Italy: Women’s Retirement Age ‘Should be Raised’
Beijing, 4 June (AKI) — Italian women’s reitrement age must be raised to be the same as men, said Emma Marcegaglia, head of Italy’s biggest business lobby, responding to questions about the European Union’s accusation that her country practices offical sexual discrimmination by allowing female servants to retire five years earlier than their male collegues.
“I agree [with the EU] and wouldn’t find it scary that women retire later,” the head Confindustria told journalists Friday in Beijing on the sidelines of Italy-China Business Forum.
The European Commission on Thursday sent a letter to the Italian government calling for parity between the required retirement age for civil servents “immediately” or face prosecution in the European Court of Justice.
It accused Italy of “discriminatory treatment in retirement ages between men and women working in public administration”, according to a commission statement.
Male Italian civil servants reach retirement age at 65 years old while women are permitted to retire at 60 years old.
Italy’s plan to equalise retirement ages by 2018 is “inadequate” the commission said.
“In a country where the life expectancy is among the longest and even longer for women…this is something that must be dealt with,” Marcegaglia said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: IMF to Help Central Bank Structure Islam Bonds
(ANSAmed) — RIYADH, JUNE 4 — Yemen’s central bank plans to issue Islamic bonds worth around 275 million dollars by Sepetember, in order to tackle the country’s weighty public debt, which reached 9.3% during 2009 and 7.7% over the first part of this year. According to reports from the Italian Foreign Trade Commission in Riyadh, the Yemenite bank has made it known that it has applied to the International Monetary Fund for help in structuring its issue of so-called ‘sukuk’ bonds. The bonds should be underwritten by ongoing governmental activities and commodities such as oil. According to the note, Yemen’s financial situation is very serious at present. Current currency reserves limit the country’s ability to continue purchasing goods abroad to the coming seven months only. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: ‘The Case Against Barack Hussein Obama’
One of the bonuses of writing a syndicated column is the mail that comes in from across the country, from outside the Beltway and beyond the Bos-Wash corridor, often presenting the opportunity for fruitful exchange with similarly concerned fellow-citizens. One such exchange, which has been going on for years now and has developed into a long-distance friendship, is with John L. Work, a retired policeman and detective in Colorado with 24 years service in law enforcement and investigation with police and sheriff’s office, as well as the Colorado public defender’s office.
John, whose analysis has appeared at this website from time to time, has pulled together something very unusual and important, which I am publishing below. It is in the form of an affadavit, the kind of document he used to put together as a detective, amassing evidence in this case about the apparent concealment of documents attesting to the identity and activities of President Barack Hussein Obama. The fact is, the birth certificate controversy is only the beginning of the presidential mystery. There is so much we don’t know for certain about President Obama. Inexplicably but intriguigingly, he has failed to produce his bona fides, while the media (and the White House media in particular), who could ask for them, don’t care, or don’t want to care.
I culled from John’s affadavit what is undoubtedly an incomplete list of the Obama documents that we, the people, have just never gotten a look at due to Obama’s decision not to let us look.
Sure, there’s (1) the original, long-form 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate. Then there’s:…
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Secretly Deploys US Special Forces to 75 Countries Across World
President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world, with American troops now operating in 75 countries.
The dramatic expansion in the use of special forces, which in their global span go far beyond the covert missions authorised by George W. Bush, reflects how aggressively the President is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. [emphasis added]
[So, this new use of Special Forces will “go far beyond the covert missions authorised by George W. Bush”, yet it’s still all Bush’s fault. Let’s see if BHO has grown a brain and finally understands the need to decapitate Islam’s upper echelons. — Z]
When Mr Obama took office US special forces were operating in fewer than 60 countries. In the past 18 months he has ordered a big expansion in Yemen and the Horn of Africa — known areas of strong al-Qaeda activity — and elsewhere in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa.
According to The Washington Post, Mr Obama has also approved pre-emptive special forces strikes to disrupt terror plots, and has given the units powers and authority that was not granted by Mr Bush when he occupied the White House. [emphasis added]
[Yet more anti-terrorism activity that exceeds Bush’s own efforts but not a lick of credit to his predecessor for setting the correct tone. — Z]
It also emerged yesterday that Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has ordered the Pentagon to find savings of more than $100 billion (£68 billion) over the next five years to redistribute more funds for combat forces — including special operations units. Mr Gates has called on all departments to come up with proposals by July 31, and is initially demanding $7 billion in cuts and efficiencies for the 2012 fiscal year, and further cuts each year up to 2016.
[Is it just me or does anyone else find it difficult to believe that the Pentagon finally comprehends how killing terrorist leadership is a million times less expensive than fighting Islam’s cannon fodder? — Z]
The effort to provide more money for combat forces in Afghanistan and Iraq — including special operations units — is likely to lead to a clash with Congress, and also with the defence industry if favoured equipment programmes are scrapped.
The aggressive secret war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups has coincided with a surge in the number of US drone attacks in the lawless border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an al-Qaeda and Taleban haven, since Mr Obama took office.
Just weeks after he entered the White House, the number of missile strikes from the CIA-operated unmanned drones significantly increased, and the pattern has remained. In Iraq, US forces have killed 34 out of the top 42 al-Qaeda operatives in the past 90 days alone.
[Sounds like al Qaeda has the same lousy retirement program that those Palestinians have. — Z]
General Ray Odierno, the US commander in Baghdad, disclosed yesterday that special forces had penetrated the al-Qaeda headquarters in Mosul in northern Iraq, which had helped them to target key figures involved in financing and recruiting .
Mr Obama has asked for a 5.7 per cent increase in the Special Operations budget for the 2011 fiscal year — a total of $6..3 billion — on top of an additional $3.5 billion he requested this year.
Of about 13,000 US special forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their use, and the increase in drone attacks, is a strategy that has been strongly advocated by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, but criticised by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hundreds of civilians have died in special operations A report last week revealed that the top US commander in the Middle East had signed an order last September authorising a big expansion of clandestine military missions in the region, and also in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.
General David Petraeus signed the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Executive Order on September 30. In the three months that followed there was a surge of special operations troops into Yemen, where US operatives are now training local forces.
Since then, US military specialists working with Yemeni armed forces are said to have killed six out of 15 leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The raids followed reports linking the group to the murder of 13 Americans at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet.
The order also allowed for US special forces to enter Iran to gather intelligence for a possible future military strike if tensions over its alleged nuclear weapons programme escalate dramatically.
The seven-page document states that the surge is designed to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” al-Qaeda and other militant groups, and to “prepare the environment” for future military strikes by US and local forces.
• President Obama is reported to have chosen a US intelligence veteran, retired General James Clapper, as his new Director of National Intelligence. General Clapper, whose nomination comes at a time of mounting domestic terror threats, would replace Dennis Blair, who stepped down last month amid heavy criticism over a string of security lapses.
Under the radar
Nov 2002 Hellfire missile fired from a drone at a car in northwest Yemen kills six al-Qaeda fighters, including Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, aide to Osama bin Laden and the planner of the bomb attack on USS Cole
Jan 2006 Missile attack on village of Damadola, Pakistan, kills 18 Pakistani villagers — but not the target, al-Qaeda’s No2, Ayman al-Zawahiri
June 2006 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s top man in Iraq, killed along with 18 others when a house near Baghdad is bombed by US jets
Dec 2008 Six members of the Afghan police force killed in exchange of friendly fire with US special forces near the city of Qalat
Sep 2009 Four helicopter gunships open fire on a convoy in Barawe, Somalia, killing four Islamic insurgents, including Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, linked to al-Qaeda
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Redefining Our Muslim Enemies
Since taking office, Barack Hussein Obama has done much to change the administration of justice against Islamic terror suspects caught in the United States. First, the word “Islamic” was removed from the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” Now, the word terrorism is also being removed from that descriptor.
The former is a consequence of a perverse mix of political correctness, deep pockets of the Saudi-funded lobby, and a presidential administration openly biased in favor of a global Islamic agenda. The latter is an example of the domestic side of that bias at work in the form of a regressive prosecutorial mentality of the Obama justice department, where enemies who are bent on the destruction of the United States are afforded the same rights as car-jacking suspects.
Smoke rising from American barbeques last week effectively covered two news items that at their core provided significant insight into our foreign and domestic approach to fighting Islamic terrorism. First, according to Barack Hussein Obama, the United States’ “war on terror” is officially over. Of course, political progressives will argue that this statement is a misinterpretation of the Obama foreign policy, and that it will actually foster international goodwill through its narrow specificity of enemy identification. Others, especially those in the intelligence world, will applaud the abandonment of a phrase that wages war on a tactic and not a target (and rightfully so).
Indeed, abandoning the phrase “the war on terror” makes sense, but the deliberate mischaracterization of the war waged upon us does not. Obama’s clever verbal shell game is able to withstand all of the scrutiny by the corporate media, but in reality it reveals an insidiously dangerous tactic that will imperil every American. By policy, Obama is redefining our enemies by removing the religious and ideological components as motives behind terrorist attacks against Americans and all Westerners. According to Obama through his senior counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, it would be wrong to “describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists” because that would “play into the false perception” that al-Qaeda and its allies were “religious leaders and defending a holy cause, when in fact, they are nothing more than murderers.”
Murderers indeed, but failing to acknowledge their common Islamic motives, Muslim ideology, their associations and their common agenda is to essentially deny the very existence and nature of our enemies. Such equivocations misrepresent the threat against every American and imperil our national security. It is political pandering at its worst.
| [Return to headlines] |
Finland: EK: Stop Mandatory Swedish
The Confederation of Finnish Industries, EK, is recommending Finland gives up mandatory Swedish language studies in schools. They say Russian language skills are more in demand in the job market and fluency in English is becoming more prominent.
According to recent research, giving up mandatory Swedish would increase the choice for students and reduce the danger of language studies becoming one-sided. Swedish language has lost ground in the Finnish work market, although it’s still considered the second most important language.
Eighty-eight percent of the people polled rated English more important. Just five years ago, 65 percent of companies recruiting new staff had Swedish language skills as a requirement. Russian is also in strong demand especially in the construction industry. According to the poll the Russian language has overtaken German as an employment qualification.
The Confederation of Finnish Industries now says Finland should let go of mandatory Swedish in their schools. They say, language teaching is in danger of becoming much too one sided both in elementary and high school education.
Around 370,000 people participated in EK’s survey.
About 5.4 percent of Finland’s population speaks Swedish as its native language.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Kosovo PM Discusses EU Membership With Vanhanen
On a visit to Helsinki, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, said he expects the country will soon be able to join the European Union. He wraps up a two-day visit to Finland on Friday.
On Thursday, Thaçi and his Finnish counterpart Matti Vanhanen met at the latter’s official residence, Kesäranta. They discussed issues such as Kosovo’s development, the economic crisis and climate change.
Thaçi says he sees promising signs in Kosovo’s relations with its former ruler, Serbia. Normalisation of ties with Belgrade is considered a basic prerequisite for union membership.
Thaçi, the former commander of Kosovar Albanian forces, also discussed Finnish cooperation in developing Kosovo’s civil society.
Thaçi also met with ex-President Martti Ahtisaari — the former UN Envoy to Kosovo — and Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
France: 63% Negative Opinion on Sarkozy’s Social Policies
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JUNE 4 — More than 6 on ten people in France (63%) have a negative judgment on what President Nicolas Sarkozy has done since 2007 regarding social policies, against 34% who expressed a positive opinion: this is the result of a poll carried out by CSA-Cap and published today. For 29% of the French, Sarkozy’s social policies have been “very negative” and for just 3% they have been “very positive”. In detail, 68% have a negative judgement on the President’s fight against unemployment, and 69% criticise his battle against poverty. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Neo-Nazi Parties Look for Salvation Through a Merger
Germany’s two main neo-Nazi parties are considering a merger in an apparent bid to turn around their flagging political fortunes, a media report said Friday.
The National Democratic Party (NPD) and the German People’s Union (DVU) are sounding out their members about a possible merger, sources at the NPD’s party conference in Bamberg told daily Tagesspiegel.
Both parties are facing dire problems with falling membership and financial struggles, particularly the DVU, which probably needs the merger to avoid oblivion, the paper reported.
According to the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the NPD has about 6,800 members and the DVU about 4,500.
At the beginning of 2005, the parties had formed a loose alliance called the Deutschlandpakt, but the NPD dissolved this about a year ago. The NPD ran in the state election in Brandenburg in September last year, and helped drive the DVU to its worst ever electoral drubbing.
Neither party ended up clearing the 5 percent hurdle needed to win seats in the parliament. The DVU had not recovered from this blow, the paper said.
The NPD has had electoral success in some state parliaments and holds seats in Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, though it has gone backwards in recent elections.
It was fined €2.5 million for funding irregularities last year. There have also been periodic calls to ban the party, with the latest being led by Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Crime Handbook Provokes Fear of Increased Left-Wing Violence
Police are trying to find the authors and distributors of what has been described as a criminal handbook full of tips for saboteurs on how to commit arson, stop trains and cut down electricity pylons without getting caught, according to Der Spiegel magazine.
The 80-page brochure called ‘Prisma’ has been circulated within largely left-wing groupings in the Berlin, Hamburg and the Lower Saxony regions, according to the authorities who fear it may become instrumental in encouraging violence.
The use of sophisticated techniques such as deploying timers as well as several different kinds of inflammable material in arson attacks is discussed in the brochure, as are methods for cutting down electricity pylons and stopping trains by placing obstructions on the line.
There are also several chapters on how to avoid getting caught, outlining the investigation techniques of the police, and offering detailed advice on how saboteurs can avoid leaving clues and shake off those who might be tracking them.
The brochure, “encourages criminal acts with an until now unseen attention to detail and professionalism,” said Hans-Werner Wargel, head of Lower Saxony’s state intelligence service.
“This criminal handbook has reached a quality not previously seen,” he told Der Spiegel.
The magazine noted figures which showed that the number of left-wing radical acts of violence rose by 53 percent in 2009. A grouping of federal and state interior ministers is planning to tackle the scene with an action plan, which has yet to be agreed.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Finmeccanica Considers Legal Action Over Bribe Claims
Rome, 1 June (AKI) — Finmeccanica, Italy’s largest defence and aerospace company, is considering legal action after media reports suggested it was under investigation for possible corruption. The company has claimed its image was “seriously harmed” by the reports.
“Chairman and chief executive officer Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, with the full and unanimous support of members of the board of directors, has considered whether to use appropriate legal, civil and administrative means to protect the company,” the Rome-based company said on Tuesday in a statement.
Finmeccanica immediately denied reports published in Italian dailies including Corriere della Sera on Friday that it used foreign bank accounts to bribe officials in order to win contracts worth billions of euros.
Corriere della Sera said Rome prosecutors had launched an investigation into a number of offshore bank accounts in tax havens such as Hong Kong, Singapore as well as others in Europe.
The probe was established earlier this year after investigators allegedly heard conversations implicating Finmeccanica as they pursued a separate case involving Italian Internet company Fastweb and Telecom Italia’s Sparkle unit, according to Corriere della Sera.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Officials May Face ‘Manslaughter’ Charge Over Quake
L’Aquila, 3 June (AKI) — An Italian inquiry into the devastating earthquake which struck the city of L’Aquila last year is looking at whether several officials should be charged with manslaughter. Local prosecutors have notified members of the ‘risks commission’ that several of its officials who met days before the quake occurred on 6 April 2009, are under investigation for negligence.
Nine officials from agencies including the civil protection authority and the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology could face charges of manslaughter, Italian media said on Thursday.
Prosecutors are inquiring into whether the officials were negligent in failing to warn people in L’Aquila and surrounding areas of the impending risk.
The inquiry began after complaints from around 30 residents who accused the commission of giving local people false assurances that there was no reason for concern ahead of the 6.3 magnitude quake.
“Managers are highly qualified experts who would have given different answers to people,” said L’Aquila’s chief prosecutor, Alfredo Rossini. “This is not about an alarm that failed, the alarm had already come from other earth tremors.
“There was no warning to say they should leave their homes.”
The earthquake which struck Italy’s central Abruzzo region last April left 308 people dead, injured 1,600 and left up to 50,000 homeless. (Photo)
The quake also caused severe damage to churches and art treasures in the city of L’Aquila and surrounding villages.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Govt Official Probed Over ‘Rigging’ Of Security Contract
Naples, 3 June(AKI) — An Italian government official is under investigation for possible involvement in the alleged rigging of a 37 million-euro security contract awarded to the Italian defence giant, Finmeccanica. Giovanna Maria Iurato, who was last week named prefect of the central city of L’Aquila, was previously head of the Italian interior ministry’s technical logistics division.
Rome-based Finmeccanica was awarded the contract for a video surveillance system to aid police in the southern city of Naples.
Investigators are looking into why all five companies invited to bid on the contract were units of Finmeccanica and if the winner had been decided prior to any bidding.
Finmeccanica’s offices were searched by investigators in April and at the time the company said it was cooperating with the inquiry and denied any wrongdoing.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Mafia Arrests Reach 2000 in 2009
Rome, 4 June (AKI) — Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri police last year made 1,999 mafia-related arrests and seized 926 million euros in assets from organised crime. The Carabinieri released the data on Friday to mark the 196th anniversary of its establishment.
The Carabinieri said it arrested 511 fugitives suspected of mafia activity last year.
Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni last month said 5,300 mafia members had been arrested in the past two years.
In that time the government has seized 11 billion euros worth of mafia assets and arrested 360 mafia fugitives, including 24 of the 30 most wanted Italian criminals, he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi to ‘Buy Luxury Villa’ For Daughter
Rome, 4 June (AKI) — Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is reportedly considering the purchase of a luxury villa for his daughter in the exclusive community of Olgiata, north of Rome. Adnkronos has learned that Berlusconi travelled to the town 25 kms north of the city for secret talks late Thursday.
Berlusconi visited the centre of Olgiata near its prestigious gated community known as the Olgiata Country Club in the leafy historic region.
Flanked by his security guards, Berlusconi is understood to have visited a villa recently renovated by the Fiorucci family and confided he wanted to buy it for his daughter.
Berlusconi is one of Europe’s richest individuals and his personal fortune is estimated to be around 6.6 billion euros.
He has two children from his first marriage, Marina and Pier Silvio, and three others — Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi — from his second marriage to Veronica Lario.
A new poll released on Thursday showed that his popularity had sunk to its lowest level since he took office in 2008, hurt largely by new austerity measures worth 24 billion euros.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rotary’s Mega-Project Against Thalassemia in Morocco
(ANSAmed) — GENOA, JUNE 4 — In order to combat thalassemia in Morocco the Rotary 2030 district, which includes Liguria, Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta, has organised a project of solidarity which has been presented today at Genoa’s Galliera hospital. This was how Rabat’s new centre of excellence for treating thalassemia was born in 2007, built thanks to an investment from the Rotary club of 1.2 million dollars and with the help of Galliera. Ahead of new departments to open in Tangeri, Tetouan, Marrakesh and in Casablanca. Between 500 and one thousand children die each year in Morocco from thalassemia, and there are around 10,000 infected with the disease, for which there is no cure. The new centre in Rabat has, over the past three years, carried out 6,700 blood tests finding 800 healthy carriers and 90 sufferers from thalassemia. Today, there are ninety children being treated in the centre. Thalassemia is a degenerative disease typical of warm climates. It causes anaemia — a defect in transporting oxygen in the blood. If it is diagnosed and treated well, it has no effect on life-expectancy. There are more than 350,000 sufferers worldwide, but millions of health sufferers. The chances of a child being born with thalassemia are reduced by 25% if only one parent is a carrier. Thalassemia is cured by a bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor or by conventional blood-transfusion therapy. Today’s presentation was attended by, among others, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco, Hassan Bouyoub, and the head of the Rotary project, Paolo Gardino. “Rotary wants to extend its solidarity,” Gardino said, “to every sufferer from thalassemia in Morocco, by getting parliament to approve a law by which it becomes obligatory for every couple to undergo a blood test before getting married and to open a new bone-marrow transplant centre in the country”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Scotland: Thousands Join Gaza Protest in Edinburgh
Thousands of people have taken part in a demonstration in Edinburgh against the situation in Gaza.
The event was arranged by supporters of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and saw about 3,000 protestors gather in the city centre.
It came as Israeli troops took control of an aid ship trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Irish ship, MV Rachel Corrie, is captained by Eric Harcus, who is from Orkney.
Israel’s military said soldiers boarded the Rachel Corrie from the sea and did not meet any resistance.
The ship was being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. There has been no word from those on board.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the peaceful outcome to the operation.
The incident came five days after nine people were killed in clashes when troops boarded the Mavi Marmara and other ships in a convoy of ships bound for Gaza, prompting international criticism.
Among those taking part in the Edinburgh demonstration was Theresa McDermott, who was on the Challenger, one of the boats boarded last week.
The 43-year-old arrived home on Friday after being held in an Israeli prison.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s External Affairs Minister Fiona Hyslop said she had discussed Saturday’s boarding with Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin.
Ms Hyslop said: “The Scottish government has had direct contact with the MV Rachel Corrie — captained by a Scot, Eric Harcus — and it is essential that the safety of the activists and crew aboard is assured by Israel’s government.
“There are concerns that the vessel may have been boarded and commandeered while in international waters.
“Micheal Martin and I both agreed that all the humanitarian aid, which includes vital medical supplies, wheelchairs and cement must reach its destination.
“The Scottish government has joined other international voices in condemning the violence on the Mavi Marmara, and the first minister has written to Israel’s UK ambassador calling for the immediate lifting of the Gaza blockade.”
She said it was “imperative” that there is an impartial, UN-led inquiry into the violence on the Mavi Marmara.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement took control of the territory.
| — Hat tip: 4symbols | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: TLC, Interest From Germany, Egypt, Spain for Telekom
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, JUNE 3 — Deutsche Telekom, Egyptian company Orascom and Spanish Telefonica are the main groups interested in buying Telekom Srbija. Telecommunications Minister Jasna Matic said several potential buyers will participate in a bid for the sale of Telekom Srbuja. In an interview today with Belgrade newspaper Blic, the minister made particular reference to the interest demonstrated by the Egyptians of Orascom, according to meetings between the official and the owner of the company together with the Egyptian Minister for International Cooperation. Orascom, underlined Matic, is a large company already present in the Balkans, Italy and Greece, and which seems to enjoy substantial credibility internationally. Telekom Srbija — observed the minister — can be privatised since the market was liberalised. In March, Premier Mirko Cvetkovic said that he was in favour of the sale of Telekom Srbija this year, the national telecommunications company, underlining that he prefers a situation in which the state keeps a stake in the company. The state, through the postal agency (PTT Srbija) holds an 80% stake in Telekom Srbija, while the remaining 20% of the company is owned by Greek phone company OTE. A 30% share of that 20% belongs to Deutsche Telekom. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Grey Whale Believed Extinct 300 Years Ago Sighted
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 4 — A grey whale believed to be extinct in the North Atlantic 300 years ago was sighted on Sunday off the coast of Barcelona, according to a statement issued today by marine environment study and conservation group Submon. According to the group, ‘this is the first sighting of this species in the Mediterranean’. The photographs of the sighting were compared by Submon’s researchers and personnel from the U.S. National Marine Mammal Laboratory of the National Marine Fisheries Services because it could be the same whale that was seen in May in Israeli waters. The presence of this rare species of whale in the Mediterranean, underlined Submon, has raised a scientific debate on the origin of the animal, which could be one of the few survivors of the Atlantic population, or could belong to a population from the Pacific Ocean that arrived to the Mediterranean. The grey whale is a migratory species that can reach 16 meters in length and lives in the Pacific. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: It’s Too Hot, City Police Strip in Protest
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 1 — The entrance to the head office of Seville’s city police was the scene of a “Full Monty” today, with a large group of police officers stripping off in protest against the lack of air conditioning, while temperatures outdoors have already surpassed 40 degrees. The protest was called by the professional union of city police officers (Suppme) to denounce the uncomfortable conditions in which staff are forced to work. The conditions are the result of a fault with the air conditioning, which has been broken for over two months. In Spain today, at least eight provinces, including Andalusia, are in a state of alarm due to the extreme heat, which in some parts of the country has already topped 40 degrees. The police protest, which attracted the attention of dozens of passers-by, was restricted to a public changing of clothes in front of the building known as ‘Charly 2’, the headquarters of city police chiefs. Officers have threatened daily “performances” if City officials do not step in to repair the building’s air conditioning system. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Catalonia Bullfight Ban Nears Approval
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 3 — The days of bullfights in Catalonia are about to end. Yesterday, the ban on fights in the region’s arenas overcame the penultimate hurdle of its parliamentary course, with the approval by the Environment Commission of the Catalan Chamber of a change in the law on protection of animals, which is set to include the law on fighting bulls. The move for a change in legislation was proposed by the ‘Prou!’ (Enough) platform and would see the ban on bullfighting in the region come into force from January 1 2012. The last step in the process will be the approval of the law change by the Catalan Parliament’s plenary session on June 9. The vote, according to media reports today, can be delayed by a month if the People’s Party, which together with the PSC and the Ciutadans party is against the law, challenges it before the Statutory Guarantee Council. Moderate and radical nationalist parties, CIU, ICV-EUIA and ERC yesterday voted in favour of the ban, which as a result is also likely to be approved in Parliament. Indeed no surprises are expected after yesterday’s emergence of an abolitionist majority. Of the three historic “plazas de toros” in Barcelona, only La Monumental has survived. In the heated debate between bullfighting enthusiasts and abolitionists, the pro-bullfight front had appointed as standard-bearer José Tomas, the matador who triumphantly returned in 2004, when the city was declared anti-taurine. Tomas discussed the Manifiesto por la Libertad, which was signed by 285 intellectuals — including Miquel Barcelò and Joan Manuel Serrat — and found unexpected support in 133 French politicians, who appealed to their Spanish colleagues to reject the popular initiative. However, this was not enough to stop the action of animal rights protesters against what they consider “a barbaric tradition that must be abolished”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Coach Details for Saturday’s Gaza Demo
Birmingham coaches for Saturday’s Gaza demo are leaving from 8.30am. To book a seat on the those leaving from Central Mosque ring Manzoor on 0797 007 2594, from Carrs Lane ring Nick on 0782 801 3091, and from Hamza Mosque ring Tahir on 0786 175 086.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Gaza Aid Ship Protesters Try to Storm BBC Manchester
A protester placed a Palestinian flag on top of BBC Manchester Protesters demonstrating against the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship have attempted to storm the BBC in Manchester.
More than 800 people marched through the city centre and down Oxford Road, where the crowd surged at the BBC’s entrance, smashing its front doors.
One man climbed to the top of the building to plant a Palestinian flag and there were at least three arrests.
Protesters said they were also angry about the BBC’s coverage of Israel.
Police officers formed a chain across the BBC’s Oxford Road entrance and surrounded the building with police vehicles and officers.
Protesters from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, who organised the demonstration, chanted slogans including: “BBC tell the truth.”
Protesters smashed glass doors and there were at least three arrests The demonstration followed the confirmed killings of nine humanitarian aid workers by Israeli soldiers, who stormed their ship as it approached Gaza.
Talat Ali, 40, organizer from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “This is a peaceful demonstration against the attack that has taken place on the Gaza flotilla.
“We are not happy with the way commanders boarded vessels and butchered people.
“We are not happy with the biased news given by the BBC.”
A BBC spokesman said: “‘There was a protest outside the offices of BBC Manchester, however staff and visitors were safe and services were not interrupted.”
Greater Manchester Police were unavailable for comment.
| — Hat tip: Alara Kenet | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rage Against Israel
* * * National Demonstration * * *
SATURDAY JUNE 5
End the Siege of Gaza: Freedom for Palestine
ASSEMBLE DOWNING STREET LONDON 1.30PM
A national demonstration in London this Saturday 5 June has been called by Stop the War, Palestine Solidarity, CND, BMI and Viva Palestina.
The march will assemble at Downing Street at 1.30pm and march to the Israeli Embassy (note below changed details for the Islamophobia conference).
Monday’s emergency demonstration showed how fast we can mobilise if we use all available means to spread the word as fast as possible. Please do all you can to publicise the demonstration among your friends, in your workplace, in your trade union, in your college or school, in your community group etc.
For more information, please click Event Leaflet
Full details: www.stopwar.org.uk
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Stop Islamophobia: Defend the Muslim Community
[Item from the British website Islamophobia Watch announcing an Islamophobia conference which has metamorphosed into a demonstration — the conference participants reveal a who’s who of the Muslims, inc Muslim Brotherhood representatives, and their ‘useful idiot’ allies among the indigenous population who enable the relentless Islamization of British public life, ie the only appropriate response is “rage against Israel” — see third item from the MCB webpage. Haven’t these people read Sloterdijk? — JP]
Conference, Saturday 5 June 9am to 1:30pm
Camden Centre London WC1H 9JE
Speakers include:
Daud Abdullah Muslim Council of Britain • Mohammed Ali Islam Channel • Anas Al-Tikriti British Muslim Initiative • Tre Azam ex of The Apprentice • Moazzam Begg former Guantanamo Bay prisoner • Lindsey German convenor Stop the War Coalition • Muhammad Habibur-Rahman vice-president Islamic Forum of Europe • Kate Hudson CND • Imran Khan solicitor • Dr Robert Lambert former head of Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit • Seumas Milne journalist • Peter Oborne journalist • Salma Yaqoob Respect Party
Update
Because of the attacks on the aid flotilla to Gaza, there is now an emergency protest demonstration being held in London on 5th June. Stop the War and BMI are fully involved in organising this protest, given the outrage at the deaths of at least ten on the flotilla and the continued imprisonment of hundreds more.
We have therefore decided to continue with the conference until lunchtime, but then to curtail it and ask delegates to join the demonstration in the afternoon.
This means that conference registration will begin at 9.00 for a 9.30 start, the conference will continue until 1pm with a final session which talks about Islamophobia, the war on terror and how they are linked. We will then adjourn to Downing St to join the march to the Israeli embassy.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Serbia: Cooperation Programmes for Disabled Children
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, JUNE 4 — The objective of the two cooperation programmes ‘The 100 languages of diversity’ and ‘Support to minors with a handicap and their family’ is to improve the living conditions of children and adolescents in Serbia, and their chances of social inclusion. Both programmes are funded by the Foreign Ministry/General direction for development cooperation with a total contribution of more than 2 million euros. They have been entrusted to the Regions of Emilia Romagna and Friuli Venezia Giulia and UNICEF, in collaboration with the Labour Ministry and the Ministry of Social Security of Serbia. “The 100 languages of diversity” will be carried out by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia on behalf of the two Regions. Its goal is to create new social and educational services in the municipalities of Kragujevac, Novi Sad and Loznica. The other programme, “Support to minors with a handicap and their family”, will be implemented by UNICEF, in collaboration with the Italian NGO Educaid, in particular in the areas of Nisava, Pirot, Jablanica and Toplica. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: DIV Changes Name, Cease to Exist After 125 Years
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, JUNE 2 — Duvanska industrija Vranje (DIV), founded in 1885 and for a long time the only industrial company in southern Serbia, will cease to exist after 125 years after the board of shareholders passed the motion of the BAT/DIV executive board to change the company name to British American Tobacco (BAT), reports radio B92. Gradimir Milic, a business relations manager at BAT Vranje, confirmed for Tanjug that DIV has been renamed British American Tobacco, adding that the new name is “the necessary step toward the full integration of the Vranje factory into the BAT family”. BAT, the world’s second largest cigarette manufacturer with 56,000 employees in 180 countries, bought 70% of DIV shares for 5 million euros back in 2003. BAT has since invested 115 million euros in the facilities in Vranje and quadrupled cigarette production.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Activists Describe “Bloodbath” On Gaza-Bound Ship
ISTANBUL/BEIRUT (Reuters) — Freed after days held incommunicado in Israeli jail, survivors of Monday’s storming of an aid ship described a “bloodbath,” with people shot before their eyes and desperate efforts to treat the wounded.
Those aboard the flotilla returned home on Thursday after being held in Israeli jail since the raid, at last able to give their own accounts of the incident in which Israeli troops killed nine activists aboard the cruise liner Mavi Marmara.
There were sharp differences in accounts: activists accused Israeli troops of war crimes, while Israel held to its line that they fired in self-defense. In one of the key differences, activists denied Israeli accusations that they fired first, with guns they had seized from Israeli troops in the melee.
All sides described a scene of confusion and mayhem in the botched assault.
“People had been shot in the arms, legs, in the head — everywhere. We had so many injured. It was a bloodbath,” said Laura Stuart, a British housewife and first aider.
She described frantic attempts to treat the injured in a makeshift sick room on the ship, and failed attempts to resuscitate some of the dead.
Four Israelis Captured in First Wave
Andre Abu Khalil, a Lebanese cameraman for Al Jazeera TV, gave an account that backed some of what both sides have said.
In his telling, activists initially wounded and captured four Israelis from a first wave that boarded the ship. A second wave of troops tried to storm the ship after the four were taken below decks.
“Twenty Turkish men formed a human shield to prevent the Israeli soldiers from scaling the ship. They had slingshots, water pipes and sticks,” he said. “They were banging the pipes on the side of the ship to warn the Israelis not to get closer.”
After a 10-minute standoff the Israelis opened fire.
“One man got a direct hit to the head and another one was shot in the neck,” he said. In all he saw some 40 people wounded, some to the legs, eye, stomach and chest.
One activist used a loudhailer to tell the Israelis the four captive soldiers were well and would be released if they provided medical help for the wounded activists. With an Israeli Arab lawmaker acting as mediator, the Israelis agreed. Wounded were brought to the deck and were airlifted off the ship.
Israel says its troops fired only after some of their weapons had been seized by activists, who fired first.
“Once the soldiers saw knives, metal rods, chains, broken bottles, and they were shot at, they shot back and killed nine of them,” Israeli military spokesman Captain Ayre Shalicar said.
Activists Deny Firing
One of the organizers on board who returned on Thursday from an Israeli jail, Bulent Yildirim, chairman of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), said activists had indeed seized weapons, but never fired them.
“They were trying to land on the boat. So obviously there was this hand-to-hand combat and during that process the people on the boat were basically able to disarm some of the soldiers because they did have guns with them,” Burney told Reuters.
Asked if anyone had used the guns against the Israeli commandos, he said: “No, not at all.”
Canadian Farooq Burney, director of a Qatari educational initiative, said the commandos waited more than an hour before treating the wounded, even though activists had made a makeshift sign reading: “S.O.S. .. Please provide medical assistance.”
The 37-year-old Canadian said he witnessed one elderly man bleed to death before his eyes after being shot.
“He just passed out in front of us and we couldn’t see where he was hit so we opened up his lifejacket and we could clearly see that he was hit in the chest,” Burney said. “He was losing a lot of blood. It was on … the right, just close to his chest and there was blood coming out from there. He passed away.”
The nine dead activists, who were brought home on Thursday in wooden coffins, were all Turks, including one dual U.S.-Turkish citizen. Yildirim said some activists were still missing, adding that an Indonesian doctor was shot in the stomach as he helped a wounded Israeli soldier.
“I took off my shirt and waved it, as a white flag. We thought they would stop after seeing the white flag, but they continued killing people,” Yildirim said. “A friend of ours saw two dead bodies in a toilet.”
British activist Sarah Colborne, of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said she was on deck when commandos approached in boats, “bristling with arms.” Others roped down from hovering helicopters and sound and gas bombs were let off.
“It looked like they were capable of killing anyone. They had obviously been fired up,” the 43-year-old told reporters.
“I saw one person who had been shot in the head between the eyes,” she said. “That made me realize how dangerous it was. That for me made me think they are using live ammunition, people are getting killed.”
| — Hat tip: MK | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza Aid Operation ‘To Receive £19m From the UK’
The UK government is expected to say it has approved £19m of aid money to be given to the UN operation in Gaza.
It is likely to be spent on medical equipment and basic food stuffs.
It follows heightened scrutiny of Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory after an aid ship was stormed five days ago, leaving nine dead.
Meanwhile, thousands protested in London and Edinburgh about the aid ship incident and Israeli soliders said they boarded another ship peacefully.
Israel’s military said they did not meet any resistance when they boarded the Irish-owned Rachel Corrie earlier.
BBC Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison said although the money had already been earmarked by the UK, the timing of the announcement that it has been “signed off” by the new coalition government, expected on Monday, was “significant”.
Mr Hague has repeated his calls for an investigation into the storming of the Turkish aid ship.
Mr Hague said: “We continue to stress to the Israeli government the importance of an investigation that ensures accountability and commands the confidence of the international community, and includes international participation.”
He added: “We urgently need to see unfettered access to Gaza to meet the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza and to enable the reconstruction of homes, livelihoods and trade. That is why we continue to press the government of Israel to lift Gaza’s closure.
“I am also discussing these issues urgently with our international partners.”
London demonstrations
Israel says the flotilla the Turkish ship was part of was breaking a blockade put in force to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza. It says it had repeatedly said the boats would not be allowed to reach the territory.
The Metropolitan Police said about 2,000 people took part in the demonstration in central London but organisers put the number at 5,000.
The protest included a march from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy. The marchers arriving at the embassy in Kensington, west London, numbered around 1,000, BBC correspondent Greg Wood said.
Among the protesters was Sarah Colborne, 43, of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who was aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara Gaza aid ship where the activists died.
She spent almost two days in Israeli custody before coming back to Britain.
Meanwhile, police said about 2,000 people took part in a demonstration in Edinburgh, through the city centre from The Mound to the US consulate via Princes Street.
SNP MSP Sandra White read out a message on behalf of First Minister Alex Salmond and the Scottish government.
It said: “The Scottish government condemns the Israeli authorities’ actions that resulted in the tragic loss of life on the Mavi Marmara.
“We have added Scotland’s voice to that of the wider international community in condemning it, and calling for the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.”
| — Hat tip: 4symbols | [Return to headlines] |
The Netherlands Calls for Gaza Inquiry, Dutch Activists in Israeli Jail
The Netherlands has called for an inquiry into the attack by Israeli forces on an aid convoy heading for the Gaza Strip in which at least 10 people are reported dead.
‘I want the Israeli ambassador in The Hague to clarify matters,’ foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen said in a statement. ‘I am extremely shocked that people have been killed. The Netherlands wants to know exactly how this happened.’
‘What has happened today, just as talks were begining between Israel and the Palestinians, will not bring peace any closer,’ he said.
Supporters
MPs from across the political spectrum, even those traditionally supportive of Israel, have said they were shocked by Israel’s actions.
‘Everything points to the fact that it is not right what Israel has done,’ the Volkskrant reports VVD MP Atzo Nicolai as saying. Unless Israel comes up with a convincing story, an international inquiry will be unavoidable, he said.
However, PVV MP Geert Wilders said it is ‘cheap’ to attack Israel. ‘I am certainly not going to make a cheap attack on Israel by howling in the woods with the rest of the wolves,’ he told tv show Nova.
Israel was fully justified in entering the ships to see if they were also carrying weapons, he said.
Activists
Meanwhile, the two Dutch nationals travelling with the convoy are being held in the Be’er Sheva prison in the south of Israel. They are among almost 500 activitists who have been taken into custody.
According to the news agency ANP, 29-year-old Anne de Jong and 43-year-old Amin Abou Rashed have been offered a fast-track deportation procedure but have refused because they want to complete their mission.
According to the BBC, Israel has imposed an information blackout, making it difficult to gather first-hand accounts from the campaigners.
Demonstration
Between 300 and 500 people held a demonstration in The Hague on Monday night in protest at the commandos’ action. But they were prevented from gathering in front of the Israel embassy because the Buitenhof square had been closed off.
The crowd carried banners and chanted ‘Israel murderer’. At one point riot police charged the crowd with batons. Gretta Duisenberg, pro-Palestine activist and widow of former central bank chief Wim Duisberg was among those who was hit.
Benji de Levie, 63, who was standing next to Duisenberg, told the Volkskrant he had been trying to avoid a confrontation with the police. He said he had been hit several times.
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Wake-Up Call
Italian parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein rails against the ‘unreasonable’ European Left and defends her counter-initiative to JCall.
By Ilan Evyatar
Fiamma Nirenstein isn’t the kind of woman to mince her words. If you ask the Italian parliamentarian, the idea of land for peace is dead and Jewish intellectuals who signed a petition pressuring Israel to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians are out of touch with reality.
Last month Nirenstein, a member of parliament in Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative coalition government, who happens to live part of the year on the other side of the Green Line, in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, launched “Stand for Israel, Stand for Reason”, a pan-European counter-initiative to JCall. The latter, “A European Jewish Call for Reason,” was launched earlier in the year with the backing of prominent Jewish intellectuals such as Alain Finkelkraut and Bernard-Henri Lévy to work for the “creation of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state” to “ensure the survival of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Nirenstein is incensed by what she sees as JCall’s placing of the onus on Israel to take the steps necessary for peace. JCall’s document, she says, “is inspired by a shortsighted view of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict” and its signatories “do not fully understand the global physical and moral threat to which Israel is currently exposed.”
“It is this lack of sense of reality and absolute misunderstanding of history that made me think that there is a need for a movement that will be on the side of truth,” says Nirenstein in a phone interview from Rome. “Because putting all the responsibility for the peace process on Israel is completely denying historical truth”. Furthermore, Nirenstein adds, pushing Israel to make land concessions will not bring peace. “Only a cultural revolution and acceptance of Israel can make that happen,” she states.
To date, “Stand for Israel, Stand for Reason” has collected some 4,500 signatories. Nirenstein rejects the labeling of the petition as right wing. “We have people from all sides of the political spectrum,” she says. “It’s not a right-wing document; it doesn’t have a political characteristic. There are people from the Right, but also from the very Left. There are writers, military men, historians. It is not right wing to say that the Palestinians must take responsibility, and the problem is not to give and give, and that the question of land for peace is irrelevant if there is not room for Arab acceptance of the Jewish state. There are plenty of people, intellectuals and politicians, who are on the Left and who understand that.”
Nirenstein didn’t always have such pronounced views. In fact, she started out as a communist and it was only after the Six Day War that her political stance took a shift to the right. “Everybody in Italy was a communist. It was a youngster’s aspiration to freedom, to a different society, to overcoming of any injustice. If you are not communist when you are young, you are without a heart, and you are without a brain if you remain a communist when you are older.”
Her late father was a correspondent for Al Hamishmar, a now defunct left-wing Hebrew daily affiliated with the Hashomer Hatza’ir kibbutz movement, who came to Israel as a leftist Zionist in 1936 from Poland with his sisters and lost the rest of his family in the concentration camps. He joined the Jewish Brigade and came to Italy with the British army, where he met Nirenstein’s mother, who was a partisan. She is still alive and well and writes for Corriere della Sera.
Nirenstein followed in the family tradition and has written for Commentary, La Stampa and Il Giornale. The author of several books on anti-Semitism, terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, she also headed the Italian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv for two years in the mid-1990s.
Nirenstein’s anger at the JCall petition is about more than just interpretation of the tactics required to bring about a resolution with the Palestinians. JCall for her is no less than an “attempt to compel Israel to give up and surrender.”
“When is it that somebody has to give up and surrender,” she explains, “when there is no exchange between the sides? There is one request of the Palestinians: that they recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish nation — they never did it and they keep up with their attitude of denial and even with very strong incitement. I was particularly struck when they named a square after Yihye Ayyash [Hamas’s chief bomb maker, nicknamed “the engineer,” who was responsible for a string of suicide bombings that rocked Israel in the mid-1990s before being killed with a bomb planted in a cellphone], because as a journalist I saw all the buses that ‘the engineer’ blew up in Jerusalem. I cannot figure why international public opinion doesn’t cry out and say to the Palestinians, ‘How can you name a square after Yihye Ayyash?’ It’s something so terribly disgusting.
“When I relate to surrendering, it is because there is a worldwide change of strategy toward Israel that pushes it into a corner. First of all, I am talking about the Islamic fundamentalist attitude guided by Iran. Israel is surrounded and they try to terrorize it. Iran, Hizbullah with its 40,000 missiles, Syria that gave Hizbullah the missiles on behalf of Iran and the other terrorist organizations. It’s blackmail. There is an attempt to blackmail Israel that says surrender or you will be completely destroyed. This is the first step to get the surrender of the Jewish state. It’s not a territorial threat, it’s a moral threat because Israel represents the West.
“Israel with its lovely democracy is in the middle of that world. They hate us because of this. Because women dress as they like, because they work, because they do what they like, because children of both sexes learn in the same class, because there are Arabs sitting in parliament while no Arab regime would allow a Jew to sit in its parliament and because Israel has such a flourishing economy, while the Arab states never gave birth to a culture or scientific invention and Israel has all its astonishing start-ups. All of this reminds the Islamic extremists of such a cultural inferiority, and I’m speaking only of a cultural inferiority of course, in front of the Western world. After Israel surrenders, the way is open to its complete destruction.”
Nirenstein’s anger is working up to a passionate crescendo. Surely, I protest, you aren’t accusing JCall’s backers of being in league with the kind of forces you have described.
“No, absolutely not,” she replies. “What I wanted to explain is what I see as a surrender. With JCall of course it is something different. Many of them belong to a history of the Left, which for a long time has been a victorious history and is also the history of the peace movement. But if you look at the movement, it has lost its way because it does not propose viable solutions. The solutions it proposed, such as at Camp David [under Ehud Barak] and Ehud Olmert’s proposals, have lost their way because they never won. The Palestinians always rejected them and I challenge anybody to say this is not true.
“Now you have [Barack] Obama. He is a big new hope in the eyes of the European Left that has lost the elections everywhere, that has lost its cultural presence everywhere and has lost its political and moral meaning. Obama really believes, I suppose, that there can be the possibility of peace based on the surrender of Israel. This opens up to the European Left the possibility of achieving a new international space. It’s an inspiration for them and sparks hopes for them and tells them let’s try again. They feel they have such a strong leader, the United States of America on their side, so why don’t we try again to focus on the battle for peace even if the formula land for peace has been defeated by history.
“I think people like Bernard-Henri Lévy know very well that the formula has been defeated by history, but the temptation of saying that a right-wing government is in itself against peace because it is right wing is something that probably, culturally, he cannot resist.”
If land for peace is dead, what is the alternative as Nirenstein sees it?
“Land for recognition of the Jewish state, for a complete stop to incitement — and as I propose all the time, we need international sanctions against incitement. Look at the dissemination of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all over the Arab world; this is something that must be the subject of sanctions. There must be a revision of the idea of what is primary and what is secondary in the peace process. Land is not primary.”
But while she does not buy into the land-for-peace formula and rejects what she calls “the politically correct idea that settlements are the problem,” Nirenstein is willing to give up land if — “and that is a big if,” she says — the Arab world accepts Israel as a Jewish state.
“I think that all the history of Israel is a history of settlements, of pioneering, of making the land bloom. I don’t consider the settlements a crime, I consider them the consequence of war,” Nirenstein states. “But I think that to find a peace agreement, while I repeat that we need mostly the acceptance of the Arab world, I also understand that some of the settlements must be abandoned. I think that the old agreements where blocs of settlements were conserved and there were territorial swaps was an acceptable position. At the end of the day, I think there will have to a be a renunciation of some of the settlements, but the most important blocs, where there are a concentration of Jewish people, will be kept. I respect the settlers and understand them. It’s ridiculous that the settlers have become a sort of offense.”
The point is, she continues, that any territorial compromise cannot be “for free.” “This is the main point of the story,” she says, “this is why we had to collect all of those signatures, because people are not ignorant, people are not stupid, you cannot sing always the same song even when you go out of tune, and this is what happened with JCall. They sang the same old song thinking that singing it again and again will allow them to win. No, history tells us what happened when Israel tried very hard to give away whatever was asked from the territorial point of view in order to make peace.
“But territory is not the point; the real point is the soul, and the soul of the Arab world today is always on the side of considering the Jews unwelcome and foreign guests in a place which is not theirs. Why doesn’t Obama stand up and say to the Palestinians — with the same strong voice that he uses when he asks Israel to stop construction — recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish state? This would be the real move that would change everything.”
In that context then, how does she see the efforts of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad?
“Salam Fayyad is a very interesting leader who puts more emphasis on society building, and this is certainly the key to democracy. When you have a society that builds its institutions and becomes a creative society, it has much more possibility of becoming a democratic society and therefore becoming an interlocutor. Because interlocution between a democratic society like Israel and a nondemocratic entity like the Palestinians’ is very hard. There are words that don’t have the same meaning. It’s the three Ps: Parliament doesn’t have the same meaning, police doesn’t have the same meaning and, most of all, people doesn’t have the same meaning.
“Salam Fayyad is very aware of this, but his proposal for establishing a Palestinian state unilaterally in 2011 is masochistic. On the other side you have Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas], and this fight between the two is very disturbing from the point of view of a real peace process. This is also something that the JCall people don’t take into consideration because to whom do you give the territory — to Fatah, to Fayyad or even to Hamas which is a very strong part of the Palestinian people? The question is very important and we cannot ignore it. The JCall document misses the most important points. It misses on the Palestinians, it misses on democracy and it misses on the Arab world.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Why Has Israel Disarmed Itself in the Battle for World Opinion?
Islamist fanatics were allowed to use the ‘humanitarian’ flotilla as a weapon, says Charles Moore
One would be perfectly justified in writing an entire column attacking the way Israel has been misrepresented over its fatal raid on the flotilla bound for Gaza on Monday. One could point out that the IHH, which was in charge of the Turkish boat which was attacked, has well-attested links to terrorist organisations. It was spoiling for a fight: some of those on board spoke of their desire for “martyrdom”. One could add that the men who fought the Israeli commandos were strangely described by ABC as “humanitarians with a few knives”. Chanting anti-Jewish battle-cries, they stabbed an Israeli soldier before, it seems, the Israelis had shot anyone. The same “humanitarians”, judging by fairly clear film of the incident, tried to club Israelis to death.
There was no need, one might go on, for humanitarian aid to travel by these means, since the Israelis were prepared to deliver it themselves, as they regularly deliver aid of their own to Gaza. The purpose of the Gaza blockade, now roundly condemned by world leaders, was originally backed up by international agreement. Various forces, including the Royal Navy, said they would help interdict supplies of arms to Gaza: it could not be permitted to become, in effect, an Iranian port. And one could remind the world that the reason Gaza is an independent entity at all is that, in 2005, Israel withdrew from it.
Finally, one might note sarcastically that world opinion’s instantaneous outrage against Israel’s action contrasts sharply with its marked reluctance to rush to judgment when North Korea sinks a South Korean ship, or, most notably, when Iran takes another step towards building its Bomb. But I shall say no more about any of these things, because what friends of Israel need to say at this point is that this mess is Israel’s fault.
I do not mean, as so many do, that Israel is wicked and aggressive, let alone — as is often, almost obscenely, claimed — that its actions replicate the behaviour of apartheid South Africa or even of Nazis in the Holocaust. I mean that Israel is at fault because, by failing to define the nature of the conflict, it is allowing such views to win.
In fewer than 10 days’ time, nearly 40 years after the event itself, and 13 years and £191 million after it was established, the Saville Inquiry on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry will report. This saga is a terrible lesson in what happens when the wrong narrative is allowed to capture the public consciousness. This week’s event, perhaps prompted by a similar, ill-disciplined impulse to teach bad people a lesson, may well be used against Israel at the bar of world opinion 40 years hence.
Things could have been so different if Israel had set the stage. These convoys, after all, are not new. Their propaganda for extremism is well known, but Israeli intelligence, so expert at tracing the networks of actual violence, seems strangely weak in following their wider ideological background, so the world was not told nearly enough about the people on board. Weeks ago, Israel could have been warning about the flotilla. It could have lobbied populations and governments about the unholy alliance between human rights groups and Islamist fanatics.
If military intervention really was necessary, Israel could surely have found technical ways to immobilise a boat without armed men having to shin down a rope. When the Israelis complain that they were attacked by people who claim they are peaceful, they have a point, but, given that they never believed they were peaceful, why were these toughest of tough commandos apparently taken by surprise? What surprised them?
The failure, above all, is in what is now called (see last week’s column) “the battle of the narratives”. I am grateful to the latest Joint Doctrine Publication promulgated by our Chiefs of Staff (Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution) for two telling quotations. One is from the Principles of War, drawn up by Hezbollah, Hamas’s murderous cousins in the Lebanon. One principle states: “The media has innumerable guns whose hits are like bullets. Use them in battle.” The other is from General Keightley, who commanded the ill-fated British operation in the Suez crisis in 1956. “The one overriding lesson of the Suez operation,” he said, “is that world opinion is now an absolute principle… and must be treated as such.”
Israel has fought so long, and usually so well, in real battles, but it seems to have forgotten how to fight in verbal ones. On the day of the flotilla incident, all the outraged governments were on the airwaves almost before anything had happened. But it took five and a half hours before the Israeli Ambassador in America appeared in public. Quite a lot of articulate people spoke up in Israel’s support — it really will be a black day when there are no articulate people to be found to defend the Jewish state — but they had no clear, coordinated, Israeli government message, and so their “innumerable guns” were pointing in different directions.
By contrast, the “humanitarian” narrative was constantly repeated with all the efficient dishonesty that terrorists, when they use that word, deploy so well.
What has gone wrong? Experts tell me that there is no proper co-ordination, that no one person is in charge of shaping and communicating Israel’s message to the world, and that no one is sacked. It is most odd that the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who came to fame 20 years ago during the first Gulf war precisely because he knew the importance of talking to the outside world, is so quiet. He seems trapped in the government machine. Somewhere down the years, Israel allowed itself to forget that its greatest weapon is the story it can tell about itself.
Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare. In the Six Day War of 1967, what swept all before it was the combination of military might and a story the world wanted to hear, that of David beating Goliath. Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case — aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries — about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism.
Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
No ‘Sex’ In Turkish Cities as Filmmakers Wrestle With Muslims’ Roles
From terrorists to hero FBI agents, Muslim characters are playing increasingly varied roles in US television shows and films. But as the culture clash that may have prompted the delayed release of ‘Sex and the City 2’ shows, there’s still a long way to go to ensure diverse, multidimensional representations the fast-growing faith
Director Michael Patrick King’s decision to thrust the couture cleavage of “Sex and the City 2” into the veiled culture of Abu Dhabi seems to not have sat well with distributors in Turkey. The Turkish release of the second movie version of HBO’s hit series has been postponed, an industry source said Thursday, with no rescheduled date in sight.
The misfire is only the most recent example of Americans’ encounters with Muslims onscreen, a “clash of civilizations” that has become an increasingly prominent part of pop culture since Sept. 11.
Not all of the depictions have been negative ones, however. Where insomniac agent Jack Bauer of the TV show “24” once had to fight Muslim terrorists in sleeper cells, the character has more recently befriended an imam for spiritual guidance and seen a female Arab agent take a role as the acting head of the counter-terrorism unit.
With its current rate of growth, Islam will be the second-largest religion in the United States by 2015, a trend that has not always been reflected in movies and television shows’ attempts to depict diversity. Take the cast of characters in “Glee,” arguably the most popular TV show of the past season: The misfit students at the fictional McKinley High School include an overweight black girl, a gay boy, an Asian girl with a stutter and a student in a wheelchair. Missing from this potpourri of minorities is a Muslim student.
King, the director and writer of “Sex and the City 2,” may have sought to contribute to onscreen diversity by taking Carrie Bradshaw and her friends to Abu Dhabi for a holiday. But this attempt backfired when critics called the jaunt to a predominantly Muslim country tasteless at best.
The first Muslim hero
Long before Sept. 11, the sinister Muslim stereotype was already a Hollywood favorite, seen, for instance, in such blockbusters like “True Lies” and Disney’s “Aladdin” — where Aladdin and Princess Jasmin spoke perfect American English, while the bad guys had thick accents.
Of course, things have changed since the tragedy nearly a decade ago. Back then, the first instinct in pop culture was to show as many Muslim terrorist extremists on TV and in movies as possible. The backlash against “24’s” Muslim terrorists next door, however, planted the seeds for more positive portrayals of Muslim communities.
The first Muslim hero on mainstream TV appeared in 2005. The show, “Sleeper Cell,” featured Darwyn al-Sayeed as a Muslim undercover FBI agent infiltrating a terrorist sleeper cell that was planning to attack Los Angeles. “The creation of Darwyn’s character was inspired by the fact that there are Muslim-Americans in the U.S. military and law enforcement who are faithful followers of their religion while being loyal, patriotic Americans,” executive producers Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff said.
With a Muslim hero leading the way, more multi-dimensional everyday Muslim people appeared onscreen. “Aliens in America,” a sitcom that sadly lasted for just one season, featured the unlikely relationship between the members of a suburban Christian family and a Pakistani exchange student staying with them. With wisdom beyond his years, teenager Raja Musharaff never compromised on his religion. A scene when he opened up his prayer rug in an airport and caused a riot made good TV and pointed at the shallow misconceptions many Americans hold about Muslims.
Cinema takes slower route
The Canadian sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” took a look at the congregation of a rural mosque as its members try living their lives in harmony with the paranoid residents of a prairie town. With its fourth season concluding recently, the show has successfully depicted the varying ideologies in average Muslim communities.
Many other TV series, such as “Nurse Jackie,” “Community,” “Better Off Ted,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Law & Order” and even “Lost” subsequently jumped on the bandwagon to include realistic, multi-dimensional Muslims in their casts of characters.
Cinema seems to be taking a slower route, with the best example coming to mind being a historic film from 2005. Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven” took place in 1184 A.D. during the holy wars between Christians and Muslims over the control of Jerusalem. The film depicted the Muslim leader Saladin as a just, moral and strong man, as well as a military genius. It also showed how these two populations at odds could still co-exist peacefully.
In another global blockbuster, “Mummy Returns,” Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell received his greatest help in fighting the undead from a Muslim character, Ardeth Bay. As Muslim advocacy groups, such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Muslims on Screen and Television, work more actively with studios, hopefully we’ll get to see more realistic, more interesting and less evil Muslim characters onscreen.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Proud to be a Turk (Especially These Days)
My friend Riyad Hammad, a Dubai-based Muslim businessman and an advocate of classical liberalism, sent me an e-mail the other day. His title was telltale: “In Turkey, we Trust.”
This was just one of the countless messages that keep coming from the Arab world with regards to Turkey. Some of these are even plainly visible, as the Turkish flag flies in the hands of thousands of non-Turks in the protests against Israeli policies across the world. The star-crescent, I bet, has never become this popular beyond its homeland.
And all this makes me proud as a Turk. I can even say that Atatürk’s famous phrase — “how happy is the one who says I am a Turk” — looks more meaningful to me now then ever before.
The right side of history
Before explaining why, perhaps I should note something that the regular readers of this column probably already know: I am hardly a Turkish nationalist. In fact, most of my ink is spent criticizing Turkish society, and especially the Turkish state, rather than praising them. The latter’s decades-long denial of the Kurds’ rights and the Armenians’ suffering, and the poor record of human rights in general, are things that give me embarrassment, not pride.
But there are times that Turkey gets things right, and stands in the right side of history. We are, I believe, in one of those moments.
Here is the reason: Turkey is taking the right stance vis-à-vis Israel, by standing by its right to exist, and to live in peace and security, but also boldly standing against her 43-year-long policies of occupation, theft of land, and crushing the Palestinians with a brutal militarism.
Although this balance does not look like rocket science, it is apparently not that easy to keep. America, the biggest player in the game, has been, at least perceivably, unabashedly and unfairly pro-Israel. Most Americans, including Joe Biden, still sound so today when they emphasize “Israel’s right to defend itself” at the expense of the Palestinians’, and the pro-Palestinian activist’s, right to live. (Add to that the right of Gaza’s children to notebooks, blank paper or chocolate, which are among the long list of goods that Israel’s bars from that giant ghetto.)
On the other side, there has always been an anti-Israeli front, which threatens to wipe the Jewish state off from the map. Nasser promised this, bringing only destruction to his county and the region. Nowadays Ahmedinejad promises the same thing, and feeds the radicalism of Hezbollah and Hamas, making life difficult for all of us. That camp only preaches anti-Semitism, hate, and a doomsday scenario. (And they have their mirror images in Israel who preach anti-Arabism, hate, and a rivaling doomsday scenario.)
“Moderate Arab regimes,” of course, are in the reasonable position of asking Israel to retreat to its pre-’67 borders, not get lost from the face of the earth. But they always lose face when Israel goes brutal and their weak reactions do not satisfy their people’s yearning for justice and defiance.
So, what is perhaps needed is a “moderate” stance which is bold, courageous and inspiring.
And now Turkey, under its prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, is filling this gap. Admittedly, Erdogan’s rhetoric is often too harsh and sometimes outright wrong (such as his statement that Darfur is just fine because “Muslims do not commit genocide.”) But it works in its own way. So, the Turkish prime minister is now an “Arab hero,” who wins the hearths and minds of even the more radical Arabs. And this might really be an asset for convincing those more radical Arabs to a fair two-way solution.
If President Obama really has the wisdom and the spine that the world still expects from him, he should see and use the opportunity here.
The militarist way:
I am sure that some people who advise Obama think quite differently. There are many devoted supporters of Israel in the United States, who are bashing Turkey these days for becoming dangerously “pro-Hamas.” (I bet some even hope for a “regime change” to bring the ultra-secular generals back to power.)
Well, I have news for this group, something that I learnt from the Turkish experience: Militarism, which they uphold, is not a solution to terrorism. It only feeds terrorism.
Our war with the PKK, a terrorist organization, is a good case study. For years, our militarists told us the reason why we have the PKK is simply the latter’s fanatic ideology and the “outside powers” which support it. All we have to do, they added, is to fight relentlessly. They even regarded the “PKK sympathizers” as enemies to be crushed.
But in fact the PKK was partly a product of our own making. It came out of the hatred that we created among the Kurds by oppressing them.
The same is true for Israel and Hamas: the latter exists not only because of its ideology and a supportive “outside power” (Iran), but also that Israel keeps on oppressing the Palestinian people.
So, unless Israel changes its policies — by ending the blockade, the occupation and settlements — it will not be able to find peace of mind.
And I am afraid the time that will make Israeli peaceniks proud of their country will never come.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Clerics Advocate Adult Breast-Feeding
[This is a prime example of exactly how contrived and insane Islam’s attempts are to regulate every single waking moment of Muslim life. You just can’t make this stuff up! — Z]
Women in Saudi Arabia should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to avoid breaking strict Islamic law forbidding mixing between the sexes, two powerful Saudi clerics have said. They are at odds, however, over precisely how the milk should be conveyed.
A fatwa issued recently about adult breast-feeding to establish “maternal relations” and preclude the possibility of sexual contact has resulted in a week’s worth of newspaper headlines in Saudi Arabia. Some have found the debate so bizarre that they’re calling for stricter regulations about how and when fatwas should be issued.
Sheikh Al Obeikan, an adviser to the royal court and consultant to the Ministry of Justice, set off a firestorm of controversy recently when he said on TV that women who come into regular contact with men who aren’t related to them ought to give them their breast milk so they will be considered relatives.
“The man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman,” Al Obeikan said, according to Gulf News. “He should drink it and then becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows him to come in contact with the women without breaking Islam’s rules about mixing.”
Obeikan said the fatwa applied to men who live in the same house or come into contact with women on a regular basis, except for drivers.
Al Obeikan, who made the statement after being asked on TV about a 2007 fatwa issued by an Egyptian scholar about adult breast-feeding, said that the breast milk ought to be pumped out and given to men in a glass.
But his remarks were followed by an announcement by another high-profile sheik, Abi Ishaq Al Huwaini, who said that men should suckle the breast milk directly from a woman’s breast.
Shortly after the two sheiks weighed in on the matter, a bus driver in the country’s Eastern Region reportedly told one of the female teachers whom he drives regularly that he wanted to suckle milk from her breast. The teacher has threaten to file a lawsuit against him.
The fatwa stems from the tenets of the strict Wahhabi version of Islam that governs modern Saudi Arabia and forbids women from mixing with men who are not relatives. They are also not allowed to vote, drive or even leave the country without the consent of a male “guardian.”
Under Islamic law, women are encouraged to breast-feed their children until the age of 2. It is not uncommon for sisters, for example, to breast-feed their nephews so they and their daughters will not have to cover their faces in front of them later in life. The custom is called being a “breast milk sibling.”
But under Islamic law, breast milk siblings have to be breastfed before the age of 2 in five “fulfilling” sessions. Islam prohibits sexual relations between a man and any woman who breastfed him in infancy. They are then allowed to be alone together when the man is an adult because he is not considered a potential mate.
“The whole issue just shows how clueless men are,” blogger Eman Al Nafjan wrote on her website. “All this back and forth between sheiks and not one bothers to ask a woman if it’s logical, let alone possible to breastfeed a grown man five fulfilling breast milk meals.
“Moreover, the thought of a huge hairy face at a woman’s breast does not evoke motherly or even brotherly feelings. It could go from the grotesque to the erotic but definitely not maternal.”
Al Nafjan said many in the country were appalled by the fatwa.
“We have many important issues that need discussing,” Al Nafjan told AOL News Friday. “It’s ridiculous to spend time talking about adult breast-feeding.”
Unlawful mixing between the sexes is taken very seriously in Saudi Arabia. In March 2009, a 75-year-old Syrian widow, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, living in the city of Al-Chamil, was given 40 lashes and sentenced to six months in prison after the religious police learned that two men who were not related to her were in her house, delivering bread to her.
One of the two men found in her house, Fahd, told the police that Sawadi breast-fed him as a baby so he was considered a son and had a right to be there. But in a later court ruling, a judge said it could not be proved that Fahd was her “breast milk son.” Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes, and the man who accompanied him got six months and 60 lashes.
The original adult breast-feeding fatwa was issued three years ago by an Egyptian scholar at Egypt’s al-Azhar University, considered Sunni Islam’s top university. Ezzat Attiya was expelled from the university after advocating breast-feeding of men as a way to circumnavigate segregation of the sexes in Egypt.
A year ago, Attiya was reinstated to his post.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
The Real Terrorism is the Lie Against Israel
Il Giornale, 3 June 2010
It really is a shock, as said Ban Ki Moon, as said the governments who recalled their ambassadors, Turkey, Sweden, Greece, Jordan. It is a shock, oh yes, as said Hillary Clinton and as Tony Blair declared. It is a horror as the EU Foreign Minister Lady Ashton said… it is a big scandal: but we’re not talking about the battle undertaken and which, unfortunately, caused nine deaths, between the armed activists of the Marmara ship and the Israeli forces, who tried to lead the convoy loaded with unidentified goods and people to Ashdod, so as to avoid handing over potential explosive to Hamas, letting it continuing the launch of six thousand missiles into Israeli territory, as far as Tel Aviv.
No, the greatest scandal, the real horror is linked to the enthusiasm with which, from wall to wall, the entire international community was quick to wave the banner of anti-Israelism without taking into account the truth, not giving a damn about the videos in which one sees how the Israeli soldiers who wanted to inspect the contents of the convoy were welcomed with iron hammers, knives, hand grenades and gunfire. An examination of the aggressive origin and the declared intentions of the pro-Hamas suicide terrorist organizations on board the Marmara don’t matter to Clinton or Ashton. Also, the international context was not taken into account — that of a Turkey linked to Iran, a supplier of weapons to Hamas, and which is increasingly determined to find its place in the sun of radical Islam.
The scandal that we warn of is about the lack of the world’s morality, integrity, and civilization, which immediately declared Israel the criminal; it’s about the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council, as well as the race of many different countries to declare their disapproval of Israel. This, yes, is a huge scandal and the wave of hatred on behalf of the European and American ruling classes, the “main stream,” of the international press with its headlines on numerous pages that repeat similar condemnations without appeal, the satisfied hate of academics and of student movements: it is like a pile of straw that waits only for the match to be struck, burst into flames and then wretchedly finishes by threatening the Jews of the Roman Ghetto. Indeed this is the proof of a theorem that the sociologist Renato Mannheimer often explains: we are talking about anti-Semitism when charges against Israel fall upon all Jews. And, in reverse, we add: we are talking about anti-Semitism when Israel alone is loaded with charges that are not directed against any other country; and when the accusations are based on lies; when anti-Jewish stereotypes like blood libel is used, depicting Israeli soldiers who really intended to kill poor pacifists, or — as it was the case of the article published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet in August 2009 — Israeli soldiers that rip out the organs of Palestinians in order to sell them. Greedy and bloodthirsty, as must be Jews.
It’s too unfair that while Hillary Clinton, together with her government, abandons Israel to the “non-aligned countries”, all ignore the news that an American drone killed along with the Al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al Yazid, his wife and three sons. We have not heard that this, and many similar incidents, have been brought to the attention of either the Security Council or the Human Rights Council. The Turks have killed in southeastern Anatolia and in northern Iraq something like 32 thousand Kurds. Where is the shock? In Darfur there has been talk of 300 thousand deaths and over two million displaced persons. Oh yeah? So what? In Sri Lanka, right when, in 2009, Israel was trying to stop the firing of missiles upon its civilian population (not even one resolution on behalf of the UN), there were 6500 civilian casualties in two months. In China, on July 2009, the violent repression of the Uyghurs in Urumqi led the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — while the Human Rights Council condemned Israel 27 times out of a total of 33 — to chirp that there was an “extraordinary number of people killed and injured in less than a day of rioting”. It neither appears that China is under investigation, nor is Iran, for all those it hanged, persecuted or killed.
On Israel, the moralizing obsession instead builds a myth that designs the unworthiness of Israel to exist. The lies are obsessive: the Jews, said Arafat and since then it has been continuously repeated, have never been in Jerusalem, the Temple never existed. A gross lie, functional to the techniques of de-legitimization that feeds upon the alleged cruelty of Israel: Israel intentionally killed the child Mohammed Al Dura, who instead probably died from a Palestinian bullet in a shootout; Israel committed a huge massacre in Jenin, where instead it has been revealed that the dead — almost equal in number — fell in a battle in which the Palestinians were well prepared; the Durban Conference in 2001 and then in 2009, made of Israel, along with the chorus of the world, an “apartheid state” — a lie repeated nonstop. The verdicts of condemnation on the defense barrier by the International Court of Justice of The Hague in 2004, and the Goldstone report against Israel in 2009, have simply forbidden Israel to defend itself.
Why should it, if it doesn’t have the right to exist? European elites, as we unfortunately read also yesterday in an article by a writer as Alessandro Piperno in the Corriere della Sera, variously repeated this ominous prophecy, an expression of nihilism that portrays the savage vitality of Ahmadinejad. But Israel is fine. It’s said by its magnificent writers, as well as demonstrated in its booming economy, medical sciences, music, cinema and children, who are capable of sacrifice and a complex life between war and their love for peace. On its side there is life; and in life the enemies exist, and they are sometimes frightening and dangerous.
In all this, we are proud that Italy voted against the request by the UN for an international investigation into the Israeli blitz.
*Translated by Amy K. Rosenthal
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Textile Sector to Grow With Syrian Fair
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, JUNE 3 — Turkish textile businesspeople are looking to expand their export destinations with the Istanbul Fashion Fair, or IFF, Aleppo, which will be held in Syria from July 22 to 25, as daily Hurriyet reports. “We aim to revive the trade volume between Turkey and Syria,” said Nedim Orun, Turkish Fashion and Apparel Federation, or TMFH, president, speaking to journalists during a press conference in Istanbul. The fair will be organized by the Fashion and Apparel Federation and will be supported by Aegean Clothing Manufacturers Federation, or EGSD. Noting that in Middle East countries, Turkish apparel products are considered high end, Orun said: “Syria’s population is 5.5 million. It is close to Gaziantep and Kilis. Aleppo is the trade capital of the country.” “Positive economic developments in Syria, the free trade agreement between the two countries and the removal of visa restrictions triggered an increase in trade volume,” said Orun, adding that he chose Syria for the IFF for that reason. Syria is Turkey’s door to Middle East, according to Orun. “We started promotional activities to increase the market share of Turkish ready wear and the apparel sector in Syria. Currently, Syrian people are watching Turkish TV series and this affects the response toward Turkish products. Syrians are following Turkish fashion.” The European market is expected to contract, due to the effects of the crisis in Greece, according to Orun. “We started to see the affects of the Greek crisis in Europe and this will reflect on our business,” he said, noting that there might be a contraction in Europe’s real sector. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Who’s Afraid of Turkey?
Its next move may favor the West.
Turkey is starting to scare Americans, for good reason. There was the high-profile clash at Davos over the Palestinians, fraying Turkish ties to Israel. Then came the surprise uranium deal with Tehran, undermining Western pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program. Now theres a new clash with Israel over Turkish support for the convoys challenging Israels embargo on Gaza. But just as Turkey is starting to look more assertively pro-Islamist than ever, there are signs that a big internal shift may reshape Turkish politics and redirect its foreign policy back toward the West.
This would end a drift that began in 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP), rooted in the countrys Islamist movement, came to power. It has grown more authoritarian, and anti-Western, ever since. The NGO that sponsored the Gaza flotilla has close ties to the AKP, has sponsored numerous fundraisers in the Istanbul convention center controlled by the AKP city government, and has been designated by the U.S. as part of an umbrella group of terrorist organizations. Now AKP leaders are pressing the U.S. for a more aggressive response.
But for the first time in years, the AKP faces a real challenge. Turkeys main opposition, the Republican Peoples Party (CHP), lately has been a mere shadow of the secular force that once ruled the country and made it a staunch NATO ally. Now the resignation of CHP leader Deniz Baykal over an alleged sex-tape scandal has ushered in a new boss, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a charismatic peoples man who is committed to Western values. He might be the one to rebuild an effective opposition and redirect Turkish foreign policy toward the West.
Kilicdaroglu has already voiced support for Turkeys effort to join the European Union, which has stalled in part due to European resistance to admitting a Muslim member, but also due to the AKPs withering interest in the process since Ankara started membership talks in 2005. Kilicdaroglu has backed some of the government response to the latest Gaza incidentit would be impossible for any Turkish politician not to, given that Turkish activists were killedbut he could still bring change in the future.
Kilicdaroglu will have to recalibrate his partys commitment to the ideals of Kemal Atatürk, who founded modern Turkey as a secular state. This New Kemalism would recall Atatürks 20th-century desire for Turkey to become European, making EU membership and realigning with the West top priorities while downplaying the AKPs rapprochement with Iran and Russia. There are signs that this is happening already, including Kilicdaroglus encouragement of prominent pro-EU Turkish diplomats to join the CHP. New Kemalism would abandon the AKPs ideological sympathy with Iran in favor of a pragmatic nationalist view: a nuclear Iran is against Turkish interests.
Kilicdaroglu, nicknamed “Gandhi Kemal” for his humility, to which the Turks have taken a liking, is already changing the CHP, taking the party, the heir to a social-democratic politics, back to the working and middle classes. He is also beginning to make New Kemalism more attractive at home by keeping its liberal aspects while coming to terms with religious issues: the new party assembly includes both a record number of women and an imam.
The CHP needs to challenge the AKPs success at creating what Turks see as a forward-looking visionone that respects the nations conservative social values and carves out a position of respect for Turkey within the transatlantic community. In recent years the CHP has defined itself mainly by saying no to the AKP, so the change in leadership presents an unprecedented opportunityTurkish leaders do not usually quit politics until they dieto introduce New Kemalism. Can Kilicdaroglu win? For now the Gaza debacle is boosting the AKPs popularity, but the CHP has a solid base. Opinion polls suggest that 32 to 38 percent of Turks would never support the AKP. Kilicdaroglus politics can expand this base. The AKP has won repeated elections since 2002 with strong support among lower-middle-class voters, Turkeys demographic plurality, thanks to its rhetoric of social justice laced with conservative overtones. Kilicdaroglus pro-working-class message will help him win over these voters. If Kilicdaroglu can advance New Kemalism as a pro-Western, social-democratic movement at peace with both secularism and religion, Atatürks party might once again return to power in Turkey. It cant happen soon enough to change the dynamics of the Gaza crisis, but it can happen.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Facing an Orphanage and Adoption Crisis
There are almost 700,000 orphans in Russia. About 30,000 orphans were adopted and then sent back to an orphanage in two years. The Civil Committee for Human Rights slams the situation, whilst Russian Children’s Rights Ombudsman Astakhov calls for the reorganisation of orphanages into family-based models of care.
Moscow (AsiaNews) — Human rights activists on Monday held a protest in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg in defence of children’s rights. In the last two months, media and politicians have focused on the plight of children, who too often are victims of abuse in their birth families and more rarely in foundling homes (state orphanages).
The ‘Civil Committee for Human Rights’ organised the action on International Children’s Day. Its leader, Roman Chorny, said that the main problem today was safeguarding children from “improper and baseless psychiatric diagnoses.”
“Very often children in orphanages are ‘punished’ for their misbehaviour by injections of psychotropic drugs with side effects,” he said, adding that in many cases, such children end up in psychiatric clinics and become handicapped.
The problem of orphanages and adoptions in Russia goes back a long time. Lately, politicians have had to get involved after an American nurse in April sent back a seven-year-old Russian child. The single woman said that she did not want him anymore because he “was mentally unstable, violent and had ‘severe psychopathic issues/behaviours’.”The boy, Artem Saveliev, was adopted just seven months before.
His case has led to the suspension of adoptions of Russian children in the United States and has put the spotlight on the conditions of orphans in Russia.
Too many orphans and too many orphanages
The fact is that in the Russian Federation, according to experts, there are too many orphans, too many orphanages and few local adoptions. At present, there are more “official” orphans now than during the Second World War, almost 700,000 (697,000 to be precise) against 678,000 in the 1940s.
Two thirds of orphans are in fact “social orphans”, children taken from their birth family because of alcoholism, domestic violence or rejection by the parents.
The chairwoman of the parliamentary (Duma) Committee on Family and Children, Yelena B. Mizulina, spoke about the situation recently.
Two years ago, the Duma adopted a law to help orphans, she noted. Since then “the number of orphans sent back from adoptive families to orphanages jumped twofold.” This, according to Mizulina, represents “serious human harm” for the children; first, they are rejected by their biological parents, then by their adoptive parents.
According to Echo of Moscow” Radio, about 30,000 children were sent back to orphanages. For Mizulina, this situation was created because no one takes care of adoptive parents or provides them any form of assistance.
Family violence
Too often, orphaned children in Russia are psychologically “sensitive”. This is clear from the data concerning abuse and violence against children. Again, Echo of Moscow radio talked about the matter, quoting Russian Children’s Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, who said that about 100,000 crimes against children were committed in Russia in 2009, 2,000 children were killed, and 600 disappeared after escaping from home.
Astakhov has proposed that the childcare and education system be reorganised for children from problem families.
“Orphanages are a very closed environment,” he lamented. “We must turn them into family-centred models of care, based on the idea of small units. The reorganisation of these homes is our duty to the children who live under the protection of the state,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
India: The Social Revolution of India’s Outcastes
The redemption of the outcastes began in the early nineteenth century with the presence of Christian missionaries: PIME for example is in India (Andhra Pradesh) and in Bengal since 1855. Today, Andhra Pradesh has 80 million inhabitants and the Church has 12 dioceses (six of which were founded by PIME) with about a half million Catholics.
The elimination of the caste system, in particular of the title of “untouchable”, the “outcaste” it is a cultural problem but also political one, that has dragged on in India since before independence. In Tamil Nadu the first conference of Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front was held on Sunday. The heart of the problem can be found in the words of Secretary of the Communist Party of India, Prakash Karat, “even after 62 years of independence, what we find in our society is that caste exceeds every class.”
The meeting, which saw the presence of numerous human rights groups, affirmed that all discrimination against Dalit Christians must be overcome, they suffer because of their faith and find themselves excluded even from the “quotas” which are reserved in public administration for outcasts.
Yet, as explained by a missionary of great experience, Father Piero Gheddo, Christianity itself gave rise to the first affirmations on the equality of all men.
The great social revolution that is sweeping through the India of the economic “boom” is not “newsworthy” in the West: 160 million “Dalit (“ untouchables “,” Dalits “or” Harijans “) have become aware of their human dignity account and are asking that their trampled rights be respected The Indian Constitution of 1948 abolished the caste system, but in rural areas (70-75% of over one billion Indians) caste separation and discrimination are still very much alive.
Even less than a century ago it was much worse. Father Louis Misani, PIME missionary in Andhra Pradesh in 1934 writes: “If you want to have an idea of the situation of Dalit, read the story of former slaves. The condition of the pariah is worse than that of a dog, free to enter and lie down in homes and woe betide anyone who touches it! Everything is forbidden the pariah and if someone beats him he must laugh and encourage harsher lashes. Before the coming of the British there were no courts or judges for the outcast. Were the pariahs unjustly deprived of some good? “Mi Cittamu prabuvu”, he would say,”Thy will be done, sir, but try to be merciful.” The death penalty was reserved for any Dalit who dared enter the houses of Brahmins or temples. No pariah could go to school and nobody thought to open schools only for the pariahs. Hence the great ignorance and moral degradation. They were so accustomed to this state, they did not dare to think it possible that it could be improved”,
Today we tend to forget that the redemption of outcaste began in the early nineteenth century with the presence of Christian missionaries: PIME for example is in India (Andhra Pradesh) and in Bengal since 1855, Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of all India “ (India, Pakistan. Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka) in 1876. The Catholic and Protestant missionaries immediately turned their attention to Dalits and tribals, building schools. The principle was: “First the school and then the church.” Gradually, the pariah began to understand that they too were human beings and to become aware of their dignity and their rights. Meanwhile, the colonial government introduced laws in India to improve the human condition and abolish religious and cultural traditions contrary to human rights such as for example, the widows who immolated themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre.
In the nineteen twenties, the nationalist movement and the charismatic figure of Mahatma Gandhi began the political movement for the redemption of pariahs. Gandhi entered politics in 1919 with his “non-violent non-cooperation” against the British and was a resounding success. The realization of the right to freedom for the people of India went hand in hand with the second aim of Gandhi’s “nonviolent revolution”: the struggle for political independence, uniting all the people against the British, had to overcome divisions of caste and religion, for example between Hindus and Muslims to unite them all together in one, single independent India. This second aim was less successful than the first, but there were positive results: for example, “dalits” (untouchables) and tribal also became aware of their political rights.
One Indian historian writes: “The strong impression made by Christian charity in the traditional mindset of India can be illustrated by numerous quotations from authors and leaders who are not Christians. The heroism of raising the most humble people from the swamp of their degradation and their degradation was a fact unknown in India of the past “(Louis D’Silva,” The Christian Community and the National Mainstream, Poona 1986, p.. 50 ).
In the twenties and thirties, the Dalit in Andhra Pradesh started mass movement towards the Catholic Church. Ready to fight and die for independence, the pariah understood that they could also fight for their rights. But at that time the Indian nationalism of Gandhi against England was dominated by the caste people, who did not want the outcast. “The pariah of Andhra Pradesh — writes father Augusto Colombo — thanks to the schools built by the missionaries, became aware of their identity, but did not know how to express it in the political and social terms. So they saw that Christian missionaries were the only ones who stood beside them. Hence the desire to embrace a religion that teaches the dignity of every human being and equality of all men as children of God. It was the Church to convert the pariah, but the pariahs who entered the Church. The movement was prepared by PIME, who since the last century had been dedicated to the poor, opening schools, clinics, etc… “
One of many examples of this initial process, which began in the social field and ends in religion, is the case of Denduluru and father Silvio Pasquali (1923-1964). Defeated in their rebellion against their former caste landowners who still oppressed them (with the help of police), the village outcasts turned to the missionary who, writes a fellow priest, “in his profound humanity and supernatural spirit, was for them worth more than a thousand books on liberation theology. “ A man of prayer, but also a man of action, affable and gentle but also firm against any injustice, Pasquali turned to the government which in principle was favourable to the distribution of uncultivated lands of large landowners among the poor. So, despite the resistance of the owners who saw their cheap labour vanish before their eyes, he bravely battled with the authorities and the courts and succeeded in the requisition and distribution of land to landless, not by violent means, but according to existing law. The result, in church terms, were the 400 baptisms in Vatlur in 1918 and the 700 in 1921 in Denduluru. Father Pasquali administered more than a thousand baptisms per year.
With this and similar cases, the movement of the outcaste towards the Church has become significant. Today, Andhra Pradesh has 80 million inhabitants and the Church 12 dioceses (six of which were founded by PIME) with about a million and a half Catholics, the vast majority outcasts. Now even the pariahs study and grow as a social group and discrimination against them is decreasing to the point it has, almost, disappeared in the cities.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Is Myanmar Trying to Build a Nuclear Bomb?
It’s easy to draw parallels between Myanmar (formerly Burma) and North Korea. Both Asian states are international pariahs, governed by brutal regimes that live in outrageous opulence while their subjects languish in extreme poverty.
And now, according to a high-level defector from Myanmar’s armed forces, the rogue nations have something even more worrying in common — a nuclear weapons program.
Former Myanmar army major Sai Thein Win says the ruling junta is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb with the help of North Korea. Sai says he was trained in missile technology in Russia and worked at two military factories in the heart of the country.
His claims also are backed by photos of bunkers and equipment and top secret documents, which are detailed in a new report by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a news agency run by Myanmar expatriates.
“They really want to build a bomb,” Sai, who is now in exile, told the DVB. “That is their main objective.”
The Myanmar generals’ atomic quest appears to have been inspired by ally North Korea, which can now attack its southern neighbor and flout international law, as its nuclear deterrent keeps it safe from retaliation.
Critics might dismiss Sai as a disgruntled former soldier out to settle old scores. However, independent nuclear experts have backed his assertions.
Robert Kelley, a former director at global nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, studied the evidence and helped draw up the 30-page report. “It appears that it’s a nuclear weapons program,” Kelley told the DVB. “There’s no conceivable use for this [equipment] for nuclear power.”
The revelations clearly have the U.S. government worried. Sen Jim Webb had been scheduled to fly to Myanmar on Thursday night for talks with the government and jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the Virginia Democrat canceled that trip, saying in a statement it would be “unwise and potentially counterproductive for me to visit Burma” until he had “clarification” on the claims of nuclear cooperation between Myanmar and North Korea.
Included in the DVB report are photographs and floor plans of two factories where Sai used European machining tools to make prototypes for nuclear missile facilities. The European kit was sold through two companies in Singapore to Myanmar’s Department of Technical and Vocational Education, which the DVB says is a front for its nonconventional weapons program. Fortunately, the machines were shipped without all of the precision parts needed to build nuclear enrichment or missile technology.
The DVB document also boasts a copy of a secret document from the country’s “nuclear battalion,” which orders one of Sai’s factories to construct a “bomb reactor … for the use of special substance production.”
However, a sketch of the “bomb reactor,” the DVB explains, reveals that the device is not a nuclear bomb or a nuclear reactor but instead “a strong vessel that could contain a violent chemical reaction.” (Such a reaction occurs when uranium and magnesium are mixed to create uranium metal, which through a highly complicated and costly process can be purified for use in nuclear warheads.)
Sai photographed the finished bomb reactors, one of which had seemingly been used to reduce metal. “A bomb reactor built by a special factory, subordinate to the Army Nuclear Battalion, is a very good indicator of a nuclear program in the context of many other things,” the report said.
The international community has long suspected Myanmar of harboring nuclear ambitions. Over the past decade, the regime has signed several deals with Russia, which agreed to provide the country with a research reactor. (Work on this project hadn’t started as of last summer, says Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security, which monitors nuclear proliferation efforts.)
Myanmar’s leaders have stated that this planned facility would create medical isotopes. But as few of the country’s citizens have access to a doctor, let alone state-of-the-art radiological equipment, most experts have dismissed this argument as bogus.
There is also strong evidence that Myanmar has been covertly pursuing its nuclear aims. Last August, the The Sydney Morning Herald cited defector accounts that the regime was building two reactors with the assistance of North Korea and planned to construct other facilities to refine and enrich uranium. Unlike the DVB report, though, these accounts were not backed with hard photographic evidence.
And in April, a North Korean ship carrying a suspicious arms cargo was reported to have docked in Myanmar. That led the U.S. State Department to request that May’s meeting of economic officials from Southeast Asia and America go ahead without Myanmar’s representation. It’s possible the ship was merely carrying conventional weapons, but such a strong reaction has caused some experts to wonder whether the vessel was in fact hauling nuclear contraband.
Although Myanmar clearly has the desire to build a nuclear bomb, its means don’t yet match its will. Sai’s photographs show many of the European machines rusting, surrounded by rat droppings and with frayed electrical cabling. And design sketches of a molecular laser isotope separation device — used to divide enriched uranium, which could be used in a bomb, from depleted uranium — lacked even basic engineering details, like material tolerances.
However, those flaws don’t mean that the U.S. and other concerned nations can ignore Myanmar. Again, North Korea provides a lesson.
Intelligence failures previously allowed the Koreans to export a nuclear reactor to Syria. That could have radically altered the military balance in the Middle East if the project hadn’t been terminated by an Israeli bombing raid in 2007.
If a similar atomic scheme went unnoticed in Myanmar, it could have drastic consequences for America’s Southeast Asian allies, such as Thailand and the Philippines.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
United Nations Official Urges U.S. To Halt Deadly Drone Attacks in Pakistan
[There can be no more sure evidence than this that the drone strikes are really working. — Z]
Using carefully worded, almost antiseptic language, a senior United Nations official urged the United States on Wednesday to halt the CIA’s deadly drone campaign targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban units in Pakistan.
The report by Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special investigator for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, did not assert that the CIA program was illegal, but said it violated the legal principle of international accountability, according to the Washington Post.
“It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict,” Alston said in a news release. “The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed.”
In a 29-page report to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, Alston also discussed targeted killings by countries such as Russia and Israel. And he said arguments that CIA agents involved in the drone attacks were committing war crimes was “not supported” by international humanitarian law.
The drones — unmanned aircraft operated remotely — have killed a number of ranking al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders with missile attacks.
CIA spokesman George Little told the Post he could not discuss or confirm any specific action. But he said the agency operated “within a framework of law” and “the accountability’s real, and it would be wrong of anyone to suggest otherwise.”
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Philippines: Manila Launches Sex Education in Primary Schools. Bishops Critical
With the new school year, the government and UN will launch the “reproductive health” program in 80 primary schools even for children s young as 11 and 12. Bishop Qitorio “The Church believes that sex education of children is the responsibility of parents and not schools, and if it should be taught to students, then it should begin with a high-school level.
Manila (AsiaNews / Agencies) — Filipino bishops oppose the teaching of sex education in public primary schools, proposed by the government and the UN, and consider sexuality a topic for discussion within families.
Bishop Pedro Qitorio, spokesman for the Philippine Bishops Conference, said: “The Church believes that sex education of children is a responsibility of parents and not the school, and if it should be taught to students, then it should begin at a high school level”. According to the prelate, the school must support parents in raising children and not replace them. “Only parents — he says — know when it is the right time to deal with the subject of sex with their children.”
The prelate stressed that the proposal is too focused on the theme of sexual intercourse and may be understood as an explicit invitation to promiscuity and relationships outside of marriage. “The students — he says — should be informed properly about sex, not only linked to the idea through the body, but the importance that sexuality and life are a gift from God.”
The “Adolescent Reproductive Health Program”, will start in the new school year. It will involve three children from 11 to 12 years and will be piloted in 80 primary schools and 79 state institutions of secondary education. It is sponsored by UN Population Found, which considers the high birth rate the main obstacle to the development of the country. “The initiative — says Teresita Inciong, head of the project — aims to teach children about the changes in their bodies during adolescence and how to deal with relationships with the opposite sex in a safe way as well as scientific and medical lectures”.
The UN years ago pressured the government to seek the approval of the controversial reproductive health bill, which the Church opposes, a law that was never approved
It includes: the dissemination of condoms and contraceptives in all public places, limiting to two the number of children per family and promotes voluntary sterilization.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistani Citizen Caught Crossing Border Into Arizona
TUCSON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirm with News4, a Pakistani citizen crossed the border illegally from Mexico into Arizona on May 20th.
ICE says the man was apprehended by Border Patrol on the Tohono O’odham reservation and turned over to ICE.
| — Hat tip: LS | [Return to headlines] |
USA: Somali Smuggler Walks!
The Virginia man accused of illegally smuggling as many as 270 Somalis into the US is a free man today. Unbelievable! This is a story we first reported here. In addition to the shocking news that he got off with time served, it turns out he had been an agent of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and another unnamed US federal agency in Kenya (FBI? CIA? they aren’t saying). Are they protecting us or their agent?
Here is the Canadian Press story today. The feds couldn’t find any of the Somalis he supposedly brought to the US. Ho hum, so what else is new!…
| — Hat tip: RRW | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Women to be Paid ‘A Fee’ For Rejecting Abortion
Milan, 1 June (AKI) — The northern Italian region of Lombardy is set to pay pregnant women in “economic difficulty” a fee of 4,500 euros if they reject abortion, conservative regional president Roberto Formigoni has said. Under his proposal, beneficiaries would receive 18 monthly instalments of 250 euros.
“No woman in Lombardy will have an abortion because of economic difficulty,” Formigoni (photo) said on Monday.
Abortion has been legal in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy since 1978 in the first 90 days of pregnancy and until the 24th week if the life of the mother is at risk or the foetus is malformed.
An Italian constitutional court in 1988 ruled a woman can have an abortion without her husband’s permission.
Formigoni, an ally of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, announced the creation of the 5 million-euro Nasko Fund in March to be financed by the regional government to pay expectant mothers to keep their children.
“We want to support and the birth rate, by removing the greatest obstacles, beginning with the economic obstacle, which makes it more difficult to make a choice to support life,” Formigoni said.
Formigoni has a record of fighting abortion. In 1989 when he was a European MP, Formigoni denounced a therapeutic abortion involving a five-month female foetus diagnosed as having a genetic anomaly.
In 2008 Formigoni’s Lombardy region moved to limit abortions in cases where the foetus is more than 22 weeks and three days.
When Italian hospitals first started dispensing the RU486 pill earlier this year, Formigoni said it was in conflict with Italy’s abortion law.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Orthodox Protestant Paper Condemns Malawi Gay Pardon
Newspaper Het Reformatorisch Dagblad, which takes an orthodox Protestant line, has written an editorial in which it says it is a ‘shame’ the president of Malawi was so quick to ‘kneel down’ and pardon a gay couple who had been sentenced to 14 years in jail.
‘If the citizens of Malawi want to know where this trail ends, they only need to follow political reporting in the Netherlands for a while,’ the paper said. The paper is referring to efforts by D66 to close a loophole allowing religious schools in the Netherlands to refuse to employ gay teachers.
‘A large majority in parliament support this proposal and this will not change after the election,’ the paper wrote.
‘It cannot be ruled out that here the opposite will happen to what has happened in Malawi: not people who are openly homosexual will be punished, but the Christians and Muslims who name that behaviour a sin.’
The paper asks if UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, who put pressure on Malawi to pardon the couple, will be prepared to address the Dutch parliament and support people who are religious against such intolerance.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
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