Cokie Roberts on Downgrade: ‘The Problem That We Have Here is the Constitution’
ABC’s Cokie Roberts said something on national television Sunday that made her colleague George Will shake his head on camera.
During a “This Week” discussion about the recent credit rating downgrade by Standard and Poor’s Roberts said, ‘The problem that we have here is the Constitution of the United States of America which actually does require people to come together from different perspectives”…
Partial Transcript:
COKIE ROBERTS: This group of people in New York [Standard and Poor’s] is actually talking about more government rather than less government, Congressman. In fact, the reason they like France and Great Britain is because they’re parliamentary systems where the majority gets what it wants no matter what.
And the problem that we have here is the Constitution of the United States of America which actually does require people to come together from different perspectives whether it’s divided government or not. We have divided branches of government under any circumstance.
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Democrats Seek to Pin Credit Downgrade on Tea Party
Partisan gridlock is real culprit, S&P says
While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party.
“I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, used the exact same phrase in dubbing the credit rating drop the “tea party downgrade,” as Democrats tried to position themselves as reasonable, pragmatic leaders and conservative Republicans as irresponsible ideologues who caused the downgrade by refusing to accept any new taxes.
That’s exactly the kind of blame game that led Standard & Poor’s, one of three key credit-ratings agencies, to strip the U.S. federal government of its AAA status Friday night and reducing it to AA+ for the first time in the nation’s history.
“Congress and the administration are jointly responsible for the conduct of fiscal policy. So, this is not really about either political party,” David Beers, the head of S&P’s government debt-rating unit, said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Even with the agreement of Congress and the administration this past week … the underlying debt burden of the U.S. government is rising and will continue to do so most likely over the next decade,” Mr. Beers said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, defended the tea party and said that without the movement, trillions of dollars in spending cuts wouldn’t be possible.
“Thank God they’re here,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“This is the first time we’ve ever raised the debt ceiling where we tried to actually reduce spending. That’s a good thing, but we’re woefully short,” he said. “The tea party hasn’t destroyed Washington. Washington was destroyed before the tea party got here. The hope is that the tea party and middle-of-the-road people can find common ground to turn this country around before we become Greece.”
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Doubts Over Euro Stability: Precipitous Market Declines Shake European Leaders
In recent days, the euro crisis appeared to be under control again, but market declines this week have shaken European leaders. Speculators are mercilessly testing the weaknesses of the euro rescue package, and European Commission President Barroso is calling for the bailout fund to be increased.
Panic ruled on the international stock markets on Friday. The German DAX index of blue-chip companies is on the decline, and on Wall Street and in the Asian markets, traders are shedding stocks in large numbers. One market strategist called it a “bloodbath.” And investors are also looking at euro-zone problem states. Yields on Spanish and Italian 10-year government bonds have risen in recent days to their highest levels since the introduction of the common currency.
Uncertainties on markets actually should have calmed this week. The United States prevented a federal default on its debt at the last minute, and in Europe the results of a special summit on the euro at the end of July were celebrated as a success. But now, of all times, the mistrust of investors has penetrated the markets at full force. They fear that economic growth will stall and that nations worldwide will fall further into debt spirals.
In Europe, the European Central Bank (ECB) and politicians are reacting with alarm. The ECB is again buying government bonds from crisis-plagued countries, including Ireland and Portugal. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso also sent a letter to European heads of state and government in which he raised the idea of expanding the euro rescue fund, so that, in the worst case scenario, the large economies of Italy and Spain could be rescued. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy planned to call each other by phone on Friday. In addition, Sarkozy was slated to confer with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero by phone.
Preventing Panic
The political leaders and the ECB are facing a dilemma: On the one hand they have to act, but on the other they don’t want to further spread panic. Merkel, for example, wants to do what she so often has done during the euro crisis — that is, to take a wait-and-see approach. Naturally, the German government is also concerned. But the government has calculated that statements from Merkel while she is on vacation that aren’t well-thought-out would only serve to heighten the nervousness on the markets. That’s why Merkel was reportedly stunned when Barroso sent his letter two weeks after the recent European Union summit, and was especially shocked at how fast the letter became public.
The Chancellery and Federal Finance Ministry directly rejected Barroso’s move. “Such a debate is coming at the wrong time,” Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler said. Rainer Brüderle, like Rösler a member of Merkel’s coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), suggested that Barroso was indirectly responsible for the turbulence in the markets.
But did Barroso’s letter really add to investors’ fears that a rescue package would also be necessary for Italy and Spain? Or did he just tap into the already existing worries on the markets?
The ECB Dilemma
The ECB is also faced with a dilemma. In order to shore up euro-zone countries, the bank is once again buying government bonds — a highly controversial practice that endangers the independence of the currency guardian. But it is precisely the lengthy political decision-making process which forces the ECB into the position of putting out fires.
The market ignores a simple political truth: democracies need time to make decisions. The buying of bonds is the best example. At the EU summit, the heads of state and government already decided that in the future the temporary euro rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), should purchase the bonds. But because the parliaments in several euro zone countries still have to approve the matter, the ECB will first be able to unload the unpleasant task a few months down the road.
Only a short time ago, Norbert Lammert, president of the German federal parliament, saw no reason to cut short the summer break on account of the euro crisis. But after the most recent flare-ups, Greek President Georgios Papandreou isn’t quite so relaxed. Member state parliaments should quickly approve the aid, he wrote in a letter to European Commission President Barroso.
But even if EU politicians were to accelerate the approval of the new bailout package, pressure on Italy and Spain would persist because the implementation of reforms will take at least as long as the passing of the bailout itself. Italy urgently needs to improve its competitiveness, while Spain must lower its dismal unemployment rate. These are goals that can’t be achieved in a few days or months — particularly when Spain’s leader is on the verge of being voted out of office and Italy has shown little motivation to manage its crisis.
Word of a surprising drop in Italian industrial production has also compounded uncertainty over whether the country’s planned second-quarter economic growth of a meagher 0.3 percent is even still realistic. Meanwhile, the increasing risk premiums on Italian bond issues expose another bitter truth: The markets are always searching for an open sore…
| — Hat tip: The Midget | [Return to headlines] |
France and Italy Stand by to Bail Out Biggest Banks as Euro Crisis Worsens
Fears are growing this weekend that two of Europe’s largest banks may require a bailout, having been hugely damaged by the worsening crisis across the eurozone.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is having to confront the possibility that the country’s second-biggest bank, Societe Generale -commonly known as SocGen — is on the brink of disaster after huge losses over loans made to Greece.
The chilling possibility of the largest bank in Italy, UniCredit Banca, suffering a similar collapse if a bailout is not implemented comes as Silvio Berlusconi already faces an increasingly dangerous national economic situation.
In Britain, a senior Government source described the position of the two banks as ‘perilous’, although an official Treasury spokesman declined to comment. Should either bank collapse, British customers with deposits of up to about £85,000 would be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
As ministers of the G7 nations — Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Canada — prepare to meet to discuss the mounting euro crisis, the French and Italian governments are believed to be standing ready to rescue the banking giants.
But it is thought the mechanisms they have in place to rescue financial institutions are less developed than those in Britain, which was far worse affected by the credit crunch in 2008 and as a result put in place fuller contingency plans.
The merest hint a major bank might fall is likely to reignite panic tomorrow in the stock market, which is already feared to react badly to the credit downgrade of the U.S. by rating agency Standard & Poor’s.
Last night Chancellor George Osborne, whose Treasury officials have ‘war-gamed’ various scenarios ahead of the markets opening, was due to discuss the crisis with Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
SocGen reported a loss of £350million on Greek debt last week. It has a total of £2.2billion of Greek debt and also owns 88 per cent of the Greek bank Geniki, whose value has collapsed in recent months.
For Italy, damage to UniCredit, in which Barclays has a two per cent share, would be a bitter blow. Its strategy of caution has led it to invest heavily in Italian government bonds which were until recently seen as safe, but as these have come under pressure the bank’s shares have plummeted.
Experts fear that if any single bank is seen to be in trouble, all lending could freeze up in the resultant climate of fear, with devastating consequences. It was a similar situation which led to the run on Northern Rock in 2007 that required a Government bailout. The European Central Bank has already reported banks unwilling to trust each other with overnight funds.
David Cameron last night broke off from his holiday in Tuscany to talk to President Sarkozy about the crisis in the markets.
News of the planned talks emerged as Business Secretary Vince Cable appeared to back calls from China for the dollar to be eventually replaced as the main global reserve currency by a new international currency unit to be based around the IMF.
He said: ‘It would be a sensible way for the world to move but it’s not something to do overnight.’
But Mr Cable added: ‘In the short run, the U.S. dollar is the key international currency and although, frankly, the American legislators made a terrible mess of things a few weeks ago, they have now got back on track. They have undertaken to manage their debt in a prudent way.’
Separately, Baroness Shriti Vadera, once a key aide to Gordon Brown, warned the current crisis could be worse than that of 2008. The former Labour Minister said: ‘The reason it’s potentially worse is governments [then] stepped in all over the world and saved the banking system Now who’s going to step in to save governments?’…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Civil Servants to Begin Working 40-Hour Week
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, AUGUST 5 — Greek civil servants are to work longer hours after Public Administration Minister Dimitris Reppas approved a government decision to extend from 37.5 to 40 the number of hours in the working week of public employees, ad local media report. Sources said that the bureaucrats have until Tuesday to decide their schedules. They are being offered the option of working from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 7.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., 8.30 to 4.30 p.m. and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The civil servants will be required to serve the public for six of these eight hours, apart from tax offices, where citizens’ access will continue to be restricted to 5.5 hours. The government, which is in the process of reducing the size of the public sector and will only be hiring one person for every 10 that leave the service, has said that the effect of extending civil servants’ hours will be like hiring 45,000 new employees.
A law passed in May 1981 established the 37.5-hour working week for public servants.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Taxi Drivers Suspend Strike After 19 Days
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, AUGUST 5 — Taxi owners and drivers have voted to end their strike 19 days after they began their protest against the government’s plans to completely deregulate their sector. Following several hours of talks on Friday, unionists took a majority decision to suspend their strike until September 5. Of those who voted, 16 were in favor of ending the action and six against. On Thursday, they had obtained guarantees from regional governors that no more new taxi licenses would be issued until the government submits its draft law towards the end of the month. The cabbies have made it clear that they may call new strikes if they object to the content of the government’s bill. Transport Minister Yiannis Ragousis favors total liberalization of their profession but has yet to give details of his plans. The drivers want the number of licenses to be limited depending on the population of each city.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
S&P Executive Says it Could Take Over a Decade to Restore US Credit Rating
John Chambers, the chairman of Standard & Poor’s sovereign debt ratings, on Sunday estimated that it could take between 9 and 18 years for the nation to regain its AAA credit rating.
Chambers said the credit agency could further downgrade the national rating depending on whether President Obama and congressional leaders can agree on reducing the deficit.
“We’ve had five governments that lost their AAA that got it back. The amount of time that it took for those five range from 9 years to 18 years, so it takes a while,” Chambers said on ABC’s “This Week”.
The ratings agency executive warned that Democrats and Republicans would have to compromise on reducing the nation’s $1.5 trillion annual deficit to win an upgrade from Standard & Poor’s.
“Our concerns are centered on the political side and on the fiscal side. So it would take a stabilization of the debt as a share of the economy and eventual decline. And it would take, I think, more ability to reach consensus in Washington than what we’re observing now,” Chambers said.
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Gas Prices Up Despite Use of Reserves
More than a month after the Obama administration said it would tap the country’s emergency oil reserve to try to combat supply disruptions in the Middle East, gas prices at the pump actually have risen 10 cents.
President Obama had hoped the move, coming at the onset of the summer driving season, would temper the loss of supplies due to the ongoing civil war in Libya. Working with international allies, the U.S. said on June 23 that it would release 30 million barrels of oil over 30 days, while other countries with strategic reserves agreed to release another 30 million, in staggered sales during July.
And prices at the pump did dip, at first, from a nationwide average of $3.61 down to $3.55, according to AAA. But by last week, they had rebounded and the price per gallon stood a dime higher than when the administration first made its decision.
“Although it helped initially to pull down prices it was probably too little,” AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John Townsend said, pointing out that the nation consumes as much as 20 million barrels of oil a day. “This is just a drop in the bucket.”
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Wolf: Liberals’ Unmaking of Barack Obama
President enters predictable free-fall from godlike to Carteresque
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Is President Obama really a different man today than he was before he entered the Oval Office? The same Illinois legislator who voted “present” 129 times is now the debt-crisis-AWOL president who refused to present a specific plan of his own. The same presidential candidate who wanted to “spread the wealth” has unleashed redistributionist, collectivist policies on everything from health care and energy supply to runaway Keynesian spending and ever-increasing taxes. Should we be surprised?
The president may still win re-election in 2012, of course, but in recent weeks, his approval rating has crumbled, particularly among liberals, to an all-time low of 40 percent in a recent Gallup poll. Another poll shows that even among liberal Democrats, strong support for Mr. Obama’s record on jobs has plummeted 22 points, to a paltry 31 percent. The hope and change of 2008 have given way to the joblessness and foreclosures of Obamanomics.
The only thing worse than the abject failure of a liberal president, at least in the eyes of the liberal, is the undeniable failure of liberalism itself. To claim Mr. Obama has been a good president no longer even remotely passes the laugh test. Consider the results thus far of the Obama presidency:
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What’s worse, and was as easily predictable, is the systematic dishonesty Team Obama unleashed to persuade Americans to tolerate its big-government, collectivist agenda. America is, after all, a center-right nation with nearly 3-to-1 self-described conservatives compared to liberals. How else besides trickery could Mr. Obama further an agenda so unpopular with voters? Witness the dishonesty:
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Ayatollah of the RAF: Academic ‘University’ Head is Muslim Convert Who Claims Nazi Gas Chambers Were British Propaganda and Criticises Libya Air Strikes
Dr Joel Hayward is dean of the college at Cranwell, the RAF’s equivalent of Sandhurst, and has taught many of the pilots spearheading the military operation against Colonel Gaddafi.
But, to the dismay of defence chiefs, he has cast doubt on the widely held belief that the Nato actions averted the mass killing of civilians in Benghazi. He also warned against the RAF becoming ‘the air corps of a rebel army’.
Dr Hayward has previously expressed remorse after appearing to claim that far fewer Jews were killed by the Nazis than generally thought and that the gas chambers of the Holocaust were British propaganda.
In another article recently he likened Churchill to Mohammed.
Dr Hayward wrote: ‘When western aircrafts began to destroy tanks and a downpour of missiles wrecked Libya’s air force and air defence system, various leaders congratulated themselves for preventing an “atrocity” or “slaughter” — evocative words which conjured up images of a Srebrenica-style massacre [the 1995 killing of Bosnian Muslims].
‘Yet we do not know that his army would have “slaughtered” civilians in a Srebrenica-style massacre.’
Dr Hayward also takes issue with the UN Security Council resolution authorising ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians from the dictator’s forces.
Describing the resolution as ‘elastic’, he says: ‘Strangely, that resolution condemned human rights abuses and torture to which the world (and the UN) had turned a blind eye for decades.’
His views and behaviour have caused disquiet among senior officers at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, where he is the most senior academic and taught Prince William.
In a letter to The Mail on Sunday entitled The Air Force Ayatollah, one senior officer expressed concern that Dr Hayward was focusing more on ‘Islamist activities that are nothing to do with the RAF’.
He also accused him of giving Muslim cadets preferential treatment and making other students take a ‘softly, softly line when writing about Muslim terrorists/Islamist extremists’.
Another officer claimed cadets and lecturers ‘are in fear’ of expressing anything that might be construed as anti-Muslim sentiment. ‘Anyone who fails to follow the line that Islam is a peace-loving religion is hauled into his office for re-education,’ he said.
Last night Dr Hayward said he did not ‘recognise’ the allegations.
The Mail on Sunday understands that Dr Hayward’s views have embarrassed RAF chiefs, who feel that while he is entitled to his opinions, it was unwise for him to air them in a Muslim magazine.
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, former chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: ‘I am delighted that the dean is not restricted in what he can say, as he would be in Islamist societies.
‘However, I very much hope that his views don’t conflict with any of his professional duties when teaching Her Majesty’s officers.’
It is not the first time the New Zealand-born academic has attracted controversy. In 2000, he was accused of denying the Holocaust after the publication of a thesis he had written in 1993 questioning the number of Jews killed. He claimed the idea of gas chambers being used was propaganda invented by Britain, the US and Jewish lobbyists. He has since expressed remorse over the ‘mistakes I made as an inexperienced student’.
Dr Hayward has frequently challenged claims of Islamic aggressiveness. Most recently, he wrote on the subject for the Cordoba Foundation, described by David Cameron as a front for the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In that article, Dr Hayward likens the prophet Mohammed’s inspirational qualities to that of Sir Winston Churchill. He said Mohammed had to go to extra lengths — just as Churchill did in the Second World War — to exhort his people to believe in victory and fight for it.
Dr Hayward was appointed to RAF Cranwell in 2007, but was investigated the following year over complaints of ‘harassment and bullying’. It is not clear what became of the investigation. He is employed not by the RAF but by King’s College, London, which runs academic courses at Cranwell.
Dr Hayward defended his article on Nato airstrikes and said he wants a free Libya without Gaddafi. He added: ‘I write articles on a range of subjects for various scholarly journals and consistently the publications are anti-extremism, anti-terrorism and encouraging of a closer bond between the West and the Arab world.
‘In no sense am I anti-Western, I am proud to be Western, I strongly believe in the value system that we have in Britain. I believe in equality, democracy, freedom, plurality, human rights, women’s rights.’
An RAF spokesman said: ‘Dr Hayward writes for a number of publications. These activities are conducted in his own time and do not impinge on his duties in support of the RAF.’
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Caught Between Two Cultures: Risk of Suicide Greater for Turkish-German Women
The number of attempted suicides is five times as high among young Turkish-German women than their ethnic German counterparts. In a state of limbo between two cultures, they often succumb to despair. Sema, a 27-year-old woman who tried to commit suicide twice, is a case in point.
Her parents had just had another one of their arguments, and that night she swallowed all the pills she could find — two entire bottles. She fell asleep quickly and was taken to the hospital, where doctors pumped out her stomach. She was 13.
Perhaps it was only an attempt that time. Perhaps she wasn’t really trying to kill herself, but was crying out for help instead. She doesn’t remember.
Sema (not her real name) is now 27. She is sitting in a Turkish café in Berlin’s Mitte district that she sometimes frequents.
Her father was 15 when he came to Germany from Turkey, and her mother is also Turkish. The parents moved from Hamburg to Berlin, where Sema grew up as a German child in a Turkish family.
She has thick kohl eyeliner under her big eyes, and she wears her dark hair tied together in a braid. She smokes a lot, and every time she coughs she smiles, as if to apologize.
When her parents moved to Berlin, her father opened a coffee shop and her mother washed clothes for other people. They worked hard to make a better life for themselves.
There were few Turkish children in the neighborhood at the time, and Sema went to kindergarten with German children. But when the children were served pork, her parents kept her home. She was alone a lot at the time, and she remained alone throughout school.
Sema’s father forbade her from playing with the other children in her class, saying that they were Turks and not Germans. Germany was their opportunity, not their new home. Sema cleaned the apartment and cooked for herself, eating eggs, French fries and beef sausages.
Her family believed that the more they worked, the faster they would succeed in this new country. But they didn’t.
Five Times as Likely to Commit Suicide
Berlin has about 170,000 residents of Turkish descent. For several months last summer, life-sized posters were displayed in subway stations and on advertising columns. They included a hotline telephone number and one sentence, written in both German and Turkish: “End your silence, not your life!”
Meryam Schouler-Ocak , the physician-in-chief at the psychiatric clinic of Berlin’s highly respected Charité hospital, is behind the poster campaign. Her office is in the St. Hedwig hospital, not far from the café where Sema is sitting.
Schouler-Ocak is of Turkish origin. She has been hearing young Turkish women’s stories for years. And ever since she saw the numbers corresponding to the stories, she has also been doing something about it.
Young German women of Turkish origin, she says, are five times as likely to attempt to commit suicide as non-immigrant women of the same age, and they are twice as likely to succeed.
During the poster campaign, Schouler-Ocak gathered all the information she could find. She found some information in the medical literature, but not much. At a hospital in Frankfurt, she learned that it was often young women of Turkish origin who tried to commit suicide.
But what were the reasons?
Schouler-Ocak and some of her colleagues put together a proposal for a project and secured the support of the Ministry of Education and Research. She staffed the hotline that was listed on the posters with two women who were also from immigrant backgrounds. She had interviews conducted and obtained additional data from emergency rooms in Berlin and Hamburg. Schouler-Ocak plans to analyze the data by the end of the year.
The reasons why young women of Turkish descent try to commit suicide extend beyond the much-reported issues of arranged marriages, honor killings and threats from the family. Sometimes the process starts out harmlessly, quietly and without any violence. Schouler-Ocak is now well aware of this.
The problem affects young women who were born in Germany and are in fact well integrated into German society, but still face pressures associated with their origins.
Desire to Be German
When Sema’s father opened his coffee shop, things didn’t run smoothly at first. The father came home late in the evening, and sometimes he was drunk and shouted at the family. Sitting on the sofa in their apartment, Sema and her mother could already hear the father shouting in the stairwell.
Sema crept into her parents’ bed at night and slept there. She would be alone the next day, cleaning and eating. Her father began coming home later and later, and he fought with her mother.
The mother wanted a divorce when Sema was eight, but the father threatened to take away their child. What good was a Turkish father without a family? He took Sema, flew back to Turkey with her and returned to the small village he had come from.
It was sunnier there than it is in Berlin, says Sema as she sits in the café and remembers those days. In Turkey, Sema, a child from the big city, had other children to play with and, for the first time, she finally had her father.
Sema thought that she was the reason her mother had become unhappy back in Berlin.
She would have liked to be German like her German girlfriends who she secretly met. Her friends could do as they pleased when they were on vacation. Sema told them that she too was going on vacation, a family vacation at the beach. Instead, she stayed at home and played by herself in front of her parents’ apartment building.
Her German girlfriends celebrated Easter and Christmas, but Sema didn’t. She lived in the German world like someone living in a bubble in which she could move around, but only with great care. She would alternate between the German and Turkish worlds, but she felt at home in neither one. Who was she?
One night, after her parents had had another one of their arguments, she swallowed all the pills she could find — two entire bottles. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors pumped out her stomach. She was 13 when she tried to kill herself for the first time…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Having a Satellite Dish is a ‘Human Right,’ Says EU
Banning satellite dishes on listed buildings and private homes could be a breach of human rights, an equality watchdog was warned.
Thousands of historic buildings and rental properties have made desperate attempts to prevent the dishes being installed on their brick work.
But an EU ruling suggests that banning the dishes will infringe the right to freedom of information, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said.
The quango issued guidance which details a recent case at the European Court of Human rights that could become a landmark case in satellite dish battles.
Two tenants in Sweeden took their government to court after they were evicted by their landlord in a dispute over a dish.
The couple installed one of the dishes on their rented property but the landlord ordered them to take it down. They refused and were later thrown out of the property.
But judges in Strasbourg ruled that the Swedish government had failed in its ‘positive obligation to protect’ the couple’s right to receive information. It found that satellite dishes come under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The guidance has angered ministers who fear that listed buildings and conservation areas could be blighted by the large metal dishes.
The country’s landlords could also be forced to allow dishes on their properties.
Housing Minister Grant Shapps told the Sunday Times that The Human Rights Act threatened to drive ‘a horse and cart’ through planning laws.
The guidance from the EHRC, which has been recruiting more staff despite a government pledge to cut bureacrats, came as a think-tank said that the quango should be scrapped.
The EHRC costs millions of pounds, contributes ‘very little to meaningful equality’, and inaccurately blames Britain for statistical differences between some groups, Civitas said.
But the EHRC said its job is to ‘start a debate on issues where we could see better outcomes for people suffering unfair disadvantages”.
Launching its report, a Civitas spokesman said: ‘Ultimately, abolishing the EHRC itself would not just be a cost-saving exercise.
‘It may well present an opportunity to channel resources into addressing the most pertinent issues holding back equality and fairness.’
The report, Small Corroding Words by Jon Gower Davis, described the commission’s goal of equality as impractical, saying that it wishes that ‘life outcomes be entirely divorced from health limitations, cultural practices and lifestyles’.
The EHRC ‘draws attention to the comparatively small differences in life expectancy between all British-born women (80.5) and women of Pakistani origin (77.3), but fails to draw attention to the much larger difference in outcomes between British women of Pakistani origin and women living in Pakistan (67.5)’, Civitas said.
It also accused the commission of refusing Britain a fair hearing, instead holding it responsible for factors over which it has no control.
The EHRC also has an illogical use of statistics and a ‘narrow approach to social policy’ which is neither reasonable nor useful, the think-tank said.
It also criticised the pay and expenses of the commission’s most senior staff, including chairman Trevor Phillips, and questioned its value for money.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: 300 People Block French High-Speed Train in Val Di Susa
(AGI) Rome — 300 ‘no-high-speed’ activitsts blocked a high-speed train at Condove, a railway station in Val di Susa.
Protesters gathered in the town hall square after 8 p.m. today.
Then they reached the station where they made it impossible for the high-speed Lyon-Turin train to go by. “This is our first response, “ the ‘No-high-Speed’ Committee spokesperson said, “ to the renewal of the contract awarded to Martina, the company in charge of completing the fences in Chiomonte. Once again it is to prove that the high-speed train is already linking Turin to Lyon and a new line is truly useless.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Military Islamo-Insanity in Britain: The RAF Ayatollah
An apparently rare breed of British military officer with the appropriate patriotic moral clarity and courage has leaked alarming (if seemingly “hiding in plain sight”) information to The Daily Mail [2] about the exploits of a convert to Islam, Dr Joel Hayward, dean of the college at Cranwell, the Royal Air Force’s RAF’s equivalent of Sandhurst (the latter being the British West Point equivalent).
Dr. Hayward (his Muslim name was not reported) earlier intimated that many fewer Jews were killed by the Nazis than rigorous, accepted research has established, while the gas chambers of the Holocaust were British propaganda—i.e., he repeats the standard, popular contemporary Muslim line of Holocaust denial. Hayward has also likened Winston Churchill to the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Now The Mail [3] is reporting, based upon a letter from a senior British officer entitled, “The Air Force Ayatollah,”…
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Åkesson Stands Firm on Immigration
Despite the recent outrages in Norway, Sweden Democrat (SD) leader Jimmie Åkesson refused to change his stance on the controversial party’s line on immigration during his summer speech on Saturday.
Addressing some 500 people in his hometown Sölvesborg in Blekinge, Southern Sweden Åkesson stressed that recent events would not make a difference to the party line, although he believes it should trigger a less combative tone when debating such issues, not just among his own party but all his opponents as well.
“We must be able to continue to criticise Sweden’s immigration policies without being blamed for mass murder,” said Åkesson.
However, he added, “What is important to emphasise is that we will always keep a good tone in the debate, that we have a civilised conversation and we hold back throwing the gravest expression at each other. This applies to me and all politicians.”
Flanked by security guards as he made his speech from the podium at a marina in the town Åkesson once again expressed his anger that the party had been held in some way responsible for the atrocities in Norway because of their outspoken opposition to multiculturalism and refused to condemn the Fremskrittspartiet (FRP) the right wing party which had such an influence on Anders Behring Breivik.
The Norwegian party has promised to tone down its rhetoric in the wake of the incidents, which Åkesson claims is a good example for parties like his own to follow.
He said, “If you mean just what it is now important that we stick together and that we as Democrats stand up for sensible political discourse, it is a great policy initiative.”
| — Hat tip: The Midget | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Missing Scouts ‘Could Have Fled’ To Denmark
One of the twelve young people from Sierra Leone who disappeared from the World Scout Jamboree in Rinkaby has returned, while police believe that the others could have fled to Denmark.
The alarm was raised yesterday when the West African youngsters could not be found, despite all their belongings being left at the site. The remainder could be on their way either to Copenhagen or back home, according to the police.
In press briefings yesterday the police said they were keeping an open mind on whether a crime had been committed or not, but now it seems they have accepted that the youngsters have left the country of their own will.
Jens Nygren, internal commander at Kristianstad police told DN.se. “Someone has talked to them and they said they would get back home to Sierra Leone.”
Meanwhile in a separate incident, fears are growing for a German family that has failed to return to their campsite in Kristianstad. The family of four left early last week on a canoe trip on Lake Immeln, but there has been no sign of them since. They were due to check out of the site on Wednesday but failed to show up, leaving their car and caravan untouched. Police are continuing their search.
| — Hat tip: The Midget | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Reinfeldt Rejects Terror Outrage Criticism
Fredrik Reinfeldt refused to respond to the criticism of his actions in the wake of the atrocities in Norway during his speech at the World Scout Jamboree on Saturday.
The Swedish prime minister has come under fire from some quarters for keeping too low a profile in the days following the tragic incidents in Oslo and Utøya, and more specifically for not attending the memorial service in the Norwegian Church in Stockholm.
However he refused to respond to questioning about it when he made a speech at the scout meeting near Kristianstad on Saturday. Instead, according to newswire TT, when pressed, he emphasised the frequent contact he had with his Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg.
“The important thing for me has been that through our direct contact with Jens Stoltenberg, he has repeatedly acknowledged that he has expressed great appreciation for what Sweden has done or said is willing to do. We wanted to show our presence and solidarity with our neighbours, but we also wanted to show that we are on hand,” Said Reinfeldt.
He continued, “He (Stoltenberg) expressed, for example, great appreciation because we participated in the minute of silence, and that official buildings in Sweden had flags at half mast for more than two days.”
Reinfeldt visited the jamboree at Rinkaby, outside Kristianstad together with the leaders of Denmark and Finland, Lars Lökke Rasmussen and Jyrki Katainen with a speech that underlined the Nordic countries’ solidarity and the importance of young people engaging in society in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Norway.
| — Hat tip: The Midget | [Return to headlines] |
The Idea That a Capitalist Economy Can Support a Socialist Welfare State is Collapsing
by Janet Daley
The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this [UK] side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted (even by parties of the centre-Right) as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.
This was the heaven on earth for which liberal democracy had been striving: a system of wealth redistribution that was merciful but not Marxist, and a guarantee of lifelong economic and social security for everyone that did not involve totalitarian government. This was the ideal the European Union was designed to entrench. It was the dream of Blairism, which adopted it as a replacement for the state socialism of Old Labour. And it is the aspiration of President Obama and his liberal Democrats, who want the United States to become a European-style social democracy.
But the US has a very different historical experience from European countries, with their accretions of national remorse and class guilt: it has a far stronger and more resilient belief in the moral value of liberty and the dangers of state power. This is a political as much as an economic crisis, but not for the reasons that Mr Obama believes. The ruckus that nearly paralysed the US economy last week, and led to the loss of its AAA rating from Standard & Poor’s, arose from a confrontation over the most basic principles of American life.
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UK: Passport to Tottenham!
Is it time to try a movie experiment from the 1940s?
Thanks to the Metropolitan Police’s ridiculous policy of appeasement, a large part of North London resembles a bombed out scene from the 1940 Blitz following a night of rioting by the city’s Afro-Caribbean “community.” The riots started after about 300 people gathered outside a police station in the gang-infested area and demanded “justice” following a shooting incident in which a policeman and a suspected gang member were both shot in what appears to have been an exchange of fire.
Faced by what initially started as a peaceful demonstration, the police responded with their usual “culturally sensitive,” “softly softly” approach of showing sympathy, maintaining a low police presence, avoiding assertive gestures, allowing the mob to vent its emotions, and retreating behind barriers, effectively giving a green light to the rioters and anyone else who was interested to run amok.
With other emergency services unable to intervene, scores of shops were looted and burnt, while the inadequate numbers of police officers sent to contain the violence were not properly equipped with riot gear resulting in several officers being hospitalized.
Despite the unfortunate results of this policy and the obvious criminality of a large section of the West Indian “community,” much of the emphasis in the mainstream media has been on rationalizing the actions of the mob as an understandable if regrettable reaction to police shortcomings and attributing all negative actions to a “tiny unrepresentative minority” — the typical hallmarks of the leftist multiracial state in damage limitation mode.
The truth is that whatever the Metropolitan Police do to police the gun, knife, and drug crime of London’s West Indian “community,” it will breed resentment. Drug-fuelled criminality and gang culture are so ingrained among young West Indians that any effective policing has to involve frequent interactions between the police and this group that can only breed tension and resentment.
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UK: Sharia: A Law Unto Itself?
Critics claim that the spread of Sharia law is creating a parallel legal system that opposes equal rights. We get a rare glimpse of an Islamic court at work .
After being beaten repeatedly by her husband — who had also threatened to kill her — Jameela turned to her local Sharia council in a desperate bid for a way out of her marriage. Today she discovers the verdict. Playing nervously with her hands, the young mother-of-three listens as the panel of judges discuss whether they should grant her a divorce.
The council meets once a month at the Birmingham Central Mosque. Many of the cases relate to divorce and involve the husbands and wives entering the room separately to make their appeals.
In an airless room in the bowels of the mosque, Jameela is asked to explain why she wants a divorce. She replies that her husband spends most of his time with his second wife — Islamic law allows men to have up to four wives — but complains he is abusive whenever he returns to her home.
Across the desk, Dr Mohammed Naseem, chair of the mosque’s Sharia council, sits alongside Talha Bokhari, a white-robed imam, and Amra Bone, the only woman sitting on an Islamic court in this country.
While a husband is not required to go through official channels to gain a divorce — being able to achieve this merely by uttering the word “talaq” — Islamic law requires that the wife must persuade the judges to grant her a dissolution.
Although the judges appear sympathetic, they are concerned about the rights of the father, as Islamic law says he is still responsible for his children’s education. “For the sake of the children, you must keep up the façade of cordial relations,” says Dr Naseem. “The worst thing that can happen to a child is to see the father and mother quarrelling.”
Jameela is one of hundreds of Muslims applying to Islamic courts every week for a ruling on family and financial issues. While these courts may be the cornerstone of many of Britain’s Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, there are growing concerns that they are creating a parallel legal system — and one that is developing completely unchecked…
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tottenham Riots: Data Journalists and Social Scientists Should Join Forces
we’re now going to have to suffer through lots of ill-informed speculation from columnists. Brace yourself yet again as they take out their favourite axe from the kitchen cupboard and grind away on it just a bit more until the head is gone and they’re whittling the handle into a toothpick. It will enrage more than enlighten.
I have a better suggestion. With the current interest in data journalism, this would be a great time to revisit one of the seminal moments of data journalism carried out by Philip Meyer in the wake of the 1967 riots in Detroit. As a Nieman fellow at Harvard, Meyer studied not only how social science could be applied to journalism, but he also explored how main frame computers could be used to quickly analyse data. (For data journalists, if you don´t already own it, you should buy a copy of Meyer´s book, Precision Journalism, first published in 1973 and since updated.) As a national correspondent for Knight-Ridder newspapers, Meyer was sent to Detroit to help cover the riots.
The 1967 Detroit riots stand as the third worst in the history of the US, only eclipsed by the 1992 riots in the wake of the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King and draft riots in New York during the US Civil War. As the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan said:
The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News threw every resource they had into covering the uprising. And as the disturbance died down, journalists and commentators, most of them white, struggled to understand who the rioters were and why they had taken to the streets. One theory was that those who looted and burned buildings were on the bottom rung of society—riff raff with no money and no education. A second theory speculated that rioters were recent arrivals from the South who had failed to assimilate and were venting their frustrations on the city.
But for many, those theories rang false.
A survey had been done following the 1965 Watts riots. Meyer approached Nathan Caplan, a friend from graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They both had a similar idea to see if a survey similar to the one done after Watts could be done in Detroit. One challenge was that the Watts study took two years, but Meyer wanted it done in three weeks. The ISR has an article that looks at the process in great depth, and what is clear is that the study of the 1967 Detroit riots and the journalism that followed had a lot of support not only from the newspapers but from the university, government and local foundations. They recruited and trained 30 teachers to conduct the surveys, drew up a random sample and interviewed 437 black residents.
The survey debunked a number of theories put forward to explain the violence…
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Egypt: Blogger: Mubarak’s Trial Restores Faith in Revolution
(ANSAmed) — ROMA, 5 AGO — “We are still taking small steps, but with the restored faith in the revolution we will continue on setting precedents in acquiring our freedom and social justice”. So commented the Egyptian blogger Nermeen Edrees about the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak which started on Wednesday.
“The trial — she said to ANSAmed — sets a precedent in the Arab World, away from the fact that it is the normal evolution of the revolution”. Nevertheless, “it came in the time that most Egyptians, including those who were pro or against the revolution, were falling in the grip of a insuperable moment of despair. Seeing the major symbols of corruption (in front of the judges, ed.) was beyond belief, a moment of pride to all Egyptians”, added the blogger who works with Global Voices Online. “It took around 7 months to get to this moment — Nermeen recalled — and people were skeptic. Those who believed in it were few, and were decreasing by the Day. No one can deny the pressure imposed by the 8th of July” protest in order to get to the trial. Although “opposed by the majority of Egyptians, neglected by the government, and certainly disdained by SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, ed.)”, who dispersed the demonstrators “by force in the first day of Ramadan…”.
Yet, she concluded, on the trial’s day “people admitted that it wouldn’t have been the same without it”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
More Bombs on Tripoli: “Colonial Aggression”
(AGI) Tripoli — Several powerful explosions shook the night in Tripoli, after being overflown by NATO aircraft shorty before.
A journalist on site reported that around ten explosions echoed at around 1:30 am. Shortly after, Libyan public TV reported that “civilian and military sites” had been struck in Khellat al-Ferjan, in the South-Eastern suburbs of the capital: the sites were “the targets of the raid of the colonial aggressors”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Libya Missteps Imperil NATO’s Future
by John R. Bolton
While the outcome of NATO’s intervention in Libya is still uncertain, the ongoing drift toward a negotiated solution is fraught with potentially debilitating problems for the Western alliance. Ousting Qaddafi remains a possibility, and could have been achieved much earlier with swift and decisive action, but the prospects for a clear NATO victory are now quite uncertain.
The collapse of NATO’s resolve came in several stages, with the seeds planted right at the outset of the military action. First, President Obama signaled hesitancy and weakness by waiting until Qaddafi’s forces had nearly taken Benghazi , the rebels’ key stronghold, and then held NATO hostage to approval from the Arab League and the UN Security Council.
Second, after very robust U.S. participation in the opening days of the attack, Obama, demonstrating his penchant to “lead from behind,” ordered U.S. strike activity diminished almost to zero. While American forces assigned to NATO continued to provide vital command, control, intelligence and logistical support, the bulk of the strike mission fell to Britain , France and smaller NATO members, on which the strain began to show relatively quickly. America ‘s hesitancy and Europe’s inadequacies have significance well beyond the constraints they imposed on the action in Libya , foreshadowing both future failures in U.S. leadership and a far broader hollowing out of Europe ‘s contributions to NATO.
NATO’s credibility, in the region and globally, is already deeply wounded because this minor military operation, for ostensibly humanitarian purposes, has lasted so long with the outcome still uncertain (and Ramadan fast approaching). If NATO cannot rapidly depose a rogue like Qaddafi, why should other rogues fear the prospect of NATO intervention? Even if Qaddafi is ultimately toppled, the palpable risk is that NATO will be perceived to have stumbled in its own backyard, undercutting its ability to shape conflicts further afield, such as Afghanistan.
Third, in the wake of these military deficiencies, increasing political splits among NATO members became all too obvious. Germany was opposed from the outset, even abstaining in the Security Council with Brazil , India , and Permanent Members Russia and China on Resolution 1973, which authorized the use of force. This public distancing by Europe ‘s largest country demonstrated to Qaddafi at the very outset of NATO’s attacks that time was likely on his side.
[Read 4 and 5 at the URL]
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UK Pilots Operating in Libya Cost 1,5 Mln/Mo in Rents
(AGI) London — The UK spends 1,5 million euros per month to house in Italy its pilots operating in Libya. According to official sources, the about 1000 RAF Tornado and Typhoon pilots and associated support personnel are billeted at the Gioia del Colle air base. According to UK Defense ministry, the base has a limited number of available aprtments and the personnel has to be housed in local hotels. In April, London stated it was thinking to alternative accomodations at Gioia del Colle.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Ban on References to God in Fallen Soldiers Tribute
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, AUGUST 5 — No references to God will be made during ceremonies paying tribute to fallen soldiers of the Israeli army. The decision was taken yesterday by the army’s Chief of Staff, General Benny Gantz, amid controversy in the country and within military ranks over the growing influence of rabbis and religious nationalists upon the armed forces. The issue has been widely covered in today’s Israeli press. The text in question is the Yzkor, which is recited during ceremonies to commemorate fallen soldiers. Within the text, the words “Israel does not forget” had been replaced by the words “God does not forget”. The change has been received uneasily by the families of fallen soldiers who are not religious or even hostile towards the more observant fringes of Judaism. Amid this backdrop, Gantz decided to refer the dispute to an internal commission, which has decided to restore the original text during the services.
All 18 year olds are called to serve in the Israeli armed forces (the Tzahal) — men for three years and women for two — which were created with a secular ideology and with strong links to the old socialist Zionism of the kibbutz. But the armed forces have a distinctly different appearance today, as a result of changes within society itself. Practicing Jews have swollen the ranks of the army, chiefly the elite units now filled by young settlers who are sensitive to radical nationalist and religious ideology. According to reports sent recently to General Gantz by senior army officials, this phenomenon has led to problems of split loyalty, disciplinary infringements and even a lack of respect for regulations that aim to guarantee equal dignity for women in uniform and soldiers from non-Jewish minority groups (Druzes, Bedouins, Christians, or non-believers of Russian descent).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Families of Suicide Bombers Given £5m in British Aid Cash
British aid cash is being given to the families of suicide bombers, it was claimed last night.
The Palestinian Authority, which gets £86million of British aid a year, has authorised payments of almost £5million to the families of ‘martyrs’.
Another £3million has been given to 5,500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The payments, using taxpayers’ cash donated from Britain and the European Union, have been described as ‘ludicrous’ by one Tory MP.
The Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, has introduced a new law which pays the families of suicide bombers out of its civil service budget.
According to the official Palestinian daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, payments to the families of ‘martyrs’ — those killed fighting Israel, including suicide bombers — totalled 3.5 per cent of the budget.
Is ‘RAF Ayatollah’ who criticised Libyan air strikes the right man to be training our pilots?
‘Every terrorist in prison, including those whose acts led to the deaths of Israeli civilians, are on the PA payroll,’ said Itamar Marcus, of Palestinian Media Watch.
‘The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family, and prisoners receive their salaries from the day of arrest.’
Tory MP Philip Davies said the payments were ‘ludicrous’. He added: ‘People think overseas aid is to try to alleviate terrible poverty in places where they can’t afford to look after themselves. But it’s being put to these kind of purposes.
‘It would be bad enough at the best of times, but at a time when we have got no money, it is utterly inexcusable.’
Last month, Britain committed to giving £86million a year in aid to the Palestinian Authority until 2015.
The payments to families and prisoners are on a sliding scale, from £250 a month for prisoners sentenced to less than three years, to a maximum of £2,140 a month for anyone serving more than 30 years.
The payments compare with salaries of £515 for a regular Palestinian civil servant and £480 for officers in the Palestinian security forces.
Minister of State Alan Duncan said in February: ‘We are very careful how we spend our money in the occupied Palestinian territories. We would abhor any money falling into the hands of extremists.’
The Government is under pressure for the amount of aid it is handing out at a time of austerity. It plans to increase foreign aid payments by 35 per cent to £11.4billion by 2015.
This comes despite several scandals involving aid. Last week, it was revealed that money to Ethiopia was being used as a political tool and those who oppose the government do not receive handouts.
David Cameron has admitted that the controversial pledge to spend billions more on international aid was a ‘difficult commitment’ at a time when spending programmes were being slashed at home.
The Prime Minister admitted that some aid had been ‘wasted’, but continued to dismiss ‘aid sceptics’.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims in World’s Tallest Tower in Dubai Told to Delay Breaking Ramadan Fast
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Muslims living in the world’s tallest tower will have to wait even longer to break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai’s top Muslim cleric, said Sunday that Burj Khalifa residents living above the 80th floor should wait two additional minutes to break their dawn-to-dusk fast while those above the 150th floor must wait three extra minutes because they will be able to see the sun longer than those on the ground.
| — Hat tip: Van Grungy | [Return to headlines] |
Saddam’s Demon Seed
Uday Hussein’s many vices and wanton sadism appalled even his father. And one man was on hand to witness it all — Uday’s unwilling ‘body double’
The siege of the Iraqi mansion lasted five hours, starting with a loudspeakered call to surrender and ending with the crash of missiles from a United States helicopter gunship. By the time it was over, half the house’s wedding cake-style facade was missing, affording the media a unique, through-the-rocket-hole tour when they were finally allowed near it.
Inside we found an elegant inner balcony splintered with bullets, and for anyone with a knowledge of gangster movies, one scene sprang to mind: the closing shots of Scarface, where Al Pacino’s drug baron makes his famous last stand.
“That film was mentioned a couple of times,” grinned Lieutenant Colonel Rick Carlson, commander of a unit involved in the raid, when I put this to him later.
So came the spectacular demise of Saddam Hussein’s notorious sons Uday and Qusay, whose lives resembled a real-life gangster flick, and whose deaths in July 2003 produced one of the few moments of universal good cheer in the ever-mounting gloom of post-war Iraq. For the US military, it was a much-needed morale boost in a steadily fraying mission, netting both the Ace of Hearts and the Ace of Clubs in the “Deck of 55” most wanted. For Iraqis, meanwhile, it meant the passing of two of the regime’s most feared men — in particular Uday, whose psychotic, unhinged brutality made his father look statesmanlike.
Yet as celebratory gunfire erupted over Baghdad, Latif Yahia, a 39-year-old former commando, was one of the few Iraqis who didn’t reach for his Kalashnikov. Not just because he was thousands of miles away in exile in England, where assault rifles are still frowned upon as party poppers, but because he didn’t want to cheer. He wanted to cry.
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Devil’s Double premieres in London
Uday Hussein
24 Jul 2003
“The Americans should have taken Uday alive,” he tells me now. “I wanted him to face trial, so that I could tell the world what he had done, all the killing.”
Playboy, murderer, and sadist extraordinaire, Saddam’s elder son left no shortage of people with horror stories to tell in his wake. Yet for Latif, the trauma of his encounter with him was uniquely personal, one that still haunts him every time he looks in the mirror. For back in 1987, after noticing his striking likeness to Saddam’s son, Iraq’s secret service picked him to be Uday’s “fiday”, or body double, a job that involved becoming the living, breathing copy of the nation’s greatest hate figure.
Being the stand-in man on any occasion where Uday feared one of his many enemies might assassinate him was just one of Latif’s occupational hazards. Far worse was the window it gave him into the ruling family’s inner circle, attending Uday’s debauched parties, mixing with his entourage of pimps and thugs, and looking on as his doppelganger rampaged with impunity. And, to his ultimate horror and guilt, sometimes enjoying it.
“Until now, I haven’t slept properly because of thinking about him,” he said. “I am stuck with Uday for the rest of my life, and will probably take him with me to my grave.”
Now, though, 19 years after fleeing Iraq and claiming asylum in Europe, Latif has another chance to give Uday’s crimes an airing, and, hopefully, give his designer-stubbled, Ray Ban-wearing demon a final exorcism.
The Devil’s Double, released this week, is a film loosely-based on Uday’s early life — shot entirely from the point of view of his body double. Coming in the wake of Green Zone and the Hurt Locker, it is the first major Iraq movie to explore life in the ruling clan. And while Uday played no real role in the wider political drama of the war, he proves an illuminating focus point, being in many ways the personification of the regime’s dark side. Addicted to drink, sex and violence in equal measure, he was despised even more than his father — as I myself found when I was a correspondent based in Baghdad after the war.
On the hot July night that news emerged that he had been killed, the Iraqi capital erupted with so much gunfire that I thought a full-scale insurrection had broken out; by contrast, the celebrations when Saddam was caught five months later were more muted.
Iraqis used to tell me that their worst nightmare was Uday inheriting power, a fear that was not without justification, if the words that Latif claimed his employer once said to him are anything to go by: “Just wait till I’m president, I’ll be crueller than my father. You will often remember these words, and yearn for the days of Saddam Hussein.”
Starring Dominic Cooper as both Uday and Latif, the film is directed by Lee Tamahori, best known for his portrayal of violence within New Zealand’s Maori community in Once Were Warriors. The mayhem in that, however, is nothing compared to the savagery in The Devil’s Double. It applies the gangster movie blueprint to an entire country, replacing the Mafia with the Hussein clan, although Uday is far more crazed than anything Coppola or Scorsese have so far conjured up.
In one horrific scene, he uses a carving knife to stab to death Kamel Hannah, his father’s personal pimp, at a party attended by the wife of the recently-deposed Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. The incident is entirely authentic, according to Latif, save for the minor detail that Uday actually used an electric rose pruner that he had at his side. Even so, Latif says the violence has been toned down.
“The movie shows 20 per cent of what really happened, at most,” he says. “On one occasion, in a jail back in ‘91, I remember Uday dealing with a Shia prisoner who had been involved in the uprising against Saddam after the first Gulf War. He said: ‘I won’t kill you by the gun,’ and instead put a drill through his head. When he’d finished, he looked around and said: ‘This is what happens to those who stand up against us.’ They killed half the people in that jail, and put the bodies in among those still alive. Then they released the survivors, just so they could tell other Iraqis what they’d seen.”
Latif first met Uday in 1979, when the two were at the Baghdad College High School for Boys, the country’s answer to Eton. The Iraq of that time was a very different place: Saddam, newly in power, was still relatively popular, having used Iraq’s oil money to create one of the Middle East’s most developed countries, while Baghdad was the region’s party capital, full of bars, discos and nightclubs.
Even then, Iraq’s First Family were a law unto themselves. Latif’s teachers learnt this the hard way when Uday first turned up at school, surrounded by five bodyguards. Having turned a blind eye to his habit of throwing chalk at them during lessons, and parking his yellow Porsche in the school’s basketball court, one teacher finally protested when Uday brought a girlfriend into class. “The teacher told Uday this was forbidden in an all-boys school,” recalls Latif. “He was never seen again.”
A keen painter, Latif won Uday’s friendship after drawing a portrait of Saddam, but knew to keep his distance. When university beckoned, he even switched to reading law when learning that Uday had enrolled on the same engineering course.
Then, one day in September 1987, while serving at the front during the Iran-Iraq war, he was whisked by limousine to a palace in Baghdad, where Uday, sat in a white leather armchair and smoking one of his trademark Montecristo No?6 cigars, told him of the top-secret plan to make him his “fiday”. After all, his father had been using one for years. “I want you to be me. Everywhere, always,” he said. It was an order, not a request. When Latif at first refused, he was thrown for days into a blood-encrusted jail cell with no lavatory. When he still protested, Uday threatened to feed his sisters to his pet dogs.
Thus began his secret service-organised “training programme”. He and Uday already bore a sharp resemblance to each other, with the same round eyes, thick eyebrows and slightly curly hair. But nothing was left to chance. To start, there was cosmetic surgery — a cleft added to the chin, and dental treatment to mimic Uday’s bucktoothed grin, which even gave him Uday’s distinctive lisp as well. To be really convincing, though, he also had to study the unique Uday school of deportment, honing, as he puts it, a “supercilious, dictatorial arrogance”.
How to mimic Uday’s childlike giggle, cocky stride and slovenly manners, always sitting slumped rather than straight up. How to greet people with a studied stare, and make his point by gesturing with a revolver. How to cruise around Baghdad in a different Porsche, Ferrari or Lamborghini every day, which also had to match whichever loud designer suit he was wearing. How to cradle a Montecristo between middle and index fingers, and knock back vast quantities of Dimple, the unsophisticated Scotch that was Uday’s favourite. And how, when attending discos, to up the tempo by blasting a few gunshots into the ceiling. For Latif, though, the hardest part of the fakery was played on his own family. He signed a contract saying he would never, on pain of execution, tell anyone that he was Uday’s double; this included his parents, who were told he had gone missing at the front, and whom he was forbidden from seeing again.
At first, being Uday had benefits…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Sana: 20 Killed in Attack on Hama Military Club
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, AUGUST 5 — Syria’s official news agency, Sana, is reporting today that “more than 20 military officials were killed” in an attack a few days ago on the military club in the city of Hama, which has become the focal point of the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. The agency says that the club is just one of the government buildings attacked in the last few days by “armed terrorist gangs” instigated “by foreigners”. Sana adds that the army is “working to bring back security, stability and normal life in Hama”, where the “terrorists have carried out acts of sabotage, killings, erecting barricades, cutting off roads and attacking and setting fire to police stations”.
Opposition sources, meanwhile, claim that the army and security forces launched a wide-ranging crackdown in Hama on Sunday, killing several dozen civilians. Sana also reports on the funerals held yesterday for five soldiers and security agents killed in the uprising in Hama, Homs and Deraa, and released the names of the dead.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Jihad Against the Armenian, Assyrian, And Greek Christians
By Janet Levy
In Germany, where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, Stuttgart University recently capitulated to pressure from resident Turkish Muslims and canceled an event entitled, “Persecution, Expulsion and Annihilation of Christians in the Ottoman Empire 1912-1922.” Ironically, this occurred in a country that was forced to confront its own genocidal past, educate its population and pay restitution to victims. University officials explained that they wanted to “remain neutral” on the subject of the nearly 100-year-old, well-documented Turkish massacre of more than two million Christians. Citing neutrality in the face of crimes against humanity is deeply troubling, particularly in light of Germany’s Holocaust past and the missed opportunity the event represented to educate students about genocide and potentially prevent its recurrence.
Equally troubling is Turkey’s continued denial and banning of information about these crimes, not only within its own borders, but, as exemplified in Germany, within other countries as well. In contrast to Germany where laws since the end of World War II seek to prevent a Holocaust from ever happening again, the Turkish government under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, passed in 2005, makes it a crime punishable by up to two years imprisonment to insult the Turkish state. This provision prevents any public commemoration or consideration of the Turkish Muslim atrocities committed against Ottoman Christians.
This silencing and strong-arming of other nations by a country that is majority Muslim represents Islamization embedded within a national policy of Turkification. Turkey’s past aggression, labeled the “Armenian Genocide,” follows the Islamization pattern that exists today: annihilation of all non-Muslims, no matter their religion, ethnicity or national origin. It was a jihad against Anatolian Christians. Further, Turkey destroyed genocide documentation, many of its killers went unpunished, restitution was never paid to victims and the perpetrators are eponymously commemorated in the naming of landmarks, cities and streets. Tragically, Hitler was inspired by the Turkish extermination of Armenian Christians and justified his “Final Solution” with a statement that “no one remembers the Armenian Genocide.”
In fact, the world does remember but is held at bay because of continued denial of historical truths, insistence on the Islamic point of view and political pressure to silence others with opposing views, prevalent throughout the Muslim world today on other fronts and continuing today in the jihad against the Anatolian Christians.
The “Armenian Genocide”
Most historians regard 1912 to 1925 as a time of massive Christian annihilation and relocation by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Although commonly given the misnomer “Armenian Genocide,” the atrocity was a carefully planned ethnic cleansing to rid Asia Minor of Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other minorities in order to establish an exclusively Muslim Turkish state. Some scholars date the first phase of the Christian genocide from the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid and his Hamidian Massacres of 1895-1897 through the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955.
The Hamidian massacres attempted to assert Muslim supremacy and advance the cause of Turkification. French ambassador Pierre Paul Cambon described Turkey at the time as “literally in flames” with “massacres everywhere” and Christians murdered “without distinction.” Marauding Kurdish chieftains in the region were encouraged to join in and channel their aggression into the killing, pillaging and raping of non-Muslim populations. Estimates of the number of Christians who perished during the reign of Sultan Hamid range from 100,000 to 300,000.
From the 1900’s to 1922, the Christian population declined from 25% to less than 5% within Anatolia. Under Islam, Christians had few rights, paid exorbitantly high taxes — the jizya — and enjoyed limited political representation and access to government services. Their testimony was inadmissible, no provision existed for their legal protection, they were prohibited from owning firearms, and their property, wives and children were vulnerable to spontaneous attacks.
Approximately 2.5 million Armenians[1], Assyrians[2] and Greek Christians[3] were massacred during this period. Kurds were encouraged to settle in Christian territory, demand the payment of tributes and illegally seize land. They were given free rein against local Christians in exchange for their loyal service to the Ottoman government.
Origins
The Turkish campaign began five years prior to World War I, when the Young Turks, a secret society of students and military officers, seized control of the Ottoman government. Initially, in an attempt to solidify their control, the Young Turks promised equality for all non- Muslims. Once in power, they rescinded this policy and devised a scheme of plunder to obtain much needed economic resources for the declining Ottoman Empire. To encourage and justify the attacks, they promulgated rumors that Christians were traitorously assisting the Empire’s enemies. A fatwa[4] was declared against Christians and was announced in mosques throughout the empire. A two-fold plan[5] was devised to homogenize Turkey through: 1) the assimilation or dilution of non-Turkish Muslims by dispersing them throughout the empire and 2) the elimination of non-Muslims who were deemed infidels and enemies of Islam. Convicts were released from prison to staff the Special Organization[6], which was formed to carry out the final solution to the Christian problem. Escorted by military troops, they raped, robbed and killed innocent Christian men, women and children.
The Christian genocide was a three-phase process. First, able-bodied men were rounded up and deported for labor battalions. Second, community leaders and influential people were publicly executed. Then, defenseless women, children and the elderly were massacred or resettled and enslaved.
Ethnic Greeks
Ethnic Greeks, uprooted from their ancestral home of 3,000 years, were the first to be victimized in what in Greece is called, the “Great Catastrophe.” During the first six months of 1914, a concerted effort began to exterminate Greeks with the goal of clearing them out of Asia Minor to make room for Muslim refugees from the Balkans. All Greek men, aged 18 to 50, were ordered to report for military duty. They were incorporated into the Ottoman army then transferred to labor battalions where they died by the thousands of exposure, cold, hunger and deprivation…
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U.S. Military Trainers Could be Targets: Iraq’s Sadr
BAGHDAD(Reuters) — Iraq’s fiercely anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has warned that U.S. military trainers will be targets if they stay in the country beyond a year-end deadline for American troops to leave.
The statement from Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia fought U.S. troops until 2008, follows a deal by Iraqi leaders to allow Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to negotiate with the United States on whether to keep trainers in Iraq after the deadline.
Sadr followers have sent mixed messages on that, but any deal to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, even as trainers, remains a sensitive issue in Baghdad and Washington eight years after the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
“Whoever stays in Iraq will be treated as an unjust invader and should be opposed with military resistance,” Sadr said in a statement published on a pro-Sadr website on Saturday.
“A government which agrees for them to stay, even for training, is a weak government.”
Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia has for the most part demobilized, but U.S. officials say Sadrist splinter groups have continued to attack U.S. troops still stationed in Iraq.
Violence in Iraq has eased sharply since sectarian bloodshed peaked four years ago, but bombings and assassinations are still carried out almost daily by Sunni Islamists, some tied to al Qaeda, and by Shi’ite militas the U.S. government says are backed by Iran.
Sadr himself is now part of mainstream politics and a key ally to Maliki in his fragile power-sharing coalition among Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs…
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Uses Dirty Tricks Despite U.S. ‘Reset’
Intelligence agents tell of intimidation, smears of American officials, diplomats
In the past four years, Russia’s intelligence services have stepped up a campaign of intimidation and dirty tricks against U.S. officials and diplomats in Russia and the countries that used to form the Soviet Union.
U.S. diplomats and officials have found their homes broken into and vandalized, or altered in ways as trivial as bathroom use; faced anonymous or veiled threats; and in some cases found themselves set up in compromising photos or videos that are later leaked to the local press and presented as a sex scandal.
“The point was to show that ‘we can get to you where you sleep,’ “ one U.S. intelligence officer told The Washington Times. “It’s a psychological kind of attack.”
Despite a stated policy from President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev of warm U.S.-Russian ties, the campaign of intelligence intimidation — or what the CIA calls “direct action” — has persisted throughout what both sides have called a “reset” in the relations.
They have become worse in just the past year, some U.S. officials said. Also, their targets are broadening to include human rights workers and nongovernmental organizations as well as embassy staff.
The most brazen example of this kind of intimidation was the Sept. 22 bombing attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. A National Intelligence Council assessment sent to Congress last week confirmed that the bombing was ordered by Maj. Yevgeny Borisov of Russian military intelligence, said four U.S. officials who have read the report.
False rape charge…
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Nepali Christians Grow, United Against the Threat of Hindu Fundamentalism
Elements in the country’s ruling class want to reintroduce Hinduism as state religion. An anti-conversion bill is before parliament. It would lead back to underground baptisms. AsiaNews speaks to the Jesuit superior who says, faced with difficulties, we are “true disciples of Christ.”
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — In the past few years, fundamentalism has quickly grown in Nepal. Elements in the ruling class, especially from the old guard, want to make Hinduism the state religion, “like before 1990”. Fr Lawrence Maniyar, Jesuit regional superior, spoke to AsiaNews about it. In his view, threats to religious freedom have “brought together the different Church leaders”.
The clergyman confirms that conversions have taken place and that the community is in constant growth thanks to adults who are baptised “during public worship”. However, if restrictions are introduced in religious matters, it will mean a return to “underground baptisms”, he warned.
Yet, despite the dangers and threats, Fr Lawrence sees the current situation as a “blessing” because it allows Christians to be “true disciples of Christ”. In other nations, “things are far worse.”
Here is Fr Lawrence’s interview with AsiaNews:
How do you see the situation of Catholics after the fall of monarchy?
The Catholic Church, like other Christian Churches, now faces more challenges than before. Hindu fundamentalism has been growing rapidly for the last four years and there is a great effort to make it the state religion, like before 1990. We are now fighting against this at different levels, in different ways. Politicians made a decision in parliament four years ago that Nepal must be a secular country; however, the mindset has not changed and the old guard wants to bring Hinduism back in a subtle way. Even though there is a great revival in Hindu fundamentalism, the present situation has brought together the different church leaders.
Are there any conversions?
When I first came to Nepal in January 1976, there were three lay people at Sunday Mass, two Americans and one Indian. Now, after 60 years of Church presence, there are about 8,000 Catholics. There are conversions, a small number to the Catholic Church and a huge number to Protestant Churches. This is what has prompted the government to come up with the anti-conversion bill. In the last four years, adult baptisms have taken place during public worship, but I am not sure that this will continue for long. If the anti-conversion bill is passed in parliament, we will have to go back to underground baptisms.
What is the role of the Catholic community in Nepali society?
Through the Jesuit Fathers, the Catholic community came to Nepal in May 1951 on the invitation of the Government of Nepal of the time. Legally, we are here to educate Nepali children. Since the old constitution allowed us to believe and “practice one’s own religion” we had no problem of taking care of the spiritual and sacramental needs of the Catholic community. We concentrate on the education of Nepali children and the social welfare of poor people in Nepal. The Catholic Church runs 32 educational institutions and more than 60 social work centres.
Is Nepal a country where religious freedom is respected?
Contrary to what many people think in the world, in my opinion, Hinduism has never been tolerant towards other religions. When Hinduism is under threat, the true nature of Hinduism comes out. The present government of Nepal is trying to introduce a bill to ban conversions because many people have converted to Christianity in the past 20 years. Many people in the government of Nepal believe that “nobody has the right to change his or her religion”. However, Christians are openly saying that they “are not Christians because our parents are Christians. We are not Hindus just because the State says so. We are Christians because we choose to be Christians.”
What work do the Jesuits perform in the country, especially in the educational field?
Our schools and college are the most sought-after educational institutions in the country right now. Besides the educational apostolate, we have four parishes, three social work centres (for orphans, drug rehabilitation programme and a home for the blind), one school for the mentally challenged, and eight mobile clinics. All these things are done by just 25 Fathers and Brothers. Religious Sisters and lay people are a great help for us in these works of apostolate.
What can you say about the Jesuits’ missionary work in Nepal?
At times, I feel that the situation is a blessing because we have a greater chance to be true witnesses to the Gospel. Non-Christians can see the way we live and work and know that we are disciples of Christ. Despite the restrictions, I am happy of the situation in our country. There are many nations in the world where things are far worse. Let us thank God and pray that it does not get worse.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Time for Another Hard Look at Our “Allies”?
Associated Press is reporting that the helicopter that crashed, apparently under fire, in Afghanistan, has killed 20 members of Seal Team 6, the same unit that nailed Bin Laden. It is not clear yet whether it may in fact be some of the same individuals from Seal Team 6 who were on the Bin Laden mission—that information we’re likely never to find out. But either way, it seems doubtful this is a coincidence. I hope a congressional committee will not accept the State Department and Pentagon line on what happened, and inquires whether Bin Laden sympathizers in Pakistan’s ISI, or inside the Afghan government, played some role in targeting and bringing down this crew.
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$3.5bn a Year Failing to Lift Aborigines Out of the 1970s
TAXPAYERS are getting “dismal” results from the $3.5 billion a year they spend on Aboriginal Australia, says a damning review of indigenous spending conducted for the federal Department of Finance.
The report points to “a huge gap between policy intent and policy execution”, which means the situation of many indigenous Australians today is as bad now as it was in 1970.
“This major investment, maintained over so many years, has yielded dismally poor returns to date,” the report says.
The report was obtained by the Seven Network under Freedom of Information laws after a long legal battle in which the department said its release was against the public interest. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal rejected the argument in a landmark ruling that could provide the public with far greater future access to government documents.
The report’s conclusions took into account the progress of the Gillard government’s Northern Territory emergency intervention program and its multi-billion-dollar Closing the Gap policies, aimed at alleviating indigenous disadvantage.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Dilma Rousseff’s 3rd Minister Quits in 3 Months in Brazil
(AGI) Brasilia — An alleged corrupting case forced the resignations of the Brazilian Agriculture minister, Milton Ortolan. He is the third member of Dilma Roussef’s cabinet to quit in 3 months.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: High Court Stops Deportations to Malaysia
A LAST minute-appeal to the High Court has stopped 16 asylum seeker men being shipped to Malaysia tomorrow.
A legal team led by refugee lawyer David Manne won an injunction in the High Court late tonight to stop the asylum seeker swap.
The team brought the case on behalf of 42 asylum seekers including six unaccompanied minors.
The refugee lawyers only found out when in the court that the 16 men were due to leave for Malaysia at 11.30am tomorrow.
Mr Manne said the case would challenge the government’s power to expel asylum seekers from the country and would also challenge Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, who was considered the legal guardian of the unaccompanied minors.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Boaters Arrested for the Homicide of Lampedusa Victims
(AGI)Palermo- 6 traffickers of the boat rescued last Sunday in Lampedusa with 25 dead bodies in the hull have been arrested.
The warrant of arrest was issued by the Prosecutor’s Office of Agrigento. They are all charged with abetting illegal immigration and for being responsible for a death occurring consequently to another offence, with two of them being charged with homicide. These are those that allegedly beat up two of the migrants whose bodies revealed signs of a brutal beating during the post-mortem examination. One of the two men arrested is Moroccan and the others are Syrian and Somalian.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Frattini Tells NATO Mandate Should Involve Help
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 5 — Civilians fleeing from the war in Libya crowded onto boats adrift in the Mediterranean Sea must also be rescued by NATO. Following the controversy that has involved NATO since yesterday due to the decision not to rescue a boat that departed from the Libyan coast with 400 migrants on board, Italy has made a dual request: change the mandate of the mission to protect refugees at sea and open a formal investigation to verify what took place. Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, asked Ambassador Riccardo Sessa, Italy’s permanent representative to NATO, to push for a discussion on the matter based on UN resolutions 1970 and 1973. He also instructed Sessa to call for an investigation to be opened. But the events that took place are still unclear, and the Alliance’s comments are vague. The spokesman at NATO Maritime Headquarters in Naples, David Taylor, said that “NATO always responds and intervenes in emergency situations, in line with international regulations”. From Brussels, spokesperson Carmen Romero only said that the Italian authorities notified NATO Allied Maritime Command of the request from a ship and subsequently of the fact that they responded to the request by sending three ships and a support helicopter. Amid the back and forth regarding the responsibility and the uncertainty of the number of deaths, there are still doubts regarding if and how the NATO mission, formally responsible for protecting civilians from the massacres perpetrated by the Gaddafi regime, should help these civilians when at sea they become refugees in the best case scenario, and illegal immigrants in the worst. Chief of Defence, Biagio Abrate, also feels the need to urge NATO to “act to raise awareness regarding the humanitarian aspect of its current operations” and to specify that Italian military ships are not involved in the alleged lack of help provided to the boat by the NATO units. Flavio di Giacomo, Italy’s spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), hopes for all forces operating in the Strait of Sicily to be coordinated, and believes that it is “necessary for all boats with migrants on board that depart from the coast of Libya to be automatically considered boats in difficulty and in need of assistance”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Global Poll Uncovers Psychic Shift on Immigration
by Rachel Marsden
A new global poll by Ipsos measuring citizens’ perception of immigration in 24 countries has just been released. Despite what politicians around the world would have their countrymen believe, the average person isn’t buying the benefits of current immigration policy.
The poll proves that our collective gut is indeed in line with reality: 80% of world citizens, from Russia and Brazil to America and India, feel that immigration has increased over the past five years, with 52% feeling it’s too much. Of respondents, 45% believe this immigration has a negative impact. This is legal, above-board immigration with which people are taking issue.
While politicians in America typically focus on the 12 million or so illegal immigrants, they often ignore that the country is taking in new legal immigrants at a rate of over a million every year.
America may have been built on immigration, but it wasn’t the kind of mass Third World immigration that we’ve been seeing over the past 40 years. The Left originally introduced the concept of Third World multiculturalism to America during the Lyndon Johnson presidency through the Democratic Party’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It was born of white guilt overkill in the shade of the Civil Rights Movement.
At the time, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy said: “Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia. … In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think. … The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
In the true final analysis, the new law opened the flood gates to exponentially more Third World immigrants than originally planned—and did it on the basis of “family reunification” rather than skill.
Before the new law, immigrants came overwhelmingly from Western European democracies and Canada. Afterward, Latin America and Asia dominated, while European immigration was reduced from 86% to a mere sliver of 13%.
The law led to an influx of new Democratic voters via immigration. Now, any politician wanting to land this growing immigrant vote—whether Democrat or Republican—had better find a way to pander to the idea of multiculturalism or, theoretically, risk alienating a major swath of voters. Ronald Reagan? presided over near record levels of annual legal immigration, and George W. Bush was anything but tough on immigration, maintaining immigration levels from the very same countries against which we struggled ideologically in the aftermath of 9/11. No one wants to touch it.
The idea of any and all legal immigration being a net positive is something that has been deeply planted in the public conscience through leftist brainwashing and diversity promotion initiatives, typically starting in the public education system. If anything, the Ipsos poll finally proves this to be definitively true, with the most educated being the most supportive of immigration. Top-educated Canadians have the most positive view of immigration of anyone in the world. As a product of that system, I can personally vouch for the amount of multicultural and diversity peddling to which the average student is subjected in the absence of any counterpoint. This, despite the fact that the two founding factions of French and English Canadians haven’t managed to ever get along, even leading to a period of French nationalist terrorism, which has since been subdued by repeatedly buying off the French-Canadian province.
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Italy Wants NATO Probe Into Refugee Rescue ‘Refusal’
NATO denied calls for help, says Italy
(ANSA) — Rome, August 5 — Following the deaths of dozens of refugees aboard a stranded ship in Libyan waters, Italy formally asked NATO Friday to investigate why it did not intervene despite calls for help.
According to witnesses among the 374 who were rescued Thursday by the Italian coast guard, the ship had been floating aimlessly for six days after the engine broke down, leaving hundreds of passengers without food and water in crowded quarters. Italian authorities said they asked a NATO ship less than 30 miles from the stranded vessel to intervene sooner, but NATO allegedly refused, prompting Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini to request an internal investigation. “NATO always responds and intervenes in emergency situations, in compliance with international law,” said NATO spokesman David Taylor. “NATO ship commanders are well aware of these laws and act in accordance with the norms of SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea), which regulate the procedures to follow for rescues at sea”. Among those rescued, 50 were immediately treated for hypothermia and dehydration and five others were hospitalized for more serious conditions.
It is the second time this week that the Italian coast guard has rescued boats fleeing Libya and found dead bodies on board. On Monday, officials found 25 corpses aboard a ship packed with 271 African refugees from Libya rescued off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
Similar accusations of NATO inaction surfaced in late March when witnesses said that two NATO jets passed over a vessel stranded off the coast of Libya.
Of the 72 refugees on board, 61 eventually died after over two weeks at sea.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Work Begins on Greece-Turkey ‘Great Wall’
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, AUGUST 5 — Based on the example provided by the Great Wall of China, built by the Chinese emperors to stop raids from neighbouring countries, Mongolia in particular, Greece has quietly begun to build its own wall to stem the flow of immigration along the border with Turkey, explained reports today in several Greek dailies, including To Vima (The Tribune) and Kathimerini (The Daily). The government in Athens announced that it wants to open its plan to build the first 10km long wall in northeast Greece to public debate and the Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection announced its intention to discuss the technical aspects of the project, whose cost has been estimated at 5.5 million euros, until August 20. The intention of the Greek government, reports the press, is to build a concrete, steel and barbed wire barrier along the Evros River (Maric in Turkish), which marks the border between Greece and Turkey for many kilometres, and which enormous numbers of illegal immigrants travel across to enter into Greek territory before attempting to reach other European countries. The Greek wall, report the dailies, is expected to run for 150 km and include a 120km long, 30m wide, 7m deep water-filled trench, in addition to an actual wall. Until today little was known about the project, since it is considered to be a military operation and is therefore classified information. In early January, Greek Immigration Minister, Christos Papoutsis, announced that his country was preparing to close off its land borders with Turkey, the main entryway for illegal immigrants into Europe. “Greek society has exceeded its limits to accommodate illegal migrants. Greece cannot take it anymore. We are planning to build a barrier along the land borders to stop illegal immigration,” said the minister at the time, and, it seems as though he was serious.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
