Greece: Papandreou, Don’t Give Up on War Reparations
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, FEBRUARY 26 — Greek premier George Papandreou stated today that “in no case will Greece give up war reparations,” owed by Germany. Speaking in Parliament, Papapandreou however added that the government does not plan on turning it into a “symbol of demands” in this “time of weakness” of the Country. The premier’s words coincided with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s invitation to visit Berlin on March 5. He repeated that “in no case will we forfeit our demands, but we will not turn them into a contingent symbol of our demands, in a time when we are weak, we are trying to restore order, carry out reforms and regain our credibility”. In recent days Germany received requests for unpaid war reparations put forth by the extreme right and left wing, as well as by deputy premier Thedoros Pangalos, but it is the first time that Papandreou mentions them directly. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Alexander: Health Care Reform a ‘Political Kamikaze Mission’ For Democrats
Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander says pushing health care reform through Congress by a simple majority using the reconciliation process would be political suicide for Democrats and vowed to campaign for the repeal the bill if it passes. On “This Week”, Sen. Alexander to told Elizabeth Vargas, “It would be a political kamikaze mission for the Democratic Party if they jam this through after the American people have been saying.”
Alexander also said, if Democrats do pass a health care reform bill, “for the rest of the year, we’re going to be involved in a campaign to repeal it.” He added that democrats would pay a political price for passing health care. “Every Democratic candidate in the country is going to be defined by this unpopular health care bill at a time when the real issues are jobs, terror and debt.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
America’s Future Could be All Greek to US — By Mark Steyn
While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Chuck Norris: Obama vs. The 10th Amendment
Of course, Jefferson’s concern against an overreaching federal government was representative of most of the framers. That is why the 10th Amendment exists. A decade later, during his presidency in 1802, Jefferson still shared about his earlier passion to inhibit an overreaching federal government: “I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for … an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union.”
The point is, based upon the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn’t have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health-care services have proven to break more national legs than mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed. The government is inept in running America’s health-care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health-care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the Gross National Product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cities Shortening Yellow Traffic Lights for Deadly Profit
Some cities have been shortening yellow lights to nab drivers with a ticket. But studies show that they’re raking in the bucks at the expense of public safety.
“While several cities have been caught shortening yellow lights to increase revenue from red-light tickets,” said Biller, “I think the larger issue today is that the duration of so many yellow lights has never been adequately set for optimal safety results. An increase of approximately one second can reduce the frequency of red-light-running by at least 50 percent.”
The standard definition of a safe yellow light is arguably hard to nail down, depending on the intersection. The Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices specifies a wide-ranging duration of three to six seconds. But the application is more important than the theory, which is why it should be left to the scientists to decide which goes where, according to Justin McNaull, director of state relations for the American Automobile Association.
“Yellow light intervals should be determined by engineers,” he told AlterNet. “If yellow lights are too short, motorists can’t stop in time. If they’re too long, motorists will continue to accelerate when they shouldn’t. To borrow from ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ yellow lights need to be just right.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
High Court Hears Ex-Enron CEO Skilling’s Appeal
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appeared troubled Monday by the selection of the jury that convicted former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling as well as the use of a federal fraud law against him.
Several justices appeared receptive to arguments by Skilling’s lawyer that he did not have a fair trial in Houston, Enron’s hometown, following the energy company’s 2001 collapse that cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.
Amid concern that the trial judge spent too little time questioning prospective jurors, Justice Stephen Breyer said, “I’m worried about a fair trial in this instance.”
Skilling was convicted in 2006 on 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors. His lawyers are hoping for a new trial.
He also is contesting his conviction under the federal fraud law making it a crime to deprive shareholders or the public of “the intangible right to honest services.”
Critics say the law is vague and unfair.
Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most vocal critic of the law, said it sounds to him as though the law says, “It’s a crime to do any bad thing.”…
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Pelosi: Lawmakers Should Sacrifice Jobs for Health Care
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue’s massive role in this election year.
Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program “This Week.” “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rep. Joe Wilson: “Fort Jackson Five” Removed From Active Duty
From Erick Stakelbeck
Another very interesting update to a story I first reported back on February 18th.
South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson said Friday that five Muslim soldiers who have been under investigation at Fort Jackson have been removed from active duty.
Wilson, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, says four of the men have been discharged from the Army, and their laptops have been seized. Congressional officials with knowledge of the case tell McClatchy newspapers that cell phones and Arabic writings had been confiscated as well.
Read more at my blog, at the link above.
| [Return to headlines] |
Soros Swoops in, Takes Another Bank
Accusations of favoritism swirl in deals for institutions seized by government
A company formed by an investor group that includes billionaire George Soros swooped in to purchase a failed California bank in the latest acquisition by the company, despite controversy surrounding some of its previous bank takeovers.
OneWest Bank entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, for the acquisition of all of the deposits and certain assets of La Jolla Bank.
The acquisition is the latest in a string of failed bank purchases for the California-based OneWest, a federal savings bank formed by an investor group that includes billionaire George Soros and Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sound the Alarm Against Sustainable Development
After more than 15 years of trying to warn Americans about the dangers of Sustainable Development, finally, many in the freedom movement are beginning to understand that it is the root of most of the issues we are fighting today. But it is a vast, complicated issue that is difficult to comprehend — even for those of us who have been studying it for so long. It is critical that all freedom-loving Americans grasp the true destructive force of evil that is Sustainable Development.
To that end, I am herein reprinting an interview I gave recently to the Internet news site “The Post & Email.” I know I have been focusing a lot of my articles on this issue lately, but I think this interview is one of the most comprehensive explanations I have yet given. But it is also very simple to understand.
[…]
Here is a more revealing quote: “Nature has an integral set of different values (cultural, spiritual and material) where humans are one strand in nature’s web and all living creatures are considered equal. Therefore the natural way is the right and human activities should be molded along nature’s rhythms.” from the UN’s Biodiversity Treaty presented at the 1992 UN Earth Summit.
This quote lays down the ground rules for the entire Sustainable Development agenda. It says humans are nothing special — just one strand in the nature of things or, put another way, humans are simply biological resources. Sustainablist policy is to oversee any issue in which man reacts with nature — which, of course, is literally everything. And because the environment always comes first, there must be great restrictions over private property ownership and control. This is necessary, Sustainablists say, because humans only defile nature.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tea Parties: Hi-Jacked by Political Hacks?
Both the Republican and Democrat Parties are trying to hi-jack the Tea Party movement. And, unfortunately, some people who sponsored the initial Tea Parties don’t have necessary arrows in their organizational planning quivers to move their pro-Constitution groups forward.
One basic Law of Nature is that nothing stands still. Everything moves. It either goes forward or it goes backward. One key to success, of course, is being able to tell the difference between “backward” and “forward.”
Some Constitutionalist (Tea Party) group leaders either don’t understand the Laws of Nature or lack organizational planning skills. Patriots they may be, but if they do not move forward to some specifically defined objective, they will fade into nothingness.
Elected officials — not all, but many — are part of the problem. Only legislative results provide a reliable guideline — and results aren’t good in most communities. So why do Tea Party coordinators invite political hacks to speak to audiences disgusted with elected officials? Why are politicians, part of the problem, given Tea Party spotlights?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Legislation Game
Drafting legislation to expand federal power has become a popular sport in Washington. It is no longer necessary for a member to have proof of a genuine problem, problems can be declared even without proof of their existence or upon the prediction that they will soon be upon us. Fiction is just as good a basis for drafting legislation as fact, or so most members who play the legislation game see it.
The way it works is simple. If you are a member of the House of Representatives or the Senate, you receive a steady stream of lobbyists into your office weekly. Or, if you are particularly anxious to build a new constituency, you can simply contact a leading figure and invite them in to see you. Most often, however, members just sit and wait because soon folks will come knocking. You then decide which of those visiting has the greatest money to give to you or the greatest popular pull or, preferably, both.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Maneuvers to Block Genocide Draft by US House
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 1 — Tensions in Ankara increased on the eve of Thursday’s Armenian genocide voting in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, today’s Radikal daily newspaper reports. Relations between Turkey and Armenia have until now been soured by differences over the massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 at the time of the Ottoman Empire. Ankara denies that it was genocide, which Ierevan has always claimed. A Turkish delegation went yesterday to the US to hold contacts in Washington before the voting scehduled on Thursday. The Turkish Foreign Ministry in turn has warned the US that the approval of the draft would have negative impact on Turco-American relations as well as on the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia. Today’s Sabah daily newspaper adds that Turkey’s newly appointed ambassador to Washington Namik Tan was working hard to block the draft. Radikal says that the silence of US President Barack Obama regarding the draft was seen as a negative sign for Ankara. The paper says that the Turkish Foreign Ministry was aware of the risks and was exerting efforts to make the White House block the controversial process. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Supreme Court Passes on Oklahoma 10 Commandment Case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has declined to get involved in a new dispute over a Ten Commandments display on public property.
The justices on Monday left in place a lower court decision that a Ten Commandments marker in Haskell County must go.
6/9/2009 Related story: Appeals Court Says Oklahoma 10 Commandments Display Is Religious
The 8-foot-tall stone monument has been on the county courthouse lawn in Stigler since 2004.
A federal appeals court ruled last year that it amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by the county commission.
In 2005, the high court said in two cases that determining whether the Ten Commandments could be displayed on government property was a case-by-case affair.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
‘White Right’ Wants Obama to be One-Term President, Farrakhan Says
Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan says the stalling of health care legislation is proof.
CHICAGO — Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, boasting his divine stature, on Sunday predicted trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and urged him to do more to improve the lives of blacks and the downtrodden.
The 76-year-old leader said the “white right” was conspiring to make Obama a one-term president, and pointed to his stalled efforts to introduce health care legislation as proof. He said those opponents and lobbyists were trapping him into a future war with Iran that could lead to mass destruction.
“The word ‘prophet’ is too cheap a word. I am a light in the midst of darkness,” Farrakhan said at the annual convention of the movement that embraces black nationalism. “It ain’t ego, it’s my love for you.”
An estimated 20,000 people attended the heavily guarded Saviours’ Day event at the United Center in Chicago. Followers — men dressed in navy uniforms and women in white skirt suits with matching hijabs — cheered on Farrakhan with shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”
Farrakhan spent most of the fiery nearly four-hour speech recounting a 1985 vision he had in Mexico. Farrakhan has often described how he believes he was invited aboard an unidentified flying object he calls “the wheel” where he said he heard the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad speak to him.
He said that experience led him to inklings about future events, including the United States’ 1986 bombing of Libya.
Farrakhan recounted how his divine knowledge has allowed him to recognize countless warning signs over the decades — such as natural disasters such as the earthquake in Chile — and said they indicate impending trouble, including for Obama.
Dressed in ornate creme robes, he addressed the president directly:
“Your people are suffering. You can’t ease their plight, but you can use your bully pulpit. Speak for the poor. Speak for the weak.”
He said helping the Nation of Islam, which has worked to reform black inmates for decades, would also be an answer.
“Put some money on back of us,” he said. “We can reform our people.”
Farrakhan has vigorously supported Obama for years and used his presidency as a call to action for blacks. That was even as Obama distanced himself from the group for Farrakhan’s past comments that many considered anti-Semitic.
Supporters say Farrakhan’s words are often taken out of context.
Farrakhan continued his praise of Obama Sunday, and said the nation’s first black president was manipulated into disavowing Farrakhan.
He would not say if he and Obama had ever met on the issue.
“They all want to know did I ever meet with him and what did I say or what he say,” Farrakhan said in the speech. “I ain’t going there.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
White House to Push ACORN Pet Project
Critics warn plan will ‘sneak socialism’ into U.S., cause major economic loss
The White House is considering a new policy that would give an advantage in bids for billions in government contracts to companies that pay workers “living wages” and offer generous benefits.
WND has learned the “living wage” campaign has long been pushed by the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and was largely initiated on a local level in the 1990s with the help of a socialist party of which evidence suggests Barack Obama was a member.
Critics warn a living wage advantage for more than $500 billion in government contracts could harm small companies, with case studies showing cities that enacted similar policies in the 1990s faced major financial losses. Business groups who oppose the plan say also it would increase government procurement costs.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will Vote Fraud Determine Upcoming Primaries — Again?
Vote fraud. I have been writing about it since 1993. The Republican and Democratic parties are well greased, well run corrupt enterprises who did nothing to stop the fraud and in fact, opened the door for more: National Voter Registration Act of 1993 aka Motor Voter Law, which opened the flood gates for fraud. While this was 2001, it’s only gotten worse:
“A recent study in Georgia found more than 15,000 dead people on active voting rolls statewide. Alaska, according to Federal Election Commission, had 502,968 names on its voter rolls in 1998. The census estimates only 437,000 people of voting age were living in the state that year…
“A cursory check of the registration cards turned up questionable names. Shortly thereafter, election board workers spent an entire day calling the names listed on the cards and found that nearly all of them were fraudulent. Many of them sought to register prominent people, dead or alive — as well as at least three deceased aldermen and a dog. The media have reported that close examinations have turned up cards that attempted to register prominent businessmen using their childhood addresses, a former deputy mayor using an old address for an alderman, and a former alderman who has been dead for years.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Anti-EU Sentiment Hardening in Iceland
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — Days ahead of a national referendum on an agreement between Iceland and the UK and the Netherlands over repayment of monies lost when Icelandic online bank Icesave went bankrupt at the height of the economic crisis, a fresh poll of the north Atlantic nation shows that anti-EU feeling is hardening amongst the populace.
Some 56 percent of those surveyd by pollster Capacent on behalf of the Farmers’ Association of Iceland opposed EU membership while 33.2 percent backed it.
The scale of the opposition to joining the bloc is in line but up slightly from other polls in recent months.
In mid-September, another poll, also by Capacent for the Federation of Icelandic Industries, reported that 43.2 percent of Icelanders were opposed to the EU application and 39.6 backed it.
In August, another poll by the same firm, this time for Andriki, a free-market think-tank, said that 48.5 percent were opposed to EU membership and 34.7 percent were in favour.
Last week, the European Commission recommended that the European Council give the green light to accession negotiations with Iceland.
However, the Icesave issue has angered many citizens, who feel that Brussels has sided with two of its member states in a dispute over a deal that they say will burden regular people and undermine funding for social programmes as a result of a problem created by bankers and political elites.
In the most recent poll, even those that favour accession are fairly lukewarm in their support compared to the fervour amongst opponents. Of the 33.2 percent that back joining the bloc, only 9.4 percent are “totally in favour,” 7.2 percent “very much in favour” and 16.6 percent somewhat in favour”.
Meanwhile, of the 56 percent who do not back accession, 28.4 percent are totally opposed, 11.3 percent very much opposed and 16.3 percent somewhat opposed.
At the height of the crisis, a majority of Icelanders favoured joining the bloc.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Bad Weather: Xynthia in France ‘Tsunami’, 47 Killed
(ANSAmed) — PARIS — The French tsunami is called Xynthia. Caught unprepared and in the middle of getting ready for winter holidays from schools, the country has been struck hard by the storm battering Europe. The consequences have been devastating: 47 dead (54 total in Europe), Vendee lashed , houses flooded in a matter of minutes. A state of alert was called on Saturday evening, and though for days it had been known that Xynthia was on its way, everyone went to bed as usual on France’s Atlantic coast in the small seaside municipalities such as La Faute and L’Aguillon, with many others on their way there to spend winter holidays with their children. The noise was what awakened those who managed to save themselves from the invasion of the water pushed by the strength of the sea in Vendee and Charente Maritime, the two regions most exposed to the fury of the Atlantic. The small, characteristic two-storey houses were flooded in a matter of minutes, with witnesses saying that within a half hour “the water had reached the first floor”. Some sought refuge on the roof, where they waited for firemen for hours, who in certain cases arrived by helicopter. Drowning under the deluge of calls, firemen counted a total of 25,000 interventions from the beginning of the storm. The highest death toll from the adverse weather conditions was in Vendee, where people drowned to death. Search operations were shocking on some beaches on which corpses washed up. Many deaths were also caused in Charente Maritime and the Pyrenees by falling trees and roofs, as well as by being struck by objects whipped by strong winds. Transport is in chaos: many flights have been called off, trains suspended, roads blocked. Inconveniences are also extreme for the millions of houses left without electricity, even though the storm has moved inland towards central Europe. French president Nicolas Sarkozy will be going to Vendee this morning. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Catholic Child Abuse Scandal Widens
The child abuse scandal engulfing the Catholic Church in Germany continues to expand, with accusations that claims of abuse were ignored or hidden for years and the first resignations.
Barnabas Bögle, abbot of the Bavarian Ettal Benedictine monastery, and Maurus Kraß, head of the school and prior there, both resigned this week after admitting that regulations on reporting accusations of abuse had not been followed.
The number of former and current students at Ettal who have made accusations of abuse has risen to 20. It has also been claimed that claims were made in 2003, during a class reunion, but that nothing was done.
The monastery at St Ottilien also reported it had received a letter accusing a teacher there of abuse during the 1960s. A letter was also sent to the local paper, the Abendzeitung accusing a priest in the former seminary of having taken nude pictures of boys there during the late 1960s.
Karlheinz Knebel, general vicar of the Augsburg bishopric, called for the accusations to be thoroughly investigated. He said it was about the credibility of the Catholic Church.
That credibility is at rock bottom, according to two surveys published on Saturday, which showed that only 30 percent of Germans consider the Church as honest.
The surveys, both conducted by Omni Quest for the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and the Frankfurter Rundschau newspapers, suggested that even among Catholics, less than half considered the church honest and true-to-life.
Christian Weisner, one of the initiators of the Catholic grassroots reform group Wir sind Kirche, said, “The catastrophic results are not only down to the current situation, but an expression of a long-term and terrible loss of trust.
“The Church ignores the experience of people in their every day lives. Families are prayed for, but not single parents or single people.”
The surveys showed only 20 percent believing that the Church would help to investigate the abuse claims, with 68 percent saying they did not think it would help.
Respected Catholic theologian Hans Küng wrote on Saturday that the celibacy rule played a rule in the abuse of children and young people in Catholic schools, and called for clerics to be allowed to marry.
Writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung he said the celibacy rule contradicted the bible, quoting from Corinthians, “Due to the temptation of illicit sexual relations, every man should have his woman, and every woman her man.”
He said many problems currently dogging the Church could be solved by allowing clerics to marry, and allowing women to be ordained. “The bishops know this,” he wrote. “but they should also have the courage to talk about it. They would have the vast majority of the public and also the Catholics behind them.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Child Sex Abuse in Dutch Catholic Church Revealed
Amid the high-profile child sexual abuse scandals in the United States and other European countries, the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands has remained unsullied. A joint investigation by NRC Handelsblad and Radio Netherlands Worldwide shows this is unjustified.
By Robert Chesal for Radio Netherlands Worldwide and Joep Dohmen for NRC Handelsblad
Janne Geraets, now 57, suffered repeated sexual abuse from the age of 11 at the hands of a priest at the Roman Catholic school where he was a boarder. His ordeal began in 1964, at the Don Rua monastery in the town of ‘s-Heerenberg in the east of the Netherlands. He was being trained by the Salesian Fathers of Don Bosco, in the hope of one day becoming a missionary. After a party, one of the priests lured Janne to the infirmary under the pretext of giving him medicine to ease his sore throat. “All of a sudden he was right up against me,” Geraets recalled. “He unzipped his trousers and forced my hand inside. I was in a state of utter confusion.”
After the incident, Geraets returned to bed. But the next morning he was summoned by the same priest. “I remember how my heart was pounding as I knocked on the door. He opened it and said ‘That should never have happened’. He gave me absolution; he pardoned my sin. That confused me even more.”
‘The dirty one’
Janne Geraets was called to that same room again and again. “He would lie on his couch and put me on top of him, riding back and forth. I remember a knock at the door on one occasion. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I wanted to yell ‘this isn’t right, this isn ‘t allowed’. But there was no one to turn to. You’re too afraid to say anything. You think you are the dirty one and that they’ll throw you out of school.”
At the boarding school in ‘s-Heerenberg, 80 to 100 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 slept in four large dormitories. “Sometimes you knew for sure: there’s something going on between that boy and that priest,” said Geraets. It happened on a large scale. Several of the priests were involved. Some priests were more popular than others. You could tell because more boys visited them.” The priest who abused him is now 98 years old. “Everything I held sacred turned out to be a facade,” said Geraets. “It was a huge blow to my self-confidence.”
‘Too little, too late’
Sexual abuse of children by priests has been brought to light in a number of countries, but the recent apologies from the Vatican are “too little too late”, said Yvo van Kuijck. He is the former chairman of the independent Assessment and Advisory Committee which cooperates with the Netherlands’ hotline for reporting sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Since it was set up in 1995, the hotline has received almost 300 reports of sexual abuse. “It has taken too long for the Church to apologise and take action,” van Kuijck said. “The Dutch bishops adopted the same ‘wait and see’ approach. I didn’t get the impression that dealing with sexual abuse was a priority for them.”
Two years ago, dissatisfied with the attitude taken by the Dutch bishops, Kuijck resigned along with his entire committee, because they learned priests guilty of abuse in one parish were simply transferred to another parish where they were free to find new victims. “Not only is that unprofessional, it’s inconceivable,” said Van Kuijck, who is now vice-president of the district court in Arnhem.
Girls as well as boys
Leonie Cramwinckel-Bloch was 15 years old and in her fourth year at secondary school in Doetinchem when she went on a school skiing trip. Her class was supervised by the English teacher, another Salesian father from the nearby monastery in ‘s-Heerenberg. It was December 1970. Leonie, who is now 54, said the priest sexually assaulted her, fondling her genitals on more than one occasion. She didn ‘t dare tell anyone. “But I knew that he was wrong,” she said. “Looking back, I was surprised by how easy and self-evident it was for him. That made me realise that it couldn ‘t have been the first time.” Back at school, she steered clear of the priest and only told her parents a few years later. The priest in question is now dead.
There were other cases of abuse outside the monastery. Another Salesian father, now 72, taught math in ‘s-Heerenberg during the 1960s. He later became a parish priest, but in 1994, the archbishop of Utrecht suspended him following accusations of sexual harassment involving a young boy.
In a response, the priest said that there was little substance to the accusations. “We were in the sauna at a sports centre. The boy saw me naked. Nothing more. A man sitting next to me had an erection. But I didn’t touch the boy. It was a long time ago. I don’t think it’s right to stir all this up again,” he said.
Wim Flapper, former provincial head of the Salesians of Don Bosco, admitted that the order did not try to get to the bottom of this incident. “He received psychotherapy,” he said of the priest. “We took care of that. But we did not investigate whether there were other victims.”
Cause for investigation
Now that three priests from the same institution have been subject to accusations, Yvo van Kuijck sees cause for further investigation. Although it is no longer his responsibility, he believes it is in the interests of the church to look into the matter. “If it’s a structural problem at an institution, then there is every reason to take a good look at what’s going on.”
Johan Marsman, now 68, ran the farm for the Salesians in ‘s-Heerenberg during the 1960s. He has written a book about the Don Rua monastery. He is aware that the priests had relationships with the boys. “Under the previous head, Wim Flapper, nearly 15 years ago, a meeting was organised for former students and the abuse was discussed. He expressed his regret and conceded that mistakes had been made,” Marsman said. According to him most of the former students no longer want to talk about the incidents. He himself left the monastery in 1968.
When asked whether the priests at Don Rua had relationships with ‘favourite boys’, Johan Marsman nodded and said: “Yes, I’ve heard that”. He added that the situation at Don Rua was not unique. “It happened everywhere, especially at the boarding schools. But it cannot be excused. “
Trail to the top
In the period that Janne Geraets was abused at the Don Rua school, the current bishop of Rotterdam, Ad van Luyn, was working there as a teacher. In the 1970s, Van Luyn was provincial head of the Salesians. Since 2008 he has chaired the Netherlands’ Synod of Bishops.
Ad van Luyn declined to discuss “past issues”. Through a spokesman, he said that “matters relating to the congregation are the responsibility of the current father superior, even if they relate to previous governors”.
Father Herman Spronck, currently the most senior Salesian in the Netherlands, denies all knowledge of abuse in ‘s-Heerenberg, and refers all inquiries to his predecessors. He is not opposed to an investigation and is keen to emphasise that sexual abuse goes against the vow taken by the fathers of Don Bosco. “At Don Bosco, the inviolable sanctity of youth is key to our system of education.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France-Algeria: Le Pen Uses Algerian Flag, Polemics
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, MARCH 1 — Algeria is upset by the most recent electoral poster of the French extreme right party National Front (FN), in which the Algerian flag is used. The slogan ‘No to Islam’ is written on the poster, which shows a woman in a burqa and several minarets in France under the Algerian flag. “An attack on our national values and symbols” Said Bouhedja, spokesman of the main Algerian party, the National Liberation Front (FLN) told the press. This attack “is not in the interest of France” and “will only sow the seeds of hatred between people”. “The means used” by the party of Jean Marie Le Pen, Bouhedja added, “go against the French values and traditions”. The rector of the Paris mosque, the Algerian Dalil Boubeker, in the newspaper Echourouk called “the combination of the Algerian flag and Muslim fundamentalism an immense mistake”. According to Boubaker, the colonial past of the two countries lies once again behind the “severe provocation, if not, why use Algerian symbols in an electoral campaign that has nothing to do with Algeria?”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hunters Urge Calm as Wolves Return to Bavaria
The ÖJV ecological hunters’ association urged Bavarians on Friday to remain calm following confirmation that a lone wolf has been spotted near the southern community of Brannenburg.
“Fear of a single wolf would be totally unfounded,” ÖJV leader Wolfgang Kornder said, advising anyone out for a walk in the forest to behave “normally.”
“Wolves have no interest in coming into contact with humans,” he said.
On Friday, Bavarian Environment Ministry wildlife manager Manfred Wölfl confirmed with daily Münchner Merkur that a wolf had been identified based on sightings and evidence of bite marks found on deer carrion. According to Wölfl, the animal has been seen in the area since December and has not attacked any livestock.
The ÖJV’s Kornder speculated that the rare canine was a young male on the prowl for a new area to settle.
“It can’t be assumed he brought along a whole pack,” Kornder said, adding that his organisation hopes the animal stays in the southern German state. “It’s a fascinating occurrence when the big predators return. We should be happy that it’s happening.”
The return of wolves to the area means that environmental conditions are improving, Kornder asserted, though he admitted that there could be problems too.
“Naturally one has to assume that in the future he could kill a house pet or two, or for example sheep in the fields at night,” he said.
But people can erect electric fences and anyone who loses an animal to a wolf is entitled to compensation from the state, he assured.
“We just need to be engaged,” he said, urging residents to be understanding.
The Canis lupus, or grey wolf, was hunted in Germany beginning in medieval times. The species disappeared from the country in the 19th century, when they were driven east to Poland and Russia.
But the wolf has been making a slow return to Germany despite residents’ fears and several lethal incidents with angry hunters. Experts estimate there are about five packs totalling in some 45 wolves in the northeastern part of the country. The five wolves in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are believed to have wandered into the country from Poland.
In June 2009 a hunter in Saxony-Anhalt was charged with killing a male wolf that lived with a female and their young cubs at the military training facility in Altengrabow.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Mills Verdict May Sway Premier’s Trial
Berlusconi case ‘should be suspended,’ his lawyer says
(ANSA) — Rome, February 26 — A time-out that ended British tax lawyer David Mills’ perjury case may sway the result of Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s trial for allegedly bribing him for perjury, judicial sources said Friday.
According to sources in the British lawyers’ camp, Thursday night’s quashing of Mills’ four-and-a-half-year sentence by Italy’s highest appeals court meant the statute of limitations should also be applied to the premier, whose trial is set to resume in Milan Saturday.
But since Berlusconi was removed for proceedings for more than a year by an immunity law, the statute would run out some time in November, they said.
However, that would not be long enough for Italy’s three-tier justice system to run its course, they said, even without laws now before parliament that would kill it before then.
“The Berlusconi trial will go on because it was suspended…but it will be timed out too,” a Mills defence lawyer said.
Berlusconi defence lawyer Niccolo’ Ghedini told Friday’s Corriere della Sera that the Milan judges should in any case suspend the premier’s trial immediately, to see the detailed written ruling of the Cassation Court justices, expected in about two months.
Ghedini also argued that the supreme court verdict “did not say Mills was guilty,” echoing the premier who on Thursday night said “no crime was committed”.
The centre-left opposition took exception to this, saying “this was not an absolution” and one member going so far as to call for the premier to resign.
But the head of a centrist opposition party, Pier Ferdinando Casini, said Friday that “justice won out” in the verdict.
Casini, an ex-Berlusconi ally, called the premier “someone who has received too much attention from militant magistrates”.
Berlusconi spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said Friday the sentence was a “victory” for Berlusconi because the Cassation judges rejected the prosecutors’ dating of the payment and placed it four months earlier to late 1999, allowing Italy’s ten-year statute of limitations to kick in.
He said the win was valid “not only in this case but in all the cases of politically motivated use of justice against him by a certain section of the magistrature”.
The premier, who has been indicted more than ten times, has never been found guilty, sometimes because of law changes or the statute of limitations.
Berlusconi has always denied wrongdoing and said a group of leftwing prosecutors is trying to hound him from office. Berlusconi is also on trial in Milan in a second case, for alleged tax fraud on film buying by his media company.
But that trial is expected to be terminated by legislation the government is pushing through parliament, including shorter mandatory trial lengths and a ‘legal impediment’ for officials to attend proceedings if it stops them doing their jobs.
In Thursday night’s Cassation ruling, the nine justices upheld the view of the court’s Assistant Prosecutor General Gianfranco Ciani.
Ciani argued Mills actually received $600,000 for allegedly committing perjury in two 1990 trials in November 1999, and not, as lower courts had found, at the end of February 2009.
Defendants should always be granted the benefit of the doubt in such cases of conflicting dates, Ciani argued.
Also on Ciani’s advice, however, the Cassation Court found that Mills should not be formally acquitted of the charge.
He was therefore ordered to pay the premier’s office 250,000 euros for damaging the image of the Italian state, as established by a Milan appeals court.
Mills was first convicted last February and saw his sentence upheld on October 27.
In the meantime, on October 7, the Constitutional Court quashed the 2008 immunity law that had removed Berlusconi from the proceedings for the duration of his term as premier.
Some political experts said the Cassation ruling was a relief to the premier ahead of March 28-29 elections in 13 of Italy’s 20 elections, as his popularity has fallen from a high of about 60% last year to some 42% amid a corruption probe citing a top aide.
But other pundits said the centre-right ruling coalition’s prospects would have been unaffected if the supreme court had gone the other way.
Mills, the estranged husband of British Olympics Minister Tessa Jowells, said Thursday night he could now “resume (his) normal life”.
The couple separated in 2004 amid the media glare on the case but Jowells has said “I never doubted his innocence”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Probe ‘€2 Billion’ In Offshore Accounts
Rome, 25 Feb.(AKI) — Italy’s tax agencies have begun a new investigation into about 2,000 people suspected of hiding 2 billion euros in offshore bank accounts between 2007 and 2008. The Italian tax police and the Italian revenue agency launched the probe as part of a crackdown on the use of tax havens.
“The people being investigated are strongly suspected of having evaded and transferred their assets,” the Rome-based Italian tax police said on Friday.
“There will be serious consequences for those who are not able to demonstrate the legitimacy of the discovered operations.”
A task force has been set up by the agencies and is expected to focus in particular on residents in the northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto as well as Emilia Romagna and Lazio, surrounding Rome.
Italians evaded taxes totalling more than 5.1 billion euros in the first half of 2009, according to official figures released by the government.
Of the total, an estimated 3.3 billion euros was unpaid between January and June and one third of that amount was illegally stashed in offshore tax havens.
Italians dodged a further 1.8 billion euros in taxes through scams involving fake companies and invoices.
Finance minister Giulio Tremonti this week said that an amnesty for people hiding money in foreign tax havens had encouraged Italians to declare about 90 billion euros in hidden assets. The government amnesty has been extended until April.
About 60 billion euros of the funds where hidden in Swiss banks, according to the Bank of Italy.
Italy’s recent crackdown on tax havens — including raids last year on branches of Swiss banks in Italy — has caused friction with neighbouring Switzerland which is concerned about compromising its notoriously secretive banking industry.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Talk Show Code Extended to Private Channels
AGCOM decision. Mediaset and Sky appeal to regional administrative court (TAR)
ROME — Privately owned television stations will have to comply with the equal access code passed on 9 February by the RAI watchdog committee. The decision came from the services and products committee of the communications authority, which approved the regulations by a majority vote. In favour were Democratic Party-sponsored (PD) committee members Michele Lauria and Sebastiano Sortino, as well as Christian Democrat (UDC) Gianluigi Magri. The chairman, Corrado Calabrò, and People of Freedom (PDL) member, Giancarlo Innocenzi, voted against.
Essentially, the three in favour want to avoid creating an advantage in terms of advertising income for private TV stations over the RAI. Mr Calabrò’s no vote derives from an opinion he has expressed in the past. He maintains the Beltrandi regulation, which imposes (article 6, paragraph 4) the same rules on news programmes and election broadcasts, clearly contravenes the basic law on equal media access, which exempts such programmes from the restrictions (article 5 of law 28/2000). According to Mr Calabrò, this sets political communication apart from information.
The first practical consequence is an appeal to the regional administrative court (TAR) by Mediaset and Sky. According to Mediaset: “AGCOM has adopted the regulation of the parliamentary public service watchdog committee, which complies with constitutional principles and is disciplined by rules distinct from the ones that regulate private broadcasting. This automatic extension to private television stations of the rules on equal media access laid down for the public service is therefore absolutely without foundation”. Sky said: “The decision is in clear violation of the principles of the free market and, above all, of the principle of freedom of opinion and expression laid down in the Italian constitution”.
Meanwhile, RAI is considering an extraordinary board meeting, probably at the weekend, since director general Mauro Masi is currently abroad for personal reasons. Channel heads have received a note from RAI’s legal office, signed by deputy vice chairman Pierluigi Lax, with three possible solutions (pages five and six of the circular). “Suspend the most popular current affairs programmes and replace them with party political broadcasts. Alternatively, the programmes could be aired but would need to be structured like political broadcasts, with representatives from all entitled bodies invited on a rotation basis, and with arithmetic calculation of the time allotted. Otherwise current affairs programmes could continue, provided no politicians are invited and provided they avoid dealing directly or indirectly with political or electoral matters, leaving comparable (ie, in the same time slot) space for party political broadcasts”. Director general, Mauro Masi, is believed to favour the third solution: no politicians on current events programmes and appropriate schedule space for party political broadcasts. It is thought that the last editions of the Annozero Michele Santoro and Porta a Porta talk shows were dress rehearsals.
Paolo Conti
25 febbraio 2010
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Book Challenges Sexual Myths
Rome, 24 Feb.(AKI) — Despite their reputation as passionate Latin lovers, Italians only have sex about seven times a month and most condemn infidelity, according to a new book. The book entitled “Italian Sexuality” is a nationwide study by three academics — Marzio Barbagli, Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna and Franco Garelli — who surveyed 7,000 people between the age of 18 and 70.
The book to be published on Thursday was reviewed by the Italian daily, La Repubblica.
The average Italian male is 17.4 years old when he loses his virginity, about the same age as the their male ancestors who were born nearly a century ago, according to the study.
Italian women lose their virginity on average at 18.5 years of age, almost four years earlier than for those born between 1913 and 1922.
According to the book Italians are unfaithful to their partners but that does not mean they take bed hopping lightly.
Infidelity is unacceptable for 89 percent of Italian women and 81 percent of men, according to the study’s authors
The idea of the Italian Don Giovanni is not backed up by the research which found that 80 percent of Italians have no more than three sexual partners during their lives.
Only 12 percent of Italian men have more than 20 partners. That compares with only 2 percent for women.
In the overwhelmingly Catholic country, churchgoers believe it is fine to have sex before getting married and 83 percent saying premarital sex is fine.
One in three practising Catholics says it’s better to marry a virgin.
Masturbation is also a norm for 67 percent of practising Catholics if they are single, while 60 percent have had oral sex and 16 percent have engaged in oral sex, according to the study.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands:2009-10 is Snowiest Winter in 30 Years
With 41 days of snow so far in the country as a whole and 55 in the north east, this winter has been the snowiest in 30 years, the KNMI weather bureau said on Friday.
And with an average temperature of 1.1 Celsius, it was also the coldest in 14 years, the KNMI said.
In a normal winter, there are an average 13 days of snow.
The temperature was below zero for 55 nights over the past three months, compared with 38 in an average year. And it remained below freezing for 20 full 24-hour periods.
The KNMI says global warming means the Netherlands will only have such a severe winter once in every 15 years. Last century the risk was one in six.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Action Coming From the Right in Election Campaign
THE HAGUE, 27/02/10 — The Christian democrats (CDA), conservatives (VVD) and Party for Freedom (PVV) are carrying out an active campaign for the elections on 3 March and 9 June. The leftwing parties are remarkably quiet.
Rightwing proposals have dominated the media since the fall of the government last Saturday. This is mainly because little news is emanating from the leftwing front. CDA, VVD and PVV are flooding the media with quotes and kites they are flying, while press conferences held by Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP) and the leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) are few and far between.
The CDA holds daily press briefings in the Lower House, at which there has so far been much talk of tougher tackling of crime and immigration. This makes it appear to be flirting with the VVD, which also plugs these themes — also in daily press breakfasts. The PVV, as always, has no difficulty at all in attracting media attention.
At the PvdA, the campaign has not really got up steam yet. They prefer to have themselves filmed while chatting with ‘the ordinary people’ on the street. Journalists are invited to coffee only twice a week and the socialists do not serve novelties with it.
PvdA chairman Lilianne Ploumen acknowledges that the party has little to announce. “It is good just to chat with one another regularly, so that (the parliamentary press) know what is going on locally at the PvdA. We are not in favour of dropping some novelty every time. This means you end up with 99 kites in the air.”
The VVD denies that its press briefings are just flying kites. “That accusation would only be justified if we made no proposals in the rest of the year,” said MP and campaign leader Stef Blok Friday.
The CDA does however seem all of a sudden very decisive. But this party also denies that it is just rhetoric. “We are really going to do something concretewith our proposals. And if it was not news, no journalists would turn up.”
At the VVD, Blok himself was the bearer of the novelty of the day on Friday. He proposed that immigrants must master Dutch at least at a basic level in order to be eligible for social security payments.
Blok said that existing guidelines already prescribe that someone must have ties with the Netherlands to be eligible for the social security safety-net, but that this is insufficiently checked by local authorities. He put forward a proposed bill on Friday which would introduce “checkable criteria for ties with the Netherlands,” as he put it.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Rotterdam Party Wants Ban on Hissing
Leefbaar Rotterdam, the political party founded by Pim Fortuyn before he entered national politics and was murdered, has made a ban on hissing and whistling at women part of its local election campaign.
The party, the second biggest on the city council at the moment, says such a ban would allow the police to intervene if women are being harrassed.
‘Women should be able to cycle home at night. Who gets in the way of that, will be tackled,’ campaign leader Marco Pastors told the Telegraaf.
In addition, the police should be able to use plain clothes officers to entrap men who whistle, hiss and threaten women, he said.
The measure is one of a number the party has included in a five point programme to beef up the safety of Rotterdammers.
Earlier this week, the Christian Democrats called for the introduction of a special community service programme for ethnic minority youths who hassle women and call them prostitutes.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Real Estate Crisis, Sells Villa Via State Lottery
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, FEBRUARY 26 — It is not the first home in Spain to be sold via an internet lottery following the collapse of the real estate market which deprived more than 500,000 homes of a market. But it is the first that will be drawn through the national State Lottery. A villa in Manacor, southeast of the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands), measuring 112.5 square metres with 1,078 metres of land, is the prize. The owners, Heinrich Peter Boddenberg and Gitta Elke, a retired German couple, have a clear purpose: gain as much profit as possible from the sale, even amidst the absence of demand. And, for this, any method is viable, as long as it is legal. The State Lottery and Gambling office stated that “It was surprising, because we receive requests for all kinds of lotteries, but this is the first of its kind. We check to avoid fraud and guarantee that the winner will get his prize”. Boddenberg, a former financial advisor, filed the competition papers with a notary in Manacor, and paid 163,350 euros to the State Lottery and Gambling office (which has exclusive jurisdiction over the organisation of national competitions), which are equal to 15% of the 1.089 million which he hopes to make from the sale of the 11,000 lottery tickets priced at 99 euros each. In three weeks he sold almost 400 tickets on the internet, half of which to Mallorca residents, and the other half to residents in Spain. After having also consulted a marketing company, he expressed his optimism to El Pais: “The tickets could be all sold within seven or eight months”. The draw is scheduled for 18 January 2011, but could be anticipated if the tickets sell out earlier. The German pensioner also promised to donate 91 cents for each participation in Medecins Sans Frontieres. Personally, he is risking a lot: the lottery will be held in any case, even if the not all the 11,000 tickets are sold, and he will take care of property transfer expenses and real estate taxes, in addition to the outstanding 50,000 euros for the mortgage and notary expenses. If everything goes according to plan, the owner will net 650,000 euros, compared to the 350,000 he paid for the chalet purchased in 1999 from a fellow countryman. But if he only manages to sell half of the tickets, his return will be cut down to 150,000 euros. In order to join the lottery all that has to be done is to compile a form on www.ganaunochalet.eu and deposit 99 euros on a Barclays bank account which entitles the depositor to a unique number linked to an alphanumeric number which identifies the participant.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Environmentally-Friendly’ Biofuels Are More Harmful to the Planet Than Normal Fossil Fuel
A new government study shows that the Department of Transport’s aim to increase the level of biofuel in fuel sold across Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being burned down and turned into plantations.
The findings of the study showed that using palm oil instead of fossil fuel increase emissions by 31 per cent, failing to meet the European Commission standard of each litre of biofuel reducing emissions by 35 per cent.
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UK: Royal Marine Told to Cover Up Regimental Tattoo at Heathrow Because it Was ‘Offensive’ To Other Passengers
A former Royal Marine was told to cover-up a tattoo of his regimental badge by security staff at Heathrow Airport, because it was ‘offensive’ to other passengers.
Paul Fairclough, a former medic with the 539 Assault Squadron, was furious after he was challenged over the famous Marine dagger insignia as he arrived for a transfer flight.
The 29-year-old, who served in Kosovo and Iraq, had just arrived at Terminal 5 from Toronto and was transferring for a Manchester flight when he was stopped by a female security operator as he passed through a metal detector.
After he put his bag on to an x-ray machine he was told to take his jacket off — revealing the 12-inch tattoo on his right arm.
The female operator spotted the tattoo and said: ‘That tattoo is offensive. You will have to cover it up.’
The father-of-one, who joined the Army at 19 and now works as a safety officer on oil rigs, refused to cover the design and walked past the guard.
Mr Fairclough said: ‘I tried to explain that she was mistaken and that it was the insignia of my old regiment, the Royal Marines.
‘She said she knew exactly what it was but that it made no difference. They had a policy that tattoos showing offensive weapons of any kind must not be on show.
‘I was half annoyed and told her that there was no way I was covering it up and I walked on as she glared at me.
‘I half expected to feel a tap on my shoulder but I just walked through the arch and went on my way.’
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UK: Stupid People
The woman pictured is a professor of global governance and co-director of LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Her name is Mary Kaldor and despite her elevated position and title, she is stupid. We know this. No one gets to that position and remains that ignorant unless they are seriously stupid.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, The Guardian chooses to give Mary Kaldor an outlet through which to display her stupidity — thereby conferring on her more gravitas than she deserves — even the little conveyed by this dismal rag.
Thus we get this stupid woman, under the heading, “The EU needs to return to its roots”, telling us via the strap line, “Europe has spent too long besieged by regulation culture and market obsession, forgetting its original purpose: peace.”
Her golden words then tell us that the world needs something like the European Union. It needs a global actor, she says, ready to take the initiative on climate change. It needs a polity underpinned by a powerful economy that can push for new global financial arrangements. And it needs political leaders able to articulate and act upon an alternative to the war on terror.
Getting to the root of what she then believes is the cause of its failure to achieve all these great things, she asserts — rightly — that, from the beginning, the EU was a peace project. It was designed, initially, after Europe’s great “civil war”, to prevent another war on European soil and later to overcome the cold war divide.
But, she tells us — again rightly — the method chosen, known as the Monnet method (after one of the founders, Jean Monnet) was to bring Europe together through economic integration, through policies adopted by the political elite rather than through public debate.
As a result, she continues, to a younger generation, who did not experience the world wars or the cold war, the European Union appears not as a peace project but as a neoliberal bureaucracy, a fundamentalist market project.
Then we get the stupidity writ large. “Somehow, popular support for the EU needs to be remobilised,” she writes. “It is perhaps the only way out of the current global crisis now that it is becoming clear how difficult it is for the US president, Barack Obama, to act decisively.”
Forget the bit about Obama acting “decisively” — we can only cope with so much stupidity in one sitting — concentrate on her staggering assertion that, “Somehow, popular support for the EU needs to be remobilised.”
The whole point, of course, it that the EU never has had popular support and, if it had needed to rely on it — as we saw with the French and Dutch referendums on the EU constitution — it would never have come into being.
And it was precisely because such an undemocratic construct — the aim of which is the destruction of nation states — would never have got public support, that Monnet adopted the strategy of economic integration, as a mechanism for achieving political integration, disguising the aim and pretending that the only objective was economic.
Thus, the state of the European Union is no accident. It has not gone off the rails — it is what it is because that is what it was designed to be. But, as the political integration agenda becomes more obvious, it is meeting with ever-increasing resistance from the very peoples who would never have approved of it in the first place, had they known what was to come.
But, says la Kaldor: “Of course there need to be new, more democratic, structures. There should be an elected president, for example.” Then she tells us, “there ought to be a family of taxes at a European level that would allow the EU to develop a degree of autonomy — carbon taxes, for example, or taxes on international speculation.”
With the perspicacity that only truly stupid people can achieve, she then adds: “these can only be achieved through political pressure.” You don’t say!
Needless to say, her innate stupidity re-asserts itself as she concludes with a stunning non-sequitur. “And that means that the EU has to reconstruct itself as a peace (and green) project instead of a fundamentalist market project,” she writes.
However, we would love to see it try. I would give it five years before it collapsed.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe Given Legal Aid to Launch High Court Bid for Freedom
In 2006, Sutcliffe was given £50,000 by the Legal Aid Board to fund a Mental Health Review Tribunal appeal for freedom, claiming he was no longer dangerous.
He could draw on legal aid again to fund the High Court appeal.
Now known as Peter Coonan, he was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1981 of murdering 13 women and the attempted murder of another seven in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.
He is currently being held at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital after being transferred from prison in 1984 suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
Today Mr Justice Mitting, sitting in London, held a directions hearing to determine how the parole tariff would be decided and what evidence should be admitted.
The judge said: ‘It is now common ground this is part of the criminal process and must therefore proceed in the defendant’s own name.
‘The press are at liberty to report the fact that these proceedings concern Peter Sutcliffe/Peter Coonan.’
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ICTY: Karadzic Claims Cause ‘Just and Holy’
(ANSAmed) — THE HAGUE, MARCH 1 — On his arrival this morning in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — where the trial has resumed in which he is accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity — former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic claimed he had acted as defender of the Serbian population in Bosnia, fighting for a “just and holy” cause, and that he had been the defender of “the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina that had suffered for 500 years”. For the first time before ICTY judges, today Karadzic, 64, will be presenting the outlines of the line of defense he will be taking against charges of “ethnic cleansing” during the war in Bosnia. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Karadzic Blames Muslims for War
The Hague, 1 March (AKI) — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told the United Nations war crimes tribunal (ICTY) on Monday that militant Muslim leaders were responsible for the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, saying that local Serbs were forced to act in self-defence.
“I will defend that nation of ours and their cause that is just and holy,” Mr Karadzic told the tribunal.
“I stand here before you not to defend the mere mortal that I am, but to defend the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which for 500 years has had to suffer and has demonstrated a great deal of modesty and perseverance to survive in freedom,” he said.
Karadzic, 64, is charged with 11 crimes, including two counts of genocide and war crimes.
Prosecutors allege Karadzic played a key role in the massacre of over 7,000 Muslims in the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995.
Karadzic appeared in court for the first time since 2 November when the trial was interrupted when he boycotted the proceedings, demanding more time to prepare his defence.
After his initial remarks, Karadzic began laying out a detailed account of the events that led to the outbreak of the war.
The prosecutor Alan Tieger said in his introductory statement in November that Karadzic was a part of a “joint criminal enterprise”, aimed at removing Muslims and Croats from a part of Bosnia.
“Karadzic was the architect of a policy on which these crimes were founded and commander-in-chief of the forces which committed them,” Tieger said.
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 after nearly 13 years as a fugitive.
During his time in power, he was president of the Bosnian Serb Republic and commander of its army during the Bosnian conflict in which more than 100,000 people died.
At the beginning of his two-day defence statement on Monday, Karadzic blamed wartime Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic and his Party of Democratic Action for conducting a “war policy in favor of Muslims and at the expense of a Christian majority — Serbs and Croats”.
The prosecution is expected to present its first witness on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Egypt: Renewable Energy Market in Expansion
(ANSAmed) — ROME, FEBRUARY 26 — Egypt and renewable sources: a market in full expansion, with great potential and wide space in which companies can act, but still with important issues to resolve. In order to manage to attract both large and small investors and convince them that the Mediterranean — instead of looking towards Turkey and Eastern Europe — is the real correct choice, specific rules are needed. An overview of ups and downs emerged during the meeting organized in Rome by the Italian Egyptian Business Council on the theme of renewable resources, with Egypt non entirely ready to accept foreign investment and Italy still behind compared to competitors like Germany, that with its companies has managed to get the Desertec project started. With a population in continuous growth, which today numbers 83 million inhabitants, Egypt also has energy needs that are in continuous growth. “Currently, the maximum production level for electric energy for the country is 23 gigawatts, while demand is 25 gigawatts, which brings continual blackouts”, pointed out the engineer Khaled Abu Bakr, general director of the Taqa Arabia group, in his speech. The recourse to all sources of alternative energy, wind and solar topping the list, therefore appears to be the only solution to face the country’s growing internal demand. By 2020, the Egyptian government estimates that energy from renewable sources will amount to 20% of the total produced. Of this figure, 12% will be generated by wind energy, a field in which Egypt has become, from 2000 to today, a leader in North Africa. The remaining 8% will be generated by hydroelectric plants and solar energy. But if diversifying sources of procurement has become the watchword, for 2022 it has been forecast that thanks to nuclear energy Egypt will be able to cover 6% of its own energy needs, attracting new investors appears vital for the country. “It is the moment, however, to pass from the pilot project to true economies of scale that allow for savings on investments”, Abu Bakr stressed. According to Giuseppe De Beni, general director of Italgen, a company from the Italcementi group started in 2001, without the impact of an intervention on the regulatory plan, “Egypt risks missing the renewable energy train”. For the co-president of the Italian Egyptian Business Council, Alberto Pirelli, “Italian businesses must look to the optimal investment environment that Egypt offers with a sense of trust. Our experience, and that of other groups, but also that of small and medium sized enterprises, is one of great satisfaction. It is true, there is the need for certainties, but Egypt is working hard to come to a regulatory structure that leads to the closing of off-taker contracts”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Film: Tunis: Third Edition of Contemporary Italian Film
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, FEBRUARY 26 — The third edition of the festival entitled “Contemporary Italian Film”, organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, has been scheduled in Tunis from March 9-14 at the CinemAfricArt cinema. The six scheduled films, as highlighted by Maria Vittoria Longhi, the ad interim cultural supervisor at the Italian embassy in Tunis, would like to stress the validity of Italy’s new contemporary film. The show will open with the film “Diverso da chi?” (“Different from whom?”), by Umberto Carteni and the programme will continue with “Good Morning Amman”, by Claudio Noce; “Cosmonauta”, by Susanna Nicchiarelli; “Lo spazio bianco” (“The white space”), by Francesca Comencini; “Tris di donne e abiti nuziali” (“Three women and wedding attire”), by Vincenzo Terracciano; and “ Generazione 1000 euro” (“Generation 1,000 euros”), by Massimo Venier. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Traffic in Archaeological Finds, Englishman Arrested
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, FEBRUARY 19 — A British citizen, charged with being part of a ring of illicit dealers of archaeological finds, was arrested in the Tunis airport while he was about to leave the country under a false identity. Arab-speaking newspaper Assabah reported that his identity is unknown. The arrest is part of a complex investigation which, since December, has led to the dismantling of a major network of illicit dealers of archaeological finds (statues and pottery in particular) and a series of arrests. The arrests now amount to 22, counting both foreigners and nationals, while others are still wanted. As far as is known, the illicit trade involved Europe and the USA. Tunisia, according to expert opinions, today holds the world’s most important roman collection, with its museums counting some 30,000 items.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Early Crop Cultivation Extended
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, FEBRUARY 25 — The production of citrus fruit as early crops (fruit maturing two weeks earlier than in the north), which began in 2005 in the Governorate of Gabes in southern Tunisia, is to be incentivised. The initial programme saw the planting of sixty thousand plants, over an area of 120 hectares; annual production is estimated at two thousand tonnes. The varieties introduced include Thomson oranges, early clementines and lemons. The initial programme, which lasted five years, is now set to continue, and funding has been decided for the inter-type grouping of the fruit; this will mean a reduction of 50% in the cost of buying plants and the supply, at no cost, of pesticides to small farmers. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
East Jerusalem: Israeli Guard Injured in Shooting
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, MARCH 1 — An Israeli Civil Guard was injured over the night when shots were fired at the jeep in which he was travelling in the Palestinian district Silwan, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City. A police spokesman said that the officer was not in serious condition. The incident came a few hours after ones on Temple Mount between a number of Muslims and an Israeli police unit. Today in Jerusalem’s Old City police are maintaining a high state of alert due to concerns that more public disorder may break out. However, morning prayers on Temple Mount were carried out without incidents of any sort, according to military radio. At the origin of the incidents is Benyamin Netanyahu government’s decision to include two sanctuaries in the West Bank (Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron), considered holy also by Islam, among “Jewish Heritage Sites” to be protected by the Israeli government. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Airlines: Syrian Air Buys Two Aircrafts From ATR
(ANSAmed) — DAMASCUS, MARCH 1 — The Italian-French consortium ATR (of the Finmeccanica group) has signed a contract with Syrian Air for the sale of two aircrafts to the Syrian airline for a total of around 40 million USD. The two airplanes will be used for domestic and short-distance regional flights. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Iran: “This Regime is Worse Than the Shah’s”
Interview with Mehdi Karroubi, one of Iran’s opposition Green Movement leaders
Mehdi Karroubi, 73-year-old cleric and politician, has become a leader of the protests against the Iranian regime. A disciple of Khomeini, since the age of 24 he fought at his side against the Shah (and paid with six years in prison) in order to create the Islamic Republic. Since 1979, he has had relevant roles, such as speaker of the Parliament. He challenged Ahmadinejad for the presidency in 2005 and again in 2009. Both times he accused the authorities of fraud during the elections. During the last street protests in Iran on February 11, one of his sons, Ali, was arrested. He was beaten for hours in a mosque by members of the basiji militia and threatened with rape, before being freed at 11 P.M. A selection of questions and answers from the following interview also appeared in Italian on February 22 in the paper edition of “Corriere della Sera” newspaper.
How is your son now?
“Physically, my son Ali is feeling better. In the first days, his condition was terrible. Now we are worried about his mental state. The damage Ali suffered is a small example of all that is happening to the children of this nation. But the regime is already paying for this”.
What happened on February 11?
“The repression was violent, no doubt. There was an unprecedented conflict with the population. This time, the regime didn’t want to allow any gathering of protesters (of the Green Movement, ed.) and it used all its strength: it gathered its forces from all the different governmental organs. They arrested our friends and family members, and they threatened the others. But their mobilization and organization didn’t stop us. I knew how it would end, but I went to demonstrate anyway. I will go again if there will be other demonstrations, even if the outcome is worse than the last one. The newspapers wrote that the people prevented the conspirators (this is how the regime defines Karroubi and Mousavi, ed.) from entering the square. I would like to ask those newspapers, which are controlled by the regime and the government: do you think that ordinary people use tear gas? Do you think ordinary people use metal bars and knives? The masters need to know that these days will pass but their sign will remain”.
The events of these months have often been compared to the Revolution of 1979. You compared the violence of the repression to that of the Shah’s time, but you said that his army had shown more restraint. Do you see other similarities between our times and those?
“The Shah’s regime was corrupt at its core, but he didn’t behave like this with the people. What do the armed forces have to do with the election’s results? Why did they treat the people like this on the 22nd of Bahman (in the Persian calendar it corresponds to February 11 ed.)? During the reign of the Shah there were rules; they did not take the people arrested to the mosque to beat them to death even before they appeared in front of the judiciary. These people make arrests without a warrant, beat them and keep them in detention. Not to mention the rest (Karroubi has denounced the rape of the protesters after their arrest, ed.)”.
Under what conditions would you be ready to find a compromise with Ahmadinejad and recognise him as the legitimate president of Iran? Do you consider yourself to be a leader of this Green Movement?
“I don’t consider myself the leader of the popular Green Movement. I consider myself a member of this movement and of the reformist movement. My actions aim to a return to the will and the ideals of the people, that is to say to the people’s sovereignty. I don’t have a personal conflict, nor a reason to reach an agreement or make peace with Ahmadinejad. We consider Ahmadinejad’s government an established government that has to answer for its actions, but not a lawful or legitimate government. I am nobody: it’s not up to me to find an agreement or a compromise. It is the people who have to decide whether or not they want a compromise with the government. It is the people who are in conflict with the government, and who do not accept its management of the country. The people don’t agree with the strategy that puts us in conflict with the world taken on by Ahmadinejad, and we are a part of this same people”.
You said that chanting slogans against the Supreme Leader and for a secular state is wrong. What slogans should people chant?
“The things should be kept separate. We are not trying to make the regime fall. On the other hand, the Constitution is not a divine revelation and therefore is not unchangeable. But, at the moment, not even this Constitution is applied in this country”.
Before the election could you imagine that the Iranian people would go so far in asking for their rights and that their anger would grow so much?
“I did not imagine or foresee that the Iranian regime would go as far as rigging the popular vote as it did. On the other hand, the regime has adopted an obstinate and non conciliatory attitude with the people, which is the cause of the current problems. In the first days (after the elections, ed.), the people said: “Where is my vote?” The people are still the same. So what happened that lead them to adopt the current slogans? The people want healthy elections and to see their votes counted”.
As a student of Khomeini, I read that you were extraordinarily absorbed by him. Is he still a model for your actions?
“I loved the Imam and I still love him. Yes, he is a model and an example for me. He was a devout cleric, he had insight and far-sightedness. My love for him increased after his death because of what happened. The Imam lead the country in its most difficult time: the first decade after the Islamic Revolution. The country was at war, prominent figures and other important politicians were killed in attacks and in the war. In that situation, perhaps some special and sometimes excessive measures were taken. I don’t say that he was a perfect model. But actions and decisions have to be evaluated taking the times into account”.
What is the worst thing that has been done in the name of the revolution? What were the most joyful moments of the revolution? Why do you still believe in the Islamic Republic?
“The Islamic Republic consists of two concepts: republicanism and Islam. The worst thing is the damage done to both those concepts and principles. I’m not saying that nothing is left anymore, but the damage done is very serious, both to Islam and to the concept of “republicanism” which means “the opinion and the vote of the people”. The Imam said that the final decision is up to the people. He always considered the public opinion and never allowed, even under the worse conditions, ambiguity and lack of clarity during the elections. What was damaged were the promises that we made to the people. The issue is not to make the regime fall, but to reform it. I still believe in the Islamic Republic, but not in this kind of Islamic Republic! The Islamic Republic that we promised the people had the support and the vote of 98% of the population: it was the Islamic Republic of free elections and not of rigged elections. I believe in modern Islam, an Islam full of kindness and affection, not a violent or fanatic Islam”.
Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi pledged to reduce the business with Tehran and to support new international sanctions. Do you think these measures would help the opposition in any way? What effects do you think UN sanctions will have on the government and on the people?
“When I was the speaker of the Iranian parliament, the relationship between our parliaments was excellent. My official visit to Italy at that time, and the visit of two presidents of the Italian House to Iran are a sign of the good political relationship between the two countries. Even the letter sent by the presidents of the Italian House and Senate to the chiefs of the Iranian regime regarding the consequences of my (possible ed.) arrest is a demonstration of the good relationship we had at that time. For this, I am grateful to the presidents and to the members of the Italian parliament. But I am absolutely against sanctions; they increase the economic pressure that the people already suffer because of the wrong policies of the government”.
Do you think that the Islamic Republic can have a dialogue with the United States?
“We said more than once that the only country we will not have a relationship with is Israel, because this country violated the rights of a people. A fair relationship (with the United States ed.), which is based on reciprocal respect and takes into account the reciprocal rights is desirable. But this government created a peculiar situation and does not allow a return to a relationship with the United States. On one hand, the Iranian government writes to the American government; on the other hand, it uses strong and harsh words and expressions against the American government. Contradictory behaviour does not work in foreign policy”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Christians Protest Against Violent Attacks
Mosul, 1 March(AKI) — Hundreds of Iraqis have gathered in the cities of Mosul and Baghdad to protest against a wave of violence that has left eight Christians dead over the past two weeks. The protests took place on Sunday as Pope Benedict XVI called on Iraqi authorities to protect the Middle Eastern country’s Christian minority.
The United Nations said more than 680 Christian families have fled the northern city of Mosul during the recent attacks.
The weekend protests took place in the town of Hamdaniyah, 35 kilometres east of Mosul, as well as in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Protesters in Hamdaniyah carried olive branches and were led by a senior Chaldean bishop, Shlemon Warduni, and other priests.
“The government has done nothing so far,” Warduni said.
He called on the United States, the UN and the European Union to defend the rights of Christians in Mosul.
In Baghdad, a smaller number of protesters carried Iraqi flags and shouted “stop the killing of Christians”.
In 2004, five Christian churches in Baghdad were bombed while Christians have been targeted for murder.
Chaldeans form the majority — about 550,000 — of Iraq’s estimated 700,000 Christians.
In his address on Sunday, the Pope said: “I appeal to the civil authorities to complete every effort to give security again to the population, and in particular, to the most vulnerable religious minorities.”
It is not clear if the spike in attacks against Christians is an attempt at voter intimidation by factions involved in a violent territorial and power struggle between Kurds and Arabs in Mosul or another attempt by Al-Qaeda to derail the election.
Christians number around 250,000 to 300,000 in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is capital.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Iraqi Christians Protest Over Killings
Hundreds of Iraqi Christians have taken part in protests calling for government action after a spate of killings.
At least eight Christians have been killed in the past two weeks in the volatile northern city of Mosul.
The killings prompted an appeal by Pope Benedict on Sunday for Iraqi authorities to protect vulnerable religious minorities.
The UN says more than 680 Christian families have fled Mosul since the recent attacks.
Sunday’s protests took place in the town of Hamdaniyah, 35km (22 miles) east of Mosul, and also in the capital, Baghdad.
Marchers in Hamdaniyah, many carrying olive branches, were led by priests including the second-most-senior Chaldean bishop, Shlemon Warduni.
“The government has done nothing so far,” he said, calling on the US, UN and EU to “defend the rights of Christians in Mosul”.
In Baghdad, a smaller number of protesters carried Iraqi flags and shouted “stop the killing of Christians”, at the gathering in Ferdus Square.
The BBC’s Hugh Sykes, in Baghdad, says Islamic militants associate Christians with what they regard as “crusaders” — the US-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003.
The recent killings were only the latest in a list of violent attacks on Christians in Iraq.
In 2004, five Christian churches in Baghdad were bombed.
Christians — and Christian priests — have been kidnapped, murdered, and maimed.
Christian businesses — often sellers of alcohol — have also been bombed and burned.
Two years ago, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped and murdered.
Most of Iraq’s estimated 700,000 Christians are Chaldeans — Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but recognise the Pope’s authority.
In his address on Sunday, the Pope said: “I appeal to the civil authorities to complete every effort to give security again to the population, and in particular, to the most vulnerable religious minorities.”
The latest murders come ahead of Iraq’s parliamentary election on 7 March.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Arrest 11 Accused of Kurdish Terror Links
Venice, 26 Feb. (AKI) — Italian anti-terrorist police on Friday arrested 11 people suspected of recruiting and training militants for the Turkish separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Special operations police from the northeast city of Venice led the investigation, which targeted 10 Turkish nationals and one Italian.
Police were also searching the properties of 16 other suspects — among them four Italians — across several cities in northern Italy, including Treviso, Pisa and Milan.
The operation was being carried out in cooperation with anti-terrorism police from France, Germany, Belgium and Holland in a bid to clamp down on militant recruitment for operations on the border between Iraq and Turkey.
The alleged PKK sympathisers are reported to have conducted militant training at secret locations in France and Italy.
The PKK, formed in the late 1970s with the aim of creating a separatist Kurdistan has been engaged in an armed struggle against Turkey that has claimed thousands of lives.
The organisation is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Olive Oil: Syrian 2009 Output Positive
(ANSAmed) — DAMASCUS, MARCH 1 — Syria’s olive oil production in 2009 saw a positive trend. Last year, Syria exported 74,000 tonnes of olive oil, of which 51.4% headed for Europe, 16.2% for Gulf countries, 10.8% for Arab ones and 3.5% for Asia, and the rest for other countries. Production exported in 2009 totalled 10,000 tonnes more than what had been seen in 2008. According to the latest data, currently olive groves cover a surface 638,500 hectares of terrain, for a total of 100 million trees which produce 870,000 tonnes of loves. Considering the fact that the number of trees grows by about 3 million per year, over the next few years olive production is expected to rise. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Reformist Newspapers Banned in Iran
The authorities in Iran have closed down the country’s biggest-circulation reformist newspaper, Etemaad, accusing it of breaching media laws.
They also suspended publication of a weekly reformist paper whose managing director is the son of one of Iran’s opposition leaders, Mehdi Karroubi.
Hossein Karroubi told the BBC that the paper, Iran Dokht, was targeted due to his father’s political activities.
Last week Mehdi Karroubi was beaten up by Iranian security forces at a rally.
Both he and the other main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi were taking part in a rally on 11 February, marking the anniversary of the Islamic revolution, when they were reportedly attacked by the government’s Basij militia.
Attack on offices
In an interview with BBC Persian television, Hossein Karroubi said that a few days ago, an Iranian government official had spoken to his mother, the proprietor of Iran Dokht.
The official had criticised the political stance of the opposition leader.
Hossein Karroubi said that three months ago there had been an attack on the offices of the journal and the attackers had taken “five or six” computer drives with them.
Publication of the newspaper Etemaad was suspended by Iran’s Media Supervision Board, which says it was responsible for repeated press offences.
Observers say that on Monday it published a story on the reaction to the emergence of a film showing the police attack on Tehran university last June, just three days after the election.
Press watchdog official Mohammad Ali Ramin told state-run television later that the ban “was a bitter decision for us but it was done due to repeated breaking of the law,” news agency AFP reported.
“The decision was taken with a degree of leniency… Its licence was not revoked and its case was referred to the judiciary,” Mr Ramin, who is also the deputy culture minister for media affairs, was quoted as saying.
A third publication, Sina, a weekly provincial newspaper, was also banned, accused of not operating in line with the constitution.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Hospital Built With Italian Cooperation Funds
(ANSAmed) — DAMASCUS, MARCH 1 — The Al Maarra hospital has been inaugurated in Idlib (Syria), financed with Italian Development Cooperation funds. Presiding over the inauguration ceremony was the Italian ambassador to Damascus, Achille, along with Syrian government representatives and local authorities and the heads of the Italian company INSO, which supplied all hospital equipment on the basis of 7.5 million euros in aid in the form of credit. According to a statement issued by the Italian embassy, the hospital is the reference point for a regional user base of about 650,000 people, and will be meeting the needs of those who fall ill in Idlib and Hama as well as the surrounding rural areas. Underscoring the importance of Italy’s contribution to the carrying out of the works is — at the hospital entrance — a mosaic panel created for this express purpose (with the zone being well-known for this form of artisanal work) bearing the Cooperation logo and the Italian and Syrian flags. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Real Arab Stuff: Hussain Abdul Hussain Explains it All to You
by Barry Rubin
Hussain Abdul Hussain gets it. He’s one of the most interesting Arab journalists and he also writes in English. His latest article-published in the “Huffington Post”-entitled “Lonely Obama vs. Popular Iran” [but you don’t have to use the link as I quoted practically all of it] he points out what the most realistic people and more moderate rulers in the Arabic-speaking world are thinking.
He explains what I’ve been telling you but since he has “Abdul” in his name perhaps you’ll believe it when he says it.
Theme one: Popularity isn’t so important in the Middle East:
“A common perception is that under President Barack Obama, America’s image has improved, and perhaps its friends have increased. But such claims are unfounded, as the opposite proves to be true.
“International relations, however, are about interests, not sweet talk. As Bush went out recruiting allies, and making enemies, Obama lost America’s friends while failing to win over enemies.”
Theme two: What is important is that allies believe you will support and protect them. Obama isn’t doing that:
Example A, Iraq: “After losing more than 4,300 troops in battle and spending $700 billion [it says trillion but I assume that’s a typo] since 2003, America today cannot find a single politician or group that would express gratitude to Americans for ridding Iraq of its ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein, and allowing these politicians to speak out freely.
“On the contrary, shy of making their excellent backdoor ties with Washington known since they fear Obama will depart Iraq and never look back, Iraqi politicians started expressing dissatisfaction with the United States in public.”
Example B, Lebanon, before Obama took office, more than one-third of the entire population-most of them Sunni Muslims— demonstrated against Hizballah and Syrian occupation. And the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said on television “that he was proud to be part of America’s plan to spread democracy in the Middle East.” Now Jumblatt has practically gone over to Hizballah or, at least, is heavily hedging his bets because he fears Iran and Syria more than he has faith in Obama’s policy. And so:
“By the time Obama had made it to the White House, support of America’s allies in Lebanon waned since Obama was determined to appease their foes in Syria and Iran. Hariri and Jumblatt were forced to abandon their fight for Lebanon’s democracy and freedom as Hariri rushed to Damascus to ask his former enemies for forgiveness, while Jumblatt is still begging for audience with Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad.
Example C, Iran:…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Rural Population Falls to 25.4 Per Cent
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 1 — The share of the Turkish population that resides in rural areas, which was 75.8% in 1927, has dwindled to 24.5% over the past 82 years. According to data compiled by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) and reported by Today’s Zaman, the number of residents in rural areas was 17.75 million in 2009 while the population in urban centers totaled 54.8 million. The data revealed that between 1980 and 2009, the urban population nearly tripled. Some 19.6 million people lived in urban areas in 1980, and this number has increased by 35.2 million in the past 29 years. The urban population exceeded the rural population for the first time in 1985. The rural population, which enjoyed continuous growth until 1980, started to decline following the beginning of a mass migration to city centers that started during that year. The total number of people living in rural areas is only slightly larger than the population of Ankara and Istanbul combined. Some 17.56 million people reside in Istanbul and Ankara, just under 200,000 fewer than Turkey’s rural population. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pravda Laughs at America
Back in Soviet times, Pravda was the official mouthpiece of the Russian Communist Party and quite critical of American capitalism. But now it seems to have as much freedom as any publication in the West, and what it now writes about events in America is quite ironic. In its issue of April 29, 2009, Stanislav Mishin writes:
“It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Afghan Victim ‘Aise No.2’
Colazzo ‘saved four other Italians’
(see previous coverage on site). (ANSA) — Rome, February 26 — The intelligence agent killed by the Taliban in Kabul Friday was No.2 in the AISE secret service, sources told ANSA Friday.
Pietro Antonio Colazzo was effectively leading the dozens of AISE agents sent to Afghanistan in recent months since the No.1 was not there, the sources said.
Afghan Police Chief Abdul Rahman told AFP that Colazzo saved four Italians with the phone call he made before being cut down outside his hotel.
“He gave us precise information that enabled us to take four other Italians out, safe and sound, General Rahman said.
AISE changed its name from SISMI last year.
Another intelligence agent, Lorenzo D’Auria, died in September 2007 after British special forces raided a hide-out where he was being held by the Taliban.
Italy began deploying troops in 2001 but its forces only began to be targeted three years later.
Since October 2004, 21 soldiers have been lost, 16 in combat.
Three died of heart attacks and two others in road accidents.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian ‘Secret Service Thwarted Afghan Attacks’
Annual report issued as Colazzo’s body returns
(ANSA) — Rome, March 1 — The Italian secret service has helped prevent attacks on both Italian and allied troops in Afghanistan, according to an intelligence report delivered to parliament Monday.
“Threats have been thwarted, also against allied contingents, and a targeted activity of counterintelligence has been developed,” the report said.
The report was issued as the body of Pietro Antonio Colazzo, the No.2 of military intelligence service AISE in Afghanistan, arrived back in Italy.
Colazzo, 47, was killed Friday amid Taliban suicide attacks in Kabul.
He was the second AISE agent to die in Afghanistan after Lorenzo D’Auria in 2007. Monday’s intelligence report said Italian agents have provided national commands with information “about the various types of threats facing Italian forces” as well as further information “useful for defining the country’s security situation and its possible evolution”. The report said there was an increased risk of roadside bombs and suicide attacks by “considerably mobile cells” in the western area of the country, controlled by Italian troops.
‘ISLAMIST THREAT RISING IN ITALY’.
Islamist militants based in Italy unable to reach war zones might turn their attention to domestic targets, the report added.
Anti-Western or anti-Italian sentiment may fuel attacks on “members of institutions or well-known figures seen as guilty of anti-Islam stances,” the domestic intelligence service AISI told parliament in an annual report The report cited a failed suicide bomb attack on a Carabinieri station in Milan in October as “the first jihadi attack on national territory”.
Islamist cells which have only been engaged in logistical support or recruiting so far could make a “quality leap” and decide to attack, the report said.
“Isolated individuals or small cells could spring into action in a wholly autonomous way” like the 34-year-old Libyan who blew off his hand while trying to get a rudimentary bomb into the main Milan Carabinieri barracks on October 12, it said.
Monday’s intelligence report also said there was a “persistent” risk of violence by far-left Italian militants, “fascinated” by the example of the Red Brigades who carried out a string of political assassinations in the 1970s including that of Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978.
The report added that a new threat from anarchists who have targeted immigrant holding centres should not be underestimated, either.
These “intimidatory” attacks were likely to recur “with greater virulence” in 2010, the intelligence services said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Afghanistan: Intelligence Feared Dramatic Attacks
(AGI) — Rome, 1 March — Italian intelligence services were quite prophetic in their report to Parliament: ‘The insurgency in Afghanistan, now having to fight the latest military offensives by the international coalition, may tend to become more aggressive. There is a high risk of dramatic attacks, intended to strengthen their image partly in response to the stated intention of the Afghan government to ‘open’ to reformable elements’. .
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Japan — Australia: Canberra Issues Ultimatum Against Japan Over Whaling
More than a thousand whales are killed by Japan for unclear scientific research purposes every year. Australian PM Rudd threatens to take the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague by November if Japan does not stop the slaughter of whales, which are at risk of disappearing in Antarctic waters. Whale meat is a highly prized and very expensive delicacy on Japanese menus worth millions of dollars in business.
Tokyo (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Japan must cease its whaling activities in Antarctic waters by November this year or Australia will initiate international legal action against it, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said today, a day before Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada is scheduled to arrive in Australia.
Rudd accuses Japanese whalers of killing about a thousand whales, allegedly for scientific research purposes; increasing the likelihood the species will go extinct. Since 1987, more than 10,000 whales have been killed, 1,075 in 2006 alone.
For Don Rothwell, a professor who teaches international law and maritime law at Australian National University, Japan will argue that it has a right to continue “scientific” whaling based on its interpretation of Article 8 of the whaling convention, which allows so-called scientific whaling.
In fact, Australia has a solid argument against Japan’s current whaling programme, Rothwell believes, because it is “an abuse of right of the provisions in the convention dealing with so-called scientific whaling.”
Japan and Australia have been at loggerheads over whaling since 1986 when an international moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced by the International Whaling Commission.
Japan accepted the moratorium Australia championed because whilst it banned commercial whaling, it allowed it for research purposes. Using this argument, Japan has continued whaling in Antarctic waters, coming close to Australian territorial waters.
Tokyo wants to preserve the hunt in order to keep afloat an industry centred on whale meat, a highly prized delicacy in traditional Japanese cuisine that is worth millions of dollars.
Unable to stop Japan legally, Australia and New Zealand have allowed environmental groups to harass Japanese whaling.
Japanese authorities claim it is doing so to understand better the life cycles of whales, their effect on the ecosystem and their population structure.
Masayuki Komatsu, a former Japanese delegate to the IWC who in the past described mink whales as “cockroaches of sea”, said he was “really confident that Japan will win over this litigation.”
As for Rudd, some analysts believe that notwithstanding his stance on whaling, the Australian prime minister is actually trying to regain ground after slipping in the polls, especially among environmentalists.
He was elected in 2007 promising to take action to stop whaling, but had to backpedal because of opposition from Australian business, concerned about the policy’s impact on trade with Japan.
The latter is in fact Australia’s main trading partner with bilateral trade reaching $ 58 billion last year.
At the same time, whale watching is an important component of Australia’s tourist industry, valued at about US$ 240 million, and well worth defending to the Australian government. Whale hunting could put all of it in jeopardy.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nigeria: 17 Police Officers Detained Over Shooting
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Nigerian police detained 17 officers for questioning after an international news channel aired a video showing uniformed men executing people in a town where religious rioting occurred, a spokesman said Monday. Police spokesman Yemi Ajyai said agents of the Nigerian police’s Special Forces Squad detained the officers over the weekend and took them to Abuja, the capital, for questioning. Ajyai said investigators suspect the officers took part in extrajudicial killings after fighting between police and Muslim militants left 700 people dead in northern Nigeria last year. Ajyai said a video aired on news channel Al-Jazeera sparked the arrests. That footage showed what appeared to be a mixed police and army unit conducting door-to-door searches. It later showed two uniformed men forcing groups of young men to lie face-down at the side of a busy road. The uniformed men then fired into the men’s backs. Their hands were tied behind their backs. The video showed two others on crutches forced to lie down by the corpses and be shot, with the news channel describing an officer shouting: “Shoot him in the chest, not the head. I want his hat.” The footage could not be authenticated by The Associated Press. The fighting began after militants from a group known as Boko Haram — translated as “Western education is sacrilege” — attacked a police station in Bauchi state in late July. Violence quickly spread to three other states before Nigerian forces retaliated, storming the group’s Maiduguri compound. Nigerian police and army officials denied committing extrajudicial killings while responding to the rioting. However, human rights groups say such killings are common across the West African nation. Authorities have been accused of killing Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf while he was in custody. Police officials he was killed while trying to escape, but army officials said he was alive when he was arrested. On Feb. 9, when the video was shown, Al-Jazeera also aired footage that showed a dead man who closely resembled Yusuf, with his hands cuffed behind his back. At the time, Borno state Police Commissioner Ibrahim Abdu described the video as false and “a deliberate attempt of the surviving sect members to cause confusion and threats.” On Monday, Abdu declined to discuss why the men were detained. “I cannot deny the arrests of some of my officers and men,” Abdu said. By NJADVARA MUSA Associated Press Writer
| — Hat tip: SC | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: ETA: FARC Accused of Cooperation With Venezuelan Help
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 1 — ETA is alleged to have supported FARC in its planning of attacks in Spain against top-level Colombian politicians. Both groups are also said to have received the backing of the Venezuelan Government. The allegations have surfaced as a result of charges that were today brought against six members of the Basque separatist group and seven members of the Colombian organisation by the judge of Spain’s National Court, Eloy Velasco. The news was published in the online edition of El Pais. The judge is alleged to have found evidence of co-operation between the Venezuelan Government and both ETA and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. According to the accusation, FARC members requested help from ETA with regards to an attack on the current President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, and his predecessor Andres Pastrana, during two separate visits to Spain. According to Velasco, the investigation has produced evidence of “government co-operation in illegal collaboration” between the two organisations. In March and September of 2000, the charge states, two FARC members, Edgar Gustavo Navarro Morales, known as “El Mocho” and Victor Ramon Vargas Salazar, known as “Chato”, travelled to Spain requesting the help of ETA members in locating Pastrana. “More recently”, they are thought to have attempted to follow the current Colombian President Uribe. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain Asks Venezuela to Explain Alleged Rebel Link
Spain has demanded an explanation from Venezuela over claims that it assisted two rebel groups which plotted to kill Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe.
Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that Madrid would “act in accordance with that explanation”.
Earlier, a Spanish judge charged six suspected members of Basque separatist group Eta and seven alleged Colombian Farc rebels with various offences.
He said he believed Farc had asked for Eta’s help in a plot to kill Mr Uribe.
The Venezuelan government has not publicly commented on allegations it was involved.
‘Bomb courses’
In a 26-page indictment on Monday, Spanish judge Eloy Velasco said an investigation launched in 2008 had turned up evidence “that demonstrates Venezuelan governmental co-operation in the illicit collaboration between Farc and Eta”.
The judge added that he believed Farc had asked for Eta’s help in a plot to kill Colombian officials in Spain, including Mr Uribe.
He did not say when the attack was to be carried out.
He said Eta and Farc had been collaborating since 1993, and accused Arturo Cubillas Fontan of being a key link.
Mr Fontan lives in Venezuela and has held a job in the government of President Hugo Chavez — and may still have one — the judge wrote.
He is also a key member of Eta, running its operations in Venezuela and the region, the indictment said.
It said Mr Fontan “co-ordinated relations between Farc and Eta and the participation of Eta members in courses on explosives and urban guerrilla warfare”.
The judge charged Mr Fontan, along with two Farc members, Edgar Gustavo Navarro Morales and Victor Ramon Vargas Salazar, with conspiracy to commit terrorist murders.
His investigation found that Farc members had travelled to Spain to try to kill former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and to stage an attack on the Colombian embassy.
A Farc member reported that “it would not be difficult to carry out an attack on those two targets as long as they could count on the help of Eta”, the indictment said.
Later the target list was allegedly expanded to include Mr Uribe and other Colombian officials.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: New Migrant Bill Submitted
The Interior Ministry yesterday tabled in Parliament the revised version of a draft law that foresees the granting of citizenship to tens of thousands of immigrants who have been living in Greece legally for five years and to their children.
A key change to the original bill is that the children of immigrants will only be eligible for citizenship if they were born in Greece and both their parents are legal residents or have refugee status. The original draft legislation, which the conservative opposition had criticized as too lax, had stipulated that the child need have only one legal parent.
The children of migrants who were not born in Greece will be eligible for citizenship on completing six years at a Greek school. The revised bill also lowers the fee for applying for citizenship to 700 euros from 1,500 euros and puts greater emphasis on the role of regional committees, rather than the Interior Ministry, in processing applications.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Today Immigrants on Strike in Italy, France and Spain
(ANSAmed) — ROME — Beginning this morning, Italy is seeing its first “national strike” of foreigners, called to bring “visibility” to the immigrants living and working in Italy and in order to fight against racism. The predominant colour is yellow, chosen by the organisers of the protest which began in France and is set to spread to other countries in addition to Italy. The initiative is part of today’s strike in France, the “Journee Sans Immigres, 24h Sans Nous”. Also in other countries, such as Greece and Spain, there is mobilisation underway to bring together under the same yellow banner foreigners, European Union citizens, second generation immigrants and “anyone rejecting racism and any form of discrimination”. The initiative was inspired by the 2006 protest movement of Latin Americans in the United States against immigration policies. Sixty squares across Italy will host demonstrations today marked by the colour yellow, “to support the importance of immigration for the socio-economic good of the country”, as announced the March 1st 2010-Day Without Us Committee (Primo Marzo 2010 — Una giornata senza di Noi). A number of initiatives have been planned in the various cities involved: among them is an “ethnic lunch” will be offered to penitentiary police officers in Varese, the painting over or cleaning off of racist slogans on walls in Trieste, a photo exhibition in Bologna with the faces of the “new Italians”, and open-air foreign languages lessons offered in Milan. In Rome there will be “lessons in illegal immigration” held by L’Onda (the ‘Wave’) students in front of Parliament. At 6.30 Pm, yellow balloons will then be released in all the squares to reiterate the colour serving as a symbol for the demonstrations. Having sprung up spontaneously on the web (in part thanks to a Facebook group) the March 1st protest has received the backing of a number of groups, including organisations such as Emergency, Amnesty International, Pime missionaries and Legambiente, political parties (PD, the Greens, SEL and Rifondazione Comunista) as well as the trade unions CGIL, CISL, UIL and COBAS, which despite having expressed their support have not called a nation-wide general strike. Those not showing up for work due to the strike will therefore be seen in limited numbers, and union coverage will be guaranteed mainly by grassroots unions such as SDL (the Workers Union). As part of the strike, Coldiretti has requested the “timely publication of the 2010 immigration quotas law in the official gazette, since a delay may damage important sectors for the Italian agro-food sector”. This is widespread concern in small agricultural enterprises over the delay in giving the go-ahead for the entrance to the country of the 80,000 foreign, seasonal workers on which 10% of Italian crops are dependent.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Crucial Workforce in Agriculture
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 1 — Without the “crucial” contribution of immigrant workers “it would not be possible to produce the many excellent Italian food products”, from harvest of the apples of the Non Valley in Trentino to the milking of cows to make Parmigiano Reggiano, from the harvest of grapes for the Italian wines to the herding of sheep for the Roman cheeses. So said the Italian National Farmers Federation Coldiretti on the occasion of the first strike of immigrants. The federation underlined that more than 10% of people working in the Italian countryside are non-EU citizens, and that around 30 thousand Italian farms hire workers from outside Europe. In Italy, Coldiretti continues, more than 90,000 immigrants work regularly, of whom around 15,000 with fixed contracts. They “give a structural and crucial contribution to the country’s agricultural economy”, according to the XIX Caritas/Migrantes Report on immigration in collaboration with Coldiretti. The farmers organisation specifies that 90,091 farming jobs have been recorded in the archives of the National Social Security Institute (INPS) as jobs of non-EU citizens with 155 different nationalities. Most of them are Albanians (17.2%), followed by Moroccans (12.6%) and Indians (13.8%), most of them working in farms in the north of Italy because of their skills in cattle-farming.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: “Hail to the Chiefs”
Last week was not a good one for proponents of social re-engineering of the U.S. military. They had been buoyed by the previous week’s congressional testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, widely seen as evidence the Pentagon was prepared to accede to President Obama’s demand that avowed homosexuals be allowed to serve in the armed forces. Now, however, four other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have weighed in, and all bets are off on the idea of experimenting with — and possibly breaking — the All-Volunteer Force.
The first official efforts to protect the military’s culture from the destructive agenda espoused by lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual (LGBT) activists were mounted on Tuesday by the leaders of the air and ground services. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz told the House Armed Services Committee: “This is not the time to perturb the force that is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere without careful deliberation.”
The same day, the counterpart Senate panel heard from the Army’s top general, Chief of Staff George Casey, who said that he has “serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years.” Gen. Casey added, “We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Christianity’s Modern-Day Martyrs
The rise of Islamic extremism is putting increasing pressure on Christians in Muslim countries, who are the victims of murder, violence and discrimination. Christians are now considered the most persecuted religious group around the world. Paradoxically, their greatest hope could come from moderate political Islam. By SPIEGEL staff.
Kevin Ang is cautious these days. He glances around, taking a look to the left down the long row of stores, then to the right toward the square, to check that no one is nearby. Only then does the church caretaker dig out his key, unlock the gate, and enter the Metro Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
The draft of air stirs charred Bible pages. The walls are sooty and the building smells of scorched plastic. Metro Tabernacle Church was the first of 11 churches set on fire by angry Muslims — all because of one word. “Allah,” Kevin Ang whispers.
It began with a question — should Christians here, like Muslims, be allowed to call their god “Allah,” since they don’t have any other word or language at their disposal? The Muslims claim Allah for themselves, both the word and the god, and fear that if Christians are allowed to use the same word for their own god, it could lead pious Muslims astray.
For three years there was a ban in place and the government confiscated Bibles that mentioned “Allah.” Then on Dec. 31 last year, Malaysia’s highest court reached a decision: The Christian God could also be called Allah.
Imams protested and disgruntled citizens threw Molotov cocktails at churches. Then, on top of everything, Prime Minister Najib Razak stated that he couldn’t stop people who might protest against specific developments in the country — and some took that as an invitation to violent action. First churches burned, then the other side retaliated with pigs’ heads placed in front of two mosques. Sixty percent of Malaysians are Muslims and 9 percent Christians, with the rest made up by Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs. They managed to live together well, until now.
It’s a battle over a single word, but it’s also about much more than that. The conflict has to do with the question of what rights the Christian minority in Malaysia is entitled to. Even more than that, it’s a question of politics. The ruling United Malays National Organization is losing supporters to Islamist hardliners — and wants to win them back with religious policies.
Those policies are receiving a receptive welcome. Some of Malaysia’s states interpret Sharia, the Islamic system of law and order, particularly strictly. The once liberal country is on the way to giving up freedom of religion — and what constitutes order is being defined ever more rigidly. If a Muslim woman drinks beer, she can be punished with six cane strokes. Some regions similarly forbid such things as brightly colored lipstick, thick make-up, or shoes with clattering high heels.
Expelled, Abducted and Murdered
Not only in Malaysia, but in many countries through the Muslim world, religion has gained influence over governmental policy in the last two decades. The militant Islamist group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while Islamist militias are fighting the governments of Nigeria and the Philippines. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen have fallen to a large extent into the hands of Islamists. And where Islamists are not yet in power, secular governing parties are trying to outstrip the more religious groups in a rush to the right.
This can be seen in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Indonesia to some extent, and also Malaysia. Even though this Islamization often has more to do with politics than with religion, and even though it doesn’t necessarily lead to the persecution of Christians, it can still be said that where Islam gains importance, freedoms for members of other faiths shrink.
There are 2.2 billion Christians around the world. The Christian non-governmental organization Open Doors calculates that 100 million of them are being threatened or persecuted. They aren’t allowed to build churches, buy Bibles or obtain jobs. That’s the more harmless form of discrimination and it affects the majority of these 100 million Christians. The more brutal version sees them blackmailed, robbed, expelled, abducted or even murdered.
Bishop Margot Kässmann, who was head of the Protestant Church in Germany before stepping down on Feb. 24, believes Christians are “the most frequently persecuted religious group globally.” Germany’s 22 regional churches have proclaimed this coming Sunday to be the first commemoration day for persecuted Christians. Kässmann said she wanted to show solidarity with fellow Christians who “have great difficulty living out their beliefs freely in countries such as Indonesia, India, Iraq or Turkey.”
There are counterexamples as well, of course. In Lebanon and Syria, Christians are not discriminated against, and in fact play an important role in politics and society. And the persecution of Christian is by no means the domain of fanatical Muslims alone — Christians are also imprisoned, abused and murdered in countries such as Laos, Vietnam, China and Eritrea.
‘Creeping Genocide’ against Christians
Open Doors compiles a global “persecution index.” North Korea, where tens of thousands of Christians are serving time in work camps, has topped the list for many years. North Korea is followed, though, by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Maldives and Afghanistan. Of the first 10 countries on the list, eight are Islamic, and almost all have Islam as their state religion.
The systematic persecution of Christians in the 20th century — by Communists in the Soviet Union and China, but also by Nazis — claimed far more lives than anything that has happened so far in the 21st century. Now, however, it is not only totalitarian regimes persecuting Christians, but also residents of Islamic states, fanatical fundamentalists, and religious sects — and often simply supposedly pious citizens.
Gone is the era of tolerance, when Christians enjoyed a large degree of religious freedom under the protection of Muslim sultans as so-called “People of the Book” while at the same time medieval Europe was banishing its Jews and Muslims from the continent or even burning them at the stake. Also gone is the heyday of Arab secularism following World War II, when Christian Arabs advanced through the ranks of politics.
As political Islam grew stronger, devout believers’ aggression focused not only on corrupt local regimes, but also more and more on the ostensibly corrupting influence of Western Christians, for which local Christian minorities were held accountable. A new trend began, this time with Christians as the victims.
In Iraq, for example, Sunni terrorist groups prey specifically on people of other religions. The last Iraqi census in 1987 showed 1.4 million Christians living in the country. At the start of the American invasion in 2003, it was 550,000, and at present it is just under 400,000. Experts speak of a “creeping genocide.”
‘People Are Scared Out of Their Minds’
The situation in the region around the city of Mosul in northern Iraq is especially dramatic. The town of Alqosh lies high in the mountains above Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Bassam Bashir, 41, can see his old hometown when he looks out his window there. Mosul is only 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, but inaccessible. The city is more dangerous than Baghdad, especially for men like Bassam Bashir, a Chaldean Catholic, teacher and fugitive within his own country.
Since the day in August 2008 when a militia abducted his father from his shop, Bashir has had to fear for his and his family’s lives. Police found his father’s corpse two days later in the Sinaa neighborhood on the Tigris River, the body perforated with bullet holes. There was no demand for ransom. Bashir’s father died for the simple reason that he was Christian.
And no one claims to have seen anything. “Of course they saw something,” Bashir says. “But people in Mosul are scared out of their minds.”
One week later, militiamen slit the throat of Bashir’s brother Tarik like a sacrificial lamb. “I buried my brother myself,” Bashir explains. Together with his wife Nafa and their two daughters, he fled to Alqosh the same day. The city is surrounded by vineyards and an armed Christian militia guards the entrance.
Tacit State Approval
Bashir’s family members aren’t the only ones who came to Alqosh as the series of murders in Mosul continued. Sixteen Christians were killed the next week, and bombs exploded in front of churches. Men in passing cars shouted at Christians that they had a choice — leave Mosul or convert to Islam. Out of over 1,500 Christian families in the city, only 50 stayed. Bassam Bashir says he won’t return until he can mourn for his father and brother in peace. Others who gave up hope entirely fled to neighboring countries like Jordan and even more to Syria.
In many Islamic countries, Christians are persecuted less brutally than in Iraq, but often no less effectively. In many cases, the persecution has the tacit approval of the government. In Algeria, for example, it takes the form of newspapers reporting that a priest tried to convert Muslims or insulted the Prophet Mohammed — and publishing the cleric’s address, in a clear call to vigilante justice. Or a public television station might broadcast programs with titles like “In the Clutches of Ignorance,” which describe Christians as Satanists who convert Muslims with the help of drugs. This happened in Uzbekistan, which ranks tenth on Open Doors’ “persecution index.”
Blasphemy is another frequently used allegation. Insulting the core values of Islam is a punishable offense in many Islamic countries. The allegation is often used against the opposition, whether that means journalists, dissidents or Christians. Imran Masih, for example, a Christian shopkeeper in Faisalabad, Pakistan, was given a life sentence on Jan. 11, according to sections 295 A and B of Pakistan’s legal code, which covers the crime of outraging religious feelings by desecrating the Koran. A neighboring shopkeeper had accused him of burning pages from the Koran. Masih says that he only burned old business records.
It’s a typical case for Pakistan, where the law against blasphemy seems to invite abuse — it’s an easy way for anyone to get rid of an enemy. Last year, 125 Christians were charged with blasphemy in Pakistan. Dozens of those already sentenced are on death row.
‘We Don’t Feel Safe Here’
Government-tolerated persecution occurs even in Turkey, the most secular and modern country in the Muslim world, where around 110,000 Christians make up less than a quarter of 1 percent of the population — but are discriminated against nonetheless. The persecution is not as open or as brutal as what happens in neighboring Iraq, but the consequences are similar. Christians in Turkey, who numbered well over 2 million people in the 19th century, are fighting for their continued existence.
It’s happening in the southeast of the country, for example, in Tur Abdin, whose name means “mountain of God’s servants.” It’s a hilly region full of fields, chalk cliffs, and centuries-old monasteries many. It’s home to the Syrian Orthodox Assyrians, or Aramaeans as they call themselves, members of one of the oldest Christian groups in the world. According to legend, the Three Wise Men brought the Christian belief system here from Bethlehem. The inhabitants of Tur Abdin still speak Aramaic, the language used by Jesus of Nazareth.
The world is much more familiar with the genocide committed against the Armenians by Ottoman troops in 1915 and 1916, but tens of thousands of Assyrians were also murdered during World War I. Half a million Assyrians are said to have lived in Tur Abdin at the beginning of the 20th century. Today there are barely 3,000. A Turkish district court threatened last year to appropriate the Assyrians’ spiritual center, the 1,600-year-old Mor Gabriel monastery, because the monks were believed to have acquired land unlawfully. Three neighboring Muslim villages had complained they felt discriminated against by the monastery, which houses four monks, 14 nuns, and 40 students behind its walls.
“Even if it doesn’t want to admit it, Turkey has a problem with people of other faiths,” says Ishok Demir, a young Swiss man with Aramaean roots, who lives with his parents near Mor Gabriel. “We don’t feel safe here.”
More than anything, that has to do with the permanent place Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Catholics and Protestants have in the country’s nationalistic conspiracy theories. Those groups have always been seen as traitors, nonbelievers, spies and people who insult the Turkish nation. According to a survey carried out by the US-based Pew Research Center, 46 percent of Turks see Christianity as a violent religion. In a more recent Turkish study, 42 percent of those surveyed wouldn’t accept Christians as neighbors.
The repeated murders of Christians come, then, as no surprise. In 2006, for example, a Catholic priest was shot in Trabzon on the Black Sea coast. In 2007, three Christian missionaries were murdered in Malatya, a city in eastern Turkey. The perpetrators were radical nationalists, whose ideology was a mixture of exaggerated patriotism, racism and Islam.
Converts in Grave Danger
In even graver danger than traditional Christians, however, are Muslims who have converted to Christianity. Apostasy, or the renunciation of Islam, is punishable by death according to Islamic law — and the death penalty still applies in Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Even in Egypt, a secular country, converts draw the government’s wrath. The religion minister defended the legality of the death penalty for converts — although Egypt doesn’t even have such a law — with the argument that renunciation of Islam amounts to high treason. Such sentiments drove Mohammed Hegazy, 27, a convert to the Coptic Orthodox Church, into hiding two years ago. He was the first convert in Egypt to try to have his new religion entered officially onto his state-issued identity card. When he was refused, he went public. Numerous clerics called for his death in response.
Copts make up the largest Christian community in the Arab world and around 8 million Egyptians belong to the Coptic Church. They’re barred from high government positions, diplomatic service and the military, as well as from many state benefits. Universities have quotas for Coptic students considerably lower than their actual percentage within the population.
Building new churches isn’t allowed, and the old ones are falling into disrepair thanks to a lack both of money and authorization to renovate. When girls are kidnapped and forcibly converted, the police don’t intervene. Thousands of pigs were also slaughtered under the pretense of confining swine flu. Naturally all were owned by Christians.
The Christian Virus
Six Copts were massacred on Jan. 6 — when Coptic celebrate Christmas Eve — in Nag Hammadi, a small city 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Valley of the Kings. Predictably, the speaker of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of the Egyptian parliament, called it an “individual criminal act.” When he added that the perpetrators wanted to revenge the rape of a Muslim girl by a Copt, it almost sounded like an excuse. The government seems ready to admit to crime in Egypt, but not to religious tension. Whenever clashes between religious groups occur, the government finds very secular causes behind them, such as arguments over land, revenge for crimes or personal disputes.
Nag Hammadi, with 30,000 residents, is a dusty trading town on the Nile. Even before the murders, it was a place where Christians and Muslims mistrusted one another. The two groups work together and have houses near each other, but they live, marry and die separately. Superstition is widespread and the Muslims, for example, fear they could catch the “Christian virus” by eating together with a Copt. It comes as no surprise that these murders occurred in Nag Hammadi, nor that they were followed by the country’s worst religious riots in years. Christian shops and Muslim houses were set on fire, and 28 Christians and 14 Muslims were arrested.
Nag Hammadi is now sealed off, with armed security forces in black uniforms guarding roads in and out of the city. They make sure no residents leave the city and no journalists enter it.
Three presumed perpetrators have since been arrested. All of them have prior criminal records. One admitted to the crime, but then recanted, saying he had been coerced by the intelligence service. The government seems to want the affair to disappear as quickly as possible. The alleged murderers will likely be set free again as soon as the furor has blown over.
More Rights for Christians?
But there are also a few small indications that the situation of embattled Christians in Islamic countries could improve — depending on the extent that nationalism and the radicalization of political Islam subsides again.
One of the contradictions of the Islamic world is that the best chances for Christians seem to crop up precisely where a major player actually comes from the political Islam camp. In Turkey it is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Islamist and now the country’s prime minister, who has promised Turkey’s few remaining Christians more rights. He points to the history of the Ottoman Empire, in which Christians and Jews long had to pay a special tax, but in exchange, were granted freedom of religion and lived as respected fellow citizens.
A more relaxed attitude to its minorities would certainly signify progress for Turkey.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
How They Distort Global Temperatures: The Urban Heat Island Effect
Now you see why the CRU and IPCC limited the number of stations they were using and restricted them to mostly urban stations to get the result they wanted.
How much do calculations of global temperatures represent the real temperature of the Earth? Every day new stories appear about temperature records with errors or deliberate omissions. An important part of the debate is something called the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE). A new article by Dr. Edward Long says, “The problem would seem to be the methodologies engendered in treatment for a mix of urban and rural locations; that the ‘adjustment’ protocol appears to accent to a warming effect rather than eliminate it. This, if correct, leaves serious doubt for whether the rate of increase in temperature found from the adjusted data is due to natural warming trends or warming because of another reason, such as erroneous consideration of the effects of urban warming.”
[…]
Several cities were studied since and though each showed the concentric temperature patterns. The form is a distinctive dome of warm air with a centre height of about 1,000 feet over the hottest part of the city (Figure 1). A convection pattern inside the dome circulates the air as shown.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Mysterious Power of Hate
How innocent children become murderers and rapists
Let’s understand, even a violent philosophy like that of radical Islam isn’t necessarily sufficient, by itself, to create a rage-fueled jihadist. No, you become full of hate and driven to violate others only when someone else first violates you — when a parent, older sibling, teacher, cleric or other authority figure intimidates, frightens, degrades, bullies, humiliates or perhaps sexually abuses you. And such cruelty and degradation are, unfortunately, endemic in much of the Islamic world. Its rigid, authoritarian religious system, the near-slave status and abuse of women, the suffocating sexual repression, the widespread incidence of what can only be called the world’s most flagrant child abuse (where even toddlers are groomed for future “martyrdom operations”), and the pervasive fear of flogging, amputation or stoning if one runs afoul of the ultra-strict Sharia legal code — all this creates an environment reeking of quiet terror. No wonder its victims take to terrorism so readily.
So, once these parents and other authorities, full of the madness and confusion injected into them during their own youth, succeed in passing it on to the next generation of youngsters by intimidating and indoctrinating them, it’s child’s play to focus the newly created jihadists’ zeal onto the appropriate “hate object” — Jews, Americans, “infidels” and so on.
This dynamic is not unique to radical Islam. In fact, believe it or not, it’s the hidden fabric of all too much of our own lives — albeit usually in a far less extreme form. In a perverse mirror reflection of the Golden Rule, we all tend compulsively to do unto others what was done unto us. We effortlessly internalize the cruelty of others.
This is because, aside from the obvious effects being angry and upset have on us — making us emotional, clouding our judgment and so on — it also throws us into “program mode.” That’s right: When we get upset at the intimidating words or actions of other people, their cruelty “infects” us in a very real way. So, for instance, if our parents angrily yelled at us all the time when we were children, we would tend to angrily yell at those smaller and weaker than us. A little bit of the bully gets inside of us, and we then bully others, in one form or another. We’ve all seen this, and we know that our prisons are full of molesters and abusers who were molested and abused as children.
Thus, maniacal imams and jihadist teachers find it relatively easy convert innocent children into suicide bombers. The first step is to indoctrinate them from birth with a poisonous belief system demonizing “infidels,” a process explained by Israeli counter-terrorism expert Itamar Marcus in “The Genocide Mechanism”:…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Moral Disarmament of the Civilized World
… that is the far great disarmament, the disarmament not of bodies, but of minds. The disarmament of the moral right of self-defense by convincing entire peoples that they are the perpetrators and their attackers are the victims. And that in any case self-defense is futile. That it is better to be quiet, to keep your head down, to learn to get along, to hope that your leaders make whatever deals are necessary to keep the peace, and to replace them with even more spineless leaders if they don’t.
That is the moral disarmament of the civilized world and it is going on every day, even in countries where there are guns to be found everywhere, the people’s minds are being disarmed, rendered helpless and impotent in the face of the enemy. Because it is not the gun that matters, but the man willing to fire it. A home can be filled with guns from top to bottom, but if the homeowner refuses to use them a robber breaks into his home, because he is not certain whether the robber might not have the right to burglarize him after all—then even surrounded by a thousand rifles, he has already been disarmed.
Like every great tyranny, the left has always known that the chains must be placed not merely on men’s bodies and property, but first and foremost on their minds. Merely placing chains on a man does not make him a slave. He must be taught to think of himself as a slave. To see himself as inferior and worthless. He cannot be prevented by escaping only through threats of violence, instead he must be brought to think that he does not deserve freedom. That whatever dissatisfaction he has with his current condition is his own fault, and that slavery is actually a kindness being rendered unto him. Then his body need no longer be chained. His body can be free and he will remain a slave, because it is his mind that has been chained.
Moral disarmament, Directed at depriving a man not merely of freedoms and rights, but of the idea that he has any freedoms and rights
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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