Cabinet Member Hits Alarm Over Obama’s Colossal Debt
‘We are losing the ability to chart our own destiny’
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. military joint command are now both on record that rising levels of U.S. national debt pose a national security threat.
The message to the commander-in-chief now from both the secretary of state and the U.S. joint military command appears to have been delivered loud and clear — continuing U.S. federal budget deficits measured in the trillions of dollars makes Americans less safe to threats posed by foreign enemies.
Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations today in Washington, D.C., Clinton said the U.S. budget deficit under the Obama administration poses a national security threat and projects a “message of weakness” internationally.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dollar-Bullish ETF Approaches ‘Death Cross’
An exchange-traded fund that follows the movement of the U.S. dollar against a basket of currencies looks to be approaching a technical indicator traders call a “death cross.”
Technical analysis has increased in popularity as investors grope to make sense of an uncertain market prone to violent swings after the credit collapse. In July, investors were bombarded by headlines pronouncing a death cross in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
Traders watch moving averages for major indexes to get a feel for trends and where markets may be heading. When the 50-day moving average moves below the 200-day moving average,…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Neal Boortz on Thomas Sowell and the Genesis of Our Economic Problems
Sowell:
No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
[…]
[…] risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.
[…]
When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.
[…]
Boortz:
… if you want to point the finger at the people most responsible for our current economy, figure out where Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are right now … and point in that general direction.
… when are we going to really explore the role of Barney Frank’s boyfriend in this mess? At the very same time that the Republicans were trying to rein in Fannie and Freddie Barney’s lover was working for Fannie Mae … working in the very Fannie Mae program that was encouraging these irresponsible loans. Does that bring up any questions as to why Barney opposed reform?
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9/11 Koran Burning: Obama Says ‘We Musn’t Start Turning on Each Other’
Barack Obama has called on Americans to observe religious tolerance and make sure “we don’t start turning on each other”.
Mr Obama’s remarks came at the end of a week that saw a Christian pastor threaten to burn Korans on the anniversary of September 11, and an angry debate over a plan to build an Islamic centre and mosque near the World Trade Center site of the New York attacks.
The Koran-burning protest, which was cancelled on Thursday night, has already claimed its first victim after a man was shot dead by German troops when Afghan protesters demonstrated against the plans by attacking a Nato base in the north of Afghanistan.
Speaking at a White House press conference, Mr Obama said: “We have to make sure that we don’t start turning on each other.
“And I will do everything that I can as long as I’m President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God and we may call that god different names, but we remain one nation.”
A crowd, estimated at 10,000 by officials in the Badakhshan province, poured into the streets of Faizabad on Friday morning after special Eid prayers to mark the end of Muslim Ramadan.
The protests quickly turned violent and a man was shot when German troops inside the Nato base opened fire after they were attacked by a mob of stone throwing demonstrators.
“They numbered in their thousands, it is a big crowd,” said Sayed Hassan Jafary, a police chief in Faizabad.
“People almost from all city mosques gathered.”
Mr Jafary said that the crowd chanted “death to America” and threw rocks at the German-run military base in the city.
The protesters demanded the Afghan authorities give them an American flag “so they can burn it and end the demonstrations”. “But we don’t have an American flag,” said Mr Jafary.
A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul said that officials were investigating the shooting in Faizabad, the capital of the Badakhshan province.
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, had earlier added his voice to those of other leaders from other Islamic countries who have said that the Florida Koran burning would be an attack on all Muslims.
“The Koran is in the hearts and minds of all Muslims. The affront against the holy book is a humiliation to the people. We are hopeful that he gives up this affront and should not even think about it.”
Brigadier General Hans-Werner Fritz, the commander of German troops in Afghanistan, had warned on Thursday that the book burning “would provide a trigger for violence towards all ISAF troops, including the Germans in northern Afghanistan.”
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, phoned Terry Jones, the Florida pastor on Thursday night and asked him to reconsider his plans to burn Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, because it would have endanger the lives of American and Nato troops.
But the evangelist has refused to cancel the book burning unless plans to build a mosque near the site of the New York World Trade Centre that was destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks nine years ago are cancelled.
Hundreds of protesters burning American flags continued to hold rallies in the central Pakistani city of Multan on Friday.
About 600 demonstrators — including clerics, political party workers and activists — held four protests in various parts of the city of nearly four million people.
The protesters carried placards reading “Death to America” and “We will lay down our lives and will not allow desecration of the Holy Koran”.
“Muslims believe in the sanctity of all holy books and they would not let anyone stage this drama to desecrate the Holy Koran,” Hidayatullah Pasroori, a Muslim cleric told protesters.
“We have heard that they have postponed the plans to burn the Holy Koran, but it is not enough. We will continue to raise our voice, so that it never happens again.”
President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that the plans served as a “recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda”, and were “completely contrary to our values”. Burning the Koran could provoke a wave of terrorist attacks on the West.
In a televised interview, Mr Obama said: “This could increase the recruitment of individuals who’d be willing to blow themselves up in American cities, or European cities. You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda. As a very practical matter, as commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan.”
World leaders had encouraged Mr Obama to intervene. Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, condemned the plan as “despicable”.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, said it would damage attempts to reconcile Muslims and the West.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Government Report: Health-Care Costs Rise Under Obamacare
Analysis finds spending will grow to nearly 20% of economy in 2019
The nation’s health care tab will go up — not down — as a result of President Barack Obama’s sweeping overhaul. That’s the conclusion of a government forecast released Thursday, which also finds the increase will be modest.
The average annual growth in health care spending will be just two-tenths of 1 percentage point higher through 2019 with Obama’s remake, said the analysis. And that’s with more than 32 million uninsured gaining coverage because of the new law.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: It’s Republicans’ Fault I Haven’t Changed Washington
By: David Freddoso
From President Obama’s press conference, a bit of self-righteous straw-man creation followed by blaming others:
Q: How have you changed Washington?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’ll tell you how we’ve changed Washington. Prior to us getting here, as I indicated before, you had a set of policies that were skewed toward special interests, skewed towards the most powerful, and ordinary families out there were being left behind. And since we’ve gotten here, whether it’s making sure that folks who can’t get health insurance because of preexisting condition can now get health insurance, or children who didn’t have coverage now have coverage; whether it’s making sure that credit card companies have to actually post in understandable ways what your credit card rates are and they can’t jack up existing balances in arbitrary ways; whether it’s making sure that we’ve got clean water and clean air for future generations; whether it’s making sure that tax cuts go to families that need it as opposed to folks who don’t — on a whole range of issues over the last 18 months, we’ve put in place policies that are going to help grow a middle class and lay the foundation for long-term economic growth…
[…]
The whole press conference here:
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/10/press-conference-president-obama
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President ‘Will Do Anything to Accomplish His Ends’
Author of ‘indictment’ says Americans were deceived
President Obama deceived Americans about his goals and his plans while campaigning for the office, and now that he’s there, will “do anything in order to accomplish his ends,” according to the author of a new book indicting the president.
“He’s committed to undermining America’s founding principles. He’s committed to doing it by deceit. His whole campaign was a deceit where he claimed to be post-partisan, post-racial and post-grievance and all that,” said author David Limbaugh, whose new book is “Crimes Against Liberty.”
Limbaugh also expressed concern that if Obama really is a Christian, as his handlers have insisted, he doesn’t appear to be acting like one.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Remembering the Anti-Federalists
From September 1787 through July 1788, the principle of ordered liberty shaped Federalist arguments for and anti-Federalist arguments against the ratification of the Constitution…
Recent experience with tyranny shaped the Articles of Confederation, the United States’ constitution from 1781-1787. In an effort to avoid everything that had become instruments of tyranny in British hands, the Articles contained no national army, no executive branch, no national judiciary, and States had to vote unanimously for any tax. A unicameral Congress, with members elected by State legislatures (not “the People”) and in which each State had one collective vote, oversaw all national matters via committees. In this highly decentralized Union, ensuring State sovereignty trumped concerns about individual liberty.
The U.S. Constitution won ratification on June 21, 1788, mainly because of promises to anti-Federalists that a Bill of Rights would be added as soon as possible. (Federalists had opposed the addition of a Bill of Rights on the grounds that listing Americans’ liberties in amendments might unintentionally limit them.)
Still, anti-Federalists did correctly predict that the U.S. Constitution would become a much-abused instrument in the hands of those who wished to build a muscular, far-reaching government. They also foresaw that the judiciary might endanger liberty more than a quasi-monarchical president. Robert Yates’s warnings about the Supreme Court and Congress certainly ring true today, as do Samuel Bryan’s predictions about politicians taking advantage of crises to pursue ideological or partisan ends. These processes tend to limit Americans’ liberties while chipping away at their virtue via government-constructed moral hazards. Indeed, as J. Budziszweski notes in “The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction”, Yates’s “arguments seem even stronger today than they did at the time they were written.”
[…]
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Report: Soros Spent Millions to ‘Undermine’ Judiciary
Campaign sought ‘commissions’ that avoided public input on candidates for judgeships
Radical progressive billionaire George Soros has spent some $45 million in recent years on efforts to take away power from voters to select judges, a new report released today by the American Justice Partnership reveals.
The report by attorney Colleen Pero was introduced today at an event held by the Heritage Foundation. It identified $45 million spent by Soros, who funds a large range of left-wing action groups, to “remake the judiciary and fundamentally change the way judges are selected in the United States.”
“This movement to end citizen participation in state judicial elections has been moving swiftly and silently, below the radar of the citizens who would be impacted by Mr. Soros’ millions,” said Pero in a statement about her report, “and it was time to bring this effort to the public’s attention.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Schwarzenegger Ignores State Responsibility to Defend Prop 8
Told to explain in court why state isn’t following its own law
With a court deadline looming in just days, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown have filed court documents to fight demands from the Pacific Justice Institute that the state defend a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman — only.
Conservative organizations led by the Pacific Justice Institute are asking the state Supreme Court to force Brown or Schwarzenegger to appeal a federal judge’s decision declaring that the state’s legal definition of marriage is unconstitutional.
Brown and Schwarzenegger consistently have refused to defend the law because they hold personal disagreements with Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that amended the California constitution to define marriage.
“The California constitution has no ‘if you like it’ provision,” Pacific Justice Institute president Brad Dacus told WND. “We have filed a writ asking the state Supreme Court to order the attorney general and governor to fulfill their job requirements pursuant to the state constitution, which specifically requires the attorney general to defend the laws of California. State statute uses the word ‘shall,’ not ‘may.’“
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Nationalist Rallies for Sweden Democrats
Pia Kjærsgaard, the leader for the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti — DF)) has accepted an invitation from the far-right Sweden Democrats to take part in an election rally in Högänäs in southern Sweden on Saturday.
Kjærsgaard whose national conservative party has supported the Danish governing coalition of Liberal and Conservative parties since 2001, plans to visit Sweden to “experience the conditions of a Sweden election and to talk about democracy and freedom of speech”, according to a party statement.
Kjærsgaard made headlines in some Danish and Swedish media week when she criticised the Swedish press for “acting as if they were in a banana republic” following the refusal of broadcaster TV4 to send an election campaign film by the Sweden Democrats.
The controversial Danish politician does not make a habit of taking part in election campaigns in foreign countries and has previously resisted several pleas from the Sweden Democrats for help.
“Mona Sahlin has demonised the Danish People’s Party,” said DF’s press spokesperson Søren Søndergaard to news agency TT, by way of explanation for Kjærsgaard’s change of stance.
Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin is on record as saying Sweden risks going down Denmark’s path if SD get into Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag when the votes are counted on September 19th.
While DF do not hold any cabinet posts the party enjoys a close cooperation with the government parties on most issues, and has pushed through a restrictive policy line towards immigrants and potential refugees.
The party claimed 13.9 percent of the votes in the 2007 parliamentary elections after a dramatic rise in support following the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2006.
The DF do not have any formal cooperation with Sweden’s SD nor with any other foreign far-right party but argue that the party has managed to silence its more extremist elements in recent years, becoming a more serious political party.
The Swedish police are well-prepared for the meeting in the west coast town of Höganäs.
“We have however not received any indication that there will be fights,” said police spokesperson Charley Nilsson to TT.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Suspected Bomber Apprehended
A man has been apprehended in central Copenhagen following a minor hotel explosion.
A man believed to be a failed bomber has been apprehended in Copenhagen.
The man is currently in handcuffs and surrounded by police officers in the Ørstedsparken park in central Copenhagen. Explosives experts are currently at the scene.
The nationality of the man is not yet clear.
The police spokesman says a terrorism emergency has not been declared but that what are being called intense investigations are under way.
Details of what has happened are scarce, but police confirm that a small explosion has taken place at the Jørgensen Hotel on Rømersgade. According to initial, unconfirmed reports the explosion took place in a hotel lavatory. No hotel staff or guests are reported to have been injured in the event, and it is not clear how strong the explosion was.
According to politiken.dk’s information, when the explosion failed, the man in question escaped into Ørstedsparken.
It is unclear whether the man under arrest in Ørstedsparken has further explosives on him. The man is said to have some wounds on his arms and head. Police spokesman Henrik Møller Jakobsen tells DR that the man may eventually have to be taken to hospital before being questioned and that police believe the man they have apprehended is the man who ran from the Hotel Jørgensen.
Dog patrols are currently searching both the park and the hotel, which was immediately evacuated after the explosion.
Several roads and the Ørstedsparken park in Copenhagen have been cordoned off.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark Police Arrest Man After Small Hotel Blast
[Evidently, a case of premature explodulation — Z]
(CNN) — A man wearing explosives strapped to his body was arrested after a small explosion at a hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark Friday, police said.
The suspect suffered injuries to his arms and hands from the blast, Copenhagen Police Vice-commissioner Henrik Moeller Jakobsen said.
A second explosion happened when a police robot shot the bag of explosives after it was removed from the suspect, police said.
Guests and workers were evacuated from Hotel Joergensen while explosive experts searched through rooms and bags, Jakobsen said.
Police are checking on the suspect’s nationality since he is not believed to be Danish, police said.
[As to the suspect’s “religion”, one guess and the first guess doesn’t count. — Z]
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
France: Rom: Ruling Against Socialist Municipality
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, SEPTEMBER 8 — The city of Nantes (western France), governed by a socialist mayor, was sentenced for clearing out a Rom campsite and will have to pay 300 euros to each of the 29 expelled Rom people. The city’s lawyers have already stated that they will file an appeal against the ruling.
The Roms were illegally occupying a piece of land owned by the city and were expelled last April. But, according to Daniel Castagne’, the vice president of the Nantes tribunal who issued the ruling, the expulsion procedure implemented by socialist mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault was irregular.
The clearing out was “immediate” and the tribunal explained that the Rom people “did not have the chance to leave the area of their own will and with their own means, without being forced by police authorities”. The city’s lawyers object to the tribunal’s decision and issued a statement pointing out that “in Nantes there is an integration policy for Rom families that has been in place since 2005”.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Political Correctness is Silencing an Important Debate
A Commentary by Matthias Matussek
German central banker Thilo Sarrazin is being pilloried over his polemic chastising of Muslims, but there are a few things his critics clearly fail to understand. You can’t cast away what the man embodies: The anger of a German people who are tired of being cursed at when they offer to help foreigners to integrate.
Nothing is as it used to be. In this season of public outrage, the case of Thilo Sarrazin has grown far bigger than Sarrazin. It’s much bigger than the man or the Islam-critical book he wrote.
The Sarrazin case is also a Merkel case, a case for his party, the center-left Social Democrats, and for the German political and media establishment. Sarrazin has become code for the outrage over how the politically correct branch of Germany’s consensus-based society have dispatched their stewards to escort this unsettling heckler to the door. On their way, they seem to be trying to teach him a lesson, as well: “We will beat tolerance into you.”
Sarrazin isn’t telegenic and he often gets tangled up in statistics. When it comes to styling, he’s at a loss — he is unkempt when he appears on the myriad talkshows that keep our entertainment society going. He slips on one banana peel of political correctness after another, opening himself to attack with his statements about genetics. But his findings on the failed integration of Turkish and Arab immigrants are beyond any doubt.
Sarrazin has been forced out of the Bundesbank. The SPD wants to kick him out of the party, too. Invitations previously extended to Sarrazin are being withdrawn. The culture page editors at the German weekly Die Zeit are crying foul and the editors at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung are damning Sarrazin for passages he didn’t even write.
Technicians of Exclusion
But what all these technicians of exclusion fail to see is that you cannot cast away the very thing that Sarrazin embodies: the anger of people who are sick and tired — after putting a long and arduous process of Enlightenment behind them — of being confronted with pre-Englightenment elements that are returning to the center of our society. They are sick of being cursed or laughed at when they offer assistance with integration. And they are tired about reading about Islamist associations that have one degree of separation from terrorism, of honor killings, of death threats against cartoonists and filmmakers. They are horrified that “you Christian” has now become an insult on some school playgrounds. And they are angry that Western leaders are now being forced to fight for a woman in an Islamic country because she has been accused of adultery and is being threatened with stoning.
Strangely enough, a good number of our fellow Turkish citizens are more outraged by Sarrazin’s book than they are about those things.
Should those Turkish immigrants fortunate enough to have exemplary careers not start exerting a bit of influence over their fellow immigrants and their neighborhoods, so that the Koran shows its gentler, more charitable face? Isn’t it time for them to stand up and show their backing for plurality and freedom of expression?
That certainly wasn’t the case recently when the Migration Board, an umbrella group for immigrant organizations in Berlin, spoke out successfully against a reading by Sarrazin during the International Literature Festival in the German capital. Bernd Scherer, who heads the House of World Cultures, the venue of the festival, buckled under the pressure and cancelled the event. Now the reading is to be held at another venue on Friday — under police protection.
Protecting the Public from Poison and Temptation
But as a society, we seem content with the fact that out politicians, opportunistic as they have become, are struggling under the same weight. And as far as the politically correct media is concerned, it hardly functions any longer.
Until now, the media was dominated by two archetypes: There was the patronizing governess style, which assumes the public is ignorant and, without being asked to do so, seeks to protect it from poison and temptation. Or there is the energetic denouncing approach, which also assumes the public is dim and focuses on revealing secrets: Mr. Teacher, I’ve noticed a brown spot, you can’t see it with the naked eye, but because I’m so smart I was able to spot it.
Klaus von Dohnanyi, who is to defend Sarrazin as the SPD seeks to expel him, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper how Germany was overshadowed by the its Holocaust history and how a culture had developed whereby anyone saying the words “gene” or “Jew” was automatically considered suspect.
He is right to complain that we shy away from debates which “are commonplace in other countries.” Among those is the discussion that “specific ethnic groups” share specific characteristics…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
German Banker Who Caused Outrage With ‘Slurs’ On Jews and Muslims to Quit
Thilo Sarrazin, 65, has polorised Germany with his trenchant views and in the past year has managed to upset Jews, Muslims, the poor and all of Germany’s main political parties — while also becoming a bestselling author backed by broad swathes of the German public.
Despite the best efforts of mainstream politicians to demonise Sarrazin, he has struck a chord among his countrymen with a message that Germany is ‘dumbing down’ due to immigration — and one in five admitted earlier this week that they would vote for him.
Sarrazin said he would quit the Bundesbank’s board from the end of September after his divisive remarks on race, religion, and immigration earned him censure from Chancellor Angela Merkel and prompted the central bank to seek his dismissal.
His resignation, announced yesterday, means President Christian Wulff no longer has to decide whether to approve the Bundesbank’s request, an awkward task that threatened to expose Merkel to a backlash from conservative voters.
Sarrazin, a former finance minister of the city of Berlin had long been outspoken, but recent claims that Jews shared a particular gene and Muslim immigrants were lowering the intelligence quotient of German society proved a tipping point.
Uproar over his contentious musings culminated last week with the publication of the banker’s new book ‘Deutschland schafft sich ab’ (Germany does away with itself), and Sarrazin is now under police protection following threats to his life.
Sarrazin’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) have also begun proceedings to expel him, though he has said he aims to ‘go to his grave’ a member of the SPD. Polls show the party has been hurt by the debate over whether to eject him.
Having inflamed opinion in 2009 with disparaging remarks about Germany’s large Muslim population, Sarrazin’s book makes a number of claims that have been seized on by far-right parties as a vindication of their own policies.
In 2009, Sarrazin — who has been compared to Geert Wilders, the head of the Netherlands’ anti-immigration Freedom Party — was stripped of some of his duties at the Bundesbank after comments in a magazine interview.
He had said: ‘I don’t need to accept anyone who lives off the state, rejects this country … and is always producing little girls with headscarves. This is true of 70 per cent of the Turkish and 90 per cent of the Arab population of Berlin.’
Right-wing online forums have hailed Sarrazin as a champion of free speech who is addressing painful truths.
One featured an image of the former rail executive that parodied U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2008 ‘Hope’ election campaign poster.
But many advocates of improving integration say Sarrazin has made it harder to hold objective debate on the matter by polarising opinion and obscuring the facts with disputed claims.
Polls have showed Germans are divided about Sarrazin’s views, though many phone-ins came out strongly in his favour.
His 464-page book, which has become a bestseller, argues in part that Muslims undermine German society, sponge off the state and may swamp the country due to a higher birth rate.
While in the capital, Sarrazin won praise for cutting the city’s huge budget deficit, racking up the first budget surplus in its postwar history in 2007.
However, a talent for stirring up controversy — including his suggestion in 2008 that the poor could wear sweaters if their heating bills got too dear — meant many in the SPD were glad to nominate him for a move to the Bundesbank in 2009.
Prominent figures were not spared his scorn.
In 2007, Sarrazin called ex-SPD chief Oskar Lafontaine an ‘arsehole’ on television.
Prominent German Jewish journalist Michel Friedman described having the same experience last week.
Sarrazin, a civil servant since 1975 whom the German press once nicknamed ‘Rambo’ for his no-holds-barred approach to politics, alienated many of his former allies after departing Berlin for the Bundesbank in May 2009.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Courses on ‘Addressing Youngsters’ In Amsterdam
AMSTERDAM, 10/09/10 — The Centrum (inner city) district of Amsterdam is offering citizens courses on how to deal with aggressive youngsters, De Telegraaf reported yesterday.
“You would think that someone who misbehaves on the street should be re-educated, but in Amsterdam, the reverse is the case,” the newspaper commented. “To the great fury of some politicians, courses are starting in which honest citizens can learn how they should deal with troublemakers.”
Maurice Limmen, a local Christian democratic (CDA) politician, calls the courses ridiculous in the paper. “If a youngster urinates in your doorway, you have to ask ‘So, your need was high?’ Or if someone speeds over the pavement on his scooter, you should say ‘So, were you in a hurry?’ In fact, you learn to say ‘Sorry that I said anything’ on the course.
“Addressing youngsters about disturbing behaviour often fails to have the desired effect. This is the reason for offering the free course,” says Ton Boon of the Centrum district. “It is a matter of fears of addressing these youngsters being overcome.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Valladolid a ‘Taurine’ City in Contrast With Catalonia
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 7 — In contrast with Catalonia, which has banned bullfights starting in 2012, the city of Valladolid, in the heart of Castilla-La Mancha, today approved a resolution calling the city “taurine” and expressing “the refusal of territorial bans” on bullfighting.
In the resolution, which was announced by local authority sources and approved by the narrowest of margins (15 votes in favour, 14 against), it is underlined that the Spanish constitution guarantees “the right to enjoy corridas in any part of the state”. The reference is to the section of the constitution that recognises the right for anyone to have access to culture.
The measures taken by the city, which is controlled by a governing majority from the People’s Party, have led to fierce criticism from the PSOE and the opposition IU party, which has branded the measure “unnecessary, opportunistic and provocative”.
he text put forward by the PP, as well as defining the city “taurine”, defends corridas as “a sign of our country’s identity”, with “important repercussions for culture, economy and tourism” and on “the image of Spain abroad”.
It also underlines that Valladolid is the province with “the oldest breeding of toros bravos in Spain”, at Raso de Portillo, and that the city’s patron saint, San Pedro Regalado, is also the patron saint of toreros.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Andalusia; Law Proposed Against Bullfights
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9 — After Catalonia, it is now the turn of Andalusia, where yesterday a popular law initiative against bullfights was presented. The project is supported by the Commission Investigating Animal Abuse (CIMA) and which calls for a ban on bullfighting. The initiative, which CIMA announced, proposes a modification to the regional law on the protection of animals so that bulls also be included. Catalonia has approved the ban, which will come into force in 2012, and is the second region (following the Canary Islands) to have banned shows which entail the death or maltreatment of animals. In Andalusia, where there is Seville’s historical Plaza de Toros, the initiative is unlikely to succeed. Not only will it need to be signed by at least 75,000 Andalusians within the next four months, but once in Parliament it will be voted against by the majority groups of the PSOE and the PP, which have already announced their position in favour of bullfighting. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Threats of Islamic Attack in Barcelona on Internet
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9 -Barcelona’s Vila Olimpica metro station is in Islamic extremists’ sights. The station was indicated as the target of a mass attack set for September 24, the day of La Merce’, Barcelona’s most important festival. The threat, which appeared on a jihadist forum, was reported today by daily newspaper La Vanguardia. An activist who calls himself Amin al Qaida has formulated the threat, explaining that “the city’s largest zoological park, which will be full of visitors that day, is located at this station.” The idea of an Islamic attack on Barcelona also appeared on the online forum that Faical Erradi runs. Erradi was arrested on August 27 in Poblenou de Benitatxell, in the province of Alicante, on charges of having carried out the online managing of the debates of the Ansar al-Mujahideen, supporters of the mujahideen. Antiterrorism sources, quoted by the daily newspaper, confirm that messages of this type are repeated on other websites and are followed very closely by the security forces in order to verify their dangerousness. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: 80 Child Sex Cases…in Just Three Months
A staggering 80 cases of suspected child sexual exploitation have been reported to Preston detectives in just three months.
A specialist team, which was set up to deal with grooming and child sexual exploitation, has seen a significant rise in the number of referrals since it was formed 18 months ago.
Last week, Mohammed Moosa, 24, of Holmrook Road, Deepdale, Preston, was given a three-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to abduction and sexual activity with a 13-year-old girl.
Moosa was snared after the Deter Team, made up of a team of experts including police, social workers and charities, was put on the case of two young girls who had been reported missing from home.
The team traced Moosa and a second man, Faisal Ghani, who admitted abduction, to a hotel in Blackpool where the girls were found to have had drank large amounts of alcohol and had taken drugs.
The case preceded a further 79 referrals which were taken to the Deter Team between the start of April and the end of June.
Speaking to the Evening Post, a victim’s mother said she had no idea her daughter was being targeted until it was too late.
But DI Jonathan Holmes, head of the public protection unit at Preston police, said having a specialist team means families are now better equipped to see the warning signs.
He said: “We have recently observed an increase in the reporting of this type of crime, which we have attributed to better scanning methods and increasing work with parents.
“We now have a dedicated team to deal with this kind of sexual exploitation.
“Part of that team’s role is to work with partner agencies and to increase awareness in the community of this type of crime and we have seen an increase in reporting of this type of crime as a result.”
Many of the cases which the team has investigated have followed a pattern which sees the offender form a ‘relationship’ with the young victim by showering them with gifts to give them a sense of independence.
This leads to many of them not realising they are being exploited, believing instead they are in a meaningful relationship.
He said: “This type of crime is likely to be under-reported.
“The nature of the crime is such the victims do not appreciate they are being victimised.
“This is because they are being subject to grooming which will take the form of gifts, alcohol, mobile phones or cash.
“The offender often grooms the victim over a lengthy period of time in order to create a situation where the victim is not necessarily aware of what’s happening to them.
“The effect is they themselves may not report any offences because they feel they are in a close relationship with the offender.”
While the number of cases being referred to the team has increased, DI Holmes claimed it was too early to say whether it is a major issue.
He said: “The Deter Team is still establishing itself but in three or four years’ time we will be able to see where reporting is.
“It is a bit early to say how big a problem it is, but we are certainly getting increasing reports and are keen to take positive action against offenders whenever we get that information.”
While many victims initially may not realise they are being abused, DI Holmes said the offenders should not be regarded in a different light to any other child sex offender.
He said: “These people are sex offenders. In my view, for an adult to have sex with an adolescent is paedophilic behaviour. It is done through a grooming process.
“Typically, they might be in their early teens. Mohammed Moosa is 24 and he was having sex with a 13-year-old.”
Charity Crop (Coalition for the Removal of Pimping) is one of the groups which works with the Deter Team to support the parents of child sex victims and it has dealt with more than 500 cases in the past five years.
Cat Tatman, a parent support worker, said the Deter Team means Preston is in a better position than many parts of the country, but there is a long way to go.
She said: “We are still at the point where we are seeing the tip of the iceberg.
“If you have one focused effort, as in Lancashire, the perpetrators are often one or two steps ahead and often push their operations out of the county boundaries.
“In Derby, they (police) were getting very good at picking kids up in the city centre, so they were moving out to Derbyshire.
“It is certainly not a new problem, but it is something we are just becoming aware of the level and extent of it.”
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Official, Gay Pride in Belgrade on October 10
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 7 — It is official news, the new attempt to set up a Gay pride event in Belgrade has been scheduled for October 10. Last year the event was cancelled in the wake of threats of violence by right wing radicals and homophobic ultranationalists. This year the Gay Pride event, organised by three homosexual NGOs, unlike last year, will benefit from the political support of government leaders, starting from president Boris Tadic and minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic.
Last year the event, scheduled to take place on September 20, was cancelled at the last moment because of threats and attacks by a group of homophobic ultranationalists and right wing radicals. The organisers had rejected a government proposal to hold the event in the outskirts of Belgrade instead of in the city centre, and criticised the authorities for their inability to guarantee security. The whole matter damaged the image of Serbia, which poses itself as a democratic and tolerant society, heading for full membership of the European Union.
The first homosexual rally had been organised in Belgrade in 2001, but was shut down ahead of time because of violent acts perpetrated against parade members by extremists and ultranationalists.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
We Won’t Let Terrorism Stop Us From Appeasing the Terrorists
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived in Washington D.C. over the bodies of four of his citizens and one unborn child, murdered by Islamic terrorists. The media had spent a busy two days worrying that the murders might in some way interrupt the latest phase of the tragic farce euphemistically referred to as, “The Peace Process”. Luckily for the terrorists, who are the sole and only beneficiaries of these and all other negotiations, killing Israelis did not prevent the Israelis from showing up at the negotiating table anyway.
[…]
A month before she and her husband were murdered, Talia Imas understood clearly why it would happen. Negotiating with Muslim terrorists is a sign of weakness. And weakness means the time is ripe for attack.
In November 2009, the Israeli authorities took away Yitzchak Imas’ weapons permit, because of his participation in the Temple Institute, a peaceful organization that attempts to preserve the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount, the site of two temples, which Muslims hijacked in order to build their Dome of the Rock. Yitzchak led groups to the Temple Mount to remind them that the site is part of the Jewish cultural and religious heritage. An act that upset and enraged the Muslims. To the Israeli authorities that made him an extremist, as anyone who upsets Muslims is considered to be an extremist.
Yitzchak Imas was disarmed and left unable to defend his pregnant wife and the other passengers in his car. Because by upsetting Muslims he had demonstrated that he was an “extremists” and had to be disarmed. Similarly by upsetting the Muslim world, Israel has demonstrated to the international community of diplomats and appeasers that it is an “extremist state” and must be disarmed as well. The same cowardly Dhimmi psychology that cost Yitzchak Imas and his wife and their unborn child their lives—is driving Israel, and any country targeted by Muslims over the abyss.
Four days before her murder, Talia Imas recorded her thoughts on watching a documentary on the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, and on seeing the last remains of the Jewish towns and villages there.
“Except for mosques in which there are Islamic Universities, nothing is left. In place of all the towns, gardens, greenhouses, there is only sand, sand and sand. There is not even a sign of the life that was formerly there. Only at the end, the photographer reported that he had found the gray skeleton of a building, but he could not identify it. He sent me the photos and my breath stopped. It had been the synagogue in Neve Dekalim.
[…]
That same day Yitzchak made plans to lead a group back to the Temple Mount in September. Four days later he and his wife were murdered. When the Muslim terrorists opened fire on his car and returned to finish them off, he could not fire a shot in self-defense. His weapons had been taken away.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Race to Nukes ‘Accelerates’ Because of Obama Policy
Presidential disarmament plans ‘have had exact opposite effect’
The danger that someone in the Middle East or elsewhere would obtain and use a nuclear weapon is higher now that President Obama has taken a series of actions toward his goal of global nuclear disarmament, according to a new analysis from the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.
A. Savyon, director of MEMRI’s Iranian Media Project, wrote that Obama’s efforts have produced the opposite of what they apparently intended.
“The actions in recent months by the Obama administration in nuclear affairs, aimed at advancing a vision and a policy of global nuclear disarmament, have had the exact opposite effect,” said the report released this week on MEMRI’s website.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Explosive Device Found, Defused at Hydropower Plant in Russia
An explosive device was detected and defused in the turbine room at the Irganaiskaya hydropower plant in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, regional news services reported. A fire broke out at the same plant earlier.
According to law enforcement officials, the explosive device was found late Wednesday in the same area where a fire had started Tuesday. Some reports indicate that the makeshift explosive device, which reportedly was equipped with a remote detonator, was discovered while a fire drill was being observed at the 400-MW hydroelectric power plant.
The fire that flared up late Tuesday evening resulted in no casualties, and there were no power limitations for consumers, according to wire reports.
After the explosive device was discovered Wednesday, a robot was used to defuse it, reports indicate. A local police source earlier said the explosives and the fire were not connected. Officials told wire services that the fire occurred for technical reasons and was not the result of a terrorist attack.
In July, two security guards were killed in a raid on a hydropower plant in southern Russia in which attackers detonated bombs that disabled the plant, wire services reported. RIA Novosti news service reported that two militants suspected of being among the group of gunmen that attacked the plant were later killed by police.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Leaders Warn Against Koran Burning Plan by US Pastor
[A short video clip first with Hamad Karzai and then President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia. One minute in the President of Indonesia
seems to say he wants the “American government to take ‘Sharia action’
to prevent and stop such uncivilised acts”.]
Thousands of protesters have held anti-American rallies in provinces across Afghanistan over plans by a US church to burn copies of the Koran.
President Hamid Karzai said the Florida church’s plan, now on hold, had been an insult to Islam’s followers.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia also spoke out, urging the US goverment to take steps to prevent the act taking place.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
One Dead & 11 Injured in Afghanistan’s Protests
The pastor of a small Florida church said on Friday he does not plan to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and hopes a Muslim imam will organize a meeting with those planning an Islamic center near the site of the New York attacks.
“Right now we have plans not to do it,” Pastor Terry Jones, of Gainesville, Florida, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“We believe that the imam is going to keep his word, what he promised us yesterday … We believe that we are, as he said, and promised, going to meet with the imam in New York tomorrow.”
Jones had threatened earlier to “rethink” his decision to abandon plans for a weekend Quran-burning event that has drawn global outrage.
Hours after calling off the much-criticized ceremony to mark Saturday’s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Jones rowed back and said it had merely been suspended.
“Right now we are just putting a temporary hold upon our planned event,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had called the pastor of the tiny evangelical church, the Dove World Outreach Center, to express “grave concern” that the Quran burning “would put the lives of our forces at risk, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Jones later told journalists outside his church that he was calling off his plan, which had caused worldwide alarm and raised tensions over this year’s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
He confirmed Gates’ call but linked his decision to what he said was an agreement by Muslim leaders — which they denied — to relocate an Islamic cultural center and mosque planned close to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.
The proposed location has drawn opposition from many Americans who say it is insensitive to families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
“The imam has agreed to move the mosque, we have agreed to cancel our event on Saturday,” Jones said.
Confusion over mosque “deal”
He said he would fly to New York on Saturday with Imam Muhammad Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida to meet the New York imam at the center of the controversy, Feisal Abdul Rauf.
But Rauf said in a statement he was surprised by the announcement. “I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans. However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri. I am surprised by their announcement,” he said.
“We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony,” he said.
Sharif el-Gamal, the project developer for the New York mosque, said in a statement: “It is untrue that the community center known as park 51 in lower Manhattan is being moved. The project will proceed as planned. What is being reported in the media today is a falsehood.”
Musri conceded to reporters: “This is not a done deal yet. This is a brokered deal,” he said. He said he had no fixed time for him and Jones to meet Rauf in New York.
International condemnation
Earlier, world leaders had joined Obama in denouncing Jones’ plan to burn copies of the Islamic holy book on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The international police agency Interpol warned governments worldwide of an increased risk of terrorist attacks if the burning went ahead, and the U.S. State Department issued a warning to Americans traveling overseas.
Jones has said Jesus would approve of his plan for “Burn a Quran Day,” which he called a reprisal for Islamist terrorism.
The United States has powerful legal protections for the right to free speech and there was little law enforcement authorities could do to stop Jones from going ahead, other than citing him under local bylaws against public burning.
Many people, both conservative and liberal, dismissed the threat as an attention-seeking stunt by the preacher.
“This is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda,” Obama said in an ABC television interview.
“You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities.”
The U.S. president, who has sought to improve relations with Muslims worldwide, spoke out in an effort to stop Jones from going ahead and head off growing anger among many Muslims.
Insults to Islam, no matter their size or scope, have often been met with huge protests and violence around the world. One such outburst was sparked when a Danish newspaper published a cartoon mocking the Prophet Mohammad in 2005.
Pentagon spokesman Morrell said earlier in the day that there was intense debate within the administration over whether to call Jones. Officials feared of setting a precedent that could inspire copy-cat “extremists.”
Jones’ plan was condemned by foreign governments, international church groups, U.S. religious and political leaders and military commanders.
It also threatened to undermine Obama’s efforts to reach out to the world’s more than one billion Muslims at a time when he is trying to advance the Middle East peace process and build solidarity against Iran over its disputed nuclear program.
One Afghan dead and 11 inured in anti-Quran-burning protests
One protester was shot dead and several were wounded outside a German-run NATO base in northeast Afghanistan and NATO said it was investigating. Demonstrations later spread to the capital, Kabul, and at least four other provinces.
Officials said the German-run base was singled out after German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday paid tribute to freedom of speech at a ceremony for a Dane whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad sparked deadly protests five years ago.
Thousands of Afghans hurled rocks at a NATO military outpost on Friday as fury built across the Muslim world against a U.S. pastor’s threats to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11. Officials say at least 11 people have been injured.
In a turbulent start to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims worldwide mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, leaders of countries including Afghanistan and Indonesia issued dire warnings against the provocative act.
It was unclear if radical Florida evangelist Terry Jones had finally decided to call off the event, which he had planned for Saturday’s ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in protest at the “evil of Islam”.
“We have heard that in the U.S., a pastor has decided to insult Qurans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai said.
“By burning the Quran they cannot harm it. The Quran is in the hearts and minds of one and a half billion people. (But) insulting the Quran is an insult to nations,” Karzai said in an Eid message.
Protestors threw rocks at the small German-held base in the remote town of Fayzabad in northeast Afghanistan, after traditional prayers for Eid, police said.
“They numbered in their thousands, it is a big crowd,” provincial deputy police chief Sayed Hassan Jafary told AFP.
“People almost from all city mosques gathered,” he said, adding that the crowd chanted “death to America.”
In neighboring Pakistan, hundreds rallied in the central city of Multan and the southern metropolis of Karachi, torching U.S. flags and calling for Jones to be hanged.
“We have heard that they have postponed the plans to burn the Holy Quran, but it is not enough. We will continue to raise our voice so that it never happens again,” cleric Mufti Hidayatullah Pasroori said in Multan.
In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, also saw protests.
“This threatens peace and international security. This is something that endangers harmony among religious people,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a nationally televised address.
“I’m of course aware of the reported cancellation of the deplorable act by Terry Jones. However, none of us can be complacent until such a despicable idea is totally extinguished,” he said.
Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned the fraught relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds would enter “a very dangerous chapter” if the burning went ahead.
“I hope the pastor will have a change of heart because by that single act of abhorrence… it will ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly,” he told reporters.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called Jones an “insane lunatic” and the Quran “our constitution.”
The imam of Mecca, Saleh bin Humaid, said Jones’s threat was “a form of terrorism and an incitement to terrorism”.
Hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his part said the plan to burn the Quran was a “Zionist plot” that would end up in the speedy “annihilation” of Israel.
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric warns against Quran burning
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric warned of “terrible” consequences if a Florida church followed through on plans, now apparently suspended, to burn hundreds of Qurans, a statement from his office said Friday.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on Muslims to exercise restraint in their reaction to the “shameful” plans for a mass immolation of the Muslim holy book on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“This shameful behavior does not correspond with the responsibilities of religious leadership, which are to confirm the values of peaceful cohabitation based on mutual respect between people of different faiths,” he said in a statement released by his office in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.
“I call on the concerned parties in the United States to stop this horrible act because if it happens, it will have terrible consequences,” Sistani said.
“The Marjaiya (the Shiite spiritual leadership in Iraq) denounce this aggression against the Quran and call on Muslims to exercise maximum restraint, and for them not to harm Christians,” he said.
Sistani, who heads the four-person Marjaiya, is revered by his followers in Shiite-majority Iraq and his stature dwarfs that of any politician here, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite.
Quran burning threat ignites debate on media coverage
The Florida pastor’s threat to burn the Quran on September 11 has sparked a soul-searching debate in the media over the amount of coverage being devoted to the deliberately provocative event.
Before Pastor Jones suspended his plan to set fire to the Quran, Fox News said it would not cover the stunt, making the Rupert Murdoch-owned television network the first major news outlet to turn its back on the story.
And the U.S. news agency the Associated Press, citing a policy of “not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend,” said it would not distribute images that show Qurans being burned.
“This is really about just using some judgment,” said Michael Clemente, senior vice president at Fox News.
“He’s one guy in the middle of the woods with 50 people in his congregation who’s decided to try, I gather, to bring some attention to himself by saying he’s going to burn a Quran,” Clemente told The Baltimore Sun. “Well, you know what, there are many more important things going on in the world than that.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed hope during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations this week that the news media would ignore Jones’s book-burning “as an act of patriotism.”
Clinton’s tongue-in-cheek remarks about media restraint triggered laughter from the crowd but the potential for violence stemming from the actions of a fringe religious group did provoke a bout of self-examination in the media.
“What would happen if the media just didn’t cover the Quran-burning preacher?” Garrett Graff, editor of The Washingtonian magazine, asked on his Twitter feed. “Not every nut deserves 15 minutes.”
“The story of this kooky pastor seems to me to be substantially overplayed, with potentially dangerous consequences,” The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz said on his blog, “Media Notes.”
“Why does the world need to follow the antics of one obscure book-burner in Florida?” Kurtz asked. “You can say we’re just covering the story, but our combined megaphone has made it into an international story.”
Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Boston’s Northeastern University, noted that the Quran burning coverage coincided with tensions over plans to build an Islamic community center near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York.
News organizations that have been “pounding away week after week about the Ground Zero mosque have some complicity” in turning the Quran burning plan into front-page headlines, Kennedy told AFP.
“Maybe this minister would have gone ahead and held a Quran-burning anyway,” he said. “But I think all of the hateful, not to mention inaccurate, public discussion about the Islamic center near Ground Zero helped to create an atmosphere in which this Quran-burning suddenly seemed, at least to a few people, like a real good idea.
“I don’t think that the media ought to ignore it,” Kennedy added, but the coverage should be “proportionate.”
Mike Thomas, a columnist for Florida’s Orlando Sentinel newspaper, said the media bears responsibility for promoting a “sad-sack preacher, lucky to draw 50 people” to his church into an international figure.
“I ask you: If a sad little man burns some Qurans in the woods, and the media aren’t there to film it, is it news?” he asked. “Of course not.”
“We could help head off such future nonsense if we folded up the circus tent and left Jones alone with his blowtorch and 30 followers,” he said. “Without us, this book burning would be little more than a grainy video on YouTube.”
Time magazine’s television critic James Poniewozik said the Quran burning story however had generated a momentum that meant it can no longer be ignored.
“This is, unfortunately, one of those cases in which, by having become news, the story is now making legitimate news,” Poniewozik wrote.
“World leaders and military leaders have weighed in, there is real international attention to the story and the prospect of real-world, non-virtual protest and unrest if the burning goes on,” he said.
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the media attention on Pastor Jones has ended up giving “a lot of weight to an insignificant action.”
“That’s what he he wants. He wants this attention,” he said. “I think in a way he succeeded, he succeeded in distracting the media from the main issues.
“Maybe this is a teachable moment for all of us,” Awad added.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Military Destroys Soldier’s Bibles
The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty — including those based in places like Afghanistan — from trying to convert people to another religion.
Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said “I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera’s clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NoKo: Setting the Stage for a Successor
Here’s another nominee for “most under-reported story” during the month of August. It received scant attention in the U.S. press, but it has vast implications for our defense policies and diplomatic efforts in northeast Asia.
In case you haven’t guessed, the event we refer to is Kim Jong-il’s recent visit to China. The reclusive North Korean leader rarely leaves his homeland, fearing a possible coup in his absence. When he travels abroad, it’s typically a short trip to the PRC, always by train. The Dear Leader apparently figures its harder to blow up a train than shoot down a plane, although there was a major blast at a rail crossing near the DPRK-China border in 2004, just hours after Mr. Kim passed through the area.
So, it was big news when Kim Jong-il traveled to Beijing earlier this year, and arguably, an even bigger story when he returned to China late last month. The reason? To discuss plans for transferring power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.
[…]
There are also rumors that the younger Kim accompanied his father on the latest China trip, but those claims have not been confirmed. Kim Jong-il’s attempt to transfer legitimacy (and power) to his son may also provide clues regarding the health of the North Korean leader. He suffered a serious stroke in August 2008, and remained out of public view for months. Putting Kim Jong-un on the “fast track” for leadership may indicate that his father’s health is worsening and Kim Jong-il wants to prepare his son for leadership before he dies or becomes incapacitated.
But it will take more than public proclamations and a nod from Beijing to complete the transfer of power…
[…]
| [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Marines Storm Pirate-Held Ship Off Somalia
U.S. Marine commandos stormed a pirate-held cargo ship off the Somalia coast Thursday, reclaiming control and taking nine prisoners without firing a shot in the first such boarding raid by the international anti-piracy flotilla, U.S. Navy officials said.
The mission — using small craft to reach the deck of German-owned vessel as the crew huddled in a safe room below — ranks among the most dramatic high seas confrontations with pirates by the task force created to protect shipping lanes off lawless Somalia.
The crew managed to kill the engines before taking refuge in an panic room-style chamber, leaving the ship adrift and the pirates so frustrated they started damaging equipment after hijacking the vessel Wednesday, Navy officials and the ship’s operator say.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Aliens Less Interested in the U.S. Than Before
…two quite different studies of alien populations were issued within 24 hours of each other, each showing that migrants appear to be less interested in the U.S. than formerly.
The more numerically significant of the two, the report of the Pew Hispanic Center, as noted in a posting by Mark Krikorian, estimated that the number of illegal aliens in the country had dropped to 11.1 million from 12.0 million two years earlier. That’s a decrease, over two years, of 7.5 percent.
Krikorian said that the lagging economy, and the more vigorous levels of enforcement, until recently, led to the decline.
The more numerically precise of the two, dealing with the much smaller population of asylum applicants, also showed a decline over time. Applications pushed to the point of decision fell about 17 percent between 2008 and the projected totals for 2010. The total number of these decisions made by immigration judges fell from 24,028 in 2008 to a projected 19,937 for this about-to-be-finished fiscal year. (The number of decisions relates roughly to the number of applications.)
The asylum study, based on records pried out of the Justice Department through a FOIA filing, was made by TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse), a program run by Syracuse University. This was TRAC’s fifth annual report along these lines, and is available here [http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/240/].
The TRAC report did not discuss why the number of application-based decisions had dropped so sharply, but did note that the number of decisions had fallen from 35,782 in 2003 to the current 19,937. (My sense is that the slowing economy must have had something to do with this trend, though that may not be a politically correct approach to an analysis of the size of a refugee-like population.)
[…]
| [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus: 16 Per Cent of Island’s Population is Foreign
(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, SEPTEMBER 8 — Cyprus has the third highest percentage of foreign citizens in the European Union, with a total of 128,000 according to a Eurostat survey released yesterday. Of those, 78,000 or 9.8% were from other EU member states and the remaining 6.3%, or some 50,000 are from non-EU countries. The country with the highest percentage of foreigners is Luxembourg, where 44% of residents are foreign, followed by Latvia (18%) and then Cyprus and Estonia in equal third place with 16%. This is almost 10% higher than the EU average of 6.4% (31.9 million in total).(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
From Sanctuary to Safer City
The police union in Houston, a former sanctuary city, is taking a look at the experience of Phoenix, which two years ago implemented a policy to allow its officers to call ICE to report suspected illegal aliens who were connected to other crimes. The implementation of this policy, which is similar to the one signed into law by Arizona governor Jan Brewer and later blocked by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in response to a Justice Department lawsuit, has contributed to a steady decline in violent and property crime rates in Phoenix, without generating a single complaint of civil rights violations or racial profiling, according to officer Mark Spencer. Spencer is president of the Phoenix police union and recently gave a presentation to officers in Houston.
Until 2008, Phoenix was considered by many to be a sanctuary for illegal aliens. The city’s policy, reportedly the brain child of then-chief Harold Hurtt, prohibited police officers from contacting ICE about a suspected illegal alien unless the alien had committed a serious crime. According to Spencer, “Basically a body in the street at the hands of an illegal alien was the cost of a police phone call to ICE.” Under the new policy, implemented in March, 2008 as a result of pressure from the police union and the public after the killing of a Scottsdale police officer by a previously deported illegal alien, officers are allowed to make a discretionary phone call to ICE if a person they encounter in connection with a crime is suspected of being an illegal alien. More than 3,000 illegal aliens have been referred to ICE since the policy was adopted. According to Spencer, Phoenix’s experience was a successful test-drive for SB 1070, and he hopes it will inspire other police agencies.
Spencer’s presentation provides a graphic description of the public safety problems caused by large-scale illegal immigration through Arizona and offers statistics to illustrate the crime problems in Phoenix that are attributed to illegal aliens (which go far beyond the issue of alien smuggling-related kidnappings).
[…]
| [Return to headlines] |
Gun Dealer Gets Prison for Selling to Illegal Immigrant; Illegal ‘Middle Man’ Not Charged
Gun rights advocates are up in arms that a Texas gun dealer was sentenced to six months in prison for selling a firearm to an illegal immigrant, but a “middle-man” who bought the gun for the immigrant — and who was in the U.S. illegally himself, but had a valid driver’s license — was never arrested, charged or deported in the case.
Paul Copeland, 56, a Vietnam veteran, was sentenced to prison time and two years probation in federal court last week for selling a gun to an undocumented alien, Hipolito Aviles, at the Texas Gun Show in Austin in January.
But Aviles wasn’t the man who handed Copeland the money for the gun. That man was Leonel Huerta Sr., who presented as identification the valid Texas driver’s license he had obtained before his visa expired in 2007.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Immigrants as Pets
[Video]
I was intrigued by a recent article on GoV which mentioned that PC Swedes seem to treat immigrants as if they were their pets. This TV advert seems to me to do just that. In segment #2 a culture enricher is presented, and he tells us in English that he gets loads of sex since he immigrated, and his sex object (wife?), blonde beauty, quickly confirms. The enricher himself is almost a parody, long haired, silly hat, and does not appear as a capable father of the two half breed children he is understood to have fathered with the blonde, especially considering that he hasn’t been able to master the native language in the meantime, although the children appear several years old. In short, this TV ad uses the ‘immigrant as pet’ as a ticket to trendyness.
| — Hat tip: mriggs | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration Hostility Widespread in U.S. And 5 Largest European Countries
NEW YORK, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ — A new Financial Times/Harris Poll finds that immigration is widely unpopular in the United States and in all of the five largest countries in Europe. The survey asked about immigration generally and not about illegal immigration. Majorities in four of the countries and pluralities in the other two believe that immigration makes it harder to find new jobs. Majorities in three countries and over 40% in the other three believe it has a bad effect on education. Majorities in four of the countries and 40% or more in the other two think it has a bad effect on health care services.
Americans, even though they live in what has been described as a nation of immigrants are not, in general, any less hostile to immigration than Europeans.
These are some of the findings of a Financial Times/Harris Poll conducted online by Harris InteractiveÂ(r) among 6,098 adults aged 16-64 within France (1,004), Germany (1,036), Great Britain (1,099), Spain (1,032), U.S. (989) and adults aged 18-64 in Italy (948) between August 18 and 25, 2010.
The main findings of this new poll include:
- Majorities in Britain and Spain, and large minorities in the U.S., France, Italy , and Germany think that immigration has a bad impact on the economy;
- Majorities in the U.S., Britain, Italy, and Spain believe that immigration makes it harder to find a new job, as do 45% in France and 46% in Germany;
- While most people who are working do not believe that immigration has had any effect on their pay, those who think they are paid less greatly outnumber those who say they are paid more;
- Only minorities, between 13% in France and 40% in Italy, believe that immigration has made it more affordable to hire services such as cleaners, builders or plumbers;
- Majorities in the U.S., Britain, France and Spain and over 40% in Italy and Germany believe that immigration makes the level of health care services worse; and,
- Majorities in the U.S., Britain and Germany believe that immigration has made public education worse, as do over 40% in France, Italy and Spain.
Overall, many people in all six countries believe that the current level of immigration makes their countries worse places to live in , varying from 64% in Britain, 60% in Spain, and 57% in Italy to 49% in the U.S., 44% in Germany, and 43% in France.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Institute Warns on Possible ‘Ghettoisation’ of Irish School System
THE CHILDREN of immigrants are more likely to attend schools designated as disadvantaged, which could lead to further “ghettoisation” of the Irish school system, a leading think tank has warned.
A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute found high levels of “clustering” of immigrant students in certain primary schools, while other primary schools had no immigrants at all.
About 44 per cent of primary schools have no immigrant students, while almost one in 10 primary schools has more than 20 per cent immigrant pupils. The level of “clustering” is less pronounced at second level, where 90 per cent of schools record immigrant students, says the report.
It says clustering is more pronounced in the primary sector because schools tend to draw pupils from their local area, while secondary schools have a wider catchment area. The study says many of the enrolment criteria used by schools tend to favour settled communities, particularly where parents are required to sign up long in advance, and preference is given to the siblings of those already in school.
This “raises concerns as to whether certain groups of students, including immigrants, are concentrated in particular school settings”, says the institute.
The report found there are 45,700 immigrant pupils at primary level out of a total student population of 476,000. It estimates there are 18,000 immigrant pupils at second level out of a total student population of 327,000.
It says immigrants are more likely to attend schools designated as “disadvantaged”, which are less likely to be oversubscribed.
“The differences between DEIS [schools designated as disadvantaged] and non-DEIS schools can be quite stark, and imply an increasing ghettoisation of those schools designated as disadvantaged.
“Because of existing social disparities in processes of school choice, we expect existing lines of inequality are likely to affect the distribution of immigrant students across schools,” says the report.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Rom: EP Resolution; Besson, France Does Not Stop Expulsions
(ANSAmed) — BUCHAREST, SEPTEMBER 9 — French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said today during his visit to Bucharest that “it is not even a point of discussion” for France to suspend the expulsions of Roma, as the European Parliament resolution that was passed today asks. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ban on Desecrating Terrorist Flags Challenged
Lawsuit filed on behalf of students in anti-terror protest
[This is a dated article but seemed too important to pass up. — Z]
A lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defense Fund is targeting the speech codes imposed on students by the university system in California after several students were prosecuted for the “desecration” of flags used by terrorist groups.
[Does anyone care to speculate where SF State University stands on burning the American flag? — Z]
“America’s colleges and universities should recognize the constitutional rights of Christian and politically conservative students just as they do for all other students,” said David French, senior legal counsel for the ADF and chief of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.
“Officials at San Francisco State are required to respect the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to free speech in exactly these kinds of situations,” he said.
As WND reported earlier, the university decided — after months of pressure — not to punish College Republicans who had been accused of desecrating the name of Allah by stepping on makeshift Hezbollah and Hamas flags at an anti-terrorism rally.
Led by the non-profit advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the public and some media outlets had called on the school to “uphold the students’ constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression.”
“We are relieved that SFSU has come to its senses and recognized that it cannot punish students for constitutionally protected expression,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said at the time. “But the fact remains that the university should never have investigated or tried them in the first place. This was a protected act of political protest, and it is impossible to believe the university did not know that from the start.”
The trouble began at an Oct. 17 anti-terrorism rally in which the students stepped on butcher paper painted to resemble the flags of the Middle East terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. The College Republicans say they simply copied the script from an image on the Internet and didn’t know it bore the name of Allah in Arabic script.
A student who is not a member of the club had filed a complaint with university officials after the protest.
The student claimed that the Republican students engaged in “acts of incivility” and “intimidation” and created a “hostile environment” by publicly walking over the terrorist flags.
“I believe that the complaint is [about] the desecration of Allah,” a university official told The San Francisco Chronicle.
[And Allah’s laws, through the Qur’an, are not an abject desecration of human life? — Z]
SFSU President Robert A. Corrigan eventually wrote that the Student Organization Hearing Panel “unanimously concluded that the College Republicans organization had not violated the Student Code of Conduct and that there were no grounds to support the student complaint lodged against them..”
But French said the speech codes led to a “burdensome, unnecessary investigation and five months of ridicule and harassment for these students,” even though they did nothing but exercise their constitutional rights.
The ADF lawsuit now asks the court to strike down the ill-defined speech code policies of SFSU and the entire California State University system at issue in the investigation.
“The university could not even find enough evidence to find them guilty of any wrongdoing. It’s time for these speech codes to go so that this doesn’t happen to these students or any other students ever again,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Conformity Masquerading as Diversity
For more than a generation now, one of the most powerful weapons used by the Liberal-Left in American politics is to justify differential treatment of citizens, referred to by the euphemism of “affirmative action.” The overriding consideration used to expound on the need for such differential treatment in hiring for jobs in teaching, government, and large sectors of the private sector has been the acquisition of DIVERSITY.
Three times, this was the answer I received from an “insider” involved in the decision to hire someone else when explaining that, although I was indeed the most “qualified candidate” for the position (two academic teaching jobs and one as the editor of a periodical), the body involved in making the decision was under pressure to conform to government guidelines (as opposed to “ rigid quotas,” they were quick to add) regarding diversity which meant that the candidate hired (a woman and two members of “racial minorities”) would more adequately reflect the student population at a community college, a university, the readership of the periodical and/or the “commitment” to demonstrate DIVERSITY. Suffice it to say that this “desirable characteristic” of the ideal candidate was not part of the original job description.
Why? How did this issue become the touchstone of hundreds of legal cases? How is it that this holy mantra of DIVERSITY is so conspicuously absent in the recent debate over the appointment of Elena Kagan for Supreme Court Justice?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Conservative Recruiters Frog-Marched Off Campus
Administrators revoke permission, have police provide escort away from students
Officials at a Florida college have ordered police to escort off campus several people who were trying to recruit members for a conservative student organization and who had obtained verbal permission to be at the location.
Officials with Young Americans for Freedom told WND the situation happened Tuesday on the campus of Palm Beach State College, where Student Activities Administrator Olivia Ford-Morris “was visibly disturbed” by promotional literature being distributed by the group, including materials published by the the Heritage Foundation critical of President Obama’s policies.
The ejection came even though Ford-Morris had granted student Christina Beattie permission to promote the organization on campus, the group said.
[…]
But campus officials then “approached the group and after seeing information about the organization and its ideals criticizing Barack Obama’s economic policy, Ms. Ford-Morris was visible disturbed by the material presented,” the YAF report said.
The officials called campus police to make sure the group was removed from the campus, and Ford-Morris denied having talked with Beattie.
“I was shocked and offended by her dishonesty. She outright denied giving me permission to table at club rush simply because she disagreed with my beliefs,” said Beattie. “The fact is, she was using her administrative power to silence the conservative opposition.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Labour to Enforce Quota System to Ensure Third of Shadow Cabinet Are Women
Labour MPs last night voted to introduce a controversial quota system to ensure that almost a third of the party’s new shadow cabinet are women.
The party decided to introduce a minimum threshold of 31.5 per cent, which is a partial endorsement of controversial proposals by acting leader Harriet Harman, who wanted at least half of its senior figures to be female.
There are 19 members of the current shadow cabinet, apart from the leader, deputy leader and members of the House of Lords, suggesting that around six places will in future be reserved for women, even if they receive fewer votes than their male rivals.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Making Lighting More Efficient Could Increase Energy Use, Not Decrease it
Solid-state lighting, a souped-up version of the light-emitting diodes that shine from the faces of digital clocks and on the front panels of audio and video equipment, promises illumination for a fraction of the energy used by incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.
If history is an indicator, however, the consequence may not just be more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting, says The Economist.
The light perceived by the human eye is measured in units called lumen-hours — about the amount produced by burning a candle for an hour.
In 1700 a typical Briton consumed 580 lumen-hours in the course of a year, from candles, wood and oil.
Today, burning electric lights, he uses about 46 megalumen-hours — almost 100,000 times as much.
Jeff Tsao of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and his colleagues predict that the introduction of solid-state lighting could increase the consumption of light by a factor of ten within two decades.
Source: The Economist www.economist.com/node/16886228
| [Return to headlines] |
The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage
Michelle Malkin
[We didn’t start the fire]
At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways.
Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah’s avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch.
The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. A Kashmiri law enforcement official later concluded the protests were “premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”
Indeed, art and graphics have an uncanny way of vitiating the Muslim world’s atmosphere.
In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company’s “Air” logo looked like the Arabic script for “Allah…
| [Return to headlines] |
The Real 2001: Scientists Teach Robots How to Trick Humans
It sounds like something straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But, in a chilling echo of the computer Hal from the iconic film, scientists have developed robots that are able to deceive humans and even hide from their enemies.
The team developed computer algorithms that would let a robot ‘decide’ whether it should deceive a human or another robot and gave it strategies to give it the best chance of not being found out.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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