Angela Merkel Pledges Germany’s Support for Papademos Government
(AGI) Berlin — Extending her best wishes to freshly instated PM Papademos, Germany’s Merkel confirms Berlin’s support for Athens. In her message to Luca Papademos, chancellor Angela Merkel says “I wish you good luck for your duties as prime minister. I look forward to work with you and I wish to assure you that Germany will stand by your side and by the Greek people as we jointly face up to common challenges in Europe and Eurozone.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Blair Calls for Defence of the Euro and Reforms
(AGI) Rome — Tony Blair called for the defence of the euro and the implementation of the necessary reforms. The former UK prime minister said that reforms were needed to support the single currency and address the changes that the current crisis shows us are unavoidable and also urgent. He added that this is a very difficult time for Italy and for Europe, explaining that Europe must clearly say that it is in favour of following the path of the single currency and the European Union has to support it and be ready to act to ensure its survival.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China-EU: Europe Has to Rescue Itself, Without Any Help From Beijing
China seeks to strengthen its economy and fears having to pay other countries debts. But an economic catastrophe in Europe, spells big problems for Chinese exports, increasing domestic unemployment.
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) — The eurozone debt crisis should be settled by Europeans themselves, the best contribution that China can offer is to take care to strengthen its economy, stated Liu Mingkang, former Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission at a conference held yesterday in Beijing.
A day before in Honolulu, U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, had asked to Asia to do more to stimulate global growth and in Europe for some time it has been hoped that Beijing would lend a hand by buying government bonds, making loans and investing in the continent.
“The best way China can help the global economy — said Liu Mingkang — is to do our work better at home, deepening reforms, reducing pollution, keeping a balanced economic growth.”
Earlier this month, at the G20 summit, President Hu Jintao had also said that Europeans must solve the debt crisis on their own.
But according to some observers and scholars, in the end China will have to help Europe because the EU is China’s largest trade partner in exports (20%). “A European economic catastrophe — said the economist and academic John Lee — is not in China’s best interests.”
A reduction in exports would lead to an increase in unemployment in China. Officially, the unemployment rate in the country is around 4-5%, but it does not take account of the 150-200 million migrant workers who enter and leave the labor market, mainly used in the manufacturing industry, which serves not only the internal market but produces goods for many other world markets.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Democracy is Being Sacrificed in Europe
Lack of democratic accountability risks an eventual, and possibly extreme, populist backlash. Far from unifying Europe, the euro threatens eventual Balkanisation.
Slavish adherence to the demands of monetary union has succeeded in the past week in dislodging two democratically elected prime ministers — George Papandreou (already gone) and Silvio Berlusconi (not yet gone, but going). Elections in Spain will shortly sweep away Jose Zapatero, too. At least in that case, it will be via the ballot box, but the effect is much the same. In its struggle to stay alive, the single currency is exacting a heavy toll among Europe’s political leaders.
Not that anyone will be shedding a tear for them. Like Zapatero, both Berlusconi and Papandreou would eventually have been removed by their electors if events hadn’t speeded up the process. What is more, many of the reforms that the largely technocratic governments replacing them are obliged to bulldoze through should have been implemented long ago: indeed, if they had been enacted during the good times, Europe wouldn’t be in quite the same mess as it is today.
None the less, the virtual suspension of the democratic process that euro membership seems increasingly to demand should be viewed with alarm. Legitimacy, it appears, is expendable; the single currency is not. From the start, the march to European unification has always implied an erosion of sovereignty. But we seem to be reaching the point where the diktats of a small policy elite vastly outweigh the decisions of national parliaments.
A particularly unhealthy development is the emergence of the “Frankfurt Group”, a shadowy collection of senior policymakers, to drive through the measures thought necessary to save the euro. Its reported make-up — Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mario Draghi, José Manuel Barroso, Jean-Claude Juncker, Herman van Rompuy and Olli Rehn, with external powerhouses such as Barack Obama occasionally allowed in by invitation — gives no reason for confidence. Nothing any of them has done to date has succeeded in stemming the crisis. On the contrary, their actions have often made matters worse. If the definition of madness is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect different outcomes, this collection of latter-day Napoleons would quickly be confined to the asylum. A policy agenda that has consistently failed is scarcely more likely to succeed if pursued more decisively and oppressively through a European equivalent of the Chinese Politburo .
Few outsiders would dispute that Silvio Berlusconi has been a malign influence on Italy. But the fact that so many Italians chose to vote for him is not the root cause of the problem. Rather, it is that there is a divergence of at least 30 per cent in competitiveness between Europe’s south and north, which makes it virtually impossible for Italy to live with German fiscal and monetary policies. Rome’s curse is not so much bad government, as being in the wrong currency. The present policy prescription offers no way out, only grinding austerity and rising joblessness.
The constraints of the single currency seem to be condemning much of Europe to virtual depression. Lack of democratic accountability, moreover, risks an eventual, and possibly extreme, populist backlash. Far from unifying Europe, the euro threatens eventual Balkanisation. Looking on in horror, Britain might seem to be well out of it. Yet everything that happens in Europe affects the UK directly. Thus far, for all his rhetoric, David Cameron appears to have been marginalised in these great debates, content to sit on the sidelines in the hope that the crisis will somehow be resolved. Yet whatever their end product — deeper union agreed by all 27 EU members, as Germany wants; the emergence of a separate “super-bloc” within the euro, as France wants; or the disintegration of the single currency itself — the discussions are of overwhelming importance to this country. With everything in flux, the Prime Minister has the opportunity that Britain has long craved to renegotiate our membership of the EU on better terms — yet at the moment, this country is being progressively frozen out of the key decision-making. We, and the other non-euro members, must act swiftly to safeguard our interests against increasingly undemocratic and economically unsound policy-making. As Europe slides inexorably into self-induced recession, time is running out.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Italy to Apply Measures Soon — Rating-Agency Gag
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 11 — “It is necessary that the Italian Parliament approve and give immediate enactment to the crucial measures”. These words from the President of the EU Council, Herman Van Rompuy, came during a speech given in Florence today. In the meantime, a new EU regulation affecting rating agencies places a ban on the issuing of ratings for countries facing financial crises, especially those that “are negotiating an international financial assistance programme” with the objective of “stabilising their economy”.
The new measures would empower ESMA, the European market watchdog, to ban the publication of “sovereign ratings in existing situations of risk for the orderly functioning of the financial markets or for the financial stability of the whole or part of the EU’s financial system”. In plain words, those affecting countries in crisis which “could cause negative knock-on effects” for other countries. The power to limit the issuing of ratings may only be exercised in “exceptional circumstances,” that are to be spelled out by a delegated commission.
The new regulation also contains sanctions: whenever a rating agency “is accountable for infringing, whether intentionally or though gross negligence” the EU regulation, thereby “causing damage to investors,” it will be subject to civil sanctions.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Unemployment Reaches Peak of 18.4% in August
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, NOVEMBER 11 — Greece’s unemployment rate soared to a an all-time high of 18.4% in August, up more than six percentage points compared with the same month in 2010, AMNA news agency reports citing official figures published on Thursday. A report by Hellenic Statistical Authority (Elstat) said that the number of unemployed people was rapidly moving towards the one million mark, after rising around 295,000 in a year. The financially non-active population in the country surpassed that of employed people by around 400,000, while unemployment among young people totalled 43.5%. The statistics service said the unemployment rate in August totalled 18.4% of the workforce, up from 12.2% in August 2010 and 16.5% in July.
The number of unemployed people rose by 294,845 in August, up 48.1% from August 2010 and up 10.7% from July this year.
According to the latest data by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office, Greece’s jobless rate is second only to Spain. At 22.6%, Spain had the highest unemployment rate in the EU, while Austria and the Netherlands had the lowest rates, with 3.9% and 4.5%, respectively. About 16.2 million people — roughly the population of the Netherlands — were unemployed in September in the euro area, up 188,000 from the previous month.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Construction Activity Keeps Coming Down
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, NOVEMBER 11 — The decline in construction activity continued in July, as Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) data showed on Thursday that the figure of new building permits fell by 14.1% from July 2010. The surface area that the permits were issued for also shrank further, by 27.3% on an annual basis, as the market adjusts to buyers’ demands for smaller houses due to the economic crisis. Construction activity has been weakening since 2007, but the rate of decline has been increasing in the last couple of years, as daily Kathimerini notes.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Indignados Carry Out Raid on Mediolanum Bank in Milan
(AGI) Milan — About 20 ‘Indignados’ protested at the Banca Mediolanum in Milan’s via Visconti di Modrone this afternoon where one employee who tried to stop them from entering was slightly injured on her hand when she tried to take down a banner. Medics took care of her injury. The group entered carrying tangas and a banner bearing the words; “Mediolanum. Last Tanga in Milan. Occupy Berlusconi” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Left and Right Should Join Forces Against the Great Euro Takeover
As the EU crisis nears its moment of truth we need democrats — not technocrats — in charge.
‘The moment of truth is approaching,” said David Cameron on Thursday. But what is the truth? In the view of those who run Europe, the truth is that its single currency must be saved. In very ancient Greece, Homer tells us, the giants tried to scale Heaven by piling Mount Ossa on top of Mount Olympus, and then adding “wooded Pelion”, another mountain in those parts, on top of that. They failed, of course, and “piling Pelion on Ossa” became a by-word for reinforcing failure.
In very modern Greece (two days ago), a new prime minister was chosen. Lucas Papademos is not an elected politician. He is the former governor of the Bank of Greece, and it was part of his job a decade ago to persuade the European Union that his country had met the budget deficit criteria which would permit entry to the euro. It hadn’t, but he said it had. Greece joined. Now, partly because of this original fiction, Greece is bust. Yet the answer, strongly approved by the euro-giants, who were disgusted by the earlier suggestion of a referendum, is to pile Papademos on Papandreou.
In modern Rome, it is proposed that Mario Monti succeed Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of Italy. Mr Monti is sometimes described as a politician, but, again, he does not sit in his country’s parliament: on Thursday, the President of Italy suddenly made him a senator-for-life. He has, however, spent nine years as a European Commissioner. His postal address is Rue de la Charité, Brussels. The euro-giants love him too. These changes are welcomed by the powerful because they mean rule by “technocrats”. Let’s call in those clever chaps who have already proved they know how to pile Pelion on Ossa and get them to pile up several more mountains, summit upon G20 summit! Then we can reach Heaven at last!
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Introduce the ‘Neuro’ For Northern Europe, Says VVD Academic
The Netherlands should begin a serious discussion about introducing the ‘neuro’, a single currency for the northern European countries, Patrick van Schie, director of the VVD’s policy think-tank, says in Saturday’s AD.
Van Schie told the paper he has difficulty with the ‘propaganda’ about the euro, such as the statement that the euro has brought the Netherlands prosperity. This is a fact which has never been proved, Van Schie is quoted as saying.
Instead, the Netherlands could think about an alternative currency zone which would not include weaker euro countries such as Italy and Greece. France may also be ineligible to join a northern currency bloc, he said.
Van Schie’s comments follow PVV leader Geert Wilders’ decision to commission an investigation into eventual cost of a return to the guilder.
VVD prime minister Mark Rutte told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting the PVV’s action will probably show that a return to the guilder would be bad for Europe and help persuade Wilders to toe the cabinet line.
Finance minister Jan Kees de Jager also said a return to the guilder ‘is not an option’. The euro has delivered many benefits, such as low inflation and modest unemployment, the minister said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Anger, Fear, Determination Permeate Anti-Shariah Conference at Madison Church
The U.S. Constitution is under attack. Say no to Shariah. Those two phrases — found on a bumper sticker in the parking lot — captured the mix of anger and determination coming from speakers and the audience at Friday’s Constitution or Sharia conference at Cornerstone Church in Madison. They say Islam is a threat to their way of life. And they want to take action to limit the influence of Shariah, the legal code that guides Muslim ethical, religious and moral practice.
Brigitte Gabriel, president of ACT for America, a leading anti-Shariah group, started her talk by saying she was not worried about moderate Muslims. But she says she fears that radical Islam is infiltrating the United States. “If you let the radicals go unchecked, they will destroy millions,” she said.Gabriel, who uses a pseudonym, is a native of Lebanon who fled her homeland during that country’s civil war. She said that no one came to the rescue of Christians in her native country when they were killed by radical Muslims. “My 9/11 happened to me in 1975, when radical Islamists blew up my home,” she said. ¡ “My only crime was being a Christian who lived in a Christian town.”
Gabriel was the last speaker of the day. The first, John Guandolo, a former FBI agent, told the crowd of about 500 that Nashville’s mosques are front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood and have no First Amendment protection. He also said national security is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s nonsense, local Muslims said. They dismissed the claims of conference speakers as mudslinging. “The First Amendment gives everyone the right to practice their religion the way they want to,” said Mwafaq Mohammed, chairman of the Salahadeen Center of Nashville, spiritual home to Nashville’s Kurds. Mohammed invited critics to visit local mosques and see for themselves that Muslims are law-abiding citizens.
Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, said he was trying to ignore the conference. He said there was not a shred of truth to the claim that local mosques are a threat. “This fear-mongering machine needs more fuel,” he said. “So they keep fueling it to keep it going.” But the message appealed to conference attendees. Larry and Mary Dalton of Bellevue, who are active in the local chapter of ACT for America, said they have nothing against their Muslim neighbors but want them to keep their religion to themselves. “We know enough about Shariah to know we don’t want it here,” Larry Dalton said.
But a speaker from the American Center for Law and Justice takes a more nuanced approach to Islamic law. In an interview, David French, a captain in the Army Reserve and an Iraq War veteran, paid homage to Muslim members of the Iraqi Army who fight alongside U.S. troops. “I served beside Muslims who gave down their lives to fight al-Qaida,” he said. But French worries about the kind of Shariah law that inspires terrorists. He said it’s what led to some Muslims being arrested for planning terrorist acts and carrying out honor killings in the U.S. — where male members of a family murder women who they think have dishonored the family. “We are seeing the Shariah of our enemies lived out around us,” he said.
A speech on the plight of women in Islam and religious persecution overseas got the loudest applause in early sessions of the conference. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist and author of A God Who Hates, said Shariah law treats women as second-class citizens. She began by pointing to a photo of British children on a public school trip to a mosque. Those children were being brainwashed, she said, into respecting Islam. Western countries should not allow Muslims any religious accommodations for Shariah law, Sultan said.
“We all must create a buffer against Islamists who are trying to exploit our system,” she said. “We must stand firm and say no to Shariah.” Justin Akujieze, a Nigerian Christian, says the Igbo people of that nation are being murdered by Muslims who want to run the country under Islamic law. That could happen in the United States, he warned. “America today is the last hope,” he said. “And we must not wither. But identify clearly the enemy and confront it head on.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Army Agrees to Review “Discriminatory” Rule Against Muslim Head Scarfs
The U.S. Army has agreed to review one of its policies that prevented a 14-year-old Muslim girl in Tennessee from marching in a homecoming parade while wearing her Islamic headscarf. Freshman Demin Zawity had been enthusiastically participating in Ravenwood High School’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and was looking forward to the parade, her mother Perishan Hussein told a local news station.
However, just before the event Zawity was told she’d have to remove her headscarf, called a hijab, because it wasn’t an official part of the uniform. Even though she volunteered to tuck it under her shirt and wear the uniforms’ cap on top of it, she was told it still was a problem, her mother said. The Brentwood, Tenn., school insisted they were just following the rules. “We as a school system are bound to the regulations of the Army. We cannot conduct the program unless we follow the regulations,” Jason Golden, chief operating officer and general counsel for the school district told The Blaze.com.
Heartbroken, Zawity dropped out of the program and her family wrote to the Council on American-Islamic Relations for help. They didn’t want to sue, but simply wanted a policy change, an apology and a chance for Zawity to be readmitted to the program. In October, CAIR wrote a letter to the school district, as well as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing their concern about the religious discrimination.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Larry Stubblefield recently sent the Army’s response, and indicated is was looking into it. “Based on your concerns, the Army is reviewing its policies related to religious accommodation as they apply to JROTC, and we will provide you the results of that review upon completion,” Stubblefield wrote. “Please be assured, that it is not the intent of the JROTC policy to discriminate against any individual or religion.”
The Army already allows Jewish individuals to wear yarmulkes under their uniform cap. In an interview with The Tennessean, Zawity said she was grateful to hear about the review, but is now too busy with her studies to rejoin the JROTC. However, she encouraged other Muslims to join JROTC. “If we never change anything,” she asked, “where would we be?” The Deseret News recently profiled a Cottonwood High School soccer player who wears her religious headscarf, as well as long sleeves and long pants, while she plays soccer, and has earned the respect of friends and teammates because of her devotion to her Muslim faith.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Boulder County Muslims Find Elbow Room in Former Baptist Church
Inside the worship room, carpeting bought off Craigslist covers the floor. Near the front door, simple wire shelving holds dozens of pairs of shoes. Out on the street, dank pieces of paper hung inside a sign box announce a mosque at the corner. Saied Mabrouk admits it’s a modest space with few flourishes and an obviously dated look. “This is a 40-year-old building; it has a lot of maintenance and repairs for us to do,” Mabrouk said before Friday prayers began at the Islamic Center of Boulder.
But he said the center’s new location, at 5495 Baseline Road, is a vast improvement over where the local Muslim community used to have to gather for worship — a cramped low-slung building on Culver Court in Boulder that the center occupied for 30 years. The new site, which the Islamic Center of Boulder bought for $1.85 million in August, is more than 13 times the size of its predecessor — 20,000 square feet versus 1,500 square feet. Where once the fire code limited congregants to 90 at a time, now up to 700 can be accommodated. There’s no need to elbow in for a spot on the floor, and women can comfortably pray at the same time as the men, either in the main worship hall or in a separate room.
“It was very crowded,” William Shutze, a Russian language and culture major at the University of Colorado, said of the city’s previous mosque. “People were completely smooshed into rows.” Mabrouk said members will be painting and touching up the building’s exterior to make it look a little more cared for over the next few months, though there are no plans — and no funds — to do a complete overhaul. The mosque is collecting donations to pay back the no-interest loans it got to acquire the land and building. “It doesn’t have to look like a classical mosque you see in Egypt — the most important thing is that we have a place to worship,” Mabrouk said.
About 100 faithful showed up Friday to pray at t he center, the interior of which still hints at its Christian origins as one-time home to Bethany Baptist Church. The church’s altar sits abandoned in one corner of the worship hall, while congregants sit facing another corner of the room that puts them into the most direct line with Mecca. Mabrouk said the center’s Muslims are perfectly comfortable practicing their faith in a space that was long home to those of another of the world’s major religions. “The very same God that was worshipped here before will continue to be worshipped,” he said. “Jesus and his God will be mentioned in reverence.”
Abu Hira, who delivered a cerebral sermon Friday on the place of science in Islam, called the 3-acre site at the corner of Baseline Road and 55th Street a “sacred space.” “We know our religions are different, but the Muslims are here to glorify God, which was the intended purpose of this building anyway,” he said. Hira said with the additional space and plentiful parking , the Islamic Center of Boulder can now throw open its doors to the community in a far more inviting and effective way than it could when it was located near 28th Street. Over time, Hira said, the center hopes to add a library, Arabic and Muslim courses, and religious classes for children. And with women now able to fit comfortably into the center for prayers, Donna Mabrouk, Saied Mabrouk’s wife, said the mosque is gaining back old members and picking up new members every week. “It really was difficult before,” she said. “We didn’t feel as much a part of the community. Now we have the facilities to become a part of the community.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Capturing the Minnesota Muslim Experience Through Oral Histories
“Really?” was the first question Kathy Wurzer of the Almanac asked me when she featured the Muslim Experience in Minnesota oral history project on her popular TV show on TPT. Does the Muslim experience in Minnesota really go back to 1880s? I think there are two main misconceptions about Muslims in Minnesota: one is that Muslims are new and alien to this land, and two is that they are monolithic. The oral history project that was carried out by the Islamic Resource Group demonstrates that neither are true.
Mrs. Wurzer’s question gives us a chance to address these misconceptions. Yes, Muslim history goes back to the early days of the establishment of the state of Minnesota. Muslims from the Ottoman Empire had come and settled in this area as early as the 1880s. We not only have pictures of these early Muslims in Minnesota, but some of the earliest mosques in the nation were built in the neighboring states of Iowa and North Dakota. One of the interviewees, Ms. Ferial Abraham, provided firsthand testimony to this fact by telling us about her father and her grandfather who migrated from Lebanon in 1913 and about her maternal grandfather, who came in 1903. After these early settlers, the next major migration of Muslims took place during the 1960¡äs. With a change in the legislation that focused on skilled immigrants, many South Asian and Arab Muslims, mainly professionals, migrated. Several interviewees, including Ahsan Ansari, Dr. Ghulam Haniff and Dr. Muhammed El-Akkad talked about the pioneering work that was done by this generation, especially in setting up organizations and building institutions.
Then in the ‘70s the African American Muslim community, moving from the Nation of Islam (NOI), came to the fold of mainstream Islam and established several mosques in the Twin Cities. Imam Makram El-Amin, whose father, Charles El-Amin, led the transformation in the Twin Cities, and other interviewees, including the former president of the St. Paul NAACP, Nathaniel Abdul-Khaliq, gave detailed accounts of this historic change that brought with it a historical depth and civil rights experience. The resulting interaction in recent years between immigrant and indigenous Muslims is proving to be a critical catalyst for defining the contemporary American Muslim identity.
More recent Muslim immigrants to Minnesota have enriched the diversity of the community further. In the ‘90s, European Muslims from Bosnia arrived, and later East African Muslims from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is, of course, a sizable number of local converts to the faith as well. The diverse Minnesota Muslim community, with its Turkish, Iranian, Liberian, Nigerian, Malay, Indonesian, and many other members, is an integral part of Minnesota’s history.
The Minnesota Muslim Experience project started with the need to tell our story. Islam and Muslims are in the news daily yet authentic Muslim voices are missing. Through a legacy grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, IRG set out to partially fill this gap by capturing an accurate reflection of the Muslim experience in Minnesota. This project provides a snapshot of the Muslim experience in Minnesota. The subjects reflect a rich cross section of the community — from imams to teachers, from doctors to a police officer, from a turkey plant worker to a Red Bull guardsman. We set up and used an interviewee selection matrix to ensure that we were achieving diversity in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, and race. We sought a diversity of locations and included over a quarter of the subjects from Greater Minnesota.
The project provides direct access to unpolished, unscripted, honest accounts of the experiences of ordinary Muslims. It articulates many thoughts and feelings that have not been spoken otherwise. It records the phases of growth of the immigrant community and the transition of the indigenous African American community from NOI to orthodox Islam. It captures personal journeys, whether a journey to a new land, a new faith, or to a new phase in life.
Please visit http://www.muslimexperience.org to learn more about the project and to listen to the interviews with 40 Minnesota Muslims.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Half of US Students Sexually Harassed at School
(AGI) Washington — Almost half of US students has suffered sexual harassment at school. An experience that affected their social life and studying performance. That’s what a survey, carried out by the Association of American University Women on a sample of 1,965 high school students aged 11-18, reveals.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Using Same ‘Strategy’ In US as Europe?
Muslims are using the same strategy to target America that they used in Europe, one Mideast expert said. Muslims have been outgrowing the populations of European countries to steadily become the dominant culture in their adopted countries, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, of Jerusalem’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said. Kedar, who recently co-authored a blockbuster study on radicalism in American mosques, warns that the U.S. is heading down the same path. “If you want to see what America will look like, regarding Islamic expansion in this country, look at Europe, and this will be America in 10 to 12 years from now,” Kedar said. “Mosques that are built in America are creating enclaves of different culture, Sharia [Islamic law] culture, which in many cases promotes jihadism, extremism, and a lack of acceptance of others,” he said. That pattern eventually undermines liberty, Kedar said.
You can find more great interviews like this on our “Stakelbeck on Terror” show here.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
‘Occupy Atlanta’ Shelter Tests Positive for Tuberculosis
A homeless shelter that has been housing more than 100 “Occupy Atlanta” protesters has tested positive for tuberculosis (TB), WGCL-TV reported Thursday.
At least two people at the Atlanta shelter have contracted the air-borne disease, a highly contagious bacterial infection that affects the lungs and other organs.
“One of these persons was confirmed to have a strain of TB that is resistant to a single, standard medication,”
Fulton County Services Director Matthew McKenna said in a written statement to WGCL-TV.
He said both infected people have begun treatment and are being monitored. It is unclear if the two cases were among the homeless population or the anti-Wall Street protesters.
The shelter has become one of the city’s largest bases for “Occupy” protesters since police shut down an encampment at a municipal park last month.
The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless indicated that two cases have been made public knowledge to the protesters.
| — Hat tip: 1389AD | [Return to headlines] |
Protesters Coming Down With the “Zuccotti Lung”
With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what’s being called “Zuccotti lung.”
That’s what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: “It’s a real thing,” Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times.
With little sleep in cold conditions, cigarettes and drinks being passed from mouth to mouth, and few opportunities to wash hands, Zuccotti Park may now just be the best place to catch respiratory viruses, norovirus (also known as the winter vomiting virus) and tuberculosis, according to one doctor.
The damp clothing and cardboard signs wet with rain are also breeding grounds for mold. Some protesters are urinating in bottles and leaving food trash discarded throughout the campground, providing further opportunities for nastiness.
“Pretty much everything here is a good way to get sick,” Salvatore Cipolla, 23, from Long Island, told the Times. “It’ll definitely thin the herd.”
Some protesters have refused free flu shots, citing a “government conspiracy,” the Times said.
There is also the increased risk among the encampment of sexually transmitted diseases, said the doctor, Dr. Philip M. Tierno, Jr. of the NYU Langone Medical Center. And the site’s pounding circles could lead to hearing damage.
Tierno compared conditions at the park to the pilgrimage to Mecca, in which entire groups of people have come down with respiratory infections in short period of time, and the communal compounds of the 1960s where sanitation problems and STDs cropped up.
The health department has visited the site and is monitoring.
“It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone’s health,” the department said in a statement.
| — Hat tip: 1389AD | [Return to headlines] |
Report: Polled Americans Prefer Netanyahu to Obama
President Obama’s hot-miked conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that he is frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — but Americans might be more frustrated with Obama than they are irritated by Netanyahu.
“A poll conducted by the group Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that 52.3 percent of Americans rate Netanyahu positively, compared to 51.5 percent for Obama,” reports Israel Today Magazine. “The results of the poll were enthusiastically discussed on Israel’s Channel 10 News on Thursday.”
The Washington Examiner called the polling firm to confirm and request the full data, including margin of error, but hasn’t heard back yet. The poll reportedly asked questions of 800 U.S. citizens.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to comment, yesterday, on Sarkozy calling Netanyahu a “liar” and Obama reportedly complaining, “You are fed up with him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.”
Carney did say that “Our relationship with Israel is based on our shared principles, our shared values, and obviously on our mutual interests in terms of security. And we will stick by Israel.”
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Unpacking the Muslim Story in 30 Days, 30 States, 30 Mosques
Two American Muslim men who recently completed a road trip, that took them to 30 mosques in 30 states in 30 days, spanning the depth and breadth of the United States (US), are now sharing that story. Their intention over the month of Ramadan was to meet Muslim communities that are spread across the US and share their stories. What emerged is a picture of American Muslims that are much less influenced by the geo-political influences of the day. The two covered 20 000 kilometres in a month. Fasting as they traveled, breaking for Iftar when reaching each destination. Aman Ali, who tackled the adventure with his friend Bassam Tariq, says their intentions were simple.
He says some people think that they were out to change perceptions of Muslims or anything like that, but says that’s not really what they were trying to do. Ali says he was more concerned about telling stories, both positive and negative, saying he felt that all the talk about Muslims in the news, whether it’s the ground zero mosque or any other controversy or backlash of 911, lacked authentic portrayals of who Muslim-Americans are. Ali maintains that the narrative of Muslims portrayed in the media is misleading. The pair met a hip hop artist struggling to reconcile his faith with his music, children too young to understand the true meaning of Ramadan, similar to children in most faiths — or the oldest mosque in America — in a place called Ross, North Dakota, with a population of 40.
Ali says news that America’s Muslim population will double by the year 2030 should be welcomed. He says currently there’s roughly 3-4 million Muslim in the US, saying taking into consideration that a lot of Muslims tend to be of higher income brackets, doctors, lawyers, engineers, the news excites him. Ali says from an economic front, it is good news for the Muslim population to grow as they will contribute more to the economy. Tariq and Ali’s intention was not to change perceptions of Islam in the United States but in their own small way, that’s possibly precisely what they’ve done. Turning the idea of a persecuted, distrusted and anti-American community, right on it’s head.
[JP note: Intentions are quite simple: Islamic conquest.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Help Feed Remote Reserve
Shamattawa gets meat from charity in sharing tradition
In remote communities where jobs are few and groceries cost a lot, most folks rarely have lamb chops and sirloin steaks in the fridge.
But this week in Shamattawa, struggling families won’t be asking, “Where’s the beef?” A Winnipeg charity has given 90 kilograms of lamb, 31 kg of beef and 200 loaves of bread to the fly-in First Nation 1,200 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. “Last year, we donated mostly to newcomer refugees downtown,” said Hussain Guisti, general manager of the Zubaidah Tallab Foundation. The Muslim charity arranges for families to get a good deal on halal meat, buying the animals and having them butchered at cost and fulfilling a religious requirement to share and help the needy. “You have to give a third of it to the poor, a third to friends and family and a third goes to you,” said Guisti. “It’s an act of giving — it teaches you to give.”
This year, they’re donating 450 kg of meat — and two freezers in which to store it — to the Canadian Muslim Women’s Institute. It distributes the meat to local families in need. “The whole thing is about sacrifice to give to the poor and the needy,” said Guisti. This year, the charity made sure there was a surplus to share the meat with First Nations people in need, said Guisti. “I don’t think there are people more needy than the First Nations,” he said. “There are several families back home who don’t have enough when they’re between cheques,” said Shamattawa Chief Jeff Napoakesik on his way back to the community of 1,100. “Groceries at the Northern Store are quite expensive.”
On Wednesday, a four-litre jug of milk sold for $13.49 and a 907-gram frozen package of lean ground beef cost $12.99 at the community’s grocer. Next week, the Muslim charity based in Winnipeg plans to ship another 115 kg of meat. Perimeter Airlines has agreed to move the food when it has room on flights to Shamattawa, said Guisti. Napoakesik said he’s appreciative of the donation and had no idea what halal meat is or its significance. Like observant Jews’ requirement for food to be kosher, Muslims eat food that is halal. When it comes to meat, there are rules for its preparation. “There are certain things you have to do,” said Guisti, who was there for the slaughter, where animals don’t see the one before them being killed. “You have to butcher the animal very fast so the animal’s not in pain. You can’t shoot it or hang it. In less than a second, you have to cut off the trachea.” At the same time, a prayer for the animal is said. “When you butcher, you have to dedicate its soul to God: ‘In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.’ That is what makes it halal.” Two years ago, the charity delivered 110 kg of chicken and 450 loaves of bread to Garden Hill First Nation.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Communist. Cabinet Member. National Threat?
Opposition calling for investigation into business minister’s relationship with Moscow to establish if he is a security threat
Two decades after the fall of communism, Ole Sohn is finding himself at the centre of a plot worthy of a Cold War thriller. The conclusion of the business and growth minister’s real life plot, however, may just lie buried in archives that he himself closed to journalists two decades ago.
Sohn, now a member of parliament for the Socialistisk Folkeparti and a cabinet member since October, faced a barrage of questions this past week about the extent of his relationship to the former Soviet Union and whether he poses a security threat to Denmark.
Sohn, a former chairman of Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (DKP), is being accused of accepting 5.2 million kroner in cash from Moscow on behalf of the party, money never declared to the tax authorities.
He denies ever accepting direct financial support from the Soviet Union, but if Sohn is lying, his political opponents argue, he presents a security risk. They reason that Russia, which may have evidence of Sohn’s complicity, could blackmail the business and growth minister for favourable trade deals in exchange for keeping quiet.
Moscow’s close relationship with the DKP — which Sohn led between 1987 and 1991 — is no secret. A 2001 book entitled ‘Guldet fra Moskva’ (The Gold from Moscow), outlined how former chairmen of the DKP, Jørgen Jensen and Knud Jespersen, both accepted cash via the KGB to support the party.
Nikolai Shatskikh, the KGB’s man in Copenhagen in the late 1980s, as well as former DKP party secretary, Bo Rosschou, both confirmed the transactions in Jyllands-Posten newspaper last week.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fading Sentimentality: German Assessments of U.S. Power
Part of Capacity and Resolve: Foreign Assessments of U.S. Power
By Heather A. Conley
Void of emotion or fanfare, German elites assume that over the next ten years the United States will experience a period of relative decline (militarily and economically) as China, and to a lesser extent India and Brazil, will experience a period of ascendancy. German opinion leaders, however, are not motivated to alter or change their own policies or behaviors on the basis of this assumption of decline. Simply put, they don’t really give it all that much thought or attention. American opinion leaders conceptualize in global terms; German as well as European elites conceptualize in terms of process, localized negotiation, and regional dialogue.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France: Protecting Muslim Honour at the Price of Freedom of Speech: Bruce Crumley, Time and Charlie Hebdo
In what I hope is part of the last gasps of the disorienting moral relativism that marked so many intellectuals during the 2000s, Bruce Crumley was given the pages of Time Magazine to spin out the classic critique that internalises a fear of “Islamophobia” as defined by Muslims who want to avoid public criticism:
[N]ot only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction? ¡But that seems more self-indulgent and willfully injurious when it amounts to defending the right to scream “fire” in an increasingly over-heated theater. Why? Because¡ [it] reflect[s] very real Islamophobic attitudes spreading throughout society.
For other responses to Crumley, see Nick Cohen and Jamie Kirchick. Crumley has made the classic moral inversion characteristic of the Human Rights Complex: he treats Muslims as a force of nature, not as autonomous moral agents. In his analogy, the “burning theater” corresponds to the hostility of Muslims towards the West: “a climate where violent response — however illegitimate — is a real risk.” In other words, since Muslims are prone to (increasingly) violent responses, we must avoid “gratuitously” provoking them, and in the process (still more gratuitously) “offending millions of moderate people as well.”
What kind of Muslim would be insulted by this cartoon? Unlike some of the Danish ones — although even they were mainly uncritical — this one is quite sympathetic: a smiling Mohammed “threatens” 100 lashes “if you don’t die laughing.” What’s offensive here? Would a Christian find a cartoon of Jesus saying this offensive? Perhaps, but certainly less offensive than a crucifix in a jar of urine. I think the “vast majority” of European Jews would find such a cover with Moses amusing.
The offensive part here is not the content, but the depiction itself. Mohammed, we are told, must not be depicted. But that’s according to (some) interpretations of sharia (Muslim law), and, in principle, enforceable only in Dar al Islam: the Islamic world. What is forbidden to Muslims — like not eating pork — does not apply to non-Muslims even in Dar al Islam. Thus, what drives the anger at the depiction of even a sympathetic Mohammed is the desire to impose a particularly rigorous interpretation of Sharia on Muslim and infidel alike. In short, it embodies, like the Danish cartoons, a Jihadi worldview in which the non-Muslim world is Dar al Harb, the world of the sword, a world Salafi Mujaheddin seek to subject to sharia. Do we really want to identify as “moderate” Muslims who so share this imperialist point of view that they find a sympathetic cartoon about Mohammed outrageously insulting?
If the “vast majority” of moderate Muslims were to say to us “we will listen to serious criticism about Islam and not assault those who engage in it, but please don’t gratuitously mock us”, I’d say “fair enough.” But that’s not what’s going on. This is not a peccadillo in the otherwise mature attitude of “the vast majority of moderate Muslims,” but a s ign of how pervasive their sense of insecurity is, how desperately and aggressively fragile they are.
Crumley here is protecting the thin skin of Muslims who, in contact with the rough and tumble verbal sport of modernity, find themselves humiliated and frustrated. Freedom of speech means, above all, the right to criticise. But in an honour-shame society, public criticism — even worse, admitting fault — is anathema: a sign of weakness and an invitation to aggression from others. Crumley is fully aware of, and highly sensitive, to this thin skin. He constantly worries about insulting and offending Muslims. Thus, Charlie Hebdo has “mock[ed] an entire faith¡ creating more division and anger¡ tempting belligerent reaction.” What happened to the “highly variegated” Muslim world? He assumes that they all respond the same immature way. Who’s the essentialising Islamophobe here?
On the other hand, the belligerent reaction he expects conforms quite nicely with my definition of an honour-shame culture, one that allows, expects, even requires that one shed blood for the sake of one’s honour. I agree with Crumley in principle. Gratuitous insult is not what we need. Much better purposeful, serious criticism. If Crumley really embodied the maturity he pretends to, then he’d have serious challenges to Islam to his credit. That would attest to his readiness to treat Muslims as adults, capable of listening to as well as proffering criticism, to his faith that “the vast majority of Muslims are moderates.”
But if he is primarily trying to spare Muslims’ feelings — if he secretly believes that they are incapable of playing by the minimal rules of civil society; that they are not far from sympathising with jihadis for whom violence is a legitimate respo nse to any form of criticism of Islam — then he unconsciously reveals that he thinks Muslims are primitive, violent people who must be appeased at all costs. Here’s where Crumley and I part ways: he treats Muslims as animals or little children, and believes that he can win them over with carrots. Sticks will just spook them. So he finds Charlie Hebdo’s behavior “childish, futile, Islamophobic [sic!]¡ inflammatory¡ obnoxious, infantile¡ outrageous, unacceptable, condemnable.” In his anger, he even indulges in a bit of schadenfreude:
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there’s no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring.
Shades of Baudrillard cheering on 9/11. I’d rather treat Charlie Hebdo as a teaching moment, as a shibboleth for detecting genuinely moderate Muslims. Here’s an occasion to teach our Muslim co-citizens about “sticks and stones.” If we can’t find Muslims to whom we can say: “this part of modern civil society, and your learning to get past the implied/imagined insult constitutes minimal adherence to principles of reciprocity,” then what does it mean to carry on about “moderate Muslims”? This reciprocity is especially significant given how virulently critical of infidels many of the most vocal Muslims are.
This radical (and pre-modern) asymmetry of “us” and “them” reflects one of the most disturbing — and to liberals, incomprehensible — principle of Wala wa bara — “loyalty to Muslims and enmity for infidels.” It constitutes the e xact opposite of the modern principles that underlie civil polities in which citizens are guaranteed “human rights.” Diderot defined natural law as:
¡in each man an act of pure understanding that reasons in the silence of passions about what man may demand of his neighbour (semblable) and what his neighbor has a right to demand of him.
In Islam there is a similar principle, what some Muslims call the “Great Jihad,” the internal struggle. According to one hadith, Muhammad warned his disciples:
You will never enter paradise until you believe, and you will never believe until you love one another (tahabbu) and make peace widespread between yourselves, loving one another, and not one of you will ever believe until his neighbor is secure from his injustices .”
Now for Muslims to enter the modern world, they not only have to apply this to their fellow Muslims (already a huge task in today’s Muslim world), but to non-Muslims, to renounce wala wa bara, which considers the very act of rejecting Islam a criminal insult.
When the Pope said “Islam is inherently violent,” Muslims around the world rioted violently: “How dare you say I’m violent.” When the Western intelligentsia blamed the Pope for “provoking them,” the joke was on us. It’s time to get a sense of humor. Crumley, lighten up; and Muslims, grow up. Just because almost no one dares laugh, doesn’t mean the joke isn’t on you.
[JP note: Definition of a Muslim — one who has sensitive skin in a sandpaper world.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
France: Can We Torch Time Magazine’s Office Now?
I should declare an interest and say that I have always admired Time Magazine. It has great journalists. It has even commissioned your humble correspondent and allowed him to join its exalted company of writers — and more to the point paid your humble correspondent ready money for the privilege. In normal circumstances I would deplore the notion that its offices should be firebombed and editors, reporters, critics, subs, secretaries and IT support staff reduced to piles of smouldering ashes, so charred and diminished their next kin would not be able to identify them.
But what possible argument can those of us who shudder at the thought of arsonists torching Time, and immolating all who work there, now make in its defence? The latest issue contains a piece saying that the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo deserved to have someone — maybe an Islamist, maybe not — firebomb its offices in Paris. It is worth studying because its author seems to be trying to provide a defence for anyone who attacks his own company’s premises.
1. He pooh-poohs the notion of personal responsibility. He says that the attack is not the fault of the attackers but of the magazine for publishing a “stupid and unnecessary edition mocking Islam” that begs “for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good”. If believers in freedom of speech and of the press were to find Time’s arguments in favour of censorship “stupid and unnecessary”, they wou ld on this reasoning be no more responsible for their actions than the Parisian fire bomber. Time would have been “begging” for it. It would have deserved everything it got.
2. Provocatively, he goes on to insult the reader’s intelligence by implying that the edition of Charlie Hebdo was an attack on poor and marginalised Muslims, who can indeed be the victims of discrimination in France as elsewhere.
“Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn’t bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well.”
The author’s idiocies pile one on top of the other. Freedom of expression is not a right that can only be exercised “in the face of oppression”; it is a universal right free men and women can exercise in all circumstances. Being “obnoxious and offensive” may be in poor taste, but there is no law against it, certainly no law that mandates auto da fé for offenders. (If Time wants to propose one, it should have the guts to say so openly.) Meanwhile Time needs to be told that the “moderate people” it is so concerned about do not take offence easily. Indeed a working definition of moderation is a willingness to tolerate the arguments of others, even arguments one finds obnoxious and offensive. Most pertinently, Charlie Hebdo was not attacking immigrants to France but Rashid al-Ghannushi’s Islamist party which has just won a plurality of the vote in Tunisia. The religious right may soon become the “face of oppress ion” in Tunisia but according to Time it will be “obnoxious and offensive” to oppose, mock and satirise their religious beliefs. If Tunisian women begin to suffer, one wonders whether Time will find it “obnoxious and offensive” to take their side, and prefer in the name of good taste and gentility to line up on the side of their oppressors instead.
3. Finally, the author hammers the reader with non sequiturs. He deplores France’s ban on the burqa and says it reflects “very real Islamophobic attitudes spreading throughout society”. I am not position to judge that, but am sure he is right to say that the state should not tell citizens how to dress. Many people find the burqa “obnoxious and offensive” — myself included. But in a free society all we can do is argue against the misogynists, who promote male ownership of women’s bodies. But if Time believes that the principles of religious freedom mandate that is wrong to ban the burqa, how can it then assert that it is right to forbid satires of religion? You cannot be a little bit free. You either believe in the freedom to practice and criticise religion or you do not.
Speaking of the noxious, I find something particularly offensive about Americans defending censorship. In the first amendment to the their constitu tion, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison declared:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
But then I often think that we misinterpret Jefferson and Madison’s motives. Far from celebrating religious freedom and freedom of speech as values upheld by Americans, they may have realised that they were values that needed to be protected from Americans.
P.S. Over at Index on Censorship James Kirchick makes the essential point that arguments about free speech are always simpler than they look:
“No one has the right not to be offended. No one has the right to firebomb a newspaper that offends them. It’s amazing, given all the struggles and sacrifices that have been made for freedom of speech over many years, that statements so simple bear repeating. But as long as we have moral cowards like Bruce Crumley [the Time journalist] around, repeat them we must.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Mohammedans Go on the Rampage in Belgium After Would-be Robber Shot Dead
A group of young Mohammedans went on the rampage in the Belgian city of Liège last night after staging a march to commemorate a would-be robber shot dead by a jewellery store owner in the afternoon. They smashed cars and attacked passers-by while shouting “Murderers, murderers”. Some wore T-shirts saying “Jordy murdered, rest in peace”. You have to admire how fast these Muslims can work. Last week it was Charlie Hebdo: magazine released at midnight; office burned before morning. Yesterday in Liège: Jordy the robber shot dead in the afternoon; T-shirts with his name and likeness ready by evening.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Guardian: ‘Reputation Tarnished’
Guardian journalists should be “more vigilant” in ensuring that they avoid using antisemitic tropes or language, according to the paper’s readers’ editor. Addressing “the increase in complaints of antisemitism” in his weekly column, Chris Elliott said the Guardian was seen as being “especially critical of the Israeli government” and that this had led to concerns it is “carrying material that either lapses into language resonant of antisemitism or is, by its nature, antisemitic”. He said that although website moderators were trained to spot “the kind of language long associated with antisemitic tropes”, more care was needed to identify coded references such as the word Zionist “being used as a synonym for Jew”. Mr Elliott said that in his view, incidents of antisemitic content being published were inadvertent, but added: “We must be more vigilant to ensure our voice in the debate is not diminished because our reputation has been tarnished.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Keep an Eye on Nick Clegg: Brussels Would Love to Install Him as Our PM
It is not so much that Berlusconi has been toppled. That had been coming for a long time. It is that he is to be replaced by a former EU Commissioner, Sgr Monti, which demonstrates the extent of the power exerted by those Masters of Europe. It is the second coup d’état in less than a fortnight. “Who next?” we might well ask. Could it be us? Certainly not just now, but who would be Brussels’ man in London and how might they hope to get him into office?
Despite the recent extraordinary posturing of Michael Heseltine, we can be sure that he is seen as yesterday’s man by Our Masters in Brussels. He muffed his part in the plot to remove Margaret Thatcher from office and missed his chance. Even apart from that, his extraordinary declaration that he still believes we should join the euro and of his commitment not just to European political union, but to global governance, has removed him from the field of political rationality.
I suspect that Our Masters’ man is now Mr Clegg. He is a man of absolute loyalty to Brussels. He simply ignores the views of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, the Conservative Party and voters with his calm assurance in Brussels that those who want a return of powers to Westminster are a “fanatical” fringe. At the moment he is no more than the cuckoo in the nest and the eurocrats’ hopes for Mr Clegg rest on a hung Parliament in 2015 with Labour the largest party, and Miliband, like Cameron in 2011, having been unable to capitalise on the sitting Government’s difficulties. We can be sure that a Lib-Lab government would not long have the confidence of the markets and Brussels’ terms for assistance would include replacing the lacklustre Miliband with their man Clegg.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Menace of the Bus Sex Attackers in Oldham
Three different women reported being sexually assaulted during a 10-week period from August 25 to November 2.
The first incident occurred at 2pm on August 25 on the number 83 bus from Manchester to Oldham.
The offender was sat behind the woman on the upper deck and sexually touched her.
He is described as Asian, in his mid-40s, of a skinny build, 5ft 9in tall and with a long face.
The second incident happened at about 4.40pm on October 23 when a woman got off the 409 bus from Oldham to Rochdale at the Oozewood Road bus stop, and was sexually touched by a man who had been a fellow passenger.
He is described as Asian with a pale complexion, in his mid 20s, of a skinny build, and 5ft 10in tall.
The third incident happened at 6.30pm on November 2 when a woman was travelling on the 83 bus from Oldham to Manchester with the offender.
Both got off in Manchester Street when he approached her, sexually assaulted her and ran off.
The offender is described as Asian, with a round face, in his 30s and had a monobrow.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Poppy Burning and the Limits of Tolerance
Anjem Choudary is the man the tabloids love to hate, but does the government risk turning him into a free speech martyr?
So Theresa May has given in to the temptation, so often indulged by her New Labour predecessors, of banning a grou p associated with Anjem Choudary, the media’s favourite Muslim radical. The latest news is that premises associated with the proscribed group have been raided by the police. “They’ve got nothing on me,” was Choudary’s reaction today. “Obviously it’s inconvenient, but that doesn’t stop me propagating what I believe.”
No, I very much doubt that it will.
Officially, Muslims Against Crusades has been banned for glorifying terrorism (a vaguely defined crime under the Terrorism Act of 2000) and because it was — the Home Office has only just realised — another name for groups that had previously been banned. It was a continuation of Al-Muhajaroun by other names. But the ban — certainly the timing of it — surely had more to do with Choudary’s plan to burn some poppies on Remembrance Day and the outrage that caused.
We’ve been here before, after all. The group’s last incarnation, Islam4UK, was banned at the start o f 2010 after Choudary declared that he and his dozen or so friends would march through the streets of Wootton Bassett in tribute (he claimed) to the thousands of unremarked Muslim casualties of Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the poppy protest, he didn’t actually need to do this. It was enough that he said he would. The reaction that followed proved that however obnoxious his cause Choudary has something of a genius for publicity.
And indeed, there’s a good argument for ignoring Choudary’s groups rather than banning them simply because such bans play into his hands. Banning his outfit gives him more even more publicity. It gives him the one thing he craves even more than Islamist domination: getting his beard on the telly. The pragmatic response would be to ignore him.
The sad truth, though, is that it’s impossible to ignore Anjem Choudary. It’s doubtful that he is actually getting more publicity for being banned than he would have go t for burning poppies. For Choudary not to get publicity would mean the press and broadcast media ending their love-affair with his unique brand of precisely-targeted outrage. He’s successful because he inhabits a stereotype so well. He plays the part of an angry, puffed-up, anti-Western, terrorist-sympathising Islamic fundamentalist with such conviction and aplomb.
His views are cartoonish: with his visions of the flag of Islam flying over Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square turned into a popular venue for Saudi-style beheadings, he offers a reductio ad absurdum of radical Islamism. The only proper response — certainly, the proper British response — is to laugh. As a country, we laughed at Hitler, as we laughed at his British wannabe Oswald Mosley. And Choudary is closer to Roderick Spode than he is to Mosley. Another figure he resembles is the Rev Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, who shares his belief in the efficacy of hate-filled placards. Phe lps and his group were, you may remember, banned from Britain by Jacqui Smith after they proposed (without really intending to) bringing their “God hates Fags” campaign to the streets of Basingstoke.
Choudary gets attention because he is, in a strange way, reassuring. I’ve no doubt that he admires terrorists (even if he would never have the balls to be a terrorist himself) and that he would like to see Islamic law imposed on all the citizens of this country. He certainly has dubious connections, most notably his mentor, the now-exiled Omar Bakri Mohamed. But these days he’s little more than a propagandist. Above all he’s just too visible to be a real threat. It’s true that the tabloids profess to be outraged rather than amused by his antics. But I doubt he would be quite so successful at getting his message across were it not for his essentially comic persona.
At the same time, he has an unerring instinct for the pressure-points of British society. Take Wotton Bassett. By the time he announced his would-be march, the Wiltshire town had become both the focus and the locus of that attenuated thing we’re supposed to call Britishness, a place where the military covenant, elsewhere a hollow joke, became almost sacral. In the absence of any clear explanation of what we were doing in Afghanistan, Wootton Bassett became not merely the scene of tribute but, in an odd way, the mission’s whole justification. The true name for Choudary’s crime on that occasion — and again this year with his mooted poppy-burning — is not glorifying terrorism or threatening public order. It is blasphemy. The public and political reaction to his group’s noisy protests is the closest that secular British society comes to the strength of feeling elicited among some Muslims by Salman Rushdie or the Danish cartoons, or among some Christians by Jerry Springer: The Opera.
But is blaspheming against the national consensus a good enou gh reason to outlaw him or his fan-club? Choudary naturally exasperates more mainstream Muslims who, consequently, get much less airtime. But he is a product of the very freedoms, the very Western decadence, he professes to despise. That, too, is a principle that we are supposed to hold sacred. And this brings me to a more principled objection to banning his group.
The quintessential Choudary placard was the one that read “Freedom go to Hell”, his group’s response to the Danish cartoons and, indeed, to all instances where non-Muslims had exercised their rights to free expression in ways that were uncongenial to his brand of Islam. There would certainly not be much free speech in the Islamic republic he dreams that Britain will one day become. He is not, therefore, in much position to complain that the government wants to stifle his own freedom, though that is precisely what he has been doing all day as he toured the major TV studios. The fact that he is a hypocr ite, however, does not mean that he is not correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of those who want to ban him. The hard truth is that the freedom to be outrageous is one of the freedoms for which people in both world wars fought and, in some cases died.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Pope Lectures German Ambassador on Abortion, Prostitution, Porn
Vatican City, 7 Nov. (AKI) — Pope Benedict XVI received the new German ambassador to the Holy See on Monday, lecturing him about abortion, pornography and prostitution..
“Only a society which unconditionally respects and defends the dignity of each human being, from conception to natural end, can call itself a human society,” Benedict told Reinhard Schweppe, the new German ambassador.
The pope then criticised discrimination and sexual exploitation of against women in Western countries like his native Germany.
“It is a critical problem which, due to materialistic and hedonistic tendencies, seems to be on the increase, above all in the Western world”.
“A relationship which fails to take account of the fact that man and woman have equal dignity represents a grave affront to humankind,” he said. “The time has come to take an energetic stance against prostitution and the widespread availability of erotic and pornographic material, also on the Internet.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Ten Go on Trial for War Crimes
Pristina, 11 Nov. (AKI) — Ten former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) pleaded innocent Friday during the opening of their trial in a Pristina district court on charges of war crimes.
Fatmir Limaj, vice president of prime minister Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo and nine others were charged with kidnapping and killing civilians and soldiers of the former Yugoslav Army in a detention camp in the village of Klecka during 1998/99 Kosovo war of independence from Serbia.
Limaj was at the time commander of “Kumanova” unit of the KLA, the ethnic Albanian rebels who fought to separate itself from Serbian rule in 1998. Kosovo’s majority Albanians declared independence in 2008 which has been recognized by over 80 countries, including the United States and 22 out of 27 European Union members.
The indictment was read by the EU prosecutor Maurizio Salustro and after hearing the charges all ten pleaded not guilty. According to Kosovo’s Albanian-language media, Salustro questioned Thaci on Thursday as a witness on Limaj’s role in the war.
Limaj had been tried by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes, but was acquitted in 2005 for lack of evidence.
The key witness in that trial was supposed to be another former KLA member, Agim Zogaj. As a protected witness he was moved to Germany, but was found dead in a Duisburg park last September.
German police said he committed suicide, but his family claims Zogaj was murdered and blamed the EU mission in Kosovo (EULEX) for not providing adequate protection.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Attempt Against Saudi Arabia Embassy Foiled in Bahrein
(AGI) Manama — The Government of Barhein busted a terrorist cell planning an attempt against the Saudi Arabia embassy and to the Manama Ministry of the interior.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Explosion at Revolutionary Guards Military Base
Fifteen soldiers have been killed in a huge explosion at a military base near Iran’s capital Tehran, officials say.
The blast occurred when weapons were being moved inside a Revolutionary Guards depot, a commander from the elite unit told state TV.
Windows in nearby buildings were shattered and the blast was heard in central Tehran, 40 km (25 miles) away.
Two hours after the explosion a fire still raged and there were traffic jams on nearby roads, a local reporter said.
Local MP Hossein Garousi said “a large part of an ammunition depot exploded,” parliament’s website reported.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ramezan Sharif did not say what had caused the “accident” in the village of Bidganeh, near the city of Karaj.
“Some of the casualties are reported to be in a critical condition,” he said.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
A New Nuclear Age: Thorium Powered Nuclear Plant to be Built in India
By John Daly
The Guardian in the UK is reporting that India has started the process of building the world’s newest thorium fueled prototype nuclear power plant. As prototypes go, this is a big one with a proposed rating at 300MW or about 30% of a customary 1GW uranium fueled station. This commitment deserves congratulations. Finally thorium has a toehold on the world power generation markets and its far less worrisome than a uranium solution.
In a rare interview, Ratan Kumar Sinha, the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, told the Guardian that his team is finalizing the site for construction of the new large-scale experimental reactor, while at the same time conducting “confirmatory tests” on the design saying, “The basic physics and engineering of the thorium-fuelled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) are in place, and the design is ready.”
Once the six-month search for a site is completed — probably next to an existing nuclear power plant — it will take another 18 months to obtain regulatory and environmental impact clearances before building work on the site can begin.
(SEE MORE AT URL, ABOVE)
| [Return to headlines] |
India: VHP Leader Calls for Decapitation of Those Who Convert Hindus to Christianity
Praveen Togadia, secretary general of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), has called for a new constitution. “Such attempts fuel social tensions for the sake of political and economic power,” says Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) — Praveen Togadia, secretary general of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu extremist group, has called for the death penalty by decapitation for anyone who tries to convert Hindus to other religions. He made the demand when he addressed the Akhil Bharatiya Dharmaprasar Karykarta Sammelan, a three-day event in Ahmadabad, in which he also called for changes to the Indian constitution.
“What Togadia has said is nothing new,” said Fr Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit and director of Prashant, the Ahmadabad-based Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace. “His words are against the spirit and the freedom enshrined in the Constitution of India, which guarantees every citizen the right to preach, practise and propagate his/her religion and for that matter choose his/her religion”.
Togadia’s “hate propaganda has so often resulted in considerable violence against India’s Muslim, Christian, and Dalit minorities,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC)
“Violence and other abuses against marginalised groups in India are part of a concerted campaign of these Hinduvta organizations—whose leadership is dominated by upper-caste Hindus—to promote and exploit communal tensions in order to retain political and economic power,” he explained.
Togadia “has long been in favour of discriminatory measures against other religions. He has long been advocating anti-conversion legislation in all states to curb conversion from Hinduism to Christianity,” George said.
Togadia, George added, has began to distribute systematically ‘Trishuls’, warning brochures that, using clever rhetoric, tell Hindus to ‘beware’ of the imminent danger and get ready for violence. For the GCIC president, trishuls are “a brazen attempt to militarise society under the garb of a religious programme.”
Recently, “Togadia opposed the ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence’, a bill drafted by the National Advisory Council (NAC) chaired by Sonia Gandhi, which, if enacted, would, in Togadia’s words, ‘oppress’ Hindus, and reduce them to second class citizens by making them into a criminal tribe”, Sajan K George explained. (NC)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
India: Muslim Trust to Set Up a Cow Shelter
VADODARA: A group of Muslims from south Gujarat plans to set up a cow shelter (gau shala) near Vadodara. The move comes at a time when stern police action following a stricter law preventing cow slaughter had created tension in the run-up to the recent Bakr Eid celebrations. Hazrat Shah Dada Kayamuddin Chishti Trust, which is associated with a dargah in Ekalbara near Vadodara, has decided to build the shelter to set an example in communal harmony. The trust also has Hindu members. The idea of the gau shala has roots in the fact that Saiyed Kayamuddin Bava Chishti, after whom the dargah is named, had propagated the concept that each household should have a cow. A vegetarian himself, Saiyed Kayamuddin was widely revered by both Hindus and Muslims.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: ‘80%’ of Jakarta Adults Had Hepatitis A
Jakarta, 10 Nov. (AKI/Jakarta Post) — About 80 percent of Jakarta’s adult residents were once infected with Hepatitis A, an expert says.
“We did research on Jakarta’s adult residents and about 80 percent of them had contracted the virus,” Dr. Unggul Budihusodo, a gastroenterohepatology consultant from the Medical School of the University of Indonesia, said on Thursday as quoted by Kompas.com.
He explained the Hepatitis A virus was transmitted through contaminated food and drink. After experiencing Hepatitis A, patients usually retained antibodies that protected the patient from another infection and the antibodies could be detected although the infection occurred long ago.
Dr. Unggul said Hepatitis A patients could recover quickly only with total rest, but the virus could turn chronic if the patient had already been infected with other viruses, such as Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C, which had no symptoms.
He added that Hepatitis A was only found in countries with poor sanitation.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Church Attacked in Kenya as Threats Hamper Relief Work
Nairobi, Kenya-After grenade attacks on a church in northern Kenya blamed on Islamic extremists, religious leaders said they were redoubling inter-faith peace efforts. At the same time, about 100 kilometers away, Christian relief agencies were carrying out humanitarian work in Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee camp, despite security threats.
Two grenades were lobbed into the East Africa Pentecostal Church compound in the town of Garissa on Nov.5, killing two people and injuring five others. The attack has been blamed on al-Shabab militants who are facing a Kenyan military operation in southern Somalia.
“We are alarmed by this blatant attempt by evil forces to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims,” Sheikh Adan Wachu, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims told a news conference on Nov. 10 in Nairobi.
Speaking under the auspices of the Interreligious Council of Kenya, he said the militants had hoped to ignite Christians-Muslims violence, but had failed. He said the faiths were united against groups that misuse religion to cause anarchy and would be preaching that message in churches, mosques and temples. “We have lived peacefully with one another for long. Therefore we choose not to interpret this as religious war,” the Rev. Joseph Mwasya, a clergyman from Garissa said on 8 November at a news conference.
At Dadaab, many agencies have scaled down since October when threats escalated, but the Rev. Eberhard Hitzler, the director of the Department for World Service of the Lutheran World Federation said on Nov.8 the organization will continue to deliver humanitarian relief at the camp. “We have not yet the impression that the current situation in Dadaab constitutes a serious crisis, despite the security risks increasing for the organization; so we should set up a team to respond to it,” said Hitzler whose organization is responsible for housing and security in the camp. The 20-year-old settlement now contains more than 460,000 refugees who have fled war, famine and disease in Somalia.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
South Africa: Muslim Halaal Outrage
On Thursday next week an outraged Muslim community and the greater public will hear if an interim order is granted to stop a cold meat storage company from allegedly relabelling pork and kangaroo meat as halaal beef. An application for an interim court order was brought before the Western Cape High Court yesterday. This is after it came to light that Orion Cold Storage allegedly imported pork, water buffalo and kangaroo meat, and relabelled it as halaal beef. There are even equally serious allegations that pig hearts were sold as sheep hearts.
This caused an outcry in the Muslim community and is also said to pose a health risk. The South African National Halaal Authority (Sanha) brought the application before the Cape High Court yesterday for an urgent interdict to prevent the firm from altering information on products. This comes after an employee of Orion Cold Storage recorded footage of the alleged relabelling of non-halaal meat products.
Maulana Igsaan Hendr icks, the president of the Muslim Judicial Council, said yesterday that the allegations were of serious concern. He said that they would also be conducting their own internal probe. “At this stage, we do not know all the details yet, so it is too early to comment, but there have been genuine concerns about this company,” said Hendricks. “This issue affects all Muslims and an investigation is imperative. This is why we will be working with Sanha and others to get to the bottom of the matter.”
Sanha said in a press statement that it would examine the documentary evidence seized to determine the extent to which the food supply chain had been affected. Patrick Gaertner, MD of Orion Cold Storage, has vehemently denied the allegations. The company also handed in affidavits to the court.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
USCIRF Condemns Bombing of South Sudan Refugee Camp
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemns yesterday’s aerial bombing of the Yida refugee camp in the Unity state of the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, reportedly by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of the Republic of Sudan. Located approximately 10 miles south of the border with Sudan, the camp holds more than 20,000 refugees who had fled the SAF’s attacks in Southern Kordofan state in the Nuba Mountains region.
According to reports, four bombs were dropped on the camp at 2:55pm local time yesterday. One bomb landed in a schoolyard, but fortunately did not explode. More than 300 students were in class at that time. “The bombing of innocent civilians in the Yida camp is unconscionable,” said USCIRF chair Leonard Leo. “These civilians fled bombardments in Sudan, only to have bombs follow them across the border into South Sudan. These assaults are clearly an outgrowth of Sudan’s hostility toward religious freedom. They target the innocent, violate South Sudan’s sovereignty, and threaten the fragile peace between the two nations.”
In late October, USCIRF met at the Yida camp with refugees who described Khartoum’s aerial bombardment in the Nuba Mountains and how SAF planes targeted them as they fled south toward Yida. Christian pastors said they were targeted and their churches burned and looted because Khartoum does not want Christianity in Sudan. Refugees witnessed soldiers killing Christians and declaring Christianity to be the enemy of Islam. Muslim refugees were threatened by soldiers in the mosques in which they sought safety and witnessed mosques being destroyed. They claimed that Khartoum does not consider them legitimate Muslims because they are Nuban. “While Khartoum continues to attack innocent civilians, it is seeking debt relief,” said Leo. “The U.S. government should deny debt relief to Sudan until the bombardments stop and unrestricted, international humanitarian assistance is permitted.”
Authorized and initiated by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, Khartoum has attacked churches, mosques, schools, and markets in the Nuba Mountains and the neighboring Blue Nile state, but not the Sudan People’s Liberation Army — North (SPLA-N) in these regions. Khartoum also has been denying humanitarian assistance which is needed due to the destruction of crops resulting from the bombing of farms. According to local sources, more than 230,000 persons are internally displaced in Southern Kordofan, 20,000 from Southern Kordofan have sought refuge at Yida refugee camp, 29,000 from Blue Nile have sought refuge at Tongo refugee camp in Ethiopia, and an unknown number from the two states are in Juba, South Sudan.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Dancing at His Own Wedding ‘Paralysed’ Moroccan Who Claimed £400,000 in Benefits… And Can’t be Kicked Out Because of Human Rights
An illegal immigrant who claimed to be paralysed from the neck down but was filmed dancing at his wedding cheated more than £400,000 in benefits, a court heard yesterday.
But even though Mohamed Bouzalim, 37, has admitted dishonestly entering the country and fraudulently exploiting the welfare system, legal sources said they will face an ‘uphill battle’ to deport him.
There is a strong likelihood the Moroccan will be able to remain in the UK by claiming he has a right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, immigration sources said.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Outrage as Tesco Backs Gay Festival… But Drops Support for Cancer Charity Event
Tesco has triggered outrage by ending its support for the Cancer Research ‘Race for Life’ while deciding to sponsor Britain’s largest gay festival.
Some religious commentators and groups have condemned the decision and are calling for a boycott of the supermarket chain.
Tesco has worked with Cancer Research for more than ten years, raising hundreds of millions of pounds to help combat an illness that will affect one in three of the population.
The chain’s main contribution was support for the annual fundraising Race for Life, the UK’s largest women-only charity event, which has raised more than £400million for the fight against cancer since it began in 1994.
But shortly after Tesco announced the partnership would end, the firm said it would be a headline sponsor of Pride London.
This is Britain’s largest gay pride event, and will be adding a second day next year when it hosts the global WorldPride 2012 festival in July.
Tesco’s chief executive of retailing services, Andrew Higginson, said: ‘Our “Out at Tesco” team will be working closely with Pride London to ensure next year’s event is even more fun.’
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
IEA Report Calls for Governments to Embrace Nuclear Power
By John Daly
The good news is that on 8 November the International Energy Agency released its 2011 “World Energy Outlook.”
While it will cheer nuclear advocates, overall the report makes for grim reading.
Pulling no punches, the report states at the outset, “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway.”
Stripped of its cautious language, the IEA report essentially noted that should present trends continue, the world’s governments through a lack of progressive initiative embracing alternative energy sources would continue to rely on ‘tried and true” fossil fuels, resulting in increased pollution, more fossil-fuel dependency and increasingly upward energy prices.
For environmentalists, this is all good news, but the report contained a caveat virtually anathema to all green movements, that accordingly, governments should reconsider their reluctance to embrace nuclear power, as it does not generate greenhouse gases.
Like many discussions in Western economies since 2008, when the global recession first began to draw blood, the issue of reliable energy production ultimately devolves down to dollars and cents issues.
The grim reality for environmentalists is that no single renewable energy resource, from wind power to solar energy through biofuels, has remotely become competitive with kilowatt hours of electrical energy generated by coal or oil-fired power plants.
(SEE MORE AT URL, ABOVE)
| [Return to headlines] |
Into the Fray: A Study in Self-Cannibalization
By Martin Sherman
Over a century ago, Churchill warned that Western civilization will face an existential challenge from the Muslim world. It is now upon us.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
— Karl Popper, On the Paradox of Tolerance, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945 …
Many Western Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner, from the politician in Parliament to the immigration official at the border, have long considered it their obligation… to tolerate intolerance.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
0 comments:
Post a Comment