Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged; Remains Ready to Buy Up Debt
The Federal Reserve on Tuesday left benchmark interest rates unchanged and announced no new steps to speed the plodding economic recovery, though it reaffirmed that it could start buying vast quantities of government debt if unemployment does not improve. Led by its chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed’s policy-setting committee postponed a pivotal decision on whether to begin a big new push to stimulate the economy by creating money and buying large amounts of Treasury securities, a strategy known as quantitative easing.
In its announcement, the Fed said it saw the pace of economic growth slowing, and little to no evidence that inflation would pose a problem in the near future, justifying a continuation of exceptionally low interest rates.
| [Return to headlines] |
Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences
When judges in Missouri sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the state, says the New York Times.
For someone convicted of endangering the welfare of a child, for instance, a judge might now learn that a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770.
[…]
…The practice has touched off a sharp debate, says the Times. Proponents consider it an overdue tool that will force judges to ponder alternatives to prison more seriously. But critics dismiss the idea as unseemly…
The shift here comes at a dire time for criminal justice budgets around the country:…
- Michigan has closed prisons.
- Arizona considered putting its prison system under private control.
- California has searched for ways to shrink its incarcerated population.
Numerous legal experts on sentencing issues say Missouri’s new policy makes sense. Economic considerations play roles in all sorts of legal decisions, says Rachel E. Barkow, a law professor at New York University, so why not let judges understand the cost of their choices?
Others, like Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, argue that Missouri’s plan counts certain costs but fails to measure others — the societal price, for instance, if someone not incarcerated commits another crime…
| [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama: The Man Who Would be God?
A long-forgotten interview from 2004 provides insight
When writing about Barack Obama’s religious orientation recently, I pointed out that while I do believe he favors Muslim over Western culture, bowing before another — even God — is above his humility grade. I further mentioned that in keeping with this self-centeredness, Obama is (like all leftists) someone who denies moral reality.
Ironically, after penning my piece, I became aware of an interview Obama once gave — one quite relevant to the topic at hand. It was conducted in 2004 by Chicago Sun Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani while Obama was running for the U.S. Senate, and it offers great insight into the nature of Obama’s “faith.” I think you’ll be interested to hear what he had to say.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CBN Exclusive: The Muslim Brotherhood in America
From Erick Stakelbeck:
I wanted to direct you to a new special edition of my show, Stakelbeck on Terror.
I’m joined by an expert panel in discussing a jihadist organization what many consider the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security: The Muslim Brotherhood.
Watch as former FBI special agent John Guandolo, ex-CIA officer Brian Fairchild and leading investigative journalist Patrick Poole break down the Brotherhood’s history, its goals and its infiltration of leading U.S. government and educational institutions.
It’s an in-depth discussion on the Brotherhood’s American nexus that you won’t see on any other network. Watch at the above link.
Here is a breakdown of the segments:
Segment 1: The Brotherhood’s History (top of the show)
Segment 2: The Brotherhood’s American Network (5:52 into the show)
Segment 3: The Brotherhood on Campus and Beyond (11:22 into the show)
Segment 4: The Brotherhood: An Insurgency with Nazi Ties (17:22 into the show)
Segment 5: The Brotherhood’s Leading American Front Group: CAIR (22:20 into the show)
And stay tuned to the October 4th edition of Stakelbeck on Terror for the conclusion of my discussion on the Muslim Brotherhood: we’ve established that there is a problem. Now what is the solution?
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Genocide Wiped Out Native American Population
Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.
Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that’s left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.
The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest.
The entire assemblage comprises 14,882 human skeletal fragments, as well as the mutilated remains of dogs and other animals killed at the massacre site — Sacred Ridge, southwest of Durango, Colo.
Based on the archaeological findings, which include two-headed axes that tested positive for human blood, co-authors Jason Chuipka and James Potter believe the genocide occurred as a result of conflict between different Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ethnic groups.
“It was entirely an inside job,” Chuipka, an archaeologist with Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants, told Discovery News.
“The type of event at Sacred Ridge is on the far end of the conflict spectrum where social relations completely melt down,” he added, mentioning that the Sacred Ridge “occupants were targeted to take the blame.”
Chuipka and Potter analyzed objects excavated at Sacred Ridge, which was a multiple habitation site of 22 pit structures, some of which may have operated as communal ritual facilities for a population that extended beyond the immediate site inhabitants. This suggests the residents at one point exerted some social control in the area.
The unearthed bones and artifacts indicate that when the violence took place, men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits. In some cases, heads, hands and feet appear to have been removed as trophies for the killers. The attackers then removed belongings out of the structures and set the roofs on fire.
“I think that the major event was preceded by social stress within the community that may have been exacerbated by a period of drought,” Chuipka said. “The scale of the mutilations suggests that it was planned and organized in the preceding days or weeks, and that the violence took place in a relatively short period of time — a few days.”
“All evidence points to a rapid event, which is only possible with coordination and complicity within the community,” he added.
The researchers ruled out other possible explanations, such as starvation cannibalism, traditional preparation of the deceased, and even individuals targeted for practicing witchcraft. Cannibalism, for example, usually involves bone marrow processing. Witch roundups tend to affect a relatively small number of victims.
In this case, a large group of people was dispatched at one time.
For a separate study, John McClelland, lab manager of osteology at Arizona State Museum, analyzed teeth from human remains within the Ridges Basin region, including Sacred Ridge.
He found that the population at Sacred Ridge in the early 800s was distinct from others in the area.
“The individuals at Sacred Ridge whose remains were disarticulated and processed were not a random selection from among the overall population of Ridges Basin,” McClelland determined. “In addition to the biological differences, they appear to have had a somewhat different diet and may have experienced a higher level of juvenile growth disruption.”
At least two other separate studies have come to similar conclusions, suggesting the genocide victims at Sacred Ridge belonged to an ethnic group that was different from that of other nearby populations.
Given basic established patterns from more recent ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Rwanda, the researchers think political structures that had been keeping ethnic conflict at bay probably broke down at Sacred Ridge.
“What we can learn from Sacred Ridge is that archaeological sites are not simply piles of rock and refuse, but that they were occupied by people that were involved in complex webs of social relations,” Chuipka said. “Sacred Ridge is a case where social relations melted down and the solution chosen was absolute and shocking.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islam’s Tentacles Enveloping U.S.
The proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York City has been a focal point for those wanting to expand Islam’s influence in America, but it’s not the only front on which the nation is facing the advance of Muslim interests.
There are more than 3,000 mosques in the U.S., and work is being done on several major projects that have neighbors alarmed to the point of resistance.
One of the hot-button mosques is the proposed Temecula Valley Islamic Center. Land for the project was purchased several years ago, but a number of people in the Southern California town have an organized campaign to derail the project.
[…]
American Family Association policy analyst Bryan Fischer says 80 percent of the mosques being built are funded by Middle Eastern money. Most are also acting as training academies.
“Every single mosque is potentially a training and recruiting center for jihadism. We know that 80 percent of the mosques in America are built with Saudi money. The Saudi Arabian government is sending education materials to these mosques that teach them to spill the blood of infidel Christians and Jews,” Fischer explained.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Murfreesboro Mosque Spokesperson Camie Ayash Had Florida Felony Record
The Tennesseean broke a story, tonight, about Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s (ICM) spokesperson Ms. Camie Ayash’s prior felony convictions and imprisonment in Florida for Grand Theft. Sources inform us that information was presented to the new Rutherford County Sheriff last Friday, who affirmed that his predecessor’s investigations would continue into other matters regarding board member Mosaad Rawash of the ICM.
The Tennessean revelations will be an embarrassment to CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 who interviewed Ms. Ayash in the wake of the Arson incident at the ICM expansion projects on Veals Road in Rutherford County.
“According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Ayash was jailed from May 2006 to March 2007 for stealing more than $300,000 from a former employer.
“It was something that happened when I was young,” said the 32-year-old Ayash. “I’m not proud of it. I never claimed to be perfect.”
Ayash admits that she served time. But she claims it occurred in 2001 or 2002, before she moved to Tennessee and converted to Islam…
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Srdja Trifkovic: the Worst GOP Candidate in History
“Conservative” Joseph DioGuardi’s “sensational” election as the GOP Senate candidate in New York has shaken up the Republican Party, gloats the Tropoja-based Albanian Minerals President M. Mujaj in the Wall Street Journal Blog. “The American people have spoken,” this self-styled compatriot of ours is telling us. “The American way of life needs to be rebalanced. Households need to stop spending what they don’t have. Local and state governments need to slash their budgets to live off whatever tax revenues they generate [….] The American people voted for change.”
What Mr. Mujaj does not mention is that former Congressman DioGuardi is the founder and well-endowed president of the Albanian American Civic League, a lobby group for the KLA-run “independent” province of “Kosova.” This is a significant fact, crucial to the funding of his candidacy, which he curiously does not mention on his campaign website. Even more curiously, the League’s aacl.com site—full of information on DioGuardi’s KLA connections—has been mysteriously dormant for weeks. There is, nevertheless, ample evidence out there that DioGuardi and his wife have been, for years, key fundraisers and apologists for the terrorist KLA in this country. It is unsurprising that he omits this aspect of his career from his pitch to the voters of New York, but it is curious that no one has called attention to the fact thus far.
As for Tropoja, it is a town in northern Albania best known not as a hub of mining in general, or as the HQ of DioGuardi’s friend Mr. Mujaj’s Albanian Minerals in particular, but as the gruesome site of a “clinic” known as The Yellow House in which hundreds of Serb civilians kidnapped in Kosovo by the KLA in 1999 were brought to be murdered for organ harvesting. As my friend Julia Gorin wrote two and a half years ago,…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
States Can Seek Constitutional Amendment to End Federal Debt Binge
During the 1980s, 33 state legislatures invoked their power to apply for a convention to draft a balanced budget amendment.
The effort fell short by just one state of the two-thirds majority needed to force Congress’ hand to call the convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
Why did the effort fail? Some legislators worried that a convention would not be limited to a specific subject and it would spin out of control to rewrite the entire Constitution. Sadly, this fear was baseless..
A new Goldwater Institute report, written by Senior Fellow Robert Natelson, shows the country’s Founders rejected drafts of Article V that contemplated a wide-open convention that could “run away.”
Instead, the authors of the Constitution intentionally picked language that calls for conventions of limited scope so state legislatures could target specific topics, such as a restriction on the federal government’s ability to borrow money.
There’s also no reason to fear a “runaway” convention because three-fourths of the states — at least 38 of them — still would have to ratify whatever proposed amendment was drafted by the convention.
State Senator Chuck Gray of Arizona and U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas are right to urge state legislatures to reconsider invoking Article V to limit the federal government’s ability to take on more debt.
No matter who controls Congress, the federal government has been incapable of putting its fiscal house in order. Article V gives the states the power to end the federal debt binge….
Source: Nick Dranias, “States can seek constitutional amendment to end federal debt binge,” Goldwater Institute, September 16, 2010.
| [Return to headlines] |
Taxpayers Foot Giant Bill to Keep Heads of State Safe at Annual United Nations Meeting
It will cost taxpayers a pretty penny to protect a petty Iranian tyrant while he visits New York.
Security for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and 190 other world leaders gathering for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly could cost $5 million to $7 million, officials said.
“This is the biggest number of heads of state that we’ve had here at any one time,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Monday.
The NYPD gets about $20 million every two years from the State Department for these kinds of expenditures, Kelly added.
Security costs aren’t broken down by leader, he added. But it’s a safe bet Iran’s leader will see a lot of NYPD blue.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
USA: Is the Tea Party Pro-British? Why the US Conservative Revolution Could Save the Special Relationship
by Nile Gardiner
This may seem like an odd question for a political movement inspired by the infamous Boston Tea Party of December 1773, which helped spark the American Revolution against the rule of King George III. But as the hugely successful modern-day grassroots organisation threatens a new revolution on Capitol Hill this November, and may play a key role in ejecting Barack Obama from the White House in 2012, policy makers in London should be thinking about the positive implications for Anglo-American relations of a conservative-dominated, post-Obama era in the United States.
I’ve written extensively on how the Obama White House has been the most anti-British presidency since the Suez crisis of 1956, and predicted months before Obama’s election win that his leadership would be damaging for the US-British alliance. As I wrote back in July 2008 on the pages of The Sunday Telegraph:
Britain’s chattering classes should be careful what they wish for. Senator Obama promises change and a bold new course for the United States. The end result may be an America that looks away from Britain and erects higher barriers to trade and investment. The special relationship has lasted over 60 years as the most powerful and successful partnership of modern times. Unfortunately it might not survive the next presidential election.
I will make another prediction here on the future of US-UK relations — the conservative revolution that is sweeping America, and which may transform the White House two years from now, offers the best hope for saving the future of the Special Relationship.
The Obama presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for Anglo-US ties, from Barack Obama’s relentless campaign to destroy the UK’s biggest company, to Hillary Clinton’s betrayal of America’s closest ally through backing Argentina’s call for a UN-brokered settlement over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. The Obama administration’s sneering view of Britain was perfectly summed up by a senior State Department protocol officer in March last year:
There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.
Under Barack Obama and Gordon Brown US-UK relations hit its lowest point in nearly half a century. There have been more positive signs under David Cameron, but there remain some deep-seated tensions below the surface, which will be impossible to resolve while Obama remains in power.
My sense is that the next Republican administration in Washington will seek a far warmer relationship with Britain than the Obama team. It could also be the most Eurosceptic White House since the birth of the European project. While the Obama administration has been openly Eurofederalist, the Bush administration was split down the middle on the issue of European integration, with the State Department in favour and the Pentagon fervently opposed. Most US administrations have been mixed in their views on Europe — the next one will be more decisively against.
There is no doubting the fact that the Tea Party movement is primarily focused at present upon domestic policy issues. It is largely driven by intense opposition to Obama’s Big Government agenda, and by a belief in low taxation and reduced government spending, greater individual freedom and limited intrusion by the state. But it is also at its heart a movement that cherishes a belief in American exceptionalism and US leadership, worships the concept of national sovereignty, and is suspicious of supranational institutions such as the United Nations or the European Union that seek to impinge upon America’s ability to act independently. In other words, it stands for almost everything the current US administration does not.
The main heroes of the Tea Party are, of course, America’s Founding Fathers. But its members also look to more recent leaders for inspiration — in the United States, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater for example, and across the Atlantic, to Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. In conversations I have had with an array of Tea Party supporters in recent months, almost all have expressed a huge admiration for the Iron Lady and her achievements across the Atlantic. There have also been frequent nods of support for the cost-cutting measures of the new Cameron-led Coalition — and many have asked the question — if they can cut the deficit in London, why can’t we do it in Washington too?
It is accurate to describe many of the key players in the Tea Party as instinctively pro-British. Sarah Palin, by far the most powerful figure in the movement, is known to be an admirer of Lady Thatcher, and has reportedly sought a meeting with the former prime minister in London. Senator Jim De Mint of South Carolina, the most influential backer of the Tea Part on Capitol Hill, has been a powerful proponent of the US-UK Defence Trade Cooperation Treaty, which is set to be ratified shortly by Congress after a long delay. Glenn Beck, the charismatic Fox News host and Tea Party favourite who’s recent rally drew hundreds of thousands of conservatives to Washington, has lambasted President Obama for his shoddy treatment of Great Britain.
Outside of the immediate confines of the Tea Party itself, several of the leading lights of the American conservative movement, including likely presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, are strong Atlanticists, who would seek to significantly advance the Special Relationship if they come to power. Unlike the Obama administration, the new wave of conservative leaders in the United States recognise Britain as America’s most important ally, are suspicious of EU-style supranationalism, and understand the great sacrifices that the US and UK have made in the defence of liberty and freedom across the world. One thing is certain if President Obama loses the White House in 2012. His successor definitely won’t be throwing a bust of Sir Winston out of the Oval office.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Canada Selling ‘Green Scam’ To California?
On a visit to the legislature by British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore found himself wondering what bill of goods this huckster was selling the Golden State? Turns out it was just more “green” snake oil.
DeVore decided to “follow the money” and discovered a “green energy scam that costs California taxpayers millions while robbing California of jobs due to higher electricity costs and electricity imports.”
DeVore reminds Californians that in 2005 the state had to sue Powerex, the Canadian energy producer, when it was discovered that it was complicit in “rampant market manipulation that ended up costing California consumers millions.” DeVore reports that in March of 2005 Powerex settled and only refunded a fraction of the profits it had made from its California customers.
Of course, one of the reasons that this situation became so easy to carry off is due to her absurd environmental laws, California is unable to produce its own energy at necessary levels.
[…]
It gets even more absurd from there. DeVore notes that while California is killing itself with its environmental laws and while British Columbia is being enriched by unfair energy prices off the backs of California, the BC energy industry is actually importing more energy than it makes and it has done so for ten of its eleven years of existence.
And where does it get the power it imports? Coal and gas-fired energy plants in Washington State and Alberta Canada. It is some of this power Powerex turns around and sells to naive Californians who imagine that the hydro-electric power it is supposedly getting from British Columbia is “clean energy.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
An Alternative to the New Wave of Ecofascism
It is time to acknowledge that mainstream environmentalism has failed to prevent climate catastrophe. Its refusal to call for an immediate consumption reduction has backfired and its demise has opened the way for a wave of fascist environmentalists who reject democratic freedom.
One well-known example of the authoritarian turn in environmentalism is James Lovelock, the first scientist to discover the presence of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. Earlier this year he told the Guardian that democracies are incapable of adequately addressing climate change. “I have a feeling,” Lovelock said, “that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” His words may be disturbing, but other ecologists have gone much further.
Take for example Pentti Linkola, a Finnish fisherman and ecological philosopher. Whereas Lovelock puts his faith in advanced technology, Linkola proposes a turn to fascistic primitivism. Their only point of agreement is on the need to suspend democracy. Linkola has built an environmentalist following by calling for an authoritarian, ecological regime that ruthlessly suppresses consumers. Largely unknown outside of Finland until the first English translation of his work was published last year, Linkola represents environmentalism pushed to its totalitarian extreme. “An ecocatastrophe is taking place on earth,” he writes concluding several pages later that “discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression” are the only solution.
Linkola has a cunning ability to blend reasonable ecological precepts with shocking authoritarian solutions. His bold political programme includes ending the freedom to procreate, abolishing fossil fuels, revoking all international trade agreements, banning air traffic, demolishing the suburbs, and reforesting parking lots. As for those “most responsible for the present economic growth and competition”, Linkola explains that they will be sent to the mountains for “re-education” in eco-gulags: “the sole glimmer of hope,” he declares, “lies in a centralised government and the tireless control of citizens.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Europe: The Rise of the Far-Right: Europe’s Worrying Trend
The stridently anti-immigration platform of the Sweden Democrats secured the party 5.7 per cent of the vote — and 20 parliamentary seats — in Sunday’s general election, enough to deny the governing Centre-Right coalition of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt a majority. While it might surprise some to see an extremist party prosper in this traditionally tolerant liberal democracy, it is actually part of a worrying new trend in European politics. Sweden has become the third EU member state since June to find itself without a governing majority after elections marked by the rise of far-Right, anti-immigration or separatist parties. The Netherlands and Belgium are in the same position. Far-Right parties are currently in government in Italy and also sit in the parliaments of Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia and Slovakia, as well as in the European Parliament.
The rise of extremist sentiment has been fuelled by immigration and has been exacerbated by the economic crisis; when unemployment rises, so does anti-immigrant sentiment. Underlying it is an increasingly ugly strand of Islamophobia. What is most worrying, however, is the inability or unwillingness of mainstream political parties across Europe to confront these issues. As we have seen in this country, the refusal of the political establishment over many years to conduct a mature debate on immigration has played into the hands of the British National Party. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is taking pre-emptive action against a resurgent National Front, which performed strongly in March’s regional elections, with his expulsion of illegal Roma immigrants. However, Europe’s leaders need to develop a more sophisticated approach to the many challenges posed by economic migration if the extremists are not to continue to prosper.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Funeral Held for Country’s 30th Afghan Military Death
Rome, 20 Sept. (AKI) — A somber state funeral was held in Rome on Monday for Lt. Alessandro Romani, a member of the Italian special forces who became Italy’s 30th military death in the 9-year-old Afghan war when he succumbed to wounds received last week during an exchange of gunfire with suspected insurgents.
Romani, 36, a native of Rome, was hit by gunfire when he and other troops were sent to apprehend militants spotted by an unmanned aircraft planting a bomb on the road between Farah and Delaram. Both cities house NATO bases.
The state funeral in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels in Rome was attended by high-ranking government officials like Italian president Giorgio Napolitano and Minister of Defense Ignazio La Russa.
In basilica’s first row of pews were Romani’s mother and father, seated in front of the alter among other family members.
“Those who have a reason to live also have a reason to die,” said archbishop Vincenzo Pelvi, who oversees Catholic rites administration for the Italian military. “In Afghanistan Alessandro wanted bombs to stop putting an end to the dreams of children, that women were no longer disfigured and stoned to death, and that men were no longer tied to a pole waiting to be executed in front of the eyes of their children.”
Another soldier was being treated at a military hospital in Ramstein, Germany for wounds suffered during the same firefight, according to an Italian military spokesman.
Italy has it will have around 4,000 troops serving in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Unicredit CEO Profumo Expected to Resign Over Libyan Stake
Milan, 21 Sept. (AKI) — Alessandro Profumo, the chief executive officer of Italian bank UniCredit, may step down from his post on Monday when the board of directors meets. His resignation would come amid a spat over Libyan investments that caused prominent shareholders to lose confidence in the Milan-based executive’s management , according to news reports.
The board is expected to appoint chairman Dieter Rampl as the interim CEO at the meeting that begins at 6 pm.
Some banking foundations have been vociferous in their distaste of Profumo’s management after Libyan investors increased their stake in Italy’s largest bank creating concern that the northern African country’s influence is UniCreit is increasing.
According to a filing with Italian stock-market regulator Consob, the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund , boosted its UniCredit stake to 2.6 percent from 2.1 percent as of 31 Aug. This is on top of the almost 5 percent of the bank in the hands of the Central Bank of Libya.
Profumo, 53, nicknamed “Mr. Arrogance” by former colleagues at consultant agency McKinsey, did not tell other managers about the Libyan moves but denied he had any involvement in encouraging them in to become invest in his bank.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
More Thai Women in Swedish Sex Report
The number of Thai and Nigerian women exploited for sexual purposes in Sweden has increased, according to a police report on human trafficking.
The number of reports involving the exploitation of mentally handicapped women has also increased, according to a report on human trafficking from Sweden’s National Police Board (Rikspolisstyrelsen) released on Tuesday.
“Alarming,” Kajsa Wahlberg of the police board told news agency TT.
Last year was the first time Nigerian women were reported to have been involved in the sex trade in Sweden, likely as a result of the introduction of a law in Norway prohibiting the buying of sexual services that came into effect on January 1st, 2009.
In addition, the number of exploited Thai women has increased. There were also several reports of the pimping of exploited mentally handicapped girls last year.
The trafficking of Nigerian prostitutes has previously been a large problem in the rest of Europe. In Sweden, however, they have only appeared on a small scale in Gothenburg.
A trial is currently under way in Stockholm exposing a Nigerian prostitution ring. The exploited women involved were forced to undergo a voodoo ritual in their home countries, where they were intimidated into submission and repaying debts to the masterminds behind the ring.
The police board estimates that about 50 Nigerian women were exploited in the sex trade in Sweden last year. They often lack education and many of them are illiterate.
The Thai women who come to Sweden and are exploited for sexual purposes often come here through marriage or on visitor visas after being invited by Swedish men who then sell them into work in apartments, hotel rooms or at Thai massage parlours.
In the Stockholm area alone, police estimate that there are about 90 Thai massage parlours.
“Most offer sexual massage,” said Wahlberg.
The police have never seen so many cases of sexual exploitation of girls and women with mental disabilities as were reported last year. Cases have been reported by police authorities in Stockholm, central Gävleborg and southern Skåne.
“They are totally unscrupulous men who exploit these helpless girls,” said Wahlberg.
Other facts from the report reveal that the majority of women who were trafficked to Sweden in 2009 came from eastern Europe, Russia, Estonia, Romania, Hungary and Albania.
Most of the traffickers were men, but some were women, coming from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Sweden, Estonia, Nigeria and Thailand.
There were also examples in which the traffickers exploited the victims for several purposes. In one case, two Czech women were trafficked to Sweden to steal during the day and prostitute in the evenings and nights.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Roma: Belgium Joins Caravan of Shame
Le Soir, 20 September 2010
“Belgium also implicated in the Roma affair,” announces the front page of Le Soir. The Belgian daily reports that the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) is preparing to file a complaint with the Council of Europe over the attitude of three Belgian regions toward “travelling people”. The FIDH claim there is an “insufficient number of suitable camping grounds, a disproportionate number of expulsions and the lack of official recognition of travellers’ trailers and caravans as ‘lodging’.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Roma: Axis of Weevils
Nicolas Sarkozy defiance of Europe — loudly supported by Silvio Berlusconi — isn’t just about the Roma, it is an attack on the community’s core values and the right of the public to know what is being done in their name, says columnist Barbara Spinelli
In an interview in Le Figaro, Silvio Berlusconi has now officially rallied to Nicolas Sarkozy’s defence on the Roma expulsions that are driving a wedge between the French government and the Union. Not only that, he has censured the justice commissioner for her remarks about Paris, adding that “Mrs Reding would have done better to discuss the matter in private with the French officials rather than expressing herself in public the way she did”.
This invitation to render European politics secret, which he now reformulates as a request to settle disputes between the Union and member states behind the closed doors of chancelleries, points up a specific conception of Europe, of its influence on its component states, and of the supranational law it administers. This conception essentially denies the primacy of that law — with its directives and its Charter of Fundamental Rights enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty — over the conduct and laws of nation states. It is ceaselessly wearing away at the European idea, delegitimising European law. And yet that law, which gives member state governments so much grief, remains in force.
Cabal of nationalists
European law and principles are being gutted in the name of national sovereignties, which are not disappearing, to be sure, but which must bow to the supremacy of the community in some domains. European power has not been formally rejected (it couldn’t be anyway), but subjected to a tenacious desire to see it camouflaged, concealed, just as Molière’s Tartuffe seeks to hide his own libidinous desires, imploring: “Cover that breast I cannot bear to see. Such a sight offends the soul and brings forth guilty thoughts.” The conspiratorial silence, the secret negotiations between Brussels and member states, the refusal to allow a space for public discussion of human dramas like that of the Roma, now a “people of the Community” if ever there was one. As in France in the age of Molière and Louis XIV, there is a “cabal” of die-hard nationalists in present-day Europe who admit the validity of European law but would keep it concealed, like Dorine’s beautiful bosom in Tartuffe.
The die-hards are hell bent on keeping up the fiction of absolutely sovereign states free to do as they see fit without interference from Brussels. These are the same die-hards who, when convenient, rail against Europe’s “democratic deficit” and its badgering tight-lipped bureaucracy. And this hypocritical number happens to be a French postwar speciality, now perpetuated by Mr Sarkozy.
But the Franco-Italian front reveals something else about the whole Roma affair. Neither the French nor the Italian leaders seem to recall the raison d’être — if they ever actually knew it — of this overly outspoken, finger-wagging Europe. They’ve apparently forgotten that the European Community was created after the war for the precise purpose of laying down a new supranational law under which states could no longer engage in wrongdoing behind the smokescreen of their little sovereign nations.
Danger of return to the past
It is not astonishing that on 14 September Viviane Reding, a Christian Democrat commissioner, should stress the danger of returning to the past, to the persecution of Jews and Gypsies in the last war. That was strong language, for which she subsequently apologised and which many deemed excessive, but which remains an inescapable reminder. A reminder of how the Union was formed post-1945, and why Europe is the promise everyone made to themselves that certain things would never happen again — thanks to the pooling of what used to be absolute national sovereignties.
On 16 September in Brussels, Europe fell out over the Roma issue: there were even reports of “violent altercations” between Barroso and Sarkozy. Even if Germany is not above reproach either (having expelled a great many Roma to Kosovo), Chancellor Merkel stands by the commission and its right to impose overarching laws and values. So does the Belgian government. The innocents are indeed few and far between, but the only government to openly back the French is Italy. And it’s the only one to share Sarkozy’s view of the commission. When he invited Reding to take in the Roma in her own country, Luxembourg, the French president treated the commission as an assembly of national representatives, and not of representatives of Europe’s common interest.
Pact of silence broken
It is possible that the conspiratorial silence may be over now. Barroso’s institutional pride in his commission is intermittent at best, and some member governments (Spain, Czech Republic) are very jealous of their sovereignty. But the pact of silence has been broken, essential matters are now being thrashed out in public: the Roma issue, like that of Austria in the days of Jörg Haider, has given rise to a European agora. Barroso’s commission would have stuck to politics being done in secret if the European Parliament hadn’t roundly condemned the expulsions on 9 September.
One of our great federalists, Mario Albertini, said the real Union would be born the day federalism “becomes a daily political struggle (…so that) the man in the street realises that, just as there are socialists, Christian Democrats and liberals, there are also European federalists”. And that is what has been happening since the beginning of the summer, thanks to the Roma and the political struggle they have triggered over Europe’s raison d’être.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Democrat Members Exposed in Leak
A register of over 5,000 people who are either members or have registered their interest in the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD), has been published on the internet.
“It is an old database… which the attacker presumably got hold of in the weekend’s hacker attack. We have filed a police report,” SD press spokesperson Erik Almqvist told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily.
But according to several Swedish bloggers rumours began circulating in the weeks running up to Sunday’s general election that the Sweden Democrats’ member list had been obtained by hackers back in April.
Either way the list was published on Monday and is presented as a search engine enabling visitors to the site to “Get to know your local Sweden Democrats” and “Find a friend near you” with the possibility to search according to town, street address or telephone number.
According to Almqvist the information has not been actively collected by the party, but has been filed by the applicants themselves.
Almqvist argued to DN that the details have been published in order to scare current and potential members, although sought to play down the importance of the information.
“It is not particularly sensitive information really, but we know that there is a significant level of threats directed against the members of our party,” he said.
The website where the register has been published is registered to Gottfried Svartholm Varg, one of the founders of file sharing website The Pirate Bay and whistleblower website Wikileaks’ web host PRQ, which is hosting the site.
While it has been confirmed that the website’s IP address does in fact belong to PRQ, it remains unclear whether Svartholm Varg is in fact the person behind the site.
The whole situation is muddied still further by the fact that Mikael Viborg, who operates PRQ, has previously been employed by the Sweden Democrats as their legal counsel.
The Sweden Democrats website has been the target of a series of hacker attacks during the election campaign and was not accessible at 6am on Tuesday.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hospital Doctors Lost Student, 17, While She Lay Dying of Meningitis and Even Took a 30-Minute Break, Inquest Told
A 17-year-old girl at one of the country’s top independent schools was ‘lost’ by doctors in a hospital as she lay dying of meningitis-related blood poisoning, an inquest heard today.
Clementine Nicholson, known as Clemie, collapsed at £24,000-a-year Rugby School and was rushed to Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry but she died the next day of meningococcal septicaemia — blood poisoning caused by the same type of bacteria that causes meningitis.
The condition needed to be treated within six hours if there was any chance of survival, the inquest at Coventry Magistrates Court heard, but Dr Patodi sent her for an unnecessary CT scan and even took a 30-minute break.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lutfur Rahman is Sacked as Labour Candidate
It’s official. The Labour Party has today issued the following statement:
“Having received a number of serious allegations concerning both the eligibility of participating voters and the conduct of Lutfur Rahman, the National Executive Committee has decided to investigate the allegations made.As a result, administrative action has been taken to remove Lutfur Rahman as a candidate pending the investigation. Nominations for Tower Hamlets mayor close this week and in the circumstances the NEC had no option but to impose another candidate. The NEC has voted to select Helal Abbas Uddin as Labour’s candidate.”
[JP note: a commentator, Mike Clark, at Harry’s Place has pointed out that Labour’s National Executive Committee have chosen to replace a Muslim with another Muslim:]
Mike Clark
21 September 2010, 4:33 pm
Andy Newman writes:
Once the Labour Party NEC decided to suspend Rahman as candidate, in the face of Gilligan’s Islamophobic witchhunt, then they could not choose the person who came second in the poll for the Labour Party candidate selection, John Biggs, without it looking like they were choosing a white British candidate in preference to a Bengali.
That’s remarkably honest of him. I think he is right. They know that Andy’s friends use Islamophobia as a political tool and quite openly lie about it to the local population to gain votes. They would have lied their heads off if they put the second place white candidate in place, so the NEC have actually discriminated against the white candidate on the basis of his race.
It’s extremely ironic. For all the talk of racism against Muslims the only race discrimination here has taken place against a white non-Muslim.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: New Report: Debunking the Islamisation Myth
[A couple more readers’ comments from the lengthy debate at Harry’s Place about Mr Standing’s report on Islamisation in the UK.]
[…]
Israelinurse
20 September 2010, 10:19 am
Generally speaking I have a lot of respect for Edmund Standing’s work, but in this instance I’m really not sure what he’s trying to prove. Beyond the ‘keep calm and carry on’ overall message of this report there is something else which I do not know whether to categorise as sinister or terminally naive. The use of the ‘2010 University of Exeter Report’ (p7, ref. 9) gets alarm bells ringing straight away. This report, co-produced by Bob Lambert, comes out of the European Muslim Research Centre at Exeter which enjoys some very dodgy funding.
http://globalmbreport.com/?p=2091
I certainly would not have used a reference from such a source in any report I wanted to be taken seriously.
[…]
Rather than wait for Edmund Standing’s rather bizarre scenario depicted on pages 16 & 17 of this report to come to pass, the more healthy route for British society (and others) would be to begin to address the real concerns of all its members instead of branding them as hysterical or racist. Such an attitude certainly does not help the moderate Muslims or ex-Muslims trying to combat extremism within society as a whole.
[…]
Don’t lecture me.
20 September 2010, 12:46 pm
paul fauvet,
“So McGrath (“Don’t lecture me”) has had his town changed about his ears. So what? We all have. Is there a single town in England that looks the same as it did ten or twenty years ago?”
I am now living in a suburb straight out of the Middle East, I don’t recognise the culture, the people and see only very few remnants of the way of life I grew up with. I’m not a victim of being unable to adjust to inevitable progress and change. I have been dumped into an alien country without ever moving! I didn’t ask for it, I don’t like it and I wont be condescende to by Idiots that can’t accept it is happening.
[…]
mettaculture
20 September 2010, 4:36 pm
It is important to never forget that islamist push Sharia and Halal as a wedge political strategy, in fact the demand for these two things is always indicative, without exception of islamist activists at work. So to allow the agenda to be determined by opposition to everything the EDL might claim is wrong-headed and dangerous. Their demonstrations always have someone carrying a placard saying ‘One law for All’. The premise of Standing’s argument implies that a liberal egalitarian secularist, non racist who expects equal treatment before the law irrespective of ethnicity or faith, cannot oppose Sharia (and the underlying islamist agenda) without showing themselves to be a hysterical fantasist and EDL type obsessing about ‘Islamization’. Sorry Edmund what this article shows is that in reacting reflexively with your liberal principles you have just been played as a patsy by Islamists and their apologists using the easiest ‘deploy multicultural cover’ ruse in their strategy book.
[…]
Dont lecture me
Where do I start?
Stephen:
“From the sublime to the ridiculous. Is boredom the M.O of most posters here?
What else would you posts inspire? But there was a serious point in my post.. Shops change ownership all the time.”
Yes, what else would my posts inspire? You have trouble with objectivity? You take my reality on the ground here as a personal slight? Doesen’t fit your preferred word view? Too bad, It’s the same today as it was yesterday regardless of your emotional state. Businesses do change ownership, but it’s not usual for them the change ownership enmasse, becoming the property of particular cultural elements seemingly intent on a land grab, and whose business models bare no relationship to the needs of the community they once served. For example; my post office is now a halal ice cream parlour. Another pub is being refitted as a travel agent offering visa processing and Hajj packages. The old folks home is an Islamic meeting hall.. If all a community needed to survive were takeaways, curry houses and Mosques, Preston would be thriving. It’s local business infrastructure has been dismantled and replaced with short term, and short sighted funding projects for the enlargement of the Islamic ghetto that already exists. Yes Edmund, there’s no such thing as Islamisation.
[…]
Devorgilla says:
“In the UK, Muslim immigration is indiscriminate (many uneducated) and drawn from parts of the Muslim world like Pakistan which are culturally backward.”
It’s not just that. Aggression and dominance are markers of many Muslim communities too. Ordinary neighboring areas are finding themselves embattled, something that has never traditionally been a component of your average joe’s existence in modern times. It’s a culture war.
Johnny….
“I live in Lancashire, and first visited Preston about 15 years ago; in the last 8, I have got to know it quite well. I have never recognised it in the way DLM describes it.”
How can I possibly argue such concrete refutation? “middle east” johnny is a metaphor, not a rigid facsimile. “There are also many pubs and nightclubs in the city centre, especially Friargate and Fishergate — as you must know: incongruous with any town in the Middle-East. I know of no Islamic attempts to close them down. (In fact, I have seen some Muslim lads drinking in them!)” What gift do you posess Johnny that allows you to determine religion by glance? Former pubs, now Muslim owned: The Stephensons arms,
The Meadow Arms, The County arms, Mr Pickwicks, The Edinborough Castle, The Red Lion, The lamb e.t.c. there are more.
Islamisation is a myth.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Newman Had an Unlikely Part in the Lord of the Rings
Standing in a field on the edge of the Lickey Hills on Sunday, I caught a breath of Tolkein’s mythical version of England, writes Christopher Howse.
The suburbs of Birmingham hardly seem a likely model for J R R Tolkien’s Shire, in Middle Earth, but standing in a field on the edge of the Lickey Hills on Sunday, I caught a breath of that mythical version of England. Cofton Park had been chosen as the place for the beatification of John Henry Newman because it is close to the place where he spent parts of the summer and chose to be buried.
Between the park and that house stands a cottage where the 12-year-old Tolkien, his brother and mother lodged when she was sick in 1904. Earlier, they had lived next to Sarehole Mill, the original for Hobbiton Mill — spoilt, in The Return of the King, by the industrialising henchmen of Saruman.
Tolkien’s true inspiration, of course, was philology, or so he thought. For him, a language naturally went together with a mythology, and England had lost its own. So he invented one.
In Farmer Giles of Ham, according to the irresistible deductions of that hard-headed Anglo-Saxonist Tom Shippey, he made Tamworth, near Birmingham, the capital of the Middle Kingdom. For Newman fans it is more familiar from The Tamworth Reading Room, his essay on the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
It was a protégé of Newman’s who had brought the Tolkien family to the postman’s cottage. Tolkien’s father was dead, and his mother had taken the brave step of becoming a Catholic, to the disgust of her few relations. Father Francis Morgan, who had acted for a time as Newman’s chaplain, saw that this sick, isolated woman could do with some country air, and found them the lodgings, next to the Oratory house at Rednal. Since then, the Longbridge motor works have eaten up the land, like Saruman producing infernal engines. Now the works are empty. Yet there still seem no signs of the Shire being cleansed.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Report Demonstrates How City is Changing
Council aims to renew its equalities policy in wake of study’s findings
THE changing face of Sheffield’s population has been revealed in a report which shows the number of ethnic minority residents has more than doubled in the last 20 years.
The figures have been released by the city council as it looks to renew its equalities policy, which aims to make particular efforts to ensure minority groups receive fair treatment and access to services, rather than simply treating everyone the same” […]
- Sheffield’s inhabitants are getting older, with the proportion of 0-14s set to shrink despite a rising birth rate, while 65 to 79 year-olds are expected to increase by 10,000, or 20 per cent, in the next 20 years. The 80 plus population is to rise by 10,000, equivalent to 40 per cent on current levels.
- The amount of people from ethnic minorities rose from 36,500, or seven per cent, in 1991, to 82,400, or 15.5 per cent, in 2007 and is set to grow further, as 29 per cent of births are in minority groups.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Three Police Officers and a Patrol Car Rush to… Children Playing Football in the Street
Police were accused today of being ‘heavy handed’ after three officers were dispatched to issue a ticking off to two boys — for playing football in the street.
Henry Worthington, 12, and his brother Alex, 11, were told their kick-abouts in a cul-de-sac outside their home after school were illegal and could result in them getting anti-social behaviour orders.
Their father Anthony, 43, of Timperley, Greater Manchester, was also sent a letter from officials at Trafford Council warning him his two sons could be in breach of the 1980 Highways Act which outlaws ball games.
The incident comes after Greater Manchester Police revealed it was preparing to cut more than 3,000 jobs due to the government’s anticipated 25 per cent cut in spending.
Today, Mr Worthington, an engineer, said: ‘Sending three officers over simply to give a warning about kids playing football in the street is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
‘My boys are not hooligans. They are good lads who cause no trouble and I prefer them to play outside the house so I know they are safe. They haven’t interfered with a car or any pedestrians so I don’t see what the problem is.
‘They play for a local football club on the weekend and they just want to practise their skills outside their house with their friends. It’s not as if they’re out all hours 24/7, it’s just half an hour after school.
‘I’m absolutely appalled that the police are not out there catching real criminals. I feel like my family is being persecuted.
‘When I was a lad the police were not out persecuting children for playing football. Now you get three policemen coming to my door to tell us off for it.
‘It’s a joke-and a total waste of police resources given that they are facing massive cuts.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Vive La Différence
In January the new permanent president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, renewed the European Union’s urgent call for a new tax. There was no time to waste: Brussels needed the dough to preserve what Van Rompuy called the “European way of life.” As a statement released by his office last November put it, “The financing of the welfare state…will require new resources.”
As the reaction against Obamacare demonstrated, if the president of the United States said he needed more money to preserve the “American way of life” and then made clear he meant ponying up more money for welfare schemes, most voters would wish him an unemployment check without delay. But they would be shocked to discover in Peter Baldwin’s very amusing book, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike, that the “European way of life” pretty much describes how people in, say, Iowa live.
In fact, Baldwin, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, reached his conclusion in a distinctly Midwestern way: he harvested. Baldwin’s numbers — fertilized by studies from the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and other international organizations and institutions, where statistics grow as thick and high as Iowa corn — fill his book. They show that despite our assumptions, despite a thousand op-eds, and a couple of centuries of squabbling and bickering, and even wars and revolutions, the statistical differences between Western Europe and America are trivial — in fact less than the differences between various European states.
[…]
One graph after another in this highly contrarian and entertaining book shows a big black line indicating where America stands in the European tables, and it’s almost always somewhere in the middle, often with Scandos and the make-believe Luxembourgers a notch or two above us, the British and Irish a notch or two below.
[…]
Who knew that in the U.S., taxes are more progressive than in all of Europe? Or that American social welfare policies are as generous as Van Rompuy’s cherished continental welfare state? Or that the Germans are even more litigious than Yanks? Or that for education, state spending by Americans and Europeans is about the same and achieves about the same results? Or that Americans have been more successful in reducing carbon dioxide output per unit of GDP than nine European countries, some of them notoriously sanctimonious? Or that the French, Austrians, Swiss, Germans, and Italians — with their expensive public transportation networks — all own more passenger cars per capita than Americans do?
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Hamas Intelligence Agent ‘Arrested’
Cairo, 20 Sept. (AKI) — A top Hamas intelligence agent has been arrested in Egypt on suspicion of participating in activities designed to compromise national security, Arabic newspaper al-Ahran reported on Monday, citing a security source.
Mohammed Dababish was accused of taking part in the killing of a border guard along the Gaza Strip, among other crimes, according to the daily, which said he was apprehended last week while returning from a trip to Syria.
Dababish is part of an unit that oversees intelligence inside of Gaza.
Dababish is believed to have been involved in a failed attempt to smuggle sophisticated radio equipment into Gaza which is embargoed by Egypt and Israel, according to the source.
Egypt has arrested a number of Hamas officials since one of its soldiers was killed in a border shooting early this year. Egypt believes Hamas was involved in the shooting.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Israel’s Allies in 1948; The USSR, Czechoslovakia, American Mainline Churches and the Left
The nearly universal belief, never challenged by the media, is that the United States was wholly or largely and “morally” responsible for fully supporting Israel on the ground from the very beginning of its independence in May, 1948. The world has been inundated with a tsunami of Arab propaganda and crocodile tears shed for the “Palestinians” who have reveled in what they refer to as their Catastrophe or Holocaust (“Nabka” in Arabic).
Their plight has been accompanied by unremitting criticism that the United States was the principal architect that stood behind Israel from the very beginning with money, manpower and arms. The fact is that President Truman eventually decided against the pro-Arab “professional opinion” of his Secretary of State, General George Marshall and the Arabists of the State Department. He accorded diplomatic recognition to the new Jewish state but never considered active military aid. His own memoirs recall how he felt betrayed by State Department officials and the American U.N. Ambassador, Warren Austin who pulled the rug out from under him one day after he promised Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman support for partition.
American Jewish voting in the 1948 Presidential election leaned heavily for President Truman but also cast a substantial number of votes for third party “Progressive” leader Henry Wallace who had spoken out even more strongly on behalf of American support for the Zionist position and aid to Israel. It was actually not until the administration of President John Kennedy in the early 1960s that the first American arms shipments were made to Israel.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bahrain: Sunni Authorities in Manama Revoke Nationality of Shiite Ayatollah
The decision is linked to a series of measures against the Shiites, who are the majority of citizens. Measures against another cleric and arrests among those who participated in protests against discrimination. Government concern over increasing power of the Shiites in the region.
Manama (AsiaNews / Agencies) — The government of Bahrain has withdraw the passport of one of the most influential Shiite leaders, Ayatollah Hussein al-Najati (left in photo), who is also the representative of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq, in the small kingdom. The decision to revoke the nationalities of both al-Najati and his family, apparently for bureaucratic reasons, falls within a range of measures that the authorities (Sunni) are taking against the majority Shiite community, in the lead up to parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 23.
On Sunday, just hours before the announcement of the decision against al-Najati, another penalty against a Shiite cleric, Sheik Abdul Jaleel Al-Miqdad, was unveiled. He has been banned for two weeks, from leading Friday prayers. The measures appear as a reaction to demonstrations and Al-Miqdad protests in August over the arrests of more than 250 Shiites. While a further 23 activists have been accused of plotting to topple the government and destabilizing the country. On Sunday there were four more arrests related to the protests. As for al-Najati, whose role in the demonstrations has not been clarified, he recently signed an appeal of the major Shiite religious leaders for an end to street protests, the release of prisoners and the opening of a dialogue between government and opposition.
The Shiites, who account for 70% of 530 thousand citizens of the small state, have long complained of being discriminated against by the Sunni monarchy and its government. They argue that the constituencies for the parliament were designed to ensure a majority for the Sunnis, that Sunnis from other states have been naturalized and recruited in the army and police (about 60 thousand men), while the civil service is full of Sunnis, especially in the areas of defence and interior and in senior roles, that the Sunnis are favoured in the allocation of houses as well as in government intervention.
The authorities in Bahrain feel threatened: last week, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa asked the government to “fight terrorism”. The underlying concern is related to the increasing importance that the Shiites are gaining in Iraq in general and the increased Iranian influence. Last year there were moments of tension in relations between Manama and, following a declaration by Ali Akbar Nateq Noori, an advisor to the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, according to whom Bahrain is the 14th province of Iran. Similar statements were made just days before by a deputy, Daryush Qanbari.
The behaviour of the government of the small kingdom is closely followed by both Sunni authorities of other countries in the area, as well as Shiite, but so far there has been no comment from Tehran or al-Sistani.
Rather than by religious conflict, then, Bahrain’s actions are for political reasons. The kingdom enjoys a discrete religious freedom — Christians, especially foreign workers, are 10% of the population — it has diplomatic relations with the Vatican, it is the first Gulf state to have allowed the construction of a Catholic place of worship and year Last King Hamad donated land for the construction of a second, responding to a request by Benedict XVI.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Who Lost Turkey?
You have to hand it to Turkey’s Islamist leaders. They sure know how to get their way. In the seven years since they first took power, the Islamist AKP party has successfully transformed Turkey from a staunch ally of the US and Israel and a member of NATO into a staunch ally of Iran and a member of NATO.
And that’s not all. Turkey’s Islamist leaders have used the Western language of democracy and freedom not only to abandon the West. They have used that language to destroy the foundations of Turkey’s Western-style secular democracy and transform the governing system of NATO’s sole Muslim member into a hybrid of Putinist autocracy and Iranian theocracy.
On September 12, the AKP took an enormous step toward consolidating its achievements and expanding its power. The Islamist regime won a national plebiscite on constitutional amendments that remove the remaining obstacles to its absolute power…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Iran: President Ahmedinejad Threatens U.S. With War ‘Without Boundaries’
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned the Obama administration today that if Iran’s nuclear facilities are attacked, the U.S. will face a war that “would know no boundaries.”
The Iranian president, who is in New York for the annual meetings of the United Nations General Assembly, spoke at a breakfast meeting with reporters and editors at Manhattan’s Warwick Hotel.
He said that Iran is on the brink of becoming a nuclear power, and warned Israel and the U.S. against attacking its nuclear facilities.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Poverty and Unemployment Among Northern Christians
Families living in villages in Zakho District are worn out by the lack of work, food and basic services. “We depend entirely on aid from humanitarian organisations and the Church,” some say. Children have a hard time integrating in schools where Kurdish is the language of education.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) — Iraqi families that fled north have to endure unemployment, poverty, lack of basic services, shortages of food and fuel and poor prospects. Many of them are Christian from Baghdad and Mosul and found refuge in Zakho District, Dohuk Governatorate (Iraqi Kurdistan). After years, their living conditions have not improved. Ankawa.com recently published a report on their dramatic situation.
Unemployment remains the main problem. The main breadwinners have had to seek work in Baghdad or nearby Erbil. Children have had to quit schools unable to study in Kurdish, a language they do not know. Those can study often do not have the money to buy school material, which is expensive given the wages of average families. Joblessness is closely related to the fact that when work is available, it is in the farming sector, whilst most migrants come from cities and do not have the necessary experience to work on farms.
In practical terms, survival depends on aid provided by humanitarian organisations operating in the area and the Church. Representatives of the local Christian community are able to provide families with US$ 50 a month, which is inadequate to help even the smallest of families.
Food prices are rising because of the lack of control by the authorities. Many families get food rations provided by the government but only in their place of origin. However, travelling to Baghdad, Basra or Mosul to get them means paying for high transportation costs and especially take risks given the insecurity that prevails in those areas.
Food is not the only thing in short supply. Getting fuel and basic services is also an uphill battle. The Kurdish government provides free medical coverage as well as water and electricity but all other public services are in a poor state. Roads are rundown or in ruin. Villages and towns are unclean. All this contributes to disease and epidemics. Adequate housing is also in scarce supply for those who fled the cities in the past six years. Many are forced to live in convents or parish buildings, two or three families per room.
With families going through their savings, poverty is widespread. For young people, the future at home is bleak, given the country’s instability and deadlocked political situation. Emigration, legal or not, is seen by many as the only hope, but the lack of means makes it hard to do.
Frustration and depression are widespread, closely linked to the realisation that everything has been lost. Families from Baghdad’s Dora neighbourhood say they left their homes into the care of neighbours, but armed gangs have seized them by force. Similarly, women have been forced to wear the veil and Christian residents now have to pay the Jizya, the poll tax for non-Muslims.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kremlin Declares War of the Last Tsar of Moscow
For weeks the mayor Luzkhov and his wealthy wife are the subject of an public campaign that highlights their personal interests and mismanagement of the Russian capital. Behind TV campaign, the hand of the government that wants to get rid of the long time first citizen, the undisputed master of Moscow for over 18 years. The possible successors.
Moscow (AsiaNews) — The army of Russians ex-kingpins ousted from the Kremlin and forced into exile in Europe could soon count among its new recruits, the mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov and his wife, the oligarch Elena Baturina. The powerful governor of the capital is now at loggerheads with President Dmitri Medvedev and his “resignation” seems imminent. This has been confirmed by a hard hitting press campaign to discredit him organized and carried out on state television NTV. According to foreign media, the richest couple in the country has already prepared for their golden exile in Austria and England, and possible candidates to the mayor’s chair have begun to circulate.
The sins of the richest couple in Moscow
In the eyes of the Kremlin, the Luzhkovs wield too much power in an area of such strategic importance as the capital. During the nearly two decade reign of her husband, Baturina has risen from being a simple clerk to the city’s ‘ brick oligarch. “ With a net worth of 2.9 billion U.S. dollars, the business magazine Forbes says she is the third richest woman in the world and has no competitors at home. It is no coincidence that in the last 10 years the real estate market in Moscow has become an inextricable mix of speculation and corruption, which is dominated by a class of unscrupulous real estate magnates. According to activists for the protection of historical heritage the local government is complicit in this, with up to 80% of construction projects involving real estate development company Inteko, which belongs to the mayor’s wife, in fact.
In fact it is this charge of putting personal interest ahead of the common good that the Kremlin has made against Luzhkov. Last week a heavy advertising campaign aimed at discrediting the image of the first citizen and his powerful wife started. The channel NTV, under the control of the Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom, which has always been close to Medvedev, broadcast a series of reports on the privileges of the couple, who immediately began a libal action against the broadcaster. The general manager of the network, Vladimir Kulistikov, said he is ready to prove the truth of the facts and push ahead in what is now an “open war”. Luzkhov has been battling demands of his resignation for months: the Russian President has not forgiven the mayor for his chaotic management of the fire and smog emergency, that devastated the capital this summer or for having challenged his decision to suspend the Moscow-Saint Petersburg highway project, after massive protests.
Luzhkov exploits power struggle between Medvedev and Putin
But beyond the official political reasons, the disappearance of Luzkhov according to some analysts, should be tied to the underlying power struggle between Medvedev and Putin, in view of the 2012presidential election. Putin, a fellow party member of Luzhkov’s in “United Russia”, may decide to defend not accept any resignation and thus open a confrontation with the president. But this would be a drastic solution that currently does not really benefit anyone. The Luzkhovs have taken a vacation and there are many who believe that they will not return home. According to the Financial Times, the couple are seeking refuge in London, where Baturina is already the owner of the second largest residence in the British capital after Buckingham Palace, the Witanhurst, estimated at 100 million pounds. Illustrious fellow countrymen like billionaires Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea, and Boris Berezovsky, the most powerful of Yeltsin-era oligarchs already reside in the English city. Precisely because of the strong presence of Russian expatriates, the British capital has been nick named Londograd.
However, if the couple chooses to disappear altogether from the scene, according to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, they could choose to retire to Kitzbuhel in Tyrol, where Baturina has already made investments.
Thus speculation has begun on the succession to the post of Mayor of Moscow, which is appointed by the Kremlin. The Russian newspaper Vedomosti reveals a list of three eligible candidates: Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin, Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoygu, former governor of Kaliningrad Georgij Boos.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Slovenian Troops “Illegally in Afghanistan”
LJUBLJANA — The union of the Slovenian military has sent a letter to the country’s President Danilo Turk regarding troop deployment in Afghanistan.
The letter informed Turk that the Slovenian government was “illegally sending troops” taking part in NATO operations.
The union informed the commander-in-chief that the Slovenian government was unconstitutionally and illegally sending Slovenian soldiers to Afghanistan.
President of the Slovenian Armed Forces Union Gvido Novak added in the letter that it was necessary for parliament to make a decision first before Slovenian troops could participate in offensive, war actions.
Reports said that without a state of war being declared, the decision cannot be made without parliament, while the government is yet to send its proposal to MPs, only a week before the deployment of the Slovenian troops in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Colonel Vojteh Mihevc, the commander of the 14th contingent of the Slovenian Armed Forces which is supposed to be deployed to Afghanistan, has not denied that the army would be used in offensive operations outside the country’s borders.
Novak warned in his letter that new Slovenian military mission to Afghanistan will not be peacekeeping and defensive any longer, and that it will be a war mission whose goal will be to defeat the enemy.
That is why the union has called upon the president to, in accordance with the Constitution, make a decision to protect Slovenian troops from missions that the government is unconstitutionally and illegally sending them to, and to protect them from committing planned and deliberate criminal acts while performing their tasks without a legal basis, said the letter.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Luis Fleischman: Beyond Electoral Illusions: The Totalitarian Regime of Hugo Chavez
On September 26, Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections. Since Hugo Chavez was elected to the presidency in 1998, Venezuela has been transformed from a country with democratic institutions to one where the president controls all branches of government. The upcoming elections serve the purpose of making Chavez look like he is presiding over a free society but in reality provide no real chance for change. In this context, it is important to understand the true nature of the present Venezuelan political reality.
Many observers, journalists and scholars have tried to define the Chavez regime. Some have referred to it as being neo-populist and others have called it an illiberal democracy. Neo-populist refers to a regime characterized by the mobilization of marginal masses led by a charismatic leader. Indeed, Chavez has established a direct and authoritarian relationship with the people and has redistributed state funds amongst the poor in order to secure their support and win legitimacy for his regime. The legislature, the judiciary and other branches of government and civil society have become subordinated to his will and executive authority. Such was the case with regimes like that of Juan Peron in Argentina in the 40’s and 50’s and with some differences the government of Getulio Vargas in Brazil in the 30’s and 40’s.
An illiberal democracy is a regime that mixes authoritarianism and elections. This type of regime uses democracy to take power and then governs in authoritarian ways.
Undoubtedly, the Chavez regime includes aspects of both populism and illiberal democracy. However, I would argue that the Chavez regime is moving beyond populism and illiberal democracy in the direction of totalitarianism.
Zbigniew Brzezinski defined totalitarianism as a system of government where instruments “of political power are wielded without restraint by centralized leadership … for the purpose of affecting a social revolution , including the conditioning of man on the basis of certain arbitrary ideological assumptions… in an atmosphere of coerced unanimity of the entire population”. This provides a good definition of where the government of Venezuela is heading…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Mexico Paper Seeks Ciudad Juarez Drug Gang Guidance
A Mexican newspaper in the heartland of the country’s drug war has asked cartels for guidance on whether it should publish stories on the conflict.
El Diario de Juarez has become known for its strong reporting from the deadly streets of Ciudad Juarez.
But the killing of a 21-year-old photographer last week prompted the newspaper to run a front-page editorial asking: “What do you want from us?”
Rights groups say journalists are regularly being targeted by drug gangs.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based advocacy group, says more than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006.
Many of those killed were reporting on crime or corruption, the group says, adding that the climate of fear has led to a widespread culture of self-censorship among fearful media workers.
El Diario’s editorial, published on its front page on Sunday, was its second since Luis Carlos Santiago, 21, was shot in Ciudad Juarez on 17 September. He later died of his injuries, although an intern who was also shot, Carlos Sanchez, survived the attack.
“The loss of two reporters from this publishing house in less than two years represents an irreparable sorrow for all of us who work here, and, in particular, for their families,” the newspaper said.
Describing the drug lords as the “de facto authorities” within Ciudad Juarez, the newspaper asked the cartels: “We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect.”
It highlighted the lack of progress in the investigation into the 2008 death of Armando Rodriguez, shot dead outside his home in view of his family.
But the editorial insisted it was not “a surrender”, saying instead that it had simply become “impossible to do our job in these conditions”.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Aunt Zeituni: ‘The System Took Advantage of Me’
President Obama’s Aunt Speaks Exclusively With WBZ-TV
“If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen.” Those are the words from 58-year-old Zeituni Onyango of Kenya in a recent exclusive interview with WBZ-TV.
Onyango is the aunt of President Barack Obama. She lived in the United States illegally for years, receiving public assistance in Boston.
‘I Knew I Overstayed’
Aunt Zeituni, as she has come to be known, first surfaced in the public light in 2008, in the final days of the Presidential election. Then-candidate Obama said that he was not against the possible deportation of his aunt. “If she has violated laws, then those laws have to be obeyed,” he told CBS’s Katie Couric. “We are a nation of laws.”
Onyango had violated the law, and she knew it.
“I knew I had overstayed” she told WBZ-TV’s Jonathan Elias when the two sat down one-on-one.
Assigned Public Housing
Zeituni Onyango said she came to the United States in 2000 and had every intention of leaving. Then, however, she says she got deathly ill and was hospitalized. When she recovered, she said she was broke and couldn’t afford to leave.
For two years Onyango said she lived in a homeless shelter, before she was assigned public housing despite thousands of legal residents also awaiting assistance. “I didn’t take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me.”
“I didn’t ask for it; they gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn’t create it or vote for it. Go and ask your system,” she said unapologetically.
And she’s right. The system provided her assistance despite her status as an illegal immigrant.
Ordered to Leave the Country
In 2004 a judge ordered Zeituni Onyango out of the country, but she never left. She stayed, hiding in plain sight. In 2005 she attended her nephew’s swearing in as the junior Senator of Illinois. In 2008 she was invited to, and traveled to D.C. for President Obama’s inauguration.
However her nephew, she says, never pulled any strings for her.
“Listen. Obama did not know my whereabouts.”
‘Heaven’ Pays Her Bills
Onyango hired a top immigration lawyer from Cleveland to help fight her case. We asked how she afforded that lawyer, when she claimed poverty.
“When you believe in Jesus Christ and almighty God, my help comes from heaven,” she responded.
‘Public Enemy Number One’
When asked about cutting in line ahead of those who have paid into the system she answered plainly, “I don’t mind. You can take that house. I will be on the street with the homeless.”
“To me America’s dream became America’s worst nightmare,” she said adamantly. “I have been treated like public enemy number one.”
Granted Asylum
She is still living in South Boston public housing, unemployed, and collecting about $700 a month in disability, she says. And now, Zeituni Onlyango is in this country legally.
In May 2010, Onyango’s case went back before the same judge who ordered her out of the country in 2004. This time she was granted asylum in the United States. The ruling said a return to Kenya might put Onyango in danger.
Did her nephew, the President of the United States influence that immigration judge? “No influence at all, from nobody, from nowhere,” Onyango said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: SPD Boss Calls for Tougher Integration Methods
The head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, has told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the country should get tough on immigrants who are unwilling to learn the language and integrate. He says they should be supported, but that the government and society should also make demands.
Sigmar Gabriel, the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party, is calling for tougher integration policies in his country. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday, he said that immigrants who refuse to participate in programs offered by the government to help foreigners integrate are as unwelcome as hate preachers who have found homes in some of the country’s mosques and receive their funding from abroad.
The SPD leader’s comments attracted criticism from the Green Party. Veteran Green politician Volker Beck described his words as the “beating of the drum against immigrants with cheap populist politics.” Gabriel’s statements reflect a tougher tone in the language of his party, which has long been aligned with the country’s labor movement and governed together in Berlin with the immigrant-friendly Green Party before conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel came into power. His comments have also highlighted a divide within the party on integration policy.
“The question of penalties surely shouldn’t be at the center of the integration debate,” Sebastian Edathy, a member of the SPD’s parliamentary group told the website of the newspaper Handelsblatt. “Instead we should be looking at the question of how we can deal with this through a better and more targeted education policy.” Edathy added, however, that foreigners must participate in integration programs designed to cater for them.
The SPD in recent days has initiated procedures to oust from the party Thilo Sarrazin, a member who resigned from his position on the board of Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, over passages in his new book and remarks he made in interviews suggesting that Muslim immigrants are dumbing Germany down, that Jews share a specific gene and that immigration is gradually overwhelming ethnic Germans. He has also argued that many Turks and Arabs living in Germany are unwilling to integrate. Regardless whether his theories are racist or not, Sarrazin has struck a chord with many Germans about the country’s integration failures in recent decades. This, in turn, has put the SPD officials under pressure not to expel Sarrazin.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Frattini Backs Hard Line on Criminal Immigrants
Rome, 20 Sept. (AKI) — Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini on Monday urged a hard line against immigrants who commit crimes and voiced support for French president Sarkozy’s controversial policy of repatriating thousands of Roma Gypsies. The Roma “commit crimes,” Frattini said.
“To dismiss Sarkozy as xenophobic was a very serious error by the European Union,” Frattini said in an interview with Italy’s RAI 1 public TV channel.
He was referring to remarks made last week by EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding, who announced the bloc was planning legal action against France over the Roma deportations.
The deportations have drawn international condemnation in recent weeks. Officials in France have dismantled over 100 illegal camps.
“The Roma commit crimes,” Frattini said.
“Europe needs to undertake serious self-criticism over its security policies,” Frattini stated.
“When citizens go to vote, they are not looking for a bureaucratic response but want immigrants who commit crimes to be deported,” he claimed.
His comments followed the election on Sunday in Sweden for the first time of 20 far-right MPs to the 349-seat parliament.
The five billion dollars annually demanded by Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi last month to prevent Europe being ‘swamped’ by immigrants from Africa is “too little” Frattini concluded.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Obama Has No Intentions of Enforcing Our Immigration Laws
Obama regime has radically changed the federal immigration enforcement stategy to REDUCE the threat of deportation for millions of illegals.
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) posted an article online on September 17, 2010 titled, “Obama Gives Illegals Get Out of Jail Card Free” written by Alan M. Gottlieb, Chairman that shows that “the Obama regime has radically changed the federal immigration enforcement stategy to REDUCE the threat of deportation for millions of illegals.”
The article goes on to explain that Obama has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dismiss deportation cases for those illegals who haven’t committed “serious crimes.”
To my way of thinking, just crossing the border without legal authority is a “serious crime” and using that criterion they should ALL be deported. But even so, if more tolerance could reduce that violation of our laws to less than a “serious crime,” we know that it will only be a matter of hours, and more likely minutes, before they do commit a “serious crime.”
And as Gottlieb further states, “Obama has turned a blind eye on the surge in violent crimes committed by illegals across the country and is now giving them more rights than law-abiding Americans.”
There is no question that Obama’s prime motive for ordering such a radical order counter to proper law enforcement and protection of our sovereignty laws is as apparent as a bright floodlight: ‘Keep them here until at least after they have voted on November 2, 2010.’ He must think that we Americans are as dumb as most of the actions are that he takes every day. He isn’t fooling anyone but himself and just piling up more and more evidence to be used against him for impeachment.
On the other hand, perhaps he has seen the projections that have surfaced in YouTube.com video that has recently surfaced and is now making the rounds of the Internet landing in my INBOX today, Sep. 18, 2010. If true; I say ‘if’ because nowhere on the film did I see any mention of its author(s), origins or persons responsible for production, it is a very chilling and nerve-rattling video about 7 minutes in length titled simply, “Demographic problem” with detailed statistics, some with printed sources and all believable. Check it out for yourself and you decide.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Republicans Raise Money for Gay Agenda
The civil war in the Republican Party takes another turn on Wednesday night when Sarah Palin basher Nicolle Wallace lends her name to a fundraiser for a pro-homosexual group called American Foundation for Equal Rights. Wallace, an adviser to the 2008 McCain for President campaign, figures prominently in Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, as someone determined to get her on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric so that she could be sandbagged by the left-wing anchorwoman.
American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) supports the “right” of a homosexual judge in California to unilaterally overturn the state’s ban on homosexual marriage.
Meanwhile, with Senator John McCain adamantly opposed, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a vote Tuesday on legislation to repeal the 1993 law against open homosexuals serving in the military. Repeal has already passed the House.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Found: Genes That Make Kids Smart
SCIENTISTS have identified more than 200 genes potentially associated with academic performance in schoolchildren.
Those schoolchildren possessing the “right” combinations achieved significantly better results in numeracy, literacy and science.
The finding emerged from a study of more than 4000 British children to pinpoint the genes and genetic combinations that influence reasoning skills and general intelligence.
One of its main conclusions is that intelligence is controlled by a network of thousands of genes with each making just a small contribution to overall intelligence, rather than the handful of powerful genes that scientists once predicted.
The researchers believe their work could eventually lead to genetic tests to predict babies’ academic potential.
“This kind of research could help us develop genetic tests to predict which kids are at risk of developing problems with their schooling, so that we could intervene to help them,” said Robert Plomin, professor of behavioural genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, who will describe his work today at a meeting of the Royal Society.
In his research, Professor Plomin built up a database on the academic ability of 4000 children, partly from teacher assessments and partly by having the youngsters sit a battery of cognitive tests. Then he and his colleagues analysed the children’s DNA, looking for tiny variations in their genes.
There are potentially many millions of these variations, but the team restricted their search to looking at the million or so of the most common, to find out which gene variants were most frequently found in children with either a high or low level of academic achievement.
“Out of the gene variants we looked at, a couple of hundred are emerging which seem to have a small but significant relationship with ability in maths and English,” said Professor Plomin.
Such research reflects a long-term trend away from the idea that particular aspects of human physiology, appearance and behaviour are controlled by just a few genes.
This idea arose from early breakthroughs in which illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and breast cancer, or features such as hair and eye colour, were found to be strongly influenced by variations in the structure of just one or a few genes. Some scientists then predicted similar results for anything from heart disease to intelligence.
In recent years, however, it has become clear that most aspects of human development, health and behaviour are controlled by huge networks of individual genes, of which humans have about 25,000.
Research into height, for example, has picked out 300 genes that affect how tall people will grow, but even these genes can only explain 15 per cent of the total variations in human height. It implies that hundreds more genes must also play a part.
The scale of the search needed to track down all the genes involved in complex areas such as intelligence was beyond scientists’ abilities until recently. The deployment of computers means they can now begin to work out the interactions of these genes.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
IPCC Studies and Reports Have Nothing to Do With Climate Change
Every prediction or projections, as the IPCC evasively call them, have been wrong.
Most people have no idea what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually studies. They believe their reports are complete reports of climate change. This misconception is mostly because the IPCC arranged it and does little to correct it. In fact, they only look at that portion of climate change caused by humans. Here’s how they limit their study.
“The definition of climate change the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods’. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributable to natural causes.”
The problem is you cannot determine the human portion of climate change if you don’t know how much it changes naturally — and we don’t. The IPCC assumes humans cause most of the changes that are occurring and set out to prove that is true.
Everything they’ve done is contrary to normal scientific practices yet is presented to the public as solid science. The IPCC has done nothing to publicly or formally disavow claims that the science is settled. It is not settled because it never began, or worse, was deliberately diverted.
[…]
The most damaging evidence against CO2 is the assumption that an atmospheric increase causes a temperature increase. The assumption is wrong. In every record of any length for any period of history temperature increase precedes CO2 increase.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Review: Books Puts Heat on Global Warming Propagandists
In a just world, a fellow like Brian Sussman would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A reluctant whistleblower is one who seeks his country’s good, first and foremost.
Of course, in our world, Brian Sussman is a troublemaker.
A media figure in the San Francisco Bay area, Sussman has exhaustively researched the “global warming/climate change” debate, and his new book, “Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam,” is an astonishing read. It is engrossing, disturbing and one of the best books I’ve read in the past two or three years.
The author spent 20 years as a television science reporter and meteorologist, so his insights into the virtually diabolical left-wing agenda concerning climate change is invaluable for those who really want to understand.
The really hot theme that emerges from Climategate is that a globalist agenda is driving the bus, and the Americans onboard are increasingly becoming puppets not only for their own government, but those who infest the United Nations.
In his book, Sussman shows clearly that “science” has been hijacked by activists in academia, who never let their Marxist worldview take a holiday. He also exposes those who are becoming rich from the climate change debate; how the U.N.’s policies are shaping our environmental laws and how it all affects the average consumer.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
1 comments:
"Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences"
Man, I swear, America is becoming Canada, and Obama is Pierre Trudeau
Post a Comment