A Growth Agenda for the New Congress
by Arthur Laffer
Since its cyclical zenith in December 2007, U.S. economic production has been on its worst trajectory since the Great Depression. Massive stimulus spending and unprecedented monetary easing haven’t helped, and yet the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve still cling to the book of Keynes. It’s an approach ill-suited to solving the growth problem that the United States has today.
The solution can be found in the price theory section of any economics textbook. It’s basic supply and demand. Employment is low because the incentives for workers to work are too small, and the incentives not to work too high. Workers’ net wages are down, so the supply of labor is limited. Meanwhile, demand for labor is also down since employers consider the costs of employing new workers—wages, health care and more—to be greater today than the benefits.
Firms choose whether to hire based on the total cost of employing workers, including all federal, state and local income taxes; all payroll, sales and property taxes; regulatory costs; record-keeping costs; the costs of maintaining health and safety standards; and the costs of insurance for health care, class action lawsuits, and workers compensation. In addition, gross wages are often inflated by the power of unions and legislative restrictions such as “buy American” provisions and the minimum wage. Gross wages also include all future benefits to workers in the form of retirement plans…
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Barroso: EU Ready to Help Ireland
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said the EU is ready to come to Ireland’s rescue if necessary, amid ongoing market turmoil surrounding eurozone peripheral states.
The head of the EU executive body made the comments to reporters in Seoul on Thursday (11 November), where G20 leaders are meeting to discuss global trade imbalances and currency values, two areas where China is deemed to be out of line by many.
“What is important to know is that we have all the necessary instruments in place now to support Ireland if necessary,” said Mr Barroso when asked on the subject. “We are monitoring the situation closely,” he added. “We support the efforts of the Irish authorities [to rein in their budget deficit].”
EU leaders hastily agreed a €440 billion European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) for struggling eurozone states earlier this year, backed up by a further €60 billion in commission support and €250 billion from the IMF. The deal followed a separate bail-out for Greece.
Attention is now focused on how the as-yet-untested EFSF will work, after Irish borrowing costs reached record euro-era levels on Wednesday.
A commission spokesman on Thursday confirmed that Dublin had not requested financial assistance, insisting that this was the first step towards activating the stability fund based in Luxembourg.
Meanwhile the cost of insuring sovereign debt using credit default swaps for Ireland, Spain and Portugal rose to new heights, with the value of the euro also falling against other major currencies.
“With three countries in the euro area now having virtually lost access to capital markets, the implications for the region as a whole could easily become systemic again,” Royal Bank of Scotland analysts said in a report to investors.
The renewed turmoil forced the ECB to step up bond purchases last week, amid signs that Europe’s fragile economy is starting to stagnate. New figures show Spain’s economy neither grew nor contracted during the third quarter of this year.
G20
Ireland’s woes will be an unwelcome distraction for top EU policymakers in South Korea for the G20 leaders’ meeting this week (11-12 November).
In preliminary speeches, both Mr Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy signaled their desire to tackle global trade imbalances, amid doubts over China’s willingness to agree to a US-proposed system of limits.
“I do not believe that mechanical, one-size-fits-all numerical targets are the answer to this challenge,” said Mr Barroso. “But I think indicative guidelines could help to address large imbalances and trigger a more in-depth assessment of their nature.”
The bloc’s senior policymakers have taken a tougher stance on currency issues, repeating their long-held view last month that the Chinese yuan is undervalued and therefore hurting EU exporters.
“We rather want exchange rates that reflect the reality of the economic fundamentals and are market-determined,” said Mr Van Rompuy in Seoul.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Co-Chairmen of Obama’s Fiscal Commission Unveil Real Tax Increases and Fake Spending Cuts
by Dan Mitchell
I have many pet peeves, but one that causes me endless frustration is the Washington “spending cut” scam. This happens when politicians increase spending, but claim that they’re cutting spending because they previously had planned to make government even bigger.
The proposal unveiled yesterday by the Co-Chairman of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission is a good example. If you read through their report, it sounds like there are lots of spending cuts. But they never explain that these supposed cuts are really just reductions in previously-planned increases.
Here’s the bottom line. As shown in the graph, it is quite simple to balance the budget (and permanently extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts) if politicians simply limit spending growth. You can balance the budget within a few years with an overall cap on spending at current-year levels. But if you prefer a more moderate approach, you can let spending increase 2 percent each year and balance the budget by the end of the decade.
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Note: good comments, too, on both sides of this issue.
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G-20 Rejection Leaves U.S. To Go it Alone
By Don Lee, John M. Glionna and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times
The Group of 20 summit ended Friday with a declaration of broad principles but no commitment to immediate action, signaling that the United States will have to go it alone in dealing with its fragile economy and near-double digit unemployment.
In their final declaration, leaders of the world’s most powerful economies pledged to work together and to refrain from protectionism and competitive devaluation of currencies. They also agreed to take steps to promote growth in low-income countries.
But when it came to specifics, a U.S. proposal to set numerical limits on trade surpluses and deficits was rejected. Leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies pledged only to develop “indicative guidelines” to assess imbalances in the first half of next year.
They also refused to endorse a U.S. effort to force China to raise the value of its currency.
“Any sense of global solidarity looks to have been yesterday’s story,” said Tim Condon, chief economist at ING Financial Markets in Singapore.
Essentially, that left the administration — along with American workers, families and businesses — to shoulder the challenge and the likely pain of trying to solve the nation’s economic problems on its own.
“ Obama is now in a position where he must be prepared to act unilaterally to reduce the trade deficit and to shore up U.S. industrial and technological competitiveness or risk losing not only the presidency in two years, but also the American dream,” said Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration trade negotiator and now president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington.
There are several possible scenarios going forward…
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Jobless Swedes Told to Look for Work Abroad
With unemployment reaching double digits in some parts of northern Sweden, job seekers are being encouraged to look for work in other countries.
Unemployment in Västernorrland County in northern Sweden has reached 9 percent, while the jobless rate in the town of Sollefteå has hit 12 percent, according to a report by Sveriges Radio (SR).
In an effort to get more Swedes back in the workforce, the local branch of Sweden’s National Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) in Örnsköldsvik is encouraging people to look for work outside of Sweden.
“If people have a hard time finding work at home it can be good to move where the jobs are,” Lena Lundkvist of the local Örnsköldsvik employment office told The Local.
“Getting experience elsewhere can then help your chances of getting a job when you get back.”
In order to help Swedes find work in other countries, Lundkvist’s office is organising a one-day seminar titled “European Job Days”.
Scheduled to take place on November 17th, the job fair will feature representatives from Spain, Norway, the UK, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
The event, arranged in cooperation with the European Job Mobility Portal (EURES), will provide information about living and working abroad and other “valuable information” for people thinking about working or studying in another country.
Nineteen-year-old Andreas from Örnsköldsvik told SR he wants to find work before pursuing further education and viewed working in the Czech Republic as an exciting prospect.
“A call centre job wouldn’t be totally foreign for me. And there’s also plenty of good beer in the Czech Republic,” he told the radio programme.
Lundkvist said that interest in finding work in other countries has increased substantially in recent years, with Sweden’s high unemployment rate being one of the factors behind the rising popularity of looking abroad for jobs.
“If there are jobs elsewhere in Europe, we should be telling people about them,” she said, explaining that as one of 55 representatives for EURES in Sweden, her job is to promote mobility within a unified European job market.
According to Lundkvist, prospective employers in other countries look favourbly on Swedish workers.
“Swedes have an excellent reputation as good workers,” she said.
While acknowledging that working abroad has certain benefits, Thomas Carlén, a labour economist with the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) who studies youth unemployment, warned that promoting jobs in other countries was probably not the best way to address youth unemployment in Sweden, which he described as a “major problem”.
“That’s not the right message to be sending people, that they should give up on the Swedish job market and look for work abroad instead,” he told The Local.
“I don’t see anything wrong with helping people learn more about how to seek employment in other countries, but that shouldn’t be seen as the solution.”
Instead, argued Carlén, more energy should be focused on reforming education and labour market policies in Sweden so that it’s easier for young people to find jobs at home.
He explained that half of Sweden’s unemployed youth are students who are unable to find part time work in Sweden. Carlén also pointed out that 25 percent of Swedish young people leave high school without a diploma, which hampers their ability to find work.
“Swedish schools and the labour market need to work in a way that ensures that more young people find work in Sweden,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saving Hayek From the People Who Think They’re Saving Hayek
Quoting a WaPo writer,Jason Kuznicki at Cato fisks the left’s ideas about what they THINK Hayek means:
I hate to say it, but this is quite the dog’s breakfast of confusion, misinterpretation, and strained reading. One ought to be suspicious when your author writes an entire book entitled The Mirage of Social Justice. Perhaps he’s not really too enthused about social justice, you know.
Although it’s probably true that most socialists’ idea of justice would be satisfied if income from private property were abolished, it does not follow that this was Hayek’s idea of justice. Hayek didn’t think it was “okay” to collectivize the entire means of production, whether by the state or by private action.
The ability to accumulate capital and to believe that one held it justly was, for Hayek, a most important incentive for the formation of responsible individuals. If the means of production were collectivized, individual character would suffer, and society would suffer with it. He wrote…
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The 77% of Income Fallacy
by Diana Furchtgott-Roth
When Congress returns next week for a “lame-duck,” post-election session, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-Nev) will try to muster the 60 votes he needs to block a filibuster of a vote on the misnamed Paycheck Fairness Act. It would be better titled the Paycheck Rareness Act, because it would make paychecks rare by driving small firms out of business and sending larger corporations overseas.
This bill would thrust the government deep into compensation decisions of employers. Its declared purpose is to close the alleged “pay gap” between men and women. That gap is mostly a statistical artifact, a false conclusion-and a rallying cry for feminist lobbyists who are well paid to advocate bills like this one.
Passed by the House of Representatives in January 2009, if the Senate concurs the bill is certain to be signed by President Obama. If it is not passed by the Senate, then, as the frantic feminists warn, there would be no chance of its being enacted next year because the House will have a Republican majority.
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A Look at Challenged Alaska Ballots
Yesterday about twenty percent of the write-in ballots were counted. 98 percent were for Murkowski and 89% of those weren’t challenged by Miller’s poll watchers. DrewM did the math and at that rate Murkowski would win by about 1000 votes without even having to count the challenged ballots. In other words, the exact-spelling rule dispute will be moot if the the 89% rate persists.
Miller must have done the math too because he’s challenging a lot more ballots today…
According to Miller’s poll watchers, the three voters who filled out those ballots should be disfranchised. By challenging ballots like these, which are clearly Murkowski votes and don’t appear misspelled to me, Miller is ensuring that the pile of challenged ballots will have to be considered to determine the outcome of the election…
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ADL Slams Beck for ‘Offensive’ Comments About Soros
The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday criticized as “completely inappropriate and offensive” remarks by Glenn Beck on his radio and television programs, in which he drew a link between the behavior of US Jewish billionaire investor George Soros as a young boy and the actions of others in sending Jews to death camps during the Holocaust.
On his October 10 radio show, Beck described how Soros, who was born in Hungary to Orthodox Jewish parents, “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaeda’s ‘Sword of Justice’ And the Coming War of Attrition With the West
His name could be Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi or Ibrahim al-Madani and some people used to call him Omar al-Somali. The Federal Bureau of Investigations, which wants him for murder and conspiracy to kill, says he’s dark-eyed, olive-skinned and was born in 1960. Or perhaps it was 1963.
Bar his vainglorious pseudonym Saif al-Adel — which means ‘the sword of justice’ — there is little public-domain knowledge about the man Osama bin-Laden has picked as al-Qaeda’s new chief for operations targeting the West. We know this much, though: he’s among the most skilled and dangerous operatives al-Qaeda has ever had.
Al-Adel wants to conduct a prolonged war of attrition against the West, built around low-cost, low-risk operations, like the bombs planted on cargo flights out of Yemen. He hopes this will push Western governments to retreat from Afghanistan, and to back away from brewing conflicts in north Africa, the middle-east and central Asia.
If the plan works, it will open the way for al-Qaeda to wield power in an Islamist-run state, like Afghanistan was before 9/11 . Al-Adel opposed those attacks on the reasonable grounds that it would provoke US retaliation, strip al-Qaeda of a safe base, and thus inflict long-term damage on the jihadist movement.
Parts of al-Adel’s thinking can be pieced together from a memoir he wrote in 2005. In 1987, the memoir records, al-Adel was a colonel in Egypt’s special forces. He was arrested that year on charges of aiding the Egyptian terror group al-Jihad. Prosecutors said he had planned to drive a bomb-laden truck into Egypt’s parliament, and to crash an aircraft into the building — tactics that al-Qaeda would later use to effect.
But al-Adel was less than impressed by his al-Jihad brothers-in-arms, holding them guilty of “over-enthusiasm that resulted in hasty action.”
For reasons that remain unclear, al-Adel was let out of prison and travelled to Peshawar in Pakistan.
In 1991-1992, he trained al-Qaeda jihadists at camp near Khost, in Afghanistan. Later, he travelled to Khartoum, providing explosives training at bin-Laden’s Damazine Farm base. Mohammed Odeh, a jihadist jailed in the US, recalls al-Adel telling him that as the fighting in Afghanistan was winding down, it was time to “move the jihad to other parts of the world.”
For the next several years, al-Adel hopped between al-Qaeda training facilities in Asia and Africa. He negotiated an alliance with jihadists in Iraq, and plotted to assassinate Australian mining magnate and orthodox Rabbi Joseph ‘Diamond Joe’ Gutnick
Like other top al-Qaeda operatives, al-Adel was involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. In July, 2001, however, al-Qaeda leaders were told the operation did not have the support of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader. The US’s official investigation of the 9/11 strikes, records Mullah Omar’s dissent was endorsed by al-Adel and his associates Mahfouz al-Walid and Mustafa Uthman.
Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, al-Adel left for Iran. US intelligence believes he masterminded several attacks on US targets while based there. In response to US pressure, Iran later detained al-Qaeda leaders operating from its soil. Al-Adel lived under house arrest near Tehran with his wife and children until April, when he was released in return for a kidnapped Iranian diplomat.
There are two big reasons why the world needs to be paying special attention to al-Adel’s new project.
First, as the Australian counter-terrorism analyst Leah Farrall has been pointing out, the top al-Qaeda leadership holed out in the war-torn Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands is still key to the global jihadist project.
US intelligence officials had been claiming to have degraded al-Qaeda to the point of no-return, but that’s starting to sound suspiciously like a declaration of victory intended to hide a precipitate retreat. “Like a snake backed into a corner,” the terrorism expert Peter Bergen pointed in areview of al-Qaeda’s capabilities, “a weakened al-Qaeda isn’t necessarily less dangerous.”
That means the West needs to prepare itself to deal with the war of attrition al-Adel is planning — which, like all wars of attrition, will be messy and unpopular.
Second, a resurgent al-Qaeda could tip the balance of power in an ongoing struggle between a battered Taliban leadership open to talking peace and a new generation of radicals.
In November, 2009, Mullah Omar, issued a statement assuring “all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others.” That statement is the foundation of hopes for a dialogue that could lead to peace.
But Afghanistan analyst Anand Gopal recently noted that a new generation of Taleban commanders were increasingly bucking their leadership, and raised the prospect that the organisation’s top leadership in Pakistan may not be able “to enforce decisions on its rank-and-file.”
Even an the end of war witwww.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/101112h the Taliban, this suggests, might not mean the beginning of peace.
In a 1939 essay, Abul Ala Mawdudi, the ideological patriarch of the global jihadist movement, argued that the pursuit of power, rather than what he called a “hotchpotch of beliefs, prayers and rituals”, constituted the essence of Islam. The religion, he wrote in Jihad Fi’Sabilillah [Jihad in the Way of God], was in fact “a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world.” This made it imperative, in Mawdudi’s view, for Islamists to “seize the authority of state”.
Al-Adel is working to that end. The world must decide on the price it’s willing to pay to stop him.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Authorities on Lookout for 2 Men Seen Videotaping D.C. Subway Station
WASHINGTON — Metro has circulated an internal memo asking employees to be on the lookout for two men seen videotaping the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station.
An internal memo says the individuals were “attempting to videotape inconspicuously, by holding the camera at their side, between their chest and waist.” Metro was alerted by a rider who took a picture of the men last week while they were sitting on the train.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gaffney: Protecting Our Troops From Policy Makers
Today on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio, Frank pays tribute to the troops and the equally incredible sacrifice of their families. Sadly and unsurprisingly, both the Defense Budget and our Military culture face threats from distant ideologues on the left and right. Defense spending is a unique priority in the U.S. Constitution and should not be treated with parity to domestic spending when the politicians pull out their knives. There is no line item function for the Congress or the President to cut the waste that does exist in the Pentagon. In reality, cuts made for political purposes traditionally hurt modernization, weapons programs, and research and development which constitute material threats to the U.S. Military’s ability to protect our country. What will the coming Congress add to the President’s request for the Defense Department to cut $100 Billion on its own?
Add to that the coming change to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. U.S. Military culture to date has achieved superior professionalism and combat effectiveness. Many, leaders in our armed forces are concerned about the impact of a change in policy that must ignore myriad practical questions in order to take place. Frank’s take on these issues will, indeed, give you insights found no where else.
[Listen to the program at the URL above]
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It’s “Otb” Time: One-Term Barack
(Sabato says, “Warning> Entering Irony Zone”)
The wreckage of the Democratic Party is strewn just about everywhere. President Obama’s carefully constructed 2008 Electoral College breakthrough is now just broken, a long-ago memory of what might have been a lasting shift in partisan alignment.
We have just entered the 2012 presidential election cycle, and the news is grim for the incumbent. While at least one recent poll gives Obama the lead against Sarah Palin, he is trailing in hypothetical match-ups against former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Even worse, only 38% in another recent poll said they believed Obama “deserves re-election.”
Take a look at this categorization of states that is based on the best estimate we can make of President Obama’s pre-election job approval level in each state. The Democratic states are those where Obama is still above 50%; the swing states have Obama between 47% and 50%; and the Republican states measure Obama’s job approval below 47%. Keep in mind that the president’s numbers are probably even worse now; they often drop after a devastating defeat such as the one Democrats suffered on November 2.
[Chart at website]
Obama may be able to count on the 200 electoral votes in the Democratic states, but if his reelection had been scheduled last week, he might well have lost every swing state—all of which he won in 2008…
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Lt. Col. Allen West Gets it: Islam is the Enemy
President Obama this week once again called Islam “a great religion” which has been “distorted” by a small number of “extremists” to justify committing acts of violence against the West.
But the Qur’an itself, the holy book of Islam, contains over 100 verses calling for violence against Christians and Jews. To give just one example, Sura 9:5 says, “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”
During a panel discussion sponsored by the Hudson Institute last January, retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West, who did combat duty in Iraq, responded to a Marine who asked the question, how do you answer people who say that terrorists are following a “warped” version of Islam?
The panel consisted of a number of former military personnel, who fumbled around trying to answer the question. Col. West finally stepped forward and answered the question directly and truthfully. Listen to the words of a former military man who understands the nature of the enemy we face:
Notice again Col. West’s straightforward assessment: “This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book (i.e., the Qur’an) says.”
In other words, Islamism is not our problem; radical Islam is not our problem; extremist Islam is not our problem. Our problem is Islam itself.
And Col. West understands that unless we get past this blithering nonsense that Islam is a religion of peace we will continue to pursue policies that make us less safe every day:
Said West, “Until you get principled leadership in the United States of America that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is, and then understand their goals and objectives — which (are) on any jihadist website — and then come up with the right (and) proper objectives to not only secure our Republic but secure Western civilization.”
President Obama doesn’t get it. President Bush didn’t get it. They have both peddled the errant idiocy that we have nothing to fear from Islam itself. Col. West, however, does get it.
And the people of Oklahoma get it as well, voting last week by an overwhelming 70% to amend their state constitution to prevent any Oklahoma court from considering Islamic law in its decisions. They have been directed by the people through this constitutional provision to consider American law and American law only. Period.
An activist federal judge, U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange, of course, has already been found who is once again eager, as all tyrants are, to thwart the expressed will of the people and do her best to impose Shariah law on an unwilling populace. Judge LaGrange doesn’t get it either.
The left, including this sorry excuse of a judge, hate democracy. They hate the concept of self-government. They see themselves as the elite who are so much smarter than those whom Katie Couric calls the “great unwashed” that they feel free to set aside any democratically enacted legislation they don’t happen to like. That’s not democracy, that’s not constitutional government, that’s tyranny.
Col. West, by the way, was elected last week to Congress, to represent Florida’s 22nd congressional district. He will be the first African-American Republican congressman to represent Florida since 1870.
Col. West was bounced out of the military for the aggressive 2003 interrogation of a civilian Iraqi police officer who was suspected of having information about an ambush on American soldiers. When the officer wouldn’t cough up information that would protect American lives, Col. West fired his pistol past the detainee’s head into a clearing barrel. It did not harm the detainee in any way, but frightened him into giving Col. West information about the planned attack.
Not only did this information enable the military to thwart this particular ambush, there were no further ambushes on U.S. forces in this area until Col. West was relieved of his leadership post.
Col. West was asked at his hearing if he would do it again. “If it’s about the lives of my men and their safety, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can.”
In other words, Col. West is a genuine American hero. He should have received another medal for his actions instead of being driven from the U.S. military. He is exactly the kind of officer I want protecting the lives of my wife and children.
Col. West was a highly decorated officer at the time of this incident, having earned the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal (two Oak Leaf Clusters) in addition to numerous other awards and decorations.
So on this Veteran’s Day, be sure to thank every uniformed soldier you see. And give a special shout-out to Lt. Col. Allen West, who knows exactly who our enemy is and is willing to publicly identify the enemy with honesty, directness, and candor. May his tribe increase.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Native American Tribes Seek Trade Ties With Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Native American tribal leaders and businessmen are seeking trade ties with Turkish companies by offering them tax incentives in their territories in the United States.
Turkish Coalition of America president Lincoln McCurdy said Thursday the Native American tribes belong to sovereign nations that can strike their own trade deals and offer special tax incentives. The coalition organized the trip.
The delegation, representing 17 tribes from at least 10 U.S. states, has been welcomed by the Turkish government, which wants to bolster trade ties with the United States.
Chairman John Berrey of the Quapaw Tribe in Oklahoma says it’s a new day for opportunities for Turkey and for Native Americans. Berrey says Native Americans can provide Turkish companies a foothold in the United States.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: Center of the Soros System?
So do not be deceived. Barack Obama merely operates one crane with one wrecking ball … there is much to bring down, and much more to the Soros System. It has a multitude of layers and much redundancy within those layers. It must be the mission of every freedom loving person to defeat this man and his plans at every level and in detail. But first, I shall attempt to motivate you about this man and his organizations. The malevolence will astound you.
George Soros has made it his mission to destroy the “evil” USA and transform it into a fairer society … does this sound familiar? Soros lets nothing stand in his way; what he can’t buy or subvert, he destroys. Who he cannot convert, he silences. I’m quite certain that Glenn Beck knows what danger he is in. I may not always agree with Beck’s philosophy, but he is a one of the few Patriots in media fighting bravely for America’s survival. Soros, in contrast, might as well be the alien from the film “Independence Day.” He and his allies have the same plans for the USA and the World. Learn and know who and what we must defeat in order to save, to keep and finally to restore, our Constitutional Republic. We are under siege. Is resistance futile? I think not.
Look at the man, George Soros, who funds agitation and Progressivism in this country. He has ruined First, Second, and Third World economies, re-making them in his own vision and has bragged about it. He is a most despicable man: a probable Nazi collaborator who participated in the confiscation of property from his own Jewish people in World War II Hungary. Soros even has a news media front MediaMatters.com that defends his every actions then and now. He attacks the right with move-on.org to distract attention from his seamy past. He uses organs like the Left-fascist Huffington Post to forward his positions and argumentation. He gives money to NPR to hire reporters. [Is it a coincidence thereafter that NPR fired honest, Liberal Analyst and Reporter Juan Williams.] Soros would have you believe that he was merely an innocent Jewish boy of 14, caught up in unfortunate circumstances, trying to evade the death camps. Bull! An interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft in 1998 states otherwise:
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George Soros’ Open Society Institute [OSI] has funneled and continues to funnel big-time money into Leftist organizations, Big Labor, the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], the Progressive Legislative Action Network [PLAN], and Gun Control organizations.”A strong supporter of anti-war and environmentalist organizations, OSI is a member of the Peace and Security Funders Group. It is also a member of the International Human Rights Funders Group, a network of more than six-dozen grant-makers dedicated to bankrolling leftist organizations and causes.” His network is vast, yet somehow the George Soros’ OSI has managed to receive over $30 Million in US Government funding! Huh?
This man Soros means business: $5 Trillion of new US debt in 4 years courtesy Obama-Pelosi-Reid is just the beginning. Soros fingerprints are all over everything. Investigate. Follow the money. Soros is now gleefully predicting economic collapse of the United States in the near future. This is near perfect for him. Hyperinflation, cross-leveling of economics [redistribution], massive societal engineering, loss of national sovereignty, re-ordered “rights [for everyone but him],” abolition of private property [except his people of course], abolition of firearm ownership [except for his people of course] … need I go on?
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Folks, I have barely scratched the surface. If you think it cannot happen here, then you had better reflect on just how far Obama-Pelosi-Reid took us toward full Socialism in just twenty—three months.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pruden: Obama’s Grim Pursuit of Muslim Romance
Unrequited love is a sad thing to watch, whether it’s a callow teenager mooning over a photograph of that cute girl in algebra class, Scarlett O’Hara pining for the elusive Ashley — or Barack Obama in relentless pursuit of the affections of uninterested Muslims.
The president seems to have left his heart in Jakarta, where he lived as a child in the late ‘60s. “Let me begin with a simple statement,” he told his Indonesian hosts, “Indonesia is part of me.” A nice sentiment, and visitors are expected to indulge in polite exaggeration in thanking their hosts. Mr. Obama continued with the usual diplomatic lies that diplomats count on nobody taking seriously, praising his hosts’ “diversity, democracy and tolerance,” citing Indonesia as a model for other countries. There was no need to go into the nation’s brutal and bloody history; the ethnic cleansing that killed up to 1 million men, women and children; the suppression of those warm and friendly folk by corrupt and oppressive regimes.
The president just can’t help himself when he gets amongst Muslims, many of whom take his treacly sentiments as telling evidence of weakness in the face of peril and provocation, proof of the “resolve” of the sappy West. He even indulged a ritual insult of the first lady, saying nothing when the Indonesian minister of communications shook Michelle’s hand at a formal reception and then apologized for the sin and shame of having touched her: “I tried to prevent it with my two hands, but Mrs. Michelle [sic] moved her hands too close to me; then we touched.” Actually, video footage shows the minister reaching eagerly for Mrs. Obama’s outstretched hand, calculating that he could get the cheap thrill of touching the forbidden female flesh that sets Muslim imaginations ablaze. Muslim men have been accused of many things, but kindness and gallantry toward women are not among them.
The next day, Michelle even put on a dowdy “Friday-go-to-meeting” dress for a Wednesday visit to the biggest mosque in Indonesia, testing whether a dowdy dress could make her look dowdy. (The dress failed.)
The president obviously has warm memories of his boyhood in Indonesia, and only a churl would deny his indulging a little nostalgia in recalling a golden boyhood. He took pains to remind his hosts that he is a believing Christian, but he passed up another opportunity to speak bluntly (as a Dutch uncle, you might say) to the Muslim world that mutual respect must be earned.
He could have said something like the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI, who Thursday condemned violence “in the name of God” and told Muslims they must respect freedom of worship even in their own countries. Conversations between Christians and Muslims are all to the good, the pontiff said, but this “dialogue” must be accompanied by “the freedom to practice one’s religion in private and in public.” He urged heads of state across the Middle East to “guarantee to all the freedom of conscience and religion, and of being able to bear public witness to their own faith.” (Saudi newspapers, please copy.)
Such a message from President Obama would have been the needed slap across the face to those who need it most. At the moment, Islam doesn’t appear to most of us in the West to be the “religion of peace” that presidents and prime ministers keep telling us it is; some of that “honest dialogue” they invariably prescribe might clear the air. It might even persuade some of the president’s fiercest critics that he isn’t really a Muslim at heart.
The president should remember the old American adage, “If they’ll hang you for stealing a goat, you might as well take a sheep.” Mr. Obama’s continued pursuit of romance with the Islamic world, little short of abasing both himself and his country, isn’t winning him a lot of points from Muslims at home. The Muslim response to his Jakarta speech, similar in tint and tone to his contrite apology last year in Cairo, has been “That’s nice, and so what?”
The special pleaders are clear about the price they exact for returning Mr. Obama’s respect and attempts at affection. They define “progress” as withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, shutting down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay at once, “protecting” the civil rights of Muslim Americans, and compelling the Israelis to commit suicide. Do all that, Mr. President, and we’ll love you — maybe for a whole day. But eventually you’ll probably have to put Michelle in a burqa.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Some Muslims Attending Capitol Hill Prayer Group Have Terror Ties, Probe Reveals
An Al Qaeda leader, the head of a designated terror organization and a confessed jihadist-in-training are among a “Who’s Who” of controversial figures who have participated in weekly prayer sessions on Capitol Hill since the 2001 terror attacks, an investigation by FoxNews.com reveals.
The Congressional Muslim Staff Association (CMSA) has held weekly Friday Jummah prayers for more than a decade, and guest preachers are often invited to lead the service. The group held prayers informally for about eight years before gaining official status in 2006 under the sponsorship of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., one of two Muslims currently serving in Congress. The second Muslim congressman, Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., joined as co-sponsor after he was elected in 2008.
Among those who FoxNews.com determined have attended the prayer services during the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations are:
— Anwar al-Awlaki, the notorious Al Qaeda cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen and the lone American on the U.S. government’s capture or kill list, who conducted a prayer service on Capitol Hill shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
— Randall “Ismail” Royer, a former communications associate for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who confessed in 2004 to receiving jihadist training in Pakistan. He is serving a 20-year prison term.
— Anwar Hajjaj, former president of Taibah International Aid Association, which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.N. in 2004.
— Esam Omeish, the former president of the Muslim American Society, who was forced to resign from the Virginia Commission on Immigration in 2007 after calling for “the jihad way,” among other remarks.
— Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who was forced to step down from a national terrorism committee post in 1999 for pro-terrorist comments.
— Nihad Awad, CAIR executive director, who attended a Hamas meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 that was wiretapped by the FBI.
— Johari Abdul Malik, Dar al-Hijrah imam, who made statements in support of convicted and suspected terrorists who attended his mosque.
— Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar banned from the U.S. for six years beginning in 2004 for his alleged ties and donations to terror groups. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lifted Ramadan’s ban in January.
— Abdulaziz Othman Al-Twaijri, the head of a division of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, considered a foreign agent by the U.S.
[.]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Some in-Fighting for the Republican National Committe Chairmanship.
Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan GOP who unsuccessfully ran for RNC chair in 2009, has decided to challenge Michael Steele for the post once again.
While trying to maintain a respectful tone toward Steele, Anuzis was sure to highlight many of the problems that have plagued the RNC with Steele at the helm.
“Chairman Steele’s record speaks for itself,” Anuzis wrote. “He has his way of doing things. I have mine.”
He went on to sat that to win in 2012, the RNC needs solid fundraising and a chairman who “steps out of the limelight and allows our elected officials and presidential candidates to be the face, voice, and agenda setter for Republicans.”
Anuzis said he would not “strive to be the voice or the face of our party” and vowed to “run a tight ship and be a conscientious steward of our donor’s money.”
[…]
[Can you say “ABS”? Anyone But Steele]
| [Return to headlines] |
The Fragile Family Effect
By Kay S. Hymowitz
It’s instability, not poverty, that does the greater damage to children
Poverty is on the rise, according to census data, and now affects 14.3% of the population, up from 13.2% in 2008…
[…]
But those who think that poor urban families’ problems have an economic fix would do well to pick up the fall issue of the Future of Children, a journal jointly published by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Brookings Institution…The articles in the issue are based on findings from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which has followed 5,000 children and their urban, primarily minority parents since the kids were born in the late 1990s…
One of the study’s most surprising initial findings was that the large majority — 80% — of poor, unmarried couples were romantically involved at the time of their child’s birth. In fact, 50% of the couples were living together. Fathers almost always visited the mothers and children in the hospital and usually provided financial support. Even better, most of these new parents said that there was a 50-50 chance that they would eventually marry each other. They spoke highly of their partners’ commitment to their children and of their supportiveness.
But within five years, a tiny 15% of the unmarried couples had taken wedding vows, while a whopping 60% had split up. At the five-year mark, only 36% of the children lived with their fathers, and half of the other 64% hadn’t seen their dads in the last month. One-half to two-thirds of the absent fathers provided little or no financial support.
[…]
A parental breakup is hard enough on kids, but the prevalence of what experts call “multipartner fertility” is salt in their wounds. By the time the children were 5, 20% of their mothers had a child by a different man; 27% of the kids were living with their mother’s new live-in partner. These relationships tended to reduce father involvement…
[…]
| [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Money Transfers Lifeline for Families of Foreigners
Many immigrants send money back home each month
Most of the foreigners in Denmark work for low wages and they send most of their salary every month to their relatives back home, shows a new study from MoneyGram.
The study was conducted among 272 foreigners from the Philippines, Africa and the Middle East currently living in Denmark.
Amongst those who transfer money, 67 percent do so every month. The typical amounts are in the range of 1,000—2,500 kroner per month. Out of those who participated in the study, approximately 33 percent earn less than 5,000 kroner per month before taxes, while 7 out of 10 make less than 20,000 kroner per month before taxes.
“Most of our customers typically come to our stores every month around payday to transfer money to their home countries,” said Joakim Husted, the regional manager of FOREX Bank handling all of MoneyGram’s money transfers in Denmark.
In particular many of the company’s customers from the Philippines and from African countries such as Cameroon, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria choose to send home smaller amounts of money on a frequent basis rather than transfer a larger sum only once or twice a year because their families depend on the monthly remittances.
Many foreigners, Filipinos and Africans in particular, choose to work temporarily in Western countries in order to be able to transfer money back home to their families.
A large portion of the immigrants from Africa, the Philippines, and the Middle East staying in Denmark temporarily in order to support their relatives back home slog away in jobs such as cleaning, sales or within the restaurant business. Filipino women typically work as au pairs.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU to Grab Even More Power Without Vote
MINISTERS will be able to hand MORE power to Brussels without holding a promised referendum, it emerged yesterday.
The coalition had agreed no powers should be transferred without a public vote, a key Tory demand. But a new EU Bill says a minister can simply state the transfer of power is NOT SIGNIFICANT enough to merit a public vote in some cases.
Tory eurosceptics erupted in fury at the Bill last night. MP Douglas Carswell called it a “hollow promise of smoke and mirrors”. He added: “Since the coalition there have been five further transfers of powers.
“I take with a pinch of salt the idea that a minister can decide what constitutes a significant change.” Robert Oulds, director of the eurosceptic Bruges Group think-tank, said: “Every single Conservative MP was elected on the promise that they would take back powers from Brussels.
“Yet since coming to office in May, the Government has actually given the EU more control over this country.”
Labour dismissed the Bill as a “dog’s dinner” which would end in costly legal wrangling The Foreign Office argues the exemption will ensure the Government does not have to hold referendums on minor changes. Europe minister David Lidington said the Bill would give people more control over EU decisions.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
France Wants to Delay Schengen Accession for Bulgaria and Romania
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — France wants to delay a decision on allowing Romania and Bulgaria to join Europe’s border-free Schengen zone at least until summer 2011 and is pressing for more results in the fight against corruption and a better surveillance of the border with Moldova.
“We have to be very vigilent” about enlarging the border-free area to Bulgaria and Romania “who hope to join in March,” EU affairs minister Pierre Lellouche said Wednesday in the French parliament, as quoted by AFP.
He warned against an “automatic enlargement” and said that the technical evaluations, which so far have all been positive, are not enough. Naming the Netherlands as its other ally, the French minister said his country was pressing “to delay this decision at least until summer 2011,” when the European Commission is set to present its annual report on the fight against corruption and organised crime in the two countries.
Mr Lellouche’s comments will deal a blow to efforts by Bulgarian and Romanian officials to separate Schengen accession from the commission’s continued monitoring of their justice reform and anti-corruption efforts.
When the two countries joined the EU, in 2007, persistent corruption and insufficient reforms of their jutice systems determined the set-up of an unprecedented monitoring mechanism, which so far led to the freezing of some €500 million in Bulgaria due to fraud associated with EU funds.
Mr Lellouche said the latest reports of the commission were “worrying”, as they noted too little progress in the two countries.
Adding to the overall situation, the French minister also said he was concerned about the Romanian-Moldovan border “because of the distribution of Romanian passports outside their border” and the separatist conflict in Moldova’s eastern region, Transnistria, a “black hole” as he described it, in reference to the organised crime gangs and trafficking in weapons, drugs and people eluding the Moldovan or Ukrainian state authority.
The level of corruption in neighbouring Ukraine is also a matter of concern to France.
These arguments are new, considering that so far, Paris had rather pressed for Romania and Bulgaria to “properly integrate” their Roma communities before joining Schengen, as the French authorities unleashed an unprecedented crack-down on Roma camps, linking them to a rise in criminality.
In a press briefing with foreign journalists in Sofia, Bulgarian interior minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov on Tuesday vowed to tackle “organised migration of Roma into EU countries.”
Meanwhile, his Romanian counterpart, Constantin Igas, briefed a German-speaking audience in Brussels about the efforts undertaken by his government, despite the austerity measures, to boost security at the borders and meet all the standards for Schengen accession.
“After our EU membership in 2007, Schengen accession has become our number one priority,” he said, adding that the government paid some €540,000, despite budget cuts, to improve the quality of border checks. EU funds amounting to some €500,000 were also used for the purpose.
Mr Igas admitted that Romania had “one of the longest and most difficult EU borders”, over 2,000 km long, but insisted that all Schengen standards will be met by March next year.
As to corruption amongst border guards, he said the phenomenon was decreasing, as attested by the commission’s reports.
EU officials familiar with the Schengen enlargement process say that if the remaining technical tests in November and December turn out positive, it will be “very hard” and even “unfair” not to let the two countries in.
A delay of a few months is possible, however, in order to signal that the process is not “automatic” and to put more pressure on the two capitals to clamp down on corruption and organised crime.
The decision has to be taken by unanimity of member states in the EU Council of Ministers, even though not all countries are part of the Schengen area, with Ireland, Great Britain and Cyprus being outside the zone.
Eastern diplomats point to the fact that new member states who joined the Schengen area in 2007 — ranging from the Baltic states to Hungary and Slovenia, “are more prepared” than some of the old member states. Greece for example, recently asked the EU to send some 200 guards to help with surveillance of its land border with Turkey, the point where most irregular migrants cross into the EU.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Births Hit Record Low
The number of children born in Germany hit a record low in 2009, official statistics showed on Friday, with Europe’s largest country facing a demographic crisis as its birth rate continues to plunge.
There were 665,126 babies born in Germany last year, by far the lowest since records began in 1946, Germany’s statistics office said. Twice as many babies were born in 1964, at the height of the baby boom.
Births per woman also dropped in 2009 to 1.36, down from 1.38 in 2008. The statistics office said one of the reasons was that women of child-bearing age (between 15 and 49) had declined.
Germany’s population of just over 80 million is shrinking rapidly, figures show. Last year, statistics showed it could be home to as many as 17 million fewer people in 50 years time.
Like other advanced economies, Germany is facing a snowballing population crisis, leaving the country short of workers and adding to the strain on already stretched public coffers.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is childless, has introduced a raft of measures aimed at boosting the birth rate, including generous parental leave allowances and increasing the number of kindergarten place.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Reds Lose the Head After Zoo Pairs Them Up With Orang-utans
PERPETUATING STEREOTYPES about redheads may not have been the intention but Dublin Zoo’s latest campaign to attract visitors has ruffled more than a few feathers.
The zoo is offering free entry to all red-haired children this weekend to highlight the endangered status of orang-utans in the wild. The offer is also open to any child who arrives dressed as an orang-utan or who wears a red wig.
Marian Purdy, co-founder of the website redheadandproud.com, which seeks to counter discrimination against redheads, said she couldn’t see much harm in the campaign but some children would “inevitably” use the association between redheads and orang-utans to taunt others.
The move caused some controversy on Twitter yesterday, with many users claiming the promotion was insensitive and stigmatised red-haired children, with one user remarking “Apes and Redheads? Connection?” In 2008, Adelaide zoo in Australia was forced to drop a similar ad campaign which offered free visits to all “rangas” — a derogatory term for redheads — after the zoo received hundreds of complaints.
Ciarán McMahon, the primate keeper at the zoo, defended the campaign, saying it was intended as a “fun and quirky” way of raising awareness. “The real point is raising awareness about these endangered animals that may be extinct in 10 years,” he said.
Orang-utans are a species of great ape found on the southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Despite conservation efforts, continued destruction of their natural habitat has seen numbers dwindle to dangerously low levels.
While some redheads may take umbrage at being lumped together with orang-utans, their affinity with the great forest apes may run deeper than just hair colour.
Some scientists believe redheads may soon be extinct themselves, theorising that the recessive gene for the rarest natural hair colour will eventually die out or fall dormant due to global intermingling.
The hair type currently constitutes about 4 per cent of the European population. Scotland boasts the highest constituency with 13 per cent, ahead of Ireland’s 10 per cent. Last month, British Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman caused a furore after she branded Scottish Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent” in a speech, in Scotland of all places.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Italy’s Scandal Magnet
Morals Won’t Bring Down Berlusconi
By Alexander Smoltczyk
Pious Christians regard him as sick but many ordinary Italians are cheering him on. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may grope his way from one scandal to the next, but issues of morality are not likely to cause his downfall.
Should 74-year-olds be hosting group sex parties? Absolutely. And should they also be in charge of the government affairs of a core European Union country? Silvio Berlusconi would answer this question enthusiastically in the affirmative. “No one can convince me to change my lifestyle,” the Italian prime minister has said. “I’m proud of it.”
Once again, Berlusconi finds himself at the center of a scandal that involves underage women, prostitution and the abuse of power. And, once again, there are those who are predicting his political demise.
Gianfranco Fini, president of the lower house of the Italian parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, who has announced that his center-right party no longer wants to cooperate with Berlusconi, is demanding that the prime minister take “a step back.” Last week three members of the Chamber switched party allegiances to join the former foreign minister’s camp.
And all of this happened because of Karima el-Marough, the young woman who has just turned 18 and calls herself “Ruby Rubacuori,” or “Ruby the Stealer of Hearts?” When she was just 12 years old her Moroccan father, who lives in Sicily, allegedly tried to marry her off to a much older man. Ruby fled and since then reportedly survived by stealing and working as a prostitute. Her dream was to join the world of showgirls, the world of Silvio Berlusconi.
An Evening with the Prime Minister
In May Ruby, still a minor at the time and without papers, was charged with stealing jewelry and cash. The Milan police were surprised to receive urgent calls from the office of the prime minister. Berlusconi’s aides told the police that the girl was a relative of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and was to be released immediately. The prime minister himself reportedly spoke to the police, as well. “If I can help people in trouble, then I will,” Berlusconi said, commenting on the matter.
The public prosecutor’s office has stated that the release was legal. Nevertheless, it is still investigating a modeling agent suspected of having seduced minors into prostitution. Ruby allegedly told the authorities that she received €7,000 ($9,730) and other gifts for one evening.
An evening with the prime minister.
She also mentioned the name of a game that was allegedly played during parties: “Bunga-Bunga,” an expression Berlusconi allegedly borrowed from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. But the girl stresses that she never had sex with the premier.
Rome has long been full of rumors about sex parties at the prime minister’s house, Villa Arcore near Milan, lavish affairs complete with half-naked young women and lap dancers, wine, drugs and seafood, Neapolitan songs performed by the master of the house, repeated hymn-like invocations (“Thank God for Silvio”), and all of it surrounding a golden throne that would suggest a liturgy dreamed up by Fellini. But the real Bunga-Bunga, reserved for the inner circle, allegedly took place afterwards, in Berlusconi’s private rooms.
The Catholic weekly newspaper Famiglia Cristiani may describe Berlusconi as “sick and of unsound mind.” Some may poke fun at “Burlesque-oni.” But the prime minister applies the categorical imperative of the populist: Say nothing unless you can assume that the majority of voters secretly agree with you. This explains why it doesn’t hurt Berlusconi to say: “It’s better to like pretty girls than to be gay.” After all, many Italian mothers would say the same thing.
Berlusconi Wasn’t Elected for His Morals
Berlusconi talks the way patrons do in the “Bar dello Sport,” the Italian version of the neighborhood bar. He lives a demonstrative and uninhibited life. His ideology is that everyone should be apolitical and think of himself first.
Many Italians are indeed ashamed of their prime minister. Nevertheless, as the psychoanalyst Sergio Benvenuto asks in the cultural magazine Lettre International, “isn’t there a little Berlusconi tucked away in the corners of every Italian’s respectability, even if he feels nothing but revulsion for Berlusconi?”
Meanwhile, the opposition doesn’t exactly occupy a moral high ground. Berlusconi’s publications reported with relish on how former Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s spokesman was photographed conversing with a transvestite back in 2007. And the center-left coalition lost control of the Lazio region when its president was caught being driven in his official car to a rendezvous with a Brazilian transvestite.
Morality will not be Berlusconi’s downfall. After all, he wasn’t elected because of his morals. He may be brought down over the promises he hasn’t kept or over the newly growing piles of garbage in Naples. Obsessed with his own problems with the courts, caught in a cocoon of sycophants, this powerful man seems incapable of achieving reforms. The fact that Italy survived the credit crisis more effectively than Greece, Portugal and Ireland is solely the achievement of Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti and the Italian economic system, which is still very traditional.
Many now hope that Gianfranco Fini will play the role of Brutus — and not, as he has until now, that of Fabius Maximus, the Roman general known as the Delayer for his dithering ways.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Pamela Anderson Asked Obama to ‘Legalise All Drugs’
Rome, 11 Nov. (AKI) — Canadian-American sex symbol Pamela Anderson during an Italian talk show said she has called on US president Barack Obama to legalize drugs.
“I sent a letter to Obama, who I think is a great president, to liberalise all drugs,” she said during the taping of “Chiambretti Night” on one of Italy’s billionaire prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s three network television channels.
“I think people would use fewer drugs if they were legal,” Anderson said.
The 43-year-old who gained international fame playing a Los Angeles beach lifeguard in television show “Bay Watch,” is due in January to appear on the cover Playboy magazine for the 11th time in 22 years.
In the January issue she will pay homeage to Federico Fellini’s 1960 film classic “La Dolce Vita” by splashing naked in a pool, evoking Swedish movie star and sex symbol Anita Ekberg’s indelible scene in Rome, Italy’s Trevi Fountain with Marcello Mastroianni.
On the show set air Friday at midnight, Anderson says she doesn’t feel nostalgic enough to look at her old Playboy photos, but she has no regrets.
“I had fun,” she said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Nab Unsafe Toys Valued at 2 Million Euros
Rome, 10 Nov.(AKI) — Italian police in Rome over the last 15 days have seized almost 400,000 counterfeit children’s Christmas toys and decorations valued at 2 million euros. The potentially hazardous items, many of which were made with haven’t passed European Union safety standards, were destined to reach consumers during the busy Christmas season.
According to the police, the items recently arrived in Italy from China via three separate import export business registered to three Chinese nationals. Charges were brought against all allegedly importing and selling unsafe counterfeit products
In all, the raid uncovered 370,000 toys and Christmas decorations made with uncertified parts as well as 30,000 counterfeit Rubix cubes. The items were nabbed as they were being transported to warehouses in Rome’s periphery in advance of their delivery to stores.
Italy has an on-going counterfeit problem with unauthorized goods bearing internationally known Italian brand names produced in China. Italian companies and their brands face growing competition from cheap imitations produced by manufacturers in China and other countries.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Rejects ‘Quit’ Call
Fini ‘will have to vote me out in parliament’
(ANSA) — Rome, November 11 — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday rejected a call from House Speaker Gianfranco Fini for him to stand down, sources in his People of Freedom (PdL) party told reporters.
The sources said the premier, who is at a G20 summit in Seoul, told them Fini would have to “come out into the open and vote me out in parliament” if he wanted Berlusconi to go.
The Speaker, who holds the balance of power in the House after being thrown out of the PdL in July and forming his own party, insisted Thursday that Berlusconi should resign with a view to broadening the coalition, possibly under a different leader, and revamping its programme.
Berlusconi’s key ally the Northern League, whose leader Umberto Bossi is mediating with Fini in a bid to avoid a formal government crisis, in turn rejected the Speaker’s call to invite the centrist UDC party into government.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pope Asks Muslim World to Reciprocate Religious Tolerance
Pontiff also tells G20 to push for social justice
(ANSA) — Vatican City, November 11 — Pope Benedict XVI called on Islamic countries to reciprocate the religious freedom Muslims usually enjoy in predominantly Christian countries in a document published Thursday.
Several Islamic states in the Middle East have laws limiting or prohibiting Christian minorities from openly practising their faith.
In the document, the pontiff stressed that the Catholic Church has “esteem” for Muslims, while stating that inter-faith dialogue will be fruitless unless it is based on “the ability of all to freely practise their religion in private and in public”.
The call was made in an “apostolic exhortation” containing the pope’s reflections on a synod of bishops that met in the Vatican in 2008 on the theme the ‘Word of God’.
The Vatican is deeply concerned about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, with non-Muslim minorities fleeing the region in numbers amid growing hostility.
Their concerns have been heightened by a recent wave of violence, including a suicide attack on a church in the Iraqi capital last month which killed 52.
“Religion can never justify intolerance or war,” the pope said in the document. “One cannot use violence in the name of God”.
He commented that “every religion should encourage the proper use of reason and promote ethical values that build civil co-existence”.
The pope also made a separate call for the world’s leading economies to push for greater social justice at the two-day G20 summit in Seoul, which started Thursday.
He asked G20 leaders to strive for “lasting, sustainable and just solutions” by acknowledging the “deeper reasons” for the recent economic and financial crisis and the “primary and central value of human dignity’ in a letter to the summit’s host, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The term “human dignity” is an apparent reference to the widespread poverty and hunger than affects big sections of the global population, above all in the developing world.
“The G20 will respond to the expectations placed in it and grant real success to future generations, if taking into consideration the various and sometimes contrasting problems afflicting the peoples of the earth, it is able to set out the characteristics of the universal common good and demonstrate its willingness to cooperate in order to attain it,” added the letter, which was published on the Vatican website Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Containers Proposed as Student Housing Solution
Officials in Stockholm have come up with a novel solution to address the student housing shortage afflicting university towns across the country: converting cargo containers into student residences.
The city of Stockholm intends to undertake two projects to create about 220 student apartments by stacking nine storeys of containers togeher, as well as building more floors on top of existing student residences at Gärdet in eastern Stockholm, newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported on Friday.
The proposal calls for building the first 50 homes near the Royal Institute of Technology’s (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH) on Drottning Kristinas väg.
If all goes to according to plan, students could move into the dwellings as early as next autumn, DN reported.
Each container occupies 25 square metres and includes a bathroom and kitchenette. The building would also include a greenhouse on the roof.
At Gärdet’s Studentbacken, one idea is to build another two to three floors on the three eight-storey buildings that the Stockholm Student Housing Foundation (Stiftelsen Stockholms studentbostäder, SSSB) currently runs.
The proposed 220 new student apartments barely scratch the surface in terms of addressing the acute housing shortage for students in Stockholm. The average time students spend on SSSB’s wait list is 15 months.
“The situation has deteriorated drastically and the queuing time has gone through the roof. A few years ago, it was three months,” SSSB communications director Anders Cronqvist told DN.
Attempts by The Local to reach SSSB were unsuccessful.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Helps World’s Poor Most: Study
Sweden has topped the rankings of a study evaluating the countries with the world’s best policies that benefit the developing world for the second straight year.
Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway and Finland came in second, fourth and sixth respectively in the 2010 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), an annual ranking compiled by the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Development (CGD) think tank released last week ahead of the ongoing G20 summit in Seoul.
The CDI measures national efforts in seven policy areas that are important to developing countries: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security and technology.
Sweden earned a 7, an improvement from last year. Its score has risen by 0.9 points from 2003 to 2010. The country scored particularly highly in the aid, migration, trade and environment categories.
However, the organisation emphasised that the world’s richest countries still have a long way to go despite making modest progress in improving policies that support development.
“At the Seoul Summit, development will be a key part of the agenda for the first time since the steering group for the global economy was expanded from the G8 to the G20 during the 2008 financial crisis,” CGD President Nancy Birdsall said in a statement.
“There are many connections between industrialised countries and developing ones, not just aid but also trade, investment, environmental policy and other linkages. The failure to use these channels to their full potential is a blow to the goal of shared global prosperity,” she added.
The CDI shows most wealthy nations have altered their policies since 2005 to be more supportive of sustained growth and poverty reduction in the developing world. However, the CDI found overall improvement has been slight and the seven major industrialised countries in particular can do much more.
Only three of them, Canada, the US and Germany, made the CDI’s top 15. The United Kingdom, which recently announced plans to boost development aid amid a government austerity campaign, ranked 16th, pulled down by a poor showing on the index security component due to arms sales to undemocratic regimes.
At their Toronto summit in June, leaders of the G20 established a working group to propose a development agenda and multi-year action plan for approval in Seoul.
In Toronto, the G20 said narrowing the gap in development between rich and poor countries and reducing poverty was integral to achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth and ensuring a robust and resilient global economy for all.
G20 leaders are expected to adopt a development action plan at the summit in South Korea.
The CDI ranks 22 of the world’s richest nations based on their dedication to development policies that benefit poor nations. In 2010, the average score for all nations on the index was 5.3, up from 5.1 in 2005, and 18 countries improved their scores over that period.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: ‘Alcolocks’ For All New Cars: Social Democrats
The Social Democrats have proposed that all new cars sold in Sweden be equipped with ignition locks to prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver is intoxicated.
The proposal, presented in the Riksdag on Friday, also calls for buses and trucks to come with the devices as well. According to the party, one in four traffic fatalities could be prevented with mandatory ignition locks.
The party’s traffic committee chairman Anders Ygeman is in favour of the government’s proposal on ignition locks as an alternative to revoking driving privileges for drunk driving offenses.
However, the Social Democrats want to go one step further with even more stringent legislation, including seeking an exemption from the EU that would allow Sweden to introduce ignition locks in all new cars.
“Every fourth traffic fatality could be prevented if we introduced mandatory ignition locks. Additionally, it would save society about 6 billion kronor ($877 million),” said Ygeman.
Ygeman quoted figures from data compiled from a Social Democratic report in 2004.
When asked how much it would cost the automobile industry, Ygeman said, “I think there will be rather minimal costs attached. When one begins mass production, it will become relatively inexpensive.”
Stockholm public transport operator SL announced in September that it will install ignition locks on all of its buses within the next two years, ensuring drivers who have been drinking cannot start their vehicles.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Switzerland: Retail Scene Changes as Coop Overtakes Migros
Switzerland’s supermarket landscape is shifting, with Coop nudging ahead of its only rival Migros for the first time. But what does this mean for consumers?
Retail experts discuss the main challenges for Swiss supermarkets expanding abroad and explain not only why Swiss consumers have to pay more than their neighbours but also why the “thrifty is nifty” mentality in Germany hasn’t taken off in Switzerland.
Last week Coop, which together with Migros accounts for about 70 per cent of the market share for food and drinks in Switzerland, announced it had bought out transGourmet, a European wholesaler, for an undisclosed sum.
As a result, the Coop Group’s turnover jumped some SFr8 billion ($8.25 billion) to just under SFr27 billion, almost SFr2 billion more than Migros (see box).
“People eat everywhere!” said Coop CEO Hansueli Loosli, eying the rapidly growing purchasing power of eastern Europe, where transGourmet is active.
Loosli, who stands down in the spring to become head of telecoms provider Swisscom, said there was a pent-up demand in the eastern bloc states which promised high growth.
Wholesale expansion
But stepping into foreign markets also contains risks. Migros tried it in the 1990s and got burnt, losing SFr300 million in Austria.
“The important thing to bear in mind is that neither Coop nor Migros wants to expand abroad as supermarkets,” Damian Künzi, an analyst at Credit Suisse, told swissinfo.ch.
“The transGourmet deal is a wholesale expansion. Migros has a few branches just the other side of the border but it has no intention of expanding — it would much rather push the export of products from its industrial plants, such as coffee capsules.”
For his part, Migros boss Herbert Bolliger said last week they were following “a different, successful growth strategy”.
“Is it in the interest of consumers and members of the cooperative that we make huge acquisitions in the food sector that tie up a massive amount of capital?” he wondered.
Challenging conditions
Künzi said there were two main challenges for retailers thinking of expanding abroad.
“First, you have to know the local market and consumers very well and you obviously need the corresponding experience. It’s not enough to simply move a tried-and-tested concept from the domestic market to a foreign one,” he said.
“Second, foreign markets are also saturated — an exception being those in eastern Europe — and seriously competitive.”
He said the saturation of the Swiss food market was “certainly the most important reason why local providers want to get involved in foreign markets”.
But despite this saturation, Swiss retailing withstood the toughest recession since the 1970s well.
According to a survey by Swiss bank UBS, two main factors boosted the sector in 2009. After a round of generous pay rises, coupled with price deflation, the purchasing power of many households increased. Also, with net immigration rising again by some 70,000 people, the potential customer base for retail traders continued to expand.
Is the price right?
That said, food in Switzerland remains around 45 per cent more expensive than the average in the rest of western Europe, according to the UBS survey.
Künzi points out that this disparity is less eye-watering when one compares Switzerland with its four neighbours: prices are on average 11 per cent higher in the Swiss retail trade as a whole and 19 per cent higher for food than in Germany, France, Italy and Austria, he said.
The main reason for this is not a lack of competition — “this increased significantly following the arrival of the German discounters” — but the small size of the market (lower purchasing volumes), market foreclosure for agricultural products (customs duty and quotas) and technical barriers to trade (declaration requirements).
Discounters
The arrival of the German budget retailers Aldi and Lidl — in 2005 and 2009 respectively — “shook up” the Swiss food business, as Künzi put it.
“Even the announcement that they would be coming had a big effect. Coop and Migros reacted by introducing cheap and premium lines and carried out spectacular acquisitions: Denner for Migros and the Carrefour premises for Coop,” he said.
“There was a greater focus than before on prices. The price gap between Swiss and foreign food prices has actually been tightening thanks to competition from the discounters.”
Dimitri Wittwer, a marketing expert at Bern University, agreed. “There was certainly a strong effect on local retailers such as Coop and Migros and an even stronger one on smaller retailers,” he told swissinfo.ch.
“But in fact Migros and Coop didn’t have to lower their prices — instead they introduced these cheaper brands, which were then in direct competition with Aldi and Lidl.”
Another interesting aspect for Wittwer is that the German mentality of “stinginess is cool” (Geiz ist geil) — the slogan for a 2003 campaign by a German electronics chain that captured the national zeitgeist — doesn’t work as well in Switzerland.
“Consumer behaviour in Switzerland is different from that in Germany,” he said. “People here will happily pay a bit more for bio-labels or for better quality.”
Thomas Stephens, swissinfo.ch
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Chinese Vase Found in London Home Sells for $83 Million
A vase that sat, little-noticed, in a modest suburban home has become one of the most expensive Asian artworks ever sold — and underlined the rapid rise of the Chinese art market.
The 18th-century Chinese vase fetched 51.6 million pounds ($83 million) at a sale by a small auction house near London.
It was sold by a woman clearing out her late sister’s house, and had been valued at 1.2 million pounds. But after fierce competition, it was bought Thursday by a Chinese bidder for many times more.
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: Jailed Hate Preacher Abu Hamza’s Home Has a £40,000 Makeover… Paid by Taxpayers
Hate preacher Abu Hamza’s family home is having a £40,000 makeover paid for by taxpayers, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Workmen from at least three construction firms have already spent two months doing up the £700,000, five-bedroom council property in an exclusive West London street.
Astonishingly, it is the second time in only five years that council bosses have approved expensive renovations on the property where the hook-handed cleric’s wife and eight children live supported by benefits worth nearly £700 a week.
Officially, the latest work is to underpin the property’s foundations after an engineer warned of subsidence.
But as this photograph, taken last week, shows, the property has also had an extensive makeover.
The front has been painted an elegant cream and white to match neighbouring properties and parts of the interior have also been touched up.
Workmen have cleared the drainpipes, cleaned windows, restored the window fittings and installed loft insulation.
Builders have injected concrete to the foundations and mended cracks in the walls to secure the property.
Hamza’s family live in the only council property in the street in Shepherd’s Bush, an area popular with bankers and City lawyers.
Former Cabinet Minister John Hutton lived next door to the cleric’s family before putting his property on the market for £1million in June 2007.
The full cost of the work on Hamza’s house has yet to be calculated, but the bill for underpinning homes of that size can be £30,000. The extra work adds around £10,000.
It follows a taxpayer-funded £25,000 refurbishment of the home in 2005 which included a new bathroom and kitchen.
One neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: ’People who abuse the system shouldn’t be able to keep their benefits. If you’ve been convicted of crimes, you shouldn’t be subsidised by hard-working people.’
Hamza, 52, never officially lived in the home, which his Moroccan-born wife Najat Chaffe, 49, moved into in 1995 after claiming they had separated.
But neighbours said he was often seen at the house until his arrest, in August 2004, for incitement to murder and racial hatred. In 2006 he was jailed for seven years.
Hamza is currently in Belmarsh Prison and faces U.S. attempts to extradite him over allegations he tried to set up a jihadi training camp in Oregon.
On his release, the cleric cannot be deported to his country of birth, Egypt, after a court last week allowed him to keep his British passport, to protect his human rights.
If he also wins his fight against extradition, which is due at the European Court of Human Rights in months, ministers will have no choice but to allow him to live in Britain.
All the Hamza children are British-born, meaning they are entitled to support from the state, which would continue even if Hamza is extradited.
At one time, the family received a weekly income of £351 in dependant children’s allowance, £97 child benefit, £56 lone parent allowance and a £16 family premium.
The rent of £120 per week and council tax of £42 per week were also paid by the taxpayer.
Hammersmith and Fulham Council said last night: ‘We are housing this family only because they are estranged from Abu Hamza.
‘He has never been a tenant at this address and if he were ever to move in it would be grounds for eviction of the family.
‘The house is one of a scarce supply of large family homes and we, of course, have to do repairs and look after the property for future tenants.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: MCB Organises Successful Inset Day for Primary School Teachers
On Monday the 1st of November, over thirty staff — both teaching and non teaching- from Marlborough Primary School attended an inset day organised by the Muslim Council of Britain. With over 50% of the school’s pupils coming from Muslim families, the staff were keen to learn more about Islam — particularly how it can be taught appropriately and creatively to children from reception class to year six. After a morning session of exploring the basic practices and beliefs of Islam, the Islamic festivals and common areas of confusion — such as fasting, dress and prayer for children, the group were warmly welcomed by the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, where they were given a tour of the facilities, observed the afternoon prayer and took part in a question and answer session.
Headteacher, Jessica Finer, said — “The day was both interesting and informative. The school based session was very useful, staff were able to ask questions about issues that they face regularly in school which gave a personalised element to the training. The visit to the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in the afternoon added a different dimension to the day and gave everyone a unique learning experience, including our Muslim staff! Feedback on the day, from staff, was very positive. Everyone said they had learnt things they did not know and the visit to the Centre gave us all a window into the lives of many of our children and families. The facilitators were excellent and I would highly recommend this training to all schools.”
The Muslim Council of Britain is delighted to have provided this service and is happy to provide similar experiences for schools where possible.
[JP note: I’ll bet the MCB is delighted at these continuing opportunities to peddle their pernicious brand of child abuse, hilariously called an ‘inset day.’]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Right-Winger Charged With Assault at Muslim Poppy-Burning Protest
Confrontation: Muslim protesters burned a model of a poppy yesterday
The leader of the extreme Right-wing English Defence League was charged today with assaulting a police officer after clashes with Islamic protesters.
Stephen Lennon, 27, of Luton, was arrested during a clash with members of Muslims Against Crusades who burned poppies during the two-minute silence in Kensington yesterday.
The father of two, also known as Yaxley-Lennon and Tommy Robinson, was one of six EDL members arrested. He will appear at West London magistrates’ court on November 22.
Four men, aged 41, 42, 19 and 18, were held for affray and another for possession of Class A drugs. Two Muslims, aged 30 and 25, were arrested for public order offences.
Members of Muslims Against Crusaders set fire to a large poppy as the clock struck 11am yesterday and chanted “British soldiers burn in hell” during their protest in Exhibition Road near the Royal Albert Hall.
A policeman was taken to hospital with a head injury as he tried to keep separate about 50 men linked to EDL and the Muslims.
Demonstrator Abu Rayah, from east London, said yesterday: “We’re here because people talk about all this patriotism but people in Afghanistan want Sharia and the soldiers keep dropping cluster bombs on our people and it’s like they just want us dead. We want British and American troops out of Afghanistan now.”
All those arrested were bailed pending further inquiries until a date in December.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Riot Rabble Who Targeted Tory HQ: Unmasked, The Hardcore Leaders of the Student Mob
There was an expat grandfather, a university tutor, a teenage schoolboy, a recent law graduate and a wealthy foreign student whose education was part-funded by the British taxpayer.
What they all had in common yesterday was an apparent central role in the riot which saw Tory Party HQ in Millbank Tower trashed by a howling mob.
As 50 people were released on police bail pending the examination of photograph and video footage of the mayhem, a picture began to emerge yesterday of the disparate nature of those involved.
The shock felt by many present contrasted with the glee expressed by a hardcore.
A large number of middle-class students who travelled to Central London to take part peacefully in their first demonstration had found themselves inadvertently propelled into the frontline.
But it also became clear that the violence, which left 14 injured and caused thousands of pounds of damage, was orchestrated and inflamed by a number of far-Left groups.
Last night Luke Cooper, a tutor in international relations at the University of Sussex and a member the pressure group Revolution, confirmed the event was carefully organised.
He said: ‘There has always been a plan for Revolution and the International Coalition Against Fees and Cuts to take direct action after the National Union of Students demo.
‘There are a number of different Government buildings in that part of London and all of them would have been legitimate targets for protest and occupation.’
Revolution’s website states: ‘We are a group of young activists who are fed up with unemployment, war, poverty, cuts and capitalism. We want to bring down Cam and Clegg’s millionaire coalition and replace it with socialism.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Boy Brimming With Pride, The Fanatics Burning With Hate… Two Faces of Armistice Day
He was 3ft tall in his shiny black shoes and he wore his great-uncle’s medals with pride as he stood to attention in the rain.
Jonny Osborne, seven, symbolised the face of a new generation yesterday as he marched shoulder to shoulder with servicemen and women to honour those killed by war.
But three miles across London from the Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph, another face of Britain was on display. It was contorted with hatred, poisoned by politics, and fuelled by flames from a giant, burning poppy.
These were the Muslim extremists who brought shame to the memory of the dead yesterday by breaking the traditional two-minute silence with chants of ‘British soldiers burn in hell’.
Ironically, it was the freedom for which thousands fought that allowed them to stage their demonstration at the stroke of 11am — the exact moment the nation came to a halt at the Cenotaph, across the country, and after parallel services at British bases in Afghanistan.
The protesters were even given a police escort to their protest venue near the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, thankfully the closest they were allowed to the focal point of Britain’s remembrance tribute yesterday.
War, inevitably, linked the two events, yet they could hardly have been more different. At one, violence and venom. At the other, dignity and deference.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Coptic Christian Woman Unwittingly Becomes Focal Point of Islamic Clash With Christianity
(AINA) — A Coptic Christian woman in Egypt named Camelia Shehata has unwittingly become the focal point in the clash of Islam with Christianity. The Al-Qaeda group operating in Iraq, which calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), stormed Our Lady of Deliverance Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad on Sunday, October 31, and killed 58 Christians before being killed and blowing themselves up. In the phone call they made to Iraqi authorities ISI members demanded the release of Camelia Shehata, among others, whom they believe has converted to Islam but is being held against her will in a monastery by the Coptic church of Egypt.
Camelia Shehata, wife of Father Tedaos Samaan, a priest in Deir Mawas, Egypt, disappeared on July 19, resulting in Coptic demonstrations against State Security for refusing to help her husband find her. According to the official version by State Security, Camelia had a row with her husband and left home, staying with one of her relatives in Cairo; security found her five days later and handed her back to her family. Not wishing to go back to her husband, she stayed with her 18-month-old son in a house for women belonging to the church.
A few days later a rumor spread by a fundamentalist shaikh claimed that Camelia had converted to Islam and 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.”
But that did not stop the Muslim fundamentalists, and the rumor of her conversion metastasized. Fourteen demonstration have been held by Muslim radicals in Egypt, each always beginning on a Friday afternoon, after the end of prayers at the Mosque.
For ISI, Camelia was worth killing for. For ISI, it does not matter that she is Egyptian and they, the ISI, are in Iraq (and that they are not even Iraqis). The ISI sees Muslims as one transnational nation. It is the nation — umma — of Islam. In its fight against the non-Muslim world, Al-Qaeda knows no boundaries or nations. The Assyrians of Iraq, as well as all non-Muslims, are fair and legitimate targets.
According to several Coptic sources, Egyptian State Security has ordered that no one should see Camelia, and it was State Security who arranged for a video of her to be taken and distributed two months ago. When Muslims said it was not her on the video, state security issued a statement and ordered national TV stations to air it to confirm it was Camelia.
The Egyptian Minister of Endowment, who controls mosques and imams, has criticized the demonstrations to “free” Camelia and said they were the cause behind the Iraqi church massacre and Al Qaida threats.
Coptic Pope Shenouda described the Baghdad church massacre as “something that logic and conscience cannot accept.”
Coptic organizations have accused the demonstrators of being Al-Qaeda members. Fearing that they will be rounded up by state security, the Muslim radicals have announced an end to these demonstrations. The last demonstration occurred on Friday, November 5, and had a fraction of the previous attendance. Egytpian State Security was heavily present. The demonstrators called for the release of Camelia and threatened and insulted the Coptic Pope (video).
According to Magdi Khalil, a Coptic activist, “the similarity between the statement issued by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and those issued by the fundamentalist organizations in Egypt on the subject of Camelia Shehata, as well as the threats shouted during the weekly demonstrations in the mosques of Cairo and Alexandria, suggests that there us a highly coordinated campaign to empty the Middle East of its Christians.”
Meanwhile, the Coptic Church is under pressure from its own members to release Camelia from the monastery where she is residing, to place her on national television to definitively lay to rest all rumors and speculations regarding her case, so that Islamists cannot exploit her alleged conversion and captivity to incite violence against Christians, be they in Iraq or in Egypt. A leading Egyptian journalist has offered to arrange with state security for her security and transportation to the television studio.
Mary Abdelmassih contributed to this report.
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Addressing Our Homegrown Enemies
This week we learned that Nazareth is an al-Qaida hub. Sheikh Nazem Abu Salim Sahfe, the Israeli imam of the Shihab al-Din mosque in the city, was indicted on Sunday for promoting and recruiting for global jihad and calling on his followers to harm non-Muslims.
Among the other plots born of Sahfe’s sermons was the murder of cab driver Yefim Weinstein last November. Sahfe’s followers also plotted to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to Israel last year. They torched Christian tour buses. They abducted and stabbed a pizza delivery man. Two of his disciples were arrested in Kenya en route to joining al-Qaida forces in Somalia.
With his indictment, Sahfe joins a growing list of jihadists born and bred in Israel and in free societies around the world who have rejected their societies and embraced the cause of Islamic global domination. The most prominent member of this group today is the American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Israel Squeeze: Worse Than You Know
Demands Jewish state retreat from territory vital for survival
NEW YORK — A U.S. proposal for a deal with the Palestinian Authority did not include an Israeli lease for part of the strategic Jordan Valley as widely reported, according to a senior PA official speaking to WND.
The PA official said the proposed deal from the Obama administration instead gave most of that territory entirely to Palestinian control.
The official was referring to a report from Israel’s Army Radio US which claimed the Obama administration proposed that Israel relinquish the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and that the Jewish state would lease back parts of the valley from the Palestinians for a up to seven years.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hate Cleric Bakri Sentenced to Life
HATE cleric Omar Bakri has been sentenced to life in prison in Lebanon for al-Qaeda fundraising, it was reported today.
Bakri is believed to be on the run in the country after getting the boot from Britain.
He said today he and 25 of his “brothers” had been given 16 days to surrender to authorities in Lebanon.
The fanatic hate preacher added: “It’s purely because we are Sunni Muslims … we never carry weapons, we never fight against anybody.
[video report at link]
“It seems to me the military court did not even contact us.”
Bakri, who was born in Syria in the 1950s, came to Britain in the 1980s and formed the al Muhajiroun organisation which recruited radical Muslims at mosques in the UK.
He was particularly reviled in Britain after he blamed the July 7 bombings in London in 2005 on the government and the British public.
He refused to condemn Osama Bin Laden who was thought to have inspired the attacks, saying: “Why would I condemn Osama Bin Laden? I condemn Tony Blair.
“I condemn George Bush. I would never condemn Osama Bin Laden or any Muslims.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Hate Preacher Omar Bakri is Sentenced to Life in Jail for Training and Funding Al Qaeda Members
Hate cleric Omar Bakri has been sentenced to life in prison by a military court in Lebanon for allegedly helping to train members of Al Qaeda at a terror camp in Tripoli.
The Syrian-born preacher, who was not in court when the punishment was handed out, was also accused of fund raising for Osama Bin Laden’s fanatics in the middle eastern country.
Bakri, who became known as the ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’ during his time in Britain has previously issued rants blaming the British public and Government for the 7/7 London bombings and calling for Christmas to be ‘completely forbidden’.
Today he described the charges as ‘absurd’ and said they were politically motivated after the Lebanese government came under pressure from Britain and the US.
Bakri said: ‘It was a military court and the judge was General Mizar Khalil who is a Shia Muslim, whereas I am a Sunni scholar.
‘They say I have been training people in weapons in Tripoli. I have never held a weapon in my life. There were 54 brothers’ names read out in court, and I was one of them.
‘They gave 25 of us, including me, a life sentence, which is the maximum because we were absent. It was simply because we are Sunni Muslims. The whole thing is absurd. I did not even receive a summons. The first I knew about it was from media reports.
‘I rang the court this morning and they said I have 15 days to challenge the decision. But I am not going to court. It is against my religion. I do not believe in any man made laws be they in the UK or the Lebanon.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Al-Qaeda ‘Leaders’ Take Refuge
Sana’a 11 Nov.(AKI) — Three alleged top Al-Qaeda leaders have fled from Iran to Yemen and are in contact with the Somali Al-Shabab jihaist group, Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas said on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. The men allegedly include former Kuwait citizen, Abu Gheith.
Gheith and fellow Al-Qaeda Saad Bin Laden were among the alleged Al-Qaeda leaders who had been detained in Iran since 2002.
Al-Qabas cites an unnamed source close to terrorist group Al-Shabab , which has ties to Al-Qaeda, who claimed the top leaders had chosen Yemen for its similarity to post-Soviet Afghanistan.
Yemen is fighting Shia al-Houthi rebels seeking more autonomy and rights in the north and a militant Islamist insurgency driven by Al-Qaeda in its south. Evidence is emerging that the country is becoming an Al-Qaeda stronghold.
The device used in the botched 25 December bombing of an American-bound flight by a Nigerian was built in Yemen and the would-be bomber was trained there, according to intelligence reports.
Geith had his Kuwaiti citizenship revoked in 1991 after the attacks against the US on 11 Sept. 2001. He and other Kuwaiti and Saudi militants are on the region’s most-wanted list.
Recent intelligence reports from the Gulf region claim Al-Qaeda-associated Al-Shabab rebels are channeling arms and militiamen to Al-Qaeda, which are being transported by Somali pirates.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Turning to Mental Wards to Break Activists
“The police know that to arbitrarily detain someone is illegal,” but mental wards are a different story.
LOUHE, China — Xu Lindong, a poor village farmer with close-cropped hair and a fourth-grade education, knew nothing but decades of backbreaking labor. Even at age 50, the rope of muscles on his arms bespoke a lifetime of hard plowing and harvesting in the fields of his native Henan Province.
But after four years locked up in Zhumadian Psychiatric Hospital, he was barely recognizable to his siblings. Emaciated, barefoot, clad in tattered striped pajamas, Mr. Xu spoke haltingly. His face was etched with exhaustion.
“I was so heartbroken when I saw him I cannot describe it,” said his elder brother, Xu Linfu, recalling his first visit there, in 2007. “My brother was a strong as a bull. Now he looked like a hospital patient.”
Xu Lindong’s confinement in a locked mental ward was all the more notable, his brother says, for one extraordinary fact: he was not the least bit deranged. Angered by a dispute over land, he had merely filed a series of complaints against the local government. The government’s response was to draw up an order to commit him to a mental hospital — and then to forge his brother’s name on the signature line.
[…]
No one knows how often cases like Mr. Xu’s occur. But human rights activists say confinements in mental hospitals appear to be on the rise because the local authorities are under intense pressure to nip social unrest in the bud, but at the same time are less free than they once were to jail people they consider troublemakers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Brazil Paper Must Pay ‘Moral Damages’
I wrote recently about worrying threats to press freedom in Brazil. Here’s another example. A paper is facing closure after being ordered by a court to pay $353,000 (£220,000) for “moral damages” to an former mayor.
The Jornal de Londrina, in Paraná state, has petitioned the supreme court to suspend the ruling.
In 1994, the paper published reports accusing the then mayor of Sertanópolis of improper administration. The mayor was later convicted on several counts.
Even so, a Paraná state court has ruled that the newspaper must pay “moral damages” because its reports were “published prematurely.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Almost 2 Million More Foreign Citizens Living in UK Than 10 Years Ago
The number of foreign citizens living in the UK has almost doubled in 10 years, according to Government figures.
More than 4 million people — representing one in 15 UK residents — have travelled to Britain from their own countries to live, analysis from the Office for National Statistics found.
This latest figure, for 2008, was a sharp rise from 10 years previously, when 2.2 million foreign citizens were living in the UK, representing one in every 26 residents.
The population figures also showed that net migration had a greater impact on increasing Britain’s population than the number of babies born to those already living here.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Austria: Chase Foreigners Off if You Don’t Want Them, Says Turkish Ambassador
The Turkish ambassador in Vienna has risked a serious thrift between Austria and Turkey with statements made in an exceptional interview.
Speaking to Austrian newspaper Die Presse, Kadri Ecvet Tezcan claimed Turks in Vienna knew they were not welcome in Austria. He also revealed having been told that the Austrian foreign minister does not welcome ambassadors for meetings — and revealed he would relocate the United Nations (UN) from Vienna were he leader of the international organisation.
Asked why immigrants from Croatia seem to do better at school than most people from Turkey, Tezcan said: “Croats are Christians and therefore welcome in the society, while Turks aren’t. They are constantly being pushed to the corners of the society.”
A survey by the Austrian Society for European Politics (ÖGfE) showed earlier this week that just 17 per cent of Austrians want Turkey to join the European Union (EU), while 68 per cent of Austrians speak out in favour of Croatia becoming a member .
The ambassador however also stressed he registered many “stories of success”. He said: “There are more than 3,500 Turkish businessmen and 110 Turkish doctors in Austria. (…) Why doesn’t the Austrian concentrate more on that?”
Tezcan emphasised he has been advising Turks living in Austria to learn German and respect the country’s rules. He explained: “The Turks (in Austria) don’t want anything from you. They are happy, they just don’t want to be treated like a virus. (Austrian) Society should help them integrate — and then it would benefit from them.
“You don’t have to get more immigrants — you have got them here. But you have to believe in them, and they have to believe in you,” the diplomat added.
Referring to the Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) success in last month’s Vienna city parliament ballot, Tezcan said: “Almost 30 per cent support a far-right party in a city which regards itself as the cultural centre of Europe. I would not stay here as head of the UN, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) or the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries).”
The Turkish ambassador said: “If you don’t want any foreigners, why don’t you chase them away? There are many countries in the world where immigrants are welcome. You have to learn how to live together with others. What kind of problem does Austria have?”
Tezcan claimed: “The Turks in Vienna are helping each other. They don’t feel welcome here. (…) I have been here for a year now. (…) There’s a big difference between Vienna and the rest of Austria. People are more hospitable when I leave Vienna.”
The 61-year-old attacked Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger by revealing the minister rejected to meet him. He said: “I was told that the foreign minister doesn’t welcome ambassadors when I asked for a meeting. Can you believe that? I’m the ambassador for 250,000 people in this country. What kind of dialogue are we talking about here?”
Tezcan, who was the Turkish ambassador to Poland between 2005 and 2008, also criticised Viennese Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn by saying: “I met the cardinal, who is a wonderful person. He said to me he hasn’t got any problems with Turks. I told him: ‘That’s not enough, you have to do more, you have to write that in your newspaper column. You should say that the Islam is worth as much as Catholicism.”
Schönborn has been attacked by some NGOs and politicians for writing a weekly column for the Kronen Zeitung. The bestselling daily has campaigned against foreigners and linked soaring crime with “organised gangs from Eastern Europe” for years.
Asked how to reduce the number of Turkish children in special needs schools due to poor language skills, Tezcan suggested there should be more support for them learning Turkish properly. The ambassador claimed such a measure would help them in learning German.
The diplomat also said attending kindergarten should be mandatory for Turkish children aged three or four to improve the integration process. “Parents, teenagers, children — they all should be able to speak German,” he told Die Presse.
Tezcan revealed he met FPÖ boss Heinz-Christian Strache to discuss problems of the coexistence of Austrians and Turks. “We agreed to disagree about everything regarding integration,” he said about the conversation with the right-winger. The Turkish ambassador accused Strache of “having no idea how the world develops.”
He also criticised the Austrian Social Democrats for failing to stand up against the FPÖ’s agitation.
Tezcan rejected calls to ban headscarves. Politicians of all Austrian parties suggested Muslim women should not be allowed to wear them amid concerns they were enforced by their husbands to do so.
“Does wearing headscarves break the law? No. You haven’t got the right to tell anybody what to do regarding this issue. If you are allowed to bath naked, you should be allowed to wear headscarves,” he said.
The interview comes shortly after the Vienna city parliament vote campaign which has been dominated by immigration issues. All parties but the FPÖ — which claimed many Muslims are unwilling to integrate — suffered bitter losses in the 10 October ballot.
The ruling Social Democrats (SPÖ) admitted mistakes handling immigration policies, but expressed a desire to keep a dialogue going. The party lost its absolute majority in seats and is expected to form a coalition with the Greens.
Analysts said the ÖVP did badly too for failing to attract new voter groups with its hardliner campaign which could have tempted many former ÖVP supporters to back the FPÖ — which has always spoken out against “criminal foreigners” — instead.
Polls suggest that the FPÖ would have the chance to gain second place on federal level if the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition breaks up early. The next general election is due in three years, but the climate between the coalition partners has worsened dramatically over the past months.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Danish MP: Breasts Best Defence Against Extremism
Right-wing politician would follow Dutch model to highlight country’s open-mindedness
Can’t bear bare breasts? Then Denmark might not be the place for you, according to Peter Skaarup, foreign policy spokesman of the Danish People’s party.
According to Skaarup, a documentary film about Denmark, which forms part of the immigration test for foreigners, lacks breasts. He claims that showing topless women in the film will help promote Danish open-mindedness and may even prevent extremists from coming to the country.
“A similar documentary in Holland shows bare breasts, and I think we should follow their example, Skaarup told Berlingske Tidende newspaper.
“It is of course a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there is an element of seriousness to it too: by including topless bathing in a documentary about Denmark, we can highlight our open-mindedness and our rights to dress — or undress — as we please.”
This, he said, is particularly relevant for immigrants coming from fundamental societies where women are oppressed and aren’t allowed to display their sexuality, pointing out that he wasn’t trying to provoke with his statement.
He added that although topless bathing isn’t as common on Danish beaches today as it used to be, it would still provide an accurate reflection of Denmark’s liberal attitudes.
“Topless bathing probably isn’t a common sight on Pakistani beaches, but in Denmark it is still considered quite normal. I honestly believe that by including a couple of bare breasts in the movie, extremists may have to think twice before deciding to come to Denmark.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Michelle Malkin: Why Are We Giving Illegal Immigrants No-Hassle Pilot Lessons and Licenses?
Chalk up another Code Red Elmo moment for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While Islamic terrorists groom suicide bombers starting in kindergarten, the grownups in charge of protecting America can’t seem to reach an elementary level of competence.
The “good” news: Hindsight-driven bureaucrats at DHS moved to ban high-risk cargo from Yemen and Somalia this week after a global air scare involving makeshift printer/toner cartridge-bombs.
The bad news: More than nine years after the 9/11 jihadist attacks, untold numbers of high-risk flyers have been able to board, ride and pilot American planes — some with Transportation Security Administration approval to boot.
Outside Boston, one shady flight school provided single-engine pilot lessons to at least 33 illegal immigrants from Brazil. But clear counter-terror rules ban illegal immigrants from enrolling in U.S. flight schools.
Clear counter-terror regulations require TSA to run foreign flight students’ names against a plethora of terrorism, criminal and immigration databases.
Head-scratching airport security officials were at a loss last week to explain how dozens of these illegal immigrant students eluded their radar screen when the agency “performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of application” and checks “for available disqualifying immigration information”…
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Study: 100,000 Hispanics Left Arizona After SB1070
A new study suggests there may be 100,000 fewer Hispanics in Arizona than there were before the debate over the state’s tough new immigration law earlier this year.
BBVA Bancomer Research, which did the study, worked with figures from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The study says the decline could be due to the law known as SB1070, which partly entered into effect in July, or to Arizona’s difficult economic situation.
The study released Wednesday also cites Mexican government figures as saying that 23,380 Mexicans returned from Arizona to Mexico between June and September.
U.S. census figures from 2008 say about 30 percent of people living in Arizona are Hispanic, or about 1.9 million.
[…]
[Not to worry, though. Just Google this search string: “States accepting Mexican papers for work”]
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Sweden: Lack of Interpreters Threat to Asylum Process
Sweden’s lack of qualified interpreters with specialized skills in legal terminology poses a threat for those seeking asylum in the country, warns the head of the Swedish Bar Association (Advokatsamfundet).
“The risk is that asylum seekers won’t be understood and that, as a result, an asylum seeker won’t be able to put forward the arguments that serve as the basis for their case in an effective way. And therefore there is a risk that they will be rejected, and we think that’s very serious,” Anne Ramberg, director general of the Swedish Bar Association, told Sveriges Radio.
Only one sixth of the 6,000 interpreters in Sweden are licenced by Sweden’s Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet), and even fewer have specialized competence in legal terminology.
Of the 200,000 interpreter hours needed annually by the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket), only 6 percent are carried out by licenced court interpreters, SR reports.
And Sweden’s 1,000 licenced interpreters are only qualified in 36 languages, while the Migration Board receives cases in well over 100 languages.
As a result, most of Sweden’s 30,000 annual asylum seekers who require an interpreter are reliant on services from interpreters who haven’t gained accreditation.
And a recent study carried out by the Swedish Courts Administration (Domstolsverket) showed that licenced interpreters are of markedly better quality than unlicenced ones.
“You can see that the translations don’t flow in the way you’re used to with a qualified interpreter,” said the Courts Administration Ulla Pålsson, who led the investigation, to SR.
She added that poor quality translations can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes which Pålsson said the agency “cannot accept” within the Swedish judicial system.
In order to address the situation, the government needs to launch an inquiry into how to train more interpreters, argued Pålsson.
In addition, she thinks that rules governing how interpreter services are supervised should be reviewed, something which was first proposed following a previous government inquiry six years ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Video: School Tells Student to Remove Flag From His Bicycle
Via JWF, this will probably be the outrageous outrage of the day. A 13-year-old boy has flown the flag on the back of his bike to and from his middle school for a couple of months, in part to honor the military service of his grandfather. This week, according to the family, the school told Cody Alicea to remove the flag … just in time for Veterans Day. The reason? Other students complained about the American flag.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Race for Private Space Stations: It’s U.S. Versus Russia
A new space race is beginning, but this time between private companies, not nations. Businesses in the United States and Russia are vying to be the first to launch a private space station.
One project, an inflatable space habitat, already has six clients waiting for it, according to the company, Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas.
“We’re just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg with commercial opportunities and pent-up demand,” Mike Gold, Bigelow Aerospace’s director of Washington, D.C. operations and business growth, told SPACE.com.
The other venture, led by two companies in Russia, is called the Commercial Space Station and aims to be a combination laboratory and hotel. Both the CSS and the Bigelow station are looking to launch in the next five years or so.
The Russian project has received support from the official Russian space program.
“We consider the Commercial Space Station a very interesting project, encouraging private participation,” said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Space Agency. “It will attract private investment for the Russian space industry.”
To date, space stations have been a national or international affair. Russia achieved early success with its Salyut and Mir stations, and NASA brought the United States into the game first with Skylab in 1973. The U.S. and Russia have since teamed up with 13 other countries to build the $100 billion International Space Station, which celebrated a decade of continuous manned operations this month.
But private space stations like those promised by Bigelow Aerospace and the Moscow-based Orbital Technologies, which is backing the Commercial Space Station, hold the promise of catering to a wider clientele — a customer base that includes scientists and governments, as well as materials manufactures and thrill-seeking space tourists.
An expandable station
The inflatable design developed by Bigelow Aerospace is based on discontinued research by NASA under the Transhab project on modules made with Kevlar-like composites that expand in space. These offer far more room than comparable modules on the International Space Station, while providing as much or more protection against radiation and impacts from debris, Bigelow officials said.
“When traditional metallic structures in space are struck by solar flares, they get a secondary radiation effect called scattering that can be deadly,” Gold explained. “Our structures are nonmetallic, substantially reducing that problem and offering enhanced protection against radiation.”
When it comes to impacts from micrometeoroids and the like, the Bigelow modules’ skins can not only absorb and disperse the energy from strikes, but can retain their shape as well. “Expandable structures hold their integrity longer than physical structures, which can collapse,” Gold said. “The additional volume our structures have buys additional time to fix them as well.”
The first Bigelow station will consist of four components in low-Earth orbit. First is the Sundancer module, which has 6,356 cubic feet (180 cubic meters) of usable space and can support a crew of three. Next is a node-bus combination that adds docking capability, and then a second Sundancer. Last comes a BA330 module, which provides 11,653 cubic feet (330 cubic meters) of space and can hold up to six crewmembers.
“That’s a crew capacity of 12, double that of the International Space Station,” Gold said.
The BA330 boasts four large windows coated with a film that protects against ultraviolet rays, and contains an environment control and life-support system, including lavatory and hygiene facilities. The station will be powered by solar arrays and batteries, similar to the International Space Station.
The Bigelow station will be geared toward astronautics and commercial and scientific microgravity research, Gold said, not tourism.
“First and foremost, we are not a space hotel,” he stressed in an interview.
Bigelow Aerospace already has six customers lined up, in the form of memoranda of understanding with space agencies and government departments in Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The cost for customers to use the station remains uncertain, “as that’s largely driven by the issue of transportation there and back,” Gold said. “Once we know what transportation vehicle we’ll use and where we’ll launch from, we’ll have a better idea on costs.”
Their station could launch by 2015 or so, Gold said, using United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. They are partnered with Boeing to produce a crew capsule as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative.
“Customers and companies that have access to space will be the economic giants of the future. We hope it happens here, and hope that all of humanity can enjoy its benefits,” Gold said…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
When it Comes to Women, The UN Flogs Its Own Integrity
Growing up in Richmond, B.C., I, like more than a few Canadian children, dreamed of becoming secretary general of the United Nations. The ideal of engaged global citizenship enraptured me, a political refugee from Idi Amin’s Uganda.
The storied service of secretaries-general from faraway lands — Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden, U Thant of Burma — shaped my belief that, whatever our origins, the UN is a crucible of common decency. I even remember telling high-school pals that my future career must involve human-rights activism. Without quite knowing what that meant, I knew the source of my inspiration.
So I have to thank the UN for making me such an enthusiast of human dignity that I can no longer defend much of its work. This week’s drama was only the latest self-imposed lashing of its integrity.
Iran’s government, among the world’s most hostile to women, almost made it onto the executive board of UN Women — a new, extra-powerful agency mandated to advance women’s equality. The nomination would have allowed Iran to slip into its seat without the glare of an election.
On Tuesday, that plan blew up. As news leaked that Iran might help call the shots at UN Women, and as human-rights groups began crying foul, polite diplomats got twitchy. East Timor jumped into the race. Dedicated arm-twisting by the United States, Canada, Australia and European countries paid off. On Wednesday, Iran lost the showdown.
But has human dignity emerged victorious? Saudi Arabia, at least as much an abuser of women as Iran, automatically bagged its position on UN Women’s board by being a donor. According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudis essentially “bought” their seat. Now their representative can fly home and tell Saudi women’s rights advocates about the kingdom’s heightened legitimacy. Yep, that’ll give everyone confidence that the stonings and floggings are coming to an end.
Having human-rights violators at the table might change them faster than isolation will. But experience suggests they’re actually egged on.
In June of 2009, David Littman of the Association for World Education went before the UN Human Rights Council. He proposed that the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar University, the Harvard of Sunni Islam, issue a fatwa against the stoning of women to death. Whereupon the Egyptian representative interjected, “I will not see Islam crucified on this council!” Crucified? By resorting to an Islamic solution?
This story illustrates deeper corruption among power players at the UN. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a union of 57 Muslim-majority countries. For several years, it has pushed through a resolution called “Combatting Defamation of Religions.” Armed with its logic and emotion, the UN Human Rights Council censors interventions not only about stoning but also about girls as young as 9 being married off.
Never mind that the crimes themselves defame Allah by cloaking man-made culture as divine edict. Never mind that this inhumane power play is being humoured by, of all things, a human-rights council. Never mind that its Godforsaken game offends plenty of Muslims who won’t have our say in the culturally circumspect corridors of the UN.
In its defence, the OIC objects that “new trends” are “threatening the multicultural fabric of many of our societies.” Trends, for example, plotted by Danish cartoon editors. But “new” trends don’t explain why Pakistan presented the first anti-defamation measure to the UN in 1999 — long before the 2006 Prophet Mohammed cartoon fiasco, or 9/11, or George W. Bush.
As of Wednesday, Pakistan also sits on the executive board of UN Women.
For all the hypocrisy, absurdity and indignity, I refuse to become cynical. Michelle Bachelet, the no-nonsense former president of Chile, heads UN Women. That’s one reason for hope. I trust she’ll be an ally to Human Rights Watch, which vows to crank up the heat on Saudi Arabia as it takes its place under the feminist sun.
It’s even possible that this week’s shenanigans have awakened sedate diplomats. Next week, the UN General Assembly will vote on Iran’s human-rights record. Lobbying has intensified because of the showdown at UN Women — for better or for worse.
I still love what the UN stands for. But none of us should abide what it’s fallen for.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
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