Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.0% in Mid-October
Unemployment is essentially the same as the 10.1% at the end of September
by Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist
PRINCETON, NJ — Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is at 10.0% in mid-October — essentially the same as the 10.1% at the end of September but up sharply from 9.4% in mid-September and 9.3% at the end of August. This mid-month measurement confirms the late September surge in joblessness that should be reflected in the government’s Nov. 5 unemployment report…
| — Hat tip: Bobbo | [Return to headlines] |
Chuck Norris: 8 Steps to Rebuild America’s Economy, Part 3
The White House’s wish almost came true last week. It was hoping most of us and even the mainstream media would miss the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary report on the 2010 federal fiscal year. And most did.
The Wall Street Journal, however, exposed why the White House was being so secretive about its results: The CBO concluded that federal government spending has skyrocketed 21.4 percent in just the last two years since President Obama took office!
Their actions remind me of President Ronald Reagan’s words, “We could say they spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors. It would be unfair, because the sailors are spending their own money.”
It’s no new revelation that Washington has lost its way from our founders’ vision and fiscal frugality. But in the last two years, it has become a financial runaway train. And it is only we, the people, who can save it from completely derailing our country and all of us onboard.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Four Men Found Guilty in Plot to Bomb Bronx Synagogues
Four men accused of planting bombs outside synagogues in the Bronx and plotting to fire missiles at military planes were convicted on Monday, in a case that was widely seen as an important test of the entrapment defense.
A jury of six women and five men in Federal District Court in Manhattan deliberated for eight days.
The four defendants — Onta Williams, Laguerre Payen, James Cromitie and David Williams IV — face up to life in prison. Prosecutors said the men, who all lived in Newburgh, N.Y., willingly cooperated with an informer working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who posed as a terrorist and supplied the men with inert bombs and Stinger missile tubes.
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Infuriated GOP Candidate Refuses to Shake Hands With Rival
Kentucky debate turns bitter as Rand Paul rips Democrat over TV ad questioning his religion
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul angrily accused Democratic rival Jack Conway of gutter politics for running a TV ad that questioned Paul’s affiliation during his college years with a group that mocked Christianity.
Paul demanded an apology during a nationally televised debate Sunday night, denouncing the commercial as false and calling himself a “pro-life Christian.” Conway offered no apology and even repeated the accusations in his ad, which started airing statewide Friday night.
“Those who stoop to the level of attacking a man’s religious beliefs to gain higher office, I believe that they should remember that it does not profit a man to gain the world if he loses his soul in the process,” Paul said, referencing a scripture from the Gospel of Mark.
[…]
Paul condemned the tactic, saying: “How do you respond to a guy who’s going to quote somebody anonymously from 30 years ago that’s untrue? You just out-and-out lie because you have nothing to stand on.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pamela Geller: Defamed Freedom Fighter
The fury of the attacks upon my colleague Pamela Geller is a measure of her effectiveness in raising awareness about issues relating to the Ground Zero mega-mosque, honour killing, the plight of apostates from Islam, and more. The enemies of free discourse, the free conscience and equality of rights for women cannot refute her, so instead, they try to destroy her personally, rendering her discredited and marginalised — even if they have to twist the truth and lie outright to accomplish this goal.
Charles Johnson’s Comment is free article was a prime example. Johnson called her an “extreme rightwing blogger” and claimed, without offering any evidence, that she had “arguably done more than anyone else to incite fear and hatred over the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’“. And with a puritanical distaste that he would sneer at if it came from any conservative, he claimed that the New York Times profile of her featured a photo of Pamela “posing in her bikini”. This, too, was false.
Then, Johnson claims that, when Geller was commenting at his site, Little Green Footballs:
“The target of her rage was usually (but not always) Muslims. And not just militants or terrorists, but all Muslims; Geller was quite clear, and stated often, that she didn’t believe in the idea of a ‘moderate Islam’ at all. (Ironically, this is an opinion she shares with the leaders of al-Qaida, who insist that all Muslims must follow their extreme interpretation of Islam.)”
Johnson here confuses moderate Islam with moderate Muslims. In Ibn Warraq’s lapidary formulation, there are many moderate Muslims, but no moderate Islam. In other words, there is no traditional, mainstream sect of Islam or school of Islamic jurisprudence that does not teach warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. But that doesn’t mean that every Muslim is with that programme, any more than Jesus’s teaching means that every Christian turns the other cheek and loves his enemies. There is a spectrum of belief, knowledge and fervour among the adherents of any belief-system; some are very knowledgeable and committed, others are not — and sometimes, the most knowledgeable and the most committed are not the same group. The teachings of a religion are one thing and the way every individual believer puts those teachings into practice is quite another.
This is an elementary distinction, but it seems to elude Johnson and other leftists. In any case, by claiming that Geller’s “target” was “all Muslims”, rather than Islamic supremacists who wish to destroy the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience and the equality of rights of women — and particularly, by his vicious equation of her with al-Qaida, Johnson betrays a breathtaking disregard for the facts. Perhaps he hasn’t caught any of the numerous media appearances in which Geller explained that it was love for Muslims, but hatred of oppression (the Islamic death penalty for apostasy, the widespread tolerance for honour killing in the Islamic world) that led her to take the stands that she has. Those who doubt the sincerity of this statement should note that human rights organisations the world over have said and done virtually nothing about the plight of apostates from Islam or the Islamic justifications for honour killing. Who loves those victims more: the self-proclaimed human rights activists, or Pamela Geller?
Johnson (who used to refer to the Guardian as “al-Guardian”) claims that he broke with Geller and me “because of their increasing radicalisation and willingness to make alliances with far rightwing anti-Islam parties in Europe, such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and Britain’s English Defence League”. In reality, neither Geller nor I ever made any alliances with Vlaams Belang or the EDL (nor did she invite EDL leaders to attend our 11 September rally, as Johnson claims).
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Pentagon Prepares for Largest Security Breach in U.S Military History as Wikileaks Set to Release 500,000 Iraq Documents
The Pentagon said today that it had a 120-member team prepared to review a massive leak of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents, which are expected to be released by the WikiLeaks website sometime this month.
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said the timing of the leak remained unclear but the Defense Department was ready for a document dump as early as tomorrow or Tuesday, a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.
People familiar with the upcoming leak said they did not expect WikiLeaks to release the classified files for at least another week.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Shock Video: Top Dem, Socialists Plot ‘1-World’ Scheme
Plan calls for unions, clergy, civil rights leaders to ‘strengthen’ Obama
The Democratic chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee has been caught on tape meeting with a U.S.-based, Marxist-oriented socialist organization to discuss how the group can cooperate to strengthen President Obama and advance their “one-world” plans.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who has a long history with the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, was recorded promoting a “one-world” government, while asking the socialist group to organize against the war in Afghanistan and in support of Obama’s policies.
“I see that us making him more cooperative with our plans is going to strengthen him and not weaken him,” Conyers says to applause from the DSA activists.
“Whose job do you think it is to get him straightened out and get him on the right track? Ours! Ours!” Conyers exclaimed to more applause.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Stakelbeck: College Professor Calls for Israel’s Destruction
Last month, a Pennsylvania college professor publicly called for destruction of the state of Israel.
His name is Kaukab Siddique, and he is an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University.
Siddique made the remarks at an annual gathering of radical Muslims and leftists in Washington, DC: just minutes from the White House.
Siddique has also called the Holocaust “a hoax” that was “invented.”
Yet he still maintains his job teaching literature at Lincoln University.
Watch my new report, featuring footage of Siddique’s genocidal comments in DC, by clicking the link above.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Al Qaeda ‘Sent Agent to Britain on Arms and Recruitment Mission’
The terror chief behind recent plots for Mumbai-style attacks in Europe sent an aide to Britain to raise cash, buy arms and recruit other terrorists, it was reported last night.
Ilyas Kashmiri, an Al Qaeda commander, arranged the trip to meet ‘contacts’ as part of plans for an attack on a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of Mohammed.
The meeting between Kashmiri’s associate, a U.S. citizen called David Coleman Headley, and two British men allegedly happened in August 2009 in Derby. According to U.S. court documents, Kashmiri said the men would provide Headley with ‘money, weapons and manpower’.
The details have emerged as part of the case against Headley, 50, who was arrested last year in Chicago on his way to Pakistan to hand over surveillance videos to terrorists.
It is believed that one-eyed Kashmiri is behind the recent terror alerts in Europe, sparked by intelligence that he had boasted about sending terrorists to Britain and Germany.
The revelations come as French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said last night that, according to Saudi sources, Al Qaeda was active in Europe and most ‘notably France’. ‘The threat is real,’ he added.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
France: Saudis Warn of New Al-Qaeda Threat
Saudi Arabia has warned France it is the target of an imminent al-Qaeda attack, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux has said.
He said Saudi intelligence agencies spoke of a threat to Europe, and “France in particular”, from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
France is already on high alert following warnings of possible attacks aimed at France, Germany and the UK.
Continue reading the main story Related stories
Drone death man ‘UK terror chief’ Analysis: The German terror connection Q&A: Europe travel terror alerts The Eiffel Tower was evacuated twice in September over security alerts.
“I can tell you — and it’s not information that’s been made public yet — that even a few hours, a few days ago, [we received] a new message, from the Saudi [intelligence] services, indicating to us that Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula was certainly active, or expecting to be active,” Mr Hortefeux said in a joint radio and television interview.
He said the threat concerned “the European continent and France in particular”.
Mr Hortefeux gave little detail about the information the Saudis had provided, but said the threat was real.
It appears to have been released by the government as a warning to the French public that they must remain vigilant, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.
The authorities have been criticised for scaremongering, our correspondent says. The the official threat level in France remains one below the highest level of scarlet.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
France Warned of “Real” New Terror Threat
Paris “Directly Concerned” after Saudi, U.S. Intel Officials Pass Info on New Unspecific Threat from al Qaeda Militants
Saudi intelligence services have warned of a new terror threat from al Qaeda against Europe, particularly in France, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.
He said Sunday the warning of a potential attack by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was received “in the last few hours, few days.”
European officials were informed that “al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was doubtless active or envisioned being active” on the “European continent, notably France,” Hortefeux said during a joint TV and radio interview.
“The threat is real,” he said on RTL-LCI-Le Figaro’s weekly talk show.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Citizens Alienated by Politics Taking to Streets for Single Issues
Germans are increasingly taking to the streets in order make their point on political matters which might otherwise be considered best debated in places such as parliament or local government.
“People in this country want to take part more and more, but not simply via elections or in parties,” said Wichard Woyke, political scientist at Münster University.
People want to have a direct effect on particularly large projects which have a direct influence on their day-to-day lives and quality of living, he said.
“This is currently illustrated by the mass protests against the station in Stuttgart just as much as with the school reform in Hamburg, the airport in Berlin or also in Gorleben, where the citizens have been demonstrating for decades against the establishment of a final storage place for nuclear waste.”
What is new, is that people from a broader social spectrum are taking part in these demonstrations — and from all political strands.
“You see a nurse next to a lawyer, a Green next to a CDU voter, a pensioner next to a young person,” said Woyke.
And people fighting local battles are helping each other he noted, saying that recently 30 opponents of the nuclear waste storage facility in Gorleben have said they will drive their tractors to Stuttgart.
The growing numbers of mass protests should prompt politicians to strengthen their efforts to explain their intentions to the voters.
“It is very important that the citizens feel involved in decision-making,” said Woyke. That is the only way people can feel included in the parliamentary democratic system, he said.
The weekend saw thousands on the streets in Berlin protesting the government’s policies of cutting Hartz IV social provision and the financial crisis policies in general.
Despite the absence of any prominent speakers, or the involvement of political parties or trades unions, the demonstration drew around 7,000 people to the city centre on Saturday.
Those fighting the Stuttgart 21 rail construction project briefly occupied part of the central station on Saturday evening too, while around 20,000 people gathered on the streets despite rainy and chilly weather.
More than 3,000 blind and vision-impaired people demonstrated in Kiel against the halving of support payments from the Schleswig Holstein state government.
The monthly payment of €400 is set to be reduced to €200 as part of the state’s budgetary savings plan. The demonstrators included representatives of the churches and opposition politicians.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Merkel Joins Seehofer to Bury Multiculturalism
Chancellor Angela Merkel positioned herself closely to controversial Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer at the weekend, saying the concept of multiculturalism had failed utterly.
While warning against “immigration that weighs down on our social system,” Merkel said she wanted to see the immigration of highly-specialised experts to continue, backing Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
But Merkel said immigrants had to understand the German legal system and speak the language. The multicultural approach had failed, she told the meeting of the youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Potsdam.
Yet she referred to Federal President Christian Wulff’s speech where he said that Islam was a valid part of Germany, saying, “Those who ignore the fact that 2,500 Imams conduct their worship in mosques are kidding themselves,” she said.
Merkel’s straddling of the immigration and integration topics mirrored splits within her party.
Education Minister Annette Schavan contradicted Seehofer when she said, “It is not immigration that should agitate us, rather emigration out of Germany. If we don’t do anything against that, the lack of experts here will develop into a brake on economic growth.”
Von der Leyen said she wanted to make it easier for qualified workers to come to Germany to supply the needs of industry. “In any case these highly-qualified people are not waiting in crowds at the border. We have to make efforts to attract them.”
Seehofer, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union, provoked concern on Saturday when he proclaimed multiculturalism to be dead.
He said the two union parties were committed to a dominant German culture and opposed to a multicultural one, expanding on his recent call to stop Turks and Arabs from moving to Germany.
Yet he said his speech was not a lurch to the right, rather an attempt to “stop the right-wing loonies,” he said, adding that “political seducers” must be deterred from parliament by addressing the concerns of voters.
Those who wanted to live in Germany had to be prepared to accept the daily culture of the country, he said, although did not specify how this should be defined.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany’s 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gül also spoke this weekend urging Turkish people in Germany to make greater efforts to integrate — particularly in learning German.
“When one doesn’t speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn’t serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society,” Gül told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries.”
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers.
“The lack is causing a loss of growth of about one percent,” he said.
Jewish leaders in Germany meanwhile warned that German society and democracy were under threat from extremists.
A recent expert study should prompt the government to act against anti-democratic ideas, the secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, told the Rheinpfalz am Sonntag weekly.
The study, by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank, showed that more than one third (34.3 percent) of those surveyed believed Germany’s 16 million immigrants or people with foreign origins came to the country for the social benefits.
Around the same number (35.6 percent) said they thought Germany was being “over-run by foreigners” and more than one in 10 called for a “Führer” to run the country “with a strong hand.”
Thirty-two percent of people said they agreed with the statement: “Foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.”
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but “to a worrying degree at the centre of society,” the report noted.
More than half (58.4 percent) of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices “significantly curbed.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ‘Acid Bath’ Mafia Murder Suspects Arrested
Milan, 18 Oct. (AKI) — Police on Monday arrested six mafia suspects over the 2009 murder of late Calabrian mafia informant Lea Garofalo, whose body was dissolved in acid. The arrests were made in Milan, capital of the northern Lombardy region, and in other Italian regions.
Prosecutors described 35-year-old Garofalo’s killing as a “genuine execution”.
The arrested suspects included Garofalo’s former partner, 40-year-old Carlo Cosco, who fathered her daughter.
Garofalo disappeared in Milan on 24 November 2009, after she testified against Calabrian mafia families based around the southern city of Crotone.
She was ‘interrogated’ by her abductors, before they shot her in the head on 25 November and dissolved her body in a vat of acid on farmland near the northern Italian city of Monza, according to investigators.
Garofalo had not been given police protection after she gave evidence against the Calabrian mafia. She disappeared during a visit to Milan to allow Cosco to see his teenage daughter.
Cosco and their daughter reported Garofalo missing on 25 November. The woman was abducted as she waited to collect her daughter from a visit with relations and bundled into Cosco’s car, investigators said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Alleged Muslim Victims of Hate Speech by Anti-Islam Politician Plead for His Conviction
Muslim witnesses said Monday that a Dutch lawmaker’s anti-Islamic comments had led to attacks and intimidation, and they pleaded with judges to convict him and give him a symbolic fine of one euro ($1.40). Geert Wilders is facing charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims for statements that include comparing Islam with Nazism and calling for banning the Qur’an and taxing Muslim scarves, which he calls “head rags.” His trial has been seen as testing the limits of free speech. Prosecutors last week acknowledged they have failed to prove the case against him and called for his acquittal. But the judges may disagree, and their verdict is expected Nov. 5. “Arson. Attempted arson. Vandalism. Disturbances. Incivility to people attending mosques. Obscenities. Intimidating behaviour — they have all become everyday occurrences” as a result of Wilders’ public remarks, said Mohammed Enait, speaking for an alliance of Dutch mosques that had asked to testify as victims in the case. Wilders denies inciting hatred of Muslims, and says he criticizes Islam because it’s an ideology that rejects Western values. He says it is not a crime to state what many Dutch voters believe. Enait said Dutch Muslims have suffered tangible damage as a result of Wilders’ repeated negative remarks about Islam. He said there are countless incidences of “children being cursed at while they walk. Stories from women … who are spit upon, mocked because they wear headscarves.” Enait, who is from Rotterdam, said the mosque he attended as a child had been burned down. Dozens of mosques in the Netherlands were burned in 2004 in apparent retaliatory attacks after the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic radical who is now serving a life sentence.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Terrorist Jason Walters Turns His Back on Muslim Extremism
The convicted Islamic terrorist Jason Walters has distanced himself from Muslim extremism in a letter to De Volkskrant newspaper.
“The ideals that I once held have become lost and I have come to the realisation that they are morally bankrupt,” writes Walters in a letter to the paper. He says he wants to warn youngsters via the letter not to be misled by “false promises and ideals.”
“The picture of the world only consisting of believers and unbelievers, with the latter only out to destroy the former, is a childish and gross simplification of reality.” The Dutchman with an American father calls on Islamists to lay down their arms and transform themselves into social and political parties in order to bring about the reforms they desire.
Walters is serving a 15 year jail sentence. He was arrested along with Ismael Akhnikh on 10 November 2004 in a house in The Hague after a 14-hour siege in which Walters threw a hand grenade to the arrest team, injuring four officers. He was eventually shot in the shoulder by snipers.
Walters and Akhnikh were part of the Hofstad group, as it was called. The leader of this network, Mohammed Bouyeri, gruesomely murdered Islam critic Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004. This Amsterdam-born Moroccan is serving a life sentence.
An appeal court in Amsterdam will tomorrow consider the question of whether the Hofstad group was a terrorist organisation. Another appeal court earlier found this was not proven, because the contacts between the members were not said to have been sufficiently intensive. The Supreme Court found this verdict negligent and ordered the case to be reopened.
Walters’ lawyer Bart Nooitgedagt says his client did not write the letter to influence the proceedings. The content of the letter is “too fundamental in nature” for this, says the lawyer. The National Anti-terrorism Coordinator (NCTb) has called Walters’ letter “a positive signal,” but cannot judge its sincerity.
In the letter, Walters writes that the Sharia is grafted onto traditional, rural communities while the modern world is to an increasing degree urbanising, liberalising and globalising. Additionally, religion has lost its monopoly of trough due to the rise of modern science and rational thinking, he argues. These things are “unique to modern times and cannot be solved by pre-modern solutions.”
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Right-Wing Attitudes on the Rise in Germany
A new study has revealed that far-right attitudes are deeply rooted in German society. One-third of Germans would send foreigners home if there weren’t enough jobs, while one-sixth think Jews have too much influence.
“Germany is in serious danger of being overrun by foreigners.” It’s a sentence one would expect to find on an election poster for Germany’s far-right NPD party. As it happens, it’s a view that is held by over one-third of the German population — a new survey has revealed that 35.6 percent of Germans agree with the statement.
Additionally, more than 30 percent think that “foreigners come to take advantage of the welfare state” and that when jobs are scarce foreigners should be sent “back to their own country.” More than one-tenth would like a “Führer” — the survey deliberately used the German word for “leader” that is associated with Adolf Hitler — who would govern the country “with a firm hand” for the benefit of all.
Rise in Xenophobic Sentiment
These are some of the findings of a new study on right-wing attitudes that was presented on Wednesday in Berlin by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democrats. A quarter of Germans agreed with statements that included xenophobic content. “We’ve detected a rise in decidedly anti-democratic and racist attitudes in 2010,” said the researchers, describing the results of their survey of 2,500 randomly selected people.
Two years ago, when the survey was last carried out, results showed a slight decrease in anti-democratic tendencies, exaggerated nationalism and xenophobia — at least in the former West Germany. The researchers did, however, note that the study was conducted during a period of sustained economic growth. Since then, the world has been hit by an economic crisis. The result is an increase in right-wing attitudes that the academics described as “possibly a trend reversal.”
One thing hasn’t changed. Contrary to what the term far-right suggests, right-wing extremist attitudes don’t only exist on the fringes of politics, but are also found in the political center, “in all social groups and in all age groups, regardless of employment status, educational level or gender.” These attitudes have even been detected among groups that traditionally classify themselves as left-wing, such as trade unions and the Social Democrats.
Results of Financial Crisis
Those at the traditional center of society are also those who are losing faith in the political system because of the financial crisis — and are becoming more prone to extreme views. Six different characteristic right-wing extremist views were identified in the study, and participants were asked three questions about each one:…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Taliban Threaten Attack Against Netherlands
The Taliban are threatening to carry out an attack in the Netherlands if Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam policies are introduced, according to the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. The threat was made in a Volkskrant telephone interview with Zabiullah Mujahed, the official Taliban spokesperson for East and North Afghanistan.
“If he succeeds in manipulating the Dutch parliament into passing more anti-Islamic legislation or laws that disadvantage Muslims, there is no doubt Muslims from other countries will take action to assist their Muslim brothers and sisters,” Mr Mujahed said.
Earlier, the Taliban in Pakistan also spoke in favour of an attack in the Netherlands. In an interview with the Television channel RTL Nieuws, Pakistani Taliban commander Wali-ur Rehman said he wanted to teach the Netherlands a lesson for its “anti-Islamic tone”.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The Gotthard Base Tunnel: Miracle Under the Alps
After years of work deep under the surface of the earth, drilling on the Gotthard Base Tunnel is set to be completed on Friday. It will be years before the first trains roll through the 57-kilometer-long tunnel, but given the difficulties workers have encountered, it is a wonder they have come this far.
They are both celebrated as wonders of mankind’s ingenuity and engineering expertise: the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, deep pathways slicing through the surface of the earth for the benefit of global trade.
On Friday, a third such wonder will take a decisive step toward completion. Only 1.8 meters (just under six feet) of rock stand in the way of the Gotthard Base Tunnel from becoming the longest tunnel in the world. On Friday afternoon, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi is scheduled to break through that final barrier far below the peaks of the Alps. Accompanied by a subterranean celebration and live coverage from the world’s media, the breakthrough is a significant milepost on the road to completion for Europe’s largest infrastructure project.
“Technically, it is an absolutely eye-popping project,” Kurosch Thuro, a tunnel construction expert from the Munich Technical University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. His colleague Markus Thewes from the Ruhr University in Bochum says “the Swiss have set the bar so high that no one will easily be able to clear it.”
The undertaking has not been without problems. Early on in the drilling, for example, on March 31, 1996, drilling experts, assistants and a geologist were carrying out geologic tests when they suddenly struck a layer known as the Piora Mulde. Suddenly, a huge quantity of water and sand shot out of the drill shaft with unimaginable force.
A Miracle
The Piora Mulde is a narrow, vertical band in the heart of the Alps made up of finely ground Dolomite — a white, often crystalline mineral, sediment which settled on the bottom of a sea 230 million years ago. Mixed with water, the substance becomes unpredictable — and presented a difficult challenge for the tunnel engineers to overcome. On that day in March over 10 years ago, thousands of cubic meters of the stuff flooded into the drill shaft. It is a miracle that none of the workers present were injured.
The Piora Mulde was just one of some 90 geological problem zones that had to be overcome during the drilling of the 57-kilometer-long tunnel. “It was not without danger,” confirms Thuro.
It won’t be until 2016 or 2017 before the first trains can roll through the tunnel on their way between Zurich and Milan. The digging, however, despite all the difficulties and delays, will be brought to a successful conclusion on Friday.
Workers removed fully 23 million tons of rock in the drilling of the tunnel — actually a pair of tunnels, each 10 meters in diameter. Indeed, were all the tunnels, including the cross tunnels, to be added together, they would extend for 153 kilometers. Up to 2,600 people worked concurrently on the project deep under the earth’s surface, battling with the dust, noise, humidity and temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius (almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit).
Forced to Use Explosives
And there were plenty of dangers. Eight workers have lost their lives so far in the construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. During the construction of the old Gotthard Tunnel in the 19th century, the total was close to 300.
In the drilling of the tunnels, workers relied on eight gigantic, 3,000-ton tunnel drilling machines simultaneously. “An exceptional logistical plan” was necessary, says Thewes. An 800-meter-long shaft was drilled vertically into the mountain, for example, so that workers could begin working in the middle of the tunnel.
Often, though, the outsized drilling machines provided little help. In zones where the rock was particularly brittle, workers were forced to use more traditional methods, such as explosives. Zones of stone that had been crushed to bits as the Alps formed proved to be particularly problematic.
“Nobody has ever worked in such material at such a depth,” says geo-technician Georgios Anagnostou, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In such areas, tunnel engineers were forced into something of a gamble. They allowed for softer material to push into the tunnel and installed thick tubes in those segments. Computer models had forecast distortions of up to one meter. In the end, the deformations were around 80 centimeters.
Not the Only Problem
Workers were ultimately successful in stabilizing the unstable. “There are no longer any parts of the tunnel where there are any distortions worth mentioning,” says Anagnostou.
But other problems awaited. At the spot where one of the emergency stops was to be built, the Faido site, engineers discovered another area of instability. The large cavern that was to house the subterranean emergency station had to be built elsewhere, and is now 300 meters further to the south.
Another problem arose when, in the same segment, one of the drilling machines got stuck and was virtually buried by debris falling from the tunnel roof. Time was lost as workers had to grind up and remove the stone that had filled the tunnel — the roof was then stabilized using steel and concrete. Similar incidents occurred in several other parts of the tunnel. At one point, one of the drilling machines was unusable for a full six months — while just 40 meters away in the parallel tunnel, workers encountered no trouble at all.
Indeed, in the end the Piora Mulde zone proved unproblematic. The real tunnel was drilled a few hundred meters below where the test tunnel had been flooded — through a stable area of marble. “The marble was the best material that workers encountered in drilling the Gotthard Base Tunnel,” says Anagnostou. “They didn’t take risks. They did their research first.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
The Lure of Radicalism and Extremism Amongst Muslim Youth
“Why is it that a few militant clerics are so popular among some American Muslims?” I was asked by an academic at a recent luncheon.
“After all, besides being so extreme in their message, don’t most of them lack the scholarly credentials of the many mainstream clerics who oppose their militancy?”
The questioner was a highly educated person — someone who had a deep understanding of Islamic theology. He also understood quite well the existence of significant variations in the interpretation and understanding of religious texts. He was one of those who had no problem looking past the right-wing Islamophobic rhetoric of Fox News and Robert Spencer et al., yet was still confused as to why second-generation American and British Muslims would find a message of extremism and militancy so appealing.
He correctly pointed out that the clerics espousing militancy were not only in the minority, but were also not as well-trained in the classical sciences as were clerics belonging to the opposing camp. Why then, were their voices so influential?
This academic at the luncheon was not the only one struggling with the question. A recent congressional hearing also tackled this same issue. And of course, this was not the first time that I myself had to confront this very question. It was especially driven home after someone with whom I had only briefly interacted — Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the now infamous ‘underwear bomber’ — turned radical and tried to blow up innocent men, women and children.
Umar’s transformation provides an excellent case-study that can and should be studied further to shed light on the question of radicalism, and this short essay makes a first, humble attempt at doing just that.
I remember Umar as a shy introvert who attended an intensive retreat, the “IlmSummit” sponsored by Al-Maghrib Institute in Houston, TX, in the summer of 2008. I was among ten instructors at that retreat.
Umar was in fact so quiet and shy that I almost felt obliged to engage him in small talk, asking him mundane questions about where he lived and what he was studying. And that was about the extent of my interaction with him. Never once did he raise his hand in class to ask a question, or seek any advice, or share any concerns, or confront me on any subject.
It appears that the lack of communication or socializing was not limited to the two of us. Rather, it seems that other students at the retreat had the same experience; they didn’t remember anything significant about him except his nonchalant, quiet presence.
In fact, my encounter with him had been so brief and dull, that when I saw his pictures being paraded on every website and news magazine cover in December of 2009, I didn’t even recognize him until someone alerted me via email that this was the same Umar who had been at the AlMaghrib retreat. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that someone as shy and socially introverted as Umar would have attempted to blow up a plane by stuffing his underwear with explosives!
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Burns Victim’s Amazement After NHS Hospital Staff Wrap Blistered His Hand in a Tesco Freezer Bag
A burns victim was left stunned after NHS staff wrapped his blistered hand in a Tesco freezer bag.
Nicholas Robertson, 38, was treated for the injury — then medical staff needed to wrap his hand in a protective and sterilised plastic bag.
But he was amazed to see the word Tesco stamped across the bag.
The supermarket giant this morning revealed it is one of their standard bags used to wrap frozen food.
Nicholas said: ‘Is this what the NHS has come to?
‘I know there are Government cuts — but wrapping patients in Tesco freezer bags is not acceptable.
‘You would expected proper burns bag which are sterilised and made for different limbs.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: I’m Still Glad I Spoke Out, Says Teacher Sacked After Her Attack on Failing Schools
A teacher who exposed shocking failures in Britain’s ‘broken’ education system has lost her job over the political row.
Katharine Birbalsingh won a standing ovation at the Conservative Party conference after she delivered a damning indictment of ‘utterly chaotic’ state schools.
But she was sent home from her school in Camberwell, South London, after her speech, and has now lost her job as a deputy head teacher at the inner city academy.
Defiant Miss Birbalsingh, 37, insisted she did not regret her strongly worded attack, in which she said teachers were ‘blinded by leftist ideology’ and refused to admit they were failing children.
She said she was surprised by the response to the speech but added: ‘I don’t regret it, it had to be said. I’m pleased I did it. ‘It was never about me; it was about a school system that is fundamentally broken. I want people to take notice of what I’ve said and demand change.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Innocent Mother Hacked to Death Because Husband Could Not Tolerate a ‘Mere Woman’ Leaving Him, Old Bailey Told
A radio receptionist was hacked to death in the street on her husband’s orders because she had said she wanted to divorce him, a court heard.
And as mother-of two Geeta Aulakh tried to defend herself, her hand was chopped off by the machete-wielding gang who her husband had paid £5,000 to kill her, the Old Bailey murder trial was told.
The three men set upon Geeta, 28, who worked for Sunrise Radio, yards from her front door in Greenford, Middlesex, as she went to pick up her young sons from a childminder.
The murder had been arranged for just £5,000 because husband Harpreet Aulakh, 32, could not ‘tolerate’ that a ‘mere’ woman should begin divorce proceedings, the court heard.
It is alleged Sher Singh, then 18, who he knew from the Punjab, Harpreet Singh and Jaswinder Dhillon, 30, were recruited to carry out the ‘hideous crime’.
Harpeet Aulakh then tried to set up an alibi by drinking in a pub with CCTV at the time of the murder last November 15, it was said.
Harpreet Aulakh of Chestnut Close, Greenford, Sher Singh, 19, of Wren Avenue, Southall, Harpreet Singh, 20, of Elmwood Road, Slough, and Jaswinder Dhillon, 30, of High Road, Ilford, all deny murder.
Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee QC told the jury: ‘On a November evening last year Geeta Aulakh, having finished work, was on her way to the home of a childminder in Greenford where two young sons were waiting for their mother to collect them.
‘The boys were seven and eight years old respectively at the time. She never got to collect them. Just yards from that address her killers lay in wait.
‘They knew exactly where to wait and when to be there. There were three of them, albeit only one would and did hack her to death.
‘So savage and determined was this mission to kill her, that when she sought to protect her head with her hands, her right hand was completely severed from her arm.
‘Why was this murderous objective embarked upon by her husband? Why did he need others to carry out this hideous crime?
‘The answer to each of these questions is straightforward enough. Geeta was in the process of divorcing him. That would not be tolerated.
‘No-one else in the world could possibly have wished this utterly innocent and hard working woman and mother any harm.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lunacy as Officers Fill in 16-Page Form to Watch Suspect
A third of police time is wasted on bureaucracy, a report into red tape has revealed.
The work of one student officer investigating a simple burglary was reviewed and directed by nine separate supervisors, the report showed.
And while a superintendent can authorise an officer to carry a firearm on one sheet of paper, a ‘ludicrous’ 16-page form must be filled in by police who want to peek through a window at a suspect.
The volume of paperwork needed to carry out such a simple task has been exposed in a paper to be published by the Government this week as police forces brace themselves for spending cuts.
Research by Jan Berry, former chairman of the Police Federation, found that officers spend a third of their time on pointless bureaucracy.
She said forces, who have ‘armies of people filling out spreadsheets’ to record performance, would have to look at cutting civilian staff.
Mrs Berry, hired two years ago by the Home Office to combat red tape in the police, discovered that an arresting officer must enter the suspect’s details in as many as eight databases.
When a crime is reported, it is assessed by four officers before an investigation even begins.
She also found that student constables investigating burglaries will have nine other officers supervising their work.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders is Dangerous, Muslims Tell Court
Muslims told judges trying anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders for hate speech Monday that he was dangerous, dividing a multicultural society that used to cohabit peacefully.
“Mr Wilders is a dangerous ideologist who has divided Dutch society,” Naoual Abaida, a trainee lawyer with a native Dutch mother and Moroccan father, told the court.
“I am asking you to protect me as a Muslim and a Moroccan against Mr Wilders,” she said, referring to his “Islam-bashing” and “insulting, polarising language”.
Wilders, 47, went on trial on October 4 for inciting hatred by calling Islam “fascist” and likening the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.
The prosecution service asked the court for his acquittal last Friday, saying his criticism, though hurtful, was not criminal.
On Monday, lawyers for Wilders’ accusers — a group of individuals from around the country — asked for a guilty verdict and a symbolic damages award of one euro.
“We are the daily target of xenophobic statements,” Mohamed Rabbae, politician and activist, told the judges as Wilders looked on, occasionally lifting his eyebrows or making faces.
“Our children have become unsure about their future … in this climate of discrimination, hate and enmity as propagated by Mr Wilders.”
This in turn caused “anger, bitterness and a deepening of the divide between Muslims and native Dutch”, said Rabbae.
In June 2008, the prosecution service dismissed dozens of complaints against the politician, citing his right to freedom of speech.
But appeals judges ordered in January 2009 that he stand trial as his utterances amounted to “sowing hatred” — compelling the prosecution to mount a case against him.
Wilders, who will give parliamentary support to a new, rightist coalition government inaugurated last Thursday, risks up to a year in jail or a 7,600-euro fine for comments made in his campaign to “stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands”.
Wilders’ defence lawyer will make his case on Tuesday and Friday.
Judgment is expected on November 5.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders Deems Swedish Citizenship ‘Undesirable’
The Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) supports the new conservative minority government, has demanded that a new minister revoke her Swedish citizenship, reported the Dutch De Telegraaf daily.
Wilders’ demands refer to the new state secretary of health Marties Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Hyllner who was born in Gothenburg and holds dual Dutch-Swedish citizenship.
“I knew nothing about this, was not informed. The Party for Freedom still holds the view that dual nationality is very undesirable,” Wilders said.
Wilders plans to raise the issue when the government’s programme is discussed in parliament on October 26th-27th.
A spokesperson for the deputy prime minister has confirmed that the government had been informed of Zanten-Hyllner’s status as a dual Dutch-Swedish citizen, and saw no problem with that.
This is not the first time Geert Wilders and the PVV have reacted to multinational ministers. When the previous government was in office, the party tabled a vote of no confidence in respect of two ministers — Ahmed Aboutaleb and Nebahat Albayrak — of Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish descent.
Wilders has previously said that the PVV’s position is that government ministers should not have dual citizenship as it implies dual allegiance.
The populist anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has capitalized on a strong showing in the recent Netherlands’ election to claim a role for the PVV as a support party of the newly elected conservative minority government.
The new government has in return promised to take a tougher, more restrictive approach to asylum seekers, including a halving of the number of new immigrants from countries outside of the “western” world.
Further promised measures include a ban on the public wearing of face-concealing Muslim attire, and forcing immigrants to pay for their own mandatory citizenship classes.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Coptic Organization Warns of Violence Against Copts in Egypt
Coptic Solidarity, a worldwide Coptic human rights organization, has issued an alarming warning.
The Oct. 14 statement says that the alarming upsurge of significant anti-Coptic activities over the recent weeks could eventually “degenerate into wholesale violence against the Copts and their spiritual leaders” in the upcoming volatile period of political changes in Egypt.
Reporting for the Assyrian International Agency (AINA), Mary Abdelmassih wrote that the National Election for the Egyptian People’s Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, is slated for Nov. 29.
In addition, AINA reported, the presidential election is due in 2011, with the controversial issue of President Mubarak’s youngest son Gamal, succeeding his father, hanging in the air.
AINA said the statement accuses the Egyptian authorities of having “chosen to remain silent, proving, yet again, that they may be trying to use Islamic radicalism as a means to channel against the Copts the escalating social discontent in the country.”
According to AINA, the Coptic Church has recently witnessed concerted incitement campaigns in the national media and by Islamic radicals. They vary from televised programs on Wahhabi-funded Islamic TV Channels to demonstrations against the Church and its pontiff Pope Shenouda III. The campaigns have been initiated from mosques all over Egypt.
AINA said the statement mentions the televised false accusations levied against the Church by leading Islamic figures on Sept. 15 and after, of “stocking arms and ammunition (imported from Israel) in their churches and monasteries” and of “preparing to wage war against Muslims.”
Copts were further accused of “inciting sectarian strife and seeking to have their own separate state in Egypt.”
AINA said Pope Shenouda, in his interviews of late Sept. on state-owned and private TV channels, expressed his concern over the ongoing situation. He dismissed such claims as illogical allegations thrown at the Church, adding that the only time a Copt would carry arms is “if he works in the police or the army.”
The pope continued to say that the doors of churches are open to state scrutiny. He also dismissed the rumors of a separate “Coptic State” on the lines of the expected division between north and south Sudan. “Copts live all over the country and it would not be feasible,” AINA reported he said.
“These preposterous accusations could have been easily refuted by the usually intrusive Egyptian authorities, but they have chosen to remain silent,” AINA reported the Coptic Solidarity statement read.
The statement also referred to the ten demonstrations carried out by Islamist mobs after Friday’s prayers, targeting the Coptic Church, the Pope and Copts in general. “Several hate slogans, normally punishable under the laws, were shouted, with no action taken by the authorities.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Police Arrest 154 Muslim Brotherhood Members
Cairo, 18 Oct. (AKI) — Egyptian police over the last week have arrested 154 members of the banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in 17 provinces the country, according to the group’s website.
The arrests, made ahead of the presentation of candidate lists for the 29 November elections for the national parliament.
“Numerous heads of the group have been arrested, striking also at financing,” Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Muniam Abdel Maqsud said on the website.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political opposition group, over the weekend confirmed it would field candidates for up to 30 percent of the 508 parliamentary seats up for grabs.
In 2005, 88 people affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood won seats in the People’s Assembly after running as independent candidates. They won 20 percent of the seats in the lower house of Egypt’s parliament.
The world’s largest Islamist political group, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928. In Egypt the group claims to advocate an Islamic state achieved through peaceful means.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaeda Reaches Out Armed With English, Internet
Al-Qaeda has combined the global reach of both the English language and the Internet as cyber-terrorism tools to win over non-Arab sympathisers. Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing released the first edition of an online English-language magazine, Inspire, four months ago that included an article on how to build a bomb. A second, 74-page edition made it to the World Wide Web last week instructing Muslims in Western countries on how to weld deadly steel blades onto SUV vehicles and then plough into civilian crowds. With Inspire, edited by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group hopes to recruit young Westerners to the jihadi cause and to apparently encourage random attacks. “This is by no doubt a new experiment” as it “is the first time Al-Qaeda issues an English-language publication,” a Paris-based expert on Middle East Islamist groups, Dominique Thomas, told AFP. “These messages target Muslim communities living” outside the Arab world, Thomas said. Philip Seib, a professor at the University of Southern California and co-author of “Global Terrorism and New Media,” believes the terror network has itself become a media organisation. “It might be time to stop thinking of Al-Qaeda as the terrorist organisation that does media and more as the media organisation that does terror,” Seib said. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, video, audio and written Al-Qaeda statements have mushroomed on the Internet. Now, the network has a complete web-magazine in English. “This is a shift” in Al-Qaeda’s strategies, said Mustafa Alani, security expert at the Dubai-based think-tank, the Gulf Research Centre. “Previously, they never cared about non-Arabic readers. This is another dimension of a global war aiming at global recruitment,” he added. Al-Qaeda “exported” militants, now it “imports” them, it used the Internet to “inform” people, now it’s using it to “recruit” them, Alani said.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Men Allowed to Beat Their Wives and Young Children (As Long as They Don’t Leave Any Marks), Rules UAE Court
Husbands are allowed to beat their wives and children — as long as they don’t leave any physical marks, an Islamic court in the United Arab Emirates has ruled.
The astonishing legal ruling gives all husbands and fathers in the ultra-rich Gulf state the ‘right to discipline’ female family members if they have first attempted reconciliation.
The judgment was made by one of the UAE’s most senior judges, Chief Justic Falah al Hajeri, who made the ruling in the case of a man fined £85 for slapping his wife and kicking his daughter.
The Emirati man in the case was found guilty of slapping his wife so hard he damaged her bottom lip and teeth.
He also slapped and kicked his 23-year-old daughter so that she suffered bruises on her hand and knee.
While the defendant, who has not been named, initially claimed he hit the two women only by accident, he was found guilty of assault.
However, he appealed, claiming that even if he had intended to strike his wife and daughter, under Shariah law he had the right to do so if he had first exhausted all other ways of resolving the dispute.
Chief Justice Falah al Hajeri said: ‘Although the law permits the husband to use his right to discipline, he has to abide by the limits of this right.
‘If the husband abuses this right to discipline, he cannot be exempted from punishment.’
Mr al Hajeri went on to explain that one of the ways of determining whether a man had breached this limit was to look for physical traces of beating.
While the ruling was greeted with anger by many Arab world commentators, others claimed it is a ‘real-life compromise’ between the competing demands of the petro-state’s highly Westernised population and its conservative Muslim heritage.
Sharia court judgements are made by Islamic scholars who judge the evidence against the moral code laid down in Islamic scripture as well as against the rulings of previous Shariah courts.
Shariah courts have previously granted husbands the ‘right to discipline’, which can include beating.
But often they differ in the definition of beating.
Jihad Hashim Brown, the head of research at the Islamic think tank the Tabah Foundation said beating one’s wife was in conflict most Islamic texts, which encourage Muslims to treat their wives in ‘love and kindness’.
He said a Quranic verse might appear to allow certain things but if the verse was not ‘clear and concise’, it should not enter courts of law.
However, Dr Ahmed al Kubaisi, head of Sharia Studies at Iraq’s Baghdad University, said that under Sharia law beating one’s wife was an option to prevent the breakdown of the family.
He said it should be used only as a substitute to resorting to the police.
‘If a wife committed something wrong, a husband can report her to police,’ Dr al Kubaisi said.
‘But sometimes she does not do a serious thing or he does not want to let others know; when it is not good for the family. In this case, hitting is a better option.’
Around a million British tourists a year visit the UAE, mainly going to Dubai where the Foreign Office warns that all visitors must abide by local laws and customs.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Istanbul University Lifts Headscarf Ban
The head of Turkey’s Higher Education-Board confirmed this week that he ordered Istanbul University, one of the nation’s biggest, to stop its professors from kicking students out of classes for wearing head coverings.
The directive followed a complaint by an Istanbul University student, who was sent out of class last November for wearing a hat. Many students disguise head scarves by placing an over-sized baseball cap on top of their scarves.
The headscarf debate has dominated political talk in Turkey for most of the year and almost brought the ruling party to the brink of being banned by the country’s highest court for infringing on human rights. Now it seems that the two major parties have reached a consensus.
“This is liberalization in one sense and in another sense it is acceptance of the headscarf in the public domain in Turkey,” said Dr. Nilufer Narli, a professor of Political Sociology at Bahçesehir University and author of numerous books including the forthcoming Feminism, Islamism and Women’s Political Participation: A Comparative Perspective.
“This is a healthy process for Turkey. This issue was really creating conflict and dividing the society,” Dr. Narli said. “It will bring more unity to Turkey.”
In a sign of how power is shifting in Turkey, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the main party of secularist opposition, has said in recent weeks that it, too, would support ending the ban in universities.
“This is a political process. The competing parties have been trying to reach a consensus, one political group insisted it is only political symbol and it shouldn’t be permitted in public and another party claimed it is sign of faith and should be allowed in the public sector. Today these two parties are reached a consensus that the headscarf should be accepted and permitted at universities,” Dr. Narli added.
The directive released today was aimed specifically at Istanbul University, however, it is expected that more universities will follow suit.
“We are against anybody being sent out of the classroom for any way of dressing,” said Education Board President Yusuf Ozcan, in comments to Turkey’s NTV television channel.” We notified this [to Istanbul University]. If it is needed, we will notify other universities as well.”
Secularists, including many academics, support the ban out of fear that any dilution of Turkey’s secular laws will open the floodgates to the country’s Islamization.
“This is a huge step backwards, a step to radicalize the state and a step towards Islamization,” Anders Gravers founder of Stop Islamization Of Europe (SIOE) told The Media Line. “This will be one of many steps that will transform Turkey into an Islamic state.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Osama Bin Laden Living in Luxury in Northwest Pakistan, Says Senior NATO Official
Osama bin Laden is living a comfortable life and hiding out in a house in northwest Pakistan, according to Nato officials.
The Al Qaeda leader has not been scuttled away to a network of caves, but instead is living life as the world’s most wanted man in conventional surroundings.
His deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is also hiding out in a separate house in an area close to bin Laden under similar arrangements, the official claimed.
After 9/11 the hunt for bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership focused on the remote Tora Bora region of Afghanistan which is known for its huge warren of caves burrowed into the mountains.
It now appears he has been moved around on a regular basis to boltholes in the Chitral area of Pakistan in the far northwest and the Kurram Valley, which neighbours Tora Bora.
‘Nobody in Al Qaeda is living in a cave,’ said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.
The prospect of bin Laden living in comfort will be a rebuke to the U.S. which has made finding and killing him a central plank of its war on terrorism.
President Barack Obama has said that he remains determined to track him down, adding that bin Laden had been forced ‘underground’ by U.S. drone attacks on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan including one on Tora Bora in 2001 which nearly caught him.
He had also claimed the leaders of al Qaeda are ‘holed up’ in a way that makes it hard for them to cooperate — an assertion which the NATO official appears to contradict.
The NATO officer, who has day-to-day high-level responsibility for the war, claimed bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services.
Finding them will be complicated by the size of the area they are in — it covers hundreds of square miles — the rugged terrain and the tribal warlords who run it.
The official offered a grim view of the war in Afghanistan and said that there were up to one million disaffected young men on the border with Pakistan who would be prepared to fight coalition forces.
‘Every year the insurgency can generate more and more manpower,’ he said, adding that despite a military presence in Afghanistan ‘we don’t know what’s going on’.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the al Qaeda leadership.
The country’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik was dismissive of the NATO official’s claims and said similar reports in the past had turned out to be incorrect.
Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, added: ‘We hardly have a day that goes by where somebody doesn’t say they know where Osama bin Laden is.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
The Cream Puff Brigade: How a Group of Islamist Radicals Became the Laughing Stock of the Taliban… Because They Missed Their Mothers
The nine would-be terrorists have been branded the ‘Cream Puff Brigade’ after they travelled from Germany in 2009 to the camp near Afghanistan.
Instead they were laid low by diarrhoea, moaned about food, griped about their training and admitted pining for friends and family.
Intelligence officials believe that the rigours the insurgents faced will help dispel ideas that the pilgrimage to fight Western forces is easy or romantic.
Hamburg’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution — Germany’s domestic intelligence agency — initially called the gang ‘the travel group’, according to magazine Der Spiegel.
Their new nickname came about when the group disintegrated under the rigours of life near the front line.
‘We knew all of them,’ one official told the magazine.
They had been under surveillance for months because of their attendance at the Taiba mosque — spiritual home of the 9/11 attackers.
In June and July this year, according to Spiegel, two of them were arrested in Pakistan, two more were killed in a recent drone attack.
But all of them were, according to intelligence, useless at the art of waging Holy War.
‘When they left Hamburg, some of them had still been living at home with their parents in the rooms they’d grown up in.
‘They fancied themselves fierce warriors, but they turned out to be major failures.’
Aged 21 to 55, one was a former drug addict, one a failed businessman with a mentally disturbed brother, and another a small-time ‘pothead’ with a criminal record for petty theft offences. Most were jobless.
In the winter of 2008 they resolved to go to Afghanistan to fight NATO forces. According to reports they split into four small groups early last year for the journey.
Ahmad Sidiqi, an Afghan-German whose interrogations at the U.S. air force base at Bagram triggered the recent terror alerts across Europe, travelled with his wife and brother.
Shahab Dashti, his friend, went along with his wife. Other included Naamen Meziche, who was born in Paris and Rami Makanese, 23, who was born in Frankfurt.
Meziche, a fanatic, was arrested on the way out in Syria.
The last group of three were a disaster from the start — one was arrested at Frankfurt Airport before he left, the other two were stopped at Vienna Airport and found to have a piece of paper with tips about ‘How to wage Holy War’ written on it.
When they arrived in Pakistan, the police put them in jail and then deported them back to Germany.
In all five men and two women made it to a town in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.
‘Bedridden, feverish and afflicted with diarrhea, they were probably more of a burden than a boon to jihad,’ the article said.
They were upset at having to pay for their food and weapons. Their Taliban masters made them write begging letters home seeking more and more cash.
‘During their telephone calls and in their e-mails back home, they sounded less and less enthusiastic and more and more discouraged about waging jihad,’ the security sources said.
Sidiqui’s younger brother was the first to pack it in and return home to his parents.
Makanese also gave in to the rough conditions. He donned a burqa to get to the German embassy in Islamabad.
He was arrested when he got back to Germany and is now in custody where he has, according to the security services, ‘been singing like a canary in the hopes of a reduced sentence when he gets to court’.
‘Shahab Dashti and Naamen Meziche were killed in a U.S. drone attack on Mir Ali two weeks ago.
‘The only people left from the original group are the two women, both of whom are now pregnant,’ said Spiegel.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Yuan Revaluation ‘Won’t Allow the Americans to Export More Goods’
American politicians are calling for China to revalue its currency to help out troubled US exporters. But in an interview with SPIEGEL, a leading German economist has warned that America first needs to make products that people want to buy.
SPIEGEL: China’s currency reserves have grown to a breathtaking $2.65 trillion (€1.9 trillion) and the imbalance in world trade is growing larger all the time. Can a revaluation of the yuan, as the US is calling for, halt this trend?
Rolf Langhammer: It would be welcome — and also in China’s own interest — if the yuan exchange rate was more flexible than it has been up to now. China’s recent moves in that direction (i.e. the small revaluation since June) are far from sufficient. I would caution against overblown expectations, though. It would hardly be possible to eliminate the global imbalance in that way.
SPIEGEL: Why not?
Langhammer: A weak dollar won’t automatically allow the Americans to export more goods. We shouldn’t be under any illusions about that. In many cases, companies that are based in the US can’t survive on the global market because they don’t have innovative products or the qualified workforce required to develop them.
SPIEGEL: Are interventions in exchange rates even capable of eliminating global imbalances?…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Man Who Set Wife on Fire Was Mentally Ill
A Sudanese man who saw seven relatives hacked to death, was mentally ill when he set fire to his wife after pouring petrol over her, a Sydney judge has found.
After conducting a judge-alone trial, Justice Peter Garling found Suliman Nmir Adam not guilty of murdering Fatima Kany by reason of his mental illness, schizophrenia.
Ms Kany died in hospital days after suffering burn wounds to about 90 per cent of her body on August 27, 2009, at the couple’s home in Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, the judge ordered that Mr Adam be detained in a psychiatric ward until, and if, the Mental Review Health Tribunal was satisfied he no longer posed a risk to the community or himself.
He said the couple, who came to Australia as refugees in 2006, had a history of domestic disputes.
After Ms Kany was taken to hospital, police found a cigarette lighter outside the fire damaged bathroom and he told them “I set my wife on fire”.
Mr Adam came from the western part of Darfur in the Sudan.
“In the course of the extensive civil war in the Sudan, in 1999 or 2000, Mr Adam witnessed the murder of seven relatives,” the judge said.
“They were hacked to death, various body parts were removed with machetes, and he witnessed their burial in a mass grave just outside the village in which he lived.
“As a consequence, he experienced recurrent images of the particular incident.
“He also witnessed other traumatic experiences before he was able to flee from the Sudan to Egypt in the north.”
He sustained the onset of mental illness in 2000 and was first hospitalised in Egypt when he reported hearing voices of people, referring to the killings he witnessed in Darfur.
On arrival in Australia, Mr Adam was troubled by auditory hallucinations and persecutory ideas.
“He was troubled by ideas about witchcraft and voices which told him to kill various members of his family, including a cousin, his brother andhis wife,” the judge said.
He tried to kill himself by taking an overdose of paracetamol tablets, saying the television told him to do so.
Mr Adam was admitted to a psychiatric ward a number of times and was the subject of various treatment plans.
On the day before he set his wife on fire, Mr Adam saw a doctor who concluded he had stopped taking his medication.
Mr Adam said he was still intermittently hearing voices, usually of the devil, but that he had not heard anything for the past five days since the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
The doctor thought his mental state did not appear to be markedly different from previous reviews.
“Whilst he continued to have concerns about his risk factors in the long term there was nothing special which he
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Psych Tests for Gun Owners Recommended
Prospective gun owners would have to pass a mental health test before being granted a firearms licence under recommendations submitted by a NSW coroner.
After inquiring into the self-inflicted shooting death of a man during a confrontation with police in Sydney, Deputy State Coroner Paul MacMahon found the licensed gun owner had posed a “very great danger” to many unsuspecting people.
The 22-year-old man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, drew a Glock pistol when two police officers asked him to stop near Eastwood Mall in Sydney’s northwest on March 10, 2008.
The officers exchanged fire with the man before he shot himself in the head, Mr MacMahon said in his findings, handed down on Monday.
Despite emergency surgery, the man died in hospital two days later.
An inquest, in November 2009 and March 2010, heard police evidence that the man intended to kill numerous people at random on the day he visited Eastwood Mall.
He was carrying six full magazines of ammunition at the time of his death, with more ammunition and a reloader found in his vehicle.
“He had a veritable war chest,” Mr MacMahon said.
On the day of his death, Mr MacMahon found, the man was likely to have been experiencing a “psychotic episode and that he was acting out of a delusion or hallucination”.
“What he could or would have done in Eastwood Mall is open to speculation. However, the situation was one of very great danger in which the lives of the many people present were at considerable risk,” he said.
Although not clinically diagnosed, the inquest was told the man’s parents thought he was experiencing mental health issues, having become “isolated and secretive”.
Among three recommendations to NSW Police Minister Michael Daley, Mr MacMahon asked for greater scrutiny during the granting of firearms licences.
He asked that “applicants undergo a mental health assessment by a general medical practitioner, or other appropriate professional, so as to ensure that they are not suffering from any previously undiagnosed mental health condition that would render the applicant unsuitable for the holding of such a licence”.
Furthermore, Mr MacMahon asked, gun licences be shown when collecting firearms from storage facilities and that such facilities keep detailed records of when items are removed and returned and by whom.
On the day of the shooting, Mr MacMahon found, the two police officers acted appropriately.
“The officers’ use of their firearm in the circumstances was appropriate,” he said.
“The circumstances faced by officers … (were) life threatening.”
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Analysis: Germany Holds Inflamed Debate on Islam and Migration
Germany’s inflamed public debate about Islam and integration risks serious overheating as politicians compete to make ever tougher statements criticizing Muslims immigrants they accuse of refusing to fit in here.
The escalating row, sparked off when a Bundesbank board member slammed Muslims as dim-witted welfare spongers, has mixed some social problems and some Muslim customs into a vision of Islam as a looming menace to German society.
When President Christian Wulff tried to build bridges by saying Islam was now part of German society, critics retorted the country was based on “Judeo-Christian values” and should not accept any more immigrants from foreign cultures.
Amid the uproar, many politicians and media have lumped together about four million residents — Turks, Arabs, Afghans, converts and others, many with German citizenship — simply as Muslims and tarred them all with problems many do not have.
The debate crackles with harsh terms like “Germanophobia” and “integration refusers” that signal growing frustration with the difficulty Germany has had with people it allowed into the country but did not welcome into the society.
“The discourse about Muslims in Germany is gradually taking on hysterical forms,” wrote Andreas Petzold, editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Stern. “It’s very off-putting to watch this cascade of debates that, in the end, all focus on Islam.”
The criticism comes mainly from the ruling Christian Democratic (CDU) and Free Democratic parties, whose ratings have slumped so badly this year because of economic problems that their opponents accuse them of using Islam as a scapegoat.
Concerns about Muslims have also risen after police shut down a radical Hamburg mosque linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and several countries issued security warnings based partly on suspected terror cells in Germany.
Officials in the CDU’s conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), say they need to tackle these issues head on so no extremist leader emerges to their right like Geert Wilders has established himself in the Netherlands.
Rising Resentment of Muslims
A new study last week gave some statistical shape to the tense debate by showing what it called “a rise in decidedly anti-democratic and racist views … and a slight increase in social Darwinist ideas of inequality.”
Polls by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is close to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), showed 58 percent of those surveyed said Muslims’ rights to practice their religion in Germany should be considerably limited.
The group agreeing with the statement “I don’t like Arabs” rose from 44 percent in a 2003 poll to 55 percent this year.
The study said opinions once limited to the neo-Nazi scene were now spreading across German society more widely. “A highly level of right-wing extremist views can be found throughout different groups of the population,” it said.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Berlin to Encourage Integration of Immigrants
The Berlin government is set to introduce laws to encourage the immigration of skilled workers, while also stepping up measures to promote integration of migrants into German society.
The measures, to be discussed in cabinet for the first time next week, follow the startling weekend admission by Angela Merkel, chancellor, that multicultural integration in the country had “utterly failed”.
Conservatives in Ms Merkel’s ruling centre-right coalition want to step up pressure on Muslim immigrants, in particular, to learn German and adapt to German society. But liberals in the government, especially in the minority Free Democratic party, are adamant that Germany should remain open to further immigration.
The government is simultaneously proposing measures to recognise foreign qualifications of migrants to work in Germany, while proposing rules to impose legal penalties on practices such as forced marriages for Muslim girls. Steffen Seibert, government spokesman, said on Monday that measures to promote integration would be put before the cabinet next week.
“We live happily in a country that is very open to the world with hundreds of thousands, indeed with millions, of well-integrated people who have foreign roots,” he said. “But we also recognise, and we are saying it much more clearly than a few years ago, that there are problems with integration amongst some groups of foreigners, and some quite openly reject it. So this society must act in the interests of everyone, and the government will do so.”
The chancellor’s speech has stoked an already heated debate over the lack of integration of Muslim immigrants, among whom the largest number came to Germany as Turkish migrant workers.
Horst Seehofer, the conservative prime minister of Bavaria, has called for further immigration from “other cultures” to be stopped, declaring that Germany is “not a country of immigration”.
But leading government ministers, including Ursula von der Leyen, the labour minister and a close ally of the chancellor, have argued instead for measures to make skilled immigration easier.
The German chambers of commerce estimate that employers are already facing shortages of up to 400,000 skilled workers, as the economy picks up from a deep recession last year. Growth is forecast to recover to more than 3 per cent in 2010, after a decline of almost 5 per cent in 2009.
Rainer Brüderle, the economy minister, said on Monday that the most acute shortages were of 65,000 skilled workers in computers, and 36,000 engineers.
He criticised Mr Seehofer’s call to stop immigration from different cultures. “That is pure propaganda, in my view,” he said.
“We must include our own people, the unemployed, wherever possible. But that will not be enough.”
Germany may attract more qualified immigrants with a points system based on economic need and the skills of workers involved.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
German Media Roundup: Merkel’s Convoluted Immigration Policy
Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared “multiculturalism” dead but also wants to lure qualified immigrants to Germany. The conflicting messages left some newspapers in The Local’s media roundup on Monday confused.
The German government announced plans on Monday for a raft of measures aimed at fostering integration of immigrants, two days after Merkel said multiculturalism had “completely failed.”
Merkel’s centre-right cabinet would adopt “concrete” new regulations governing immigration policy and residency permits, with a focus on German language courses and combating forced marriages, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
He added that the government aimed in December to sign off on a bill that would see more foreign diplomas formally recognised after Education Minister Annette Schavan announced plans for recognising more foreign credentials to allow for the recruitment of 300,000 more qualified immigrants.
At the moment, workers who have obtained qualifications abroad have to pass a series of practical and theoretical tests as well as undergo interviews and evaluations. With an ageing population, employers in Europe’s biggest economy and exporter have long complained about a lack of trained youngsters and red tape hindering the hiring of qualified foreigners.
But several newspapers in The Local’s media roundup on Monday were sceptical of Merkel’s two-pronged offensive — bashing some immigrants while trying to lure others — would work.
Frankfurt an der Oder’s regional daily the Märkische Oderzeitung said the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union appeared to lack a coherent immigration strategy.
“What exactly does the Union want in regards to the issue of integration? The chancellor is vacillating and once again trying to please everyone,” the paper wrote. “Wanting to remain the world’s leading exporter while not allowing more foreigners into country somehow doesn’t fit. But simply offering empty words won’t help this issue move forward.”
Saxony’s Leipziger Volkszeitung also pointed out Merkel’s seeming hypocrisy on the issue of immigration.
“Islam is part of Germany, but multiculturalism isn’t, says Merkel while giddily clapping for the TV cameras when Mesut Özil scores goals for the German national football team,” wrote the paper, referring to the midfielder with Turkish roots.
“While the federal government attempts to hash out criteria for highly qualified immigrants, the flailing CSU boss Horst Seehorfer fantasises about foreign cultures and stopping immigration while enjoying Merkel’s protection. But that will simply scare away qualified experts,” the paper opined.
But the right-wing daily Die Welt wrote that multiculturalism can’t be dead, because it never lived in the first place.
“No one has anything against immigrants who live and work here and want to fit in,” the paper wrote. “But many have something against immigrants who want to bring their own laws along. To immigrate doesn’t just mean accepting the traditions of the chosen country, but respecting them too.”
Those who choose not to do so should “please stay away,” the paper said.
Leftist daily Die Tageszeitung said that the German abbreviation for multiculturalism, Multikulti, isn’t even used by the Green party as it once was, and has instead become a “puppet for conservative politicians to batter ritually when they crave applause.”
But Merkel and Seehofer are using this technique and other “empty clichés” to distract from their real dilemma — that the economy, industry and their junior coalition partners, the pro-business Free Democrats all want skilled workers from abroad, while many in the public identify with the anti-immigrant remarks of former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin.
But Merkel and her conservatives know the country won’t make it without foreign workers, thus their recent proposals to institute an immigration point system similar to Canada’s, the paper said.
“The irony: Exactly this suggestion came from the Greens. But Merkel and Seehofer would rather throw themselves into rhetorical battles that have already long been decided.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: ‘Failure’ Of Multiculturalism
In a speech to young members of her party, Chancellor Merkel at the weekend broke a taboo. She said multiculturalism had “utterly failed”.
Up until now mainstream politicians have largely shied away from “identity politics”. No longer. The German chancellor was explicit. “This multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side-by-side and live happily with each other has failed. Utterly failed.”
To understand this intervention it is worth scrolling back a few weeks. Over the summer the former Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin caused a storm of protest with his book Germany Abolishes Itself. His comments about Jews and genetics meant that his views were immediately condemned and he eventually had to resign from the bank.
But the main argument in his book was that Islam did not fit comfortably with Western values. He packed audiences and his book has sold over a million copies. Suddenly Germany was discussing how well its five million Muslims had integrated.
Then the German President, Christian Wulff, stepped into the argument. “Islam,” he said, “has become part of German culture”. It was right, the president said, for the Muslim religion to be taught alongside others at German schools.
The reaction was not what he may have imagined. The paper Bild splashed a headline asking “Mr President, why are you sucking up to Islam?” Polls suggested the public did not share the views of the president. Of those polled 66% rejected the president’s view that Islam was part of Germany. Other politicians began speaking out. The conservative Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, said “Germany does not want to integrate Islam but to retain its own cultural identity”.
This has been the message that has enabled anti-immigration and overtly anti-Muslim parties across parts of Europe to enter mainstream parties.
The Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders visited Germany and according to reports told a large audience that “we do not deserve to become strangers in our own land”. There was loud applause.
Angela Merkel has decided that the argument cannot be left to those parties. She told her audience at the weekend that “immigrants are welcome… they must learn the language and accept the country’s cultural norms”.
Gradually across many parts of Europe the old concept of multiculturalism is being challenged. That had allowed new arrivals to essentially live within their own communities without taking steps to integrate into their new societies. The problem was that separate parallel communities sprang up.
What politicians like Angela Merkel want is for closer integration, for newcomers to take on Germany’s “cultural norms”. In her view, it is no longer just enough to arrive and to cling to the values and customs of the country they have come from. She is not promoting assimilation, but she is suggesting that newcomers “have obligations” and need to do more to become “German” or “European”.
The new thinking is less to celebrate what makes societies different and more what binds them together. The Turkish President, Abdullah Gul, spoke of the need for Turkish migrants in Germany to speak German “fluently and without an accent”.
Many migrant communities are understandably wary of “identity politics” and would argue that the barriers to integration often come from society itself, which makes it difficult for them to find jobs. Some in Germany have pointed out that the funding to help migrants learn German has been cut.
But — after the economy — the issue of immigration in country after country is influencing the outcome of elections and mainstream politicians are starting to pay attention.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Merkel’s Rhetoric in Integration Debate is ‘Inexcusable’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s declaration that multiculturalism in Germany has “utterly failed” has raised the temperature of an already burning immigration debate. German commentators on Monday clashed on whether she was voicing a home truth or scoring cheap political points.
In an unusually pointed interjection, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday declared that multiculturalism in Germany was a failure and said it was an illusion to think that Germans and foreign workers could “live happily side by side.”
“We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn’t stay, but that’s not the reality,” she told members of the youth group of her Christian Democratic Union party, referring to the influx of workers, known as guest workers, who helped fuel the country’s postwar economic boom.
“Of course the tendency had been to say, ‘let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other’. But this concept has failed, and failed utterly,” she said.
Her comments fanned Germany’s already raging debate on immigration. A chorus of politicians has argued that many people from the immigrant community, which includes some four million Muslims and makes up some 18 percent of the population, have failed to integrate into German society. Thilo Sarrazin touched off the debate in August with the launch of his polemic book blaming immigration for what he saw as the demise of German society.
Tougher Tone
True to her diplomatic leadership style, Merkel, took pains not to alienate other, more liberal elements of her party. At the same time as slamming multiculturalism, a clear step towards the right, she voiced support for a recent speech by Germany’s president which stressed that Islam is “a part of Germany.”
Some critics said her tougher tone on immigration was a bid to regain waning popular support. A series of polls have revealed that many Germans are worried about immigration. On Friday a study by the state television channel ARD showed that just eight percent thought that immigrants had adjusted well to German society. Meanwhile, Sarrazin’s book continues to top national bestseller lists, despite the outrage by politicians which cost him a top post at the Bundesbank.
And the popular skeptisim about immigration was also fed by Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer on Sunday. Speaking alongside Merkel in Potsdam, Seehofer said “multiculturalism is dead” and insisted that his Christian Social Union party was committed to preserving the German “Leitkultur”, meaning the “dominant German culture” Failure to revamp its immigration policies would put Germany at risk of becoming “the world’s welfare office,” he said.
Politicians, including voices from the right, have stressed that Germany needs to encourage the immigration of urgently needed skilled workers. On Sunday Jürgen Trittin, of the opposition Greens party, argued that Seehofer risked “lending social acceptability to views similar to those of right-wing extremists”.
The right-wing Die Welt writes:
“No one has anything against the immigrants who live and work among us. But many people have something against the immigrants who want to bring their own system of justice along with them. Immigration means accepting the traditions of the chosen country — and also respecting those traditions. Whoever lives here has to accept that honor killings are murder. Whoever doesn’t want to do so, should stay out of the country.”
“For this reason Angela Merkel and Horst Seehofer are right when they say that immigration needs clear-cut principles.”
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
“The pressures of immigration are no reason for people to cut themselves off from their roots. After all, it is more than a few who want to migrate here, to a country which is worth living in. Whoever really wants to move here, whoever wants to call this country home, they should be made to feel welcome regardless of which culture they stem from.”
“Their chosen homeland is in the process of change — but the immigrants still have to adapt themselves to their new home.”
The left-wing Tageszeitung writes:
“The dated buzz word (multiculturalism or ‘multikulti’ in German), which originated from Green politicians like Heiner Geißler or Daniel Cohn-Bendit to fight xenophobia, is now firmly out of fashion. Today ‘Multikulti’ is nothing more than a bogeyman for conservative politicians, who routinely criticise the concept when they are looking to generate a round of applause.”
“Merkel and Seehofer are now continuing this trend. Instead of more ‘multikulti’ they are calling for more integration or more ‘Leitkultur’ — phrases which are similarly devoid of meaning. Their populistic formulations are designed to distract attention from the real dilemma. After all, the German economy, industry and the FDP (editor’s note — the pro-business Free Democratic Party which is junior partner in Merkel’s center-right coalition) all want to encourage more trained workers from abroad.”
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Interview With Victim of Notorious Sex Experiments
‘Esther White’ interview exposes ‘evil’ scientific research: Part 1
[WARNING: Disturbing and graphic descriptions.]
Over the years, the Kinsey Institute has consistently denied that Kinsey recruited pedophiles to conduct his research or knew about any ongoing abuse of children. Esther White has stepped forward to tell us that’s not the way it was.
“Esther White” as adult
WND: How did you come to be a subject in the Kinsey experiments?
Esther White: My grandfather set this whole thing up. He was the connection. He went to Indiana University, he was getting his teacher’s certificate there. Kinsey was a pretty young professor and my grandfather was a pretty old student, he had already had three sons before he went to IU.
He was buddy-buddy with Kinsey. He used to have a picture of himself with Kinsey, on the bottom he had written “Me and Alphe.” That’s how Kinsey spelled it, A-l-p-h-e.
My uncle moved to Bloomington about 1948. Many years later he told me his wife was socially involved with Mrs. Kinsey. He seemed quite proud of that fact, because Mrs. Kinsey was socially prominent. He also told me he thought Kinsey was a “queer duck.”
My uncle and grandfather and dad went to meet Kinsey at the university on Thanksgiving Day in 1950. Our whole family was having Thanksgiving dinner there. Another uncle seemed upset about it and refused to go. He said he’d rather stay home with the nieces and nephews. I didn’t go, they didn’t invite me.
I think that’s when they made the deal to use the information they got before for Kinsey’s second book, the one about women. In the first book there were some statistics on little girls, too, they just weren’t the prominent charts. I think he knew he was going to write the one on girls while he was doing the one on males.
WND: How old were you when the abuse started?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Stunner! Kinsey Paid My Father to Rape Me
Subject of 1940s ‘research’ goes public with horrific details of abuse by dad
[WARNING: Disturbing and graphic descriptions.]
Editor’s note: The following report is part of WND’s ongoing, multipart investigation into alleged crimes committed by sex-research pioneer Alfred Kinsey and his Kinsey Institute.
WASHINGTON — A victim of sexologist Alfred Kinsey’s “research” during the 1940s is coming forward with the stunning claim that her father was paid by Kinsey, universally regarded as the “father of the sexual revolution,” to rape her and then report to him on the attacks.
Nearly 70 years after being molested repeatedly by her own father, “Esther White” (a pseudonym) is speaking out in hope of prompting Congress to investigate the controversial research. White said she would be willing to testify in person on Capitol Hill if an investigation results in opening the Kinsey Institute files to public scrutiny.
“He was giving me orgasms and timing it with a stopwatch,” White told WND. “I didn’t like it, I went into convulsions, but he didn’t care. He said all little girls do this with their daddies, they just don’t talk about it.”
White was 7 when her father began abusing her.
“There’s no question that Kinsey broke a number of laws and conspired to break a number of laws to conduct his faux research,” said Matt Barber, a law professor and associate dean at the Liberty University School of Law.
[…]
White says her father and grandfather were paid by Kinsey and that Kinsey was aware of what her father was doing to her. She recalls that her father filmed some of those sessions and sent the home movies to Kinsey. She also witnessed Kinsey handing her grandfather a check.
“In 1943, when I was nine,” White told WND, “I found a sheet of paper that had boxes on it and my father was checking off things he was doing to me. He grabbed it away from me and put it in a brown envelope.
“It was a form with little boxes down the left side of the page, and a list of statements describing sexual acts. He was supposed to check things off, whether he did that or not.
“One of the statements included the words ‘timed orgasm.’ I didn’t know what ‘orgasm’ meant, so I asked him and he told me. That’s why he was using a stopwatch.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Celebration of Class Warfare
The weather was perfect — 72 degrees and sunny — for the “One Nation Working Together” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Oct. 2. I was determined to go with an open mind because I wanted to try to understand what would motivate someone to attend an event sponsored by unions and self-proclaimed socialist and communist groups.
The first time I heard about the rally the thought crossed my mind how embarrassing it was that union bosses and their counterparts in a wide variety of extremist, left-wing organizations would put on an event to counter one sponsored by a television commentator, Glenn Beck. It was like a third-grader trying to one-up a popular rival on the playground.
[…]
At the Beck rally it was strictly shoulder-to-shoulder, virtually impossible to walk in most places. That crowd was no less than 500,000 — and perhaps as high as 750,000. But one of the many differences with the 8/28 event was that virtually everyone stayed until the rally was officially over. They were there by choice.
To be as fair as possible, I generously factored in the large number of people who had departed two hours or more before I arrived at the One Nation rally and came up with a crowd estimate of between 75,000 to 150,000 — far more than the 30,000 to 50,000 I had guessed might show up. Clearly, I had underestimated the power of union bosses handing down mandates to their rank and file to attend.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Worse Life is Waiting for You
Prince Charles recently visited a Mumbai shantytown and praised its “sustainability” in which residents recycle their waste and build their own homes out of whatever materials come to hand. There is of course a word for this form of “sustainability”, it’s called grinding poverty.
Charles is of course not the first rich European to romanticize poverty as some sort of higher spiritual principle. But it’s easier to apply that brand of orientalism to India, to assume that people with brown skin who live in terrible poverty are more spiritual, rather than poor. Had Prince Charles gone back in time, he could have seen that same form of “sustainability” in London. But people do not recycle their wastes and use found objects as building materials because they are environmentalists, but because they have no choice. When posturing hipsters in the United States dig through trash cans for food, they’re Freegans. But when people who have to dig through garbage cans for food do it, we call them impoverished.
But Charles’ attitude is typical of the dementia of the left, which confuses poverty with moral superiority. But the idealization of poverty is the liberalism of fools. The left started out by claiming that materialism provided a saner perspective on human existence, yet the left is abandoning even that in the pursuit of some New Age notion about moral superiority emerging from misery and deprivation. The left once denounced such thinking as cruel and superstitious. Now it is embracing it wholesale, and urging Westerners to use the Third World as a model for how to live.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Corrupted Climate Science Exploited Basic Human Realities
Two major factors explain how the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) people got away with massive deception. First is exploitation of fear — the Chicken Little factor — and in this case the claim the sky literally is falling. Second is their exploitation of people’s lack of knowledge or understanding of science.
You can essentially divide the world into two groups. This is said with trepidation because H. L. Mencken argued you could divide the world into two groups, those who will divide it and those who won’t. Lack of knowledge or understanding is more easily exploited because of the distribution of people that understand science and those who have no idea and are often proud of the fact. After 25 years of teaching a science credit course for arts students my experience was that 80 percent of university students avoided science courses and 20 percent took them. Less than one percent was comfortable and did well in both. Interestingly, this percentage increased as more women moved in to sciences. Few exploited these population realities better than Al Gore
Few exploited these population realities better than Al Gore. Few used it with more cynicism and arrogance than the people at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) who controlled climate science through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They treated the public with disdain and through RealClimate, William Connolley, Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and others sneered at scientists who challenged the science.
Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” was a brilliant piece of propaganda. It didn’t deserve a Nobel Peace Prize because of the scientific errors that fooled many of those specialist scientists. It deserved the Oscar as a make-believe story in the best entertainment tradition. The challenge was to take complex scientific ideas and present them in an entertaining, highly emotional way. Home Box Office (HBO) producer Davis Guggenheim succeeded by falsifying, distorting, and misrepresenting facts and the science.
The challenge facing anyone trying to counter the exploiters is to bring logic, clarity and understanding in a way a majority of people can understand. You can write a book or make a movie that satisfies scientists, but the general public will not understand. Or you can write for a wider audience and scientists will say it oversimplifies. Many have faced the challenge with documentaries and books about climate. Martin Durkin faced the challenge commendably with his documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” A good book that straddled the dichotomy is Essex and McKitrick’s “Taken By Storm” (Revised edition). I recommend it, but many say they get lost.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
It’s Logical to be ‘Islamophobic’
From a utilitarian perspective, it’s simple. The average person faces greater danger from radicalized Muslims than from other dangers that we also fear, such as sharks or lightning.
According to the ISAF, in 2009, there were 61 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide, resulting in five deaths and 56 injured. Lightning is more dangerous than sharks. According to NOAA, in 2009, 34 Americans died from lightning strikes. Worldwide, the estimate is about a thousand deaths and five thousand injuries annually. But radical Islamic terrorism is even more dangerous. According to the U.S. State Department report on terrorist attacks in 2009, “about one half” of the 10,999 identified terrorist attacks worldwide were associated with Sunni Islamists. That’s the high end of the scale. By contrast, another list showing only attacks involving Islamic radicals indicates that they were only responsible for about 1,900 world-wide attacks in 2009. Still, those resulted in more than nine thousand deaths and 18,500 injuries.
The average person is thirty times more likely to be attacked by a Muslim than a shark, and hundreds of times more likely to be killed by one. But it’s not wrong to be “Sharkophobic,” even though the risk is infinitely small. There are good reasons to fear sharks.
1) Predatory — Sharks are dangerous predators that attack when we are vulnerable. Their attacks are sudden, unexpected, and very hard to defend against. 2) Single-minded — Sharks are single-minded and pursue their own objectives. This predatory behavior is controlled by instincts and criteria that I don’t understand. 3) Uncaring — Sharks don’t care about me or my concerns. I cannot get a shark to accept me as a person of value worthy of life. 4) Fear — The shark’s reputation as a cold-blooded killer causes the mere appearance of one to produce fear.
Unfortunately, the reality is that there are also some Muslims who fit the same basic criteria.
1) Predatory — Radical Muslims are also dangerous predators who attack when we are vulnerable. Their attacks are sudden, unexpected, and very hard to defend against. 2) Single-minded — Radicalized Muslims are single-minded and pursue only their own objectives. This predatory behavior is controlled by a worldview and a set of criteria that few of us understand. (Further, those who do understand it make it clear that we could not accept it as normative without massively disruptive changes to our lives.) 3) Uncaring — Radicalized Muslims do not care about me or my concerns. In fact, they do not value anyone who doesn’t precisely share their own specific interpretations of Islam. (As a result, the vast majority of their victims are also Muslim.) 4) Fear — It is the intent of these radicals to produce fear — that’s why we call them “terrorists.” Terror is part of the method they employ to get compliance to their demands. It should not surprise us when they succeed in generating fear that greatly contributes to “Islamophobia.” 5) Announced Intent — There is a fifth dangerous element unique to these people. They have repeatedly “declared war” on us, our religion, our political system, and our way of life. As proof of their intent, they have conducted violent attacks inside our country, using attackers who live among us and hide their malicious intent until it is too late. Their deception involves extensive lying and efforts to appear “normal” so that they can attack without warning. Who would have thought that a mild-mannered Saudi national, who was college-educated in Germany and who had been in this country for more than a year learning to fly commercial jets, would have led the most vicious attack against civilians in U.S. history? Who would have thought that a U.S.-born practicing psychiatrist, an Army officer, sent through medical school by the Army, would have unexpectedly attacked random soldiers in his own workplace, killing thirteen and wounding thirty? Therefore, it is logical to be fearful of Muslims because a tiny percentage of them, who deliberately deceive everyone about their intentions, might be extremely dangerous.
Unfortunately, this is bad for the rest of the Islamic faith. We can’t tell them apart — until it is too late. It seems to me that this logical fear will cause the Muslim faith as a whole to suffer growing isolation. Since I fear sharks, I do not go into the water when they are around, and I get out if they show up. The same withdrawal reaction is rational when dealing with Islamic radicals.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Revolution Postponed: Why the Human Genome Project Has Been Disappointing
The Human Genome Project has failed so far to produce the medical miracles that scientists promised. Biologists are now divided over what, if anything, went wrong—and what needs to happen next
A decade ago biologists and nonbiologists alike gushed with optimism about the medical promise of the $3-billion Human Genome Project. In announcing the first rough draft of the human “book of life” at a White House ceremony in the summer of 2000, President Bill Clinton predicted that the genome project would “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.”
A year earlier Francis S. Collins, then head of the National Human Genome Research Institute and perhaps the project’s most tireless enthusiast, painted a grand vision of the “personalized medicine” likely to emerge from the project by the year 2010: genetic tests indicating a person’s risk for heart disease, cancer and other common maladies would be available, soon to be followed by preventives and therapies tailored to the individual…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Study Predicts Women in Power, Muslims Heading West
In the next 40 years, an unprecedented number of women will be in positions of power, Muslim immigration to the West will rise, and office workers will be unchained from their cubicles, a report released last week says. South America will see sustained economic growth and the Middle East will become “a tangle of religions, sects and ethnicities,” says the report by Toffler Associates, a consultancy set up by the author of the 1970s blockbuster “Future Shock.” Toffler Associates released its predictions for the next 40 years to mark the 40th anniversary of “Future Shock,” in which author Alvin Toffler studied the 1970s to see what would happen in the future. His prognosis 40 years ago was that technology and science would develop at such an accelerated pace that many people would be unable to process the enormous amounts of new information available and would disconnect from life. Some of “Future Shock’s” prognoses have come true, including that news would travel around the world instantly, that same-sex couples would wed and raise families, and that violence and environmental disasters would increase and have broad consequences — like the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. So it might be worth paying heed to what Toffler Associates foresees for the next 40 years, including container ships getting larger to meet increasing demand for faster, cheaper delivery of goods, and the Suez and Panama Canals being “improved.” They envision more and more people growing their own food to reduce their dependence on large manufacturers and distributors, and the proliferation of high-speed Internet and low-cost video-conferencing freeing office workers from their cubicles and working from anywhere in the world. Only a very small number of states will continue to behave as “rogue” nations, Toffler Associates says, naming North Korea and Iran. “A true test for political leaders will be in how they handle relationships with these nations and to what extent they allow them to control geo-political agendas,” the consultancy says. China will position itself as a global economic power, allying with Brazil and India to influence currency use and with Venezuela and African nations to ensure its energy needs are met. The United States, meanwhile, will depend on China for 17 rare earth metals that are essential to produce everything from weapons components to radars to wind turbines and hybrid cars. The development of alternative energy forms will create “losers in a post-petroleum world” including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, several Gulf states, Russia and Venezuela, the report says. Christianity will rise rapidly in the global South, while Muslims will migrate in increasing numbers to the West, where their presence will reshape public attitudes and government policies.
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| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The Slow Death of the Environmental Movement
“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!
“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels”. —Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
If you want to understand how utterly soulless and nihilistic environmentalism is than you need only pay attention to what they say. (Click here for more such quotes)
My friend, Joseph A. Olson, PE, recently wrote of “Climate Science’s Worst Week in History” in which he noted a series of events such as the UK’s Royal Society’s step back from its former support of global warming.
This was followed by a Washington Post opinion editorial by one of its perpetrators, Michael Mann of Penn State University, pleading for a Democrat victory in the midterm elections so he could avoid being investigated by Congress.
That same week Dr. Hal Lewis, a renowned physicist, resigned from the American Physical Society, rebuking it for having been subverted to serve the global warming hoax.
Having observed the movement for decades, I think we are seeing a growing awareness that environmentalism is fear-driven, based on many false claims, a threat to the U.S. economy, fundamental freedoms, and humanity in general.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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