Franco-German Eurozone Reform Raises Hackles
A Franco-German drive to undertake a risky rewrite of the European Union’s hard-fought Lisbon Treaty to tighten budgetary discipline among eurozone countries sparked fresh criticism from other EU member states on Monday.
A deal brokered a week ago by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy “leaves a bad taste” for other European nations that feel they are being told what to do, said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.
Not only because of the manner in which Germany and France appeared to be dictating EU requirements, he said, but because “there is a risk that we will be plunged back into months and years of navel-gazing” after a “decade” of angst over Lisbon.
The bloc’s current treaty only came into force late last year after a difficult birth with Ireland throwing it out in a first referendum before a positive second vote left ultra eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus with little choice but to sign its final ratification.
The Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg also said no-one should assume that even a tweak, as France and Germany are wont to present the changes, would pass easily.
“In this world, anything is possible,” he said on arrival for talks between EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg focused on Serbian accession and a possible change in the bloc’s policy towards Cuba. “But it’s not very likely,” Schwarzenberg underlined.
Germany will only make permanent its lion’s share contribution to a three-year fund of emergency loans for struggling eurozone countries if the EU treaty is changed, otherwise it fears its Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe will block the move.
The IMF-backed fund only came about because of widespread fears of contagion following the Greek debt crisis, which saw markets punish Athens with ferociously high rates for state borrowings.
Berlin also wants the treaty change to enshrine tougher rules currently being drawn up by the EU’s various powerbases for countries that overspend, so as to remove voting rights from the most serious offenders.
“We want to protect our citizens’ currency and that means learning the lessons of the crisis,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
“If we find ourselves back in the situation we experienced with Greece in the spring, Europe will move dangerously close to the brink,” he warned.
Finland’s Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said he was open to the ideas put forward by Berlin and Paris, stressing that “at the end of the day, as long as the rules are tight, I’m happy.”
However, he warned that the process is not exclusively in the hands of the states, underlining that the European Parliament wants “much tougher” changes introduced.
“The fun hasn’t even begun yet,” he stressed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Global Food Crisis Forecast as Prices Reach Record Highs
Cost of meat, sugar, rice, wheat and maize soars as World Bank predicts five years of price volatility
Rising food prices and shortages could cause instability in many countries as the cost of staple foods and vegetables reached their highest levels in two years, with scientists predicting further widespread droughts and floods.
Although food stocks are generally good despite much of this year’s harvests being wiped out in Pakistan and Russia, sugar and rice remain at a record price.
Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5.5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.
“The situation has deteriorated since September,” said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. “In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008.
“We may not get to the prices of 2008 but this time they could stay high much longer.”
However, opinions are sharply divided over whether these prices signal a world food crisis like the one in 2008 that helped cause riots in 25 countries, or simply reflect volatility in global commodity markets as countries claw their way through recession.
“A food crisis on the scale of two or three years ago is not imminent, but the underlying causes [of what happened then] are still there,” said Chris Leather, Oxfam’s food policy adviser.
“Prices are volatile and there is a lot of nervousness in the market. There are big differences between now and 2008. Harvests are generally better, global food stocks are better.”
But other analysts highlight the food riots in Mozambique that killed 12 people last month and claim that spiralling prices could promote further political turmoil.
They say this is particularly possible if the price of oil jumps, if there are further climatic shocks — suchas the floods in Pakistan or the heatwave in Russia — or if speculators buy deeper into global food markets.
“There is growing concern among countries about continuing volatility and uncertainty in food markets,” said Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank. “These concerns have been compounded by recent increases in grain prices.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Fallout Continues Over Fiat CEO’s Remarks
Marchionne implies automaker would be better off without Italy
(ANSA) — Rome, October 25 — Remarks by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne that the automaker could be better off without Italy continued to spark reactions on Monday in union and political circles.
Interviewed during a Sunday evening TV talk show, Marchionne noted that of the two-billion-euro trading profit Fiat expects to see in 2010, “not one euro will be from Italy”.
“Without Italy, Fiat’s performance would be better but Fiat wants to stay in Italy and is ready to raise salaries in return for greater efficiency in its factories, which is the company’s weakest link,” he added.
Fiat has offered to invest 20 billion euros over a five-year period to boost annual auto production in Italy from its current level of 650,00 cars to over one million.
In return Fiat has demanded concessions from unions to boost productivity at its plants in Italy and reduce labor costs.
If these conditions are not met, Fiat has made it clear it will shift some production outside Italy, a situation which several unions view as blackmail.
In Sunday’s interview, Marchionne explained that “Fiat cannot continue to operate its plants at a loss forever”.
In an interview appearing Monday in the Rome daily La Repubblica, the outgoing head of Italy’s biggest union CGIL, Guglielmo Epifani, said “the truth is Marchionne wants to leave Italy”.
According to Epifani, “factories cannot produce profits if they are laying workers off because of reduced demand. The problem is that the European market is not doing well, especially for Fiat”.
“Fiat doesn’t have any models in the sectors which make the most money and in the others it faces tough competition. Not only does it not have any models but it also doesn’t have an industrial plan for Italy,” the CGIL leader said.
Corriere della Sera published an interview with Raffaele Bonanni, head of the CISL union which is more open to revising labor contracts, who said “we all know that productivity is a real problem and one caused by government’s immobility and the ideological bent of the opposition”.
“My proposal to the Fiat CEO is this: let’s get all the plants working at full steam in exchange not only for a higher salary but also sharing the profits and allowing us to take part in the company’s decision-making process,” Bonanni said.
“We need to work together to see how we can get the most out of the factories to bring us in line with other European countries. But all this must take place in the full light of day,” he added.
Corriere della Sera also had an interview with the deputy chairman of the industrial employers association Confindustria, Alberto Bombassei, who backed up Marchionne’s position.
“Competitiveness does not just have to do with labor costs but also energy costs, taxation and infrastructures. A common effort and approach is needed but unfortunately no one appears willing to tackle this,” Bombassei said.
In regard to production, he added that “not only do we lag behind China but also Poland, where the hours worked are an average of 200 more than in Italy. This is a reality we cannot ignore without running the risk of witnessing a real industrial desertification in this country”.
“No change can be made in contracts without the approval of unions. And so we need to talk and together establish the conditions not only to draw back foreign investors but also to keep our own companies from fleeing abroad,” the Confindustria deputy chairman said.
“But for this we need the involvement of the political world, which always seem more interested in other questions,” he added.
In his interview on Sunday, Marchionne remarked how Italy “is 118th out 130 for labor efficiency and in 48th place for the competitiveness of its industrial system. We are way behind the rest of Europe. Over the past ten years Italy has not been able to keep up with the pace of other countries, but this was not the fault of its workers”. Speaking on a morning radio talks show, the head of the UIL union, Luigi Angeletti, said “for Fiat, Italy remains its best market and without Italy I don’t know where Fiat can go in Europe to build and sell its cars”.
“Marchionne is certainly not the first to discover that there is a problem of competitiveness in Italy. Compared to other countries we have low salaries and low productivity. What remains to be seen is whether Marchionne is ready to take on challenges and not just talk about them,” he added.
In Sunday’s interview, Marchionne also rejected claims, from unions and political parties, that Fiat was in debt to Italy for having received financial aid in the past.
Fiat, he said, has “repaid any debt it had towards Italy. I don’t expect gratitude but I cannot allow anyone to claim that we are always looking for a handout”.
According to Marchionne, “recent attacks on Fiat are uncalled for and certainly do not help attract foreign investment to Italy. And as things stand now no foreigner wants to invest here”.
The polemics over Marchionne’s interview apparently had no effect on Fiat’s stock, which was up over 1% by midday.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar Islamic Bank Eyes UK Mid-Cap Investment Spree
The UK unit of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) QISB.QA has unveiled a new lending strategy targeting small to medium-sized British companies with limited access to conventional sources of credit, the company said.
“We are seeing quite a big opportunity in the UK for good, solid credit, which is being ignored by traditional banking and capital sources, and our strategy is to pursue those transactions,” its Head of Corporate Finance Akbar Ahsan told Reuters on Monday.
QIB (UK) is focusing on profitable companies whose products are in line with Islamic tenets.
UK companies have struggled to secure bank lending since the financial crisis struck in 2008, prompting concerns that the economic recovery may be derailed.
Ahsan declined to give details on the potential size of QIB’s prospective lending programme.
Data released last week by the Bank of England revealed that lending to firms picked up in August for the first time in six months, although preliminary September data suggested the improvement was short-lived. [ID:nLDE69K10M]
QIB, which used to be known as European Finance House until August, was interested in companies with a value of up to 150 million pounds ($235.4 million), Ahsan said. He sees special opportunities in manufacturing and services but is looking at all sectors compliant with Islam, which forbids industries such as alcohol, pork, pornography, weapons, and companies charging interest or taking excessive risks.
“The UK is our first priority but Europe will eventually be on the radar,” he said. “The pipeline is pretty full. I am hoping there will be further announcements shortly.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Homeowner Outraged After the Property He Paid £84,000 for is Valued — at Just One Pound
A homeowner was devastated when a building society refused to give him a mortgage — and valued his house at just £1.
Paul Rooney, 42, spent £10,000 on a new kitchen and conservatory after he bought the two-bedroom Victorian end-of-terrace for £86,000 in early 2007.
But the businessman was stunned when he applied for a mortgage on the property with Nationwide and valuation officers who visited the house gave it a meager £1 price tag.
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Collateral Data: NASA’s Planned Moon Crash Churned Up Water, Lots of Mercury and More
Findings from the LCROSS mission’s controlled impact into the moon reveal a complex brew in lunar soil
A spent rocket stage that NASA sent hurtling into the moon last year in hopes of kicking up water from a polar crater delivered on that mission, revealing that at least a moderate portion of its target was indeed made of ice. But the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) revealed much more than that—hinting at a rich mixture of chemical species in the crater, including carbon monoxide, mercury and possibly silver.
Far from a “mission to bomb the moon,” LCROSS involved two complementary pieces of hardware—a spent Centaur rocket as an impactor that produced a towering debris plume, and a sophisticated shepherding spacecraft that trailed it to sniff out water in the plume before crashing into the moon as well four minutes later. Data collected by the sensor-laden spacecraft, as well as measurements from a lunar orbiter passing overhead, are the basis for a suite of research papers about the mission appearing in the October 22 issue of Science.
When the Centaur struck the lunar crater Cabeus, near the moon’s south pole, on October 9, 2009, astronomers around the world tuned in to try to glimpse the impact flash, thanks in part to a public relations push from NASA that drew attention to the event and its viewing potential. But most telescopes trained on the moon saw little. “It was sort of considered a flop,” says Randall Gladstone, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and lead author of one of the new studies. “People were expecting an awful lot from such a small impact velocity.”
The Centaur crashed into the moon at about 2.5 kilometers per second, roughly one quarter the speed of the impactor that struck Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 as part of NASA’s Deep Impact mission. But LCROSS, Gladstone says, “wasn’t a flop scientifically—we found out all kinds of great stuff.” Mission scientists announced preliminary results from the experiment in November 2009, including the spectral signature of water in the debris plume tossed up by the impact. But after months of analysis the picture has become clearer, and a few surprising characteristics of the target crater have emerged.
“What we have now is we actually have concentrations,” says Peter Schultz, a planetary geologist at Brown University who co-authored two of the Science papers. “Before, we had to do some hand-waving to do our estimates.” Measurements from the shepherding spacecraft detected the presence of water in the infrared spectra of the plume. The researchers estimate that the shepherding spacecraft saw as much as 155 kilograms of water in its field of view; a series of measurements imply concentrations of roughly 5.6 percent water in the lunar soil that was churned up.
Scientists have speculated that ice could persist for long periods of time without sublimating to vapor in places such as Cabeus, because the rim of the crater, coupled with the low angle of the sun, keeps part of the crater floor in perpetual darkness. With temperatures that can range well below —200 degrees Celsius, permanently shadowed regions on the moon are among the most frigid places in the solar system and form cold traps that preserve all manner of chemical species that arrive there…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Virgin Galactic Spaceship Christens New Spaceport Runway
UPHAM, N.M. — A new private spaceship designed to carry tourists to space touched down for the first time Friday (Oct. 22) on the runway of Spaceport America, soon to become its home base.
About 600 people watched as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, carried by its mothership WhiteKnightTwo, glided down in the southern New Mexico desert to celebrate the dedication of the spaceport’s runway. [Photo: SpaceShipTwo over Spaceport America]
Spaceport America is touted as the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, and will serve as the headquarters for Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spacecraft once the spaceport is complete. A giant hangar and other facilities are still under construction.
“I can’t wait for our first day of commercial operations here,” said Virgin Galactic founder and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. “Today is very personal as our dream becomes more real.”
Orbital aims
While SpaceShipTwo is designed to make short joyrides to suborbital space, Virgin Galactic has set its sights on orbital travel, too.
“Obviously, we want to move on to orbital after we’ve got suborbital under our belts, and maybe even before that,” Branson said.
The company will aim to win a NASA contract to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, he said. The space agency plans to look to private space companies to take over this task once the space shuttle fleet retires next year.
“We plan to start work on an orbital program quite quickly,” Branson said.
This new partnership between NASA and commercial spaceflight companies was authorized by a NASA authorization bill just signed into law by President Obama earlier this month.
NASA’s deputy administrator Lori Garver was on hand at the spaceport dedication to affirm the agency’s support for the burgeoning private space industry.
“I can assure you, we wish you nothing but clear skies and success ahead. Godspeed,” Garver said.
First passengers
Branson and his family are set to be the first passengers aboard SpaceShipTwo when it begins official operations in nine to 18 months, he said.
After them, the line of people waiting for a ride is growing. More than 380 customers have already put down a total of over $50 million in deposits toward SpaceShipTwo flights. [Video: SpaceShipTwo’s First Solo Glide Test.]
“It’s like Christmas, you want to go, you can’t wait,” said future Virgin Galactic passenger Sonja Rohde, who was onsite to celebrate the spaceport’s dedication. “I’m not scared, just excited,” she said of her trip.
Rodhe is among a group of “founders” who have already paid the $200,000 ticket price in full.
“It was always a childhood dream to go to space,” Rodhe told SPACE.com. “Now I’m the first German woman to come to space.”
Another founder, Perveen Crawford of Hong Kong, said the cost of a Virgin Galactic trip was definitely worth it.
“It’s a bargain compared to the Russians,” she said, referencing the roughly $35 million past space tourists have paid to Russia’s federal space agency to ride aboard the Soyuz to the International Space Station.
By comparison, the SpaceShipTwo flights will only be in space for about five minutes, providing a brief experience of weightlessness and the view of Earth from above before heading back down to the ground.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ford Defeats Smitherman in Toronto Mayoral Race
Rob Ford, the city councillor who campaigned against waste and business-as-usual at City Hall, is the new mayor of Toronto.
With 90 per cent of polls reporting, Mr. Ford took almost 49 per cent of the vote, compared to 34 per cent for former Ontario deputy premier George Smitherman and 11 per cent for third-place finisher Joe Pantalone, the current deputy mayor.
More related to this storyLiveblog: Ford wins Toronto mayoral race
Toronto mayor race results
Toronto, GTA and Hamilton-Niagara election results
“The sentiment running across Canada and the U.S. is that people are fed up.” Doug Ford, the candidate’s brother and city council candidate, said Monday afternoon. “They want change.”…
| — Hat tip: SF | [Return to headlines] |
Mohammd Moon Station to be Set Up
(AhlulBayt News Agency) — Dr Rezvan Alfaqir, Canadian-Moroccan descent cosmologist and space scientist, announced the deployment of an unmanned research spacecraft by Mohammad Institute for Space Science.
With its headquater in Vancouer, Canada this research institute is active in development of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and space exploration in the World of Islam.
This institute cooperates with several research centers around the world recruiting a multicultural, multinational range of skillful scientists.
Expressing his regret over the lost glamour of Muslims in the world of science, Dr Al faqir counted paying respect to the high status of the Prophet Mohammd (PBUH) as the motivation for the mission.
The head of the whole project, Dr Mohammad ai-Faqir announced that the laboratory which is to be based on the Moon by 2013 is upgraded to a bigger laboratory in 2015 and completed into the Mohammad Moon Station two by 2015.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Blast Suspect in Touch With German Extremists: Report
A suspect arrested after an explosion at a Copenhagen hotel had contact with Islamic extremists in Germany, a Danish tabloid reported Monday.
The suspect, born in Chechnya but living in Belgium, is thought to have been targetting the Danish newspaper that published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
The Ekstra Bladet tabloid reported that according to unnamed German police officials Lors Dukayev repeatedly visited a radical mosque in the Groepelingen area of Bremen, in northeastern Germany.
“We can confirm he went to Bremen at least once in 2009,” the official told the paper’s online edition.
According to the official, Dukayev would have been in touch with Rene Marc Sepac, a convert who preaches at the mosque.
Ekstra Bladet said Sepac, along with his 23-year-old sister Vivian, was among eight people charged in Germany in September on suspicion of spreading Al-Qaeda propaganda on the Internet.
The German prosecutor’s office said the suspects belong to the German chapter of the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) and attempted to lure recruits to Al-Qaeda with online propaganda between August 2006 and March 2008.
Dukayev was arrested shortly after a small blast in a central Copenhagen hotel on September 10.
Police believe he was preparing a letter bomb for the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which published 12 caricatures of Islam’s prophet in 2005, triggering Muslim anger and violent protests the following year.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Eastern Europe Versus the Open Society
by Srdja Trifkovic
Excerpts from a speech to the H.L. Mencken Club, Baltimore, October 23, 2010
Two weeks ago the first “gay pride parade” was staged in Belgrade. Serbia’s “pro-European” government had been promoting the event as yet another proof that Serbia is fit to join the European Union, that is has overcome the legacy of its dark, intolerant past. Thousands of policemen in full riot gear had to divide their time between protecting a few hundred “LBGT” activists (about half of them imported from Western Europe for the occasion) and battling ten times as many young protesters in the side streets.
The parade, it should be noted, was prominently attended by the U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade Mary Warlick, by the head of the European Commission Office, Vincent Degert of France, and by the head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Serbia, Dimitris Kipreos. Needless to say, none of them had attended the enthronment of the new Serbian Patriarch a week earlier. Two days later, Hillary Clinton came to Belgrade and praised the Tadic regime for staging the parade.
Mrs. Clinton et al are enjoying the fruits of one man’s two decades of hard work in Eastern Europe. George Soros can claim, more than any other individual, that his endeavors have helped turn the lands of “Real Socialism” in central and eastern Europe away from their ancestors, their cultural and spiritual roots. The process is far from over, but his Open Society Institute and its extensive network of subsidiaries east of the Trieste-Stettin line have successfully legitimized the notions that only two decades ago would have seemed bizarre, laughable or demonic to the denizens of the eastern half of Europe.
The package was first tested here in America. Through his Open Society Institute and its vast network of affiliates Soros has provided extensive financial and lobbying support here for:…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Far-Right ‘Lite’ To Push for EU Referendum on Turkish Accession
Europe’s far-right ‘lite’ parties are to push for a pan-European referendum on Turkish accession to the bloc under the EU’s new rules.
Six extreme right parties meeting in Vienna on Saturday (23 october) — Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO), Belgium’s Flemish separatists of the Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s Party, Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, the Slovak National Party and the Sweden Democrats — are about to launch their own citizens’ campaign hot on the heels of the success of the left-wing online pressure group Avaaz, which earlier this month collected a million names demanding a ban on genetically modified organisms across the EU.
Under Lisbon Treaty rules, which entered into life in January this year, the European Citizens’ Initiative forces the European Commission to consider proposing legislation if a million EU voters sign a petition.
The Vienna conference, entitled “EU after the Lisbon Treaty” also discussed Islam in Europe and immigration, two hobby-horses of the parties.
The meeting follows a similar gathering in Vienna last year in advance of a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, where most of the same clutch of parties strategised how to campaign against passage of the treaty.
While the traditional far right is explicitly anti-EU, and the so-called far-right ‘lite’ parties are certainly eurosceptic, the parties in Vienna on Saturday said they opposed Turkish accession in order to defend the Union.
“That would be the end of the European Union,” said FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache, “and the beginning of a Eurasian-African Union that would completely go against our European peace project and must therefore not be allowed.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Gang Joins Swedish Police in Hunt for Man Suspected of Racist Attacks
An investigation into a series of racist shootings in Sweden took a bizarre twist today when both the police and an underworld gang announced that they were pursuing a man now suspected of 15 attacks in the southern city of Malmo.
Meanwhile, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, whose entry into parliament last month has been linked with the shootings, announced a reward for anyone helping to catch the suspected gunman, who escaped from his latest attack — on an Iranian-born hairdresser — on Saturday after headbutting his victim and fleeing the scene on a bicycle.
The police spokesman, Commissioner Borje Sjoholm, said the shootings might have started in October last year. Fifteen incidents are being investigated. Eight people have been wounded in them, and one killed.
The apparent murder victim was a 20-year-old woman named Trez West Persson, who was shot in a parked car with her immigrant boyfriend on 10 October last year. Since he was newly released from prison, the police originally assumed he was a gang target, but they now suppose the pair was attacked because of the colour of his skin.
Suspected targets since then have included one of the city’s mosques and a police station. In another incident, a group of African men were fired on outside one of the city’s swimming pools. In all, police said there was no obvious motive in 19 of the 50 shootings recorded in the city since last October.
A spokesman for a breakaway group from one of the city’s three main immigrant gangs told a Swedish paper that he and his friends were hunting the gunman and patrolling the Rosengaard estate, a housing project where approximately 30,000 immigrants live. “We know the area better than the police,” he said.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Blinding Laser Attacks on Airline Pilots Surge
Dangerous blinding attacks with high-powered lasers on aeroplane and helicopter pilots in Germany have risen dramatically in recent months, according government figures released Monday.
From January to the middle of September, there were 229 laser attacks on planes and helicopters, the Federal Agency of Aviation (LBA) has announced — a massive rise on the 35 reported for the whole of last year.
The high-powered lasers put the lives of the pilots as well as airline passengers and people on the ground at risk, aviation experts say, prompting calls for the devices to be treated as weapons.
At Düsseldorf Airport alone there were 15 such attacks in the first nine months of this year.
The number of cases has particularly spiked in the autumn, with its greater hours of darkness per day.
Air traffic controllers were powerless to do anything about the attacks, said Ute Otterbein, spokeswoman for the DFS air traffic authority.
“We can’t do anything about it, except pass on the information as quickly as possible,” she said.
Jörg Handwerg, spokesman for the pilots’ association, Cockpit, said the reason for the dramatic spike in attacks was simple: “These dangerous, high-powered laser pointers are ever more common because they have become cheaper.”
Although sales of the high-powered versions of the device are actually banned in Germany, they can still be easily bought on the internet.
Yet many people still did not appreciate how dangerous the devices were, Otterbein said.
“They regard it simply as a stupid kids’ prank to blind someone with it,” she said.
Yet the attacks could have potentially catastrophic consequences.
Handwerg added: “They can burn a hole in CDs or take away someone’s eyesight from hundreds of metres’ distance.”
He said that the lasers should be regarded as weapons and regulated with corresponding strictness.
Car drivers have also complained of laser blinding attacks.
DAPD/The Local/dw
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Nocturnal Cow Attacks Car
A cow left to wander on a cold night attacked a car while walking along a country road near the town of Heimbach in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday night.
According to the police report, the cow had decided to cross the road, forcing two cars to stop. Suddenly confronted, the cow went on the attack, running past one car before jumping half on to the second.
Once it had successfully smashed the hood of the vehicle with its front hooves, the cow fled into a nearby forest.
Despite an immediate attempt to capture the animal, the cow evaded the police until Sunday morning, when it was returned to its owner.
The 36-year-old driver of the car escaped unharmed, though shaken.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Minister Warns on Naples Trash Violence
‘Stop or we’ll go in harder’, Maroni says
(ANSA) — Naples, October 25 — Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on Monday warned protesters at a waste dump outside Naples to stop attacking police or face “tough” action.
Speaking after two police patrols were assaulted at Boscoreale, near the Terzigno site, Maroni said: “I urge everyone to lay down their arms, otherwise I think we will have to go in harder”.
One officer sustained an eye injury and three youths were arrested.
Witnesses said the youths ran out at the patrol cars from side alleys.
Violent protests have been going on for weeks and refuse in the streets of Naples has been building up.
On Friday Premier Silvio Berlusconi sent Civil Defence chief Guido Bertolaso to deal with the emergency as he did to resolve a similar one in 2008. Unlike on that occasion, he did not go himself.
Bertolaso drafted a plan which halted dumping at the Terzigno site until toxic tests could be carried out, and indefinitely froze the opening of a new dump at Cava Vitiello in the Vesuvius National Park.
But local mayors rejected the plan, echoing local families in saying they wanted both Terzigno and Cava Vitiello abandoned altogether.
On Monday workers started laying a covering of fresh earth and greenery over the foul-smelling Terzigno landfill ahead of testing, which is expected to start later this week.
Bertolaso, a veteran of crisis management who like Berlusconi won plaudits with the trash emergency resolution two years ago but whose credibility was dimmed by a favours probe earlier this year, told reporters: “I understand the protests, but now we have to isolate the violent elements”.
Naples has been plagued by waste mismanagement for years and the local Camorra mafia has allegedly fed off it.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Malmö Police Probe Two Weekend Shootings
At least one shot was fired in a residential area in the Malmö district of Husie on Sunday, the latest incident in a series of shootings that have rocked the city in recent weeks.
The night before, a tailor’s shop and hairdressing salon on the corner of Lönngatan and Norra Grängesbergsgatan in Malmö’s Augustenborg district was also exposed to gunfire while the owner was inside.
A family discovered a bullethole in the balcony window of their home on Västra Skrävlingevägen in Husie on Sunday. This was the third shooting reported this weekend in the city.
At 10.30am, a man reported that he and his family thought they had heard fireworks overnight. Later, the family discovered what looked like a bullethole in the balcony window and curtain. The apartment is located on the second floor.
Police technicians at the scene have confirmed that this is yet another shooting.
“There is a hole in the pane of glass and a hole in a curtain,” said Lars Rosberg of the Skåne police.
Calle Persson, public relations officer at Skåne police, confirmed to the TT news agency that police technicians have found a bullet or bullet fragment in the apartment.
The family that lives in the apartment are of foreign origin and were not previously known to the police. Police are now going door to door door in the area to look for witnesses who may have seen the shooting.
Separately, overnight, police took a man in his 50s in for questioning on suspicion of involvement in the shooting in Augustenborg. The man was released after questioning and he is no longer under suspicion, police said.
Fifty-seven-year-old Naser Yazdanpanah, who is of Middle Eastern origin, owns the business that was attacked on Saturday. He was in the shop when he heard a bang early on Saturday evening. He saw a man outside and went out.
He was then headbutted by the offender, who fled by bicycle. He was slightly injured, but was taken to hospital. He did not see the weapon nor the shot. Dog patrols have searched the area.
Police were called at 6.35pm on Saturday. Yazdanpanah returned to the premises on Sunday morning to serve its customers. He works 13 hours a day, seven days a week.
“One must always fight and now against him or her or those who go around and shoot people. I do not want to let them think they have won,” he said defiantly to TT, but with fatigue clearly hanging over him.
When TT met him, he had not slept for 40 hours.
Yazdanpanah and his wife had attended a demonstration in Malmö against all the shootings and violence on Saturday afternoon. Several hours later, he himself was at the centre of the next shooting.
On Friday evening, a man reported that he felt someone had shot in his direction following a spate of shootings targeting people of immigrant origin.
Police this week said they were setting up a task force of up to 50 police officers to look into around 15 unsolved shootings in the southern city of Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest, over the past year, which could be motivated by racism.
The crimes bear a chilling similarity to the case of an immigrant-shooting sniper in Stockholm in the early 1990s.
Laserman was the nickname given to John Ausonius, who shot 11 people of immigrant origin, killing one, in and around Stockholm from August 1991 to January 1992.
Ausonius, who in many of the attacks used a rifle equipped with a laser sight, was sentenced to life behind bars in 1994 and remains in prison.
Just as with the Laserman case, the recent shootings in Malmö come at a time when an openly anti-immigration party has just entered the Swedish parliament.
This year, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won 20 seats in parliament in the September 19th election with an especially strong showing in the south of Sweden.
Police have warned residents against panic, stressing a text message appearing to come from police that had been circulating urging people to stay indoors was fake.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Police Warn Against Panic Over Malmö Shootings
Malmö remained on alert on Friday evening after a man reported that he felt someone had shot in his direction following a spate of shootings targeting people of immigrant origin.
The man was riding on a bicycle path near the Mobilia mall. He was not hit. Police received an initial report at 7.01pm and made contact with the man, who had fled from the spot, eight minutes later. The man promised to point out the exact location of the alleged shooting, adding that an unknown man had run away from the scene.
“As citizens of Malmö, regardless of nationality or origin, we must have public safety in mind,” Åsa Palmqvist of the Malmö police told reporters on Friday.
Police this week said they were setting up a task force of up to 50 police officers to look into around 15 unsolved shootings in the southern city of Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest, over the past year, which could be motivated by racism.
The crimes bear a chilling similarity to the case of an immigrant-shooting sniper in Stockholm in the early 1990s.
Police were cautious in drawing parallels between the two cases, but the Swedish press quickly picked up on the similarities, with the country’s two largest tabloids on Friday saying that police were searching for “a new Laserman.”
Laserman was the nickname given to John Ausonius, who shot 11 people of immigrant origin, killing one, in and around Stockholm from August 1991 to January 1992.
Ausonius, who in many of the attacks used a rifle equipped with a laser sight, was sentenced to life behind bars in 1994 and remains in prison.
Daily Dagens Nyheter reported on Friday the profiler who helped solve that case had joined the investigation team in Malmö.
Police in Malmö did not divulge the details of the investigation, only telling a large crowd of reporters — some them from Denmark and Norway — that they were receiving help from various Swedish police corps.
They also warned residents against panic, stressing a text message appearing to come from police that had been circulating urging people to stay indoors was fake.
On Thursday, two women aged 26 and 34 were slightly injured when someone shot them through a kitchen window. A teenager driving a moped was also shot at in broad daylight earlier in the day, but was not hit.
In both cases, the victims were of immigrant origin, police said.
Börje Sjöström of the Malmö police said there was a risk of more shootings in the city, but stressed Malmö was still safe.
“For an individual person, the risk is extremely small,” he said.
In many of the unsolved shootings over the past year, the victims had not adopted risky behaviour and were simply going about their daily business, he said.
“Many of those who were affected were in completely normal situations. It is not risky behaviour to work out at the gym or to wait for the bus,” Sjöström said, insisting that “the worst thing people can do is to lock themselves in and capitulate.”
Just as with the Laserman case, the recent shootings in Malmö come at a time when an openly anti-immigration party has just entered the Swedish parliament.
This year, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won 20 seats in parliament in the September 19th election with an especially strong showing in the south of Sweden.
Gellert Tamas, who wrote a book about the Laserman in 2002, said the current political situation could be an inspiration for today’s shooter, much like the anti-immigration New Democracy party inspired Ausonius.
“John Ausonius was very clear in the interviews I did with him that he was inspired by the debate on immigration that took place in the early 1990s,” he told Dagens Nyheter.
“He felt moral support, that people were behind him. But he also felt political support, from New Democracy above all, but also from other xenophobic parties such as the Sweden Democrats,” which had just been created, he added.
Of the Malmö shootings being probed, only one has resulted in a death: a 20-year-old woman of Swedish origin who was shot last October while sitting in a car with a young man of immigrant background. He was seriously injured in the attack.
Separately, Malmö mayor called on Justice Minister Beatrice Ask to act on demands from the police and city of Malmö to hike the penalties for possession of illegal arms, writing she should “take her mission seriously or resign” in Dagens Nyheter’s opinion page on Saturday.
Reepalu believes that Malmö residents have been affected by lack of action in this area in an unacceptable way.
“I become furious when the Minister of Justice says in the newspaper that it is ‘understandable’ that gang shootings take place in Malmo,” he wrote in Dagens Nyheter.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Turkish ‘Terror’ Suspect Arrested at Arlanda
Border police at Arlanda airport arrested a Turkish man wanted by Belgian police on suspicion of “terror crimes” on Friday and is holding him pending a decision on whether to extradite him, Swedish security police said on Sunday.
“He was arrested at Arlanda [Stockholm’s international airport] on Friday by the border police. A European warrant had been issued for his arrest a long time ago by Belgium police,” Swedish Security Service (Säkerhetspolisen, Säpo) spokesman Patrik Peter told AFP.
The man, a Turkish citizen whose name was not given, is reportedly 30 years old and “was remanded in custody yesterday [Saturday]. He is suspected of terror crimes,” Peter said, without providing further details.
“This is a Belgian investigation,” he explained.
The man was arrested on terrorism, kidnapping and hostage-taking charges, prosecutor Ronnie Jacobsson told newspaper Aftonbladet on Saturday.
Säpo planned to speak with the suspect on Monday to determine if he opposed extradition and Peter said he expected the process to be launched quickly, although a court would have to rule whether the man could be sent to Belgium.
According to Peter, the man’s plane arrived from Syria. He added he does not know whether the man has connections to Sweden or if he has tickets for further travel.
“He has been wanted for a long time and was outside the Schengen area. He came into the Schengen area yesterday [Friday] via Arlanda. This set off an alert and the man was arrested,” said Peter.
Lawyer Anders Björk would not comment on how his client responded to the allegations.
“I will not comment on that,” said Björk.
A district court will decide whether to hand the man over to Belgium, generally within 30 days after the arrest.
“We will hold a hearing with him on Monday, but it is not a hearing to investigate the crimes. It is more about finding out whether he objects to being extradited,” said Peter.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Ex-Gang Members Hunt Malmö Gunman: Report
Ex-members of criminal gangs in Malmö in southern Sweden have taken up the hunt for an unknown gunman thought to be responsible for nearly 20 shootings targeting people with immigrant backgrounds.
According to the local Sydsvenskan newspaper, the former leader of one of the town’s largest criminal networks is among a group of “old friends who have stuck together” and who are now actively looking for the gunman which has left Malmö’s immigrant community gripped with fear.
“He had better hope that we don’t find him first,” a man who referred to himself as “Leo” told the newspaper during an interview in his apartment in the city’s Rosengård neighbourhood.
The man believes he and his friends have better knowledge of the area where the shootings have taken place and will likely find the gunman before the police.
“It will be much easier for us to catch him than for the police,” he told the newspaper.
At a Monday morning afternoon press briefing, police in Malmö expressed urged concerned citizens to leave the investigation to the police.
“People shouldn’t take the law into their own hands,” said criminal inspector Börje Sjöholm.
“It’s totally reprehensible. You can’t have that in a society governed by the rule of law; it’s the job of the police to uphold law and order.”
Sjöholm added that a number of false alarms had come in at the weekend.
“We received calls about a number of shootings that didn’t turn out to be shootings,” he said.
He explained that a special investigative group was launched after police concluded that several unexplained shootings in the city may be related.
“We’ve gone through the shootings we’ve had. When we realized it could be the same perpetrator we decided to launch this investigation. We’re talking about 15 shootings or so in the span of a year,” he said.
However four additional shootings have taken place since the investigation began which have been added to the original 15 incidents.
Altogether eight people have been injured, and one killed in the shootings.
“We don’t want to say exactly which shootings,” he said.
Sjöholm also commented on the weapons believed to be used in the shootings.
“We’ve confirmed that a number of weapons have been used in several shootings,” he said, although he refused to confirm how many shootings may be tied to the same gun.
Sjöholm also explained that police believe they are hunting a single individual.
“The profiling group has gone through all the shootings and things there is a strong grounds to believe it’s the work of one and the same assailant, but we can’t let ourselves get locked into that,” he said.
Police nevertheless hope they have secured DNA evidence from a man who beat and eventually fired a shot at a tailor and hairdresser in the Augustenborg district on Saturday night.
“The tailor was headbutted, so we’ve taken swabs, taken clothing and samples. We’ll send them over to the National Forensics Lab straight away tomorrow morning for analysis,” Ewa-Gun Westford of the Malmö police told the Aftonbladet newspaper on Sunday evening.
Police in Skåne county received a number of calls about suspected shootings on Sunday night.
“Since 8pm, we’ve had eight or ten calls. We’ve gone out to all of them, but nothing has proven to be acute,” police spokesperson Sofie Österheim told the TT news agency.
Tensions in the city remain high as one young women learned on Sunday night when she was stopped by two police officers at Nobeltorget square.
“A caller warned of a woman wearing dark clothes and shorts who had a holster on her thigh with a gun in it,” said Calle Persson of the Skåne county police.
It turned out that the woman was on her way to a costume party.
“We pointed out to her that her clothing was in appropriate,” said Persson.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
UK Minister Praises Turkish Democracy
Britain’s minister for Europe has reaffirmed support for Turkey’s European Union membership bid. Addressing the seventh Bogazici Conference on Turkey-EU relations, David Lidington said that Turkey’s democracy worked on an idea of pluralism.
He said that Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, had a successfully working democratic multi-party system, and was constantly making progress.
“You respect religious minorities and give them space to prosper. Turkey’s approach is a good example for the position of Islam in the public area. Turkey’s democracy is working on idea of pluralism. These values will be enhanced by Turkey’s EU membership,” Britain minister of state for Europe said.
[DF — Britain is run by these naive fools]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Baroness Warsi Pulls Out of Muslim Conference Amid Claims of Tory Concerns
Baroness Warsi, the most senior Muslim in government, pulled out of a planned speech at the Global Peace and Unity (GPU) event in London on Sunday.
Mrs Warsi was said to be “very upset” not to speak, sparking allegations the decision was made by Conservative Party officials who felt other speakers at the conference may be deemed controversial or extremist.
In a thinly-veiled attack on the Conservatives Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, speaking at the conference, said: “I am aware some people say this event is controversial. I have a message to you and to my colleagues in Parliament.
“I always believe it is better for people of every background to engage with the Muslim community, not to walk away.”
In his speech at the Excel conference centre, East London, he said: “I want to make it very clear that we were privileged to accept this invitation.
“I hope that in future years all the political parties will be here at this event.”
At a press conference after his speech, Mr Hughes added: “I think it is unfortunate that our Conservative Colleagues are not represented.”
Mohamed Ali, chair of the GPU foundation, said Mrs Warsi’s non-appearance was a “very bad example” from a leading member of the Muslim community and former Muslim activist.
He said: “Every single school of thought in the Muslim community in the United Kingdom is represented here and they banned her from coming. It’s a shame on them.”
A list of proposed speakers at the conference had been sent to the Department of Communities and Local Government for approval in July, but was never formally approved after being leaked to the Sunday Telegraph.
Two Muslim figures due to speak last night were Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who has allegedly celebrated the death of five American soldiers in a suicide bomb attack, and Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, who has said homosexuality is an “aberration against God”.
Mr Ahmed was unable to attend the conference due to reported problems leaving Pakistan.
Shaykh Qadhi said: “I cannot and will not say it is morally acceptable to engage in premarital, extramarital or homosexual sex.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Controversial Islam Doc Cleared by Ofcom
Channel 4’s Britain’s Islamic Republic, which attracted more than 1,000 complaints and was branded a “dirty little programme” by former MP George Galloway, has been cleared by Ofcom.
Steve Boulton Productions made the Dispatches investigation into a “fundamentalist Muslim group”, which attracted 205 complaints to the regulator and more than 800 to the broadcaster.
It was fronted by investigative reporter Andrew Gilligan and claimed the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) had infiltrated the Labour party and Respect party and was exerting influence over Tower Hamlets Council in London.
It also probed Galloway’s relationship with the IFE and included secretly filmed footage taken in the East London Mosque, the London Muslim Centre and the studios of IFE radio show Easy Talk.
The film went out in March and was described by Galloway as “another camera-up-the-jumper film” from the “tiresome and fevered” current affairs strand.
Ofcom investigated the film against four criteria of its Broadcasting Code, but found it had not broken any of the rules.
It said the doc was “clearly part of Channel 4s distinct public service remit” and that it made clear its allegations related to the IFE only and were not representative of all Muslims.
The programme also represented the views of the IFE in response to the allegations, Ofcom said, and there was no evidence that its audience was materially misled.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Failed by the Police. Failed by Facebook. A Family Torn Apart by the Cunning of an Online Predator
It’s now exactly a year since 17-year-old Ashleigh, a bright and popular student who was training in childcare, was murdered by a rapist who ensnared her over Facebook.
Peter Chapman, 33, a serial sex offender, was sentenced to a minimum of 35 years in jail after admitting to her kidnap, rape and murder. He had stolen the identity — and photograph — of a handsome 19-year-old man to ensnare her via the website.
Her case came to serve as the most terrible warning to the five million teenagers in the UK who use Facebook. It also became a flashpoint for controversy over the lax controls imposed on such social networks.
Today, Andrea, 40, is fired by a potent mix of grief and anger. Anger at the police blunders that allowed Chapman to strike, anger at internet ghouls who have insulted her daughter’s memory — and anger at Facebook for its complacent response to the tragedy.
Andrea is enraged that for nine months after Ashleigh’s death, Facebook refused to install a panic button on its pages. Such a device — widely adopted by almost every teenage networking site since 2006 — provides immediate access to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and allows users to alert officials if they fear they are being targeted by sexual predators or bullies.
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: Israel Wins Cambridge Uni Debate
Despite hostile audience, Israeli team marks unexpected victory in debate titled ‘Israel is rogue state,’ hosted by prestigious British university
It’s not every day that Israel marks a victory away from home, especially not on hostile grounds such as University of Cambridge in England. But on Thursday, Israel secured an unexpected triumph in the institution’s prestigious debate club, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
[…]
Last Thursday, the debate club hosted an event titled “Israel is a Rogue State.”
The debate’s starting point was that Israel is a problematic country, which does not obey international law.
Due to the preeminence of the hosting institution, The Israeli embassy in London decided to send representatives Ran Gidor, the embassy’s political advisor and a Cambridge graduate, and Shiraz Maher, a former radical Islamist that has become an enthusiastic Israel supporter.
Harsh diatribe The opposing side was represented by journalist and publicist Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Booth, who is considered as one of the most prominent and outspoken pro-Palestinian activists in Britain, converted to Islam after visiting Iran six weeks prior to the event.
Thousands attended the debate, including Cambridge’s senior academic staff, students and guests.
At first, it seemed the hall was overwhelmingly anti-Israel, as Booth and Mark McDonald, who heads the Labor party’s Friends of Palestine & Middle East Association, engaged in a harsh diatribe against the Jewish State.
The event took a sharp turn when a few students from the pro-Palestinian camp raised pro-Israeli arguments during the discussion.
One of them told the audience that Israel gives political asylum to Darfuri refugees, while Egypt shoots them as they try to infiltrate the border, and that the Jewish State initiates internal probes over international violation, also noting Israel’s liberal policies vis-à-vis gay and lesbian rights.
[…]
Surprisingly, the Israeli side won with 74% of the votes, marking an important PR achievement in what could be considered one of Europe’s main anti-Israeli strongholds.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Melanie Phillips: The Capture of Tower Hamlets
People like myself who have warned for some years now about the steady Islamisation of Britain receive a torrent of scorn and abuse from the so-called custodians of our culture. Terms such as ‘scare-mongering’, exaggeration’ or ‘alarmism’ tumble out alongside the inevitable ‘Islamophobia’.
Now we can see what these cultural kamikazes are helping bring about. In the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, a man with reported links to radical Islamism, Lutfur Rahman, has been elected Mayor of the borough, giving him control of a billion-pound budget and thus the apparent installation of a platform for the progressive intimidation and silencing of British Muslims who do not want to live under sharia law, let alone the non-Muslim majority in the area.
In order to know anything about this crucial development, you have to read the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan who has been closely following what’s been going on in Tower Hamlets during the past year. He writes on his blog:…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Surfing Rabbi Tells EDL Demo ‘We Shall Prevail’
Around 300 members of the far right organisation the English Defence League (EDL) were joined by a US Rabbi associated with the Tea Party at a demonstration “to oppose Islamic fascism”.
Speaking outside the Israeli embassy in London, Rabbi Nachum Shifren stressed he was not here to represent the Tea Party but came as someone “who loves freedom”.
Rabbi Shifren, who is standing for the California state senate, said: “To all my Jewish brothers who have called me a Nazi…I say to them they don’t have the guts to stand up here and take care of business.”
The so-called surfing rabbi said the EDL were the only group in England with moral courage and that politicians would not admit that “because of the Arab petrol dollars.”
Rabbi Shifren added that Muslims “eat each other alive, like the dogs that they are.”
He said: “We shall prevail, we will not let them take over our countries. We will never surrender to the sword of Islam.”
Shaking his fist in the direction of the Israeli embassy, he shouted slogans in Hebrew, telling the crowd: “You won’t understand what I’m about to say but you will feel my meaning.”
Police surrounded the crowd, who were shouting chants about Allah. A man claiming to be Tommy Robinson, the EDL’s founder and leader, denied that the EDL was a violent organisation.
But he told the JC: “I will protect myself against anyone and I will stand up to anyone and that’s what you’re seeing.
“It will be lads, you will see lads who are not prepared to back down.”
Although the demonstration was ostensibly to show support for Israel, he said he was there to take on militant Islam.
He said: “This isn’t Mickey Mouse, it’s militant Islam. We’re opposing a fascist murdering ideology.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why Would Tony Blair’s Sister-in-Law Convert to Islam?
It was only a matter of time. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a dose of “spiritual morphine” in Iran, although she talks about the world’s fastest-growing religion like it was the latest version of the Atkins Diet:
“Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she said.
And she’s even refused to rule out wearing a burka: “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?”
Politically Booth has always struck me as being incredibly naïve, or willfully ignorant of reality. She writes:
Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It’s kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.
Presumably being a past contributor to the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece, Press TV, makes it easier for her to overlook Iran’s appalling human rights record, stories of widespread torture, rape and murder following last year’s rigged elections, its role in murdering dozens of dissidents across Europe, and its financing of various homicidal sectarian groups in Iraq.
I’ve written before about the fascination some middle-class Englishwomen have with Islam and the Arab world; the paradox is that many who convert come from progressive backgrounds and would be horrified at the idea of embracing Catholicism or one of the more conservative forms of Protestantism. And yet they’re prepared to adopt a religion far more traditional in its attitude to the sexes, and adopt an item of clothing that Middle Eastern women fought so hard and courageously to get rid of.
No doubt their Islam is partly a reaction to the excesses of the last 40 years, by people too programmed to oppose “Right-wing politics” to become conventionally conservative. Anyone who’s walked through a British city centre on a Friday night and contrasted the behaviour of the people serving the curry with the people eating it can see the attractions of a faith that emphasises family, duty and sobriety. And Islam is also attractive because it’s so demanding, asking great sacrifices of its followers.
But partly it is because Islam is, unlike any other faith, more than just a religion — it is also a political idea. And ever since the decline of socialism and Left-wing intellectuals’ abandonment of the working class, third worldist “anti-imperialism” has become the radical chic of choice, especially so with the Holy Land conflict. And what better way of embracing the politics of the 1968 generation than by submitting to Islam?
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Hails EU Serbia Progress
‘Right signal at right time’ says foreign ministry
(ANSA) — Rome, October 25 — Italy on Monday hailed the European Union’s decision to ask the European Commission for a formal opinion on whether to launch entry talks with Serbia.
The decision by the EU’s 27 foreign ministers was “the right signal” and came “at the right time for Serbia and the whole Balkan region,” a statement from the Italian foreign ministry said.
“It is a concrete signal for the European prospects of a country which Italy and (Foreign Minister Franco) Frattini, with his personal commitment, have strongly encouraged,” the statement said.
The EU move came after Serbia this summer agreed to talks with its breakaway province Kosovo.
But the ministers warned further progress would be linked to Serbia’s full cooperation with a United Nations war-crimes tribunal which is seeking former Serb commander Ratko Mladic for the notorious 1995 Srejbenica massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys.
Frattini and Serbian counterpart Vuk Jeremic had talks in Rome a month ago, after which the Italian diplomatic chief praised Serbia’s decision to uphold a UN resolution calling for talks with Kosovo under European Union auspices.
The Italian foreign minister said Serbia had confirmed its “European vocation” by showing “flexibility” on an issue which it “holds dear” as a nation, referring to Serbia’s historic claims to Kosovo as its ancient heartland.
Jeremic praised Italy for supporting Serbia’s bid in an “unequivocal way”.
Serbia has not recognised breakaway Kosovo but most Western countries, and 70 United Nations countries in all, have opened relations with it as a republic.
Countries with their own ethnic-enclave problems, such as China, Russia and former Soviet central Asian states, have not recognised Kosovo’s February 2008 declaration of independence.
Most Latin American and African states have also yet to recognise it.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Palestinian Refugees: Why is Everyone Lying to Them?
by Khaled Abu Toameh
Palestinian Authority leaders are now saying that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state because that would mean that they would have to give up the “right of return” for millions of Palestinians to their original homes inside Israel.
These leaders are actually continuing to deceive the refugees into believing that one day they will be permitted to move into Israel.
The Palestinian Authority, like the rest of the Arab governments, has been lying to the refugees for decades, telling them that one day their dream of returning to their villages and towns, many of which no longer exist, would be fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the refugees are continuing to live in harsh conditions in their UNRWA-administered camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
No Arab or Palestinian leader has ever dared to confront the refugees with the truth, namely that they are not going to move into Israel. On the contrary, Palestinian and Arab leaders continue to tell these people that they will go back to their former villages and towns.
Arab and Palestinian governments are lying to the refugees because they want to avoid any responsibility toward their plight. The Arab governments hosting the refugees have done almost nothing to improve the living conditions of the refugees.
On the contrary, Palestinian refugees living in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have long been subjected the victims of racism and other repressive and unjust measures and laws that deprive them even of basic rights. Governments such as Jordan receive a payment for each refugee, turning the refugees into nothing more than property, like stocks on Wall Street.
Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has also done very little to help the refugees. In the West Bank, most of the international aid is being invested in major cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Jenin, as well as scores of villages.
UNRWA is also not offering a solution to the refugees. Instead, the UN agency is perpetuating the problem by creating new generations of refugees. UNRWA is in fact encouraging the refugees to stay where they are. For UNRWA, refugees are a gigantic UN jobs program, providing over 30,000 of them, costing over $1 billion USD a-year, or, according to separate sources, a third of all other UN regugee services combined.
The case of the Palestinian refugees is one of the most important issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It needs to be solved for once and for all — and immediately. The refugees have the legitimate and moral right to continue dreaming about their original villages and towns. But the Arab and Palestinian governments do not have the right to continue lying to these people.
The issue of the refugees can easily be solved if the entire international community, with the help of the Arab world, gets together to find a solution. Israel alone will never be able to solve the problem.
The refugees should be offered financial compensation or resettlement in Arab and other countries. Those who wish to move to a Palestinian state that is established alongside Israel in the future should not be denied that right. Arab countries should be urged to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Western countries should also participate by taking some of the refugees and offering them a new life. Why not establish an international fund that would offer financial compensation to those who lost their homes and lands? And let us not forget that there are also hundreds of thousands of Jewish “refugees” who lost their properties in Arab countries.
The world needs to tell the Palestinian refugees that while they are entitled to many rights, they must forget about returning to Jaffa, Haifa and other places inside Israel.
The issue of the Palestinian refugees can be solved only when a courageous Arab or Palestinian leader confronts them with the truth. As long as the refugees are being fed with false hopes, there can be no solution.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Chemical Weapons, Iranian Agents and Massive Death Tolls Exposed in Wikileaks’ Iraq Docs
As the insurgency raged in Iraq, U.S. troops struggling to fight a shadowy enemy killed civilians, witnessed their Iraqi partners abuse detainees and labored to reduce Iran’s influence over the fighting.
None of these phenomena are unfamiliar to observers of the Iraq war. But this afternoon, the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks released a trove of nearly 392,000 U.S. military reports from Iraq that bring a new depth and detail to the horrors of one of America’s most controversial wars ever. We’re still digging through the just-released documents, but here’s a quick overview of what they contain.
(Our sister blog Threat Level looks at how Friday’s document dump could affect Bradley Manning, who’s already charged in other WikiLeaks releases.)
It Was Iran’s War, Too
No one would accuse WikiLeaks of being pro-war. Not when the transparency group titled its single most famous leak “Collateral Murder.” Not when its founder, Julian Assange, said that its trove of reports from the Afghan conflict suggested evidence for thousands of American “war crimes.”
So it’s more than a little ironic that, with its newest document dump from the Iraq campaign, WikiLeaks may have just bolstered one of the Bush administration’s most controversial claims about the Iraq war: that Iran supplied many of the Iraq insurgency’s deadliest weapons and worked hand-in-glove with some of its most lethal militias.
The documents indicate that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq war, as its elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported deadly weapons like the shape-charged Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and U.S. troops.
A report from 2006 claims “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons from Iran were smuggled into Iraq. (It’s one of many, many documents recounting WMD efforts in Iraq.) Others indicate that Iran flooded Iraq with guns and rockets, including the Misagh-1 surface-to-air missile, .50 caliber rifles, rockets and much more.
As the New York Times observes, Iranian agents plotted to kidnap U.S. troops from out of their Humvees — something that occurred in Karbala in 2007, leaving five U.S. troops dead. (It’s still not totally clear if the Iranians were responsible.)
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Islamophobia’s Chill Sweeps Turkey
Millions of Europeans arrive here each year to visit historic sites like the Blue Mosque; to savour the aromas of roasting kebabs, barbecued fish and apple-flavoured water pipe smoke; and to haggle with merchants at the energy-oozing Grand Bazaar.
But Turkey is increasingly unwelcome in Europe as the rise of Islamophobia crushes much of the optimism that this economically and militarily powerful Muslim country will fulfil its long-standing dream of joining the 27-nation European Union.
Far-right parties have gained ground in numerous European countries in recent elections, with anti-Muslim Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders declaring during his recent breakthrough campaign that Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is “a total freak.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has insultingly dismissed Turkey — which is claiming Istanbul as Europe’s 2010 “capital of culture” — as not being a legitimate European country since most of its land mass is in Asia.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel fed into the growing anti-immigrant mood by lamenting last week that Germany has “utterly failed” to integrate its 2.5 million Turkish minority.
“Ten years ago, the majority of Turkish people were for membership in the European Union, but now it’s the opposite,” said Kamil Park, a businessman here in one of the world’s most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities. “They don’t believe it. They say Europe cannot accept us.”
Support for EU membership has indeed plunged to just 38 per cent in a recent poll by the German Marshall Fund think-tank, down from 74 per cent of the population in 2004.
Some Turks argue that Europe is correct in questioning the candidacy of this country of 77 million people that straddles Europe and Asia.
The harshest of these critics are usually among the large minority who voted against Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor who some see as a threat to the strongly secularist tradition established in 1923 by the founder of the republic, former war hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood Expels 4 Members
Jordan’s largest opposition group on Monday dismissed four members because of their refusal to heed its boycott of next month’s parliamentary elections.
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu Bakr said the group’s tribunal expelled members Mohammed Masaad, Madallah al-Tarawneh, Aref Abu-Eid and Ahmed al-Qadah.
Abu Bakr said that the Islamic Action Front, the Brotherhood’s political arm, will take its own decision later about whether to expel three other members also flouting the boycott.
The group is boycotting the Nov. 9 poll to protest a new law reducing seats for lawmakers in urban areas, where it has influence. The May legislation increased seats from in rural areas dominated by pro-government tribes.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Wheelbarrow Rockets, Remote-Control Suicide Vests and Captured Drones: Wikileaks Exposes Insurgent Tech
It was billed as a war between low-tech insurgents and the high-tech U.S. military. But the WikiLeaks war logs from Iraq reveals that the insurgents were sophisticated and tech-savvy, too — embedding cameras in suicide vests, turning trucks into rocket-launchers, and deploying a variety of missiles to menace U.S. troops.
It shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that lots of Iraqi insurgents came out of Iraq’s huge Saddam-era military, or that some had help from elite Iranian agents. But here’s an overview of some of the more ingenious, lesser-known innovations in asymmetric warfare that insurgents developed during the Iraq war to neutralize the U.S.’s conventional advantages.
The Truck- and Wheelbarrow-Based Rocket Launcher. How to turn a truck into a rocket system: first, lease a Toyota. In October 2004, just outside Fallujah, Iraqis were observed mounting a “homemade rocket launcher” onto a “small white Toyota pickup.” A High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System this wasn’t. But each rocket tube within the truck contained multiple rockets — and it wasn’t the only one. Southwest of a Marine observation post, the truck met up with another makeshift mobile rocket-launcher and attempted to take the post out in tandem.
Within weeks, the Marines invaded the city for what became known as the Second Battle of Fallujah. But that didn’t stop the advance of improvised mobile rocket launchers. In May 2005, outside nearby Ramadi, troops investigating incoming rocket fire found a “wheelbarrow… with modified rocket launchers welded on the underside.” The wheelbarrow-based rockets were apparently launched remotely: the system was connected to a battery “wired to a phone-base station.” Two months later, an Iraqi was detained on suspicion of modifying dump trucks to launch rockets.
Encrypted Communications. Several insurgent groups maintained an impressive amount of operational secrecy and tactical discipline, often keeping U.S. snoops at bay. A clue as to how came on June 11, 2009, when U.S. and Iraqi troops at a hospital outside of Baghdad uncovered a “historical” cache of communications equipment used by the Mahdi Army, one of the hardest-core Shiite militias. Amplifiers, tuners and radio telegraph adapters were somewhat antiquated but looked factory-fresh.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Top Kremlin Ideologue Visits Chechnya as Violence Mounts
Kremlin’s top ideologue Vladislav Surkov paid a rare visit to Chechnya where he said the insurgency-plagued North Caucasus would remain part of Russia as he sought to dissuade youth from joining militants.
Russian authorities are battling a Muslim insurgency in the North Caucasus where attacks on officials have become daily occurrences as security analysts say the Kremlin is losing its grip over the region.
Surkov, the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, said on Friday during a visit to Chechnya, site of two wars with separatists in the 90s, that the country’s political leadership would never agree to let the Caucasus become independent.
“The Caucasus is the foundation on which the whole of Russia stands,” Surkov told youth activists in comments released by the Chechen government.
“There are different people in Russian politics. And there are unfortunately those who believe that state policy in the Caucasus is doomed to failure, that it is not effective.
“No doubt, the country’s political leadership proceeds from absolutely different messages,” he said, adding the ruling tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin never questioned the country’s territorial integrity.
Putin in July said time was running out for militants as he unveiled an ambitious economic drive to bring prosperity to the violence-torn region by enticing investors there.
Sceptics scoff at those plans as they point to an increasing number of attacks on officials and key infrastructure sites in the region. Widespread unemployment, especially among young adults, is the region’s most acute problem and helps militants recruit new fighters, analysts say.
Surkov sought to dissuade local youth from taking up arms, calling on them to grow up.
“Youth is always prone to extreme activities. The very physiology calls for it at a certain age,” he said, noting however that “we can’t allow ourselves to be children all our life.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
‘Ignored India’s Warnings on Terrorism’
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the West has always ignored India’s warnings on terrorism.
“Despite India’s warnings on terrorism, it took 9/11 for us to wake up,” Blair said in an interview to NDTV news channel aired on Monday.
“I used to say towards the end of prime ministership that we should have listened to India more…we should have watched what’s happening there and taken more account of it.
“It’s for our arrogance, something West is known for, that we didn’t quite understand it and ignored India’s warnings on terrorism,” Blair said.
“Now I realize that it is a global war (against terrorism) and it threatens all.”
Asked if terrorism is rooted in Pakistan, Blair said there is strain of extremism in Islam itself.
“I have many Pakistani friends and I have realized that they (Pakistan) too wants to defeat terrorism,” said Blair.
He further said: “I think it has more to do with the fact that this trend of extremism within Islam. What I learnt from the Indian experience is, you can’t hide away from the fact that this (extremism) is an element within Islam…it doesn’t express itself as an accepted terrorism but as a narrative of extremism about society, about relations between countries and people of different places.”
“I think fundamental has to be confronted. That fundamental, I am afraid, is present as a strain in the Pakistani society,” said Blair.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Islamists Step-Up Attacks on Christians
“The violence and attacks, against Christian churches of all denominations, has grown in recent years and now in the past several days, especially in Jakarta and in the western part of Java island. We are increasingly concerned about it.” This is according to Monsignor Johannes Pujasumarta, Catholic Bishop of Bandung and Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference of Indonesia.
“Those responsible are small radical Islamic groups that are sowing panic among our people, especially in the Dioceses of Jakarta, Bandung, and Bogor. They are minority groups, but they should be stopped. The violence also increases the indifference of the civil authorities and police, who shrug off the violence. We demand more attention and protection for the Christian communities and that such acts may not remain unpunished,” says the Bishop.
A documented and detailed report, describing the latest incident, was made by the Indonesian Christian Communication Forum (ICCF), an organization that brings together leaders of different Christian denominations, and monitors the situation and violence against Christians in Indonesia.
The report, released on October 24 in a public conference in Jakarta, recalled that last October 17 radical Islamic groups threatened to attack a Catholic church in Karanganyar, Central Java. Days earlier, on October 13, in Sukoharjo, in the same area, 12 militants on motorcycles set fire to a Protestant church.
On October 12, there was another attempt, fortunately with little damage, striking St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Klaten, also in central Java. The Forum recalled that last September a Catholic church was struck in the Province of Pasir, in Borno Indonesia. This latest episode presents the real possibility of extremist attacks entering into other provinces of the country, althouhgh most of the episodes of violence were registered in the suburbs of Jakarta and in west and central Java.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: ‘In Suicide Attacks We Trust’
Within hours of every terror attack that strikes the heart of a Pakistani city, you hear the holy warriors of TTP claiming responsibility for their “remarkable valour.”
It is unclear why the law enforcement agencies have not yet tackled these murderers head on.
These cowardly acts are marketed as a fitting response to the US drone strikes.
In other words, these are God-fearing mujahideen waging a war against the ‘infidels’. The term ‘infidel’ has lost its real meaning. Any and everybody can be declared an infidel at a moment’s notice by these fighters. After that conclusive declaration, no further justification for any action is required.
The sad part is that a number of the general population is sympathetic towards these beasts, because the Taliban use religion as a shield for their deeds. Let’s assume that these “oppressed and valiant Taliban” were not Muslims and these were communist rebels, resisting American invasion (so to speak). Would our sentiments still be in line with their modus operandi?
Religion as a weapon
In any war, strategy dominates the game. In this case, the TTP, or the Taliban in general, have brilliantly used religion to cover up their barbaric acts. There are educated people, in and outside Pakistan, who not only buy into all of this, but justify suicide bombings as an act of struggle against “imperial forces.” If you engage those individuals in any sane discussions, the counter-argument is always that Americans stage invasions and these acts are the repercussion.
Afghanistan, prior to the much-debated American invasion, was no symbol of peace and prosperity under the direct rule of these “self righteous and pious Muslims.” The sheer brutality and lack of human values were the hallmark of these “great visionary leaders” of the Muslim Ummah. Many would dismiss all of this as being Western propaganda, but facts from the independent and non-partisan media show volumes of incriminating evidence against these brutes.
The case in Pakistan is no different, as we have a hypersensitive religious society in action at all times. We can attract people’s attention within minutes if we use the name of religion, for better or for worse. The hardcore religious parties always have a soft corner for these beasts, as ideologically, they find common ground with the TTP and LJ and their likes.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Bomb Blast Kills Five in Sufi Shrine
The dead included one woman and 13 more were injured by the explosion at the gate of the Farid Shakar Ganj shrine in Pakpattan town, Punjab province.
The bombing damaged nearly a dozen shops on either side of the street outside the shrine, leaving large piles of rubble and broken wood. Blood stained the ground and the wall of one of the damaged shops.
Irshad Ali, the owner of a shop selling beads, rushed to the site after hearing the explosion shortly after 6am.
“Within minutes I was here and saw a horrible scene,” he said. “Victims were being loaded into vehicles and dust and smoke was in the air.”
Earlier this month, two suspected suicide bombers attacked a Sufi shrine in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, killing at least eight people and wounding 65 more.
A suicide attack in July killed 47 people at the nation’s most revered Sufi shrine, Data Darbar in the eastern city of Lahore.
Pakistan is home to a network of sectarian terrorist groups, although many attacks are later claimed by the Pakistani Taliban as part of a campaign to sow fear and destabilise the government.
Sufis’ tolerant, mystical form of Islam is considered heretical by many extremists, making them frequent targets.
After the attack, a senior Sufi scholar criticised the government for not doing enough to protect the Sufi population.
“Our rulers are too busy serving foreign masters and have not prioritised protecting the people and sacred places from terrorists,” said Mufti Muneebur Rehman.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Armed EU Guards to Patrol Greece-Turkey Border
A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country’s border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe.
The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU’s external land border.
The teams are to arrive in Greece within days, the European commission announced today , although the precise numbers and makeup are yet to be decided.
A commission official said: “This is a new front. The teams are armed, but they can only use their arms in self-defence.”
Struggling to cope with the hundreds of migrants who are entering Greece every day through an inhospitable, unmonitored stretch of the country’s border with Turkey near the town of Edirne, Athens appealed to Brussels for help at the weekend.
“The flows of people crossing the border irregularly have reached alarming proportions,” said Cecilia Malmström, commissioner for home affairs. “Greece is manifestly not able to face this situation alone.”
Some eight out of 10 migrants entering Europe this year have arrived in Greece via Turkey, according to Brussels. Some are illegal economic migrants, at the mercy of gangs of human traffickers; many are Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers, whose treatment by the Greek authorities the United Nations and the EU regard as indefensible.
“It is an appalling situation,” said the official. “The Greeks currently can’t handle it. It’s a small country facing huge pressure.”
The numbers entering Greece this year have almost quadrupled, to around 34,000 from around 9,000 last year.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The Intolerant Legacy of Multiculturalism
Speaking recently to young conservative members of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society had ‘utterly failed’. Not long before, Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), had argued that Germany should block the entrance of migrants from ‘alien cultures’, such as Turkey and the Middle East.
While Merkel’s comments raised a few eyebrows, it provoked little criticism. Seehofer, however, was accused of being a controversialist and of pandering to the right-wing. This is peculiar, because Merkel’s statement also alluded to the idea that certain cultures are not easily compatible with the ‘German way of life’. She suggested Germany should be more assertive in demanding integration from immigrants. The fact that there was so little criticism of the chancellor shows how defensive old-style multiculturalists have become.
Merkel’s statement is only the latest contribution to a vociferous debate about the merits of a multicultural society. Germany seems to have split into two groups with apparently different views on the nature of modern Germany. This became clear when German president Christian Wulff said, during his October speech to commemorate German reunification, that Islam had become a part of Germany. While supporters of multiculturalism saw this as an affirmation of reality, arguing that immigrants had the right to demand that their cultural and religious differences be recognised and respected, others thought that Wulff was selling out on German values. While some see diversity as a positive thing, then, others use it to make a case against immigration.
However, because it is framed in terms of being ‘for’ or ‘against’ multiculturalism, the debate about immigration in Germany is very narrow. Multiculturalism was not something which developed as a response to the reality of diverse communities forced to live together. Rather, it was a policy imposed on society from above. As such, it represented neither an acceptance of immigration nor a symbol of openness and tolerance. It was the product of measures instituted by national governments and local authorities to diffuse the pressure imposed upon them by immigration.
[…]
Yet it is important to see that the idea of ‘alien cultures’, which are apparently not compatible with German society, was always at the very core of multiculturalism itself. Firstly, the linking of immigration, social work and integration implied that social problems arose from the presence of these allegedly culturally distinct peoples within German society. Hence, it was not the rise of unemployment and the closures of traditional industrial workplaces which were perceived as the main problem, but immigrants themselves — immigrants who could no longer be integrated into the workforce and who began, in part, to rely on Germany’s social security system.
Moreover, the multiculturalist ideal did not seek to overcome differences. Its advocates never pleaded for a truly open Germany and certainly never propagated equal rights for everyone. Rather, multiculturalism was used to diffuse anger created by immigration by celebrating cultural differences — and thus it placed division rather than equality at the centre of its ideology. That is, different peoples should have the right to express their identities, explore their own histories, formulate their own values, pursue their own lifestyles.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘I Always Cry at Weddings’: Tearful Bride Led Away in Handcuffs After Police Target Suspected Sham Marriage
A ‘bride-to-be’ was was led across a city centre street in a full-length white dress and handcuffs today after a raid targeting a suspected sham marriage.
Police and UK Border Agency (UKBA) staff swooped on the ceremony in Sheffield Town Hall as a 36-year-old Afghan ‘groom’ and his Slovak ‘bride’ were preparing to tie the knot in the city’s Register Office.
They were arrested by the waiting officers along with two guests.
All four were led past bemused shoppers and into waiting police vans.
The handcuffed ‘groom’ — thought to be a failed asylum seeker — was led out first wearing a single-breasted suit and was held by a uniformed and a plain-clothed officer.
His ‘bride’, dressed in a floor length white gown with intricate beading across the front, followed soon after and looked clearly upset.
Detective Sergeant Alisdair Duncan, who led the operation, said the raid comes after a summer of intense UKBA activity against suspected scam marriages which is beginning to see results.
‘The couple were due to get married a 10.30am and we’ve just disrupted that wedding — we believe an Afghan male and a Slovak bride together with a couple of guests,’ he said.
‘We’ve arrested four people.
‘The message is that we can disrupt these weddings. There are laws there and we’re enforcing them.’
Asked whether raids like today’s are having an impact, he said: ‘There were quite a few weddings taking place but these have really tailed off now. So it is having an impact, yes.’
‘We’ve had so much publicity you wonder why people continue.’
A UKBA spokesman said 53 sham wedding were disrupted nationwide over the summer. He said this had led to 118 arrests.
Jeremy Oppenheim, the agency’s regional director for the North-East, Yorkshire and the Humber, said: ‘We will not tolerate immigration abuse and, once again, our immigration crime teams have shown that they will crack down on those attempting sham marriages.
‘Our aim now is to identify the organisers who would seek to profit from this kind of illegal activity and destroy their criminal business.
‘The UK Border Agency is working closely with registrars to identify marriages that may not be genuine.
‘We do not expect vicars or registrars to be experts in immigration law or spotting forged documents — that’s our job.
‘But, if they have any suspicions about whether a relationship is genuine, we would urge them to get in touch with us.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Met Police Get Hit by Political Correctness Bug as They Change Vice Squad Name
Scotland Yard’s famous Vice Squad has been renamed in a politically correct makeover.
The unit, which led some of the Metropolitan Police’s most celebrated cases in the capital’s seedy underworld, has a new title — the Serious Crime Directorate 9: Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command, or SCD9 for short.
The Met says the unit has been renamed to reflect its work combating ‘all forms of human exploitation’, not just prostitution and criminal activities in nightclubs and casinos.
But sources say the switch was ordered as the world ‘vice’ was thought to have negative connotations.
| [Return to headlines] |
How to Catch the ‘Jihadi Bug’
The anthropology of terrorism makes for compelling fieldwork. In his quest to understand what makes people kill and die for a cause, Scott Atran — an astute analyst of social, psychological and cultural issues — has met with the Hamas high command in Damascus, Syria, interviewed the plotters behind the 2002 Bali bombing, unpacked the web of connections behind the 9/11 and 2004 Madrid train attacks and been forced to flee for his life from militants in Indonesia and Pakistan unsettled by his probings.
His main finding is that terrorist organisations tend not to be the sophisticated, well-ordered hierarchies that we commonly suppose, but loose networks of friends and family who die not just for a cause but for each other. Who gets radicalised is often quite random: “Someone gets the jihadi bug, and friends follow, gathering force from sticking together.” Understanding these social dynamics, Atran believes, is key to tackling terrorism.
Talking to the Enemy is recommendable not just for its vivid insights into the motivation of terrorists, but also for its study of Islamic radicalisation and the anthropology of religion in general. It is worth reading for its demolishment of many of the simplistic ideas put forward by self-declared “scientific atheists” such as Sam Harris, Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins, who see religion as the root of intolerance and campaign with missionary zeal for its eradication.
Dawkins has argued, for example, that suicide bombers are brainwashed in religious schools. Yet none of the 9/11 hijackers or the Madrid train-bombers attended a religious school, and the one London Underground bomber who did so attended only briefly. Indeed evidence shows that in Muslim communities the deeper a person’s religious scholarship, the less likely he or she is to be involved in jihadist activities.
The suggestion by Harris and others that the world would be less violent without religion — and especially without Islam — also looks hollow when you consider the crimes against humanity committed by atheists. Prior to 2001, for instance, one of the most prolific dispensers of suicide terrorism was the secular Tamil Tigers. In trying to understand, or predict, terrorist activity, it makes scientific sense to look beyond religion, such as to the social dynamics of particular friendship networks and the recruitment strategies of jihadist organisations whose agendas are usually avowedly political.
The scientific atheists’ disregard of evidence when making their case “makes me almost embarrassed to be an atheist”, says Atran. He is on strong ground: gathering data first-hand is not something Atran seems shy of, even if it means risking his own life.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Naked Truth: Why Women Shrug Off Lousy Sex
Your girlfriend isn’t satisfied in bed. Does it matter?
For some couples, the answer might be a resounding yes. But for many women, a lack of sexual desire or pleasure isn’t worth getting worked up about. Studies find that while one-third to nearly one-half of women report sexual function problems, only about 10 percent are worried about those troubles.
Unsurprisingly, the 10 percent of women who experience both problems with desire and stress about sexual function have received the bulk of the research attention — they’re the ones with real problems, after all. But studies on the happily dysfunctional might provide hints into the factors that influence sexual distress. (The results could also give these women a hint of what they were missing.) …
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Past Climate Change Influenced Human Evolution
AS THE climate changes and the world warms, will humans evolve to handle the effects? Maybe, if the Yoruba people of west Africa’s response to living in arid conditions is anything to go by. Whether there is enough time to adapt is another matter.
The Yoruba have been exposed, historically, to the dry conditions of the Sahel on the edge of the Sahara desert. To find out whether they had evolved to cope, Andres Moreno at Stanford University in California and colleagues looked at the variation of a gene known to be involved in water retention in the kidney, called FOXI1, in DNA samples from 20 Europeans, 20 east Asians and 20 Yoruba.
The team found that 85 per cent of the Yoruba had an identical sequence of genetic information that was longer than it would have been if it was produced by random recombination and genetic shuffling. Instead, they suggest that it had been naturally selected (BMC Evolutionary Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-267).
The length of the genetic signature suggests that the change occurred in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years, which could have coincided with the initial stages of the desertification of the Sahara. They also analysed a region of the gene in 971 samples from 39 human populations around the world, including the Yoruba, and found that the same genetic sequence was found at higher frequencies in lower latitudes. Since lower latitudes are more likely to be regions of water-stress, this suggests that the selection pressure was climate-related, says Moreno.
However, Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, points out that the evidence is only indirect, since we don’t know whether the genetic variance in the Yoruba people actually boosts their survival.
Nonetheless, if Moreno’s explanation is correct, the study opens up a new question: can humans evolve to adapt to climate change? “Over the long term, if the Earth keeps warming, I would not be surprised to see genetic shifts,” says anthropological geneticist Anne Stone at Arizona State University in Tempe…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Travails of Modern Islam
By Daniel Pipes
[…]
To start with, the Islamic religion prevails in majority-Muslim countries stretching from Senegal to Indonesia, and is not simply a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Muslim people can now be found in substantial numbers in Europe, North America, Latin America, and indeed, Oceania.
The Islamic religion is also a civilization. One scholar gave it the name Islamicate, suggesting it can be seen along the same lines as the Italianate. I find this a useful concept. Islamicate civilization includes non-Muslims who live in majority Muslim countries and who share certain attributes. For example, art can be called Islamicate. You can usually tell which is Muslim art; it’s not exactly Islamic as it’s not connected to the religion.
I spent the first part of my career trying to understand the nature of the connection between Islam and other aspects of life. In particular I took a topic that’s a little bit exotic for the dissertation and my first book, titled Slave Soldiers and Islam. I examined a form of military organization which is unique to the Muslim world and asked how can this phenomenon be connected to the religion of Islam, how can slaves be used as soldiers within these organizations? Of course, slaves were used as soldiers in emergency capacities in various places at various times, but the Muslim use of slaves as soldiers between roughly the years 800 and 1800 was not occasional and not only during emergencies. It was a centralized, very significant institution called the Mamluk Institution, or the Janissary Institution, and could be found over the centuries in different continents.
What possible connection could there be with what is happening today? To make a long story short, my thesis was that Islam demands of Muslims are so onerous to fulfil that for various reasons the Muslim populations withdrew from political life. As a result of this, the rulers needed to reach out to non-Muslims and the best way to do that was through this exotic form of slavery. That insight was one a step towards the larger question of how Islam influences politics.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Why Complex Life Probably Evolved Only Once
The universe may be teeming with simple cells like bacteria, but more complex life — including intelligent life — is probably very rare. That is the conclusion of a radical rethink of what it took for complex life to evolve here on Earth.
It suggests that complex alien life-forms could only evolve if an event that happened just once in Earth’s history was repeated somewhere else.
All animals, plants and fungi evolved from one ancestor, the first ever complex, or “eukaryotic”, cell. This common ancestor had itself evolved from simple bacteria, but it has long been a mystery why this seems to have happened only once: bacteria, after all, have been around for billions of years…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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