Banks: 3 Trillion in Aid and Still Fragile
Le Figaro, 12 September 2011
“Euro crisis: banks under pressure,” headlines French daily Le Figaro. The idea of a Greek default being no longer taboo, “the Old Continent’s banks are under tremendous pressure on stock markets,” the paper says. Three French banks, BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Agricole are on the front line with holdings of about €37 billion of Italian public debt and holdings of nearly €6 billion of Greek public debt. Although Moody’s rating agency could downgrade their credit rating this week, “the question of whether the European banks holding State bonds from fragile Eurozone members are sufficiently capitalised is widely debated,” Le Figaro notes. As is whether or not the Member States should fly to their rescue.
But as Spanish daily Público says in a headline, three years after the failure of Lehman Brothers, “saving the banks has already cost €2,000 billion” in direct State aid, to which must be added the €3,000 billion (of which €500 billion by the European Central Bank) injected by central banks to add liquidity to the international financing system. “The current relapse proves that the government support given to the banks didn’t reactivate the economy,” the paper says, adding “What’s the use of saving the global banking system to the detriment of the taxpayer’s money?”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Beijing as the Euro’s Savior: Europe and China Bound by Mutual Fears
While a hard-up America can only admonish those involved in the euro crisis, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is offering to be the savior. Beijing’s price: more political credit and economic power. The EU must not be intimidated, however — its bargaining position is better than it may seem at first.
A few years ago, critics from the United States and Europe gave their trading partner China a less-than-favorable name: In an insulting bit of latent racism, they dubbed the emerging superpower a “yellow peril.” They warned of an army of Chinese minimum wage laborers, who would destroy entire industries in the West — and with them millions of jobs. They also warned of growing political influence from the East, which could ultimately even lead to an erosion of human rights.
In recent months, the critics have gone quiet — because they have far more important problems to worry about. Problems with many zeros on the end. At around $15.2 trillion (€11.1 trillion), the US government’s debt at the end of 2012 could be as high as the amount of money the country generates in a year.
In Europe, the debt prognosis is hardly any better. Italy: €1.9 trillion (approximately 120 percent of annual economic output); Greece: €472 billion (150 percent). The debt clocks of America and the euro countries are ticking relentlessly, and the slogan “Money rules the world” is being given a new meaning. In record time, it seems the current global balance of power is shifting — in favor of China.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Draws Up Survival Plans for Life After the Euro to Avoid Plunging Into Another Recession
Economists believe the EU would be unlikely to survive a disorderly break-up of the euro and say that even stronger economies could contract by as much as 25 per cent in the aftermath.
Amid a mounting sense of inevitability that Greece will default on its massive debts and be forced to leave the single currency, the U.S. urged EU governments to use ‘overwhelming force’ to address the debt crisis.
U.S. treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who will take the unusual step of attending a meeting of EU finance ministers in Poland tomorrow, admitted Washington had been ‘behind the curve’ in tackling its own financial crisis but urged Europe to act decisively.
Yesterday ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of two of France’s largest banks, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole, because of their exposure to Greek debt causing panic on French stock markets.
The ratings agency left France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, on review, saying its profitability and capital base gave it an adequate cushion to support its Greek, Portuguese and Irish exposure.
Last night, following emergency video-conference talks between France, Germany and Greece, the country’s three leaders insisted they were certain Greece’s future remained inside the eurozone.
But even the most die-hard pro-Europeans appear to accept that the eurozone is in terminal trouble.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, a long-time supporter of the single currency, asked in an interview with The Spectator whether he thought the euro could survive in its current form, replied: ‘No, I don’t.’
‘The most likely outcome is probably a core euro, a euro that has Germany, Austria, Finland and the Benelux countries in it — you’d have to have France in there for political reasons, even though economically they wouldn’t come up to the mark precisely — and maybe Sweden.
Martin Callanan, Conservative leader in Brussels, said: ‘The thing is in absolute crisis. Everybody is panicking over here.
‘And it seems to me the least worst option is to accept the inevitable for Greece to default on its debt, leave the euro and devalue its currency and then give it space to restructure’.
But he warned that Britain could be caught in the fallout as the eurozone collapses.
Andrew Lilico, chief economist at analysts Europe Economics, said the collapse of the euro would almost certainly mean the end of the EU.
‘The EU is most unlikely to continue without the euro,’ he said. ‘Sudden and disorderly collapse of the EU would induce a massive further phase of recession.’
He referred to predictions by the Swiss bank UBS of a 20-25 per cent contraction in gross domestic product for strong countries and 50 per cent for weak countries.
‘I happen to think that the UBS figures are somewhat emotional,’ he said. ‘But it would certainly involve a recession on a scale beyond modern experience or comprehension in a Western democracy.’
In an extraordinary sign of alarm across the globe, five big developing countries said they were ready to discuss bailing out Europe.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the ‘BRICS’ countries — are to meet at the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund summit next week to talk about providing emergency assistance.
The head of the World Bank said the global economy had entered a new ‘danger zone’ and that the ‘time for muddling through’ was over.
Robert Zoellick said: ‘Unless Europe, Japan, and the United States can face up to responsibilities they will drag down not only themselves but the global economy. They have procrastinated for too long on taking the difficult decisions, narrowing what choices are now left to a painful few.’
Treasury sources believe that Germany is now resigned to the eurozone breaking down in its current form and a new European ‘inner core’ being created. There is an increasing expectation that this will mean a new EU treaty.
Downing Street confirmed that officials were working on ‘contingency plans’ aimed at trying to insulate Britain from a full-blown crisis in the eurozone, but refused to speculate about what form they would take.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, in a speech on the economy, warned: ‘The economic context is much worse than before. Yes, facts have changed.’
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls warned of the danger of a ‘massive economic catastrophe’ on a larger scale than the banking crash in 2008.
‘The issue now isn’t really Greece, it is what is happening in Spain and in particular Italy,’ he said.
Polish finance minister Jacek Rostowski, who will chair a meeting of EU finance bosses tomorrow, said the EU could be destroyed by the debt crisis.
But the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, insisted that the answer to the growing threat to the euro was a more, and not less, integrated EU.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus: Russia to the Rescue With a 2.5 Bln Euro Loan
(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, SEPTEMBER 14 — Russia is in the process of negotiations on a loan for cash-strapped Cyprus, daily Financial Mirror writes quoting Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying to Interfax news agency. However, he did not say what sum is to be lent, even though previous reports said the Cyprus government was in talks for a 2-2.5 bln euro five-year loan either from or set up through the Russian government to refinance maturing debt and plug a deficit hole. Cyprus has around 1 bln euros in debt maturing in early 2012. Russia, one of the world’s top forex reserves holders, is among several countries that are likely to become lenders to Cyprus, but it is not holding bilateral talks about financial aid to any other euro zone country. Dailies Politis and Phileleftheros cited government sources as saying consultations were underway with Moscow but nothing had been finalised. Phileleftheros said the two sides were very close to a deal. Yields on Cypriot bonds on secondary markets have surged in recent months after repeated downgrades of the euro zone minnow by ratings agencies concerned over fiscal slippage, and exposure of the island’s banking sector to Greece. Current high yields have fanned speculation that the island could be a candidate for an EU bailout because its borrowing options seem limited. Politis said the interest rate on the loan, which would be for up to 5 years, would be 4.5%.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Emerging Nations Crafting Plan to Come to Europe’s Aid
In a stunning reversal of fortune, it has emerged that the so-called Brics nations, the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — who almost alone in the global economy have weathered the financial crisis sitting atop huge international reserves — are planning to come to Europe’s aid. Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega on Tuesday said that the Brics states are to hold a meeting on 22 September to discuss co-ordination of an EU rescue plan. “We will meet next week in Washington to decide how to help the European Union to get out of this situation,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
‘Europe in Danger’ Over Eurozone Crisis
EU leaders issued dire warnings on Wednesday that the 60-year-old European Union could be torn apart by the eurozone debt crisis, as the risk of Greece defaulting grows. Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said that the bloc which now counts 27 member states could be destroyed by the debt crisis dragging down the currency area. “Europe is in danger,” Rostowski told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. “If the eurozone breaks up, the European Union will not be able to survive, with all the consequences that one can imagine.” European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso agreed with the Polish minister.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Europe’s Banks Are Staring Into the Abyss
Where now for European banks? Sir Howard Davies, former chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, said on BBC Radio’s Today programme on Tuesday morning that he thought the French government was only days away from having to recapitalise the country’s banking system for a second time. It’s hard to disagree. The panic seems to have been temporarily stemmed by a statement from BNP Paribas to the effect that it wasn’t having the problems widely reported of finding dollar funding. There was also an emphatic denial of discussions over state intervention. But no-one is kidding themselves. Italy had to pay the highest spread since joining the euro to sell its bonds on Tuesday. There are growing fears over whether Europe’s largest borrower can stay the course.
The eurozone sovereign debt crisis is meanwhile exacting a devastating toll on the European banking system as a whole, the UK included. With their high exposure to eurozone debt, the problem is particularly acute for the French banking goliaths, BNP Paribas and Societe Generale. BNP alone has a eurozone sovereign debt exposure of some €75bn, amounting to roughly 6pc of total assets, including €14bn of Greek debt and €21bn of Italian government bonds. And that’s just BNP. The other two major French banks, SocGen and Credit Agricole each have exposures of a similar order of magnitude. Collectively, French banks have €56bn of Greek sovereign bonds alone. They’ve so far only written down this Greek debt by around 20pc, or in line with the restructuring agreed at the time of the last bailout.
That’s nowhere near mark to market. In the increasingly likely event of Germany kicking the Greeks out of the eurozone altogether, Greek debt will become close to worthless. Greece is already effectively a cash only economy. Most forms of credit has effectively dried up, the Greek banking system is finished, and capital controls to prevent what little money that remains from leaving the country are surely only a matter of time. European banking must prepare for the worst as far as Greece is concerned. As for the remainder of the eurozone sovereign exposure, there’s been no write down at all among banks on these bonds. If there’s a wider problem of default, the bad debt recognition has yet to come.
How come European banks have got so much of the stuff? Well ironically, this is one lending decision gone wrong that the banks cannot be blamed for. In response to the original banking crisis, regulators ordered banks substantially to increase their liquidity buffers. Government bonds are generally viewed as the most liquid and least risky assets to hold, so that’s where the money went. That these regulatory obligations also helped governments fund their ever growing deficits is by the by. In any case, nowhere is the law of unintended consequences more in evidence than in financial regulation. By seeking to address the last crisis with greater liquidity buffers, regulators succeeded only in sowing the seeds for the next one. A banking crisis that transmogrified into a sovereign debt crisis now shows every sign of transmogrifying back into another banking crisis.
Much of the selling pressure on European banks has come from the US. American investors and lenders look at Europe and see a Continent apparently incapable of gripping its problems. With the debt crisis approaching some kind of self evident denouement, there’s no-one in charge, only denial and blame. Policymakers seem more concerned with the irrelevancies of moral hazard than on finding solutions. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be laughable. Europe is fiddling while Rome burns.
When the banking crisis first broke, Europeans tended to regard it as wholly an Anglo-Saxon problem. There was some recapitalisation of French and German banks that went on in late 2008, early 2009, but it wasn’t nearly as big as in the UK and the US, and within a year, the French banks had in any case largely repaid all their state support. Problem over, it was thought. The same refusal to face up to underlying solvency concerns continues to dominate Contintental attitudes to the crisis. There is a collective sense of denial. BNP for one insists that it is in nothing like the same poor shape as many UK and US banks back in 2008. Profits are still buoyant, delinquency subdued, and capital more than adequate, BNP insists. Unfortunately, that’s not what the markets are saying.
Record quantities of European term funding are set to mature in the first quarter of next year. It’s not clear that the European Central Bank can cope with the sort of liquidity support that banks will require if markets refuse to refinance it. Europe’s financial and monetary system is falling apart. Since French banks are widely thought of as essentially arms of the French state, is there actually any point in recapitalising them? In France, the public subsidy issue which has so exercised the Vickers Commission on banking in the UK is taken for granted. Banks are understood to be underwritten by the state, and therefore require less capital and can hand the benefits of cheaper funding onto to their customers. Why not then just make this implicit support explicit?
You only need to take one look at what happened to Ireland to see why. In the early days of the crisis, the Irish government promised to stand behind all banking liabilities. By doing so, it ended up pushing the entire country into bankruptcy. No. France and Germany need to recapitalise their banks. The sooner they do so, the sooner the wider programme of debt forgiveness necessary to set the European economy back on a sustainable footing can begin.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Eurozone Crisis Could Rip EU Apart: Officials
AFP — The eurozone crisis could wreck the European Union, top EU officials warned on Wednesday as the leaders of Germany and France held talks with Greece to avoid a default and widespread chaos.
The pressure rose on all fronts with United States again expressing great concern, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner saying European states “now recognise they are going to have to do more” to resolve to the crisis.
Highlighting the threat to the global economy, Geithner is to exceptionally attend talks between European Union finance ministers and central bankers in Poland on Friday.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Fitch Threatens to Lower Spanish Debt Rating Outlook
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — Fitch Sovereign Credit Rating Director Douglas Renwick maintains that Fitch rating agency threatens to lower the rating outlook of the Spanish debt again, due to economic slow-down and failure by autonomous communities to meet the deficit targets. Bloomberg news agency reports. The future credit’s rating is “clearly expected to be on the downside”, Renwick stated. “The regional deficit performance adds to pressure on the central government to make the needed cuts “ Renwick added. In the first semester, the autonomous communities’ deficit amounted to 1,2% of the GDP, nearly reaching the maximum 1,3% limit set for the entire 2011. Currently, Fitch rates Spain AA+, although with a negative outlook due to weak economic growth, possible failure to meet deficit targets and increased use of public funds to rescue the bank sector. This could trigger further decrease of credit rating outlook.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Greeks Vow to Rebel Against New ‘Monster Tax’
The Greek government’s new real estate tax, a desperate bid to meet its budget goals and secure fresh foreign aid, will hit the population hard. Greeks have almost their entire wealth invested in property — and are more worried about the tax than about the prospect of a national insolvency or leaving the euro.
Jannis Foteinos doesn’t look especially wealthy. The 57-year-old pensioner is wearing sandals and socks and ordinary-looking glasses, and he doesn’t have that many teeth left. He lives in the working class Athens district of Aigaleo. But he owns two apartments, one 100 square meters in size, the other 130, and he is outraged at the new real estate tax introduced by the embattled Greek government on Sunday.
“We might as well shoot ourselves,” he said. The government aims to collect €2 billion ($2.72 billion) in extra revenue by imposing a tax averaging €4 per square meter for two years in a desperate bid to stave off insolvency by meeting its budget goals and thereby qualifying for the payout of further aid from the euro zone and International Monetary Fund.
For people like Foteinos, the tax entails another financial burden they can ill afford. The former shop owner recently had his monthly pension cut by €200. Now he could face a tax bill of some €1,000 in the coming days. Given that prospect, he doesn’t really care that politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition have started talking openly about the possibility that Greece will go bankrupt or even have to leave the euro zone.
In fact, he wouldn’t mind getting the drachma back. “Everyone here has had bad experiences with the euro,” he said. That may be a little exaggerated. But for many Greeks, the real estate tax poses a bigger problem than the currency. “I can’t judge whether the drachma would be better or worse,” says Irida Thanopolous, 40, who runs a small street café nearby. She is a little embarrassed to admit that she owns six apartments. She bought one with her husband, the other five were part of her dowry. That amounts to almost 500 square meters which will now be liable to tax. “That is totally tragicomic,” she said.
Many Investments in Property
Thanopolous doesn’t just have six apartments. She also has three jobs. She and her husband run a clothing store next to the café, and she spends her weekends typing up documents for a law firm. Together with the rental income, she has a net monthly income of €4,000. That isn’t much for a family with two teenage children, says Thanopolous. The apartments are meant to secure their standard of living.
Many Greeks did the same as Thanopolous. Because the drachma wasn’t a hard currency, they invested their savings in property. Some 85 percent of the people’s wealth is invested in houses and apartments. That explains the outraged response to the surprise tax. “Monster Tax,” left-wing newspaper Eleftherotypia screamed in a headline, while conservative Eleftehros Typos commented: “The citizens will go bankrupt.”
The country’s well-oiled protest machine has already been fired up. The influential Federation of Real Estate Owners said it would only accept the tax if no other extra contributions were levied. The trade union of state energy utility DEI, which is to collect the tax and switch off the power supply to owners who refuse to pay up, said it would block the process by refusing to issue electricity bills. The threat is credible because virtually all DEI employees are union members…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Chinese Visit for ‘Commercial Investment Not Bonds’
Tremonti and Bank of Italy met Chinese fund officials
(ANSA) — Rome, September 13 — A delegation from China’s largest sovereign fund came to Italy to evaluate commercial investments not purchase government bonds, sources have told ANSA.
Representatives from the China Investment Corporation met Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, Infrastructure Minister Altero Matteoli and other ministers as well as officials from the Bank of Italy in Rome on September 6.
The delegation is reported to have been led by Lou Jiwei, the head of CIC.
Speculation about whether the Chinese government would buy Italian bonds emerged on Tuesday as yields on Italian five-year bonds reached their highest level since the introduction of the euro a decade ago.
On Monday the Financial Times newspaper reported that Italy had asked China to make “significant” purchases of Italian debt.
Spreads on five-year bonds were at 447 points late morning, while the spread between the 10-year Italian bond against the German bund rose to 440 points in early trading, before dropping back to 397.3 points later in afternoon trading. It was the first time that the 10-year spread against the German bund had risen above 400 basis points since the beginning of August.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Loose Talk on Greek Default Could ‘Cost Billions’
Members of Angela Merkel’s government have been openly discussing the possibility of a Greek bankruptcy, a debate the chancellor sought to quash on Tuesday. The statements made by her junior coalition partners have unsettled markets and could “cost billions,” German commentators warn.
Against the background of increased pressure from the United States for a more resolute approach to the euro debt crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday moved to crush speculation within her government about a possible Greek default.
The future of Europe is tied to the common currency, Merkel told the Berlin public radio station RBB. “For that reason everyone needs to weigh their words very carefully,” she said. “What we don’t need is disquiet on the financial markets. The uncertainties are already great enough.”
Her comments were viewed as an indirect jab at Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler, who distanced himself from the government over the weekend with a newspaper commentary. In the piece for the conservative daily Die Welt, the leader of her junior coalition party, the increasingly unpopular pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), said “there can no longer be any taboos” in the debate over the euro crisis, including, if necessary, “an orderly bankruptcy of Greece, if the required instruments are available.”
Merkels comments also appeared to be aimed at Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer, who is the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party to the chancellor’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Seehofer has raised the possibility of a Greek exit from the euro zone in recent days.
Merkel’s attempt to silence grumbling over Greece within her coalition came ahead of a Tuesday meeting with Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen. Helsinki has demanded extra guarantees from Greece in exchange for its approval of a second bailout package, but Berlin rejects special rules that would create an additional burden for other euro-zone nations.
Pressure From Obama
With the next meeting of European finance ministers set for Friday in the Polish city of Wroclaw, US President Barack Obama urged EU leaders to prove their commitment to resolving the issue in an interview with Spanish journalists published on Tuesday.
“It is difficult to coordinate and agree on a common path when you have so many countries with different policies and economic situations,” Obama said, according to daily El Mundo’s website. “In the end, the big countries in Europe, the leaders in Europe must meet and take a decision on how to coordinate monetary integration with more effective coordinated fiscal policy,” he said, according to news agency EFE.
Concern about the global effects of the euro crisis is so great in the US that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will also attend the EU finance ministers’ meeting on Friday — an unprecedented move on his part. Obama also pointed to the looming dangers posed by Spain and Italy. Rome inspired fresh alarm on Tuesday with a sharp rise in interest rates on government bonds floated in an auction that day. Even a report in the Financial Times saying that Italy had asked China to purchase billions worth of its government bonds failed to ease fears about massive public debt in the country.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was also scheduled to meet with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on Tuesday afternoon, pledged that new austerity measures would be approved in Rome the next day. Meanwhile, market turmoil continued on Tuesday thanks to myriad uncertainties across the euro zone that also included fresh concerns about the stability of banks in France.
On Tuesday, German commentators set their sights on Greek default speculation among their own politicians, with some lamenting what they see as a dangerous indiscretion…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
More Poor People Now in USA Than 50 Years Ago
(AGI) Washington — There are more poor people in the USA than ever before in the past 50 years with recent surveys putting the figure at 45 million at the end of 2010. Poverty levels have risen for the third year in a row to 15.1% due to the recession between December 2007 and June 2009. Estimates drafted by the US Survey Office show a 0.8% rise in the number of the poor between 2009 (43.6 million) and 2010 .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Poland Warns of War ‘In 10 Years’ As EU Leaders Scramble to Contain Panic
Germany, France and the European Commission are scrambling to contain panic and “quash rumours” about a eurozone break-up amid repeated off-piste messages from other senior EU politicians. But even amid their desperate efforts, the finance minister of Poland, the country that currently represents the EU to the world as holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency, warned of war on the continent within 10 years if the eurozone collapses.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Uncertainty on Greece Weighing Economy Down, Zapatero
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, SEPTEMBER 14 — Spain’s economy will grow by two tenths of a point in the third quarter of the year compared with the same period in2010, a rate similar to the one seen in the second quarter. This was said today to the Spanish Congress by Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in the penultimate government monitoring session before the dissolving of the Chambers for early elections on November 20. However, Zapatero said that confirmation of growth estimates of 1.3% for all of 2011 made by the government would depend on the evolution of financial tensions caused by uncertainty on the situation in Greece. “As of today the approximations we can made is that a slight recovery will be seen, and the final growth figure on an annual basis will depend on the circumstances as concerns financial tension and the economic and confidence outlook,” the prime minister said. Confidence which currently “goes well beyond Spain’s borders,” he added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The “Opportunities” And Risks of Beijing’s Purchase of Italian Debt
Two economists talk about a report in the Financial Times to that effect. “It’s nothing new. China has been looking at our market for some times,” says one. “It is a warning to the UCB. If it buys our debt, someone else will be the big player,” says d’Orlando.
Rome (AsiaNews) — China’s purchase of Italian public debt “is nothing new. It should not cause any alarm. Beijing has been buying Italian bonds for quite some time,” an Italian economist told AsiaNews. “Of course, if it should turn out that it holds 4 per cent of Italian debt that would be news, good news that is,” he added. The economist entertains cordial relations with Beijing and Chinese businessmen.
According to the Financial Times, China holds about 4 per cent of Italy’s € 1.9 trillion debt (US$ 2.6 trillion). Citing Italian sources, the newspaper said that the recent visit by “Lou Jiwei, chairman of China Investment Corp, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds” was a sign of China’s interest in Italian bonds.
In his visit to Italy (which follows a visit to Beijing by the head of Italy’s treasury, Vittorio Grilli), Lou held talks with Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti and representatives of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Deposit and Loans Bank), during which Tremonti negotiated the mass purchase of Italy’s public debt even though he expressed reluctance for what he once described as “reverse colonisation”.
“To talk about colonisation in today’s world and with the existing international financial system is absurd,” an economist told AsiaNews. “Tremonti knows it and perhaps sought a valid alternative to the usual buyers. The collapse of the eurozone or the default of some European nations would be hard blow to Beijing. An ‘international governance’ espoused by some governments would be even worse. This is why the purchase is going ahead.”
According to Maurizio d’Orlando, an economist and economic commentator for AsiaNews, “this is not surprising. What the Italian government wants is simple but misconceived. By leaking the information, Italy has for all intents and purposes let the European Central Bank know that it wants Europe to buy Italian public debt. If the ECB does, Italy then would have more buyers lined up; in this case, China.”
Beijing “is trying to do with Europe what it has done with the United States,” d’Orlando explained. “Since it cannot move away from an export-driven economy, and continues to hold the yuan below its real value, it must prop up export markets for its own goods. So far, the Old Continent has defended itself with import rules and non-tariff barriers, like quality requirement on imported goods”.
“What China is doing is something else,” d’Orlando noted. “It wants to turn the euro into an international reserve currency to counter the dollar. However, this is a dangerous policy, for Europe as well. It could increase the EU’s trade deficit with China, which until recently, was not very big. This can be inferred from the fact that the Chinese exchange rate is lower than the rate that the one based on the purchasing power parity, which is to the advantage of Chinese exporters.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: A Tale of Two Obamas
Barack Obama was even more prominently featured in the news on Sunday than is usual for a President of the United States, what with his four appearances that day in 9/11-related events. These opportunities afforded him the chance to appear dignified, non-partisan and, well, presidential. A more illuminating sense of the man and his presidency, however, was provided by a curiously bipolar treatment of Mr. Obama in that day’s Washington Post. Call it a tale of two Obamas.
On the one hand, columnist Dana Milbank scathingly described what he called “President Irrelevant.” Milbank not only chronicles the jaded response of many Republicans to Mr. Obama’s pitch for his new jobs bill. He also describes the unconcealed lack of enthusiasm congressional Democrats are now exhibiting for the leader of their party…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Jewish Arab Blogger ‘Cuffed, Questioned’ In 9/11 Flight Ordeal
A half-Jewish half-Arab blogger has complained of being handcuffed and locked up after she raised the suspicions of security during a flight from Denver to Detroit on the anniversary of September 11. Shoshana Hebshi, who has a Saudi Arabian father and a Jewish mother, was one of three passengers detained and held in custody for several hours after they appeared to be spending too long in the plane toilets. Airline staff raised the alert and two F-16 jets were sent to follow the flight until it landed, at which point three passengers were taken away for questioning.
Ms Hebshi, who is married with a child, said she thought flying on 9/11 would be easy because people would avoid flying and so queues would be short. But she said that when she saw “what looked like the bomb squad” arrive before the flight departed she started to rethink her decision. “Before I knew it, about ten cops, some in what looked like military fatigues, were running toward the plane carrying the biggest machine guns I have ever seen,” she claimed in a blog post about the experience. [One] slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.”
According to her account Ms Hebshi was then strip-searched, placed in a cell for several hours and a background check was done. Finally, all three were released and an FBI agent “apologised for what had happened and thanked me for understanding and cooperating”. “I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance,” she wrote. “I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice.” A spokesman for the Detroit branch of the FBI said they were erring on the side of caution due to the date.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Koch: NY Race Proves Obama Can’t Take Jewish Vote for Granted
The stunning Republican victory in New York’s special election Tuesday should make President Barack Obama realize that Democrats no longer can rely on the Jewish vote, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch tells Newsmax.
[…]
Obama “should make it clear to both Turkey and Egypt that, if you engage in a war against Israel, you are engaging the United States,” Koch said.
[…]
The 9th District, one of the most solidly blue in the country, spans parts of the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It has a large number of Orthodox Jewish voters who heeded Koch¹s call to vote for the Roman Catholic Turner against the Jewish Weprin.
[…]
“We should never forget that there are more Christian supporters of Israel in this country than Jewish supporters. We are a small number, but fortunately for us we live in the right states, Florida being one of them.”
| — Hat tip: Egghead | [Return to headlines] |
Stamp Out Anti-Science in US Politics
On climate change: variations are “natural, cyclical environmental trends”. That “we can’t say with assurance that human activities cause weather changes” and that climate problems in Texas are best solved through “days of prayer for rain”.
You would probably be even more disturbed to be told that these are the opinions expressed by potential Republican candidates for the US presidential nomination. It’s alarming that a country which leads the world in science — the home of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman and Jim Watson — might be turning its back on science. How can this be happening? What can be done?
We have to hope that the people of the US will see through some of the nonsense being foisted on them by vocal minorities. It is time to reject political movements that reject science and take us back into the dark rather than forward into a more enlightened future.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
The Terrorist Next Door: American Muslims Face Growing Prejudice
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, America’s Muslims have become the country’s internal enemy. Conservative forces have seized upon the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” as a rallying point. Amid all the hate, Americans have lost sight of the real problem: the fact that their country has become paranoid.
Even on hot summer days in Virginia, Brigitte Gabriel receives visitors looking as if she were dressed for the opera. She has her hair teased up, copious amounts of pearls adorning her neck and arms, and her feet clad in rhinestone-studded sandals. This is her uniform in the war against what she sees as the barbarians of radical Islam. On three occasions, Gabriel has been the subject of declarations by al-Qaida, she says, and her name is probably on various death lists. Indeed, Gabriel, who emigrated to the US years ago from Lebanon, is America’s siren on all things Islamophobic, and her speeches are one indication of how the country may have changed since the attacks of September 11.
Gabriel’s position can be summarized as follows: The US is suffering from terminal cancer and is infected with rampant Islamist cells that are eating away at the country, its liberties and its constitution. “Our enemy,” writes Gabriel, “is not an organization of people living overseas plotting to attack. Our enemies are the neighbors next door, the doctors practicing in our hospitals, and the workers who share our lunch break. Our enemies are terrorists driven by a dangerous ideology and clothed in deception who operate under cover and laugh about the advantages our sensitivity training, gullibility, and political correctness give them.”
Some 300,000 copies of Gabriel’s first book, which contains these sentences, have been distributed. TV stations now set aside ample airtime for her and her ideas. She has been invited to give presentations to US Senate committees, the FBI, the US Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Staff College, the Republican Party, the Tea Party movement and Christian conferences. Brigitte Gabriel, who pronounces her name as if it were French, is an idol in the conservative half of America’s deeply divided society — but remains a reviled figure in the other half.
On the Death Lists
Speaking face-to-face, she seems much nicer than the woman who she is on TV, where her interviews often sound like fanatical yapping. The interview with SPIEGEL took place in a palatial home on the Atlantic coast, with windows that look out over a finely manicured lawn.
She is staying here with friends, she says, but it feels as if she has invited us into her own home. The living room matches her style, with cathedral ceilings and expensive furniture made of chrome and leather, but the question of where she lives remains open. Her whereabouts have to be kept secret, she says, because of al-Qaida — and the death lists. A man with a revolver is standing guard at the door.
By way of introduction, Gabriel recounts the story of her childhood. It is the story of a Christian family that survived the mayhem of civil war in Lebanon. She talks about the ordeal of a young woman who watched helplessly as her home fell into the clutches of Muslim fanatics. She recounts how Lebanon, which once had a Christian majority, became a Muslim country. Her point is that the same thing cannot be allowed to happen to America.
Gabriel contends that until Sept. 11, 2001 she was an apolitical woman who wanted to enjoy life. But the attacks of that day reopened old wounds, she says. “I was sitting here,” she recalls, as her eyes turn a steely gray, “in America, 8,000 miles away, 20 years later, and I had to answer the same question from my own children that I had asked my father: Why are they doing this to us?” Her father’s answer, slightly modified, became the title of her first book: “Because They Hate.”
She founded the organization ACT! for America, which was initially called the American Congress for Truth. Today, she says, it boasts 170,000 members across the country: “We are the largest grassroots movement for national security.” Local groups are encouraged to take action against overly politically correct teachers, excessively tolerant members of Congress and local newspapers that publish “derogatory” articles about the US or Israel. ACT! for America, says Gabriel, is a rallying point for “people who are fighting to save America.”…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Woman Says That Arrest After 9/11 Flight Was Ethnic Profiling
A suburban Toledo woman who is half-Jewish and half-Arab says that she and two Indian Americans were detained Sunday by armed officers on an airplane at Detroit Metro Airport and then jailed and strip-searched — an incident that civil rights leaders say was one of many cases of law enforcement targeting minorities on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But federal officials say they were told that some passengers on board were acting suspiciously, and responded accordingly. After landing in Detroit, the Ohio woman, Shoshana Hebshi, wrote on a blog that has received national attention that she and the men were handcuffed, jailed, strip-searched and interrogated because of their ethnicities.
“They … needed to make sure all my orifices were free and clear,” Hebshi wrote. And she said an FBI agent told her there were “50 other similar incidents across the country that day,” raising questions about whether law enforcement targeted certain groups on Sept. 11 because of their appearance. FBI Special Agent in Charge of Detroit Andy Arena told the Free Press that the FBI did interview the woman and the men, but said: “We treated her well.” “The FBI did not arrest anybody or direct anyone to be arrested,” Arena said Tuesday. After determining “there was no criminal or terrorist activity … they were released.”Arena said there were other reports of suspicious activity across the U.S. on Sept 11; he added that the FBI does not profile.
The suspicious activity prompted authorities to scramble F16 jets to tail the plane while it was in the air. Upon landing, it was ordered to a remote area. Then, “all of a sudden, a SWAT team went through … saying, ‘Please place your hands on the seat in front of you,’ “ passenger Belinda Duggan of Troy told the Associated Press. In an e-mail to AP, Wayne County Airport Authority spokesman Scott Wintner said airport police “responded appropriately by following protocol and treating everyone involved with respect and dignity.”
Hebshi said that, finally, after being fingerprinted and allowed to call her husband, she was told she and the men were being released and that nothing suspicious was found on the plane. She said an official apologized and thanked her for understanding and cooperating. Hebshi said she received another call of apology from an FBI agent Monday, before she wrote her blog post. “I can understand they were just doing their job,” she told the news service. “My beef is with these laws and regulations that are so hypersensitive. … Even if you’re an innocent bystander, you have no rights.”
The anniversary of Sept. 11 brought a renewed focus on terrorism, a focus that ended up scapegoating some innocent people, say Muslim leaders. On Twitter and blogs, many expressed concern about the way Hebshi and the men were treated. The incident came after a decade in which Arab Americans, Muslims and South Asians say they’ve been increasingly harassed and humiliated by law enforcement. A spokesman for Frontier Airlines, Peter Kowalchuk, did not comment about whether the three passengers were singled out for their ethnic appearance, saying Frontier was “following security protocols and in response to concerns expressed by passengers on the aircraft and our flight attendants” about “the suspicious activity of two gentlemen.” He did not explain what the suspicious activity was. A spokesman for Wayne County Airport Police, who helped detain the three passengers, did not return calls seeking comment.
Hebshi is a freelance writer, editor and stay-at-home mother of twin six-year-old boys who lives in a Toledo suburb. She said in the blog that she and two men she happened to be seated next to were detained and jailed without explanation. “Armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up,” she wrote, saying that what happened to her was an example of how “in the name of patriotism we lost a lot of our liberty, especially those who look like me.”
Civil rights advocates say the incident — and others like it across the U.S. on Sept 11 — indicate that federal law enforcement might have profiled and questioned minorities on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “It’s obvious that the FBI detained and questioned so-called suspicious-looking persons due to the anniversary of 9/11,” said Dawud Walid, head of the state branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations. “More than 300 people were questioned by the FBI over an ‘unconfirmed’ threat that there would be an attack on the anniversary. Of course, all were cleared. The search of that innocent woman, who is half Arab, and her Indian travel companions was a case of flying while ethnic-looking on 9/11.”
Hebshi, who describes herself as a “dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage,” said: “I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance.” She added: “I was forced into a situation where I was stripped of my freedom and liberty that so many of my fellow Americans purport are the foundations of this country and should be protected at any cost.” Hebshi posted her essay on a blog that she says tells “the stories of everyday life.”
A Detroit FBI spokeswoman, Special Agent Sandra Berchtold, said the FBI received a report of “suspicious activity” on the flight, but would not say what that activity was.
A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, Jim Fotenos, did not comment on the allegations of profiling. He said the TSA “was notified of passengers allegedly behaving suspiciously.” “Out of an abundance of caution,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) “scrambled F16 jets to shadow the flight until it landed safely,” he said. Fotenos also did not explain the suspicious behavior. After landing, Hebshi said that cops surrounded the plane and proceeded to arrest them without any explanation.
One officer grabbed her arm hard, and then “he slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained. The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms.”
Hebshi said she has never had any trouble with the law and while on the plane, “I never left my seat, spoke to anyone on the flight or tinkered with any ‘suspicious’ device.”
Contact Niraj Warikoo: 313-223-4792 or nwarikoo@freepress.com
[JP note: See Hebshi-Holt’s 9/11 account ‘Numb’ here www.interfaithfamily.com/relationships/marriage_and_relationships/Numb.shtml Numbskull indeed.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
First Poll Since Norway Killings: Right-Wing Populists Face Test in Denmark
Just two months after the politically inspired massacre in Norway, a right-wing populist party, one of Europe’s most influential, will face a test of voter sentiment at the ballot box. The Danish People’s Party has been instrumental in tightening at least 20 laws pertaining to immigration and migration.
The path to the right-wing outsiders leads straight through the hallowed halls of Christiansborg Palace, right on past the red and white national flag, the “Danebrog,” as well as the portrait gallery of past politicians and finally right under the heavy chandeliers in the country’s political control center. This, it seems, is the place where the Danish People’s Party feels most at home.
The neo-Baroque palace is home to the royal reception rooms of Queen Margrethe, the Supreme Court, parliament and the Danish government. The space is also kept free for the People’s Party because Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen doesn’t have his own majority with his Liberal party and the conservatives. Whether or not the center-right minority government is re-elected in national elections on Thursday and can continue to govern will hinge largely on the People’s Party’s performance at the ballot box.
At the moment, People’s Party chief Pia Kjaersgaard, who has become something of a cult figure, is being shielded from the press. Morten Messerschmidt, 30, a rising star in the party, spoke to SPIEGEL at Christiansborg.
‘We Are Proud of Our Policies’
Messerschmidt is a member of the European Parliament and one of the party’s strategic thinkers. He combats the political stigma of being defined as right-wing or xenophobic. “We are conservative,” he says. “We are the only party that stands for national identity and tradition.”
Messerschmidt speaks quickly, as if he wants to forestall any objections. “We are proud of our policies, and there is no greater success than having your policies get adopted by others,” the alert young politician says. And that, he says, is why he believes in his party’s re-election prospects.
For weeks now, however, Social Democratic challenger Helle Thorning-Schmidt, 44, with her three-partner, left of center “Red Block” has been two to four percentage points ahead of the “Blue Block” comprising of the Liberal party, the conservatives and the right-wing populists.
Thursday’s vote will be the first indicator of the national standing of a right-wing populist party in Europe since the massacre in Norway . In July, Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people in Oslo and on the island of Utøya. It will also be a test of one of Europe’s most influential right-wing populist parties. In the manifesto he wrote before embarking on his murder spree, Breivik even referenced the anti-immigrant Danish nationalists. “He also had contact to Socialists,” Messerschmidt retorts, unblinking.
For 10 years now, the People’s Party has backed the minority government in Copenhagen — causing a sustained shift in the country’s political climate. So far, the nationalists have succeeded in pushing through legislation to tighten at least 20 laws pertaining to immigrants and asylum seekers. Traditionally liberal Denmark is now the country with the most conservative legislation for foreigners in Europe — an achievement that makes the People’s Party proud.
Its members are fond of fomenting fears of “Eastern European criminal gangs” and refer to the Muslim religion as a scourge, saying, “Islam is a fascist ideology.” The party flatly rejects the European Union and has called for a “strengthening of Danishness.” One party strategist recently demanded that proof of “blood ties” to Denmark should be a prerequisite for Danish citizenship. The statement was quickly retracted.
Rhetoric like that attracted up to 13.9 percent of the vote in 2007 elections for the Danish People’s Party. The degree to which right-wing populist sentiment has become acceptable to society in Denmark is underscored by the discovery only a few weeks ago of a far-right underground movement…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Frankfurt Shooter Deep Into Jihad: Prosecutors
German prosecutors on Wednesday said the Kosovar man accused of killing two US airmen at Frankfurt’s Airport in March had a long fascination with Islamist propaganda, contradicting his previous statements.
Arid Uka, 21, has admitted to shooting and killing Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, and Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback, 21, as they prepared to depart to Afghanistan. Two other military personnel were wounded in what has been called the first ever jihadist attack on German soil. As Uka tried to shoot a fifth person, his gun jammed, according to authorities. In court last month he said that his motivation for the shooting was essentially spontaneous — inspired by a Islamist propaganda video on the internet falsely claiming to show an Afghan woman raped by US soldiers.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: WikiLeaks: Life in Norway for Jews
There are about a thousand Jews in Norway. This is what life is like for them.
The Norwegian self-image
Norwegian society, however, has obstacles to effectively combating [antisemitism]. First, a deep-seated fundamental belief by Norwegians that their national character is deeply and essentially “good,” makes Norwegians reluctant to accuse one of their own of a sin perceived to be as odious as anti-Semitism. Second, whether an anti-Semitic (or racist) statement has been made is determined by the speaker, not the offended group. Even unacceptable statements are forgiven so long as the speaker insists upon his or her good intentions. Third, Norway follows a social model based on consensus rather than individualism, so Norwegians are somewhat more prone to have difficulty differentiating between individuals and groups.
Former Prime Minister Kare Willoch
Over the last two months, a former prime minister, Kare Willoch, and a preeminent commentator on U.S. policy, Ole Moen, were accused of making comments that were anti-Semitic. On December 30 in a television debate program, when asked about the prospect for progress in the Middle East with Obama leading negotiations, Willoch said, “it doesn’t look good, because he has chosen a Jew as a chief of staff.”
Mona Levin, a Jewish columnist who also participated in the television debate, later wrote a column in which she accused Willoch of both anti-Semitism and racism for sending a message that Jews can’t be trusted and blacks are easily manipulated. She also commented on a feeling of hatred she perceived from him during the television debate, noting he pointedly said “you people,” although her family has lived in Norway since the 19th century. Many voices in the media (including Willoch’s own) have risen to his defense. Willoch has for years been an especially strident voice against Israeli policy.
Prominent political commentator, Ole Moen:
Ole Moen is the most frequently quoted academic on US policy. During the election, he predicted that Americans would never elect either a black man or a woman due to the racism and sexism that he believes permeates American society. On January 9 Moen said Obama “has appointed many Jews and pro-Israel people in his administration. …This makes me have little hope for significant change (in Middle East policy.)” Despite complaints by a prominent commentator that Moen characterized Jews as a group and appears to have assumed Jews don’t have independent opinions as individuals, because they’re Jewish, no apology was offered. Both Willoch and Moen publicly and repeatedly rejected the characterization of their comments as anti-Semitic.
The Embassy official
In mid-January, a first secretary at the Norwegian embassy in Saudi Arabia used the MFA’s email system to send out a fundraising email appeal for Gaza with images comparing Israeli soldiers with Nazi soldiers, urging recipients to forward it as a chain letter. The MFA said it would be dealt with as an internal personnel matter and there has been no further public information given on the disposition of the case.
The Chief Rabbi
The chief Rabbi of the Oslo Synagogue reportedly receives a pile of hate mail each day. Typical salutations on such mail are, “Murderers,” “Maybe Hitler was right,” “May hatred toward you Jews grow and strengthen,” and so forth.
Life for ordinary Jews:
One orthodox Jewish family in Oslo chose not to take their children to synagogue, as their appearance on the street makes them especially vulnerable. Some Jewish parents are walking with their children to school as an added security measure. There have been reports of bullying at school, where Jewish children are subject to insults. A recent expose on anti-Semitism in a major paper found that “Jew” has become an epithet among both Muslim and Christian teenagers. One Muslim teenager interviewed commented that his friends say that the Israelis “aren’t people.” When pressed by the reporter on what that meant, he responded, “well of course we know they’re people, but when we say they’re inhuman, we mean they aren’t good people.”
Antisemitism is easier to express than criticism of Hamas
For all of these reasons, latent anti-Semitism is more likely to be expressed publicly, if indirectly, and in turn increase anti-Semitism in society at large. Offended Norwegians feel constrained about protesting anti-Semitism, since they would be questioning the Norwegian self-image. Post believes that the “legitimization of rage” practiced by the Norwegian media, in which outrage over Israeli policy is encouraged, has contributed to an atmosphere in which anti-Semitism is easier for ordinary Norwegians to express; there is no corresponding freedom to attack Hamas, however, sine the local narrative predominantly blames Israel.
Official sympathy for Hamas
Although the [Government of Norway] would deny it, there are clear signs that contacts with Hamas go beyond a tactical desire for dialogue to a level of sympathy for Hamas positions. The [Foreign Minister Stoere] once told DCM for example that one could not expect Hamas to recognize Israel without knowing which borders Israel will have. While the FM expresses some sympathy for Hamas’ positions only in unguarded moments, other prominent Norwegians go further.
Mohammed Hamdan, leader of Norway’s Islamic Council, is the brother of Osama Hamdan, Hamas leader in Lebanon:
Osama Hamdan is the brother of the former leader of the Islamic Council in Norway, Mohammed Hamdan. Mohammed Hamdan played a key role in contacts between Muslims and the Norwegian authorities after the publication of the Mohammed cartoons. This thus gives Hamas leader Osama Hamdan a very good channel to the Norwegian government.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: After the Massacre: Anti-Semitism, Islam, And Norway
Anti-semitism in Norway is rampant among Muslims, and encouraged by media and leftist politicians. Plus, the response to psychopath Anders Breivik’s act may trend towards further Jew-hatred.
Dr. Michal Rachel Suissa is a Jewish Amazigh (Berber) refugee from Morocco, working as an associate professor in medicinal chemistry at University College of Oslo. She regularly lectures and has written many articles on minorities in the Middle East, human rights in the Muslim world, and the use of religion as a weapon against Jews and minorities. She is the director of the Center Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) and the editor of the quarterly magazine SMA-Info on Israel and Anti-Semitism. I asked her a few question regarding racism, anti-Semitism, and Islam in Norway.
Does Norway have a racism problem?
Suissa: Racist or xenophobic political parties do not exist in Norway. We may identify some individual examples of racist behavior, racist comments in the media, and even racist violence and murders committed by individuals, but these cases do not have an organized character and should not be considered as a particular Norwegian phenomenon. On the contrary, comparing with other countries, the low level of such behavior in Norway has been more striking.
Several churches were burned down in the 1990s. Can we call that religiously motivated violence?
Suissa: As far as we know, all church fires resulting from arson in Norway were committed by people with connections to a Satanistic or “Black Metal” milieu. The majority of the cases were solved and the culprits have been sentenced. In my opinion, this has nothing to do with the recent atrocities.
Has there been a public discussion about Muslim immigration?
Suissa: Immigration is a topic that has been discussed in Norway for many years, as in other countries. Occasionally there may be a reference to Muslim immigration, but this generally has to do with a perceived low level of integration or assimilation into Norwegian society by some Muslims; in particular, Muslim women. Even Muslim leaders and spokesmen have made critical comments about Muslim practices of marriage and such phenomena as cousin marriage, genital mutilation, and honor killing. But I see no difference between Norway and other Western countries in this respect. In my experience, the majority of Norwegians definitely favor cultural and ethnic diversity within the common liberal constitutional polity they have created in this country, but in a way that safeguards hard acquired basic rights and values of their own constitutional democracy, such as equal rights for women and gays, freedom of critical expression, etc.
Is there a clash of opinions about these issues?
Suissa: There is no way to deny that there have been verbal confrontations over issues of this kind with local proponents of Islam. This kind of debate may be rather difficult in Norway, as the risk of being labeled a racist or “Islamophobic” by the media and some Muslims is very high. I have not observed similar debates with Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs or other religious groups. I do not experience Norwegian society as “muslimophobic” at all, but I do see how concerned people are when it comes to political values brought to Norway by some Muslim immigrants, such as circumcision of girls, forced cousin marriage, and the support of death sentences for homosexuals. Open warnings and threats from fundamentalist Muslims have also been a part of this picture.
What’s the role of the media?
Suissa: An undebated problem is that Norway has practically no completely free mass media, as they are all financially supported on an annual basis by the government and therefore have an observable tendency to echo politically correct opinions. As it is not politically correct to criticize any aspect of Islam, anyone who dares to address simple questions like: “How long can we turn a blind eye to the fact that Mecca is still a forbidden city for non-Muslims, while the number of mosques in Norway is growing like mushrooms after the rain?” is guaranteed to be labeled a racist. In Norway, as in the rest of Europe, there is in effect a ban on telling the truth about these matters, and that frustrates people.
Some newspaper reports claim that anti-Semitism in Norway is extreme, even by European standards.
Suissa: There is no evidence that antisemitism is more extreme in Norway than elsewhere, although a general rectification or “Gleichschaltung” of public information and lack of alternative channels has no doubt had an effect on public opinion in a small language group. We do however have a recent public report on the presence of anti-Semitic behavior among schoolchildren, published by the municipal authorities in Oslo on June 7, 2011. It provides clear evidence that Muslim youths are overrepresented in the group mobbing Jewish schoolchildren. The children testified that the word “Jew” has again become a common insult among pupils in Norwegian schools, and that most of the Jew-hatred is committed by Muslim pupils. Our Information Center, the CAA, has said that for years, but Norwegian authorities have tried to downplay, ignore, or otherwise remove this from public debate.
So is it Muslim immigration that is mainly responsible for the spread of anti-Semitism in Norway?
Suissa: No. Anti-Semitic attitudes, both direct and concealed, have been both created and maintained by mainstream Norwegian media, such as the state broadcasting organization NRK and Oslo’s largest newspaper Aftenposten. There are also politicians and journalists who make a career by castigating Israel at any given opportunity. This goes along with a biased and negative description of Israel’s friends in Norway, as well as a brisk support to Hamas and the PLO. Hence, radical Muslim immigrants must necessarily have noticed that their anti-Semitic and even racist attitudes are often met with significant support, direct or indirect, by Norwegian media and some political spokesmen.
In an anti-Israeli demonstration led by the Norwegian minister of finance and other left-wing notables directed against the military operation in Gaza, many young Arabs marched through the streets of Oslo chanting: “Itbah al yahood!” (Kill the Jews!). This did not occur during the Holocaust, but in January 2009 in the streets of Oslo. Norwegian and Muslim children saw their leaders walk hand-in-hand with radical Islamists. This affects people’s attitudes, and the results of this kind of leadership are summarized in the report I mentioned.
The responsibility for Jew-hatred in Norway lies with the “mind-designers” who recklessly use the media and their political platforms to distort reality and depict Jews as the world’s most dangerous people, in the words of former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland (now secretary general of the Council of Europe): “If there is something that is a threat to world peace, then it is the Israeli occupation.” Such often-repeated statements are among the unquestionable sources of Jew-hatred in Norway.
How would you describe the government’s stance toward Israel?
Suissa: Over the years it has made an easily observable u-turn. From being an ardent supporter of the young Jewish homeland and a formerly neutral peace broker in the Arab-Israeli negotiations, Norway has under its present government taken a decisive step to ally politically with the Palestinian side and to leave her former friend by the roadside. This is another aspect of Norwegian politics downplayed by the media. One of the foremost advocates of this change of Norwegian foreign policy in recent years and the man who irreversibly took sides with the Palestinian Arabs in the conflict is Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. His role in changing his country’s relationship with the international community has to a great extent passed without significant debate in Norway. Norwegians have been generally satisfied by living in their own growing welfare bubble, isolated from the evils of the world and very content by having their country ranked number one among countries worth living in.
What can you tell us about Gahr Støre?
Suissa: He came to political office after having been headhunted by leaders of the Labour Party. As a former career bureaucrat he also had to prove his mettle among the radical fringes of his new party. He did so by clarifying Norway’s stance towards all the parties of the conflicts of the Middle East; he was the first Western leader to recognize and establish political and economic ties to organizations like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and recently the Somalian terrorist organization al-Shabaab. His most important slogan is: “Dialogue.”
What does the Utoya massacre mean for Norway’s Jewish community?
Suissa: The majority of Jews in Norway try to conceal their Jewish identity. We have three very small congregations which represent a few hundred observant Jews. For the time being there is a full silence, as most Jews have reacted instinctively with fear, afraid of becoming victims of the ongoing blame game. I know this for fact, as some of them have let me know in private conversations. The media were quick to make headlines of the allegation that the murderer was “pro-Israeli.” I see this as part of the massive media propaganda to silence the “right-wing” opposition, which is also generally positive towards Israel.
Are there already any reactions to the massacre which you would describe as anti-Jewish or anti-Israel?
Suissa: I do not fear that the recent atrocities by themselves will increase anti-Semitism in Norway, and I do not see at the moment any reactions to the massacre and bombing which I would describe as anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli. I am however quite worried that the witch hunt directed against the political opposition by the largely left-wing media may make it even more difficult to express solidarity with Israel in public. We have seen examples of anti-Israeli incitement — not the least of which came from the foreign minister — just prior to the terrorist massacre, which I fear may settle as a rock bottom “truth,” in particular among the less historically informed younger generations who were traumatized by the terrorist, and this scenario worries me a lot. After the publication of the report on anti-Semitism in June, the minister had the courage to state that our politicians did have a responsibility for the situation, saying that: “A jargon of slang terms which may have unintended and very grave consequences, may easily take root. Those of us who have the political responsibility must talk about this and counteract such expressions.” Unfortunately, he had forgotten his own piece of good advice — as late as the day before the shooting he met his expectant colleagues with unmistakably anti-Israeli slogans, saying to his cheering young audience: “The Palestinians must have their own state. The occupation must end, the wall must be torn down, and this must happen now!”
One of the more long-term negative consequences of this brutal terrorist act in Norway is a limitation of the freedom of speech. People have become terrified of being connected to the mass-murderer, whom the media describe as a “conservative Christian fundamentalist.” This tag is sufficient to paralyze half of the Norwegian population, where the majority of the supporters of Israel and the Jews are found. At present we observe a form of slanderous media defamation of Christians which in some cases has already acquired an eerie resemblance to classical anti-Semitism. This witch hunt, spreading like a steppe fire, has already paralyzed conservative bloggers in this country, and I fear others will also suffer before the media may end up with the classical compromise of blaming the Jews.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: After Utøya, Voters Elect Moderation
Aftenposten, 13 September 2011
“Conservatives jubilant,” headlines Norwegian daily Aftenposten, following regional and municipal elections won by the opposition, led by Erna Solberg. The Social Democratic Party of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg nonetheless remains the leading party with 31% of the vote. As for its partner within the ruling ‘red-green’ coalition, the Socialist Left, it tallied its worse score at municipal elections since 1979. A month and a half after the massacre of young Social Democrats perpetrated by right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, voters thus chose moderate parties. The Conservatives are the winners because they obtained their best score at municipal elections since 1979, the paper explains. Their rise is at the expense of the other major right-wing party, the Progress Party (FrP populist and anti-immigration), of which Breivik was a member, and which felt the backlash of the July 22 attack. In Oslo, the FrP’s score was clearly a “disaster”, writes leader writer Harald Stanghelle, for whom this “national tragedy undoubtedly mobilised the voters but didn’t lead to upheaval in Norwegian politics”. The election will nonetheless “have major political implications because it is the beginning of the end of the coalition as we know it today,” Stanghelle predicts.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Refugee From Muslim World Sees European Caliphate
For more than 30 years, Bat Ye’or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis — Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands for over a millennium. Now, she has a new book, “Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate,” that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural.
She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She is convinced that Europe, sooner rather than later, will be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into “Eurabia” — a term she has popularized but did not coin. It was first used in the mid-1970s by a French publication pressing for common European-Arab policies.
Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate — which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere.
Ye’or contends that a concerted effort is being made not only to ensure that Muslim immigrants in Europe remain squarely in the second category but also that they become the means to transform Europe politically, culturally and religiously. Leading this effort is the Organization of the Islamic Conference, established in 1969 and which, a few months ago, no doubt upon the advice of a highly compensated public relations professional, renamed itself the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The OIC represents 56 countries plus the Palestinian Authority. It claims also to represent Muslim immigrants — the “Diaspora” — in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. It is pan-Islamic: It seeks to unify and lead the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. In a manual first published in 2001, “Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West,” the IOC asserts “Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation.” It goes on to recommend, Ye’or notes, “a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture.”
The IOC, she argues, is nothing less than a “would-be, universal caliphate.” It might look different from the caliphates of the Ottomans, Fatamids and Abbasids. It might resemble, instead, a thoroughly modern trans-national bureaucracy.. But, already, the OIC exercises significant power through the United Nations, and through the European Union that has been eager to accommodate the OIC while simultaneously endowing the U.N. with increasing authority for global governance.
In the eyes of OIC officials, no problem in the contemporary world is more urgent than “Islamophobia” which it calls “a crime against humanity” that the U.N. and the E.U. must officially outlaw. The OIC also has specifically “warned” the “international community” of the “dangers posed by the influence of Zionism, Neo-Conservatism, aggressive Christian evangelicalism, Jewish extremism, Hindu extremism and secular extremism in international affairs and the ‘War on Terrorism.’“
Funding for terrorist groups flows generously from individuals in oil-rich OIC countries. Violence directed against those it views as enemies of Islam is defined as “resistance” — even when civilians, including women and children, are the intended victims….
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: 725 Euro Fine for Man Who “Abused” His Son
(AGI) Stockholm — Giovanni Colasante, a municipal councilor in Canosa di Puglis, arrested on August 23rd has been fined 725 euro by a Swedish court for abuse inflicted on his 12-yearold son. The court in Stockholm found him guilty of “having deliberately caused the boy pain by pulling his hair,” behavior that in Sweden is considered ‘abuse’.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK Musicians Suspended Over Israel Proms Row
Four members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been suspended for calling on the BBC to cancel the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s Proms appearance earlier this month.
Cellist Sue Sutherley and violinists Tom Eisner, Nancy Elan and Sarah Streatfeild were among those who signed a letter to the Independent on August 30. They claimed Israel was an apartheid state and called for the BBC to cancel the concert. Each indicated their membership of the LPO alongside their signature. Their suspensions are expected to be for up to nine months.
In a joint statement, LPO chief executive Timothy Walker and chairman Martin Hohmann said players’ views were a private matter and the orchestra had no political or religious affiliation. But they added: “The orchestra would never restrict the right of its players to express themselves freely, however, such expression has to be independent of the LPO itself and must not be done in any way that associates them with the LPO. The company has no wish to end the careers of four talented musicians, but the board’s decision in this matter will send a strong and clear message that such actions will not be tolerated by the LPO. For the LPO, music and politics do not mix.” The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s Proms September 1 performance was repeatedly disrupted by anti-Israel protesters inside the Royal Albert Hall.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Anger in Lancashire That Forced Marriage Will Not be Criminalised
CAMPAIGNERS against honour violence in Lancashire have slammed news that the government has backed away from plans to criminalise forced marriage.
The Home Office said that, despite pressure from MPs to do so, a move to make a specific law categorising forced marriage as illegal is not going to be pursued.
Local campaigners said the news was a ‘backwards step’ in the fight against honour violence.
Anjum Anwar, chair of Woman’s Voice in Blackburn, said: “Forced marriage is not a marriage. It’s a criminal act and must be dealt with as such.
“How can a government not legislate against criminal behaviour?
“This news really upsets me. I work with victims of forced marriages and I know how it ruins lives. Ask those women if they are the victims of criminal behaviour and you will get a very clear answer.”
Salim Mulla, from the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said: “Forced marriage is not acceptable and this decision from the government sends out completely the wrong message.
“It is obviously a criminal act and the government cannot ignore it.
“This will disappoint so many people in Lancashire who have been working hard on the issue.”
Earlier this year, the Home Affairs committee urged the government to create a new crime, saying that there needed to be a criminal sanction to help prevent people breaching forced marriage protection orders.
The court orders, created in 2007, are the government’s key legal tool to protect potential victims and are used to forbid families from actions such as taking people abroad for marriage, seizing passports or intimidating victims.
If someone breaches an order they can be jailed for up to two years.
Blackburn County Court is one of only 15 in the country to hear Forced Marriage Protection Order (FMPO) applications.
| — Hat tip: An EDL buck | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hungry for Justice — EDL Leader Released
THE leader of the English Defence League, Stephen Lennon, has been released from Bedford Prison on bail until his trial for assault at the end of this month. Mr Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, was held in custody at Bedford Prison for a week after breaking bail conditions by attending a demonstration in London. The EDL said their leader was on hunger strike while in prison, because he was a ‘political prisoner’ and because he believed the food served was halal. While at Bedford Prison he is understood to have been kept in segregation both for his own safety and over concerns about disruption at the prison.
A source said: “There was a big concern because he is so high profile, so they kept him away from the other prisoners. He was classed as a vulnerable inmate. It is a diverse prison and they were worried what might happen. There are also a lot of people from Luton in there as it’s the nearest prison and there were concerns there might be a riot.” The source said Mr Lennon was held in an underground cell where he was allowed a television, and that his exercise was taken in a yard boarded off so he could not be seen by other inmates.
They added: “His hunger strike only lasted 24 hours and then he gave up.”
But Mr Lennon said yesterday morning (Tuesday September 13) that he had not consumed anything other than water while in custody. He said: “I had a Nando’s last night when I came out and I was up all night ill — I thought I was going to have to go to hospital. I lost a stone while I was in there.” Mr Lennon denies assaulting a man at an EDL protest in Blackburn in April, and said he was looking forward to the trial at Preston Magistrates Court on September 29. “I will go to court and I will walk out of court,” he said. “The man who I’m supposed to have assaulted has come forward and said it wasn’t me. I’m going to keep on breaking these bail conditions — they just want to stop my involvement with the EDL. I’m not allowed to send emails, faxes, texts. That’s against my human rights and civil liberties. I will say what I want, when I want.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Our Best Tribute to 9/11 is to Keep Calm and Carry on
London remembered Britain’s 9/11 deaths at the weekend with due dignity. That was as it should be. These are moments when the public city collects itself to console private grief. It also happens when London remembers past wars. It will happen when the Tube bombs of 2005 are likewise memorialised.
But we need to be careful to remember what we are remembering, and perhaps what we should not remember. The 9/11 memorials in both London and New York were massive. Apart from the parades and ceremonies, there have been television specials, newspaper supplements, photographic exhibitions, essays and concerts. Variously, 9/11 was said to have been “a declaration of war”, “a day that never ended”, a “moment that changed the world”. Tony Blair’s claim that the attack “rewrote the rules of the game” was repeated endlessly in the cliché that “nothing will be the same again”. While for the bereaved these words are understandably true, for the recalled event as such they could hardly be in greater contrast to the brave plea of New York’s then mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, within hours of the 9/11 attack. He told his citizens to “continue with your normal lives”, go to the park, see a show, buy a pizza, show respect for Muslims. Above all, deny the terrorist what he most wants, proof that he has shattered America’s way of life and induced it to declare war on Islam.
Sometimes we might therefore stop and ask what, in any circumstance, the enemy most wants us to do. That especially applies to terrorism, whose potency lies not in the act itself but in the victim’s reaction to it. The terror lies in the response. Osama bin Laden’s objective was to elevate the craft of terror into a spectacular criminal act and then rely on America so to over-react as to turn his deed into a war between nations, religions and civilisations. He did not initially succeed. It is worth recalling that in the aftermath of 9/11 virtually the entire Muslim world expressed shock and sympathy for America. The PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, publicly gave blood for the people of New York. That was before George Bush and Tony Blair victimised Bin Laden in Muslim eyes and promoted al Qaeda’s cause by doing just what he wanted — and declared war on him. The outcome was the invasion and occupation of two states, thousands more Western deaths and tens of thousands of Muslim ones, and billions of dollars taxed from the pockets of the infidel. The West unquestionably feels less safe now than it did before 9/11.
Were he alive today, Osama bin Laden would have delighted at the 9/11 memorials. What to New Yorkers may have been a commemoration, to al Qaeda must have seemed a magnification and celebration of all their deeds. New York at the weekend was reported to be in “total lockdown”, for fear of a terrorist attack, while VIPs were forced to stand behind bullet-proof screens lest an undiscovered sniper took a shot at them. Defying terrorism required 9/11 to be treated as a criminal act by a demented gang, successful only through a failure by the West’s police, espionage and aviation security. The appropriate response was by those same agencies. Today defiance means acknowledging the grief of the bereaved but also using the occasion to show a civic community ruled not by fear but by normality and a readiness on the part of citizens to accept a degree of risk for the sake of civil liberty. Remembering should not be equated with “war”, militarisation or even politics.
As in New York, so in London, the bravery to be recalled was that of those civilians who helped the stricken, not grandees who failed to protect the city or belligerent politicians who aided the enemy cause by over-reacting. Most important of all, now is the time to abate over-reaction. Central London this past decade has slid into being a parody of a terrorised city. Its security is lopsided. Last week in Edmonton yet another youth was stabbed in a park in the under-patrolled streets of the poorer suburbs. At the same you could have stood in Parliament Square safe in the knowledge that probably 500 policemen were within gunshot range, guarding Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, Parliament and Scotland Yard from the spectre of terrorists. The Palace of Westminster is surrounded by car-bomb barricades and Downing Street looks like something in Baghdad’s green zone. The lobby of the House of Commons is patrolled by policemen carrying machine guns. I remain mystified at what use could be made of these ferocious weapons in any such crowded place. They are also brandished in the high street outside the Evening Standard’s Kensington offices. All this achieves is to tell the world, and especially tourists, that London is a dangerous and terrified place, under hourly threat from al Qaeda and to be avoided above all during the Olympics.
There could be no better way of commemorating the dead of 9/11 (and in London’s case of 7/7) than by dismantling the apparatus of a terrorised state. There could be no better way than to refuse disproportionate reaction, and allow the city to revert to life as normal. There are risks in any city, and there will occasionally be crimes and outrages from fanatics. But we must learn to take these things in our stride. We expect the citizens of Edmonton to risk life and limb every day. Why not expect the same around Westminster?
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Victims Group Asks Hague to Investigate Vatican
Pope accused of covering up ‘torture, rape and sexual violence’
(ANSA) — Brussels, September 13 — A coalition representing the victims of clerical sex abuse on Tuesday asked the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate Pope Benedict XVI and three top cardinals.
The coalition said high-level Vatican officials should be prosecuted for what it describes as “widespread and systematic torture, rape and sexual violence committed by priests and others associated with the Catholic church”.
In addition to calling out the pope, the group specifically accused cardinals Angelo Sodano, Tarcisio Bertone and William Levada of a cover-up.
Cardinal Bertone is the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano is his predecessor and Cardinal Levada is the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, the post formerly held by the pontiff, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
“Crimes against tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, are being covered up by officials at the highest level of the Vatican,” said Pam Spees, an attorney representing New York-based rights group Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed the complaint together with Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
“In this case, all roads really do lead to Rome,” she added.
The Vatican said it had no immediate comment at this time.
It is unlikely that the ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes court, will take on the case since it does not have jurisdiction in the Vatican, which never ratified its founding treaty.
The statute for the court, agreed at an international summit in Rome in July 1998, lays out its task of bringing to justice major world figures accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, which include rape, sexual violence, assault and torture.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
WWII Reparations Case: ‘Germany Doesn’t Feel Obliged to Pay More’
This week The Hague addresses a dispute over whether Italian courts can skirt German sovereignty in demanding reparations for Nazi war crimes. In an interview with SPIEGEL Online, victims’ lawyer Martin Klingner discusses the implications of the case for his clients and future international war reparations.
In a case that could have consequences worldwide, Germany and Italy are squaring off this week at the United Nation’s highest court in a jurisdictional dispute over the right of Italian courts to demand compensation for the victims of Nazi war crimes.
Hoping to quell what has been called “judicial tourism,” Germany applied for proceedings in front of the World Court in December 2008, arguing that Italian courts have violated German sovereignty by addressing civilian claims for Nazi war crimes. The row originated from the case of Luigi Ferrini, who in 1944 was deported to Germany as a forced laborer. After an Italian Supreme Court ruled he should be compensated by Germany in 2004, a flood of similar cases have been filed in the country.
Italian courts argue such cases are admissible because state immunity is trumped by crimes against humanity. Germany, on the other hand, worries that a breach of state immunity could create a dangerous precedence for exceptions in World War II cases and beyond.
“The consequences would be severe,” German director-general for legal affairs, Susanne Wasum-Rainer, warned judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday. “All inter-state peace settlements concluded after an armed conflict will be put into jeopardy by allowing domestic courts to re-examine and reopen them.”
Greek Case Also Involved
Judges at the ICJ also expect to hear from Greece, where in 1997 a court ordered Germany to compensate survivors and relatives of those massacred by Nazis in the village of Distomo. Greeks remember the Distomo massacre as one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. Some 218 people, including women and children, were murdered there on June 10, 1944 by a unit of an elite Nazi SS killing squad.
When the ruling for Germany to pay out some €28.6 million ($37 million) was never enforced, Greek plaintiffs turned to the favorable Italian courts, where a judge enforced the original ruling by ordering the seizure of German property in Italy.
Martin Klingner, a lawyer for the Distomo victims’ families spoke with SPIEGEL Online about the case at The Hague and what potential rulings could mean for Germany and future war reparations.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Klingner, please explain what’s going on at The Hague this week.
Klingner: The Federal Republic of Germany is suing Italy because in various court cases involving victims of Nazi war crimes and their families, Italian courts ruled that their justice system had jurisdiction [to demand reparations].
SPIEGEL: What about Germany’s claims of state immunity?
Klingner: The highest Italian court in Rome has said that Germany cannot claim state immunity … in cases of war crimes, grave human rights violations and in particular crimes against humanity. Here, the principle of of state immunity no longer applies, and the state that committed the crimes or its successor cannot claim immunity.
SPIEGEL: Is this just another trial dealing with the idiosyncrasies of international law?
Klingner: Germany suing Italy is special because on the surface it appears to only deal with international law when, in fact, it will indirectly affect the victims [of Nazi crimes].
SPIEGEL: How does the Greek village of Distomo — the site of a 1944 Nazi massacre — come into play?
Klingner: In the case of Distomo, there was a final judgement in Greece, but the Greek court’s decision can’t be enforced in Germany because it needs the permission of the Greek government, which it doesn’t have. With this, the victims turned to Italy in order to facilitate an enforcement on German property in Italy.
SPIEGEL: Is compensation your clients’ first priority?
Klingner: If you speak to survivors, they will tell you, ‘We’re not just doing this for us. It’s not all about the money, it’s about getting what happened to be seen as a crime.’ If the countries responsible for committing crimes are brought to justice, then this has a preventative function, they say.
SPIEGEL: What do you expect from the court ruling?…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Crisis in North, Serbs Set Up Roadblocks
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE/PRISTINA, SEPTEMBER 14 — In the north of Kosovo, local groups of Serbian residents set up numerous roadblocks during the night to protest the announcement by authorities in Pristina that they will assume control of two customs posts in Jarinje and Brnjak, the sites of violence in July. The press in Belgrade has reported that roadblocks have been set up along the road between Kosovska Mitrovica and Zvecan, between Mitrovica and Ribarici, around Leposavic and in other places in northern Kosovo where the Serbian majority rejects Pristina’s authority. The mandate of KFOR, the NATO force in Kosovo, is set to expire, which assumed control of the two border posts following clashes on July 25 and 26. An ethnic Albanian police officer was killed during the violence, and Serbian extremists set the Jarinje customs post ablaze. Incidents erupted after Pristina sent special police units and their own customs officials to take control of the two border crossings in order to enforce an embargo on Serbian goods in response to a similar measure taken by officials in Belgrade. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are preparing to do the same thing now, confirming that they will send their police and customs officers to Jarinje and Brnjak on September 16 when the KFOR mandate expires. And they have said that they are seeking to do so with the support of KFOR and EULEX, the European mission in Kosovo. Yesterday, Serbian President, Boris Tadic, launched a harsh warning to Pristina, saying that Belgrade will not accept this decision and that Pristina and the international institutions present in the country (KFOR, EULEX, UNMIK) will be held responsible for any new outbreaks of violence. EULEX and KFOR, said Tadic, must adhere to their neutral status and not side with Pristina. The situation in the north was called “calm but tense” today by the Serbian media.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Al Aswany: Revolution Done, Now for Democracy
(ANSAmed) — NAPLES, SEPTEMBER 14 — “The hardest part was toppling Mubarak’s government. There are difficulties now but I am sure that Egypt will find the way towards full democracy”. Alaa Al Aswany is optimistic. The writer, who became famous the world over with his novel “The Yacoubian Building”, is now telling the story of his country’s transformation in “The Egyptian Revolution”. The Cairo author, launching the book at Feltrinelli in Naples, has spoken about his experience as a writer taking part in the country’s revolution. “I was in Tahrir Square, I was there for weeks, taking part in all the protests. But I am not a politician, I am a novelist. I found myself involved in change and I told its story from a literary point of view”. The book is a collection of articles written by Al Aswany during the revolution in a number of newspapers opposing the Mubarak regime, all of them ending with the words: ‘The only solution is democracy’. “The sentence is a take on a very common saying in Egypt, according to which the only solution is Islam,” the writer explains.
Al Aswany is optimistic about his own future because, as he says, “I took part in change. Before January 24, Mubarak was the undisputed boss of Egypt, he had two million soldiers and the support of western countries, first among them the US. In his position, I would also have felt untouchable, yet the day that the judge made him read out the list of charges he faced, I understood that the power of people really can do anything”. Al Aswany talks about this power over some dramatic pages. “I am put in mind of the shots fired by snipers placed on rooftops by Mubarak: they would shoot, a protester would fall, but the crowd would not give up,” he says.
Yet the Egyptian author does not hide the difficulties of transition. “Today, there is a counter-revolution being taken forward by those who prospered under Mubarak. This explains the attack on the Israeli embassy a few days ago. They want to show the revolution in a bad light and distract attention from the what Egyptians want now. The suspension of trials against civilians in military courts is a clear sign of a handover of power by the army,” he says.
With regard to Egypt’s international future, Al Aswany sees renewed relations with Erdogan’s Turkey in a positive light. “He is an elected leader and must answer to the people. It is also a good model in terms of the political integration of Islam,” says the author, who is convinced that Egypt will now become closer with the Palestinians. So when will democracy arrive? Al Aswany says that it could take as much as two years but “Egypt today is like an open window at 4 o’clock in the morning. It is still dark but the light is fighting to emerge. And when you look outside, you know for sure that dawn will come”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan’s Call Irritates the Muslim Brotherhood
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s call for a secular state in Egypt has raised Muslim Brotherhood’s anger , Al Arabiya reported. Addressing a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on Sept. 13 Erdogan stated the necessity of adopting a secular constitution in Egypt. Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman Muhammad Ghozlan rejected this call, saying ‘the experience of other states cannot be applied in Egypt’. He regarded Erdogan’s calls for secular constitution in Egypt as interference into other country’s internal affairs. Founded in 1928, Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest and one of the largest Islamic groups, which is regarded as the largest political opposition organization in Egypt. Erdogan kicked off his visit to Egypt on Tuesday as part of a tour of North African Arab countries. He had talks with the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Isam Sharif and the Secretary General of the League of Arab States Nabil al-Arabi. Erdogan is scheduled to visit Tunis on Sept. 14. He will leave Tunis for Libya on Sept. 15 to hold talks with the Head of the Interim Transitional National Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan Attacks Israel in Cairo, Offers Himself as Leader of Arab World
The Turkish prime minister describes Gaza blockade as a “crime”, says a Palestinian state is “not an option but a necessity”. In reference to Syria, he says, “The legitimate demands of the people cannot be repressed with force and in blood,” reminding his audience that Turks and Arabs are brothers.
Cairo (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan began a tour of Arab nations yesterday. In Cairo, where he arrived with a huge entourage of 280 business people, ministers and advisers, the Turkish leader signed trade agreements with Egypt, declared his full support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and renewed his attacks against Israel.
Erdogan made two public appearances yesterday. One before the foreign ministers of the Arab League and the other at a short press conference. At both, Israel starred as the greatest opponent of peace in the region. Erdogan mentioned the nine Turkish civilians killed aboard the Mavi Marmara during last year’s flotilla to Gaza, and the five Egyptians killed during a terror attack near Eilat last month.
“The barrier to peace in the region is the mentality of the Israeli government,” Erdogan noted.
Urging Arab states to raise the Palestinian flag, he described the Gaza blockade as a “crime”, and the establishment of a Palestinian state “not an option but a necessity”.
In an interview with the paper el-Shourouk, he said that Israeli leaders have failed to read the situation and lost supporters, even in the United States. When former US Defence Secretary Gates, a former CIA director, says that Netanyahu is a danger to Israel, pushing the country towards international isolation, that can be taken as a major sign. Many kept silence. Turkey chose to act, he said.
In a reference to Syria, the Turkish leader appealed for freedom and democracy. “The legitimate demands of the people cannot be repressed with force and in blood,” he said. “Freedom and democracy and human rights must be a united slogan for the future of our people.” What is more, “Turks and the Arabs are linked by brotherhood for hundreds of years. We share the same culture and the same faith”.
Such words echoed those of US President Barack Obama, who in his meeting with Erdogan stressed Turkey’s leadership role in the Arab world.
Some years ago, top officials in the Italian Bishops’ Conference and Vatican diplomacy expressed the same ideas.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Press; Sarkozy-Cameron Mission to Tripoli Tomorrow
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, SEPTEMBER 14 — The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the French philosopher, Bernard Henri-Lévy will tomorrow travel to Tripoli and then on to Benghazi, according to the website of the French newspaper Le Monde. Sarkozy ,Cameron and Henri-Lévy, the philosopher who over the last few months has forged close ties with members of Libya’s rebel forces and has pusher for International intervention against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, will travel to a hospital in the Libyan capital and will meet the leaders of the National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustafa Abdel Jalil and Mahmud Jibril. Le Monde says that the meeting will be followed by a brief press conference. Cameron and Sarkozy will then fly to Benghazi, the city that became the focal point of the rebellion, where they will speak in Freedom Square.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Sarkozy-Cameron Duo to Steal Limelight From Erdogan
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, SEPTEMBER 14 — Oil and contracts in the new Libya are so widely coveted that even the passing hours appear to be crucial. This, at least, is the message from the interventionist movements of the political leaders of France and the UK, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, who are looking to accelerate plans for a potential semi-surprise visit to Tripoli.
The arrival of the French President and the British Prime Minister would steal the limelight from Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who according to reports in recent days will arrive tomorrow in the Libyan capital, which remains well disposed towards him, despite the excessive pro-Gaddafi balance in Ankara’s diplomatic circles.
The website of the French newspaper, Le Monde, says that Sarkozy and Cameron will travel tomorrow to Tripoli and then Benghazi, alongside the French philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy. There has been no official confirmation, clearly for security reasons, but an indication comes in the form of the mobilisation of 160 French police, who are leaving for Libya, where the two leaders will address crowds grateful for Anglo-French bombings of Gaddafi targets. The acclaim is also a useful diversionary tactic in France, on the day that debate gets underway between socialist candidates for the country’s primary elections. Preparations for the trip are thought to have been going on for two weeks, on Sarkozy’s side at least, but the unofficial announcement has caught Erdogan by surprise, after the Turkish Prime Minister had officially trumpeted his visit some days ago as his final trip in the region, after today’s visit to Tunisia and yesterday’s triumphant appearance in Cairo, the capital of North Africa’s Arab Spring.
The diplomatic flocking to Tripoli has been increased further today by the US, with the most senior official yet to set foot in Libya, Jeffrey Feltman, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, also in the country.
It seems that the two European leaders are travelling to Libya to reap the economic and oil dividends of a political and military effort that has led NATO to give its decisive support to the anti-Gaddafi rebels, while Turkish diplomats led by the Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, were mediating until the end between the Libyan leader and rebels, showing a balanced approach that, at first, was appreciated by many, but which eventually became counter-productive as the rebel victory began take shape. Indeed, Ankara only recognised the National Transitional Council as the “legitimate representative of the Libyan people” at the beginning of July. The NTC has said publicly that it will favour companies heralding from countries that showed the most support for the uprising, showing particular favour not only to France and the UK, but also to the US and Qatar. In spite of this, the signals sent out to Erdogan by Mahmoud Jibril, the second-in-command of the NTC, and by a spokesperson for the organisation, have been encouraging. Forgetting the series of fantasy diplomatic formulas that marked Turkey’s failed mediation (“road map”, “guarantees”, “rapid ceasefire”, “third way”), the two men underlined the help given to those injured in the fighting and said that they hoped for a return of Turkish businesses.
Ankara, the historic heir of the Ottoman empire, has significant economic interests in Libya, over which it once ruled, as shown by the 20-25,000 Turks repatriated from Libya, who have abandoned — at least for now — the roughly 30 billion dollars in investments and interests linked especially to property.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Clashes Between Rebels at Tunisian Border, Press
(ANSAmed) — TUNISIA, SEPTEMBER 14 — In Libyan territory along the border with Tunisia near the border crossing Ras Jedir, there have reportedly been skirmishes — with much shooting taking place — within the ranks of the rebels. Reports were from the local correspondent of TAP, who did not add any details.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Abbas: State Request to UN Irreversible Decision
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO — A request for full-fledged membership of the Palestinian state to the UN is an “irreversible” Arab decision, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) while speaking with the Egyptian press, reports MENA, before the UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week. The Palestinian President underlined that the initiative is not a “unilateral” move and that this does not mean what the Palestinians do not want peace negotiations. “We are doing this because there are not any negotiations,” he said. “We are not trying to isolate Israel and we do not want to be dragged into a confrontation with the USA,” Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) commented, underlining that the U.S. government provides the Palestinian National Authority with 470 million dollars per year.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Nude Models on Dead Sea, Photography Project in Doubt
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, SEPTEMBER 14 — Three days before another mass photo shoot, photographer Spencer Tunick is still not sure whether he will be able to photograph thousands of nude volunteers on the shores of the Dead Sea. According to Israeli military radio, the necessary permits have not been granted yet and opposition to the project is mounting. Previously, Tunick has already done photographs with thousands of nude models in places all over the world. The choice to shoot at the Dead Sea also falls within the context of efforts to publicise the area on an international level as one of the “wonders of the world”, according to military radio. Tunick intends to photograph between 1000 and 3000 volunteers at sunrise on Saturday in a secret location on the Dead Sea. The volunteers will be transported to the site on coach buses. But strong opposition to his project has come from religious circles and several members of Parliament are now working to prevent the realisation of the project, which in their opinion, “hurts the feelings” of the people they represent. This idea has bewildered Tunick’s volunteers, who say that “it is not easy to hurt someone’s feelings at 4am in a desert zone”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan Rallies Arab League Against Israel
ecep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, warned Israel it must “pay a price for its aggression and crimes”, in a passionate speech in Cairo, cementing a foreign policy shift that has alarmed Israel and worried the US. Mr Erdogan’s comments on Tuesday, the first full day of a trip intended to boost Turkey’s role in a region in flux, ranged far beyond the dispute over Israel’s deadly raid on the Turkish-based ship, the Mavi Marmara, last year. The Turkish leader said it was “an obligation” to support the Palestinians in their efforts to gain UN recognition as a state. “The Palestinian flag has to flutter at the UN,” he told a foreign ministers’ meeting at the Arab League’s Cairo headquarters. “Let’s raise the flag of Palestine to the sky and let it be a symbol of justice and peace in the Middle East.”
Mr Erdogan’s trip is seen as an attempt to capitalise on popular Arab admiration for his perceived willingness to take a tougher line towards Israel than other countries in the region.
But the deepening rift has been of great concern to the US, which counts both Israel and Turkey as close allies. Mr Erdogan’s comments came as two senior US administration officials travelled to Israel for talks aimed at staving off the Palestinian vote at the UN. David Hale, Washington’s Middle East peace envoy, and Dennis Ross, a senior White House adviser, are due to hold meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Wednesday and Thursday. Their hastily arranged trip, just days before the two leaders will travel to New York for the UN General Assembly, appears designed to forge an eleventh-hour deal that would stop the Palestinians from pressing ahead with their bid for full membership. “Our hope is that we get the parties back into a frame of mind and a process where they will actually begin negotiating again,” Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Tuesday. Mr Hale and Mr Ross visited the region last week but came back empty handed, and analysts say there is little hope for progress from the latest trip. “If the administration is trying to put together a cleverly packaged formula [for more talks], it would be a disaster,” said Aaron David Miller, a former senior US diplomat now at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “I would prefer a UN resolution to another false start.”
Mr Erdogan has expelled Israel’s senior diplomats, threatened to send warships to guard aid convoys to Gaza and described the Mavi Marmara raid — in which eight Turks and a US-Turkish dual national were killed — as a “cause for war”. “His positions on Israel are 100 per cent,” said Nasr Ali, a demonstrator who came to express his support for Mr Erdogan outside the Arab League. “His stance is much better than that of Arab leaders. He was first to expel Israeli diplomats from his country.” Huge billboards carrying Mr Erdogan’s picture against the backdrop of the Egyptian and Turkish flags were erected in Cairo, emphasising his message of regional unity. One supporter held up a sign saying: “If Erdogan had been our leader we would have liberated our Jerusalem.” But Emad Gad, an analyst, said Cairo seemed reluctant to rush into Ankara’s embrace. “The ruling military council and the government probably believe that this is not the right time to launch a strategic co-operation with Turkey. “The Turks are in a moment of strength and we are in one of weakness.”
Mr Erdogan called for the Israeli blockade of Gaza to be lifted and mentioned five Egyptian soldiers killed last month on the border with Israel as its forces pursued assailants who had mounted an attack inside Israeli territory. Many Egyptians have been angered at what they considered their government’s feeble and confused response to the killing of its soldiers. The killings were the reason cited by demonstrators for invading the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Friday.
Turkey’s new stance on Israel has come as part of a reversal of previous close ties, which prospered in the 1990s but frayed in recent years. Israel said it carried out the Mavi Marmara raid in self-defence in protection of a legal blockade on Gaza. Turkish officials said Mr Erdogan’s tour, which will later take him to Tunisia and Libya, will also mark Ankara as an unhesitating supporter of the rolling revolutions of the Arab spring.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Erdogan’s ‘Dangerous Macho Posturing’
EU Politicians Slam Turkey’s Anti-Israel Course
Turkey’s prime minister is keen to position himself as a leader in efforts to rebuild the Arab world. At the same time, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has grown aggressive in his verbal attacks on Israel. European Union politicians are now criticizing the Turkish leader, calling for a more moderate tone.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not only using his tour of several Arab states for self-promotion, but for verbal attacks against Israel as well. “No one can play with Turkey or Turkish honor,” Erdogan said in Cairo on Tuesday. Israel lost Turkey as a strategic partner after the Israeli military attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip in May 2010.
During the Arab Spring, Erdogan has presented himself as a new power, a model leader and a “rising star” with “near pop-star status” in the region, as the New York Times has described the Turkish leader. His multi-day trip to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is meant to strengthen his role in the region.
However, Erdogan has also linked his solidarity with the Arab world to a strident anti-Israel foreign policy. Indeed, the political battle lines between Turkey and Israel have been intensifying in recent weeks:
Erdogan expelled senior Israeli diplomats in early September. If the tension between the two countries wasn’t thick enough already, this step only served to escalate the dispute between them.
Ankara halted its military cooperation with Israel and announced an increased Turkish military presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. All trade ties with Israel are currently frozen and Erdogan is threatening “further sanctions.”
At the same time, Erdogan is presenting himself more and more as an advocate for the Palestinians. More than once, he has vociferously considered visiting the Gaza Strip, a move Israel would regard as an affront.
Erdogan doesn’t shy away from verbal attacks, either. On Monday, he said Israel had behaved like a “spoiled child” and accused Israel of supporting “state terror.” He described Israel’s military action against last year’s flotilla to Gaza as a “cause for war.”
The conflict could also put Ankara’s relationship with the European Union to the test. The dispute over the deadly military raid on the Gaza flotilla, which left nine Turkish activists dead, could grow into a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the EU. Indeed, among high-profile politicians in the European Parliament, criticism of Erdogan is growing…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Fearful of “Terrorists” Coming to Power in Syria
(AGI) Moscow — Russia is not backing down on its support for the regime of Syrian dictator, Bashar el Assad, saying that should he fall “terrorist organizations” could come to power.
The sentiment came from a high Russian official, who said, “If the Syrian government shows itself incapable of governing, there is a high possibility that radical elements and terrorist organizations would take over” in Syria. Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev expressed the same fears in the past few days.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Prince Walid Denies Model Rape Allegations
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, SEPTEMBER 14 — A spokeswoman for Kingdom Holding company, an investment company controlled by the multi-billionaire prince Walid Ibn Talal, has stated that rape allegations against the Saudi prince, who is accused of having raped a Spanish model are “totally and completely false”. This was reported by the daily newspaper Gulf News. The New York Times yesterday reported a Spanish judge’s intention to re-open a sexual assault case related to a rape that allegedly occurred in 2008, on a yacht on the island of Ibiza. The trial had previously been kept confidential and was dismissed in 2010, due to lack of evidence. “The event did not occur” stated spokeswoman Hiba Fatani, explaining that “the prince was not in Ibiza in 2008 and has not been to Ibiza for over ten years. His yacht, the Kingdom 5KR, had not reached the island yet and the prince never rented another one”. The woman, known only as Soraya, was allegedly raped on a yacht after having been drugged. Medical and toxicological investigations have detected the presence of drugs in urine and evidence of sexual intercourse; however, no evidence of rape was found. “This is certainly not the first time that somebody passes oneself off for a prince for his own purposes. However, while we do accept that a young woman might have been deceived, we would not expect this from the New York Times,” Faitani said.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
The Christians of the Near East and Islamist Ideology
At the 23rd European week on Euro-Mediterranean religious history, a series of interventions illustrate the great saga of the Churches of Antioch, from martyrdom to deportations, but also passionate evangelization and inter-religious and cultural dialogue. An overview by the editor of AsiaNews on the current situation of the Churches of the Near East in the throes of radical Islamism.
Gazzada (AsiaNews) — From September 6 to 10 last, the 23rd European Week focusing on the life history and tradition of the Christian communities of Antiochian tradition (Maronite, Byzantine, Syriac, Chaldean, Armenian, Malankara, … ) was held in Gazzada (VA).
These weeks are organised by the Fondazione Ambrosiana Paolo VI and the Catholic Sacro Cuore University and are held in the magnificent setting of Villa Cagnola, an eighteenth-century jewel. The specific theme was “From the Mediterranean to the China Sea. The irradiation of the Christian tradition of Antioch in Asia and in its religious universe. “
Over the course of very intense days of academic study and debate on the various Christian experiences in Turkey, Persia, Central Asia, India, China, the characteristic of the Antiochian tradition emerged, a tradition capable from the outset of communicating with the surrounding cultures and religions, along with a strong sense of Christian identity. The conference was attended by personalities and scholars from around the world. Among them, some witnesses to the current life of these churches, such as Msgr. Louis Sako, Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk, and Fr Samir Khalil Samir, an expert on Islam and professor in Beirut.
The concluding day, Sept. 10, was devoted to the situation of these churches, often subjected to severe persecution. The director of AsiaNews was asked to present a paper entitled “Islamist Ideology and situation of Christians in the Middle East”, which we publish below. The Paul VI Foundation is already drafting a publication that will include all the interventions of the conference proceedings.
Radical Islam has always been present in Islam, but it has emerged in recent decades thanks to the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928) and with the support from the Saudi Wahhabi ideology. It supposes a literalist interpretation of Islam and a return to the origins of Islam — that of Mohammed and the four caliphs — as a way to reaffirm the dignity of the Muslim communities in the world.
Their enemies are the corrupt Islamic governments (almost all) the atheist and colonial West, the State of Israel, and finally Christians, often banded together with the West, although the Islamists often target the Christian communities who were present in the Middle East long before Muhammad.
The choice of violence and terrorism seen as a religious act in praise of Allah that purifies the world by destroying the enemies of Islam is linked to the Islamic world.
What weight does this interpretation of Islam have?
A survey by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published by AsiaNews [1] March 4, 2009, showed that at least 30% of respondents in several Muslim countries — Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco — supported the use of bombs and murder to achieve political and religious purposes.
A large majority supported the goal of al Qaeda to “push the U.S. to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries”. These include 87% of Egyptians, 64% of Indonesians, 60% of Pakistanis.
Other aims of al Qaeda also received wide support. Among these, “the strict application of sharia law in all Islamic countries and the unification of all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate” received the support of 65% of Egyptians and 48% of Indonesians, 76% Pakistanis and Moroccans. “Keeping Western values out of Islamic countries”, another of the organization’s goals gained the support of 88% in Egypt, 76% in Indonesia, 60% in Pakistan and by 64% in Morocco.
Support for figure of Osama bin Laden — still alive at the time — was more contentious With the exception of Egypt (with 44%), and the Palestinian territories (with 56%) in other countries, “positive feelings” towards him reached 14% in Indonesia, 25% in Pakistan, 27% in Morocco; 27% in Jordan, 9% in Turkey and 4% in Azerbaijan.
We can say that this mentality is still present, even after the death of Osama bin Laden. Tony Blair, former British prime minister, in an interview with the BBC (09/10/2011) said that the West “had beaten Al Qaeda militarily,” but it has not yet won “from the ideological point of view.”
There is therefore a discreet influence of this Islamist mindset in the Muslim world. It is enhanced by two other factors:
1) the silence of the moderate or modernizing Muslim world, that wants a reform of Islam based on a new interpretation of the Koran and Sharia law subject to universal human rights;
2) the spread of Islamist thinking through the preaching in mosques and Islamic schools.
Because of this, in recent decades Islamic propaganda has been on the steady increase in countries in the Middle East with mosques, movies, books, videos, use of the veil, the beard, the practice of Sharia law. Such propaganda has silenced the moderate voices and urged Christians to increasingly take refuge in their communities, at most resisting this new type of colonization, by remaining anchored to their tradition.
The political use of Islam was accelerated in 1979 with the Iranian revolution and the assault on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001. However, it mainly feeds on a sense of crisis that pervades Muslim communities, who feel out of place in the modern world, incapable of producing influential and desirous cultures while at the same time wanting to live their religious faith.
The (easy) option is a return to the original Islam, the religious formalism proposed by the imams, who are repeating patterns taken from the past in every aspect of life: work, daily living, gender, justice, value of women, apostasy, etc..
The governments of the Middle East, all extremely fragile, depend on aid from Saudi Arabia and suspend the already marginal political value of the Christians — a minority — often they do not defend Christians, but prefer to leave more room in society to Islam, though sometimes they appeal for society to be protected from terrorism.
The West, for its part, by supporting the cause of Israel, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has also chosen a conflictual path in the relationship, while maintaining economic ties, and relegating cultural and religious dialogue to last place.
Not to mention the tendency in the West to blame itself for all the problems of the Arab world, attaching them to its colonial past. A West that defends sharia as an untouchable cultural element, which defends all the rights except that of religious freedom … it must be said that these positions of the West strengthen Islamism, which is convinced of the West’s “predator” and “atheist” character and he sees in the oppression of Christians (“Crusaders”) a victory for these positions.
This situation of insecurity, war, cultural oppression is emptying the Middle East of Christians. Emigration is the road chosen by many, often forever.
In Lebanon, at the time of the Constitution in ‘46, about 60 years ago, there was a small Christian majority, compared to Muslims and Druze. Now nobody wants to do a census, but Christians have fallen below 40% (perhaps 35%). And this is undermining the country’s political balance. In other countries of the region, like Turkey, we see the Christian presence in free fall: in the space of a century it has dropped from about 20% to 1%.
Some years ago the Custody of the Holy Land presented some striking data. It claims that between 1840 and 2002, the Christian population of Jerusalem fell from 25% to 2%. In 1863, Bethlehem was an almost entirely Christian city with 4400 Christians to 600 Muslims. Even in 1922 there were still 5838 Christians and only 818 Muslims. But in 2002 the City of David is home to only 12 thousand Christians, while Muslims are now 33,500.
Dr. Bernard Sabella, of Bethlehem University, a scholar of labour migration, says that since 1948 at least 230 thousand Arab Christians have left the Holy Land; since the war of 1967 35% of the Palestinian Christian population has emigrated. It is expected that in 2020, Christians will represent only 1, 6% of the total population. The unstable political situation, tensions with Israel which slow development and job prospects, the growth of Islamism among Palestinian Muslims (in a population that once was the most secularized in the Middle East); any violent incident against churches and Christian schools, especially in Gaza are all contributing factors to Palestinian emigration.
The case of Iraq
The situation of Christian communities in Iraq is even more emblematic. Since 2003, the year of the U.S. invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein, the country has become unstable, insecure, with fundamentalist groups that fight foreign troops, but also their Iraqi “allies”, Muslims or Christians.
The lack of security, the slowness with which the political alliances and governments were formed have increasingly deteriorated the situation.
In this sense, Christians have suffered the same trials and violence as other groups — Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidi, Arabs, Turkmen, etc. ..
The Christians were, however, a particular target of violence, to the point that many bishops feared the existence of a plan to rid Iraq of Christians, similar to the 1970s when there was one to drive Christians from Lebanon.
The culmination of this open persecution emerged in the Oct. 31, 2010, terrorists attack on the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baghdad. In the afternoon, while Sunday Mass was being celebrated, a group of youths — 14-15 years of age — fully armed with machine guns and grenades entered the church and began to shoot, detonating their grenades among the faithful gathered for the Eucharist . 55 people were killed, among them many children, women, elderly as well as two priests, along with about 70 wounded [2].
The attack was immediately claimed by the “Islamic State of Iraq”, a cell of al Qaeda in Iraq. In their rambling statement, they claim that the attack was retaliation against the Egyptian Church, “guilty” of incarcerating two Christian women who wanted to become Muslim.
It is important to note that since then they say that all Christians of the Middle East have become “legitimate targets” of the war of Islam against idolatry and against the “pollution” that Christians bring to Arab culture [3], referring to the church targeted in the attack as a “dirty den of idolatry.” [4]
Christians are therefore “legitimate targets” for allowing more dialogue between East and West, for having encouraged a growth in the values of modernity Arab culture, for affirming the dignity and equality of women and men, for offering education to girls, for nurturing a mature secular state, for accommodating all religious minorities.
This explains why in all these years in Iraq priests, bishops, but also lay faithful — Christian university students, male and female, university professors, professionals — have been targeted.
Al Qaeda is against the Christian faith and its contribution to the advancement of society, wanting to return the country to primitive Islam, where the woman stays at home and does not study, where there is no culture if not the literal study of the Koran, where pluralism is absent from society.
The bombing of the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help has led many Muslim intellectuals to (re) discover the value of the Christian presence in the Middle East, and some have launched the slogan: Let us save the Christian presence in the Arab world [5].
The invitation of the Synod on the Middle East
One important coincidence is that a few days before the attack in Baghdad the Synod on the Churches in the Middle East had just concluded at the Vatican, where the importance of the presence of the Eastern Churches in the fabric of the Middle East was stressed.
And the Synod launched the urgent invitation to Christians to “remain” in the Middle East, not for masochistic voluntarism or blindness, but in the name of the vocation and mission that Christians have in these lands [6].
The Synod’s invitation to “stay” was voiced by Benedict XVI to the Christians of the Holy Land, during his trip in May 2009 [7].
This “stay” is an integral part of the search for a more complete religious freedom, but also that of a constantly growing collaboration as equal citizens of Middle Eastern society.
Arab Spring
A historic occasion for the implementation of this mission is the turbulence that is crossing many countries of the Middle East.
The so-called “Arab Spring” or “jasmine revolution” that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and especially Syria.
All of these riots started because of hunger (rising food prices), unemployment, injustice, corruption. The many young people who participated in the demonstrations were asking in particular for dignity and work, but also democracy and constitutional reforms to eliminate the personal dictatorships that dominated their country for decades, enriching themselves and groups linked to them.
The demonstrations were mostly non-violent and without Islamic confessional elements. Indeed, especially in Egypt, the friendship between Christians and Muslims was openly stressed and the demand that the constitution ensure full citizenship to all the minorities remains.
It is true that the situation of greater freedom created by with the fall of dictators (in Tunisia and Egypt and now in Libya), is bringing out the highly organized Muslim Brotherhood or fundamentalist groups linked to al Qaeda, (in Libya), who make their influence felt.
It is possible that in future elections in these countries, fundamentalist forces may gain the upper hand, aided by their organization and perhaps even the ignorance and illiteracy of the masses.
The fear of a future dominated by fundamentalists has pushed and is pushing almost all the Christian leaders to see every change of regime in a negative way and to condemn the “Arab Spring”.
Not so among the Christian laity, who instead are divided between advocates of change and supporters of these regimes.
The most typical example is Syria for months in revolt at first, non-violent, but now in danger of generating a civil war. The leaders of Christian churches, however, continue to defend Bashar el-Assad. In the words of Melkite Greek-Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham, “We are not afraid of Islam. We are afraid of a chaos taking over, similar to that in Iraq. “ [8]
The pope, for his part, called on Christians to pray, but he also asked the parties to find ways of reconciliation, also seeing just demands in the requests of the anti-Assad protesters.
It is a critical moment of discernment for the Christians of the Near East, to augment the demands for justice with the need for order, security and freedom. And that is part of their mission and of their “staying”.
Concluding this overview, it is worthwhile to at least touch on some important paths that are emerging in these times and which mark that a change is underway in the Middle Eastern world:
a) increasingly the Muslim world, including Muslim institutions, are openly condemning terrorist violence;
b) many Muslim intellectuals have spoken out in defence of Christians and their presence in the Middle East, and for their contribution to society, without which their lands would become “barbaric” and places of perpetual ethnic wars;
c) facing the threat of extinction of Christians in the Middle East, the various churches are seeking ways to collaborate and to evangelize together, e with a much more solid ecumenism than in the past (see in particular Turkey, Iraq, the Holy Land);
d) the Christian communities of the Diaspora do an excellent job in supporting religious freedom in their communities of origin, but are tempted by a singularly conflictual approach to the Islamic world, without being of real help to the mission of Christians in Middle Eastern societies;
e) the West (see the U.S. and Europe) seem less interested in a Middle Eastern solutin in justice, peace and respect for human rights. Their only concern is maintaining economic ties without any political or cultural dialogue;
f) the churches of the West are engaged in charity and in solidarity with the churches of the East, but hesitate to suggest ways of engagement in
Middle Eastern societies inspired by the social doctrine of the Church; at the same time they fail to influence their governments to bring political and cultural pressure to bear on the Middle Eastern States.
[1] Cfr.: AsiaNews.it, 04/03/2009, Islamic countries reject al Qaeda, but also American policy.
[2] For the massacre’s story told by the injured, s. AsiaNews.it, 11/25/2010 The martyrs of the massacre in Baghdad, a sign of unity for all Iraq’s Christians (by Simone Cantarini) and AsiaNews.it, 11/30/2010 I try to forget, but I will always see the blood stained church of Baghdad (by Giulia Mazza).
[3] Cfr AsiaNews.it, 11/03/2010 Al Qaeda threat: Christians are legitimate targets.
[4] Cfr. CBN News, 11/05/2010, Al Qaeda Group Promises Attacks On Iraqi Christians.
[5] For all, s. AsiaNews.it, 11/13/2010 Christians in the Middle East essential for the survival of the Arab world.
[6] Cfr the nn 106-110 of Instrumentum Laboris on “The Catholic Church in the Middle East:Communion and Witness”, Vatican City, 2010; the No. 5 of “Message to the People of God” (cfr. AsiaNews.it, 10/23/2010, Synod for the Middle East: a Message to the People of God ).
[7] Cfr. AsiaNews.it, 05/10/2009, Pope prays Christ will give “his courage” to the Christians of the Holy Land.
[8] Cfr. AsiaNews.it, 08/09/2011 The Pope’s appeal and the fears of Christians in Syria.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey’s Erdogan Struts the Arab Street
It is deeply ironic and from some perspectives profoundly troubling that the hero of the moment in the chaotic political turmoil that is now the Jasmine Revolution is not an Arab at all, but the leader of the Middle East’s old imperial power, Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday capped months of persistent efforts to turn Turkey away from its European focus and refashion it as a power broker in the Middle East with a highly charged speech in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, aimed at arousing the political passions of ordinary Arabs.
Erdogan capitalized on his record as an outspoken populist by calling for regional backing for a vote at the United Nations later this month for recognized Palestinian statehood.
The United States, ostensibly Turkey’s ally in the NATO alliance, is siding with Israel on this question, has warned that the move will do nothing to promote a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, and says it will use its UN Security Council veto to nullify the move. But Erdogan’s willingness to bulldoze through the usually nuanced and opaque positions taken by Middle Eastern leaders on the Israel-Palestinian issue resonates with ordinary Arabs.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in March and April found that 79 per cent of Egyptians, 72 per cent of Jordanians and 64 per cent of Lebanese have confidence in Erdogan as a regional leader. The Arab embracing of Erdogan comes almost a century after the Arab Revolt demolished the Turkish Ottoman Empire that had ruled the Middle East for centuries.
And while that collapse led to a revolution in Turkey that created a secular democracy with Islamic tinges — now seen by many as a model for the Middle East — in the rest of the region the Arab Revolt produced a period of French and British colonialism which morphed into the authoritarian regimes now facing turmoil on the streets.
Erdogan’s emergence as the champion of reform, however, comes more from the lack of any credible voice within the Arab states than from his own vision for the region. Since he was first elected in 2003, Erdogan’s foreign policy has been more a series of lucky stumbles than the pursuit of clear and logical policy. He leads the Muslim faith-based Justice and Development Party. His domestic drive, as well as overseeing an economic boom, has been to erode the army’s ultimate authority to protect the secular constitution. This tack towards overt religious conservatism in politics has been aided by the abrupt rejection, especially by France, of Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.
Instead, Erdogan has turned the country’s attention toward making Turkey a major player in a regional game of influence where Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt carry the big sticks.
Erdogan’s most telling move was in May last year when his government allowed and encouraged a Turkey-based anti-Israeli group to send a flotilla of ships to try to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza, aimed at preventing weapons from being supplied to militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed on one of the ships when activists attacked a boarding party of Israeli commandos. Earlier this month a UN report said Israel had the right to stop the flotilla, but used excessive force.
Erdogan used the occasion to try to ramp up his Arab street cred and demanded an apology from Israel.
That was never going to happen, but Erdogan, with what sounded like manufactured outrage, expelled the Israeli ambassador to Ankara. This has in part disguised how wrong-footed Erdogan has been in his response to the so-called Arab Spring. Erdogan opposed the UN-backed Western intervention in Libya, where Turkey had contracts worth about $15 billion with the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. After his visit to Cairo, Erdogan is going on to Tripoli to try to repair relations with Libya’s new interim government. He has also stumbled and fumbled in his dealings with another old friend under attack from protesters on the streets, Bashar Assad, president of neighbouring Syria. Erdogan’s first instinct was to support Assad, but he had to do an about-face when floods of Syrian refugees crossed the border and Turks made clear their support for the Syrian protesters. Erdogan now says Assad has lost the right to rule and should go, but he warned on Tuesday that Syria faces a civil war that could destabilize the region.
jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Taliban Blitz Rocks Kabul
TALIBAN killers launched a vicious attack on Kabul today — targeting key buildings in a devastating blitz. During a day of carnage the US Embassy, Nato HQ and other buildings in the heart of the Afghan capital were struck while suicide bombers attacked police buildings. The stand-off began when six Taliban killers stormed a building opposite the two HQs before firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. This latest attack came just two days after the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It was the THIRD major attack in Kabul since June, showing a worrying new trend in the war there.
Wounded
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force said: “A small group of insurgents attacked the vicinity of the US Embassy and International Security Assistance Force Afghanistan headquarters today, firing from outside the compound using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. The attack started around 1.30 pm (local time). “Afghan National Security Forces and coalition forces immediately responded to the attack, and are still on the scene. There are no reports of ISAF casualties at this time.” The American Embassy and Nato confirmed no staff were wounded in the attack. But Afghan officials said at least one Afghan copper, a civilian, and two Taliban fighters had been killed in the violence. The Interior Ministry said a total of nine people were wounded across the city. They include four injured by two suicide bomb attacks in the western part of the capital.
[JP note: Koranic students perform their version of ‘Ballroom Blitz.’]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
NCJP Report Highlights Violence and Abuses Against Pakistan’s Minorities
The commission’s Human Rights Monitor 2011 not only describes human rights violations but also offers proposals to improve society and help the country. The study includes emblematic cases of persecution and data on blasphemy murders and indictments against non-Muslims. In 2010, 40 people were charged for blasphemy; 37 were murdered.
Lahore (AsiaNews) — The National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) of the Catholic Bishops’ conference of Pakistan has released Human Rights Monitor 2011, an annual report on religious minorities in Pakistan that describes in detail the violence they had to endure last year and in the first part of this year. In addition to proving an exhaustive overview of the situation, it also provides proposals to guarantee all Pakistanis more rights and freedom.
In the preface, NCJP’s executive secretary, Peter Jacob, remembers a talk he had with activist and journalist Aziz Siddiqui before the first edition was released in 1997. The “NCJP kept doing this report all these years with limited means and skills,” Jacob writes, yet the “journey to improve human conditions and reclaim human dignity must continue with zeal and with all possible means.”
The 2011 report contains stories, comments, complains about discrimination. It highlights the various forms they take: forced seizures of land, attacks against churches and other places of worship, violations of religious freedom, forced conversions, racist verbal abuse and discrimination, anti-minority laws, crimes against women, abuses by law enforcement agencies and political groups, and last but not least, the country’s blasphemy legislation and its effects on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Specific cases are described to illustrate the deadly violence of the ‘black law’. The cases of Robert Fanish Masih, a Christian man accused of blasphemy who died in prison, (see Fareed Khan, “Punjab: young Christian man accused of blasphemy killed in prison,” in AsiaNews, 18 July 2009) and that of Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother of five sentenced to death on the same charges (see Jibran Khan, “Christians, Muslims, NGOs mobilise for Asia Bibi, against “obscene” blasphemy law,” in AsiaNews, 15 November 2010) are updated.
The report also looks at the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer (Jibran Khan, “Punjab governor assassinated, he had called for Asia Bibi’s pardon,” in AsiaNews, 4 January 2011) and the death of two Christian brothers, charged with blasphemy and killed in front of a courthouse (see Fareed Khan, “On trial for blasphemy, two Christian brothers murdered in Faisalabad,” in AsiaNews, 19 July 2010)
Christians as well as members of other religious minorities like Hindus and Sikhs are victims of abuses, harassment as well as psychological and physical violence. Ahmadis, who are deemed heretical by mainstream Muslims because they do not consider Muhammad as the last prophet, fare even worse.
Women are attacked in the sanctity of their home or in their place of work. Some are abducted and forced into prostitution; others are forced to marry Muslim men and convert to islam.
The study notes that last year at least 40 people were charged under the blasphemy law, including 15 Christians, 10 Muslims and 6 Ahmadis.
About 37 people were killed with the law as their justification, including 18 Christians and 16 Muslims.
Between 1986, when the law came into effect, and 2010, 1,081 people were charged under it, including 138 Christians, 468 Muslims and 454 Ahmadis.
Last year, 32 Christians were forcibly converted to Islam out of 43 cases. (DS)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
31 Afghans Picked Up After Landing in Salento Area
(AGI) Lecce — Thirty-one Afghans who landed illegally on the Salento coast have been picked up by carabinieri and finance police. According to the migrants they arrived aboard a large rubber dinghy that sailed from Greece.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Breakfast Bans Would Make Monkeys Out of Mums
IF you buy junk food at a drive-through in NSW it may astound you to learn from new mandatory labelling that popcorn chicken is basically fat suspended in a superstructure of chicken eyeballs. This will no doubt shock the people who missed the memo that health food doesn’t come in buckets.
Last week the Cancer Council NSW continued its war on fast food with an assault on Bubble O’Bill, the Paddle Pop lion, the Coco Pops monkey and Toucan Sam, long-serving avian ambassador of Froot Loops cereal. Should the Cancer Council succeed, parents can rest assured any food promoted by a jungle creature in drag will be taken off the shelves and replaced, presumably with a plain olive green box.
Once again the food nannies will have succeeded not only in taking the fun out of another meal but in removing what effectively has served as a warning sign for parents that products are junk food. Foods such as Nutri-Grain, many mueslis and “healthy breakfast spreads” such as peanut butter and Nutella are promoted not by cartoons but by sports people.
If Nutella had a cartoon bird on it perhaps people would have worked out faster that just because a marathon runner promotes it, chocolate isn’t a breakfast food. Certainly the San Diego mother who sued Nutella for selling her fake health food would have had a harder time proving she was not a complete idiot.
Bans on food and beverage advertisements for products that are high in fat, salt and sugar are defended with studies such as the 2006 Access Economics report on obesity in Australia that claimed it cost us $8.3 billion. Obesity certainly is a serious health problem with links to cancer and diabetes, but picking on the fun foods as the sole culprits and treating parents like idiots reveals an agenda based as much on cultural prejudice as health consciousness.
Mass-produced, commercial junk food is easy to recognise; certainly the mascots help. However, posh food is often as bad for your health but is rarely marketed with anything as crass as a cartoon toucan. Wagyu beef has become increasingly popular in part because it has a high fat content and consequently is full of flavour. Perhaps a Pokemon-style cow mascot would help us remember at the butcher that Wagyu is not a healthy alternative to lean beef, fish or lentils.
At the ice cream fridge the poshest ice creams have the highest milk fat content. That’s why they are so delicious. While Paddle Pops are clearly labelled junk food by the presence of the Paddle Pop lion, Maggie Beer’s ice cream has a picture of very dignified and grown-up looking treats on the box. Eating a little of either won’t hurt you but if you’re planning to watch The Notebook, the Lion represents more value for your money.
My waistline has been enhanced by a range of foods both healthy and unhealthy, gourmet and gourmand. There are a remarkable number of kilojoules in fast and slow, fancy and plain, wholesome and junk, the amount of sugar in “diet” foods being an obvious case in point.
The Cancer Council’s bans won’t address the avalanche of kilojoules available in our prosperous society. What they can look forward to is enabling parents such as the San Diego Nutella mum to blame food producers or the government for their failure to meet a basic parenting requirement: feeding their kids properly.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Slap Gets Father Child Abuse Record
An Italian who chastised his 12-year-old son in public while on holiday in Sweden has been found guilty of child abuse.
Stockholm District Court said Giovanni Colasante, an official from the southern Italian town of Canosa di Puglia, “intentionally inflicted pain on his son by pulling him by the hair” for about five seconds during an argument in Stockholm.
Colasante, who denied the charges, was arrested after witnesses approached the family and called police. He spent three nights in jail before returning to Italy and was not present in court for the hearing.
It was not immediately clear whether he would appeal against the verdict.
The case has generated front-page headlines in Italy, where it is being called a parenting “culture clash” between northern and southern Europe. But even Italians who say parents should not slap their children question whether Colasante’s offence deserved jail.
Colasante told Italy’s RAI television he was “humiliated” by the experience and that his son felt guilty for having put his father through the ordeal.
“I had to give up a holiday, and it put into question my relationship with my son, because he now in some ways feels responsible for what happened,” Colasante said, his wife sitting by his side.
In Sweden there is zero tolerance for parents who hit their children, and anyone who does in public is often confronted by bystanders or reported to police.
Sweden was the first country in the world to outlaw corporal punishment in 1979, according to the country’s Ombudsman for Children.
Noting that boy had not received any injuries, the court said the abuse was regarded as a misdemeanour and waived a fine of €800, saying Colasante’s time in jail was sufficient punishment.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Eco-Loon Science: 24 Hours of ManBearPig Day
Today is ManBearPig day. World renowned carbon trader and masseuse enthusiast Al Gore will be kicking off the celebrations by showing wall-to-wall eco-porn videos of weather doing scary things; stock markets across Europe will be collapsing in sympathy with the Prince of Wales’s recent claims that economic growth is unhealthy and we must all live more “sustainably” (ie in abject poverty); and here on this blog we plan to commemorate this glorious event with fun, games and some of our favourite South Park, Simpsons, and Eco-loon propaganda videos.
Altogether now: “GLOBAL WARMING! WE DIDN’T LISTEN!!!!”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Super-Earth Discovered in a Habitable Zone
Whispers that the Milky Way is filled with planets have turned into a roar. Earlier this week, astronomers announced the discovery of 600 more exoplanet candidates, including one “super-Earth” which may be habitable. The news strengthens many astronomers’ suspicions that habitable planets are common and that more exciting discoveries are likely as better telescopes become available.
Called a super-Earth because it is only 3.6 times more massive than Earth and possibly rocky rather than gaseous, it resides in a 58-day orbit on the inner edge of its orange star’s habitable zone. If protected by a thick, cloudy atmosphere, it could have liquid water on its surface. Called HD 85512b, the exoplanet is only the second small world to be found inside a habitable zone and lies just 36 light years away in the constellation of Vela. That is close enough for future telescopes to scour it for signs of life.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
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UK
Wife of Stockholm bomber arrested in Britain: police
LONDON British police said Wednesday they had arrested the wife of a man who carried out a suicide bombing in Sweden in December on suspicion of carrying out preparatory acts for a terrorist attack.
Scotland Yard confirmed they detained Mona Thwany, the wife of Taymour Abdelwahab, on Tuesday in Luton.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gH0HoOBaeEIm_Id5CMlI6zuua8Ww?docId=CNG.3f504f40e2fa04f86688eb68b5588ddf.b81
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