China’s $7.24b March Trade Deficit 1st in 6 Years
SHANGHAI -China reported its first monthly trade deficit in nearly six years in March, a shift expected to be short-lived and one that may give Beijing only a slight respite from pressure to revalue its currency.
The $7.24 billion trade deficit in March reported Saturday by China’s customs administration was China’s first since a $2.26 billion deficit in April 2004. Though expected, it was significantly bigger than many economists had forecast. It follows four straight months of narrowing trade surpluses.
The return to deficit after many years of surplus comes as China is being pressured to let the value of its currency rise against the dollar — a key source of friction with the U.S. and other trading partners.
Zheng Yuesheng, chief of the customs agency’s statistics department, said the 60 percent rise in China’s imports in January-March, compared to a year earlier, was a boon to “the balanced growth of the world economy.”
“This kind of trade deficit is healthy because it appears when exports and imports both grow rapidly,” Zheng said on national television.
Zheng echoed other officials in predicting that China’s trade will soon return to surplus, though he said that it will likely tend to be more balanced than in the past.
China’s exports totaled $112.11 billion in March, up 24.3 percent from a year earlier. Imports reached $119.35 billion, up 66 percent compared to the same period last year, the Customs Administration said in data posted on its Web site.
In the first three months of this year, China still posted a global trade surplus of $14.5 billion, down 76.7 percent from the first quarter of 2009. The trade surplus was $7.6 billion in February and the combined January-February surplus was $21.8 billion.
The overall March deficit still shows that demand in China remains strong, driven in part by a torrent of bank lending and other government stimulus. As a result, prices for crude oil, iron ore and other raw materials China imports have been rising. Meanwhile, the Western economies that are the top export markets for Chinese goods have yet to return to solid growth, though are expected to revive later this year.
“China’s trade deficit will likely prove temporary. With an anticipated recovery in developed economies this year, Chinese exports should improve gradually over the coming months,” Jing Ulrich, head of China equities for J.P. Morgan, said in a note to clients.
Chinese trade officials, however, pointed to the deficit and the absence of full-throttle recovery in the global economy as reasons to keep the yuan stable. Appreciating the currency, they argue, would hurt China’s already hard-pressed exporters and add more uncertainty to the world economic outlook.
“We are still very much concerned. Global demand is still weak and protectionism is rising,” Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Yi Xiaozhun said at a regional conference, the Boao Forum for Asia, on Saturday.
In a separate statement, the Commerce Ministry said that the deficit shows that “the decisive factor that affects the trade balance is not the exchange rate, it’s the relationship between market supply and demand and other factors.”
Still, China recorded a $9.87 billion trade surplus with the United States in March and a $30.7 billion surplus for the first quarter, the customs figures showed. Imports from the U.S. rose 43 percent in March, nearly twice the pace of exports.
China’s trade surplus with the European Union was $7 billion in March and $29.3 billion for the first three months of the year.
Persisting trade surpluses have caused U.S. and European leaders to demand Beijing allow the yuan to rise in value, thereby increasing demand within China and perhaps helping to create jobs in the West, which is grappling with high unemployment. American economists estimate that the yuan is undervalued by up to 40 percent, giving its exporters an unfair advantage and swelling its trade surplus.
Some U.S. lawmakers have pushed for President Barack Obama to have China declared a currency manipulator in a Treasury Department report that was due out this month.
In a conciliatory gesture, Washington postponed the report ahead of a visit by President Hu Jintao to the U.S. to attend a nuclear conference. Following a brief stopover in Beijing by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for talks with a top Chinese official, Wang Qishan, many expect Beijing to allow at least a modest change in the yuan’s value.
Beijing has kept the value of the yuan tightly linked to the U.S. dollar for much of the past two decades. After breaking the link in 2005 and allowing the yuan to rise by about 20 percent, it then slammed on the brakes in mid-2008 as the crisis hit and has since held its currency steady against the dollar. The move gave a lifeline to exporters, who shed millions of factory jobs in the plunge in global demand.
Supporters of a loosening of controls on the Chinese currency argue that keeping the yuan’s value steady is helping to fuel inflation and limiting Beijing’s ability to manage the economy effectively.
“China can go a lot further in internationalizing its economy and promoting world growth by making its currency more flexible,” Pieter Bottelier, an economist who formerly headed the World Bank’s Beijing office, told a conference in Shanghai this week.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Government Approves New 30-Point Anti-Crisis Package
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 9 — Spain’s government has today approved a new package of around thirty measures coordinated between parliamentary groups which is aimed at combating the economic downturn. As explained by Deputy Premier Maria Teresa Fernandenz de la Vega to a press conference following a cabinet meeting, the package is aimed at “continuing along the path to recovery”. The measures, which are bundled into a legislative decree, contain moves to restructure the property sector, which the executive says will create 350,000 new jobs at a cost of 1.4 billion to state coffers; the activation of direct loans of up to 200,000 euros to small and medium-sized enterprises through the Official Credit Institute (ICO); and the establishment of a commission charged with drawing up the 2020 industrial policy plans. At the same time the decree will include cuts in the rate of VAT on all restoration works carried out on homes up until December 2012. All in all, the new anti-recession package will cost the state 1.6 billion euros. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
A Feckless Response
Feckless can mean irresponsible, incompetent, ineffectual, feeble, weak, futile and useless. All of the possible meanings for feckless apply to the US Government’s response to the incident involving the Qatari diplomat who Wednesday lit up on United 663 while on route to Denver.
On Thursday, the bloggers were expressing anger at the actions of Mohammed al-Modadi, who broke two laws, first when he smoked on the plane and then when he joked about it. While the anger is justified, the greater anger should be directed at our government’s handling of the matter. I’m not talking about the law enforcement actions taken by the air marshals aboard the plane, or the decision to scramble F-16 fighter jets.
Those were right on target. I’m talking about the failure of our government to ask the government of Qatar to waive al-Modadi’s diplomatic immunity so that he could be charged with the crimes he had committed. In light of the brush-off remarks made by Al Hajri, Qatar’s ambassador, Qatar would have refused to waive diplomatic immunity. The ambassador wrote that al-Modadi was “traveling to Denver on official embassy business” and “that this was a mistake.” He didn’t write that al-Modadi had made a mistake; he didn’t apologize on behalf of the government of Qatar; he didn’t write that Qatar would hold al-Modadi accountable for his actions; and he didn’t offer to compensate the United States for the expenses incurred in this incident. Instead the ambassador condoned al-Modadi’s actions, which were not a mistake but a deliberate affront to every American.
[…]
How can the United States be a role model when our president believes that bending over is more effective than standing tall.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Agent Provocateur Mad Hatters Want to Crash Your Tea Party
Warning: Marinated-in-Marxism Democrats and supporters are hot on the trail of Tea Party patriots.
They have launched a Crash the Tea Party (CTTP) website: crashtheteaparty.org on the eve of the April 15 anniversary of the Tea Party.
“WHO WE ARE, Crash The Tea Party style, is a lesson in Marxism 101: “A nationwide network of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who are sick and tired of that loose affiliation of racists, homophobes, and morons; who constitute the fake grass-roots movement which calls itself “The Tea Party.”
The definition of CTTP couldn’t have been better scripted by Nancy Pelosi.
[…]
But the game-plan is Crash the Tea Party’s most ominous part: “We will act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.) to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them. We will also use the inside information that we have gained in order to disrupt and derail their plans.” (Emphasis CFP’s).
“Sound like fun? It is!! If you’d like to join us, just click on the word “crash!” below.
“Crash the Tea Party” could should be called “Agent Provocateurs Are Us”!
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Audio: Mark Levin’s Stern Warning About Obama’s Supreme Court Pick
With a stern warning for those still cherish what remains of our freedom, Mark Levin used a portion of Friday’s syndicated radio program to spell out the mission of Obama’s US Supreme Court pick: imposition of dictatorial control over American lives.
While it’s true we don’t yet know which contender will be selected by the regime, Levin believes the mindset of the likely nominee will reflect Obama’s extreme-left ideology.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Clinton Helps Islamic Terror Supporter Enter U.S.
Examiner.com 9 April 2010
By Jim Kouri
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an order allowing a radical Islamic man with terrorist ties to tour cities in the United States in spite of a six-year ban, according to a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police’s Terrorism Committee.
Secretary Clinton consented to have Tariq Ramadan, an extremist Muslim who supports Islamic terrorism, visit New York City — the city attacked by 19 Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001 — to begin a U.S. tour that includes New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit and Washington.
The prominent European Muslim scholar openly supports Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, has worked for Iran and donates money to terrorist causes, according to public-interest group Judicial Watch.
In 2009, a university in The Netherlands terminated Ramadan as a result of his extremism and for his work for the Islamic Republic of Iran, currently pursuing nuclear weapons and financing terrorism worldwide.
According to The Investigative Project, Judicial Watch and other U.S. organizations, Professor Ramadan told his students that the London subway bombers were justified in acting out against their oppressors because the “British government is helping Iraqi people to be killed.”
A well-known French author, Caroline Fourest, who has studied Ramadan extensively says the scholar is undoubtedly an agent of radicalization. She wrote:
The remarkable thing is that Ramadan is on record describing how those who fight for Muslim dominance need to interact with their prey in Western Europe. In Ramadan’s words to his adherent, “You must know how to speak to those who don’t come from the same background we do,” and “You must attune your speech in accordance with the ear that is listening to you. It’s essential, but to attune your speech to the ear that is listening, you must also know that ear’s disposition.” Ramadan has written, “In Islam, the whole conception of man is different … In fact, what is asked of reason is to show us the way of faith in our hearts, not explore its limits so as to extent our faith.” You get the picture?
“It’s in his blood, evidently. Ramadan’s grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamist group that advocates terrorism against Israel and the west and is known as the parent organization of Hamas and Al Qaeda,” according to IPT.
In documents obtained by the FBI during the raid of a terrorist front group in Texas, Muslim Brotherhood lists its “strategic goal” in the U.S. as “grand jihad,” by “eliminating and destroying the western civilization from within and (…)
| — Hat tip: AA | [Return to headlines] |
More Americans Give Up Citizenship as IRS Gets Aggressive Overseas
The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service towards Americans living overseas.
According to public records, just over 500 people worldwide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.
[…]
Unlike most jurisdictions, the U.S. taxes the income of citizens and green- card holders no matter where in the world it is earned.
In order to give up U.S. citizenship, a person must obtain or have citizenship in another country. The person surrenders their passport or green card during an interview with a consular officer in their new home country. He or she must also submit a form, including a list of assets, to the IRS to complete the process.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Outrageous: FBI Uses Non-Violent Conservative Group as Bait to Catch Stalker
Senator Patty Murray (D, Wa) doesn’t want to hear from her constituents if they are upset at her vote for Obama’s take over of our nation’s healthcare. One voter in particular has earned Murray’s ire. He has almost daily called Murray’s offices and in no uncertain terms informed the Senator that he hates her healthcare votes. Really hates it.
[…]
An F.B.I. agent called Wilson and pretended to be a representative of Patients United Now, an arm of the conservative, free-market organization Americans for Prosperity.
The F.B.I. reports that Wilson listened to the fake call and confirmed his identity to the F.B.I. agent. He then readily admitted that he called the Senator’s office and confirmed that he was enraged by Murray’s vote on Obama’s socialist healthcare scheme.
The F.B.I. complaint said that Wilson confirmed that he was the one that left the voicemail messages at Murray’s office. The government agency makes further complaints against Wilson:
[…]
What Wilson said is obviously filled with anger and a bit over the top, but dangerous? I don’t see it.
Americans for Prosperity told the New York Times that they were never contacted by the F.B.I. and told that the government agency was going to impersonate them to trap Wilson.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The New Intolerance
“This was a recognition of American terrorists.”
That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.
Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War battlefields.
[…]
At the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12-13, 1865, the first shots of the Civil War, Virginia was still inside the Union. Indeed, there were more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy. But, on April 15, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers from the state militias to march south and crush the new Confederacy.
Two days later, April 17, Virginia seceded rather than provide soldiers or militia to participate in a war on their brethren. North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas followed Virginia out over the same issue. They would not be a party to a war on their kinfolk.
Slavery was not the cause of this war. Secession was — that and Lincoln’s determination to drown the nation in blood if necessary to make the Union whole again.
Nor did Lincoln ever deny it.
In his first inaugural, Lincoln sought to appease the states that had seceded by endorsing a constitutional amendment to make slavery permanent in the 15 states where it then existed. He even offered to help the Southern states run down fugitive slaves.
In 1862, Lincoln wrote Horace Greeley that if he could restore the Union without freeing one slave he would do it. The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, freed only those slaves Lincoln had no power to free — those still under Confederate rule. As for slaves in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, they remained the property of their owners.
As for “terrorists,” no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.
The great terrorist in that war was William Tecumseh Sherman, who violated all the known rules of war by looting, burning and pillaging on his infamous March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. Sherman would later be given command of the war against the Plains Indians and advocate extermination of the Sioux.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Has ‘Enough Oil to be Independent’
Analysts say reserves can be safely tapped if leaders have the will
Energy analysts say demand for crude oil will double by 2035, but some argue that with vast untapped petroleum reserves that can be accessed by new environmentally safe technologies, the U.S. can become energy independent if it has the political will.
The increase in demand was highlighted by President Obama’s announcement last week that the federal government is opening up Florida’s west coast, part of Alaska’s northern coast and the southern Atlantic Shelf for exploration and drilling.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cutbacks Take Their Toll on European Armies
Forget fighter jets, submarines and machine guns. Europe’s armed forces will be fighting their next war with their accountants.
By Michel Kerres
The financial crisis has finally hit home with Europe’s military establishment, 18 months later than anywhere else. Massive bailouts and economic stimulus programmes have left virtually all European governments with staggering budget deficits. Now the time has come to cut back on their spending. With nurses and the unemployed already paying their share of the price, soldiers will probably be next.
Defence spending is being scrutinised across the continent. How will military staffs and politicians react to the sudden money shortage? Will they choose only modest improvements in efficiency? Or will they opt for far-reaching measures and cut operational capacity? In theory, international cooperation could go a long way towards reducing the need for cutbacks.
“It is clear that the financial crisis and the cutbacks have forced countries to ask themselves some difficult questions,” said Clara O’Donnell, a defence specialist with the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think-tank. “Should they specialise themselves? Should they cooperate?” In the UK, closer military cooperation with France has become a real possibility again now that money is short.
Two brigades abandoned
Budgetary urgency to cut spending varies from country to country. In the Netherlands, 12 possible scenarios have been proposed to cut back on the armed forces. Potential savings range from 0.4 billion to 2.1 billion euros, on a total annual budget of 8 billion.
In the cheapest scenario, the Dutch armed forces would focus exclusively on the navy and air force, cutting 23,500 jobs and disbanding two entire brigades. Foreign missions such the current deployment in Afghanistan would then become impossible.
The German federal military has until June to reconsider any major purchases such as airplanes and helicopters. “Military planners’ first reflex will be to try to reduce bureaucracy and postpone expensive acquisitions,” said Hilmar Linnenkamp, a defence specialist with the Berlin-based think-tank SWP. “Little will change because the crisis isn’t grave enough to warrant it. Perhaps we will buy a few A400M transport planes, or 37 Eurofighters less. But that will be it.”
In France, meanwhile, the battle over defence spending has yet to be fought. The current French defence budget, which has already been determined for the years 2009 to 2014, allows for significant investments in equipment that will partially be paid for by reducing personnel spending. The French armed forces will receive 100 billion euros to but new frigates and Rafale fighter-jets. Their number of troops will have to be down-sized by 47,600. All together, this means an effective increase in French defence spending.
French soldiers fight finance ministry
The French finance ministry has already suggested reconsidering this plan in the light of the French vow to reduce its budget deficit from 8.2 to 3 percent of GDP. The finance and defence ministry will probably butt heads over the matter later this month. Far-reaching cutbacks will be some time in the making however, thinks Jean-Pierre Maulny of the Paris-based IRIS research institute.
The British armed forces may be the first to take some major hits. A British think-tank has estimated the country’s next government will have to cut defence spending by 15 percent in the next six years. Defence minister Des Browne recently even suggested the UK should start sharing its equipment — and the financial burdens that come with it — with other countries.
“Until recently, the UK was able to maintain armed forces that were prepared for all tasks imaginable,” British expert O’Donnell said. “Now the financial problem has become so pressing that people have to face up to the fact some tasks may have to be abandoned altogether. A decrease in the number of aircraft carriers is a real option now, as is reducing nuclear force. In the past, these things were never up for debate.”
Politicians and defence specialists have argued for years that European cooperation is the only logical strategy for the future, but this has been progressing slowly for a number of reasons. Cooperation threatens national sovereignty and European military forces are equipped with materials from different manufacturers. Besides, the defence industry makes up an important part of the national economy in some European countries.
Cooperation is cheap
Still, O’Donnell believes a watershed moment could be at hand. “If the situation becomes dire enough it could create sufficient political support to move some of the traditional obstacles out of the way.”
The UK, for instance, has been looking to France with renewed interest. Europe’s two foremost military powers have sought cooperation in the past, but this rarely went beyond pretty prose and the institution of very modest research programmes, French expert Maulny said. The joint development of an aircraft carrier never made it past the drawing board. The chiefs of staffs talk regularly however. Just last month, the UK explored the possibilities for France to contribute to the — more cost efficient — future of the British military.
Maulny said he doubted the two countries would be able to cooperate on major projects, but he saw plenty of opportunity for collaboration in the realms of logistics, training and research. In Berlin, Linnenkamp remained sceptical. “Those two like telling each other that they are the only European countries with real military power. They don’t take the others all that seriously. I don’t think it will lead to much,” he said.
Linnenkamp joked it wouldn’t hurt if the two countries started out by coordinating their activities. Only a year ago a French and a British submarine collided while patrolling the Mediterranean.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: 70th Anniversary of German Invasion
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Germany invasion of Denmark during World War II
As the flags fly at half mast and the war dead are remembered around the country, it seems that young people have forgotten the significance of 9 April.
A survey carried out by Rambøll Analyse showed that almost half of Danes in general recognise the date as the day German troops invaded Denmark 70 years ago.
However, only 17 percent of 18-25-year-olds recognise the date that marked the start of five years of Nazi occupation.
On the other hand, more than 80 percent of survey respondents over the age of 65 recognised the importance of the date.
Professor Ditlev Tamm of the University of Copenhagen has written several books about the occupation and called the survey results a ‘catastrophe’ for the Danish school system, laying the blame firmly at the door of teachers.
‘If we no longer have events which we jointly remember then there are many things we can no longer talk about together. It’s the whole basis for out community,’ Tamm said.
Education minister Tina Nedergaard was also critical of the lack of knowledge among young people and said it was dishonourable to those who had experienced the occupation.
According to Statistics Denmark there are more than 604,000 Danes who are still alive today who experienced the German occupation.
The history of the occupation is a mandatory part of the curriculum for primary schools, but not for high schools.
When German troops crossed the Danish border on the morning of 9 April, 1940 there was some resistance. Thirteen Danish soldiers and three border guards were killed and 21 others injured.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
France and Italy Form Joint Alpine Force
France and Italy are to form a joint Alpine brigade of several thousand soldiers to specialise in mountain warfare, the French presidency said Thursday.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy are to formally announce the creation of the unit on Friday in Paris at their annual summit, according to the president’s office.
The Franco-Italian brigade will have a unified headquarters modelled on that of the joint Franco-German Brigade, and by 2013 will be ready to be deployed for mountain warfare in areas like Afghanistan, it said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France: Italy Boost Nuclear Cooperation, Defend Euro
France and Italy on Friday agreed to cooperate more closely to increase nuclear power generation and vowed to come to the aid of debt-laden Greece in order to defend the euro.
At a summit at the Elysee presidential palace, President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Italy’s decision to tap into nuclear power and said France was ready to share its expertise as Europe’s largest atomic energy producer.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Sarkozy also said the European Union was ready to swing into action “at any time” to activate its rescue plan for Greece.
“Greece is part of the eurozone. We have a responsibility to support Greece and without this, there will be a negative impact on the euro and the eurozone,” warned Berlusconi.
The leaders spoke in Paris as financial markets sent a strong message that they had little faith in the IMF-EU rescue scheme aimed for Greece.
Greek bond yields jumped to more than 7.5 percent, the highest readings since the country joined the euro in 2001, while the stock exchange in Athens plunged five percent and the euro fell further against the dollar.
“A support plan has been approved by all members of the eurozone. We are ready to activate it at any time to come to Greece’s aid,” said Sarkozy.
Nuclear cooperation however was the centrepiece of the summit, with seven government and industry agreements signed between the two countries.
French electricity giant EDF signed a five-year partnership deal with Enel, Italy’s largest power company, and turbine maker Ansaldo to develop and build four nuclear reactors in Italy, EDF said in a statement.
The Italian nuclear power plants will be modeled after France’s EPR design and Ansaldo, a subsidiary of the aeronautics group Finmeccanica, will be tasked with carrying out technical studies.
Areva, the world’s biggest nuclear reactor builder, signed three big deals with Ansaldo, the Techint Group and the CIRTEN Italian university research centre to work together on the Italian plan for four new atomic power plants.
Areva will contribute to “the development of new nuclear industrial skills in Italy,” said a statement from the company.
France and Italy last year signed a partnership agreement bringing together major industrial players from both countries for Italy’s plan to build the new reactors.
On the eve of the summit, Enel signed a deal with French carmaker Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan to build charging stations in Italy for electric cars, said a senior Renault official.
Patrick Pelata, a senior Renault director, said the deal could also extend to Spain and Latin America, where Enel has a presence.
France and Italy also agreed to form a joint Alpine brigade of several thousand soldiers to specialise in mountain warfare on battlefields like Afghanistan.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
French Leader Sarkozy Slams Obama, Warns He Might be Insane
A new report circulating in the Kremlin today authored by France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) and recently “obtained” by the FSB shockingly quotes French President Nicolas Sarkozy [photo top right with Obama] as stating that President Barack Obama is “a dangerous[ly] aliéné”, which translates into his, Obama, being a “mad lunatic”, or in the American vernacular, “insane”.
According to this report, Sarkozy was “appalled” at Obama’s “vision” of what the World should be under his “guidance” and “amazed” at the American Presidents unwillingness to listen to either “reason” or “logic”. Sarkozy’s meeting where these impressions of Obama were formed took place nearly a fortnight ago at the White House in Washington D.C., and upon his leaving he “scolded” Obama and the US for not listening closely enough to what the rest of the World has to say.
Apparently, as this report details, the animosity between Sarkozy and Obama arose out of how best the West can deal with the growing threat posed by rising Islamic fundamentalism. Both Sarkozy and his European neighbors had previously been supported in their efforts by the United States in forming an alliance to strengthen the integration of Muslim peoples into their societies, and has including France and Belgium moving to ban the wearing of burqa’s.
European fears over their growing Muslim populations appear to be valid as the growing immigration and birth rates of these Islamic peoples are warned is causing the “Eurabiazation” of the Continent and within a few generations will see them become the majority of nearly all of the EU Nations.
The greatest threat to these Western Nations posed by the Muslim peoples becoming the majority of their populations lies in their likelihood of destroying the Global Banking System which according to their faith is firmly rooted in “satanic” evil and “must” be replaced by an Islamic one.
[Note: Islamic banking refers to a system of banking or banking activity that is consistent with the principles of Islamic law (Sharia) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics. Sharia prohibits the payment or acceptance of interest fees for the lending and accepting of money respectively, (Riba, usury) for specific terms, as well as investing in businesses that provide goods or services considered contrary to its principles (Haraam, forbidden).
Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t share the views of his European allies and has, instead, embarked upon a course of embracing the Muslim peoples of the World and to the shock of all has overturned the Bush era ban on the radical Swiss born Muslim Cleric Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States, last year ordered the US government bailed out General Electric Capital Corporation to became the first Western multinational to issue an Islamic bond, and this past week commanded that all of his governments security documents eliminate the words “Islamic extremism” and “jihad”.
Sarkozy in these reports further warns that by Obama’s “unrestrained” and “destabilizing” actions an already tense Global situation is growing ever more catastrophic as America’s once stalwart allies are being cast aside in favor of a New World Order where instead of the United States securing its vital energy future through conquest and war it will now do so by appeasement to some of the most violent and radical regimes on Earth, and as we can see exampled:
[…]
To all of these actions (and too many more to mention in this short report) Russian Military Analysts warn that Obama has pushed our world towards total global war more than any single leader since Nazi Germany’s Adolph Hitler, to which Russia and China are, likewise, preparing to confront to stop the Americans.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Former Red Army Faction Member Becker Indicted
Federal prosecutors said Thursday they had indicted Verena Becker, a former member of the far-left West German militant group the Red Army Faction, for complicity in a murder that took place more than 33 years ago.
The 57-year-old Becker was arrested in August in connection with the killing of chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and two others on April 7, 1977, during the bloody era which became known as the “German Autumn.”
“She has been charged with complicity in the murder of federal prosecutor Buback and his companions Goebel and Wurster,” said Frank Wallenta, a spokesman.
[…]
After more than three decades, her case was reopened in April 2008 when investigators used the latest forensic technology to examine a letter that had claimed responsibility for the murders.
Becker’s DNA was found on the letters, leading investigators to raid her house, where they secured other incriminating evidence.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: New Research Sheds Light on Soviet Plans for World War III
German historians are divided over the significance of a massive Communist-era bunker in the former East Germany. Was it to be used as a command post in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe? Researchers now believe Europe was closer to the nuclear abyss than was previously believed.
Riding in fully enclosed trucks, a military construction crew under the command of the East German National People’s Army was driven to a remote woodlot near Kossa in the state of Saxony, which at the time was part of communist East Germany. They were not supposed to hear anything, see anything or say anything. They were only here to work.
First, the soldiers put up 6 kilometers (3.75 miles) of steel fencing and ran 6,000 volts of electricity through it. The men dug deep holes with excavators and poured concrete walls. Then the underground facility was fitted with electronic systems.
The secret fortress was completed in 1979. Located in the middle of a heath, the installation consisted of six separate bunkers that cannot be seen from the air, spread over an area of 75 hectares (185 acres), and built with blast-resistant steel doors and decontamination showers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Man Sues Swedish Firm Over Turkish Yoghurt Pic
A Greek man has sued a dairy firm in southern Sweden after his picture ended up on a Turkish yoghurt product.
The man whose picture adorns the Turkish yoghurt product, manufactured by Lindahls dairy in Jönköping, argues that the company does not have permission to use his image. He has now sued Lindahls for 50 million kronor ($6.9 million), according to Sveriges Radio (SR) Jönköping.
The man, who lives in Greece, was made aware of the use of his picture on the popular Swedish product when an acquaintance living in Stockholm recognized his bearded friend.
“I was surprised and I could not believe my eyes. It was a shock to see him there suddenly, someone I know. He didn’t like it, he was upset and wondered how it had happened,” Athanasios Varzakanos told SR.
In his writ the man has underlined that he is not Turkish, he is Greek, and lives in Greece, and the use of his picture is thus misleading both for those who know him and for buyers of the product.
Lindahls dairy has expressed surprise at the writ and argues that the image was bought from a picture agency, and as far as they are aware all the rights of the photographer have been respected, SR writes.
Peter Vinthagen Simpson
+46 8 656 6518
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Minister Rules Out Jail for Burqa Wearers
Paris, 9 April (AKI) — Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini on Friday rejected the idea of sending to jail women who wear the face-coveing Islamic burqa. Both Belgium and France are moving to ban the burqa and the niqab, which leaves only the woman’s eyes visible.
“It’s unacceptable to send women to prison because they wear the burqa in public,” Frattini told satellite TV channel France24 in a interview.
French MPs will on 11 May debate regulating Islamic garments that fully cover a woman’s body and face, paving the way for a likely law banning face-covering veils, officials announced earlier this week.
“When it’s not a personal choice, the veil can be interpreted as an act of submission and therefore as an offence to sexual equality,” Frattini stated.
France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated at around 5 million, but only a tiny minority of women wear the head-to-toe Islamic burqa.
France’s conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy has said the burqa and niqab oppress women and are “not welcome.”
Many supporters of a burqa ban say it poses a security risk and deny they’re targeting the garment for its religious symbolism.
Many in the West see the burqa as a sign of male oppression of women.
France banned Muslim head scarves and other “ostentatious” religious symbols from classrooms and public offices in 2004.
Belgium is this month expected to become the first country to outlaw the burqa. MPs are due to vote into law a bill banning Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places. The Belgian parliament’s justice and home affairs committee in late March unanimously endorsed the bill.
The bill would make it illegal to wear clothing that covers all or part of the face.
Defying the rule could lead to nominal fines of around 26 to 40 euros or possible imprisonment for up to seven days.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italo-French Summit Produces 20 Accords
Berlusconi and Sarkozy move to boost bilateral cooperation
(ANSA) — Paris, April 9 — Italy and France consolidated their bilateral cooperation on Friday with the signing of 20 accords, both on an inter-governmental level and between companies from the two countries, above all in the energy and nuclear sectors.
The accords were signed on the sidelines of a summit between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, which aside from nuclear cooperation focused on the Mideast and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, with ample attention paid to the financial crisis in Greece.
While the two government chiefs were holding their talks, parallel bilateral meetings were held between the respective ministers for industry, defence, foreign affairs, transport, European Union affairs, internal affairs, the environment and culture.
Speaking at a joint press conference after their meeting, Berlusconi observed that the 20 accords were a demonstration of the “concrete collaboration” which existed between the two countries.
Italy abandoned nuclear power following a referendum held a year after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and France has played a key role in its return to this energy source. At last year’s Italo-Franco summit an accord was signed for the joint construction of four nuclear plants in Italy and five in France.
In opening their joint press conference, Sarkozy praised the “historic” decision by Berlusconi to return to nuclear power, a choice he said “brings France and Italy closer together”.
Berlusconi replied that the decision was Italy’s “duty” given that it pays 30% more for energy than its EU partners and this hurt the competitiveness of its goods and services.
“What we need to do now is convince citizens that nuclear power plants are absolutely safe and we are considering using TV to do this,” he added.
The premier is also the owner of Italy’s three main private TV networks.
One of the accords signed on Friday dealt with nuclear security and allows for a greater exchange of information in regard to the choice of sites to build new plants, their construction, operation, management of radioactive waste, research and health.
Turning his attention to Greece, which due to a budget shortfall risks defaulting on its debt, Berlusconi said that between Rome and Paris there was “a desire to work together” to help Athens.
“It is our duty to help Greece. and it is in our interest because otherwise there could be negative consequences for our common currency and our won economies According to the French president, the EU is ready to step in to help Greece financially “at any moment”.
“Every time it has been faced with a crisis, the EU has always known how to intervene in time and at the right moment.
On this Italy and France have exactly the same position,” Sarkozy added.
“Greek authorities have adopted courageous measures to correct public finances and a plan to support this effort has been approved by all members of the euro area,” he observed.
The final decision on whether the EU will intervene to help Greece, Sarkozy said, “is up to Athens and the countries in the euro area, on recommendations from the European Central Bank and the European Commission,” the EU executive.
Looking at how Italy weathered the global economic downturn and subsequent domestic recession, Berlusconi said “we are pulling out of it well. Our (financial) system, like that of France, is very solid and does not need help from the government. The outlook is good and we will meet our deficit and debt commitments”.
According to Sarkozy, “Europe needs to protect itself through investing in innovation and fair competition. And protection is not the same as protectionism”.
“We are in favor of a market economy, free trade, but we cannot be naive. Italy and France cannot accept this. We cannot impose quality controls on our farm products when others do not do the same. Protectionism may be the worst of all evils, but unfair competition is even worse,” the French president said.
During the press conference, Berlusconi said that in his talks with Sarkozy he made it clear that Italy was ready to “intensely collaborate with France also in view of it taking the presidency (in 2011) of the Group of Eight (G8) and G20”.
The French president responded by saying that France intended to “associate” Italy next year with its two presidencies “because we want to bring to the G8 and G20 the strength of Europe’s third economy”. Among the accords signed at the summit were those to create a joint brigade of 6,000 French and Italian mountain troops, to try and cooperate more than compete in the rail sector, to work to set up a special tribunal to combat Somali-based piracy, to help Somalia and Kenya to combat the phenomenon and create a marine park in the Bonifaccio Strait between Corsica and Sardinia.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Sees ‘Need’ For Nuclear Energy
Paris, 9 April (AKI) — Nuclear energy production in Italy is “an absolute necessity” in Italy, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday. Berlusconi made the comment after meeting French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
“Now you need to convince the people where the plants will be built,” he said.
Berlusconi has pledged that Italy will return to producing nuclear power after plants were banned in Italy following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
Earlier this year, Berlusconi pushed through a decree law that sets a timetable for work to start on new reactors from 2013, with production due to come on line by 2020.
But resistance from regional governments has cast some doubt over Rome’s plans.
During their bilateral summit, Berlusconi and Sarkozy said they would build on an accord endorsed last year in which France agreed to help Italy rebuild a nuclear sector.
The Berlusconi government wants 25 percent of Italy’s electricity to come from nuclear power.
Italian electricity is curently produced from plants that run on coal, natural gas or fuel oil.
The country also imports energy, primarily from France, where almost 80 percent of electricity is generated at nuclear power plants.
“I honour the historic decision of Berlusconi’s government to return to nuclear energy, “Sarkozy said at the end of the meeting. “It is a decision that brings our two countries even closer together.”
Coinciding with the summit, French nuclear power plant maker Areva signed a deal with Ansaldo Energia on Friday to work on an Enel-EDF project to build at least four reactors and revive Italy’s nuclear power industry.
Enel is a shareholder in France’s new generation European pressurised reactor project, while it and EDF, the French state-owned utility that manages the country’s 58 nuclear reactors, have a joint venture to build reactors in Italy.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
John Cornwall on Pope Benedict and the Paedophile Priest Scandal
The New Statesman 01.04.2010 (UK)
The British writer and Vatican expert John Cornwall turns to Pope Benedict’s past to explain his disappointing reaction to the paedophile priest scandal. He concludes that the Pope is not taking responsibility but passing the buck: “Benedict’s chosen initiatives to combat the paedophile priest scourge focus on supernatural rather than human remedies. He has decreed that the Eucharistic wafer (which Catholics believe to be the ‘body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ’) should be exposed for adoration in hundreds of churches across Ireland. He has vowed to send teams of clergy to the country to investigate its seminaries, monasteries, parishes and dioceses. These spiritual shock-troops will preach the gospel afresh to the shamed Hibernian clerics and nuns. They will lead prayers, preach homilies and hear confessions. In the same letter, the Pope blames clerical misinterpretations of the reforms of Vatican II. In other words, Catholic liberals are ultimately responsible for seducing the Irish clergy away from priestly piety.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Leading UK ISP Says it Will Defy Government’s Net Censorship Bill
A leading internet service provider in the UK has declared that it will refuse to follow government orders to restrict, slow down or cut off its customers’ internet access under rules set out in Lord Mandelson’s (pictured) Digital Economy Bill.
The provider, TalkTalk, which has over 4 million internet users, has declared the legislation “draconian” and says it will not cooperate with its provisions.
Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s director of strategy and regulation has said the company will repel any instructions to disconnect customers unless instructed to by the courts.
“If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.” Heaney wrote on the company blog.
Heaney also makes it clear that TalkTalk will not turn over details of its customers’ online activities to the government.
“Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it,” Heaney asserted.
Under the legislation, the government will impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and the material they have downloaded. The bill states that ISPs who refuse to cooperate could be fined £250,000.
Heaney described the provisions in the legislation as a pretext to communist China style internet censorship:
“…many draconian proposals remain such as the responsibility on customers to protect their home networks from hacking at a collection cost of hundreds of millions of pounds a year, the presumption that they are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent, and, as in China, the potential for legitimate search engines and websites to be blocked.” he urged.
Heaney added that TalkTalk will “continue to battle against these oppressive proposals”, pointing out that the Digital Economy Bill measures will require secondary legislation before they can be implemented and made law.
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Pope Ready to Meet More Abuse Victims
Benedict ‘exceptional’ in fight against abuse
(ANSA) — Vatican City, April 9 — Pope Benedict XVI is ready to meet clerical sex abuse victims as he did on a US visit in 2008, the Vatican said Friday.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi stressed the pope had voiced his willingness to meet victims in a pastoral letter to Ireland, the country most hit by recent scandals.
Speaking on Vatican Radio, Lombardi remarked that “many victims are looking for spiritual support rather than financial compensation”.
The spokesman reiterated the Vatican’s view that Benedict was being unfairly targeted by the media, saying he “deserved respect” and was a “Pastor capable of coping, with high rectitude and security, with this difficult period where groundless innuendo and criticism have not been lacking”.
Lombardi said the pope would respond “with patience to the gradual emergence of partial or alleged ‘revelations’ which are seeking to undermine his credibility or that of other institutions and persons in the Church”.
Praising the pope for his “exceptional” work, Lombardi stressed the importance of bringing paedophile priests to justice and helping victims.
The number of abuse complaints against the Catholic Church was falling, especially in the United States, Lombardi added.
Church authorities were now encouraging victims to speak out, he stressed, adding that the prevention of abuse must start with the selection of candidates for the priesthood.
Benedict has been at the centre of claims that he did not do enough to root out paedophile priests during his 14-year term as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog before becoming pope in 2005.
He has been accused of failing to defrock in 1998 a US priest who abused 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1974 and overseeing the transfer of a predator priest in Munich in the mid-1980s, as well as dragging his heels on a probe into Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who died in disgrace in 2008 after decades of abuse.
These and other claims have been dismissed by the Vatican as “petty gossip”.
The Vatican insists the pope took “decisive” action as head of the Congregation of the Faith to rid the Church of what, soon after he was elected, he termed “filth”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Salesian Order Suspends 3 Accused of Abuse
Three (former) priests accused of child abuse were suspended Friday morning. Two of them still carried out duties involving minors.
By Joep Dohmen
The Salesian priests accused of sexual abuse at Don Bosco boarding school have been suspended from all their duties effective immediately, pending an investigation into the abuse in the Catholic Church.
Herman Spronck, prior of the Salesian order in the Netherlands, announced his decision Friday in response to questions from NRC Handelsblad and Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The Salesian is the first order to take disciplinary action against its clerics since the abuse scandal broke in the Netherlands last month.
In February, NRC and RNW were the first to publish accounts of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics in the Netherlands. Since then, numerous victims have come forward telling similar stories. Until now, the Church had not taken any action against the alleged perpetrators. Since most of the accusations date back decades, the statute of limitations for such crimes has long expired.
Of the (former) Salesian priests who are accused of, or admitted to, sexually abusing minors two carry out duties involving children. One sits on the national board of the Salesian order.
Father Spronck said he conferred with the Salesian headquarters in Brussels and then asked the three to resign all their duties immediately. “They have made it clear they intend to comply with my request,” Spronck said. “They are no longer active or even present at the Don Bosco centre.”
A total of 33 victims of abuse at the hands of Salesians spoke to NRC and RNW and accused 23 priests of being involved in the abuse. Most victims were allegedly abused in the 1960s at the Don Rua boarding school in ‘s-Heerenberg. Spronck said it had been “appalling to be confronted with these facts,” for him. He promised his congregation would cooperate with future investigations “in any way possible”. Spronck said six victims had sought him out so far, asking him to organise a meeting with fellow victims. Spronck said he did not feel for their suggestion however. “The Salesian priests are the ones standing accused now. I do not think it would be right to meet with the victims at this time.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Intellectuals Propose Concordia Award for Moriscos
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 9 — Spain, a bridge between cultures and religions, hosts the sixth Asia-Europe Interfaith Dialogue, which ends today in Toledo. In Cordoba, a group of intellectuals has proposed a gesture of recognition of the wealth brought by the Muslim world to the country, four days after the expulsion of Moors from the peninsula. Freedom of religion, human rights, respect and mutual understanding, dialogue between religions and cultures are the topics of the conference that took place yesterday and today in Madrid and Toledo in the Asia-Europe meeting, organised on the occasion of Spain’s EU presidency. Representatives of 27 countries participate in the event. Diplomats, government representatives, scholars and religious leaders participate in the forum, which was instituted in 2005 and in organised one year in Asia and the next in Europe. This year’s event has been jointly organised by Spain and Pakistan, and has been sponsored by 15 European and Asian countries: Germany, Austria, China, South Korea, Denmark, the Philippines, Finland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore and Thailand. >From Toledo, a crossroad of cultures, to Cordoba, a paradigm of interfaith dialogue, where a group of prestigious intellectuals has presented a proposal to Casa Sefarad, in Cordoba, to award the Prince of Asturias Concordia Award to the Moors: the Spanish Muslims or descendants of Muslims that have been converted to Christianity. Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, philosopher Sami Nair, writer Juan Goytisolo are some of the 1600 intellectuals who support the initiative, quoted today by El Pais. The proposal is in line with the awarding, in 1990, of the prestigious prize to the Sephardic people, to remember the immense tragedy of the expulsion of Jews from Spain ordered by the Catholic Kings in 1492. More than a century later, on April 9 1609, King Philip III signed the decree for the final expulsion from Spain of the Moors, Muslim minority in Andalusia, which had stayed under the peninsula under the sovereignty of the Christian monarchs. Three hundred thousand people, descendants of the Moors who had lived in Spain for around 900 years, were forced to leave Spain. The proposal to give the Prince of Asturias Award to the Moors is meant as reparation and as recognition of the mark left by “Al Andalus” on Spanish culture. “Our goal is to reconstruct Spain’s collective memory. This is no symbolic gesture, but a very important act”, explained writer and lawyer Rodriguez Ramos, one of the initiative’s organisers. He called the initiative “civic, secular, independent and plural”, backed by people of all faiths, ideologies and cultures. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Survey: 15% Women Stop Working After Having Baby
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 9 — Spanish women who contribute more to the household economy than their partner run a higher risk of being physically abused by their partner, while for men that risk is higher for those who are unemployed. These are some of the conclusions of the report “Matrimony and young couples in Spain” drafted by the SM Foundation quoted today by the press, which shows a gap in the married life in the new generations. The report is based on 2,500 interviews with couples, 1,800 of which married couples and 700 living together, in the age between 16 and 39. It reveals that 25% of consorts recognises that they are no longer as much in love as they were when they got together. The main motives for conflicts are the children and in-laws. People get married less and less and at a higher age, particularly because of the difficulties in finding a house. In any case, 80% of young couples keep in touch with their own family after getting married. For 45% of the interviewed, the ideal situation is living together before getting married; 32% prefers other options that the formalisation of their union and 19% opt for a civil marriage. The survey also makes clear that 37% of women stopped working for at least one year after giving birth to the first child, 15% never returned to their jobs. The percentage of mothers under the age of 40 who are still working is 67, of whom 58% have children under the age of 3. For 26% of women the birth of a child has limited their opportunities for promotion and career. 41% have reduced their working activities and 19% took a different job to have more time for their children; for men this percentage is close to zero. The report underlines that physical or verbal abuse among partners is more frequent in couples that are less stable. 17% of the interviewed admits that they have been insulted at some time by their partner and 3.5% recognise that they have been physically abused. For men, the risk of abuse is three times higher when they are unemployed. Women who earn more than their partner run a higher risk of being abused, a response of some men to their loss of status. A recurring motive for conflict is the division of domestic chores. Women continue to take care of most of these: only in one out of five couples these chores are divided on an equal basis. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘The Monster at Our Door’
Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power
By Walter Mayr
Opposition leader Viktor Orban, who spurred the populist politics that have led to the rise of the far-right in Hungary, believes his party is set to win a two-thirds majority after Sunday’s parliamentary elections. But it is the right-wing extremist Jobbik party that is setting the hateful tone of the campaign.
The state authorities have their backs up against the wall in front of St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest. Three police officers, positioned in the shadow of an Art Nouveau palace, watch motionlessly as Hungary’s National Front marches before their eyes.
Members of citizens’ militias and neo-Nazi groups have taken over patrolling the streets on this day. In combat boots, camouflage or black military uniforms, they form human chains and divide the crowd.
Fifty thousand people have gathered in front of a speaker’s platform. An easterly wind rattles the flags — red and white striped, much like the armbands worn by members of Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross Party during World War II. The sound of speakers preaching nationalist beliefs reverberates from the loudspeakers.
“Hungary belongs to the Hungarians,” the crowd hears. One speaker claims that Israeli investors and their local agents are in the process of buying up the country with its 10 million inhabitants. The speaker argues that the government doesn’t care where the money comes from and that they’re letting these people “buy Hungary up.” The currently governing Socialists, another speaker warns, will be “obliterated from the face of the Earth” and Roma will be encouraged to emigrate.
“They should leave,” the crowd chants in unison. “They should leave.”
It’s election campaign time in Budapest, the peak of the political hunting season, and members of Jobbik, the “Movement for a Better Hungary” founded in 2003, aren’t pulling any punches. The party won nearly 15 percent of votes in elections for the European Parliament last year, and is gearing up for the first round of voting in Hungary’s next national parliamentary elections on Sunday. The first round will determine party lists, and Jobbik wants to make gains.
‘Commotion over the Holocaust’
Polls show the far right-wing party, led by Gábor Vona, almost neck and neck with the left-leaning Socialist Party. Young and nationalistic Jobbik wants Hungary, a European Union member, to abolish its Foreign Ministry, tackle “Gypsy crime” and replace all the vexing “commotion over the Holocaust” with more contemporary topics such as overdue battles against the criminal political caste, international high finance and the disgraceful 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which spelled the end of Greater Hungary. “On April 11, we must bang on the table,” Vona says. “And the world will tremble.”
Jobbik’s rowdies make the late Jörg Haider and his Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) sound like a harmless bunch of choirboys in retrospect. The FPÖ’s entrance into a coalition government in 2000 brought Austria months of diplomatic ostracism from most other EU countries. It remains to be seen whether Hungary’s political parties learned anything from the Austrian lesson.
“The monster at our door” is threatening to demolish the inner workings of Hungarian democracy, warns Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, who is asking the country’s moderate parties to close ranks against the extremists. But Bajnai and the Hungarian Socialist Party, the country’s strongest political force since the fall of Communism, are as good as invisible in this election. The same goes for conservatives from the Fidesz party under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, 46.
Orbán, today leader of the opposition, looks likely to achieve a two-thirds majority in parliament. To keep from putting that election victory at risk, Orbán has avoided making any clear statements to the people, instead playing the role of a statesman in waiting and leaving the stage to the right-wing extremists.
The spectacle being put on by the extremists is visible everywhere — even in broad daylight. But what is most striking is that it is happening in the middle of the capital of a country once known as the “happiest barracks in the camp” of the Eastern bloc, a place that produced reformist politicians who shook Europe’s post-war order with the opening of the Iron Curtain in 1989 — a first big step toward a reunited, democratic Europe.
‘This Is Not What We Fought For’
Chants of “Jewish pig, Jewish pig” now sound from the bank of the Danube River, directed toward a monument to poet Sándor Petöfi, an icon of Hungarian freedom, where Budapest Mayor Gábor Demszky has positioned himself with the intention of giving a speech. Police are having to protect Demszky from Jobbik supporters and passersby, who shout: “Into the Danube with you!” Two young men raise their right arms in a Nazi salute and a shout goes up, first tentatively, then louder: “To the concentration camp, to the concentration camp.”
Demszky has been mayor of Budapest for 20 years. He’s a former dissident and a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Now he stands between the Chain Bridge and the Parliament building, not far from the place where members of the Arrow Cross Party shot thousands of Jews and dumped their bodies into the Danube in the last winter of World War II. Demszky struggles for words: “This is not what we fought for,” he calls out to the mob, “just to have a socialist dictatorship replaced by a National Socialist one!”
Things haven’t gone quite that far yet — even if the Hungarian capital has lately heard open murmurings again about “Jewdapest” being controlled by non-Christian liberals, media and profit-seekers. And even if the magazine Barikád was allowed to print a photomontage on its cover showing Benedictine monk and local patron St. Gellért atop the Budapest hill named after him, brandishing a seven-branched, menorah-like candelabra over the city instead of a cross.
All it will take is a couple of slaps in the face, Orbán has said, for the specter of right-wing extremism to disappear again. The former prime minister, whose party looks set to take up to 60 percent of the vote, bears the hopes as well as doubts of a democratic Hungary. Is the opposition leader serious about his promise to transform himself from a fire-starter to a fireman?
No other than Orbán himself is responsible for the country’s radicalization, says his biographer József Debreczeni, who explains that Orbán, voted out as prime minister in 2002, subsequently shifted the political opposition’s platform from parliament into the street. “It happened like gang warfare,” the writer says. “And suddenly a gang emerged that was far more brutal” — Jobbik. Orbán’s tacit collusion with the far right, Debreczeni adds, is now backfiring: “The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no getting it back in.”
Part 2: Proud Hungarians Struggling with Role of Beggars on EU Stage
Orbán himself says that in the “fight for a better future,” Hungary must stand united to “conquer evil” — preferably under his leadership. The trained lawyer has left little room for doubt in the past two decades that any year without him as prime minister is a lost one for the country.
Since his ousting as prime minister in 2002, Orbán has skipped parliamentary sessions again and again, or sat and observed them in silence. Outside parliament, however, he forged alliances in preparation for his return to power — especially after an internal speech by Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány to fellow party members was made public in fall 2006. The speech was a document of relentless self-incrimination: “It nearly killed me,” Gyurcsány said, “having to pretend for a year and half that we were governing. Instead we lied morning, noon and night.”
In the wake of the leaked speech, Orbán talked about the Socialists’ “government of lies” and took advantage of the public rage, which exploded into weeks of rioting, the way a surfer might ride a wave.
The Fidesz leader is again enjoying the best possible public esteem, while the standing of Hungarian politics in general is disastrous. Just 15 percent of Hungarians trust their parliamentary representatives. Little more than half still favor a multi-party system. Resentment toward the EU has also reached a record high for a member state. Chronically in deep debt under socialism and, since 2008, financially strapped by the global economic crisis, the proud Magyars are struggling with their role of having to beg on the European stage.
A Society Derailed
It was only through a €20 billion ($27 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the EU that Hungary was able to avert national bankruptcy. And even after the country eliminated its practice of paying workers yearly bonuses equivalent to a month’s salary, raised the retirement age by three years and increased its value-added tax by 5 percent, real wages still rose. Now there is little money left for any future benefits, and Orbán’s latest speech concerning the state of the country was correspondingly non-committal, scoffed Pester Lloyd, a German-language daily newspaper based in Budapest. “He didn’t give away any details,” the paper wrote, because there’s “nothing” in the state coffers anyway.
Just steps from Budapest’s Ferenc Deák Square, where Jobbik speakers are riling up the public, looms an urban jungle of tenement houses from the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The symptoms of a society derailed by political system change and globalization emerge more strongly here, like rays of sunlight concentrated under a magnifying glass.
Between the decorative stucco facades, one-bedroom apartments with shared toilets in the stairwell are squeezed in next to vacant luxury apartments. Laptop-toting, post-Communism success stories rub shoulders with alcoholics in early retirement, Roma picking through furniture left out on the streets as trash and Orthodox Jews in their wide-brimmed hats hurrying to Kazinczy Synagogue.
It’s a scene of both a flourishing multicultural milieu and the melancholy of Hungarian daily life — corruption at the top and the impoverishment of the bottom third of society. Indeed, the same factors drawing voters across the country to the right-wing and extremist parties can all be seen here in Erzsébetváros, Budapest’s poorest district.
The former district mayor of Erzsébetváros, a member of the Socialist Party, has been in jail for months on suspicion of corruption, along with the district mayor and 13 council members from the adjacent Terézváros district. The spokesman for the Roma, bent over his catfish goulash in one of the area’s best restaurants, complains of a catastrophe — “at most 10 percent” of his people still have work. Meanwhile, Jobbik’s parliamentary candidate is scoring points with the voters. “We’re something like the common people’s last hope,” he says.
‘Barking Dogs Seldom Bite’
Robert Fröhlich — Rabbi Robbi to friends — is chief rabbi at Europe’s largest synagogue on Dohány Street, just a few buildings away. With a yarmulke on his head, a Marlboro in his mouth, and a Blackberry in hand, Fröhlich describes the extremists’ advance as a danger, and not just for the nearly 100,000 Jews living in the country. It’s also a threat “to all of Hungarian society,” the rabbi says, because it makes clear that civil resistance is lacking, as well as a justice system willing to protect the foundation of democracy.
On the other hand, Fröhlich comments, there’s no need to hand too much glory to malicious racists and anti-Semites by paying them too much attention. “Barking dogs seldom bite,” he says.
Holocaust survivors see the matter differently. The rooster feathers Jobbik extremists have taken to wearing in their caps look familiar to György Konrád — the gendarmes who came to deport his parents to Auschwitz in 1944 wore similarly feathered caps. Konrád’s family survived the concentration camp, but more than half a million Hungarian Jews didn’t share their fate.
Konrád himself was able to hide in Budapest. At 77, sitting in his Budapest apartment, the prizewinning author and essayist makes bitter jokes about the return of these ghosts from the past, coming after the country shook free of socialism. “Freedom includes the freedom not to want to learn,” he says. Former young liberal Orbán is only now noticing, Konrád adds, that “his migration from the far left to the far right” of the political spectrum has ended up creating “a small monster” in the form of Jobbik. “He conjured up the neo-Fascists,” Konrád says, “and now they’re going to show him and his party what he himself once showed his opponents — how old they look.”
Part 3: ‘Chimneysweeps Wear Black, Too’
Orbán long held an undisputed role as the country’s most talented tightrope walker. In his younger years, he was courageous in demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Later, he worked to have the role of Miklós Horthy, Hungary’s regent through most of World War II and a supporter of Hitler, cast in a gentler light by historians.
Budapest’s “House of Terror” museum, opened while Orbán was in office, devotes most of its exhibition space to the socialist dictatorship. As a result of such policies, today only 4 percent of eligible voters under 30 understand the term “Holocaust.” At the same time, a collective yearning is growing for Hungary’s former days of greatness and the thousand-year rule of the Kingdom of Hungary.
“Viktor Orbán is our favorite politician and we’re his favorite paper,” says András Bencsik, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Magyar Demokrata. Bencsik stands to become one of the most powerful journalists in the country under the future government.
Bencsik is one of the founding fathers of the paramilitary Hungarian Guard, which was legally banned in 2008 — and then reformed as the New Hungarian Guard Movement. When asked whether the black uniforms worn by this Jobbik-backed entity evoke those of the SS or even the Arrow Cross Party, he responds: “That’s a joke. Chimney sweeps wear black, too.” The fact that Orbán, a vice president of the Christian Democratic-oriented European People’s Party, doesn’t shy away from contact with people like Bencsik is disorienting even for conservative Hungarians.
‘We Saw Ourselves as the Immaculate Generation’
Magyar Hirlap, a newspaper affiliated with Orbán’s party, printed an appeal in 2008 that Jewish journalists should no longer be “allowed to piss and blow their noses in the country’s pool.” Instead the paper called for closing ranks and keeping Jews out.
That text was written by Zsolt Bayer, a 1988 founding member of Fidesz. Bayer’s name can be found fifth on the list in the original party membership register and, as he says, he still has the boss’ ear. “We saw ourselves as the immaculate generation,” Bayer says in retrospect. “We wanted to get rid of the old tensions in society between the capital and the provinces, and between Jews and non-Jews. But we didn’t succeed.” Now he sees the continuation of the Hungarian nation as the main concern. “Sooner or later,” Bayer says quietly, “the patience of the majority of society will run out.”
If Viktor Orbán and his party achieve their aim of a two-thirds majority in parliament, then he would have a free hand to make groundbreaking changes to the country’s laws. Immunity for members of parliament could be revoked and criminal proceedings initiated. Orbán has said he would issue passports to millions of Hungarians living in neighboring countries and election law reforms would be possible as well.
Orbán says he dreams of Hungarian politics “not being determined by a dual force field in the next 15 to 20 years” — driven not by endless quarreling between Socialists and Conservatives, but by politics with “constant governance as its goal.”
It’s a goal that is still familiar to older Hungarians — from the Communist era.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mother Denied Cancer Drugs That Were Promised by Labour Says, ‘I Just Want to See My Sons Grow Up’
‘He said: “I hate to ask you this, but is there any way you can raise the money to pay for this treatment, because it’s the only one left that is clinically effective,” ‘ she recalls.
Shocked though she was, Nikki remembers realising immediately that behind the consultant’s judicious choice of words, there was an unequivocal message: ‘He was saying that by denying me the money to pay for the only drug left that could help me, the NHS was consigning me to an early grave.’
Nikki is not an overtly emotional person — she has schooled herself to hide her feelings behind a mask of cheerfulness for the sake of her young family — but on hearing this from the consultant, she broke down.
‘I held my husband Bill’s hand and I sobbed. I said: “I want to see our sons grow up.” I couldn’t bear the thought of not being there to guide them, to comfort them and advise them through their tender early years.
‘I knew without treatment I wouldn’t have a hope of seeing them grow to adulthood or marry; I’d never know what careers they’d chosen. I was being told to find the money — or face death.’
Mrs Phelps, a 37-year-old mother of two-year-old twins Jack and Harry, suffers from a rare glandular cancer. She has also become the human face of an election battle over the NHS.
As many as 20,000 Britons may have had their lives cut short because of decisions taken by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the NHS’s rationing body, a recent study has found.
In late 2008, NICE responded to huge public criticism and announced plans to increase the number of drugs for rarer forms of cancer approved on the NHS.
Drugs for rarer cancers are often more expensive, so the organisation’s chairman Professor Sir Michael Rawlins promised to change NICE’s rules so dearer drugs could be approved.
But since then, NICE has not given full approval to a single cancer drug, despite considering 15 medications — meaning thousands of patients have missed out on lifeextending drugs.
When he unveiled his new policy, Sir Michael said: ‘People attach a special importance to extending the lives of those with mortal illnesses and we appreciate that these extra weeks and months can be very special.’
But an analysis by the Tories last week showed the new rules have in fact had little effect. Of the 15 drugs assessed since November 2008, four were rejected outright, a decision was delayed on another, and ten were only partially approved.
It has imposed complex criteria that mean in some cases drugs are approved for treatment for a specific form of cancer, but not others that a patient’s doctor may want to treat with the drug.
So, even though NICE has approved ten drugs for some cancers, some sufferers are denied a drug that could extend their life, or even save them.
The present situation is in stark contrast to Conservative plans, under which a patient would be able to get access to any cancer drug — so long as their clinician says it can be beneficial. This would be paid for from a £200 million fund, raised from the cancelling of Labour’s rise in National Insurance contributions for employers like the NHS.
Eminent oncologist Professor David Kerr was one of the architects of Labour’s NHS reforms, but has thrown his weight behind the Tories after concluding the Government has ‘lost the plot’ on patient care.
Yesterday, he rallied behind Mrs Phelps, urging Health Secretary Andy Burnham to instruct the NHS to supply the drug, Sutent, to her immediately. He also proposed that all patients in her position, with rare cancers, get the drugs they need.
He said: ‘Yet again we are forced to witness the painful spectacle of a young mum bravely confronting her own cancer but having to beg for a new, effective drug which is being denied her by the crass bureaucracy erected by this Labour Government.
‘Despite strong support from a leading and widely respected consultant from one of our top hospitals, despite good evidence of the benefit of Sutent in the treatment of Mrs Phelps’s particular type of cancer and despite promises from the Government to improve access to innovative therapy, we have a local panel denying a mother the right to a treatment which is her only proven hope of buying her precious further time with her young family.
‘Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Minister, has promised to right this wrong and fund access to effective new anti-cancer treatments where the patient and their consultant see benefit.’
For now, Nikki is left in limbo. While her consultant has told her that Sutent would offer her the last real chance of prolonging her life, NICE has refused to approve the use of it, and so her primary care trust has used that as an excuse to withhold it.
So Mrs Phelps and her husband Bill, 45, who runs a cattery near Gravesend, Kent, face the prospect of selling both their £500,000 home and the business attached to it to fund the £100-a-day drug she needs to prolong her life.
Already they have eaten into their fast-diminishing savings to buy two months’ supply, at a cost of around £6,000. Mrs Phelps — a former teacher who says that even after a few weeks she is feeling the beneficial effect of taking Sutent — the economy is a false one.
When a panel of NHS ‘experts’ — none of them as qualified as Nikki’s consultant oncologist — adjudicated on her particular case, they made no allowances for her personal circumstances.
‘They told me they could not take into consideration my social or family situation,’ she says. ‘But if they are not going to give the drug to a 37-year-old mother of two little boys, then who on earth will they give it to?
‘Their failure to fund it is shortsighted. If we are forced to sell our home, Bill’s livelihood goes with it. He will have to find a job — and if he fails, he’ll be forced on to benefits — and in turn there will be nobody to look after me and help care for the twins, which my husband is currently able to do because he runs our business from home.
‘Ultimately, it will cost the State far more to deny me the drug than it would to fund prescribing it to me.’
Mrs Phelps was first diagnosed with multiple endocrine neoplasia MEN1 in 2000. Her first intimation that all was not well was a duodenal ulcer which perforated. Subsequent tests showed she had a series of benign tumours on her pituitary gland, neck and pancreas.
A year after her diagnosis, Nikki’s father Jack, from whom she had inherited the MEN1 gene, died of complications from the disease.
‘We lost Dad four days before I married Bill; it was a profound shock,’ she says — and all the more frightening for Nikki, of course, because she knew she, too, carried the gene.
However, she drew comfort from the fact the cancer is slow-growing; that her father survived for 14 years with it and that her own tumours were not malignant.
‘I had a series of operations to remove them and I made a very good recovery,’ she recalls. ‘In fact, for five or six years I led a very full and productive life. I continued to teach in the wonderful school in Gravesend where I was head of the early years department.
‘I enjoyed work and remained full of energy and enthusiasm.’
In fact, she progressed so well that she and Bill sought advice from doctors about starting a family.
‘We were delighted when they said: “Yes, go ahead”.’
However Nikki failed to conceive naturally — her infertility was unexplained but may have been connected with her illness — so they attempted IVF.
‘Seven days after my fertilised eggs were implanted, I was admitted for tests and they told me: “You’re pregnant!”.
‘They’re telling me I’m ready for my coffin. But I’m not’ ‘It was a joyous moment, but I could hardly believe it was true. So Bill bought a home testing kit — just to make sure — and that was positive too.’
Two years on, Nikki and Bill’s adorable flaxen-haired twins chatter and play with all the irrepressible, boisterous energy of any toddlers.
I arrive at breakfast time and Bill tussles them into coats as they spoon in their cornflakes before the nursery-school run.
Cats saunter in and out; bright plastic toys litter the polished wood of the floorboards. It is a bustling, happy house like many others; Nikki and Bill have ensured it is so — for the sake of their sons, who rarely have the slightest idea that their mummy is sad or ill.
Bill has built up the business from scratch. The house, set deep along winding lanes in the Kentish countryside, is an idyll.
Nikki is clearly a wonderful mother. When I ask if she should have had the twins, knowing, as she did, that she carried a genetic cancer gene which might have been inherited by her sons, she replies simply: ‘I ask myself, “Would my own mum have aborted me if she’d known at the time I might have carried the gene?”
‘And I have to hope she wouldn’t because I feel I’ve lived a wonderful, worthwhile life, even if it ends tomorrow.’
The Phelpses, moreover, have taken the decision to have their boys tested for the gene sooner rather than later.
‘If one of them carries it we’ll have more time to help them adjust and to seek treatment,’ explains Bill.
It was — by cruel irony — her pregnancy that accelerated Nikki’s own cancer. Two months after the boys were born she started to feel ill.
Another awkward question arises. Would she have had her cherished sons had she known pregnancy would precipitate her own decline into incurable illness? On this, again, she is unequivocal.
‘You hear a lot of mothers say they’d give their life for their children — and I would, too,’ she says. ‘So no, I don’t regret for a second that I had the boys. If I was put on this earth just to have Jack and Harry my work is done. I don’t regret a moment.
‘I worry, though, that people might think I was reckless; that I shouldn’t have got pregnant — but the truth is, I was naïve. I remember asking my consultant, “Do many patients with MEN1 have families?” and he said, “Yes, they do.”
She was still breast-feeding the twins when she noticed her weight was falling; she retched every time she bent down. But she reassured herself that nursing mothers often suffered such symptoms.
More disquieting, however, was the fact that her ‘baby bump’ was not diminishing; strangers would routinely stop her in the supermarket and ask if she was pregnant.
‘It started to get embarrassing,’ she recalls. ‘Then I noticed a lump on my stomach.’ Even this did not alarm her unduly. ‘I thought, “I’d better nip to the doctor’s”,’ she says.
While her doctor suspected it was benign, an endocrine specialist at Hammersmith Hospital in West London had a worrying prognosis: scans revealed a large tumour had grown on Nikki’s pancreas and was spreading to her liver.
‘I was terrified; especially at the mention of liver cancer,’ she says. ‘I remember, too, the look of doom on the faces of Bill’s family. I thought: “Don’t look like that. I won’t die.”‘
Indeed, the consultant was reassuring.
‘He said it was slow-growing and treatable,’ says Nikki. ‘So I calmed down.’
Within two months, she underwent surgery to remove the primary tumour on the wall of her stomach. By March last year, when she was due to start chemotherapy to treat the remaining growths, doctors discovered another lump on her abdomen. She was rushed into the oncology ward for emergency treatment.
‘Jade Goody had just died of cervical cancer and I was frightened,’ she says. ‘The newspapers and magazines were full of this young mum whom the doctors couldn’t treat. It was then that I thought: “They’re not magicians. I know they’ll try their hardest, but they’re not guaranteed to save me.”
But Nikki did, of course, survive. It seemed her sheer strength of will — combined with chemotherapy — had triumphed. The tumours shrank.
But months later, a body scan disclosed that the cancer had become more aggressive and spread to her pelvis. It was then that her consultant oncologist at Hammersmith Hospital, Mr Harpreet Wasan, told Nikki her only hope — the last drug available to her that had any chance of saving her — was Sutent.
There was, she was told, no chance that she would live without it; yet in February, a panel of NHS ‘experts’ decreed that she was not eligible to be given the drug. It was then that Mr Wasan — who could think of no other solution — suggested the couple fund Nikki’s treatment themselves.
‘We are using my pension; the lump sum I received when I had to retire from teaching because of my illness — the money we thought would help us through our old age — to pay for the drugs.’
Thankfully, friends have rallied and are also fund-raising on Nikki’s behalf. So far around £4,000 has been raised. Their generosity has moved her deeply. But though their goodwill is limitless, the cash is not.
Meanwhile, in the two months since she has been taking Sutent, Nikki has felt her spirits rise. Her strength, which had ebbed away, is returning. Life has meaning again.
‘I may not be an active mum, but I’m still here,’ she smiles. ‘I’m here to guide and advise the boys; to see them grow and to watch them thrive — and that all gives me comfort.’
She is a mild-mannered woman, not given to fruitless rages, but she reserves the full force of her anger for the bureaucracy forced on the NHS by a Government that has flagrantly disregarded the needs of the patient.
‘It seems short-sighted in the extreme,’ she says, ‘that the NHS has spent thousands of pounds providing me with scans, operations, chemotherapy drugs and blood tests — and it’s pulling the plug on me now when I need help most.
‘There doesn’t seem to be a cohesive policy.
‘They’ve invested time, money and the resources of experts to try to get me well — and now they’ve failed me at the last hurdle.
‘They’re effectively telling me I’m ready for my long box — but I’m telling them I’m prepared to put up with anything to preserve the life I treasure, for the sake of my family.’
If you wish to make a donation to help Nikki Phelps pay for her medication visit: www.nikki-fundraising.co.uk
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Sexual Liberation Partly to Blame for Paedophilia
(AGI) — Vatican, 9 Apr — The Vatican’s chief press officer, father Federico Lombardi, today sought to draw a connection between the increased incidence of paedophile abuse cases reported within the Roman Catholic Church and developments in broader society “at the height sexual revolution.” Hinting that the former could be a consequence of the latter, Lombardi went on to lament the fact that the implications of the sexual revolution “combined with the Church’s secularisation” have not yet entered “the broader media debate”. Weighing his words carefully, Lombardi submitted “the Church’s current experience may prove useful” for lay community and governments, effectively seeking to shift part of the blame on the broader scale of society. ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Croatia: Serb Minority Wants Cyrillic Road Signs
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 9 — Croatia’s resident Serb minority wants to see street signs bearing both Latin script and Cyrillic as is foreseen in the country’s constitutional law on the rights of minorities. A report by the Tanjug agency speaks of the request has come from the congress of municipal councils (ZVO), an association of councils in eastern Slavonia and Baranja, regions with a Serb minority presence. The request stresses how this right to “double characters” has been enjoyed by Croatia’s ethnic minorities such as Italians, Czechs and Hungarians for the past three years. Serb and Croat are very similar languages in their syntax and grammar, but while Croat uses only the Latin alphabet, Serb is officially written in Cyrillic, even though it is often produced in parallel Latin transcriptions. (ANSA)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Croatia: Final Smoking Ban in Force for Cafes From Tomorrow
(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, APRIL 9 — A final ban on smoking in all public places will come into force starting tomorrow in Croatia, after an initial attempt failed due to protests from the cafe owners association. The anti-tobacco law was enforced only from April to September last year, when the weather was pleasant for staying at tables outside restaurants and cafes, to be then be suspended in the autumn after managers protested that the smoking ban would have bankrupted the entire restaurant sector, already hit hard by the world economic crisis. However, the ban remained in place for restaurants, night clubs and discos, and will be enforced for cafes as well from tomorrow on, with Croatia joining most other European countries which now prohibit smoking in public places. This time, though, the law has granted a few “concessions” to smokers. Owners of cafes with an area of up to 50 square meters will be able to choose whether to allow smoking inside their properties or not and whether to install expensive air conditioning. The larger cafes have the option to use an isolated and air conditioning- equipped room for smokers, where service to customers will not be allowed. Due to the very high costs of air conditioning, very few cafes have decided to use this option so far. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia-Turkey: Military Cooperation Agreement Signed
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 9 — An agreement in the field of military cooperation has been signed in Belgrade between Serbia and Turkey. The deal, which was signed by General Petar Cornakov, head of training and learning of the Serbian armed forces and by the Turkish operational chief of staff, General Mehmet Eroz, provides for instructor exchanges, practical and professional training at specialist centres, visits by military representatives of the two countries, and mutual assistance in supplies of materials and equipment for military schools. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Roma Day, Best Students Rewarded
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 9 — On International Roma Day, which was celebrated yesterday, the Serbian Human and Minority Rights Minister Svetozar Ciplic donated 40 laptop computers to 40 Romani students who have gained the best results at school. “With this, we want to eliminate the prejudices and to prove that the common belief that Roma people are not educated is not true,” said Ciplic, quoted by Tanjug. Yesterday the government in Belgrade announced a series of measures, which include financial ones, in support of the greater integration of Romani communities into the social fabric of the country. Out of Serbia’s population of 7 million people, there are officially 180,000 Romani people, although in reality the actual number is around 450,000. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Top Model Arrested for ‘Defrauding’ Humanitarian Fund
Belgrade, 9 April (AKI) — A former top fashion model, Katarina Rebraca, made the front pages of Serbian newspapers on Friday after she was arrested for allegedly defrauding a humanitarian fund for over half a million euros.
Rebraca, 38, her mother Sandrina Bogunovic and two other women were arrested late on Wednesday and police said they misused the donations made to the “Katarina Rebraca Fund” whose stated mission was to fight breast cancer.
Belgrade daily ‘Pravda’ splashed Rebraca’s picture on its entire front page with the banner headline “Beauty or Beast?”
Members of the media and the Serbian public were shocked that a once-prominent model and jet set figure had allegedly been involved in crime.
“Shame”, “disgusting” and “unbelievable” were words featuring prominently on Friday in news stories and on people’s lips.
Rebraca set up her fund in 2006 and thanks to her popularity collected hundreds thousands of euros in donations for her supposedly humanitarian activities. She had promised to buy mammography and other equipment for several hospitals, but the items never materialised.
The police said the money was squandered on her luxurious lifestle, self-promotion, sumptous parties and travel.
Rebraca had worked as a model during the 1990’s in Italy’s fashion capital, Milan, and was married to an Italian.
She is a the daughter of a famous Serbian ice hockey player Nikola Rebraca who now lives in the United States.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Christian Framed in Sexual Assault Case
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — As Guirgis Baroumi went out to Farshout on his tricycle selling poultry on November 18, 2009, he never imagined that he would be framed in a sexual assault crime — which would be used twice in less than 7 weeks by Islamists as a pretext for arson, looting and slaying of his Christian Coptic brethren in Farshout and Nag Hammadi.
Pessimistic observers see that the death sentence has already been passed on Baroumi when the Egyptian authorities and State Security decided to interfere in the course of justice and use him as a scapegoat to justify the violations against the Copts in Egypt .
After the last court session on March 24, 2010, the defense team came out angry and critical of the court. “It is obvious there is lack of justice. The trial is an absolute comedy, an unjust theatrical play.” said Fathi Farid, Chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Anti-Discrimination (EGHR). “The developments in the case are not reassuring at all.” Their grievances against the court include changing its mind with every session, preventing them from meeting with the defendant, barring them from closed sessions, following the wrong procedures with regards to forensic evidence, and accepting new witnesses.
Claims of the alleged sexual assault of 12-year-old Muslim girl Youssra Abdelwahab by 21-year-old Copt Guirgis Baroumi, on November 18, 2009, led to several days of violence by hundreds of Muslim protesters who went to the police station to kill Baroumi, then went on a rampage of looting and torching Christian-owned property. State Security also forced the eviction of 160 Christians from Baroumi’s village (AINA 11-22-2009, 11-23-2009). Baroumi, who always denied committing the crime, was not subjected to forensics, “which gave the impression that he was framed to be used as a pretext for assaulting Copts in Farshout and the neighboring villages and destroying them economically,” said Coptic activist Wagih Yacoub.
On January 6, 2010, when Copts celebrate Christmas Eve, six Copts were gunned down in a drive-by shooting as they emerged from church in Nag Hammadi. (AINA 1-7-2010). This hideous crime resulted in widespread Coptic demonstrations worldwide and international condemnation, with the USA saying that the killings of Copts showed “an atmosphere of intolerance in Egypt.”
Egyptian officials, including the Interior Minister, the Prosecutor General and the Speaker of the People’s Assembly, Dr. Fathi Sourour, have denied a sectarian element to the Nag Hammadi slaying, insisting it was a criminal act, in revenge for the rape of the Muslim girl by a Copt in Farshout. Although the two cases are unconnected, the government linked them together, even the timings of the court sessions run parallel in both cases. Egyptian rights groups have disputed the government theory and criticized authorities for refusing to acknowledge the sectarian aspect of the killings. “If they can prove that Guirgis is guilty then they can say that what happened on Christmas Eve is a reaction to what he did,” said Fathi Farid.
In an interview with BBC Arabic on January 31, 2010, Sourour said the Nag Hammadi Christmas Eve shooting of Christians was a single criminal act, with no sectarian dimensions, prompted by the “death” of a Muslim girl as a result of being raped by a Copt (AINA 2-3-2010). When he was criticized for falsifying facts as she was still alive, he altered his statement, saying the girl “died morally.” Defense team member Al-Zohairy told Watani Coptic Weekly, “This statement, coming from the Parliament Speaker and professor of criminal law, is a serious matter, because this is an indictment of Baroumi before the end of the trial, and a violation of the rule which says that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.”
Baroumi’s defense team has expressed fear over the way the trial is being handled in an effort to bring a water-tight case against Baroumi. “The case against him is full of holes,” said Ahraf Edward, defense team member. “Surprisingly, documentation show that prosecution referred the case to court only two days after the arrest has been made and without waiting for any forensic reports to verify that Baroumi was the one who committed the alleged sexual assault,” said Edward who was one of the first to take up Baroumi’s defense after the Bar Association in Qena, issued a statement warning lawyers not to take up Baroumi’s defense, in solidarity with the girl’s family.
Many people believe the Farshout girl’s story lacks credibility. “The girl changed her story nine times, as to what happened, the time and the location,” said Ashraf Edward.
According to the first description of the crime as per the police report issued on 18 November 2009, (scan of police report, the father of the girl reported that his daughter Youssra Abdelwahab told him when she came home that a man on a tricycle threw her on the ground and “tried to sleep with her”. The report continues that she gave her father his description who ran to Farshout and caught him at the railway crossing. The father said that he came to know that his name was Guirgis Baroumi, his daughter identified him, and they accompanied him to the police station.
“Her story changed when she was questioned by prosecution into rape on the busy main road, but that he had no time to complete the act because she called out for help” said Dr. Ihab Ramzy, “The place, the circumstances and in view of no prior relationship between them, makes the rape incident extremely illogical and full of lies.”
Youssra’s lawyers told ElYoum 7 newspaper that they are now calling for a change in the description of the charge against Baroumi to make it abduction and rape, which carries the death penalty. “Because he obstructed her way, made her fall off her donkey and him being so huge that he pinned her down to the ground which amount to abduction.” one of the lawyers said.
The fourth trial session which was held in Qena Criminal Court on March 24, was marred by a clash between the defense team and the presiding judge, Mahmoud Abdelsalam, who barred them from attending sessions until they obtain a power of attorney from the defendant or either of his parents. “This is not legal at all. A power of attorney should not be requested at a criminal court if the defendant is present, it is only required if he is absent,” Ramzy said. He pointed out that the procedures to obtain a power of attorney is complex and the judge knows that, “He just wants to limit the defense of the defendant,” Dr. Ihab Ramzy said. Attorneys have been complaining that they are never allowed to meet with Baroumi in prison on State Security orders.
Defense attorney Saeed Abdelmassih said that the judge prevented the defense team from attending a closed session on February 17 when the alleged rape victim, her parents and a new witness were being questioned. “This is against all norms of justice to separate an accused person from his attorney.” When they were barred, defense complained to the Justice Minister and Attorney General and it was agreed with the judge after that, that they would question the victim on March 24, however, the girl and her family did not show up at court.
Outspoken attorney Ms.Howaida Al-Omda said “the court is preventing defense from questioning the alleged rape victim because she is a liar. I do not believe that the rape incident took place at all.”
The court also accepted as a witness 16-year-old student Mohamed Hussein, who claims to have seen the incident in November. The defense team objected to this, but the court overruled their objection. “Legally, the defense of the defendant has the right to bring witnesses while the victim is restricted to the list of witnesses mentioned in the case file,” defense lawyer Peter Al-Naggar told Copts-United. “the victim and her father said in the police and investigations that there were no witnesses to the incident. So after all that time a witness appears and the court allows it,” said Fathi Farid.
All NGOs and journalists carrying foreign press identity cards were barred from the court session.
Christian youths, who believe like many others that Giruis Baroumi is innocent and that he is bound to lose his life with powerful opponents such as the Egyptian government and the State Security authorities who insist on his guilt, have initiated a Facebook campaign called Save Guirguis.
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Hamas Apologist Norman Finkelstein Attacks Israel Again
Norman Finkelstein, the professional Israel basher, appeared before the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York on April 7th to hawk his newest diatribe against Israel entitled ‘This Time We Went Too Far.’ Finkelstein claimed in his book that he was providing “an accurate record” of the “suffering” that the Gazan population “endured” as a result of the “merciless Israeli assault.” He urged the UN correspondents to publicize his message about what he called the “bloodletting in Gaza.”
[…]
First of all, Finkelstein conveniently left out of his praise of the Goldstone Report the part about Hamas’ own violations of international human rights law. Second, he neglected to mention the biased composition of the panel serving with Judge Goldstone that conducted its fact-finding mission in Gaza at the UN Human Rights Council’s behest.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Arabs and Turks: Mending a Broken Relationship
Turkey launched the Arabic version of its official TV last Sunday. Called “TRT Arabic,” the channel is expected to reach 350 million people throughout the Arab world. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke at the opening ceremony, noted that it marked “a historic day for Turkish-Arab friendship,” initiating an era of “brotherhood, unity and solidarity” between the two peoples.
I share Erdogan’s wishes on this. I also think that we Turks and Arabs need to do a little bit of historical revision to get rid of some of the artificial walls built between us in the past century.
On our side, these walls were built mainly by the nationalist ideology of the Turkish Republic. From the late 1920s on, the latter’s propaganda machine created two popular myths, by which many Turks were brainwashed.
Republican myth-making
The first of these was that the Arabs “stabbed us in the back” during World War I. (This stab-in-the-back theme was a popular one among some other nationalists of the time as well.) The story was not totally untrue, for some Arab leaders, such as the Sharif Husayn of Mecca, had indeed collaborated with the British to rebel against Ottoman rule. But many other Arabs took the other way. As Mitchell G. Bard, the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, notes, “most of the Arabs did not fight with the Allies against the Turks in World War I.” In fact, as Bard emphasizes with a subtext of his own, “most Arabs fought for their Turkish rulers.”
The second, and the more untrue, modern Turkish myth was that “Arabization” had been a historic misfortune for the nation. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the great patron of this thesis, asserted that Turks were “a great nation before Islam,” and now was the time to discover “the lost civilized traits of the Turk.” Hence came the extensive republican effort to revitalize (and actually invent) the glorious history of the ancient “Turkish stock.”
The historical truth, however, was the exact opposite. The pre-Islamic Turks of Central Asia were a warlike nomadic people with very little trace of cultural sophistication. But the Arabo-Islamic civilization of the medieval age was, in the words of Bernard Lewis, “the richest, most powerful, most creative, most enlightened [civilization] in the world.” That’s why the “Arabization” of the Turks, i.e., their gradual conversion to Islam from the mid ninth century onwards, was actually an enlightenment for them. It is no accident that all famed Turkish scholars, scientists, poets or thinkers are from the Islamic age, and not the pre-Islamic one.
The synthesis of the Turkish military might and the Arabo-Islamic culture would reach its zenith in the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of today’s “Middle East” for more than four centuries with relative tolerance, peace and rule of law. The Ottomans, who adopted the Arabic script and enriched Turkish with many Arabic (and Persian) words, respected the Arabs as the descendants of the prophet, calling them “kavm-i necib,” or “the honorable people.”
This affable attitude to the Arabs lasted until the very end of the empire, with only the Young Turk government taking some extreme measures during World War I against Arab nationalism, real or perceived. Particularly the mass executions of some Arab intellectuals in 1916 by Jemal Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Syria, left a very black stain.
Unfortunately, the post-Ottoman Arab states, especially those in the core of the Middle East, created their own national consciousness by cherry-picking such nasty episodes in the four-century long Ottoman saga. The Cold War added to the problem, by putting us into opposing camps.
A story to share
However, things are changing. First, Turkey is outgrowing the myths and fears created in early decades of the Republic, and becoming more at peace with its own identity. After being dominated for decades by a wannabe-French elite, the country is now raising political and cultural leaders who are more proud of their nation’s place within the Muslim civilization.
This doesn’t mean that Turkey is turning its face from the West — something I would strongly oppose. But it does mean that Turkey is “not turning its back to the East anymore,” as I heard Erdogan saying on TV the other day.
This also doesn’t imply that Turkey will adopt the ways of its Arab neighbors. I am the farthest thing from a nationalist, but I think it is fair to say that we Turks had a better socio-political experience in the 20th century than most of our co-religionists. Unlike most, we were never colonized, and had the chance to experiment with democracy. We also enjoyed proximity to the West, a relatively free economy, and currently an EU accession process. (Who knows where the latter is going, but it has helped so far.)
So, perhaps we Turks have a story to share with our Arab brothers about all the complicated questions of modernity.
And I am really saying this with a sense of not pride but duty. I know, after all, that what we owe to the Arabs from a millennium ago is unforgettable.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Unveils More Advanced Centrifuge Machines
Iran unveiled a third generation of domestically built centrifuges Friday as the Islamic Republic accelerates a uranium enrichment program that has alarmed world powers fearful of the nuclear program’s aims.
The new machines are capable of much faster enrichment than those now being used in Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Iranian officials praised the advancement as a step toward greater self-sufficiency in the face of international sanctions targeted at choking off the nuclear work.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Channel to Censor HBO’s ‘The Pacific’
A 10-episode HBO miniseries about World War II will air in Turkey minus a scene featuring dialogue about “Turks torching Izmir” after recapturing the Aegean city from the Greek Army during the war of independence.
“The Pacific,” which focuses on the U.S.-Japanese conflict during World War II, will be aired starting April 18 in Turkey without the deleted scene, the hybrid business/financial and entertainment channel CNBC-e has announced.
According to a statement on the CNBC-e Web site, the controversial scene occurs in the third episode of the series and features a Greek woman talking to an American soldier, telling him the Turks “invaded and torched Izmir” in 1922.
Izmir was not a Greek city at the time, but an Ottoman one occupied by Greek soldiers, CNBC-e said, criticizing the series it intends to broadcast. The channel said it has notified HBO of its decision to delete the scene.
A great fire took place in Izmir in September 1922, but the two nations’ official histories contradict each other on whether the Greeks or the Turks were the ones who started the blaze, a matter that has turned into a dispute in the Turkish press.
Some columnists have expressed their agreement with CNBC-e and official Turkish history, saying the fire in Izmir was the work of the retreating Greek army and the Greek community in the city. Others, however, say the fire started after the recapture of the city by the Ottomans.
“The fire started Sept. 13, four days after the city’s liberation,” wrote Engin Ardiç, a columnist for daily Sabah. “It grew and spread Sept. 14 and reached the 1st Kordon [coastal road] on Sept. 15 and 16.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen Won’t Go After Radical US-Born Cleric
SAN’A, Yemen — Yemen says it will not hunt down a radical US-born cleric who has reportedly been added to the CIA’s list of targets to be killed or captured.
Yemen’s foreign minister says the U.S. has not handed over evidence to support allegations Anwar al-Awlaki is recruiting for al-Qaida’s offshoot in the impoverished country on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.
The Obama administration has authorized his killing because it believes he has shifted from encouraging attacks on the U.S. to participating in them, The New York Times reported this week.
Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said Saturday that al-Awlaki is not a terrorist. Security officials believe he is hiding in an area of Yemen that has become a refuge for Islamic militants.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Polish Leader, 95 Others Dead in Russia Jet Crash
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 96, officials said.
Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.
The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland’s political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
President of Poland Killed in Plane Crash in Russia
MOSCOW — A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard.
Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland.
The governor of Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiyev, said the plane did not reach the runway but instead hit the treetops and broke apart. An official with the Russia’s Investigative Committee said possible causes were bad weather, mechanical failure and human error.
The crash came as a staggering blow to Poland, killing what may be a tenth of country’s top leadership in one fiery explosion. In the numb hours after the crash, leaders in Warsaw evoked the horror of the massacre at Katyn, which stood for decades as a symbol of Russian domination of Poland.
“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similarly historic terms.
“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he said. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”
The flag at the presidential palace in Warsaw was lowered as a crowd gathered, laying down flowers and lighting candles. According to Poland’s constitution, the leader of the lower house of parliament — now acting president — has 14 days to announce new elections, which must then take place within 60 days.
The plane was a Tupolev Tu-154, designed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s. Officials in Poland have repeatedly requested that the government’s aging air fleet be replaced. Former Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who survived a helicopter crash in 2003, told Polish news he had long predicted such a disaster.
“I once said that we will one day meet in a funeral procession, and that is when we will take the decision to replace the aircraft fleet,” he said.
The news channel TVN24 reported that moments before the Polish plane was to land, Russian air traffic controllers refused a Russian military aircraft permission to land. The report said the air traffic controllers could not refuse permission to the Polish plane, so they suggested it land in Minsk instead.
The crash site was cordoned off, but Russian media reported that the airplane’s crew made several attempts to land before a wing hit the treetops and the plane crashed about half a mile from the runway. Correspondents reporting from the scene said the plane’s explosion was so powerful that fragments of it were scattered as far as the outskirts of Smolensk, more than a mile from the crash site itself.
For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski — one of the highest-ranking Polish leaders not on board the plane — told Poland’s Radio Zet that he was the one to inform Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who “was in tears when he heard about the catastrophe.”
Among those on board, according to theWeb site of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, were Mr. Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzinski; the head of the president’s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczyglo; the deputy minister of foreign affairs, Andrzej Kremer; the chief of the general staff of the Polish army, Franciszek Gagor; the president of Poland’s national bank, Slawomir Skrzypek; the commissioner for civil rights protection, Janusz Kochanowski; the heads of all of Poland’s armed forces; and dozens of members of parliament.
A spokesman for Poland’s ministry of foreign affairs said 88 people were on the plane. Russian emergency officials said the total number killed, including crew members, was 96.
Mr. Kaczysnki, 61, was elected president in 2005 just as his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, became head of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice government, often putting Poland on a collision course with Russia. Mr. Kaczynski forged close relationships with Ukraine and Georgia and pushed for their accession into NATO, arguing passionately that a stronger NATO would keep Russia from reasserting its influence over Eastern Europe.
The president’s death on Russian soil is bound to open old wounds in the relationship between Russia and Poland.
He had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939.
The two countries had been making strides in recent months to improve their ties, which had been strained since the days of communism, when Poland was a Soviet satellite. After the collapse of communism, its leaders embraced the West and snubbed Russia.
The Katyn massacre was one point of tension. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took a major step to address improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary. He was joined there by Mr. Tusk.
At the ceremony, Mr. Putin cast the executions as one of many crimes carried out by the “totalitarian regime” of the Soviet Union.
“We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here,” he said. “In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red Army, executed by the Nazis.”
Mr. Kaczynski, who is seen by the Kremlin as less friendly to Russia, was not invited to the joint Russian-Polish ceremony on Wednesday. Instead, Mr. Kaczynski decided to attend a separate, Polish-organized event in Katyn on Saturday.
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Afghanistan: Karzai’s Gambit and Obama’s Betrayal
Whatever else Hamid Karzai may be, he’s always been a survivor. And now he’s trying to survive the Obama Administration. Karzai knows that unlike Bush, Obama has no commitment whatsoever to Afghanistan. What Obama wants is to pull out as quickly as possible in time for his own 2012 election. And he wants to do it without the appearance of a disaster and a defeat. And there’s only one way to do that, cut a deal with the Taliban.
To that end, the Obama Administration is operating on two tracks. Track 1, the public and visible track, is the military approach that Obama got pushed into, a temporary surge to push back the Taliban and allow him to declare victory ahead of a pullout.
Meanwhile behind the scenes Track 2, the invisible diplomatic track, is meant to sideline Karzai with a coalition of pragmatic “moderate” Taliban, who will end the fighting and provide an appearance of normalcy for the pullout to come.
The surge was supposed to be a show of force, to force them to the table, but the real gambit was to put the Taliban back in power.
For Obama, Afghanistan is a threat to his political neck. For Karzai, it’s a threat to his actual neck, and Karzai is a survivor. And so he in turn began sabotaging Obama’s Track 2. If the Obama Administration wanted a show of force and some high profile prisoners, he helped give it to them, by routing Pakistan’s capture of top Taliban leaders who were willing to negotiate with the US. Meanwhile Karzai was using Pakistan’s ISI, which had helped fund the Taliban, to conduct his own talks with them. The resulting situation is one in which both Karzai and the Obama Administration are competing to cut a deal with the Taliban—even as they’re fighting them.
This disaster was brought to you courtesy of the Obama Administration, which demonstrated its absolute disregard for the future of Afghanistan and tried to cut Karzai out of the loop in order to make a deal with the Taliban.
[…]
Worse yet, Afghanistan’s future will send a message once again that no one should put their faith in the US. That any liberation that comes will be strictly temporary and then the people we drove out will be back. And that means the next time we come after the Taliban or terrorists anywhere else, allies will be much harder to come by.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bangladesh: High Court Rules Veil Cannot be Imposed on Women
The courts have ruled that the veil in public offices “is a personal choice of women.” The ruling arises from a dispute between a local official and the director of a school, branded a “prostitute.” Applauded by human rights activists and civil society. For the extremists it is a “conspiracy” against Islam.
Dhaka (AsiaNews) — The Ministry of Education should ensure that women — employed in public institutions — are not required to wear the veil or ‘hijab “against their will.” This was ordered by the Bangladesh High Court, in a ruling issued yesterday of historical significance. The grounds, the judges Syed Mahmud Hossain and Syeda Afsar Jahan agreed that “it is a personal choice of women to wear the veil or not.” They add that “forcing a woman to wear the veil against her will” is considered a “flagrant violation” of basic human rights “enshrined in the Constitution.”
The historic ruling comes after a dispute between a government official and the director of an elementary school in the district of Kurigram, for which the man later apologised. Arif Ahmed had insulted Sultana Arjuman Huq, director of State elementary school Atmaram Bishweshwar, because she was not wearing a veil. The incident occurred last June, during a public meeting at the headquarters of the Department of Education in upazila (an administrative sub-district of Bangladesh, ed) in which the school is located.
On June 26, 2009 Bangladeshi newspaper Shamokal reported that the man called the school’s principal “beshya” — prostitute in the local language -, for not wearing the veil. Sultana Arjuman Huq was deeply affected by the insult causing her to fall into a depression. The woman finally decided to file a lawsuit for injuries. In January 2010 Arif Ahmed apologized to Sultana Arjuman Huq before High Court judges, who then closed the case. The woman, in fact, decided to forgive him.
On April 8, the judges issued the verdict, explaining the reasons for setting veils for women as non-mandatory. “In Bangladesh — write Syed Mahmud Hossain and Syeda Afsar Jahan — there is no established practice that requires women to cover their heads.” In recent years, attempts have emerged, “to force” women to this practice “not only at an individual level but also in public offices.” The case in hand, they concluded, is evidence of violations of the rights of women and girls “in public spaces, schools, educational institutions and places of public and private education.”
Human rights organizations and members of civil society welcomed the court ruling because it is a further source of protection of women’s rights. However, some Islamic fundamentalist movements attacked the judges, branding the move as “a conspiracy to destroy Islam in Bangladesh.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesian Couple Paraded Naked, Tied to Pole & Flogged for Having Affair
A human rights activist on Thursday slammed the humiliating punishment meted out to a teacher in Aceh Barat and the married woman he was suspected of having an affair with after the pair were marched through a village naked, tied to a pole and then brutally beaten. “To parade people around naked is not sanctioned in Islam,” said Zulfikar Muhammad, an activist from a coalition of human rights organizations in the staunchly Muslim province.
“The acts of the villagers who paraded the two through a village clearly violates both Islamic Shariah law and human rights. Islam upholds justice and the rights of human beings.”
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Fatal Go-Kart Park Running Illegally
A SYDNEY woman strangled in front of her husband and two children after her hijab became tangled in a go-kart was buried yesterday, as it emerged the amusement facility where she died was operating illegally.
Marian Dadoun, of Yagoona, was on the first day of a holiday to Nelsons Bay on Wednesday when her headscarf became tangled in the kart she was driving at Port Stephens Go Karts.
WorkCover responded quickly yesterday, closing down the facility, which was not registered for amusement devices.
Inspectors on Wednesday had issued prohibition notices on two go-karts, one for being unregistered and the other for not providing “significant guarding”.
The go-kart track owners Mick and Judy Hogan — who are facing possible criminal charges — said their hearts went out to the woman’s family. “We are very, very sorry,” Ms Hogan said.
The couple said they had operated the track for about 10 years “without an incident”.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Immingrant Groups Grapple With Honour Crimes
Some groups of immigrant women in south west Finland’s Uusimaa district may be becoming increasingly vulnerable to honour crimes. The Uusimaa chapter of the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare has received tips relating to about 100 suspected honour crimes over the past three years, and says the number of such incidents is growing steadily.
There are no official statistics on the spread of such practices, but the League estimates that its information represents just the tip of the iceberg. The League is most often contacted for guidance on matters relating to child welfare and schooling.
In response to the emerging trend, the League recently launched an online info pack on the issue of honour crimes. Project Manager Marjo van Dijke hopes that the web pages will help victims to take action.
“Many people find it difficult to speak about this issue with their clients. Hopefully this will provide guidance on what to ask, how to discuss the matter, and what kinds of consequences there might be,” she explained.
Difficult Subject for Finnish Men
The League’s web pages also provide advice for the Finnish friends of immigrant girls, as Finns often find it difficult to understand why their friends don’t have the same kinds of freedoms that they enjoy.
Another key target group for the web campaign is Finnish men, who may be interested in women coming from backgrounds in which honour crimes are practiced.
“A woman’s freedom determines moral expectations and behaviours related to morality and chastity have created challenges for many Finnish men as they don’t know how to proceed and what they can do in practice,” said the League’s van Dijken.
Honour Crimes Assume Different Forms
Honour crimes may involve physical violence or may be exercised in restrictions, for example in dress codes, relationships or even hobbies.
The practice may be seen not only in certain immigrant groups, but may also be experienced in multi-cultural families.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Migrant City’s Cry for Help: Anguished Letter to Brown and Cameron Reveals Devastating Toll of Immigration on Schools, Housing and Hospitals
The impact of uncontrolled mass immigration on the fabric of British life was driven home to the party leaders yesterday.
A letter to Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg reveals in graphic detail the struggle of one community to cope.
It says public services — from schooling to housing, healthcare to police protection — are overstretched because councils have not been given the support they need.
The letter, from two independent councillors in the Cambridgeshire city of Peterborough, spells out in a straightforward and measured way how a community which ‘lived in peace and harmony’ has been transformed.
Local schools are struggling to educate children who speak 27 different languages and health services are under unprecedented pressure. The councillors, Charles Swift and Keith Sharp, contrast the situation with that of a few years ago.
Then, they say, ‘there was parental choice in education with school places. There was no homelessness. There were no problems with registering at the local doctors for health services.
‘Everyone knew the local police officer and they were available at all times. People could walk the streets in safety and talk to their neighbours.’
The two men asked the party leaders for a reply, warning that the problem is a national one. But in another example of the way immigration issues have been brushed under the carpet, they have heard nothing.
The letter has been sent to Mr Brown and Mr Clegg three times since January 18, without any reply. David Cameron responded with an email from his correspondence secretary promising a reply from immigration spokesman Damian Green. Mr Swift and Mr Sharp are still waiting.
The two councillors represent North ward in Peterborough where 15 per cent of people are migrants, mainly from former Communist countries in Eastern Europe which are now EU members.
Their letter — which they also sent to constituents — was passed to the Daily Mail by a local resident concerned that its urgent message was being ignored.
The councillors say: ‘At our local primary school, Fulbridge, which has a roll of 675 pupils, 27 different languages are spoken with only 200 of the pupils having English as a first language.
‘The first-year reception class has 90 pupils, of which only 17 are white British. Every day new arrivals are turned away.
‘Registration at the local doctors’ surgery has rocketed with more than 90 per cent of the new arrivals being from the EU. There has been a substantial increase in women who are pregnant.
‘The Health Service and Primary Care Trust in the city has overspent by millions in the past year.’
A key issue is the Government’s failure to support councils.
But Mr Swift and Mr Sharp make clear that the local authority cannot track all new arrivals — crucial information in assessing what they need.
They say there were only four EU citizens on the local electoral roll in 2004. Now there are 537 and ‘we know there are substantially more here’.
The councillors also voiced the local fears that immigration is fuelling a rise in crime.
They write: ‘We had four police houses in the ward years ago. Everyone knew and respected the local constable. Now we have muggings, robberies, burglaries and neighbour disputes. We have prostitutes, drug dealers and an ever-increasing number of people who drive without road tax or insurance.’
Some 16,000 migrants, many seeking farm work, have moved to the Peterborough area since 2004. Immigrant communities account for 64 per cent of the population growth.
Details of the letter emerged a day after the Daily Mail revealed shocking figures showing that nearly every job created under Labour has gone to a foreign worker. Some 98.5 per cent of 1.67million new posts went to immigrants.
In their letter, Mr Swift and Mr Sharp say the arrival of so many migrants has left Peterborough’s housing system in chaos, with immigrants sleeping rough and relying on the Salvation Army for food.
They say many properties have been bought by speculators and turned into multioccupancy dwellings let to immigrants.
‘The consequence is that our housing waiting lists have rocketed and our homeless hostels are full.’
This reinforces reports of migrants living in makeshift huts along the local river and slaughtering swans to eat.
The councillors’ concerns were echoed last night in a Harris poll for the Daily Mail, which reveals that seven out of ten voters are ‘very worried’ about the scale of immigration and believe it is a ‘significant cause of unrest’.
Some 63 per cent think the influx of two million immigrants under Labour has been a ‘bad thing’ and three out of four want a tough limit on new arrivals.
Mr Swift, 79, a former train driver and trade unionist who was awarded the OBE for his council services, said last night: ‘The political leaders must listen to ordinary people.
‘There must be a control on migrant numbers coming in. It is what people want. They feel the situation has got out of hand. I have spoken to rocksolid Labour supporters, rocksolid Conservative supporters. They don’t know how to vote.’
Sir Andrew Green, head of the Migrationwatch campaign group, called the letter ‘a vivid and convincing account of the impact of immigration’. He added: ‘It is shameful that these councillors should have received no substantive reply’.
Last night a Tory spokesman said a reply from Mr Green is due to be sent before MPs’ offices close on Monday.
A spokesman for Mr Brown said: ‘We are not currently aware of this correspondence but of course Gordon will answer any questions that are asked of him.’
Nick Clegg’s spokesman said: ‘We are very sorry these councillors have not received a reply. They will be getting one as soon as possible.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Kills Himself After Row at Work Over Non-PC Joke
A medical technician killed himself after being suspended from work after someone complained that he made a politically-incorrect joke about a black friend.
Roy Amor, 61, who was devastated at the prospect of losing his job making prosthetics, shot himself in the head outside his house.
He was facing a disciplinary investigation after suggesting to the black colleague that he ‘better hide’ when they noticed immigration officers outside their clinic.
It is understood that the man was a close friend of Mr Amor and was not offended. However, it was overheard by someone else who lodged a formal complaint.
Five days after his suspension, Mr Amor received an email about the incident from his employers, Opcare, a private company that provides prosthetic and orthotic services to the NHS.
A few hours later police found his body in the road outside his home near Bolton, Lancashire, after being alerted by a neighbour.
Sources told The Mail on Sunday that he left three notes, all of which mention Opcare, including one written outside his workplace at 5pm on the day before he died in which he describes his despair.
The black man, who is believed to have attended Mr Amor’s funeral and had known him for many years, is said to be ‘shattered’.
His distraught family believe that what he intended as a light-hearted remark became overblown.
Mr Amor, a classic car enthusiast, was married to his wife Ann, a former nurse, for 39 years. The couple have a grown-up son and daughter.
Last night, Mrs Amor, who was not at home at the time of her husband’s death, was too upset to comment. Friends said Mr Amor was a highly regarded and experienced prosthetics technician.
One said: ‘Roy made a joke along the lines that his friend had better hide in case the officers found him. It was nothing more than a good-humoured joke but apparently someone overheard it and made an official complaint because they thought it was racist.
‘Roy was devastated when he was suspended and was worried he might lose his job.
‘His colleague has known both Roy and Ann for years and is a family friend. He went to Roy’s funeral and is as shattered by what happened as is everyone else.
‘He has told Ann that he didn’t make the complaint and despite requests from the family, the company has refused to discuss the details of it. The family is not even sure whether the investigation is still ongoing.’
The email from the company that Mr Amor received on the morning of his death was a request asking him to address the statement he had made about the incident.
Unable to open an attachment containing the details, Mr Amor emailed a reply saying he was too upset to deal with the matter immediately. He then shot himself in the afternoon.
Opcare has run the ‘disablement services centre’, which stands in the grounds of Withington Community Hospital, Manchester, for the past three years. The centre had previously been run by other private companies. In all, Mr Amor had worked there for more than 30 years and ‘adored’ his job. He had not faced disciplinary proceedings before.
Last night, the female manager at the Manchester Opcare centre and a spokeswoman at the company’s Abingdon head office in Oxfordshire said they were unable to make any comment.
David Warlow, one of Opcare’s directors, was also approached by The Mail on Sunday. ‘I’m unable to comment on the matter,’ he said.
Opcare chief executive Michael O’Byrne admitted that Mr Amor had been suspended over the joke.
He added: ‘It’s an enormous tragedy and we are all in mourning. I knew Roy personally and he was an excellent technician.’
Asked if he had any regrets about suspending him, he replied: ‘I don’t want to comment further.’
A Greater Manchester Police spokeswoman said details of Mr Amor’s death had been passed to the Bolton Coroner’s Office. A full inquest would take place in August.
‘There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death,’ the spokeswoman added.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Dr. Walid Phares: Jihadism’s War on Democracies
The term “War of Ideas” began appearing in the years following al Qaeda terror attacks against the United States on 9/11. In the days following the massacres, the mainstream media displayed a stunning lack of determination in indentifying where aggression was coming from and why. In the hours following the bloodshed in Manhattan, Pennsylvania and Washington where about three thousand- mostly civilians- were killed, the main question raised by networks, publications, and commentators was, “Why do they hate us?”
Incredibly revealing, this slogan told the world and public at home that America did not know who the “they” (i.e., the attackers, who they represent, and what they wanted) were. It also underlined another stunning revelation: that what mainstream intellectuals understood from 9/11 was that sheer “hate” was the reason, and worse, the roots for this so-called hatred were unknown. Al Qaeda’s onslaught on American soil signaled the start of what was called the “War on Terror”. But historical precision tells us that in reality the jihadi war on the United States and other democracies began several years earlier. The sudden post-Cold War rise of combat Salafists (al Qaeda and others) against American and western targets in the 1990’s and the actions taken by Khomeinists (Iran and Hezbollah) since the early 1980’s preceded America’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq two decades later. Popular and media reactions to the 9/11 attacks in the United States revealed a dramatic reality. The public — let alone the Government did not know that the jihadists have been at war with America and other democracies for many years before the Twin Towers attacks.
[…]
… two types of literature expanded in the United States, and later in Europe and the West. One set of books, articles, and panels insists that terrorism is waged by segments of Arab Muslim societies frustrated with Western policies in general and U.S. foreign policy in particular (e.g., economic disenfranchisement and in some cases racism). The second type of literature links the violence performed by the terrorists directly to Islamic theology. The wedge between the two explanations was wide and has grown larger. Both literatures, though, failed to see or explain the jihadi threat as a movement with global strategies, tactics, and rational steps.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Soros: It’s Not Easy Being God
Obama’s boss, George Soros discovered his own narcissism at an early age. Robert Slater, in his unauthorized biography of Soros—Soros, The Life, Times & Trading Secrets of the World’s Greatest Investor:
“Yet, what is one to make of a child who believed he was God?”
Slater posits that such grandiose thoughts in childhood, if they were the “fleeting dreams of a small child” might be understandable if Soros had given any indication as an adult that he had outgrown his delusions.
“Yet, as an adult, he offered no sign, no dismissive gesture, no footnote signifying that he no longer clung to such wild convictions, but only the suggestion of how difficult it was for someone to believe himself a deity.” (Pg. 15).
In other words, Soros figured out early on that his messiah complex wasn’t going to be well received in the real world and he should try to tone it down a bit.
He’s having mixed results with that.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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