.

Emigration has decreased by 15 percent compared to 2008, with 38,000 residents moving abroad. The number of Swedish citizens relocating to Norway and Finland remained the same, but emigration to the US and UK decreased somewhat.

Immigration also contributed to the marked population growth. SCB estimates that 102,000 immigrants moved to Sweden in 2009. The largest group of immigrants are returning Swedish citizens, followed by Iraqis and Somalians. The number of Iraqi immigrants has dropped by about 30 percent compared to 2008, while the number of Somalian immigrants has increased by 50 percent.

Over the last decade, the number of births in Sweden has increased every year. In 2009, 54,000 girls and 57,000 boys were born, a total increase of 2 percent compared to 2008. At the same time, SCB estimates that the number of deaths has decreased by approximately 1 percent.

SCB also estimates that 14 percent of the Swedish population were born abroad. The largest group is made up of 173,000 people born in Finland, followed by 117,000 born in Iraq. Almost 400,000 individuals born in Sweden have two parents who were born abroad.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Sweden’s Population Grows With Full Speed

The population of Sweden has increased with a record speed during 2009. Sweden has already passed 9.3 million and is expected to pass 9.340.000 by new year. This shows preliminary statistcs from Statistics Sweden.

During 2009, the population has grown with 84.000. This big increase in such a short time has occured only once before and this was in 1946. This year is still known for creating the new great generation who have come to dominate Swedish economic, political and cultural life the last twenty years.

The reason behind the strong increase is a continuing high birth rate and a strong flow of immigration. But also reduced emigration and a decrease in the number of deaceased.

Sweden continues to be by far the most populated country in the Nordic region. Iceland continue to be the smallest. See comparison below:

Table: Population of countries in the Nordic region 2009. Source Wikipedia.

Country Population

Sweden 9.3

Denmark 5.5

Finland 5.4

Norway 4.8

Lithuania 3.6

Latvia 2.2

Estonia 1.3

Iceland 0.3

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]



Swiss Minaret Vote Was a “Lesson in Civic Spirit”

Two weeks after voters approved a ban on minaret construction, the rightwing Swiss People’s Party deputy Oskar Freysinger gives his reading of events.

In French-speaking Switzerland Freysinger became the voice of the yes side. He recently defended the minaret ban, accepted by 57.5 per cent of voters on November 29, in a debate on the Arab television channel al-Jazeera.

Freysinger rejects outright the argument that the yes vote stemmed from fear and ignorance and he deplores the fact that people have used the result to attack direct democracy.

swissinfo.ch: The anti-minaret vote has provoked a huge amount of comment and criticism both in Switzerland and abroad. What struck you most from what has been said and written on this subject?

Oskar Freysinger: What stays with me, is that the focus slipped very quickly from minarets to direct democracy. Two camps emerged: the elite who said that direct democracy was anti-democratic and against human rights, which is a total paradox, and the defenders of popular rights, who, while recognising that it is not ideal, nonetheless think that the system is the best possible, because it allows people to feel involved and to have an outlet of expression.

In Europe, people envy us. I’ve received a huge number of emails from France and elsewhere. People regret that they do not have the instruments to allow them to express their will. In fact Switzerland, at the heart of Europe, has just given an incredible lesson in civic spirit, against the politically correct, against the elites, against the media and against the monumental pressure of uniform thought. That could give ideas to the people who surround us, and that is feared by the European intelligentsia.

swissinfo.ch: But are the people truly always right? Can they not also make mistakes?

O.F.: Let’s say it’s like the dogma of papal infallibility: the pope is always right in questions of faith, not in the absolute. The people are always right because the system makes them right. Determining who is right and wrong is always complex.

As a politician I have lost plenty of votes with the electorate. You have to accept it and deal with the situation, even if that is extremely difficult, as with the free movement of people [between the EU and Switzerland] today.

swissinfo.ch: A lot has been said about this being a vote based on fear. What is your take on that?

O.F.: Based on the thousands of messages and reactions I received, I can detect the tendencies. Throughout the campaign, it was not fear that dominated but a cool reflection, relatively specific and neutral in tone about what Islam is and its doctrinal incompatibility with our state based on law. On this subject I also received some information that was useful to me during the debate. It is not therefore a purely irrational and ill-informed vote, as has often been said.

As for the yes voters, some of them are proponents of self-determination who believe that our identity should be protected during this time of open borders which make it impossible to regulate migration flows. There was also the yes vote of the Catholics who did not follow their leaders, as well as a yes vote by women. Many of them told me that they never vote for the People’s Party, but that on this subject, they felt the threat of a particularly patriarchal religion.

swissinfo.ch: Several recommendations have been made, the creation of a constitutional court, a new article on tolerance, in a effort to “correct” this vote. What do you think of that?

O.F.: The decision of the people acts as law. If we want to change this article in a few years’ time because Islam no longer presents a problem, the people alone will be able to modify the situation. Replacing the vote by an article that covers everything, which would have the disadvantage of penalising all religions would be superfluous because tolerance is already enshrined in the Constitution and Swiss laws.

As for a constitutional court, it is a system imaginable in a country where the parliament alone determines the laws. But in Switzerland the people are sovereign. Introducing a system like that would go back to muzzling the people. In any case, what makes lawyers better able to distinguish what is for the best or worst for the citizens?

swissinfo.ch: What would you say to those who reproach you for having taken the risk, with this initiative, of destabilising the peaceful integration of Muslims in Switzerland, most of whom are non-practising, and making them turn inwards to their community?

O.F.: This complaint does not hold up. I distinguish three categories among Muslims. The non-practising, who, by definition, are free from religion and therefore indifferent to the presence or not of a minaret or even a mosque. Then there are those who live the religion as a personal choice and a private affair. These are the ones who pay today for the damage inflicted by the third category, that is those who do not accept that civil law should be placed above religious dogma. Financed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, this fringe, the most demanding, also bears a responsibility in this vote.

swissinfo.ch: The day after the yes vote, several extreme right parties in Europe welcomed your initiative. What are your ideological affinities and differences with these movements?

O.F.: I’ve heard this confusion with the extreme right and fascism for a long time. But the differences are substantial. The first is that the People’s Party defends democracy and the state of law absolutely without restriction. Another difference, we do not believe you should reject the other simply because he is different, that is racism and xenophobia.

On the contrary, the behaviour of a person who comes to Switzerland is not irrelevant. What gets us branded as racists is that we attack the dysfunctional behaviour imported through immigration. But it is the behaviour that we denounce, and not the colour of the skin or where the person comes from.

Carole Wälti, swissinfo.ch (translated by Clare O’Dea)

           — Hat tip: TV [Return to headlines]



UK: Brussels Rules Cost UK £18bn a Year

The cost of European Union regulations — ranging from restrictions on working hours to limits on the noise at which orchestras can play — is costing Britain more than £18 billion a year, a report has found.

The most expensive law is the working time regulation, passed in 1998. According to the research by the think tank Open Europe, this costs £3.5 billion annually. The regulation has also been blamed by an official inquiry for contributing to unnecessary hospital deaths.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: EU ‘Threat’ To Election

The EU could rule next year’s General Election ILLEGAL if prisoners are denied the right to vote.

Britain has dithered since the European Court of Human Rights said in 2005 that its 63,000 jailbirds must get postal votes.

Now the European Council of Ministers wants Britain to comply. “The whole election could be declared illegal,” warned ex-chief prisons inspector Lord Ramsbotham.

Legal challenges from prisoners could also see the poll declared void.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



UK: Thug Walid Salem Boasts He is Untouchable as the Householder He Tormented is Jailed

A career criminal who violated a man’s home with two other knife-wielding thugs boasted that the law could not touch him.

Walid Salem, 57, was set free by a judge while Munir Hussain, the householder, was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

In court Munir’s wife Shaheen, 49, who has recently suffered a stroke, described her ordeal.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Defence: Croatia Has Problems Controlling Air Space

(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, DECEMBER 18 — Croatia may entrust the security of its air space to another country to resolve the technical problems it is experiencing as a consequence of its obsolete fighter planes and the impossibility of monitoring its own air space. The announcement was made by Croatian President Stjepan Mesic during the celebration of the Croatian Air Force. At present the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Zagreb points at, Croatia doesn’t have sufficient resources to buy new fighter planes. The country’s priority is the development of its economy and the creation of jobs, to create the necessary income to modernise its army. Italy and Hungary are reportedly among the candidates to guard Croatia’s air space. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



EU: Serb Citizens in Brussels After Schengen Opening Tomorrow

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 18 — As of tomorrow the people of Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia will no longer need a visa in the Schengen area (all EU Member States except for Great Britain, and Ireland, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland). For the occasion a delegation comprising 50 Serb citizens will catch a flight for Brussels immediately after midnight to mark the event. The group will be accompanied by Serbian deputy prime minister Bozidar Djelic. Today EC spokesperson Amadeu Altafaj Tardio explained that “The delegation of citizens, in the context of the ‘Europe for everyone’ initiative, will be received in the European Parliament”. The guests will be met by a video message made by Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, and by vice-president Silvana Koch-Merin. The delegation of Serb citizens will then meet Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Enlargement.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Serbia to Submit Bid to Join EU

Serbia will apply to join the European Union tomorrow, hoping that improving relations with the bloc will open a fast track for its candidacy by the end of 2010.

The Balkan country of around 8m people — still weighed down by the legacy of the 1990s wars — seeks EU candidate status despite lingering questions about its co-operation with the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

But a largely positive report from UN prosecutors earlier this month has brought greater flexibility, even from the most sceptical EU members.

“We see new momentum and would like this to continue,” said Bozidar Djelic, Serbia’s deputy prime minister. “By making our application now, we will unequivocally demonstrate the central strategic goal of Serbia is to join the EU and nothing else.”

Economic stabilisation and the successful busting of Balkan drug-trafficking networks have also boosted Belgrade’s credibility nearly a decade after the overthrow of wartime leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Boris Tadic, president and main pro-EU party leader, said: “No one can doubt the road that Serbia has taken. Serbia is going towards European integration.” *Low-cost airlines are lining up to add Belgrade and other Serbian airports to their routes after the EU relaxed visa rules for three ex-Yugoslav republics at the weekend.

Citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia will now be able to visit much of the EU without a visa.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



Serbs Walk on Eggshells in Meeting With Dutch FM

Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen visited Belgrade and dampened hope he has completely opened the door for Serbia’s EU entry.

By Marloes de Koning Mark Kranenburg in Belgrade

He said it himself: there is probably no country in the world where Maxime Verhagen makes more headlines than Serbia. The Dutch minister of foreign affairs visited Belgrade on Wednesday, where he took the time to answer questions from young representatives of NGOs. “Some of you may think I am the guy keeping you out of the European Union, or that I have a personal feud with Ratko Mladic. Neither of those assumptions are true,” he told them.

Being the sole person barring Serbia from the EU is actually a reputation Verhagen long cherished, with the support of Dutch parliament. But last week he gave up resisting closer ties with the former Yugoslavian republic. He approved a trade agreement that had been put on ice for two years because the Dutch refused to ratify it. Verhagen acknowledged Serbia has stepped up its cooperation with the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. However, Verhagen still wants Serb authorities to find and arrest Ratko Mladi?, the chief of staff of the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s, who is held responsible for the Srebrenica massacre. Dutch UN soldiers stood by while Mladic’s men killed more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men near what was supposed to be a UN-protected safe haven in Bosnia, in July 1995.

The main goal of Verhagen’s visit to Serbia appeared to be the managing of expectations, after the Serbian euphoria that followed last week’s news. While he has approved the trade agreement and lifted visa restrictions for Serbs, he still refuses to discuss the real gateway to EU membership, the so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreement, for at least another six months. Only the extradition of fugitive Mladic can speed up this process, Verhagen repeated Wednesday.

His audience quietly listened to his speech before it cautiously asked questions. If Verhagen’s does not have it out for Mladic personally, why doesn’t he recognise economists and statistics say Serbia is much more developed than Romania and Bulgaria were during this phase of their accession to the EU, asked 23-year old Tanja Kuzman, who does economic research for an American government agency. Verhagen’s answer was longwinded and left room for interpretation. Entry into the EU is about European standards, he explained. “Not just about meeting criteria, but about the proven sustainability.”

Not so fast, was his underlying message. After the meeting he told Dutch reporters: “We won’t accept any short cuts.” Kuzman, nonetheless, was left thinking the Dutch resistance really is related to one man, she said afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Serbian government seems to have gotten the message. Ministers who had hinted to filing an application for EU membership before the end of this month are now saying they will do so “when the time is right.” Serbian media claimed last week they had laid their hands on a memo from president Boris Tadic in which he called on his cabinet not to present thefinal ratification of the trade agreement as a Serbian victory. They now realise they have to be careful not to get on the wrong side of the Dutch again.

The Dutch message that it is in Serbia’s best interest to confront its war record and cooperate with the tribunal, however, does not fly with the Serbian public. The large majority of the population is convinced the West sees them only as villains, while they too are victims of the wars that tore up Yugoslavia. They consider the The Hague tribunal a political instrument of victor’s justice.

But while Serbs think the location of the tribunal and the need for it to be successful play a part in shaping Dutch attitudes, many feel they have fallen victim to Dutch domestic politics. “Why should we pay the price for your guilt over Srebrenica,” said Bosko Jaksic, a commentator on foreign affairs for Politic daily. Everybody in Serbia “including myself” has had it with Mladic and the tribunal, said Jaksic. “It is a frustrating story. I honestly believe our current leaders would like nothing more than to find him and extradite him, just to get rid of the whole problem.” The analyst said he doesn’t believe the Netherlands is helping by constantly reminding them in public.

But Verhagen showed he has no intention to stop beating them up about it. “Our tough stance has helped,” he said. Last year, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested after 13 years on the run and delivered to the tribunal.

Serbian president Tadic has promised his country will continue to fully cooperate with the tribunal. “But we can’t just take his word for it,” Verhagen said.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood, Conservatives Win Party Vote

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 21 — The conservative faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, the executive commission that has to elect the new Supreme leader of the movement after the dismissal of Mohamed Mahdi Akef, has won the election of the Brotherhood’s political office, pan-Arab newspaper Al Ahyat reports. One of the reasons Akef was dismissed, is his support to the reformist and spokesman of the movement, Essam Al Eryan. Eryan has been elected as member of the political office (one of the 16) though, together with other members of his group. Meanwhile, the movement’s consultative council, banned in all Egypt, has appointed five candidates for the new elections of the Supreme leader, expected mid-January. One of them is the favourite, Mohamed Habib. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Egypt Bans a Protest March Into Gaza

Egypt has rejected a request to allow activists to march across the border into the Gaza Strip to mark the anniversary of last year’s conflict.

The Egyptian foreign ministry said the march could not be allowed because of the “sensitive situation” in Gaza.

Over 1,000 activists from 42 countries had signed-up to join “the Gaza freedom march” planned for next week.

Egypt warned that anyone attempting the crossing from Egypt would be “dealt with by the law”.

Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the violence between 27 December and 16 January, though Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.

The UN’s Goldstone report has said both the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during fighting.

Egypt has begun constructing a huge metal wall along its border with the Gaza Strip as it attempts to cut smuggling tunnels.

When it is finished the wall will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long and will extend 18 metres below the surface.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: First Day of Hegira, Also With Traditional Food

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, DECEMBER 18 — The first day of the new Hegira year (1431) which Muslims celebrate today December 18 will also celebrate food, with helpings of a number of traditional plates such as ‘mloukhia’, which comprises large pieces of meat or entrails flavoured with garlic and laurel leaves and is very green in colour because of the powdered leaves of the tree which lends its name to the dish. The colour green represents a good omen for happiness, prosperity and fertility. Then there are dishes which can be considered as regional. In the island of Djerba, for example, people serve “mhammess au kadid”, which is garnished with coloured eggs and especially dedicated to children. In Nabeul little girls are gifted with small multicoloured sugar dolls, while little boys are given small multicoloured sugar horses or eggs. The tradition states that eating the little statues defeats pagan beliefs. As for the adults, on the eve it is traditional to have a sugared and spicy plate of couscous.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


How the Auschwitz Sign Claiming That “Work Makes Free” Embodies Current Western Thinking and Policy

by Barry Rubin

We invite you to reprint this timely article with a link to the GLORIA Center website, where it originally appeared:

The theft and then recovery of the famous sign at the entrance of Auschwitz-Arbeit macht frei, work will make you free-has brought that artifact of the Holocaust to international attention once again. Merely dismissing the sign as “cynical,” few understand the meaning of the sign in context and its underlying implications for Jewish thought and Israel today.

At the time—and this was very clear in Eastern European towns like that of my grandparents in Poland— Jews were used by the Germans for forced labor. While many were involved in road repair (an extremely important task during the war when highways were heavily used by the Nazis for military purposes), tree cutting, or other manual labor, others labored in their usual professions.

The Germans, of course, wanted to win the war, which they were waging, despite their victories, against difficult odds. Even after the French were defeated and the British retreated across the Channel, the combat was ferocious against the Soviets and the United Kingdom fought on. In pragmatic terms, the Germans needed Jewish labor. After all, too, they could hardly be receiving it under better circumstances. The Jews were not paid for the work, they were denied consumer goods, and their food rations were minimal.

In short, the German strategy toward the Jews-focusing on forced labor-made sense in pragmatic terms. And Western civilization is governed by pragmatism. One does what is beneficial to one’s material self-interests. The German behavior made sense.

It was not hard to explain, for the overwhelming majority of the Jews under German occupation as well, the killings of Jews that they knew about. Here, it was a reprisal for Germans killed by partisans; there, it was a pure act of cruelty or the deeds of a sadistic officer. Or it could be perceived by the pragmatic German goal of keeping the Jews intimidated or to appeal to local anti-Semitic Christians themselves under occupation or actions against Jews who were known for anti-Nazi views.

Whatever it seems to those looking back from a time of much greater knowledge, this pragmatic understanding did make sense in terms of all past history (including Jewish history) and the events people knew about. True, Hitler had written about the extermination of the Jews but this was considered to be just ideology. In Western society, people had become cynical about ideology or at least of ideas that went against immediate self-interest. This was just rabble-rousing.

Thus, it could be expected that if Jews really did work hard and did not cause too much trouble, they would survive, at least the great majority, as had happened during so many previous persecutions. That was their life experience and their historical experience. Of course, it was richly supplemented by wishful thinking, sometimes a wishful thinking that promoted blindness to events that were clearly visible, but this line of reasoning gave an ample logical basis to that wishful thinking.

And so, work makes free. It was not just a sarcastic act of derision but an actual control measure. If the Jews believed they were in Auschwitz to work hard in exchange for their lives, they would be more docile and far easier to manage. The sentiment was meant to be taken seriously, and almost always, at least until late in the war, it was.

To understand all of this is of vital importance for historical reasons. The Jews who became victims were not just cowards or fools or sheep but people who often believed they were using their wits to survive once again a terrible but ultimately passing pogrom…

           — Hat tip: Barry Rubin [Return to headlines]



Israeli Military Admits to Organ Harvesting

Following diplomatic tensions over an August article published in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet accusing the Israeli army of illegally harvesting the organs of Palestinians, Israel has admitted its forensic pathologists removed organs from dead bodies without consent from their families, reports the Associated Press.

Over the weekend, a 2000 interview carried out by an American anthropology professor with Dr. Jehuda Hiss, the then head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, was broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Israel Harvested Organs in ‘90s Without Permission

JERUSALEM — Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, “We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

In the interview, Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. “We’d glue the eyelid shut,” he said. “We wouldn’t take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids.”

Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel’s attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss’ dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report “anti-Semitic.”

The academic, Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden’s foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.

Sheppard-Hughes said that while Palestinians were “by a long shot” not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because “the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered.”

While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel’s Health Ministry told Channel 2, “The guidelines at that time were not clear.” It added, “For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law.”

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]



Palestinians “Disgusted” And “Disappointed” By Bickering Between Hamas and Fatah

For journalist Samir Qumsieh, “no one knows where we are going” and “every day many things happen but nothing changes.” We seem to be “in a blind alley.” The Christian community suffers the most from this paralysis.

Bethlehem (AsiaNews) — “People are tired and disgusted by this ridiculous if not tragic situation,” said Samir Qumsieh, the Catholic editor and director of private broadcaster Al-Mahed Nativity TV, as he described to AsiaNews the state of mind of most Palestinians today. Qumsieh refers to the situation as one of “paralysis” that “will not end any time soon.”

On the one hand, there is the confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, postponed elections, the extension of Mahmud Abbas’ presidency. On the other, talks with Israel are at a standstill whilst Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank continue and talks over the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange of Palestinian prisoners are at a standstill.

“It is clear that Israel has an interest in seeing Palestinians tear at each other to justify its opposition to a two-state solution,” the director of Al-Mahed Nativity TV said, “but the same is true for Hamas for whom avoiding reconciliation with Fatah means doing whatever it wants in Gaza.”

For Qumsieh, extending Abbas’ presidency is the “only way possible to avoid a power vacuum, but it does not offer any prospects for the future. Every day many things happen but nothing changes,” he said. “There is too much bickering and the future looks bleak.”

Christmas is coming and New Year celebrations are just around the corner, but most people in the Territories feel “disgusted” and “resigned”.

“We have so many needs and the same problems continue, with more being added. The wall, joblessness, restricted movement are even heavier burdens to carry in a situation of uncertainty.” People are suffering “because no one knows where we are going. We are in a blind alley,” he lamented.

The Christian community is suffering the most from this “situation of paralysis.” Indeed, according to Qumsieh, recent anti-Christian graffiti in Jerusalem (see ““Death to Christians”: Hebrew graffiti next to Upper Room in Jerusalem,” in AsiaNews 12 December 2009) are but the latest example of something that is almost a daily occurrence.

“Let us not forget that for the Israelis we are Arabs, and that for the Arabs we are Christians,” the journalist explained. “We are always something else and are caught between the two main groups, exposed to their most extremist fringes.”

If obscene Hebrew graffiti are written in Jerusalem against Jesus and Christians, he said, in Gaza the community is getting smaller and smaller “and not only because of Israel’s embargo against the Strip.”

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Shalit: Netanyahu Resumes ‘Marathon’ Talks

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 21 — Today Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu has resumed the lengthy sessions of talks with six of his closest ministers to decide whether to agree to the proposal by a German mediator for a prisoner exchange with Hamas which would secure the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, prisoner in Gaza for over three years. Yesterday Netanyahu spoke to ministers in three different sessions, with three ministers in favour of the proposal (Ehud Barak, Ely Ishai and dan Meridor) and three against (Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Begin and Moshe Yaalon). In exchange for Shalit, Hamas has demanded the release of thousands of prisoners, including ones behind the most serious terrorist attacks during the first years of the intifada. Expecting today to be a critical one, Shalit’s parents have arrived in Jerusalem where they will be received by Netanyahu during the day. In front of the prime minister’s offices a demonstration in support of the Shalit family is in the process of being organised. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Trial Begins: Olmert Pleads Not Guilty

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM — Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert (Kadima) pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the trial against him in the Jerusalem district court. The charges against Olmert include him having accepted envelopes filled with dollars (in cash) from the US businessman Morris Talansky when he was mayor in Jerusalem. He is also accused of having received multiple reimbursements from several institutions (including the Holocaust Museum Yad Va-Shem) for expenses incurred in trips he took abroad to raise funds, as well as having granted favours to friends while Industry Minister. Alongside Olmert also his personal secretary Shula Zaken is on trial, who according to charges managed slush funds for him. Olmert resigned from his position as prime minister in September 2008 after a number of police investigations began against him. He remained in the position until March 2009 (at the end of three years in the government) when his place was taken by Benyamin Netanyahu. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


140 Million Arabs Live in Poverty: UN

CAIRO — Nearly 140 million Arabs live below the poverty line, according to a report published on Sunday by the United Nations Development Programme and Arab League.

The joint report stressed “there has been no decrease in the rates of poverty in the Arab region over the past 20 years,” with some countries actually showing an increase.

“Overall poverty remains high, reaching up to 40 percent on average, which means that nearly 140 million Arabs continue to live under the upper poverty line.”

Outrage at Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi’s £2m bank account

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/outrage-at-lockerbie-bomber-abdul-baset-ali-al-megrahis-2m-bank-account/story-e6frg6so-1225812358319

CAMPAIGNERS opposed to the release of the Lockerbie bomber have expressed outrage at the disclosure that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi held almost £2million in a Swiss bank account during his trial.

Last night the Crown Office confirmed that a “substantial sum” had come to light in 2000, with one source estimating the figure at £1.8million. Evidence of al-Megrahi’s riches was passed to prosecutors by the Swiss authorities in 2000, but was deemed inadmissible because legal proceedings had already begun.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Defence: Turkey to Buy US Military Heavy Lift Copters

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 18 — U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has agreed to sell 14 CH-47F heavy-lift transport helicopters worth up to $1.2 billion to the Turkish military, and has formally asked for Congress’ permission, Hurriyet daily newspaper reports. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, the Pentagon body coordinating weapons sales, last week notified Congress of the potential sale in a letter. “The government of Turkey has requested a possible sale of 14 CH-47F Chinook helicopters, 32 T55-GA-714A turbine engines, 28 AN/ARC-201E Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems, 14 AN/APR-39A(V)1 Radar Signal Detecting Sets, support equipment, special tools and test equipment, spare and repair parts, publications and technical documentation, site survey, personnel training and training equipment, ferry services, U.S. government and contractor technical and logistics support services and other related elements of logistics support,” the DSCA wrote. “The estimated cost is $1.2 billion.” Turkish procurement officials welcomed the move. The CH-47F Chinook is produced by the Boeing Company’s plant in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. The DSCA said Congress was notified Dec. 7. Unless members of the Senate, Congress’ upper chamber, formally object to the sale within 15 days, permission will be automatically obtained. Such objections are extremely rare after a notification is given by the DSCA. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Lebanon: Bus With Syrian Workers Under Fire

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, DECEMBER 21 — Damascus has asked Beirut to find and trial the people who are responsible for the armed attack on a bus in the north of Lebanon, in which early this morning a 17-year-old Syrian boy was killed, the Syrian press agency SANA reports. A man raked the bus with gun fire using a Kalashnikov, in the town of Deir Ammar, near Tripoli. The bus was transporting 25 Syrian labourers. Initial reports on people that have been injured have not been confirmed yet. According to SANA, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Muallim called his Lebanese counterpart, Ali Shami, this morning, to ask “to be informed with the results of the investigations carried out by the Lebanese authorities to identify those who are behind the attack”. The attack comes the day after the meeting in Damascus between Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri and the president of Syria, Bashar al Assad, to end a 4-year period of worsening relations between Lebanon and Syria. In this period anti-Syrian sentiments among many Lebanese increased, including Premier Saad Hariri who has repeatedly accused Syria of being behind the murder of his father, former premier Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a devastating attack in Beirut in 2005. Speaking on LBC television, a local network, the Lebanese Minister of State, Youssef Saadeh, accused “those who are not happy with the rapprochement between Lebanon and Syria” of this morning’s shooting, without supplying further details. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey-Syrian Military Manoeuvres Worry Barak

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, APRIL 27 — Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak described the imminent combined military manoeuvres to be carried out by Turkey and Syria as “a worrying development” for the Middle Eastern region. The two countries, both Muslim, represent a strategic ally and a historic enemy of Israel. The combined manoeuvres, completely unprecedented, were announced yesterday from Ankara and will take place, with units from both armies, in Turkey in a sensitive border area that has been the theatre for repeated clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish separatists for the last 25 years. “We are witnessing a worrying development,” Barak commented, adding that he considers “the strategic alliance between Israel and Turkey will permit a solution” to this problem. Israel has noteworthy trade and close technical and military relations with Turkey, which is a NATO member and with whom Israel has recently conducted combined naval manoeuvres. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turkey: Ergenekon Party to be Founded

The Ergenekon Party, or ER Party, will be the next organization in Turkey’s political scene if the group’s application is accepted, an Ýzmir lawyer said Tuesday. The group aims to be an official political party by Oct. 29, which is the anniversary of the day Turkey was declared a republic.

When asked why they chose the name, lawyer Tarcan Tülük said, “To show that it is wrong to name a law case and terror organization after such a great heroic myth of the Turks.”

Tülük said the group was inspired by the structure of the Pirate Party in Sweden and that they will model their organization accordingly; instead of working in big buildings and huge offices, the party will operate primarily through the Internet and in small offices.

“The ER Party is the solider of Atatürk’s spiritual legacy,” Tülük said.

[Return to headlines]

South Asia


Karzai: Better if Dutch Troops Remain in Afghanistan

Kabul — President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that his war-torn country would benefit if the Netherlands maintained its military and civilian presence in Afghanistan, rather than withdrawing as planned.

About 2,000 Dutch troops are deployed in the province of Uruzgan, one of the most insurgency-hit regions in southern Afghanistan.

The deployment is set to end next year.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Far East


Beijing Prepares New Law on Expropriation

Houses and land are stolen indiscriminately by local governments, which because of the construction boom and major international events increase in value. The central government seems to want to stop the phenomenon, which causes hundreds of violent clashes every month. The Shanghai Expo and Asian Games in Guangzhou mirror the case of the Beijing Olympics.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) — The Chinese central government is ready to change the highly controversial law on the forced demolition of homes and the displacement of citizens, which over time has become a source of violent (and sometimes fatal) conflict among homeowners and real estate speculators often aided by police. This was announced by the Office of Legal Affairs of the State Council, the Chinese Cabinet, who met on 16 December to discuss the matter.

The civil servants are studying a draft law providing for new rules for the purchase of homes and the fees that the state must pay in compensation to the displaced. The draft should abolish the current law, introduced in July of 2001, which besides having gaping voids in legislation, has been defined (even by the state press) as “unfair to the people.”

The Beijing news agency, Xinhua, has interviewed the deputy director of legal affairs Hao Fengtao who argues: “the draft regulation would usher in a profound shift in housing-demolition policy”. Hao declined to give a timetable for the approval of the text, but stressed that this provides “compensation first before demolition begins “.

The text currently in force stipulates that local governments can decide at their discretion how much and when to pay, and this has increasingly created social tensions. Among other things, the explosion of the housing market and the major international events hosted by China have multiplied the number of forced expropriations.

The case of the Olympic Games held in Beijing in the summer of 2008 was sadly notorious. In order to build new stadiums and the Olympic Village, the local government evicted more than 1.5 million people, forcing them to move to rural or suburban districts of the capital. There were hundreds of violent clashes to protest against these injustices, and several who defended their home were sentenced to years in prison.

The situation could be repeated at the 2010 Shanghai Expo and the Asian Games to be held the same year in Guangzhou. The capital of the rich southern province of Guangdong has already been the scene of violent clashes: in November, hundreds of police in riot gear destroyed homes, chased residents and cleared land. According to residents, “these things happen too often.”

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



North Korean Jeans Label Opens Pop-Up Shop in Stockholm

After PUB department store in Stockholm yanked NoKo Jeans from its shelves at the beginning of December, the North Korean jeans label opened its own pop-up shop on Saturday.

“There has been a constant flow of shoppers,” Tor Rauden Kaellstigen of company NoKo Jeans told AFP.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Mexico City Backs Gay Marriage in Latin American First

Lawmakers in Mexico City have become the first in Latin America to legalise gay marriage.

City legislators passed the bill 39-20, with five abstentions. The city’s mayor is now widely expected to sign the bill into law.

Gay marriage is only allowed in seven countries and some parts of the US. Certain parts of Latin America allow civil unions for same-sex couples.

The Catholic Church and conservative groups had opposed Mexico City’s move.

The bill calls for a change in the definition of marriage in the city’s civic code — from the union of a man and a woman to “the free uniting of two people”.

Regional differences

Lawmaker David Razu had proposed the change to give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples regarding social security and other benefits.

Mexico City’s legislature is dominated by the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, which has already legalised abortion and civil unions for same-sex couples.

Spokesman Oscar Oliver told AFP news agency that city legislators were now taking up a measure in the bill that would allow married same-sex couples to adopt children.

A handful of cities in Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia permit gay unions.

Uruguay alone has legalised civil unions nationwide and allowed same-sex couples to adopt children.

Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent’s first gay marriage.

In a last-minute challenge, a court referred the case to the country’s Supreme Court, which is due to rule on the issue.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Egypt: Promised Visas for Italy Not Obtained, Protests

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 17 — Visas promised for legal immigration never arrived, and have reportedly been used to legalise illegal immigrants already present in Italy. These are the claims of some Egyptian workers, according to the independent newspapers Al Shourouk and Al Dostour, who participated in a training course in order to immigrate legally to Italy, and who have decided to report the event to the prosecutor’s office against the Minister of Labour and Immigration in Egypt, Aicha Abdel Hadi, the ambassador of Italy in Cairo, and the director of the Don Bosco Institute where the courses, a couple of years ago, were held. According to the charge, the Egyptian minister opened the possibility to immigrate to Italy and work in the construction and agriculture sectors, as a part of an agreement between the two countries entitled ‘International Action for Labour’, offering 8,000 permits. The same minister, again according to the accusations, accepted the candidacy of those who presented themselves and asked to follow the language and labour law courses. After having paid for the courses and following the 200 hours of lessons, the report claims, the participants never received a response on the issuing of the visas or a date for the trip. The ministry reportedly informed them that the visas that were to go to them were used to naturalise Egyptians who were already present on the Italian national territory. No notification reached the seat of the Salesian Institute in Cairo, stated director Don Renzo Leonarduzzi. “In any case”, he added, “we do not have any responsibility, we only hosted the courses, for some 220 people and supplied some teachers. There were Italian lessons, but also lessons on job safety and Italian law, as well s welding. Then I heard that there had been complaints because time passed with no indication of anything, while some others managed to depart. Some of the attendees left their old jobs to be able to attend the courses”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



France: Immigration, 20,000 Registrations This Year

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, DECEMBER 21 — In 2009 France regularised more than 20,000 immigrants. The claim was included in a survey by Paris newspaper Le Monde, based on figures provided by the Ministry of Immigration. According to official statistics, in 2008 some 2,800 workers gained their papers and that number, according to Le Monde, should remain the same for 2009. But this form of regularisation covers only a small part of granted residence permits”. We have to add the so-called extraordinary residence admissions, in other words regularisations for humanitarian reasons, and family regroupings. Permits for humanitarian reasons are not officially accounted for, but again Le Monde calculated that they amount to approximately 3,000 every year. The numbers for family regroupings are instead much higher, and have been constantly increasing in the past decade: from 3,314 in 1999 to 15,858 in 2008, with a peak of more than 22,000 in 2006. The trend was also confirmed for 2009, which in September already registered 10,917 persons that had been regularised for personal and family ties”. The newspaper commented that the number of granted residence permits is thus equal, if not greater, than the number of expulsions, the pride of the unwavering policy followed by minister of Immigration Eric Besson, which in 2008 amounted to 19,724 and in 2009 should be just as many. Nonetheless, the number of irregular foreigners on French soil should range between 200,000 to 400,000. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Governments vs the People: Replacing the Population by Another One

Conspiracy theorists can easily explain the conduct of the Belgian government. They will say it is an attempt to replace the Belgians by another population. For those who do not believe in this theory, it is harder to explain why Mr. Van Rompuy declared an amnesty which he knew to be unpopular, which will drain the Belgian welfare budget and which is, moreover, unlawful because the government usurped the prerogatives of Parliament. For those who do not believe in the population replacement theory, it is hard to explain why the Belgian government, despite a court ruling, stubbornly sticks to its decision.

For those who do not believe in a conspiracy theory, it is equally hard to explain why on 15 December, George Papandreou, the Prime Minister of Greece, announced that one of the measures to reduce his country’s crushing budget deficit will be to “bring illegal immigrants into the social security system.” It is true that some illegal aliens work in the country illegally and do not pay taxes and contributions, but it is equally true that many others do not and will, if “brought into the system,” be net consumers rather than net contributors.

Those who do not believe that Europe’s ruling establishment has engaged in a conspiracy against it own people will also have a hard time explaining the recent decision of the appeals chamber of the Bar Association’s disciplinary council in the Netherlands. On 12 December, it acquitted a Muslim lawyer of contempt of court. The Muslim lawyer, who wears a Muslim head covering during court sessions, refuses to rise when the judge enters the courtroom. He says that his religion maintains that everyone is equal and that, hence, he cannot rise for the judge. Though everyone is equal, however, the same lawyer refuses to shake hands with women. Nevertheless, the Muslim lawyer is getting away with behavior which the ruling establishment would not tolerate from indigenous Dutch lawyers, and, more importantly, which the majority of the Dutch people does not wish to tolerate from newcomers.

Europe’s ruling establishment is currently engaged in policies which go so radically against what ordinary Europeans want that a dangerous rift is growing between the people and those who govern them. If this situation is not remedied, Europe’s governments risk losing their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to realize that this can only contribute to the potential for a revolutionary explosion of violence and anger somewhere down the road.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]



Philippines: International Migrants Day: For Filipino Church, Emigration Destroys Families

Separation from wives and husbands working abroad deprives children of education and work. More than 10,000,000 Filipinos live overseas. So far this year, they have sent home US$ 14.3 billion.

Manila (AsiaNews) — “Remittances by our migrants keep the economy afloat, but more emigration destroys society,” said Fr Joaquin F. Valdes, OP of the Catholic University of Santo Tomas, Manila. For him, the lack of values and separation of husbands and wives tend to break up marriages and have devastating effects on new generations, who without a family tend to emigrate on their own without a proper education and preparation for work.

The Philippines is the Asian country with the highest proportion of citizens living abroad, 10,000,000 in all, or about 9 per cent of the total, spread in about 190 countries, 70 per cent women.

Unemployment is the main cause for this exodus, a problem that is growing. In 2009 alone, about 2.72 million Filipinos lost their job at home.

Experts note that about 2,000 Filipinos leave the country every day, mostly young people with little education or working experience. In a few years, this will mean that overseas Filipino will constitute about 11.7 per cent of the population.

The main countries of destination are the United States, home to about 3,000,000 Filipinos, but many are also reaching Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and the Middle East.

Often migrants face human rights violations in their host country. This is especially true in Arab world where women are often segregated in the homes of their employers for the duration of their contract.

Despite such problems, little or nothing is being done to stem the flow. One reason is that foreign remittances by Filipinos are a key component of the national economy. Just in the first ten months of this year, Filipinos sent home a total of US$ 14.3 billion. In October, they sent home US$ 1.2 billion; that is 6.7 per cent more than in previous months.

The Church has been actively involved in helping Filipino migrants since 1955 through the Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI), which provides assistance to those in need.

The Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC) in Manila is an example of what the Church is doing. It offers programs to educate and train young people who emigrate and missionary priests who go abroad to minister to Filipinos. Another example is the Child and Migrant Parents in South East Asia Programme, which provides spiritual support to children and parents of migrants.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

General


There’ll be Nowhere to Run From the New World Government

The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of “global agreements” reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Thank You, Geert Wilders

Free Geert banner


For a long time any criticism of Muslim immigration in the Netherlands — especially when voiced by Geert Wilders and other members of the PVV — was considered unwise, because it would tend to radicalize impressionable young Muslims and push them farther away from integration into Dutch society. So the reasoning went, anyway.

However, a new report by the Dutch intelligence service indicates that the growth of Salafism — fundamentalist Islam — in the Netherlands has slowed. And what is the cited reason? Public discussion of and resistance to Islamization, as led by Geert Wilders and the PVV.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article on the topic from De Volkskrant:

Wilders deserves a little thanks

by Amanda Kluveld

The real reason for terrorists to see us as a legitimate target is that the Netherlands has not yet been conquered by Islam

In the recent AIVD report “Weerstand en tegenkracht” (Resistance and Counterforce)[1] on current trends and developments one may read that the growth of Salafism in the Netherlands has stagnated. That is good to know, because according to the AIVD, Salafism is an important basis for Islamic terrorism and serves as an essential binder for the Islamist terrorist networks, organizations and individuals. There is no cause for joy though, because a stagnation of such growth does not mean that the in recent years the increasingly growing Salafists’ group in the Netherlands has become smaller.

But why the sudden stagnation of growth? The AIVD points at the public debate as one of the causes. This is a remarkable turnaround from previous reports by the service. In 2004, the Islam-critical contributions to the public debate were seen as a major cause of the fact that Muslims are turning away from Dutch society and are attracted to Salafism, radical jihad, and terrorism.

In a note on jihad recruits, the then Minister Johan Remkes (VVD, center-right) said: “Of interest is the fact that a growing number of Muslims feel unfairly treated by opinion makers and opinion leaders in society. Adding to this is that in their view the government does not — or fails in an attempt to — act as impartial arbiter. This idea reigns within a small group of politically radical Muslims but also within a large proportion of Muslims who themselves have do not feel obliged to — and bound to — the principles of constitutional democracy.”

That public debate caused youngsters to drift into the arms of jihadists. And now that same public debate is suddenly causing the Salafism in our country to stop growing, and making moderate Muslims increasingly speak out against radical dawa. How does this work, exactly?

– – – – – – – –

The AIVD does not say much about that, and just gives a few examples, including the controversy on dress codes between Ahmed Marcouch and Imam Fawaz Jneid of the as-Sunnah mosque. I still remember this debate. It was so weak that I can hardly imagine that it would have had such an impact on Muslim youth that they suddenly found Salafism to be less attractive. But I may be wrong. It would therefore be pleasurable if the AIVD would actually show the relationship between the halt in the growth of Salafism and the controversy.

Yet it is remarkable that the public debate according to the AIVD suddenly is no longer the problem but part of the solution. With the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism such a change of thinking has not yet occurred. The Eleventh progress report of the NCTb suggests that the Netherlands remains a ‘legitimate target’ in the eyes of international jihadist groups.

A major reason is supposedly “the tone of the debate on Islam” in the Netherlands. Perhaps the NCTb empathizes a little too much with the jihadists. It may be that these violent Muslim terrorists point at the debate on Islam in the Netherlands, but it goes too far to immediately believe that this is an important reason to consider attacks on our country.

With more credibility, one might conclude that terrorists use the Dutch debate Islam as an excuse. The real reason why they consider our country to be a legitimate target is their irrational and hypocritical ideological hatred against the West, and the simple fact that the Netherlands has not yet been conquered by Islam.

Because Islam is intent on conquest. It was not without reason that Pope Benedict XVI quoted the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in his Regensburg speech: “Show me what kind of new things Muhammad has brought about, and you’ll find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the faith he preached with the sword.”

In 2007 the then National Coordinator for Counterterrorism Tjibbe Joustra did not want to know about it. He said: “The tone that people like PVV leader Geert Wilders take may lead to the radicalization of Muslims. […] Such radical statements may give the final push to individuals who are on the brink of violence.” The responsibility of the individuals who are likely to become violent was therefore completely taken away form such persons and placed on the plate of Wilders.

The AIVD and the NCTb are not doing that now. They do not need to, because Wilders will be prosecuted for his contributions to the public debate about Islam. Wilders is indicted for his “radical statements” about Islam and even because of quoting from or agreeing with statements made by others on this issue. For instance, Wilders is accused of stating that he agrees with the Regensburg speech by the Pope.

And also because he quoted the statement by Oriana Fallaci: “Moderate Islam does not exist. And it does not exist because there is no such thing as Good Islam and Bad Islam. There is Islam and that’s all. And Islam is the Koran. Nothing but the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate the others… which calls non-Muslims infidel-dogs, meaning inferior beings. Read it over, that Mein Kampf. Whatever the version, you find out that all the evil which the sons of Allah commit against us and against themselves comes from that book.” [2]

Wilders is also charged with the fact that he cited the former chief of the Mossad, Ephraim Halevy. Halevy says that World War III has begun. “Those are not my words, but it is true,” Wilders said.

In brief: when the AIVD is right, and the public debate has contributed to the stagnation of the growth of Salafism in the Netherlands, there can be no conclusion except that Wilders deserves a little thank-you. His contributions to the public debate have not gone unnoticed. And even if the AIVD is not right, there still is no reason to charge Wilders with anything.

Wilders is not the first to state that the pope is right. He also is not the first to agree with the vision of Oriana Fallaci. But he is the first to be prosecuted for that reason [with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Roger Köppel unfortunately probably next in line — translator]. Where are the human rights organizations to take it up for them? Where are the opinion leaders? Where is the public debate?

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Notes:

[1] AIVD Report: ‘Weerstand en tegenkracht’

The growth of the Salafist movement in the Netherlands is stagnating due to increased resistance. With this a part of the breeding ground for radicalization also disappears. This is shown by the AIVD report “Weerstand en tegenkracht” (Resistance and Counterforce). This report is a follow up to the publication “Radical Dawa in Transition”, which was published in the autumn of 2007. Because Salafism is a movement that can have a polarizing effect on society, it remains important to fully monitor developments. By making a careful assessment of the threat we needs must avoid both an underestimation and an overestimation of the problem.

The report states that resistance has increased due to publications about the risks of Salafism and initiatives by local government. This contributed to the increasing resistance within the Dutch Muslim community against the radical dawa. Moderate Muslims increasingly dare to speak out at the local and national level against the anti-integrationist and intolerant isolationist message of the Salafist preachers. The AIVD has the past two years visiting several mayors and a dozen regional colleges to inform them about the nonviolent radical dawa.

Download the report [in Dutch] here.

[2] (Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason, post-script, p.305, February 2006. Citation from a speech by the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci which she gave in New York on November 28, 2005, when she was awarded a prize for her heroic resistance against Islamofascism and for her battle for freedom [taken from Geert Wilders’ website].

Denigrating Islam in Switzerland

Last month’s referendum in Switzerland — which banned further minaret construction — generated vehement opposition and disapproval from the usual suspects on the Left and among Muslims.

But it wasn’t just the OIC and the European transnational clique that objected to the ban; the ruling elites in Switzerland itself were appalled by the “racism” of their benighted countrymen, and have signaled their willingness use any available legal pretext to overturn the results of the referendum, if they can.

In a case that is reminiscent of the “hate speech” charge brought against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, a magazine editor in Switzerland has been indicted for “denigrating Islam” in his “racist” utterances on television. This quasi-legal farce is an obvious reprisal for his support of the minaret ban.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Het Vrije Volk on the case:

Swiss leftists want to silence magazine-editor

The editor-in-chief of the Swiss magazine Weltwoche, Roger Köppel, has been indicted by Socialists in Zurich. The reason: he violated an anti-racism law. On talk shows, according to the Socialist thought-gestapo, Köppel “systematically denigrated and vilified members of the Islamic religion and thus crossed the borders of racism.”

The guardians of political correctness subsequently filed a criminal complaint with the Public Prosecutor in Zurich.

The Young Socialists (Jungsozialisten, Juso) in Canton Zurich have indicted the editor-in-chief of Weltwoche Roger Köppel due to violations of the anti-racism penalty statute. Köppel made racist statements in several articles and a television interview, the accusations asserts.

According to a statement of this on Thursday, it concerns the TV show “Talk Täglich” [Daily Talk] of the local broadcaster “Tele Züri” and comments in several editions of Weltwoche. Thus it was about the minaret-referendum and the Islam.

[…]

With such statements intentionally vague fears would be fueled, discrimination in Switzerland would be instigated, and the Muslims and Muslimas would be stigmatized. In their indictment, the Young Socialists want to send a signal against intolerance and exclusion.

To blame Roger Köppel for racism — who, unlike left-wing barkers, always knows how to behave and always argues with well-grounded reasoning — can hardly be surpassed in absurdity. In any case the leftists themselves inflame “vague fears” by trying to nip any criticism of Islam in the bud with the ultimate death-club of racism or fascism. Good for those people, who due to lack of arguments always show their undemocratic face and try to suffocate any opposing view.

The Jungsozialisten proudly announce:

– – – – – – – –

Roger Köppel, editor and editor-in-chief of the Weltwoche, with numerous statements in the comments in the editions 43 and 47 of Weltwochehas made it clear that the people of the Islamic faith who live in Switzerland are a fundamental threat to security and order of the country due to their religion, from his perspective, and that one therefore would not need to be tolerant towards them. He ascribes to the Muslim women and Muslims in general an “unfulfilled nostalgia for the political coup”, because they “right up to today have not got over the loss of their empire.” The present Islam wants to be “a political domination system”, even a “political-religious ideology of conquest”, that is “hostile towards the current order” and seeks “extension, subversion and conquest.

In the above-mentioned television broadcast “Tele Züri” he made similar statements, and included the matching opinion that Muslim women and Muslim men living in Switzerland should be considered members of “a hostile army”.

With these statements Roger Köppel has clearly violated article 261bis of the Criminal Code, because he systematically denigrated and vilified the members of the Islamic religion.

Thereby Roger Köppel has exceeded the boundaries of racism. With such statements, deliberately vague fears are fueled, discrimination in Switzerland is instigated, and Muslims are stigmatized. This can and will not be accepted by the Young Socialists. With their indictment they want to give a signal against exclusion and intolerance, because for them it is clear: racism in Switzerland, no matter by whom and against whom, will not be tolerated.

Probably the lefties are just bad losers and can not forgive Roger Köppel for being on the side of the winners since the start of it. When they lose, democrats shows their true face…

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Original sources: PI-News and Het Vrije Volk.

Email address of the Young Socialists (Jungsozialisten, Juso) in Kanton Zürich: info@juso.org

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/20/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/20/2009The German defense minister says he thinks it’s time negotiate with the Taliban. He believes that not all Taliban are hard-core terrorists and would-be totalitarians, and recommends that the NATO coalition in Afghanistan negotiate with the “moderate” Taliban.

In other news, Zhu Min, the deputy governor of the People’s Republic of China, warned President Obama to stop his runaway deficit spending. Meanwhile, the Islamist al-Shabaab rebels in Somalia are forcing men to grow their beards, shave their moustaches, and wear short pants, so that they will be in accord with the tenets of sharia law.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Esther, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, TB, VH, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – –

Financial Crisis
China Warns Obama Deficit Spending Must Stop
Common Currency Questioned by Leading Economist
Government’s ‘Cure’ Worse Than ‘Disease’
Swiss Banks Should Step Up Islamic Wealth Drive
 
USA
L.A. Neo-Nazis Protest at Riverside Synagogue
Laughing at the Left
‘Tis the Week Before Christmas …
Understanding the Global-Warming Jihadists
 
Europe and the EU
Cyprus: 125:000 Foreigners Live on the Island
Sweden:300 Demonstrate for Christian Convert
Switzerland: Of Minarets and Massacres
UK: ‘Low-Ranking Airline Worker’ Al-Megrahi Had £1.8m in Swiss Bank Account Before Lockerbie Bomb Conviction
UK: Bah! Humbug! A Christmas Ghost Story in Downing Street
UK: Christian Teacher Lost Her Job After Being Told Praying for Sick Girl ‘Was Bullying’
UK: Muslim Police Chef Defeated in ‘Bacon Roll’ Tribunal Faces £75,000 Legal Bill
UK: Police Expect Mumbai-Style Terror Attack on City of London
UK: The Michael Powell Case Shows How Charges of Racism Hobble the Police
 
North Africa
Egypt Boosts Security at Gaza Border After Firing
Tunisia: Archaeological Finds Trafficking, Italians Arrested
 
Middle East
Analysis: Suddenly, The Arab World Wakes Up to Yemen’s Rebellion
First Woman to Open Bank Account in Lebanon
Iranian Troops No Longer Control Oil Well: Iraq
Plot Targeting Turkey’s Religious Minorities Allegedly Discovered
Turkey Slams Orthodox Chief’s Crucifixion Remark
Turks Threaten to Kill Priest Over Swiss Minaret Decision
Yemen:12 Al-Qaeda Suicide Bombers Dead, 5 Foreigners Killed
 
South Asia
A Thousand Islamic Extremists, Including Women and Children, Storm a Church Near Jakarta
Indonesian Theology Students Withstand Threats, Illness
Let’s Talk to the Taliban, Says Guttenberg
Migrants of Bangladesh: A Vital Resource for National Economy
Pakistan: Zardari ‘To Lose Control of Party’ Following Amnesty Ruling
Sri Lankan Military ‘Sexually Abused’ Tamil Girls in Refugee Camps
Tens of Thousands Flee as the Army Faces the Taliban in Swat
 
Far East
China: Shaolin: Kung Fu Monks Become a Money Making Brand
Gas Pipeline a Symbol of China’s Power: Analysts
N. Korea Capable of Miniaturizing Nuclear Warheads: Source
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
African Christians Fear Own Government on ‘Jihad’
Somali Rebels Force Men to Grow Beards
 
Immigration
Swedish Police Produce Pepper Spray at Refugee’s Wedding
Switzerland: Guantánamo Detainee Wins Asylum Appeal
 
Culture Wars
Analysis: How Nelson-Reid Compromise Allows Abortion Funding in Health Care
Defense Launched for Kids Sex Books
Dissident Lutherans: Bullying Over Gays
U.S. Army Major: Lose Evangelical Christian Beliefs
 
General
Islamic Plan to Criminalize Gospel Message Crumbling

Financial Crisis


China Warns Obama Deficit Spending Must Stop

Beijing reluctant to keep bankrolling president’s belt-buster budget

One day after the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao snubbed President Obama at the United Nation’s Copenhagen Climate Summit, the Chinese warned the United States that China’s ability to continue buying U.S. Treasury debt was limited.

Zhu Min, the deputy governor of the People’s Republic of China, told the Shanghai Daily that it is getting harder for the People’s Bank of China to buy U.S. Treasuries because the shrinking U.S. current account is reducing the supplies overseas.

[…]

“The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries,” Zhu said. “Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible.”

Zhu’s warning was clear.

“The world does not have so much money to buy more U.S. Treasuries,” he said.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Common Currency Questioned by Leading Economist

London, 18 Dec. (AKI) — A leading economist and Middle East expert from the London based think-tank Chatham House has questioned the likelihood that some Arab states will create a single currency modelled on the euro. Paola Subacchi, research director of the organisation’s international economics department reacted with scepticism when interviewed by Adnkronos International (AKI) on Friday.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar this week announced plans to launch the first phase of a single currency next year, creating a Gulf Monetary Council to evolve into a fully-fledged central bank.

“From an economic point of view it makes sense for a monetary union. A big problem is that here we have Saudi Arabia and three smaller partners,” Subacchi said.

“It is like having Germany with Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. It doesn’t make sense,” Subacchi said.

Subacchi, who is Italian, specialises in international monetary systems, capital flows and other issues.

“We have seen so many kinds of declarations of intent, this is another one. It is an empty declaration,” Subacchi said.

She said it made sense to form a common currency in the region.

“There is commonality of institutions so it makes a lot of sense,” she said.

“But the whole process has been so slow that many people have lost confidence in this project.”

Earlier this week, the United Arab Emirates declined to join the move for a common fund, apparently irked that the central bank will be located in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on the insistence of the Saudi King Abdullah, rather than in Abu Dhabi.

Between them the Gulf countries amount to a regional superpower with a gross domestic product of $1,200 billion some 40 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal to that of China.

The Gulf states remain divided over the wisdom of anchoring their economies to the US dollar. The Gulf currency — dubbed the “gulfo” — is likely to track a global exchange basket and may ultimately float as a regional reserve currency in its own right.

“The US dollar has failed. We need to delink,” said Nahed Taher, chief executive of Bahrain’s Gulf One Investment Bank.

The project is inspired by Europe’s monetary union, seen as a huge success in the Arab world.

Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, said the project would not work unless Gulf countries break down basic barriers to trade and capital flows.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Government’s ‘Cure’ Worse Than ‘Disease’

As we count down to the final Senate vote on a government-mandated health plan that will cripple and then bankrupt the American health-care system, we must reacquaint ourselves with the results of past government intervention in the health-care system and in other areas, such as the financial meltdown.

Recently, the president met with bank executives in an attempt to increase their lending to small and mid-sized businesses, the very businesses that will suffer the most under the proposed health plan. Mr. Obama is demonstrating very clearly that he does not understand the constitutional role of the presidency. Additionally, he either misunderstands the way government has attempted to drive the United States into third world status, or else he desires this result.

Our Dear Leader still seems oblivious to the fact that the government was the cause of the financial meltdown in the first place. How can we more easily understand the process by which the government caused the financial crisis? I explained in an earlier article that undesired consequences result when the government gets into the game as opposed to restricting itself to its intended role as referee.

[…]

Government is the cause of the high cost of health care in the United States, and like the mortgage crisis the health-care cost “crisis” cannot be cured by its very cause. Medicare was the first public option, made mandatory because those not enrolled in Medicare are ineligible to receive Social Security benefits. Government options are never optional because the goal of government is to increase dependence on itself.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Swiss Banks Should Step Up Islamic Wealth Drive

Switzerland faces a bigger threat from the developing private banking system in the Middle East than reaction to the minaret ban, according to one finance expert.

However, the controversial vote and subsequent condemnation should serve as a warning for the Swiss finance industry to better serve the needs of Islamic clients, observers believe.

Switzerland is waiting to see how far November’s referendum decision to ban the future construction of minarets will damage the country’s image and business interests.

So far, only Turkey has reacted with concrete retaliatory proposals by suggesting that its citizens withdraw assets held in Swiss banks. But the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) is not expecting outflows of the estimated $200 billion (SFr208 billion) held by mainly Arabic clients in Switzerland.

“Muslim clients are very canny investors and appreciate the competence, quality of service, good advice and good performance they get from Swiss banks. Money knows no religion,” SBA spokesman James Nason told swissinfo.ch.

John Sandwick, head of Geneva-based group Islamic Wealth and Asset Management, told swissinfo.ch that the vote had stirred up resentment in the Middle East, but not enough to spark organised financial reprisals from wealthy Muslims.

“Switzerland did something really offensive against people who could really hurt us, but on this occasion it looks like it will not have a big impact on Swiss private banking in the long run,” he said.

Local competition

Having suffered setbacks in the United States and Europe in a bruising battle over tax evasion, Swiss banks are increasingly turning their attention to the Middle East, Asia and developing markets.

Switzerland is not the only European country to have identified lucrative prospects in the region and has long faced stiff competition from London, and to a lesser degree, from Paris to attract petro-dollars.

However the main threat in future may come from local banks setting up their own wealth management services, with a much wider array of Sharia compliant services.

“Lots of local private banks [in the Middle East] are starting up their own private banking businesses,” Sandwick told swissinfo.ch. “The domestic wealth management programme is already in the process of destroying the Swiss private banking model. It is not there yet, but it will not take too long.”

Sandwick believes the Swiss are taking too long to offer Middle Eastern clients a full range of private banking services that are compliant with Islamic legislation known as Sharia.

Sharia law, for example, prohibits the charging or payment of interest and investments associated with gambling, alcohol, tobacco, pornography or pork production.

Time is ripe

Despite Swiss banks being present in the oil rich region for many years and producing a steady trickle of Sharia compliant services — such as the recent wealth management offering by Bank Sarasin — Sandwick thinks they have barely scratched the surface of Islamic finance.

“All the locals are saying that they want Islamic financial products, but Swiss banks do not appear interested in doing anything,” he said. “These clients do not have access to plain vanilla [standard] wealth management with Fatwa [approval from Islamic clerics].”

Sandwick insisted that the time is ripe for Swiss private banking to make serious inroads into one of the few global regions to come out of the financial crisis with a steady supply of new wealth.

And he believes that Muslim clients would in future seek safe, conservative refuges for their assets after taking a battering with the recent fad for investing in complicated products. Switzerland’s reputation for solid, safe banking has lost some of its sheen after becoming entangled in the subprime crisis, but it still retains much of its private banking credibility.

“Right now is the time to penetrate further into this market because others have lost credibility,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

USA


L.A. Neo-Nazis Protest at Riverside Synagogue

The demonstration outside Temple Beth El is the third in recent months, rabbi says. It occurred during a Hanukkah celebration attended by members of local churches and other groups.

Congregants at Temple Beth El who had gathered to celebrate the last night of Hanukkah were met by a group of neo-Nazi demonstrators who waved red-and-black swastika flags outside the Reform synagogue in Riverside on Friday evening.

Rabbi Suzanne Singer said the demonstration was the third such protest at the temple in recent months. She said she thinks it was connected to a counter-protest held in September by members of the synagogue and others responding to a neo-Nazi protest at a day labor site.

[…]

“All this does is bring people closer together,” Gilman said. “The message that they’re trying to send isn’t the message people in Riverside want.”

Singer said her synagogue, a local Islamic center and several area churches would be raising banners outside their respective buildings next month declaring, “We value diversity. Unity in love.”

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Laughing at the Left

If the consequences for this great nation of ours weren’t so serious and the policies preferred by the left weren’t so dangerous, one would really laugh, almost uncontrollably, at the beliefs and (il)logic of American liberals. Based on things they have actually said or done, here are some of the things they really, truly seem to believe.

They believe we can spend our way out of debt. They believe taking money from one part of the economy to give to another part somehow makes the economy bigger. They believe people who have never run a business can run a business better than people who have spent their whole lives running businesses. They believe that what appears to be a 20-year spike in global temperatures (a spike itself that hundreds of scientists dispute) can mean doom for a planet whose temperatures have swung much more widely for 6 billion years — but that an eight- or ten-year flattening or even drop in temperatures can be ignored because it doesn’t comport with the “models” based largely on the previous 20 years. They believe that punishing “developed” nations for carbon consumption is a good idea even if it means that developing countries without the same environmental controls will take over the production/manufacturing forced away from the developed countries. So, somehow, in the name of saving the environment from carbon emissions, they would create even more carbon emissions (and other, real pollution) elsewhere — and call it progress.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



‘Tis the Week Before Christmas …

America’s great experiment in freedom was designed by our founders to create a new kind of government consisting of the very people for whom the government was made. The first purpose of this new government was to protect the freedom of the people against all enemies both foreign and domestic, and especially from governmental tyranny. To keep the federal government under control, the designers limited the power of the new federal government to those very specific areas set forth in Article I, Section 8.

These limitations are now routinely ignored by both the House and the Senate.

The one mechanism in our system of government designed to rid our government of those who abuse the Constitution is the biennial elections.

America stands at the brink of a Marxist abyss because Americans have elected a majority of officials who do not honor the Constitution, who do not respect the value of individual freedom, and who crave personal power and perks more than the prosperity produced by free people operating a free market.

[…]

Victory in 2010 is not necessarily determined by party label. There are Democrats who believe in the constitutional limitation of congressional power, and Republicans who do not. The challenge faced by voters is finding candidates — regardless of party affiliation — who are strong advocates of the U.S. Constitution, as demonstrated by deeds, not rhetoric. Sadly, many of these candidates labor fruitlessly in third-party campaigns.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Understanding the Global-Warming Jihadists

Here is the lowdown in a nutshell: Governments have used billions of dollars of our money to fund fraudulent science, which, in turn, is used to justify policy that would steal untold billions more from us through taxation and the handicapping of the private sector. This will, of course, stifle the creation of wealth, but it will also be a transfer of it. But this would not be so much from the rich to the poor; it would be from the poor and middle class to the rich and well-connected. Carbon-credit con men such as Al Gore will add to their many millions, while subtracting from the many millions some of the latter’s few dollars. It would move us toward a situation in which we’d have two Americas, as John Edwards might say. One would be a lying, covetous ruling class of John Edwardses. The other would be the masses, who would be perpetually mired in serfdom.

[…]

So forget about icebergs; the meltdown the climate con artists fear is that of their reputations, egos, finances and faith. Scientists or not, to admit error is not merely the alteration of a hypothesis to them; it is the loss of religion and meaning, the end of empire, the fall of Rome. It is complete and utter personal destruction.

Yet destruction is precisely what the climate-change con men would visit on the economies of nations in their delusional grip. Other lands, such as China and India, will never yield to such insanity. They may pay lip service to it, though, especially if doing so will encourage us to more thoroughly handicap ourselves. Then they can laugh and rise to prominence while we become the most recent great civilization to descend into backwater status.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Cyprus: 125:000 Foreigners Live on the Island

(ANSAMED) — NICOSIA, DECEMBER 18 — The number of foreigners living in Cyprus on a permanent basis has shot up according to new figures, showing 125,000 residents are non-Cypriot (15.9%). According to the data, 81,000 foreign citizens in Cyprus were from EU member states and 44,000 from third countries. On 1 January 2008, 30.8 million foreign citizens lived in the EU27 member states, of which 11.3 million were citizens of another EU27 member state. The remaining 19.5 million were citizens of countries outside the EU27, of which 6.0 million were citizens of other European countries, 4.7 million of Africa, 3.7 million of Asia and 3.2 million of the American continent. Foreign citizens accounted for 6.2% of the total EU27 population. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Sweden:300 Demonstrate for Christian Convert

From Swedish: 300 people demonstrated in Stockholm in support of Adiba öde (37) whose asylum request was rejected by the Swedish authorities. Adiba is a Jordanian-Muslim who converted to Christianity. She came to Sweden fleeing honor murder, and now says she’s persecuted for her new religion. Adiba was attacked recently, apparently by somebody sent by her Jordanian family, and has gotten death threats.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Of Minarets and Massacres

The surprise Swiss vote last month to ban new minarets triggered the expected gnashing of teeth from those who believe Islam, the least tolerant of faiths when administered by autocrats and absolute monarchs, should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. “It is an expression of intolerance, and I detest intolerance,” commented French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. “I hope the Swiss will reverse this decision quickly.” Commenters expressed similar thoughts on blogs—”Deeply ashamed to be Swiss,” wrote Stephanie of Zurich—while voices sympathetic to the vote also quickly flooded the blogosphere. “Google ‘Archdiocese of Mecca,’“ one poster from Arizona acidly suggested.

Forgive me if I, too, do not weep that 57.5 percent of the Swiss, now hosts to a largely moderate Muslim population of Turks and former Yugoslavs, want to keep their country a quiet car among nations. I am still busy weeping for the Armenians, the first people in their corner of the world to officially adopt Christianity, almost eliminated from history due to regular massacres by the Muslim Turks among whom they lived for centuries.

Is bringing in the Armenian genocide too big a stretch when contemplating an electoral act about urban design rather than a state policy to implement ethnic cleansing? After all, the ban doesn’t involve violence (so far), or suppression of religious worship (mosques remain OK). What is the appropriate context when reflecting on such a ban? One little-pondered aspect of Web commentary on the news these days is how it has tremendously widened the spectrum of “context” in intellectual debate. Examine remarks on the minaret ban and it’s easy to feel that no one short of a walking encyclopedia could properly tackle the subject.

What about the Crusades? The Inquisition? America’s genocide of Native Americans? Church bells and belfries? Jordanian denial of citizenship to Jews? Nineteenth-century European colonialism in the Mideast? Islamic discrimination against gays, Jews, women, Christians? Serb persecution of Muslims in Bosnia? The Battles of Tours (732) and Lepanto (1571)? Wahhabi fundamentalism? Swiss collaboration with the Nazis? Swiss protection of Jews from the Nazis? It’s enough to make one’s head swim.

Perhaps we’ll all need “Advanced Context” as a required liberal-arts course once the anarchy of cybercommentary takes over all intellectual debate. Allow me, then, in this amorphous, pluralistic environment, to return to the Armenians. Because it may well be that persuading people about appropriate context in large moral matters can’t be done a priori, but only, so to speak, pragmatically—you juxtapose the context you think relevant with the issue at hand, and see whether it makes a difference to what anyone thinks. It may also be, in moral matters involving tolerance, that proper context can be sought by connecting it with a concrete, powerful notion in everyday life: apology.

It’s an unfortunate modern truism that all genocides aren’t equal in their impact. As Richard Bernstein noted recently in the International Herald Tribune, the just-finished trial of a key Khmer Rouge figure in Cambodia stirred little attention in America. Yet the morally impoverished reaction over decades to the Turkish government’s massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians that began in 1915—bookended by earlier and later massacres that killed hundreds of thousands—still stands apart because it once stood as the best-known genocide in modern history.

As early as 1895, The New York Times ran a report headlined, “Another Armenian Holocaust.” In 1915, the Times ran multiple reports with such headlines as, “Wholesale Massacres of Armenians by Turks” and “800,000 Armenians Counted Destroyed.” In 1918, Theodore Roosevelt declared that “the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and failure to act against Turkey is to condone it.” British Prime Minister David Lloyd George decried the Ottoman state as “this inhuman Empire.” Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” in helping to establish the United Nations Convention on that crime, first used the term in regard to the slaughter of the Armenians.

Thankfully, the quality and extent of scholarship about the Armenian genocide continues to grow, though it still falls short of that on the Holocaust. Last spring saw the momentous, long-overdue publication by Peter Balakian, the American conscience of the Armenian genocide, of his great-uncle Grigoris Balakian’s Armenian Golgotha (Alfred A. Knopf), an immensely moving, harrowing memoir that instantly takes its place as a classic alongside Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Elie Wiesel’s Night. This fall brought Michael Bobelian’s resourcefully reported Children of Armenia (Simon & Schuster), which focuses not on the genocide itself but the disgraceful history of how the U.S. government, which once trumpeted Armenian demands for justice, has repeatedly sold Armenians down the river for cold-war solidarity, oil contracts, and strategic cooperation from Turkey.

Precisely because the Armenian genocide remains unfamiliar to many, it’s necessary to at least sketch what happened. In 1908, the original Young Turks, officially the Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP, began their takeover of the collapsing Ottoman Empire by forcing Sultan Abdul Hamid II to re-establish the empire’s constitution, leading many to see the CUP as a reformist movement. The supporters of the Sultan, who himself saw Armenians as “degenerate” infidels, fought back, spurring massacres of Armenians in 1909, before the CUP deposed him. But as the Ottoman Empire lost most of its European territory during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and Muslim refugees flooded into what is now Turkey, anti-Christian sentiment and Turkish nationalism both intensified.

In 1913, three extreme nationalists among CUP leaders who would become the architects of the Armenian genocide—Ismail Enver, Ahmed Jemal, and Mehmed Talaat—staged a coup that gave them complete government control. As World War I ensued, the CUP leaders, in a military alliance with Germany, increasingly bristled at the 1914 Armenian Reform Agreement that granted European powers the right to inspect the empire’s treatment of Armenians.

In response, Talaat and his colleagues formulated a policy of eliminating the empire’s Armenians once and for all—a policy postwar evidence showed he expressed directly to Germany’s ambassador, Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim. In November 1914, the Sheik-Ul-Islam of Constantinople issued a jihad against Christians, and the looting of Armenian and Greek businesses in Western Turkey—a kind of Ionian Kristallnacht—began. In 1915, the CUP arranged for the release of some 30,000 criminals from Ottoman prisons to form chetes (mobile killing units) that would become the storm troopers of the genocide.

In April 1915, the deportations, executions, and rapes of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire began. On April 24, the day on which the Armenian genocide is memorialized worldwide, the CUP arrested some 250 of Constantinople’s Armenian leaders and intellectuals, including Grigoris Balakian, and imprisoned them in the east—most would subsequently be killed. (When Lenin exiled many of Russia’s leading intellectuals in 1922, he explicitly contrasted his generous decision in letting them live with how the Ottomans treated the Armenians.)

That year, 1915, saw the awful crescendo of the genocide as the CUP government forcibly deported Armenians eastward, tortured, massacred, and starved them on death marches, confiscated their property, killed almost all of the arrested 250 leaders, and resettled Muslim refugees on Armenian land. The United States knew all about it as Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, a hero of the era who eventually lost his position for trying to protect the Armenians, reported to Washington that “a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.”

By August, U.S. diplomats estimated that more than a million Armenians had been killed. In 1916, Interior Minister Talaat ordered the massacre of Armenian refugees still surviving in the desert town of Der Zor, which came to be known as the Auschwitz of the genocide. It is now believed the Turks slaughtered up to 400,000 Armenians there. Grigoris Balakian’s memoir, like other accounts, achingly details the astonishing, grisly savagery of the killings—the beheadings, disembowelments, and mutilations to which Armenian men, women, and children were subjected. He also acknowledges the existence of righteous Turks who saved Armenians. Indeed, Taner Akçam, the brave Turkish historian whose A Shameful Act (Metropolitan Books, 2006) is a monument in this field, dedicated his book to Haji Halil, a courageous Turk who, at the risk of being hanged, protected eight members of an Armenian family by hiding them in his home.

After World War I ended, when the victorious Allies set out to dismember the Ottoman Empire, it looked for a few years as if Armenians, like Jews after World War II, might see justice done by international powers and institutions. The three chief perpetrators of the genocide—Enver, Jamal and Talaat—fled Constantinople for safety abroad. The American King-Crane Commission, and a fact-finding mission led by General James Harbord, confirmed the extermination. For a brief period in 1919-20, Ottoman courts, under pressure from the British, prosecuted some of the perpetrators and sentenced the CUP leaders to death in absentia. (Armenians seeking revenge assassinated Talaat and Jamal, who had escaped arrest, within the next few years.) The prosecutions produced hundreds of pages of evidence that remain key to showing the genocide issued from official government policy.

But then, as Bobelian relates, the Armenian struggle for justice derailed. President Wilson’s push to expand the tiny 900-day Armenian Republic that emerged from World War I along borders that would be promised in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, collapsed when he suffered a stroke in 1919 and Mustapha Kemal (later “Atatürk”) forcibly began the establishment of the future nation of Turkey. (Kemal recaptured lands meant for Armenia as European powers dithered.) In 1921, Turkey and the Soviet Union divided historic Armenian lands among themselves. A truncated Armenia survived only as Soviet Armenia. After Kemal drove the Greek Army out of Turkey in 1922, getting in one more Turkish massacre of Armenians and Greeks in Smyrna (now Izmir), the European powers signed the shameful 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, recognizing the Republic of Turkey as the successor to the Ottoman Empire without even mentioning Armenia.

Bobelian ably covers the sorry story from then to the present. Repeated efforts by Armenian activists to enlist world powers in support of Armenian claims fell on deaf ears. After World War II, U.S. cold-war aims drove an almost 180-degree turn in U.S.-Armenian policy from Wilson’s idealism, dictating a realpolitik alliance with Turkey against the Soviet Union. Bobelian thoroughly reports how Turkey has continued to obstruct Congressional resolutions and any serious U.S. or world action to hold it responsible for its virtual annihilation of the Armenians.

On the eve of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to the White House on December 7, the AP reported: “Breaking a campaign pledge, Obama has refrained from referring to the [1915] killings as genocide, a term widely viewed by genocide scholars as an accurate description.” The same week, The New York Times reported that “Ottomania,” or nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire, is a hot new trend in Turkey.

Now let’s talk again about voting against two new minarets in Switzerland.

The Swiss vote is a signal rather than an endorsement of intolerance. The Swiss, while facing only a sort of creeping, minor Islamicization of their society—requests for girls to be excused from swimming classes, or separate cemeteries of the sort Swiss Jews already have—are aware of the gargantuan intolerance shown by some Muslim societies against minority Christians. While they may not seriously fear such a consequence, many of them plainly want to draw a line in the sand and say: We will not become a Muslim-dominated society, and we will stop that process early.

Swiss Muslims may protest that it is unfair to burden them with the worst sins of fellow Muslims. But isn’t that sociological fix the precise reason groups of believers historically split off from their brethren, forming sects or new religions? So long as Muslims anywhere keep their place in the House of Islam everywhere, they bear some responsibility for the actions of their fellow believers. That’s particularly so when they don’t powerfully denounce evil acts, or acknowledge the fear and hostility such acts evoke. That is where apology comes in.

The explosion of Net criticism of the Swiss for their vote recalls the last major moment in which the cry for Christian apology to Muslims rose up alongside the usual silence about the need for Muslim apology. That was Pope Benedict XVI’s bizarre magical military tour of Turkey in 2006, protected by helicopters overhead and Turkish SWAT teams deployed on every flank in case someone decided to nail him on his first visit to a Muslim land. The pope, who has his own problems in regard to personal and institutional behavior in World War II, had, after all, said unkind things about Islam.

There he was in the NATO republic whose foremost motto remains: Those who forget the past sometimes don’t want anyone to remember it, thank you very much. One might recall, in this regard, the remark famously attributed to Hitler, speaking to his generals, eight days before invading Poland in 1939: “Who, today, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Benedict played along. He largely kept quiet about arriving in a land whose predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire—many of whose leaders became central figures in the Turkish Republic—committed the largest genocide in history against Christians. To this day, the Turks have never apologized, never offered a lira of reparation, never returned stolen property or land. Turkish newspapers, astonishingly, kept asking whether the pope would offer yet another, fuller apology for his remarks on Islam. News reports from elsewhere kept mentioning that Turkey was “99-percent Muslim.” They didn’t say why.

By contrast, how intolerant is it to deny a religion a minor aspect of its ritual behavior, as the Swiss are doing by banning minarets? How intolerant is it not to apologize? Whether we owe tolerance to the intolerant is one of the great logical challenges within ethical theory. Simply declaring that we do, as so many commenters on the minaret vote urge, fails to convince if one believes tolerance, like some other ethical duties, arises out of implicit or explicit social contract, and should be reciprocal.

I, for one, find that context, apology, and intolerance matter in the following way. If you steep yourself in the atrocities of the Armenian genocide, not to mention the many intolerances exhibited by majority-Muslim societies toward Christians, Jews, women, gays, and other non-Muslims, one’s conclusion is not an absolutist moral judgment, but a decision on who owes a greater apology to whom, a decision on how to allocate one’s moral energy.

The day that Turkey apologizes and pays reparations for the Armenian genocide, that Saudi Arabia permits the building of churches and synagogues, that the Arab world thinks the homeland principles it applies to the Arabs of Palestine also apply to the Armenians of Turkey—on that day, I will find time to commiserate with the generally kind and hard-working Muslims of Switzerland.

Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: ‘Low-Ranking Airline Worker’ Al-Megrahi Had £1.8m in Swiss Bank Account Before Lockerbie Bomb Conviction

Scottish prosecutors admitted last night they refused to grant bail to terminally-ill Megrahi in November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was said by the Libyan government to be a low-ranking airline worker.

Yet he had a bank balance of £1.8million when he was found guilty of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am bombing, which happened above the Scottish town of Lockerbie 21 years ago today.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: Bah! Humbug! A Christmas Ghost Story in Downing Street

With apologies to Charles Dickens, Gordon Brown is visited by three spirits and the chain-clanking spectre of Tony Blair

Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve — old Brown sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather. The door was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, Darling, who in a dismal little cell was copying figures and then erasing them again as soon as he had set them down. Brown had a small fire of smouldering parliamentary expenses’ claims. The clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful, rather posh voice. It belonged to the old Etonian who owned the toy shop next door. “Bah!” said Brown. “Humbug!”

Master Cameron had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog that he was all in a glow.

“Out upon Merry Christmas!” snarled Brown. “What’s Christmas time but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for trying to balance your books and finding every item in ‘em presented dead against you.”

“I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time,” returned young Cameron. “The only time I know of when men and women think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. Naturally, they may not be bound on any journeys of any nature if they are booked to fly with British Airways.”

“I say of Christmas, God bless it!” cried the cheerful Tory. “For it brings the election closer.”

The clerk involuntarily applauded.

“Let me hear another sound from you,” Brown barked at Darling, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.”

The old Etonian departed. As he did so, he let two other gentlemen in. Said one of the gentlemen: “Brown and Blair’s, I believe.” “Mr Blair has been dead these three years,” replied Brown. The gentleman took up a pen: “At this festive time of the year, Mr Brown, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many are in want of common necessities: plasma TVs, champagne flutes, chandeliers, massage chairs, silk cushions, bath plugs, patio heaters. Since the reports of Sir Christopher Kelly and Sir Thomas Legg into their expenses, hundreds of MPs are in want of these comforts, sir.”

“Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?” asked Brown. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, “in which some of these benighted creatures may yet rest.” He went on: “A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor MPs some meat and drink, and means of warmth to keep out the chill of the opinion polls. What shall I put you down for?” “Nothing!” Brown replied. “I don’t myself make merry at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

At length, the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived. Brown walked out with a growl and went home. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. Brown, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker not a knocker, but Blair’s face. It looked at Brown as Blair used to look: with a ghostly smile turned up upon its ghostly mouth. Though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That made it horrible. As Brown looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

“Humbug!” said Brown. He closed the door and locked himself in; double-locked himself in. The door flew open with a booming sound. “It’s Balls still!” said Brown. “I won’t believe it.” His colour changed when it passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame of the candle leaped up, as though it cried: “I know him! Blair’s Ghost!” and fell again. A chain was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail. It was made of cash-boxes, deeds to houses, invoices for appearance fees, dodgy dossiers and body bags. Though he looked the phantom through and through, though he felt the chill of its death-cold eyes, he was still incredulous and fought against his senses.

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I don’t,” said Brown. “I never did.”

At this, the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with a dismal and appalling noise. “Mercy!” said Brown. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?” “You will be haunted,” said the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.” Then the spectre floated through the window and out upon the bleak, dark night. Brown, desperate in his curiosity, looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither, and moaning as they went. Many had been personally known to Brown in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one ghost, Sir Fred, known as the Shred. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell.

Brown was returned to his bed when the hour bell sounded with a deep, dull, melancholy One. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside and Brown found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them. It was a strange figure. What was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness.

“Are you the Spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Brown. “I am!” The voice was smooth with a sinister yet fruity flavour. “What are you?” Brown demanded. “I am the Ghost of New Labour Past,” replied the pale face of Peter Mandelson. It put out its hand. The grasp, though feline as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. They passed through the wall and across space and time until they stood amidst a crowded House of Commons on Budget Day.

“Good Heaven!” said Brown. He saw himself as he was five years ago. Labour MPs were waving their order papers and cheering as his younger self boasted of the longest period of growth since records began and promised unprecedented increases in public spending. “No return to Tory boom and bust!” bragged the figure at the Dispatch Box.

“Spirit!” cried Brown. “Why do you delight to torture me? Show me no more!”

“I told you these were the shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me!” “Leave me!” Brown exclaimed. “Haunt me no longer!”

The hour struck again and with it came another phantom. “I am the Ghost of Labour Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!” From head to toe, the phantom was clothed in plastic; red, green, blue, black, gold, silver and platinum plastic. “Touch my robe!” commanded the spirit and whisked Brown to a city street. They stood in a pound-stretcher shop where the people made a rough but brisk kind of music at the tills. Soon the steeples rang with the call to church and chapel — but the people simply carried on shopping.

The spirit led on to the dwelling of Brown’s clerk. In came Alistair, his threadbare clothes darned up. Diddy David was upon his shoulder. “And how did little David behave?” asked Mrs Darling. “As good as gold,” said Alistair. “Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much at the Foreign Office, and thinks the strangest things you’ve ever heard.”

“Spirit,” said Brown. “Tell me if Diddy David will live?”

His clerk proposed a toast: “I’ll give you Mr Brown!” “Mr Brown indeed!” cried Mrs Darling, reddening. “I wish I had the odious bully here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon.” “My dear,” Alistair hushed her. “The children.” Brown was the ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party. Diddy David drank the toast last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.

The clock struck another hour. Brown asked: “I am in the presence of the Ghost of Election Yet To Come?” The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its hand. “Ghost of the Future!” Brown cried. “I fear you more than any Spectre I have seen. Will you not speak to me?” The still silent Spirit conveyed him to Downing Street. “I see the house,” said Brown. “Let me behold what I shall be in days to come.” Brown hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The figure in the chair was the old Etonian.

A churchyard. The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed to one. Brown crept towards it, trembling as he went. Following the finger, he read upon the stone of the neglected grave: Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, 2007-2010.

“No, Spirit! Oh no, no! Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”

Holding up his hands in one last prayer to have his fate reversed, the phantom vanished. Brown scrambled out of bed, resolved to change his future. Running to the window, he put out his head and called downward to a boy. “Hello, my fine fellow,” he cried. “Do you know the Poulterer’s at the corner? Go and buy the prize Turkey that hangs up there.” The boy was off like a shot. “I’ll send it to the Darlings,” whispered Brown, rubbing his hands with merriment.

He got dressed in his best, went downstairs to open the street door, ready for the coming of the Turkey.

The boy returned, empty-handed. “Where’s the Turkey?” demanded Brown. The boy shrugged: “They say you’ve not the money to afford it. The only Turkey you will see this Christmas is yourself.”

“Bah,” groaned old Brown. “Humbug!”

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



UK: Christian Teacher Lost Her Job After Being Told Praying for Sick Girl ‘Was Bullying’

A devout Christian teacher has lost her job after discussing her faith with a mother and her sick child and offering to pray for them.

Olive Jones, a 54-year-old mother of two, who taught maths to children too ill to attend school, was dismissed following a complaint from the girl’s mother. She was visiting the home of the child when she spoke about her belief in miracles and asked whether she could say a prayer, but when the mother indicated they were not believers she did not go ahead.

Mrs Jones was then called in by her managers who, she says, told her that sharing her faith with a child could be deemed to be bullying and informed her that her services were no longer required.

Her dismissal has outraged Christian groups, who say new equality regulations are driving Christianity to the margins of society.

They said the case echoed that of community nurse Caroline Petrie, who was suspended last December after offering to pray for a patient but who was later reinstated after a national outcry.

Coincidentally, Mrs Petrie lives nearby and has been a friend of Mrs Jones for some years. Mrs Jones, whose youngest son is a Royal Marine who has served in Afghanistan, said she was merely trying to offer comfort and encouragement and only later realised her words had caused distress, for which she is apologetic.

The softly spoken teacher, who has more than 20 years’ experience, said she was ‘devastated’ by the decision to end her employment, which she said was ‘completely disproportionate’.

She said she had been made to feel like a ‘criminal’, and claimed that Christians were being persecuted because of ‘political correctness’.

Speaking at her home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, she said: ‘Teaching was my dream from the age of 16. It is as if 20 years of my work, which I was passionate about, has gone. It is like a grief.

‘I have been sleeping badly and been in a daze. I haven’t even got around to putting up a Christmas tree or decorations. So much for Christmas cheer.’

Mrs Jones shares her comfortable four-bedroom house with her husband Peter, who is also a teacher and heads the maths department at a local state secondary school.

The house provides few clues about her strong beliefs. There is a small wooden cross on one wall, a few plaques carrying religious texts, and some Bibles in the sitting room which she used in her studies for a diploma at the Pentecostal Carmel Bible College in Bristol.

She is a regular churchgoer, attending her local Church of England church most Sundays, but she also occasionally opts for more lively evangelical worship at the college.

After training to be a teacher at Aberystwyth University, where she met her husband, and a period bringing up her children — student Rob, 24, and soldier James, 23 — she returned to teaching in state secondary schools and sixth-form colleges.

Wanting to concentrate more on family life, she began a part-time job more than four years ago at the Oak Hill Short Stay School and Tuition Service North, which caters for children with illness or behavioural difficulties.

She had no formal contract but was scheduled to work to a timetable for about 12 hours a week at the school in a converted bungalow and one-storey prefabricated block in nearby Nailsea.

She prepared lessons, taught and marked work for about six children between 11 and 16 who had problems ranging from leukaemia to Attention Deficit Disorder. In reality, however, pupils were frequently unavailable for lessons, and she says she often found herself working as little as 20 hours a month.

As she was technically a supply teacher, she was paid £25 an hour plus mileage and had to submit a timesheet. While she was working, she was paid about £700 a month before tax and pension contributions by North Somerset Council, and received payslips.

Occasionally she would teach one or two sick children at their homes, and from September she made half-a-dozen visits to one child in a middle-class area who she was tutoring in GCSE maths.

On the fourth visit the girl stayed in her bedroom because she did not feel well enough for lessons, so Mrs Jones chatted to her mother and raised the subject of her faith, saying she believed God had saved her life.

The teacher said when she was a teenager she had been driving a tractor on the family farm near Carmarthen in Wales when it slid down a slope but came to a halt just before tipping over.

‘I shut my eyes and thought I was going to die,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Then there was a sound of a rushing wind, like that described in the Bible, and then total stillness.

‘I was convinced it was a miracle. I shared my testimony to encourage the mother to believe that there is a God who answers prayer. I believe I have a personal relationship with God, who is a constant source of strength.’

Unbeknown to Mrs Jones, the mother complained about her comments to health authorities in the mistaken belief that they were her employers. It appears, however, that these criticisms were not passed on to Mrs Jones.

Unaware that there were any problems, Mrs Jones’s fifth lesson with the child passed without incident, but when she returned for her sixth session towards the end of last month, things went awry.

She said that although the girl came downstairs in her dressing gown, she could not face a lesson, so the three of them chatted over cups of tea about books they were reading. Mrs Jones once again referred to the incident involving the tractor and spoke about her belief in Heaven.

‘I told them there were people praying for them, and I asked the child if I could pray for her,’ said Mrs Jones.

‘She looked at her mother, who said, “We come from a family who do not believe”, so I did not pray.

‘I asked the mother if she wanted me to cancel the next lesson as her daughter had not been feeling up to maths, but she said no.’

She left on what she thought were good terms and returned to the unit to do some more work, but within a few hours she was told that the head of the unit, Kaye Palmer-Greene, wanted to see her in her office.

‘I suspected it must be serious as Kaye did not normally see people without an appointment,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘When I got to her office I was told to wait outside.

‘Then the unit co-ordinator Karen Robinson came out and said I would have to come back later. I could tell by her face I was in big trouble.

‘I asked her if I was being sacked but she refused to comment. I drove to a Tesco car park and sat in the car and called a few friends to ask them to pray.’

About an hour-and-a-half later she was told she could go back to the office, and she went in holding a Bible. ‘You could feel the tension in air,’ she said. ‘I was so frightened I could hardly breathe.

‘I was a total wreck. I was shaking and in shock. I had never experienced anything like this before. I had a faultless record. It was horrible, one of the worst experiences of my life.

‘They were very strict and firm. Kaye was mostly silent while Karen read comments from the parent from a sheet of A4 paper. One thing the parent said was that I had demanded a cup of tea, which I hadn’t.

‘Then she said that my testimony and mention of prayer had distressed her and her daughter, and she didn’t want me to tutor in their home again. Obviously, if I had known she was upset when I had first mentioned my testimony I would never have brought it up again. But I had no idea.

‘I don’t push my beliefs down other people’s throats, and I apologise for any unintentional distress I may have caused.’

Mrs Jones said that during the meeting Ms Robinson told her that talking about faith issues in the house of a pupil could be regarded as bullying.

Ms Robinson also asked Mrs Jones why she had ignored her advice not to pray or speak about her faith at work, a reference to an occasion three years ago when the teacher had prayed for a girl with period pains.

The girl appears to have complained and Ms Robinson had told Mrs Jones to be more professional, but Mrs Jones said there had been no written warning.

‘Karen then said I had been an exemplary maths teacher, but my services were no longer required. As I had no contract, they could tell me to go just like that.

‘They also told me that had I been on a contract, I could be facing disciplinary proceedings. But they never told me the grounds for that.’

Mrs Jones was advised by a friend to contact the Christian Legal Centre, an independent group of lawyers funded by public donations that defends Christians in legal difficulties.

‘I am not angry with my bosses, as they are trying to interpret new equality and diversity policies,’ she said. ‘But I am angry with the politically-correct system and about the fact that you can’t mention anything to do with faith to people who might find it of use.

‘My main concern is the interpretation of the policies concerned, which seem very ambiguous.

‘An atheist may think that you shouldn’t speak about anything to do with faith to students if it is not your specialist area, but it is not really clear.

‘It is as if my freedom of speech is being restricted. I feel I am being persecuted for speaking about my faith in a country that is supposed to be Christian.

‘I feel if I had spoken about almost any other topic I would have been fine but Christianity is seen as a no-go area. It felt as if I was being treated as a criminal. It is like a bad dream that had come true.’

She said that although she was clear that she had been sacked, she had recently been approached by a senior education official who had said the complaint was still being investigated and had suggested a meeting.

She said she believed the approach had been triggered by the involvement of the Christian Legal Centre, and she was now taking legal advice about how to proceed.

Andrea Williams, a lawyer and director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: ‘The story of Olive Jones is sadly becoming all too familiar in this country. It is the result of a heavy-handed so-called equalities agenda that discriminates against Christians and seeks to eliminate Christian expression from the public square.

‘Olive Jones had compassion for her pupil and finds herself without a job because she expressed the hope that comes with faith. It is time for a common sense approach to be restored in all these matters.’

She said that although Mrs Jones was not on a contract and had occasionally taken time out from her teaching duties during term time, the Centre would argue that she had effectively worked continuously for the unit for nearly five years and should have had some protection under employment law.

Mrs Williams said the human rights lawyer Paul Diamond — who represented Heathrow check-in worker Nadia Eweida, who in 2006 was banned from wearing a cross around her neck — had been instructed in the case.

Nurse Caroline Petrie described Mrs Jones, whom she met through her church more than four years ago, as a ‘caring, honest and lovely person’ whose gentle voice and manner were perfect for dealing with sick children.

She said she had been shocked that the teacher had been dismissed without being allowed to consult a lawyer first.

Nick Yates, a spokesman for North Somerset Council, said: ‘Olive Jones has worked as a supply teacher, working with the North Somerset Tuition service. A complaint has been made by a parent regarding Olive. This complaint is being investigated.

‘To complete the investigation we need to speak to Olive and we have offered her a number of dates so this can happen. At the moment we are waiting for her to let us know which date is convenient for her.’

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Muslim Police Chef Defeated in ‘Bacon Roll’ Tribunal Faces £75,000 Legal Bill

A Muslim chef who lost a claim of religious discrimination against Scotland Yard after complaining he was forced to cook sausages and bacon faces a legal bill of more than £75,000.

Hasanali Khoja accused the Metropolitan Police of failing to consider his Islamic beliefs when he was asked to handle pork products as a catering manager at a police station.

The £23,000-a-year chef claimed suggestions by his bosses that he should wear gloves and use tongs left him ‘stressed and humiliated’. Muslims are banned from eating pork under Islamic law.

But Mr Khoja, 62, lost his claim in May after a police employee told an employment tribunal how she saw Mr Khoja eat bacon rolls and sausages.

The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) has now won a ruling ordering Mr Khoja to pay its costs, which total at least £76,200. In its costs claim, the Met said Mr Khoja ‘knew that he had asked for a bacon roll two or three times for personal consumption before bringing his claim and throughout the conduct of his claim’.

‘The fact that he had knowingly come into contact with pork products before bringing the claim shows that the claim had no reasonable prospect of success from the outset.’

Judge Michael Southam agreed and ruled Mr Khoja should pay costs, though these would be determined at a later date at a county court.

Mr Khoja, from Edgware, North London, who is still employed by the Met, claimed at a hearing in Watford that he could afford to pay only £80 a week as he has little income, lives in rented property and is struggling with £30,000 legal bills of his own.

But the court discovered he had sold another home last year, splitting profits of almost £200,000 with his wife and two sons.

The decision is another setback for the police chef, who believed he was on course for a large settlement when he launched his case in 2007.

Mr Khoja, who sits on a Foods Standards Agency advisory committee on Muslim issues, decided to take action after Scotland Yard chiefs placed him on unpaid leave for a year after his refusal to work with pork.

He said he was then given work in a different building but his role was downgraded.

But his case fell apart when another caterer, Mary Boakye, told the court she served him bacon rolls ‘two or three’ times at the Met canteen at Heathrow in West London.

When she told him she was surprised because his religion banned him from eating pork, Mr Khoja allegedly replied: ‘I eat them once in a while.’

Another chef said he saw Mr Khoja once happily eat a sausage dish and told the court ‘he was not as strict as some Muslims’.

Judge Southam also heard how Mr Khoja had made ‘wild and baseless’ allegations about a human resource manager, allegedly making racial facial gestures.

Mr Khoja is one of several ethnic minority staff to launch racial discrimination claims against Scotland Yard. The most high-profile was former Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, who last year accused Sir Ian Blair of excluding him from the upper echelons of the force because of his skin colour.

Mr Ghaffur retired after receiving an out-of-court settlement and dropped the allegations.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Police Expect Mumbai-Style Terror Attack on City of London

Scotland Yard has warned businesses in London to expect a Mumbai-style attack on the capital.

In a briefing in the City of London 12 days ago, a senior detective from SO15, the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism command, said: “Mumbai is coming to London.”

The detective said companies should anticipate a shooting and hostage-taking raid “involving a small number of gunmen with handguns and improvised explosive devices”.

The warning — the bluntest issued by police — has underlined an assessment that a terrorist cell may be preparing an attack on London early next year.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



UK: The Michael Powell Case Shows How Charges of Racism Hobble the Police

The inquest into Michael Powell’s death cost a million pounds to prove racism was not to blame, says Alasdair Palmer

It is more than a decade since the Macpherson report branded the Metropolitan Police as “institutionally racist”. Ever since, policemen everywhere in Britain have struggled to convince ethnic minorities that their actions are not racist — or at least that they do not have to be.

There are, of course, many occasions on which the police fail to protect those whom they should, or to catch those responsible for terrible crimes. There are also many causes of such failures, including incompetence, laziness, cowardice, stupidity and simple bad luck. It was not Sir William Macpherson’s intention, but the principal effect of his report has been to persuade many people that whenever the police deal with someone from an ethnic minority, and the result of the interaction is less than perfect, there is in fact just one explanation: racism.

There was a classic example of that syndrome last week, at the inquest into the death of Michael Powell, a black man from Birmingham who died in police custody six years ago. Mr Powell had a history of mental instability and had been a user of crack cocaine. His terrified mother called the police when he started smashing his car windows with a hammer on the night of September 7, 2003. The police turned up quickly and tried, but failed, to subdue Mr Powell: their use of CS spray backfired, disabling the officers who deployed it rather than Mr Powell.

In the end, it took several additional policeman to overpower Mr Powell and bundle him into the back of a police van. But during the journey to the police station, he died. Three pathologists conducted two separate post-mortem examinations. They concluded that his death was not due to any injury caused by the police. An inquest was started, and then abandoned because 10 officers were charged with a number of offences relating to Mr Powell’s death. They were all acquitted. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) then investigated the officers, and concluded that there were no grounds for disciplining them.

Were all of those investigations sufficient to convince Mr Powell’s friends and family that police racism was not the cause of his death? They were not. The family’s team of lawyers managed to re-open the inquest, get their case funded by legal aid and argue that, had it not been for police racism, Michael Powell would still be alive today.

After six weeks of hearing evidence, the jury decided that Mr Powell did not die because the police treated him in a way they would not have treated a white man. But although they rejected — after deliberating for two days — the allegations that the way officers restrained him had caused his death, it took the inquest a month and a half, and at least a million pounds in lawyers’ fees, to come to a conclusion already reached by two post-mortem examinations, a trial, and an investigation by the IPCC.

Repeated investigations of the kind seen in Mr Powell’s case are justified on the grounds that they reassure the public that “the system is not institutionally racist”. But they do not have that effect. They merely publicise the convictions — some might call them prejudices — of groups that insist that the police are institutionally racist, as are all the bodies that acquit them of that charge. No one, therefore, should be surprised that police recruitment of ethnic minorities is down, or that many ethnic minority organisations now advise against co-operating with the authorities.

There are racists within the police, just as there are everywhere, and when individual racism is identified it must be investigated and punished. But the result of labelling entire organisations “institutionally racist” has been to make it harder for ethnic minorities to believe they will be treated fairly which has made it harder to police our multi-ethnic society. That development, like the inquest into Mr Powell’s death, serves neither justice nor good sense.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Egypt Boosts Security at Gaza Border After Firing

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) — Egypt is stepping up security on its border with the Gaza Strip after earth moving equipment came under fire from the Palestinian side for three days, a security source said on Saturday.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Egypt was installing an underground metal barrier between 20 and 30 meters (70 and 100 feet) deep along the short border strip where Palestinians have dug tunnels to circumvent an Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Egyptian officials say authorities have been installing steel tubes in the ground at several points on the border, but their purpose has not been specified.

Egypt had stationed about 200 policemen and increased armored vehicle patrols along the length of the border and in areas where excavating is under way, the security source said.

“We have sent new forces from the police to the border with Gaza after repeated shooting from the Palestinian side,” the source told Reuters.

Shots had been fired from the Palestinian side of the border at equipment in the area since Thursday, the source said. No injuries were reported.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Tunisia: Archaeological Finds Trafficking, Italians Arrested

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, DECEMBER 18 — There are Italian nationals (the exact number has not been released) as well as British and two Tunisians among the 26 arrested in Tunisia as part of an inquiry into a vast network for the international trafficking of archaeological finds. Carried out by the Tunisian National Guard in collaboration with Interpol, the inquiry has made it possible to recover about 7,000 finds, many of which considered invaluable, according to the French-language daily Le Temps. Concerning the Italians arrested after the issuing of international arrest warrants, the daily paper reported that the individuals “have criminal records, having already been arrested in Italy for similar crimes”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Analysis: Suddenly, The Arab World Wakes Up to Yemen’s Rebellion

by Jonathan Spyer

The 30th summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, meeting in Kuwait this week, expressed its solidarity with Saudi Arabia in its fight with the Shi’ite Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. The Kuwaiti emir noted that Saudi Arabia is facing “flagrant aggression that targets its sovereignty and security by those who have infiltrated its territory.”

The formerly little-noticed conflict between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government is now taking on the coloration of an additional hot front in an ongoing region-wide cold war. The conflict in northern Yemen reveals the ongoing Iranian regional effort to convert Shi’ite populations into assets enabling it to apply pressure on neighbors and rivals.

The Arab response, meanwhile, shows the very great trepidation felt by the Gulf Arabs in the face of Iranian regional ambitions and expansion.

The term “Houthi rebels” refers to members of the Houthi clan, who have been engaged in an insurrection against the government of Yemen in the Saada district in the north of the country since 2004. The Houthis are members of the Zaidi Shi’ite sect of Islam. (Zaidi Shi’ites venerate the first four Imams of Islam, in contrast to the Twelver Shi’ites dominant in Iran). Led by Abd al-Malik el-Houthi, the rebels are fighting to bring down the government of President Ali Abdallah Saleh, which they regard as too pro-Western.

Thousands on both sides have died in the rebellion. The fighting includes the use by both sides of tanks and armored personnel carriers. It has resulted in the displacement of around 150,000 people.

The situation escalated in November, when Houthi rebels clashed with Saudi forces in the Jabal Dukhan territory straddling the border. In the ensuing firefight two Saudi border guards were killed and another 10 were wounded. The Saudis responded in force. Saudi aircraft and helicopter gunships carried out a series of attacks on rebel held areas of northern Yemen in the following days, killing around 40 rebels. Saudi forces remain on high alert…

           — Hat tip: Barry Rubin [Return to headlines]



First Woman to Open Bank Account in Lebanon

“I’ve been trying to open a bank account for my two sons for 10 years now, but I was continuously told that only my husband could sign the papers,” Lebanese-American Barbara Batlouni told AFP.

“It’s unfair. They’re my children too and I don’t see why I cannot, as their mother, teach them to manage their finances,” she said at the headquarters of Bank of Beirut and the Arab Countries (BBAC).

Her move came after Lebanon’s bank association altered its own rules on December 9, following a campaign to press for the change led by the Institute of Progressive Women and other groups.

A smiling Batlouni signed the first papers at BBAC for an account that named as beneficiaries her two sons, 16-year-old Samer and 14-year-old Jad.

“I’m glad that Lebanon is improving its laws,” said Samer, who along with Jad will become the official holder of the account once he turns 18.

The bank also gifted her a 1,000-dollar (790-euro) cheque as a token of their appreciation for her “fight against discrimination,” BBAC general manager Ghassan Assaf said.

While the boys’ father is Lebanese, Batlouni, the Lebanon country director of the non-profit organisation Amideast, said she insisted on opening the account herself on principle.

“Lebanese women excel in all fields, and yet they do not have their basic rights,” she said.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Iranian Troops No Longer Control Oil Well: Iraq

Ali al-Dabbagh said a small group of Iranian troops who had taken over an oil well in a remote region along the two countries’ border last week were no longer in control of the well, which Iraq considers part of its Fakka oilfield.

“The Iranian flag has been lowered. The Iranian troops have pulled back 50 meters, but they have not gone back to where they were before. The Iraqi government asked for the troops to go back to where they were,” Dabbagh said.

On Friday, global oil prices climbed after Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Co. in the southeastern city of Amara said that an Iranian force had arrived at the field and taken control of the Well 4.

Baghdad demanded that “Tehran pull back the armed men who occupied Well No 4” and condemned the incident as “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”

Iran rejected allegations it had occupied an Iraqi oil well.

The border flare-up kicked off a storm of emergency meetings and bilateral phone calls, with Baghdad calling for an immediate withdrawal yet also seeking to contain damage to its important relationship with neighboring Iran.

In a phone conversation on Saturday evening, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari underlined the need for a meeting of officials “with the intention of enforcing bilateral border agreements”, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported.

The two countries have a long history of border feuds, including one that escalated into a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s. The relationship warmed after 2003, when fellow Shiite Muslims took over in Baghdad and the countries’ trade and religious tourism ties began to deepen.

Dabbagh said a joint committee would begin to look at demarcating the border in the desert region.

Fakka is a relatively small field, and currently produces about 10,000 barrels per day, Iraqi officials say.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Plot Targeting Turkey’s Religious Minorities Allegedly Discovered

CD indicates naval officers planned violence against non-Muslim communities.

Chilling allegations emerged last month of a detailed plot by Turkish naval officers to perpetrate threats and violence against the nation’s non-Muslims in an effort to implicate and unseat Turkey’s pro-Islamic government.

Evidence put forth for the plot appeared on an encrypted compact disc discovered last April but was only recently deciphered; the daily Taraf newspaper first leaked details of the CD’s contents on Nov. 19.

Entitled the “Operation Cage Action Plan,” the plot outlines a plethora of planned threat campaigns, bomb attacks, kidnappings and assassinations targeting the nation’s tiny religious minority communities — an apparent effort by military brass to discredit the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The scheme ultimately called for bombings of homes and buildings owned by non-Muslims, setting fire to homes, vehicles and businesses of Christian and Jewish citizens, and murdering prominent leaders among the religious minorities.

Dated March 2009, the CD containing details of the plot was discovered in a raid on the office of a retired major implicated in a large illegal cache of military arms uncovered near Istanbul last April. Once deciphered, it revealed the full names of 41 naval officials assigned to carry out a four-phase campaign exploiting the vulnerability of Turkey’s non-Muslim religious minorities, who constitute less than 1 percent of the population.

A map that Taraf published on its front page — headlined “The Targeted Missionaries” — was based on the controversial CD documents. Color-coded to show all the Turkish provinces where non-Muslims lived or had meetings for worship, the map showed only 13 of Turkey’s 81 provinces had no known non-Muslim residents or religious meetings.

The plan identified 939 non-Muslim representatives in Turkey as possible targets.

“If even half of what is written in Taraf is accurate, everybody with a conscience in this country has to go mad,” Eyup Can wrote in his Hurriyet column two days after the news broke.

The day after the first Taraf report, the headquarters of the Turkish General Staff filed a criminal complaint against the daily with the Justice Ministry, declaring its coverage a “clear violation” of the laws protecting ongoing prosecution investigations from public release.

Although the prime minister’s office the next day confirmed that the newly revealed “Cage” plot was indeed under official investigation, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Taraf’s public disclosure of the plan as “interfering” and “damaging” to the judicial process and important sectors of the government.

But when the judiciary began interrogating a number of the named naval suspects and sent some of them to jail, most Turkish media — which had downplayed the claims — began to accept the plot’s possible authenticity.

To date, at least 11 of the naval officials identified in the Cage documents are under arrest, accused of membership in an illegal organization.. They include a retired major, a lieutenant colonel, three lieutenant commanders, two colonels and three first sergeants.

The latest plot allegations are linked to criminal investigations launched in June 2007 into Ergenekon, an alleged “deep state” conspiracy by a group of military officials, state security personnel, lawyers and journalists now behind bars on charges of planning a coup against the elected AKP government.

Christian Murders Termed ‘Operations’

The plot document began with specific mention of the three most recent deadly attacks perpetrated against Christians in Turkey, cryptically labeling them “operations.”

Initial Turkish public opinion had blamed Islamist groups for the savage murders of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro (February 2006), Turkish Armenian Agos newspaper editor Hrant Dink (January 2007) and two Turkish Christians and a German Christian in Malatya (April 2007). But authors of the Cage plan complained that AKP’s “intensive propaganda” after these incidents had instead fingered the Ergenekon cabal as the perpetrators.

“The Cage plan demanded that these ‘operations’ be conducted in a more systematic and planned manner,” attorney Orhan Kemal Cengiz wrote in Today’s Zaman on Nov. 27. “They want to re-market the ‘black propaganda’ that Muslims kill Christians,” concluded Cengiz, a joint-plaintiff lawyer in the Malatya murder trial and legal adviser to Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches.

In the first phase of the Cage plot, officers were ordered to compile information identifying the non-Muslim communities’ leaders, schools, associations, cemeteries, places of worship and media outlets, including all subscribers to the Armenian Agos weekly. With this data, the second stage called for creating an atmosphere of fear by openly targeting these religious minorities, using intimidating letters and telephone calls, warnings posted on websites linked to the government and graffiti in neighborhoods where non-Muslims lived.

To channel public opinion, the third phase centered on priming TV and print media to criticize and debate the AKP government’s handling of security for religious minorities, to raise the specter of the party ultimately replacing Turkey’s secular laws and institutions with Islamic provisions.

The final phase called for planting bombs and suspicious packages near homes and buildings owned by non-Muslims, desecrating their cemeteries, setting fire to homes, vehicles and businesses of Christian and Jewish citizens, and even kidnapping and assassinating prominent leaders among the religious minorities.

Lawyer Fethiye Cetin, representing the Dink family in the Agos editor’s murder trial, admitted she was having difficulty even accepting the details of the Cage plot.

“I am engulfed in horror,” Cetin told Bianet, the online Independent Communications Network. “Some forces of this country sit down and make a plan to identify their fellow citizens, of their own country, as enemies! They will kill Armenians and non-Muslims in the psychological war they are conducting against the ones identified as their enemies.”

No Surprise to Christians

“We were not very shocked,” Protestant Pastor Ihsan Ozbek of the Kurtulus Churches in Ankara admitted to Taraf the day after the news broke.

After the Malatya murders, he stated, Christians had no official means to investigate their suspicions about the instigators, “and we could not be very brave . . . Once again the evidence is being seen, that it is the juntas who are against democracy who [have been] behind the propaganda in the past 10 years against Christianity and missionary activity.”

Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church also openly addressed the Cage plot, referring to recent incidents of intimidation against Christian and Jewish citizens in Istanbul’s Kurtulus and Adalar districts, as well as a previous raid conducted against the alumni of a Greek high school.

“At the time, we thought that they were just trying to scare us,” he told Today’s Zaman. Several of the jailed Ergenekon suspects now on trial were closely involved for years in protesting and slandering the Istanbul Patriarchate, considered the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy’s 300 million adherents. As ultranationalists, they claimed the Orthodox wanted to set up a Vatican-style entity within Turkey.

Last summer 90 graves were desecrated in the Greek Orthodox community’s Balikli cemetery in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul. The city’s 65 non-Muslim cemeteries are not guarded by the municipality, with their maintenance and protection left to Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities.

As details continued to emerge and national debates raged for more than a week over the Cage plan in the Turkish media, calls came from a broad spectrum of society to merge the files of the ongoing Dink and Malatya murder trials with the Ergenekon file. The Turkish General Staff has consistently labeled much of the media coverage of the Ergenekon investigations as part of smear campaign against the fiercely secular military, which until the past two years enjoyed virtual impunity from civilian court investigations.

According to Ria Oomen-Ruijten, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, the long-entrenched role of the military in the Turkish government is an “obstacle” for further democratization and integration into the EU.

           — Hat tip: VH [Return to headlines]



Turkey Slams Orthodox Chief’s Crucifixion Remark

“We regard the use of the crucifixion simile as extremely unfortunate…. I would like to see this as an undesired slip of the tongue,” Davutoglu told reporters here when asked about Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I’s comments in an interview with US television network CBS.

“We cannot accept comparisons that we do not deserve,” the minister added.

He rejected criticism that the Islamist-rooted government in Turkey was discriminating between its citizens on religious grounds.

“If Patriarch Bartholomew I has complaints on this issue, he can convey them to relevant authorities who will do whatever is necessary,” he said.

In an excerpt from the interview, which will be broadcast in full on CBS on Sunday, Bartholomew I says that the tiny Greek minority in Turkey is not treated equally.

“We are treated… as citizens of second class. We don’t feel that we enjoy our full rights as Turkish citizens,” says the patriarch, who represents the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.

He ruled out the option of leaving Turkey. “This is the continuation of Jerusalem and for us it is equally holy and sacred land. We prefer to stay here, even crucified sometimes,” the patriarch adds.

The CBS website quotes Bartholomew I as saying that the Turkish government “would be happy to see the Patriarchate extinguished or moving abroad, but our belief is that it will never happen.”

The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire, which collapsed in 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.

Though Ankara does not interfere with the patriarchate’s religious functions, it withholds recognition of Bartholomew’s ecumenical title, treating him only as the spiritual leader of some 2,000 Orthodox Greeks still living in the country.

Turkish authorities also keep closed a theological school on an island off Istanbul, depriving the church of a means to train clergy.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Turks Threaten to Kill Priest Over Swiss Minaret Decision

Slap to religious freedom in Switzerland leads to threat over church bell tower in Turkey.

In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group.

Three Muslims on Dec. 4 entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him..

“If Switzerland is demolishing our minarets, we will demolish your bell towers too,” one of the men told Akbulut.

The threats came in reaction to a Nov. 29 referendum in Switzerland in which 57 percent voted in favor of banning the construction of new minarets in the country. Swiss lawmakers must now change the national constitution to reflect the referendum, a process that should take more than a year.

The Swiss ban, widely viewed around the world as a breach of religious freedom, is likely to face legal challenges in Switzerland and in the European Court of Human Rights.

There are roughly 150 mosques in Switzerland, four with minarets. Two more minarets are planned. The call to prayer traditional in Muslim-majority countries is not conducted from any of the minarets.

Fikri Aygur, vice president of the European Syriac Union, said that Akbulut has contacted police but has otherwise remained defiant in the face of the threats.

“He has contacted the police, and they gave him guards,” he said. “I talked with him two days ago, and he said, ‘It is my job to protect the church, so I will stand here and leave it in God’s hands..’“

Meryem Ana is more than 250 years old and is one of a handful of churches that serve the Syriac community in Turkey. Also known as Syrian Orthodox, the Syriacs are an ethnic and religious minority in Turkey and were one of the first groups of people to accept Christianity. They speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, a language spoken by Christ. Diyarbakir is located in eastern Turkey, about 60 miles from the Syrian border.

At press time the tower was standing and the priest was safe, said Jerry Mattix, youth pastor at the Diyarbakir Evangelical Church, which is located across a street from Meryem Ana Church.

Mattix said that threats against Christians in Diyarbakir are nothing out of the ordinary. Mattix commonly receives threats, both in the mail and posted on the church’s Internet site, he said.

“We’re kind of used to that,” Mattix said. He added that he has received no threats over the minaret situation but added, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we do.”

Mattix said the people making threats in the area are Muslim radicals with ties to Hezbollah “who like to flex their muscles.”

“We are a major target out here, and we are aware of that,” Mattix said. “But the local police are taking great strides to protect us.”

Mattix said he also has “divine confidence” in God’s protection.

The European Syriac Union’s Aygur said that Christians in Turkey often serve as scapegoats for inflamed local Muslims who want to lash out at Europeans.

“When they [Europeans] take actions against the Muslims, the Syriacs get persecuted by the fanatical Muslims there,” he said.

The threats against the church were part of a public outcry in Turkey that included newspaper editorials characterizing the Swiss decision as “Islamophobia.” One Turkish government official called upon Muslims to divest their money from Swiss bank accounts. He invited them to place their money in the Turkish banking system.

In part, the threats also may reflect a larger and well-established pattern of anti-Christian attitudes in Turkey. A recent study conducted by two professors at Sabanci University found that 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas.

The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had “very negative” or “negative” views of Christians. In Turkey, Christians are often seen as agents of outside forces bent on dividing the country.

This is not the first time Akbulut has faced persecution. Along with a constant string of threats and harassment, he was tried and acquitted in 2000 for saying to the press that Syriacs were “massacred” along with Armenians in 1915 killings.

In Midyat, also in eastern Turkey, someone recently dug a tunnel under the outlying buildings of a Syriac church in hopes of undermining the support of the structure.

At the Mor Gabriel Monastery, also near Midyat, there is a legal battle over the lands surrounding the monastery. Founded in 397 A.D., Mor Gabriel is arguably the oldest monastery in use today. It is believed local Muslim leaders took the monastery to court in an attempt to seize lands from the church. The monastery has prevailed in all but one case, which is still underway.

“These and similar problems that are threatening the very existence of the remaining Syriacs in Turkey have reached a very serious and worrying level,” Aygur stated in a press release. “Especially, whenever there is a problem about Islam in the European countries, the Syriacs’ existence in Turkey is threatened with such pressures and aggressions.”

           — Hat tip: VH [Return to headlines]



Yemen:12 Al-Qaeda Suicide Bombers Dead, 5 Foreigners Killed

YEMEN — A total of 12 al-Qaeda men were confirmed dead after a security operation went down against a training camp in al-Majalah, Abyan, south of Yemen, said a security official Saturday.

The Mohammed Saleh al-Kazimi, Mukbel Abdullah Awadh Shiekh, Ahmed Abdullah Awadh, Methak al-Jalad, Abdullah Awadh Shiekh were confirmed dead in al-Majalah area, an unnamed official said in statement published by state-run media.

Two Saudi nationals, Ibrahim al-Najdi, Mohammed Rajeh al-Tharan were among a group who were buried in Sairah Cemetery, Mudiah district, Abyan, said the official.

Five more foreigners, with unknown identities, were buried in Zarah Cemetery in Lawdar district, Abyan, added the official.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

South Asia


A Thousand Islamic Extremists, Including Women and Children, Storm a Church Near Jakarta

by Mathias Hariyadi

The building was near completion and was to be used for Christmas Mass. Local Catholics are afraid that more attacks could take place during the festive season. Police and local authorities urge Catholics to celebrate the service anyway.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Last night a crowd of angry Muslims, including women and children, attacked the Church of Saint Albert, in Bekasi Regency, about 30 kilometres east of Jakarta. The situation is now under control but the local Catholic community is afraid of an escalation before Christmas.

Kurniadi is a member of the committee charged with the church’s construction. He told AsiaNews, “Suddenly, a bunch of bikers arrived in the area where the church stands.” They had banners and kerosene tanks. “We don’t know why we were attacked,” he said.

Kristina Maria Renteana, who was present when the Church was attacked, said, “The mob had about a thousand people,” not only men, but “women and children” as well.

Running around in cars and motorbikes is a tradition for Indonesian Muslims during “national celebrations.”

Last night was the first day of the Islamic New Year, the start of the month of Muharram. Local sources told AsiaNews, on condition of anonymity, that the “crowd was made of people from Tarumajaya and Babelan”, two villages in North Bekasi where Islamic extremists are a majority.

Saint Albert’s Church, a chapel that is part of Saint Arnold’ Church in Bekasi, was not yet finished. Started on 11 May 2008, it had the required building permit for places of worship and was 80 per cent complete. Workers had finished the walls and the roof. Only ceramic floor tiles had to be laid.

Although not yet finished, it was set to host Christmas Mass for the local Christian community.

Now it is damaged but police and government authorities have urged the parish priest, Fr Joseph Jagadwa, to go ahead with the Mass anyway.

           — Hat tip: VH [Return to headlines]



Indonesian Theology Students Withstand Threats, Illness

JAKARTA, Indonesia, December 1 (CDN) — Some 1,000 seminary students are resisting efforts to evict them from the former municipal building of West Jakarta where they have taken refuge after Muslim protestors drove them from their campus last year.

On Oct. 27 officials began evicting about 300 students of Arastamar Evangelical Theological Seminary (SETIA) from blocks I and II of the former mayoral building, but those in blocks III, IV, and V chose to remain.

The students, some of whom had sown their mouths shut as part of a hunger strike, asserted that new quarters offered by the Jakarta Provincial Government are not yet fit for occupancy — dirty and unkempt with broken windows and doors. They said the property offered, the North Jakarta Transmigrant building, has not functioned since 1999, and its five buildings accommodate only 200 to 300 students.

The seminary students told Compass that unidentified mobs have threatened them, telling them to leave the former municipal complex immediately..

“They threaten us and tell us that if we do not move, our safety cannot be guaranteed,” said SETIA’s Yulius Thomas Bilo.

The Rev. Matheus Mangentang, rector of SETIA, confirmed that the threats had been made. Asked about the identity of the mobs, he said he knew only that they appeared daily to intimidate and threaten students.

“We are going to move as soon as possible — Dec. 31 at the latest,” Mangentang said. “If we don’t, the place is no longer safe.”

He added, however, that they would not move until their new location was clear.

“We have not wavered in our desire to return to our own place, because we actually have our own campus in Kampung Pulo, East Jakarta,” Mangentang told Compass.

The Jakarta Provincial Government has not allowed the students and staff to return to their campus, citing fear of more violence.

“It is not permissible for them to return to Kampung Pulo; conditions are not conducive,” the Jakarta area secretary who goes by a single name, Muhayat, told Compass.

In July 2008 hundreds of protestors shouting “Allahu-Akbar [“God is greater]” and brandishing machetes forced the evacuation of staff and students from the SETIA campus in Kampung Pulo village. Urged on by announcements from a mosque loudspeaker to “drive out the unwanted neighbor” following a misunderstanding between students and local residents, the protestors also had sharpened bamboo and acid and injured at least 20 students, some seriously.

Water and Electricity Crisis

Conditions for the 1,000 students living in the former West Jakarta mayor’s complex are worsening.

“Since the end of October, we have had no electricity and no water,” said Alexander Dimu, head of the student senate. “We have to depend upon our own resources and donations to buy water. We need about US$100 per day for water.”

Compass noted hundreds of students lined up to obtain water for bathing and drinking. They used old buckets to carry water to the bathrooms, which were badly in need of repair.

As a result of such living conditions, many students have diarrhea and hemorrhagic fever.

“So far, six have fever and 17 have diarrhea,” Dimu told Compass.. “Those who are ill have been taken to a nearby hospital.”

A number of students have quit school, according to Mangentang, as their parents were worried about the health conditions. The average SETIA student is from outside Jakarta. They come from Nias Island, East Indonesia, Borneo and other areas. Their families are largely farmers.

“The parents have millions of expectations as to how they can help the children of their home villages after graduation,” said Mangentang.

The ultimate destination of the students is still unclear. The Jakarta Provincial Government has stood firm in ordering them to move to Cikarang, West Java, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Jakarta. At the same time, the SETIA Foundation has requested the government find a new campus venue within Jakarta to avoid the difficult process of obtaining permits in the new provincial jurisdiction of West Java.

After SETIA staff and students met on Nov. 16 with several members of Parliament at the former mayoral office, the MPs led by Education Committee Vice Chairman Heri Ahmadi promised to ask Jakarta Gov. Fauzi Bowo to return them to their campus at Kampung Pulo with the necessary security.

Mangentang said that he was still waiting for the members of Parliament to make good on that pledge.

The visit by the parliamentarians brought an end to a hunger strike by five students who had sewn their mouths shut at the former mayoral complex on Nov. 9. They were identified only as Yanisar, Leonardo, Mutari Unang, Demas and Epy. That act followed a protest by the student council from Oct. 27 to Nov. 3.

Two units of heavy machinery had begun tearing down part of the main building where the 1,000 students are housed. Some of the students staying there were previously evicted from the Bumi Perkemahan Cibubur (BUPERTA) campground.

SETIA spokesman Yusup Agustinus Lifire told Compass the seminary is awaiting word from the Jakarta governor’s office about their returning to their campus at Kampung Pulo.

“We submitted an official letter to the governor, the police chief of Greater Jakarta and the military chief of Greater Jakarta on Oct. 28, but so far there is not any reply for us,” Lifire said. “We would like to leave this building if we could find a new place. It is not certain if the students began to attack and throw stones at police officers on Oct. 27-28 when they began demolishing one of the buildings. There were some provocateurs who started to throw some stones at police officers, then the officers threw the stones at the students and vice versa.”

Lifire also said the Jakarta governor’s office should take responsibility for the crisis. SETIA has asked the governor to guarantee security for a return to their original campus or else prepare or provide a new venue, he said.

A female student of Christian Education said there is a banner at the original campus that reads in Bahasa, “If you dare to return, we will wipe you out.”

           — Hat tip: VH [Return to headlines]



Let’s Talk to the Taliban, Says Guttenberg

Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg called on Sunday for greater dialogue with moderate Taliban where possible, as part of a reassessment of Germany’s strategy to stabilise Afghanistan.

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper, Guttenberg said he supported keeping open channels of communication with moderate tribes and communities in the war-torn country, as long as it didn’t mean backing oneself into corner.

While keeping open the possibility of a troop boost after the international Afghanistan summit scheduled for January, Guttenberg stressed Germany would not be giving the United States or NATO a blank cheque.

On the matter of dialogue with the Taliban, Guttenberg said it was important to distinguish diehard global insurgents from Taliban fighters who did not pose a threat to the West.

“Not every insurgent is a direct threat to Western society,” he said. “There is a difference between groups who have the goal of fighting our culture out of a radical rejection of the West and those for example who see culture as connected to the place where you live.”

Cutting off all communication was at this stage of the conflict not a wise approach, though he stressed that “criteria had to apply” in talking to the Taliban.

Guttenberg ruled out unconditionally boosting Germany’s troop levels in Afghanistan as per the wishes of US President Barack Obama.

“I would be careful about the phrase: ‘You have to follow Obama.’ Our standard ought to be that we aim for a strategy that incorporates our own experience.”

“The first logical step for a new strategic approach is not to say: ‘We take more soldiers and then follow the strategy.’ We put together the strategy now and then from that follows how many soldiers and civil forces we need. It’s still open as to whether we need more soldiers or will make do with the existing framework.”

Guttenberg fired off an attack on Social Democrats chairman Sigmar Gabriel’s announcement on Saturday that his party would not support a troop boost, describing it as “commitment ahead of strategy.”

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Migrants of Bangladesh: A Vital Resource for National Economy

An estimated 5.5 million migrants contribute 12% of Gross Domestic Product. Dhaka emphasizes the contribution to the growth of the country, but fails to promote effective policies to protect them. Deaths in the workplace and clandestine conditions the most urgent problems to solve.

Dhaka (AsiaNews) — Around 5.5 million migrants from Bangladesh are currently abroad in search of fortune. Of these, 33% are qualified, 15% semi-qualified and 48% belong to low unskilled workers. In conjunction with the United Nations International Migrants Day, scheduled for today, president Zillur Rahman and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have stressed the “vital role” expatriates play in the national economy. But in many cases, the price is violence and abuse, or their very lives.

The Middle East and South-east Asian nations are the main destinations for Bangladeshi migrants, who thanks to their work account for 12% of gross domestic product (GDP). From 1976 to 2008 over 6 million people emigrated to 21 different countries — including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Britain, Italy, Egypt — producing total remittances to the state coffers of over 56 billion dollars, a constantly growing trend.

Zillur Rahman, President of Bangladesh, says that “Migrant workers play a vital role in our economy” for both the capital returned to the country and for the professional knowledge acquired abroad. The prime minister Sheikh Hasina adds that they “help build the nation and we are all grateful.”

But the contribution of migrant workers often hides abuse and deaths at work and the government over the years has not been able to promote policies to protect them. Many expats work in the Middle East without receiving wages. About 8 thousand deaths have occurred in recent years, another constantly growing trend: 788 in 2004, 1248 in 2005; 1402 in 2006, 1673 in 2007; 2237 in 2008.

Migrants also have to invest substantial sums of money to move abroad. According to a World Bank report 28% of the expatriates take the money needed to start from savings fund, 21% receive money from relatives and friends, 12% sell all their worldly goods.

With the risk, once they have left, of not obtaining working visas. Several sources indicate that there are 5 million illegal Bangladeshi workers in India. From 2000 to 2006 there were 86,681 expulsions, with an annual average of more than 12 thousand.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Pakistan: Zardari ‘To Lose Control of Party’ Following Amnesty Ruling

Islamabad, 18 Dec. (AKI) — Uncertainty over the future of Pakistan’s president Ali Asif Zardari is continuing to mount after the Supreme court this week dismissed a controversial amnesty protecting him from prosecution for corruption. Whether he is reduced to a ceremonial presidential role or a court orders him to stand down, he will lose control over the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, unnamed sources close to the military told Adnkronos International (AKI) on Friday.

Despite opposition calls for his resignation following the historic Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday, neither the Pakistani army nor opposition parties want to destabilise the government, sources said.

However, several current members of the PPP leadership, including former senator Anwar Baig and ports and shipping minister Nabeel Gabol, have urged members of the cabinet to resign who enjoyed immunity from protection under the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

The Supreme Court struck down the NRO amnesty on Wednesday.

Two founder members of the PPP, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Mubashir Hasann were the original driving force behind the petition brought against the NRO.

Zardari once again faces several pending court cases against him in Pakistan since the historic Supreme Court ruling but under the country’s constitution is protected by presidential immunity.

However, any private citizen may file a petition against the eligibility of the president, which if successful would result in a court order forcing him to resign.

Zardari convened a meeting on Friday with key cabinet members from the PPP to forge a strategy following the top court’s annulment of the controversial NRO amnesty.

Wednesday’s court ruling re-opened 8,000 corruption and criminal cases against Zardari, defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar, and interior minister Rehman Malik and other cabinet ministers which they faced before the amnesty came into force in 2007.

A Pakistani court on Friday issued arrest warrants against Malik, DawnNews reported. The arrest warrants are for alleged misuse of authority and allegedly accepting two cars from Toyota Motors as a bribe.

Malik and Mukhtar are among politicians who have been barred from leaving Pakistan. Mukhtar was on Friday stopped from flying to China on an official visit. He is among around 250 officials now being being probed for corruption.

The NRO decree resulted from a political deal between former president Pervez Musharraf and Zardari’s late wife, slain former prime minister and PPP leader Benazir Bhutto in October 2007. The deal agreed to scrap pending corruption cases against civil servants and politicians.

Pakistan’s opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, backed by the army, has called for the 17th amendment of Pakistan’s constitution to be cancelled.

The amendment gives the president the power to dissolve the parliament and appoint the head of the armed forces.

The army has also called on the PPP to sack all cabinet ministers facing corruption charges, and not to interfere in the workings of the country’s Supreme Court, parliament, armed forces and intelligence agencies.

Sharif is the leader of the country’s second largest party, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz group. He left the country shortly before the NRO ruling.

Siddiqul Farooq, spokesman for the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, said after the ruling that Zardari should resign on “moral grounds”.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Sri Lankan Military ‘Sexually Abused’ Tamil Girls in Refugee Camps

LONDON: In what may bolster the claims of human rights organisations, Tamil women in refugee camps in Sri Lanka were “sexually abused” by their military guards while many suspected of links to LTTE were taken away and not seen since, a British medic of Asian-origin has alleged.

According to 25-year-old Vany Kumar, who was locked up in a refugee camp for four months, along with many who escaped the horrors of the civil war, not only military guards traded sex for food with Tamil women but prisoners were also being made to kneel for hours in the sun, ‘The Observer’ reported.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Tens of Thousands Flee as the Army Faces the Taliban in Swat

At least 40 thousand people have fled the area where sporadic clashes take place. The pact between the government and Islamic extremists appears close to collapse. Today Zardari and Karzai meet Obama. The fight against the Taliban in Pakistan is essential for victory in Afghanistan.

Islamabad (AsiaNews/Agencies) — At least 40 thousand people are fleeing the Swat Valley as it becomes increasingly evident that the agreement between the Taliban and the government is over. The pact had already been criticised by many in Pakistani society as Islamabad selling out its’ sovereignty to the Islamic extremists. The Pakistani Army accuses the Taliban of having broken the deal by seeking to infiltrate other areas of the nation.

Over the past few days the Taliban and army have been clashing in the main regional city Mingora, once a renowned destination for skiers which now lies devastated by two years of Taliban warfare. Swat’s top official, Khushal Khan, confirms that the radical militants are infiltrating strategic points and mining the territory. According to authorities 500 thousand people are seeking refuge. The army is preparing 6 camps to shelter them.

The crisis has worsened on the eve of direct talks between the US President Barak Obama and the Pakistani and Afghan Presidents, Asif Ali Zardari and Hamid Karzai.

Obama is expected to urge Zardari to put a stop to Taliban who are using Pakistan as a base from which to launch their attacks in Afghanistan. According to US presidential advisor Richard Holbroocke, without Pakistan’s help the United States cannot win the war in Kabul.

The pact between the government of the North West Frontier Province (Nwfp) and the Taliban foresaw the introduction of Sharia the area, as of February 16th last, in exchange for a ceasefire. On April 13th last Zardari signed a decree validating the deal. As the Taliban began summary executions for adultery, public lashings for ‘immoral behaviour’, the closure of girls schools and banned women from appearing in public, in public society particularly among women’s groups criticism of Zardari has grown.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Far East


China: Shaolin: Kung Fu Monks Become a Money Making Brand

The government is negotiating with a tourism giant to transform the monastery of Dengfeng into a rich joint venture for tourism. Abbot indicted, considered a ruthless business, who kick-started the selling off of the cradle of Zen.

Dengfeng (AsiaNews / Agencies) — China Travel Service (CTS, Chinese tourism giant) has announced it has opened negotiations with the city of Dengfeng, Henan, to transform the ancient monastery of Shaolin into a successful brand. The meeting was confirmed by municipal leaders, who have stressed, however, they “have not yet signed any contract with the company.” The Hong Kong branch of the CTS is responsible for ongoing negotiations.

According to available details, the monastery does not form part of future joint ventures and its abbot, Shi Yongxin, has been kept in the dark regarding negotiations. However, many Buddhist faithful in the area have accused him of being the true promoter of the initiative: the expensive tastes of the abbot are well known, who at the beginning of 2009 “accepted” a garment woven with gold worth of 160 thousand yuan [16300th euro] from a private firm.

The first meeting for the new company took place December 9: according to Bejing News, rights of entry into the monastery and the exploitation of suggestive scenarios of Mount Song — where there religious site is located — are around 49 million Yuan [approximately 5 million Euros]. The government of Dengfeng is entitled to 49% of the total. The deal, however, seems to be decreasing: last year, in admission tickets alone, the monastery grossed 10 million Euros.

However, the deal has not gone unnoticed in atheist China: the Shaolin monastery, 1,500 years old, is considered a place of national interest and therefore should not enrich anyone in particular. Home and birthplace of kung fu and Zen Buddhism, it has evolved into a tourist attraction and movie set. Its turnover includes even the production of medicines, apart from the famous monks who often travel the world giving performances of their martial art.

Many believe that the abbot Shi is behind this mutation of the monastery, from a place of prayer to an amusement park. He hit headlines after accepting some 20 thousand Euros from businessmen who sought his blessing and an ultra-luxury SUV, worth 100 thousand Euros, given to him by the local government for his contribution to the local economy.

For his part, the cleric denies all the charges. After 11 months of controversy, he returned the robe of gold (but not the SUV). In an interview with Hunan TV he said he has no intention of selling off the monastery, which “houses a priceless cultural heritage.”

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Gas Pipeline a Symbol of China’s Power: Analysts

China has quietly rewritten the geopolitical landscape in Central Asia in recent years, breaking Russia’s monopoly over the export of the region’s e nergy resources also coveted by the West, experts say.

The proof came last week when Chinese President Hu Jintao travelled to the region for the inauguration of a natural gas pipeline snaking from Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan into China’s far western Xinjiang region.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



N. Korea Capable of Miniaturizing Nuclear Warheads: Source

SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s state-run defense think tank has concluded that North Korea is capable of achieving the technology needed to miniaturize its nuclear warheads, an informed military source said Sunday.

In its report on 2009 military trends in Northeast Asia scheduled to be published next month, the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses (KIDA) concluded that the North at the moment does not have the technology to fit a nuclear weapon on a missile, according to the military source who asked to be unnamed.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


African Christians Fear Own Government on ‘Jihad’

Sudan on brink of civil war, as south seeks freedom from Islamic law

The chief diplomat of the autonomous Government of South Sudan says that war between his region and the country’s central Islamic government is unavoidable unless the world presses Sudan to keep the terms of the 2005 Naivasha Agreement that formed the nation’s current structure.

International Christian Concern reports that South Sudan government chief diplomat Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth made the statements in a Washington interview with the human rights agency.

The ICC’s Jonathan Racho, however, says the cause of the civil war goes beyond Sudanese President Oman al-Bashir’s failure to implement the peace accord.

Racho says it’s a jihad campaign.

“This campaign will be another jihad in Sudan between the Muslim government in the north and the predominantly Christian and animist south. In Sudan when we say Muslims, we mean the government of the President Omar al-Bashir,” Racho explains.

“And when we say jihad in this situation, it’s not an Islamic extremist group;” Racho adds, “it’s the government of Sudan itself.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Somali Rebels Force Men to Grow Beards

Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabaab rebels on Saturday ordered men to grow long beards, shave their moustaches and wear their trousers above the ankle.

It is the first time in the lawless Horn of Africa country that the insurgents, who seek impose a strict form of Islamic Shariah law, have focused on men’s appearance, having previously ordered women to cover their entire bodies, and banned bras.

“In order to ensure the complete implementation of the Islamic Shariah law in the region, we call upon all men to grow their beard and shave their moustache,” Sheik Ibrahim from the Shabaab group told reporters in Kismaio.

“Anybody found ignoring the rules or breaking it will be punished accordingly.”

He said the order will be implemented in three days in the port town of Kismaio.

“People already started practicing the Shariah as the Shabaab ordered and with the new rules, every adult is keen to grow beard in order to avoid punishment”, Mohamed Sakiin, a resident told AFP by phone.

“You must look like them otherwise you are likely to be in trouble”, another witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Previous rulings

The group, which Washington says is an al-Qaeda proxy, has already banned musical ringtones, dancing at weddings and playing or watching soccer.

Shabaab has carried out executions, floggings and amputations to enforce its rulings, mainly Kismayu.

The group is battling the government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed for control of Mogadishu, and is fighting another Islamist militia—Hizbul Islam—in the provinces.

Shabaab also ordered men to wear their trousers above the ankle. “They have 15 days to follow the order,” Garweyn said.

A two-and-a-half year insurgency has killed more than 19,000 civilians, displaced 1 million people, allowed piracy to flourish offshore and spread security fears in the region.

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since 1991. Its transitional government controls little more than a few blocks of Mogadishu, with the rest carved up between Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.

Fighting near Kenya border

In a separate incident on Saturday, fighting between Shabaab and Hizbul Islam fighters near Dhobley close to the Kenyan border killed six people.

“I have seen dead people near Dhobley, two young men, al-Shabaab fighters. Also there are another four from the other side,” said a resident who asked not to be named for security reasons.

Residents said Shabaab fighters had dug trenches in the town in what appeared to be defence lines against possible attacks from Kenya.

Kenya closed its border with Somalia in 2007 and has boosted patrols in recent months.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Swedish Police Produce Pepper Spray at Refugee’s Wedding

A wedding on Saturday in Malmö in southern Sweden came to an abrupt halt as police arrested the 24-year-old groom at the city hall, using pepper spray on him in the process, according to Sydsvenskan newspaper.

The man, who is a refugee from Afghanistan, was wanted by the police after his application for asylum was rejected. He had remained on the run to avoid deportation.

But the police received information that the 24-year-old was to be wed.

“We knew that they were going to the city hall. We had to act before they managed to perform the ceremony,” Anders Kristersson of the Malmö police department told Sydsvenskan.

He said that pepper spray was used because the Afghan man resisted arrest. The man remains in the custody of the Malmö police.

A representative of the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) said that preventing the wedding was unnecessary as marriage to a Swedish citizen wouldn’t have any effect on the man’s deportation as the decision had already been made.

Migration Board communication manager Jonas Lindgren said that police had abused their authority. “You shouldn’t be able to use your power in this way,” he said.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Guantánamo Detainee Wins Asylum Appeal

An Algerian Guantánamo detainee has been given a second chance to have his asylum request considered by the Swiss authorities.

The Federal Migration Office must now re-examine the file after the Federal Administrative Court accepted the man’s appeal.

The Algerian, who has been held at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002 after being detained in Pakistan, submitted an asylum application to Switzerland in July 2008.

US investigators accuse the man of having been active within an armed group linked to Al-Qaida. However the accused claims he was undertaking voluntary work for a humanitarian organisation.

A complaint against the legality of his detention is currently before the American courts.

The Federal Migration Office gave insufficient grounds for its refusal of the Algerian’s initial application, the administrative court judges in Bern found.

Earlier this week an Uzbek national, currently being held in Guantánamo, was granted asylum by the Swiss authorities. Two other cases are still being considered by the Swiss court.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Analysis: How Nelson-Reid Compromise Allows Abortion Funding in Health Care

The language is not similar to the Stupak and Nelson amendments approved by the House and defeated in the Senate.

Instead, Section 38 adds a provision allowing states to opt out of providing abortion coverage through the exchange and adds further layers of accounting requirements that pro-life groups are calling gimmicks to hide abortion funding.

The result remains the same and, contrary to longstanding policy, the federal government will subsidize private health insurance plans that cover abortion.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Defense Launched for Kids Sex Books

Library group official: Jennings critics ‘undermining’ democracy

The chairman of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee has launched a defense of Kevin Jennings and the sexually explicit books recommended for children by the homosexual advocacy organization that Jennings started, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Dissident Lutherans: Bullying Over Gays

A decision to ordain actively gay clergy has caused deep fissures in the nation’s largest Lutheran church group, with some traditional Lutherans saying they have been subjected to threats and retaliation as they consider breaking away.

Several disaffected members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) say the decision made at the church’s national convention in Minneapolis in August could prompt a major exodus from one of America’s biggest Protestant denominations.

“I wouldn’t even begin to tell you how many thousands [of calls] I’ve gotten,” said Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, or CORE, a national coalition based on traditional values. His group said last month that it cannot remain inside the 4.7-million-member ELCA and will form a new synod.

[…]

The Rev. Mark Gehrke, of Faith Lutheran Church in Moline, Ill., said that “if you do not agree with the direction of the ELCA, you are … bullied or ostracized or threatened. The threat has been to even remove me and suspend me from ministry,” he said.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



U.S. Army Major: Lose Evangelical Christian Beliefs

‘American strategists incorrectly rely on generalizations cast as good, evil’

A research paper written by a U.S. Army major for the School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., calls for Americans to lose the evangelical Christian belief of pre-millennialism because of the damage it does to the nation’s foreign interests.

“As a result of millennarian influences on our culture, most Americans think as absolutists,” Maj. Brian L. Stuckert wrote in his 2008 course requirement at the school for military officers.

“A proclivity for clear differentiations between good, evil, right, and wrong do not always serve us well in foreign relations or security policy,” he said. “Policy makers must strive to honestly confront their own cognitive filters and the prejudices associated with various international organizations and actors vis-Ã -vis pre-millennialism.

“We must come to more fully understand the background of our thinking about the U.N., the E.U., the World Trade Organization, Russia, China and Israel. We must ask similar questions about natural events such as earthquakes or disease.”

He warns against the Christian beliefs espoused by many that the end times will involve Israel as God’s chosen nation, a final 1,000-year conflict between good and evil and an ultimate victory for God.

[…]

Others were more blunt in their assessments of Stuckert’s work. Blogger John McTernan, for example, called it “the most dangerous document to believers that I have ever read in my entire life.”

“After reading this document, it is easy to see the next step would be to eliminate our Constitutional rights and herd us into concentration camps,” he said.

“The last third is an interpretation of Bible belief on world events. This report blames all the world evils on believers! World peace would break out if it were not for Bible believers in America,” he said.

[…]

McTernan said he had contacted Col. Stefan Banack, listed on the monograph as the director of the School of Advanced Military Studies, who defended the writing.

“The conversation was extremely heated between us, and he hid behind the freedom of speech to produce it. He refused to let me write an article to refute this attack on Bible believers. He refused to tell me what this study was used for and who within the military was sent copies. I believe that it represents an official military view of Bible believers as Col. Banack said there was no study or article refuting this one,” McTernan said.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

General


Islamic Plan to Criminalize Gospel Message Crumbling

U.N. vote shows ‘continuing pattern of growing opposition’ to proposal

Support for a United Nations proposal that critics contend would be used to ban criticism of Islam, censor the message of Jesus Christ and attack and kill Christians and members of other faiths is plunging, according to the newest vote totals.

A resolution has been pending in one form or another since 1999 and originally was called “Defamation of Islam.” The name later was changed to “Defamation of Religions,” but Islam remains the only faith protected by name in the proposal.

It is being sought by the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to “protect” Islam from what OIC members perceive as “criticism,” which could include anything referencing Christianity since that could be considered a challenge to the beliefs of Muslims.

[…]

Open Doors President Carl Moeller recently published a commentary describing what could happen under the proposal.

[…]

He said the OIC is the driving force behind the plan and noted, “The OIC’s goal is anything but peaceful.”

He cited Leonard Leo of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, who described the resolution as an attempt to create a “global blasphemy law.”

“From the right to worship freely to the ability to tell others about Jesus Christ, the Defamation of Religions Resolution (previously called the ‘Defamation of Islam’ resolution) threatens to justify local laws that already restrict the freedom of Christians [and other religious minorities],” Moeller said.

When such laws are adopted locally, he said, they are used to bring criminal charges against individuals for “defaming, denigrating, insulting, offending, disparaging and blaspheming Islam, often resulting in gross human rights violations.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Muslim Demand #42,338

Cultural Enrichment News


It’s a general rule of Islamization in the West that as the number of Muslims in the population increases, the demands for special treatment of Muslims become commensurately more extensive and insistent.

Since France has the largest percentage of Muslims of any Western country, it’s no surprise that the boldest and most strident demands come from French Muslims. Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Nieuw Religieus Peil detailing the latest workplace requirements laid down by French Muslims:

Staff demand separate Muslim canteens

Segregated canteens for men and woman and “appropriate outfits” for the female canteen staff — these are just some of the demands made by Muslim workers according to Carl Pincemin, a personnel consultant who works for large French companies.

Pincemin also told the French National Assembly that some Muslim workers reject the idea of halal meat in canteens being offered next to “normal” meat, because this would be “unclean”. They want separate canteens and not to have to sit next to people who eat pork.

– – – – – – – –

Other demands of Muslim workers are the recognition of Islamic holidays as days off, and prayer rooms at business locations. According to the anthropologist Douina Bouzar, author of Allah at-il sa place dans l’entreprise? (“Does Allah have a place in the company?”), certain companies give in to the demands of their Muslim employees, out of fear of being seen as Islamophobic.

Some of them have even agreed that Muslim workers will not have their annual performance reviews with their female superiors.

Original sources:



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

Fjordman: On the Collapsing US Dollar

Fjordman’s latest essay, “On the Collapsing US Dollar”, has been published at Atlas Shrugs. Some excerpts are below:

The price of gold will probably continue to rise. Investors buy precious metals because they no longer trust many currencies, above all the US dollar, and they are right to distrust the dollar. Although the price of gold has already risen significantly, the expatriate American investor Jim Rogers believes this is not a bubble since virtually nobody still owns gold. As a friend of mine comments, “I think gold is going to hold the level for a while now, for some months bordering to half a year. Then, due to the money-printing, the sky will be the limit.”

I have heard several people who are into precious metals state that silver is currently preferable to gold, and platinum may be a good bet as well. Exactly which precious metal is better I will leave to the experts, but a combination of all three might be sensible, in addition to property or other assets. This could be one of the few cases where “diversity” really is a good thing. An ancient and time-tested advice is to never put all of your eggs in one basket.

According to blogger Dennis Mangan, “While predictions are difficult to make, especially about the future, Williams marshals the facts that support his analysis. Runaway government spending, aided and abetted by massive printing of dollars by the Federal reserve, have doomed the dollar. It is only a matter of timing. A hyperinflation will be accompanied by political upheaval and, in my opinion, could see the end of the U.S. as we know it. What shape that upheaval would take is anyone’s guess.”

– – – – – – – –

Not all observers agree that the USA is facing a hyperinflation; there are those who believe the result will rather be a serious deflation. Whatever will be the end result it is quite evident thatthe United States is now headed for turbulent times, financially and politically. Since ethnic diversity is rapidly increasing and national cohesion is decreasing correspondingly, a Second American Civil War could be considered one of several possible outcomes.

Frankly, I suspect that more or less the entire Western world is heading for serious financial instability and Multicultural tribalistic violence in the coming generation. The most important thing that the common man can do in such turbulent times is to be mentally and physically prepared to protect the life and property of his family as best as he can until the dust settles. This includes having guns and ammunition as well as money. All things considered I believe that Americans and Westerners in general would be smart to invest some of their savings in metals as soon as possible, starting with gold, silver and lead, not necessarily in that order.

Read the rest at Atlas Shrugs.

Heroes of the Counterjihad

There are many heroes in the Counterjihad movement, and it’s important that we celebrate them.

Some of our heroes are members of the military in various countries, and others are in the police and intelligence services. These people put their lives on the line all the time, and often receive scant appreciation from their governments for their selflessness. In addition to the deadly perils of their jobs, when the winds of ideological fashion shift they are frequently used as political footballs by their superiors.

There are also numerous people who wear no uniform and yet act heroically in the struggle against the Great Jihad. They don’t necessarily bear arms or put their lives on the line, but they are heroes nonetheless.

So what makes an ordinary citizen a hero of the Counterjihad?

First of all, he faces some kind of serious risk by doing what he does. He might be in danger of losing his job, or risk possible arrest, or surrender his own financial well-being for the sake of the cause. The consequences of his actions may include a brick through his living room window or having his car overturned and set on fire. In the most extreme cases he faces bodily harm or even death because of what he chooses to do.

Most importantly, he does not back down in the face of threats and intimidation. It would be so easy and forgivable to retire from the fight and return to the quiet life, yet he persists. A “hate speech” charge or a death threat only serves to make him more resolute in his resistance to Islamization. He serves as a shining example for the rest of us, reminding us of the stark choice between principled behavior and moral cowardice.

What we really need is a Counterjihad Heroes’ Gallery which would recognize and memorialize those who have taken serious risks and made major sacrifices for the sake of the anti-jihad cause. I don’t have the time or resources to add this job to my to-do list, but perhaps someone with web programming skills and access to a secure server could take the idea and run with it.

There are many candidates for our heroes’ gallery, but I’ll pick just three to get the ball rolling. Readers are invited to include their own choices in the comments.

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Hero #1: Oriana Fallaci

Oriana FallaciOriana Fallaci, the late author of The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason, is justly celebrated for her many writings that warned of the dangers of Islam. Her body of work was already an inspiration for the rank-and-file of the Counterjihad, but it was her actions during the last few years of her life that made her into a hero.

She was in the midst of a grim struggle against terminal cancer when the Italian government put her on trial for “defaming Islam”. With only a few more months left to live, she could have settled her case by doing the normal cowardly things that most people would do in a similar situation: apologizing, expressing contrition, agreeing to donate money to “outreach” groups, pleading guilty to a lesser charge and paying a fine, and so on.

She could have opted to end her life in quiet and uneventful obscurity. Instead she chose to fight the charge vigorously, and remained an outspoken opponent of Islamization until the day of her death.

Oriana Fallaci was a hero.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


Hero #2: Lionheart

LionheartPaul Ray, the British blogger who posts under the pseudonym Lionheart, has been living under severe threat for several years. He ran afoul of the corrupt police force in his native Luton when he attempted to expose the Pakistani drug-dealing gangs who terrorized his neighborhood. His life was threatened, and he was driven out of his home and business.

Lionheart could have opted to save his skin by shutting up and moving someplace where he would no longer be a thorn in the sides of the South Asian drug dealers. But his Christian faith impelled him to stay and continue his efforts to expose and publicize what was happening in Luton. For his trouble he was publicly denigrated, called a racist and a neo-Nazi, and demonized in the press.
– – – – – – – –
The climax came when the police charged him with “incitement to hatred” after receiving a complaint from a Pakistani about the “racist” writings on his blog. For the following year they kept him hanging, using the charge to remind him of his powerlessness in the face of the corrupt multicultural regime that now controls the UK. The police have effectively told him that they can’t protect him, although they are conscientious enough to notify him whenever they receive a credible threat against his life.

Lionheart is a hero.

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Hero #3: Fabrizio Quattrocchi

Fabrizio QuattrocchiFabrizio Quattrocchi was an Italian security guard who was taken hostage in 2004 by Islamic terrorists in Iraq. Like so many other infidels who were taken hostage in those days, he faced a grisly death at the hands of his captors. The customary practice was to force the hostage to kneel and be beheaded while videotaping the gruesome process.

Mr. Quattrocchi could have done what so many other victims did. He could have whimpered and begged to be spared. He could even have tried to save his life by reciting the shahada and converting to Islam, as did one journalist who was captured by terrorists in the Gaza strip.

He was facing certain death, and he knew it. The only thing that remained under his control was the manner of his dying.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi chose to set an example for the rest of us, and not go meekly like a sheep to the slaughter. As his captors prepared to videotape his murder, they forced him to dig his own grave and kneel beside it while wearing the hood. He defied them by ripping off the hood and shouting “Vi faccio vedere come muore un italiano!” — “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” Then the terrorists shot him to death.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a hero.

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There are many other heroes who could be named here, some of them famous — such as Geert Wilders — and others anonymous and obscure.

If we lived in a sane society, there would be an annual day on which we celebrated them. It would be marked on all our official calendars: “Heroes of the Counterjihad Day”.

Or perhaps it would be April 14: “Fabrizio Quattrocchi Day”.



Thanks to Henrik from Europe News, who came up with the idea for this post.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/19/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/19/2009I haven’t included a news article about it here, but the latest word is that Harry Reid has corralled all 60 votes needed to clinch the Senate version of Obamacare. If the House and the Senate can resolve their differences, we are on the verge of the biggest government takeover in history of a private sector function.

A cold wave has descended on Europe, with ice and snow causing chaos and several deaths on German roads.

In other news, a female journalist in Saudi Arabia has called for polyandry for Muslim women, to give them equal rights with Muslim men. Islamic authorities have roundly condemned her for her idea.

Thanks to Amil Imani, C. Cantoni, Diana West, Esther, Fausta, Insubria, JP, KGS, Sean O’Brian, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – –

USA
Cyclists, Hasidim Split Over Bike Lanes
Penetration Even at the Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy
 
Europe and the EU
66% of Belgians for Buddhism Classes
Austria: Memorial to Nazis’ Homosexual Victims Cancelled
Copenhagen Was the MPs’ Expenses Scandal Writ Large
Copenhagen: The Sweet Sound of Exploding Watermelons
Czech Republic: New Party to Push for Direct Democracy
EU and Vatican Sign New Monetary Accord
Fraud in Europe’s Cap and Trade System a ‘Red Flag, ‘ Critics Say
French Halal Restaurants Try Gourmet Cuisine
Germany: Ice and Snow Cause Traffic Chaos
Growth of Radical Islam Halted in the Netherlands
Leaving UN Terror Blacklists Gets Easier
Spain: The ‘Five-Days-After’ Pill Available as of Today
Switzerland: Minaret Vote Was a “Lesson in Civic Spirit”
UK: Philip Davies MP Bombarded Watchdog in ‘Political Correctness’ Campaign
Vatican: Bishop Criticises Move to Beatify John Paul II
 
Balkans
EU: Croatia a Member by 2011, Frattini Says
EU: End of Visas Pleases Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia
 
North Africa
Abul Gheit Stresses Egypt’s Right to Control Border
 
Israel and the Palestinians
EU: Palestinian State? The Sooner the Better, Moratinos
Film: EU Project Finances Films on Palestinian Women
Gaza is Not an Islamic Republic
 
Middle East
Another Targeted Killing Against Mosul’s Christian Community
Arab Journalist Seeks Polyandry for Women
Diana West: The “Surge” And “Success”, Pt. 1
Iran Rejects Reports of Iraqi Oil Well Seizure as Attempt to Harm Ties
Saudi Arabia: Crew Members Stranded in Muslim Holy City
Turks Threaten to Kill Priest Over Swiss Minaret Decision (Via Nrp)
 
South Asia
Afghan Soldiers and Police Fight Each Other
Afghan Elders to U.S.: Let US Do Fighting
Indonesia: A Thousand Islamic Extremists, Including Women and Children, Storm a Church Near Jakarta
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
Somalian Men Ordered to Grow Beards
Suspected Somalia Pirates Freed by Dutch Navy
US Arrests Three Africans in ‘Al-Qaeda Cocaine Sting’
 
Latin America
Venezuela Imprisons Judge Who Freed Banker Without Trial
 
Immigration
Italy: Thousands of Suspected People Traffickers Arrested in 2009
 
General
Amil Imani: Christmas Spirit and Islam
There’ll be Nowhere to Run From the New World Government

USA


Cyclists, Hasidim Split Over Bike Lanes

NEW YORK, Dec. 9 (UPI) — Two young cyclists in the Williamsburg neighborhood in New York have been charged with repainting a bike lane removed at the request of Hasidic Jews.

Quinn Hechtropf, 26, and Katherine Piccochi, 24, surrendered to police Tuesday and were charged with criminal mischief, the New York Post reported. They were given desk appearance tickets and released.

“We’re self-hating Jewish hipsters,” Hechtropf joked.

The neighborhood at the Brooklyn end of the Williamsburg Bridge has long been a major center of the Hasidic movement. In recent years, it has also attracted young artists.

The Hasidic community complained of the 14-block bike lane on Bedford Avenue. Leaders argued the cyclists speeding by were a safety hazard and also a moral one because T-shirts and skimpy bike shorts left too much of their bodies exposed by the strict standards of the local Hasidim.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Penetration Even at the Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy

The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.

As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book “Muslim Mafia.”

For example, Islam persuaded brass to sack a Pentagon analyst, Stephen Coughlin, after he advised cutting off outreach to ISNA, which he accurately ID’d as part of a covert terror-support network in the U.S. — something the Justice Department recently confirmed in a major terror finance trial.

Islam invited ISNA officials to lunch with the avuncular England, known by insiders as Gullible Gordon, who in turn spoke at ISNA confabs. Islam also helped set up a Pentagon job booth at one recent ISNA convention to recruit Muslim chaplains and linguists.

Most disturbing, Islam met regularly with Saudi and other embassy officials lobbying for the release and repatriation of their citizens held at Gitmo. He in turn advised England, who authorized the release of dozens of Gitmo detainees. Some have resumed terrorist activities.

No one really knew who Islam was when he was promoted — in fact, the Pentagon removed his bio from its Web site after reporters noted major inconsistencies in it — yet he was allowed to get inside the office of the Pentagon’s No. 2 official.

“In effect,” a senior U.S. Army intelligence official told me, “we’ve got terrorist supporters calling the shots on our policies toward Muslims from the highest levels.”

Meanwhile, politically incorrect prophets like Coughlin have been frozen out. After the betrayal at Fort Hood, the military could use his analysis of Islamic doctrine more than ever.

I attended a private briefing by Coughlin in February. In a PowerPoint presentation, he detailed how jihadists use the Quran to justify their actions. Some of his slides matched almost word-for-word Hasan’s own PowerPoint slides extolling the virtues of jihad and martyrdom. Both, for instance, quoted from the same Quranic passage known as the “Verse of the Sword.”

           — Hat tip: Fausta [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


66% of Belgians for Buddhism Classes

From Dutch: About 66% of Belgians want Buddhism as as option in religion classes. Buddhism is the third most well-known religion, after Catholicism and Islam, even before Judaism.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Austria: Memorial to Nazis’ Homosexual Victims Cancelled

Plans for a monument to homosexual and transgender victims of the Nazis in Vienna have been shelved — because artists could not find the right colour for it.

Hans Kupelwieser had won a competition 2006 with plans for a 20×20 metre water basin full of pink-coloured water and the word “Que(e)r” written across it to be placed at Morzin square.

But Social Democratic (SPÖ) cultural councillor Andreas Mailath-Pokorny said the project had been called off because of a failure to find a colour suitable for daily use. He said: “We really wanted it to become a reality.”

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Copenhagen Was the MPs’ Expenses Scandal Writ Large

The futile climate-change negotiations at Copenhagen revealed the same contempt for the public as the scandal over MPs’ expenses, says Matthew d’Ancona.

What I loved about Avatar, James Cameron’s stunning new 3D movie, was its spirit of innovation, and the boundless energy of the imagination behind it. Only once did my heart sink, which was when the human-turned-tall-blue-alien, Jake, apologised to the local deity, “Eywa”, that his own race had not looked after their own “Mother” and that there was therefore no vegetation left on 22nd-century Earth. Even at the multiplex, you are made to feel guilty about the recycling box. There really is no escape, is there?

The Hollywood elite long ago made up its mind about climate change and the environmentalist agenda. So too, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, have the political elites gathered in Copenhagen for the past fortnight — like a student union meeting, only with motorcades. On Friday, I listened to the Today programme’s reports on the summit: carbon markets, government-to-government funding, and cash-for-temperature deals between the developing and developed nations. Lord Stern, the author of the 2006 Treasury review on the economic impact of climate change, said he was concerned that we were going to end up “two or three billion tonnes short”. I think he was talking about greenhouse gases and acceptable levels of emissions before 2020. But one can never be sure when environmental experts get going.

In all areas of public policy, of course, there is a gap between the specialist and the man on the street: a gap created by impenetrable jargon, vested interests, and the group-think of the decision-taking elites. But where climate change policy is concerned, that gap is a positive chasm. The breaking news at Copenhagen was provided by the intransigence of the Chinese, President Obama’s intervention on Friday, the frenetic efforts behind the scenes of Gordon Brown and the Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, and the weakness of the final “accord”. But, as acrimonious as the talks between nations were, the real story of Copenhagen was of planetary negotiating failure — not between heads of government but between governments and governed. This summit has dramatised the gulf between political class and public on the global stage as clearly as the expenses scandal did on the domestic scene. In a Danish city, 115 world leaders congregated to take decisions about the way the rest of the species will behave between now and 2050. Their deliberations have not been illegitimate — as heads of government, they are entitled to negotiate at such gatherings — so much as a waste of time.

Let us, just for the sake of argument, assume that the summiteers are right about the perils ahead. The changes under discussion at Copenhagen involve behavioural change on a truly epic scale: billions of people must live quite differently, and subordinate present prosperity and comfort to what they are assured are the interests of the future. No legislation or regulation — however strict — can force such a transformation.

People must therefore be persuaded, or the rules, and the laws, and the summits, amount to precisely nothing. And, to date, they are very far from persuaded. According to a Populus poll in The Times last month, less than half of Britons believe that human activity is to blame for global warming; an ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph earlier this month found only slightly greater support.

This being so, it is odd that ministers have been so scornful about sceptics and those who do not sign up in every detail to their position. As environment secretary, David Miliband displayed the political focus and sinew needed to make cuts in carbon emissions legally binding: the world’s first such Climate Change Bill. At the same time, however, he seemed to think that because he had made his mind up, everyone else should simply step into line.

“I think that the scientific debate has now closed on global warming,” he declared in October 2006, “and the popular debate is closing as well.” The truth is that there were, and still are, plenty of dissenters in the scientific debate, and that the “popular debate”, as Mr Miliband described it, was, and still is, in its infancy. Yet his strategy was to ridicule those who didn’t accept his orthodoxy: they were, he said, “the flat-earthers of the 21st century”.

Now Mr Miliband’s younger brother, Ed, is at the helm of the reconfigured Department of Energy and Climate Change. In a speech last month, he at least acknowledged the problem: “To make these changes requires leadership from government, but it also requires us to build and maintain consent. To take that consent for granted is a mistake and to assume we can sustain change without it would be wrong in my view too.”

Just so. But if Miliband the Younger accepts this, why did he describe those who disagreed with him in the run-up to Copenhagen as “saboteurs”? To provide the context: he was attacking his political opponents, Nigel Lawson and David Davis, and was perfectly entitled to do so. None the less, his revealing choice of the word “saboteur” — disagreement equals vandalism — sent a clear signal to every member of the public who dares to wonder what all this is about, why the changes needed are so dramatic, whether the scientific consensus is as clear as ministers say it is. “Anyone who comes forward at this moment,” Mr Miliband continued, “and starts saying ‘We can stick our heads in the sand’ is irresponsible.” Again, the message was crystal-clear. You are entitled to your opinion, as long as it’s mine.

All this should be exercising David Cameron, too — although I suspect that he has a clearer grasp of the persuasive task ahead than do his Labour opponents. Ed Miliband has emphasised the need for “strong state action”; Mr Cameron, a student of the Nudge school of public policy, favours more subtle means of changing behaviour. He also knows that trust in politicians is at such a low ebb that, for now, any instruction or diktat emanating from Westminster and Whitehall invites suspicion, resentment or contempt.

If you want a “green revolution” — and the evidence suggests that you don’t — it must truly be from the bottom up. This Government’s strategy — to sneer at the doubters — is doomed, not only because doubt is the cornerstone of democracy but because, on this specific issue, the doubters are in the majority. Copenhagen marked the end of an era: it demonstrated the poverty and self-regard of elite politics, the introspection and self-congratulation of a political class still in love with itself because nobody else will love it. The lesson of 2009, from duck houses to green summits, was that that kind of politics is dead, and a new kind is needed. Any ideas? Meanwhile: Happy Christmas.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Copenhagen: The Sweet Sound of Exploding Watermelons

I take it all back. Copenhagen was worth it, after all — if only for the sphincter-bursting rage its supposed failure has caused among our libtard watermelon chums. (That’s watermelon, as in: green on the outside, red on the inside).

As Damian reports, on Twitter they’re all planning to cleanse Mother Gaia of their polluting presence Jonestown-style.

The Great Moonbat [George Monbiot, Guardian columnist] is sounding more unhinged than ever:

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

And Polly Toynbee is blaming the whole fiasco on false consciousness.

Most leaders in Copenhagen were out ahead of their people. Most understand the crisis better than those they represent, promising more sacrifice than their citizens are yet ready to accept — while no doubt praying for some miraculous technological escape.

Sometimes we’re inclined to dismiss Polly as a loveable comedy figure, what with her lovely house in Tuscany contrasting so amusingly with her prolier-than-thou politics, and the never ending japesomeness of her deft, lighter-than-air prose. But you know what? When she reveals her true colours, as she does here, I think she’s really, really scary. Her whole article teeters on the brink of demanding an eco-fascist world government to save us all from ourselves.

She yearns, like a woman wailing for her demon lover, for the righteous apocalypse which will teach us the error of our ways:

What would it take? A tidal wave destroying New York maybe — New Orleans was the wrong people — with London, St Petersburg and Shanghai wiped out all at once.

What she really wants, though, as you see from the plaintive, yearning tone of this sentence is global dictatorship:

As things stand, politics has not enough heft nor authority.

One day, Polly dear. One day.

UPDATE: Christ on a bike! You thought Moonbat and Pol-Pot were barking. Wait till you read Johann Hari’s tearful summation in the Independent.

Throughout the negotiations here, the world’s low-lying island states have clung to the real ideas as a life raft, because they are the only way to save their countries from a swelling sea. It has been extraordinary to watch their representatives — quiet, sombre people with sad eyes — as they were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were ignored.

Does he mean the man in the bow-tie from Tuvalu who wept openly for his island’s fate but on closer cross-examination — as Andrew Bolt reported — turned out to live nowhere near Tuvalu (whose sea-levels, in any case, have not risen in several decades)?

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]



Czech Republic: New Party to Push for Direct Democracy

Prague, Dec 17 (CTK) — The new Party of Citizens’ Rights (SPO) will be pushing for strengthening direct democracy and it will also support reinforcement of foreign anti-terrorism military missions, according to its draft programme its chairman Milos Zeman presented Thursday.

Zeman, former Czech prime minister and former chairman of Social Democracy (CSSD), presented the party’s draft programme to the SPO preparatory committee members.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



EU and Vatican Sign New Monetary Accord

(ANSAmed) — VATICAN CITY, DECEMBER 17 — The Vatican and the European Union on Thursday signed a monetary accord to govern the use of the euro in the papal state. According to the Italian bishops’ daily Avvenire, the accord implies that the Vatican will adopt before the end of next year EU norms in regard to money laundering and financial fraud. The new EU-Vatican accord replaces one signed at the end of 2000, which saw the Vatican adopt the euro as its legal tender. Until then the Vatican had linked its currency to the Italian lira, which in 1999 became a subunit of the euro and ceased to exist in 2002.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Fraud in Europe’s Cap and Trade System a ‘Red Flag, ‘ Critics Say

The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading has fallen prey to an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion — a massive fraud that lawmakers and energy experts say should send a “red flag” to the U.S., where the House approved cap-and-trade legislation over the summer amid stiff opposition.

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe’s cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

“These criminal activities endanger the credibility of the European Union Emission Trading System and lead to the loss of significant tax revenue for governments,” Rob Wainwright, Europol’s director, said in a statement.

Launched in 2005, the Emission Trading System seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — which many scientists believe contribute to global warming — by allocating carbon pollution allowances to member states to fulfill its obligations under the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol. Companies that emit less than their allowance can sell the difference on the trading market to firms that exceed their established limits.

But, according to a diagram of the scheme provided by Europol officials, the accused traders would open an account in a national carbon registry and then purchased emission allowances without value added taxes from other companies in other countries. Those allowances were then transferred to the country where they were registered before the accused trader moves them to an unregulated broker, selling the allowances on a trading exchange, often through various buffer companies. Finally, the accused trader charges the value added tax on the transaction but does not submit that money to authorities.

France has reportedly launched a criminal probe into four men who allegedly took part in the scheme, two of whom have been jailed.

It’s a lesson to be learned, critics of cap-and-trade say. Creating such a system in the United States would invite “corruption, illegality and criminal activity,” much as it has in Europe, said Max Schulz, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

“This is the problem with politicians trying to create a market for something that the free market otherwise doesn’t value,” Schulz said. “An emissions trading market is an artificially, politically-created market…

“If we pass a system like Europe has, we’re going to get all the problems Europe has experienced,” he said. “You’re asking for a lot of problems.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said it’s no surprise cap-and-trade systems are vulnerable to corruption.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



French Halal Restaurants Try Gourmet Cuisine

In a stylishly decorated restaurant in the heart of Paris, tucked between Bastille and Place de la Nation, Sophia Tabet is perusing a typical French menu, including foie gras, beef fillet and duck confit.

But unlike other French eateries, this one offers no wine list, and all food is prepared strictly in accordance with the principles of Islamic sharia law.

“We all eat halal food. It’s nice to have a change, to be able to eat French gastronomy that’s halal,” said Tabet, 29, a customer adviser at a large financial services company.

Tabet is on a girls’ night out with work colleagues at Les Enfants Terribles, one of a new breed of up-market halal restaurants that have sprung up in and around Paris, catering to a growing population of young Muslim professionals.

Born and educated in France, they have similar culinary tastes and social lives to their non-Muslim counterparts, but eating out can be a disappointing experience, restricted to cheap fast food outlets, or the vegetarian option on the menu.

“Before, eating halal in Paris, you were pretty much limited to pizzerias or kebab shops,” said Kamel Saidi, 32, who opened Les Enfants Terribles two years ago with his brother.

“I was born in France, I grew up in France and I was frustrated because I wasn’t able to enjoy good traditional French food,” he said.

Literally translated, halal means “permissible”, and defines foods that Muslims are allowed to eat under Islamic law.

Pork is strictly forbidden, as is alcohol, both as a drink or as an additive in cooking.

Halal meat must be slaughtered in the name of Allah and the animals’ throat slit to allow blood to drain before consumption.

For Muslims, this rules out a wide range of traditional French fare, but also restricts choice in the more cosmopolitan eateries, such as Thai and Chinese, that have become a feature of the French culinary landscape.

In a country famed for its rich cuisine and passion for food, halal can therefore prove something of a social handicap.

“What if you want to invite a colleague out? You can’t really ask a French non-Muslim to the kebab shop,” said Saidi.

National Identity

France recently launched a debate on the issue of its national identity, aimed at defining its essential unifying values and reclaiming a renewed sense of patriotism.

The conversation has zeroed in on France’s mainly Muslim immigrants, and the question of whether their presence is diluting France’s social and cultural character.

But lost in this debate are the growing number of second and third generation Muslims who share the tastes and aspirations of a modern non-Muslim youth, and are seeking to reconcile their religious values with a strong sense of Frenchness.

Dhieb Lagnab, 31, of Tunisian descent, recently opened a chic Thai restaurant, Le Wok Saint Germain, on Paris’ Left Bank, tapping into a growing urban trend for international cuisine.

“Personally, as a Frenchman, I don’t identify with my parents, but more with the young generation of French people who are opening Asian restaurants,” he said.

“The only difference is that in my case, it’s halal.”

France has Europe’s largest Muslim community, estimated at some 5 million people or 8 percent of the population.

Already, the market for shop-bought halal food products is valued at 4 billion euros ($5.90 billion) and growth is expected to reach 10 percent per year up to 2012, according to a study by Paris-based consultancy Xerfi.

For Saidi, the gamble has already paid off — two years after opening Les Enfants Terribles, he is fully booked every night, and plans to open a second venue elsewhere in the city.

“The demand is big, and professionals are really starting to feel it. Halal is starting to expand everywhere,” he said.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



Germany: Ice and Snow Cause Traffic Chaos

The biting cold that has blanketed Germany in snow and ice caused chaos on the roads at the beginning of the weekend, killing at least two people and causing thousands of accidents, particularly in the west of the country.

Two people were killed in the far-northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. And police in North Rhine-Westphalia counted more than 1000 weather-related accidents since the beginning of the snow falls on Friday afternoon.

The plummeting temperature caused the breakdown of the power plant for chemical firm BASF in Ludwigshafen in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The temperature at the Funtensee lake in Bavaria dropped to -33.6 degrees. Northern Germany’s highest peak, the Brocken in the Harz mountain range, had its coldest December night in 31 years: -21.7 degrees.

However the German Weather Service (DWD) is forecasting an end soon to the bitter cold, with warmer air replacing low pressure system Vincent by the end of Sunday. Temperatures were set to creep back above zero by Monday and climb to about 5 degrees on Wednesday.

Police said a 24-year-old female driver died in a collision near Neumünster in Schleswig-Holstein after she skidded on snow around a curve into the path of oncoming traffic. Similarly a 52-year-old man in the same state went onto the wrong side of the road and was killed in a collision. His wife suffered life-threatening injuries.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, 20 people were seriously injured and another 85 suffered milder injuries in accidents. The cost of accidents was estimated at about €2.5 million.

In an ice-covered carpark in the Mendig region of the Rhineland-Palatinate, a 39-year-old woman slid into parked car, shunting it into a truck and causing serious head injuries to the truck’s passenger.

Police in Bavaria counted more than 200 accidents overnight on Friday, causing several injuries, though none life-threatening.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Growth of Radical Islam Halted in the Netherlands

Salafism, an ultra-orthodox Islamic movement, is no longer growing in the Netherlands, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD reported on Thursday.

Nordin Akhssay (31) is still different — but on the outside, he looks just like everybody else. “If people won’t accept you for who you are, you’d better be like they want you to be,” he said.

It is Akhssay’s faith that puts him apart from other people. Akhssay returned to the Netherlands in 2004 after spending 18 months abroad studying Arabic in Damascus and the Koran in Medina. He had married a devoutly religious woman who bore him a son they named Sayfuddin, meaning “sword of the faith” in Arabic. But when Akhssay returned to Helmond, a town of some 80,000 in the south of the Netherlands, he found his strict faith and long beard made it all but impossible for him to find a job. “I was turned down at every place I applied for one,” Akhssay said. “Sometimes they ended up picking someone who was obviously less competent than me.”

Salafism no longer on the rise in Netherlands

His 1609 publication Mare Liberum was part of a larger work in which Grotius investigated the nDutch intelligence agency AIVD published a report on salafism in the Netherlands on Thursday. The rapid growth of this fundamentalist Muslim movement has ground to a halt, the report noted. Salafist centres in the Netherlands have ceased to be a hotbed of terrorism. “People with jihadist ideals are barred from Dutch mosques these days,” an AIVD analyst said.

According to the AIVD, salafi still preach their “anti-assimilatory” and “intolerant and isolationist” ideals in more intimate settings.

Nordin trimmed his beard down a bit and was promptly hired, but was still greeted with suspicion at his new job. “People would address me using infantile language, thinking I couldn’t speak Dutch,” Akhssay said. He drew stares walking down the street in his traditional Islamic garb.

Some might call Akhssay a salafi. “If somebody wants to label me as such, that’s their business,” he said. Still, his appearance today does little to betray his faith. On the night of this interview, conducted at a hip diner in Eindhoven, he was wearing a striped sweater. His chin bore only the faintest of goatees.

Salafism, an ultra-orthodox Sunni Islamic movement which seeks to return to Islam’s earliest roots, is no longer gaining ground in the Netherlands. The salafi movement grew rapidly the last few years, with especially young people joining its ranks, but now that expansion has ground to a halt, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD concluded in a report it published on Thursday, titled Resistance and Counterforce.

The salafist gospel, or dawa, is meeting with growing resistance, the AIVD notes. Moderate Muslims have become more vocal, and the salafi themselves have also loosened up in their religious convictions. “The salafi lifestyle is very demanding for young people,” an AIVD analyst explained. “Once you start a family you don’t have the time to pray five times a day anymore.”

Salafi believe there is only one true, pure strain of Islam: that of the ‘pious predecessors’, or Salaf us Salah. These predecessors consist of the first three generations following the prophet Muhammad, who died in 632. The movement has its earliest roots in eighteenth-century Saudi Arabia but has since spread all over the planet. During the decolonisation of the Muslim world, some salafists combined their orthodox convictions with political activism. Al Qaeda traces its origins back to this politicised strain of Islam.

The first salafist groups in the Netherlands were formed in the 1990s, but they went relatively unnoticed until the attacks of September 11, 2001. Months later, in January of 2002, two boys from Eindhoven were killed under suspicious circumstances in Kashmir. According to the AIVD, they had been recruited to participate in violent jihad by a recruiter working in the Al Furqan Mosque in Eindhoven. The same year, 12 people were arrested on suspicion of recruiting people for jihad. The El Tawheed Mosque in Amsterdam and the As Sunnah Mosque in The Hague also got a lot of bad publicity, promoting the thinly veiled suggestion these Dutch salafist centres were practically Al Qaeda employment agencies.

Akhssay grew up in a Catholic neighbourhood in Helmond, attending a local Catholic primary school. He said his teachers there were the first to make him feel “different” When he went to a mosque for the first time in his life — the Omar Ibn Khattab Mosque, a local mosque affiliated with Al Furqan in Eindhoven — he didn’t even know how to pray properly. A fellow student from his school, Amr Nejjar, asked him over and introduced him to the close-knit community of youngsters attending the Al Furqan Mosque. He became a fanatical believer almost overnight, praying before sunset, studying and discussing tenets of Islam. “You really want to do your best at everything,” Akhssay recalled the time when he first found his faith. He may have become a believer, but by no means did he become acquiescent. When a jihadist visited his mosque, preaching the blessings of martyrdom, Akhssay retorted by asking him why he didn’t go off to fight jihad himself.

Studying in Saudi Arabia, Akhssay witnessed the break-up of the orthodox movement. He saw some salafi become increasingly politicised and more radical. Others felt good Muslims did not rebel against authority. Even the Dutch students in Medina disagreed on the matter.

On returning home in 2004, Akhssay faced a harsh welcome. Muslim extremist Mohammed B. killed Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in the same year. The word ‘salafi’ had become practically synonymous with ‘terrorist’. Al Furqan’s familiar imams were soon deported by Dutch immigration agencies.

Akhssay decided to adapt. “I am putting on a charade though,” he said. On the inside, he said he has not changed. Perhaps he does not frequent the mosque on a daily basis any more, but his son Sayfuddin attends an Islamic primary school, and he has named his second son Nasrdin, Arabic for “victory of the faith”.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Leaving UN Terror Blacklists Gets Easier

Switzerland and other countries have convinced the United Nations Security Council to simplify the delisting procedure for people affected by anti-terror sanctions.

With the creation of an ombudsman’s office, individuals or companies will have an independent review body to which they can submit their grievances and demand their removal from a blacklist.

Since 1999, the council has imposed on member states obligations that include travel restrictions, financial sanctions and arms embargoes against people and entities associated with al-Qaida and Afghanistan’s Taliban.

There are 500 names currently on the UN’s blacklist, but until now only a Security Council committee has decided who joins — or is struck off. There has been no independent delisting procedure for those affected by the sanctions.

Switzerland pointed out this shortcoming early on and in 2005 launched an initiative with other countries to correct this situation, criticised by various courts and parliaments as a lack of protection of individual rights.

Last year a concrete proposal to set up a review body was submitted to the council. It stipulated that sanctioned people or entities had the right to know why and the right to appeal.

The proposal was accepted on Thursday by the council. The new ombudsman, appointed by the UN secretary-general, will review cases independently and submit the reasons for decisions to the council’s sanctions committee.

“Paradigm shift”

Speaking for the group of nations that had backed the proposal, the Costa Rican representative on the council welcomed the decision, calling it a “paradigm shift”. He said the move was a “brave and decisive step towards a fairer and more transparent procedure”.

The group includes Denmark, Germany, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Norway.

The Swiss foreign ministry said in a statement that the rights of individuals would now be taken into account at the international level and the legitimacy of the United Nations system of sanctions would be strengthened.

It also promised that Switzerland would closely follow the implementation of the new resolution.

The lack of independent review body had been highlighted in the Swiss parliament.

Swiss role

Dick Marty, a senator for the centre-right Radical Party and a member of the Council of Europe, had tabled a motion demanding that UN sanctions no longer be applied if a person had been blacklisted for more than three years, no new proof had been supplied against that person and there was no way of appealing the decision.

Marty has had the sanctions procedure in his sights for some time. He also submitted a critical report to the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog.

While the Senate unanimously accepted the motion, the government rejected it because Switzerland as a UN member was bound to apply the organisation’s sanctions.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey promised though that Switzerland would attempt to ensure that a fairer procedure for the lifting of anti-terror sanctions would be introduced.

On Thursday Swiss diplomats said the Security Council decision should go a long way to answering Marty’s criticism of the sanction system.

Rita Emch in New York, swissinfo.ch (Adapted from German by Scott Capper)

The Youssef Nada case

Youssef Nada was placed on the UN blacklist in autumn 2001. The US government had accused al-Taqwa, which was founded in 1988 by its Egyptian managing director Nada, and his Syrian associate, Ali Himmat, of helping to fund Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

Al-Taqwa was put under investigation shortly after the terror attacks on Washington and New York on September 11, 2001.

Swiss officials froze 24 Nada bank accounts and searched company officials’ homes and offices on November 7, 2001 — the same day that the organisation was accused by Washington of financing terrorist acts.

The company operated out of the southern canton of Ticino until it was liquidated in December 2001.

Nada and Himmat repeatedly denied any connection with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network and accused the Swiss authorities of taking part in an American-led anti-Muslim campaign. After three-and-a-half years of investigations, the Swiss authorities dropped the case.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Spain: The ‘Five-Days-After’ Pill Available as of Today

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 18 — Following the day after pill which was made legally available two months ago, as of today Spanish chemist shops will also be able to sell the five-days-after pill, an emergency contraceptive that can be taken in the 120 hours following an unprotected sexual relation. The pill, sold under the name EllaOne, will only be available with a medical prescription, unlike the day after pill. The contraceptive, which has been available since September in the UK, France and Germany, is not hormonal and acts on progesterone regulation sensors and is five times more powerful in inhibiting pregnancies compared to the post-coitus pill, which, as explained by the Spanish contraception Foundation, only works in the 72 hours following sexual intercourse. It comes in the form of a single pill which costs 32.78 euros and, according to experts, has secondary effects that are similar to those of the day after pill: headaches, stomach aches, tiresomeness, delay or lengthening of the hormonal cycle. Experts warn that the pill can only be taken in case of emergencies and should not be taken regularly. According to Isabel Serrano, president of the Family Planning Federation, it will be able to help to lower the number of abortions practiced in Spain, which in 2008 amounted to 115,000.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Switzerland: Minaret Vote Was a “Lesson in Civic Spirit”

Two weeks after voters approved a ban on minaret construction, the rightwing Swiss People’s Party deputy Oskar Freysinger gives his reading of events.

In French-speaking Switzerland Freysinger became the voice of the yes side. He recently defended the minaret ban, accepted by 57.5 per cent of voters on November 29, in a debate on the Arab television channel al-Jazeera.

Freysinger rejects outright the argument that the yes vote stemmed from fear and ignorance and he deplores the fact that people have used the result to attack direct democracy.

swissinfo.ch: The anti-minaret vote has provoked a huge amount of comment and criticism both in Switzerland and abroad. What struck you most from what has been said and written on this subject?

Oskar Freysinger: What stays with me, is that the focus slipped very quickly from minarets to direct democracy. Two camps emerged: the elite who said that direct democracy was anti-democratic and against human rights, which is a total paradox, and the defenders of popular rights, who, while recognising that it is not ideal, nonetheless think that the system is the best possible, because it allows people to feel involved and to have an outlet of expression.

In Europe, people envy us. I’ve received a huge number of emails from France and elsewhere. People regret that they do not have the instruments to allow them to express their will. In fact Switzerland, at the heart of Europe, has just given an incredible lesson in civic spirit, against the politically correct, against the elites, against the media and against the monumental pressure of uniform thought. That could give ideas to the people who surround us, and that is feared by the European intelligentsia.

swissinfo.ch: But are the people truly always right? Can they not also make mistakes?

O.F.: Let’s say it’s like the dogma of papal infallibility: the pope is always right in questions of faith, not in the absolute. The people are always right because the system makes them right. Determining who is right and wrong is always complex.

As a politician I have lost plenty of votes with the electorate. You have to accept it and deal with the situation, even if that is extremely difficult, as with the free movement of people [between the EU and Switzerland] today.

swissinfo.ch: A lot has been said about this being a vote based on fear. What is your take on that?

O.F.: Based on the thousands of messages and reactions I received, I can detect the tendencies. Throughout the campaign, it was not fear that dominated but a cool reflection, relatively specific and neutral in tone about what Islam is and its doctrinal incompatibility with our state based on law. On this subject I also received some information that was useful to me during the debate. It is not therefore a purely irrational and ill-informed vote, as has often been said.

As for the yes voters, some of them are proponents of self-determination who believe that our identity should be protected during this time of open borders which make it impossible to regulate migration flows. There was also the yes vote of the Catholics who did not follow their leaders, as well as a yes vote by women. Many of them told me that they never vote for the People’s Party, but that on this subject, they felt the threat of a particularly patriarchal religion.

swissinfo.ch: Several recommendations have been made, the creation of a constitutional court, a new article on tolerance, in a effort to “correct” this vote. What do you think of that?

O.F.: The decision of the people acts as law. If we want to change this article in a few years’ time because Islam no longer presents a problem, the people alone will be able to modify the situation. Replacing the vote by an article that covers everything, which would have the disadvantage of penalising all religions would be superfluous because tolerance is already enshrined in the Constitution and Swiss laws.

As for a constitutional court, it is a system imaginable in a country where the parliament alone determines the laws. But in Switzerland the people are sovereign. Introducing a system like that would go back to muzzling the people. In any case, what makes lawyers better able to distinguish what is for the best or worst for the citizens?

swissinfo.ch: What would you say to those who reproach you for having taken the risk, with this initiative, of destabilising the peaceful integration of Muslims in Switzerland, most of whom are non-practising, and making them turn inwards to their community?

O.F.: This complaint does not hold up. I distinguish three categories among Muslims. The non-practising, who, by definition, are free from religion and therefore indifferent to the presence or not of a minaret or even a mosque. Then there are those who live the religion as a personal choice and a private affair. These are the ones who pay today for the damage inflicted by the third category, that is those who do not accept that civil law should be placed above religious dogma. Financed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, this fringe, the most demanding, also bears a responsibility in this vote.

swissinfo.ch: The day after the yes vote, several extreme right parties in Europe welcomed your initiative. What are your ideological affinities and differences with these movements?

O.F.: I’ve heard this confusion with the extreme right and fascism for a long time. But the differences are substantial. The first is that the People’s Party defends democracy and the state of law absolutely without restriction. Another difference, we do not believe you should reject the other simply because he is different, that is racism and xenophobia.

On the contrary, the behaviour of a person who comes to Switzerland is not irrelevant. What gets us branded as racists is that we attack the dysfunctional behaviour imported through immigration. But it is the behaviour that we denounce, and not the colour of the skin or where the person comes from.

Carole Wälti, swissinfo.ch (translated by Clare O’Dea)

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



UK: Philip Davies MP Bombarded Watchdog in ‘Political Correctness’ Campaign

A Tory MP has bombarded the government’s equalities watchdog with a series of extraordinary letters about race and sex discrimination, in a one-man campaign against “political correctness”.

In the latest of 19 letters sent since April 2008, and likely to dismay equal rights campaigners, Philip Davies asks Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission: “Is it offensive to black up or not, particularly if you are impersonating a black person?”

In a postscript to the letter, he asks “why it is so offensive to black up your face, as I have never understood this”.

Davies, MP for Shipley and “parliamentary spokesman” for the Campaign Against Political Correctness lobby group, also asked:

  • Whether the Metropolitan Black Police Association breaches discrimination law by restricting its membership to black people. He compared this to the BNP’s whites-only policy, which the far-right party has now agreed to change.
  • Whether the women-only Orange prize for fiction discriminates against men.
  • Whether it was racist for a policeman to refer to a BMW as “black man’s wheels”.
  • Whether it was lawful for an advert for a job working with victims of domestic violence to specify that applicants had to be female and/or black or ethnic minority.
  • Whether a “Miss White Britain” competition or a “White Power List” would be racist, after Phillips justified the existence of Miss Black Britain prizes and the Black Power List. “Is there any difference legally or morally than publishing a white list? Do you think this entrenches division?”
  • Whether anti-discrimination laws ought to be extended “to cover bald people (and perhaps fat people and short people)”.

Phillips (or on one occasion an adviser) answered each letter at length, with the exception of the last query, to which the EHRC chairman gave a succinct reply: “The answer to your question is no.”

On the Metropolitan Black Police Association, Phillips said its membership criteria might be protected as a professional, trade or members’ organisation, although this would be for a court to decide…

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



Vatican: Bishop Criticises Move to Beatify John Paul II

Vatican City, 18 Dec. (AKI) — Archbishop of the Belgian capital Brussels, Godfried Maria Jules Danneels, has criticised Pope Benedict XVI for what he considers to be special treatment for fast tracking the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

“I think that the normal procedure (for beatification) has to be respected. If the process itself moves fast, it is fine, but sainthood does not need preferential treatment. The process must take all the time it needs, without exceptions” said Danneels — also a cardinal in the Roman Catholic church — in an interview with monthly magazine ‘30 Giorni’.

“The pope was baptised just like all the others, thus the beatification procedure should be the same for all of those who were baptised,” he said.

Moves to beatify John Paul II received a boost when Benedict waived the usual five year waiting period for John Paul II, in May 2005.

After calls were expressed for the sainthood of John Paul II during his funeral in 2005, Danneels strongly opposed it.

“Of course I did not like people yelling ‘Saint Now’ during the funeral in St. Peter’s Square. It can’t be done like this. Some time ago, they even said this was all a previously orchestrated initiative and this is unacceptable. To carry out beatification by public acclaim is unacceptable,” said

Danneels made the remarks a day before Pope Benedict XVI is expected to authorise a decree which would pave the way for the beatification of John Paul II, who died in 2005.

The decision would move the pontiff one step closer to canonisation and full sainthood.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Balkans


EU: Croatia a Member by 2011, Frattini Says

(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 16 — Croatia as a member of the European Union “would be achievable by 2011”, said Italian Minister Franco Frattini in a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Chamber of Deputies on the results of the European Council meeting last week. “Italy,” said the head of the Foreign Ministry, “is a leading country and we insisted on not blocking Serbia and Croatia’s path process towards integration.” He added that Croatia had been negotiating for two years and “by 2011 it will certainly become a member.” As concerns Serbia, on the other hand, the minister announced that on December 21 a group of young Serbians would be visiting the foreign ministry “for their first visit in the EU without a visa”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



EU: End of Visas Pleases Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 18 — From midnight tonight visa requirement for visitors from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia to the Schengen area will be abolished. Ahead of the coming into force of the new regime, the interior ministers of the three affected countries have issued a joint communiqué of celebration with their citizens. “With the abolition of the visa requirement, our citizens can now enjoy freedom of movement, thus confirming their membership of the European family”, the three ministers, Ivica Dacic (Serbia), Ivan Brajovic (Montenegro) and Gordana Jankulovska (Macedonia) said. Press agencies are reporting that the ministers have expressed their hope that citizens of Bosnia and of Albania “will have EU support for the freeing of their visa regimes as soon as possible”.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Abul Gheit Stresses Egypt’s Right to Control Border

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 18 — Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit has stressed Egypt’s full right to control its borders and keep its terriroty well-protected. In an interview with Al-Ahram Al-Arabi magazine out Saturday, reported by MENA today, Abul-Gheit said the Palestinian cause is close to the heart of every Egyptian, who sacrified a lot for the cause and it is ready to sacrifice even more but …..Egypt’s land and security are very precious. He regretted the fact that certain Palestinian leaderships seek to seize power which to them is more important than healing the rift between the Palestinians. He urged Palestinian leaderships to consider the consequences and repercussions of their acts. The idea of holding a peace conference in Moscow is still on the table, he added, and rejected a peace process that would result only in wasting time and holding futile talks. “French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak during his visit to Paris in July means of reviving the peace efforts and Mubarak highlighted certain points that would render these efforts successful”, Abul-Gheit said. For these efforts to succeed, Abul-Gheit said the US should take action in the Middle East peace process and attention should be focused on pushing forward peace negotiations. The international community, especially the UN, should offer guarantees that a sanctioned final settlement would be reached, he said, adding that at this point the Palestinians would not fear to go ahead. Asked if the Middle East peace process would hamper the Union for the Mediterranean as happened with the Barcelona process, Egyptian Foreign Minister said the Barcelona process was economically motivated although the political work seemed to be the main player. He added that the union’s meeting at the foreign ministers level was halted because Arab top diplomats do not want to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Projects of the union came to a standstill because so far members of the union’s secretariat and the secretary general — who are in charge of implementing the ventures — have not been elected, he said. He accentuated that the union’s secretary general and the general secretariat members will be elected ahead of the union’s summit to be held in Barcelona in June. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


EU: Palestinian State? The Sooner the Better, Moratinos

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 18 — The sooner Palestine has its own state the better, said Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, speaking today at the presentation of a conference of the Spanish EU presidency, which will begin on January 1. “My dream,” said Moratinos, responding to questions by journalists on the role of the EU in the Middle East peace process, “it to see the creation of a Palestinian state, which lives in peace with Israel. The sooner it happens the better.” The Spanish presidency “will fight” to reach this objective, added the Spanish foreign minister, working in all ways possible with all parties involved and “encouraging” the Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Film: EU Project Finances Films on Palestinian Women

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 18 — The condition of women in the Palestinian Territories was the topic focussed on by four films financed by the EU with the Masarat project. The initiative, reports ENPI’s website (www.enpi-info.eu), aims to raise a debate about the role of women in Palestinian society and taboo subjects such as incest. This idea gave rise to four 15-minute documentaries, which were screened at dozens of associations, cultural centres, and universities, and also broadcast by local TV stations in the West Bank. The most successful film was a drama on incest and the code of silence for women who are victims, entitled “Golden pomegranate seeds”. Other topics discussed were adolescent love, with a story about a group of friends, while another was about the difficult situation of women farmers, who work in the field for entire days, and another focussed on the path between tradition and modern society summarised in a portrait of a 70-year-old iconoclast, who married for love, but wears a veil, is a widow and a foreman.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Gaza is Not an Islamic Republic

From Dutch: A Dutch journalist visits Gaza. At the border crossing he sees how the border guards throw out beer they’ve found in one foreign car entering Gaza. Fawzy Barhoom, Hamas spokesperson explains they need to be consistent. Alcohol is haram and banned in Gaza, and they can’t impose that on their own people without also asking foreigners to comply. “We are a moderate Islamic party, but we see to enforcing some important Islamic values. That is our duty.” The journalist’s conclusion: Gaza is not an Islamic republic, there’s no Sharia law there.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Another Targeted Killing Against Mosul’s Christian Community

Gunmen kill a 30-year-old man on his way home. One attacker gets out of the car to make sure he is dead. The last liquor store is closed in the province of Babylon, and its owner is arrested. Iraq is drifting towards fundamentalism and the Islamisation of the country.

Mosul (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Mosul’s Christian community has suffered more violence. Zeid Majid Youssef, a 30-year-old worker, was killed in the western part of the city. One of his attacker got out of the car to make sure he was dead. In another sign that Iraq is drifting towards fundamentalism, authorities in the province of Babylon closed down the last liquor store in the area, this despite the fact that the separation of state and religion is enshrined in the constitution.

A few days after a double attack against churches in Mosul left an eight-day baby girl dead, anti-Christian attacks continue. Sources had told AsiaNews that community “was destined to die”.

The attackers drove up and shot dead Zeid Majid Youssef as he as entering his home after parking his car.

Mohammad Abdel al-Jabbar, who saw what happened, said that one of the criminals “got out of the car to make sure that he was dead” before the car took off “quickly”, execution style.

Local sources said that the young man was buried in the cemetery near the Immaculate Church, in Tahira. In the past, the building has suffered a lot of damage as a result of two car bombs.

The murder is part of a plan to “ethnically cleanse” Iraqi Christians through targeted killings.

Speaking with AsiaNews Mgr Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, had slammed what was happening as the national government and the local governatorate proved unable to stop events, and the city’s various ethnic groups, Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen, with possible foreign involvement, blamed each other.

In the province of Babylon, 90 kilometres south of Baghdad, the authorities closed down the last liquor store. It belonged to a Yazidi family, and the storeowner was arrested by police on Monday.

Firas Sardar, 25, said that his uncle “Mourad, 45, was stopped by some agents . . . Since then we have not seen him.”

The man’s son explained that plainclothes police officers intervened because “neighbours had complained about shouting and noise caused by clients.”

Firas Sardar said that Hilla, the capital of the province of Babylon, has only two Yazidi families, related to one another. Both have involved in the sale of alcohol for more than 40 years.

Until the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein, they were properly authorised to do so. At present, Islamic fundamentalists have grown in power and are exerting pressure to implement fully Sharia, Islamic law, which bans the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Arab Journalist Seeks Polyandry for Women

Saudi journalist stirs row after publishing article in favor of polyandry for women in Muslim world

A Saudi female journalist stirred a row in Egypt after publishing an article in favor of polyandry for women.

The piece, published in the al-Masri al-Yaum newspaper, promotes the notion that women should be allowed to marry several partners, similarly to the right enjoyed by Muslim men. According to Islamic law, a man is allowed to be married to four different women at any given time, as long as he treats them equally.

However, journalist Nadin al-Badir suggested that polyandry be permitted to both women and men. The female writer also proposed that Muslim men be banned from marrying more women merely because they are bored with their current partners.

According to a BBC report Friday, a parliament member already filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for publishing the provocative item.

As could be expected, the article also elicited angry responses among Muslim clerics, who argued that the ideas presented in it are anti-Islamic and that the journalist had no right to attack tradition.

However, one cleric defended the article, claiming that it did not constitute an attempt to promote polyandry among women, but rather, it aimed to expose readers to the suffering of women as result of their husbands’ conduct.

           — Hat tip: KGS [Return to headlines]



Diana West: The “Surge” And “Success”, Pt. 1

The main reason the “surge” in Afghanistan is on is because the conventional wisdom tells us the “surge” in Iraq “worked.”

The problem is, the Iraq surge did not work. Yes, the U.S. military perfectly executed its share of the strategy — the restoration of some semblance of calm to blood-gushing Mesopotamian society — but that was only Step One. The end-goal of the surge strategy, Step Two was always out of U.S. control — a fundamental flaw. Step Two was up to the Iraqis: namely, to take the opportunity afforded by U.S.-provided security (Step One) to bring about both “national reconciliation” and, as the powers-that-were further promised, the emergence of a U.S. ally in the so-called war on terror.

Step One worked. Step Two didn’t. The surge, like an uncaught touchdown pass, was incomplete. The United States is now walking off the battlefield with virtually nothing to show for its blood, treasure, time and effort. In fact, another “success” like that could kill us.

Take the state of post-surge U.S.-Iraq investment lately in the news. Remember “blood for oil,” the anti-war mantra of the Left? “Blood not for oil” is more like it. Not only did Paul Wolfowitz’s prediction that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction with oil revenue never come true; not only did the United States never get to fill up one crummy Humvee for free; but when Iraq staged one of the biggest oil auctions in history last week, U.S. companies left empty-handed. Russia, China and Europe came out the big winners.

“Strange,” said industry experts, which is one word for it. What’s also shocking is Iraq’s apparent willingness to denigrate the United States by showing favoritism to hostile nations (that sacrificed nothing in Iraq’s war), and disregard for American interests in the war’s (supposed) aftermath.

Such benefactor-abuse fits a pattern of what you might call Iraqi de-Americanization.

           — Hat tip: Diana West [Return to headlines]



Iran Rejects Reports of Iraqi Oil Well Seizure as Attempt to Harm Ties

TEHRAN, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) — Iran on Saturday rejected the reports that an Iraqi oil well was taken over by Iranian armed forces as an attempt to harm the relations between the two neighboring countries, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“Foreign media made unfounded allegation … and attempted to disrupt friendly relations between Iran and Iraq by propaganda campaign,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying.

“Iran and Iraq currently enjoy friendly and excellent ties,” he said. “Those who are not satisfied with such friendly ties between the two countries try to create rift by spreading improper language.”

300 Christian leaders accused of sexual abuse

http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/12/19/nyheter/innenriks/sexanklager/kirken/9587386/

From Norewgian: In the past 13 years, 300 leaders of Norwegian churches and Christian organizations were accused of sexual abuse. Only 30 denied the allegations.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Saudi Arabia: Crew Members Stranded in Muslim Holy City

Thirty Flyglobespan crew members are stranded in the Muslim holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia.

The airline had a contract to carry passengers between Delhi in India and Medina for the Hajj pilgrimage.

Flyglobespan captain Bob Lee revealed that the crew members have been confined to their hotel for at least four days because, as non-Muslims, they are not allowed to move around the city.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Turks Threaten to Kill Priest Over Swiss Minaret Decision (Via Nrp)

Slap to religious freedom in Switzerland leads to threat over church bell tower in Turkey.

ISTANBUL, December 15 (CDN) — In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group.

Three Muslims on Dec. 4 entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him..

“If Switzerland is demolishing our minarets, we will demolish your bell towers too,” one of the men told Akbulut.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Afghan Soldiers and Police Fight Each Other

Ahmad Fareed is not shy about his battle scars. As he slowly got up from a couch he was sitting in at an Afghan army base, he lifted up his long, brown shirt. A line of scar tissue ran from his sternum down to his waistline, where it disappeared into his pants. “An IED exploded while I was patrolling on foot near Deh Rawood,” he said. “The Taliban detonated it remotely.”

Fareed (21) may be out of action for a while, but he has not lost his lust for battle yet. “We will kill all these bomb-makers,” he said dryly. “I feel terrible being stationed so far from home, but we are doing this for our nation.” Like many Afghan soldiers stationed in the southern province Uruzgan, Fareed is from the north of the country.

Fareed doesn’t have the faintest idea when the Afghan military will be able to operate without international support, but governor Asadullah Hamdam wants armed forces to assume control in Uruzgan within thee years. President Hamid Karzai wants all of Afghanistan to follow in five. American president Barack Obama wants to start handing over responsibilities to the Afghans by 2011. The Afghan army is supposed to grow from 97,000 to 159,000 strong within the next 18 months. The police force is supposed to increase its ranks from 94,000 to 123,000.

Success in Afghanistan has remained elusive after seven years and 15 billion dollars in expenses. An extra 30,000 extra troops and an additional 7,000 soldiers from other Nato partners should now bring stability to the war torn country and they should educate Afghan police and military forces to take over and cape the country safe. Obama hopes to be able to determine whitin a year whether his new Afghanistan strategy is working.

“We are building the track right in front of the wheels,” said British brigade general Simon Levey, looking out over the largest military training centre in the country, near Kabul. Training is quick and dirty, Levey explained. “We are not building a Rolls Royce here. We are building a really rugged 4×4. It is all we need to beat the Taliban.” According to the general, 12,000 recruits train in Afghanistan every day already. The training grounds cover 20,000 square acres, encompassing twenty shooting ranges. New barracks, fit for thousands of soldiers, are currently under construction.

Recruiting new soldiers will not be the biggest challenge the Afghans face. Holding on to them is. According to the international command staff in charge of the military and police training programmes, 16 percent of Afghan soldiers leave the army annually. The drop-out rate is even higher within the police force. The generals do not want to speculate too much on the root cause of the problem, which is currently being investigated. Officers’ abuse of power is said to play a role, as is the long distance separating recruits from home, and their fear of combat.

Mohammad Khory (35) left the army after five years of service because he felt discriminated against. Six months after joining the Afghan air force he was stationed in Kandahar, in the perilous southern part of the country. Khory is a member of the Hazara ethnic group, which has long been subject to discrimination by the Pashtun and Tajik, the country’s two largest ethnic groups. “The Pashtun and Tajik always got the best weapons and the best rooms to live in,” Khory said, speaking of his time in the armed forces. “They were promoted more quickly and transferred to the safer parts of the country, while the Hazara were left behind in Kandahar.” When his commanding officer, a Pashtun, publicly accused him of supporting the Taliban, Khory decided to go AWOL.

He is now pleading the Hazara case with president Karzai. “If he disappoints me I will not hesitate to take up arms,” he said decidedly. “There is a silent majority out there waiting to take action against this government.”

Problems in the police force are worse than in the army, the interviewed generals said. Of the 94,000 police officers, only 25,000 to 30,000 have received specific training for their duties, even though they are exposed to the greatest risks. They are often charged with manning small, poorly protected posts in remote areas and are an easy prey for the Taliban. According to the Afghan Deputy minister Munir Mangal, 950 police officers were killed in the last nine months, while 300 Afghan soldiers were killed in the same period.

There are 1320 police officers stationed in Uruzgan, 600 of which have completed basic training. They have been unable to secure even the direct surroundings of the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt. The finding of the decapitated corpses of a 16-year old boy and a 28-year old man on the edge of the town earlier this month served as a morbid reminder of that fact. No one in the town dared collect their bodies, even after the mosque called upon the citizens to do so.

An additional 900 officers are supposed to join the ranks of the local police force within the next year. To speed up their training the eight-week programme will now compressed into a six week period, with the number of instruction-hours remaining the same. The programme includes a daily hour of writing lessons. After the recruits have completed the course, they are able to write their own name and that of their district. “Ultimately, they should be able to write reports for the local prosecutor’s office,” said Jeffrey van Horn, a Dutch major who is involved with the recruits at Camp Holland, the main Dutch base in Uruzgan. “But that is a long term goal.” To achieve it, the police will have to give the local population a sense of security, which will be difficult if it doesn’t weed out corruption and drug use from its own ranks first.

According to their international trainers, poor cooperation between the military and the police is also an issue. Mutual distrust runs high between both organisations. In a nutshell: the military feels all police are corrupt, while the police think the military doesn’t understand local issues, because they are commonly recruited in parts of the country far away from where they are stationed.

The distrust between army and police has led to violence twice this month in Tarin Kowt, when petty squabbling escalated into armed conflict. At least four civilians were killed and — according to some sources — more than ten police officers and soldiers as well. Only one man ended up in a holding cell on an Afghan army base: a soldier who failed to show when he was called upon to fight the police.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Afghan Elders to U.S.: Let US Do Fighting

As we flew in to Forward Operating Base Frontenac, the terrain was mountainous — jagged hills cropping up suddenly in the middle of southern Afghanistan’s lunar rocky landscape.

But the day — the whole trip — was like a flashback to Iraq. There was Admiral Mike Mullen speaking to the troops, telling them their new strategy is to protect the population, just as previous commanders had done with troops in Anbar, and Mosul, and Baghdad in 2006 and 2007.

“We can tactically win,” the admiral said. “But if we’re killing local civilians we’re going to strategically lose.”

[…]

Mullen pulled up his chair to their table, instead of sitting across the room from them at the executive table set up for him. Then he pulled out a notebook, and asked them to tell him what they need.

They did not hold back. For two hours, while Mullen’s staff kept cups of tea coming, the admiral heard everything from demands for a new dam (or two, if we Americans could swing it), to complaints that their young men need an army training facility built in Kandahar, instead of having to go all the way to Kabul, where the elders say their southern Pashtun ways make them the butt of abuse from Northerners.

But the most striking message of all was this: Stop fighting for us.

“You must understand our culture,” one said. “It’s insulting for you to die for us. We should be dying to take back our country, not you.”

That was the lead in to his demand that the Americans start sending more money and training their way. “One of your soldiers costs a million dollars a year. One of ours costs $6,000. So spend that money on us, and we get 165 of our soldiers for one of yours.” Mullen told him he had a good point, and carefully wrote it down in his green spiral notebook.

Of course, the elders did add that they wanted their forces to continue fighting alongside U.S. forces, because the Americans have air support. “If we are fighting with you, and we need an air strike, it comes right away,” one elder said. “If we’re on our own . . . “

Not so much, he essentially shrugged.

I’d never seen a four-star admiral taken to task like that. But that’s exactly what Mullen was looking for — the unvarnished, sometimes unrealistic demands of the locals that he doesn’t hear all the way back in Washington.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



Indonesia: A Thousand Islamic Extremists, Including Women and Children, Storm a Church Near Jakarta

The building was near completion and was to be used for Christmas Mass. Local Catholics are afraid that more attacks could take place during the festive season. Police and local authorities urge Catholics to celebrate the service anyway.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Last night a crowd of angry Muslims, including women and children, attacked the Church of Saint Albert, in Bekasi Regency, about 30 kilometres east of Jakarta. The situation is now under control but the local Catholic community is afraid of an escalation before Christmas.

Kurniadi is a member of the committee charged with the church’s construction. He told AsiaNews, “Suddenly, a bunch of bikers arrived in the area where the church stands.” They had banners and kerosene tanks. “We don’t know why we were attacked,” he said.

Kristina Maria Renteana, who was present when the Church was attacked, said, “The mob had about a thousand people,” not only men, but “women and children” as well.

Running around in cars and motorbikes is a tradition for Indonesian Muslims during “national celebrations.”

Last night was the first day of the Islamic New Year, the start of the month of Muharram. Local sources told AsiaNews, on condition of anonymity, that the “crowd was made of people from Tarumajaya and Babelan”, two villages in North Bekasi where Islamic extremists are a majority.

Saint Albert’s Church, a chapel that is part of Saint Arnold’ Church in Bekasi, was not yet finished. Started on 11 May 2008, it had the required building permit for places of worship and was 80 per cent complete. Workers had finished the walls and the roof. Only ceramic floor tiles had to be laid.

Although not yet finished, it was set to host Christmas Mass for the local Christian community.

Now it is damaged but police and government authorities have urged the parish priest, Fr Joseph Jagadwa, to go ahead with the Mass anyway.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Somalian Men Ordered to Grow Beards

Al Qaeda-linked Islamist authorities in southern Somalia have ordered men to grow beards and shave off moustaches, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.

“In order to ensure the complete implementation of the Islamic sharia law in the region, we call upon all men to grow their beard and shave their moustache,” Sheik Ibrahim from the Shebab group told reporters in Kismaio.

“Anybody found ignoring the rules or breaking it will be punished accordingly.”

He said the order will be implemented in three days in the port town of Kismaio.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Suspected Somalia Pirates Freed by Dutch Navy

A group of suspected Somali pirates detained on a Dutch warship has been released because no country has agreed to prosecute them.

A Dutch defence ministry statement said the European Union had decided that the 13 detainees had to be freed because it was impossible to bring charges.

The suspects were seized in the Indian Ocean two weeks ago after allegedly attempting to attack a cargo ship.

They were put back on their own speedboat with some food and fuel.

They had been on board the Dutch warship Evertsen since early December after they were tracked down following the alleged attack on the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo ship MV BBC Togo failed.

Regret at release

The European Union naval force said ladders, grappling hooks, nine automatic weapons, grenades and other ammunition were found on board their skiffs.

“The European Union has tried in vain since their arrest to find a country which would agree to prosecute them,” the defence ministry statement said.

“The defence ministry regrets that the European Union has not found a suitable solution,” the statement added.

Although the EU had signed agreements with the Seychelles and Kenya to help press charges against suspected pirates, “the two countries indicated they did not want to prosecute the pirates”, the ministry said.

Differences over laws concerning the arrest of pirates have hampered efforts to curtail piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

There has been just a handful of pirate prosecutions outside Africa.

Warships from around the world are patrolling the Indian Ocean to try to fend off attacks in some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 and the lawlessness has spread from land to the water in recent years.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]



US Arrests Three Africans in ‘Al-Qaeda Cocaine Sting’

A court in the US has for the first time charged suspected members of al-Qaeda with plotting to traffic cocaine in order to fund terrorism.

The three suspects, who are believed to be from Mali, were extradited to New York from Ghana.

They were arrested this week in an operation involving informants posing as Colombian leftist rebels.

The suspects allegedly offered al-Qaeda protection for moving cocaine from West Africa through the Sahara to Spain.

They arrived in the US on Friday and were ordered to be held without bail after a brief court appearance. They did not enter pleas to charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, US officials said.

Washington has long been concerned about close ties between militants and the heroin trade in Afghanistan but the African case appears to show an expansion of both al-Qaeda’s global operations and the US response, The Associated Press news agency reports.

Lebanese cover

The US authorities say the men are associates of al-Qaeda’s North African branch and had told US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informants that al-Qaeda could protect major shipments of cocaine in the region, driving the drugs by lorry through the Sahara desert.

All in their 30s, the suspects were named as Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman.

Unsealed court papers say Mr Toure and Mr Abelrahman at one point claimed the profits from the drug business would “go to their people to support the fight for ‘the cause’“.

The DEA infiltrated the group by using informants posing as supporters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc.

In particular, the DEA used a French-speaking informant posing as “a Lebanese radical committed to opposing the interests of the United States, Israel, and, more broadly, the West and its ideals”, court papers say.

The informant claimed in secretly taped conversations that the Farc were looking for a secure means of smuggling drugs through western and northern Africa on the way to Europe.

During the negotiations, the al-Qaeda suspects allegedly offered to move cocaine from west Africa to north Africa for about 3,000 euros ($4,200) per kilo.

           — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Venezuela Imprisons Judge Who Freed Banker Without Trial

CARACAS — A Venezuelan judge arrested after releasing a banker imprisoned for nearly three years without a completed trial has been sent to a prison where her life is in danger, her lawyer said Friday.

Judge María Afiuni, 46 years old and with eight years on the bench, arrived Thursday afternoon at the National Institute of Feminine Orientation, a prison for women on the outskirts of Caracas, according to her lawyers.

Some critics say the arrest is further evidence of what they see as a collapse of checks and balances in Venezuela’s justice system under President Hugo Chávez, a self-declared socialist revolutionary who has been in power 11 years. Mr. Chávez staffed many courts with “transitional” judges, seen as friendly to him, that were never replaced, and he expanded the Supreme Court with allied magistrates.

“This government doesn’t care if she lives or dies,” said one of her lawyers, Sandy Guevara. “She’s in the prison with inmates she likely sent there.”

Officials at the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, which ordered the arrest, didn’t answer telephones Friday afternoon.

On Dec. 10, Ms. Afiuni ordered Eligio Cedeño to be released on parole after reviewing his case and finding he had been in jail for 34 months without any conviction.

Ms. Afiuni’s lawyers say the judge was following the letter of Venezuelan law, which permits no more than two years of pre-trial detention. While Mr. Cedeño went on trial beginning in 2008, it was suspended after several months of deliberations amid procedural issues, and a verdict was never reached, according to lawyers and media reports.

Mr. Cedeño, who at the time of his arrest was the president of a Caracas bank, was charged with skirting strict foreign-currency regulations. His lawyers deny the charges.

On the same day Ms. Afiuni ruled to free Mr. Cedeño, police arrested her. The next day, Mr. Chávez called her a “bandit” on national television and said she should be jailed for 30 years for freeing Mr. Cedeño.

On TV, Mr. Chávez alleged that Ms. Afiuni and Mr. Cedeño together cooked up the plan to release him. He added that in the days of 19th-century South American independence hero Simón Bolívar, Ms. Afiuni would have been executed by firing squad for what she did.

Ms. Afiuni has been charged with corruption, accessory to an escape, criminal conspiracy and abuse of power.

Lawyers for both Mr. Cedeño and Ms. Afiuni deny government assertions that their clients were somehow working in league ahead of Ms. Afiuni’s decision to release him.

Mr. Cedeño, whose lawyers contend he was held because of his opposition to Mr. Chávez, hasn’t been seen publicly since he reportedly hopped on the back of a waiting motorcycle last week outside the courthouse.

His parole requires him to stay in Venezuela and return for a court hearing later this month. His lawyers say he left the country with no immediate plans to return, arguing that the judge’s parole conditions are no longer valid given her arrest.

Critics, including three United Nations human-rights experts, said Ms. Afiuni’s arrest is troubling and called for her immediate release. The Caracas Bar Association says it supports Ms. Afiuni’s order to free Mr. Cedeño and condemned her arrest.

Ms. Guevara, the attorney for Ms. Afiuni, said she had filed a motion Wednesday for the judge’s temporary release from detention, or to at least have her moved to a holding cell away from INOF, as the National Institute of Feminine Orientation is known. She expressed little hope of anything being processed quickly. Many courts close this week for the holidays and don’t reopen until early next year.

Ms. Afiuni is being kept in a cell apart from the general population, Ms. Guevara said. That has provided little comfort for Ms. Afiuni and her family, Ms. Guevara added, citing lawlessness in Venezuela’s prison system and saying guards are aware of Mr. Chávez’s anger toward her.

Attempts to reach the prison weren’t successful.

Last year in Venezuela, 422 prisoners were killed out of a total prison population of about 23,000 inmates, said the watchdog group Venezuelan Prison Observatory

           — Hat tip: Fausta [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Italy: Thousands of Suspected People Traffickers Arrested in 2009

Roma, 18 Dec. (AKI) — A total 4,737 suspected people traffickers were arrested and 78 vehicles were confiscated this year in operations to combat illegal immigration, Italian tax police said on Friday in their annual report. The government has vowed to clamp down on the tens of thousands of people who enter Italy illegally each year.

Under a law enacted in July, people entering Italy without permission face fines of up to 10,000 euros and immediate expulsion.

Italian tax police chief Cosimo D’Arrigo presented the annual report, which covered operations to counter illegal immigration, trafficking and organised crime, as well as terrorism, money laundering, piracy and counterfeiting.

The report said tax police had uncovered a record 35 billion euros in unpaid taxes owed by 8,000 individuals and companies this year. The tax police also said they had confiscated suspected mafia assets worth 2 billion euros — twice the amount seized in 2008.

Tax police reported 397 people for illegal financial operations this year, compared with 314 in 2008. They seized 396.5 million euros and arrested 150 people in 310 anti-money laundering probes.

They also carried out 313 inspections of ‘money transfer’ centres suspected of involvement in financing international terrorism.

As recently last month, two Pakistanis who ran a money transfer business in the northern city of Brescia were arrested on suspicion of helping finance the Muslim militant group held responsible for the attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008 that killed at least 170 people.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

General


Amil Imani: Christmas Spirit and Islam

This is the time of the year that the air is filled with everything Christmas. There is something for everyone: gifts for family and friends, prayers at churches, and Christmas music everywhere. It puts me in a contemplative mood, particularly when I hear the delightful Christian refrain, peace on earth, goodwill to men. This is the gift I want. This is my Christmas. When there is peace on earth and all people dispense and receive good will.

Yet, I am saddened to see the world as it is, particularly with what Islam is doing to it, which is the exact opposite of working for peace and extending goodwill to all people.

My contemplation takes me to the genesis of Islam. Something I have come to view as a scourge of humanity, and here are a few of my random thoughts about the founder of Islam: the person who launched a religion that has denied peace to mankind right from the start, the person who advanced a religion that began with war, continues with war, and aims to carry on with bloodletting to the end of time. All this makes me think and shake my head in bewilderment.

Starting with the premise that an all-knowing powerful God is the creator of this awe-inspiring universe where we humans are an infinitesimally insignificant part of his creation humbles me. Muslims call this creator Allah—a recast of one of 360 idols in the pre-Islamic Idolatry of Mecca—and attribute numerous superhuman qualities to him. It is awe-inspiring to realize that a being of that description may indeed exist.

That leads me to some questions: Why would such an indescribably exalted creator, with his ascribed boundless wisdom and resources, pick an illiterate Bedouin to become his prophet for then and forever? The man himself, Muhammad, admitted in the Quran to his own illiteracy. Yet, Allah persisted in choosing this man? Was Allah bored with the rest of his universe and playing a joke on us helpless mortals? Or was it a case of Allah not being able to get any reasonably literate man to take the job?

I don’t have an answer to this or a bevy of other questions and the answers I have seen so far from Muslims are far from satisfactory…

           — Hat tip: Amil Imani [Return to headlines]



There’ll be Nowhere to Run From the New World Government

‘Global’ thinking won’t necessarily solve the world’s problems, says Janet Daley

There is scope for debate — and innumerable newspaper quizzes — about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which “global” swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were “global crises” and “global challenges”, the only possible resolution to which lay in “global solutions” necessitating “global agreements”. Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a “global alliance” in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)

Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word “global”, as in “global economic crisis”, meant: “It’s not my fault”. To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people — that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.

The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of “global agreements” reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational “legally binding agreements”, what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous “democratic deficit” of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro-bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.

But, you may say, however dire the political consequences, surely there is something in this obsession with global dilemmas. Economics is now based on a world market, and if the planet really is facing some sort of man-made climate crisis, then that too is a problem that transcends national boundaries. Surely, if our problems are universal the solutions must be as well.

Well, yes and no. Calling a problem “global” is meant to imply three different things: that it is the result of the actions of people in different countries; that those actions have impacted on the lives of everyone in the world; and that the remedy must involve pretty much identical responses or correctives to those actions. These are separate premises, any of which might be true without the rest of them necessarily being so. The banking crisis certainly had its roots in the international nature of finance, but the way it affected countries and peoples varied considerably according to the differences in their internal arrangements. Britain suffered particularly badly because of its addiction to public and private debt, whereas Australia escaped relatively unscathed.

That a problem is international in its roots does not necessarily imply that the solution must involve the hammering out of a uniform global prescription: in fact, given the differences in effects and consequences for individual countries, the attempt to do such hammering might be a huge waste of time and resources that could be put to better use devising national remedies. France and Germany seem to have pulled themselves out of recession over the past year (and the US may be about to do so) while Britain has not. These variations owe almost nothing to the pompous, overblown attempts to find global solutions: they are largely to do with individual countries, under the pressure of democratic accountability, doing what they decide is best for their own people.

This is not what Mr Brown calls “narrow self-interest”, or “beggar my neighbour” ruthlessness. It is the proper business of elected national leaders to make judgments that are appropriate for the conditions of their own populations. It is also right that heads of nations refuse to sign up to “legally binding” global agreements which would disadvantage their own people. The resistance of the developing nations to a climate change pact that would deny them the kind of economic growth and mass prosperity to which advanced countries have become accustomed is not mindless selfishness: it is proper regard for the welfare of their own citizens.

The word “global” has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily “narrow” and self-serving. (Never mind that a “global agreement” will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence.

If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. “Globalism” is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the “blood and soil” nationalism that gave rise to fascism.

The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year’s global challenge.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

“There Is No Law Here”

I’ve posted previously about the streets in the 18th Arrondissement in Paris which are taken over and blocked off by Muslims every Friday to use for their prayers.

It’s no longer necessary to ask, “Who owns these streets?” The video below makes the answer clear: Muslims own these streets.

A “person of French background” who enters the street during prayers is prevented from videotaping and forced out. There’s no police presence on the street, and no recourse for the cameraman or anyone else who draws the attention of Muslim sécurité:



Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for subtitling the video. The titles may be hard to read in this embedded version; click here for the full-sized Youtube.

[Nothing follows]

Support Geert Wilders With a SITA Action

Free Geert banner


In just one month Geert Wilders will go on trial in Amsterdam for inciting hatred against Islam.

International Action SITA is making a final push to help Mr. Wilders in his struggle on behalf of freedom of speech. Here’s what SITA is planning:

Geert Wilders’ trial is coming soon (January 20, 2010). Last step to support him with a SITA action

The international establishment, subverted by a variety of Islamic organizations including the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) will undoubtedly apply a great deal of pressure on the Dutch establishment to ensure that Geert Wilders is convicted on the charges that have been mischievously brought against him. It is likely that his party will win the next election in 2011 with the possibility of Mr Wilders becoming Prime Minister. The global establishment undoubtedly does not want Mr Wilders in such a position of influence, even if the people of the Netherlands do.

An international SITA action in support of Geert Wilders was established in late January 2009. It has received over 6,000 visits and generated hundreds of letters designed to educate and inform decision makers in the Netherlands. The Dutch Ministry of Justice visited our SITA websites.

This SITA action will now be reactivated in order to highlight this apparently politically motivated prosecution. If Geert Wilders falls, then Freedom of speech is dead in Europe.

There are three ways that you can participate:

– – – – – – – –

1)   By mail — two possible texts; one comparing Wilders to Winston Churchill and another comparing him to Charlie Chaplin (what to print and put into the envelope and the recipients are indicated).

2)   By putting a message in comments to articles talking about the trial of Geert Wilders in blogs. This message appears at the bottom of this page in four languages: FR, ENG, SP, D.

To support Geert Wilders and our dearly acquired freedoms please participate to the 2 suggested actions and transmit this message to your friends who have websites so that they can spread the word.
 

3)   By giving some money. To donate, go here.

Fjordman: A History of Astronomy, Part 1

Fjordman has begun a new series of essays called “A History of Astronomy”, and the first installment is at Jihad Watch. Some excerpts are below:

Note from Fjordman: This text is about the history of astronomy before Islam. I will deal with the history of astronomy after Islam in a separate text. This essay overlaps to a significant extent with my essay The Ancient Greeks and the Invention of Natural Philosophy, to some extent with my histories of astronomy in prehistoric Europe and of the calendar and to a much lesser extent with my history of geology.

In the Fertile Crescent agriculture was gradually established after 10,000 BC, with settlements at the Neolithic town of Jericho near the Dead Sea dating back to 9000 BC. The success of Chatal Huyuk or Çatalhöyük, a large site in Anatolia that existed from ca. 7200 to after 6000 BC, is thought to have resulted from its trade in the volcanic glass known as obsidian.

The greatest change in the history of the Near East and indeed the world came with a people called the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. During the Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC), the Sumerians are credited with many “firsts” in human history, from the first writing system to the first monumental statues in an urban setting. Their origin is unknown and their language has no proven connection to any other language, living or dead, yet they produced lasting literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

There were other cities or proto-cities in the Fertile Crescent stretching from northern Mesopotamia into northern Syria, Anatolia and western Iran, but Uruk by 3300 BC contained a population of perhaps 40,000-50,000 people, gigantic compared to any other known settlement on the entire planet at that time. The “Uruk Expansion” during the fourth millennium BC spread its cultural influence to neighboring regions. With the growing complexity of society and the ensuing expansion of bureaucracy came the development of a system for recordkeeping which evolved into cuneiform script, the first true writing system.

– – – – – – – –

In the book Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs, scholar Stefan Wimmer comments on the fact that in ancient Egypt in contrast to Mesopotamia, hieroglyphs emerged almost fully formed in the generations before the unification of the Egyptian state after 3100 BC. During this period a number of cultural characteristics similar to those of southern Mesopotamia such as cylinder seals and certain artistic motifs appeared in Egypt. In other words, we know that the Egyptians had contact with Mesopotamia just as this region was developing writing.

In Europe, the Minoans on Crete adopted a form of writing, probably inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs, after 2100 BC. Author Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel favors the concept of idea diffusion to explain why a numbers of societies from the Indus Valley in India to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean region developed writing within a short period of time after the Sumerians: “It would be a remarkable coincidence if, after millions of years of human existence without writing, all those Mediterranean and Near Eastern societies had just happened to hit independently on the idea of writing within a few centuries of each other.”

While I am sometimes critical of Mr. Diamond I agree with him in this case. Those who believe in an independent evolution of writing in Egypt and the Indus Valley will point to the fact that these writing systems do not outwardly resemble Sumerian proto-cuneiforms, but it remains possible that they imported the very concept of writing from nearby Mesopotamia. While ancient China was not as isolated as some Chinese historians like to claim, an independent development of writing here should nevertheless be considered as a possibility. If we assume that the Mayas and others in Mesoamerica had no significant contact with Eurasia then writing has been independently invented at least a couple of times in human history.

In his fine and well-researched book A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 — 323 BC, second edition, scholar Marc Van De Mieroop states that in Uruk, “a sexagesimal system, relying on units with increments of ten and six, was used to account for animals, humans, and dried fish, among other things. A bisexagesimal system, which diverges from the previous one as its units also show increments of two, was used for processed grain products, cheese, and fresh fish. Volumes of grain or surfaces of fields were measured differently.”

This sexagesimal (base 60) system was later adopted and passed on by the successive cultures that dominated Mesopotamia down to the ancient Persians and Greeks and from them on to us. We retain sexagesimal numbers today in our system for measuring time (60 minutes to an hour) and angles (60 minutes in a degree and 360 degrees in a circle), but it dates back in a straight line to the civilization of the ancient Sumerians more than five thousand years ago.

Read the rest at Jihad Watch.

Teaching Iran to Play by the Rules

The news about Iran’s new seizure of Iraqi oil wells was discouraging; another sign of the deterioration of Iran, the seeming helplessness of Iraq in the face of such mockery. Because that’s what it was: mockery of Iraq, of the US forces there — not to mention mockery of the idea of sovereignty, etc.

How much more bad news can anyone read? But then…

… I ran across a brilliant plan, written by an obviously smart blogger who has looked at this particular briar patch and instead of throwing up his hands in disgust, created an excellent strategy for change.

What he has to propose is better than anything the professionals could ever devise, at least based on the behaviors of the latter in the face of provocation. Which is one reason why they’ll never implement anything so simple, robust and direct. Our “statesmen” don’t do simple or direct; they’d be out of a job.

He prefaces his solution with a partial explanation of the problem:

Nations always have disputes between them… but territorial integrity is the first and most basic component of sovereignty: If a country cannot hang onto its own territory, it may as well hang it up; it’s not really a nation.

[… ]

Iraq has been entirely too complacent for entirely too long about so-called “disputed” territory; worse, this lackadaisical attitude, in the Age of Barack H. Obama, has even infected the American military forces in Iraq. This is unacceptable; it’s primitivism. And rather than enable it, we should help the Iraqis stamp it out and shift to a modernist conception of sovereign territory.

“Primitivism”, he says…
– – – – – – – –
In other words, we — the world at large — is regressing to an earlier, uglier idea about what territorial rights a sovereign state has. You could argue that under Bush the US reverted to that with the invasion of Iraq. However, there were many attempts to seek another solution before the first boot hit the ground in Iraq in 2003, so making this facile comparison would be a categorical error. For the moment, let’s not go there.

This action list is creative. Not only that, it calls on our President to deal from a position he knows how to play due to earning his political chops in the badlands of Mayor Daley’s Chicago wards.

Before you read his plan, please note the way in which he has set up the one absolutely essential step required when you have decided to force change in a belligerent situation. That is, you warn your opponent that your rules for the game have, from this time forward, changed. The signal is crucial to any strategy for change in a situation pervaded by chronic hostility.

This move works in intimate relationships, too. Say you have suffered from some annoying habit of those you live with. Maybe they leave the @ &*^%#*& cap off the toothpaste despite your frequent protestations, remonstrations, fits of anger, pleading, etc. Nothing has worked; the cap remains off the toothpaste because no one besides you cares enough to put it back. If you decide to change the rules (no more talk, just direct action) in this game, you need to let your adversaries know that the old behaviors will not be tolerated anymore and then you can proceed with all justice and deliberate speed toward your goal of a capped toothpaste tube.

Thus, here are the steps we need to take to change this annoying habit of the Iranians regarding Iraq’s oil wells:

1. For right now, send a combined U.S. and Iraqi force into the area; the Iranians will amble on out, smirking. We linger at the border for a few weeks, then withdraw. (This step is necessary to feign weakness and set the Iranians up for step 3.)

2. Inform Iran that this is the last time they will enter the Abu Gharb oil field, the Iraqi side of the al-Fakkah field, or any other Iraqi oil field… but don’t tell them what will happen if they do. We keep troops fairly nearby but not close enough to keep the Iranians from doing what comes naturally.

3. Within a few months, Iran will do it again; we know they will, because we deliberately signalled weakness with step 1. This is the trigger for which we will be waiting: Our troops move into the region; the Iranians withdraw. But instead of stopping at the border, American troops move into Iranian territory, seize some of their oil wells (on the pretext that they are “disputed territory”)… and sit on them.

4. We invite Iraqi oil workers in to start pumping the oil from these wells and driving it back to Iraq. The idea is not just to chase Iran out of Iraq but to force them to serve penance for their sins.

5. We hold the wells for six months; then we tell Iran that this seizure was their one warning: The next time Iran invades any portion of Iraq, these wells and unspecified other assets will be annexed to Iraq… permanently.

According to Dafyyd, this works on several levels, but the most important of these is the way in which it aids in the crucial transformation of Iraq’s thinking about itself. This action will serve to bring Iraq into the modern world of national boundaries. If this doesn’t happen, he says, “nationalism will never trump tribalism”:

Such a jump is impossible in Afghanistan, at least anytime in the foreseeable future; all we can do there is maintain a more or less “tribal-democratic” government (where each tribe gets a vote — in the form of each person voting) and keep the Taliban and their ilk out of power. But Iraq can be so much more; they can be a powerful American ally in the Middle East into the future. But we must encourage them to stop thinking like their neighbors and start thinking like us.

We cannot allow them to revert to their former ways; the danger to the United States would be dire.

Alas, this is all fantasy: Barack Obama cannot “feign” weakness because he is weak, and only the strong dare such pretense to draw an attack — an expected attack — and turn it back on the enemy. Perhaps someday Iran will school Obama on what it means to act from strength, not submission.

Is he right? Is Barack Obama really “weak”?

So far, our leader’s demeanor seems to indicate this might be the case. A weak man threatens others needlessly, as when Obama recently warned some Senator “don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother”. What a needless taunt — ugly and non-productive. Of course everyone already knows that the Executive branch monitors closely whatever is happening in the Legislative branch. To state the obvious, and to do so in the manner of a schoolyard bully, gives us some sad insights into BHO.

But there is another major outward indication of weakness in Obama. If bullying is one aspect of his make-up, the opposite and necessary mental function is Obama’s obeisance which takes the form of random public bowing to other world leaders. If he weren’t America’s leader this trait would be interesting to dissect. As it is, though, it’s too alarming given the mess we’re in to look too closely at what we’ve got here.

The latest seemingly random action of Obama’s, something that was neither threat nor submission, was the (sort of) surprise bombing of some al Qaeda training camps in Yemen seems part of this personality construct:

In his speech about added troops for Afghanistan earlier this month, President Obama made a brief reference to Yemen, saying, “Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold — whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere — they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships.”

Until tonight, American officials had hedged about any U.S. role in the strikes against Yemen and news reports from Yemen attributed the attacks to the Yemen Air Force.

President Obama placed a call after the strikes to “congratulate” the President of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salih, on his efforts against al Qaeda, according to White House officials.

No doubt this action of Obama’s against two of Yemen’s terror camps has led to some cogitating on the part of Somalia and the other “elsewheres” with jihad training camps. They probably know what’s going to get hit, they just don’t know when the missiles will arrive.

The announcement of plans to “confront” al Qaeda was supposed to signal that cruise missiles would be raining down on a few of their camps in the sovereign nation of Yemen? Hmmm… sounds like a reprise of Bill Clinton’s haphazard missile-lobbing military strategy. When this strange, one-off behavior is followed up by a call “congratulating” the President of Yemen it all begins to feel icky.

What next? Who knows? One has the sinking sensation that our President hasn’t a clue about the next scene beyond the fact that he is the center of the drama.

There are times that Obama seems like the very embodiment of Hamlet. Unfortunately for us, he’s Hamlet in a play that draws on The Bald Soprano for its dramaturgy.

Global Warming in Action

Snow at Schloss Bodissey 1 Climate change started falling early yesterday afternoon at Schloss Bodissey, and continued falling heavily all night.

When I woke up this morning and opened the back door, this was what awaited me.

We now have about fifteen inches (forty cm) of global warming on the ground, with more coming down hard.

Does this mean I get to cash in a lot of carbon credits?

Seriously — I haven’t seen this much snow before Christmas since I was a kid.

Snow at Schloss Bodissey 2Back in the late fifties and early sixties we had five or six white Christmases in row, sometimes with eight or ten inches on the ground. Then the sunspot cycle kicked in, and we went decades without seeing snow on Christmas Day.

I assume we have returned to the same level of sunspots that we had forty-five years ago. I wonder how many winters like this it will take before “global warming” becomes a stale old joke?

[Post ends here]

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/18/2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/18/2009The Copenhagen Climate Circus is drawing to a close, and the most recent reports indicate that there will be no grand agreement, which much be a disappointment to those with ambitions for a New World Order.

In other news, a feminist political party in Sweden has launched a promotional campaign featuring the slogan “Feminists have better sex”. Doesn’t that make you want to run right out and vote for them?

Thanks to 4symbols, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Esther, ESW, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, Lurker from Tulsa, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
– – – – – – – –

Financial Crisis
Abu Dhabi’s Sway Over Dubai Increasing at Tehran’s Expense
Oklahoma Schools Will Fail to Make Payroll Due to Budget Cuts
Tulsa Mayor Bartlett to Decide on Budget Cuts on January 7th
 
USA
Congressman: Why is Obama Stifling Hasan Investigation?
Terrorists, Crooks Allowed to Keep FAA Pilot’s Licenses
 
Europe and the EU
Anthrax Found in Glasgow Heroin Users
‘Feminists Have Better Sex’: Swedish Party
Italy: Cabinet Mulls Controversial Web Bill
Itlay: Stealing Love Pest Phone ‘No Crime’
Lord Monckton Barred From Copenhagen Conference — Pushed to the Ground by Security
Most Czechs, Slovaks Would Ban Construction of Minarets
Poland: Auschwitz ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Sign Stolen
Spain: Basque Priests Rebel Against New Bishop
Spain: Arrested for Damage to Roig Sculpture, ‘Was Disgusted’
Tuscany in War-Crimes Trial With Germany
UK: Judge Condemns ‘Sex Ring’ Charges Delay
UK: Keighley Woman Spat at and Punched in Keighley Attack
UK: MP Condemns Plan to Build a ‘Muslim Eton’ For Girls
UK: Supreme Court: London Jewish School Discriminated
UK: Tulay Goren Murder: ‘Honour’ Crimes Doubling Every Year, Figures Show
UK: Tinsel Taliban Strikes as Court Service Ban Staff From Decorations to Avoid Offence
Vatican: Beatification of John Paul II Progresses
 
Balkans
Serbia: Dutch Minister Backs Belgrade’s EU Bid
 
North Africa
Al Aswany: Fundamentalism Can’t be Defeated Without Democracy
Algeria: Ten Arrested in Anti-Terror Operation
Martial-Arts Trained ‘Lady Guards’ Latest Security Craze in Egypt
 
Israel and the Palestinians
Arab Agents to Join Police in January
CIA Working With Palestinian Security Agents
Gaza: Shots From Gaza on New Barrier Construction
Nationalist Rabbis Attack on Barak
New Banknotes: Sharett is Out, Begin and Rabin Are in
Obama Policies to Create Hamasland?
Palestinian Christians Urge Boycott
UK-Livni: Knesset Petition Threatens Boycott
Why Can’t H. Clinton Bring Israeli-Palestinian Peace? Look at What B. Clinton Offered Which the Palestinians Rejected
 
Middle East
Global Corporation Supplying Iran Missiles?
Iran Troops ‘Seize Iraq Oil Well’
Pentagon: Insurgents Intercepted Drone Spy Videos
Saudi to Launch TV Channels on Koran, Sunnah
Zawahiri’s Wife Releases Statement, Tells Women They Can be Suicide Bombers
 
Russia
Moscow’s Arrogance Leads to Turkmen Gas Flowing Towards China
Russia Accuses US of Last-Minute Obstacle to Nuclear Arms Treaty
 
South Asia
Ex-UN Afghan Deputy Denies Conspiracy
Norway: No People to Kabul
 
Far East
Japanese Whalers Using ‘Military’ Sonic Device: Activists
N. Korean Hackers May Have Stolen US War Plans
Obama Told China: I Can’t Stop Israel Strike on Iran Indefinitely
 
Australia — Pacific
A Woman Was Impaled on a Steel Fence for an Agonising 47 Minutes Waiting for an Ambulance.
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
Controversial African Bishop Defrocked
 
Latin America
Rash of Public Lynchings Hit Guatemala
 
Immigration
Illegal Workers on Elmendorf AFB
Italy: Immigrant Population Up to 4.8 Million in 2009, Study
Spain: 11.6% Residents Are Foreigners, Double the EU Average
Turks and Moroccans Most Numerous in EU
 
Culture Wars
Jennings ‘Credited’ With ‘Heterosexism’ Questionnaire
 
General
Obama: We Are Running Short on Time for Climate Deal
When Reds Go Green

Financial Crisis


Abu Dhabi’s Sway Over Dubai Increasing at Tehran’s Expense

The first plan to rescue the debt-ridden emirate is proving insufficient for many investors, but it is bringing Abu Dhabi back into the fold of the emirate federation. It is also increasing the distance with Iran, which hitherto used Dubai as a trans-shipment point to break the embargo and export its goods.

Dubai (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Sheikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee, has begun a trip to London, New York and Washington to reassure investors about Dubai World’s plans to restructure its debt and explain how it will use the US$ 10 billion loan from Abu Dhabi.

Businessmen and contractors that fuelled Dubai’s real estate boom are still waiting for their money. And many economic experts believe that the injection of capital by Abu Dhabi will not solve all of its problems.

Dubai is now using US$ 4.1 billion of the US$ 10 billion loan to pay Dubai World’s liabilities; the rest will go to other debtors.

A Dubai World spokesman said the funds would help contractors, but sought to manage expectations given that the restructuring of Dubai World and its two property arms, Nakheel and Limitless, is just starting.

For analysts at National Bank of Kuwait, the Dubai World’s debt restructuring could trigger a further 25 to 30 per cent decline during the next six months.

In fact, much of the debt needs to be settled in 2010 and 2011. Altogether, Dubai must repay at least US$ 55 billion in the next three years.

Geopolitically, the rescue plan for Dubai unveiled on Monday gives Abu Dhabi greater sway over Dubai’s affairs and could force Abu Dhabi’s independence-minded leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, back into the fold of the United Arab Emirates.

For many, the sheikh has acted a bit too independently vis-à-vis federal authorities, engaging in reckless financial operations whilst contributing less than 3 per cent to the US$ 12 billion federal budget.

Abu Dhabi’s control could take two forms. First, its emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan could put a stop to Dubai’s bad financial habits by asserting control over key pieces of Dubai’s corporate empire as compensation for its bailout, pieces like Dubai’s state-owned Emirates Airlines and its port operator, DP World Ltd. Secondly, control could be more political. Abu Dhabi often works in league with Saudi Arabia on foreign policy matters, whilst independent-minded Dubai has favoured instead Ahmadinejad’s Iran, thus gaining large amounts of cash by serving as an embargo-busting trans-shipment point for Iran’s trade.

If US-ally Abu Dhabi does assert its control, Washington could gain a platform from which to exert significant pressure on Iran.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Oklahoma Schools Will Fail to Make Payroll Due to Budget Cuts

OKLAHOMA CITY — Scary was the word repeatedly being passed around the State Board Of Education meeting Thursday in response to the recent state budget cuts.

“Prior to this week we have been careful about saying whether or not there would be layoffs. I can now say without a doubt that we’re going to lose teachers from our workforce,” said State Superintendent Sandy Garrett.

James White is the Assistant State Superintendent and said, “25 schools will not be able to meet payroll by the end of the year.”

“Schools are looking at annexation, going to another school, closing. Some schools look to possibly to go to judgment, which means their district will take responsibility of the debt. If it is not able to pay people, people will take them to court, sue and taxpayers of the district will have to pay the debt of that school for the remainder of the year,” White said.

There is worry that many of Oklahoma’s teachers will leave for good and others won’t want to come to Oklahoma because of the poor and falling funding.

Oklahoma schools have lost $43 million in the last five months, and now there are worries state budget cuts will cut deeper because insurance costs will rise in January.

“We’ve got really topnotch people scared, I mean frightened and they should be,” said Tim Gilpin, State Board Of Education member.

See how the state’s budget cuts have impacted Oklahoma’s school

The 8 percent rate increase will cost the state an additional $33 per insured employee. It will be part of what contributes to a $21 million shortfall for health insurance for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Education leaders are hoping the Rainy Day fund will be used to help alleviate the problem.

           — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa [Return to headlines]



Tulsa Mayor Bartlett to Decide on Budget Cuts on January 7th

TULSA, OK — Mayor Dewey Bartlett said he is not sure how many city employees will lose their jobs and says the decision won’t come until the first of the year.

The head of each department has made a plan to handle the cuts. They will turn those over to the mayor Friday.

While cuts are looming, the mayor says other cuts made previously might be soon restored.

Mayor Bartlett personally briefed the council for the first time Thursday night. He repeated his prediction the city might have to cut spending by $10 million over the next six months.

That kind of cut would mean layoffs for employees in every city department, including police officers and firefighters.

Bartlett says he’s waiting on specific recommendations from each department.

“We haven’t asked any department to that, we just asked please give us your best recommendation on how you would revamp, handle your department if we end up with five or ten million dollars less in the budget,” Bartlett said.

At the same time,the mayor says he’s pursuing new plans to get the police helicopter unit flying again, and through stimulus money might be able to turn the lights back on along expressways.

Mayor’s Chief of Staff Terry Simonson announced a plan to use an existing stimulus grant to buy new streetlights.

“By employing the energy efficient street lamps, not only will it hopefully lower the cost down to something we can afford, but we also become eligible for the PSO model cities program, meaning we pay less per kilowatt, so there’s another savings to it,” Simonson said.

There is no timeline for the lights or the helicopters but both projects are not quick turnarounds.

As for the job cuts, the mayor says he will make that decision around January 7th.

           — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa [Return to headlines]

USA


Congressman: Why is Obama Stifling Hasan Investigation?

Member of House intelligence committeee wants reports to prevent another attack A member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is wondering why President Obama apparently is suppressing information assembled by an investigation into the Nov. 5 attack at Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “Allah is greatest,” while killing more than a dozen soldiers and civilians.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., expressed his concern in a recent commentary, saying, “There has been a troubling refusal by Obama officials to acknowledge that the shooting likely was an act of homegrown terrorism.”

[…]

But Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the GOP members of the intelligence committee, told WND that the problem is while the investigation apparently has produced a report about Hasan, it’s being suppressed by the White House.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Terrorists, Crooks Allowed to Keep FAA Pilot’s Licenses

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has asked the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General to investigate why suspect individuals — including terrorists and drug kingpins — have been able to retain their Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot’s licenses.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU


Anthrax Found in Glasgow Heroin Users

Health agencies across Scotland have been placed on alert after a drug user who died in a Glasgow hospital tested positive for anthrax.

A woman who injected heroin is also being treated for the effects of the infection.

Tests are also being carried out on a third drug user and a number of other cases are being investigated.

Health officials believe the two may have taken contaminated heroin and an outbreak control team has been set up.

The woman is being treated at the Victoria Infirmary, where the man died two days ago and doctors are waiting for the results of tests carried out on a third drug user at the city’s Royal Infirmary.

At the moment, the cases are not being linked, though it is known all three had infections in areas of the body they had injected with heroin.

Police and health officials are investigating whether contaminated heroin or a contaminated cutting agent may be responsible.

Dr Syed Ahmed, consultant in public health medicine, said: “I urge all drug injecting heroin users to be extremely alert and to seek urgent medical advice if they experience an infection.

“While this section of the community need to be on their guard the risk to the rest of the population — including close family members of the infected cases — is negligible.

“It is extremely rare for anthrax to be spread from person to person and there is no significant risk of airborne transmission from one person to another.”

‘Extremely rare’

The health board said it would investigate cases of drug injecting heroin users with serious soft tissue infections now or during the last four weeks.

Strathclyde Police said it was vital that if there was a contaminated batch of heroin on the streets that it was traced and recovered.

A spokesman added: “Our number one priority is the safety and wellbeing of everyone in our communities.

“We would appeal to drug users to come forward if they have any information that may enable us to trace its source.

“We would like to reassure people that our purpose is to recover this substance in the interests of public safety. It is not about targeting drug users.”

Anthrax is an acute bacterial infection most commonly found in hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep and goats.

It normally infects humans when they inhale or ingest anthrax spores, but cannot be passed from person to person.

The last death from anthrax in Scotland was in 2006 when Christopher Norris died after inhaling the spores.

The 50-year-old craftsman, from Stobs, near Hawick, made drums with materials such as untreated animal hides.

Last November, drum-maker Fernando Gomez, who is thought to have inhaled anthrax spores while handling imported animal skins, died in hospital in London.

The 35-year-old Spanish folk musician had been in the intensive care unit for several days.

Five people died and 17 others were ill in a series of anthrax attacks in the US in 2001.

           — Hat tip: 4symbols [Return to headlines]



‘Feminists Have Better Sex’: Swedish Party

Sweden’s feminist political party is hoping logo items featuring a bold claim about their supporters’ supposed prowess in the bedroom will raise awareness about the party during the holiday shopping season.

“Feminists have better sex,” the Feminist Initiative (FI) political party claims in its recently launched line of logo items.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Italy: Cabinet Mulls Controversial Web Bill

Unruly demonstrations also considered in new legislation

(ANSA) — Rome, December 17 — Bills imposing stiff penalties for threatening web content and unruly demonstrations caused a stir on Thursday when it was presented before the cabinet.

The draft laws were presented by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni in reaction to clashes between protestors and police at student demonstrations last week, in addition to groups on Facebook applauding last Sunday’s attack on President Silvio Berlusconi.

Over 50,000 people signed up for the groups hailing a man with mental health problems who hit the premier in the face with a statuette on Sunday, breaking his nose and two of his teeth.

Facebook administrators said Wednesday they would take down any groups with overtly violent content, but leave up any that were merely “controversial or offensive”.

Government sources said the bill dictates protocol for acting against Web content constituting offences like “incitement to commit a crime”.

The law would reportedly give users 24 hours to remove the offending content or face a fine.

When users can’t be identified, responsibility would pass to Web administrators who would have three days to remove the material or risk sites being closed down for as long as a month.

Another bill would make counter-protests and sit-ins against the rallies or opposing groups a felony punishable by up to two years in prison.

Throwing objects at demonstrations would also become a criminal offense, punishable by up to three years in jail.

Following the meeting, Infrastructure Minister Altero Matteoli said “we have a basic agreement about the bills, but still need to work out some of the finer points”.

Cabinet insiders said a number of ministers were reluctant to make website administrators liable for content their users published, while others, such as Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, wanted to take an even harder line against troublemakers at demonstrations.

Matteoli added that the government would seek the opposition’s support for the bills, but didn’t rule out ramming them through with a decree if it met resistance.

Leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani said he would “read anything they send us” but that he couldn’t make any promises.

“We’re very, very concerned about some of the restrictions being discussed here,” he said. The proposed bills have drawn stern criticism from digital freedom advocates in Italy who fear the legislation could pave the way to censorship.

The head of the online rights group Agora’ Digitale, Luca Nicotra, said “there’s no need for new laws specific to the Internet just to enforce old ones already in place”.

Nicotra said his group was ready to lead an online protest against the bill through many of the channels it might conceivably target, such as Facebook.

The social networking website was the main tool behind the demonstration this month which brought thousands of anti-Berlusconi protestors into the streets of Rome.

Senate Speaker Renato Schifani said the government had an “obligation to keep these websites from turning into odes to violence”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Itlay: Stealing Love Pest Phone ‘No Crime’

Boyfriend ‘entitled’ to take texting rival’s mobile says court

(ANSA) — Rome, December 16 — Stealing the cellphone of someone texting love messages to your girlfriend is not a crime, Italy’s highest appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The Cassation Court, whose rulings set precedents, turned down a prosecutor’s appeal against the acquittal of a Romanian immigrant, Cristian N., who discovered that compatriot Sorin D.

had been courting his girlfriend with text messages.

In their appeal, Ancona prosecutors argued that the theft of Sorin’s phone had been “a full-fledged robbery”.

The Cassation Court rejected the plea, saying that Cristian had been “entitled” to take the phone because it was being used to “bother” him with the messages.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Lord Monckton Barred From Copenhagen Conference — Pushed to the Ground by Security

This was the scene yesterday in Copenhagen. As you can see the scene is rather agitated with lots of police action, including use of billy clubs. As of this writing, no pictures or video is available of Lord Monckton’s account below. Hopefully somebody in the crowd will post some. I wish him well. I’ll also be glad when this conference is over. It has shown government at its worst.

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen at the SPPI blog:

Today the gloves came off and the true purpose of the “global warming” scare became nakedly visible. Hugo Chavez, the Socialist president of Venezuela, blamed “global warming” on capitalism — and received a standing ovation from very nearly all of the delegates, lamentably including those from those of the capitalist nations of the West that are on the far Left — and that means too many of them.

Previously Robert Mugabe, dictator of Rhodesia, who had refused to leave office when he had been soundly defeated in a recent election, had also won plaudits at the conference for saying that the West ought to pay him plenty of money in reparation of our supposed “climate debt”.

Inside the conference center, “world leader” after “world leader” got up and postured about the need to Save The Planet, the imperative to do a deal, the necessity to save the small island nations from drowning, etc., etc., etc.

Outside, in the real world, it was snowing, and a foretaste of the Brave New World being cooked up by “world leaders” in their fantasy-land was already evident. Some 20,000 observers from non-governmental organizations — nearly all of them true-believing Green groups funded by taxpayers — had been accredited to the conference.

However, without warning the UN had capriciously decided that all but 300 of them were to be excluded from the conference today, and all but 90 would be excluded on the final day.

Of course, this being the inept UN, no one had bothered to notify those of the NGOs that were not true-believers in the UN’s camp. So Senator Steve Fielding of Australia and I turned up with a few dozen other delegates, to be left standing in the cold for a couple of hours while the UN laboriously worked out what to do with us.

In the end, they decided to turn us away, which they did with an ill grace and in a bad-tempered manner. As soon as the decision was final, the Danish police moved in. One of them began the now familiar technique of manhandling me, in the same fashion as one of his colleagues had done the previous day.

Once again, conscious that a police helicopter with a high-resolution camera was hovering overhead, I thrust my hands into my pockets in accordance with the St. John Ambulance crowd-control training, looked my assailant in the eye and told him, quietly but firmly, to take his hands off me.

He complied, but then decided to have another go. I told him a second time, and he let go a second time. I turned to go and, after I had turned my back, he gave me a mighty shove that flung me to the ground and knocked me out.

I came to some time later (not sure exactly how long), to find my head being cradled by my friends, some of whom were doing their best to keep the police thugs at bay while the volunteer ambulance-men attended to me.

I was picked up and dusted me off. I could not remember where I had left my telephone, which had been in my hand at the time when I was assaulted. I rather fuzzily asked where it was, and one of the police goons shouted, “He alleges he had a mobile phone.”

In fact, the phone was in my coat pocket, where my hand had been at the time of the assault. The ambulance crew led me away and laid me down under a blanket for 20 minutes to get warm, plying me with water and keeping me amused with some colorfully colloquial English that they had learned.

I thanked them for their kindness, left them a donation for their splendid service, and rejoined my friends. A very senior police officer then came up and asked if I was all right. Yes, I said, but no thanks to one of his officers, who had pushed me hard from behind when my back was turned and had sent me flying.

The police chief said that none of his officers would have done such a thing. I said that several witnesses had seen the incident, which I intended to report. I said I had hoped to receive an apology but had not received one, and would include that in my report. The policeman went off looking glum, and with good reason.

To assault an accredited representative of a conference your nation is hosting, and to do it while your own police cameramen are filming from above, and to do it without any provocation except my polite, non-threatening request that I should not be manhandled, is not a career-enhancing move, as that police chief is about to discover to his cost.

Nor does this incident, and far too many like it, reflect the slightest credit on Denmark. We must make reasonable allowance for the fact that the unspeakable security service of the UN, which is universally detested by those at this conference, was ordering the Danish police about. The tension between the alien force and the indigenous men on the ground had grown throughout the conference.

However, the Danish police were far too free with their hands when pushing us around, and that is not acceptable in a free society. But then, Europe is no longer a free society. It is, in effect, a tyranny ruled by the unelected Kommissars of the European Union. That is perhaps one reason why police forces throughout Europe, including that in the UK, have become far more brutal than was once acceptable in their treatment of the citizens they are sworn to serve.

It is exactly this species of tyranny that the UN would like to impose upon the entire planet, in the name of saving us from ourselves — or, as Ugo Chavez would put it, saving us from Western capitalist democracy.

A few weeks ago, at a major conference in New York, I spoke about this tendency towards tyranny with Dr. Vaclav Klaus, the distinguished economist and doughty fighter for freedom and democracy who is President of the Czech Republic.

While we still have one or two statesmen of his caliber, there is hope for Europe and the world. Unfortunately, he refused to come to Copenhagen, telling me that there was no point, now that the lunatics were firmly in control of the asylum.

However, I asked him whether the draft Copenhagen Treaty’s proposal for what amounted to a communistic world government reminded him of the Communism under which he and his country had suffered for so long.

He thought for a moment — as statesmen always do before answering an unusual question — and said, “Maybe it is not brutal. But in all other respects, what it proposes is far too close to Communism for comfort.”

Today, as I lay in the snow with a cut knee, a bruised back, a banged head, a ruined suit, and a written-off coat, I wondered whether the brutality of the New World Order was moving closer than President Klaus — or any of us — had realized.

           — Hat tip: KGS [Return to headlines]



Most Czechs, Slovaks Would Ban Construction of Minarets

Prague, Dec 16 (CTK) — Most people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia would ban a possible construction of minarets, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) reports Wednesday, referring to a poll conducted by the NMS agency simultaneously in both countries.

The poll has reacted to the recent controversial referendum in Switzerland in which most people voted against the construction of more minarets, tall spires with onion-shaped or conical crowns used for the call to prayer, in their country.

According to the NMS poll conducted on 424 voters in the Czech Republic and 502 in Slovakia, 78 percent of Czech respondents and 70 percent of Slovaks would vote against minarets in a referendum.

Moreover, 54 percent of Czechs and 56 percent of Slovaks would ban the construction of both minarets and new mosques, Tomas Dvorak, from NMS, told LN.

The poll also shows that Czechs and Slovaks mind new mosques less than minarets. Only one-third of the polled strictly oppose mosques, others do not want them only in “their surroundings.”

Nevertheless, Muslims in the Czech Republic are not considering building minarets for the time being, LN writes.

Muneeb Hassan, from the Islamic community, said minarets are rather a pretext. “Those who mind Islam and Muslims are against minarets,” he told LN.

Muslims in the Czech Republic and Slovakia face more serious problems with the construction of their houses of prayer.

In the Slovak capital of Bratislava, for instance, they bought a plot ten years ago but they have not obtained a building permit yet, LN writes.

The first mosque in the Czech Republic is in Brno where Muslims are planning another one, but many people have protested against the project. The Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and representatives of the extra-parliamentary ultra-right National Party (NS) have disagreed with it.

In addition, a decree to regulate the maximal height of buildings in various parts of the city is being prepared in Brno, which could affect the construction of minarets, LN writes.

The paper recalls that there is only one minaret in the Czech Republic, in the UNESCO-listed Lednice-Valtice chateau and park complex, south Moravia, that has actually nothing to do with Muslims. The minaret with quotes from the Quran on the walls was built in 1804 to house exotic collections of the Liechtenstein noble family.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Poland: Auschwitz ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Sign Stolen

OSWIECIM, Poland — The Nazis’ infamous iron sign declaring “Arbeit Macht Frei” — German for “Work Sets You Free” — was stolen Friday from the entrance of the former Auschwitz death camp, Polish police said.

The 5-meter-long (16-foot-long), 40-kilogram (90-pound) iron sign at the Holocaust memorial site in southern Poland was unscrewed on one side and torn off on the other, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said.

The theft from the entrance to the camp — where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died during World War II — brought condemnation worldwide.

“The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days,” Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement from Jerusalem.

“I call on all enlightened forces in the world who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the other, to join together to combat these trends.”

The sign disappeared from the Auschwitz memorial between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m., Padlo said.

Police deployed 50 police, including 20 detectives, and a search dog to the Auschwitz grounds, where barracks, watchtowers and ruins of gas chambers stand as testament to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

Police said they were reviewing footage from a surveillance camera that overlooks the entrance gate and the road beyond, but declined to say whether the crime was recorded.

Auschwitz museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said it might have been too dark for the camera to have captured images.

He said the thieves apparently carried the sign 300 meters (yards) to an opening in a concrete wall. That opening had been left intentionally to preserve a poplar tree dating back to the time of the war.

Four metal bars that had blocked the opening were cut. Tire tracks and footprints in the snow led from the wall opening to the nearby road, where police presume the sign was loaded on to a vehicle.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said he had trouble imagining who would steal the sign.

“If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick pranksters, or someone with a political agenda. But whoever has done it has desecrated world memory,” Schudrich said.

           — Hat tip: ESW [Return to headlines]



Spain: Basque Priests Rebel Against New Bishop

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 16 — Priests in the Basque diocese of Guipuzcoa are rebelling against their new bishop, José Ignacio Munilla: even before he takes up his new post on January 9, 85 out of 110 curates in the San Sebastian area have signed an open letter in which they warn that the new prelate is in no way the right person to be the shepherd of our diocese. The revolt of the Basque priests is on the front page of todays newspapers in Spain. This is an unprecedented event in the Spanish Church. El Mundo points out that the only event which comes close was in 1967, during the Franco dictatorship, when “Volem bisbes catalans” (we want Catalan bishops) was how Catalan parishioners greeted the new archbishop of Barcelona, Spaniard Marcelo Gonzalez Martin. After four troublesome years on Catalan soil he left for Toledo. The attack in Guipozcoa is directly aimed at the new prelate appointed by Benedict XVI on the proposal of the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Cardinal of Madrid, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela. Claimed to be anti-nationalist and a conservative, Mons. Munilla was parachuted into a diocese known for being radical and a supporter of Basque nationalism. Thus 77% of curates in the diocese took up pen and paper and publicly disassociated themselves from the choice of the new bishop, who takes over from radical Juan Maria Uriarte. The priests protest follows another from the Basque nationalist party the PNV, the main political group in the Spanish Basque country. The Basque priests expressed pain and deep concern over the appointment of Munilla, whose trajectory has so far been deeply marked by dissatisfaction and an absence of communion with the diocesan lines. Munilla, who is close to conservative Rouco Varela, in a message following his appointment, told the 700,000 faithful of Gupozcoa that he wants to be the bishop of all. But in a recent interview he warned that the Church must contribute towards depoliticising Basque society, which is suffering from an excess of politicisation. According to El Mundo, the new bishop is known for being a hard man, a militant to the core, and they way that he never backs down. And the Basque priests, writes El Pais, are now concerned that with his appointment, conservative Rouco Varela wants to deactivate the line of a diocese renowned for its social commitment, co-responsibility with the lay community, support for dialogue to end the violence with Eta in the Basque Country. The saga has now also become the subject of political controversy: the leader of the Basque Partido Popular, Arantza Quiroga, today accused the 85 dissident priests of being guided by the hand of the Basque nationalist party.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: Arrested for Damage to Roig Sculpture, ‘Was Disgusted’

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 17 — In Valencia, a 32-year-old man has been arrested for seriously damaging a fountain-sculpture by the Majorcan artist Bernardi Roig exhibited in the clearing before the Valencia Museum of Modern Art (IVAM) as part of the show “Shadows Must Dance” underway at the contemporary art centre. According to police sources quoted by the EP agency, the incident occurred on Sunday when the man, whose identity has not been disclosed, was caught on video by security cameras outside the museum as he used his hands and feet to attack the sculpture, a life-size human figure with water spurting out of its mouth, until the sculpture fell to the ground and broke. The work of art has an estimated value of 80,000 euros. The vandal, originally from Tenerife and who was released after being charged with damage to artistic heritage, holds a Fine Arts degree. In statements to the daily paper Levante, he said that on Sunday after a beer out with some friends, he noticed the sculpture in front of IVAM and went closer to touch it. However, after having seen that it moved, was overwhelmed by a sense of disgust and shoved the sculpture to the ground. Bernardi Roig, the creator of the work of art, is currently in New York and has been informed of the incident. According to museum sources, on his return he will give instructions as to how to proceed with the restoration work on the sculpture, with has in the meantime been withdrawn from the exhibition. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Tuscany in War-Crimes Trial With Germany

Region joins victims’ suit for reparations

(ANSA) — Rome, December 18 — The region of Tuscany joined a civil suit against the Federal Republic of Germany on Friday in what is likely to mark the last major Nazi war crimes trial in Italy.

Six German soldiers were arraigned by an Italian court in October for the 1944 massacre of over 350 people in an area known as the Vallucciole in the mountains of eastern Tuscany as a reprisal against raids by local partisans.

According to the few remaining survivors, most of the victims were women and children. By now in their 80s and 90s, witnesses to the killings will testify in both the criminal trial and a civil suit seeking reparations from both the culprits and the German government.

Tuscan Governor Claudio Martini noted in an official statement that it was “the first time a region of Italy has ever taken part in a trial against both war criminals and the Federal Republic of Germany”.

“These crimes were committed with total disregard to even the most basic principles of human decency,” he explained.

“As the representative of an area devastated by those crimes, the Tuscan regional government joins the victims’ plea for justice”.

None of the defendants, identified over the course of a lengthy investigation by Italian war crimes prosecutors, will be present for the trial, in which they face life sentences for mass murder.

Karl Winkler, 87, Friz Olberg, 88, Wilhelm Karl Sark, 89, Ferdinand Osterhaus, 90, and Gunther Heintroth, 84, are the living officers of the Fallschirm Panzer Division who allegedly ordered the killings.

Another officer, Gustav Brandt, was struck off the list of defendants who recently died in Berlin at the age of 95.

Even if they were to be extradited to Italy, none of the defendants would face actual jail time given their old age.

But Marini said the trial, perhaps the last of a long series for war crimes committed during the German occupation of Italy, had “great symbolic importance” in establishing what happened and who was responsible.

Tuscany’s part as a plaintiff in the civil suit follows a landmark 2008 ruling by the Italian Court of Cassation requiring Germany to pay damages to the families of those killed in Nazi massacres.

Germany appealed the ruling to the International Court of Justice arguing that Italy breached a 1961 war crime treaty.

The two countries have set up a panel to review WWII issues.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



UK: Judge Condemns ‘Sex Ring’ Charges Delay

A JUDGE has comdemned an eight-month delay in bringing charges against an alleged sex ring accused of attacks on girls as young as 13 as “absoluttely scandalous.”

He said it was a “lamentable failure” on the part of the Crown Prosecution Service, who had waited since March to bring the men to court following their arrest.

Members of the alleged eight strong sex ring were arrested in March in a series of early morning raids after being linked to a year-long series of sexual offences, committed around Rotherham, involving three 13-year-old girls and one adult.

But they were later released on police bail and had not been brought to court until their appearance at Rotherham Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

District Judge John Foster strongly criticised the eight month delay in bringing the men—charged with a total of 16 rapes—to court.

Addressing CPS prosecutor Mark Hughes, Mr Foster said: “The complainants are 13 and 14 years of age and you are telling me that it’s acceptable to conduct an eight month Crown Prosecution review of the case before bringing these men to court? I can’t believe it.

“These are children who are going to have to give evidence about these allegations.

“They face the prospect of being cross-examined, assuming not guilty pleas are entered by one or more of the defendants. Someone has to explain this to me, it’s absolutely scandalous.”

The accused men are:

  • Adil Hussain (20), of Nelson Street, Rotherham, charged with the rape of a 13-year-old girl.
  • Saeed Hussain (28), of Hatherley Road, Eastwood, Rotherham, charged with inciting a 13-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity.
  • Shaizaad Hussain (21), of Clough Road, Masbrough, Rotherham, charged with two counts of rape against a 13-year-old girl.
  • Mohsin Khan (21), of Haworth Crescent, Moorgate, Rotherham, charged with five counts of rape including four against a 13-year-old girl.
  • Zafran Ramzan (21), of Broom Grove, Broom, Rotherham, charged with four counts of rape, including one involving a 13-year-old girl.
  • Razwan Razaq (29), of Oxford Street, Clifton, Rotherham, charged with two counts of rape against a 13-year-old girl.
  • Umar Razaq (23), of Oxford Street, Clifton, Rotherham, charged with rape of a girl aged over 16 and engaging in sexual activity with 13-year-old girl.
  • Shazad Akbar (22), of Shirecliffe Lane, Shirecliffe, Sheffield, charged with rape.

The men lined up in the dock at Rotherham Magistrates’ Court to face the raft of charges on Wednesday after answering bail at the town’s Main Street police station on Tuesday.

Many of them had answered bail more than seven times since their arrests in March.

All eight applied for bail at Wednesday’s hearing as solicitors argued that all had completed regular visits to Main Street police station as their bail conditions required.

But Mr Foster denied all eight their liberty by detaining them in custody prior to an appearance at Sheffield Crown Court on Wednesday, citing charges which could attract life sentences in some cases as a reason why they may not submit to bail in future.

Mr Foster added: “This has been a lamentable performance by the CPS in the delay which has been occasioned by their complete failure, it seems, to take any positive action in relation to this case since March this year.”

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Keighley Woman Spat at and Punched in Keighley Attack

A young woman motorist was spat at and punched in a racial attack as she sat in her car in Keighley town centre.

The 23-year-old victim was left distressed by the incident, which happened as she waited at traffic lights with her window wound down.

Police say the “disturbing” assault was racially motivated and are appealing for help to trace the “cowardly” gang responsible.

The woman, who is white, had pulled up at the lights in North Street, at 5pm on Saturday when she was approached by a group of Asian men.

They began to racially abuse her and spat at her through the open window.

One of the males punched her while trying to grab her car keys.

After a short while the victim managed to wind up the window and drive away from the scene.

She was not seriously hurt but was left distressed. The group of men then left the area, heading up Devonshire Street.

The main aggressor is described as Asian, in his late teens, 5ft 5ins, and of skinny build.

He had brown eyes and was wearing a plain grey hooded top.

Detective Inspector John Mountain, of Airedale and North Bradford CID, said: “This was a disturbing racial assault and attempted robbery on a young woman in her own car who was minding her own business and appears to have done nothing to provoke it.

“The attack happened at a busy time of the day in the town centre and I am appealing for anyone who saw what happened, or may know the identities of any of this group, to come forward.

“Fortunately incidents such as this are rare and I now appeal to residents from all sections of the community in Keighley to assist us in finding those responsible for this cowardly attack.”

Anyone with information should contact PC Al Towers, of Airedale and North Bradford CID, on 0845 6060606, or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



UK: MP Condemns Plan to Build a ‘Muslim Eton’ For Girls

The college for 1,500 pupils would be both the largest Muslim faith school and the biggest boarding school in the country — larger than 1,330-pupil Eton.

Yesterday Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, near the school site in Burnley, warned that it could damage existing schools and colleges in the area and stoke community tensions.

‘The last thing we need is single-sex, single faith schools for girls,’ he told the Times Educational Supplement.

‘It pulls against community cohesion. It makes me weep to think so much time, energy and effort has gone into the community to get people to mix together. [This] goes against all public policy.’

The blueprint emerged after a proposal for a 5,000-place girls’ boarding school in Pendle was dropped amid public opposition.

The Islamic charity behind the Burnley project, the Mohiuddin Trust, insists its aim is to ‘strengthen inter-community relationships’.

It is in the process of setting up Mohiuddin International Girls’ College after purchasing the former Burnley College site for £2million.

The college would cater for girls of 16 and over and teach mainstream qualifications and faith studies.

The trust wants the school to cater initially for 500 students, expanding to 1,500.

Dr Mohammed Iqbal, a Mohiuddin trustee, said: ‘At this moment it’s difficult to offer a detailed response about the courses to be offered as we are still in the preliminary planning stages.

‘We do, however, expect to offer a variety of skills and courses.

‘A-levels are being considered but may not be available as soon as the college starts.

‘Our objective is to offer young women the opportunity to empower themselves with better qualifications with the aim of improving chances of securing better employment.’

Afzal Anwar, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Pendle, said he understood that the school would be open to girls of all faiths, and would offer optional lessons in Islamic studies.

He said the plans for a 5,000- place school in Pendle were dropped after attracting ‘overwhelming local opposition’ from all communities, including a majority of Muslims.

He added: ‘There should be provision for faith schools if parents want to send their children there.’

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: ‘We have not yet been approached by the promoters of the school, so we do not know what their proposals are.

‘Any application will be scrutinised closely before the school can open.’

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Supreme Court: London Jewish School Discriminated

LONDON (JTA) — A Jewish school in London discriminated against a child denied entrance because his mother was not recognized as Jewish, Britain’s Supreme Court said.

The court on Wednesday narrowly rejected an appeal by the Jewish Free School against an earlier ruling stating that its admission policy was illegal and that the North London school broke the Race Relations Act.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



UK: Tulay Goren Murder: ‘Honour’ Crimes Doubling Every Year, Figures Show

“Honour killings” are now running at the rate of one a month, it has emerged, following a shocking rise in violent crimes committed in Britain in the name of religion.

The number of murders, rapes and assaults on people who dare to break strict religious or cultural rules is doubling every year, police figures show, with up to two violent “honour crimes” being committed every day.

But charities which help victims of honour crimes say the true extent of the problem is far worse than the statistics show, as every year hundreds of vicitms — normally women — are too frightened to report attacks or to give evidence in court.

The escalating problem was highlighted yesterday as an Old Bailey jury convicted Mehmet Goren, 49, of the cold-blooded and premeditated murder of his 15-year-old daughter Tulay after she fell in love with someone from the “wrong” branch of Islam.

Miss Goren disappeared 10 years ago after telling a friend she might be pregnant but justice caught up with her father after his wife “courageously” testified against him and lifted what was described as the “cloak of secrecy” which surrounds honour crimes.

A prosecutor said the case was a “wake-up call” to the authorities over the extent of the problem in this country, which campaigners say is growing because of the rise of religious fundamentalism.

Miss Goren and her family had nine contacts with police in the days before her death, during which they complained of violence by Goren, but officers had little understanding at the time of the concept of honour crimes and she was left at the mercy of her father.

The court heard that Miss Goren, whose Turkish Kurd family are Alevi Muslims, was drugged, tortured and then killed by her father after she fell in love with a Sunni Muslim twice her age. Her body has never been found.

Goren, who adhered to what one police officer described as “outdated feudal beliefs”, was sentenced to serve a minimum of 22 years in jail as the trial judge condemned the “hideous practice” of so-called honour killings.

Miss Goren’s sister Nuray Guler told the court, the teenager had been “caught in the middle of two clashing worlds” and pleaded with police to stop other women falling victim to “this primitive custom”.

She expressed fears for the safety of her mother Hanim, whose evidence against Goren had put her own life in danger. “No one should fail to realise what this means within our culture,” she said.

“These people do not forget.”

Figures released by the Metropolitan Police show that in London alone there have been 129 honour-based crimes between April and October this year, compared with 132 in the whole of 2008/09, which in turn was double the number of the previous year.

The Home Office has estimated that there are an average of 12 honour killings each year in England and Wales.

But Diana Nammi, director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, described the official figures as “the tip of the iceberg” and suggested there are more than 500 honour crimes each year nationwide.

She said: “It’s not just the detection of honour crimes which is increasing, but the number of crimes which are committed. The rise of fundamentalism is the reason these crimes are increasing. The Government has also been turning a blind eye to the problem, which only makes things worse.

“We need to change the mindset of the communities where these crimes are happening — mainly people from South Asia, the Middle East and Muslim communities — and hopefully the religious leaders will think about how we can stop this.”

Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley, near Bradford, who has campaigned to raise awareness of honour crimes, said local councils in areas with large ethnic minority populations remain reluctant to confront the problem because it is such a politically sensitive issue.

She said: “It is a real struggle to get this issue out in the open because instead of looking after the human rights of vulnerable young women you get accused of doing down the Asian community.

“One of the difficulties is that you have very large extended families in places like Bradford, which are very influential, and local councillors are afraid of upsetting them because they think they will lose votes. As a result local authorities are reluctant to talk about this issue.

“But I know from experience that for every male vote you might lose for speaking out you will gain a female vote, and I just wish politicians would realise you don’t need to fight shy of this.”

Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police, said officers were now trained to recognise potential honour crimes, and that awareness of the problem has “significantly improved”, though he insisted the force was not “complacent” about the ongoing problem.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



UK: Tinsel Taliban Strikes as Court Service Ban Staff From Decorations to Avoid Offence

The ‘Tinsel Taliban’ have struck in Britain’s courts.

The Tories claim court officials have been banned from putting tinsel around front office-counters amid fears it will ‘offend other religions’.

Tinsel and other Christmas decorations have been outlawed at the Warwickshire Justice Centre in Nuneaton, where people pay fines.

But last night the Government denied the charge that the ban had been put in place to ensure Muslims were not offended.

They said it was because they would be insensitive for criminals to have to pay fines in a room surrounded by tinsel.

However, one courts worker wrote to community cohesion minister Sayeeda Warsi to say he had been told the ban had been imposed because tinsel would ‘break the Court Service Diversity Policy’.

This commits court service managers to ‘creating a culture where equality and diversity forms an integral part of everyday working life’ and ‘incorporating equality and diversity into day-to-day management activities’.

Baroness Warsi spoke out after receiving a letter from a worker at the centre who said: ‘I work as an admin officer in the county court and we have been told that we can’t put tinsel around our counter window as it might offend other religions, according to HMCS diversity policy.’

The Warwickshire Justice Centre houses police officers, the Crown Prosecution Service, four magistrates courts, the probation service, the local youth offending team and witness support services.

The Court Service is headed by justice minister Bridget Prentice, who is spearheading a campaign to ban pink toys being sold because they are not sufficiently ‘progressive’ and ‘funnel girls into pretty, pretty jobs’.

Baroness Warsi said: ‘First toys; now tinsel. Labour’s PC killjoys are determined to kill off Christmas.

‘This has nothing to do with diversity; it’s about the very opposite — a stultifying grey conformity.

‘Non-Christians don’t want to see Christmas banned, and they’re fed up of being patronised by Labour.’

Last night a source at the Ministry of Justice admitted that tinsel had been banned at the front-office counter at the Nuneaton office.

‘Over the counter, yes, where sensitive business like fine payments takes place,’ he said. ‘For that reason. Otherwise there is tinsel and stuff elsewhere.

‘Nothing was removed for religious or diversity reasons.

‘One piece of tinsel was removed from a counter where it was getting in the way. The rest of the tinsel remains there as festive as ever.’

And he claimed: ‘I have it on good authority that the court is one of the most festive places one could go, perhaps outside Lapland.’

The Conservatives have long accused Labour of bowing to PC concerns over Christmas — such as the famous example of Birmingham rebranding the religious festival as ‘Winterval’.

But two weeks ago, David Cameron faced embarrassment when it emerged the Tory website was selling Christmas cards with the PC message Season’s Greetings.

This is despite the fact he has in the past derided such cards as being ‘insulting tosh’.

           — Hat tip: Gaia [Return to headlines]



Vatican: Beatification of John Paul II Progresses

Vatican City, 16 Dec. (AKI) — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday is expected to authorise a decree which would pave the way for the beatification of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. The decision would move the pontiff one step closer to canonisation and full sainthood.

The pontiff is due to receive the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Angelo Amato, who will ask Benedict for final approval regarding decrees for the ‘heroic virtues’ and the miracles of ‘God’s servants’, a decisive move in the process of beatification.

‘God’s servants’ refers to John Paul II and Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest who was kidnapped, tortured and assassinated by Poland’s communist regime in 1984.

John Paul II had prayed at his tomb several times.

Because Popieluszko’s case is considered ‘martyrdom’, there is no need for recognising a miracle by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Officials in the Polish capital Warsaw are already planning a ceremony for Popieluszko in June 2010.

For John Paul II, however, there still needs to be approval of a “miracle” which should be approved in the next months.

The late pope is believed to have performed a miracle when he cured a French nun of Parkinson’s disease in 2005.

Pope John Paul II (photo) died on 2 April 2005. Moves to beatify him received a boost when Benedict waived the usual five year waiting period for him in May 2005.

There is speculation his beatification will be approved in Rome in October 2010.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Balkans


Serbia: Dutch Minister Backs Belgrade’s EU Bid

Belgrade, 16 Dec. (AKI) — Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said on Wednesday his country supported Serbia’s drive to join the European Union. But he stressed that Belgrade must arrest the remaining two fugitives wanted by the United Nations War crimes tribunal (ICTY).

After meeting president Boris Tadic, foreign minister Vuk Jeremic and other officials, Verhagen said the Netherlands strongly believed in a European future for Serbia.

However, he said his country would continue to be “strict, but just” in demanding full cooperation with the tribunal.

The Netherlands has been instrumental in blocking Serbia’s progress with the EU and Verhagen said it was essential that Serbia did everything possible to cooperate with the tribunal and arrest the remaining fugitives.

Serbia has handed over to the ICTY more than 40 indictees over the past several years, but two others remain at large — wartime Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic, wartime leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia.

The Netherlands agreed this month to abolish visas for Serbian citizens and the unfreezing of an interim trade agreement with the EU, but is still blocking the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), which is a key step towards EU membership.

Tadic and Jeremic assured Verhagen that Mladic and Hadzic would be arrested and handed over for trial as soon as they were located.

Serbian authorities claim they have no knowledge of the fugitives’ whereabouts and police minister Ivica Dacic said on Wednesday he had no idea when they might be located.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

North Africa


Al Aswany: Fundamentalism Can’t be Defeated Without Democracy

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 17 — “There are two battles in course in Egypt: one, the most visible, is for democracy, the other, no less important, is a cultural battle in which the country defends its free interpretation of religion against that of ‘the desert’. They are two battles connected to each other: if we get close to one we will be successful in the other”. These were the words of Alaa Al Aswani, author of ‘Yacobian Palace’, ‘Chicago’ and ‘Friendly Fire’. The Egyptian writer is also very active in the political debate through the ‘Kefaya’ (Enough) movement, that is now supporting the presidential candidacy of Mohamed El Baradei, and another one against the inheritance of the power of Hosni Mubarak. The battle for democracy and fundamentalism are connected to one another, he explained in an interview with ANSAmed, “because a dictatorship has a similar mentality to that of religious fanaticism, even if there can be a conflict over power between them”. But the culture of the Egyptian people “leans naturally towards democracy. From 1882 to 1953 the people fought against British occupation”. Moreover, Al Aswany went on from his dentistry office, “we Egyptians have our own interpretation of Islam based on the thought of Muhammad Abduh, who became the Mufti of Egypt in 1899: a liberal man, in favour of art, music, education for women and democracy”. All of this meant for Egypt “progress before that of the rest of the Arab world”, because for us “religion was not a barrier, but a motivation”. All of this finished in the 1980s, after the Iranian revolution in 1979, seen as “a threat by some Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia. Regimes that spent billions of dollars to promote another interpretation of Islam, Wahabism”. Interpretations from which also Egyptian society, he complained, has ended up being influenced by, when, because of “poverty and the failure of the government”, many have emigrated to Saudi Arabia. But it is truly down to the deep religiosity of the Egyptian people, Al Aswany observed, that “it is difficult to see the difference between religious people and Muslim brothers: if many women wear veils, it does not mean that there are any more votes for the movement”. For which the adherents, he calculated, are no more than 400,000 compared to the million claimed by the leaders. The story is different for the Islam that has spread into Europe, the writer went on, which is often influenced by “an extremist vision, because the majority of mosques are supported by Saudi Arabia or one of its organisations. For example, covering the face of a woman has nothing to do with religion, it is a tradition that comes before Islam”. But it is on this extremist vision that the current fear of Islam is based, pushing the Swiss to ban minarets in a recent referendum. “I was the first to write about it on October 27”, he reminded, quoting one of his weekly articles in the independent newspaper Al Shourouk, “suggesting some ideas that were not welcomed by the Egyptian government. I proposed that a delegation of teachers of Islamic culture and religious scholars go to explain that a minaret is an architectural trait and not a symbol of war”. Because in this historic moment even Islamic intellectuals “have a responsibility: if we knew more about each other, there would not be fanaticism. And in this literature too can have an extraordinary mission”.(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Algeria: Ten Arrested in Anti-Terror Operation

Algiers, 16 Dec. (AKI) — Algerian authorities have arrested ten suspected members of an Al-Qaeda cell in an anti-terrorism operation in the past two days, news reports said on Wednesday. The suspects were arrested in separate raids in the Algerian capital, Algiers, and in the east of the country, according to reports.

In the anti-terrorism operation in Algiers, police arrested six suspected members of cell linked to the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb — the terror network’s African branch.

The suspects allegedly gathered “large” sums of money for Al-Qaeda which they had extorted from small businesses on the outskirts of Algiers.

Four more suspects were arrested in Stif, 300 kilometres east of Algiers. They face charges of providing logistical support to armed groups.

The four suspects arrested in Stif are originally from Boumerdes, east of Algiers and from Bouira, southeast of the capital, and do not not have previous police records, according to Algerian daily El Khabar.

Algeria’s national security directorate has put the country’s anti-terror units on high alert and ordered security to be stepped up at checkpoints following intelligence reports that Al-Qaeda is planning terrorist attacks in the capital, El Khabar said.

Al-Qaeda claimed twin bombings in Algiers in December, 2007 that killed that killed 41 people and injured close to 200.

The bombs exploded outside Algerian government offices and the office of the United Nations refugee agency in Algiers, killing at least 11 UN employees were killed in the attack.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Martial-Arts Trained ‘Lady Guards’ Latest Security Craze in Egypt

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) — In a slightly musty gym in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, three young women in head scarves are learning how to defend themselves.

Their teacher, a huge man in loose black trousers and a white tunic, is instructing them in the finer points of Aikido, a Japanese martial art.

The women, among them 21-year-old Dawlat Sami, are learning to become “lady guards.” That’s what Sami’s employer, Falcon, an Egyptian security company, calls its growing army of female bodyguards.

It is a profession that seems somewhat out of place in conservative Egypt.

“At first, my father objected,” Sami told CNN. “But when he came with me and saw what we did, he changed his mind.”

When they’re not practicing Aikido or pumping iron under an old black-and-white poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodyguards get classroom instruction. The emphasis is on staying alert, maintaining a professional demeanor, and not getting too cozy with clients.

In the last three years, Falcon, one of Egypt’s leading security companies, has trained more than 300 female body guards. Demand for the service is growing, according to Falcon Managing Director, Sharif Khalid.

“In our society women don’t want to be searched or have their bags inspected by men,” Khalid told CNN. Falcon’s clients include movie stars, foreign visitors and patrons Khalid refers to as “society women.”

People say women can’t work as bodyguards, but I want to change that idea

—Randa Mohamed, trainee lady guard

RELATED TOPICS

Egypt

Martial Arts

Women’s Issues

Lady guards do not carry weapons. They defend clients first through diplomatic means but, if all else fails, they can disable attackers.

Female body guard training emphasizes quick thinking above all.

“The body isn’t so important,” said Khalid. “What matters is that [female body guards] can pick out suspicious people and react quickly, because with security, if you delay just a moment, things can go very wrong.”

The women who join Falcon know, however, that the skills they learn may well come in handy outside of work. “If I have any problems, or somebody bothers me, now I know how to defend myself,” Amani Mahmoud, another trainee female body guard told CNN.

Sexual harassment is a growing problem in Egypt.

According to a 2008 poll conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign female visitors polled have experienced sexually harassment.

Egypt has made some efforts to crack down on this problem: Last year a court sentenced a man to three year in prison for groping a woman on the street. But that was the exception. For the most part, Egyptian police — under paid and in many cases poorly educated — shrug off complaints from women.

So, it should come as no surprise that some women are starting to take matters into their own hands: “It’s also about making a point,” trainee Randa Mohammad told CNN.

“People say women can’t work as bodyguards, but I want to change that idea. I want to show that women can defend themselves, and defend others,” said Mohammad.

Falcon isn’t the first in the Middle East to come up with the idea of female bodyguards — Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi has been using them for years.

Gadhafi often appears in public with a phalanx of hefty “Amazons,” who are armed and aggressive. In fact, back in the 1980s, a Libyan body guard rifle-butted a CNN producer who got too close to Gadhafi.

Falcon’s lady guards, I’m happy to report, were nothing but polite and courteous with this correspondent.

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians


Arab Agents to Join Police in January

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 17 — Israel is planning to enrol, starting in January, a few hundred police agents and officers of Arab ethnic origin into the national police forces. The media announced today that the initiative was taken by Yitzhak Aharonovich (Israel Beitenu, lay radical left wing) minister of Home Security. This represents an absolute first for the State of Israel. A first pilot enrolment plan will start on January 25. The minister stated that the idea is supported by the mayors and local administrations of the Israeli main Municipalities with an Arab majority, which deem it a useful move for the consolidation of public order and a feeling of greater confidence in their areas. Even when, officially, the same administrators would rather hold on to a low profile, as reported by newspaper Haaretz. There are more than 1.5 million citizens of Arab origin living in the country (compared to a total population of approximately 7.5 million), but they are almost all exempted from military service and in effects have no police representation, except for a few coming from the Druse and Bedouin minorities. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



CIA Working With Palestinian Security Agents

US agency co-operating with Palestinian counterparts who allegedly torture Hamas supporters in West Bank

Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Gaza: Shots From Gaza on New Barrier Construction

(ANSAmed) — RAFAH, DECEMBER 17 — Some Palestinians opened fire towards the construction of, on the part of Egypt, the new barrier to hinder the digging of new tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Work on the barrier, made of steel and laid underground as confirmed by an Egyptian government newspaper today, was temporarily suspended. The shots, which occurred yesterday evening, did not cause damage or injury to the personnel on the scene. The episode was reported by official sources, but also by witnesses and the workers. According to the same sources, a new group of security forces was sent to the area to protect the works in course. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Nationalist Rabbis Attack on Barak

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 17 — A fierce personal attack on Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, the man who boasts the title of the most decorated soldier in the history of the country, was launched today by a group of ultra-orthodox rabbis close to the settlement movement and the ideology of Jewish radical nationalism. The criticism follows a recent decision by Barak to cut off all relations between the armed forces and a yeshiva (rabbinical college) run by a rabbi who refused to condemn the blatant insubordination committed by several settler-soldiers — students at the religious schools — who went against orders to dismantle settlement outposts in the West Bank. An official response to the decision is expected on Sunday from the whole college of directors of the yeshivots. But ahead of this response the spokesman for the rabbis, Eliezar Melamed, spiritual (and political) guide of the Har Bracha yeshiva, wanted to begin his challenge today. Barak thundered rabbi Benny Kalmanson on behalf of everyone has made a whole series of mistakes, as a person and as a leader…and he has laid himself open to repugnant episodes of corruption and hedonism. So he is therefore an outcast, against whom his brother Melamed must become a symbol of resistance for all the hesder yeshivots united. The hesder rabbinical colleges (agreement in Hebrew) have agreements with the armed forces, whereby their students can carry out military service while continuing their religious studies for some of the time. In recent years they have become a reservoir for Israeli fighting units: precious, but often sensitive to ideological impulses, to the cult of Israel the Great, and the precepts of the rabbis rather than the orders of their commandants. The situation is something which an old general like Barak wants to bring back into line, but not without igniting a confrontation over the uncertain outcome. Even more, against the background of the spirit of rebellion which is spreading throughout the settlement movement — his field of reference — after the moratorium imposed by the government on settlements in the West Bank. Rebellion — warns the chief of police, Dudi Cohen — is now at the point of overstepping the red line. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



New Banknotes: Sharett is Out, Begin and Rabin Are in

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 17 — New banknotes that will be issued by Israel will include the faces of two of Israels most historically important prime ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, who for most of their political careers were at the extreme opposite ends. Newspapers today reported that the decision was definitively taken by Stanley Fischer, governor of the Central Bank. This is the first round of fresh faces on banknotes since the birth of the Israeli shekel. Begin and Rabin (respectively leader of the Israeli right wing and Labour prime minister responsible for the Oslo peace agreements, before being killed by a radical Jewish right-winger in 1995) will feature on two of the most widespread banknotes and will join icons such as the ideologist of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and the founder of Jewish State, David Ben-Gurion: both still in place on their respective banknotes. The people who instead will disappear are former presidents Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Zalman Shazar, writer S.Y. Agnon, and Moshe Sharett, the prime minister who followed Ben-Gurion: one of the greatest pacifists, if not the greatest, in Israeli history, who is by now little known by the general populace. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Obama Policies to Create Hamasland?

Terror group plotting takeover of strategic, biblical territory

The Hamas terrorist organization is working to establish a military wing in the strategic West Bank, according to Jordanian intelligence officials speaking to WND.

The Obama administration has backed a Palestinian Authority-led state in the West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month announced a 10-month freeze of Jewish construction in the territory in an attempt to jumpstart talks aimed at creating a West Bank PA state, a move that would first see an Israeli retreat from the area.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Palestinian Christians Urge Boycott

Condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Christian leaders call on their brethren worldwide to rise up in action

Palestinian Christian leaders, representing churches and church-related organisations, have launched a “landmark campaign” aimed at enlisting Christians worldwide in proactive efforts to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, reports Khaled Amayreh in Bethlehem. The unprecedented initiative, called “Kairos Palestine-2009: A moment of truth”, appeals to churches worldwide to treat Israel in the same way they had treated the erstwhile South African apartheid regime.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



UK-Livni: Knesset Petition Threatens Boycott

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 17 — A possible boycott of British products in Israel in response to legal actions taken by the UK judiciary against Israeli political leaders has been proposed in the Knesset (the parliament in Jerusalem) in a petition signed by 40 representatives of all political parties so far, though for the moment of symbolic value only. The petition arose after the incident — similar in kind to others before it — in which Kadima (opposition — centrist) leader Tzipi Livni was forced to call off a trip to London due to an arrest warrant for war crimes was issued against her, submitted by citizens of Arab origin in relation to Operation Cast Lead — the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter when Livni was Foreign Minister, in which a total of 1,400 Palestinians were killed. The signers of the proposal condemn the initiative of the British judiciary and have asked that the UK government make amends. They also see the UK’s intention to include on the labels for West Bank products whether they were produced by Palestinians or Israeli settlers as oppressive, and have requested that the Israeli government “look into” suitable counter-responses in trade with the UK. Included among the latter may be customs duties on British products imported by Israel or the boycotting of British Airways. The Livni case has set off diplomatic tensions between Jerusalem and London, which on Tuesday resulted in the summoning of the British ambassador in Israel and the suspension — confirmed by Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon — of all reciprocal visits by official delegations. The state of tension relaxed somewhat yesterday after the UK government promised to revise its legal system to prevent the repetition of similar incidents, and the personal telephone call with which prime minister Gordon Brown assured Livni that she would always be “welcome in Great Britain”. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Why Can’t H. Clinton Bring Israeli-Palestinian Peace? Look at What B. Clinton Offered Which the Palestinians Rejected

by Barry Rubin

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an interview to al-Jazira television, December 10, which reminds us of something exceptionally important for any discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict: what her husband offered the Palestinians-the last time a comprehensive deal was proffered-and was turned down almost exactly nine years ago.

How does Clinton explain the lack of a peace agreement? She blames it on George W. Bush:

“I regretted that there was a lull in it after my husband left office because we were poised to make such progress, and if we had been able to get it over the goal line, there would have been a Palestinian state for nearly a decade now.”“

When her husband left office there wasn’t just a “lull.” Bill Clinton had spent two terms working hard to achieve a peace agreement and he failed because the Palestinians rejected every offer he made and then launched a massive terrorist-based war on Israel that lasted five years. The beginning of understanding the issue is to admit that the reason there hasn’t been a Palestinian state for nearly a decade is because the Palestinian leadership turned it down.

Until that admission happens, all of this running around is a wasted effort…

           — Hat tip: Barry Rubin [Return to headlines]

Middle East


Global Corporation Supplying Iran Missiles?

Program causes ‘concern’ for U.S. defense secretary

A German company that worked with Iraq in the development of its weapons of mass destruction under Saddam Hussein now may be concentrating its technology and efforts in assisting Iran in its ballistic missile program, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Engineering giant Siemens is under investigation for allegedly violating export control laws on two separate shipments of components to Iran.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Iran Troops ‘Seize Iraq Oil Well’

Iranian troops have entered southern Iraqi territory and taken control of an oil well, reports say.

An Iraqi official played down the incident, saying the area was abandoned and right on a disputed border section.

Iranian soldiers crossed the border and raised an Iranian flag over the Fakkah oil field, a US military spokesman told the AFP news agency.

But an Iranian oil company spokesman denied the accusation, saying no troops had taken control of any oil well.

“The company denies Iranian soldiers taking control of any oil well inside Iraqi territory,” the National Iranian Oil Company spokesman was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Confirmation

Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister confirmed the Iranians stayed in Iraq and were in control of the well.

Earlier it was reported that they had withdrawn back across the border.

Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji initially told the Reuters news agency the reports of the Iranian incursion were not true.

But Mr Khafaji later confirmed the incursion had taken place, and said 11 Iranians had dug-in at the oil well and had not left.

“At 3:30 this afternoon, 11 Iranian soldiers infiltrated the Iran-Iraq border and took control of the oil well. They raised the Iranian flag, and they are still there until this moment,” he told the Reuters news agency.

He said there had been no military response from Iraqi forces..

“We are awaiting orders from our leader,” he said.

The incursion is one of several that have occurred in the last few days, he said.

The well is about 500m from an Iranian border fort and about 1km from an Iraqi fort, US Colonel Peter Newell told AFP.

           — Hat tip: 4symbols [Return to headlines]



Pentagon: Insurgents Intercepted Drone Spy Videos

WASHINGTON — Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have hacked into live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military’s eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.

[…]

Shiite fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The interception, first done there at least a year ago, was possible because the remotely flown planes had unprotected communications links.

Within the last several months, the military has found evidence of at least one instance where insurgents in Afghanistan also monitored U.S. drone video, a second defense official said. He had no details on how many times it was done in Afghanistan or by which group.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Saudi to Launch TV Channels on Koran, Sunnah

(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 16 — Four new television channels will be launched in Saudi Arabia, the Culture and Information Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja has announced. Two channels will be broadcast from Makkah and Madinah and dedicated to the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah, while the others will focus on economic and cultural issues, the daily Arab News reported. The channels will start broadcasting at the beginning of the next Hijrah year, the paper reported. “The new channel for culture will be a venue for academics and intellectuals to air their views on various issues,” the minister told the paper. Khoja also announced the launch of five new FM radio stations. Fifteen companies have already been shortlisted including, Saudi Specialized Publishing Company, an affiliate of the Saudi Research & Marketing Group, Rotana Audio Visual Co, owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and Arab Radio and Television Network, run by Saleh Kamil, the paper said. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Zawahiri’s Wife Releases Statement, Tells Women They Can be Suicide Bombers

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, has been a regular presence on Islamic web sites for years , releasing statements and videos via al-Qaeda’s propaganda arm that blast the West and urge Muslims to wage holy war. Now his wife may have joined the family business.

In what is thought to be her first public statement, Omaima Hassan published a statement on Islamic web sites Thursday that encouraged “Muslim sisters” to assist with jihad, but only in suitably feminine ways. She called supporting jihad “an obligation for all Muslims, men and women.” ABC News could not independently confirm the authenticity of the statement.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Russia


Moscow’s Arrogance Leads to Turkmen Gas Flowing Towards China

The new gas pipeline will bring natural gas to Xinjiang. It represents a slap in the face of Russia’s approach to energy politics in Central Asia. For months, Turkmenistan and Russia were at loggerheads over gas prices. China is the big winner.

Ashgabat (AsiaNews) — The Kremlin is in a tight spot and must rethink its approach to Central Asia energy, this according to some Russia newspapers that commented Monday’s inauguration of the new Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline. The new facility is crucial to the geopolitics of the Caspian Sea and more broadly Asia. It reinforces China’s presence in the region at the expense of Russia, which hitherto had held a stranglehold over gas exported from the former Soviet republics.

Once it is in full operation in 2013, the US$ 20 billion pipeline will stretch 1,883 kilometres. It will have a capacity to deliver 40 billion cubic metres a year to China’s Xinjiang province, through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. A deal between China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and KazStroyService will however allow Kazakhstan to keep 10 billion cubic metres.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, as well as the Presidenta of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, and Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, were present at the inauguration ceremony of the Trans Asian Gas Pipeline (TAGP) in Saman-Depe.

This structure is a very important element in Asia’s energy equation, especially since it is the first to bypass Russia.

For Turkmen President Berdymukhamedov himself, the pipeline is more than about economics, it is a signal to Russia that Turkmenistan wants closer ties to China, one of the guarantors of global security.

Why did Moscow’s relations with its former satellites sour? Its arrogance. In July 2008, Gazprom signed an agreement to buy Turkmen gas at higher, European prices, but in April of this year, the Russian energy giant shut down Turkmen supplies after a gas pipeline exploded in that country.

For the Turkmen, Moscow was behind the incident because it reduced pressure in the pipeline, causing the explosion. This came after Turkmenistan increased gas prices and threatened to ban its resale, which would have made the gas deal worthless from Gazprom’s perspective.

After months of tensions, Moscow relented and allowed the gas to flow again, but the atmosphere between the two countries was no longer the same.

China is taking advantage of Russia’s arrogance, profiting from a softer but more incisive diplomacy. Beijing gave Ashgabat a US$ 4 billion loan this year.

The CNPC is the only foreign company with exploration rights in Turkmenistan’s gas fields.

Russia’s Gazprom has failed to invest in the country, choosing instead to get cheap Turkmen gas in order to resell it at a higher price. Now however, Moscow’s approach is showing its limits, Vitaly Bushuyev, head of the Energy Strategy Institute, said.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]



Russia Accuses US of Last-Minute Obstacle to Nuclear Arms Treaty

Washington and Moscow have repeatedly claimed to be close to signing a deal that would slash their nuclear arsenals by a third and substantially cut the number of missiles, submarines and bombers they maintain to launch a nuclear strike.

But the initial Dec 5 deadline for replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty came and went without a result and now it looks as if there is a real risk that the new end-of-the-year deadline will also be missed.

[…]

The Kremlin is anxious to water down what it believes to be a humiliating verification regime that in the past saw US inspectors based at a ballistic missile factory deep inside Russia. “It is high time to get rid of excessive suspiciousness,” Mr Lavrov said. As the US attempts to “reset” its relations with Russia, the Kremlin believes its negotiating leeway is growing.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

South Asia


Ex-UN Afghan Deputy Denies Conspiracy

KABUL — The former deputy U.N. chief in Afghanistan said Thursday that he had proposed replacing the Afghan president with an interim government to avert a constitutional crisis if a fraud-marred election could not be resolved in time. He denied the suggestion that it was a plot against President Hamid Karzai.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



Norway: No People to Kabul

From Norwegian: The Norwegians are having trouble finding diplomats who are willing to work in Kabul. The job is difficult as the embassy employees live and work there and cannot leave. Most of the Norwegian aid money goes to Afghanistan.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Far East


Japanese Whalers Using ‘Military’ Sonic Device: Activists

SYDNEY — Anti-whaling activists accused Japanese fishermen Friday of using a military-type sonic device and water cannon against their helicopter as risky skirmishes in Antarctic seas escalated.

The Sea Shepherd animal rights group said the whalers used a Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD) to repel the activists’ helicopter, and then blasted the aircraft with water after it landed back on the anti-whalers’ ship.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]



N. Korean Hackers May Have Stolen US War Plans

South Korea’s military is investigating a cyber attack in which North Korean hackers may have stolen secret defence plans outlining Seoul and Washington’s strategy in the event of war on the Korean peninsula.

The highly sensitive information, codenamed Oplan 5027, may have found its way into hostile hands last month after a South Korean officer used an unsecured USB memory stick to download it.

It reportedly contained a summary of military operations involving South Korean and US troops should North Korea conduct a pre-emptive strike or attempt to invade.

According to the Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, the document outlines troop deployments, a list of North Korean targets, amphibious landing scenarios and how to establish a post-war occupation.

The Yonhap news agency said the plan allowed for the deployment of 700,000 US troops in the event of a full-scale war.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Obama Told China: I Can’t Stop Israel Strike on Iran Indefinitely

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz.

They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.

The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama’s meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat.

After the Beijing summit, the U.S. administration thought the Chinese had understood the message; Beijing agreed to join the condemnation of Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency only a week after Obama’s visit. But in the past two weeks the Chinese have maintained their hard stance regarding the West’s wishes to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The Israeli officials say the Americans now understand that the Chinese agreed to join the condemnation announcement only because Obama made a personal request to Hu, not as part of a policy change.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Australia — Pacific


A Woman Was Impaled on a Steel Fence for an Agonising 47 Minutes Waiting for an Ambulance.

The 34-year-old received no pain relief while her body was supported by volunteer emergency services workers during the ordeal at Yarrawonga, in Victoria’s north.

Ambulance Victoria has launched an investigation into the delay.

It was contacted at 9.42pm on Tuesday and told Kim Broadbent had been impaled through the groin in a fall. A crew did not arrive until 10.29pm.

There was no paramedic available in the border town that night and sources said a graduate officer was refused permission to attend.

A crew was sent from Wangaratta, 55km away, but was not cleared to travel over the speed limit or with lights and sirens.

By then, Ms Broadbent had spent more than 47 minutes seriously injured, lapsing in and out of consciousness.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa


Controversial African Bishop Defrocked

Vatican City, 17 Dec. (AKI) — The Vatican has defrocked the controversial African archbishop Emmanuel Milingo after he continued to ordain bishops after being excommunicated from the Catholic church. In a statement released on Thursday, the Vatican said it had taken what it called “extraordinary action” because of Milingo’s “regrettable conduct”.

Milingo outraged the Catholic Church in 2001 when he married a South Korean woman. He has also practised exorcism and faith healing.

The archbishop, who comes from Zambia, was excommunicated in 2006 after installing four married men as bishops.

He had been threatening to illegally ordain bishops as part of a breakaway church that would allow priests to marry, according to a Vatican spokesman.

In the statement, the Vatican said Milingo had committed “grave crimes” which were proof of his stubborn refusal to comply with church regulations.

“The Holy See has therefore been obliged to impose upon him the further penalty of dismissal from the clerical state,” the Vatican said in a statement.

The Vatican said that in spite of efforts by the late pope John Paul II and by Pope Benedict XVI, Milingo had shown “no sign” of repentance.

“Rather, he has persisted in the unlawful exercise of acts belonging to the episcopal office, committing new crimes against the unity of the Holy Church,” said the Vatican statement.

“Specifically, in recent months, Archbishop Milingo has proceeded to several other episcopal ordinations,” the statement added.

Under canon (or church) law, Milingo will no longer be allowed to officiate as a priest or to dress as a priest, the Vatican said. Its statement referred to him as “Mr”.

Milingo, who has been an outspoken critic of the Vatican’s celibacy rule, will still be obliged to be celibate, the statement said.

A former archbishop in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, Milingo stunned the Vatican in 2001 when he married Maria Sung, a 43-year-old South Korean woman at a mass wedding presided over by South Korean-born evangelist, Sun Myung Moon.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]

Latin America


Rash of Public Lynchings Hit Guatemala

The young blonde woman and three men were allegedly intent on robbing a bus in Guatemala City. But they were thwarted when passengers rose up against the gang.

The men escaped, but the woman, Alejandra Maria Torres, was captured and then subjected to local justice. She was stripped to the waist, savagely beaten by a lynch mob, and then doused in gasoline.

Luckily, police arrived and arrested her before she was badly burned, according to press reports.

Tuesday’s violence was the latest incident of mob justice in Guatemala where lynchings — which include hangings, beatings, stoning and dousing with petrol — are common. This year, 219 people have been lynched and 45 have died.

           — Hat tip: Esther [Return to headlines]

Immigration


Illegal Workers on Elmendorf AFB

A contractor hired for a major construction project on Elmendorf Air Force Base broke both state and federal law.

At issue: the illegal immigrants that were granted access to the base to help construct the Air Force’s new F-22 hangars.

This summer the Air Force started a multi-million dollar effort to build new F-22 hangars on Elmendorf Air Force Base. The contractor hired for the steel work was Steel System Erectors out of California.

An investigation has reviled the company employed undocumented workers and allowed them access to a national security site.

A “critical infrastructure site essential to national security.” That is how the federal government describes Elmendorf Air Force Base.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]



Italy: Immigrant Population Up to 4.8 Million in 2009, Study

(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 14 — Italy’s official immigrant population grew to 4.8 million by January 2009, up by half a million from the year before, according to a new report released Monday. The study by multiethnic research foundation, ISMU, showed that while the number of foreign residents in Italy continues to grow, the number of illegal immigrants has begun to decline. The foundation estimates that the 651,000 illegal immigrants in Italy at the beginning of 2008 had fallen to 422,000 by January this year. ISMU General Secretary Vincenzo Cesareo said “we can predict from this data that the number of immigrants in Italy will total over ten million by 2030”. Some 968,000 Romanian residents make up the largest foreign community in Italy, followed by 538,000 Albanians and 497,000 from Morocco. Moroccans, however, account for the largest number of illegal immigrants (59,000), followed by Albanians (54,000) and Ukrainians (28,000). Islam remains the leading religion among immigrants, with over 1.2 million foreign-born Muslims in Italy, nearly one third of the country’s immigrant population. Catholics came in second, accounting for 860,000 non-native residents or 23% of the total. The number of foreign school children is also on the rise from 574,000 enrolled last year school year to 627,000 in 2009, around 7% of all grade-school students in Italy. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Spain: 11.6% Residents Are Foreigners, Double the EU Average

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 16 — Spain’s foreign resident population is 11.6% of the total, more than double the EU average of 6.2%, according to data published today by Eurostat for the International Day of Immigrants, cited by news agency, EFE. In Spain, there are 5,262,000 residents from foreign countries, compared to 30.8 million according to EU census numbers from January 1, 2008, which includes 11.3 million Europeans who have moved to other member states, while the remaining number come from outside the EU. Of the resident foreigners in Spain, over 2 million come from other EU member states. The Romanian community is the largest (14%), followed by Moroccans (12.3%), and Ecuadorians (8%). Spain is second only to Germany, which has 7 million foreigners, in terms of total immigrants, followed by the UK, France, and Italy. (ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]



Turks and Moroccans Most Numerous in EU

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 16 — In 2008, 12% of foreigners in the European Union coming from countries outside of the 27 Member States were Turks, with 2.4 million immigrants, followed by Moroccans (1.7 million), in other words 9% of non-EU foreign citizens. Third place belongs to the Albanians (1 million citizens), which represent 5% of foreign residents coming from non-EU Countries. This is the scenario painted by a report published by Eurostat, the European statistics office, which states that 6.2% of the EUs population is made up of foreigners. Still in 2008, EU Member States with the highest presence of foreigners coming from a single Country were Greece, with 64% of immigrants coming from Albania, followed by Slovenia (47% from Bosnia Herzegovina), Hungary (37% from Romania), and Luxembourg (37% from Portugal). The report claims that 37% of foreigners which in 2008 lived in one of the Member States were citizens of another Member State: the most numerous came from Romania (1.7 million, equal to 1.5% of the EU total) followed by Italian (1.3 million, equal to 11%) and Polish (1.2 million, 11%) emigrants. Turks represented one fourth of foreigners present in Germany (25,2%), 13.6% in Holland, 9.7% in Denmark and 8.4% in Romania. Overall, the highest number of foreigners was reported in Germany (7.3 million), Spain (5.3 million), Unite Kingdom (4 million), France (3.7 million) and Italy (3.4 million).(ANSAmed).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]

Culture Wars


Jennings ‘Credited’ With ‘Heterosexism’ Questionnaire

Researchers cite appearance of document under ‘safe schools’ czar’s byline

It’s a document that has appeared over the last decade or so in most public and many private schools, and it essentially undermines the basic building block of civilization, the family, by raising questions such as, “What do you think caused your heterosexuality?”

Now its authorship has been attributed by an organization of pro-family researchers to Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s choice to be the chief of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

General


Obama: We Are Running Short on Time for Climate Deal

Copenhagen, Denmark (CNN) — Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference are “running short on time” to reach agreement on a deal, U.S. President Barack Obama told them Friday.

“There is no time to waste,” he said. “Now I believe it’s the time for the nations and the people of the world to come behind a common purpose. We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides.”

Obama sounded impatient with the progress of the two-week conference so far, saying the scope of climate change discussions over the years have produced little more than talk.

“These international discussions have essentially taken place now for almost two decades, and we have very little to show for it other than an increased acceleration of the climate change phenomenon,” Obama said. “The time for talk is over.”

The president said that the “pieces” of an accord have become clearer in the past fortnight in Copenhagen, but that countries must now decide to sign on, even if they feel the framework is imperfect.

“No country will get everything that it wants,” he said.

Without mentioning China specifically, the president challenged that country’s reluctance to allow transparency in international review.

“I don’t know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and ensuring that we are meeting our commitments,” Obama said. “That doesn’t make sense. It would be a hollow victory.”

Amid signs that climate talks could be falling apart at the critical stage, Obama arrived in the Danish capital Friday morning and immediately ripped up his planned schedule in a desperate attempt to salvage a global deal to cut carbon emissions.

He abruptly canceled a ceremonial one-on-one meeting with the Danish prime minister in order to jump into an emergency meeting with almost 20 key leaders — including representatives from China, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and India.

China’s involvement is critical because it has been holding up a climate deal over whether the United States and other wealthy nations should pay to help developing countries deal with the cost of global warming.

Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for 55 minutes Friday, a White House official said.

The meeting was a “constructive discussion that touched upon all of the key issues,” the official said, including the three major points Obama touched on in his speech: mitigation, transparency, and financing.

Obama and Wen directed their negotiators to work on a bilateral basis and with negotiators from other countries to see whether an agreement could be reached in Copenhagen, the official said. It means the U.S. negotiators have now split in two, divided between the Chinese negotiations and the ongoing multilateral negotiations, the official said.

The meeting between Obama and Wen was a “step forward,” the official said, without providing details.

Speaking at the plenary session ahead of Obama, Wen sought to reassure delegates that China takes the issue of climate change seriously.

“It is with a sense of responsibility to the Chinese people and the whole (of) mankind that the Chinese government has set the target for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “This is a voluntary action China has taken. … We have not attached any condition to the target, nor have we linked it to the target of any other country. We will honor our word with action.”

He said it was unacceptable to “turn a blind eye to historical responsibilities” or undermine the efforts of developing countries to work their way out of poverty and deal with climate change.

Ahead of his arrival, Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the conference to reveal that the United States will pay into a $100 billion-plus global fund to help poorer nations.

But the money comes with two big caveats: The nearly 200 nations gathered here must sign on to a global deal to cut emissions, and China must provide more transparency to show it is complying with the new commitment.

Wen urged the conference to “pay attention to the practicality of the targets” they set. A long-term perspective is important, he said, but so is a focus on the present.

“It is necessary to set a direction for our long-term efforts, but it’s even more important to reach near-term targets,” he said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez objected to Obama’s arrival only on the last day of the summit, calling him “the emperor who comes in the middle of the night, in the darkness in an anti-democratic way, and cooks up a document. … We will never accept it.”

Chavez complained that he had been waiting several days to take the floor but that Obama had turned up, been invited to speak immediately, and then left.

“We don’t have first-category presidents and second-category presidents,” Chavez said. “We are all equal here.”

Chavez also criticized Obama for spending so much money to bail out failing banks when he could have spent some of that money on the environment.

“If the climate was a bank, it would have been saved already,” he said.

Environmental lobbyists close to the talks, who had been optimistic about a deal Thursday, said Friday the negotiations got “rocky” after key officials met through the night and made very little progress.

The state of play may best be summed up by a White House official who told reporters: “Everything’s fluid.”

In his speech, Obama laid out the quandary that nations find themselves in at the conference.

“There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached, and no obligations with respect to transparency,” he said. “They think that the most advanced nations should pay a higher price. I understand that.

“There are those advanced nations who think that developing countries either cannot absorb this assistance, or that they will not be held accountable, effectively, and that the world’s fastest-growing emitters should bear a greater share of the burden.”

But America is already on board with a global deal, Obama said, and he laid responsibility for signing it at the feet of his fellow world leaders.

“We have made our commitments, we will do what we say,” he said. “Now, I believe that it’s the time for the nations and the people of the world to come together behind a common purpose.”

           — Hat tip: TB [Return to headlines]



When Reds Go Green

Divisions between the advanced countries and the Third World developing countries at the Copenhagen Climate Summit are revealing an underlying agenda to redistribute wealth globally that gives impetus for the United Nations goal to impose a cap-and-trade tax on the United States and Europe, for the benefit of China, India and the rest of the developed world.

“Save the planet, scrap capitalism,” a protester in Copenhagen at a socialist and communist protest, highlighted by red communist flags displaying the hammer and sickle of the former Soviet Union, told a reporter from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT.

The U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen this week increasingly appeared to be on the verge of collapsing as the United States engaged in increasingly bitter exchanges with China and India, while the African Nations walked out.

The crux of the issue is that the developing world, led by China and India, want the developed world, led by the United States and Europe, to pay to developing nations hundreds of billions of dollars in what amount to reparations for emitting carbon.

[…]

Basically, the United Nations and leftist-oriented climate alarmists want to produce a two-tier global carbon-tax system in which manufacturing will be punished for remaining in the United States and the European Union and rewarded for relocating to an emerging economy such as China or India.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]