Ireland: Saudi Arabia in Talks to Fund 4,500 Pharma Research Jobs
THE PROMOTERS of an ambitious plan to create 4,500 pharmaceutical research jobs in Co Kerry are in talks with the Saudi Arabian government about funding the entire cost of the €4.7 billion project. Taoiseach Brian Cowen yesterday lent his support to the plan to create the large place of employment in Ireland and the biggest pharmaceutical research centre in the world on an industrial park in Tralee. Mr Cowen said the proposed Global Pharmaceutical Centre of Excellence could rely on the “supportive engagement” of the State enterprise agencies to help bring the project to fruition. He added: “When the detailed proposals for the project are submitted, I want to assure you that as head of Government, the expertise of our State enterprise agencies will be at your disposal to assist and support you further to bring this ambitious project to fruition.”
The centre, which already employs 65 people, said yesterday it was finalising plans for a planning application to Kerry County Council for a 1.2 million sq ft facility in the Kerry Technology Park in Tralee. It plans to open in February 2013, subject to planning and other permissions. The promoters, Irish pharmaceutical company Pharmadel, say up to 400 jobs will be created in advance of opening, with over 4,500 jobs envisaged when the centre is up and running. Pharmadel employs 12 people selling generic pharmaceuticals in Midleton, Co Cork.
Senior figures formerly in the European Commission, US politics and university governance have been approached about joining the board of the centre, according to Rory Doyle, vice president of global development at Pharmadel. Mr Doyle said Government funding was not being sought. Discussions had been held with three sovereign funds about supporting the project and negotiations with one in the Middle East were at a critical stage. He declined to say who the potential investor was, but The Irish Times understands it involves a Saudi state funder.
When news of the project first emerged after local TDs were briefed during the summer, it was greeted with some scepticism in official circles, largely because of the unprecedented size of the plan. However, intensive lobbying appears to have allayed many of the initial concerns, and State agencies have now rowed in behind the plan. Mr Doyle said he understood the scepticism, but insisted the project was realistic.
The pharmaceutical industry was re-inventing itself by contracting out the huge cost of developing new drugs, he pointed out, so an opportunity existed to carry out this work here. “If you study the industry as we have you’ll see this is going to happen on a large scale. So why not in Ireland? And why not in Kerry?” The centre will operate as a campus carrying out drug research on contract for individual companies and countries. Different departments with different research objectives will share their knowledge and operate under the one roof.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Birmingham Could Put City Assets Up for Sale
Coalition spending cuts may lead city council to make venues, including the NEC and NIA, available to sovereign wealth funds
Birmingham council leaders, who are hoping to plug a budget hole by selling some of the billions of pounds of property assets owned by Britain’s second city, are in talks with Middle East sovereign funds. The National Exhibition Centre (NEC) — Britain’s biggest exhibition venue — prime real estate and a stake in Birmingham airport could all be up for grabs, councillors said, as they look to fund large capital projects at a time when the national government is demanding deep spending cuts.
Mike Whitby, leader of Birmingham city council, which represents over a million people and describes itself as Europe’s biggest local authority, said he had been approached by sovereign wealth funds and was talking with the Abu Dhabi government as he tried to forge closer ties with the Middle East. “We would allow them to be in partnership with our assets, including the National Indoor Arena [NIA], the Symphony Hall, the ICC [International Convention Centre] and the NEC,” Whitby said.
The NEC Group, which is wholly owned by the council and includes venues such as the NIA and ICC as well as the main exhibition centre, has fixed assets worth about £750m, according to pre-credit crisis valuations included in the council’s most recent annual report. The NEC made an operating profit of almost £30m last year, on revenues of £110m. Whitby said investors had shown a significant level of interest in Birmingham’s “Big City Plan” redevelopment during his recent trip to Kuwait, when he spoke to the country’s chamber of commerce.
Such asset sales and foreign investment show how councils could invest in infrastructure despite expected cuts of 20-30% in their budgets and would help the government towards its goal of using the private sector to lead economic recovery. Birmingham’s Beorma quarter development, the latest phase in the regeneration of the city centre, has attracted about £200m from its Kuwaiti lead developer Salhia International Investments, Whitby said.
Plans to knock down and relocate the main library and redevelop the site in the heart of the city have also caught the eye of Middle Eastern investors, Randal Brew, the councillor responsible for finance, said. “We have been successful in attracting quite a lot of Arab money,” Brew said. “The leader has gone out and marketed the city.”
Elsewhere, the local business community is busy forging ties with Middle Eastern investors, as highlighted by a visit this month from Sheikh Ali al-Hashimi, religious adviser in the United Arab Emirates ministry of presidential affairs. “We want to see if we can get sovereign wealth attracted to projects in Birmingham,” Noor Siddiqi, a lawyer who organised al-Hashimi’s trip, said. “London has the attention of most of the world but other regions like Birmingham have a massive Muslim community and can relate to Muslim countries.”
One Conservative councillor, who asked not to be named, said the council could raise funds by selling its 19% stake in Birmingham international airport. Britain’s sixth-busiest airport is worth about £870m, based on the £420m the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Australia’s Victorian Funds Management paid for a 48% stake in 2007. Such a sale would have long-term strategic and financial implications, however, and Brew was less keen on sales of anything other than real estate assets, saying he knew of no plans to sell the NEC or the council’s airport stake. “They generate good returns and they have a good asset value … Now is not the time to review those type of assets because you would not get the maximum value,” he said. The council, which according to Brew owns about 40% of Birmingham, has a total capital budget for the next three years of just under £1.5bn. “We will fund that by a number of means and included in that will be capital receipts from the sale of properties we have that are surplus to requirements,” Brew said. Other big items sitting on the council’s balance sheet include about £2bn of social housing, equating to a third of its total fixed assets.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
ACORN in Trouble Again
Federal inspector says spinoff may have concealed fraud
A spinoff of the controversial community organizing group ACORN has failed to comply with federal grant requirements and should be placed on “inactive status,” asserts a report by the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
ACORN, convicted in multiple voter-fraud cases, may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records, the investigation concluded.
The OIG found the group received $3.25 million in housing counseling grants from HUD between 2008 and 2009. More than $2.544 million, nearly 80 percent, of the HUD grants were used to pay ACORN’s salaries.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘Anti-Israel’ Group Recruiting Across Nation
Controversial organization claims it supports Jewish state
A controversial lobby group accused of working against Israel will be hosted by a Jewish organization at the University of Pennsylvania as part of an initiative to make the group known in local venues across the U.S.
J Street’s inaugural university event Feb. 4 will be broadcast live from the university to 24 U.S. college campuses.
The event features a professor who accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, a supporter of a recent U.N. report charging Israel with war crimes and a host of personalities involved with a “Fast for Gaza” initiative that demands Israel negotiate with the Hamas terrorist organization.
J Street brands itself as pro-Israel. It states on its website it seeks to “promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically.”
But the group also supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israel’s anti-terror military offensives.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Communists to be Welcomed at Progressive March
The “peace director” of the October 2 “One Nation Working Together” rally says that the U.S. should immediately withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, military aid to Israel should be ended, and that Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons as long as the U.S. has them. He also says that Marxists are invited to participate at his upcoming rally.
Michael McPhearson, one of the key organizers of the event and former executive director of Veterans for Peace, tells Accuracy in Media, “I’m not all that concerned if you’re a Republican, Democrat, or Marxist or Communist, whatever,” he said. “I just want us to work together to make our country better. That’s what I look at — not if you’re a socialist.”
The October 2 rally in Washington, D.C. is designed to counter the Tea Party, a grass roots movement of citizens devoted to limited government, and the recent “Restoring Honor” rally in the nation’s capital sponsored by Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
[…]
The mainstream media, however, can be expected not to highlight the fact that the Democratic Party and its constituency groups, which are running the rally, have made common cause with communist groups dedicated to the destruction of the American system and withdrawing U.S. military power from the Middle East in the face of global Islamic terror.
McPhearson, controversial in his own right, confirmed his participation in the 2008 national convention of the Black Radical Congress, a gathering that included representatives of the Communist Party, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. The theme of the event was “Forging a Black Liberation Agenda for the 21st Century.”
[…]
In addition to USAction, the official “partners” of the October 2 rally include the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), National Council of La Raza, the Campus Progress affiliate of the Center for American Progress, Green for All (the Van Jones group), the American Federation of Teachers, Pax Christi, Rainbow Push, Color of Change, United for Peace and Justice, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, AFSCME, Queers for Economic Justice, and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).
[…]
The “Peace Table” that McPhearson has assembled for the upcoming demonstration includes the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a spin-off from the old Moscow-run Communist Party; Code Pink, which supports the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela; the American Muslim Association of North America; the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation; and the U.S. Peace Council, the American affiliate of the old Soviet front World Peace Council.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s UN Speech: More Revealing Than Effective
By Barry Rubin
President Barack Obama’s speech to the UN, September 23, 2010, is revealing on several levels. Indeed, I learned something very important about his foreign policy. But that’s at the end.
He began by discussing terrorism as if it is carried out by faceless, doctrineless, causeless mystery men who have no sponsors, ideology, or goals and attack everyone equally.
Obama explained:
“Nine years ago, the destruction of the World Trade Center [by whom? BR] signaled a threat that respected no boundary of dignity or decency. Two years ago this month, a financial crisis on Wall Street devastated American families on Main Street. These separate challenges have affected people around the globe.”
That could be an important clue: those who attacked the World Trade Center might have been early protesters against the financial crisis.
What has happened since?
“Men, women and children have been murdered by extremists from Casablanca to London; from Jalalabad to Jakarta.”
Note that three of the four places listed are in Muslim-majority countries, disguising the fact that most of these attacks were by Islamists trying to kill Westerners, though many were also aimed at Muslims, too. Obama should want to win over governments in Muslim majority countries but he goes a step further, making Muslims as the victims rather than focusing on building a broad international coalition.
For that purpose, Obama should have listed more places. In fact by making the tally include many countries he would have demonstrated the extent of the problem and, more effectively, the need for cooperation in fighting this battle. It would have been especially smart of him to mention Russia, India, and China. These are important powers whose support Obama needs. He might have remembered the Asian victims like Thailand and the Philippines. A mention of Israel would have been decent.
The problem, then, is NOT that Obama wants to show sympathy for non-radical Muslims and win them over. The problem is that he focuses too single-mindedly on that priority, while failing to draw a sharper distinction between the two sides in Islam’s internal struggle for power and legitimacy.
Obama then discusses his withdrawals from Iraq:
“Since I took office, the United States has removed nearly 100,000 troops from Iraq. We have done so responsibly, as Iraqis have transitioned to lead responsibility for the security of their country. We are now focused on building a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people, while keeping our commitment to remove the rest of our troops by the end of next year.”
He plays partisan politics here. True, he withdrew troops but there’s no mention of the surge-something he opposed and his predecessors implemented-that made these withdrawals possible. It isn’t just mean-spirited behavior. Obama genuinely has little sense of the continuity of U.S. policy. Nor will his audience fail to remember that Iraq has been without a government for months, during the period of his “partnership” policy.
Next, a curious, clumsy phrasing to transition to a discussion of nuclear weapons:
“As we pursue the world’s most dangerous extremists, we are also denying them the world’s most dangerous weapons, and pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Leaving aside the nuclear issue itself, how has U.S. policy denied al-Qaida nuclear weapons? The proper connection would be to Iran as the world’s main sponsor of terrorism.
Instead, he links the denial of nuclear weapons to Iran with the idea that everyone must give them up, though he mentions in passing that “Iran is the only party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program….” But what does this mean? That Iran’s nuclear program is developing weapons or that there is concern such weapons might be used? The distinction might not seem important now but some day it could be the pivot on which the Middle East’s strategic balance turns against America.
Okay, enough about the rest of the world, now Obama gets to the issue that really animates him, what he appears to believe is the keystone to everything. Two paragraphs about terrorism; two on Iran; ten long paragraphs about Israel-Palestinian issues.
Before going into detail, let me ask a question: Obama wants to win over Muslim majority states. Why should he highlight what might be considered the U.S. weak point in that context? Yes, I understand he wishes to demonstrate how hard the United States is working on this issue. But no matter how much he talks, he has nothing to show for it! All any Arab or Muslim writer or politician need do to shoot down Obama’s arguments is to say: Yes, he keeps blabbing about this but he hasn’t done anything.
A good statesman doesn’t highlight what he cannot do, nor sets himself up as the one to blame when-inevitably-nothing happens. He and his administration simply don’t get this and keep promising, flattering, and sometimes conceding more with no result…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Seattle Church Invites Muslims to Dinner
But plan to ‘dialogue’ draws criticism over its message
A Seattle-area church is reaching out to Muslims by having area pastors sit down over dinner with imams affiliated with the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations to share their religious beliefs.
Michael Ly, associate pastor of Soma church in Renton, Wash., believes the project will open doors for further understanding between the two faiths.
The Seattle Times reported Ly believes that reaching out to Muslims with friendship is what Jesus would do.
But Crosstalk radio host and cultural analyst Ingrid Schlueter believes the effort is outrageous.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Soros Revealed as Funder of Liberal Jewish-American Lobby
The Jewish-American advocacy group J Street, which bills itself as the dovish alternative to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby, has secretly received funding from billionaire George Soros despite previous denials that it accepted funds from the Hungarian-born financier and liberal political activist.
Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.
The contributions represent a third of the group’s revenue from U.S. sources during the period. Nearly half of J Street’s revenue during the timeframe — a total of $811,697 — however, came from a single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.
Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s executive director, said in an interview that the $245,000 was part of a $750,000 gift from the Soros family to his organization made over three years. Mr. Ben Ami also said that in this same period he had raised $11 million for J Street and its political action committee.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Zucker Announces Departure From NBC
Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, told the company’s employees in an e-mail Friday morning that he will step down from his position upon the completion of the takeover of NBC by Comcast.
The fate of Mr. Zucker, the longest-serving senior manager at NBC, has been the subject of widespread speculation since Comcast agreed last December to purchase 51 per cent of NBCU from its long-time corporate owner, General Electric. The deal is expected to close at the end of the year, following regulatory approval.
In an interview in NBC’s executive offices, Mr. Zucker, who is 45, said the decision to leave the only employer he has ever worked for — a decision he acknowledged he was not his own choice — became inevitable after a meeting two weeks ago with Steve Burke, Comcast’s chief operating officer.
| [Return to headlines] |
Absolutely Awful: French Mock Carla Bruni’s Latest Assault on Pop Charts With Cover of David Bowie Hit Absolute Beginners
* Scroll down to listen for yourself
Carla Bruni is being mocked mercilessly across France after having recorded arguably the most dreadful David Bowie cover of all time.
The somewhat feeble take on Bowie’s ‘Absolute Beginners’ which has been leaked on the internet may well signal an abrupt end to the pop singing career of France’s First Lady.
Even Paris Match, a magazine which has historically been extremely loyal to the 42-year-old former supermodel, suggests in its latest edition that ‘France suffers while Madame sings.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
France: Patio Heater Ban ‘Could Kill Paris Café Culture’
Patio heaters are set to be banned from Paris because of the harm they cause to the environment, it emerged today.
In a move which will be watched closely in Britain, the French capital’s Socialist council said it wanted to get rid of appliances which have become the ‘4x4s of café culture’.
Since the smoking ban was introduced three years ago, hundreds of the gas heaters have sprung up outside cafe’s and restaurants.
They allow people to sit outdoors in cold weather, enjoying cigarettes while being heated by the glowing, gas-powered rings.
But Lyne Cohen-Solal, head of trade regulations at the council, said a ban on the most powerful heaters could come into force as soon as January.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland’s Catholic Schools Ban Full Muslim Veil
Roman Catholic secondary schools in Ireland have imposed a ban on Muslim girls covering their faces with a full veil.
Teachers have been told in guidelines that Muslims would not be permitted to wear the niqab, the garment covering the entire body except for slits across the eyes. The guidance, circulated in Ireland by bishops among more than 450 schools this week, said that although staff should respect the religious rights of non-Catholics, it was “unsatisfactory for a teacher not to be able to see and engage properly with a pupil whose face was covered”.
“No pupil or staff member should be prevented from wearing a religious symbol or garment in accordance with their tradition, for example, the hijab [headscarf] for Muslim girls and the turban for Sikh boys,” said the document called “Guidelines on the Inclusion of Students of Other Faiths in Catholic Secondary Schools”.
“Freedom of religious expression is a basic human right and is in keeping with the Catholic understanding of its identity as being a universal Church,” the guidelines say. “On the other hand, the wearing of a full veil over a girl’s face [niqab], for example, is a more challenging issue.” The guidelines advise teachers to explain the prohibition in the presence of the head or senior teacher to parents of any pupils who wanted to wear the veil. Staff are told that they would be right to demand that a pupil’s mother remove her own veil during such a meeting as long as no men are present.
The guidelines also recommend that parents are made aware of uniform policy before children arrive at schools. In many cases, they say, uniform policy would involve an obligation to wear the school’s crest on a blazer even if this included an image of a cross or other Christian symbols.
The guidelines were published after a number of head teachers asked the bishops for advice on how to work with pupils from other religions while maintaining their Catholic ethos. Their publication signals the hardening across the European Union towards the wearing of the veil, with France the latest country to forbid the practice.
In Britain, Catholics schools have already strongly discouraged the wearing of the veil and last year a Muslim teacher was prevented from visiting St Mary’s Catholic College in Blackburn, Lancashire, because she refused to take off her niqab.
Months earlier, a Muslim mother was turned away from a parents’ evening at Our Lady and St John Catholic Arts College, Blackburn, for the same reason.
The Irish guidelines, like those published in England and Wales in 2008, also recommend that places be set aside in schools were Muslim pupils can pray daily.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Catholic Church Backs Muslim Struggle to Build Milan’s First Mosque
American pundits and politicians continue to argue over whether building an Islamic cultural center two blocks from ground zero — where Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center nine years ago — is appropriate.
But as the debate, centered around religious freedom and the role Islam itself played in the 9/11 attacks, continues in New York another of the world’s great cultural cities is arguing over a proposal for its first mosque. And proponents are getting help from an unlikely corner: the Vatican.
Milan, the northern Italian city famed for finance and fashion, is home to about 100,000 Muslims, mostly migrant workers from North African countries. But within city limits, there isn’t a single mosque…
| — Hat tip: goethechosemercy | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Will Become Majority in Europe, Senior Vatican Official Warns
European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamised, a senior Vatican official has said.
Italian Father Piero Gheddo said that the low birth rate among indigenous Europeans combined with an unprecedented wave of Muslim immigrants with large families could see Europe becoming dominated by Islam in the space of a few generations.
“The challenge must be taken seriously,” said Father Gheddo, of the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.
“Certainly from a demographic point of view, as it is clear to everyone that Italians are decreasing by 120,000 or 130,000 persons a year because of abortion and broken families — while among the more than 200,000 legal immigrants a year in Italy, more than half are Muslims and Muslim families, which have a much higher level of growth.”
He said: “Newspapers and television programmes never speak of this. However, an answer must be given above all in the religious and cultural fields and in the area of identity.”
The priest blamed Christians for failing to live up to their own beliefs and helping to create a “religious vacuum” which was being filled by Islam.
He predicted that Islam would “sooner rather than later conquer the majority in Europe”.
“The fact is that, as a people, we are becoming ever more pagan and the religious vacuum is inevitably filled by other proposals and religious forces,” he said.
Father Gheddo also said that Christians who lapsed were also making themselves vulnerable to attacks by secularists.
He said when “religious practice diminishes in Christian Europe and indifference spreads, Christianity and the Church are attacked”.
“If we consider ourselves a Christian country, we should return to the practice of Christian life, which would also solve the problem of empty cradles,” he added.
The comments of Father Gheddo come just months after a Czech cardinal also blamed lapsed Catholics for the Islamisation of Europe.
On his retirement as Archbishop of Prague earlier this year, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void “created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives”.
He said that unless Christians woke up to the threat to their culture they would soon find they no longer have the strength to make their mark on society.
He called on Christians to respond to the threat of Islamisation by living their own religious faith more observantly.
While many European Catholic bishops often defend the rights of Muslims to worship publicly others are more keen to protect the Christian heritage of their continent.
Last year Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, warned Catholic women against marrying Muslims.
Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi has also urged the Italiangovernment to give priority to Catholic migrants over Muslims in order to protect his country’s religious identity.
The Vatican has also opposed Turkey joining the European Union partly because the Muslim country does not share the continent’s Christian heritage.
| — Hat tip: ED | [Return to headlines] |
True Finns Support Surges
Support for the right-wing True Finns Party has risen to a new high, according to a survey published on Friday.
According to the Taloustutkimus survey published by YLE, 12.5 percent of respondents said they back the True Finns. That is a rise of 1.8 percentage points since August.
Meanwhile the three big parties — the National Coalition, the Centre and the opposition Social Democrats — have all lost ground, but less than one percentage point each.
Support for the Greens edged up to around 10 percent. Last summer the opposition True Finns surpassed the Greens — a member of the four-party government coalition — as the country’s fourth most popular party.
The Left Alliance made its poorest showing ever at 7.2 percent. The Christian Democrats overtook the Swedish People’s Party as the nation’s seventh-biggest party.
The margin of error is 1.4 percent.
The next general election is in March 2011.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Forget Canada, I Want to Live in Middlesbrough, ‘ Defiant Girl, 13, Abducted by Her British Mother Tells Judges
A schoolgirl has been allowed to stay in Britain instead of moving to live with her father in Canada following a landmark ruling by top family judges.
The 13-year-old, who was ‘abducted’ from America by her mother in violation of international law, set out her bitter objections to Lord Justice Thorpe and Lady Justice Smith in a private interview, midway through a hearing at London’s Civil Appeal Court.
In a unique move, the judges ruled she was old enough to have views of her own and could stay in her native Middlesbrough rather than moving thousands of miles away.
[…]
The details of the private meeting were not revealed but Lord Justice Thorpe — one of the nation’s most senior family judges — said he had been impressed by the ‘cogency of her reasons for rejecting (America) as the future for her’.
‘It is highly unusual for this court to meet a child before deciding an appeal,’ he said said. ‘It is certainly the first time I’ve ever had that experience.
‘But I believe it was just and necessary in this case…’
He said it was becoming ever more crucial to ensure the voices of children were heard in family law cases.
After her legal victory, the jubilant schoolgirl said she had simply told judges she ‘would not go back’.
[…]
She and her younger sister arrived back in England late last year, after their mother used the pretext of a theatre visit to take them from their father, and ‘abduct them to the United Kingdom’, the court heard.
‘That was a very foolish step,’ the judge observed, adding: ‘The bare removal would have been bad enough, but the elements of deception which surrounded their removal inevitably further damaged the relationship between the parents, and has had further repercussions since’.
The father, exercising his rights under the Hague Convention which enshrines the international ban on child abduction, in August,secured a High Court order for the return of his daughters to America for their future to be decided there.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Bonfire of the Inanities
Farewell, then, to the Pesticides Residue Committee, the Consular Stakeholder Panel and the Zoos Forum. And good riddance to the Commissioner for the Compact, the Caribbean Board and the Advisory Committee on Packaging. These — and 171 other non-departmental public bodies — are finally to be abolished. Governments of every stripe have for decades promised a “bonfire of the quangos”, and yet these costly (and usually pointless) bodies have continued to proliferate. At long last, however, we can see some flames.
But while the Coalition’s hard-headed approach to these otiose adornments to public life is most welcome, why are many other bodies — such as the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objectors — only under review? On to the bonfire with them now, however much they squeal.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Head of MI6 Attends Funeral of Spy Found Locked in Sports Bag
Spy Gareth Williams, who was found dead in a sports bag in a Central London flat, has been laid to rest in a service attended by the head of MI6.
Sir John Sawers made the journey from London to the small Bethel Methodist Chapel in Anglesey on Friday to support Mr Williams’s family and represent the maths genius’s colleagues who could not attend.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Knife-Wielding Lithuanian Squatters Who Move in When Residents Go Out
Gangs of Eastern Europeans are taking over family homes while the occupants are out.
Residents have told how gangs break into their homes, change the locks and then move in ‘tenants’ who claim squatters’ rights.
The victims return to find aggressive, knife-wielding Eastern Europeans who refuse to let them into their own home — while police say they are powerless to act without a court order.
The ensuing stand-off means homeowners and tenants have to find somewhere else to stay and face a costly legal battle to reclaim their property.
Angie Belalij, 37, lost control of her rented two-bedroom home five months ago after illegal tenants moved in while renovation work was carried out.
Mrs Belalij, who lives with her husband Tarik, and son Jake, 14, said she was threatened with a knife by one of the eight Lithuanians who had invaded her home in Barking, Essex. She now does not want to return and fears for her family’s safety.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: PC Plod Loses the Plot
A quite devastating report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has admitted that the British police have staged a 30 year ‘retreat from the streets’ and abandoned the public to endemic thuggery which has blighted the lives of millions of people. This report, by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor, is a stunning admission of what can only be described as systemic professional collapse. The picture he paints is of a society whose most vulnerable inhabitants have been simply abandoned because the police have, as he bluntly observes, ‘defined disorder down’ — and effectively out of existence — as they have looked the other way. The kind of yobbery he is talking about is, as he says,
a cumulative, corrosive issue that undermines the ability of victims to live in peace.
Yet the police by and large don’t take it seriously. The principal reason is that anti-social behaviour does not fall into the category of ‘crime’ — and therefore does not register in the crime statistics. And since for years now the police have tailored what they do in order to be seen to be meeting crime statistics targets set by the government, the victimisation of whole communities by yobbery has gone unaddressed.
As a result, the report discloses that, even though some 70 per cent of people say they have been the victims of anti-social behaviour and it accounts for a full 45 per cent of calls from the public, the police fail to respond to some 50 per cent of these calls. Moreover, only a quarter of the 14 million incidents that occur each year are reported to police because many victims feel their complaint will be ignored. So we can now see how the official crime figures are hopelessly unreliable. The true extent of crime in Britain is very much worse than official figures suggest. And one of the main reasons for the discrepancy is the collapse of faith in the very people who are supposed to be protecting the public from that crime.
The toll of misery caused by this collapse of the policing ethos is appalling. Individuals, their families and their houses have been targeted for years by thuggery that make victims prisoners in their own homes. More shockingly still, many if not most of these victims are poor and, even worse,
29 percent of our victim survey identified themselves as having a ‘long standing illness, disability or infirmity’.
So the most vulnerable are being the most badly victimised and the most badly ignored by the police. And the unrelieved despair caused by such victimisation and neglect has resulted in a few tragic cases of suicide and violent death. In other words, managerialism — that benighted doctrine that lies behind target-setting, regulation and the management consultancy-speak that has helped bring Britain’s public services generally to their knees — results also in violence, intimidation and even death. But it’s not just top-down managerialism. There’s also a problem of bottom-up incompetence:
Out of 43 forces, only 22 have IT systems that help them to identify and prioritise repeat calls, at the time of the report being made, and just 16 forces can effectively identify vulnerability. This falls to only 13 forces that can effectively identify those most at risk, repeat vulnerable callers, at the time the call is made.
The fact is that, over the past three decades or so, PC Plod has simply lost the plot. There have been many reasons for this: a denigration of policing street experience in favour of increasingly ideological academic qualifications as the criteria for promotion; the undermining of justice and morality by ‘victim culture’ and human rights law; the savaging of police attitudes by the politically correct inquisition; the politicisation of the upper ranks and their kow-towing to Whitehall interference and managerial gobbledegook.
The result of all this and more has been a wholesale demoralisation of the British police. At their best, they are magnificent. The HMIC report itself records that, where the police do address anti-social behaviour, there are is high level of public satisfaction. And some senior officers’ feet remain firmly on the ground. See for example, the remarks by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who responded to the HMIC report by admitting that
a ‘psychological contract’ between police and the public over tackling street yobbery has been broken
and that
officers behind desks often leave members of the public to face petty thuggery alone. in general.
But in general, the police are now lions led by donkeys. And they have lost sight of what policing in Britain always saw as its priority: not the detection of crime, but the prevention of crime and the maintenance of public tranquillity. It was that perception which made the British police unique in the world. And it has been lost. To his credit, Sir Denis appears to understand this. There is surely real anguish here when he writes:
We need to examine the impact of the drift away from maintaining order by presence, persuasion, communication, cajoling and when needed coercion, though often short of physical force, to a model principally geared around control and the use of powers.
What he is describing is not just a discrete problem of police strategy. Nor is it merely an erosion of the professional ethos of policing. It is the brutalisation and disintegration of a once gentle, civilised, orderly country — whose gentleness and orderliness derived from a shared understanding of the necessary limits of behaviour, of the need for discipline of self and of others, of a shared sense of connection with others, of the fact that policing needed to be carried out not just by men and women in uniform but by parents and teachers and bus conductors and park attendants and society in general, all pulling together in pursuit of a common interest.
As Sir Denis O’Connor has said, individuals and communities must re-establish acceptable rules of behaviour for those in public spaces or impacting on their neighbours. But as Sir Paul Stephenson has said, individuals and communities need the police to back them up in doing so.The formal and informal policing of a society is a symbiotic process. The erosion of the one causes the erosion of the other. The crisis of British policing is a symptom of the wider crisis of Britain’s fractured society.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Police ‘Have Lost the Public’s Trust’: We’ve Retreated From the Streets and Broken Our Contract Says Yard Chief
Police have broken their ‘psychological contract’ with the public to keep the streets clear of anti-social behaviour, the country’s most senior officer admitted yesterday. Scotland Yard chief Sir Paul Stephenson accepted beat patrols had been neglected and officers left behind desks, in cars or left doing ‘social work’. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner supported the call for the public to join the fight against yobs, saying they should be confident officers will back them.
His comments came after Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor said officers had ‘retreated from the streets’ over the past 30 years.. Sir Denis said the basic task of keeping the peace had become a ‘second order consideration’ as officers became obsessed with hitting crime targets. The Association of Chief Police Officers — which represents chief constables — claimed it could not tackle yobbery alone and blamed a ‘complex range of challenges’ for keeping its officers off the streets. But yesterday Sir Paul said: ‘This is more to do with the psychological contract between the citizen and police. And occasionally the citizen might be forgiven for thinking the psychological contract has been broken.’
‘They are on the streets and police are in buildings and vehicles, not doing other things. That is the critical issue,’ he said. ‘It is a psychological contract, we are not saying the public should do this on their own. We should be out there. We should be saying, ‘we want to be on the streets on your behalf. We want to make them safe’.’ He added: ‘Too often in recent years police have fallen into the trap of engaging in social engineering and associated social work, filling gaps left by other agencies.. In years gone by we have lost the sense of the importance of visible street patrols — effecting as best as we can, uniform governance of the streets and public places, owning the streets on behalf of the public so that we can enjoy using them. We need to give people confidence we are there supporting them and we are doing that through visible police patrol.’
The HMIC report found 90 per cent of the public thought it was the responsibility of the police to tackle thugs and yobs. Despite the findings, senior officers pointed to the other tasks forces had to handle, such as organised crime and terrorism. The Association of Chief Police Officers also claimed anti-social behaviour was not for the police to deal with on their own. Acpo spokesman, Assistant Chief Constable Simon Edens, said he accepted anti-social behaviour could have a devastating impact. But he added: ‘As HMIC recognises, modern policing has to meet a hugely complex range of challenges. Tackling anti-social behaviour must be achieved alongside keeping people safe through less visible parts of policing such as tackling serious organised crime or terrorism.
Anti-social behaviour is not a matter for the police to tackle alone, and the service supports the Government’s approach to encouraging greater personal and community involvement in neighbourhoods.’
But critics said it was wrong for senior officers to suggest tackling anti-social behaviour was ‘someone else’s job’. Blair Gibbs, of the Policy Exchange think tank said: ‘It is an abdication of responsibility for senior police leaders to imply that tackling anti-social behaviour is someone else’s job. Making communities safer requires more than good policing, but fighting crime effectively begins with proactive policing that bears down on disorder and doesn’t tolerate minor criminality. There can be no excuse for police forces abandoning their primary mission to prevent crime and disorder.’
Home Secretary Theresa May attacked Labour for failing to tackle anti-social behaviour over the last 13 years. Mrs May said: ‘This report is a damning indictment of Labour’s failure to get to grips with anti-social behaviour. They spent record amounts of money but achieved nothing.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Roman Catholic School Could be Handed Over to a Mosque After Number of Rc Pupils Falls to ‘Five or Six’
Church bosses want to close Sacred Heart RC Primary School, in Blackburn, Lancashire, because the number of Catholic students has plummeted from 91 per cent to just three per cent in a decade.
In what would be the first case of its kind in Britain, the primary would be handed over to another organisation to run — most likely the local Tauheedul mosque — and re-opened with a new name.
Around 95 per cent of the school’s 200 pupils are of Asian origin. Many do not speak English as their first language and the majority follow the Islamic faith.
The Diocese of Salford has told Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council that it no longer believes it is “appropriate” for the church to be in charge.
According to a report presented to the council’s executive, the school, which sits in a predominantly Asian populated area of the town, has been struggling to recruit a permanent headteacher because of rules imposed by the church that the head must follow the Catholic faith.
The board of governors also made a decision to resign en masse because they believed they were not an accurate reflection of the local community.
Geraldine Bradbury, director of education at the Diocese, said population shifts meant there were only “five or six” Catholic pupils left at the school.
‘We have never experienced a change to this extent before,’ she said. ‘We want to make sure that the educational needs of the community are met.
‘We would not be serving the local community by insisting that we run the school. It brings things like having a Catholic headteacher and devoting 10 per cent of the timetable to RE. It would be very wrong of us to insist on putting a school community through that.’
The Tauheedul mosque is already responsible for a voluntary aided Islamic girls’ secondary school in the town.
Under the mosque’s leadership the school would “provide increased diversity… and offer a faith school that matches the population in this area of the town,” the report says.
Hamid Patel, principal and chief executive of Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School, said the mosque would like to take over the running of Sacred Heart.
‘Given that almost all of the pupils are Muslim it makes sense for us to engage with the school,’ he said.
‘We will need more information on the expectations of the local authority, but if the community and the school want us to be involved, then yes, we are interested.’
But James Gray, education officer at the British Humanist Association, criticised the move.
“This demonstrates that religious authorities do not always see education as a means of serving the local community,’he said. ‘They have decided there are not enough Catholics and want to wash their hands of the school.’
The new provider will be decided by a competition, under which different organisations bid to the local authority to be put in charge.
It is understood that the Church of England diocese is also interested in potentially taking over the primary school.
According to the report, the council believes that any attempt to turn Sacred Heart into a non-religious community school would be rejected by the Government because of the Coalition’s “stated preference for… new faith schools and free schools”.
Education Secretary Michael Gove named five faith schools among the list of the first 16 free schools to open next year, including two Jewish schools, a Sikh school and a Hindu primary.
Harry Devonport, director of children’s services at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: “The decision to cease to maintain the school as a Catholic school has been taken by the RC Diocese.
‘The recommendation is to establish a new school which will be looked at by the executive board after an extensive consultation has taken place.
‘This is merely a technical change which will involve the same staff. There will be no disruption for our children at this school. Our main focus is ensuring that pupils have access to quality education.’
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Suspended Jail Term for Nelson Man Who Whipped Wife
A ‘STRESSED’ father of three disabled children attacked his long-suffering wife twice and left her injured, a court was told.
Mohammed Zubair, 47, who has four children, whipped victim Zareena Bibi repeatedly with an electric power cable, leaving marks on her back seen by their daughter.
Later, he kicked her, causing swelling and bruising, while she was praying on her knees in their lounge.
Burnley Crown Court heard that Zubair, described as ‘controlling’, was said by one of their now grown-up children to be unable to control his temper and to scare her.
One of their sons saw the prayer mat assault and told his father to stop it.
The defendant’s response was to smack him across the face and ask: “What are you going to do about it? You’re disabled.”
The hearing was told the family lived in Every Street, Nelson, in a home which had been adapted for the disabled children through Pendle Council at a cost of £100,000.
References “speaking very highly” of Zubair and painting a very different picture of him to that outlined to the court were sent in to the court by the Deputy Mayor of Pendle, the leader of the council’s Labour group and two councillors.
The defendant admitted two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm.
The defendant, who had no previous convictions, was given 10 months in jail, suspended for two years, with two years supervision.
The judge also imposed a five-year restraining order banning Zubair from contacting or communicating with his wife or children except through a solicitor, and from approaching Mrs Bibi and their family.
Sentencing, Recorder Dennis Watson told the defendant: “You richly deserve to go to prison.”
But, he continued, there had been no repetition of his behaviour towards his wife since 2008 and she did not suffer lasting physical harm.
Philip Holden, for Zubair, said “mercifully” the relationship between Zubair and his wife had come to an end.
The barrister added: “He is most unlikely to ever come before the courts again, provided the relationship between he and his wife never comes about again.”
| — Hat tip: ICLA | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Soldier Who Served in Afghanistan Refused Council House ‘For Not Being Local While He Was Overseas’
But Afghan family given a £1.2m house by their local authorityA father-of-two who served in Afghanistan has been denied a council house because he has not been living in his local area while serving in the forces.
Lance Corporal Craig Baker, 26, completed two tours of duty in the war-stricken region before he decided to leave the Army to spend more time with his sons.
But the former soldier, who grew up in Bracknell, Berkshire, has been denied a council property for his family because he ‘does not have a local connection’. It is in sharp contrast to an Afghan family who were given a £1.2 million seven-bedroom house by their local authority just 30 miles away in 2008.
L/ Corp. Baker claims he and his young family — wife Anna, 25, and their two boys, aged five and two — have been let down by Bracknell Forest Council.
And he accused the local authority of discriminating against him because of his service background.
The former soldier said: ‘Bracknell Forest Council has let us down from the start. We don’t want any special treatment, we just want fair treatment and are not getting it.
‘We have tried to help ourselves and all we ask is for a little bit of help but they have turned their back on us.
‘We have been fobbed off by the Bracknell housing options team. I believe this is partly due to incompetence and partly due to discrimination because I am an ex-soldier.
‘I grew up in the area, my parents live in the area and my wife Anna is from the area. But because I’ve lived in different military areas for short periods I am not local to anywhere.
‘It’s me, my wife and two children sleeping on an airbed in my parents’ home. Life after leaving the Army is far from ideal.
‘I left the Army to spend time with my two boys. I am hoping to become a truck driver.’
Mr Baker grew up in the Berkshire town and was educated at Easthampstead Park Community School. His wife Anna went to Brakenhale School in the town.
But the pair moved into Army accommodation at Wattisham Airfield, Ipswich, Suffolk, in November 2007.
Now unable to find accommodation, the ex-serviceman has also been unable to find work. He was forced to sign up for the Jobseekers’ Allowance.
He has also been denied council support for a rental guarantee scheme which could have enabled him to move into a private property.
The former soldier would otherwise need someone earning at least £40,000 pounds per year to confirm the rent would be paid — a contact which he does not have.
Bracknell MP Dr Phillip Lee said he has launched an investigation into the case.
‘I am happy to take up a case like this with the council, where someone has given service to this country,’ he said.
Before he left the forces, Mr Baker, who also served in the Falklands, was a member of the 3rd Regiment of the Army Air Corps where he was employed as an arming and loading point commander.
He also prepared Apache helicopters for combat.
Simon Hendey, chief officer of housing for Bracknell Forest Council, denied that Craig Baker was discriminated against because he was a soldier.
‘Bracknell Forest Council has recognised its duty to provide Mr Baker and his family a permanent home,’ he said.
‘For the interim period, the housing options team has been advising Mr Baker of all his short term options and he has determined which one best suits his family’s need.
‘The council provides housing in a way which ensures people with the greatest housing need are housed first.
‘Mr Baker and his family have not been disadvantaged because he has served with the Armed Forces.
‘We anticipate the family will be able find a permanent home which meets their needs by using the council’s housing allocation system which both maximises choice for residents and ensures the most needy are housed first.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Student Raped and Left Naked by Roadside in Manchester
A Manchester student has been raped, beaten and left naked by the roadside in an attack police believe could have been carried out by a serial offender.
They have now appealed to students in the Fallowfield area not to walk home alone and say the woman may have been stabbed with a knitting needle.
Police described the man who pushed his victim into a car on Amhurst Road as Asian and overweight.
The woman was subjected to an “horrific” sexual attack, police said.
The woman was also left with injuries to her back and eye after being hit with a weapon similar to a skewer or knitting needle, detectives said.
The offender drove a black five-door car. He let the woman get out of the car after the attack in the early hours of Friday but drove off with her clothes and handbag containing her camera, phone and cards.
‘Traumatic ordeal’
The offender was described as Asian, of fat or large build, around 5ft 10ins (1.78m) tall and aged in his late 20s to early 30s and had a shaved head.
Officers believe this incident may be linked to another on Wednesday where a woman saw a similar looking man beside a black saloon car on Alan Road.
He tried to grab her hand but she ran off and called police.
Det Ch Insp Steve Eckersley said: “The victim has been through a horrific and traumatic ordeal and she is currently being supported by specially trained officers.
“Many students may be going out in Manchester after the summer break and I would urge them to take care when planning their route home.
“Please don’t walk home on your own, arrange for a taxi to drop you off outside your house and if you are walking and become concerned about someone, go to the nearest house for safety. “
Patrols have been increased in the area and witnesses are asked to contact police.
| — Hat tip: GB | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sixth Form College Bans the Veil ‘For Security Reasons’
Burnley College, in Lancashire, placed a notice from principal Hugh Bramwell at reception informing all students, staff and visitors they must remove items which cover their face on arrival.
But while bosses claim the move was necessary for security, the University of Central Lancashire, which runs courses from the same building, has not implemented the policy.
Critics have now hit out at the ban — which includes helmets — insisting it denies people the ‘freedom to wear what they want.’
Councillor Wajid Khan, a course leader at the university, condemned the move.
‘Personally I don’t agree with the policy in the college,’ he said.
Coun Khan, whose ward contains the college, added: ‘Here at the university we don’t have that policy. Everybody should be entitled to their individual freedom.
‘It could affect parents coming to parents’ evening but the college should let parents know of the policies and students should make sure they know the policies before they join.
‘Any student in the University of Central Lancashire area can chose what they wear. But university students who wear the veil and walk through the college area must identify themselves to the security guards. There are only male security guards on the premises.’
Former Lancashire Council of Mosques chair Abdul Hamid Qureshi, who is still heavily involved with community cohesion work in Burnley, termed the policy ‘a little excessive’.
‘There are human rights issues, people have the right to wear what they want,’ he said.
‘Burnley College has one policy and the university has another. I think it is a little excessive. There should be a compromise.
‘If security is an issue the person coming in the burka should show their face to the security guard.’
Last year the college, which describes itself as a provider of sixth form, university and adult education, turned away Shawana Bilqes, 19, when she tried to enroll.
Staff asked her to remove her burka — which covered everything but her eyes — for identity fraud purposes.
But she told them she could not because of her religious beliefs and was forced to abandon plans to sign up her course.
Shawana, from Burnley, Lancs, said: ‘I am not surprised that the college has decided to ban veils completely after what happened to me.
‘It is sad as it will force students to go elsewhere.’
The 19-year-old added: ‘It is my choice to wear the veil.
‘I live around the corner from the college in an area where there are so many practising Muslims. It was an ideal place for me to studyand that’s why I chose it.
‘I tried to compromise but the college wouldn’t. They sent me a letter to say I could continue with my course if I stopped wearing the veil.
‘We are in the 21st Century and we get people from all walks of life. I’m in the police cadets as well and yet it’s not a problem wearing the veil there.’
Burnley College is in a new £81m development described as ‘the most ambitious development of its kind in the country’. It boasts 7,500 sixth form students and a 100 per cent pass rate for the fifth year running.
Blackburn MP Jack Straw hit the headlines in late 2006 after making controversial comments about whether women should wear the veil.
Mr Straw, who is also on the governing body at Blackburn College, said: ‘Institutions have to make their own judgements, but at Blackburn College we take a different view.
‘Security can be checked in other ways. But I think they are barriers of communication.’
A spokeswoman from the college said: ‘The policy on our reception desk is a college policy which is displayed internally to staff, students and visitors.
‘This policy is an internal document which is not designed to be used externally.’
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Police Must Reclaim Our Streets From Yobs
This week’s report by Sir Denis O’Connor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, on the retreat of the police from our streets, will come as no surprise to communities where yobbish behaviour has been allowed to flourish. Parts of our town centres are, as Sir Denis says, “now being left in the evening as surrendered territory”. The main reason is that the police have, as he puts it, “given up” on the street. On average, just one officer in 10 is available for “visible patrolling” at any time — and the total is lower at the weekends, when the police are needed most.
Why has this state of affairs been allowed to continue, when it has been apparent for many years that the public wants to see more policemen on the streets, and all the evidence shows that this reduces anti-social behaviour? Well, an academic study commissioned by Sir Denis’s office found that the police spend too much time worrying whether something is an example of crime or of disorder. “Police should be encouraged to start by establishing whether the event concerned is causing significant harm to individual or public interests,” it said. “If so, they should seek to do something about it.” Many people would be astonished if this was not being done already.. They might find the proposed remedy just as perplexing: “Attending to the harm and impacts of problems can be effected through application of the Signal Crimes Perspective methodology.”
Herein lies much of the problem. Policing has been so overwhelmed by impenetrable jargon, imported from the world of criminology, that chief constables have lost sight of their primary function, to deter crime and provide order. In addition, forces have been encouraged to think like commercial enterprises, referring to their “business” and “customers”. Stir in the last government’s obsession with performance targets, which often produced the opposite consequences, and the result has been a demoralised profession, confused about its role and losing the confidence of the public. This is an unhappy combination, which the Coalition must address. Its plans for elected police commissioners might help, by focusing officers’ attention on the wishes of local people, rather than Whitehall. But Sir Denis is wrong to conclude that cutting spending will make the problem worse. The police’s retreat from the street has occurred during a period of unprecedented investment, with a record number of officers. This has nothing to do with money: it is about priorities. And if there is a rise in anti-social behaviour, as Sir Denis fears, the responsibility will lie not with the Coalition, but with the chief police officers.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tormented to Death: Pensioner, 80, Dies After She Falls Into Manhole Trap Set by Yobs Who Made Her Life a Misery
An 80-year-old woman died after sick yobs removed a manhole cover from her driveway and she plunged into the hole in darkness. Jenny Ward, who still worked on a market stall selling jewellery, had been plagued by a gang of youths who smashed the windows of her home and taunted her for several months. The thugs’ campaign of harassment eventually ended in tragedy when the pensioner returned home and fell into the trap late one night. Her cries for help went unheard for three hours until she was finally rescued by firefighters.
After spending a month in hospital and enduring an operation on her foot, Mrs Ward went to live with a relative, but took a turn for the worse and died in hospital on September 8. Blackpool coroner’s office said Mrs Ward died after a blood clot formed in her lung caused by deep vein thrombosis. However, friends and neighbours of the pensioner, who had run a market stall in Blackpool for 50 years, said she had never recovered from the campaign of torment and her fall into the manhole. They have accused police of not doing enough to deal with anti-social behaviour and urged them to find those responsible. They said that in the weeks leading up to the manhole incident she been scared to return to her home on Shetland Road, because a gang of around ten to 15 teenagers would gather regularly outside her home.
Bev Lord, who worked with Mrs Ward in the market, said: ‘I’m devastated.. She was being tormented. She stayed out most nights and didn’t go back home until later because she was frightened of being home. She was getting verbal abuse and she had her windows smashed. ‘She was still working up to a couple of months ago when she had arrived home late one night and someone had stolen the manhole cover from her drive. She didn’t see it and got trapped down the hole. At her age it must have been such a shock. She was well known, she was a real character. I think there should be an investigation. I cannot help but think that whoever did this has caused her death. If it hadn’t happened, she would still be working in the market.’
Victor Granda, 46, who had known Mrs Ward since her family employed her on an ice-cream stall when she was a teenager, said: ‘She was a lovely lady. She’d talk to a lot of people. These teenagers were making her life a misery. They were throwing stones at her, shouting things at her and taunting her. She was staying out later and later at night because she didn’t want to see these youths. The next thing I heard she had fallen down a manhole because a cover had been taken. She’d been a very energetic lady, she would have had about ten years on her if this hadn’t have happened.’
Neighbour Ced Nortorn, an assistant manager at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, said: ‘Mrs Ward was being victimised by local children. It’s been a shock.’ Another neighbour, who did not wish to be named for fear of reprisals, said: ‘They were always hanging about outside her house and they’d give her cheek. There was a gang of them. I’ve had hassle from them too. There should be an investigation. Someone took the manhole cover and she fell in it. I think that’s why she died.’ Another neighbour said: ‘They smashed her window once but Mrs Ward said she didn’t get it fixed because they’d only do it again.
Police said they were not aware of the antisocial behaviour and have not launched an investigation as the coroner’s office did not deem Mrs Ward’s death as suspicious. But they say they are looking into the theft of the manhole cover and urged anyone with information to contact them. PC Paul Michael said: ‘We regularly patrol this area, but we’ve not been made aware that antisocial behaviour is a particular problem.. ‘We would encourage residents to report incidents to us so we can provide an appropriate policing response.”
[JP note: PC Paul Michael sounds as if he is being economical with the truth — why should the public place their trust in such mindlessly-complacent officers of the peace?]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Three-Year-Olds Being Labelled Bigots by Teachers as 250,000 Children Accused of Racism
Teachers are being forced to report children as young as three to the authorities for using alleged ‘racist’ language, it was claimed last night.
Munira Mirza, a senior advisor to London Mayor Boris Johnson, said schools were being made to spy on nursery age youngsters by the Race Relations Act 2000.
More than a quarter of a million children have been accused of racism since it became law, she said.
Writing in Prospect magazine, she said: ‘The more we seek to measure racism, the more it seems to grow.
‘Teachers are now required to report incidents of racist abuse among children as young as three to local authorities, resulting in a massive increase of cases and reinforcing the perception that we need an army of experts to manage race relations from cradle to grave.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why Decent Folk Deserve Better From Cops Who Let Yobs Run Amok
Graham Lukes and his wife Christine bought their terrace council house in a neat square in 1989. They’ve been happy there and have made several improvements to the property. Not all of their neighbours exercised their right to buy under Mrs Thatcher’s sweeping housing reforms, so some of the adjoining homes have remained under local authority control. Two and a half years ago, the council installed a ‘problem’ family next door. Since then, Mr and Mrs Lukes’s lives have been made a misery.
The new tenants hold noisy all-day parties and treat the garden as a rubbish tip. Sometimes there are as many as 50 black plastic bags piled up in the yard. These neighbours from hell urinate in bottles and throw them over the fence into the Lukes’s back garden. When the family first moved in, Mr Lukes, a 64-year-old stores manager, tried to make them welcome. They ignored him.
Mr Lukes isn’t quite sure how many people live in the house. He thinks there’s a mother and father and four children, aged between 12 and 22, but as people are constantly coming and going all day and all of the night, he can’t be certain. As the state of the neighbouring property continued to deteriorate, Mr Lukes complained to the council at least half a dozen times. The dustmen refuse to pick up the rubbish or empty the overflowing wheelie bins because they haven’t been put out on the street for collection.
He was told by a Town Hall official that no action could be taken against his neighbours because they were ‘protected tenants’. Fairly recently, the kids next door acquired an old car. They proceeded to treat the square and surrounding streets as a race track, terrorising the neighbourhood. Someone must have reported them because the car, which wasn’t taxed, was towed away. Clearly, Mr Lukes’s ‘problem’ neighbours believe he grassed them up. Last week, he found his car covered in paint and the tyres let down. Obviously, he can’t prove it was the family next door, even though he saw them walking away from the car, smeared with paint, and a trail of paint-splattered footprints led to their front door. When Mr Lukes complained to the police, officers agreed with him that the neighbours were the most likely culprits. They visited the house next door and discovered one of the rooms painted the same colour.
The police told Mr Lukes that they had given the neighbours a ‘rollocking’ and warned them about their future conduct. ‘But when I asked them if they were going to prosecute, they told me their hands were tied,’ Mr Lukes told me. ‘Since it was only emulsion, and I was able to wash off the paint with a pressure hose, and because the tyres had only been deflated, not slashed, they said no crime had been committed and they could take no further action. It took me two hours to clean it off.’ Mrs Lukes is blind and registered disabled. So they need the car close at hand. But since this incident, Mr Lukes is afraid to park outside his house, especially as he can expect no protection from the police.
He originally wrote to me because he thought his story might be worth including in ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’. After all, under what criteria does pouring paint over someone’s car not constitute a criminal offence? But, with almost spooky synchronicity, his email coincided with yesterday’s pronouncement from the Chief Inspector of Constabulary that the police are failing the public by refusing to tackle anti-social behaviour. Mr Lukes lives in Glenrothes, Scotland, and Sir Denis O’Connor’s remit extends only across England and Wales. But the blight of anti-social behaviour doesn’t stop at the border. It is just as rife in Fife as it is elsewhere — if not worse.
Mr Lukes’s ordeal — and the failure of the police and local council to deal with his nightmare neighbours — exemplifies the scale of the problem. According to Sir Denis, millions of acts of drunken loutishness and vandalism go unreported and unpunished every year. The police have withdrawn from the streets, handing control to the yobs -so much so that the kind of criminal damage and general unpleasantness which Mr and Mrs Lukes have endured for the past two and a half years has become ‘normalised’.
The Lukes have become trapped in a frighteningly familiar cycle of despair — a perfect storm of callousness and indifference. The police and council either can’t, or won’t, do anything to help. They fall back on ever-more inventive excuses for refusing to do their job. In the mindset of the local authority, the troublemakers are the people who need ‘protecting’. Police don’t consider anti-social behaviour to be ‘proper’ crime and so find reasons not to make arrests. Most of the time, they don’t even respond to complaints about anti-social behaviour. With only one in ten officers on the streets at any given time, they’ve usually got ‘better’ things to do. In any event, they’re probably sick and tired of taking louts and vandals to court, only to see them walk away laughing with a meaningless caution or a toothless Asbo.
It’s unfair to blame the thin blue line, who are only obeying orders handed down from above. Most frontline coppers yearn to make a difference, but are hampered by softly, softly policies drawn up by the top brass, Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service, who are obsessed with the ‘yuman rites’ of criminals. Hardly surprising, then, that people don’t even bother reporting ‘low-level’ nuisance behaviour and vandalism. Why waste your time, especially when a complaint to the police often results in reprisals from your tormentor? Millions of decent, law-abiding people like Mr and Mrs Lukes are having their lives ruined by louts. Yet they are betrayed by the very forces of law and order we pay through our taxes to protect us.
Many council estates are no-go areas, run by feral gangs. According to no less an authority than the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, half of us avoid certain streets because of fears about safety. Four out of ten, particularly the elderly, say they are scared to go out at night. Compared with what some people have to put up with, Mr and Mrs Lukes appear to get off relatively lightly. Some of us have been writing about this problem for 20 years, but have always been accused of exaggeration and sensationalism..
Now it has been confirmed by one of Britain’s most senior policemen, perhaps something will finally be done to put things right. It will take determination and political will to throw policing into reverse and inject some steel back into the justice system. Home Secretary Theresa May says she intends to cut bureaucracy, restore thousands more bobbies on the beat and put victims first.
We’ve heard it all before and she will face fierce opposition from entrenched vested interests and the Guardianistas in her own department. But after 20 years that have seen the police transformed into a branch of the social services, under the likes of New Labour luvvie Ian Blair, I detect a new breed of harder-nosed chief constables committed to reclaiming the streets. We can only hope they mean it and that they get government support, whatever it takes, however unpalatable it may be to the ‘yuman rites’ brigade. Decent folk such as Graham and Christine Lukes deserve nothing less.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: We Were Abused and Slagged Off by Fans Who Wore Pakistan Shirts But Spoke in London Accents
GRAEME SWANN last night described how Pakistan fans hurled torrents of abuse at the England cricket team.
In a stunning Sun exclusive, spinner Swann revealed England players were saddened and shocked to hear the foul-mouthed tirades coming from cricket supporters “with London accents”.
Swann also lifted the lid on how the Pakistan match-fixing scandal led to a poisoned relationships between both sides out on the pitch.
Swann said: “The taunts we received from the crowd were not pleasant.
“As we left The Oval, people with broad London accents wearing the green shirts of Pakistan were slagging us off.
“It was hard hearing the England team being abused by people who sound English.
“It wound us up but added to the feeling of euphoria on Wednesday night when we won the final match to clinch the series.”
Swann was England’s star bowler in the series with 11 wickets and has now risen to No 3 in the world one-day rankings…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: What the Left is Really After
Following the example of its counterparts in the West, for decades the Israeli Left has carefully cultivated its image as the fun side of the political divide.
In a thousand different ways, the public was told that the Left is on the side of tomorrow. It is the home of optimism. If you want a cheery future, if you want to party all night long and never get a hangover, the image-makers told us the Left is the place to be.
From the Left’s perspective, the peace process between Israel and the PLO was the fulfillment of its promise. It was also its key to a permanent cultural monopoly and control of government.
Israelis who objected to handing control over the country’s heartland and capital city to the PLO were nothing more than gloom and doom preaching, messianic extremists. The Right was angry. The Left was happy. The Right was the party of war. The Left was the party of peace. The Right was suspicious and tribal. The Left was optimistic and international…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Warns: Support ‘Palestine’ Or ‘More Blood’ Will Flow
Comment prompts question whether Palestinians distinct from other Arabs
Without world support for establishing an independent Palestine, President Obama warned the United Nations General Assembly today that “more blood will be shed” and “Palestinians will never know the pride and dignity that comes with their own state.”
Though couched with references to Israeli security and a “neighbors who are committed to coexistence,” Obama’s observation prompted a provocative question and little known insight into the Palestinian-Zionist identity conflict from the author of a bold new book about the Nazi links to Islamic jihadists.
“Are the Palestinian Arabs a distinct people apart from other Arabs?,” asks Chuck Morse, author of “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj. Amin Al-Husseini.”
[…]
“Ahmad Shukairi — the founder of the PLO — stated in 1969 that ‘Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,’“ said Morse. “PLO member Abu Iyad recounted in his memoir ‘Palestinian without a Motherland’ that he and other PLO members had been advised by the North Vietnamese to develop the ‘two-state’ idea in 1973.“
So the North Vietnamese, said Morse, actually “advised Iyad to ‘stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.’“
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: In Beirut, Sunni-Shia Crisis Getting Worse
The international tribunal investigating the Hariri assassination might indict members of Hizbollah. The latter’s leader, Nasrallah, labels the tribunal an “Israeli project” and raises the issue of false charges. Lebanon’s prime minister plays down the row but demands “truth and Justice”. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria are working to avoid violence.
Beirut (AsiaNews) — Lebanon is in the middle of a political crisis. Majority and opposition parties, which are represented in the same government of national unity, are feuding again after a few weeks of truce. Tensions can be felt in the streets. How did it get to this point? It all started when Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni, told Saudi daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, “We made mistakes in some places; at some point we accused Syria of assassinating martyr” former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. “This was a political accusation and it is time to stop” that.
Hariri also spoke about “false witnesses” who “harmed relations between Syria and Lebanon, politicising the murder”, adding, “A new page has been turned in the [Syrian-Lebanese] relationship following the formation of the Lebanese government.”
“We have started assessing mistakes that were made in relation to Syria, which influenced the relationship between the two countries and with the Syrian people,” the Lebanese prime minister noted.
Speaking about the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) set up in 2007 by the United Nations to shed light on the Hariri assassination, the prime minister said, “The tribunal is doing its job, and from our point of view we must review the facts.”
Rumours are flying that STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare will soon go public with the indictment and that members of Hizbollah might on the list of accused.
“I don’t know what will be in the indictment and I cannot intervene in that, nobody can. All that I ask for is the truth and justice,” Hariri said, words that set off fireworks. Although the prime minister might have thought that he was doing a nice gesture towards Syria, his political adversaries, starting with Hizbollah, took advantage of the statement to engage in a campaign of unprecedented vehemence to discredit the STL and some of Hariri’s aides, accusing them of giving false testimonies.
Hizbollah is particularly concerned that after political accusations were made against Syria, the STL, which it considers manipulated by the United States and Israel, might also make false accusations against it. Indeed, for Washington, Hizbollah is a terrorist organisation.
The most vehement attack against Hariri came however from Jamil Sayyed, the former director-general of Lebanon’s Public Security, who was dragged into the Hariri affair by “false witnesses”.
After four years in prison, Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare ordered Sayyed’s release for lack of evidence. However, in a recent statement, he threatened to take revenge “personally” against the prime minister if he was denied justice. The verbal clash that followed this statement went beyond politics, and led to a heated row between Sunnis and Shias.
Ordered by a court to appear, Jamil Sayyed received the support of Hizbollah, whose bearded troops raided Beirut airport last Saturday to welcome the former general on his return from a brief trip to Paris.
For their own reasons, the Saudis, Syrians and Iranians have moved in to calm down the political and confessional storm. Iran does not want any trouble because President Ahmadinejad is expected on an official visit to Lebanon on 13 October. Syria and Saudi Arabia want peace and quiet because they sponsored last July’s political truce following a joint visit to Lebanon of Saudi King Abdallah and Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. For them, the survival of the Hariri government and respect for the media and political truce are crucial. Whilst it would not have the STL abolished, Saudi Arabia said that in exchange for an end to the row it would try to get the main charge in its present form changed.
Thus, the focus is not on the STL itself but on what is happening around it. Hizbollah for instance has come up with evidence that would connect Israel to the Hariri assassination. If substantiated, this would allow its members to avoid trial. In fact, the Shia movement, which is in the current government, has denied claims that it was involved in the Hariri assassination. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said instead that the UN tribunal is nothing but an “Israeli project”.
For Hariri, speaking about relations with Syria, “the facts of the past must be clarified [. . .]. We must draw lessons from the past to build the future in which the Lebanese and Syrian peoples and their respective states can recognise themselves. This is the reason for dialogue with President Bashir al-Assad.”
Likewise, “Our opinion did not spring just now [. . .]. We want better relations and no one will stop us. Syria is our economy’s door to Arab markets as well as an important market in itself,” he said.
Speaking about his own party, the Lebanese prime minister added, “Within the Future Movement, there are basic principles that we must uphold as I said at our general congress. Of course, there are different points of view, but when a decision is taken; everyone must respect it [. . .]. I am beginning to see people and supporters share this view, becoming aware of the privileged relationship between Lebanon and Syria, understanding how important these relations are.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabians Will Soon Need a License to Blog
According to The Media Note, Saudi Information and Culture Ministry spokesman Abdul Rahman Al-Hazza announced last night Saudi time that all Saudi Arabian web publishers and online media, including blogs and forums, will need to be officially registered with the government.
Al-Hazza claimed that the measure will cut down on libel and defamation and is not intended to limit freedom of speech.
However Saudi Arabia has a checkered history when it comes to Internet censorship, and old media is currently very regulated. The government heavily controls the few newspapers in operation and traditional journalists can be detained if they cross the line.
While the Saudi government has arrested bloggers critical of Saudi life and censored activist Twitter pages in the past, this is the first attempt at regulating online media as a whole. As blogging becomes more popular, Saudi Arabian authorities are starting to treat it with the same caution and restriction applied to traditional media in the country.
Of course this has gotten many bloggers upset, and people have taken to Twitter to protest, with the hashtag #haza3 which refers to the Ministry official’s last name. Public protesting is illegal in Saudi Arabia.
The regulation has not yet gone into effect and this story is still developing so stay close for updates.
For those curious, you can visit the Saudi Arabian Minister of Information’s official Twitter and Facebook profiles here…
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Retired General Confesses to Burning Mosque to Fire Up Public
A retired general who has recently been accused of having conducted an assassination attempt on the life of Turkey’s eighth president, Turgut Özal, has inadvertently confessed that he ordered the burning of a mosque as part of psychological warfare operations in 1974.
In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibesoglu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey’s military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up.
The retired general is also believed to have wide-ranging information concerning many alleged crimes and activities of behind-the-scene organizations such as JITEM. He was also implicated in the Sept. 6-7, 1955 pogrom in Istanbul against minorities, which today is widely believed to have been part of a manipulative plan concocted by Ergenekon-like structures. Yirmibesoglu has admitted that the Sept. 6-7 events were organized by the Special War Department, documented by journalist Fatih Güllapoglu in his book “Operation with No Tanks or Arms.” In the book, Yirmibesoglu is quoted as saying, “Sept. 6-7 is the work of Special War [department], and it is a spectacular organization.” In the interview with Haber Türk, Yirmibesoglu also attempted to clarify this point. He partially denied what was in the book saying, “In 1971 I was assigned as the senior [head] of the Special War Department. At the time, there was actually no department called the Special War Department, there was only the Mobility Investigation Board that was set up for Cyprus.”
The confession brings to mind the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) coup plot, allegedly drafted by a clique in the military to undermine the government. Dozens of military officers were arrested, although most were later released during the investigation into the Sledgehammer document, which includes plans to bomb the Fatih and Beyazit mosques and down a Turkish jet over the Aegean to fuel problems with Greece with the ultimate aim of discrediting the government.
When allegations regarding the Sledgehammer plan first arose after the document was leaked to the press earlier this year, then-Chief of General Staff Gen.Ilker Basbug dismissed the accusations as nonsense. Basbug said a military whose troops are known for shouting “Allah Allah” as they attack the enemy could not possibly think of burning the house of God. However, Yirmibesoglu’s revelation shows that this has actually been done before.
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Turkish Government Condemns Alleged Conservative Muslim Attack on Istanbul Art Gallery
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government has condemned an attack allegedly by conservative Muslims on people drinking cocktails outside an Istanbul art gallery, calling for understanding and respect for one another’s way of life in this largely Muslim but secular country.
Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said Thursday his government will seek the heaviest punishment for the culprits who beat and slightly injured five guests drinking in the street outside the gallery in Istanbul’s Tophane district on Tuesday evening. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam.
Gunay called on the gallery to the respect family values of the neighbourhood while also urging respect for different lifestyles and their right to be and work in that area.
Turkey is aspiring to become the first Muslim member of the European Union.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Sentence Over Shooting US Soldiers Sparks Outrage
Karachi, 24 Sept(AKI) — By Syed Saleem Shahzad — People in Pakistan expressed outrage after an American-educated Pakistani scientist was sentenced to 86 years by a New York judge for an armed assault on American military officers and intelligence agents in Afghanistan.
In 2008 Aafia Siddiqui was detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan, after the local authorities spotted her loitering outside the provincial governor’s compound. While in custody she grabbed an M4 rifle from a police station floor and fired on Army officers and FBI. agents before being shot in the abdomen.
Her lawyers had sought a 12-year sentence, while prosecutors had requested life.
Pakistanis were were glued to their televisions in anticipation of the sentence. As soon as the verdict was announced hundreds of people hit the streets in protest. Many chanted anti-American slogans and burned tires.
Pakistani senator Talha Mehmood, who was part of a parliamentary committee working on Siddiqui’s behalf, said his country’s government deliberately didn’t take the interest for her release and alleged that the Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani had a role in her losing the case in a Manhattan federal court.
“Pakistan’s ambassador in the US works for American interests. He does not represent Pakistani interests at all. He had a role for getting Aafia convicted,” he told a press conference following the Thursday sentencing.
“This is sham judgement and exposed the American justice system. However, the government of Pakistan is a real culprit. Americans have vital strategic interests in Pakistan and had Pakistan put pressure on Americans for Aafia’s release, Americans would have released him, he said.
From Friday morning all roads leading to US consulates in Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore were closed to traffic. The students in the colleges and universities throughout the country boycotted their classes and carried out massive anti-America rallies.
During her 14 day trial, Disiqui would carry out angry outbursts resulting in her rejection from the courtroom on a number of occasions.
During her testimony in her own defence she said that charges that she purposely shot at soldiers were “ridiculous.”
Prior to sentencing she was given an opportunity to address the court when she spoke about allegedly receiving beatings while in custody and said she was at peace.
Afterward, she insisted that her lawyers not appeal.
“It’s useless, pointless,” she said. “I appeal to God.
Siddiqui has biology and neuroscience degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Anti Burqa Mural Vandalised in Newtown
Is it unAustralian to dictate what people wear?
Newtown shop owner Sergio Redegalli doesn’t think so and has painted a large mural on the side of his shop of a woman wearing a niqab (Islamic headdress) with the slogan ‘Say No To Burqas’.
Mr Redegalli said he is not racist or anti-Islamic but the mural on Station St was “anti-extremist, attempting to stop violence in the future”.
“I would not like to see Australia have Sharia law (the sacred law of Islam),” he said.
“It might never happen but it will be challenged. It’s through that process of it being pushed I’m worried about the violence.
“Just because the Cronulla riots happened six years ago doesn’t mean the tension isn’t there.”
Mr Redegalli said that he is not anti-hijab and that the nowhere in the Qur’an does it state women need to wear a burqa.
He has had a sticker on his car for the past month stating ‘Australian’s have nothing to hide, say no to burqas’.
Mr Redegalli is using his shop, Cydonia Glass Studio, to create discussion about the issue because he believes state and federal governments are too scared to bring the issue up.
“This mural has come from frustration that political correctness has gone so far you can’t say anything about Muslims without getting in trouble,” he said.
“This is a stance on rights for ourselves, we can say something peacefully without having violence.”
Mr Redegalli said he also believes Australian’s have the right to see another persons face when people are speaking to them.
Mr Redegalli said the mural has been vandalised twice since he painted it on Monday, once with the word ‘bogan’ written across it.
He said 10 to one people who walk past believe it’s positive, and when people have been negative he has invited them into his shop to try and explain his views.
“No one that is Muslim have vandalised this, I think it’s just the locals who are doing it,” he said.
While the Inner West Courier was interviewing Mr Redegalli, one woman walked past and yelled “‘all you are doing in condemning young Muslim women to being stuck in their homes”‘.
Marrickville Council requested that Mr Redegalli paint over the mural yesterday, but backed off.
A statement issued from Marrickville Council said they had several complaints about the mural and while they don’t have the legal right to remove it, they are currently pursuing other legal avenues to remove it.
‘‘I strongly condemn this action which goes against the values which the Marrickville community has believed in and practiced for generations,’’ Marrickville Mayor Sam Iskandar said.
‘‘I believe this is an isolated incident which is not supported by the broader Marrickville community.’’
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
David Hicks to Test the Law Over Memoir
Random House has confirmed that the long-awaited memoir of former Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks will be released next month.
Hicks has been writing his autobiography, Guantanamo: My Journey, for about two years, but until yesterday neither the publisher nor the release date had been confirmed.
The publishing director of Random House Australia, Nikki Christer, described the 522-page tome as an “utterly compelling” insight into his 5 1/2 years in detention, and one that would detail the interrogation techniques used on him by the US military.
“His story is incredible. I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with that,” Ms Christer said.
But she refused to say whether Hicks had been paid an advance, or to comment on whether she was confident a “literary proceeds order” could be avoided.
Now married and living in Sydney, and understood to be working at a nursery, Hicks still carries a conviction, having pleaded guilty in 2007 to a retrospective charge of providing material defence to terrorism.
In July The Australian reported that the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 had been amended to remove recognition of the US military commissions set up before 2006 after the US Supreme Court deemed the commissions invalid.
But at the time the federal Attorney-General’s Department stressed that Hicks would still be covered by the act.
Hicks is receiving legal advice from Ben Saul, a co-director of the Sydney Centre for International Law, who confirmed yesterday that Hicks would seek to overturn his conviction in the US…
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Qaeda Warns France Not to Try Rescuing Hostages: Site
DUBAI — Al-Qaeda has warned Paris not to attempt to rescue five French nationals kidnapped by jihadists in Niger, SITE monitoring group said Thursday, as France mobilised its forces to find them.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb posted a statement on jihadist forums in which it said the kidnappings came in the “context of retaliation” promised by AQIM leader Abu Musab Abdul Wadud to France, the US-based group said.
SITE said the statement carried a warning to France that they should not attempt another rescue mission “like they had done for Michel Germaneau” and that the group “will issue their legitimate demands later.”
“In the context of retaliation… a group of heroic mujahedeen under the command of Sheikh Abu Zeid, may Allah protect him, were able to break into the French Arlit mining area in Niger,” said the statement carried by SITE.
“Despite the tough military stands in the area and the many security cordons, the lions of Islam were able to go through all the guards and kidnap five French nuclear experts working at Areva,” it said.
“We also warn of the consequences should they commit any foolish action again, because it will be doomed to fail and they will certainly pay a heavy price.”
French Defence Minister Herve Morin said Thursday.France hopes to contact Al-Qaeda to hear its demands.
“We have not received any proof of life, but we have every reason to think they are alive,” Morin told RTL radio, adding that the five hostages and two African colleagues had probably been moved to northern Mali.
“For the moment our concern is to be able to enter in contact with Al-Qaeda, to know what the demands are, which we haven’t received,” he said.
“What we want is for Al-Qaeda at some point to put demands on the table,” he said. “In other cases, they have negotiated.”
AQIM militants have repeatedly threatened France and its citizens since a July deadly Sahara raid in a bid to rescue French hostage Germaneau in which seven of its members were killed. The group said it executed the 78-year-old as a reprisal for the raid, vowing further revenge against France.
Gunmen seized the five French nationals along with a Togolese and a Madagascan on September 16 in a raid on French firms working in northern Niger’s uranium fields.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Wednesday a full mobilisation of French forces to try and rescue the hostages.
“As the president just said, all the services of the state are mobilised to obtain the freedom of the hostages,” French government spokesman Luc Chatel said after Sarkozy chaired a cabinet meeting.
Many states in North and West Africa, including Niger, Algeria, Mali and Mauritania, were former French colonies, and France has military trainers working along some of the local troops.
SITE quoted AQIM as saying Western firms “that steal our wealth and take advantage of our people should know that they are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen and they should leave promptly, because our land is not a field for plunder and our wealth is not something to be taken advantage of.”
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, due to meet with his Malian counterpart President Amadou Toumani Toure in Bamako, said that military interventions had been ruled out “at this stage”.
In Washington, US officials said France had asked for its assistance in hunting down the militants, amid reports that the Pentagon operates a listening post in southern Algeria to monitor regional radio and telephone traffic.
France did not confirm US assets were involved in the hunt, but said it was working “with all the governments involved in fighting terrorism in the Sahel.”
The small AQIM army has spun a tight network across the Sahel, raking in millions from kidnappings and drug trafficking, killing several hostages and carrying out attacks across the six countries it spans.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Sudanese Call for Obama to Show Leadership and Avert Genocide
Sudanese refugees say Obama broke his promise to them.
A group of African former slaves turned human rights activists are walking from New York City to Washington, D.C. at this moment. They are calling attention to the ongoing crisi of genocide and slavery in
Sudan. A New York Times op-ed recently referred to the situation there as “President Obama’s Rwanda moment … unfolding now, in slow motion.”
I’m speaking directly to President Obama. He was there with me when we talked about the issue in the South Sudan as a senator, shoulder to shoulder, when we talked about the Southern Sudan. I’m asking
you, why are you distancing yourself from me, why are you distancing yourself from the issue of Sudan? Why are you putting heavyweights to
be envoys here and envoys there, and you’re sending someone who has to learn on the job to be the envoy, knowing the magnitude of the problem in the Sudan?
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EU: Bulgaria Opens EU Doors to Allow 500,000 More Immigrants to Live in Britain
Bulgaria has announced plans to hand passports to more than 500,000 non-EU citizens — giving them long-term rights to live and work in the UK.
Nationality minister Bozhidar Dimitrov says the new citizens — currently in the Ukraine and Moldova — would be free to come and live in Bulgaria.
However, EU border rules mean they could eventually also set up home in other EU countries, including Britain.
In the past year alone Bulgaria has issued nearly 80,000 new passports to people who can claim Bulgarian descent, dating back to their grandparents, living in other countries.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hypocrisy: Mexico Building Security Fence Against Guatemala
I was just sent an news article and I couldn’t believe what I read. I think you will find it incredible!
According to the news article that appeared on the Examiner website on September 19th, the government of Mexico is now constructing its own wall to protect its southern border that separates Mexico from Guatemala! Meanwhile when Mexican President Felipe Calderon addressed our Congress several months ago, he had the chutzpah to criticize the state of Arizona for daring to deal with the immigration crisis confronting our nation- a crisis the federal government is largely responsible for ignoring and, actually exacerbating!
What was even more astounding was the standing ovation Calderon received from members of the United States Congress!
Here is a link to that shameful episode in American politics:
Do you suppose that Alvaro Colom Caballeros, the president of Guatemala will be heading to Mexico anytime soon to address the government of Mexico to decry the construction of Mexico’s border fence? If he did make that journey, do you suppose any of Mexico’s leaders would give him a standing ovation if he called for an open border or legal status for Guatemalans living illegally in Mexico?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Joins Europe-Wide Backlash Against Immigration
Its asylum policies are the continent’s most generous. But the public mood is now changing
The road and rail bridge linking Malmo to Copenhagen. Swedish and Danish policies on immigration are radically different. In a country that elevated social democracy into the natural form of government for decades, Maria has been a loyal stalwart. The 66-year-old retired canteen worker has always voted for Sweden’s Social Democratic party, like the vast majority in her working-class suburb of Malmo. Until last Sunday, that is. That morning Maria broke the habit of a lifetime and in doing so helped redraw the map of Swedish politics. She voted for an extreme-right movement accused of being Islamophobic that broke into parliament in Stockholm for the first time, probably condemning the country to a fragile minority government.
She was not alone. In Maria’s high-rise suburb of Almgården an astonishing one in three voted for Sweden Democrats, a party dubbed “racist and neo-Nazi” and led by Jimmie Åkesson, the new young darling of the European far right.
The reason is plain. Maria pointed across the dual carriageway to the neighbouring housing scheme of Rosengård, known locally as “the ghetto”.
It is home to almost 20,000 immigrants, overwhelmingly Muslim, almost half of them jobless.
“It’s become crazy around here. You can’t go out in the evening,” said Maria, who like other locals, did not want her surname revealed. “I’ve got nothing against foreigners. I’ve been married to a Bulgarian for 40 years. But these people don’t share our values. If you don’t like the colour of our flag, I say, I’ll help you pack your bags.”
Another resident, running a minicab service, remained loyal to the centre-left, but said: “Åkesson’s right. Enough is enough. Even in the jungles of Africa, they don’t know where Sweden is, but they know they can come here, get money and not need to work. I came so close to voting for Sweden Democrats. Maybe the next time.”
Åkesson, a dapper, bespectacled 31-year-old, celebrated his party winning nearly 6% of the vote by declaring: “We’re in.” The Social Democrats slumped to their worst result. The same equation now applies across Europe.
Malmo, formerly an old industrial city, lays fair claim to being the cradle of Swedish social democracy. The centre-left still controls the city, but its power is eroding in what has been an exceptionally promising summer for Islam-baiting, anti-immigrant movements in Europe…
| — Hat tip: El Inglés | [Return to headlines] |
Only One in 100 Britons is Gay Despite Long-Held Myth… But 71% of Public Say They Are Christian
The first ever official count of the gay population has found that only one in 100 adults is homosexual.
The figure explodes the assumption — long promoted by social experts and lobbyists — that the number is up to ten times higher than this at one in ten.
And in further evidence that Britain remains a traditional society, 71% told the same survey that they still regarded themselves as Christian.
The Office for National Statistics said 1.3 per cent of men are gay and 0.6 per cent of women are lesbian.
Another 0.5 per cent consider themselves bisexual, according to the figures gathered from questions put to nearly 250,000 — the biggest survey possible outside a full national census.
This means that, in total, around 1.5 per cent of the population is either homosexual or bisexual.
The number is far lower than the estimate used as a basis for the distribution of millions of pounds in public money to sexual equality causes.
When the government framed civil partnership laws, it accepted an assumption that at least five per cent of the population was homosexual.
Since then thousands of same sex couples have tied the knot.
Among them were Labour’s Chris Bryant who earlier this year became the first homosexual MP to enter into a civil partnership in the Houses of Parliament, ‘marrying’ partner Jared Cranney.
British surveys carried out by sex researchers have suggested between six and ten per cent of men have had homosexual experiences.
In 2003 the government published and endorsed estimates by the Stonewall lobby group which said that between five and seven per cent of the adult population was gay.
The ONS said yesterday that the new figures were the first on ‘self-perceived sexual identity’ to be made public.
The findings also showed that 94.8 per cent of adults call themselves heterosexual or straight.
Another 0.5 per cent described themselves as other than straight, gay or bisexual, and a similar proportion declined to reply to the question.
The gay population, while small, is highly educated and economically successful, the survey showed.
Gays and lesbians are twice as likely as heterosexuals to have university degrees or the equivalent.
Nearly half of all gays and lesbians work in managerial or professional grade jobs, compared with fewer than one in three heterosexuals.
The figures brought calls from religious groups for less political attention and public money to be spent on meeting the demands for legal protection for homosexuals.
Mike Judge of the Christian Institute think tank said: ‘A large amount of public money has been spent on the basis of higher figures, which have turned out to be a lie.’
Ben Summerskill of Stonewall said some of those polled may have been reticent to answer questions on their homosexuality.
He added: ‘We would expect to see these figures increase over time as people’s confidence in the survey grows.’
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Texas Weighs Bid to Rid Schools of ‘Pro-Islam’ Books
The Texas school board is set to vote on a resolution urging publishers to keep “pro-Islamic/anti-Christian” language out of textbooks in the state.
Among other complaints, the non-binding decree says some textbooks devote more lines to Islam than to Christianity and print “whitewashes” of Islamic culture.
Critics say it relies on a flawed reading of books that are out of use.
In May, the panel adopted guidelines that critics said injected conservative political ideas into the curriculum.
Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the US, and a vote in favour of the resolution could carry considerable weight in the publishing industry, supporters say.
Warning to publishers
The measure, on which the Texas Board of Education will vote on Friday in the state capital of Austin, is drafted by Randy Rives, a businessman and former school official in the Texas city of Odessa.
Supporters say the resolution is needed to warn textbook publishers not to print “anti-Christian” books if they want to sell them to Texas schools.
“It’s the pro-Islamic, anti-Christian teachings in these books, that is what we are concerned about,” Mr Rives told the BBC.
“We’re teaching double the beliefs and specifics about another religion than we are about Christianity, which is the foundation of our country.”
Among several complaints, the resolution says that a textbook used until 2003 used pejorative language to describe the crusaders while “euphemising Muslim conquest of Christian lands as ‘migrations’“.
It also says a book approved for use in Texas schools until 2003 devoted 159 lines of text to Islam and only 82 to Christianity, and recounted crusaders’ massacres of European Jews while ignoring a 15th Century massacre of Baghdad Muslims by the Muslim conqueror Tamerlane.
Flawed reading
Mr Rives, a Republican who lost an election for the state school board this year, rejected criticism the resolution refers to books no longer used in Texas schools.
“The big concern is that we don’t let it happen in the future,” he said.
The Texas Freedom Network, an organisation that says it promotes religious freedom and individual liberties and opposes “the religious right”, accused the Texas board of manufacturing controversy instead of focusing on education. It said the resolution relied on a flawed reading of textbooks that overlooked certain passages.
“This resolution is another example of state board members putting politics ahead of expertise and refusing to consider the advice of real scholars before doing something provocative and divisive,” the group said in a statement.
“Indeed, the board has asked no scholars or other experts for public advice about the resolution.”
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
1 comments:
Quote:
Police said they were not aware of the antisocial behaviour and have not launched an investigation as the coroner’s office did not deem Mrs Ward’s death as suspicious.
end quote.
Children don't do these things.
The morally and culturally degenerate do.
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