Indexes Rally on Fed Move and Strong Retail Sales; Dow Gains 2%
Stocks rallied strongly in the United States on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve’s decision to buy more government securities to stimulate the economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 219.71 points, or 1.96 percent, to close at 11,434.84, a two-year high, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 23.10 points, or 1.93 percent, in preliminary figures, and the Nasdaq composite gained 37.07, or 1.46 percent.
Equity markets have been rising steadily since early September, partly in anticipation of stimulative steps by the Federal Reserve, which announced on Wednesday that it would purchase $600 billion in Treasuries in an effort to push down long-term interest rates and spark lending. The Dow has risen more than 14 percent in the past two months, retracing its losses since the financial crisis took hold in September 2008, while the Standard & Poor’s index is up 16 percent.
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Sen. Gregg Warns US: ‘We’re Greece’ in a Few Years
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., warns that if the United States doesn’t quickly cut its deficit and debt, it will become like Greece in a few years.
“This nation is on a course where if we don’t do something about it, get federal situation, the fiscal policy [under control], we’re Greece. We’re a banana republic,” Gregg told CNBC.
“Our status as a nation is threatened by what we’ve got coming at us in the area of deficit and debt. And it’s only a few more years, at the most, that we have to work with here before the market says, ‘Sorry, your currency is something we cannot continue to defend.’
Last month, the U.S. government posted its second straight annual budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion as lingering unemployment constrained tax revenue. The shortfall totaled $1.294 trillion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, second only to the $1.416 trillion deficit in 2009, the Treasury Department said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: 8 in 10 Spaniards Don’t Want Zapatero to Run in 2012
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 1 — The anti-deficit measures launched by Spain’s socialist government have met with widespread negativity from the electorate, with 8 out of 10 Spaniards saying that they do not want the Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to stand at the next general elections in 2012. The survey was carried out by the Noxa institute for today’s edition of the La Vanguardia newspaper.
An overwhelming majority of those questioned (80%) believes that Zapatero should not run for a third term in office, while only 18% think that he should. But the general lack of confidence is also affecting the leader of the opposition People’s Party, Mariano Rajoy, with 70% saying that he should stand down as head of the party, with only 27% wanting him to continue.
The stance against Zapatero’s running for election has become firmer in the last few months. The figure has grown by 15 points since January, from 63% to 78%. Of his potential successors, the deputy PM and Interior Minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, is the preferred choice for 1 in 4 Spaniards, while other candidates, such as the Defence Minister, Carme Chacon, and the Infrastructure Minister, Jose’ Blanco, are at least 20 points ahead of Zapatero in the opinion polls.
Pessimism towards the state of the economy is the order of the day, with 88% considering it “bad” or “very bad”, with 39% and 49% respectively, compared to 86% a year ago. Only 4% of those asked consider the economic situation to be “good” or “very good”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Northern Rock Chief Quits… But Taxpayers Will be Paying Him £82,000-a-Month Until April to Do Nothing
The chief executive of nationalised bank Northern Rock will be paid more than £80,000-a-month by the taxpayer after quitting his job, it was revealed today.
Gary Hoffman, 50, has stepped down with immediate effect but will be on gardening leave for the next six months before joining NBNK Investments.
He is not being given a severance package but will reportedly carry on being paid his £58,000-a-month salary and £23,000-a-month pension contribution.
The company has also said he will continue to receive a £1,000-a-month car and petrol allowance.
His bumper pay packet for the bank, which is wholly owned by the taxpayer following a state bailout in February 2008, sparked fury at a time of drastic spending cuts.
Brian Cole, Unite officer said: ‘Unite is disgusted that Northern Rock has awarded Gary Hoffman a golden goodbye of £500,000.
‘The award of half a million pounds for Mr Hoffman to put his feet up represents a punch in the stomach for the 2,500 Northern Rock employees who have been sacked by Northern Rock during the last two years.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
34 Warships Sent From US for Obama Visit
New Delhi: The White House will, of course, stay in Washington but the heart of the famous building will move to India when President Barack Obama lands in Mumbai on Saturday.
Communications set-up and nuclear button and majority of the White House staff will be in India accompanying the President on this three-day visit that will cover Mumbai and Delhi.
He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there beginning Saturday. The measure has been taken as Mumbai attack in 2008 took place from the sea.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CAIR Sues Oklahoma for Banning Islamic Law
Unindicted terrorist co-conspirator reacts after 70% of voters approve
The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced today it will file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state ballot measure that bars judges from considering Islamic law in any ruling.
On Tuesday, with about a dozen other states watching, Oklahoma became the first state to put before voters the proposition that Islamic courts, Islamic law — known as Shariah — and Shariah-based court decisions should be banned.
[…]
As a bill in Oklahoma legislature, the Shariah ban, called “Save Our State,” received the support of 82 of 92 members in the state House and 41 of 43 members in the Senate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lawsuit Filed in Okla. Against Islamic Law Ban
An Oklahoma Muslim filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday to block a state constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters that would prohibit state courts from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases.
The measure, which got 70 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, was one of several on Oklahoma’s ballot that critics said pandered to conservatives and would moved the state further to the right.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, seeks a temporary retraining order and injunction to block the election results from being certified by the state Election Board on Nov. 9. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges the ballot measure transforms Oklahoma’s Constitution into “an enduring condemnation” of Islam by singling it out for special restrictions by barring Islamic law, also known as Sharia law.
“We have a handful of politicians who have pushed an amendment onto our state ballot and then conducted a well-planned and well-funded campaign of misinformation and fear,” said Muneer Awad, who filed the suit and is executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. “We have certain unalienable rights, and those rights cannot be taken away from me by a political campaign.” About 20,000 and 30,000 Muslims live in Oklahoma, Awad estimated.
Legal experts have also questioned the measure.
Joseph Thai, a professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law, said the ballot measure is “an answer in search of a problem.” He said he knows of no other state that has approved similar measures.
“There is no plausible danger of international law or Sharia law overtaking the legal system,” Thai said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He said courts only consider international law when deciding issues involving a federal treaty, a business contract or a will that incorporates international law.
Thai said the ballot measure “raises thorny church-state problems as well” and could even affect a state judge’s ability to consider the Ten Commandments.
“The Ten Commandments, of course, is international law. It did not originate in Oklahoma or the United States,” Thai said.
The measure is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. It’s author, Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs, said it was not intended to attack Muslims but to prevent activist judges from relying on international law or Islamic law when ruling on legal cases.
“The threat posed by activist judges is clear,” Duncan said. “It shouldn’t matter what the law in France or any other European country is.”
Duncan described the measure as “a pre-emptive strike” in Oklahoma, where he said activist judges are not an imminent problem. But some judges elsewhere, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, believe courts should look to the law of other countries for guidance when deciding cases, he said.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
‘Obama Comes Across as Cold, Arrogant and Elitist’
It was a failure of historic proportions. With US President Barack Obama’s Democrats having lost control of the House, there seems little hope for progress during his two remaining years, say German commentators. Obama himself, they say, bears much of the blame.
On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama and his Democratic party were issued a stinging defeat in the mid-term elections as the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives and installed themselves in 22 governor’s mansions.
Though the Democrats narrowly were able to keep control of the Senate, the Republicans, who rode the wave of anti-incumbent sentiment and populist anger over the economy into office, now have the power to determine the House’s legislative agenda — and to block Obama proposals. Indeed, Republican leaders in the House have already promised that their first order of business will be to repeal Obama’s health care reform — his signature achievement.
Several German opinion-makers were clear that the election was more of a referendum on the president, who comes across as “cold, arrogant, and elitist,” and less of an endorsement of the Republicans and their policies. There is widespread agreement in the editorial pages that Obama failed to make the case for his administration’s accomplishments, a fact that he himself has acknowledged.
The ‘True Victors’
But the biggest challenge for Europeans appears to be understanding the role of the Tea Party activists — described as the “true victors” of Tuesday’s elections — and predicting what kind of influence they will have over the next two years.
Congressman John Boehner, the Republican from Ohio who stands to be the next Speaker of the House — and third in line for the presidency — made his first call on election night to supporters of the Tea Party movement in southern Ohio, and according to The Washington Post, told them: “I’ll never let you down.”
The effect of the elections on US-German relations were downplayed in Berlin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman told reporters on Wednesday that the German-American friendship doesn’t rest on the shoulders of just one person, namely Barack Obama, and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the American election was a vote on domestic policy, not foreign policy.
Still, the new balance of power has been cause for discussion.
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Doesn’t Rule Out Bypassing Congress and Using EPA Regulations to Cap Carbon Emissions
In a White House press conference Wednesday, President Barack Obama did not rule out using regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency to cap carbon emissions in the United States without an act of Congress.
Meanwhile, on October 25, the EPA announced new regulations to limit “greenhouse gas” emissions by heavy-duty trucks and buses.
In the last Congress, the House of Representatives passed a “cap-and-trade” bill that would have forced carbon emissions caps on U.S. industry in the interest of protecting the planet against warming. However, the Senate never voted on the bill.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is Here to Stay
We have had a change in party control of the House and made some headway in the Senate but don’t expect to see a concentrated effort to rescind ObamaCare. We may see some minor changes in the health care act but do not look for it to be repealed. I say this because we will have the same GOP leadership in January that we had before this past Tuesday’s election. Because of this I only expect token change, just enough to make some people happy and to appear that the Republicans are trying to appease the tea party rabble.
In the House of Representatives there are currently six different bills all of which purpose to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act…
[…]
…[neither] Congressmen John Boehner [nor] Eric Cantor’s names were on the list as cosponsors of a single one of these bills. These are the same two congressmen that will be in the top two positions in the House.
…they are only paying lip service when it comes to repealing ObamaCare and the best we can expect from them is to push for some minor changes in this already passed legislation.
[…]
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Asylum Seekers: The Albanians Are Coming!
27 October 2010 De Morgen Brussels
“Belgium fears a tidal wave of Albanian asylum seekers,” announces De Morgen. The Belgian daily believes that the waiving of the visa requirement for Albanians in December will prompt a surge in the number of migrants entering the Schengen Area: “One third of the country’s population [1.3 million people] have applied for passports in order to travel to the European Union.” Belgian authorities are particularly concerned because the number of asylum seekers there already stands at four times the European average. Only Sweden and Cyprus have higher figures. Worse still, Belgium does not have a stable national government. As De Morgen explains, the problem has been exacerbated by “the total lack of a policy” on asylum, which could end in “all kinds of inhuman consequences”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Cherie Blair: It’s Wrong to See Muslim Women Who Wear the Veil as a Threat
Cherie Blair today launched a strident defence of Muslim women who wear a veil claiming that it was wrong to view them as a threat.
Speaking just two weeks after her sister Lauren Booth converted to Islam, the former Prime Minister’s wife stressed that it was essential to respect people’s right to dress how they choose.
‘We use the appearance of women as a metaphor of our fear of a supposed Islamic threat,’ she told Spain’s El Pais newspaper.
‘There are thousands of Muslims in Europe who participate in our way of life and intend continuing to do so and if they want to dress in a certain way because of their beliefs, we shouldn’t feel threatened.’
Asked about her sister’s recent conversion to Islam, she said simply: ‘It’s her choice.’
Mrs Blair’s comments were made in an interview ahead of the European Muslim Women of Influence Conference in Madrid.
She stressed it was important to fight against stereotypes that ‘above all affect Muslim women’.
‘We tend to believe they’re oppressed, insecure and incapable of thinking for themselves and that is not true,’ she said.
‘One of the things I try to do is help to explain that Islam is an open religion in which women have influence, whether they hide their hair or not.
‘I was educated by nuns who were completely covered up to their necks.’
Mrs Blair had previously attacked full face veils for women which she said failed to acknowledge ‘the woman’s right to be a person’.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme three years ago: ‘I think we can get very hung up about women’s clothes.
‘The question is whether we honour people’s religious beliefs or not.
‘I am happy to honour people’s religious beliefs, provided they are freely undertaken.
‘Women covering their heads, women dressing modestly, I have no problem with at all.
‘I think, however, that if you get to a stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because you can’t see her face, then you do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person in her own right.’
However, she appears to have rowed back on her previous comments.
Mrs Blair who has just returned from a speaking engagement in Brazil with her husband, also backed his controversial decision to invade Iraq.
She insisted former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar and his wife Ana Botella — staunch allies of Britain and the U.S. in their controversial war on terror — remained close friends.
She said: ‘I think my husband took the correct decision on Iraq. And he had the support of Aznar.
‘He and his wife Ana are very good friends of ours. Supporting people out of goodwill is one thing.
‘Another thing is defending yourself if your way of life is under threat. Then you have to stay firm and show you will not tolerate it.
‘At times, so that it’s made clear, you have to show it.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Enemies of Britain
FURY erupted last night after police allowed Islamic bigots’ hate-filled demo at the life sentence on MP murder-bid student Roshonara Choudhry. They yelled “Curse the judge” from the public gallery of the Old Bailey after Roshonara Choudhry, 21, was sentenced.
The twisted trio then hurled abuse at a terrified Muslim female juror wearing a headscarf, screaming: “Shame on you, sister.”
Security men bundled the ranting bigots from Court Seven after the disgraceful scenes.
But the three were allowed to continue their poison rants in the street — yelling “British soldiers must die.”
n a vile insult to the former Labour minister stabbed by burka-clad Choudhry, they screamed: “Death to Timms.” They also wielded placards saying, “Iraq, graveyard for the British troops”, “Islam will dominate the world” and “Stephen Timms go to hell”.
Trial judge Mr Justice Cooke did NOT use his powers to order their arrest for contempt of court.
And police LET the men walk away after their protest outside the court. Tory MP Patrick Mercer — a former soldier who served in Northern Ireland — said last night: “The judge needed to get a grip.
“If there is evidence of a juror being intimidated, the judge should use his powers not just to clear the court but to prosecute. It seems like an open-and-shut case of contempt of court.” Former Scotland Yard commander John O’Connor said the men should have been arrested for incitement to kill or other offences.
He said: “They should not have been allowed to get away with this because it means others will turn up at the courts to try to bring justice into disrepute. These people have abused the privileges of freedom of speech which we enjoy in this country — and which they would never get in other parts of the world.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Europe Regains Its Pride
Il Giornale, October 18, 2010
by Fiamma Nirenstein
The speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the failure of the multi-cultural model, is not a defeat. It is a challenge. A momentous challenge, not in the form of a trumpet fanfare, but a quiet call to common sense. As the Chancellor is known to be a liberal and moderate, she certainly did not intend through her intervention to attempt to close the doors of Germany or Europe. Nor would it be possible to suddenly halt immigration and, more generally, the processes of globalization that are part of today’s world, our world. But it was precisely her round, yet stern face and her common courtesy that pose the question to us in such a civilized way: her expressing the worry of young people to be trained for a decent job; our children who don’t know what to do with themselves; speaking of the unease of a biblical Babel in a world in which your neighbors have no concept of your language; the creation of ghettos, all alien and totally diverse from each other, each nationality unto itself, where the question of integration does not even arise, only the survival and closed preservation of one’s self identified by one’s own culture… all this brings the problem into focus better than sheaves of sociological analyses.
The point is that certain cultures very often have no intention of mixing in with ours, despite our actions and best intentions. Paris has become a city in which more than 200,000 people live in families where polygamy is common practice. In Italy 30,000 women have been subjected to genital mutilation and Islamic courts—ninety-odd in London alone—inflict sentences that are inconceivable.
And it is, in fact, Angela, who has some hope of posing the problem because she doesn’t use the same tone as Geert Wilders who, despite his equally-good reasons, is rejected by politically-correct public opinion. The Chancellor could pose the problem as Alexis de Tocqueville would have. In 1830, as is well-known, he offered our world a sharp and amazed description of someone seeing for the first time in America a rapidly and crazily spinning world made up of a multi-colored mosaic around which gyrated all the individual tiles used to create a liberal and democratic society. Greed, competence and motivation, but also a common spirit. Herds of people who came from far away to the shores of New England, Tocqueville says, who would soon forge a unified language around a common English tongue, all interested in promoting education, the fact of belonging to well-off classes in their homelands despite their economic straits: in that vast wilderness they faced everything that was new with the conviction of making it work in the name of an ideal based on that of the Pilgrim Fathers…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: First Woman Rabbi Since WWII Ordained
Germany’s first woman rabbi since World War II was ordained on Thursday in Berlin, marking another milestone in the resurgence of Jewish life in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.
The last woman rabbi ordained in Germany, Regina Jonas — who is also thought to have been the first worldwide — was murdered in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where an estimated one million Jews died.
On Thursday, Alina Treiger, 31, who was born in Ukraine but moved to Berlin in 2001, was ordained alongside two fellow students before an audience that included President Christian Wulff and 30 top rabbis — including some women — from around the world.
However, she will not recognised as a rabbi by orthodox Jews, who reject the ordination of women.
Treiger said at a press conference that she found it somewhat irritating that there was so much hype around her appointment, according to daily Berliner Morgenpost.
“I am annoyed; I haven’t actually done anything yet,” she said. “It’s only important that a rabbi is good. It’s not important whether it’s a man or a woman.”
Treiger will now lead the Jewish communities in the cities of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst in Lower Saxony. She said youth work was important to her. Jewish life had to go on in a country that had once resolved to exterminate Jews.
“The Holocaust is for us a case of working through the grief process,” she said.
The Holocaust claimed the life of her predecessor Jonas, who was ordained in 1935 in Offenbach. She was transported to Auschwitz death camp and murdered there in 1944.
Treiger was born in 1979 in then-Soviet Ukraine, where communism prevented religion from playing any public role in life.
But after communism collapsed, Treiger went to Moscow at the age of 18 and studied social work. She then came to Berlin in 2001 and went on to study at the liberal Jewish seminary, the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam. She learned German as well as Hebrew and completed her studies in Israel.
The Local/DAPD/dw
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
German Muslim Leader Worried Over Growing Anti-Islam Hysteria
A prominent German Muslim leader expressed serious concern over the growing anti-Islam hysteria in his country, fuelled by right-wing populist politicians and the media.
Meeting with the Berlin-based foreign press Wednesday evening, the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek said, ‘I am concerned about the situation which we are facing.’
He pointed out the animosity towards Muslims was ‘the fastest growing form of racism’ in Germany.
Mazyek said Islam bashing had become ‘socially acceptable,’ even in German intellectual circles.
He added it was ‘frightening’ to note that most Germans would support restricting the religious freedom of Muslims, according to a recent survey released by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, affiliated to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Mazyek warned that this hysterical anti-Islam debate would ‘ultimately damage Germany.’
He criticized the nation’s media for not seriously questions some of the baseless assertions made about Islam.
The official emphasized that it was ‘the duty of German society as a whole to confront this form of racism.’
The activist lamented the fact that German Muslims were facing ‘daily discrimination and hostility.’
He referred to examples of an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim violence, including the recent brutal murder of an Iraqi Muslim by two neo-Nazis in the eastern city of Leipzig and the series of ‘almost monthly attacks against mosques’ throughout the country.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Escort Claims She Had Sex With Berlusconi and Other Politicians
Rome, 3 Nov. (AKI) — A 28-year-old prostitute has claimed she had sex twice with Italy’s flamboyant premier Silvio Berlusconi as well as with public administration minister Renato Brunetta and the mayor of the northern city of Parma.
Nadia Macri says she visited Berlusconi’s residences three times and slept with him twice, once at his holiday villa in Sardinia in 2009 and later at his home in Arcore near Milan in April this year, according to Italian media reports on Wednesday.
He personally paid her 10,000 euros cash for the encounters, Macri reportedly said. She claimed that she was among around 25 young women who were guests at Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa.
Sex sessions took place around the villa’s swimming pool, where the women took turns to service Berlusconi, news reports cited Macri as saying. Marajuana had been placed in every guest’s bedroom although Macri said she had never seen him “smoking”, according to the reports.
She made the claims to prosecutors who have questioned her in a prostitution probe centred on a prominent Italian show business agent, TV presenter and a councillor for the northern Lombardy region who is Berlusconi’s former dental hygienist.
Macri also told prosecutors she had sex with the mayor of Parma, Pietro Vignali, a Berlusconi ally, who paid her 500 euros for her services. She picked him up in an upscale hotel near Parma’s rail station and they had sex at his villa.
“When I need money, I go to Parma,” she was cited as telling prosecutors.
Macri, an aspiring showgirl claims she was introduced to Berlusconi through Italian TV presenter Emilio Fede and prominent show business agent, Lele Mora, who are both at the centre of the prostitution probe.
She also claimed to have had sex twice in 2006 with Renato Brunetta, now Italy’s public administration minister and a former economic advisor to Berlusconi and member of the European Parliament.
Macri reportedly said Brunetta paid her 300 euros and gave her jewellery and clothes. He introduced her to a leading Italian lawyer, Carlo Taormina, who she hoped would help her regain her young son in a custody battle.
Brunetta has strenuously denied having had sex with Macri and claims he only met her once at a conference in 2006.
Vignali denies having met Macri at all and says he has never paid for sex — a claim made repeatedly by Berlusconi, who has been embroiled in several previous sex scandals involving escorts and underage girls.
Last month, Italian media reports linked him to a Moroccan teenage belly dancer known by her stage name ‘Ruby’. The girl was quoted as telling prosecutors she attended parties at Berlusconi’s villa near Milan when she was 17 and that he gave her cash, jewellery, clothes and a car, but claims they did not have sex.
Ruby, whose real name is Karima Keyek, has reportedly been under investigation for prostitution since 2009.
Opposition politicians this week called for his resignation for abuse of office after he was accused of personally intervening to obtain Keyek’s release from police custody when she was arrested in May on suspicion of stealing cash and valuables from a female acquaintance in Milan.
The 74-year-old prime minister has claimed he only tried to help Keyek out of kindness. On Tuesday, he defended his apparent playboy lifestyle stating: “It’s better to be passionate about beautiful women than to be gay.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Town Appeals to Supreme Court Over ‘Baby Bonus’ Ruling
Initiative found to be discriminatory against non-Italians
(ANSA) — Tradate, October 27 — The center-right council of this northern Italian town near Varese decided on Wednesday to appeal to Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation against a Milan court ruling last month that the town’s ‘baby bonus’ could not be given exclusively to Italian couples.
The Milan court not only ruled that it was discriminatory not to give the bonus to non-Italian residents but ordered that the town compensate those who have been excluded from the initiative since 2007.
The court said the 500-euro bonus should have gone to all families of children whose births were recorded in the town registry starting in 2007 if at least one of the parents had been a town resident for at five years or more. The local council, composed of members of the national government partners the People of Freedom (PdL) party and Northern League, said it would take the matter “to the highest court in the land” because the measure was “adopted in good faith with no intention of being discriminatory”.
“We have decided to oppose the ruling because we know we are in the right and we are convinced the supreme court will agree with us,” Mayor Stefano Candiani of the Northern League said.
“We have no intention of paying back bonuses to non-Italian families because the motivation behind our initiative was to help the Tradate families,” he added.
According to the mayor, the Milan court ruling in favor of immigrant families was “politically motivated”.
The town administration has decided to suspend the baby bonus’ until there is a reply from the Court of Cassation. The town has already seen a previous appeal rejected, one which defended the ‘Italians only’ baby bonus on the grounds that it was aimed at “combating the sharp demographic drop among Italians”.
The center-right majority on Wednesday rejected two motions presented by the opposition in the town assembly that called for full application of the Milan court ruling and reactivating the bonus “without its discriminatory conditions”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The European Court of Human Rights Must Not Override Our Democratically Elected Parliament
The Prime Minister was reported to be very angry indeed on receiving legal advice that in the light of prospective legal actions by prisoners in jail denied the vote, he had no option but to haul down the Union Flag, raise a white one, and surrender to the judicial imperialists of the European Court of Human Rights.
The only thing left to be decided is whether the surrender should be unconditional or whether our masters in Strasbourg will allow the United Kingdom to retain some shreds of dignity as we do their bidding.
Now, just how could this be so? In that rousing speech at the Conservative Party Conference the Foreign Secretary declared that Parliament was sovereign. Indeed it was he told us, “an eternal truth” that “what a sovereign parliament can do, a sovereign can also undo”.
I happen to think that those judges grossly abused their powers, which stem from the European Convention on Human Rights. That was designed to protect European people from the kind of atrocities and denial of rights to life and liberty that were perpetrated by the National Socialists, Communists and their like. Churchill and Attlee would not have envisaged that it would be used to over-ride a democratically elected sovereign parliament here.
Whether I am right or wrong about that, if William Hague is right in what he told the Conservative Party, a simple one-clause bill should be enough to assert that either this particular Court of Justice ruling, or all of its rulings, are null, void and without any effect in this Kingdom. Perhaps just to make sure, it might be best to implement Mr Cameron’s manifesto promise to repeal our own domestic Human Rights Act too.
So what is the problem? Have the lawyers told the Prime Minister that our sovereignty is, well, not quite as sovereign as it used to be? Or is that the Prime Minister has been overruled by the Deputy Prime Minister, who does not believe in all that old-fashioned nonsense of the sovereignty of the British people, or that of Parliament, over a ragbag of foreign lawyers in Strasbourg.
Oh, the ironies of history. The Court created to protect us from anti-democratic forces should now turn on its creators slapping down the longest lasting democracy in Europe as being unfit to manage its own affairs.
What will Mr Hague have to say to the Conservative Party Conference next year? That is, if anyone turns up to listen.
…
I am glad that my blog on “Women’s History” gave so many of you so much amusement. It is an essentially comical concept. Indeed, enough to make me think of joining Franks on his way to the straight white male shame parade. As Tanuki and Blackdog pointed out there is also transgender, lesbian, bisexual gay and black history being taught, which as Bersher and others said is no encouragement to boys in particular to read history.
Philgenes wrote well on the effects of forcing “Women’s History” on boys, something which also concerned Henrietta. I strongly aggee with Ooopiop that there is no such thing as “Women’s History”; just history which has involved both men and women, and with Daniele that it has to be taught as sequence of events. And how right was Surrey_puma to say that we should not apply our current standards to historical events. However, Benarnulfsen also spilled a bibful saying that there is no hope of rational dialogue with the adherents of “equally valid “ doctrines. As Valeriekal noted, those feminist historians dislike succesful women like Margaret Thatcher, whereas as Lickyalips reminded us some of the gay and women’s rights people support Islam. Perhaps Jaybee 001 should be thanked for reminding us that Lenin recognised the work of some of these people when he observed that “when you destroy the family, you destroy the country”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Curse the Judge, Shout Fanatics as the Muslim Girl Who Knifed MP Smiles as She Gets Life
A judge was subjected to a tirade of abuse in his own courtroom yesterday as he jailed an Al Qaeda-inspired Muslim woman for attempting to assassinate an MP.
Islamist protesters harangued Mr Justice Cooke from the public gallery at the Old Bailey, shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘God is great’), ‘British go to hell’ and ‘Curse the judge’.
The outbursts came as Roshonara Choudhry, 21, was sentenced to life imprisonment for stabbing former minister Stephen Timms. Choudhry smiled broadly as the judge told her: ‘You said you ruined the rest of your life. You said it was worth it. You said you wanted to be a martyr.’
Outside, a second group demonstrated as the judge told the high-flying student — who stabbed the politician twice in the stomach as ‘punishment’ for voting for the Iraq invasion — that she must serve at least 15 years behind bars.
The chaotic scenes unfolded as Home Secretary Theresa May dramatically revealed that the Al Qaeda gang behind last week’s ‘Lockerbie-style’ cargo plane bomb plot are already working in the UK.
In court the judge pointedly contrasted Mr Timms’ Christian beliefs with the ‘distorted thinking’ of his attacker, who refused to recognise the court and appeared by videolink for her sentencing.
‘I understand that he (Mr Timms) brings to bear his own faith, which upholds very different values from those which appear to have driven this defendant,’ he said.
‘Those values are those upon which the common law of this country was founded and include respect and love for one’s neighbour, for the foreigner in the land, and for those who consider themselves enemies, all as part of one’s love of God.
‘These values were the basis of our system of law and justice and I trust that they will remain so as well as motivating those, like Mr Timms, who hold public office.’
The stabbed MP yesterday backed calls for an overhaul of U.S. websites hosting terror videos.
University student Choudhry attacked Mr Timms after becoming radicalised by online sermons from the extremist preacher suspected of masterminding the recent airline ‘ink bomb’ plot.
The MP, attacked at a constituency surgery, said: ‘My real worry about it all is that a very bright young woman with everything to live for would reach the conclusion that she should throw it all away by attempting to kill the local MP.
‘It is puzzling and alarming that she seems to have reached the conclusion by spending time on some website.
‘That raises questions about what’s on the web. As I understand it, the material she accessed would be illegal if it were hosted in the UK.’
Hundreds of videos inciting violence, including clips by the U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who inspired Choudhry to attempt to assassinate the MP, were removed from YouTube yesterday.
Their removal followed a private speech in the United States by security minister Baroness Neville-Jones in which she called on the White House to ‘take down this hateful material’.
Mr Timms, 55, describing the moment he was stabbed in East London in May by the smiling student, said: ‘I shouted out, “What was that for?”‘
‘That was the last thing that I expected to happen and there was absolutely no explanation to me. She didn’t say a word. It was a complete bolt out of the blue.’
After being disarmed by the MP’s assistant and held by a security guard, Choudhry told detectives the stabbing was ‘to get revenge for the people of Iraq’.
Sentencing Choudhry after she was found guilty of attempted murder and two counts of having an offensive weapon, the judge said that if she had succeeded in killing Mr Timms he would have given her a whole-life sentence, meaning she would never be released.
He told her: ‘You intended to kill in a political cause and to strike at those in Government by doing so.
‘You did so as a matter of deliberate decision-making, however skewed your reasons, from listening to those Muslims who incite such action on the internet.
‘You are an intelligent young lady who has absorbed immoral ideas and wrong patterns of thinking and attitudes.
‘It is not only possible, but I also hope that you will come to understand the distorted nature of your thinking, the evil that you have done and planned to do, and repent of it.’
He added: ‘You do not suffer from any mental disease. You have simply committed evil acts coolly and deliberately.’
Choudhry, from East Ham, East London, spoke only to confirm her name when she appeared by videolink for sentencing yesterday.
Wearing a black headscarf, she sat placidly blinking behind her glasses as she watched proceedings on a screen in front of her.
The court heard she was a straight-A pupil and top university student at King’s College, London. She had hoped to become a teacher but dropped out weeks before carrying out the attack.
English language lecturer Alan Fortune said she was an outstanding student who had been expected to achieve a first class honours degree, adding: ‘The world was her oyster.’
But the judge told her: ‘There is no remorse on your part and you refuse to recognise the jurisdiction of this court over you in respect of your attempts to murder the person chosen by your fellow constituents in the East End of London, including Muslims, to represent them in the democratic institutions of government in this country.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Cherie Blair: It’s Wrong to See Muslim Women Who Cover Their Hair as a Threat
Cherie Blair today launched a strident defence of Muslim women saying it was wrong to see those who cover their hair or their body as a threat.
Speaking just two weeks after her sister Lauren Booth converted to Islam, the former Prime Minister’s wife stressed that it was essential to respect people’s right to dress how they choose.
‘We use the appearance of women as a metaphor of our fear of a supposed Islamic threat,’ she told Spain’s El Pais newspaper.
[…]
‘I am happy to honour people’s religious beliefs, provided they are freely undertaken.
‘Women covering their heads, women dressing modestly, I have no problem with at all.
‘I think, however, that if you get to a stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because you can’t see her face, then you do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person in her own right.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Date Set for Laura Wilson Murder Trial
TWO people charged with the murder of teenage mum Laura Wilson appeared at Sheffield Crown Court yesterday morning.
Ishaq Hussain (21), Ferham Road, Rotherham, and a 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were remanded in custody until the next hearing to be held in February.
A trial, expected to last three weeks before a High Court judge, has been set for May next year.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Organised Squatters Inform Others on Gaining Legal Upper Hand
LONDON LETTER: Coming home from holidays to find people have moved into your home without your knowledge is a reality for some in the U.K.
CONNAN GUPTA returned from holiday to his home in Camberwell in London recently to find it occupied by five squatting Italians who had changed the locks.
The squatters, students who said they could not afford London’s high housing costs, refused to leave, leaving Gupta locked out of his home for a fortnight.
In May, Abu-Taher Ahmed (68) and his wife and four children came back to their property in Tottenham — which they had left while some building work was going on — to find eight Romanians inside. He told a local newspaper later that they refused to let them in, while sipping champagne, sunbathing and throwing a party. For comfort, they had even installed their own satellite dish.
Ahmed climbed through an open window where he was then confronted by the aggressive squatters, who ordered him to leave. He barricaded himself, his wife Iffet (52) and their children into the master bedroom for a weekend after police told him it was a civil matter. The eight demanded £3,000 to leave, but finally quit the property when police threatened them with arrest for breach of the peace.
Helped by internet forums, squatters have become more organised, even down to holding information evenings in a cafe in Hackney and another near Elephant and Castle every month.
Squatting itself is not a criminal offence in England and is covered by civil law.
It is illegal to gain entry by breaking in or damaging windows and doors — something which, squatters admit, is impossible to avoid unless someone has left a door or window unlocked.
Using utilities, such as electricity and gas, is also illegal, unless the squatters directly contact the suppliers — but the same courtesy does not under law have to be granted to the property-owners.
“When you move in you should note the reading on the electricity and gas meters and contact the suppliers telling them you wish to start paying for the fuel. A copy of such a letter can help show the police you are trying to pay. Don’t tell them you are squatting, as then they do not have a duty to supply you,” says the Advisory Service for Squatters.
Homeowners can ask the police to remove squatters from their home immediately without having to obtain an eviction order from the courts, though since it is a civil law matter, local constabulary can often be reluctant to get involved. However, the landlord or homeowner is the one in danger of running foul of the law if they force their way back in when there is someone inside.
The situation for the police is complicated because they themselves are in danger of breaching Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act if they violently enter a premises against opposition. Squatters are being told by some squatters’ advisory groups to “make sure you know the legal situation better than they do (not usually very difficult)”.
The occupation of family homes, obviously, brings squatters to greater, unpopular prominence. Sometimes their actions meet with a grudging approval — as long as they behave themselves once in occupation — given the large number of often large properties left vacant for years by wealthy owners in central London.
The squatters law is different in Scotland. By the Trespass Act (Scotland) 1865, it is a criminal offence to “lodge in any premises or encamp on” private property without the consent of the owner. The maximum penalty is a fine and up to 21 days in jail.
The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was supposed to improve owners’ rights by giving the opportunity to apply for “interim possession orders” (IPOs), though, in practice, it has changed little.
“This can be nasty, but has turned out to be not nearly so bad as everyone thought when it was going through parliament. It cannot be used on the majority of squatters, and so far there have been very few IPOs. Most IPOs which squatters defended have flopped and the owners have been forced to use the old procedures instead,” says the Advisory Service for Squatters.
Council properties, however, rather than private buildings, are the best target, since a surprising number are vacant: “Often quite reasonable properties are left empty because of mismanagement, bureaucracy or low demand on hard-to-let estates (as people do not want to move to them). If there are a lot of squatters the council will take longer to evict people,” says one internet guide.
Some council staff can be “unofficially sympathetic” to squatters and leave eviction until the properties are required, particularly if the people living there would simply have to rehoused by the local authority anyway. However, the councils, squatters’ organisations complain, have recently increased the numbers of “illegal or heavy-handed evictions”.
Repossessed houses are a favourite target, since the banks have to take the squatters to court as long as the previous occupants have been formally evicted. Meanwhile, pubs — a growing number of which are lying idle in the UK, some for years — have moved up squatters’ preference lists.
So far, the Gupta and Ahmed cases involving private homes would seem to be the exception. “Best avoided,” says one squatters’ guide.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Revolving Door Justice: 3 in 4 Offenders Return to Life of Crime After Punishment
Three quarters of offenders never leave their life of crime and go on to commit a further offence, figures showed today.
More than half of these were re-convicted within the first year alone, the Ministry of Justice said.
And offenders being monitored by the probation service went on to commit almost 600 serious further offences, including murder, rape and grievous bodily harm, in 2008/09.
In all, 74 per cent of offenders who were discharged from custody or started a court order between January and March 2000 were re-convicted within nine years.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Radical Website Publishes MP ‘Death List’
A website which influenced a young Muslim to stab an MP has posted dozens more MPs’ names on a ‘death list’ with an exhortation to Muslims to follow her example.
Revolutionmuslim.com was named by Roshonara Choudhry in her police interviews as one of the sites which radicalised her. Choudhry was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday for attempting to murder the former Labour minister Stephen Timms.
The site praises her as a “mujaahidah,” or holy warrior, saying: “We ask Allah to keep her safe and secure, to hasten her release and to reward this heroine immensely.”
It published a list of all the MPs who voted for the Iraq war together with an instruction to Muslims to try to kill them, saying: “We ask Allaah for her action to inspire Muslims to raise the knife of Jihaad against those who voted for the countless rapes, murders, pillages, and torture of Muslim civilians as a direct consequence of their vote.”
It also appears to incite further attacks on Mr Timms, publishing details of his constituency surgery times and venues, and even a link which shows readers where they can buy a £15 kitchen knife, similar to the one used by Choudhry, from Tesco Direct.
The website adds: “If you want to track an MP, you can find out their personal website after typing their name in this website. In their personal website, you can usually find the time and location of their surgeries where you can encounter them in person.”
The site then lists the 139 Conservative MPs that voted for the war and the 244 Labour MPs. It said that no Liberal Democrats voted for the war but added: “They have now formed a coalition government with the Conservatives.” Accompanying the statement is a prayer in Arabic to “destroy your enemy and the enemies of Islam” naming Mr Timms and the judge in the Choudhry case, Jeremy Cooke.
The website is hosted in the US, where the White House has been urged by British ministers to take urgent action against similar sites.
Patrick Mercer, a former chairman of the Commons homeland security subcommittee and one of the MPs on the ‘death list’, said: “If they think this will change my opinions or my conduct in any way, they can think again. These sites are extremely dangerous, as the case of Choudhry has shown, and this one must be taken down immediately.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sex Abuse Trial: Two More Guilty Verdicts
TWO more men have been found guilty of sexually abusing three teenage girls and three others have been cleared of similar charges at the end of a seven week trial at Sheffield Crown Court.
It brings the total of convicted defendants to five out of the eight on trial. They were all remanded in custody before being sentenced tomorrow.
Razwan Razaq (30), of Oxford Street, Clifton, was found guilty by a jury of having sex with two 13-year-old girls in 2008.
His 24-year-old brother Umar Razaq, of the same address, was found guilty of sexual activity with a 13-year-old and not guilty of raping a 16-year-old.
The jury also found Mohammed Zafran Ramzan (21), of Broom Grove, Broom, guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl and twice having sex with her 13-year-old cousin.
He was found not guilty of two further counts of rape.
Adil Hussain (20), of Nelson Street, Rotherham, was found guilty of under-age sex with a 13-year-old, but acquitted of three other sex abuse charges.
Mohsin Khan (21), of Haworth Crescent, Moorgate, was convicted of one charge of under-age sex with a 13-year-old and found not guilty of two other charges of sexual activity with the same girl.
Khan and Shazad Akbar (23), of Shirecliffe Lane, Shirecliffe, Sheffield, were both cleared of four joint charges of rape on a 16-year-old girl.
Saeed Hussain (29), of Hatherley Road, Eastwood, walked free after he was acquitted of two charges of inciting a 13-year-old to have sex with other men.
Shalzaad Hussain (22), of Clough Road, Masbrough, also walked free after the jury cleared him of one count of sexual activity with a 13-year-old.
The jury of seven women and five men spent six days deliberating over the verdicts.
The three teenage victims of the sex abuse were aged between 13 and 16 at the time of the offences during 2008 and are now 15 and 17.
All eight defendants denied the allegations throughout the trial.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Secret Double Life of a Police Sergeant Who Was Head of an Underworld Gang and Stored Machine Guns and Bullets at His Suburban Home
A respected police sergeant who led a secret double life as head of a ruthless underworld crime family was behind bars tonight.
Salim ‘Sal’ Razaq, 31, became a ‘mob boss in police uniform’ after assuming control of a drug and dirty money racket when his brother went to jail over a vicious turf war.
Officers found two Uzi sub-machine guns and a 9mm Sten sub-machine gun hidden in a suitcase under the stairs, when they raided his suburban home.
They also recovered 224 live rounds of ammunition from a shed, £72,000 in cash plus a knuckle-duster, balaclava and bullet-proof jacket.
Inside the house was a ‘tick list’ of names and amounts of money which police believe refered to drug contacts.
It is suspected he had also been using the police national computer to check on the movements of rival mobsters.
Razaq’s amazing double life emerged at Liverpool Crown Court where he was convicted of misconduct in a public office, perverting the course of justice, possession of fireams and ammunition and money laundering.
Colleagues at Nelson Police station in Lancashire regarded Razaq as a ‘copper’s cop’. They had no idea he had turned his home in Chorley Road, Preston, into a gangland HQ.
He was eventually caught after officers routinely picked up on a prison telephone conversation between him and his brother, 25-year old Hafiz in which they talked about a key witness to a kidnapping ‘being taken care of.’
Hafiz was known in the Preston underworld as ‘The Enforcer’, ‘Big Haf’ and ‘The Muscle’.
Now in Manchester Prison, he admitted perverting the course of justice and money laundering. His mother Gulsham Razaq, 58, of Chester Road, Preston, also admitted the perversion charge.
After Razaq was remanded in custody for sentencing, Andy Cooke, Lancashire’s Assistant Chief Constable said: ‘Razaq was nothing short of a criminal in a police uniform.
‘I am appalled that a police officer could be involved at the level he was in this criminality.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Eufor: Italian Contingent’s Mission Concludes
(ANSAmed) — SARAJEVO, OCTOBER 29 — After 15 years the Italian military mission in Bosnia has come to a close, and in recent days the last soldiers and officials part of the contingent, which was initially part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force (IFOR/SFOR), and which since December 2004 operated under the European stabilisation force EUFOR, are making their return to Italy. After the withdrawal of the contingent decided upon in August, Italy will remain present with several EUFOR command officials and will continue to contribute at NATO headquarters in Sarajevo.
With the return last weekend of 40 Carabinieri of EUFOR’s Integrated Police Unit (IPU), the mission of the European Gendarmerie Force led by Italy also came to an end, and next week nearly 80 Italian Army soldiers and officials will leave Bosnia. The IPU, with the remaining Turkish, Romanian and Dutch members, moved from the Italian Butmir 2 base to Butmir 1, formerly the headquarters of the operative component and EUFOR command, as well as NATO’s general headquarters in Sarajevo.
Meanwhile, the possibility of the voluntary conveyance of the entire Butmir 2 structure where the final activities for the mission will take place in the coming weeks, carried out by a group of Carabinieri, to the Bosnian armed forces is being considered.
Since the beginning of the EUFOR Althea operation in Bosnia, which initially involved 6,000 soldiers and whose numbers today have been reduced to less than one-third, the general level of security in the country has constantly improved, also thanks to the contribution of the Italian soldiers. After arriving in December of 1995 with the NATO force to enforce the Dayton Agreement, the Italian soldiers leave a country that has been reconstructed for the most part and that is on the way towards membership in the European and Atlantic organisations.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Al-Qaeda ‘Shopping for Arms’ In Chad
Algiers, 2 Nov. (AKI) — Al-Qaeda militants in northern Africa have been shopping for arms in Chad, according unnamed Algerian intelligence agents who were cited by Algiers-based newspaper Ennahar.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is using the estimated 100 million dollars earned between 2003 and 2010 from ransoms and drug trafficking to purchase weapons for use in for terror operations in Algeria and Mali, the newspaper said.
Al-Qaeda is also laundering money from illegal activities by investing in real estate, the report said. They have bought large tracts of land and villas in Niger, Mali and Mauritania, the newspaper said.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in September claimed responsibility for the abduction of seven foreigners, including five French citizens in Niger.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Married Women More Exposed to Violence
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, NOVEMBER 3 — Most women who suffer from violence are married and it is often the husband who is responsible for the rapes, kidnappings and physical and psychological violence. This is according to a report drawn up by the Algerian network of centres for violence against women, which was created in 2008 by the CIDDEF (Centre of Information and Documentation on Rights of Women and Children) in collaboration with the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
Of the 547 women who have turned to the 18 centres in the country over the last year, 65% are married, 10% are divorced, while 23% are single. In 75% of cases, husbands, ex-husbands and boyfriends are responsible for the acts of violence, while 24% are the work of fathers, brothers or other male family members. The remaining 1% of attacks are carried out by strangers.
University lecturers, women with degrees and illiterate women are all victims of violence, according to CIDDEF, though the more educated women do not put up with the situation for as long. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sharia Considers Rape of Wife a Crime, Tunisia’s Mufti
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, NOVEMBER 1 — A husband who rapes his wife commits a crime according to the Sharia (Islamic law), said Tunisia’s Mufti Othman Batik in an interview with the Arab-language weekly Al-Akhbar, speaking out against the fatwa (religious opinion) by the head of the Islamic Courts of Great Britain, Sheikh Abou Assayd. “Rape,” said Batik, “is a crime. Those who suffer it are assassinated morally. Therefore the victim has the right to bring charges against her rapist husband, as well as requesting a divorce.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hague on Collision Course With Israeli Government
William Hague’s decision to hold taboo-breaking talks with representatives of three groups at the forefront of the Palestinian civil disobedience movement has set him on collision course with Israel’s government.
The Foreign Secretary will meet the leadership of the increasingly assertive Palestinian groups on Wednesday, during his first visit to the Holy Land after taking office, and Israel fears the meetings could confer international legitimacy on the protesters.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the meeting because the identity of the Palestinian leaders involved has not yet been publicly disclosed. Privately, though, some officials voiced misgivings. “All I can say is that I hope he tries to get all opinions at hand from all sides,” one said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Catholic Assyrians in Iraq Paid the Price for Muslim Fundamentalist Incitements in Egypt
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — The attack by Islamic terrorists on the congregation of the Assyrian Our Lady of Deliverance Catholic church in central Baghdad, on October 31, resulted in killing of 52 catholic Assyrians, including two priests, 5 policemen, and wounding 75. 5 terrorists died either by detonating their explosive belts or being killed by the Iraqi security. The Martyrs Brigade of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), a Sunni militant umbrella group affiliated with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The gunmen had reportedly told the authorities from inside the church through a mobile phone that in exchange for setting the hostages free, they demanded the release of two Egyptian Christian women they insisted were Muslims and were being held against their will as prisoners by the Coptic Church in Egypt. They gave the Coptic Church 48 hours to respond to their demands.
A communique and an audio-video released by ISI, posted on radical Islamic forums confirmed that hostage taking in the Assyrian Catholic church was in part an action directed against the Coptic church in Egypt.
“In response to the call of Allah and the voice of the helpless women, Camelia Shehata and Wafaa Constantine and their sisters, held captive in the hands of the Cross Worshippers in Egypt, we, the suicide battalion of the Islamic State of Iraq have carried out this task. Our demands are simple and clear, our captive women in the hands of your Christian brethren in Egypt, in exchange for the Christians held by us in the Church.”
The chilling voice on the audio-video threatened the Vatican to “pressure them to release our captive sisters, or killing will reach all of you and [Coptic Pope] Shenouda will bring destruction to all the Christians of the region.” The audio went on to say “If you turn your churches into a prison for Muslim women, we will make them graveyards for you,” threatening to kill the Assyrian hostages if the group’s demand was not met.
Commenting on the Al-Qaida statements, Coptic activist Mark Ebeid said “My heart bleeds when I think of the possibility that over one hundred and twenty innocent Iraqi Christian brethren who went to Church on Sunday to pray, would pay the price for handing over to the Muslim fundamentalist two innocent Coptic women who never became Muslims, but some Salafi Sheikhs in Egypt decided to spread this unfounded allegations and convinced thousand of Muslims of their fabrications.” He added “Besides, the Coptic church would have never delivered two of its children, who sought refuge within its walls, to the fundamentalists.”
The audio ended by warning the Copts against not responding, otherwise, they would be opening the door to serious harm to Christians not only in Iraq, but also in Egypt, the Levant and other countries of the Middle East.
Coptic Pope Shenouda III was unaware of the hostage drama , as he was on a plane on his way back to Egypt from the Unites States. The 86-year old Coptic pontiff sent his condolences on Monday to the Assyrian Catholic Church in Iraq, expressing his “deepest sorrow for this tragic incident which killed a large number of innocent people in Iraq.”
The threats directed at the Coptic Church were covered by the majority of the Egyptian media, to assess its seriousness and possible danger to Egyptian Coptic churches.
President Mubarak and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar condemned the attack and the official spokesman of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Egypt categorically rejected the involvement of its name or its affairs in such criminal act.
Commenting on the incident, Bishop Marcos, chairman of the Coptic Church PR Committee, told the Egyptian media the Church is not afraid of the al-Qaeda threats which are issued by a group of terrorists, and that “God is the protector of the Copts.” He confirmed that the Coptic church has not imprisoned anyone and asserted that the two named Coptic women have never converted to Islam and were staying in monasteries for their safety. “All of these things are illusions in the minds of those sick people.”
Most analysts interviewed by the media downplayed the seriousness of the threat to the Coptic church in view of the absence of al-Qaeda off-shoots in Egypt, however, they all advised vigilance and precaution. Once more the conspiracy theory appeared, with either Israel or Iran as culprit.
Dr. Naguib Gobrail, head of the Egyptian Federation for Human Rights, asked the Interior Minister to take the threats seriously and held the Egyptian government responsible for the protection of its Coptic citizens.
Church sources said that church services are operating normally and the weekly Wednesday sermon given by Pope Shenouda, which is attended by thousands, will take place as usual.
It was reported that security around churches was stepped up in Egypt, and more security checking at the airports were carried out on citizens from Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and other countries.
Thirteen fundamentalists’ demonstrations have taken place every Friday in front of mosques in Egypt , demanding the release of Wafaa Constantine and Camelia Shehata from church prisons.
In 2004, Wafaa Constantine, a mother of two children was married to Father Youssef, a Coptic priest in Abu Matameer, Beheyra province; she experienced serious marital problem because her husband’s legs were amputated after an accident, causing a change in his behavior. In order to get a divorce, she decided to convert to Islam. Ms. Constantine did not go to Al Azhar , but went to State Security with her wish to convert. At that time, the authorities were forced by law to inform the church about Constantine’s intention and to arrange for what was known as “Advice and Guidance Sessions” by priests in the presence of security, to ascertain her sincerity in converting to Islam.
Security had kept her in a safe place and three clergy met with her at intervals, answering her queries. She decided not to convert, and gave a statement to prosecution with her own hand writing giving her decision with an addition “ I was born a Christian and will live and die a Christian.”
The Church received her from the prosecution and took her to a monastery in Wadi Natroun “to keep her in a safe place and protect her,” said Metropolitan Bishoy, who was one of the Coptic clergy attending the “Advice and Guidance Sessions,” explaining that “we are afraid some people may accuse her of Apostasy or kill her.”
The Church held a press conference giving the whole story, asserting that Wafaa Constantine will remain in the monastery and will not return back to her husband. The Attorney General issued a statement to this effect. “Since that time she has been living in a monastery in Wadi Natrun, where she spends her time in reading and translating books” said Bishop Bachomius of Beheira in September 2010 to the newspapers. Her husband died in 2006.
Camelia Shehata, wife of Father Tedaos Samaan, priest in Deir Mawas, Minya Governorate, disappeared on July 19, resulting in Coptic demonstrations against State Security for refusing to help her husband find her. Five days later, according to the official version by State Security, Camilia had a row with her husband and left home, staying with one of her relatives in Cairo; security found her and handed her back to her family. Not wishing to go back yet to her husband, she stayed with her 18-month-old son in a house for women belonging to the church.
Surprisingly a few days later, a rumour spread by a fundamentalist shaikh that Camelia converted to Islam and that as they were on their way to Al-Azhar to authenticate her conversion, Camelia was taken by State Security (AINA 9-18-2010).. Muslim TV satellite channels were calling for her return to Islam and demonstrations went out in front of mosques calling for her freedom from her “captivity” and accusing the Coptic church and Pope Shenouda for holding her hostage. She appeared on a video confirming that she was a Christian and never thought of converting to Islam. Al-Azhar also denied she ever came there but the demonstrations continued (AINA 10-10-2010).
Hamdi Zakzouk, Minister of Endowment , during a lecture at Cairo University on November 2, asserted that Camelia never converted to Islam or went to Al-Azhar. He also heavily criticized the weekly Friday fundamentalist demonstrations which called for the return of “our Muslim sister.”
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
Former Iranian Revolutionary Guard: Iran Will Bomb Israel
[WARNING: Graphic and disturbing content.]
Speaking from an undisclosed location, with his voice digitally altered to protect his true identity, former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Reza Kahlili told Israel National Radio’s Yishai Fleisher that Iran would not hesitate to use nuclear bombs against Israel.
“[Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government] will use the nuclear bomb against Israel, they will use it against Persian Gulf countries, and they will use it against Europe to bring about that last hadith (Islamic commentaries on sayings and activities of Mohammed and his companions) that calls for total chaos, lawlessness, and havoc in the world, which creates the circumstance for Imam Mahdi (the Islamic messianic figure) to appear.”
Kahlili bemoaned the oppression of the Iranian people by their government, and told Fleisher about the circumstances which made him leave the Revolutionary Guards and become a spy against them for the American CIA. His new book, “A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran”, details his experiences fighting against a regime he says is tyrannizing his people.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Holds Four ‘UK-Linked Men’ For Killings — State TV
Iran says it has arrested four men allegedly paid by a man based in Britain to carry out assassinations, an official state TV station reports.
Press TV said the four “Britain-linked terrorists” were detained in the western city of Marivan.
The men are accused of carrying out five assassinations in the past two years for money, Press TV reports.
In London, the UK government dismissed the story as the latest in a line of “baseless Iranian allegations”.
‘Slur’ In a strongly worded statement, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said the allegations were without foundation.
“The UK does not support or encourage terrorist activity in Iran, or anywhere else in the world and this claim will be seen as what it is: another in a long line of slurs against the United Kingdom from the Government of Iran,” it said.
The Iranian report, which comes on the anniversary of the day in 1979 when Iranian militants seized the US embassy in the capital, Tehran, was published on the English language TV channel’s website.
The four men are reported to have “confessed” to receiving orders while in the Iraqi city of Suleimaniya from a man Press TV named as Jalil Fattahi
The report said he was the group’s commander, and was now living in the UK.
Although promised some $20,000 (£12,400) per killing, the arrested men only received less than half that sum, Press TV says.
“The ministry says it has disclosed documents and confiscated weaponry from the terrorist group,” the report says.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Iranians Stage Mass Protest Against ‘Great Satan’ US
TEHRAN (AFP) — Thousands of Iranians chanted “Death to America” as they staged Thursday a mass protest against the “Great Satan” to mark the 31st anniversary of the capture of the American embassy by Islamist students.
Tehran, meanwhile, welcomed Washington’s decision to list shadowy rebel group Jundallah as a foreign terrorist organisation, saying it was the “right” move, but reiterated its allegation that the US supports the Sunni network.
Iran annually on November 4 marks the anniversary of the capture of the US embassy by Islamist students in Tehran in 1979, months after the Islamic revolution which toppled the US-backed shah.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq-Egypt: Cairo Rejects Al Qaeda Ultimatum and Denies “Conversion” Of the Two Women
Egypt has rejected the request of the alleged terrorists who demand the “release” of two Muslim women, who according to Al Qaeda are being forcibly held in monasteries in the country.
Cairo (AsiaNews / Agencies) — “We categorically reject that our name be linked to such criminal acts,” reads a note from the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, which “strongly condemns” the attack. The Iraqi cell of al Qaeda, responsible for the attack on the Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad that resulted in a raid by Iraqi forces which killed more than 50 people, gave Cairo an ultimatum of 48 hours.
The two Coptic women called into question in the attack on the Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad, have sought refuge in some convents or communities because of “‘the strong social pressure that they suffered’. These the words relayed over the phone by Samia Sidhom, Cairo editor of the El Watani, the Egyptian Copts historic weekly magazine based in New York. “They had left their homes because of family disagreements — says Samia Sidhom to ANSAmed — but there was no conversion to Islam, as confirmed by the highest Muslim religious authorities”, as confirmed by the Sunni authorities of Al Azhar, the journalist states. In reality ‘both (one of them, Wafa Constantine, already widow at the time of her disappearance in 2004) wanted to return to a normal life, explains Samia Sidhom, “but there was too much pressure on them” and therefore they were forced to seek refuge in two different places” (monasteries and community). Sidhom adds that she herself is unaware of their exact whereabouts. But both have been “victims of exploitation”, she adds, in the demonstrations that followed the spread of news of their conversion, as well as by those terrorists who claimed responsibility for the attack in Iraq.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Christians ‘Lost’ After Attack, Says Baghdad Archbishop
Baghdad, 3 Nov. (AKI) — The deadly attack on the main Catholic church in the Iraqi capital is part of a deliberate campaign to drive all Christians from Iraq, according to the archbishop of Baghdad, Athanase Matti Shaba Matoka. He called on nations to help the country’s beleaguered Christian minority.
“We felt lost after Sunday’s attack against the church in Bagdad,” the archbishop of Baghdad, Athanase Matti Shaba Matoka, told Adnkronos International.
The attack by gunmen at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church killed at least 52 people, mainly Christians who were taken hostage inside the church, and injured scores. Two priests were among the dead.
“Such attacks are clearly aimed at driving all Christians from Iraq. Once people lose a family member in such violence, they soon think of fleeing the country,” he said.
An Al-Qaeda linked group claimed responsibility for the bloodbath in a message posted to an extremist website.
Matoka said he had received a letter from Pope Benedict XVI expressing his condolences for the attack.
The pope condemned the attack after his Angelus prayer in Rome’s St Peter’s Square on Sunday as “an absurd and ferocious attack on Christians in the Middle East”.
Around half a million Christians from ancient denominations remain in Iraq. Iraqi Christians have been leaving the country in droves since the US-led invasion in 2003.
“The indifference of the government, which has reduced security for Iraqi citizens, upsets us,” said Matoka, acknowleging that some politicians and government ministers had come to the church to express solidarity after the attack.
He called on the international community, especially the United States, to ensure Christians in Iraq could live there in safety.
“They (nations) are responsible for this situation and have to find a solution because we’ve been without a government for six months,” he noted.
Iraq is riven by sectarian divisions and its various political forces have failed to form a new government since parliamentary elections in March.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Salwa Al Neimi Exposes Hypocrisy of Arab Society
(ANSAmed) — PARIS — Illegal maternity and an unforgiving society; the hypocrisy of marriage, which often constitutes entrapment for women; domineering fathers; children as exchange currency; infidelity; sex without love and power controlling every single breath and movement of individuals.
With “The Book of Secrets” (published by Feltrinelli, 112 pages, 11 euros), her first book written in 1994 and only today available to Italian readers, the Syrian writer Salwa al-Neimi “strikes a blow” to contemporary Arab society, exposing its hypocrisy and its shortcomings, with no concern for the consequences, but rather proud and aware of the deep sense of shock that her writing provokes in readers. These are eight intense short stories in which the writer expresses herself with great strength and courage and a desire for freedom and redemption, not only for herself, but for all Arab women.
“These novellas were published for the first time in Egypt in 1994 and then in Damascus,” Salwa al-Neimi tells ANSAmed, surrounded by thousands of papers towering over her desk at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where she has lived and worked since the mid-1970s. “At the time I thought that they would remain confidential and that perhaps only a few brave friends would read them”. Things did not turn out this way, though, and after finding a brave publisher, Salwa al-Neimi managed to unsettle readers halfway around the world, especially with her second book, “The Proof of the Honey”, which was released in Lebanon in 2007 (and brought to Italy by Feltrinelli in 2008) and later translated into 20 languages, the latest Japanese.
Yet in spite of her success, her writing has been censured.
“In some Arab countries, my books are sold under the counter and can be downloaded for free from the Internet, and I’m happy about that,” she says, smiling. The book trade in the Arab world is not yet ready to accept uncomfortable or ‘scabrous’ texts.
“Lebanon, but also Gulf states, are beginning to take steps with the creation of new literary prizes,” she says. The problem, however, lies in self-censure by writers. “To get their work published, they limit themselves, avoid tackling certain issues and write what those in power want to read”. Al-Neimi, too, who with great irony and critical passion mocks the framework surrounding Arab society, refuses to discuss certain topics.
“I don’t say everything that I think politically. Maybe I will in the future”. Neither does she like to talk about religion, even though issues such as marriage and sex recur frequently in her texts. “Arab society is multiple and I enjoy telling of this complexity,” she says.
Salwa al-Neimi is also involved in the emancipation of Arab women, although she is sceptical — as is the main character in her stories, who attends “conferences in which no concrete results are ever reached” — and continuously fights for them on the front line. “Figures suggest an improvement in the level of education, which is the basis for making them fully-fledged citizens”. She says that she is optimistic about the future.
“Power can do nothing against freedom of women”.
It is here, and not in religious figures, that she sees the real cancer on Arab society. “It is not movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that worries me, its power and nothing more”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Saudi Women Are Forbidden to Work as Cashiers in Supermarkets
“Women should look for a decent job, that does not make it possible for them to attract or be attracted to men,” states fatwa. Dismay among the Saudi people (men and women) over the ruling, which bans women from working as cashiers because contrary to the rules on the separation of the sexes. The supermarket is considered to be a mixed environment.
Jeddah (AsiaNews / Agencies) — Saudis are shocked after the Committee on Scholarly Work the Ifta emitted a new fatwa prohibiting women from working as cashiers in the kingdom’s supermarkets. The statement was released on October 31. Unemployment among Saudi women is 28%, but there are places available in retail establishments, where they can be employed.
The fatwa reads: “It is not permitted for a Muslim woman to work in a mixed environment with men who are not related to them, and women should look for jobs that do not lead to them interacting with men which might cause attraction from both sides”. The ruling, issued by the Ifta under the Council of Scholars (the highest authority for Islamic affairs in the kingdom), came after a conservative preacher called for a boycott of supermarkets who have women cashiers on their payroll. The shops in question are: retail clothing chain Ted Tag, based in Los Angeles, Azizia Panda and Marhaba supermarkets.
Many people have reacted with dismay to the decision, calling it meaningless and unfair to those women who need work. Abdulrahman Fakhri, an entrepreneur of 32, says: “It is clear that the people who have issued this fatwa do not know the conditions these women work in. In addition, these women need money, otherwise they would not do this job. “
Haneen Kelani, a housewife, said: “Women will mix with men whether they remain behind the counter or in front. I always go to supermarkets with men cashiers, and am usually alone. Is this considered mixing? What harm is there if I and the male cashier changed places? “.
Nayef Abdulaziz argues that these cashiers do not work in conditions that violate Islamic rules, “Once I went to the supermarket to see how these women worked: there is a glass divider that separates them from customers. They are covered and do not socialize with anyone. I tried to go to a woman — he continues — but I was stopped and sent a male cashier, which means that employers have full control over what happens in supermarkets, and do not allow men and women to come into contact”.
Marhaba and Azizia Panda supermarkets have refused to comment on the fatwa.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen Bomb Was 17 Minutes From Exploding
PARIS — One of two mail bombs sent from Yemen last week was defused just 17 minutes before it was set to explode, the French interior minister said Thursday.
Brice Hortefeux provided no other details in an interview on the state-run France-2 television channel and did not say where he got the information about the timing.
“One of the packages was defused only 17 minutes before the moment that it was set to explode,” he said.
One law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday that the U.S. cannot confirm the 17-minute timer claim by the French minister. U.S. officials have yet to conduct their own, independent analysis of the two bombs, which remain in the custody of U.K. and UAE investigators.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Youtube Begins Removing Al-Qaeda Videos
YouTube has begun removing al-Qaeda videos from its website after the British Government contacted the White House to complain about the material.
A number of clips by Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to have been the mastermind of the cargo bomb plot, were deleted from the video sharing site last night. However scores more, including incendiary calls to wage war on non-Muslims, remain.
A Google search for one of the most provocative videos — entitled 44 Ways to Support Jihad — on Google brings up more than a hundred results from YouTube. Two of the three top results have now been blocked although the bulk of the rest remain available.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Youtube Yanks Cleric’s Jihad Sermon Videos: NY Times
YouTube has yanked videos featuring calls by Yemen-based radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi for a holy war, The New York Times reported.
The American-born Awlaqi has been cited as a catalyst for terrorist attacks and was charged Tuesday in absentia in Yemen with incitement to kill foreigners under the banner of Al-Qaeda.
The move by Yemeni prosecutors came several days after parcel bombs destined for Chicago were traced to suspected jihadists in Yemen.
Removal of some of Awlaqi’s hundreds of videos at YouTube follows complaints from American and British officials, according the Times.
US Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York, dubbed Awlaqi the “bin Laden of the Internet” in a letter sent last week demanding removal of the videos.
“We are facilitating the recruitment of homegrown terror,” Weiner said in a message posted at his website.
“There is no reason we should give killers like al-Awlaqi access to one of the world’s largest bully pulpits so they can inspire more violent acts within our borders, or anywhere else in the world,” he said.
Awlaqi, a citizen of both Yemen and the United States, has appeared in more than 700 YouTube videos that have logged a combined total of 3.5 million views, according to the congressman.
Awlaqi has been connected to several terrorist plots and reportedly met with the 9/11 hijackers prior to the infamous attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
“I understand that YouTube is a clearing house for ideas and that your company aims to not infringe on free speech, but al-Awlaqi’s message, promoted via YouTube, has caused violence and is a threat to American security,” Weiner said in his letter to the head of the video-sharing service.
“I request that you remove this man and his hateful rhetoric from your website, as he poses a clear and present danger to American citizens.”
Google-owned YouTube declined to comment specifically on Awlaqi sermon videos.
The San Bruno, California-based firm said that it has removed a significant number of videos that violated guidelines prohibiting dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech, and incitement to commit violent acts.
YouTube told AFP that it removes videos and terminates accounts registered by members of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations or officially used to promote interests of those groups.
“We’re now looking into the new videos that have been raised with us and will remove all those which break our rules,” said a spokesperson for YouTube, which received complaints about Awlaqi videos from several members of Congress.
“We will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Attack on Christians in Russian Caucasus
Three churches in Karachayevo-Cherkessia set on fire, but Muslims are being targeted too: Imam killed in Dagestan. Attempts to “destabilize the inter-religious peace.”
Moscow (AsiaNews) — The North Caucasus is till burning and this time the target of violence are religious. Attacks on Christian churches and against Muslim leaders have taken place between 1 and 2 November in different parts of the region.
Local Christian leaders have been trying now not to foment tension and avoid pointing the finger at religious extremism, but the eyes of investigators and public opinion are all pointing in that direction.
At dawn on Nov. 1, three fires have occurred in as many churches in the Autonomous Republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia. According to preliminary reports, the attackers set fire to an Orthodox church in Orjonikidzevsky, almost destroyed, then continued on to another Orthodox and a Baptist church. In all cases, the buildings wee saved by the immediate intervention of pastors and faithful, who, after calling the fire department, started to put out the flames on their own.
According to the spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kazim Baybanov, the fires were caused by flammable materials thrown into the churches through broken windows.
Christian leaders have taken steps to curb possible tensions with the Muslim community. Press and investigators immediately indicated the track of religious extremism, which infests the Russian Caucasus. According to statements by the Archbishop of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, Feofan, there are no preconditions for talking about religious hatred in the region: “It was a well-orchestrated provocation, but we can not talk about inter-religious enmity, especially between Orthodox Christians and Muslims.” “We can not blame Muslims, we can not judge people by individual incidents. Even policemen and muftis are killed and the attack has the same matrix: the intention is to destabilize inter-religious harmony, but they will not succeed”, added the Orthodox bishop.
Almost to prove his words, news of the assassination of the imam of a mosque in Khasavyurt, in the Republic of Dagestan, with a gunshot to the head, authorities are investigating.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Australia Will Spend $500m to Upgrade Indonesian Schools
Australia will spend $500 million building 2000 schools in Indonesia in an effort to improve the prospects of Indonesia’s youth and moderate the influence of the country’s religious schools.
The five-year initiative was announced yesterday at a joint press conference by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. A commitment to forge a broader economic relationship was endorsed, and people-smuggling and the fate of Schapelle Corby and the Bali nine were also discussed.
After Dr Yudhoyono urged Australia not to ‘‘pressure’’ it after a video showing Indonesian soldiers torturing Papuans became public, Ms Gillard did raise the issue but only to praise the Indonesians for bringing the soldiers to trial.
Ms Gillard has frequently expressed her passion for education, saying it trumped her interests in foreign affairs. In Jakarta yesterday, she combined the two as she announced the $500 million package for Indonesia’s schools.
“My firm belief is that the future of our two countries will be determined largely by what is happening in the schools of each of our nations today,” she said.
The program to build 2000 new schools — providing places for more than 300,000 junior secondary school students — and upgrade the curriculum of another 1500 Islamic schools builds on a successful program already being run by AusAID. Australia has already funded the construction of 2000 primary level schools.
Indonesia’s Islamic schools are largely moderate in outlook but there have been pockets of radicalism that have produced terrorists in Indonesia, most notably the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir’s school in Ngruki, central Java, where some of the Bali bombers studied.
The Islamic schools have been poorly regulated and the standard of education has been low.
By paying for 1500 madrasah, as the schools are also known, to adopt Indonesia’s national curriculum, students will receive a more traditional education in the sciences, history and humanities and not focus so heavily on studying the Koran.
The two countries also announced the commencement of negotiations for a “comprehensive economic partnership”, which aims to go beyond a traditional free trade agreement and build a “higher level and mutually beneficial economic partnership”.
The economic ties between the countries — while growing — have lagged behind other aspects of the relationship.
Diplomats said that while the agreement went beyond a traditional free trade agreement, negotiations could be tricky as Indonesia still has strong protectionist instincts.
As for the fate of the Australian drug smugglers imprisoned in Indonesia, Dr Yudhoyono gave little indication of whether he would grant Corby’s appeal to him for clemency.
However, he did say he was “optimistic” a prisoner transfer deal that would potentially see Corby and others serve their terms in Australia could be negotiated.
Such a deal has been negotiated on and off for five years and gone nowhere.
While Dr Yudhoyono gave it presidential endorsement, there is little prospect that the required enabling legislation could get through Indonesia’s notoriously work-shy and fractious Parliament.
Dr Yudhoyono backed away from endorsing Ms Gillard’s proposed refugee processing centre. He was “open” to the idea “but we need to discuss in depth to ensure, once again, this is a solution to our regional problem”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Qantas Grounds A380 Fleet After Engine Disintegrates
‘My whole body just went to jelly,’ passenger recounts
SINGAPORE — Qantas Airways grounded its fleet of Airbus A380s after one of the superjumbo jets’ engines disintegrated shortly after takeoff, forcing an emergency landing and showering debris onto houses and a shopping mall below.
Qantas said the Airbus A380 — which had stopped off en route from London to Sydney, Australia — suffered a “significant engine failure.” The carrier said there had not been any explosion and landed safely with no injuries.
However, passengers among the 459 people on board flight QF 32 variously reported hearing a “massive bang” or a “loud boom,” with one describing the incident as “the scariest thing I had seen.” The giant jet was forced to return to Singapore to make an emergency landing.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Magistrate Blasts Immigration Department
A PERTH magistrate says the immigration department “effectively sabotaged” police investigations into a riot by detainees on Christmas Island and allowed key players to escape justice.
Magistrate Stephen Malley today ruled on whether five Sri Lankan Tamil detainees took part in a riot at the detention centre on November 21 last year.
He said it was “bizarre” that within 48 hours of the extremely violent riot, the immigration department shipped off 40 detainees to mainland detention centres, many of whom were heavily involved in the violence.
The actions of the immigration department “effectively sabotaged” investigations into the riot by the Australian Federal Police, Mr Malley said.
The court heard that Afghan detainees were violently set upon by Sri Lankan detainees following a dispute between the two groups.
Mr Malley said rioters had armed themselves with tree branches, pool cues, mop handles, chairs and parts of soccer goal posts that were dismantled during the violence.
He said that following the riot the immigration department showed “little or no regard whether those they were releasing committed serious or criminal acts”.
The department showed “reckless disregard” for the significance of the events, the magistrate said.
He found that the AFP had limited assistance from the immigration department.
But he said that the video interviews conducted by police were “poorly done and in most instances worthless”.
Photo boards used by police for identification during the investigation were also inadequate, the magistrate said.
He also found that staff employed by the firm Serco, charged with running the centre, were “not well trained in the manner in which to deal with these events”.
Mr Malley said the case had been frustrating for the court given the inadequacy of the investigations and the “considerable money” invested in bringing five of the lesser players before the courts.
Those more seriously involved were in effect “assisted to evade prosecution”, he said.
The magistrate found only two of the Sri Lankans guilty of rioting and three of them guilty of weapons possession.
Two were found not guilty on both charges.
The five Sri Lankans sat together in the dock in the Perth Magistrates Court listening to the judgments through an interpreter.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Muslims Call for Public Service Immigrant Quota
Germany’s top Muslim group called on Thursday for an immigrant quota in public services such as the police and the bureaucracy.
Central Council of Muslims chairman Aiman Mazyek told Thursday’s edition of the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that people with foreign names and immigration backgrounds were often passed over for public service jobs despite having the same or even better qualifications than native German candidates.
A quota would be an appropriate way to level the playing field, he said.
Germany’s police forces had already opened themselves up to immigrants, which had benefited the services — and could be improved with quotas — he said.
“Why should the experiences of the police not be applied elsewhere?” Mazyek asked.
His remarks followed a national “integration summit” held on Wednesday and attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel, immigrant community leaders — including Mazyek — and state and municipal officials.
The meeting, which was held to discuss how immigrants could be better integrated with mainstream German society, focused on recognition of foreign qualifications — currently seen as one of the best ways to improve immigrants’ job prospects and therefore their integration.
After the summit, Mazyek accused Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, of using immigration and integration as election weapons, rather than tackling them seriously.
He said integration would “not be improved by a multiplication of summits.”
The real work would have to happen in the field, and that including an opening up of the job market, public offices and political parties to immigrants.
Turkish Community in Germany (TGD) chairman Kenan Kolat also lavished the summit with faint praise.
“Integration summits are all very well, but this to me was a preparation for the worst,” he said.
The summit had been less a dialogue than a series of monologues, he added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Integration Summit Delivers Little
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) and the German government’s Integration coordinator Maria Böhmer (second from right) at Wednesday’s integration summit in Berlin.
The German chancellor is calling for greater accountability for all parties when it comes to pulling her country’s immigrants from the margins to the center of society. But so far, Merkel’s annual Integration Summit has failed to deliver the goods. This week’s Berlin meeting proved to be no exception.
Germany’s recent integration debate has been far from civil. Former German Central Bank board member Thilo Sarrazin kicked it off with his book portraying foreigners as welfare freeloaders who have little intention of integrating into German society.
It has been downhill from there. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone on record as saying that multiculturalism has been a dismal failure in Germany. The Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats — the Christian Social Union — has demanded a stop to immigration from “alien cultures.” And the head of the center-left Social Democrats has demanded that tougher measures be taken against immigrants who refuse to integrate.
As such, all eyes were on Merkel’s annual integration summit on Wednesday, the first such meeting to be held after the most recent spate of German hand-wringing over its immigrant population.
An open letter to Merkel released in the run-up to the summit made clear how immigrants in Germany feel about the current debate. “We do not want to be reduced to the level of youth gangs who beat people to death on the subway,” the letter read. “We are sick of sweeping prejudices against us.” “The debate as it has been conducted up until now has harmed and damaged us.” Even some of the best integrated immigrants in Germany have been left feeing unwelcome in the country.
Three Decades of Failure
On Wednesday, Merkel sought to turn down the heat on the debate. At the summit, 120 participants from business, public life, organizations representing the interests of immigrants and politicians convened to discuss issues including language acquisition, education, social welfare issues as well as the economy and labor market.
One of the most important aspects of Germany’s program to bring immigrants to the center of society is through government-sponsored language and integration courses. Merkel said the classes would help Germany accomplish in 10 years what it had failed to do for over three decades. “In five to seven years, we will have offered all those who are interested the chance to take an integration course,” the chancellor said.
In addition, each immigrant is to be given an individual plan, a kind of contract that will codify the support and help an immigrant can expect. “But also what our country expects of them,” said Maria Böhmer of the CDU, the government’s coordinator for integration. Böhmer said that would lead to a greater commitment from both sides. She added that the expectations for an immigrant’s language skills, level of education and professionalism would be anchored and that, at the same time, an individual offer of support would be given to each. Böhmer said the government would begin testing the integration agreements in 2011.
German Education and Research Minister Annette Schaven of the CDU also presented draft legislation that would improve the recognition of foreign degrees and training certificates. The government believes that as many as 300,000 qualified immigrants will profit from the law. Many foreigners living in Germany have trouble getting their academic qualifications and degrees from abroad officially recognized by German authorities.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Chancellor Wants to Expand “Integration Courses” For Immigrants
Germany intends to expand the program of courses to help immigrants to integrate. Chancellor Merkel pointed to successful examples of integration and said society should put more effort into working with immigrants.
By 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to give every immigrant the opportunity to take part in integration courses. The government estimates that by that time around 1.8 million people will have attended the courses since they were first introduced in 2005.
“We’re catching up in 10 years on what we failed to do in the previous 30 years,” Merkel said at the end of an integration summit in Berlin on Wednesday.
“We want to be more concrete.” That was the message of German chancellor Angela Merkel at the Berlin integration summit. She wants to set clear standards to make it easier to assess what Germany has achieved, and what is still to be done on the issue of integration.
‘Multiculturalism has failed’
Merkel said the notion that integration could be achieved simply by different living next to one another was outdated.
Merkel, who said in a speech last month that “multiculturalism has failed,” set out to prove that integration would not happen by itself. She said that true integration required much more energy and engagement from all of society.
The chancellor praised the atmosphere at the summit as being “the right working environment.” The 120 participants, including politicians, economists, and representatives of the police and the media apparently exchanged “controversial opinions” with one another. Merkel said they had spoken openly about “what had yet to be achieved.”
For example, she pointed out that there was a lot of work still to do on the issue of violence in schools.
“There’s still a long way to go on this journey,” Merkel commented.
The government says it will spend about 400 million euros (560 million dollars) by 2014 on improving German language skills among the children of immigrants so they can perform better at school.
It is also seeking to help immigrants get their foreign qualifications recognised in Germany, and to have more people from immigrant backgrounds working in the civil service and in the police force…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Wages Keep African Island Afloat
Niodior is an African village that exists in two different places: in Senegal, where the families live in poverty, and in southern Spain, where their sons live together after making the perilous journey north. They work illegally and wire their earnings home, as a form of private development aid.
The sentence is still there, written on the dusty wall of his room in Niodior. It’s a little faded by now, but the letters are still as curved and rounded as ever: “The strength of a man does not lie in his freedom, but in the ability to fulfill his duty.”
The old women sit outside in the courtyard, nodding as they shell mussels and spread the yellow meat out to dry. Yes, Mamadou Ndour, they say, they remember him. He’s a good boy. He wrote the sentence on the wall with a piece of white chalk. Then he got into a wooden boat and headed out into the ocean.
Any of the boys from this island could have written the same sentence. It’s what they believe in, the young men of Niodior, a speck of land off the coast of Senegal. It’s the reason they have to leave their village, and the reason they get into boats and risk their lives on the open seas. This sentence explains why the village of Niodior exists in two incarnations, one in Spain and one in Senegal.
Every year tens of thousands of illegal immigrants land on Europe’s shores. Several boats reached the Canary Islands two weeks ago, for example. When the coast guard pulled the last of the boats out of the water off the island of Lanzarote, there were 26 West Africans on board, many of them minors. The boats represent the modern migration that Europe fears and is trying to fend off, and yet needs: the countless sons and daughters who systematically export their labor, the workers in Spanish greenhouses, the dishwashers in French restaurants, the cleaners in German households. Some arrive on boats or hidden on trucks. Others arrive by air on tourist visas, and when it comes time to leave again, they disappear into the cracks of a society that doesn’t want them and yet cannot function without them.
Those who believe that there are too many foreigners in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain perceive someone like Mamadou Ndour — a man who has left Niodior Island for Europe’s coast — as a threat to peace and prosperity on the Old Continent.
‘It’s Hard Work’
Ndour works in a gigantic greenhouse in Roquetas de Mar on the Spanish coast, where he is currently crouched over, cutting zucchini from low-growing vines. “You cut one off, throw it in the box and look for the next one. You spend the whole day bent over.” The French words in his head have gradually given way to Spanish ones. He laughs when he confuses the two languages. “€30 ($42) for eight hours,” says Ndour. “This isn’t what I had expected in Europe.”
Ndour, 31, a tall young man, is wearing a light-brown T-shirt that’s frayed around the collar. He has been living in Spain as a clandestino, or illegal immigrant, for the last three years. “It’s hard work,” he says, as he tosses the green vegetables into crates under the watchful eye of a Spanish farmer. He says that he was able to send his parents €150 ($214) recently.
Ndour was a fisherman back in Niodior. The little money he earned was enough to pay for food, but not enough to buy medication for his parents. And it wasn’t enough to make a wife happy one day, he adds.
Then he saw Europe on television. It had clean cities, tall buildings and neon signs. He pauses to reflect for a moment. “Here between the greenhouses,” he says, “I feel like I’m not in Europe, but in a second Africa.” There are no streetlights at night, no shopping centers and no restaurants. Only dust, heat and work, says Ndour, as he snips off the next row of vegetables. “We have to do this,” he says.
He is referring to himself and the two other workers crouched in the greenhouse with him. He is also referring to the many other young men from Niodior who work together between rows of plastic tarps in Spain and send money home to their island.
There is Almamy Sarr, who trained to be a tailor. There are the brothers Seyny and Aliou Thiare, who are trying to earn enough money to send their mother on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And there is Moussa Thiare, who, by working in Spain, is supporting his father, his father’s two wives and his nine younger siblings.
They attended school together, played together under palm trees as children and went fishing together as teenagers. They are neighbors, cousins, brothers or otherwise related. They live in small houses that they have rented from the farmers for a few hundred euros a month. In the biggest of the houses, “la grande maison,” 25 young men share three rooms, a kitchen, an outside bathroom, a few discarded sofas and a few beds. “There must be 100 guys from Niodior here by now,” says Ndour.
Remittances Exceed Development Aid
It’s as if this collection of young men, almost the entire able-bodied work force on the island, had traveled together to Spain to establish a second Niodior. They are the bank accounts that their parents never had, they represent the hope of obtaining refrigerators and mobile phones.
There are a billion people living in Africa, and about 22 million have left their homes. In 2009, economic migrants like Mamadou Ndour sent about $316 billion (€227 billion) back to their native countries. In Senegal, the money coming from Europe represents close to 10 percent of the gross domestic product. The flows of capital generated by these migrant workers already exceed the foreign development aid Senegal receives.
How does the life of a family change when one of its sons has made it to Europe?
Niodior is a test case of sorts, an island whose sons working in Roquetas de Mar in southern Spain are its most important source of income. Month after month, more of Niodior’s young men disappear, traveling in their wooden boats to the Canary Islands, where they are then taken to the Spanish mainland. Almost every mother in the village now has a son living in Spain.
The island they have left behind is considered to be one of the most beautiful in all of Senegal. It lies in the delta of the Saloume River, where the river water mixes with the saltwater of the Atlantic. There is a poem children there learn before they even go to school. The verses paint a picture of Niodior as a place of fishing boats bobbing in the water, coconut palms lining the shore and a white carpet of shells crunching underfoot.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fast Food Inhibits Dialogue, Church Says
Meals offer a sense of communion
(ANSA) — Vatican City, November 3 — The ‘golden arches’ of a well-known fast food chain are unlikely to go up anywhere inside the Vatican any time soon given that the Church considers this form of eating as a “negation of dialogue”.
According to the Holy See’s ‘culture minister’, soon-to-be cardinal Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, “fast food has become the negation of dialogue through eating. Let us not forget that a meal is at the center of the Liturgy in which food is used as a symbol”.
Msgr Ravasi made his remarks to the press Wednesday during the presentation of the upcoming plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which he heads, that will be dedicated to the theme of “the Culture of Communication and New Languages’.
One day of the November 10-13 council session, he said, will see participants treated to a full-course Renaissance meal “in order to study the language of food, how it is a form and means of communication”.
“Each course, prepared using Renaissance recipes, will be presented in a way to demonstrate how esthetic taste and the communication of meaning can go together,” Msgr Ravasi explained.
Communication and a sense of communion through eating, he added, needs to be restored in celebrations of certain church rites, not only weddings but also funerals, as is the case in the tradition of the Eastern Church.
Next Wednesday’s opening of the plenary session will exceptionally take place at Rome city hall, on the Capitoline Hill, in order to “provide a meeting point with society,” the soon-to-be cardinal said.
The first day will include a discussion entitled ‘In the City, Listening to the Language of the Soul,’ with the participation of Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno.
Other guest speakers during the plenary session will include composer Ennio Morricone, who will speak on the language of music; Microsoft Italia CEO Pietro Scott Jovane, who will discuss marketing; and Msgr Gerhard Mueller, the bishop of Regensburg, who will open a session with an address on an anthropological theme.
Msgr. Ravasi, 68, will be ordained as a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI at a consistory on November 20 along with 23 others.
He is a a recognised Biblical scholar, theologian, expert on Judaism and an archeologist.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Julianne Moore Calls Berlusconi’s Anti-Gay Remarks ‘Archaic’
Rome, 2 Nov. (AKI) — American movie star Julianne Moore on Tuesday criticised Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for making “unfortunate, archaic and idiotic” anti-gay comments. She was holding a news conference on her recent film ‘The Kids are All Right’.
“We live in a time that sexual orientation is about biology — we are who we are…to say that is embarrassing,” the 49-year-old actor told reporters during a Rome press conference.
The two-time Oscar nominee was responding to a question about 74-year-old Berlusconi’s comments at a Milan motor show earlier in the day when he said, “It’s better to be passionate about beautiful women than to be gay.”
Berlusconi is embroiled in a fresh scandal that links him to a teenage Moroccan bellydancer and suspected prostitute.
Moore is the guest of honour at the International Rome Film Festival where her comedy about a lesbian couple’s teenage children who seek out their biological father is being screened.
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko, it debuted in January at the 2010 edition of the Sundance Film Festival and also stars Annette Bening as Moore’s partner and Mark Ruffalo, the biological father to their two children.
Moore told reporters, “we are seeing more and more homosexual families in the United States and certainly my kids, who go to school in New York see families with two moms or two dads.”
She cited a study that followed gay families for 24 years. “They found the children were well adjusted and well educated, they were loved,desired, socially adept and they were, you know, basically wonder families and wonderful children.”
In Cholodenko’s film — in fact — the couple portrayed by Bening and Moore resembles any “mainstream” couple with the director taking pains to present them as any regular couple, regardless of being a same-sex one.
Later on Tuesday, Moore will receive Rome’s Marc’Aurelio acting award at a gala ceremony in her honour. Previous recipients of the award include Sean Connery, Sophia Loren, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.
The Rome Film Festival closes November 5th.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
PLAN Spreads Feminist Virus to Third World
“Because I am a Girl” is a campaign that undermines marriage and family by empowering young females at the expense of young males. It pretends to believe that empowering girls (but not boys) is the key to eliminating poverty and creating a better world. See here:http://plancanada.ca/Page.aspx?pid=2270 .
It doesn’t just infect girls around the world. It infects thousands of participating Canadian and American girls with self destructive lesbian-feminist dogma.
The Campaign is sponsored by PLAN which is recognized as a “unified global entity.” Founded during the Spanish Civil War as “Foster Plan for Children in Spain”, PLAN worked in Europe during WWII, and in the 1950’s opened new programs in developing countries. In 2000, PLAN International became simply PLAN.
PLAN/Canada, pretends to be a grass roots movement. The website states they are not affiliated with any religious or political entity. However, they are supported by the United Nations and the Green Party. Revenues come from private and corporate donors as well as Government grants. They also partnered with the World Health Organization.
See the “Because I am a Girl” documentary trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S14gc27FVgI . See more of the “dot in the circle” symbolism here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5fat9YCqMI. I was surprised to hear young girls making statements such as, “I am no different than a guy”.
Oh really? Then you must have a penis and ten times the testosterone of a girl.
The traditional role of men is fast disappearing in the West. Men and boys seem to be given second place to females.
This western model of destabilizing society is being used in the third world. The result is a decline in marriage family and the birth rate.
Again, in the West, young men no longer seem encouraged to assume the traditional role of husband, father, protector and provider. Males are routinely ridiculed in western media. Girls rule and Boys drool.
Part of heterosexual masculine identity is protecting and providing for women and children.
As a woman, I feel uncomfortable with the over-promotion of females. For instance, “Because I am a Girl/Canada,” is currently sponsoring an e-petition to declare Sept 22 as THE DAY OF THE GIRL. What about boys? Who’s helping the boys?
As a mother of an adolescent son , I can see what this does to a young boy’s self-esteem. As my son has often said to me, “mom, why is it always about girls?”
Over empowering or over-glorifying females, at the expense of males, creates an imbalance that effects us all. Historically, male-female unity has been our source of strength as humans.
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‘Snowball Earth’ Scenario Plunged Our Planet Into Million-Year Winters
These days the climate news is all about global warming, but global freezing was the biggest climate worry in Earth’s distant past.
Long periods of severe cold — like Ice Ages on steroids — brought glaciers down to the equator and froze much if not all of the oceans.
Scientists still debate what triggered these so-called Snowball Earths, but equally uncertain is how the Earth unfroze itself. One research group is studying the hyper-greenhouse warming that would be needed to end a million-year-long winter.
The evidence for Snowball Earths comes from paleomagnetic data taken from ancient glacial deposits. From their magnetic properties, geologists can tell that some of these ice-induced rocks originated from low latitudes. This surprising result implies a cold planet that only would get colder as the ice reflected away more heat.
“Once you have ice cover in the tropics, it all ‘Snowballs’ from there,” says Alexander Pavlov of the University of Arizona.
Ice reflects more than twice the sunlight of bare ground and more than five times that of water, so as the ice spread, less heat was retained at the surface. The average global temperature is estimated to have dropped to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit).
“This is why it is so hard to escape a Snowball,” Pavlov says. “There is much less radiation being absorbed to warm the planet.”
But escape the Earth did. Pavlov and his colleagues are modeling the necessary conditions that would push the icy Snowball temperatures back to a more comfortable level.
As part of NASA’s Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program, they also will be considering the implications in the search for habitable planets. If breaking out of a Snowball event turns out to be very difficult, then other worlds that we would expect to have liquid water instead may be permanently frozen.
Deep freeze
The geologic record bears the signatures of three Snowball Earths, although there may have been more. The first event occurred around 2.3 billion years ago and seems to roughly coincide with the rise of atmospheric oxygen.
The other two happened more recently at 710 and 640 million years ago. Scientists have proposed several theories for what caused the Snowball Earths. The most well-known of these involves a decrease in heat-trapping carbon dioxide when too many continents drifted near to the equator.
It might seem strange that atmospheric levels of CO2 might be controlled by continental position, but the connection is through the chemical weathering of rocks. Carbon dioxide in the air dissolves into rainwater, creating carbonic acid that dissolves rock minerals like silicate. Through the reaction, the carbon dioxide s transformed into carbonate, thus reducing the amount of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Typically, this weathering is faster where the climate is warm, so having most of the continents along the equator should increase weathering and lead to a significant drop in CO2 that will chill the planet.
There is some debate among scientists over just how much of the Earth was covered in ice during Snowball episodes. Many biologists do not think life on Earth could have survived being locked under a kilometer-thick sheet of ice, so they argue that there was open water somewhere in the tropical seas.
However, Pavlov believes that it is very hard to prevent ice from going everywhere once it reaches around 35° latitude. Moreover, there is geologic evidence that suggests the ocean was effectively cut-off from the atmosphere during the extended glacial periods.
Breaking the ice
Assuming that the planet did freeze over completely, how did the temperature trend ever reverse?
Previously, researchers suggested that the Earth could re-warm itself by turning back the dial on carbon dioxide. Volcanoes would be constantly releasing CO2, and there would be virtually no weathering on an ice-covered planet to consume this greenhouse gas.
Calculations have shown that once the atmosphere has accumulated 0.2 bars-worth of CO2 (over 600 times what we have now), the greenhouse warming would be enough to start melting the ice.
However, there are some holes in this warming model. Carbon dioxide will condense into “dry ice” at around minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 F). The wintertime polar temperature should drop below this limit during a Snowball episode, so a large fraction of CO2 could end up being trapped in seasonal ice caps at the poles (similar to what happens on Mars).
Pavlov and his colleagues are currently redoing the models to account for CO2 condensation and evaporation. They also will be looking at whether clouds of CO2 might form that could block some of the sunlight from reaching the ground.
It may turn out that carbon dioxide from volcanoes won’t be enough to thaw out the planet. His group will therefore consider the effect of other greenhouse gases, such as methane released from ice deposits, or sulfur dioxide emitted from volcanoes.
The team also will be readdressing the reflection, or “albedo” of the ice. Often this is treated as a single parameter, but Paul Hoffman from Harvard University says that the buildup of dust or salt on the surface, as well as the daily melt cycles, can have a big effect on just how much of the Sun’s heat gets reflected away rather than absorbed.
“Tropical ice albedo is the ‘elephant in the room’ in Snowball modeling,” says Hoffman, who is not involved in this project.
Snowballs elsewhere?
Our planet was able to escape its Snowball events, but would other planets be so lucky?
“The more landmass a planet has, the better it is protected from runaway Snowball,” Pavlov says. “It is much harder to build a glacier inside a large continent if it is not at the pole.”
So a watery planet with little or no dry land might get itself stuck in a Snowball and never escape. Astronomers eventually may have to consider that too much water can be a bad thing when it comes to the habitability of a planet.
“I would say that the main conclusion is that we should not be focused so much on the water-rich planets,” Pavlov says. “Dry planets with some water can be habitable at farther distances from their stars.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
There is No Water Shortage
Water: The next political frontier
There is no shortage of water. Amounts available vary regionally and change over time as precipitation amounts vary. Demand also changes with increases in population and economic development. Crude estimates indicate water use per person is 15 liters in undeveloped countries and approximately 900 liters in developed countries. Throughout history humans have developed remarkable techniques and technologies to deal with these issues. Few of these attempted to reduce demand, most worked to increase supply.
Some societies went to great lengths. The extent of the Roman Empire is delineated by the construction of aqueducts and lead mines developed to produce pipes to carry their water.
Major advances, considered important turning points in human development, are technological controls over weather. Fire, housing and clothing created microclimates and the ability to live in more extreme conditions. Irrigation was first introduced in the Fertile Crescent (Figure1) driven by a climate change. A region that produced crops gradually became drier with the onset of a warm period called the Holocene Optimum. Besides the decrease in precipitation there is, at least initially, an increase in variability.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘They All Look the Same’ Race Effect Seen in the Brain
Why do people so often have trouble telling those of a different race apart? Now psychologists have identified the brain mechanism responsible for this “other-race effect”, and say their work could be used to improve the reliability of eyewitness evidence in criminal trials.
Previous studies have identified the brain region responsible for the phenomenon, but the mechanisms underlying it have been unclear. So Roberto Caldara and colleagues of the University of Glasgow, UK, showed 24 Caucasian and East Asian volunteers pairs of photos, one after the other. The pictures were either of two different people of the same racial group — either Caucasian or East Asian — or the same person with different facial expressions. At the same time they recorded the volunteers’ brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity produced by the firing of neurons in the brain.
Normally, showing someone the same face twice generates a similar EEG pattern each time, although the activity levels is lower the second time. Different faces spark different activity patterns.
When Caldara’s volunteers were shown faces of people of a different race to their own, their neurons responded as if they were the same person, whether they were or not. The results were the same whether Caucasian volunteers were looking at East Asian faces or vice versa.
Universal failure
“That suggests it’s a universal phenomenon in our perception,” says Caldara, who adds that people who live among people of other races can learn to identify individuals better.
Caldara says his team’s techniques could help identify unreliable witnesses in criminal trials. “If a witness has a really clear other-race effect, we could not be sure that they had really recognised a defendant of another race,” he says.
The research is “fascinating”, says John Brigham of Florida State University in Tallahassee, but he thinks that the technique is far from ready to be used in court.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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