Banksters Ready QE3 Asset Bubble
On Monday, Atlanta Fed boss Dennis Lockhart said that if oil prices continue to climb the Fed will make a new round of asset purchases, in other words it will kick off QE3.
In response to the unfolding economic depression last November, the private Fed announced plans to buy $600 billion in long-term Treasuries, known as quantitative easing. QE2 — and now possibly QE3 — do nothing for the broader economy, however.
The provided excuse for cranking up the funny machines and printing a ton of fresh new fiat dough is that it boosts the economy. In fact, the scheme does nothing for the larger economy or the nation as a whole — infrastructure projects, education, health care, business development, etc. — as you might expect (if you follow the Fed’s reasoning). Instead, it is a gift for the financial industry and the banksters. The excess paper money flows into the stock market and creates dangerous asset bubbles around the world.
Even establishment economists like former Clintonite Robert Reich warn that the rapid in-flow of funny money will simply create another stock market bubble. It is a classic Ponzi scheme designed to reach dizzying heights and then crash.
Some financial experts say QE2 was not designed to terminate. It was engineered to go on forever, or at least until the entire economy explodes. According to these experts, there was no QE1 and there is now no QE2 — there is simply one long “accommodation” that will eventually spell disaster.
“The Fed never said that QE2 would end,” notes finance expert James Rickards, “that’s a popular misconception but they never said it. What they said was that they would buy $600 billion of intermediate term Treasury securities by June 2011. They never said that was all they would buy. They never said they would stop. The comments were carefully worded so that $600 billion by June was a targeted minimum but they never said anything about a maximum; technically there is no maximum. The first QE program ended in 2010 and the economy immediately began to fall into a double dip.”
Bernanke and the Fed are not finished attacking the dollar. They are determined to kick off another round of debilitating inflation, the ultimate result whenever the money supply is artificially expanded. It is a scientific process, as Congressman Charles Lindbergh said after the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.
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Denmark: How the Welfare State Broke the National Economy
In the first in an ongoing series on the condition of the welfare state, researcher Gunnar Viby Mogensen tells us how we’ve got into the mess we’re in.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Greece is Clearly in Need of Debt Restructuring’
The international ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Greek debt to junk status on Monday, another reminder that the euro crisis isn’t over. German commentators on Tuesday say that the European Union must quickly find a way to free Athens from its mountain of debt. Financial analysts have been saying for weeks that the euro crisis isn’t over. Even as the European common currency has risen against the dollar, due in part to strong indications from European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet that he plans to raise interest rates this spring, debt concerns have not evaporated.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A Rally at Times Square and a Time for a Muslim Moral Reckoning
Despite all the hysteria and Islamophobia-mongering, Islam isn’t on trial here
The occupant of the White House’s middle name is Hussein, every school curriculum lists a whitewashed history of Islam that ignores the genocides and atrocities, and there are now more positive depictions of Muslims on TV, than there are of Christians and Jews combined. But Muslims in America still aren’t happy.
From all the wailing and boohooing, you might think that mosques were being shelled, the way Muslims are attacking monasteries in Egypt. Or that Muslim politicians were being gunned down in the street the way that Christian politicians are in Pakistan. You might at least think that Muslims are treated like second-class citizens, the way non-Muslims are treated in every Muslim country in the world. But no that’s not the case.
So what has Muslim burqas wadded up in a bunch this time? Representative Peter King wants to hold hearings to investigate whether some Muslim groups are urging their communities not to cooperate with government authorities in fighting terrorism. King is not inviting experts on terrorism like Steve Emerson, or experts on Islam like Andrew Bostom or Robert Spencer. He isn’t even inviting ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan. Instead the witness list is limited to Muslims and law enforcement officials. Despite all the hysteria and Islamophobia-mongering, Islam isn’t on trial here.
One of those witnesses is congressman Keith Ellison, a former associate of the violently racist Nation of Islam, who has defended and promoted anti-semitism in the past. Since then Ellison has been transformed into the chief spokesman for tolerance as America’s first Muslim congressman. That tolerance however ends at the borders of Islam. And does not extend beyond it.
In response to Congressman King’s hearings, a motley group of organizations held a rally at Times Square, near the site of an attempted Muslim car bombing attempt only several months ago. They made no acknowledgment of the countless lives that would have been lost at the hands of a Muslim terrorist. Nor did the media in any way acknowledge the radicalism of the participants.
They called the rally, “Today, I Am a Muslim Too”. But where are the rallies for, “Today, I Am a Copt Too” or “Today, I Am a Hindu Too” or “Today, I Am a Zoroastrian Too”.
In Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia — saying “I am a Muslim Too” will not get you equal rights. It will get you superior rights, which is what Muslims enjoy throughout the Muslim world. And that includes the right to oppress and massacre Christians, Jews, Hindus and countless other minorities. Groups for whom no rallies are being held. Whose suffering goes unheard. While the media flocks to a photo op for an orgy of self-pity by radicals and extremist organizations.
Russell Simmons promoted and spoke at the rally. Simmon’s own transformation into an icon of tolerance is another farce. Russell Simmons is not only close to violently racist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, but actually wrote an essay calling him, “My Second Father”. In an interview, Simmons stated, “But all of us have some kind of an array of race-related issues. Farrakhan has the least. And his statement that he made when we were kids that inspired us so much when we were kids and so angry, were merited. The white man was the devil. I was happy to say it and I could say it all of the time, I could say it now.” But of course he didn’t say it at the rally. That would have ruined the photo ops. And the media remained silent on his love for Farrakhan, even while the Minister’s former patron in Libya is massacring his own people.
This was only the first flash of intolerance at a Muslim rally supposedly dedicated to tolerance.
[…]
Congressman King is not holding hearings to denounce Islam. He is holding hearings to challenge the lack of cooperation from the Muslim community. The protest is held out of mere outrage that King dares single out Muslims as the problem. But whom else should he single out? Buddhists, the Amish or maybe those dreaded hordes of bomb throwing nuns?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Caught on Tape: NPR Executive Ron Schiller Savages Conservatives & Tea Party Members
Conservative James O’Keefe strikes again…
The fillmmaker released video this morning of NPR senior executive Ron Schiller trashing conservatives and Christians in a staged meeting with fake Muslim Brotherhood members.
From the video:
Senior Executives at NPR meet with Muslim Brotherhood Front Group to solicit $5mm and discuss their federal funding, Fanatical Christians, Zionists in the media, Tea Partiers, Republicans, Uneducated Americans and Juan Williams.
Featuring:
Ron Schiller, President NPR Foundation.
Betsy Liley, Senior Director, NPR Institutional Giving.
Reporters:
Shaughn Adeleye as Amir Malik
Simon Templar as Ibrahmim Kasaam.
Produced by James O’Keefe
TheProjectVeritas.com
Promoting Modern-Day Muckrakers.
Song Licensed by FriendlyMusic.com
Talk about good timing…
Just yesterday NPR CEO Vivian Schiller proclaimed that NPR had “no particular bias.”
The Daily Caller reported on the tapes this morning:
A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement.
“The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, who runs NPR’s foundation.
In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”
On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives.. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”…
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Dad: I’ll Kill My Son’s Murderer if He’s Released
[Comments: WARNING: Graphic content.]
The father of a five-year-old boy slain in 1975 has vowed to murder the man who did it “as aggressively and painfully as he killed my son” if he is released from prison early.
John Foreman told WPRO-AM radio that he blamed himself for accepting a plea deal that saw Michael Woodmansee convicted of the second-degree murder of his son Jason in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Woodmansee was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1982, but the plea bargain deal allowed him to be released early for good behavior. This could happen as soon as August, the Providence Journal reported.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message
FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:
As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.
“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”
Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of Long Island, will conduct hearings Thursday in Washington on a similar theme: that the United States is infiltrated by Muslim radicals. Mr. King was the first guest last month on a new cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT! and a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.
Ms. Gabriel, 46, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans.
She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion. She has found a receptive audience among Americans who are legitimately worried about the spread of terrorism. [emphasis added]
[What total rubbish. All who “study” Islam with any degree of diligence know damn well that it is “thoroughly bent on destruction and domination”.. Only someone who is completely unlettered in Islam would declare Ms. Gabriel’s depiction as “unrecognizable”. — Z]
But some of those who work in counterterrorism say that speakers like Ms. Gabriel are spreading distortion and fear, and are doing the country a disservice by failing to make distinctions between Muslims who are potentially dangerous and those who are not.
Brian Fishman, a research fellow at both the New America Foundation in Washington, and the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said, “When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists.”
Ms. Gabriel is only one voice in a growing circuit that includes counter-Islam speakers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Walid Shoebat. What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization,
Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East).
As national field director, Mr. Rodgers planted and tended Christian Coalition chapters across the country, and is now using some of the same strategies as executive director of ACT! Among those tactics is creating “nonpartisan voter guides” that rank candidates’ responses and votes on issues important to the group.
Just as with the Christian Coalition’s voter guides, the candidates whose positions most often align with ACT!’s are usually Republicans. Mr. Rodgers previously served as campaign manager for Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential run in 1996, and as a consultant for John McCain in 2008.
Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Rodgers declined to be interviewed in person or over the telephone, but agreed to respond to questions by e-mail. They permitted interviews with only their national field director and two chapter leaders they selected, though half a dozen other interviews were conducted with chapter leaders before they were told not to talk.
Ms. Gabriel says she is motivated not by fear or hatred of Islam, but by her love for her adopted country.
“I lost Lebanon, my country of birth, to radical Islam,” she wrote. “I do not want to lose my adopted country America.”
She insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” — not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression. She puts it most simply in the 2008 introduction to her first book, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.”
“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” she wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”
In what ACT! is calling “Open a Koran” day this September, the group plans to put up 750 tables in front of post offices, libraries, churches and synagogues and hand out leaflets selectively highlighting verses that appear to advocate violence, slavery and subjugation of women.
In the last year, the group played a key role in passing a constitutional amendment in Oklahoma banning the use of Shariah, a body of Islamic law derived from the Koran and from the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s teachings, sayings and acts. Most Muslims draw selectively on its tenets — in the same way that people of other faiths pick and choose from their sacred texts. [emphasis added]
[Once again we are treated to completely erroneous journalistic bias. If “Muslims draw selectively on its tenets”, the Qur’an exhorts more devout Muslims to KILL THEM. — Z]
But group members and their allies have succeeded in popularizing the notion that American Muslims are just biding their time until they gain the power to revoke the Constitution and impose Shariah law in the United States.
“We can’t let Shariah law take hold,” said Susan Watts, who leads a large chapter in Houston.
ACT! members are challenging high school textbooks and college courses that they deem too sympathetic to Islam. A group leader in Eugene, Ore., signed up to teach a community college course on Islam, but it was canceled when a Muslim group exposed his blog postings denouncing Islam and denying the scope of the Holocaust.
A chapter in Colorado recently featured a guest speaker on “How to minister to Muslims,” and “Conversion success stories.” Mr. Rodgers said in a written response that ACT! does not encourage such activities.
Ms. Gabriel’s approach and her power appear rooted in her childhood trauma in the civil war in southern Lebanon. The war was a chaotic stew in which ever-shifting alliances of clan-based militias made up of Christian, Shiite, Sunni, Palestinian and Druse made war on one other, often with the backing of other countries. But in the rendering Ms. Gabriel shares with her American audiences, it was black and white. As her father explained to her, “The Muslims bombed us because we are Christians.. They want us dead because they hate us.” (The refrain became the title of her first book.)
She moved to Israel in her early 20s to work for Middle East Television. Ms. Gabriel often mentions in lectures that she was an anchor for the network, but does not reveal that Middle East Television was then run by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East.
On air as a reporter, Ms. Gabriel used the name Nour Saman. She married an American co-worker and in 1989 moved to the United States. They started a film and television production company, which says it has produced programs on terrorism for “Good Morning America” and “Primetime.”
She said she uses a pseudonym, voted on by her organization’s board, because she has received death threats.
Ms. Gabriel has given hundreds of lectures, including to the Heritage Foundation and the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. Her salary from two organizations she founded, American Congress for Truth and ACT! for America, was $178,411 in 2009. And the group’s combined income was $1.6 million.
In Fort Worth, Ms. Gabriel spent nearly an hour after her speech signing books and posing for pictures with gushing fans.
“She really opened up my eyes about Islam,” said Natalie Rix Cresson, a composer, clutching a signed copy of Ms. Gabriel’s book. “I didn’t realize it was so infiltrated in the schools, everywhere.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Guantanamo: Obama Lifts Freeze on Military Trials
(AGI) Washington — After 2 years, Obama has authorised the resumption of military trials for detainees at Guantanamo.
Despite vowing, during the election campaign, that he would close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Barack Obama authorised today the resumption of military trials for detainees there. He also issued new guidelines on the treatment of inmates who cannot be tried and are deemed too dangerous to free.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
In Wake of Muslim Hearings, Rep. King Gets Security Upgrade
L.I. Congressman Says Hostile Phone Calls Flooding His Office
Long Island Congressman Peter King is facing threats — and getting extra security.
But he vowed Monday to forge ahead with controversial hearings on radicalization in the Muslim-American community, reports CBS 2’s Tony Aiello.
King was heavily criticized at a weekend rally in Times Square.
“American Muslims are part of the American family and are Americans, too!” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said.
But the congressman was strongly supported at a smaller rally nearby.
“Imam Rauf and his friends are trying to create a phony trumped-up civil rights movement,” one King supporter said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Intruder Calls Police When Southwest Portland Homeowner Returns (9-1-1 Tapes)
The homeowner, age 55, and her daughter had just returned home from a brief trip to the grocery when she heard a man’s voice coming from the bathroom, a police report said. The woman ordered her daughter to leave while she yelled outside the bathroom door, demanding to know who was there.
The suspect gave his real name. The homeowner told him she was calling police. Surprisingly, the suspect said he was doing the same, according to police reports.
When Chapek called 9-1-1 just after 7 p.m. Monday, police say he reported to dispatchers what he had done. And he shared his worry that the homeowner outside the bathroom door might have a gun and most certainly had two eager German shepherd dogs.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pilot Holds Plane for Grandfather of Murdered Toddler
[See if your monitor screen doesn’t go out of focus by the end of this article — Z]
An Arizona family is praising a Southwest Airlines pilot who held a Tucson-bound plane in Los Angeles for 12 minutes to wait for a passenger trying to get to a hospital to say his goodbyes to his 21/2 -year-old grandson, who was about to be taken off life support..
The child, Caden Rodgers of Aurora, Colorado, was in a Denver hospital, the victim of child abuse at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend, Theodore Madrid, 30, who has since been charged with first-degree murder.
The Southwest pilot’s efforts to help Caden’s grandfather, Mark Dickinson, of Palominas, Arizona, to get to the child’s bedside on Jan. 5 first came to light when his wife, Nancy Dickinson, wrote of the incident to travel blogger Christopher Elliot.
In an interview with AOL Travel News, Nancy says, “He got to say his goodbyes thanks to Southwest. I am so grateful for the airline for doing what they did.”
She says her stepdaughter, Ashley Rodgers, 26, needed her dad. And if Dickinson had missed the plane it would have been a tragedy on top of a tragedy.
“It was heartbreaking,” Dickinson says.
Mark, an engineer with Northrop Grumman, had been on a business trip in Los Angeles when he got word his grandson was to be removed from life support that night. He already had a flight booked back to Tuscon and booked a connecting flight to Denver.
He arrived at LAX two hours early, but had to check in his suitcase, which took an hour, and then encountered a security line that was “out the door and down the sidewalk,” Nancy says.
She says he advised Southwest and TSA workers of his urgent need to make the Tuscon flight and why, but could not convince them to help.
“God bless TSA. They are really there for us,” Nancy says.
Mark, on the verge of tears, ended up just grabbing his computer, belt and shoes as they came through security screening and running shoeless to the plane, knowing the minutes were ticking by.
At the gate, the pilot of the Southwest plane and ticketing agent were both waiting for him.
“Are you Mark? We held the plane for you and we’re so sorry about the loss of your grandson,” they said.
Nancy says she and Mark are not sure when or how Southwest got the word, but she is grateful they did. The plane was originally supposed to take off at 11:50; Mark arrived at 12:02 p.m.
“It was the pilot’s call to make. We are grateful that he felt comfortable in making that call,” Nancy says.
Mark was able to get to Denver to say goodbye to his grandson and be with his daughter.
Caden was buried yesterday. The toddler’s organs have been donated to several people in need of transplants.
Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Marilee McInnis tells AOL Travel News the carrier is proud of the pilot’s actions.
“We fully support what our captain did,” McInnis says. “Customer service is important and we’re not at all surprised an action like this would take place.”
[People who feel so inclined should contact Southwest to voice their approval — Z]
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Report Prioritizes Big Missions to Mars and Jupiter, But Can NASA Afford Them?
An expedition to see if some form of life ever existed on Mars and a journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to study its underground ocean should be NASA’s highest-priority missions in the next decade, a new report from the National Research Council suggests. The report, entitled “Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022,” was released today (March 7) after an in-depth review to outline the greatest needs for planetary exploration in the next decade. NASA’s current budget woes, however, might delay some or all of these missions, the report warns. NASA, like all federal agencies, is currently operating without an official 2011 budget — the government is working under a temporary spending measure called a continuing resolution.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Students Taught to Emulate Van Jones’ Anti-Police Activism
New curriculum glorifies communist who called for ‘resistance’ against cops
Van Jones, president Obama’s former “green jobs” czar, led an event that launched a new “human rights” curriculum for high schools in which the work of Jones and other radicals is glorified.
High-school students are now being asked to “know who Van Jones is and why he is a human rights defender,” according to lesson plans obtained by WND this week.
The plans also ask students to “become a defender” against “police brutality” while glorifying an organization founded by Jones that has been accused of anti-police activities.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What Does it Take? Another Victory for the Enemy Within
Let’s cut to the quick: Two more broadcast commentators dared to speak out on the infiltration of our society by the Radical Islam/far left coalition whose fondest hope is to bring us down, tear our Constitution to shreds, and rule from the White House.
What we need to do as we witness this attack from within right before our eyes is to repeat — again and again and again, if necessary — that our very survival (as a nation, and possibly personally, as well) hangs in the balance.
[…]
We are under siege from Radical Islam and the Hate-America Left. What unites them is their white-hot contempt for America.
The Hate-America Left has been in a snit ever since the end of the Cold War. These people loathe and despise Ronald Reagan precisely because he ended the Soviet Empire. Apparently they see Radical Islam as their hobby-horse opportunity to bring down America. One can guess which element of that coalition is the exploiter and which the exploited.
Radical Islam for years has harbored the ambition to rule the world. Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst (2009) quotes a leading Islamic terrorist sponsor as declaring that “in order to reach the ideal Muslim society, every method and path is acceptable (including) lying to people.”
[…]
Now, can we agree that when groups such as CAIR try to shut up anyone and everyone who raises his head to speak out on the most deadly ideology to threaten Americans in our nation’s history, the enemies of free speech are not doing it because of genuine concern over “Islamophobia,” but rather because they are afraid? Afraid — that Radical Islam’s plot will be exposed for what it is — a war against Western Civilization.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
White House Official Praises Muslim Brotherhood Leader
Deputy NSC chief begs for ‘cooperation’ at mosque in Virginia
WASHINGTON — While visiting a mosque in the Washington area last week, a senior White House security official lavished praise on a Muslim cleric who happens to be a top leader of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in America, FBI investigators point out.
“They are so ignorant,” said one FBI veteran regarding the White House. “This is unbelievable bullsh — .”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wish Comes True for Cancer-Stricken 10-Year-Old Inducted Into Army
[Let’s see if you can still read your monitor clearly after finishing this story — Z]
Most kids might hope to get an Xbox or an iPod Touch for their 10th birthday. Brennan Daigle got a reception from a formation of soldiers, a ride in a camouflaged National Guard Humvee—and induction as an honorary member of the Army.
Since October 2009, Brennan, from Sulphur, Louisiana, has been battling embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma—a rare form of cancer in which muscular tumors attach themselves to bones, reports the Fort Polk Guardian. Last month, doctors told his family there was nothing more they could do, and gave Brennan just weeks to live.
Brennan has always loved the Army. His mother had created a Facebook page—Brennan’s Brigade—to keep family and friends informed of his condition. People from around the world, including soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, have left comments of encouragement and support. One group of soldiers in Afghanistan posted a picture of themselves holding an American flag, and told Brennan: “We’re flying this flag in honor of you; we’re here to back you. Stay Army strong.”
Becky Prejean, who runs a charity for sick kids called Dreams Come True of Louisiana, heard about Brennan’s illness, and got in touch with his mother, Kristy Daigle. Brennan’s greatest wish, Daigle told Prejean, was to meet some soldiers in person, before his illness worsened. So the two women contacted the Fort Polk Community Relations Office, which put out a call for a few soldiers to attend Brennan’s tenth birthday on Feb. 26.
Forty showed up. [emphasis added]
[Does anyone have any doubts as to why America’s fighting men and women continue to garner the very highest levels of respect from among ALL public figures, private or government? — Z]
Brennan had been told he was going fishing with his father. But when he got out of his dad’s truck, he was greeted by a formation of 1st MEB soldiers, standing at attention in front of a National Guard Humvee. After a moment, they all shouted “Happy Birthday, Brennan!,” and broke into applause.
Brennan was speechless, according to his mother. “All he could do was giggle,” she said.
Brennan and his best friend Kaleb were invited to check out the Humvee, and Brennan sat behind the wheel. Then soldiers took the two boys out for a spin. Afterward, Brennan and Kaleb put their heads out the hatch on the vehicle’s roof, while the crowd snapped pictures.
But it wasn’t over. Brennan got out of the Humvee and was led to the front of the formation, where he shook hands with each soldier. He was inducted into the Army as an honorary member, then given a coin symbolizing merit and excellence, as well as a military jacket with his name on the pocket, and other Army-themed gifts.
“Brennan, you exemplify what personal courage means,” Pfc. Kamesha Starkey, 1st MEB, told him.
Finally, the mayor of Sulphur, La., gave Brennan a key to the city, and the title of Honorary Mayor of the Day.
“Words can never express what I felt seeing all those soldiers there, knowing some of them had just come back from Iraq and still took time out for just one little boy,” Kristy Daigle said. “Just to know that they care enough to give their all, to give their love and support to a little boy is phenomenal. It says so much about our men and women who serve our country in the armed forces.”
Some of the soldiers said the event helped put things in perspective for them. “It was good to be able to give back,” Pfc. Kyle Frederick said. “It opened my eyes to a lot of things: How I take my kids for granted, how lucky we are, how we complain on a day-to-day basis and we really have it good compared to others.”
As for Brennan, it took a while for his new honor to sink in. The next day, he asked his mother, “Am I really in the Army?”
“You most certainly are,” she answered. “They don’t swear in just anyone.”
“That’s awesome,” said Brennan.
[Here’s to our AWESOME armed forces — Z]
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Alien-Life Claims Spark Monster Mud-Slinging
First seen on 14 May 1864, in the shape of an enormous fireball in the sky over southern France, the Orgueil meteorite is making headlines again — though this time its appearance has mostly been ill-received.
Last week, NASA scientist Richard Hoover at the Marshall Space Flight Center near Huntsville, Alabama, published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology claiming that fragments collected from the Orgueil meteorite and two similar meteorites contain fossilised bacteria.
Microbiologist Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, critiqued Hoover’s study on her blog, RRResearch. She remains unconvinced by the evidence for alien life presented in the study. Although Redfield chastises Hoover for not properly detailing how the samples were stored over the years — and therefore how they could have been contaminated by earthly bugs — she is more concerned that Hoover apparently did little to rule out the possibility that the shapes he saw are simply not life forms, extraterrestrial or otherwise. “The first thing you learn when you do electron microscopy is that it’s really easy to see anything you are looking for — if you have a good search image in your brain, you can find it,” she says. “I think those squiggles are just places in the rock where the minerals happened to arrange themselves in a squiggle shape. Minerals readily grow into fibres.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Arrest in Glasgow Over Stockholm Bombing
A 30-year-old man has been arrested in Glasgow in connection with a suicide bombing in Sweden.
Police detained the foreign national under the Terrorism Act during an intelligence-led raid in the city’s Whiteinch area at about 0605 GMT.
Two people were hurt in two blasts in Stockholm in December. A man was later found dead with an explosive device.
The Stockholm bomber was named as 28-year-old Iraqi-born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, who lived in Luton.
He previously attended the University of Bedfordshire.
The attack was believed to be the first suicide bombing in Sweden’s history.
‘Well planned’
Detectives in Britain and Sweden have been investigating whether Abdulwahab was supported by others or acted as a lone attacker.
Officials said at the time the bombing appeared “well-planned” and worked on the assumption that he was helped by others.
The man detained in Glasgow is suspected of “aiding terrorist activities outwith Scotland”.
The Swedish Security Service said the arrest was made following collaboration between Scotland and Sweden.
A statement said there was “good co-operation between prosecutors and the police authorities”.
It read: “Strathclyde Police, Scotland, has today arrested a person suspected of offences under the Terrorism Act.
“Scottish investigations show that there could be a connection between the person now arrested and the terrorist attack in central Stockholm on 11 December 2010, something the continuing investigation in Scotland will clarify.
“Strathclyde Police is in charge of the investigation and the arresting.
“The arrest made in Scotland is the result of the Scottish police investigation, the collaboration between Scotland and Sweden within the scope of international judicial assistance, and a good co-operation between prosecutors and police authorities.”
Strathclyde Police said the man being detained posed “no direct threat to Scotland”.
The incident is not being linked to events at Gartocharn, near Loch Lomond, last November where a number of suspicious devices were found.
| — Hat tip: Seneca III | [Return to headlines] |
Brain Drain Continues in Italian Universities
(AGI) Rome — The Almalaurea report on employment for graduates in Italy has shown that for every genius that enters Italy, one and a half leave the the country. “The reduced presence of foreign students in the Italian university system,” reads the report presented in Rome at the CRUI centre, “and that of foreign researchers in Italian centres, leads us to reflect upon the modest overall attraction of the system in our country, with the result that more clever graduates leave the country that than those who enter it.” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: End of Line for Christiania’s Flower Children
Freetown Christiania is no longer free. After forty years, the last hippie enclave in Europe is bowing to the laws of the free market, writes Gazeta Wyborcza.
Jacek Pawlicki
Founded in 1971 by a group of hippies who squatted a deserted naval base in Copenhagen, Christiania is a global phenomenon. For experts, it is a legend of alternative culture, Europe’s most famous and sole functioning hippie enclave. After the Little Mermaid and the Tivoli amusement park, it is also the Danish capital’s third most popular tourist attraction. A million visitors come every year to wander among the psychedelic mural-adorned barracks and buy illegal cannabis in Pusher Street.
Christiania, a self-proclaimed free town, has its own anthem (I kan ikke slå os ihjel, meaning “You cannot kill us,” a protest song by the rock group Bifrost), its flag of freedom (three yellow spheres against red background), its own currency, and its own set of rules and customs. There is a ban on car traffic (residents park their cars outside), running (if you run, you’re taken for a thief), photography, and bulletproof vests.
Recently, after forty years of existence and twenty-two of legally sanctioned independence, Christiania has lost its free-town status. On 18 February, the Danish Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the enclave’s residents against a 2009 court ruling that re-established state control over the 35-hectare former naval base. Thus a long legal battle over a status secured by hippies and squatters in 1989 has come to an end.
Authorities want developers to take advantage
The battle began in 2004 when the centre-right, conservative government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen (today the head of NATO), repealed a decision made fifteen years previously by Denmark’s left-wing government ceding control over the territory to its residents. In 2006, Christiania lawyers appealed against the decision, arguing it violated the European Convention of Human Rights. Danish courts have now decided, however, that there was no violation and that Christiania belongs to the state (specifically, to the Ministry of Defence). And it is the state that will determine its future.
“The court procedure is over. Now it’s time to think about the future,” says Thomas Ertmann, the commune’s spokesman. He admits that the lawyers representing the enclave’s 850 residents — hippies, artists and all kinds of freaks — will now have to sit at the negotiating table with the government.
“We needed the court ruling to finally solve the issue of ownership,” says Nils Vest, a movie director who has been living in Christiania for twenty years and who runs an independent film studio there. “One thing is certain, Christiania will survive. We want to be a legal community, but on our terms. The terms proposed so far by the government have been unacceptable for us because they’d surely result in Christiania’s disintegration”.
Europe’s alternative metropolis
According to Mr Vest, the incumbent administration has done everything for Christiania to fall into ruin in order to then recover, under the pretext of restoring order and prosperity, the precious hectares in Copenhagen. With the court ruling, the authorities want building developers to take advantage of the area’s investment potential. First, however, they will have to reach an agreement with the residents because eviction by force is out of the question for political and social reasons.
The government plan for Christiania provides for a return to normality: tearing down the illegally erected huts and houses, weeding out soft drugs (the hard ones are banned by the residents themselves) and gradually getting rid of the squatters. The problem is that, according to experts, this would mean the end of a social experiment on a global scale that was Freetown Christiania. Those unable to find a place for themselves in normal society and willing to forego the achievements of modern civilisation in the name of living in utopia have been coming here for years.
“We are Europe’s alternative metropolis. The largest experiment of its kind,” says Mr Vest. “When you have the possibility of self-government, you care more about your environment,” he argues. Despite the unfavourable court ruling, Mr Vest is optimistic. He says the ruling coalition will lose the upcoming elections and power will go to the social democrats, more flexible and more favourably inclined towards the Christiania community’s postulates. During the coming months, the enclave’s residents will be raising funds and securing bank loans to buy as many “squatted” properties as possible.
“The crucial issue now is how Christiania will be managed. We want to have a say over how it develops, what kind of people live here. We certainly won’t allow real estate speculation by people from outside the community,” insists Mr Vest.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France: Chirac Corruption Trial Starts in Paris
(AGI) Paris — The trial of Jacques Chirac is under way in Paris. He is accused of corruption during his time as Mayor of Paris in the 1990’s. Chirac is the first former French president to be put on trial. He is charged with using public funds to pay party workers while he was Mayor of Paris.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italian PM Undergoes 4 Hour Plastic Surgery Operation
(AGI) Rome — A statement made in Milan by professor Alberto Zangrillo, and issued by the Premiership, informs that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has undergone surgery to rectify jaw and masticatory problems that arose after he was attacked. The operation involved bone transplants and implants under a general anesthetic to restore masticatory function that was seriously compromised when he was attacked on December 13th 2009 .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bulgari to be Acquired by France’s Lvmh for €3.7 Bln
Rome, 7 March (AKI) — French luxury-goods maker LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton said it will acquire control of Italian competitor Bulgari in a deal worth about 3.7 billion euros.
LVMH will buy the Bulgari family’s 50.4 percent share of the Rome-based company for 1.87 billion euros in stock and offer other Bulgari investors 12.25 euros for each of their shares, the companies said in a joint statement on Monday.
“Our entrance into LVMH will allow Bulgari to reinforce its worldwide growth and to realise significant synergies,” Bulgari CEO Francesco Trapani said in the press release.
Bulgari, founded in 1884, will become LVMH’s second-largest family shareholder in the LVMH and be granted two seats on the board.
LVMH is controlled by Bernard Arnault, ranked 7th on Forbes’ Magazine’s 2010 list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires with a net worth of $27.5 billion.
Bulgari’s shares traded at 12 euros at around noon in Italy after closing at 7.59 euros each on Friday.
Arnault has grown his company primarily through acquisitions like Hennessy Cognac and Moet & Chandon champagne and Louis Vuitton handbags.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Opposition Presents Over 10 Million Signatures Backing Berlusconi’s Resignation
Rome, 8 March (AKI) — Italian opposition politician Rosy Bindi on Tuesday presented prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s top aide with a petition containing more than 10 million signatures demanding the premier’s resignation.
Bindi also gave cabinet undersecretary Gianni Letta a message wishing 74-year-old Berlusconi a speedy recovery from recent surgery to repair damage he suffered to his face in a 2009 attack in Milan.
Bindi, 60, a former health minister who is president of Italy’s main opposition Democratic Party, received thousands of messages of support after Berlusconi insulted her on a late-night talk show in October 2009.
Appearing on the Porta Porta show hours after Italy’s top court stripped him of his immunity from prosecution, he told Bindi after she interrupted him: “I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent.”
Bindi famously replied: “I am not one of the women at your disposal, Prime Minister.”
Berlusconi’s mysogynist gaffes are legion, are his alleged liaisons with ambitious young women aspiring to TV and political careers.
As Bindi carried the boxes of signatures into the prime minister’s office in Rome, Democratic Party leader Piergluigi Bersani and party activists gathered outside to celebrate, chanting: “Resign Berlusconi!”.
“We decided to deliver these signatures on 8 March — International Women’s Day — because we started gathering them when ‘Rubygate’ broke,” said Bindi, referring to Berlusconi’s alleged trysts with an underage Morocccan go-go dancer nicknamed Ruby.
Berlusconi is due to stand trial on 6 April for paying Moroccan teen Karima El Mahroug for sex and abusing his political office to cover up his relationship with her. She is now 18, but was 17 at the time she slept with Berlusconi, prosecutors allege.
‘Rubygate’ is the latest of a series of sex scandals to have hit Berlusconi and which have dented his popularity in opinion polls. He is also facing three other trials for bribery, tax fraud and embezzlement connected to his Mediaset group’s business activities.
“We want Berlusconi to stand down because he is incapable of running the country, but also because of his violation of women’s dignity and of the whole country. Go now!” said Bindi.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Snow Storm Hits Southern Italy
(AGI) Catanzaro — Calabria has been hit by a snow storm with winds and below freezing temperature. Last night snow fell on the lower elevations including some beaches along the Ionian coast. Traffic problems were reported on State Highway 107 (SS 107) and in the Sila plateau, where motorists are obliged to carry snow chains. Many mountain communities are difficult to reach because of the weather.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hundreds of Council Tax Protesters Storm Courtroom in Attempt to Make Citizens’ Arrest of Judge
Hundreds of protesters stormed a courtroom and attempted to make a citizens’ arrest on a judge in support of a man challenging his council tax bill.
In chaotic scenes, police rescued Judge Michael Peake from the clutches of a mob and escorted him safely from the County Court in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
Officers were force to scramble over court benches to control the near riot as one protester shouted to ‘seal the court’. Another sat in the judge’s chair at the head of the court and declared the defendant be released.
Deafening cheers and chants could be heard from the crowd outside the courts and demonstrators used mobile phones to film arrests being made.
The protesters were from the anti-establishment British Constitution Group (BGC).
The demonstration was sparked when a prominent voice in the BCG, Roger Hayes, from Wirral, faced a bankruptcy hearing for non-payment of council tax.
Around 600 chanting demonstrators had massed around the court in support of Mr Hayes. Roads were blockaded and dozens of police officers deployed to keep order.
After exchanges between Mr Hayes and the judge, protesters watching from the public gallery charged at Mr Peake to make a civil arrest, chanting ‘arrest that judge’.
A stand-off followed with several demonstrators staging a sit-down protest in front of police vehicles, refusing to let them pass. Several arrests were made and police dog-handlers called to the scene.
As he emerged from the court surrounded by his supporters, Mr Hayes said: ‘The judges are breaking the law in their own courts. I asked him [Mr Peake] if he was serving under his oath of office.
‘I asked three times for him to confirm this and he refused, so I civilly arrested the judge and I called upon some people in the court to assist me in this.
‘[The protesters] were acting lawfully and the police should not have arrested them.’
The BCG’s main aim is a rallying call for ‘lawful rebellion.’ Leaflets handed out by the crowd said: ‘We, the British People have a right to govern ourselves.
‘That right has been subjugated as a consequence of acts of treason having been committed by the collective political establishment, aided and abetted by corrupt segments of the judiciary, the police, the Church and the civil service.’
In 1997, Mr Hayes, a former member of UKIP, stood for election in Wallasey representing the Referendum Party against sitting Labour MP Angela Eagle. He polled 1,490 votes and finished fourth.
Raymond Saintclair , who organised the Birkenhead protest said: ‘Today was day one. This is going to happen again and again and again. We have sent a message to this court as one nation and one voice until change comes.’
The hearing was abandoned and will need to be re-arranged at a date to be fixed.
| — Hat tip: Takuan Seiyo | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Pregnant Student Nurse Told Her Labour Pains Are Kidney Stones… Until She Spots Her Baby’s Head
When heavily pregnant Danielle Crowley started having contractions every three minutes she was convinced she was going into labour five weeks early.
But when she arrived at hospital blundering doctors and midwives checked her three times and dismissed her discomfort as kidney stones or back ache — as well as accusing the first-time mother-to-be of having a ‘low pain threshold’.
At one stage the teenager was in a toilet screaming in agony while staff ignored her and the only person who checked on her was another patient.
Finally, after an 18-hour ordeal, she gave birth in a side ward of the maternity unit in front of other patients and their visitors.
The student nurse has now lodged a formal complaint with Southend Hospital in Essex.
‘They made me feel like I was over-reacting and that the pain was in my head. There was no compassion or empathy,’ said Miss Crowley, 19.
‘I was told quite a few times to put my trust in them. You believe the professionals. They really let me down.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Ultranationalist Seselj Demands Acquittal by UN Court
(AKI) — Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj, accused of war crimes by the Hague-based United Nations tribunal, demanded an acquittal on Monday, saying the prosecution has failed to prove charges against him.
According to the tribunal rules, Seselj has the right to demand acquittal after the prosecution rests its case. He is accused of crimes against Muslims and Croats allegedly committed by paramilitaries recruited by his Serbian Radical Party during 1991-1995 war that followed the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
“I propose that you acquit me of all charges, since there is no evidence for a guilty verdict,” Seselj told the tribunal. “I demand to be compensated for more than eight years spent in detention without any reason and for everything I went through,” he added.
“You haven’t proven anything beyond a doubt, except that you hate me immensely and that you want to convict me at all costs,” he told prosecutors.
Seselj surrendered to the tribunal in February 2003 and the prosecution ended its case and examined last witnesses early this year. Seselj had the option to present his witnesses or to demand acquittal.
The prosecution will have four hours to present its arguments on Tuesday, after which Seselj will have another hour for his comments. The tribunal is expected to rule on Seselj’s request in a few weeks.
If the tribunal rules that prosecution has proven charges against him, Seselj will be granted time to present his witnesses before the final verdict is reached.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
“Give US Back Our Church, “ Copts and Muslims Tell Egyptian Government
Some 8,000 people demonstrate in front of Egyptian TV, demanding the rebuilding of the Coptic Church of Saints Minas and George, destroyed by extremists last Saturday. It is the first protest of its kind by Copts other than at their cathedral. For Fr Rafik Greiche, head of the press office of the Catholic Church of Egypt, this demonstration is a sign that Christians dare take to the streets. However, fundamentalists are still trying to take advantage of the situation of chaos to impose on Egypt Sharia and a radical version of Islam. “Western government can put pressure on our government to recognise the value of this equality on society,” the clergyman said.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — “Give us back our church,” shouted some 8,000 people, Copts and Muslims together, in front of Egyptian TV, as they called for the rebuilding of Saints Minas and George Church, which was destroyed by fire last Saturday by a group of Muslims.
Fr Rafik Greiche, head of the press office of the Catholic Church of Egypt and spokesman for seven Catholic denominations, told AsiaNews that “for the first time Coptic Christians gathered outside Cairo’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral for a show of strength and signal their desire to be present in society and change the constitution.” The place was chosen because various TV studios are located near Tahrir Square, which has come to symbolise the protests that brought down the Mubarak regime.
For Fr Greiche, this shows that Christians are more conscious of what they can do. “With this demonstration, they wanted to show that they can take to the street and find support in the Muslim community. In fact, they were able to convince Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to meet a delegation of a thousand Copts, and get a promise out of him to rebuild the church immediately.”
“Videos from the demonstration show Muslim women wearing the hijab along with Christian women, calling together on the army to rebuild the church,” the priest said. “Images such as these, of Muslims standing side by side with Christians, are a sign of the equality between the faiths that came out of the Jasmine Revolution, which brought together hundreds of thousands of young people from both religions under the same flag,” he explained. “During the uprising, Christians and Muslims showed that they were truly one heart in their country.”
Nevertheless, Islamic fundamentalism remains a major danger to the country. Organised extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are trying to take advantage of the situation of chaos to impose a radical version of Islam and implement Sharia in Egyptian society.
“Many imams are opposed to changes to Article 2 of the constitution, which says that the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia). Right from the beginning of the unrest, religious leaders said they would accept changes only to those articles that affected the government and parliament, but not those that involved Sharia.” Many of these leaders belong to the same fundamentalist Muslim groups that include Muslim radicals who escaped from Mubarak’s political prisons.
“The fire at the Coptic church in Soul occurred in a rural area not far from the capital,” the clergyman said. “It was provoked by a family feud between a Muslim and a Christian family.”
Local muslims used the dispute to exercise the right of vengeance, which is rooted in Muslim society, in order to demolish the church and force 7,000 Christians out of their homes.
“Even though the army pledged that it would rebuild the church on its original site, some Muslims do not want it in their village, and are trying to have it moved to another location. This goes to show the real intent behind the attack, namely the desire to get rid of the church from the village. It also suggests that for some Christian-Muslim disputes can only be settled by moving a church to another place.”
According to Fr Greiche, the only good thing that has come out from the Jasmine Revolution is equality between Christians and Muslims. In a situation of instability, it can stop extremists from imposing Sharia as the source of Egyptian law.
“Western governments can put pressure on our government to recognise the value of equality in society,” he said. “Muslims and Christians together carried out the revolution. There were martyrs on both sides. The West must let any future government realise that a new country can be built by making a small change to Article 2 of the constitution.” (S.C.)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Christian Copts in Egypt Protest Muslim Attacks
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — Thousands of Christians, joined by many Muslims, have been staging sit-in since March 5 in front of the Egyptian TV building on the Nile Corniche in Cairo, protesting the attack on the church in the village of Soul and the inaction of the Egyptian armed forces in preventing the Muslims from torching and demolishing the church and terrorizing the Christian Copts and forcing them to evacuate the village.
The church, which has been completely demolished, has been used by Muslims to pray there to humiliate the Copts said the protesters.
The protesters were joined by 15 priests, including priests from the demolished St. Mina and St. George’s church in Soul, Atfif in Hewan, 30 kilometers from Cairo, blocked the path to the main October and May 15 bridges. Some of the Coptic youth lay in the middle of the roads to prevent cars from passing, which brought traffic in this busy area of Cairo to a stand still for hours.
The demonstrators accused government officials of complicity and silence to the exposure of Copts to violence and looting and demanded the recovery of their church, which was razed and taken over Muslims while under the sight of the Egyptian army. They held banners and chanted “We want our rights” and “Demolish our churches or our homes, the Coptic voice will not abate.”
Father Filopareer Gamil of Giza Coptic Dioceses read the Coptic demands on behalf of protesters. “Since yesterday (March 5) we have been crying out in vain to the armed forces to issue a statement to protect our rights and our homes.” Coptic Demands are mainly for the church to be rebuilt on the same location and same dimensions (now an empty plot of land,) as well as the torched affiliated community services building; Christians to be allowed from immediate effect to pray again there even in a tent until the new church has been built; to secure the return of more than 7000 Copts who were terrorized and forcibly displaced from the village; compensation for all Copts affected by the incident; prosecution of the perpetrators and inciters of the church attack.
To pacify the Copts, Field Marshall Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, issued a statement that the torched church would be rebuilt by Easter, at the expense of the army.
Outspoken Father Metias Nasr, priest of St. Mary’s Church in Ezbet el Nakhl, who also joined the sit-in, told the Egyptian daily newspapers Elyom 7 on Sunday “To remain silent while violence is taking place in the village of Soul raises question marks for many, and we will sit-in until our demands are met. We got yesterday a promise to return to the land of the church to worship, which did not happen, on the contrary, individuals who burned the Church came and established Islamic rituals of prayers.”
The St. Mina and St. George’s church incident was triggered by a relationship between Ashraf Iskander, a 40-year-old married man and a Muslim married woman (AINA 3-5-2011). A video shows the demolition of Church and the sounds of the Imam’s call of “Allahu Akbar” from the mosque speakers while Muslims are destroying the church walls.
Father Yosha, the priest who was inside the Church, escaped the fire which destroyed the church, along with three deacons who were with him, through the roof of the burning church, leaping to the roof of the neighboring house, owned by Muslims, who helped and protected him from being assaulted by the mob as he left.
The village residents, priests and the Bishop appealed in vain to the armed forces, stationed only 7 km away from Soul in the village of Borombol to intervene. In an interview with Freecopts, Bishop Theodosius, Bishop of Giza, said “We called the commanders of the army in charge of the region of Helwan and Borombol, and the leaders of the national security. They subsequently sent the army. When the army arrived at the village of Soul, it fired in the air and the Muslim mob dispersed. However, about half-an-hour later, the mob reassembled and began to burn the church in presence of the army. The army sent a fire truck that extinguished the fire, but thereafter the army began to protect the Muslims who were destroying the church. Meanwhile, the army prevented the Christians from reaching the church, when they attempted to extinguish the fire and end the destruction of their church. Thus, the Muslims were allowed to destroy the church under the protection of the Egyptian army.” (complete Freecopts interview with English sub-titles
Father Balamon, one of the torched church pastors said that because the army did not intervene when the mob demolished the church, the Muslims were emboldened on Saturday and attacked Christian homes and looted everything inside.
On Saturday there was a mass evacuation of terrorized Copts. One village witness told activist Mariam Ragy that there is hardly a female left in the village now as Muslims threatened to rape Coptic women, and only males are left behind inside their homes.
The army has imposed a media black-out on the village; journalists have been prevented from entering the village and one journalist had his camera confiscated.
A delegation of priests met on Sunday midnight with Prime Minister Dr. Essam Sharaf in his home, who promised to contact Field Marshall Tantawi on Monday morning to make sure that his promises regarding the torched church will be kept.
http://www.aina.org/news/20110307205517.htm
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Court ‘To Probe Mubarak Family Bank Accounts’
Cairo, 7 March (AKI) — Egypt’s deposed president Hosni Mubarak and his family’s assets in all Egyptian banks will be investigated, the Cairo-based Court of Appeals announced on Monday.
Egyptian daily Al-Masry-al-Youm cited the head of the court Abdul Aziz Omar as saying the court will on Tuesday consider a request from the justice ministry’s department of illegal earnings to determine whether enough evidence is available to allow the disclosure of secret accounts belonging to the Mubarak family.
Activists previously filed a complaint to prosecutors claiming that Mubarak, his wife and two sons possessed secret bank accounts. The activists said the disclosure of these accounts was essential to hold the family accountable for potential charges of graft.
Egypt’s attorney general Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on Monday ordered the freezing of Mubarak’s assets abroad and banned him and his family from leaving the country.
The Mubarak family is believed to have amassed a vast fortune worth as much as 70 billion euros, according to Arabic media reports.
Egyptian activists recently launched a Facebook campaign to gather one million signatures aimed at dissolving the National Democratic Party, formerly headed by Mubarak, which monopolised power in Egypt for decades..
Members of the Facebook page now number near 20,000. Activists have created several other similar groups urging the dismantling of the NDP and the prosecution of Mubarak, according to Al-Masry-al-Youm.
Lawyer Ibrahim Bassiouni last week announced he will file a suit to call for the negation of the NDP’s permit, the banning of its activities and the closing of all its branches throughout Egypt.
He also called for returning all of the party’s properties to the state as well as freezing its assets in Egyptian banks and distributing them among the population.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood’s Power Growing From the Jasmine Revolution
A source tells AsiaNews that Muslim extremists are behind recent attacks against police stations and secret service offices. They probably tried to destroy their files, whilst giving a different spin on the raids. Other sources note that Islamists are still a minority in the country, as most Egyptians, Christians and Muslims, are still committed to their country’s future. People continue to be uneasy about poor security.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — “The Muslim Brotherhood is reaping the benefits of the Jasmine revolution, which began as a real coming together of all Egyptians, Christians and Muslims,” a source told AsiaNews, anonymous for security reasons. Groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood recently stormed police stations and secret service offices to destroy files containing information about their activities. This version of events is different from what international media reported. The latter claimed that ordinary Egyptians attacked such sites to stop the destruction of papers documenting abuses and torture of dissidents under the Mubarak regime.
According to the source, many Christians still feel threatened by the lack of security, as the recent attack against the Coptic community in the village of Soul indicates. On that occasion, Muslims set fire to a local church, forcing thousands of people to flee.
“The West should remain focused on Egypt. The active intervention of Europe and the international community, by qualifying the recognition of any new government, could positively influence the Jasmine Revolution,” the source said.
However, the future of the revolution is uncertain, this according to other sources. For them, “the country is in a mess.”
Even though life has started to go back to normal in Cairo and the main cities, with schools and offices reopening, one major problem remains, namely “the lack of security”. At the same time, “we do not know what will happen to the country.”
Given the uncertain future, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is well organised, could take advantage of the situation to take over. However, “they are a minority, and young people are still very active in society, and want to transform Egypt along democratic lines.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Copts Continue Protests Against Church Burning
Cairo, 8 March (AKI) — Coptic demonstrators on Tuesday blocked a main road in central Cairo to protest the burning of a church south of the capital. The church was set ablaze by a group of Muslims on Saturday reportedly following a dispute between two families over the romance between their Muslim daughter and Christian son.
Eyewitnesses said thousands of protesters held a sit-in in front of the public radio and television buildings close to Tahrir Square, forcing passers-by and drivers to change their routes, according to Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm.
Protesters also parked cars in the middle of the road, while others lay on the ground to hinder traffic, according to witnesses. Security forces fired in the air to force passers-by to change direction after clashes took place.
Although sectarian clashes between Muslims and minority Christians ebbed in the wake of uprisings which led to the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak on 11 February, sporadic incidents like the burning of a church and killing of a Coptic priest have raised fears that tensions are being reignited.
Thousands of Copts travelled to Cairo from several governorates on Monday to stage the open-ended sit-in in front of the TV building. The same day, Egypt’s ruling military council promised to rebuild the torched Helwan church in its original location, according to state TV.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Will Only Approve NATO-U.N. Intervention in Libya
(AGI) Rome — Talking to the press today, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said that military intervention in Libya by Italy is one of many options but would require a UN resolution.
“It should not be excluded but rather debated at an international level.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Italian Ship Delivers Humanitarian Aid to Benghazi
Rome, 7 March (AKI) — An Italian military ship loaded with medical supplies and other humanitarian aid landed on Monday in the eastern Libyan port city Benghazi.
The ship transported the supplies to an area controlled by forces opposing Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in a deepening armed conflict.
The ship is due to unload medical aid, as well as tents, blankets, food, water purifiers and electrical generators, before returning to Catania, Sicily, where it is based.
The United Nations has appointed a new envoy to Libya, former Jordanian foreign minister Abdelilah al-Khatib “to undertake urgent consultations with the authorities in Tripoli and in the region on the immediate humanitarian situation.”
Last week the UN imposed sanctions on Gaddafi and his family and referred him and members of his inner circle to the International Criminal Court for investigation over possible crimes against humanity. Interpol has also issued arrest warrants for Gaddafi and 15 other Libyan nationals including members of his family and top aides.
Separately, Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini said it would be difficult for his country to provide military jets to enforce a possible no-fly zone over Libya, a former colony ruled by Italy from 1911-1943. However, he left open the possibility that Italy would allow allies to use Italian military bases to conduct aerial patrols over the North African country.
Three United States senators on Sunday went on television to encourage president Barack Obama to consider military force to protect Libyan rebels from a crushing response by Gaddafi.
Former presidential candidate John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the possibility of bombing Libyan airfields as a way of grounding Gaddafi’s air force.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tripoli Accuses US, UK and France of Conspiring to Divide
(AGI) Tripoli — The US, Great Britain and France “are conspiring to divide Libya.” The accusation was levelled by Libya’s foreign minister Mussa Kussa, who accused the three governments of trying to manoeuvre the National Liberation Council.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisian Government Abolishes Political Police Force
(AGI) Tunis — The Tunisian Interior Ministry has abolished the political police force and state security agency, removing its mandates and eliminating its existence. the decision was announced with a statement explaining that, “these measures are in symbiosis with the uprising and concern over respecting the law within the framework of trust and transparency between security services and citizens.” This includes a “wish to continue the work started, to contribute to implement the values of democracy, dignity and freedom.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia’s Steep Path to Democracy
Righting the Wrongs of the Ben Ali Regime
Having liberated themselves from 23 years of dictatorship, Tunisians are finding the first steps toward democracy difficult. They must first come to terms with Tunisia’s history of government suppression and violence.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Womens’ Surprising Defenders
Every few months, we are presented with media reports about Jewish women rescued from their Muslim husbands in the Palestinian Authority or within Israel.
The stories are always similar. The women were tortured by their husbands, often locked in their homes or under constant guard by members of their husbands’ families. Either with or without the help of their Jewish families, they reached out to Yad L’Achim which rescues Jewish women and their children from Muslim husbands. Yad L’Achim volunteers plan and carry out often dangerous rescue operations and bring these women and their children to safety.
In January, Channel 10 presented live footage of one such rescue. Viewers saw relatives of a mother of four named Dana waiting anxiously at the Erez checkpoint as she and her children fled her husband and his family in Gaza and took their first steps of freedom.
During their courtship, Dana’s husband showed her every courtesy. After their marriage, he began regularly beating her and kept her under around the clock surveillance. A visit to Yad L’Achim’s website makes clear that her story is anything but unique…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Iran: Reformist Ex-President Replaced as Leader of Key Clerical Body
Tehran, 8 March (AKI) — Iran’s authorities have replaced reformist former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani as head of the powerful body charged with appointing and dismissing Iran’s supreme leader.
Ayatollah Kani was picked to head the powerful Assembly of Experts early on Tuesday with 63 votes in favour in the ninth session of the 86-member body, Iran’s state television channel Press TV reported.
Press TV said Rafsanjani (photo) had declined to run again for the post, but hardliners and supporters of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were said to have lobbied hard in recent weeks to push Rafsanjani out of the post, according to observers.
Kani is a moderate conservative not seen as a supporter of the opposition.
Rafsanjani is a bitter enemy of Ahmadinejad, and tacitly supported his rival, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential polls and post-election unrest.
Rafsanjani, who is also a former parliament speaker, was appointed head of the Assembly of Experts, a body that oversees the work of 71-year-old supreme leader, 71-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Members of the Assembly are religious scholars who are directly elected to an eight-year term in a nationwide poll. It holds meetings twice a year to review major national issues and every other year to appoint a new chairman.
Rafsanjani is regarded as a moderate conservative and served as Iran’s president from 1989-1997. However he lost the 2005 election to Ahmadinejad.
The 77-year-old cleric still heads the Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates between the parliament and the Guardian Council, the hard-line constitutional watchdog that approves candidates for parliament, president and the Assembly of Experts.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Oman Sultan Fires 12 Cabinet Ministers
Muscat, 7 March (AKI) — Qaboos Bin Said, the sultan of Oman, on Monday fired 12 of his ministers following anti-government protests over the past few weeks, according to reports on state television.
The ministry overseeing domestic economic affairs was dissolved as part of a government reshuffle sparked by a wave of protests throughout the Middle East.
Protesters in the sultanate have called on the government to implement democratic reforms and ease high unemployment. At least one person was killed during clashes with security forces.
Sultan Qaboos already reshuffled his cabinet last week in response to the demonstrations.
Sultan Qaboos, who rose to power after overthrowing his father in a 1970 palace coup, attempted to appease protesters on Sunday by pledging 50,000 new jobs and $390 in monthly unemployment benefits.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Plans to Invade Israel Prepared
‘Tactically, it is very much possible and even in a very short period of time’
Sources close to the Hezbollah — which Israel and the United States regard as a terrorist group — have told G2Bulletin that the organization has devised military plans to occupy “Galilee,” or northern Israel, should the Jewish state attack Lebanon, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
A few weeks back, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a public speech commemorating Hezbollah “martyrs,” particularly Hezbollah operations chief Imad Muganiyeh whom Hezbollah believes Israel assassinated in Syria two years ago, that Hezbollah was prepared to occupy the region.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: ‘Useful Idiots’
I was totally surprised when everyone else was surprised at the recent wave of detentions of journalists on charges of being members of a terror organization that aims to plot coups and overthrow the government. That should have been hardly surprising in a country that ranks 138th among 175 countries in the international Press Freedom Index (right next to Ethiopia, which ranks 139th).
In fact, it would have had “news value” if there wasn’t a single Turkish journalist in jail: Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “2011” is clearly a not-so-modest challenge to George Orwell’s “1984.”
Recently, the U.S. ambassador to Ankara, Francis Ricciardone, said he could not quite understand the arrest of journalists in connection with an alleged terror organization. Turkish prosecutors may have helped him understand it better now, with the new arrests including an international award-winning journalist along with several others.
I expect that Ambassador Ricciardone now agrees with Interior Minister Besir Atalay who said press freedoms in Turkey were more advanced than in the United States. But Turkey’s American and European friends must be grateful for such polite explanations from Cabinet ministers. After the June 12 elections all they will be able to hear from Ankara will be a simple “Go to hell!” The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is already journeying between the two sides of the thin line dividing self-confidence and arrogance in its “Western relations.”
The kind of questions the prosecutors asked the “terror suspects” have already entered the public domain. Ironically, during the interrogations, there was an abundance of words like “article, book, book-writing, media, newspapers, computers, pseudonyms, notes, CDs, digital data, telephone conversations and mobile phone messages” instead of “bombs, guns and assassinations.”
Among the evidence of crime are manuscripts of books to be published on Islamists’ infiltration into the police force and the judiciary. The infamous “nutty professor” who is another coup suspect and was arrested in the latest wave sums it up: “Under Hitler’s rule, they burned published books. Now in Turkey they are burning books not yet published.”
Never mind… It was fun all the same to see the appalled European faces along with appalled “liberal Turkish faces” after the latest wave of arrests. You cannot be serious about your shock, gentlemen. What else did you expect when any possible thesaurus failed to provide you with sufficient words of praise for the AKP’s “determined march toward advanced democracy.” You can enjoy Turkey’s advanced democracy now. Our colleagues in prisons certainly don’t.
“Useful idiots” was how mass-murderer Stalin dubbed left-wing academics who enthusiastically supported his communism. Now it seems “useful idiots” were not a Soviet particularity.
Sadly, to the willing or unwilling blind eye of the useful idiots, this is a “religious war.” It’s not a war between two different faiths. It is not even a war between two hostile sects of the same faith. It is a war between two different practices of the same sect of the same faith.
With a powerful hatred of the “other” and enjoying a popular support based on “head-count democracy,” neo/post-modern/whatever Islamists are fighting to create a unified form of observance — theirs. They are offering the enemy two choices: Convert to our observance of Islam, or you’ll be crushed!
Several years ago, former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who passed away last month, put it very honestly when he said “Islam’s victory” would sooner or later emerge, “with or without blood.”
At his funeral, his son, Fatih Erbakan, put it in a different way. In a speech to the crowd, Mr. Erbakan said his father had taught “Muslims in Turkey and the world that Islam is not only making your prayers, fasting and going on the hajj, but it is also to make jihad in the path of Allah and to work for the happiness of all humanity and for an Islamic union.”
Mr. Erdogan’s difference is to put the same idea in much better wording — a wording that wins thundering applause from useful idiots.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Gov’t Trying to ‘Destroy Journalists, ‘ Arrested Reporter Claims
One of the journalists recently arrested in connected with an alleged coup plot has said he was targeted before, accusing the government in a letter to his family of trying to “destroy journalists like us.”
“[My arrest] has no direct connection with the latest TV debates [about which I was questioned]. Apparently they were going to involve me in this kind of operation anyway,” journalist Nedim Sener wrote in a letter to his wife and 8-year-old daughter. “Because they have decided to destroy journalists like us and it looks like this process will continue.”
Sener also said in his letter that he was targeted two years ago with a fake e-mail. Daily Milliyet previously reported that police received an e-mail May 6, 2009, from a person identified only as M. Yilmaz, alleging that Sener had a “secret mission in the propaganda unit of Ergenekon,” an alleged gang accused of plotting to topple the government.
Both Sener and another Turkish reporter, Ahmet Sik, were arrested Sunday following raids on their homes and those of other journalists as part of the ongoing probe into the alleged Ergenekon gang. Sener wrote the letter to his family, and a separate one to his colleagues at daily Milliyet, from Metris Prison, where he was taken after he was arrested, the paper reported. He was later transferred to Silivri Prison.
During the questioning following his detention, Sener said he was asked about many past events, largely from the era between 2003 and 2006. He said the prosecutor even asked him about a question Sener had posed to former Police Chief Adil Serdar Saçan during a TV program broadcast in 2007.
Questioned about his wife’s heart surgery
In the letter he sent to his Milliyet colleagues, Sener objected to a line of questioning by Ergenekon Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz related to his wife. “Did you have your wife get heart surgery in order to prevent the legal operation against you?” the prosecutor asked Sener, according to his letter.
“The most strange and odd question I was asked during the questioning was about my wife’s heart surgery,” Sener wrote, quoting Öz as saying: “During a phone conversation with your wife, you said, ‘If I had known what would happen to me, we would not have gotten you heart surgery.’ That brings one’s mind to the [idea] that you had your wife get heart surgery in order to prevent the legal operation against you.”
Daily Milliyet reported March 6 that Sener’s phones had been wiretapped since 2009.
The mother of the other arrested journalist has meanwhile spoken out about the case, saying, “If something happens to my son, I will burn myself,” Milliyet reported.
The parents of Ahmet Sik, who live in Antalya, said they are very concerned about their son’s condition and what is going on in Turkey. “I gave my brother as a martyr before the 1980 military coup. Now I will not give my son,” said Sik’s mother, Fatma Sik, a retired civil servant.
“The prime minister says he has no information; the president says he is concerned about the latest arrests. If something happens to my son, I will burn myself,” she said.
The Ergenekon case started in June 2007 with the discovery of 27 hand grenades in a shanty house belonging to a retired noncommissioned officer. In the later stages of the investigation, those in custody have been accused of planning to topple the government by staging a coup, initially by spreading chaos and mayhem.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Inmates Riot in Solidarity With Protesters
Sanaa, 8 March (AKI) — Around 2,000 inmates in a prison in Yemeni capital Sanaa took about 10 guards hostage in a revolt during which they called for the resignation of president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera cited unnamed security security source as saying in the Arab country.
At least three prisoners in the Sanaa facility were reported killed and four others injured, Sharif Mobley, an inmate, was quoted as telling Al Jazeera via phone from within the prison.
The prisoner revolt started late Monday when detainees set fire to mattresses and occupied the prison exercise yard, the source said.
A number of prisoners gathered in the prison yard on Monday chanting “the people want to overthrow the regime,” prompting security forces to open fire with tear gas and live ammunition, Al Jazeera said.
At least two people were killed on Friday when the military opened fire on anti-government protesters in the northern province of Amran.
Protesters rejected Saleh’s 28 February attempt at pacifying critics with a pledge to allow the opposition into his government.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Russian Cynicism Towards the Jasmine Revolution
As world chancelleries try to solve crises in North Africa and Middle East, Moscow is biding its time to take advantage of the situation, waiting to see which side wins. In the meantime, it is earning extra dollars from higher oil prices, even if it has to stop arms sales to Libya.
Moscow (AsiaNews/Agencies) — In Russia, protests and unrest in North Africa and in other Arab countries have not made any major waves. Russian leaders control the situation at home and do not fear any contagion. In fact, their main concern is not domestic uprising but rather what advantages they can make from the situation, especially as oil prices rise.
When street protests broke out in Tunisia and Egypt back in January, Moscow limited itself to condemning the use of force whilst reiterating the principles of “non-interference” in the internal affairs of other countries.
At a meeting of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee on 22 February, President Dmitri Medvedev warned that radical forces could seize power in a country like Libya. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin suggested that Western nations might even be behind the unrest. Two days later, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also raised the spectre of radical Islam.
Moscow’s interest in the Jasmine Revolution rose marginally only when it came to Libya. On 24 February, Russia and the European Union adopted a joint statement condemning the use of force by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Two days later, Russia backed sanctions imposed on Libya by the Security Council. However, Russia’s economic ties with North Africa and the Arab world are limited compared to other countries.
The biggest investments are in Libya, where Tatneft has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in managing oil deposits (estimated at some 247 million tonnes), and Gazprom, which is planning to exploit the Elephant deposits in cooperation with the Italian company ENI.
Other major investments include a contract signed by Russian Railways to build a railway line in Libya, at a cost of US$ 2.2 billion, little compared to the tens of billions of Sino-Libyan trade.
This, Marcin Kaczmarski writes in the Eastweek journal, explains why Moscow is standing on the sidelines, waiting to get as much out of the situation as possible.
Russia’s involvement in the strife-affected nations is limited. Moscow can thus wait to choose sides when it will be clear who the winners will be, whether liberal democrats or radical Islamists. By contrast, powers that have entertained extensive links with existing regimes are in a more difficult position. Only three months ago during a visit to Bahrain, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the situation was quiet and without problems.
Libya produces 2 per cent of the world oil output, mostly for Europe. The Suez Canal is crucial for European supplies (through the canal and a pipeline). Lower supplies and greater uncertainties are driving prices upward, to the advantage of oil-producing Russia. At the beginning of March, the price of Urals oil stood at around US$ 109, far higher than the US$ 75 projected for mid-year.
If Europe loses access to North African supplies, it would have to turn to Russia, which would strengthen Moscow’s economic and political position vis-à-vis the Caucasus and central Europe.
Russia’s arms industry might suffer though. The Kremlin is one of the world’s major weapon producers, and has been criticised for selling arms to certain regimes. For instance, recent sales to Libya came to about US$2 billion, whilst contracts signed with Algeria stand at US$ 4 billion.
In the end, Moscow might have to stop deliveries to prevent the use of its weapons against civilians, but such a loss would be compensated by other advantages.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Bangladesh: Power Games of Tribal and Official Authorities Behind Suicide of Raped Christian Girl
The girl, aged 14, was raped by nine men a year ago. The police arrested a local committee to which the girl’s father had turned to seek justice. The tribal ruling provided for the payment of a sum to the family. The parish priest jailed for having mediated, rapists still at large.
Dhaka (AsiaNews) — Mardi Serafina, a Christian from the Santals tribe, was only 14 when she committed suicide. Left alone in the house, she dosed herself with kerosene and set herself on fire, four days later, on February 21, she died due to burns. A year ago, on April 4, she had been raped by nine men from her village. Her father, on the advice of the village leaders, did not lodge a report with Bangladeshi authorities but instead, resorted to a local Christian “court”. A year later a “friendly” accord was reached which provided as punishment for rapists the payment of a sum of between 1400-1500 euro and a forced marriage for the girl.
But the issue was never properly resolved. In fact it emerges that Serafina decided to set herself on fire — a common practice in Bangladesh — in response to certain events that occurred after the agreement. Her father on having received the money, lodged it in the name of the girls’ sister. In addition, one of the culprits who would have married her to repair the shame she had suffered, refused when he discovered that no law required him to do so. The paradox continues: after the death of Serafina, the parish priest of the village together with the men of the tribal committee who had negotiated the sum to be paid were arrested by police, while the rapists roam free. A story like many others, in Bangladesh, as a source for AsiaNews says who asks to remain anonymous. But one that lifts a veil on numerous episodes of “do-it-yourself justice”, related to tribal authorities, to which people prefer to go rather than contacting the police and official authorities.
“Among the Santals of the village — says the source — there are two committees, one Catholic Christian and one non-Christians who are competing for control. When the non-Christian committee heard of the episode, it reported the other committee to the police, saying they had acted illegally, forcing the girl to commit suicide because she had not received justice, or recognition of her dignity. Following the indictment, 11 people were arrested, including the village priest who had acted as a liaison in the delivery of money to the family. “
These are the facts. But according to the source, “the situation is really far more complex. First, the rapists are still free and nobody has dealt with them. On a strictly legal level, the father and the committee that established the framework were wrong. But there are far from negligible reasons. I’m not referring to the specific case, as much as similar cases. For centuries — the source said — traditional authority has governed the lives of these peoples, the Santals as well as others. It has held up for the better or worse, because sometimes the judgements expressed are close to modern culture, others are not. Perhaps the best choice — according to the source — would be to discern what cases can be left to local courts, rather than abolish them altogether. “ Because abolishing this authority “means to erode the culture of these peoples from within.”
“Another point on which everyone is silent — continues the source — is the reality is that nobody trusts the police and the criminal courts [official] in Bangladesh. Everyone knows that going to the police with such a case means paying considerable sums. The court and the judges decide in favour of those who have more money. “ So this is another reason why the village leaders and priests often advise the victims of any crime to appeal to local authorities, to hope in a minimal form of justice.
This mentality “has its flaws — the source points out — but it is not by throwing away an entire tradition of a people that we can find the solution. Eliminating these institutions all of a sudden, there is a risk of causing serious damage to the internal balance of these peoples. Instead we should really focus on the police and the judiciary and the workings of a corrupt system. “
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Graft Convict Serves Just One Day in Office in Eastern Papua Province
Jayapura, 7 March (AKI/Jakarta Post) — A politician convicted of corruption was installed on Monday as a district chief in Indonesia’s eastern Papua province, only to be suspended from his post pending confirmation of his legal status.
Indonesia’s interior minister Gamawan Fauzi said in Jakarta that he had signed the suspension letter for Yusak Yaluwo, who had just been installed as Boven Digul regent for his second term by Papua governor Barnabas Suebu.
Barnabas installed Yusak and Yesaya Merasi as regent and deputy regent in a Papua council special plenary session that took place at the interior ministry in Jakarta. Papua is Indonesia’s largest province.
Last November, the Corruption Court in Jakarta had sentenced Yusak to four-and-a-half years in prison for corruption related to the procurement of a tanker vessel and the Boven Digoel regional budget in 2002 and 2005.
Yusak was also ordered to pay 200 million Indonesian rupiahs (23,000 dollars) in fines or spend another six years in prison, and ordered to pay 45.7 billion Indonesian rupees in compensation. If he cannot pay the compensation, he will be ordered to spend another two years in jail.
Yusak is currently detained at Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta, Indonesian national news agency Antara reported.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nepal: Kathmandu: Catholics and Activists for Women Rights and a Secular State
The Nepalese Church has been promoting prayer and social activities also open to non-Christians. Women’s movement call for an end to trafficking in women, sold as “slaves” in India and China. Hindu woman: the work of Catholics favours the advancement of women.
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — Guaranteeing the rights of women and promoting a secular vision of the country in the new national constitution. These are the demands of Nepalese Catholics and human rights activists this March 8th on the occasion of International Women’s Day. During a prayer meeting in the cathedral of Kathmandu, a women’s movement also called for an end of “trafficking in Nepalese women who are sold as slaves” in India and China.
Catholic women in Nepal have launched a series of events to celebrate International Women’s Day. The first, on March 5, at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Kathmandu at the initiative of the group Deepshrinkhala, “Chain of Life” in the local language. The women, Christian and non, prayed for global peace and the rights of the women around the world. Flora Rai, a 60 year old Catholic, stated during the religious ceremony that “women are silent victims of all the world’s problems,” including “conflicts, politics or any other type of instability in a nation”. Nepal, the activist continues, should not target women “by depriving them of their rights under the new Constitution,” because “neither the parties nor the country” will be able to achieve their aims “without the presence of women.”
Among the many violations they face, many Nepalese women end up being sold as “slaves” in the markets of China and India. “The state — said women’s activist Rupa Rai, — should not abuse their vulnerability.” Tara Nepali, a 40-year old of Hindu faith, participates regularly at functions sponsored by Catholics and thanks to her relationship with the Church has become aware of universal rights. “Until two years ago — she tells AsiaNews — I was totally unaware of the rights of women.” Now, she says, after meeting with Catholic and Christian activists “ I can talk to women about their rights and share in their efforts to protect them.” Abused in the past, Tara says, “Now nobody can torture me.”
Fr. Robin Rai, assistant pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption, emphasizes that women should “give more value to their life” and work of the Catholic Church moves to help them in this direction.” Many of them”, the priest says, “knew nothing of their rights,” but now “have the means to fight” so that they are respected.
The Catholic Church in Nepal, together with other organizations such as Caritas, has promoted a series of activities aimed at women. The work of Christians volunteers embraces over 34 districts in remote areas of the country, with development programs that also target education for young girls’.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Women’s Rights in Afghanistan Lose Steam
The fall of the Taliban may have brought change for many women in major urban areas, but today women are running into cultural barriers that go beyond Taliban influence.
Some 10 years after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, women may be losing steam in the battle for gender equality.
“There has been a lot of effort to damage the situation of women in the law of Afghanistan” in the past five years, says Naheed Farid, a member of parliament from Herat Province. “I cannot say that there is no progress. As a woman I did not have the right to go out shopping [before 2001], but now I am a member of the parliament.” However, she adds that more needs to be done in order to protect the rights of women.
Throughout Afghanistan, women like Mrs. Farid increasingly appear to be encountering a number of hurdles. The fall of the Taliban may have brought a wave of change for many women in major urban areas, but today women are running into cultural barriers that go beyond the Taliban’s influence.
Lack of enthusiasm for girls’ education, limited impact of development funding, regulation at women’s shelters, and government malfeasance all seem to point to reluctance among some Afghanis to let go of traditional views of women.
Last week, Oxfam released a report indicating that there have been significant strides in girls’ education — the number of girls in school has climbed from 5,000 under the Taliban to 2.4 million today. But experts say those numbers present an incomplete picture.
“There was loads of energy going on and now that energy really isn’t there. There isn’t that drive to get girls in school and keep them in school,” says Louise Hancock, a spokesperson for Oxfam in Afghanistan.
Of the 2.4 million girls currently in school, a disproportionate number of them — 1.9 million — are in primary school, signaling a significant drop-off after the sixth grade. Additionally, that number only reflects enrollment, not attendance. In 2009, 22 percent of female students were absent for the entire year or listed as permanently absent according to the same report.
What’s happening?
“[The Afghan government and international donors] are still putting money into education, it’s just that it’s not being targeted in the right way for girls,” Ms. Hancock says.
Another theory is that during nine years of war, Afghan politicians have simply lost the determination required to push through serious changes to enhance women’s rights.
“There was more enthusiasm and more hope [for women after the fall of the Taliban], but now it’s reduced a little bit because of the lack of political will. I think the women who are active, they don’t want to give up, they want to continue,” says Sima Samar, chairperson for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
But one of the biggest challenges is that some of the worst women’s rights abuses comes not from the Taliban, but from rural Afghan society, which is steeped in traditional views of how woman should behave.
A prime example is Bibi Aisha. Ms. Aisha was married when she was 14 to someone she says didn’t want to marry and who abused her. After about four years of marriage and abuse she ran away. When she was found by her family, they cut off her nose and ears as punishment — considered a rather barbaric form of punishment by most Afghan standards. It made international headlines and the Taliban were immediately suspected, but, in fact, the Taliban has condemned the incident and says it is conducting an investigation to determine who is to blame.
Incidents of such violence against women have also occurred under those in the Afghan government chosen to protect women.
Last spring, Marhaba Karimi, the former women’s affairs director in Kunar Province, and her husband made major headlines throughout the country when they were convicted of brutally torturing and killing their daughter-in-law. Ms. Karimi was the head of women’s affairs for the US-supported Afghan government in Kunar, set up to protect women’s rights, yet she got caught up in a rural murder scandal that most Afghans would describe as backward. While such incidents remain rare, the trial was a black mark on women from rural areas working on behalf of other women in the government.
“It’s difficult to expect that everyone in this country will change their attitude in just 10 years. We will probably need at least 50 years,” says Sayeda Mojgan Mostafavi, technical and policy deputy at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
More traditional women’s shelters?
Controversy stirred last month when the Ministry of Women’s Affairs announced its plans to begin regulating shelters for women who’ve had to flee their homes, mainly out of fear of abuse. Traditionally Afghans keep women in their homes and don’t let them out, unless they have a male escort.
The ministry officials say that they will only intervene to impose health and safety regulations and stop wasteful mismanagement of the shelters.
For women’s groups in Afghanistan though, the move raises a red flag about the government’s future intentions.
Initially there were concerns that the ministry had fallen under the sway of conservatives who wanted to see traditional Afghan cultural practices implemented. Critics of the government plan to regulate shelters say they worry that a more traditional hand on the shelters could actually endanger the safety of some women.
“We feel that if today the government would like to control the shelters, then tomorrow they will start controlling the civil-society led NGOs, especially the women’s organizations,” says Huria Samira Hamidi, country director for the Afghan Women’s Network.
Millions invested, but limited gains
Additionally, a number of women’s right groups have grown frustrated with the seemingly limited returns on the amount of money invested in women’s issues since 2001. Like much development work in Afghanistan, it remains difficult to quantify what the millions of dollars invested in advancing the rights of women has bought.
“Some donors do not understand about our Afghan culture, about our Islamic culture. So much money is coming to Afghanistan in the name of women’s rights and human rights, but women’s lives or human rights never change in Afghanistan,” says Fatana Ishaq Gailani, founder and chairwoman of the Afghanistan Women Council.
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NPR executive calls tea party ‘seriously racist,’ most Americans ‘uneducated’
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0308/NPR-executive-calls-tea-party-seriously-racist-most-Americans-uneducated
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A video sting targeting former NPR fund-raising executive Ron Schiller could create political and public-relations problems for the news organization — just as it steels itself for a battle with congressional Republicans over federal funding.
In comments made to a hidden camera, Mr. Schiller called the tea party movement that propelled Republicans to huge congressional gains in the midterm elections “scary” and “seriously, seriously racist.” In addition, he complained that America did not have enough “educated, so-called elite” citizens, and that the Republican Party was anti-intellectual. Perhaps most damaging, however, was Schiller’s statement that NPR would do better without federal funding.
The video is the work of James O’Keefe, the sting artist who took down ACORN in 2009, and it marks the second time in as many months that conservative provocateurs have targeted an organization they see as liberal in a bid to persuade Congress to defund it. In February, O’Keefe protegée Lila Rose released videos that suggested Planned Parenthood employees were willing to collude with sex workers to procure abortions for under-age girls.
An attempt to defund NPR in 1995 failed as listeners bombarded conservative congressmen with phone calls and letters. But Schiller’s unguarded comments indicate that NPR itself has inwardly debated whether or not defunding could actually ultimately help the 41-year-old journalism organization’s mission.
“My inclination is that cutting off federal funding to NPR might be a good thing, since this kind of political interference is not healthy for the media in general,” says Tom Edsall, a professor at Columbia Journalism School.
But he also suggests that government funding might be forcing NPR to be more even-handed than it would otherwise be. “For a place like NPR, being tied to the government may in the end help them to stay fairly objective,” he adds.
For its part, NPR has renounced the comments of Schiller, who left NPR on Monday for unrelated reasons, according to officials. “We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for,” NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in a statement.
What is the video about?
The video shows Schiller and another NPR fund-raising executive having lunch with two purported members of a fake Muslim organization called the Muslim Education Action Center, which is falsely offering a $5 million gift to NPR. The group also set up a fake website that explicitly stated that it supported the spread of sharia law.
The two actors clearly goad Schiller into making observations, most of which are made after Schiller explicitly takes off his “NPR hat” to give his personal opinion. For example, Schiller says there aren’t enough “educated, so-called elite” Americans, adding that public opinion is driven by “this very large uneducated part of the population.”
Of tea partyers, he adds: “I mean, basically they … believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”
The impact could be serious, because the comments play right into the hands of those who believe that NPR is a “socialist adventure,” says Stephen Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“I don’t think any of this helps the survival, let alone the quality existence, of public broadcasting in the United States,” says Mr. Ward. “You can argue that these comments … don’t reflect the grander importance of public broadcasting, but in a world of agenda-setting journalism, these are perfect examples for people who dislike or oppose public broadcasting to use for political purposes.”
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” agreed Maxie Jackson, president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
NPR’s battles
On one hand, Schiller said he’s “very proud” of NPR’s handling of the Juan Williams debacle, in which the veteran commentator was fired in October after acknowledging that he felt fearful when flying with people in Muslim dress. NPR President Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron Schiller) has said recently that the network botched the Williams firing.
At the same time, NPR is fighting an effort to defund $90 million of Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, which are allotted to independent affiliate stations which then pay NPR for its broadcasting. Ms. Schiller has said she wants federal funding to continue, primarily so that public radio stations in far-flung parts of the US can survive.
But Mr. Schiller said: “Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding. The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark.”
Conservatives have latched on to this comment. “At a time when the country is upside down by more than a trillion dollars, can we really afford to provide huge subsidies to entities that openly state that they don’t need the money?” said Mark Meckler, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, in USA Today.
From a media perspective, however, some experts worry that Mr. O’Keefe’s partisan “gotcha” tactics could be a slippery slope for both sides of the political spectrum. “If [these kinds of sting videos] become the methodology of journalism in general, then we’re going to sink the reputation of journalists and bury it forever in a grave,” says Ward.
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
China: Higher Oil Prices to Push Beijing Towards Greater Social Justice
For well-known economist Andy Xie, protests in North Africa and higher oil prices will negatively impact an already embattled Chinese economy. If Beijing wants to avoid unrest, it must protect the interests of the more vulnerable groups rather than those of big public sector corporations.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Protests in North Africa and rising oil prices are creating major headaches for energy-hungry China. The country needs a lot of energy to fuel its economic development and meet the needs of its 1.3 billion people. At present, it can do so with coal-powered plants, which are however expensive, inefficient and highly polluting. Even though the mainland produces half of the world coal output, that is not enough. In fact, China has to import coal, creating a major logistical problem. Experts believe that coal supplies (domestic and imported) will not keep up with demand.
Oil is the first alternative. China’s net import of crude and oil products may reach six million barrels per day this year, nearly quadrupling in a decade. If the current trend continues, China’s net imports will reach 16 million barrels per day by 2020, far higher than the US’ 13 million.
The Middle East accounts for 37 per cent of the world’s oil production, of which two-thirds is exported, and 62 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves. However, Unrest in North Africa and other Middle Eastern countries has pushed prices up. On Asian markets, a barrel of oil is now selling at US$ 106, with Brent at US$ 117, with the upward trend bound to continue. Uncertainty now prevails over supplies and cost.
Rising prices come at a time when the world economy is already stagnating with banks lowering the cost of borrowing to boost investments.
Andy Xie, a well-known economist, told the South China Morning Post, that the mainland is likely to experience stagflation, with high inflation and low growth. High energy prices are likely to reduce world consumption whilst increasing the cost of Chinese goods, further cutting exports.
Despite Beijing’s push for higher domestic consumption, China’s economy is still heavily dependent on exports and foreign investments.
With the government hard-pressed trying to contain inflation, higher energy prices can only aggravate the situation, increasing the likelihood of social disorder.
China has tens of millions of graduates but its labour market is unable to absorb them. Wage rises are also lower than inflation, undermining people’s purchasing power. On average, a property now costs 20 times annual income in the big cities.
Beijing can act quickly and decisively to pre-empt social unrest and eliminate injustices and social inequalities with three moves.
First, it can cut the top corporate and personal income tax rate to 25 per cent. A high tax rate usually redistributes income from the rich to the poor, but not in China, because the wealthy can set up companies and spend money for personal use out of company funds. A high tax rate is instead a heavy burden for white-collar workers, preventing them from joining the ranks of the middle class. With a high tax rate, China towards is moving to a two-tiered society, with a small class of super-rich and a vast underclass.
Second, the authorities can increase interest rates quickly to protect savings. Two hundred million migrant workers have worked very hard for very little over the past decade. They have saved money for their children’s education. Now they see their hard-earned yuan at risk as the government looks on indifferent.
Third, property should not be a speculative asset. Local authorities and public sector firms have come to rely on revenue from the property sector, acting like property agents fuelling speculation. The government should introduce drastic measures, like a 90 per cent capital gains tax on property transactions. This should remove speculators and cool prices.
“Property speculation is perhaps the biggest threat to China’s stability,” Xie writes. “The central government should introduce a policy to remove this risk. [. . .] For too long, China’s policies have paid too much attention to special interest groups and too little to the plight of working men and women. If this doesn’t change, China’s stability will be put at risk. Whatever policy option is considered, top officials need to ask first whether it takes from the people, or gives to the people.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
SW China Mega-City Building Huge Security System
The mega-city of Chongqing in southwest China plans to build a $2.6 billion security system that will be one of the world’s largest with 500,000 surveillance cameras, state media have said.
Chongqing police chief Wang Zhijun said the system would be the world’s largest new security network since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the Global Times reported.
The system would dwarf a network of 40,000 security cameras installed in the capital of China’s far-western Xinjiang region last year, following deadly July 2009 clashes between Muslim Uighurs and members of the majority Han group.
Chongqing’s more than 500,000 cameras, which are due to be installed by 2012, will mainly be used for crime prevention, emergency controls and rescue operations, a police spokesman told the Global Times.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jealous Rapist Gets 5-Year Jail Term in SA
A jealous Indian man who tied up and raped a young woman to ruin her for any other man has been jailed for at least five years.
Ajay Pal Singh Thiara, 26, was jailed for six years and eight months in the District Court of South Australia on Tuesday and will be deported when he finishes his sentence.
Judge David Smith gave him a five year non-parole period because Thiara would face retribution in India.
“I take into account that there may be more shame and retribution in store for you on your return home to India at the end of your sentence but that is of small solace in comparison to what you have done,” he said.
Thiara raped the woman in December 2009 because he was angry and jealous when she went off to meet a suitor her family had arranged for her to marry, Judge Smith said.
He got drunk then proclaimed his love for her, abused her, tied her up, indecently assaulted and raped her.
She was a virgin who did not immediately report him to police because she felt ashamed and defiled.
But that changed after he assaulted her again in February 2010, stripping her naked and filming it on his mobile phone.
The judge said Thiara’s excuse was that he was in love and did not want to lose the woman, a Sikh who would now find it very difficult to find a husband.
“Your intention, you said, was to ruin her so that no other man would want her,” the judge said.
The rape was violent and protracted, shameful and degrading, he said.
“You deliberately defiled this young woman out of abject selfishness and jealousy.
“You have shamed her, her family, yourself and your family.
“There is apparently a risk of some kind of form of retribution in India and in particular an honour killing.”
Thiara came to Australia with his wife and worked as a taxi driver while studying.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Hostage Oversupply in Somalia? Pirates Negotiate Better Deals to Free Up Space
Somali pirates may have reached their limit, at least for now. Security agencies have suggested that Somali pirates are willing to negotiate lower ransoms to release ships they have seized — because they are running out of room. Somali pirates have made large swathes of the Indian Ocean a no-go area, but lately they’ve become victims of their own success. Security agencies report that pirate groups are more willing to negotiate the release of captured vessels lately — in large part, experts believe, because their ports at Haradheere, Eyl and Hobyo are choked up with ships.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Boats Carrying 1,700 Migrants Land on Italian Islands
Rome, 8 March (AKI) — Around 1,700 Tunisians over the last days have arrived by boat to the tiny southern Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa causing overcrowding in a detention centre designed to hold unauthorised immigrants.
To ease the conditions at the centre on Lampedusa and make room for fresh arrivals, 264 migrants on Monday were transferred to other centres in Italy. Around 1,200 people are packed into the centre designed to hold 800.
Many of the more than 9,000 migrants who’ve reached Italy since January reportedly set sail from the Tunisian port of Zarzis, where truckloads and cars full of migrants are reported to be arriving. The migrants are understood to be paying 1,400 euros each for their 10-12 hour passage to a ‘new life’ in Europe.
Italy has warned of a bible-like exodus of migrants arriving to European shores from North Africa where popular uprisings toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and is verging on civil war in Libya.
The migrant influx has placed a strain on Lampedusa, where the population is 6,000 people, and Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni on Sunday assured the island’s mayor Bernardino De Rubeis that the government was gradually emptying the detention centre.
Italy has asked the European Union for 100 million euros to help it manage the situation.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Maroni: Traffickers Are Back in Tunisia
(AGI) Milan — “What worries me most is the news” that traffickers that operated in Libya are back in the Southern ports of Tunisia. That’s where “the criminal organizations that used to operate in Libya embarking unauthorized migrants” have settled. This is the statement made by Roberto Maroni, according to who people traffickers “are now relocating there”.
We have reports of thousands and thousands youths — explained the Interior Minister, while talking to journalists on the margin of the Federal Council of the Lega Nord in Via Bellerio — heading towards the ports of Zarzis and Djerba, in Southern Tunisia”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Half of Teenagers Think Homosexuality is Abnormal
Acceptance of homosexuality by Dutch teenagers has improved slightly. a survey of 10,000 teenagers living in the north of Noord-Holland province shows.
The survey, carried out by the local health service among second and fourth year high school pupils in 2009, found 50% thought homosexuality was normal, 37% thought it a bit abnormal, 6% very abnormal and 6% thought it completely wrong.
In 2005, 56% of teenagers polled thought homosexuality was abnormal to some degree.
In the most recent survey, some 39% of girls said being gay was not normal, compared with 61% of boys.
Age and type of schooling did not affect the results.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
The South Polar Region of a Frigid Saturn Moon Churns Out Far More Heat Than Yellowstone National Park, Earth’s Most Famous Geologic Hotspot, A New Study Finds.
Using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, researchers have determined that the far southern reaches of the Saturn moon Enceladus produce about 15.8 gigawatts of heat-generated power. That’s about 2.6 times the power output of all the hot springs in and around Yellowstone — and 10 times more than scientists had predicted, researchers said.
The new find is intriguing to scientists since it adds more evidence for the likelihood of a liquid-water ocean under Enceladus’ icy shell. But it’s puzzling as well — researchers aren’t sure where all that heat is coming from.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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