Arab Countries Have Highest Unemployment Rate in World
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, JANUARY 26 — The Middle East is the region with the highest rate of unemployment in the world, confirmed the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which reports that unemployment in the region is 10.3% compared to 6.2% on average globally. The situation presented in “Global Employment Trends 2011” is even more dramatic when looking at the young segment of the population up to the age of 25, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 40%. The data published by the UN agency raised a further alarm for a region that has already been observing popular insurrection and protests with cries for “more bread, more work” in recent weeks.
A situation that is undermining and disrupting decades of immobile balances of power. “It is quite clear that an unequal distribution of wealth and the absence of opportunities are an explosive combination for social disorders,” commented the co-author of the report, Duncan Campbell, who did not indicate a positive immediate future for the MENA region. Economic growth in the entire area is forecast to be between 4.5% and 5.1% between 2010 and 2012, but it does not seem destined to translate into actual jobs. While the IMF already predicted a “strong recovery for the job markets in Europe and the United States,” the Middle East still has to work on structural factors capable of changing their dynamics. The priority, both for oil-producing countries and those that do not have energy reserves, is to absorb an already high number of young people ready to enter onto the job market, a figure that continues to grow on a yearly basis. An urgent situation that even Queen Rania of Jordan had stressed in 2008, labelling it “a ticking time bomb”. However, the challenge lies in the ability of the governments to create industrial and economic sectors that allow for this absorption and to devise an educational system capable of training new generations in line with market requests, explained Campell. An old problem in the economic-social debates in the region, which also includes the rich economies in the Gulf Region, is that they are not diversified enough and that they are too dependent on hydrocarbons and have schools that offer inadequate programmes when compared to the new needs in the labour market. In Saudi Arabia, the youth unemployment rate in 2009 was over 30%. Other areas that need to be assisted with large investments, according to ILO analysts, include SMEs and the private sector. In the initial days of the riots in Tunisia, during the summit at Sharm al Sheikh, the Arab countries earmarked 2 billion dollars to put an end to the problems of tens of millions of people, a figure and policy that analysts call insufficient and inadequate to favour the necessary growth and economic reforms.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Buy Euros — The Single Currency is Finished
Rather than work hard, live within his means and save for the future, a dissolute student decided to invent a system for beating the bank at roulette. After months of experimentation with betting patterns, his quest bore fruit: a foolproof way of creating riches — or so he thought. The problem was, in order to exploit his genius a bankroll was required. At this point, a credulous father was inveigled into the scheme. Suspending disbelief, the hapless parent signed a six-figure cheque and wished his son good fortune as the boy left for Las Vegas. After a few days with no contact, Dad started to fret and sent the lad a tentative message: “How are we doing?” No reply. A week later, he tried again, only this time was rather more panicky: “What’s happening?” Still no reply.
Finally, the desperate man sent an ultimatum: “Get in touch — or else!” His delusional offspring eventually replied: “Delighted to inform you system is working. Please send more money.” This, now, is the position of the Club Med countries within the eurozone. The single currency is functioning so brilliantly, its vulnerable members are sliding towards bankruptcy. Frittering away their credibility in remorseless bond markets, they turn to Das Scheckbuch in Berlin for hard cash.
On current form, Greece will be paying nearly 10 per cent of its GDP in interest by 2015. Portugal’s 10-year borrowing costs are close to an unsustainable 7 per cent and would be even higher were it not for market manipulation by the European Central Bank. And Spain is sitting on 700,000 unsold homes, 20 per cent unemployment and a 33 per cent deterioration in competitiveness against Germany since the euro was formed.
Yes, the system is working a treat. No luck required, just more money. But from where will it come? The bail-out fund of 750 billion euros, cobbled together by the European Union and IMF, will not be enough. It may buy time, allowing Athens, Lisbon and Madrid to play the wheel for longer than they should, but their financial attrition grinds on. Of the six eurozone countries that still have triple-A credit ratings — Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — only one really matters: Germany. As the EU’s economic powerhouse (GDP growth was 3.6 per cent in 2010), it has become the lender of last resort. So far, Berlin has paid up, but 62 per cent of Germans now oppose further rescue packages for EU losers. Faced with choosing between Europe’s olive belt and her own electorate, Chancellor Angela Merkel will turn off the aid tap.
So what can be done? Some are calling for the issuance of an all-embracing euro bond, enabling the weaklings to access credit on terms similar to those enjoyed by more muscular neighbours. Last week, I asked Finland’s prime minister, Mari Kiviniemi, if this was a good idea. She responded in the way that an exasperated teacher might scold a classroom dunce: “No, it is a very bad idea”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
CBO: U.S. Budget Deficit to Hit $1.5 Trillion
A continuing weak economy and last month’s bipartisan tax cut legislation will drive the government’s deficit to a record $1.5 trillion this year, a new government estimates predicts.
The eye-popping numbers mean the government will continue to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends.
The new Congressional Budget Office estimates will add fuel to a raging debate over cutting spending and looming legislation that’s required to allow the government to borrow more money as the national debt nears the $14.3 trillion cap set by law. Republicans controlling the House say there’s no way they’ll raise the limit without significant cuts in spending, starting with a government funding bill that will advance next month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Croatia: Construction in Decline 20 Months in a Row
(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, JANUARY 24 — The construction industry is one of the sectors that has been hit hardest by the economic crisis in Croatia, and according to statistics announced today, November 2010 marks 20 consecutive months in decline for the industry. Compared to November 2009 the volume of work in the construction industry dropped by 12.1% on an annual basis. The sharp and extended decline is due to a decrease in investments from the public sector, with the government’s slowdown or abandonment on several large-scale public works, as well as a decline in the last two years in the number of homes sold. According to some estimates, in Zagreb alone there are about 7000 new apartments that have been on the market for months, for which there are no buyers. However, this has not created a sharp decrease in prices, with costs down only between 4% and 7% compared to pre-crisis figures.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Davos WEF 2011: OECD Secretary-General Insists UK Should Press on With Deficit Cuts
Angel Gurria, OECD Secretary-General insisted that the UK government should press ahead with deficit cuts.
“They should stay the course. The package was an ambitious, far-reaching package. It cleared the markets in terms of its credibility. It’s what was necessary. The fiscal situation in the UK absolutely requires this approach,” he said in an interview with the BBC at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.
“Of course there are short-term implications but without it there will be no medium- and long-term growth,” he said. The OECD expected Britain to have positive, albeit modest, growth in 2011 and “perhaps somewhat more robust growth in 2012,” he added. Mr Gurria also argued that inflation in Britain was under control. “What we see at the OECD is that they are a result of the weakness of the pound, that they are a result of the spike of the prices of both food and energy, and that the underlying inflation in the UK is around the 2 percent level and therefore under control,” he said…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Davos WEF 2011: George Soros Says UK Risks Slipping Back Into Recession
The hedge fund manager, most famous in the UK for “breaking the Bank of England” by betting against the then-Tory government remaining in Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, said Britain’s austerity measures risked killing off economic growth.
“I don’t think they can be implemented without pushing the economy into a recession,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “My expectation is that it will prove to be unsustainable.” Mr Soros’s warning comes just one day after shock data from the Office for National Statistics showed the economy contracted by 0.5pc in the final three months of last year, raising fears of a double dip recession.
Concerns about UK growth were also voiced by Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University also know as Dr Doom. In an earlier session, he said: “Tail risks of outright double dip and outright deflation are lower than last year even if the data in the UK and peripheral eurozone economies seem to suggest that there are risks.” Mr Soros’s comments are the first really serious challenge George Osborne has had to his economic policy. The International Monetary Fund and credit ratings agencies have thrown their weight behind the austerity budget as the UK attempts to grapple with its vast public debts.
However, there have been rising concerns that the Government does not have a growth strategy. The delayed White Paper on growth, which was due last year, has fuelled those fears.
John Evans, general secretary at the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), told delegates at Davos: “What I don’t see happening and what you need is a medium term strategy to get people into jobs. I see the UK’s austerity as a vicious circle, not a virtuous circle.” Mr Soros indicated he had some sympathy with Mr Osborne’s plans. “They may have been right in embarking on it,” he said. “The initial reaction has been very positive.” Bond markets have reacted favourable since the June Budget, despite the UK holding the worst deficit in the OECD. He added that he did not know enough about the UK economy to prescribe a solution, but in discussing the US’s similar debt concerns said more fiscal stimulus was needed. However, he clarified that stimulus measures which target consumption, as Ed Balls has called for, are not effective…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Skilled Worker Shortage
Berlin Aims to Attract Unemployed Europeans
With Germany facing a lack of skilled workers, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is looking into ways to attract the unemployed from Southern and Eastern Europe. The plan would stop short of recruiting workers from too far afield.
With the German economy recovering rapidly from the recent crisis, employers have once again begun voicing concerns about finding enough qualified workers to fill their needs. Indeed, Klaus Zimmermann, head of the German Institute for Economic Research, recently forecasted that Germans may soon face a 45-hour work week if the situation doesn’t improve.
Ulrich Blum, president of the Halle Institute for Economic Research, agreed. He said that the only way to address the problem would be to increase immigration to Germany.
That, it would seem, is exactly what Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives are now looking to do. Specifically, her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), are looking into ways to entice young people to move to Germany from debt-burdened European Union countries like Portugal and Spain. Both countries are experiencing high unemployment, with Spain’s jobless rate currently over 20 percent.
Plugging the Gap
With full freedom of movement rights set to kick in for those Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in 2004, workers from countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and others could likewise help plug the gap.
“There are many unemployed young people in Southern and Eastern Europe who are desperately looking for jobs,” Michael Fuchs, deputy floor leader for the CDU/CSU in the federal parliament, the Bundestag, told SPIEGEL.
“It is better to draw on labor resources from within Europe than to change immigration laws again for migrants from other parts of the world” added Max Straubinger of the CSU.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has welcomed the proposal. Indeed, she plans to address the issue with her Spanish counterpart, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The new effort to attract highly qualified workers from Southern and Eastern Europe comes on the heels of a 10-point plan announced last week by Germany’s Federal Employment Agency aimed at alleviating the skilled labor shortage. The plan is primarily focused on integrating more women into the German workforce, with estimates suggesting that such measures could fill up to 3 million jobs alone by 2025.
Fear of ‘Foreign Cultures’
But Raimund Becker, a member of the board at the Federal Employment Agency, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week that bringing in workers from abroad is a necessary component of any long-term solution. “The problem cannot be solved without immigration,” he told the paper. He estimated that some 800,000 skilled workers could be attracted to work in Germany.
Limiting efforts to attracting workers from within Europe would appear to be a concession to the CSU. Late last year, CSU head Horst Seehofer demanded a halt to immigration to Germany from “foreign cultures.”
“It’s clear that immigrants from other cultures such as Turkey and Arabic countries have more difficulties,” Seehofer told the German newsmagazine Focus last October. “From that I draw the conclusion that we don’t need additional immigration from other cultures.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Middle Class Shrinking
Germany’s middle class has been steadily shrinking since the late 1990s, a leading economics think tank has found.
The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) has calculated that, despite falling unemployment, the proportion of individuals and families living on roughly average incomes has dropped, weekly Die Zeit reported in advance of its Thursday edition.
The share of middle income earners as a proportion of the population fell from 59.2 percent to 58.7 percent over the course of 2008 — the last year for which reliable figures are available. Ten years earlier, the figure had stood at 64 percent.
“The trend is clear,” said DIW researcher Markus Grabka. “Since 1999, the middle class has shrunk continuously.”
The DIW defines “middle class” as people who have at their disposal between 70 percent and 150 percent of the average after-tax income. For a single person, that means between €1070 and €2350 per month.
Grabka’s calculations contradict recent research by the Roman Herzog Institute, a Munich think tank named after the former German president and committed to economic reform. The RHI has declared the shrinking middle class to be a “myth.”
Grabka argued his calculations were more comprehensive: he studied annual income rather than monthly income and therefore incorporated investment income as well as periods of temporary unemployment.
His findings correspond to figures released Tuesday by the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) which revealed that the proportion of Germans at risk of poverty had risen from 12 percent in 2004 to 15.5 percent in 2008. Still, Germany’s poverty risk rate is lower than the European Union average, which is 16.3 percent.
The EU defines a person as being at risk of poverty if they are forced to live on less than 60 percent of the average income, including state transfers such as welfare payments. In Germany, this amounted in 2008 to €11,151 per year for a single person. Some 62 percent of unemployed people and 37.5 percent of singles are regarded as at risk of poverty, along with 14.9 percent of pensioners.
The highest risk of poverty in the EU is in the Baltic state of Latvia with 25.7 percent. Its neighbours also have high rates — Lithuania with 20.6 percent and Estonia with 19.7 percent. Romania has a rate of 22.4 percent and Bulgaria 21.8 percent. Countries hit by the eurozone crisis are also at high risk, with Greece on 19.7 percent and Spain — which some experts predict may also need a bailout — on 19.5 percent.
The lowest rate is in the Czech Republic, where just 8.6 percent of the population is at risk of poverty.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Employers See Economy Lagging Global Recovery
Rome, 26 Jan. (AKI) — The global economy’s recovery from recession is outpacing that of Italy, which is struggling to grow more that 1 percent annually, Italy’s powerful private employers’ association Confindustria warned on Wednesday.
“With its strong performance at the end of 2010 and the progress signalled by early economic indicators for 2011, the global economy is bouncing back. It will stabilise this year and uncertainly will diminish,” said Rome-based Confindustria in a monthly report.
The report cited a 0.3 percent drop in industrial production in the fourth quarter of 2010 and unchanged industrial output in December after a bigger-than-expected 1.1 percent hike in November.
“Italy’s gross domestic product is struggling to grow by more than 1 percent annually,” the report said.
On a more positive note, Italian exports should be stronger in the second half of 2011 as Eastern European and Middle Eastern economies pick up steam, Confindustria said.
But it warned: “Record commodity prices, which are predicted to rise even further, will crimp companies’ profit margins and household spending power, dampening demand.”
And petrol costs of 100 dollars a barrel will trim 0.3 percent off Italy’s GDP, Confindustria said.
“High unemployment will keep down the cost of labour,” it stated.
The stumbling Italian economy contrasts with the most dynamic advanced economies such as the United States and Germany, where the investment cycle will re-start thanks to a more stable economic outlook this year, according to Confindustria.
National economies will expand at widely varying rates, and global growth will be driven by emerging countries especially Asia’s. Germany and the US will post strong growth, but it will be weak in many eurozone countries, Confindustria said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Minister Wants to Split Banking Supervision From Monetary Policy
THE HAGUE, 26/01/11 — Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager does not want both banking supervision and monetary policy to be in the hands of the Dutch central bank’s (DNB) president any longer.
The present DNB president, Nout Wellink, is stepping down in July. De Jager then wants a separate chairman at DNB to maintain supervision of the financial sector.
The proposal will be discussed in cabinet on Friday, De Telegraaf newspaper reported yesterday. Other sources say the proposal will only be considered a week later.
At the moment, the president of DNB is ultimately responsible both for supervision and monetary policy. Wellink attracted much criticism on the supervision of the takeover of ABN Amro and the collapse of Icesave and DSB banks.
The change in structure is intended to prevent the position of the bank president in the area of monetary policy and the euro to be undermined by problems relating to supervision.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Number of Young Swedes in ‘Early Retirement’ Soars
Since the centre-right Alliance coalition first took power in Sweden more than four years ago, the number of young people receiving disability pension payments has increased by nearly 50 percent, which the social security minister called a “political catastrophe.”
Young people who end up taking the benefits include those who attend special schools for the mentally disabled or require several extra years to complete upper secondary school and receive special compensation instead of student loans, newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) reported on Wednesday.
Social Security Minister Ulf Kristersson pointed out that a number of these individuals leave the labour market with relatively unclear psychiatric diagnoses instead of receiving help from employers.
He added that the solution to their mental illness cannot be that they will never work, calling it “inhumane,” according to the report.
Even at the end of 2006, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt lamented the large number of young people who were ‘retiring’ from the workforce and instead receiving sick or disability benefits.
“It is clear that it is not good. It must be very odd for those who are 25 years old and are told that ‘as we see it, you have clearly worked,’“ he told news agency TT at the time.
That year, 4,500 young people under 30 years old took what were then termed “early retirement” benefits (förtidspension).
By last year, the number had risen to 6,700, according to preliminary statistics from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan).
The ruling Alliance coalition is now expressing its dismay at the high number in even stronger terms.
“We cannot continue to put young people on disability benefits who will never come off of them, it is unfair. It is a political catastrophe,” Kristersson told SvD on Tuesday.
He emphasised that it is not about “forcing someone into the labour market.”
“This will be done carefully,” he promised.
However, the minister’s goal remained clear.
“I want to bring down the number of new young people taking on disability pensions by a couple thousand a year. It will be one of my biggest political challenges,” Kristersson told SvD.
Kristersson has pledged to reduce the number of young people receiving the benefits by one-third this year, according to SvD.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: 2.25-Bln Bond Auction Good, Yields Down
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 25 — Spain has placed 3-month and 6-month state bonds for a total of some 2.25 billion euros, successfully securing lower yields. For the 3-month tranche of 944.8 million, the rate fell below 1% to 0.98%, from the 1.804% of the previous auction in December. Demand was more than double compared to the same placing of last month, exceeding the offer 5.48 times against 2.14 times in December’s auction.
For the six-month tranche of 1.3 billion, the yield fell to 1.801% from its previous 2.597%. Demand was slight weaker, exceeding the offer by 5.11 times (5.15 times previously).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: State Deficit to 5%, Lower Than Expected
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 25 — The Spanish administration has closed the 2010 financial year with a deficit of 53.444 billion, 5.07% of GDP and lower than the expected 5.9%. The news was announced today in a press conference by Vice Premier and Economy Minister Elena Salgado.
According to Salgado, the better-than-expected result was caused by a 7.7% increase in revenues, almost twice as much as expected from the VAT rise. The result will make it possible to compensate for the potential problems of other administrations, and to reach the target of a reduction of the deficit to 9.2% for all public administrations in 2010 “with ease”. The final figure regarding the regional administrations will be announced next week. The Vice Premier pointed out that so far only Catalonia has announced that its “deficit will be worse than expected”. The target for the Regions is to lower their deficit to 2.4%. The Regions that fail to reach this goal, Salgado reminded, have to present a rebalancing plan, which will be screened by the Economy Ministry.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Ikea Founder Admits to Secret Foundation
Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, considered one of the wealthiest people in the world, controls the company through a secret foundation worth 100 billion kronor ($15.34 billion), according to a Sveriges Television (SVT) report.
Despite the revelation, the company and Kamprad’s image will probably not be affected, according to media advisors.
Kamprad controls the enterprise through a holding company called Inter Ikea by way of a secret foundation in Liechtenstein. The foundation is currently worth about 100 billion kronor, according to the latest episode of SVT’s Uppdrag granskning investigative news programme, set to air on Wednesday evening.
Ikea is controlled through a complex network of different types of companies and foundations.
According to Uppdrag granskning, Kamprad, who has lived in Switzerland for over 30 years, created the foundation Interogo in Liechtenstein in the spring of 1989. The foundation is managed by the law firm Marxer & Partner.
In an email from Ikea sent to the TT news agency, Kamprad admits that the Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein exists and that it owns Inter Ikea Holding SA, which in turn owns Inter Ikea.
“Interogo Foundation is a company foundation whose only goal is to invest in the expansion of the company business and secure its long-term survival. In other words, the assets of the Interogo Foundation are held as financial security and are only used if Inter Ikea has financial difficulties,” wrote Kamprad.
“The assets can also be used to support individual Ikea dealers who have financial difficulties or for philanthropic purposes. Interogo Foundation is controlled by my family and is administered by a board of directors consisting only of outside representatives.” he added.
Liechtenstein’s rules and regulations are extremely closed. And the bylaws of the foundation clearly state that documents about the foundation cannot be shown to outsiders or foreign authorities.
Proceeds can be paid out through grants to individuals or organisations that work in architecture, as well as interior design and consumer products. Interogo currently has 100 billion kronor in equity, acting as a hidden fortune for Kamprad.
The regulations also clearly stipulate that the Kamprad family has total control over the executive board of Inter Ikea, which is registered in the Netherlands.
For many years, Kamprad has said that his influence over the company is limited and that a Dutch charitable foundation, Stichting INGKA Foundation, directed it.
However, it is Inter Ikea, which the Kamprad family controls through Interogo, that owns the rights to the Ikea brand, its concepts and all of the products sold in its stores around the world.
A large part of Inter Ikea’s proceeds comes from the 3 percent in royalties on all sales that every Ikea store must pay to the parent company for the right to use the concept. These payments are tax-free and are amount to several billion kronor per year.
Ikea currently operates in 38 countries. In Sweden, the arrangement amounts to 100 million kronor a year in lost taxes, according to the report.
Through advanced tax planning, the company has implemented the system of royalty payments to dodge tax payments, according to Uppdrag granskning’s report, which uncovered the jumble of companies within Inter Ikea registered in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Curaçao, the Virgin Islands and Cyprus.
Despite the revelations, media advisor Paul Ronge doesn’t think the information will negatively affect the image of Ikea and Kamprad.
“There are extremely few brands that are considered icons in Sweden, but Ingvar Kamprad is one of them. If someone decides to go after Kamprad, it must be with something that will cause people’s jaws to drop,” he said.
During his media training sessions, Ronge often compares Kamprad with beloved Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren and actor and director Hasse Alfredson.
“Ingvar Kamprad has been perhaps the most skillful brand builder in Sweden as he has built up his brand over a long, long time. That makes for a very strong immune system during crises,” he said.
“The key issue is whether people think this is so remarkable, shocking and new that they are prepared to reconsider the image of Kamprad that the majority of the Swedish people have held over the last 40 to 50 years,” Ronge pointed out.
When a reporter from the programme tried to confront Kamprad with the information, he became angry and asked, “How can you ask such idiotic questions? Are you crazy?”
“It is deplorable that Ingvar Kamprad had an outburst like that. It is so unnecessary. He did not have to end up in such a situation. One should not react emotionally and in the presence of journalists to show yourself getting so pissed off,” said Ronge.
Ikea Sweden plans to comment the revelations presented by Uppdrag granskning on Wednesday and early on Thursday morning, Ikea Sweden will host a chat on its website, where CEO Peter Agnefjäll will answer questions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: 5 Mln Euros From EU for Welfare and Labour
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 25 — The European Union will donate five million euros to Syria to improve the country’s welfare system. A statement issued by the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) reads that the money will be used for two programmes: the National Aid Fund (direct contributions for the poorest part of the population) and the Decent Work Country Programme, sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (to improve conditions on the work floor). The funding covers the 2011-2013 period and is part of a number of EU programmes for Syria, totalling around 129 million euros.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why George Soros is Talking Nonsense
Household debt is still at near-record levels, barely a start has been made on getting the public finances back on to a sustainable footing, credit is still shrinking and private demand remains flat on its back. Is it not folly, in such circumstances, to be launching, full-steam ahead, into the most severe fiscal consolidation since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War? To rub home the point, along comes George Soros to say the UK Chancellor’s plans can’t be implemented without pushing the economy back into recession. Would it not be better to delay until conditions are unambiguously better? The answer to this question, which refuses to go away as an object of intense political and economic debate, is a definitive no. Plainly the Government must remain flexible in its approach to events, but the wobble in the economy makes it more vital still that the Coalition holds its nerve and the broad outline of the deficit reduction programme is stuck to.
People worry about the coming austerity, but actually, it is already here. While Mr Soros and much of the rest of the world’s elite busy themselves with the irrelevancies of Davos, for ordinary mortals, grim reality is biting hard. The erosion of living standards referred to this week by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King may not have been obvious to high earners, but it is already painfully felt by almost everyone else.
As Mr King points out, Britain is heading for the most prolonged and biggest squeeze in real wages since the 1920s. It’s not so dissimilar in many other advanced economies, and in some of the periphery eurozone nations, it’s even worse.
Remarkable though Mr King’s observation was, it was certainly in no way a revelation. Devaluation in combination with rising commodity prices, booming emerging market demand and increased sales taxes is causing UK inflation to outstrip wage growth by a wide margin. In some parts of the eurozone, nominal wages too are falling, and in most countries there is rising unemployment.
Mr King characterises this adjustment as part of a wholly necessary adjustment after years of living high on the hog. It’s the price we have to pay, he says, for the financial crisis. It’s also what has to be done to rebalance the UK economy away from credit-fuelled consumption to production, investment and exports.
As Mr King explained, monetary policy can do little to avoid this process of adjustment. The UK economy is being made competitive again, and to do this, relative living standards must fall. Ours is an inflationary adjustment, rather than the deflationary one we are seeing in parts of the eurozone. That makes it seem less painful, but over time the effect is much the same.
Central bank governors are meant to sound majesterial and omnipotent, so Mr King’s refusal to accept that the Bank had in any way breached its remit by failing to grind down on inflation is perhaps understandable. The Bank’s own role in fostering the crisis by running too loose a monetary policy, and its complete misdiagnosis of the inflation risk since, are a column for another day. There will be no admission of error from Mr King until after he’s retired, if then. Whether culpable or not in the economic mess, Mr King is right to argue that monetary policy cannot do anything about the adjustment. Sure enough, he could have put up interest rates to counter external inflationary pressures, but by raising unemployment and mortgage rates, that would have made the squeeze on consumption even worse…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
“Investing” In America’s Oblivion—The State of the Union
It’s a well known fact that Progressives have difficulty saying certain words. For example the poor dears have a problem saying the words “radical Islam.” It was seat-squirmingly awkward to watch our Attorney General, Eric Holder, suffer a cruel grilling by that mean Mr. Smith a couple of years back.
Rep. Smith: “Are you uncomfortable attributing any of the actions to radical Islam; it sounds like it.”
Holder: “No I don’t want to say anything negative about a religion that is, uh, that is, it’s, uh…”
Rep. Smith: “No, no, I’m talking about RADICAL Islam, I’m not talking about the general religion.”
And on it went—painful to watch really. One can be forgiven for wanting to whisper the answer at such times: “Psst, Eric—I-S-L-A-M-I-C T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T-S.” After all, which of us isn’t familiar with that sinking feeling of having the teacher call on us, and not knowing the answer?
At any rate, Obama gave the yearly State of the Union address last night, and those of us who have come to appreciate how he is regarding clarity and specifics were not disappointed…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
“Radicalization” Hearings Lose Anti-Jihadist Support
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is scheduled to hold hearings on “radicalization” of American Muslims next month, and he has already taken heat from Muslim leaders and others who are aghast at, for example, King’s suggestion that “80 percent” of mosques are controlled by radicals.
But King is now facing criticism from an unlikely source: the self-described “anti-jihadist” writers who make their living by crusading against Islam and would be expected to be King’s biggest supporters. As blogger Pamela Geller (of “ground zero mosque” fame) wrote in the American Thinker last week:
Methinks Representative King is a wee bit in over his head. I am filled with dread and sorrow at another lost opportunity. Doesn’t King know he is going to be smeared and defamed for these hearings no matter what? So why not achieve something? Why not have the courage of your convictions?
The roots of the split can be found in this Politico article that reported King will not call as witnesses Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and Robert Spencer of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. That report prompted an angry response from Emerson, who accused King of selling him out. King maintained that he planned to use Emerson as a behind-the-scenes resource…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
California City Denies Appeal, Mosque Will be Built
The City Council voted early Wednesday to allow about 150 Muslim families to build a mosque in Temecula after months of angry debate over the plan that included protests and letter-writing campaigns. The council voted 4-0 to approve the project after a nine-hour meeting that ended after 3:30 a.m.
The vote came despite fears from opponents that the Islamic Center of Temecula could bring extremist activity and traffic woes to the region in Riverside County, about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The Islamic Center was formed in 1998, and its members have been worshipping in a warehouse for a decade. The group plans to build a 25,000-square-foot, two-story mosque that will be constructed in two stages and will feature domes topped with crescent moons. The city Planning Commission approved the project in December, but resident George Rombach appealed to the City Council, arguing that other houses of worship were held to more stringent land use requirements — a claim rebuffed by city officials.
Last year, residents flooded the city with letters about the mosque and attended raucous hearings about the project.
Supporters, including members of other Temecula-area houses of worship, rallied around the Islamic community and cited the contributions made by American Muslims.
“The hallmark of our country is that we allow all faiths and beliefs to be practiced and that we, as a country, tend to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove differently,” Ada Hand wrote to the commission.
Opponents objected to the project and hundreds turned out at the council meeting.
“I’m afraid our freedoms are at stake with this kind of a neighbor,” resident Connie Power wrote before the hearing…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Engineer Jailed for Selling US Stealth Bomber Technology to China
A former B-2 stealth bomber engineer has been jailed for 32 years by a US court for selling military secrets to China.
Noshir Gowadia, 66, made profits of at least USD$110,000 (£68,000) by selling classified engine technology that China needed for its design of a stealth cruise missile that could evade infra-red detection, the court heard.
“He broke his oath of loyalty to this country,” said Judge Susan Oki Mollway passing sentence after a hearing in Honolulu, Hawaii, “He was found guilty of marketing valuable technology to foreign countries for personal gain.” Gowadia, an engineer with the Northrop Grumman Corporation between 1968-88 who worked on the B-2 design, made repeated trips to China between 2003 and 2005 providing “defence services” to China’s cruise missile programme as a freelance consultant.
The prosecution had called on the judge to impose a life sentence on Gowadia who used the proceeds of the sales to fund a luxury lifestyle on Hawaii where he lived in a multi-million dollar home overlooking the ocean on Maui.
Defence lawyers for Gowadia, an Indian-born engineer who worked on the engine design for the B-2 bomber, had argued that he had sold only unclassified technology.
However after a 40-day trial, he was convicted on 14 charges including communicating national defence information to aid a foreign nation, violating the arms export control act and several counts of money-laundering and tax fraud.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lame Hearings on Islam Will Do Nothing
Politico featured a story this week headlined, ‘Muslim groups nervous about King hearings.” It went on to discuss Muslim apprehension regarding upcoming congressional hearings led by Rep. Peter King, R-NY, ‘on the threat posed by radical Islam in America.” That phrase — ‘radical Islam” — is truly a marvel: a 14-karat, bulletproof, titanium shield for Islam itself, which, sorry guys and gals, is the source of all things we deem ‘radical” in Islam. ‘Islam is Islam and that’s it,” as Turkey’s Erdogan so memorably put it. But since we don’t want Islam to be ‘it,” we pretend and operate and make policy and even war based on some mythic radicalism of ‘twisted” or ‘hijacked” or ‘perverted” Islam.
If these King hearings turn out to be about the threat posed by ‘radical Islam” — and not about the threat posed by what is radical about Islam — ‘nervous” Muslim groups have nothing to worry about, and anti-jihad, anti-Shariah citizens have nothing to gain.
Hope I’m wrong, but it looks like any rational analysis of jihad or of Shariah is already off the table. Politico writes: ‘In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told Politico that he’s not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims.”
Let’s break this revelation down. It may be smoothly packaged, but it is utterly mind-boggling.
Point One: King says he won’t be calling a certain genre of witness to the hearings. Politico’s term for this genre of witness is ‘Muslim community critics,” and it includes Islamic terrorism expert Steve Emerson and Islamic doctrine expert Robert Spencer. Let’s start with Politico’s terminology: ‘Muslim community critics.” ‘Community” is another shield word — a warm and fuzzy term of misdirection that conjures up something communal and open — something cooperative, maybe even picnicky and family-oriented. How mean of Steve Emerson and Robert Spencer to be ‘Muslim community critics”! But imagine if Politico were less a prisoner of adversarial convention and more freewheeling in its mode of expression. Emerson would be better ID’d as a Muslim terrorism critic — or, better still, a Muslim jihad critic. Spencer would be more accurately labeled as a Muslim law or Shariah critic…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Last Pardon of Abraham Lincoln Was ‘Forgery’
It was the final act of compassion that seemed to epitomise the decency of President Abraham Lincoln.
On April 14, 1865, having steered the US through the horrors of civil war, he issued a pardon for Patrick Murphy, a mentally disabled private in the union army who had been sentenced to death for desertion.
He then headed to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, to watch a performance of Tom Taylor’s ‘Our American Cousin’, during which he was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth.
But while Lincoln’s standing is not in doubt — amid today’s fierce partisan divisions, his unifying heroics are more venerated than ever — this neat portrayal of his final hours has been exposed as a sham.
Thomas Lowry, an amateur historian who said he had found the dated pardon among archived papers and then built a book, and a career, around it, has confessed to amending the document.
The pardon, it turns out, was in fact issued by Lincoln on April 14, 1864 — while the civil war raged on and exactly a year before he was to be assassinated during Act III, Scene II.
Trevor Plante, the acting chief of reference at the National Archives, where the pardon is stored, said his suspicions had been aroused after he began frequently showing the document to visitors during tours.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama May Get Power to Shut Down Internet Without Court Oversight
A bill giving the president an Internet “kill switch” during times of emergency that failed to pass Congress last year will return this year, but with a revision that has many civil liberties advocates concerned: It will give the president the ability to shut down parts of the Internet without any court oversight.
The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act was introduced last year by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in an effort to combat cyber-crime and the threat of online warfare and terrorism.
Critics said the bill would allow the president to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures. Future US presidents would have those powers renewed indefinitely.
According to a report Monday at CNET News, the bill will be back on the Senate agenda in the new year. But a revision introduced into the bill in December would exempt the law from judicial oversight. According to critics, this change would open the law to politically-motivated abuse by any administration, no matter how narrowly the law is interpreted.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Srdja Trifkovic: Barack Obama’s Reassuringly Vacuous State of the Union Address
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate considering the magnitude of social, economic and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant absurdity of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved.
The cliche’s and the rhetoric were kitchy and old-fashionedly quaint. At least Obama did not give us any of his predecessor’s neocon-infested world-historical drivel (“History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight… America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity… We’ve come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed..”) What we have instead is a chief executive visibly reluctant to engage in foreign dragon-slaying missions. An inoffensive Latin American tour is on the cards instead, exactly the sort of stuff the President should do when he decides to do nothing.
Obama mentioned the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan—two doomed wars inherited from his predecessor—and steered clear of the old caveat about “getting the job done.” No “job” is ever “done” by a non-Muslim power in the Islamic heartland, which Iraq illustrates today, and which Afghanistan has proven on four occasions over the past 175-odd years. That both will revert to their nasty and brutish Hobbesian-Mohammedan ways once the last GI departs is obvious. Judging by his speech Obama knows this. His en-passant pledge that the U.S. “stands with the people of Tunisia” is reassuringly meaningless: presumably the “standing” will continue regardless of whether the Islamists take over, which is likely, or the country turns into a beacon of Western-style democracy in North Africa, which is not.
Not a single word about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the State of the Union is excellent news. For the moment the best U.S. policy in the Middle East is passivity. Over the next year or two Washington should leave Israel and its Arab neighbors to their own devices. We are further away from a comprehensive settlement than at any time since Oslo two decades ago. Prime Minister Netanyahu is not in a mood to offer anything to the Palestinians, and they are not in a position to insist on anything. As I wrote in Chronicles five months ago, those Americans who contend that the U.S. has the moral obligation to bring an end to the conflict should recognize that, like in many other national, religious and ethnic conflicts around the world, it will go on if both sides are willing to pay the costs of what they regard as a just and necessary fight: “No outside deus-ex-machina can save the parties from themselves. Not unlike other wars, the Arab-Israeli war will end when both sides grow weary of it and conclude that their interests would be better served at the negotiating table, with the outcome of such negotiations reflecting the balance of power between them.”
Since the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are unable or unwilling to do so today, Obama is right to stay aloof. Only when both sides are exhausted by the conflict and ready to make peace should the United States mediate a settlement. Only then some reference to the U.S. effort deserves to be made in the State of the Union address. This was not one such occasion…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Belgium: Citizens Desperately Seeking Government
De Morgen, 24 January 2011
“And now, a government,” demands demands De Morgen in the aftermath of a Brussels demonstration organised by the SHAME, No Government for our Country after 200 days Facebook group. The newspaper remarks that the “silent cry and call for responsibility” sent by the protest will likely “put paid to the notion that social networks only serve to promote a superficial lifestyle.” In its editorial, it also notes that the 34,000 “demonstrators needed little encouragement to take to the streets — which should be a lesson to our politicians.”
According to a poll published by the Francophone newspaper, Le Soir, 44% of the demonstrators were from Brussels, 35% Walloons and only 21% were Flemish. The daily describes the event as “a success,” but warns that if it is to be repeated, “diffuse antipathy to politicians, and the immense desire to safeguard Belgium’s mixed society,” could be quickly transformed into “a display of anger and an outright rejection of politics.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Business Sector Warns Italy Stagnating Amid Sex Scandal
Business leaders questioned Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership amid a raging sex scandal as the Italian prime minister’s allies denied orgies and polls showed increased backing for his ruling party.
As Berlusconi steeled himself for further criticism from the Roman Catholic Church Monday and the opposition continued to clamor for his resignation, Italy’s powerful employers federation said the country was in a state of political stagnation.
Emma Marcegaglia, head of Confindustria, tore into Berlusconi’s centre-right government late on Sunday for neglecting Italy’s economic and social problems over the last six months in favor of political infighting and sex scandals.
“We need to see if the government is capable of carrying out certain reforms, otherwise if there’s no majority, there’s no cohesion, and we’ll need to make other decisions. We can’t wait any longer,” she said.
As the sordid allegations of Berlusconi’s late night parties with call girls continued to make headlines in Italy and abroad, Marcegaglia insisted “there is another Italy that goes to bed early and wakes up early, that really works.”
Marcegaglia’s comments came as the media obsessed over allegations by Milan magistrates that Berlusconi consorted with prostitutes he kept in rent-free luxury apartments and paid for sex with an underage disco dancer named Ruby.
While frequenting prostitutes is not a crime in Italy, having sex with one under the age of 18 has been an imprisonable offence since Berlusconi’s right-wing government voted a law against it in 2006.
Lele Mora, an agent for Italian starlettes and a friend of Berlusconi who is under investigation by Milan magistrates in the “Ruby Gate” scandal for induction to prostitution, denied any wrongdoing on Sunday.
Mora claimed escorts had lied about having sex with the prime minister and said he had helped organize the parties for a lonely Berlusconi who “needed friends around him” and enjoyed helping those in need with gifts and money.
But the barrage of criticism last week from Pope Benedict XVI and other religious leaders who had called for greater morality and political responsibility was set to continue on Monday, according to Italian media.
The prime minister’s alleged penchant for frolicking in hot-tubs with naked escorts was likely to dominate Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco’s address to the Italian Episcopal Conference, or CEI, the Corriere della Sera daily said.
On Friday, one of Italy’s most popular magazines, Famiglia Cristiana, said the allegations centering on Berlusconi were indecent and warned the prime minister risked alienating Catholics and losing votes.
But while nearly half of Italians want the embattled prime minister to resign, according to a poll carried by the Corriere della Serra on Sunday, backing for his People of Freedom, or PDL, party was up on the previous month.
The paper said the sex scandal appears to have had little impact on the standing of the various parties among voters, with Berlusconi’s PDL retaining 30 percent support compared to 28 percent in December.
Milan’s prosecutors revealed their investigation on January 14, just a day after a top court partially stripped the prime minister of political immunity and experts warned the scandal might force the government to early elections.
The opposition PD party has said it will petition for Berlusconi’s resignation for “dishonoring Italy in the eyes of the world,” and hopes to collect 10 million signatures from disgruntled Italians.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
European Muslims Can Do Better, Says Leading Islamic Scholar
According to a recent study carried out at the University of Leipzig, more than a third of Germans believe Germany would be better off without Islam. Last week Europe’s foremost Muslim thinker, Tariq Ramadan, spoke to a captive audience in Berlin about the tide of Islamophobia sweeping Europe and his own vision of a “shared pluralism.” A professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University, Ramadan is also president of the European Muslim Network. He is a polarizing figure, seen by some as the “Muslim Martin Luther” and by others as a master of doublespeak. He spoke to Deutsche Welle about western perceptions of Islam today and the need for Muslims to become full partners in democratic societies.
Is it Germans’ job to understand Islam better, or is it Muslims’ job to explain Islam better?
Islamophobia and rejection of Muslims is everywhere in Europe today, and Germany is no exception. It is a two-way process. We have to change our way of talking about Islam, our way of creating and building the ‘Other.’ To this end, it’s important to work on education and a better understanding of what Germany and Europe is today and to accept that Islam is a European religion, because we have millions of citizens who are French, British, German and Muslim. But Muslims as citizens have to be more vocal and assertive by explaining their religion and the way they deal with it in their daily lives, so that it is not only perceived as a problem but as a gift and a positive presence.
They also need to avoid the victim mentality that might be nurtured by this atmosphere and to avoid identifying as a minority, saying: we don’t want to be targeted, so we will isolate ourselves. No, they should do the opposite, even though to withdraw from being visible would be a natural psychological reaction.
In your book “What I Believe,” you say that the debate about integration borders on the obsessive and that what we need now is a ‘post-integration’ approach based on contribution.
We need to stop referring to integration. By ‘post-integration,’ I mean that we need to come to an understanding that the success of integration is to stop talking about it. If we keep on repeating year after year, generation after generation, that ‘they’ need to integrate, we imply that there is a host country, and they are its immigrants. It’s over! Muslims are not immigrants in Germany. They are German, they are European.
Then, what we need to do is ask: as a member of this society, what is my contribution going to be? If you are always perceived as ‘to be integrated,’ the question is: where do you come from? We have to stop asking: where do you come from and ask: where are we going — together?
We have to be visible and vocal not only in the religious field but everywhere. Our contribution can be philosophical, artistic, and as I advocate in my book, creative! To be a Muslim isn’t just to say: Islam is not violent, it is not discriminatory — no, it’s more than that. It is architecture, books, imagination, ethics. And the more you give to society, the less you will be perceived as a negative factor.
What [controversial German author] Thilo Sarazzin basically said was: look at these Muslims, they are a problem and they are lowering our level of intelligence. He is wrong, of course, and this was a racist stand. But the only way to answer it is to point to contribution. The only right answer is practical: we have to be witnesses of the potentialities we have in our societies to express ourselves in a positive way.
But when you have public and institutional hostility to Muslims, it restricts the scope of their participation in social, economic, political and cultural life. How can we break this deadlock?
When I come to Germany and other European countries I can see that, yes, there is a trend to Islamophobia, racism and a rejection of Muslims, but lots of people are not happy about it and know there’s something wrong.
So you are right, a fracture within society is possible. But what I see behind the scenes at the local level are a lot of Europeans willing to listen. This should be the driving force of change: not Muslims on their own, but Germans from different backgrounds sharing the same principle: we are not going to allow racism to return to this country in a way that is very, very damaging for all citizens…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Catholic Abuse Victims Offered Firm Payout
Victims of sex abuse at Jesuit schools are finally being offered concrete compensation payouts one year after the abuse scandal was revealed, a Catholic official said Monday.
Klaus Mertes, rector of Canisius College, the elite Jesuit school in Berlin at which the first allegations surfaced, told daily Berliner Zeitung’s Monday edition that the 205 known victims would share about €1 million in damages payments, meaning each will receive roughly €5,000.
The figure was immediately rejected as insufficient by a victims’ group.
The onslaught of revelations of sex abuse within the Catholic Church began in January 2010 when it emerged that priests at Canisius committed dozens of sexual assaults on pupils in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mertes told the paper that the church would “finalise the precise sums and carry out he payment of probably about €1 million in total.”
Matthias Katsch of the group Eckiger Tisch, which represents victims, said the sum was disappointing and in no way adequate.
Mertes himself revealed the scandal a year ago. After writing to former students of the college to alert them to the fact that former teachers were being investigated for abuse, he then held a press conference to announce the discovery.
Sexual abuse allegations at other Catholic schools began to surface and quickly turned into a flood of claims.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Man Asks for Police Protection From Sex-Crazed Wife
A desperate Turkish man living in Germany has turned to the police for protection from his wife’s constant demands for sex, authorities said Wednesday.
The man came to his local police station in the southwestern city of Waiblingen, Baden-Wurttemberg on Tuesday saying that he had been sleeping on the sofa for the past four years to escape the clutches of his wife.
The couple has been married for 18 years and have two children together.
“Now he has decided to get a divorce and to move out… in the hope of finally getting some rest, particularly as he is anxious to arrive at work well rested,” police said in a statement.
“At the moment this is impossible because he says his wife keeps coming into the living room demanding that he perform his marital duties,” the statement said. “He asked for police help in getting some sleep at night.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ‘Confidence in Institutions Down’
Only Italian president shows rise
(ANSA) — Rome, January 24 — Public confidence in Italian institutions is down to a new record low, a survey showed Monday.
A whopping 68.5% of those interviewed said their confidence in institutions fell last year, the highest figure since 2004, said the Eurispes research agency.
There was a 22% increase in the number of people who felt let down, it said.
Some 12% said they were less confident in government.
Only 2.2% of the sample said their confidence in institutions grew in 2010. It remained unchanged for 27.5%.
The only institutional figure in which trust rose was that of the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, whose rating rose from 62.1% in 2009 to 67.9% last year and 68.2% this year, Eurispes said.
Trust in the magistrature rose to 53.9% this year from 47.8% in 2010, 44.4% in 2009, 42.5% in 2008 and 39.6% in 2007.
Confidence in the police remained high with the Carabinieri now polling at 72.6% compared to the state police at 66.8% and the tax police at 64.1%.
There was a “steep” decline in confidence in political parties, Eurispes said, while trust in trade unions was steady and confidence in the Catholic Church fell from 47.3% in 2010 to 40.2% this year.
Almost half of those polled came out in favour of the idea of a directly elected head of state with more powers. The poll came a day after a survey in the Corriere della Sera newspaper showed that support for Premier Silvio Berlusconi is unchanged despite the latest in a string of sex scandals.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Former Politician Tullia Zevi Dies
(AGI) Rome — Tullia Zevi, former voice of Italian Jews in politics, died in Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome at the age of 91. Zevi was the leader of UCEI (Union of Italian Jewish Communities) for several years; Zevi was on vacation with her family in Switzerland when racial laws were passed in Italy, and subsequently moved to France. After the war she returned to Italy with her husband Bruno Zevi, architect and art critic. As a journalist, she was sent to the Nuremberg Trials.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Calls Party Summit After Bishops’ Attack
Rome, 25 Jan. (AKI) — Italy’s sex-scandal mired prime minister Silvio Berlusconi called a meeting of his ruling party’s leaders slated for late on Tuesday. The move came after a senior Italian bishop, Angelo Bagnasco, said Berlusconi’s conduct encouraged young people to “sell themselves” and cheat to get ahead in life.
“Whoever accepts a public position must understand the sobriety, personal discipline, sense of measure and honour that comes with it,” Bagnasco said on Monday in a televised address to the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which he heads.
He said the example set by Italy’s leader suggested that “cunning, social climbing, showing off and selling oneself” was the way to get on in life, and said such conduct was sowing the seeds of an “anthropological disaster”.
Bagnasco was making in indirect reference to the current sex scandal in which prosecutors accuse Berlusconi of paying “a significant number” of women for sex. The women allegedly include a Moroccan erotic dancer aged just 17 at the time of their purported encounters, who Berlusconi alleged pressured police to release in May 2010 over unrelated theft charges.
Using a juvenile prostitute carries a maximum jail term of three years in Italy, while the crime of abuse of office is punishable with up to 12 years in prison.
Berlucsconi hit back at the accusations against him in a surprise phonecall to L’Infedele, a political TV show which was discussing allegations that dozens of ambitious young women attended orgiastic parties at the premiers’ homes and slept with him in exchange for cash, jewellery, rent-free apartments and other benefits in kind.
“Yours is a disgusting programme conducted in a despicable, vile and repugnant way, a brothel,” Berlusconi told the show’s host, Gad Lerner. He also ordered a politician from his conservative ruling People of Freedom (PdL) party, Iva Zanicchi, who was appearing on the show, to leave the TV studio, which she declined to do.
“That’s enough insults,” Lerner replied. “Why don’t you go before the prosecutors instead of insulting,” Lerner told Berlusconi. He was referring to a request by Milan prosecutors conducting the prostitution probe that Berlusconi submit himself to questioning over the allegations — a demand which the premier has repeatedly rejected, claiming the prosecutors do not have the authority to quiz him.
Prosecutors say they have enough evidence to bring him to trial in a matter of months and have submitted a 389 page dossier to the Italian parliament.
A parliamentary commission has begun investigating the allegations and will decide if prosecutors are entitled to question Berlusconi, search his financial administrator’s office and possibly put him on trial, or whether the premier should be shielded from prosecution
Berlusconi has rejected calls from the centre-left opposition that he resign over the scandal, saying it would be “mad” for him to do. But he has come under increasing pressure from the Catholic Church over the allegations. Bagnasco was the second high-profile establishment figure to attack Berlusconi in as many days.
Pope Benedict XVI in an address last week deplored the current weakening of public morals, and his second in command, Tarcisio Bertone, called for a more “robust morality” among public officials.
The well-known head of Italy’s leading industrialists’ association, Emma Marcegaglia said on Sunday she would suport finance minister Giulio Tremonti as a possible replacement for Berlusconi, claiming the government has been paralysed for the past six months by a series of scandals and was “not up to the job”.
Marcegaglia also said she spent a lot of time trying to convince foreigners that not all Italians behave like Berlusconi.
But while new surveys showed that 49 percent of Italians now want Berlusconi to resign — eight percentage points more than a year ago — support for his conservative PdL party appears to be on the rise.
In a poll published in Sunday’s Corriere della Sera, support for the PdL has actually increased since December, from 27.6 percent to 30.2 percent. Over the same period, support for every major opposition party has declined.
The Democratic party and the Italy of Values party the centre-left parties that have spearheaded the attacks on Berlusconi’s probity have declined from 25.0 percent to 24.5 percent and from 6.2 percent to 5.5 percent respectively.
Meanwhile Italians’ faith in governance has hit its lowest level since 2004, according to a study published on Monday by research institute Eurispes.
A massive 68.5 percent of Italians have little or no faith at all in their government and public institutions, up 22 percent from a year ago, according to the study.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Finally Loses Patience With Berlusconi
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in embroiled in yet another sex scandal, involving accusations of prostitution and abuse of power. But the biggest question is how long the country will continue to put up with its leader.
The public prosecutor’s office in Milan is housed in a massive, forbidding building from the Mussolini era not far from the cathedral. The Latin word “IUSTITIA,” or “justice,” is inscribed in huge letters above the main entrance. Behind this building’s gun-slit-like windows lies the conscience of the nation, the other Italy.
Milan’s prosecutors have spent the last six months investigating a case newspapers have dubbed “Rubygate.” They have been digging through interrogations and recorded telephone conversations of people who attended parties at Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s villa in Arcore, outside Milan.
Their work has yielded a 389-page dossier, which was submitted to parliament in Rome last week. It is now up to an investigative committee to determine whether additional searches of the premier’s private property can be made. Berlusconi himself has been summoned to appear for questioning in Milan and was given his choice of three dates. This time around, things are not looking good for the Italian prime minister.
‘The Old Guy’ with the Money
The once-secret dossier is no longer secret. In fact, all of Italy is familiar with it, thanks to the fresh and increasingly sordid details the papers are revealing each day. Indeed, with each passing day, it seems like the prime minister is being pulled farther and farther off his pedestal. The image of the virile, omnipotent ruler, of the hedonist who loves women, is beginning to crumble. One reason behind this shift is that many of the girls caught in wiretapped telephone conversations speak in such contemptuous terms about the man who has fascinated Italians for so long.
This fascination was born from the fact that Berlusconi could run the country while at the same time being a little like them: gullible, fallible and a macchietta, a somewhat strange, grotesque figure distinguished only by his absolute mediocrity. But as one of the party girls said in a conversation recorded by the prosecutor’s office: “He’s become old, fat and ugly — but generous.”
“It’s unimaginable, the things that happen there,” another girl says, referring to the many parties at Berlusconi’s villa. “It’s a real whorehouse.”
“The old guy is really getting on my nerves. I think I’m going to kill him soon,” says yet another girl.
“What on earth will I do if he ever resigns?,” asks Karima El Mahroug, the nightclub dancer who also goes by the name “Ruby” and was still underage when she allegedly visited the prime minister eight times at his villa. “Then I’ll have nothing left to bite.”
The files also contain snippets of conversations such as the following:
“You’re supposed to be the official nurse.”
“Ha-ha. That’s what he told me, too.”
“Have fun with him. You have to bring along a fake blood pressure monitor and a white coat.”
“The kind doctors wear. And don’t wear anything underneath, of course!”
“And then you say to him: ‘I’m the nurse, and I have to examine you…’ You know how much he likes things like that.”
Bunga-Bunga Parties
These files depict the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, a dirty old man who seems to have lost his connection to reality, holds court in his villa near Milan, apparently gives fetish parties — and prefers groping to governing.
The women who are now causing Berlusconi so much trouble are the products of his media empire. And he himself is a prisoner of the cheap soap operas he has been churning out for years.
There were apparently more than 20 women involved: television starlets and nightclub dancers — all of them rather young, money-hungry and raunchy. In the wiretapped conversations, they describe so-called “bunga-bunga” parties in the basement of the Berlusconi villa, where they were told to put on special outfits kept in a closet, such as nurse or police uniforms, and had to perform pole dances in front of the prime minister’s golden throne while being ogled and groped.
Italian Stallion
Their descriptions reflect the swamp Italy is currently wallowing in. What’s more, they epitomize a country that has gotten used to having a prime minister suspected of tax evasion, a man who bribed an attorney and a person who, in the words of the popular commentator Sergio Benvenuto, has “behaved like a whoremonger” for years. All of a sudden, this same Italy is reeling with shock at what allegedly transpired in Berlusconi’s house.
Italian President Giorgio Napoletano demanded an immediate investigation into the Berlusconi affair, the left-wing opposition collected 10 million signatures “to send Berlusconi home,” and even the Vatican — normally no enemy of the prime minister — sharply condemned him. While Pope Benedict XVI complained of a “certain weakening of public morals,” his right-hand man, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was more direct, calling for a “more robust morality, a sense of justice and legality.”
Berlusconi replied from his villa in Arcore, the scene of the scandal, with a video message to the people. He sat in front of the camera, looking as pallid as a corpse, no longer able to conjure up his perma-grin smile, his face frozen into a mask. Pictures of smiling family members in silver frames lined the bookshelf behind him, and next to him was a statue of a rearing stallion. Not a single detail or gesture was random.
Berlusconi raged against what he called a conspiracy by the left-wing judiciary and insisted on his right to privacy. Then he made a fist, as if to hammer home that there was nothing to the accusations. “I have a steady girlfriend,” he said, adding that she would never allow such absurd things to take place — as if having a girlfriend somehow proves an Italian doesn’t cheat on his wife…
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Magistrates Ask to Quiz Conservative Politician in Prostitution Probe
Rome, 26 Jan. (AKI) — Italian prosecutors on Wednesday summoned a regional councillor for prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative ruling party for questioning on allegations that Berlusconi used an underage Moroccan prostitute.
Prosecutors in Milan, want to question Lombardy regional councillor Nicole Minetti on 1 February over allegations that she procured prostitutes for erotic parties and sex with Berlusconi at his home in Arcore near Milan and elsewhere.
Prosecutors supported their request, submitted to the Italian parliament, with several hundred pages of documentation, including text and other messages, financial payments from Berlusconi’s financial administrator Giuseppe Spinelli, and wiretap transcripts.
Minetti’s lawyer said it had not yet been decided if Minetti would be questioned by prosecutors next Tuesday.
Berlusconi fielded Minetti as a candidate for his People of Freedom party in Italy’s March 2010 region elections. She met the former showgirl and newly qualified dental hygienist when treated him for two broken teeth and facial injuries after he was attacked at a political rally.
She also appeared a dancer on a TV show aired by one of the billionaire media tycoon’s channels, called Colorado Cafe, and on another programme called Scorie, which is an Italian version of Candid Camera.
Minetti is one of the women named in the media as 74-year-old Berlusconi’s possible girlfriend after he claimed in a recent video message that he had been in a “steady relationship” for the past 18 months since he split from his second wife.
Minetti is among several Berlusconi associates who are suspected of of procuring prostitutes for Berlusconi, including teenage Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed Ruby, who was allegedly17 when she spent at least eight nights at Berlusconi’s villa in Arcore last year.
She and Berlusconi deny they have ever had sex and she has claimed he “never laid a finger” on her.
A panel of the Italian parliament is currently considering a request sent on 14 January by Milan prosecutors spearheading the prostitution probe for permission to search Spinelli’s offices in Milan. The prosecutors supplied a 389 page dossier of evidence gathered on the case.
Berlusconi refused to be questioned by the prosecutors last week over the allegations he had sex with a juvenile prostitute and abused his powers of office by pressuring police to release El Mahroug from custody last May over an unrelated theft charge.
He claims the allegations against him are “absurd” and part of a plot against him by subsersive leftwing prosecutors who should be “punished”.
He has said it would be “mad” for him to bow to opposition demands that he resign, but has also received criticism from the Catholic Church and the Vatican over the prostitution allegations.
On Wednesday he said the furore would blow over and he vowed he would remain premier. He told journalists the new dossier againt Minetti was “scandalous”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: School Can Restrict Headscarf Size, But Only for New Pupils
A secondary school in Utrecht was within its rights to set demands on how Muslim girls wear their headscarves, the equal opportunities commission said on Tuesday.
However, the commission said the ruling only applies to pupils who started at the school this academic year, after the rule was introduced, the Telegraaf reports.
In June, the Gerrit Rietveld College told girls who wear Islamic headscarves they must make sure at least 90% of their face is visible. In particular, headscarves should not cover their eyebrows and chin, which makes communication with teachers difficult, the school said.
Some 50 pupils refused to comply and the school itself took the issue to the commission.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
President Gül Warns of Rising Racism, Discrimination in Europe
Turkish President Abdullah Gül spoke before deputies from the 47 nations represented at PACE on Tuesday as Turkey took over the presidency of the European body.
Turkish President Abdullah Gül has warned about the growing pessimism in Europe that he said was reshaping the continent’s political life on the back of increasing manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in many European societies.
“Let us not forget that popular support for explicit anti-Semitism was only 5 percent in the late 1920s. With the snowball effect, this poisonous minority paved the way for the Holocaust in the late 1930s. History does repeat itself if we do not draw lessons from our past mistakes,” he said to deputies from the 47 nations represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
“Over the past few years, our member states have been affected by weakening social ties. Radicalization and increasing gaps between different religious, ethnic and cultural communities started to harm the social fabric of our nations,” President Gül remarked, adding: “We must retain confidence in the ability of our democratic institutions to promote human rights, tolerance, dialogue and social cohesion. We need to develop a democratic framework for living together.”
In an address delivered yesterday in Strasbourg during the winter session of PACE, the largest and most important European watchdog overseeing human rights, rule of law and democracy on the continent, Gül said the Council of Europe has done and continues to do much to promote peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between peoples of different origin, culture and faith living in Europe. “The Council of Europe has the duty to address and counter these new challenges,” he added.
PACE President Mevlüt Çavusoglu, a Turkish deputy from the district of Alanya, introduced the Turkish president and said, “It is an honor and a pleasure to welcome you in this chamber, particularly at a moment when your country is chairing the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.” Praising Gül as one of the strongest supporters and defenders of PACE and the values it stands for, Çavusoglu said, “As a Turkish politician, you have invested a lot of effort into promoting democratic reforms in Turkey.”
He went on to say progress on democratic reforms is clearly visible. “The positive result of the recent referendum on constitutional changes as well as the high turnout show how strongly the Turkish people are attached to their democratic rights and freedoms and to a future in Europe. I am sure that with your strong political support, democratic reforms in Turkey will move ahead smoothly, to the benefit of Turkish citizens,” the PACE president remarked.
President Gül cited racism and xenophobia as representing major causes of concern in connection with the current economic crisis. “Roma and travelers, Muslims or Jews, and, more generally, those who are different, experience hostility and social exclusion in many of our societies,” he said, criticizing governments’ tough lines on immigration. “There is a rise in electoral support for political parties that portray immigration as the main cause of insecurity, unemployment, crime, poverty and social problems,” he warned, calling them “pathologies” that are weakening Europe and decimating its soft power in the world. “We should work hard to defeat these problems to reassert Europe on the global scene,” the Turkish president told the deputies.
Recalling terror attacks in New York, Madrid, Istanbul and London, Gül argued that European Muslims have perhaps been more affected than others by these trends. He said Muslims in Europe are very diverse not only in their geographical origins and cultural heritage, but also in their ways of interpreting and practicing their faith. “It is a misperception to view these diverse communities as a unitary one defined by religion. This is fundamentally at odds with ‘European values’,” he noted.
President Gül emphasized that the perpetrators of these crimes have nothing to do with Islam. “One should also bear in mind that those terrorist organizations are attacking many Muslim targets, too. They do not have achievable political objectives, but rather pursue their archaic and illicit utopian ideas,” he stated. The Turkish president made the point that Islam, like all other religions, teaches tolerance and respect for human beings of all faiths. “It is the abuse of faith for political purposes that leads to intolerance and exclusion,” he added.
Gül also responded to questions raised by deputies from the 47 nations in PACE. He said there is a “silent revolution” going on in Turkey in terms of further democratization, admitting, however, that there are still shortcomings. “We have confidence in ourselves in overcoming those shortcomings,” he added. He dismissed a question raised by one deputy regarding lowering the 10 percent threshold in national elections, saying it is simply not possible to amend election laws in an election year. “Everyone agrees in Turkey, including the government and the opposition, that we need a new constitution. The threshold could be taken in that context after the elections,” he said, adding that there is no barrier for independent candidates.
Responding to a question on the restoration of churches in Turkey, Gül said the Turkish state does not make a distinction between churches, synagogues or mosques, and they are trying to restore all historic buildings. He said he believes everyone should be able to freely practice their own religion, including atheists. “We are removing all obstacles before that. Some of these problems may be relevant for the Muslim majority as well,” he pointed out.
The Turkish president gave assurances that his country is doing everything it can to prevent illegal migration to Europe. He warned, however, that Turkey cannot be a place where all illegal immigrants are dumped and left to be taken care of by without any help from other countries. “We need close cooperation,” he said. When a German deputy raised the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) trial issue, Gül said it is up to the independent court to determine whether terror or violence is involved. He also informed deputies that defense given in a mother tongue other than Turkish in the courts is allowed and currently in practice.
As for minorities, Gül said that if any group is not happy with the decision of the domestic courts, they can always take a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). He squarely placed the blame for deteriorating relations with Israel on the Jewish state, saying Turkey did all it could to help Israel to reconcile its differences with its neighbors in the past. “The collective punishment of the Gazan people is not acceptable as confirmed by international bodies. Many international human rights organizations have tried to help the Gazans. Turkey did that, too. People from 47 nations participated in that aid convoy, but Israel attacked them in open waters,” he explained.
Gül also dismissed the genocide question raised by Armenian deputy Naira Zohrabyan, saying the Turkish government does not believe the term can be applied to the incidents during World War I. He called for the establishment a historical commission to investigate World War I killings during which Armenians, Turks and many others perished and asked for all archives to be opened up. Recalling that he was the first Turkish president to visit Armenia, Gül said Turkey wants to normalize relations with its neighbor, but the occupation of Azerbaijani lands must cease. “As long as there are problems in this area, there will be a wall between Europe and Asia. If we solve these, the Caucasus would be a great gateway for prosperity,” he noted.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Scrapping the RAF’s £4bn Nimrod Fleet ‘Risks UK Security’
In an open letter to the Daily Telegraph, former defence chiefs from all three services say the decision to destroy nine MRA4 Nimrods to save money is “perverse” and could cause serious long-term damage to the country’s interests.
The protest over the Government’s decision in last year’s Strategic Defence and Spending Review to destroy what is regarded as a vital part of the country’s defences comes as private demolition contractors hired by the Ministry of Defence began breaking up the aircraft. Former military chiefs believe that without the Nimrod’s surveillance technology, the country will be dangerously exposed. The planes can detect and sink submarines, drop life rafts to sailors in trouble and play a vital role in drug-smuggling and counter-terrorism operations.
In their letter, Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig, the former Chief of the Defence Staff and Chief of Air Staff; Major General Julian Thompson, the commander of land forces in the Falklands conflict; Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason, the former Air Secretary for the RAF; Major General Patrick Cordingley, the commander of the Desert Rats in the Gulf war; Air Commodore Andrew Lambert, the director of the UK National Defence Association; and Admiral Sir John “Sandy” Woodward, urge the Government to halt the scrapping programme.
“Without any explanation the Security and Defence Review announced that the Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft would not be brought into service,” they write.
“The decision was fiercely debated within the MoD but the need for immediate savings and priority to current operations prevailed. Destruction of the nine airframes at Woodford has now begun. “Machine tools have been destroyed; several millions of pounds have been saved but a massive gap in British security has opened. “Vulnerability of sea lanes, unpredictable overseas crises and traditional surface and submarine opposition will continue to demand versatile responsive aircraft.
“Nimrod would have continued to provide long-range maritime and overland reconnaissance — including over the UK — anti-submarine surveillance, air-sea rescue coordination, and perhaps most importantly, reconnaissance support to the Navy’s Trident submarines.” The use of helicopters and Hercules aircraft to fulfil some of these roles “falls far short” of what the Nimrod is capable of, they warn. With the MoD contemplating further cuts, they say: “It may seem perverse to suggest that the gap left by broken Nimrods should be readdressed. If not, short-term cost savings could seriously jeopardise longer term British security interests.”
Privately, it is understood that senior RAF officers believe the strategic spending review has caused “untold damage” to Britain’s defences. The Telegraph has also learnt that very senior military chiefs have written privately to defence industry figures to begin looking at replacing the Nimrods in three years’ time. A likely replacement would probably be an inferior American aircraft.
The Government is determined to plough on with the destruction of the aircraft, saying it will save £2 billion over the next decade. Private contractors have already chopped off the wings of the first of the Nimrods in Woodford, Cheshire. It is estimated that scrapping the aircraft, which have never been used, will cost 1,200 jobs. Marshal of the RAF, Lord Craig, said: “This seems the height of stupidity as these aircraft have another 40 or 50 years life left in them.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Hunt for Muslims in Madrid Jail
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 25 — Serious episodes of intolerance, a real ‘muslim hunt’ was unleashed over the last month in Madrid’s Valdemoro penitentiary. The report was made by sources within the union of jail officers (Acaip) in a statement, quoted today by newspaper El Mundo, which mentions threats, assaults, beatings and even a knife attack on Muslim prisoners since January 15. The report states that on that day, following the cry of “Lets get them, kill them all”, a Spanish convict assaulted a Muslim convict and, backed by another four Spanish inmates, sent him to hospital. The same fate occurred to another three Arab inmates who tried to help the victim of the beating. This first episode was followed by a field battle between the two groups during the break period in the prison yard, who were then separated by the intervention of prison wardens. But the clash was followed, a few days later, by the stabbing of a Muslim convict by one of the Spanish convicts in charge of the revolt.
The Muslim convict was also admitted to the Jail’s infirmary.
According to the statement, it was the same Spanish convict who in the past, in the presence of the jail director, assaulted a black Muslim inmate, sticking a pen in his eye socket and making him blind. A person who the Acaip jail officers describe as dangerous, with the compact group of acolytes he set up in jail, who “already in April of 2008 stabbed Said Chedadi, who had been sentenced for the 9/11 attacks in New York”. The last violent episode happened on Sunday, with the threat cried out to the prison wardens to continue the assaults on the Muslims, “until the body of some Arab lies on the ground”.
This led to the union of prison officers asking for the violent group of Spanish inmates to be transferred out of the Valdemoro prison, in order to prevent the worst from happening.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Man Jailed for Store Floor Pooping
A man who defecated on the floor of a shop in eastern Sweden has been sentenced to prison.
The incident took place in November 2010 when the 45-year-old man was visiting a shop in the town of Finspång, located about 30 kilometres west of Norrköping.
When nature called, the man asked a store employee if he could use the toilet, the local Norrköpings-Tidning newspaper reported.
But the store employee explained that health regulations prohibited customers from using the store toilet, news which prompted the man to take drastic measures.
“He pulled down his pants, squatted on the floor and pooped,” the 21-year-old female cashier said in court during the 45-year-old’s trial, according to the newspaper.
The cashier explained further that the man proceeded to insult her while he relieved himself on the floor of the store.
After he’d finished his business, the 45-year-old left the store, snatching some candy on the way, and leaving behind a pile of excrement and his dirty undies, according to the cashier.
The man was charged with shoplifting, assault, molestation, as well as interference in a judicial matter for threatening the cashier on two other occasions.
During his trial, the man changed defence attorneys twice before the court rejected his third request for a new counsel. After being denied another defence attorney, the man expressed his lack of confidence in the court in front of a gallery filled with schoolchildren on a field trip.
“I’m not going to participate in this damn farce,” he exclaimed before storming out of the courtroom.
Despite the judge’s explanation that leaving the courtroom would deprive him of the chance to tell his side of the story, the man refused to return, prompting the judge to order him placed in a nearby room where he heard the proceedings through an intercom.
Following the hearing, the court found the man guilty of several crimes, save for the shoplifting charge, and sentenced him to eight months in prison and pay compensation to the store.
Since the man was on parole from a previous conviction at the time of the public defecation, he must now also serve two additional months in prison.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Grenade Explodes in Malmö Apartment
An explosion reportedly caused by a hand grenade ripped through an apartment in Malmö in southern Sweden early Wednesday morning in what police have classified as an attempted murder.
Two men who were in the apartment at the time of the blast were uninjured, despite extensive damage to the floor, walls, and furniture.
As of 6am Wednesday morning it remained unclear what exactly had been thrown into the apartment in the Kirseberg neighbourhood and caused the powerful explosion.
Marie Keismar, duty officer with the Skåne police, was unable to confirm media reports that the blast had been caused by a hand grenade.
Citing investigation confidentiality she also wouldn’t comment on which man police believe was the target of the attack.
The explosive device was thrown through the window of the second floor apartment. Neighbours were evacuated after the blast and the apartment was blocked off by police.
Forensic investigators were working throughout the morning to find clues. At the same time, the hunt for possible suspects is well underway.
Keismar emphasised that the police were devoting all available resources to secure evidence and other clues which could lead them to solve the crime.
“But right now we have no suspects,” she said.
She added that the police take the incident very seriously.
“It’s obviously also very unpleasant for those who live in the area when something like this happens,” said Keismar.
Speaking later on Wednesday morning, police spokesperson Bo Lundqvist told TT that neither of the two men in the apartment at the time of the blast wanted to cooperate in the investigation or be interviewed about what happened.
“One of the men is well-known to the police, the other doesn’t have a record whatsoever,” he said.
No one has yet to be arrested in connection with the attack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Far-Right Calls to Fight Islamic Extremism
Sweden’s far-right leader on Wednesday called for a fight against Islamic extremism at a parliamentary debate in connection with the December suicide attack in Stockholm.
“Terrorism is not an isolated threat. It is a form of Islamic tactic and it is Islamism as a political ideology that needs to be fought and mapped out,” Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson said.
Åkesson, whose anti-immigration party burst onto the Swedish political scene after the September election, acknowledged that only an extremely small portion of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims committed terrorist acts, but said many more “sympathise with Islamism.”
Åkesson, whose Sweden Democrats’ requested Wednesday’s parliamentary debate following the country’s first-ever suicide attack, insisted an important debate had been stifled in Sweden by “a fear of being branded Islamophobic.”
Taimour Abdulwahab, an Iraqi-born Swede who staged the December 11 attack on the eve of his 29th birthday, had sent messages invoking Islam before blowing himself up near a busy shopping street.
He was the only person killed in the attack.
Justice Minister Beatrice Ask acknowledged extremism existed in Sweden, but tried to nuance the picture.
“I think, personally, that a lack of hope and optimism and real or perceived injustices attract mainly men to extremist movements,” she said in her opening remarks, also criticising the Sweden Democrats for voting against a proposal on increased international cooperation against terrorism.
Green Party parliamentarian Maria Ferm meanwhile blasted Åkesson for “trying to connect the typical picture of a terrorist to the Muslim man,” insisting that only 0.34 percent of all terror attacks in Europe are committed by Islamic extremists.
Most attacks, she said, were carried out by rightwing and leftwing extremists.
Åkesson rejected that argument.
“To compare militant vegans from Umea (in northern Sweden) with jihadists is a confused approach,” he said…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The Danish Witch-Hunt
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about the witch-hunt in Denmark against Lars Hedegaard, President of the Danish Free Press Society and The International Free Press Society. Along with a Danish MP, Jesper Langballe, Hedegaard has been prosecuted for ‘racism’ after he drew attention to ‘honour’ violence among Muslim families. He is now on trial, and this is the speech he made to the court in Frederiksberg two days ago. Here’s a flavour:
My counsel has instructed me that in cases brought under Article 266b, the only thing that determines whether one is convicted or not is a matter of the perceived insult whereas one is barred from proving the truth of the statement. The article deals with public statements whereby a group of people are ‘threatened, insulted or degraded’. But as my lawyer has already noted, I have made no public statement.
When it comes to Article 266b, there is no equality before the law. I am daily insulted and degraded by something I read or hear and I am sure that most people have the same experience… As jurisprudence shows, not only in Denmark but in all European countries with similar insult articles in their penal code, these insult articles open the gates to inequality before the law. There are insulted who enjoy the tender graces of the public prosecutor, and there are the less favoured who must endure insults directed at them.
…What does the public prosecutor hope to accomplish by my conviction? He may drag me in front of a court. He may portray me as a racist, a right-wing extremist and a non-human. He may do the same to hundreds and thousands of others who insist on their right of free speech to describe Islam and Muslim culture just like we would deal with any other phenomenon in a free society.
…In conclusion permit me to mention the true victims in this case. The public prosecutor has not considered the 20,000 women in the Muslim world who every year fall victim to so-called honour killings, or the 50,000 Muslim girls in Germany who the federal police consider threatened with genital mutilation, nor the hundreds of thousands of little girls in Muslim majority societies who have been sold into marriage with much older men and who must therefore live a life of constant rape, while Islamic scholars preach that this is in complete accordance with religious orthodoxy.
I hope that the judge as opposed to the public prosecutor will consider the fate of these unfortunate human beings. Likewise I hope that the judge will realise the absurdity of prosecuting me for statements made within the confines of my own four walls.
As Mark Steyn notes in a fine and savage piece about this obscenity in Denmark:
His is merely the latest in a long line of the western world’s new heresy trials — Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, Geert Wilders and Gregorius Nekschot in the Netherlands, Michel Houllebecq in France, Michael Smith in Australia, Ezra Levant and me in Canada.
As in Canada, as in the Netherlands, so in Denmark the defendants in such cases are informed that the truth is no defense. …That’s why these are heresy trials, and only the first of many. The prosecutors think Hedegaard, Langballe, Wilders, Mrs Sabbaditsch-Wolff et al are apostates from the new state religion of multiculturalism. Thuggish Muslim lobby groups, on the other hand, consider them heretics against Islam. In practice, it makes little difference, and multiculturalism is merely an interim phase, a once useful cover for an Islamic imperialism so confident it now barely needs one. The good news is that European prosecutors are doing such a grand job with their pilot program of show trials you’ll hardly notice the difference when sharia is formally instituted. …
This trial shames Denmark. If Lars Hedegaard is convicted, another light in Europe will have been extinguished, and the remainder will follow, very fast. In their folly, the multiculti enforcers are setting the stage for great violence, and a descent into barbarism.
Read Hedegaard’s speech, and weep for Europe.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Wear the Hijab or I’ll Kill You, Cousin Told Girl’: Muslim Tells of Terrifying Phone Threats
A man threatened to kill his cousin and harm her family after she decided to stop wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf, a court has heard.
Mohamed Al-Hakim, 29, allegedly phoned Alya Al-Safar to tell her she must die because of the ‘shame’ she had brought — leaving her too afraid to leave the house.
[…]
‘Listen Alya, I am warning you if by the 19th of June you are not wearing the hijab back, I am warning you I will kill you and harm you. I am giving you ten days. You brought shame to your family, you should not have done that.’
Al-Hakim, who denies one charge of making threats to kill, allegedly said he thought the phone call might be taped but he warned her he was ‘not afraid of anything’. Miss Al-Safar said: ‘He was calm. I was so scared, I really felt scared because my cousin was threatening me.
‘I didn’t know if he was joking, if he was just mad, or if it was true and he would do it.
‘He started shouting, “Listen to me, you had better do what I said.
‘I have seen you on the Edgware Road [a busy street in central London] and if I see you again I will kill you”.
‘He said something about harming my father as well.
‘I was so scared I didn’t want to leave the house and everyone in my family said, “Don’t go out”.’
Days earlier Al-Hakim, of Acton Park, West London, had called Miss Al-Safar’s mother to complain about the decision to ditch the hijab and had shouted down the phone, the jury heard.
Miss Al-Safar said: ‘Then he said something like, “You all are bitches and whores”.’
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Lite’ Terror Control Orders Designed to Keep Nick Clegg Safe From Ire of Lib Dem Voters, Claims Labour
Nick Clegg came under fire today when Labour accused the Government of horse-trading over the issue of control orders to appease Lib Dem voters.
Unveiling the new Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures, Home Secretary Theresa May announced 16-hour curfews for terror suspects would be replaced by 10-hour ‘overnight residence requirements’.
However, the new ‘lite’ version of the controversial orders was immediately said to be a result of the difficulties faced by Nick Clegg, who campaigned at the General Election on a pledge to abolish them completely.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Blair Sister-in-Law Wants Him Tried for Iraq Crimes
Former prime minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth, a rights campaigner and Muslim convert, said on Wednesday that he should be tried for war crimes over the invasion of Iraq.
Booth, the half-sister of Blair’s barrister wife Cherie, is in Malaysia for lectures organised by Viva Palestina, a British-based organisation associated with controversial politician George Galloway. Asked whether Blair should be arrested and sent to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for war crimes, Booth replied: “Absolutely. He misled the British people and took Britain to war on a lie.”
The conflict in Iraq was “an offence”, she told reporters after a speech at a Malaysian university, saying it was organised well in advance between Blair and the United States leadership. Booth has been a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, and a supporter of the Palestinian cause, and in 2008 travelled with other activists to Gaza by ship to protest against Israel’s blockade of the territory. The 43-year-old, who wore a black headscarf that tightly framed her face as she gave an address on “Islam from the perspective of Western women”, discussed her own conversion which took place 15 weeks ago. “My friends think I was naive and stupid, they have rubbished me so much,” she said. “Really, joining Islam is not a trendy thing to do…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Control Orders: Terrorism Suspects to be Given Greater Freedoms
Suspected terrorists who are deemed a danger to Britain will have the restrictions on their movement relaxed following a revamp of the control orders regime.
Home Secretary Theresa May announced that the measures used against suspects who have not been convicted in court will be renamed and that suspects will be allowed the possibility of staying away from their home overnight.
But the new powers will no longer need to be reviewed every year, a clear signal that restrictions against suspected terrorists against whom prosecutions cannot be brought are here to stay.
The current 16-hour curfews will be replaced by an “overnight residence requirement”, typically of between eight and 10 hours, Mrs May said.
The term “control order” has been scrapped and will be replaced with “Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures”, or Tpims, Mrs May said.
The new powers will be limited to two years and will only be renewed “if there is new evidence that they have re-engaged in terrorism-related activities”.
The overnight stays, which will replace the current curfews, will be monitored by electronic tags and there will be an additional level of flexibility with the suspects allowed to apply to spend a night away from their main residence.
Asked about the difference between curfews and overnight stays, a Whitehall official said the overnight stays could be much shorter and more flexible, allowing arrangements to be made for a suspect’s shift patterns at work or other needs.
The new powers will “more clearly target and focus those limitations”, while still enabling authorities to ban a suspect from visiting a particular building or street, Mrs May said.
The Tpims will also give greater freedom of communication and association than the control order regime, which was described as being akin to house arrest by critics.
Limited use of the internet on a home computer will also be permitted, provided that all passwords are provided to the authorities.
But curfews and further restrictions on communications, association and movement could all be brought in as part of “exceptional emergency measures”, the Home Office said.
The issue is particularly fraught for the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg, who campaigned at the General Election on a pledge to abolish control orders completely.
In his review of counter-terrorism powers, Lord Macdonald QC said he would regard the use of curfews and tags as part of a replacement regime for control orders as “disproportionate, unnecessary and objectionable”, adding they would “serve no useful purpose”.
Asked if she accepted that the new plans would still impose on civil liberties, Mrs May said: “What I accept is that sadly there are a small number of cases where we are not able to prosecute people but we do need to take measures to maintain national security and keep people safe.”
A total of eight terror suspects are currently subject to control orders but putting them under surveillance instead would be difficult with limited resources.
Round-the-clock surveillance of just one suspect can involve up to 60 officers, it is understood.
Mrs May went on: “The threat from terrorism remains serious and complex and I have always said that this Government’s first priority is to protect public safety and national security.
“But for too long the balance between security and British freedoms has not been the right one.
“The measures we are announcing today will restore our civil liberties while still allowing the police and security services to protect us.
“They are in keeping with British traditions and our commitment to the rule of law. I also believe they will restore public confidence in counter-terrorism legislation.”
ty, the civil liberties campaign group, said the announcement showed that “control orders will effectively be retained”.
Shami Chakrabarti, the charity’s director, said: “We welcome movement on stop and search, 28-day detention and council snooping, but when it comes to ending punishment without trial, the Government appears to have bottled it.
“Spin and semantics aside, control orders are retained and rebranded, if in a slightly lower-fat form.
“As before, the innocent may be punished without a fair hearing and the guilty will escape the full force of criminal law. This leaves a familiar bitter taste.
“Parliament must now decide whether the final flavour will be of progress, disappointment or downright betrayal.”
Liberty said the plans amounted to a “control order-lite” which could lead to “potentially punishing the innocent while the truly dangerous may remain at large in the community”.
| — Hat tip: A. Millar | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Home Office Silent Over Fatwa Threat in Tooting
The Home Office today declined to comment on posters which have been put up in Tooting issuing a Fatwa on Theresa May.
The town’s MP, Sadiq Khan, said he had informed the Home Secretary about the posters this morning in Parliament — but a spokeswoman for her office said no comment would be made on the matter.
The Western-style wanted posters claim the Fatwa — a term sometimes used to mean an Islamic death sentence imposed upon a person — is “for the abduction, kidnapping and false imprisonment” of various radical clerics.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Tooting Islamic Centre (TIC) criticised the posters, which have been plastered on phone boxes, bus shelters and even the town’s message board, close to Tooting Broadway Tube station.
He said: “A Fatwa is a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist.
“To describe the term as otherwise leads to both confusion and uncertainty.
“The TIC is not aware of the makers, and are not in any way associated with this leaflet.
“TIC condemns the use of such language and incitement.”
The posters direct the reader to a professionally-made website — theresamayfatwa.co.
The site carries a mobile number but when the Wandsworth Guardian dialled it, an automatic voicemail message played.
Wandsworth police are investigating the matter and working with the council to remove the posters…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Islamophobic? Too Tolerant More Like
AS I type this letter I’m hearing on the news that 35 people have been killed at Moscow airport by yet another suicide bomber — more lives lost because of some nutter’s warped thinking on religon.
In the same week, Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi fuels intolerance with talk of the spread of Islamophobia. What she fails to understand is that the British public are known for being the most tolerant people in this world. Who else would sit back and take these cuts and fuel rises other than the British? But when we have a Muslim preacher calling our Queen disgusting, Muslim radicals wanting to blow innocent people up, demanding Sharia law, demanding the use of halal meat, burning poppies on Remembrance Sunday, insulting our troops, refusing to integrate with their new hosts when they come here, I think it’s a bit rich of Sayeeda Warsi to point the finger at us British. Is she so out of touch that she thinks people will sit back and say nothing?
Maybe she should be concentrating on getting the Muslim community to root out these fanatics themselves rather than wag the finger at us, then maybe attitudes will change.
Just think, if a Christian cleric called a Muslim leader leader disgusting the state would come crashing down on that cleric. But we all know that would never happen as our Christian leaders are too busy appeasing everyone else and letting our Christian values be attacked.
So Baroness Warsi, keep your nose away from my dinner table — any thoughts that people have around a dinner table are their own, not anyone else’s. And that’s the difference — they are thoughts not actions…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Liverpool Student Becomes the First Person to Graduate With a Degree in the Beatles
A former Miss Canada finalist has become the first person in the world to graduate with a Masters degree in The Beatles.
Canadian singer Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy, 53, was one of the first students to sign up for the course on the Fab Four when it launched at Liverpool Hope University in March 2009.
Twelve full-time students joined the Master of Arts course in ‘The Beatles, Popular Music and Society’ and Mary-Lu is the first of her class to graduate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mother Dies After 5-Hour Hospital Wait ‘Because A&E Was Clogged Up With Drunks’
A grieving husband has attacked A&E services for prioritising drunk patients, after his seriously sick wife waited five hours to see a doctor.
Laura Martin, 39, was sent home after a brief consultation only to return with her husband Andrew a few hours later when her condition worsened.
The couple then waited a further two hours before the mother-of-two was seen again, by which time her condition had deteriorated. She died from lung failure later that day caused by a mysterious illness.
Mr Martin, 41, said the outcome might have been different if the hospital had not been inundated with Saturday night revellers.
‘The A&E was overrun, because it was the weekend everyone came in from a drinking night,’ he told MailOnline.
‘I saw one lady brought in by two friends who was seated slumped over her chair, but after a while she seemed to get better and they went out to call a cab without even seeing a doctor.
‘The doctors called out five or six names where no one responded because they had all left.
‘You should get some priority if you are seriously ill.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: MPs Slam ‘Secretive’ Climategate Probes
TWO inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive.
The row, which became known as Climategate, erupted in 2009 over allegations that researchers had deliberately strengthened evidence suggesting human activity was to blame for rising temperatures.
MPs on the Science and Technology Committee have now concluded that both probes into the scandal had failed to “fully investigate” claims that scientists had deleted embarrassing emails.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Portsmouth Councillor in Imam Prayer Protest
A Portsmouth councillor walked out of a council meeting because an imam was asked to deliver an opening prayer.
Conservative councillor Malcolm Hey left Tuesday night’s Portsmouth City Council chamber while Sheikh Fazle Abbas Datoo was speaking.
The imam, from the Al Mahdi mosque in Wickham, had been invited by the city’s lord mayor Paula Riches.
Mr Hey said it was not appropriate for a Muslim to deliver prayers at the start of a full council meeting.
His behaviour was heavily criticised by Muslim community group Wessex Jamaat, which said snubbing the imam by walking out was “a serious issue”.
‘Different god’
Mr Hey, who sits on the Portsmouth Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education, rejoined the meeting straight after the prayer.
Gerald Veron-Jackson, leader of the Liberal Democrat-controlled council, has written to Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi calling for the councillor to be excluded from the party.
“Not only were [his] actions hugely disrespectful to the lord mayor and to the imam, but also to the whole of the Muslim community,” he added.
Mr Hey, ward councillor for Copnor, is a founder member of the Grace Baptist Church in Copnor Road.
“In a letter, and without any consultation, the lord mayor invited, and will invite, other religions to take part and I was not happy with that,” he said.
“I’m a Christian, not a Muslim, and I do not believe we are praying to the same god.
“I think we have a tradition of Christianity in this country, our legal system is based on that, and most of our official meetings have some Christian prayers or worship as part of that event.
“I do not think at this point in time it’s reasonable to change our history and have, say, some Muslim tradition brought into that environment.”
Yasin Rahim, of Muslim community group Wessex Jamaat, said: “It was our imam who Malcolm snubbed by walking out.
“I think this is a serious issue here. The imam was invited by the mayoress — it was an invitation to the table of brotherhood and here he walks out.
“It smacks of inauthenticity. He says he’s not Islamophobic but that is like saying I’m turning right and then he turns left.”
It is customary for the authority to start its full council meetings with a prayer from a local Christian leader, but the lord mayor was keen to involve other religious groups as well in an effort towards greater inclusion.
Councillor Riches said she was “deeply disappointed” by Mr Hey’s actions and they had not yet spoken.
“We are a multi-cultural, multi-faith city and in my particular ward I have the mosque and a Sikh temple.
“I’m deeply disappointed that he felt he should leave the chamber.
“I feel, in a way, it’s being disrespectful.”
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The BBC Became a Propaganda Machine for Climate Change Zealots, Says Peter Sissons… And I Was Treated as a Lunatic for Daring to Dissent
Institutionally biased to the Left, politically correct and with a rudderless leadership. This is Peter Sissons’ highly critical view of the BBC in his new memoirs, in which he describes his fascinating career over four decades as a television journalist. Here, in the latest part of our serialisation, he reveals how it was heresy at the BBC to question claims about climate change…
My time as a news and current affairs anchor at the BBC was characterised by weak leadership and poor direction from the top, but hand in hand with this went the steady growth of political correctness.
Indeed, it was almost certainly the Corporation’s unchallengeable PC culture that made strong leadership impossible.
Leadership — one person being in charge, trusting his or her own judgment, taking a decision and telling others what to do — was shied away from in favour of endless meetings of a dozen or more people trying to arrive at some sort of consensus.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Women Entitled to a Council House if They Move Out Because Their Partner Shouts at Them, Top Judges Rule
The Supreme Court ruled that women whose partners shout at them persistently can claim they are effectively ‘homeless’ — and will be entitled to a council house.
In a test case, the judges ruled that Mirhmet Yemshaw was the victim of ‘violence’ at the hands of her husband even though she was never physically attacked.
Her local authority had earlier ruled that she was at low risk of being physically attacked by her partner.
The decision could have wide-ranging implications for councils across the country.
If a couple split and the ‘abused’ partner is shouted at they will potentially be entitled to be handed a new home by their local authority.
In August 2008, Mrs Yemshaw fled the flat she shared with her partner and two children — a girl aged six and a boy who was eight months old. She sought the help of the housing authorty in Hounslow, London, as she had nowhere to live.
In interviews with the housing officers Mrs Yemshaw said she was scared and complained that ‘her husband hates her and (she) suspects that he is seeing another woman.
‘(She) is scared that if he confronts him he may hit her. (However her) husband has never actually hit her,’ the judgment said.
Mrs Yemshaw complained that her partner did not give her money for housekeeping and was scared he would take the children away.
She was told by officers she could not be classified as ‘homeless’ under the Housing Act as her husband had not threatened her with physical violence.
A review panel found that it was reasonable for her to continue to live at the matrimonial home.
Today a panel of five justices in the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that she could be classed as ‘homeless’ as the shouting could be construed as ‘violence’. They referred the case back to the housing authority.
If a person is without a place to live then the council must give them accommodation — unless they left their previous property voluntarily.
Lady Hale, giving the lead judgment, said the definition of domestic violence must now include not only physical and threatening or intimidating behaviour but any other form of abuse which may give rise to the risk of harm.
Mrs Yemshaw had told the housing officers that her husband, who rented the property in his sole name, shouted in front of the children and did not treat her ‘like a human’.
Lady Hale said that ‘violence’ can also include ‘strength or intensity of emotion, fervour and passion’.
She said the legal understanding of domestic violence had moved on ‘from a narrow focus upon battered wives and physical contact’.
The Justice of the Supreme Court said the meaning of ‘violence’ under the 1996 Act should be brought up to date in line with modern thinking.
Lady Hale added: ‘The essential question is whether an updated meaning is consistent with the statutory purpose.
‘In this case the purpose (of the Act) is to ensure that a person is not obliged to remain living in a home where she, her children or other members of her household are at risk of harm.’
Lord Rodger said he could see no reason why Parliament would have intended the position to be any different where someone will be subjected to deliberate conduct, or threats of deliberate conduct, that may cause her psychological, as opposed to physical, harm.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Ashton: Aspiration to Change Like in Tunisia
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, JANUARY 26 — The people of Egypt are like the people of Tunisia, according to a parallel drawn by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The thousands of people who demonstrated in the streets of Cairo “expressed their will and their desire for political change,” said Ashton, through her spokesperson. “The EU is closely following the popular demonstrations that are taking place in Cairo, viewing them as a sign of the aspirations of many citizens in the wake of the events in Tunisia,” added Ashton, who also expressed her “regret” for the victims.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Bans Demonstrations
CAIRO — Egypt said on Wednesday it was banning demonstrations and quickly dispersed protesters who tried to gather, seeking to draw a line under unprecedented protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.
Activists called on Egyptians to take to the streets again on Wednesday to end Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule after a “Day of Wrath” of anti-government protests across Egypt in which three protesters and one policeman were killed.
Police fired teargas and water cannon in the early hours of Wednesday to disperse protesters in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square. By daybreak, Cairo and other cities were calm. Police were deployed in large numbers around the capital.
Brief attempts by protesters to gather again on Wednesday outside a court complex in Cairo and in the industrial city of Mahallah el-Kubra were quickly broken up. In Tahrir square, police questioned and moved on anyone who appeared to loiter.
As cleaners swept the last stones and debris from Cairo’s streets, the independent newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm arrived at newsstands bearing a stark red front-page headline: “Warning”.
“No provocative movements or protest gatherings or organisation of marches or demonstrations will be allowed, and immediate legal procedures will be taken and participants will be handed over to investigating authorities,” the state news agency MENA cited the Interior Ministry as saying.
Some 20,000 demonstrators, complaining of poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression and inspired by this month’s downfall of the president of Tunisia, had turned out in cities across Egypt on Tuesday to demand that Mr. Mubarak step down.
“To any free and honest citizen with a conscience who fears for his country, to anyone who saw yesterday’s violence against protesters, we ask you to pronounce a general strike across Egypt today and tomorrow,” one activist wrote on a Facebook site that has been used as a tool to marshal protests.
One opposition group, the Sixth of April Youth, called on its Facebook page for protests to continue on Wednesday “and after tomorrow, until Mr. Mubarak goes”.
A set of political demands were posted on Facebook and passed around Tahrir Square on slips of paper before police moved in.
They included the resignation of Mr. Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, the dissolution of parliament and the formation of a national unity government. A labour union activist repeated the demands to the crowd in the square by megaphone.
Egypt’s population of 80 million is growing by 2% a year. About 60% of the population — and 90% of the unemployed — are under 30 years old.
About 40% live on less than US$2 a day, and a third are illiterate.
Washington, a close ally of Egypt and a major donor, called for restraint. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Mr. Mubarak’s government was stable and seeking ways to meet Egyptians’ needs.
French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said: “I think one must be able to demonstrate without there being violence and, much less, deaths,” adding that protesters had “an aspiration for more freedom”.
Tuesday’s protesters had chanted “Down, Down, Hosni Mubarak” and torn up pictures of the president and his son, Gamal, who many Egyptians believe is being groomed for future office, though both father and son have denied any such plan.
“Change must happen. It must,” said a butcher in central Cairo who asked to be identified simply as “an Egyptian”.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Britain and the United States, told Reuters Insider Television the future of Mr. Mubarak’s government depended on its ability to understand the reasons for the protests.
“Whether they can catch up as leaders to what the population is aiming (for) is still to be seen,” he said.
Twitter, the Internet messaging service that has been one of the main methods used by demonstrators to organise, said it had been blocked in Egypt.
“The difference is great between freedom of expression and chaos,” Safwat el-Sherif, secretary general of the ruling National Democratic Party, told the state newspaper al-Akhbar.
A government source said ministers had been told to ensure staff returned to work on Wednesday and did not join protests.
But the activists on the Web appeared determined to keep up their momentum.
“Tomorrow, don’t go to work. Don’t go to college. We will all go down to the streets and stand hand in hand for you our Egypt. We will be millions,” wrote one on Facebook…
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Protesters Turn Tables on Police by Forcing Water Cannons Onto Their Wagon
Angry Egyptian demonstrators being targeted with water cannon retaliated by turning one of the powerful hoses back onto the security forces.
Egyptian police were attempting to disperse the crowds protesting against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak and the country’s grinding poverty in the centre of Cairo.
But the crowd fought back.
It was a small victory against the security forces who have also used rubber bullets, batons and tear gas to try to control the protesters.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Protests: President’s Son ‘Flees to London With 100 Pieces of Luggage’
he son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is said to have fled to London after the country was rocked by two days of riots over poverty.
Gamal Mubarak, 48 and believed to be his father’s choice of successor, boarded a private jet from Cairo to London with his wife, daughter and around 100 piece of luggage, according to reports.
His sudden flight, reported by the U.S. based Arabic website Akhbar al-Arab came as hundreds of demonstrators hit the streets despite a government ban on protests.
But strengthened forces quickly moved in and used tear gas and beatings to disperse them.
Security officials said a total of 860 protesters have been rounded up nationwide since yesterday, when tens of thousands turned out for the largest protests in years — inspired by the uprising in Tunisia.
They demanded president Mubarak’s removal and a solution to grinding poverty, rising prices and high unemployment.
After nightfall today more than 2,000 demonstrators were marching on a Nile-side road when dozens of riot police with helmets and shields charged the crowd. It was a scene repeated throughout the day wherever demonstrators tried to gather.
They were the latest in outbursts of political discontent in Egypt that have been growing more frequent and more intense over the past year…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Launches Crackdown on Protesters as US Urges Reform
Police arrested 860 people across the country after bloody confrontations with security forces using rubber bullets, batons, tear gas and water cannon.
A protester and a policeman were killed on Wednesday night when a car ran them over during a protest in a poor, central Cairo neighbourhood. Officials said earlier the two died when they were hit by rocks but later changed the account. Three protesters and a policeman were killed on Tuesday.
Protesters in Suez set a government building on fire and tried to burn down a local office of Egypt’s ruling party with petrol bombs. Demonstrators had earlier broken through police cordons despite hundreds being severely beaten and the presence of the feared undercover police on the streets.
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether President Hosni Mubarak, the target of demonstrators’ anger, still has the Obama administration’s support.
Mrs Clinton said the government should allow peaceful protests instead of cracking down.
“We are particularly hopeful that the Egyptian government will take this opportunity to implement political, economic and social reforms that will answer the legitimate interests of the Egyptian people,” she said. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, also urged Mr Mubarak to make concessions.
The tens of thousands on the streets of Cairo took inspiration from Tunisia, which saw a North African Arab state overturn its dictatorship for the first time in decades.
Anxious to avoid a repeat of Tuesday’s Day of Wrath, which saw the largest political demonstrations in Egypt during Mr Mubarak’s 30-year presidency, the government was also considering banning gatherings at Friday prayers. The Muslim holy day of obligation is now looming as the sternest test that the 82-year-old former general has faced. “No provocative movements or protest gatherings or organisations of marches or demonstrations will be allowed, and immediate legal procedures will be taken and participants will be handed over to investigating authorities,” the interior ministry said in a statement. Over two thousand people defied the curfew and marched on a major downtown Cairo boulevard along the Nile on Wednesday night. They were stormed by riot police with shields. In other clashes, protesters stoned police, who fought back with rubber bullets…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Germany ‘Very Worried’ About Unrest in Egypt
Germany is “very worried” by unrest in Egypt, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Wednesday, calling on all sides to refrain from violence and on Cairo to do more for human rights.
“We are very worried by how the situation in Egypt is developing,” Westerwelle told reporters.
“We call on all the parties to exercise restraint and renounce violence. The situation in Egypt should not be allowed to escalate further and for this reason restraint from violence …. is the order of the day.”
Westerwelle said countries where human rights and freedoms were denied risked instability and conflict.
“The current situation in Egypt highlights the need for a dialogue in society, it highlights the need for more democracy, respect for people and for human rights. That is the best way to achieve stability,” he added.
Four people died on Tuesday during unprecedented nationwide rallies seeking to end President Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade-long rule.
Activists have called for more protests on Wednesday but the interior ministry said further demonstrations were banned and anyone taking part would be prosecuted.
“The right of people to protest peacefully must be protected — that applies to all countries,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular government press briefing.
The spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday that protests in Egypt highlight the “wish for political change” and are “a signal” after recent events in Tunisia led to the ouster of autocratic President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: 260 Mln Euros for Damage in Inland Regions
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 25 — The allocation of 500 million dinars (some 260 million euros) for “urgent and immediate” assistance for inhabitants of the inland governorates of Sidi Bouzid, Kasserine and Gafsa, was decided yesterday by the Council of Minister. The sum will be used not only as initial compensation, pending further assessments, for people killed or injured during the demonstrations that brought about the fall of Ben Ali’s regime, but also to compensate craftsmen and small business holders for damage suffered due to the unrest in the streets, allowing them to return to work. This is being done in consideration of the fact that virtually none of their activities are covered by insurance.
Another part of the sum will be destined to young unemployed people who have a high school diploma. They will be offered the possibility of a part-time voluntary job with monthly pay of 150 dinars (some 78 euros) until they find a fixed and stable job. Minister for Regional and Local Development Ahmed Nejib Chebbi said that these measures are of immediate assistance; the ways in which they will be managed and distributed will be decided by the citizens, through organisations and civil structures.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Social Solidarity Depot in Tunis Looted
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 25 — The central depot of the Tunisian Union of Social Solidarity, in the zone of El Khadra on the outskirts of Tunis, was yesterday looted. The looters stole food, blankets, clothes and other materials. The Union is a charity which distributes aid to needy families.
For their part, the employees of the Union are protesting in order to obtain the regularisation of their position, from temporary to fixed.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Insurance: Initial Damage Estimate is 500 Mln Dinars
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 25 — According to an initial estimate of damage suffered by their clients as a result of the recent unrest, Tunisian insurance companies estimate that the sum that they will have to pay out to be 500 million dinars (some 260 million euros). According to the Fédération tunisienne des sociéte’s d’assurance (FTUSA), the most consistent part regards the large-scale retail trade sector and the banking sector. FUTSA, which for this year has announced an increase in insurance premiums, is looking to strengthen its coverage capacity in consideration of the request to extend coverage put forward by different firms. And, according to African Manager, negotiations with Kuwaiti insurance company Awaris are currently underway with this aim.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Government Asks Interpol to Arrest Ben Ali
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 26 — The Tunisian government has asked Interpol to arrest former President Ben Ali, his wife and other family members. This is what has been announced by Justice Minister Lazhar Karoui Chebbi in a press conference. Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, he said, are accused of “the illegal acquisition of moveable and immoveable property” and the “illegal transfer of foreign currency abroad.” The President, who left the country on January 14, is in Saudi Arabia. The Minister said that six members of the presidential guard are also wanted for inciting violence after Ben Ali fled.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisian Revolution Forces a Rethink in Europe
The fall of the regime in Tunis took the European Union by surprise and exposed France’s contradictory policy. The tumult is now threatening to spread to other North African countries, with further protests. The Europeans are now forced to rethink their position: Should they be pushing for democracy or stability?
This is clearly not one of his favorite issues to discuss. Nicolas Sarkozy lowered his head and stared at the paper in front of him on the lectern. “Behind the emancipation of women, the drive for education and training, the economic dynamism, the emergence of a middle class — there was despair, a suffering, a sense of suffocation,” he said. “We have to recognize that we underestimated this.” There had been unbearable corruption in Tunisia, he added.
At a press conference on Monday, the French president went into damage-control mode. For years, France and the European Union have courted former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — and damaged their reputations in the process. They pursued economic and security interests, but ignored human rights.
As Tunisians took to the streets by the thousands in protest, they couldn’t count on any support from Europe. Only days before he fled, French Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said she wanted to lend the “knowhow” of French police to help Ben Ali maintain order, even after police had fired on protesters. Her colleague, Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterand, said the country was not an “unequivocal dictatorship,” and suggested that describing Ben Ali as a dictator was “completely exaggerated.”
“The Europeans did what the French wanted. They thought that Ben Ali would be a bulwark against terrorism and that’s why they had to accept his dictatorship,” said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the head of the Green Party in the European Parliament. Even as the pressure continued to mount on Ben Ali, the best the EU member states could come up with was an agreement to continue to follow the developments more closely. Within hours, Ben Ali had fled. The EU’s role never went beyond monitoring the situation from afar.
The EU’s Hard as Nails Pursuit of Own Interests
Now critical voices are growing within the EU, with demands for a shift in policy. In hindsight, it had been a mistake to back authoritarian regimes, said Rainer Stinner, a foreign policy expert with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the German parliament. He said EU countries had placed too great an emphasis on stability while giving human rights short shrift. Ruprecht Polenz, the foreign policy spokesman in parliment for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, also conceded that fears of Islamists had led to the wrong policies for the North Africa region. Speaking to the Rheinische Post newspaper, he said: “We need a strategy that promotes freedom and rule of law.”
But what would this policy entail? The European Union is based on values like democracy, the rule of law, human rights, basic freedoms that are all anchored in the Lisbon Treaty, and the EU’s strategy with the North African nations has also been based those principles. The problem is that the EU hasn’t pushed them very hard. “The EU is considered a force of good, but what it actually engages in is hard as nails pursuit of its own interests,” says Annegret Bendiek, an EU foreign policy expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. “The EU has to ask itself whether it wants to work together with countries where human rights are trampled on.” Bendiek said it was important for the EU to be more determined in its approach. “Muddling through as they have done up until now will not lead to more effective policies,” she said.
Scandinavian countries, in particular, are interested in clear words from the EU and will be pushing for a greater observance of human rights. And the Maghreb issue is likely to be on the agenda at the next meeting of the EU foreign ministers on Jan. 31.
How Much Sway Does EU Have in North Africa?
The European Union could soon face the next test. Trouble is also brewing in Tunisia’s neighboring country. On Sunday, a man died in Algeria after setting himself on fire. A similar act of self-immolation sparked the Tunisian insurgency in December. Opposition groups in Algeria have already been protesting for weeks, pushing for democracy and the lifting of a national state of emergency that has been in effect ever since it was imposed in 1992. On Sunday, police used force to break up a protest leaving dozens of people injured.
There were protests in Yemen as well over the weekend. Thousands demonstrated in the capital Sana’a demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled the country for the past 32 years. On Friday, demonstrators were out in several Jordanian cities too, pushing for an end to the government there.
Still, it is unclear whether the European Union has the political clout to apply pressure in many countries in the region. When it came to Tunisia, the lever was clear: 73 percent of Tunisian exports end up in the EU while 72 percent of the country’s imports come from the bloc. Brussels, however, showed little interest in promoting democracy and human rights in the country.
With countries like Libya, Algeria and Jordan, however, EU economic ties are not strong enough to exert much pressure. Plus, the EU relies on oil and gas deliveries from many countries in the region…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia Should be EU’s ‘Highest Strategic Priority’
Tunisia is in turmoil in the aftermath of the Jasmine Revolution, and it’s still unclear which direction the country will take. The head of the European Union Institute for Security Studies sees an opportunity for transforming the whole region but warns that the EU needs to do more to help.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The European Union hasn’t exactly excelled itself in its handling of Tunisia. The deposed president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was fawned over for decades as the supposed guarantor of political stability, while the EU simply turned a blind eye to torture and repression. Do you regard Europe as being complicit?
Alvaro de Vasconcelos: I have to agree there. The European Union, and especially the member states geographically closest to Tunisia, accepted Ben Ali’s regime for far too long. They saw the status quo as a safer option than experiments with democracy. The underlying reason for this is the Europeans’ fear that Islamists could gain power. Many still consider authoritarian Arab regimes to be the lesser evil.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ben Ali used this fear very effectively to win support for his own dictatorship.
De Vasconcelos: The question is which Islamists we’re talking about here. The largest Islamist movement in Tunisia, the Ennahda party, is comparatively moderate; it has nothing in common with extremist and jihadist groups at the other end of the spectrum. Political Islam is not a homogeneous bloc. There are significant ideological differences between, say, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) in Morocco, the AKP (Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party) in Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Apart from that, Ben Ali did not only repress the religious opposition, he also did away with the secular opposition. He nipped any possible manifestations of democracy in the bud — which actually tended to strengthen the extremists as a result.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: One EU member state had especially close ties to the Tunisian dictator, namely France. French Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie even offered Ben Ali “the know-how of (France’s) security forces” to help control the uprising. Isn’t that embarrassing for Paris?
De Vasconcelos: Well, the northern EU member states also cooperated with Ben Ali, even if the southern states certainly benefited more directly. When it comes to France, it seems to me the fundamental question is how a former colonial power should interact with its former colony. I’m Portuguese, and my country has very similar difficulties in finding a balanced relationship with its former colonies.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But who should have used its ties to Tunisia to push for more reforms, if not France?…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Unprecedented Anti-Government Protests Rock Egypt
Police fought with thousands of Egyptians who defied a government ban on Wednesday to protest against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old rule, firing rubber bullets and tear gas and dragging away demonstrators.
Protesters burned tires and hurled stones at police as groups gathered at different parts of the capital Cairo. Demonstrators also clashed in other cities around Egypt. In Suez, east of Cairo, protesters torched a government building.
The scenes were unprecedented in the country, one of the United States’ closest Middle East allies, and follow the overthrow two weeks ago of another long-serving Arab strongman, Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in a popular revolt.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will Islamist Parties Vie for Power in Tunisia?
Authoritarian states may appear powerful and stable when viewed from afar, but since they have little legitimacy, they are built on sand. We have just witnessed another example of this in the North African state of Tunisia, where president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been toppled after 23 years in power.
Many observers were taken by surprise by this spontaneous uprising, perhaps because Ben Ali was more circumspect than neighbouring autocrats such as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi (a supporter of Ben Ali’s, by the way).
Ben Ali’s regime was viewed as “friendly” towards the West, and he was in the good graces of the former colonial power, France. He also sought to curb Islamist extremism.
But Ben Ali ran a kleptocracy. He and his wife Leila Trabelsi, along with their families, amassed untold wealth, while Tunisia’s youth, including university students, found themselves without jobs or hope.
It began to unravel on Dec. 17, when a university graduate set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid over the lack of jobs, sparking protests. Within a month, Ben Ali’s hold on power collapsed, with many cronies arrested or killed.
Jews have lived in Tunisia for more than 2,000 years. Though the country was once home to a sizable Jewish community — in 1948 the Jewish population was an estimated 105,000 — only about 1,000 now remain, in a population that numbers 10.5 million.
Most Jews left after independence in 1956. By 1967 only 20,000 remained. During the Six Day War, there was a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment. Jews were attacked in riots and almost all temigrated, mainly to France and Israel.
Tunisia served as the HQ of the Arab League between 1979 and 1989. It also was home to Yasser Arafat’s PLO between 1982 and 1993. The PLO’s headquarters were bombed by the Israeli air force in October 1985, in retaliation for the murder of Israelis in Cyprus.
Today most of the remaining Jews live on the island of Djerba, which is home to the El Ghriba Synagogue. It has been attacked twice, in 1985 (following the Israeli raid on the PLO offices) and 2002. There were anti-Israeli demonstrations in the country during March and April 2002, and on April 11, a truck fitted with explosives drove past security and detonated at the front of the synagogue, killing 21 people. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.
Despite the current turmoil in Tunisia, there has so far been no sign of large-scale emigration by the country’s remaining Jews.
Though a Muslim Arab state, Tunisia’s political culture has been largely secular. However, since the 1980s, there has been a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI), founded by Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, a philosophy professor, began to flourish despite attempts at suppression by the government. Ghannouchi was jailed between 1981 and 1984, and went into exile in Britain in 1989. The party was banned under the Ben Ali regime.
In the past, Ghannouchi has condemned Zionism and westernization, and dedicated a book he published in 1993 to Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. However, in more recent years, he has pledged his adherence to democracy and the electoral process. “Islam recognizes as a fact of life the diversity of peoples and cultures,” he told an audience in London…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Tony Blair ‘Biased’ Towards Israel, Leaked Documents Claim
The former British prime minister was frequently scorned for his efforts to develop the economy of the West Bank, according to confidential memos obtained by Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network. Mr Blair was seen as focusing too much on winning small concessions from Israel for minor development projects, while proving reluctant or impotent when it came to persuading Israel to ease bigger restrictions imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank.
In one memo reviewing his proposals, Mr Blair is accused of showing bias to the Israeli security forces and of advocating “an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank”. Another is equally scathing: “The overall tone, without making any judgment as to intent, is paternalistic and frequently uses the style and jargon of the Israeli occupation authorities. Some of the terms are unacceptable to Palestinians.”
In a December, 2007 memo, the Palestinian Authority’s Negotiations Support Unit is critical of a plan by Mr Blair to develop an agribusiness project because Palestinians involved would suffer from Israeli restrictions on movement and exports. Palestinian officials have frequently been critical of Mr Blair, who was appointed to his Middle East role in 2007, when speaking in private. US officials earlier this week claimed Middle East peace negotiations have been made harder by the leak of documents disclosing Palestinian positions with Israel.
A spokesman for Mr Blair said: “There has been real change on the ground as a result of Tony Blair’s efforts. The economy is now flourishing in the West Bank with double digit growth and falling unemployment. Palestinians are now able to move throughout the West Bank in ways impossible when Tony Blair started pushing for changes in the access and movement regime. A significant number of the core checkpoints have been opened…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Hezbollah’s Rise to Power is ‘A Disaster for Lebanon’
Hezbollah has confirmed its standing as the most powerful political force in Lebanon by installing its candidate, businessman Najib Mikati, as prime minister. German media commentators say the move could turn Lebanon into an outpost of Iran on Israel’s northern border — and may trigger a war.
The Lebanese parliament backed Najib Mikati, the billionaire businessman nominated by Hezbollah, as prime minister on Tuesday, spurring violent protests by Sunni youths who accused the movement of staging a de facto coup d’etat.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his allies brought down Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri earlier this month, plunging the country into crisis in a dispute over indictments by a United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 killing of Rafik al-Hariri, the premier’s father.
The rise of Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has boosted the influence of those two countries in Lebanon’s government. Hezbollah’s military branch is considered better-armed and trained then the Lebanese army.
Israel has said it would not tolerate a Lebanese government led by Hezbollah. Mikati has pledged to create a government of national unity but if he fails, he could destroy the delicate balance of sectarian power in Lebanon.
German newspaper commentators say Hezbollah’s rise to power could spark civil war in Lebanon and trigger a new conflict with Israel, and that the international community should consider imposing sanctions to ensure that the tribunal continues its work…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
It’s a Cover-Up! Iranian Media Raises Baroness Ashton’s Neckline in Picture Taken at Nuclear Programme Talksby John McDonnell
Iran has been embroiled in another censorship row after a top worn by Baroness Ashton was doctored in state media because it was too revealing.
Photographs of the EU foreign minister with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili at talks in Istanbul on Friday appeared the next day in Iranian media — but showed her wearing a top with a much higher neckline than she actually had on.
It appears the garment was too low-cut for the strictly Islamic country and so the image had to be doctored before publication.
Some newspapers raised the top to just below her necklace, while others went as far as covering up above her collar bone.
Baroness Ashton made sure to follow protocol and not cause offence by touching the Iranian politician as she posed for the picture, but she was blissfully unaware that her relatively modest attire would be too racy for Iran.
The EU foreign policy chief was leading an international team of six world powers as they attempted to convince the Middle Eastern country to curb its rogue nuclear activity at the historical Ciragan Palace in Turkey’s capital.
Afterwards, she said she was ‘disappointed’ as the talks ended without progress.
Ashton made sure to show very little flesh at further photocalls at the two-day talks, wearing scarves to prevent the chance of any cleavage being shown.
A spokesman for Lady Ashton told the Telegraph: ‘She was properly dressed. It was not low-cut. Many women in Iran are in a complete veil. These were international negotiations in a third country.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Must Not be Hostage to Iran and Hezbollah, Shalom
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, JANUARY 26 — Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sylvan Shalom, has today appealed to the international community not to allow Hezbollah and Iran to “take Lebanon hostage”, after the Sunni billionaire Najib Mikati was chosen to form a new government.
“The international community must do everything to prevent” Lebanon from becoming a hostage of Iran and Hezbollah, “which is not a simple terrorist organisation, but a terrorist organisation controlled by the Iranian state,” Shalom added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Secret Files: PA Looks for Al Jazeera ‘Mole’
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, JANUARY 25 — The leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have launched an investigation to find the ‘mole’ who could have delivered some 1,600 confidential documents regarding talks with Israel to Al Jazeera. The documents have been disclosed by the Qatari broadcaster in recent days. According to daily paper Haaretz, the PA already has two or three suspects. The paper reports that the theft of the documents could have taken place in the offices of the ‘Negotiation Support Unit’ (NS), a ‘team’ of experts formed in western countries, often of Palestinian origin, which has for years supported the PA negotiators. The newspaper reports that in recent years following the gradual running aground of the negotiations, many of these experts have left the NSU. According to Haaretz, yesterday agents from the PA carried out an inspection of the NSU offices. Their suspicions, at this stage, are concentrated on Nazmi Bashara, an official who recently moved to Qatar and who works as a commentator for Al Jazeera. The paper adds that Bashara is a relative of Israeli MP Azmi Bashara who left Israel suddenly in 2007 after being suspected by the secret services of having contact with Lebanese Hezbollah members.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Stakelbeck on Terror Show: The Arab/Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust
On this week’s special edition of the Stakelbeck on Terror show, I sit down with bestselling author and investigative journalist Edwin Black to discuss his new book, The Farhud.
The book outlines the history of Islamic anti-Semitism in the Middle East, including the 1941 organized massacre of Iraqi Jews in Baghdad known as The Farhud, or “violent dispossession.”
Black also breaks down the larger Arab Muslim role in the Nazi Holocaust—which included an active alliance between the leader of the Palestinians and Adolf Hitler—and how this history still affects the Middle East today.
Click the link above to watch.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia’s Worrying Precedent: Arab Rulers Fear Spread of Democracy Fever
In the wake of Tunisia’s mostly peaceful revolution, Arab leaders are worried that their young, frustrated populations might follow suit. While the West sits back and watches, regimes stress stability over genuine democracy and hope to calm simmering discontent with cash.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom don’t have all that much in common, but they do share one thing: Neither thinks much of the revolution in Tunisia.
“I fear that we now stand before a new and very critical phase in the Arab world,” Shalom, who was himself born in Tunisia in 1958, said in an interview aired on Israeli radio on Jan. 14. Israel and the majority of its Arab neighbors now agree on the importance of fighting Islamic fundamentalism, Shalom said. His concern lies with what might happen if Arab states start becoming democratic. He fears Tunisia might “set a precedent that could be repeated in other countries, possibly affecting directly the stability of our system.” If democratic governments take over Israel’s neighboring states, the vice prime minister said, the days of the Arab-Israeli security alliance will be over.
Gadhafi also complained that he was “very pained” to see his friend Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime collapse and Tunisia descend into fear and insecurity. “What is this for?” he asked. “To change Zine El Abidine? Hasn’t he told you he would step down after three years? Be patient for three years and your son stays alive.”
Prioritizing Stability
The revolution in the Maghreb presents a difficult dilemma not only to Tunisia’s neighbors, but also to Europe, the United States and Israel. Indeed, the dilemma embodies the central question of Middle Eastern politics in general: Which is more important — democracy or stability?
Last Wednesday, when Arab leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort city on the Red Sea, for the Arab economic summit, it was the first time Tunisian dictator Ben Ali was missing from their ranks. The summit’s hosts tried in vain to steer the conversation away from the unprecedented events in Tunisia. “The Tunisian revolution is not far from us,” Arab League leader Amr Moussa said in his opening remarks for the conference. “The Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration,” he added, noting that “the Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession.”
Speaking after Moussa, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak didn’t even mention Tunisia, preferring instead to address the importance of economic cooperation, which he called a “requirement for national security.” It was a bold denial of the reality that Moussa had just clearly described. After all, the conditions in Tunisia also apply to most of the other 21 Arab states and the Palestinian territories — and sometimes even much more so.
Young Masses Led by Old Men
The populations of these countries are young and unhappy. Indeed, 53.4 percent — or roughly 190 million out of a current population of 352 million Arabs — are younger than 24 years old, and nearly three-quarters of them are unemployed. In many cases, the education these young people receive doesn’t do them any good because there are no jobs in the fields they trained for. Many are 35 or even 40 before they can afford to marry. In essence, this is a violation of a basic human right perpetrated against millions in countries such as Egypt, where life expectancy is nine years less than it is in Germany, or in Yemen, where the figure is almost 15 years lower.
Governments in these countries, on the other hand, are corrupt and outdated. Indeed, before Ben Ali’s ouster, the leaders of North Africa’s five countries had enjoyed a combined total of 115 years in office. The countries’ youth ministers are generally old men.
In countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, demographics, governments run by old men and widespread malaise are forming a dangerous mix. Although it is aware of the situation, the West continues to support the old rulers.
A Problem throughout North Africa
Take the example of Algeria. In recent weeks, Tunisia’s western neighbor has seen riots like those in Tunisia. According to a 2008 report from the US Embassy in Algiers that was leaked to the Wikileaks website, the US Department of State considers the Algerian government “fragile” and riddled with “unprecedented levels of corruption.” Likewise, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the country’s 73-year-old president, is “isolated” and has lost touch with reality. According to the document, Bouteflika is trying to groom his brother Said, around 20 years his junior, to be his successor. The country, one source cited in the document said, is “sitting on a volcano” and its young men feel “grim” and only left with a choice “between death at sea and a slow, gradual death at home.”
Another embassy cable is entitled “The Harraga: Give Me Dignity or Give Me Death” after the name for would-be illegal emigrants trying to escape across the Mediterranean. It reports that refugee boats set off from the port city of Annaba each week “filled with a cross-section of frustrated young Algerians — doctors, lawyers, dropouts, the unemployed.” Even members of the country’s elite are fleeing. “The grandson of former president Chadli Bendjedid, 29-year-old Mourad Bendjedid, left on February 8, 2007 along with six other young men and has not been heard from since.”
American diplomats sent similar reports from Morocco. There, dozens of college graduates camped out in the hopes of being hired as civil servants, people who’d given up hope began setting themselves on fire three years ago, and “corrupt practices” have “become much more institutionalized” under King Mohammed VI.
Meanwhile, their colleagues in Libya reported that the regime there had things much less under control than it appeared and that Gadhafi found himself in “a downward spiral” after being disgraced by his sons’ excesses.
At the same time, American diplomats acknowledge what these and other Arab governments have accomplished in terms of averting terrorist attacks, thwarting Islamists and establishing dynasties that offer stability even if they do not provide democracy that meets Western standards.
Part 2: Will Revolution Spread?
Given such conditions, the question arises whether Tunisia is just the beginning of the end of Arab autocracies as well as just how long the populations in countries from Mauritania to Yemen and from Sudan to Syria will continue to put up with the daily humiliations they face at home.
Events of recent days might hint at the answer to these questions. In Mauretania, Algeria and Egypt, 10 men followed the example of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor whose act of self-immolation after having been humiliated and shooed from the street like a dog triggered his country’s revolution.
Thousands have taken to the streets in Jordan and Yemen as well, demanding that their rulers step down. In the wealthy oil emirate Kuwait, which has systematically discriminated against its Bedouin population for decades, the government sent every citizen $3,500 (€2,600) to nip any possible protests in the bud.
There are two aspects of Tunisia’s example that give Arab reformers hope. First, it was the Tunisians themselves who got rid of their despot, not a Western army sweeping in with its own “freedom agenda,” as the United States did in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003. And, second, it was a grassroots movement that brought about the change of government in Tunisia rather than a highly organized one or an opposition movement co-opted by one charismatic leader, as was the case with the Iranian revolution in 1979. This last point, in particular, has long been viewed by political scientists as a prerequisite for successfully overthrowing a despot in the Middle East.
Nervous Responses
Nevertheless, most Middle East experts are still hesitant to proclaim the dawning of a new era in the Arab world. As they see it, social, economic and political conditions vary too widely for Tunisia’s example to be an indication that a revolutionary spark could affect the entire region.
As much as the West may disapprove of them, these conditions are just as real as the region’s demographic imbalance, youth unemployment and official corruption. People in the oil states of Libya and Algeria, for example, are gazing toward Europe just as longingly as people in Tunisia, but their governments enjoy resources they can employ when their systems come under serious threat. Algiers quickly stemmed riots over rising bread prices by simply reducing food prices. And in Egypt, which is much poorer than Tunisia, the circle of people who benefit from the existing system is far larger than that of the Ben Ali clan, with its shamelessly opulent lifestyle.
This holds even more true for Saudi Arabia, which has just as many unemployed, frustrated young people as Tunisia does. The country’s deeply conservative monarchy doesn’t even pretend to have democratic structures in place. But it still distributes its oil wealth more equitably than the Arab republics that proudly display their elections, parliaments and parties.
Since the Tunisian revolution, poorer Arab princes — who rely more on large security apparatuses than energy resources — no longer feel truly secure, and their wealthier counterparts have little faith that this tenuous peace will hold. As a result, meeting last Wednesday in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Gulf’s oil monarchs decided to send a signal by pledging a total of $2 billion to governments throughout the Arab world for creating jobs and promoting new businesses.
They care a lot about stability and very little about democracy. And, so far, no one in the West has told them to act any differently.
Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Moscow Airport Bomb: Suicide Bombers Were Part of Squad Trained in Pakistan
The two suicide bombers who carried out the Moscow attack were thought to be part of a suicide squad trained in Pakistan’s al-Qaeda strongholds sent to the capital to target the city’s transport system.
Russian security services warned in December that there were two attack teams primed to carry out attacks, sparking fears there could still be terrorists at large who were prepared to carry out another attack.
Intelligence sources said that one of the squads was likely to have established a base, at a house in Moscow, where the suicide belts to be used in attacks were assembled.
Russian security sources said yesterday that a male and female suicide bomber from the Black Widow brigades had carried out the bombing together. The attack had been closely supervised by three accomplices, who had watched from a distance and are now being sought by the authorities.
A Russian security official said the bomb that ripped through Moscow’s Domodedovo airport was carried by a woman who mingled in the crowd at arrivals. She then either set the bomb off herself or someone else detonated it using a remote-control device.
An eyewitness said the woman had been dressed in black and had worn a veil, suggesting she may have been a ‘Black Widow’ suicide bomber from the North Caucasus region out to revenge the killing of her husband by Russian security forces.
“The explosion occurred the moment the presumed female suicide bomber opened her bag,” the security source told the RIA Novosti news agency. “The terrorist was accompanied by a man. He was standing beside her and (the blast) tore off his head.”
Intelligence services have been embarrassed by the revelation that informants had warned of an attack on an airport in the Russian capital just weeks before the incident. Security experts said the tip-off had revealed that a criminal gang based in the Moscow suburbs was assisting a Chechen bombing making squad and that a suicide cell was travelling from a training camp.
A newspaper close to Russia’s FSB security service published what it claimed was a warning to Moscow police issued in December that said there was credible intelligence that a suicide squad made up of three women and one man from Chechnya was headed to Moscow.
The memo said the team had spent time in Pakistan and Iran and that one of the women had a relative with a flat in Moscow that might be used as a bomb making factory. Another group of five Islamist militants trained in Pakistan was also expected to cross into Russia soon, it added.
An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: “You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.”
The daily Kommersant newspaper said security service officials were alerted to the extent of the threat when a woman accidentally blew herself up on New Year’s Eve in Moscow. It later emerged that her husband was in jail for being a member of an Islamist terror group and that she and a girlfriend had been sent to Moscow from the internal Muslim republic of Dagestan to commit an act of terror.
Russian media published a grisly picture of the male terrorist’s severed head that was being circulated around police and security services in the troubled mostly Muslim North Caucasus region to see if anyone recognised him.
The region, which includes restive internal Russian republics such as Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, is in the grip of a growing Islamist insurgency and has served as a launching pad in the past for a series of deadly strikes on civilian targets in Moscow and other cities.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Must Develop an Alternative to Islamism in the Caucasus
A commentary by Matthias Schepp in Moscow
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wants to weaken Islamist militants in the Caucasus by building infrastructure projects worth billions. But Monday’s terror attack in Moscow shows once again how hard it will be to win the hearts and minds of the population.
Speaking on television shortly after Monday’s deadly attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seemed shaken, almost helpless. “This is a terrorist act,” Medvedev said, putting into words what was already obvious to observers.
The attack, which according to current figures killed 35 people and injured well over 100, puts the Russian leader under considerable political pressure. His vision of economic development for restive provinces in the Caucasus, such as Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, as a means of combating militant Islam, seems increasingly naive. His dream of promoting tourism in the troubled region appears more unrealistic than ever.
On Wednesday, Medvedev had planned to appear before political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos to present his vision for bringing peace to the Caucasus. His plan foresees building five major ski resorts in the region, one of which will be on the highest mountain in Russia, Mount Elbrus. Another is to be in Dagestan, where people die on an almost daily basis in skirmishes between militants and security forces. The plan, which will cost €12 billion ($16 billion), is based on an initiative by Alexander Khloponin, a former top executive and regional governor. In January 2010, Medvedev appointed Khloponin as his envoy to the North Caucasus, giving him the rank of deputy prime minister.
Although there is not yet a proven link between the Domodedovo bombers and Caucasus-based militants, media reports on Tuesday make it seem increasingly likely. Moscow-based newspapers reported that an eyewitness at the airport saw a women of Muslim appearance, dressed in a black robe, accompanied by a man. That would fit into the pattern of previous terrorist attacks in Moscow which have been committed by so-called “black widows,” as female suicide bombers from the Caucasus have been dubbed.
The Domodedovo massacre has, intentionally or not, torpedoed Medvedev’s planned initiative at Davos. On Monday, reacting to the attack, the Kremlin boss canceled his opening speech at the World Economic Forum. Now it will be even more difficult to make the plan, or even parts of it, a reality.
Medvedev’s idea to use the Davos summit to personally secure foreign partners for the development of the Caucasus had always seemed ambitious. The plan to increase the number of ski tourists from the current level of a few thousand to hundreds of thousands looked like an unrealistic daydream.
Demands for Tougher Stance
Hardliners in Moscow will now demand a tougher stance against terror and will call for even more power and personnel for Russia’s already bloated intelligence agencies and corrupt police. It is a reflex that is by no means limited to Russia, a country where the desire for a strong man is especially pronounced after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social insecurity of the 1990s.
In Russia, the supporters of a hard line on terror point to the success of a series of anti-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus last year, the “liquidation” of the guerrilla fighters’ chief ideologue, Said Buryatsky, and the capture of the underground leader Akhmed Yevloyev, also known as Magas.
The Russian security forces often operate outside the law in the Caucasus. Many police officers and intelligence agents follow an approach that Vladimir Putin formulated in 1999 after a wave of terrorist attacks. “If they’re in the airport, we’ll kill them there,” he said. “If we find them in a toilet, we’ll kill them in the outhouse.”
But militant Islam in the Caucasus resembles the mythical hydra, which grows back two heads for each one that is severed. Every time a fighter is killed, another one joins the armed underground. Hence Russia needs to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the people in the Caucasus…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hamid Karzai Criticises Western Interference as Afghan Parliament Opens
Unhappy at polls that produced a larger, more vocal opposition, President Karzai last week sparked a political crisis by trying to delay the opening by a month so a special court could investigate allegations of electoral fraud.
But he was forced to back down by successful candidates who said they would take up their seats with or without him. Yesterday, he took a swipe at his Western backers. “During the election process we faced serious problems in protecting people’s votes, preventing fraud and from the interference of foreigners,” he said in his opening speech to members of the assembly shortly before they were sworn in.
“We must ‘Afghanise’ government institutions and the elections. Undoubtedly, elections convened by the Afghans will be more transparent, less expensive.”
His comments underline the awkward relation between President Karzai and Western governments.
Washington is pressing the Afghan leader to tackle corruption as it looks to begin the withdrawal of US troops later this year. A strong and clean government in Kabul is seen as crucial to ending the Taliban threat.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said the inaugural session of parliament was unimportant to the insurgents and that the political drama surrounding the opening was meant to confuse the Afghan people.
“This is part of this puppet government under the Americans,” he said…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Police Arrest Terrorism Suspect in Central Java
Jakarta, 25 Jan. (AKI/Jakarta Post) — Indonesia’s national police anti-terror unit arrested a villager in Sukoharjo, Central Java, on Tuesday for his alleged involvement in terrorism, police say.
“The Densus 88 [antiterror unit] arrested the suspect at 10 a.m. in Waru Village, Central Java, on Tuesday morning,” national police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said on Tuesday at the national police headquarters in Jakarta.
“The suspect is allegedly a member of terrorist group from Sleman, Klaten and Sukoharjo,” Boy said.
The suspect, identified as Roki Aprisdianto, had lived in a rented house for three months and said he had worked as a parking attendant in Purwosari, Surakarta.
Police also secured the house for further investigation, Amar said.
Mardono, a neighborhood unit chief in Tegal Baru hamlet, Waru village, said that several officers from Densus 88 had come to his house at around 9 a.m., saying they had just arrested a resident.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Operation Groundhog in Kazakhstan: The US Seeks to Protect Former Soviet Nuclear Testing Site
Plutonium is lying around, virtually unprotected, at a test site in Kazakhstan where the Soviets once detonated more than 500 nuclear bombs. Could the dangerous material fall into the hands of terrorists?
The vast steppe stretches to the horizon, an empty patch of earth at what appears to be the end of the world, inhabited only by a handful of shepherds. Despite its remote location, drones circle in the air above this no man’s land in northeastern Kazakhstan. They are part of a secret operation being conducted by the United States Defense Department, which doesn’t want anyone to know what the unmanned aircraft are watching in this distant wasteland.
Pentagon officials believe there is no other location in the former Soviet republics where it is as easy for terrorists to acquire radioactive material — and its presence there leaves them feeling deeply unsettled. As a result of earlier nuclear bomb tests, the soil in some places is so contaminated with plutonium that thieves could simply dig up enough of the material they would need to build a dirty bomb.
More Than 500 Bombs Detonated
Occupying an area almost the size of Israel, the Semipalatinsk test site was once the Soviet Union’s top nuclear testing venue. The first mushroom cloud rose into the sky over Semipalatinsk on the morning of August 29, 1949. The residents of the surrounding villages watched the spectacle in shock. No one had warned them.
Another 506 nuclear bombs were detonated there during the Cold War. After the 1963 signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons tests, the military continued to detonate bombs in underground tunnels and shafts.
As a result, Semipalatinsk was turned into one of the most radioactively contaminated areas of the world. To make matters worse, the collapse of the Soviet Union left Kazakhstan with an enormous arsenal of bombs. Since then, the United States has spent more than $600 million (€440 million) to secure plutonium and uranium in Kazakhstan, under the auspices of Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR), a program designed to secure and ultimately destroy weapons of mass destruction throughout the former Soviet republics.
Warning Signs and Barriers
American embassy cables dating from 2009 and 2010 obtained by WikiLeaks and shared with SPIEGEL have now revealed that despite all of their efforts, US military officials still fear that terrorists could obtain radioactive material in Semipalatinsk. “Of all the projects funded by the CTR appropriation, the most critical is a classified project to secure weapons-grade material at the former Soviet nuclear weapons test site in Semipalatinsk,” then-US ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland wrote in cables from February 2010 and January 2009.
The Americans have already made another $100 million (€73.2 million) available for the project, which includes improved surveillance of the contaminated site by Kazakh police officers and soldiers. In addition, the Americans have provided other physical security enhancements, like “warning signs, barriers, unattended ground sensors (UGS), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), patrol vehicles and other equipment required for Kazakhstan,” according to another US embassy cable from the Kazakh capital Astana a short time earlier.
Originally, the Kazakh government planned to return the 18,500-square-kilometer (7,140-square-mile) region to its original use as pasture and farmland. Teams were sent to the Polygon, as the Soviets referred to the site, to measure radiation levels.
“The only remaining concerns lie with dispersed ‘hotspots’ within the test site,” Nicholas Priest, the director of NATO’s SEMIRAD mission, said in 2005. “At present, the location of these ‘hotspots’ is not completely understood, and this is a worry.”
High Cancer Rates Nearby
As part of Operation Groundhog, Russian, American and Kazakh teams are jointly searching for sites with high plutonium levels. In one location, the radioactive poison was so highly concentrated that workers sealed off the ground with two meters (6.5 feet) of reinforced concrete. For a long time, anyone could walk across the parched grass to reach the areas where nuclear bombs had once been detonated. “Access to the site is uncontrolled and utilized by shepherds and their herds,” a US Energy Department team warned in 2001.
Cancer rates are high among residents of the villages and cities in the test region. Plutonium, a heavy metal, emits alpha radiation, and the material is most harmful when inhaled or ingested. Scientists found very high levels in horse bones, where plutonium had become concentrated. Kazakh shepherds use these bones to make soup.
Blasting Open The Tunnels
But the highest plutonium concentrations are most likely underground. Roughly 400 nuclear bombs exploded in shafts and tunnels up to two kilometers (1.25 miles) deep. Years ago, Larissa Ptizkaya, the director of the local radiation protection institute, reported that people trying to steal scrap metal had used homemade bombs to blast open the nuclear test caves, which had been sealed with concrete. The thieves, in order to feed their families, sold the irradiated metal to dealers in China. Of course, terrorists could acquire radioactive material for dirty bombs in the same manner.
Although a 2009 embassy cable indicates that there was “successful elimination” of 181 tunnels, there could be more. The cable also mentions 20 other tunnels that were being investigated at the time.
The careful surveillance of the Kazakh steppe is nothing new for the US military. In the 1950s, US Air Force pilots flew reconnaissance missions in U-2 spy planes over the Soviets’ nuclear program in Semipalatinsk.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Puts Urumqi Under ‘Full Surveillance’
Xinjiang city which saw ethnic violence in 2009 now watched by tens of thousands of cameras, says state media
China is putting Urumqi, where deadly ethnic violence broke out in 2009, under full surveillance, with tens of thousands of cameras positioned across sensitive areas of the city, state media reported today.
Security has been tight in the western city since tensions between the area’s largely Muslim Uighurs and members of China’s Han majority flared into open violence in 2009. Uighurs have long resented what they see as an incursion by Han migrants into their ancestral homeland, the Xinjiang region.
The government says 197 people were killed during the violence, the deadliest in Xinjiang in years. Dozens of people have been imprisoned for their involvement in the riots, most of them Uighurs. Beijing blamed overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence, but exile groups denied it.
Just before the one-year anniversary of the violence last year, officials said about 40,000 high-definition surveillance cameras with riot-proof protective shells had been installed throughout the region. Nearly 17,000 were installed in Urumqi last year, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today. It was not clear if that figure was in addition to the one reported last year.
The surveillance coverage will continue to grow this year, according to the mayor of Urumqi, Jerla Isamudinhe, who spoke to the city’s legislature over the weekend, Xinhua reported.
Surveillance is “seamless” — meaning there are no blind spots — in sensitive areas of Urumqi, the report quoted Wang Yannian, head of the city’s information technology office, as saying.
It is not unusual to see thousands of surveillance cameras in China’s cites, and authorities have been known to install them around mosques in Xinjiang and in temples in Tibet, which saw its own of ethnic violence in early 2008.
Beijing is wary of anything that looks like separatism and has branded as “terrorists” those who oppose China’s authority over Xinjiang, a strategically vital region with oil and gas deposits.
Last autumn, the UK-based consultancy IMS Research said more than 10m surveillance cameras would be installed in China in 2010. Beijing has more than 400,000, the China Daily newspaper reported last April.
Civil rights activists have objected to the widespread use of surveillance cameras, pointing out that China has very little in the way of privacy protections.
Today’s report said 3,400 buses, 4,400 streets, 270 schools and 100 shopping centres in Xinjiang.
The increase in surveillance is part of a pattern of tightening Beijing’s control over the region. After the 2009 violence, the region’s internet and international telephone links were blocked for more than six months. Officials last year also reported hiring an extra 5,000 police officers in Xinjiang.
Uighur exile groups have asked for an independent investigation of the violence and the crackdown.
Chinese authorities have long been accused of alienating the largely Muslim Uighurs with tight restrictions on cultural and religious expression and nonviolent dissent.
China’s leaders say all ethnic groups are treated equally and point to the billions of dollars in investment that has modernised the region.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew Urges Muslims to ‘Be Less Strict’
SINGAPORE (AFP) — Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew has urged local Muslims to “be less strict on Islamic observances” to aid integration and the city-state’s nation-building process.
Singapore has a predominantly Chinese population, with minority races including Muslim Malays and Indians, and Lee has always stressed the importance of racial harmony.
“I would say today, we can integrate all religions and races except Islam,” he said in “Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going,” a new book containing his typically frank views on the city-state and its future.
“I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came and if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration — friends, intermarriages and so on…” he stated.
“I think the Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate,” Lee added, calling on the community to “be less strict on Islamic observances.”
During the book’s launch on Friday, the self-described “pragmatist” warned Singaporeans against complacency, saying the largely ethnic Chinese republic was still a nation in the making.
Describing Singapore in the book as an “80-storey building on marshy land,” Lee said it must contend with hostility from larger Muslim neighbours.
“We’ve got friendly neighbours? Grow up… There is this drive to put us down because we are interlopers,” he said, citing alleged Malaysian and Indonesian efforts to undermine Singapore’s crucial port business.
Singapore was ejected from the Malaysian federation in 1965 in large part due to Kuala Lumpur’s preferential policies for ethnic Malays, and has since built up Southeast Asia’s most modern military to deter foreign aggression.
Turning to local politics, Lee said the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which has been in power since 1959 when Singapore gained political autonomy from colonial ruler Britain, will someday lose its grip on power.
“There will come a time when eventually the public will say, look, let’s try the other side, either because the PAP has declined in quality or the opposition has put up a team which is equal to the PAP… That day will come.”
“In the next 10 years to 20 years, I don’t think it’ll happen. Beyond that, I cannot tell.”
Lee said that despite a survey showing the contrary, he believed Singaporeans were not yet ready for a non-ethnic-Chinese prime minister.
“A poll says 90 percent of Chinese Singaporeans say they will elect a non-Chinese as PM. Yes, this is the ideal. You believe these polls? Utter rubbish. They say what is politically correct,” he stated…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Episcopal Church Leader: Polygamy is Sort of OK in Africa
The Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has given a most revealing interview to the Houston Chronicle in which she says that Anglican churches in Africa have polygamous members and, um, that’s basically OK. I mean, not ideal, but a man can keep his wives if he wants to, though not add to his collection. (H/T Riazat Butt.) Here’s how the bishop puts it: In Africa, the church doesn’t officially recognize polygamy. They certainly have polygamous members of their churches. In some places, they say the man can’t take additional wives once he becomes a Christian, but he isn’t forced to divorce the wives he already has. Well, I suppose her Church was founded by a man with six wives…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Migrants Battle to Get Into Fortress EU
EUOBSERVER / CHISINAU — With Moldova inching toward EU visa-free travel while increasingly becoming a transit point for EU-bound irregular migrants, Moldovan officials have listed some of the ways that people use to enter fortress Europe.
Option one: buy a real visa. The Rolls Royce way to get into the EU illegally is to bribe an EU consular official in Moldova into issuing a real visa.
Veaceslav Cirlig, the head of the migration policy department in Moldova’s interior ministry, told this website that the size of the bribe is up to €5,000. If you pull it off, it is a watertight way of getting into the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, where people can outstay the duration of the visa and disappear into society.
EU consular officials are quite hard to corrupt. But in some cases, as with the Netherlands, EU countries keep an embassy in neighbouring Ukraine and hire Ukrainians or Moldovans to issue visas in Moldova. The foreign staff said to be more amenable to bribe-taking.
Option two: buy a forged Polish or Romanian passport or visa. The cost here is between €300 and €800, but the risk is greater. Roman Revenco, the director of Moldova’s Border Guards Service, said he has up-to-date document scanners that “easily” detect fakes. Guards on Monday (24 January) caught a Moldovan citizen with a fake Polish visa bought for €800.
Option three: hide on a train or in a truck. Moldova is angling for EU money to buy 12 modern vehicle scanners costing €300,000 each but does not have them yet. Mr Revenco said guards “recently” found nine Turks, including two children aged 12 and 14, concealed in a truck. The migrants had been “facilitated” by German citizens. He however added that such cases are “rare.”
Option four: get on a boat or swim. The physical border between Moldova and EU member Romania is the river Prut. Mr Revenco said people try both ways to get over the water, but noted that the river is “dangerous” because of its strong current.
Option five: walk. Some migrants come to Moldova and then go to Ukraine, which has a long land border with EU member Poland. This option is also dangerous. In 2007 three girls aged six, 10 and 13 died in the Bieszczady mountains while trying to walk into Poland with their mother. If caught, migrants face harsh conditions in Ukrainian detention camps.
Last October, Moldova restarted a daily train service between Chisinau and Odessa in Ukraine. The train stops in Tiraspol, the main city in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, an unrecognised entity which broke away from Moldova 20 years ago and is ruled by a Russian factory manager.
Tiraspol is a threat to EU border security. It has facilities for producing illegal documents and is home to a massive Soviet-era arms cache, but the 350,000 people who live there go in and out of Moldova proper with no checks by Moldovan border guards. Evidence indicates that its main smuggling activity is counterfeit cigarettes, however.
Most irregular migrants in Moldova come from former Soviet Union territories. People from Africa, Asia and the Middle East instead try to use the Greek-Turkish land border, which is considerably busier.
Meanwhile, Moldovans are returning home from the EU due to the economic crisis in the Union. And Transniestrians are going to Turkey to try to make a living.
The EU commissioner responsible for visas, Sweden’s Cecilia Malmstrom, in Chisinau on Monday at a conference on EU migration offered Moldova an Action Plan explaining what it must do to clinch the visa-free deal.
She declined to give a target date and told Moldovan media that people should not abuse future freedoms. “Visa liberalisation is not something that will get jobs in Europe. It’s about visiting, getting to know each other, making contact,” she said.
Brussels nannies
Oxford University migration expert Franck Duvell told the 19 EU delegations at the conference that people who enter the union on a fully legal visa but outstay their exit date and work in menial jobs such as cleaning far outnumber people who enter illegally. “If such people were regularised in some way, a good proportion of ‘illegal migration’ would be eradicated,” he said.
On the subject of household workers in the EU capital, Ms Malmstrom admitted it is common knowledge that EU officials widely hire irregular migrants as cleaners and nannies. “If it’s against Belgian law, it’s illegal and they shouldn’t do it,” she said. “As to whether they are being exploited, I’m sure some of them are treated very well. But if it’s against the law, they shouldn’t do it.”
For his part, Martijn Pluim from the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna, told this website he knows of cases in which European diplomats have abused their household staff.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UNHCR: Greece OK on Asylum System Reform
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 24 — The Unhcr delegate for South Europe, Laurens Jolles, defined as “positive and constructive” the meeting he held in Athens with Christos Papoutsis, Minister for citizen protection, with whom he talked about progress achieved on the path of the reform of the asylum system in Greece, including the adoption of the new law on asylum procedures. During the meeting, Jolles stated that “we expressed deep satisfaction for the resolute commitment shown by the Greek government in setting up a good system capable of guaranteeing assistance and security to those who have the right to international protection”.
Unhcr issued a statement saying that it is “aware of the massive challenges that derive from the need to reform the asylum system, specially at a time when there are many priorities. At the same time, it is a major opportunity to correct, once and for all, a system which clearly was not working”. Unhcr also “emphasised the importance of making sufficient resources and skills available, including suitable training and necessary staff, to efficiently manage the entire asylum procedure”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Second Gay Couple Sue B&B After Being Turned Away by Owner Who Said Her ‘Convictions’ Didn’t Allow Two Men to Share a Bed
A gay couple are suing a Christian bed and breakfast owner after she told them it was ‘against her convictions’ for them to share a bed, it emerged yesterday.
Michael Black, 63, and John Morgan, 58, are claiming sexual discrimination after being turned away from Swiss B&B in Cookham, Berkshire, last March.
Their case follows that of Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, who won £3,600 damages from the owners of a Cornish guesthouse last week for refusing them a double room.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Sex-Ed Film Reported to Police Over Teen Sex Scenes
Animated sex scenes featuring Swedish teens in a new sex education film has led to the film being reported to the police for violating laws against endangering the moral upbringing of young people.
The film, “Sex on the map” (Sex på kartan), was co-produced by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) and the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company (UR) and broadcast last week on Sveriges Television (SVT).
The 30-minute film is the first sex ed film produced for Swedish schools for 25 years. While animated, many of the film’s drawings are nevertheless quite detailed. The film also includes scenes featuring teenagers engaging in sexual activity with one another.
Following the film’s broadcast on SVT, an individual from Umeå in northern Sweden reported the public broadcaster to the police.
According to the complaint, the film depicts minors having sex and is directed toward Swedish high school students and thus qualifies as the crime of “leading youth astray.”
According to the statute, someone can be convicted of the crime for distributing pictures or images featuring content which “can be dehumanising or otherwise cause serious danger for the moral upbringing of young people.”
Cecilia Bäcklander, the programme director at UR responsible for producing the film, rejected claims that the film leads youth astray.
“This is a very well thought out film that has been planned for several years with RFSU. We’re not guilty of endangering young people or leading them astray. This is an educational film,” she told The Local.
Bäcklander admitted the film addresses “sensitive issues” and isn’t surprised that it may have sparked negative reactions among some viewers. However, she’s “not at all” worried about the police complaint.
“We’ve consulted our lawyers throughout the production,” she said.
The head of RFSU, Åsa Regnér, agreed that “Sex on the map” was a high-quality sexual education film based on actual questions posed by Swedish teenagers.
“We’ve tested it in schools and we know it works. It doesn’t lead young people astray; it gives them important information about sexuality and their bodies,” she said.
The complaint, which was filed with the police in Stockholm, has been forwarded to Sweden’s Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern), who is charged with assessing whether or not the matter falls within the framework of Sweden’s laws governing freedom of expression.
If the chancellor rules that the film isn’t covered under Sweden’s free speech laws, the complaint will be sent back to the police.
Speaking with the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, a representative from the chancellor’s office called leading youth astray an “extremely uncommon” crime and that only two or three such cases have come to the office in the last decade.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Feminists Are Obnoxious Bigots and Men Have a Raw Deal: Tory MP Calls for Male Equality
Men are increasingly the victims of ‘obnoxious bigotry’ by women and should start ‘burning their briefs’ in protest, according to a rising Tory star.
Dominic Raab, a new Tory MP tipped for high office, said men were getting a ‘raw deal’ from the cradle to the grave following years of anti-discrimination legislation favouring women.
He pointed out women in their 20s are now paid more than their male peers, who work longer hours, retire later and die earlier.
Mr Raab, the 37-year-old MP for Esher and Walton in Surrey and a former chief of staff to David Davis, called for an end to what he called feminist bigotry.
[…]
‘Take the gender pay gap. The fascinating thing is just how sexist its champions have become,’ he said. ‘It is almost taboo for a man to question the assertion that the rapidly dwindling pay gap is the result of discrimination, rather than genuine choice,’ he said.
‘Yet, research shows the pay gap has halved since the 1970s. Office for National Statistics data in December showed that, since 1997, the difference between full-time median earnings has fallen from 17 per cent to 10 per cent — and the shrinkage is accelerating.
‘According to research for the Institute for Economic Affairs, women in their 20s earn one per cent more than men, single women a shade more.
‘Gay men earn more than straight men, lesbian women more than heterosexual women. Does that sound like a society riddled with discrimination?
‘Meanwhile, pay is just one of the terms of employment. Men work longer hours, enjoy their jobs less, commute further and are more likely to get the sack.’
Mr Raab said Britain now had some of the toughest anti-discrimination laws in the world, but was ‘blind to some of the most flagrant discrimination — against men’.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
White House Official: Obama Will Tackle ‘Very Important Issue’ of Gun Control
A White House senior adviser said Tuesday night that President Obama is “going to address [gun control].”
In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, David Plouffe responded to criticism that the president did not mention gun control in his State of the Union address. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill and gun-control advocates have called for new legislation in the wake of the deadly shooting that killed six and injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) earlier this month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lost Islands of the Crows Revealed in DNA Study
Islands are generally thought of as the Hotel Californias of evolution: once immigrant species evolve to fit the less competitive local ecology, they can never leave. Every so often, a species somehow manages to escape back to the more-diverse mainland, but now evolutionary biologists have discovered that a whole major bird family once did so too. They’ve found the DNA signature of the common ancestor of all of the world’s crows from the time it checked into an island resort north of Australia about 30 million years ago.
Knud Jønsson, now at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, set out to unravel the history of crows for his doctoral dissertation. By building a family tree of the world’s corvids based on comparisons of DNA sequences and anatomy, and their present geographic distribution, he traced their origins to New Guinea, several hundred kilometres north of Australia, about 30 million years ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Menace of Radical Islam and the Radical Left
“We knew that once there was no moral confusion…once good and evil were kept separate, the Soviet Union’s days were numbered.” Natan Sharansky
In the above illuminating quote, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky reveals the satisfaction, triumph and elation he felt as a prisoner in the notorious Soviet Gulag after he learned President Ronald Reagan had called the now defunct Soviet Union “an evil empire.” He and other incarcerated dissidents, he relates, were “ecstatic” when Reagan dispelled with his unqualified statement, once and for all, the “moral confusion” existing between freedom and democracy on the one hand and “the most fearsome totalitarian empire in human history” on the other. It is this dispelling of moral confusion that also emerges as the outstanding characteristic and purpose of Jamie Glazov’s new, captivating and very informative book, Showdown With Evil: Our Struggle Against Tyranny and Terror, in which the Sharansky quote appears. In 29 highly interesting interviews with prominent writers and thinkers, Showdown With Evil deals smashing blows to civilization’s implacable enemies: Islamic extremism and its radical leftist ally, the book’s main targets. Divided into eight parts, the last entry being an interview with Glazov himself, Showdown With Evil’s bare-knuckle, head-on approach to the weighty problem of liberal democracies’ maintaining their freedom in the face of these dangers is both refreshing and one of the book’s high values.
[Many thanks to Diversity Lane for the cartoon.] This twin menace, radical Islam and the radical left, provided Glazov’s work with its title. As the book’s interviewees make abundantly clear, Islamic extremism and the radical left are both evil and tyrannical. And while the “terror” in the subtitle concerns radical Islam, after reading the book one would agree Glazov could easily have added the word “treason” for the hard left. And it is between the book’s covers that the hard-hitting and merciless showdown with the evil they represent takes place…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
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