Euro Crisis Could Help Boost Political Union-Merkel
BERLIN, May 13 (Reuters) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday the euro’s troubles offered a chance for the EU to strengthen its economic and political union, not just its common currency.
Speaking at a ceremony in Aachen where Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for furthering European unity, Merkel said the future of the EU was at stake in the challenges to its monetary amalgamation.
“If the euro fails, not only the currency fails. Europe fails too, and the idea of European unification. We have a common currency, but no common political and economic union. And this is exactly what we must change. To achieve this — therein lies the opportunity of this crisis.”
In a speech broadcast live on WDR television, Merkel said the crisis over the euro’s future was “not just any crisis, it is the strongest test Europe has faced since 1990, if not in the 53 years since the treaties of Rome.”
“This test is existential — it must be passed. If it does not manage to (do that), the consequences for Europe and beyond are unforeseeable,” the conservative Christian Democrat said.
Greece’s debt emergency and a worsening deficit crunch in Spain, Portugal and Ireland have eroded the euro’s strength.
But Merkel held off on backing a 110-billion-euro ($139.7 billion) bailout for Greece until it was clear contagion was starting to afflict the euro zone, dismaying France over the delay. Germany and France had long been the twin engines of EU integration.
ECONOMIC POLICY COORDINATION AT ISSUE
In the decade since the euro was created, Germany has resisted the idea of tightening economic policy coordination, fearful states like France could exploit such a discussion to try to exert influence over the European Central Bank.
Germany was also concerned that its export-reliant economic model could come under fire from EU partners that want Germany to do more to boost long-stagnant domestic demand.
But the contagion crisis has forced Merkel to drop her resistance to closer coordination, inviting recognition that it is the price Germany must pay to win agreement from other EU members to a radical strengthening of the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact that Berlin wants.
Both the euro and European sovereign debt have seen erratic swings in their value over the past weeks as leaders agreed massive financial aid packages first to bail out debt-laden Greece, then to buttress the entire euro zone.
The latest step, taken last weekend, saw policymakers from the European Central Bank deciding to buy euro zone government bonds on the open market in a move welcomed by economists and investors as bringing calm to markets.
In a sign the programmes were working, investors were attracted to the European stock market, where shares rose for a second straight session to a one-week high on Thursday, also helped by soothing company results in recent days.
But the euro retreated against the dollar on Thursday, nearing a 14-month low as concerns rise about the potential impact from the harsh austerity steps to be imposed in some countries as part of the euro zone emergency aid plan.
Merkel was confident that Europe would overcome the crisis in her speech in Aachen, a western German city that was for centuries the place of coronation of German kings.
“The euro is more than just our currency. It is the furthest achievement of European integration so far. It stands for the European ideal. And I stick to my vision that one day, all EU member states will also have the euro as a currency,” she said.
| — Hat tip: Paul Weston | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Tourism Alert, 17,000 Bookings Cancelled
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MAY 14 — A true tourism crisis has broken out for the Greek government due to “cancellations of bookings on a massive scale” across the whole country. Government Spokesperson, Giorgio Petalotis, announced that a Crisis Committee has been set up to tackle the situation, which threatens to undermine one of the key sectors of the Greek economy. Over the past few days, the Association Athens Hoteliers stated that more than 17,000 bookings had been cancelled in the capital alone following the demonstrations that broke out in protest at the government’s austerity plans. Athens’ main hotel, the Grande Bretagne, was registering one hundred cancellations per day. The government has blamed the far left and especially the Communist Party for having undermined the country s credibility and for having provoked billions of euros of damage to the tourist industry. The demonstration on the top of the Acropolis was singled out as an invitation for Europeans to “stay away” along with the blockade of the tourist activities in the Port of Pireus. The recovery of Turkish tourism to Greece is also at the centre of talks being held in Athens between delegations from ministries and Turkish businesspersons, as part of the official visit by Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Chain of Suicides for Economic Reasons
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MAY 14 — The financial crisis in Greece is reportedly the cause of a wave of suicides across the country, as reported by the press quoting police sources. Recently the owner of a bakery in Athens hung himself in his shop, and a mechanic, also in the capital, shot himself with a gun. The 49-year-old mechanic left a message to his family, in which he explained that he could no longer support his economic situation. Suicides, apparently also for economic reasons, have also been reported in several other parts of the country, like Crete, Trikala, Thessaloniki, Veria and Serres. The calls for help to centres that offer assistance to those who are considering to commit suicide have also increased. According to psychiatrist Kyriakos Katsadoros, calls to line 1018, operated in collaboration with the Health Ministry, recently increased by 70%.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bleak Dawn on ‘Laid-Off Island’
Qatari pull-out ‘thunderbolt’ for Survivor-style protesters
(ANSA) — Sassari, May 13 — Redundant Italian workers who grabbed headlines with their own Web-based Survivor show on a former prison island off Sardinia woke up to a bleak dawn Thursday after a Qatari multinational pulled out of a deal to buy their petrochemicals plant.
“A terrible thunderbolt has hit Laid-Off Island,” the workers from the bankrupt Vinyls company at Porto Torres wrote in a Web diary which has proved a Facebook hit.
“We’re terribly disappointed,” they said after Qatar-based oil powerhouse Ramco scotched a deal set up to be signed next week. The workers, who have been on the island of Asinara for 77 days, urged the Italian government to take action to save their jobs.
“We’ve taken a knock but the fight goes on,” said the 15 workers who sailed across to Asinara on January 7.
Laid-Off Island has drawn some 40,000 supporters to a Facebook page and also has a link on the Web page of Sardinia’s largest newspaper, La Nuova Sardegna, with a ‘survivors journal’.
The dozen, part of a former work force of about 150, have been beaming images of themselves living in Asinara’s closed-down maximum security jail, once home to terrorists and mafiosi.
The protest has been backed by Italian politicians and on Thursday the largest opposition group, the Democratic Party, called on the government to get fuels giant ENI, Vinyls parent company, to find another buyer.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Inflation Rises to +1.5% in April, Boosted by Energy
(ANSAmed) — ROME — Italy’s inflation rate in April rose to 1.5% from 1.4% in March. As confirmed by the Italian National Statistics Institute (ISTAT), in specifying that prices on a monthly basis have increased by 0.4%. The annualized inflation rate is the highest since February 2009. In April prices of frequently bought goods, i.e. everyday expenses (food, drinks, rent, fuel and newspapers), increased by 2.2% compared with the same month in 2009. According to the experts of the statistics office, inflation climbed mainly due to rising energy prices, and was partly balanced by falling food prices. Prices of petrol and diesel rose in fact by more than 10% from last year (as did LPG and heating fuel prices), boosting the transport item to +5.5% on the year. The sector also felt the impact of air transport prices, which soared by 14.9% compared with March and by 13.4% from April 2009. All items linked to the approaching summer holidays saw their prices increase, like all-in vacations (+5.9%, +3.8% on 2009), amusement parks (+2.1%, +1.9% on 2009) and other accommodation services (+1.2%, +0.3% on 2009). Food prices fell on the other hand, when compared with last year (-0.2% for food and non-alcoholic drinks), and remained stable from March of this year.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Many Greeks Blame Foreigners for Their Crisis
If it is to avoid sliding into the abyss, Greece must implement brutal austerity measures and increase its tax revenues. Yet many Greeks, including the political opposition, are in denial about the economic reality of the current crisis. Many ordinary people believe that foreign influences are to blame for the country’s predicament.
Georgios Trangas is one of Greece’s best-known journalists. His two-hour morning radio show “In Athens,” which is broadcast nationwide by a private radio station, has a cult following. Day after day, the 60-year-old utters his views and discusses virtually every issue that is important to Greeks, often generating controversy in the process. It’s something he’s been doing for many, many years.
Trangas is a polarizing figure. Earlier this year, he called for a boycott of German products as a response to the media attacks against Greece coming from newspapers and magazines in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. He also attacked his own government over its austerity program, demanding unity and warning against a “division of society.” With his positions, he has attracted an audience and market share for his radio program that is virtually unrivaled in Greece.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rich Greeks Hide Their Swimming Pools
Residents in rich areas of the Greek capital Athens are scrambling to hide their swimming pools under tarpaulins as tax authorities resort to satellite images to identify the owners and make them pay, French paper Le Monde reported on its Web site Friday.
For a pool of between 25 and 60 square meters, owners would have to pay up to 800 euros ($1,000) per year unless they can transfer 11,600 euros to a Greek bank account and use it for purchasing certain goods, according to a Web site offering advice on living in Crete.
Only some 300 households in the north of Athens have declared owning swimming pools, but tax authorities discovered, with the help of satellite photographs, that there are about 17,000 pools in the area, Le Monde reported.
Owners are now covering them up with tarpaulins the color of grass or concrete to make them undetectable from air, the paper wrote.
The Greek government has pledged to implement strict austerity measures in exchange for a 110-billion-euro bailout package offered by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Fighting tax evasion in the country of 11 million, where the “grey” economy is estimated at a third of gross domestic product, is one of the ways the government is hoping to raise revenue.
Small bribes paid by Greeks to doctors, tax auditors and town planning officials for special treatment cost the economy 1 billion euros last year, according to Transparency International (TI) estimates.
In 2009, Greece fell in TI’s annual corruption ranking for a fourth straight year to rank 71st, behind countries like Montenegro, Ghana and Kuwait. The lower the ranking, the more corruption there is, according to TI.
“Tax evasion has played a key role in the crisis,” Costas Bakouris, president of Transparency International in Greece, told Le Monde.
“It’s enough to look out the window and see all the beautiful cars in the street to realize the size of the problem,” Bakouris added.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Stock Market Down Due to Doubts on Recovery
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 14 — Doubts on Europe’s capacity to consolidate the recovery, due to the impact of the new austerity plans on growth, are weighing down the Spanish stock market. At noon, the IBEX 35 was down more than 4%. According to some observers, the programme of cuts in public spending announced on Wednesday by the government is interpreted by investors as a positive factor for the correction of the deficit, but an impediment to the recovery of the weak growth of the Spanish economy — GDP +0.1% in the first quarter — after a long period of recession. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Obama Praises Daring Cuts, But Stock Markets Plunge
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 14 — US President Barack Obama has welcomed the “audacious measures” announced by the Spanish government to reduce the public deficit, but his optimism is not reflected in the performance of the Spanish stock markets, where the IBEX index opened at -3% today. According to several sources quoted today by newspaper Expansion, the Central Bank may have slowed the acquisition of Spanish and Italian bonds on Monday, after confidence in the markets of these two countries had been boosted. Spain’s risk coefficient, after a decline from 180 to less than 100, has returned to values above 100. Yesterday President Obama praised the cuts in public spending announced by the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, 15 billion euros in the 2010-2011 period. These cuts include a 5% cut in the wages of 2.6 million civil servants, starting in June. According to La Vanguardia, the government will not discuss the cuts in today’s cabinet meeting, since it needs more time to resolve the technical problems and assess its impact on the wage structure. On the other hand, the UGT and CCOO unions have announced a strike of civil servants, on June 2. The details of the protests will be discussed in today’s meeting of the leaders of both unions.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Stocks Tumble on Worries About European Growth
NEW YORK — Stocks dropped again Friday after concerns grew that the deep spending cuts under Europe’s bailout plan could slow down the continent’s economy. The euro dropped to a 19-month low.
European stock markets fell more than 3 percent, leading U.S. stocks lower. Investors seeking safety from the fresh signs of distress in financial markets piled into Treasurys and gold, which hit another record.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 200 points in midday trading.
Currency traders have been moving out of the euro throughout the week because of concerns that strict cost-cutting measures in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal will slow the continent’s economy to a crawl in the coming years. Now stock investors are also looking at those potential long-term problems.
“Clearly the action in the euro is reflecting the fact that at least currency investors don’t think the bailout plan plus the austerity measures are sufficient,” said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners in New York. “The euro is leading the market down.”
Any significant slowdown in Europe’s economy could put a crimp in the U.S. recovery as well. U.S. companies that export to Europe would face weaker demand, hurting their sales and profitability.
Credit card companies fell after the Senate voted to force them to reduce fees for debit card transactions. Visa fell 8.5 percent and Mastercard fell 7.4 percent.
Earlier in the week, stocks rose sharply after a nearly $1 trillion rescue package was launched by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in hopes of containing a debt crisis in Greece.
The euro, which is used by 16 countries, slid as low as $1.2359 in morning trading in New York, its weakest point since October 2008. The euro has dropped more than 6 percent since the beginning of the month and is close to its lowest level in four years.
Better-than-expected reports on U.S. retail sales and industrial production didn’t help stock prices.
At midday, the Dow fell 197.03, or 1.8 percent, to 10,585.92. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 26.44, or 2.3 percent, to 1,131.00, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 63.83, or 2.7 percent, to 2,330.53.
Stocks are set to extend losses that piled up on Thursday. A disappointing report on weekly jobless claims and downbeat forecast from department store Kohl’s drove major indexes lower. Financial stocks were also slammed after the New York attorney general launched an investigation into eight Wall Street banks about their dealings in mortgage securities.
Among stocks, Visa Inc. fell $8.88, or 10.4 percent, to $78.45 and Mastercard Inc. fell $18.64, or 8 percent, to $213.67 after the Senate vote to curb fees on debit cards.
Gold hit a record of $1,249.70 an ounce before retreating to $1,233.
Crude oil fell $2.90 to $71.50 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Investors on Friday looked past upbeat reports on April retail sales and industrial production.
The Commerce Department said sales rose 0.4 percent in April. That was double the forecast by economists polled by Thomson Reuters. It was the seventh straight monthly rise in sales, providing hope that a consumer rebound will hold and help the economy grow.
The Federal Reserve said industrial production rose 0.8 percent in April, better than the 0.6 percent growth forecast by economists. It was the biggest jump in output from the nation’s factories, mines and utilities since January.
Manufacturing growth has been steady in recent months as the sector plays a leading role in the domestic recovery.
Ten stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 594 million shares compared with 422 million traded at the same point Thursday.
U.S. Treasurys, like gold, benefited from being viewed as a safe investment. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.43 percent from 3.53 percent late Thursday.
Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 3.1 percent, Germany’s DAX index fell 3.1 percent, and France’s CAC-40 tumbled 4.6 percent.
The Russell 200 index of smaller companies lost 19.92, or 2.8 percent, to 689.93.
| [Return to headlines] |
Coffee Party: Either Ignoramuses or Marxists
Not long ago, I caught the tail end of a television interview with Obama supporter Annabel Park, founder of the Coffee Party USA. What little I heard of the interview sounded like it was the progressives’ answer to the tea-party movement. The party’s mission statement, as posted on its website, is as follows:
“The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grass-roots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.”
The above is clearly a not-so-subtle attack on the tea-party people. While it is vague, it’s easy to spot its progressive tone when you break it down into its component parts.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: Do We Deserve a Mosque at Ground Zero?
The second attack on the World Trade Center is coming. It will stand 13 stories high, cost $100 million dollars and include a mosque. Known as Cordoba House — the name echoing an early caliphate that, of course, subjugated non-Muslims — it will be located two blocks away from where our magnificent towers crashed and burned, easy wafting distance for the Islamic call to prayer.
How demoralizing is that? Let’s step back for some historical perspective. With the U.S. military preparing its assault on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, there’s a not-too-wild comparison to be made between the mind-blowing reality of New York City approving a mosque at Ground Zero and the unthinkable notion of Honolulu authorities, with GIs massing for the ultimately unnecessary invasion of Japan, approving Shinto shrine construction adjacent to Pearl Harbor.
Both are equally outrageous. But there is a key difference. During World War II, the militaristic cult of Shintoism, the state religion of Imperial Japan, was always understood to be enemy ideology. In our irresponsibly long war, we have never, ever acknowledged that Islam, with its supremacist cult of jihad, is the enemy threat doctrine. And that’s not because I say so. It’s because the enemy says so, 24-7, and so do his mainstream, unimpeachable Islamic legal and religious sources.
But we plug our ears, drowning out our better judgment with counsel from apologists for Islam, flimflam men who, like carnival hawkers, are adept at misdirecting attention away from the Islamic doctrinal motivations behind what is a global jihad, waged both openly (violently) and more subtly, to advance the influence of Sharia in the world. Indeed, we become apologists and flimflam men, too. Or maybe we just don’t care. “If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want,” said a spokesman for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
If it’s “legal”? What if it mocks the dead?…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Tell Court They Can Decide What You Eat
‘Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish’
Attorneys for the federal government have argued in a lawsuit pending in federal court in Iowa that individuals have no “fundamental right” to obtain what food they choose.
The brief was filed April 26 in support of a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ban on the interstate sale of raw milk.
“There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds,” states the document signed by U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose, assistant Martha Fagg and Roger Gural, trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish,” the government has argued.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Got Milk? You Bet — From Mexico
Have you noticed the rash of stories lately in which the federal government is invading private U.S. milk farms to ensure that no domestic raw milk crosses state lines?
Just last month, Food and Drug Administration agents conducted a 5 a.m. raid on an Amish milk farm in Pennsylvania.
The alleged crime?
“FDA, working with information from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, was investigating whether the farm was delivering into interstate commerce, selling, or otherwise distributing raw milk in final package form for human consumption,” said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon.
Now, I have to tell you, I would have no second thoughts about drinking raw milk from an Amish milk farm — even if it came from a neighboring state.
But that’s against the law.
However, the same federal government busybodies who raid domestic farms in the U.S. on suspicion of selling across state lines is encouraging the importation of milk from Mexico — where the standards of hygiene and cleanliness are, shall we say, somewhat lower than Amish milk farms.
Just last week, those promoting “free trade” were boasting about the opening of a distribution center in Houston, Texas, for DLM USA Enterprises, a subsidiary of Alpura, a Mexican dairy company — one of three such businesses importing milk into the U.S.
Let me tell you about leche importado.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
GPS Glitch Hit Some Military Systems in January
DENVER (AP) — A software glitch in the military GPS network temporarily left some defense systems unable to lock onto locator signals from satellites in January, but the problem has been fixed, the Air Force said Friday.
The Air Force declined to say how many weapons or other systems were affected, but it said operations were halted in only one program as a precaution. Officials declined to identify the program.
SpaceNews.com reported this month that the Navy interrupted development work on an unmanned jet because of the problem. The website cited an Air Force contract document that was posted online and later removed.
Joe Davidson, a spokesman for the Air Force Global Positioning Wing, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that no civilian GPS functions were affected.
He said up to 10,000 military GPS receivers manufactured by Trimble Advanced and Military Systems could have been affected, but he declined to give a specific number.
It wasn’t clear whether each of those receivers is in a separate piece of equipment or weapon. It also wasn’t clear how many other GPS receivers from other manufacturers are used by the military.
Trimble spokeswoman Lea Ann McNabb said the company’s technical staff worked with the Air Force to fix the problem. She referred all questions to the Air Force.
The GPS system uses a constellation of 24 satellites beaming down signals that receivers can use to pinpoint the receiver’s location. GPS is used in everything from handheld units for hikers and dashboard models for civilian drivers to military aircraft and artillery shells.
The satellites are overseen by Air Force Space Command units at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., and Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.
The glitch occurred when new software was installed in ground control systems on Jan. 11. Some GPS receivers soon experienced trouble locking in on the satellite signals, Davidson said.
The GPS Wing and Trimble identified the problem in less than two weeks and began installing a temporary fix, Davidson said. A permanent fix has been developed and is being distributed, he said.
Trimble received a $900,000, no-bid contract to help identify and fix the problem.
Davidson said the problem was caused when the military altered some message bits in the GPS signal, which affected how the receivers operated. He said the message bits involved are used only by the military.
SpaceNews reported that the Air Force contract document said the Navy halted work on its X-47B unmanned jet because of the software problem. The X-47B is designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers for reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting missions. Its first flight is expected later this year.
The contract document said the delay was costing $1 million a day, but it’s not clear how long it lasted.
SpaceNews said the contract document was posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website on April 30 but was removed by May 3.
The contract document also said the Army stopped using its GPS-guided Excalibur artillery rounds because of the problem. Davidson told the AP the Excalibur did have a problem, but it turned out to be different from the one caused by the software change.
He declined to say what the problem was but said it has been solved.
The Army says Excalibur shells can land to within about 10 yards of a target 14 miles away. They have been used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
How Can RINOs Really Fight Against Kagan?
In a recent posting on my website, Loyal to Liberty, I said that no one should be surprised if Barack Obama seeks to put a radical, pro-abortion, pro- “gay rights” leftist on the Supreme Court. The tragic irony of America’s current crisis lies in the fact that it will be very surprising if the GOP contingent in the U.S. Senate unites to mount a strong stand against her confirmation.
The usual contingent of the Obama faction’s RINO fellow travelers will certainly line up to lend bipartisan credibility to the leftist media claque’s propaganda about what a consensus-building “moderate” she is. But the real problem is that to take a strong stand against Kagan, the GOP must show real commitment to the constitutional principles she rejects and means to overturn.
Kagan espouse the “societal costs” doctrine of rights. (For more on the nature and pernicious effects of this doctrine, read this article at Loyal to Liberty.) She therefore discards the American founders’ vision of a government constrained by respect for the God-ordained requirements of justice. She aims to allow the government to curtail or suppress the rights of the people whenever their exercise of rights interferes with the Obama faction’s consolidation and control of power over all aspects of society’s life.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Interfaith Meeting Rocked by Terror Accusation
Muslim leader unexpectedly confronted with group’s ties to parent of al-Qaida
An American Islamic leader friendly with the White House who leads an interfaith-dialogue movement was unexpectedly confronted at a Connecticut synagogue about her organization’s ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of al-Qaida, Hamas and numerous Islamic groups that aim to establish Islamic law worldwide through terrorism and other means.
Ingrid Mattson, director of the Islamic Society of North America, ISNA, was a featured speaker May 4 at an interfaith event hosted by Congregation Kol Haverim in Glastonbury, Conn., titled “How Religious People of Peace Can Transform Differences and Build Bridges of Understanding.”
Jeffrey Epstein — who as president of the non-profit America’s Truth Forum has researched and hosted conferences on the Islamic terror threat to the U.S — told WND he “felt it best to leave” after the president of the synagogue interrupted his second question, which had elicited noticeable gasps from the mostly Jewish audience of about 100.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic Jew-Hatred Isn’t Just on UK Campuses. America’s Got it Too.
If you spend any time looking into Islamic radicalism, you do sometimes wonder if you can be shocked any more. For me this video at least reminded me that I can be.
It is a video from a recent talk by the American author David Horowitz at University of California San Diego.If any of you thought that it is only the UK that has been stupid enough to allow radical Islamists to thrive on our campuses, think again.
I really do urge you to watch till the end to understand quite why it is so shocking. When Horowitz quotes the leader of Hezbollah saying that all the Jews going to Israel will save Hezbollah going round the globe and hunting them down one by one, you may guess what the girl is going to say.. But I promise your breath will be taken away by the way she says it.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Kagan’s Hero: ‘Most Liberal Activist Judge’ In World
Jurist credited with transforming his nation’s high court into ‘alternate government’
NEW YORK — President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, once called a judge universally regarded as one of the most extreme liberal activist high court justices in history “my judicial hero.”
“He is the judge who has best advanced democracy, human rights, the rule of law and justice,” stated Kagan in September 2006 introductory remarks at a Harvard University award ceremony.
Kagan was referring to Aharon Barak, the retired president of the Supreme Court of Israel, who at the time was receiving the Peter Gruber Foundation 2006 Justice Prize at Harvard.
Barak has been recognized across the political spectrum as one of the most liberal activist judges.
[…]
Continued Rubinstein: “Thus a situation has arisen whereby the Supreme Court may convene and decide on every conceivable issue. … This was a total revolution in the judicial thinking which characterized the Supreme Court of previous generations, and this has given it the reputation of the most activist court in the world, causing both admiration and criticism.” Supreme Court Nominee Kagan Continues Meeting Senators On Capitol Hill
Barak worked tirelessly to place the judicial branch over the executive and legislative, subjecting even the Israel Defense Forces to judicial scrutiny on matters of self-defense.
[…]
Barak insisted that “everything is justicible” and enacted legislation arguing judges “cannot be removed by the legislature but only by other judges.”
That argument prompted Richard Posner, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a respected authority on jurisprudence, to remark, “only in Israel … do judges confer the power of abstract review on themselves, without benefit of a constitutional or legislative provision.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
L.I. Dunkin Donuts, A Terror Money Drop Spot?
Sources Tell CBS 2 HD Feds Pouring Over Surveillance Video From Inside Ronkonkoma Store As Part Of Shahzad Plot
There is a startling development in the botched Times Square bombing.
A Long Island doughnut shop may have been used by a terrorist courier as a cash drop. This as a Shirley, N.Y., man whose house was raided Thursday claimed it wasn’t him.
They use a lot of “dough” at the Ronkonkoma Dunkin’ Donuts, but what federal investigators want to know is if this is where Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad got a different kind of “dough” — the money he used to fund his failed rein of terror.
“It’s crazy. I can’t believe that,” said Mike Kitz of Wading River.
“It kind of is a shock to me,” added Eilias Wallen of Medford.
What’s more important to investigators is identifying the currier who gave Shahzad the money. If the transaction occurred in the donut shop they may have a good shot. It has five surveillance cameras and the owner is cooperating.
The wife of the owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts told CBS 2 HD the manager is copying 30 days worth of surveillance tapes to turn over to authorities.
Sources told CBS 2 HD the highly classified probe is now centered on tracing the money trail from Pakistan to wherever in the world it leads.
Shahzad said he used something called the “Hawala” system to get his money. It’s an underground band of curriers based on family, tribe or other connections in Pakistan. They slip money into the U.S. without banks or authorities knowing about it. To put it another way, it’s the terror version of a money gram.
When agents raided Mohammad Iqbal’s Shirley home Thursday they asked him about Hawala.
“I never heard of that word,” Iqbal said. “They said do you know anybody who deliver money from one person to other person? Do you know anybody who send money like that?”
Iqbal said he’s innocent, has no connection to the terror plot and would like to help find those here giving law abiding Pakistanis a bad name.
“I want to find the bad guy who making all the Pakistanti look bad and who are a threat to our children and threat to us,” Iqbal said.
Iqbal started out saying he wanted to sue the FBI for raiding the home of an innocent man. Now he says he’d settle for an apology.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
New York AG Accused of ‘Bullying’ Private Employer
Demand for ‘cross-dressing rights’ takes ‘bedroom into workplace’
New York’s attorney general has been accused of “bullying” a private employer to acknowledge a “right” by workers to engage in cross-dressing in a move critics say “takes the bedroom into the workplace.”
According to the New York Daily News, an agreement forced by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will require American Eagle Outfitters to allow men to dress as women and women to dress as men if they wish.
The company confirmed that to avoid “further expense and the distraction of a prolonged argument,” it agreed to the compromise. The new policy will also require the company to train workers in how to choose which pronoun to use — apparently “he” or “she” depending on what the person desires.
[…]
H.R. 3017, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009, or ENDA, would make it unlawful for government agencies or businesses with more than 15 employees to refuse to hire or promote anyone based on “gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.”
It’s being promoted by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and others.
The bill makes exceptions for the U.S. military, religious organizations and some businesses with non-profit 501(c) designations, but makes no provisions for business owners’ consciences. A small construction company that wanted to maintain a Christian reputation, for example, could be sued if it refused to hire transvestites.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
St. Cloud School Officials Say Harassment Complaints Not Valid
St. Cloud, Minn. — The St. Cloud school district has found that most of the student harassment complaints filed by a Muslim civil rights group are not valid.
The district investigated eight incidents brought to their attention by the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
School board member Jerry Von Korff said the district found no evidence to support seven out of the eight complaints filed by the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Submitting to International Treaties and the U.N
The U.S. is a sovereign nation with our own laws, priorities and goals. We have no business signing or submitting to anything that the anti American and anti Semitic U.N. wants to control and get us to sign!
Clear back in October, 1945 the U.N. was put together as a group of countries with seemingly high goals to support human rights and fair ball, dealing with economic and security issues internationally. However, over the years the alleged ‘need solving’ spirit of the U.N. has turned into a largely, Islamic controlled, global elitist, anti American body of elitists. They act as an Islamically inspired, communist pimp and they think the U.S. is their stupid whore.
They are most in love and committed to redistribution of wealth, socialism and cradle to grave control. We have seen the international take over plans attempting to suck the blood out of the U.S. with their environmental, global warming, international tax push, Rights of the child push, global control and regulation of guns push and now meddling with States rights and laws.
[…]
Rights of the child
Sen. Boxer is urging along with Hillary, the Obama administration to sign onto the 20 year old U.N. convention on the Rights of a child. This push started in last year. The U.N. has been pressuring the U.S. to sign onto this along with Sen. Boxer. She says it is humiliating that the U.S. and Somalia are the only two left not to sign onto this. If we did sign this, the U.N. and International law would parent your children. It would be illegal to spank and use normally accepted discipline with your children. It would all be about the child’s rights and WANTS, even regarding the dangerous Internet. If you were a family who went to church together and one day your 10 year old declared he wasn’t going. You, as a parent wouldn’t have the right to make him go or have any consequences. Parents rights would be destroyed and completely controlled. The socialist/communist U.N. and this administration would be indoctrinating your child and parents would be the ‘poser’ stand in puppets who would have to submit. This is an ongoing goal of the progressive left and Obama administration.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why is GOP Gov. McDonnell Raising Money for the Post?
Conservative Republican Robert McDonnell is rewarding the media company that did its best to make sure he was not elected governor of Virginia. But he is not doing something as ordinary as granting The Washington Post an interview. Instead, he is scheduled to appear at a for-profit corporate-sponsored “conference” put on by the Post that is designed to help launch one of the paper’s new business publications.
Titled “The Business of the Beltway,” the event is invitation-only and costs $175 per person. The public is not permitted to attend, although they can watch the event on-line and submit email questions. The $175 includes a subscription to a new Post publication called Capital Business, described as the “insiders’ guide” to the Washington business community.
McDonnell’s participation in The Washington Post event is perplexing for several reasons, including that the paper strongly opposed his candidacy and savaged him personally.
[…]
It is not surprising that the Obama Administration would furnish high-level officials to benefit the paper financially. After all, the Post endorsed Obama for president.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Codex Committee on Food Labeling Meets in Quebec
From May 3-7, 2010, the Codex Committee on Food Labelling (CCFL) held its 38th Session in Quebec City, Canada, under the chairmanship of Mr. Paul Mayers. The Canadian government is the host of this particular committee and has provided Mr. Mayers as the chairman for the last several years. The National Health Federation (NHF) has been attending CCFL meetings for even longer and is well-known for being outspoken on several of its agenda items, but especially on the one concerning the disclosure on labels of genetically-modified (GM) food ingredients.
The GM Label Issue
As you may recall, the question of whether or not GM foods should be labeled so that the consumer may know what he or she is buying has been a hot issue at CCFL for many years now. At past meetings, the Western Hemispheric countries (Canada, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina) except Brazil have taken a united stand against the mandatory labeling of GM food products because they have known that consumers, by a large majority, are reluctant to buy GM foods.
So, for years these countries’ delegations at Codex have been opposing GM labeling so they can push their GM-rich crops on unsuspecting consumers. As U.S. delegation head Dr. Barbara Schneeman said several meetings ago, “The consumer is too ignorant to know the difference between GM and non-GM foods.” They are supported by two industry INGOs known as the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and the International Council of Grocery Manufacturers (ICGMA).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Program Aims to Keep Young Somali-Canadians Out of Gangs
The Alberta government is spending $202,000 to keep Somali-Canadian youth in Edmonton away from gangs and drugs, Justice Minister Alison Redford announced Tuesday.
The money goes towards after-school programs and academic support in school.
Another $1.3 million will be spent on integrating immigrants and refugees into the community and $400,000 more towards a mentoring initiative to keep immigrant youth from drug trafficking and gang activity.
“Whenever we talk about safe communities, we’re talking about a whole spectrum of issues that need to be dealt with,” Redford said Tuesday.
“I’ll tell you in the past what we haven’t focused on sufficiently is the piece we are talking about today, which is mentoring, support for kids, support for parents…to make sure that people are feeling connected to the communities they live in and the wider community at large.”
The projects are funded through the Safe Communities Innovation Fund.
More than 23 young Somali-Canadian men have been slain in Alberta in the last five years.
While a few of the victims were not involved in crime, more faced charges or convictions for drugs and weapons. Police believe many were involved in gangs. Many grew up in Ontario but moved to Alberta in recent years.
Task force still needed
Mahamad Accord, president of Edmonton’s Alberta Somali Community Centre, said while the money will benefit the community, a task force is still needed.
Community members have signed a petition calling on the Alberta government to form a task force to find ways to solve the cases and prevent more deaths.
So far, the Alberta government has rejected the idea, believing it would cost too much and take too long to show results.
Accord told CBC News that Tuesday’s announcement doesn’t deal with crime prevention — something the Somali-Canadian community desperately needs.
“I am not diminishing the work my community has built here but what we are looking for is diversion,” Accord said.
“So if they really want to do something for the community they have to look at the bigger picture, which is who is killing the 30 youth and why.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Former UK Treasury Minister Stephen Timms Stabbed
Friday, former UK Treasury Minister and sitting Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed by a woman while attending his first advice session with his constituents since the 6th May general election, said officials.
According to police and Labour party officials, injuries sustained by Timms in the attack are not believed to be life-threatening. The Labour party in a statement said Timms was currently recovering at the Royal London Hospital, and is “in good spirits.”
The incident happened at the Beckton Globe Library in east London when the former Treasury minister was holding a constituency surgery. Police officials said a 21-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with the attack on the lawmaker, but the motive behind the attack is not yet clear.
“He has been taken to a local hospital with non-life- threatening injuries,” the Metropolitan police said in a statement released Friday. “A 21-year-old woman has been arrested and is currently in custody.”
Though the police did not provide any further details about the incident, British news agencies reported that Timms was stabbed twice in the abdomen. The suspect arrested in connection with the attack was reportedly an Asian woman with mental health problems.
54-year-old Stephen Timms, who was U.K. chief secretary to the Treasury under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, is currently the member of Parliament for the constituency of East Ham, which he has represented since May 1997. He was first elected to the British parliament in 1994 as a Labour MP for Newham North East.
Timms was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury until the Conservatives took power earlier in the week after successful power-sharing negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. He had secured a remarkable 70% of the vote polled in his constituency in last week’s general elections, which saw the Labour party losing ground across the country.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
France: Italian Satire Screened at Cannes
Cannes, 13 May (AKI) — A controversial Italian film that satirises prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his government’s response to last year’s deadly earthquake in L’Aquila has received an enthusiastic response at the Cannes Film Festival.
‘Draquila: Italy Trembles’ by the comedian and satirical author Sabina Guzzanti, is being screened out of competition at the 63rd festival which opened on Wednesday.
A screening of the mock-documentary on Thursday generated bursts of applause and laughter.
Italy’s minister of culture, Sandro Bondi last week announced plans to boycott the festival after the documentary he termed “propaganda” was included in the programme.
Bondi expressed his regret that “a propaganda film, ‘Draquila’, which insults the truth and the entire Italian population”, had been selected at the festival.
“I was intending to avoid this issue, but I am ashamed at Bondi’s absence at the festival and for the umpteenth time our country has made a terrible impression abroad thanks to the conduct of this government,” Guzzanti said at the festival.
The film has had a tepid response in Italy where it was released on 7 May and has had box office receipts of 263,000 euros.
In ‘Draquila’ Guzzanti impersonates Berlusconi and attacks politicians who she claims have sought to capitalise on reconstruction projects in the central town of L’Aquila.
A total of 308 people were killed in the earthquake which struck on 6 April and more than 50,000 were left homeless. More than half of those forced from their homes are still living in hotels on the Adriatic coast or staying with friends and relatives.
The historic centre of L’Aquila remains closed.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Blow to Islamic Conference as Leading Muslims Pull Out
The second German Islamic Conference — a key meeting to improve Muslim integration — is set for a shaky start Monday after one of the main Muslim associations abruptly announced this week it was pulling out.
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD) made its surprise announcement Wednesday after several discussions with the Interior Ministry.
“In all of our contacts, we are simply coming up against a brick wall,” said chairman Ayyub Axel Köhler.
The German Islamic Conference between the federal government and Muslim groups is intended to set policies about Islam in Germany for the next three years, with an emphasis on improving religious and social integration of the country’s sizeable Muslim population.
Köhler had hailed the first conference, held in 2006, under then Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a great success.
Köhler stressed the council had come to its difficult decision only after weeks of consideration. But the council was upset that half the 2,500 Mosque-centred communities were not going to be represented at the conference and that the ministry had “gone over the heads of Muslims,” in deciding the themes and constitution of the conference, he said.
The council felt it was “a conference decreed by the federal government” that would be neither binding nor authoritative and therefore amounted to a “debating club.”
The key issues for Muslims were discrimination and Islamophobia.
“We are distressed that there is fear in the community leveled against us. All of this must be central to the political agenda, and that includes hostility to Islam. But all that was ever said to us was: ‘Yes, yes, that will be brought up, we’ll put it under the theme of extremism.’“
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière had also rebuffed the central council’s demand for greater recognition as an official religious community.
“They didn’t want to accommodate us at all. An uneasy partner is now gone,” Köhler said.
But de Maizière has stressed he wanted the conference to focus on “practical questions about how the mainstream community and Muslims live together.”
“The withdrawal of the ZMD is regrettable,” he said, while adding the conference would still be well-attended and would reach the goals that had been set.
However Greens parliamentary leader Volker Beck accused de Maizière of having botched the conference.
“The new meeting of the Islamic conference has failed before it has begun,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Terrorist Attacks in Thessaloniki and Athens
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MAY 14 A bomb exploded today in the Hall of Justice in Thessaloniki, the day after the bomb attack on the Korydallos prison in Athens. Investigators haven’t ruled out a link between the two terrorist attacks, which were announced by an anonymous call to television network Alter and newspaper Eleftherotypia. One employee suffered a foot injury in today’s attack and has been taken to hospital. The bomb had been planted in the bathrooms on the lower floors of the large buildings, situated in the commercial centre of Greece’s second-largest city. The police suspect that both attacks, for which nobody has claimed responsibility, could represent a message of support to the leaders of Revolutionary Struggle (EA), the most important armed group in Greece. The leaders were arrested last month and are held in the high-security prison of Korydallos, in front of which yesterday’s bomb exploded in which a woman was mildly injured. According to the investigators, the attacks may be the work of EA or of the related group Conspiracy of cells of fire, which is also active in Thessaloniki. After the recent arrest of 6 EA members and the find of the group’s arsenal of weapons and explosives, Greek anti-terrorism forces seemed to believe that the revolutionary group, which was responsible for the missile attack on the American embassy in Athens in 2007, had been as good as dismantled.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Terrorism; Bomb Attack Against Athens Prison
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MAY 14 — A high-potential time-bomb exploded last night near the maximum security prison of Korydallos, in Athens, causing damage but no victims, and it cannot be discounted that it may be the work of the armed organisation. The Revolutionary Fight. According to unconfirmed sources, two people, including a woman, were slightly injured by flying glass, following the explosion, in one of the surrounding buildings. The explosion damaged dozens of shops and homes, especially shattering windows and displays, within four blocks. As reported by a police official, who defined the device “probably the biggest to have exploded during the past few years”. The blast occurred shortly after 10:00 p.m. local time (09:00 p.m. Italian time) after a telephone call to the daily Eleftherotypia and to the TV network Alter. The anonymous caller issued a warning that a device would explode near the prison 30 minutes later. Police immediately converged on the area, but did not have time to evacuate it before the blast occurred and was heard in most of the city. The explosive, say police sources, was contained in a rubbish bin alongside one of the outside prison walls. The area has been completely cordoned off by police. Observers do not exclude, considering the force of the explosion and the attack’s modality, that it may have been an attack carried out by the major Greek armed organisation, The Revolutionary Fight, or by flanking groups. In fact, some leaders of The Revolutionary Fight, arrested over the past months, are detained in Korydallos. The arrest of several individuals belonging to The Revolutionary Fight and the discovery of the insurrectionalist group’s arsenal had led to the belief that the group had effectively been dismantled. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Ex-Minister Avoids Corruption Inquiry
Rome, 13 May (AKI) — Italy’s former industry minister Claudio Scajola has refused to be questioned on Friday by prosecutors who are probing hundreds of millions of euros in public works kickbacks. His lawyers said Scajola should only appear before a special court for ministers and was not a formal suspect although he had been namedin the inquiry.
“For many days now, the national press has been reporting matters as if my client were a formal suspect, In my opinion, this is technically incorrect. Moreover, should it be necessary, minister Scajola should only have to appear before a Tribunal of Ministers,” said his lawyer Giorgio Perroni.
Prosecutors have named Scajola in their inquiry after they discovered evidence that he had purchased a luxury flat allegedly with cash from slush funds used to pay kickbacks to officials.
Scajola has denied any wrongdoing but resigned from his cabinet position in early May. He said he wanted to clear his name.
Prosecutors last week widened their corruption investigation into public works corruption to include 15 apartments.
These include a 1.5 million euro flat Scajola bought for his daughter near the Colosseum in Rome in 2004.
More than half the purchase price of the Rome apartment was allegedly paid by Angelo Zampolini, an architect who is being investigated for public works corruption.
Zampolini worked for businessman Diego Anemone who was among four people arrested in February in connection with alleged graft in the allocation of construction contracts for last July’s Group of Eight summit that totalled 327 million euros.
Anti-graft prosecutors are also probing other public works projects including reconstruction projects in the central Italian city of L’Aquila and the surrounding area after the devastating earthquake in April 2009.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Leaked List of Names Sparks Furore
More than 350 names found in graft suspect’s computer
(ANSA) — Rome, May 13 — Polemics flared on Thursday over a leaked list of politicians, top civil servants, police officials and entertainment personalities found in the computer of a Rome constructor involved in a a number of graft probes over public tenders.
According to media reports, investigators suspect that Diego Anemone’s construction firm may have performed work free of charge in the homes of some 350 people — perhaps as many as 412, according to some reports.
Many of those cited in the reports have already denied wrongdoing or said they have proof of payment for the services performed by Anemone’s company in their homes.
The company reportedly also worked for a number of ministries, police and army barracks and at Palazzo Chigi, Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s office. The eight-page-long list was found by prosecutors in Anemone’s computer during a graft probe connected to the construction of public venues for the 2009 world swimming championships in Rome.
Anemone is at the centre of other probes for construction work done at state venues, including the original site of last year’s Group of Eight summit in Sardinia and a police academy in Florence.
News of the probes first broke in February when prosecutors ordered the arrest of the head of the state public works office, Angelo Balducci, 54; the Tuscany region’s public works contractor Fabio De Santis, 61; and state official Mauro Della Giovampaola, 44.
Anemone was also arrested but he and Della Giovanpaola were released from preventive custody on Sunday.
He claims his company always “worked honestly”. The businessman has also been linked to former industry minister Claudio Scajola, who was forced to resign last week amid reports Anemone partly paid for the purchase of his Rome apartment in 2004.
Scajola denies wrongdoing and says he never dealt with Anemone but only with Angelo Zampolini, an architect who worked for the construction company, renovated the former minister’s flat near the Colosseum. Anemone is also linked to Civil Protection Chief Guido Bertolaso, whom prosecutors suspect may have taken bribes and struck sex-for-favours arrangements after the businessman won a tender for the restructuring of the original venue of the G8 in the Sardinian island of La Maddalena.
Bertolaso, who has offered to step down, said at a news conference last week he had “never lied to Italians” and had “a clear conscience”.
Among those whose names featured in the list published Thursday are Nicola Mancino, vice-president of the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM) who promptly denied wrongdoing; the Deputy General Manager of state broadcaster RAI Giancarlo Leone; intelligence chief Gianni De Gennaro; film director Pupi Avati; tax police general Francesco Pittorru; and former minister Pietro Lunardi.
The opposition voiced concern the latest reports indicated that the country was facing a revival of the 1990s Tangentopoli scandals which swept away the once dominant Christian Democrat and Socialist parties. Within two years of the start of Tangentopoli in 2002, parliament received requests for immunyty to be lifted on 619 parliamentarians, of whom 321 were investigated.
Eight ex-premiers and some 5,000 businessmen and politicians were charged. To date, there have been 1,233 convictions but none of those convicted is still in jail.
“We absolutely must get to the bottom of this because it’s obvious it’s just not a sum of unrelated cases but a mechanism that stems from a political will to broaden (public) tenders to include reserved and non-tendered bids in a distorted application of European Union directives,” said opposition leader Pier Luigi Bersani.
Berlusconi reportedly told businessmen during a meeting late Wednesday he did not believe the probes would lead to anything similar to Tangentopoli but pledged to oust anyone found guilty from the government and from his People of Freedom (PdL) party.
The premier said the probes would not damage the government in any way.
Coalition ally, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, told reporters that as long as he, his party and Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti “were around” there would be “no risk for the government; they’re not going to topple it”.
The PdL’s House Whip, Fabrizio Cicchitto, complained that prosecutors should not have allowed the list to be leaked, saying investigations should have been completed before any names of people who may be cleared of any misdoing were “dished up”.
He said the papers had published what amounted to “a proscription list” and that “any one on it will end up being skewered by the media”.
Perugia prosecutors, who were tasked with probing the G8 case because a Rome magistrate was suspected of involvement, said they had no knowledge of the list.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Arrests Follow Employee Abuse
Business reaped millions by selling fake medical device
(ANSA) — Florence, May 13 — Police have arrested five people accused of abusing employees and tricking customers into paying thousands of euros for cheap vacuum cleaners sold as anti-allergen equipment, the Italian media reported Tuesday. The four men and one woman have been charged with conspiracy to commit tax fraud and business fraud, while 11 other individuals are still under investigation.
Three properties worth 1.5 million euros have also been seized in connection with the investigation. All had links to Italcarone, a Tuscan company that allegedly imported 350-euro vacuum cleaners from the United States that were then sold to Italian customers for around ten times that price. The appliances were branded as “electro-medical anti-allergen equipment”, which customers were told would help treat respiratory disease and even cure asthma.
In the five years since it was created, the company is estimated to have sold over a million appliances, generating annual under-the-counter revenue of around five million euros. Although the charges are fraud related, it was chiefly the business’s appalling treatment of staff that helped bring the scam to light, investigators said. Unskilled staff in desperate need of money were recruited through newspaper advertisements and then trained either as telephone operators or as door-to-door salesmen.
WORKERS WERE WHIPPED WHEN THEY FAILED TO MEET TARGETS.
Those working in the call centre were set impossible targets, for which they were promised non-existent trips to exotic locations.
They were expected to work up to 14 hours a day, with half an hour for lunch and timed bathroom breaks, and subjected to continual psychological and physical abuse, ex-employees claimed. They said the company routinely used public humiliation in front of co-workers to keep employees in line. Some were even whipped on their legs when they failed to meet targets.
Workers were ‘boosted’ by daily blasts of the national anthem and by motivational talks.
The door-to-door salesmen were encouraged to attempt their first demonstration to a relative or close friend — who would often buy the appliance out of support. However, the salesmen were then fired shortly afterwards without being paid, on the basis they had failed to meet the impossible quotas set.
“The employees were subjected to gruelling and frequently humiliating work conditions,” investigators commented.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ‘Traditional Knowledge’ Centre Set Up Near Florence
Farming, building, cloth-making at UNESCO-sponsored institute
(ANSA) — Florence, May 12 — An institute to preserve the world’s traditional farming, building, cloth-making and other artisanal techniques has been set up at a small town outside Florence.
The International Traditional Knowledge Institute (ITKI) at Bagno a Ripoli east of the Tuscan capital is the brainchild of Pietro Laureano, a consultant for the United Nations heritage organisation UNESCO.
Unveiling the centre Wednesday, Laureano said it aimed to help UNESCO “draw up a list of the traditional knowledge to safeguard”.
Laureano, an anthropologist and architect who has worked on traditional ways of collecting and using water at Sahara oases, Ethiopia and Babylon, said age-old techniques should be preserved and could “provide lessons for today”.
As well as water management, he cited terrace farming and other environmentally friendly methods that were “ever more relevant in an age of global warming”.
“There are tens of millions of traditional techniques across the planet whose variety corresponds to environmental and cultural differences”.
“The data bank we plan to set up will be put at the disposal of all the public administrations in the world”.
One of ITKI’s first projects is to restore a disused textile workshop on the banks of Arno River in Florence, dating back to the 13th century.
Its energy saving looms could be replicated in other countries, Laureano said.
As well as collating traditional know-how that still has value in protecting the environment, ITKI will also safeguard song, folklore and other aspects of indigenous culture that might have practical as well as cultural significance.
“This would also be a way of making sure that multinationals don’t slap a patent on them,” he said.
On a video uplink from Paris, UNESCO Deputy Director-General Francesco Bandarini said: “The birth of ITKI is good news for Florence, and good news for UNESCO too”.
UNESCO and a number of local foundations are providing seed money for the institute.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Regions Must Pay Health Sector Deficits
Local taxes need to be raised cover budget overruns, govt says
(ANSA) — Rome, May 13 — Italian regions which run up deficits in their health budgets will be obliged to raise local taxes, the government said on Thursday.
The announcement was made at the office of Premier Silvio Berlusconi to the governors of Lazio, Campania and Calabria and representatives from the regions of Molise, Abruzzo and Sicily. Campania Governor Stefano Caldoro confirmed after the meeting that “the government told us that regions with health sector deficits would have to raise their taxes to cover these deficits”.
The government was also said to have told the regions of Campania, Lazio, Molise and Calabria that they could not use their special development funds (FAS) to pay for their health budget overruns.
“This is because these four regions did not provide guarantees that a monitoring system would be set up to ensure these funds were used to improve the health care system,” Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio explained.
“Without an effective monitoring system the FAS would be no different than an ATM machine. FAS funds cannot be used to cover deficits,” he added.
Fazio recognised that the deficits in question were run up by previous regional administrations. All the regions are now, like the central government, run by the center right whereas Lazio, Campania and Calabria were governed by the center left until last March.
“They want us to raise taxes! This is absurd, unjust and incomprehensible!,” Molise Governor Michele Iorio complained after the meeting with the government.
Lazio’s new Governor Renata Polverini said “I told the government how we had advanced funds of 1.4 billion euros, which should have come from the economy ministry, to revamp our hospital network. We did this taking out bank loans on which we are paying almost 300 euros a day in interest and now would like to have the money back”.
“And we are still waiting for another 800 million euros from a special guarantee fund allocated to us as well as other contributions. In order to resolve this situation we are more than ready to work with the ministries for the economy and health,” she added. According to the governor of Abruzzo, Gianni Chiodi, until recently the government had authorised regions to use FAS funds compensate for their budget gaps.
He added that this was not the case in his region where raising taxes would not be necessary.
All the regions summoned to the premie’s office are governed by center-right, like the central government,
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Squatters Take Over Ex-Minister’s Colosseum Flat
‘Take from rich scoundrels’, supporter says
(ANSA) — Rome, May 13 — Leftist youths campaigning to free up housing in Rome on Thursday moved into a flat overlooking the Colosseum vacated last week by a minister who quit when he was unable to explain who paid for it.
Industry Minister Claudio Scajola was forced to resign after claiming not to know who put up 900,000 euros of the 1.5 million euros paid for the flat.
He denied it was a Rome businessman, Diego Anemone, embroiled in a string of graft probes.
Several dozen members of a leftist militant squat called Pack Your Bags moved into the minister’s former home.
Their stunt was praised by a leftwing member of Rome’s city council, Andrea Alzetta of the Rainbow-Left group, who said: “Here’s the solution to (Rome)’s housing emergency, taking from rich scoundrels and giving to the poor”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
New UK Cabinet Criticized for Lack of Diversity
Prime Minister David Cameron’s three-day-old administration was criticized by activists, the press and even his new coalition partners Friday for picking an almost entirely white, male and upper-class Cabinet despite pledging that his Conservative party would no longer be an old boys club.
Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, both grew up in wealthy families and attended elite schools. The 23-member Cabinet they selected after forging a coalition government this week includes Britain’s first female Muslim to sit at Cabinet, but only three other women. Only two run government departments, the mark of influence and power.
Twenty-two Cabinet members are white, and at least 16 went to top universities Oxford or Cambridge.
Cameron has been trying to detoxify the image of the Conservative party as a small club of aristocrats hostile to minorities and indifferent to the poor. He’s been including more minority candidates and pledged in his campaign that a third of senior government jobs would go to women.
The participation of the left-leaning Lib Dems also raised expectations of more diversity, now dashed.
“Cabinet jobs for well-heeled school chums,” the Daily Mirror tabloid scoffed. “A huge step backward,” wrote gender rights activists in a letter to The Times. “Awash with buddies, backslapping and in-jokes,” said a columnist for The Guardian newspaper.
Radio shows were inundated by complaints about the lack of women and minorities in the upper echelons of power.
“When you look at the negotiating teams, they were male and pale,” Liberal Democrat lawmaker Lynne Featherstone told the BBC, referring to senior leaders from both parties who cobbled together the power-sharing deal. “We must do better.”
Other European nations have greater gender equity at the top. About half of Norway and Sweden’s Cabinets consist of women, and Germany has six women in its current 16-member Cabinet. Six of Austria’s 13 top ministers are female. In Switzerland, women make up less than a third of the parliament, but within Cabinet there are three women out of seven members.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had six women in his 2005 Cabinet. Gordon Brown, who resigned this week, had five in his team.
“The numbers (of women in government) have certainly gone down, and so has the significance of the posts they hold,” said Margaret Beckett, who served as foreign secretary under Blair. “(Cameron’s) rhetoric has been that we need to bring more women into the administration, but his decisions have not matched that.”
Eight percent of Britain’s population consists of ethnic minorities, with Indians being the largest group followed by Pakistanis.
Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit at Cabinet, has not been given a defined policy area.
Theresa May, the most senior female figure in the Conservative Party and the new Home Secretary, will also serve as minister for equalities.
Her appointment was questioned by some gay rights activists. Although praised as a Conservative modernizer, May voted against equalizing the age of sexual consent for gays and heterosexuals in 1998, and in 2002 she voted against letting gay couples adopt children. May did, however, vote in favor of civil partnerships.
Analysts say Cameron’s efforts to increase diversity in the party’s upper ranks by recruiting women candidates — mockingly dubbed “Cameron’s cuties” by the press — didn’t work because the new recruits don’t yet have enough experience.
“Cameron — and Clegg — were acutely aware they have very few women on which they could credibly draw,” said Colin Hay, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield. “The politics of the past was gender discriminatory … the irony, in a way, is that the Cabinet remains a sort of last bastion of that old order.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Judge Garzon Suspended From Office
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 14 — The Superior Council of Judicial Power (CSPJ) has today decided to suspend from office the Audiencia Nacional magistrate, Baltazar Garzon, according to judicial sources quoted on the website of El Pais. The suspension had become obligatory, after trial proceedings were requested against Garzon by the Supreme Court Judge, Luciano Varela, for charges of abuse of position during the opening of an investigation into crimes committed under Franco. The decision was announced to the media by the CSPJ spokesman, Gabriela Bravo. The chairman of the magistrates’ self-governing organ, Carlos Divar, announced that a permanent commission had been called in the afternoon to examine reports that arrived at the CSM today on the possible temporary transfer of Garzon to the International Penal Court, and to decide whether or not the suspension is legally compatible with the judge’s possible authorisation to leave for the AJA. Garzon was informed of the CSPJ’s decision over the telephone by the CSM secretary, while the questioning of a defendant in a corruption case known as the ‘Pretoria case’ was ongoing in the preliminary section of the Audienca Nacional, which he was chairing. The judge immediately suspended the questioning and abstained from taking any further judicial action. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Garzon Appeals While His Suspension is Discussed
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 14 — The counsel for the defence of Baltazar Garzon has made a final attempt to avoid the magistrate’s suspension, which will be discussed in today’s special meeting of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial, Spain’s Governing council of the judiciary. Garzon’s lawyer Gonzalo Martines-Fresneda, has appealed to the Supreme Court, in which he asks not to prosecute the magistrate and to end the hearings of the trial, in which Garzon is charged with alleged abuse of office for opening an investigation into crimes committed in the Francoist period. Garzon’s defence claims that the committal for trial issued two days ago by Luciano Varela, of the Supreme Court, is annulled, since it violates basic procedures and the rights of the defending party. According to the counsel for the defence of Garzon, “unjustified rashness” of the committal for trial, without defining “the conclusion of the preliminary stage, has caused a situation of procedural injustice”. The magistrate could be suspended for up to 20 years, which would effectively end his career.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Toledo Wants to be European Cultural Capital in 2014
(ANSAmed) — TOLEDO (SPAIN), MAY 14 — Domenikos Theotokopoulos, also called El Greco, the late-Renaissance painter known as one of the founders of the Spanish School of painting and among Europe’s most eminent artists, was criticised in his time. A pupil of Titian in Venice, he came to Rome after a study tour through Italy. He was first welcomed and then driven out by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. At the age of 36 he decided to emigrate to Spain, possibly to work for Philip II, to work on the decoration of the El Escorial monastery, from which he was excluded however. According to historian and El Greco expert Fernando Marias, his presence in Toledo, the city in Castile-La Mancha where he stayed until his death in 1614, is documented since 1577, when he was asked to work on the Cathedral and Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, where he made the famous ‘El Expolio’. This was the start of a partnership which led the artist to a “complete symbiosis with the city”. And now the city has dedicated the ‘El Greco 2014’ Foundation to the artist, created — as the Foundation’s chairman Gregorio Maraon explained ANSAmed — “to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of his death and to promote Toledo in that year as capital of European culture, what it was at the time of El Greco”. The Foundation has been officially presented in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo, under the dome that was designed by the son of the Greek painter, Jorge Manuel, and in the presence of 16 of El Greco’s works dedicated to the apostles, dominated by the majestic painting El Expolio (The Disrobing of Christ). But the initiative also wants to promote cultural tourism in the region, a priority according to the president of the Council of Castile, José Maria Barreda. The mayor of Toledo, Emiliano Garcia-Page, supplied the numbers: when in 1909, the time of the rediscovery of El Greco, the marquis of Vega Inclan founded a museum for the painter in Toledo, the city registered a thousand tourists. In 1925 this number had increased to 100,000 and in 2006 198,000 people visited the museum alone. Culture, he added, “is our main product”. The initiative, “intended to last”, will also expand to other artistic circles. Apart from the Prado museum, the future art director of the Real Theatre, Gerard Mortier, is also involved in the project, as chief of the Foundation’s artistic programme, as well as Marias, curator of a large exposition planned for the four hundredth anniversary of the death of El Greco. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Damaged’ Man Pleads Guilty to Terror Crimes
Sentence delayed for psychiatric reports
A man who posed as the leader of a British offshoot of al Qaida and called for the deaths of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair pleaded guilty yesterday to a string of terrorist offences.
Ishaq Kanmi, 23, of Blackburn, Lancashire, posted a message on a jihadi website which declared the prime minister and his predecessor would be sought by “martyrdom seekers” if his demands were not met.
Pretending to be Umar Rabie — the head of “al Qaida in Britain” — he issued a two-month deadline in January 2008 calling for withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, together with the release of Moslem captives from prison.
Kanmi was arrested at Manchester Airport as he waited to board a flight to Finland in August 2008.
He had three electronic storage devices in his suitcase and was carrying a mobile phone, all of which contained terror-related information.
It was reported that Kanmi was travelling to Helsinki with Abbas Iqbal, 24, one of two brothers who filmed al Qaida-style propaganda in a park in broad daylight and dubbed themselves “The Blackburn Resistance”.
Iqbal was sentenced to three years in jail two months ago.
Appearing at Manchester Crown Court yesterday, Kanmi, of Cromwell Street, pleaded guilty to professing to belong to al Qaida and inviting support for the terror group.
He denied two counts of soliciting to murder Mr Brown and Mr Blair.
Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, said inviting support for a “murderous organisation” such as al Qaida was similar to soliciting to murder. Joel Bennathan QC, defending Kanmi, said it would be argued that his client was “reckless rather than intentional” in some of his actions.
aborted
He said: “We will say this is a very young, damaged man who is a million miles away from Abu Hamza.”
During an aborted trial last year, Mr Edis said Kanmi admitted to making two postings regarding Mr Brown and Mr Blair but said it was a joke and he never thought anyone would take him seriously.
Mr Edis said Kanmi began using the name Umar Rabie on a US chat forum in May 2007. He also created two other online identities, Umar Rabie’s Bro and Lover of Islam.
While messaging as Umar Rabie’s Bro he pretended he had fought Americans in Iraq. Analysis of his messages showed that many were sent from his hometown library.
Sentencing will take place at a later date after psychiatric reports are prepared.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: English is a Second Language for 1 in 6 Primary School Children
One in six primary school children does not speak English as a first language — twice as many as a decade ago.
The numbers who normally speak English as a foreign language topped half a million for the first time — putting teachers under ‘significant’ pressure, a teaching union warned.
Across all schools, nearly one million youngsters aged four to 18 — around one in seven — are non-native speakers.
The figures triggered warnings that schools are being put under increasing strain as they battle to accommodate a wide range of languages spoken by pupils.
In parts of London, English is not the first language for more than three-quarters of primary pupils.
A study by Reading council found this year that pupils in the town speak 127 different languages between them.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: From Milton Keynes to the Babel of Britain: The Town With 100 Mother Tongues Sees 15-Fold Rise in Number of Interpreters
It could be the town that speaks the most languages in the country.
In Milton Keynes, the local council has to provide translations for at least 100 different tongues, including obscure West African and Indian dialects.
Critics say the scale of the language service the Buckinghamshire new town, is a graphic demonstration of the impact of immigration on life in towns and cities across the UK.
They want the growth of translation services to be curbed to save public money and argue that officials should be providing less help to those who decline to learn English.
The Milton Keynes Community Language Service, run by the town’s council, has seen the number of interpreters it uses multiply 15-fold over the past decade, officials said yesterday. It has 300 under contract.
While ten years ago it was thought enough to provide interpreters for speakers of 12 languages, there are now 105 available, including related services such as sign language for the deaf and braille.
Less common languages and dialects on offer include Twi, the second largest language in Ghana; Teluga, spoken in India; and Yoruba, used in Nigeria.
A further 20 interpreters are being recruited and the centre plans to add Pashto, an Afghan language, by the end of the year.
The centre provides a 24-hour service — that is often free — to immigrants helping them understand housing, health, police and legal matters in Milton Keynes and the neighbouring towns of Luton, Bedford and Northampton.
All have seen large-scale immigration in recent years.
Most local authority translation services are a heavy burden on the taxpayer.
The Local Government Association says they are one of four key extra costs faced by local government because of high immigration.
The Metropolitan Police estimates its interpretation service costs £20million a year.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘The sad fact is many council translators end up dealing with people who have lived here for years without learning English.
‘It’s ridiculous that people are claiming benefits for years but can’t even fill in a form about themselves in our national language.’
A spokesman for Milton Keynes council said the centre was ‘cost neutral’ because it charges some customers — and other costs are billed to different public services such as the NHS.
Home Secretary Theresa May has yet to put a figure on the coalition government’s promised cap on non-EU immigration but the Home Office said it would be cut to levels last seen in the 90s.
Languages spoken in Milton Keynes
1. Afrikaans — spoken in South Africa
2. Albanian
3. Amharic — spoken in Ethiopia and Etritrea
4. Arabic
5. Ashanti — spoken in Ghana
6. Ateso — a language of the Iteso ethnic group in Uganda and Kenya
7. Bajuni — used in East Africa
8. Bambara — used in Mali
9. Bemba — spoken in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo
10. Bengali — spoken in Bangladesh and India
11. Bengali (Sylheti) — used in Bangladesh
12. Berber — spoken in North Africa
13. Braille transcriptions
14. British Sign Language
15. Bosnian
16. Bulgarian
17. Cebuano — used in the Philippines
18. Chinese Cantonese
19. Chinese Mandarin
20. Chinese Hakka. Fukien
21. Chiu Chau — another Chinese language
22. Croatian
23. Czech
24. Danish
25. Dari — spoken in Afghanistan
26. Dutch
27. Dutch (Flemish)
28. English
29. Ethiopian Ewe
30. Fanti — from Ghana
31. Farsi — spoken in Iran
32. Filipino (Tagalog) — spoken in the Philippines
33. Finnis
34. Flemish
35. French
36. French Creole — used in former French colonies such as Guadelope and Haiti
37. Fula — spoken in West Africa
38. Garre — spoken in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia
39. Georgian
40. German
41. Greek
42. Gujrati — used in India and Pakistan
43. Hindi
44. Hungarian
45. Ilonggo — also from the Philippines
46. Indonesian
47. Italian
48. Japanese
49. Kabyle — spoken in Algeria
50. Kachi — used in Pakistan
51. Kikuyu — spoken in Kenya
52. Kiswahili — spoken across East Africa
53. Korean
54.Kosovan
55. Kurdish — spoken in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria
56. Kurdish Sorani/Bodhani/Lori — different Kurdish dialects
57. Latvian
58. Lingala — spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo
59. Lithuanian
60. Lugandan — used in Uganda
61. Lugweri — also spoken in Uganda
62. Macedonian
63. Maldavian — spoken in the Maldives
64. Malay
65. Malinke — used in West Africa
66. Mirpuri — used in Pakistan
67. Moldovan
68. Mongolian
69. Ndebele — spoken in Zimbabwe
70. Oromia — used in Ethiopia
71. Pahari — spoken across the Himalayan region
72. Pathwari — spoken in India
73. Persian (Farsi) — spoken in Iran
74.Polish
75. Portuguese
76. Pothohari — used in Pakistan
77. Punjabi (Mirpuri) — used in India and Pakistan
78. Punjabi (Gurumurkhi) — a variant of Punjabi
79. Pushtu — spoken in Afghanistan
80. Romanian
81. Russian
82. Saghawa — spoken in Sudan and Chad
83. Serbian
84. Serbo-Croatian
85. Shona — spoken in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe
86. Singalese — used in Sri Lanka
87. Slovak
88. Somalian
89. Spanish
90. Swahili — spoken East Africa
91. Swedish
92. Tamil — spoken in Sri Lanka
93. Teluga — used in India
94. Thai
95. Tigrinya — spoken in Ethiopia
96. Tshiluba — from the Democratic Republic of Congo
97. Tswana — spoken in Botswana
98. Turkish
99. Twi — spoken in Ghana
100. Ugandan
101. Ukranian
102. Urdu — used in Pakistan
103. Vietnamese
104. Yoruba — spoken in West Africa
105. Shona (Spoken in Zimbabwe)
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Labour MP Stephen Timms Stabbed ‘By Woman’ As He Held Constituency Surgery
A former minister was stabbed twice in the stomach by a knife-wielding woman today as he held a surgery for constituents.
Stephen Timms was attacked by the 21-year-old, who appeared to be wearing Muslim dress, at his regular Friday afternoon surgery in his East London constituency.
She lunged at him and stabbed him twice before being wrestled away by a security guard and arrested.
An aide to Mr Timms was hailed a hero after it was revealed he wrestled the knife out of the hands of the female attacker.
Andrew Bazeley, 22, bravely disarmed the woman who had made an appointment to see Mr Timms at his constituency surgery, witnesses said.
Mr Bazeley was left covered in blood after he grabbed the knife and restrained the woman until a security guard arrived.
Mr Timms, 54, was being treated in hospital tonight and said to be in a stable condition.
Eye-witnesses screamed in terror as they watched the woman stab him in the abdomen.
One person who arrived moments after Mr Timms was attacked, said she saw blood on his shirt and an Asian woman being restrained by security guards.
Police arrested the attacker and the MP — one of the tallest politicians in Parliament — was taken to the Royal London Hospital.
The senior Labour MP, one of the longest surviving and least controversial members of the former Labour Government, was said tonight to be in ‘good spirits’.
Sagal Ahmed,16, a student at Kingsford Community School, was in the community centre in Beckton when the stabbing happened.
‘We just heard this big commotion so we ran in to the room,’ she said.
‘The security guard had grabbed this Asian woman. She was wearing a long black outfit like what Muslims wear and an orangey headscarf. I think she was a Muslim.
‘She wasn’t saying anything. They were just grabbing her to keep her still. She was really shaking.
‘The Muslim woman seem shocked and distressed. It was the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen.
‘Then we saw the man (Stephen Timms) getting put in another room. We saw the blood on his shirt but I couldn’t tell where he’d been stabbed. They were dragging him.
‘He was conscious. He looked shocked and he was pale.’
Mr Timms, the MP for East Ham, was meeting constituents at the Beckton Globe local centre his first surgery since the General Election.
Sir Robin Wales, the elected Mayor of Newham, said: ‘My understanding is there was an appointment made for the woman.
‘At the beginning of the interview she stabbed him. The security guard came in and disarmed her and held her until the police arrived.
‘He was definitely stabbed with a knife. It was twice near the abdomen and I believe he is being kept in hospital overnight for an exploratory operation.’
Sir Robin, who has known Mr Timms for more than 20 years, said he spoke to the MP tonight.
‘I think he was handling it very well,’ he said.
Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman expressed her concern saying: ‘One of the great strengths of the British political system is the every day accessibility of MPs to their constituents but we can’t have a situation where MPs are at risk.’
Shahid Mursaleen, spokesman for the Newham-based moderate Muslim organisation Minhaj-ul-Quran UK, said: ‘We are shocked and saddened to hear that Stephen Timms MP has been stabbed.
‘Mr Timms has always been close to his constituency and a friend of Muslims living in east London. He has been a good friend of Minhaj-ul-Quran.
‘We wish him well and his recovery to be soon and hope that he can resume his position as MP of East Ham soon.’
But the attack on the former Treasury minister raised new questions about security surrounding politicians.
Nine years ago Liberal Democrat MP Nigel Jones was seriously injured and his assistant murdered by a man wielding a samurai sword while he conducted a surgery at his Cheltenham constituency.
Cabinet ministers and former ministers, particularly those who served in departments such as the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office, have security protection but the majority of MPs do not.
Lib Dem MP Nigel Jones, now Lord Jones, was wounded and his aide, Andrew Pennington, was stabbed to death in the frenzied sword attack.
He said tonight: ‘I have always wanted MPs to be accessible to their constituents because they are the people who put us in the House of Commons.
‘But these kind of events make you wonder what kind of security measures need to be put in place.’
Several MPs sent Mr Timms their best wishes via micro-blogging site Twitter.
Labour’s Tom Harris (Glasgow South) said: ‘Awful news, Stephen. Wishing you a very speedy recovery.’
Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, said: ‘Awful news about Stephen Timms, thank goodness not life threatening. Stephen is one of politics’ thoroughly nice guys, a real gentleman.’
Newly-elected Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde Jonathan Reynolds said: ‘Appalled to hear Stephen Timms has been stabbed at his parliamentary surgery.’
Mr Timms, who married Hui-Leng Lim, 56, in 1986, has the safest Labour seat in the country and increased his majority in last week’s election.
The MP’s personal popularity in his constituency is reflected by the fact that he secured a 7.7 per cent swing from the Conservatives in last week’s election, when Labour was generally losing ground across the country.
He won a remarkable 70.4 per cent of the vote and his 27,826 majority is the largest in the new House of Commons.
He describes himself as a Christian Socialist and is Labour’s vice-chairman for faith groups.
Mr Timms has been MP for the constituency — and previously for Newham North East — since 1994.
He has regularly spoken out against knife crime in his constituency, particularly among young people.
In 2006, he spoke at an event to mark the death of 15-year-old Charlotte Polius, who was stabbed while walking in the street the previous year.
He supported Labour legislation which gave teachers the power to search pupils for weapons and raised the age at which a knife could be purchased legally to 18.
Educated at Farnborough Grammar School in Hampshire, Mr Timms read mathematics at Emmanuel College, Oxford, and before entering Westminster in 1994 he worked in the telecommunications industry for 15 years.
He held jobs in the Labour administration throughout its 13 years in power, first as a parliamentary aide and then in ministerial posts as financial secretary to the Treasury and in the Departments for Social Security, Education, Trade and Industry and Work and Pensions.
He joined the Cabinet in 2006 as chief secretary to the Treasury — effectively Chancellor Gordon Brown’s second-in-command, with responsibility for keeping departmental budgets under control.
After Mr Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he was dropped from the Cabinet and made competitiveness minister in the Business Department, before moving back to the Department for Work and Pensions and then returning to his old job of financial secretary to the Treasury in 2008.
Never a flashy performer or household name, he has been regarded as a safe pair of hands on issues like the economy, pensions and business.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Magistrate Told Off for Branding Boys Who Desecrated Cathedral ‘Absolute Scum’
A magistrate who branded two boys ‘absolute scum’ after they desecrated a cathedral faces disciplinary action.
The 16-year-old boys wrote racist and sexually-abusive graffiti in prayer books, and bent a priceless John The Baptist cross out of shape at Blackburn Cathedral, causing £3,000 damage.
Pages were also torn out of the prayer books and insults written in the prayer and visitor books included: ‘I will kill all Jews. Don’t underestimate me’, and lurid sexual comments about ‘the vicar’.
They were caught after they wrote their names in the visitors’ book.
Chairman of the bench at Blackburn Magistrates’ Court Austin Molloy labelled the boys ‘absolute scum’ during the sentencing yesterday at the Youth Court.
But he was immediately criticised by the court clerk who stood up and objected to the use of the ‘inappropriate language’.
The mother of one of the boys said she would be making an official complaint.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Middle England’s Last Stand: The Defiant Villagers Who Set Up Barricades Against Invading Gipsies
A quartet of pensioners stand guard around a blazing brazier. Well, to be precise, they sit guard, perched on a row of deckchairs.
But each of them is ready, at any minute, to lie down in the middle of the road — whatever those nice police officers may say about getting arrested.
Younger men are gathering logs and food supplies. A few schoolchildren enjoy the excitement and novelty of it all, while mothers and grandmothers — the real generals in this battle — sort out the rotas. Who is cooking tonight? Who is doing the 2am shift tomorrow night?
Every now and then, they all fall silent as the distant rumble of a large vehicle raises the dreaded question: has the onslaught resumed? But it hasn’t resumed. Not yet, anyway.
I am slap-bang in the middle of Middle England — in more ways than one. If you cut out the map of England and balance it on a pin, it will pivot on this very village — Meriden in Warwickshire.
It’s a place of tidy gardens, a pretty village green, hard grafters and good neighbours.
And yet it is boiling with rage. Because it is discovering that its cherished values count for little in the face of the ‘human rights’ agenda which shapes the modern bureaucratic mindset.
More…
The entire village has risen up to stop a covert attempt to desecrate a precious patch of greenbelt land by a group of well-heeled gipsies who want to build a permanent mobile home park — in the name of ‘human rights’, of course.
And, in a rare variation on the usual story, the villagers seem to be winning. But for how long?
You can goad Middle England a long way. You can ignore it, sneer at its quaint, sepia-tinted values, tax it hard and presume that it will just shrug and cough up.
And you can haughtily refuse it planning permission for its new garage or granny flat, safe in the knowledge that it will do as it is told.
But everyone has a breaking point. And Meriden has just discovered its own.
If the new coalition Government wants to bang on about ‘fairness’ and ‘change’, then it had better remember it’s not all about inner cities and polar bears.
If the new political elite cannot carry the Meridens of this world on their togetherness crusade, they might as well pack up right now.
Here in Eaves Green Lane is a scene so quintessentially English — British, indeed — that it’s crying out for Elgar and a nice cup of tea. At the same time, though, there is something profoundly depressing about it, too.
A whole community rises up against a flagrant breach of planning law, of common sense — and of simple fairness. And what is the response from officialdom? Solihull Council ums and ahs about a long and costly legal battle it may never win.
And the police? They have joined council officials in removing the villagers’ protest signs from the village. Local residents have been warned that they are the ones breaking the law for erecting ‘Help Save Meriden’s Green Belt’ signs without planning permission.
There are moments in life when you are left wondering whether the Home Office’s £10 billion police budget might be better spent on comedians.
That, says Barbara Cookes, a retired farmer, is why she is wearing a hat. ‘I have to wear it to stop the steam coming out of my head,’ she says. ‘There are times I just want to blow my top.’
Fortunately for Barbara, and countless homeowners all over the country, the Daily Mail has learned that the new Government has plans to tackle this most contentious of rural issues. Not before time.
Barbara, now 74, moved into the lane at the outbreak of World War II and her family has been farming here ever since.
There have been many ups and downs. There was the day her father was nearly burned to death rescuing his calves from a German incendiary bomb that missed Coventry and landed on his shed.
There was the day her whole school turned out to salute the Prime Minister as he drove through Meriden (‘I hate it when people call him Winston — he’s Sir Winston’).
But neither she, nor anyone else, can recall anything that has ever got the whole village as passionately united as the current battle over the 5.6-acre field on Eaves Green Lane.
It will be a story familiar to rural residents all over Britain. A chap comes along and buys a bit of agricultural land at an agricultural price, saying he wants it to graze a horse or store some machinery. Without anyone noticing, he quietly connects it to the local water and electricity supply.
Then he waits until a few minutes before closing time on the Friday before a Bank Holiday and posts a planning application for a mobile home site through the door of the local council, knowing that the officials won’t be back until Tuesday.
Minutes later, pre-arranged convoys of diggers, lorries and building supplies descend on the site, followed by a fleet of caravans.
By the time the bureaucrats have returned to their desks on Tuesday and produced what is known as a stop order, the field will have been torn up and covered with thousands of tons of hardcore and asphalt.
Each caravan will have a solid pitch linked up to the utilities. The local residents will be up in arms: they can’t even get planning permission for a shed.
As local property values fall off a cliff, the newcomers cross their arms and hand it all over to the lawyers, safe in the knowledge that the law is on their side.
A canny lawyer with a good grasp of human rights legislation can keep the legal battle going on for years or, indeed, perpetuity, while their clients enjoy fast-track access to education and medical care on the orders of the Government.
What makes Meriden (population: 2,743) different is that the locals have stopped these guerilla developers in their tracks — literally.
To begin with, the gipsies (their term; they do not call themselves ‘travellers’) followed the template to the letter.
But when neighbours spotted a bulldozer leading the advance into a local field on the Friday night before the last Bank Holiday weekend, they didn’t waste any time.
‘Word went round instantly,’ says David McGrath, a training consultant who lives opposite the field and acts as spokesman for the residents.
‘Some local farmers turned up with tractors, which made it quite hard for any more vehicles to come down the lane.
‘And so, when around 90 lorry loads of hardcore turned up — and it was explained to the drivers that they were heading for an unauthorised site — they went on their way. They rely on local trade so they weren’t going to alienate the entire village.’
So far, so good, as far as the locals were concerned.
Mr McGrath — a former Lib Dem councillor on Birmingham City Council — had only just arrived in Torquay at the start of a recuperative holiday following an operation. He didn’t even unpack and was home in a few hours.
While the residents set up blockades at each end of the lane, police arrived to ensure that the road remained open. By then, though, the insurgents had lost the element of surprise and, crucially, time. The lorries and all the building supplies did not return.
The local Tory MP, Caroline Spelman — subsequently appointed Environment Secretary in the coalition Cabinet — was soon on the scene and tracked down the relevant council officials. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ she tells me, adding that she is returning to the site this weekend.
A stop order was produced in near-record time on the Saturday. From the moment it was posted at the entrance, all work had to cease on pain of a £20,000 fine.
The bulldozer had already torn up great tracts of the field and the caravans were in situ, but none of the crucial infrastructure had been installed.
But that stop order lasts only 28 days and, for some unfathomable reason, cannot be renewed. It expires in the middle of the next Bank Holiday weekend and council staff will say only that they are ‘exploring options’.
If they do nothing, the gipsies/developers can resume work and seek retrospective planning permission for 14 permanent mobile homes and 14 caravans, claiming it’s a question of ‘human rights’.
If that happens, some of the locals tell me, they will not be responsible for their actions. Hope is at hand, though. As we reveal in today’s Daily Mail, the Government says it is preparing to close key gaps in the planning system.
For now, it’s stalemate as I arrive in Eaves Green Lane, waved through by Meriden’s very own Home Guard. The residents have set up command posts at either end of the road.
One, next to Barbara’s farm, is called Camp Barbara. Half a mile away, next to the entrance to the site, is Camp Nancy, named after a pensioner whose cottage looks straight into the disfigured field.
The caravan crowd has piled dozens of binliners bulging with rubbish next to Nancy’s hedge. Some have burst open. When the weather warms up and the wind dies down, there should be quite a pong.
At both camps, I find a defiant little band gathered around it, chatting and waiting to lie down in the road at the first sign of a building lorry.
As everyone is eager to tell me, this is green-belt land, a precious ‘green lung’ of countryside separating Birmingham and Coventry. The local authority is very strict about who can do what.
David McGrath was refused planning permission to put filing cabinets in a workshop at the back of his house because it would constitute an ‘office development’.
Mike Gallagher, a semi-retired concrete contractor who lives opposite Camp Nancy, has had his request to build a garage kicked out. ‘So I abided by the law. I didn’t just build it like these people.’
The two camps are linked by walkie-talkies. ‘We can get reinforcements right away,’ explains David. A rather endearing rivalry has evolved.
Camp Nancy has a snug tent with a television and stove installed inside for the nocturnal vigils. Camp Barbara just has a couple of awnings but Barbara’s cohorts claim they produce the better tea.
Both camps enjoy regular deliveries from the owner of the local fish and chip shop. ‘I supply him with the potatoes and he fries them,’ says Lawrence Arnold, 30, one of three local farming brothers whose tractors managed to hold off the Bank Holiday invasion. Local shops have been supplying biscuits and essentials.
Two police officers are on permanent duty to ensure that the gipsies and other road users can come and go. Suddenly, a smart pick-up with four rear wheels, tinted glass and a personalised numberplate arrives.
It is Noah Burton, leader of the gipsies, owner of the land and, by his own admission, the ‘Bin Laden of Meriden’.
I expect some pantomime boos or hisses from the crowd but everyone shuffles off the road without a murmur to let him through. ‘I’ve known him for a long time,’ says Mr McGrath.
‘He owned a shed opposite my house where he was doing up old sports cars and we’d chat most days. I had no idea he was planning this.’
As Mr Burton turns off the lane, he stops for a word with the police officers. I poke my head through the window and ask if I can have a chat. I cannot.
He drives into the field and parks up by a distant caravan. It’s a big beast, the sort of thing that might house the leading lady on a film set.
So I decide to have a look at the rubbish tip by poor Nancy’s hedge.
Among the trash is a huge box the size of a door. It is the packaging for a Panasonic Viera widescreen television with a label to say it comes from Currys in Coventry. Someone in this field has just plugged in a brand-new £1,000-plus telly.
Another tinted pick-up with a personalised numberplate cruises in. Apparently, this is Mr Burton’s son. But then, Mr Burton is a businessman who is listed on the electoral roll as the resident of a rather grand stud farm a few miles away.
This field may look like a tip but there is no shortage of money round here. If anyone tries to drag hardluck tales of poverty and deprivation into this dispute, they may get short shrift.
Suddenly, Mr Burton’s pick-up speeds back across the field and he beckons over the two police officers. They have a few words and he drives off.
The officers duly warn me that I am trespassing on Mr Burton’s property and that I am to step away from his rubbish tip. What on earth might I find?
Dusk is approaching and the evening teams are preparing to take over. Barbara’s great nephew, Jonathon, will be here shortly. He is 18 and working hard for his A-levels.
For the moment, he is happy to do his revision next to the fire at Camp Barbara. Up at Camp Nancy, Lawrence Arnold is heading off for some kip before he and his tractor return for another 2am to 6am shift.
Everyone is adamant that they will be here as long as it takes. To date, there has been no confrontation. Indeed, I find much sympathy for the plight of what officialdom calls the ‘non-settled’ community.
‘Everyone needs a home and if there aren’t enough sites for the gipsies, then we must find some,’ says a lady on the Camp Nancy food committee who does not wish to be named.
‘But we all have to abide by the rules. If one set of people can ignore the law and get away with it, what do you expect the rest of us to do?’
I dare say that in the days ahead, we may find out.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Scramble! RAF Warplanes Are Intercepting Russian Nuclear Bombers at Least Once a Month
Streaking across the sky in front of a rising sun, the huge Russian jet heads towards Britain.
Capable of carrying nuclear weapons at supersonic speeds, it is a potential threat the RAF must tackle — and fast.
Tornado fighters are scrambled. They intercept the Blackjack bomber and shadow it until the Russian pilots turn for home.
But this is no isolated incident. Astonishingly, such high-stakes games of cat and mouse are being played out in the skies off Britain at least once a month.
State-of-the-art British warplanes have taken to the air 64 times since 2006 to head off Russian aircraft, figures reveal.
They are being scrambled to repel the 1,380mph Tu160 Blackjack and Tu95 Bear bombers.
The RAF’s elite ‘Quick Reaction Alert’ force is being called into action following the Kremlin’s growing tendency to flex its muscles and test Western response times to its increasingly aggressive incursions.
Tornado F3 fighters from 111 Squadron based at RAF Leuchars in Fife and Typhoon F2s — also known as Eurofighters — from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire are on 24-hour standby.
The revelations come after the RAF was forced to axe the number of Tornado training flights in a bid to save £80,000 a month on fuel and other costs.
Defence chiefs admitted in March that RAF warplanes were scrambled no fewer than 20 times last year to warn off Russian bombers.
But the latest statistics, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, uncover the true extent of Russian premier Vladimir Putin’s sabre-rattling.
International experts believe the missions are an attempt by Russia to re-assert itself as a superpower after crippling budget cuts forced it to scrap the flights in the 1990s.
The supersonic Tu160, nicknamed the White Swan by its pilots, can carry up to 40tons of weapons including cruise or short-range nuclear missiles.
Mr Putin, himself a former Blackjack pilot, is suspected of ordering the training missions to the fringes of UK airspace.
Now the RAF has released a series of dramatic pictures taken by British airmen who tracked a Blackjack warplane for four hours as it snaked along the Outer Hebrides.
British fighter pilots intercepted the Russians in international airspace near Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, and took photographs of the planes in the dawn light.
The two Tornados shadowed the bombers for hundreds of miles before they turned away.
An RAF spokesman said that the revival of the training runs was not seen as a threat.
But Matthew Clements, Eurasia analyst of Jane’s Defence News, said: ‘Although ostensibly these are for training purposes they also provide Russia with a symbolic show that it is able to project its power beyond its own borders.’
Defence aviation analyst Mike Gething said: ‘Each side is doing what it’s supposed to do: they’re training.
‘The Russians have got a bomber force that they need to train, and they like long flights to this part of the world.
‘But make no mistake — when those aircraft meet one another each side is taking pictures and monitoring radio conversations, and other emissions, from each other’s aircraft.
‘It’s an intelligence-gathering exercise as much as a training exercise.’
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy said: ‘It’s just training flights — nothing more than that.
‘As any other country, Russia has the right to conduct patrol flights in the international airspace-strictly abiding by the corresponding international regulations.
‘Russian strategic aircraft have never entered into sovereign UK airspace or that of other states.’
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: To Keep Your Seat, Stick to Your Principles
It would be a mistake to think that political ideology is dead and buried in the rose garden behind 10 Downing Street. It may well have looked that way as Nick Clegg and David Cameron stood with identical suits and podiums, seeming to usher in a new era of managerialism. Their détente was expressed in a laundry list of agreement that could not have read less like a manifesto.
Yet this is the document on which both want the next five years of British government to be based: a “new politics” where conflict is replaced with compromise.
One does not hear much from disgruntled Tory backbenchers nowadays, which is extraordinary given how many are spitting tacks. “This coalition won’t last a year,” I was told by a newly appointed minister. “The party won’t wear it because the country won’t wear it.” Depending on which bookmaker you visit, the odds on another election this year vary from 2-1 to 6-1. It is a bold MP who ignores such odds. So while Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg may hope for five years of stable coalition, their MPs will be working out how to savage each other when the time comes.
For all their protestations to the contrary, most Tory MPs are dismayed at the idea of coalition — and having to cheer Mr Clegg at Prime Minister’s Questions. Many Tories were baffled by Mr Cameron’s declaration on Wednesday that the idea of his party governing alone was “so uninspiring”. Most had, perhaps naively, been rather inspired by the idea of a Tory government until a few days ago. Crucially, they remain inspired: the battle of political ideas is one that most Tory MPs came into politics to wage.
It is hard to find much evidence of ideology being drained from our political system. Last week’s election may have delivered one of the largest transfusions of new blood in Westminster’s history, given the number of MPs who retired after the expenses scandal, but the new generation are in no way post-ideological. Many Labour MPs were selected with the backing of trade unions and a fundamental belief in the State rather than the market. Half of the Tory backbenchers were elected for the first time last week with a fundamental belief in the market, not the State.
In many ways, they are more independently minded than the lobby fodder swept into power by Tony Blair in 1997. Scores of those new Labour MPs owed their job to their leader: they believed (correctly) that had there been no Blair revolution, there would have been no landslide. Crucially, most new Tories believe that they were elected despite Mr Cameron, not because of him. “I could have doubled my majority if he wasn’t so wishy-washy,” moaned one of the higher-profile new candidates to me last week. It is a fairly typical complaint.
Mr Cameron himself is a proudly post-ideological party leader. When I asked him a fortnight ago if he had a favourite economist, having studied the subject at university, he simply laughed. He stands in a long line of successful Tory leaders who took a similar view — but his MPs are not in the same mould. Much attention has focused on whether they are gay, female, black or Muslim. But their political orientation has been overlooked. As several surveys show, the typical new Tory MP is reform-minded and resolutely Eurosceptic — the type of Tory who has posters of Thatcher on the wall and Jacques Delors on the dartboard.
The new MPs will have noticed how independence, rather than following the party line, seems to be rewarded at the ballot box. This, at any rate, was the story of last week’s election. Gisela Stuart, for example, should have been swept away by a Tory tide last week given that Birmingham Edgbaston was for years a Conservative stronghold. But this German-born MP made her name by defying her Goverment — and denouncing the European Union constitution. Karen Buck, who pulled her son out of one of Labour’s flagship city academies, held on to Westminster North, seeing off Joanne Cash, the very model of an A-list Conservative.
Political principle is making something of a comeback: the rebels are rewarded and the party automatons are punished. All this will make the Tory Whips’ job rather difficult — especially if the MPs have half a mind on a new election which could be called at any point. Pity the likes of Chris Huhne, carried to Parliament largely on the strength of anti-Tory tactical voting. There is talk of the Tories refusing to run a candidate against him, to protect him from voters who feel betrayed by his decision to join Mr Cameron’s Cabinet.
This month Tory MPs will elect a new chairman of the group of backbench MPs, the so-called 1922 Committee. The odds are that it will be Graham Brady, famed for resigning from the front bench so that he could argue for more grammar schools (he almost doubled his majority last week). If he was elected, it would be a sign that the new MPs would not hesitate to unite behind a troublemaker.
It is hard to argue that Britain voted for a “new politics”, because the British are never asked whom they want in government. We are only asked to choose a local MP, and these 650 decisions are added up — and, most times, one party wins outright. The voting system is firm but unfair, and the polling suggests that is how Britain likes it. Last weekend polls showed that most voters would have preferred Mr Cameron to go it alone.
When our MPs return to the Commons they will meet in a chamber where the two sides are kept exactly two swords’ length apart. It took a direct hit during the war, but was rebuilt in this way to keep the adversarial culture intact. Competition, not collusion, has been the British way. Perhaps because of this, hung Parliaments in British peacetime history have seldom lasted much more than a year. If the Lib-Con pact does break up, it will be for a simple reason: that the tension inside the House of Commons — tribal and intellectual — is just too strong.
Fraser Nelson is the Editor of The Spectator and a columnist for the News of the World
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Airports: Croatia, Terminal B Opened in Dubrovnik
(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, MAY 14 — The new terminal “B” of Croatia’s airport in Dubrovnik has been opened. Thanks to the new structure, the airport now has a capacity of 2 million passengers per year. According to the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Zagreb, the terminal cost a total of around 24 million euros. Croatian Premier Jadranka Kosor announced that the government will invest 68 million euros in 2010 to expand the network of motorways in the county of Dubrovnik (Dubrovacko-Neretvanska). The ICE adds that negotiations are in progress with the European Investment Bank and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for the construction of the A1 motorway (Dubrovnik) and the A10 (border with Bosnia and Herzegovina — port of Ploce). Work will start this year, the project has an estimated cost of 78 million euros. This project is scheduled to be completed in 2012. The Croatian Premier also announced the start of construction of the bridge on the Peljesac peninsula, which should be completed in 2015. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria-EU: Government for Revision Association Deal
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, MAY 14 — Algeria will ask for the revision of the association agreement with the European Union during the fifth association council in Brussels on June 15. The announcement was made by Trade Minister El-Hachemi Djaaboub. The Minister explained that the request regards “clauses that should be more balanced between Algeria on one side and the EU member states on the other. We have found anomalies and imperfections, each sector has presented a report to the Ministry that will present these documents in Brussels”. These clauses include the rules imposed on Algerian exporters and the low volume of European investments. The Algeria-EU association agreement has been in force since September 2005, and foresees in the constitution of a free trade zone in 2017. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Lebanon: Satellite Links Tyre and Novara School
(ANSAmed) — TYRE (Southern Lebanon), MAY 14 — Attempts at dialogue have taken place today between students from a secondary school in Tyre, in southern Lebanon, and a technical institute in Novara, with the two groups linked by a video connection set up between the Ministry of Defence’s stand at the Turin international book fair and the theatre hall of the Lebanese port city’s main state school. Despite Friday being a holy day in the Islamic world, around two hundred boys and girls from Tyre, together with the head teacher and a handful of teachers filled the large hall in their school, the only one in the city to have mixed classes, in order to dialogue and try to get to know their peers across the sea. Managing the event were Colonel Francesco Tirino, in Tyre, the spokesman for the Italian contingent of the UN mission present in the south of Lebanon, while the other microphone, at the Turin Fair, was being held by captain Rosa Vinciguerra, from the office of the Head of State for the Defence. At the beginning, the head of the Tyre school, Hassan Izzedin, and the official from Lebanon’s Ministry of Education responsible for Italian teaching, Daad Qassem, spoke to the youngsters. “Today, let’s not talk of politics, but only of historic relations between Italy and Lebanon,” said Izzedin, with Qassem adding: “Remember that you are the sons of Tyre, a city full of civilisation in a civilized country”. With help from an interpreter and encouraged by teachers and organisers of the virtual meeting, students from the Novara’s Bermani business technical institute and those from the state school in Tyre began asking each other shy and generic questions. “What do you do after school,” they asked in Italy, with Hussein in Lebanon answering “Well, we listen to music, I love rock”. “What is the national sport in your country?” Other more neutral questions were also asked, like “What does the cedar on the Lebanese flag represent?” and the more speculative “What is the significance of the Italian tricolor?”. Attention from the two rooms was at its highest point when Karim Badawi, who has studied Italian at his school in Tyre, revealed himself to his ex-classmates and his family who were in the hall on the other half of the screen: three years ago, Karim won a study grant from the Italian Foreign Ministry and signed up to study Telecommunications at the University of Genoa. From the Defence stand in Turin, and in good Italian, Karim spoke first to the Novara group and then to his own family and friends in Arabic: “It is really emotional talking to you from here, seeing you on video, Thank you for making me study Italian”. The head of the Tyre school then told his pupils: “Karim is one of the seeds that we planted and that grew, now it is your turn. Learn Italian and follow his experience”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Making Israel’s Case
Forty-three years after the Jewish people liberated Jerusalem, our capital has never been under greater assault. But it has also never been more energetically defended by an indignant Jewish people — in Israel and throughout the world.
Last week Makor Rishon reported that US diplomats have been “showing interest” in all Jewish construction plans in the capital. Ambassador James Cunningham and Jerusalem Consul- General Daniel Rubinstein have met repeatedly with relevant government ministers to express US opposition to all construction in Jewish neighborhoods built since 1967. Bowing to this shocking US assault on Israel’s sovereignty, the government reportedly cancelled construction plans that had already been approved for 2,500 apartments in Ramot, Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Ya’acov, Gilo and Har Homa.
The US is also demanding that Israel take no action against illegal Arab construction in the capital. That is, the US is acting to undermine the rule of law in Israel twice. First, it seeks to deny Jewish Jerusalemites their property rights, and second, it is calling for Israel not to enforce its laws against Arab criminals…
| [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus: Israel to Enhance Relations in the Sector
(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, MAY 14 — Cyprus and Israel discussed today ways to further enhance their relations in the tourism field, as CNA reports. Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Antonis Paschalides and Israeli Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov held a meeting in Nicosia during which they decided to establish a committee that would discuss and propose ways to boost tourism between both states, in the participation of all players in the tourism field. They also decided to attract tourism from third countries with joint packages. After the meeting, Paschalides, who visited Israel last year, said “we discussed ways to increase tourism from Cyprus to Israel and Israel from Cyprus,” adding “both countries believe that there are many prospects of improvement”. “We also decided to hold joint workshops to present to third countries, like the USA, Russia and maybe Britain, a common package to attract tourists to visit both Cyprus and Israel,” he went on to add. The Israeli Minister said that tourism is very important for both countries, especially in economic terms. “We attach great importance to our mutual relationship in the tourism field,” he said, adding “we have the mutual history, mutual geographical position, short distance between our countries, we can have much better cooperation between our countries”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Defence: Turkish Aselsan to Produce Night Vision in Jordan
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MAY 14 — Turkey’s leading defense company, Aselsan, as part of a joint venture in Jordan is to start manufacturing defense systems components for the Jordanian military, as Today’s Zaman reports. Aselsan has recently reached an agreement with the Jordan-based King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) to set up a joint venture in Jordan. Within the scope of the agreement, signed by Aselsan’s deputy chairperson, Necmettin Baykul, and KADDB’s chairperson, Moayyad Samman, the newly established electro-optics company will manufacture night vision and thermal imaging systems to meet the military needs of Jordan. The devices could also be sold to other countries in the region. The agreement between the two companies specifies the design, development, manufacture, marketing and provision of the systems as well as maintenance, testing and certification of the products, officials said. Aselsan is a Turkish electronics company that designs, develops and manufactures modern electronics systems for military and industrial customers in Turkey and abroad. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Eases Grip on Al-Qaida
As the U.S. is steps up drone attacks in Pakistan to weaken the Al-Qaida’s leadership, Iran seems to be re-examining its murky relationship the group.
Al-Qaida operatives who have been detained for years in Iran have been making their way quietly in and out of the country, raising the prospect that Iran is loosening its grip on the terror group so it can replenish its ranks, former and current U.S intelligence officials say.
This movement could indicate that Iran is re-examining its murky relationship with al-Qaida at a time when the U.S. is stepping up drone attacks in Pakistan and weakening the group’s leadership. Any influx of manpower could hand al-Qaida a boost in morale and expertise and threaten to disrupt stability in the region.
U.S. officials say intelligence points to a worrisome increase in movement lately.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
SAS Defied MoD to Rescue Two of Its Men Held Hostage in Iraq as Top Commanders ‘Prepared to Quit’ Over Ban on Mission
The SAS launched a daring mission to rescue two of its own men held hostage in Iraq against the orders of the Ministry of Defence, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The elite unit was pushed to the brink of mutiny after it was banned from saving the SAS soldiers captured by militants because to do so would embarrass the Government.
The astonishing edict drove SAS officers close to mass resignation, according to a hardhitting report by the Tory MP Adam Holloway, a former Guards officer.
The SAS Lieutenant-Colonel on the ground, believing that ‘politically motivated’ commanders in the UK were ‘unable to make rational and effective decisions’, sent in a rescue team anyway — fearful that within hours the captured men could have been spirited away or executed.
The rescuers blasted their way into the police station in Basra where the two soldiers were being held and saved them.
Details of the incident in 2005 expose the shameful way the Armed Forces have become politicised under Labour — with political spin put before soldiers’ lives.
Mr Holloway’s explosive account is supported by General Sir Mike Jackson, who was head of the Army at the time but only learned of the scandal later.
General Jackson last night made clear his disgust at the way soldiers were asked to sacrifice their men for political reasons, shattering the sacred military covenant that no man is left behind on the battlefield.
He told the Mail: ‘The story as you relate it chimes with my memory of the events. It was not only a brave but a very necessary operation to release those two captured soldiers. The British Army looks after its own. Underline that three times.’
The two troopers were seized by militant Islamic militiamen who had infiltrated the Iraqi police.
But a ‘very senior general’ at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, to the west of London, refused to approve the rescue mission.
Ministry of Defence officials were concerned that attacking an Iraqi police station would undermine the Government’s claims that Britain was successfully handing power to the local security services.
In a report on the Failure of British Military and Political Leadership in Basra, published by the First Defence think tank, Mr Holloway says: ‘The senior operational commanders in the MoD — a continent away from the frontline — repeated very clearly, and a number of times, that there were “more important things at stake than the lives of the soldiers”.’
Explaining the reasons for the decision, Mr Holloway quotes a senior British civilian official in Iraq at the time: ‘The need to rescue the soldiers from an insurgent group embedded within the police force proved that our training and mentoring operation was dangerously ineffective, and in complete contradiction to the universally positive picture presented to Whitehall by the Government and MoD at the time.’
That explanation was met with incredulity in the special forces. The report says SAS commanders regarded the orders as ‘politically-motivated deliberations’ that would only succeed in giving the insurgents time to ‘remove their captives beyond the reach of any rescue operation’.
The SAS Lt-Col ‘told his forward based troops to mount the operation with or without approval. In the event, approval did come through — but the operation was already being mounted by the time that it did’.
In a damning conclusion, Mr Holloway reveals: ‘The next day General Mike Jackson was told what had happened and was, reportedly, appalled. He also learned that had the authority not eventually come through the commanding officer and many of his officers and senior ranks would have resigned.’
Mr Holloway’s account makes no reference to the SAS but it was widely reported at the time that the two soldiers seized were part of the special forces regiment based in Hereford.
He reveals that the SAS Lt-Col later left the Army, ‘disillusioned at the degeneration of the moral backbone of British military generalship in the heart of Whitehall’. The MoD said it did not comment on special forces matters.
The SAS commander in Basra was planning one of the most risky and high-profile operations in the regiment’s recent history when he discovered that the enemy was not his biggest problem.
Hunkered in the nondescript HQ in Iraq’s second city, the Lieutenant-Colonel watched for the umpteenth time as footage of two of his men — held captive, beaten and bloodied — flashed on the TV screen in his office.
It was September 19, 2005, and in a jail in the centre of town two SAS men accused of killing an Iraqi policeman were held hostage by militants who had infiltrated the Iraqi police.
Three hundred miles north, on an airfield just outside Baghdad, a C-130 Hercules special forces transport plane sat on the runway, wind whipping the sand into a yellow mist.
In the back, a squadron of SAS troops sat patiently looking at the crate of kit strapped to the floor of the fuselage, pulses quickening as they checked their Heckler & Koch submachine guns and C8 carbine rifles.
A second SAS squadron in Basra prepared for the arrival of the reinforcements. Like any mission they had made speedy plans and moved into action with calm professionalism.
But this time it was personal. The targets were two of their own. That was when the call came — on a secure line from a military bunker just outside London. The Lt-Col could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Permission not granted. There are more important things than the lives of the soldiers.’
The voice was that of a senior general at Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, the UK nerve centre of the war.
That was when the Lt-Col realised that his biggest challenge would be the top brass at home. The men waiting on the runway were flabbergasted when they heard. ‘People were pretty fired up,’ one source close to the regiment said. ‘And then there was the let down. The CO was furious.’
It was then the commanding officer made the decision that could have seen him and his brother officers hauled over the coals. The alternative, they agreed, was to resign en masse in disgust.
He picked up the phone and made the fateful call. ‘We’re doing it anyway,’ he said. Minutes later the C-130 took off. There was no going back. BASRA was originally proclaimed a beacon for post-war Iraq, a model of how to hand over control to the local population.
But now it was a hotbed of militia extremism. For weeks the SAS had been monitoring and infiltrating the Iraqi insurgent groups who were quietly gaining a stranglehold on the very police force that British soldiers were supposed to be working with to restore order.
The operation had gathered intensity after six British soldiers were killed in attacks by militants. The crisis began when a group of special forces soldiers, clad in Arab garb and driving a battered civilian car, got into a shootout with Iraqi policemen at a roadblock in the city.
One Iraqi was killed and three injured in the gun battle. The SAS men were seized and beaten by their Iraqi captors. They were handed to a militant militia group. Then there was the public humiliation of the TV cameras.
The insurgents could not have chosen a better time to strike. The senior officer in Iraq was on leave, his deputy a staff officer without the clout to make the big calls. Brigade commander Brigadier John Lorimer — a soldier universally admired as an effective commander — had his hands tied by demands that he refer major command decisions to London.
In the drab corridors of the Ministry of Defence main building, there was panic, but not just about the lives of the men held hostage. Operational command rested with an RAF officer who was allegedly playing golf. His highly-regarded deputy, Major General Peter Wall, was out of the office.
The SAS commander’s request to launch a rescue mission was passed to Northwood. The judgment was that a raid would be both a diplomatic disaster in terms of relations with the Iraqis — but more seriously that launching the raid against Iraqi police who were supposed to be allies would be an admission that the British had lost control of Basra.
As Andy McNab, the SAS hero of the first Gulf War who is now a bestselling author, puts it: ‘There is a very strong feeling from the guys on the ground in Iraq and now in Afghanistan that we have made a mistake by running our wars from 3,000 miles away.’
In Basra, a delegation of officials and diplomats was dispatched to the police station where the men were being held, backed up by troops. They were quickly ambushed by a mob assembled by the militants who armed the crowd with petrol bombs. The scene descended into chaos.
Two Warrior fighting vehicles were swiftly engulfed in flames. One soldier, his uniform ablaze, was forced to throw himself from the hatch of his armoured car and roll on the ground to put out the flames. It became one of the defining images of the Iraq occupation. He was rescued by colleagues and there was a tactical retreat.
Then came rumours that the two hostages were going to be moved. SAS commanders feared their men would disappear and perhaps be executed. As darkness fell, ten armoured vehicles, packed with SAS colleagues, returned. They bulldozed through a 6ft wall to the compound.
The special forces troops fanned out, firing stun grenades while helicopters hovered overhead. They found the men and got them out. No British serviceman was seriously hurt. At some point after the SAS commander gave the green light for the raid, retrospective permission was granted by top brass back home.
But those who were there insist it was well under way before the agreement was given. One SAS source said: ‘The OK was given retrospectively because the operation was a success. But if it had gone wrong they would all have been completely shafted.’
There was a price. In the chaos 100 prisoners escaped and furious Iraqis quickly demanded compensation for the damage caused.
But insiders say the price of inaction for the reputation of the Army would have been higher. Just how serious became clear a day later when the head of the army, General Mike Jackson was told that the senior ranks of the SAS would have resigned if permission had not been granted.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Russia Could Put Syrian Reactor Back on Track
Facility bombed earlier by Israel as major threat
Russian President Dimitry Medvedev has signaled his country is considering putting back on track a nuclear reactor in Syria that was under develpment by North Korea when it was bombed by Israel as a threat, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
On a visit to Syria, Medvedev said construction of the reactor, hit by the Israelis two years ago, is under consideration.
“Cooperation on atomic energy could get a second wind,” Medvedev said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Footage of Polish Air Crash ‘Shows Russians Executing Survivors’… But is it a Cruel Propaganda Stunt?
A video of the plane crash which killed the president of Poland apparently shows survivors being shot.
The video, which is being circulated on the internet, has fuelled conspiracy theories about the accident.
It purports to show film of armed Russian-speaking men killing passengers minutes after the crash which killed Lech Kaczynski and dozens of members of the Polish government and military elite.
The grainy, blurred footage — on which sounds like that of gun shots are heard — has been dismissed as a ‘malicious hoax’ by a Russian aviation expert.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration Embraces Russia as “Helpful”; Moscow Stabs U.S. In Back
by Barry Rubin
If America’s Middle East position collapses in the forest will anyone hear it? The answer is either: apparently no, or just barely. As I’ve predicted Russia is coming back into the region and it is going to play a very bad role. Moscow is linking up with the emerging Islamist alliance of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration praises Russia for allegedly supporting sanctions against Iran. Russian support, at best, consists of throwing a bucket of fluid over the sanctions’ plan to water it down.
[Don’t miss the amazing Russian statement cited at the end of this article.]
Back in the real world—the Middle East, not Washington discussions—let’s begin with Syria. The Obama Administration says it is going to pull away Syria from Iran, but the two countries are coming closer together. Syria’s open goal is to pull the United States away from Israel, but meanwhile Syria is finding still another ally to back its ambitions.
The recent visit of Russia’s President Medvedev with a huge entourage was a major step toward reestablishing the old Soviet-Syria relationship. There were broad economic talks, including the possibility of Russia building a nuclear reactor for the Syrian dictatorship.
Acording to Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Russian parliamentary foreign liaison committee, quoted in the Syrian newspaper Tishrin, May 12, the visit, “Is a clear indication to everyone in the Middle East region and on the regional and international level that Syria was and will remain a strategic partner to Russia….” This includes a new round of arms’ sales to Syria, which presumably will be paid for largely by Iran.
Even if the alliance remains limited, it will further encourage Iran and Syria to be covertly aggressive and hard line while sending still another signal to moderate Arabs that America is on its way down. Clearly, Russia’s refusal to support more sanctions on Iran in any serious manner is part of this calculation.
Is it a problem for Russia that it faces internal Islamist terrorism but is aligning with Islamist forces? No, not at all. Iran has been careful not to back these revolutionaries in the north Caucasus. Iran even joins Russia in following a policy of supporting Christian Armenia against Muslim-majority Azerbaijan. By working with the Iranians Russia is reducing the possibility that they will support Islamist rebels against Moscow.
As in so many cases, this strategic factor appears nowhere on the administration’s horizon…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesian Anti-Terrorism Squad Raid: Three Arrests, Five Extremists Killed
The special unit operations led to the seizure of ammunition, Kalashnikov AK-47 and M 16 rifles, pistols and grenades. Two terrorists killed in the raid were involved in the attack on the Australian embassy in 2004. At present there are still 25 extremists on the run.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Three arrests and five extremists killed. This is the result of a series of raids carried out by Indonesian anti-terrorism teams, which began yesterday afternoon and throughout the night in the provinces of Central Java, West Java and East Jakarta. During the operations, the special forces seized ammunition, Kalashnikov AK-47 and M 16 rifles, pistols and grenades.
At night, the anti-terrorism squad Densus 88 captured two suspects in Solo, Central Java Province. They are Joko Purwanto and Abdul Hamid. A few hours later, the military arrested a third suspect, identified by the name of Erwin in the village of Baki, Sukoharjo district, about 10 km south of Solo. During the raid several AK-47 and M-16 rifles and bulletproof vests, plus hundreds of rounds of ammunition were seized.
Yesterday afternoon the special units also carried out two separate raids in East Java and Cikampek in West Java province, about 70 km east of Jakarta. Inspector General Edward Aritonang, a police spokesman, reported that the two men killed in Cikampek are on top of the wanted list of the country’s most dangerous for their involvement in the bomb attack on the Australian embassy in September 2004 (14 dead and dozens injured).
Internal sources add that the two terrorists killed were Mulyana and Sapte, but police spokesman would not confirm this. Sapte, among other things, is known to the police because he is believed to have taken control of training centres for terrorists in the province of Aceh, following the death of his brother Jaja. Mulyana, however, was believed to have been detained in Malaysia under internal security laws. Also yesterday in a second operation three terrorists were killed in Cawang, East Jakarta.
The Indonesian government continues its hard line against terrorism, with targeted operations against extremist leaders and training centres. However, there are still 25 top extremists on the run, including Abdullah Sonata and Abu Yusuf — aka Mustaqim — trained in a specialized field in the southern Philippines.
The police spokesman added that the five terrorists killed were preparing bloody attacks against sensitive targets, without giving further details.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China Boom May be Ending, Warns OECD
The breakneck Chinese economic boom may be starting to unravel, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has warned.
The Paris-based institution warned that the economy, which has continued to grow rapidly throughout the recent global recession, and has helped support growth worldwide, may be facing a sudden “halt in expansion”.
The warning, revealed by the OECD’s composite leading indicators (CLI) — a measure of economic turning points — will fuel fears that the Asian giant may be set for more troubled times.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
USSR Planned Nuclear Attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.
The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China’s ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.
Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.
He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow’s plans “to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer,” with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.
But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table.
He quotes Soviet ministers and diplomats at the time to bolster his claim.
On 15 October 1969, he quotes Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as telling Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Washington has drawn up “detailed plans” for a nuclear war against the USSR if it attacked China.
“[The United States] has clearly indicated that China’s interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us,” Kosygin is said to have told Brezhnev.
That same day he says Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev something similar after consultations with US diplomats. “If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war,” Dobrynin said. “The Americans have betrayed us.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia: Ex-Governor Targeted by Al-Qaeda Linked Militants
Mogadiscio, 13 May (AKI) — Militants from Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab group on Thursday claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt against the former governor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Omar Habeb. One person was killed and Habeb and four others with him were injured when a roadside bomb exploded as his car drove by in Mogadishu’s Shangay district.
In a message posted to jihadist websites, Al-Shabab claimed to have killed Habeb’s four bodyguards in Wednesday’s attempted assassination. Habeb is an active opponent of Al-Shabab.
“We have struck at the apostate former governor of Mogadishu and have killed some of his body guards,” the message said.
“Al-Shabab’s explosives team has struck in the Shangay district and Habeb’s car was destroyed in the resulting inferno — even if the apostate seems to have survived.”
It is reportedly the second time Al-Shabab has tried to kill Habeb, who survived an assassination attempt against him earlier this year.
Al-Shabab fighters and other Islamist rebels are plotting a series of 10 suicide attacks in Mogadishu, a spokesman for the African Union Peacekeeping Mission to Somalia, told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat last week.
Al-Shabab, one of Somalia’s two main rebel groups, announced in February it had ‘merged’ with Al-Qaeda to establish an Islamic state in the country.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK March Against ‘White Genocide’
About 600 South Africans living in the United Kingdom are expected to march in the London city centre to bring attention to what they call a “South African genocide against white people” tomorrow.
The protest began with an invitation on social networking tool Facebook to an “awareness campaign against crime, genocide of white people, murder of all races, farm murders and the current state of things in South Africa”.
The event — which is not affiliated to any official grouping — has drawn over 446 Facebook supporters and more than 150 other marchers.
Ivan Cornelius, the mastermind behind the stint to publicly “reveal the atrocities in South Africa”, told The Times in London yesterday that he was tired of the slaughter of South Africans and that global awareness was necessary.
Though the Facebook group and event listing on the website have brought in several views, including that whites are being targeted by criminals in South Africa, Cornelius insists the genocide is more than that.
“A genocide goes beyond murder. The genocide that we are talking about highlights other issues too. Whites are the only group whose language is being attacked and eliminated. White culture is being attacked and eliminated. We have ticked the boxes which qualify a nation of genocide and there is a genocide of whites,” he said.
Cornelius said the event has no affiliation to the right-wing AWB.
“I can’t control who comments on the Facebook page. We have received loads of e-mails from South Africans who support us. We stand as a whole with a specific view but we cannot break down every individual’s other views, whether racist or not,” he explained.
This has been evident on the Facebook event page, where Cornelius has called for marchers to carry national South African flags tomorrow — however, several have refused to do so, saying that they detest the democratic flag.
Cornelius does not believe that the march will cause further racial tension in South Africa.
“I don’t see how it can. I am not a racist yet as whites we are called that. If it does bring up racial tension then it will reveal the truth and will expose … the real racists.”
He added that the march is not meant to dent South Africa’s image ahead of the World Cup.
“I want the World Cup to be a success. Why would we want it to be a disaster?”
However, not everyone attending the march is on the same page as Cornelius. Some have written that they want the world to be warned before the tourists leave the World Cup in body bags.
The march has been authorised by London police, who will monitor the protest tomorrow.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: PM Rival Calls for ‘Xenophobia’ Debate
Pisa, 13 May (AKI) — Italy needs to engage in a “serious” national discussion about citizenship to combat xenophobia, according to Gianfranco Fini, speaker of Italy’s lower house, and leadership rival of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
“A society that is changing needs to have an antidote to xenophobia and racism. A serious discussion about citizenship is one of the antidotes to xenophobia,” he said during an immigration debate at the University of Pisa on Thursday.
Immigrants make up 7.1 percent of Italy’s population of 60 million, according to the national statistics agency Istat.
Fini has tried to distance himself from the anti-immigrant Northern League party, who provides crucial support to keep the conservative government in power.
Relations between Fini and Berlusconi have been tense for months and culminated in a public row at a party conference in Rome last month.
Fini on Thursday also called for relaxing Italy’s hardline immigration laws to make it easier for immigrants to obtain Italian citizenship and eventually integrate in society.
“In my opinion the Italian immigration laws need to be revised to favour easier integration,” he said.
In 2008 Fini called for a middle ground to be found between those who advocate for Italian citizenship at the moment of birth, and the current law which states that the person must reach 18 years of age to be eligible for citizenship.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Deported Baby Trafficker Sneaks Back in to UK So She Can Claim Thousands at Work Tribunal
The ease with which illegal immigrants can enter the country was highlighted yesterday when a baby trafficker banned from the UK for ten years sneaked back in to claim thousands at an employment tribunal.
Peace Sandberg, 42, was jailed for 26 months in 2008 after she bought a three-month-old baby in Nigeria for £150 and tried to pass it off as her own to get a council house.
After she had served her sentence she was deported to Sweden where she holds joint Swedish/Nigerian citizenship, and was ordered not to return to Britain for ten years.
Defying the ban, Mrs Sandberg, a former housing officer who worked with the elderly in Ealing, London, flew back to the country and walked straight through immigration checks at Heathrow Airport.
She returned to Britain to sue her former employers, the Peabody Trust, for race and sex discrimination.
The employment tribunal allowed the case to proceed knowing she was in the country illegally.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Canada: ‘Gay’ Demands Challenge Freedom of Religion
Court hearing arguments over whether officials must solemnize ‘marriages’
A Canadian court is hearing arguments over whether government officials assigned to perform marriages can be forced to officiate same-sex ceremonies in violation of their religious beliefs.
According to the Christian Legal Fellowship, a decision on whether proposed legislation in Saskatchewan to protect the religious liberties of marriage commissioners likely is constitutional will come at some point after the two-day hearing, which ends tomorrow.
Several other provinces in Canada already have installed a provision that allows marriage commissioners, who are government employees, to decline to violate their deeply held religious beliefs and opt out of performing “marriages” for homosexuals. However, several other provinces are awaiting the results of the Saskatchewan dispute.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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