Mr. President: Give Us Back Our Streets!

I received a message this morning from the French anti-jihad organization VV&D about the French citizens of a Muslim-controlled area, who have written a letter directly to President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for help.

Here’s the text of the letter, as translated by Gaia:

Mr. President,

This is an appeal for help from the citizens of the 18ème Arrondissement. For several years now, certain of our streets have been occupied by fundamentalists who come from all over the Parisian region to practice their cult activities.

The pavements for hundreds of metres are taken over, putting pedestrians in grave danger as they are obliged to walk in the street to get past the people “praying”.

Entire streets are roped off with cars and security barriers and no entry signs, preventing the inhabitants of the area from going out or returning to their homes, the shopkeepers from working, ordinary citizens from circulating normally.

Every protest or even a simple attempt to penetrate into the zones occupied by these fundamentalists risks being met by insults, threats and aggression and for some time now no one dares to protest, such is the fear installed in our area.

Are we no longer a secular Republic? Isn’t occupation of the public highway by unauthorized cultic activities a public order offence? Is preventing the free circulation of citizens in public areas, by means of threats or other means, normal in our city? Why do we no longer have the right to enter or leave our homes? Why do we have to live in a climate of fear?

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Mr. Delanöe, the Mayor of Paris, knows perfectly about our situation, as does Mr. Vaillant Mayor, of the 18ème, and Mr. Gaudin Préfet de Police. All of them have abandoned our streets to Islamic fundamentalists; they have abandoned their citizens who can no longer walk around their city because certain areas are out of bounds to non-Muslims during prayer times.

Mr. President, you have affirmed that in France there are no “no-go zones”. So what would you call these areas or the militant fundamentalists who have shut roads for their exclusive private use for a number of years now without the police intervening to re-establish public order?

Mr. President. Do not abandon us also. Stop this occupation of our streets by fundamentalists.

The inhabitants of the 18ème Arrondissement of Paris.

We are not able to sign this document for fear of our lives and those of our families.

There’s more information (in French), plus a video, in this VV&D article.

Read further...

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/7/2009

The climate summit in Copenhagen — known as COP15 — dominates the news today. The AGW mafia is doing its best to suppress the impact of “Climategate” and make sure that the right accords are agreed to. Follow the links to see photos of some of the Green demonstrators in Copenhagen.

In other news, Russia’s Ministry of Education has announced that it will make the teaching of Arabic language and culture part of the regular curriculum, even as early as elementary school.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CSP, Esther, Gaia, Insubria, JD, MJP, Sean O’Brian, Steen, TB, The Frozen North, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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	USA
	Davis Boy, 12, Honored for Saving Dad’s Life
	Frank Gaffney: How to Lose a War
	Robobees: Insect-Like Robots Are Creating a Buzz
	Something Wicked This Way Comes
	U.S. Sees Homegrown Muslim Extremism as Rising Threat
	Europe and the EU
	BBC Weatherman Was Sent Climate Change Emails
	Chuck Norris: Copenhagen is on Fire This Week, And There’s Far More Heating Up Than Just the Climate.
	COP15: Russia Behind Climategate?
	Danes Support Nuclear Power
	Denmark: New Muslim Party Sees the Light
	France: Sarkozy’s Great Web Debate on National Identity is Hijacked by Racists
	Frank Vanhecke Leaves Vlaams Belang Party Executive
	‘Hire Non-Swedes for Sensitive Posts’: Säpo
	Italy: ‘No U.S. Contact on Knox’
	Liberals Plan to Overturn Swiss Minaret Ban
	Most Spaniards Reject ‘Nation’ Of Catalonia
	Obama Pressured by France, Germany, UK
	Pope to Meet Irish Bishops
	Sweden: Palin Made Me Cry
	Sweden: Anna Anka Faces Split With Hollywood Husband After Latest Row
	Swiss Inviting Qaeda Hits
	UK: Fear Being Branded Racist and of Offending Minorities Hampers Social Workers’ Action Over Forced Marriage
	UK: It’s a Return to the Star Chamber as Europe Finally Tramples Magna Carta Into the Dust
	UK: Middle Classes and the Rich Face Biggest Fall in Living Standards for Decades
	UK: Return of Gordon Brown’s Stealth Tax as ‘Thousands More Face 40% Increase’
	UK: Record Rise in Seizures of Pit Bulls as Gangsters Shun Guns
	Balkans
	Montenegro Moves Closer to NATO Membership
	Mediterranean Union
	EU-Morocco: Summit to Strengthen Relations in 2010
	North Africa
	Libya-Egypt: Customs Barriers Lifted
	Missionaries Arrested in Morocco
	Swiss ‘Mafia’ Inviting Qaeda Hits With Minaret Ban: Kadhafi
	Israel and the Palestinians
	IDF: Palestinians Launched S-5k Rocket
	On Israel’s Construction Freeze: U.S. Fails to Deliver: Instead of Praising, Europe Demands More
	Shalit: Media Reports Medical Exam by French Doctors
	UK MPs Back Swedish Presidency on Jerusalem
	Middle East
	Big Spender Mohammed Unshaken by Dubai Crisis
	‘Climategate’ Shakes Trust in Scientists: Saudi
	France Urges Firmer Sanctions on Iran
	Jordanian Man Kills Pregnant Sister in “Honor Killing”
	Kuwait: Imam Jailed for Collecting Al-Qaeda Money
	Lebanon: Anti-UNIFIL Terrorist Cell Dismantled, Press
	One Dead as Violence Flares in SE Turkey
	Saudi Says Trust in Climate Scientists “Shaken”
	Thousands Stuck in Lebanon Limbo With No Rights or Hope (Via NRP)
	Turkey’s Erdogan to Meet Obama on Afghanistan, Kurdish Conflict
	Turkey’s Moves Towards Iran Concerning United States
	US Wants to Stop Mankind’s Savior: Iran Leader
	Russia
	Russia Considering Ban on Food Imports
	Russia to Teach Arabic Culture in Schools
	South Asia
	80 Percent of French Oppose More Troops for Afghanistan
	Afghanistan Court Sentences Kabul Mayor for Corruption
	India in Nuclear Deal With Russia
	Mangalore: Faction-Fight in Mosque — Two Sustain Serious Injuries
	Pakistan: 366 Killed in 7 Attacks Targeting Mosques in 2009
	Taliban: New Wall Bombs
	Far East
	North Korea Currency Change Sparks Panic
	Australia — Pacific
	Climate Email Mess Hits Australia
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Mogadishu Demonstrators Protest Shebab
	Pirate Payoffs Feed Big-Money Lifestyle in Somalia
	Sudan SPLM Arrests Spark Southern Unrest
	Latin America
	Brazil: Muslim Numbers Soar in Latin America’s Islamic Resurgence
	Police Commit 20 Percent of Venezuela Crimes-Minister
	Venezuelan Government Takes Over Farms
	Venezuela Shuts 3 Banks, Escalates Intervention
	Venezuela Widens Purge of Bankers With New Arrest
	Immigration
	Danes’ Anti-Immigrant Backlash Marks Radical Shift
	UK: Immigrant Criminals Cost £292m to Lock Up
	Want to Sneak Into U.S.? There’s an App for That
	General
	Minarets and the Concept of Reciprocity
	Spy vs. Spy on Facebook

Davis Boy, 12, Honored for Saving Dad’s Life

Daniel Marsh is a hero.

The 12-year-old Davis boy grabbed the wheel of the family station wagon when his father, Bill Marsh, suffered a nearly fatal heart attack and blacked out while driving Nov. 9.

Daniel steered the speeding car away from oncoming traffic and slammed it into a wall to stop it. Then he thumped his dad’s chest with his fist, as he’d seen on TV, until his dad’s heart started beating again.

Hospital employees, who heard Daniel’s story as he sat anxiously beside his father’s bed in an emergency room, nominated the seventh-grader as a hero with the American Red Cross of Yolo County.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Frank Gaffney: How to Lose a War

If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps the picture of President Obama that did not get taken during his recent visit to Elemendorf Air Force Base in Alaska is worth a million of them.

The men and women Elmendorf who play a vital role in the air defense of our nation and, if necessary, in the projection of dominant aerospace power overseas understandably wanted to have as the backdrop for an important presidential address their best weapon system, the F-22 Raptor. There was only one problem: President Obama had made the cancellation of production of this state-of-the-art air superiority fighter one of his signature “defense” initiatives.

Mr. Obama’s handlers freaked out at the prospect of a photo op that could prove as inopportune, and perhaps politically costly, as the image in 1988 of then-Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis looking ridiculous in the helmet of a main battle tank crewman. So, the Air Force was ordered to substitute a decades-old, and increasingly dated, F-15 to frame the President’s speech…

— Hat tip: CSP

[Return to headlines]

Robobees: Insect-Like Robots Are Creating a Buzz

Researchers at the Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory at the University of Maryland are using a $12 million grant to study the way insects, birds, snakes, and bats navigate and communicate.

Their Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, could be used to carry out dangerous air surveillance and save lives on the ground.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Comments from JD: Book review of Muslim Mafia.]

From the moment the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been on a journey we never wanted to make. A particularly malevolent enemy has altered all our lives, and the one thing we can’t afford to do is ignore this evil.

As in every era in which America faced a dire threat, there are heroes among us who put themselves on the frontlines. Two such men are David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, authors of a new book, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.” This is one of the most important books I’ve read in many years, and I would go so far as to say you can’t afford to be without it.

Gaubatz, a former agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, went undercover to pry open the secrets of radical Muslim front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR. What he and Sperry have uncovered and set forth in their book is nothing short of apocalyptic. They reveal a plan to take over America that is so diabolical, one struggles to separate it from a Tom Clancy novel.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

U.S. Sees Homegrown Muslim Extremism as Rising Threat

This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say.

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters’ trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

BBC Weatherman Was Sent Climate Change Emails

A BBC weatherman has admitted he was sent the controversial emails about how to “spin” climate data — more than a month before they were made public.

It has raised questions about why the BBC did not report on the matter sooner, and will reignite the debate over whether the Corporation is “biased” on the issue of climate change.

Thousands of emails and documents allegedly stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.

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Energy suppliers ‘overcharging’

Aviation rivals rally for ‘green manifesto’ The emails sent between world’s leading scientists apparently show researchers discussing how to ‘spin’ climate data and how that information should be presented to the media.

Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate change expert, has disclosed he was sent the leaked emails, a month ago, and claims the documents are a direct result of an article he wrote.

In his BBC blog written last week , he said: “I was forwarded the chain of emails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the world’s leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article “Whatever Happened To Global Warming”.

“The emails released on the Internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as I can see, they are authentic,” he added.

The BBC has previously accused of failing to cover the climate change debate objectively. Earlier this year, Peter Sisson, the veteran newsreader, claimed it is now “effectively BBC policy” to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming.

He said: “The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that “the science is settled”, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.

“But it is effectively BBC policy… that those views should not be heard.”

Godfrey Bloom MEP told The Daily Telegraph: “The BBC has blocked sceptics of climate change for four years now, no debate is allowed on the BBC. It is biased reporting and it is censorship.

“The corporation is in breach of their charter obligations as the BBC has a duty to inform as well as entertain and without proper coverage of this important story, licence fee payers have a right to ask questions about the point of the BBC.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “Last week Paul spotted that these few emails were among thousands published on the internet following the alleged hacking of the UEA computer system.

“Paul passed this information onto colleagues at the BBC, who ran with the story, and then linked to the-mails on his blog this Monday.”

Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has called for an independent inquiry into the email scandal, warning the credibility of UK science is at stake.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Chuck Norris: Copenhagen is on Fire This Week, And There’s Far More Heating Up Than Just the Climate.

While heads of state and others gather this week at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (Dec. 7-18), bonfires have already been blazing for weeks on that European front.

Let me see if I can summarize the chestnuts roasting on that Copenhagen fire.

Shocking e-mail exchanges from scientists at an eminent global-warming research center in the United Kingdom have proven that key climate-change scientists have suppressed evidence to “trick” or “hide the decline” of global temperatures.

Rather than focus on the audacity of the climate-gate cover up, Obama’s top science adviser, John Holdren, downplayed the e-mails, telling Congress that the controversy involved a small group of scientists. And others like Sen. Barbara Boxer blamed the hackers who exposed the e-mails rather than the scientists who deceived the world with false global climate reports.

Similarly, the U.N. was caught recently deleting documents that would disclose how member states are leading (or not leading) the way in self-greening efforts.

The scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters documented that ice melt on Antarctica was the lowest in 30 years during the 2008-2009, a fact being intentionally ignored by NASA.

[Comments from JD: Lots of links in Chucks article.]

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

COP15: Russia Behind Climategate?

There are claims abroad that hackers supported by Russia were behind Britain’s Climategate.

The plot thickens as to who was responsible for leaking confidential e-mails purporting to show the alleged manipulation of climate statistics and the climate debate by British scientists.

According to a report in Britain’s Independent, the computer hackers who accessed and then published the e-mails may have been none other than Russia’s FSB intelligence service. According to the report, the e-mails were first posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, is reported to have said, with the inference that the retrieval was backed by some measure of officialdom in Russia.

He added that the publication was a “carefully made selection of emails and documents that’s not random. This is 13 years of data, and it’s not a job of amateurs.”

“We are spending a lot of useless time discussing this rather than spending time preparing information for the negotiators,” Ypersele went on to say in another report in The Times.

The Times also quoted the Director of the UN Environment Programme Achim Steiner as saying that ‘Climategate’ was a misnomer, and should be called ‘Hackergate’.

“Let’s not forget that the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so,” Steiner says although refraining from comment on the substance of the e-mails.

But in the same report, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer suggested that attention by the media to the issue could was not necessarily unwelcome.

“I think it’s very good that what is happening is being scrutinised in the media because this process has to be based on solid science. If quality and integrity is being questioned, that has to be examined,” de Boer is quoted by The Times as saying.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Danes Support Nuclear Power

From Danish: 54% of Danes support nuclear power as a way to fight climate change. In 2007, 73% opposed nuclear power, and in the 1980s, 80% opposed it.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: New Muslim Party Sees the Light

A new Muslim party will aim to address both Muslims and the most vulnerable groups in society to gain more political influence

The Interior and for Social Affairs Ministry’s electoral board has allowed for the establishment of a new Islamic political party in Denmark, reports TV2 News.

According to its founder, Ras Anbessa, Danmarks Muslimer will seek to recruit a majority of Muslims to gain more influence in Danish politics.

‘Danish society is characterized by the fact that Muslims must not turn out as a group to vote. But we are continually identified as a separate group, so we might as well stand together and work on creating some positive initiatives, said Anbessa.

He said that it was especially the most vulnerable groups in society to whom the party will try to reach out.

‘We have to go in and identify the people we believe are in the worst situations and come up with some serious and effective means to solve their problems,’ said Anbessa.

He identified the homeless, disabled, young people, elderly and the nation’s integration policies as being the new party’s key targets.

But the party’s name alone may work to its disadvantage, according to Professor Kasper Møller Hansen, political science expert at the University of Copenhagen. He believes it indicates religion as being important for the party — something that won’t win over many non-Muslim Danes.

Although the party was approved by the ministry, it must still obtain the 20,000 signatures necessary to be eligible to be on the ballot for the next election. But Anbessa said the primary objectives of the party — at least for now — are not about getting into parliament.

‘One thing we’ll do is knock on the doors of opposition party members and ask them to more strongly publicise the differences between them and the government parties, because I don’t think people can really see that right now,’ he said.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

France: Sarkozy’s Great Web Debate on National Identity is Hijacked by Racists

Controversy: All French citizens were invited to take part in Nicolas Sarkozy’s Great Debate on national identity

It seemed like a good idea at the time — a website where the French could take part in a debate about their national identity.

But Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s hopes for a civilised exchange of views have been dashed.

Thousands of racist contributions have been posted with the general theme that foreigners should go home.

‘France has become an African colony in a way which cannot be reversed,’ reads one, while another says: ‘Before France had colonies, now it’s been colonised itself.’

Others read: ‘Nobody in France asked to be invaded by strangers’, ‘Being French is to be born in France to two French parents’, and ‘Immigrants who want to impose their lifestyles on us should go home.’

— Hat tip: Steen

[Return to headlines]

Frank Vanhecke Leaves Vlaams Belang Party Executive

Just one day after the new party executive of the extreme right wing Vlaams Belang was approved, chairman Frank Vanhecke resigned. During a meeting of the Vlaams Belang party council on Saturday a crisis within the party was supposedly avoided when a vision text was approved by chairman Bruno Valkeniers and the new party executive. But the resignation of the former VB chairman Frank Vanhecke from the executive indicates that the internal problems are far from over.

Frank Vanhecke was one of the dissident voices against the new party executive. As Euro MP for Vlaams Belang he automatically has a seat in the party executive. But just one day after the approval of the new executive Vanhecke has resigned.

He explains that his resignation is in protest at what he feels is a take-over of power by the Antwerp city council. Within Vlaams Belang it appears that not everyone is pleased with the attempts by Filip Dewinter and Gerolf Annemans to take control of the most important posts in the party.

“During the party council meeting on Saturday I called on people not to vote in favour of the tabled proposal for a new party executive. Through my resignation I am just being consistent,” said Mr Vanhecke. He stresses that he remains a member of the party.

Vlaams Belang facade is showing cracks

Last week Marie-Rose Morel also resigned from the party executive. Morel and Filip Dewinter do not see eye to eye on many issues.

Ever since she joined Vlaams Belang (in 2004) the popular politician from Schoten (near Antwerp) clashed with Filip Dewinter and Gerolf Annemans.

— Hat tip: TV

[Return to headlines]

‘Hire Non-Swedes for Sensitive Posts’: Säpo

Swedish security service Säpo wants to make it easier for foreign nationals to fill sensitive positions within the Swedish state as part of a “necessary modernization”.

The government is set to review the laws governing Säpo’s role in determining who can be hired for government positions requiring a security clearance, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reports.

Currently, the law gives Säpo the power to stop foreign nationals and others deemed to be inappropriate for sensitive positions.

But as the Swedish labour market becomes woven ever more tightly within the larger EU labour market, Säpo believes its policies of automatically shutting foreign citizens from sensitive jobs with the Swedish state are outdated.

“This type of modernization is necessary. We do after all have free movement in Europe,” Säpo director general Anders Danielsson told the newspaper.

Previously, a cabinet decision was required before hiring a non-Swede for positions requiring a security clearance.

Säpo hopes the change will allow it to hire competent foreign staff.

Danielsson also believes that the agency will have to perform checks on an increasing number of people employed at private companies contracted to carry out vital functions within society, such as operating nuclear power plants.

Currently, Säpo isn’t allowed to investigate the backgrounds of people employed at privately owned nuclear plants.

“There’s pressure from public opinion here. People think that Säpo should be checking on the people who run our nuclear reactors,” he told Sydsvenskan.

Danielsson also wants Sweden’s state agencies to adapt to NATO standards and bolster protections of digital information.

He also added that it’s becoming more difficult for Säpo to define what exactly constitutes “national security” and to protect “Swedish interests” in a globalized age.

In Danielsson’s eyes, an electronic attack is currently the biggest threat facing Sweden, as such an attack could not only compromise the country internally, but also make Sweden more vulnerable to military and other external threats

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Italy: ‘No U.S. Contact on Knox’

Clinton has not criticised verdict, Frattini notes

(ANSA) — Brussels, December 7 — There has been no contact between the United States and Italy about Amanda Knox’s conviction for murdering British student Meredith Kercher, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday.

He said he did not expect any such contact concerning the guilty verdict handed down on Kercher’s American house-mate and fellow student, who supporters claim did not receive a fair trial.

Frattini was asked about US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s stated willingness to discuss the case with the Senator from Knox’s home state of Washington, Maria Cantwell.

Cantwell claimed Seattle native Knox had been found guilty despite “a clear lack of evidence” and the verdict reflected “anti-American” sentiment.

Speaking on his way in to a NATO meeting in Brussels on Afghanistan troop reinforcements, the foreign minister stressed that Clinton herself had not criticised the verdict.

“Who is criticising? A petition led by (Knox’s) relatives, certainly not Hillary Clinton. Let’s not get confused”.

Clinton’s interest in the case “seems right and normal to me,” Frattini said.

He said he himself heard petitions from activists and MPs who claim two Italians detained in the United States had unfair trials.

He cited a businessman from Trieste, Enrico Forte, who has been in a Miami jail for ten years after being convicted of murder; and a Tuscan computer expert, Carlo Parlanti, serving eight years in California after being convicted of sexual violence in 2005.

“It is right that Hillary Clinton should listen to an American Senator,” Frattini said. Knox, 22, and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffael Sollecito, 25, were sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively by a Perugia court just after midnight Friday.

The jury found Knox guilty of delivering a fatal knife wound after a sex game aimed at “punishing” Kercher for complaining about Knox’s behaviour went wrong. Sollecito was found guilty of pinning Kercher down with a second man, Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, who is appealing an earlier 30-year sentence for Kercher’s murder.

Leeds University exchange student Kercher, 21, was found with her throat cut on November 2, 2007 in the house she shared with Knox in the medieval Umbrian university town.

During the trial, which began in February, the prosecution showed the jury a knife police found in Sollecito’s apartment which was found to have Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s on the tip.

The defence said the DNA evidence was unsafe, the knife was too big to be consistent with Kercher’s wounds, and argued there was a lack of a clear motive.

Kercher’s family said they were happy with the verdict.

Knox is reportedly under suicide watch in a Perugia jail while Sollecito was moved Monday to a high-security jail in nearby Terni.

Knox and Sollecito’s lawyers are already preparing appeals, the first of two they are entitled to.

One of Italy’s best-known attorneys, Giulia Bongiorno, led Sollecito’s defence.

She said she was confident the convictions would be overturned or the jail terms greatly reduced on appeal.

The first appeal is expected to take about a year, legal experts say.

A second and final appeal, which could also be filed by the prosecution if they are unhappy with the first one, would go to the supreme Cassation Court. photo: Knox

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Liberals Plan to Overturn Swiss Minaret Ban

Swiss liberals are considering a new referendum to overturn the ban on new minarets.

Club Helvetique, a group of over 20 Swiss intellectuals, will draw up an action plan to overturn the ban, which has drawn widespread criticism abroad and prompted hundreds of people to take to the streets this weekend in Zurich, Basel and Berne.

“A new initiative is the most democratic way of achieving this,” constitutional lawyer Joerg Mueller told Sonntag.

Voters adopted the ban in a referendum a week ago, defying the government and parliament which had warned the right-wing initiative violated the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and a cherished tradition of tolerance.

Two complaints questioning the legality of ban had already been handed to Switzerland’s Federal Court, Sonntag said.

Libya leader Gaddafi said the ban had done a great favour to al Qaeda militants, who would use it to attract recruits in a holy war against Europe, news agency SDA reported.

“The activists are now saying: ‘we told you that they are our enemies…join al Qaeda and declare jihad on Europe ‘.”

Politicians from the SVP, Switzerland’s biggest party, and the conservative Federal Democratic Union gathered enough signatures to force the referendum on the initiative which opposed the “Islamisation of Switzerland”.

Its campaign poster showed the Swiss flag covered in missile-like minarets and the portrait of a woman covered with a black chador and veil associated with strict Islam.

“The Club Helvetique is an association of bad losers,” Sonntag reported SVP Vice-President Christoph Blocher as saying.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Most Spaniards Reject ‘Nation’ Of Catalonia

Madrid — Some 80 percent of Spaniards reject the term ‘nation’ to describe Catalonia, an opinion poll said Sunday, as the country’s highest court prepares to rule on the legality of the region’s statute of autonomy.

To the question “Do you think Catalonia is really a nation”, 79 percent replied ‘no’ and 18 percent ‘yes’, according to the poll released by the newspaper El Pais.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Obama Pressured by France, Germany, UK

From Danish: France, Germany and the UK pressured Obama last week to come to Copenhagen. It was Sarkozy’s suggestion that Obama was presenting himself as an indecisive leader that got Obama to change his attitude and come to the final negotiations of the climate summit.. This according to senior diplomatic sources in Brussels.

[Where, coincidentally, HIllary Clinton just wrapped up a visit]

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Pope to Meet Irish Bishops

Benedict to discuss child abuse report

(ANSA) — Vatican City, December 7 — Pope Benedict XVI will meet Irish bishops Friday to discuss the latest sex abuse scandal rocking the Irish Catholic Church, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Monday.

“I can confirm that the Holy Father has invited Cardinal Sean Brady, president of the Irish Episcopal (bishops’) Conference and the archbishop of Dublin, Msgr Diarmuid Martin…to assess the painful issue of the Church in Ireland following the recent publication of the Murphy Commission report,” Lombardi said.

The papal nuncio (envoy) in Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and the heads of the relevant departments of the Roman Curia will also be present, Lombardi said.

The Murphy report, released November 26, found that the Catholic church in Dublin covered up decades of sex abuse on children.

Four former archbishops of Dublin — three now dead and one retired — failed to report child sex abuse to the police from the 1960 to the 1980s, the report said.

The report listed 320 people who complained of abuse between 1974 and 2004 and said a further 130 complaints against priests in Dublin had been made since May 2004.

It said that it was only in 1995 that the archdiocese started notifying civil authorities.

In the wake of the report, the head of the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse group urged Benedict to go to Ireland and apologise for his clergy’s behaviour.

The Murphy report is the second of two detailing abuse this year. In May the Ryan report published records of 70 years of abuse at orphanages and industrial schools run by Catholic religious orders across Ireland.

Since the mid-1990s the Catholic Church has been hit by child abuse scandals in the United States, Australia, Canada and Ireland.

The Church says some 80% of the estimated 5,000 priests involved acted in the US, where huge settlements have been made to victims.

In April 2008 Pope Benedict made a six-day tour of the US, visiting Washington and New York but not Boston, the epicentre of America’s clergy sex abuse scandal.

However, he met and prayed with six Boston victims in Washington, saying “no words” could convey his shock and regret about the abuse.

During the visit, victims’ groups reiterated their criticism of the Church’s treatment of former Boston archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law who resigned in December 2002 when unsealed court records revealed he had moved paedophile priests among church assignments without notifying parishioners.

After his resignation, he was transferred to Rome where he now holds several authoritative posts including archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome.

The abuse scandal led to the bankruptcy of several US dioceses including Washington, Arizona and California.

POPE ASKED FOR ‘EVERY EFFORT’ TOWARDS TRUTH.

In June 2009, after the Ryan report, Benedict asked Irish bishops to make every effort to “establish the truth” and ensure “justice for everyone”.

“The Holy Father once again urged the bishops and all in the Church to continue to establish the truth of what happened and why; to ensure that justice is done for all; to see that measures put in place to prevent abuse from happening again are fully applied, and, to help to bring healing to the survivors of abuse,” said the Irish Bishops Conference.

Ireland, a nation that once looked to the Church for leadership, has seen increasing numbers turn from it.

Calls for criminal cases against priests have been made by the country’s top politicians including President Mary McAleese.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Sweden: Palin Made Me Cry

From Swedish: Swedish journliat Staffan Heimerson says he was touched by Palin’s book and her description of Trig. He thinks her magical realism writing is similar to that of the greatest female authors: Selma Lagerlöf, Fay Weldon, Sigrid Undset. He expects to see a lot of her in 2012.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Sweden: Anna Anka Faces Split With Hollywood Husband After Latest Row

Singer-songwriter Paul Anka has filed for divorce from his Swedish wife Anna following a violent spat at the couple’s Hollywood home last week.

The recently crowned queen of Swedish reality television called police last Thursday after she and her husband became embroiled in an argument over Anna’s decision to fire one of the couple’s housekeepers, the Aftonbladet newspaper reports.

The following day, the 68-year-old Paul Anka filed for divorce from his 38-year-old Swedish wife, whom he married in 2008.

“They’ve been fighting like cats and dogs recently,” a source with insight into the relationships told the newspaper.

Anna recently catapulted herself into Sweden’s celebrity spotlight through her starring role in the TV3 reality television programme Svenska Hollywoodfruar (“Swedish Hollywood Wives”).

She then ignited a heated public debate in Sweden by publishing an article on the opinion website Newsmill in which she criticized Swedish dads for “their nappy-changing and equality”.

She went on to suggest that a man’s infidelity is ultimately his wife’s fault.

“Sexually it is the woman’s responsibility to ensure that the man is satisfied, if she does not then she only has herself to blame if he is unfaithful,” she wrote.

Anna Anka’s ratings success prompted TV3 to offer her a Christmas-themed special consisting of six episodes, the last of which is set to go head to head with public broadcaster SVT’s annual Christmas Eve broadcast of Donald Duck and other Disney cartoons — one of the most-watched television programmes in Sweden.

According to the celebrity news site TMZ.com, police arrived at the Anka residence after receiving two calls of a domestic dispute last Thursday.

Anna said she felt threatened by her husband, claiming Paul had pointed a gun at her. However, a subsequent review of the mansion’s surveillance tape showed no evidence that such an episode took place.

Anna Anka has moved out of the couple’s home, however, and is currently living in the Four Seasons hotel, where crews from TV3 continue filming her Christmas special.

According to TV3, the taping is continuing as planned, but Paul Anka will not be featured in any of the episodes.

“The idea never was to have Paul participate. This is about Anna Anka’s Christmas,” TV3 spokesperson Max Lagerbäck told the Expressen newspaper.

— Hat tip: TB

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Swiss Inviting Qaeda Hits

TRIPOLI — LIBYAN leader Moamer Kadhafi said the Swiss referendum banning the building of new minarets was an invitation for Al-Qaeda to launch attacks in Europe, the official news agency JANA reported on Sunday.

‘They pretend they are ‘fighting Al-Qaeda and terrorism’ whereas in fact they have just rendered it the greatest service,’ he said, referring to Switzerland with disdain as ‘the mafia of the world.’

On November 29, more than 57 per cent of Swiss voters approved a rightwing motion to ban minarets on mosques, a decision that has sparked an international backlash and charges of intolerance.

‘Al-Qaeda militants are now saying: ‘We warned you that they were our enemies… Look at what they are doing in Europe. Come and join us for a jihad (holy war) against Europe,” Kadhafi said.

The Libyan leader, speaking at an academic ceremony on Saturday in Zliten, 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of Tripoli, said Muslim countries now had an argument not to allow the building of new churches. ‘I don’t think anyone in the Muslim world will from now on authorise the construction of a church,’ Kadhafi said.

He warned Switzerland of an economic fallout of a rift with the Muslim world. ‘You must think of your interests. You need gas, ports, the sea, solar energy, investments,’ Kadhafi said. — AFP

— Hat tip: TB

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UK: Fear Being Branded Racist and of Offending Minorities Hampers Social Workers’ Action Over Forced Marriage

Women and young girls at risk of being taken abroad and forced into marriage are being failed because local officials fear ‘offending’ minority communities, according to a Government report.

Social workers are being slow to use new court orders aimed at stopping potential victims being spirited overseas to be married without their consent, the report said.

It pointed to ‘a fear of being accused of racism or not being culturally sensitive’.

Judges who rule on applications for the orders warned of a ‘political correctness agenda’ hampering efforts to help.

Schools were accused of failing to alert pupils to the issue, for fear of offending parents.

Children as young as nine have been taken overseas by their parents and forced to marry complete strangers. Around 70% of cases are from families originally from Pakistan and 10% of Bangladeshi origin.

At least 1300 Britons have been involved in forced marriages in the last four years. As well as very young children, cases have involved adults with mental health problems.

Last month a Muslim father who threatened to kill his wife for blocking a forced marriage in Pakistan for their daughter became the first person to be prosecuted for breach of an order.

Aurang Zeb, 43, from Blackburn, was sentenced to 200 hours community service, and placed under a community supervision order.

The Ministry of Justice study, published last week, looked at the use of Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPO) since they were introduced twelve months ago.

A form of court injunction, they allow courts to confiscate the passports of potential victims.

Families can be instructed to reveal where the woman was sent if she has already left the country.

The report praised police for being ‘active’ in bringing cases to the courts. But it pointed to ‘issues’ with social services, who have tried to negotiate between victims and their families instead of offering immediate protection.

In some ‘closed’ minority communities community leaders were acting as ‘gatekeepers’ to forced marriage instead of challenging the practice, the report found.

Charities helping victims of forced marriage backed the report’s findings.

Kiran Cheema, regional adviser at Karma Nirvana, which runs a helpline for victims said schools had refused to put up posters warning children because parents might object.

‘The reason for not enough orders is because people are worried about cultural sensitivities,’ she said.

‘They are worried about stepping on people’s toes in regards to their culture. That’s why people don’t bring those orders forward — because they are afraid.’

Since the powers were introduced twelve months ago, in parts of England and Wales with large south Asian communities, 86 orders have been issued, nearly half to girls under 18.

The report said: ‘Degrees of use varies by locality, and there is concern about underuse in some areas due to fear of approaching the courts, compounded by fear among some agencies of offending the local communities.’

Justice Minister Bridget Prentice called for ‘all agencies’ to take action against forced marriages as quickly as possible.

She said: ‘We are all responsible for protecting those at risk of forced marriage within our society and it cannot be done by one person or one agency alone.

‘I would urge all agencies to take appropriate action at the earliest possible opportunity and engage in a multi-agency effort to eradicate forced marriage.

‘Forcing someone to marry is widely recognised as a human rights abuse and is simply unacceptable within our society, and our common culture of values based on equality and respect between men and women.

‘My department will continue to take a leading role in disseminating the lessons learned during this first year and to provide agencies with the information and tools to be able to access protection for victims.’

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: It’s a Return to the Star Chamber as Europe Finally Tramples Magna Carta Into the Dust

I have a copy dated MDCCLXVI (1766) left to me by my father, and to him by his father. The customary law is Saxon, Celtic, even Visigoth.

“All men in our Kingdom have and hold the aforesaid liberties and rights, well and in peace, freely and quietly, fully and wholly, for ever.”

“No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, unless by lawful judgment of his peers.”

“No constable or bailiff shall take another man’s corn or chattels without immediate payment, nor take any horses or any man’s timber for castles.”

“Any one may leave the Kingdom and return at will, unless in time of war, when he may be restrained for some short space for the common good”.

Here is a nice one, as the Square Mile falls under the control EU authorities with “binding powers”.

“The City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs.” Merchants should be free from “evil tolls”.

The founding texts of the English Constitution — charter, petition, bill of rights — have one theme in common: they create nothing. They assert old freedoms; they restore lost harmony. In this they guided America’s Revolution, itself a codification of early colonial liberties.

Europe’s Constitution — the Lisbon Treaty, as we know it — began as a sort of Magna Carta. EU leaders agreed at Laeken in 2001 that the Project needed restraining after Danes and Swedes rejected EMU, the Irish rejected Nice, and youth torched Gothenburg in anti-EU riots.

People do not want Europe inveigling its way into “every nook and cranny of life”, they said. Needless to say, insiders hijacked the process. A Hegelian monstrosity emerged. The text says much about the heightened powers of EU bodies, but scarcely a word to restrain EU bailiffs and constables.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights — legally binding in the UK as of Tuesday, when Lisbon came into force — asserts that the EU has the authority to circumscribe all rights and freedoms.

The text was modified after I threw a tantrum in the Daily Telegraph during the drafting process, comparing it to the “general interest” clause used by Fascist regimes to crush dissent in the 1930s.

Article 52 now reads: “Subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union.”

Don’t be misled by this inverted wording. What it states is that the EU may indeed limit rights in the “general interest”. In other words, our Magna Carta has been superceeded.

It is the European Court (ECJ) that decides what is “proportional” or “necessary”, and it cannot be trusted. The ECJ behaves like the Star Chamber of Charles I, as I learned following three cases where it rubber-stamped the abuse of state power against whistleblowers Bernard Connolly and Marta Andreasen, and German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack.

Mr Tillack was arrested by Belgian police and held incommunicado for ten hours. Incommunicado on the basis of a fabricated allegation by two EU officials. Police went through his notes and computers, identifying his network of informants inside the EU apparatus.

Mr Tillack took the case to the ECJ. It ruled in favour of the system. It always does.

This is our new Supreme Court under Lisbon, its jurisdiction vastly expanded from narrow commercial law (Pillar I) to the breadth of Union law (Pillars I, II, and III).

As my colleague Daniel Hannan writes, Lisbon gives the EU “legal personality” to enter treaties as a state, and contains an escalator clause that lets it aggregate further power without need for ratification by national parliaments — it draws charisma (papal usage) from itself.

French and Dutch voters rejected this leap from a treaty organisation to a unitary state when given a chance in 2005. The revamped version was slipped through by parliaments — except in Ireland, where voters said No, until coerced by events into acquiescence. In Britain, Labour did this knowing with absolute certainty that citizens would have voted No. You can conjure a Burkean argument to justify the denial of a referendum, but that is to traduce Burke.

“Yes’ votes are always pocketed in perpetuity: ‘No’ votes are good only until the weather changes. Those who feign not to see the asymmetry of this are being cynical.

By acting in this way, the EU has crossed a subtle line. It is no longer legitimate.

So what can a dissenting citizen do? Do we retreat into realpolitik, betting that the EU Project can go only so far before it provokes into an even bigger backlash from Europe’s tribes, and will in any case spend much of the next decade dealing with bitter fall-out from a currency that pits North against South?

Or do we let out a primordial scream, and agitate for total withdrawal from the EU — knowing that our backs are pressed against the wall, that this Government has spent us to the brink of a debt-compound spiral? Morgan Stanley has warned of a Gilts crisis next year. So have others. This is a perilous for time for heroics.

Makes you weep.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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UK: Middle Classes and the Rich Face Biggest Fall in Living Standards for Decades

Britain’s middle classes face the biggest financial squeeze for decades that will drastically affect their living standards, according to new research.

The findings show the typical family will face a decline in their income of around £300 — or 2.4 per cent — next year through higher taxes, mortgages and rises in the costs of food and other goods.

The richest in society will also see their spending power cut by up to nine per cent — which amounts to almost £5,000 a year.

They may be hit even further by this week’s Pre Budget Report, which is expected to tighten the screw on higher earners.

But the less well-off are expected to actually see their spending power rise next year. A single mother who receives around £10,000 a year is due to have an extra £130 annually.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Return of Gordon Brown’s Stealth Tax as ‘Thousands More Face 40% Increase’

Fears are growing that 70,000 more Britons face paying the top rate of income tax under plans from Alistair Darling.

The Chancellor will trigger the increase by freezing personal allowances for taxpayers in his Pre-Budget Report on Wednesday, say accountants.

It is also thought that the threshold for higher-rate income tax will be held at the current level.

Although ministers may justify the freeze by citing falling inflation, the plans mean those workers earning around £43,000 who do get pay rises would end up paying much of it to the Government.

Experts say freezing the allowances would be a ‘stealth tax’ because UK earnings rose 1.2 per cent in the year to September according to the Office for National Statistics.

The personal allowance is usually increased every year, meaning workers can earn a little extra money before paying more to the Inland Revenue.

But the desperate state of the nation’s finances means it is likely to remain at £6,475 for under-65s for the next year.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Record Rise in Seizures of Pit Bulls as Gangsters Shun Guns

Seizures of illegal pit bull terriers have soared to record levels as young men and gang members use them to intimidate enemies and provide protection.

The dogs are being used as lethal weapons because the penalty for owning them is far lower than for carrying a knife or gun.

They are also increasingly seen as a sign of status among young men, while the ease with which they can be purchased is helping to fuel an explosion in illegal dog fights.

— Hat tip: JD

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Montenegro Moves Closer to NATO Membership

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — Nato ministers on Friday offered Montenegro a formal plan to join the alliance, just days after the EU announced it would lift visas for its citizens.

“With a sustained effort at further reform, today’s invitation to join the Membership Action Plan (MAP) will be a stepping stone to the ultimate goal: full membership in Nato,” the secretary-general of the military alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference in Brussels.

He added that Bosnia and Herzegovina, for which a similar request was rejected, will get the plan once it has achieved the “necessary progress in its reform efforts.”

The move for Montenegro comes just a little over three years since it declared independence from Serbia, much faster than older candidates Georgia and Ukraine, who had also applied for MAP.

The former Yougoslav republic of 650,000 people had to “start its army from scratch”, but did not meet opposition from any Nato member or from Russia, as was the case with Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia’s two neighbours have been granted another form of intensified co-operation with Nato, the so-called commissions, which their backers present as MAP without the actual name.

In addition it remains unclear whether Kiev and Tbilisi will have to formally have a membership action plan, a step created to introduce some rigour into the membership preparation stage.

Ukrainian foreign minister Petro Poroshenko, for his part, presented a relaxed front on Montenegro becoming a Nato member ahead of his country.

“If Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina have the intention of providing their country security in the form of Euro-Atlantic integration, we can only welcome this decision,” he told journalists at a press conference after meeting with Nato ministers on Thursday.

But he pointed out that the period before joining MAP was “unexpectedly short” for Montenegro and that “nobody raised flags against it.”

One of the reasons picked up by France and Germany for opposing MAP for Ukraine was low public support for Nato accession. But in Montenegro’s case, it was not seen as a factor that most people there also oppose the military alliance, as they still remember the Nato bombing of Serbia. Polls conducted in October show Montenegrin support for Nato membership at 35 percent.

The Ukrainian foreign minister did not want to comment on what he called ‘double standards’. Instead, he played down the importance of the plan, which he called a “bureaucratic formality”, and noted that a lot of countries became Nato members without it.

Before, 1999 when MAP was created, membership did not depend on fulfilling this step.

For Montenegro, the plan does not mean automatic membership as the government in Podgorica still has a number of outstanding reforms ahead. New Nato member Albania, for instance, spent 10 years in the MAP stage before joining earlier this year.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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EU-Morocco: Summit to Strengthen Relations in 2010

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 7 — A summit in the first half of 2010 will mark a new step in relations between the European Union and Morocco, during the Spanish presidency of the EU. The objective is to reach an advanced state in bilateral relations, which are currently under scrutiny by the 27 EU members. The EU-Morocco Council of association announced the news today in Brussels, saying that it represents an important step in strengthening relations, said Frank Belfrage, Swedish Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs for the Union presidency. Belfrage said that Morocco is a strategic partner for the EU at a regional and international level. It is of the utmost urgency to finalise the ongoing trade negotiations added European Commissioner for External Relations and Neighbourhood policy, Benita Ferrero Waldner, in the areas of agriculture and services. In particular, the agriculture negotiations will help reduce rural poverty in Morocco and relaunch European agricultural exports. On the matter of strengthening relations between the EU and Morocco in all sectors, a proposal is under scrutiny by the member States explained the European Commissioner. The proposal is supported by France, said French Minister for European Affairs, Pierre Lellouche.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Libya-Egypt: Customs Barriers Lifted

(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI — The tenth session of the Egypt-Libya Joint High Commission to re-launch cooperation between the two countries ended with resolutions to double trade between Libya and Egypt, abolish customs duties and regularise the flow of Egyptian workers in Egypt. The details emerged at the meeting between the prime ministers of Egypt and Libya, Ahmad Nazif and Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmudi. Last Saturday Libya and Egypt consolidated their cooperation with the signing of 3 executive programmes, 4 memorandums of understanding and one industrial accord. The next session of the Egypt-Libya Joint High Commission, according to the final document signed in Tripoli, will be held in Cairo in February and will focus on the creation of industrial and free trade zones, with all the necessary services. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Missionaries Arrested in Morocco

17 people including one Swiss citizen have been arrested in Marocco, accused of trying to spread Christianity.

According to the Moroccan interior ministry, authorities intervened after hearing about evangelical missionary efforts. They feared that the mission could lower the religious values of the kingdom.

The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has not yet confirmed the arrest of the Swiss. The other detainees, are said to be from Guatemala, South Africa and Morocco itself.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Swiss ‘Mafia’ Inviting Qaeda Hits With Minaret Ban: Kadhafi

TRIPOLI — Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said the Swiss referendum banning the building of new minarets was an invitation for Al-Qaeda to launch attacks in Europe, the official news agency JANA reported on Sunday.

“They pretend they are ‘fighting Al-Qaeda and terrorism’ whereas in fact they have just rendered it the greatest service,” he said, referring to Switzerland with disdain as “the mafia of the world.”

[…]

The Libyan leader, speaking at an academic ceremony on Saturday in Zliten, 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of Tripoli, said Muslim countries now had an argument not to allow the building of new churches.

“I don’t think anyone in the Muslim world will from now on authorise the construction of a church,” Kadhafi said.

He warned Switzerland of an economic fallout of a rift with the Muslim world. “You must think of your interests. You need gas, ports, the sea, solar energy, investments,” Kadhafi said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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IDF: Palestinians Launched S-5k Rocket

Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip have begun launching Russian-manufactured S-5K rockets into southern Israel, Army Radio reported on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, security forces discovered remnants of a projectile that was fired by Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip.

— Hat tip: Esther

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On Israel’s Construction Freeze: U.S. Fails to Deliver: Instead of Praising, Europe Demands More

…By Barry Rubin

Israel acceded to a U.S. request to freeze construction on existing Jewish settlements; the Palestinian Authority (PA) refuses even to negotiate or to give anything in exchange for this concession. Who did Europe reward and was the United States able to mobilize praise for the former or criticism for the latter?

Need you ask?

It is now confirmed that my analysis of the State Department statement on the construction freeze was correct. It was intended as a statement supporting key Israeli demands-recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and changes in the 1967 borders-while also meeting major Palestinian demands, an independent state based on those borders.

Equally unnoticed, however, is the fact that the United States did not even get its European allies to endorse its new position. Once again, despite all the Obama Administration’s apologies, flattery, and concessions, it could not even obtain the smallest things in exchange from those given such rewards.

The main U.S. effort was to get the Quartet of mediators (U.S., Europe Union, Russia, and UN) to endorse the new U.S. stance. The proposed statement would have urged resumed negotiations without preconditions to seek an agreement which…

— Hat tip: Barry Rubin

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Shalit: Media Reports Medical Exam by French Doctors

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 7 — The news reported on the BBC Arabic and the Arab paper Al Hayat according to which four French doctors had examined the soldier Gilad Shalit (held prisoner by Hamas in Gaza since 2006) has made a splash in Israel. However, Shalit’s father Noam has said that he was not aware of this new development. According to the BBC and Al Hayat, it is the visit time that the Israeli soldier has ever been examined by those not belonging to the armed wing of Hamas. The doctors, with different specialisations, went into Gaza accompanied by a German mediator involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the past few months. It was also reported that — during their visit — the zone of Gaza into which they had gone was constantly flown over by Israeli drones. However, so far the news has not been confirmed in Israel, and the soldier’s father has told the press that he knew nothing about it. On Friday an Israeli Labour deputy said that he believed there would be a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas “within the next two weeks”. Afterwards, however, he said that he had simply been expressing his opinion and not — as it had first seemed — information he had gathered in the Israeli prime minister’s office. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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UK MPs Back Swedish Presidency on Jerusalem

A group of nearly 50 members of the British parliament have written a letter voicing their support for a controversial Swedish EU presidency proposal to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

“We, Parliamentarians in the UK, would like to put on record our support for the Swedish Presidency’s draft document calling for a viable state of Palestine, comprising the West Bank and Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital,” writes Martin Linton, chair of British-Swedish All-Party Parliamentary Group and chair of Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East.

“We pay tribute to the Swedish Presidency for raising this and for standing firm against attempts to derail this initiative.”

The letter, signed by an additional 47 mostly Labour MPs, comes as EU foreign ministers gather on Monday for two days of meetings in Brussels during which Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt will present a proposal outlining the EU’s concerns about the “stalemate” in the Middle East peace process.

The draft version of the proposal, which includes a specific reference to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestine, was published last week in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, sparking outrage and concern over the EU’s stance toward the peace process.

Opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni slammed the measure in a letter to Bildt following the Haaretz report.

“I wish to convey my deep concern regarding what appears to be an attempt to prejudge the outcome of issues reserved for permanent status negotiations,” wrote Livni, according to Haaretz.

“Whatever the intention of the Council’s conclusions, I believe that any attempt to dictate for either party the nature of the outcome on the status of Jerusalem, is not helpful and wrong.”

Speaking to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newpaper, deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon declared that “the Europeans will not dictate the results of the (Israeli-Palestinian) peace process.

“The Swedish initiative is dangerous and it may hinder the efforts to resume negotiations by radicalizing the Palestinian stand,” he added.

Israeli envoys have been tracking the proposal for weeks, with Israel’s ambassador to the EU claiming that Sweden was putting the EU on a “collision course” with Israel, according to Haaretz.

While Bildt has refrained from directly addressing Israel’s fears ahead of the Brussels meetings, writing on his blog on Sunday, he did refer to the need for “a clear European voice” on the situation in the Middle East in order to “create a situation where forward steps are actually possible”.

Reached by The Local on Monday, a spokesperson for Bildt declined to comment on the proposal.

“We have no comment before the meeting,” Irena Busic told The Local.

— Hat tip: TB

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Big Spender Mohammed Unshaken by Dubai Crisis

IT IS “business as usual” for the Irish bloodstock interests of the troubled ruling family of Dubai, the Maktoum clan.

With 5,000 acres and some of Ireland’s leading stud farms — including he famous Kildangan Stud — the family’s personal fortune is not caught up in the country’s property empire Dubai World which announced last week that it was suspending payments on its €50bn debt.

During the last two weeks, many Irish breeders were at the Tattersalls Sales in the UK and it was business as usual.

At the sale of top quality foals Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum was still buying race horses two days after the announcement of Dubai World’s proposed debt repayment crisis .

— Hat tip: Esther

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‘Climategate’ Shakes Trust in Scientists: Saudi

AFP — Saudia Arabia told global warming talks on Monday that trust in climate science had been “shaken” by leaked emails among experts and called for an international probe.

“The level of trust is definitely shaken, especially now that we are about to conclude an agreement that … is going to mean sacrifices for our economies,” said Mohammed al-Sabban, the kingdom’s top climate negotiator, told delegates at the opening of December 7-18 UN talks.

Al-Sabban called for an “independent” international investigation, but said that the UN climate science body was unqualified to carry it out.

— Hat tip: Esther

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France Urges Firmer Sanctions on Iran

AFP — France called on Sunday for tougher sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear programme.

“The time has come to seek firmer sanctions against Iran,” secretary of state for European affairs Pierre Lellouche said on the French Jewish radio station

— Hat tip: Esther

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Jordanian Man Kills Pregnant Sister in “Honor Killing”

The December 6 Jordan Times reports that a 36-year-old man stabbed to death his married sister, who was nine months pregnant He stalked her and stabbed her seven times, killing her and her unborn son. He then promptly gave the knife to the police, explaining that it was an honor killing. He displayed neither shame for his crime nor fear of the legal consequences..

The unnamed man gave two reasons for killing the unnamed victim, a 34-year-old mother of three: first, she “would often leave her husband’s house,” and second, he had caught her committing adultery. It is not clear whether this means that he observed her having sex with another man, as many of us would assume; or, perhaps, he saw her sitting with another man in a coffee house. (Last January a 17-year old boy killed his 13-year-old sister because she had taken a slip of paper containing a phone number.)

— Hat tip: Esther

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Kuwait: Imam Jailed for Collecting Al-Qaeda Money

Kuwait City, 7 Dec. (AKI) — A court in the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait has sentenced a prominent local imam to seven years in jail after he was found guilty of having collected money to help fund the Al-Qaeda terror network.

According to the local daily al-Jarida, the unnamed imam, preached at the al-Hamdi mosque and apparently asked the faithful for donations to build a second mosque.

However, the news report said that the money was instead diverted to two other accomplices who were due to travel to Pakistan for training at an alleged Al-Qaeda camp.

The fighters would then go to Afghanistan to fight coalition forces there. During their stay, the fighters were also to meet an important Saudi member of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The newspaper said that both accomplices also had a role in the financing of the Iraqi insurgency.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Lebanon: Anti-UNIFIL Terrorist Cell Dismantled, Press

(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT — Lebanese secret services have arrested four alleged members of a terrorist cell which was planning attacks on UNIFIL, the UN force deployed in southern Lebanon in which 2,000 Italian soldiers are involved. The press in Beirut this morning reported on the matter. Anonymous sources quoted by the daily paper Al Akhbar said that UNIFIL, which until the end of January 2010 will be commanded by the Italian general Claudio Graziano, “may be targeted over the next three weeks”. An Nahar daily said that the cell included the 21-year-old Tareq Baydun (a university student studying chemistry), his two brothers and his father, all residents of Majdal Anjar, a stronghold of Sunni fundamentalism in the eastern Bekaa Valley a few km from the eastern border with Syria. According to daily As Safir, Tareq Baydun had entered into contact with the internet site of the Ziad Jarrah Battalions, a group with links to al Qaeda which claimed responsibility for rocket launching in October from southern Lebanon at northern Israel. The press in Beirut added today that security forces had found automatic rifles, detonators, computers and a handbook on how to make bombs in the Bayduns’ house. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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One Dead as Violence Flares in SE Turkey

Turkish riot policemen drag a Kurdish demonstrator during clashes in mainly Kurd Diyarbakir yesterday.

DIYARBAKIR (AFP) — A student was shot dead yesterday during clashes between Turkish police and demonstrators protesting the prison treatment of the founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), sources said.

An estimated 15,000 protesters marched in the city of Diyarbakir, in the majority Kurdish southeast, in support of jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Saudi Says Trust in Climate Scientists “Shaken”

Saudia Arabia told global warming talks on Monday that trust in climate science had been “shaken” by leaked emails and called for an international probe as the head of the United Nation’s panel of climate scientists strongly defended findings that humans are warming the planet.

“The level of confidence is certainly shaken. We believe this scandal is definitely going to affect the nature of what can be fostered (in Copenhagen). The size of (economic) sacrifices must be built on a secure foundation of information which we found now is not true,” Saudi delegate, Mohammed al-Sabban, said.

Al-Sabban called for an “independent” international investigation, but said that the U.N. climate science body was unqualified to carry it out.

“The IPCC, which is the authority accused, is not going to be able to conduct the investigation,” he said, referring to the Nobel-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

The Saudi negotiator rejected IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri’s defense of the integrity of the panel’s findings — delivered earlier in the plenary session — as “general statements.”

“In light of recent information… the scientific scandal has assumed huge proportion,” al-Sabban said.

“We think it is definitely going to affect the nature of what can be trusted in the negotiations.”

Hacked emails

Climate change skeptics have seized on a series of hacked emails written by climate specialists, accusing them of colluding to suppress others’ data and enhance their own.

The emails, some written as long as 13 years ago, were stolen by unknown hackers and rapidly spread across the Internet, showing that scientists had manipulated evidence.

In one email, confirmed by the University of East Anglia as genuine, the head of its Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, said he wanted to ensure a specific paper which doubted climate science was excluded from the IPCC’s 2007 report.

Pachauri, head of the IPCC, told a climate conference that its findings were “subjected to extensive and repeated reviews by experts as well as by governments.”

The IPCC concluded in 2007 that it was at least 90 percent certain that humans were to blame for global warming.

“The evidence is now overwhelming that the world would benefit greatly from early action,” Pachauri told delegates at the opening session of the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen summit.

“The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some (people) would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC.”

“Climategate” row

That paper did in fact appear in the final 2007 report, the university says. Pachauri on Monday defended scientists named in the “climategate” row.

“The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges,” Pachauri told the 192-nation conference.

“Given the wide-ranging nature of (economic) change that is likely be taken in hand, some naturally find it inconvenient to accept its inevitability.”

Another British climate research center, the MetOffice Hadley Centre, plans to publish this week data from more than 1,000 locations around the world to boost transparency and underpin evidence that the world is warming.

“We are confident (it) will show that global average temperatures have risen over the last 150 years,” it said in a statement, adding that the move had the support of the University of East Anglia.

“As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records.”

Emission cuts

A set of so called Cool Globes set up in Copenhagen

The comments came at the biggest climate meeting in history, with 15,000 participants from 192 nations seeking to agree curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid and clean technology.

Campaigners say politicians have 2 weeks to save the planet from catastrophic climate change in the talks, which end with a summit of 105 world leaders — including U.S. President Barack Obama, on Dec. 18.

The summit will have to overcome deep distrust between rich and poor nations about sharing the cost of emissions cuts.

The attendance of the leaders and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters — led by China, the United States, Russia and India — have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years.

The goal is to seal an ambitious political agreement in outline form.

Further negotiations would take place in 2010 to fill in the details and — if all goes well — from the end of 2012, the new pact would take effect.

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

Thousands Stuck in Lebanon Limbo With No Rights or Hope (Via NRP)

I was put on earth to suffer: Palestinian refugee

Saeed Mohamed Hammo technically does not exist as far as the world is concerned. But as he recounts his life as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, his story is very much real.

Hammo, 61, is among an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 so-called “non-ID Palestinians” in Lebanon who are considered illegal aliens and who have lived in legal limbo, many of them for decades.

Palestinian refugee Mohammed Hammo poses for a picture with his children

They have no freedom of movement, no right to work and no access to medical services or education.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Turkey’s Erdogan to Meet Obama on Afghanistan, Kurdish Conflict

ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets Monday with US President Barack Obama for talks expected to focus on NATO reinforcements in Afghanistan and Ankara’s efforts to curb Kurdish rebels based in Iraq.

Iran’s nuclear programme, which Erdogan has defended much to the dismay of Turkey’s Western allies, is also likely to be high on the agenda.

Erdogan, whose country is a key Muslim ally of the US, visits Washington after Obama announced that 30,000 more soldiers would be sent to Afghanistan and US allies followed suit Friday by pledging at least 7,000 more troops to help defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Even though it has NATO’s second largest standing army, Turkey insists it will not engage in combat missions and offered only three teams to train Afghan security personnel, according to NATO sources.

Some 1,700 Turkish soldiers are currently deployed in Afghanistan, but their mandate is limited to patroling Kabul and training Afghan forces.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Turkey’s Moves Towards Iran Concerning United States

Turkey’s attempts to develop a strategic partnership with Iran are causing concern in America and are likely to dominate talks between its leader and President Barack Obama during a US visit that starts today.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has introduced a “good neighbours” foreign policy that has tilted the axis of Ankara’s diplomacy in the direction of Iran, Russia and bordering states.

Turkish frustration with a series of setbacks for its bid to join the European Union triggered a search for a foreign policy that reflect its historical interests in the Middle East, Caucasus and Islamic world.

— Hat tip: JD

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US Wants to Stop Mankind’s Savior: Iran Leader

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has documented evidence that the United States is doing what it can to prevent the coming of the Mahdi, the Imam that Muslims believe will be ultimate savior of mankind, press reports said Monday.

“We have documented proof that they [U.S.] believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts [Middle East] and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” the hard-line president said, addressing an audience of families of those killed during the 1980’s war against Iraq.

They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule.”

Iranian news website Tabnak said Ahmadinejad further revealed plots by both the East and the West to wipe out the Islamic Republic.

“They have planned to annihilate Iran. This is why all policymakers and analysts believe Iran is the true winner in the Middle East,” he went on to proclaim, adding that they were after Iranian oil and other natural resources.

“In Afghanistan, they are caught like an animal in a quagmire. But instead of pulling their troops out to save themselves, they are deploying more soldiers. Even if they stay in Afghanistan for another 50 years they will be forced to leave with disgrace — because this is a historical experience.”

The president said on his last visit to New York he asked officials “Is there not one sane person in your country to tell you these things?”

“They know themselves that they need Iran in the Middle East, but because of their arrogance they do not want to accept this reality. They are nothing without the Iranian nation and all their rhetoric is because they don’t want to appear weak,” he added.

Enemy hype

Referring to his disputed June reelection, Ahmadinejad said, “The enemy… was hyping the issue as if the Iranian nation has been weakened and as if this was the best opportunity to get concessions from them. But your humble son stood in front of the oppressive powers and shouted: You are dead wrong! The Iranian nation will put you in your place.”

“In the recent [post-election] incident, they claimed that they had devised a plan that could bring hundreds of governments to their knees,” he continued. “But he who is on the righteous path will always be victorious and will never see defeat.”

The June 12 presidential election sparked Iran’s worst unrest since the Islamic revolution three decades ago and exposed deep divisions in the establishment. Authorities have denied all allegations of vote-rigging.

On Monday Iran commemorates the killing of three students in 1953 under the former Shah. The opposition is expected to try to use the state-organized rallies to revive opposition protests.

— Hat tip: TB

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Russia Considering Ban on Food Imports

The UN says every seventh person in the world is experiencing difficulties getting food.

It is an idea that has been around in Russia for 12 years. Keeping the country fed is a matter of national security and therefore comes under the responsibility of the President and National Security Council.

National Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev said the issue was vitally important for the longer term.

“Russia is not fully self-sufficient in food. We are forced to import a number of products and we cannot get rid of this dependence in the near future.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Russia to Teach Arabic Culture in Schools

Russia’s Ministry of Education has added Arabic language and culture to next year’s school curriculum in an unprecedented move welcomed by families who said they look forward to introducing their children to Arab culture.

Native Russians welcomed the initiative and expressed their admiration for Arab culture.

“The number of orientalists is very limited and I want to be one,” said Sasha, explaining the reason for his keenness to learn Arabic.

His colleague Vadim said his admiration for Arab culture encouraged him to learn the language.

“I want to be able to speak to the Arab people when I get the chance to visit the Arab world,” he told Al Arabiya.

According to the new government resolution Arabic classes will be introduced as early as elementary school, said Sieda Golinian, headmistress of a school in southern Moscow.

“The majority of our students are either Russian or from other ethnicities that are not Arab,” she told Al Arabiya. “They want to learn Arabic to work as translators or in other financial, political and cultural fields.”

In addition to offering job opportunities, including Arabic in Russian schools will also be of great help to mixed Russian-Arab families, said Selim al-Ali, member of the Council for Arab Expatriates.

“Teaching Arabic in schools will solve many problems faced by children of mixed marriages as they will be able to get in touch with the culture that constitutes half their heritages,” he told Al Arabiya.

— Hat tip: TB

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80 Percent of French Oppose More Troops for Afghanistan

Bordeaux — More than 80 percent of French people are against Paris sending more troops to Afghanistan, according to an opinion poll carried out for a regional newspaper.

The Ifop poll for the weekly Sud Ouest Dimanche showed 82 percent opposed to reinforcements for the some 3,300 French troops already in Afghanistan.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Afghanistan Court Sentences Kabul Mayor for Corruption

An Afghan court has sentenced the mayor of the capital, Kabul, to four years in prison on corruption charges.

Mir Abdul Ahad Sahebi was not in court. His whereabouts are uncertain, but a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The deputy attorney general, Enayat Kamal, said the charges related to more than $16,000 (£9,800) of public money.

It was the first high-profile graft conviction of President Hamid Karzai’s second term. He faces renewed Western pressure to crack down on corruption.

“The court sentenced [Sahebi] to four years in jail, ordered him to return the money he wasted, and fired him from his position,” the prosecutor, Mr Kamal, was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

The case relates to a contract that was awarded without following the proper procedures, prosecution officials told the BBC.

Allegations rejected

Last month, the mayor dismissed corruption accusations levelled by Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal against him and the municipality.

“I categorically reject the allegations,” said Sahebi, who has been in office for the past year-and-a-half.

“I have started a lot of reforms since I became mayor, and many of these charges relate to things that took place before my time,” he said at the time.

Afghan officials said further charges were pending against officials from the Kabul municipal government.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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India in Nuclear Deal With Russia

Russia and India have signed an agreement to increase their civilian nuclear energy co-operation.

The announcement came after talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow.

Russia will build a number of nuclear reactors in energy-hungry India as well as increase atomic fuel exports to it.

Russian reports suggested progress had also been made on India’s purchase of a refurbished former aircraft carrier.

The sale of the Soviet-era Admiral Gorshkov was agreed years ago but delivery has been long delayed.

Kremlin sources gave no timing for when the vessel might be handed over to India’s military.

‘Great potential’

Mr Singh called the nuclear deal “a major step forward”.

“Today we have signed an agreement which broadens the reach of our co-operation beyond the supply of nuclear reactors to areas of research and development and a whole range of areas of nuclear energy,” Mr Singh told a Kremlin news conference.

Mr Medvedev spoke of “great potential” in the two countries’ relations.

The head of Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, estimated the value of the deal at “several dozens of billion of dollars”.

He said the agreement could involve Russia building more than 12 nuclear reactors in India. Mr Singh put the number at four.

Russia is among a number of countries seeking to expand their activities in India following its landmark nuclear deal with the US in 2005.

That accord ended India’s nuclear isolation after it tested an atom bomb in 1974.

Mr Singh was due to meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin later on Monday.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Mangalore: Faction-Fight in Mosque — Two Sustain Serious Injuries

Mangalore, Dec 7: Two groups, one representing Sunni and the other, Jamaat-e-Islam-e-Hind, fought pitched battle in the mosque located in Bardila of Kuppepadav village within the Bajpe police station limits on Sunday December 6. Two persons, one with critical injuries to head, and the other with fractured leg, were admitted to private hospitals, after the incident. They have been identified as B C Mohammed and Fakruddin, both belonging to the Sunni group.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Pakistan: 366 Killed in 7 Attacks Targeting Mosques in 2009

LAHORE: At least 366 innocent Pakistanis have been killed and 901 injured in the first 11 months of year 2009 in seven bloody incidents of terrorism across Pakistan, targeting mosques with the help of suicide bombers as well as explosive-laden vehicles.

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani ministry of interior, 52 people were killed on average per month in the seven gory incidents, most of which were claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). On average, 33 people were killed every month in the mosque-related acts of terrorism in the first 11 months of the year 2009. The weekly and daily average for those killed during the same period comes to eight and one persons respectively. The odious ploy of targeting jam-packed mosques at prayer time is now increasingly being used by the Tehrik-e-Taliban as this has become a lethal way to create horror. According to the available data, over 50 mosques have been targeted since 9/11 either by the Pakistani Taliban or their like-minded jehadi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM) and Jamaatul Furqaan.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Taliban: New Wall Bombs

From Dutch: the Taliban have started using a new type of bombs — wall bombs. These bombs are set up when a patrol passes, and is expected to pass back. When the patrol steps over the trigger wire, the bomb hidden inside the nearby wall explodes.

— Hat tip: Esther

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North Korea Currency Change Sparks Panic

North Koreans are “devastated” following currency reforms that could wipe out their savings, reports say.

Ordinary people are reported to be desperately trying to buy as many goods as they can with the old currency while it is still valid.

The government told its people on Monday that it was knocking two noughts off the nominal value of banknotes.

Experts say this will help tackle inflation and increase officials’ control over an already impoverished population.

They say the Pyongyang government particularly wants to rein in the activities of free markets that have sprung up across North Korea.

Economic hardship

The North Korean government was initially quiet about the reform — telling its own people, but not the rest of the world.

But on Friday South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said a Japan-based newspaper with links to the North had confirmed the news.

Yonhap quoted an interview the newspaper had conducted with a North Korean central bank official.

The North Korean banker said international sanctions, natural disasters and the fall of the communist bloc had created economic hardship.

This has forced the North to adjust its currency, Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

Under the new system, an old 1,000 North Korean won note will now be worth just 10 won.

[…]

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector now living in the South, said: “My contacts [in North Korea] called me to say North Korean people are in despair, crying and shouting — just like a war.”

Some reports say the North Korean authorities raised the amount of money that can be exchanged following the complaints.

Fighting inflation

Another defector, Kim Woon-ho, said people were “devastated” when they heard the news, which apparently came as a surprise.

“Complaints are mounting because the North Korean government is taking money away from its people,” said Mr Kim, who only left the North for the South this year.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Climate Email Mess Hits Australia

LONDON: Australian weather records for an international database on climate change were a “bloody mess”, riddled with entry errors, duplication and inaccuracies, leaked British computer files reveal.

The Herald found the criticism in a 247-page specialist programmer’s log, unearthed among the thousands of files hacked from East Anglia University, which is at the centre of a climate change email scandal.

Labelled “HARRY-READ-ME”, the log catalogues problems with the raw, historical climate data sent from hundreds of meteorological stations around the world.

The Australian data comes in for particular criticism as the programmer discovers World Meteorological Organisation codes are missing, station names overlap and many co-ordinates are incorrect.

At one point the programmer writes about his attempts to make sense of the data. “What a bloody mess,” he concludes. In another case, 30 years of data is attributed to a site at Cobar Airport but the frustrated programmer writes: “Now looking at the dates. something bad has happened … COBAR AIRPORT AWS [automatic weather station] cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!”

In another he says: “Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data … so many false references … so many changes … bewildering.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Mogadishu Demonstrators Protest Shebab

Hundreds of people marched in Mogadishu Monday to protest the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab group, which many blame for a suicide bomb that killed 24 people last week. The group has denied involvement.

People set fire to flags with the Shebab group colours, and chanted slogans against the group.

The march left from the hotel where the attack took place last week. A suicide bomb exploded during a graduation ceremony at the hotel, killing 24 people, including three government ministers and three journalists.

This was the first public protest against the group in Mogadishu, as people risk being killed in retaliation if they publically oppose the movement.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Pirate Payoffs Feed Big-Money Lifestyle in Somalia

A parcel of land here that sold for $12,000 two years ago now costs more than $20,000.. The price of a nice pair of men’s shoes has gone up from $20 to $50.

The reason: pirates.

The influx of millions of dollars in ransoms has changed life in this coastal Muslim community, driving prices up and creating a schism between the pirate haves and have-nots. As piracy ramps up again with the end of the monsoon season, the lifestyle of the pirates — big houses, fast cars and easy drugs — is decried by both religious leaders and ordinary villagers.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Sudan SPLM Arrests Spark Southern Unrest

Protesters set alight the office of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir’s party in a southern town after three southern politicians were arrested in Khartoum.

There were no reports of casualties at the National Congress Party (NCP) building in Wau, and police later freed the three politicians.

The SPLM joined the government in 2005, ending a 22-year north-south conflict.

But tensions between the SPLM and their power-sharing partner the NCP have been rising ahead of next year’s elections.

‘We want freedom’

The vote will be the first presidential, parliamentary and local elections in 24 years.

Monday is the final day for voters to register for the election, and the government declared it a public holiday in an effort to encourage a good turnout.

But the SPLM and the NCP have failed to agree on changes to the election laws.

And about 20 opposition parties called for a gathering in front of the parliament building in the capital to demand electoral reform.

Hundreds of demonstrators turned out, watched by lines of armed police.

The AFP news agency reported that demonstrators marched through Khartoum and its neighbouring city Omdurman waving placards and chanting: “We want our freedom.”

As the protest grew — with some reports estimating thousands of people had joined the rally — police fired tear gas and beat the protesters with batons.

SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum was arrested along with his deputy Yasir Arman and Abbas Gumma, a state minister in the interior ministry.

Reports said dozens of other protesters were detained.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Brazil: Muslim Numbers Soar in Latin America’s Islamic Resurgence

“ALLAH Akbar” blares from the loudspeakers as hundreds of Muslims file into the mosque for prayers. Outside, halal meat stores line the street as in Damascus, Cairo or Baghdad, but this is the working-class neighbourhood of Bras in Sao Paulo, Brazil — the heart of Islam’s Latin American rebirth.

Brazil is experiencing an Islamic boom, with reliable estimates indicating that the Muslim population has increased from a few hundred thousand to 1.5 million this decade alone, out of a total population of 190 million. This is clear as mosques emerge throughout the country, some financed by Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Police Commit 20 Percent of Venezuela Crimes-Minister

CARACAS, Venezuela-Up to one out of every five crimes in Venezuela is perpetrated by crooked police officers, Interior Minister Tareck El Aisammi said Sunday on President Hugo Chavez’s weekly radio show.

The official said police officers accounted for 15-20 percent of all crimes, notably major felonies such as kidnapping and murder.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Venezuelan Government Takes Over Farms

Venezuelan officials supported by troops and police took control of 31 farms totaling more than 48,000 acres (19,000 hectares) on Nov. 23, accusing owners of not holding proper titles or not putting the land to adequate use.

Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua announced the government’s interventions at farms across the country and insisted it was acting legally.

The affected land included a ranch belonging to former presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, a prominent opponent of President Hugo Chavez who earlier this year fled to Peru and was granted asylum.

— Hat tip: JD

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Venezuela Shuts 3 Banks, Escalates Intervention

Venezuela escalated its intervention in the banking sector Friday, with government officials shutting down three small banks following the closure of four others earlier this week.

Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez attempted to calm depositors by saying the sector isn’t facing a crisis, though problems are clearly evident among some of the country’s smallest lenders.

— Hat tip: JD

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Venezuela Widens Purge of Bankers With New Arrest

CARACAS, Dec 6 (Reuters) — Venezuela on Sunday widened a police sweep against executives from seven troubled banks shut down despite their links with top government officials — a move likely to win support for leftist President Hugo Chavez.

Police arrested the director of the Banco Real, Giuzel Mileira, bringing to six the number of bankers in custody.

— Hat tip: JD

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Danes’ Anti-Immigrant Backlash Marks Radical Shift

by Sylvia Poggioli

An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken — nowhere more starkly than in Denmark — the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.

Earlier this year, that haven of solidarity and liberalism was shaken by violent protests and deaths in the Muslim world over cartoons of Mohammed that were published in a Danish paper. Suddenly, Danes began to see their own Muslim immigrants as a threat to their national identity.

The cartoon crisis hit hard in the Copenhagen commune of Christiania, a bastion of the counterculture where freedom of speech is the paramount value.

Sculptor/welder Charlotte Steem, one of the commune’s 800 residents, says the violence with which some Muslims reacted to the Mohammed cartoons has undermined many of her convictions.

“There are a lot of things I don’t understand in [the] Muslim world,” Steem says. She recognizes the free society of her country but says she doesn’t know whether borders can remain open.

Only a few years ago, Denmark was proud of its open-door policy, and even the mildest critique of immigration would have been labeled racist.

But the mood shifted after Sept. 11, and the terrorist attacks in Europe. After many years of leftist rule, a right-wing government came to power, introducing Europe’s toughest immigration laws.

It also introduced restrictions aimed at curbing forced marriages among Muslims.

Today, the Danish political discourse is no longer stifled by political correctness. The tone can even be inflammatory. One politician has called for the internment of some Muslim radicals in Denmark for security reasons.

And last year, a radio station went so far as to call for the extermination of all radical Muslims.

The difficulty of integrating Muslims who don’t share Western values is the No.1 topic of discussion.

Currently, the nation’s best-selling book is called Islamists and Naivists.

“We compare Islamism to Nazism and communism because they are all three of them a totalitarian ideology,” says Karen Jespersen, who co-wrote the book with her husband, Ralf Pittlekow.

Their politically incorrect analysis would suggest they’re right-wingers. But they’re diehard Social Democrats — proud veterans of the student protests of the 1960s.

Jespersen, a feminist and a former interior minister in charge of immigration issues, says the radicals’ goal is the Islamization of Europe. When she was in government, many Muslims told her they were not free to adapt to Western society.

“In the parallel society, they use the term ‘Muslim police,’“ she says. “They are trying to control the more moderate Muslims. If they see their daughters talking to boys, then they go to the fathers and say, ‘I saw your girl talking to a boy, and how can you let her? You have to stop it immediately.’“

The concept of the cradle-to-grave welfare state is so deeply embedded in the Danish psyche that even the conservatives don’t dare touch it. But many Danes say their social pact has been undermined by the large inflow of immigrants — many of whom don’t share Danish civic values and, they say, prefer to live on the dole rather than work for the minimum wage.

“A welfare state can only function if there are restrictions on the border,” says Soren Espersen, a leading member of the right-wing Danish People’s Party, which has had increasing electoral success running on an anti-immigration platform.

The government depends on the party’s parliamentary support to pass bills.

Espersen points out that thanks to new laws, annual immigration has declined to 2,000 last year from 27,000 in 2001. Asylum for refugees has also dropped sharply.

Despite promoting Europe’s harshest immigration law, the DPP rejects being identified with the racism and anti-Semitism associated with French ultra right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. It’s radical Islam, Espersen says, that today represents the extreme right.

And the only way to combat it is through integration and education, he says.

Commentator David Trads says there is such a broad political consensus that the DPP has become mainstream.

“We want as few new immigrants as possible,” Trads says. “This is new; this is not how it was five years ago.”

One of parliament’s most vocal opponents of Islamic radicals is Syrian-born Naser Khader, who says the integration debate is roiling among Muslims themselves.

Khader says many Muslims in Europe want to break their ties with their land of origin and declare their loyalty to their new Western homelands.

“But the Islamists don’t like this,” he says. “They want the mullahs and imams in Muslim countries [to] decide what the Muslims in Europe should do.”

Khader insists that Islam and the West are not grappling with a clash of civilizations.

“It is clash between ideologies, democracy and not democracy,” he says. “Between those who want democracy, modernity, respect for human rights, equality between gender, and the others who want the opposite.”

Khader says it will be a long battle and won’t be won during his lifetime.

— Hat tip: The Frozen North

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UK: Immigrant Criminals Cost £292m to Lock Up

THE cost of locking up foreign prisoners has soared to £292million.

There are 7,500 immigrant crooks swamping British jails, the Ministry of Justice has revealed.

Foreign offenders now account for one in every 10 lags. Phil Woolas, the Borders and Immigration Minister, denied giving up on deporting them.

He said: “Our Facilitated Returns Scheme saves the taxpayer money because foreign criminals are removed direct from jail or immigration detention.”

— Hat tip: Steen

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Want to Sneak Into U.S.? There’s an App for That

American college prof develops cell-phone tool to help illegals cross border

Illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border now have a cell-phone tool to chart the best route, find food and locate people who will help them enter the country — courtesy of a professor at a state-funded university.

Ricardo Dominguez, a University of California, San Diego tenured visual arts professor and activist, designed the Transborder Immigrant Tool, an application much like a global-positioning system used in cars, to help illegals find the best locations for food, water and groups to assist them as they sneak into America.

Dominguez is also co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater, or EDT, a group that developed virtual-sit-in technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. He also helped set up a website-jamming network called the FloodNet system to attack official sites of the U.S. Border Patrol, White House, G8, Mexican embassy and others.

[…]

But Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project, told WND the tool goes a step further.

“It helps illegals avoid all of the Border Patrol hot spots,” he said. “It helps them to illegally infiltrate the United States.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Minarets and the Concept of Reciprocity

The mainstream media continue to decry the Swiss referendum on minarets. To date, The New York Times has published one editorial and five additional articles on the subject, including one today. Perhaps The Paper of Record views the 30% of the electorate who actually voted in Switzerland as traitors to their own multicultural, anti-racist, politically correct belief system.

The problem is that the Islamic world today does not share this hallowed belief system. Actually, it never did. Rather, it has destroyed or built over synagogues, churches, and temples, and denied that such infidel places of worship ever existed. Note the fevered Palestinian attempts to claim the Temple Mount, where once the ancient Jewish Temple stood, as really “Islamic.”

The Islamic world does not allow new synagogues or churches to be built. Further: Muslim fundamentalists currently persecute, torture, and murder those Christians who dare remain in the Middle East, and they kidnap, forcibly convert, and “marry” their very young daughters.

It is time to demand—or at least to expect—reciprocity. Otherwise, we are really being racist in having one (higher) standard for Westerners and another (much lower) standard for the barbarians.

Granted: The West is not as barbaric and intolerant as the Islamic world; we do not willingly wish to become intolerant. Yet, tolerating the intolerant is unwise, or as the Jewish sages tell us: Being kind to the cruel results in cruelty to the kind.

Thus, if there can be no churches or synagogues built in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.—then why should the Swiss or the Europeans allow new, blockbuster size mosques, and sound-splitting loudspeakers emanating from minarets? According to Imam Kurdi, writing in the Arab News,

“And let’s not be hypocrites. If you held a referendum in a Muslim country asking whether the construction of new church steeples should be permitted, you are also likely to get an overwhelming no. So let us not brand this a Swiss phenomenon and let us also remember that it is not the majority of the Swiss population that supported the ban but the majority of those who voted, which if you do the maths comes to 30 percent of the population.” (Thanks to Esther for bringing this to my attention.)

Let me clear. I am one of those westerners who has “dreamed East.” And, as a Jew, I have an undeniably dangerous but familial kinship with Arabs and Muslims. I find the Muslim call to prayer beautiful—but only if I refuse to understand that, as an infidel, an American citizen and patriot, a Jew, a woman, and a Zionist, that my place inside that mosque is that of a sub-human, fair-game target for hatred or worse.

Jews in exile from Arab and Muslim countries have launched a beautiful, haunted literature, one in which they manifest nostalgia for the places which endangered them and forced them to flee. Often, the danger is minimized, the customs romanticized. I am thinking of Andre Aciman, Roya Hakakian, and Lucette Lagnado.

I am in favor of interfaith gatherings. Peaceful voices are sweet to my ears and yet: telling the truth is far sweeter than lying. The truth is:

Mosque and minaret building in Europe probably represent a refusal to integrate; a refusal to separate mosque and state. Perhaps it also signifies an intention to one day vote in Shari’a law as the law of the European land.

It is cause for concern.

[Return to headlines]

Spy vs. Spy on Facebook

Crane says that the team’s decision to spread the wealth was instrumental to its success, as it gave people an incentive to share good information, and a feeling of investment in the process. He was less interested in the monetary prize than in the potential for social research.

“On the science side, we’re scratching the surface of this tremendous new system” of social networks. “With this data set we have the potential to understand how to face — and exploit — the challenges that come with living in this interconnected world.”

The practical possibilities of the Network Challenge go far beyond a research lab. Already the powers of social networks are well documented: Earlier this year, information about violence in Iran continued to be dispersed through Twitter even after traditional news sources were squelched. Crane wonders what types of applications might result from data about information dispersal collected this weekend: “Could we design an alert system to help us find missing children? Could we redesign the incentive structure for police rewards?”

DARPA officials plan to meet with participants throughout the week to debrief them on their strategies.

Not everyone believes their motives are pure. After all, what would an intersection between the government and the Internet be without a few conspiracy theories?

“Looks to me that ‘someone’ has lost a balloon with something very important in it, and now is making all this fiction to promote it’s prompt finding,” wrote a commenter on NewScientist.com.

Crane says that the team’s decision to spread the wealth was instrumental to its success, as it gave people an incentive to share good information, and a feeling of investment in the process. He was less interested in the monetary prize than in the potential for social research.

“On the science side, we’re scratching the surface of this tremendous new system” of social networks. “With this data set we have the potential to understand how to face — and exploit — the challenges that come with living in this interconnected world.”

The practical possibilities of the Network Challenge go far beyond a research lab. Already the powers of social networks are well documented: Earlier this year, information about violence in Iran continued to be dispersed through Twitter even after traditional news sources were squelched. Crane wonders what types of applications might result from data about information dispersal collected this weekend: “Could we design an alert system to help us find missing children? Could we redesign the incentive structure for police rewards?”

DARPA officials plan to meet with participants throughout the week to debrief them on their strategies.

Not everyone believes their motives are pure. After all, what would an intersection between the government and the Internet be without a few conspiracy theories?

“Looks to me that ‘someone’ has lost a balloon with something very important in it, and now is making all this fiction to promote it’s prompt finding,” wrote a commenter on NewScientist.com.

— Hat tip: MJP

[Return to headlines]

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On the Failure of Law Enforcement — Part 3

This is the third and final installment of El Inglés’ three-part essay “On the Failure of Law Enforcement”. For earlier installments, see Part 1 and Part 2.


On the Failure of Law Enforcement — Part 3
by El Inglés

Sealing the Victory — Grappling with the Human Substrate Problem

In part two of this essay, we considered how we might overcome the Dynamic of Escalation. Now we must consider where we would stand if we were to succeed in doing so. After all, as I discussed in detail in the first installment of this essay, in solving the Dynamic of Escalation we will only have exchanged one problem for another, somewhat lesser one. We will now have a massively over-incarcerated and substantially disproportionately criminal Muslim population, which exists in an extremely polarized and tribally antagonistic relationship with its host society whilst inflicting huge costs of various sorts upon it. Moreover, this population will continue to grow as a fraction of the whole, even if only by virtue of higher fertility.

It is essential to understand here that, unless we rid ourselves of some fundamental taboos, this outcome, exceptionally difficult to arrive at and deeply unsatisfactory in every way, is still the best that can be hoped for, in perpetuity. A question needs to be put here: are the peoples of Western countries prepared to accept that their countries will be forever blighted by the criminality, dysfunctionality, and ideological hostility of Muslim populations imported into those countries against the will of the host population? If the answer to this question is no, then we need to ask what the non-acceptance of this state of affairs implies.

Here we must revisit the Human Substrate Problem. I claimed that the Human Substrate Problem leaves us with no good options for dealing with a problematic human substrate, only bad and worse. However, this is only true under prevailing political paradigms, which prohibit the large-scale deportation and/or internment of the worst elements of problematic populations. Given that there are few restraints on what human beings will feel entitled to do to protect themselves when faced with existential threats, we need not concern ourselves with these paradigms here. Instead, we will assume that they have been discarded when we seek to implement solutions to the Human Substrate Problem.

Exclusion

So, we consider these matters from the perspective of peoples who are faced with crime of a type and magnitude that fundamentally threatens their societies and ways of life. After stating this up front, what follows? In essence, the only way of overcoming the Human Substrate Problem is to physically exclude the worst elements of a problematic substrate so that their unpleasantness cannot spill over onto unfortunate members of the host society.

There are two ways of doing this: internal exclusion and external exclusion, more conveniently referred to as internment and deportation. They need not be implemented independently of each other, but any solution to the Human Substrate Problem will consist of a combination of them. I have discussed internment, deportation and related topics at length in other essays (most obviously Surrender, Genocide, or What and follow-ups) with a different emphasis, and do not propose to revisit these discussions in any detail here. Instead, I will concentrate on the use of internment and deportation in attempts to grapple with the Human Substrate Problem and its implications for crime. The significance of these measures for the de-Islamization of European countries is something that I will then touch on briefly at the end, to explain why they may well be of greater utility in this regard than I have suggested in the past.

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The key distinction to be made between internment and deportation is that the former can be carried out without the consent or cooperation of external parties, whereas the latter can not. Deportation requires the immigration authorities of the destination country to accept the deportee, and this restriction on how widely it can be applied is likely to be an important factor in developments in European countries vis-à-vis the most criminal parts of their foreign populations. For this reason, we will discuss it first, and then move onto internment, about which there is more to say.

Deportation
- - - - - - - - -
Deportation is the most effective and final way of dealing with the Human Substrate Problem. A system could quite easily be devised under which Muslims (by which I mean people of Muslim background, irrespective of how devoutly they practice their religion) acquired some number of points each time they were convicted of a crime, with the accumulation of some number of points being considered grounds for deportation. Needless to say, any country attempting to implement such a program would have to have complete control over its own borders and extremely strict border checks. Biometric identity checks and pre-flight screening would have to suffice to make sure that people were never allowed back in once deported. This would all be simple enough. However, there are two absolute barriers to this process and one conceptual difficulty of note.

The first of the two barriers is citizenship. If a given criminal of foreign origin has dual citizenship, say between the UK and Pakistan, then it would be a simple matter to revoke his British citizenship. However, if he had only British citizenship, then it is difficult to see how he could be deported back to his ancestral country. Some countries, such as, I believe, Morocco, do not allow their citizens to renounce their citizenship, and will continue to treat such people and their children as full citizens irrespective of any other considerations. This has the potential to be a great boon for a country such as the Netherlands, badly afflicted as it is by a shockingly criminal and parasitic Moroccan population.

Here, however, we run into the second barrier. As I have discussed in previous essays, it is entirely possible that certain Muslim countries could refuse entry to flights attempting to deport people in this manner, or refuse to allow them to enter the country in some other fashion (severing diplomatic relations and all transport links, for example). I do not wish to revisit this in detail here. Suffice it to say that it is a potentially serious problem that may, in some cases, make large-scale deportations virtually impossible.

The conceptual difficulty referred to above is as follows. If we decided that we wanted to exclude blacks in the UK once they had acquired the requisite number of points, we would be faced with the difficulty of deciding who exactly was black. This would be a difficult task now that a significant degree of interbreeding with other populations has taken place, and one that would involve a great deal of unpleasantness and arbitrariness. Would the same be true if we targeted Muslims instead of blacks?

It seems to me that the very strong tendency of all Muslim groups to marry and have children within their own communities would make the determination of foreign origin relatively straightforward for the Muslim population, by which I mean that the extremely fuzzy boundary between those of foreign and native origin when we look at blacks and whites is replaced by a relatively clear boundary when we concern ourselves with Muslim and non-Muslim. Furthermore, a history of Islamic religious observance could be taken as proof of ‘Muslimness’ and grounds for exclusion even if a given criminal was only partially of foreign origin. On these grounds, I conclude that this problem is surmountable, though the problems it throws up would have to be considered very carefully.

Internment

Under a system of internment, the points system for determining who was to be excluded would be identical to that for deportation, as the problem and the end goal would be the same in both cases. Once exclusion had been decided upon, the criminal would be interned until it was determined whether or not he could be deported. If deportation proved not to be an option, internment would then become permanent until the criminal left the country in whatever fashion.

Internment has great disadvantages relative to deportation. It creates the constant possibility of riots, breakouts, hunger strikes, and the like. Moreover, it would result in constant political opposition from Muslim fellow-travellers and ‘human rights’ activists at home and abroad, which is to say that these people would try to reverse it. Lastly, it would be extremely expensive and require the construction of some number of large internment facilities somewhere off in the countryside of the country in question, and undoubtedly the stationing of army units nearby to quell possible disturbances.

These caveats notwithstanding, internment may well become necessary, so it needs to be discussed. Let me state up front that I take it as given that the ultimate objective of internment would be to convince the interned to leave the country, relinquishing, in the case of the UK, their British citizenship and handing over their British passports. To this end, it would have to be impressed upon them that they had absolutely no future in the UK and no prospect of returning to British society under any circumstances whatsoever.

One can think of this as an internal exile that we would be trying to convert into an external exile. Needless to say, it would make most sense for the interned to leave for their country of ancestral origin, Pakistanis to Pakistan, Somalis to Somalia, and so on. From the perspective of European peoples, however, the crucial thing is that they leave the UK after biometric data had been taken to facilitate their future identification and continued exclusion.

The camps themselves would have to be sufficient to hold, in total, at least several thousand people at any given time. I predict a fairly rapid throughput once it can properly be impressed upon inhabitants that their exclusion from British society is indeed permanent. They should be as unlike prisons as possible to impress upon all concerned that they are not prisons, and that their inhabitants have passed beyond the criminal justice system as it is conventionally understood. Within and without the camps, it will need to be understood that the camps are settlements for Muslims who have made it clear that they cannot be allowed to be a part of British society. They will have prison cells to be temporarily inhabited by those who break their rules, but the underlying notion is that inmates should have as much freedom of motion and action as is possible within the camps, as would be the case in any other settlement.

That said, segregation of men and women into separate camps would be absolutely essential. Exclusion must be a reproductive dead end unless and until the excluded leave for their countries of origin. There is no particular reason to allow rough equivalents of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and other countries to spring up on European soil. Note that this is no different to the reproductive dead end that is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Since the vast majority of the excluded would be male, this sexual segregation would not be too much of an issue anyway.

Given that the camps would aim to allow inhabitants as normal a life as possible under the circumstances, there would be opportunities for inhabitants to engage in productive labour, and enjoy the fruits of that labour. However, these would not extend to visits from anyone outside the camps. Exclusion means exclusion. Of course, considering the character of the people going into these camps, there would undoubtedly be a certain amount of unpleasantness directed from inmate to inmate, and from inmate to guard. Such behaviour would not be tolerated and would result in punishment up to and including indefinite periods of solitary confinement. It would also be advisable to have separate areas for those of different racial, religious, and/or national backgrounds to minimize tensions within the camps.

I touched earlier on the subject of how large the camps would have to be, and what the expected rate of throughput might be, i.e. the rate at which the interned left Britain for good. Examining this issue in any detail would require legal and other expertise that I do not possess, so I will restrict myself here to a brief observation concerning the rate of flow of the interned out of the country. If the decision had been made to intern, in the UK, a given Pakistani pending deportation, it is of no interest to the British people where that person ends up. If it can somehow be arranged for him to get transit to a third country (Turkey, say), then he can be provided with whatever travel documents are necessary to allow him to get that far, where he would no longer be our problem. This could allow the partial circumvention of restrictions imposed on the deportation of, say, Pakistanis by the Pakistani government. Turning back flights from the UK for political reasons would be one thing, but attempting to turn back a Turkish airline carrying an excluded Pakistani would simply bring the Pakistani government into conflict with the Turkish government, the Pakistani in question, and his friends, family and supporters in Pakistan. Either way, it has nothing to do with us once the person in question has left. Why the Turkish government should allow transit through their country in this matter is a difficult question to which I have no answer. Indirect deportation may well prove to be an important part of the exclusion process nonetheless.

The Left of the Incarceration Point

We have now laid down the bare bones of a solution to the Human Substrate Problem posed to us by criminal, hostile, and parasitic Muslim populations. It should be clear to readers that the overlap between this problem and the basic problem of Islamization is very significant, as is the overlap in the solutions. I have tried to keep this overlap in the background throughout the three parts of this essay for the sake of conceptual clarity. Here, however, I would like to step outside this constraint and highlight, in closing, how the exclusion system outlined above could be used not only with the objective of crime reduction, but with the specific intent of de-Islamizing our countries. It should go without saying that the following discussion assumes that Muslim immigration has already been permanently halted.

An application of the exclusion system to fight crime can be considered a reactive application, whereas the avid de-Islamizer would be looking to adopt what we might call a proactive application instead. This consists of doing everything we have already discussed, but also using the exclusion system to hack away at the Muslim population on the left-hand side of the incarceration point. This hacking will not be arbitrary; rather, it will consist of putting into the exclusion system a portion of the problematic substrate to the left of the incarceration point, who we might consider to be those who have come into contact with the law enough to impress their criminal nature upon us, but have not yet been convicted of anything.


Muslim men who abuse their wives and children, Muslims who intimidate Europeans in public, Muslims who justify Muslim terrorism, Muslims who advocate the adoption of sharia law in European countries: it is not difficult to think of people who would fit the bill. Such people could go straight into the exclusion system without ever being exposed to the criminal justice system. Given that the people in question would not have been convicted of criminal offences, there would have to be a separate process for deciding who was to be excluded, but it should not be particularly difficult to devise one. Peremptory hearings, with magistrates pronouncing their verdicts whilst applying hammers to gavels, sounds about right to the current author. Others will have their own thoughts.

We would then have an exclusion system which is heartily funnelling the most seditious, criminal, and dangerous Muslims out of British society, whether to internment camps or beyond. As impressive an achievement as this would be, one is forced to return to the looming difficulty, to wit, that many countries will not cooperate with the deportation of large numbers of their nationals from European countries. In my essay To Push or to Squeeze, I presented an extremely pessimistic analysis which suggested that, rather than the push of deportation, the squeeze of a gradually tightening brutality and oppression of Muslims within European countries would be likely to be relied upon, sooner or later, to de-Islamize European countries. I still consider this analysis to be largely correct, but certain aspects of it can be reconsidered in light of the exclusion system we have now devised.

If European countries were to play host to the type of genocidal tribal violence I have predicted in other essays, it seems probable that internal pressure on Muslim governments around the world would force them to readmit their nationals overseas even if they were not particularly keen to do so. However, it seems that a better solution for all concerned would be for these same Muslim governments to make the same decision without such a descent into savagery in Europe. The beauty of the exclusion system presented above is that it could, in principle, do much to facilitate this.

Imagine a Lebanese-origin youth recently convicted of rape in Germany, for which he has been sentenced to five years in prison and subsequent exclusion. Five years pass, at the end of which he is cast into the exclusion system, which is to say he is interned pending deportation. Though he himself is prepared to be sent back to Lebanon, the Lebanese government refuses to allow his repatriation. He is not a citizen of their country; he is a convicted criminal; his treatment is a breach of his human rights: it is not difficult to imagine the reasons the German government would be presented with.

However, after another year passes, it starts to dawn on the German-resident family of this unhappy rapist that the German government is serious. The fruit of their loins is never getting back into German society. Furthermore, they are never going to see him again and he is never going to have any semblance of a real life unless he can get out of the internment camp and back to Lebanon. How could we then expect them to act?

If the only barrier to his deportation and, therefore, to his eventual reunion with his family and return to a real life, is the uncooperative attitude of the Lebanese government, it is surely to be expected that his family will exert pressure on that government to allow him into Lebanon. It is also at least reasonably likely that they will decide to live in Lebanon themselves, both to better exert that pressure and to be together as a family once it has paid dividends. Even if the young criminal is not himself a Lebanese citizen, his parents almost certainly will be, and their demands, in-country, for their son to be able to join them will not be easily ignored, even by a relatively despotic and callous government.

In this manner does the exclusion system allow the greatest single potential barrier to a relatively non-violent de-Islamization of Europe to be undermined. A situation will be created in which Muslim parents living in European countries will be:

a)		willing to have their children deported,
b)		keen to apply pressure to their home governments to allow that deportation, and
c)		likely to go home themselves, for reasons already explained.

To say that this makes the exclusion system a useful tool for de-Islamizers would be something of an understatement. Indeed, it is probably the single best option for any government wishing to de-Islamize its country in the least bloody and unpleasant manner for all concerned.

In essence, the exclusion system can be considered an extremely fiendish squeeze of the Muslim population of any given European country, in the sense that I used the term in To Push or to Squeeze. It has the potential to overcome all sorts of opposition to the deportation of problematic Muslims that only raw brutality would otherwise be able to deal with.

Contrary to certain charges levelled at me in the past, I am not keen to see my country and its neighbours descend into widespread tribal violence. It is for this reason that I am so delighted with the broader potential of the exclusion system, which, I reiterate, holds out the possibility of being a tool of great utility in the hands of those who are keen to ensure that the worst elements of the Muslim populations of their countries go back where they come from.

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“We Are Infiltrated”

CBN, unlike all the networks and the major cable outlets, does excellent hard-hitting reporting on Islamization and Islamic terrorism.

Here’s retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin talking about the true nature of Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood mujahid:


Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

[Post ends here]

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Dereliction of Duty

Imagine that you’re a distraught husband whose wife was just murdered during a home invasion by a Somali. You were a witness to the crime, and you live in Minneapolis, so you know all too well what Somalis look like and how they speak.

Naturally, when the cops talk to you, you tell them that the murderer was a Somali. The lead detective looks at you more closely and asks you in a less-than-friendly fashion how you know the killer was a Somali. So you tell him — the guy looked like a Somali, dressed like a Somali, and shouted at your wife in a Somali accent just before he shot her.

The detective tells you that he will have to write you up for making racist remarks, and the next day you are visited by two officers from the Diversity and Community Cohesion Division of the police force, who pressure you to sign up for an intensive three-week multicultural sensitivity training course.

When the police send out an all-points bulletin on the suspect, they include height, weight, hair length, and clothing style, but neglect to mention the perp’s race or Somali accent. When you call down to the station to ask about this omission, they tell you that state law forbids them to “profile” suspects in such a fashion. Not only that, they are required to spend at least as much time on any given case investigating white suspects as they are on “minorities”.

Nevertheless, the murderer is so incompetent that, despite all the legal impediments, the police manage to find him and arrest him. The day after his arraignment, his lawyer — chosen and paid for by the state from the local Social Justice and Legal Aid Foundation — argues successfully before a judge that his client must be released, because over the last six months the Minneapolis police have arrested a disproportionate number of Somalis, thereby discriminating against them.

So the murderer walks away free, and you start attending your Multicultural Awareness course, which, as a matter of interest, is subcontracted by the city to the local office of ACORN.

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OK, I admit it: the above story is a bit far-fetched, at least for the USA. But for Britain it’s hardly even a fantasy — and we will be emulating the British before you know it.

Under an Orthodox Multiculturalism regime, justice is not served by investigating a case objectively, determining the facts, and punishing the guilty.

Multiculturalism is concerned first and foremost with the correct predetermined treatment of defined social groups. Whatever benefits or punishment are handed out must fall upon those various groups in the proper proportions.

Individuals are irrelevant. Facts are irrelevant.

Objective, factual language is a hindrance, and must be modified to better serve the larger Multicultural goals.

The behavior of the Multicultural authorities is more Orwellian than George Orwell could ever have imagined. Newspeak has nothing on Diversitalk.

I bring all this up as a way of introducing an article about the latest in Multicultural Dyslexic Disorder as reported from the UK by The Sun.

Before you jump all over me: yes, I know what kind of paper The Sun is. But regular readers will have noticed that similar articles appear virtually every night in the news feed, taken from The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Times, and other venerable Fleet Street organs. This is not an anomaly.

Here’s the Brave New Language being forced on government apparatchiks in the UK:

Ministers Have Been Banned From Using Words Like Islamist and Fundamentalist — in Case They Offend Muslims.

An eight-page Whitehall guide lists words they should not use when talking about terrorism in public and gives politically correct alternatives.

They are told not to refer to Muslim extremism as it links Islam to violence. Instead, they are urged to talk about terrorism or violent extremism.

Fundamentalist and Jihadi are also banned because they make an “explicit link” between Muslims and terror.

Ministers should say criminals, murderers or thugs instead. Radicalisation must be called brainwashing and talking about moderate or radical Muslims is to be avoided as it “splits the community”.

- - - - - - - - -

Islamophobia is also out as it is received as “a slur that singles out Muslims”.

The guide, produced by the secretive Research, Information and Communications Unit in the Home Office, tell ministers to “avoid implying that specific communities are to blame” for terrorism. It says more than 2,000 people are engaged in terror plots.

The guidance was branded “daft” last night by a special adviser to ex-Communities Secretary Hazel Blears. Paul Richards said: “Unless you can describe what you’re up against, you’re never going to defeat it. Ministers need to be leading the debate on Islamic extremism and they can’t do that if they have one hand tied behind their back.”

The Home Office said: “This is about using appropriate language to have counter-terrorism impact. It would be foolish to do anything else.”

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the mass insanity described above is that Her Majesty’s Government can no longer perform its primary function, which is to protect and defend the subjects of the Queen. On the contrary, the behavior of the government demonstrably gives aid and comfort to the enemies of those same subjects. Official state policy actually increases the chances that Britons will be killed by their enemies.

This is an unprecedented dereliction of duty.

In a sane world, it would be considered treason.


Hat tip: AA.

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Death and Multiculturalism

Our Austrian correspondent ESW has translated an article about the multicultural approach to death and dying as it is practiced in Salzburg. According to ORF.at:

State clinics: Special Rooms For Dying Patients

State clinics in the Austrian province of Salzburg will offer special rooms for dying Muslim patients. These rooms are part of an EU-wide project on the theme of migrant-friendly hospitals, of which non-professional interpreters are also a part.

Salzburg state clinics are currently engaged in intensive deliberations about death and dying in other cultures. This is the reason for the two special rooms set aside, where for instance Muslims can do the ritual washing of their dead.

One out of every ten deaths in Salzburg clinics is a person who comes from a different cultural background. Additional training for employees now concentrates on death and dying in these cultures, according to Margarethe Hader, in charge of patient care.

“The multicultural farewell rooms are visible sign of this focus and the motivation for our employees in order to take care of and deal with these people in a respectful manner,” says Hader.

- - - - - - - - -

“A second room is already being planned. Ritual washings will then be possible. Regrettably, this is not possible at the moment.”

Doris Mack, the senior physician at the state clinic, oversees quality management and is the initiator of these “migrant-friendly hospitals”.

“I myself have learned a lot. German and Austrian patients prefer a pain-free life until their death. But this is not the case in other religions. Some religions prescribe a certain level of pain tolerance. And there are certain rituals, such as ritual washings, which must be followed, or even prayer rooms.”

The multicultural farewell rooms will be coordinated according to the requirements of every religious group, says the assistant for nursing management, Herbert Herbst.

“We are particularly proud of having representatives of all fourteen religious groups in Austria sit down and postulate their quality criteria in the realm of hospital counseling. This is how state clinics want to show their respect for other cultures.”

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/6/2009

I got back from my day trip very late, no time to post anything but the news feed.

I met this afternoon with some very interesting and well-informed people from the D.C. Counterjihad. One of them is an author, and I may get hired to edit his book. It will be a while before I find out.

Take a look at the NYT story about African-Iraqis, who have been an oppressed minority in Mesopotamia for centuries. Some of them say that illegal slavery continued into the 1950s.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Esther, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Lurker from Tulsa, Sean O’Brian, spackle, Steen, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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	USA
	Anti-Muslims Discrimination Up: CAIR
	Are Officials Hiding Details in Hijacking ‘Dry Run’?
	Binghamton: 3 Muslim Students Say They Tried to Avoid Al-Zahrani
	Climate Change Hoax Ignored by Obama, Gore and the Elite Media
	Tulsa Business Closes Without Warning, More Than 100 People Jobless
	Canada
	Born in Canada, Educated, From Respected Families and They Might be Fighting for the Shadowy Al-Shabab
	The Canadians Who Changed the Climate Debate
	Europe and the EU
	But Religion Has Nothing to Do With it: Minarets Are Political Symbols
	‘Climategate’ Professor Phil Jones Awarded £13 Million in Research Grants
	Copenhagen Mayor Pleads With Climate Change Delegates Not to Use Prostitutes… As Sex Workers Offer Their Service Free
	English Defence League Protest Leads to Clashes With Police in Nottingham
	EU: Baroness Ashton, Her Communist Lover and a Riddle of Moscow Gold
	Finland: Female Pastors Often Harassed by Parishioners
	Germany: Berlin and Hamburg Attacks an Anarchist ‘Declaration of War’
	Germany: Hamburg Police Attack ‘Was to Mark Death of Greek Student’
	Germany: A Tale of 7,000-Year-Old Cannibalism
	Italy: Leading British Weekly Calls for PM to Resign
	Men Seek to Kill Woman for Adultery in Spain
	Northern Ireland: Republican Terrorists Plan ‘Christmas Spectacular’ Attack on British Troops
	Two Camps Demonstrate Against Obama in Oslo
	UK: George Osborne’s Brother Becomes a Muslim to Marry His Love of 14 Years
	UK: Student’s Dream of Flying an Raf Jet Shattered by Thugs Who Kicked Him So Hard His Right Eye Popped Out
	Video: Swedish Store Pulls North Korea Jeans
	Balkans
	Serbia: Church Enjoys Greatest Trust Among Population
	Serbia-France: Agreement on Youth Mobility Signed
	Serbia: Army to Turn Professional in 2011
	North Africa
	Algeria: Miminum Monthly Salary Rises to 145 Euros
	Egypt: Poverty Drives Three Men to Suicide
	Egypt Detains 10 Senior Muslim Brotherhood Members
	Morocco: EU Funds Game Show for Young, Prize is Brussels Trip
	Veil’s Spread Fans Egypt’s Fear of Hard-Line Islam
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Hamas May Not be Moderate, But It’s Cracking Down on Extremism
	Middle East
	Banking: Turkey Eyes Selling Samurai Bonds
	Disappointment in Turkey Over Cancelled Trip
	In Iraq’s African Enclave, Color is Plainly Seen
	Iran Says Ukrainian Kids Are New Victims of Israeli ‘Organ Theft’
	Iran Summons Swiss Ambassador Over Minarets
	Iran Bans Foreign Media From Rally Fearing Protests
	Iran: 20 More Enrichment Sites Needed
	Italy: New Book Puts Mafia on the Map
	Lebanon Report: Attack Against UNIFIL Thwarted
	Lot’s Sin and That “Extreme Solitude”
	More Than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings
	Muslims Will Empty Their Swiss Accounts: Turkish Minister
	Rafsanjani Accuses Iran Rulers of ‘Intolerance’
	Turkish People Spend Nearly 92 Million Euro for Handguns
	Russia
	Vatican-Russian Relations Upgraded
	South Asia
	‘4:000 Italians in Afghanistan’
	Gordon Brown Snubbed by Soldiers’ ‘Curtain’ Protest
	India: Operation Green Hunt Launched Against Maoists
	India: Muslim Clerics Pledge to Eradicate Polio
	India: Muslim Leaders Against Street Protest on December 6
	Pakistan: Slain Lawmaker’s Father Urges Elimination of All Terrorists
	Pakistan: Mosque Attackers Are Not Muslims: Malik
	Far East
	China Sentences 3 More to Death Over Xinjiang Riots: Xinhua
	Special Investigation: Peter Hitchens — Blood and Fear on Happiness Street as China Threatens to Obliterate Another Ancient Culture
	Australia — Pacific
	Australian Police Quell Violent Anti-Israel Riots
	Muslims Urged to Accept Minorities
	Latin America
	Mexico Busts Gang That Held 107 People in Slavery, Arrests 25
	Culture Wars
	Cardinal: Statement on Gays Was Misrepresented
	Cardinal Draws Vatican Rebuke for Anti-Gay Talk
	Fury as Lesbian is Chosen by Anglican Church to be a Bishop
	Lesbian Awarded Custody of Christian’s Only Child
	General
	Islam’s Failure to Modernise. It’s Time the Muslims Engaged in Self-Criticism

Anti-Muslims Discrimination Up: CAIR

WASHINGTON — Discrimination against Muslims continues to grow in America, where Islamophobic rhetoric is used to smear Muslims and undermine their continuous strive for inclusion, according to a report by America’s largest Muslim civil rights group.

“There is an increase in civil rights cases, the highest reported to CAIR since the foundation of this report,” Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told IslamOnline.net on Thursday, December 3.

The group released earlier Thursday its 14th annual report on the state of Muslims civil rights in the US.

The report — the only annual study of its kind — offers a summary of incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment reported to CAIR during 2008.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Are Officials Hiding Details in Hijacking ‘Dry Run’?

Airline silent on witness’ testimony of mock shootings aboard plane

Testimony of a passenger in the gate of Nov. 17 AirTran Flight 297 suggests the airline may be deliberately leaving out key details of an onboard incident that affirm widespread speculation the flight was the subject of a “dry run” by Muslim terrorists.

Dr. Keith Robinson, a Houston, Texas, chaplain who occasionally works through the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told WND he is standing by his written account of the incident, which includes testimony that a passenger told him Arabic men sang, danced and pretended to shoot the other passengers before the plane was returned to the gate.

None of these details have been addressed in AirTran’s account of what happened aboard Flight 297.

[Comments from JD: Wow. You gotta read all the details in the article. Airlines should start doing security video recordings of the passengers in order to collect evidence of such activities.]

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Binghamton: 3 Muslim Students Say They Tried to Avoid Al-Zahrani

VESTAL — Encounters with accused killer Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani led several local Muslims to take steps to avoid him when they saw him on campus or elsewhere in the community.

Al-Zahrani, the man accused of fatally stabbing Binghamton University Professor Richard Antoun on campus Friday, had accused fellow Middle Eastern students of following him, answering a greeting of peace with an obscene insult, and disparaging a local mosque, according to three students interviewed Saturday night.

[…]

Though Al-Zahrani claimed to be Muslim, the students said, a true follower of the religion would not have harmed a professor or have spoken as Al-Zahrani did. Kasim Kopuz, imam of the Islamic Association of the Southern Tier, said association members were not familiar with Al-Zahrani.

One student was offended by a comment Al-Zahrani made to him about a year ago.

“He insulted Islam, my religion, which is a good religion,” said Samer Salameh, a master’s degree candidate, who said Al-Zahrani used the phrase ‘garbage in Johnson City’ in an apparent reference to a local mosque. “That is not acting like a Muslim.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Climate Change Hoax Ignored by Obama, Gore and the Elite Media

Opponent’s of so-called Cap-and-Trade environmental legislation are quick to remind Obama’s political allies that besides being destructive to the US economy, such legislation is based — wholly or partially — on faulty or manipulated science.

“These liberal-left politicians and activists see an opportunity to use so-called global warming as a means to push forward their Marxist philosophy. Part of the agenda is to take away wealth from the American people and give it to Third-World countries,” said political strategist Mike Baker.

The evidence provided by the intercepted emails of renowned climatologists has created one of the biggest scandals in the last decade — if not the century, according to Baker.

Thousands of emails and documents allegedly “stolen” from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.

These leaked emails provide compelling evidence that much of what is being touted as scientific fact is in reality erroneous, fraudulent, and perhaps criminal if participating scientists used their phony research to acquire government grants.

Several emails contained discussions about how to best portray data sets, among other topics. Scientists maintain their comments have been taken out of context, but those who fiercely oppose the climate change thesis argue the emails invalidate all the research.

Even the leftist newspaper Telegraph described its newsroom’s shock over discovering that the documents revealed scientists were “cooking the books,” in order to prove the earth is warming at an alarming rate.

What is even more shocking is that the authors of the emails are not just any old bunch of academics. “Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” stated Baker.

Baker points to the senders and recipients of the leaked emails saying that they are a “who’s who” of science. Their ranks include Doctors Michael Mann, Ben Santer, Kevin Trenbeth, and even Al Gore’s climate guru, Dr. James Hansen. Gore used Hansen’s studies in his Oscar-winning motion picture An Inconvenient Truth.

Even after being caught with the “smoking gun,” they and their defenders have offered every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offense.

[…]

Meanwhile in the US, major media outlets continue to ignore the story, according to the media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media.

Since the emails where first discovered, ABC had only mentioned the story once, on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopolous, and CBS and NBC still has never reported the leaked emails on the morning or evening news, according to AIM.

“Rather than focus on this huge scientific scandal, the timing of which is critical considering the cap and trade legislation stalled in the Senate and the upcoming Copenhagen meeting supposedly intended to combat global warming— the mainstream media have done their best to ignore it.

“The scandal involves the destruction of data, the manipulation and cover-up of data, and a plan to punish scientific journals that might dare to publish the views of skeptics of the man made global warming theory. They realize that a full airing of the facts would likely undermine an important part of President Obama’s agenda, and expose the corruption of a significant part of the scientific establishment,” writes AIM’s contributing editor Allie Duzett.

Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview with the Washington Post from that Obama’s decision to go to Copenhagen suggests that “he’ll be here at the end to help seal the deal.”

“The Washington Post is one of the culprits in this enormous cover up,” accuses Mike Baker. “And why aren’t reporters flocking to Al Gore for his reaction to this proof that climate change is a farce?”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Tulsa Business Closes Without Warning, More Than 100 People Jobless

TULSA, OK — More than 100 people have lost their jobs after a Tulsa business closed without any warning. Automated Research and Marketing told employees to go home on Tuesday after it couldn’t provide any paychecks. Now some employees say it has put a cloud over Christmas.

“Well, I never thought I would actually work for a company that would just run off with my money,” said Myia Cole, a former employee.

“I feel like I was robbed, that’s how I feel like,” said Eunice Reed, a former employee.

Eunice Reed and Myia Cole are close friends and both are out of a job.

“It’s just devastating that I can be working somewhere and then all of the sudden someone just disappear,” said Eunice Reed.

They both worked for Automated Research and Marketing or ARM Services, it’s a telemarketing company at the Fontana Shopping Center.

The doors are now locked and the building is vacant after shutting down operations on Tuesday. No one answered the phone when The News On 6 called the Tulsa location and the number for a corporate office in Arkansas is disconnected.

Cole and Reed say the company owes them three weeks worth of paychecks.

“I’m just holding on. I mean, it’s Christmas, (a couple of gifts) is all I got right there for my kids,” Myia Cole said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

The Tulsa Better Business Bureau says the employees may be able to get their money back, but it will be an uphill battle. So while the employees want the money by Christmas, the BBB says it will most likely take several months, if they get it back at all.

“No food, no job, no money,” said Myia Cole.

“Lost” is how Cole describes her life now. She’s not sure what will happen next. She’s not even sure why she has no job.

“Just high and dry. You try to do the right thing, try to be a good citizen and this is what you get, this is what you get in the end,” said Myia Cole.

— Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa

[Return to headlines]

Born in Canada, Educated, From Respected Families and They Might be Fighting for the Shadowy Al-Shabab

The photos were laid out one after another, headshots of five young Somali-Canadian men who disappeared in mid-October.

The man from the East Africa desk of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service asked anguished parents the usual questions: Do you recognize any of the men in these pictures? Did you know them, or did your son? Did anything change in his life recently? Any indication of new friends or new interests?

The families often had no answers. Yes, some sons had recently chastised their parents for not showing sufficient religious devotion, friends say. Others had dropped out of college or lost interest in their studies. But most parents remain bewildered by their sons’ disappearance.

The men left the country without a word of warning. They range in age from early 20s to early 30s and all worshipped at the Abu Huraira mosque in North York, community leaders say. Two or three have since called home to say they travelled to Kenya, but didn’t say whether they ever plan to return to Toronto. The language they used in the phone calls is similar, an indication that they may have been told what to say.

Security officials believe the missing men have crossed Kenya’s northern border with Somalia to join al-Shabab — literally “the youth” — an al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist movement that has swept across southern and central Somalia.

“Somalia’s fragile coalition government appears helpless against a widespread Islamist insurgency that is gradually tightening its grip,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said in a speech last month. He added he was particularly concerned about the jihad spreading to “Somali-Canadians who travel to Somalia to fight and then return.”

On Thursday, a suicide bombing believed to be the work of the al-Shabab ripped through a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu, killing three Somali cabinet ministers, several journalists and more than a dozen students. Similar bombings have been perpetrated by Somalis raised in Europe and the United States.

In Somalia, and increasingly in Canada, community leaders view such attacks as war on their own futures. The refugee communities that fled the civil strife 20 years ago had hoped that generations raised in the West would break the cycle of bloodshed, poverty and anarchy. The cruel twist is that a handful of youth within the Somali diaspora are being pulled back to their homeland to perpetuate it.

Security officials say al-Shabab is to Somalia what the Taliban was to Afghanistan a decade ago: Violent Islamist warriors who promise law and order, but whose barbaric practices include cutting off the limbs of thieves and stoning teenage rape victims to death.

Somalia hasn’t had a stable national government since 1991. The U.S., the UN, Ethiopia and the African Union have all tried unsuccessfully to bring a semblance of security to the country. The current leadership, known as the Transitional Federal Government, has limited reach even within the capital, Mogadishu. It’s opposed by several rebel groups, most notably al-Shabab, as well as the pirates that hold sway in the northern province of Puntland.

Last month, U.S. prosecutors charged a group of American Somalis with recruiting at least 20 of their own kinsmen from the Minneapolis area to join the al-Shabab, including some who have become suicide bombers. Until recently, no one in Canada thought Toronto would be the next target.

“We used to argue with our American friends. We would say, ‘We will never have this extremism in Canada because we are a tolerant society.’ … None of our mosques were known for spreading an extremist message,” said Abdurahman Jibril, head of the Somali Canadian National Council, a group that lobbies to improve social services for Somali immigrants.

What’s most troubling for Somali-Canadian leaders is that these are not young men who struggled to adjust to life in the West. At least two were born in Canada. The others were educated here from primary school onwards. They are the children of respected families who have found work and integrated into the broader community, leaders say. They attended either college or university. Most of the missing men can’t even speak Somali, the community leaders add.

Parents are perplexed: They still see the Somali conflict as an internecine tribal war, not a religious conflict. How could their sons reconcile returning to a ravaged country their families sought so desperately escape?

A further contradiction is that they may have joined a movement based primarily in Somalia’s south, in the city of Kismayo, even though four of the five men are descended from families from the relatively stable northern province of Somaliland.

Somaliland was overseen by the British during the colonial era, while the south was run by the Italians. Somalis generalize by describing northerners as more reserved, and southerners as more outgoing. Northerners live primarily in the Scarborough area, while southerners dominate the area known as Little Mogadishu, around Kipling Avenue and Dixon Road. The bulk of Toronto’s 50,000 Somalis live in the apartment towers and public-housing projects that dot that corner of Etobicoke.

Omar Kireh, administrator of the Abu Huraira mosque, where the men prayed, said it’s strange that northerners would join a southern insurgency. But nothing is predictable with the younger generation, he added, who know little of the country’s fractious tribal politics.

“It’s upsetting. Their parents are worried,” said Mr. Kireh, a soft-spoken middle-aged Somali with a grey beard. “Think about someone missing a loved one for just one night. This is much worse.”

His mosque, a nondescript, out-of-the-way building on a North York cul-de-sac, started above a convenience store not long ago, and has quickly grown by promising to focus on youth and back-to-basics Islam.

In the fall, the mosque’s new, hard-line imam, a charismatic young Somali named Said Rageah, created a minor controversy. In a lecture to the congregation, he said Muslims in Canada have to stop “so-called Muslims” who team up with “kuffar” (infidels) to stop the spread of Islamic dress. Imam Rageah urged true Muslims to stand fast for the right to cover up, saying he wanted to see beards, niqabs , and other Islamic dress “everywhere in the city.”

Imam Rageah was not at the mosque last week, but Mr. Kireh, described the controversy as a tempest in a teapot. He said the sermon was taken out of context and the real concern is getting the missing men back home.

To protect their families, he won’t reveal the men’s identities, and he said he’s not sure what might have motivated them to leave the country. Perhaps it was for the sake of adventure, he suggests. But he stresses that no one yet knows where they are, or whether they have joined al-Shabab.

Recruitment is a source of much speculation in the Somali community. Many say it was done through the Internet, perhaps in video-chat rooms that leave no record of what has been said.

Others raise the possibility of a mysterious sixth man, an older gentleman who travelled frequently between Canada and Somalia and may have acted as a recruiter.

“I’m told that the person who recruited them left the country before them and then made arrangements for them to follow him,” said Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.

How they were targeted is still a matter of debate. Many mothers say they worry their sons could be next.

“Al-Shabab is going to take the bright ones: Usually it’s clean cut, conscientious well-educated people. That’s why you always hear these kids are from good families. These are middle-class kids. That’s why it’s so shocking. If they can infiltrate these kids then nobody is safe,” said one Somali community leader, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s working to find the missing men.

“Today, al-Shabab, al-Qaeda, they’re an attraction for the young people. In our day it was socialism and injustice … now it’s Islam, and the injustice they see is Americans bombarding the children of Palestine and Afghanistan,” he said.

If the men have joined the insurgents, they have likely already been moved to a training camp in the bush outside Kismayo to be cleansed of their Western tendencies, he added. Eventually they will be pushed into the fight.

If things have already gone that far, it will be difficult for the men to extricate themselves, should they have a change of heart.

Mr. Hussen said two Minnesota men who tried to leave were executed by the insurgents.

The United States and Australia have formally blacklisted al-Shabab as a banned terrorist group. Canada has yet to follow suit.

Part of its reluctance may have to do with complications arising from the kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout, who was held for 15 months in Somalia until her release a couple of weeks ago.

A Somali gang shuffled the Canadian journalist through some al Shabab-controlled cities and threatened to hand her over to the terror group at times. Designating al-Shabab as a banned terror group could’ve been taken as a provocation that might have endangered her life.

The CSIS agent who met with parents of the missing men reassured them that if the men return to Canada they may not be subject to sanction under Canadian law, because the group is not formally banned. The RCMP, though, say travel to support any terrorist group can be considered a crime.

— Hat tip: Vlad Tepes

[Return to headlines]

The Canadians Who Changed the Climate Debate

Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have discovered faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies behind the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As Richard Foot reports, that’s made them pretty unpopular in some circles.

[…]

McIntyre contacted Ross Mc-Kitrick, a University of Guelph statistical economist who was also analyzing the science behind the IPCC reports. Together they unearthed evidence that Mann’s calculations were predisposed to producing a hockey stick-shaped graph, with sharply rising temperatures in the 20th century.

They also showed that Mann’s calculations ignored the data showing a major warming trend in the 15th century, much like the warming of the 20th century.

“That discovery hit me like a bombshell,” wrote one scientist in the MIT Technology Review in 2004. “Suddenly the ‘hockey stick,’ the poster child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

But Religion Has Nothing to Do With it: Minarets Are Political Symbols

As to the decision by Switzerland to ban minarets, I would like first of all to say that, in my years as a correspondent from Jerusalem, I had to bear the Muezzin’s call from a nearby mosque every night at 4 a.m., much before the cock crow. And nor far away from him came many other similar voices. However, I never thought that the Muezzin had to be silent. In his village, he does not sing to be heard also from me, but to call his followers to pray. This is religious freedom and Jerusalem gives it to everybody. Thinking that, down there, he was trying to convey a political message in addition to a religious one, would mean to go well beyond what is legitimate for a person who is democratic, liberal and respectful of other people’s culture and religion.

Actually, except for some pathological cases, Islamophobia is an invention of the U.N. Indeed, in 2004, the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan officially defined it as the cause of frustration for many Muslims, without mentioning the rampant jihad and other huge problems. In fact, in most countries of origin and abroad, the official Islam has not accepted the universal declaration of human rights. But it has responded with other initiatives such as the Cairo Declaration, which states that “anyone has the right to support what is right and to warn against what is wrong and evil in line with the Islamic Sharia”.

The ultimate reason that led the Swiss to say no to new minarets, is not poor respect for religious freedom. It is not even the loss of identity that is driving us — erroneously — to ask for the cross on our flag. It has nothing to do with this. There are many simple reasons of diffidence that prevent from wishing for the expansion of Islam. Nor should we imagine that this choice invites the Muslim to embrace extremism. There are indeed other reasons behind jihadism — that is fed only by itself and by its unflinching decision to convert the world. The Swiss watch the TV and are concerned: the Sharia leads to death sentences, to the hanging of homosexuals, to stoning people to death. In general, Islamic countries are ruled by dictatorships, the dissidents suffer, they die. The Christians are persecuted, let alone the Jews. The groups and the countries that cry their faith louder are also the most evident ones: certainly both Ahmadinejad’s Iran and the Hezbollah, or Hamas or Al Qaida, represent negative, terrorist models.

Of course, the Islam is not all like this. But, let us talk about it. Let us thoroughly examine the problems without being accused of Islamophobia; we have a problem, either we solve it by looking at the Islamic immigration in its eyes, or soon this concern will turn into rejection. And the idea that the true Islam is elsewhere with respect to jihad is not able to placate these fears within the public opinion: there are few and rare instances in which a brave Islamic voice speaks to guarantee the respect for democracy, sexuality, converted individuals, dissidents. It is the politically correct denial that makes jihad prosper: in Switzerland, after the arrest of eight people who allegedly collaborated to some suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia, the reaction of the head of a local Muslim group was that “the problem is not the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, but the intesification of Islamophobia”. In the USA, the same happened after the Fort Hood incident.

It is forbidden to laugh for some cartoons that talk about Islam. It is forbidden to deal with the terrifying oppression of women, it is disgraceful to stress that there is an evident identification between the Islam and totalitarian regimes. It is horrible to raise the issue of honor killing, polygamy and of disfiguring women with acid that push us back in time (yes, many of these episodes result from tribal and not by religious habits, but please let us look at the geographical and sociological distribution of these episodes) and especially it is generic to speak about jihad… And then, since whatever is concrete is forbidden, the reaction is against the symbols of the Islam.

There are millions of mosques without minarets in Islamic countries. But if they are built close to churches, they are taller, more proud and powerful. The construction of an Islamic place of worship has a series of explicit secular meanings that always reiterate the holy competition of the Islam to conquer the world. Many mosques have been built on ancient Jewish and Christian temples.

A revolt against the politically correct on the Islam may occur anywhere and the trigger will not be religious intolerance: it does not belong to us or to Switzerland or to Europe.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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‘Climategate’ Professor Phil Jones Awarded £13 Million in Research Grants

The professor at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair has successfully received more than £13 million in research funding.

The figure is disclosed in a leaked, internal document posted on the internet by climate change sceptics who have seized upon it as evidence of a funding “gravy train” for scientists conducting research into the area.

The grants were awarded following successful applications made by Professor Phil Jones, who headed up the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

— Hat tip: JD

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Copenhagen Mayor Pleads With Climate Change Delegates Not to Use Prostitutes… As Sex Workers Offer Their Service Free

Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor has written to all 500 climate change delegates pleading with them to abstain from using services of the city’s ‘unsustainable’ prostitutes.

Ritt Bjerregaard, who is hosting her own climate conference for mayors, said: ‘As mayor I have a duty over which image of Copenhagen will be shown during the summit and I think it’s deplorable that you can buy a woman for sex.’

A sex workers organisation has responded by urging its members to offer free sex to anyone attending the meeting .

The city council contacted 160 hotels asking them not to arrange prostitutes for guests attending the conference.

Together with the anti-trafficking organisation, The Nest International, and tourism group Wonderful Copenhagen, it issued postcards featuring the slogan, ‘Be sustainable — don’t buy sex’, which been distributed to hotels.

— Hat tip: JD

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English Defence League Protest Leads to Clashes With Police in Nottingham

Violent clashes erupted between police and right wing demonstrators during a protest just hours after a homecoming parade for British troops.

About 500 protesters from the English Defence League (EDL), many with their faces covered with scarves and hooded tops, marched through Nottingham yesterday decrying Allah and shouting: “We want our country back”.

Other protesters waved Union Flags, St George’s flags and placards which read: “Protect Women, No To Sharia” and “No Surrender”.

Mounted police used batons to keep back some of the demonstrators and police dog handlers were also deployed to contain the crowd.

There were brief scuffles between EDL members and a small group of Asian students who were waving a Pakistani flag.

Earlier in the day thousands of Christmas shoppers gathered to watch 500 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment march through the city.

The homecoming parade followed a six-month tour of duty in the Helmand province of Afghanistan where the regiment lost five soldiers and dozens of its men were injured.

The EDL claims it is not a racist organisation and has no links with the British National Party, but a counter-protest was mounted by Unite Against Fascism.

James Newton, from Nottinghamshire Stop The BNP, said: “The reason we’re here is because we believe the EDL is clearly a racist organisation.”

One EDL member, a serving soldier who declined to be named, said of the student protest: “I look at their protest and there’s a Pakistani flag flying with a Muslim symbol. They’re protesting against the troops and it’s anti-British. I’m not a fascist, I’m not a Nazi but I am British.”

— Hat tip: Gaia

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EU: Baroness Ashton, Her Communist Lover and a Riddle of Moscow Gold

Britain’s new EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton enjoyed a relationship with a hard-line communist who boasted close links to some of Britain’s most militant union leaders.

Lady Ashton dated Communist Party official Duncan Rees for more than two years in the late Seventies.

At the time, Mr Rees, now 56, was the Communist Party of Great Britain’s general secretary.

— Hat tip: JD

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Finland: Female Pastors Often Harassed by Parishioners

Over half of the female pastors in the capital region say they have been recipients of offensive sexual advances, according to a survey by the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church’s news website, Pod.fi.

About one-fifth of the female pastors in Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa responded to the survey in November.

The most common type of harassment was inappropriate conversations. However, some congregates have shown up unwanted at a female pastor’s home, according to Marina Tolonen, the industrial safety officer of Parish Union of Helsinki.

She says this type of harassment is particularly distressing because pastors cannot fire their parishioners.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Germany: Berlin and Hamburg Attacks an Anarchist ‘Declaration of War’

Anarchists attacks on police stations and political offices in Berlin and Hamburg overnight were a “declaration of war” on the state, head of the German Police Union (DPoIG) told The Local on Friday.

Unknown perpetrators, assumed to be left-wing extremists, threw Molotov cocktails, paint bombs and cobblestones at Berlin’s Treptow district Federal Criminal Police (BKA) office overnight. Meanwhile local offices for the centre-left Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Democrats were also vandalised with anti-war graffiti.

Around the same time in Hamburg, about 10 masked perpetrators attacked a police precinct in the Schanzenviertel neighbourhood, setting a police cruiser alight, damaging other police cars and breaking windows with stones.

On Friday afternoon the Berliner Morgenpost also reported that a southern wing of the Chancellory had also been vandalised with three Christmas tree decoration bulbs full of paint.

Though no one was injured in either of the attacks they are a sign of a “new escalation in the spiral of violence,” DPoIG leader Rainer Wendt told The Local.

According to his assessment, the attacks were coordinated between a growing network of anarchists between the two big cities.

“The attacks were anything but spontaneous, and executed in an almost professional manner,” he said.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Germany: Hamburg Police Attack ‘Was to Mark Death of Greek Student’

A group calling themselves ‘the hoodie wearers’ has claimed responsibility for the Hamburg police station attack on Thursday, saying it was to mark the first anniversary of the death of a teenager in Greece who was shot by police.

In a letter to the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper, the group, who set fire to two police cars, set up burning barricades and threw stones at officers, said they were no longer prepared to face riot police.

They used the Greek word Koukoulofori, as a name, which translates roughly to ‘the hoodie wearers’.

“Rather than allowing ourselves to be beaten bloody by the Robocops at demos,” the letter called for those who felt the same way, to undertake similar surprise attacks as that on the police station on Thursday.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Germany: A Tale of 7,000-Year-Old Cannibalism

Remnants have been found in southern Germany

Old civilizations can be credited with a lot of things, from setting the basis of modern societies (Sumer), to boosting astronomical knowledge and mathematics. But, at times, the cities and villages inhabited by our ancestors turned into savage grounds, where people would get killed for no apparent reason. This appears to be the case with the Herxheim, located in what is now southern Germany. The settlement was the scene of gruesome crimes more than 7,000 years ago, when its inhabitants seem to have turned into cannibals for a few decades, Wired reports.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Italy: Leading British Weekly Calls for PM to Resign

London, 3 Dec. (AKI) — One of the world’s most influential magazines, The Economist, has called for the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign. The British weekly was due to publish a controversial editorial, entitled, “Time to say addio (goodbye)”, in its latest edition on Friday.

“The resumption of various court cases involving him or his associates, plus a series of other business and legal issues, are distracting him and his government from their other responsibilities,” the editorial says.

“The damage is visible. With the financial crisis and the recession, attention has shifted from Italy’s economic difficulties to the plight of places like Greece.

“Yet although Italy’s admirable small businesses in the north are thriving, the country as a whole still lags behind badly. In the year to the third quarter its GDP shrank by more than the euro-area average, and it is expected to fall by almost 5 percent in 2009, as big a drop as in any other big west European country.”

“Italy would be better off if il cavaliere now rode out of the scene.”

The cover of the magazine, which showcases the issue of climate change, says “Silvio Berlusconi, your time is up”.

According to The Economist, the premier has made an “art” of political survival, but now seems to be in difficulty after his recent conflict with the speaker of the lower house Gianfranco Fini, and the resumption of two legal cases.

Earlier this week, Fini, whose formerly neo-fascist party merged with Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in March, said that the prime minister “confuses leadership with absolute monarchy” in a conversation inadvertently recorded and published by the media.

In early October, Berlusconi was declared to be jointly responsible for a corruption conviction against his holding company Fininvest in a 1991 battle to buy publisher Mondadori and was due to pay more than 1.1 billion dollars in compensation.

Fini’s comments provoked widespread concern in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party and leaders met at the party’s headquarters.

The Economist editorial is likely to generate widespread debate in Italy.

In 2008, Berlusconi lost a defamation suit he brought against the London-based magazine over a 2001 cover story that said he was “unfit to lead Italy”.

A Milan court rejected his libel claims ordering him to pay 25,000 euros in legal costs.

The Economist also defined Berlusconi’s foreign policy as being “eccentric” due to his overtures to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and recently, the president of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko.

In 2006, The Economist issued a cover story saying “Basta” or enough to Berlusconi’s government.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Men Seek to Kill Woman for Adultery in Spain

Spanish police have arrested nine men suspected of seeking to have a woman killed after they accused her of adultery, claiming they were following sharia (Islamic law), authorities said on Sunday.

Police spokesmanAccording to police, the woman had been taken in March and held in an isolated house in Valls in northeastern Catalonia.

Authorities say the men set up a court there to judge her for adultery.

“These men had formed a kind of court to apply sharia (Islamic law,)” the spokesman said, adding the woman told authorities she was tried and sentenced to death.

She was later able to escape and report what happened to police.

— Hat tip: TB

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Northern Ireland: Republican Terrorists Plan ‘Christmas Spectacular’ Attack on British Troops

Republican terrorists are planning to launch a “Christmas spectacular” attack on British troops in Northern Ireland, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Intelligence chiefs believe dissident republicans will “ramp-up” attempts to murder British troops and police officers in a series of shooting and bomb attacks in the next few weeks.

Documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph also state that the terrorists now have access to an armoury of weapons and explosives and are believed to be receiving help from disaffected members of the Provisional IRA.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Two Camps Demonstrate Against Obama in Oslo

From Norwegian: Both camps agree on nuclear weapons, but one demonstration will focus on nuclear weapons (“No to nuclear weapons”, “with Obama for a nuclear weapon free world”), while the other focuses on Israel and Afghanistan (“A New Dawn: Stop the Israeli Settlements!”).

— Hat tip: Esther

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UK: George Osborne’s Brother Becomes a Muslim to Marry His Love of 14 Years

The younger brother of Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has converted to Islam to allow him to marry a beautiful Bangladeshi-born plastic surgeon he met at university.

Adam Osborne, 33, who was temporarily banned from working as a junior doctor last year following allegations that he prescribed drugs to a friend, ‘quietly married’ Rahala Noor, 31, in two ceremonies held during the past six weeks. One was a civil ceremony, the other a traditional Asian Muslim celebration.

Dr Osborne’s religious conversion is said to have been a condition put forward by Dr Noor’s devoutly Muslim family for the marriage to take place.

He spent several months learning the teachings of the Koran at a mosque in Withington, in Manchester, before being formally welcomed into the faith at a simple ceremony last month.

Dr Osborne has adopted the name Mohammed, plans to attend mosque regularly and now prays five times a day.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Student’s Dream of Flying an Raf Jet Shattered by Thugs Who Kicked Him So Hard His Right Eye Popped Out

A student who was set for a career as a pilot has seen his ambitions destroyed — after he was attacked by thugs and left blind in one eye.

Devastated Joshua Harvey, 21, had been due to join the RAF but his professional flying dream has been grounded by seven mindless louts.

Joshua had been out with friends when he left a nightclub and was set upon by the group who punched, kicked and strangled him.

His right eye was knocked out of its socket and doctors were forced to insert three metal plates in his head to stop it slipping even further.

He now has permenant loss of vision and a large scar meaning his modelling days are over and his plans to join the RAF in tatters.

Joshua, who was in the first year of an engineering degree, has also been forced to postpone his studies until he recovers.

Police have described the assault as ‘completely unprovoked’ and say the attack had ‘long term’ consequences.

Joshua, of Exeter, Devon, said: ‘I used to have 20/20 vision and my dream was to join the RAF and become a jet or helicopter pilot.

‘But that has been written off because of what happened. It was so unnecessary and had no impact on the people who carried out the attack.

‘There were multiple kicks and punches to my face. I had bruises all over my face and a sore throat from where I was strangled.

‘I had a modelling contract but now have a lovely big scar on my face. I am so angry and I don’t even want to go outside.’

— Hat tip: JD

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Video: Swedish Store Pulls North Korea Jeans

A Swedish department store has cancelled what was to have been North Korea’s debut in high-end Western fashion.

Stockholm’s PUB store removed the sales space for Noko Jeans, made in the hardline communist state, because they did not want to be associated with “a political issue”.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Serbia: Church Enjoys Greatest Trust Among Population

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 3 — The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), Army of Serbia and education system are the institutions which enjoy the highest trust among the citizens of Serbia according to research conducted by the Strategic Marketing agency under a request by the OSCE mission in Serbia and the Serbian Internal Affairs Ministry (MUP), reports VIP Daily News Report. The research showed that the MUP is in fourth place followed by the police in fifth place in terms of trust. A total of 56% of the polled spoke well of the Church and 38% of the military while 30% spoke in favor of the education system, 29% for MUP and 27% for the police. The Finance Ministry ranked at the bottom of the list with 11% trust, the Serbian Parliament got 8% and political parties got 6%. Similarly to a poll in November last year, with the exception of the Church, a relatively low percent of the polled had a favorable view of institutions and the MUP, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs are the only institutions trusted more now than a year ago. A total of 77% of the polled said politicians have influence over the operational efforts of the police with 40% them choosing full influence and 37% saying “in good measuré. The poll was conducted in October covering a total of 1,450 people. It showed that 31% of the polled have a negative view of the MUP and 29% of the police.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Serbia-France: Agreement on Youth Mobility Signed

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 2 — Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for EU Integration Bozidar Djelic and French Minister for Immigration Eric Besson signed an agreement on youth mobility, reports radio B92. The agreement, signed in Belgrade will enable young people from Serbia to study, do internships and look for jobs in France. “Since the decision on visa liberalization for the Serbian citizens, France is the first country which has made a step forward, which proves that Serbian-French friendship in not only a noun, but also a reality,” Djelic said. Besson said that the agreement symbolized great relations between Serbia and France and guaranteed Serbia’s firm place within the EU frame. It is clear that Serbia’s future is within Europe, this is what Serbia wants and what France wants for Serbia, Besson underscored. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Serbia: Army to Turn Professional in 2011

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 4 — Serbian Army CoGS Lt. Col. Miloje Miletic said that the professionalization of the military would be complete in the first half of 2011, reports radio B92. “The Serbian Army will become professional, and I expect us to complete that process at the end of 2010, or 2011 at the latest,” Miletic told reporters during a conference entitled “Necessary Skills for Serbian Army Officers, 2010-2020”. When asked if Serbian officers would be educated according to NATO standards, Miletic responded affirmatively, adding that it was one of the aims of the meeting. “The very fact that our officers have been educated in various institutions in the countries that are members of the Partnership for Peace program and NATO allows us to educate our officers according to those standards,” Miletic remarked. He said that it had “nothing to do with Serbia’s military neutrality”, stressing that “we (the military and the Defense Ministry) respect the decisions of the Serbian parliament, like all other government institutions, and that (military neutrality) does not prevent us from cooperating with other militaries in the world.” (ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Algeria: Miminum Monthly Salary Rises to 145 Euros

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, DECEMBER 3 — The minimum guaranteed monthly salary has been increased in Algeria from 12,000 to 15,000 dinars (about 145 euro). APS reported that the decision was made over the night by the government, the General Workers Union (UGTA), the only trade union which took part in the talks and various aid associations. The three parties “‘ adopted measures to foster national companies, the retention of employment and the struggle against unemployment”. It is an insufficient rise — today’s press reports — which only partially meets the requests made by the UGTA. The union had asked for a rise of at least 18,000 dinars, while aid associations had requested one of 14,000. According to a survey cited by a number of papers, “the minimum Algerian salary is enough to provides for the needs of a family for about a week: those bringing home an average salary of between 15,000 and 25,000 dinars can survive on it for 10 days.” According to the survey carried out by the United Civil Service Unions, a father of a family would need at least 14,000 dinars for food, 8,000 for housing, 7,500 for various expenses, 8,600 for his children, with the total being at least 38,000 dinars. (370 euro). (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt: Poverty Drives Three Men to Suicide

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 3 — There have been three cases of suicide for reasons of poverty in three Egyptian governorates over the past few days. According to a report in today’s edition of the independent Al Masri Al Yom newspaper, all of the deaths occurred in the Nile Delta area. The first case is that of an unemployed worker in the village of Abu Nasser, in the governorate of Dakahleya, who killed himself inside his apartment. In the second, in the governorate of Kafr el Sheik, a thirty-two-year-old threw himself from the fourth floor leaving his wife and five children: he had been unsuccessful in his application for an increase in his monthly wages of just 400 lires (less than 50 euros), 300 of which went on rent. A thirty-one-year-old killed himself in the governorate of Charkiya, having failed to acquire an apartment, which would have allowed him to marry. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Egypt Detains 10 Senior Muslim Brotherhood Members

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have detained 10 senior members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, the group’s secretary general told AFP on Sunday.

The officials were arrested in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh on Saturday during a meeting, Mahmoud Ezzat said, adding authorities provided no reason for the arrests.

“Detentions in Egypt are like death, they can happen at anytime to anyone and no one knows why,” Ezzat said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Morocco: EU Funds Game Show for Young, Prize is Brussels Trip

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 3 — The name is Rawabit, it is the weekly game show financed by the European Commission and it is on air in the early evening on the Al Aoula channel. Who are the contestants? In the first series, which has just been launched, they are young people aged between 19 and 25, whilst in the second season they will be high school kids between the ages of 15 and 18. The quiz, launched in collaboration with the local Education Ministry, features questions about current affairs and the countrys culture, but also a section on cooperation projects between the EU and Morocco. Sixteen teams are selected and take each other on until the final stage, with the prize consisting of a cultural and educational trip to Brussels, a visit to the European institutions, as well as a laptop computer. The consolation prize for finalists is a home cinema system, whilst all contestants will receive books about art, encyclopaedias, etc. As well as the TV version, there is also an online version of the Rawabit game, so that people can play from home: www.rawabit.ma. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Veil’s Spread Fans Egypt’s Fear of Hard-Line Islam

CAIRO — When Egypt’s government banned Islamic veils and all-encompassing robes in the dorms of public universities, it cited reports of men wearing the garb to sneak into the women’s quarters.

But there was a deeper reason behind the move: an intensifying struggle between the moderate Islam championed by the state and a populace that is turning to a stricter version of the faith, whose most visible hallmark is the niqab — the dress that covers the entire female form.

The debate has grown more heated since Mohammad Tantawi, the top cleric at prestigious Al-Azhar University, banned the niqab in classrooms and dorms on the grounds that it “has nothing to do with Islam,” and that it was unnecessary since the college is gender-segregated. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry and religious authorities forbade nurses and preachers to wear the niqab.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Hamas May Not be Moderate, But It’s Cracking Down on Extremism

Many Israeli commentators have argued recently that Hamas is eager to complete the deal to free Gilad Shalit because of the lack of achievements it has to show its public in the Gaza Strip. However, quite a number of Palestinian commentators there claim that the status of the Islamic movement has stabilized of late, in particular because of its ability to help distressed residents of the Strip by means of its network of charitable organizations. Others propose that the real threat to Hamas today comes from the direction of Islamic extremism, which in another few years is liable to become a significant factor and to present a serious challenge to the Hamas regime.

Last Friday the Israel Defense Forces attacked a group of men launching Qassam rockets in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. One Palestinian was killed and three more were wounded. According to various assessments, the men belonged to a cell of extreme Islamist activists affiliated with what is called the Jaljalat movement.

In recent months, it and other small organizations have been gathering momentum. For its part, Hamas is trying to embrace the extremists and convince them to act within its laws, even as these factions cause harm to Hamas and its public support — especially as they depict the organization as a collaborator with Israel that has given up the principle of jihad. Many of the members of Jaljalat, for instance, are former Hamas activists who left the organization because they felt it had become too moderate. They are now trying to spearhead a more extreme policy with respect to Israel.

Among these radical groups are the Army of the Nation, the Army of Islam, Jund Ansar Allah, as well as Hizb ut Tahrir, which is not involved in fighting per se, but rather confines itself to propaganda activities.

The tension between the small radical groups and the Hamas government is manifested particularly in the attempts of extremists to take over mosques, as in the Rafah area, a few weeks ago, where the Jund Ansar Allah has been active. Still, it is Hamas that is in control in Gaza and its rule has only become more firmly established since the coup of June 2007. Fatah has nearly ceased to exist in the public domain in the Strip. At the same time, Hamas is making great efforts to stave off the rising popularity of the extremists, such as by establishing such beneficial institutions as an Islamic bank and a body charged with overseeing halal products.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Banking: Turkey Eyes Selling Samurai Bonds

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 3 — Turkey is interested in selling samurai bonds partly guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, or JBIC, the head of the state-run lender said. The bank will likely have detailed discussions with Turkey on the sale, Bloomberg reported Hiroshi Watanabe, chief executive officer of JBIC, as saying on Monday. Japan backs sales of samurai bonds to provide financial support to debt issuers. Indonesia issued 35 billion yen in 10-year Samurai bonds to institutional investors in July while Colombia sold 45 billion yen in notes in November. Samurai bonds are yen-denominated bonds issued in Tokyo by a non-Japanese company but are subject to Japanese regulations. Other types of yen-denominated bonds are “Euroyens,” issued in countries other than Japan. Samurai bonds give issuers the ability to access investment capital available in Japan. The proceeds from the issuing of such bonds can be used by non-Japanese companies to break into the Japanese market, or it can be converted into the issuing company’s local currency to be used on existing operations.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Disappointment in Turkey Over Cancelled Trip

Turkish MPs are disappointed the Dutch parliament has cancelled a fact-finding mission about the country’s wishes to join the European Union, the NRC reports on Thursday.

The parliamentary EU affairs commission decided yesterday to cancel the trip, apparently based on comments by one spokesman for the Turkish foreign affairs ministry, who said anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders is a racist and not welcome.

— Hat tip: Esther

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In Iraq’s African Enclave, Color is Plainly Seen

BASRA, Iraq — Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that in the tradition of Prophet Muhammad treats black people with equality and respect.

But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as “abd” — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs.

Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugar cane fields.

Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say.

Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament.

“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the country’s estimated 1.2 million African-Iraqis. “We want to end that.”

On a recent weekday afternoon, a group of black children and adults wearing flip-flops stood in a dirt field waiting for cars to drive up so they could wash them.

It is their only source of income, they said, because no one will hire them.

In Basra, a southern oil and port city with winds that constantly whip the desert sands, car washing is not a bad way to survive, and over time the field has become a crowded gathering point for boys and men waiting with hoses and buckets for the next dirty car.

The children, most no older than 14, are school dropouts. Sometimes it was their choice, other times the decision rested with a father who had little formal education himself and an unsteady income.

“If I go back to school, then who will feed my family?” asked one of the boys, Hussein Abdul Razak, 13.

Hussein said he left school when he was 8 years old because he had fallen so far behind in his classes. His father, who also works at the car wash, was sick, so the family’s dinner this day rested entirely with whatever Hussein could earn. Unfortunately, things were slow, with too little sand in the air. He shrugged. He had earned nothing.

Mohammed Waleed, also 13, is one of the rare children at the lot who has a father with a steady job. His father drives a minibus.

Mohammed, who had come pedaling up on his bicycle, said he had left school so long ago that he could not remember how old he was then.

“Every year I failed and I failed, and so I left,” he said. He looked nervously at the boisterous children who had gathered around him, deciding whether to say what came next.

“I can’t read,” he said. The children grew silent.

Mohammed’s dream, he said, is to follow in his father’s footsteps and drive a Kia minibus. He said he already knew how to drive, but that he needed to wait five years to be hired.

“Until then, I’ll drive my bicycle,” he said. Everyone around him laughed.

Majid Hamid, a lanky 20-year-old who is among the lot’s oldest workers, said some days were better than others. It had been a bad day for him as well.

“From the morning until now, I haven’t washed a single car,” he said. It was past 6 p.m.

But even on the good days, he said, they still had to deal with customers who frequently used racially derogatory terms when addressing them. “They say, ‘Abu Samra,’ come on, go fast!’ “ he said. “What can I do? I can beat them up, but there will be trouble afterward.”

Lighter-skinned Iraqis consider Abu Samra a term of endearment, but the car washers said that for them it is a vicious slur.

They say they are called a lot of other names, and are often picked up by Army patrols and taken to bases where they are threatened with beatings and imprisonment if they continue to wash cars. They say the soldiers leave them alone when lighter-skinned people are working in the lot. Ahmed al-Sulati, deputy chairman of Basra’s provincial council, said neither racism nor color consciousness existed among Iraqis, and that the lives of African-Iraqis are no more difficult than anyone else’s. “There is no such thing in Iraq as black and white,” he said, echoing what most people here say publicly.

In a run-down neighborhood about a mile from the car wash, Mr. Hamid and thousands of other African-Iraqis live side by side with Arabs in mud-brick houses in various stages of collapse. His brother, Rafid, 19, also works at the car wash, but has a second job in a small satellite television repair shop where he works with his stepfather.

Their sister, Amani, 16, has been pulled out of school because the family can no longer afford the daily bus fare. “I miss school,” she said. “Sometimes I cry.”

Said Rafid, “Life here is very bad.”

Things could become even worse; the family of nine has not been able to pay the landlord for the past two months.

“We either pay the rent or we eat,” said Raja Abdul al-Samad, their mother.

Mrs. Samad said life in Iraq was far more difficult if one had dark skin. She said that over the years she had come to realize that she could maintain friendships only with those people who shared her skin color.

“It all starts O.K., but then they slip and say something by mistake,” she said. “Or, when they are with their relatives, they avoid us. I don’t like being with people who look down on us.”

— Hat tip: spackle

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Iran Says Ukrainian Kids Are New Victims of Israeli ‘Organ Theft’

An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv’s plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs.

The story brings to light the fact that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. It cites a Ukrainian man’s fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for ‘spare parts’.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Iran Summons Swiss Ambassador Over Minarets

Switzerland’s ambassador to Iran was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran on Saturday to hear of Iran’s indignation at the minaret ban.

The Iranian news agency said Silvia Leu Agosti was told that such a decision “increased tension between Islam and Christianity”.

The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, also telephoned his Swiss counterpart, Micheline Calmy-Rey, and told her that such a vote should never be allowed in a country which claims to respect democracy and human rights.

He said the ban on the construction of minarets had damaged Switzerland’s reputation as a progressive country throughout the Islamic world.

The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that a conversation had taken place between the two ministers, the AP news agency reported on Saturday.

The Swiss side explained the workings of direct democracy, and said the decision had been taken democratically and would therefore be respected. At the same time, it was pointed out that Muslims in Switzerland could continue to practise their religion as before, the ministry said.

In a popular vote on November 29, Swiss voter approved a call to add a line to the constitution stating that the construction of minarets is forbidden.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Iran Bans Foreign Media From Rally Fearing Protests

Iran’s authorities have banned foreign media from an annual rally due to be held on Monday, which they fear the opposition could use to stage protests.

Press permits were revoked for 7-9 December, officials said, and reporters told not to leave their offices.

Residents in the capital, Tehran, also said their internet access had been limited ahead of the rally.

Iran has cracked down hard on protests by opposition supporters following a disputed election in June.

Opponents of Iran’s regime have taken to using officially sanctioned demonstrations to turn out in big numbers and publicise their message.

Rallies have been held annually on December 7 to mark the death of three students during an anti-American protest in 1953.

Iranian security forces including the elite Revolutionary Guards have warned that they will step in to prevent any attempt to use the event to stage opposition protests.

Reporters held

Ahead of the rally, Tehran residents said that they had been unable to use e-mail and that opposition websites were being more tightly restricted than before.

One official at the Iranian telecommunications ministry told Reuters news agency that internet and mobile phone connections would be disabled on Monday.

Thousands have been arrested and dozens killed this year after the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to the largest street protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Dozens of people have been given jail terms and as many as five people have been sentenced to death over their alleged role in the demonstrations.

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said on Saturday that the situation for journalists in Iran was “getting worse by the day”.

“Journalists who have chosen not to the leave the country are being constantly threatened or summoned by the intelligence services, including the intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guards,” the group said in a statement.

“Some have been given long prison sentences at the end of completely illegal judicial proceedings.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Iran: 20 More Enrichment Sites Needed

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and previously Iran’s representative in the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Saturday that Iran needs to establish 20 additional uranium enrichment sites to fuel the country’s nuclear reactors, Israel Radio reported.

Salehi further said that Iran had no intention of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Earlier this weekend, there was speculation that Iran would pull out of the treaty following statements by Iranian nuclear official Abolfazl Zohrehvand that Teheran will not answer to the UN nuclear watchdog beyond the barest minimum required under the NPT.

Speaking on Friday, Zohrehvand said this limited cooperation would apply to the building of 10 new uranium enrichment facilities.

— Hat tip: JD

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Italy: New Book Puts Mafia on the Map

Rome, 4 Dec. (AKI) — A new book has been released in Italy documenting the growth of one of the country’s biggest exports — organised crime. Entitled ‘Mafia Export — How ‘Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and the Camorra colonised the World’ is written by Francesco Forgione, a former MP and president of the Italian parliament’s Anti-Mafia Commission between 2006 and 2008.

The book documents the rise of various arms of the mafia, in particular the emergence of the Calabrian mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, in Germany and the expansion of the Neopolitan Camorra in Spain.

Forgione’s book crisscrosses the globe and publishes for the first time various maps showing how individual mafia clans have divided their business in countries as diverse as Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and Australia.

“Corruption and criminality are the most serious issues facing the economy and structure of modern society,” Forgione said.

“Corruption and the mafia (together) produce an intolerable social cost globally, they dissipate resources, destroy and poison the environment, violate human rights and compromise democracy.”

He also singled out Switzerland to show how major mafia clans from the southern regions of Campania and Calabria have penetrated the country.

But tiny countries in central America, including Costa Rica, and Caribbean islands such as Santo Domingo are also included in the vast criminal network revealed in the book.

In his book, Forgione also published maps showing the international shipping routes of the major mafia drug cartels — tracking cocaine shipped from Colombia, marijuana from North Africa and heroin from Turkey and Afghanistan to Europe and onwards to North America.

He is not the first commentator to emphasise the significance of the brutal massacre of six Italians killed in a bitter ‘Ndrangheta feud in the German city of Duisburg in August 2007.

Forgione said the killings not only shocked German police but revealed the penetration of Italian organised crime in Germany, where many Italian immigrants have settled.

“Since the men of (Calabrian town) San Luca have created for themselves a real colony, Duisburg is not only one of the wealthiest industrial centres of the country,” Forgione said.

“It is only a few kilometres from the Belgian and Dutch borders and a few hours’ travel from the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.”

He also talked about the expansion of several key mafia clans in Australia — the Siderno, the Alvaro, the Sergi of ‘Ndrangheta and the establishment of the Secondigliano alliance of the Camorra from Naples.

“Australia is a small market but it is important,” he said. “The Camorra is moving into the country because organised crime goes where it can find the most liberal legislation. Like the United Kingdom, Australia has very liberal laws in relation to money laundering and the confiscation of criminal assets.

“Australia is emerging as a key area for Camorra activities, like Brazil and America.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Lebanon Report: Attack Against UNIFIL Thwarted

UN peacekeepers again in crosshairs of Lebanese terrorist organizations. Lebanese army arrests four-person terror cell from east of country on suspicions they tried to target UNIFIL officials in one of series of similar events recently

The Lebanese military thwarted an attack targeting UNIFIL forces operating in the south of the country, according to a report Sunday on Hezbollah’s television channel al-Manar.

According to the report, the Lebanese military arrested a four-person terror cell that was in possession of a large quantity of explosives near Majdal Anjar, in the Lebanon Valley.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Lot’s Sin and That “Extreme Solitude”

Amara Lakhous

The roots of the difficult coexistence between the gay and the Muslim worlds are deep-rooted in the Koran, which defines homosexuality as “Lot’s sin.” In Muslim countries gays are obliged to live their lives in secret not only for religious reasons but also due to social contempt, just as happens in the west. Thus homosexuals continue to be the most persecuted minority in the world.

In Islam sexuality has positive connotations. Carnal pleasure is neither repressed nor removed, on the contrary it is to be searched for and satisfied, but within the institution of marriage. It is the Prophet himself who compares the sexual act to prayer., “I have been permitted to love three things from your lowly world: women, perfume and prayer.” Italy’s most important scholar of Islam Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, explains this issue very clearly, “Sex, therefore, is something positive in the Muslim collective conscience. […] however this sexuality must in some way be channelled, legalised and controlled. Marriage is the instrument for this. It is no coincidence that in Islam the worst of all sins is promiscuity; an illegal sexual relationship. Hence Islam’s traditional horror of prostitution. There are many jurists who say that Islam, acknowledging the nature of men, accepts polygamy so as to avoid promiscuity and the evils that result from it.” (1)

To analyse in greater depth the issue of homosexuality in Islam, one can divide sexuality into two types. On one hand one has a ‘good sexuality’ with roots founded exclusively in the institution of marriage, on the other there is a ‘harmful sexuality’, based on promiscuity, such as homosexuality, adultery, incest, rape and prostitution.

The religious viewpoint

Muslims call homosexuality “Lot’s sin” (2). Condemnation of homosexuality is very explicit both in the Koran and in the Sunnah.

“And Lot, when he said to his tribe: “Do you commit an obscenity not perpetrated before you by anyone in all the worlds? You come with lust to men instead of women. You are indeed a depraved tribe.” The only answer of his tribe was to say: “Expel them from your city! They are people who keep themselves pure!” So we rescued him and his family, except for his wife. She was one of those who stayed behind. We rained down a rain upon them. See the final fate of the evildoers!” (Koran 7: 80-84) (3). And also “And so Lot said to his people “Do you do what is shameful though you see its iniquity? Would you really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, you are a people (grossly) ignorant!!”. But his people gave no other answer but this: they said, “Drive out the followers of Lot from your city: these are indeed men who want to be appear clean and pure!”. (Koran 27: 54-56)

The Prophet said “When you discover two men committing Lot’s sin, kill them al-fa’l (active) and al maful (passive).” Muslim jurists agree in condemning homosexuals with the death penalty, but not however on the manner in which it is carried out. There are four alternatives, death at the stake, death by the sword, stoning or throwing the convicted man off a hill. Islam considers homosexuality as being unnatural. Relations between men and women with the objective of procreation are considered natural.

The real problem arises when addressing the “responsibility” and the culpability of homosexuals. Are men born homosexuals or do they become homosexuals? In 1993 Dean Hamer, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, stated that he had discovered the genes of homosexuality. These are supposedly chromosomes “x” transmitted from a mother to a child. Hence, according to this research, homosexuality had nothing to do with culture or the free choices made by individuals (4). A number of Muslim scholars rejected this thesis because it implies questioning God and his infallibility. God cannot be imperfect and create “imperfect” human beings, punishing them in such an unfair manner. Hence a homosexual is always guilty.

The anthropological perspective…

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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More Than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings

Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians.

ISTANBUL, December 4 (CDN) — More than half of the population of Muslim-majority Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey.

Fully 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had “very negative” or “negative” views of Christians. In the random survey, 60 percent of those polled said there is one true religion; over 90 percent of the population of Turkey is Sunni Muslim.

Ali Çarkoglu, one of two professors at Sabanci University who conducted the study, said no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely “risk free.”

“Even in Istanbul, it can’t be easy to be an observant non-Muslim,” Çarkoglu said.

The report, issued last month, was part of a study commissioned by the International Social Survey Program, a 45-nation academic group that conducts polls and research about social and political issues. The survey quantified how religious the population is in each of its 43-member countries.

Çarkoglu, along with Professor Ersin Kalaycioglu, carried out the research in 2008. The completed study with the results of all 43 countries will be released in 2010. The study has been conducted previously three times at roughly 10-year intervals.

This year marked the first time study data has been collected in Turkey. Turkey was the only Muslim-majority population in the study.

The survey includes significant nuance. While 42 percent of the population agreed with the statement that religious people should be tolerant, 49 percent of those surveyed said they would either “absolutely” or “most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion. But 20 percent of those surveyed said they had “very positive” or “positive” views of Christians — 13 percent “very positive,” and 7 percent “positive.”

Çarkoglu said the results of study could be attributed to the Turkish educational system, which mandates religious studies for both junior high school and high school students — classes in which Christians and Jews “are not even mentioned” or are portrayed as “the others,” Çarkoglu said.

“That instills in these students a severe point of view of intolerance,” he added.

Dual Threat

The Rev. Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, speaking on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, said that Greek Orthodox Christians are treated like second-class citizens in Turkey. He said that members of his church feel “pressured” but things have improved slowly over the years. Earlier this year, two Greek Orthodox cemeteries in Istanbul and one in Izmir were severely vandalized.

“There’s still vandalism, but there haven’t been any problems with physical threats lately,” he said.

In Turkey, Christians face dual threats from a self-declared “secular” state and from members of the public who, according to the study, have become more observant in their Islamic faith. Christians are often seen as enemies of the state, enemies of Islam or traitors to Turkish culture.

A 2009 report on international religious freedom by the U.S. Department of State said that in Turkey, “No law explicitly prohibits religious speech or religious conversions; nevertheless, many prosecutors and police regarded religious speech and religious activism with suspicion. Christians engaged in religious advocacy were occasionally threatened or pressured by government and state officials. … Threats against non-Muslims created an atmosphere of pressure and diminished freedom for some non-Muslim communities.”

At times in Turkey’s history, the government has “manipulated public opinion” by putting forth the message that Turkish Christians are aligned with powers outside of the country that want to divide the nation, said Zekai Tanyar, a Turkish national who has been a Christian for more than 30 years. He is chairman of the Association of Protestant Churches (in Turkey).

“There are some who view that Christians are out to undermine the country, especially missionaries,” he said.

In January 2007, Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in Istanbul. Dink was a member of the Armenian Christian community in Turkey. Three months later, two Turkish Christians and a German Christian were murdered in Malatya. The accused killers in all four slayings have alleged links to Turkish nationalists. Two other Christians, converts from Islam, are standing trial charged with, among other things, “insulting Turkishness” and inciting hatred against Islam.

According to the U.S state department report, by law religious services in Turkey can only take place at worship sites approved by the government. And while the Sunni majority receives generous support from the government for its mosques, “[Non-Muslim groups] reported difficulties opening, maintaining, and operating houses of worship.”

Tanyar of the Protestant association said that the anti-Christian persecution situation in Turkey has improved in some ways but gotten worse in others.

“People have gotten used to the idea that we exist, and certain laws have changed to accommodate us,” he said. “On the other hand, acts of disinformation and violence have increased.”

— Hat tip: Steen

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Muslims Will Empty Their Swiss Accounts: Turkish Minister

A Turkish minister said he expected Muslims to withdraw their money from Swiss banks in response to a referendum vote that banned the construction of minarets in the country, in remarks published Wednesday.

“I am certain this (the vote) will prompt our brothers from Muslim countries who keep their money and investments in Swiss banks to review their decision,” State Minister Egemen Bagis, who is also Turkey’s chief negotiator in EU accession talks, was quoted as saying in the mass-selling Hurriyet daily.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Rafsanjani Accuses Iran Rulers of ‘Intolerance’

AFP — Powerful cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused Iran’s rulers on Sunday of being intolerant, saying they have closed the door on constructive criticism.

Rafsanjani, one of the main figures in Iran’s opposition movement, also called on protesters opposing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to express their views “within the framework of law.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Turkish People Spend Nearly 92 Million Euro for Handguns

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, NOVEMBER 30 — Turkish people have spent nearly 92 million euro in the last seven years for handguns, as Anatolia news agency reports. Turkey’s Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKEK) has sold 10,302 handguns since the beginning of the year. While 8,225 of those handguns were made in Turkey, the remaining 2,077 were imported from different countries. The sale of handguns amounted to nearly 10,6 million euro. In the last seven years, MKEK sold 99,109 handguns, reaching an income of nearly 138 million USD. 21,969 of them were imported from several countries while the rest was made in Turkey. MKEK sells different types of handguns from 25 companies including 15 foreign companies such as Beretta, Bernardelli, Browning, Glock, CZ Strojirna, CZ Zbrojovka, Heckler&Koch, HS 2000, Jericho, Sig Sauer, Smith&Wesson, Steyr, Tanfoglio, Walther and ZVI-Kevin. Prices of handguns ranges from 300 euro to 4,700 euro. According to current figures by the Umut Foundation, a Turkish gun control advocacy group, 9% of the nation owns a firearm. Turkey has approximately 2.5 million registered guns, while an estimated 5.5 million guns are believed to be owned without licenses. Nearly 3,000 people yearly — eight every day — are killed by gun violence.(ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Vatican-Russian Relations Upgraded

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 3, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to upgrade relations between the two sides to full diplomatic ties, the Holy See is reporting.

A communiqué from the Vatican press office confirmed that the two leaders met today for some 30 minutes in the Vatican, and that during the “cordial” discussions, it was “agreed to establish full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Russian Federation.”

The two sides have maintained representation below the rank of ambassador since 1990.

— Hat tip: Esther

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‘4:000 Italians in Afghanistan’

Extra 1,000 troops plus 200 Carabinieri says Frattini

(ANSA) — Brussels, December 4 — Italy will have almost 4,000 forces in Afghanistan by the end of next year, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told NATO counterparts here Friday.

As well as the 1,000 extra troops announced Thursday night, he said, there would be some 200 Carabinieri to help train Afghan security forces.

The Italian contingent is currently 2,795, according to the most recent data.

Frattini had “cordial” informal talks with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the foreign ministers met, in which she thanked Italy again for its contribution to the “surge” decided by President Barack Obama, diplomatic sources said.

The US is hoping its allies will contribute some 10,000 more troops following Obama’s decision to add 33,000 to its 68,000.

So far, commitments from countries including Britain, Portugal, Spain, Georgia, Poland and South Korea add up to about half that.

The Netherlands and Canada are pulling out in 2010 and 2011 respectively, while Germany has put off its decision until January and France has said No to more troops.

“We’re counting on you,” Clinton told Frattini before the ministers’ session, and the Italian foreign minister replied “now we must convince the others”.

In his address to the NATO meeting, Frattini said Italy would by the end of 2010 have “around 4,000 troops” in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which currently has some 20,000 troops.

He appealed to America’s allies to commit more troops, saying “we cannot unload the burden in Afghanistan onto the US alone”.

Frattini reaffirmed the need for what he called a “civilian surge” and said Italy would consider doubling its contribution to the Afghan reconstruction budget.

The diplomatic chief also stressed the importance of NATO getting its message across to Afghans via NATO TV.

Both Frattini and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi have said the extra push in Afghanistan must be part of a “transition strategy” aimed at equipping the country to look after its own needs, and not an exit strategy that might encourage the Taliban.

The extra 1,000 troops will be taken from other foreign missions, in the Balkans and Lebanon, and the beefed-up mission, which must still be approved by parliament, is expected to last until the end of 2013.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Gordon Brown Snubbed by Soldiers’ ‘Curtain’ Protest

Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him.

More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present.

The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”.

Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair … he has done nothing for us.”

Brown visited the military wing of Selly Oak on September 2, where about 25 wounded soldiers were being treated. They were told about the visit in the morning and asked by nurses if they wanted to speak to him.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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India: Operation Green Hunt Launched Against Maoists

India has launched a major offensive codenamed “Operation Green Hunt” against Maoist rebels in Bastar on Thursday.

The assault “Green Hunt” was launched against insurgents in Chhattisgarh — the epicentre of violence between Maoist fighters and security forces.

Officials said there was least resistance from some of the Maoist strongholds, which could be a ploy.

— Hat tip: Esther

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India: Muslim Clerics Pledge to Eradicate Polio

PATNA: Muslim clerics came together to support Rotary International’s ‘End Polio Now’ campaign and pledged to eradicate polio through advocacy

and awareness efforts.

At a meeting held at Haj Bhavan here, they said Bihar is still an endemic state for polio cases. As the war against polio is in a decisive phase, the Rotary leaders have come to seek the support of Muslim clerics amid the reports that there is some resistance in the community over polio drops.

— Hat tip: Esther

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India: Muslim Leaders Against Street Protest on December 6

PATNA: The demolition of Babri Masjid is remembered on every December 6 as a ritual, but this year the day is being observed not only to protest

the destruction of the disputed structure, but the protests will also be focused on Liberhan panel report. The report was leaked only weeks ahead of the 17th anniversary of the day which the secular parties describe as “Black Day.”

A general alert has been declared by the police. Principal secretary, home, Amir Subhani told TOI that there was no report of any big protest. “Some symbolic protest may take place, but the police will be ready at every point to meet any eventuality,” he said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Pakistan: Slain Lawmaker’s Father Urges Elimination of All Terrorists

MINGORA: The father of Shamsher Ali Khan, the Awami National Party legislator who was killed on Tuesday in a suicide attack, said on Wednesday the army should not leave Swat until all terrorists were eliminated.

“My son is gone, but I appeal to the security forces to stay as long as a single terrorist remains alive,” Abdur Rashid told Daily Times after a condolence meeting, which was attended by Swat operation commander Maj-Gen Ashfaq Nadeem, Kabal sector in-charge Brig Salman Akbar and MPA Waqar Ahmed.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Pakistan: Mosque Attackers Are Not Muslims: Malik

KARACHI: Federal Minister for Interior Rehman Malik said that they are not Muslims who attack mosques, and the people of South Waziristan are with the government and army.

He said this while talking to the media at airport when he arrived in the city on Sunday.

Malik said that every Pakistani wants to eliminate terrorists from the country.

— Hat tip: Esther

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China Sentences 3 More to Death Over Xinjiang Riots: Xinhua

BEIJING — A court in China’s restive Xinjiang sentenced three more people to death Friday for their roles in July ethnic violence, state media said, raising the total condemned to die or executed to 17.

The court in the regional capital Urumqi sentenced another person to life in prison, while three defendants were given varying jail terms for the violence that left nearly 200 dead, the Xinhua news agency said, citing the verdict.

On Thursday, an Urumqi court handed out death sentences to five others.

Last month, nine people were executed for their roles in the violence that also left over 1,600 injured in the worst strife in China in decades.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Special Investigation: Peter Hitchens — Blood and Fear on Happiness Street as China Threatens to Obliterate Another Ancient Culture

This, however, is certain: last year, just before the Olympics, two Kashgar Muslims drove a truck into a group of jogging Chinese paramilitary troops, then attacked them with knives and home-made grenades, killing 17.

The two were caught and later executed — probably shot in the head, still a common method of capital punishment in the People’s Republic.

The anger follows aggressive colonisation. Ethnic Chinese people have come West in their millions in the past 30 years, encouraged by the state to settle and make the region their own.

The locals fear their homeland is being snatched away from them before their eyes, by strangers who wish to change the place to suit them, rather than adapt to the customs of the country.

What seem to have been race riots broke out in Sinkiang’s provincial capital Urumchi last July, with an official death count of 156, plus 800 injured, many, it is said, in horrific slashing attacks by inflamed Muslim mobs. Women were not spared.

Ethnic Chinese retaliated soon afterwards, taking to the streets with iron bars and axes and looking for suitable candidates for gory vengeance. Rumours suggest that the real butcher’s bill was much higher than the published figure, around 2,000. Who can say?

A few weeks ago, the authorities announced the executions of 12 more men for their part in the carnage — ten Muslims and two ethnic Chinese, to prove they are not wholly one-sided. Actually, the proportions may be more or less just.

Any sane person must be appalled by such outbreaks of ancient bloodlust, and — as in Tibet last year — the cause of the local people is severely set back in the West by being linked to such cruel horrors.

[…]

Even middle-class Muslims and ethnic Chinese are nowadays nervous of mixing with each other in public. One Muslim who tried to carry on seeing Chinese friends described to me how she was then shunned by her Muslim neighbours. A sort of apartheid, voluntary but bitter, is springing up in the enormous city.

‘When people who have lived alongside you for years suddenly turn on you, you cannot feel safe near them ever again,’ said one Chinese resident.

[Comments from JD: A report on the muslim, han chinese clashes in Sinkiang province of China.]

— Hat tip: JD

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Australian Police Quell Violent Anti-Israel Riots

(IsraelNN.com) Guests at an event that featured the two second-highest officials in Australia and Israel as keynote speakers were forced to use a side entrance to attend the gathering due to a pro-Palestinian Authority riot blocking the main entrance at the venue in Melbourne on Sunday.

The gathering, a joint Australia-Israel Leadership Forum being held at the Park Hyatt Hotel in East Melbourne, featured speeches by Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

But the event also became the scene of a violent demonstration that forced guests to enter through a side door, while police were forced to spray a mob of screaming rioters at the front of the hotel with pepper spray in order to push them back.

The pro-Arab protestors, who continued to try to force their way into the lobby, waved placards and pounded on the door, shouting “Free Palestine!” and various epithets. Three rioters managed to break through the line of police officers and forced their way in to the foyer, where according to Australian media, “punches were thrown and [they] were wrestled to the ground.”

Police mounted on horseback were also brought in to force back the mob, which was estimated at approximately 200 and reportedly included women and children.

Police said they were dismayed that the demonstrators had not kept their word to maintain order. “We’re disappointed that the protestors broke their agreement,” Sergeant Steve Burke told the Australia Network News (ANN). “They said it was going to be peaceful and in the end they’ve forced the issue and we’ve had to force them back.”

Three protestors were arrested in the melee and later released on their own recognizance.

At the event, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard met with Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and others, including MKs Avi Dichter, Nachman Shai and Ronit Tirosh (all members of Kadima), Daniel Ben-Simon (Labor) and Danny Danonm who also is World Likud chairman.

Gillard expressed her country’s firm support for the Jewish State, but made no specific mention of the chaos outside the hotel. “Australia’s support for Israel remains strong and remains bipartisan in this country,” she asserted.

One of the protestors, Hisham Moustafa, told ANN the demonstrators were trying to send a message to the Australian deputy prime minister. “I don’t think she would be supporting Hamas coming to Australia,” Moustafa said. “So we expect more from our representatives, and we think that Julia Gillard, by entertaining the Israeli politicians at the moment, sends a message that the Palestinian people are just being forgotten by Australia.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Muslims Urged to Accept Minorities

MUSLIMS must tackle injustices and corruption in their own countries before they can point a finger at the West, former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said in Melbourne yesterday.

“How Islam treats minorities is excessive, no question — Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews. We cannot condone injustice. We must condemn atrocities against minorities in Muslim societies and against Muslims in Christian societies,” he told the Parliament of the World Religions.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Mexico Busts Gang That Held 107 People in Slavery, Arrests 25

Mexico City — Mexico City police arrested 25 people who were allegedly involved with a network that held 107 people, mostly of indigenous descent, in slavery in the Mexican capital. Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Angel Mancera said Friday that investigation of the gang started in September, and noted that the people who were being forced to work as slaves “in many cases cannot even speak Spanish.”

The busts were carried out Thursday.

Victims were kidnapped at the Central de Abastos, the largest wholesale market in Mexico, where many of them worked as load carriers.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Cardinal: Statement on Gays Was Misrepresented

ROME, DEC. 4, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The retired president of the Vatican’s health care council says he has been misrepresented by the press, which has reported him as asserting homosexuals cannot go to heaven.

On Wednesday, the Pontifex.roma Web site published comments attributed to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán that state “transsexuals and homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Cardinal Draws Vatican Rebuke for Anti-Gay Talk

A Roman Catholic cardinal has drawn on an unusual rebuke from the Vatican for saying that homosexuality is “an insult to God” and “transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, made the comments Wednesday to a conservative Web site, the British newspaper The Telegraph reports.

“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence.

“Perhaps they aren’t guilty but by acting against the dignity of the body they will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The comments prompted a response from Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said the Web site to which Lozano Barragan spoke should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking “on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality.”

Current Catholic teaching acknowledges that some people have innate homosexual tendencies but that homosexual acts are “disordered.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Fury as Lesbian is Chosen by Anglican Church to be a Bishop

The worldwide Anglican Church has been plunged into a fresh crisis after a lesbian was chosen as its second gay bishop.

In a move that will dismay the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Canon Mary Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop for the diocese of Los Angeles.

The Rev Rod Thomas, the leader of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a member of the General Synod, said: ‘I feel deeply ashamed that this is happening in the Anglican Church.

‘I think a schism is absolutely inevitable.’

— Hat tip: JD

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Lesbian Awarded Custody of Christian’s Only Child

Decision sets up showdown over claim from ex-partner

A Vermont court ordered a Christian child taken away from her mother and given to a lesbian ex-partner, setting up, according to a lawyer for the Christian family, a dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court likely will have to resolve.

Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, told WND the recent order from the Vermont judge that Lisa Miller turn over her young daughter, Isabella, to the lesbian ex-partner, Janet Jenkins, on New Year’s Day is being appealed.

In the interim, a separate court hearing on the dispute is scheduled to be heard in a Virginia court during this coming week.

“We’re arguing that the state of Virginia cannot enforce an out of state, Vermont, civil union because it’s contrary to Virginia law,” Staver said.

Ultimately, he said, the issue probably will have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the case is being moved along parallel tracks in both Vermont, where Jenkins lives, and Virginia, where the Millers live.

[…]

The dispute is over Jenkins’ demands for visitation and/or custody of Isabella, with whom she has neither a blood nor an adoptive relationship.

Liberty Counsel has argued that Virginia courts cannot enforce child custody orders arising from Vermont same-sex civil unions since the state doesn’t recognize that status.

Last year, a judge in Vermont gave Jenkins visitation rights with Miller’s daughter. Then just days ago, the judge ordered custody transferred to Jenkins.

Liberty Counsel said, “Unrefuted testimony has shown that for the last five years, Janet has neither attempted to phone nor write Isabella. She has never sent Isabella a card of any kind for any occasion. Janet has refused to attend Isabella’s Christmas plays because she does not want to be around a Christian environment. She has also said that it is not in Isabella’s best interest to be raised in a Christian home.”

Virginia court rulings have declared Miller to be the sole parent.

Isabella was born to Miller from artificial insemination when Miller and Jenkins were living together. They obtained a civil union from Vermont, but Jenkins never adopted the baby.

The relationship terminated when Miller became a Christian and quit the lesbian lifestyle.

Even on the pro-homosexual “Queerty” website, the Vermont court decision startled some.

“What kind of monster takes a child away from their mother. … This is a human rights violation for the child,” said one person.

— Hat tip: JD

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Islam’s Failure to Modernise. It’s Time the Muslims Engaged in Self-Criticism

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 03.12.2009

The German-Egyptian historian Hamed Abdel-Samad, author of the book “Mein Abschied vom Himmel” (My departure from heaven), addresses the issue of Islam’s failure to modernise. “Enemy stereotypes have cemented the victim role among Muslims and prevented them from taking responsibility for their own problems. It is time they reshaped their self-image and began looking for answers, leaving histrionics and conspiracy theories behind them. For its part, Europe should break off its unholy alliances with Middle East dictators and look for new allies. Europeans should press ahead with their criticism of Islam, ignoring fundamentalist threats and avoiding the lazy thinking of political correctness. This criticism should be tough, but it should steer clear of polemic and resentment. And if the Muslims can’t take criticism from outside, then they should start practising it themselves.”

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Read further...

Radio Silence

The Baron left early this morning, wearing his best cloak-and-dagger, for some Seeekrit Meeting in Washington, D.C. That's why you haven't heard from him all day.

Well, it sounds good, huh? I mean aren't you impressed?

In reality, he may be editing a book and went to meet with the author. If anything comes of that, dear readers, you will be the first to know. That is if you've memorized the password and you have your seekrit decoder ring...oh, and a small bag of unmarked twenty dollar bills.

Meanwhile, my asthma exacerbations have kicked back in. I'm holding on until I see the doctor tomorrow. What I'd like is (joke coming) a shot of oxygen. I guess they go to steroids next? Yuck. The B. thought he ought to stay home in case I needed to go to the ER (one of our clunkers is in for repairs). No way. I didn't clean his cloak and polish that darn dagger just so he could stay here and watch me breathe.

By the way, when he comes home he'll have the jar of honey I need to make that honey-onion-garlic mixture. And a herbal remedy for bronchial spasms.

He left at some ungodly hour, but I think he said he'd be home in time to do the newsfeed.

I'm just not well enough to post anything. The health care alternative I wanted to put up is too much for my oxygen-starved brain. And who wants to post about Sarah Palin (nice lady, but...), or report breathlessly on the numbers of women who've come out of the woodwork to claim their piece of Tiger Woods?

Is my fevered imagination or has the news itself degenerated?

Happy Saint Nicholas Day. Want to see a dhimmi Sinterklaas? Go here.

Can you see the missing cross?

That's the future. What you won't see. And the children will never know.


[nothing more here]

Read further...

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/5/2009

Binghamton, New York is in the news again today: a man named Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani has been charged with stabbing a Binghamton University professor to death. The suspect’s roommates say that he often engaged in confrontational behavior and “acted like a terrorist”. There’s no indication that Binghamton’s proximity to Islamberg, the national headquarters of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, has any connection with this tragic incident.

In other news, a new study shows that Al Qaeda kills on average eight times as many Muslims as it does infidels.

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Esther, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, KGS, Nilk, Sean O’Brian, SS, Steen, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
- - - - - - - - -

	Financial Crisis
	Italian Families Hit Hard by Recession
	USA
	American Muslims Fear for European Counterparts
	Binghamton University Killing: Apartment-Mates Say Man Accused of Killing Professor Was Confrontational and ‘Acted Like a Terrorist’
	Court Records Confirm West Covina Man Provided Information to FBI
	Ex-Muslim’s College Speech Disrupted by Arson
	Sikh Sues Indiana Airport Bus Company for Discrimination
	Suspect Named in Fatal Stabbing of Binghamton University Professor
	Canada
	Funding for Leftist Group to be Cut
	Ottawa: Arrest Made in Jewelry Robbery
	Europe and the EU
	Burning of a Witch in Upper Austria Prevented at the Last Moment
	Copenhagen Summit: Denmark Rushes in Laws to Stop Carbon Trading Scam
	Europe’s Rabbis Fear to be Next After Minaret Ban
	Finland: Lisbon Treaty Won’t Affect Åland Islands
	Germany: Westerwelle Defends Swiss After Minaret Ban
	Greece: Athens Set for Anniversary of Fatal Police Shooting
	Ireland: Muslim Community Aids Flood Victims
	Italy: Berlusconi Denies Rift With Fini
	Italy: PM ‘Put Country in Our Hands’, Says Mafia Turncoat
	Italy: Senate Committee Bars Request to Arrest ‘Mafia-Linked’ Minister
	Italy: Racist Abuse Against Balotelli Feared at Inter-Juve Tie
	Italy: Hitman Claims Berlusconi Involved in 1993 Bombing Campaign
	Italy: Saharawi: Naples Hangs Photo of Activist for Her Release
	London Climate Change March Draws 20,000
	Swiss Ban on Minarets Was a Vote for Tolerance and Inclusion
	Switzerland: Minaret Ban Makes Word of the Year
	Why the Swiss Were Right to Prohibit Construction of Minarets
	North Africa
	Egypt: Al Aswany; Baradei Poses Real Problem for Regime
	Egypt: Al Ahram Daily to Elbaradei, Illusions of a Pensioner
	Ex-IAEA Head El Baradei Mulls Egypt Presidential Bid
	Minarets: Egypt’s NCHR, Shortcoming in Tolerance
	Minarets: Egyptian Press Very Critical Again
	Spain: Morocco: Haidar Will Have Passport After Apology
	Women Learn Self-Defence to Fight Back Against Harassment in Cairo
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Expert Calls for Law Against Foreign Political Intervention
	Middle East
	Ex-UN Inspector Condemns Bush, Blair on Iraq
	Homosexuals in the Arab world? The West and the Orientalism of Sexuality
	Iran Urges Bern Not to Enforce Minaret Ban
	Turkey: Approved Kurdish Language Classes at Universities
	Turkey: Iranian Atheist Risks Death Penalty if Repatriated
	Turks to Obama: ‘You Broke it, You Fix it’
	South Asia
	Afghanistan: NATO to Send 7,000 More Troops
	Bin Laden ‘Seen in Afghanistan in Early 2009’
	Italy to Send 1,000 More Troops and Rethink Afghan Strategy
	Far East
	4 US Teens Held for Attempted Murder in Japan: Media
	Australia — Pacific
	Bashing Suspect Steps Up to Law
	Immigration
	UK Should Open Borders to Climate Refugees, Says Bangladeshi Minister
	General
	Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims
	Environmentalism as Religion (1)
	Environmentalism as Religion (2)
	From Communism as “The 20th Century Islam, “ to “Islam as the 21st Century Communism?”
	Intimidation Then Normalization

Italian Families Hit Hard by Recession

One in three households struggle to make ends meet

(ANSA) — Rome, December 4 — The global recession has taken a heavy toll on Italian families according to an annual survey released Friday by socioeconomic think-tank Censis.

One in three households polled in the study reported dipping into their savings, skipping bills and borrowing money to make ends meet.

Over half of Italian families this year earned less than 15,000 euros, while less than 2.2% declared more than 70,000.

Over one million families live so far beneath the poverty line, they cannot afford to feed themselves properly.

Around 763,000 jobs were lost this year between people fired, placed on temporary suspension, employed by enterprises which shut down or whose temporary contracts were not renewed. The majority of those finding themselves without work were men, 56.4%, while 42% had worked in industry, 27.1% in the transformation sector, 15.1% in construction, 14.5% in retail and 9.1% in the services sector. National statistics bureau Istat reported last week that Italy’s unemployment rate in October rose to 8% of the labor force, its highest since November 2004, with the number of unemployed surpassing the two- million mark for the first time since March 2004.

Despite the rise in unemployment, Censis said Italy had weathered the crisis better than other countries. In the first six months of the year, compared to the same period in 2008, employment in Italy fell by 1.6%, compared to 7.2% in Spain and 2% in Britain. Helping to contrast the trend of closing Italian businesses were an increasing number of small enterprises run by immigrants.

In the first six months of the year, the number of small businesses operated by immigrants rose 2.4%, which now account for 6% of the total.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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American Muslims Fear for European Counterparts

Switzerland’s decision to ban minarets has sparked outrage by Muslim-Americans who have called the vote “xenophobic and bigoted”.

The Swiss minaret ban, agreed by voters on Sunday, heightens a general concern by Muslims in the United States about the challenges faced by Muslims living in Europe.

“Our fear is that the ban is going to further alienate a growing population of Muslims in Europe,” said Faiza Ali of The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Muslim-American group.

Ali cited other examples of challenges faced by European Muslims, including French resistance to burkas worn by some Muslim women, and opposition in parts of Europe to Turkish membership in the European Union.

CAIR has called on President Barack Obama to denounce the minaret ban, stating that America’s silence would send a negative message to the Muslim world.

“The president has made an effort to reach out to Muslims outside of the United States to build up a relationship that was tarnished during the Bush era,” Ali said. “We want him to continue those efforts and speak out against the ban.”

At the same time, Ali said her group is against efforts to boycott Swiss products and services, believing that civic engagement is more fruitful.

Chorus of disapproval

Besides national papers, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, a number of local newspapers have also denounced the decision. The New York Daily News, called the Swiss vote “utterly idiotic” adding that “passing laws that target Muslims for being Muslims is not part of any clash of civilizations, it is a failure of one”.

The Salt Lake Tribune also condemned the ban, calling the Swiss People’s Party “embarrassing” and adding that Swiss Muslims are forced to keep a low profile “so as not to excite the many people in the country who hate and fear them”.

The popular blogger Andrew Sullivan said the ban does nothing to address the issue of integration of Muslim immigrants and is a way to “provoke religious hostility and intolerance and thereby further radicalise Swiss Muslims”.

The Anti-Defamation League, a human rights organization, issued a statement urging the Swiss government to be “vigilant in its defense of religious freedom”.

“Those who initiated the anti-minaret campaign could try to further erode religious freedom through similar means,” the statement said.

The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy said in a statement that the decision is of “great concern”, calling it part of a “disturbing trend in significant parts of Europe to restrict the religious freedom and self-expression of religious and ethnic minorities, notably of Muslims”.

At the same time the group credited the Swiss government for its stance against the proposal.

Support

While opposition to the ban is strong, some conservative groups believe it is long overdue and hope the US. will draw lessons from the Swiss vote.

“Americans have been wondering when the Europeans will wake up and capture their own heritage,” Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, told swissinfo.ch.

Muslims must be welcomed into European countries, he said, on the condition that they agree to assimilate and abide by the norms of democracy.

Like many supporters of the ban, Donahue believes that allowing minarets would encourage the growth of an unwelcome ideology and support the Islamic legal system known as Shariah, which he calls “anti-democratic”.

To Donahue, the Swiss decision is a good model for America, where he believes Muslims are treated preferentially. “The United States goes overboard to show Muslims how tolerant they are,” he said.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Binghamton University Killing: Apartment-Mates Say Man Accused of Killing Professor Was Confrontational and ‘Acted Like a Terrorist’

The two apartment-mates of the man charged with stabbing a Binghamton University professor to death on Friday said Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani was confrontational, argumentative and “acted like a terrorist.”

The three men lived together for the past three weeks in a first-floor unit on Main Street in Binghamton. The men were brought together by a landlord, who rented a vacant room to Al-Zahrani, a 46-year-old Saudi national who was working on his doctorate at BU.

Souleyman Sukho, a Senegalese doctoral student at BU, said during the three weeks the men lived together, Al-Zahrani “came at me with a knife.”

“He asked me if I was afraid of dying,” Sukho said. “Then he went into his room. I told him, ‘don’t ask me the question if you don’t want to hear my answer.’

“He behaved like a terrorist,” Sukho said. “He would open his door and would be screaming on the phone.”

Binghamton University killing: 46-year-old grad student charged in professor’s death

Sukho said he didn’t understand what Al-Zahrani was screaming about because he was speaking in a language Sukho didn’t understand. “He claimed he was persecuted.”

The other roommate, Luis Pena, a 22-year-old master’s degree student at BU, said he tried to mitigate the tension between Al-Zahrani and Sukho, but he, too, was concerned about Al-Zahrani’s actions.

“He would be sitting here on the sofa and just blurt out, ‘I just feel like destroying the world,”‘ Pena said. “He would just make weird remarks.

“He comes off calm (but) he could flip in a second,” Pena said.

Sukho and Pena said they didn’t hear Al-Zahrani make any references to Richard T. Antoun, 77, the Binghamton University anthropology professor emeritus who was stabbed to death Friday inside Science Building I on the Vestal campus.

Police spent nearly 18 hours at the apartment between Friday and Saturday, speaking to the roommates and searching for clues.

— Hat tip: SS

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Court Records Confirm West Covina Man Provided Information to FBI

Court records made public on Friday indicate a one-time West Covina man provided “very, very valuable information” to the FBI during an operation he says consisted of spying on mosques.

Craig Monteilh said he spied on nearly a dozen mosques from July 2006 and October 2007 on the FBI’s behalf, posing as a Muslim convert and using the alias Farouk al-Aziz.

“This information finally confirms what I’ve been stating all along, that I’m a high-level, highly-trained FBI informant,” Monteilh said. “And that this information was sealed because the FBI did not want this record to go public. They wanted it sealed because the operation I was involved in was for the most part illegal.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Ex-Muslim’s College Speech Disrupted by Arson

Nonie Darwish’s previous appearances canceled by Columbia, Princeton

Author Nonie Darwish, whose new book warns of the advance of Islamic law in the West, completed a scheduled speech at Boston University but not without the interruption of an apparent arson in a nearby restroom.

Darwish, whose recently scheduled addresses at both Columbia and Princeton were canceled following Islamic opposition, said the students who arranged her Boston University appearance this week believe the fire was an attempt to hinder her message.

“I am still in shock,” she said in an e-mail to supporters. “Fifteen minutes before I was to speak at Boston University a fire was set on purpose in a bathroom near the room I was to speak at.”

— Hat tip: JD

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Sikh Sues Indiana Airport Bus Company for Discrimination

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A Sikh man sued an Atlanta-based company that provides shuttlebus service at Indianapolis International Airport, claiming it denied him a job as a driver because of his beard and turban, which he said his faith requires.

Indirjit Singh, of Greenwood, sued Air Serv Corp. in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis on Tuesday for an unspecified sum of money, claiming Air Serv did not hire him for a $9.90 per hour job he applied for in late 2007 because his beard and turban violate company guidelines for shuttle bus drivers.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Suspect Named in Fatal Stabbing of Binghamton University Professor

VESTAL — Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Binghamton University Professor Richard T. Antoun.

Al-Zahrani, 46, was taken to the Broome County Jail at 1:30 a.m. Satruday, said Broome County Sheriff’s Sgt. Paul Carlson. He was arraigned in Town of Vestal court Saturday morning.

According to the Binghamton University Web site, Al-Zahrani is a cultural anthropology graduate student working on his dissertation. Al-Zahrani, of Main Street, Binghamton, was charged by Binghamton University Police.

The fatal stabbing Friday of longtime Binghamton University anthropology professor Antoun has left the community with more questions than answers, again.

Antoun, 77, of Vestal, died at Wilson Regional Medical Center in Johnson City, where he was rushed following an attack against him inside BU’s Science 1 building..

According to police radio transmissions, Antoun was stabbed four times with a 6-inch kitchen blade while he was inside a campus office.

Professors who were in the building at the time said Antoun was stabbed by a graduate student. However, the university would not confirm the name of the suspect or release a possible motive.

University officials said there was no danger to students or others on the Vestal campus, but urged the community Friday afternoon to stay clear of the Science I building, which was to remain closed until noon Saturday. At 2:20 p.m. Friday, many students who registered their cell phones with the university received a text that read: “At 1:41 p.m., University Police responded for a reported stabbing in S-I. Suspect in custody. Police investigating. Stay clear of Science I.”

It was unclear Friday night when the suspect would be formally charged…

— Hat tip: SS

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Funding for Leftist Group to be Cut

The Conservative government is set to slash millions of dollars in funding to Alternatives, a Montreal-based nongovernmental organization associated with a number of left-leaning causes and which has been critical of Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Alternatives was founded in 1994 “to foster social justice, participatory democracy and equal relations between North and South,” according to its 2007-08 annual report.

The report shows that it received $2.4-million from the Canadian International Development Agency and a further $1.4-million from other federal departments.

[…]

Alternatives runs a number of programs, in Canada and abroad, including environmental, communications, peace promotion and “social justice” programs.

Ottawa is understood to be particularly unhappy about an education camp the NGO organized in August 2008. The event, at Saint-Alphonse de Rodriguez in Quebec, featured “500 motivated militants” invited from countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, “Palestine” and Venezuela.

Sources said the government is also concerned that Alternatives’ board includes supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, such as Ali Mallah, vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation.

[…]

Tom Quiggin, who has 20 years’ experience in the Canadian intelligence community and is now a board advisor for Global Brief magazine, said he has noted an increasing convergence between the hard left and supporters of organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been declared terrorist organizations by the Canadian government.

[Comments from JD: See article for more details]

— Hat tip: JD

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Ottawa: Arrest Made in Jewelry Robbery

“I don’t remember anything after the call that came at 8 p.m.,” Natalie Galipeau said about the night she was nearly killed by a stranger. Almost four months later, police say they have the man who did it.

Galipeau, 31, was trying to sell a sapphire and diamond bracelet for $1,250 online when she was contacted by a man who said he was interested in purchasing it.

They eventually agreed to meet at Galipeau’s home on Plainhill Dr. in the city’s east end.

She walked outside with the bracelet at about 9 p.m. on Aug. 18 while her husband and daughter remained inside.

Her next memory is of waking up in a hospital bed days later with them at her bedside.

Police said Galipeau had been viciously attacked and then dragged by the suspect’s car for about half the length of a football field before ending up on the street in a pool of her own blood. She had suffered multiple skull fractures and was put into an induced coma for three days because of swelling in her brain.

She also had three teeth knocked out and had to have surgery on one of her eye sockets.

The pain never leaves her.

“Sometimes I cry from the headaches,” she said. “It’s taken a long time after the hospital to even get this far.”

Galipeau is also suffering from short-term memory loss.

An appointment with a neurologist is the next step of many still to be taken.

But for one day, at least, good news.

“We’re very happy and relieved,” she said after being told of the arrest. “It made my little girl smile a lot.”

Galipeau, her husband Louie and seven-year-old daughter never gave up hope the police would get their man.

“The police were always confident and they told me they would never let it die no matter how long it took,” she said.

Police called Thursday to say they were interviewing someone. Then Friday the call they were all waiting for came.

“I’m surprised it happened so quickly after they said they were talking to someone,” she said.

Yonis Awais Hassan, 18, of Ottawa is charged with two counts of robbery, two counts of conspiracy, theft, aggravated assault, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and failing to remain at the scene of an accident in connection with this case and two other robberies.

Police are looking for an accomplice.

Galipeau said if Hassan is the person who did this to her, her husband is happy about one thing.

“He’s happy he’s 18 and not a young offender,” she said.

— Hat tip: Vlad Tepes

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Burning of a Witch in Upper Austria Prevented at the Last Moment

The organiser of a traditional festival in the south of Upper Austria had the devilish idea to “burn a witch” to spice up his event. At the last moment disgusted citizens and residents were able to prevent such an outrageous spectacle.

The “burning of a witch” during the event was even advertised on placards and posters. 400 years ago many women were killed that way in the name of the church. Those crimes count to one of the darkest chapters in Austrian history. A female author who lives in the region startled the general public and confirmed that such kind of activities have nothing to do with customs, but rather with abuse.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Copenhagen Summit: Denmark Rushes in Laws to Stop Carbon Trading Scam

Europe’s flagship carbon trading scheme suffered a blow today as the Danish government was forced to rush an emergency law through parliament to clamp down on a virulent form of VAT fraud.

On the eve of the Copenhagen climate talks, which will attract world attention to emissions trading schemes, police and tax investigators across Europe are believed to be investigating hundreds of millions of euros worth of fraud involving carbon quotas originating in Denmark.

Since British, French and Dutch governments took similar action in the summer, much of the “carousel” fraud involving carbon credits moved to Denmark, where registration of carbon quotas for the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is easy and a VAT rate of 25% makes the fraud attractive to international criminals.

Experts said today that Copenhagen had long been an accident waiting to happen in terms of carousel fraud.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Europe’s Rabbis Fear to be Next After Minaret Ban

The Conference of European Rabbis condemned the outcome of last Sunday’s Swiss referendum in a resolution passed during their two-day meeting, International Relations Director Philip Carmel told Reuters on Thursday.

“We don’t have a situation of the extreme right in Europe attacking Jews because they are content to attack Muslims,” he said. “But the Swiss example is classic: it’s not just Muslims who are going to be targeted by the extreme right.”

Swiss voters approved a ban on building new minarets in a referendum, defying the government and parliament which had rejected the right-wing initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and a cherished tradition of tolerance.

Speaking after the conference ended, Carmel said any movement towards xenophobia or extreme nationalist sentiment was “bad for Jews”, adding: “The growth of the far right legitimizes xenophobic opinion.”

The Conference, which represents over 800 rabbis in more than 40 countries, was concerned that Jews might be the next targets of a rise in right-wing sentiment aroused by the minaret ban, he said.

The rabbis met in Moscow at the historic Choral Synagogue, scene of protests by Jews during the Soviet years when so many KGB agents stood inside that worshippers preferred to meet on the street outside. The building has been restored.

Rabbis said they were delighted by the revival of Jewish life in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, where their faith was relentlessly persecuted, leading to an exodus of tens of thousands.

They said the growth of Muslim extremism in western Europe’s capitals was making life difficult for Jewish communities there.

Jonasan Abraham, a London rabbi, said it was “tragic to think that it’s safer now to walk the streets of Moscow as a Jew than in many Western European capitals where you feel hostility.”

In some European cities, Jews were living under tight security at schools and synagogues because of the threat from Islamic fundamentalists, the rabbis said.

“You can’t talk about the Holocaust in certain classrooms because the Muslim children will stand and complain about why it is being discussed,” Carmel said.

The rabbis called for European governments to combat extremism by making a commitment not to engage in dialogue with fundamentalist organizations and their representatives.

— Hat tip: TB

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Finland: Lisbon Treaty Won’t Affect Åland Islands

The Lisbon Treaty will not have an effect on the autonomy of the Åland Islands. Finland informed the EU on Thursday in Brussels that the Swedish-speaking province, which has been a demilitarised zone since 1921, would not be subject to the guidelines of the treaty.

The Finnish government negotiated extensively with leaders from the province concerning the effects of the Lisbon treaty.

The Åland Islands are a self-governing province of Finland. They are also exempt from the EU’s VAT rules, allowing for the sale of tax-free items on ferries travelling between Finland and Sweden

— Hat tip: KGS

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Germany: Westerwelle Defends Swiss After Minaret Ban

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday that it was wrong to consider Switzerland a nation of bigots after its vote in favour of a ban on building new mosque minarets.

“As much as I — just like the Swiss government — regret the outcome, it’s wrong to come to the conclusion that Switzerland is an intolerant or undemocratic country because of this vote,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Switzerland was one of the world’s oldest democracies and was founded on tolerance, Westerwelle said, however, he admitted he would have campaigned for a different result.

In a referendum in Switzerland last weekend, 57 percent of voters approved a right-wing motion to ban future construction of minarets, a decision that was met with an international backlash and charges of religious prejudice against Muslims.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Greece: Athens Set for Anniversary of Fatal Police Shooting

More than 6,000 police will be on the streets of Athens this weekend as the city marks the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy.

The teenager’s death at the hands of police in December last year sparked Greece’s worst riots in decades.

In the run-up to the anniversary, dozens of schools and university campuses have been occupied by students preparing to mark the uprising.

Greece’s government says it will have a zero tolerance policy towards violence.

“We want to send a clear message, we won’t tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror scene in central Athens, we won’t hand Athens to vandals,” said Citizen Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis.

Memorial service

Family and friends of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos will hold a memorial service on Sunday to mark a year since his killing.

They have appealed for calm, but posters have appeared in the capital saying: “We won’t forget, we won’t forgive.”

Police said they expect about 150 foreign anarchists to arrive this weekend from Italy, France and other European countries.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has acknowledged that the weekend is a “crucial moment” for his new socialist government and for the nation.

“All of us, citizens, political leaders, parties, students representatives, we must protect Athens,” he said.

Shop owners in the Greek capital are braced for trouble although some believe it will not be as bad as last year.

“Like all other shops on this street, we have put [up] steel shutters,” said Athens music store manager George Stouraitis.

“But I don’t think anything major will happen this year because the government is still young.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Ireland: Muslim Community Aids Flood Victims

The Irish Muslim community has announced it is to conduct a nationwide collection at the State’s mosques in aid of those affected by the recent floods.

According to Mohammed al Kabour, who is organising the campaign, the Irish Muslim flood relief committee met the Irish Red Cross last week, and it was agreed to run its fundraising in conjunction with the Irish Red Cross appeal, which is seeking to raise €1 million.

Collections at two mosques have already taken place over the past two Fridays, and the nationwide collection will take place this Friday. Mosques involved in the collection with include those in Clonskeagh, Co Dublin; Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo; and Cork and Galway.

Volunteers are also collecting in various points in Dublin today, including Temple Bar, Grafton Street, and Camden Street.

“The aim of the appeal is to give back to Irish society itself. The Red Cross has been very generous in helping after earthquakes in places such as Indonesia and Pakistan, and we feel it’s time to give back,” Mr al Kabour said.

“With the recession, attitudes have hardened toward immigrants, and its important to show the contribution they can make,” Mr al Kabour added.

Last week, the Irish Red Cross estimated it has raised over €300,000 so far for its flood relief operations

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Italy: Berlusconi Denies Rift With Fini

Press says premier fuming over off-the-cuff remarks

(ANSA) — Rome, December 3 — Premier Silvio Berlusconi dismissed reports on Thursday that he and House Speaker Gianfranco Fini were ready to part company after his ally was caught saying the premier acts like “an absolute monarch”.

Fini made what he believed were pri