Can the Euro Still be Saved?
The countries of the euro zone are hopelessly divided over the question of how to save the currency in the long term. Bailouts for individual countries like Ireland and Greece can only be a temporary solution. Meanwhile, an internal paper drawn up by the German government has revealed Berlin’s plans for forcing private-sector investors to take their share of losses in future crises. By SPIEGEL Staff
In the time since European leaders named the Belgian politician Herman Van Rompuy president of the European Council a year ago, the public has taken little notice of the reserved native of Belgium’s Flanders region. But that changed last Tuesday, when Van Rompuy made headlines across Europe with a brief remark.
“We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union,” Van Rompuy said during a panel discussion. With his comments, he expressed what many people in Brussels had been thinking but few had dared to say out loud.
As it happens, Van Rompuy would also have preferred not to say what he said. Two days later, he claimed that he had been misunderstood. He had apparently stuck his neck out too far. But that doesn’t change the fact that the statement itself was correct.
Euro-zone governments have spent months trying to end the crisis facing their common currency, but the danger has not been averted. On the contrary, the crisis meetings have returned and billions in emergency funds are needed once again. And there is still no end in sight to the crisis.
Merely Temporary Relief
European leaders have tried all kinds of measures in the bid to save the euro. They approved a bailout program for Greece and a massive rescue fund for the entire euro zone, they whipped legislation through their parliaments and they expanded the articles of the Lisbon Treaty to their legal limits (and beyond, many would argue). The European Central Bank (ECB) has even violated an ironclad taboo by buying up the bonds of ailing countries in an attempt to stabilize their prices.
But those steps only brought temporary relief, which only lasted until the next piece of bad news emerged. Yesterday it was Greece, and now it’s the sorry state of Irish banks that poses a threat to the common currency. Each new report fuels the suspicion that the problems may be so pervasive that they can no longer be solved with conventional methods and by taking on more and more debt. Fears are growing that the crisis could lead to the default of individual countries or possibly even the collapse of the euro zone.
A deep divide between two almost irreconcilable camps runs through Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel heads one camp, consisting of the northern European countries. Merkel sees herself as the defender of a culture of stability of the sort that Germany has maintained since the days of the deutschmark. Her goal is to prevent the monetary union from becoming a kind of transfer union, with Germany as paymaster.
The second camp consists of the so-called PIIGS states, which have accumulated too much debt in the past and are now hoping for help: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. They want the thing that Merkel wants to prevent: a union in which the strong pay for the weak. Europe’s institutions are now maneuvering between these two camps…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Agrees on Multi-Billion Rescue Package for Ireland
Ireland has formally asked the European Union for financial assistance, and EU finance ministers have approved the aid. The size of the rescue package is not yet clear, but it could be up to 100 billion euros. The junior partner in Ireland’s ruling coalition, the Green Party, has called for an early election in January.
Just a few days ago, Ireland was insisting that it would not need a financial rescue package from the European Union. Now Dublin has changed its tune. On Sunday, the Irish government officially requested help from the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Europe’s finance ministers quickly agreed to the aid in a hastily convened telephone conference on Sunday evening.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said on Sunday a package of less than €100 billion ($137 billion) had been agreed on in principle. Its main aim will be to support Ireland’s ailing banks. EU and IMF experts had arrived in Ireland on Thursday to examine the country’s books to get a sense of what kind of assistance Ireland would require.
The news agency Reuters quoted senior sources in the EU as saying the package would total €80 billion-90 billion. The EU’s Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn said that the exact amount would be decided at the end of November after further negotiations.
‘Misled and Betrayed’
The bailout threatened to plunge Ireland into a political crisis on Monday as the junior partner in the ruling coalition, the Green Party, called for a general election in January to give the Irish people “political certainty.” It said it would pull out of government once the government had agreed all the necessary fiscal measures and secured financial support.
“The past week has been a traumatic one for the Irish electorate. People feel misled and betrayed,” the Green Party said in a statement.
The coalition of Fianna Fail, the Greens and independent politicians has a parliamentary majority of three and faces a December 7 vote on a rigorous package of austerity measures.
Tens of Billions Needed
The EU’s finance ministers immediately agreed in principle to a rescue package on Sunday evening. “We welcomed the request of the Irish government for financial assistance from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund,” Rehn said. “Providing assistance to Ireland is warranted to safeguard the financial stability in Europe.” He said experts from the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank would prepare a three-year package of loans by the end of the month, which would “address both the fiscal challenges of the Irish economy and the potential future capital needs of the banking sector in a decisive manner.”
Justifying the request for help, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan had said earlier on Sunday that his country had accumulated a deficit of €19 billion that it could not currently refinance on the financial markets. He said tens of billions of euros were probably needed to help ailing banks in the country, but insisted it would not be a “three-figure sum.”
Lenihan insisted however that Ireland’s low 12.5 percent corporate tax would not be touched, despite calls from other European politicians for the tax rate to be raised.
The United Kingdom and Sweden, which are not euro-zone members, have also said they will provide bilateral aid to Ireland. British Chancellor George Osborne has agreed to pay 7.5 billion pounds (€8.8 billion or $12 billion) toward the bailout…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Eurozone Crisis: Merkel is no Marshall
Handelsblatt, 19 November 2010
“Versailles without war.” Handelsblatt leads with a front page diatribe on Angela Merkel’s attitude towards the EU countries in trouble. The chief editor of the financial daily, Gabor Steingart, accuses the chancellor of inflicting on Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain sanctions comparable to those under the Versailles Treaty that put an end to the First World War — and paved the way for the Second.
And Steingart recalls US Secretary of State George Marshall’s speech in June 1947 offering a defeated Germany the aid needed to take its destiny in hand again. “We give the Americans credit for that, but we haven’t learned any lessons from it” — and now run the risk of turning Europe into “a place where the inhabitants loathe one another”.
Cutbacks equivalent to 13% of GDP are something no country has achieved in times of peace, points out Das Handelsblatt. “Applied to Germany, that would mean dispensing with family benefits, disbanding the Bundeswehr, reducing social security subsidies to zero — and doubling income taxes.”
“The 72 million Greeks, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese owe 1.5 trillion euros to European banks: that’s five times the German state budget,” raps out Gabor Steingart, foreseeing that “states in distress can scrimp and save to the point of self-strangulation, they won’t get rid of that millstone round their necks”. Lest her policy culminate — not in war — but in rampant social insecurity, Angela Merkel had better remember Versailles and the Marshall Plan, take a leaf out of that book, and bang the drum for direct investment in southern Europe.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Irish Government on Brink of Collapse as Cameron and Osborne Face Fury Over Britain’s £7bn Loan
David Cameron and George Osborne faced a furious backlash over Britain’s £7bn loan for Ireland today as the Irish Government was pushed to the brink of collapse by the withdrawal of a junior coalition partner.
The Green Party today called for a general election in Ireland and said a vote should be set some time in the second half of January.
John Gormley, Green Party leader and Irish Environment Minister, said the party made the decision on Saturday.
The dramatic call comes less than 24 hours after one of the darkest moments in recent Irish history when the country agreed to ask the International Monetary Fund and Europe for a multi-billion bailout.
Confirming that the UK would pay more than £7billion into an international package worth up to £85billion, George Osborne insisted the bailout was in Britain’s ‘national interest’.
Critics protested that the sum exceeds the £6 billion of early spending cuts that the Coalition managed to scrape together this year, amounting to £300 per family for Ireland’s bail-out.
British taxpayers will be landed with an increase in the colossal debt burden — already £952billion — at a time of desperate cost cutting.
They will be stung three times because Ireland will receive funds from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and direct loans from Britain.
But the real anger was from Conservative Right-wing MPs furious that the Prime Minister was in their view failing to live up to the eurosceptic promises he made in opposition.
Bill Cash, the elder statesman of Tory Euro-sceptics, said: ‘It is in our national interest to help the Irish but not through this Euro framework. The real issue is the Government saying it will do something about European rules but then acquiescing in another European integration process.’
If Ireland were to default on its debts, losses of around £5billion on toxic bank debts held by Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group would push the liability to British taxpayers up to £12.5billion — though the bailout should prevent that happening.
Critics argue Britain should not be involved in propping up a currency it does not support.
John Mann, a Labour member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, called for MPs to be given a vote on the Irish bailout.
‘What George Osborne has chosen to do is use money from the average taxpayer to bail out the bankers — including British bankers — yet again,’ said Mr Mann.
But Mr Osborne insisted today: ‘“I told you so” is not much of an economic policy.’
He told the BBC: ‘What we have committed to do is to be partners, as shareholders in the International Monetary Fund, in an international rescue of the Irish economy.
‘But we have also made a commitment to consider a bi-lateral loan that reflects the fact we are not part of the euro and don’t want to be part of the euro.
‘Ireland is our very closest economic neighbour. I judged it to be in our national interest to be part of the international efforts to help the Irish.’
However, he did stress that Britain does not want ‘to be part of a permanent bail-out mechanism for the euro’.
Asked to confirm the £7billion estimate for Britain’s contribution , the Chancellor added: ‘It’s around that. It’s in the billions, not the tens of billions.’
Mr Osborne, who will make a statement to MPs in the Commons later, said: ‘Ireland is a friend in need and we are here to help.’
The final bailout total is expected to be between £68billion and £76billion, but it could be as high as £85billion. Britain’s contribution will be between £6billion and £7.5billion.
The Irish Greens said they made the decision on Saturday. The party then sent its two Cabinet ministers into an emergency meeting yesterday to sign off the IMF/EU bail-out.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen was told about the move this morning and Mr Gormley said he expressed disappointment at the decision.
But Finance Minister Brian Lenihan was reportedly unaware of the decision up until half an hour before it was made public.
Mr Gormley said he wanted the current coalition Government to achieve three things before going to the public.
Secure IMF/EU funding respecting vital Irish interests and restoring stability to the euro, expected in several weeks.
Mr Gormley said the Greens wanted to spend the next two months working on these crucial issues to ‘safeguard the future prosperity and independence of the Irish people’.
Mr Cowen bowed to a week of EU pressure last night and said the once-mighty Celtic Tiger requires a humiliating Greek-style handout to prop up the government and its basket-case banks.
‘The government has today decided that Ireland apply for financial assistance to the European Union,’ he said. ‘European countries have agreed to our request. A formal process of negotiation will commence that will lead to assistance.’
European shares and the euro both rose in value this morning as markets welcomed the developments.
The FTSE 100 was up 0.5 per cent, Germany’s Dax up 0.6 per cent and the euro had strengthenned to $1.376, while Japan’s Nikkei closed at a five-month high after rising 0.9 per cent.
However, experts have warned that the humiliation of Ireland will have a domino effect, threatening the future of the euro.
Fears are rising that Portugal might also need to be saved as the debt crisis tears across Europe, with Spain not far behind. Foreign Secretary William Hague claimed the single currency might not survive.
Mr Osborne and fellow G7 finance ministers held a conference call to agree the basics of the deal.
EU Treasury ministers later issued a statement confirming that the EU as a whole, the IMF and the 16 eurozone countries will all contribute while Britain and Sweden have offered the Irish direct loans.
EU ministers will meet in Brussels this week to thrash out the precise details of who pays what.
But senior Treasury sources revealed that one third of the bailout cash will come from the IMF at a cost of £1.5billion to Britain.
Britain looks likely to contribute £3billion to the EU fund but will not make any contribution to the eurozone pot of cash because it is not in the single currency bloc.
Instead, the UK is poised to lend ‘small handfuls of billions’, thought to be another £3billion in direct loan.
While the EU fund money has already been paid to Brussels, the loans will add to the Government’s debts, though they will not add to the deficit because they will be paid back.
Opponents of the bailout point out that the UK is trying to save £7billion in cuts this year, with 25 per cent reductions in many departments over the next four years.
The Dublin government will be forced to copy Britain in announcing a new budget tomorrow, which will include cuts of £13billion by the end of 2014. The Republic currently spends about £16billion more than it receives in taxes.
David Cameron said the UK must play its part because of the ‘incredibly close economic relationship’ between the countries.
‘Ireland is not just our neighbour and friend,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘We export more to Ireland than we do to Brazil, Russia, India, China combined. Our banking systems are linked, our finances and economies are very linked so of course we stand ready to help.’
European leaders have been open about their desire to prop up the Irish to save the euro. The Dublin bailout follows the £94billion rescue of Greece over the summer — to which Britain did not contribute.
Tory MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘We shouldn’t be paying to help keep Ireland in the euro. If we are going to pay to solve this crisis, we should be helping to pay Ireland to quit the euro.
‘Ireland’s misery is only going to end when it has its own currency again. At a time of austerity, again we are paying vast sums to the European Union.’
Leading Eurosceptic and former Tory cabinet minister John Redwood also said Britain had no responsibility to contribute to the fund.
He said: ‘I don’t think it’s Britain’s problem, I think it is a euro area problem. Why should Britain have to do it when we are not part of the euro area?’
Sam Bowman, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said: ‘The proposed bail-out for Ireland is a bad deal for the UK. It puts the interests of the European Union and the eurozone before the interests of Ireland, and the British Government should have no part in paying for it.
‘Asking the British taxpayer to cough up £7billion shows just how audacious the European Union has become in its desperation to keep the eurozone project afloat.
‘The UK successfully avoided entering the eurozone. Ireland was not so lucky, but it entered in full knowledge of the risks involved.
‘Bailing out Ireland now would undo much of the benefits that Britain has yielded from keeping the pound and would make a mockery of the spending cuts announced by the coalition last month.
‘In the end, Ireland will have to choose its own path out of this crisis. But the British taxpayer should not be held responsible for past mistakes by Irish politicians.’
A source close to Mr Osborne said: ‘We have a very high level of confidence that we will be paid back.’
The developments marked a day of infamy for Ireland after less than 90 years of independence and weeks of denial that any help would be needed at all.
Irish Prime Minister Cowen insisted the bailout did not amount to a ‘loss of sovereignty for Ireland’.
But he faced questions about his own future after being forced to go cap in hand to international financiers — a move which shattered the economic reputation of the Labour government in the 1970s when Britain received an IMF bailout.
With fears mounting over the health of Portugal, Spain and even Italy, the rescue of Ireland might not be enough to save the euro.
The opposition party in Lisbon claims that Portugal’s debt mountain is even bigger than the government admits.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Irish PM Brian Cowen to Call New Year Election
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has said he will call a general election in the New Year following a day of political turmoil over an EU-led bail-out of the country’s ailing economy.
He rejected opposition calls for a snap election, saying the country’s crucial budget had to be passed first.
Earlier, the Green Party — junior partners in the governing coalition — called for a January election.
The government has accepted up to 90bn euros (£77bn; $124bn) in loans.
In return, the government is to publish a four-year economic plan on Wednesday and is drawing up an austerity budget, to be unveiled on 7 December.
“We believe that there is a clear duty on all members of Dail Eireann [lower house of parliament] to facilitate the passage of these measures in the uniquely serious circumstances in which we find ourselves,” said Mr Cowen after an emergency meeting of cabinet members.
“The political and financial stability of the state require no less. It is my intention, at the conclusion of this budgetary process with the enactment of the necessary legislation in the New Year, (to) then seek a dissolution of Dail Eireann and to enable the people to determine who should undertake the responsibilities of government in the challenging period ahead thereafter.”
He called for MPs to support the budget and the four-year plan — aimed at bringing stability to the economy.
However, the BBC’s Mark Simpson in Dublin says that, despite Mr Cowen’s statement, MPs could still force him from office before the budget is agreed.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Budget Cuts Prompt Entertainment Industry Walkout
Rome, Nov. 22(AKI) — Cinemas and theatres will go dark on Monday as Italy’s entertainment industry agitates against proposed budget cuts to their sector with a one day national strike.
The strike comes as Italy’s arts and entertainment workers say they will be affected disproportionatly compared with other areas in culture, such as museums and archeological sites. It is expected that 250,000 will turn out for today’s actions.
Italy’s arts fund, known as FUS, or fondo unico spettacolo, is a single fund divided between the arts. The Italian government has plans to slash financing for the fund from 450 million euros in 2008 to 262 million euros in 2011, according Italian newspaper La Stampa, citing government figures.
Heavily in debt, the Italian government, along with other European countries, is implementing sharp budget cuts. The Italian culture ministry has been subject to spending reductions to the tune of 16 percent from 2008 to around 1.71 billion euros despite claims that Italy is the country with the richest cultural patrimony.
Actors, directors, producers and other members of Italy’s entertainment community last month staged a protest that blocked the opening day at the Rome Film Festival.
They fear tax credits aimed at boosting cinema production, will not be renewed. Big Hollywood productions such as “The Tourist” and “The American” were able to film in Italy thanks to the tax credit.
Speaking of the expected drop to FUS, Silvano Conti, general secretary of the Slc-Cgil communications union that is involved in entertainment, reiterated fears that the tax credit for film production has not been included as renewals in the upcoming budget.
“The situation is serious and worrisome and the solidarity of the strike shows this,” Conti told Cinecitta News, a daily Italian film news service.
Entertainment organizations Agis, entertainment trade organization and Anica, Italy’s motion pictures organization are strongly joined with the strike as is US major Universal Pictures. The CEO of Universal Pictures Italia Richard Borg said Monday that the major is aligned with the protest.
Italy’s culture minister Sandro Bondi has been under fire for not sufficiently lobbying in favour of culture. Following the recent crumbling of Pompeii’s 2000-year-old House of the Gladiators, Italy’s political opposition has called for Bondi to resign and have forced a confidence vote on the minister’s mandate slated later this month.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Detroit Mayor Encouraged by Turin Counterpart
Turin, 19 Nov. (AKI) — Turin mayor Sergio Chiamparino has encouraged his Detroit counterpart Dave Bing not to give up hope in overcoming the challenges faced by an industrial city during hard economic times, according to an excerpt of Bing’s diary posted on the Detroit Free Press’s web site.
In his diary, which he publishes daily during a week-long trip to Fiat’s hometown, Bing said Chiamparino reminded him that “it is not easy to reverse the mood of the community, and that aiming at major achievement requires the patience of making small steps and accepting failures.”
Fiat controls Crysler -based near Detroit — by virtue of the 20 percent stake it recieved as part of a bailout deal overseen by the US government.
Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne is attributed for turning around the company’s fortunes. In October he said the carmaker in 2010 would make at least 2 billion euros before taxes and one-time costs.
Detroit-based American car giants Ford and General Motors have also recently come back from the brink of collapse. Ford earned $6.4 billion during the first nine months of this year. After reporting $2 billion in third-quarter profits, GM said it expects 2010 to be its first profitable year since 2004.
Detroit, known as the Motor City, faces a $3 million budget deficit and will run out of money on 31 January, according to the Free Press.
The city’s unemployment rate in September dropped 1.5 percentage points from a year earlier to 13.4 percent, but remains around 4 percentage points higher than the US national average.
Bing said Chiamparino told him to “recognize each step — no matter how small — as part of the bigger vision, that the past is only part of the future, and to continue to share a strong and clear message for change.”
“Also, he encouraged continued community involvement in order to realize recognizable improvement in the city and, finally, that there are no favorable winds for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go,” Bing said in his latest diary entry.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Schäuble Defends Ireland Euro Bailout
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has insisted Germany’s economy is safe despite the announcement that fellow euro zone member Ireland has asked for an international bailout of nearly €100 billion.
Schäuble told broadcaster ZDF on Sunday night that he was confident Ireland’s debt crisis could be contained without its spreading elsewhere in the euro zone.
“If we now find the right answer to the Irish problem, then the chances are great that there will be no contagion effects,” he said.
His comments followed the Sunday evening announcement by the European Central Bank that Ireland had — as has long been expected — asked for international help to stabilise its teetering banking system. Various media reported that the bailout was expected to total €80 billion to €90 billion.
Schäuble said the bailout was unavoidable and added it was a matter of “defending our common currency” rather than any particular euro zone member.
Economy Minister Rainer Brüderle also strove to reassure Germany, saying the country’s celebrated economic recovery was not under threat.
“If help for Ireland does flow, this will not endanger the rebound,” he told daily Bild. “In addition, Ireland must undertake efforts so that its economy becomes competitive. I have no doubt that Ireland will do that successfully.”
Michael Heise, chief economist for Allianz, told the same paper he was confident the crisis in Ireland would not affect the German economy.
The European Central Bank said its governing council “welcomes the request of the Irish Government for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union and euro-area Member States.”
The request was “warranted to safeguard financial stability in the European Union and in the euro area,” it said.
“The European Union and euro-area financial support, together with the IMF financing, will be provided under strong policy conditionality, on the basis of a programme negotiated with the Irish authorities by the Commission and the IMF, in liaison with the ECB,” it said.
“We are confident that this programme will contribute to ensuring the stability of the Irish banking system and permit it to perform its role in the functioning of the economy,” the statement said.
Dublin’s request for aid was approved by EU finance ministers during an emergency conference call on Sunday evening.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Ready to Open Coffers for Ireland: Borg
Sweden could lend Ireland, which is negotiating a debt rescue deal, up to 10 billion kronor ($1.46 billion), Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said Monday.
Sweden amends growth forecast (12 Oct 10)
A Swedish loan to Ireland would be given in addition to funds the country gets from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union.
“We are offering a loan similar to those given to Iceland and Latvia,” Borg told Swedish public radio,” adding that loans to those countries during the global financial crisis amounted to between five and 10 billion kronor.
Borg said “no final decision has been taken on the amount of the loan but the contribution could be at the same level as the loans to Iceland and Latvia.”
He added the loan to Ireland would carry an interest rate of about three percent.
“Sweden is a small country dependent on exports, so stability is crucial to us,” Borg said.
Sweden, a member of the EU but not of the single currency eurozone, said late Sunday it would consider a loan to Ireland but did not specify the amount.
The Scandinavian country’s public finances are among the healthiest in the European Union and the government is forecasting growth of almost five percent this year.
A Swedish loan to Ireland would need to be approved by parliament, Borg said.
Britain said Monday it was considering a loan to Ireland of about £7 billion ($11.2 billion) as part of an international rescue.
It will also lend to Ireland via the EU/IMF bailout.
The EU and IMF accepted on Sunday Ireland’s request for a bailout estimated at up to €90 billion ($123 billion) to stabilise the country’s debt-stricken banking system and restore its strained public finances.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Despite Laws, Currency Black Market Prospers
(ANSAmed) — ROME, NOVEMBER 19 — The number of currency exchange companies and offices in Syria, which up to the end of 2009 numbered no more than 25, seems to be rather low when compared to a population that now amounts to 23 million. Then again, four years after the approval of the law which governs currency exchange, and despite the economic liberalisation, the black market maintains a remarkable presence in Syria’s economy.
The laws that were meant to impose order in the currency exchange sector immediately appeared to be, according to economics expert Abdelkader Hasria, inadequate, and many believe that they were tailor made to suit certain economic parties.
To confirm the fact that, despite the new law, the situation for the currency exchange sector in Syria is rather different to the one desired by the lawmakers, in recent times the country is experiencing a phenomenon of transformation of the official exchange offices. In effects, many of them have now in practice become commercial dealers and their shop windows, instead of listing currency exchange rates, display handcrafted items, gold products, and clothing. This benefits the black market, which continues to prosper in clear breach of the specific measures provided by the Central Bank and its codified procedures.
Syrian banks, including the Central one, control 70% of all foreign currency movements, and Syria’s banks purchase foreign currency and then sell it to the Central Bank. The remaining 30% is equally subdivided between authorised and irregular exchange agencies. Zuhair Zahlool, president of the International Exchange Group, admitted that “The black market is very efficient, but causes many problems because of false banknotes and money transfers”.
Zahlool added that “The fact that the black market still exists is also due to the shortcomings in laws and regulations and, sometimes, to their formal inflexibilities”. He explained that “To open a branch of an exchange agency in a distant area, such as that of Sayyada Zainab, known for religious tourism, you need approximately 50 million Syrian pounds (approximately 790,000 euros, ed’s note). Hardly anyone is ready to invest such an amount in that area”. Which, in practice, allows the black market to prosper, because by bypassing laws and regulations it can open offices anywhere it wants to. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands Protest Over New Ukrainian Tax Code
KIEV (Reuters) — Tamara Boikovich buys fruit and vegetables in the Ukrainian port of Odessa and resells them in the capital Kiev to supplement a meagre pension — but she now fears her old age will be spent dodging the tax man.
She was among several thousand who protested on Monday over a new tax code which the 60-year-old small businesswoman says will condemn her to spend her remaining life “in the shadows.”
The protesters, whose numbers were about 4,000 in the morning but later swelled to many more, urged President Viktor Yanukovich to veto the bill, already passed by the parliament.
They briefly blocked Kiev’s main downtown street, but were prevented by hastily-erected metal barriers from getting close to the presidential administration building.
“I have worked three shifts at a plant for 40 years and now I get a pension of 700 hryvnias ($87.50) a month, and the government still wants money from me,” Boikovich said.
“I will quit this business (if the new tax code takes effect). To hell with it! I will ‘move into the shadows’. I will paint walls for the rich and will pay no taxes at all.”
Plans to reform the ex-Soviet republic’s notoriously weak tax system have triggered the biggest public protests against the Yanukovich government since his election in February, and also revitalised a fractured political opposition.
The new tax code was passed by parliament on November 18, but has to be signed by Yanukovich for it to become law.
The government is under pressure from major creditors like the International Monetary Fund to reform a tax system which ranks third worst in the world after Belarus and Venezuela, according to a World Bank survey.
The new tax code will significantly broaden the category of those small businesses which will have to submit details of their operations to the state tax inspectorate, and pay 25 percent of their profits, instead of fixed payments.
This will immediately apply to large numbers of people like market traders, taxi drivers, cafe owners and hairdressers — Ukraine’s emerging middle class — who until now have simply made monthly ad hoc payments to district tax inspectors.
“No Tax Hikes for the Rich”
But critics say the proposed new code offers a number of loopholes to the government’s wealthy industrialist supporters while hitting millions of low-income earners hard.
“This tax code doesn’t touch the rich, the oligarchs, at all,” said Vitaly, 30, from the industrial city of Kryvy Rih who asked to be identified only by his first name.
He said his family business, which he started in 2001 by selling foodstuffs in a tent to make just over a dollar a day, would no longer be able to expand and would have to be scaled back instead — if not shut completely.
“We have invested hundreds of thousands of hryvnias, cutting down our spending to a minimum,” said Vitaly, who supports a family of four as well as his ageing parents. “I consider myself lucky if I make $1,500-$2,000 a month.”
Chanting “Shame! Shame!,” thousands massed on Kiev’s Independence Square, which was hemmed in by police in riot gear. They urged Yanukovich, who was in Brussels for a summit with the European Union, to use his powers of veto.
Yanukovich, putting at 300,000 the number of additional people who will now be liable for paying tax under the new system, said on Friday in an interview that the government would be unable to make ends meet unless the tax system was reformed.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov defended the tax code as “the most liberal in Europe” but said his government was ready to have “constructive dialogue” with protesters.
The demonstrations coincided with the sixth anniversary of the start of the 2004 street protests against electoral fraud which became known as the Orange Revolution and denied Yanukovich his first chance at power.
Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko went on to become president in early 2005. But Yanukovich staged a comeback, winning a presidential election last February after a run-off against Yushchenko’s erstwhile ally Yulia Tymoshenko.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
BBC’s Kay Suggests Tea Partiers Put Beating Obama Ahead of ‘Country’s Interest, ‘ Opposing Obama is Alternative to ‘Competence’
Appearing as a panel member on Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the BBC’s Katty Kay suggested that Tea Partiers are willing to go against the “country’s interest” rather than to “deal” with President Obama. Kay: “ And if there is going to be a wing of the Republican Party that says, do not on any issue, on any case, even on its merits, compromise with the President, it’s gonna be the Tea Party. And if the Tea Party is driving the energy in the Republican Party … Republicans in Congress are going to have to look very carefully at how they deal with them. And the Tea Party is saying we don’t care about whether it’s in the country’s interest, in our foreign policy interest, in our economic interest necessarily to deal with the President.”
A bit later, as she speculated about whether obstruction by the GOP would be rewarded or punished in 2012, she seemed to suggest that “competence” would involve compromising with President Obama as she used the word as the alternative to standing on “principle” and opposing Obama. Kay: “I think this is the biggest point that, I mean, the point that Dan raises about in 2012. Will voters more reward competence and actions that have been seen to be effective for the country? Or will they reward politicians who stood on principle and oppose the White House expansionist agenda, as they see it?”
[…]
[Competence?? Is this woman joking? Yes, this President will definitely be rewarded.]
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Frank Gaffney: Introducing ‘Forced Intimacy’
It is a sad, and potentially fatal, fact that most Americans know virtually nothing about the United States military. That astounding reality is all the more incredible given that our very survival ultimately depends on the men and women in uniform who defend this country.
Such ignorance is, ironically, a testament to the success of what is known as the All Volunteer Force. It is also a national defect, one that may soon be the undoing of a system based on the willingness of a few to protect the rest of us at great risk to themselves.
Since conscription was ended as the Vietnam War wound down, the American military has been rebuilt — most especially by Ronald Reagan — around extraordinary people who sacrifice normal lives (the creature comforts civilians take for granted in America, the quality time with their families, watching children grow up, witnessing births and birthdays, the ability to decide where they will be and what they will do at any given time, etc.) Even more remarkable, in every case, they are offering to sacrifice life itself, for their country and for us.
But fewer and fewer of us have anything to do with such people. There are a fraction of the bases around this country that there were after World War II or even twenty years ago. The workforce associated with what a generation of Americans were encouraged to revile as the “military-industrial complex” has contracted dramatically. Most of us only come into contact with servicemen and women, if at all, as they transit through airports, train or bus stations on their way to a base or a deployment. All too infrequently are they even acknowledged, let alone thanked, for their service…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Ground Zero Mosque Developers Apply for $5m Grant… From Fund Set Up to Rebuild Manhattan After 9/11 Attacks
Developers of a planned mosque at New York’s Ground Zero have applied for a $5million grant from a fund set up to rebuild the city after 9/11.
The audacious application was put in to the taxpayer-funded ‘community and cultural enhancement’ programme designed to repair lower Manhattan following the terrorist outrage.
If the application is successful,the money will be reportedly used to cover educational facilities at the 13-storey building and not the controversial prayer room.
But even so it will spark outrage and fury amongst the families of those who lost loved ones and re-ignite the row over the entire project.
The Park51 mosque has become a lightning rod for anti-Muslim feeling, with poll after poll indicating it should not be built so close to where the Twin Towers fell.
Serious questions have been raised about its backers including controversial Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who refuses to rule out obtaining funding from countries in the Middle East which have backed terrorist regimes.
‘If Imam Feisal and his retinue want to know why they’re not trusted, here’s yet another reason,’ said. Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam and Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University.
‘The New Yorkers I speak with have questions about Park51. Requesting money from public coffers without engaging the public shows a staggering lack of empathy — especially from a man who says he’s all about dialogue.’ The application was made to the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation, which is overseeing the $20billion (£12.5billion) in federal aid which is earmarked for rebuilding New York and its communities.
The bid appears to have been legal as religious groups can make such requests ‘as long as the request is for a facility or portion of a facility that is dedicated to non-religious activities or uses’.
However the board that makes the final decision must also consider its commitment to ‘an open, inclusive, and transparent planning process’ which could scupper the deal.
What is clear is that the application is well above the $100,000 to $1million which is the recommended range for grant applications, something else the board will have to weigh up. The board’s decision is expected next year.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Obama and Holder and Their Massive Failure to Think
Well, the bubble of Obama supremacy has finally exploded in all our faces and is now lying in tatters, with little giblets of its former hot-air glory spread from here to kingdom come. The candidate who played his “Peace is just an Obama speech away” tune to the easily bamboozled left has just been dealt the final blow that crashed the big, fat hot air balloon.
The very first test case was just last week: a former Gitmo detainee, brought to NYC to be tried as a civilian with all the rights of a genuine American citizen, was found guilty on asingle picayune count from a list of 280-plus murder charges.
Ahmed Ghailani was found guilty by a civilian jury on a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings. Never mind the hundreds murdered by means of the TNT bought by this enemy combatant, obeying the orders of his own commander in chief, Osama bin Laden. Due to constitutional protections gratuitously bestowed on him by President Barack Obama and the Department of Injustice, Ahmed Ghailani will soon be sentenced to serve a couple of decades in an American prison (minus time served, for sure), where he likely will sue the people of the United States of America over and over again with some trumped-up “cruel and unusual punishment” claim.
Wherever he is, Osama bin Laden is having one heck of a great laugh right this minute as he watches Western civilization shoot itself again, again, again, and again in the foot.
What we have here is a great, big, fat failure to think. A failure to think beyond the next sentence. A failure to give an ounce of credit to the president in charge on 9/11 and the thousands of career security personnel who devised the enemy combatant plan and engineered Gitmo to hold these bad guys indefinitely as the prisoners of war that they are. A complete failure to think through possible outcomes and plan around them.
Obama & Company have been called the Keystone Cops too many times to count. But they are far, far worse than mere incompetents. They are blowhards who believe in their own mental and moral superiority to the point where they put all Americans at gratuitous risk.
In the very first month of his presidency, Barack Obama announced the closing of Gitmo within one year. That one was a wash before the words ever cleared his teleprompter-enabled mouth.
Immediately after this thoughtless announcement, Obama moved to shut down the military tribunals set to take place at Gitmo. Despite the huge sums of taxpayer money spent on the Gitmo enterprise, Obama was ready to throw all that away on another of his liberal dream schemes. But the political will had evaporated in the Congress, and the funds to do all this were refused. If Obama had merely thought this through before the big announcement, he could have saved himself and us a lot of embarrassment, not to mention dollars.
Then Holder decided to release for public consumption hundreds of formerly classified CIA memos on prisoner interrogation despite the erstwhile bipartisan pleas of former CIA heads and many other experts. This sent a message to the entire world that our new leader would prefer to sacrifice our own valiant security officers on the altar of his political fantasies than to protect American citizens. And it told the entire Islamic terrorist network exactly how we had interrogated their comrades in arms and simultaneously sent the message that we would surrender rather than fight smart and tough in the future.
As if that were not enough, Holder soon announced — with Obama’s enthusiastic backing — that the 9/11 terrorists would be gifted with full-court-press civilian trials in NYC, mere blocks from Ground Zero. Another massive-beyond-massive failure to think. No one in the whiz-kid cadre at the White House bothered to check with NYC and NY state officials first. Neither did they pre-gauge the furious public reaction. Neither did anyone think to check the budget problems of New York.
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Now, since it is a documented fact that the modern terrorist is a Muslim male somewhere between the ages of 17 and 40, we should begin to put on our little thinking caps and realize that if Islam is indeed a religion of peace, then all that inbreeding has caused vast numbers of Muslim males to completely take seriously the dozens of dicta in the Koran to kill all infidels. In reality, no one gives a tiny whit why they blow people up, what religion they are, or how hard they had it as kids, much less if they got here because of consanguinity. The only thing any decent person cares about is stopping these Muslim males before they kill us all and put their imams in power.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Senate Approves $4.6b for Black Farmers, Indians
WASHINGTON — The Senate has approved almost $4.6 billion to settle long-standing claims brought by American Indians and black farmers against the government.
The money has been held up for months in the Senate as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it. The two class action lawsuits were filed over a decade ago.
The settlements include almost $1.2 billion for black farmers who say they suffered discrimination at the hands of the Agriculture Department. Also, $3.4 billion would go to Indian landowners who claim they were swindled out of royalties by the Interior Department. The legislation was approved in the Senate by voice vote Friday and sent to the House.
President Obama in a statement praised the Senate for passing the bill and urged the House to move forward on it. He said his administration is also working to resolve separate lawsuits filed against USDA by Hispanic and women farmers.
“While these legislative achievements reflect important progress, they also serve to remind us that much work remains to be done,” he said.
Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe from Browning, Mont. and the lead plaintiff in the Indian case, said Friday that it took her breath away when she found out the Senate had passed the bill. She said was feeling despondent after the chamber had tried and failed to pass the legislation many times. Two people who would have been beneficiaries had died on her reservation this week…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mark Steyn on the Decline of the West and Israel on the Front Line
On the night before terror fundraiser George Galloway is greeted in Vancouver by his adoring rabble of supporters, bestelling author of America Alone Mark Steyn spoke at a Hillel (Jewish students’ association) gala nearby. Steyn spoke on the theme of “First Line and Last Ditch: Israel and the World”, connecting local elements like the Galloway circus tour and the decline of free speech on Canadian campuses, with a worrying loss of “civilizational confidence” in the Western world.
Hillel’s reaction to the Galloway tour this week, which gained big coverage in the National Post and elsewhere, was a perfect example of the group’s effectiveness, Steyn noted. “What they did with George Galloway was to hang him around the neck of celebrity supporters and so-called peace organizations and telling them there’s a price to be paid if you want to associate with a guy like George Galloway. They didn’t do it by going to the Human Rights Commission or saying he should be banned. They said ‘Let him speak’ But let the people who put their names to support the organization that brings a man like George Galloway to Vancouver. Let them pay the price and have George Galloway hung around their necks.”
University bureaucracies are not making it easy for groups like Hillel to push back against those who would deligitimize Israel and make excuses for terrorist organizations. “There’s something very wrong with Canadian education when Canadian universities will fund and support the appearance of a man like George Galloway while Christie Blatchford gets banned from the University of Waterloo and gets compared to Julius Streicher.”
Jews and their friends on campus and elsewhere have been deserted by an assortment of liberal and “human rights” groups that ought to be their natural allies. “It is amazing to me by the way as a satirist that there is an organization called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid… It’s a testament to the absurdity of the situation.” Later, he added that “Jews are the only people in our so-called, rainbow multicultural society who have to justify their identity, who have to defend their identity. It takes courage to be a Jew at a Canadian university and it shouldn’t.”
This absurd situation is a somewhat predictable consequence of a decline in civilizational confidence at the highest levels and in the street, Steyn says. The trend is at its furthest evolution in Europe, is taking hold in Canada and is even affecting the world’s (former?) global superpower. “An incremental decline is very seductive. The United States is now, at least among some of its people, giving way to a palpable wish to join the rest of the West in a hedonistic twilight. In 2008, many Americans were just exhausted by the war on terror, not because it demanded anything of them — quite the opposite — it was just that it got rather tedious to hear about it all the time. They got bored with it.
“Conservative Americans scoff that liberal Americans want to turn the United States into a large Sweden. Liberal Americans reply, well what’s so wrong with being a large Sweden? It’s not clear to me that it’s possible to be a large Sweden and these days, even Sweden isn’t Sweden… The only reason Sweden can be Sweden and Belgium can be Belgium and Canada can be Canada is because since 1945 America has been America: the global order maker.”
Hitting on the central theme of the talk, Steyn noted that Israel was an an exception to this trend. “There’s a nation that doesn’t have the choice of whether it can simply live in the culture of pleasure and surrender to sensual pleasures and songs, soccer and movies… It’s a country whose wealthy prosperous suburbs don’t look so very different from those in Vancouver or Seattle or Geneva.
“And yet every so often, rockets are fired at you from the death cult next door. And your more benign neighbors refuse to recognize your right to exist. And your less affable neighbors are actively working to bring about your non-existence. And now their pathologies are about to be nuclearized. Israel will not merely be on the front line, but condemned by the myopia of the rest of the West to live permanently at Code Red. And so because it cannot lapse into the self-indulgence of the rest of us, because it’s obliged to be the last serious Western nation, it is universally reviled in the coordiors of the UN and elsewhere.”
Steyn is well known for the central theme of America alone, that our Western society is changing due to rapid and growing immigration from Muslim countries. It is not an argument about racial demographics, but about behavior: while past waves of immigrants of diverse groups such as Jews, Italians, East Indians and Chinese have essentially assimilated into the Canadian fabric and helped perpetuate a tradition of respect for universal freedoms and democracy, there are certainly large numbers of Muslims who would like to change the fundamental makeup of society by instituting shariah law and forcing changes in our foreign policy (notably, to isolate Israel, the only Western democracy in the Middle East). The West’s tradition of multiculturalism is only viable so long as no one group seeks special priveleges to dominate the rest, as when some Islamist groups maintain that all citizens should be legally punishable for blasphemy against Islam (as defined by those same Islamists, naturally).
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
1,000 mph Car ‘On Track’ To Break Record
The British say they’re set to break the world land speed record in 2012 with a car that can reach 1,000 mph (1,609 kph), according to BBC News.
Construction on the Bloodhound vehicle’s rear should begin in January.
“We’ve got companies all over the world wanting to sponsor the car,” project director Richard Noble of Bloodhound SSC Engineering Adventure told BBC News. “We’ve actually got more people who want to financially back this thing than we’ve got space for them.”
To snag the world record, the Bloodhound will need to beat out the current record of 763 mph (1,228 kph) set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997.
The British car will be powered by a hybrid rocket and a jet engine from a Eurofighter-Typhoon, according to Bloodhound SSC.
Once built and ready to go, the car is expected to race across what is now a dried-up lake bed in Northern Cape Province, South Africa.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Americans Have Taken Their Eyes Off Europe
Dutch expat Leslie Wolf, who left Amsterdam for the rural US earlier this year, might have the answer: “Here I don’t get the idea that Europe even exists!” “It’s worse than I expected,” says Ms Wolf. “The ignorance of the ordinary American man and woman about where I come from is immense. I feel like I’ve arrived from another planet.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Death of European Free Speech — Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff “Anti-Islam” Trial to Commence Tomorrow in Vienna
November 22, 2010 — San Francisco, CA — PipeLineNews.org — Tomorrow morning, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff will stand trial in Vienna, Austria, accused of violating Europe’s onerous “hate speech,” thought control statutes.
Sabaditsch-Wolff has been accused of fomenting hatred against the Continent’s Muslims, primarily by quoting verbatim from the Qur’an. If convicted she could face a stiff fine as well as prison time.
The trial has caused quite a stir among conservative defenders of free speech but has garnered almost no coverage from a complicit Western press.
As noted wag Pat Condell has noted regarding this spectacle, “Europe today is a shining example of how to piss in your own drinking water…”
That the trial should commence in Vienna, once a city noted for its laissez faire liberalism and free thinking, is especially noteworthy and tragic, having been the scene of an epic battle marking the beginning of the end of the Muslim Ottoman Empire — the siege of Vienna in 1529 — in which the Islamists were repulsed. The battle began a nearly 200 year effort to repulse the Muslim jihad which culminated in the famous naval battle of Lepanto [1689] in which the Turks were defeated in an effort led by Pope Innocent XI and Europe’s Christian princes.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Politicians Line Up to Buy Churches
Copenhagen to convert churches into nurseries
Plans are under way to start converting city churches slated for closure into nurseries and youth centres.
The proposal has received political support from all sides, including the city’s deputy mayor for Copenhagen’s child and youth affairs, Anne Vang. “The churches have some beautiful and exciting rooms that are just perfect for cultural events such as concerts,” she told Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.
“But I’m also excited by the thought of using the churches for child functions. We’re currently working with child institutions focusing on the transitions in the children’s lives, and we actually need big buildings for that,” she said.
MP Karen Klint, the Social Democrat religious issues spokesperson, was also in favour of the idea. “Part of the mission of our church is to work for our young people. So if a church shuts down, it would make perfect sense to use it as a nursery, for instance,” she said.
Over the next four years, Copenhagen will see an increase of 50 school classes and a shortage of up to 4,000 nursery places, according to the council’s children and youth administration.
The proposal comes in the wake of last week’s savings plan announcement by the National Church, which included a list of churches recommended for closure.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Euro-Zone Rescue: Rising Tide of Opposition in Germany
by Srdja Trifkovic
On November 21 Ireland formally applied for a rescue package worth $90 billion, having failed to control its financial crisis with austerity measures and strict budgetary planning. European Union officials quickly agreed to the request, which follows an agreement negotiated last week in Dublin by a joint EU and IMF team. They hope that the Irish rescue will reassure investors and prevent the crisis from spreading to Portugal and perhaps even Spain.
Not for the first time, Germany will bear the disproportionate share of the burden of the rescue package. But can it be counted upon to continue acting as an emergency paymaster whenever a troubled member of the euro-zone slides into crisis? As I wrote here a few days ago, the future of the euro, and of the EU itself, hinges on the continued will of the German political and financial establishments to foot the bill for wider geopolitical and ideological reasons. That will suddenly appears to be wearing thin. Today’s Spiegel magazine thus reports (“Can the Euro Still Be Saved?”) that Chancellor Angela Merkel is under increasing pressure from Germany’s public opinion and from the parties forming her ruling coalition to stop equating the survival of the euro with the future of the EU itself.
In addition, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is currently reviewing several complaints that tens of billions of euros in aid for Greece, and the subsequent establishment of the European stabilization fund, have violated Germany’s constitution. According to the Center for European Politics in Freiburg, the use of EU money to support rescue packages is also illegal under Article 122 of the Lisbon Treaty which says that “the Union shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments… or public undertakings of any Member State, without prejudice to mutual financial guarantees for the joint execution of a specific project.” As Ambrose Evans Pritchard explained at the time, this does not necessarily prohibit EU states joining together voluntarily to rescue a country in trouble—but it is another matter to use EU money itself for this purpose.
One of the suits was filed by five venerable legal and financial experts, including the hugely influential former CEO of Thyssen, Dieter Spethmann. They maintain that the erosion of German state finances “strikes a blow at the constitutional foundations of our state and our society.” It is contrary to the true spirit of Europe, with its diverse roots and cultures, and “trifles with the future of our children and grandchildren.” To fight this travesty does not signal a return to outdated nationalism, they wrote; “As citizens we have a right to demand that our government abides by its sworn oath to protect the German nation against threats.”
Last Friday the five published a full-page advertisement in the Handelsblatt in the form of an open letter to the ruling Christian Democratic Union, which had just completed its annual congress. The financial burden of Germany’s own debt and that of its insolvent partners, they warned, is forcing the German economy to its knees—yet the CDU is complacently acting under the slogan “business as usual”:…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Church Thief Sent Packing Empty-Handed by Falling Saint Statue
A thief who tried to break open the donation box in a church was hit on the head by a falling statue of a saint, police in Munich reported on Sunday.
The man suffered a nasty cut to the head and fled the St Benno Church without the donation box, said Ludwig Sperrer, the church’s priest.
He said it seemed that the near-life-size statue of Saint Antonius had fallen from its wooden plinth as the would-be thief was trying to break open the donation box which was situated in the same wooden structure.
“He obviously did not want to let it go,” said Sperrer with a grin.
But the thief was obviously not convinced to change his ways by the falling saint — he went to a nearby house to ask for help with his bleeding head and his lady accomplice stole a wallet left lying on a counter.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Introduces Tax on Cruise Ship Passengers
(ANSAmed) — ROME, NOVEMBER 19 — The Greek government has introduced a boarding fee for cruise ships operating under non-community flags seeking to operate in the Greek sea area. The approval was signed by the Greek Minister of Maritime Affairs, Islands and Fisheries, Yiannis Diamantidis. The fee for every passenger and for the trip has been fixed at 3.95 euros. The fee will be cut by 20% on the condition that the cruise company employs Greek sailors at a rate of at least 1% of the ship’s total crew. It will be cut by 7% for each additional Greek port the ship approaches, according to the cruise schedule of the company.
According to Diamantidis, the decision will give incentives to cruise companies to operate in Greek ports more, to hire Greek sailors, and it will encourage port authorities to develop and improve the services offered. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Has Jihad Come to France?
In recent days I posted two articles describing acts of violence and vandalism against Catholic churches, one in Carcassonne, the other in Avignon. In the first case, young thugs threw rocks and pine cones at the parishioners and set the cypress tree abutting the church on fire. In the second, young thugs urinated in the church and threw excrement on the walls. In both cases the reactions by the archbishops of the dioceses were late in coming, mild in tone and conciliatory towards the thugs, who were regarded as kids acting badly. However, Catholic writer and activist Bernard Antony wonders if France is not now engaged in the jihad that seeks to subjugate the land that was once liberated from Islam by Charles Martel.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Northern League Politician Calls for Looters to be Shot
Treviso, 18 Nov. (AKI) — People caught looting properties in flood-hit areas should be shot on sight, a politician from Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League said on Thursday.
“They should be left for local people to deal with. In such cases, I think police should be authorised to shoot them on sight,” the president of northern Italian province of Treviso in the Veneto region, Learnoardo Muraro, told local TV channel Antennatre Nordest.
He was referring to three Serb immigrants who were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of stealing items from homes in and around the Veneto city of Padua, whose owners had been evacuated during recent flooding.
Muraro also suggested imposing martial law during flooding and other disasters.
Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in Veneto in recent weeks, following heavy rain and flooding.
Five people died in the heavy rains and flooding in northern Italy and elsewhere in the country which caused at least 1 billion euros of damage in the Veneto region alone.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kickbacks Scandal Hits French Establishment
L’Humanité, 22 November 2010
“Did they die for kickbacks?” Humanité reports on yet another French “affaire d’état”, or political scandal. Eight years after the 8 May 2002 bomb blast which killed 11 French naval engineers working on the construction of submarines in Pakistan, investigators are increasingly drawn to a theory that has long been advanced by relatives of the victims: the bomb attack was “linked to the existence of ‘retrocommissions’ [sums of money presented as standard commissions, which also include an illegal payment that is returned to the seller]. “These payments were subsequently used to finance former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign, which was in part organised by his spokesman Nicolas Sarkozy,” writes the daily. According to the families of the victims, the bombing was a reprisal for the suspension of commissions ordered by Jacques Chirac when he took over the office having defeated Edouard Balladur and other candidates.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: PVV Debate on Internal Democracy Leaked
THE HAGUE, 20/11/10 — Documents about the internal organisation of the Party for Freedom (PVV) have been leaked to the media. The documents show that prominent MPs have sharply differing thoughts about the future of the party.
PVV MP Hero Brinkman has for some time been urging more internal democracy in the PVV. He has written a discussion piece that the 24 MPs are to discuss on Tuesday. The report has come into the hands of TV programme EenVandaag.
EenVandaag also obtained a report on the same subject by MP Martin Bosma. He has views that contrast sharply with those of Brinkman. Both MPs play a leading role in the party behind party leader Geert Wilders.
Brinkman is pressing for the conversion of the PVV, which is a foundation without members, into a normal party which organises congresses and has a scientific bureau and a youth branch. Bosma warns that such bodies could undermine the stability of the PVV because then “infiltration threatens.”
Brinkman is also concerned about the degree to which Wilders allows his MPs to appear in the media. If issues other than Islam remain undiscussed on TV then the media-portrayed image of the PVV being a one-issue party will become a reality, the MP warns.
Brinkman further warns that the PVV will collapse should anything happen to Wilders. There has been insufficient thought about a sustainable future for the party, in his view.
Brinkman is not amused that his report and that of Bosma have been leaked. He told reporters he was not sure whether someone within the PVV had leaked the documents to the press. The possibility of theft cannot been ruled out, he said.
The offices of the MPs in the Lower House cannot be locked. “It would not be the first time that we encounter journalists in our rooms,” said Brinkman.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Nothing Wrong’ With Naked Swedish Farm Student Video
An internet video featuring naked Swedish high school students frolicking with farm animals and riding tractors on school property is nothing out of the ordinary for Sweden, according to the school’s principal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi School Lessons in UK Concern Government
The government says it will not tolerate anti-Semitic and homophobic lessons being taught to Muslim children in the UK.
BBC Panorama found that more than 40 Saudi Students’ Schools and Clubs are teaching the official Saudi national curriculum to about 5,000 pupils.
One text book shows how the hands and feet of thieves are chopped off.
The Saudi government said it had no official ties to the part-time schools and clubs and did not endorse them.
However, a building in west London where Panorama obtained one of the text books is owned by the Saudi government.
The director of education for the Saudi Students’ Schools and Clubs said the Saudi Cultural Bureau, which is part of the embassy, had authority over the network.
‘Hellfire’
Education Secretary Michael Gove said there was no place for the Saudi teachings with regard to Jews or homosexuals in Britain: “To my mind it doesn’t seem to me that this is the sort of material that should be used in English schools.”
He said in light of the BBC’s findings, the school inspectorate Ofsted was looking into the possible regulation and inspection of out-of-hours schools and clubs. At present, part-time schools do not fall within Ofsted’s mandate.
“Ofsted are doing some work in this area, they’ll be reporting to me shortly about how we can ensure that part-time provision is better registered and better inspected in the future,” Mr Gove said.
One of the text books asks children to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam — the answer given in the text book is “hellfire”.
Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.
In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.
‘Out of context’
In a written response, the Saudi embassy said such materials were often taken out of context and often referred to historical descriptions.
But Neal Robinson, an expert in the Koran, said the context in which the materials are presented comes with risks.
“To present it cold, as it seems to be here, just part of the teaching of Islam, no it’s not wise. In the wrong hands I think it is… ammunition for anti-Semitism.”
The use of these materials in Britain comes three years after a BBC investigation found a Saudi-funded school in west London was using texts that referred to Jewish people and Christians in derogatory terms. That prompted assurances at the highest diplomatic levels that the materials would be removed.
Panorama has also found evidence of extreme views on some private, full-time Muslim school websites, including messages that state: “Our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition to almost everything Islam stands for” and “We need to defend our children from the forces of evil”.
MP Barry Sheerman, former Labour chairman of the Children, Schools and Families parliamentary committee, said politicians had avoided the issue of controversial teachings in some Muslim schools.
“There are some very good Muslim schools but there are some Muslim schools that give me great cause for concern that is often around the ethos of the schools, the focus of the school and the kind of ideology that is concerning.”
Dr Usama Hasan, an Islamic scholar and part-time imam in east London, warned of the dangers of segregating young Muslims in Britain, particularly the seminaries where the next generation of imams are being educated.
“They don’t interact with people who are not Muslim… they don’t learn the ingredients of the western world, so it’s very easy for them to read the medieval texts which were written at a time when Islam was under attack and say non-believers are our enemies and we have to fight them.”
| — Hat tip: DF2 | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Explosion Destroys Store in Malmö Suburb
A powerful explosion ripped through a convenience store in the Rosengård area of Malmö on Monday morning.
The blast was so powerful that the windows in the property opposite the building were blown out.
“It was not fire crackers that were used,” according to a spokesperson at Malmö police.
According to police the explosive was probably placed at the outside of the property, which contained a store combined with a restaurant.
Police forensics have begun their inspection of the scene.
It remains unknown who could have been behind the attack.
An alarm call came in about the explosion at around 4.30am on Monday and according to police no people were injured.
Police confirmed that there is damage to the building as far up as the third floor in the eight story building where the explosion occurred.
“The glassed in balconies have been moved on the floor above the small convenience store where the explosion occurred,” an eye witness said.
One person, who lives on the fourth floor, told of how he woke up when his bed moved as a result of the blast.
The store’s security bars were thrown across the street in the explosion.
The area around Bennets väg has been cordoned off by police.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Kids With ‘Smart’ Parents Smoke More Weed: Study
The use of cannabis among Swedish high school students is more common among those with university-educated parents, according to a new study published by the National Institute of Public Health (Statens folkhälsoinstitutet).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Islamization of Europe is Happening Now
Muslims have been conducting a prolonged campaign against Christian values which has now entered its third phase.
The first phase began when Islam itself was born in the Arabian Peninsula, from where it spread into the Middle East and beyond. By conquering Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, all of which had been part of the Christian world. Muslim armies were able to initiate a process of Islamization and Arabization. They continued their expansion into Europe, where areas of Spain, Portugal, Sicily, mainland Italy and part of France all fell under the dominance of Islam. Despite a mighty and bitter struggle Christianity only managed to regain a portion of the territories they had lost. Having retaken most of what became known as Europe, they had to give up on their former territory in North Africa and the Middle East.
However, despite the failure of the Arabs and Moors to gain a foothold in Europe, the Turks and Tatars conducted a second wave of attacks. In the Mid-thirteenth century the Mongol conquerors of Russia were converted to Islam. Having previously conquered Asia Minor, the Turks advanced into Europe in 1453 by assuring control over the ancient city of Constantinople. Then they captured the Balkans. Temporarily they ruled half of Hungary and twice got as far as Vienna, which they laid siege in 1529 and 1683. This time Europe decisively fought back to recover Russia and the Balkan Peninsula. This time too they managed to pursue their Islamic conquerors beyond the borders of Europe well into Islamic territory. Indeed so successful was the second Europe counterattack, that Europe was able to exert rule over the heart of the Middle East between the two world wars in the twentieth century.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran by Shiite Muslims a third wave of the struggle against Europe has been apparent. As evident in numerous events, in particular the 9/11/2001 attacks by the Wahabi Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network , their new phase has been marked by two distinct characteristics: Terrorism and Immigration. The catalyst was in Iran.
“After the Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Shia system of Velayat-e-Faqih, the Wahabi/Salafi religious leaders in order not to be left behind introduced a Sunni version of radical Islam,” Dr. Assad Homayoun a former Iranian diplomat and President of Azadegan Foundation said. “This competition led to the rise of the Al Qaida which attacked two centers of economic and military power of the United States on September 11, 2001 and created the present incarnation of International terrorism.”
Although there is competition between the Salafists and the Shias there has also at times been cooperation among them.
Prevailing wisdom in the western media and intelligence circles had been that international cooperation among terrorist groups was improbable, particularly between those following Shia Muslim ideology and those following salafist Sunni ideology. The Balkan wars of the 1990’s dispelled both beliefs. Officers of Iranian Al-Quds operational wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran are known to be located in Zagreb, the Croatian capital. Particularly interesting is the fact that several officials in the Embassy of Iran in Zagreb, are on the list of the intelligence arms of al-Quds. Several Western intelligence agencies consider that the Iranian Embassy in Zagreb is one of the communication centers of al-Quds with Al-Qaeda and other radical and extremist Islamic organizations across Europe In order to satisfy the need for labor in the 1950s and 1960s Europe sought workers in Africa and Asia. Thus Muslim Arabs and Turks initially settled in western Europe as guest labor. The first generation was followed by Muslim refugees seeking political asylum and a better way of life.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The Story Behind Germany’s Terror Threat
Germany is currently in a state of high alert. Security officials are warning that they have concrete information pointing to a possible terror attack on the federal parliament building in Berlin, a massively popular tourist attraction. The days of Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière’s reserved stances in dealing with such warnings appear to be over.
The call came from abroad, and the man speaking hurriedly on the other end of the line sounded as if he feared for his life. He wanted out, he told the officers of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) — out of the terrorist scene. He wanted to come back to Germany, back to his family. Then he asked if German officials could help him.
Right now, they’re trying to do just that. The BKA is pursuing the case under the codename “Nova.” The apparently remorseful man could be an important possible whistleblower from a dangerous region of the globe. In fact, he is also the most recent reason why German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière put the entire country in a state of fright on Wednesday.
During a hastily called press conference that day, de Maizière stated that Germany faced the threat of terrorist attacks that might be launched against the country at some point in November. As he put it, Germany is “presently dealing with a new situation.”
Just two days earlier, the source had called for the third time in just a short period and provided more information. He told officials that a small group of terrorists wanted to conduct a raid on the Reichstag building in Berlin, which houses the federal parliament, and that that was only one of the targets included in their attack plans.
Germany on High Alert
Since then, Germany has been in a state of high alert. The Reichstag is surrounded with barricades and its popular cupola tourist attraction temporarily closed to visitors. Police armed with submachine guns are patrolling major railway stations and airports. And vacations have been called off for officials at the country’s security agencies. Wherever they have cause for doing so, the authorities are secretly monitoring communications, conducting surveillance operations and launching undercover investigations. At the moment, investigators seem to be at a loss; their modus operandi: “We’ll prod the shrubs and see if we can flush out any birds.”
“There is cause for worry, but no cause for hysteria,” de Maizière assured his listeners. But while he has never been much of an agitator, his colleagues at the state level have described the situation in much more drastic terms. Uwe Schünemann, for example, who has been the interior minister of the northwestern state of Lower Saxony since 2003, stated that he had “never experienced a heightened security situation like this one.” And Berlin Senator for the Interior Ehrhart Körting, whose position is tantamount to that of a government minister in the city-state, has already even gone so far as to call on the inhabitants of the German capital city to report suspicious-looking individuals of Arab origin to the police. “If you suddenly see three somewhat strange-looking men who are new to your neighborhood, who hide their faces and who only speak Arabic,” Körting said, “you should report them to the authorities.”
Under heightened pressure, officials in Germany’s 16 federal states are now checking to see when and where major events are scheduled to take place this coming week within their boundaries. And nothing suggested as a possible target is being discounted, no matter how unlikely. For example, officials in Rhineland-Palatinate warned the state’s interior minister, Karl Peter Burch, that there was always a lot going on at IKEA stores on Saturdays.
Serenity, Scaremongering and Strategy
Since last week, German politicians at both the state and federal levels have once again had to figure out how they will handle themselves when making warnings about terrorist attacks. They have had to come up with a language that can simultaneously convey both an alert and a sense of calm.
This is no easy task. For one thing, this isn’t the first time this has happened. In September 2009, for example, right before federal elections were held, there were concrete threats that resulted in a heightened security situation. But, in the end, nothing happened. This time around, people are wondering whether they are on the precipice of an emergency or whether these are once again empty threats.
Still, one thing is certain: For the time being, Germany has become a different country — more nervous, more anxious, more agitated. And Germany’s domestic security policies are being put to the test.
When Interior Minister de Maizière assumed his office in October 2009 in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, he aimed to cool down the heated sense of alarm regularly fanned out by his predecessors. What’s more, the man who had served as Merkel’s chief of staff in Chancellery until being moved to the role of interior minister in her new government, was given the task of nurturing a more relaxed relationship between her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and its new coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). In particular, it was his job to not draw out the long-standing conflict over domestic security policies with the Justice Ministry, which has been led since the 2009 election by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the FDP. Indeed, Merkel feared that the quarrelsome FDP might try to capitalize on the issue to win over more voters, so she assigned de Maizière to prevent that from happening.
In fact, the plan was to repeat the same strategy that the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had used when they were in the so-called “grand coalition” with the center-left Social Democratic Party, between 2005 and 2009. At the time, they made a point of undermining the SPD by championing what had traditionally been the latter party’s issues…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Alert Over Jihadists in Muslim Schools
KIDS in Muslim faith schools are in danger of being brainwashed by jihadists, a report warns today. Checks are too weak to stop fanatics poisoning pupils’ minds, says a think tank.
It calls for new laws to make it harder for extremists to politically indoctrinate children.
The report by Policy Exchange says the monitoring of faith schools is “piecemeal, partial and lacks in-depth expertise”. It slams the “counter-extremism mechanisms” for vetting schools as inadequate.
The think tank also calls for a “due diligence unit” to train inspectors to monitor schools and stop hard-liners gaining a foothold.
Its report — produced by a former school inspector and three academics — urges tougher checks on charities, parents or companies that apply to open a faith school.
The experts think schools should also do more to promote the British way of life. They call for a “commitment to core British values of democracy, tolerance and patriotism”.
And they say episodes from British history should be a compulsory part of the curriculum.
Other European countries have more rigorous systems to crack down on extremists in schools, the report says.
It warns that reforms are vital to block fanatics from exploiting Government plans for more independent “free schools”.
People wanting to set up a free school should be scrutinised for signs of extremism as well as face financial and criminal record checks.
Funding agreements should ban “violent or non-violent extremism”.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Beer Thrown at Mosque Following Kingston Protest March
Masked men threw bottles of beer and urinated on a mosque following a march against Muslim extremism.
Bacon was also left on cars near Kingston Mosque during the attack by a group of 10-15 youths on Sunday.
Kingston Mosque claimed baseball bats were also used in the incident on East Road, but this was not confirmed by police.
However officers did recover two pieces of wood near the scene.
Police were called to the mosque at 1.15pm and arrested three white males, who have since been released on bail without charge.
Rizwan Khaliq, spokesman for the Kingston Muslim Association, said: “Under the pretence of protesting against extreme elements within the Islamic faith, a group of masked men congregated outside the mosque shouting obscenities at the mainly elderly congregation inside.
“They urinated against the mosque walls, threw beer-bottles, and used baseball bats to smash windows.
“It is a miracle that nobody was injured and only superficial damaged was caused.
“Such despicable actions have no place in our community and it is something that we must all unite against.
“All decent folk must come together and unite against the hate agenda — which has no place in our community.”
Muslims are forbidden from eating pork by the Koran.
Earlier on in the day about 60 people holding Union Jacks and a large wooden poppy had chanted “Muslim bombers off our streets” as they marched through Kingston.
The protest had appeared to pass off peacefully and the crowd had dispersed from Clarence Street by 12.15pm.
Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Greenslade said police were investigating any link between the attack on the mosque and the march.
However Ben Baty, 20, of Sunbury, who organised the march, said: “I think it’s disgusting. It’s the kind of behaviour I thought my march would not attract. I wanted people from other communities to feel welcome.
“Even when people were shouting ‘Muslim bombers off our streets’ I was not happy but obvously people did not know how to express themselves.
“I’m saddened and shocked this happened because I thought the group there was very well behaved. Hopefully these people will be brought to justice.”
Mr Baty said the march was against extreme Islam and poppy burning.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: EDL Founder Denies Armistice Day Assault on Officer
The founder of English Defence League has denied assaulting a police officer during clashes with Muslim protesters on Armistice Day in west London.
Stephen Lennon, 27, was arrested in Kensington, as the Muslims Against Crusades group burnt a poppy during a two-minute silence to mark the day.
Mr Lennon, of Luton, was released on conditional bail when he appeared at West London Magistrates Court charged with assaulting a police officer.
He will go on trial on 12 January.
The groups clashed when Islamic protesters burnt a poppy and chanted “British soldiers burn in hell” as the two-minute silence began on 11 November.
One officer suffered a head injury during the clashes as about 50 men linked to the English Defence League (EDL) were kept away from the Islamic group.
Addressing about 30 EDL followers who had gathered outside the court Mr Lennon, of Layham Drive, said: “I’m morally innocent.
“I would do it again tomorrow, we will do it again, whenever we see them disrespecting our troops.”
Seven other people were bailed to appear in court in mid-December.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: MI5 Loses Fight to Keep Evidence Secret at July 7 Inquests
Home Secretary Theresa May today lost her legal challenge to a coroner’s refusal to hold closed sessions of the 7/7 inquests to hear top-secret evidence.
Coroner Lady Justice Hallett earlier rejected calls from MI5 and the Home Secretary for the families of those killed in the 2005 London bombings to be excluded from hearings while she examines highly sensitive intelligence material.
Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Lord Justice Stanley Burnton upheld the coroner’s ruling at the High Court today.
The judges announced their decision in a brief hearing and will give their full reasons at a later date.
The Government could now attempt to appeal against the decision or use powers to transform part of the inquest into a public inquiry, which could examine the secret documents in closed hearings.
Lady Justice Hallett, an appeal court judge appointed to hear the 7/7 inquests, concluded that she had powers under Rule 17 of the Coroners Rules 1984 to exclude the public from hearings in the interests of national security.
But she ruled that this did not include ‘interested persons’, such as the bereaved relatives, who are legally entitled to be represented at the inquests.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Pregnant Again, The Mother With Five Children in Care Who Vows to Keep Having Babies Until She Gets a Council House
An unemployed benefits claimant whose five children were all taken into care has vowed to continue having babies until she is granted a council house.
Lavine Samma, 27, is now pregnant with her sixth child and fully expects the baby to be taken from her by social services at birth, just like the last three infants.
Since 2002, the feckless mother has given birth to three boys and two girls by three different men and doesn’t even know who the father is of one.
She does not work and rakes in around £600 a month in benefits.
But Miss Samma claimed yesterday that it was her ‘human right as a woman to have children’ and vowed to continue falling pregnant until the local authority moved her from her 16th floor inner-city council flat to a ‘proper council house’.
When the Daily Mail called just before 11am yesterday Miss Samma was just about awake but still in bed.
Nevertheless, she quickly warmed to her theme.
‘I’m not a priority for a house because I don’t have children with me, but if I had children in my care I would be’, she said.
‘If they keep taking them away from me I will just keep having them. Again and again and again!’
Miss Samma, who lives in a tower block in Newtown, Birmingham, with Jamaican asylum-seeker boyfriend Damien Sewell, lost her first two children — a girl and a boy — in March 2006, when social services were tipped off that she had been neglecting the elder child, then aged three and a half.
Bruises and scratches were discovered on the girl’s back and the following year the mother was found guilty of neglect.
She was jailed for a year and released on licence after six months.
The girl’s father left her after the birth and the couple divorced. When the second child was born in 2005, Miss Samma believed Mr Sewell was the father, but a DNA test revealed he was not. The children are now in the custody of a relative.
Since then, the couple have had three children together. All have been removed within hours or days of their birth by social services.
Miss Samma said she admitted neglecting her first two children but claimed that should not stop her from having more children in the future.
She said her ultimate aim was to ‘be a mum — which is my right’, rather than to simply get a council house.
But she admitted that being rehoused as a result would be a ‘happy side-effect’ of being allowed to parent a child.
She claims £96.72 a fortnight in Jobseekers’ Allowance and £87 per week housing benefit.
But although she claims to be looking for work, she said she struggles because of depression, as well as the fact that she is pregnant.
She met Mr Sewell, 31, in 2002 when he came to England on a holiday visa and later claimed asylum.
The couple said he is unable to claim benefits but refused to comment further on his immigration status.
It is thought he is still waiting for a final decision on his claim.
Miss Samma has lived in her one-bedroom council flat since she was 18.
But she said she is determined to leave the property because it is riddled with mould.
Mr Sewell said: ‘The whole system is corrupt’, he moaned. ‘The courts and the council, they are all against us.
‘I know they will try and take this latest baby from us, but that won’t stop us having more.’
Last night a spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said the case ‘shows why our welfare system needs so desperately to be reformed’.
He added: ‘This woman has little incentive to go and find work, to get on in life, or to pay for her own housing, because the state is providing all of this for her.
The real losers in this sorry tale are the children…but it is unfair for taxpayers to be asked to support people who have large numbers of children, and no intention of providing for them.’
A Birmingham City Council spokesman would not comment on individual cases but added: ‘The welfare of a child is always the prime consideration of the local authority whenever a decision is taken to place them in care.’
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Terror Vid Fanatic Back on the Streets
A MUSLIM fanatic caged for plotting a terror attack is back on the streets after serving just three months. Abbas Iqbal, 24, was seized with a video of armed British jihad extremists on military manoeuvres in a park.
He and brother Ilyas, 23 — both members of the “Blackburn Resistance” in Lancs — had an arsenal of weapons at home, including air rifles, knives, machetes, a sword, a crossbow and ammunition.
Cops also found gruesome beheading videos and papers on guerrilla warfare.
At their trial in March, the court heard the Osama Bin Laden supporters had been “intoxicated by the evil of terrorism and were training for violent Jihad”.
Abbas was sentenced to two years for preparing for acts of terrorism and Ilyas got 18 months for possessing terrorist literature.
But because they spent 21/2 years on remand they were freed early. Abbas has been out since June 28. A juror who convicted him said: “It’s very disturbing. Abbas Iqbal was hellbent on preparing for a terror attack. I consider him a danger.”
The Probation Service said people convicted of serious offences were closely supervised.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Together But Separated: Stereotypes as Demarcation Line Between Alevis and Sunnis in Bulgaria
By Nuray Ekici*
Historically, Turks have not only been engaged in inter-religious conflicts, but also in intra-religious ones. In these conflicts, whether latent or not, stereotypes have played an important role; they have fueled the conflicts, and at the same time been sustained by them. Thus stereotypes have served to draw bold demarcation lines and sharp boundaries between intra-religious groups. The case of Bulgarian Alevis and Sunnis is not an exception to this rule.
The Need to Have “Enemies and Allies”, or just an (Internal) “Other”
In shaping collective identities, “others” play a vital role. “Me” and “us” has substance or significance, so long as “he/she” and “they” exist as a negative reference group: as Huntington puts it “we know who we are only when we know who we are not, and often when we know whom we are against.” That is to say, we are “what the “other” is not.”
When it comes to Bulgaria’s Sunni Muslim community, the “main other” (by definition inferior and in some cases even subhuman), is the Alevis. In the larger national context, Sunni religious identity itself has been formed primary against that of the Christian Bulgarians. But Alevis, more commonly known as Kizilbashes, are also crucial in their identity construction as being the main “internal others.” Indeed, they usually are not perceived as true Muslims by their Sunni peers; for the Sunnis, they are “semi-Muslims” or “Muslim-like people.” Thus they are not even always considered “internal” specifically. In some cases they are even considered inferior to Bulgarians in religious terms.
The Alevis in Bulgaria: A “Minority within a Minority”
Bulgaria’s Muslim community is mainly concentrated in Southeast and Northeast Bulgaria, and is almost totally composed of ethnic Turks. This community numbers approximately 967,000. The vast majority of these are Sunnis; the Alevis of Bulgaria, as a religious group, number around 53,000 people; in a way, therefore, they are a “minority within a minority.”
The presence of the Kizilbashes in Bulgarian public life is barely noticeable, not only due to their small population, but also due to the prevailing social biases, stereotypes and prejudices against them. Historically, they have had to hide their identity in order to survive under harsh political conditions. Today, though such a threat to the very existence of the Alevi community does not exist, most of them still prefer to hide their identity mainly due to the prevailing stereotypes within the dominant group…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Christian Copts, Egyptian Security Standoff Over Church Construction
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — A Standoff took place on November 22 between Copts and security forces, which stormed the Church of St. Mary and St. Michael, in Talbiya, Giza to stop the construction of the church. It was the second time in less than 10 days that security forces stormed the church premises to seal it off.
The siege began at midnight and lasted until six AM. Priests and parishioners had anticipated the visit from security. “All priests were inside the premises, and a great number of the parishioners were inside the church since 9.00 PM, praying,” a witness said.
Security forces surrounded the church and prevented the builders from working, and confiscated four concrete mixing vehicles containing ready-mixed concrete, which were on their way to church. The concrete was spoiled, being kept for over 10 hours, costing a loss of 400.000 Egyptian pounds, reported Wagih Yacoub.
Nearly two thousand Copts came to the church as soon as they heard that security forces had stormed the church and are continuing their sit-ins and demonstrations in front of the church until the matter is resolved (video).
Protestors are adamant that they have all necessary construction permits, condemning the decision of the chief of the local authorities in Omraniya to stop work on the church, which is nearly complete except for the domes.
One of the building contractors told Ms. Hekmat Hanna, a reporter at the scene, that every now and then security comes to hamper our work because they do not want the church to “show.” Also “for the police officers and district officials to come so late at night, shows that what they are doing is wrong.”
Dr. Naguib Ghobrial, President of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights, issued a statement today calling for the dismissal of the chief of the local authorities in Omraniya, who issued the order. “The church has all the permits, and by this behavior the chief of the local authority is encouraging Islamists to fight with the Christians because of the Church and therefore causing sedition.”
The crisis started on November 11 as the church was in its final finishing stages and the builders were completing the roof, when security forces stormed the church and wanted to close it down, under the pretext that the building is not in accordance with the drawings presented. Three days earlier, the authorities at Omraniya came under the pretext of completing the papers for the construction work and found that builders were building a second staircase, as well as toilets, which they considered to be in violation of the permit granted.
According to church authorities, it was the Civil Defense authorities who asked the church to erect a second staircase to relieve congestion inside the church in case of emergencies, and the necessary permit amendments were made (AINA 11-13-2010).
More than one million Copts live in the Talbiya area, without a single church to serve them, having to travel for miles every Sunday with their children to the nearest church. Until now the building of the new church came to more than 7 million Egyptian pounds, all collected from donations of the local Copts.
Samira Ibrahim Shehata a volunteer worker at the church, who had been keeping guard at the Church premises since November 11, said, “I want to know why a hundred mosques can be built, and not one church can be built. I believe that State Security is the root of all evil.”
It was also reported that the Governor of Giza is going to the church premises to negotiate with the thousands of Copts from Talbiya and Giza who are still continuing their sit-in in front of the church.
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
‘I May Never Return to Israel’
Australian tourist writes open letter to Israelis about her experience with airport security. ‘I never want to go through that again even if it means not coming back to Israel,’ she says
I am a 24-year-old female Australian law student and first visited Israel last year. I had a really enjoyable trip visiting friends and as such, decided to return for a second trip to visit their newborn baby this year. However, I had an experience with Israeli security at the airport flying from Amsterdam that would make me think twice about traveling to Israel again in the future.
Before checking-in for my flight, passengers were required to undergo a brief security interview. As part of this, I was asked what I was doing in Amsterdam and who I was staying with. My answer: “Visiting two Australian friends from law school currently living in Holland.” Security asked for their names. I had nothing to conceal and neither did my friends, so I gave security their names as requested. This should have been a simple affair if it was not for the sole reason that one of my friends, born and raised in Australia, happened to have an Arabic sounding surname.
Immediately and without explanation, my bags and passport were taken from me and further security appeared demanding to know whether this girl was really Australian. I found this question offensive: she is as “Australian” as I am, just without my “stereotypical” blond hair and blue eyes. They started questioning her background, which made me think: if she or I were any type say her name? Of course not. The situation didn’t seem rational to me.
I was directed to a different boarding gate to all other passengers. A lady was waiting for me at the gate and ordered me to follow her into an isolated, underground section of the terminal where I was placed in the custody of approximately five security officers . Needless to say, a very intimidating and confusing situation.
There, security officers spoke between themselves in Hebrew, which I cannot understand, and provided me with no explanation of what was happening even though I kept asking. Again, without any explanation, I was ordered to a private room with two female security officers with the only English instructions being “move over there and bring whatever money you have with you.”
This did not clarify things for me. I again tried to enquire what was going on because, but again, they continued to communicate only in Hebrew and still I received no response to my questions. Eventually I received a response when I asked, “Is this a random security check?” One lady paused and barked at me, “No.” I was silent after this…
| — Hat tip: Don Vito | [Return to headlines] |
Never Again?
Giulio Meotti’s book about Palestinian terrorism tells a truth many Westerners don’t want to hear.
“A New Shoa: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism,” is a hard read. Not because it is badly written; it is clear, precise, and eloquent. It is a hard read because it is deeply moving—many times, I had to stop reading and catch my breath, wipe away the tears. Giulio Meotti, an Italian author and journalist, has written a monumental study of pain and grief, of mourning and remembrance, of hatred and love.
The book’s title is well-chosen. From the very first pages, Mr. Meotti makes clear that he considers Palestinian terrorism and Arab hatred of Israel and the Jews the continuation of Nazi anti-Semitism. He shows that Palestinian and Arab rhetoric is focused on Jews—not just Israelis. The dream of the Islamists is to destroy the Jewish people, not just the sliver of land called Israel.
This is not a matter of opinion but of facts, which Mr. Meotti’s well-researched book provides in abundance. Take just this recent example from a public speech by Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV on November 5, 2010:
“Allah willing, their [the Jews’] expulsion from Palestine in its entirety is certain to come. We are no weaker or less honorable than the peoples that expelled and annihilated the Jews. The day we expel them is drawing near…
| — Hat tip: Swenglish Rantings | [Return to headlines] |
The Great Mystery: What’s the Obama Administration Up to on Israel-Palestinian Talks?
By Barry Rubin
Letters I receive from readers mainly focus on asking me what I think about the U.S.-Israel-PA negotiations about getting back to…negotiations. What is my view of this big deal that’s being discussed for a three-month freeze on Israeli construction.
My response has been that until we have a clear, authoritative, and detailed description of what’s being asked and offered, there’s no sense in analyzing it.
Yet something very strange is going on. Before November, I pointed out that the urgent U.S. demand for a two-month freeze was a desperate attempt by the Obama Administration to be able to claim some diplomatic victory before what looked beforehand (and proved to be) a disastrous election. After all, what other possible explanation could there be for giving a lot to get Israel to stop building any apartments in the West Bank for eight weeks? There was no conceivable diplomatic payoff in terms of U.S. national interests or Middle Eastern peacekeeping to justify such a move.
So what can say of offering even more after the election for a twelve-week-long freeze?
All of the answers are seemingly ridiculous, though that doesn’t make them any the less possible.
First, the administration may have become so obsessed with getting a freeze and restarting negotiations, as an end to themselves though in part for reasons of prestige, that they have lost all proportion. If this is true—and given the administration’s past record it might be true—the current U.S. government is incompetent.
Second, the administration may actually believe that if it can only get the two sides back to the table the impetus toward peace is so great that a couple of meetings will set off lightbulbs in the heads of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that say: Hey, this is easy! What have we been waiting for! Let’s make peace! If this is the true factor in administration thinking, the current U.S. government is incompetent.
American presidents don’t spend vast resources in order to look good on Monday when the same matter will make them look stupid on Thursday. Yet this has happened with President Barack Obama, notably in his September 2009 announcement that there would be some new high-level, intensive Camp David talks eight weeks later when no such outcome was likely. Whether such behavior is due to arrogance, ideological blindness, or some other factor isn’t important.
There is a third possibility, however, that should be added. A lot of my readers will favor this one but I think it is the least likely though still possible. The Obama Administration may decide to try to impose some kind of solution on both sides. There are two potential variations on this theme. One would be trying to get the declaration of a Palestinian state without boundaries; the other would be to try to impose a comprehensive solution…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaeda Vows to “Bleed Enemy to Death”
The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaeda has vowed to continue attacks against the West such as last month’s cargo plane parcel bombs, in a “strategy of a thousand cuts” that will “bleed the enemy to death”, a monitoring group said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said the packages it put aboard freight planes bound for the U.S. in late October were never intended to cause mass casualties, but were aimed at creating maximum economic damage.
The group said the parcels, which were intercepted by security officials in Dubai and Britain, were part of “Operation Hemorrhage” a plan that had cost just $4,200 to mount.
AQAPIt said there was now little focus on large-scale mass-casualty attacks like those on New York and Washington in September 2001.
“To bring down America we do not need to strike big,” the terror network said, in an English-language magazine called Inspire which was monitored Saturday by the U.S.-based Intelcenter.
“In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect.
“This strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death.”
The two parcels were addressed to synagogues in Chicago and found to contain the hard-to-detect explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges.
The group boasts that they chose printer cartridges in which to hide the explosive because toner is carbon-based, with a molecular composition “close to that of PETN,” so it would not be detected. “We emptied the toner cartridge from its contents and filled it with 340 grams of PETN,” the writers say.
The article states that the package attacks were intended to cause economic harm, not casualties. “We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot,” it reads, “so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy,” by striking at the multi-billion dollar U.S. freight industry.
A massive global security clampdown on airfreight followed the discovery, with a number of countries banning cargo or flights originating from Yemen, including the United States, Canada and several western European countries.
The al-Qaeda offshoot insists it also brought down a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September, in addition to the Oct. 29 attempts to bring down a FedEx plane, and a UPS plane bound for the U.S. But U.S. officials insist the Dubai crash was an accident caused by a battery fire, not terrorism.
“Total bill of $4,200”
AQAPThe AQAP magazine details the “total bill of $4,200” for Operation Hemorrhage, adding that it was three months in the planning and execution.
“On the other hand this… will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. This is what we call leverage.
“From the start our objective was economic… It was determined that the success of the operation was to be based on two factors: The first is that the packages pass through the latest security equipment.
“The second, the spread of fear that would cause the West to invest billions of dollars in new security procedures.
“We will continue with similar operations and we do not mind at all in this stage if they are intercepted. It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy and keep him on his toes in exchange of a few months of work and a few thousand bucks.”
The magazine says AQAP intends to pass on its know-how to other radical Islamists around the world, to encourage them to mount similar operations.
“We are laying out for our enemies our plan in advance because… our objective is not maximum kill but to cause a hemorrhage in the aviation industry, an industry that is so vital for trade and transportation between the U.S. and Europe.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Christian Church Spurns Call to Head North
Baghdad, 19 Nov. (AKI) — Christians have lived in Iraq for thousands of years and should not be confined to the northern part of the country as Iraq’s president recently suggested, according to a priest from one of Baghdad’s most important churches.
“Even though I appreciate his noble intentions, I believe the idea of Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani to move Christians to the northern Kurdish region of the country is wrong,” Salim Qiryaqous said.
He is a priest at the Syriac Catholic cathedral in Baghdad where 58 people died in an attack in October claimed by an Al-Qaeda linked group. Some eighty people were injured.
“Christians represent the whole Iraqi territory and not only the north. There are Christians who live in the south and in the centre of Iraq,” said Qiryaqous.
Talibani, a Kurd, had “noble intentions” but suggestion that Iraq’s Christian minority take refuge in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, could put country’s social stability at risk, he said.
According to the Chaldean Christian church in Baghdad, 120,000 Christians have fled to the Kurdistan region.
There are approximately 500,000 Christians remaining in Iraq but the 31 October attack on Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad and a spate of bombings this month targeting the Christian community have left its members in fear of their lives.
Talabani’s proposal, which he floated on Thursday, has drawn a mixed reaction from Christians in Iraq.
“I think Talibani’s plan is a positive one, also to create a special security force,” said aChristian member of parliament, Yunadim Yusuf said.
He said he hoped the new Iraqi government would take office “as soon as possible, to restore security to the country.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Kay: A UN Case Study in Muslim, African and Communist Homophobia
No one expects Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Liberia to start printing gay-marriage licenses any time soon. But would it be too much to ask that these countries at least oppose the targeted murder of homosexuals?
As it does every two years, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly has been fashioning a resolution calling for states to prosecute the extrajudicial killings of people because of their race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, language or other identifying characteristics. In past years, sexual orientation has been part of this list. But thanks to an amendment supported by a group of African and Muslim nations — which passed by a vote of 79-70 — the reference to sexual orientation has been struck from this year’s resolution. The effective message is that killing someone because they’re gay just isn’t that bad.
The list of 70 pro-gay amendment opponents is more or less a who’s-who of enlightened, civilized nations — including, for instance, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea and the United States. Not all of these nations are rich (e.g. Dominican Republic), but almost all of them stand, aspirationally at least, for what we would broadly call Western values (the major exception being Venezuela). Not a single one of them is majority-Muslim. And not a single one of them is African.
The list of 79 anti-gay amendment supporters is very different. There are 2 0r 3 Caribbean outliers in this collection. But otherwise, these nations all are either (a) communist or post-communist autocracies (China, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam), (b) Muslim police states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) and (c) the generally impoverished nations of Africa.
Putting aside the disgust one feels at the manner by which the UN now has become a forum for organizing homophobes (to go along with the body’s day-to-day role of promoting bigotry against Israel), the results are quite interesting.
First, they show that, when studying the nations of the world, a government’s attitude toward homosexuality can more or less be taken as a reliable proxy for the general health of its society. With few exceptions, the list of 70 pro-gay nations all are places where most of us would gladly work and visit, and perhaps even live; while the anti-gay nations tend toward corrupt and rigidly patriarchal police states.
Second, they show that homophobia is not a “natural” form of bigotry, as some social conservatives suggest; but rather, that it survives in the modern age due to one of three very specific influences: totalitarian politics, retrograde religiosity, and grinding poverty.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands Against Secure Zone for Iraqi Christians
THE HAGUE, 20/11/10 — Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal is against the introduction of a secure zone in Iraq for the protection of Christians in that country.
Small Christian party ChristenUnie had called on the minister to push for a special zone where the ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq could seek a safe haven. According to ChristenUnie MP Joel Voordewind, Christians are abandoned to their fate in Iraq, while the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis all have their own army and police for protection.
The Dutch government is not however keen on safe zones “due to the vulnerability that you thereby create,” said Rosenthal in the Lower House. He will continue to convey his disquiet about the increasing violence against Christians and other religious minorities via his contacts. The EU is also doing so, according to the minister.
Voordewind said that there is religious cleansing going on in Iraq comparable to that with the Kurds at the beginning of the 1990s. He added that there are no alternatives for the protection of the minorities if there is no safe zone.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Girls Taking Care of Pilgrims, Controversy
(ANSAmed) — ROME, NOVEMBER 19 — The creation of the first body of girl scouts at the service of children who lose themselves during the pilgrimage season in the city of Mecca resulted in some controversy in Saudi Arabia.
According to Al Jazeera’s website, the controversy was sparked off at the same time as the issuing of a number of fatwa that prohibit such activities, deemed to be a form of westernisation. Activities that are banned because, aside from having to remove their veils, it allows women to spend time with men.
Maha Ftehy, president of the new body, instead claims that the work of the girl scouts in taking care of and entertaining children is a service rendered to men and women while they carry out the rites of pilgrimage. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
While the Crown Prince to Return to the Kingdom
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will leave for the United States on Monday for medical checks, while Crown Prince Sultan will return from a holiday abroad, the state news agency SPA said on Sunday.
Political stability in the monarchy is of global concern. The Gulf Arab state controls more than a fifth of the world’s crude reserves, is a vital U.S. ally in the region, a major holder of dollar assets and home to the biggest Arab bourse.
Western diplomats said the king’s departure and crown prince’s sudden return indicate the absolute monarchy, which has no political parties or elected parliament, is seeking to prevent a power vacuum and reassure Washington and other allies.
Abdullah, seen by Washington as a moderate at the helm of a pivotal Muslim country, was admitted to hospital on Friday after a blood clot complicated a slipped disc he suffered the week before.
“The king will leave on Monday for the United States to complete medical tests,” the Saudi Press Agency SPA said.
Crown Prince Sultan, who has had unspecified health problems over the past two years, meanwhile would return to Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening from Morocco where he has been since August.
The king is thought to be 86 or 87 and Sultan is only a few years younger.
The United States is keen to see reforms continue after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 on U.S. cities brought Saudi Arabia’s puritanical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam to the top of global concerns. Fifteen of the 19 al Qaeda attackers were Saudi.
Saudi Arabia has become key to global efforts to fight al Qaeda. A Saudi intelligence tip-off helped Western governments stop package bombs destined for the United States that were sent on planes out of Yemen last month.
Prince Nayef
Interior Minister Prince Nayef, comparatively youthful at around 76, was appointed second deputy prime minister in 2009 in a move which analysts say will secure leadership in the event of serious health problems afflicting the king and crown prince.
The position does not guarantee that Nayef would become king but places him in a strong position.
Analysts see jostling for position at the top of the ruling family.
Last week the king transferred control of the National Guard, an elite Bedouin corps that handles domestic security, to his son Mitab.
With both the king and crown prince indisposed, Prince Nayef has featured heavily in state media over the past week.
The veteran security chief was in an ebullient mood when he met reporters in Mecca before the haj pilgrimage last week and state media made a formal announcement that he would oversee the haj in the king’s place, receiving guests there in recent days.
Nayef is seen as a hawk on a range of issues. Analysts say he appears lukewarm about the social and economic reforms the king has promoted, including attempts to reduce the influence of the hardline clerical establishment in a country that imposes strict Islamic sharia law.
Analysts say the ruling Al Saud family, which founded the kingdom with the help of Wahhabi clerics in 1932, needs to promote younger princes to dispel the image of gerontocracy.
So far only sons of state founder Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud can become kings of which about 20 are left, some in ill health.
Prince Salman, in his 70s, will return to the country on Tuesday to resume duties as governor of Riyadh, SPA also said on Sunday. He underwent a spine surgery in the United States in August and remained outside the kingdom for recuperation.
Salman is a full brother of both Crown Prince Sultan and Prince Nayef.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesians Protest, Jakarta Calls for Investigation
The death of one Indonesian maid and the torture of another by their Saudi employers within one week triggered riots in Indonesia, and condemnation by the government in Jakarta.
The two tragedies had also promoted calls by Saudi activists to pressure their government to impose strict rules to thwart any future maltreatment to foreign workers in their country.
The two cases of the physical abuse suffered by the Indonesian maids, one of them dead and the other in a critical condition, were reported this week. The first case is 23-year-old Sumiati Salan Mustapa who was transferred to a hospital in Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, while in a state of unconsciousness.
Mustapa sustained severe burns and wounds, some parts of her skin were removed, and her legs were hardly moving. Medical examinations revealed that she lost a lot of blood and suffered from malnutrition. When the private hospital to which she transferred was unable to treat her, she was transferred to the King Fahd Hospital.
Mustapa’s employer, a 53-year-old widow, first claimed at the hospital that the wounds on the maid’s body were the result of a suicide attempt. She later retracted her statements and admitted to torturing her with a hot iron after her son had earlier told the truth to police.
Pictures in Saudi newspapers showed Mustapa’s badly scarred face, revealing a cut near the eye, a burn in her upper lip, and scattered wounds in her nose and forehead.
The second case is of 36-year-old Kikim Komalasari, whose body was found in a dump in the southern city of Abha. Deep wounds in her neck and signs of severe physical abuse in different parts of her body showed that she had been tortured to death.
Saudi authorities announced that the Saudi couple responsible for Komalasari’s death have been arrested and are currently being interrogated. The names of the man and his wife have not been revealed.
Indonesian outrage
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono More than 200 Indonesians staged demonstrations in front of the Saudi embassy in Jakarta and protested the treatment of Indonesian migrant workers.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono described the crimes as “beyond inhumane” and called for opening a full investigation. Yudhoyono also formed a ministerial delegation to be dispatched to Saudi to follow up on the case.
Yudhoyono said his government will work on reaching a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to regulate the treatment of Indonesian workers and avoid future abuse.
“We need to discuss and seek solutions regarding the problems of our workers — mainly those abroad — as there are surprising incidents that breach humanity,” he said before an impromptu cabinet meeting he called to discuss the issue.
The Indonesian Foreign Ministry summoned the Saudi ambassador in Jakarta and expressed the government’s concerns over the treatment of migrant workers.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Linda Amalia Sari, who visited Mustapa in hospital, is expected to issue new regulations that protect maids working abroad, according to Indonesian media reports.
Saudi response
Saudi rights activist Dr. Mohamed Al ZulfaSaudi ambassador in Jakarta Abdul Rahim Khayat held a press conference at the embassy in the wake of the protests and stressed that the kingdom will take all the necessary measures to ensure the protection of foreign domestic workers.
He added that investigation in the two cases is underway and that the culprits will be prosecuted.
Dr. Mohamed al-Zulfa, Saudi rights activist and former member of the Consultative Council, condemned the two crimes and called for deterrent punishments for all employers who abuse workers.
“We also have to raise awareness about the value of human dignity,” he told AlArabiya.net. “These crimes tarnish the reputation of Saudi Arabia and Muslims in general.”
However, al-Zulfa argued that the cases of the two Indonesian maids do not make the torture of foreign labor a phenomenon in Saudi.
“These are individual cases and the offenders are sick people who do not represent all Saudis.”
Al-Zulfa added that ignorance plays a major role in persecution of foreign labor since several employers accuse their maids of engaging in magic practices.
“Unfortunately, the society is now obsessed with magic and employers torture their maids because they think they practice magic. This is also due to the weakness of their religious faith,” he concluded.
According to a statement issued by the human rights watchdog, individual cases can represent a “broader pattern of abuse.”
Nisha Varia, HRW senior women rights researcher, said that physical torture is just one of the many crimes committed against domestic works and that other cases of “sexual abuse” and “labor exploitation such as non-payment of wages” are frequently reported.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamists in Pakistan Kill ‘Blasphemy’ Accused, Four Others
Police suspect two Muslim extremists shot a Christian to death yesterday in Punjab Province shortly after the victim was granted bail in a “blasphemy” case — and less than a week after Islamist militants killed four members of a Christian family for their faith in the same province.
In Godhpur village in Narowal district, 111 kilometers (69 miles) northeast of Lahore, 22-year-old Latif Masih died after two men with pistols shot him to death near his home. Inspector Rafique Ahmed said that Masih’s murder was likely linked to the case against him for allegedly desecrating the Quran.
“No Muslim tolerates a man who commits blasphemous acts,” he said. Masih, a member of the United Presbyterian Church, was accused of burning pages of the Quran in a case registered at Godhpur police station in June and had spent five months in jail. He was released on bail on Nov. 3 after the complainant in the case, Ijaz Ahmed, told the court that he was not sure that Masih was guilty, police said. Masih’s mother Rubina Bibi, 60, said two men armed with pistols knocked at the door of their house on Thursday (Nov. 18) and asked him to accompany them.
“A few yards from the house, they suddenly opened fire,” she said, adding that Masih was shot five times.
She said the attackers fled by motorbike. “There were policemen present in the street, but no one tried to stop them,” she said.
Junaid Masih, the victim’s brother, said Latif Masih was innocent of the blasphemy charge. He said that Ahmed had filed the charge because he was trying to take possession of his brother’s shop.
“My brother bought a mobile shop in the village,” he said. “He displayed a cross inside. Ijaz Ahmed is the son of the local Muslim cleric, and he came to Latif’s shop and threw the cross out and demanded that he leave the shop.”
Junaid Masih added that he suspected Ahmed had arranged for two Muslim associates who were with him when he threw out the cross to kill his brother.
Inspector Ibrahaim Shah told Compass that when Ahmed filed a complaint in June accusing Latif Masih of burning pages of the Quran and speaking against Islam, he had ulterior motives.
“He also demanded that I help him in getting the shop,” Shah said. “While arresting Latif Masih, Ahmed kept saying that he will ensure that no Christian can live or buy a shop in Godhpur village.”
Human rights activists condemned the incident as another example of the havoc wrought by Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws. Dr. Altaf Hasan, chairman of the Human Rights Foundation-Pakistan, said both the judiciary and the government were afraid of the laws — judges fear being attacked for acquitting those accused of blasphemy, and government officials defend the laws for the same reason.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Only God Can ?Save Country? Now: Pagara
KARACHI — Pir Pagara, chief of Pakistan Muslim League (F), on Monday warned that the country would breakup unless God intervenes to save the nation.
“Owing to the present situation the country is heading towards anarchy and possible break up. Only divine intervention from Almighty could save the country”, he told newsmen while celebrating his 82nd birthday alongwith his youngest daughter who too was born on the same day.
Pagara whose party is coalition partner in centre and Sindh had been working for the unification of all Muslim League believed only his party could rescue the country from the doomsday.
“Only a united Muslim League could save the country and I will continue to work to bring all the factions together. We should let our egos leave behind for the sake of country”, he said.The PML (F) chief , in recent months had been critical of the present governments claiming it had lost the confidence
of the masses due to wrong policies. Although almost all factions of Muslim League have shown their willingness to get united on one platform except for the country’s second biggest party PML -N headed by twice former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Bucks Recession Trend to Keep Emissions High
While rich countries cut back on their emissions during the recent recession, China and India sailed through with no pause in their output of greenhouse gases. It’s further evidence that developing economies are having ever-greater influence on global temperatures.
Based on data compiled by the Global Carbon Project, carbon dioxide emissions worldwide dropped 1.3 per cent in 2009, compared to 2008. “That’s about four days of emissions out of the year,” says Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter, UK, who led the research.
A year ago, the International Energy Agency predicted a 3 per cent fall. The drop was half that, because the economies of China and other developing countries continued to grow. These countries emit much more carbon dioxide for every dollar they earn than do developed countries like the UK. “The UK is four times more efficient than China, because China is relying on coal and that emits more CO2 per unit of energy,” says Friedlingstein.
“It is indeed the ‘emerging countries’ that push global emissions,” agrees Matthias Jonas of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.
While emissions did not fall much, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by just 3.4 gigatonnes — one of the smallest rises in the last decade. Friedlingstein says the land and marine sinks performed better in 2009, because the La Niña conditions in the Pacific meant the tropics were wetter, allowing plants to grow more and store away more carbon.
The team predicts that, as the economy recovers, emissions will grow by 3 per cent in 2010.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Foreign Wives Stir Korean Melting Pot
By Andrei Lankov
Last summer, I visited Buyo county, which lies in the heart of an agricultural, less-developed and deeply traditional part of South Korea’s southwest. Not far from the bus terminal, a large poster attracted my attention. It stated: “Vietnamese girls, those who never run away.”
Not far away, there was another poster that made another bold — but, perhaps not completely unfounded — generalization about the Vietnamese: “Vietnamese daughters-in-law are really kind!” The presence of these posters was not unusual — Vietnamese girls constitute a large number of new brides in the area, and international introduction agencies seems to be present at every major crossroads in this part of Korea.
Indeed, in recent years South Korean public mood has undergone a major change where marriage with foreigners is concerned. When in the early 1990s the present author published a book on daily life in Korea, he stated with a measure of confidence, “as a rule, Koreans do not approve of marriage with foreigners”.
This might sound like a generalization, but back then, some 20 years ago, public opinion polls supported such a statement, stating that South Koreans were remarkably less willing to marry their children to foreigners than, say, Hong Kong Chinese or Japanese. When in the 1990s a gender imbalance caused by sex-selective abortions was much discussed, one of the oft-repeated scares was that Korean males would have no choice but to marry foreigners.
Had anybody told me some 20 years ago that soon Korea would become one of the world’s leaders when it came to international marriages, I would probably laugh at such a ridiculous idea. But this is exactly what began to happen around 2000.
Only one type of international marriages had been quite common in Korea, beginning in the late 1940s — marriages between South Korean girls and American soldiers. No exact statistics are available, but the number of such marriages over the last half a century may have reached 100,000. In most cases, though, Korean spouses of the American soldiers came from underprivileged social groups and were more or less despised (or, perhaps, pitied) by mainstream society. Syngman Rhee, the first South Korea president, might have had a “foreign wife” (Korea’s first First lady was an Austrian-born American), but in general Korean males seldom married non-Koreans until very recently.
Though the changes only began two decades ago, as is usually is the case in Korea, those changes were fast indeed. In 2000, a foreigner was involved in 3.5% of newly registered marriages, and in 2005 the share of such “international marriages” reached the impressive 13.5%. In the subsequent years the ratio went down slightly, but was quite steady, so in 2009 some 10.9% of all marriages (33,300 cases) were concluded with foreigners. It is the Korean male who usually take a foreign spouse these days — in 2009, 75.5% of all newly registered mixed marriages had a Korean groom and a foreign bride.
From the first glance at the marriage statistics, the nature of these unions becomes clear; this is essentially one of the largest mail-order-bride operations the world has ever seen. The Korean farmers, largely from the less developed parts of the country, marry young women from Asian countries.
In 2009, about a third of all brides in newly registered mixed marriages (34.1%, to be exact) came from China. Vietnam was the second largest bride exporter, with 21.8% of all brides. China and Vietnam were followed by Cambodia and the Philippines, but also by Japan (even though the nature of 1,140 marriages between Japanese women and Korean men must be different).
This explosive growth was brought about by the demographic changes in the Korean countryside, such as a flight of marriageable young women to the cities. From the 1980s local women left their native villages in droves, while men who were expected to take care of the family farms and had no choice but to stay. For a while, there were attempts to solve the problems with public awareness campaigns — I still remember how in the mid-1990s Seoul subway carriages had billboards encouraging Korean girls to marry farmers.
Korean girls were decisively reluctant to move back to the countryside. So, foreign brides were “discovered”, and nowadays the share of mixed marriages in the countryside is astonishing. For example, in Southern Cholla province, 43.5% of all farmers who married in 2009 took a foreign bride.
Not surprisingly, the foreign wives tend to be much younger than their Korean husbands — a usual situation with mail-order brides worldwide. A 2009, large-scale research of the mixed families indicated than on the average wife was 8.3 years younger. However, this research dealt with all existing mixed marriages, including those with a Korean wife, so for foreign wives from some countries the difference could be much greater, for Cambodia, the average age difference reached 17.5 years, and in the case of Korean-Vietnamese marriages the average age difference is 17 years.
Some exceptions exist, to be sure, but in most cases such marriage is a business deal, pure and simple, which both sides hold as advantageous. A Korean farmer finally gets a wife (presumably, youthful, hard-working and obedient), while a girl from the less developed parts of poorer nations gets a material life far better than she can realistically hope for in her home village. For young women from many countries even a poor Korean farm house is a paradise: it has running water, electricity, a TV set and fridge — all still luxuries in many parts of rural China and Vietnam.
In most cases, the marriages are arranged by brokers or agencies — a large and booming business nowadays. The brokers describe South Korea as an earthly paradise. The popularity of Korean soaps reinforces this image, so girls tend to have a rosy picture of the country where they will go. TV dramas usually depict the life of the rather privileged middle class families, not the farmers whom they are most likely to marry.
The brokers arrange for the wife-hunting farmers to come to Vietnam or China, where they are introduced to a number of potential marriage candidates. Then the choice is made and paperwork begins, so in few months, a new bride emerges from a plane.
Thanh Ha Minh, a post-graduate at the Seoul National University, conducted a large study of the Vietnamese wives in Korea. In the survey, the four most frequently cited major reasons for taking the decision to marry were, “economic reasons”, “parental pressure”, “dreams about Korea”, “impact of the ‘Korean wave’ in pop culture”.
For the foreigner-marrying Korean men, whom Thanh Ha Minh surveyed, the reasons cited were different: “the disdain Korean women feel towards husbands who are not economically successful”, “dislike of Korean women”, “the similarities between Vietnamese and Koreans in appearance” (obviously, an assumption that neither woman nor their children would stand out in a crowd).
Taking into consideration such a background, one cannot be surprised that these marriages are often criticized in Korean media. Nonetheless, a more balanced view on these unions should be, perhaps, more sanguine.
Most of those marriages are driven by pragmatic considerations, but we should not forget that the same is applicable to a majority of marriages throughout the world. The idea of love as the sole legitimate reason for getting married is very recent (maybe, a century or so old), and so far it has prevailed only in the more affluent parts of the globe. A modern consciousness feels uncomfortable about the idea of a young woman going to an unknown place to live with a man whom she has never seen before, on the assumption that this would secure her livelihood, but this is a pretty correct description of, say, 90% of marriages concluded before 1900.
It would be naive to think that the life of our ancestors was devoid of domestic bliss — evidence shows that often the opposite was true. If people are good, and caring, and decent human beings, they might and usually do become a perfect couple, whichever were the initial reasons behind their marriages.
The Korean press often runs horror stories of gross domestic abuse suffered by the foreign wives. Indeed, the girls — poorly educated and with limited command of Korean — are easy victims. Abuse does happen, to be sure and one should welcome the position of the Korean media, which is quite sympathetic to their plight.
However, one should remember that the bad news usually gets to newspapers more readily. A look at the statistics reveals a much more optimistic picture. In 2009, during a nationwide study of mixed marriages, over half of all foreign wives (57%) said life in Korea was “satisfactory” or “very satisfactory” — and 36.3% described it as “normal”. Only 6.7% saw their lives in Korea as “unsatisfactory” or “very unsatisfactory”, and this is clear a sign of international marriages being more successful than many people assume.
Another sign of success — perhaps, more powerful than all poll results — is the constant inflow of the new marriage migrants, usually coming from the same areas, same towns and villages as earlier “foreign brides”. They and their parents have enough experience by now they get plentiful information from those who moved to Korea earlier, so these girls and their families — or, at lease, a majority of them — know what they are doing.
But one thing is clear: Korea is not a mono-ethnic country any more — or rather it is losing this peculiarity at an amazing speed. In a few decades many thousands of people of various ethnic backgrounds will be seen on Seoul’s streets. The ethnic “purity”, long a topic of self-congratulatory speeches of the Korean nationalists, is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Andrei Lankov is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacifica and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pope Warns China on Treatment of Bishops
Vatican City, 18 Nov. (AKI) — The Vatican on Thursday said it would consider any move by China to force Roman Catholic bishops to attend a state-sponsored ordination of a bishop not recognised by the pope to be a transgression against personal liberty.
“The Holy See would consider such actions as grave violations of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience,” Pope Benedict XVI’s spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Thursday in a written statement.
The Holy See refers to the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome. Headed by the pope, it is widely recognised as a sovereign entity under under international law.
An estimated third of China’s 12 million Catholics belong to a church that has stayed loyal to the Vatican throughout decades of repression under China’s Communist Party.
Increasing numbers of clergy in the state-controlled faith have sought Rome’s blessing, since the easing of restrictions on religion in the 1980s.
The pope warned China that relations between Beijing and the Holy see would be compromised if bishops under the pontiff’s command were required to attend an ordination ceremony next week of Father Joseph Guo Jincai in Chengde, located in Hebei province in the country’s east.
“It would also consider such an ordination as illicit and damaging to the constructive relations that have been developing in recent times between the People’s Republic of China and the Holy See,” the statement said.
The Vatican would like to establish formal diplomatic relations with Beijing, with whom its relations have been improving. But its recognition of Taiwan has prevented the world’s smallest sovereign state from exchanging ambassadors with the globe’s most populous nation.
China considers Taiwan a renegade breakaway state. Taiwan has formal diplomatic ties with 23 countries.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Could U.S. Eventually Become an Islamic Land?
Even if we should succeed in ending illegal immigration, our immigration law itself needs to be updated to accommodate a new factor never envisioned by its framers. Ironically, increased immigration by Latinos could help balance factors to avoid the current crisis in which European countries are moving: mass Muslim immigration and consequent Islamic culture and laws.
If both comparative birth rates and Muslim immigration from eastern countries continue at their present rates, most countries in Europe will within a few years be Islamic nations. Not far behind are Canada and the United States.
The alarm is being raised both in Europe and America. Many political experts are convinced European countries over-estimated their need for immigrant labor and under-estimated the cultural impact of Islam. These European countries base their attitude toward immigration on secularism, tolerance, and equality, but none of these qualities has any value to Islam. In point of fact, their traditional values are opposites. Asylum was generously granted for political refugees from eastern countries. However, it allows into west Europe countries far more illegal aliens than those in need of political refuge. Many parts of Europe already harbor anti-American feelings, but Moslem immigrants have added outright hostility to America.
One of the more recent expositions of this trend is Christopher Caldwell’s “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe”: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Doubleday, 2009).
Statistical studies indicate the 52 million Muslims in Europe today will double within 20 years to 104 million. France already as more mosques in the south than churches, and France is predicted to become an Islamic country within 35 years.
While the birth rates in all countries of the European Union, and in Canada and the United States as well, are dropping, the Muslim rate is increasing. In both England and France, 50 percent of births are to Muslim families. Germany is the first nation to speak out in concern about Muslim immigrations, because they predict by 2050 it, too, will be an Islamic country.
In 1970 there were 100,000 Muslims in the United States. Today there are 9 million. Within 30 years there will be 50 million.
Islam has recently surpassed the Roman Catholic Church as the largest religious body in the world. In five to seven years it will be the dominant world religion.
If Latino immigration into the United States continues, it would raise the fertility rate from its present 1.6 children per family to 2.11, which historical studies have shown is just barely sufficient to maintain a culture for 25 years or more. Without them, the United States and Canada could well become yet other Islamic nations not long after Europe.
I have walked through Muslim neighborhoods in London, and it didn’t look or feel like England at all. Whole populations have been transplanted and pushed natives aside. England has over 1,000 active and well-attended mosques.
Muslims do not assimilate when they are great enough in number to take over. Another study has shown that when Muslims approached 50 percent of a population, the culture changed substantially. When they reached the two-thirds mark, the country became Islamic with Islamic law.
I lack a research staff to confirm the statistics I have quoted, and, so, cannot assert them. I just report the work others have done. But I have documented sources, and these impress me. If the statistics and projections are not fully accurate, the facts are close enough to frighten.
Our immigration law and policies need to be revised — reformed — not only to eliminate illegal immigration, but to ensure all immigrants admitted contribute to the cultural diversity of this country and strengthen it. We are in danger of Muslim immigration becoming a foreign invasion followed by occupation by an alien culture and ruled by alien law.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Immigrant Pensioners Form a New Lower Class
Figures show a worrying trend for poverty amongst the elderly
Pensioners are the section of the population with the lowest percentage of poor people — but the country’s elderly immigrants are an exception.
Out of the capital’s 561 pensioners who live in “serious poverty”, 482 have an immigrant background, according to new figures from the City Council.
“We’re creating a new lower class here in Denmark. The lower class is changing colour,” Jonas Schytz Juul, senior analyst at the Economic Council of the Labour Movement (ECLM), which has close ties to the Social Democrats, told Politiken newspaper.
While only 1.1 percent of ethnic Danish pensioners live in poverty, the figure for their immigrant counterparts is a full 27.4 percent, according to new ECLM figures, based on the OECD’s poverty line definition of 50 percent of the country’s median income.
Older immigrant’s poverty problems stem from a regulation requiring individuals to be in Denmark for 40 years before collecting a pension. During the first ten years of residence, of which at least five years must be spent here before turning 60, there is no possibility of earning a state pension.
The city’s deputy mayor for social affairs, Mikkel Warming, said the state pension for immigrants was too low, and that it was wrong to deny pensions to people who come to Denmark after having turned 65.
“When you’ve been granted residency here for the rest of your life, of course you should receive a state pension,” he told Politiken newspaper.
The situation, according to Bjarne Hastrup, the head of elderly advocacy group DaneAge extended beyond financial concerns.
“Many elderly immigrants live lonely lives with their own language,” he said. “Their children and grandchildren are being integrated into society and may not be as close to their elderly relatives as one might think. This is more than simply a question of finances. It is a significant social and humane problem.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Shameless: The Romanian Gypsy Who Lived Luxury Lifestyle With £113,000 Benefits Stolen From British Taxpayers
A ‘shameless’ Romanian gypsy who stole at least £113,000 from British taxpayers in benefits to fund a luxurious lifestyle has been jailed for three years.
Illie Schian, 47, bought sports cars, motorcycles and quad bikes and built his family a nine-bedroom house with money he received in British hand-outs.
He is also accused of involvement in a people smuggling ring that sent around 180 children to Britain to beg and steal and amassed a £20,000 nest egg in a Romanian bank account before he was finally stopped.
Schian, from Enfield, North London, applied for political asylum under an assumed name when he arrived in the UK claiming he had been persecuted in Romania because he was a gypsy.
He was granted indefinite leave to remain and proceeded to fleece British taxpayers out of tens of thousands in job seekers’ allowance, child benefit and housing benefit before he was arrested in July this year.
The Romanian was jailed for three years after he admitted a string of fraud charges at Southwark Crown Court on Friday.
Mr Justice James Wadsworth, QC, said: ‘You did your utmost to defraud the public. You did it in a determined and skilful manner and I have been shown photographs of how your family appears to be very prosperous.
‘I am satisfied that you skillfully and deliberately profited greatly and enjoyed it enormously.’
The judge ordered Schian to be deported after serving his sentence.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Former Catholic Theologian Says Much of the Clergy is Gay
The former publisher of a conservative Catholic magazine has claimed that a large share of Catholic clergy is gay, and called for the Church to change its homophobic attitude and teaching.
Theologian David Berger, was correspondent professor for the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas in the Vatican, where he said his academic work was watched and censored where it concerned homosexuality.
As a gay man himself, he told Der Spiegel in an interview that living among the Catholic homophobia was a nightmare.
“It must be acknowledged that a large number of Catholic clerics and trainee priests in Europe and the United States are homosexually-inclined,” he said.
He said when he was writing for theological magazines, he had to use phrases such as fornication-partner rather than life-partner, and that the neutral word homosexual could not be used, but gay men were described as perverse sodomites.
“The worst homophobia in the Catholic Church comes from homophile priests, who are desperately fighting their own sexuality,” he said.
“Obviously, those who follow their urges are repudiated more fiercely when one is so painfully repressing that disposition oneself.”
Now working as a teacher in Cologne, Berger outed himself as gay this April after the Bishop of Essen Franz-Josepf Overbeck described homosexuality as perverse and a sin during an appearance on a television chat show.
Berger’s book about his experiences within the Church The holy illusion — a gay theologian in the Catholic Church which is published this week.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
High Suicide Risk, Prejudice Plague Transgender Peopleby Clara Moskowitz,
A staggering 41 percent of transgender people in the United States have attempted to commit suicide, according to a new survey. About 19 percent of transgender people report being refused medical care because of their gender-nonconforming status, and a shocking 2 percent have been violently assaulted in a doctor’s office.
These statistics are just some of the sobering findings from a survey of more than 7,000 transgender people conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, released in October 2010.
Tomorrow (Nov. 20), the Transgender Day of Remembrance will pay tribute to people killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.
“It’s an opportunity to honor the people who lost their lives for really no other reason than that another human being acted out of hatred or fear and were so consumed by that that they ended another person’s life,” said Justin Tanis, spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “It’s also an opportunity for us to look at what we can do about it. We’ve got to keep taking concrete steps to end that violence, because it’s unacceptable that people continue to be killed and continue to be violently attacked.”
Stacked deck
Psychologists say transgender people often face what feels like a stacked deck against them. The disapproval and confusion of friends, family and people around them creates a burden of stress. Many trans people fear for their safety because of the threat of anti-transgender violence.
Furthermore, many report having trouble finding and keeping jobs because of their transgender status.
“If there isn’t a clause like an anti-discrimination rule, people can be let go if they transition” from one gender to another, said clinical psychologist Gail Knudson, a professor in the department of sexual medicine at the University of British Columbia and medical director of the Transgender Health Program at Vancouver Coastal Health. “And it’s difficult if you do not pass well [as your preferred gender] to find employment because people are discriminated against.”
One of the biggest issues many trans people face is the difficulty of changing gender. Transitioning from one gender to another can take many forms, but often requires hormone therapy and sometimes surgery on breasts and/or genitals.
Many people have to pay out-of-pocket for these expenses, because they either don’t have medical insurance or their insurance doesn’t cover the treatment. Additionally, the process takes a long time — most doctors follow guidelines called the Standards of Care that require people to live and present as their preferred gender for months before receiving any physical intervention.
Yet transgender people overwhelmingly say it’s worth it. After transitioning, transgender people show a significant decrease in substance abuse problems and depression, for example, and their mental health significantly improves, Knudson said.
Before transition, people struggle with gender dysphoria — the feeling that they are stuck in the wrong body that doesn’t match the way they feel on the inside.
“For their lives to go forward they need to transition,” Knudson told LiveScience. “A lot of the health care providers that work in the field see transitioning as a medical necessity — not as something people chose to do, but as something they need to do to lead productive lives.”
Other risks
In addition to their higher risk of suicide, transgender people face steeper odds for other health issues.
For example, the recent survey found that 2.64 percent of trans people are infected with HIV — that’s more than four times the national average rate of 0.6 percent in the general population. And 25 percent of the survey respondents reported misusing drugs or alcohol specifically to cope with the discrimination they face due to their gender identity.
A 2003 study by Ilan H. Meyer of Columbia University found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people have a higher prevalence of mental disorders than heterosexuals. The author explains this prevalence in terms of minority stress, writing in the journal Psychological Bulletin that “stigma, prejudice, and discrimination create a hostile and stressful social environment that causes mental health problems.”
Though transgender people weren’t included in the study, these same stressors apply, experts say.
“Some of the key components of the minority stress model state that stigma, prejudice and discrimination create a hostile and stressful social environment that are correlated with increased incidence of other mental health problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, and in extreme cases — suicidal ideations),” Seth Pardo, a doctoral candidate in the department of human development at Cornell University, wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. “Indeed, several recent reports have surfaced in the national and perhaps more so in the local media of gender-nonconforming youth and young adults being harassed or otherwise bullied at school.”…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Richard Littlejohn: After Me, Children: My Sharia Armour
When I went to Sunday school, a million years ago, we were taught to love our neighbour.
I don’t recall ever being told that we should take an ‘eye for an eye’ literally. Or that the punishment for homosexuality was death.
Aged six, we didn’t even know what homosexuality was, even though we’d been warned to steer clear of that chap who was always hanging round the swimming pool. We were also taught that Jesus was King of the Jews — not that the Jews were plotting to take over the world and should all be killed.
But thousands of children in Britain are now being indoctrinated in the brutal ways of Islamic Sharia law, according to an investigation by BBC’s Panorama.
At weekend schools, young Muslims, aged between six and 15, are receiving lessons in how to hack off a criminal’s hand or foot.
They are being told that the penalty for gay sex is execution and that Jews are ‘reprehensible’ Zionists bent on world domination.
This filth is part of the standard curriculum at 40 weekend schools in this country. To no one’s great surprise, it is bankrolled by our good ‘friends’ the Saudis.
If this kind of hatred was peddled by any other group in Britain, they would be prosecuted and the schools shut down.
But, yet again, militant Islam seems to be immune from the usual strictures of the laws against incitement.
We are told over and over again that it is difficult to single out Islamic organisations for investigation. All religions operate weekend schools.
Yes, but Jewish and Anglican schools don’t preach amputation and murder. At my Sunday school, we made farmyard animals out of Plasticine to put round the manger. What next: teaching kids how to turn plastic explosives into a suicide belt? The authorities are scared stiff of offending ‘peace-loving’ Muslims, so they turn a blind eye to violent jihadists in our schools and on our streets.
When Channel 4’s Dispatches went undercover and exposed the hatred being preached in mosques, the bold West Midlands police investigated the programme’s producers, not the preachers of death.
If this latest exposé runs true to form, it’s the makers of Panorama who can expect a visit from Plod.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Government, Law to Approve Sedation of Terminally Ill
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 19 — The Spanish government announced today that it will regulate, by law, the sedation of terminally ill people to avoid unnecessary suffering and guarantee a noble death. During the traditional press conference that follows cabinet meetings, the deputy premier, minister of Interior Affairs and government spokesperson, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, explained that “This is not a law on euthanasia, because that is a personal decision”. The law, which will guarantee that people who are terminally ill will have access to means of sedation needed to pass away without suffering, will be called ‘Law Of Palliative Cures And Noble Death’.
According to Rubalcaba’s explanation, it will regulate relations between the doctors and the family of terminal patients admitted to hospital in case of great suffering.
According to the government “it is a matter of guaranteeing the rights of relatives, patients and doctors”. The law will be ready by March. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Overtime Pay at Christmas Axed: It Discriminates Against the Other Religions, Say Care Home Bosses
The firm said it had an ‘ethical belief in equality’ which means it cannot favour Christmas over ‘other religious festivals’.
Staff were told that it would only pay bonuses for bank holidays, which rules out Christmas Day and Boxing Day this year because they fall at the weekend.
Scores of care workers who provide 24-hour care for the elderly were told of the pay arrangements during recent meetings with Guinness Care and Support.
One member of staff said: ‘We have learned that senior head office management have decided that all staff who work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day will be paid standard, flat-rate wages with no bonuses whatsoever.
‘The management themselves are on two weeks’ annual leave. It has come as a shock and left us all stunned.
‘Due to the nature of the work we expect to work festive times and give up our own time with our families knowing we are giving time, care and support to those who are unfortunate enough to need to live in care homes.
‘But for the management to deem that we do not deserve some sort of bonus, like the majority of other employees at this time of year, is not a reflection of their mantra of care and support in the community. It obviously excludes their own staff.’
Mick Green, senior human resources manager for Guinness Care and Support, said that it was company policy not to pay extra to staff working at Christmas.
He said: ‘We would like to make our position on pay clear. We have a strong ethical belief in equality and diversity and are unable to recognise one religious festival over others.
‘Our policy is not to pay extra when staff work during a religious festival.
‘We would like to stress that many of our office-based staff will also be working over the Christmas period in order to support staff in our homes during this busy time.’
Mr Green said there was a statutory responsibility to recognise bank holidays, and people working on Monday, December 27 and Tuesday, December 28, would receive extra pay as outlined in their contracts.
Guinness Care and Support runs more than 20 residential homes across Devon looking after hundreds of elderly men and women.
Exeter Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said that he would be contacting Guinness Care and Support for a more comprehensive explanation of the company’s position.
He said: ‘I am surprised at their stance. We are still an overwhelmingly Christian society and Christmas is a religious festival and a public holiday.
‘Other religious festivals are not public holidays and I do not think Guinness is comparing like with like.’
Hugo Swire, Conservative MP for East Devon, added: ‘I can give you my reaction in one word — bonkers.’
Sarah Austin, an employment expert at Foot Anstey solicitors, in Exeter, said: ‘Unless there is a contractual provision to the contrary, employers aren’t actually obliged to pay more than the standard rate of pay to employees who work on Christmas Day or Boxing Day.
‘But they will sometimes exercise their discretion to do so in the interests of maintaining good relations with their employees.’
| — Hat tip: ICLA | [Return to headlines] |
Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending
The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. The simple setup demonstrated a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere. In this spirit, the Web spread quickly from the grassroots up. Today, at its 20th anniversary, the Web is thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity.
The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.
The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.
If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.
Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.
Yet people seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature, and if it starts to wither, well, that’s just one of those unfortunate things we can’t help. Not so. We create the Web, by designing computer protocols and software; this process is completely under our control. We choose what properties we want it to have and not have. It is by no means finished (and it’s certainly not dead). If we want to track what government is doing, see what companies are doing, understand the true state of the planet, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, not to mention easily share our photos with our friends, we the public, the scientific community and the press must make sure the Web’s principles remain intact—not just to preserve what we have gained but to benefit from the great advances that are still to come.
Universality Is the Foundation
Several principles are key to assuring that the Web becomes ever more valuable. The primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the Web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection. The Web should be usable by people with disabilities. It must work with any form of information, be it a document or a point of data, and information of any quality—from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. And it should be accessible from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet: stationary or mobile, small screen or large.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Mad Artist’s Brain: The Connection Between Creativity and Mental Illness
More evidence for the long-suspected physiological link between inventiveness and mental illness
The popular perception of creative thinkers and artists is that they often also have mental disorders—the likes of Vincent van Gogh or Sylvia Plath suggest that creativity and madness go hand in hand. Past research has tentatively confirmed a correlation; scientific surveys have found that highly creative people are more likely to have mental illness in their family, indicating a genetic link. Now a study from Sweden is the first to suggest a biological mechanism: highly creative healthy people and people with schizophrenia have certain brain chemistry features in common.
A research team at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied 13 mentally healthy, highly creative men and women. As noted in the paper published in May in PLoS ONE, other scientists had previously found that divergent thinking, or the ability to “think outside the box,” involves the brain’s dopamine communication system. The Swedish research team used PET scanning to determine the abundance of a particular dopamine receptor, or sensor, in the creative individuals’ thalamus and striatum, areas that process and sort information before it reaches conscious thought—and that are known to be involved in schizophrenia. The team found that people who had lower levels of dopamine receptor activity in the thalamus also had higher scores on tests of divergent thinking—for instance, finding many solutions to a problem.
Previous work has shown that people with schizophrenia also have lower dopamine receptor activity in the thalamus—and the scientists suggest in their paper that this striking similarity demonstrates a “crucial” link between creativity and psychopathology. “Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box,” writes lead author Fredrik Ullén, a cognitive scientist at Karolinska.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Wikileaks Set to Release New Iraq War Logs ‘Seven Times Bigger Than the First’
Wikileaks has announced it will release a third set of war logs which will be seven times bigger than the last batch.
In a defiant posting on its official Twitter account, the website’s founders said it was ‘under intense pressure’ over the disclosure but vowed to press ahead anyway.
‘The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined. Keep us strong,’ they added.
It is not yet clear what the new logs would cover but such a vast information dump would create another firestorm in Britain and the U.S.
Generals on both sides of the Atlantic are still furious over the last set of 400,000 classified documents which covered the war in Iraq, the biggest military leak of all time.
| [Return to headlines] |
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