Gates of Vienna

The Counterjihad Manifesto

2009-11-20T20:08:00.003-05:00

A representative of a European NGO contacted me this morning and asked for my help. His organization was preparing a presentation on the Islamization of Europe, and he was in urgent need of a brief description of the Counterjihad, including a statement of our goals and a concise rationale for what we are doing.

I was happy to oblige him, and the result is below.

The Counterjihad: Resisting Islamization and Reviving the West

Islam has been at war with the Western world for fourteen centuries — since its inception. Muslims all over the world still consider themselves to be at war with non-Muslims; this is why Islam refers to us as Dar al-Harb, the “House of War”.

The West, however, has forgotten that this war exists. We continue to labor under the illusion that Islam is an ordinary religion, like Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Unfortunately, Islam is above all a totalitarian political ideology, sugar-coated with the trappings of a primitive desert religion to help veil its true nature. The publicly stated goal of Islamic theology and political ideology is to impose the rule of Islam over the entire world, and make it part of Dar al-Islam, the “House of Submission”.

Widely accepted Islamic theology based in Koranic doctrine explicitly requires that Islam be spread by any and all means necessary, including by violence and mass slaughter, in a process known as jihad, or holy war.

The fact that many Muslims do not support or engage in violent jihad is not germane. If only one percent of Muslim believers take the Islamic mandate of jihad seriously, it means there are over fifteen million people scattered among the world’s Muslims who want to destroy us, and we have no means of determining in advance which ones they are.

Therefore, those who oppose Islamic totalitarian ideology and the expansion of Islam into the West have formed themselves into a coalition known as the Counterjihad.

The goals of the Counterjihad are:
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1.		To resist further Islamization of Western countries by eliminating Muslim immigration, refusing any special accommodations for Islam in our public spaces and institutions, and forbidding intrusive public displays of Islamic practices.
2.		To contain Islam within the borders of existing Muslim-majority nations, deporting all Muslim criminals and those who are unable or unwilling to assimilate completely into the cultures of their adopted countries.
3.		To end all foreign aid and other forms of subsidy to the economies of Muslim nations.
4.		To develop a grassroots network that will replace the existing political class in our countries and eliminate the reigning multicultural ideology, which enables Islamization and will cause the destruction of Western Civilization if left in place.

We are a loose international association of like-minded individuals and private organizations. We all share the overriding goals described above. We are non-partisan, and welcome members from any political parties who share those same goals, and who also demonstrate a strong commitment to the humane democratic values of the West.

We are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, agnostics, and atheists.

We live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.

We are the Counterjihad.

A Perversion of the Justice System

2009-11-20T17:04:00.002-05:00

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) confronts Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorist detainees in a Manhattan criminal court:

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

[Post ends here]

An Orthanc in Brussels?

2009-11-20T09:51:00.001-05:00

Paul Belien writes today about the new president of the European megastate, who happens to be Belgian:

Herman Van Rompuy. Get used to the name. He is the first President of the European Union, which with the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by all the 27 EU member states in early November was transformed into a genuine United States of Europe.

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. They chose one of their own. Herman Van Rompuy was the Prime Minister of Belgium. I knew him when he was just setting out, reluctantly, on his political career.

To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place.

Yes, the shade of John Lennon is the guiding hand behind the political philosophy of the European Union. No more wars! No more suffering! No more dissent! No more independent thinking!

We no longer have any need for such things. Everyone should just drink their soma, copulate indiscriminately, and spend all their spare time at the feelies.

Mr. Belien concludes:
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Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us.

Fjordman adds these thoughts:

I’m not surprised that Herman Van Rompuy is evil. You cannot get to the top of a thoroughly evil system such as the European Union unless you are evil yourself, or at least willing to play ball with evil. It’s the entire system that is the problem, not one particular man.

I’ve heard some observers say that the EU elites want to reduce us all to the status of medieval serfs. This is incorrect for a number of reasons. The roots of many of our parliaments and self-ruled institutions, including the British Parliament, date back to the Middle Ages.

The EU imposes a centralized, authoritarian structure which used to be alien to pre-Communist Europe but in some ways resembles a bureaucratic empire such as Ming Dynasty China, if not the Soviet Union.

During all of previous European history, no single authority has ever been able to successfully censor ideas throughout the entire Continent, which, frankly, has been one of Europe’s greatest strengths. What’s more, while medieval European rulers were not elected and certainly didn’t believe in “democracy,” for better or worse they usually at least upheld a minimum of law and order, and didn’t indoctrinate European children to hate their own heritage or import people from hostile tribes to rape their daughters.

The EU elites do these things every single day.

We shouldn’t insult medieval European rulers by comparing them to the EU. I stand by my previous assessment that the only sensible thing to do with the EU is to pull down the entire structure before it kills European civilization.

Happy to be of Pedagogical Assistance

2009-11-20T01:43:00.001-05:00

Our good friend the Headmistress is in charge of The Common Room, one of the premier homeschooling blogs on the web. She and her husband are blessed with a (possibly uncountable) number of children, and have homeschooled them all. That’s part of the secret of their blog’s success: all those young bright young minds are put to work doing research, designing graphics, and developing blog posts as a part of their schoolwork. The Common Room is a content-rich site as a result.

To all of the commenters who have in the past dismissed the idea that we have a significant number of homeschoolers who read our blog: You’re mistaken.

Positive feedback is always gratifying, and it’s especially gratifying to receive an encomium from the Headmistress, who, after all, has very high standards.

Tonight I happened to come upon the following in one of her regular news-gathering articles which she posts for her student readers:

The following items are taken from the excellent newsfeed offered on a regular basis over at Gates of Vienna. It is an excellent resource for homeschooled students in high school and, for some students, jr. high, to use for compiling their news notebooks. Dymphna and the Baron work (and their readers work) very hard at this, and they also are very much aware that homeschooled students read their blog from time to time, so they ask their readers to be mindful of the comments they make. Some of their readers do not really believe high school students could possibly be interested in news, and they do not watch their language, but that is not the fault of our good blog hosts. Bookmark them. Their posts are really helpful for current events notebooks.

Thank you, Headmistress. Glad to be of help!

To the homeschool pupils and teachers among our readers: it’s good to know you’re out there. Your attention will make me that much more mindful of my spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
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Dymphna and I homeschooled our son, so we are avid supporters of the homeschool movement. You may be — as we were — tagged with a reputation as Christian fundamentalist zealots and nutcases, but that’s only among those who have never homeschooled their kids or known any homeschoolers. Those of us who have actually taken part in group homeschool activities know what a rich and varied bunch of dedicated, intelligent, and well-informed people you are.

But don’t be too hard on people who sneer at homeschooling. Either they don’t have kids, or their kids are most likely stuck in the public school system. The latter possibility is enough to make them deserve our sympathy.

Homeschooled children are the best-educated kids in America, as proved over and over again by the results of standardized tests and their performance when they go on to college. The most expensive private schools are hard-pressed to match the education that homeschooling provides.

So you have a lot to be thankful for. You’ve made the right choice, even if it did cut your income almost in half to do it.

To the rest of y’all: notice that the Headmistress is aware of your bad language, but she forgives you for it.

When you comment, please be mindful of all those young eyes that pore over your every expletive, solecism, and grammatical infelicity.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/19/2009

2009-11-19T23:58:00.001-05:00

A representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA) says that women in the Philippines are being driven into prostitution by climate change. Women in coastal areas are particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change.

In other news, Gibson’s guitar plant in Nashville, Tennessee was raided by federal agents on the suspicion that the company might be using wood from endangered species of trees to make guitars. At the same time, sheriff’s deputies in Delaware County, Oklahoma seized 36 pounds of opium that were sent to the post office by drug smugglers.

Thanks to AP, Archonix, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, JP, LN, Lurker from Tulsa, Paul Green, Steen, TV, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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	Financial Crisis
	Société Générale Tells Clients How to Prepare for Potential ‘Global Collapse’
	USA
	Al-Awlaki and New McCarthyism
	‘Anti-Gunner’ OSHA Nominee Advances Without Questions
	CAIR Asks McDonnell for More on Robertson, As Connolly Weighs in
	Dangerous Times
	Gibson Guitar Plant in Nashville Raided by Feds
	Hasan’s Supervisor Warned Army in ‘07
	Ibn Warraq: Going Honest
	It’s Hard to Lead From a Bowing Position
	KSM Trial: Creative Treason
	Obama’s Prissy America
	Princeton, Columbia Cancel Free Speech: Darwish Silenced
	Proof That Fort Hood Shooting Was Muslim Terrorism
	Senators Press Obama on Fort Hood Probes
	Silence on Islam Kills, From Hassan to Honor Killings
	Two Arrested and 36 Pounds of Opium Seized in Delaware Co., Oklahoma
	Europe and the EU
	Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy Called Clown by Sister Christine
	Berlusconi Fun at Food Summit
	Britain’s Awol Ally
	Britain: Bin-Laden’s Son Wants to Work for the UN
	EU President: Herman Van Rompuy Opposes Turkey Joining
	EU: Nominations; El Pais, Zapatero Sees Moratinos for Solana
	EU: We Don’t Even Know Who They Are
	Europeans Meet (Soviet-Style) To Choose First-Ever EU President
	Greece: Explosive Days in Athens
	Irish Child Misdiagnosed With Swine Flu Dies
	Islam: Aid El Adha November 27 for French Muslims
	Italy: Dalai Lama Enters Crucifix Debate
	Italy: Pope Trumps Berlusconi Among World’s Most Powerful Men
	Italy: Berlusconi’s Govt Continues Freefall in the Polls
	Italy: Colonel Who Captured Red Brigade Terrorists Now Branded a Criminal
	Italy: Kercher Murder Account ‘Not Credible’
	Medfilm: Moroccan Actress Emerges as Top New Talent
	Pope’s Art History Lecture
	Tony Blair Dumped as Baroness Ashton of Upholland Gets Key EU Role
	UK: [Fox-Hunting] Anti-Matters
	UK: A Special Form of Disrespect
	UK: Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
	UK: Condemned to an Early Death: Rationing Body Tells Liver Cancer Victims That Life-Prolonging Drug is ‘Too Costly’
	UK: Community’s Fury at Continued Detention of Shaikh Asif Farooqui
	UK: Hadley CRU Has Apparently Been Hacked — Hundreds of Files Released
	UK: Pirate Finder to Create Militias and Laws
	UK: Shocking Report Reveals That 92% of Gang Rapists in London Are Non-White
	UK: Sadistic Mother-of-Eight Found Guilty of Abusing Her Children With Belt, Meat Mallet, Hot Screwdriver and Even a Garlic Crusher
	UK: The More the State Cares for the Old, The Less We Care for Them
	Balkans
	Serbia: Patriarch Pavle Dies; Funeral, Pope’s Condolences
	North Africa
	Egypt: Orascom: Black Day on Bourse After Attacks in Algeria
	Football: Algeria in World Cup;20 Yrs of Fear, Now Celebrating
	Football: Egypt-Algeria, Diplomatic and Media Clash
	Italy-Egypt: Information Campaign for Minors
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Netanyahu Party Member Slams ‘Racist’ Obama
	Settlements: Beilin, Netanyahu, 10 Month Moratorium
	Temporary Palestinian State, OK by Peres and Barak
	U.S. Supporting Palestinian Land-Grab
	Middle East
	A Challenging Theater Performance by Transsexuals
	Davutoglu Criticizes Speaker of EU Parliament
	Death of an Iran Prison Doctor Raises Suspicion
	Islam: First ‘Official’ Copy of Koran in Italian to be Printed in Medina
	Lebanon: School for Palestinians Reopened Thanks to EU
	South Asia
	India: Church Vandalised in South of Country
	Indonesian Catholics Helping Farmers and Labourers
	White House Aides: No Afghan Decision Before Thanksgiving
	Far East
	North Korean Exile: Beijing Uses Pyongyang to Threaten the World
	North Korea: The Life of Communism’s Playboy
	Obama Leaves a Victorious Beijing. More Activists Arrested
	Obama Goes Mao
	Philippines: ‘Climate Change Pushes Poor Women to Prostitution, Dangerous Work’
	President Obama Returns Home From Visit to China Almost Empty Handed
	Tremonti Lectrues at Chinese University
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Africa: Foreign Aid Not Good for Region
	Obama’s Half Brother Describes Abuse
	Latin America
	Brazil: Last Word on Battisti on ‘Political’
	Immigration
	122 Kurds Disembark in Calabria
	Britain’s Soaring Population on Course to Hit 74million
	Greece: Minister Announces New Measures
	Human Rights Commission, Filipino Maids ‘Slaves’
	Italy: Northern Mayor Launches ‘Immigrant Clean-Up’ Initiative
	Multi-Lingual Guide to Find House in Lombardy
	Spain: Morocco Obstacle for New Islamic Party
	Turks: Germany Must Do More for Integration
	General
	200 Web Sites Spread Al-Qaida’s Message in English

Société Générale Tells Clients How to Prepare for Potential ‘Global Collapse’

Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible “global economic collapse” over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.

‘Debt levels risk another crisis’ “As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse,” said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.

Under the French bank’s “Bear Case” scenario (the gloomiest of three possible outcomes), the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.

Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.

(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).

The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. “High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt,” it said.

Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils.

If so, gold would go “up, and up, and up” as the only safe haven from fiat paper money. Private debt is also crippling. Even if the US savings rate stabilises at 7pc, and all of it is used to pay down debt, it will still take nine years for households to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.

The bank said the current crisis displays “compelling similarities” with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.

SocGen advises bears to sell the dollar and to “short” cyclical equities such as technology, auto, and travel to avoid being caught in the “inherent deflationary spiral”. Emerging markets would not be spared. Paradoxically, they are more leveraged to the US growth than Wall Street itself. Farm commodities would hold up well, led by sugar.

Mr Fermon said junk bonds would lose 31pc of their value in 2010 alone. However, sovereign bonds would “generate turbo-charged returns” mimicking the secular slide in yields seen in Japan as the slump ground on. At one point Japan’s 10-year yield dropped to 0.40pc. The Fed would hold down yields by purchasing more bonds. The European Central Bank would do less, for political reasons.

SocGen’s case for buying sovereign bonds is controversial. A number of funds doubt whether the Japan scenario will be repeated, not least because Tokyo itself may be on the cusp of a debt compound crisis.

Mr Fermon said his report had electrified clients on both sides of the Atlantic. “Everybody wants to know what the impact will be. A lot of hedge funds and bankers are worried,” he said.

— Hat tip: AP

[Return to headlines]

Al-Awlaki and New McCarthyism

Witch-Hunt Against UK Muslim Organizations

In the wake of the tragic killing of 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, a number of Britain-based think tanks, newspapers, and websites have sought to capitalize on reports saying that the suspected gunman, Nidal Malik Hasan, was allegedly in contact with a well-known Yemeni imam called Anwar Al-Awlaki. The purpose of such focus is to engage in a modern version of a McCarthyite witch-hunt against leading UK Islamic organizations and Muslim individuals.

History of McCarthyism

During a period in US history known as the Second Red Scare, which lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, US Senator Joseph McCarthy achieved notoriety for his aggressive anti-Communist pursuits. Thousands of Americans were hauled before investigatory panels and accused of being Communists or Communist sympathizers, despite the often very questionable or inconclusive evidence. Many innocent people’s careers were destroyed as a result.

The term McCarthyism has come to describe the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty or subversion against others without proper regard for evidence.

Al-Awlaki and Fort Hood Suspect

Following the Fort Hood shootings, Al-Awlaki used his website to post a message praising the suspected killer as follows:

— Hat tip: JP

[Return to headlines]

‘Anti-Gunner’ OSHA Nominee Advances Without Questions

‘By fiat could outlaw firearms in workplaces, parking lots across America’

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today approved without question and without comment the nomination of David Michaels, the chief of a George-Soros-funded Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, as the next head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

[…]

Obama’s nomination of Michaels, a George Washington University professor, drew reaction from Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com.

Olson said Michaels’ strong views on firearms are “by no means irrelevant to the agenda of an agency like OSHA, because once you start viewing private gun ownership as a public health menace, it begins to seem logical to use the powers of government to urge or even require employers to forbid workers from possessing guns on company premises, up to and including parking lots, ostensibly for the protection of co-workers.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

CAIR Asks McDonnell for More on Robertson, As Connolly Weighs in

Washington Post (blog) — Washington,DC,USA

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR, said the national group is working with Muslims in Virginia to decide how to proceed on the issue. …

Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell continues to face calls for him to publicly repudiate donor and ally Pat Robertson today, even after a statement issued Tuesday evening in which his spokesman commented generally about the importance of the Muslim community to Virginia.

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday that McDonnell’s comment “a good statement as far as it went,” but said he did not believe it went far enough in directly disavowing Robertson’s remarks.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR, said the national group is working with Muslims in Virginia to decide how to proceed on the issue. But he said he continues to believe McDonnell needs to make a clear statement indicating he does not agree with Robertson’s stand on Islam.

Robertson said last week that Islam is “not a religion” but a “violent political system” and called for Muslims to be treated like communists or members of a fascist party.

“[McDonnell’s] sending the message that he wants it both ways—he wants the support of a Muslim-basher. And he wants to work with Virginia Muslims. I think those two things are incompatible,” Hooper said.

Meanwhile, the political implications of the Robertson remarks are growing. U.S. Rep Gerry Connolly (D) has put out a statement Wednesday calling on Robertson to apologize for his comments. Connolly said he has heard from hundreds of constituents, both Muslims and others, offended by Robertson’s comments, which came in response to the Fort Hood shootings on an episode of the 700 Club last week.

“My feeling is that if public officials don’t speak out about this, our silence might be misconstrued,” Connolly said. “I, for one, am not going to be silent in the face of that kind of unbridled intolerance.”

And does Connolly believe that McDonnell needs to speak out as well?

“I feel as a public official, I have a duty. I have acted on my duty. Other public officials have to take their own counsel,” he said.

— Hat tip: heroyalwhyness

[Return to headlines]

Dangerous Times

Obviously, there is blind party allegiance aplenty on both sides of the political divide in our nation. However, it is apparent that the upsurge in popular concern for the sharp turn our government has taken toward the left (courtesy of the current administration) is occurring among the majority of non-dogmatists in between.

Efforts to characterize all those who are troubled as members of the radical right, while disingenuous, are not entirely surprising. The success the Obama administration (as well as the left in general) has had, in concert with an ideologically kindred establishment press, in promulgating the most outrageous and dangerous fabrications and falsehoods cannot be underestimated. This is demonstrated by the fact that a great many intelligent and conscientious Americans remain quite oblivious, even regarding the administration’s more overt machinations.

The reason for this upsurge in popular concern is that a considerable number of Americans realize the magnitude of the change that is taking place (no Obama marketing pun intended) and its potential for detrimental, life-changing outcomes. As such, the rebellion against it has been the sort of phenomenon unseen since the Civil Rights Movement. More importantly, these citizens are quickly identifying and openly discussing the administration’s maneuvers, which flies in the face of the left’s appraisal of the American people as vapid and dull. More than one might surmise are seeing clearly through to the ugly endgame.

[…]

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Obama administration has made comprehensive and treacherous moves in practically every area of domestic and foreign policy, despite the apparent dangers associated with riling such a large segment of Americans. This is their day; they realize that if they fail to employ as many of their oppressive, destructive schemes as possible before the midterm elections next year, they might never get the chance.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Gibson Guitar Plant in Nashville Raided by Feds

Guitar maker cooperates in exotic wood probe

An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world’s rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar ‘s manufacturing plant, but no arrests.

Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson’s Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.

Gibson issued a statement saying it is “fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood.” The company said it did nothing wrong.

Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson’s plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law…

— Hat tip: Paul Green

[Return to headlines]

Hasan’s Supervisor Warned Army in ‘07

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan’s incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan’s file.

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army’s most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

The Damning Memo

On May 17, 2007, Hasan’s supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, “Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan.” More than a page long, the document warns that: “The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. … He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.” It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan’s career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

“Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview,” says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt’s psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

Sharfstein says it’s a little hard to read the evaluation now and pretend that he doesn’t know that Hasan is accused of shooting dozens of people. But he says if he had seen a memo like this about an applicant, Sharfstein would have avoided him like the plague.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Ibn Warraq: Going Honest

Islam, terrorism and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Maj. Nidal Malik HasanJudging from the way his critics have been going on, I would say that Tunku Varadarajan was on to something in his Forbes column “Going Muslim.”

The reaction to his important and well-reasoned article ironically confirms and further underlines his central point; namely, that out of political correctness we refuse to see and act on the obvious—the implication of Islamist ideology in violent acts such as the murders perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Instead of addressing the substance of Mr. Varadarajan’s arguments, the self-appointed spokespersons for Islam turn the whole discussion around and present Muslims as the victims of “hate-speech” or “Islamophobia.” This now-familiar rhetorical tactic deflects public attention away from an entirely legitimate and necessary question: Would this crime make any sense apart from Islamist ideology?

While posing as victims, some Muslims absolve themselves from considering Islam as in any way responsible for acts such as those of Maj. Hasan. Certain groups of Muslims are adept at nursing and flaunting their grievances, and, as Theodore Dalrymple once put it, there is nothing like grievance to prevent people from examining their own responsibility for their situation.

Mr. Varadarajan uses the phrase “Going Muslim” reluctantly since it is disconcerting, and he is careful to distinguish between those Muslims who are radicalized and the many more who are not. The problem, he reminds us, is the privileging of religion in general, not just Islam. Again, in his very sensible list of what practical steps we can take to prevent such acts as Maj. Hasan’s from recurring, Mr. Varadarajan makes it clear that he is talking of “radical Islamism,” and he recognizes that there may well be other problems such as “sympathy with white supremacism” or “simple mental unfitness.” Such a nuanced analysis cannot be characterized as “crude hate-mongering.”

Not all Muslims are terrorists. My family is Muslim, of Indian origin. My brother is a practicing Muslim, a gentle soul who is not capable of hurting anyone. But we have seen a great many terrorist acts committed by Muslims since 9/11. According to a poll conducted in 2006, a quarter of British Muslims believe that the terrorist bombs in the London subway in 2005—which killed 56 people—were a legitimate response to the “war on terror.”

Even the politically correct F.B.I. estimates that of 2,000 mosques in the U.S., 10% preach jihad. There are said to have been at least 14,396 acts of Islamic terrorism…

— Hat tip: Steen

[Return to headlines]

It’s Hard to Lead From a Bowing Position

President Obama, trying to escape the turmoil he has created in the USA with an overaggressive legislative agenda, is spending time overseas — but obviously, he is way over his head abroad, too.

Obama sets the record for countries visited during a president’s first year. In 10 months’ time, he has visited 20 countries. Even with all his globetrotting, Obama returns from his multitude of trips with no real accomplishments or agreements. His most recent expedition to Asia was an abject failure for America.

[…]

Obama’s Asian trip soured rapidly after he bowed before the emperor of Japan. Obama has shown a penchant for prostrating himself before foreign leaders, giving visual representation to how he is seeking to submit America to the desires of foreign powers. Obama bent so low it approached the level of groveling to the diminutive son of the man who ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Next, when attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Obama shook hands with Gen. Thein Sein, the prime minister appointed by a vicious and brutal military junta in Myanmar. By shaking hands and meeting with this unelected dictator, Obama sends a message to all those fighting for freedom across the world: America is no longer standing with you, but with your oppressors.

In China, Obama was pushed around by those from whom he is borrowing more and more money. Obama failed to gain any commitments from the Chinese regarding their repression of human rights. His creditors also greatly restricted his ability to speak to the Chinese people. Obama was allowed one highly scripted town hall meeting that was not broadcast on state-run television, as he had expected. While he was in China, the Chinese verbally attacked American economic policy. To top it off, the Chinese signaled they would block American-led efforts to sanction Iran for its nuclear program.

Other world leaders know weakness when they see it.

— Hat tip: JD

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KSM Trial: Creative Treason

The Constitution is quite specific about what constitutes treason:

“Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

“The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.”

Treason is an emotional charge. If it were not spelled out in the Constitution, most of us who have been politically active or opposed the government’s actions at some point during our lives would perhaps be in jail for treason. It’s always easy for those in power to equate treason with opposition to their personal power.

That being said, the political left in America has been engaged in covert, under-the-radar treason against the United States, to expand their own personal power, since at least the days of Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss and FDR.

When America developed the bomb, some of the physicists working on the project couldn’t wait to share it with our enemies. The Rosenbergs were quite rightly executed for their part in handing over plans for the bomb to the Soviet Union. While the legal charge was espionage, the actual result was treason.

[…]

Barack Obama has now elected to carry on in the Hate America First leftist tradition of treason. As John Yoo points out in the Wall Street Journal, the trial will force the U.S. government to hand over the methods and sources of intelligence to the self-proclaimed enemy military commander who organized and carried out the 9/11 attacks.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama’s Prissy America

Why does Obama’s tolerant, apologetic America seem so very self-centered?

But things have not quite worked out as planned. Barack Obama to all appearances is certainly more relaxed than Bush. And he resonates abroad as a nontraditional American. Indeed, Obama is now the paradigm of America’s ongoing metamorphosis into something more like the rest of the planet.

[…]

The point is this: When Obama takes it upon himself to adjudicate, in quite ahistorical fashion, who is culpable and who not, the resulting verdicts are consistent only in terms of the president’s own Chicago-style race/class/gender politics.

— Hat tip: JD

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Princeton, Columbia Cancel Free Speech: Darwish Silenced

In our time, a speaker must face a gauntlet of hostility and a menacing crowd if she wishes to speak in favor of Israel or to tell the truth about Islam.

That’s if she’s lucky. Most such speakers never get invited or when they do, their invitations are canceled.

Nonie Darwish, the author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, has faced on-campus hostility and disruption before. Over the years, I have interviewed her about this a number of times. Like many of us, she has also sometimes been forced to have security guards with her when she speaks.

This time, Nonie, who is the founder of Arabs for Israel, was invited to speak at both Columbia and Princeton. The official invitation at Columbia came from the very distinguished CAMERA, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), and from a new student organization there: Campus Media Watch, a group which is not yet quite up and running. Darwish flew from the West Coast, and was already all dressed up and ready to travel to Columbia when she got word that she’d been canceled…

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Proof That Fort Hood Shooting Was Muslim Terrorism

While the U.S. debate continues as to whether Maj. Nidal Hassan’s murder of 13 soldiers in Texas this month was a terrorist attack, researcher Barry Rubin says the murderer himself provided the affirmative answer.

Maj. Hasan, who is now facing charges of having murdered 13 and wounded 29 in the Fort Hood shooting attack of Nov. 5, delivered a lecture in June 2007. His topic was: Islam, the complete subservience demanded by Allah and Muhammed, and threats that the American military might encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.

Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, has analyzed the slide show Hassan presented, concluding that it clearly explained his religious Muslim motives for the attack. “Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people — including the president of the United States — to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack,” Rubin laments.

[…]

The Slides Tell the Story Rubin analyzed Hassan’s slide show, entitled, “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” and summed up, “All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Senators Press Obama on Fort Hood Probes

White House wants lawmakers to slow their investigations

A bipartisan group of senators began a concerted push Wednesday to get more cooperation from the Obama administration in its reviews of the Fort Hood shootings, which left 13 dead and a raft of questions about information-sharing among intelligence agencies.

In addition to the public hearings that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is set to begin Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) demanded Wednesday that his panel receive the results of a White House review of agency investigations of suspect Nidal M. Hasan’s communications with a radical Muslim cleric who has ties to al-Qaeda.

Congressional Democrats have not been nearly as aggressive in their oversight of the Obama administration as they were during the Bush administration. The actions on Capitol Hill this week, however, demonstrate a growing impatience, particularly among senators, with the White House’s preference that lawmakers slow down their inquiries.

Lieberman’s hearing Thursday, the first on Capitol Hill regarding the Texas shootings, will start what potentially could be a more assertive approach to administration oversight, at least on matters of national security.

“We are not interested in political theater,” Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday. “We are interested in getting the facts and correcting the system so that our government can provide the best homeland security possible for the American people.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Silence on Islam Kills, From Hassan to Honor Killings

Not only did Hassan put a Jihadist abbreviation on his business cards, he delivered repeated lectures justifying Jihad, accused the soldiers he was supposed to treat of War Crimes As the story of Nidal Hassan unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that the Jihadi Shrink who opened fire on US troops at Fort Hood did everything but spray paint, “I Am Going To Kill You All” on the wall, before he actually carried out his attack. Not only did Hassan put a Jihadist abbreviation on his business cards, he delivered repeated lectures justifying Jihad, accused the soldiers he was supposed to treat of War Crimes and was already being investigated for contacts with Al Queda and for defending suicide bombing online.

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Two Arrested and 36 Pounds of Opium Seized in Delaware Co., Oklahoma

DELAWARE COUNTY — Delaware County Sheriff’s deputies make a monumental drug bust, one they believe is the biggest in state history.

Deputies intercepted 36 pounds of pure opium on its way to Colcord.

U.S. Postal inspectors spotted the drugs and tipped off the DEA. They were waiting for Jay residents Wang Khang, 25, and Xue Yang, 32, who showed up to pick up the shipment at a local post office.

Khang and Yang are in the Delaware County jail on a million dollars bond each.

— Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa

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Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy Called Clown by Sister Christine

THE Belgian politician poised to become president of Europe was last night dismissed as a clown. Herman Van Rompuy faced a massive surge of opposition as other leaders began the task of rubber-stamping his elevation to the powerful new job of leading the entire European Union. But the 62-year-old poetry-writing prime minister of Belgium suffered fresh embarrassment when it emerged that even his own sister had ridiculed him.

Christine Van Rompuy — a member of a rival political party — helped to produce a poster showing her brother posing as a clown during a recent election. The image showed Mr Van Rompuy sporting a red nose and a clown’s hat. Ms Van Rompuy, who admitted the picture had caused some tension between them, added: “We have not spoken since.”

— Hat tip: JP

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Berlusconi Fun at Food Summit

Italian PM ribs Gaddafi, tells Karl Marx joke

(ANSA) — Rome, November 16 — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was in fine form as he chaired Monday’s world hunger summit in Rome, ribbing Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi about his famously long speeches and telling a joke about Kark Marx.

“Five minutes from Colonel Gaddafi would be too much to hope for but I appeal to his good nature,” Berlusconi said in calling the Libyan leader to the rostrum.

After Gaddafi spoke for only ten minutes, the premier told the assembled leaders: “We’ve set a record of brevity for the colonel that will go down in the history of his appearances at international summits”.

He also told a joke about Karl Marx in which he returns to Earth, goes before the Supreme Soviet assembly and says: “Workers of the world, sorry”.

Many leaders smiled and he even got a laugh out of Jacques Diouf, head of the World Food Organisation.

Earlier, the Italian premier had jokingly asked the assembly to sack Diouf because one of the names on the summit’s panels was missing.

The flamboyant Italian premier is known for taking the stuffiness out of formal occasions with jokes and quips.

Last Friday he showed his playful side again when he moved a tall Serbian minister away from him in a photo op.

Berlusconi, who is among the world’s shorter leaders, looked in a tight spot when he realised Serbia’s towering Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovic was looming over him.

Amid general amusement, he quickly moved the giant minister to the end of the row and replaced him with a shorter official, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.

The irrepressible Berlusconi has always taken pride in expressing his fun-loving nature at international meets.

And he recently dubbed the approach ‘peekaboo diplomacy’ after an impromptu gag at an Italian-German summit last year.

Spotting German Chancellor Angela Merkel walking up to the entrance, he ducked behind a lamp-post and popped out as she passed by, saying ‘peekaboo’.

The chancellor spread her arms wide in amusement, saying “Oh, Silvio,”.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Britain’s Awol Ally

Cameron just made a very good point in his speech — namely, that Brown claimed just days ago that Obama would make an Afghanistan announcement in the “next few days”. Now, we have no idea when the announcement will come. But this isn’t Gordon Brown’s fault — it’s Obama’s. The way Washington is treating Britain is deplorable and the subject of an excellent cover piece tomorrow by Con Coghlin (cover image above). As Con says in his piece:

‘The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan — a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission — Britain is reduced to taking a guess. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair-Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.’

Obama is simply not there. And in this respect he is, as we say on the cover, the worst kind of ally.

— Hat tip: JP

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Britain: Bin-Laden’s Son Wants to Work for the UN

New York, 19 Nov. (AKI) — The son of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Omar, has told a British magazine that he would like to promote peace and work for the United Nations. His comments were published on Thursday in New Statesman magazine.

“I do not believe that I would be a good politician — I have a habit of speaking the truth, even when it does not serve me well. But I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me,” said Omar Bin-Laden.

Last year in November, Omar (photo) requested asylum in Spain, but his application was refused.

He was travelling on a Saudi Arabian passport and was detained at Madrid’s Barajas Airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt.

In the interview, Omar told New Statesman that he would seek God’s advice in whether to report his father if he knew where he was hiding.

“If such a time comes, God will guide me to the correct path. But any child on earth would have difficulty with such a situation.”

Omar was also asked about his life as a child in the Bin Laden household and said he remembers most of it as being “sad”.

“There were lots of kids…But when my father was around, we were quiet and obedient,” he said.

“My childhood was mainly sad and lonely because of my father’s passion for supporting the Afghan people against the Russians. I rarely had time with him and he was afraid for our safety, so we had to play indoors,” Bin Laden said.

“When we left Saudi Arabia for Sudan, we lived more normally, but then we moved to Afghanistan and life became more than tough.”

The Bin Laden family is one of the wealthiest in the Kingdom, where they possess an impressive conglomerate including one of the largest construction firms and are involved in equity management.

Omar, 28, is one of 19 children of the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who tops America’s most wanted list.

Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts remain unknown. He is accused of being behind a number of atrocities, including the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in East Africa and the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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EU President: Herman Van Rompuy Opposes Turkey Joining

The poetry-loving favourite to become the first president of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, is also a hard-line opponent of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union because it is an Islamic country.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s Prime Minister, has in the past spoken out against Turkish EU membership because, he warned, it would dilute Europe’s Christian heritage.

His position on the issue is so strong that he has won the support of Vlaams Belang, the controversial far-right Flemishh anti-immigrant party in Belgium.

Speaking five years ago, as an opposition politician, Mr Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, argued that Muslim Turkey could not be considered a candidate for EU membership.

“Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe. An expansion of the EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another expansion as in the past,” he said.

“The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are fundamental values of Christianity, will loose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.”

Filip Dewinter, a Vlaams Belang leader, said: “We are entirely in agreement with Van Rompuy over this question and are convinced he will defend this point of view as President of the EU. It is for this reason we openly support him.”

Mr Van Rompuy’s opposition to Turkey is set to cement British and East European opposition to him during Thursday’s summit dinner to appoint a President and Eu foreign minister.

— Hat tip: TV

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EU: Nominations; El Pais, Zapatero Sees Moratinos for Solana

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 18 — The socialist Spanish Premier José Luis Zapatero is reportedly in favour of the candidacy of Madrid’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, as the high European representative, replacing Javier Solana, El Pais wrote today. The newspaper with socialist ties affirmed: “Zapatero with Moratinos in the battle for EU positions”. The Spanish Premier confirmed yesterday that the name of Moratinos was circulating among those of Solana’s possible successors, but specified the hope that he remains in the Spanish government. This among other things just before the Spanish term of presidency for the EU which will begin next January. Moratinos specified today on radio Cadena Ser that he is “very content” with his current role and that he “was not a candidate, even”, he said, “if it is being talked about”. Moratinos, indicating that Zapatero expressed hope that he would remain with the Spanish government, he added “I don’t know why these interpretations are made”. “But”, he went on, “I am available and will accept his decision”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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EU: We Don’t Even Know Who They Are

A new survey of MPs, senior journalists and other political insiders suggests that there is widespread disapproval of the opaque process for choosing the new EU president, with almost half the political community confessing they have ‘little or no knowledge’ about the candidates.

On the day that European leaders are meeting to decide who will become president of the European council, the latest PoliticsHome insider research lays bare the extent to which the UK political community remains in the dark about candidates for the job.

In addition, the survey revealed widespread disapproval within Westminster for the process by which the new president will be chosen. The Phi100 panel of political experts and insiders — which comprises MPs and peers from across the political spectrum alongside political editors and commentators, broadcasters, party strategists and think tank directors — were asked the extent of their knowledge of candidates for the new president and their views on the process of filling the role.

In a striking result, not a single insider claimed to be well informed about the range of candidates for the position.

Almost half the panel (forty seven per cent) admitted that though they were aware of the names of a few candidates, they knew ‘little or nothing about what any of them were like’. Twenty four per cent knew ‘a little about some of them’. Roughly the same proportion (twenty six per cent) had ‘detailed knowledge of some’ while knowing ‘little about others’. This pattern was replicated across the political spectrum.

— Hat tip: JP

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Europeans Meet (Soviet-Style) To Choose First-Ever EU President

by Soeren Kern

Leaders of the 27 member states of the European Union are meeting in Brussels on November 19 to choose the first-ever European president and European foreign minister. European political elites say these two new jobs are needed so that the notoriously divided EU can begin speak with one voice on the global stage. Once that happens, they contend, the EU will assume its rightful role as a world superpower and act as a counter-balance to the United States.

Geo-strategists are debating whether Europe’s superpower moment is or is not just around the corner. But if the nomination process for the individual who will represent 500 million Europeans has demonstrated anything at all, it is that Europe is inexorably moving in a direction that has far more in common with Soviet totalitarianism than with Western liberal democracy.

In what has been described as a “slow-moving coup d’état,” Europe over the past several decades has experienced a gradual but significant shift in political power away from individual nation states towards an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy based in Brussels.

Today, these so-called Eurocrats oversee more than 100,000 pages of EU legislation, much of which has primacy over national legislation and parliaments. Indeed, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels now exercise so much power that they dictate what elected leaders can or cannot do in more than 30 policy areas.

In 2004, European federalists moved to consolidate their power by means of the “European Constitution,” which, among many other things, called for abolishing the national veto in more than 50 additional policy areas. But the ratification process ran into a roadblock in May and June 2005, when French and Dutch voters rejected the document.

Predictably, the authors of the European Constitution were unwilling to let democracy get in the way of their federal ambitions…

— Hat tip: Fjordman

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Greece: Explosive Days in Athens

Menace and discontent hang in the air as the anniversary approaches of the shooting of a 15-year-old in Greece’s capital

Greeks mark their anniversaries with a gravitas rarely seen elsewhere. Celebrations commemorating the 17 November 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising against the Colonels regime — an event that would spark the collapse of seven years of military rule — are held over three days and never without the solemnity and panache of a major military victory.

With rare consensus, Hellenes agree that had it not been for the revolt — and the unknown number of students who laid down their lives in the name of democracy — Greece might not have been freed of tyranny so easily.

This year’s anniversary was unlike most others, and not only because the country is in the grip of unprecedented social malaise. Barely three weeks before Athenians mark another anniversary — the shooting last year of a teenage boy by a policeman patrolling the febrile neighbourhood around Athens Polytechnic — the rage that erupted in the wake of the killing, snowballing into riots nationwide, has far from disappeared.

Anti-authoritarian violence, resurgent terrorism and a surge in militant extremism by youngsters who have come to see themselves as the “defenders” of the polytechnic spirit, have made Athens an increasingly explosive place. For some, the anniversary was a dry run for what lies ahead.

With this in mind, the commemorations, including the traditional march from the polytechnic to the US embassy — to protest at Washington’s shameful support for the junta — were seen as a crucial public order test for the newly installed socialist government. With military precision, 6,000 police were dispatched on to the streets, many in riot gear. In the event, the march went off without much incident even if the rally drew more Greeks (an estimated 12,000 showed up for the protest), and more teenagers, than in recent years.

But like the unmistakable whiff of discontent that still prevails among Greek youth, an air of menace hangs in the air. The boulevards and side streets surrounding the polytechnic are rife with graffiti, the sort that warns that “Athens will burn”, “banks will go up in flames” and “cops, pigs, murderers, we don’t forgive”.

Walking the grimy streets of Exarchia, the bohemian district behind the polytechnic that has come to be associated with leftwing radicalism, I stumbled across a well-spoken, well-shod 25-year-old who, describing himself as an anarchist, gave an eloquent explication as to why young Greeks had to resort to violence to defend their rights. “Beware, that we will burn what hasn’t burned so far,” he said as two young men in jeans and leather jackets, loitering with him, smiled in agreement. “Violence in our society is systemic, it is everywhere, in the police, in exploitative labour, in our attitude to migrants, in our banks. As the uprising showed last year, there are many of us who think like this, and the beautiful thing is we don’t have demands. Put simply, we just want to say ‘we don’t like you, we will fight you, we will destroy you, we will defend our right to violence’. We don’t need an anniversary. It could happen anytime, anywhere, there is no rendezvous with the police.”

Tellingly, many of the youngsters who have emerged as members of the “guerilla” groups that have attacked government and political targets in the past year, come from privileged backgrounds, often attending private schools in Athens’ well-heeled northern suburbs.

The spectre of violence has been exacerbated by the disproportionately high rate of joblessness among the younger generation and worsening corruption — Greece slipped to last place within the 27-member EU this year in the league table of “perceived” corrupt states released by Transparency International.

Though in government for less than two months, George Papandreou’s centre-left Pasok party has also been accused of furthering disillusionment by forging ahead with unpopular (if much needed) economic reforms. Among the far left, the sense is growing that the socialists are bent on pursuing the same policies as their conservative predecessors. What is sure is that with many clearly girding for battle, the government is taking no chances and has announced that security will be stepped up in the coming weeks.

“Remember, remember the 6th of December,” read one banner, referring to the day the privately educated 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead last year. The banner was held aloft by a group of self-styled “anti-establishment nihilists” chanting “cops, pigs murderers, we will burn you” as they marched through Athens.

The threat of violence has been met with thinly disguised disdain by those who fought to overturn a hated regime when they participated in the polytechnic uprising. “These people undermine democracy, with their actions they give police every reason to take harsh measures against the little man in the street,” said Evangelos Kouris, one of the veterans heading the rally to the US embassy. “What we did was heroic and legitimate. What they are doing is cowardly and criminal and has no relation whatsoever with the struggle for a better tomorrow.”

— Hat tip: JP

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Irish Child Misdiagnosed With Swine Flu Dies

A little girl, Ruby Ayoub, who would have been six this week, was buried in Dublin on Monday following her death from meningitis which doctors wrongly diagnosed as swine flu.

Now her parents have pledged to work to make sure no other family needlessly suffers the same heartache.

Ruby, who lived in Sandyford, County Dublin, fell ill, complaining of a headache, on the evening of Friday, November 6, and was taken to a local surgery by her parents but she was sent home by a doctor who said she had swine flu.

When, clearly in agony, her condition deteriorated, Ruby was taken to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, where meningitis was diagnosed but crucial hours had been lost and she lapsed into a coma on Sunday.

— Hat tip: JD

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Islam: Aid El Adha November 27 for French Muslims

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, NOVEMBER 18 — The Muslim holiday to remember the sacrifice of Abraham, Aid El Adha, will be celebrated by French Muslims on November 27, the French council of the Muslim faith announced, indicating that “animal sacrifices must take place in authorised slaughterhouses, in close respect of religious norms and principles”. The authorised facilities are not easy to find, the throat cutting of the animals will be able to take place for 3 days beginning with the prayer set to take place at 9 am on the 27th. The Festival of the Ram, as Aid El Adha is commonly called, or Aid El Kebir, remembers the sacrifice made by Abraham when God asked him to sacrifice his son (Isaac, son of the barren Sara, according to Genesis, the first son of Ishmael according to the Koran) to demonstrate his devotion. Abraham with sadness in his heart on the point of committing the act when God (or Allah) satisfied by this obedient reaction, stopped his hand, allowing him to sacrifice a ram in the place of his son. During the celebration, which focuses on generosity with the poor, every Muslim who has the means has almost the duty of purchasing a ram, the prices of which rise astronomically in Islamic countries, and give a part of it to a poor family. The festivities are held after the pilgrimage to Mecca, pthe tenth month of Dhou Al Hijja, the last month of the Muslim calendar, which varies geographically based on when the full moon is observed, as in other holidays like Ramadan. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Dalai Lama Enters Crucifix Debate

Rome, 18 Nov. (AKI) — Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Wednesday rejected a recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights opposing the display of the crucifix in school classrooms in officially secular Italy saying it is important to maintain traditions.

“It is of fundamental importance to maintain your own traditions, and Italy has a Christian and Catholic background. Therefore, to keep the tradition of the crucifix in the schools is extremely important,” the Dalai Lama told a media conference at Italy’s chamber of deputies.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 3 November that placing the crucifix in classrooms infringed parents’ right to educate their children “in conformity with their convictions”.

The court ruling has sparked fierce debate in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy where the Vatican earlier this month strongly rejected the ruling, saying it was “wrong and myopic” to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

The case was launched by an Italian woman, Soile Lautsi, who opposed the display of a Catholic crucifix at her children’s state school in Abano Terme, a small town outside the northern city of Padua.

Lautsi was also awarded 5,000 euros in damages by the court.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Italy: Pope Trumps Berlusconi Among World’s Most Powerful Men

New York, 12 Nov. (AKI) — Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the 12th most powerful man in the world, trailing Pope Benedict XVI who is ranked 11th, according to a ranking by US-based financial magazine, Forbes. The list included 67 heads of state, criminals, financiers and philanthropists.

The Forbes list placed Italy’s “colourful prime minister…who is a politician, a media monopolist and owner of soccer powerhouse A.C. Milan,” at number 12.

To calculate the rankings, five Forbes senior editors ranked all of the candidates according to their influence, financial resources, power in a number of different spheres and their use of power.

“Pope Benedict XVI, ranked 11th on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world’s population,” Forbes noted.

This year, the list was topped by US president Barack Obama followed by Chinese president Hu Jintao, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, Ben Bernanke, the US chairman of the federal reserve and the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page among others.

Last week, Forbes ranked Berlusconi as the 72nd wealthiest individual in the world with net assets of 6.5 billion dollars.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Italy: Berlusconi’s Govt Continues Freefall in the Polls

Rome, 17 Nov. (AKI) — The popularity of the government headed by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi declined over the past two months while his personal approval rating remains at its lowest level since he was re-elected for the third time in April last year, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

The government’s popularity dropped two percentage points since October and decreased by 14 points since October last year, according to the survey.

Berlusconi’s approval rate as the premier remained at 45 percent and it is still at its lowest point since he was re-elected for the third time in April, the survey said.

The survey was conducted by Naples-based market research company, IPR, and published in left-leaning Italian daily, La Repubblica.

La Repubblica is one of the newspapers Berlusconi is suing for libel and intrusion of privacy. The daily has been at the forefront in reporting Berlusconi’s colourful private life allegedly involving prostitutes.

Meanwhile, Italy’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, registered a four percent increase in its popularity, reaching a 41 percent approval rate, according to the survey.

Earlier in November, former economy minister Pierluigi Bersani was elected as the new party leader.

The survey was published in the wake of recent scandals surrounding Berlusconi and members of his party. These include support for the candidacy of a politician suspected of mafia links in upcoming elections for president of the southern region of Campania.

Prosecutors have requested the arrest of junior government minister and parliamentarian, Nicola Cosentino, who is suspected of longstanding collusion with the mafia.

According to Cosentino, the premier did not ask him to resign. Berlusconi’s lawyer and People of Freedom MP Niccolo Ghedini defended Cosentino, who is reportedly a favourite of the premier.

Berlusconi’s popularity was also unaffected by a bill tabled by his conservative ruling coalition to shorten the length of criminal trials, which the opposition claims has been drafted to help Berlusconi solve his legal problems.

Two of Berlusconi’s trials would be “timed out” if the bill becomes law, according to financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore and other reports.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Italy: Colonel Who Captured Red Brigade Terrorists Now Branded a Criminal

Colonel Seno found guilty of Abu Omar abduction. “I’m not ashamed to say I wept”

MILAN — The glint in his eye is the same as it was 35 years ago, when as a Carabiniere captain serving with General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa he leapt out of his white Fiat 124 and grabbed Alberto Franceschini by the neck before the Red Brigade terrorist could get his loaded pistol out of his belt. Renato Curcio was also in the car he rammed at Orbassano, near Pinerolo, on 8 September 1974. Luciano Seno had more hair back then, and it was darker. Today, his well-groomed locks are white but his expression is still the same. The former captain, now a colonel, explains: “At the time, I was running on adrenalin. Now my eyes reflect only anger and deep disappointment. I served my country for 45 years, 20 in the uniform of the Carabinieri and 25 in the intelligence service. Protecting people. But I never imagined I would be retiring with a shameful three-year sentence for personal complicity in abduction. Never. I wept, I’m not ashamed to say so. It’s appalling and unparalleled that this should happen. But I am a child of the state and believe in the rule of law. I’ve worked side by side with outstanding magistrates and judges so I respect the verdict in the inner certainty that I can overturn it on appeal. But it’s not easy to accept. Believe me. I’ve dedicated my life to the law”.

The Carabiniere who served with Dalla Chiesa can at last draw breath. The verdict that convicted him was handed down last Wednesday and the trial was the one involving top brass from SISMI military intelligence and the CIA over the abduction in Milan of the former imam, Abu Omar. State secrecy was controversially invoked to protect SISMI boss Nicolò Pollari and Seno’s direct superior, Marco Mancini, but not Seno himself. The colonel’s actual involvement in the case was limited to giving his service mobile phone, at the request of Marco Mancini, to another SISMI colleague, General Gustavo Pignaro, who was seriously ill and has since died. Seno was at the back of the court as the judge, Oscar Magi, read the verdict. He was alone, keeping away from photographers, and had a briefcase. The colonel insists: “I obeyed a legitimate order. I never knew anything about the Abu Omar abduction, except what I read in the papers, and this is the result. It’s an anomaly of the system. Anyone who ascribes a job as wrong-headed and poorly executed as the Abu Omar business to military intelligence is terribly mistaken. None of us would have acted like that”.

Luciano Seno lives in Rome. He has no children. His roots lie in Piedmont, something he reveals with a certain pride, because the Carabinieri also have Piedmontese origins. Seno arrested Curcio and Franceschini, he smashed the XXII Ottobre gang and apprehended Sergio Gadolla’s kidnappers. He was the man who put the cuffs on the killer of Milena Sutter, the 13-year-old floor wax magnate’s daughter who vanished in the afternoon of 6 May 1971 outside a Swiss school to reappear, washed up on a Genoa beach, two weeks later. Seno tells us: “Some books say that the police got him but the truth is that it was us, the Carabinieri, who collared Lorenzo Bozano, the ‘fair-haired kid in the red sports car’. Me and my lads”. Dalla Chiesa had noticed the young officer at the Lamarmora barracks of the Carabinieri battalion in Milan, behind the courthouse. When he met Seno again in Genoa almost by chance, in the early 1970s, Dalla Chiesa took him back to Turin to set up the first special anti-terrorism squad. “Days and nights ceased to exist for us and our families. There was only the job. The Red Brigades had to be beaten. And the general was always with us”. Seno remembers one urgent report that had to be sent to an examining magistrate. “We wrote it during the night and at four in the morning Dalla Chiesa began to drift off. We waited in silence. Three minutes later, Dalla Chiesa woke up and stared at us one by one. He said ‘Come on lads, even a general can nod off. Let’s get this finished’“.

The photo of Franceschini’s arrest went all round the world. “Not many people know that it was taken by a Carabiniere officer that Dalla Chiesa had assigned to protect us. It was an incredible afternoon. I was in my own white 124 with a colleague, who was driving. We couldn’t communicate because the radio wasn’t working. I was cut off behind Curcio and Franceschini. We followed them to a level crossing. I was worried we would be separated by the barrier and lose them so I ordered the driver to run into them. We got out to inspect the damage but Franceschini sensed it was a trap and tried to get away. Curcio stayed behind the wheel. I had to act quickly and jumped out, then I saw a camera lens poking through a bush. I handcuffed Curcio as well and shouted to the driver to arrest the man behind the bush. I thought it might be a BR terrorist who could have shot us. My driver raced over, rugby-tackled the hapless photographer and punched him in the mouth. The man started shouting ‘Stop! What are you doing? I’m a Carabiniere officer, too!’ For Dalla Chiesa, we were all his children and had to be protected”. The general took Seno to Rome. Seno continues: “Andreotti summoned Dalla Chiesa to Rome. The general wanted me and the other lads, about ten of us, but we pulled off another miracle. One officer managed to penetrate the Via Volsci terrorist lair and get hold of the membership list of Potrop, the Workers’ Party. We found out who they all were”. If you ask him whether he was a good Carabiniere, the colonel smiles again. “My investigations do the talking for me. I don’t have to say anything”. The colonel rubs his chin and straightens his jacket. Before he takes his leave, he whispers: “It hurts to be treated like a criminal”.

English translation by Giles Watson

www.watson.it

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Kercher Murder Account ‘Not Credible’

30-year-term should be upheld, prosecutor says

(ANSA) — Perugia, November 18 — An Italian prosecutor on Wednesday asked an appeals court to uphold the 30-year conviction of an Ivory Coast man for the rape and murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in 2007 in Perugia.

Prosecutor Pietro Catalani argued Rudy Guede, 22, had taken part in the crime and had raped the victim.

Catalani said Guede’s earlier account of the night of the murder had not been credible.

Guede claimed he had been listening to his I-pod in the bathroom when he heard Meredith scream and saw a male assailant flee with Amanda Knox, a US student in the dock in a separate trial with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

“He is not credible,” said Catalani, arguing that the “progressive” wounds on Kercher’s body could not have been inflicted in a single attack of the kind described by Guede.

Guede’s trial was adjourned until December 21.

Knox, 22, and Sollecito, 25, are expected to get their verdicts early next month.

Prosecutors in the Knox trial say she, Sollecito and Guede killed Kercher after a sex game went wrong.

Knox is accused of holding a knife to Kercher’s throat while Sollecito pinned her arms down and Guede tried to have sex with her.

According to prosecutors, the Seattle-born Knox dealt the blow that slit Kercher’s throat.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Medfilm: Moroccan Actress Emerges as Top New Talent

Rome, 16 Nov. (AKI) — Moroccan actress Sanaa Alaoui has won the New Talents Award at the 15th annual Mediterranean Film Festival held in the Italian capital Rome. She spoke to Adnkronos International (AKI) in an exclusive interview.

“I feel very proud of being Moroccan and I am very proud of Moroccan directors who are now discussing issues of women’s emancipation and modernism. It is a beautiful evolution,” Alaoui told AKI after receiving the award in Rome on Saturday.

Alaoui has starred in Moroccan, French, Mexican and Spanish films and several television series but did not appear in any of the films screened at this year’s MedFilm Festival.

The 32-year-old said that Moroccan cinema was growing and there was more creative freedom than there had been in the past in the north African country.

“Before, we couldn’t speak about issues such as sex. Now we can do that. We have a new eye for cinema,” she said, adding that the main problem for Moroccan cinema was a lack of funding.

Alaoui was born in the Moroccan city of Casablanca and now lives in the French capital Paris.

She offered advice for aspiring Moroccan actresses saying they had a chance to make it in the world of cinema if they persevered.

“Believe in your dream. It is possible, but you need to have passion, you need to be strong in order to succeed,” she said.

In 2008 Alaoui won the Best Actress Award at the Tangier Film Festival, while a film in which she starred, A Fiance for Yasmina, won the Audience Award at the Mediterranean Film Festival of Montpellier and Best Movie at Nantes Film Festival.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Pope’s Art History Lecture

Benedict explains importance of Medieval cathedrals

(ANSA) — Vatican City, November 18 — Pope Benedict XVI turned into an impromptu art history professor on Wednesday, lecturing faithful on the importance of Europe’s Medieval Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.

Addressing the crowd at his weekly general audience, the German pontiff likened the cathedrals to “stone Bibles” which through sculptures and paintings illustrating episodes from the Gospel offer Christians a “privileged route” to draw closer to God.

“Christianity gave life not only to masterpieces of theological literature. It also inspired some of the most exalted artistic creations of all civilisation: the cathedrals, which are the real glories of Medieval Christianity,” Benedict said.

Benedict recalled that from the 9th to the 14th century, European nations, particularly France and Italy, vied with each other to create artistic and architectural masterpieces.

The cathedrals, he said, were titanic endeavours which were built thanks to the contributions of the faithful, technical advancements in architecture and the know-how of brilliant architects.

Favourable historical conditions, including greater political stability which led people to move to cities, created a need for the construction of churches big enough to hold large congregations.

Romanesque churches introduced the use of sculptures which, as well as seeking technical perfection, had an educational aim, he said.

Statues, paintings and magnificent portals — whose recurring theme was the representation of Christ as Judge, surrounded by the figures of the Apocalypse — struck the viewer and helped him understand that Jesus is “the door that leads to heaven”,said the pope.

Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were characterised by “their vertical thrust and luminosity” which aimed to translate in architectural lines “the longing of the soul for God”.

They are a synthesis of faith and art “harmoniously expressed through the universal and captivating language of beauty,” Benedict told the 8,000 faithful gathered at the general audience.

Their stained-glass windows heaped “a cascade of light upon the faithful, recounting the story of salvation”.

“The force of the Romanesque and the splendour of Gothic cathedrals remind us that the way of beauty, is a privileged and fascinating way to approach the Mystery of God”, Benedict said.

photo: Leon Cathedral, Spain.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Tony Blair Dumped as Baroness Ashton of Upholland Gets Key EU Role

The EU appointed Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister, and the British Trade Commissioner, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, to the two newly created posts of President and High Representative tonight, hours after Downing Street confirmed it had abandoned its support for Tony Blair.

Gordon Brown joined the seven other European socialist group leaders in backing Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Upholland after accepting that there was too little support for Mr Blair to be president. A Downing Street spokesman said: “When it became clear that, because of the various political considerations and varying views among the rest of the members on Blair [he would not get the post], then the Prime Minister made the forceful step of proposing Catherine Ashton for the high representative’s position,” the spokesman said.

“We feel that it is in Britain’s interests to play a major role in the new EU and don’t forget this is a very important job — not just for its political role but also for its defence role. We are very pleased that our socialist partners agreed to put [Ashton] forward as our candidate.”

Downing Street’s U-turn was a humiliating snub to Mr Blair, Mr Brown’s predecessor, who had hoped to take the plum role, but was opposed by key EU leaders who feared he would be too presidential. The choice of Mr Van Rompuy signalled that the leaders were not eager to have a high-profile personality represent the EU abroad. The two new posts are meant to bolster the EU’s influence overseas.

Lady Upholland, 52, a former leader of the Lords, took over as British Commissioner in Brussels when Lord Mandelson was brought back to the UK Cabinet by Mr Brown. News of her promotion will astound British diplomats, who would not have regarded her senior enough for the job. Lady Upholland’s appointment marks the latest in a line of jobs since she was given a life peerage in 1999.

Mr Brown promoted her to the role of Leader of the House of Lords in his first reshuffle. She took up briefs as the Government’s spokeswoman for equality and the Cabinet Office in the Lords. In 2001 she was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills, taking charge of Sure Start in 2002. In 2004 she took up a similar role at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, before her promotion last year. She also became a Privy Councillor in 2006.

Lady Upholland, who studied economics at London University, spent six years as director of Business in the Community in the 1980s and later chaired Hertfordshire’s health authority. Married to the journalist and pollster Peter Kellner since 1988, she has two children and three stepchildren.

— Hat tip: JP

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UK: [Fox-Hunting] Anti-Matters

I was a hunt-follower over the weekend. Or rather I stood in the wind and rain watching friends in hunting coats, galloping about on horses. Horses, riders and hounds were following a quad-bike-laid trail, not foxes; but with or without a fox I can’t claim that personally I see the point of it.

No witness could deny, though, the thrill for many of the whole thing. I find the ritual, and the very British defiance of the hunting community, rather wonderful.

To my confusion, however, I find the defiance, idealism and anger of the anti-hunting brigade rather wonderful (and very British) too, and was disappointed there were no antis in evidence on Saturday, although apparently they often do turn up, on the alert for fox-chasing. I salute both sides.

Couldn’t we ritualise the anti-hunt as well as the hunt? Couldn’t they too have special coats, little glasses of port to drink and, maybe, whistles to blow? Hunt servants get paid; if we paid anti-hunt servants too (apparently students do sometimes take a fee) we’d double the employment opportunities for local people, and add further to the gaiety of rural life.

— Hat tip: JP

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UK: A Special Form of Disrespect

Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin

It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be no one willing to take Britain’s call.

For weeks now, President Obama has been deliberating over what the Afghan strategy should be — and how many troops to send. If there is confusion in Washington, then Britain’s strategy is not much clearer. Gordon Brown has staged a recent flurry of activity on the subject, from writing misspelt letters to grieving mothers to demanding that an exit strategy be established for the withdrawal of British forces. Yet among our top brass, the general perception is that the Prime Minister has little interest in the war.

It is often as if Brown regards the Afghan campaign as a dead fish that Tony Blair has left in the top drawer of his Downing Street desk. It has infected his premiership with a foul odour, and he wants to be rid of it as soon as possible. This explains his promise, on Monday, to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops at the earliest available opportunity. The signal is sent that an exit is not just in sight, but being approached.

Brown’s approach hardly squares with his Foreign Secretary’s assertion, made the next day in his address to Nato’s Parliamentary Assembly, that British forces should remain until the Afghans are strong enough to take care of their own affairs. Miliband might have his faults, such as his obsessive enthusiasm for Europe. But he is sound on Afghanistan where — unlike the prime minister — he has been an articulate and well-informed advocate of the Nato cause. One has the feeling that, if Mr Obama were able to talk about Afghanistan, Mr Miliband could have a decent conversation with him.

But the very fact that these policy divisions are now starting to appear in London is symptomatic of a far deeper malaise that lies at the heart of Afghan policy-making; it is a malaise that now threatens to jeopardise the success of the entire mission. And this malaise is the absence of meaningful dialogue between the White House and its hitherto most stalwart and reliable ally, particularly when it comes to the messy business of confronting Islamist militants through force of arms.

We all had a good giggle when Brown was reduced to chasing the Leader of the Free World through the subterranean kitchen complex at the UN’s New York headquarters in September. One can understand why Obama can think of a million better ways to spend his time than talking to our obsessive, nail-chewing and electorally doomed prime minister. But given that Britain and America are currently fighting a war together, one would hope that the true statesman would overcome any personal reservations — and deal with Mr Brown because of the country he represents.

What really troubles British policymakers is that the collapse in the relationship is institutional, not personal, and that the president has little interest in listening to what Britain has to say on many world issues, even at a time when British servicemen and women are sacrificing their lives in what is supposed to be a common cause.

The astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain has been made clear by his deliberations over the Afghan issue. As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan — a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission — Britain is reduced to guesswork. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair—Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.

— Hat tip: JP

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UK: Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy

British media and society are gripped by lies about a “secret” Israel lobby controlling foreign policy.

Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.” The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper’s flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group’s virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a “Protocols of Zion”-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.

Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.

Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary, “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby,” on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.

The makers of the documentary—top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones—have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors’ own explanation on how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power.

It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel. “The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza,” they wrote. “We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it ‘strives to protect innocent life.’ This remark was not intended satirically.”

Since it is inconceivable, the authors obviously believe, that anyone could honestly credit Israel with anything other than the most damnable motives it must therefore follow that those who do in fact praise the Jewish state must be being paid or bullied into doing so. If you think this all sounds familiar, you’d be right. Messrs. Oborne and Jones produced an extensive pamphlet accompanying the documentary, which openly claimed inspiration from none other than John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”—another conspiracy theory alleging malign Zionist influence in the United States.

But if Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt at least felt the need to dress up their polemic in pseudo-academic wrapping paper, the sheer amateurishness of the British documentary they inspired is breathtaking. There was the endless superimposition of the Israeli Star of David on to the British flag, which, along with some absurdly melancholic background music, was presumably designed to prepare viewers for an astonishing series of revelations. But of course such revelations actually never materialized.

It turns out from the documentary itself that the allegedly secretive Jewish donors have been quite open in declaring their interests in accordance with the law. One of them, Poju Zabludowicz, the billionaire funder of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) is good friends with Madonna—not exactly the kind of company you’d choose if you were trying to hide behind a veil of obscurity.

Much is also made of the influence of Friends of Israel groupings in the British Parliament. Such allegations are, of course, rendered ridiculous with a moment’s reflection on the countervailing influence of vast amounts of Arab oil money, not to mention the fact that membership in such groups for many parliamentarians is either purely formal or outright meaningless. Michael Ancram, for example, a former Northern Ireland minister and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 30 years, is famous for calling for talks with Hamas.

Given the paucity of the arguments, it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British Jews, not least on Channel 4’s widely read Web site, whose moderators have seen fit to approve dozens of postings about the Zionist lobby’s “seditious behavior,” its “disgusting attack on British democracy,” “the hand of global Zionism at work,” and several along the lines of the following, which said flatly: “We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at all levels of our government and politics need flushing out.”

If this sort of language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole lot worse.

Jewish leadership organizations have long feared accusations of divided loyalty between Britain and Israel and, ironically given the charges now being made against them, are frequently criticized in their own communities for failing to be sufficiently robust in Israel’s defense. The risk is that some may now be panicked into silence. Non-Jews who call for a more reasoned discussion of Israel—already a small and diminishing group in Britain—will likely face additional slanders against their integrity: Since there is supposedly no reasonable case to be made in favor of the Jewish state, we must have sold out to the “Lobby.”

Such calumnies cannot be allowed to stand. Now more than ever, the forces of reason and decency must continue the fight to be heard.

Mr. Shepherd is director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society. His new book, “A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem With Israel,” has just been published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

— Hat tip: JP

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UK: Condemned to an Early Death: Rationing Body Tells Liver Cancer Victims That Life-Prolonging Drug is ‘Too Costly’

Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn.

They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed.

Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.

The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was ‘simply too high’ to justify the ‘benefit to patients’.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Community’s Fury at Continued Detention of Shaikh Asif Farooqui

[Note from JP: Police acknowledge sharp reaction from the community. Local MP has called for calm.]

As the police are granted more time to question the five individuals apprehended on suspicion of inciting terrorism overseas, the family of Shaikh Asif Farooqui has released a statement expressing their shock and dismay at the arrest of the 62 year old preacher.

The family’s statement reads:

“It is simply incredible to those that know him and his work to imagine he could be involved in the promotion or incitement of any kind of violence.

“It is particularly shocking that, having influenced so many, young and old, male and female, to live as law-abiding, trustworthy citizens, he is now being accused of actions which he has so openly opposed for so long.

“He has always gone out of his way to foster good relations with the local police in order to work together as a community and this makes his arrest all the more disgraceful and unacceptable.”

The local MP for Bolton, Dr Brian Iddon has called for calm in the circumstances.

Mr Iddon, speaking of the local community’s horror at the arrest of the well-known and well-respected imam from Deane, Bolton, said:

“I would ask everyone to remain calm.

“This gentleman is very well known. He comes from the Sufi tradition, a branch of Islam which is traditionally very peaceful. That is why the community is so surprised.”

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thompson of the local police force, acknowledging the sharp reaction from the local community, has moved to reassure them that the police are “working closely with local partners and key contacts to ensure that any relevant information is shared as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile the Al Rahman Mosque in Daubhill, Bolton has started an e-petition calling for the immediate release of Shaikh Asif Farooqui.

— Hat tip: JP

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UK: Hadley CRU Has Apparently Been Hacked — Hundreds of Files Released

The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown

I’m currently traveling and writing this from an aiprort, but here is what I know so far:

An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertsied an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to

be kept under wraps.

We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents

The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files.

It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.

I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.

Here is some of the emails just posted at Climate Audit on this thread:

[…]

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or

first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps

to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from

1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual

land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land

N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999

for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with

data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones

[…]

— Hat tip: Archonix

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UK: Pirate Finder to Create Militias and Laws

A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I’ve ever seen. Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he’s hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.

This is as bad as I’ve ever seen, folks. It’s a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

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UK: Shocking Report Reveals That 92% of Gang Rapists in London Are Non-White

A shocking report, ordered by the Metropolitan Police Authority, has revealed that 92 percent of all gang rapists in London are non-white. Fifty percent of all the victims are white.

The report, drawn up by a senior detective from the Yard’s Operation Sapphire team, which investigates sex crimes, revealed that eight percent of all gang rape suspects in 2008/09 were white, 32 percent were black, and 24 percent contained members of different ethnicities. The make-up for the rest was unknown.

The proportion of white victims fell from 69 percent in 1998/99 to 50 percent last year, while the number of black victims doubled from 17 percent to 34 percent, the report continued.

In total, there were 93 gang rapes last year compared with 36 in 2003/04.

Police define the offence as being a sex attack by three or more people, although research by the Met shows an increase in the number of assaults involving four or more attackers.

The report’s other statistics show that in 1998/99, a total of 48 percent of victims were 19 or younger. Last year that total had reached 64 percent. Thirty-six percent of victims were 15 or younger.

The ages of the perpetrators has also dropped. According to the Met, 42 percent were 19 and under last year, compared with 38 percent In 2003/04.

The number of suspects in their twenties fell slightly over that period, from 32 percent to 30 percent.

The report, by Detective Chief Inspector Mark Yexley, says the Met “recognises multiple-perpetrator sex offending linked to youth violence as one of the most serious crime types.”

It adds that gang rape is less likely to be reported than other offences because there are often social links between victims and suspects.

Boroughs with the highest rates of gang rapes include Lambeth, Croydon, Newham, Southwark, Westminster and Hackney.

The Met also said it had asked for research into the issues of female gang membership and gang violence.

The report says: “Offences are complex … from allegations of consensual sex between victims and a known party followed by non-consensual assaults committed by associates, to stranger attacks involving large groups.”

— Hat tip: LN

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UK: Sadistic Mother-of-Eight Found Guilty of Abusing Her Children With Belt, Meat Mallet, Hot Screwdriver and Even a Garlic Crusher

A sadistic mother-of-eight has been found guilty of subjecting six of her children to a ‘sickening’ six-year campaign of abuse and neglect.

The 37-year-old beat her children — aged between four and 16 — with objects including a belt, a broken coat hanger and a meat-tenderising mallet, a court heard.

She was found guilty of 18 charges of abuse including scratching one of her daughters with a knife and burning another with a hot screwdriver.

Cambridgeshire County Council admitted monitoring the family since 1999 yet charges were only brought on the mother after two children discussed the abuse with a teacher.

The mother, a Jamaican national living in Cambridge, was found guilty of 18 charges including nine counts of assaulting a child under 16 in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering with injury to the child’s health.

She was also found guilty of one count of affray and two counts of witness intimidation.

Her reign of terror against her children lasted from January 1 2002 to July 1 2008, the court heard during a five-week trial.

ONE OF THE ABUSED CHILDREN:

‘She hit me on the head with the garlic crusher and grabbed me round the throat. I was crying and putting my hands up to stop her.

The allegations came to light when two of her daughters told teachers at their school that they were being mistreated.

On one occasion, the woman locked up two of her daughter’s school friends in the family home after they witnessed her violence towards her daughter.

They saw her hit her daughter with a meat mallet and garlic press and threaten to slit her throat with a knife if she did not move her hands out of the way.

Summing up the case, Judge Jonathan Haworth read an extract from video evidence from the girl who suffered the attack.

She said: ‘I thought she was going to hit me until I died.

‘She hit me on the head with the garlic crusher and grabbed me round the throat. I was crying and putting my hands up to stop her.

‘She said “I am going to slice your throat with the knife”. I could hardly breathe and she cut me with the knife she was holding in her hand.’

The mother subjected her children to a catalogue of abuse and smacked them with a belt, leaving buckle marks on their skin.

On one occasion the mother heated a screwdriver to mend a toy and then used it to burn her daughter on the thigh and buttock areas, leaving scars.

Two of the children aged just 12 and 14 said they did the shopping and cooking for the family and looked after their younger siblings while their mother lay in bed watching TV.

The mother even sent her young daughters out late at night to find ice for her drinks. Rather than return empty-handed, the youngsters often hid in a park overnight to avoid being attacked.

The woman was heavily pregnant when the allegations were made and has since given birth to her eighth child. All of her children are now in care of the social services.

One of her daughters told the court that she had considered suicide.

She said: ‘I was bullied at school, beaten and burned by my mum. My life was terrible.’

When police arrested the mother, they found the house dirty, with no food in it and no sheets on the children’s beds.

Medical reports said doctors found scars and marks on the children which could not have been from accidental injuries.

The children’s teachers described them as quiet and withdrawn and noticed that one of her sons was always cold and hungry, eating second and third helpings of school dinners.

They were concerned at times that the girls were fending for themselves and appeared frightened of their mother.

In her defence, the mother claimed that a former partner used to beat her and hit the children with a belt and that her children and their friends had made up the allegations.

She admitted slapping them but not using weapons.

She told a parent of one of her children’s friends: ‘Tapping them is different from hitting. I loved my kids, I still do. I did not do these things to them.’

Georgina Gibbs, defending, said that witness reports about the house being messy and smelling of urine did not indicate that the children were being neglected.

Cambridge City Council admitted that they had been aware of the situation since 1999, but despite ‘ongoing monitoring’ the children were only recently taken into care.

A spokesman said: ‘We acted as soon as these allegations came to light and the children were immediately taken into care.

‘Social care teams offered extensive support when the family first came to our attention in 1999, and the situation improved significantly when a relative moved into the family home.

‘There was ongoing monitoring of the family situation by all the relevant agencies.’

Peter Bradley, deputy director of national children’s charity Kidscape, described the abuse as ‘sickening’.

He said: ‘If you’ve got six children, over a six year period, showing signs of serious physical harm, it begs the question as to why there was no intervention earlier.

‘This seems to be part of an ongoing problem with social services nationally where departments are not joined-up in their thinking process and are not sharing information effectively.

‘This has been the failing of many social services around the country which needs to be addressed urgently.

‘In this case the child who reported the abuse was braver than social services themselves who should have been there to protect those children.’

Detective Superintendent Tim Underhill of Cambridgeshire police’s child abuse investigation unit described the state of the house when they arrived.

He said: ‘The mother was arrested and her children taken into care on the same day that the children reported the situation at school.

‘The house was untidy and cluttered. It smelt and there were no, or very few, toys around.’

DCI Karen Rowell, also of the child abuse investigation unit, said the trial had been ‘particularly harrowing’.

‘I would like to thank all of the children involved who have all been incredibly brave throughout,’ she added. ‘I hope the children will be able to move on with their lives.’

Sentencing will take place on December 7.

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UK: The More the State Cares for the Old, The Less We Care for Them

So the Government is to spend £670million to offer free personal care for the most vulnerable elderly people in their own homes. Good, you may say. I’m not so sure. The more the state intervenes, the more we seem to treat the elderly with contempt.

The hallmark of a civilised society is the attention paid to the old, infirm and vulnerable. By that yardstick, Britain has become a disturbingly uncivilised, even brutal society.

How have we descended to this appalling state of affairs? The core reason is that in Britain, we do not venerate our elders in the way that other cultures do.

— Hat tip: JD

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Serbia: Patriarch Pavle Dies; Funeral, Pope’s Condolences

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, NOVEMBER 19 — Pope Benedict XVI has expressed his condolences to the Serbian Orthodox Church and its followers on the death of the Serbian patriarch Pavle, as announced by the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade. In a letter brought by the delegation representing the Vatican at the funeral, led by Cardinal Sodano, the pope noted that Patriarch Pavle was “a witness of faith in spiritual forces in very difficult years marked by wars and conflict on Serbia and other Balkan countries”. Pope Benedict XVI expressed the hope that the memory of Patriarch Pavle would be an invitation for all to follow in the path of dialogue and unity of those who follow Christ. With the mass in Belgrade’s central cathedral began the funeral this morning for the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pavle, who died on Sunday at age 95. Taking part in the funeral were representatives of all the orthodox churches led by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew. Also present were the highest-level political figures of Serbia. In the central mass to be held in front of the San Saba cathedral, at least half a million believers from all across Serbia are expected. The Patriarch will then be buried, as he had asked in his will, in the monastery of Saint Michael in Rokovica, a Belgrade suburb. Serbia is observing a day of rest today. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt: Orascom: Black Day on Bourse After Attacks in Algeria

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 18 — It has been a black day for Orascom Telecom, which went into free fall on the Cairo Bourse today, losing around 6%, after news that the Algerian tax authorities had notified the group that it must pay around 596 million dollars in back tax for the 2005-2007 period and sanctions. The bad news, which was predicted by company president Naguib Sawiris yesterday in a press conference in Cairo, follows damage costing millions to the companys offices and shops in Algeria which is the result of the climate of violence which followed Egypts football victory over Algeria in Cairo last Saturday. Shares in Orascom Telecom fell by 6.04% while the damage to Orascom Construction Industries was limited to 3.9%, according to Mena. The fall of Sawiris giant dragged the Cairo titles down with it, with sales on the part of Arab and foreign investors. The new statement by Algerias tax authorities for large businesses, said a statement by the holding company, is chiefly based on the unfounded and unacceptable accusation that Ota (Orascom Telecom Algeria, ed.) failed to keep correct accounting records for 2005,2006, and 2007. The statement says that the group and Ota will appeal.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Football: Algeria in World Cup;20 Yrs of Fear, Now Celebrating

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, NOVEMBER 19 — Fireworks, ‘ululululu’ (Arab women’s cry of joy) and even ship sirens rung out across yesterday evening in Algiers, where — immediately after the final whistle of referee Eddy Maillet of the Seychelles — a resounding boom marked the beginning of celebrations for the win against Egypt (1-0) in Khartoum, the qualifying match giving Algeria the right to compete in the 2010 World Cup South Africa. It was a much-desired victory, which after 24 years has brought the North African country to the World Cup for the third time in its history. “A well-deserved match,” Amina told ANSA, “which I hope can restore some joy to the young generation, after 20 years of suffering and pain. Twenty years of war and fear.” “I am happy especially for them, and I hope this marks the beginning of the true rebirth of Algeria,” said the 58-year-old woman, mother of three children — including one who made his way to Sudan to watch the match. Algeria hadn’t qualified for the most important football competition in the world since the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. A few years later, the fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) began to dictate laws, and in 1992, with the annulment of the elections in which the FIS won a landslide victory, violent actions began to be taken by Islamist armed groups: terrorism, and civil war. Art, culture and sport almost entirely disappeared. Since yesterday evening the entire country has been dreaming — even Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who thanked the players in an official statement for having given Algerians “immense joy and immense pride”, by pulling off “a feat which until this very moment had been seen as impossible”. Millions of young and old alike, including many women, celebrated in the streets of all the cities of Algeria, from the capital to the oases of the farthest reaches of the Sahara, with the celebrations broadcast live on state-run TV, ENTV. And many, between one slogan and the next, just could not hold back their tears. “After what the Egyptians did to us they got what they deserved. It is a question of pride. Wére on our way to the World Cup!”, said one young fan. Security forces, deployed in riot gear across many zones of Algeria, where in the case of a defeat public disturbance had been feared, helmets were lowered. The tension building up after Saturday’s defeat in Cairo disappeared, as did the violence of the last few days against Egyptian companies. “One, two, three, vive l’Algerie!”. Now, and for many days to come, the time has come to celebrate.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Football: Egypt-Algeria, Diplomatic and Media Clash

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 19 — The Egyptian Foreign Minister has summoned the Algerian Ambassador to Cairo to tell of Egypt’s deep discontent over a series of incidents caused by Algerian football fans after the match yesterday in Sudan, in which Algeria qualified for the World Cup in South Africa. Several Egyptian fans were attacked by the other sides supporters, armed with rocks, but also knives, whilst they were returning to the airport to get their flight back to Cairo. The Egyptian Health Minister however stated in a TV interview that the injuries suffered by Egyptian supporters were mild and that a team of Egyptian doctors were waiting at the airport to provide first aid. As regards the message to the Algerian Ambassador to Cairo, a spokesman from the Foreign Ministry spoke of harsh tones, and repeated Egypt’s request of a guarantee of safety for its citizens in Algeria, for which the government in Algiers is responsible But the Foreign Minister also berated the mercenary press, blaming them for the incidents. The press, reads a statement, have distanced the sport of the Arab world from the sporting spirit, whilst the winner has continued his aggression towards the loser, adding sad memories to the bitter defeat, which only the diplomats can now erase. The statement invites diplomats from Egypt and Algeria to repair the fractures created between the two countries, and underlines the need for a Charter of sports for the Arab world which promotes the role of it as an element of unification between peoples. The Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera is in particular accused of throwing petrol on the fire over a documentary on the history of sporting rivalry between the two countries, which is said to have given both sides the impression that the other was preparing for war. TV programmes featuring interventions by sports analysts were also criticised in general. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy-Egypt: Information Campaign for Minors

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 16 — Challenge yourself…dont challenge the sea, is the slogan for a awareness-raising campaign over the dangers and alternatives to immigration by Egyptian children to Italy, to be presented tomorrow in Cairo by the Egyptian Minister for the Family and Population, Mushira Khattab, and Italys ambassador, Claudio Pacifico. The campaign — which the Italian Employment Ministry and the International Organisation for Migration will participate in — is called ‘Safe Migration and positive alternatives for Egyptian Youth’, and has the intention of providing information on legal alternatives to emigration to Italy and on the importance of professional and linguistic abilities. The initiative will be launched by the Governorate of El Fayoum and will continue in other Governorates with high migratory pressure. The issue of irregular emigration by Egyption minors into Italy has reached worrying levels in recent years. According to data from the Italian government, 41.8% of the 2,881 irregular migrants who arrived in Italy in 2008 were between 15 and 18 years old. It is fundamental that the minors and their families are made aware not only of the dangers from irregular crossings but also of the possible conditions for regular migration. The launch event will be sponsored by well-known Egyptian actor Amr Waked. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Netanyahu Party Member Slams ‘Racist’ Obama

Lawmaker decries U.S. demand to halt Jewish construction

A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party today slammed as “racist” President Obama’s longstanding demand for a halt to Jewish construction in the strategic West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

“President Obama should not interfere with the rights of the Jewish people to live in Jerusalem,” said Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon. “This … is a racist demand, saying that Jews cannot live in Jerusalem, only Arabs.”

Danon continued: “Our duty is to the nation that chose to deepen the settlement across Judea and Samaria, and of course Jerusalem. We will fulfill that duty, even at the cost of ignoring Obama and his advisers.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Settlements: Beilin, Netanyahu, 10 Month Moratorium

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, NOVEMBER 19 — Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will soon announce a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, which will not apply to East Jerusalem. This was made public yesterday by the former Meretz (secular left) party chairman. In the next few days Netanyahu will announce a 10-month moratorium on construction in the settlements, which will apply to all of the West Bank except Jerusalem, confirmed Yossi Beilin during a ceremony where French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, awarded him the Legion of Honour at the French Embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its indivisible capital, including the eastern part conquered and annexed in 1967, while Palestinians want to establish the capital of the state they aspire to in this annexed section. The international community has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will refuse, and this move (by Netanyahu) will actually be a step back, leading to a political void and the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, predicted Beilin, one of the architects of the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accord in 1993.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Temporary Palestinian State, OK by Peres and Barak

(by Aldo Baquis) (ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, NOVEMBER 19 — A temporary Palestinian state in the middle of the West Bank in a limited time, combined with serious international guarantees to the Palestinians that within two years at the most a definitive peace agreement can be reached with Israel. On that day their State will cover an area equivalent to the West Bank and Gaza before the 1967 Six-Day War. Daily newspaper Maariv reports that these are the central elements of a plan which is still being worked out, and which has been discussed privately between Head of State Shimon Peres and representatives from the United States, the PNA and the Arab world. Defence Minister Ehud Barak is in complete agreement with Peres, according to Maariv. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is being kept informed, and is not against it. Opposition party Kadimas number two Shaul Mofaz presented a personal plan based on similar concepts ten days ago. He presented it to United States government officials yesterday, who reacted with keen interest said Mofaz. For his part, Netanyahu is about to announce a ten-month moratorium on building projects in the West Bank. But a mini-State in the West Bank, with a considerably problematic limb in Gaza (due to the deep and lasting bitterness between Fatah and Hamas) seems not to be exciting interest among the Palestinians. While Jerusalem multiplies its own trial balloon, twenty kilometres to the north in Ramallah, a profound sense of mistrust reigns. In an interview from prison with Reuters, al-Fatah chief Marwan Barghuti claims that talks with Israel will be considered a failure and that now is the time to resume the peoples battle against the settlements, against the security barriers and against the Jewification of Jerusalem. President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) asked rhetorically: if not even the president of the United States can manage to freeze the Israeli settlement-building, how can I? In a television interview Mahmoud Abbas said he was determined not to stand again as leader of the Palestinian National Authority. Nobody is replaceable if the Israelis seriously want to move forward with the peace process, let them speak with my successor as well he said, continuing his international itinerary from Egypt to Brazil. Demoralised tones now mark Abu Ala and Saeb Erekat, the best-known Palestinian negotiators. Meanwhile Premier Salam Fayad is concentrating on building the infrastructure of the Palestinian state regardless of any particular agreements with Israel. Despite the negative atmosphere, talks are going on behind the scenes for a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. A cautious optimism has been growing since yesterday. Israeli corporal Ghilad Shalit, who has been held in Gaza since June 2006, could soon be taken to el-Arish (in the Egyptian Sinai) to be examined by Israeli doctors. Palestinian newspaper al-Manar maintains that Israel will then release 450 Palestinian prisoners accused of serious attacks. Thanks to Hamas, says the newspaper, Barghuti will be released. Minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer (Labour) says that Barghuti could be the best successor to Mahmoud Abbas: he is a genuine leader who also enjoys the support of Hamas. He knows the difference between dreams and reality. I would like to do business with hard people like him. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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U.S. Supporting Palestinian Land-Grab

Operating in areas under Israeli authority according to Oslo Accords

While the Obama administration has demanded a halt to Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, it is “totally supporting” the building of official Palestinian institutions in those same areas as well as the strategic West Bank, a top Palestinian Authority official told WND.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a recent report by Israel’s Shabak security services that the PA has been opening official institutions in what are termed areas B and C.

According to the 1993 Oslo Accords, territories defined as area A are entirely administered and controlled by the Palestinians; area B is administered by the PA but controlled by Israel; whereas area C, including eastern Jerusalem, is supposed to be entirely administered and controlled by Israel.

In defiance of the accords, the Palestinians in recent months have opened up official institutions, including PA ministry offices, in area C.

— Hat tip: JD

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A Challenging Theater Performance by Transsexuals

Transsexuals have come together to perform in the theater as the Group Opal. ‘Either love us or not, but know us first,’ the artists say as they depict their struggles through the language of art

A group of Turkish transsexuals has created a theatrical play to share the difficulties members of the community face, telling audiences, “Either love us or not, but know us first.”

The biggest problem faced by Turkish transsexuals, Group Opal artists say, is that they are not given a chance to express themselves. They must pay the price of their sexuality in their daily lives and have difficulties finding the jobs they need to survive. Their families generally reject them, and many find themselves caught up in prostitution due to financial problems and social pressure. Only some succeed in coping with these difficulties.

“Everyone will confront themselves and life [in this play],” Dilruba Saatçi, who is staging “Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” (Worthless Neighborhood Lectures) at Süzer Plaza’s Theater Mann in Istanbul’s Elmadag neighborhood, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. Drawing attention to the problems faced by transsexuals in Turkey, Saatçi added, “Turkish society cannot stand the ‘other.’“

An accidental encounter

Saatçi, who moved to Vienna with her family when she was a child, received an education in the performing arts. She took the stage in almost every European city, including Vienna, and followed events in Turkey distantly, through the eyes of a young person growing up in Europe.

Wanting to know more about her own culture, she came to Turkey a few years ago to satisfy her curiosity. Saatçi said she was very upset that she could not find what she desired in Turkey. “I was really disappointed. Human rights are not respected in this country,” she said, adding that it was difficult to hide from this reality because she is a Turk.

The main reason behind Saatçi’s attitude was an incident that occurred at Çapa Hospital in Istanbul’s Fatih district when she was attending scriptwriting classes. She asked herself, “What kind of role would I choose if I were a director?” and came up with the idea of playing the role of a transsexual. She started researching the topic and met with a psychiatrist at Çapa Hospital. During the meeting, a nurse entered the room and said a tormented transsexual had been brought to the hospital. This was a turning point for Saatçi.

Difficult to gain trust

Following this incident, she chose to devote more research to the difficulties experienced by transsexuals, attending meetings organized weekly by members of the community. “They share their most private secrets at the meetings, from their troubles with the police to problems with their families,” Saatçi said.

Though she regularly attended the meetings for three months, she said it was difficult to gain the participants’ trust.

“When I asked them why, they adopted a distant manner,” she said. “Their answer was ‘You’ll get bored and leave a short time later.’“

Saatçi was determined not to leave. With her friend Yilmaz Öney, she wrote the play “Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” and later shared her project with the meeting participants. “None of them had any experience with acting. They accepted it at first, but wanted to go when they had difficulty,” she said. “I encouraged them, saying, ‘If you have succeeded in surviving against all odds as a transsexual in this country, you can also get onstage.’ I enabled them to discover their power.”

She said all viewers, whether Turkish or foreign, would see a different face of life in this play.

“Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” runs until the end of the season; the next performances are Nov. 21 and 28 at 8:30 p.m. For further information, visit www.tiyatromanno.com.tr.

‘They make my life hell’

Didem Soylu, 27, one of the performers, is a tourism and hotel-management graduate. She said she realized her sexual tendencies at a very young age. “I felt the feelings of all young girls while being a woman, too. I wanted to get the support of my family. But it was difficult to break the taboos; the cost was heavy,” she said.

“If we are given the right to education, we want to become successful and do our business,” Soylu said. “I don’t understand why people are curious about others’ sexual lives, but not their brains.”

Sevi Yilmaz, 30, graduated from a school for gifted students. She said her right to live as she chooses has been violated because of her sexual preferences. “My soul hurts, they make my life hell. I don’t know what cost we will have to pay in this world,” she said. Yilmaz added that transsexuals working as prostitutes should not be made to feel shame, saying: “If you don’t give me a job and create an opportunity for me to be included in society, then I will sell my body and soul.”

Using the example of Turkey’s “diva” soloist Bülent Ersoy, who underwent a gender-change operation in the early 1980s, Yilmaz said: “If a transsexual is famous, she is warmly applauded, but if not, all doors are closed. What a bad contradiction!”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Davutoglu Criticizes Speaker of EU Parliament

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reacted Monday to the Polish speaker of the European Parliament’s statement that Turkish culture has no place in Europe’s cultural heritage.

“I am a bit surprised by this statement because it does not fit with the European mentality,” Davutoglu said in an address to the New Economy Forum in Madrid. “I can give you a hundred reasons why Turkey is part of European culture.”

Parliament Speaker Jerzy Buzek made the remarks in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais.

“Let’s say Turkey gave up on its membership aspiration… Do you think all European cultural challenges would be solved?” Davutoglu asked. “Introducing a unified European culture and excluding the rest is wrong.”

“You cannot understand the history of at least 15 European countries without exploring the Ottoman archives,” the Turkish foreign minister added. “One cannot understand the European cities of Sarajevo, Belgrade and Thessaloniki without considering the Ottomans’ urban culture.”

“The European Union should think more globally than continentally,” Davutoglu said. “We want a Europe open to all cultures.”

In his lengthy address to the Turkish and Spanish audience, Davutoglu said the world must restore the global political, economic and cultural order for the well-being of the future of humanity.

On his last day in Spain, Davutoglu went to Barcelona to re-open a Turkish consulate in the city. Turkey had operated a consulate there between 1925 and 1981, but was forced to shut it for economic reasons.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Death of an Iran Prison Doctor Raises Suspicion

“An Iranian doctor who went public with reports of tortured protesters he treated at Tehran’s most feared detention facility dies, amid conflicting reports of a heart attack, a car accident or suicide — raising opposition accusations that the 26-year-old was killed.

Revelations that protesters detained in Iran’s postelection crackdown were tortured, some to death, were a deep embarrassment to the country’s clerical rulers. Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani was pressured to change the death certificate of one of the most well known victims and later spoke to a parliament commission investigating the abuse, opposition Web sites reported.”

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Islam: First ‘Official’ Copy of Koran in Italian to be Printed in Medina

Mecca, 18 Nov. (AKI) — The first ‘official’ copies in Italian language of the Islamic holy book, the Koran, will be published in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina next year. The copies will be printed in the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Koran, which issues hundreds of thousands of copies of the Koran all over the world. A team of Islamic scholars in Medina has been working on the translation for a number of years.

“Compared to the previous translation that sold thousands of copies in Italy, the Saudi version will have fewer annotations, and the Italian translation will also contain the original Arabic equivalent,” former secretary of one of Italy’s largest Muslim groups, UCOII, Hamza Piccardo.

Piccardo drafted an Italian translation of the Koran, which the Islamic scholars in Medina used as a basis for the ‘official’ translation which will be available next September.

“There were corrections and revisions where I also participated after spending many days here in Medina,” Piccardo said in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

Distribution of the Italian Koran will begin next September and many Italian mosques will soon have a copy, according to Piccardo.

He was also in Saudi Arabia for the annual ‘hajj’ or pilgrimage to Mecca.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Lebanon: School for Palestinians Reopened Thanks to EU

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 18 — The Deir Qasi school in Said, Lebanon, has been opened after it was rebuilt with EU funds. Around 900 children will be able to learn in the new building, avoiding double shifts and increasing lesson times. The initiative, says the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), was part of a 15 million-euro educational project, which aims to give extra job opportunities to young Palestinians in Lebanon, by increasing and improving the quality of the UNRWAs education system, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Young people are the future and we must invest in them, said Karen Abou Zayd, general commissioner of UNRWA, at the opening ceremony. by 2012, thanks to our joint endeavour, no school in Saida will be operating on double-shift; and more than 6,000 Palestinian children across Lebanon will have a new classroom., said Ambassador Patrick Laurent, Head of the European Commission Delegation to Lebanon. The EUs support for the education of Palestinian refugees through the UNRWA also includes a programme of University scholarships for Palestinian students in Lebanon. The EU has approved this initiative for three years, with up to 8.3 million set aside for scholarships for Palestinians. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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India: Church Vandalised in South of Country

Bangalore, 18 Nov. (AKI/IANS) — A church located in the southern Indian state of Karnataka has been vandalised and a cross, doors and windows have been damaged, police and church authorities said Wednesday.

Vasanthkumar, the priest at the church in Humnabad in Bidar district, told reporters that the attack must have taken place late Tuesday and the damage was noticed Wednesday.

“It looks like a deliberate act of desecration as nothing has been stolen,” Vasanthkumar said.

He said the cross on top of the church, the main door and windows have been damaged.

The police visited the church and registered a case on the complaint lodged by the priest.

In September last year, more than 15 churches were vandalised in different parts of the state by pro-Hindu activists, protesting alleged conversion activity by missionaries.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Indonesian Catholics Helping Farmers and Labourers

Farmers are powerless in the face of shrinking farmland and foreign competition. KPTT, an organisation founded by a Dutch Jesuit, holds a two-day workshop in Central Java to discuss the matter.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — In Indonesia farmers and labourers are powerless, living on the edges of society. Farmers have also lost a lot of farmland to large-scale industrial development.

“The problems of everyday life are getting worse,” Fr Winangun said. “On the market, the price of wheat is low, but the cost of seeds is rising sharply.”

However, sharing these problems tends to sharpen a sense of solidarity among those involved. People are forced to come up with solutions to common problems, protecting their rights and improving their quality of life, this according to a two-day workshop organised by an Indonesian Catholic NGO that brought together 34 farmers and workers in Salatiga, a town in Central Java.

“Our mission is to improve farmers’ morale,” said Fr John Wartaya Winangun SJ, director of KPTT, an organisation founded in 1964 by a Dutch Jesuit, Fr Callens.

The meeting, which took place last week, saw farmers and labourers (pictured) come from Jakarta, Central Java and East Java.

Those present talked about their “experiences and problems,” Fr Winangun said. They also tried to develop common solutions to “improve their quality of life.”

Networking in support of workers is an essential part of that because it enables members to “promote their products” and “exchange ideas and opinions,” the priest said.

Farm workers face the same challenges. Not only are they paid low wages but they are also subject to haphazard working conditions, increasingly at the mercy of outside businesses that penalises local production.

Boosting solidarity to help local farmers develop the country’s agriculture go hand in hand with a better quality of life, the KPTT director said.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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White House Aides: No Afghan Decision Before Thanksgiving

President Barack Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said on Thursday.

The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One and heading back to Washington after an eight-day Asia trip. Obama and his top military and diplomatic aides have been deliberating for months over how to proceed in Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners have sought for eight years to defeat the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda a safe haven from which it can plan and launch attacks.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has stated that without the deployment of up to 40,000 additional of troops within the next year, the mission “will likely result in failure.” But some aides are arguing for a much smaller troop increase, and the U..S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, has questioned whether the Afghan government can be a reliable partner.

Obama said in interviews Wednesday that he would reveal his decision within the next several weeks. On Thursday, aides clarified that there would be no announcement before Thanksgiving, one week away. Senior administration officials said Obama intends to meet with his national security team again before going public with his plans.

Obama did not mention the looming decision in his remarks to U.S. troops, referring to the Afghan conflict only by thanking South Korea for its efforts and expressing gratitude to the American soldiers who have served there.. But he did discuss the region in his meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, whose government has is sending 150 civilian aid workers to Afghanistan.

Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures. “You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.

Standing on a riser wearing a blue suit and red tie, with a cluster of troops and a large American flag behind him, Obama expressed “the gratitude of the American public” and said his meetings in four countries over eight days in Asia will help deliver a “safer more prosperous world for all of us.” He got a huge cheer when he told them he was increasing military pay. “That’s what you call an applause line,” he said, before boarding his jet and taking off at 4:11 p.m.

— Hat tip: JP

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North Korean Exile: Beijing Uses Pyongyang to Threaten the World

A former university professor, who fled to China, warns: “The government of Hu Jintao has done everything to provoke a nuclear strike by Kim Jong-il. Our people are afraid of dying slaves to the empire”.

Beijing (AsiaNews) — The regime of North Korea “fears Beijing more than Washington. China is using Pyongyang to frighten the world, but is not interested in its future. We’re on a train launched at breakneck speed, driven by the People’s Republic and with us, South Korea and Japan on board”. The speaker is a former university professor of the northern Korean Peninsula, escaped from the totalitarian rule of Kim Jong-il and currently a refugee in China. According to Choi, a fictitious name given to the interviewer, “the elite of Korean Stalinist regime is animated by a deep hatred towards China. Until recently, the relationship between the two countries was described as ‘a covenant of blood’, but today the reality is much clearer. They use us, they use our nuclear capability to tighten the ropes on other nations. And then they will discard us, when they no longer need us”.

Until two years ago, continues the former academic, “the population of the North believed anti-American propaganda. Now it fears becoming a slave of the Chinese, who are worse than the Americans. We were forced into poverty, we were hated by the whole world, and for what? So they could be our watchdogs. No-one cares about our security”.

Choi stresses that this “is not solely my idea: almost all North Korean intellectuals think like me. Everything started when the nuclear plans of the ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il clashed with the wishes of the Chinese. Even he agrees with what I said, so much so that is trying in every way to escape from that situation. “

Beijing’s strategy “is very simple. They want to play with the international community, which is aware of the fact that Pyongyang takes orders only from China. They use the adventurism of our Republic to point missiles at everyone and then disarm us, in order to prove themselves better than the United States. Beijing has manipulated us, it has done everything to increase our arsenal of weapons: it said it was putting pressure on us, but it did the opposite. “

According to the dissident, “the aim was to bring North Korea to a level that could directly threaten, if not America, at least Japan. At that point, Beijing would have torn us to pieces, saying that the real fault lay with the other nations. On the other hand, our regime knows this well: by launching a nuclear attack, we would disappear from the face of the earth. Intellectuals succeeded in asking the government to move with caution on the subject, but until we have China breathing down our necks we are all in danger of dying”.

The interview with this exiled intellectual appeared on a well known website, the North Korean Daily, which collects the testimonies of those who manage to escape the regime of Kim Jong-il. Immediately after its publication in Chinese and English, a message appeared in the window to comment on the post from a Chinese user who calls himself “a patriot”. The text of the post reads: “Choi is only an ungrateful worm. The Chinese know who they are dealing with, and that is why the Koreans will never be tolerated by us”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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North Korea: The Life of Communism’s Playboy

MI6 uncovers the inside world of Kim Jong-il

Across the border from where Kim Jong-il rules, Obama was told on his whistlestop trip around Asia that Kim is “the mad, bad dictator dangerous to know.”

He has impressive missiles, a stockpile of plutonium for dirty bombs and a track record of selling whatever weapons he has to dangerous customers.

Politely, Obama had tried the “open hand” approach — sending no fewer than four U.S. delegations to Pyongyang this year. They have come away with the news that the dictatorship is hard-wired to interpret conciliation as weakness.

But now Britain’s intelligence service MI6 has pieced together a picture of the lifestyle of Kim and a handful of the country’s secretive elite.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama Leaves a Victorious Beijing. More Activists Arrested

Before leaving for Seoul, the U.S. president met with Wen Jiabao and visited the Great Wall. Hundreds of activists with petitions arrested or deported.

Beijing (AsiaNews) — On the last day of his visit to China, Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. As a final gesture, before his departure, the U.S. president visited the Great Wall. Meanwhile reports of persons arrested and deported from Beijing to ensure they will not meet with the American guest are persistent.

The meeting with Wen Jiabao took place in the late morning, and focused mainly on economic relations between the two superpowers and on the imbalance between the two. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, with 797 billion dollars.

The meeting was followed by lunch together in the residence for VIPs at Diaoyutai.

Before his departure for South Korea, the last leg of his trip to Asia, Barack Obama visited the Great Wall.

Meanwhile, the CHRD (Chinese Human Rights Defenders) reports that hundreds of people who arrived in Beijing to press the U.S. president on human rights, have been detained and deported. On the evening of November 16, about 90 activists from Shanghai, arrived at Diaoyutai be able to see Obama, but were taken by the police. About 40 of them were transferred to prison in Ganjiakou, the other inmates to a “black prison” (unofficial) near the southern station. All those arrested belong to a group whose homes have been expropriated and destroyed to prepare space for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Another hundred people who had come to Beijing to petition, were taken and deported to their provinces.

According to experts and analysts, Beijing has emerged victor from Barack Obama’s visit, which saw its role as a superpower publicly recognized; its claim on Tibet and Taiwan confirmed; human rights overshadowed. For its part Beijing made no promise to appreciate the Yuan or on climate issues.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Obama Goes Mao

By supporting the policy, Obama has committed the US to backing the PRC position on One China. As T-shirts featuring a stylized Obama and Mao were selling like hot cakes in Beijing, and health care nationalization that Mao himself might have approved of was moving through congress, Barack Hussein Obama took the opportunity to embrace his inner Mao by predictably enough selling out the last remnants of Taiwan’s sovereignty vis a vis the political successors of Mao’s monstrous Communist butchers, the People’s Republic of China.

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Philippines: ‘Climate Change Pushes Poor Women to Prostitution, Dangerous Work’

Effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines to risk dangerous jobs, and sometimes even into the flesh trade.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection,” Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.

In the Philippines, small brothels usually pop out near the coastal areas where many women do sexual services to transient seafarers. Often, these prostitutes are ferried to bigger ships by their pimps.

Based on the UNFPA report, there are 92 million Filipinos in the country as of 2009 and that number is expected to balloon to more than 146 million in the next 40 years.

Of the 92 million Filipinos, about 60 percent are living in coastal areas and depend on the seas for livelihood, said former Environment secretary Dr. Angel Alcala.

Alcala said that “we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our marine environment.”

But as the sea’s resources are depleted due to overpopulation and overfishing, fishermen start losing their livelihood and women are forced to share the traditional role of the man in providing for the family.

Alacala, who also heads the Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management in Siliman University, said some women often pick out shellfish by the coastlines, exposed to storm surges.

Women who could no longer endure this work often go out to find other jobs, while some are tempted into prostitution, Alcala added.

In an interview with the Inter Press News Agency, Marita Rodriguez of the Centre for Empowerment and Resource Development, Inc. said women are taking the brunt of climate change.

“Aside from their household chores and participation in fishing activity, they have to find additional sources of income like working as domestic helpers in affluent families,” she said.

The UNFPA noted that the temperature in the earth’s surface has risen 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past 100 years. The 10 warmest years globally since 1880 have also been recorded in the last 13 years.

“Slower population growth, for example, would help build social resilience to climate change’s impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gas-emissions in the future,” the UNFPA report said.

The UNFPA suggested five measures to mitigate climate change and overpopulation…

— Hat tip: Zenster

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President Obama Returns Home From Visit to China Almost Empty Handed

On nearly every subject critical to the US he got virtually nothing from Beijing President Obama achieved very little from his three-day trip to China: on nearly every subject critical to the US he got virtually nothing from Beijing.

The trip, which was closely regimented by Beijing, far more than when Bill Clinton and George Bush visited the country, was also notable for how often Mr Obama asked for China’s help, rather than the other way round.. He got almost nothing in return. By the end of the trip it was evident that the two nations were unable to overcome their differences on key matters, including currency disputes, trade, climate change and Iran’s nuclear programme.

That no main breakthroughs were achieved reflects the changing power dynamic between the two countries. China has weathered the financial crisis better than the US. Mr Obama, burdened with colossal national debt and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had little bargaining power to bring to the table. The White House insisted that it was unrealistic to expect immediate results from the trip. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, said that the President “did not think the waters would part and everything would change as a result of his trip to China”.

There are increasingly nagging doubts among the US public about Mr Obama’s ability to get things done on the world stage and exact concessions from America’s rivals and enemies. The trip to China has only enhanced those perceptions.

— Hat tip: JP

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Tremonti Lectrues at Chinese University

Economy minister praises reforms in socialist system

(ANSA) — Beijing, November 19 — Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti on Thursday gave a lecture to the rising stars of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in which he called for a new ‘Global Standard’ to govern a now global economy.

Speaking at the PCC’s Central School, a post-graduate campus for future party leaders, the Italian minister observed that “the market has become global but the rules which govern it have remained local”.

And what this has created, he explained, “is a divide between politics and the economy, between reality and the rules”.

The recent global economic downturn, Tremonti observed, “was curbed but not resolved by government policies which restored confidence among the people through classic Keynesian spending policies and through direct intervention in finance and banking”.

But all this “was not enough,” he added, “what is needed is political intervention to draw up new, governing rules which are global and multilateral: a new Bretton Woods”.

“What we need is not a new code based on old codes but a tool which can help write a new page in history. Something which has been christened a ‘Global Standard’… which to many may appear to be a utopia,” Tremonti explained.

Only a few years after he had warned about the risks connected with China’s aggressive trade policy, Tremonti appeared to have changed his tune and said that it was essential that China be directly involved in drawing up future rules for the global economy.

The future ‘Global Standard’ must be drawn up by nations with different political systems and ensure “that we are all on the same footing based on reciprocal respect. For us in the West this means accepting political systems which are different from our own,” the Italian minister said.

In a statement which drew applause from the young Communist audience, Tremonti observed that “what is special about China’s political experience is not its shift from socialism to capitalism but the internal reforms your brand of socialism has adopted, reforms which are still ongoing”.

In summing up, Tremonti said that “only reciprocal tolerance will get us through the crisis. A tolerance which must not only be economic but also cultural and religious, because the essence of our society is not just commercial but above all moral and political”.

Tremonti this week was voted the fifth best finance minister in the European Union by Britain’s Financial Times.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Africa: Foreign Aid Not Good for Region

Harare — I COME from Africa, a resource-rich continent which is depicted as poor by conventional development statistics — so as to justify foreign aid. Aid has driven Africans to lose confidence in their abilities and opportunities. It has promoted a culture of dependence — a culture of relying on other people’s help.

African children are born into a cycle of dependency. Imagine yourself as a child, growing up in a country where your parents have been reduced to mere procreators. They cannot feed you, because their indigenous foods have been crowded out by exotic foods that came from donors. They cannot choose the type of education you ought to get, because donors have supplied all sorts of “free education systems” that orient you to the West. You become an automatic candidate for the “brain drain”, for immigration to the developed world — but your education does not prepare you to solve Africa’s problems.

So-and-So/IRIN

You grow up in a confused political environment. Donors’ direct funding of civil society cuts your government out of the picture and leaves it impotent. On the other hand if the donors give direct funding to your government, they breed political cronyism, corruption and the evils of ethnic division. A mixture of both leads to political upheavals — as we saw in Kenya last year. Donors made Kenya into a country whose government does not pay attention to the electorate. At the same time they paid its civil society to organise citizens into agitators.

Attempts by donors to impose their organisational structures on Africa create confusion — and force people on the continent to focus on short-term goals. Although donors might brag about promoting education in Africa, they do not admit that they’re simply helping their own industry, by creating a supply of labour. Donors decry the dearth of leadership in Africa, but stop short of pointing out that the majority of the so-called “bad leaders” were educated in Western schools using donor funds…

— Hat tip: Zenster

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Obama’s Half Brother Describes Abuse

The self-published “Nairobi to Shenzhen” follows Ndesandjo’s peripatetic life. He was born in Kenya to Barack Obama Sr., the president’s father, and his third wife, Ruth Nidesand, the daughter of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. The couple later divorced and Ndesandjo moved to the United States, earning degrees in physics from Brown University and Stanford and an MBA from Emory University.

He was married last year to a Chinese woman from Henan province.

As with the president’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Ndesandjo’s book delves into growing up as a mixed-race child and into a psyche shaped by an erratic father.

“My father beat my mother and my father beat me,” Ndesandjo told the Associated Press in an interview released Wednesday. “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting.”

— Hat tip: Zenster

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Brazil: Last Word on Battisti on ‘Political’

Brazilian supreme court rules in favor of extradition

(ANSA) — Rome, November 19 — Now that Brazil’s supreme court has given its green light to the extradition to Italy of convicted terrorist Cesare Battisti, the final decision on his return will be political, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Thursday.

“We await this next move with respect and serenity,” he added.

“In the meantime, I wish to congratulate the two ambassadors who handled this painful chapter with competence, resolve and a sense of institutional responsibility,” the foreign minister said.

“Our whole diplomatic network worked as a team and did a magnificent job. I thank everyone on behalf of all Italians,” Frattini added.

Brazil’s supreme court, in a five-to-four decision, ruled on Wednesday that Battisti could be extradited to Italy but that President Inacio Lula da Silva should have the final word.

Lula was in Italy this week, to take part in a United Nations food security summit and discussed the Battisti case when he met with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on the sidelines of the gathering.

“I couldn’t come to Italy without addressing the Battisti case, but I don’t want to tell you what we said to each other,” Lula told journalists as he left the premier’s office.

He added: “I have already voiced my position, I’m waiting for the Supreme Court ruling”.

In the past, Lula has come out against Battisti being returned to Italy, but he has also said he will respect the court’s decision.

Battisti, 54, was convicted in absentia for complicity in four murders committed by a leftist militant group in the 1970s.

He was arrested in Brazil in March 2008, some four years after he had fled to that country to avoid extradition to Italy from France, where he had lived for 15 years and become a successful writer of crime novels.

In January, the Brazilian justice ministry granted Battisti political asylum on the grounds that he would face “political persecution” in Italy.

The ruling outraged the Italian government who demanded that it be appealed to the Brazilian supreme court.

Those arguing against his extradition claim he is the victim of political persecution, while those who think he should be sent back to serve out his sentence say the crimes he was convicted of were not political.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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122 Kurds Disembark in Calabria

(ANSAmed) — RIACE (CALABRIA), 18 NOVEMBER — A boat with 122 immigrants of various nationalities on board was intercepted by the Finance Police a few kilometers from the coast of Riace, in the Jonnio region, this morning. The boat, after having been intercepted, tried to go further, but ran aground. The immigrants that were on board were thrown into the sea, but have subsequently been recovered and brought to shore. Investigators are now looking for the people traffickers. The group of immigrants comprised 74 men, 24 women and 24 minors, about ten of which were children, two very young. Two of the women were pregnant and one man was taken to a local hospital, but their conditions are not cause for concern. According to verifications from the Finance Police, who are developing their investigations together with the other police units, the immigrants are Kurdish, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. They departed from a port in Turkey last Friday. The immigrants have been taken into two facilities in Riace made available by the Mayor, Domenico Lucano, as they await transportation for to a reception centre. In Riace there has been a strong immigrant presence for a long time , under a Council initiative, wherein they are settled in the centre of the Locride region, creating a community that is assimilated within the wider social context.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Britain’s Soaring Population on Course to Hit 74million

Britain’s population may grow to 74million over the next 20 years, according to official estimates. The Office for National Statistics said that if immigration continues at high levels the population will swell by more than a fifth — some 12million — in two decades. And according to calculations of the highest likely scale of future population growth published yesterday, numbers will reach the 70million mark in 2023, six years earlier than otherwise expected.

The projection from the ONS follows a pledge by Gordon Brown last week that numbers in the country will not hit 70million in the next 20 years. Ministers say new immigration curbs will ensure the record migration levels of the last five years are cut back. Last month the ONS said the most likely date for the 70million level to be reached is 2029.

The 74million estimate was based on what will happen if immigration continues at the highest levels seen in recent years, if birthrates among new migrants are maintained, and if the life expectancy of Britons keeps rising.. A spokesman for the ONS said the high-level population projection was calculated from ‘ alternative, but still plausible, assumptions’.

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Use Hotmail to send and receive mail from your different email accounts. Find out how.

— Hat tip: JP

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Greece: Minister Announces New Measures

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, NOVEMBER 18 — Minister of Citizen Protection (established by the new Papandreou government) Michalis Chrysochoidis has announced that he will modernise the Coastguard, so that the wave of illegal immigrants who reach the coast of the islands in the Aegean Sea can be managed better. Chrysochoidis, has also decided to increase the number of employees and to update the equipment used by the port authorities on the islands of Lesbos, Samo, Leros and Patmos, in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea. The minister has expressed his concerns about the daily arrival of illegal immigrants on the Greek islands. Talking to reporters after a meeting at the headquarters of the Coastguard, the minister said that he will form a special team that will follow the movements from and to the ports of Patras and Igoumenitsa, because of the serious problems these ports are experiencing with illegal immigration. The Secretary-General of the Ministry and the Chiefs of Greek Police and of the Coastguard will be on the team, the minister added. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Human Rights Commission, Filipino Maids ‘Slaves’

(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 18 — The parliamentary commission for Labour Affairs of the Philippines has urged the government to suspend the sending of domestic workers to the Middle East followed an inspection by three delegates to the region, who documented situations tantamount to “modern slavery”, reports the daily paper Khaleej Times. The mission, sent by the parliament of the Philippines, visited five cities: Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Amman in Jordan. “We have seen violations in all three countries,” said member of parliament Carlos Padillas, explaining that “some of the victims were tricked by the employment agencies, while others suffered physical and sexual abuse from their employers.” Abuse and maltreatment have also been revealed by Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, where there is an ever-growing number of suicides among foreign domestic help. The director of the Immigration Department of Dubai, Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri, refused to comment on the news, saying that the department had not yet been officially informed of the inspection. However, he added that if the information is proven accurate, then the Ministry for Foreign Affairs would take the necessary measures. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Northern Mayor Launches ‘Immigrant Clean-Up’ Initiative

Brescia, 18 Nov. (AKI) — The mayor of the small town of Coccaglio, located in the northern Italian region of Lombardy has launched a campaign to “clean-up” the city of immigrants, ahead of the Christian holidays next month, Italian media said on Wednesday. The town council has dubbed the operation “White Christmas”.

“There is no crime here. We only want to start cleaning up,” said the mayor of Coccaglio, Franco Claretti.

The “White Christmas” campaign is being spearheaded by Claretti and six town councillors from Italy’s ruling conservative People of Freedom party and its junior coalition partner, the anti-immigrant Northern League party.

“For me, Christmas is not the holiday of hospitality, but instead that of the Christian tradition, of our identity,” said Coccaglio’s councillor in charge of security, Claudio Abiendi, from the Northern League, quoted by Italian daily La Repubblica.

The operation will see police officers going to every home in the town to make sure its residents have their immigration documents in order, otherwise they will lose their residence and risk deportation.

The move also applies to those whose legal permit of stay expired over six months ago and cannot prove that they have begun the procedure to renew it.

Coccaglio has a population of 7,000 residents of which more than 1,550 are immigrants, most of them from Morocco, Albania, and from the former Yugoslavia. In 1998, there were 177 immigrants living in the town.

The nearby towns of Castelcovati and Castrezzatoare also beginning to copy Coccaglio’s idea, La Repubblica reported.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Multi-Lingual Guide to Find House in Lombardy

(ANSAmed) — NAPLES, NOVEMBER 18 — It is aimed at immigrants in Lombardy and offers numerous pieces of information on the regional home market, with instructions and suggestions on how to rent an apartment, buy a home or have recourse to local public housing. It is the multi-lingual guide “Living in Lombardy: The Guide for Immigrants to Rent or Buy a Home”, which will be presented tomorrow in Milan. Published by the Region of Lombardy with the ISMU Foundation — Multiethnic Research and Initiatives — through the financing of the Ministries of labour, health and social policy, the volume is supplied free in the ten widest spoken languages in the area of Lombardy (Arabic, Spanish, Albanian, English, Romanian, Tagalog, Chinese French, Ukrainian and Portuguese). 80,000 copies have been printed and they will be distributed over the entire territory: in 130 private and public offices, including those of SpazioRegione, the courts, police stations, employment agencies, immigration windows and Caritas. Moreover the guide will be available on the internet on the ISMU website (www.ismu.org/radici). (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Spain: Morocco Obstacle for New Islamic Party

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 19 — There is a hurdle called Morocco to be got past for the new Islamic party PRUNE, which was created in Spain this year and would like to run for office in the 2011 city council elections. PRUNE (Partito Renacimiento y Union de Espana), founded by the Moroccan-born journalist Mustafà Bakkach, addresses its platform mainly to the about half a million Muslim citizens of Spain, as well as legal immigrants from Islamic countries having agreements with Madrid which allow their citizens to vote in city council elections. According to the online edition of ABC, however, it is rather unlikely that an agreement of this type could happen with Morocco, the home country of over 700,000 legal immigrants to Spain — which would constitute the main electoral base of the new party. The Moroccan constitution does not allow foreign citizens to take part in its elections, and the accords signed by Madrid with non-European countries allowing their immigrants to vote in local elections are all based on reciprocal agreements. “A referendum is necessary for a change to the constitution in Morocco, and this complicated matters,” said Rabat university professor Mohamed Khachani. PRUNE, formed at the beginning of the year and registered since July at the Interior Ministry, with sections for the time being only in Granada and Oviedo, would like to be present in 2011 in major Spanish cities, and hopes to rack up votes also among the non-Muslim population which can take part in the elections. Two other Muslim parties have long existed in Spain in the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Moroccan territory, but so far the latter have been limited to local politics. PRUNE aims to extend its electoral base as far as possible by promising, as Bakkach said, “to defend the interests of minorities and those living on the fringes of society”. Bakkach himself, a naturalised Spanish citizen since 2001, does not hide the hope that one day “one of our children could become the mayor of a large city…or minister. And why not?”. Of course, ABC noted, the matter would be simpler for PRUNE if the idea of a law allowing all legal, stably residing immigrants to vote were to take root, spoken of a number of times within Premier José Luis Zapatero’s PSOE. However, for the time being it is only an idea.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turks: Germany Must Do More for Integration

The vast majority of Turkish immigrants in Germany think their adopted country should do more to accommodate them, according to a new study released on Thursday.

Forty-five percent of the Turks surveyed said that they feel unwelcome in Germany. But an overwhelming 82 percent said their host should do more to aid their integration.

Germany is home to almost three million people with Turkish roots, making it the world’s largest Turkish diaspora and Germany’s largest ethnic minority.

The study said Turks were already engaged in many aspects of German society such working, paying taxes and being able to afford consumer goods such as cars. But mentally, there was still a huge gulf between Turks and their host country.

“This is a group of people who are deeply committed to their cultural and religious roots and Turkish values,” the study said. “And they are not fundamentally prepared to give them up.”

A damning report published in February found that although many Turks have been in Germany for nearly 50 years they are the least well integrated of all immigrant communities.

Other recent surveys have shown that they are more likely to leave school without qualifications than the overall population, more likely to be unemployed and below the poverty line.

This latest survey was carried out by research institutes Info GmbH and Antalya-based Liljeberg Research International. Around 1,000 Germans, people in Germany with Turkish roots and Turks in Turkey took part in the survey.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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200 Web Sites Spread Al-Qaida’s Message in English

RIYADH,Saudi Arabia — Increasing numbers of English-language Web sites are spreading al-Qaida’s message to Muslims in the West.

They translate writings and sermons once largely out of reach of English readers and often feature charismatic clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki, who exchanged dozens of e-mails with the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings.

The U.S.-born al-Awlaki has been an inspiration to several militants arrested in the United States and Canada in recent years, with his Web-based sermons often turning up on their computers.

“The point is you don’t have to be an official part of al-Qaida to spread hatred and sectarian views,” said Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator for the New York-based NEFA Foundation, which researches Islamic militants.

“If you look at the most influential documents in terms of homegrown terrorism cases, it’s not training manuals on building bombs,” Kohlmann said. “The most influential documents are the ones that are written by theological advisers, some of whom are not even official al-Qaida members.”

Most of the radical Islamic sites are not run or directed by al-Qaida, but they provide a powerful tool for recruiting sympathizers to its cause of jihad, or holy war, against the United States, experts who track the activity said.

The number of English-language sites sympathetic to al-Qaida has risen from about 30 seven years ago to more than 200 recently, said Abdulmanam Almushawah, head of a Saudi government program called Assakeena, which works to combat militant Islamic Web sites.

In contrast, Arabic-language radical sites have dropped to around 50, down from 1,000 seven years ago, because of efforts by governments around the world to shut them down, he said.

Al-Qaida has long tried to reach a Western audience. Videotaped messages from its leader, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri usually have English subtitles. But translations of writings and sermons that form the theological grounding for al-Qaida’s ideology, along with preachers like al-Awlaki, mostly eliminate the language barrier.

Al-Awlaki’s sermons have turned up on the computers of nearly every homegrown terror suspect arrested in the United States, Kohlmann said.

Members of a group of Canadian Muslims arrested in 2006 for allegedly forming a training camp and plotting bombing attacks in Toronto listened to his online calls for jihad, according to the case against them in court. According to prosecutors, an al-Awlaki sermon on jihad was among the numerous materials — including videos of beheadings — found on the computers of five men convicted in December of plotting attacks on the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.

On his Web site and in widely circulated lectures, the 38-year-old al-Awlaki, now in hiding in Yemen, often calls on Muslims to fight against the United States, accusing it of waging war on Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nidal Hasan, who has been charged in the Fort Hood shootings, contacted al-Awlaki nearly a year ago. In an interview published in The Washington Post, al-Awlaki said he did not pressure Hasan to carry out the shooting, but after the attack, al-Awlaki praised him as a hero. U.S. investigators have said Hasan appears to have acted alone, not on orders from anyone, when he opened fire Nov. 5 at the Texas military base, killing 13.

The cleric met two of the 9/11 hijackers at mosques where he preached in the United States, and after his return to Yemen he was detained for more than a year on suspicion of involvement in a kidnapping gang. Yemeni officials released him because they could not confirm an al-Qaida link, but they say they are hunting for him again on suspicion he may have ties.

U.S. intelligence officials declined comment on the spread of English-language jihadist Web sites.

Such sites are expected to follow closely the upcoming trials of Hasan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of being a top architect of the 9/11 attacks, said Rita Katz, head of the U.S. based SITE Intelligence Group, which follows on line militant traffic. The Obama administration announced this week that Mohammed and four others will be put on trial in New York City.

Almushawah said clerics like al-Awlaki are “more dangerous than any other group.” And if these clerics are jailed, “it’s no big loss for al-Qaida because they don’t belong to the network,” he said.

Many of the sites post speeches by English-speaking clerics like al-Awlaki or, more often, translations of sermons and lectures by Arabic-speaking clerics.

One site, the Pulpit of Monotheism and Jihad links to sermons by al-Awlaki, alongside English versions of speeches by some of the top sheikhs of jihadist ideology — even some who are dead like Abdullah Azzam.

The proliferation of sites in English means “potential jihadists can know only their native language and still be radicalized,” Katz said.

While al-Awlaki has become popular, “other, more prominent and influential Arabic-speaking jihadist sheikhs … have had their works and speeches translated into English and other languages. Their works tend to be used more often by the jihadist community to justify violence,” she said in an e-mail interview. Al-Awlaki “fills a void in that he can directly interact, understand and communicate with English-speaking jihadists in a way that Arabic-speaking clerics cannot.”

Almushawah says most of the servers for the sites are in Britain, but they can be run from anywhere and most of them are operated and receive content from the U.S. Most of the clerics who appear on them are in the Arab world with some in France and England.

U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment on the spread of English language sites and their influence.

Saudi Arabia set up its Assakeena program after authorities found that 70 percent of al-Qaida sympathizers were drawn to the group through the Internet. In the campaign, government-backed preachers monitor 400 radical Islamic web sites and inject a more moderate message on the sites.

The campaigners also directly contact and dialogue with militants they encounter on the Web, conversations that can take weeks or months. Of 2,631 militants contacted by the group, 1,170 withdrew their support for radicals, according to the campaign. About a fifth of the militants were from Europe and North American, and the rest from Arab countries.

Assakeena — the name is Arabic for “Tranquility from God” — is part of other hearts-and-minds programs the kingdom launched to complement its crackdown on al-Qaida after the group carried out a series of attacks on foreigners and oil infrastructure in 2004.

— Hat tip: Steen

[Return to headlines]

More on the Stavanger Rape Wave

2009-11-19T21:47:00.002-05:00

Below is a follow-up newspaper article about the non-Western rape epidemic in Stavanger, once again translated by our Norwegian correspondent The Observer.

Stavanger Muslims, like Muslims in the United States after the Fort Hood massacre, feel that they are being unfairly stigmatized by the actions of a tiny minority of their co-religionists — who just happen to commit the vast majority of rapes in Stavanger and other Norwegian cities.

From Aftenbladet:

Angry at Aftenbladet and the police

On Wednesday evening a meeting hall in the International House in Stavanger was crammed full of immigrants. The room practically simmered with anger and frustration over the rapes that had taken place in the city lately, and most of the anger was directed towards Aftenbladet and the police.

The meeting hall was simply too small when Stavanger SV [Stavanger Socialist Party] invited people to a dialogue meeting to discuss the sexual assaults and taxi-rapes that have occurred in the city recently.

Several of the attendees had to stand outside in the corridor or squeeze together in the door opening to listen to a parliamentary politician from SV, Akhtar Chaudhry, present a stern message to the immigrant community in the city.

“There is no excuse for rape; you don’t have to be a Muslim to understand that,” Chaudhry told the audience.

The majority of the attendees were immigrant males, and several of them expressed frustration over the rapes and the media coverage that these had generated.

Feel cornered

“As a Muslim I was very angry at the media coverage. It was unacceptable. People now believe that all Muslim men are rapists. It was a big mistake for Stavanger Aftenbladet to publish this article. The newspaper should have contacted the Muslim community prior to publishing this article,” the local representative of Stavanger Labour Party, Mubarak Ali, told the audience. He was referring to Aftenbladet‘s article about non-Western males being responsible for the majority of the sexual assaults in the city.

Rakeem Hatinoor, who has lived in Stavanger for ten years, said that the mood between the Norwegians and the immigrants in the city has changed.

“When I arrived in the city there was a good relationship between Norwegians and immigrants, unlike in many other Norwegian cities where this relationship was pretty strained. But the mood changed after this article was published. We need to learn from the past and not end up in a situation where immigrants remain isolated in their own ghettos,” Hatinoor told the crowd.

“It is horrible to stigmatize an entire ethnic group. The police have only managed to cause tensions between the various ethnic groups in the city,” someone from the audience said.

“In their article Aftenbladet was guilty of generalizing, and they managed to drive Muslims into a corner,” another one said.

Throwing away his taxi permit

Several of the people at the meeting wanted to talk to Aftenbladet afterwards to express their disappointment with the newspaper. One of the men, Mahood, told the representative from Aftenbladet that he would tear up his taxi permit.

“I can’t continue to drive a taxi and be told that I’m a rapist.”

- - - - - - - - -

Taxi owner Amir Saleem Sheik felt that men and women had an equal responsibility to stop the rapes. He condemned the rapes, but said that the Norwegian society was moving in the wrong direction.

Las Vegas

“Girls as young as 16 have offered me condoms and suggested that we should have a good time together. Grandmothers have their handbags full of sex toys and ask me if I want to come along to a strip tease. Where are the ethics and the moral in this society? Is this Las Vegas or what?”

But Akhtar Chaudhry, the parliamentary politician from SV, said that it was Saleem Sheik who was going in the wrong direction.

“This can never be a debate about sex and morals. This is a question of respecting the laws of the country, and ensuring that women are able to feel safe at all times.”

Chaudhry had no sympathy for those who wanted to turn Aftenbladet into a scapegoat.

“You feel stigmatized, but what have you done? I haven’t read one single letter to the editor or a newspaper comment from you, nor have I seen any of you trying to set up a meeting to discuss the issue. The press has a job to do. One of the most powerful women in the country (Gerd Liv Valla) wrote a book about how poorly she was treated by the media, but did it help? If you’re not happy you should contact the media and use it to your advantage,” Chaudhry said.

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

Video of the Paris Riots

2009-11-19T20:02:00.001-05:00

As I reported previously, last Saturday a Belgian company planned to stage ill-advised publicity stunt in the Champ de Mars in Paris. The organizers would have given away varying amounts of cash to members of the public on a first-come-first-served basis, but were forced to cancel the event at the last minute when far too many would-be beneficiaries showed up.

This left a large crowd of angry and disappointed “youths” in the Champ de Mars with nothing to do except overturn cars and beat up any unfortunate persons of French background who happened to wander by.

Vlad Tepes has compiled a video based on two TV reports. With the help of Gaia’s translation of the voice-over, Vlad subtitled the larger of the two segments. In the last eight seconds you’ll see the infamous machete-carrying culture enricher whose photo I posted on Tuesday:

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There’s an excellent series of photos, plus an eyewitness report in English, at the Take Out Photo blog, which reports that one police car appeared briefly on the scene, was rocked from side to side by the rioters, and then promptly left.

After that the youths had the run of the place until the riot police arrived a little while later.

Hat tips: Vlad, pistache (for the machete sequence), and Steen (for the photo blog).

A Bunch of Rednecks Who Think We Know it All

2009-11-19T09:51:00.000-05:00

The following comments appeared during the night on an old post (June 2008) about Afghanistan’s nancy boys. The commenter complains about my lack of “bloody research”, ignoring the well-attested sources I presented in the linked posts about the persistence of boy-love in Islamic cultures, particularly in Afghanistan and the Arabian peninsula.

I have to be out most of the day today, so I won’t have time to do these comments justice. Since most of you probably missed what Naila had to say — and some of you may be interested in responding — I’ve reproduced his/her/its comments below:

Comment #1:

Naila said…

A very interesting shindig u have going here. Quite sad really but nice enough for all you narrow minded people to show how much you don’t know.

Just so u know, pederasty began and is synonymous to Hellenic culture (for those who don’t know what that is, its called Ancient Greece and if u want details of man-boy love, read Plato’s work).

Secondly, before condemning Islam and pinpointing it as a breeding ground for pederasty due to women being ‘scarce’and in hijab and what not, look at Christianity. I have no disrespect for the religion but many a priest have been condemned for such practices, and pederasty was accepted until the late 19th century in Russia, which is would u believe a oh-so orthodox land. German aristocrats still fight for acceptance of this which began as a movement in the the late 60’s.

So really is this a ‘Afghanistan’ thing that only occurs there due to their religious practices? Clearly not but how would u tell that to a bunch of rednecks who think they know it all? Apologies to those who have actually learnt something from this.

Blame the people. Not the religion. I don’t accept pederasty as something that should be ignored, but next time u want to put up a post/article like that at least do ur bloody research.

And before I end this, its funny how u post up the ‘abuse’ that the soldiers saw in Afghanistan, yet failed to include any abuse that those soldiers committed to the citizens of the land? And if u say ‘oh but the soldiers are innocent n have only been doing their job’- think again coz you’ll only voice ur ignorance.

Peace out

Comment #2:
- - - - - - - - -

Naila said…

And another thing, Islam does NOT accept homosexual relationships and condemns it in its books like Christianity.

The punishment for such is death.

These soldiers that have watched this event every thursday are NOT upholding Sharia law hence I have no pity for them if they allow for these activities to take place before their eyes as they are simply viewing this as entertainment. If it struck them as wrong, they’d intervene. Considering its only struck them as ‘odd’, it means they accept it not because their hands are tied but because they find this grossly amusing.

This has nothing to do with the government, rather what people are happy to turn a blind eye to.

The Party of Allah

2009-11-19T00:46:00.003-05:00

The article below is from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and concerns the formation of an explicitly Islamic political party in Spain. The author expresses alarm and dismay about this event, and seems to believe that the Spanish party is the first Islamic party in Europe. But this is hardly the case — Islamic parties already exist in other Western European countries, some of them going back several years.

Reinhard of FOMI has compiled a list of seven Muslim political parties (assuming the “anti-Zionist” party founded by the “Swedish” poet Mohammed Omar counts as Islamic):

Although I agree with everything reported in this article, I fail to share the author’s pessimism.

Yes, the formation of such parties will indirectly encourage Islamic terrorist organizations and their sympathizers. And yes, separate Islamic parties will hinder integration in their respective countries. But the “integration” of Muslim immigrants is already a bitter joke.

And Europe needs to become separate from Islam, so the establishment of separate Islamic political parties is a good first step in that process. It will help demonstrate that Islam is incompatible with Western culture, since Muslim demands will move out into the open during election campaigns for everyone to see, instead of sneaking in quietly via the Socialist parties that run most major European cities.

Muslim parties will clarify political realities in Europe, and a party’s electoral performance will provide a useful gauge of the degree of Islamization in a particular country.

So let’s hear it for Hizb’ullah, the Party of Allah!

And now the article from Corriere della Sera. Many thanks to Gaia for the translation:

Why the Spanish Announcement is Worrying

If Islam becomes a Party

Democratic politics is structured towards a short term horizon. The nature of the democratic system obliges politicians to concern themselves solely with problems that beset the present. Other problems — already envisaged but only becoming troublesome tomorrow or the day after — are not taken into consideration. Unlike the best medical practice, democratic politics does not care about prevention. If this were not the case, the news that just arrived from Spain would have provoked great arguments within the political classes of all European Countries, including Italy. The news — as would have become unavoidable sooner or later — is that there is already a Muslim party flexing its muscles in the public arena, and ready to introduce itself with its manifesto in the electoral competition of a European country. It is known as Prune, a party founded by a famous Moroccan intellectual, Mustafá Bakkach, who has been a resident in Spain for many years.

Its officially-stated intention is to aspire to Islam in order to contribute to the moral regeneration of Spain. In reality, it will try to defend and to diffuse the Muslim identity. It will have its electoral baptism in the administrative elections of 2011. If it succeeds, as is possible, it will raise a wave (as the migratory flows and demography show us) that will cross the whole of Europe. The imitative effect will be powerful, and Muslim parties will probably be formed in many European countries. At that point, the road of hoped-for “integration” of many Muslims who reside in Europe will become much steeper and problematic. Why? Because choosing a Muslim party is an identity choice, a choice of separation, of ghettoization. It could also be said, paradoxically, that when Muslims parties are born it will become possible for every European country to gauge the real rate of Muslim integration. Because it is obvious that the integrated Muslims (of whom, fortunately for us, there are already very many), that live quietly with their faith and do not have identity-religious issues with the European society in which they reside and work, will not vote for these Islamic parties. However many others will vote for them, either out of spontaneous adhesion (in the name of an experienced separation of identity) or because of pressure from the Muslim environments in which they live.

- - - - - - - - -

The Spanish Muslim party, as well as every future European Muslim party, will naturally declare (not that there is any reason to believe the contrary) that they are non-violent. They could not risk (which would result in the failure of their political plan) links or contamination with either active or dormant terrorist cells in Europe. But this does not, however, mean that the ideology of the Muslim parties will be not be traditionalist/fundamentalist.

It will be the ideology of the so-called Muslim Rebirth, impregnated with anti-Western — and with respect to European mores, illiberal — values. It will be a matter of illiberal forces that will use politics in order to create new spaces, resources, and means of indoctrination and propaganda. For this, their very entry into the European political-electoral market will block or at least delay over a long time period the integration of many Muslims.

What to do? Democratic politics cannot easily be defended from the trap that has been laid. But the possibilities of success or failure of the Muslim parties in the several European countries will depend on a number of conditions.

The smaller or greater opportunities available for every single Muslim in gaining employment and of being able to obtain for himself and his family conditions of well-being will be important (but not to be underestimated is the aspect of identity). These will include also, and perhaps above all, the institutional characteristics of various European countries. Those that can defend themselves better, I believe, are the democracies endowed with majority electoral systems (which render very difficult the entry of new parties) compared to those who use some form of proportional representation.

Great Britain has committed colossal political errors concerning Muslim immigration. Its doctrine of “multiculturalism” has resulted in delivering to Islam, and also to the more radical form of Islam, important portions of its cities’ territories (to such a point that today Great Britain must even face the phenomenon of the numerous British citizens, speaking the English language, who fight in Afghanistan with their Taleban co-religionists). However, those errors are perhaps still reversible. In fact, the majority system renders very difficult the entry into the British political scene of a Muslim party. However, in the case of countries where proportional representation is the norm, entry is relatively easy and the politics of alliances and coalitions typically associated with this system guarantees influence and power even to small parties, a circumstance that the future Muslims parties will undoubtedly be able to take advantage of. From a longstanding, and non-repentant, supporter of the majority system, the above represents a further reason for adopting it.

— Angelo Panebianco, 18 November 2009

Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/18/2009

2009-11-18T23:51:00.001-05:00

A Nigerian immigrant to Britain pretended to marry his own daughter so that he could claim she was his wife, and could thus be brought into the UK. This in itself is no big news — you expect immigrants to scam the system if they can — but the real scandal is that the Home Office was informed about the situation by a whistleblower, and did nothing.

In other news, a Christian pastor in Somalia was shot and killed by Islamists on his way home from a worship service in an underground church.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Esther, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, RRW, The Frozen North, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
- - - - - - - - -

	Financial Crisis
	Thousands of Jobs Scammed or Created
	USA
	(Somali Refugee) Boys in the Hood
	Army Plans Fort Hood Probe
	Blue-Collar Town Elects a Muslim Mayor
	Clint Eastwood Says America is Becoming More ‘Juvenile’
	FBI Probe Biggest Plot Since 9/11
	Lawmakers Ask IRS to Investigate CAIR
	Lou Dobbs: My Downfall at CNN Started When Barack Obama Became President
	Major Hasan Dined With ‘Jihad Hobbyist’
	Obama’s Kooks
	Obama’s Critics Should be Bowing Their Heads
	Role of ACLU Decisive in Moving KSM Trial to New York
	When America ‘Did’ Security
	Why the Left Excuses Communist Horrors
	Why We Should Put Jihad on Trial
	Canada
	Soldiers Could Get Uniforms for Urban Jungle
	Europe and the EU
	Boeing Sued for Dutch Accident
	EU Presidency Race Descends Into Chaos as Leaders Struggle to Agree on Candidate
	Italy: Napolitano, Turkey Added Value for Europe
	Italy: Maroni: Possible Nat-Radical Islam Relationship
	Italy: Opposition Leader Vows to Fight New Trial-Length Bill
	Netherlands: CDA Irritation Over Multicultural Sinterklaas
	Romania Named Most Corrupt Country in EU
	Salzburg Hotel Boss Promises Personal Prayer Room for Cruise
	Scotland: Devout Muslim Who Crossed Busy Road for Prayers Killed in Collision
	Sharks Off the British Coast: Oil Tankers Refuse to Unload Until Prices Rise… Keeping Your Fuel Costs Soaring
	Spain Confirms Sovereignty Over Gibraltar Waters to London
	Spain: Industry Minister Leaves Greenpeace After 18 Years
	UK: Bully, 13, Who Chased Girl to Death
	UK: Honour Killing Theory as Mother-of-Two is Found Dumped in the Street With Her Hand Severed
	Vatican in Favour of Limits on Veto Power in UN
	Balkans
	EU: Council: First Step in Albania’s Candidacy
	Mediterranean Union
	Cinema: EU Backs Palestinian Women’s Film Festival
	Femise: Reduce Life Standard Gap With Southern Shore
	Jordanian Masadeh Next Secretary-General
	North Africa
	Football: Algeria, Also Military Aircraft for Khartoum
	Morocco: False Information, Al Massae Journalists Sentenced
	Soccer: Algeria, 5 Mln Dollars Damage for Orascom Attacks
	TLC: Submarine Cable Between Tunisia and Italy Operational
	Israel and the Palestinians
	East Jerusalem: Netanyahu Against Building Ban
	Erekat Denies PA Unilateralism Plans
	Hamas-Linked Group Offers Cash for Israeli Capture
	PNA: EU Launches Seyada II, Empowering Judicial System
	White House “Dismayed” At Jerusalem Settlement Expansion
	Middle East
	Boycott Israel Campaign Targets Gulf Railway
	Culture Influences EU Perceptions Toward Turks
	Emirates: Again Problems With Lorries at Saudi Border
	EU: Napolitano: Veties Halt Europe-Power
	Finmeccanica: Dubai Air Show, 26 Mln Euro Contract
	Growing Demand Predicted for Fighter Jets
	‘Religion Loves Tolerance, But is Not Tolerant’
	Turkey: 21 Years in Prison for Stealing 4 Pairs Used Shoes
	Turkey: Court Releases Colonel Suspect of Plot Against AKP
	UAE: Black List for People Who Refuse Jobs
	UAE: Finmeccanica Joint Venture Signs Deal With Indonesian Airline
	South Asia
	Afghan Village Armies Fight Taliban
	Obama Gives US an Afghan Escape Route
	Pakistan: Militants Blow Up Girls’ School in Northwest
	Far East
	Obama “Forgets” Human Rights to Appease Beijing, Tibetan Leader Says
	Australia — Pacific
	Scientology Faces Allegations of Torture in Australia
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Germany Arrests Rwandan War Crimes Suspects
	Somali Pirates Paid $3 Million to Free 36 Hostages
	Somalia: Pastor Shot, Killed on Way Home From Worship
	Sudan: Thousands of Police Deployed for World Cup Match
	Immigration
	Culture: IMA in Paris, Showcase of Arab World for 22 Years
	Netherlands: Integration Minister Critical of Maladjusted Immigrants
	Turin Film Festival: Two Films With Tunisian Ahmed Hafiene
	UK: This Man Married His Own Daughter So She Would be Allowed to Stay in Britain — and the Home Office Knows About it
	USA: 55% See Immigrant/Native Born Conflict
	Culture Wars
	City Vote Opens Women’s Restroom Doors to Men
	General
	Halal Food for Polar Girl in Antarctica
	Satan, The Great Motivator

Thousands of Jobs Scammed or Created

President Obama has repeatedly stated that his stimulus package has “saved or created” hundreds of thousands of jobs. And hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created. In Unicornland.

According to the Recovery.gov website — a website that the Obama administration has spent $18 million “stimulating” — millions have been spent and hundreds of jobs have been created in heretofore unknown areas of America: 30 jobs using $761,420 of federal cash in the fictional 15th Congressional District in Arizona (there are only eight congressional districts in Arizona); $19 million in spending and 15 jobs created in mythical districts in Oklahoma; $10.6 million on 39 jobs in invisible Iowan areas; $68.3 million spent in the magical 1st Congressional District of the U.S. Virgin Islands; $35 million spent and 142 jobs created in the glittering fairy-tale kingdom of the 99th district of the Northern Mariana Islands; and the list goes on.

The biggest problem, amazingly enough, isn’t the Obama administration’s incredible creation of districts from scratch. It’s the Obama administration’s use of stimulus funds to pay off its political allies.

On Sept. 11, 2009, Democrat Rep. Eric Massa of the 29th Congressional District of New York — yes, this district actually exists — wrote President Obama a letter regarding the Obama administration’s $74.6 million grant to Canandaigua Power Partners, LLC, and Canandaigua Power Partners II, LLC, in Cohocton, N.Y. These companies, according to Massa, “act as shell companies that deceptively operate on behalf of First Wind, which is currently under investigation by New York State Attorney General Cuomo for corruption charges in Cohocton and across the Northeast.”

In fact, wrote Massa, “Constituents in our region see these projects as criminal actions … the award of $74.6 million to corrupt companies that have changed names time and again forming new LLCs and new Inc.s but maintaining their business model of lie, cheat and corrupt at the expense of taxpayers has stirred great unrest.” Remember, this is a Democratic congressman.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

(Somali Refugee) Boys in the Hood

This is pretty outrageous, check out the film that Youtube removed, here, at City Pages. A bunch of Somali thug teens rough up bikers and little kids in Minneapolis. Police are now investigating, and you gotta laugh, these brilliant fellows put their names prominently on the film…

— Hat tip: RRW

[Return to headlines]

Army Plans Fort Hood Probe

Goal Is to Learn Whether Officials Failed to Heed Suspect’s Troubling Behavior

The Army is preparing an internal probe into the Fort Hood shootings that will focus on whether military personnel should have done more to sound alarms about the sole suspect in the rampage, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Military officials said the new probe will closely examine Maj. Hasan’s six years at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he did his residency and worked as a psychiatrist before his July transfer to Fort Hood in Texas.

Since the shootings, some of Maj. Hasan’s former colleagues have said he performed substandard work and occasionally unnerved them by expressing fervent Islamic views and deep opposition to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That has prompted questions about whether hospital officials should have alerted law-enforcement authorities about Maj. Hasan months ago, which may have helped prevent the shootings. The attack killed 13 people and wounded dozens.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Blue-Collar Town Elects a Muslim Mayor

GRANITE FALLS, Wash. — Granite Falls residents are suspicious of any newcomers, let alone a Muslim native of Pakistan who moved to this rugged, blue-collar logging and mining town to open his own bar.

But 54-year-old Haroon Saleem has thrived, winning over the town with hard work and an easy smile. He has become so popular that, on Nov. 3, he won the mayor’s job in a landslide, getting 61 percent of the more than 800 votes cast — a result that residents say would have been inconceivable not long ago.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Clint Eastwood Says America is Becoming More ‘Juvenile’

We’re “becoming more juvenile as a nation,” he said. “The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

FBI Probe Biggest Plot Since 9/11

The FBI say they hope to prevent another attack like 9/11 Newsbeat has been given exclusive access to one of the biggest anti-terrorist operations in America since the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI is worried a group linked to al-Qaeda is training up a new generation of terrorists.

They’re thought to be targeting young Somali immigrants, radicalising them to carry out attacks on their home country and possibly the US in the future.

The November cold in Minnesota is brutal. The fierce winds brush against your skin like a sharp knife.

The grey high rise flats in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, are clustered together and are home to hundreds of Somali immigrants.

A group of young boys are sitting on the concrete steps watching the traffic as it whizzes by.

It’s not clear why teenagers like these are giving up their comfortable lives in America and returning to their war torn homeland.

But over the past three years, authorities believe 20 young Somali men have gone back to fight in the bitter civil war, which is reported to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

None of them have come back and three are thought to be dead.

Illegal refugees

According to census figures there are 35,000 Somalis living in America but the figure is almost certainly a massive underestimate as many live in the country illegally.

Some of them came to the US as refugees looking for a safer place to settle and raise families.

Their country has been a war zone since the collapse of its government in 1991.

Now an extremist Muslim group, which America calls a terrorist organisation, is trying to gain control.

The US believes al-Shabaab has ties to al-Qaeda. It’s a shadowy organisation which is made up of radical Islamists.

It controls much of southern and central Somalia and has imposed strict Sharia law in those areas.

Burhan Hasan was 17 when he went missing from Minneapolis. His mum, Zeinab Bihi, thinks he was poached by al-Shabaab and taken back to Somalia to fight on its behalf.

She said: “Someone called me from Somalia and said Burhan is dead today and when I asked some details they said I can’t give you details and hung up the phone. He was shot in the head.”

Risk to US

The FBI were reluctant to spell out the threat, but they do believe something sinister is happening in the local Somali community.

They’re calling it their biggest terror investigation since 9/11.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war in Somalia They’re not just concerned about those who may be travelling from America to Somalia either.

They’re also worried about who may come back, war hardened and perhaps prepared to plot attacks on American soil.

EK Wilson, one of the special agents investigating the case, says they have to consider all possibilities.

He said: “There is no credible threat or evidence they want to carry out a terrorist threat on US soil but it’s not something we can rule out.

“Counter terrorism is our number one priority so we’re focusing our attention on this one.”

Agents won’t say if mosques or religious leaders are involved but they do think victims are being radicalised in America before being trained as fighters in Somalia.

Community in fear

The Somali community is frightened. At a Somali market, a group of young men are watching football on a big screen while eating rice and potatoes.

Somali men at this market were reluctant to talk They cheer and laugh as the the match reaches its climax.

But as soon as we ask about the disappearance of their fellow Somalis, the mood changes. A look of excitement turns into a look of fear.

An 18-year-old Somali man, who refused to give his name, said: “I am very scared and I feel uncomfortable in this country. I just hope the government know what they’re doing here and they don’t mess with the wrong people.”

As for the American people, many of them are scared too. Their biggest fear is another 9/11.

The evidence of al-Shabaab’s activities isn’t clear but the families of the missing are desperate for answers.

Zeinab Bihi says it doesn’t make sense that her son would go to Somalia without telling her.

She said: “He was a nice kid and very smart. I just don’t know what happened to him.”

— Hat tip: RRW

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Lawmakers Ask IRS to Investigate CAIR

Group’s lobbying activity illegal, members of Congress believe

A senator and five Congress members are urging the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations to determine whether the controversial Muslim group’s lobbying activities on Capitol Hill violate its nonprofit status.

— Hat tip: JD

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Lou Dobbs: My Downfall at CNN Started When Barack Obama Became President

Former CNN veteran Lou Dobbs suggests his form of advocacy journalism fell out of favor when President Obama was elected and his ratings began to decline.

Dobbs, who had come under fire from watchdog groups because of his on-air, anti-immigration stance, told Bill O’Reilly Monday on the Fox News Channel that he never heard directly from CNN management that he made the network look bad — but there was a tonal change when Obama became President.

“You know, I discern more of a difference between then, which was under the Bush administration whom I was criticizing, and now, when it is the Obama administration and an entirely different tone was taken,” Dobbs said.

— Hat tip: JD

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Major Hasan Dined With ‘Jihad Hobbyist’

Friend of Accused Shooter Called Himself “Extremist,” Watched Al-Qaeda Videos

Ever since he told a British reporter that he felt “no pity” for the victims of the Fort Hood massacre, Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old Muslim convert who frequently dined with accused shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan and attended the same mosque, has ducked the media. His parents ordered ABC News off their property over the weekend and on Monday, Reasoner again dodged ABC — this time by using a pass to drive onto the Fort Hood Army base, home of the soldiers for whom he said he felt no pity.

For the most part, Reasoner has stayed close to the one-story Copperas Cove, Texas house he shares with his parents, who have reportedly worked on the base and who, according to a friend of Reasoner’s, are “not particularly supportive” of the faith adopted by their son.

But while Reasoner may not be making himself available in person, his presence on the Web is unmistakable. During the past two years, Reasoner has shown a marked interest in jihadi Web content and videos of figures associated with al Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al Awlaki, the radical Yemeni-American cleric and al-Qaeda recruiter who exchanged e-mails with Major Hasan and told the Washington Post he considered himself Hasan’s confidant.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama’s Kooks

Another kooky Barack Obama appointee became publicly known this month and quickly was thrown or voluntarily threw herself under the bus. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director (who led Obama’s war on Fox News), said that Mao Zedong was one of her two favorite “political philosophers” whom “I turn to most” for answers to important questions.

History identifies Mao as a ruthless savage, not as a philosopher. He probably holds the record for ordering the mass murder of more people (50 million to 100 million) than anyone else in history.

Dunn tried to claim that her statement was a joke, but anyone can look at her actual speech on Youtube and see that she spoke in deadly earnest. Dunn was part of Obama’s inner circle and a senior media adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign.

— Hat tip: JD

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Obama’s Critics Should be Bowing Their Heads

The American right has worked itself into a lather over Obama’s bow to Japan’s emperor. They owe him an apology

[Note from JP: Typical Guardian nonsense.]

To most reasonable people, it was a well-intentioned show of respect to a head of state who greeted his guest on the steps of his home before ushering him inside for lunch.

But Barack Obama’s greeting to Japan’s emperor, Akihito, at the weekend has worked the American right into a lather over what they see as their president’s unseemly deference to a symbol of hereditary power.. The outrage was initially confined to commentators such as William Kristol, who, in an interview with Fox News on Sunday, wondered “why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan.” Now no less a figure than Dick Cheney has waded in. “There is no need for an American president to bow to anyone,” the former vice-president told the politico.com website.

By contrast, when Cheney met Akihito, he restricted the niceties to a stiff-backed handshake … but then Cheney is all charm.

Sean Hannity at Fox News claimed the Japanese were “mortified” by the addition of a handshake to the traditional greeting.

They were nothing of the sort: the handshake, though not strictly necessary, has crept into bowing etiquette, particularly in international business and politics. What better way to illustrate the meeting of two cultures?

Far from embarrassment, there is consternation here that some Americans should be so incensed by their president’s impeccable manners. If anyone was belittled it was Akihito, who stands eight inches shorter than the 6ft 1in Obama. Etiquette experts in Japan have praised the president’s efforts, while an Imperial Household Agency spokesman said the greeting looked “natural and appropriate”.

At the very least it was an improvement on the cringeworthy efforts of celebrities, Madonna included, who greet their Japanese fans with a nod of the head, palms pressed together in prayer. Sorry, Madge … wrong country. But the vitriol continues. In his LA Times blog titled, “How low will he go?” Andrew Malcolm called Obama “undignified” and his behaviour deeply misguided in the presence of a man whose father occupied the chrysanthemum throne when Japan and the US were at war.

Stephen Colbert exploited the bow’s rich comic potential with a reference to George Bush Snr’s “greeting” to his Japanese counterpart Kiichi Miyazawa in 1992: a lapful of vomit. The conservative pundit Bill Bennett told CNN: “It’s ugly. I don’t want to see it. We don’t defer to emperors.”

Which is fine, because Obama wasn’t deferring to anyone.

The angle and length of a bow in Japan depends on who is bowing to whom. Etiquette demands that a 90-degree bow should be reserved for such occasions as meeting the emperor or another VIP, or as a sincere expression of apology or regret. Context is everything. I have seen teachers perform an “Obama” in front of graduating pupils, and departing senior editors practically kiss their kneecaps before a newsroom of lowly hacks. Deference, or simple gratitude and civility?

The Obama administration has stepped in to defend the president. “I think that those who try to politicise those things are just way, way, way off base,” an unnamed official said. The state department, meanwhile, attempted to clear up any confusion over how Americans should behave abroad. Thanks to their ignorance, Cheney, Kristol et al now owe Obama an apology. A perfectly executed dogeza, foreheads pressed to the ground, would be a good start

— Hat tip: JP

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Role of ACLU Decisive in Moving KSM Trial to New York

That the ACLU cheers this latest attack on American national security is no surprise. After all, they are up to their ears in making sure Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his friends get sprung, although the mainstream media seems to be ignoring the ACLU’s role. I wrote last year at Pajamas Media that the “John Adams Project” would undoubtedly play a role in securing three hots and a cot for Khalid Sheik Mohammed while he awaits his day in an American court:

What is it? In a nutshell, the ACLU has assembled a “Dream Team” of attorneys with an $8.5 million budget to defend terrorists currently held at Guantanamo. Who’s the primary object of the ACLU’s affection? Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The ACLU, true to form, impugns the professionalism and competence of men and women of infinitely more honor than their accusers by referring to tribunals as a “kangaroo courts.” But could the ACLU really be so scandalized that this mass murderer will stand before a military tribunal? Could the ACLU truly be standing up for his “fundamental rights”?

What is the true purpose of a multi-million-dollar campaign to get KSM off the hook?

The ACLU explains: “The ACLU chose to focus on Mohammed’s defense,” Romero said, because he appears to be “the government’s top priority in the prosecution. And whether or not they are able to convict Khalid Sheik Mohammed under these rules may well determine the fate of the almost 300 other men who are detained at Guantanamo.”

So that’s it. The ACLU wants to set KSM and 300 other terrorists free or at least make it impossible for the tribunals to serve their function. Because KSM is the worst of the worst, because he is the terrorist in custody most responsible for 9/11, the ACLU is his champion.

— Hat tip: JD

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When America ‘Did’ Security

Go back only to World War II. Can you imagine telling enemy prisoners in advance exactly how gentle their interrogations will be? Or exactly how many more troops the president is considering sending to a war zone, and we’ll let you know when he decides? Or the secretary of state announcing when the Battle of the Bulge gets rough that we’re “limiting our goals in Belgium”? (And can you imagine Gen. Patton’s reaction when he’s briefed accordingly?) Or our major media routinely handing crucial intelligence to the enemy nicely gift-wrapped on Page 1? Or an American ambassador openly disagreeing with a plea for more troops from the American commanding general? (I say “openly” knowing Ambassador Karl Eichenberry’s comments weren’t supposed to “look” open. They were deliberately leaked to take the pressure off President Obama to accede to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s appeal for more troops in Afghanistan. Do you hear any White House anger over that “leak”? That leak was about as accidental as ballet.) It’s as though they never heard of doors you could go behind and close.

Can you imagine any White House before this one bulging with lovers of Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, teenage homosexual activity, trees and animals having lawyers to sue humans, the ridiculing of free speech (from a stalwart of the FCC, no less), even polygamy? What exactly does CNN mean when it says it’s not an American but rather an international network? And are we sure we know what Mike Wallace was saying when he insisted that, as a combat correspondent, he would not tip off American troops even if he learned of an enemy ambush? Maybe we don’t want to know.

[…]

Back in the days when America understood security we had classifications like confidential, secret and top-secret. Americans took such things seriously. During World War II my mother worked in the civil-defense headquarters of Greensboro, N.C. She refused to tell me where it was. During the Korean War the Army assigned me to a desk job at an intelligence agency. Here’s what’s remarkable. All of us GIs at that agency lived in a group of barracks together. I don’t recall one single instance of any of us asking or telling another what kind of work we were doing. We were told not to.

My badge, worn at all times, had a bar running diagonally across it indicating I did not have a full security clearance. I had only a “partial” clearance. Why should an outspoken patriot from North Carolina with absolutely no questionable item on his record be denied a full clearance? I’ll play out the argument for you. ARMY: “Your grandparents are all from Communist countries.” YOUNG FARBER: “No, Sir. Those countries are Communist now but when my grandparents left they weren’t Communist yet.” ARMY: “OK, but how do we know how many in their families survived World War II and how they feel about Communism and America and whether anyone in your family carries out communication with those relatives within the Soviet bloc through mail-drops in neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland? Partial clearance. Case closed!” That’s when America “did” security.

[…]

An American GI named Fred Howard told me how easy it was to get German prisoners talking. They simply dressed up an appropriate-looking American in the uniform of a Russian colonel who continually walked around the POW camp. Whenever a German prisoner asked, “Who’s he?” the American would say, “Oh. That’s Colonel Volkov of the Russian Army. Every Tuesday we give the Germans who won’t talk over to him and they’re bused over to the Red Army base in Leipzig.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Why the Left Excuses Communist Horrors

Alan Kors, University of Pennsylvania history professor, gave the evening’s keynote address. What he revealed about the dereliction and character weakness of academics, intellectuals, media elites and politicians is by no means complimentary, but worse than that, dangerous. Professor Kors said that over the years, he has frequently asked students how many deaths were caused by Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong and their successors. Routinely, they gave numbers in the thousands. Kors says that’s equivalent to saying the Nazis are responsible for the deaths of just a few hundred Jews. But here’s the record: Nazis were responsible for the deaths of 20 million of their own people and those in nations they conquered. Between 1917 and 1983, Stalin and his successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Zedong and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.

Professor Kors asks, why are the horrors of Nazism so well-known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers has there been? In Europe, especially Germany, hoisting the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag is a crime. It’s acceptable to hoist and march under a flag emblazoned with the former USSR’s hammer and sickle. Even in the U.S., it’s acceptable to praise mass murderers, as Anita Dunn, President Obama’s communications director, did in a commencement address for St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral where she said Mao was one of her heroes. Whether it’s the academic community, the media elite or politicians, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism — a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.

— Hat tip: JD

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Why We Should Put Jihad on Trial

An open trial will also provide a catalyst for reflection among Americans on both 9/11 and its aftermath. The years before the attacks have been thoroughly hashed out through the report of the 9/11 commission and by memoirs and histories. The eight years since, a time of unremitting warfare, has had no similar opportunity for taking stock. Regrettably, no trial can provide closure for the traumas of that day. But a judgment in New York, where the greatest suffering was inflicted, will remind us both of the narrow viciousness of the terrorists’ cause and of the enduring strength of our own values.

— Hat tip: JP

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Soldiers Could Get Uniforms for Urban Jungle

Camo tailored for Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver — but not Ottawa

OTTAWA — Future Canadian soldiers could be wearing new uniforms designed to provide camouflage on the streets of our largest cities.

The Defence Department will know by March what designs might work for what is being called a Canadian Urban Environment Pattern.

Those designs are to be based on the “unique requirements” of the urban settings of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, according to an outline of the project being co-ordinated by scientists at Defence Research and Development Canada in Suffield, Alta.

Ottawa, the nerve centre of government and the military, was left off the list because it doesn’t rate as a major metropolitan centre.

[…]

However, Eric Graves, the editor of Soldier Systems Daily, a U.S. website that reports on the uniform and equipment industry, questioned whether it made sense to have camouflage based on the landscape of Canadian cities. Various studies indicate the world’s population in developing nations is becoming more focused in urban areas and military officers often talk about future warfare being in those areas.

“It makes zero sense for the Canadian military to produce an urban pattern based on their own cities unless they plan on fighting there,” Graves noted.

“If that’s the case, then it is the perfect choice.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Boeing Sued for Dutch Accident

From Dutch: Boeing is being sued by 14 victims of a planecrash this past February. The victims claim the company was aware of problems with its altimeters.

— Hat tip: Esther

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EU Presidency Race Descends Into Chaos as Leaders Struggle to Agree on Candidate

The race to anoint the first president of Europe was descending into farce as EU leaders prepared to gather in Brussels tonight.

With no agreement on a candidate, the EU’s 27 heads of government will arrive in Brussels this afternoon for a special summit called to select a president and foreign minister.

Despite weeks of intensive behind the scenes negotiations brokered by the Swedish president Fredrik Reinfeldt the leaders are no closer to deciding who should take the new posts.

A frustrated Mr Reinfeldt said tonight’s dinner in Brussels, which was meant to be a rubber-stamping exercise, ‘might take all night’.

Diplomats have warned the meeting could even run into the weekend or have to be reconvened next month.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi revealed the chaotic state of negotiations yesterday when he said a deal was ‘a very long way away’.

The chaos is an embarrassment for EU officials who had hoped for a smooth transition to the positions, which were created by the Lisbon treaty.

Former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, herself a candidate for the presidency, yesterday condemned the secretive way in which the decisions were being made.

She called on the EU to ‘stop working like the former Soviet Union’ and said a woman should get one of the key posts.

Some diplomats believe the lack of a preferred candidate means it is still possible that Tony Blair might get the £270,000-a-year job, despite earlier suggestions that his bid is fading.

Downing Street yesterday said that Gordon Brown remained ‘full square’ behind the former PM’s bid.

Mr Blair’s supporters last night played down some reports that he is on the verge of throwing in the towel.

But Britain is deadlocked with Germany over the decision.

Reinhard Bettzuege, German ambassador in Brussels, let slip yesterday that Chancellor Angela Merkel is backing the Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy for the presidency.

Mrs Merkel is said not to be a fan of Mr Blair, reportedly commenting that she didn’t like the idea of ‘having to listen to Mr Flash all the time’.

Mr Van Rompuy, 62, is the frontrunner but has been unable to cement his position.

Britain has signalled its opposition to Mr Van Rompuy, who supports the introduction of new EU taxes.

There are still no official candidates, and yet more than half a dozen politicians are said to be in the running.

Mr Van Rompuy may reign victorious simply by virtue of being the least offensive candidate.

Mr Blair is the best known of the candidates and was the early favourite.

But some EU leaders fear being overshadowed by him on the world stage.

Others chafe at the prospect of being led by a man so closely associated with the Iraq War.

Mr Brown is believed to have a ‘Plan B’ if it becomes clear tonight Mr Blair is out of the race. At that point Britain will try to nominate a candidate for one of the top economic jobs in the newly constituted European Commission.

David Miliband and Lord Mandelson say they have ruled themselves out of the running to be EU foreign minister.

— Hat tip: Gaia

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Italy: Napolitano, Turkey Added Value for Europe

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, NOVEMBER 17 — “Turkey represents an added value for Europe”, said Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano after talks with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul. It is necessary to continue, he added, negotiations for entry “without obstructionism” or second thoughts regarding the “thoughtful, not superficial and still valid” decision of the European Council in 2004. “In a world profoundly changed as the one we live in”, said Napolitano, “the European Union could play a decisive role only if it is more united, more integrated with more consistent and various presences. In the sense that Turkey is an added value for Europe”. Napolitano repeated Rome’s support of Rome entry process of Turkey to the European Union, “Italy remains faithful to the commitment signed in the 2004 Council of Europe together with other countries in the European Union. Any opinion on Turkey joining can be expressed but the 2004 decision remains a firm point”. Abdullah Gul thanked Napolitano for these considerations and for supporting the adhesion process. “Europe which tore down the Berlin Wall twenty years ago perhaps wants to build another one somewhere else to exclude Turkey? If this is so, it is a lack of vision of the interests of Europe itself”, said the Turkish president, underlining that there are common visions between Italy and Turkey on this point and numerous points of the international agenda. Napolitano also pointed out the full identity of opinion with the UN reform and the common participation in Nato and EU missions in Afghanistan, the Balkans and other regions. The meeting showed the excellent level of bilateral relations, called by Napolitano “exceptionally positive with ulterior possible of development”. On the economic plan, he said this prospective will be discussed in December during the Italy-Turkey summit. Napolitano also referred to the talks scheduled today in Rome between Turkish prime minister Erdogan and Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi during the FAO summit.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Maroni: Possible Nat-Radical Islam Relationship

(AGI) — Milan, 17 Nov. — “We are following this phenomenon also in relation to others that we have been following up to this point: certain incidents of unrest in the antagonist area and primarily the eventual possible relationship with the Islamic radicalism”. The Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni, during the Stelline convention, commented on the leaflet signed by the Nats addressed to diverse publication editors. Maroni recalled that the first kamikaze case in Italy took place in Milan. “Unfortunately it is all concentrated here — he emphasised — and this is the reason for the maximum care and attention”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Italy: Opposition Leader Vows to Fight New Trial-Length Bill

Rome, 13 Nov. (AKI) — Italy’s opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani on Friday vowed centre-left politicians would fight the passage of a controversial bill to shorten the length of criminal trials. The opposition claims the bill has been drafted to help prime minister Silvio Berlusconi solve his legal problems.

The premier is a defendant in two trials due to resume later this month.

“We will strenuously oppose this draft legislation,” said Bersani (photo), who leads Italy’s Democratic Party — the largest opposition party.

“Our goal is to stop such laws being passed. Yet again, this country is being sacrificed to serve Berlusconi’s interests,” he said.

Berlusconi and his supporters in the conservative ruling coalition tabled the bill in the Italian parliament this week, claiming it is a long-overdue attempt to reform Italy’s notoriously slow and cumbersome judicial system, where trials take years and sometimes never reach a verdict.

Centre-left opposition leaders are vowing to hold street protests over the bill, which Italy’s association of magistrates has said would have a “devastating effect” on justice by letting at least 100,000 suspects off the hook over the next two years.

Both Berlusconi trials would be “timed out” if the bill becomes law, according to financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore and other reports.

The bill proposes shortening trial to six years for offences carrying a sentence of ten years, from the first verdict through two rounds of appeals.

The measure would apply only to crimes that carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years. It could not be used by repeat offenders or for crimes such as criminal association or child pornography.

Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo Ghedini, who is also an MP , spearheaded the bill. It was drafted after a ruling by the Constitutional Court last month which threw out a law granting Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office.

The ruling paved the way for two corruption trials to re-open in which the premier is a suspect.

In one of the pending trials, Berlusconi is accused of tax fraud involving his broadcaster Mediaset’s purchase of TV rights in the United States. The charges currently expire in 2012.

The trial was set to resume next Monday, but the premier’s lawyers have reportedly sought a postponement, claiming that he will be attending a global food summit opening in the Italian capital, Rome, on that date.

In a second trial due to resume on 27 November, Berlusconi is accused of paying his former tax adviser, David Mills, 600,000 dollars to give misleading evidence on his behalf in two corruption trials in the 1990s.

These charges are due to run out in 2011.

Berlusconi denies all the charges against him and has long claimed his legal woes are the result of persecution by “Communist” Italian prosecutors.

But some of Berlusconi’s own allies are lukewarm about his repeated attacks on the judiciary and the prospect of new measures which could be perceived by Italians as self-interested.

Earlier this week, his ally Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, gave crucial but reluctant backing to the bill.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Netherlands: CDA Irritation Over Multicultural Sinterklaas

THE HAGUE, 19/11/09 — The Christian democrats (CDA) are put out that the Christian cross on the mitre of Sinterklaas is disappearing in more and more municipalities with the apparent intention of keeping radical Muslims calm.

Sinterklaas is the Dutch variant of Santa Claus. Tradition has it that the holy bishop arrives from Spain on his steamboat on around 20 November every year to give all good children presents on 5 December, after which he disappears again.

Sinterklaas has had no cross on his mitre in Amsterdam any more for some years, but rather the logo of the city. The capital acknowledges that this is because the population’s composition has become “multi-ethnic”.

According to CDA, more and more municipal executives are opting to drop the cross for a neutral headdress. This damages a tradition, says the government party.

CDA has sent written questions to Labour (PvdA) Ministers Guusje ter Horst (Home Affairs) and Ronald Plasterk (Culture). They are urged “to fight for the preservation of a typically Dutch festival, including all symbols and references that belong to it.”

CDA MP Koppejan: “We consider it fine that in Dutch society, ethnic groups have come along with their own festivals, customs and religions. But this must not mean that the Christian origin of our own festivals is renounced.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Romania Named Most Corrupt Country in EU

Romania is the European Union’s most corrupt country, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said today (Tues) as it unveiled its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index today (Tue).

The organisation said policy decisions since the start of negotiations for EU accession had undermined the country’s political institutions and contributed to the perception that the risk of corruption in the country had increased.

“Being in the EU ironically appears to reduce pressure for anti-corruption reforms. As a consequence, Romania is facing a degradation of its public integrity climate, marked by the lack of strategic coordination of legislative and institutional anti-corruption measures,” it said.

Romania came 71st in the group’s list of 180 countries and was seen as more corrupt than Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece as well as Namibia, ranked 56th, Cape Verde, ranked 46th and Botswana ranked 37th.

New Zeeland, Denmark and Singapore were seen as having the lowest levels of corruption.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Salzburg Hotel Boss Promises Personal Prayer Room for Cruise

Salzburg hotel managers have promised Tom Cruise a private prayer room when he comes to the province this week.

Sepp Schellhorn, head manager of the Hotel Seehof in Goldegg, Salzburg, said he would go as far as setting up a prayer room for the devout Scientologist to make his star guest happy.

“I would arrange a prayer room for (him) if that’s what he is demanding,” Schellhorn — who heads the Austrian Hotels Association — told Kurier newspaper today (Tues).

— Hat tip: Esther

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Scotland: Devout Muslim Who Crossed Busy Road for Prayers Killed in Collision

A DEVOUT Muslim was killed when he crossed a busy dual carriageway after saying his prayers, it was revealed yesterday.

Mohammed Mushtaq, 58, of Aberdeen, died after being knocked down by a motorcycle on Friday. Mr Mushtaq, a father of three, had borrowed a van to move furniture and was heading back to Aberdeen when the accident happened.

Mr Mushtaq parked the van at the side of the dual carriageway for his afternoon prayers. It is understood he decided to cross the dual carriageway because the ground near where he parked was too wet. He was killed instantly when a BMW bike collided with him.

Mohammed Farooq, a friend of Mr Mushtaq, said: “He had found a spot in a field where he could pray. When he was finished, he crossed back over the road and was about to get into the van when the motorcycle hit him. I only wish he had waited until he was home.”

Mozibul Islam, a member of the Aberdeen Interfaith Group, said

“He had some difficulty with his hearing and he must not have heard the motorcycle.”

— Hat tip: The Frozen North

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Sharks Off the British Coast: Oil Tankers Refuse to Unload Until Prices Rise… Keeping Your Fuel Costs Soaring

These tankers have been parked off our shores for months, refusing to unload their oil until prices have risen even higher. The delay makes millions for speculators… and keeps your petrol costs soaring. Laden with fuel, three oil tankers sit idly within sight of the British coastline, playing a waiting game that is driving up petrol prices for hard-pressed motorists.

They are part of a flotilla of ten vessels refusing to unload their cargo until market speculation has driven up its price to the level they want.

And as the value of that cargo is currently rising by over £1million a day, driven partly by profiteering traders and speculators, it is unlikely to see a petrol station any time soon.

With such tactics, it is not hard to see why prices at the pumps are forecast to have risen by 26 per cent in a year by this Christmas.

AA president Edmund King said: ‘Traders and speculators seem to be storing up oil until the price rises. Drivers can expect more hikes in the pipeline. Motorists are paying the price of this at the pumps.’

Residents near Brixham in Devon have watched with growing anger as the tankers have anchored in Lyme Bay for the past two months.

The price of a barrel of oil has increased from $40 a barrel a year ago to $80, with the cost expected to soar even higher in the next few months.

Even from the start of the tankers’ stay in Lyme Bay, the value of the oil they carry has risen from £313million to £378million — an increase of £65million, or more than £1million a day.

It means a 21 per cent profit for doing nothing more than simply watching and waiting.

Record amounts of fuel are now being stored in such a manner around the world — indirectly helping to push up petrol prices on the forecourt.

Oil pumped out of the ground by the major producers such as BP, Shell and Exxon goes by pipeline to tankers which then circle the globe.

In the course of their journey the oil may be bought and sold to different traders many times on the international commodity markets, often in just one day.

Some of these unidentified oil traders may be big-name players within the industry, but others could be the ‘Arthur Daleys of the international oil world’, say City experts.

The price drivers pay at a forecourt — currently touching 110p-alitre or £5-a-gallon — is largely determined when the oil reaches an onshore refinery, from where it takes two months to work its way through to the pumps.

But until it gets to the refinery speculators are free to drive up the price thanks to the age-old capitalist model of supply and demand.

If the price is not high enough, the tankers simply cruise around the high seas — or park in a safe haven — until it goes up sufficiently high to sell on in the UK or elsewhere.

City analysts say the refusal to unload ultimately drives up the price motorists pay at the pumps.

Experts say every $2 rise in the price of oil puts 1p on the price of a litre — adding 50p to every fill-up.

In total, the Lyme Bay tankers carry a million tons of oil.

Once refined, that will create 250,000 tons of petrol — equivalent to 340million litres — enough to fill up nearly seven million Ford Mondeos.

A spokesman for Brixham coastguards said the huge ships were now a familiar sight in the bay: ‘Some have been there two months or more,’ she said.

‘They’re awaiting orders. The cargo will be worth more now than when they first arrived.’

As the Mail reported on Tuesday it was disclosed that petrol prices were on track to have soared by 26 per cent this year — fuelled by speculators and tax rises — and were set to hit 110p a litre by Christmas.

They are already at 108.6p a litre with diesel just short of an average £5 gallon at 109.8p a litre.

The last time prices were so high was when oil was trading at $100 a barrel in September 2008.

The extent of oil speculation is even beginning to alarm producer countries. The Arab-dominated OPEC oil cartel warned last week it will increase supply and thus reduce the price if the speculators do not relent.

One of the giant crude oil tankers, the 159,300-ton SKS Segura, registered in Norway, first arrived on September 24 — more than eight weeks ago.

The 50,300-ton Tristar Kuwait tanker, registered in the Bahamas, has been awaiting orders in Lyme Bay since September 2.

Another anchored in Lyme Bay is the 43,000-ton Alkman, also registered in the Bahamas, which arrived on November 1.

The 72,000-ton Petali Lady, registered in Liberia, has been anchored in Lyme Bay since September 27.

And the 99,000-ton Danishregistered Torm Ingeborg has been there since October 10.

This is not the first time tankers have anchored in Lyme Bay. Several ships did the same last April before moving on.

— Hat tip: Gaia

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Spain Confirms Sovereignty Over Gibraltar Waters to London

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 16 — The Spanish government sent an official communication to the British government to the effect that it does not recognise areas beyond those handed over in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, in which Spain passed the city and castle of Gibraltar to the British crown, along with the port and fortifications, but not the isthmus or the territorial and air space. The communication, according to diplomatic sources quoted by the Europa Press agency, is the response to a protest presented by the British government in London in September, which considers the patrols carried out by the Spanish Civil Guard into the waters around the Rock of Gibraltar to be incursions. The rock currently has the special status of a dependency of the British Crown, and London claims the waters as belonging to it. Today El Mundo reported recent incidents between the British navy and the Gibraltar police on one side and the Spanish Civil Guard on the other, in the disputed waters at the three-mile limit from the coast. On more than one occasion, Britain and Gibraltar intervened on Civil Guard patrols who had entered the waters inside the three marine miles, ordering them to move back. Sources say that the Civil Guard has been coming in and out of the disputed waters for years, carrying out patrols or in pursuit of crimes. There has been no contact between the United Kingdom and Gibraltar to tackle this kind of incident since the so-called Brussels Process, the framework in which disputes over sovereignty are handled, was suspended unilaterally by London. A spokesman from the British Embassy in Madrid stated to Europa Press that the waters in question belong to Gibraltar, and repeated the British governments willingness to continue to work with the Spanish executive and that of the Rock of Gibraltar to make progress in cooperation between local agencies, within the Forum for Dialogue constituted by the three governments in 2004. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Spain: Industry Minister Leaves Greenpeace After 18 Years

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 16 — Spain’s Industry Minister, Miguel Sebastian, left Greenpeace after 18 years of environmental activism due to an incompatibility of the objectives of the environmental organisation and the energy policy developed by the Spanish government, announced the head of Spain’s Greenpeace in Spain, Juan Lopez de Uralde, to the media today. According to Uralde, Sebastian did not only decide to keep the Santa Maria de Garoa (Burgos) nuclear facility, extending its useful life, but managing the facility characterises an energy policy that is contradictory to his activism in Greenpeace. For the Greenpeace representative, it is sufficient to look at the Industry Ministry’s energy policy, including carbon subsidies, which are like an award for polluters to see these contradictions. Underlining that Greenpeace is an organisation that has been against nuclear energy since its founding in 1971, Lopez de Uralde pointed out that the group defends and energy policy based on efficient energy consumption, the development of renewable energy resources, and respect for the environment, compared to the current model of unlimited production and increasing production from sources that pollute, are dangerous, and not renewable, such as nuclear and combustible fossil fuels. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UK: Bully, 13, Who Chased Girl to Death

A girl who was 13 when she drove a vicar’s adopted daughter to jump to her death from a third-floor window was convicted of manslaughter today.

Hatice Can, now 15, was led sobbing to the cells and was comforted by her mother after the verdict was read out.

She and Oluwakemi Ajose, who was 17 at the time, had denied causing the death of 19-year-old Rosimeiri Boxall at council-owned temporary accommodation in Blackheath.

Ajose, from Charlton, had been best friends with the vicar’s daughter but they fell out when Can and Rosimeiri rowed over a boy.

On the day of the attack Ajose and Can had been drinking vodka before launching an attack on Rosimeiri.

She was beaten by the two defendants who could be seen on mobile phone film laughing, with Can urging Ajose to punch “lower, lower”.

The sound of her being slapped and punched echoed around the courtroom. Her hair was pulled and hairspray was aimed at her face.

Rosimeiri leapt in desperation from the window. As she lay dying, Can is said to have shouted: “Serves you right, bitch.”

The judge ordered that Can’s name can be published as a deterrent to bullies around the country.

“There is a legitimate public interest in the case and its outcome and the potential deterrent effect on others and the consequence of serious bullying,” he said.

Can had received the guilty verdict in silence but minutes later suddenly burst into tears which prompted at least four women on the eight woman, four man jury also to start weeping.

The judge told them: “These things are always distressing.” In contrast Ajose was poker faced as she was led away.

The Rev Simon Boxall, vicar of Open Gateway Community Church in Thamesmead, and his wife Rachel had adopted Rosi as a toddler in Brazil and brought her to Britain in 2005.

The couple raised her as their own alongside their four natural sons but were left heartbroken when Rosi left home at 18 and began to get into the wrong company.

Rosi had gone to stay at Ajose’s flat in Blackheath, which had been given to her under a social services scheme. Ajose also let Can, who had run away from her home in Belvedere, to stay there.

The court heard that on the day of the attack neighbour Raffaelina Asli tried to intervene but Rosi, although scared, refused to leave the building.

When Mrs Asli later heard terrifying screams she hammered on Ajose’s flat door to be told by Can: “F*****g hell she has escaped, she had gone out the window, she has f*****g jumped.”

The two girls, who have police cautions for theft and violence, will be sentenced at a later date.

Rosi’s adoptive parents had attended every day of the trial and were in court when the unanimous verdicts were announced.

They said in a statement that Ajose and Can must face now up to what they have done, but added: “We want them to know that we forgive them. Forgiveness means that we refuse to be shackled by bitterness and our prayer is that forgiveness will allow the girls to be released from the burden of what they have done, so that they can now grow into the sort of people that God intended them to be.”

They said they have never regretted adopting Rosi, cherish the “pure joy” she brought into their lives and look forward to seeing her again in heaven.

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: Honour Killing Theory as Mother-of-Two is Found Dumped in the Street With Her Hand Severed

A mother was found dying in a street with serious head wounds and her right hand cut off as she went to pick up her children after work.

Geeta Aulakh, who has two young sons, died four hours later in hospital from her horrific injuries.

Police later arrested her estranged husband, 31-year-old Harpreet Aulakh, along with five other men.

[…]

She was separated from her husband, whom she had married against her parents’ wishes, and friends described him as a ‘waste of space’. The couple were believed to be in the middle of divorce proceedings.

Police are investigating several theories behind the murder, including jealousy, access to the children or bringing dishonour on the family.

A friend said: ‘It’s horrific but hugely symbolic that Geeta’s right hand was cut off.

‘She was a Sikh and all Sikhs wear a metal bangle, the kara, on their right wrist.

‘It is a permanent reminder to live a moral and good life and once it’s on you can’t get it off. So her murderer was both dishonouring her and perhaps trying to show she had been dishonourable — which is just barbaric.

— Hat tip: JD

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Vatican in Favour of Limits on Veto Power in UN

Each permanent member of the Security Council should agree not to exercise its veto power in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian laws and similar acts.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) — In his address to the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Mgr Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See, said that the Vatican is in favour of reforming the veto power of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France) so that certain issues that affect most of the international community can be discussed and not blocked by a single nation.

Given the fact that the abolition of the veto is not feasible, “its reform is more suitable and realistic,” said Mgr Migliore. Placing limits on its use would be a positive development because “[o]n so many occasions in history its use has slowed down and even obstructed the solution of the issues crucial to international peace and security, thereby allowing the perpetration of violations of freedom and human dignity.

“The reform of the veto is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in jeopardy because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few,” the Vatican diplomat said.

For this reason, the Holy See joins all those who share “the view put forward by other delegations that the Security Council’s permanent members should commit themselves to a practice of not casting a veto in situations where genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, serious violations of international humanitarian law or similar acts are involved.”

“At the minimum, in an effort to reach a timely and more representative solution for such grave situations, the number of affirmative votes supporting the Security Council’s decisions should require the concurring vote of no more than two permanent members.” At present, all five must agree.

For Mgr Migliore, “the permanent members should show great accountability and transparency in using the right of veto” before a resolution is drafted “in order to ensure that States are not effectively vetoing texts before they can be considered by the Council.”

“Indeed, knowing that a permanent member would vote against their adoption, many proposed drafts are never formally presented to the Council for a vote,” the diplomat said.

Finally, Mgr Migliore expressed hope for “more open” dialogue and cooperation between the permanent and other members of the Security Council” to explore all diplomatic channels to settle questions.

“The decision to extend, limit or abolish the veto lies in the hands of the member states and will depend on the broadest possible consensus on one of the options. We trust that such a decision would be right and it would favour transparency, equality and justice, reflecting the values of democracy and mutual trust in the work of the reformed Security Council.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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EU: Council: First Step in Albania’s Candidacy

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 16 — The EU Foreign Council has given the go-ahead to an evaluation procedure for Albania as a possible candidate for adhesion. The European Commission has been charged with evaluating whether Tirana is in a condition to open negotiations for entry into the Union. Todays decision is the first step in a long process towards the countrys membership into the EU, which has been a member of NATO since April. Considering that the evaluation by the Brussels executive will take between 14 and 16 months, a decision on Albanias official candidacy will not arrive before 2011. If Albania begins negotiations for entry into the EU, it will have to take forward all the economic and political reforms necessary to come in line with the European standards. On of the main challenges, according to Brussels, will be the fight against corruption and organised crime. However, concludes the EU Council, the future of the western Balkans lies in the European Union. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Cinema: EU Backs Palestinian Women’s Film Festival

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOV 18 — Until the end of the month, Palestinian film buffs will have the opportunity to attend 84 screenings at locations across the occupied Palestinian territories as part of the EU-funded Shashat 5th Womens Film Festival in Palestine, the only annual womens film festival in the Arab world. The three themes of the festival this year — - according to the Enpi site (www.enpi-info.eu) are Jerusalem on the occasion of Jerusalem being the Capital of Arab Culture, 2009, History of Cinema in Palestine, and Women and War. The 5th Shashat Womens Film Festival is made possible by major support from the EU, which contributed over 47,000 euros to the event. The EU supports film festivals across the Mediterranean partner countries, recently organising European cinema festivals in Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Jordan. It also funds a regional programme, Euromed Audiovisual, which aims to contribute to intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity through support to building cinematographic and audiovisual capacity in the region.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Femise: Reduce Life Standard Gap With Southern Shore

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 17 — The 14 kilometres of the Strait of Gibraltar symbolise a gap of nine years: the difference between people living in Europe and those living on the southern side of the Mediterranean Sea. The Euro-Mediterranean forum of economics institutes (FEMISE) wants to contribute to reducing, or even closing, this unacceptable gap through continuing analyses and the presentation of proposals. “Our focus” explained FEMISE general director Frederic Blanc during the Forum’s annual conference in Brussels, “is not on the convergence of institutions, but on reducing the differences in standard of living. That nine-year gap is a shame, we must lower the differences in infant mortality, in living conditions, in the level of wealth, labour, healthcare. We must aim high, both in Europe and in the south of the Mediterranean area”. In order to succeed in reducing the differences between the two sides of the Mediterranean, the general director of FEMISE has proposed to launch “a real Euro-Mediterranean cohesion policy, the same policy that has allowed Spain, Ireland and to a lesser extend also Greece and Portugal, and now the countries in the east, to develop”. The Forum has formulated a request during the Forum, to create a system of structural funds to speed up development in the region. “The countries in the south of the Mediterranean are able to manage this type of aid” Blanc continued, “but the political will is not there. We shouldn’t let the crisis decrease our aid”. FEMISE has presented a survey on the crisis in Brussels. The report indicates that so far the southern Mediterranean countries have withstood the crisis very well, but at the same time it makes clear that they are feeling the impact of falling demand, of people sending less money home and of the crisis in tourism. Moreover, only 5% of the population is considered poor (having less than one dollar per day to spend), but 20-30% of inhabitants on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea have just 2 dollars to spend every day. These millions of people run the risk of also becoming ‘poor’ due to the crisis. The survey mentions July 2010 as crucial: if the crisis continues after that month, the south will have serious problems with its financial stability and social cohesion. FEMISE was created in 1997 in Marseille to monitor the economic partnership within the framework of the Barcelona Process, which includes the EU, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. Libya participates with the status of observer. In July 2008, with the Barcelona Process in a stalemate, the French presidency at the time of the EU decided to launch the Mediterranean Union. “Since 1997” Blanc concluded “not all our expectations have been realised, there hasn’t been any development, but at least we have managed to create a network, the idea of the Euro-Mediterranean region, where first all that existed were bilateral relations”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Jordanian Masadeh Next Secretary-General

(ANSAmed) — Madrid, NOVEMBER 18 — The Jordanian Ahmad Masadeh, current representative of Jordan at the EU, is the only candidate to lead the Mediterranean Union. The Union will have its headquarters in Barcelona and will officially take shape on November 21, with the approval of its articles. After the cancellation of the summit of Foreign Ministers of Mediterranean Union countries in Istanbul, the articles will be approved in Brussels by the ad hoc committee of mostly ambassadors, according to well-informed sources quoted today by El Pais. In the same meeting on the 21th, Masadeh will probably also be appointed as leader of the Mediterranean Union , for which alternately a representative from the southern and the northern shore of the Mediterranean is chosen. The two current presidents of the Union, the French Nicolas Sarkozy and the Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, will have to ratify the nomination. Meanwhile the restructuring of the Mediterranean Union headquarters, the Pedralbes building in Barcelona, is almost finished. The Union will start using the building during the Spanish EU presidency, which starts in January 2010.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Football: Algeria, Also Military Aircraft for Khartoum

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, NOVEMBER 17 — The Algerian government also contributed financially to the transport, with the airline Air Algerie, of Algerian fans for the match tomorrow against Egypt in Khartoum and “in case of necessity” has decided “to mobilise air transport planes from the Algerian military”, reported APS from a statement released by the government. “To guarantee the organisation of flights for the company Air Algerie scheduled for the transport of 9 thousand Algerian fans”, the note specified, “on the instruction of the president of the republic, the government has decided to give direct financial support to the flagship carrier” and, if necessary, using aircraft from the ANP. “As a consequence, Air Algerie has been asked to thank the companies who offered financial assistance and put an end to useless sponsorships”, the note concluded. In recent days different private companies, including the Egyptian company Orascom’s Djezzy, have announced financing for the transport of fans from Sudan. Numerous Djezzy offices were devastated by fans in Algiers with damage estimated at over 5 million dollars. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Morocco: False Information, Al Massae Journalists Sentenced

(ANSAmed) — RABAT, NOVEMBER 17 — The director and a journalist of the Arab language newspaper ‘Al Massae’ were sentenced by a court in Casablanca for having published false information on a news story about drug trafficking. The Map news agency reported the sentencing, citing judicial sources. The director Rachid Nini was sentenced to three months in prison and fined 4,400 euros while the journalist who wrote the article, Said Laajal, got two months in prison and a fine of 2,600 euros. The newspaper, according to the court, wrote that the presumed head of a drug trafficking network talked about the involvement of a judicial official. Other than Al Massae, the most important Arab language newspaper, in the recent weeks there has been an increase of sentencing for journalists for false information about the royal family. (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Soccer: Algeria, 5 Mln Dollars Damage for Orascom Attacks

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, NOVEMBER 16 — Damage caused by Algerian fans to the telephone company Djezzy, a branch of the Egyptian Orascom (OTA), in Algiers, amounts to more than five million dollars. The statement was made during a press conference in Algiers by the company’s communications director Hamid Grine, who explained that “more than 70,000 cell phone for a value of five million dollars were stolen or destroyed.” Grine added, “computers, desks, air conditioners were stolen from the Ota headquarters in Dar El Beida”, a few steps from the Algiers airport attacked last night. Various other offices of the company which has more than 14 million subscribers in Algeria, were devastated in the last 23 hours. The Djezzy Didouche Mourad offices, in the centre of the capital city, were also completely destroyed. “Orchestrated” attacks according to Grine who spoke of “manipulation by some active in the telephone sector”. Hundreds of young people also sacked the Egypt Air company offices, recently attacked again. An attempted assault on the Egyptian embassy in Algiers was fought off by security forces.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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TLC: Submarine Cable Between Tunisia and Italy Operational

(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, NOVEMBER 13 — ‘Hannibal’, the first submarine cable between Kelibia (Cap Bon) and Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) started operating today. The goal of the connection is to make Tunisia’s international communication faster and more effective. The news was announced by the press agency TAP. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the general director of Tunisie Telecom, Montacer Ouaili, were present at the opening ceremony. Thanks to ‘Hannibal’, writes TAP, new prospects are opened in the field of international voice connections and internet data transfer, which could reach a capacity of up to 3200 Gigabit per second. This is a way to “contribute to the strengthening of competitiveness of companies and to reaffirm Tunisia’s place in the knowledge society”. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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East Jerusalem: Netanyahu Against Building Ban

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, NOVEMBER 17 — Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu recently pushed back a request from the US emissary George Mitchell for a ban on the Israeli project in the neighbourhood of Ghilo, inside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem but in an area that was not under Israeli sovereignty before the 6 days war in 1967. According to military radio, Mitchell’s request left Netanyahu “very surprised”. Israel, the prime minister responded, has no intention of interrupting building inside of Jerusalem. In any case, Netanyahu added, he does not have the legal power to block the construction which includes the building of some dozens of homes.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Erekat Denies PA Unilateralism Plans

The Palestinians will not unilaterally declare an independent state, but rather seek a UN Security Council resolution endorsing a two-state solution along the pre-1967 lines, Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Israeli officials said Erekat was backtracking on earlier statements calling for a unilateral declaration of independence, even as he said that Israel was “twisting his words.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Hamas-Linked Group Offers Cash for Israeli Capture

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A Gaza charity headed by the interior minister of the militant Hamas group on Wednesday offered $1.4 million to any Arab citizen of Israel who abducts a soldier.

Palestinians have frequently called on Israeli Arabs to abduct Israeli soldiers, but this is the first time that money has been offered.

The Waad group from Gaza offered the bounty for Israeli soldiers in an e-mail sent to Palestinian media. The organization, which supports Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, is headed by Hamas’ Interior Minister Fathi Hamad. The minister did not return messages seeking comment.

— Hat tip: Esther

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PNA: EU Launches Seyada II, Empowering Judicial System

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOV 17 — The European Union launched the second phase of the largest project funded by the EU for the development and strengthening of the Palestinian judicial system with a budget of 4.4 millions euros. The ‘Seyada II project according to the Enpi site (www.enpi-info.eu) will help the Palestinian Authority develop a more independent, impartial, efficient, transparent and modern justice system. Seyada II follows the results of the first phase of the project, which focused on training judges and public prosecutors and on institutional and capacity building. ‘The Seyada project said the European Commission Representative, Christian Berger — is a vital element of the EUs assistance programme for the Palestinian Authority. The EU is committed to the establishment of a viable, democratic and independent Palestinian state and it is clear that this ambition will only be realized through maintaining and developing the rule of law across its territory. We hope that the Seyada II Project will deliver assistance that responds to the sudicia authoritys needs affirmed Chief Justice, Judge Issa Abu-Sharar. Seyada II will run until August 2012 and the beneficiaries include the High Judicial Council, the Palestinian Judicial Institute and the Palestinian Bar Association, setting up a legal aid system and strengthening constitutional review.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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White House “Dismayed” At Jerusalem Settlement Expansion

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The White House said on Tuesday that it was “dismayed” over Israeli approval to expand the Gilo settlement in Jerusalem and sharply criticized the ongoing evictions and demolition of Palestinian homes.

“At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

— Hat tip: JD

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Boycott Israel Campaign Targets Gulf Railway

(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 18 — The 170 organisations supporting the boycotting, disinvestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) against companies which allow Israels expansion in Jerusalem are focusing on the oil-producing countries of the Gulf, by inviting them not to sign agreements with the two French transportation giants Alstom and Veolia, who are involved in the construction of the holy citys light railway line, reports Gulf News. The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman — are preparing to build a regional railway network, worth over 25 billion dollars, which Alstom has already stated its wish to participate. After the war in Gaza and the Goldstone report, the political climate is ripe to show Israel that continuing with the occupation has an economic price, maintain the organisers of the Bds, a movement which has already successfully managed to exclude the two companies from taking part in bids and with disinvestments worth a loss of 7-8 billion dollars. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Culture Influences EU Perceptions Toward Turks

Cultural factors are among the main elements influencing European perceptions of Turks, according a recent study conducted by a prominent Turkish university.

The research, made public Monday night by the European Studies Center of Bosphorus University, also showed that younger generations in Europe are more supportive of Turkey’s entry to the European Union than are older generations.

The study was based on a poll conducted among 5,000 people in Germany, France, Britain, Spain and Poland between August and September 2009.

The poll’s most striking discovery is the contrast in Europeans’ outlooks toward Turkey as opposed to other candidate countries.

Democracy, human rights, economic development and welfare are the main criteria the five EU countries identify with. The participants also believe the two most important criteria for a candidate country to become an EU member should be its performance on democracy and human rights and its contribution to Europe’s overall welfare.

Yet when it comes to the respondents’ outlook on Turkey’s membership in the EU, only 26.8 percent of those polled said economic factors are important, while 40.4 percent said cultural factors are the main element influencing their opinion.

France comes first among the five countries in judging Turkey’s entry to the EU based on cultural factors.

Islamic culture

More people said they believe that Turkey’s Islamic culture would be an asset to the European Union than did not share this view, with 59 percent saying they believe that Turkey’s membership would increase the EU’s influence in the Islamic world. However, 54 percent said they do not believe that Turkey’s Islamic culture would contribute to preventing a clash of civilizations.

When it comes to the principle of “pacta sund servanda,” which can be translated in English as “promises must be kept,” a majority of those polled said it would be unfair to avoid following through on promises made to Turkey.

Based on these findings, Professor Hakan Yilmaz, the coordinator of the project, suggested that instead of using religious or cultural arguments, “Turkey should use the principle of upholding the law to make its case to the European public.”

Some journalists and academics at the press conference objected to this, saying that few in Europe know that Turkey has been promised membership by the EU since the 1960s.

Younger generations are more supportive of Turkey’s entry into the group of EU member states, with 57 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 and 51 percent of those between 25 and 39 expressing a positive outlook about Turkey’s EU bid. This support decreases to 35.2 percent for those ages 65 and above.

When it comes to knowledge about Turkey, Istanbul is the most commonly known name, with 91 percent of respondents recognizing it. The archaeological site of Troy in Turkey’s northwest city of Çanakkale follows Istanbul with 70 percent recognition. A full 50 percent of respondents said they know the Turkish football team Galatasaray, while 48.3 percent know the Mediterranean city of Antalya in the country’s southwest.

The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, follows Antalya with 40 percent name recognition; Turkish pop singer Tarkan was recognized by 23 percent of respondents, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan by 22 percent, author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk by 11.5 percent and finally communist poet Nazim Hikmet Ran by 8.2 percent.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Emirates: Again Problems With Lorries at Saudi Border

(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 17 — There are once again problems on the border between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In the past few hours a line of more than 15km has formed, more than 5.000 lorries waiting to cross the border. The news was reported by the daily Gulf News. In June a similar thing happened when vehicles blocked between the UAE border crossing Al Ghuwaifat and the Saudi Bat’ha formed a 32km long line, which stayed there for days and caused serious economic damage to haulage contractors. The drivers suffered much due to the high temperatures and the lack of services. The reasons for the new blockage are yet unclear. “We don’t know exactly what is happening, but each time illegal goods are intercepted, traffic is seriously slowed down” the drivers reported, quoted by the newspaper. In June the Saudi authorities blamed the serious delays to the lack of adequate documents to accompany the goods and to the introduction of a new security system based on fingerprints. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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EU: Napolitano: Veties Halt Europe-Power

(AGI) — Ankara, 18 Nov. — The Union must become a “Europe-power” in the wake of the implementation of the new Constitution, avoiding obstruction by the “nostalgic demands of the national states” and by the “obstruction and power of veto”. This from the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, conducting a conference at the University of Ankara entitled ‘Inheritance of the past and challenges for the future: Turkey and Europe in the new global world balances”.

According to the Head of State the EU “can not stand still for the sake of humanity when faced with fundamental decisions that await it, renouncing the tools that permit the new Treaty comprising stronger cooperations”.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Finmeccanica: Dubai Air Show, 26 Mln Euro Contract

(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 18 — Selex Galileo, the Finmeccanica company present at the air show of Dubai, has won a 26 million euro contract for the supply of SM-1S Seeker Radars. The company hasn’t specified with which Arab country it has closed a deal, but Finmeccanica explains that the radar systems have been ordered in the framework of order for the MARTE MK2/N anti-ship missile system. Originally designed for use by helicopters and already installed in AW101 and NH90 helicopters, the Marte missile will in this case be launched by fast patrol boats. Agusta Westland, another Finmeccanica firm, has reached an agreement with Abu Dhabi Aviation for the creation of a joint-venture in the helicopter maintenance field. The deal also includes the sale of spare parts and the institution of a training centre for helicopter pilots. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Growing Demand Predicted for Fighter Jets

Dubai, 17 Nov. (AKI) — A European consortium set up to build the Typhoon fighter jet expects global demand to hit 300 over the next 20 years, with the Gulf Arab region yielding the biggest potential growth. Eurofighter chief executive Enzo Casolini made the prediction at the Dubai Air Show on Tuesday.

“We estimate the market for fighter jets globally is 800 in 20 years,” Enzo Casolini told reporters.

“For Eurofighter, we target 300 global export contracts. It could vary from 50 to 100 Eurofighters depending on how optimistic I am.”

Casolini said Eurofighter, a consortium comprising Italian aerospace giant Finmeccanica, Britain’s BAE Systems and the European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Company, had seen steady demand from the Gulf Arab states.

He added that the company expected an order backlog of 25 billion euros (37 billion dollars) by the end of the year and revenues of 4 billion euros (6 billion dollars).

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are moving to upgrade their respective air forces, as well as missile defence and naval forces, amid growing international concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In 2007, Eurofighter signed a 7.25 billion dollar deal with Saudi Arabia for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes.

Casolini said the Middle East would account for one third of Eurofighters in operation in 20 years.

But he declined to predict how long it would take to sell as many as 100 new aircraft.

Finmeccanica has adopted a high profile at the Dubai Air Show after it sealed a partnership agreement in the high tech aeronautics sector with the Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development Company in October last year.

The Italian company has predicted strong growth in the UAE market because of the country’s unprecedented economic and industrial diversification and it opened an office in Abu Dhabi last year.

Finmeccanica’s subsidiaries have had partnerships with UAE companies for several years and the company has been selected by the Emirate’s navy to supply naval and underwater systems for a new class of ship.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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‘Religion Loves Tolerance, But is Not Tolerant’

Although Turks identify themselves as religiously tolerant, they do not behave that way in practice, according to a survey. There has been an increase in the number of people identifying themselves as religious since 1999, which might be related to the political atmosphere in Turkey, an academic says

Turkish people strongly identify themselves as religious and also regard religion as a source of tolerance. But when it comes to religious worship, a significant number are not as tolerant of people from other religions, concludes a survey released Tuesday.

Prominent political scientists Ersin Kalaycioglu and Ali Çarkoglu from Sabanci University reported the research findings on religiosity in Turkey under the framework of the International Social Survey Program, or ISSP, which measures religious values from 43 different countries.

International research was conducted three times in the past; the last available data was from 1998. International data from the 2008 research is expected to be available in 2010. Turkey first participated in the survey in 2008 and is the first and only country surveyed with a Muslim majority population.

Eighty-three percent of Turks identify themselves as religious, with 16 percent saying they are extremely religious, 39 percent saying they are highly religious and 32 percent saying they are somewhat religious.

Of the 43 countries surveyed, Turkey, Poland, the Philippines and the United States are among the most religious. Almost half of Turks say they practice religious prayers and also identify themselves as religious. Twenty-eight percent say they pray, but do not regard themselves as highly religious.

According to Çarkoglu, there has been a significant increase since 1999 in the number of people who identify as religious. “This is the most striking conclusion of this survey, though it is not alarming,” he said. He added that the change could be related to peoples’ attitudes toward behaving in accordance with the current political climate.

Another striking discovery made by the survey was that 60 percent of Turks said there is only one true religion, while 34 percent said most religions hold basic truths.

The findings on tolerance toward religions are remarkable as well. Ninety percent of the Turkish population reported having a positive view toward Muslims, but this ratio dropped to 13 percent for Christians and around 10 percent for Jews. Those who said they have highly positive views about non-believers of any religion totaled 7 percent.

When it comes to accepting political candidates from different religions, 37 percent of Turks said they would absolutely not accept this and 12 percent said they would most likely not accept it. However, 23 percent said they would absolutely accept it and 24 percent say they would probably accept it. Eleven percent of Turks said people from different religions should absolutely be allowed to organize public meetings to express their ideas, while 24 percent said they should be allowed to do so.

Thirty-six percent said people from different religions absolutely should not be allowed to organize such meetings, while 23 percent said they should not be allowed to do so.

Following religious rules

Another striking discovery dealt with obeying laws that contradict religious rules. A majority of the participants in the research, 67 percent, said they would continue acting in accordance with their religious beliefs if the Parliament passed a law that contradicted religious laws. Twenty-six percent said they would obey the country’s law in this case.

When it comes to the perception of God, Turks identify with a God who is more like a father than a mother, but as a lover rather than a judge. The perception of God for Turks is closer to the tasavvuf, or Islamic Sufism, tradition in Anatolia. Turks are more inclined to identify with God as a friend rather than a sultan or a spouse, or as the master of the house.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Turkey: 21 Years in Prison for Stealing 4 Pairs Used Shoes

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, NOVEMBER 16 — Two Turkish youths responsible for the theft of four pairs of used shoes have been sentenced to a total of 21 years and four months imprisonment — ten years and eight months per pair, reports daily online paper Hurriyet. On October 15 2007 Sukru Unal noticed that his shoes — Turkish people generally leave their shoes outside their homes — had disappeared, and that a young man was getting into a waiting car with the shoes. After a short chase, first in his slippers and later by car, Unal managed to stop the thief and his accomplice with the help of the police. 24-year-old Ufuk Altun, and 26-year-old Zeynel Aslan admitted stealing the shoes, along with three pairs of shoes reported missing by three other people. They were held in prison while Altuns car was confiscated by the police. An expert witness estimated the total value of the shoes at 190 Turkish lire, about 86 euros. But at the end of a two-year trial, the judge sentenced Altun and Aslan to 10 years and eight months imprisonment each, because the pair failed to apologise for the thefts and made no offer to compensate the victims, said the judge in the sentencing. If they had done so, the two would have received a reduction in their sentence to just one year in prison, which they would not have served, being first-time offenders. However, given their attitude, the judge decided to make an example of them. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turkey: Court Releases Colonel Suspect of Plot Against AKP

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, NOVEMBER 13 — A criminal court in Istanbul released on Friday a naval colonel, suspect of an alleged plot against the government, as Anatolia news agency reported. The court freed Naval Colonel Dursun Cicek, suspect of an alleged plot against the government, which surfaced with discovery of the “Action Plan against Reactionaries” document allegedly drafted by the Colonel, upon his lawyer’s objection to his arrest. An Istanbul criminal court arrested Cicek on Wednesday after his interrogation. Turkish daily newspaper Taraf published in June a plot document allegedly drafted and signed by Col. Cicek at the General Staff Headquarters in Ankara, outlining what is publicly known as an alleged military plan to smear Justice and Development (AK) Party government. The news story caused wide controversy and stirred heated debates in Turkey which lasted for weeks. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UAE: Black List for People Who Refuse Jobs

(ANSA) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 16 — A black list for those who refuse at least six job offers: this is the measure adopted by the Emirates organisation for national development (Endp) to point out the seriousness of its actions for those with a lax approach towards possible employment situations. The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has started a policy to encourage citizens to join the work force and strengthen the presence of Emiratis in the in the labour market. Part of the 16,000 unemployed in the EAU, despite having applied for work in the national production cycle, continues to find ways to decline employments offers ranging from the impossibility of wearing uniforms or working shifts. This repetitive attitude has lead to the adoption of the measure which, according to Endp, is not meant to be punitive but educational. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UAE: Finmeccanica Joint Venture Signs Deal With Indonesian Airline

Dubai, 17 Nov. (AKI) — Italy’s leading aerospace and defence company, Finmeccanica, and its joint venture partner EADS have signed a 600 million dollar contract to supply 15 turbo-prop aircraft to the Indonesian passenger airline, Wings Air. In a statement released on Monday, ATR, the partners’ joint venture, is to deliver the aircraft with an option for 15 others to Wings Air, a subsidiary of Lion Air between 2009 and 2011.

The European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Company is European group based in the Netherlands.

Finmeccanica is playing a prominent role in the Dubai Airshow which opened on Sunday. The Italian aerospace giant is hoping to secure new deals in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

The company has just created an industrial partnership with the Abu Dhabi-based business development and investment firm, the Mubadala Development Company, to produce components for civil aircraft at a plant at Al Ain in the UAE.

The plant was opened in an official ceremony at the weekend.

Under the arrangement, Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica subsidiary, will provide technology, technical assistance and training as well as manufacturing for the new composites plant.

The United Arab Emirates government also recently announced the acquisition of 48 M-346 advanced lead-in fighter trainer aircraft to be manufactured by Alenia Aermacchi, a Finmeccanica company.

The agreement includes the creation of a joint venture to establish a final assembly line for the M-346. It is the result of close collaboration between the Italian government and the defence industry, which have worked together to capitalise on Italian excellence in the aeronautics high-tech sector.

“The selection of the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 by the United Arab Emirates government represents a huge success for the Italian high-tech industry” said Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, chairman and chief executive officer of Finmeccanica.

“It is an endorsement of considerable strategic value for Finmeccanica, as it confirms the supremacy of this advanced next-generation trainer aircraft at international level and paves the way for further successes in the global markets, where others important campaigns are already under way.”

In a statement on its website, Finmeccanica said that the UAE also offered opportunities for Alenia Aeronautica’s C-27J tactical transport aircraft, which is generating considerable interest throughout the Gulf region.

The aircraft’s special features including a take-off and landing capability on short runways under 500 metres in length, made it particularly suitable for the region, the company said.

Alenia Aeronautica, the world leader in regional turboprop aircraft, also plans to promote the special versions of the ATR series: the ATR 42MP and ATR 72MP (for maritime patrol) and the ATR 72ASW (for anti-submarine warfare) during this week’s international show.

The UAE is of strategic interest to Finmeccanica, and it opened an office in Abu Dhabi last year. Finmeccanica has had a presence in the UAE for years and has numerous partnerships with Emirate companies.

In 2005, in association with Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB), SELEX Sistemi Integrati set up the joint venture Abu Dhabi Systems Integration, ADSI, which is active in the defence and security sector.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Afghan Village Armies Fight Taliban

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — War-weary villagers in northern Afghanistan are taking up arms against insurgents, sick of having the Taliban encroach on their once peaceful patch of the country.

In villages across Kunduz province, where a misdirected NATO air strike killed 90 civilians in September, tribal elders say they have had enough of being caught in the middle of an escalating war.

So they are grabbing their guns, forming their own armies and getting rid of the Taliban insurgents who took control of their region.

“We were fed up with the Taliban,” Abdul Jalil Tawakal, a tribal elder from Qala-i-Zal district told AFP.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Obama Gives US an Afghan Escape Route

The phrase ‘exit strategy’, with its overtones of defeat, has been almost taboo in the Government’s pronouncements on Afghanistan until now. Thanks to President Obama’s instructions to his advisers to include an exit strategy in the various options available, it has become possible for Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband to talk some sense, though still not enough.

The solution of handing over security to the growing Afghan national army, amid claims that we are beating back the insurgents, remains very vague. We are not winning. Far from reducing the number of jihadists, our intervention has helped to recruit them all over the Middle East, and in our own country, too.

— Hat tip: JP

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Pakistan: Militants Blow Up Girls’ School in Northwest

Bara, 17 Nov. (AKI) — Suspected Taliban militants blew up a girls’ school in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, officials have told the media. The attack took place in the Yousaf Kely village near the town of Bara and was the third such attack this month.

Militants attacked the government-run school overnight when no one was at the premises, according to a local intelligence official.

“The girls’ middle school was badly damaged because of the explosion, now the school building is almost out of use. The classrooms, desks and chairs were also damaged,” Farooq Khan, told French news agency AFP.

Islamist militants have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years.

Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the northern Swat region during a two-year uprising that began in 2007 in a bid to enforce Islamic sharia law.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Obama “Forgets” Human Rights to Appease Beijing, Tibetan Leader Says

For Urgen Tenzin, the United States and Western powers have a “moral obligation” towards democracy and human rights. He is disappointed by the US president’s visit to Asia. Too concerned about the economic crisis, the US leader did not defend democratic values. Japan has been able to reconcile development and protection of individual liberties.

Dharamsala (AsiaNews) — The world’s economic crisis and a desire to “appease” the Chinese government are the reasons why US President Barack Obama “did not speak about the Tibetan issue” and human rights, Urgen Tenzin, executive director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD)), told AsiaNews as he spoke about Obama’s trip to Asia. For him, the international community has a “moral obligation” to defend the rights of all peoples, including Tibetans and Chinese.

“It is unfortunate that president Barack Obama did not mention the Tibetan question,” the TCHRD chief said. He is not alone: “most world leaders are also trying to appease the Chinese.” The power of China is such that Western governments have been forced into silence.

The US president uttered but a few timid words in favour of dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, pledging US support for rapprochement between the two sides.

During the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic of China, the authorities put on display the country’s military might, presenting China as a developed nation, Urgen Tenzin said. “Sadly, this development has very high human and environmental costs.”

Natural disasters are affecting the Tibetan plateau and future generations will suffer the drastic consequences of rampant environmental degradation,

Whilst TCHRD appreciates President Obama’s statement on human rights, it is crucial to recognise that democracy and human rights are interrelated.

When he arrived in Japan, President Obama was greeted with banners that said, “Welcome to Japan! Don’t Forget Human Rights and Tibet”. For Tenzin, such a plea by the Japanese is a good sign.

“Japan is one of the most respected democratic nations in the Asian continent. It is a respected and powerful developed country and this has made it a ‘responsible nation’, urging other countries to respect human rights, religious freedom, individual liberties and democracy. “

“The TCHRD,” Urgen Tenzin said, “appreciates and welcomes this brave move to be outspoken about Tibet and human rights. Not only is Japan a developed democratic power in the Asia, but it now has moral authority and can show its concern for all peoples.” (NC)

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Scientology Faces Allegations of Torture in Australia

Australian prime minister considers inquiry after senator tables allegations including forced abortions, assault and blackmail

The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has said he would consider an inquiry into the Church of Scientology after a senator tabled allegations against the organisation including forced abortions, assault, torture, imprisonment, covering up sexual abuse, embezzlement of church funds and blackmail.

Senator Nick Xenophon tabled letters from former officials and staff of the Church of Scientology alleging criminal activity, and demanded a review of the organisation’s tax exempt status.

“Scientology is not a religious organisation, it is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs,” he told the senate.

Among the letters tabled was one written by Aaron Saxton, from Perth, who said he engaged in torture and blackmail while working for the church in Australia and at its American headquarters between 1989 and 1996.

Rudd said the allegations were “grave” and that he would consider an inquiry, but said the evidence needed to be looked at carefully. “Many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology. I share some of those concerns. But let us proceed carefully, and look carefully at the material which he has provided, before we make a decision on further parliamentary action,” Rudd said.

Xenophon, an independent member of the Australian parliament who built a reputation fighting the spread of poker machines in his home state, South Australia, tabled the documents in the senate saying he had also referred the allegations to New South Wales and Australian federal police.

Xenophon said he had received letters from many more former church members who were too afraid to talk to authorities.

The letter from Aaron Saxton claimed he had assisted in the forced confinement and torture of a female church member who was kept under house arrest, Xenophon told the Senate. Saxton also said he was involved in coercing female followers to have abortions to keep followers loyal to the organisation and to allow them to keep working for it.

“Aaron says women who fell pregnant were taken to offices and bullied to have an abortion. If they refused, they faced demotion and hard labour,” Xenophon said. “Aaron says one staff member used a coat hanger and self-aborted her child for fear of punishment.”.

One letter from a former executive director of the Sydney branch of the church, Carmel Underwood, said that when she fell pregnant she was put under extreme pressure to have an abortion.

“Carmel says she also witnessed a young girl who had been molested by her father being coached as to what she should say to investigating authorities in order to keep the crimes secret,” Xenophon said.

Anna and Dean Detheridge from Sydney, who spent 17 years on church staff, said they were “subjected to physical and mental abuse during their time with the organisation”, according to the parliamentary statement.

“Anna and Dean also provided evidence where information they and others have revealed to the church have been used to blackmail and control. They also provided more information about coerced abortions,” Xenophon said.

The Church of Scientology issued a statement accusing Xenophon of abusing parliamentary privilege. “Senator Xenophon is obviously being pressured by disgruntled former members who use hate speech and distorted accounts,” the statement said. “They are about as reliable as former spouses are when talking about their ex-partner.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Germany Arrests Rwandan War Crimes Suspects

Ignace Murwanashyaka, seen here in a March 2005 photo, was arrested Tuesday in Germany.

The Hutu militia FDLR is responsible for much of the violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where murder, massacres, rape and kidnapping are widespread. The FDLR’s leaders have lived untouched in Germany for years. Now the authorities have reacted — far too late.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Somali Pirates Paid $3 Million to Free 36 Hostages

Spain offers ransom for crew held aboard tuna trawler for 7 weeks

A crew of 36 held captive for nearly seven weeks aboard a tuna boat was freed Tuesday after the Spanish government reportedly paid Somali pirates $3.3 million in ransom.

More than a dozen armed pirates seized the Spanish trawler Alakrana on Oct. 2 in a plot to collect a huge ransom.

Their plans changed when Spanish naval forces captured two pirates a day after the tuna boat’s seizure.

The pirates then demanded the release of their colleagues for the freedom of the crew. They eventually settled for the money, though, one pirate said.

— Hat tip: JD

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Somalia: Pastor Shot, Killed on Way Home From Worship

Al-Qaida affiliate boasts goal is to eliminate Christianity

Two masked members of the al-Shabaab Muslim militia have shot and killed a pastor as he drove home from a worship service, according to reports.

The shooting killed Mogadishu, Somalia, pastor Ali Hussein Weheliye in the attack in October, but reports of the incident didn’t come out until this week.

Experts at the missions think-tank the Joshua Project estimate that Somalia is 99 percent Muslim. International Christian Concern’s Jonathan Racho agrees with that statistic and says the overwhelming numbers make it difficult to be a Christian in Somalia.

“A vast majority of Somalis are Muslims, but there are hundreds of Christians in Somalia. This pastor was the pastor of an underground church,” Racho said.

“Christians in Somalia have to go underground and they don’t give away their identities because once al-Shabaab knows someone is a Christian, that is a death sentence for that person,” Racho says.

— Hat tip: JD

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Sudan: Thousands of Police Deployed for World Cup Match

Khartoum, 17 Nov. (AKI) — Up to 15,000 Sudanese police are expected to be deployed for the World Cup qualification play-off between Algeria and Egypt on Wednesday amid concern about potential violence. “We have put all our security forces on their highest level of alert,” Khartoum state governor Abderrahman al-Khidr told reporters in the Sudanese capital.

Khidr said that only 35,000 spectators would be allowed into the 41,000 capacity stadium in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman to ensure segregation of rival fans.

Algeria and Egypt each have an allocation of 9,000 tickets for their travelling fans.

“We are expecting 48 planes from Algeria and 18 from Egypt,” Khidr said, adding that 2,000 fans were also travelling by road from neighbouring Egypt for the game.

The Khartoum governor said travelling fans needed to be aware of a shortage of hotels in the Sudanese capital.

A rash of violence since the 2-0 Egyptian victory, which forced Wednesday’s play-off to be staged in a neutral location, has heightened security fears around the game.

The Egyptian foreign ministry summoned the Algerian ambassador to seek increased security for its nationals after a spate of attacks against Egyptian targets.

Cairo wants “assurances that the Algerian authorities are doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of Egyptian nationals in Algeria,” deputy foreign minister for Arab affairs Abdel Rahman Salah told reporters.

Wednesday’s play-off will give the victorious team a place in the 2010 finals in South Africa.

Egypt last qualified for the World Cup in 1990, and Algeria in 1986.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Culture: IMA in Paris, Showcase of Arab World for 22 Years

(by Cristiana Missori) (ANSAmed) — ROME — In its 22 years of existence, ‘l’Institut du Monde Arabe (Ima)’ in Paris has succeeded in its mission: introducing the culture and civilization of the Arab countries to the French and to the many foreign tourists who visit the building. The institute’s president, Dominique Baudis, spoke of an “excellent” result. Baudis visited Rome in the past days to chair the jury of the Medfilm Festival. “If the idea was to make the Institute a showcase, a cultural centre to show the Arab culture and civilization to France and Europe, the mission has been completed” Baudis told ANSAmed from the closing ceremony of the Mediterranean Film Festival. Despite twenty years of financial difficulties, “the numbers speak for themselves” he said: “around one million visitors per year”. L’Institut du Monde Arabe was created in 1987. Valery Giscard d’Estaing expressed his will to see such institute created already in the first years of his seven-year period, and it actually came from the ground under Francois Mitterrand. Today 22 Arab countries are member of the Institute. The initiative shows a certain political-diplomatic far-sightedness from the side of the French. “At the time” said Baudis, former Lebanon and Near East reporter for radio and TF1 television, and later mayor of Toulouse and Euro-MP for the UMP, “no other European country was able to understand what was going to happen in the relations between the West and Islam”. “In the ‘80s” he continued, “there was a wide gap between culture on one side, and international relations on the other”. After September 11, the role of the Ima became increasingly important: “There were more tasks for us, we organised debates and meetings. Our mission was also to make people understand that the combination of terrorism and Islam is an aberration”. Baudis, talking about the dialogue between the West and Islam, remarked that “there are as many reasons for hope as there are for despair. What is certain is, that we can’t just sit on our hands. We must try and avoid the worst. A festival like the Mediterranean film festival is “a good example. “Thirty years ago such a festival would have been unthinkable”. Some of the films shown to the audience in Rome deal with real and difficult issues. “The Mediterranean is full of conflicts and has many problems: from religious extremism to immigration and inequality between the north and the south. All the more reason to talk about these problems”. The Mediterranean Sea, Baudis claims, could be a fault line between the north and the south or it can be transformed into a place of synergy and mutual recognition. “At present both aspects exist”. Each day, I see “thousands of people enter the Institute. Eighty percent of them are no Arabs of Muslims. They are people who are curious and want to know the Arab world. That is a good sign”. The building, situated in the V arrondissement and built by a group of architects, has hosted tens of exhibitions over the years. A few recent examples of these exhibitions are ‘Venice and the East’, ‘The golden age of Arab science’, exhibitions on Islam’s equestrian art — around 400 of the most beautiful artifacts from Turkey, India and the antique Persia from the private collection of the Furusiyya Art Foundation — or the shows dedicated to Oum Kalsoum or to Bonaparte and Egypt.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Netherlands: Integration Minister Critical of Maladjusted Immigrants

THE HAGUE, 18/11/09 — Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan yesterday sent his Integration Letter 2009 to parliament. In a commentary, he expressed fierce criticism of the doctrine that immigrants are in an underprivileged position. Nowhere in the world is as much support offered to them as in the Netherlands, he said.

In the future, the core idea must be that migrants “make a choice for the Netherlands”, according to Van der Laan. The Labour (PvdA) minister added that they “have a moral obligation to adapt” to Dutch society.

An effort can be expected from newcomers to find themselves a place in Dutch society. “You come here, you must make a success of your future here,” he would want to say to the target group. This message is currently often frenetically avoided, he considers.

Critics see the Dutch language and culture classes for immigrants as a humiliating form of assimilation, but according to Van der Laan, it is rather a gift. Immigrants should make much more use than they do now of the opportunities for integration offered by the government. “There is no country that has organised such a system of integration.”

Van der Laan gave as an example of maladjusted behaviour a mother who knows so little Dutch that she does not even understand which school her children are at. Such problems must be named without political correctness. “The debate can be confrontational as long as it aims to solve the disagreement.”

Van der Laan added there should not solely be an eye for the interests of migrants, but also for what the Dutch society can manage. “I have seen schools in which 98 percent of the pupils are new Dutch (immigrants). Then you see the teachers, with bags under their eyes. We must help them, these teachers, GPs and police officers. It is a tension that cannot go on for ever.”

Nonetheless, things are going better with the integration of immigrants in the Netherlands, according to the minister’s documents. His integration letter sees “progress, slowly but surely.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Turin Film Festival: Two Films With Tunisian Ahmed Hafiene

(ANSAmed) — ROME, NOVEMBER 16 — The face of Tunisian actor Ahmed Hafiene is becoming increasingly familiar to the Italian public. After his success in Carlo Mazzacurati’s “La giusta distanza” in 2006, Hafiene returns to Italy with two films that will be presented tomorrow at the Turin Film Festival in the ‘Festa mobile’ section with Marco Campogiani’s first work, ‘La cosa giusta’ and Marco Turco’s ‘La straniera’, adapted from a book by Iraqi writer Younis Tawfik. ‘La cosa giusta’ was filmed in Turin and Tunis and is about two police officers played by Ennio Fantastichini and Paolo Briguglia who are investigating an Arab man suspected of terrorism who is awaiting trial, played by Hafiene. An unusual relationship develops between the three. ‘La straniera’ was filmed in Turin and Marrakesh and tells a love story of two immigrants in Italy played by Hafiene and Kaltoum Boufangacha, named Naghib and Amina. He is an established architect and she is an illegal immigrant who was abandoned by her husband and is now a prostitute. Hafiene is also in Daniele Luchetti’s film ‘La vita non si ferma mai’ and in Isotta Toso’s first film, ‘Scontro di civilta” per un ascensore a Piazza Vittoriò, adapted from a book by Algerian writer, Amara Lakhous. Hafiene was born in Tunis in 1966 and played some of the most important Tunisian films in recent years including Nouri Bouzid ‘Poup’es dargilé in 2002, Abdellatif Ben Ammar’s ‘Le chant de la Noria’ in 2000 and Nawfel Saheb Ettaba’s ‘El Kotbia’ in 2003. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UK: This Man Married His Own Daughter So She Would be Allowed to Stay in Britain — and the Home Office Knows About it

A Nigerian Home Office worker ‘married’ his own daughter to get her a British visa, the Daily Mail can reveal.

The extraordinary scam was apparently executed by Jelili Adesanya while ministers turned a blind eye.

Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived here for more than 30 years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her husband and their four sons to join him from Nigeria.

He faked a wedding ceremony complete with a photograph of the happy ‘couple’ which helped fool immigration officials that his daughter, Karimotu Adenike, was really his wife.

Miss Adenike, who is in her mid-30s, was duly granted permission to live in the UK.

The pair are waiting for her to be granted a permanent right to remain before they undergo a quiet divorce and attempt to bring the rest of her family here.

It is expected she would try to remarry her real husband to get them all visas.

But despite being tipped off two years ago, the Home Office seems to have done nothing to stop the scam by one of their own workers.

Until recently, Mr Adesanya was employed as an occupational health nurse for the Home Office, working with immigration officials at Gatwick airport.

A whistleblower sent letters to the High Commission in Lagos and the UK Border Agency including specific details such as names, addresses, passport numbers and even a copy of the wedding photograph.

When there was no response, he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon Coaker and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing.

Mr Adesanya, who came to Britain in 1976, flew back to Nigeria on May 29, 2007, and held the bogus wedding ceremony a few days later at a register office in Ikorodu, Lagos.

A source said: ‘They paid people to attend the wedding so that the British High Commission in Lagos would believe it was genuine. The commission then gave Karimotu Adenike a two-year settlement visa in October 2007.

‘On her settlement visa application form, of course, she did not mention that she already had a husband and four children.

‘The date of birth on her Nigerian passport is not her real date of birth.’

Miss Adenike is believed to have aged herself by ten years on her wedding certificate to disguise the age gap with her father.

Although her settlement visa expired last month, she is hoping to be given the right to remain.

David Burrowes, the Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate and Shadow Justice Minister, was also tipped off by the whistleblower and wrote to the Home Office.

This time there was a reply, but it said that although the matter was ‘under investigation’, no further information would be provided because it could ‘breach of our obligations under the Data Protection Act’.

Mr Burrowes told the Mail: ‘I am very surprised and concerned that no action appears to have been taken, because the allegations are extremely serious.’

Mr Adesanya, who lives with his daughter in Dagenham, Essex, vehemently denied the plot and said he had never been questioned about the allegations.

He said: ‘Married my own daughter? I have never heard anything like this in my life. I deny it. She is my wife, not my daughter.’

However, asked to confirm his ‘wife’s’ date of birth, he said he did not know without checking her passport, and refused to allow her to speak for herself.

Unbeknown to him, his daughter had confirmed the arrangement when she told a friend she would shortly apply for her own British passport and ‘divorce daddy’.

Last night Jonathan Sedgwick, from the UK Border Agency, said: ‘These individuals are already under investigation, and I want to make it clear that abuse of our immigration laws will not be tolerated.

‘If we identify marriages which we believe are not genuine, we will challenge them and prosecute where appropriate.

‘We are determined to send home any foreign nationals convicted of these types of crimes once they have served their sentences.’

— Hat tip: Gaia

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USA: 55% See Immigrant/Native Born Conflict

A majority (55%) of adults said there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between immigrants and people born in the United States. Nearly as many — 47% — said the same about conflicts between rich people and poor people, according to a nationally representative survey by the Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends project. The survey found that substantially few Americans — about four-in-ten (39%) — believe there are serious conflicts between blacks and whites, and only a quarter (26%) see major generational divisions between the young and old.

— Hat tip: Esther

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City Vote Opens Women’s Restroom Doors to Men

But people have chance to speak before ‘gender identity’ move becomes law

The city council of Tampa, Fla., voted unanimously last week to include “gender identity and expression” as a protected class under the city’s human rights ordinance, leading some to fear the council has opened the city’s public bathroom doors to sexual predators masquerading as protected transsexuals.

A statement from the American Family Association explained, “Tampa Police arrested Robert Johnson in February 2008 for hanging out in the locker room— restroom area at Lifestyle Fitness and watching women in an undressed state. The City of Tampa’s ‘gender identity’ ordinance could provide a legal defense to future cases like this if the accused claims that his gender is female.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Halal Food for Polar Girl in Antarctica

Bandar Seri Begawan — Brunei’s very own Polar Girl, Dk Najibah Eradah or Era, together with the Commonwealth women’s team is eager to start the symbolic and prestigious expedition to the South Pole.

Being the only Muslim in the team, she has been accorded her right to have halal food, though precooked. Era, who is now in Patriot Hill along with her teammates, spoke to the Bulletin via satellite phone last night.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Satan, The Great Motivator

The curious economic effects of religion

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies — and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell. That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.

The notion that religion influences economies has a long history, but the specifics have been vexingly difficult to pin down. Today, as researchers start to answer the question more definitively with the tools of modern economics, what’s emerging is a clearer picture of how nations’ prosperity can depend, in part, on seemingly abstract concerns like theology — and sometimes on quite nuanced points of belief or religious fervor.

The work is preliminary, but offers the hope of useful findings. Knowing exactly how and when God influences mammon could lead to smarter forms of economic development in emerging nations, and could add to our understanding of how culture shapes wealth and poverty. And it stands as part of a larger movement in economics, in which the field is looking beyond purely material explanations to a broader engagement with human culture, psychology, and even our angels and demons.

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Barro and McCleary, for their part, think religion and policy are difficult to mix. McCleary says the lesson of their results isn’t that governments should boost religion, but simply that they should recognize it has some value, and avoid regulating it too heavily. The bigger application of research into religion, she thinks, isn’t to foster religious imperialism but to build a better-informed economics, and in the long run, better policy. There won’t be manna from heaven. But there might, over time, be less poverty here on earth.

— Hat tip: JP

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