Audio: ‘Out-of-Control Public Pensions Sinking California’
State $19 billion in debt despite ‘maxing out taxes as far as they can go’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bye Bye to the Polish Plumber, Guten Tag to the German Carpenter
The myth of the Polish plumber taking bread from the table of German workers has been and gone. According Foreign Policy Romania, the time has come for workers in Western Europe to migrate to Central Europe, where there are plenty of jobs on offer.
With a growth rate of 1.7% in 2009, Poland was the Eastern European country least affected by the crisis. Even the tragic air crash which caused the death of most of the political elite responsible for this success has not put a brake on the Polish economy. As a result, thousands of East Germans are now traveling east and crossing the river Oder in their quest to find jobs.
According to official figures, there are more than 2,500 Germans working in call-centres, construction and other industrial sectors in the city of Szczecin and the surrounding area, but unofficial reports are citing much higher numbers. A German skilled worker can earn about 1,000 euros a month in Poland, which is not stellar, but better than nothing. A stone’s throw away, in the German district of Uecker Randow, the rate of unemployment now stands at 20%.
This latest phenomenon is further proof of a counter current in the flow of migration. The 1950s and 1960s were marked by the arrival of Turkish and Greek workers in Germany, but now the economic crisis has encouraged German migrants to seek work in Poland and also in Turkey.
Turkish-Germans returning “home”
Young Turkish-Germans are leaving the country where they were born to return to Turkey with their parents. According to a study form the Futureorg Institute in Dortmund, 38% of Turkish graduates would like to live in Turkey. Half of them claim that they “do not feel at home” in Germany, where they believe they are treated like foreigners. Approximately 5,000 of them took the step of emigrating in 2008.
Along with this sentiment of non-integration, another factor that encourages them to leave is the level of discrimination on the job market. According to a study conducted by the University of Konstanz, people with Turkish names are14% less likely to be called for job interviews. This is marked contrast to the situation they would enjoy in Turkey, where the economy has been booming in recent years and there are plenty of interesting jobs on offer to well qualified bilingual graduates.
Management and engineering graduates, who are bilingual and imbued with the German work ethic, are particularly sought after on the Turkish labour market. As a result, “Germany is not only losing highly qualified workers whose education it has financed, but also individuals who could make a decisive contribution to the integration off an ethnic minority”, regrets Astrid Ziebarth in a report for the German Marshall Fund.
Resurgence of Greek and Irish emigration
Countries that have been worst hit by the economic crisis are experiencing a predictable exodus of young graduates. Many young Greeks, who returned home after completing their studies abroad, have lost their jobs and are now planning to leave.
During the Celtic Tiger years of strong economic growth, the Irish government enthusiastically reported that new industries had put a stop to emigration and that expatriates attracted by jobs in construction and financial services were returning home. Today, the victims of job cuts are queuing up to leave the country.
Headed for Portugal’s former African colony
Fleeing a rate of unemployment that stands at 10% in their home country, several thousand Portuguese have opted to try their luck in Angola, the country’s former colony in East Africa. Thanks to a surge in oil revenues, the Angolan economy has grown by 16% per year over the last five years, as opposed to just 1.1% growth in the Portuguese economy.
The Angolan boom has resulted in a wider range of professional openings, with notable shortages of qualified workers in the engineering, telecommunications, retailing and banking sectors.
Close to 25,000 Portuguese have moved there over the last three years, and these include small business owners, executives and qualified workers such as bricklayers, electricians and construction foremen. Although they have been marked by the trauma of the colonial period and the fight for independence, the strong linguistic, historic and cultural links that unite the two countries have done much to facilitate the integration of the new wave of Portuguese job seekers.
View from Romania
Long live the brain drain!
“You can tell the country is bankrupt when the head of state in person makes speeches in praise of emigration,” notes Journalul National in response to recent statements by Romanian President Traian Basescu. The national leader spoke of the “courage” of Romanians leaving home, who have the courtesy to contribute to the national economy by sending money home without weighing on the country’s welfare system. Never mind if Romania “loses all its highly qualified graduates and doctors, or if heedlessly abandons its patients!” complains the newspaper. The brain drain does not only concern Romania. Lidové Noviny reports that at a time of rising unemployment all over Europe, headhunters in countries like Germany and the Untied Kingdom are increasingly looking abroad in their quest to recruit engineers, IT specialists, cooks, doctors and candidates for other key jobs.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Crisis Boosts European Military Cooperation
Blocked by national interests, European military cooperation is still at an embryonic stage. However, the economic crisis has encouraged member states to break new ground in their quest to take advantage of synergies and share common resources and defence infrastructure.
Defence budgets will be hard-hit by the wave of austerity sweeping across Europe. Germany is planning to put an end to obligatory military service and to cut military spending by one billion euros over the next four years. France aims to reduce its budget by 3.5 billion by 2013. In the United Kingdom, the government has announced that the cuts will be painful, and experts in the sector expect the budget will be diminished by close to 10%. The same trend prevails everywhere on the continent: defence is perceived as an easy target for cutbacks that are less socially explosive than they would be in other fields.
Now that they are forced to scale down spending, governments in the bigger EU member states are beginning to explore new avenues for cooperation that will optimise resources and preserve the operational capacity of their military forces. In July, the French Minister for Defence, Hervé Morin announced that France and Germany have recently established a working group to study “areas where resource sharing and pooling could be initiated” with a view to “budget reductions and economies of scale.” And Paris and London have also set up another bilateral commission. After years of stalling, it now appears that real progress is on the horizon.
“Reservations about the EU’s role have not suddenly vanished, but I believe that the current situation will lead to definite progress over the next few years,” explains former European Defence Agency director Nick Witney.
Room for manoeuvre away from the front
The main motivation for governments is to avoid spending money on duplicate infrastructure and equipment. Of course, leaders want to retain full control over resources deployed at the front, but there is plenty of scope for rearguard cooperation.
“The consensus is that the closer you get to the front, the more difficult it becomes,” points out Witney. “I’m personally sceptical about multi-state units, however, there are sectors where reinforced cooperation is politically acceptable, for example in research and development, and in defence infrastructure. There is no reason why each country should have its own structures to maintain and repair equipment. The same applies for weapons testing, munitions and explosives evaluation, wind tunnels used for aircraft design and warship testing basins.”
Bi-lateral relations could result in even greater progress. “There is even greater scope for cooperation between the United Kingdom and France,” says Witney. “The right-wing of the ruling Conservative Party remains very sceptical about EU defence policy and prefers to channel everything to NATO. But even they are ready to boost cooperation with France, a country they perceive as willing to share costs and ready to fight.”
Fewer financial resources
Europe may never reach the point where different member states share warplanes, but there is no reason why there should not be pooling on the level of infrastructure — development, maintenance, and training centres — and on the level of transport. “Several studies have shown that cooperation could result in savings,” points out Elisabeth Sköns, Leader of the Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). “Progress has been slowed by the desire to protect the industrial and military technology base in individual countries, and divergent views on defence policy. These problems have yet to be resolved, but today harmonisation within the EU has meant that they are less of an obstacle.”
The budgetary die has been cast, and Europe will have to decide if wants to optimise military resources which are now more limited. In 2009, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain — the five main European powers, whose collective GDP is almost as big as the GDP of the United States — devoted 165 billion euro to military spending: just a third of what was spent by the United States. In the same year, China increased its defence budget by 217%, and India augmented military funding by 67%. In contrast, the average increase in defence spending in the five major European military powers was much lower at only 10%.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark Starts to Trim Its Admired Safety Net
COPENHAGEN — How long is too long to be paid to go without a job?
As extended unemployment swells almost everywhere across the advanced industrial world, that question is turning into a lightning rod for governments.
For years, Denmark was held out as a model to countries with high unemployment and as a progressive touchstone to liberals in the United States. The Danes, despite their lavish social welfare state, managed to keep joblessness remarkably low.
But now Denmark, which allows employers to hire and fire at will while relying on an elaborate system of training, subsidies for those between jobs and aggressive measures to press the unemployed into available openings, is facing its own strains. As a result, it is beginning to tighten up.
Struggling to keep its budget under control after the financial crisis, the government in June cut into its benefits system, the world’s most generous, by limiting unemployment payments to two years instead of four. Having found that recipients either get work right away or take any job as their checks run out, officials are also redoubling longstanding efforts to move Danes more quickly out of the safety net.
“The cold fact is that the longer you are out of a job, the more difficult it is to get a job,” Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the Danish finance minister, said during an interview. “Four years of unemployment is a luxury we can no longer allow ourselves.”…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Standing on a Landmine
US President Barack Obama’s warm endorsement of the plan to build a mosque by the ruins of the World Trade Center tells Israel — and its enemies — everything we need to know about the Pesident of the United States of America.
Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the White House to an audience of people affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US, Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground Zero in constitutional terms.
In his words, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.”
Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque. The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an act of war against the US and an act of terror against the American people…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Did a Minneapolis Janitor Work for Al-Shabab in the Netherlands?
Mahamud Said Omar is a middle-aged former janitor who used to work at a mosque in Minneapolis frequented by Somali expatriates. According to his lawyer, Omar has possible mental-health issues, and held a succession of other fairly menial jobs before joining the mosque.
But U.S. authorities describe Omar as a significant—if not key—figure in a major investigation into the activities of the violent Islamist group Al-Shabab. Justice Department and FBI documents allege that over a two-year period, Omar provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization—specifically Al-Shabab, which is believed to have attracted dozens of American recruits and is alleged by some U.S. officials to have ideological ties to Al Qaeda. U.S. prosecutors allege that not only did Omar provide money and encouragement to young Minneapolis Muslims heading to Somalia to become Shabab fighters, but that he also financed the purchase of AK-47 assault rifles for the militants.
The feds contend that in January 2008, Omar traveled from Minnesota to Somalia and visited a Shabab safe house there, where recruits from Minneapolis were hanging out. That August, prosecutors say, Omar accompanied two would-be Shabab enlistees to Minneapolis airport as they prepared to depart for Somalia. In late October of that year, Shirwa Mohamud Ahmed, a former Minneapolis resident who had stayed at the safe house that Omar allegedly visited in January, carried out one of five simultaneous suicide bombings by driving a booby-trapped Toyota truck into a local intelligence office in the northern Somali region of Puntland.
The feds say Omar left the United States again in late November 2008, flying via Amsterdam to Amman, apparently on his way to Mecca with a group of Muslim pilgrims from Minnesota. But although he had a return ticket to America for Christmas Eve, the feds say he wasn’t on board when FBI agents went to Minneapolis airport to meet his scheduled flight. Witnesses told investigators that Omar had flown back with the group as far as Amsterdam, but that he had not boarded the onward flight to Minneapolis.
Subsequent events raise worries that Al-Shabab may be seeking new recruits or contacts in Europe as well as America. According to Dutch government officials and Bart Stapert, an Amsterdam lawyer who now represents the former janitor, instead of boarding his Amsterdam-Minneapolis flight, Omar went to Dutch authorities and asked for political asylum. Dutch authorities then sent him to a government-supported refugee resettlement facility in Dronten, a new town in the Dutch province of Flevoland, according to Stapert and two Dutch officials who requested anonymity when discussing legal matters. “While in Dronten it is believed he was connected with or working for Al-Shabab,” one of the officials tells Declassified.
Last November, Dutch authorities arrested Omar. After a grand jury in Minneapolis had secretly indicted him in August 2009 on terrorism-related charges, the U.S. government filed a request for his extradition from the Netherlands. Though his case is still being processed—a Dutch court found in favor of his extradition, and Omar’s appeal of that ruling is currently pending before Holland’s Supreme Court—Omar’s activities appear to have provoked concern among Dutch authorities about possible Shabab activities on their soil. According to both a Dutch official and Omar’s lawyer, the Dutch government’s decision to arrest Omar was based at least in part on a report on him from the AIVD, the Netherlands’ small but highly regarded secret intelligence service. Spokespeople for the service have declined to discuss the report’s contents, and Omar’s lawyer says he has not been granted access to the report.
Omar’s lawyer scoffs at the notion that his client could be an important figure in an alleged Somali terror network. According to Stapert, what the Dutch official told Declassified—that Omar was involved in Al-Shabab while in the Dutch refugee center—has not been alleged by Dutch authorities in any official forum; the allegation is new to him, Stapert says. While the lawyer concedes the possibility that Omar may have been in intermittent contact with people involved with Al-Shabab, he says Omar is troubled by “mental issues” that prevented him from holding anything but “menial jobs” since his arrival as an immigrant to the United States. Stapert calls it “preposterous” to suggest that Omar was some kind of terrorist mastermind.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Newt Gingrich Compares ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Organisers to Nazis
“The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy. That’s why they won’t go anywhere else, that’s why they won’t accept any other offer. And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right — and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaking on Fox & Friends, quoted in the Huffington Post, 16 August 2010. Gingrich is billed as a speaker alongside Dutch far-right Islamophobe Geert Wilders at Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s 11 September rally in New York, which gives you an indication of the sort of company the Republican right is keeping these days.
For a useful summary of the origins of the “Ground Zero mosque” hysteria, see Salon.com, 16 August 2010.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Opponents to Meet With Developers on Troubling Issue
NEW YORK (CBS 2) — There was a possible resolution in the works Tuesday night in the debate surrounding the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near ground zero.
CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer has learned it looks as if the developers of the mosque may be willing to budge and move away from the Park 51 location where they originally planned the construction.
So will the mosque be moving?
New York Gov. David Paterson plans to meet with developers of the controversial ground zero mosque as early as this week to offer them state land — at another location — for their cultural and religious center. Paterson told Congressman Peter King about the meeting, and King said the governor asked him to make it public.
“The purpose of the meeting would be for the governor to discuss with the leaders of the mosque where state property is available,” said Rep. King. “Whether or not people from the mosque would be willing to consider that property.”
King added that the governor “seemed very enthused” about the anticipated discussions.
For at least a week, the governor’s message to the developers has been one of hopeful understanding.
“I hope that they type of cultural understanding that they’re trying to promote when they build the center could be practiced right now,” Paterson said.
Sources tell CBS 2’s Kramer that Gov. Paterson is concerned that Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a staunch supporter of putting the mosque at ground zero, and President Barack Obama, might be advising mosque leaders to dig in their heels and insist on the present location.
But there was a glimmer of hope that they are open to a compromise.
A Tuesday tweet from the Park51 Twitter account said:
“For the past week, we have focused on trying to respond to attacks and detractors of our project. What’s become clear is — they won’t listen.”
In the next 140 character post, they added:
“Starting today, we’re going to begin addressing questions regarding park51. We’re open to any sensible discussion.”
Paterson’s office confirmed that discussions between his staff and the developer’s staff have been ongoing and said the governor expects to have a meeting scheduled in the near future.
Congressman King said the openness of the developers to a compromise will be the real test of their intentions.
“If the leaders of the mosque take up the governor on his proposal, it would show that their real intention is to bring people together,” he said. “And not just make a political statement by having a mosque at Ground Zero.”
There’s also the issue of separation of church and state, and whether the governor should provide state land for a mosque.
King said in this case it would be okay, especially if the compromise meets the need of both sides.
As for the debate over the mosque in its current proposed location, religious leaders said Monday they are worried this one building is leading to a nationwide backlash.
It is the question Muslim leaders and those of other faiths are asking.
“How far is too close? If two blocks near the Burlington factory is too close then why in Brooklyn is the mosque being opposed in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn? Is that far enough?” said Mahdi Bray, the executive director of Muslim American Society Freedom.
Officials said the ground zero mosque controversy is just one of many attempts to prevent mosques from being built all over the country, and that it may have emboldened other protestors.
Protests have been held on Staten Island, and California, and Tennessee, Wisconsin, Alabama and Florida.
“The building of mosques and the resistance to buildings of mosques has increased throughout America as well as the destruction and vandalizing of mosque in Florida with a pipe bomb,” Bray said.
Leaders of other faiths joined the Muslins American Society Freedom on Tuesday.
“I know how I would feel if people started saying there were certain places you weren’t allowed to put up a synagogue and therefore I know what should not be done to people who want to put up a cultural center that will include a prayer space,” said Rabbi Aurthus Waskow, the director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
But on Tuesday at ground zero many said they were opposed to putting the mosque so close to where the 9/11 attacks took place; not to mosque construction in other parts of the city.
“It’s the location, yeah, this is holy ground. A lot of people died here,” said Steven Van Cook of Queens.
“My objection is to ground zero. This is a holy place. It should remain as a holy place,” added Steven Goldberg of Bayside.
What about building it in another place in Manhattan?
“No, I wouldn’t mind because you know it’s freedom of speech in the country, but I object to it being here,” Goldberg said.
When asked is he is opposed to the location or the building mosques in New York City, Vito Serzelczyk of Marlton, N.J., said, “Location, location, location. This is a very sensitive area. I was here on Sept. 11. It was a terrible, tragic event and I feel sorry for the families of those people, victims, and this is not really the place to build the new mosque.”
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Putting a Mosque at Ground Zero Insults Victims
by Leo McKinstry
IF YOU had told anyone on the day after 9/11 that a vast mosque would be built at the devastated site within a decade, you would have been greeted with incredulity. It would have seemed like a sick joke, an insult to all those killed by the jihadists acting in the name of Islam. Yet this unthinkable idea is fast becoming a reality. Leading Kuwaiti-American Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has won the backing of New York’s authorities to put up a £50million, 13-storey mosque and Islamiccommunity centre just 200ft from the scene of the world’s worst terrorist attack. Indeed, an undercarriage from one of the hijacked planes actually fell on the very spot of the proposed new Muslim edifice.
Given the sensitivity of the location, the plan has inevitably sparked ferocious opposition,particularly from relatives of 9/11 victims. Opinion polls show that almost 70 per cent of New Yorkers are opposed to the proposal. With equal inevitability US President Barack Obama has chosen to ignore public opinion by lending his support to this project.
Obama and other backers of the Ground Zero mosque have claimed that the central issue is one of religious freedom, claiming that such a basic liberty is enshrined in the American constitution. But this is just a pathetic smokescreen to hide their craven eagerness to appease militant Islam. No one is denying the right of Muslims to worship in New York or anywhere else in America. In fact there are already about 30 mosques in Manhattan alone, hardly an indicator that Islam is suffering from repression — unlike Christianity in the Muslim world..
The crucial issue is why Rauf and his cheerleaders in the White House want to see a mosque erected at this site. After all, there are numerous other plots of land available in New York. The proposal is a deliberate act of provocation against America and Judaeo-Christian civilisation. The reason that the hijackers were determined to destroy theTwin Towers was because they were seen as a graphic symbol of American enterprise. Once the mosque is erected, it will become a symbol of Islamic triumphalism, an assertion of Muslim power over the West.
The Ground Zero mosque has nothing to do with freedom. If Imam Rauf was as moderate as he pretends, he would not dream of proceeding with this offensive scheme. But Rauf is not as pro-West as White House propaganda claims. This is a man who has not only refused to condemn Hamas, the notorious Palestinian terror outfit,but also equivocated over 9/11, shamefully describing the US as “an accessory in the crimes that happened.”
In any case, the experience of Britain suggests that the label of moderate may be an irrelevance. After all, the notorious Finsbury Park mosque in North London was opened in 1990 as a mainstream institution. It even had the backing of the Prince of Wales and the Saudi Royal Family, who contributed £1.3 million to its £8million cost. Yet within just seven years it had been taken over by a bunch of vicious hardliners, led by the one-eyed radical Abu Hamza. The place was turned into a haven for murderous zealots, like the infamous shoe bomber Richard Reid, while the police, the government and moderate Muslims did nothing.
Exactly the same could easily happen with the Ground Zero mosque, especially because its location is likely to act as a honeypot for extremists. Tolerance is a one-way street when it comes to Islam. Muslims constantly demand that our society respects their sensitivities; only last week it was revealed that all meat served in Harrow secondary schools now has to be halal. Yet, as the Ground Zero controversy shows, there is no reciprocal concern shown by Muslims for indigenous cultures.
For all President Obama’s blather about bridge-building, the fact is Islam is an ideology that spells misery, oppression and misogyny wherever it gains power. We hear a lot about the importance of “moderates” likeRauf but it is the Islamists who set the agenda. Over the past 10 years, so-called “moderates” have either colluded or been quiescent. After 9/11, there was not a single demonstration by Muslims anywhere in Britain to protest at the atrocities committed in name of Islam. Yet when a small Danish magazine published a satirical picture of Mohammed, the centre of London was brought to a standstill three weekends in a row by Muslims angry at the “offence” they had suffered.
The Ground Zero mosque is indicative of a climate of appeasement and self-loathingthat has gripped the political class in the West. It is grotesque that, in the name of freedom, our leaders refuse to challenge a doctrine that would destroy our freedoms. Here in Britain, the supine state has allowed domestic terrorism, forced marriages, child sex trafficking, immigration abuses and honour killings to flourish for fear of being labelled “racist”.
In America, the results have been just as deadly, as shown by the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Despite his declared support for Islamic terrorism, US army top brass refused to act against him. Then, in November last year, he shot dead 13 of colleagues. None of those men would have died if the destructive creed of multi-culturalism had not been so strong. Tolerance in the face of extremism is killing our society. The 9/11 attacks should have galvanised the west. Instead, 10 years later, it is looking like our death knell.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorist Tapes Found Under CIA Desk
WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Battle Over the Mosque at Ground Zero
President Obama has managed only to inflame the row engulfing America over plans to erect a mosque close to the scene of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Toby Harnden reports.
August tends to be an inauspicious month for elevated debate in American politics. Last year, everyone was bickering about whether health-care reform would usher in “death panels” that could dispatch Granny to her grave. Now, as Europe holidays, the United States is in a frenzy about the building of a mosque at Ground Zero, principal site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Polls indicate that two-thirds of the country opposes the establishment of a Muslim holy site at the spot where Islamists killed 2,752 people that day in 2001.
Even before President Barack Obama waded into the controversy at the weekend, the issue had degenerated into a parody of one of those cable talk shows where two polemicists on either side of an issue shout at each other for 15 minutes, reinforcing lots of prejudices but changing no minds. What is being proposed, in fact, is not a mosque but an Islamic community centre. It is, moreover, not at Ground Zero but two blocks away. That would put it a little under a quarter of a mile from Ground Zero itself. There is, incidentally, already a mosque just a third of a mile away.
Opponents of the Cordoba House cultural centre like to conjure up the image of minarets rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. But, in reality, the proposal is for a 15-storey building with a mosque inside it, along with an auditorium, swimming pool and other facilities. Among its neighbours will be the Pussycat Lounge strip joint, Thunder Lingerie (featuring a peep show) and numerous pizza parlours, tanning salons, banks and bars.
That said, the sanctimony of many supporters of the project has been breathtaking. New York’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has been among the most prominent figures to suggest that the protesters are guilty of bigotry and religious intolerance. Certainly, there are prejudiced voices opposing the plan, which was given the go-ahead by a nine-to-zero vote of New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission a fortnight ago. Hamas has, predictably, spoken out in favour. Does that mean all those who support the scheme favour suicide bombing?
Mr Obama’s intervention was as ham-fisted as it was harmful to the prospects of common sense and goodwill prevailing. It is always impressive to witness a politician take a principled stand in the face of public opinion and damn the consequences, and that is what it seemed Mr Obama had done at Friday night’s traditional White House dinner to mark the breaking of the fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country,” he said. “That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”
The man who was elected largely on the basis of his awe-inspiring skill with the spoken word can surely have been in no doubt about how his utterances, in a prepared speech, would be interpreted. Cutting to the chase, as usual, the New York tabloids called it as they saw it. “Allah Right By Me”, proclaimed the New York Post while the New York Daily News went with “Prez: Build the Mosque”. But wait. The very next day, Mr Obama was backtracking, stating that he was only defending the legal rights of the Cordoba project. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have, which dates back to our founding.”
So Mr Obama had merely been playing the constitutional law professor, lecturing the nation about religious freedom. And what did he think about whether the mosque should be built in that particular spot? Having given a speech that was interpreted by friend, foe and undecided alike as being in favour, he was now insisting that he had taken no stance. Democrats working frantically to maintain their party’s majorities in the November mid-term elections are understandably tearing their hair out. Initially, the White House had said it was staying out of what was a “local” matter — a sensible position to take when Republicans such as Sarah Palin were trying to stoke it for personal political gain. Then, Mr Obama weighed in, apparently on the unpopular side of the debate — a problem for centrist Democrats seeking to win seats in conservative districts. Next, he claimed not to have taken a side at all, thus losing credit from those who admired what they thought was a principled stance.
What was most damaging, however, was that Mr Obama was not addressing the nub of the issue at all. He was, in fact, doing what Mayor Bloomberg has done — branding all opponents of the proposed centre as un-American. Bizarrely, he also described the project as “a mosque” at Ground Zero, playing into the dumbed-down caricature of what was being proposed. Few opponents of the centre have said that those who want to build it have no right to do so. What they have been saying is that they should not exercise that right because it would be insensitive to New Yorkers and to relatives of the 9/11 victims to do so. They cite, in their support, Pope John Paul II’s decision in 1993 to order Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had founded in the early 1980s near the Auschwitz camp, which many Jews saw as an affront to their sensibilities.
The victims of 9/11 were not all Christians — some 60 Muslims died that day — or all Americans. They came from more than 90 nations and were of many faiths. But there is no denying that the attacks were carried out in the name of Islam, albeit a perverted version of it. Given that fact, it is curious that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Cordoba project, should want to build a centre so close to Ground Zero. It is even more remarkable that he should insist on proceeding with it despite the furore that has developed.
If a Japanese-American had proposed building a Japanese cultural centre 400 yards from Pearl Harbor in 1950, he probably would have faced some opposition. He could genuinely have seen his centre as a bridge towards cultural understanding. But the outcry, surely, would have persuaded him that the opposite would be the case. Thus, there is justifiable suspicion about the motives of Rauf, an apparently moderate Muslim who has written books such as What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America and promoted the idea of a modern Islamic faith that is not at odds with Western society. He has stated that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” because “we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world… in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA”. Even more pertinently, he has failed to take up an offer from Governor David Paterson of New York, a Democrat, to provide city land further away from Ground Zero so the centre could be built there. In making his proposal, Paterson made clear he did not oppose Rauf’s right to build a centre where he wanted.
Such a compromise would seem to be an ideal way out of the mess this issue has become. But with Mr Obama’s unhelpful intervention, the battle lines are more firmly drawn than ever. Now, it’s sunk to the lowest common denominator of Redneck versus Terrorist, Muslim versus Christian, Obama versus Palin. There is every indication that this could stretch well beyond the summer silly season and become a national election issue in November — a depressing prospect indeed.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
US Breast Cancer Drug Decision ‘Marks Start of Death Panels’
America’s health watchdog is considering revoking its approval of the drug Avastin for use on women with advanced breast cancer, leading to accusations that it will mark the start of ‘death panel’ drug rationing.
A decision to rescind endorsement of the drug would reignite the highly charged debate over US health care reform and how much the state should spend on new and expensive treatments.
Avastin, the world’s best selling cancer drug, is primarily used to treat colon cancer and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008 for use on women with breast cancer that has spread.
It costs $8,000 (£5,000) a month and is given to about 17,500 women in the US a year. The drug was initially approved after a study found that, by preventing blood flow to tumours, it extended the amount of time until the disease worsened by more than five months. However, two new studies have shown that the drug may not even extend life by an extra month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
EU’s Backdoor Thrown Open
Millions of Turks, Serbs, Moldovans, Ukrainians and Macedonians could soon be European citizens, thanks to some fancy footwork by new member states
Already dealing with growing unease over immigration, and with publics haunted by the spectre of “invasion”, the European Union could have done without three of its newest members effectively opening a backdoor on fortress Europe. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have to some extent infringed the terms of their mission to secure the EU’s eastern borders by allowing up to five million Moldovans, Macedonians, Serbs, Ukrainians and Turks to avail of procedures to obtain European passports.
History and the perceived injustices of the past have provided them with a means to circumvent immigration barriers. While Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian political leaders are hoping to reap the benefits of being perceived as the bearers of this unexpected gift, officials in the capitals of Old Europe are none too happy.
A new Hungarian law on dual nationality, which could concern up to 3.5 million people, will offer the keys to the European labour market to 300,000 Serbs of Hungarian origin in the autonomous province of Vojvodina and to 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in the Ukraine when it comes into force in January. It has also ratcheted up tensions between Hungary and two other EU states: 1.4 million Magyars live in Romania, and there are 520,000 Hungarians in Slovakia (10 % of the population). Slovak authorities were particularly offended by the plan.
The bill proposed by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban and supported by the extreme-right in the Budapest parliament, can be interpreted as a revenge or a provocation. Hungary has never really recovered from the trauma of the Trianon Treaty, which cut away two thirds of the country’s territory and effectively exiled half of its population in June 1920. By way of reprisal, the parliament in Bratislava adopted a law stipulating that anyone who availed of the offer of Hungarian nationality would automatically lose their Slovak passport.
Blood ties
A little more prudent in their response, the Romanian government was eager to downplay the measure: first and foremost because a section of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania has on occasion publicly demanded the re-establishment of an autonomous Szekler Land, and also because Bucharest could hardly complain in view of the fact that it has also implemented very similar legislation.
In April 2009, Traian Basescu simplified procedures for the granting citizenship to Moldovans of Romanian origin. “We are obliged to respect the blood ties that bind us together, and to offer our support,” announced the Romanian president. Moldova has had a troubled history since it was created by Stalin from territory detached from the Ukraine and the province of Bessarabia, which was part of Romania from 1918 to 1940 and from 1941 to 1944. Two-thirds of the Moldovan population are Romanian speakers while the other third speak Russian. With a population of roughly four million, it is a small and extremely poor country. A third of its citizens of working age have been forced find jobs abroad, where more often than not they are employed illegally.
It is for this reason that the “open-sesame” to the EU could have the unwanted effect of encouraging the break-up of a fragile state that is already in the throes of an identity crisis, casting doubts about its viability. Approximately 120,000 Moldovans have a Romanian passport, 800,000 more have applied to obtain one, and all of the indications are that these figures are set to increase. With funding from the EU, Bucharest has opened two new consulates in the towns of Balti and Cahul.
Bulgarian refugees in Turkey
Following Hungary’s example, Bulgaria has simplified procedures for the granting of Bulgarian nationality to approximately 2.5 millions Bulgarians living in areas scattered across the Ukraine, Moldova, Albania and Greece and in particular in Macedonia and Turkey. On this basis, roughly 1.4 million Macedonians (or three-quarters of the Macedonian population) will now be able to obtain European passports. For certain historians, Macedonians are a subgroup of the Bulgarian nation, and the Macedonian language is simply a dialect of Bulgarian.
Sofia is also concerned about the fate of Bulgarian Turks and Pomaks (Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman period). Before the fall of communism, this minority, which includes an estimated 900,000 people, was the victim of a policy of forced assimilation and discrimination that continued right up to the fall of communism. The 350,000 Turks and Pomaks who fled to Turkey to escape this oppression will now not have to wait for the completion of accession negotiations with Ankara before they apply to obtain EU passports.
Latin America
You too could be Spanish
It is easy to become Spanish, explains Le Figaro. Nearly 120,000 applications for Spanish nationality have already been granted this year, the vast majority from South Americans, mostly Cubans and Argentinians. Most apply through a law on “historical memory” passed in 2007, which gives descendents of those who were forced to flee Spain during the civil war and the time of Franco to reclaim their nationality. Bowled over by the success of the law, Madrid has extend the period families can apply for citizenship until the end of 2011, by which time it could have created as many as 500,000 new Spaniards.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
For the Free Movement of Gods
Confronted by a multiplicity of religions and their symbols, most states choose to forbid them. But in doing so, they are heading toward an impasse, claims Die Zeit while pleading for tolerance and pluralism.
Armenia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta, Russia, San Marino and Cyprus are to appear before the European court of human rights. The issue in question concerns whether crucifixes should be forbidden in Italian classrooms, as they allegedly constitute a violation of each state’s legally-mandated neutral impartiality. The countries that feel directly implicated in the issue have joined the defendant, Italy, and are represented by the eminent European jurist Joseph Weiler, himself a practicing Jew.
Here is a case in point of how rich and paradoxical Europe’s ideological landscape has become. Religions not only compete with each other, they sometimes join to form alliances: a Jew shows support for a symbol of the Christian faith, and Orthodox Bulgarians come out in favour of Italian Catholics. Globalisation and open borders have brought out a number of conflicts where different faiths meet. The most interminable of these conflicts throughout Europe centres on the question of Muslim identity, continually harped upon by Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders, who dramatically exposes the latest ideological fissures. But at least one valid question is hidden behind this rhetoric: What should be the relation between religion and the state in 21st-century Europe?
Religious illiteracy
It is evident that the debate on Islam is not just about religion. Anti-Muslim feeling has become the most noticeable form of xenophobia in modern Europe, a form of racism that is apparently acceptable, perhaps even enlightened, because it is opposed to fanaticism and “Medieval obfuscation”.
Still, at the heart of this confrontation lies religion. And Europeans of 2010 are ill prepared to respond to the challenge of religion. Europe is the world’s least religious region, a zone tempered by secularism on a planet that otherwise is burning in pious fervour. Christianity, historically the dominant religion in Europe, now finds itself in the place of the outsider. Examples of its rejection are omnipresent, from the example of British Airways, who fired a flight attendant because she refused to take off a cross, to the (aborted) constitution of the EU, where God had no chance of being mentioned. We could also speak of religious illiteracy, the incapacity to recognise religious faith as a legitimate force in present-day life. It is through this view of reality that we can understand the fear that Islam provokes throughout Europe — a double fear, because it is a religion of foreign origin with a level of intensity that is no longer seen on the continent.
Of all the possible arrangements with heaven, a political orientation hostile to religion suddenly seems to be the best candidate, for example secularism as it is practiced in France. The Muslim veil can then be forbidden in good conscience, because the crucifix must also disappear. The law is the same for all, or to put it succinctly: uniform suspicion, uniform control, uniform repression.
Churches and state in partnership
However, neither is this the “one true way”. Europe’s goal is not to eliminate all sign of religion, but rather of the multiplicity of religions. Just as in economics and technology, the West doesn’t have a monopoly on political ideology. It cannot simply impose its authority on the rest of humanity, declaring that God is dead, or at least very old, and consequently should be excluded from earthly affairs.
Even in Old Europe, secularism has certainly not been the only state philosophy. Germany has had a longstanding partnership with the Church, and the enlightened indifference of the British with respect to questions of one’s faith (The police officer who is a member of the Sikh religious community wears a turban? So what?) is somewhat ironic in view of the fact that the state church has a queen at its head. And in Italy, religious affairs are still conducted in the shadow of Vatican influence, whose effect is that of cultural placidity: the veil would hardly be shocking to anyone used to seeing religious vestments and nuns in their habits.
Religion as resistance
These models contain resources for religious tolerance that Europe needs for a pluralist religious future. Veiled Muslim women who are denied access to public schools find refuge in private Catholic schools, where wearing clothing related to beliefs poses no problem. It is an alternative to secularism, an example of different faiths uniting against religious hostility. It is also the end of this idea of the Christian Occident to which certain conservatives have been so dearly hanging onto.
The fact that the majority of the Turkish population is Muslim is not a justification for rejecting its EU candidacy. But having a state ideology or a religious monoculture would be. A country in which it would be impossible to construct a church without running into difficulties would be in violation of European tradition. The same is true for the construction of minarets.
It’s true, religion is dangerous. In its name so much blood has been spilled. But it can also be a force of resistance against vague attempts at domination and the will to conform to the state or to society. In Muslim countries, the call to Islam is a means of calling for justice against dictatorial regimes like that in Egypt. An intelligent political policy takes into account the fact that believers represent a beneficial challenge, an argument in favour of the presence of religion in public places. Each cross atop a church in European cities is there to remind us that the way in which we live is not the only possible reality. This is equally true for the crescent on a mosque.
Proposal
Make Eid a public holiday for all
As Muslims embark on this year’s Ramadan, two Turkish-Flemish intellectuals, Selahattin and Bahattin Koçak advocate establishing a public holiday at Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of fasting. In a proposal published in De Morgen they argue that “the best solution would be if this celebration became a holiday for everyone, because acceptance of other cultures depends on their integration.” Consider the implications of growing up in a culture that does not feature on the national calendar: “our sense of equality is undermined, because on a symbolic level the celebration of Ramadan is similar to the celebration of Christmas. When we were children, we thought Santa Claus must be racist because he had presents for our neighbour Frankie [a typical Flemish first name], but never anything for us. By the same token, acceptance of Islam cannot solely depend on the good will of neighbours and employers,” who tolerate the fast “as long as it does not undermine productivity.” What is needed is a greater acknowledgement: “We must move on from the stage where we were simply becoming acquainted with each others’ religions and cultures. Today, the integration of Islam in mainstream society is a challenge that will enable us to make progress together.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France: Thousands Evacuated in Lourdes Hoax Bomb Scare
A bomb threat forced the temporary evacuation of the Roman Catholic sanctuaries in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes on Sunday, as 30,000 worshippers celebrated the Assumption.
The regional prefect, a state representative and police chief, Rene Bidal told AFP that bomb squad officers had finished a search of the site’s various shrines and found no sign of explosives following the apparent hoax.
The site will reopen in time for the closing of the annual ceremonies, allowing thousands of pilgrims from around the world to return to the grotto where a 19th century serving girl believed she saw the Virgin Mary.
Earlier, bomb disposal teams and sniffer dogs had scoured the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, the Basilica of the Rosary, the site’s offices and hospitals and the underground cave church of Saint Pius X.
“A bomb warning was received at the police station, announcing that four bombs were going to go off at around 3.00pm in the sanctuaries,” the site’s press officer Pierre Adias told AFP just before 2.00pm (1200 GMT).
Appeals to worshippers were broadcast in six languages on loudspeakers, and the shrine complex was calmly evacuated without incident. Worshippers were allowed back less than three hours later.
Some sang hymns as they waited nearby for the shrine to reopen.
“The start of the 15 August procession, which is a key moment of the pilgrimage, has been maintained for 4.30pm, so as to disturb the cultural event as little as possible,” Bidal said.
“The call came in around noon from a telephone box from a man with a strong Mediterranean accent who seemed quite determined. We had to take the threat seriously,” he added.
On August 15, Catholics celebrate the Virgin Mary’s ascent to heaven, and Lourdes — a southern French town where the faithful believe the Virgin Mary appeared in visions 152 years ago — is a popular site to mark the event.
Lourdes has been one of the most important centres of Catholic pilgrimage in Europe since 1858, and the small community of only 16,000 permanent residents now hosts around six million visitors per year.
The town owes its fame to Bernadette Soubirous, who in 1858 was an impoverished 14-year-old serving girl when she had the first of what the Church now recognises as 18 visions of the Virgin Mary.
A freshwater spring was found in a cave at the site of the visions and now serves as a source of water for pools in which sick pilgrims hope to find cures for various worldly ailments.
Bernadette was canonised as a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1933.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Ramadan Evenings
Ramadan 2010 has begun. The front page of the largest newspaper in the city where I live had the headline with a photo of Muslims at prayer. I would imagine that papers all over America announced the event, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Ramadan will end on September 10. The City of Paris will be celebrating the Islamization of Europe during the final week of Ramadan. The following article is posted at Islamisation, via Novopress:
In early September, the Institute of Cultures of Islam (ICI) will celebrate the Islamization of Europe. At 19 rue Léon, in the heart of la Goutte d’Or, the Parisian neighborhood that aroused the collective French consciousness last June 18 when it became the symbol of Muslim imperialism…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamist Cell Threatens Spanish Hostages
A radical cell of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) which has executed two Western hostages, is threatening the lives of two Spaniards held by another branch, sources told AFP Saturday.
The leader of the cell, Algerian Abdelhamid Abu Zeid “is currently doing everything possible to endanger the lives of the two Spanish hostages,” a Malian official involved in negotiating the release of hostages told AFP.
Albert Vilalta, 35, and 50-year-old Roque Pascual were kidnapped in Mauritania eight months ago and were taken to Mali where they are being held by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, alias Belawar. A Spanish woman kidnapped with them, Alicia Gamez, was released in March.
However Abu Zeid is putting pressure on Belmokhtar to refuse to release of the two Spaniards, the official said.
Belmokhtar’s motives for kidnapping are mainly financial, according to AQIM experts, and some think he may be using pressure from Abu Zeid as a negotiating tactic.
“But we must take the threat seriously,” said the official. “Their situation could quickly worsen.”
Abu Zeid’s has taken a hard-line since seven militants were killed in a joint Franco-Mauritanian military raid on July 22 on his AQIM who were holding a Frenchman hostage.
Three days later the militants announced they had killed the hostage, Michel Germaneau, 78.
Abu Zeid’s cell also executed Briton Edwyn Dyer 14 months ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rome’s Mayor Eyes ‘Tax’ On Demonstrations
Rome, 16 August (AKI) — Rome’s conservative mayor Gianni Alemanno is eyeing the introduction of a charge for major protests organised in the capital, a move opposed by the centre-left opposition.
“We’re thinking of a kind of tax on demonstrations. We can’t be the only ones to foot the bill for these — the organisers have to pay something too,” Alemanno told Italian TV programme Cortina Incontra.
City council waste disposal and street cleaning services were need to clear up after rallies and demonstrations, Alemanno said.
“While it is a democratic right to hold protests, I believe it’s right that organisers of such protests should have to pay something.”
But opposition centre-left city councillors reacted angrily to post-fascist Alemanno’s plans.
“Alemanno’s imagination knows no bounds. Today he’s proposing a tax on demonstrations. We expect this will soon be followed by a charge on sit-ins or other forms of assembly,” said the Democratic Party’s chip whip in the city council assembly, Umberto Marroni.
Demonstrations in Rome frequently paralyse the city, which has a tiny subway system and chronic traffic congestion.
Comments posted to Cortina Incontra’s Facebook page suggested Alemanno’s move would not be unwelcome by some. “I like this idea,” wrote one user.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Police Discover 20 Large-Scale Cannabis Factories in Britain Every Day — So Are We Now a Drugs Exporter?
Criminal gangs are now producing so much cannabis in Britain’s suburban streets that there is a ‘market for export’.
Police say the gangs have taken over cinemas, houses, pubs, banks and shops left empty because of the recession.
Almost 7,000 cannabis factories were discovered last year — more than double the number found two years ago.
Incredibly, a report by chief constables says the gangs are growing so much cannabis that — for the first time — there is enough to start selling the drug overseas.
Previously, the UK relied on smuggled supplies of the illegal drug, from countries such as Holland and Morocco, because homegrown crops did not meet demand.
The study, by the Association of Chief Police Officers, offers a disturbing insight into how cannabis farms have sprung up across the UK.
Criminals are employing children to grow the drug with powerful heat lamps, and also to break into farms run by rival gangs They are often run by immigrant gangs from the Far East, though there is evidence they are now joining forces with home-grown criminals.
They are employing children to grow the drug with powerful heat lamps, and also to break into farms run by rival gangs.
The properties are being booby-trapped — with window frames wired to the electricity mains.
There are now almost 20 commercial cannabis factories being found by police every day, taking the total for 2009/10 to 6,886 — more than double the 3,032 discovered two years ago.
It is more than eight times the annual average between 2004 and 2007.
More than 1.3million plants worth an estimated £150million were recovered in the past two years.
Last year alone, police seized almost 750,000 plants with an estimated yield of £85million, compared with more than 500,000 plants worth £65million the year before.
‘There is now a market for exportation,’ the police chiefs warn, though they are yet to gather intelligence that this is happening.
More than 1.3million plants worth an estimated £150million were recovered in the last two years The highest number of factories — 896 — were found in the West Yorkshire force area.
The largest factory found was in an industrial unit in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, where more than 7,600 plants were recovered with an estimated yield of £2.5million, the report said.
It added that privately-owned houses, often in suburban streets, remain the ‘property of choice for large-scale cannabis cultivation’.
Acpo also found the premises used for cannabis cultivation were becoming more varied and included disused industrial buildings, former pubs, cinemas, nightclubs, hotels, print works and even banks.
The report, called the UK National Problem Profile: Commercial Cultivation of Cannabis, also found that criminals involved in the cannabis farms were involved in crimes such as counterfeiting currency and DVDs, money laundering, immigration crime, firearms, blackmail, prostitution, theft and people trafficking.
Reports of factories being ‘taxed’ by other criminals have led to criminals arming themselves with machetes and sawn-off shotguns.
Booby traps found at factories include electrifed window frames and doorknobs, a home-made device designed to detonate a shotgun cartridge, and an external side gate wired directly to the mains.
Running a cannabis farm would lead to the criminal charge of producing a Class B drug — punishable with up to 14 years in jail.
Many of the factories are found after tip-offs from neighbours who notice blacked-out windows, hot walls, condensation or ‘strange aromas’.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Roma: Where Are the Millions in European Aid Going?
In light of the absence of progress on the issue of Roma integration, host countries and the countries of origin are continuing to bounce accusations and blame back and forth. Brussels, meanwhile, is exasperated by the fact that the projects it is financing are either advancing too slowly, or not at all.
Demanded by France, Italy and Sweden — and supported by the Belgian presidency of the European Union — the debate on the integration of the Roma in Europe seems to be going nowhere, from Brussels’ perspective. A number of weeks ago, Pierre Lellouche, French Secretary of state for European affairs, had requested an “urgent” debate on “a real problem whose time has come a real solution”.
Evoking the problems of juvenile delinquency as well as the networks of prostitution and the traffic of minors facing France, Mr Lellouche has sharply criticised the influx of “people who don’t want to integrate into society”, the lack of responsibility on the part of the Roma’s (9 million of whom hold European passports) countries of origin, and even the relative inaction on the part of the Commission in Brussels which, says the Secretary of state, is spending far too much money on integration strategies. Sweden then added its own critiques, demanding an “obligatory plan of action” that would address “an alarming situation”.
Romania is the primary target
These governments are targeting certain of the Roma’s countries of origin, accusing them of shirking their responsibilities. In addition to Bulgaria (with an estimated 750,000 Roma) and Slovakia (500,000), it is Romania — with an official population of 537,000 Roma, but a more realistic count of 2 million — that remains the primary target. And Romania has since promised action. While a Secretary of state for repatriated Roma has been named, Bucharest has at the same time protested against the destruction of encampments in France, also complaining about the “public blame” that it has had to endure.
The fact that Bucharest is so slow in using the European funds earmarked for aid to the Roma is also quite irritating for other member states. Six programs totalling 9.3 million euros are administered by the National Agency for the Roma, but results are hardly visible. And because of delays, certain projects may find their funding frozen. “The Commission has recommended that we terminate those programs that are not advancing, so as to not tie up the allocated funds”, declares Anca Zevedei, director of the Authority for the management of human resources in the Romanian Labour ministry. “The Commission wants to help the Roma and other underprivileged groups, but just look at what is (not) happening with the projects administered by the National Agency for the Roma…” The miserable fate of this population almost invariably seems to make emigration a more palatable solution.
The associations of Roma criticise Romanian authorities as much as they do the French. “Romania has not done its job”, observes Ciprian Necula, who oversees the project known as “ the House of the Roma”. “The State has allowed networks of human traffic and prostitution to thrive, and has simply created a few programs on paper (addressing these issues) designed to please the Europeans”.
“Waste” and “non-utilisation”
The situation on the ground confirms the pessimistic diagnostic regarding the waste, and even the non-utilisation of the European funds earmarked for the problem. The fact is that Romania is finding it difficult to spend the 32 billion euros of non-reimbursable funding that the Commission has reserved for the situation, funds which require proper requests and justifications for their release.
As the official arbiter of the debate on the Roma, the Commission can hardly hide its malaise. Invited by France and other countries to “act”, the Commission maintains that it has created multiple initiatives that focus on integration issues as well as those dealing with non-discrimination. But “integration will only be effective with coordinated action on the part of the member states, on the national, regional and local levels”, emphasizes the European official.
Some 13.3 billion euros will have been spent between 2007 and 2013, via the European social fund, for the integration of the Roma and other groups identified as “vulnerable”. In Romania and Hungary, half of the aid received goes to the Roma. Money is also distributed to various countries through the Fund for rural development, and since May, member states can make use of the European fund for regional development in order to aid minorities, including the Roma, to more easily obtain housing. Other infrastructure funds allow for the co-financing of projects for pre-schoolers, education and employment. The European Parliament has also allocated 5 million euros for a pilot integration project based on micro-financing and education.
“It’s not money that’s lacking, just the right way to make use of it”, sighs an official. As a final recourse, Brussels has now commissioned studies to identify the most successful integration programs, projects and political strategies.
Western Europe
Governments lead the hunt for The success of festivals dedicated to Gypsy music, such as initiatives to raise awareness of Roma culture, attest to the fascination of Europeans for the Gypsy world. Yet, in several western European countries, repressive measures against them are increasing, says the Polish magazine Przekrój.
In late July, French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke of “problems posed by the behavior of some Roma and Travellers”, and advocated the expulsion of those who are strangers, while his minister of the interior launched the dismantling of nearly half a thousand illegal settlements throughout the country. In April, Germany began the removal of 12,000 Roma in Kosovo, while Denmark expelled 400 others who “violated the public sense of security” of their neighbors. In early July, the Flemish government transferred several Roma camps close to Wallonia, not to mention the measures taken in Italy since 2008 to monitor the “Roma people”. For its part, the Swedish government wants to punish begging in groups by expulsion and banishment for three years, while asking the European Commission to take a position regarding the alarming situation of Roma in Europe.
On 29 July, Brussels responded that in relation to evictions of Roma member states are sovereign. This ia a way for the EU to ignore the problem, accused Amnesty International, saying some countries have “systematically anti-Roma policies. On August 12 last, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has singled out France for the “resurgence of racism” and its policy towards the Roma.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Slovakia: No Round for Greece
“The Slovak revolt,” sums up Lidové Noviny, after parliament’s refusal to endorse the participation of Slovakia (valued at €816 million) in a loan of 110 billion negotiated by the EU and the IMF with the aim of helping Greece clear of its debts. Described as “the punk of Europe” by the Financial Times Deutschland, Slovakia is the only EU countries to have backed down and, with the outgoing government, it approved the agreement. But Lidové Noviny notes public opinion in Slovakia is rather on the side of the new government elect: “The basic requirements for solidarity do not exist,” wrote the Prague daily, not seeing why “a country where average monthly wage income is 308 euros should lend money to another country where the minimum wage is 863 euros a month.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Some in Merkel’s Party Want to Talk With the Taliban
General David Petraeus made a plea for patience on Sunday and said that the roots of progress have been established in Afghanistan. But with public support of the war down across NATO, some politicians, including those from German Chancellor Merkel’s own party, want to negotiate with the Taliban.
It has not been a good couple of months in Afghanistan. July was the deadliest month for US troops there since the campaign started almost nine years ago, with 66 soldiers losing their lives. Furthermore, the website icasualties.org reported over the weekend that 2,000 coalition troops have now died in Afghanistan. And the violence is getting worse. Whereas 521 soldiers were killed in 2009, making it the deadliest year since the beginning of the war, 434 have already been killed in 2010.
And still, there is no real end in sight. In an interview with NBC television aired on Sunday, the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus asked for patience and said that there were “areas of progress” that now had to be linked together and extended.
He also hinted that US President Barack Obama’s July 2011 target for beginning to withdraw troops from the war-torn country might be premature. “I think the president has been quite clear in explaining that it’s a process, not an event, and that it’s conditions-based,” Petraeus said of the possible drawdown.
It’s not clear, however, whether his request for patience will be honored. Public support for the war is dropping in the US and is extremely low in several NATO countries, including Germany. Indeed, some politicians in Germany have told SPIEGEL that they would be interested in negotiations with the Taliban — even with such notorious extremists as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — as a way to put an end to the violence.
Renunciation of Violence
“In order to guarantee stability in Afghanistan, we also have to take into account the development that some people have undergone,” said Philipp Missfelder, the foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, in reference to Hekmatyar. He added that “radical Islamists like Hekmatyar or Taliban leader Mullah Omar could only be considered as negotiating partners if they were to meet conditions such as a renunciation of violence or the respect of women’s rights.”
Others in Berlin have also shown an interest in negotiation with those, like Hekmatyar, who are behind the Taliban-led insurgency. Kerstin Müller, a foreign policy expert with the Green Party, has likewise shown sympathy for a power-sharing arrangement between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has not staked out a position publicly, but has said internally that there is no alternative to some sort of cooperation.
Still, it remains unclear what cooperation with a fighter like Hekmatyar might look like. He stands accused of having carried out several terrorist attacks, including a bloody assassination attempt on Karzai in 2002 which killed several bystanders. He is considered one of the primary leaders of the insurgency and, as a university student, is thought to have thrown acid on female students who refused to wear the veil.
Rainer Stinner, a foreign policy expert with the Free Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner, is skeptical of a partnership with Hekmatyar. “I have a hard time imagining that Hekmatyar will swear off violence,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trauma Can Cause Diseases That Mimic Lou Gehrig’s, Researchers Say
A peer-reviewed paper to be published Wednesday in a leading journal of neuropathology suggests that Lou Gehrig’s demise — and that of some other athletes and soldiers given a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — might have been catalyzed by injuries only now becoming understood: concussions and other brain trauma.
Although the paper does not discuss the Yankees slugger specifically, its authors in interviews acknowledged the clear implication: Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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UK: Daughter of Benefits Scrounger With Tenth Child on the Way Brands Her Own Father ‘Lazy and Useless’
A benefits claimant who has fathered ten children and receives more than £30,000 a year in state handouts has been branded as lazy and ‘nothing more than a sperm donor’ by his own daughter.
Jobless Gary Bateman, 46, and his partner Joanne Sheppard, who is pregnant with her 12th child, have been moved into a free five-bedroom house in which to raise their brood.
The £1,200-a-month rent on their Bristol home is covered by the taxpayer.
Mr Bateman’s daughter Jessica, 18, who is from a previous relationship, said she was ashamed of her ‘useless’ father.
She said he walked out on her family when she was five years old.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: More Than Half of Britain’s Wind Farms Have Been Built Where There is Not Enough Wind
It’s not exactly rocket science — when building a wind farm, look for a site that is, well, quite windy.
But more than half of Britain’s wind farms are operating at less than 25 per cent capacity.
In England, the figure rises to 70 per cent of onshore developments, research shows.
Experts say that over-generous subsidies mean hundreds of turbines are going up on sites that are simply not breezy enough.
Britain’s most feeble wind farm is in Blyth Harbour in Northumberland, where the nine turbines lining the East Pier reach a meagre 4.9 per cent of their capacity.
Another at Chelker reservoir in North Yorkshire operates at only 5.3 per cent of its potential, the analysis of 2009 figures provided by energy regulator Ofgem found. Enlarge wind-farm.jpg
The ten turbines at Burton Wold in Northamptonshire have been running for just three years, but achieved only 19 per cent capacity.
Europe’s biggest wind farm, Whitelee, near Glasgow, boasts 140 turbines. But last year they ran at less than a quarter of their capacity.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Pensioner, 83, Facing Eviction From His Home to Make Room for Families Needing Council Housing
An 83-year-old pensioner who has lived in the same council house for 74 years is being evicted after the death of his sister left him living alone.
Edward Meakins fears moving out of his life-long home will kill him but Barnet Council wants to use the three-bedroom property for one of the rising number of families needing large council homes.
He moved into the house in Cricklewood, north-west London, with his parents and four siblings in 1936 but is now the only resident after his sister Margaret died in May.
Following her death, he signed a temporary contract taking on the rights and responsibilities of the former tenant, but has since been told this will run out in six months.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Warburg Should be Saved, Not Strangled
London University seems bent on betraying the terms on which it set up a great cultural institution
In December 1933, two small steamers sailed from Hamburg, paid for by the textile magnate and collector, Samuel Courtauld, and the politically influential Lord Lee of Fareham.
They were loaded with the 80,000 books of one of the most extraordinary libraries created in modern times — by Aby Warburg, the scholar member of the Jewish banking family.
He had developed a revolutionary way of looking at philosophy, science and art that excluded nothing: neither astrology nor alchemy, neither fortune-telling nor magic, nor any of the aspects of the past that modernity had relegated to the bin of intellectual dead-ends. The motto over the library was simply “Mnemosyne” — Memory. This library was to become the Warburg Institute.
To understand the special nature of the Warburg, you have to know that the library, where readers can roam around the bookstacks, is at the heart of its approach to ideas, to Geisteswissenschaft. The books are arranged according to Aby Warburg’s idea of “good neighbourliness”. Related books are on shelves near each other to avoid rigid and narrow ways of thinking about the past. Thus, secret codes are near emblem books, books on heraldry, the art of memory and shorthand. It is internationally famous among the many scholars who use it today, not only for the breadth of thinking it encourages, but also for facilitating research. One eminent Italian said: “Here I can get done in one week what takes me a month elsewhere.”
The Jewish scholars who came over with the books, and those who congregated around the library after its arrival in Britain, were to be among the 20th century’s most influential art historians: Fritz Saxl and Ernst Panofsky, Rudolph Wittkower, Ernst Gombrich, Frances Yates and Michael Baxandall. The Warburg Institute was made official in 1944. It was scarcely a wealthy moment in British history, yet the University of London, recognising “the world-wide reputation in its special field of culture and research which the Warburg Library has already established”, signed a trust deed by which it accepted the gift of the books by the Warburg family, and agreed to maintain and preserve it, provide it with a building and keep it adequately equipped and staffed.
So why is the university now trying to change the terms of this deed (in ways as yet undeclared) and imposing conditions on the Warburg that place its survival as an independent institution at risk? In 2007, it raised the space charge it imposes by £500,000 to £650,000, which eats up half the Institute’s annual £1.3m grant so that, to keep within its budget, it now runs at a deficit of over half-a-million. The reason for this, says the university, is that the Warburg is an open access library, which means that it incurs a charge eight times higher than that for restricted access institutions.
But this reveals that the university has utterly failed to understand the special nature of the Warburg. Against the explicit wishes of its director, Charles Hope, the university has “converged” the administration of the famous library into London Research Library Services, which will be appointing the next librarian, who will no longer be a scholar-librarian — again, indispensable to the nature of the library.
These are straitened times for everyone, but such moves smack more than anything else of the need London University feels to centralise and manage the small number of research institutes that still remain under its control. Instead, it should stop penalising the Warburg, respect its obligations under the trust deed, and help it launch a fundraising campaign. It has a great treasure under its roof, and scholars around the world — not to mention the Warburg family — are watching.
Anna Somers Cocks is the editor of ‘The Art Newspaper’
[JP note: The Warburg is probably too Jewish and therefore an embarrassment for the University of London.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Universities Woo Foreign Students But Close Door on Britons in ‘Two-Tier’ Clearing System
Sixth-formers face a ‘two-tier’ clearing system as elite universities shut their doors to competent British applicants while continuing to recruit overseas students paying up to £20,000 a year.
Prestigious institutions including Edinburgh, Nottingham, Liverpool, Cardiff, York and Exeter are taking advantage of rules which strictly limit numbers of British students while placing no restriction on the lucrative international market.
Some universities will only enter the clearing system for international students while others will offer a greater variety of courses to candidates applying from outside the European Union.
As home applicants face mass rejections, institutions admit they will advertise some places in clearing as being available only to international students.
Ministers admitted that up to 3,500 candidates with three straight As in their A-levels are expected to be turned away this year, as well as tens of thousands of others with decent grades that would previously have landed them a place.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP Leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch Standing Down
UK Independence Party leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch is to stand down after less than a year in the position.
In his resignation statement, Lord Pearson said he was “not much good” at party politics and UKIP “deserved a better politician… to lead it”.
The outgoing leader had a difficult general election campaign, telling one interviewer he could not remember his own manifesto in detail.
An interim leader will be chosen at UKIP’s annual conference next month.
One of UKIP’s two deputy leaders — Euro MP David Campbell Bannerman — is planning to stand in the contest to replace Lord Pearson, a spokesman said.
Lord Pearson’s predecessor, Nigel Farage, said he would not announce whether he would stand until the conference.
Lord Pearson was elected in November 2009, after Mr Farage stepped down to concentrate on contesting the Buckingham parliamentary seat, which was held at the general election by Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Resigning as leader, Lord Pearson, 68, said he wanted to “spend more time on his wider interests” which included “the treatment of people with intellectual impairment, teacher training, the threat from Islamism and the relationship between good and evil” — as well as his dogs and family.
UKIP had increased its vote by 50% in the general election and “had many exciting plans for the future”, he said, but it was time for a “younger leader” to show how “liberating and enriching life would be outside the EU”, saying he was “confident” one would emerge.
He said the party had “never been more important for our freedom as a self-governing democracy” and had to “go on telling the truth about Europe”.
“We have a coalition government which supports every new power grab by Brussels: supervision of our financial services; an EU diplomatic corps; new police and surveillance powers; bailing out the folly that is the euro.
“Much of this is illegal under the Treaties, but that has never worried Brussels or the Luxembourg Court, which now make most of our national law in a secretive process over which Parliament has no control.
Click to play
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Lord Pearson has difficulty discussing UKIP’s election manifesto. First broadcast April 19 2010
“History teaches us that trouble lies ahead when a regime is free to break its own laws with impunity, when it is supported by a puppet court, and when its people are powerless to get rid of it. That is what the European Union has become, and the only way out is the door,” he said.
Mr Farage, who was hurt in a plane crash on polling day in May, said he had yet to decide whether to stand for re-election to his old job.
He told the BBC: “I’m not going to say I’m absolutely not going to do the job again but I’ve got to decide, in the wake of that accident, whether I’m strong enough to take the job on.
“The other problem is I’m still leading a group in the European Parliament in Brussels. Can I do that and lead a party in the UK?”
He added: “I’m sad that he [Lord Pearson] is going… I don’t think today’s the day to announce whether one intends or not to run.”
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Radical Muslims Urge Boycott of Security Forces
Sarajevo, 17 August (AKI) — Radical Wahabi fundamentalists have been leafleting mosques throughout Bosnia Herzegovina urging Muslims not to join the country’s police and army.
“Those are forces devoted to a fake god who we should fight against with all of our powers,” read the leaflets, which Wahabis have been putting in mosque collection boxes.
Members of Bosnia’s Muslim community dismissed the leaflets as a “desperate and insane appeal”.
The leaflets also contained several passages from the Koran which had been “misinterpreted” and “used out of context”, they said.
Similar leaflets were found in mosque contribution boxes just before the bombing of a police station in the central Bosnian town of Bugojno on 27 June that killed one policeman and injured six others.
Wahabi leaflets first appeared in Bosnia when the government decided to contribute to NATO forces in Afganistan and Iraq. The leaflets accused the government of “betraying our Islamic brothers” in these countries.
Bosnia’s imams are said to be deeply concerned by the bombing in Bugojno and the reappearance of wahabi pamphlets. Bosnian mosques are not well protected and it is impossible to monitor people entering them, according to the imams.
The Wahabi movement first appeared in the Balkans during the 1990s wars, when ‘mujahadeen’ from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims.
Wahabi cells have been radicalising supporters, running training camps and plotting violence in recent years, according to a number of terrorism experts
Bosnia state security agency OSA director Almir Dzuvo said in July there were some 3,000 well equipped radical Islamist militants in Bosnia, who posed a serious terrorism threat to the country.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Moroccan Activists in Melilla Protest Against Spanish Police Brutality
Moroccan activists have tonight erected a new photo montage of Spanish police officers, in protest against police brutality on the Beni-Enzar border crossing between Melilla and Morocco.
“Tha National Police stole the other posters we put up, so we’ve had another bigger one made, showing a total of eleven female officers, to ask these women to stop the brutality,” said Munaim Shauki, the head of the North Moroccan Civil Society (CSCNM).
The latest photo montage, erected in the so-called “no-man’s land” at this border point, shows the officers in a rubbish dump, combined with images of hands stained red with blood and the word “frontier”.
“We respect these women and have nothing against them, but most of the brutality has been initiated by them. They are the ones who throw the first stone and we just retaliate,” continued Shauki, who is also the National Council for the Liberation of Ceuta and Melilla’s (CNLCM) coordinator for foreign affairs.
He added that if the Unified Police Syndicate (SUP) went ahead with their plan to lodge a formal complaint against the two organisations for slander and defamation of character, he will not appear in court.
“We cannot appear in court in a city that is occupied. They can lodge their complaint in Málaga or any other city, but if they do so in Melilla, in a colonialist court, we will not appear,” confirmed Shauki.
The CSCNM and the CNLCM organised a boycott last Thursday, preventing the entry of fruit, fish, shellfish, and vegetables into Melilla, and have announced further action of a similar nature from Monday onwards.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
2 IDF Soldiers Injured Near Gaza
Salah al-Din Brigade claims responsibility for mortar attack.
Clashes between the IDF and Palestinian terrorists along the Gaza border intensified on Tuesday, when two IDF soldiers were slightly injured by mortar fire near the security fence in southern Gaza .
The injured soldiers were evacuated by helicopter to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
IDF forces returned fire in the area that the two mortar shells were fired from.
The Salah al-Din Brigade claimed responsibility for the mortar fire on Tuesday.
The Salah al-Din Brigade is the armed wing of Gaza terrorist group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).
Tuesday’s incident took place in the same area where an IDF soldier was slightly wounded in clashes with Palestinians on Monday.
The soldier, from the Armored Corps, was part of a force that intercepted two Palestinians who were trying to lay a bomb along the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip.
The force detected the Palestinians and opened fire, killing one of them. In response, sniper fire was opened and the soldier was wounded and evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
It is still not clear who was responsible for the blast.
Following the incident, two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza, exploding in the Eshkol area in the western Negev. No injuries were reported and no damage was caused in Monday’s rocket fire.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Gunman Lightly Wounded in Turkish Embassy Standoff
Palestinian calls reporter to denounce “murderous Jews,” “threatened to blow up building;” Turkish, Israeli diplomats seeking end to standoff; man claimed he worked as Israeli informant.
A Palestinian man barricaded himself inside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, and was said to be armed and lightly wounded. Police told reporters that the man, Nadim Injaz, was known to them from a similar previous attempt when he barricaded himself in the British embassy four years ago.
Channel 2 played what it said was a recording of Injaz telephoning its reporter earlier Tuesday from inside the Turkish Embassy, where he had gone to seek asylum. He said in the call that he had taken two people hostage and threatened to blow up the embassy, claiming he had explosives on his person.
Sounding emotionally unstable, he denounced “the murderous Jews,” the “murderous Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas),” and other corrupt Palestinian leaders who he said were stealing money from the Palestinian people, and urged Turkey to save him. Police believe that Injaz is mentally ill and that he was shot in the legs and is not in critical condition, according to an Israel Radio report.
Earlier Tuesday, police confirmed that Injaz removed all his clothes on Yarkon Street at the Turkish embassy after which he was shot by an “unknown individual,” likely a security guard. A large police response converged outside the embassy building and Magen David Adom ambulances were rushed to the area.
Further details about Injaz were made available by a lawyer he contacted on Tuesday, Israel Radio reported.According to Injaz’s lawyer, who has kept in contact with him by cellphone while he is in the embassy, the Palestinian man is armed with a pistol and a knife. He claims that he is being pursued by the Israeli and Palestinian intelligence services because he has information that could “bring down several senior Palestinian Authority officials.”
The man has demanded safe passage to Ankara, Turkey, his lawyer said.
As helicopters circled outside the beseiged Turkish embassy building in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry officials arrived in a black Mazda to negotiate with Turkish officials to allow Magen David Adom crews and police to enter the building, Channel 2 reported.
Tel Aviv police and ambulance crews have not been allowed to enter the embassy building to treat the man or determine what occurred during the shooting, as the building is considered Turkish sovereign territory.
Injaz, broke into the British embassy in a similar incident four years ago, saying he was a former Israeli informant who had been abandoned by the Israeli handlers, and threatened to shoot himself if he was not given asylum in a European country.
The gun he was holding turned out to be made of plastic.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Gunman Storms Embassy Shouting ‘I Want to Kill Jews!’
TEL AVIV — Employees of the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv are being held hostage in their compound by a Palestinian threatening to “kill Jews,” according to witnesses.
WND spoke with witnesses who saw the man storm the embassy and fire shots.
The embassy is completely surrounded by Israeli security forces and ambulances.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Immanuel Kant vs. Israel
As someone who deeply appreciates what Western civilization, for all its faults, has achieved, I puzzle over the hostility many Westerners harbor toward their way of life. If democracy, free markets, and the rule of law have created an unprecedented stability, affluence, and decency; how come so many beneficiaries, fail to see this?
Why, for example, does the United States, which has so much for human welfare, inspire such hostility? And tiny Israel, the symbol of rejuvenation for a perpetually oppressed people — why does it engender such passionate hatred that otherwise decent people desire to eliminate this state?
Yoram Hazony of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem offers an explanation for this antagonism in a profound and implication-rich essay, “Israel Through European Eyes.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Outrage After Female Israeli Soldier Posts Photos of Blindfolded Palestinian Prisoners on Facebook
An Israeli soldier has sparked outrage after posting photos of herself smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners in a Facebook album she called ‘the time of my life’.
Eden Aberjil, who left the Israeli Defence Force last year, was shown on Israeli news websites and blogs in two photographs.
In one, she is sitting legs crossed beside a blindfolded Palestinian man who is slumped against a concrete barrier.
His face is turned downwards, while she leans toward him with her face upturned.
‘You’re the sexiest like that,’ a friend wrote on the image.
‘I wonder if he’s got Facebook!’ Aberjil responded. ‘I have to tag him in the picture!’
Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.
The prisoners are mocked and ridiculed in the comments between the soldier and her friends.
The photographs were reminiscent of images taken in 2003 by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Those images showed Iraqi detainees naked, humiliated and terrified. In that case, some soldiers went to prison after the photos came to light.
The photographs of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinians, by contrast, show no overt physical abuse or coercion of the prisoners.
Nevertheless their publication on Facebook was condemned both by the Israeli military and the international community.
‘These are disgraceful photos,’ said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman.
‘Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately,’ he told Associated Press Television News.
But Aberjil herself was baffled by the controversy.
‘I still don’t understand what was wrong,’ the former conscript said in an interview on Israeli Army Radio today.
She said the photographs, which she has since removed from her Facebook page, were not intended to make a political statement or demonstrate contempt for Palestinians.
‘It was solely to show the experience of military service,’ she said.
Abergil completed her mandatory two-year army service about a year ago.
She said the photographs were taken in 2008 at her base where Palestinians who tried to cross the Gaza border into Israel were often taken for questioning.
Commenting on whether the photographs had dealt a blow to Israel’s international image, she told Army Radio: ‘We will always be attacked — whatever we do, we will always be attacked.’
It was not clear whether the army could punish her, because she has finished her compulsory military service.
Palestinians are routinely handcuffed and blindfolded when they are arrested to stop them from trying to flee.
The incident was a reminder of the fraught relations between Israeli soldiers and the West Bank Palestinians under their control.
Israel controls much of the occupied West Bank, captured in a 1967 war, which Palestinians want as part of a future state along with the Gaza Strip, now run by Hamas Islamists.
Israeli soldiers have run into trouble on the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube before.
Most recently a group of combat soldiers were reprimanded for breaking into choreographed dance moves while on patrol in the West Bank town of Hebron.
The dance featured prominently on YouTube.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the photos and said they pointed to a deeper malaise — how Israel’s 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.
‘This shows the mentality of the occupier,’ Khatib said, ‘to be proud of humiliating Palestinians.
‘The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Has Three Days to Stop Iran Developing Nuclear Weapons, Warns Ambassador
Israel has just days to launch a military strike and stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations warned tonight.
The deadline was set by outspoken former envoy John Bolton, who claimed that time was running out for the West to crush Tehran’s atomic ambitions.
He said Iran is planning to bring its first Bushehr reactor online on Saturday, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.
At that point, he said it would be too late for Israel to attack the facility because it would spread radiation and affect innocent Iranian civilians.
‘Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they’re in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it,’ said Mr Bolton.
‘So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days,’ he told Fox News in the U.S.
If the Israelis fail to act, Mr Bolton said: ‘Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor.’
But the former diplomat, who served as George Bush’s ambassador to the UN between 2005 and 2009, said he doubted Israel would attack Iran.
‘I’m afraid that they have lost this opportunity,’ he added.
Tehran continues to insist it is only building its atomic plant for peaceful purposes to provide cheaper electricity. But Britain, the U.S. and other western powers claim the Iranians are covertly creating a nuclear warhead.
Mr Bolton blasted Russia’s role in the development of the plant. ‘The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America’s eye always figures prominently in Moscow,’ he said.
Last night, Iran dismissed the possibility of an Israeli assault.
‘These threats have become repetitive and lost their meaning,’ said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparasi.
‘According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences,’ he added.
Iranian officials said they have stepped up security at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.
The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions in June over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran’s banking and energy sectors.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Obama-Ahmadinejad Summit in Works?
3rd party military action could determine whether it’s a go
National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones’ recent statement that President Obama would be prepared to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if Tehran resumes negotiations over its nuclear enrichment program has fueled speculation that such a meeting could occur late next year just as the U.S. presidential campaign season is to begin, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
One Middle East source even suggested the meeting could occur in Tehran.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Future of Iraq Post-US Withdrawal
In an interview with The Guardian in his Qadhimiyah prison cell, former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was reported to have said last week, “[U.S. President Barack Obama] is leaving Iraq to the wolves.” Given the likely consequences of President Obama’s decision regarding the U.S. troop pull-out, I am afraid to say that Aziz might indeed be right.
Obama’s decision poses two threats that may eventually cause irreparable consequences. The first one is related to the current state of the Iraqi military. American authorities are continually assuring us that the Iraqi security forces are fully prepared to take the lead role when U.S. troops end their combat mission, but Iraqi officials clearly don’t share this decidedly optimistic view. Last week, for instance, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, chief of staff of the Iraqi army, was reported to have acknowledged that they might “not be ready to take control for another decade.”
Bob Woodward, in his “State of Denial,” writes that Jay Garner, as a retired officer, strongly opposed Paul Bremer’s decision to abolish the Saddam-era Iraqi army and warned, “… you can get rid of an army in a day, but it takes years to build one.” The U.S. has put six years of efforts into training the new Iraqi army, but to date little has been seen that might inspire confidence that they are close to achieving their goals.
By January 2005, Iraqi security forces totaled 120,000 on paper, but only 5,000 of this number could actually be relied upon. In June 2005, NATO, after robust internal disputes, agreed to establish a training mission in Iraq. Yet according to their estimates, only 1,500 Iraqi military personnel could properly be trained per year, a number just over one percent of the projected Iraqi armed force level of 131,000.
The inevitable result was a fiasco. The new troops trained were neither combat capable nor present for duty. Iraqis joined the security forces either to earn money or to serve the sects they belong to. In certain cases, the aim was to collect intelligence and weapons for the insurgency. The Iraqi police, numbering some 135,000, was not immune to this rot. In fact, infiltration by those with sectarian loyalties most heavily impacted on police forces run by the Interior Ministry.
A considerable improvement was accomplished during Gen. David Petraeus’ command, but in the power vacuum expected to emerge subsequent to the U.S. pull-out, I am sure old inclinations will definitely resurface.
The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, on the other hand, has constituted a kind of formidable deterrent to the eruption of a full-scale civil war between Iraq’s various ethnic and sectarian groups.
Before the war, all members of the George W. Bush administration had opposed ethnic federalism in Iraq. More importantly, sectarian affiliations were not the prime motive among the Iraqis. Bremer, in his memoir titled “My Year in Iraq,” for instance, argues the sectarian divides that had dominated Iraqi politicians were much less pronounced among average Iraqis.
The moves the U.S. government was initially making, however, drove a wedge between the various factions in Iraqi politics. Former CIA chief George Tenet, in his memoir titled “At the Center of the Storm,” admits the way they implemented democracy “had led people to believe that they deserved a piece of the pie based on their membership in a certain group, so the whole dynamic was to pull away from the center.” Thus, the organizing principle of Iraqi politics has gradually become one of sectarian and ethnic affiliation. In the words of Tenet, “the decisions [the U.S.] made tended to fracture Iraq, not to bring it together.”
Today, the state of relations among these various groups is determined by a pure struggle for power. Yes, a culture of bargaining has indeed emerged and a shifting of alliances has served as a kind of guarantee in Iraq’s evolving federal structure, but the struggle over resources, namely land, water and oil, is still a major source of instability. Consider, for example, the Kirkuk problem. How do you think it might be resolved after the U.S. troops leave Iraq? And more importantly, what could be the role of the insurgency and al-Qaeda in widening the gaps prevailing among these ethnic and sectarian groups, as they have done in the near past? Wouldn’t they see the U.S. pull-out as a kind of retreat that will eventually provide them with a new motivation and impetus?
In such a milieu, I humbly think it is really worth highlighting what Tariq Aziz maintained in his recent interview: “When you make a mistake you need to correct a mistake, not leave Iraq to its death.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Political Leaders Debate Ancestry on Campaign Trail
With the campaign ahead of next month’s constitutional reform referendum heating up, the debates between the two main leaders are taking an ever-more tangential turn, with the latest argument now centering on the politicians’ ancestries.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan created fresh controversy over the weekend at a party rally in the southeastern province of Gaziantep when he questioned the ancestry of his main political rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu.
Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leader Kiliçdaroglu is from Tunceli, an eastern Anatolian province that is predominantly inhabited by Kurds and Alevis.
“Mr. Erdogan has talked about my mother and my father. Now, in a speech in Gaziantep, he even questioned my kin,” Kiliçdaroglu said Monday, adding that he was proud of his ancestry and his family.
“I have a suggestion to Mr. Recep. If he wants to learn about my family, then he can examine the state records. But if he is so curious about people’s ancestry, he may as well come and measure my skull. I would not mind it.”
Measuring skull was an old custom among ultra-nationalists to prove one’s roots of pure Turkishness.
The party leader continued to criticize Erdogan’s manner, claiming that the prime minister looks into the cameras and reads off speech cards. “He is not sincere, and everyone knows this.”
Continuing, Kiliçdaroglu said: “My request is that the prime minister does not resort to swearing. He blames me for falsely accusing him. It is not me who has accused him of being a fraud. It is the attorney general of this country who has done so.”
Kiliçdaroglu said it was Erdogan himself who signed the exact document from the attorney general and sent it to Parliament, meaning, according to the CHP leader, that the prime minister himself had read the document in which he is called a slanderer.
“Why does he blame me for such a thing?” asked Kiliçdaroglu. “He should not have done things to provoke such comments. Now he plays the fool when I address these issues. But I will unmask him.”
In addition, the CHP leader said Sept. 12 was very soon, adding that a defeat of the referendum would pave the way for positive changes in Turkey.
“Justice will be restored,” he said. “A Turkey with a bright future will be ahead. We will keep telling the public the truth to reveal the indecent. A ‘no’ answer to the undutiful ones will pave the way for Turkey’s prosperity.’’
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Why All Middle Eastern Politics Can’t be Reduced Merely to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
by Barry Rubin
I simply cannot comprehend why so many in the West refuse to see that Arabs can be revolutionaries. It is remarkable that so many who claim to be experts don’t incorporate the idea that Arabs, like other peoples, might dislike their existing societies or be motivated by ideologies claiming to be the blueprints for utopias.
After all, if Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Latin Americans think and behave this way, why aren’t Arabs going to act the same?
The two paragraphs above are written in response to yet another book, by a very experienced expert on the region, saying that al-Qaida is almost completely motivated by the Palestinian issue as well as a couple of articles claiming that the only reason why the United States or President Barack Obama isn’t popular in the Middle East is due to Israel.
In fact, al-Qaida, Hamas, Hizballah, Muslim Brotherhoods, and other Islamist groups, have been overwhelmingly motivated by a desire to revolutionize the entire Muslim-majority world (and even the whole world) in line with its interpretation of Islam. Al-Qaida’s original cause was to overthrow the Saudi royal family, followed by an effort to help Iraq against Western pressure. In al-Qaida documents before and after the September 11 attacks, the Palestinian issue was not mentioned more than about ten percent of the time and never highlighted.
In addition, radical Arab nationalists, including many intellectuals and several Arab regimes (Egypt, 1952-1970; Syria, 1949-present; Iraq, 1958-2003; Libya, 1973-present), have sought to unite the Arab world under their leadership, overthrow neighboring governments, and expel Western influence in line with their ambitions and ideology.
And a recent poll showing that Obama was unpopular, the United States seen as an enemy, and tremendous popular support for revolutionary Islamists was also attributed by its sponsor to this cause. For my analysis of this poll, see here.
Yet why should this be so? Something fishy is going on here…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Audio: ‘Russia Sticking a Thumb in Washington’s Eye’
Bolton: ‘Russia sticking a thumb in Washington’s eye’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Afghan Couple Stoned to Death by Taliban After Their Families Turned Them in When They Tried to Elope
A man and a woman have been stoned to death in Afghanistan over an alleged love affair.
Their families asked the Taliban to arrest the two, who were each engaged to other people [mostly likely an arranged engagement] , after they tried to elope.
Their deaths come a week after it was revealed Islamic militants in the country had flogged and executed a woman accused of adultery.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia Hunts Frenchman Over Terror Links: Official
Indonesia is hunting a French man wanted for alleged involvement with Al-Qaeda-linked militants plotting Mumbai-style attacks in Jakarta, a top security official said Tuesday.
Frederic Jean Salvi had a history of radical activism in France, security ministry anti-terror chief Ansyaad Mbai told AFP.
“Our partner from the French police informed us that he’s a French national and that he’s a radical activist there. It’s still unclear what kind of activist specifically,” he said.
“We know transnational terror groups cooperate with one another. We’re working with the French on this matter,” Mbai said.
Salvi, who goes by alias Ali, could be Muslim, he added.
In anti-terror raids in West Java on August 7, police arrested five suspects, seized explosive materials in a bomb factory and a vehicle belonging to a French national which they suspected could be used as a car bomb.
Police earlier said they were working with Interpol to track down the car owner.
“He (Salvi) had given assistance to the terror group by lending his car. We’re still investigating if the car would be used as a car bomb,” Mbai said.
Police have arrested 102 terror suspects, of whom 66 were detained, in a series of raids nationwide since discovering in February a militant training facility in Aceh, northern Sumatra island.
Top radical Islamist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir was arrested last week accused of funding and training Al-Qaeda linked extremists who were plotting a wave of attacks in Jakarta.
According to the police, the plot was inspired by the siege of the Indian city of Mumbai by Islamist militants who killed 166 people in November 2008.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Targets U.S. Troops With Arms Buildup
China is aggressively building up military forces capable of striking U.S. forces in the western Pacific and elsewhere as part of what the Pentagon calls an array of high-tech “anti-access” missiles, submarines and warplanes in its latest annual report.
The report to Congress on China’s military power, released Monday, also warned that China’s military is extending its global military reach beyond a weapons buildup to wage regional war with Taiwan and the United States. The report also questioned U.S.-China military exchanges, noting that Beijing is using the visits and meetings for political influence operations and intelligence gathering.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australian PM Julia Gillard Wants to Ditch British Monarchy
Australia’s Welsh-born Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, believes that when the Queen dies the country should take steps to become a republic.
With the nation evenly divided over the question of severing all ties with the Monarchy, Miss Gillard has indicated a Labour Government would start the moves following the Queen’s death.
The Queen, said Miss Gillard — who hopes to lead her party to victory in next week end’s general election — should be Australia’s final monarch, despite the nation’s ‘deep affection’ for her.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Federal Cops Openly Blast Obama and His Appointees
With most Americans beginning realizing the politicians in Washington are moving the nation in the wrong direction, even federal law enforcement agents at two of the Homeland Security Department’s largest agencies are blasting the White House and its appointees.
In one case that created a stir in Washington, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents overwhelmingly said that their department’s leadership has become politicized to the point of affecting the effectiveness of ICE.
ICE agents through their union claim their leaders have little regard for the safety of American people. Their union has released a letter announcing its recent unanimous “vote of no confidence” in ICE agency heads, accusing them of “misleading the American public” regarding illegal immigration in order to further a pro-amnesty agenda.
The National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council and its affiliated local councils cast a unanimous 259-0 vote of no confidence in ICE Director John Morton and Assistant Director Phyllis Coven, according to Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum.
The National Council members criticized the ICE leadership and claim they created “misguided and reckless initiatives,” and claim ICE managers “abandoned the Agency’s core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed their attention to campaigning for policies and programs related to amnesty.”
Besides Morton’s and Coven’s low marks, the Obama Administration recently appointed a former police chief, who believes in illegal alien sanctuary city policies, to command the immigration enforcement program that entails federal agents working with local police departments on cases involving illegal aliens.
As part of the Homeland Security Department’s anti-terrorism mission, the new director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination is now Harold Hurtt, an outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level such as Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law.
“As police chief in two different cities with huge illegal alien populations— Phoenix and Houston—Hurtt enforced don’t-ask-don’t-tell immigration measures that prevented officers from inquiring about a suspects’ legal status in the U.S.,” according to officials at Judicial Watch, a non-partisan, public-interest group that investigates public corruption.
In his new post, Hurtt will receive a salary $180,000 a year plus benefits to oversee outreach and communication between federal immigration staff and local law enforcement agencies. He is charged with strengthening the collaboration between local police and federal immigration officials in an effort to combat a crisis that has rocked practically every major U.S. city and many small municipalities, according to Judicial Watch officials.
Homeland Security officials are promoting Hurtt as “a respected member of the law enforcement community” who will be an “invaluable asset to ICE’s outreach and coordination efforts.”
However, the reality is quite different, say proponents of tough immigration enforcement. Chief Hurtt is on record opposing immigration enforcement and as police chief protected the most violent of criminals. Hurtt has even testified before Congress that local police should not assist with immigration enforcement, say officials at Judicial Watch.
[…]
In the population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.
They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
France: Roma: 1st Flight for Deported to Leave Thursday
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, AUG 17 — The first flight destined to take the deported Roma home will leave next Thursday. So said the Home Minister Brice Hortefeux, also disclosing that 51 illegal camps have already been dismantled during the summer. The last dismantling took place this morning at Tremblay-en-France, in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, northeast of Paris. Eighty four Roma were evacuated. In a few days’ time, Hortefeux, “150 Roma, of which 80 adults, will be sent away from a camp in Marseilles”.
Roughly 700 people will be “sent back into their Country of origin by the end of the month”, added the minister, explaining that flights directed to Bulgaria and Romania will be carried out by “private companies and public airports”. The second flight is to leave on August 26 th, while a third one is programmed for “the end of September”.
Previously, the minister for Immigration, Eric Besson had also stressed that there wouldn’t be any “special flights”, so as to avoid all controversy. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Investigation: We Reveal How to Buy a Bride (And a British Passport) For £6,000
As the Church is embroiled in a series of sham wedding scandals, a Daily Mail investigation exposes one of the shady Mr Fix-Its making a fortune out of our shambolic immigration laws
The paunch and the well-cut blue suit hinted at prosperity, while the businesslike A4 clipboard and purposeful air did nothing to detract from the overall impression of a man doing well for himself.
The sales patter was practised: clear, concise and very relaxed. Satty, as he called himself, had patently done this before.
‘The paperwork is all taken care of. We’ve got a firm of solicitors who deal with all of that,’ he smiled as he sipped his cappuccino in a smart West Midlands bar.
No one in earshot would have batted an eyelid. Surely he was selling a car, or perhaps even a house? No. Astonishingly, what Satty was actually trying to sell was a bogus, albeit willing, bride.
What he didn’t realise was that he was talking to an undercover Daily Mail reporter posing as a broker for a fictitious 28-year-old Punjabi illegal immigrant who had been living in Britain for the past year and who wanted to buy a wife to secure himself a passport.
The price of such a transaction? £6,000. The deal was brokered in the kind of bar found on any British High Street.
The impending union would have nothing to do with love and everything to do with money. For the hand in marriage of a British-born woman all but guarantees her ‘husband’ a British passport.
And, with a passport comes access to this country’s generous education and medical services and an entitlement to its labyrinthine benefits.
A British-born Sikh, probably in his early 40s, Satty seemed, well, at the top of his game. As well he might for he is one of a new breed of marriage fixers who bestride the illegal but busy and lucrative trade in sham marriages in Britain today.
They have taken advantage of flawed Home Office legislation dreamed up by the previous government. Intended to clamp down on fake register office unions, it served simply to move them sideways down the aisles of the Church of England.
Until, that is, it was challenged by our ubiquitous human rights laws and thrown off the statute books altogether, permitting the industry to flourish in both secular and religious venues.
(In fact Labour’s legislation was so preposterously ineffective, there are experts who today believe it was a cynical bid to massage the figures, not to actually reduce them — more of which later.)
Last month, the case of Father Alex Brown (known in the trade as the vicar who never said no) reignited the controversy.
The 62-year-old conducted up to eight weddings a day at his church in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.
He was happy to overlook telling details such as the way one bride changed into her borrowed wedding gown in the vestry before the ceremony, then stuffed it back into a plastic bag afterwards, or the fact that a groom produced a ring too small for his wife’s finger.
The shamed priest now faces a jail sentence of up to 14 years for conspiracy to breach immigration law. But he’s not alone.
Last week, two more Church of England clerics were arrested on suspicion of similar crimes and released on bail in East London.
And in Manchester, a Czech gang await sentencing next month for their part in a bogus marriage ring centred on a C of E church in Salford. There the vicar was seen as ‘naive’ rather than crooked — but the results were the same.
Dave Magrath, an inspector for the UK Border Agency, said: ‘There were cases in which the bridegroom still has the Primark labels on his hastily-bought suit.
‘A network of Eastern Europeans was negotiating with Nigerian groups to facilitate very brief introductions. When a fee was agreed, they used a C of E church to get married, picking a vulnerable minister in an area with a changing population, who didn’t think there was anything untoward.’
Nothing untoward? Really? But worryingly, listen to Satty’s description of his dubious ‘services’ and that can begin to seem credible.
For the right fee he will attempt to find a perfect match — age, religion, background, aspirations — much the same as a legitimate wedding couple. He believes he is skilled enough to easily outfox the investigators from the UK Border Agency whose job it is to dismantle the sham marriage industry.
So let us return to that bar in Wolverhampton and see how it’s done.
The city has long been home to a large immigrant population, topped up in recent times by an influx of refugees and asylum seekers from cities such as Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Many are illegal and desperate to secure British citizenship. A trawl of inner-city pubs led our reporter to Satty and his catalogue of women willing to help our fictitious groom towards the prize of a passport.
In a brief but friendly telephone conversation, Satty arranged to meet our reporter the next day at a pub in the affluent Penn district of the city.
He revealed: ‘We arrange it all with our own girls, British-born Asians, mostly divorcees, a bit older, who know the score. They’re educated girls, got degrees and stuff, nice office jobs.
‘We can make sure the girl looks like she’s compatible with your man, similar ages, religion .?.?. If he doesn’t click with one girl then we’ll try with another. It’s all about making it look believable.’
He joked: ‘I mean the immigration people here ain’t all that stupid. They know some young blonde bird from Estonia ain’t really going to fall in love and want to marry some Freshy (a derogatory term used by British-Asians referring to illegal immigrants from the sub-continent) who can’t speak English or Estonian.’
The bogus bride would want £2,000 in cash up front with another £4,000 to be paid when our man was granted a visa.
‘The solicitors will do all the applications and sort out the registration of marriage. None of that is a problem. We’ve done loads of these,’ he added.
He went on: ‘After that you do know that your man will have to go back to India while the application goes through. It takes anything up to six or seven months before he gets his passport stamped with the visa. You only pay the four G (£4,000) when you’ve got your stamped passport in your hand.’
It was clear that in Satty’s mind at least this was a victimless crime where everybody cashes in: a bogus bride or groom earns a hefty fee, an illegal immigrant earns a precious British passport and he gets a cut. It’s only, it seems, the estate of marriage — and, of course, the poor British taxpayer — which is harmed by his work.
Meanwhile the internet proves, as always, a cosy environment for illicit business. And as our female investigator discovered, you don’t even have to stray into its shadowy recesses to find yourself a pretend husband.
She posed as ‘Dina’, an Iranian girl looking for a British husband and posted on various bulletin board websites, including Craigslist.co.uk. Her first attempt, perhaps too bluntly headed ‘Need marriage visa’ was removed from the website in minutes.
But another attempt — ‘Looking for marriage’ — was left on and received several responses.
‘If you are looking for marriage for spousal visa purposes,’ replied ‘Nick’, ‘I will be willing to negotiate marriage for money on a business term basis which will be the easiest for both us. Please reply and we can come to an arrangement.
‘I would like to make it clear after we have met and discussed this I would need £3,000 upfront,’ he continued. ‘If we decide to go ahead and its £7,000 payable after marriage. I will not do ANYTHING unless this is arranged.’
Equally keen to set out his terms was ‘Alan’, who too sounded as if he’d been down this route before: ‘I am more uncomfortable through communication by email, thus leaving traces, even when deleted. The penalties for such breaches of law are severe!
‘I work with you, the client, to plan and achieve your objective. Meet, discuss, plan and arrange.
‘I am particularly well-connected and fully understand the innermost workings of the United Kingdom Border Agency. You have made the most important step, removing the evidence that was there for all to see on Craigslist. The next stage is to discuss your aims, your budget to achieve and your time frame. I await your instructions.’
It’s hardly the most romantic of proposals, is it? No bended knee, no whispered endearments, no thoughtfully chosen ring. But then it’s business, not pleasure because Britain’s laissez faire approach to who can access its welfare state will always be a magnet for illegal immigrants.
But how have we reached the point where they can wed under the auspices of the Church of England to achieve their goal? The answer lies in the curious legislation enacted by the Labour government.
Shamed by the label ‘Soft Touch Britain’, in 2004 the government introduced a Home Office certification scheme designed to verify the motives of non-EU brides and grooms planning to wed an EU citizen in a British register office.
It reduced fake weddings from approximately 3,500 that year (though some estimates put them at 10,000) to 282 in 2006.
But the legislation was doomed from the start because it exempted church weddings.
In 2005 Andy Burnham, then a Home Office Minister, now campaigning to be leader of the Labour Party, stated: ‘There is no evidence of sham marriages taking place in the Church of England and the Government does not feel abuse is likely in the future.’
Academics were astonished by this statement. In fact some, such as Dr John Davies of Sussex University’s Centre For Migration Research, believe the new laws were designed to create a loophole which would ensure sham marriages were not stopped, but simply shifted out of sight.
For while registrars were under a legal obligation to report any suspicions they might have about a wedding couple, parish priests could continue to do as they chose.
The Home Office might have claimed a victory, but it was entirely Pyrrhic.
Dr Davies told the Mail: ‘I warned them and other experts warned them. I specifically identified the Church of England loophole as a deliberate attempt by the Home Office to push the numbers of fake marriages down by directing them to somewhere they could continue and not be counted.
For the simple truth is that the regulations were framed to push fake marriages out of the register offices where registrars were reporting them and place them in another forum (the church) where no one was going to collect any data.
‘The Home Office knew what was going to happen, but it was a way of cooking the books. They claimed a great success in reducing the number of fake marriages when all they did was to push the practice out of sight.
‘My warning was based on the bloody obvious. The regulations were so obviously creating an unsupervised alternative to register offices that any idiot could see what could be done.
‘The loophole was widely known about in the immigration advisory community and Church of England marriages became the norm very quickly. It was an incredible and blatant deception.’
As Satty and his prospective brides, and Dina’s multiple internet suitors, prove, the sham marriage industry is thriving as never before. So will the Home Office finally take real action to shut it down? Don’t hold your breath.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Registrar Warns of Rapid Rise in ‘Sham Marriages’
By Jamie Smyth
BETWEEN 10 and 15 per cent of the civil ceremonies conducted across the country may be “sham marriages” aimed purely at circumventing immigration rules, one of the country’s main marriage registrars has warned.
Dennis Prior, superintendent registrar for the Health Service Executive eastern registration area, said the increase in suspected bogus marriages, which is now estimated at several hundred per year, was “disheartening and demoralising” for registrars.
He said registrars had only limited power to block marriages and revealed that officials were discussing a green card-style interview to identify genuine unions.
“When you look at our own Constitution it is there to prevent an attack on marriage and actually it just seems like an attack on marriage is taking place,” he said.
“I have seen ceremonies where two interpreters were required for a marriage when clearly the bride and groom couldn’t understand each other.
“Other indicators are: a man holding all the documents for a woman; the bride and groom not knowing each other’s address at the interview; a bride having no friends at a ceremony; and the same people often attending different marriages,” said Mr Prior.
The HSE eastern area is the biggest in the country, performing about 2,500 of the 6,200 civil ceremonies in 2009. But an increase in suspected sham marriages has been noted all over the country as non-EU nationals — typically from Pakistan and India — seek residency after marrying an EU citizen, according to Mr Prior.
He said the problem of sham marriages was more acute for civil ceremonies because local priests would meet a couple several times before they married in church.
Under an EU directive, which was given effect in the Republic in 2006, the non-EU spouses and family members of EU citizens have the right to travel freely within the union.
The Government had attempted to limit this right, claiming that it encouraged sham marriages. But it lost a key test case at the European Court of Justice in 2008 on the issue and can now only refuse residency applications on limited grounds.
New figures show the number of people applying for residency rights based on marriage to an EU citizen increased to 2,129 in 2009, up from 1,207 in 2006.
In the first six months of this year, 1,182 non-EU nationals applied for residency based on marriage to EU citizens.
Pakistanis have made 223 spousal applications this year, which is the largest number submitted by any nationality. Almost a third of these applications (95) are based on recent marriages to Latvian women. There have been 131 applications from Nigerians and 71 applications from Indians.
Mr Prior said he was receiving a growing number of requests for support from registrars who suspected the marriages they were solemnising were a sham.
“I get one or two requests for support a week and I would estimate that 10 to 15 per cent of marriages are at risk of being a sham marriage. This is a big increase from two years ago,” he said.
Mr Prior said tackling the problem was complex because there was no law defining sham marriage, or making it illegal to either accept money for a marriage or to marry for immigration purposes.
He said the General Registry Office and the Department of Social Protection were drafting new guidelines for registrars to follow in identifying sham marriages and were considering changing the interview process for marriages.
“We are considering asking more in-depth questions at the interview stage, although this would probably require a change of legislation,” he said.
Currently, registrars only ask basic questions at interview such as a couple’s name and address.
If the plans under consideration were implemented, couples could face more detailed questions, such as how they first met; if they lived together; what they had for breakfast; and to provide photographs of themselves together, said Mr Prior.
The Garda recently launched an operation to prevent and detect criminality associated with sham marriages. This has led to several arrests linked to the offences of bigamy, false documentation and evading deportation orders.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Malmö Makes Hunting Illegals Harder for Cops
The municipality of Malmö will no longer print the personal identification numbers of marrying couples on the lists of upcoming civil weddings in a move which will make it harder for border police to hunt for illegal immigrants at weddings.
Police have previously been able to scrutinise lists from the city of Malmö’s marriage registrar with names, personal identification numbers and times for weddings.
Through the lists, the police would be to see if either of the spouses should be arrested and dismissed. The municipality has now decided to no longer include social security numbers in the lists.
“We have had a discussion and came to the conclusion that we want to protect the personal sphere,” Tomas Bärring, secretariat director at the city office, told the newspaper.
The police can still have access to the personal identification numbers of those intending to marry by requesting a proof of impediment.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ending ‘Discrimination’ Results in Totalitarianism
The existence of discrimination or bias is one of the most sensitive subjects in our multicultural society. There are some in the political class, especially liberals, who believe the government should strive to create a society in which there is no discrimination.
At first glance, this would seem to be a noble objective. Discrimination is associated with terrible things like slavery, Jim Crow laws, hate crimes, and even the Holocaust. Every sane person is against these things. However, the political movement to eliminate nearly all forms of discrimination has itself become a form of totalitarianism. Here are some reasons why.
In its most basic form, discrimination is simply freedom of choice by an individual or group. Any expression of preference for one person or thing over another is a form of discrimination. The only way completely to eliminate discrimination would be to take away the rights of people to make choices.
This obviously is not consistent with living in a free society. Politicians and the courts have tried to dance around this conflict between freedom and anti-discrimination by making choices for people about which forms of discriminate are allowed and which are not allowed, but the list of choices (or discrimination) that is not allowed keeps getting longer.
That list of government-prohibited forms of discrimination now includes race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, and in some cases even weight. The government and many people believe these are inappropriate forms of discrimination, and in most cases they are.
However, there are many situations in which even these prohibited forms of discrimination may be entirely appropriate. Is it really a good idea for a jockey to be fat? Or for a lifeguard to be 80 years old? Or for a firefighter to be a paraplegic? Or for a Catholic to be rabbi? Or for a man to counsel young women who have just been sexually assaulted? Or for a lesbian to be a Muslim cleric? Or for a white man to be president of the NAACP?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Now California Puts Gay Marriage on Hold Indefinitely as Court Decides Whether They Should Go Ahead
An American appeal court has put same-sex weddings in California on hold while it considers whether the state’s ban on gay marriages is constitutional.
The decision, made by a three-judge panel, over-rules a previous lower-ranking judge’s order earlier this month that would have allowed same-sex marriages to commence from Wednesday.
Lawyers for the two gay couples that challenged the ban — known in the U.S as Proposition 8 — said they would not appeal the decision because they are happy the case is being fast-tracked through the American legal system.
The judges decided to put the temporary hold on granting same-sex marriage licenses until the case is resolved because it would create legal chaos if the ban is eventually upheld.
‘I think the basic notion that this case is not final until it’s gone through the complete appellate process,’ said Douglas Napier, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal firm.
‘Rather than have this kind of ping-pong effect of having the decision overturned, appealed and then overturned again, it’s better to have this kind of decision,’ he said.
Under the timetable laid out by the appeal court on Monday, it is doubtful a final decision will be reached before next year.
A different three-judge panel to the one that made Monday’s decision will be assigned to address a case which many believe will eventually end up before the Supreme Court, providing a further delay to a final decision.
The subject has been a political hot potato in America since Proposition 8 was passed in November 2008.
The latest major twist in the long-running saga occurred earlier this month when California Judge Vaughn Walker overturned the ban.
He argued it was because it the ban violated the equal rights gays and lesbians are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
The ban’s backers appealed that ruling — and also asked for the block on same-sex weddings during the appeals process.
They claimed that gay marriage harm the state’s promotion of traditional weddings and the family unit.
Both California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Attorney General Jerry Brown have said they support same-sex marriage and have refused to defend Proposition 8 in court.
Currently, same-sex couples can legally wed only in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
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