‘China Syndrome’ Means Country Faces Dangerous Property Bubble
Yu Yongding, senior fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and former member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China, said that the demand for new property was so high that prices were in danger of soaring out of control. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Yongding said that China’s authorities would have to act to calm the market and that the rate of growth would have to be lowered: “Definitely inflation is the biggest concern so far. At the same time we are concerned about a real estate bubble.
“The demand for houses is still tremendous. So there is a tug of war between the central bank and the real estate developers. If the bank loosens [the property] policy there may be a re-emergence of a real estate bubble.”
CASS is affiliated to the State Council, one of the major government bodies in China.
Mr Yongding’s warning comes after a series of signals that markets are becoming concerned that the rapid rate of growth in China is not sustainable.
Three weeks ago The Sunday Telegraph revealed that a number of hedge funds had begun taking short positions against China. The following week, Goldman Sachs warned of some short term dangers for the Chinese economy and last week a report from the consultants, McKinsey, said that high property and commodity prices were a threat. Mr Yongding made it clear that he did not believe that there were “short-run” risks to China, but he did say that a fundamental restructuring of the economy was necessary to stop long term problems: “I am not too worried about the short run prospects of the Chinese economy. Why am I so confident? Because China’s fiscal position is extremely good.”
China’s gross debt is just 20pc of GDP. “There is tremendous room for the central bank to use very expansionary fiscal policy to stimulate the economy,” he said.
“We are now formulating the next five-year map of [the] monetary plan and according to our intention [in] the next five years Chinese growth will be lower. [It] will be lower than 8pc.”
China’s most recent growth rate has been above 10pc but high food and other commodity prices are putting pressure on consumers. The Chinese authorities appear to be well aware of the problems of inflation and over-heated house prices…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
David Cameron: Migrant Boom ‘Helped Wreck Our Economy’
David Cameron will argue that the influx of migrant workers severely damaged the economy
DAVID Cameron will today say that “unsustainable levels of immigration” helped fuel the boom that left Britain on the brink of bankruptcy.
In a speech urging the country to brace for a difficult and long road back to prosperity, the Prime Minister will argue that the uncontrolled influx of migrant workers under Labour severely damaged the economy as well as putting intense strain on social cohesion and public services.
He will also make clear that households must prepare for a lengthy financial squeeze in the battle to reduce the Government’s debt. “The British people understand there are no short-cuts to a better future,” he will say in a speech to the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
“Our first priority is to kill off the spectre of massive sovereign debts.
“Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong. You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second.”
Mr Cameron’s suggestion that mass immigration played a damaging role in the economic boom under Labour marks a significant shift in tone. It is likely to irritate Lib Dem members of the coalition, such as Business Secretary Vince Cable, who has argued that the economy needs the most “liberal immigration possible”.
Mr Cameron will say that uncontrolled immigration, along with spiralling debt and reckless lending by banks, combined to plunge the economy into crisis.
“Remember what we started with in the UK: an economy built on the worst deficit, the most leveraged banks, the most indebted households, the biggest housing boom and unsustainable levels of public spending and immigration. And now think of where we need to go: an economy based not on consumption and debt but on savings and investment; not on Government spending but on entrepreneurial dynamism; not on one industry in one corner of the country but on all our businesses in all our regions, with a new emphasis on manufacturing, exports and trade.”
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Construction, Cost of Materials Increasing
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 28 — According to data from the Greek statistics authority, the cost of building materials in December went up 3.6% on the previous month. The Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Athens reports that it is principally attributable to the increase in prices of diesel (+41.8%), steel tubing (+24.1%), plastic tubing (+12.8%) and bricks (+3.3%).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Fiat Profits Up in 2010, Debt Down
Ferrari sees record sales
(ANSA) — Turin, January 27 — Fiat posted profits of 607 million euros in 2010, up from 470 million in 2009, the carmaker said Thursday.
Earnings were 27.9 billion euros, 6% higher than 2009.
Car sales were 8% down but this was outweighed by a 27% rise in sales of light commercial vehicles, Fiat said.
Fiat’s debt dropped to 2.4 billion euros in 2010 from 4.4 billion at the end of 2009.
Its new separate carmaking company holds debt of 0.5 billion euros while its other activities, hived off at the end of last year, have debts of 1.9 billion euros.
The group spun off farm and construction vehicle division CNH, bus and truck maker Iveco and the non-auto part of Powertrain, which develops and produces engines and transmissions, into a new company, Fiat Industrial.
Its car-making and components divisions, including Fiat Group Automobiles (Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo), Ferrari, Maserati, Magneti Marelli, Teksid, Comau and the rest of Powertrain, have remained in the original Fiat Spa.
Ferrari profits were up 15.8% to 303 million euros in 2010, the company said.
Some 6,573 cars were sold, 5.4% up on 2009 and a new record following one set in 2008 when “market conditions were decidedly better than the present ones”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Pensions and Employment, Zapatero’s Double Challenge
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 28 — The dizzying rise in unemployment means that almost 5 million people are out of work, while an ageing population will see the number pensioners double, from 8.7 million to almost 17 million, in the next 40 years. The challenge faced by the Socialist government led by José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is double edged: on the one hand, pension reform, with the rise in the pensionable age indispensable for covering services and, on the other, the struggle against unemployment, which rose to 20.3% at the end of 2010, the highest level since 1997, according to the results of a report on the active population (EPA), which were released today.
If the head of the Socialist government can say that he was one the first challenge, with this morning’s agreement of principle with unions and representatives, which the Employment Minister, Valeriano Gomez, dubbed “historic”, the struggle to rectify the employment situation is an uphill one, with no end currently in sight. Zapatero himself was forced to admit in front of Congress that “it will not be easy to reduce unemployment,” especially among young people.
The admission was a response to the leader of the People’s Party, Mariano Rajoy, who said that youth unemployment (for people under the age of 25) was above 43% in Spain. The EPA results show that there are 840,000 people under the age of 25 on the unemployed list, with the highest percentage of jobless youths (23%) under the age of 19.
The threat of a “lost generation” has been hanging over the lengthy negotiations between the government, the CcOo and UGT unions and the confederation of industrialists, which have resulted in an agreement on the reform of pensions and a pre-agreement on the state pact. The reform is “flexible” and will aid “the recovery of the economy and of employment,” according to the Deputy PM, Interior Minister and government spokesperson, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, who was speaking after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, during which the agreement was ratified. The deal will not only help to reach targets of deficit reduction, but is “an integral part of the future economic and social contract, towards which the government, unions and representatives are working”.
The pensions agreement includes a deal on active employment policies, which are still to be defined. Meanwhile, unions have won greater rights for those who are most penalised by the measures: young grant holders, upon whose post-university training employers will be forced to pay pension tax for a maximum of two years, with another maximum two years worth of tax payments for workers (especially young mothers) who request leave to look after their children.
“The reform is designed to support the public pension system, when it is joined by the most populous generations of our history, starting in 2025,” Gomez said after the meeting of Ministers. “It is the most intense reform every carried out in Spain, and has the merit of having united social players”. The text of the social contract, which has not yet been published, will be signed next Wednesday and will include new pension measures, pushing up the pensionable age from 65 to 67, but with a series of exceptions, such as the opportunity to stop working at 65 with 38 years and 6 months of tax.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Dave Gaubatz: Sleeper Cells in the USA
Upon returning from Iraq I left Federal Service to pursue a career educating U.S. law enforcement in the U.S. I wrote a book titled “Arabic for law enforcement and military”. During my lectures to local, county, and state law enforcement officers it was revealed the true first line defenders in the U.S. are not trained nor prepared to combat terrorism in the U.S. (through no fault of their own). The local law enforcement agencies were not receiving adequate funds or assistance from the Federal Government to fight terrorism. The majority advised they were supposed to be the first line defenders, but in actuality they did not even know what Al-Qaeda meant, and/or could not point out Iraq or Iran on a map. They had no Arabic language training. I began conducting research and talking with experts from various fields and determined three significant facts that I corroborated by further research:
1. The terrorists groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda each had different leaders and to some degree operated in different ways, but they each had the same two goals (destroy Israel and destroy America and any country that supported either).
2. Our nuclear research centers were very vulnerable to an attack and the potential for a suicide bomber using a dirty radiological bomb from these facilities was and is a high probability. Note: Vic Walter and Brian Ross of ABC News did an excellent report on the lack of security at these facilities. I received an enormous amount of information from individuals associated with Russian nuclear programs that there is nuclear material being sold on the black market and nuclear material is in the hands of Islamic Extremists.
3. Terrorist sleeper cells are located primarily in Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, California, and Canada. The “sleepers” are prepared to conduct terrorist attacks within the U.S., and nuclear material is available to them. “Prepared” in this instance indicates they have the necessary tools to carry out their attacks and are prepared to die.
4. Non profit organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, MANA, MSA, and several other Islamic based groups are in actuality simply fronts for Al Qaeda and Hamas. The leadership within these groups receives funds and training from the Saudi government. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows these groups to operate freely throughout the U.S. and at American’s taxpayer’s expense. Essentially the IRS grants the groups immunity and the authority to train, organize, and prepare for attacks against our country. Why? Because CAIR and other such groups have a confidential informant network much better than even our FBI. CAIR uses contractors such as Corey Saylor (Simple Resolve Company) to place interns into our elected official’s offices, and into organizations such as the IRS.
Terrorist operations are active in the U.S. and are being operated/financed by Al Qaeda throughout the U.S.
U.S. citizens need to understand there are people trained and prepared to carry our suicide missions in the U.S. and nothing are off limits. Churches, malls, and even the schools our children attend are not off limits to suicide bombers. It is only a relatively short time before the U.S. will begin seeing suicide terrorist missions.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Man Arrested With Explosives at Michigan Mosque
A 63-year-old California man who had explosives with him was arrested outside one of the nation’s largest mosques in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, authorities in Michigan said.
Dearborn police said Roger Stockham was arraigned Wednesday on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. A statement from police says Stockham had class-C fireworks.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter says Stockham was arrested Monday in the parking lot of Islamic Center of America.
| [Return to headlines] |
Marines to Train in Mock City as Big as San Diego
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — A 1,560-building mock city that’s roughly the size of San Diego has risen in the Southern California desert.
The $170 million Marine Corps urban training center at the Twentynine Palms military base is some 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Outrageous Teachings by New GZ Mosque Big
The new imam at the Ground Zero mosque and cultural center believes people who are gay were probably abused as children and that people who leave Islam and preach a new religion should be jailed.
Abdallah Adhami’s remarks on homosexuals, religious freedom and other topics have brought renewed criticism of the proposed community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, which purports to be an inclusive organization.
Adhami, in a lecture on the Web site of his nonprofit, Sakeenah, says being gay is a “painful trial” caused by past trauma.
“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life,” he says. “A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”
He says gays must fight this “propensity.”
“When a religious leader of his standing opens up his mouth and spews this kind of ignorance and hateful statements, it does put his greater judgment into question,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights group.
Adhami also notes that if a Muslim leaves the faith and “preaches their views, they’re jailed.”
“The only thing you do not have the right to do is spread this conviction, lest you, quote unquote, ‘pollute’ others,” he said when asked to give his personal opinion about apostates.
Jordan Sekulow, a lawyer at the Pat Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice in Washington, questioned why the mosque project, called Park51, would choose a leader who advocates retribution for those who leave the faith.
“To be in the United States of America and to tell former Muslims to ‘keep your mouth shut’ is against the Constitution,” said Sekulow, whose organization is suing to stop Park51 from being built.
Adhami, 44, who was born in Washington and says that he began his Islamic studies in Syria at age 8, claims to be descended from “the noble lineage of the family of the Prophet Muhammad.”
The organizers of the mosque sought yesterday to distance themselves from Adhami’s comments and backpedal on his role in the $100 million project.
The Park51 organization announced earlier this month that he was a “senior adviser” to the effort.
But the Park51 organizers posted on Twitter that Adhami is only an “adviser” and that his views do not reflect those of the project.
Preaching intolerance
Ground Zero mosque Imam Abdallah Adhami’s views on homosexuality, religious freedom and faith, from lectures posted on the Web:
On homosexuality and “sexual deviance”
“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life.”
“A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”
On leaving the faith:
“If you look over the Koran from cover to cover, you literally have the right to reject God’s message. The only thing you do not have the right to do is spread this conviction, lest you, quote-unquote, ‘pollute’ others.”
“If someone leaves the din, leaves the path privately, they cannot be touched. If someone preaches about apostasy or preaches their views, they’re jailed . . . Many jurists have said they have to be killed.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Cable: Turkey Used ‘Bazaar’ Tactics in EU Talks
The intense Dutch-led negotiations leading to the EU Council’s invitation to Turkey for accession talks were one for the history books, according to Dutch diplomat Pieter de Gooijer in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
A newly released U.S. diplomatic cable describes all the details of the Dec. 17, 2004 meeting, the final Turkey accession negotiations that ended with a declaration known as the Ankara Agreement.
De Gooijer, who witnessed the 2004 meetings about Turkey firsthand, claimed in the cable three events were especially critical in bringing about a positive decision: French President Jacques Chirac’s push to Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, British Prime Minister Blair fetching Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan back from his hotel before he could hold a fatal press conference and Dutch finessing of the Council Conclusions text that welcomed and quoted a Turkish declaration on the Ankara Agreement that never really existed.
De Gooijer described the Turkish delegation’s negotiation methods like that of a negotiation for a rug in a bazaar. “If things had run in a straight line, they [Turks] would have suspected they could have gotten a better deal. By the same token, bazaar psychology dictated that Erdogan appear dissatisfied with the result after the fact as well,” he told U.S. diplomats, according to the cable.
At the beginning on Thursday, Dec. 16, De Gooijer said the Netherlands Presidency delegation met the Turks around 4:30 pm, where the Dutch told them they had to do something about Cyprus. There was an immediate and negative Turkish reaction to signing anything, he recalled.
With this in mind and while the heads of state were sequestered at dinner, de Gooijer said he proposed that Turkey could initial the protocol to the Ankara Agreement. Initialing is not as final as signing, he had postulated.
“It was a way for Turkey to acknowledge that this was where the Cyprus issue stood, that they could accept the text. Following this plan, the Dutch had circulated an annex to the council conclusions, which referred to Turkey’s signing the protocol of Ankara Agreement, that acknowledged the initialing by the Commission and Turkey of the protocol,” De Gooijer said.
“Difficult talks between the Dutch Prime MinisterJan Peter Balkenende, Foreing Minister Bernard Rudolf Bot, Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül ensued, with the Turks eventually rejecting initialing as too much like signing. They never appreciated the subtle, negotiator’s distinction between the two,” de Gooijer said.
The annex was withdrawn Friday morning, Dec. 17. The Dutch fell back to a proposal that Turkey could make a declaration of intent to sign the protocol prior to the actual start of accession negotiations.
De Gooijer recalls a small meeting among Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, Blair, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and Balkenende with Papadopoulos. “The full council was meeting in a nearby room. With time slipping away for a deal, Papadopoulos balked at a mere declaration.”
Finally, de Gooijer recalled, President Chirac said, “Tassos, look; Tony, Gerhard and I all think this is a good solution. We have not much time. I know you will agree.” Chirac reportedly then stood up and reached out for Papadopoulos, saying, “Now let’s go into the meeting.” And with that, de Gooijer said Chirac shepherded a slightly stunned Papadopoulos back to the council meeting. “That is how the EU works in the end, with the big countries ganging up on a small hold out,” de Gooijer said.
De Gooijer said the Turks were quibbling over words down to individual letters in the conclusions text. “Worse, they refused to make the formal declaration as foreseen in the text of paragraph 19, which welcomed it and supposedly quoted from it. By this time, Erdogan had apparently abandoned the negotiations and was heading back to the Conrad Hotel for an already scheduled 2 p.m. news conference. Balkenende called Blair, de Gooijer said, and asked him to help. Blair volunteered to get in his car and go after Erdogan; some time later, both men returned to the council building for the final round.”
At this point, according to the diplomatic cable, de Gooijer said he proposed that Erdogan, Balkenende, and Barroso sign the page from the newly issued draft conclusions on which the revised paragraph 19 stood, as a way of acknowledging agreement to its contents and intent. “I just tore the page from my book and drew three lines at the bottom of it,” de Gooijer recalled. “Erdogan refused to sign, as did Gül.”
De Gooijer said he then pointed out that someone from the political level would have to accept paragraph 19 in such a way that the rest of the council, especially Cyprus, would be satisfied that Turkey agreed to sign the protocol before Oct. 3.
De Goojer said: “Finally Erdogan instructed his foreign minister to sign on behalf of Turkey; State Secretary Arzo Nicolai signed for the Dutch, and Commissioner Rehn signed for the commission; this paper was then copied and circulated to the council.”
“As for Turkey’s Declaration? It will forever be missing; historians will search in vain for a paper since there never was one, de Gooijer said with a grin,” according to the cable.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Dutch End Iran Ties Over Hanging
Government’s move came in response to the hanging of a Dutch-Iranian woman on Saturday
The Dutch government has frozen official contacts with Iran to protest the hanging of a Dutch-Iranian woman, the foreign ministry said.
Gharib Abadi, the Iranian ambassador was informed of the sanctions after he confirmed reports that Zahra Bahrami, 45, was executed in Tehran on Saturday.
His embassy later said the hanging was ‘an internal issue’ that should have no impact on diplomatic relations.
Iranian state television reported Bahrami was hanged for possessing and selling drugs. The report said that initially Bahrami was arrested for committing ‘security crimes,’ but it did not say what became of that case.
Bahrami had been jailed in Iran since December 2009 after protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. Protesters took to the streets, saying the vote was marred by fraud and that opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was the rightful winner.
The Iranian embassy in a statement on Saturday described Bahrami as a member of an international drug trafficking ring, who traveled on Dutch, Iranian and Spanish passports with different personal information.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
EU Becoming ‘Christian Club, ‘ Turkish Minister Says at Davos Forum
Turkey’s deputy prime minister complained Saturday that the European Union was becoming an inward-looking “Christian club,” slamming a lack of progress in his country’s bid to join.
Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos that included EU President Herman Van Rompuy, Ali Babacan said: “We always thought the EU is a big peace project … but then the enlargement process literally stalled.
“The open-door policy is no longer there,” he added.
“And one of the big themes about why Turkey cannot become a member of the European Union is because it is a Christian club. This is in our view very, very dangerous,” he said.
Ankara began accession negotiations with the EU in 2005, but the process has stalled amid opposition from some member states, lack of reform in Turkey and a trade row over the divided island of Cyprus.
Several chapters remain frozen due to Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Greek Cyprus, an EU member that Ankara does not recognize owing to the island’s division between its Greek and Turkish communities.
Beyond this, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have expressed opposition to Turkey’s bid.
People in the Islamic world are looking closely at the EU to see whether it will open its doors to Turkey, said Babacan, also economy minister.
“Everyone is looking at what is going on. And what kind of Europe, what kind of European Union we are going to be seeing in the future is going to be of immense importance in terms of what kind of message our region gets,” he said.
Turkey’s EU bid received warm support from one European delegation in Davos: Sweden said it would continue to support Turkey.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt denied Europe is a “Christian club,” saying: “In Sweden a couple of decades ago we abolished the idea of a state church. We are not in the conception that we are all of one religion.
“We have 400,000 Muslims in Sweden. For me it’s not a religious cooperation the European Union; it’s a set of values that is open for all world religions. We are very much in favor of a reformed Turkey’s entry into the EU,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Ex-Civil Defence No.2 Arrested in Environment Probe
Marta Di Gennaro held in alleged sewage scam
(ANSA) — Naples, January 28 — Former civil defence No.2 Marta Di Gennaro and ex-Naples trash crisis commissioner Corrado Catenacci were arrested Friday in a probe into alleged crimes against the environment in the Campania region.
The pair, who were placed under house arrest, were among 14 people arrested on suspicion of allowing waste-plant managers to pour raw sewage into the sea for years, police said.
A further 38 people are under investigation in the probe including former Campania governor Antonio Bassolino.
There have been waste crises in the Naples area for years and the local Camorra mafia is said to be heavily involved in illegal waste management.
Di Gennaro’s ex-boss Guido Bertolaso is expected to face trial shortly for allegedly exchanging public works contracts including G8 site work for favours including an apartment and sex.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bertolaso Expected to Face Trial
Former civil protection chief accused of taking bribes
(ANSA) — Rome, January 27 — Perugia prosecutors probing former civil protection chief and 21 other people in a graft probe in public tenders have wrapped up their case, accusing him of taking bribes and striking sex-for-favours arrangements with Rome businessman Diego Anemone.
According to the prosecutors, Anemone gave the 60-year-old Bertolaso 50,000 euros in cash, allowed him to use a luxury studio apartment in Rome and provided free escorts at his sports club in exchange for bids to work on state venues, including the renovation of the original site of the 2009 Group of Eight summit on the Sardinian island of La Maddalena.
Bertolaso, who won plaudits with the handling of the 2009 quake in Abruzzo and the management of other crises, stepped down last year.
Bertolaso claims he has been dragged into the probe as punishment for never having kowtowed to anyone.
“I’m paying dues for my independence and because I’ve never let anyone get away with anything,” Bertolaso said during a visit to reconstruction sites in the quake-hit areas around the central city of L’Aquila.
“I’ve never lied to Italians about my actions. I believe I have a clear conscience,” he said, reiterating that charges against him were “totally groundless”.
Anemone, Bertolaso and the others now have 20 days to prepare their defence and convince prosecutors before a decision is made by an investigating judge on whether they should stand trial.
The former civil protection chief admitted that his wife — a landscape architect — had worked briefly for Anemone, but said “this was before the G8 renovation at La Maddalena”.
He also said he never received money from Anemone but had in fact given him 20,000 euros to cover costs for repair works at his Rome home done by his construction firm.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi and People of Freedom Take to Streets Against “Politicised Justice”
PDL changes tack. Hundred-theatre event ditched for single demonstration in Milan on 13 February
MILAN — On 13 February, the People of Freedom (PDL) will take to the streets in defence of Silvio Berlusconi. The PM’s party is planning a huge demonstration in Milan at which Mr Berlusconi himself will be present. A party executive explained that the aim “is to take to the streets to defend the prime minister against politicised justice”.
FROM 100 THEATRES TO SINGLE EVENT IN MILAN — The original idea had been to hold a simultaneous event in the theatres of a hundred towns. However, the political climate in the wake of Rubygate prompted the prime minister and his party to switch to a single demonstration to be held, in all probability, in Piazza del Duomo. “Spontaneous demonstrations” may also be held in other towns at the same time. An “operational meeting” is due to be held on Friday at the PDL headquarters in Rome’s Via dell’Umiltà, said a PDL member.
“I WILL NOT YIELD A MILLIMETRE” — Mr Berlusconi spoke about the Ruby affair again at a birthday dinner for Micaela Biancofiore. “I will not yield a millimetre”, he is reported to have said to some PDL parliamentarians. “Italians are with me”. Everybody must take a stance so it is clear that I have done nothing wrong”.
CRITICISM FOR SANTORO — In the course of the evening, Mr Berlusconi is said to have been liberal with criticism of the Annozero television programme, which he called “scandalous” and “disgraceful”, stressing that “Santoro has overstepped all limits”. Guests at the dinner reveal that Mr Berlusconi was highly critical of the programme’s content, which he said was based entirely on “trash and lies”.
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Tax Fraud Trial to Resume in Milan
Milan, 28 Jan. (AKI) — Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s trial for tax fraud and false accounting will resume in Milan on 28 February, a court in the northern city announced on Friday. The move followed a recent ruling by Italy’s supreme court that weakened Berlusconi’s immunity from prosecution.
The Constitutional Court earlier this month partially overturned the government’s controversial ‘legitimate impediment law’ by ruling that judges should decide if Berlusconi and other cabinet ministers may postpone trials.
The law allowed trials to be suspended for up to 18 months if ministers considered themselves too busy to attend.
The law had put on hold Berlusconi’s trial for tax fraud and false accounting related to his Mediaset company’s purchase of 470 million euros of television rights in the United States during the 1990s, which will now resume.
Two other planned trials against the 74—year-old billionaire media tycoon could also re-start.
In a second trial, he is charged with paying a 600,000 dollar bribe to his British former tax lawyer, David Mills, to give false court testimonies during two trials in the mid-1990s.
The third trial involves tax fraud and embezzlement charges involving Mediaset’s Mediatrade unit.
Berlusconi denies wrongdoing in all cases.
Unnamed sources close to prosecutors in the so-called ‘Rubygate’ vice probe said on Friday the magistrates would “very shortly” file a request for Berlusconi to stand trial over allegations he used a underage Moroccan prostitute nicknamed Ruby.
The prosecutors also allege Berlusconi abused his powers of office to pressure police to release the teenager from custody in May 2010 over an unrelated theft charge.
Berlusconi denies the allegations. On Thursday, a panel from the lower house of the Italian parliament sidestepped a request from Milan prosecutors to grant them permission to search the offices of his accountant in connection with the probe, which involves “numerous” young women including another minor.
The panel voted by 11-8 that the case should have been submitted to a special tribunal for ministers and to return two huge files of documents supporting the allegations back to prosecutors in Milan.
In Italy, abuse of office is punishable by up to 12 years in prison, while using an underage prostitute carries a maximum jail term of three years.
Berlusconi on Friday vowed he would remain in office. “We are living in a democracy, not a police state, we mustn’t be dragged down by these prosecutors and their dossiers,” he stated.
The president of Italy’s association of magistrates Giuseppe Cascini reacted angrily to Berlusconi’s remarks.
“The judiciary is being attacked by those who don’t accept the principle that all citizens are equal before the law,” he said.
The opposition has urged Berlusconi to resign over the prostitution probe, and the scandal has drawn thinly veiled criticism from Pope Benedict XVI and other top Catholic prelates.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: The Loneliness of Silvio B.
Corriere della Sera Milan
Why, at 74 years of age, is the leader of a Western country embarrassing himself and his country and getting caught up in scandals that undermine his power and authority? And why haven’t the Italians given him the boot yet? The answer lies in a national penchant for exhibitionism whose roots go back to the Roman empire, says columnist Beppe Servergnini.
Beppe Severgnini
Torn between curiosity and fatigue, Italians want to know: how, where, how many? And judges: who and when? But the sixth question — Why? — hasn’t been asked yet. Why does Berlusconi behave like this? How can such an important man, the leader of a government, surround himself with courtesans and bimbos? The simplest answer might be: because he likes it. Not so much for the sex, which at a certain age poses all the challenges of mountain climbing, as for Lady Approval and her three sisters: Admiration, Adulation and Adoration.
The scenes described by those who attend his parties bear some comparison with other situations that delight the master of the premises, such as meeting worshipful young party activists, TV like ceremonies, Brazilian nights and Russian dachas, Sardinian villas and the Milanese universities that celebrate him.
Silvio B. has all the characteristics of a nuclear narcissist. He wants to be applauded and admired. One of the reasons why he hates journalists — except in their domesticated form, those who work for his own newspapers — is that critical questions are evidence of a failure to love him. And therefore unbearable.
The weakness of B. is human and Italian
National exhibitionism — the very one that springs out of a neurotic need to cut a bella figura [to make a good impression] — is fired to its point of incandescence, producing that energy that can go without sleep, prudence and common sense. It drives him to use the television stations that he owns as bait and as reward, propels him to push forward young women as party candidates, to support and shield them for their aesthetic and sexual merits, and to defend them beyond all logic. All of which makes him blind to the grotesque spectre of a single man prowling nightclubs in search of women disguised as nurses, teachers, policewomen — the lonely Lothario of numerous films and a vast literature.
The artificiality of the parties, the compliments and the flattery, the parody of seduction, the predictable temptation, the illusion of charms that have a price tag. The weakness of B. is human and Italian. But there is something familiar in this spasmodic quest for approval whose symptoms — well known in the business empire and in the party where Silvio B. is known respectively as the Dottore and the Presidente — entered the public arena two years ago.
Some men need an audience
At that time, his attendance at the eighteenth birthday party of Noemi Letizia, in the suburbs of Naples, showed signs of a fanatical exhibitionism. The party guests marvelled with astonishment at what the rich and powerful man was unable to resist that night. The dramatisation of his travels, his meetings, the worldly success of the host — at his villa at Arcore outside Milan or at the Grazioli palace, his private residence in Rome — are further proof of the same phenomenon.
Some men need an audience just to be able to wake up in the morning. If they can’t find it, they buy it. There is a little of Tiberius (as described by Suetonius) and a little of Hugh Hefner (immortalised by Playboy) in Silvio B. Thus are empires undone, in between parties, debauchery and attempts to stop time, with tricks that time has taught us to recognise. Family and professional success are never enough. What is wanting are cheerleaders, admirers, singers and stages both spectacular and, above all, melancholy. For it is his role to banish melancholia.
Silvio B. is a lonely man. He will grasp it when he is no longer in power: as the prices go up and the number of friends go down. Those who wish him well should tell him. But perhaps it is already too late.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Radical Islamic Subversion in Greece
A well known hypothesis in the European and American security circles is that the region of Southeastern Europe, including the Eurozone country Greece, is on the verge of a full-scale radical Islamic subversion process which is being facilitated by myriad Islamic-originating groups aiming to gain a strong foothold in Europe.
A recent revelation by the infamous Wiki leaks US Dept of State telegrams, showed that already since 2009, the ex-Ambassador of US in Athens, Mr. Daniel Speckhard, has noted the danger of the creation of extremist Islamic cells in Greece and the use of the country as a traverse point of terrorists from the Middle East to other European countries.
In a special report by the French daily “Le Figaro”, on the 21st of December 2010, the case of the route of Islamic terrorists from Lebanon to Europe was noted with significant details.
The article titled “Liban-une filiere djihadiste vers l’Europe”, clearly illustrated the perils involved for Greece as well. More specifically, the Lebanese Army Cornell Mahmoud Issa noted to the French journalists that since November 2010, some 20 extremists managed to escape from a camp where they were kept in Lebanon and found their way to the EU.
He stated that already the authorities were notified in an international level, although he admitted that this is a difficult task. From their part, the French security authorities believe that this is the case of a new Jihad mission heading towards European metropolises.
In classified documents that were in possession of radical groups in Lebanon, it was noted, that the individuals named: Karoum Imad Youssef, Ahmad Kayed and Sidawa, managed to leave the camp previously and through Syria and Turkey ventured up to Greece and Bulgaria with the assistance of illegal immigrant transport networks managed by Turks.
Moreover they managed to acquire fake ID’s and they were finally caught by a common operation of the Bulgarian and Greek authorities. That case according to many reliable sources was closely monitored by the British and French intelligence, due to the fact that these two countries was the ultimate destination of the Lebanese group. Mahmoud Issa, states that more cases are to be found that evade the authorities so far. In the article Greece is mentioned as a traverse region from where potential terrorists travel on their way to other EU countries.
At the same time the rising illegal immigrant wave into Greece from nationals of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Algeria and Sudan has alarmed both Greek and international authorities. Already the country has announced the creation of a fence in order to curb the movement and mass arrests of illegal immigrants is happening on a daily basis. Around 100 of those are arrested daily over the past few months, but not all deported due to a variety of bureaucratic and political reasons.
Leftist sectarian groups and NGO’s with obvious Islamic links, are assisting into perpetuating the situation by providing a local cover for the incoming illegal immigrants, despite the fact that their identity cannot be established, and it is more than sure that amongst their numbers there are quite a few radicals and potential terrorists.
The role of the emerging Islamic power of Turkey into managing the en mass movement from Islamic countries into the EU has been highlighted numerously over the past few months and it is of interest to make a note of the fact that regular flights are being organized between Rabat in Morocco and Algiers in Algeria to Istanbul so as to bring a sizeable number of nationals from those countries to Turkey and transport them thereafter to Greece-Bulgaria, en route to the EU.
The Islamic governance in Turkey has lifted travel regulations and visas with those countries, whilst it has no visa with Iran, thus promoting in effect the movement of Afghans and Pakistanis, as well as, Iranians into Europe.
The issue is of concern for Greece, regarding radical Islam, is inexorably related to Turkey’s ability or capability to either control its domestic rising radical Islamist tendency, or whether it will pursue a full-blown Islamists policy with multiple consequences for the region between Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, which is due to be destabilized because of the Egyptian developments and the possible domino-effect in neighbouring countries.
In Athens-Greece, it can be safely assumed that first of all, there is activity within radical circles. This is the estimation by local security circles, that assume around the presence of cells directed by various groups such as Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, and various networks of individuals related to the Somalian Al Shahab, Palestinian radicals, Pakistani and Afghani Islamists. Due to the fact that the majority of the Islamic population in Greece and especially the radicalized part of them are mainly interested into travelling to Northern Europe, the situation is deemed as controllable by the local authorities, something that cannot be guaranteed on a permanent basis.
Since late 2008, there have been three major cases that show the tendency of creating a rising network of a quasi-radical Islamic element in the Greek society. The first was in the December 2008 riots, were approximately 50% of the people arrested were Pakistanis and Afghanis arrested, some of them claiming to the authorities that were paid in order to participate in the violent demonstrations.
The second development was the May 2009 so-called “Koran demonstrations”, when a multicultural group of various Islamic communities in Athens took to the street allegedly claiming that the Police desecrated the Koran during a routine search in the pockets of a Syria street vendor.
It was later revealed that this particular individual was lying to the authorities and the press and was involved in various illegal actions including robberies. What was also proven, was that a network of NGO’s were able to coordinate and finance the mobilization of the illegal Muslim community in Athens and claims have been made that they are financed by the organized crime which employs the desperate masses of Muslims in the country in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus of Islamic countries in Greece.
A third phase was the mass prayer of some 10,000 Muslims in the centre of Athens in October 2010, without attaining the necessary state permission for that. Amongst the organizers they were individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and an Imam was brought by Egypt to commemorate the ending of the Ramadan…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden’s Wolf Hunt Heading to Court: EU
Sweden’s wolf hunt violates EU law, environment commissioner Janez Potocnik said on Monday, vowing to drag Sweden to court for allowing the hunt to continue this year.
“I regret that Sweden has embarked on the licensed hunting of wolves without providing a clear answer to my letter sent on December 7th,” Potocnik, who is responsible for the protection of endangered species, wrote in a statement on Monday.
He emphasised that the commission has called for an intensive dialogue with the Swedish government about the fact that, as the commission sees it, the hunt may be illegal in relation to EU law.
Now, he pointed out, there is nothing else to do but to take Sweden to court.
“The Swedish authorities’ actions give me few other options than to propose to the EU Commission to start a formal proceeding against Sweden for breaching the EU’s environmental laws,” said Potocnik.
With the wolf hunt in its third day on Monday, there are only five wolves left in this year’s quota of 20: three in Värmland in western Sweden and one each in Örebro and Västmanland in central Sweden.
Over the first two days of the hunt, 14 wolves were killed by Monday. Among the wolves that have been killed, four were alpha animals, two of them marked.
Eleven were classified as adults and only three pups or juveniles. This does not correspond to the entire age composition of the wolf population.
“It sounds like a skewed distribution. It may be that the adult animals expose themselves more, but also that the hunt was consciously directed towards them,” said Olof Liberg, coordinator of the Scandinavian wolf research project Skandulv.
“If the hunters shoot young animals, the adults are understandably left behind and can continue to reproduce. And then the hunters cannot let their dogs loose in the countryside,” he added.
Even last year, there were clear signs that the shooting was lopsided. However, Liberg pointed out that the researchers took that into account that for this year’s allocations.
“In order to spare the number of alpha animals and secure at least 20 rejuvenations next year, we slowed the allotment overall,” he said.
A shot was fired at a wolf in Västra Götaland this weekend, but after tracking, it was determined that the wolf was not hurt. The hunt will likely resume there.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey’s Alcohol Restrictions Against European Practice, Euro MP Says
The new restrictions introduced by the AKP government regarding alcohol laws are inconsistent with Europe’s free market principles, according to a EU MP. ‘If they change, then it would be a clear step away from European values, says,’ EU Labor party member Richard Howitt
New restrictions on Turkey’s alcohol laws strongly backed by the government drew adverse criticism from a member of the European Parliament who said they were inconsistent with Europe’s free market principles.
The new regulations introduced by the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government, would prohibit alcohol from appearing in commercials and advertisements and bring strict new restrictions on alcohol licenses.
“It is a legal drug across the European Union, freely sold and consumed in European markets and therefore if restrictions are brought in Turkey they are inconsistent with our freedom in the EU,” Richard Howitt, Labor member of the European Parliament, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview.
“The objective fact is a restriction on the market for alcohol is inconsistent with Europe’s free market principles and if it changes then it would be a clear step away from European values,” he said.
Howitt, alongside a group of several parliamentarians from the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, attended an inter-party seminar at the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, headquarters in Ankara as well as holding talks with government officials last week.
‘European eyes to watch Turkey’
Freedom of the press in the run up to the June elections is another controversial area in Turkey with the latest progress report of the European Commission, the EU’s executive, published in November, citing problems in this particular field.
“There are clearly still problems in relation to freedom of expression in the country,” said Howitt.
“It is important to say in the run up to elections in particular, free debate, free interchange, free reporting of the different views, of the different parties is an integral part of a pluralistic, democratic process. I think European eyes will be watching very carefully to see that journalists are not simply able to report freely but to report freely in run up to the elections,” he added.
The parliamentarian expressed worries about not only Article 301 of the Turkish penal code that criminalizes insulting “Turkishness,” but other articles reflecting a similar mentality.
“The essential thing there is not to focus on simply one change to the law, the journalists should never be in prison for what they write or broadcasters for what they say,” he said.
The government-amended Article 301, under which a number of authors and intellectuals have landed in court, gives the authority to open cases to the justice minister, instead of a local prosecutor.
‘Detention periods contradict European charter’
Prolonged detention periods in Turkey are another area considered as a serious violation of human rights. Howitt said prolonged periods of detention without charge is in contradiction to the European Convention on Human Rights.
“People should know the charges against them and they should have uninhibited access to defense lawyers to be able to present a proper defense clearly and fairly without torture or mistreatment, and the independent justice system should operate independently,” he said.
‘Women should have safe haven’
The latest statistics about the situation of women in Turkey reveal the country is lagging behind. The European parliamentarian said the statistics do not mean that the situation is worsening but added that he was not minimizing the problem at all of the violence against women in this country.
He recalled a recent debate between Turkish officials and European parliamentarians about the number of shelters for women who are subjected to domestic violence.
“There should be a shelter in every municipality and any women who are subjects of domestic violence should have a safe haven to flee. The debate about the numbers is the wrong debate in my view,” said Howitt.
Asked if he shared concerns over Islamization of Turkey under the AKP rule, the parliamentarian said he was listening to such concerns that he noted cannot be ignored.
“But our job in the EU is to talk to the government, because it is an elected government. We also work not just with this government, but all parties in Parliament, with all of society, because it would not be the government that would join the EU but the country and its people,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Asian Men Who Groom Young Girls Frustrated by Arranged Marriages, Peer Warns
Lord Ahmed said young Asian men want “fun” in their sex lives and do not have anything in common with their overseas’ brides, who can often be cousins.
He said it was time for the Muslim community to “wake up” to the problem and look to promote UK-based marriages instead. His comments come amid growing concern over the role of Asian men in the grooming of young girls.
Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, provoked controversy when he said that white girls were seen as “easy meat” by some Pakistani men. Lord Ahmed, a Labour peer, said he was talking about Asian men in general and warned they can target young Asian girls as well as white girls.
He said: “They are forced into marriages and they are not happy. “They are married to girls from overseas who they don’t have anything in common with, and they have children and a family. “But they are looking for fun in their sexual activities and seek out vulnerable girls.
“I get a lot of criticism from Asian people who ask, ‘How can you say this about Asian men?’ But they must wake up and realise there is a problem.”
He added: “While I respect individual choice, I think the community needs to look at marriages in the UK rather than cousin marriages or economic marriages from abroad…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Grooming of Girls by Asian Gangs Fuelled by Unhappy Arranged Marriages to Cousins Claims Muslim Peer
A senior Muslim politician has blamed unhappy arranged marriages to cousins for leading some Pakistani men to prey on vulnerable young white girls to fulfil their sexual needs.
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, Britain’s first Muslim peer, is the first politician to make a link between first-cousin marriages and sex crimes by Pakistani men.
He has spoken out after a spate of high-profile court cases where groups of Asian men have been sentenced for grooming white girls as young as 12 in Derby, Blackburn and Lord Ahmed’s home town of Rotherham.
Lord Ahmed, who wants an end to cousin marriages, said: ‘They are forced into marriages and they are not happy. They are married to girls from overseas who they don’t have anything in common with, and they have children and a family.
‘But they are looking for fun in their sexual activities and seek out vulnerable girls.’
He said Asian men resort to abusing young white girls because they do not want meaningful relationships with adult white women.
‘An adult woman — if you are having an affair — would want your time, money and for you to break up your marriage,’ the peer added.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Islamists Establish a Bridgehead in Parliament, Get Commons Pass: MP and Peer Resign
In November, I disclosed how the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Islamophobia had unwittingly appointed a group of Islamist sympathisers called Engage (or iEngage) to act as its secretariat. Engage are an extremely dubious bunch of people who have repeatedly attacked Muslim moderates and defended extremists. After I publicised the evidence on this blog (detailed below) the chair, the Tory MP Kris Hopkins, and the vice-chair, Labour’s Lord Janner, requested the sacking of Engage as the secretariat to the all-party group. Now, however, after what is described as an “orchestrated lobbying campaign,” Engage have apparently convinced a number of the more gullible members of the APPG that they are authentic representatives of Britain’s Muslim communities. They appear to have been reinstated as the secretariat. Their “head of research,” Shenaz Bunglawala, has been given a Commons pass allowing her unrestricted access to the building without passing through security checks.
Mr Hopkins and Lord Janner on Friday resigned both from their positions and from the group.
In an email circulated to members, they say: “It is our belief that the Group needs to be seen as above reproach and political leaning in order to maintain trust and confidence in its work. “Whilst iEngage are perfectly entitled to express their views, we did not believe it appropriate for them to do so whilst continuing to act for the Group.
“An orchestrated lobbying campaign on behalf of iEngage since we issued our statement has only served to reinforce our opinion. “However, after consulting with several colleagues since Parliament’s return from recess, it appears that this campaign has also persuaded some that iEngage should remain in place.
“Whilst it is obviously a matter for members to decide on what — if any — role iEngage should play in the Group, we no longer feel able to remain a part of it.
“We have therefore decided to relinquish our positions as Chair and Vice Chair, and our memberships, with immediate effect.” iEngage has consistently defended fundamentalist organisations such as the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe. It routinely attacks all criticism of them as “Islamophobic.” It attacked the BBC’s recent Panorama documentary on racist Muslim schools — showing that some children are being taught anti-Semitism and Sharia punishments — as a “witch-hunt.” Typically, it launched its attack before even seeing the programme. It was almost alone in this criticism — faced with Panorama’s clear evidence, even some of the usual Islamist suspects kept quiet.
It attacked me for writing about the East London Mosque’s hosting of the terrorist preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki, in 2009 — advertised with a poster showing New York under bombardment. It peddled the straightforward lie told by the mosque that no-one had realised Awlaki was a bad egg at that stage. In fact, Awlaki had been identified by the US government two months before as a spiritual leader of the 9/11 hijackers — and the mosque knew this.
iEngage’s chief executive, and secretary of the new parliamentary group, Mohammed Asif, wrote to the Home Secretary to protest against the ban on the extremist preacher, Zakir Naik. Mr Naik has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist.” But Mr Asif and iEngage said that Naik’s exclusion would “put at risk good community relations.” iEngage publicised a grotesquely misleading report issued by another Islamist-sympathising group, iEra, purporting to show that three-quarters of non-Muslims believe Islam is negative for Britain. As I demonstrated, this result — massively more than the true figure — was only achieved by systematically twisting the data as part of iEra’s agenda to sow suspicion and discord between communities. iEngage has attacked the Independent columnist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, one of the country’s major voices of moderate Islam, for her opposition to the niqab and the burka. She is far from the only Muslim to be attacked by iEngage. It is interesting that no Muslim MPs attended the launch of the all-party group…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: No-Win, No-Fee Firms Urging Polish Workers to Cash in on Britain’s Compensation Culture
Polish migrants in Britain are being urged to launch compensation claims for thousands by companies luring them with promises of no-win, no-fee deals.
Insurance experts say unscrupulous operators are exploiting the system and fuelling a rise in premiums for millions of householders and motorists.
Hundreds of glossy full-page advertisements for the no-win, no-fee companies have recently started appearing in Polish-language publications.
[…]
The Association of British Insurers said it had no idea where One Call Claim had obtained its compensation figures. ‘Anyone who has suffered an accident injury through no fault of their own should have the right to compensation,’ said spokesman Malcolm Tarling.
‘But it is irresponsible to stoke up the belief that every accident leads automatically to a successful claim.
‘We are concerned that a number of unscrupulous claim management firms are helping to fuel the perception that there is a compensation culture in Britain. Advertisements like these could give rise to fraud and to the assumption that the system is ripe for exploitation.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: One of Last Surviving Vessels From Normandy Landings Sinks En Route to Restoration
The Yarmouth Navigator, a former Navy minesweeper and patrol boat, was being moved to a new mooring after a campaign to save it which lasted several years.
Rescuers were searching for one missing person after three people were saved from the waters of Plymouth Sound shortly after 6.30pm. A major search and rescue operation was launched, with officers from Devon and Cornwall Police, crews from Brixham Coastguard, a search and rescue helicopter and RNLI lifeboats involved. The vessel is understood to have been in the process of relocation from its former mooring in Noss Marina, on the Dart, to Plymouth. The Yarmouth Navigator was one of around 5,000 ships that participated in the Normandy landings in June 1944 and it is listed by the National Historic Ships Committee on its register of vital ships. Unlike listed buildings, there is no official protection for ships. According to the register, the ship was built by Richards Ironworks in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1943, with a gross tonnage of 115.96 and a beam of 22.98ft (7.01m). It was fitted with a diesel engine During the 1990s, the ship was tied up and largely left untouched but a campaign was launched in 2001 to save the 97ft (29.6m) wooden ship from the breaker’s yard.
However, the project foundered when the vessel was impounded by the authorities before a buyer was found who spent the last six months working on the engine…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Strictly Star Laila Rouass’ Sister Explains Into How Some Muslims Are Lured Into Fanaticism
Kay Rocco is highly articulate, with a confidence that makes it difficult to imagine anyone dominating her. But her extremist husband Abdul Rahman Saleem held a powerful hold over her for more than a decade.
It is a photograph that, even now, makes Kay Rocco shudder.
It shows members of the extremist Al-Muhajiroun organisation standing outside the London Central Mosque, their faces contorted with rage as they chant ‘UK, you will pay, Bin Laden on his way’ and holding aloft a burning Union Flag.
[…]
For Kay, sitting at her parents’ home in London, the image elicited a more complex series of emotions.
Standing alongside the organisation’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, was her then husband, Abdul Rahman Saleem, a key member of the group.
Although he had told her triumphantly of his actions, it was only when her disgusted parents showed her the picture in a newspaper that she fully grasped the implications.
‘I thought Abdul was all talk, but when I saw that photo and the rage in his eyes, I didn’t recognise him,’ she says. ‘It was the first time I wondered what he was really capable of, how far he would go and what he’d become.
‘My family are moderate, open-minded people who hated me being with him. They showed me the picture in a newspaper and asked how I could be with a man who held such beliefs. I hated what he stood for and felt so ashamed.’
[…]
Saleem sold the TV, threw away all the couple’s CDs and insisted their children wear no Western clothing.
‘He tried to make me wear a full veil, but I refused,’ she says.
‘He hated that I wasn’t like the other wives, who were very involved in the organisation, although they weren’t allowed at important meetings.
‘They disliked me because I kept my distance and one told Abdul I was a threat. Some were graduates but they let every part of their lives be controlled by their men. They weren’t even allowed to drive. It horrified me — however hard Abdul tried to take away my freedom, I would never allow it.’
He was increasingly irrational. ‘He’d flip suddenly. Once, I dropped something in the street and he shouted at me. He’d scream if white drivers overtook him, getting out of the car and squaring up to them.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The 10 Families Who Are Costing US an Astonishing £1m a Year Between Them Just in Housing Benefits
Ten families in England are sharing an astonishing £1million a year in housing benefits, it emerged last night.
The huge sums being lavished on the families by the taxpayer are allowing them to live in streets normally reserved for millionaires.
Five of the families are receiving the maximum payment of £2,000 per week.
It is the first proof that George Osborne was correct when he claimed some households were receiving sums in excess of £100,000 a year.
Last night, the Chancellor told the Daily Mail: ‘It is precisely this kind of shocking waste of public money under the previous Labour government that led to Britain’s debt problems.
‘We are bringing an end to this by putting a cap on the total amount of benefit that a family can receive so the days of £100,000 housing benefit claims are gone.’
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
What Action: Lady Ashton?
Le Monde Paris
Catherine Ashton was cast as Europe’s international voice, the head diplomat of an EU full of world-wide ambitions. Unfortunately, she is not making her voice heard, is nearly invisible and has already lost the confidence of most of the member states.
Philippe Ricard — Jean-Pierre Stroobants
“The European External Action Service [EEAS] is in place? Oh really, what action?” laughingly asks a senior diplomat, who is otherwise a Europhile. In Brussels, the tone is becoming more and more cutting, mocking or saddened whenever the subject of European diplomacy or of the “service” is raised. Placing the EEAS under the tutelage of a High-Representative rather than under the responsibility of a “European Minister of Foreign Affairs, as called for in the Constitutional draft prior to the Treaty of Lisbon is a highly symbolic gesture. Or rather it is a symbolic step backwards obtained by the United Kingdom, whose former Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown used to say that between the world and states there is nothing.
Catherine Ashton, who hails from the same political party as Gordon Brown, and who landed by chance in the position of High-Representative, is having a hard time meeting the challenge. “In her place, others would have already given up,” says one of her advisors, “but she’s gotten into the game and she’s got a solid hide”. Her advisors even dare to mention the “positive balance sheet” of her latest initiatives towards finding a solution to the Gaza issue or the defense of Christian Copts in the Middle East. She is credited with success in the Balkans following renewed talks between Serbs and Kosovars. On Iran, she is trying to take up the baton of her predecessor, Javier Solana, by guiding negotiations on nuclear non-proliferation. But the High-Representative can’t forget what she was told upon taking office: “Welcome. But you should know you will be ripped apart each time you open your mouth”.
The early days of the Baroness Ashton, were, it is true, difficult, studded with errors and hesitations, accounted for by her lack of diplomatic experience. She had trouble overcoming criticism for speaking only English and over her long family weekends in London. Early on, her absence during the Haïti earthquake, her lack of interest in security and defence issues, gave rise to criticism.
All crises seem the same for Ms Ashton
Against all odds, Lady Ashton announced in December 2010 that a “new departure” was being given to security and foreign policy. After some trench warfare between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission over the powers and control mechanisms for the new organism, it was finally officially launched on January 1.
Its 3,650 civil servants were drawn mostly from the former Directorate General for External Relations at the Commission but some also come from the Directorate General for External Relations of the Council and from the delegations of the 27 member states throughout the world. Another 120 positions will be created and diplomats from the member states will join the EEAS. Will this new arrangement open the way towards a single European voice?
Reality is grim on this point. For, after Belarus, Ivory Coast, and Tunisia, one crisis follows another and all seem the same for Ms Ashton. There is always a lag-time that causes impatience in part of the press room in which the press gathers each day at the Commission. The Commission spokesperson is a perfect example of an observation made by French diplomat, Maxime Lefebvre: “Joint declarations — of the EU — sometimes are there only to paper over the differences of the Member States”.
New members and founding countries feel under-represented
Many have the impression that, a year after her nomination, the High-Representative for Foreign Affairs remains absent. This lack of visibility is exasperating certain European capitals. A senior European decision-maker is categorical and ferocious. “Everyone has turned the page, Ms Ashton is useless and the service was put into place in such chaotic fashion that already no one has faith in it,” he said. Ms Ashton’s “passivity” discourages all pooling of diplomatic efforts and compromises the exchange of sensitive information, he added.
The unease rose as the organization of the EEAS was unveiled. The new members, but also founding countries such as Germany or Italy, feel they are under-represented. Although it long promoted the idea of a more substantial EU diplomacy, France is also unhappy. Other than the nomination of Pierre Vimont as Executive Secretary General, no French diplomat has been found worthy in the eyes of Lady Ashton. Ireland’s David O’Sullivan was named Chief Operating Officer and Robert Cooper will hold the rather vaguely-defined role of Special Advisor to the Baroness, and will, therefore, be in direct contact with her. Human Resources, infrastructure and embassies will all be at the hands of Lady Ashton’s compatriots and this has caused a great gnashing of teeth.
For some, however, the frustrations extend beyond questions of recruitment and give rise to diplomatic initiatives which appear in contradiction with the goals pursued by certain capitals. Thus, while Ms Ashton seems uninterested in the defence aspects of European construction, or, in any case, unwilling to cross NATO, Paris is favouring greater military cooperation via bi-lateral talks with Britain — much to the chagrin of Italy, Germany and some others. In a revealing choice, France barely leaned on the European Union to manage the crisis in Ivory Coast, a country long in France’s African sphere of influence.
A “facilitator” on the world stage
Yet, some, such as MEP Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the EU parliament still believe. “If we want to avoid a loss of power in the multi-polar world, we need a global diplomatic strategy — for defence, for climate-change, monetary or security issues,” he argues.
Will Ms Ashton be able to elaborate this vision despite her tendency to adopt, at best, the policy most acceptable to the States thus ignoring the latitude and the prerogatives allowed by the Lisbon Treaty? The Baroness seems to desire little more than being a “facilitator” between the Member States. Before Socialist MPs on January 12, she used the same term — “facilitator” — to define the possible action of the EU on the world stage.
For the moment, Europe is satisfied to remain the “narrative power” described by political scientist Zaki Laïdi —able to talk about the world, to state its values, but not (yet?) able to impose itself as a true power.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Draft Agrements With Serbia Adopted
(ANSAmed) — SARAJEVO, JANUARY 26 — The Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) Council of Ministers adopted a draft agreement with Serbia on temporary employment of Serbian citizens in BH and vice-versa, reports local media.
The Council also adopted a proposal for a security agreement between BH and Serbia, which will ensure the secrecy of information exchanged between the Serbian and BH governments.
The proposal came from the Ministry of Security, and will next be forwarded to the BH Presidency.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs, which sponsored the temporary employment agreement, will deliver the document to the BiH Presidency for further procedure. Minister of Civil Affairs Sredoje Novic has been proposed as the signatory of the document on behalf of BH.
The Council of Ministers also adopted a draft agreement with Slovenia on temporary employment of Slovenian citizens in BH and vice-versa.
The agreements will regulate the legal hiring of foreign workers, which should help these countries reap the benefits of a mobile workforce, as well as reduce brain drain.
The ministers also adopted a protocol from the talks on the mutual protection of secret information between the BH Council of Ministers and the Government of Montenegro.(
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: HRW, Violations Persist
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JANUARY 25 — Human rights continued to be violated in Algeria in 2010 as well. According to the latest report of Human rights Watch (HRW), the state of emergency which has been in force since 1992 “has created a situation in which freedom of expression, of assembly and association are generally restricted”. Moreover, “the audiovisual media are controlled by the State” and “broadcast hardly any programme in which the government policies are criticised”. The private newspapers, according to HRW, have more freedom of movement although the repressive existing law and their dependence on advertising revenues “limit their freedom to criticise the government and army”.
The NGO also denounces the obstacles to the freedom of religion. “Algerian law criminalises the proselytism of non-Muslims towards Muslims”, the report reads, quoted by the local press, “but not the opposite situation. It also forbids non-Muslims to come together and pray outside the places that have been authorised by the State”. Also the “Pact for peace and national reconciliation”, an initiative taken by Bouteflika in 2006 in an attempt to turn the page of Islamic terrorism, “sets a legal context of continuing impunity of which the people responsible for the atrocities that took place in this period benefit”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria-Italy: Lombardy Entrepreneurs in Algiers
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JANUARY 24 — About ten Lombard entrepreneurs from several different sectors will be in Algeria today and tomorrow to “create new commercial opportunities” and “partnerships with their Algerian counterparts”. The enterprises present, reports a statement from the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) office in Algiers, the organiser of the event alongside the Milan Chamber of Commerce (Promos) are producers of industrial electrical materials, locks and frames, granite and various types of stone as well as engines and materials for the metallurgy and energy sectors. The entrepreneurs will have “B2B” meetings with representatives from Algerian companies, to whom they will be presenting their products. It is the fifth iniziative by Promos in Algeria. In the first 10 months of 2010, underscored ICE, the North African country imported products worth 2.33 billion euros from Italy, 9.8% more than the same period in 2009.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Progress on Talks With Renault and Volkswagen
20 January , 12:52
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JANUARY 20 — Government talks are going ahead in Algeria with Renault and Volkswagen for the building of the first car factory in the North African country. “Talks are going ahead,” the general director for the National Agency for Investment Development (ANDI), Abdelkrim Mansouri, said to the national radio station. “The projects will be carried out over the next few years and in 2011 we will finalise all the formalities” of a bureaucratic nature, he added, noting that the two carmakers “want to go forward very quickly”, but the State “wants to have time to study the offers”. According to the specialised site DZ-Auto, Volkswagen wants to invest 150 million dollars in a project for the assembly of vehicles and would initially produce the Polo and the Polo Classic. Renault would instead aim to produce 4 models in Algeria for a total of 75,000 vehicles per year. According to current legislation, both brand names could hold 49% of the projects, while the remaining 51% would be divided between the State and a local partner.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Pharaoh Palm in Danger of Extinction
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 7 — Red alert for the Nubian desert palm (Medemia Argun) which was common at the time of the pharaohs but may not survive climate change and the threat posed by mankind. Environmentalists have raised the alarm for the species, which is on the endangered species list of The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They have been involved in projects for a long time to search and protect the survivors of an ancient period, when the Egyptian civilization still dominated and the Sahara still wasn’t the inhospitable place it is today.
According to experts, thousands of years ago the region in question was much more humid than it is today. The palms are well adapted to high temperatures but need rains and groundwater to sink their roots in (up to a depth of three metres) for their reproduction.
The palm species is frequently seen in Egyptian paintings and its fruits have been found in the tombs of pharaohs. Its traces were lost various times after its discovery in 1837 by the German explorer Paul Wilhelm von Wurttemberg. Nowadays only a few hundred trees survive in Egypt and Sudan.
The species is threatened by several factors, starting with climate change and the progressive desertification of the area.
The increasing pressure of human activities also has a negative impact. Environmentalists have asked for better protection of the palms, for more research into the size of the population, for genetic studies and for a campaign to make people aware of the importance of the species’ survival.
The trees that are still standing in Egypt — a few dozen — are mainly located in the Dungul oasis, 220km south of the city of Aswan. In Sudan there are still a few hundred surviving trees, but these are at risk as well due to excessive exploitation by the local people, which use the trees for the production of baskets, mats and ropes. In an attempt to stop the decline of the species, to protect it and to help it spread, the Egyptian Environment Ministry has studied the possibility of creating a natural reserve of more than six square kilometres, which would include the Dungul and the Kurkur oasis. In 2003 a nursery was created at the South Valley University in Aswan, where researchers have been able to grow around twenty palms. They hope these trees, in time, will be able to propagate and that they can be returned to their natural environment.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: The Flowering of Democracy, Or the Birth of Another Iran?
For the fifth day in a row, Egypt was consumed with rage, fear and hope yesterday. The streets of ancient cities like Cairo and Alexandria were filled again with the burning anger of brave citizens, desperate to pull down a regime that has repressed and impoverished them for so long.
With smoke rising from the burned out headquarters of the ruling party, bodies piled up at the morgues and protesters defying tanks by clambering on to them and urging soldiers to join the uprising, no-one should be in the slightest doubt over the significance of these events.
Whatever happens over the next few days in Egypt, we are at one of those turning points in history. It is a moment when old certainties collapse and the future is that much harder to predict. The outcome could affect us all.
[…]
But waiting in the wings, yet to make their move, are the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest and largest Islamist organisation. They are loathed by jihadists for their embrace of democracy, but at the same time have been highly critical of America and its support for neighbouring Israel. They remain something of an unknown quantity.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt is the New Iran
Former Republican Congressional candidate and friend Ari David sent in this analysis on the current crisis in Egypt. Let’s hope another Islamist hell like Iran does not await the Egyptians, the Middle East and our world.
First he criticized the weakened leader of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Next Obama threatened to emasculate Mubarak’s standing with the Egyptian military by reducing US financial aid if Mubarak didn’t allow the protests and revolution in the streets to continue.
Obama followed up by tacitly signaling that he supports the violent Islamic protests which are backed by the Shariah-compliant extremists of the Moslem Brotherhood, which is the only real opposition party in Egypt to the thirty-year dictator Mubarak. After that, like Carter, Obama showed constant indecision and weakness, which is having the result of undermining our allies and empowering the forces of insanity and evil on the ground in Egypt and other destabilized countries in the region like Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.
Just like Carter, Obama got us to this point by undermining our only ally in the area, Israel, and empowering all of her regional enemies for the first two years of his presidency. That undermining has led us directly to these out of control events.
At this moment, of the four nations that border Israel, two of them, Syria and Lebanon, are client states of Iran waging constant war and the other two which both have brokered peace are facing internal turmoil, Jordan is facing Islamic protests in her streets and the relatively stable tourist destination Egypt, is exploding in revolution.
The way Obama is handling the Egyptian crisis there can only be one outcome. The Moslem brotherhood will seize total control of the nation and turn the Arab world’s most populace country into a totalitarian Islamic theocracy just like Iran. Egypt’s fall will be a strategic disaster for the US because Egypt borders Israel and controls the vital Suez Canal which connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The Suez is one of the most vital water-ways in the entire world because it is the shipping lane that allows Middle East oil to get to the consumer countries in Europe.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Crisis: Mubarak Under Pressure From West as Lawlessness Takes Hold
As an anti-government revolt raged for a sixth day, with thousands of protesters still on the streets, the US Secretary of State and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, only just stopped short of demanding that Mr Mubarak end his 28-year rule immediately.
But in a clear sign that their support for his regime is wavering, they made it clear they could envisage a time without the 82-year-old in charge in the not too distant future.
In an attempt by the Egyptian military to demonstrate its muscle power, two F-16 fighter jets swooped low over central Cairo in the afternoon, making multiple passes of a crowd of 10,000 people or more thronged in Tahrir Square. Mr Mubarak was pictured on state television in a meeting with his vice-president and defence minister at the military operations headquarters.
Before dawn, gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates. Young men with guns and large sticks smashed cars and robbed people in Cairo. The official death toll from the turmoil stood at 74, with thousands injured.
Two leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the best-organised opposition to the regime, who were among those freed from jail were given a tumultuous welcome when they arrived at Tahrir Square on Sunday night. Esam al-Erian told the cheering crowd: “They tried every way to stop the revolution of the people.”
Some police could be seen returning to some streets nearly two days after virtually disappearing, creating a security vacuum only partially filled by the presence of army troops backed by tanks at key sites around city of 18 million.
However, local squads of vigilantes had largely taken over the job of trying to keep control of the widespread looting. Hundreds of British tourists struggled to leave as Cairo airport went into meltdown. Staff failed to arrive for work and dozens of flights were cancelled.
By Sunday most countries were warning citizens against all but essential travel. Turkey and the US announced they would be putting on special flights to rescue those stranded, however, with an airport struggling to function it was unclear if they would be able to land. Mr Hague said that the British government would work with the tour operators to ensure the safe return of British citizens.
In a crucial move the organisers of the protests gave their backing to the Nobel peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei to agree on a national unity government, giving the demonstrations a political face. Mr ElBaradei took to the streets of Cairo with protesters. He hailed “a new Egypt in which every Egyptian lives in freedom and dignity. We are on the right path, our strength is in our numbers. I ask you to be patient, change is coming.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt and Tunisia Usher in the New Era of Global Food Revolutions
If you insist on joining the emerging market party at this stage of the agflation blow-off, avoid countries with an accelerating gap between rich and poor. Cairo’s EGX stock index has dropped 20pc in nine trading sessions.
Events have moved briskly since a Tunisian fruit vendor with a handcart set fire to himself six weeks ago, and in doing so lit the fuse that has detonated Egypt and threatens to topple the political order of the Maghreb, Yemen, and beyond.
As we sit glued to Al-Jazeera watching authority crumble in the cultural and political capital of the Arab world, exhilaration can turn quickly to foreboding.
This is nothing like the fall of the Berlin Wall. The triumph of secular democracy was hardly in doubt in central Europe. Whatever the mix of aspirations of those on the streets of Cairo, such uprisings are easy prey for tight-knit organizations — known in the revolutionary lexicon as Leninist vanguard parties.
In Egypt this means the Muslim Brotherhood, whether or not Nobel laureate Mohammed El Baradei ever served as figleaf. The Brotherhood is of course a different kettle of fish from Iran’s Ayatollahs; and Turkey shows that an ‘Islamic leaning’ government can be part of the liberal world — though Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan once let slip that democracy was a tram “you ride until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
It does not take a febrile imagination to guess what the Brotherhood’s ascendancy might mean for Israel, and for strategic stability in the Mid-East. Asia has as much to lose if this goes wrong as the West. China’s energy intensity per unit of GDP is double US levels, and triple the UK.
The surge in global food prices since the summer — since Ben Bernanke signalled a fresh dollar blitz, as it happens — is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.
Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39pc in the last year, the oil and fats index 55pc…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Unrest: Tough Questions if Revolution Succeeds
The ordered surroundings of the presidential offices where Hosni Mubarak officially appointed Omar Suleiman, his trusted intelligence chief, as his first deputy seemed a far cry from the anger and chaos that was clearly visible on nearby Cairo streets.
While he no doubt hoped his new government would assure demonstrators of his intentions to embrace political reform, as he announced on state television late on Friday, few were convinced by his efforts.
“We are not dying so that he can just make changes to his ministers. We want a real democracy with limited presidential terms. He didn’t listen to the people,” said Mohamed Sadiq who had joined tens of thousands of Egyptians in the crowds in central Tahrir Square.
A student, Yumla, dismissed the elderly Mr Mubarak as hopelessly out of touch with reality.
“All people are against this president and his government and its corruption,” said Yumla. “It’s rubbish. We don’t want it any more and we won’t go home until he goes.”
In recent years, pro-democracy and human rights rallies have tended to draw small numbers of the same familiar faces onto the streets, usually to be crushed with a heavy-handed security response.
Now though, as was recently seen in Tunisia, people are finding relative protection in their large numbers.
What comes next?
If, as they demand, the president steps down and the government should fall, questions loom large about who and what would follow.
As the Jasmine Revolution model shows it can be hard to come up with answers that satisfy the masses.
Years of suppression in Egypt have left a fractious opposition, often divided by personal and ideological rivalries.
If there were free and fair elections, it is widely expected that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood would win.
Officially illegal, but largely tolerated, it is the most well-organised opposition movement with a network of thousands of grassroots members.
It won one-fifth of the seats in parliamentary elections in 2005 — half of those it contested — with its members running as independents.
Mr Mubarak has long raised the spectre of an Islamist takeover of Egypt to scare his international allies against criticising his ruling party’s political tactics.
While the Brotherhood has been careful to take a low-key role in the latest protests, this week a senior leader, Essam El Erian, told the BBC, the West should respect Egyptians’ religious beliefs and aspirations.
The support of the armed services will be key to the outcome of the crisis
“Islam is compatible with democracy, it is pro the rotation of power, it is pro equal rights and duties for all citizens,” he asserted. “Islam wants a moderate democratic state. You must listen to the people.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
El Baradei Interview: “The US Must Choose Which Side It’s on”
The emerging leader of Egypt’s democratic opposition says the Obama administration must decide if it’s with Mubarak or the Egyptian people
This time the call goes through, and after a few rings the voice that picks up on the other end is that of Ali El Baradei. “You want to talk to my brother? Hang on a moment while I ask him,” he says. The brother of Mohammed ElBaradei turns to someone near him: “It’s the Italian paper, La Stampa. They already called two days ago, what should I tell them?”
A moment later, the voice speaking into the telephone is the one we’ve come to recognize from United Nations’ podiums, when the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency made pronouncements about the existence (or lack thereof) of nuclear weapons in both Iraq and Iran, work that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. “So how are things going in Italy?” Mohammed El Baradei jokes.
La Stampa. Calmer than in Egypt. Aren’t you under house arrest?
ElBaradei: That’s what the authorities say, they even cut off our water supply. But today I will challenge them and go out anyway. Let’s see what happens. I don’t see a huge police presence around here, I think they announced my arrest in order to intimidate the protesters, the message being: “If we take such a well-known person as ElBaradei, just imagine what we’ll do to you.”
Will it work?
I don’t think so. People are back out on the streets today, and will keep doing so until Mubarak goes.
Did you find his speech and new appointments convincing?
It is an insult to the intelligence of the Egyptian people, just empty words. Mubarak has been in power for 30 years and everybody knows he names members of the government at his pleasure. How can he imagine that he can place all the blame on the executive and promise phantom reforms, and then expect to be believed?
So what’s the solution now?
What the people on the streets demand. Mubarak must understand that his time is up, and must peacefully cede power. At that point, we’ll have to build a transitional government, a coalition able to represent all society. This executive will need to change the parts of the constitution that deny democracy. Once the job is done, Egypt will need to go to the polls in free elections to choose a new parliament and a new president.
Do you put yourself forth as a candidate to lead this transitional government?
Anybody who has the good will to really believe in democracy can be a candidate, but the choice rests with the people.
Do people in the streets applaud the military because they hope it will turn against Mubarak?
That’s what I hope, too. Perhaps that’s the key to this crisis.
How do you view the protest?
It’s an extraordinary, spontaneous phenomenon that really represents the whole Egyptian society. Friday, after the mosque prayers, all sorts of people took to the streets, the rich and the poor, the educated ones and the illiterate ones. All of the country’s social strata have peacefully expressed a resentment they have long harbored. And that’s why Mubarak cannot pretend like nothing’s happened.
There has been violence, too.
That’s the police’s fault, they reacted in an atrocious way. The protest was a peaceful one, but the response of police officers caused it to degenerate. Still, despite this and despite some looting that has immediately been condemned, the overwhelming majority of protesters have continued just expressing their ideas. The violence will backfire on Mubarak, just like the empty words of his speech.
The international community fears Egypt will plunge into chaos.
They are wrong. That is a senseless fear. Why should a democratic government, one that is representative of all the people, drag the country toward instability?
Because it might be led by the Muslim Brotherhood, for example.
Another senseless fear. The regime has used Islamic extremism as a bogeyman to convince the West to support it, coming up with bizarre links to Al-Qaida, Hamas and with Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood is just a conservative religious group like Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem or born-again Christians in the United States. They represent a minority of Egyptians and in any case they will never have the power to subvert out constitution, which calls for a civil government at the helm of the country.
So you’re asking the United States to abandon Mubarak?…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: The Muslim Brotherhood is the Enemy
Suddenly, Washington is consumed with a question too long ignored: Can we safely do business with the Muslim Brotherhood?
The reason this question has taken on such urgency is, of course, because the Muslim Brotherhood (or MB, also known by its Arabic name, the Ikhwan) is poised to emerge as the big winner from the chaos now sweeping North Africa and increasingly likely to bring down the government of the aging Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Frightening: Muslim Brotherhood Militants Escape From Prison in Egypt (Video)
“On the ground of radicalization, the Muslim Brotherhood is clearly one of the major engines of creating the terrorists if not engaging in terrorism directly… The Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal is not secret. They want to bring down the government of Egypt as it exists now and as it exists later if the reformists would take over. They’re against a secular, pluralist, democratic government. They want to establish an emirate. An emirate would be something that would look like the Taliban but they are very shrewd in showing only the piece of that agenda that they would accommodate. They say, “We don’t want Mubarak. But, they don’t say what they want. They will take roots in a country and then they will impose their own regime.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Analysts Fear Islamic Takeover in Egypt
Israel’s leaders anxiously watched events in Egypt on Sunday as analysts warned that if a new leadership was dominated by Islamists it could threaten 30 years of peace between the two neighbours. As the wave of unprecedented protests continued to engulf Egypt, Israeli officials have been nervously eyeing developments and assessing the likely impact on ties.
“We are attentively following what is going on in Egypt and in our region,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday after holding late-night talks with US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Peace between Israel and Egypt has existed for more than three decades and our aim is to ensure that these relations continue to exist,” he said.
Israel’s two top-selling dailies ran the same banner headline on their front pages on Sunday, proclaiming “A New Middle East” and raising the spectre of Islamic fundamentalists filling the political vacuum left by the expected end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule. “In this kind of chaotic situation, the advantage of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are the most organised and also the most resolute,” said Benjamin Miller, a Haifa University expert on Middle East conflicts and security.
Even though Muslim Brotherhood activists had not so far been prominent in the demonstrations, the group had the advantage of having a widespread political infrastructure already in place, he said. Israel, which is already facing hostile Islamic groups in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, is deeply concerned at the prospect of Islamic gains in Egypt, with which it shares its longest border. But aware of the hypersensitivity of Israel’s relations with the Arab world, Netanyahu ordered his cabinet ministers to make no public statements on the issue, a move which Miller said was wise. “Interference in the domestic affairs of another state is always sensitive, especially if it’s an Arab state, especially if it’s the most important Arab state,” Miller said.
“Definitely Israel is not an asset for any group. Israel is not a winning card domestically.”
Writing in the top-selling daily Yedioth Aharonot, Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo, said that if free elections were held in Egypt the outcome would be inevitable.
“The most likely result will be that the Muslim Brotherhood will win a majority and will be the dominant force in the next government, he said. “That is why it is only a question of a brief period of time before Israel’s peace with Egypt pays the price.”…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: USD 18 Bln From Exploration Concessions
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, JANUARY 24 — In 2010 Libya discovered 24 new oil and gas fields and earned over 18 billion dollars through authorisations to explore granted to a number of foreign countries over the year, announced the National Oil Company (NOC).
In a press release published on the company site, NOC secretary general Choukri Ghanem underscored that “this is the result of four bids held by NOC in 2009, thanks to which 43 oil companies obtained contracts for oil prospecting in Libyan territory.” For 2011, Ghanem does not see the possibility to bring in other calls for tender “given the current market conditions”. Libya, which has oil reserves estimated to be worth 60 billion barrels and 1,500 billion cubic metres in gas reserves, produces between 1.3 and 1.7 million barrels of oil per day. The authorities aim to raise oil production to 3 million barrels per day.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: 24 Billion Dollars for Accomodation After Protests
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, JANUARY 27 — Libya has set up a 24-billion-dollar investment fund mainly aimed at the construction of new housing for the country’s growing population, the online journal OEA says.
Citing Libya’s Minister for Industry and Development, Mohammed Hweji, OEA explains that this measure comes on top of “the decision to cut taxes on food and basic products”. At the same time as the protests were under way in Tunisia at the beginning of the month, Libyans also took to the streets — something almost unheard of in this country — and took possession of hundreds of still unfinished homes, ransacking the offices of the foreign construction companies. Once import duties for food products had been lowered and the subsequent sinking of prices for many basic commodities, Libya’s Finance Ministry announced in a report yesterday that it had set up a new Local Investment and Development Fund with capital of 29 billion Libyan dinari (around 24 billion dollars).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
More Than 102 Dead and Thousands of Prisoners on the Loose in Egypt as 30,000 Stranded Britons Struggle to Leave the Country
Around 30,000 British tourists were stranded in Egypt today as army planes buzzed low over Cairo on the sixth day of uprisings.
At least 102 people have been killed, more than 2,000 are injured and there were calls for a multi-party democracy to emerge as President Hosni Mubarack’s grip on power loosens.
Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn today, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities.
Helicopters were hovering over Cairo and trucks appeared in a central square where protesters were gathered.
It was the latest show of military might on Sunday in an apparent effort to send protesters back to their homes before a 4pm curfew.
The warplanes flew over the city several times. At least a dozen troop trucks and extra tanks drove towards the square as more protesters gathered in defiance of the curfew.
‘The planes are out there to scare the people. It’s time for the curfew and no one is going home,” a 45-year-old engineer who was protesting in the main Tahrir square said.
‘It’s clear to me that the army is here to protect Mubarak.’
Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, said on Sunday he wanted to see a multi-party democracy emerge in Egypt but could not say how soon that might happen.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the United States wanted to see an orderly power change in Egypt, where anti-government protests have threatened the rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
‘We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void, that there not be a void, that there be a well thought out plan that will bring about a democratic participatory government,’ Clinton told the Fox News Sunday’ program.
‘We also don’t want to see some takeover that would lead not to democracy but to oppression and the end of the aspirations of the Egyptian people,’ she said.
Earlier U.S. embassy officials called for Americans to get out of the country as soon as possible — and advised citizens not to travel because of the unrest, violence and on-going demonstrations.
The warning is an escalation in the assessment of the situation by the U.S. government, which previously had advised against non-essential travel to Egypt.
Britons trapped in the country were told by the Foreign Office yesterday to stay clear of the nationwide violence and abide by a 4pm curfew ordered by President Hosni Mubarak.
The British Government also advised against all non-essential travel to Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria and Suez as all flights from the UK to Egypt were cancelled.
One BMI flight en route to Cairo from London was turned around at 30,000ft as the situation worsened yesterday.
British Airways chartered an extra aircraft to rescue stranded tourists from Cairo as its airport witnessed chaotic scenes, with tourists desperately trying to flee the violence.
Yesterday mummies in the country’s national museum were destroyed by looters attempting to steal the treasures of King Tutankhamun.
Soldiers were positioned at the Pyramids and Cairo’s Egyptian Museum — the holding place for Tutankhamun’s priceless golden mask and other artifacts — on the fifth day of anti-government demonstrations in the country’s capital.
The military deployment came amid an almost complete collapse of law and order, with the violence escalating outside the capital. Residents in Alexandria, north-west of Cairo, were forced to stand guard outside their homes armed with sticks as gangs rampaged through the city.
The death toll was estimated to have reached 74 yesterday, with at least 48 of those being killed since Friday and 2,000 people suffering injuries.
President Mubarak also gave the first indication of a succession plan when he announced that his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, had been appointed his deputy, a position last filled by the president himself 30 years ago.
The latest wave of violence has been most notable for the widespread looting, indicative of the scale of the breakdown in law and order.
Nine men broke into the Egyptian Museum in the early hours of yesterday, taking advantage of damage caused to the building’s security by a fire in the neighbouring headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party.
They were caught by police and a crowd of civilians while carrying out the skulls of two mummies and two statues estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.
One statue, believed to be of Tutankhamun, was broken into two pieces by the thieves, although officials said they hoped to be able to repair it.
Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said: ‘They tried to attack and rob from the showcases of King Tut, but they failed. These people are criminals, they are not true Egyptians. The nine men were caught carrying skulls and two statues, one of which was broken. But the army are now guarding the museum and all the museums are now safe.’
The Egyptian military closed tourist access to the Pyramids as tanks and armoured personnel carriers sealed off the site at Giza, normally packed with visitors.
Clashes have also occurred in Suez, and eight prisoners were killed during an attempted mass escape from Abu Zaabal prison, north-east of Cairo.
Tour operators said that most British tourists in Egypt were in ‘peaceful’ areas of the country, such as the resort of Sharm-el-Sheik.
However, at Cairo airport a group of holidaymakers who had booked through Thomas Cook told of their anger after being stranded when they landed yesterday.
They said that when they boarded their flight they had followed the advice of the Foreign Office that travel to Egypt was safe but had been amazed to discover the state of the country on arrival.
Lesley Scyan, from Crawley, West Sussex, who had travelled to Cairo with two friends to celebrate her 60th birthday, said: ‘I am stamping with rage. There was no information for us when we landed. We followed Foreign Office advice which said it was safe to travel, and then we get here and because of the curfew no one is around to help. We don’t know what to do.’
A Foreign Office spokesman said the advice given to passengers had been correct when it was issued.
A Thomas Cook spokesman said that their customers would be returned home this morning.
British Airways said it had rearranged flights in order to avoid take-offs during the curfew.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said: ‘President Mubarak spoke last night of his commitment to take new steps towards greater democracy. We call on him to listen urgently to the aspirations expressed by the Egyptian people.’
President Mubarak has fired his cabinet in response to the violence but has refused to stand down.
Dubbed ‘the Pharaoh’ for his 30-year iron rule, President Hosni Mubarak is said to have amassed a fortune of £25 billion for his family.
Mubarak, 82, his half-Welsh wife Suzanne and sons Gamal and Alaa are seen in Egypt as symbols of nepotism and corruption with properties and business interests worldwide, including London.
The First Lady keeps a firm grip on Egypt’s leading social circles and is often pictured at diplomatic and charity events in stylish outfits alongside dignitaries’ wives including Carla Bruni.
Her charity donations total millions of pounds a year, though rumours have swirled that some of this money has found its way into her bank accounts. As her profile in the state-controlled media has soared, critics have likened her to French Queen Marie-Antoinette.
Critics say the closest their sons have got to ordinary Egyptians was when they were driven past them in limousines. Both sons have been linked to arms-dealing.
Mubarak has survived at least six assassination attempts and fears have also been growing that he plans to groom the more political Gamal to inherit the throne.
Will first family flee to London (and Selfridges)?
When a Cairo newspaper claimed on Tuesday that members of President Mubarak’s family had fled, speculation spread that they were on their way to Britain.
The newspaper reported that Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and possible successor, had boarded a private jet bound for London, taking his family and 97 pieces of luggage with him.
Egyptian baggage handlers at Heathrow were also quoted as saying that they had seen President Mubarak’s wife Suzanne, who is half-Welsh and holds a British passport, at the airport.
The Foreign Office would not confirm last night whether Mrs Mubarak and her sons Gamal and Alaa had British passports.
The family, who have relatives in Britain, are regular visitors and Gamal, 47, once lived and worked in London, initially for Bank of America before, in 1996, he set up his own investment vehicle, Medinvest Associates.
He lived in a five-storey Georgian townhouse in Knightsbridge, on the same street as the five-star Berkeley Hotel and a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. The most recent similar property to sell on the street went for £5.59 million.
The offices of Medinvest Associates are based a five-minute walk away, above expensive boutiques in the centre of Knightsbridge.
Suzanne Mubarak was born in Upper Egypt in 1941, but her mother Lily May Palmer was a nurse from Pontypridd, Wales, who married an Egyptian paediatrician, Saleh Sabet in 1934.
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Stunner. Muslim Brotherhood Announces They Will Support El-Baradei
ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came back to Egypt on Thursday night, just in time for the “Day of Anger” protests which have left President Hosni Mubarak clinging to power with the army in the streets. ARAB TV CHANNELS QUOTES EGYPT’S BROTHERHOOD FIGURE ESSAM EL-ERYAN SUPPORTING ELBARADEI TO “NEGOTIATE WITH REGIME”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Italian School in Tunis Reopens
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 24 — Teaching has resumed at the Italian G.B. Hodierna school in Tunis this morning, with a visit from Italy’s ambassador to the country, Pietro Benassi, who visited students.
After a minute’s silence in memory of the victims of the country’s unrest, the headmaster, Prof. Emanuele Minardo, spoke to students “about the significance of the events and the positive nature of the behaviour of the Tunisian people in these circumstances,” a statement said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Security Improves, Curfew Shortened
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 26 — The Tunisian authorities have today announced that the curfew has been reduced “as a result of an improvement in the situation.” The news was announced by the official TAP agency. “Given the improvement in the situation in terms of security, the curfew has been reduced and will now be in force from 10pm to 4am, starting from today,” writes the agency. The previous curfew was from 8pm to 5am. But for the last three days, hundreds of protestors have challenged the curfew by camping out night and day under the windows of the PM, Mohammed Ghannouchi, in the Kasbah square in Tunis, calling for the resignations of the interim government.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: More Than 700 Italian Firms Present in Country
13 January , 16:40
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 13 — More than 700 Italian companies are officially active in Tunisia (excluding the energy sector): in 2009 704 firms were registered at the Tunisian offices (672 in 2008), employing 55,000 people.
Most firms (260) are active in the textile and clothing sector, usually small and medium-sized companies. There are also large industrial groups however like Benetton (awarded in 2008 as “best investor of the year”, the Miroglio-Gvb textile group, the Marzotto group and Cucirini. Italy invests in all sectors however. There are large Italian firms present in the energy sector (Eni, Snam Progetti, Terna, Ansaldo Energia), in transport (Fiat Auto, Fiat Iveco, Fiat Avio, Piaggio), metallurgy (Ilva Maghreb) and construction (Todini, Astaldi, Ferretti International, Carta Isnardo).
Ansaldo Energia recently won the tender for the construction of a power plant in Sousse. Other Italian companies in Tunisia are Cai-Alitalia (air transport), Messina, Tarros, Grimaldi, Bongiorno srl, Sirio, Germanetti,Martinelli, Faggioli, Stc-Societa’ Trasporti Combinati, which manage sea and intermodal transport between Tunisia and Italy. Simest is very active in the country, with stakes in ten companies. There are also several firms with offices in the banking sector, like Agrleasing of the Iccrea group, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Unicredit and Intesa-San Paolo, which holds a 5.61% stake in Biat. BNL has an Italian office at Ubci, of the Pnb Paribas group.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: 600 of 800 Italian Companies Back to Work
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 27 — Of the 881 Italian companies set up in Tunisia and working in the production, services and infrastructures sectors, approximately 600 resumed their activities, at least in part. The statement was made by the general secretary of the Italy/Tunisia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Ctici), Ferruccio Bellicini, who emphasised that the biggest problem lies in getting to the workplace with the curfew (still in effect though recently shortened again), customs operations are quite slower and there has been a slowdown in orders. As for the companies that still have to resume operations, in most cases the entrepreneurs have security and union concerns based on the demands of the employees. Italian companies offer 70,000 direct jobs and 40,000 indirect ones. Their turnover ranges from 1 to 1.2 billion euros. Bellicini, who expressed his confidence in the future development of Tunisia independently from politics, stated today that Ctici Tunisia will point these matters out to the Italian chambers of commerce and to anyone who has interests in the country in order to reassure potential investors on the new, transparent and safe environment.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisian Islamist Leader Rachid Ghannouchi Returns Home
The leader of Tunisia’s main Islamist movement has returned home after 22 years in exile following the ousting of President Ben Ali earlier this month.
More than 1,000 people were at the main airport in Tunis to welcome Rachid Ghannounchi as he arrived from London.
Mr Ghannouchi, 69, says his Ennahda party intends to work for the popular uprising that toppled Mr Ben Ali.
Observers say his return is the most potent symbol yet of the change that has swept the country since then.
His return follows the interim government’s announcement that media curbs would be lifted, banned political parties allowed to register and political prisoners amnestied.
Alongside his supporters was a small group of secularists with banners reading: “No Islamism, no theocracy, no Sharia and no stupidity!”, Reuters news agency said.
| — Hat tip: 4symbols | [Return to headlines] |
Clare Lopez: Why the Mullahs Cheer for the Brotherhood
Observers following tumultuous events across the Middle East in recent days may find it confusing that Iranian leadership figures would be cheering for the protesters in the streets of Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere. After all, not only are most Iranians Shi’ite Muslims, while the majority of the angry crowds calling for the downfall of Arab dictatorships are Sunni, but Iran faces its own Greens Movement opposition that continues to demand regime change in Tehran. It is worth noting that the Iranian regime crackdown against its own people’s uprising has been far more brutal than anything seen so far in either Egypt or Tunisia…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Hangs Iranian-Dutch Woman for Drug Smuggling
Iran on Saturday hanged an Iranian-Dutch woman for drug smuggling after initially arresting her for anti-government protests, the Tehran prosecutor’s office said.
Zahra Bahrami’s execution takes the total number of people hanged in Iran so far this year to 66 — on average more than two a day — according to an AFP tally based on media reports.
The Netherlands summoned Iran’s ambassador in the wake of the hanging, the Dutch foreign ministry said.
“A drug trafficker named Zahra Bahrami, daughter of Ali, was hanged early on Saturday morning after she was convicted of selling and possessing drugs,” the Tehran prosecutor’s office said.
Bahrami, a 46-year-old Iranian-born naturalized Dutch citizen, was reportedly arrested in December 2009 after joining a protest against the government while visiting relatives in the Islamic republic.
The prosecutor’s office confirmed on Saturday that she had been arrested for “security crimes.”
But elaborating on the drug smuggling charge, the office said Bahrami had used her Dutch connections to smuggle narcotics into Iran.
“The convict, a member of an international drug gang, smuggled cocaine to Iran using her Dutch connections and had twice shipped and distributed cocaine inside the country,” it said.
During a search of her house, authorities found 450 grams of cocaine and 420 grams of opium, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that investigations revealed she had sold 150 grams of cocaine in Iran.
“The revolutionary court sentenced her to death for possessing 450 grams of cocaine and participating in the selling of 150 grams of cocaine,” it said.
The Netherlands had been seeking details about Bahrami’s case and had accused the Iranian authorities of refusing the Dutch embassy access to the prisoner because they did not recognize her dual nationality.
Foreign ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told AFP in The Hague that the ministry had not yet received confirmation of the execution.
“The minister has summoned Iran’s ambassador in order to elucidate this piece of information,” he said.
On Jan. 5, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal expressed “extreme concern” about Bahrami, and said that he had “asked the Iranian authorities to provide immediate clarification” about her case.
“We insist on information, the possibility to provide her with consular assistance, and a fair course of justice,” Rosenthal said in a statement at the time.
Dutch broadcaster Radio Netherlands Worldwide, quoting Bahrami’s daughter Banafsheh Najebpour, had reported earlier this month that Bahrami was awaiting trial in a second capital case in which she was accused of being in an armed opposition group.
Bahrami’s execution takes the total number of people hanged so far this year in the Islamic republic to 66, according to an AFP tally based on media reports.
There has been a spike in hangings this year in Iran, especially of convicted drug smugglers.
Last Monday, Iran carried out the first executions of two political activists detained in street protests after the disputed presidential poll of 2009.
The two, Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei, were members of the outlawed group, People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, and were hanged despite U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging their release.
The spate of executions has drawn criticism from Catherine Ashton, Europe’s chief diplomat and the point person in talks between world powers and Iran over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.
Along with China, Saudi Arabia and the United States, Iran has one of the highest numbers of executions each year, with adultery, murder, drug trafficking and other major crimes all punishable by death.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Private ‘Industrial City’ With Jordanian Capital
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 28 — The Jordanian company Specialized Investment Compounds (SPIC) has announced that the first private “industrial city” will be created in Damascus, with an investment of 200 million USD, the website of Al Arabiyya reports. The choice for Damascus as location of the “industrial city” reflects, according to SPIC chairman Haleem Assalfety, the intentions of the Jordanian company to make use of all opportunities for investment offered by the Syrian authorities. The firm that will manage the structure, Assalfety underlines, will be completely controlled by SPIC Jordan in its first ten years of existence. After this period, the industrial city will become a joint-stock company and will be listed on the Damascus Stock Exchange. Assalfety stressed that the industrial city in Damascus is the result of the success of a similar initiative in Cairo.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. And Iran in Christian-Shiite Alliance Against Sunnis
A message from the terrorist movement says meeting between Hillary Clinton and former foreign minister in Tehran “confirms” the plot. In Iraq it is not uncommon to see pictures of Jesus and Imam Hussein side by side.
Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) — An “alliance” between Christians and Shiites against Sunnis. This is the claim carried in an audiotape released yesterday evening by al Qaida, which claims that there is an anti-Sunni agreement between the U.S. and Iran. The affirmation of the terrorist movement sees “a confirmation” of the conspiracy in last month’s meeting in Yemen between U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and former foreign minister of Iran, Manouchehr Mottaki, in the “Manama Dialogue “on security on the Arabian Peninsula.
In reality, especially in Iraq, Shiite and Christian communities are the targets of terrorist attacks linked to al Qaida and its not uncommon to see images of Jesus and the father of Shiism, Imam Hussein (pictured) side by side. Such was the case during the Christmas period and again during a call from religious leaders inviting Christians not to leave the country.
The message of al-Qaida urges Sunnis to “pay attention to the massacres” that “happen in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, while you are unarmed.” “Take up your weapons and prepare yourselves before it is too late.” “Buy weapons, even if it costs a lot, to protect your religion, your lives and your honour.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UN to Assist Lebanon With Gas Reserves Borders
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 28 — The United Nations have expressed their willingness to assist Lebanon for the marking of maritime borders with Israel, to protect the country’s gas reserves. The news was reported by the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Beirut. According to research by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), it is estimated that the area called Levant Basin Province has potential reserves for 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of gas. The Levant Basin Province extends over an areas of some 83,000 km2 off the coasts of Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus and Israel. In August last year, the Lebanese Parliament ratified a bill for the first time to authorise offshore explorations for crude oil and gas.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lavazza Chooses India for First Foreign Plant
20-mn-euro factory to be built at model town in south of country
(ANSA) — New Delhi, January 28 — Historic Italian coffee maker Lavazza has chosen India for the first plant it will build outside Italy, the Turin company said Friday.
Analysts said the choice reflected the growing importance of the Indian market to the Italian coffee retail leader.
“Our dream is to turn India into our second market after the Italian one,” top executive Giuseppe Lavazza told ANSA.
The 20-million-euro plant will be built at a new model town called Sri City on the borders between the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in southern India, it said.
It will produce ground coffee as well as beans and capsules for the Barista chain it bought in 2007.
The number of Barista shops in India will be increased from 200 to 400, Giuseppe Lavazza said.
Lavazza is looking to grow abroad “in four or five select markets, given that it cannot expand further in Italy due to anti-trust laws,” its director of acquisitions for Asia and Australia, Luca Maulini, said recently.
These markets include India, China, Brazil and the United States, where the company “is not out to make a quick buck because it prefers to build a name and a business, while getting the best deal possible,” Maulini said.
As an example the executive recalled that four years ago in Britain Lavazza was offered a chain of coffee shops “but at the time we thought the price was too high and we didn’t buy it.
This year the same chain was offered to us again but at a third of the original price”.
At the end of September Lavazza completed the acquisition of a 7% stake in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) of the US for $250 million, the biggest investment the family-owned Italian company has made abroad.
Lavazza and GMCR also entered into a partnership to develop new single-serve espresso machines and single-serve espresso capsules designed for use in these machines.
Lavazza, founded in 1895, is one of the world’s largest coffee manufacturers and the retail market leader in Italy.
It directly operates 11 international subsidiaries and its products are marketed in 90 countries.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Government in New ‘Tug of War’ With Baloch Separatists
Quetta, 28 Jan. (AKI) — By Syed Saleem Shahzad — A new battle of wills has emerged between Baloch separatists and the Pakistani government after the government barred Shahzain Bugti’s movement in the southwestern city of Quetta on Friday.
The move resulted in the cancellation of his planned Long March.
Quetta, is the capital of Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province which borders Afghanistan and its volatile provinces of Helmand, Zabul and Kandahar.
Half of this mineral rich province is populated by the Pushtun population, which is often blamed by the western media as being a Taliban hotbed.
The rest of Balochistan is ethnically Baloch.
Baloch insurgent often attack the Pakistani security forces and national installations such as gas pipelines. It is widely believed that the Baloch insurgency has created a major distraction from the Taliban’s presence in Balochistan as Pakistani security forces cannot open two fronts at the same time.
Shahzain Bugti, the grandson of rebelled Baloch leader Nawab Akhbar Bugti who was killed by Pakistani security forces during Musharraf’s time, called for a long march towards his native town Dera Bugti which is under the control of Pakistani security forces and now inhabited by the Baloch tribes which are considered as pro-Pakistan.
The announced march was the first act of defiance by Shahzain Bugti after his December 2010 arrest by the security forces for keeping illegal arms.
Heavily engaged against the Pakistani security forces in daily attacks and blowing up gas pipelines and other installations, Shahzain Bugti last Thursday made a bid to negotiate with the government’s Muttahida Quami Movement coalition partner at its headquarters in the southern port city of Karachi.
Although the MQM was a coalition partner in former president General Pervez Musharraf regime and still part of the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government, it is widely considered a pro-India and pro-western party.
The same accusation is often levelled at Bugti insurgents.
Speaking at the MQM headquarters in Karachi after meeting members of the party’s Rabita Committee, Bugti repeated demanded the withdrawal of security agencies from Dera Bugti.
Shahzain Bugti said that the long march from Karachi, Lahore and Quetta would converge at Kashmore and then proceed towards Dera Bugti.
“Security agencies have occupied Dera Bugti. We demand the immediate withdrawl of security forces from there as Dera Bugti is the land of Bugti tribes”, he said.
Shahzain expressed concern over the growing number of abductions and murders in Balochistan. He also demanded the release of missing and imprisoned individuals, stating that the situation in Balochistan was deteriorating.
He thanked the MQM and religious parties for supporting his movement’s stance on Balochistan and said he hoped that Pakistani security agencies would not obstruct their planned march.
The Jamhori Watan Party provincial chief along with his security guards were arrested on December 22 last year by the paramilitary Frontier Corps near Quetta after they were found to be carrying a huge cache of illegal arms including anti-aircraft guns. He was later on released by Balochistan High Court on bail.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sino-Indian Rivalry Comes to the Arabian Sea
Beijing is developing the Pakistani port of Gwadar and plans road and rail links with Pakistan across the Karakorum. New Delhi backs the Iranian port of Chabahar and is seeking closer ties with Afghanistan and central Asia. The rivalry between the two Asian giants is branching out.
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Sino-Indian commercial and military competition has come to the Arabian Sea where the two Asian superpowers are building “rival” ports, one in Pakistan, the other Iran.
In Pakistan, China has funded and helped build the port of Gwadar on the Gulf of Oman, which will give it direct access to the Indian Ocean and the energy-rich Arabian Peninsula. China also wants to build a highway and railway link to Gwadar, but both are still held up by considerations over high costs and technical difficulties.
The Karakorum Highway would connect China’s Xinjiang and Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan but it would have to go over high mountains. The highest point passes at 4,693 metres and is closed between December and April because of snow and bad weather. In some places, it is vulnerable to landslides so big lorries might not use it easily.
A 3,000-kilometer rail line could link Kashgar and Gwadar, but its cost would be enormous, up to $30 million per kilometre in the highest mountains.
Then there are political obstacles. Baluchistan is one of Pakistan’s most unstable provinces because of local autonomist rebel movements. Insurgents have already kidnapped and killed Chinese engineers in Gwadar.
Still, the port of Gwadar is essential for China as a terminal for oil and gas shipments as well as an important listening post to monitor naval activities on the Indian Ocean and base Chinese naval ships and submarines.
For New Delhi, Gwadar is a threat because it is so close to the Strait of Hormuz and would allow Pakistan to exercise control over its energy routes.
Its response has been to build a US$ 8 billion naval base at Karwar, Karnataka, in western India, as well as help Iran develop the port of Chabahr, some 72 kilometres west of Gwadar.
India is also helping Iran with the Chabahar-Milak-Zaranj-Dilaram route from Iran to Afghanistan. The three countries have already agreed to preferential treatment and tax holidays for trade with India.
However, Afghanistan is unstable because of the Taliban insurgency, and construction at Chabahar is behind schedule. The port now has a capacity of only 2.5 million tonnes per year, whereas the target was 12 million.
Finally, India and the United States have moved closer. New Delhi must therefore address the fact that Washington favours isolating Tehran over its nuclear programme whilst Beijing is one of the latter’s great allies in the matter.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
In China, The True Cost of Britain’s Clean, Green Wind Power Experiment: Pollution on a Disastrous Scale
This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what’s left behind after making the magnets for Britain’s latest wind turbines… and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background
On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.
Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.
‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’
Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.
Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.
The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.
Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.
The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.
For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.
Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty — a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties.
‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’
As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.
‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’
People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.
Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.
Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.
There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ — the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.
Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time — hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.
In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go.
‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.
Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.
In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.
The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year — it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 — or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai.
The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.
According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.
In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’
Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Prada to Make Bourse Debut in Hong Kong
Long-awaited IPO expected this summer
(ANSA) — Rome, January 27 — Italian fashion powerhouse Prada said Thursday it had chosen Hong Kong to make its debut on the stock market.
The Prada board “has decided to start the process of quoting the company on the Hong Kong stock market,” a statement said.
The Intesa Sanpaolo, Credit Agricole and Goldman Sachs banks have been chosen to handle the operation, Prada said.
“Trusting in the further development of the group we can take the best opportunities offered by the international capital market,” said CEO Patrizio Bertelli.
Prada did not give a date for the initial public offering but Italian media have speculated the IPO will come in June or July. Poor market conditions have forced Prada to postpone making its market debut four times in the last ten years.
Prada is believed to have chosen Hong Kong over Milan because individual investors are more active in Asia.
Intesa SanPaolo, Italy’s second-biggest bank, said in July that getting listed on the stock market remained a primary target for Prada but that this would take place only when market conditions were favourable.
The bank has a 5% stake in Prada.
After seeing its best year ever in 2007, Prada appeared set to embark on an IPO in 2008 but the global economic downturn in mid-2008 again thwarted its market plans.
Prada shelved plans to go public three times in 2001 and 2002 because the situations in either the stock market or the luxury fashion sector were poor.
Speaking in March 2008, Bertelli said “going public represents an opportunity for us to fulfill our growth projects.
We are keeping a close eye on financial markets and when the time is right we will make our move”.
Prada is 95% owned by designer Miuccia Prada and her husband, Bertelli. It produces clothes and accessories under its own name as well as the trendy Miu Miu label.
Speculation that Prada was again considering an IPO returned earlier this year when the 2009 balance sheet showed it had a better-than-expected year, despite the economic downturn, with higher earnings than in 2008.
Financial sources at the time of the 2008 possible IPO put Prada’s value at between five and six billion euros.
Prada, which also has the Church’s and Car Shoe brands, had an even better 2010, posting net profits of 156 million euros in the first three quarters, triple the same period in 2009.
Much of the improvement was due to booming Asian sales.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan Split: 99 Per Cent Vote Yes to Divide North From South
Of more than 3.8 million ballots cast, less than 15,000 were for continued unity, the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission said. In five of south Sudan’s 10 states, the vote was 99.9 per cent in favour of separation. The lowest figure endorsing secession was 95.5 per cent. International observers had earlier hailed the Jan 9 to 15 vote as largely free and fair.
“Anywhere else you see these kinds of numbers, you’re going to cry foul,” said one Western diplomat who travelled to Sudan to observe the vote.
“In this case, we’re pretty confident that that is pretty much exactly the reflection of the voters’ wishes.”
Sunday’s announcement was the first official release of results, but they are still preliminary until finalised in Khartoum, the northern capital, early in February.
After that, South Sudan will split from the north on July 9, according to the timetable laid down in a 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war between Sudan’s north and its south…
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Intolerance, Poor Prospects Drive Away Well-Educated Immigrants
Some two thirds of the people leaving the Netherlands have an ethnic minority background and are fed up with intolerance or see better career prospects in their country of origin, the Volkskrant reports on Friday.
In particular, well-educated young people with a Turkish or Moroccan background are leaving, the paper says, quoting research by Regioplan for the home affairs ministry. They are most likely to cite hardening attitudes to foreigners as the primary reason.
Half of the people leaving are aged 20 to 45 and have at least an MBO college diploma.
Gerard Schouw, MP for the Liberal democratic party D66, which pressured the ministry to commission the report, told the paper the cabinet should work to create an ‘attractive and pleasant’ working climate for well-educated migrants.
‘This is very bad for the economy,’ he said. It is a real shame that so many well-educated people are being driven out by the ‘symbolic drum rolls’ from the PVV. The party wants an end to all non-western immigration.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Hard-Line Asylum Activists Sow Fear
Publishing addresses on the internet, intimidation, paint bombing and occupying buildings: the resistance against the Netherlands’ tough line on immigration is taking on a new edge. The Dutch Intelligence Service has issued a warning about radical asylum activists and the police are worried…
| — Hat tip: Feli | [Return to headlines] |
Racism and Xenophobia Still in Italy, HRW
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, JANUARY 24 — In Italy “racist and xenophobic violence is still a pressing problem”. The statement on Italy is included in the annual Human Rights Watch report which criticises the Italian policies on immigration, rejection and discrimination of the Rom and Sinti communities.
The Human Rights Watch report comments on the 2010 incidents in Rosarno, stating that “many countries expressed concerns on racism and xenophobia in Italy” at the next UN Council on Human Rights.
Hrw also stated that “Rom and Sinti people still have to deal with a high level of discrimination and poverty in addition to deplorable living conditions both in authorised and non authorised camps”.
It added that Italy “continued to deport terrorism suspects to Tunisia, among which Mohammed Mannai”, despite the risk of mistreatment. Then it also pointed out that in the April report by the European Committee for the prevention of torture it was stated that “Italia violates the prohibition of turning people back when boats of emigrants trying to get into Italy are intercepted, returning them to Libya without picking those who potentially need international protection”. Lastly, the report pointed out that “Italy did not grant asylum to dozens of Eritreans rejected to Libya in 2009”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
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