Greece’s Inflation Eases to 1.4% in August
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, SEPTEMBER 8 — Greece’s inflation rate dropped for a second month in August as retailers slashed prices during the summer sales season.
The annual rate calculated using European Union methods fell to 1.4% from 2.1% in July, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) said as reported by daily Kathimerini. Economists expected a 2% reading, the median of five estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. Using Greek methods, the rate was 1.7%. Greece now has the third-lowest inflation rate in the euro region behind Slovenia and Ireland, less than a year after it had the region’s highest. Increased sales taxes introduced as a condition of the 110-billion-euro bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund pushed the rate up to 5.7% in September 2010. The EU and the IMF forecast Greek inflation will average 2.9% this year, compared with 4.7% in 2010, according to the fourth review of Greece’s progress in meeting the bailout conditions.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Cabinet to Consider New Tax on ‘Super Rich’
High-income earners to pay 3%, VAT increase
(ANSA) — Rome, September 6 — The Italian cabinet was meeting in Rome late Tuesday to consider a new tax on high income earners and other changes to the government’s 45-billion-euro austerity package.
A statement released by Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s office confirmed the meeting, which would look at a 3% tax on those who earn more than 500,000 euros and raising the country’s VAT by 1% to 21% in a bid to balance the budget by 2013.
The cabinet was also expected to consider the measures which also include raising the retirement age of women in the private sector from 2014. Cabinet was to endorse a parliamentary confidence vote on the government’s austerity package which could face a vote in the Senate on Wednesday.
The opposition Democratic Party’ leader in the Senate, Anna Finocchiaro, said the time needed to approve the package would depend on the government.
“The government launched the decree on August 11 and today, September 6, the government was ready to present the fifth version of the package,” she said.
“The time needed to approve it depends exclusively on the government because we have done everything expected by a responsible party”. The government’s proposed changes failed to reassure investors as Milan stocks posted the worst results in Europe on Tuesday.
While European markets reduced their losses, Milan stocks fell 1.98% to close at 14,049 points, while Paris and Frankfurt were down 1.6%.
The 10-year spread between Italian bonds and the German bund were still at a very high 365 points late Tuesday after the government announced its latest measures. “The markets are waiting for specific, definitive measures and are still suspicious about the continual changes, cuts and corrections to the budget package seen in the past few weeks, those that are reducing the rigour,” said one market trader.
“Then the negative day in international markets does not help”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Napolitano — Austerity Package Much Appreciated Within EU
(AGI) Rome — President Napolitano said the austerity package is necessary, urgent, and about to be finally approved by Parliament. Leaving the Palermo headquarters of the Society for the History of the Sicilian homeland, he added that the package is “very much appreciated within the EU.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Jim Rogers: Swiss Central Bank Move Huge Mistake
The Swiss central bank’s decision to set a limit on how much the Swiss franc can appreciate against the euro is “a huge mistake,” investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC.com on Wednesday.
The move “will work for a while, but the market will have more money in the end than the SNB,” Rogers, who was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, told CNBC.com. The Swiss central bank risks losing “a lot of money buying up lots of foreign currencies which they will eventually sell at a loss,” he explained. Another risk is that the central bank will “totally debase the Swiss franc trying to keep Switzerland ‘competitive’ which will then destroy the traditional Swiss financial industry,” Rogers said. “So this is a huge mistake for Switzerland since they are going to suffer more either way,” he added.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Housing Sales Plummet by 40% in Q2
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8 — Real estate sales in Spain continued to free fall in the second quarter, with 90,746 operations, equivalent to a 40.8% decline compared to the same period last year, according to figures released today by the Infrastructure Ministry.
Between January and June an overall 165,284 houses were sold compared to 260,240 in the same period in 2010, with a decline of 95,000. According to sources in the ministry, this is the worst six-month period since 2004 for the real estate sector. It was mainly new home sales that collapsed due to a flooding of the market by houses whose mortgages were foreclosed on by the banks and sold off second hand. New homes only accounted for 33.7% of sales in the first quarter, while in years past they represented a majority of the houses sold.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Switzerland Ties Itself to Euro Mast
It is clear we are living in a strange world when Switzerland, that most euro-skeptic of nations, has tied its fortunes to the success, in its current fragile form, of the euro zone common currency. The Swiss National Bank on Tuesday shocked the markets when it announced it was imposing, unilaterally and with immediate effect, a cap on the value of its currency against the euro, seeking to shield its economic competitiveness from the massive flows seeking safe haven amid doubts over the euro zone. This amounts to an extreme expression of confidence in the euro zone’s ability to sort itself out, because if it cannot this policy will fail expensively.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
10th Anniversary of 9/11: Counting the Cost of Political Opportunism
11th September 2001: on that fateful afternoon I was on a teacher training session in east London, in the UK. A short text from a friend appeared on my mobile: ‘New York Twin Towers on fire’. For a while I was in disbelief; within minutes a couple of other messages appeared on my screen. By the time I could comprehend what had happened I looked up and saw the pale faces of some of my colleagues — they had also received similar messages. The news spread and our individual shock turned into collective panic. The session was suspended and we came home early: such was the impact of a 21st century terror act. I was glued to the TV for the rest of the day.
9/11, as it has become known since then, changed the world. It was a colossal act of terror and nihilism. The tragedy quickly turned into an outpouring of sympathy from across the world. We were in sympathy with America and America’s citizens. We were stunned, too, coming to terms with the reality of such a heinous act.
The sole superpower was expected to react with calm and dignity. But within weeks the advocates of Neoconservatism (‘neocons’) — who we now know had an ideology predicated on refashioning parts of the world order — persuaded the Bush administration to lash out. America invaded Afghanistan. And within 18 months an Arab country that was totally unrelated with the 9/11 attacks experienced America’s ‘shock and awe’ — despite world-wide protests and UN disapproval. The US Imperial Hubris, with two sovereign countries under its boots and the deaths of unknown numbers of faceless people, rose to its peak with President Bush’s historic ‘Mission Accomplished speech’ on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003. It gave the chilling message that America, as the ultimate arbiter in world affairs, was ready to unleash its military might on any country that ‘that provoked her ire’. The outpour of sympathy gradually turned into fear and a gathering hatred of America in the Muslim world.
The consequences of the 9/11 tragedy with its short-termist War on Terror policy by the Bush administration, eagerly supported by the Blair government in Britain, became a global disaster. Overnight the world was forced into two camps by President Bush’s ‘You are either with us or against us’ speech. For an overwhelming proportion of the world’s 1.5 billion or so Muslims this seemed a War on Islam. With the American war cost in Afghanistan and Iraq reaching close to $4 trillion, combined with a US debt of around $14 trillion dollars today, the economic tectonic plates are silently shifting towards the East. Some fear that the political tectonic plates may follow suit in a generation’s time.
The neocon movement in America opened up a post-7/7 front in Britain among several prominent journalists, columnists, think tanks and allied blogs. After the US victory in the Cold War and the fall of Communism in 1989, these over-enthusiastic conservative thinkers sought to find a new challenger to American hegemony. What they found was ‘Islamism’: an ill-defined, catch-all term that could mean anything from Islamically-inspired political activism to violent extremism in the name of Islam. This redirection in policy had tremendous political and social impact across the Atlantic. Suddenly, politically- and socially-active Muslims were seen as ‘Islamists’. They may as well have said ‘new Communists’. A new ‘cold war’ against ‘Islamism’ gradually took shape.
Under the neocon spell the US administration abandoned the Geneva Conventions in its War on Terror.. The images of shackled prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the abuse of prisoners in Bagram Airbase and at Abu Ghraib filled the airspace. Extraordinary rendition and outsourcing of torture to criminal regimes encouraged many autocratic rulers to violently suppress their political opponents — all in the name of defeating terrorism. Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry were on the rise.
In Britain, some columnists and bloggers chose to conveniently ignoring the advocates of racism and fascism, such as the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL), and started highlighting Muslim ‘otherness’ with unseemly vigour. Simultaneously, many of our politicians decided to downplay the extent of anti-Muslim hatred because (according to some) it might have deflected attention from ‘Islamism’ — that catch-all term which they saw as the main problem facing the UK. Almost all mainstream Muslim organisations were put in the dock. Fear of Islamism was used to hide other real issues: job losses, economic insecurity, the profligacy of bankers, and so forth. As ever, these proponents of Muslim ‘otherness’ looked for simple answers and someone to blame. The diversion created by 9/11 therefore unlocked the doors to dangerous forces which created further division within our societies.
This stifling and noxious ‘anti-Islamist’ narrative gained momentum after the suicide bombings in London in July 2005 (‘7/7’). A strong wind was blowing against Muslims: they were indiscriminately accused and tried by the media of engaging in ‘political Islam’ or, worse, ‘Islamo-fascism’. This McCarthy-esque witch hunt succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear amongst the Muslim population. Even ‘moderates’ were treated with suspicion — they could be viewed as part of the ‘conveyor belt towards extremism’.
A discredited counter-subversion policy from the Cold War era was adopted by several right-wing think tanks close to the current coalition government. A recent report by pressure group Spinwatch examined two of these think tanks, Policy Exchange (PEx) and the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), whose main purpose seemed to be to condemn peaceful Muslims. The anti-Muslim brigade took advantage of successive governments’ lacklustre responses; they had a free ride over the Muslim community. Many Muslims, conversely, felt under siege.. London Metropolitan University recently carried out a comparative study on the Irish and Muslim communities, showing how (at different times) both were widely viewed as suspect communities.
Some powerful European leaders tried to cash in on this growing anti-Muslim atmosphere. In the US, a Congressional hearing on ‘Muslim radicalisation’ raised the anti-Muslim temperature higher. The controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders built a political career forged around Islamophobic slogans. Some ‘experts’ on both sides of the Atlantic wrote voluminous books to prove how bad Muslims were and how Muslim citizens were trying to ‘take over’ the West through the backdoor and turn the clock of history back to 7th century Arabia. Even the absurd Eurabia and Londonistan theories were getting an audience!
Fortunately, not everyone was convinced by this hyperbole. Yet it took the cold-blooded mass murder of 77 mainly-young Norwegians by far-right Christian extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, in Norway on 22 July this year to shake the conscience of Europe’s political classes. In their enthusiasm for demonising Muslims they had inadvertently allowed (and encouraged, some might argue) other monsters to grow. The slayings in Norway were a horrendous wake-up call to far-right violence and ideology. Inspired by the rhetoric of politicians such Wilders and groups like the English Defence League in Britain, we got a glimpse into a savage dark-age that lurked barely-restrained around the corner.
The inspirational examples by some Muslims to contain the situation during widely-reported English riots during early August also opened the eyes of many. Local Muslim worshippers in east London calmly and responsibly saw off rioters from the streets of Whitechapel. Tariq Jahan, the father of a young Muslim man murdered trying to protect his community in Birmingham, received widespread praise for his dignity and call for restraint in the wake of his son’s death. Some are now beginning to accept that the treatment of Muslims has indeed been embarrassing. A sense of objectivity and balance seems to be gradually returning. In 2002 the Muslim Council of Britain published an insightful book, The Quest for Sanity: Reflections on September 11 and the Aftermath, with the following observations:
“The atrocities committed on September 11 were base deeds. The aftermath has been further baseness. The US-led war on terror has been used to set a global course of action with little respect for human life, national sovereignty and the rule of law. …. Terrorism has no religion. This is true whether its perpetrators are individuals, groups or states. It is time that the international community frees itself from the calculus of terror and directs all its energy towards building a just and terror-free world.”
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 the world has come to realise that ‘a just and terror-free world’ can only be built on respect for fellow human beings and justice, not on political opportunism. Let us all heed that call.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is a parenting consultant. He is a founding member of The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) that has grown into Citizens UK, Chairman of the East London Mosque Trust, and former Secretary General Muslim Council of Britain (2006-10).
[JP note: Contrary to what the good Dr Bari might believe, Islam is indeed a religion of terror. Terror is the glue which holds Islam in place — without it, Muslims would lack purpose, piety, and, most importantedly, self-aggrandizing enthusiasm. Islam is the means to an end of perpetual terror, or, in other words, it is the spread of terror for its own sake.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
A Stale Speech
by Victor Davis Hanson
Obama must be in a time warp — he thinks the content of his speech is new, or can be made new by more soaring cadences. It’s almost as if he is oblivious to the fact that, before calling for nearly half a trillion dollars in government borrowing to jumpstart temporary job creation tonight, he already oversaw a failed $800 million stimulus, “shovel-ready” jobs that were later admitted to be not so shovel-ready, “millions of green jobs” talk leading to sweetheart loans to now-bankrupt crony companies, nearly $5 trillion in new borrowing, and massive new financial and environmental regulations. Been there, done that.
And is the president unable to give a speech without trotting out the tired canard of “millionaires and billionaires” and the omnipresent Warren Buffett and his proverbial secretary for the nth time — especially given that Buffett’s companies have had tax troubles with the IRS and his fortune will pass without inheritance taxes? Can he refrain from equating legitimate worry over new hyper-regulation with a desire to expose kids to mercury or be shortchanged by the health-care industry? Does he really believe that the majority of Americans who oppose his statism really wish to “just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own”?
Why all that straw-man caricaturing ad nauseam, when after three years it is well beyond old and stale and, what’s more, Obama has a desperate need now for bipartisan support? Is Obama just politically dense, or he is so inured to the Chicago us/them confrontational mentality that he knows no politics other than polarization, even when appealing for help?
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: Thank You: America, For the Golden Age of Islam
It is something to have gone 10 years without an Islamic attack of similarly gigantic proportions to those of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not enough. That’s because the decade we look back on is marked by a specifically Islamic brand of security from jihad. It was a security bought by the Bush and Obama administrations’ policies of appeasement based in apology for, and irrational denial of, Islam’s war doctrine, its anti-liberty laws and its non-Western customs. As a result of this policy of appeasement — submission — we now stand poised on the brink of a golden age.
Tragically for freedom of speech, conscience and equality before the law, however, it is an Islamic golden age. It’s not just the post-9/11 rush into Western society of Islamic tenets and traditions on everything from law to finance to diet that has heralded this golden age, although that’s part of it. More important is the fact that our central institutions have actively primed themselves for it, having absorbed and implemented the central codes of Islam in the years since the 9/11 attacks, exactly as the jihadists hoped and schemed.
Take the U.S. military, symbol plus enforcer of American security.
In Afghanistan, our forces are now “trained on the sanctity of the holy book (the Koran) and go to significant steps to protect it,” as the official International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) website reported last year.
Are they similarly trained to take “significant steps” to “protect” other books? Hardly. It’s reckless and irresponsible to demand that troops make the protection of any book a priority in a war zone. But it’s not merely the case that U.S. troops have become protectors of the Koran in the decade following 9/11. “Never talk badly about the Qu’ran or its contents,” ISAF ordered troops earlier this year. Did the Pentagon restrict language about “Mein Kampf” or the “Communist Manifesto”? They, too, were blueprints for world conquest that the United States opposed. Of course not. But the Koran is different. It is protected by Islamic law, and that’s enough for the Pentagon. Not incidentally, ISAF further cautioned troops to direct suspects to remove any Korans from the vicinity before troops conduct a search — no doubt for the unstated fear that infidel troops might defile the protected book.
None may “touch the Qu’ran except in the state of ritual purity,” the Islamic law book Reliance of the Traveller declares. And “ritual purity,” naturally, is a state a non-Muslim can never, ever achieve under Islam.
Since when did Uncle Sam incorporate Islamic law into military protocols?
Since 9/11…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Raids ‘Connected’ Energy Firm Solyndra
The FBI has confirmed to ABC News that federal agents are conducting a search this morning at the offices of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt California solar power company that received $535 million in federal loans under a green energy program touted by President Obama…
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Post-9/11 Special Powers, Budgets, Agencies Seen Needed Far Into Future
By Eli Lake
The national security state that has expanded in response to the Sept. 11 attacks will not shrink in the near future, even though al Qaeda’s top leadership has been decimated and the U.S. government faces extreme budget pressures.
When asked last month if the U.S. government could relinquish some of the extraordinary powers or shrink some of the budgets and bureaucracies created to protect Americans since 9/11, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano gave a one-word response: “No.”
Speaking at a homeland security seminar sponsored by the National Governors Association, Ms. Napolitano elicited nervous laughter with her response. She went on to say that her department defends against multiple threats beyond the ideology of al Qaeda.
“Realistically, we have to say environments change over time, and 9/11 was the signal of a change in the environment that we have to deal with, I think, throughout the foreseeable future,” Ms. Napolitano said.
“What is that change? That change is the threat against the United States motivated by various ideologies, terrorists, other ideologies as well, aimed at trying to commit a crime motivated by that ideology that will have an undue impact on our society, either economically and/or by the number of individuals affected.
“We at the department, we run this assuming that is the environment,” she said. “Then the question is, what are the best things we can do, consistent with American values and privacy.”
Since 9/11, the federal government has created a counterterrorism state unto itself:…
| — Hat tip: DS | [Return to headlines] |
US Government Openly Admits Arming Mexican Drug Gangs With 30,000 Firearms — But Why?
It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going.
This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called “ATF”) under orders from Washington. The program was called “Fast and Furious.”…
Among the firearms sold to the Mexican drug gangs were AK-47s, thousands of pistols and, remarkably, .50-caliber rifles which are typically used to disable vehicles or carry out sniper-based assassinations at extremely long ranges (up to two miles). The mainstream media is now reporting that these weapons are turning up in violent crimes being committed in Phoenix, Arizona. As an ABC news affiliate reports:
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Diplomats Who Are Accidentally Paid Too Much Are Allowed to Keep the Money
European Union diplomats who are accidentally paid too much are allowed to keep the money, it has been revealed.
Recovering all sums owed by those working for Catherine Ashton’s European External Action Service would be a ‘great disincentive’ for recruitment and would be ‘contrary to the principle of legal certainty’, says the European Commission.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamist Sleeper Cells Proliferating in Germany
by Soeren Kern
The number of potential Islamic terrorists currently living in Germany has jumped to around 1,000, according to new information provided by the German Interior Ministry.
Many of these home-grown Islamic radicals are apparently socially alienated Muslim youths who are being inflamed by German-language Islamist propaganda that promotes hatred of the West. In some cases, the extremists are being encouraged to join sleeper cells and to one day “awaken” and commit terrorist attacks in Germany and elsewhere.
In a September 4 interview with Bild, Germany’s largest-circulation newspaper, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said: “We have almost 1,000 people who could be described as possible Islamist terrorists. Of these, 128 are highly dangerous, that is to say, they are known to be capable of committing serious crimes, including terrorist attacks.”
Friedrich said that around 20 of these had received training in camps in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan that are associated with terrorist groups. He said that these individuals are at least partly under surveillance by Germany’s security services.
Although the death of Osama bin Laden has damaged the al-Qaeda terrorist network, the group still represents a threat, Friedrich said. Nevertheless, “the greatest danger today is rather individual offenders. They are difficult to detect,” he said.
The head of the German Police Union (DPolG), Rainer Wendt, told the Bild newspaper on September 5 that he was concerned about the presence of clandestine Islamic sleeper cells made up of Muslim immigrants and converts in Germany. He has called for the recruitment of undercover agents to infiltrate the Islamic environment. It is the “only way to monitor the scene,” Wendt said.
“Radical Islamists live everywhere and nowhere in Germany. One cannot rule out that that nice young man from next door, who brings grandma her fresh bread every morning, is not in fact an Islamic sleeper and terrorist,” Wendt warned.
According to Germany’s Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the domestic intelligence agency, there currently are an estimated 29 Islamist groups in Germany with 34,720 members or supporters who pose a major threat to homeland security. Many of them want to establish a “Koran-state” in Germany because they believe Islamic Sharia law is a divine ordinance that is to replace all other legal systems.
[…]
Friedrich and Wendt were speaking after the August 31 opening in Germany of the trial of a 21-year-old man from Kosovo who said he was acting alone under the influence of Islamist propaganda when he shot and killed two American soldiers at the Frankfurt Airport who were heading to Afghanistan by way of Germany.
The March 2 attack was the first successful attack by a suspected Islamic extremist on German soil. It sparked fears about the danger of “lone wolf” terrorism carried out by a self-radicalized individual, unaffiliated with any organization and previously unknown to the authorities.
German prosecutors say Arid Uka was radicalized by Islamist propaganda he saw on the Internet trying to incite Jihad. They believe he acted alone and did not belong to a terrorist network.
Germany’s indigenous militant scene has been steadily growing on the fringes of Muslim communities in the country. Populist imams are using online videos and discussion forums to spread Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of revivalist Islam with roots in Saudi Arabia that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by forcibly re-establishing an Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe.
The surge in online Islamist propaganda, much of which warns Muslims that they are not to integrate into German society, comes as immigration from Muslim countries continues to surge. With an estimated 4.3 million Muslims, Germany has Western Europe’s second-biggest Islamic population after France.
Whereas much of the Islamist propaganda circulating in Germany once originated in places like North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region known for al-Qaeda and Taliban activity, the Islamist movement in Germany is now being fuelled by Muslim immigrants from Turkey, Kurdistan, North Africa, Central Asia as well as West Africa.
One man German officials say is a major security risk is Denis Mamadou Cuspert, a former street rapper of Ghanaian origin. Cuspert, who converted to Islam sometime in 2009, has been accused of inciting violence and unrest through inflammatory videos and fiery speeches that praise terrorists and attack the West.
Some of the Islamists are Germans who recently converted to Islam. This would include former boxer Pierre Vogel, who converted to Islam and studied in Saudi Arabia. He is now an Islamic preacher who rails against Muslim integration into German society.
Many of the German converts to Islam are socially disaffected drop-outs from school and/or ex-convicts, and radical Islam is giving them respectability, according to German security services.
The BfV office in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has analyzed the lives of some 130 Muslim converts living in that region. In their analysis, the BfV concludes that they are very often “unstable characters with abnormalities in the course of socialization.” The majority are male and between 20 and 30 years old. About 25% of this group is unemployed. About 60% have committed crimes, before or after their conversion. In about 15% there is an affinity for violence, according to the BfV.
[…]
| [Return to headlines] |
It Doesn’t Add Up: We’re Even Worse at Maths Than Albania as UK Schools Rank 43rd in the World
Britain is languishing behind Albania in a league table for maths and science education, according to an authoritative international study.
A report by the World Economic Forum has ranked UK schools 43rd in the world — behind countries such as Iran, Trinidad and Tobago and Lithuania.
The findings are a damning indictment of Tony Blair’s pledge to prioritise ‘education, education, education’ and come after education spending doubled from £35.8billion to £71billion under Labour.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi to be Questioned in Extortion Probe
Prosecutors to meet premier at Rome office
(ANSA) — Rome, September 8 — Premier Silvio Berlusconi will be questioned by Naples prosecutors in Rome next week as part of their investigation into whether he was the target of extortion over his alleged use of prostitutes.
Chief prosecutor Giovandomenico Lepore and several other prosecutors will meet the prime minister at his office at Palazzo Chigi in Rome on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, prosecutors on Thursday were for the second time due to interrogate entrepreneur Gianpaolo Tarantini, one of three people accused of blackmailing the prime minister, at Poggioreale prison in Naples.
Tarantini,34, and his wife Angela Devenuto were arrested by police in Rome last week for alleged extortion of Berlusconi.
A third person, Valter Lavitola, director and editor of the online daily Avanti!, is also wanted for questioning over the extortion but is believed to be abroad.
Tarantini has previously admitted paying women to spend the night at Berlusconi’s official residence in Rome.
He was also at the centre of a 2009 sex scandal involving escort Patrizia D’Addario, who released to the media tapes of conversations she claimed to have recorded before and after having sex with the prime minister.
According to prosecutors, Berlusconi paid Tarantini and Lavitola up to 850,000 euros.
Three Naples prosecutors have been conducting an inquiry into claims that were first published in the weekly Panorama on August 24.
Acting on arrest warrants issued by a Naples judge, investigators from Digos, the police agency charged with fighting organised crime, detained Tarantini and his 34-year-old wife last week and transferred them to separate prisons in Naples.
The prime minister, who is on trial in Milan for allegedly paying for sex with an underage prostitute, last week denied that he had been the victim of extortion.
Berlusconi dismissed the Naples investigation as “pure fantasy”.
“I gave a hand to a family with children and I do it as it happens with a number of people,” Berlusconi said. “I do it because I can”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: PM ‘Told Blackmailer to Remain Abroad’, Says Weekly
‘Stay where you are’, Berlusconi allegedly said
(ANSA) — Rome, September 8 — Premier Silvio Berlusconi told one of the three people accused of blackmailing him to remain abroad to avoid prosecutors, an Italian left-leaning weekly has claimed.
Excerpts from the latest edition of L’Espresso, to be published on Friday, said that Valter Lavitola, the editor of an online magazine and Berlusconi confidant, telephoned him to seek his advice.
“Will I present myself to the magistrates?” he reportedly asked. Berlusconi is alleged to have told him to “Stay where you are”.
Bari businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini and his wife Angela Devenuto were arrested by police in Rome last week for alleged extortion of Berlusconi. Lavitola is also wanted for questioning over his role in blackmailing the premier over his alleged use of prostitutes.
According to the magazine Lavitola was in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, “to finish business” he was conducting for Finmeccanica, the Italian defence giant, when he learned of the widening investigation by Naples prosecutors.
When Lavitola spoke to Berlusconi, L’Espresso said the prime minister was aware of the Naples investigation and the arrest warrant that had been issued by judge Amelia Primavera. He picked up the telephone to call Berlusconi’s secretary Marinella Brambilla and after several attempts he was passed to Berlusconi. L’Espresso said.
Berlusoni reportedly defended his behaviour saying he simply wanted to help a family with children who found themselves in need.
“I have nothing to apologise for, I have done nothing illegal,” Berlusconi reportedly said.
Lavitola hurriedly organised a trip to Brazil instead of returning to Italy, L’Espresso said.
Tarantini has previously admitted paying women to spend the night at Berlusconi’s official residence in Rome.
He was also at the centre of a 2009 sex scandal involving escort Patrizia D’Addario, who released to the media tapes of conversations she claimed to have recorded before and after having sex with the prime minister.
According to prosecutors, Berlusconi paid Tarantini and Lavitola up to 850,000 euros.
Three Naples prosecutors have been conducting an inquiry into claims that were first published in the Berlusconi-owned weekly Panorama on August 24.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘It’s Too Dangerous to Meet My Constituents’: Labour MP Stuart Bell Tries to Justify Not Holding a Surgery for 14 Years
A veteran politician branded ‘Britain’s laziest MP’ said yesterday that he hasn’t held a surgery for his constituents for 14 years because he fears being attacked.
Sir Stuart Bell, 73, said that after a member of the public ‘attacked him twice’ during surgeries he decided to hold meetings only by appointment.
The Labour MP for Middlesbrough denied being idle after a newspaper investigation found that of 100 phone calls made to his office by reporters posing as constituents, not one was answered by his staff.
He believes it is ‘most assuredly’ more dangerous for MPs now than 14 years ago.
‘When I did hold surgeries I had to have a policeman there, and now it’s a different world,’ he said. ‘So you deal with constituents in a way that is effective and positive for them and they don’t complain, believe me.’
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Former Head of MI5 Says ‘Talk to Al-Qaeda’
The former head of MI5 has said it would be “foolish” not to talk to al-Qaeda in an attempt to start a peace process.
Dame Eliza Manningham Buller, who was deputy head of the service at the time of the September 11 attacks ten years ago, said she hoped that consideration was being given to a political solution. During a question and answer session after delivering the BBC’s Reith Lecture, to be broadcast next Tuesday, she said: “I believe you deal with terrorism not by closing your eyes to what the motivations of terrorists are. “It’s a monstrous crime, we recognise that the solution to terrorist crime ultimately, apart from prosecution, is addressing the roots of it, through politics and economics — military and intelligence and police work will not deal with terrorists.” She added: “The world is changing and there are causes for hope and out of those some of the causes of terrorism may be diminished.” Asked to whom you talk in al-Qaeda and what you talk to them about, she said: “Those are the key questions. I don’t know the answer to them. I hope, I don’t know, that thinking the answers to those questions is something that is currently happening. “People I hope in the American intelligence world and in our own are thinking exactly who to talk to, how to talk to them and what we might discuss. It’s obviously incredibly early and difficult — how do you deal with some totalitarian group? But to say that you’re never going to speak to them or never try to, I think that’s foolish.”
But Lady Manningham-Buller told the invited audience at Broadcasting House in London: “We are obviously a great deal away from anything you can call negotiation, even if that were possible, but to think about these questions and to make effort to try and have those conversations must be a start.” She added: “An American politician who will remain nameless said to me: ‘We are going to win and we are going to get all of them.’ Well, how?” The former director general of MI5 said that, although “utterly different”, Northern Ireland represented hope that “peace between hostile factions is possible.” She finished her lecture by saying: “Maybe just maybe the death of bin Laden, the excitement of the Arab Spring, the possibility of a new and enlightened generation of Muslim leaders, may mean we see less al-Qaeda related terrorism. The investment in intelligence and its success, the attrition the terrorists have suffered, the changing politics of the Middle East, all give some cause for optimism. I am also encouraged that most people refuse to give the victory to terrorists, either by being intimidated or by supporting the diminution of our civil liberties. Ten years on from 9/11 the fear the afflicted us then has faded, although it has certainly not disappeared.”
[JP note: See David Trimble, writing in 2007, on the potential dangers of using the Northern Ireland peace process as a model for resolving other conflicts www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/25/comment.politics ]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muhammad Abdul Bari at Huffington Post UK on ‘The Neocon Witch Hunt’
The Huffington Post UK website currently publishes the writings of far-left crank John ‘international Jewry’ Wight of Socialist Unity ‘fame’. Another of HuffPo UK’s writers is Muhammad Abdul Bari, former head of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). In an article posted today, Bari writes:
The neocon movement in America opened up a post-7/7 front in Britain among several prominent journalists, columnists, think tanks and allied blogs.. After the US victory in the Cold War and the fall of Communism in 1989, these over-enthusiastic conservative thinkers sought to find a new challenger to American hegemony. What they found was ‘Islamism’: an ill-defined, catch-all term that could mean anything from Islamically-inspired political activism to violent extremism in the name of Islam. This redirection in policy had tremendous political and social impact across the Atlantic. Suddenly, politically- and socially-active Muslims were seen as ‘Islamists’. They may as well have said ‘new Communists’. A new ‘cold war’ against ‘Islamism’ gradually took shape.
[…]
[Reader comment by in the mod gulag again on 8 September 2011, 9:47 pm]
“seeks to portray organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain as ‘Islamist’ in orientation, when really they are ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate’.”
Have you considered the possibility that these sorts of groups, Islamic groups such as the MCB, are Islam’s “mainstream” and “moderate” organizations and that it is we non-Muslims who are failing to comprehend that fact. Have any of you ever wondered why every single Islamic country on this planet would not be considered “mainstream” and “moderate” by any honest observer, “but what about Indonesia” I hear some cry, well yes, OK then, what about Indonesia. What about Malaysia, they too are a paragon of Islamic moderateness, aren’t they?
Mainstream Islam. Maybe HP should take a look inside that box. For instance what is “mainstream” Islam’s position on apostasy?
Gays?
Jews?
FGM?
Well you get my drift.
I doubt most Westerners have yet to reach the point were they are prepared to take a serious look at the views of mainstream Islam instead of simply assuming that since it’s a religion its intentions, fundamentally, must be “good”, in fact I would venture a guess that even suggesting such an approach would ensure instant condemnation from the “tut tut tut” fraternity.
Mainstream Islam isn’t “moderate” in any sense of the word, the $64000 question is can it be moderated? personally I very much doubt it, but hey, there’s no harm in trying, is there. The more you look, the more you find. If you don’t want to find then don’t look, just continue to accuse those who do of bigotry and islamophobia, I am absolutely positive that’ll solve the problem, yeah, no problem. And before some bug eyed leftist lunatic starts ranting on about how I am a racist and hate all Muslims or some such other nonsense, I will clarify that I am talking about “mainstream” Islam, that’s Islam the religion, not the people who consider themselves Muslims but who know virtually nothing about Islamic theology/ideology or history.
And no, I am not using the term “Islam” as a code word for “Muslim” as do the Jew haters who use “Zionists” as code for “Jews”, I am interested in examining the ideology of this religion called Islam. And I will not be cowed or made to lower my eyes simply because some people have a problem with looking too closely into the beliefs of certain groups human beings who they have decided need “protecting.”
Mainstream Islam is not moderate, sorry but that is plain for all to see, no matter how much mainstream Islam doesn’t want us to look, it is blindly obvious that “moderate” islam is not. Now although plenty of individual Muslims may be moderate in the western sense of the word, Islam is NOT. And that’s not “islamophobia” that is islamoreality.
[…]
[JP note: Great neologism — Islamoreality.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslims Feel So British, They’re Ready to Die for This Country
by Christina Odone
The riots brought out a nasty streak in thousands of looters — and in thousands of ordinary citizens too. They didn’t kick in a shop window or make off with a pair of Nikes. But they gave their xenophobia free rein. While the sikhs, Turks and Poles drew praise for their efforts in defending their neighbourhoods and restoring order, hostile little Englanders gave vent to their paranoia: immigrants can’t be patriots, was their mantra — and Muslims above all. (For a taste of these rants, have a look at the responses to my meek and mild article on immigrant patriots).
They’d do well to read the riveting study of Muslims and the Army, “Ties That Bind” which Policy Exchange has just published. Author Shiraz Maher discovers not only that almost 90 per cent of Muslims here feel British, but also that 79 per cent of low-skilled Muslims would consider joining the Army and just under 48 per cent of Muslim women said they would too.
This should put paid to theories about Muslims’ true allegiances. Just as for centuries Catholics were viewed as suspect because it was said their first allegiance was to the Pope, so today’s British Muslims are accused of being loyal first to the Ummah (the global Islamic fraternity) and then to their homeland. This suspicion (one shared by almost half of respondents in one poll cited) is fed by a strident minority who megaphone their hatred of the West. Their message is of a culture war between the faithful, pious Muslim and the decadent West. It makes for some sensationalist footage: protesters with their faces concealed by a keffiyeh, and placards that hurl abuse at the government. No wonder the media is eager to focus on this lot: it’s great telly. But in fact these loudmouths have taken over the role of the shop stewards during the 1970s trade union: they want to create a perception of us against them, because it is only in that hostile scenario that they are of use. With this mission in mind, they are busily sowing seeds of discord, urging young Muslims to turn their back on a career in the UK Forces (at present they employ only 600 Muslims); and even allowing extremists to issue a fatwa on any Muslim serving as a soldier in the British Army — as in the 2006 case of Parviz Khan, who was taped threatening to decapitate a fellow-Muslim who had signed up with the infidel British army.
Despite the swivel-eyed fanatics like Khan, most Muslims are ready to serve in Britain’s institutions, whether it be the Army, the police, or the civil service. That’s something to be encouraged. Muslims who have a stake in Britain won’t want to blow it up.
[JP note: This woman suffers from the mental delusion virus commonly known as Islamophilia.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Planning Reforms: Must England’s Beauty Perish, Mr Cameron?
by Roger Scruton
Julien Sorel, the hero of Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir, is at a certain stage obliged to visit England; he disparages the gross manners and crude conceptions of the people, finds nothing in the cities that would remotely interest a person of refined sensibility, and yet is taken aback by the “indescribable sweetness” of the countryside, which surpasses anything he had known in France. Visitors to England today report the same impression, and are often at a loss to understand how such a delicate fabric could have stayed in place despite industrialisation, a tenfold increase in population since the 18th century, bombardment by the Luftwaffe and the ever-accelerating impact of commerce. The impression is all the more striking, given that England is the most densely populated country in Europe, with 395 people for every square kilometre — more than three times the European average. To compare England as it is today with the Netherlands (which has 392 people for every square kilometre) is to find vivid proof that there is such a thing as successful environmental management.
What explains this? David Cameron has urged us to put civil society in place of the state, and to return to the people the initiative that central government has stolen from them. I applaud his intentions. But the Coalition’s proposals to reform the planning system, while ostensibly returning planning decisions to local communities, leave the default position not in the hands of the community, but in the hands of the developer — the big business from elsewhere, which has no interest in conserving a cherished habitat and which is no more the friend of civil society than was the dictatorial state.
The astonishing success of the English in conserving their environment illustrates the principle that the Government is now on the brink of betraying. Almost none of the work of rescuing our country from the effects of the Industrial Revolution was initiated by Parliament, and all of it depended on public-spirited citizens combining in defence of their homes. The Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, founded in 1865 by George Shaw-Lefevre, used old common-law rights to put a spoke in the wheel of Parliament and the developers on behalf of the woodlands around London.
The Guild of St George, founded by Ruskin in 1870, defended the face of England from the blemishes of industrialisation, and without its work the Lake District would not be the jewel that it was until the wind farms came. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded in 1877 by Philip Webb and William Morris, inspired the inhabitants of our cities to preserve their streets as settlements, places with souls.
The many civic initiatives culminated in 1895, with the foundation of the National Trust. The trust was not then and has not been since a government organisation, and to call it an NGO is to misrepresent its moral character. It is a civil association, granting privileges to members, of whom there are now 3.8 million, and devoted to setting an example of stewardship to the nation as a whole. Its members are not mobilised behind a campaign, but settled around a common interest, and they refresh that interest by visiting the places that the trust maintains. No longer a “little platoon”, it is nevertheless a civil institution, an expression of the deep spiritual bond between a people and a place, a bond that the English have always and rightly treated as sacred.
In 1899, Sir Ebenezer Howard formed the Garden City Association, in order to advocate a new kind of conurbation, free from the overcrowding and pollution of the Victorian slum. This institution was eventually to become the Town and Country Planning Association in 1941, joining forces with other civic initiatives to press for planning laws that would constrain development in both town and country. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England was launched in 1925, and now has branches all over the country, doing what it can in the cause of the “beauty, tranquillity and diversity of the countryside”.
The efforts of these associations were boosted by the historian GM Trevelyan, whose book Must England’s Beauty Perish?, published in 1926, awoke the reading public to the threat of urban sprawl. Trevelyan’s warning was amplified in 1928, when the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, founder of the model town of Portmeirion in Wales, published England and the Octopus, describing the danger of ribbon development. Williams-Ellis’s initiative was taken up by a host of writers and campaigners, and their work eventually led to the Town and Country Planning Act of 1946, establishing Green Belts, forbidding ribbon development and laying down nationwide constraints on building in rural areas.
There are few success stories in environmental politics. But the 1946 Act is one of them. And its success is due to one fact above all, which is that it removes the default position from the developer. It is a set of constraints, telling us what cannot be done, but leaving what is done to negotiation between the parties. It is not a perfect law, but it has commanded the assent of English people of all temperaments and political persuasions, because it has protected their country as a home.
The Government justifies its new proposals as instruments of economic growth. The 1946 Act has certainly been an obstacle to economic growth. When people refuse to pull down a cathedral for the sake of the coal beneath it, or insist on retaining a Georgian city when it could be rebuilt as a business park, they create obstacles to economic growth. Most forms of love are obstacles to economic growth. Thank God for obstacles to economic growth.
Roger Scruton’s latest book, ‘Green Philosophy’, will be published at the end of the year by Atlantic Books
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptians Demolish Israel Embassy Wall at Protest
CAIRO (Reuters) — Egyptian activists demolished a wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo Friday after thousands demonstrated at Tahrir Square to push for a timetable for transition to democracy and an end to military trials for civilians.
Activists who spearheaded an uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February have been piling pressure on the ruling military council to fix a date for parliamentary and presidential elections and to get rid of officials who served under Mubarak.
After Friday prayers, thousands had converged on Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests that toppled Mubarak, for what was billed as “Correcting the Path” protests.
Some of the demonstrators later marched to the other side of the Nile in Giza, where they used hammers and large metal rods to destroy the wall, erected this month by Egyptian authorities after daily protests over the killing of five Egyptian border guards in Sinai.
“This action shows the state of anger and frustration the young Egyptian revolutionaries feel against Israel especially after the recent Israeli attacks on the Egyptian borders that led to the killing of Egyptian soldiers,” Egyptian political analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah told Reuters.
Egyptian police stood aside as activists tore down the concrete wall to the cheers of hundreds of demonstrators.
“It is great that Egyptians say they will do something and actually do it,” Egyptian film director and activist Khaled Youssef said, standing among the protesters outside the embassy.
“They said they will demolish the wall and they did … the military council has to abide by the demands of the Egyptian people,” he said.
Israel Radio cut into its Sabbath programing with bulletins about the Cairo demonstrations. Citing Foreign Ministry sources, it said the ambassador was safely at his official residence and that Israel was in contact with Egypt, the United States and European powers about the incident.
“Police will not do anything to the protesters and they will be left unharmed to continue demolishing the wall,” one security source said.
Tensions between the two countries sparked a series of angry protests that reached a climax last month when a demonstrator scaled the building and removed the Israeli flag.
The five security men died during an Israeli operation against gunmen who had killed eight Israelis. Egypt threatened to withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv. Israel has stopped short of apologizing, saying it is still investigating how the Egyptian troops were killed.
Protesters also demonstrated outside the Interior Ministry, near Tahrir Square, where some hurled stones at the building…
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Egypt: Hundreds Assault Walls of Israeli Embassy
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, SEPTEMBER 9 — Hundreds of demonstrators are assaulting the outer walls that have been raised in recent days to protect the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Anti-riot police units deployed along the wall failed to contain the assault by demonstrators, who started to tear down various parts of the wall with hammers and ropes.
The demonstrators are chanting the slogan “out, out” in reference to the request to drive the Israeli ambassador out of the country and repeating the slogan used during the revolution to demand the removal of Mubarak.
Meanwhile the thousands of demonstrators who gathered together today in Tahrir square have moved to the front of the Justice building to demand the end of military trials against civilians and the magistracy’s independence.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptians Storm Israeli Embassy Building, Remove Flag
Hundreds of Egyptians partially tear down wall surrounding Israeli Embassy in Cairo, remove flag from building for second time this month. Over 200 Egyptians reportedly injured. Foreign Minister opens emergency situation room
Hundreds of Egyptian activists on Friday demolished parts of the wall erected around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo to protect it against demonstrators.
Some of the protesters then stormed the embassy premises and tore down the flag from the building for the second time in less than a month. Eyewitnesses reported that the protesters threw the flag on the street, prompting loud cheers from the mass crowds gathered outside the embassy.
Israeli officials stated that the Egyptian protesters broke into the building and managed to reach the floor on which the embassy is located. However, they have not managed to break in through the fortified doors.
Sources in Jerusalem called the incident a “grave event,” and noted that it is still unclear whether the Egyptian security officers who guard the building fled the scene.
The Foreign Ministry opened an emergency situation room and is constantly being updated by Egyptian and Israeli authorities in Cairo. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman arrived at the command post and is being briefed on the latest developments.
Israeli officials also stated that no embassy personnel have been injured. Al-Arabiya network reported that at least 200 Egyptians were injured during the clashes outside the embassy building.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Barack Obama and briefed him on the situation outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
Al-Jazeera network reported that the Egyptian army is using tear gas canisters in order to disperse the crowds.
According to eyewitnesses, crowds climbed the embassy security wall, pummeled it with hammers and tore away large sections of the barrier, which Egyptian authorities erected after daily protests last month sparked by tensions over the death of five Egyptian security personnel in Sinai which Cairo blamed on Israel.
The attempt to demolish the wall came after an Egyptian Facebook group called activists to gather outside the Israeli delegation in Cairo and “urinate on the wall.”
Egyptian groups also called activists to spray graffiti slogans against Israel on the wall and erect a memorial for the soldiers killed during the attack in south Israel.
Eyewitnesses said policemen and soldiers stood by as the activists hammered away at the roughly 2.5 metres (8-foot) high wall.
Egyptian officials said the wall was intended to protect residents of the high-rise embassy building, not the Israeli mission.
The move against the embassy wall came as around 4,000 Egyptian activists demonstrated in central Cairo demanding faster reforms, ending military trials for civilians.
Since Mubarak’s fall, calls have grown in Egypt for ending the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel, a pact that has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Gaddafi Troops Launch Counter-Offensive in Red Valley
(AGI) Umm Kunfis — Forces loyal to Gaddafi have launched a counter-offensive to reconquer the Red Valley, a strategic location on the road to Sirte taken on Thursday by the NTC’s troops. The news was reported by a France Presse journalist.
The Red Valley is 60 kilometres west of Sirte ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas Looks to Cairo for New Headquarters
Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar says Hamas may relocate its Damascus headquarters to Cairo due to the widespread unrest in Syria.
Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar announced Friday the terror movement is may relocate its headquarters from Damascus to Cairo. It is the first time a senior Hamas official openly admitted they were looking at a move.
“All the Palestinians in Syria are in distress, not just Hamas. There are many options in terms of the organization’s headquarters and Egypt is one of them,” he said.
Al-Zahar also addressed the possibility that other senior Hamas officials will return to Gaza and noted this depended on each of them personally.
“Gaza is open to all,” he stressed. “There are leaders who may return to Gaza and some may not. “
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: New Leaders Face ‘Difficult’ Unity Fight
Tripoli, 9 Sept. (AKI/Bloomberg) — Libya’s transitional prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, called for national reconciliation and unity, saying they may be “more difficult” to achieve than the fight that toppled Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
“There are two battles,” Jibril said after arriving in Tripoli two and a half weeks after opposition fighters entered the capital. Achieving unity will be “our biggest challenge,” he said.
“The first battle is against Gaddafi and his regime,” Jibril said at a news conference Thursday. “This will end by the capturing or the elimination of Gaddafi. However, the battle that is more difficult is against ourselves. How can we achieve reconciliation and achieve peace and security and agree on a constitution? We must not attack each other or push each other away.”
While Libya has been able to export little oil during the conflict, a 600,000-barrel crude shipment is being offered from the western port of Mellitah, according to three people with direct knowledge of the transaction.
In Washington, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said yesterday that the U.S. is working “very closely” with Libya’s transitional government to secure stockpiles of weapons, such as shoulder- fired anti-aircraft missiles.
“We are concerned about the potential for certain weapons to get into the hands of terrorists,” Brennan told reporters at a roundtable organized by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington.
The transitional leadership has been unable to proclaim a full victory because of its inability to find Gaddafi and enter the few remaining towns that are home to some still loyal to him.
Jibril’s comments draw attention to the long-standing tensions between western Libya, Gaddafi’s heartland, and eastern Libya, where years of simmering unrest fueled by political and economic resentments spawned the current uprising. In addition, the rebel coalition that has been bound together by hatred of a shared foe will be tested as leaders jockey for power and resources.
Some anti-Gaddafi fighters in units from coastal Misrata and from the Nafusa mountains accuse the transitional leadership of excluding them from the newly formed Military Council that is in charge of opposition military operations.
Mohammed Salem, a rebel fighter from the Nafusa mountains, who was part of the security detail for Jibril’s press conference, objected to what he said was employment of former Gaddafi soldiers for security duties.
“Maybe we need a new revolution,” he said.
Libyan broadcast media yesterday reported that as many as 10 grad rockets were fired by Gaddafi loyalist forces from the town of Beni Walid, 140 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, toward rebel fighters dug in around the town.
The NTC has called on the town this week to surrender to rebel forces. NTC president Mustafa Abdel Jalil set a one-week deadline ending 10 September for pro-Gaddafi forces to surrender control of Sirte, 400 kilometers east of Tripoli, the last coastal city still in the hands of the former regime.
The NTC is pursuing negotiations for the surrender of towns held by forces loyal to Qaddafi in order to avoid more bloodshed, said the council’s U.K. coordinator, Guma el-Gamaty.
The council is in talks with tribal elders for its forces to peacefully enter Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, and the loyalist- held towns of Bani Walid and Sabha, the site of a major military base south of the capital.
“The hitch is that the freedom fighters are keen not to shed any more blood,” el-Gamaty said Thursday. “The stalemate will not go on forever” and a “line will be drawn very soon,” he said.
Council forces Wedesday claimed control of the town of Waddan, 225 kilometers south of Sirte. The area around Waddan has been the focus of bombing by the NATO, which said 20 targets have been destroyed around the nearby town of Hun since 2 September.
More than six months of fighting to end Gaddafi’s 42-year rule have reduced oil output and disrupted power supplies in the country with Africa’s largest crude reserves. The petroleum industry’s infrastructure is mainly intact, el-Gamaty said.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked Interpol to issue a so-called red notice to arrest Gaddafi for the alleged crimes against humanity of murder and persecution, the ICC said Thursday.
The New-York based-Human Rights Watch, said documents it discovered in Tripoli on 3 September “reveal new details of the high level of cooperation among United States, United Kingdom, and Libyan intelligence agencies in the transfer of terrorism suspects.”
The documents describe U.S. offers to transfer or render, at least four detainees from the U.S. to Libyan custody, one with the active participation of the U.K., the group said in an e-mailed statement. The papers reveal U.S. requests for detention and interrogation of other suspects and U.K. requests for information about terrorism suspects; and the sharing of information about Libyans living in the U.K.
The files “underscore the need for the U.S. and U.K. to account for past abuses,” the organization said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Writer Matar: Democracy Will be Difficult
(ANSAmed) — MANTUA, SEPTEMBER 9 — “For Libya democracy will be a difficult road”. Hisham Matar, the Libyan writer, 41 who has been living in London since 1986, who appears at Mantua’s literary event, Festivaletteratura with his new novel, ‘Anatomia di una scomparsa’ [Anatomy of a Disappearance] (Einaudi), speaks of the future of his country of origin and of the hope that he can feel inside himself for the first time.
In this book, which follows ‘Nessuno al mondo’ [Nobody in the World], which was short-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, he tells of a son in search of his father in a similar way to how the writer saw his own father, a Libyan dissident, disappear inside Col Gaddafi’s prisons.
“It will be difficult for Libya, given the rudimental quality of its institutions, and for the decimation of all its cultural manifestations, which were banned by the regime. But the main thing is that change is coming from within Libya. There is no Bush figure with his troops arriving from outside”.
“Having removed a Gaddafi or a Mubarak is important, but this is not the real revolution. That is what comes now. The important thing is the awareness that in order to create a democratic society, it’s necessary to bring the relationship between the rich and the poor, development and justice into the discussion. It is a slow journey but I am very optimistic,” the writer says.
“For the first time,” Mr Matar continues, “we no longer have to deal with a popular dictator, father and son. Mubarak and Gaddafi are figures that have identified themselves in power with being the fathers of the nation itself. In their speeches they interchanged the word ‘I’ with Egypt, with Libya, and our ability to develop democracy is contained within all of this.
But the revolution has been done by the young people in low-waist jeans. For the first time I can truly see a freedom movement. We don’t know what the future will be: before we knew everything: what we had to read, what we had to say. This moment is a dream of coming-of-age”.
Of course, Mr Matar, who has relatives in Libya, does not hide that “Europe made the revolution against Gaddafi more difficult and it continues with its behaviour of riding any wave inside Libya to secure its own interests”. The current feeling among the people of Libya is “fear, suffering”. And in speaking of this new book, a personal affair parallels in a sense events inside his country. He does not condemn the silence and recognizes the power of the women in living the revolution.
“Women manage to express resistance in the most effective way: they represent a stronghold, a fortress,” he notes, and says we should not judge. “It is easy to do so in a hurry in this situation. Many Libyans have risked their own freedom and their lives. We mustn’t forget the risks the accompany expressing what you think and how difficult it is to be silent. There are also psychological dangers”. This revolution “is a kind of sacred moment and it merits respect”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Blockade Christian Village in Egypt, Demand Demolition of Church
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — Christians in the Upper Egyptian village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan province, have been forbidden to leave their homes or buy food until they remove the dome of St. George’s Church, which was rebuilt in its previous location. Village Muslims, backed by Muslim Salafists from neighboring villages, have threatened to demolish the church on Friday September 9 after prayers and use it as a mosque.
Despite the presence of security forces, Muslims have blocked the roads to the village, refusing passage of any Christians under any circumstance..
Yesterday the military governor in Aswan was contacted as Christians were starving in their homes. Security officers were sent and accompanied two Christian youths to buy food for the villagers. Muslims at the entrance of the village tried to stop the two security cars. “Failing that they threatened that this would be the last time,” said one villager. “It was heart-breaking to see the elderly running with the children to get a loaf of bread.”
On Friday September 2, a “reconciliation” meeting was held under the auspices of security between Muslims and Christians in which the Christians were forced to give in to the Muslim demands of the new church being stripped of crosses, bells and outside microphones (which churches never have).
“For the sake of peace we agreed to their demands,” said Father Makarios Boulos, “although the approved permit included crosses, bells and domes.”
On Tuesday evening, the same Muslims who attended the reconciliation meeting started to congregate near the church demanding the removal of the six small domes, which would, according to the church’s priest, make the whole church collapse if removed.
Muslims also demanded removal of any signs of it being a church. “It has to be called a ‘hospitality home,’“ Father Makarios said.
Confronted with escalating Muslim demands, the Bishop of Aswan, Anba Hedra, refused and warned those who incite sectarian violence, pointing to the fact that the church was rebuilt legally, and any concessions on the part of the church was done for the love for the country, which is passing through a difficult phase. The military council was asked to send troops to protect the village against Muslim violence.
Early this morning two army tanks arrived at the village, manned by officers. The military governor paid a visit to the village today together with area heads of security to solve this crisis.
They listened to the Muslims, who insisted the previous church was not a church, but a hospitality home. The Coptic side was represented by Father Makarious Boulos, Father Salib Elias of the Aswan Coptic Diocese and lawyers representing the church, who presented all valid documents.
According to Mr. Mikhail, a worker at St. George’s Church, who was interviewed by Coptic TV, the Muslims were not represented by any official.. “They said they are people who have control over the Muslim youths.”
Muslims chanted “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) and said they want the church razed. Mikhail said Security tried to calm them down but fearing the situation would turn for the worse, the meeting was recessed with the promise that “the army and security representatives will come to a solution acceptable to both parties before they leave the village.”
The authorities demanded that no construction be carried out or services held in the church, and Muslims to refrain from violence.
Muslims have been spreading news that the new church was never a church but a hospitality home. Father Makarios said that the church was always a church and has been protected by the police for twelve years and they already have a hospitality home one block away.
The church of St. George, built a century ago with soft bricks and palm tree branches, was so dilapidated the local council said it would be unsafe to carry out services there. The church was given permission by the Aswan Governor in June 2010 to rebuild, and the authorities had approved the design. In June 2011 the building of the church began and services were held.
Father Makarious said the village Muslims never showed any bad feelings when permission for the rebuilding the old church was issued. “The church was nearly complete when Muslims started to complain.”
Village Copts have warned that any attack on their church will lead to sectarian clashes. It was reported that some Coptic youth are inside the church guarding it against potential vandalism. Copts have also reported that while they are detained in their homes, Muslims have destroyed their crops.
Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination (EARD) reported the incident to the justice committee affiliated to the Prime Minister’s office. A statement issued by EARD today condemed the incitement to demolish the domes of St. George’s Church. The statement accused the Salafists of inciting the village Muslims against the Copts and criticized the “obvious indifference, amounting to collusion, of officials responsible for the security of the country.” The statement held the Military Council responsible should of any harm come to the Copts, their property or their church together with its bells, crosses and domes.
Dr. Naguib Gabriel, head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization (EUHRO), said this incident is one in a series of persecutions and attacks on Copts and their churches. “The Muslim Brotherhood announced immediately after the revolution that it is impossible to build any new church in Egypt, and churches which are demolished should never be rebuilt, as well as no crosses over churches or bells to be rung.”
Dr. Gabriel, who is a Copt, said the siege of the Copts in their homes is an “international crime” where a minority, just because of its religion, is imprisoned in homes and threatened with destruction of their religious buildings. “When we bring the Coptic case to the International community, no one should blame the Copts or accuse them of exaggeration when they highlight the Muslim intolerance in Egypt.”
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
How Obama “Misled” The Palestinians
by Khaled Abu Toameh
If anyone is to be held responsible for the Palestinian Authority leadership’s decision to ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines, it is US President Barack Obama and his Middle East advisors.
When and if violence erupts in the Palestinian territories after the UN vote later this month, it will be the direct result of Obama’s failed Middle East policy, which is likely to see a dramatic rise in anti-American sentiments not only among the Palestinians, but also throughout the Arab and Islamic world.
Through their statements over the past three years, the Americans gave the Palestinian Authority and many Arabs the impression that Washington is in favor of a Palestinian state at all costs.
The Obama Administration had also initially given the Palestinians the impression that the US was “on our side,” and would force Israel to accept all their demands, first and foremost a complete withdrawal to the pre-June, 1967 lines and the re-division of Jerusalem.
Palestinian leaders in Ramallah say that Obama has misled them twice in the past few years: first, when he gave them the impression that the US would support a Palestinian state even if it is not achieved through negotiations and, second, when he dropped his demand for a full cessation of settlement construction.
Obama is now being condemned by Palestinian Authority officials for being “biased in favor of Israel” and succumbing to the “powerful Jewish lobby” in the US.
[…]
The Palestinian Authority is even using a speech by Obama to the UN General Assembly last year in which he voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state before the end of this year.
In the speech, which is now being used as part of a media campaign, broadcast on Palestine radio to drum up support for the statehood initiative, Obama says: “When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel.”
At the end of the radio spot, Abbas states, quite sarcastically: “If he [Obama] said it, he must have meant it.”
Abbas’s aides say that the media campaign is intended to expose Obama’s “lies” and “hypocrisy.”
Many Palestinians are now planning anti-US demonstrations when and if Washington uses the veto to foil the statehood bid at the UN Security Council. The Palestinian Authority, which relies heavily on US funding, is also taking part in the campaign of incitement against the US.
“The same Obama who promised us a state by the end of 2011 is now threatening to veto it at the UN and impose financial sanctions on the Palestinian Authority,” said one aide. “Instead of supporting our move at the UN and exerting pressure on Israel to change its policies, Obama is sending us his envoys in an attempt to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state.”
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Israel Sees Turkish Escort for Aid Convoy as Serious Threat
(AGI) Jerusalem — Israel criticised Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, for committing naval support to a Gaza aid convoy. According to the Israeli Intelligence Services minister, Dan Meridor, these are “grave and serious” threats that, if actually carried out, “would violate international law.” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Israel to ‘Punish’ Turkey
Jerusalem fights back: Foreign Minister Lieberman formulates series of tough moves in response to Turkish steps; Israel to cooperate with Armenian lobby in US, may offer military aid to Kurdish rebels
Jerusalem to punish Erdogan: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has decided to adopt a series of harsh measures in response to Turkey’s latest anti-Israeli moves, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday. Senior Foreign Ministry officials convened Thursday to prepare for a meeting to be held Saturday with Lieberman on the matter. Saturday’s session will be dedicated to discussing Israel’s response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent threats and his decision to downgrade Ankara’s diplomatic ties with Jerusalem.
Following Thursday’s meeting, officials assessed that Turkey is not interested in an Israeli apology at this time and prefers to exploit the dispute with Jerusalem in order to promote Ankara’s status in the Muslim world. Lieberman therefore decided there was no point in seeking creative formulas for apologizing, instead choosing to focus Israel’s efforts on punishing Turkey. The Foreign Ministry has now decided to proceed with the formulation of a diplomatic and security “toolbox” to be used against the Turks. The first move would be to issue a travel warning urging all Israeli military veterans to refrain from traveling to Turkey. The advisory will be especially harsh as it will also urge Israelis to refrain from boarding connections in Turkey.
Another planned Israeli move is the facilitation of cooperation with Turkey’s historic rivals, the Armenians. During Lieberman’s visit to the United States this month, the foreign minister is expected to meet with leaders of the Armenian lobby and propose anti-Turkish cooperation in Congress. The implication of this move could be Israeli assistance in promoting international recognition of the Armenian holocaust, a measure that would gravely harm Turkey. Israel may also back Armenia in its dispute vis-à-vis Turkey over control of Mount Ararat.
Lieberman is also planning to set meetings with the heads of Kurdish rebel group PKK in Europe in order to “cooperate with them and boost them in every possible area.” In these meetings, the Kurds may ask Israel for military aid in the form of training and arms supplies, a move that would constitute a major anti-Turkish position should it materialize.. However, the violent clashes between Turkey and the Kurds only constitute one reason prompting accusations that Ankara is violating human rights. Hence, another means in Lieberman’s “toolbox” vis-à-vis Erdogan is a diplomatic campaign where Israeli missions worldwide will be instructed to join the fight and report illegal Turkish moves against minorities. The tough response formulated by Lieberman stems, among other things, from the foreign minister’s desire to make it clear to Erdogan that his anti-Israeli moves are not a “one-way street.”
Officials in Jerusalem also noted that Turkey’s global status at this time is not promising as it is, adding that Ankara is embroiled in tensions vis-à-vis NATO and Greece, while Erdogan’s relations with Syria and Iran are also not favorable. “We’ll exact a price from Erdogan that will prove to him that messing with Israel doesn’t pay off,” Lieberman said. “Turkey better treat us with respect and common decency.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: A More Muscular Approach
ISTANBUL-Turkey is showing signs of trading its vaunted “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy for a more muscular approach to its bid to become the leading power in the Middle East and North Africa. The shift, analysts and diplomats say, could trigger clashes with Israel and force Washington to choose between its closest allies in the region. In recent weeks the policy change has been on display as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to deploy his country’s navy in a dispute with Israel, approved a major aerial bombing campaign against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and pressed Egypt to let him make a politically provocative visit to Hamas-run Gaza. A Turkish cabinet minister also threatened that Turkey would use its navy to prevent Cyprus and Israel from developing offshore natural gas fields without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus.
On Monday, Mr. Erdogan departs for high-profile visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya-three core battlegrounds in the wave of popular revolutions that have swept the Arab world in the past year. Turkey isn’t shifting from soft power to hard, says Ibrahim Kalin, senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan, but is using “smart power” by turning to force where necessary. “The soft power is still there,” he says.
The Arab Spring forced Turkey to retool its foreign policy, analysts and diplomats say, after the revolutions rocked the regimes of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi-partners in Turkey’s “zero problems” approach-and for a time put Ankara in conflict with popular Arab sentiment. Mr.. Assad’s crackdown also drove Ankara into more direct competition with Syrian ally Iran, whose regime Turkey had courted assiduously. Last week, Ankara agreed to host the forward radar for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system directed at Iran.
While the Obama administration has expressed alarm over the confrontational approach to Israel, U.S. officials said they have been coordinating closely with Turkey in responding to political upheavals in Arab countries-and Washington views Ankara as central to any efforts to stabilize the Mideast. Turkish officials see the Arab upheavals of 2011 as playing to Turkey’s strengths as a model Muslim democracy. They say their “zero problems” policy remains in tune with the Arab Spring, because it shares the same values as the protesters.
The officials now feel ready to press those advantages with Mr. Erdogan’s trip next week. “We have made it clear we never had any kind of imperial intentions, but there is demand from the Arab street,” Mr. Kalin said in a phone interview on Thursday.
How much Turkish leadership Arab leaders will accept remains an open question. Mr. Erdogan pushed hard, for example, to secure Egyptian permission to cross its border into Gaza, where he would likely receive a hero’s welcome for his vocal opposition to Israeli policy. Egypt so far appears to have refused permission for the trip. So far there is little sign that Israel will bow to threats and meet Turkey’s demand that it should apologize for the deaths of nine people in the seizure of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010.
Nor does Cyprus appear to be rushing to compromise in reunification talks, while Syria’s President Assad has so far rebuffed pressure to reform from Ankara, as well as from other capitals. Israel sees Turkey’s campaign for an end to the blockade of Gaza as part of a strategic decision to gain prominence in the Muslim world at the expense of their old strategic alliance.In Iran, ex-justice minister Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi complained that Turkey is promoting “liberal Islam.” The policy shift doesn’t have universal appeal at home, either. Turkey’s main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu caused a storm of protest from government officials on Wednesday when he said Turkey’s foreign policy had turned from one of zero problems to “zero gains.”
For now though, surveys suggest Mr. Erdogan is the most popular leader in the Middle East. In Egypt, a new zeal for revolutionary change has cast Mr. Erdogan’s more confrontational attitude toward Israel and his moderate approach toward political Islam as a model for the democratic experiment. Activists are reportedly planning a welcome party to greet Mr. Erdogan’s arrival. Egyptian foreign-policy institutions are less likely to look to Turkish regional leadership with the same enthusiasm, said an official in Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs. “Egypt is not in the business of following,” he said. Mr. Erdogan, in a speech at Cairo University on Monday, will set out Turkey’s vision for the region’s future, one defined by “not occupation, not authoritarianism, not dictatorship,” said Mr. Kalin. Mr. Erdogan will also sign bilateral energy and other economic agreements, attend a high-level joint political-security council, meet representatives of the prodemocracy movement and address a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, according to Mr. Kalin.
Yet Mr. Erdogan’s outreach to the Arab world comes with a visibly tougher approach to foreign policy. That includes a series of warnings to Cyprus and Israel in recent days against drilling offshore for natural gas without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus. “That’s what naval forces are for,” Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s Europe minister told the Sunday’s Zaman newspaper. “In this game of brinksmanship accidents can happen, not least because parts of the Israeli government are prone to high risk-taking,” says Professor Ilter Turan, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. Mr. Turan sees the Turkish government’s more aggressive stance as part of a wider confidence that is the result of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s sweeping re-election in June.
In a sign of that confidence, Ankara-once careful to court the European Union-this summer threatened to freeze relations with the bloc over Cyprus reunification talks. Then, in August, Turkey’s once all-powerful generals effectively admitted defeat in a power struggle with the government; a new slate of top commanders appears to have accepted civilian control, boosting government confidence. It isn’t clear how far Turkey will go. For example, while Ankara has threatened to send out naval patrols, it has yet to do so. The assault on bases of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, is only the first in several years and hasn’t expanded into a land campaign.
According to Henri Barkey, Turkey specialist and professor of international relations at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, Turkey is using the latest conflict with Israel in “a bid to recover lost prestige in the Arab world” after the Arab Spring. At the same time, he said, Ankara is bidding for regional leadership and challenging the U.S. to choose between its two closest regional allies. “It’s a very high stakes approach, but they are also very confident,” he said.
-Joshua Mitnick in Tel Aviv, Matt Bradley in Cairo and Jay Solomon in Washington contributed to this article.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Karachi Killings Case Brings to Light Politicization of Police
Karachi, 9 Sept. (AKI) — A hearing by a special bench of the Pakistani Supreme Court on the killings in Karachi on Friday was adjourned till September 13 amid a deployment of paramilitary forces to quell the sectarian violence that has been blighted the city and claimed more than 300 lives since July., DawnNews reported.
During Friday’s hearing, Sindh Advocate General Fateh Malik told the court that 40 per cent of the police force had political affiliations. He added that 38 out of 44 cases have been registered.
Earlier, Chief Justice Iftikhar had criticised Sindh Advocate General, blaming him of not putting his heart into his job.
Speaking about problems faced by law enforcement agencies in the city, Inspector General Sindh Police Wajid Durrani said that cellular network companies and PTA did not cooperate with the police and often did not provide the police with the required data.
Adding to problems surrounding cellular phones and related networks, City Police Chief Saud Mirza said that mobile phones of Chinese brands were untraceable, and that customs authorities should be notified in this regard. Responding to which, Chief Justice Iftikhar said that thousands of shipping containers would not have been stolen if customs authorities were working properly.
Regarding other issues faced by police, Durrani requested the court to order the State Bank of Pakistan to cooperate with police.
Moreover, on the orders of Chief Justice Iftikhar, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on Friday submitted a report before the court on the violence in Karachi.
Earlier during Thursday’s proceedings, Chief Justice Iftikhar had said that political parties appeared to have become militant outfits.
“Allegations and counter-allegations are levelled by political parties against each other. Criminal gangs have been formed in the parties and people have been made hostage,” the chief justice observed during the hearing.
After the hearing, the Inter-Services Intelligence briefed the bench on the Karachi situation in the presence of representatives of other intelligence agencies. Due to the sensitive nature of the matter, members of the bench received the briefing in the committee room.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
US Military Plane Forced Down by North Korean Electronic Attack
SEOUL — A US military reconnaissance plane came under electronic attack from North Korea and had to make an emergency landing during a major military exercise in March, a political aide said Friday.
The aide said the plane suffered disturbance to its GPS system due to jamming signals from the North’s southwestern cities of Haeju and Kaesong as it was taking part in the annual US-South Korea drill, Key Resolve.
The incident was disclosed in a report that Seoul’s defense ministry submitted to Ahn Kyu-baek of parliament’s defense committee, the aide to Ahn said.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan: Thirteen Police Killed During Raid on ‘Bandits’
Khartoum, 9 Sept. (AKI) — Thirteen Sudanese police were killed and another 30 wounded during a blitz on “bandits” who were holding three hostages in Darfur, according to a police spokesman.
“Yesterday the police attempted to free three hostages in the hands of bandits, not those in the Darfur rebel movement,” Ahmed al-Tughani said during a Friday press conference.
The identity and the state of the hostages was not immediately revealed.
Sudanese newspaper Al-Ahdath said one of the hostages was Sudanese newspaper Al-Ahdath, a worker with the medical humanitarian aid group Emergency kidnapped on 14 August east of Jabel Marra in the war-torn region of region of Darfur.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Nurses Who Can’t Speak English Put Patients in Danger: Lord Winston’s Stark Warning Over NHS Workers From Romania and Bulgaria
Nurses from Eastern Europe put NHS patients in danger because they can’t speak proper English, one of Britain’s top doctors has warned.
Lord Winston said yesterday that he was particularly worried about those from Romania and Bulgaria who had limited communication skills ‘even in their own language’.
He told the House of Lords they had been trained in a ‘completely different way’ to British nurses, and were not used to speaking to doctors or their own patients.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
It is Western Muslims Who Will Beat Al-Qaeda
At no time in history have so many Muslims lived in the West, or so many been trying to migrate here. In Muslim countries, Western clothes, languages, films, sports — even McDonald’s and Starbucks — are visibly popular. Across the Middle East, demands are being made, and blood shed, for Western freedoms. Yet polls repeatedly show that, 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, there is still widespread hatred in those same countries towards America and Britain.
It was that hatred, fed by a narrative of perennial battle between Islam and the “Jews and Crusaders”, that led a small number of Arab men to attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre. Yet remarkably, 75 per cent of Egyptians — to pick one example — do not think their co-religionists were behind the atrocities. This denial has ugly consequences: a lack of the social and religious responsibility that would rein in the rhetoric that fosters terrorism; a failure to grasp its dangers; and a subsequent lack of co-operation with counter-terrorism efforts.
Despite the triumphalism of Leon Panetta, America’s new Defence Secretary, who spoke of the “strategic defeat” of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death, the reality was better understood by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organisation’s new leader. The Egyptian chided the Obama administration, asking why it refused to release pictures of bin Laden’s body, which would help quash the many conspiracy theories. He answered his own question with chilling accuracy: since bin Laden and his message remain popular in the “hearts of millions of Muslims”, such a move would only fuel anti-American sentiment. The US refused to produce the images not out of strength, but out of fear.
The truth is that, when it comes to the threat of Islamist terrorism, we cannot kill our way out of danger. Instead, we urgently need to rebut the idea of a schism between Islam and the West. And our most potent weapon is the 30 million or so Muslims in the West. The identity crisis they face, and the conclusions they reach, will be the most powerful answer to al-Qaeda’s claim that the West and Islam are at eternal war. The 9/11 attacks, and those on July 7, 2005, triggered a ferocious debate among Muslims in Europe and America about what it means to be a Westerner and a Muslim, and how these facets of our identity could be reconciled. For most, there is no contradiction — they prove that every day, comfortably living and working as both.
[….]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
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