France: Toward Record Deficit in Welfare System 2010
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JUNE 9 — The deficit of the French social security and health care system (Securité sociale) for employees in the private sector has reached a new record. According to sources close to the French Audit board, quoted by France Presse, the welfare deficit has reached more than 26.8 billion euros in 2010, much more than last year’s 20.3 billion. The deficit in the pension sector is particularly high: around 10 billion euros in 2010 in the private sector alone. The board’s official report will be presented tomorrow to the French government, in the context of the State budget cut projects in line with the European stability pact.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Government to Sell 1,700 Properties
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JUNE 9 — The French State will sell 1,700 properties and terrains between now and 2013, to rationalise its properties and reduce costs. The news was announced today by the French Budget Ministry, which specified that the list of properties for sale will be published on internet “to inform potential buyers”. The sale includes disused barracks, old lodges and cantonal houses, but also several luxury buildings, like the small castle on Lake Leman, on the Swiss border, and a ‘hotel particulier’ in the heart of Paris. The goods will be sold “at market price”, the Ministry added, without making an estimate of the expected revenues from the sale.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Unemployed With Children, Profile of the New Poor
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 16 — The profile of the new poor with the highest risk of social exclusion in Spain includes young, working-age people, with at least one dependent child. This finding was contained in the annual report on vulnerability presented today by the Spanish Red Cross, which was drafted based on 22,899 social-related questionnaires. In 2009, the organisation assisted 1,435,000 people, 600,000 more than in the previous year. This mainly took place as part of programmes intended to help the elderly, immigrants and to fight against poverty. Over half of these people turned to the Red Cross for reasons “directly connected to the economic crisis,” and many of these individuals were unemployed. Over half a million of the beneficiaries of the programmes received food aid. According to the report, the majority of the 600,000 new poor are Spanish, “and belong to families whose members have all lost their jobs and who have found themselves without revenue and in debt”. They have been forced to ask for help in order to pay their rent or bills, according to the coordinator of the study, Graciela Malgesini, speaking to the press. Men were the majority in the programmes intended for immigrants (53.7%) and the fight against poverty (60.3%), confirming a tendency already identified back in 2006, when the percentage of women receiving assistance from the Spanish Red Cross dropped from 60% in 2006 to 48% in 2008. “Women are doing a better job of keeping their employment, although unstable. They are more adaptable when it comes to finding alternative jobs,” observed Malgesini. The majority of men that requested assistance from the Red Cross were of working age, between 25 and 49-years-old, and unemployed in 77% of the cases. They have an average of two dependent children; in 30% of the cases, they had three children, and one-fourth of the men had completed secondary school. Fifty-two percent were Spanish nationals. In terms of immigrants, the average age of those receiving assistance was between 25 and 30, with beneficiaries mainly coming from Latin America, North Africa and Eastern Europe, with one or two dependent children. According to the report, half of these men had finished secondary school and 76% were unemployed. Of the elderly people assisted by the Red Cross, 99% were Spanishnationals and 77.2% were women with an average age of 77. Over half of the women were widows and receive a pension, while 71.5% of the men are retirees. They represent the group that is at the highest poverty risk, even though, of the four profiles outlined in the report, foreigners without income and housing were identified as being a group with “extreme and multi-dimensional risks for social exclusion”.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: In 2010 GDP to Exceed USD 60 Bln, IMF Says
(ANSAmed) — DAMASCUS, JUNE 8 — The International Monetary Fund has forecast that in 2010 Syria’s nominal GDP should exceed 60 billion dollars and the economy should continue to grow, while inflation should stay under control. Syria’s GDP should reach 60 billon dollars this year and 66.2 billion dollars next year. The fiscal deficit should drop from 5.5% of the GDP (2009 data) to 4.5% in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. The public debt should continue to decrease, as it has in the last five years, amounting to 28% of the GDP in 2010 and 26% in 2011. Exports and imports should continue to increase, in line with the liberalisation of foreign trade. Exports should increase, amounting to 18.7 billion dollars in 2010 and 20.4 billion dollars in 2011. On the other hand, imports should amount to 21.4 billion dollars this year and 23.1 billion next year. (ANSAmed).
2010-06-08 16:27
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Fed’s Purchase of US Sovereign Debt
Were it not for the Federal Reserves purchase of Treasury and Agency bonds the US would already be unable to raise funds to service debt and issue new debt, and it would already have descended into national bankruptcy. It is no wonder the Fed does not want to be audited. Through various artifices the Fed has been purchasing US treasury paper. No one knows how much, because when asked the Fed says it is a state secret. That is what all Americans love. A country run in secrecy. A privately owned corporation operating under the cover of secrecy, and protected by a Treasury Department, that is under the control of the Fed’s owners. How is that for an incestuous relationship?
Government is desperately searching for more revenue to cover its massive deficit spending and to service existing mandatory programs. Taxes are being increased; some 19 new taxes, in the recently passed medical reform legislation. Unfortunately this isn’t enough. Of course, there is never enough.
As a result, as we pointed out recently, government has been eying retirement plans as a source of funding. The arm-twisting has been going on for some six months to make managers of retirement funds to purchase US Treasuries and Agency bonds. This is to provide a delaying action as the dollar begins to play second fiddle to gold as the only real currency. In addition, foreign central governments, which own well over $3 trillion of these debt instruments, hope that the US is serious about protecting the functioning of government. Accessing retirement plans will be an integral part of extending solvency to buy more time for Wall Street, banking and government. Of course there is nothing our purchased Congress won’t pass to stay in office.
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AT&T Suspends iPhone 4 Pre-Orders
To paraphrase Darth Vader, AT&T’s failure is now complete.
It looks like the pre-order system is now completely offline at ATT.com.
And if you read the litany of horror stories at Gizmodo (apparently not only are people being logged into other AT&T users’ accounts, but some people are reporting that even when they logged in to their own accounts, the shipping addresses shown were for someone else. some people apparently didn’t notice the mismatched shipping addresses, so it looks like some people are getting pre-order confirmations for iPhones they never ordered, while other people are being billed for iPhones they’ll never receive) I think this is going to be a gigantic legal nightmare for AT&T.
I’ll be checking with the no-doubt harried public relations folks at AT&T and trying to get some clarity.
UPDATE: AT&T confirms the suspension of the pre-order program, but doesn’t address all the security issues that have popped up.
From the company’s just-released statement:
iPhone 4 pre-order sales yesterday were 10-times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year. Consumers are clearly excited about iPhone 4, AT&T’s more affordable data plans and our early upgrade pricing.
Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we’re suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we’ve already received.
The availability of additional inventory will determine if we can resume taking pre-orders.
In addition to unprecedented pre-order sales, yesterday there were more than 13 million visits to AT&T’s website where customers can check to see if they are eligible to upgrade to a new phone; that number is about 3-times higher than the previous record for eligibility upgrade checks in one day.
We are working hard to bring iPhone 4 to as many of our customers as soon as possible.
And even if you could pre-order, the launch-day iPhones are already sold out, and it looks like the next shipment won’t go out until July.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Facts and Myths About Obama’s Preventive Detention Proposal
By Glenn Greenwald
In the wake of Obama’s speech yesterday, there are vast numbers of new converts who now support indefinite “preventive detention.” It thus seems constructive to have as dispassionate and fact-based discussion as possible of the implications of “preventive detention” and Obama’s related detention proposals (military commissions). I’ll have a podcast discussion on this topic a little bit later today with the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, which I’ll add below, but until then, here are some facts and other points worth noting:
(1) What does “preventive detention” allow?
It’s important to be clear about what “preventive detention” authorizes. It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding. That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, “preventive detention” allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally “dangerous” by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they “expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden” or “otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans”). That’s what “preventive” means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be “combatants.”
Once known, the details of the proposal could — and likely will — make this even more extreme by extending the “preventive detention” power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a “combatant.” After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based — namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain “dangerous” people even when they can’t prove they violated any laws — there’s no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly “dangerous” combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.
(2) Are defenders of Obama’s proposals being consistent?
During the Bush years, it was common for Democrats to try to convince conservatives to oppose Bush’s executive power expansions by asking them: “Do you really want these powers to be exercised by Hillary Clinton or some liberal President?”
Following that logic, for any Democrat/progressive/liberal/Obama supporter who wants to defend Obama’s proposal of “preventive detention,” shouldn’t you first ask yourself three simple questions:
(a) what would I have said if George Bush and Dick Cheney advocated a law vesting them with the power to preventively imprison people indefinitely and with no charges?;
(b) when Bush and Cheney did preventively imprison large numbers of people, was I in favor of that or did I oppose it, and when right-wing groups such as Heritage Foundation were alone in urging a preventive detention law in 2004, did I support them?; and
(c) even if I’m comfortable with Obama having this new power because I trust him not to abuse it, am I comfortable with future Presidents — including Republicans — having the power of indefinite “preventive detention”?
(3) Questions for defenders of Obama’s proposal:
There are many claims being made by defenders of Obama’s proposals which seem quite contradictory and/or without any apparent basis, and I’ve been searching for a defender of those proposals to address these questions:
Bush supporters have long claimed — and many Obama supporters are now insisting as well — that there are hard-core terrorists who cannot be convicted in our civilian courts. For anyone making that claim, what is the basis for believing that? In the Bush era, the Government has repeatedly been able to convict alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban members in civilian courts, including several (Ali al-Marri, Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh) who were tortured and others (Zacharais Moussaoui, Padilla) where evidence against them was obtained by extreme coercion. What convinced you to believe that genuine terrorists can’t be convicted in our justice system?
For those asserting that there are dangerous people who have not yet been given any trial and who Obama can’t possibly release, how do you know they are “dangerous” if they haven’t been tried? Is the Government’s accusation enough for you to assume it’s true?
Above all: for those justifying Obama’s use of military commissions by arguing that some terrorists can’t be convicted in civilian courts because the evidence against them is “tainted” because it was obtained by Bush’s torture, Obama himself claimed just yesterday that his military commissions also won’t allow such evidence (“We will no longer permit the use of evidence — as evidence statements that have been obtained using cruel, inhuman, or degrading interrogation methods”). How does our civilian court’s refusal to consider evidence obtained by torture demonstrate the need for Obama’s military commissions if, as Obama himself claims, Obama’s military commissions also won’t consider evidence obtained by torture?
Finally, don’t virtually all progressives and Democrats argue that torture produces unreliable evidence? If it’s really true (as Obama defenders claim) that the evidence we have against these detainees was obtained by torture and is therefore inadmissible in real courts, do you really think such unreliable evidence — evidence we obtained by torture — should be the basis for concluding that someone is so “dangerous” that they belong in prison indefinitely with no trial? If you don’t trust evidence obtained by torture, why do you trust it to justify holding someone forever, with no trial, as “dangerous”?
(4) Do other countries have indefinite preventive detention?…
| — Hat tip: Apollon Zamp | [Return to headlines] |
An Algerian Flag on a French Town Hall
The French flag hanging on the front of the town hall of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (Val de Marne) was burnt in the night from Sunday to Monday and replaced by an Algerian flag, police said.
The facts were discovered Monday morning at the opening of the hall. The council said he had immediately lodged a complaint. On Sunday, Slovenia has defeated Algeria in the World Cup football match (1-0) in his first match in Group C.
In early June, Justice Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, seized the State Council of a draft decree punishing a fine of 1500 euros the contempt of the French flag. The draft decree provides for a contravention of the fifth degree, punishable by a fine of 1500 euros, which will punish on the one hand the fact of degrading or indecent use of the tricolor flag in a public place or open to the public, and, secondly, to disseminate by any means the representation of these facts’ stated Arthur Dreyfuss, deputy spokesman of the Ministry of Justice. ‘The element of intent will be included in the decree in question’ to be taken into account in the sanction, he added.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
France: Survey Slams Attitudes Towards Muslims
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JUNE 11 — Moroccans are voting first for France (30%), then for Italy (13%) and then choosing the USA (10%). Saudi Arabians opt for Spain (18%), France (17%) and Italy (9%), and the United Arab Emirates are most drawn to Spain (15%) with France and Italy a close joint second with 13%. These are the findings of an Ifop survey conducted for France’s Catholic newspaper, La Croix, exploring the perceptions these three countries have of France. Invited to choose which six western countries they like the most, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates put the USA (5% for the UAE), the United Kingdom (6% for Morocco), the USA and Germany with 8% for the Saudis, at the bottom of the class. Generally, France enjoys the most popularity, especially among women, Moroccans and Saudis, and the young. However, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Morocco find great fault with France in the way it behaves towards Moslems: 46% of Moroccans, 42% of Emiratis and 38% of Saudis criticised its policies. But then 58% of Moroccans found that Paris is on good terms with the Arab world, while only 27% of Saudis and 21% of Emiratis shared their opinion. Just as only 16% of the citizens of the Gulf states thought that France was on good terms with their own country, compared to 75% of Moroccans. Overall, the Moroccans, Saudis and Emiratis interviewed thought that France’s policies were independent of those of the USA regarding: Afghanistan (Moroccans 54%, Saudis 61%, Emiratis 52%), the Arab-Israeli conflict (64%, 59%, 47%) and Iraq (65%, 60%, 52%). Also of note is that in the UAE, 48% of the population hold opposite opinions regarding Afghanistan and Iraq. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Alleged Anthem Snub Sparks Call for Law Change
Row rages after ceremony attended by Northern League governor
(ANSA) — Rome, June 14 — A Northern League governor’s alleged snub of the Italian national anthem led to calls on Monday for a new law regulating when it should be played.
The row started Sunday when Giuseppe Verdi’s opera piece Va pensiero was played instead of the anthem at a ceremony at a primary school attended by Luca Zaia, the Northern League’s governor of Veneto. Va pensiero, which is sometimes known in English as the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, has been adopted by the Northern League as its anthem for Padania, its power base in and above the Po Valley.
Initial reports said Zaia’s representatives asked the piece to be played on his arrival at the start of the ceremony instead of the Italian anthem, which was played later with few officials around to hear it.
But the governor insists this is not the case.
“It’s a giant lie. If it were true it would be impeachment material,” Zaia told Monday’s edition of newspaper La Repubblica, adding that the Italian anthem had possibly been played late because of a “logistical” problem. Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa of the People of Freedom (PdL) party, the League’s ally in the centre-right governing coalition, said he believed Zaia had not wanted to snub the anthem but argued the affair highlighted the need for new legislation.
“I will present a bill to make the national anthem obligatory in certain circumstances,” La Russa said of the rousing L’Inno di Mameli (Mameli’s Hymn), named after its author Goffredo Mameli.
“In that way we’ll have a legislative reference point, as already exists for showing the flag, and eliminate an ulterior opportunity to argue”.
Italo Bocchino, a PdL MP like La Russa, was less charitable with former agriculture minister Zaia. “Zaia must apologise,” Bocchino said. “These things must not happen and a strong, courageous word is needed from (Premier) Silvio Berlusconi, given that Zaia was one of his ministers, he chose him (to stand for) Veneto governor and he is the head of the coalition the Northern League belongs to”. The formerly separatist Northern League has mellowed over the years and now only demands greater regional autonomy, although occasionally its members dig back up the fiery rhetoric of its early days, with famous slogans such as ‘Roma Ladrona’ (Thieving Rome).
Zaia swept to victory in Veneto in the March 28-29 regional elections. photo: Veneto governor Luca Zaia.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Wilders and the US Israel Lobby
As a one-man party, the PVV is cut out of much government funding. But Geert Wilders has good contacts in Israel and the US and that is where much of his financial support comes from, writes Giles Scott-Smith of TheHollandBureau.com
In the last televised debate before the Dutch elections on 9 June, the party leaders were asked which country they would fly to if there was a plane ready to go.
Several said Brussels, Femke Halsema of GroenLinks said Washington (huh? Oh, to discuss the state of the world with Obama), Emile Roemers of the SP said Berlin (by train, of course). Geert Wilders, as ever setting out his own path, said Israel, because it was a country that deserved support. In the context of the recent mayhem surrounding the Gaza convoys, this answer stood out.
But Wilders has good contacts in Israel who support his political movement. Likewise in the United States.
As of this morning, the chances for a Right-wing cabinet in the Netherlands seem to rest with the Christian Democrats. Wilders appears to be genuine in his wish to govern:
VVD+PVV+CDA could “become something really fantastic,” as he put it. For such a cabinet to be stable, it would need alongside its majority in the Second Chamber (where it would hold 76 of 150 seats) also a dominant presence in the First Chamber — where so far Wilders has opted out.
No problem — the PVV will participate in First Chamber elections next March, presumably covering that gap. The fact that Wilders is facing a court case in October concerning accusations of promoting hatred and discrimination has been declared to be no obstacle to his entering a cabinet.
It looks like his jibe against the Socialist party — that they are always condemned to the opposition and therefore not worth voting for — was more than electioneering. He wants in.
A crucial detail about Wilders’ party, the PVV, is that it only has two official members: himself, and the Friends of the PVV Foundation which he formed as a finance-gathering apparatus.
Dutch law states that every party with a membership of 100,000 or more can receive state subsidy. Wilders’ decision to keep his party in his own hands therefore also has severe financial consequences.
Someone else aside from the Dutch state has to provide the money. Much of it comes from the US, where Wilders travels regularly. According to the Volkskrant, in 2008 Wilders even changed the statutes of the Foundation to ensure that it could be used to accept donations for legal cases — the grounds of which remain unspecified in the document — that he might be faced with.
The Dutch press has tracked down several of the principal financial sources for the PVV in the US. Two figures stand out: David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. Horowitz runs the online FrontPage Magazine and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which with an annual budget of around 5 million dollars is an important financier of outlets such as Jihad Watch and Islam critic Robert Spencer.
According to the NRC, it was Horowitz who introduced the Dutchman to leading conservative activists Senator Jim DeMint and Dick Cheney´s daughter Liz last year, and brought Wilders into contact with one of his own financiers who is not named.
Pipes is founder of the pro-Israeli Middle East Forum and has long been in favour of a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Pipes also formed the Legal Project in 2007 to raise and distribute funds for researchers, journalists, and authors who face legal battles based on their critical statements about Islam — ‘jihad by court’, as they say.
Wilders is of course an ideal recipient. In 2009 Pipes managed to round up “an amount in six figures” for Wilders in the USA. Interesting detail is that both Horowitz and Pipes belong to the Right of the Republicans but see Wilders mainly as a useful extension of their pro-Israeli agitating.
Horowitz literally said in this article that he couldn’t make the same anti-Islamic comments as Wilders in the US because it would be too dangerous. Then there is the American Freedom Alliance, who honoured Wilders with a reception in the Reagan Library in October 2009. Officially the AFA doesn’t do fund-raising for the PVV. But of course, gatherings such as this are ideal for opening up private channels.
So what of Israel? Vrij Nederland covered that angle in an article last year. Interesting part of the narrative was the trail behind Wilders’ film Fitna, which appeared in many scenes to be a very close (if not identical) copy to the earlier 80-minute documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West, which Horowitz promoted in the US.
Financial supporters for the film (which is meant to have cost $400,000) came from the obscure Clarion Fund and the orthodox Jewish religious/cultural organisation Aish HaTorah, based in Jerusalem opposite the Wailing Wall and closely linked to the West Bank settler movement.
In December 2008 Wilders spoke at the Facing Jihad conference in Jerusalem, where he also showed Fitna in Israel for the first time. There were few Europeans present, but several US neocons like Pipes and his blog-groupie Pamela Geller.
The conference was organised by Arieh Eldad, former Israeli army officer and leader of the extreme right Hatikva party tht places itself on the no-compromise right of Benjamin Netanyahu. For these groups the West Bank should be emptied of Palestinians, who can leave to neighbouring Arab states, to ensure a secure Jewish nation — a crucial part of the global struggle against the Islamic threat.
Financial support for the conference came from the Ariel Center for Policy Research, a base for the anti Peace Process hawks in Israeli politics, who propagate their views via the publication Nativ.
Theselinks are all the more remarkable because during his time as a member of the VVD (prior to 2004) Wilders followed the line of that party — sympathy for Israel but critical of any moves that would disrupt chances for lasting peace.
Wilders even spoke out against the West Bank wall and the continuing expansion of settlements. But his designs for the PVV as his vehicle to political power demanded a regular sizeable income, and that meant cozying up to the radical anti-Islamic Right. Again according to the Vrij Nederland, showings of Fitna in the US last year came with a $2500 price tag for those wanting to join GW at the top table.
The picture that emerges from these US-Israeli connections is quite revealing because they are not so much on the Right-wing but on the Right-wing of the Right-wing. The Vrij Nederland ended its article (from October 2009): “With Wilders’ PVV in the government the Netherlands will place itself far outside the mainstream internationally. And that for a country that at the moment still so wants to work with the Big Boys.”
The Big Boys of course means the US. The potential consequences for Dutch foreign policy and the Dutch role and image in the world are mind-boggling.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: CDA to Ask Members About a Coalition With Anti-Islam Party
The Christian Democrats are to organise an congress to decide if the party should join a coalition government with the VVD Liberals and anti-Islam PVV, acting party chairman Henk Bleker said on Wednesday.
There is great unease within the party about joining a new coalition government, partly because of the CDA’s poor performance in last week’s general election, but partly because of the PVV’s policies.
The CDA’s vote almost halved.
‘The party wants to be involved with this sort of decision and members want to be able to say yes or no at crucial moments,’ Bleker is quoted as saying by the Telegraaf.
This is the first time the CDA will have asked members to vote on such an important issue, the Telegraaf says in its coverage of the news.
In the meantime, the CDA’s parliamentary leader Maxime Verhagen has been given the green light to join the talks, currently ongoing between the PVV and VVD.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
OSCE Urges Italy to Rethink Wiretap Bill
Measure must be amended to guarantee press freedom
(ANSA) — Vienna, June 15 — The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) urged Italy on Tuesday to drop or amend a contested bill aimed at restricting the use of wiretaps and their publication before trials.
The OSCE called on the government to withdraw the current measure and modify it to bring it into line with international standards guaranteeing freedom of the press.
The bill, which was approved by the Senate on a confidence vote last week, is now at the Lower House for a third and final reading. OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, said in a statement she was “concerned that the Senate approved a bill that could seriously hinder investigative journalism in Italy despite several warnings from my Office.
“It marks a trend towards criminalizing journalistic work,” said Mijatovic.
“Journalists must be free to report on all cases of public interest and must be able to choose how they conduct a responsible investigation. The draft law in its current form contradicts OSCE commitments, especially as it prohibits the use of some confidential sources and materials which may be necessary for meaningful investigative journalism in the service of democracy,” Mijatovic said.
The largest centre-left opposition group, the Democratic Party (PD), did not take part in the Senate vote last Thursday while the second-biggest, Italy of Values (IdV) voted against it after vainly trying to stop the ballot with an all-night sit-in.
The opposition says the measure is undemocratic and will ‘gag’ the press and hurt probes but the Senate whip for Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party, Maurizio Gasparri, said the government was “proud” of it.
Gasparri argued that wiretaps should only be a “last resort” in investigations while “today there is constant use, and some probes start with wiretaps”.
He also argued that the measure will put an end to “trial by the media”.
Gasparri accused left-leaning papers of using wiretaps against Berlusconi “to try to overturn the will of the people”.
The measure has sparked protests not only from the opposition but also from prosecutors and the media.
Some Italian dailies on Friday came out with special editions protesting the bill.
Left-leaning daily La Repubblica, a frequent critic of Berlusconi and his government, ran an empty front page containing only a sticker in the middle saying “The gag law denies citizens the right to be informed”.
La Repubblica, which has often been sued by Berlusconi over its coverage of scandals, has in recent weeks been flagging all of the articles with similar stickers saying “under the gag law you wouldn’t be able to read this article”.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, a small openly anti-Berlusconi daily, put a black mourning band on top of its masthead.
The liberal daily La Stampa blanked out two regular columns and the leftwing L’Unita’ ran a stark front page with a huge three-line banner headline saying Gag Law Approved, against a black background.
Corriere della Sera, Italy’s largest newspaper, did not join the announced ‘mourning’ move but ran an editorial saying the passage of the bill from the Senate to the House was “a dark page for lawmaking on justice issues”. The draft measure would make it harder to obtain authorisation for wiretaps, restrict their duration, and slap stiff fines on newspaper publishers and journalists who publish wiretaps before investigations reach trial, a process that can take years in Italy’s slow justice system.
The Italian journalists union has announced a full-scale news blackout on July 9 when the bill is expected to complete its final reading in the House.
Terrorism and mafia probes are excluded from the measure but prosecutors say many mafia cases stem from the investigation of lesser crimes.
The government says the measure will bring Italy into line with other Western countries and prevent the publication of wiretaps that invade privacy but have no bearing on probes.
The European Commission on Friday said it would be “very vigilant” on the issue of press freedom.
“The European Commission does not comment on drafts of measures which are still being discussed by parliament but it is clear that we are very vigilant on any situation that might create problems,” an EC spokesperson said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Slovenia-Italy: Mantica, Debate on Minorities
(ANSAmed) — LJUBLJANA, JUNE 9 — There will be more coordination and debate between Italy and Slovenia in reference to their respective minorities. Foreign affairs undersecretary Alfredo Mantica made the announcement at the end of a meeting in Ljubljana today with Slovenian foreign minister Bostjan Zeks: a very positive meeting because it was the first between to equal-ranking government officials, said Mantica, who added that they decided to add the minorities issue to the agenda of the Italian-Slovenian board of ministers that is held every year. Mantica then stated that Italy and Slovenia are busy setting up within the EU the Adriatic/Ionian macro-region, so “we need to start debating minorities inside the European union”. The Foreign affairs undersecretary made the comment this morning while meeting representatives in Ljubljana of the Italian minority in the COuntry. The Slovenian minister also had a positive opinion of the meeting, and admitted the “complexity” of the issue concerning finances for minorities, hoping for a “clearer vision” between Italy and Slovenia before the summer’s end. In particular, as regards financing for Italian minorities in Slovenia, Mantica emphasised “difficulties” in maintaining the size of 2009 funds, pointing out that the next financial bill provides a wage freeze for public employees, major cuts to the ministries and increased pension ages. Mantica then announced that he and his Slovenian colleague will visit the minorities of their respective Countries, to prove that debate on the matter is ongoing.(ANSAmed).
2010-06-09 20:17
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Scramble for Timbuktu: Scenes From the Race for Influence Over Africa’s Ancient Written Culture
By Charlotte Wiedemann
The evening light throws pink feathers across the sky. A herd of goats sends dust spiralling into the air and as it settles, a sand-coloured twilight descends on the sand-coloured city. In front of the mud construction of the Sankore mosque, men lie chatting in the sand. It absorbs their voices. Timbuktu sinks murmuring into an early night.
Somewhat incongruously, we arrive by plane. Timbuktu, in the east of Mali, on the southernmost edge of the Sahara, the eternal European metaphor for the back of beyond, for the unreachable. Not far from here, the paths that head for another form of unreachable begin, the paths of migration to Europe, through the deadly reaches of the desert. It all depends on which part of the world you chose to construct your myths from: this is Timbuktu’s story.
One thing it certainly is not is the end of the world. For centuries, Timbuktu was a centre of the southern hemisphere, a stronghold of trade, an Islamic university city. Where the Niger Delta met the desert, the paths of ages crossed: from the North came the caravans, over the river came gold from West Africa. And after the merchants came scholars; Timbuktu was a cosmopolitan city. Our men murmuring into the evening are lying in the exact spot where West Africa’s Quartier Latin lay in the 15th century, or to be more precise, a Quartier Arabe with 25,000 students. Almost the population of Timbuktu today.
Deceptive, this sand-coloured silence, the sense of being lost to the world. With a stoic pride the inhabitants of Timbuktu register the recent flurry of interest in something that has always been theirs: the oldest library south of the Sahara. Its Arab manuscripts dating back to the 13th century have brought state presidents, scholars, representatives of major foundations traipsing awkwardly through Timbuktu’s sand to see them. Over 100,000 manuscripts on Islamic law, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, on termite-eaten parchment, on gazelle hide even.
There is no room for all this erudition in today’s image of Africa. Which is why, opposite the Sankore mosque, in the light of a single, precious floodlight, stands a fancy new research centre, beamed as if by magic into the sparse historical settings. Elegant, air-conditioned, mud hut meets modernism. A gift from South Africa, a gift from rich to poor Africa — so that the continent can look back on its history with pride.
Timbuktu as a site of African renaissance, where the continent can reflect on its culture and its strengths — this was Thabo Mbeki’s idea, as president of South Africa. On a state visit to Timbuktu he visited the Ahmed Baba Instititute, where 30,000 manuscripts are stored under state supervision. The institute bears the name of Timbuktu’s most famous philosopher, but what a meagre place, how ill-suited to the restoration of so precious a heritage! Mbeki pledged his support; it was crucial to “raise Africa’s profile, not only in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of Africans themselves.” Back in South Africa, he mobilised private capital and within a fortnight, the first experts from the Cape had landed in Mali. The Malians were bowled over by this display of efficiency.
Mbeki was replaced long ago, entire football stadiums have been erected in South Africa since then, and in Mali, where everything happens at a slower pace, the new Ahmed Baba Institute is finally ready for occupancy. Beautiful and alien it stands in the centre of Timbuktu, in the exact spot where the philosopher Ahmed Baba once lived; the South Africans insisted on the location, forcing the Malians to knock down their Gendarmerie. Now they are concerned that the gift will consume more energy that everything else in Timbuktu combined. An African-African partnership, two different worlds.
Africa as a continent without history — this image was corrected by the German explorer and scholar Heinrich Barth, after he studied the African chronicles in Timbuktu in 1853/54. And yet, a hundred years later, still very little was known about the African written history. Priceless manuscripts, stolen by France during its colonial rule in Mali, lay unstudied in the National Library in Paris. The British Africanist John Hunwick began his manuscript research in 1965 — without any idea of the wealth of texts that would emerge.
The majority of these are privately owned; the families in Timbuktu are only gradually starting to open the old chests in which they have stored and hidden the yellowed and gilded calligraphies for generations. The media hype created a new myth: Timbuktu was having its last secret wrested from its hands, “desert scrolls” on which the hidden history of the continent was chronicled. Indeed it is the libraries more than anything that prove “that Africa has shared in Islamic knowledge for almost a thousand years”, according to the German Islam scholar Albrecht Hofheinz, who is overseeing a project for the digitalisation of the manuscripts at Oslo University. Some of them stem from Andalusia, North Africa and the Middle East, others were written by African writers in Timbuktu. African languages were also transcibed in the Arabic script for diplomatic correspondence and contracts.
Arabic played a similar role in parts of Africa that Latin played in Medieval Europe, it was the written language of the elites for centuries. Until the arrival of the French. The imposition of the French language was “devastating” for the scholarly tradition of the region, John Hunwick noted. Young Africans today often have no idea that a tradition of reading and writing even existed prior to the colonial era. In South Africa the ministry of education ordered a reappraisal of school books and curricula. The conclusion was that Africa’s place in the world was related from a “overwhelmingly Eurocentric” perspective. For Shamil Jeepi, a historian at Cape Town University, Timbuktu is exactly the right place to disempower once and for all “the European colonial project” of historical denial. The university is helping with the evaluation and preservation of the documents.
There are also plenty of Malians who know nothing of their cultural history. In a mud hut, far away from Timbuktu, the farmers glance at one another in embarrassment when asked about the manuscripts. Hurriedly they send for a boy who has spent the most years in school; he stares shamefaced at the floor.
It is easy to lock a poor country in a smothering embrace. Gaddafi declared Timbuktu his home, and lavished it with gifts. A vast construction site on the outskirts of the city: another centre for manuscripts. No one needs it, but the “Gaddafi Center” must be more impressive that the South African building. A race for influence over the continent, played out on a small stage of sand and parchment.
At the end of Ramadan, Libyans drove through the night to Timbuktu in trucks and threw food parcels in front of the inhabitants’ houses. “The Libyans have no manners”, the recipients of these gifts said quietly. Then came Gaddafi’s appearance, on the birthday of the Prophet. He was invited to eat a mechoui with Mali’s president, the traditional festive desert meal. A chicken is stuffed with an egg, then a sheep with the chicken — but Gaddafi never turned up. He left the other guests sitting there, with their mutton, chicken and egg, and roared off to Timbuktu, to glory in the crowds alone.
All this fuss has created a stubborn new confidence in the owners of the manuscripts. No one embodies this more than Abelkader Haidara, whose father left him a library containing 9000 manuscripts, which he tends with profound erudition and love. Once upon a time, the charming, rotund Haidara convinced family upon family to hand over their manuscripts to the state; now the 45-year old preaches the opposite. “Hold on to your intellectual property!” He was the first to open a family library to the public; now Timbuktu has 32 private libraries.
When Haidara first sought foreign financial support a decade and a half ago, no one was willing to believe his story about an African library. The turning point came in the form of a black American: Henry Louis Gates. The head of African American Studies at Harvard was electrified when he saw the manuscripts and brought the Ford Foundation on board as a financial partner. Haidara giggles: “It’s strange to think that this Gates became famous for a completely different reason.” He was the man who was arrested on his own doorstep for supposedly trying to break in, and ended up drinking an anti-racist beer with Obama.
Haidara is about to bring out a CD of exemplary translations of his ancient manuscripts: “On conflict management and good governance. The Westerners all come over here thinking they invented everything.”
Timbuktu tells of relations, perspectives. This was the way things used to be, when globalisation still rode on a camel’s back. And this is how it is today, when Facebook users call themselves “Tim Buktu” with no idea that blogs and Facebook have been there for years. In the three-way relationship between Africa, the West and Islam, how do the sides perceive one another?
Since its founding in the 12th century, Timbuktu was Islamic. As an academic centre, the city came to embody the Islamisation of Africa — and the Africanisation of Islam. Every second African today is Muslim — a fact which is often overlooked. There is an inscription in Mali’s National Museum which contains these remarkable words on the subject: With the creation of an indigenous class of Muslim scholars “Islam ceased to be the religion of a white foreigner and became an African religion.”
The Arab “as white foreigner” — this does not refer only to the arrival of Islam. No one in Timbuktu has forgotten how the Moroccans conquered the city, plundered the libraries and dragged off the best scholars to Fes. Ahmed Baba, the philosopher, in chains! This is a source of embarrassment in Morocco today but the stolen manuscripts have yet to be returned to Timbuktu.
“We were also colonised by the Arabs,” says Mohamed Dicko, director of the Ahmed Baba Institute. “It was an intellectual, cultural colonisation and it is still at work today in the notion that everything good about Islam came from the Arabs. It is like during the French colonial era when school children were taught only French writers.” Soon, for the first time, texts in Arabic by native Mali authors will be appearing in textbooks, he says. His institute also receives money from Saudi Arabia, but Dicko plays that down, he prefers the South African partners. Amazingly the guardian of the manuscripts talks no Arabic: rumour has it that this was a deliberate political decision.
Is is possible to strengthen the Arabic heritage without allowing more Arab influence in the country? Saudi Wahabists have been trying for a long time to establish a “cleansed” de-Africanised Islam in Mali. They have had no success in Timbuktu so far; even the religious students still wear fetishes.
If you talk to Abdramane Ben Essayouti, Timbuktu’s leading imam, about the Wahabists, he straightens his bright blue robe, the bubu, and relates a famous anecdote: When in 1324 the Malian King Kankou Musa went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, his caravan was loaded with so much gold that while he was on the road, the value of gold in Cairo plummeted. “Saudi Arabia,” say the Imam with a subtle smile, “was just a sandpit in those days”. When the King returned he brought an architect with him who set to work building Timbuktu’s cultural heritage for the future. The Djingareyber mosque is still standing 700 years later and Ben Essayouti is its imam. “The Wahabists will not be able to do anything about a tradition as strong as ours.”
Ben Essayouti owns 8,000 ancient manuscripts and an internet cafe. The 14th century is in the vitrines, the 21st in is the basement — no distance at all for the man in the blue bubu. “I was the first to get an email address” : imamtombouctou. He took his children out of the French-speaking state school and sent them to an Arabic-French lyceum, a day’s travel away. So that one day they will be able to accept their inheritance appropriately informed. Recently a European tourist offered him a handsome sum for a manuscript of astronomical calculations.
The Imam smiles subtly. Of course it was not for sale.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Anwar Al-Awlaki: MI5 Warns of the Al-Qaeda Preacher Targeting Britain
Young British Muslims are being groomed to carry out terrorist attacks in this country by Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical al-Qaeda preacher based in the Middle East, it can be disclosed.
The security services fear that a new generation of British extremists is being radicalised by Awlaki, who recruited the Detroit plane bomber. They are concerned that Awlaki’s followers could unleash a wave of easily planned guerrilla-style terrorist attacks, similar to the massacre in Mumbai. Such small-scale attacks could be carried out cheaply by individuals with little terrorist training and without the need for the support of a large organisation.
The British security services have become so worried about Awlaki’s rising influence that they have alerted ministers to their fears. He is now regarded as one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. A briefing paper, seen by The Daily Telegraph, has been circulated within government, warning that Awlaki has now “cemented his position as one of the leading English-speaking jihadi ideologues”. His growing influence was one of the factors that led to a raised terrorism alert level in Britain earlier this year.
Awlaki, who was born in America, but is of Yemeni descent, is in hiding in Yemen, where he also spent his teenage years. He has become the foremost influence on young radical Muslims across the world through his English language sermons delivered over the internet.
He said in a statement in March: “Isn’t it ironic that the two capitals of the war against Islam, Washington DC and London, have also become among the centres of Western Jihad [holy war]. Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea.” His growing influence has also attracted young Britons to Yemen seeking to train as suicide bombers. It can be disclosed that at least one British Muslim has volunteered to be a suicide bomber in recent months after contacting Awlaki. MI5 and the police fear there could be more. Authorities have rounded up Westerners studying at Arabic colleges in Sana’a, the capital, including at least two Britons who were later released.
Awlaki built up a base of extremist followers while living in London for two years until 2004, giving lectures at mosques, universities and closed study circles across the country, sources say. He developed a following among terrorists and terrorist groomers, including the July 7 and July 21 bombers and the leader of the transatlantic airline bombers, it can also be disclosed. CDs of his sermons were found in the Iqra bookshop in Leeds — where the July 7 bombers held meetings — when it was raided in July 2005.
Mohammed Hamid, the recruiter of the failed July 21 bombers, attended his sermons, sources have told The Daily Telegraph.
His lectures were also found among the material seized from Aabid Hussain Khan, an international terrorist recruiter, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, in June 2006. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the leader of the trans-Atlantic airline bombers arrested in August 2006, spoke of his admiration for Awlaki during his trial. Meanwhile, Rizwan Ditta, who sold terrorist texts in Halifax, West Yorkshire, had material from Awlaki on a computer at his home when he was arrested in December 2006.
Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November, had asked for Awlaki’s advice in emails about a suicide attack. Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the failed Detroit bomber, contacted Awlaki over the internet. Awlaki put him in touch with al-Qaeda in Yemen, investigators say. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, New York, last month, has told investigators he was also influenced by the preacher.
Awlaki has become such a significant threat that the SAS has been deployed to Yemen in a bid to hunt him down. President Obama has also signed orders allowing drone attacks and special forces ground attacks in pursuit of Awlaki, who holds US citizenship. In the past few weeks al-Qaeda has released a 45-minute interview with him which has become a hit on YouTube. In the interview Awlaki appeared to admit involvement in 14 plots in the US, Canada and Britain.
A government analysis of YouTube last year found that Awlaki had 1,910 videos on the site, one of which had been viewed 164,420 times.
[JP comment: tiny minority of extremists alert]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
EU-Serbia: Press, Belgium, Holland, Germany Against Candidacy
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, JUNE 16 — According to reports in Serbian daily Vecernje Novosti today, three EU countries are against Serbia’s candidate status to enter the European Union: Belgium, Holland and Germany. In a meeting on Monday in Luxembourg, during which the EU Foreign Ministers ratified the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Serbia, 24 of the 27 member-states were in favour of approving Belgrade’s presentation to the European Commission of its request to be granted candidate status. However, Belgium, Holland and Germany were against the request. Today, Vecernje Novosti reported that despite all of the attempts to convince the representatives of the three countries to support the proposal in favour of Serbia, the three Foreign Ministers — especially Dutch Minister Maxime Verhagen — remained staunchly opposed. The daily did not provide reasons as to why the countries were opposed, although, in the past Holland has made its approval contingent upon the capture of Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic. The daily underlined that despite the situation, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that the problem of Serbia’s candidacy will already be discussed at the next meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in July.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Israeli Company to Open Spice Factory
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, JUNE 7 — The Israeli Green Only company, which specializes in producing spices, will be opening a factory in Serbia, reports radio B92. Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic and Israeli ambassador Arthur Koll will be at the ceremony in the central town of Svilajnac (central Serbia). The equipment and factory itself is worth EUR850,000 and will be geared toward spice production. Since most of the work will be done manually, it is expected that Green Only will be employing more workers as it expands its capacities to 100 hectares of land. This will make Svilajnac the center for production of spices and vegetables in Serbia.(ANSAmed).
2010-06-07 19:45
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
2 Out of 3 Tunisians Not Interested in the Environment
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JUNE 7 — The result of a study carried out in Tunisia by the Green party in collaboration with a specialised study have caused perplexity: two out of three Tunisians are absolutely indifferent to the problems that affect the environment. And they have no intention of getting involved in safeguarding it. The study, carried out on a sample of 1,000 people, put the residents of the south of the country in first place of the most disinterested. The results of the study were announced on the occasion of the celebration of the world day for the environment. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Congress Looking Into Crackdown on Christians in Morocco
Hearing to focus on Morocco’s mass deportations
The mass deportation of Christians ordered by authorities in Morocco in recent weeks now is getting attention in Washington.
Counsel Roger Kiska of the Alliance Defense Fund said a hearing is scheduled Thursday before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
Testifying will be staff members of Village of Hope, an orphanage whose staff members were targeted during one of the deportation purges.
“Christians shouldn’t be targeted for deportation simply because of their beliefs,” Kiska stated. “None of the preconditions for lawful deportation under Moroccan law was met by the government officials in this case.
“It is vital that no precedent be set that will lead to more human rights violations of this sort, where Christian volunteers can be mass expelled simply because they are Christian,” he said.
| [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: Violence on Women, Parliament Examines Issue
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, JUNE 10 — In Rabat the socialist group of the Chamber of Deputies set up a day to examine the law against violence on women that was joined by members of parliament, representatives various of ministries and women’s associations and human rights associations. Zoubida Bouayad, president of the socialist group, stated that “this phenomenon keeps getting worse and has different forms in our society” and pointed out that the aim of the meeting is to examine measures capable of countering the ulcer of violence against women on the social, institutional and human rights level. Minister for relations with Parliament Driss Lachgar evoked major changes in Morocco’s society in terms of human rights and especially women’s rights, which had a positive impact on the social level through the creation of shelters for female victims of violence, and the creation of special offices in tribunals and hospitals. Health Minister Yasmina Baddou emphasised how her department pays special attention to assisting the victims of violence through special units in public hospitals across the country. In Badou’s opinion the fight against this phenomenon requires a rigorous and global legal framework to define the various categories of women (e.g. married women, home sitters and emigrants) and consider the various forms of physical and mental violence. A report by Morocco’s observatory on violence against women stated that 3,547 women fell victim to violence in 2008, a 38% increase compared to 2007. Even though it has not been established whether this is an increase in violence or if women are growing bolder in reporting such events.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Azoulay to Continue Battle for Peace
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JUNE 16 — Giving up and opting not to continuing fighting to achieve a fair peace between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible — even when, day after day, the list of failures and lost opportunities grows longer. Even when this long-sought peace seems ever more a mirage. After almost fifty years spent fighting for reconciliation in the Middle East, André Azoulay, advisor to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, has no intention of throwing in the towel and cancelling out work in favour of dialogue between Jews and Arabs which began in the 1970s, when he founded the organisation “Identity and Dialogue”, one of four forums created to request talks between Israelis and Palestinians. A highly-respected economist in Europe, since age 19 at the side of the Alawite monarchy, sole Jewish advisor to hold such a high post in the entire Muslim world, over the past few days the president of the Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures Anna Lindh received the 2010 Mediterranean Peace Prize. He told ANSAmed over the phone that he had “always fought to find a way to give Palestinians freedom, identity, dignity and — most of all — a state, and to give Israel security and peace.” It is a “fight” which has lasted over fifty years, and which shows no sign of abating today, despite the quick-fire succession of tension and crises between the countries facing off against each other on the Middle Eastern playing field. He admitted that it was true that “the Mediterranean is still bereft of a deeply-rooted peace”. And inevitably it is to be assumed that, without a solution to the dramatic situation Palestinians find themselves in and without ensuring security for the State of Israel, there will never be stability in the entire area. He went on to say that “today there can still be virtuous convergences between the vision expressed by US president Obama during his Cairo speech, the Union for the Mediterranean and the peace proposal by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference countries.” And so not all seems lost to the president of the Anna Lindh Foundation. A high-ranking figure in the political sphere of the Alawite Kingdom, due to his being a Jew Azoulay represents an exception in the entire panorama of the Arab Muslim world. He defines his experience as “unable to be cloned”, though he does not hide a touch of optimism when he says that “it is an exception full of hope for the future of the Arab world.” He has been harshly criticised both by Jews (many times having been accused of being pro-Palestinian) and by Arabs (for being pro-Jewish). Azoulay said that “those criticising my position forget the wealth and traditions of my country. It is a country in which Jews and Muslims have been living side by side for millennium.” Then, with a bit of a challenge aimed at those criticizing him, he said that “I live my role as advisor to the king as a true privilege. In the end, I belong to a very exclusive club, and therefore a very snobbish one. I am, in fact, the only one to belong to it. Moroccan Judaism has been a part of the Moroccan cultural reality for over 2000 years. Generation after generation, Moroccan Jews have been able top enrich themselves within this Berber and Arab-Muslim culture.” And Morocco? The glass seems more than half full for the advisor to Mohammed VI. “Over the past two decades,” he said, “Morocco has put its foot on the accelerator towards democratisation and the structural reforms necessary not only to strengthen the economy, but also the political and social geography of the country.” The country, he concluded, has never stopped and things will only go forward. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Some Semi-Sanity From Europe: EU Foreign Ministers Make Partial Sense on Gaza, Iran
by Barry Rubin
Remember what I told you: if you want to know what policy is going to be, watch the governments, not the media. While the results of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg were far from perfect, they also show the difference between decision-makers and opinion-makers on the Middle East.
First, the foreign ministers proposed new sanctions going beyond the ones just voted in the UN against Iran’s nuclear program to prohibit new investment and transfer of technology, equipment and services.
The British representative, William Hague, told the EU to take a “strong lead” on this issue. Sweden’s opposition was overcome. We must wait to see the details but clearly this is a step in the right direction. Incidentally, I believe the main European states were willing to do this nine months ago but were forestalled by the go-slow U.S. policy.
Second, regarding the Gaza issue, the EU foreign ministers refused to condemn Israel and adopted a mixed package of proposals. They called for a “credible, independent” investigation of the incident with the Gaza flotilla, which leaves the door open for Israel’s approach of an independent commission with two foreign observers rather than a UN-led (and inevitably wildly biased) process.
They also called for the release by Hamas of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and that the Red Cross be allowed to visit him, while recognizing Israel’s “legitimate security concerns, including the need to cease all violence and arms smuggling into Gaza.”
On the other side, they wanted a narrowing of the embargo on Gaza but did not define precisely how this should be done. And Tony Blair, the Quartet’s Middle East said sympathetically that he expected Israel to ease the blockade soon.
The EU position also offered to help in arrangements for the crossings along the lines of its 2005 arrangements, which proved to be useless in practice though they made the EU feel good about doing something.
This is a position that Israel can live with by modifying the embargo. It is generally not realized that restrictions are constantly being revised any way. For example, Israel has agreed in connection with UNRWA to let in construction equipment and concrete for specific, supervised construction projects to ensure that this materiel isn’t used for Hamas military projects.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction:…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Flotilla Organisers to Send More Gaza Ships
BRUSSELS, June 16 (Reuters) — A Turkish pro-Palestinian group said on Wednesday it will send another aid flotilla to Gaza next month, again trying to break an Israeli blockade after its last convoy was the target of a deadly Israeli raid in May.
The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid (IHH) told members of the European Parliament it had assembled six ships for the next flotilla and put out an appeal for others to join.
Its last flotilla was intercepted off the coast of Gaza on May 31. Clashes broke out on one of the ships as Israeli commandos boarded it to enforce a blockade, and in fighting that followed Israeli forces shot dead nine Turkish men.
The next flotilla is due to sail in the second half of July, IHH said. The group invited the international media to inspect all goods on board before the convoy sails to “demonstrate their commitment to total transparency”.
Israel says the IHH has links to Muslim militants, which the group denies.
Richard Howitt, a British member of the European Parliament who organised IHH’s press conference at the parliament in Strasbourg, said the European Union had an obligation to ensure respect for humanitarian law and access for the next flotilla…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Christian-Moslem Rift Re-Emerges Over Palestinians
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, JUNE 16 — As they were prior to the 1975-90 civil war, Christian and Moslem members of Lebanon’s parliament are divided again over whether to give the circa 400,000 mainly-Moslem Palestinian refugees living in the country basic civil rights or not. Heated debate erupted Wednesday at the half-Christian, half-Moslem 128-member assembly when Druze deputy Walid Jumblat forwarded a law proposal to give these Palestinians the right to retirement indemnity, work risk security and limited property ownership. The proposal provoked uproar among the Christian deputies who feared that such a law would lead to the naturalization of the predominantly Sunni Palestinian refugees and, consequently, disrupting the confessional balance on which Lebanon’s political system is based. The division revealed the fragility of the alliances Moslem and Christian political parties have forged among themselves over the past five years and revived the old confessional split. “This divide reminds of the civil war,” lamented the leftist As-Safir daily, while the center-right An-Nahar questioned Jumblat’s “sudden rush” to give the Palestinian refugees civil rights. Lebanon’s civil war started when rightwing Christian militias took up arms to fight Yasser Arafat’s PLO that grew influential in the country with the backing of local Moslem and leftist parties and militias, including Jumblat’s Progressist Socialist Party (PSP). Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and destroyed the PLO. Syria crushed the Christians in 1990. But the country still denies civil rights to the Palestinian refugees, who have been living in 12 squalid camps along with their descendents since the creation of Israel in 1948. “All right parties in the world are stupid but I have not seen more stupid than the Lebanese right,” said Jumblat —a descendent of a feudal family with the noble title of “Bek” and who, in 1977, inherited from his father the uncontested leadership of the PSP that drove the Christians out of Mount Lebanon in the civil war. In an attempt to defuse tension, House Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite, referred Jumblat’s proposal to the parliament’s Justice Committee for further discussion and promised to bring the issue again at a general meeting of the unicameral chamber in a month time. For the Druze leader, Berri’s decision “is just to postpone the explosion of the ticking bomb.” Sunni Premier Saad Hariri was more explicit. “If we do not give the Palestinians their civil rights, we will be investing in the biggest project to produce terrorism,” warned Hariri.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkmenistan: Ashgabat: No Amnesty for Jehovah’s Witnesses
Turkmen president issued an amnesty this month, but did include those who refuse compulsory military service on grounds of conscientious objection, like Jehovah’s Witnesses. The latter got two years of hard labour and had their Bible seized.
Ashgabat (AsiaNews/F18) — Refusing to perform compulsory military service on grounds of conscientious objection is so serious a crime in Turkmenistan that offenders do not deserve amnesty. Currently, five Jehovah’s Witnesses are languishing in jail and this for several months, because of their refusal to wear a uniform—four of them have even earned a month of solitary confinement.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov issued a general amnesty on 9 May to commemorate the end of World War 2. A number of Jehovah’s Witnesses, sentenced last December to two years in prison, were not included among those who benefitted from the measure, friends told the Forum 18 news agency.
F18 said that the five Jehovah’s Witness prisoners of conscience are in a hard labour camp near the eastern town of Seydi
In November and December of last year, four of them—Shadurdi Ushotov, Akmurat Egendurdiev and two brothers, Sakhetmurad and Mukhammedmurad Annamamedov—were visited by unidentified officials who asked them some questions. Immediately afterwards, they were sent to punishment cells for three days.
Whilst relatives can visit them, they had their Bibles and all other religious text seized by police.
Two other Witnesses, Zafar Abullaev and Dovrai Kushmanov, were given a two-year suspended sentence for conscientious objection, which limits their activities and movements. They too did not benefit from the amnesty.
Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse military service because their faith rejects war. However, they are willing to perform a non-military service.
Turkmenistan has always rejected calls for an alternative to the draft, which is compulsory for all young men.
Article 219 of the existing Criminal Code punishes refusal to perform peacetime military service with up to two years in jail.
On 10 May, the Turkmen parliament (Mejlis) approved a number of changes to the Criminal Code, but left Article 219 untouched.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kenyans Fear a Repeat of 2007 Bloodshed
The grenade attack in Kenya does not bode well for the forthcoming referendum on the country’s constitution
The two grenades that detonated in Nairobi in the late hours of Sunday left at least six people dead and scores more injured, and immediately set off a blame game from both sides, those who are backing the proposed constitution (now dubbed the Greens) and those opposed to it (the Reds).
Who could have been behind the attack? A shocked country is searching for the answer. This is not the first time the country has experienced killer explosions — recall the August 1998 bomb blast in the US embassy in Nairobi — but it was the first serious attack at a referendum or election campaign.
In the last two months, Kenyans have been gripped by what is now being called referendum fever. The proposed constitution has polarised the country in much the same way it did in 2005, when the first serious attempt at a new constitution was made and defeated.
Just as in 2005, President Mwai Kibaki is supporting the proposed constitution. But he has found an unlikely ally in his prime minister, Raila Odinga, who was on the opposing side in 2005. Both are having to ride a fierce tide of opposition from some of their cabinet ministers led by higher education minister William Ruto, an erstwhile ally of Raila Odinga’s and the Christian community.
The Reds have been traversing the country to drum up opposition to the document. Likewise, the Greens have been ratcheting up their yes campaign. But nobody thought that things could turn bloody until the grenade thrower struck on Sunday.
There are many unsubstantiated theories about who could have been behind it or what the motive could have been. Both sides have come out with strong reactions, with the Reds blaming the Greens and the Greens defending themselves. But it is generally agreed that such an attack would serve no side in any way. The Greens know that the last thing that they need is to be labelled violent. It is imperative for them to keep in check the intolerant elements among their ranks. The Reds know that nothing would serve them better than the perception that the Greens are intolerant. On the basis of public pity, they could hope to pick up a few followers here and there. But they also know that security for their followers is key to success of their future rallies. And if, in any event, Sunday’s attack was the work of religious extremists, both sides know that this are not the kind of people to help their cause in any way.
Be that as it may, the Sunday incident buttressed calls from those opposed to the referendum that it be put aside until there was agreement on both sides. This is probably what those who planned the attack aimed to achieve.
Whatever the motive of the attack, Kenyans are, once again, fearing the worst: that this referendum, slated for 4 August, might lead to the kind of bloodshed witnessed after the 2007 general election. The government, which today offered a reward of Sh500,000 (about £4,200) for any information that could lead to the arrest of the attackers, will have a tough job reassuring the country that the forthcoming referendum will end well.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UN World Food Program — Money Goes to Islamists
The UN WFP (World Food Program) receives most of its funding from USAID.
The WFP is corrupt to its core, as evidenced by a leaked UN document about Somalia which exposed that most of the aid goes to UN workers, Islamic militants and contractors.(6) Another example is in Ethiopia where only 12% of the food aid was delivered to the intended poverty stricken area. Additionally, there are more examples of corruption with shipping and trucking fees inflated up to 300% over cost. Of course, NGOs are deeply complicit in this international scheme of theft and incompetence with zero accountability.
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Taxpayers Spend $967 Million on Abortion Providers
GAO audit exposes use of federal funds to support family-planning groups
WASHINGTON — Anti-abortion lawmakers in Congress have determined that federal taxpayers poured at least $967 million into family planning organizations such as Planned Parenthood over the last eight years — money they said potentially freed the health-service enterprises to use other donations to perform abortions.
Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, who led an effort by 31 Republican lawmakers to obtain the audit by Congress’ watchdog Government Accountability Office, said he hopes to use the findings to generate momentum for his proposed legislation to require states and the federal government to provide annual public reports on taxpayer funds that are appropriated to “abortion providers.”
“It is disturbing to learn that these organizations spent nearly $1 billion in taxes over eight years,” Olson said. “That this tax money is spent by organizations and practices that offend the majority of Americans only further justifies the need for this alarming report.”
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