Algeria: Oil and Sugar Price Freeze Will Cost 300 Mln Euros
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JANUARY 11 — Measures announced by the government to freeze the prices of oil and sugar, rises in which have been at the root of the protests of the last few days, will cost Algeria 30 billion dinars, around 300 million euros. The announcement was made today, APS reports, by the spokesperson for the Trade Ministry, Farouk Tifour.
“Immediate state intervention to lower the prices of sugar and oil will cost the Treasury 3 billion dinars”, Tifour said, adding that “a further 23 billion dinars will not enter the state’s coffers as a result of the suspension of customs duties”.
On Sunday, the Trade Minister, Mustapha Benbada, urged wholesalers to respect the prices fixed by the state: 90 dinars per kilo for sugar and 600 dinars for a 5 litre container of cooking oil.
Benbada said that the price difference would be bridged by the state. Last week’s 20-30% increase in the price of these products led to violent protests, that have so far left 5 people dead and 800 injured.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Beijing: The Self-Serving Life-Saver
After Greece and Portugal, Peking has now come to the rescue of crisis-stricken Spain, with a massive buy-up of national debt. A symbol of increasing inroads China is making in Europe, notes the press.
“The Chinese comrade, Zapatero’s best ally,” El Mundo calls Chinese vice-premier Li Keqiang, currently on a visit to Spain that is of crucial importance to the future of the Spanish economy. José Luis Zapatero’s government “are crossing their fingers in hopes that China will continue breathing life” into the Spanish economy in 2011, says the conservative daily, adding that Beijing has signed deals with Madrid worth €5.5bn. Moreover, China has already purchased upwards of €43bn in Spanish government bonds and “seems prepared to buy more” — with an instant impact on the Spanish debt risk premium, which dropped 9 points on 4 January.
El Mundo nonetheless airs criticism of Zapatero’s “acquiescence”, now that he has found “his best allies in these hard times” among the hierarchs of the Communist dictatorship, and hopes the prime minister will follow the lead of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, “who didn’t hesitate to call on China to respect human rights”.
Spain is not an isolated case in Beijing’s European strategy, observes Dziennik Gazeta Prawna over in Poland: “Every month China has been buying up EU government bonds to the tune of €7-8bn in a bid to shore up Chinese exports for good. By helping the ‘PIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain),” adds the Polish paper, “China is getting to know the European market and, more importantly, indirectly influencing the euro exchange rate, as well as weakening its arch-rival, Germany, while it’s at it.”
To reassure the latter, as a matter of fact, the selfsame Li Keqiang has penned an op-ed piece in the Bavarian paper Süddeutsche Zeitung hailing the “joint struggle against the crisis conducted over the past two years by China and Germany” and stressing the huge scale of trading between the two countries: “$140bn in 2010, which corresponds to 30% of trade between China and the EU” and makes China Germany’s foremost trading partner outside the EU. By reaching out to the most heavily indebted countries, Beijing is also hoping to ward off sanctions from Brussels for dumping (the Commission has filed 50 actions for unfair trading against China), explains analyst Yiyi Lu in Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. He points that at the same time Beijing is demanding that the EU grant it market economy status and ease up on the preconditions for the transfer of cutting-edge technologies. The next step, concludes Yiyi Lu, will probably be the lifting of the embargo on arms sales to China that was imposed by the EU after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Translated by Eric Rosencrantz
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
EU Considers Increase of Bail-Out Fund, As Debt Crisis Rumbles on
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — Against a background of growing fears that the eurozone’s rescue fund would be insufficient should Spain or Belgium knock on its doors, the European Union’s economy chief has called for a hike in the effective lending capacity of the EU’s bail-out mechanism.
“We need to review all options for the size and scope of our financial backstops — not only for the current ones but also for the permanent European stability mechanism too,” EU economics and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn wrote on Wednesday in an opinion piece in the Financial Times.
The commissioner issued the call after member-state representatives met in the European capital to discuss proposals to boost the fund ahead of a meeting of European finance ministers next week.
Mr Rehn also issued a stark warning that for all the deficit-slashing austerity measures that European states have so far imposed, it is not enough.
“There is insufficient ambition and a lack of urgency in implementation. That needs to change,” he wrote.
The commissioner called for Europe to embrace structural reforms to bring an end to the debt crisis this year.
He wants to see changes to tax and benefit systems, reform of labour markets and pension provision, a loosening of business regulation and more investment in innovation.
“This calls for a comprehensive response by the whole EU and for bold fiscal and structural measures in all member states,” he said.
He issued the call ahead of the unveiling of the European Commission’s first annual growth survey, essentially a template with spending recommendations for EU member states, published as part of an effort to bring European-level coherence to national budgetary plans.
On Tuesday, representatives of EU member states in Brussels also considered an increase in the effective lending capacity of European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
While the EFSF kitty amounts to €440 billion, as more countries become borrowers from rather than guarantors of the fund, the actual capacity of the fund currently sits at roughly €250 billion.
Some governments favour a hike in the effective lending capacity to the full €440 billion, while others are looking to a doubling of the fund. But to do so would require further credit guarantees from eurozone states in a less precarious situation, notably Germany and France.
No decision was taken ahead of a finance ministers’ meeting next Monday, however.
Member states are considering expanding the role of the EFSF to permit the common purchase of government bonds, an exercise which is currently the competence of the European Central Bank.
According to EU sources, any decision on the matter hinges on the result of government bond auctions this week, particularly Portugal’s trip to the market.
On Wednesday, Lisbon is to attempt to raise up to €1.25 billion in 10-year bonds from investors. The yield on Portuguese debt has hit record levels in recent days, although the pressure eased off this week, most likely as a result of ECB purchases of government debt. Should the yield at auction be too onerous, Portugal is likely to ask for a bail-out.
On Tuesday, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates continued to insist his government was not in need of any assistance. “Portugal won’t ask for any financial help because it’s not necessary,” he said.
Spain for its part on Thursday is to try to raise some €2.5 billion in five-year bonds.
Also on Tuesday, Japan announced it was to buy a fifth of the eurozone’s first bond issue.
Japanese finance minister Minister Yoshihiko Noda said his government was to purchase more than 20 percent of a bond offering by the EFSF, to take place later this month.
The move comes in the wake of an announcement last week by China to buy Spanish bonds.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Globalisation 2.0: How the West Lost it
As the West stews in stagnation, emerging economies are on the rise — and driving prices of raw materials and fuel to perilous highs. As they now set the pace of the global economy, Europe, stymied by cutbacks and unemployment, is in for hard times ahead.
Maurizio Ricci
China, India and Brazil are stepping up the pace of economic activity as Western economies trail further and further behind. The emerging nations are now calling the shots and setting the prices on the world market. The upshot, an across-the-board inflationary trend, couldn’t have come at a worse time for the struggling West, which may now face the double-whammy of throttled growth and rampant inflation.
The prices of commodities — cotton, sugar, rubber et al — have been steadily mounting for months. But only now that the price of oil is welling up too — oil being the queen of commodities, with the most direct impact on the overall economy — is the West finally sounding the alarm. Crude oil is up to around $90 a barrel in the US and verging on $95 in Europe, over $15 more than it was a year ago. That’s dangerously close to the $100 mark, which many regard as the psychological threshold beyond which the vicious circle of financial speculation will set in, thanks to abundant liquidity made available by the now flush central banks. Which is what happened in 2008, when the barrel shot up to $140.
The OECD’s International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that this latest upturn in oil prices is already taking a heavy toll on the most developed economies. The bill the 34 OECD countries pay to the oil-exporting nations jumped $200bn in 2010 to nearly $800bn: in other words, the rich countries spent one third more on imported crude oil last year than in 2009. In fact, according to the IAE, they sacrificed half a GDP point to the oil sheiks at a time when the GDP is struggling to pick up again. At this rate, they’re headed straight to the brink of a recession. “The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery,” warns chief IEA economist Fatih Birol. “This is a wake-up call to the oil consuming countries and to the oil producers” — which have rejected the calls on OPEC in recent weeks to increase production.
In 2011 Europe might lose its shirt
The price of crude is an unknown quantity that casts a long shadow on the economic forecast for the years to come, and yet it’s only the biggest cloud looming on the horizon. Almost all commodities are going up in price — starting with food. A new food crisis, like that of 2007—2008, is not in the immediate offing because stocks are fairly plentiful for the time being. But the effects on prices are already much in evidence. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) food price index shot up 4.2% in a single month in November 2010. It is already higher than in 2008, driven up by increased wheat, sugar and meat prices. Likewise the price of cotton, for instance, which has hit a new all-time high.
What is happening in the world markets bodes ill for consumers in 2011, especially in the West. Smack in the middle of a phase of high unemployment and stagnating income, it is going to be raining markups, including the prices of petrol at the pumps and natural gas for heating (which is tied to the price of petrol in Europe). Big distributors are already warning retailers that virtually everything — from meat and bread to blue jeans — is going to cost more. And that will put a dent in household and national budgets.
A flurry of markups means a new round of inflation. December prices in the eurozone were 2.2% up on the year before, which was a lot more than expected — and above the 2% threshold the European Central Bank was hoping not to exceed. Under different circumstances, the ECB would have already raised interest rates to keep prices down. It hasn’t done so lest it stifle the recovery (which has been pretty meagre at best except in Germany), but probably more to the point because a rise in interest rates would make it even harder and more costly to finance public debt in the weaker eurozone economies, i.e. Greece, Spain, Belgium and Italy. Still, if inflation doesn’t stop going up, the Germans will insist that the ECB increase interest rates. So in 2011, in a nutshell, Europe might not only lose its new shirt, it might be pushed to the brink of another financial and political crisis…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Minister Likens Global Economic Crisis to Videogame Monsters
Paris, 6 Jan. (AKI) — Italy’s economy minister Giulio Tremonti said on Thursday the international economic downturn is not over and likened it to a videogame where the monsters keep on appearing.
“The crisis isn’t over. It’s like living in a videogame. You see a monster, you fight it, you beat it, and relax. But then another, even more fearsome monster appears,” he told a seminar in the French capital, Paris.
Governments and international institutions must remain vigilant and must not lower their guard, Tremonti said.
“Right now we’re saying, everything’s going okay. But are we sure?” he told the annual New World, New Capitalism seminar taking place at the French economy ministry.
Financial experts and ministers from major countries attend the seminar.
Tremonti reiterated support for a proposal for common euro zone bonds to help cut funding costs for troubled member states and overcome the single currency area’s sovereign debt crisis .
“This is a political, not a technical issue,” Tremonti said.
He cited a famous speech by British leader Winston Churchill after World War II, saying: “Europe must rise up again.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Valentino and Hundreds of Other Rich Italians Appear on ‘Tax-Dodger’ List
Rome, 12 Jan.(AKI) — Fashion tycoon Valentino Garavani and jewellery dynasty member Gianni Bulgari are among the famous names that appear on a list of suspected Italian tax dodgers who had Swiss bank accounts with HSBC containing billions of dollars.
Investigators say the money may have been deposited in Switzerland to avoid paying Italian taxes.
London-based HSBC in March 2010 announced employee Herve Falciani, a computer systems worker with duel French-Italian citizenship, had stolen the information from the bank and smuggled it out of the country to France.
The list was subsequently passed on by French authorities to investigators in Italy.
The list of contains 6,963 bank accounts belonging to hundreds of Italian individuals and companies, of which 700 are under investigation, according to Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera.
More than six billion dollars were deposited in the accounts between 2005 and 2007, according to investigators.
Garavani — founder of the eponymous fashion house Valentino — and Bulgari appear alongside fashion designer Benato Baestra and as well as Italian actors and businessmen, according to the Corriere della Sera report.
Late Spaghetti western director Sergio Leone’s name was also spotted on the HSBC list and investigators will question his heirs. Leone died in 1989.
Award-winning actress Stefania Sandrelli was also on the list but she already reported her hidden funds when she took advantage of one of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s amnesties designed to allow tax dodgers to repatriate money hidden abroad, at a tax rate far below official levels, the news report said.
In her long career, Sandrelli has worked with director Bernardo Bertolucci, and acted with Vittorio Gassman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Portugal: 1.250 Bln in Bonds Successfully Placed
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 12 — The Portuguese Treasury successfully met their objective today in placing 1.250 billion euros in bonds, including 650 million euros of 3-year notes and 600 million of 9-year notes. The interest rates were greater than the last auction: 3-year bonds had a rate of 5.396% compared to 4.041% at the previous auction. Nine-year notes, which are seen as having a higher risk by investors, had a rate of 6.716%. Nonetheless, the bond issue is being viewed as a success for the short-term survival of the Portuguese economy, which will not need to seek out aid from an EU or IMF rescue plan. Tomorrow the Spanish Treasury will test the markets with a bond auction of its own.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
You’re Insane if You Don’t Own Gold, Investors Told
Not owning gold during the current financial turmoil is “a form of insanity”, according to an investment analyst at a leading City firm.
Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC: “I think not owning gold is a form of insanity. It may even show unhealthy masochistic tendencies, which might need medical attention.”
He added that the dollar was heading for “oblivion”.
Mr Griffiths predicted that gold’s 10-year bull run would continue and even intensify. “Although it’s been a top performer for each of the last 10 years, it’s still in a linear trend,” he said. “Eventually it will go exponential and make more in the last little bit than the whole of the 10-year trend.”
He said investors should regard any short-term falls in the gold price as a buying opportunity, adding that gold was still not an “over-owned trade”.
His comments come against the background of the US Federal Reserve’s huge monetary stimulus from quantitative easing, which many believe will result in inflation and a fall in the value of the dollar.
“The downward trend in the dollar is awesomely powerful,” Mr Griffiths said. “It’s vital to get yourself out of the dollar long-term on any significant rally. Continuing to own a currency that is going to be printed virtually into oblivion — that’s the official policy — is crazy.”
He added: “Real assets hedge paper money being printed into oblivion, so you’ve got to own gold and you’ve got to own other commodity-related investments still.”
Gold hit an all-time high of $1,432 last month and is currently trading around $1,375.
Meanwhile, the gold price would have to exceed $2,000 for the metal to be considered in a bubble, according to an analyst at Deutsche Bank. “We believe gold will continue to compete aggressively for investment capital,” said Michael Lewis in a report.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Fla. Jogger Won’t be Charged for Shooting Teen
TAMPA, Fla. — A pistol-packing jogger in Florida won’t be charged for shooting and killing a teenager who attacked him during a midnight run.
Prosecutors said Tuesday they are convinced Thomas Baker acted in self defense when he fired eight shots at 18-year-old Carlos Mustelier near Tampa in November .
Prosecutors say Florida’s “stand-your-ground” law was a factor in their decision. The law, passed in 2005, gives people the right to use deadly force as long as they “reasonably believe” it is necessary to stop another person from hurting them.
Baker told police he reached for his gun when the teen punched him in the face. Baker has a concealed weapons permit.
The teen was hit four times in the chest, back and buttocks. He died at the scene.
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Legal Group Seeks Injunction to Halt Mosque Near Ground Zero
NEW YORK — A conservative legal group asked the New York Supreme Court on Tuesday to halt construction of the Islamic cultural center near ground zero.
The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 9/11 first responder firefighter Tim Brown in a lawsuit against the Park51 project, is seeking an injunction in any demolition and construction at the downtown Manhattan site.
The group alleges that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his office overstepped their legal boundaries in assisting the developers of the $100 million project.
Court filings revealed several emails between Bloomberg’s office and the Park51 developers.
In one email, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is spearheading the project, wrote to a commissioner of the Community Affairs Unit in the mayor’s office thanking her for drafting a letter to the Lower Manhattan Community Board 1 advocating for the project.
ACLJ counsel Brett Joshpe also asked the court to grant discovery in the case, noting that the mayor’s office has not fully responded to the group’s Freedom of Information Law request for communications between Bloomberg, the New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Islamic center’s developers.
“There is a disturbing pattern of stonewalling by the City and Mayor’s Office in providing information about what’s clearly been a politically tainted process from day one,” said Josphe in a statement.
“The limited release of documents by the Mayor’s Office underscores our concerns.”
Filed last August, Brown’s lawsuit alleges that the LPC abused its discretion and acted arbitrarily in its deliberations last summer about whether to give landmark status to the building at 45-47 Park Place, which would have made it difficult for Rauf to develop the Islamic center and mosque there. The LPC denied landmark status to the building, located just two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The lawsuit names the LPC, the New York City Department of Buildings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the project’s developers.
In its request for injunctive relief, ACLJ said it believes destruction of the building is imminent, citing two complaints of unauthorized work without proper permits at the site.
The group also pointed to the developers’ application for $5 million in public funding through the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as an indication that the project is moving forward.
The proposed center is expected to include a mosque, a daycare, gym, an interfaith prayer space, and a 9/11 Memorial cultural center, among other things.
Opponents of the mosque have vocally demanded that the center be moved elsewhere.
Activist Pamela Geller is expected to lead another protest against the mosque next month.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Mayor Stalling ‘Mosque’ Suit, Which Wants to Stop Art Opening
Despite the occasional hiccup, it looks like the controversial Park51 Islamic community center downtown has weathered the furor that consumed it last year and will get built some day if the ambitious project can find $100 million.
That has not stopped a firefighter and a conservative legal group from continuing to fight Park51 with a lawsuit, The Times reports. The real problem, the group charges, is not the developer, Sharif El-Gamal, or the imam, Faisal Abdul Rauf, but the Bloomberg administration.
“There is a disturbing pattern of stonewalling by the city and mayor’s office in providing information about what’s clearly been a politically tainted process from day one,” said Brett Joshpe, a lawyer for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative group in Washington that is representing Mr. Brown.
He added: “With developers moving forward with their plans and the continued lack of response by the city, we’re seeking an injunction from the court to halt the destruction of any of the buildings at issue in the case.”
The attorneys are seeking an injunction barring any work at the site, but a Park51 spokesperson said construction is still a while away-with the exception of “a multicultural art exhibit later in the spring.”
What? No art within five blocks of Ground Zero? We knew the World Trade Center cultural center was still struggling, but this is a new low.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Radical Muslim in America: All the Benefits and Still Turning to Jihad
Recent remarks by Attorney General Eric Holder on the threat posed by “radicalized” American Muslims deserve close attention—not just because of what they say regarding the domestic situation, but for their international implications as well. According to Holder:
“[T]he threat is real, the threat is different, the threat is constant. The threat has changed … to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens—raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born. It is one of the things that keeps me up at night. You didn’t worry about this even two years ago— about individuals, about Americans, to the extent that we now do.” Holder noted that while he was confident in the United States’ counter-terrorism efforts, Americans “have to be prepared for potentially bad news… The terrorists only have to be successful once.”
Holder’s assertion that “the terrorists only have to be successful once” has important implications: aside from the obvious—that it only takes one strike to create devastation on U.S. soil—they are a reminder that when people argue that most American Muslims are moderate, and only a few are radical, it does not help our security. It took nineteen to commit 9/11; and we have already seen that some American Muslims are radical. According to Holder, in the last two years, 50 of the 126 people charged with terrorism were U.S. citizens.
Further, Holder’s point that, “You didn’t worry about this even two years ago—about individuals, about Americans, to the extent that we now do,” is odd. Why should Americans not have been a worry two years ago? Anyone even moderately familiar with Islamist ideology knows that it allows for absolutely no national allegiance. The notion that some American Muslims could become radicalized should have been a concern since 9/11—nearly a decade ago.
More significantly, these revelations not only bode ill for U.S. security; they also suggest that American efforts in the Muslim world are doomed to failure. Consider: if American Muslims, who enjoy Western benefits—including democracy, liberty, prosperity, and freedom of expression—are still being radicalized, why then do we insist that importing these same benefits to the Muslim world will eliminate its even more ingrained form of “radicalization”?…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Officer Injured, Protesters Arrested Over Meeting at Zionist Centre
Several protesters were arrested and a police officer sent to hospital with a broken rib after a protest against a right-wing British organization in Toronto Tuesday night.
The protest was sparked by a meeting to hear a webcast of a speech by the founder of the English Defence League, an anti-Muslim group in the United Kingdom, at the Toronto Zionist Centre on Marlee Avenue, near Lawrence Avenue and the Allen Road.
While some protesters gathered for a vigil at the northeast corner of the intersection, others marched south on Marlee, towards the building where the meeting was taking place, said witnesses at the scene.
Police blocked the marchers from proceeding, and some protesters tried to get around police lines. Eventually, officers on horseback arrived and corralled the group, pushing it away from the Zionist Centre.
Police arrested at least four people and said one policeman was hit with the poll of a flag and had to be taken to hospital with a broken rib.
The side window of a police car was also broken during the protest, though it was not immediately clear how the damage happened.
The protest, which drew between 50 to 100 people, eventually dispersed.
The meeting at the Zionist Centre was organized by the Jewish Defence League, to hear a live speech broadcast via the Internet, from English Defence League founder Stephen Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson.
The United Kingdom-based EDL, a far-right organization, purports to confront radical Islam. Its critics, however, charge that it is an Islamophobic group.
Mr. Lennon himself faces charges of assaulting a police officer during a protest last year.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Lisbon Treaty in the Dock
Berlingske Tidende, 12 January 2011
The Danish supreme court has ruled that a group of 35 Danish citizens may file a case against the country’s Prime Minister and liberal leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, explains Berlingske Tidende. According to the plaintiffs, which include politicians and well-known artists, the Prime Minister violated the Danish constitution when he opted to ratify the Lisbon Treaty with a vote in parliament rather than a referendum. In its editorial, the Copehagen daily argues that the ratification procedure had the support of a majority of Danes and warns that a court ruling against the Prime Minister will herald “a return to the Maastricht era and more interminable discussions on our capacity to survive without the EU.” The Danes voted against Maastricht in a 1992 referendum, but finally approved it in 1993, once they had obtained a number of opt-outs.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France Heads Industrial Espionage: WikiLeaks Cables
FRANCE is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage on other European countries, even ahead of China and Russia, said leaked US diplomatic cables quoted today by Norway’s Aftenposten.
“French espionage is so widespread that the damages (it causes) the German economy are larger as a whole than those caused by China or Russia,” an undated note from the US embassy in Berlin said, according to a Norwegian translation by Aftenposten.
The Norwegian daily of reference said last month it had obtained all the 250,000 US diplomatic cables WikiLeaks had accessed and would publish stories based on them independently of the whistleblowing website’s own releases.
Its article based on leaked cables included an October 2009 comment from Berry Smutny, the head of German satellite company OHB Technology, quoted in the diplomatic note.
“France is the Empire of Evil in terms of technology theft, and Germany knows it,” a Norwegian translation of Smutny’s comment in the cable read.
OHB Technology became known to the general public in January 2010 when it obtained a contract for the construction of several satellites for the Galileo satellite navigation system, a much-delayed European challenger to the American-developed Global Positioning System (GPS).
The small German firm won the bid for the contract over Astrium, a subsidiary of pan-European giant EADS.
A leaked US cable posted yesterday by Aftenposten described Franco-German competition in terms of spy satellite development.
The cable said Germany was developing, with the help of the US, its own High Resolution Optical Satellite System (HiROS), despite the objections of France, which is leading pan-European efforts in the field with its Helios satellites.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
France: Interview: Le Pen Daughter Eyes Party Helm
The future face of far-right politics in France may soon be a blond, twice-divorced mother with a penchant for chic suits — and who wants to soften her party’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim image. She also bears the French far right’s best-known brand name. Marine Le Pen, the 42-year-old daughter of France’s best-known far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is seen as the favorite to succeed her father as leader of the National Front at a party convention on Sunday. After five presidential runs, and now aged 82, Jean-Marie Le Pen is calling it quits from presidential races, even if he plans an emeritus role as “honorary” president at the party he founded nearly four decades ago.
Marine Le Pen has his backing in the weekend vote against Bruno Gollnisch, a longtime party No. 2, whom her father once called “nearly” a son. That was before his daughter’s rise to prominence. In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Marine Le Pen said she was “born” in politics, but traced her ascent to her father’s biggest moment, when he qualified for the runoff of the 2002 presidential race.
French TV put her on air to comment on the startling success of her father, a nationalist who has been convicted of minimizing the Holocaust and inciting racial hatred by saying France might be overrun by Muslims. “I was noticed a bit by the media,” she said. “Some said: ‘Here’s a woman, who is young, who contrasts with the caricatured image that some people might have of the National Front — a macho party, a rather tough party, with members who didn’t necessarily come out of the younger generations.’“
“Progressively, I gained importance within the National Front,” said Madame Le Pen while speaking in her office at party headquarters in Nanterre, west of Paris, which is decorated with pictures of her three children and a photo print of a wind-swept shore in Brittany where her father is from…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
‘Grow a Beard for Belgium’ Appeal by Actor Poelvoorde
One of Belgium’s best-known actors, Benoit Poelvoorde, has urged his fellow citizens not to shave again until the country finally forms a government.
Poelvoorde, star of black comedy Man Bites Dog and costume drama Coco Before Chanel, made his appeal on Belgian TV.
A caretaker government has been running Belgium since June, setting a post-war record for a period without government.
Parties from the Dutch-speaking north and French-speaking south remain split.
“Don’t be surprised by the stubble,” said Poelvoorde.
“We have decided to stop shaving for as long as Belgium has no government. Let’s keep our beards until Belgium rises again.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Franco’s Image Sought by Souvenir Hunters
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 11 — His statues having been toppled from their pedestals and banned by law from public squares, thirty-five years after his death, Francisco Franco has turned into an icon for souvenir hunters: his ‘mug’ is to be found on mugs, ashtrays, sandals and anything else you care to mention — along with the image of the founder of the Phalange movement, Jose’ Antonio Primo de Ribera. According to a survey recently conducted by El Pais, 20-euro-a-ticket Christmas lottery, which included among its prizes a diptych of Franco, Primo de Rivera and his wife Pilar, was a complete sell-out, as was one whose tickets bore the Eagle of Alcazar of Toledo, the Franco-ist symbol of the imperial eagle.
Souvenirs bearing the face of the General are on sale in the centre of Madrid as in Seville, in the South of the Spanish peninsular, or they can be found in Burgos, in the country’s North. Despite the law on historic memory which orders that statues of Franco and symbols of his era be removed from the streets and public buildings, Spain’s legislators have not banned the exhibition of political symbols, although this may be considered as an aggravating circumstance in connection with other crimes.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Muslim Brotherhood Path to Victory: Part One (Of Two)
And the award for turning Islam into one of the fastest growing, most influential, and most intimidating religious movements in the world goes to… the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
The most recent victim of the global Islamic movement’s intimidation of free speech in Denmark is Lars Hedegaard, the President of the Danish Free Press Society and The International Free Press Society. Denmark has been targeted by the MB after the 2006 publication of ‘Mohammed cartoons’ by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Following Sheikh Ali Al-Hudaify, imam of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina call “upon governments, organizations and scholars in the Islamic world to extend support for campaigns protesting the sacrilegious attacks on the Prophet,” the MB orchestrated mass riots in Denmark and across the world.
Responding to an interviewer question on Muslim “honor killings,” Mr. Hedegaard remarked, “They rape their own children.” He now stands accused by Denmark’s public prosecutor of “racism.”
Although Mr. Hedegaard further explained that he was not speaking about every single Muslim or even the majority, the prosecution is proceeding. His trial begins later this month.
The politically correct sensitivity of the Danish public prosecutor that led to Mr. Hedegaard’s prosecution and persecution seems to follow the cowardly public apology issued by the Danish daily Politiken on February 2010, for reprinting the cartoons in 2008. The newspaper’s mea culpa was obtained as part of the settlement with a Saudi lawyer representing 94,923 of Muhammad’s descendants, who sued the paper for offending them.
Hedegaard’s legal troubles and Politiken’s cave-in are the casualties of the global propaganda offensive launched after 9/11, portraying the Muslims as victims of discrimination by Western societies. Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, this offensive drastically intensified after the publications of the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and Sweden.
Ironically, while Europe is obstinately ignoring or kowtowing the growing power of radical Islam and the MB, State Department communications revealed by Wikileaks in November and December 2010 show that Arab leaders in the Middle East have voiced increasing alarm at the spread of the MB’s radical Islamic worldview is spreading.
A March 3, 2008 cable quoted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali predicting an MB takeover in Egypt, where, he noted, the environment was “explosive.” This view was confirmed in a February 23, 2010 cable quoting the Qatari Emir, Hamid bin Khalifa al Thani, telling U.S. Senator John Kerry, “Everyone knows that Egypt has a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another cable revealed an allegedly reluctant association between MB offshoot Hamas and Syrian President Bashar Assad. Calling the terrorist group an “uninvited guest,” Assad insisted that “to be effective and active,” he nonetheless had to “have a relationship with all parties. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood, but we have to deal with the reality of their presence.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim Worship Leader ‘Raped Boy at Mosque’
A Muslim worship leader allegedly raped a young boy on numerous occasions as he attended a mosque for religious lessons, a court heard today.
Mohammed Hanif Khan, 42, is alleged to have sexually assaulted the boy, who was 12 years old at the time, inside the mosque on Capper Street, Stoke on Trent, where he was employed as the Imam.
He is also charged with the attempted rape of and sexual activity with the boy’s cousin, who was 15 at the time, as he stayed over at his home one evening.
Khan, who appeared in front of Nottingham Crown Court today wearing a black suit, white shirt and red tie, spoke only to confirm his name and to enter not guilty pleas to all eight charges against him.
He is charged with three counts of rape, four counts of attempted rape and one count of sexual activity with a child, all of which are alleged to have taken place on various dates between July 1, 2009 and October 16, 2009.
Opening the case today, prosecutor Tariq Shakor Khan told the jury of six men and six women that part of Khan’s job as Imam of the mosque was to lead prayers and to give Islamic education lessons to boys who attended evening classes at the mosque.
He told the court that in police interviews in October 2009 the 12-year-old boy, who cannot be named, said he was singled out by Khan following the evening prayer on about half a dozen occasions, the first of which was in around August 2009.
“On each occasion it happened at the mosque, usually after the formal prayers in the main prayer hall ,” Mr Khan said.
“The defendant would request him to lay out his red prayer mat in a different part of the mosque. That is when the remaining prayer would be completed individually and not in congregation.
“He seems to suggest that usually the defendant would take him through the door marked ‘private’ and into the sitting room area, and into the room with cushions on the floor used by committee members.
“On occasions, then passing through another door in the big room, the classroom, going to the corner at the back.”
Mr Khan said the defendant chose different places within the mosque that were not covered by CCTV cameras, one of which was the area near the building’s bins…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim Prisoners ‘Refuse to Take Part in Rehabilitation Programmes’
Scores of the Britain’s 10,000 Muslim prisoners — who account for one in eight of all inmates — are refusing to take part in Offending Behaviour Programmes (OBPs ), claiming it is ‘forbidden’ or ‘Haraam’.
Haraam refers to anything that is prohibited by faith, and in Islamic culture criminals are barred from discussing their offences with others.
Previously, Muslim prisoners refused to take part in Sex Offender Treatment Programmes because it involved talking about offences against women, but now some are refusing to take part in all rehabilitation sessions where they have to ‘open up’ in front of other cons.
Among the courses some Muslims — who now make up 12 per cent of the prison population — are declining to take part in are the Cognitive Self Change Programme (CSCP), just one of 13 OBPs on offer from the prison service,
The CSCP, which treats 7,000 prisoners each year, targets ‘high risk violent offenders’ and offers individual and group sessions to prisoners.
The course claims to: “Equip prisoners with skills to help them control their violence and avoid reconviction.
“It is aimed at offenders with a history of violent behaviour and is suitable for those whose violence is reactive and/or instrumental.”
Other programmes on offer include Enhanced Thinking Skills, Cognitive Skills Booster Programme, Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage it and various motivational courses.
One Muslim prisoner, Abu Dira, a maximum security prisoner at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, said this week: “Muslims cannot speak about their past crimes in a group setting.
“It is an established concept within the Sharia that a Muslim must not speak about the Haraam — prohibited things — and certainly should not advertise past mistakes to their peers.”
He says that it is clear from the words of Islamic prophet Muhammad, called a Hadith, that it was wrong to talk about past crimes.
He said: “This is clearly supported by Hadith — If you keep your evil away from the people, Allah will record this as a charitable act from yourself for yourself, so corruption is not to be spread amongst Muslims.”
If a prisoner refuses to take part in an offending behaviour course they can have their privileges dropped from enhanced or standard to basic — meaning losing access to certain ‘luxuries’.
Privileges that can be cut off include access to the telephone, the number of prison visits allowed by friends and relatives, access to cash and in-cell TV.
A Prison Service spokesperson confirmed that a review of procedures was underway and that discussions were being held with Muslim prison chiefs.
He said: “A very small number of Muslim prisoners have raised concerns with the Muslim Adviser.
“The Muslim Adviser is looking at different Islamic standpoints so there can be further discussion.”
He said, however, that at the moment no Muslim prisoner would be exempt from a rehab course on the grounds of religion alone.
He added: “Each prison-based offending behaviour programme has clear selection criteria, based on risk and need, and rigorous assessment procedures which are used by programme staff when assessing the suitability of offenders referred to programmes.”
He said that no prisoner would be forced onto a programme, adding: “As well as being suitable for the programme offenders must be ready and willing to fully engage in it.”
If a prisoner refuses to go on a course, however, he is likely to have any privileges forfeited and he will serve his full sentence.
In 1991 there were just 1,959 Muslims in jail, and just eight years on, in 1999, the number had more than doubled, with 4,335 in prison.
That number now stands at around 10,000 — 12 per cent of the prison population of 84,000 — despite Muslims making up just three per cent of the general population in the UK
In 2008 the Prison Service’s Muslim Adviser Ahtsham Ali said it was a ‘legitimate Islamic position’ that criminals should not discuss their crimes with others.
| — Hat tip: 4symbols | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Pope Calls on Governments to Protect Christians
Vatican City, 10 Jan. (AKI) — Pope Benedict XVI on Monday called on governments to step up efforts to shield Christians from discrimination and violence.
In his annual Message for World Day of Peace to the diplomatic corp accredited to the Holy See, he said countries must guarantee “religious freedom as the fundamental path to peace.”
“Peace is built and preserved only when human beings can freely seek and serve God in their hearts, in their lives and in their relationships with others,” Benedict said in his address.
Citing recent violence in Iraq, Nigeria and Egypt he said governments must implement measures to protect those countries’ Christians.
The pontiff lashed out against a blasphemy law in Pakistan which can sentence to death anybody found guilty of insulting Islam, and spoke in favour of Catholics in China where there are pastors “who are experiencing a time of difficulty and trial.”
“In a number of countries…a constitutionally recognised right to religious freedom exists, yet the life of religious communities is in fact made difficult and at times even dangerous because the legal or social order is inspired by philosophical and political systems which call for strict control, if not a monopoly, of the state over society,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Woman Freezes to Death Inside Swedish Castle
A 65-year-old woman froze to death after somehow being locked inside the fortress walls of an historic Swedish castle where she had attended a special New Year’s Eve mass, police said Sunday.
The woman, who had been suffering from psychological problems and was living at a home for people with special needs, had been reported missing Friday afternoon, said Ulf Karlsson, a spokesman for police in the southeastern town of Kalmar.
There was no sign of her until Sunday morning, when “one and a half days later they opened the doors to the Kalmar castle’s inner courtyard, and a janitor found the woman there,” he told AFP.
The woman, who had spent two nights out in below freezing temperatures, “was showing slight signs of life when she was found, but her body temperature was much too low, and she died,” Karlsson added.
Following the discovery, police had spoken with staff who said they had seen the woman attend a special New Year’s Eve mass at the castle, which was first built in the 12th century but owes its Renaissance style to a 16th century makeover.
“They had seen her alive at 4.45pm and had asked her to leave before locking up, but somehow this woman stayed behind,” Karlsson said.
He said there had been a way for her to get out, passing through the restrooms to an unlocked door on the other side, “but I guess she didn’t find it.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Organ Trafficking; Turkish Dr Frankenstein Arrested
(ANSAmed) — PRISTINA, JANUARY 12 — A Turkish doctor, rechristened “the monster” or “Dr Frankenstein” by the Kosovar press and “the vampire” by the Serbian press, has been arrested as he is suspected of being involved in human organ trafficking in Kosovo. The news was reported today in Pristina by the European mission EULEX, confirming news released by the Turkish media.
“EULEX confirms that Dr. Yusuf Sonmez was arrested by the Turkish authorities yesterday in Istanbul,” said EULEX spokeswoman Kristiina Herodes, who added that the doctor denies any involvement. She added that it is not yet known if and when the Dr. Sonmex will be extradited to Pristina, where the private clinic Medicus is located, at the centre of events regarding the illegal transplanting of human organs, primarily kidneys.
The clinic was closed in 2008 after an investigation by the Kosovar police that hypothesised the illegal trafficking of organs. Reports of illegal organ transplants in the Medicus clinic are also contained in the report by Dick Marty, the Swiss rapporteur from the Council of Europe, who reported organ trafficking in Kosovo and Albania at the end of the 1990s using Serb prisoners, and in which the current Premier, Hashim Thaci, at the time leader of the Albanian pro-independence UCK, is alleged to have been personally involved.
It is suspected that poor people from depressed areas of eastern Europe and central Asia — primarily Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey — were promised compensation of up to 14,500 euros for each removal of their organs, money which they nonetheless never received. Their organs were transplanted into rich people from western countries who paid between 80,000 and 100,000 euros for this.
Spokeswoman Herodes said that the EULEX public prosecutor in charge of the case, Jonathan Ratel, described Sonmez (53 years old) as a “key surgeon” in the illegal transplants carried out at the Medicus clinic.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria-Tunisia: Addi, Silent EU Fearful of Fundamentalism
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JANUARY 10 — “The Europeans are frightened that an Ahmadinejad figure could come to power in Algeria or in Tunisia and face them with this kind of challenge just an hour by air away from Marseilles. Their fears are unfounded, but they serve as a source from which the regimes of these two countries can draw useful credit”. Such is the opinion expressed by sociologist Lahouari Addi in an interview appearing in Le Monde, whose leading article is highly critical of the silence which has reigned up to now from France and from the European Union on the street protest in the two Maghreb countries.
A lecturer at Lyon University, Lahouari Addi states that France especially “is in a ticklish position as the former colonial power as any stance it takes would meet with disapproval from one section of power or other”. The French government, he says, “knows that these are corrupt and inefficient regimes, but is worried that fundamentalists would stand to gain from their falling”. The sociologist sees both regimes as equally threatened, although he underlines the differences and similarities between Tunisia and Algeria. The major difference is the level of corruption: “in Tunisia, this is contained within the family of President Ben Ali, while in Algeria it is a cancer spreading throughout the country’s administration: few are the civil or military officials uninvolved”. In both countries “political life is artificial: in Tunisia it is the police that choose the ministers, parliamentarians and political representatives. In Algeria this role is performed by the army through its branches”. Addi points out how there is in Tunisia a middle class “that has not been impoverished by the regime and which is claiming a greater role in the conduct of political life” and how every political analyst sees all the conditions in place for the emergence of a democratic regime. In Algeria, “economic and social problems are more serious, the country has lost all of the know-how it inherited from colonial France and is chronically dependent on its income from hydrocarbons”.
In its leading article, which appeared in the morning before the condemnation of the violence was issued by France’s Foreign Ministry, Le Monde points an accusatory finger at “the silence from Paris on the tragedy in Tunisia”, stating that French governments have for years “been in denial under the pretext that Ben Ali’s regime was saving Tunisia from fundamentalism and thus tolerating everything”. The newspaper recalls how in 2008, President Sarkozy declared that “freedoms are spreading in Tunisia today,” and wonders whether France’s refusal to take a moral stand may have contributed to “the regime’s blindness to its own wrong-doings, and thus contributed to present events”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Minister, Youth’s Favourite Sport is Theft
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JANUARY 11 — Young people “are nihilistic and pessimistic” and “the only sport that interests them is theft, stealing.” So said the Interior Minister, Daho Ould Kablia, who made harsh comments about young people who have been leading the violent protests of recent days, have caused a stir in Algiera. This generation, he said in an interview with the Algerie-Plus website, “loves everything that it can obtain only through contraband, drug trafficking. They find no pleasure in music, sport, travelling. Their universe is the street, their neighbourhood.” The statements have been described by the local press as “the shocking truths of Kablia.” “Instead of using a conciliatory tone,” writes El Watan, “he has chosen provocation, a firm stand” demonstrating “the inability of a power to put Algeria back on the road of modernity and freedom.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Pledges to Support Tunisia, Algeria After Unrest
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 10 — Italy will keep supporting the governments of Tunisia and Algeria, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday after the two North African nations were hit by unrest.
The Tunisian government said 14 civilians were killed at the weekend in riots when security forces opened fire on protesters following a month of trouble over food prices and unemployment.
The European Union and the United States have expressed concern about Tunisia’s handling of the rioting. Two people have been killed and hundreds injured in apparently unrelated protests over the same issues in neighbouring Algeria in recent days.
“The Algerian and Tunisian governments form an important presence in the Mediterranean, above all when it comes to the war on terrorism,” Frattini said.
“We condemn violence anywhere, but we support governments that have had courage (in fighting terrorism) and have paid with the blood of their citizens,” Frattini said. “We’ll never forget this”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: A Different Kind of Muslim Country
In recent weeks, we have seen a spate of killings of Christians in Muslim countries. There is one country, however, that has managed to avoid the violence: Morocco. I spoke by phone with Morocco’s ambassador to the U.S., H.E. Aziz Mekouar. He talked about religious freedom, his own country’s battle against violent extremists and the state of relations with the U.S.
Unlike any other Muslim country, Morocco actually guarantees freedom of worship. The ambassador says, “In Morocco freedom of religion is totally guaranteed by the constitution. We think anything, anything, any religious violence is unacceptable.” He notes that there are “tens of thousands of Christians and a very important Jewish community in Morocco.”
Last year Morocco took some heat when a small group of Christian missionaries were asked to leave the country. Religious freedom is protected, but there is also a prohibition on proselytizing. It was violation of that law that precipitated the Christians’ departure. Since that incident there have been no further disputes and there has been no violence directed at either the Christian or Jewish communities. Meanwhile, Morocco faces violent extremists. Earlier this month, Morocco “arrested 27 people, including a member of Al-Qaeda’s branch in North Africa for planning terrorist attacks in the kingdom. The network was led by ‘a Moroccan national who is a member of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and who wanted to create a rear base in the country for terror attacks,’ an Interior Ministry statement said late Tuesday, cited by Moroccan news agency MAP.” Along with the terror plotters a stash of weapons was recovered including “33 Kalashnikovs, two rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), a mortar and 1998 Kalashnikov ammunition.”
It now seems there is ample evidence that the Polisario Front, a Soviet-style liberation group pressing for independence for the Western Sahara is in league with al-Qaeda…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: French Minister, Ben Ali Often Judged Wrongly
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JANUARY 11 — French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire weighed in today in defence of Tunisian President Ben Ali, who “is often judged wrongly, he has achieved a lot”.
“Before judging a foreign government, it is better to have a good understanding of the situation on the ground and know exactly why one decision was made over another,” he said in an interview with Canal+ about the bloody clashes between police and protesters in the North African country.
“It’s not up to me to judge the Tunisian regime. I am French, it is not my responsibility to judge a foreign government from the outside,” he added. “President Ben Ali is often judged wrongly, but he has achieved a lot. Certain things can be criticised, always paying close attention to human rights, but it is a country that has truly gone through some hard times.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
If One Extremist Gunman Can Do So Much Damage in America, How About Ten Million Such People in the Middle East?
By Barry Rubin
When one crazed or ideologically obsessed gunman starts shooting in Arizona, people condemn him and start bemoaning their society. How about a place with ten million people like that who are treated as heroes?
America this week is awash in a huge and passionate debate over whether angry political disagreements and harsh criticisms of certain views or groups inspired the attack on an American congresswoman (Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, by the way). I’m not going to enter into that argument right now but I want to point out the Middle Eastern ramifications of what’s going on here.
Every day for more than a half century, Arabs and Muslims have been inundated every day with hatred for Israel, America, the West, Jews, and often Christians. You can read transcripts of Syrian broadcasts or Palestinian speeches from 50 years ago that sound just like what was said in the same places yesterday by powerful and/or respectable figures and institutions.
Let’s say that the proportion of lies, slanders, and incitement in the American discourse is one-tenth of one percent of all the words spoken on controversial issues. The equivalent figure for the Middle East is well over 95 percent.
In addition to that tone, there is also virtually not only a lack of balance but an absence of the other side altogether.
And in addition to those two points, the level of factual accuracy has a huge gap (though, admittedly, that gap has been narrowing in recent years as Western standards decline).
And in addition to those three points, where extremists tend to be marginal in the United States, they are in control—either politically or at least rhetorically—throughout most of the Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority worlds.
Thus, the level of incitement, imbalance, lies, and the hegemony of hatred in that part of the world towers above that in the West like the World Trade Center towers over an anthill.
Oh, the World Trade Center doesn’t exist any more. Well, that has something to do with this situation, too, doesn’t it?
Or to put it another way, in the Middle East, the crackpot is more credible than the rational or factual.
I won’t take your time with lots of examples but one might start with the widespread belief that the U.S. government or Israel carried out the September 11 attacks coupled with the belief-held often by the same people-that it was a great thing to do. Or all the ridiculous conspiracy theories about Israel, as in the cases mentioned here.
Here’s one of many such items that come across my desk each day. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the PA, has articles, the most recent being December 31 and January 4, accusing Israel of planning to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque. In the newspaper’s words, Israel’s projects in Jerusalem “are part of [the efforts] causing the collapse of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in order to establish Solomon’s Temple upon its ruins.”
The al-Aqsa Institute for Religious Affairs, which the PA controls, accuses Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being behind this “Satanic plot.”
Or, this one: All mothers undoubtedly love their children but only in Iran there’s now a special day when mothers take their babies to a ceremony where they vow to make them martyrs in Jihad. (Funny, contrary to what is taught in Western schools they don’t define Jihad as inner spiritual striving.) And not many mothers in Western democratic states hold celebrations after their kids blow themselves up in an attempt to murder as many civilians as possible.
Now, let me ask some questions:…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Booze Ad Ban Knocks Turkey’s Efes Pilsen Off Court
Turkey’s leading basketball club will be forced to either change its name or shut down completely under a new bylaw on sponsorships by tobacco and alcohol brands that was published in the Official Gazette on Friday.
The team, Efes Pilsen, was established by a major brewery company and uses the name and logo of the company’s most popular brand of beer, something that has been banned under the newly effective law.
The Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Authority, or TAPDK, issued a bylaw in May that set new ground rules for commercial ads, sponsorship deals and promotion campaigns in the marketing of alcoholic spirits and drinks.
With the bylaw, which went into effect with its publication in the Official Gazette, the tobacco and alcohol watchdog banned the use of alcohol-related content in sports activities and sports-associated promotion campaigns, sponsorship agreements and commercials. This includes the use of names, logos, emblems or signs in sports clubs, organizations, services or any sports activities that could be associated with alcoholic drinks and spirits.
Efes Pilsen, which won 13 league titles and is the only Turkish side to claim a European trophy, with its Korac Cup victory in 1996, is the biggest sports club that will be affected by the change. It is the top basketball club in the country and the top sports team sponsored by an alcohol beverage brand.
Under the bylaw, the team must decide how to comply with the ban within a period of one year.
At the very least, the team will have to drop the word Pilsen, referring to the pilsner type of beer, from its name, Turkish sports broadcaster NTV Spor reported. According to daily Hürriyet’s website, completely shutting down the basketball team could also be in the cards.
During the preparation process for the bylaw in 2008, several media outlets reported that the team might simply drop Pilsen from its name, and continue as Efes Istanbul. Sports daily Fanatik then said Efes Pilsen might be completely shut down, and the company’s investment shifted to basketball clubs abroad, potentially including Serbia’s Partizan Belgrade or Russia’s CSKA Moscow.
The scope of the bylaw is not limited to sports, but also includes regulations on sales locations, wholesale and retail sales, commercial ads, inspections and sanctions of tobacco and alcohol products.
Under the regulations, the dispensing of tobacco and alcohol products from vending machines will no longer be permitted, nor would the use of such products as gifts or rewards for games and betting.
Furthermore, wholesale or retail sellers of such products will need to obtain a sales permit and possess a physical workplace location, meaning that selling the goods by mail or other type of order will only be possible from that address.
Apart from convenience shops, stores will not be permitted to advertise the products near ads that could attract the attention of children, such as those for candy or toys.
Presenting alcohol and tobacco products as an indispensable part of certain social occasions is also no longer permitted under the bylaw, which additionally limits beverage brands’ sponsorships of cultural events.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Green Crescent to Map Turkish Alcohol Consumption
A city-by-city map indicating levels of alcohol and tobacco consumption in Turkey will be prepared by the Turkish Green Crescent, the group said in an announcement reported by daily Radikal on Friday.
The goal of producing the map is not to identify the places where the most alcohol is consumed but to “encourage” the least-consuming ones, Muharrem Balci, the head of Green Crescent (Yesil Ay), told Radikal after his visit Wednesday to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.
Data from the Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Agency, or TAPDK, will be used to create the map, according to Balci, who said he received a positive response when he presented the project to the prime minister.
“People should cooperate in the struggle against addiction. The Green Crescent should be more active and energetic. We want to see the Green Crescent that we saw in our youth,” Balci quoted Erdogan as saying.
The Green Crescent leader said the group would use positive images of healthy non-drinkers in its campaigns rather than those of alcoholic people.
According to Balci, the organization will also fight to stop the advertisement of lotteries and will file a lawsuit against schools bearing the name of the National Lottery Institution. There are schools in Turkey with names such as “National Lottery High School.”
In 2007, the Green Crescent under then-head Necati Özfatura prepared a report on alcohol consumption based on media coverage of the issue. The report said socialists and social democrats were the biggest consumers of alcohol, while only 2 percent of conservative people and students at theology schools drink alcoholic beverages.
“The world of art, which is close to alcohol consuming, has become a tool to impose alcoholism on society. The majority of singers of Arabesque music drink alcohol before they take the stage,” read part of the 88-page report, which was sent to government members.
Arabesque is a kind of musical style featuring deeply emotional songs about hopeless love affairs, failures in life and similar topics.
The Green Crescent was founded in 1920 to fight against alcohol and drug consumption.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Hezbollah Forces Collapse of Lebanese Government
Hezbollah and its allies forced the collapse of the government on Wednesday, deepening a crisis over a United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of a former prime minister.
Eleven of the cabinet’s 30 ministers announced their resignations, a move that dissolves the government. They said they were prompted to act by the cabinet’s refusal to convene an emergency session to oppose the tribunal, which is expected to expected to indict members of Hezbollah.
Ten of the ministers announced their resignations just as Prime Minister Saad Hariri was meeting with President Obama in Washington. The opposition had hoped that all 11 ministers would resign together, to bring down the government at that time and embarrass Mr. Hariri to the maximum.
| [Return to headlines] |
Hezbollah and Allies Resign, Toppling Lebanon Government
BEIRUT (Reuters) — Ministers from Hezbollah and its Lebanese allies resigned on Wednesday, toppling the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri before expected indictments against the Shi’ite group over the killing of Hariri’s father.
Lebanese politicians had said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia and Syria failed to reach a deal to contain tensions over the U.N.-backed tribunal, which is expected to issue draft indictments soon over the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri.
The ministers resigned as Saad al-Hariri was meeting U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.
The militant Shi’ite Hezbollah has denied any role in the killing. Its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has attacked the tribunal as an “Israeli project” and urged Hariri to renounce it. The Sunni Muslim premier has resisted Hezbollah’s demand.
“Clearing the way for the formation of a new government … the ministers present their resignation, hoping that the president will quickly take the required steps for forming a new government,” said Gebran Bassil, a Christian government minister speaking for Hezbollah and its allies.
Stalemate over the tribunal has crippled Hariri’s 14-month-old “unity” government. The cabinet has met, briefly, just once in the last two months and the government could not secure parliamentary approval for the 2010 budget.
A U.S. official said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had talked to officials in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and France, seeking international backing for the tribunal.
“She’s already been talking to the Egyptians, the Saudis, the French and others about having an international consensus about supporting Lebanon and … the tribunal,” a senior U.S. government official told reporters on Clinton’s plane as it landed in the Gulf state of Qatar.
The official said Clinton planned to raise the Lebanon issue “urgently” with Gulf Arab leaders meeting there.
Tensions over the tribunal have exacerbated existing rifts between Hariri, who is supported by Western powers and Saudi Arabia, and Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria.
Analysts say the resignations could set the stage for protracted political turmoil in Lebanon, which has endured a series of crises since Rafik al-Hariri’s killing, including assassinations and sectarian street fighting in Beirut in 2008…
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Hillary Clinton’s Dangerous Bout of Moral Equivalency
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insulted her country while traveling in the Middle East this past week and participating in a televised feel-good town hall-style meeting at a college in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
This is nothing new for the Obama administration, which makes a habit of trying to make dysfunctional societies feel better by highlighting our faults and engaging in a game of moral equivalency. However, Clinton took this game to a whole new, disgraceful level.
Twisting the truth about the alleged Arizona murderer, Jared Loughner, Clinton characterized him as an “extremist” influenced by “the crazy voices that sometimes get on the TV.” There is no evidence for her to make such a connection. In fact, the evidence adduced so far shows that Loughner is simply a nutjob. The voices he hears are all in his head. Nevertheless, Clinton used the tragic shooting to tell her Abu Dhabi audience that we are on the same level as they are when it comes to the threat from extremists lurking in our respective societies.
Clinton got into this discussion when she was asked why Americans appear to blame the entire Arab world for 9/11. Instead of firmly dispelling the myth that Americans blame all Arabs or all Muslims for 9/11 and pointing out Americans’ legitimate concerns with the widespread fundamentalist strains of Islam that call for jihad and hatred against non-Muslims, our Secretary of State sought fit to say the following:
We have the same kind of problems…the extremists and their voices, the crazy voices that sometimes get on the TV, that’s not who we are, that’s not who you are, and what we have to do is get through that and make it clear that doesn’t represent either American or Arab ideas or opinions.
While Bill O’Reilly appropriately went after that dippy Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for mouthing off his unsubstantiated political theories on what led to the shooting, O’Reilly inexplicably gave Hillary Clinton a free pass for equating American “extremists” with Islamic “extremists.” As Secretary of State, Clinton is in a position to do far more damage to our country’s reputation with such canards than a local sheriff.
Islamic extremism is a global problem because it has become the driving force of Islamic ideology. Extremism, as we would define it, has become the norm throughout much of the Muslim world. Islamic law, teachings and history are loaded with continual incitement to hate and war against the infidels of any faith or belief other than Islam.
While the worst examples of Islamic extremism have appeared most prominently in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Iran, the more “moderate” countries in the Muslim world are far from immune. For example, the supreme court of the United Arab Emirates, the country where Hillary offered her views on comparable extremism in the Arab world and the United States, has issued a ruling affirming that it is a fundamental right of an Islamic male to administer beatings to his wife.
The only countries in the world with no female representatives in their governing bodies have been all Arab Gulf states. Apparently Representative Gabrielle Giffords or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton herself, would have no place in those countries’ governments.
Back in 2006, over 100 copies of the social studies text book ‘World Cultures,’ taught to the sixth grade children in an upscale American school in Abu Dhabi, were confiscated by the Ministry of Education, for allegedly presenting Islam and the Muslim countries including Gulf states in a negative light…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon Reels as Hezbollah Topples Government
Arab states, the US and Israel reacted with alarm to the collapse tonightof Lebanon’s western-backed government, which threatens to plunge the fragile country into further chaos and stoke simmering sectarian tensions.
The 18-month-old government fell after the Hezbollah-led opposition pulled its ministers from prime minister Saad Hariri’s administration. Hezbollah and its allies pulled out in reaction to Hariri’s refusal to convene the cabinet to discuss how to deal with the naming of suspects in the killing of his father.
However, it had been agitating for at least three months for a new administration, which would help it confront the imminent issuing of indictments by a UN-backed tribunal that are expected to implicate at least three members of Hezbollah in the 2005 bombing on the Beirut waterfront.
The announcement was timed to coincide with the start of a meeting at the White House between Hariri and the US president, Barack Obama. It also followed the apparent breakdown of an initiative by Saudi Arabia and Syria to strike a compromise between Hariri’s bloc and the Hezbollah-led opposition, which formed a tenuous unity government amid heightened sectarian tensions three years ago.
All 10 opposition ministers resigned, along with Adnan Sayyed Hussein, a minister aligned to Lebanon’s president. His resignation was crucial because it meant more than one-third of the cabinet had quit — a move that meets a constitutional threshold to cause the fall of the government.
The energy minister, Jebran Bassil, fronted an evening press conference of all 10 opposition MPs at which he said Hariri must choose between “Beirut or Washington, or Beirut and any other capital”.
Hariri tonightcut short his US visit and was planning to meet the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on his way home to Lebanon, where he will attempt to manage the crisis. He is expected to be named as caretaker prime minister while a new cabinet is formed.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the Hezbollah move was an attempt to “subvert justice” that would not work. The US fears that the opposition will attempt to gain control over any new cabinet and use it to cut Lebanon’s share of funding for the tribunal and to delegitimise its findings.
Both sides had traded regular barbs over loyalty, with Hariri’s bloc claiming that the opposition takes its instructions from Iran and Syria.
The foreign secretary, William Hague, called on all sides to resolve the impasse, saying: “Justice needs to be done and there must be an end to impunity for political assassinations in Lebanon.”
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had been threatening to disrupt the government ever since he claimed to have received advice from the UN-backed special tribunal for Lebanon that several of his members were likely to be indicted for the assassination…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Stakelbeck on Terror Show: Muslims Persecuting Non-Muslims
On the of the Stakelbeck on Terror Show (click the link above to watch), we focus on Muslim persecution of Christians and Jews in the Middle East, and much more:
- An interview with leading Middle East expert Walid Phares about his new book, The Coming Revolution. (2:08 into the show).
- My report featuring exclusive, never-before-seen footage of Al Qaeda training in North Africa (9:57 in).
- An exclusive interview with David Rubin, former mayor of Shiloh in Israel’s Biblical heartland and author of the new book, The Islamic Tsunami. David discusses the Palestinian terrorist attack against he and his 3 year old son by Palestinian terrorists in gripping detail (13:55 in).
- A look at sharia law in Sudan as the country’s majority Christian South strives for independence (23:51 in).
- And in the Stak Attack, we examine the forced Jewish exodus from Muslim lands in the 20th century—a story that deserves much more attention (25:47).
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Faithful Return From Exile: Russia Woos Orthodox Sect to Repopulate Siberia
Not many people want to live in the isolated tracts of Siberia, where temperatures can fall to minus 40. But for the Old Believers, members of an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church who were persecuted by the Soviets, it’s paradise. Now Moscow is trying to lure the deeply devout ethnic Russians back out of exile in a bid to repopulate the region.
With his white beard and felt jacket, Fjodor Kilin looks like he has stepped straight out of an oil painting by an old Russian master. The 70-year-old stands in front of a plain icon of the Virgin Mary. His melodious voice fills the farmer’s cottage. He is speaking a soft Old Church Slavonic that few Russians know anymore, tinged with a Spanish accent.
A year ago, Fjodor and his wife Tatjana packed all their worldly belongings and their passports, which were issued in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, to journey to the land of their forefathers, a country they had never seen before. From the subtropical lands on the border with Argentina, they traveled to Siberia in Asia.
The Russian government helped them start a new life. In June 2007, Moscow set up a program designed to lure exiled ethnic Russians scattered around the globe back to their homeland, particularly to Siberia, which is becoming increasingly depopulated.
All manner of people are required in Siberia, even those like Fjodor and Tatjana. The two are Old Believers, members of an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church who were persecuted by the Soviets. The Russian government hopes to attract 300,000 returnees by 2012. However, only 20,000 have come home so far.
‘The Fewer the People, the Stronger the Faith’
The deeply devout parents of Fjodor and Tatjana fled the taiga and Communist Russia in the 1920s. They went to northern China, then Hong Kong, and finally to South America, gradually distancing themselves from modern life and the hustle and bustle of the city.
For Fjodor, therefore, the village of Dersu is both the start and the end of a global odyssey. The couple has 12 children, 59 grandchildren and 43 great-grandchildren. About two dozen members of Fjodor’s family left Uruguay with him. Some came to Dersu, which was down to 10 inhabitants before they arrived. Now the village’s population has more than doubled in size. Having reached the end of their journey, they can now celebrate their true Russian heritage, happy that they are even further from civilization, yet closer to God. “The fewer the people, the stronger the faith,” Fjodor says.
China lies just 150 km (90 miles) west of Dersu. Moscow, by contrast, is a five-hour drive, a seven-hour train ride and then an eight-hour flight away. The last remaining Siberian tigers wander through the pine forests. Snowflakes dance in front of the windows, the temperatures will soon plummet to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).
There’s a muffled knock at the door, and Alexander stomps inside. Alexander is a neighbor, or what passes as such in a region in which fewer than 20,000 people are spread across an area about the size of New Jersey. It has taken Alexander two hours to drive to Dersu. He crossed the first river in his Jeep. The second river he traversed on a rickety barge.
“I’m an atheist, but I’m fascinated by their pure faith,” Alexander says of Fjodor and Tatjana. “Perhaps exile has made them more Russian than those of us who stayed.” In Dersu, the girls have their hair plaited, while married women cover their head with a bonnet or a scarf. “Photography is a sin,” Fjodor says…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Biden Tells Pakistan: ‘We Are Not the Enemy of Islam’
US Vice President Joe Biden delivered a bold message of support for key anti-terror ally Pakistan during a trip to Islamabad Wednesday, telling the country that America is “not the enemy of Islam”. In a joint news conference with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Biden said their discussions had been “extremely useful” before he turned to address anti-American sentiment, fanned by the ongoing war in Afghanistan and a covert US drone campaign.
“There are… some sections in Pakistani society and elsewhere that suggest America disrespects Islam and its followers,” Biden told reporters at the prime minister’s residence.
“We are not the enemies of Islam and we embrace those who practise that great religion in all our country,” he added. As Biden wrapped up his visit, a suicide blast in the northwest town of Bannu killed 18 people, most of them security officers, and wounded 15 in an attack claimed by the Taliban as revenge for US missile strikes in the area.
Biden said militancy in Pakistan was a threat to both countries, and he referred to the killing last week of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who was shot dead by his bodyguard over his outspoken opposition to strict blasphemy laws.
The confessed killer has been hailed a hero by religious conservatives and rallies have been held across the country in his honour. “Societies that applaud such actions end up being consumed by those actions,” Biden said.
Biden delivered his message before leaving for a key meeting with army chief General Ashfaq Kayani…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Iranian ‘Smugglers’ Nabbed Carrying 1kg of Crystal Meth
Jakarta, 10 Jan. (AKI/Jakarta Post) — Officials at Jakarta’s main airport have arrested two alleged drug smugglers from Iran carrying over a kilogramme of crystal methamphetamine in their stomachs in 125 capsules.
“The methamphetamine was packed in capsules and had been swallowed,” the chief customs investigator at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Gatot Sugeng, said on Monday.
The suspects, named as Yaser, 29 and Ghader B, 34, had swallowed a total weight of a little more than 1 kilogram, worth approximately 166,000 dollars.
They men had carried the drugs from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Jakarta aboard a Malaysia Airlines flight.
The suspects were arrested at 6 pm local time on Friday, when they arrived at Terminal II of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. However, the haul was only made public on Monday to allow police to carry out an investigation.
The suspects said they had worked as farmers in Iran and would have been paid 2,000 dollars if they had managed to deliver the the drugs.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Daughter of Murdered Politician Warned About Blasphemy Campaign
Many Muslims celebrated last week’s murder of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, and marched in support of Mumtaz Qadri, the police officer who fired a volley of bullets into his back. However, Shehrbano Taseer, 21, has taken up her father’s cause and spoken out against misuse of the country’s blasphemy laws to target minorities.
Shadab Qadri, head of the Sunni Tehreek organisation, said that she should stop criticising the killer’s actions. “We read the statement of the slain governor’s daughter in a newspaper. She should refrain from issuing such statements and must remember her father’s fate,” he said.
His organisation has also offered legal support to Qadri and financial help to his family “as he performed a great duty in the name of Islam”. The killing shocked Pakistan’s small, liberal elite — but has found support among its conservative population who were told by imams that Mr Taseer wanted to open the floodgates to abuse of the Prophet Mohammed. On Wednesday, Ms Taseer spoke to the BBC Today programme to say she hoped the killer would be brought to justice. “My father’s stance has been misrepresented and has been misquoted because he simply said these laws are being misused and they target the poor, the dispossessed and the voiceless…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Suicide Bomb Kills 18 in North West Pakistan
The bomber’s car struck Miryan police station on the outskirts of the town of Bannu and badly damaged a nearby mosque. “We have received 18 dead bodies and 15 injured,” said Mohammad Rahim, a doctor in Bannu’s main hospital.
District police chief Mohammad Iftikhar told AFP that most of those hurt were police officers and paramilitary personnel. The attack was immediately claimed by Pakistani Taliban, who said it was to avenge US drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt, which borders Afghanistan.
“We claim responsibility for this attack. We will continue such attacks unless the drone attacks are stopped,” Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq, speaking from an undisclosed location, told AFP by telephone. The bomb followed a missile strike by an unmanned aircraft on a militant compound in the North Waziristan region at dawn on Wednesday, which killed five militants, security officials said. The United States does not officially confirm the controversial drone attacks, which take place with Islamabad’s tacit approval and which US officials say has severely weakened al-Qaeda’s leadership. In 2010 the campaign doubled missile attacks in the tribal area with around 100 drone strikes killing more than 650 people, according to an AFP tally.
The suicide attack came as US vice president Joe Biden was visiting Pakistan and delivered a bold message of support for its key anti-terror ally, telling the country that America is “not the enemy of Islam”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Terror Has a Religion
More worrying than the assassination last week of Salman Taseer, the outspoken governor of Pakistan’s Punjab, was the aftermath: the joy on the faces of those who showered rose petals on Taseer’s radicalised and ever-smiling bodyguard (no doubt convinced of rewards in the hereafter) and the zeal with which imams warned anyone from mourning the slain governor.
Though there has been enough evidence of growing radicalisation on the fringes of our society, it’s hard to imagine anything this extreme in modern, outwardly secular, democratic India. But the great cause for worry is a quietly accelerating religious conservatism and a spreading atmosphere of intolerance and hate. India tomorrow could be more threatened than Pakistan is today, for a mass radicalisation will consume not one religion but two.
To address these issues, it is important to stop the denial implicit in the slogan so beloved in India: Terror has no religion. Terrorism is almost always driven by religion. That’s evident in every terror investigation since before the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which, along with the Gujarat riots of 2002, set off a wave of urban, Islamist terrorism.
Here’s part of a motivational speech — submitted as evidence by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 1993 — by Dr Jalees Ansari, a Mumbai doctor sentenced to life for masterminding more than 30 bombings, most of them before the Babri turmoil of 1992: “We should pressure the government and the majority Hindu community by whatever means, even if it means destruction of life and property to any extent… we want to terrorise them and government, particularly the police.”
The latest confession comes from Jatin Chatterjee, or Swami Aseemanand, the botany post-graduate and Hindu evangelist who on December 18, 2010, revealed to a magistrate (as opposed to dubious confessions made to police forces renowned for torture) a nationwide web of terror around the Hindu cause. His confession supposedly joins the dots between five bombings (Malegaon, Maharashtra, 2006; Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad, 2007; shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, Ajmer, 2007; Samjhauta Express to Pakistan, 2007; and Malegaon, 2008) that claimed 119 lives and resulted in many young Muslims being arrested and charged with terrorism.
Of the 14 Hindu men arrested or absconding over the last two years, nine were members of the RSS, whose chief Mohan Bhagwat on Monday said the organisation has always asked members with “extremist views” to leave. Even so, the RSS and the BJP find it hard to accept that its members could ever cross over to the dark side. Instead of recognising the cancer within, they belligerently allege conspiracies. This is not too different from the denial practised in the past by the Sunni Ahl-e-hadees sect that spawned Dr Ansari and some other Muslim bombers.
Whether Islamist or Hindu, terrorists rise from denial, regarding themselves not as attackers but defenders of a faith they see as being under siege. They believe God is with them, that their cause is right and just and cannot fail…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
From the Bosphorus: Straight — Turkey’s Stake in Sudan’s Referendum
There are many reasons for the world to pay keen attention to the referendum begun yesterday in southern Sudan that could see the region secede, becoming Africa’s newest state. And no country, in our view, has more reason to watch this process and support a democratic outcome than Turkey.
After China, Turkey is among the largest investors in Sudan. It is probably the first, however, in the diversity of investments. They range from small trading houses to hotels to construction to oil pipeline construction and installation to solar power. No country has the political investment in Sudan that Turkey does. In recent years we have reported on delegation after delegation heading to Sudan, the country has been a key element in the Foreign Ministry’s outreach to Africa and Sudan leader Omar al-Bashir has been a repeated guest in Turkey — often controversially so.
We have often used this space critically when it comes to al-Bashir and our government’s red-carpet treatment of him. He remains an internationally indicted war criminal for his treatment of rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region, where hundreds of thousands have allegedly perished at the hands of government troops.
So today, fairness dictates that we note the maturity, sobriety and vision with which al-Bashir has approached this referendum, which involves a region that does not include disputed Darfur. He has repeatedly stated that he and his government will support whatever outcome emerges in the coming days and he has consistently urged peace and stability over a fight for resources that straddle the borderlands that may well define a new international frontier. Al-Bashir’s outlook is all the more remarkable as some 80 percent of Sudan’s identified oil reserves lie south of the prospective new border, and oil is the resource that has trebled the country’s wealth since al-Bashir came to power in 1989.
It would appear that the Sudanese leader has understood and embraced the arguments of many advocates of southern independence. They say, essentially, that oil in the ground is worthless, which is where it will stay if war and strife continues to divide Sudan’s many tribal groups, not to mention its northern Muslims and southern Christians. Better a political separation and an economic reintegration based on the logic that geography will dictate robust cooperation — in oil transport as well as ancillary industries.
Hundreds of international observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, are in southern Sudan today to monitor the fairness of voting. We will trust that Turkey’s leadership is monitoring this vote as well and joining in strong support for a peaceful outcome. In addition to its economic investment, Turkey’s political investment in Sudan and in al-Bashir is substantial. No one, other than the Sudanese themselves, has as critical a stake in the referendum outcome as Turkey.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Not All in Northern Sudan Embrace Islamic Law
Many southerners are voting for an independent Sudan this week, thirsting for freedom from the north. They equate sharia or Islamic law that President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to strengthen with slavery. Al-Bashir has declared that if Southern Sudan votes in favor of separation, sharia will become the main source of Sudan’s Constitution, Islam the state religion and Arabic the official language. Many in the north are embracing al-Bashir’s pledge. Newspaper publisher Al-Tayib Mustafa said he will be happy to see his nation break in two. Islam, he said, comes above all else. “When the south goes, then the north will be Muslim,” he said. “For a Muslim, unity is not as important as religion. Sharia is religion. Sharia is Islam.”
But there are other faces of Islam in Sudan, including a Sufi community, and Mustafa’s position is hardly shared by all Sudanese. Some in the north consider themselves Arabs, others Africans. They speak a dozen different languages, and while a majority of people are Muslims, a significant number are Christians or practice traditional religions. Sharia already is the law of the land in northern Sudan, but Sudanese authorities have relaxed its enforcement since 2005 when a peace treaty ended more than 20 years of civil war.
The war pitted a northern government of Arab Muslims against blacks in Southern Sudan who practice Christianity and animist religions. It killed 2 million people and displaced several million others, mainly from Southern Sudan.
The president’s comments have stirred fear that the government will implement sharia for the hundreds of thousands of southerners and other non-Muslims in northern Sudan, including many who fled fighting, disease and famine in the south…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan: A Nation Driven Apart by Muslim Bigotry
The likely partition of Sudan is a result of Islam’s increasing intolerance, writes Con Coughlin.
George Clooney, the Hollywood actor who spends increasing amounts of his spare time playing the role of a globe-trotting peace activist, has hardly been able to contain his excitement over this week’s controversial referendum on splitting Sudan in two.
“It is something to see people actually voting for their freedom,” the Ocean’s Eleven star gushed as he mingled with the long queues of tribesfolk patiently waiting to cast their votes. “That’s not something you see often in life.”
The 49-year-old was speaking as an estimated four million voters in southern Sudan, predominantly Christians, took part in a plebiscite that will decide whether the south is divided from the north to form a new nation.
When the polling stations close on Saturday, it is widely predicted that the pro-independence campaign will get the 60 per cent of the vote needed to sanction the division of Africa’s largest country — which is equivalent in size to Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Greece and the UK combined.
The referendum is being held as part of a peace deal agreed in 2005 between the government of President Omar al-Bashir and the leaders of southern Sudan’s rebel movement, after more than 20 years of bitter civil war, which claimed an estimated two million lives.
In 1983, a widespread revolt had erupted in the south over claims that Christians there routinely suffered at the hands of the country’s Muslim majority, which controls the government in Khartoum.
Mr Clooney and the other celebrity hangers-on that have descended this week on Juba, the fly-blown capital of the south, believe that, by declaring independence from Khartoum, the minority Christians can make a better life for themselves.
But the reality of secession is likely to be very different. Southern Sudan is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped regions on the planet, where the absence of basic provisions, such as health and education, means that a typical 15-year-old girl has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than of finishing school.
The south occupies an area the size of France, but has just 38 miles of paved roads. By breaking ties with the north, it risks making its economic plight even more perilous. The world’s 193rd state — suggested names include New Sudan, Equatoria and the Nile Republic — would almost certainly be the most impoverished.
If, as many diplomats are warning, secession will make life worse for the majority of people in southern Sudan, why are they so keen on separation?
The answer lies in the uncompromising approach the Arabised government in Khartoum has adopted towards non-Muslims. Since independence in 1956, the southerners have invariably been treated as serfs by their Muslim overlords, who often sought to starve them into submission when they complained.
And worryingly, the seemingly irreparable rift between Sudan’s Christian and Muslim communities is being replicated in many parts of the Arab world, where the growing intolerance of Islamist hard-liners has led to an alarming escalation in violence against Christians.
In Iraq, a stream of al-Qaeda attacks against Christians has seen a community that numbered around 1.5 million at the time of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003 reduced to 400,000.
This exodus has increased considerably since the appalling attack on the Church of our Salvation in Baghdad at the end of last year, which killed 58 worshippers. In a grotesque demonstration of their contempt for the Christian faith, the suicide bombers blew themselves up on the altar, along with a child hostage.
The bombing over the new year of a church in the port of Alexandria has had a similarly devastating impact on Egypt’s eight million Copts, who comprise 10 per cent of the country’s population. Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq have been blamed for the attack, which killed 21 worshippers.
Much of the blame for the deterioration in relations between the faiths lies with the growing legions of Islamist militants who seek to wage jihad against the West. But the origins of Islamic intolerance for other faiths, particularly Judaism and Christianity, can be traced back to the Prophet himself: on his death bed, he instructed followers that only one faith — Islam — could be allowed in Arabia. Christianity remains banned in Saudi Arabia, which claims to be a close ally of the West, and Christians are not allowed to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where the Prophet lived and preached. Last year, 12 Filipinos and a priest were arrested for “proselytism”, after they held a secret mass in Riyadh.
Muslims of a more moderate persuasion argue that Islam is a tolerant faith, and that their religion allows for co-existence with other faiths. There was a graphic illustration of the potential for better co-operation this week when a group of Egyptian Muslims formed a “human shield” to protect Coptic Christians as they celebrated their version of Christmas.
But increasingly, such acts of generosity are the exception. For many Christians, the ability to enjoy a peaceful co-existence with their Muslim neighbours is but a distant memory.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Deportations on the Rise in Finland
The number of deportations of non-Finnish residents is on the rise. Last year there were three times as many deportations from Finland than in the year before. A person’s criminal record is increasingly often the reason for being ousted from the country.
Officials began looking into the grounds for deportation after the shocking events at Espoo’s Sello shopping centre on New Year’s Eve 2009, when an immigrant with a criminal record shot dead six people, including himself.
Last year some 200 deportation orders were made in Finland, leading to just over 60 people being deported. Even more are expected this year.
Also last year, around 700 people without residence permits were turned away from Finland — often because of criminal backgrounds. Officials say that thefts are the most common types of crime that will cause people to be turned away.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
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