I got back from my day trip very late, no time to post anything but the news feed.
I met this afternoon with some very interesting and well-informed people from the D.C. Counterjihad. One of them is an author, and I may get hired to edit his book. It will be a while before I find out.
Take a look at the NYT story about African-Iraqis, who have been an oppressed minority in Mesopotamia for centuries. Some of them say that illegal slavery continued into the 1950s.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Esther, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Lurker from Tulsa, Sean O’Brian, spackle, Steen, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Anti-Muslims Discrimination Up: CAIR
WASHINGTON — Discrimination against Muslims continues to grow in America, where Islamophobic rhetoric is used to smear Muslims and undermine their continuous strive for inclusion, according to a report by America’s largest Muslim civil rights group.
“There is an increase in civil rights cases, the highest reported to CAIR since the foundation of this report,” Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told IslamOnline.net on Thursday, December 3.
The group released earlier Thursday its 14th annual report on the state of Muslims civil rights in the US.
The report — the only annual study of its kind — offers a summary of incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment reported to CAIR during 2008.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Are Officials Hiding Details in Hijacking ‘Dry Run’?
Airline silent on witness’ testimony of mock shootings aboard plane
Testimony of a passenger in the gate of Nov. 17 AirTran Flight 297 suggests the airline may be deliberately leaving out key details of an onboard incident that affirm widespread speculation the flight was the subject of a “dry run” by Muslim terrorists.
Dr. Keith Robinson, a Houston, Texas, chaplain who occasionally works through the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told WND he is standing by his written account of the incident, which includes testimony that a passenger told him Arabic men sang, danced and pretended to shoot the other passengers before the plane was returned to the gate.
None of these details have been addressed in AirTran’s account of what happened aboard Flight 297.
[Comments from JD: Wow. You gotta read all the details in the article. Airlines should start doing security video recordings of the passengers in order to collect evidence of such activities.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Binghamton: 3 Muslim Students Say They Tried to Avoid Al-Zahrani
VESTAL — Encounters with accused killer Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani led several local Muslims to take steps to avoid him when they saw him on campus or elsewhere in the community.
Al-Zahrani, the man accused of fatally stabbing Binghamton University Professor Richard Antoun on campus Friday, had accused fellow Middle Eastern students of following him, answering a greeting of peace with an obscene insult, and disparaging a local mosque, according to three students interviewed Saturday night.
[…]
Though Al-Zahrani claimed to be Muslim, the students said, a true follower of the religion would not have harmed a professor or have spoken as Al-Zahrani did. Kasim Kopuz, imam of the Islamic Association of the Southern Tier, said association members were not familiar with Al-Zahrani.
One student was offended by a comment Al-Zahrani made to him about a year ago.
“He insulted Islam, my religion, which is a good religion,” said Samer Salameh, a master’s degree candidate, who said Al-Zahrani used the phrase ‘garbage in Johnson City’ in an apparent reference to a local mosque. “That is not acting like a Muslim.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Climate Change Hoax Ignored by Obama, Gore and the Elite Media
Opponent’s of so-called Cap-and-Trade environmental legislation are quick to remind Obama’s political allies that besides being destructive to the US economy, such legislation is based — wholly or partially — on faulty or manipulated science.
“These liberal-left politicians and activists see an opportunity to use so-called global warming as a means to push forward their Marxist philosophy. Part of the agenda is to take away wealth from the American people and give it to Third-World countries,” said political strategist Mike Baker.
The evidence provided by the intercepted emails of renowned climatologists has created one of the biggest scandals in the last decade — if not the century, according to Baker.
Thousands of emails and documents allegedly “stolen” from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.
These leaked emails provide compelling evidence that much of what is being touted as scientific fact is in reality erroneous, fraudulent, and perhaps criminal if participating scientists used their phony research to acquire government grants.
Several emails contained discussions about how to best portray data sets, among other topics. Scientists maintain their comments have been taken out of context, but those who fiercely oppose the climate change thesis argue the emails invalidate all the research.
Even the leftist newspaper Telegraph described its newsroom’s shock over discovering that the documents revealed scientists were “cooking the books,” in order to prove the earth is warming at an alarming rate.
What is even more shocking is that the authors of the emails are not just any old bunch of academics. “Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” stated Baker.
Baker points to the senders and recipients of the leaked emails saying that they are a “who’s who” of science. Their ranks include Doctors Michael Mann, Ben Santer, Kevin Trenbeth, and even Al Gore’s climate guru, Dr. James Hansen. Gore used Hansen’s studies in his Oscar-winning motion picture An Inconvenient Truth.
Even after being caught with the “smoking gun,” they and their defenders have offered every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offense.
[…]
Meanwhile in the US, major media outlets continue to ignore the story, according to the media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media.
Since the emails where first discovered, ABC had only mentioned the story once, on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopolous, and CBS and NBC still has never reported the leaked emails on the morning or evening news, according to AIM.
“Rather than focus on this huge scientific scandal, the timing of which is critical considering the cap and trade legislation stalled in the Senate and the upcoming Copenhagen meeting supposedly intended to combat global warming— the mainstream media have done their best to ignore it.
“The scandal involves the destruction of data, the manipulation and cover-up of data, and a plan to punish scientific journals that might dare to publish the views of skeptics of the man made global warming theory. They realize that a full airing of the facts would likely undermine an important part of President Obama’s agenda, and expose the corruption of a significant part of the scientific establishment,” writes AIM’s contributing editor Allie Duzett.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview with the Washington Post from that Obama’s decision to go to Copenhagen suggests that “he’ll be here at the end to help seal the deal.”
“The Washington Post is one of the culprits in this enormous cover up,” accuses Mike Baker. “And why aren’t reporters flocking to Al Gore for his reaction to this proof that climate change is a farce?”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tulsa Business Closes Without Warning, More Than 100 People Jobless
TULSA, OK — More than 100 people have lost their jobs after a Tulsa business closed without any warning. Automated Research and Marketing told employees to go home on Tuesday after it couldn’t provide any paychecks. Now some employees say it has put a cloud over Christmas.
“Well, I never thought I would actually work for a company that would just run off with my money,” said Myia Cole, a former employee.
“I feel like I was robbed, that’s how I feel like,” said Eunice Reed, a former employee.
Eunice Reed and Myia Cole are close friends and both are out of a job.
“It’s just devastating that I can be working somewhere and then all of the sudden someone just disappear,” said Eunice Reed.
They both worked for Automated Research and Marketing or ARM Services, it’s a telemarketing company at the Fontana Shopping Center.
The doors are now locked and the building is vacant after shutting down operations on Tuesday. No one answered the phone when The News On 6 called the Tulsa location and the number for a corporate office in Arkansas is disconnected.
Cole and Reed say the company owes them three weeks worth of paychecks.
“I’m just holding on. I mean, it’s Christmas, (a couple of gifts) is all I got right there for my kids,” Myia Cole said. “What am I supposed to do now?”
The Tulsa Better Business Bureau says the employees may be able to get their money back, but it will be an uphill battle. So while the employees want the money by Christmas, the BBB says it will most likely take several months, if they get it back at all.
“No food, no job, no money,” said Myia Cole.
“Lost” is how Cole describes her life now. She’s not sure what will happen next. She’s not even sure why she has no job.
“Just high and dry. You try to do the right thing, try to be a good citizen and this is what you get, this is what you get in the end,” said Myia Cole.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Born in Canada, Educated, From Respected Families and They Might be Fighting for the Shadowy Al-Shabab
The photos were laid out one after another, headshots of five young Somali-Canadian men who disappeared in mid-October.
The man from the East Africa desk of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service asked anguished parents the usual questions: Do you recognize any of the men in these pictures? Did you know them, or did your son? Did anything change in his life recently? Any indication of new friends or new interests?
The families often had no answers. Yes, some sons had recently chastised their parents for not showing sufficient religious devotion, friends say. Others had dropped out of college or lost interest in their studies. But most parents remain bewildered by their sons’ disappearance.
The men left the country without a word of warning. They range in age from early 20s to early 30s and all worshipped at the Abu Huraira mosque in North York, community leaders say. Two or three have since called home to say they travelled to Kenya, but didn’t say whether they ever plan to return to Toronto. The language they used in the phone calls is similar, an indication that they may have been told what to say.
Security officials believe the missing men have crossed Kenya’s northern border with Somalia to join al-Shabab — literally “the youth” — an al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist movement that has swept across southern and central Somalia.
“Somalia’s fragile coalition government appears helpless against a widespread Islamist insurgency that is gradually tightening its grip,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said in a speech last month. He added he was particularly concerned about the jihad spreading to “Somali-Canadians who travel to Somalia to fight and then return.”
On Thursday, a suicide bombing believed to be the work of the al-Shabab ripped through a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu, killing three Somali cabinet ministers, several journalists and more than a dozen students. Similar bombings have been perpetrated by Somalis raised in Europe and the United States.
In Somalia, and increasingly in Canada, community leaders view such attacks as war on their own futures. The refugee communities that fled the civil strife 20 years ago had hoped that generations raised in the West would break the cycle of bloodshed, poverty and anarchy. The cruel twist is that a handful of youth within the Somali diaspora are being pulled back to their homeland to perpetuate it.
Security officials say al-Shabab is to Somalia what the Taliban was to Afghanistan a decade ago: Violent Islamist warriors who promise law and order, but whose barbaric practices include cutting off the limbs of thieves and stoning teenage rape victims to death.
Somalia hasn’t had a stable national government since 1991. The U.S., the UN, Ethiopia and the African Union have all tried unsuccessfully to bring a semblance of security to the country. The current leadership, known as the Transitional Federal Government, has limited reach even within the capital, Mogadishu. It’s opposed by several rebel groups, most notably al-Shabab, as well as the pirates that hold sway in the northern province of Puntland.
Last month, U.S. prosecutors charged a group of American Somalis with recruiting at least 20 of their own kinsmen from the Minneapolis area to join the al-Shabab, including some who have become suicide bombers. Until recently, no one in Canada thought Toronto would be the next target.
“We used to argue with our American friends. We would say, ‘We will never have this extremism in Canada because we are a tolerant society.’ … None of our mosques were known for spreading an extremist message,” said Abdurahman Jibril, head of the Somali Canadian National Council, a group that lobbies to improve social services for Somali immigrants.
What’s most troubling for Somali-Canadian leaders is that these are not young men who struggled to adjust to life in the West. At least two were born in Canada. The others were educated here from primary school onwards. They are the children of respected families who have found work and integrated into the broader community, leaders say. They attended either college or university. Most of the missing men can’t even speak Somali, the community leaders add.
Parents are perplexed: They still see the Somali conflict as an internecine tribal war, not a religious conflict. How could their sons reconcile returning to a ravaged country their families sought so desperately escape?
A further contradiction is that they may have joined a movement based primarily in Somalia’s south, in the city of Kismayo, even though four of the five men are descended from families from the relatively stable northern province of Somaliland.
Somaliland was overseen by the British during the colonial era, while the south was run by the Italians. Somalis generalize by describing northerners as more reserved, and southerners as more outgoing. Northerners live primarily in the Scarborough area, while southerners dominate the area known as Little Mogadishu, around Kipling Avenue and Dixon Road. The bulk of Toronto’s 50,000 Somalis live in the apartment towers and public-housing projects that dot that corner of Etobicoke.
Omar Kireh, administrator of the Abu Huraira mosque, where the men prayed, said it’s strange that northerners would join a southern insurgency. But nothing is predictable with the younger generation, he added, who know little of the country’s fractious tribal politics.
“It’s upsetting. Their parents are worried,” said Mr. Kireh, a soft-spoken middle-aged Somali with a grey beard. “Think about someone missing a loved one for just one night. This is much worse.”
His mosque, a nondescript, out-of-the-way building on a North York cul-de-sac, started above a convenience store not long ago, and has quickly grown by promising to focus on youth and back-to-basics Islam.
In the fall, the mosque’s new, hard-line imam, a charismatic young Somali named Said Rageah, created a minor controversy. In a lecture to the congregation, he said Muslims in Canada have to stop “so-called Muslims” who team up with “kuffar” (infidels) to stop the spread of Islamic dress. Imam Rageah urged true Muslims to stand fast for the right to cover up, saying he wanted to see beards, niqabs , and other Islamic dress “everywhere in the city.”
Imam Rageah was not at the mosque last week, but Mr. Kireh, described the controversy as a tempest in a teapot. He said the sermon was taken out of context and the real concern is getting the missing men back home.
To protect their families, he won’t reveal the men’s identities, and he said he’s not sure what might have motivated them to leave the country. Perhaps it was for the sake of adventure, he suggests. But he stresses that no one yet knows where they are, or whether they have joined al-Shabab.
Recruitment is a source of much speculation in the Somali community. Many say it was done through the Internet, perhaps in video-chat rooms that leave no record of what has been said.
Others raise the possibility of a mysterious sixth man, an older gentleman who travelled frequently between Canada and Somalia and may have acted as a recruiter.
“I’m told that the person who recruited them left the country before them and then made arrangements for them to follow him,” said Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.
How they were targeted is still a matter of debate. Many mothers say they worry their sons could be next.
“Al-Shabab is going to take the bright ones: Usually it’s clean cut, conscientious well-educated people. That’s why you always hear these kids are from good families. These are middle-class kids. That’s why it’s so shocking. If they can infiltrate these kids then nobody is safe,” said one Somali community leader, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s working to find the missing men.
“Today, al-Shabab, al-Qaeda, they’re an attraction for the young people. In our day it was socialism and injustice … now it’s Islam, and the injustice they see is Americans bombarding the children of Palestine and Afghanistan,” he said.
If the men have joined the insurgents, they have likely already been moved to a training camp in the bush outside Kismayo to be cleansed of their Western tendencies, he added. Eventually they will be pushed into the fight.
If things have already gone that far, it will be difficult for the men to extricate themselves, should they have a change of heart.
Mr. Hussen said two Minnesota men who tried to leave were executed by the insurgents.
The United States and Australia have formally blacklisted al-Shabab as a banned terrorist group. Canada has yet to follow suit.
Part of its reluctance may have to do with complications arising from the kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout, who was held for 15 months in Somalia until her release a couple of weeks ago.
A Somali gang shuffled the Canadian journalist through some al Shabab-controlled cities and threatened to hand her over to the terror group at times. Designating al-Shabab as a banned terror group could’ve been taken as a provocation that might have endangered her life.
The CSIS agent who met with parents of the missing men reassured them that if the men return to Canada they may not be subject to sanction under Canadian law, because the group is not formally banned. The RCMP, though, say travel to support any terrorist group can be considered a crime.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
The Canadians Who Changed the Climate Debate
Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have discovered faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies behind the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As Richard Foot reports, that’s made them pretty unpopular in some circles.
[…]
McIntyre contacted Ross Mc-Kitrick, a University of Guelph statistical economist who was also analyzing the science behind the IPCC reports. Together they unearthed evidence that Mann’s calculations were predisposed to producing a hockey stick-shaped graph, with sharply rising temperatures in the 20th century.
They also showed that Mann’s calculations ignored the data showing a major warming trend in the 15th century, much like the warming of the 20th century.
“That discovery hit me like a bombshell,” wrote one scientist in the MIT Technology Review in 2004. “Suddenly the ‘hockey stick,’ the poster child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
But Religion Has Nothing to Do With it: Minarets Are Political Symbols
As to the decision by Switzerland to ban minarets, I would like first of all to say that, in my years as a correspondent from Jerusalem, I had to bear the Muezzin’s call from a nearby mosque every night at 4 a.m., much before the cock crow. And nor far away from him came many other similar voices. However, I never thought that the Muezzin had to be silent. In his village, he does not sing to be heard also from me, but to call his followers to pray. This is religious freedom and Jerusalem gives it to everybody. Thinking that, down there, he was trying to convey a political message in addition to a religious one, would mean to go well beyond what is legitimate for a person who is democratic, liberal and respectful of other people’s culture and religion.
Actually, except for some pathological cases, Islamophobia is an invention of the U.N. Indeed, in 2004, the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan officially defined it as the cause of frustration for many Muslims, without mentioning the rampant jihad and other huge problems. In fact, in most countries of origin and abroad, the official Islam has not accepted the universal declaration of human rights. But it has responded with other initiatives such as the Cairo Declaration, which states that “anyone has the right to support what is right and to warn against what is wrong and evil in line with the Islamic Sharia”.
The ultimate reason that led the Swiss to say no to new minarets, is not poor respect for religious freedom. It is not even the loss of identity that is driving us — erroneously — to ask for the cross on our flag. It has nothing to do with this. There are many simple reasons of diffidence that prevent from wishing for the expansion of Islam. Nor should we imagine that this choice invites the Muslim to embrace extremism. There are indeed other reasons behind jihadism — that is fed only by itself and by its unflinching decision to convert the world. The Swiss watch the TV and are concerned: the Sharia leads to death sentences, to the hanging of homosexuals, to stoning people to death. In general, Islamic countries are ruled by dictatorships, the dissidents suffer, they die. The Christians are persecuted, let alone the Jews. The groups and the countries that cry their faith louder are also the most evident ones: certainly both Ahmadinejad’s Iran and the Hezbollah, or Hamas or Al Qaida, represent negative, terrorist models.
Of course, the Islam is not all like this. But, let us talk about it. Let us thoroughly examine the problems without being accused of Islamophobia; we have a problem, either we solve it by looking at the Islamic immigration in its eyes, or soon this concern will turn into rejection. And the idea that the true Islam is elsewhere with respect to jihad is not able to placate these fears within the public opinion: there are few and rare instances in which a brave Islamic voice speaks to guarantee the respect for democracy, sexuality, converted individuals, dissidents. It is the politically correct denial that makes jihad prosper: in Switzerland, after the arrest of eight people who allegedly collaborated to some suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia, the reaction of the head of a local Muslim group was that “the problem is not the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, but the intesification of Islamophobia”. In the USA, the same happened after the Fort Hood incident.
It is forbidden to laugh for some cartoons that talk about Islam. It is forbidden to deal with the terrifying oppression of women, it is disgraceful to stress that there is an evident identification between the Islam and totalitarian regimes. It is horrible to raise the issue of honor killing, polygamy and of disfiguring women with acid that push us back in time (yes, many of these episodes result from tribal and not by religious habits, but please let us look at the geographical and sociological distribution of these episodes) and especially it is generic to speak about jihad… And then, since whatever is concrete is forbidden, the reaction is against the symbols of the Islam.
There are millions of mosques without minarets in Islamic countries. But if they are built close to churches, they are taller, more proud and powerful. The construction of an Islamic place of worship has a series of explicit secular meanings that always reiterate the holy competition of the Islam to conquer the world. Many mosques have been built on ancient Jewish and Christian temples.
A revolt against the politically correct on the Islam may occur anywhere and the trigger will not be religious intolerance: it does not belong to us or to Switzerland or to Europe.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
‘Climategate’ Professor Phil Jones Awarded £13 Million in Research Grants
The professor at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair has successfully received more than £13 million in research funding.
The figure is disclosed in a leaked, internal document posted on the internet by climate change sceptics who have seized upon it as evidence of a funding “gravy train” for scientists conducting research into the area.
The grants were awarded following successful applications made by Professor Phil Jones, who headed up the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Copenhagen Mayor Pleads With Climate Change Delegates Not to Use Prostitutes… As Sex Workers Offer Their Service Free
Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor has written to all 500 climate change delegates pleading with them to abstain from using services of the city’s ‘unsustainable’ prostitutes.
Ritt Bjerregaard, who is hosting her own climate conference for mayors, said: ‘As mayor I have a duty over which image of Copenhagen will be shown during the summit and I think it’s deplorable that you can buy a woman for sex.’
A sex workers organisation has responded by urging its members to offer free sex to anyone attending the meeting .
The city council contacted 160 hotels asking them not to arrange prostitutes for guests attending the conference.
Together with the anti-trafficking organisation, The Nest International, and tourism group Wonderful Copenhagen, it issued postcards featuring the slogan, ‘Be sustainable — don’t buy sex’, which been distributed to hotels.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
English Defence League Protest Leads to Clashes With Police in Nottingham
Violent clashes erupted between police and right wing demonstrators during a protest just hours after a homecoming parade for British troops.
About 500 protesters from the English Defence League (EDL), many with their faces covered with scarves and hooded tops, marched through Nottingham yesterday decrying Allah and shouting: “We want our country back”.
Other protesters waved Union Flags, St George’s flags and placards which read: “Protect Women, No To Sharia” and “No Surrender”.
Mounted police used batons to keep back some of the demonstrators and police dog handlers were also deployed to contain the crowd.
There were brief scuffles between EDL members and a small group of Asian students who were waving a Pakistani flag.
Earlier in the day thousands of Christmas shoppers gathered to watch 500 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment march through the city.
The homecoming parade followed a six-month tour of duty in the Helmand province of Afghanistan where the regiment lost five soldiers and dozens of its men were injured.
The EDL claims it is not a racist organisation and has no links with the British National Party, but a counter-protest was mounted by Unite Against Fascism.
James Newton, from Nottinghamshire Stop The BNP, said: “The reason we’re here is because we believe the EDL is clearly a racist organisation.”
One EDL member, a serving soldier who declined to be named, said of the student protest: “I look at their protest and there’s a Pakistani flag flying with a Muslim symbol. They’re protesting against the troops and it’s anti-British. I’m not a fascist, I’m not a Nazi but I am British.”
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Baroness Ashton, Her Communist Lover and a Riddle of Moscow Gold
Britain’s new EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton enjoyed a relationship with a hard-line communist who boasted close links to some of Britain’s most militant union leaders.
Lady Ashton dated Communist Party official Duncan Rees for more than two years in the late Seventies.
At the time, Mr Rees, now 56, was the Communist Party of Great Britain’s general secretary.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Female Pastors Often Harassed by Parishioners
Over half of the female pastors in the capital region say they have been recipients of offensive sexual advances, according to a survey by the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church’s news website, Pod.fi.
About one-fifth of the female pastors in Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa responded to the survey in November.
The most common type of harassment was inappropriate conversations. However, some congregates have shown up unwanted at a female pastor’s home, according to Marina Tolonen, the industrial safety officer of Parish Union of Helsinki.
She says this type of harassment is particularly distressing because pastors cannot fire their parishioners.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Berlin and Hamburg Attacks an Anarchist ‘Declaration of War’
Anarchists attacks on police stations and political offices in Berlin and Hamburg overnight were a “declaration of war” on the state, head of the German Police Union (DPoIG) told The Local on Friday.
Unknown perpetrators, assumed to be left-wing extremists, threw Molotov cocktails, paint bombs and cobblestones at Berlin’s Treptow district Federal Criminal Police (BKA) office overnight. Meanwhile local offices for the centre-left Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Democrats were also vandalised with anti-war graffiti.
Around the same time in Hamburg, about 10 masked perpetrators attacked a police precinct in the Schanzenviertel neighbourhood, setting a police cruiser alight, damaging other police cars and breaking windows with stones.
On Friday afternoon the Berliner Morgenpost also reported that a southern wing of the Chancellory had also been vandalised with three Christmas tree decoration bulbs full of paint.
Though no one was injured in either of the attacks they are a sign of a “new escalation in the spiral of violence,” DPoIG leader Rainer Wendt told The Local.
According to his assessment, the attacks were coordinated between a growing network of anarchists between the two big cities.
“The attacks were anything but spontaneous, and executed in an almost professional manner,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Hamburg Police Attack ‘Was to Mark Death of Greek Student’
A group calling themselves ‘the hoodie wearers’ has claimed responsibility for the Hamburg police station attack on Thursday, saying it was to mark the first anniversary of the death of a teenager in Greece who was shot by police.
In a letter to the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper, the group, who set fire to two police cars, set up burning barricades and threw stones at officers, said they were no longer prepared to face riot police.
They used the Greek word Koukoulofori, as a name, which translates roughly to ‘the hoodie wearers’.
“Rather than allowing ourselves to be beaten bloody by the Robocops at demos,” the letter called for those who felt the same way, to undertake similar surprise attacks as that on the police station on Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: A Tale of 7,000-Year-Old Cannibalism
Remnants have been found in southern Germany
Old civilizations can be credited with a lot of things, from setting the basis of modern societies (Sumer), to boosting astronomical knowledge and mathematics. But, at times, the cities and villages inhabited by our ancestors turned into savage grounds, where people would get killed for no apparent reason. This appears to be the case with the Herxheim, located in what is now southern Germany. The settlement was the scene of gruesome crimes more than 7,000 years ago, when its inhabitants seem to have turned into cannibals for a few decades, Wired reports.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Leading British Weekly Calls for PM to Resign
London, 3 Dec. (AKI) — One of the world’s most influential magazines, The Economist, has called for the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign. The British weekly was due to publish a controversial editorial, entitled, “Time to say addio (goodbye)”, in its latest edition on Friday.
“The resumption of various court cases involving him or his associates, plus a series of other business and legal issues, are distracting him and his government from their other responsibilities,” the editorial says.
“The damage is visible. With the financial crisis and the recession, attention has shifted from Italy’s economic difficulties to the plight of places like Greece.
“Yet although Italy’s admirable small businesses in the north are thriving, the country as a whole still lags behind badly. In the year to the third quarter its GDP shrank by more than the euro-area average, and it is expected to fall by almost 5 percent in 2009, as big a drop as in any other big west European country.”
“Italy would be better off if il cavaliere now rode out of the scene.”
The cover of the magazine, which showcases the issue of climate change, says “Silvio Berlusconi, your time is up”.
According to The Economist, the premier has made an “art” of political survival, but now seems to be in difficulty after his recent conflict with the speaker of the lower house Gianfranco Fini, and the resumption of two legal cases.
Earlier this week, Fini, whose formerly neo-fascist party merged with Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in March, said that the prime minister “confuses leadership with absolute monarchy” in a conversation inadvertently recorded and published by the media.
In early October, Berlusconi was declared to be jointly responsible for a corruption conviction against his holding company Fininvest in a 1991 battle to buy publisher Mondadori and was due to pay more than 1.1 billion dollars in compensation.
Fini’s comments provoked widespread concern in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party and leaders met at the party’s headquarters.
The Economist editorial is likely to generate widespread debate in Italy.
In 2008, Berlusconi lost a defamation suit he brought against the London-based magazine over a 2001 cover story that said he was “unfit to lead Italy”.
A Milan court rejected his libel claims ordering him to pay 25,000 euros in legal costs.
The Economist also defined Berlusconi’s foreign policy as being “eccentric” due to his overtures to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and recently, the president of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko.
In 2006, The Economist issued a cover story saying “Basta” or enough to Berlusconi’s government.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Men Seek to Kill Woman for Adultery in Spain
Spanish police have arrested nine men suspected of seeking to have a woman killed after they accused her of adultery, claiming they were following sharia (Islamic law), authorities said on Sunday.
Police spokesmanAccording to police, the woman had been taken in March and held in an isolated house in Valls in northeastern Catalonia.
Authorities say the men set up a court there to judge her for adultery.
“These men had formed a kind of court to apply sharia (Islamic law,)” the spokesman said, adding the woman told authorities she was tried and sentenced to death.
She was later able to escape and report what happened to police.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Northern Ireland: Republican Terrorists Plan ‘Christmas Spectacular’ Attack on British Troops
Republican terrorists are planning to launch a “Christmas spectacular” attack on British troops in Northern Ireland, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
Intelligence chiefs believe dissident republicans will “ramp-up” attempts to murder British troops and police officers in a series of shooting and bomb attacks in the next few weeks.
Documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph also state that the terrorists now have access to an armoury of weapons and explosives and are believed to be receiving help from disaffected members of the Provisional IRA.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Two Camps Demonstrate Against Obama in Oslo
From Norwegian: Both camps agree on nuclear weapons, but one demonstration will focus on nuclear weapons (“No to nuclear weapons”, “with Obama for a nuclear weapon free world”), while the other focuses on Israel and Afghanistan (“A New Dawn: Stop the Israeli Settlements!”).
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
UK: George Osborne’s Brother Becomes a Muslim to Marry His Love of 14 Years
The younger brother of Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has converted to Islam to allow him to marry a beautiful Bangladeshi-born plastic surgeon he met at university.
Adam Osborne, 33, who was temporarily banned from working as a junior doctor last year following allegations that he prescribed drugs to a friend, ‘quietly married’ Rahala Noor, 31, in two ceremonies held during the past six weeks. One was a civil ceremony, the other a traditional Asian Muslim celebration.
Dr Osborne’s religious conversion is said to have been a condition put forward by Dr Noor’s devoutly Muslim family for the marriage to take place.
He spent several months learning the teachings of the Koran at a mosque in Withington, in Manchester, before being formally welcomed into the faith at a simple ceremony last month.
Dr Osborne has adopted the name Mohammed, plans to attend mosque regularly and now prays five times a day.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Student’s Dream of Flying an Raf Jet Shattered by Thugs Who Kicked Him So Hard His Right Eye Popped Out
A student who was set for a career as a pilot has seen his ambitions destroyed — after he was attacked by thugs and left blind in one eye.
Devastated Joshua Harvey, 21, had been due to join the RAF but his professional flying dream has been grounded by seven mindless louts.
Joshua had been out with friends when he left a nightclub and was set upon by the group who punched, kicked and strangled him.
His right eye was knocked out of its socket and doctors were forced to insert three metal plates in his head to stop it slipping even further.
He now has permenant loss of vision and a large scar meaning his modelling days are over and his plans to join the RAF in tatters.
Joshua, who was in the first year of an engineering degree, has also been forced to postpone his studies until he recovers.
Police have described the assault as ‘completely unprovoked’ and say the attack had ‘long term’ consequences.
Joshua, of Exeter, Devon, said: ‘I used to have 20/20 vision and my dream was to join the RAF and become a jet or helicopter pilot.
‘But that has been written off because of what happened. It was so unnecessary and had no impact on the people who carried out the attack.
‘There were multiple kicks and punches to my face. I had bruises all over my face and a sore throat from where I was strangled.
‘I had a modelling contract but now have a lovely big scar on my face. I am so angry and I don’t even want to go outside.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Swedish Store Pulls North Korea Jeans
A Swedish department store has cancelled what was to have been North Korea’s debut in high-end Western fashion.
Stockholm’s PUB store removed the sales space for Noko Jeans, made in the hardline communist state, because they did not want to be associated with “a political issue”.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Church Enjoys Greatest Trust Among Population
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 3 — The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), Army of Serbia and education system are the institutions which enjoy the highest trust among the citizens of Serbia according to research conducted by the Strategic Marketing agency under a request by the OSCE mission in Serbia and the Serbian Internal Affairs Ministry (MUP), reports VIP Daily News Report. The research showed that the MUP is in fourth place followed by the police in fifth place in terms of trust. A total of 56% of the polled spoke well of the Church and 38% of the military while 30% spoke in favor of the education system, 29% for MUP and 27% for the police. The Finance Ministry ranked at the bottom of the list with 11% trust, the Serbian Parliament got 8% and political parties got 6%. Similarly to a poll in November last year, with the exception of the Church, a relatively low percent of the polled had a favorable view of institutions and the MUP, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs are the only institutions trusted more now than a year ago. A total of 77% of the polled said politicians have influence over the operational efforts of the police with 40% them choosing full influence and 37% saying “in good measuré. The poll was conducted in October covering a total of 1,450 people. It showed that 31% of the polled have a negative view of the MUP and 29% of the police.(ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia-France: Agreement on Youth Mobility Signed
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 2 — Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for EU Integration Bozidar Djelic and French Minister for Immigration Eric Besson signed an agreement on youth mobility, reports radio B92. The agreement, signed in Belgrade will enable young people from Serbia to study, do internships and look for jobs in France. “Since the decision on visa liberalization for the Serbian citizens, France is the first country which has made a step forward, which proves that Serbian-French friendship in not only a noun, but also a reality,” Djelic said. Besson said that the agreement symbolized great relations between Serbia and France and guaranteed Serbia’s firm place within the EU frame. It is clear that Serbia’s future is within Europe, this is what Serbia wants and what France wants for Serbia, Besson underscored. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Army to Turn Professional in 2011
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 4 — Serbian Army CoGS Lt. Col. Miloje Miletic said that the professionalization of the military would be complete in the first half of 2011, reports radio B92. “The Serbian Army will become professional, and I expect us to complete that process at the end of 2010, or 2011 at the latest,” Miletic told reporters during a conference entitled “Necessary Skills for Serbian Army Officers, 2010-2020”. When asked if Serbian officers would be educated according to NATO standards, Miletic responded affirmatively, adding that it was one of the aims of the meeting. “The very fact that our officers have been educated in various institutions in the countries that are members of the Partnership for Peace program and NATO allows us to educate our officers according to those standards,” Miletic remarked. He said that it had “nothing to do with Serbia’s military neutrality”, stressing that “we (the military and the Defense Ministry) respect the decisions of the Serbian parliament, like all other government institutions, and that (military neutrality) does not prevent us from cooperating with other militaries in the world.” (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Miminum Monthly Salary Rises to 145 Euros
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, DECEMBER 3 — The minimum guaranteed monthly salary has been increased in Algeria from 12,000 to 15,000 dinars (about 145 euro). APS reported that the decision was made over the night by the government, the General Workers Union (UGTA), the only trade union which took part in the talks and various aid associations. The three parties “‘ adopted measures to foster national companies, the retention of employment and the struggle against unemployment”. It is an insufficient rise — today’s press reports — which only partially meets the requests made by the UGTA. The union had asked for a rise of at least 18,000 dinars, while aid associations had requested one of 14,000. According to a survey cited by a number of papers, “the minimum Algerian salary is enough to provides for the needs of a family for about a week: those bringing home an average salary of between 15,000 and 25,000 dinars can survive on it for 10 days.” According to the survey carried out by the United Civil Service Unions, a father of a family would need at least 14,000 dinars for food, 8,000 for housing, 7,500 for various expenses, 8,600 for his children, with the total being at least 38,000 dinars. (370 euro). (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Poverty Drives Three Men to Suicide
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 3 — There have been three cases of suicide for reasons of poverty in three Egyptian governorates over the past few days. According to a report in today’s edition of the independent Al Masri Al Yom newspaper, all of the deaths occurred in the Nile Delta area. The first case is that of an unemployed worker in the village of Abu Nasser, in the governorate of Dakahleya, who killed himself inside his apartment. In the second, in the governorate of Kafr el Sheik, a thirty-two-year-old threw himself from the fourth floor leaving his wife and five children: he had been unsuccessful in his application for an increase in his monthly wages of just 400 lires (less than 50 euros), 300 of which went on rent. A thirty-one-year-old killed himself in the governorate of Charkiya, having failed to acquire an apartment, which would have allowed him to marry. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Detains 10 Senior Muslim Brotherhood Members
CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have detained 10 senior members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, the group’s secretary general told AFP on Sunday.
The officials were arrested in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh on Saturday during a meeting, Mahmoud Ezzat said, adding authorities provided no reason for the arrests.
“Detentions in Egypt are like death, they can happen at anytime to anyone and no one knows why,” Ezzat said.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: EU Funds Game Show for Young, Prize is Brussels Trip
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 3 — The name is Rawabit, it is the weekly game show financed by the European Commission and it is on air in the early evening on the Al Aoula channel. Who are the contestants? In the first series, which has just been launched, they are young people aged between 19 and 25, whilst in the second season they will be high school kids between the ages of 15 and 18. The quiz, launched in collaboration with the local Education Ministry, features questions about current affairs and the countrys culture, but also a section on cooperation projects between the EU and Morocco. Sixteen teams are selected and take each other on until the final stage, with the prize consisting of a cultural and educational trip to Brussels, a visit to the European institutions, as well as a laptop computer. The consolation prize for finalists is a home cinema system, whilst all contestants will receive books about art, encyclopaedias, etc. As well as the TV version, there is also an online version of the Rawabit game, so that people can play from home: www.rawabit.ma. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Veil’s Spread Fans Egypt’s Fear of Hard-Line Islam
CAIRO — When Egypt’s government banned Islamic veils and all-encompassing robes in the dorms of public universities, it cited reports of men wearing the garb to sneak into the women’s quarters.
But there was a deeper reason behind the move: an intensifying struggle between the moderate Islam championed by the state and a populace that is turning to a stricter version of the faith, whose most visible hallmark is the niqab — the dress that covers the entire female form.
The debate has grown more heated since Mohammad Tantawi, the top cleric at prestigious Al-Azhar University, banned the niqab in classrooms and dorms on the grounds that it “has nothing to do with Islam,” and that it was unnecessary since the college is gender-segregated. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry and religious authorities forbade nurses and preachers to wear the niqab.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas May Not be Moderate, But It’s Cracking Down on Extremism
Many Israeli commentators have argued recently that Hamas is eager to complete the deal to free Gilad Shalit because of the lack of achievements it has to show its public in the Gaza Strip. However, quite a number of Palestinian commentators there claim that the status of the Islamic movement has stabilized of late, in particular because of its ability to help distressed residents of the Strip by means of its network of charitable organizations. Others propose that the real threat to Hamas today comes from the direction of Islamic extremism, which in another few years is liable to become a significant factor and to present a serious challenge to the Hamas regime.
Last Friday the Israel Defense Forces attacked a group of men launching Qassam rockets in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. One Palestinian was killed and three more were wounded. According to various assessments, the men belonged to a cell of extreme Islamist activists affiliated with what is called the Jaljalat movement.
In recent months, it and other small organizations have been gathering momentum. For its part, Hamas is trying to embrace the extremists and convince them to act within its laws, even as these factions cause harm to Hamas and its public support — especially as they depict the organization as a collaborator with Israel that has given up the principle of jihad. Many of the members of Jaljalat, for instance, are former Hamas activists who left the organization because they felt it had become too moderate. They are now trying to spearhead a more extreme policy with respect to Israel.
Among these radical groups are the Army of the Nation, the Army of Islam, Jund Ansar Allah, as well as Hizb ut Tahrir, which is not involved in fighting per se, but rather confines itself to propaganda activities.
The tension between the small radical groups and the Hamas government is manifested particularly in the attempts of extremists to take over mosques, as in the Rafah area, a few weeks ago, where the Jund Ansar Allah has been active. Still, it is Hamas that is in control in Gaza and its rule has only become more firmly established since the coup of June 2007. Fatah has nearly ceased to exist in the public domain in the Strip. At the same time, Hamas is making great efforts to stave off the rising popularity of the extremists, such as by establishing such beneficial institutions as an Islamic bank and a body charged with overseeing halal products.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Banking: Turkey Eyes Selling Samurai Bonds
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 3 — Turkey is interested in selling samurai bonds partly guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, or JBIC, the head of the state-run lender said. The bank will likely have detailed discussions with Turkey on the sale, Bloomberg reported Hiroshi Watanabe, chief executive officer of JBIC, as saying on Monday. Japan backs sales of samurai bonds to provide financial support to debt issuers. Indonesia issued 35 billion yen in 10-year Samurai bonds to institutional investors in July while Colombia sold 45 billion yen in notes in November. Samurai bonds are yen-denominated bonds issued in Tokyo by a non-Japanese company but are subject to Japanese regulations. Other types of yen-denominated bonds are “Euroyens,” issued in countries other than Japan. Samurai bonds give issuers the ability to access investment capital available in Japan. The proceeds from the issuing of such bonds can be used by non-Japanese companies to break into the Japanese market, or it can be converted into the issuing company’s local currency to be used on existing operations.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Disappointment in Turkey Over Cancelled Trip
Turkish MPs are disappointed the Dutch parliament has cancelled a fact-finding mission about the country’s wishes to join the European Union, the NRC reports on Thursday.
The parliamentary EU affairs commission decided yesterday to cancel the trip, apparently based on comments by one spokesman for the Turkish foreign affairs ministry, who said anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders is a racist and not welcome.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
In Iraq’s African Enclave, Color is Plainly Seen
BASRA, Iraq — Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that in the tradition of Prophet Muhammad treats black people with equality and respect.
But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as “abd” — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs.
Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugar cane fields.
Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say.
Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament.
“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the country’s estimated 1.2 million African-Iraqis. “We want to end that.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, a group of black children and adults wearing flip-flops stood in a dirt field waiting for cars to drive up so they could wash them.
It is their only source of income, they said, because no one will hire them.
In Basra, a southern oil and port city with winds that constantly whip the desert sands, car washing is not a bad way to survive, and over time the field has become a crowded gathering point for boys and men waiting with hoses and buckets for the next dirty car.
The children, most no older than 14, are school dropouts. Sometimes it was their choice, other times the decision rested with a father who had little formal education himself and an unsteady income.
“If I go back to school, then who will feed my family?” asked one of the boys, Hussein Abdul Razak, 13.
Hussein said he left school when he was 8 years old because he had fallen so far behind in his classes. His father, who also works at the car wash, was sick, so the family’s dinner this day rested entirely with whatever Hussein could earn. Unfortunately, things were slow, with too little sand in the air. He shrugged. He had earned nothing.
Mohammed Waleed, also 13, is one of the rare children at the lot who has a father with a steady job. His father drives a minibus.
Mohammed, who had come pedaling up on his bicycle, said he had left school so long ago that he could not remember how old he was then.
“Every year I failed and I failed, and so I left,” he said. He looked nervously at the boisterous children who had gathered around him, deciding whether to say what came next.
“I can’t read,” he said. The children grew silent.
Mohammed’s dream, he said, is to follow in his father’s footsteps and drive a Kia minibus. He said he already knew how to drive, but that he needed to wait five years to be hired.
“Until then, I’ll drive my bicycle,” he said. Everyone around him laughed.
Majid Hamid, a lanky 20-year-old who is among the lot’s oldest workers, said some days were better than others. It had been a bad day for him as well.
“From the morning until now, I haven’t washed a single car,” he said. It was past 6 p.m.
But even on the good days, he said, they still had to deal with customers who frequently used racially derogatory terms when addressing them. “They say, ‘Abu Samra,’ come on, go fast!’ “ he said. “What can I do? I can beat them up, but there will be trouble afterward.”
Lighter-skinned Iraqis consider Abu Samra a term of endearment, but the car washers said that for them it is a vicious slur.
They say they are called a lot of other names, and are often picked up by Army patrols and taken to bases where they are threatened with beatings and imprisonment if they continue to wash cars. They say the soldiers leave them alone when lighter-skinned people are working in the lot. Ahmed al-Sulati, deputy chairman of Basra’s provincial council, said neither racism nor color consciousness existed among Iraqis, and that the lives of African-Iraqis are no more difficult than anyone else’s. “There is no such thing in Iraq as black and white,” he said, echoing what most people here say publicly.
In a run-down neighborhood about a mile from the car wash, Mr. Hamid and thousands of other African-Iraqis live side by side with Arabs in mud-brick houses in various stages of collapse. His brother, Rafid, 19, also works at the car wash, but has a second job in a small satellite television repair shop where he works with his stepfather.
Their sister, Amani, 16, has been pulled out of school because the family can no longer afford the daily bus fare. “I miss school,” she said. “Sometimes I cry.”
Said Rafid, “Life here is very bad.”
Things could become even worse; the family of nine has not been able to pay the landlord for the past two months.
“We either pay the rent or we eat,” said Raja Abdul al-Samad, their mother.
Mrs. Samad said life in Iraq was far more difficult if one had dark skin. She said that over the years she had come to realize that she could maintain friendships only with those people who shared her skin color.
“It all starts O.K., but then they slip and say something by mistake,” she said. “Or, when they are with their relatives, they avoid us. I don’t like being with people who look down on us.”
| — Hat tip: spackle | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Says Ukrainian Kids Are New Victims of Israeli ‘Organ Theft’
An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv’s plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs.
The story brings to light the fact that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. It cites a Ukrainian man’s fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for ‘spare parts’.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Summons Swiss Ambassador Over Minarets
Switzerland’s ambassador to Iran was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran on Saturday to hear of Iran’s indignation at the minaret ban.
The Iranian news agency said Silvia Leu Agosti was told that such a decision “increased tension between Islam and Christianity”.
The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, also telephoned his Swiss counterpart, Micheline Calmy-Rey, and told her that such a vote should never be allowed in a country which claims to respect democracy and human rights.
He said the ban on the construction of minarets had damaged Switzerland’s reputation as a progressive country throughout the Islamic world.
The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that a conversation had taken place between the two ministers, the AP news agency reported on Saturday.
The Swiss side explained the workings of direct democracy, and said the decision had been taken democratically and would therefore be respected. At the same time, it was pointed out that Muslims in Switzerland could continue to practise their religion as before, the ministry said.
In a popular vote on November 29, Swiss voter approved a call to add a line to the constitution stating that the construction of minarets is forbidden.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Bans Foreign Media From Rally Fearing Protests
Iran’s authorities have banned foreign media from an annual rally due to be held on Monday, which they fear the opposition could use to stage protests.
Press permits were revoked for 7-9 December, officials said, and reporters told not to leave their offices.
Residents in the capital, Tehran, also said their internet access had been limited ahead of the rally.
Iran has cracked down hard on protests by opposition supporters following a disputed election in June.
Opponents of Iran’s regime have taken to using officially sanctioned demonstrations to turn out in big numbers and publicise their message.
Rallies have been held annually on December 7 to mark the death of three students during an anti-American protest in 1953.
Iranian security forces including the elite Revolutionary Guards have warned that they will step in to prevent any attempt to use the event to stage opposition protests.
Reporters held
Ahead of the rally, Tehran residents said that they had been unable to use e-mail and that opposition websites were being more tightly restricted than before.
One official at the Iranian telecommunications ministry told Reuters news agency that internet and mobile phone connections would be disabled on Monday.
Thousands have been arrested and dozens killed this year after the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to the largest street protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Dozens of people have been given jail terms and as many as five people have been sentenced to death over their alleged role in the demonstrations.
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said on Saturday that the situation for journalists in Iran was “getting worse by the day”.
“Journalists who have chosen not to the leave the country are being constantly threatened or summoned by the intelligence services, including the intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guards,” the group said in a statement.
“Some have been given long prison sentences at the end of completely illegal judicial proceedings.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Iran: 20 More Enrichment Sites Needed
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and previously Iran’s representative in the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Saturday that Iran needs to establish 20 additional uranium enrichment sites to fuel the country’s nuclear reactors, Israel Radio reported.
Salehi further said that Iran had no intention of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Earlier this weekend, there was speculation that Iran would pull out of the treaty following statements by Iranian nuclear official Abolfazl Zohrehvand that Teheran will not answer to the UN nuclear watchdog beyond the barest minimum required under the NPT.
Speaking on Friday, Zohrehvand said this limited cooperation would apply to the building of 10 new uranium enrichment facilities.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: New Book Puts Mafia on the Map
Rome, 4 Dec. (AKI) — A new book has been released in Italy documenting the growth of one of the country’s biggest exports — organised crime. Entitled ‘Mafia Export — How ‘Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and the Camorra colonised the World’ is written by Francesco Forgione, a former MP and president of the Italian parliament’s Anti-Mafia Commission between 2006 and 2008.
The book documents the rise of various arms of the mafia, in particular the emergence of the Calabrian mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, in Germany and the expansion of the Neopolitan Camorra in Spain.
Forgione’s book crisscrosses the globe and publishes for the first time various maps showing how individual mafia clans have divided their business in countries as diverse as Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and Australia.
“Corruption and criminality are the most serious issues facing the economy and structure of modern society,” Forgione said.
“Corruption and the mafia (together) produce an intolerable social cost globally, they dissipate resources, destroy and poison the environment, violate human rights and compromise democracy.”
He also singled out Switzerland to show how major mafia clans from the southern regions of Campania and Calabria have penetrated the country.
But tiny countries in central America, including Costa Rica, and Caribbean islands such as Santo Domingo are also included in the vast criminal network revealed in the book.
In his book, Forgione also published maps showing the international shipping routes of the major mafia drug cartels — tracking cocaine shipped from Colombia, marijuana from North Africa and heroin from Turkey and Afghanistan to Europe and onwards to North America.
He is not the first commentator to emphasise the significance of the brutal massacre of six Italians killed in a bitter ‘Ndrangheta feud in the German city of Duisburg in August 2007.
Forgione said the killings not only shocked German police but revealed the penetration of Italian organised crime in Germany, where many Italian immigrants have settled.
“Since the men of (Calabrian town) San Luca have created for themselves a real colony, Duisburg is not only one of the wealthiest industrial centres of the country,” Forgione said.
“It is only a few kilometres from the Belgian and Dutch borders and a few hours’ travel from the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.”
He also talked about the expansion of several key mafia clans in Australia — the Siderno, the Alvaro, the Sergi of ‘Ndrangheta and the establishment of the Secondigliano alliance of the Camorra from Naples.
“Australia is a small market but it is important,” he said. “The Camorra is moving into the country because organised crime goes where it can find the most liberal legislation. Like the United Kingdom, Australia has very liberal laws in relation to money laundering and the confiscation of criminal assets.
“Australia is emerging as a key area for Camorra activities, like Brazil and America.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon Report: Attack Against UNIFIL Thwarted
UN peacekeepers again in crosshairs of Lebanese terrorist organizations. Lebanese army arrests four-person terror cell from east of country on suspicions they tried to target UNIFIL officials in one of series of similar events recently
The Lebanese military thwarted an attack targeting UNIFIL forces operating in the south of the country, according to a report Sunday on Hezbollah’s television channel al-Manar.
According to the report, the Lebanese military arrested a four-person terror cell that was in possession of a large quantity of explosives near Majdal Anjar, in the Lebanon Valley.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Lot’s Sin and That “Extreme Solitude”
Amara Lakhous
The roots of the difficult coexistence between the gay and the Muslim worlds are deep-rooted in the Koran, which defines homosexuality as “Lot’s sin.” In Muslim countries gays are obliged to live their lives in secret not only for religious reasons but also due to social contempt, just as happens in the west. Thus homosexuals continue to be the most persecuted minority in the world.
In Islam sexuality has positive connotations. Carnal pleasure is neither repressed nor removed, on the contrary it is to be searched for and satisfied, but within the institution of marriage. It is the Prophet himself who compares the sexual act to prayer., “I have been permitted to love three things from your lowly world: women, perfume and prayer.” Italy’s most important scholar of Islam Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, explains this issue very clearly, “Sex, therefore, is something positive in the Muslim collective conscience. […] however this sexuality must in some way be channelled, legalised and controlled. Marriage is the instrument for this. It is no coincidence that in Islam the worst of all sins is promiscuity; an illegal sexual relationship. Hence Islam’s traditional horror of prostitution. There are many jurists who say that Islam, acknowledging the nature of men, accepts polygamy so as to avoid promiscuity and the evils that result from it.” (1)
To analyse in greater depth the issue of homosexuality in Islam, one can divide sexuality into two types. On one hand one has a ‘good sexuality’ with roots founded exclusively in the institution of marriage, on the other there is a ‘harmful sexuality’, based on promiscuity, such as homosexuality, adultery, incest, rape and prostitution.
The religious viewpoint
Muslims call homosexuality “Lot’s sin” (2). Condemnation of homosexuality is very explicit both in the Koran and in the Sunnah.
“And Lot, when he said to his tribe: “Do you commit an obscenity not perpetrated before you by anyone in all the worlds? You come with lust to men instead of women. You are indeed a depraved tribe.” The only answer of his tribe was to say: “Expel them from your city! They are people who keep themselves pure!” So we rescued him and his family, except for his wife. She was one of those who stayed behind. We rained down a rain upon them. See the final fate of the evildoers!” (Koran 7: 80-84) (3). And also “And so Lot said to his people “Do you do what is shameful though you see its iniquity? Would you really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, you are a people (grossly) ignorant!!”. But his people gave no other answer but this: they said, “Drive out the followers of Lot from your city: these are indeed men who want to be appear clean and pure!”. (Koran 27: 54-56)
The Prophet said “When you discover two men committing Lot’s sin, kill them al-fa’l (active) and al maful (passive).” Muslim jurists agree in condemning homosexuals with the death penalty, but not however on the manner in which it is carried out. There are four alternatives, death at the stake, death by the sword, stoning or throwing the convicted man off a hill. Islam considers homosexuality as being unnatural. Relations between men and women with the objective of procreation are considered natural.
The real problem arises when addressing the “responsibility” and the culpability of homosexuals. Are men born homosexuals or do they become homosexuals? In 1993 Dean Hamer, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, stated that he had discovered the genes of homosexuality. These are supposedly chromosomes “x” transmitted from a mother to a child. Hence, according to this research, homosexuality had nothing to do with culture or the free choices made by individuals (4). A number of Muslim scholars rejected this thesis because it implies questioning God and his infallibility. God cannot be imperfect and create “imperfect” human beings, punishing them in such an unfair manner. Hence a homosexual is always guilty.
The anthropological perspective…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
More Than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings
Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians.
ISTANBUL, December 4 (CDN) — More than half of the population of Muslim-majority Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey.
Fully 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. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.
The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had “very negative” or “negative” views of Christians. In the random survey, 60 percent of those polled said there is one true religion; over 90 percent of the population of Turkey is Sunni Muslim.
Ali Çarkoglu, one of two professors at Sabanci University who conducted the study, said no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely “risk free.”
“Even in Istanbul, it can’t be easy to be an observant non-Muslim,” Çarkoglu said.
The report, issued last month, was part of a study commissioned by the International Social Survey Program, a 45-nation academic group that conducts polls and research about social and political issues. The survey quantified how religious the population is in each of its 43-member countries.
Çarkoglu, along with Professor Ersin Kalaycioglu, carried out the research in 2008. The completed study with the results of all 43 countries will be released in 2010. The study has been conducted previously three times at roughly 10-year intervals.
This year marked the first time study data has been collected in Turkey. Turkey was the only Muslim-majority population in the study.
The survey includes significant nuance. While 42 percent of the population agreed with the statement that religious people should be tolerant, 49 percent of those surveyed said they would either “absolutely” or “most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion. But 20 percent of those surveyed said they had “very positive” or “positive” views of Christians — 13 percent “very positive,” and 7 percent “positive.”
Çarkoglu said the results of study could be attributed to the Turkish educational system, which mandates religious studies for both junior high school and high school students — classes in which Christians and Jews “are not even mentioned” or are portrayed as “the others,” Çarkoglu said.
“That instills in these students a severe point of view of intolerance,” he added.
Dual Threat
The Rev. Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, speaking on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, said that Greek Orthodox Christians are treated like second-class citizens in Turkey. He said that members of his church feel “pressured” but things have improved slowly over the years. Earlier this year, two Greek Orthodox cemeteries in Istanbul and one in Izmir were severely vandalized.
“There’s still vandalism, but there haven’t been any problems with physical threats lately,” he said.
In Turkey, Christians face dual threats from a self-declared “secular” state and from members of the public who, according to the study, have become more observant in their Islamic faith. Christians are often seen as enemies of the state, enemies of Islam or traitors to Turkish culture.
A 2009 report on international religious freedom by the U.S. Department of State said that in Turkey, “No law explicitly prohibits religious speech or religious conversions; nevertheless, many prosecutors and police regarded religious speech and religious activism with suspicion. Christians engaged in religious advocacy were occasionally threatened or pressured by government and state officials. … Threats against non-Muslims created an atmosphere of pressure and diminished freedom for some non-Muslim communities.”
At times in Turkey’s history, the government has “manipulated public opinion” by putting forth the message that Turkish Christians are aligned with powers outside of the country that want to divide the nation, said Zekai Tanyar, a Turkish national who has been a Christian for more than 30 years. He is chairman of the Association of Protestant Churches (in Turkey).
“There are some who view that Christians are out to undermine the country, especially missionaries,” he said.
In January 2007, Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in Istanbul. Dink was a member of the Armenian Christian community in Turkey. Three months later, two Turkish Christians and a German Christian were murdered in Malatya. The accused killers in all four slayings have alleged links to Turkish nationalists. Two other Christians, converts from Islam, are standing trial charged with, among other things, “insulting Turkishness” and inciting hatred against Islam.
According to the U.S state department report, by law religious services in Turkey can only take place at worship sites approved by the government. And while the Sunni majority receives generous support from the government for its mosques, “[Non-Muslim groups] reported difficulties opening, maintaining, and operating houses of worship.”
Tanyar of the Protestant association said that the anti-Christian persecution situation in Turkey has improved in some ways but gotten worse in others.
“People have gotten used to the idea that we exist, and certain laws have changed to accommodate us,” he said. “On the other hand, acts of disinformation and violence have increased.”
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Will Empty Their Swiss Accounts: Turkish Minister
A Turkish minister said he expected Muslims to withdraw their money from Swiss banks in response to a referendum vote that banned the construction of minarets in the country, in remarks published Wednesday.
“I am certain this (the vote) will prompt our brothers from Muslim countries who keep their money and investments in Swiss banks to review their decision,” State Minister Egemen Bagis, who is also Turkey’s chief negotiator in EU accession talks, was quoted as saying in the mass-selling Hurriyet daily.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Rafsanjani Accuses Iran Rulers of ‘Intolerance’
AFP — Powerful cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused Iran’s rulers on Sunday of being intolerant, saying they have closed the door on constructive criticism.
Rafsanjani, one of the main figures in Iran’s opposition movement, also called on protesters opposing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to express their views “within the framework of law.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish People Spend Nearly 92 Million Euro for Handguns
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, NOVEMBER 30 — Turkish people have spent nearly 92 million euro in the last seven years for handguns, as Anatolia news agency reports. Turkey’s Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKEK) has sold 10,302 handguns since the beginning of the year. While 8,225 of those handguns were made in Turkey, the remaining 2,077 were imported from different countries. The sale of handguns amounted to nearly 10,6 million euro. In the last seven years, MKEK sold 99,109 handguns, reaching an income of nearly 138 million USD. 21,969 of them were imported from several countries while the rest was made in Turkey. MKEK sells different types of handguns from 25 companies including 15 foreign companies such as Beretta, Bernardelli, Browning, Glock, CZ Strojirna, CZ Zbrojovka, Heckler&Koch, HS 2000, Jericho, Sig Sauer, Smith&Wesson, Steyr, Tanfoglio, Walther and ZVI-Kevin. Prices of handguns ranges from 300 euro to 4,700 euro. According to current figures by the Umut Foundation, a Turkish gun control advocacy group, 9% of the nation owns a firearm. Turkey has approximately 2.5 million registered guns, while an estimated 5.5 million guns are believed to be owned without licenses. Nearly 3,000 people yearly — eight every day — are killed by gun violence.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican-Russian Relations Upgraded
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 3, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to upgrade relations between the two sides to full diplomatic ties, the Holy See is reporting.
A communiqué from the Vatican press office confirmed that the two leaders met today for some 30 minutes in the Vatican, and that during the “cordial” discussions, it was “agreed to establish full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Russian Federation.”
The two sides have maintained representation below the rank of ambassador since 1990.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
‘4:000 Italians in Afghanistan’
Extra 1,000 troops plus 200 Carabinieri says Frattini
(ANSA) — Brussels, December 4 — Italy will have almost 4,000 forces in Afghanistan by the end of next year, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told NATO counterparts here Friday.
As well as the 1,000 extra troops announced Thursday night, he said, there would be some 200 Carabinieri to help train Afghan security forces.
The Italian contingent is currently 2,795, according to the most recent data.
Frattini had “cordial” informal talks with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the foreign ministers met, in which she thanked Italy again for its contribution to the “surge” decided by President Barack Obama, diplomatic sources said.
The US is hoping its allies will contribute some 10,000 more troops following Obama’s decision to add 33,000 to its 68,000.
So far, commitments from countries including Britain, Portugal, Spain, Georgia, Poland and South Korea add up to about half that.
The Netherlands and Canada are pulling out in 2010 and 2011 respectively, while Germany has put off its decision until January and France has said No to more troops.
“We’re counting on you,” Clinton told Frattini before the ministers’ session, and the Italian foreign minister replied “now we must convince the others”.
In his address to the NATO meeting, Frattini said Italy would by the end of 2010 have “around 4,000 troops” in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which currently has some 20,000 troops.
He appealed to America’s allies to commit more troops, saying “we cannot unload the burden in Afghanistan onto the US alone”.
Frattini reaffirmed the need for what he called a “civilian surge” and said Italy would consider doubling its contribution to the Afghan reconstruction budget.
The diplomatic chief also stressed the importance of NATO getting its message across to Afghans via NATO TV.
Both Frattini and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi have said the extra push in Afghanistan must be part of a “transition strategy” aimed at equipping the country to look after its own needs, and not an exit strategy that might encourage the Taliban.
The extra 1,000 troops will be taken from other foreign missions, in the Balkans and Lebanon, and the beefed-up mission, which must still be approved by parliament, is expected to last until the end of 2013.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gordon Brown Snubbed by Soldiers’ ‘Curtain’ Protest
Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him.
More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present.
The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”.
Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair … he has done nothing for us.”
Brown visited the military wing of Selly Oak on September 2, where about 25 wounded soldiers were being treated. They were told about the visit in the morning and asked by nurses if they wanted to speak to him.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
India: Operation Green Hunt Launched Against Maoists
India has launched a major offensive codenamed “Operation Green Hunt” against Maoist rebels in Bastar on Thursday.
The assault “Green Hunt” was launched against insurgents in Chhattisgarh — the epicentre of violence between Maoist fighters and security forces.
Officials said there was least resistance from some of the Maoist strongholds, which could be a ploy.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
India: Muslim Clerics Pledge to Eradicate Polio
PATNA: Muslim clerics came together to support Rotary International’s ‘End Polio Now’ campaign and pledged to eradicate polio through advocacy
and awareness efforts.
At a meeting held at Haj Bhavan here, they said Bihar is still an endemic state for polio cases. As the war against polio is in a decisive phase, the Rotary leaders have come to seek the support of Muslim clerics amid the reports that there is some resistance in the community over polio drops.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
India: Muslim Leaders Against Street Protest on December 6
PATNA: The demolition of Babri Masjid is remembered on every December 6 as a ritual, but this year the day is being observed not only to protest
the destruction of the disputed structure, but the protests will also be focused on Liberhan panel report. The report was leaked only weeks ahead of the 17th anniversary of the day which the secular parties describe as “Black Day.”
A general alert has been declared by the police. Principal secretary, home, Amir Subhani told TOI that there was no report of any big protest. “Some symbolic protest may take place, but the police will be ready at every point to meet any eventuality,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Slain Lawmaker’s Father Urges Elimination of All Terrorists
MINGORA: The father of Shamsher Ali Khan, the Awami National Party legislator who was killed on Tuesday in a suicide attack, said on Wednesday the army should not leave Swat until all terrorists were eliminated.
“My son is gone, but I appeal to the security forces to stay as long as a single terrorist remains alive,” Abdur Rashid told Daily Times after a condolence meeting, which was attended by Swat operation commander Maj-Gen Ashfaq Nadeem, Kabal sector in-charge Brig Salman Akbar and MPA Waqar Ahmed.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Mosque Attackers Are Not Muslims: Malik
KARACHI: Federal Minister for Interior Rehman Malik said that they are not Muslims who attack mosques, and the people of South Waziristan are with the government and army.
He said this while talking to the media at airport when he arrived in the city on Sunday.
Malik said that every Pakistani wants to eliminate terrorists from the country.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
China Sentences 3 More to Death Over Xinjiang Riots: Xinhua
BEIJING — A court in China’s restive Xinjiang sentenced three more people to death Friday for their roles in July ethnic violence, state media said, raising the total condemned to die or executed to 17.
The court in the regional capital Urumqi sentenced another person to life in prison, while three defendants were given varying jail terms for the violence that left nearly 200 dead, the Xinhua news agency said, citing the verdict.
On Thursday, an Urumqi court handed out death sentences to five others.
Last month, nine people were executed for their roles in the violence that also left over 1,600 injured in the worst strife in China in decades.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Special Investigation: Peter Hitchens — Blood and Fear on Happiness Street as China Threatens to Obliterate Another Ancient Culture
This, however, is certain: last year, just before the Olympics, two Kashgar Muslims drove a truck into a group of jogging Chinese paramilitary troops, then attacked them with knives and home-made grenades, killing 17.
The two were caught and later executed — probably shot in the head, still a common method of capital punishment in the People’s Republic.
The anger follows aggressive colonisation. Ethnic Chinese people have come West in their millions in the past 30 years, encouraged by the state to settle and make the region their own.
The locals fear their homeland is being snatched away from them before their eyes, by strangers who wish to change the place to suit them, rather than adapt to the customs of the country.
What seem to have been race riots broke out in Sinkiang’s provincial capital Urumchi last July, with an official death count of 156, plus 800 injured, many, it is said, in horrific slashing attacks by inflamed Muslim mobs. Women were not spared.
Ethnic Chinese retaliated soon afterwards, taking to the streets with iron bars and axes and looking for suitable candidates for gory vengeance. Rumours suggest that the real butcher’s bill was much higher than the published figure, around 2,000. Who can say?
A few weeks ago, the authorities announced the executions of 12 more men for their part in the carnage — ten Muslims and two ethnic Chinese, to prove they are not wholly one-sided. Actually, the proportions may be more or less just.
Any sane person must be appalled by such outbreaks of ancient bloodlust, and — as in Tibet last year — the cause of the local people is severely set back in the West by being linked to such cruel horrors.
[…]
Even middle-class Muslims and ethnic Chinese are nowadays nervous of mixing with each other in public. One Muslim who tried to carry on seeing Chinese friends described to me how she was then shunned by her Muslim neighbours. A sort of apartheid, voluntary but bitter, is springing up in the enormous city.
‘When people who have lived alongside you for years suddenly turn on you, you cannot feel safe near them ever again,’ said one Chinese resident.
[Comments from JD: A report on the muslim, han chinese clashes in Sinkiang province of China.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australian Police Quell Violent Anti-Israel Riots
(IsraelNN.com) Guests at an event that featured the two second-highest officials in Australia and Israel as keynote speakers were forced to use a side entrance to attend the gathering due to a pro-Palestinian Authority riot blocking the main entrance at the venue in Melbourne on Sunday.
The gathering, a joint Australia-Israel Leadership Forum being held at the Park Hyatt Hotel in East Melbourne, featured speeches by Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
But the event also became the scene of a violent demonstration that forced guests to enter through a side door, while police were forced to spray a mob of screaming rioters at the front of the hotel with pepper spray in order to push them back.
The pro-Arab protestors, who continued to try to force their way into the lobby, waved placards and pounded on the door, shouting “Free Palestine!” and various epithets. Three rioters managed to break through the line of police officers and forced their way in to the foyer, where according to Australian media, “punches were thrown and [they] were wrestled to the ground.”
Police mounted on horseback were also brought in to force back the mob, which was estimated at approximately 200 and reportedly included women and children.
Police said they were dismayed that the demonstrators had not kept their word to maintain order. “We’re disappointed that the protestors broke their agreement,” Sergeant Steve Burke told the Australia Network News (ANN). “They said it was going to be peaceful and in the end they’ve forced the issue and we’ve had to force them back.”
Three protestors were arrested in the melee and later released on their own recognizance.
At the event, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard met with Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and others, including MKs Avi Dichter, Nachman Shai and Ronit Tirosh (all members of Kadima), Daniel Ben-Simon (Labor) and Danny Danonm who also is World Likud chairman.
Gillard expressed her country’s firm support for the Jewish State, but made no specific mention of the chaos outside the hotel. “Australia’s support for Israel remains strong and remains bipartisan in this country,” she asserted.
One of the protestors, Hisham Moustafa, told ANN the demonstrators were trying to send a message to the Australian deputy prime minister. “I don’t think she would be supporting Hamas coming to Australia,” Moustafa said. “So we expect more from our representatives, and we think that Julia Gillard, by entertaining the Israeli politicians at the moment, sends a message that the Palestinian people are just being forgotten by Australia.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Urged to Accept Minorities
MUSLIMS must tackle injustices and corruption in their own countries before they can point a finger at the West, former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said in Melbourne yesterday.
“How Islam treats minorities is excessive, no question — Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews. We cannot condone injustice. We must condemn atrocities against minorities in Muslim societies and against Muslims in Christian societies,” he told the Parliament of the World Religions.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Mexico Busts Gang That Held 107 People in Slavery, Arrests 25
Mexico City — Mexico City police arrested 25 people who were allegedly involved with a network that held 107 people, mostly of indigenous descent, in slavery in the Mexican capital. Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Angel Mancera said Friday that investigation of the gang started in September, and noted that the people who were being forced to work as slaves “in many cases cannot even speak Spanish.”
The busts were carried out Thursday.
Victims were kidnapped at the Central de Abastos, the largest wholesale market in Mexico, where many of them worked as load carriers.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Cardinal: Statement on Gays Was Misrepresented
ROME, DEC. 4, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The retired president of the Vatican’s health care council says he has been misrepresented by the press, which has reported him as asserting homosexuals cannot go to heaven.
On Wednesday, the Pontifex.roma Web site published comments attributed to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán that state “transsexuals and homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Cardinal Draws Vatican Rebuke for Anti-Gay Talk
A Roman Catholic cardinal has drawn on an unusual rebuke from the Vatican for saying that homosexuality is “an insult to God” and “transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, made the comments Wednesday to a conservative Web site, the British newspaper The Telegraph reports.
“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence.
“Perhaps they aren’t guilty but by acting against the dignity of the body they will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
The comments prompted a response from Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said the Web site to which Lozano Barragan spoke should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking “on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality.”
Current Catholic teaching acknowledges that some people have innate homosexual tendencies but that homosexual acts are “disordered.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Fury as Lesbian is Chosen by Anglican Church to be a Bishop
The worldwide Anglican Church has been plunged into a fresh crisis after a lesbian was chosen as its second gay bishop.
In a move that will dismay the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Canon Mary Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop for the diocese of Los Angeles.
The Rev Rod Thomas, the leader of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a member of the General Synod, said: ‘I feel deeply ashamed that this is happening in the Anglican Church.
‘I think a schism is absolutely inevitable.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lesbian Awarded Custody of Christian’s Only Child
Decision sets up showdown over claim from ex-partner
A Vermont court ordered a Christian child taken away from her mother and given to a lesbian ex-partner, setting up, according to a lawyer for the Christian family, a dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court likely will have to resolve.
Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, told WND the recent order from the Vermont judge that Lisa Miller turn over her young daughter, Isabella, to the lesbian ex-partner, Janet Jenkins, on New Year’s Day is being appealed.
In the interim, a separate court hearing on the dispute is scheduled to be heard in a Virginia court during this coming week.
“We’re arguing that the state of Virginia cannot enforce an out of state, Vermont, civil union because it’s contrary to Virginia law,” Staver said.
Ultimately, he said, the issue probably will have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the case is being moved along parallel tracks in both Vermont, where Jenkins lives, and Virginia, where the Millers live.
[…]
The dispute is over Jenkins’ demands for visitation and/or custody of Isabella, with whom she has neither a blood nor an adoptive relationship.
Liberty Counsel has argued that Virginia courts cannot enforce child custody orders arising from Vermont same-sex civil unions since the state doesn’t recognize that status.
Last year, a judge in Vermont gave Jenkins visitation rights with Miller’s daughter. Then just days ago, the judge ordered custody transferred to Jenkins.
Liberty Counsel said, “Unrefuted testimony has shown that for the last five years, Janet has neither attempted to phone nor write Isabella. She has never sent Isabella a card of any kind for any occasion. Janet has refused to attend Isabella’s Christmas plays because she does not want to be around a Christian environment. She has also said that it is not in Isabella’s best interest to be raised in a Christian home.”
Virginia court rulings have declared Miller to be the sole parent.
Isabella was born to Miller from artificial insemination when Miller and Jenkins were living together. They obtained a civil union from Vermont, but Jenkins never adopted the baby.
The relationship terminated when Miller became a Christian and quit the lesbian lifestyle.
Even on the pro-homosexual “Queerty” website, the Vermont court decision startled some.
“What kind of monster takes a child away from their mother. … This is a human rights violation for the child,” said one person.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islam’s Failure to Modernise. It’s Time the Muslims Engaged in Self-Criticism
Neue Zürcher Zeitung 03.12.2009
The German-Egyptian historian Hamed Abdel-Samad, author of the book “Mein Abschied vom Himmel” (My departure from heaven), addresses the issue of Islam’s failure to modernise. “Enemy stereotypes have cemented the victim role among Muslims and prevented them from taking responsibility for their own problems. It is time they reshaped their self-image and began looking for answers, leaving histrionics and conspiracy theories behind them. For its part, Europe should break off its unholy alliances with Middle East dictators and look for new allies. Europeans should press ahead with their criticism of Islam, ignoring fundamentalist threats and avoiding the lazy thinking of political correctness. This criticism should be tough, but it should steer clear of polemic and resentment. And if the Muslims can’t take criticism from outside, then they should start practising it themselves.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
One of the problems in dealing with a militant and expansionist Islam is that our opponents have a policy of gradualism. While they keep our attention fixated on wars and terrorist incidents in foreign countries, they relentlessly flood into the West as immigrants and refugees, family members and prospective brides. Since immigrants are, by definition, a minority in any country, these newcomers are tolerated, and since they largely keep to themselves, they have little or no political impact on town and city councils.
As most of you know, here at Schloss Bodissey our family has been in the midst of a health care crisis for the better part of a month.
For the tens of thousands of years of the Würm glaciation, Paleolithic hunting tribes lived at the southern edge of the ice fields in Europe and Asia. About 10,000 years ago, as the last of the glaciers receded, some groups chose to follow the retreating ice northwards. While their cousins in the warmer regions to the south were smelting metal, these hardy tribes were knapping flint. While the southerners were inventing agriculture, slavery, and the ziggurat, the northerners were hunting large game in the chilly grasslands and forests of Central Asia and Northern Europe.
Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a series of reports from the Dutch media about the frightening possibility that Iran will use nuclear weapons to create a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) over the coast of Europe as well as over the United States.
