Belgium: Dexia Nationalised for a High Price
De Morgen, 10 October 2011
“Playing poker with taxpayers money,” headlines De Morgen. The Flemish daily announces that on 9 October, the governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg reached agreement on the dismantling of Dexia. The Belgian state will take control of 100% of Dexia Banque Belgique (DBB), the Belgian branch of the group which is specialised in retail banking, in exchange for 4 billion euros. “Belgium only wanted to pay 3 billion, while France wanted to sell for 8,” notes L’Echo.
This is a relatively low evaluation, but at the same time Belgium “will have to act as a guarantor for 50 to 60 billion of potential losses caused by Dexia’s toxic assets,” which have now been placed in a bad bank. The Belgian guarantee will cover 60.5% of these investments, while France will cover 36.5% and Luxembourg 3%. “Economists have warned against a downgrading of Belgian bonds which would result in greater sovereign debt,” remarks De Morgen, which argues that “Belgian taxpayers may have to pay a high price for the bailout of Dexia.” On 8 October, Moody’s rating agency warned of a negative outlook for Belgian debt.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Dexia Rescue: Belgium Nationalizes Troubled Bank
The European banking crisis claimed its first victim on Monday: The Dexia group will be broken up. The Belgian government is paying 4 billion euros to acquire the company’s operations in that country. Meanwhile, the Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments all plan to provide billions in guarantees.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Frattini Certain Bilateral Deals Not a Solution to Crisis
(AGI) Luxembourg — Referring to yesterday’s meeting in Berlin between Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicholas Sarkozy, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that “a global crisis cannot be resolved with bilateral agreements” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Athens Airport Could Pass to China Group
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, OCTOBER 10 — While Greek government’s talks with Hochtief Airport about the extension of its concession contract for Athens International Airport continue, there are indications that Greece’s main terminal will soon be passed on to Chinese owners. As daily Kathimerini reports quoting reliabe sources, the sale process of German airport management company, which owns a 40% stake in Athens Airport and carries out management duties, is at an advanced stage with China’s HNA Group. “The Chinese have submitted the highest bid, but have also set the most terms,” a well-informed source said.
One of the terms concerns the extension of the contract for Athens Airport for the 2026-46 period. Negotiations between the Greeks and the Germans about Athens Airport are heating up, despite the two deadlines set by the Greek side for September 30 and October 5, both of which Hochtief missed. The Greek government is asking for 500 million euros, while Hochtief is insisting on 400 million. Their difference is on the assessment of the airport’s cost of equity. The Germans are banking on the Greek state’s need for privatization revenues, while Greece is relying on Hochtief’s intention to sell its Airport subsidiary.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Government Say OK to French-German Plan on Banks
(AGI) Athens — Greece appreciates the French-German plan for the strengthening of capital in European banks, according to the Greek government spokesperson Ilias Mossailos. “The recapitalization of banks is a very positive decision”, Mossailos said .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Industrial Output Up 4.3% in August
Biggest spurt since 2000
(ANSA) — Rome, October 10 — Italy’s industrial output rose 4.3% in August, its biggest spurt since 2000, Istat said Monday.
Output was 4.7% higher in August 2011 than August 2010, the national statistics agency said.
Auto vehicle output was 31.7% higher over the year.
The figures showed the Italian economy might be on the upturn, analysts said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Merkel, Sarkozy Will Do ‘Whatever Necessary’ To Bail-Out Banks
Financial markets hoping for the outline of some grand strategy for dealing with the ever-worsening eurozone crisis are likely to be disappointed by the vague announcement offered up by the French president and German chancellor after emergency talks in Berlin on Sunday (9 September). “We are very conscious that France and Germany have a particular responsibility for stabilising the euro,” said Nicolas Sarkozy alongside Angela Merkel. “We need to deliver a response that is sustainable and comprehensive. We have decided to provide this response by the end of the month because Europe must solve its problems by the G20 summit in Cannes.” “By the end of the month, we will have responded to the crisis issue and to the vision issue,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Slovakian EFSF Opponent Sulik: ‘The Greatest Threat to Europe is the Bailout Fund’
Only two countries, Malta and Slovakia, have yet to ratify the expansion of the euro bailout fund. Its fate may be in the hands of a minor Slovak party headed by Richard Sulik. In an interview, the politician explains why he hopes the fund will fail and what he sees as the only way to save the euro.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Banks Urged to Beef Up Ahead of Crisis
Swiss financial authorities have urged bank giants UBS and Credit Suisse to quickly improve the quality of their equity capital as fears mount that the Greek debt crisis will spread across the banking sector. A crisis committee will meet this week to discuss the potential impact on Switzerland’s two biggest banks of the eurozone debt crisis, the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday citing two unnamed sources. The report said the committee, which was set up after the 2008 bailout of UBS, has got down to work for the first time amid growing concerns of a new financial crisis in the banking sector.
Interviewed by the NZZ, Patrick Raaflaub, director of financial markets regulator FINMA, described the situation in global markets as “tense” but declined to comment on the activities of the committee. “A body like the financial crisis committee can by definition only function out of the public eye in such phases,” he said, refusing to explain specific measures.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
CAIR/Hamas Spreads Islamic Propaganda in FL English Textbook
The war for the “Heart” of America (our children) in accordance with the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood has taken another bold step forward, one which has apparently gone undetected by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) and other education officials.
While Islamic Indoctrination in America’s public school textbooks has been detailed in reports by groups like ACT for America, American Textbook Council, and most recently a report by Citizens For National Security (CFNS) which cites over 200 false or misleading excerpts in (27) twenty seven of Florida’s approved History and Social Studies textbooks, this is the first time to our knowledge of Islamic propaganda being reported in an English textbook.
The textbook “Elements in Literature” fourth course by Holt, Rinehart and Winston (ISBN 10:0-03-099302-4) is currently being used by Hilliard Middle-High School in Nassau County, a state of Florida approved textbook.
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Crime Predicting Technology Tests Draw Minority Report Comparisons
Using cameras and sensors the “pre-crime” system measures and tracks changes in a person’s body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.
It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual’s likelihood to commit a crime.
The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.
The first test was carried out at an undisclosed location in the north-eastern United States.
According to the Department of Homeland Security it was not at an airport, but was at a “large venue that is a suitable substitute for an operational setting”.
Ultimately, the system could be used not only at airports but at border crossings and any large scale public events like sports matches or political conventions.
However, civil liberties groups have called it a “pseudo technological approach” and raised privacy concerns.
In the 2002 Hollywood blockbuster Minority Report, Tom Cruise plays a police officer in a specialised “PreCrime” department.
Psychics are used to give detectives foreknowledge of someone’s criminal intentions.
The FAST system is instead based on equipment including infrared cameras and pressure pads to detect fidgeting.
Details of the system were obtained through freedom of information laws by the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) based in Washington DC.
A document they obtained said that “sensors will non-intrusively collect video images, audio recordings, and psychophysiological measurements”.
Ginger McCall, a lawyer for the non-profit group, told CBS News: “If it were deployed against the public, it would be very problematic.
“They should do a privacy impact assessment. Especially if they’re going to be rolling this out at the airport.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard told the technology website CNET that “preliminary research” had been carried out to see if the technology could detect signs of stress, which can be associated with intent to do harm.
According to the documents obtained by Epic, the next trial may involve volunteer members of the public with experience in the food service industry.
They would be asked to work at a “one day VIP event” and some of them would be told to do something wrong, like smuggling in a recording device. The technology would then be used to identify the perpetrators.
A Homeland Security spokesman said the FAST experiments were voluntary and did not store any information from those involved.
He added: “If it were ever to be deployed, there would be no personally-identifiable information captured from people going through the system.”
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Group That Had Planned to Build Mosque in Florence Instead Sells Land to Developer
FLORENCE, Ky. — A group that had planned to build a mosque in northern Kentucky has instead sold the property to a developer. The Mercy Foundation, which bought the 5.5 acre plot in Florence in 2008 for $200,000 sold the land to New Plan Property Holding Company, a division of Centro Properties, for $950,000. The proposal last year to build for a mosque at the location generated some negative reactions from neighbors, but the sale appears to be unrelated. Joseph Dabdoub, a spokesman for the Northern Kentucky Islamic Center, told The Kentucky Enquirer that the offer was too good to pass up (http://bit.ly/qsQp57). “This was strictly a business decision,” Dabdoub said. “We had about $100,000 invested in engineering and planning and they agreed to pay that, plus $850,000. They appear to have plans for the property.”
Stacy Slater, a senior vice president for the Centro subsidiary Brixmor Property Group, says the parcel was a critical acquisition for the potential expansion and redevelopment of Florence Square. “We are constantly evaluating options to improve our assets via redevelopment,” Slater said. “As always, our strategy is to create an optimal merchandise mix for the surrounding community of Florence.” Dabdoub said the sale of the parcel does not indicate plans to scrap the mosque project. He said the center would like to remain in Florence, where it currently leases space, but is considering other locations in the vicinity.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Northern B.C.’s First Mosque Opens in Prince George
The first mosque in northern B.C. opened its doors on Saturday in Prince George. Muslims in the region have been worshipping in rented rooms and church halls for years but now — after two years of construction — locals finally have a mosque of their own. “In a mosque, you have a place where you do your own activities that’s your own. You don’t have to call somebody to ask to rent or to come in,” said Dr. Firas Mansour, a local doctor and the project manager for the Prince George Islamic Centre. “This will be the gathering point, the focal point of all activity.”
Built from local wood, the mosque windows face both Mecca and a nearby grove of pine trees. Local residents, with help from mosques across Canada, raised more than $1 million for construction costs. They also got a helping hand from a seven-year-old girl who asked her party guests to bring donations for the mosque instead of gifts for her. “A girl came that evening after the birthday party here and made the contribution,” Mansour said. “And we were extremely happy to see the involvement. It is an important sign to show how the community at large is supportive. If the parents weren’t supportive, the kids would not be supportive.” Mansour said Prince George residents have warmly welcomed the mosque.
“It’s definitely one of the misperceptions of many immigrants, that smaller communities are not welcoming as the larger urban communities.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Electronic Surveillance Scandal Hits Germany
A German hacker organization claims to have cracked spying software allegedly used by German authorities. The Trojan horse has functions which go way beyond those allowed by German law. The news has sparked a wave of outrage among politicians and media commentators.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
France: Hollande Determined to Bring Left to Presidency
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, OCTOBER 10 — “I want to be the candidate making change possible and who will make the left win, for a more respectful, stronger and fairer Presidency of the Republic.
Today has taken me close to this aim,” said Francois Hollande to the press late yesterday evening in the Socialist Party headquarters in Paris. According to estimates, Hollande was in the lead in the French Socialist primaries, from which the Socialist candidate for the 2012 presidential elections will emerge. Now the former secretary of the Socialist party will have to go up against Martine Aubry in the second round of voting on Sunday. Before then, there will likely be a televised squaring-off between the two candidates.
“I am pleased with this result,” added Hollande. “First because there was large-scale participation, beyond what I had expected, and then because I was clearly in the lead. Now I must bring Socialists together again without losing my consistency. I thank the French for what they have done.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
French Suburbs Becoming ‘Separate Islamic Societies’
France’s decrepit city suburbs are becoming ‘separate Islamic societies’ cut off from the state, according to a major new study that examines the spread of Islam in France.
Muslim immigrants are increasingly rejecting French values and identity and instead are immersing themselves in Islam, according to the report, which also warns that Islamic Sharia law is rapidly displacing French civil law in many parts of suburban Paris.
The 2,200-page report, “Banlieue de la République” (Suburbs of the Republic), is the result of a one-year research effort into the four “i’s” that comprise the heart of the debate over French national identity: Islam, immigration, identity and insecurity. The report was commissioned by the influential French think tank L’Institut Montaigne, and directed by Gilles Kepel, a well-known political scientist and specialist in the Muslim world, together with five other French researchers. The authors of the report show that France, which has between five and six million Muslims (France has the largest Muslim population in European Union), is on the brink of a major social explosion because of the failure of Muslims to integrate into French society.
The report also shows how the problem is being exacerbated by radical Muslim leaders who are promoting the social marginalization of Muslim immigrants in order to create a parallel Muslim society in France that is ruled by Sharia law. The research was primarily carried out in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two suburbs in north-eastern Paris that were ground zero for Muslim riots in 2005. Clichy and Montfermeil form part of the district of Seine-Saint-Denis, which has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in France.
Seine-Saint-Denis, which the report describes as a “wasteland of de-industrialization,” is home to more than 600,000 Muslims (primarily from North and West Africa) out of a total population of 1.4 million.
“In some areas, a third of the population of the town does not hold French nationality, and many residents are drawn to an Islamic identity,” the report says. The study says that Muslim religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition. For example, French schools, which are rigorously non-religious, have traditionally been seen as having the role of training and socializing young citizens in the secular values of the French Republic. However, many Muslim pupils refuse to integrate and often boycott school dinners if the food is not halal [religiously permitted in Islam], the report says.
The survey also points to differing social attitudes when it comes to marriage, for example. The report says that although most people in France do not object to mixed marriages, “in the suburbs we were surprised to find a very large proportion of Muslim respondents who said they were opposed to marriages with non-Muslims.” The researchers also looked into the reasons behind the 2005 riots, which they said had called into question modern France’s founding myth, namely “the implicit shared belief that the nation was always able to integrate people.”
Islamic values are replacing those of a French Republic which has failed to deliver on its promise of “equality,” the report says, and the residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French. But the report adds that the French state is not primarily to blame for this and that many Muslim immigrants simply do not want to integrate into French society.Although resentment in the poor suburbs has social roots (primarily a lack of jobs), the report says the rioters expressed frustration in a vocabulary that is “borrowed from Islam’s semantic register.”
The report points out that the suburbs of Clichy and Montfermeil have been at the center of one of France’s biggest urban renewal projects. Many physical barriers to integration have been removed, and efforts have been made to plug the area into public transport networks and improve public safety. Nevertheless, low educational achievement is endemic among the Muslim population. This, in turn, is turning France into a “divided nation.” Most Muslim youth are “not employable.” More than 20% of the residents of Clichy and Montfermeil leave school without a diploma (about 150,000 people per year), according to the report. The unemployment rate for Muslim youth in the suburbs of Paris is around 43%.
These drop-outs enter a cycle of social exclusion negatively shapes their lives and those of their children. Many Muslim youth turn to “deviant behaviors across the range of incivilities in a parallel economy in which drug trafficking is the most prominent.” “One is struck by the high birth rates among newly arrived families from the African Sahel. The mothers work long hours and their young children are under-supervised by the education system, thus threatening their social integration,” the report says. Islam is filling the void. The authors of the study are taken aback at the explosion of the halal market in France in recent years and also point out that the term halal has been greatly expanded in its definition. The survey question “do you respect the halal?” highlights the “complexity of different meanings of the word, which in its most restrictive sense means only the dimension of the forbidden food, but may also include a code of conduct, standards and an expression of dominant values, separating the ‘halal’ from ‘haram,’ the lawful or unlawful in many aspects of society.”
The report also describes a proliferation of mosques and prayer rooms in the suburbs. The religious orientations of the mosques are heavily influenced by the national origin of the founder or president of a given mosque. Islam in Clichy-Montfermeil is structured around two major poles: one pole involves the Tabligh (“spreading of Islam”) movement which is focused on “re-socializing” Muslims on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. The Tabligh movement arrived in Clichy-Montfermeil in the 1980s in the midst of mass unemployment and drugs. Tabligh preachers built their social legitimacy by providing a moral regeneration of young people in distress around a rigorous practice of the precepts of Islam.
The other pole revolves around the figure of the Tunisian imam Dhaou Meskine, who was involved in the launch of Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UIOF). The UOIF, which represents the majority of the 2,100 registered mosques in France, is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which aims to extend Islamic law throughout France. Meskine also participated in the formation of the Union of Muslim Associations (UAM93), a Muslim lobby group that aims to mobilize Muslims to elect candidates in local elections around Islamic issues. UAM93 has been pushing for the construction of a mega-mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis, although that project has run into difficulties due to a power struggle between Algerian, Moroccan and Turkish immigrants.
The report describes a “new sociology of Muslim believers” that is composed mainly of undereducated low-income immigrants who depend on financial support from Morocco or Turkey, countries that are pursuing their own objectives in France. The authors of the study also point to a contradiction among Muslims who live in the suburbs: they do not want the French state to interfere in matters relating to Islam, but they also expect the state to improve their lot in life. The report closes with a warning: “France’s future depends on its ability to re-integrate the suburbs into the national project.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Potential Arson Attack Averted at Berlin’s Central Train Station
Workers at Berlin’s main train station have reportedly found a stash of incendiary materials near an underground track. The discovery was made after arson attacks were reported outside the capital.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Leftist Extremists Claim Rail Arson Attacks
Train services between Berlin and Hamburg were severely disrupted on Monday after a sabotage attack on rail lines claimed by leftist extremists. Federal police also said they had foiled an arson attack on the German capital’s main train station. Reporting the incident at the central station, used by thousands of people each day, the daily Der Tagesspiegel said that an attack had been thwarted at the last minute when a member of staff found several suspect objects. Investigation showed them to be incendiary agents. “The objects were suspiciously like those which were found by the attack on the Berlin-Hamburg train track,” said a spokeswoman for the police. The train station was not evacuated, but the discovered objects were taken for investigation.
An arson attack on cables crucial to the rail link from Berlin to Hamburg early on Monday morning caused what was described as massive damage along the stretch between Brieseland and Finkenkrug stations. Signalling was totally knocked out said a police spokesman, making it impossible for the high-speed ICE train services to run there, according to Der Tagesspiegel.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Parents Believe Their Ethnically Turkish Children Disadvantaged
Most parents of ethnically Turkish children in Germany say they are dissatisfied with the way their kids are being educated, according to a survey seen by Der Spiegel magazine. The survey of 1,256 parents of children between 3 and 18 years old by the Allenbach Institute and commissioned by the Vodafone Foundation found 59 percent believed their kids were not given the same opportunities as ethnically German children. A full 63 percent said they believed teachers had pre-existing prejudices against children from minority backgrounds, the magazine reported.
A slight majority (51 percent) also felt that their children were unfairly graded by teachers, even if they were achieving as highly as their ethnically German peers. A majority also felt language barriers were a major reason for what they felt was their children’s unfair treatment. Previous research has shown that children from immigrant backgrounds fare poorly in Germany’s school system compared to their ethnically German peers, although there has been disagreement over the reasons. Suggested reasons range from low expectations among teachers to poor German language ability among some minority young people.
A 2009 article in the American University Law Review reported that between two thirds and three quarters of children of Turkish origin were assigned to the lowest of Germany’s secondary schools — the Hauptschule — compared to just one third of ethnically German children.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
How a Far-Right Party Came to Dominate Swiss Politics
It has become the biggest party in Swiss politics and one of the most talked-about far-right parties in Europe. Meritxell Mir looks at how the SVP became so successful. With a strident anti-immigration stance and provocative campaigns, the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has become one of the most successful right-wing populist parties in Europe. It now looks set to repeat its success in October’s federal elections. For decades, the SVP seemed to be little more than a curiosity in Swiss politics, winning about one in every ten votes in elections. However, since the early 1990s its popularity has rocketed, its share of the vote doubling in 12 years. In the 1995 federal elections, the far-right party got 14.9 percent of the votes. By 2007, its support had risen to 28.9 percent.
“It has become the strongest and most stable extreme-right party in Europe,” says Georg Lutz, director of Swiss Electoral Studies at the Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences in Lausanne. Today, it’s as strong as ever. The latest poll, published on September 9th and conducted by pollster gsf.berne, showed the SVP way ahead of its opponents, with the support of 28 percent of respondents. The Socialist Party ranked second with 20.5 percent of the vote share, followed by the Free Democratic Party (15.6 percent), the Christian Democratic Party (14.5) and the Greens (9.5). Like similar parties in other countries, the SVP plays on voters’ fear of change, Lutz argues: “Globalization, the openness and the enlargement of the European Union, and the increasing amount of immigrants were seen as a cultural threat to Swiss identity for many people.”
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
How a Frenchman Helped Invent the English Garden
Take a look at some of the Claude Lorrains in a new exhibition at the Ashmolean, and you could be forgiven for thinking you were in deepest Wiltshire.Claude was a Frenchman — born in the Duchy of Lorrain; thus the name — who lived in Rome for most of his life. And yet several paintings at the exhibition, like his Landscape with the Judgment of Paris, look distinctly English. Rambling, deciduous trees tumble down to a gently bubbling, rock-fringed lake, flanked by a ruined folly. If it weren’t for Paris’s toga and the goddesses’ topless gowns, you’d hardly think it was ancient Greece. Greece, ancient or modern, never looked as dark green as this.
This similarity — between rural England, and rural Greece painted by a Frenchman to look like 17th century Italy — is no coincidence. 50 years after his death, Claude was at the heart of the mid-18th century Picturesque landscape movement in England; it’s no coincidence that the word “picturesque” originally meant “fit to be made into a picture”. Other artists inspired the new generation of English gardens, too: Poussin, Gaspard Dughet and Salvator Rosa among them. Roman poetry, by Ovid, Virgil and Horace, also encouraged the movement, as did the English writers, Joseph Addison and Alexander Pope.
But it was Claude’s paintings that dominated the scene from the 1730s onwards. 27 of his paintings were sold in London auction houses between 1731 and 1759. Frederick, Prince of Wales, hoovered up as many Claudes as he could. In the early 1740s, engravings of 44 Claude landscapes were snapped up by the public from an enterprising Covent Garden printmaker. His arcadian vision was recreated across England in the parks of country houses, from Blenheim Palace to Stowe, with particular influence on the managed landscapes of Capability Brown. These new landscapes were contrived to look natural: clumps of trees wrapped round lakes, clearing to reveal views to the far horizon, just like in Claude’s picture of the Judgement of Paris.
And, just like in that painting, classical ruins were slotted into the apparently wild 18th century English landscape, as if the trees and rampant undergrowth had shot up around the long-neglected temples and monuments. In one painting in the Ashmolean show, Pastoral Landscape with the Arch of Titus, Claude takes a cheeringly free approach to classical archaeology. He transplants the ruined arch from the Forum at Rome, and slaps it next to some of the greatest hits of imperial architecture — the Colosseum, Claudius’s aqueduct and the Ponte Nometano. All this is then thrown together into an elegiac, rural capriccio.
This effect is precisely what the 18th century landscape architect, Charles Bridgeman, was aiming for at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, which has more classical follies than anywhere else on the planet. Among the highlights scattered through Stowe’s park are Doric and Corinthian arches, a menagerie, Dido’s Cave and temples to Venus, to Ancient and Modern Virtue, to Friendship and to British Worthies. At Stourhead, Wiltshire, the banker Henry Hoare was so keen on Claude that some historians have suggested the whole garden is a copy of Claude’s painting, Coast View of Delos with Aeneas.
The Claude phenomenon spread beyond the parks and drawing rooms of English country houses. In the late 18th century, English tourists rushed to the Continent, clutching their Claude glasses — small, tinted mirrors which instantly converted any scene in the Roman campagna into a mini-Claude painting. Another successful set of Claude engravings appeared in London in 1772. And, as late as 1794, a drawing room in Butcher Row, east London, was painted with a mural copy of Claude’s Pastoral Landscape with the Arch of Titus.
The whole idea of a specifically English type of gardening became associated with this feeling of rural wildness, too. Compare the Tuileries in Paris — parterres divided along dead-straight lines, lime trees manicured like topiary, and vegetation-free paths — with St James’s Park; where willows dip clumsily into the water, and snaking, pitted paths follow the undulating line of the lake; where the oaks are left to their messy, shifting outlines, part-obscuring, part-shaping ever-changing views of Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office.
This picture of Englishness lodged, too, in the foreign mind. Les Jardins Anglais of France, the Englischer Garten of Munich…whatever they might call it abroad, the English garden is asymmetrical, untethered and faintly shambolic, with serpentine lakes, winding drives and trees grouped in apparently random clumps around an off-centre lawn. The managed wildness of the 18th century English landscape garden migrated into the English back garden. While grand Continental gardens were ordered and symmetrical, mirroring Renaissance ideals of the classical palaces they bordered, England’s gardens followed an ambling, unpredictable line. They developed ragged-edged borders, teeming with apparently unruly plants, with rough-mown paths curving through overgrown grass dotted with wildflowers.
“Old roses should be allowed to ramp away into big bushes,” Vita Sackville-West, the most influential English gardener of the 20th century, said of Sissinghurst, in Kent, “And allowed also to travel about underground if they are on their own roots and come up in fine carelessness some yards from the parent plant.” “Fine carelessness” is pretty much what Claude was up to — combining random Roman temples and submerging them among the overgrown trees and wandering hills of his idealised landscape, producing a kind of accidental beauty.
In recent years, the wild tradition of English gardening has come under attack on many fronts — particularly from the pared-down, symmetrical forces of minimalism, and from dictatorial makeover programmes demanding garden features, planned grids of garden rooms and acres of decking. But, still, a consciously wild tradition of English gardening survives: in the survival of English cottage gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show; in the reaction against anything too fake — iceberg roses, say — created by horticulturalists; and in the high visitor numbers to England’s 18th century landscape gardens.
Apart from the togas, only one thing looks out of place when you compare these English landscapes with Claude’s pictures — the weather. Although Claude’s dark green trees and shrubs look like they get a regular English soaking, his skies feel too hot for our northern climate. Usually set at dawn or dusk, Claude’s paintings are lit by that searing, southern, yellow-white light, promising intense heat to come, or signifying great heat in decline. That heat is hardly very English. But, in last week’s Indian summer, the words in Tom Stoppard’s play, Arcadia, never looked so true: “English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors… Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil.” We like to think of ourselves as a cool, level-headed, northern race — but a streak of the warm, wild south runs through our landscape.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Judge Calls Kercher Murder ‘Unsolved Mystery’
Knox ‘overwhelmed’ on her return to Seattle
(ANSA) — Perugia, October 5 — An appeals judge in the trial that acquitted Amanda Knox of homicide said Wednesday that the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher will be marked as an unsolved case.
“It will remain an unsolved mystery,” said Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, the judge who read the not-guilty verdict Monday at the appeals trial of Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
The prosecution has said it will appeal the verdict which was widely seen as being based on a forensic report that said original DNA findings were unreliable.
“Nobody can say what the facts are,” the judge added. “The only one is Rudy Guede”.
Guede, 24, an Italian-Ivorian drifter, is the only person in jail for the murder.
Guede opted for a fast-track trial separately from Knox and Sollecito and was given a 30-year sentence, later cut to 16 years on appeal, a sentence confirmed by Italy’s court of last instance, the Cassation Court.
In the final verdict against Guede, whose DNA was detected all over the murder house, he was found to have committed the crime “with others”, identified at the time as Knox and Sollecito, during an alleged sex game that got out of hand.
After boarding a Tuesday flight from Italy to the US, Knox was greeted by swarms of reporters and supporters at the airport in her home city of Seattle where she spoke from a podium.
“Thank you for being there for me,” she said tearfully.
“I’m really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane, and it seemed like everything wasn’t real”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Comics Great Bonelli Dies
Publisher of Tex, Dylan Dog
(ANSA) — Milan, September 26 — Italian comics great Sergio Bonelli, publisher of the much-loved Western heroes Tex and Zagor as well as cult ‘paranormal detective’ Dylan Dog, died Monday in Milan.
He was 79.
Tex, who was created by Bonelli’s father in the 50s, inspired TV and feature films.
Dylan Dog, created in 1986 by Tiziano Sclavi, was also made into a film, while its sales overtook those of Tex.
Zagor, invented by Bonelli himself, was another hit for the Cepim stable, which became a publishing giant under his stewardship, Italy’s biggest comics and cartoon house.
Mr No — another Bonelli creation — Martin Mystere and Nathan Never were other international successes for Bonelli, who also oversaw a Tamil language version of Tex.
In an interview a few years ago, Bonelli said “I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else”.
He was an honorary citizen of Milan and in 2008 received a civic award for “helping make Milan the Italian comics publishing capital and making generations of children love reading”.
Milan Mayor Giuliano Pisapia said: “Sergio Bonelli thrilled generations of children and grown-ups with his comics.
“His characters, from Tex Willer to Dylan Dog, have gone down in the history of cartoons, amazing us with their adventurs which made us dream and which we will always remember”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Complains of ‘Burden’ of Power
But says will carry on to steer country out of crisis
(ANSA) — Rome, October 7 — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Friday complained that power was a burden for him but stressed he would continue to make the sacrifice to keep the government in place and steer Italy out of its current crisis.
“Being in government is a great personal sacrifice for me, it’s a burden I would gladly do without, but a government crisis is the last thing Italy needs at this time,” the premier said in a message to his People of Freedom party, vowing to serve out his term until 2013.
“Early elections are no use to anyone. Only the Left is excited by the illusion of taking power.
“It would only create instability and open new opportunities for financial speculation,” he said, referring to market pressure over Italy’s sovereign debt crisis.
The opposition Democratic Party replied that “he (Berlusconi) is the burden the whole country would gladly do without”.
It called on the premier “to free us and him of this burden, to give the country the chance to rediscover the path of growth.
“That way, he would have more time and energy to devote himself to the creation of his new party, which appears to be the only thing on his mind”.
On Thursday the sex-scandal-plagued premier was widely reported as quipping a good name for his new party would be Come on Hot Chicks, a claim denied by a member of his party Friday.
“Someone else jokingly suggested that name but the premier said it wasn’t the time or place to make such jokes,” said People of Freedom MP Ugo Lisi.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Juholt to SVT: Don’t Have Åkesson Stand So Close to Me
The leaders of the Social Democrats and the Left Party on Friday declined to participate in an upcoming debate to avoid having to stand next to Sweden Democrat party leader Jimmie Åkesson. “We have taken the logical decision to decline participation,” Social Democrat spokesperson Nina Wadensjö told the TT news agency in reference to a televised party leader debate on Sveriges Television (SVT) scheduled for Sunday evening. “We do not want to stand with the Sweden Democrats, it is unthinkable for us.” The Left Party spokesperson Ted Bergdahl concurred. “The placement that SVT wants gives the image of a united opposition, which we aren’t,” he told SVT, arguing that the placement should be decided by lottery. On their website, the Social Democrats explained that they couldn’t accept how the show was arranged, since the placement of the party leaders implied that the Social Democrats formed a “common opposition” with the Sweden Democrats.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Boulter vs Fox
The Liam Fox imbroglio has just started to make more sense. The original story was broken by The Guardian (of whom more later) and the main source appears to have been one Harvey Boulter, an American mogul whom Fox fatally agreed to meet in June at the suggestion of his friend Adam Werrity. It was the kind of meeting that a civil servant would never have arranged. Boulter was, to use a political term, toxic. He was being sued for blackmail by 3M, in a court case being fought in London, and after landing this meeting with the UK Defence Secretary he tried to use it as ammo. According to 3M’s lawyers, he told them that unless this blackmail malarkee was settled quietly and out of court then his new mate Foxy would discuss at Cabinet rescinding the knighthood recently given to 3M’s chairman Sir George Buckley. A lunatic suggestion — as any Brit knows, knighthoods are not rescinded by a Cabinet discussion. But it may have sounded less implausible in America than it does here.
In this way, Fox stumbled into the middle of a lethal blackmail lawsuit. Ka-boom. But Iain Dale has significant new details now. As Dale puts it:
“So it is clear that from Mr Boulter’s point of view, if he can discredit Werrity and Fox as witnesses it will be ‘job done’. In essence, that’s what all this seems to be about. And Boulter thinks he has done a pretty good job so far.”
Dale’s scoop is an email from Boulter’s law firm, confirming that the subject of a knighthood did not come up. His blog asks why The Guardian — which broke the original story — did not report this part of it. Meanwhile The Guardian has more details for tomorrow’s paper (pictured, above), seemingly more ammo from Boulter. Details that he paid £10,000 a month to lobbyists trying to get closer to Fox. The story is here. Fox has made many errors, and apologized for them today. But it all makes more sense in the context of this American blackmail battle, in whose crossfire Fox is now caught.
The Boulter vs 3M story was originally reported with this intro: “It is a rare and wonderful case that brings together the British defense ministry, the maker of Post-Its, the dread MRSA staph virus, and competing accusations of corporate blackmail and legal-ethics breaches.” This story contains a whole lot more now. But for all his errors, is Fox actually guilty of wrongdoing? I think not, which is why I suspect he’ll survive. But it seems the mud-slinging is not over yet.
UPDATE: Tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph has a splash (below) presumably discovered in the vaults of its still-excellent-value computer disc on MPs expenses: Fox paid Werrity £690 in National Insurance in 2005/06 (I suspect this is the earliest year for which the Telegraph’s disc has data). Its significance?
“The payment suggests that he had been employed by Dr Fox in the previous year. At the time, Mr Werritty was the director of a company called UK Health. Since Mr Werritty has never been issued with a House of Commons security pass, the payment will raise questions about what work he was doing for the MP’s office.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: David Cameron is to Revisit Forced Marriage Crime Plans
The government is to consult on making it a criminal offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to force a person to marry against their will. Earlier this year the Home Office rejected the idea amid fears victims might be put off coming forward. In a speech later, David Cameron will also announce plans to make it a criminal offence to breach orders imposed by the courts to prevent forced marriages taking place. This already happens in Scotland.
Forced Marriage Protection Orders were introduced in 2008 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. A potential victim, friend or police can apply for an order aimed at protecting an individual through the courts and anyone found to have breached one can be jailed for up to two years for contempt of court, although this is classed as a civil offence.
The prime minister wants that changed, as well as a re-examination of proposals to create a specific criminal offence covering the act of trying to force someone into marriage.
In a speech on immigration later, Mr Cameron will say: “Forced marriage is little more than slavery. To force someone into marriage is completely wrong and I strongly believe this is a problem we should not shy away from addressing.” Last year a unit set up to tackle the problem dealt with 1,700 cases, but many more cases are thought to have gone unreported.
The government says it is a breach of human rights to force someone to marry against their will for family advantage or to protect the perceived notion of a family’s honour.
However, in July the Home Office dismissed calls by the home affairs committee to make it an offence as ministers said it would be hard to prove and could have a negative effect on victims. Mr Cameron will now ask Home Secretary Theresa May to consult on criminalising forced marriage by working with support groups to ensure that such a move does not deter victims from coming forward.
In the same speech Mr Cameron is also expected to announce tougher visa rules to weed out bogus marriages and other immigration abuses. He will also call for relatives joining their families in the UK to speak English and have enough cash to live on. Mr Cameron will say the government wants to prevent immigrants becoming a burden on the taxpayer and is considering forcing some applicants to pay financial bonds. In his speech Mr Cameron will say: “Of course in the modern world, where people travel and communicate more easily than ever before and where families have connections all across the globe, people do want to move to different countries to be with loved ones. We all understand this human instinct. But we need to make sure — for their sake as well as ours — that those who come through this route are genuinely coming for family reasons, that they can speak English, and that they have the resources they need to live here and make a contribution here — not just to scrape by, or worse, to subsist on benefit.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: EDL Women Tell Cameron We’re Not Sick
Over 50 women and twice as many men came to Downing Street to protest against David Cameron calling the EDL (English Defense League), sick last month. There was also a UAF (Unite Against Fascism), counter demonstration. London, UK. 8th October 2011
More than fifty women and two or three times as many men from the EDL came to Downing Street today to protest against David Cameron’s attack on the EDL last month where he called the EDL sick. There they confronted a UAF counter-demonstration before marching to Parliament. David Cameron in the House of Commons said “Deprecating the EDL and all they stand for and their attempt to somehow say they are going to restore order is, I’ve described some parts of our society as sick and there is none sicker than the EDL.”
It was a statement that greatly upset the EDL, and the women’s section, known as the ‘Angels’ launched an online petition with the title ‘EDL Angels are not sick’. In it they describe themselves as “wives, mothers, aunts, grandmothers etc” and ask:
“Is it sick to care for your country and the downward spiral that it is on? Is it sick to protest at the two tier system that runs in our Country? Is it sick to protest over Child Grooming of which the majority is carried out by Muslim gangs? Is it sick to protest over the murder of Charlene Downes? Is it sick to protest about religious courts in our Country and the futile attempts by some to bring ‘Sharia Controlled Zones’ into our Country?”
So far the petition has attracted 780 signatures on the web site (though at least one person has signed it five times and a quite a few including Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun are clearly spoofs), and the EDL Angels organised a protest today to hand with the intention of handing it in at Downing St, although I did not see them do so. One of the most recent comments on the petition today claims to be from a David Cameron who writes “Girls! You FORGOT the petition.;-)”
They came along from outside the Red Lion in Parliament Street where they had gathered and into the pen the police had provided for them opposite Downing St. Some 50 yards up the road was another pen in which around a hundred people, mainly women, had answered the call of the UAF to oppose their protest. The two groups shouted at each other for around half an hour, with the EDL (and the men were rather more vocal) telling the UAF that they were not English and the UAF calling the EDL racists and suggesting they follow the example of Adolf Hitler.
Some of the EDL women wore t-shirts with the message ‘EDL Angels not racist not sick and not silent’ and the message was repeated on a large placard. Others carried placards with the heading ‘English Defence League Angels’ and a reproduction of a ‘One Law for All’ placard stating ‘Sharia Law Discriminates Against Women’. There were also a few of the usual EDL flags and banners based on the St George’s Cross and another placard with John Bull stating ‘If You Won’t Defend Your Rights, Don’t Complain When you Lose Them.’ One woman came in a burkha.
As some of the men came along towards the pen there was a little of the anti-Muslim chanting that I’ve heard at other EDL events, including one group who walked along singing “Allah is a ***** “, but I heard little of this later in the protest, which was generally well-behaved. I didn’t see exactly what happened when one woman wearing Union Jack ear-rings approached the UAF protesters, but she was led away struggling by police.
Among those who came to protest against the EDL probably all are also opposed to female genital mutilation, and against the repression of women in some Muslim countries. Most too — and most Muslims — are against any imposition of Sharia Law and certainly against ‘Sharia Zones’ and the other ludicrous activities of fringe extremist groups such as Muslims Against Crusades. What unites the UAF, as its name states, is the opposition to fascists and fascism and racism in any shape or form. Among those groups demonstrating with the UAF were Feminist Fightback, Mothers March, Women of Colour, PCS union, Socialist Workers and London Met Uni Feminists.
The Casuals United Blog had issued a warning to EDL members that the Muslim Defence League (MDL) had issued a threat that they were intending to “to hunt OUR ANGELS AND SMALL GROUPS OF EDL.” As they said (rather more graphically) there is not really an MDL, but they also suggested that there was “a demo George Galloway has arranged it is a Palestine Demo” taking place in Trafalgar Square. Of course it wasn’t a “Palestine Demo” but a Stop The War/CND/MAB protest, and although Galloway did speak he was not the organiser. I talked to someone later in the day at another event from the MDL who denied any knowledge of a threat being issued, and had not even heard of the rumour.
After around half an hour of shouting and pointing at the UAF, the EDL formed up into a march, led by the ‘Angels’ with the men following a short distance behind, with EDL stewards and police keeping good order, and set off for Parliament. As I was taking pictures of them outside the Houses of Parliament one of the stewards tried to move me away from the protest, and called on the police for help. They told him that I had a right to be there, and I told the steward that we lived in a free country and that it was important to uphold the freedom of the press. I had earlier had no problems photographing the ‘Angels’ (and had complied with some more reasonable requests by the chief steward) and have no idea why that particular steward took against me, but I have previously been named and threatened by EDL members for accurately reporting their events. I left to go elsewhere as the EDL Angels rally was starting outside Parliament. One group of women taking part in the counter-demonstration told me that they had been attacked by a group of male EDL supporters on their way to the protest for carrying an anti-EDL placard. Police stepped in and prevented anything further developing.
Earlier in the day I had spent some time reading comments on several online EDL forums and screenshots from them published on anti-racist web sites. Although the official EDL line is that they are only against extremists and not anti-Muslim and not racist and some of those involved may well espouse this point of view, it would appear that many of those who support the EDL have very different views. A week or so ago a damning academic study of the EDL and their activities was released by Dr Matthew Feldman and Dr Paul Jackson at Northampton University’s Radicalism and New Media Research Group.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mosque Users Answer Critics [Blackpool]
MOSQUE goers have hit back after residents complained the place of worship causes parking problems. More than 100 residents filled the Waterloo Hotel on Waterloo Road, South Shore, on Tuesday night to voice their opposition to the Noor A Madina mosque on the same street. Residents claim it is operating illegally and during its busiest prayer time on a Friday afternoon, those driving to the mosque cause a parking nightmare.
Peace
But Dr Zahid Mammod, 35, from Arnold Medical Centre on St Annes Road, South Shore, said: “I feel victimised and if someone decided to take this away it would be very distressing.
“I wish there was something we could do to help. “Although this is not in an ideal location, maybe the council can do something about it by providing extra parking spaces, because this is supposed to be a place of peace.” A petition against the mosque has been handed into Blackpool Council by the residents, while the co-owner of the mosque Natasha Shah waits on a planning decision which could see five buildings converted into a larger mosque.
Before the prayers started at 1pm on Friday, there were 10 cars parked next to the mosque and on the street, but the owners were told to remove them by the mosque and the forecourt was cleared. Wahid Hussain, 50, also uses the mosque. He said: “There’s no parking problem. People come into the mosque and they don’t cause any trouble.” Shezad Adam, 24, added: “We only meet for an hour and we are not harming anyone. We stand outside now and tell everyone to move so nobody complains.” Parking is available on nearby streets and a lot of the mosque’s users park in the car park at nearby Homebase, but Miss Shah says it is not only those using the mosque causing obstructions. She said: “We have cars parked there and other businesses park cars in-front of their shops. “We are going to cordon off this area during meetings.” Gary Rogers, 43, owner of Woodstock 4U Furnishings on Waterloo Road, said: “The parking on this street is a nightmare. It’s an accident waiting to happen because there is a constant flow of traffic and a lot of children live in this area.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Police ‘Threatened’ me for Taking Pictures of Daughter in Shopping Centre, Dad Claims
A DAD says he was threatened by police under anti-terror laws — for taking a picture of his wee girl eating ice cream.
Chris White was pulled up by a security guard and police were called after he snapped his four-year-old daughter Hazel on his phone in Braehead shopping centre, near Glasgow.
Chris was asked to delete the photos and banned from the mall.
Police also warned him they could confiscate his phone under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: Secret Army of 200 Homegrown Suicide Bombers ‘Plotting to Attack Britain’
More than 200 UK-based terrorists are currently plotting to carry out suicide bombing attacks in Britain and are likely to strike during next year’s London Olympics intelligence chiefs have warned.
Government ministers have been briefed on the threat by senior intelligence officers from MI5 and MI6 who claim the figure is a ‘conservative estimate’.
The information is said to be part of a secret government report on the enduring threat from Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organisations
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Nadir of the Anti-Zionist Jews
For years and years, a small group of self-identifying anti-Zionist Jews have engaged in an energetic campaign against the existence of the State of Israel. These anti-Zionist Jews have poured venom on those who support Jewish self-determination in Israel, alongside Palestinian self-determination in a Palestinian state. They have painted Jews who disagree with them as agents of a foreign power, conspiracised about Zionist cabals and plots, and accused Israel of the worst crimes imaginable, including the deliberate killing of children.
While loudly declaring that Israeli Jews and their supporters are the new Nazis, they have staged antisemitic plays like “Seven Jewish Children”, in which Jews rejoice in their supposed “chosenness” while glorying in gore. They have marched hand in hand with supporters, members, of the genocidally antisemitic Hamas and Hezbollah, while attacking the critics of these groups as Islamophobes.
And now, they’ve been outclassed. By Gilad Atzmon.
Atzmon’s book launch takes place today, at a panel discussion on “Jewish Identity”, where he will be joined by the prominent Atzmon supporter and Reader in Law at Southampton University, Oren Ben Dor. According to Atzmon, the anti-Zionist Jews are planning to leaflet this event:
It didn’t take me by complete surprise to find out that J-Big (Jews Only Israeli Boycott Campaign) are operating relentlessly against the book. I always asked myself, how long is it going to take before J-Big contaminates my song with one of their Ava Nagilas or any other Jewish folklore anthem. It is almost amusing to follow the distorted Jewish progressive interpretation of the BDS. Instead of mounting pressure on Israel or its Hasbara agents, J-BIG is now trying to suppress intellectual exchange within our movement.
The anti-Zionist Jews paved the way for Atzmon. They promulgated the canards of Jewish political and cultural control, they promoted the notion that Israel was uniquely evil, and they promoted and covered up for Islamist and Arab nationalism antisemitism. Now, they have been replaced by a man who does the job just a little bit better than them, who is fully in harmony with the sentiments of the Hamas Covenant, and they’re not happy. So, having spent a lifetime accusing Jews of raising lying concerns about antisemitism for cynical and wicked purposes, the anti-Zionist Jews find that they have little support.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Wall Street Protests Spread to Sweden
The anti-capitalism protests against Wall Street have spread like wildfire across the United States and the rest of the world, and have now reached Swedish shores. Currently, protest events are in the makings in 1,060 cities worldwide, according to the unofficial website Occupy Together, a number which is constantly increasing. Sweden is one of the places where a demonstration is being planned. The protest is to be held on central city square Sergels Torg in Stockholm, on Saturday October 15. The protestors received support from this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Liberian human rights activist Leymah Gbowee, when she spoke in New York late Saturday evening. Gbowee expressed her admiration for the Wall Street-critical protests that are spreading across the world, describing them as “an indication that people will no longer sit down and just take it,” wrote the New York Times.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Wine: Saudi Arabia Visits Venice Hunting for Luxury
(ANSAmed) — ROME, OCTOBER 10 — There will also be tour operators from Saudi Arabia at the first edition of Planett, an event dedicated to luxury wine tourism, scheduled to be held on October 19 at the Westin Europa & Regina hotel in Venice. Planett is meant as an event where tour operators can meet and open new frontiers in the sector. The first edition of the event that was conceived by Marco Giol will be held after the already successful formula of Winett, a business to business meeting between wine producers and buyers, scheduled two days earlier at the Westin Europa & Regina. This will make Venice a point of reference from October 17 to 19, an alternative to other international expos, for the promotion of wine export and national luxury wine tourism.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Mediterranean Economy Week Starts in Marseille
(ANSAmed) — ROME, OCTOBER 10 — Figures attending the Mediterranean Economy Week in the French city of Marseille were met this morning with strong winds that have forced the opening of the “Objective Development” exhibition organised by the French Development Agency (AFD) to be postponed until Thursday. Meanwhile, the programme for the first day of the meeting, ro end on October 15, will go ahead as planned. Financial resources in support of the region are on today’s agenda, with an opening conference on financing instruments for regions in favour of SMEs, followed by this afternoon’s European Parliament Citizens’ Forum, which will be attended by a number of European MPs and will see talks centred on support policies for countries involved in the “Arab Spring” and the EU’s “financial prospects” for the period between 2014 and 2020.
The region’s main institutional and economic players are meeting in completely new circumstances this year. Europe is tackling an unprecedented economic crisis, while the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is facing new challenges of democratisation and development in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”. Over a series of meetings between today and Saturday, talks will focus on obtaining the template for a new model of cooperation that takes emerging situations into account. The key date in this week’s event, the fifth edition of its kind, will be the Marseille Forum, the first European-MENA affairs session, which will bring together 300 businesspeople and representatives of institutions from both sides of the Mediterranean on October 13 and 14. “Common vision, shared prosperity” is the title of the forum, in which participants will have the chance to identify investment opportunities and launch new partnerships.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Uprisings: FEMISE: Independent Banking Authorities Needed
(ANSAmed) — BRUXELLES, 10 OTT — “The public sector must disengage from financial institutions and set up truly independent banking supervisory authorities” concluded a study of four banking systems in southern Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt), published by the Euro-Mediterranean Forum of Economic Institutes (FEMISE).
According to the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), the study reveals that Morocco is, by far, the country with the best banking system, with 6% of bad debt (in 2008), whereas this same rate fluctuates between 12 and 15% in the other countries. These percentages are still too high compared to the 3% observed in Europe. Morocco has also distinguished itself over the years with an effort to privatise the banking system and by equipping itself with credit information systems. The introduction of credible deposit insurance and applying the Basel Norms have also played a decisive role in the economic development of the country and the arrival of foreign banks, according to the study.
“The Moroccan banking system — said Rym Ayadi, who led the FEMISE study — has diversified but has not yet reached an optimal situation for development. Morocco must continue its efforts”. In contrast, the study says, the Algerian banking system, which is under state control, appears plagued by corruption and a lack of transparency in financial transactions.
In Tunisia “we observed failings in the internal control systems and far too much cronyism” said Rym Ayadi. The new democratic governments, in this sense, could introduce more rigour and transparency in financial transactions, says the report. FEMISE is an EU-funded project, which aims to contribute to the reinforcement of dialogue on economic and financial issues in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Berlin Plans Airlift for Wounded Libyans
Germany intends to step up its assistance in Libya by offering visas for medical treatment to those wounded in the civil war. The visas are to be issued with minimal bureaucracy, according to German officials.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Clashes Beween Christians and Muslims: Orgy of Violence Plunges Egypt Into New Chaos
Channel 1, the state TV broadcaster, likewise got involved by issuing an appeal to Muslims to rush to the aid of the troops. It said Christians were rioting and killing soldiers. Islamist groups armed with knives and sticks responded by marching to the state TV building and joining the fight. The evening had begun with Christians and Muslims united against violence. It ended with battles between Christians and Islamist Muslims. Copts make up 10 percent of Egypt’s roughly 80 million inhabitants.
Businesses owned by Christians were also targeted. According to messages posted on Twitter, several stores selling alcohol were wrecked in Cairo. Rioters also gathered in front of a Coptic hospital and assaulted cars. Chaos has returned to the center of Cairo, where the Egyptian revolution originated and which has come to symbolize the Arab Spring. In recent months, there had been increasing incidents of clashes between Coptic Christians and Muslims, most recently in the south of Egypt, in the region of Aswan where a Christian church was set ablaze. The army didn’t intervene to protect the Copts.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Army, Police Kill 35 Coptic Christian Protestors
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — For the second time in five days military and police forces forcibly dispersed Coptic protesters. 35 Copts were killed today and over 300 injured. The numbers could rise dramatically as many bodies are still unidentified and disfigured beyond recognition. The dead and injured have been transported to the Coptic Hospital in Cairo. Bodies of 4 Copts were found in buildings and taken to the public morgue, reported al-Ahram Daily.
There were discrepancies between reports from the official State-owned TV and independent TV stations. Al-Hayat confirmed that army armored vehicles went into Maspero “in a strange way” and ran over the protesters. A video clip of the armored vehicles running amok through the 150,000 protesters was shown on Al-Arabia TV. Egyptian State-run TV said that Coptic protesters killed 3 soldiers and injured 20. They gave no numbers for the fallen or injured Copts. They also said that the Copts had weapons. This was refuted by Coptic priests and activists. Nader Shoukry, Coptic activist and journalist, said “We only had wooden crosses.”
“Today occurred a massacre of the Copts,” said Coptic priest, Father Filopateer Gamil in a telephone conversation with CTV Coptic Channel.. “I was an eyewitness to all what happened.”
According to witnesses, the army forces were waiting for the Copic rally to arrive at Maspero, near the state television building. “They arranged a trap for us,” said Father Filopateer. “As soon as we arrived they surrounded us and started shooting live ammunition randomly at us. Then the armored vehicles arrived and ran over protesters.”
Father Filopateer said he saw army police and affiliated thugs torching police cars, to later blame it on the Copts. He believes that the assault on the Copt was preplanned.
Copts announced a few days ago that they would stage a rally to protest the torching of the church in the village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan (AINA 10-1-2011), as well as the brutal attack on the Coptic rally in Maspiro on October 4 (AINA 10-9-2011). Rallies were to be staged in Cairo, Aswan, Minya, Beni-Suef, Assiut, Suez and Alexandria.
“When we announced this peaceful rally we made it understood that it will be from 5-8pm and no sit-in and no blocking of traffic,” said Ihab Aziz, Coptic-American activist, who was one of the organizers.
Aziz said that the procession started today at the Christian populated district of Shubra and went to Maspero, in front of the TV building, on the river Nile. On their way, some Muslims fired live ammunition over their heads to terrorize them and some bricks were hurled at them. By the time they arrived to Maspero there were nearly 150,000 protesters. “The army and police were waiting for us about 200 meters away from the Maspero TV building,” said Aziz. “They started firing at us before two army armored vehicles came at great speed and drove into the crowds, going backwards and forwards, mowing people under their wheels.” He said he saw at least 20 dead Copts around him.
“The most horrible scene was when one of the vehicles ran over a Copt’s head, causing his brain to explode and blood was all over the place,” recalled Aziz. he held out his hand, showing two bullets in his palm. “We got a clear message today that we are no first class citizens.”
The same description of events was confirmed by Nader Shoukry. He said that when the Copts were trapped by the army forces, some threw themselves in the Nile and some just fainted seeing other people being run-over in front of their eyes. Copts ran to hide in the neighboring buildings, but the police dragged them out and assaulted them.
Dr. Naguib Gabriel, who was at the procession, was shot in the leg.
Michael Munier, head of El Hayat (Life) Party, said that what happened to the Copts today was a massacre. He asked why do the authorities kill the Copts who were protesting peacefully for their rights, while at the same time when Salafists blocked the trains in Qena for 10 days protesting against a Copt being nominated for governor of Qena, no one touched them?
“People are being prosecuted, including former President Mubarak, in courts presently because they killed demonstrators on January 28. Now the military police is doing the same to the Copts,” said Shoukry.
A curfew has been announced tonight in several Cairo streets.
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Respect Freedom of Worship, Elections Needed, Ashton
(ANSAmed) — LUXEMBOURG, OCTOBER 10 — Freedom of worship is “a fundamental right which must be respected”, said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on her arrival at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg. Ashton expressed concern over the violence in Cairo and underscored that “the time has come for Egypt to move towards free elections” which can lead the country towards democracy.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Copts Protest in Cairo, Over 20 Killed in Clashes
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, OCTOBER 10 — Tension is still high in the Cairo area Shubra and along the Nile in front of the Maspero building (offices of the state TV) after clashes between soldiers, military police and Copts who had been protesting to ask for the removal of Mostafa al-Sayed, the governor of Aswan (where last week a church was destroyed). The death toll provided by the Health Ministry yesterday evening was 23 dead and 174 injured, some of whom in serious condition due to respiratory problems from the tear gas used by the military.
Fresh clashes between Muslims and Copts have occurred near the hospital where those injured have been taken. The protests by Cairo’s Coptic community had been announced days ago and was to have gathered together thousands of Copts in Tahrir Square to protest also against the head of the Supreme Defence Council, Hussein Tantawi, accused of not being committed to ensuring that Egyptian Christians’ rights are respected by the Muslim majority (Copts in Egypt total about 10% of the population of 80 million inhabitants). The Copts are also convinced that there is an agreement the military — which has held power in Egypt since the resignation of former president Mubarak on February 11 — and the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organised body thought to be able to take part in the legislative elections set for November 28. Enough time has reportedly not be given to allow the groups that promoted and led the January 25 uprising which brought down Mubarak’s regime to organise election campaigns. Yesterday, while protests were also being held in Aswan and Alexandria, the incidents began in Cairo. There has not yet been an official reconstruction of the events. According to state-run news agency MENA, the violence began “after shooting and stone-throwing by Coptic demonstrators who were marching towards the television headquarters to protest the tension concerning the Aswan church.” According to eyewitnesses spoken to by ANSA, the Copts marching towards the Maspero building were attacked by Molotov cocktails, stone-throwing and firearms by hooligans and “baltageya” (an Arabic term denoting violent and common criminals paid by counterrevolutionaries). When those taking part in the demonstrations reacted by throwing stones, soldiers and police allegedly intervened, shooting and using tear gas to disperse the protests. Yesterday evening Prime Minister Essam Sharaf made an appeal to warn Christians and Muslims not to give in “to calls for sedition”.
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Egypt: Cairo: Violence Against Copts: 24 Dead and 212 Injured
A peaceful demonstration attacked by thugs and the army. Tank deployed, crushing some of the demonstrators. Christians and moderate Muslims accuse the army of pandering to fundamentalists. Curfew imposed. Anti-Christian violence “advertising” for extremists ahead of political November elections.
Cairo (AsiaNews / Agencies) — 24 dead and 212 wounded, this is the toll after violent clashes between Coptic Christians and security forces last night in Cairo. A curfew was imposed throughout the night, which ended at 7 this morning.
The violence erupted during a demonstration held by Coptic Egyptians and others, condemning the attack by Muslim extremists against a church in Aswan, aggravated by police and the governor inertia.
The Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, after visiting the site of the clash, said that “the greatest threat to national security is the manipulation of national unity and return to discord between Muslims and Christians.” This violence — he added — “threatens the relationship between citizens and the army.”
In reality, the violence was sparked by the army. Thousands of Christians — but not only — marched from the district of Shubra to the headquarters of state television, demanding the resignation of the governor of Aswan, guilty of covering up for alleged Islamic extremists. They also denounced the state television of inciting anti-Christian sentiments.
At one point the demonstrators were attacked by a group of plainclothes thugs who began throwing stones and shooting. Christians responded by throwing stones and the army, in response attacked the demonstration. A military vehicle charged some of the demonstrators and crushed them. The Christians then burned some police cars. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd, the demonstrators threw stones and anything they could throw at them.
According to the Ministry of Health, among the 212 wounded 107 are civilians and 84 police.
Since the fall of Mubarak, thanks to the sit-in in Tahrir Square, held by Christians and Muslims together, there has been a crescendo of attacks against Christians by Islamic fundamentalist forces.
The army seems unable to contain the violence, but more often seems inclined to defend the extremists rather than Christians.
Last night the Christians demanded the resignation of the military council and its president, gen. Mohamed Tantawi.
The anti-Christian violence appears to be part of a campaign to increase the consensus of the Islamic parties in the lead up to the political elections on 28 November. Local sources told AsiaNews that there is a plan to drive Christians from Egypt or at least to reduce them to a minority subject.
The Christians in Egypt, the country’s original population, constitute 10% of the population. They suffer from exclusion from public office and limits on freedom of religion, both in the construction of churches and in the freedom of evangelization and conversion.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: EU Ministers: Religious Minorities Must be Protected
(ANSAmed) — LUXEMBOURG, OCTOBER 10 — EU Foreign Ministers have unequivocally condemned the violence against Coptic Christians that has erupted in Egypt and have called on the Egyptian authorities to act in defence of religious minorities.
The violence “is very alarming”, said the British Foreign Minister, William Hague, while his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, called the incidents “unacceptable”.
“I think that it is very important that the Egyptian authorities reassert religious freedom in Egypt and that all sides refrain from violence,” Hague said during the Council of Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg. The Danish minister, Villy Sovendal, also expressed his strong condemnation, saying that he was very concerned that Egypt had reached a point of religious violence. The Dutch Foreign Minister, Uri Rosenthal, spoke of “extreme concern”, as did the Swedish minister, Carl Bildt. “The authorities have the responsibility to protect everyone and anyone, as well as their right to express their opinions,” Bildt said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: China Hopes Religious Groups in Egypt Maintain Harmony, Safeguard Social Stability
BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) — China hopes religious groups in Egypt will maintain harmony and make joint efforts to safeguard social stability, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin said here on Monday. Liu made the remarks during a regular press briefing in response to a question about China’s opinion on the religious clashes in Egypt’s capital city of Cairo.
Thousands of protesters blocked the main street in front of Egypt’s state television building and threw stones and bottles at soldiers and police on Sunday evening. Minor clashes between Muslims and Copts were reported in Cairo and some other places after the violence. The clashes have left 19 dead and 183 injured.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Imposes Curfew in Cairo as at Least 25 Killed in Clashes
CAIRO: Egypt’s military ruler has imposed a curfew on Cairo’s Tahrir area as at least 25 people, including three soldiers, were killed and 170 injured after Coptic Christians protesting over an attack on a church clashed with security forces in the capital. Central Cairo witnessed a demonstration by activists against the military rule while police augmented by special forces deployed in the area called on protesters to leave before the curfew because they have been ordered to treat people breaking the curfew with firmness.
The curfew is to last from 2 am to 7 am Cairo Local Time. Despite the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi issuing a decree to halt presenting civilians to military courts except in cases stated by the military law, people arrested in yesterday’s events might face military trials as they have attacked army members. Other protests in Egyptian cities have peacefully ended and in particular in Alexandira where thousands of Copts had surrounded a military area and torched cars nearby.
Copts had arranged for a rally in Cairo in objection to recent clashes last week in the area of Idfu in Aswan, Egypt’s furthest governorate south. Muslims had attacked a building they claimed Copts were turning into a church accusing them of not having the needed permits. Nothing was done to prevent the issue from escalating as the governor confirmed the permits were not requested from the official bodies. To reply the Copts published copies of the permits in newspapers signed by the governor himself. The governor did not apologise but noted “he was suffering fatigue when he signed the papers and hence cannot remember.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Frattini Calls for Egypt to End Religious Violence
‘Up to 100,000 Coptic Christians fleeing’, reports say
(ANSA) — Luxembourg, October 10 — Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Monday expressed concern about the escalation of violence in Egypt and reports that Coptic Christians were fleeing the country.
“We heard about an exodus of Christians,” Frattini said.
“They are talking about 100,000 Christians who have reportedly left Egypt but we do not know if these numbers are accurate”.
Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf called an emergency government meeting after at least 24 people were killed and another 200 were injured in clashes between Coptic Christians and security forces.
The violence broke out after a protest in the capital Cairo against an attack on a church in Aswan province last week. “This violence should never be repeated,” Frattini told reporters on a visit to Luxembourg.
“There is an escalation which worries us very much. This is a challenge for the transitional government which must demonstrate more effort than the Mubarak regime to prevent it and react to it”.
Frattini said those behind the violence against the Copts should be punished in an important sign of action ahead of the first round of elections in November.
“I hope that all the EU foreign ministers will condemn the very serious violence against the Christian Copts of Egypt,” continued Frattini. “I am sure that the Egyptian authorities will want to investigate and immediately put on trial the perpetrators”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Appeals From Ex Leader; Jibril, He’s in the Country
(ANSAmed) — ROME, 7 OTT- Muammar Gaddafi is not giving up the ghost. The ousted Libyan leader has once again spoken out in an audio message broadcast by the Syria-based Arria television network, in which he calls on Libyans to take to the streets to protest peacefully and accuses foreign powers of wanting to conquer the countries of the developing world. On the military front, the rebel offensives in Sirte and Bani Walid, the regime’s last remaining strongholds, have limped on and are now are at a standstill.
“If the power of the [foreign] fleets gives legitimacy, then the rulers of the Third World are ready,” Gaddafi said. “Those of you who recognise the NTC, prepare yourselves for the creation of trans-national councils imposed by the power of the fleets to remove you one by one”. Libyans, he added, must therefore “take to the streets in their million”, because the situation in the country has become unsustainable.
Meanwhile, in Sirte, Gaddafi’s snipers are blocking the rebel advance. The idea mooted yesterday by rebel commanders that the Colonel’s native city would be taken “within 48 hours” now looks to have faded. The NTC says that Gaddafi’s son, Mutassim, who is thought to be leading the resistance in the city, has fled. Yet the situation remains very complicated. The ultra-loyalists hiding in the city “are veterans and fanatics”, Matthew Van Dyke, an American fighting with the rebels, told Reuters, adding that “it will take time, we are suffering serious losses”.
The Libyan Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, who is on a visit to Baghdad, also confirmed that the ousted Libyan leader is still hiding out in the south of the country, protected by tribes, who occasionally cross the border into Niger, though he said that Libyan transitional government forces would soon be able to track him down.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Idris: Strong-Arm Ways of Multinationals Must Change
ANSAmed) — TAORMINA (MESSINA), OCTOBER 7 — Multinational energy companies and troops that backed Gaddafi in the name of business must change their ways, and Italian SMEs must arrive to Libya, said Prince Idris al-Senussi, the nephew of the late King Idris, exiled in Italy since 1969. The prince spoke at the Taormina Forum on development in Africa and Europe, organised by the Bank of Sicily Foundation and Studio Ambrosetti. In Libya, said Idris, “the conduct must change that has made several multinational energy companies and troops powerful and troublesome, which, indifferent to Gaddafi’s conduct, gave him impunity and allowed him to carry out abuses in the name of international businesses and interests. Energy is a beneficial asset, but so is democracy”. According to the prince, “Italy, which boasts a long-term, although fluctuating contribution to my people, must change its approach. Italy’s talent is in its SMEs, which have the ability to adapt and settle in, finding solutions in the local territory”.
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Libyan NTC Forces Leave Bani Walid Airport, Several Dead
(AGI) Tripoli — Libya’s National Transitional Council forces had to withdraw from Bani Walid airport less then 24 hours after they announced its capture, said Salem Gheith, head of the NTC command centre. Gheith said several NTC fighters were killed or wounded in the fightback by Gaddafi loyalists at the airport 170 kilometres south east of Tripoli, one of the last strongholds of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. At least seventeen fighters were killed and 50 wounded in the clashes.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Occupy Wall Street is Phony Opposition
Controlled opposition scam alert….The “OCCUPY AMERICA MOVEMENT”.
It’s everywhere! Just like Arab Spring for North America! and it’s sooooooo grass roots and spontaneous!
[Editor’s Note: The “tell” is the publicity this is getting from the TV Networks who spin it as the Democratic Party equivalent of the Tea Party.]
OCCUPY WALL STREET and the OCCUPY TOGETHER MOVEMENT is the work of SERBIAN contract revolution organizers the CENTER FOR APPLIED NONVIOLENT ACTION AND STRATEGIES [C.A.N.V.A.S] in Belgrade and it’s field operative organizer company, “OPTOR!”
So don’t you believe it when ABC says “Everybody and nobody are in charge….” or the Guardian hints, “rumors persist the group “Anonymous” is behind the Occupy Together Movement”.
OCCUPY TOGETHER in the US and Canada are directed by C.A.N.V.AS., the same directors behind the Tunisian and Egyptian and ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions. They may look the same but the objectives are quite different. The objective in America and Canada is NOT to topple ‘regimes’. C.A.N.V.AS. is backed by Council on Foreign Relations foundations like Carnegie Group and the Albert Einstein Institute.
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Blair Not Flavour of Palestine’s Week
The Palestinian Authority is furious with former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the Mideast envoy of the international Quartet, for applying diplomatic pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN. Nabil Shaath, the senior Palestinian negotiator, said on Saturday that “over the last few years, he [Mr Blair] played a minor part. The first thing that interested him was to satisfy the Israelis.” But Mr Shaath denied reports by the Palestinian news agency, Maan, that the Palestinian leadership was considering boycotting Mr Blair, who has been in post for four years. One unnamed senior Palestinian official accused Mr Blair, who is envoy to the Middle East of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations), as “behaving like an Israeli diplomat, not an international envoy.” The Palestinians are particularly angry at the role played by Mr Blair last month in the pressure on President Abbas not to request full member-state’s rights from the UN Security Council, because they expected a degree of support from the Quartet, especially the EU component, to counterbalance the opposition from the Obama administration. The Quartet’s new proposal, for an immediate return to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians has also angered them as it does not include their demand for a freeze on settlement building. Mr Blair spends on average a week a month in the region, with his offices based in the American Colony Hotel in east Jerusalem. Last week spokespeople for him and Israeli industrialist Ofra Strauss denied reports, based on rumours that have been going around Israel for months, that the two are romantically attached.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Chairman of the Palestinian Supreme Judicial Council Meets a Number of Officials
Muscat, Oct 9 (ONA) — Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Zahir al-Hinai, Justice Minister and Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council received at his office here today Sheikh Yousef Adeis al-Shaikh, Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council for the Sharia Judiciary and Acting Supreme Judge of Palestine. During the meeting, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Zahir al-Hinai affirmed the attention accorded by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said for the bilateral relations between the Sultanate and the State of Palestine and the support for the Palestinian people till they restore their full rights and achieve their aspirations towards establishing their independent state over their land.
On his part, the guest expressed the appreciation of the Palestinian people for His Majesty’s supportive stances for the Palestinian right at the international forums and the Sultanate’s government assistance to the Palestinian legitimate right. He also hailed the process witnessed by the Sultanate in all walks of life, especially in the judiciary field in terms of legislation, rehabilitation and having infrastructure that keep pace with the modern age, such as utilization of computers and IT in the service of justice. He pointed out that this is a source of pride for Arabs and deserves to be a role model.
The Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council for the Sharia Judiciary and Acting Supreme Judge of Palestine presented an overview about the judiciary and legislation in force as per the link between geography and political developments. He affirmed that the records of the Sharia justice on properties in Al Quds and all Palestinian cities are strong evidences for the Palestinian rights and reveal the falseness of the occupation authorities.
The meeting was attended by Sheikh Zahir bin Abdullah al- Abri , Justice Ministry Undersecretary, Hamoud bin Talib al- Balushi, Chairman of the Public Administration for Judicial Inspection, Mohammed bin Abdullah al- Hajri, Chairman of the Public Administration for Courts, Faisal bin Omar al- Marhoon, Director General of Planning and the Palestinian Ambassador accredited to the Sultanate.
The Palestinian guest was also received by Dr. Abdullah Mohammed al-Saeedi , Legal Affairs Minister and His Eminence Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalli, the Grand Mufti of the Sultanate. During the meetings bilateral relations between the two countries were reviewed, fields of cooperation between the Sultanate and Palestine and the role of Ulama in the two countries to serve the Palestinian right and Muslims sacreds were discussed. Sheikh al-Khalili reiterated the Sultanate’s support to these rights. The Palestinian guest has earlier arrived in the Sultanate on a several day visit. He was received by Sheikh Zahir bin Abdullah al- Abri, the Justice Ministry Undersecretary, a number of judges and senior officials at the Justice Ministry. — — — — Ends/MS/FS
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Israelis Blast Hyprocrisy of Focus on Mosque Vandals
Ever since a mosque in northern Israel was allegedly burned by Jewish vandals last week, Israel’s leadership has been flagellating itself and vowing harsh punishment, while the Arabs and international community have been crying foul at the top of their lungs. But many Israelis, while in total opposition to the mosque incident, say the whole episode is just another example of the double standard they must endure, most often at the hands of their own officials.
Grafitti reading “Price Tag” was spray-painted on the side of the burned mosque in the Galilee town of Tuba Zangria, identifying the attack as the work of a small group of right-wing Jews violently opposed to government policies that endanger Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria — the “settlements.” Even though at least one local resident said he wasn’t convinced the fire was set by Jews, Israeli leaders from President Shimon Peres to the nation’s chief rabbis visited Tuba Zangria full of contrition. Prime Miniter Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “boiling with anger” over the “shocking” attack.
Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yochanan Danino was even more firm:
“Price Tag incidents are serious and must be eradicated. Attacking religious symbols and holy places is an extremely explosive phenomenon that has implications for the general public of the country.”
To be sure, Tuba Zangria and its residents are and always have been loyal to the State of Israel, and an unprovoked Jewish attack on them should be forcefully condemned.
But at the same time, Arab attacks on synagogues and Jewish civilians are taking place all over the country on a regular basis with little or no response from authorities and even less coverage by the media.
For example, Joseph’s Tomb in the Samarian town of Nablus, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, is desecrated weekly by local Palestinians. As on every other week, Jewish worshippers arriving at Joseph’s Tomb last Thursday found the holy site scrawled with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. The Rabbis’ Council for the Binyamin Region noted that what set apart of the Tubia Zangria mosque incident from the descecration of Joseph’s Tomb is that nearly all Israelis condemn the former, while a majority of Arabs support the latter.
The rabbis insisted that the Israeli authorities and media should react just as strongly, if not more so, to the constant violation of Jewish religious freedom. Religious Israeli lawmakers Michael Ben-Ari and Rabbi Yisrael Eichler suggested to Israel National News that the double standard is a symptom of the Israeli leadership’s fear of Muslim threats and international criticism. “When Jews are hurt everyone is silent. When Arabs are hurt, everyone shouts,” noted Ben-Ari. Rabbi Eichler explained that “just three weeks ago a synagogue in the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem was torched. Even the religious media barely mentioned it. I responded to this severe matter here in the Knesset and I asked where is everyone who yelled against price tag operations when a mosque is targeted. All of a sudden, they’re guarding freedom of religion.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Wretched Scandal of Gaza
Despite the Palestinians’ appeal to the UN for statehood, Gaza remains in a state of siege, lacking basic food and sanitation. Mary Riddell reports from ‘a stricken land’.
Past bombed suburbs and scrubland stands the house on the frontier of hell. Once, Abdullah Wahdem’s home was a pleasant villa set in the citrus groves of northern Gaza. Now its cream stucco frontage is pitted by the bullets and artillery salvos that slammed into the last outpost of a stricken land. Three miles away, across the wasteland, is Sderot, the Israeli town regularly hit by Hamas rockets fired from Gaza. While those attacks have provoked international outrage, few outsiders ever see the return violence visited on innocent inhabitants of a territory under blockade. The occupants of Abdullah’s house are as gravely scarred as its facade.
Behind the shutters stands his sister-in-law, a pretty young woman with a closed slit where her left eye was shot away. Her small daughter and the family’s other children still wake screaming after artillery rounds fell on their bedroom. Abdullah’s 10-year-old son, Mohammed, extends a hand with fingers missing.
“We are still suffering so much,” Abdullah says. “Everything has been demolished by the Israelis.” The fruit farm that was once his livelihood has been flattened by “sweepers” that have destroyed trees and bushes to allow maximum visibility in a buffer zone where, according to a local lawyer, a shoot-to-kill policy still operates. Farmers have been struck down as they tend their land, and a teenager collecting scrap metal from the rubble was shot the day before we drove in.
Almost three years have passed since the start of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Air Force campaign that killed 1,300 Palestinians, many of them women and children, and injured 7,000 more. Although the hostilities that crushed 4,000 homes and bombed Gaza back into medievalism are over, the current ceasefire does not betoken peace, or even an absence of war. The road back from Abdullah’s house leads through Beit Hanoun, where an Israeli air raid was reported to have injured three Gazans shortly before our arrival. I am travelling with Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, and David Miliband, debarred from visiting Gaza for security reasons while he was Foreign Secretary and paying his first visit to support the charity’s work.
The Arab Spring has not percolated the permafrost of Gaza’s political winter. In the highest global forums, the Middle East peace process is back on the agenda after the Palestinian appeal to the UN for statehood. Gaza, barely mentioned in such discussions, is the scandal that the world forgot. With justifiable cause, Israel fears and detests the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, elected to govern the Gaza Strip. Talks between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian party that administers the West Bank, are far from reaching accord over the occupied territories.
In an urban sprawl of buildings bombed to rubble, the odd fruit stall, even a barber and a wedding dress shop, reflect the determination of Gaza’s 1.5 million citizens to survive a siege under which necessities, such as fuel and building materials, are either unobtainable or have to be smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. Children with pressed uniforms and schoolbags walk home from classrooms too overcrowded to cope, and the blue sea lapping northern beaches is poisoned by raw sewage. Electricity and the undrinkable tap water are intermittent, and — in a country that should be prosperous — children are routinely starving.
In a nutrition centre to which Save The Children has given $250,000 since the war ended, a grey-faced mother of nine sits with her tiny, 10-day-old triplets. Her name, Tahani, which means Blessings, is unlikely to reflect their futures or that of the 10 per cent of Gazan children so malnourished that their development is permanently stunted. Many of the mothers sitting in this clinic are university graduates, and the director, Dr Adnan Al-Wahaidi, trained at Great Ormond Street. But neither education nor skill can counter the curse of being born in Gaza, whose situation Dr Adnan describes as “being like a car stuck in sand and getting sucked in deeper”. As Justin Forsyth says: “Gaza is one of the hardest places on earth to be a child. The sadness is that the ruin of these children’s lives is so unnecessary.”
While Forsyth’s staff and medical teams do what they can, the Gazan crisis is also a failure of politics. On the humanitarian front, Forsyth has only praise for the Government, and in particular the International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, and the “extraordinarily brave” Chancellor, George Osborne — who, in the face of austerity cuts, has ensured that British aid spending is maintained.
In the political sphere, however, courage is less evident. Despite pledges to the contrary, the Gazan border remains virtually impenetrable, stifling the economy and starving the population of life’s staples. As David Miliband says: “Gaza has gone off the political agenda, and that is dangerous.” Despite his lack of any formal role, Miliband, who left Gaza to meet young activists in Egypt, remains an influential figure, able to command the attention of foreign leaders at a time when the US Congress is threatening to cut $200 million in aid to the Palestinians as a rebuke for President Mahmoud Abbas’s call for statehood.
A central player in the mounting diplomatic crisis facing the occupied territories is Miliband’s old friend and mentor, Tony Blair. As the special envoy for the Middle East Quartet, made up of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, he has attracted the wrath of Palestinians, one of whom described him as more like an “Israeli diplomat” than a neutral interlocutor.
While no politician (least of all Miliband) backs accusations that Blair has been freeloading, there is a genuine anxiety over the worth and impartiality of the Quartet. In the marbled offices of the West Bank, some senior Palestinian figures make little secret of their scorn for Blair and the “useless” alliance he represents. As Quartet efforts to revive the peace process continue, there is scant mention of Gaza, the dirty secret of the region and the world.
Countless lives depend on whether Israel can finally be persuaded or shamed into seeing that a prosperous neighbour would be less of a threat than a pariah land in which the Hamas government becomes more entrenched and misery engulfs the peaceful majority. Here in Gaza everything is rationed, except hope. In a children’s centre whose libraries and rose-scented rooms offer a rare oasis of calm, two 10-year-old boys write out neat homework. Abdullah wants to be a doctor, and his friend, Yusuf, says he hopes to become a pilot and fly out of Gaza airport. But Gaza has no airport. To fly away seems an impossible ambition when Yusuf may never even be permitted to trudge the dusty kilometre through no man’s land and across the barricaded border. The question is whether a region and a world intoxicated by the Arab Spring have the will to nurture one child’s small dream of freedom.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Eight Bangladeshis Publicly Beheaded in Riyadh, Five More at Risk
The men were migrant workers. Pleas by human rights activists against the “barbaric”, “appalling” and “medieval” practice fell on deaf ears. The government and embassy of Bangladesh are criticised for the way they dealt with the matter.
Dhaka (AsiaNews) — Five Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia may meet a fate similar to that of eight compatriots, who were beheaded in public in Riyadh on Friday for murdering an Egyptian security guard in 2007. Four of them are in prison and one is on the run. So far, appeals by human rights activists against the “barbaric”, “appalling” and “medieval” public execution have fallen on deaf ears. The Bangladeshi Embassy in Riyadh said that it is doing all it can to prevent another spate of executions. However, many people are critical of the Bangladeshi government for not doing enough to stop them.
A Saudi court sentenced the eight migrant workers to death by beheading. They were convicted of robbing a warehouse and killing the Egyptian security guard, Hussein Saeed Mohammed Abdulkhaleq, in 2007.
The Saudi authorities, as per the practice, did not inform their embassy in advance. In such cases, the bodies are not repatriated for burial.
In Bangladesh, National Human Rights Commission Chairman Mizanur Rahman said the public beheadings has traumatised the population. For him, the executions go against the spirit of international human rights laws, which say that no penalty should violate human dignity.
According to Adilur Rahaman Khan, secretary of the human rights group Odhikar (Rights), both the Bangladeshi government and the embassy in Riyadh “have failed to protect the Bangladeshis”, underscoring the weakness of the country’s foreign policy.
Sultana Kamal, executive director of another rights organisation, Ain O Salish Kendra, said, “There are no words to condemn the execution of the eight Bangladeshis. This is barbaric, appalling and a crime against humanity. The right to life has been taken away from the accused.”
Furthermore, she wonders why the United Nations or other human rights bodies were not informed of the matter.
More than 2,000,000 Bangladeshis work in Saudi Arabia. The latest eight executions bring the total number to 58 this year, twice as many as in 2010.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Hariri Trial Financing Divides Majority
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, OCTOBER 7 — The issue of Lebanon financing the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) on the 2005 killing of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri seems to pose a threat to the strength of the government. The Shiite movement Hezbollah, which leads the majority and has seen four of its members indicted by the tribunal, continues to oppose the financing while Prime Minister Najob Mikati would like Beirut to fulfill its obligations. “The tribunal will continue its work, whether we pay or not,” Mikati was quoted as saying by today’s Daily Star, implying that in the case of a refusal the UN might inflict sanctions on Lebanon. But Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah reiterated that “the tribunal will not be financed by Lebanon”, according to the newspaper Al Akhbar. On the basis of Resolution 1757 of the United Nations Security Council, which established the special tribunal, Lebanon is obliged to pay just under 50% of its expenses for 2011, which overall total 65 million dollars.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Number of Arab People Visiting Istanbul Up
(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL, OCTOBER 6 — The number of Arab tourists visiting Istanbul year-on-year in the first nine months of 2011 rose by 26.7%, as Anatolia news agency reported. According to data by Istanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate, 676,675 Arab tourists visited Istanbul between January and September 2011.
6,079,873 foreign tourists visited the city in the first nine months of 2011. A total of 5,654,128 foreign tourists had visited Istanbul in the same period last year. Of foreigners who visited Turkey in the January-September period this year, Germans took the lead as it sent 743,094 visitors. Russia followed Germany with 369,006 of its nationals. Ahmet Emre Bilgili, head of Istanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate, said that mutual visa exemption between Turkey and Arab countries contributed to rise in number of Arab tourists.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Top Dutch MP Slams Turkey’s ‘Belligerence’ Against Israel
Middle East expert Kortenoeven accuses Turkey of “sliding into an abyss of Islamic extremism,” criticizes foreign policies at OSCE meeting.
BERLIN — Wim Kortenoeven, a prominent Dutch MP and Middle East expert, blasted Turkey’s government for its jingoistic policies toward Cyprus and Israel on Sunday at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Kortenoeven’s sharp criticisms of Turkey’s foreign policies and repression of press freedoms elicited an irritated response from Turkey’s representative at the OSCE session on security in the Mediterranean area.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Java: Church Attacker, Spiritual Son of the Islamic Leader Baasyr
Beni Asri has confessed to having been “baptized” with the “baiat” a particular form of oath, by Abu Bakar Baasyr, a controversial religious leader of the country. His fellow “baiat” another young man who died in a suicide attack against the police.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Beni Asri, one of the country’s best-known Islamic extremists, arrested after the attack on the Christian church of Solo (Java) last September, has admitted strong links with the leading Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Baasyr. (09/25/2011 At least three killed in a suicide attack on church in Indonesia). Beni Asri has been accused of planning several suicide bombings in Indonesia, and in particular of being the organizer of the attack against the Solo church. Beni Asri was arrested Sept. 30 in his parents’ house in Solok, West Sumatra province.
Beni Asri (photo: the day of the arrest) made a crucial testimony to Indonesian security services investigators who are trying to trace the roots of radical fundamentalism that is spreading among young people. Beni Asri confirmed he had been spiritually “baptized” by Abu Bakar Baasyr after a short course of prayers and Islamic teachings in Cirebon, West Java, in 2008.
Beni Asri, a native of Solok, does not have a high level of education, he attended junior high school, and from 2003 to 2006 earned a living by selling clothes and toys in various markets around the island of Java. His life changed radically after coming into contact, by chance, with two men: Agung Nur Alam and Syarif, in Cirebon, where he used to sell toys in the markets during night parties.
Syarif, the perpetrator of the suicide attack on the Cirebon Police Headquarters, was killed in the attack, which injured several officers. “Beni Asri was very committed, he followed the sermons held continuously by Abi Bakar Baasyr in the An Nur Mosque in Cirebon,” said a police spokesman, Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam. “Beni Asri received ‘baiat’ and his companion was Agung Nur Alam”. The “baiat” is a spiritual oath, professed by young novices in front of their spiritual director and teacher, after a period of intense preparation and physical and moral training. According to the spokesman, Beni Asri was to an extent “kidnapped” by Agung Nur Alasm, Syarif and a third person, Sueb, to bring him to Abu Bakir Baasyr.
Beni Asri recieved “baiat” along with 15 other young unknown men. The only thing he remembers about that day and the “oath” is that he must “be loyal to all that the Amir (the spiritual leader, Ed) tells him to do, based on the Koran and Sunnah of the Prophet, in the effort to achieve the implementation of Sharia. “ After the “baiat” Beni Asri was as an active member of the Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (Jat), an organization founded by radical Muslim Abu Bakar Baasyr after having abandoned, , his former fundamentalist group, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) after strong divisions.
According to General Alam, Beni Asri was subjected to a brainwashing to inculcate a false idea of jihad (holy war spiritual) in a series of courses held by Baasyr in the Zaitun mosque of Cirebon. Considered the Amir of the Jemaah Islamiyah, Baasyr’s meetings, which were attended by about thirty young men.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia: Perlis Raja Opens Floating Mosque
Kangar, Oct 9 (Bernama) — The Raja of Perlis, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Putra Jamalullail, last night officially opened the Al-Hussain Floating Mosque in Kula Perlis, a busy gateway for tourists heading to the legendary island of Langkawi. The mosque, which has its prayer hall extending out to sea, was built at a cost of about RM12 million through the sponsorship of businessman Tan Sri Mohd Ariffin Yusof and family. The mosque can accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers. The twin minarets of the mosque will light up in different colours during the dawn and night prayer times, and thus guide fisherman on the time for prayers.
[JP note: Perhaps another project for Boris: a floating mosque in the Thames Estuary? The world’s first Floating Boris Mosque for East End Muslims all at sea?]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysian Muslims to Get Counseling After Church Meet
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Islamic authorities will provide counseling to a dozen Malaysian Muslims to “restore their belief and faith” after they attended a community dinner at a church hall, a royal sultan said Monday. The case has triggered worries among officials in Muslim-majority Malaysia that some non-Muslims were trying to convert Muslims. Proselytizing of Muslims is punishable by prison terms of various lengths in most Malaysian states.
Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, the constitutional ruler of Malaysia’s central Selangor state, said Islamic officials who inspected a dinner at a Methodist church hall in early August found “evidence that there were attempts to subvert the faith and belief of Muslims.” The sultan did not elaborate on the evidence or mention Christians in his statement, but said the evidence was “insufficient for further legal actions to be taken.”
Church officials had repeatedly denied any proselytization occurred at the dinner, which they described as a multiethnic gathering to celebrate the work of a community organization that worked with women, children and HIV patients. Christian leaders had also criticized Islamic state enforcement officials for what they called an unauthorized raid. Malaysia’s state sultans command immense moral clout particularly among Malaysia’s ethnic Malay Muslims, who regard them as the top authorities on Islamic issues. Muslims, who comprise nearly two-thirds of the country’s 28 million people, are not legally permitted to change religion.
“We command that (Islamic officials) provide counseling to Muslims who were involved in the said dinner, to restore their belief and faith in the religion of Islam,” Sultan Sharafuddin said. Rev. Hermen Shastri, the general secretary of Malaysia’s Council of Churches, said the sultan’s statement “brings closure to the case.” “No one should speculate or aggravate the situation further,” he told The Associated Press.
The sultan added Monday he was “gravely concerned and extremely offended by the attempts of certain parties to weaken the faith and belief of Muslims.” “We hope that after this, any and all activities … for the purposes of spreading other religions to Muslims in Selangor must be ceased immediately,” he said. Malaysia’s non-Muslims mainly comprise Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, some of whom have complained in recent years that enforcement officials are often overzealous in trying to uphold Islam and fail to respect the rights of minorities.
[JP note: Islam is such a fragile religion that mere contact with a different faith occasions doubt, despair and despondency. Either that or they’re having a laugh.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan “Legalises” Persecution Through Blasphemy Laws
Until 1986, only seven people charged with desecrating the Koran or reviling the name of Mohammed. Since the introduction of black law over 4 thousand cases reported, mostly in the last five years. The protest of Christians and members of civil society. The law “protects killers” and those who “incite violence on the streets.”
Islamabad (AsiaNews) — The introduction of the notorious blasphemy laws in 1986, during the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, has led to an exponential increase in complaints for “desecration of the Koran” or “defamation of the Prophet Muhammad.” Between 1927 and 1986, when the “black law” was approved, there were only seven cases of blasphemy. Instead, the victims since 1986 have risen to over 4 thousand and the figure continues to rise: in fact, from 1988 to 2005, the Pakistani authorities indicted 647 people for offenses relating to blasphemy, but in recent years, there have been thousands of cases of Christians, Muslims, Ahmadis, and members of other religions accused by word of mouth, without the slightest scrap of evidence.
The crime of blasphemy provides for life imprisonment or the death penalty. However, the 30 confirmed victims of blasphemy have died as a result of extra-judicial killings perpetrated by fanatics with the endorsement — or complicity — of the authorities and police forces. Complaints and killings are mostly the result of jealousy, personal enmities, economic or political interests that have nothing to do with Muhammad and Islam. This long trail of blood caused by the norms 295 B and C of the Pakistan Penal Code are signs of the “Islamization” of the nation, founded in 1947 on the principles of secularism, equal rights and religious freedom. Today the Christian community — around 2% of the population, concentrated mostly in the Punjab province — is seen as a threat for three fundamental reasons: Christianity is regarded as a “Western” religion, members of religious minority are considered liberal and representatives of a middle class — especially Protestants — educated, associated with the leadership of the colonial past, what is done by or against the Christians is “exaggerated” or overestimated.
The “Black Law” in the last 20 years has resulted in attacks against entire communities, as happened in Shantinagar and Multan (1997), or in the recent past in Gojra (2009), with deaths and dozens of houses torched. Pakistani Christians and civil society mourn three prominent figures, regarded as “martyrs”: the Catholic Bishop John Joseph, who committed suicide in 1998 in protest against the death sentence of two Christians, the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, a Muslim murdered by his bodyguard on January 4 this year, the Minister for Religious Minorities, the Catholic Shahbaz Bhatti, killed by an armed commando on March 2 last year. The last two had requested the cancellation of the law and the liberation of Asia Bibi, a 45 year old Christian mother of five children, sentenced to death under the black law.
Many Christians and non-Pakistanis protest against the violence and human rights violations perpetrated under the law. For Basharat Gill the blasphemy law “protects the killers and promotes street violence,” revealing the “weakness of the judiciary.” Nadeem Raphael adds that “no religion permits violence and cruelty” against other human beings. “It is not enough that Islam is tolerant — Sadaf Saddique comments — we all need to promote peace, regardless of faith.” Bonnie Mendes warns that “it is absolutely right to stop the killings in the name of Islam”, but he also emphasizes that “even those who kill are wrong in trying to export their model of democracy.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Ship Seized by Pirates Off Coast of Somalia
(AGI) Rome — An Italian vessel, the M/N Montecristo, with 7 Italians on board and owned by the D’Alesio group has been seized off the coasts of Somalia. The alarm was launched at 6.45 am when the boat was about 620 miles from the coast. A recent message from the Italian captain informs that the M/N Montecristo was attacked by a boat carrying five armed men.
There are 23 people on board the ship, 7 Italians, 10 Ukrainians and 6 Indians .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Canada: ‘Human Rights?’ Fired for Opposing Immigration Policy
As in a Communist country, Canadians ware denied their livelihood if they challenge the Illuminati banker agenda. Canada champions “human rights” only when it advances this agenda.
“A teacher can call a teenage girl a slut and e-mail her his desire to have sex with her, he’ll still be okay. However, be an immigration critic or stand up for free speech and you’re declared unfit to teach in politically correct Ontario.” Paul Fromm, Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression
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Greece to Remove One-Day Visa Requirement for Turks
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, OCTOBER 10 — The Greek government is preparing to remove visa requirements for Turkish citizens who make one-day visits to western Thrace. Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Dollis, on Prime Minister George Papandreou’s instructions, jump started the legal process to remove the one-day visas, daily Milliyet reported. Parliamentary deputies from the region near the Meric Evros in Greek) river, which is the border between Greece and Turkey, requested the lifting of the visas alst week, stating that the removal of one-day visas would economically benefit the struggling Greece as well. Turkey removed the one-day visa in the region in 1988. The legal proposal by Dollis is expected to be finalized next week.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
SA Man Loses Bid to Stay in Canada
South African Brandon Huntley has lost his latest bid to stay in Canada, after applying for refugee status, the Sunday Times reported. On Wednesday Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against the withdrawal last year of his refugee status. The 33-year-old, who works as a handyman at a carnival, would now take his case to Canada’s Supreme Court. According to his lawyers this would buy him another four years in Canada. He left South Africa in 2004. In 2009 Huntley successfully argued to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board that as a white man, he was being targeted by black criminals in South Africa. He claimed he had been robbed at least seven times in racially-motivated attacks.
| — Hat tip: Rembrandt | [Return to headlines] |
UK: A Welcome Plan for Real Action on Immigration
David Cameron and Theresa May are to be commended for their new proposals, but the barriers ahead remain formidable.
David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference last week demonstrated many sterling qualities. It showed courage: the Prime Minister is leading from the front during these difficult times, and is prepared to take the flak to which that exposes him. It demonstrated his determination, as Matthew d’Ancona emphasises on the opposite page, to be a “One Nation” Tory, leader of the nation rather than merely the Tory tribe. It also emphasised the compassion that, he insisted, lies behind his willingness to go against the opinion of many in his party over such issues as gay marriage, foreign aid, or intervening to topple the Gaddafi regime in Libya.
At the top of Mr Cameron’s concerns was the economy, and rightly so. He stressed the importance of harnessing Britain’s enterprise and “can-do optimism” to escape from our current straits. But the economy is not the only issue on the Government’s agenda. One of the public’s main concerns, as opinion polls have repeatedly shown, is the effect of excessive immigration. Indeed, it was Theresa May’s welcome desire to tackle illegal immigration that was at the root of her spat last week with Kenneth Clarke.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr Cameron repeated his desire to return immigration to sensible levels. Certainly, the need is pressing: the latest figures show net migration running at well over 200,000 people a year — around half of which consists of those coming to Britain from outside the EU. The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised to reduce that number to the “tens of thousands”, but the Coalition’s existing measures are clearly not having the desired effect. We are therefore pleased to be able to report that the Prime Minister and his Home Secretary are to ask the Migration Advisory Committee to look at ways in which immigration from non-EU countries can be more effectively controlled. The ideas that the committee is to consider include raising the minimum income that prospective immigrants outside the EU must command. At present, the figure is £20,000. Raising it to £25,000 or even £30,000 should cut the numbers of officially sanctioned migrants, although it is hard to say by how much.
Another proposal is to reduce the number of work visas from the current level of 21,700 a year. That will have less effect. So far this year, only about 1,000 have been applied for each month, so the maximum number would have to fall by more than half to reduce immigration even fractionally. To have a significant impact, such visas would have to be eliminated entirely, which would provoke an understandable outcry from business.
Next, the Government plans to tackle sham marriages by increasing the “probationary period” from two years to five before a non-EU resident who marries an EU citizen gains the right to settle here permanently. In the absence of comprehensive changes to the way in which Article 8 of the Human Rights Act is interpreted — this being the now-notorious “right to family life”, against whose abuse this newspaper has been campaigning vigorously — this measure is probably the only one that the Government can take.
A final proposal is that companies should be required to publish a breakdown of their employees’ nationality, in the hope that those employing too few British workers will be shamed into increasing their number. The motive is admirable, but there must be concerns about the bureaucracy this would involve — not to mention the prospect of firms being stigmatised merely because they employ a high percentage of foreigners, perhaps because they are unable to find sufficient Britons with adequate skills and motivation.
The holy grail of immigration policy must be to find a way to let in skilled and productive workers that will make a positive contribution while keeping out those likely to break the law, or become dependent on state handouts. The Government is certainly making a serious — and long overdue — effort to move in the right direction; even Labour now accepts that things went badly wrong in recent years. Sadly, effort does not guarantee success. Because of a maze of international obligations and treaties, reducing immigration is enormously difficult. If any area of policy requires can-do optimism, it is here.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
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