Eight Strategic Factors to Consider in 2012
by Gregory R. Copley, and Yossef Bodansky
Rarely in the past six decades has global context counted for as much in strategic forecasting — trend analysis — as it does at the dawn of 2012. Reliance on stove-piped analysis of “strategic sectors” — such as economic and financial issues, security issues, politics, geopolitics, resources and energy, sociology and religion, and so on — will produce skewed and unreliable estimates, and will tend to favor linear extrapolations of recent experience. A study of broad contextual factors, including an expanded view of history, will show how cycles and confluences of trends potentially play a greater disruptive role than at any time since the end of World War II.
We have, in recent writings, stressed the longer-term trends and outlook, but it is important to see how the strategic environment is likely to play out during 2012. Equally, it is important that these trends (and others) are seen collectively, and not separately.
1. Global Economic and Financial Trends: Economic fragility is everywhere, even in fairly robust and growing economies. Some of the new engines of economic and financial growth — Brazil, India, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — face significant hurdles in 2012. Indeed, it is likely that we may see economic growth couple with instability, and with an inability of even substantial growth to meet social (and therefore political) expectations. Absent major surprises, watch for India to fall still further behind the PRC in terms of economic, and therefore strategic, competitiveness. But the delicacy of the global situation, as well as the PRC’s leadership transition in 2012, means that the PRC is unlikely, during this year, to see its yuan (renminbi) transform into a major global currency. Three of the major global economic lynchpins — the United States of America, the European Union, and Japan — remain in economic and financial difficulties, and this will constrain their strategic capabilities significantly. The rising debt-to-GDP ratio in both the US and the EU will hollow economic recovery efforts. This situation also means that the US dollar and the euro will retain their status as global trading currencies only by default, and will help reinforce a continuation of a fundamentally inflationary situation in the global marketplace. National statistics, which are biased politically, will continue to obscure real, underlying inflation, and this will continue to be pervasive and exported from the US and eurozone.
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EU Commission Wants 5-Year Deadline to Save Euro
Sources — Brussels wants 27-nation accord
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, JANUARY 4 — The 26-state inter-governmental accord to save the euro should be incorporated into EU-wide treaties within the coming five years.
This is the main demand of the EU Commission for the new inter-governmental accord being drawn up between 26 of the 27 member nations (after the United Kingdom withdrew from the negotiations). “This parallel route is necessary because there is no unanimity today,” EU sources say. “We want to see the accords aiming towards incorporation of the new regulations within the Treaty of Lisbon” within a foreseeable time span. “With five years at most from the coming into force of the accord, on the basis of an assessment of its application, an initiative should be launched … with the purpose of incorporating the substance of this accord within the legislative framework of the European Union,” reads part of the six-page document presented by the European Commission to the President of the Council, Herman van Rompuy.
“It important not to lose sight of the objective of keeping within a timeline of a few years for bringing the accord within the framework of treaties for the 27 states,” the source noted.
“For now, we have to use this parallel 26-nation instrument, but with the intention of going further. Our position remains unchanged; we believe it is better to work towards a Community framework,” the high-ranking official added.
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French Minister: EU Will Impose Financial Tax by End of Year
French junior minister Leonetti has said on TV the bloc will launch a financial transactions tax by the end of the year despite UK opposition. “Twenty six out of 27, in all truth, none of the European countries expect the UK are against the idea, and except Sweden,” he said.
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Greece Warns of Euro-Exit as EU Economies Drift Apart
BRUSSELS — Greece may have to exit the eurozone if it fails to secure its second EU-IMF bail-out its government has warned, amid new protests against spending cuts. “The bailout agreement needs to be signed otherwise we will be out of the markets, out of the euro,” government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis told Skai TV on Tuesday (3 January).
The day before, doctors and pharmacists went on strike in reaction to planned spending cuts, with hospitals taking emergency cases only until Thursday. The latest €130 billion bail-out for Greece was agreed in principle by EU leaders in October, provided Athens cuts deeper into public spending, privatises some services and state-owned companies and boosts revenues by clamping down on tax evasion.
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Italy: Bond Spread Dips Below 500 Points
Yields on 10-year bonds at 6.92%
(ANSA) — Rome, January 3 — The spread between Italy’s 10-year Treasury bond and the German benchmark bond dipped below the psychologically important 500-basis-points mark in early trading on Tuesday.
The spread had opened above 520 points on Monday following market uncertainty in Italy’s ability to service its big debt despite the government approving a tough austerity plan before Christmas aimed at balancing the budget by 2013 and boosting investor confidence.
But a strong start to the week on the financial markets helped bring the spread back down to 500 points on Monday.
The spread on Tuesday was 499.3 points while the yield on 10-year bonds, another indicator of market sentiment, stood at at 6.92%.
Premier Mario Monti has said spreads above 500 points are not justified by the Italian economy’s fundamentals.
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Italy Wants ‘Leeway’ On Deficit
Proposed amendment to new eurozone fiscal pact
(ANSA) — Brussels, January 4 — Italy wants Europe to consider granting leeway for public investments in annual deficit calculations and to consider the economic cycle in assessing the rate of reduction of debt exceeding 60% of GDP, the government said Wednesday ahead of Friday’s eurozone working-group meeting on moves to save the euro agreed last month.
The proposals are contained in amendments the cabinet agreed on January 29 to the draft new treaty for a new fiscal compact aimed at saving the eurozone from implosion, the government said.
Italy’s huge debt, 120% of GDP, is the main reason it is under attack from bond markets.
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Italy: Govt Re-Evaluating 200-Euro Residence-Permit Levy
Measure seen by many as hitting some of Italy’s poorest people
(ANSA) — Rome, January 4 — The government said Wednesday that it is re-evaluating a controversial new 200-euro levy on residence permits for migrant workers in Italy.
The measure, which is due to come into effect at the end of this month, was approved by Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right administration before the media magnate was forced to resign as premier in November by Italy’s debt crisis.
Premier Mario Monti’s emergency government, which approved a tough austerity package that aims to balance the national budget by 2013, initially left the levy in place.
But Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri and International Cooperation Minister Andrea Riccardi said in a statement the move was being reassessed after complaints from many quarters that it would hit some of the poorest people living in Italy.
“In a time of crisis that hits foreign workers in our country as well as Italians, it is necessary to verify if its application can be changed on the basis of the foreign worker’s salary and the composition of his or her family,” the statement said.
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Italy: Monti to Meet Merkel for Talks in Berlin
Focus on eurozone and development
(ANSA) — Rome, January 4 — Premier Mario Monti will go to Berlin next Wednesday to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel for talks on the eurozone crisis, the German government said Wednesday.
“The talks will focus on bilateral and international themes, the situation in the eurozone as well as economic development in Europe,” the government said in a statement.
Merkel is due to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, two days before Monti, to prepare a European Union summit scheduled for the end of the month. Monti is scheduled to arrive in Berlin late morning and will be greeted with full military honours.
German government spokesman Georg Streiter said the two leaders would meet for lunch before holding a media conference.
The talks were announced as Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg and president of the Euro Group, warned that Europe was “on the edge of recession”. There was also renewed concern about inflation as Italy’s annual inflation rate reached 2.8% in 2011 — its highest level since 2008, according to the statistics agency ISTAT.
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Spain: Household Borrowing Down 2.1% on the Year in November
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 3 — The debt of Spanish households decreased by 2.1% on the year in November, to 878,197 million euros, the same level recorded in the final months of 2007 and the first months of 2008. The figures were released today by the Bank of Spain. The reduction was caused by a decline in consumer credit, which fell by 5% in November compared with the same month in 2010, to 207,195 million euros. The mortgage debt fell by 1.2% in the same period, to 667,935 million euros, 76.05% of total household borrowing. This percentage has remained virtually unchanged over several years. Company borrowing increased by 0.02% in November compared with the month of October, but fell by 2.1% on the year, to 1.26 billion euros.
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Swiss Retail Giants Call for Weaker Franc
Swiss retailers Coop and Manor have joined forces to ask for a minimum exchange rate of 1.40 francs ($1.50) per euro and longer opening hours. The supermarket and department store titans want the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to intervene again to lower the value of the national currency against the euro in order to fight retail tourism in bordering countries.
“As long as the euro is not worth 1.30 francs ($1.39), the retail trade will suffer a competitive disadvantage against other countries,” said Bertrand Jungo, head of Manor, in an interview with newspaper SonntagsBlick. His counterpart at Coop, Joos Sutter, issued a similar message in a column published in the SonntagsZeitung.
“A minimum exchange rate set at 1.45 francs ($1.55) would help us,” he wrote, admitting the goal was “not realistic” and that a cap of 1.30 francs ($1.39) per euro would also be welcome.
On September 6th, the SNB set a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 francs ($1.28) to the euro in order to stop the “massive overvaluation” of Switzerland’s national currency that has been hurting many industries and economic sectors, such as retail and tourism, for the last two years.
But establishing a new cap for the franc is not the only measure proposed by the heads of Coop and Manor to prevent millions of francs from leaking across the country’s borders.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Closes 2011 With Record $15.22 Trillion in Debt, Officially at 100.3% Debt/GDP, $14 Billion From Breaching Debt Ceiling
By Tyler Durden
…The final debt settlement of US debt about 10 days ahead of schedule, it is now official: according to the US Treasury, America has closed the books on 2011 with debt at an all time record $15,222,940,045,451.09. ..
US debt to GDP is now officially over 100%, or 100.3% to be specific, a fact which the US government decided to delay exposing until the very end of the calendar year. We wonder, rhetorically, just how prominent of a talking point this historic event will be in any upcoming GOP primary debates. And yes, technically this number is greater than the debt ceiling but it excludes various accounting gimmicks. When accounting for those, the US has a debt ceiling buffer of… $14 billion, or one third the size of a typical bond auction.
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Bernie Goldberg on Iowa: Mainstream Media Would Never Say ‘South Carolina is Too Black’
With the Iowa caucus less than 24 hours away, there is still some hesitation in the media that the caucus, not being an actual election and being somewhere in the Midwest, isn’t entirely representative of the nation. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, media critic Bernard Goldberg took on precisely this claim from Andrea Mitchell, suggesting that it was only acceptable in the mainstream media to say Iowa wasn’t representative of the nation because it was white. “We’re not going to hear that South Carolina… is too black,” he argued.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Brain Electrodes Fix Depression Long Term
First placebo-controlled trial of implanted electrodes is positive.
Deep depression that fails to respond to any other form of therapy can be moderated or reversed by stimulation of areas deep inside the brain. Now the first placebo-controlled study of this procedure shows that these responses can be maintained in the long term. Neurologist Helen Mayberg at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, followed ten patients with major depressive disorder and seven with bipolar disorder, or manic depression, after an electrode device was implanted in the subcallosal cingulate white matter of their brains and the area continuously stimulated.
All but one of twelve patients who reached the two-year point in the study had completely shed their depression or had only mild symptoms. For psychiatrists accustomed to seeing severely depressed patients fail to respond — or fail to maintain a response — to antidepressant or cognitive therapy, these results seem near miraculous.
“It’s almost spooky,” says Thomas Schlaepfer, a psychiatrist at the University of Bonn, Germany, who says he has seen similar long-term results in five treatment-resistant depressed patients following deep-brain stimulation (DBS) in the nucleus accumbens brain area.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Deep-Brain Stimulation Found to Fix Depression Long-Term
The first placebo-controlled trial of implanted electrodes is positive, but recovery is usually slow and procedures are being fine-tuned
Deep depression that fails to respond to any other form of therapy can be moderated or reversed by stimulation of areas deep inside the brain. Now the first placebo-controlled study of this procedure shows that these responses can be maintained in the long term.
Neurologist Helen Mayberg at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, followed ten patients with major depressive disorder and seven with bipolar disorder, or manic depression, after an electrode device was implanted in the subcallosal cingulate white matter of their brains and the area continuously stimulated. All but one of twelve patients who reached the two-year point in the study had completely shed their depression or had only mild symptoms.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Defying Republicans, Obama to Name Cordray as Consumer Agency Chief
President Obama will challenge Senate Republican foes of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by naming Richard Cordray as its director while Congress is out of town, according to a senior administration official.
That would allow the agency to establish new regulations over financial institutions, putting into effect elements of the financial regulatory overhaul that was one of the administration’s main achievements in Congress.
Mr. Obama’s exercise of constitutional powers to name top officials without Senate confirmation while Congress is in recess is a stiff challenge to Republicans, who have attempted to block the maneuver by holding “pro forma” sessions over the holidays.
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Fly Parasite Turns Honeybees Into Zombies
If deadly viruses and fungi weren’t enough, honeybees in North America now must also deal with a fly parasite that causes them to leave their hive and die after wandering about in a zombie-like stupor, a new study shows.
Scientists previously found that the parasitic fly, Apocephalus borealis, infects and ultimately kills bumblebees and paper wasps, while the “decapitating fly,” an insect in the same genus, implants its eggs in ants, whose heads then pop off after the fly larvae devour the ants’ brains and dissolve their connective tissues. Now researchers have discovered honeybees parasitized by A. borealis in 24 of 31 sites across the San Francisco Bay area, as well as other commercial hives in California and South Dakota.
Genetic tests revealed that some of the bees and flies were infected with deformed wing virus and the fungus Nosema ceranae, both of which have been implicated in colony collapse disorder (CCD). The scientists believe that more research into the parasitized bees and their behavior could yield new insights into the devastating disorder.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Genetically Engineered Silkworms With Spider Genes Spin Super-Strong Silk
In a lab at the University of Wyoming, some silkworms are spinning cocoons of silk, just as every silkworm has done for millions of years. But these insects are special. They have been genetically engineered to spin a hybrid material that’s partly their own silk, and partly that of a spider. With spider DNA at their disposal, they can weave fibres that are unusually strong and tough. It’s the latest step in a decades-long quest to produce artificial spider silk.
Spider silk is a remarkable material, wonderfully adapted for trapping, crushing, climbing and more. It is extraordinarily strong and tough, while still being elastic enough to stretch several times its original length. Indeed, the toughest biological material ever found is the record-breaking silk of the Darwin’s bark spider. It’s 10 times tougher than Kevlar, and the basis of webs that can span rivers.
Because of its enticing properties, spider silk has enormous potential. It could be put to all sorts of uses, from strong sutures to artificial ligaments to body armour. That is, if only we could make enough of the stuff. Farming spiders is out of the question. They are territorial animals with a penchant for eating each other. It took 82 people, 4 years and 1 million large spiders to make a piece of cloth just 11 feet by 4 feet. The alternative is to synthesise spider silk artificially. That hasn’t been easy.
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Harlem Faces a Historic Shift
Rise of Hispanic Voters Means Neighborhood Could Lose Its Black Voice in Congress
For seven decades, two African-American politicians-first Adam Clayton Powell Jr., then Charles Rangel-have represented Harlem in Congress, symbolizing the New York City neighborhood’s status as the de facto capital of black America.
Now, redistricting under way by the state legislature combined with a fast-rising Hispanic population are threatening to overturn that history. There are more Hispanics than blacks in Mr. Rangel’s district, raising the prospect that Harlem’s roughly 200,000 African-Americans will lose their dominant role in choosing the district’s member of Congress. Similar issues are emerging in several areas around the country, including Southern California.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Historic Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy: Obama Seeks Ties With Muslim Brotherhood
Reaching out in friendship to a group dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”
CAIRO — With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.
The administration’s overtures — including high-level meetings in recent weeks — constitute a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Magma Causing Uplift in Oregon
Volcanic activity is causing the earth to rise in Oregon, scientists have found. Though whether such uplift is a sign of an imminent eruption remains uncertain.
As early as the summer of 1996, a 230-square-mile (600-square-kilometer) patch of ground in Oregon began to rise. The area lies just west of the South Sister Volcano, which with the North and Middle Sisters form the Three Sisters volcanoes, the most prominent peaks in the central Oregon stretch of the Cascade Mountains.
Although this region has not seen an eruption in at least 1,200 years, the scattered hints of volcanic activity here have been a cause of concern, leading to continuous satellite-based monitoring. Now 14 years of data is revealing just how the Earth is changing there and the likely cause of the uplift — a reservoir of magma invading the crust 3-to-4 miles (5-to-7 km) underground.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mitt Romney’s Luck Has Limits
Mitt Romney barely won the Iowa Republican caucuses, and he’s likely to become the party’s presidential candidate. The former governor is profiting from his rivals’ weaknesses, but this could damage him in the end. If he doesn’t improve his image, the chances of beating Barack Obama are slim.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Worker for Sacremento County Sues, Alleges Religious Harassment
A Muslim employee of Sacramento County alleges that he has suffered religious and racial discrimination since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That’s the same year Abdur-Rahim Wasi, who is African American, started work at the Human Assistance Department. In a lawsuit filed in Superior Court last year, Wasi says co-workers have called him a host of names associated with the terrorist attacks — “Osama Bin Laden,” “Taliban” and “Al-Qaida.” “I’m tired of being called Osama Bin Laden,” Wasi wrote in a complaint to a federal agency two years ago. Wasi went on to say that he considers the Sept. 11 attacks criminal and the “mass murder of innocent people.” Wasi’s attorney, Leo Donahue, would not discuss the case Tuesday, nor would a county spokeswoman, Kerri Aiello. But in its written reply to Wasi’s complaint, the county denies all of his allegations and says it took reasonable steps to stop any harassment or discrimination. Rachel Roberts, Northern California civil rights coordinator for the Council of American Islamic Relations, said, “We’ve seen an uptick in employment discrimination around the country, including the Sacramento Valley, since 9/11.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Woman Settles Religious Discrimination Suit Against Church
A Muslim woman who claimed she was fired from her job as a bookkeeper at an Easton church because she complained about religious discrimination by the monsignor has settled a federal lawsuit she filed against the Diocese of Allentown. The terms of the settlement between Omayma Arafa and the diocese have not been disclosed in court documents and attorneys on both sides of the case did not return phone calls seeking comment. A settlement conference had been scheduled for Dec. 22 in Philadelphia, but before the hearing, the parties notified federal Magistrate Judge L. Felipe Restrepo they had reached a settlement. Restrepo dismissed the case Dec. 16.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Representative Michele Bachmann Leaves Race
Mrs. Bachmann said Wednesday that she would not continue her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
“I have decided to stand aside,” Mrs. Bachmann said at a news conference in West Des Moines.
Of the six candidates who seriously competed in the Iowa caucus, Mrs. Bachmann came in last, winning only 5 percent of the vote.
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Survey Tunes in to Dark Energy
Sonic yardstick offers a measure of Universe’s expansion.
David Schlegel’s tool for exploring dark energy, one of nature’s biggest mysteries, is deceptively simple. It is an aluminium plate the size of a manhole cover — or rather, 2,200 of them, each with a specific pattern of holes drilled to match the arrangement of galaxies in a particular section of the sky. Every plate is used once, for an hour, at the prime focus of the 2.5-metre telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. When the telescope is pointing at the correct spot, light from each galaxy streams through its corresponding hole. The light is then broken up into its constituent wavelengths and used to clock how fast each galaxy is being carried away from us by the relentless expansion of space.
The study, which began in 2009, will ultimately gather data from 1.5 million galaxies. Its goal is to measure dark energy — a phenomenon thought to be driving the Universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate — and discern whether its influence has remained constant or has varied slightly across billions of years of cosmic history. “The more galaxies we get, the better we do,” says Schlegel, an astronomer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California and principal investigator of the massive undertaking, known as the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS).
But BOSS — and the method behind it — is already coming into its own. On 11 January, Schlegel and his colleagues will unveil their initial findings — based on data from 470,000 galaxies — at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. Those data have given them a glimpse of cosmic structure by showing where galaxies clump together, like the crests of giant waves. The structure is a relic of a much younger and smaller Universe, in which acoustic waves reverberated through the dense, hot plasma that had not yet cooled enough to form stars and galaxies. These waves, called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs), pushed matter into regions of high and low concentrations with fairly even spacing — a pattern that evolved, in later epochs, into the giant sheets and filaments of galaxies that are the largest structures in the Universe.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop With Kids
Ex-LA auxiliary Zavala heads Pax Christi
(ANSA) — Vatican City, January 4 — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday accepted the resignation of an American bishop who last month confessed to him that he had two children.
Msgr Gabino Zavala, 60, ex-auxiliary bishop for Los Angeles, is chair of the US chapter of Pax Christi, the Catholic peace and human rights movement.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Yahoo Names PayPal President as C.E.O.
Yahoo named the president of PayPal, Scott Thompson, as its chief executive to replace Carol Bartz, who was dismissed in September, the company said Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson has been running PayPal, the online payments unit of eBay, since early 2008, and was previously its chief technology officer. PayPal processed $29 billion in payments in the third quarter of 2011.
The former Web powerhouse is undergoing a strategic review as it struggles to compete with newer heavyweights Google and Facebook. It has been run by Tim Morse since Ms. Bartz’s departure; the company said Mr. Morse would return to his former role as chief financial officer.
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Encounters With the Calabrian Mafia: Inside the World of the ‘Ndrangheta
The shadowy Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, has become one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Western world through its dominance of the European cocaine trade. For the first time, local syndicate bosses described their business model to SPIEGEL. It’s a mixture of entrepreneurial talent, skillful management and deadly ruthlessness.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Dealt Another Blow
Faster-than-light neutrinos can’t catch a break. If they exist they would not only flout special relativity but also the fundamental tenet that energy is conserved in the universe. This suggests that either the speedy neutrino claim is wrong or that new physics is needed to account for it. In September, physicists with the OPERA experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, reported that neutrinos had apparently travelled there from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, faster than light.
The claim threatened to blow a hole in modern physics — chiefly Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which set the speed of light as the absolute limit for all particles in the universe. Now a team including Shmuel Nussinov of Tel Aviv University in Israel says it could also put a dent in the principle of the conservation of energy. “This is such a holy principle that has been verified in so many ways,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Floating Wind Turbines Set to Conquer Deep Ocean
The first floating offshore wind turbine is undergoing tests more than 200 miles off the coast of Portugal
As far-fetched as it may sound, giant floating wind turbines will carve their own niche in the offshore wind sector if they can provide access to locations with excellent wind conditions at cheaper prices, industry experts say. Last month, the first offshore turbine ever to be installed without using heavy lift vessels gently floated away on a platform built at a shipyard in Portugal and was towed by a boat 217 miles to the coast of Aguçadoura for a year-long test. It’s a regular 2-megawatt turbine made by Denmark’s Vestas bolted on one of three columns of a triangular floating platform made by Seattle-based Principle Power.
“We are making a similar leap towards new energy resources as the oil and gas industry did in the 1970s when it began using floating structures,” said Alla Weinstein, CEO of Principle Power. The floating technology allows turbines to be located in previously inaccessible locations where water depth exceeds 50 meters and wind resources are superior.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Goodbye Democracy: My Political Analysis is Banned by a European Government as “Hate Speech”
by Barry Rubin
I have just been informed that my PJ article, “Egypt: As Grim Islamists March Toward Power, The Naïve Dance in Tahrir Square” has been barred on sites used by officials of a European government-hint, they speak English there and it is the birthplace of modern democracy and free speech-on the grounds that this article is “hate speech.” What this means is that if you work for any institution that is part of this government-including the Foreign or Defense ministries-you cannot read this PJ Media column on your computer that’s part of such a server.
The message reads: Access denied — reason given : hate speech.
My reader asks sarcastically if complaining about this action would constitute a “thought crime” on his part.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Group Appeals Against Plans to Build Mosque in Athens
A group of Greeks that includes bishops, academics and military officers have appealed against a parliamentary bill that will allow the construction of a mosque in the Greek capital.
According to the Greek press, a petition submitted to the Council of State in December was signed by Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus, as well as a university professor, naval officers and five residents of the area in which the mosque is planned to be built.
The appeal argues that the construction of a mosque would be in violation of the constitution and harmful for national unity. It also cites the high cost of the building project in the face of Greece’s financial crisis.
Known for his far-right views, Seraphim said the bill constituted an anti-Christian action and described it as disrespectful to Christian martyrs. He went on to condemn the Greek parliament for approving such a bill.
The controversial bill was passed in 2006 under the New Democracy party government. Renewed debate over the construction of the mosque began in November after the former Papandreou government made a commitment to complete the project by spring 2012, according to the Greek press.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Man Prefers Jail to Stay With Monks
‘Don’t take me back,’ criminal begs police
(ANSA) — Enna, January 3 — A criminal has fled a halfway house run by a particularly austere order of monks for the second time in just over a month, saying he prefers life in jail.
“Prison’s better than the Santa Maria degli Angeli community home,” David Catalano told police on Monday night.
Catalano, 31, first fled the home near Enna in eastern Sicily on November 21 but was ordered back there. The petty criminal has now been granted his wish and is in a local jail.
“I don’t want to go back with the Capuchins,” Catalano said.
The Capuchins broke from the Franciscans in the 16th century saying the order had strayed from the tough regime of founder St Francis.
They formed an offshoot which focused on living a very austere monastic life. The Capuchins are named after their distinctive pointed hoods; ‘cappuccino’ means “pointed cowl” in Italian. The Capuchin monks believe in living as simply as possible. Neither monks nor monastery are allowed to own property, and the monks are expected to beg and rely on charity for all of their needs, never keeping more than a few days’ worth of food at any given time.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Allies Face Trial Over P3 Lobby
Accusations include ‘influencing govt bodies’
(ANSA) — Rome, January 3 — Two of former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s key allies are expected to be sent to trial over their alleged involvement in an influence-peddling lobby dubbed P3 by local media.
Rome prosecutors on Tuesday announced they were seeking indictments for Senator Marcello dell’Utri, a former Berlusconi aide twice convicted over his links to the mafia, and Denis Verdini, co-ordinator of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party (PdL).
The two political figures and 18 others are accused of secret association “aimed at influencing the operation of constitutional bodies”.
Among those likely to also face trial are three others who were previously arrested: ex-P2 wheeler-dealer Flavio Carboni, who was acquitted of the 1982 murder in London of ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi; Arcangelo Martino, a Naples businessman and former city councillor; and Pasquale Lombardi, an ex-mayor, former judge and heavyweight in the now disbanded Christian Democrat party.
Ugo Capellacci, president of the Sardinia region, is accused of abusing his office and is also likely to face trial.
In July 2010 Dell’Utri declined to respond to prosecutors investigating his alleged involvement in the P3 lobby.
Dell’Utri told reporters he had learned his lesson after his dealings with prosecutors in Palermo who began investigations on his links to Cosa Nostra 15 years ago.
“When I was questioned in Palermo 15 years ago I spoke for 17 hours and was brought to trial on the weight of my statements. I’ve learned my lesson since then,” he said.
Dell’Utri, a former Berlusconi employee who masterminded his 1994 entry into politics, had a mafia sentence reduced from nine to seven years in 2010 by a court that found he only had dealings with Cosa Nostra until 1992.
Verdini, one of the three national coordinators for the PdL, was questioned in 2010 by Rome prosecutors who allege the lobby “was able to influence decisions made by government institutions”.
When the allegations emerged, Verdini quit as chairman of the Florence-based Credito Cooperativo Fiorentino and resigned from its board.
In 2010 prosecutors were reportedly investigating some 2.6 million euros in Verdini’s accounts at the bank on suspicion of possible kickbacks.
Verdini at the time denied wrongdoing and said he was the victim of a “media and judicial tempest”.
The P3 case of a suspected cabal of politicians, businessmen and judges was named after a scandal in the 1980s in which the P2 Masonic lodge rocked the Italian establishment.
The suspected P3 members, who include several magistrates, allegedly tried to sway public tenders and influence court rulings including, unsuccessfully, a Constitutional Court verdict quashing a law granting Berlusconi judicial immunity.
The case stems from a probe into alleged contract-rigging for windfarms in Carboni’s native Sardinia.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Japanese Tycoon Steps in to Restore Dilapidated Treasure in Rome
As the Colosseum ‘crumbles’ and awaits a £22 million restoration, a Japanese tycoon has stepped forward to spruce up another of Rome’s ancient treasures: a massive stone pyramid built as a mausoleum for a Roman dignitary.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your Thoughts
A clever new system helps paralyzed patients and computers work together to control a robot, helping to connect locked-in people with the world.
Over recent months, in José del R. Millán’s computer science lab in Switzerland, a little round robot, similar to a Roomba with a laptop mounted on it (right), bumped its way through an office space filled with furniture and people. Nothing special, except the robot was being controlled from a clinic more than 60 miles away-and not with a joystick or keyboard, but with the brain waves of a paralyzed patient.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Lawyers Reject New Review of Breivik’s Sanity
Prosecution and defence officials rejected a second opinion on Wednesday on the mental health of Anders Behring Brevik, the gunman behind Norway’s twin attacks on July 22nd whom experts have found criminally insane. Lawyers representing some of Behring Brevik’s 77 victims have called for a second psychiatric evaluation.
But in a letter released by the Oslo district court, lawyers for the 32-year-old right-wing extremist said they and their client were opposed to a new evaluation being conducted. “There is already a very detailed forensic medical evaluation of the accused,” lawyer Vibeke Hein Baera said. In a separate letter, the two prosecutors in the case also said a new assessment was “not necessary”.
On November 29th, two psychiatrists appointed by the Oslo court concluded that Behring Breivik suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and that he could not be held criminally accountable for his actions. Given that, Behring Breivik is expected to be sentenced to psychiatric care in a closed ward instead of going to jail.
The conclusions caused outrage in Norway, upsetting victims and the public who noted that Behring Breivik planned the attacks in detail for several years and spent almost an hour and a half coldly shooting dozens of young people.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Doctor Under Fire After Saving Woman’s Life
A doctor at Sørlandet hospital in southern Norway has come in for heavy criticism after giving a woman a blood transfusion despite her written request not to receive the treatment under any circumstances. The 30-year-old woman, a Jehovah’s Witness, was given blood by the doctor after complications arose as she gave birth to her second child in the summer of 2010, newspaper Fædrelandsvennen reports.
Local patient rights official Eli Gotteberg has now called on the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision to launch an inquiry into whether the doctor violated the patient’s rights.
Although the doctor’s action may have saved her life, the woman reserved the right to refuse treatment if she wished, Gotteberg said. She added that physicians could decline in advance to treat Jehovah’s Witnesses if they felt this created the kind of ethical dilemmas they would rather avoid. “Wherever the Bible is clear, we aim to adhere strictly to it,” said Jehovah’s Witness spokesman Tom Frisvold.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Priceless Roman Mosaic Irreparably Damaged by Thieves in Burgos
A priceless IV Century Roman mosaic in Baños de Valderados, Burgos, has been irreparably damaged by thieves, who ripped out three separate sections, including one measuring almost 2.5 square metres, in a theft which was discovered on Wednesday.
The 66 square metre mosaic was only discovered in 1972 and depicts the Roman god Bacchus and was one of the best preserved Roman mosaics of the Iberian Peninsula. The local Mayor, Lorenzo Izcara, told El País that the thieves caused havoc and tremendous damage when they ‘barbarously’ chipped out the stolen sections, ‘probably with a chisel’.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Gun Laws May be Sharpened: Minister
Sweden’s minister for justice, Beatrice Ask, says Swedish weapons laws will be looked over, after recent events in Malmö where five people have been shot within the space of a month. “The previous report didn’t see a reason to change the law. I am not happy with that and we are looking into it at the moment,” Ask told news agency TT.
The Chairman for the Committee on Justice, Social Democrat Morgan Johansson, has been demanding that Ask does something about the situation. “This is really scary. It is about time now that the fight against organized crime becomes a national responsibility. This is not a local or regional issue,” he said. “The National Police Board has to be given more resources. There is currently 30 police officers working with this case. We have proposed an additional 100 million kronor ($14.6 million), which would mean that 130 officers can work with these questions.”
Johansson also suggests to increase penalties for illegal possession of firearms from six months to one year in prison, which would make the crime serious enough in the eyes of the law for police to be allowed to use phone surveillance to catch suspects. Beatrice Ask agrees that the latest rise in violence in the region is very serious and she agrees with Johansson that this is a national problem. However, she is not interested in the reorganisation of the Swedish police.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Politics of Projection in the West
Western liberals applaud the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood but warn of fascism from popular right-wing parties in Europe.
In 2010, one the vilified leaders of Europe’s new right, the leader of the Vlaams Belang party in Belgium, Filip Dewinter, said the following:
We can’t change the past. We can’t deny the dark spots in our history. But we are not prisoners of that history. This bitter experience has been a sobering lesson. We will never ever again believe the false promises of totalitarianism. One could only wish the left-wingers had learned that lesson too.
Today many Europeans celebrate the rise of democracy in the Middle East. However many are fearful of how the democratic will of the Europeans will manifest itself. Interestingly, these fears are not always applied to other parts of the world.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
To Keep Venice From Going Underwater, Researchers Say, Pump Water Under Venice
Venice is sinking, and the nearby Adriatic sea-like the global sea level-is rising. The city could, some estimates suggest, be underwater by the end of the century. Much of the trouble is due to Venice’s precarious, low-lying position in the middle of a lagoon, but human activity in the area has played a role in the city’s subsidence, as well.
One possible solution to the problem may be, in essence, reversing what was done last century: rather than pumping groundwater out from under Venice, some scientists suggest, it’s time to pump it back in. While injecting water won’t undo all the damage, it can stop subsidence-and even slightly lift an area. The technique has worked before; it halted the downward creep of Long Beach, California, half a century ago, as nearby oil extraction caused the city to sink.
In the current study, Italian researchers modeled how groundwater injection would work in Venice and found, happily, that the technique would likely be a success.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Another Islamophobic Rant From Abhijit Pandya
Over at the Mail’s Right Minds blog there is yet another raving anti-Muslim post from former UKIP candidate Abhijit Pandya. David Cameron is denounced for “failing to act” on his notorious Munich speech last year denouncing multiculturalism. This has supposedly resulted in a failure to resist forced marriages, honour killings and, in particular, sharia courts.
According to Pandya, “women are not allowed to speak” at sharia tribunals, which is a new one on me. It would certainly come as a surprise to Amra Bone. Needless to say, the parallel role of Beth Din in the Jewish community doesn’t even rate a mention. Apparently it’s only Muslims’ religious tribunals (“these monstrous courts”) that pose a threat to social cohesion. At the end of the piece we are asked to: “Note also the group ‘One Law for all’ in the UK which is fighting against Sharia Courts.” Maryam Namazie will be so pleased.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Brother-in-Law of 7/7 Bomber Sparks Outrage With Claim Murderer Was ‘A Really Good Person’
The brother-in-law of the 7/7 bombing ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan has provoked outrage by calling him ‘a really good person’.
Arshad Patel, of Dewsbury, further infuriated the relatives of those brutally murdered by complaining that he had not yet recovered an Xbox from the police.
Mr Patel, who was arrested along with his sister at the time before being released, said on the BBC’s Asian Network: ‘I am trying to get back my computer games because I never got a chance to play with them, so now I’m hoping my kids can.
‘It’s been six years now and we are just starting to get back some of our property. They (the police) took away our Korans and so many of our Islamic books.’
Mr Patel, 30, said he used to discuss political issues with his brother-in-law.
He told the BBC that Khan was a ‘normal, every day guy’ and a ‘really good person’, who fitted in well with the family after marrying Mr Patel’s sister Hasina.
Mr Patel’s mother Farida, from Dewsbury, said she was not happy with the way the police carried out their early inquiries into Khan’s actions.
‘As his mother-in-law I suffered a lot of harassment,’ she said.
‘I had to leave the beautiful bungalow I had moved into ready for my retirement, and even until today I have been unable to go back there.’
‘I have never wanted to go back because it holds such bad memories for me and my family. I have not even been to that area where I had lived since coming to live in the UK.’
Victims’ loved ones called their comments ‘trivial’ and insensitive, according to the Daily Express.
Sean Cassidy, whose son Ciaran, 22, died in the suicide bombings, said the family were lucky have a good lifestyle in Britain.
‘If I was family of a mass murderer, I would be lying low,’ he said. ‘It makes my blood boil.’
| — Hat tip: Seneca III | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Daily Mail Reports That Halal Meat Rejected in Parliament Restaurants and Cafes
The Daily Mail has once again attempted to perpetuate the myth of the Islamisation of Britain via-halal meat, publishing an article on the rejection of demands to serve halal meat in the restaurants and cafes of the Houses of Parliament.
Titled, ‘We won’t eat halal meat, say MPs and peers who reject demands to serve it at Westminster’, the article states that no halal option will be made available to those who desire to eat it, and that some Muslim MPs and peers have been misled into believing that they had eaten halal meat when it was not so.
From the Daily Mail.
“The Palace of Westminster has rejected demands to serve halal meat in its restaurants. “Muslim MPs and peers have been told they cannot have meat slaughtered in line with Islamic tradition because the method — slitting an animal’s throat without first stunning it — is offensive to many of their non-Muslim colleagues. “The stance has infuriated some parliamentarians who have eaten meat in the Palace’s 23 restaurants and cafes, having been assured that it was halal. “Lord Ahmed of Rotherham said: ‘I did feel misled. I think a halal option should be made available.’“ In 2010, the Mail on Sunday revealed schools, hospitals and restaurants were serving halal meat to unwitting customers. Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Somerfield and the Co-op all said they stocked meat slaughtered according to Islamic tradition without letting customers know. Fast-food chains including Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, KFC, Nando’s and Subway are also using halal meat without telling customers, it was revealed. Members of the Church of England have complained that the spread of halal meat was ‘effectively spreading Sharia law’ across Britain. However, a spokesman for the House of Lords and the House of Commons confirmed that it was not served in their restaurants. Alison Ruoff, a member of the Church of England, said: ‘It’s a bit hypocritical that the Houses of Parliament, which have allowed other people to provide halal food, have ruled it out on their own premises. At Halal slaughterhouses thousands of birds are killed every hour.”
The article does not substantiate the charge that halal meat is “offensive” to non-Muslim colleagues with any statement or quote. Moreover, the relevance of the last sentence on the “thousands of birds” killed in halal slaughterhouses is highly questionable- are thousands of birds, cattle and pigs not also killed in regular slaughterhouses in the UK and in the slaughterhouses which produce the imported meat that many Brits consume? The Daily Mail has been at the forefront of a tabloid-press campaign portraying halal slaughter as unethical and perpetuating the myth that Muslims as well businesses and institutions are imposing their religion on others by serving halal meat options or halal-meat only (see here, here, here and here).
This article, like many before, poses the issue as one of animal rights. If this is so, then why no furore, for example, over the tens of millions of chickens which are battery-farmed in Britain? And why no mention of the fact that Kosher Jewish slaughter practices are almost identical to that of halal slaughter? Moreover, ‘Indian’ restaurants have been serving halal meat for decades, and as curry is something which is often considered the nation’s favourite food. It is somewhat puzzling therefore, that moral outrage has only found expression in the past few years, and that Muslims are singled out for their practices; practices which are significant to the Muslim community but in the context of the issue of animal rights and meat consumption in Britain, form and fraction of the issue. There is little doubt that articles such as this one and those that have preceded it are there to give fuel to anti-Muslim sentiment by peddling the idea that Islam is a barbaric religion and that Britain is slowly being Islamised.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Human Rights Law is Undermining UK’s Democracy
JUST when you think the reputation of the European Convention on Human Rights can’t sink any lower, along comes the case of Abdullah Munawar, a 23-year old Bangladeshi. Mr Munawar came to Britain in 2008 to study accountancy. His visa was, supposedly, strictly limited. But thanks to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), there is now, it turns out, no such thing as a limited student visa. Mr Munawar has been granted permission to remain here. Why? Because he plays cricket on Sundays. According to Judge Susan Pitt, Mr Munawar was entitled to stay in the UK under Article 8 of the ECHR, which protects the right to a “private life”. By all accounts Mr Munawar is a thoroughly admirable man — and in many ways he would make a model citizen. But the idea that he should gain residency through an international human rights treaty is simply perverse. The world has gone mad when the fact that a visitor to the UK plays cricket in north London and has “formed friendships” is enough to guarantee him permanent residence.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: London 7/7 Bombings: Family’s Lasting Shock Over Attacks
Thinking back to 12 July, 2005, Farida Patel says it was the day her life “fell apart”. That was the day officers from Scotland Yard entered her family home and told her that her son-in-law, Mohammad Sidique Khan, was one of the suspected London suicide bombers. In her first media interview since the 7 July bombings, Mrs Patel described her state of disbelief at the time. “I said ‘Why my house, why search my house?’ and when they told me it was my daughter’s husband, I was shocked,” she said. “At first they thought he was my son, but I said, ‘No he was not my son — he was my son-in-law’.” The police raid came just days after the bombing attacks on London’s transport network, which killed 52 people. Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was the ringleader of the group behind the bombings, which included Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hasan, 18, and Muslim convert Germaine Lindsay, 19.
Khan, originally from Leeds, moved first to Batley and then to nearby Dewsbury, in West Yorkshire, after his marriage to Mrs Patel’s daughter, Hasina, in 2001. They had a daughter in 2004. Mrs Patel, who came to the United Kingdom from South Africa in 1967, had worked in a Dewsbury secondary school and was a key member of the local Muslim community. She sat on a number of committees which aimed to foster links between people of different faiths, and had even served on a local police forum. But she said she was not happy with the way the police carried out their inquiries in the early days of the investigation. “As his mother-in-law I suffered a lot of harassment. I had to leave the beautiful bungalow I had moved into ready for my retirement, and even until today I have been unable to go back there,” she said. “I have never wanted to go back because it holds such bad memories for me and my family. I have not even been to that area where I had lived since coming to live in the UK.”
Mrs Patel’s youngest son, Arshad Patel, said that he came to know Khan well after they became brothers-in-law. “He struck me as a normal everyday guy… so when Mohammad Sidique Khan’s name came up (in connection with the bombings) I was speechless,” he said. “A lot of people do tend to put you in a box and say you were a friend, or from the family of ‘that terrorist’. The community do treat you differently at first. But now they’re all very supportive,” he said. “When something like this happens it’s not only affected us but everyone living close by, and it’s very unfair to label us like that when we do not support such actions.” Mr Patel said that he was angry with the police investigation, and the fact that the police still have most of the family’s property that was seized at the time. “It’s been six years now and we are just starting to get back some of our property. They (the police) took away our Korans and so many of our Islamic books. I am trying to get back my computer games because I never got a chance to play with them, so now I’m hoping my kids can.”
The family believe that the media coverage at the time, coupled with arrests of Arshad Patel and his sister Hasina, who did not want to be interviewed, have left a lasting impact on them. Both Arshad Patel and his sister were later released without charge. Mrs Patel said she had become more reclusive as a result. She now wears a full hijab when in public, and prefers not to show her face. She said she had given up all her community activities, and would not take them up again. “I used to sit on committees which were set up to enable Muslims and other faiths to work together and understand each other better,” she said. “Of course we condemn what happened with the London bombings and we feel nothing but compassion for all those who were victims… we just try not to remember the past and hope the future is better for us all.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said it would not discuss individual cases, but added that no complaint had been received from the Patel family. In a statement, the force said: “Officers from MPS conducted a complex and lengthy investigation into the 7 July bombings, which has helped to inform the police response to the criminal trial, and also the inquest.
During the course of this investigation, officers searched a number of addresses and seized items of property. There is an ongoing process in place to return property to the individuals concerned where possible. This a major undertaking given the scale of the inquiry.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rupturing Breast-Implants
At least 50 clinics have reported burst, perished and broken implants made by French firm PIP to the medical watchdog since Friday.
The total number of women whose implants have ruptured is not known, but even conservative estimates suggest it could be as high as 1,000.
The president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, who is advising Mr Lansley, added: ‘The point is not so much the rupture rates but that the quality of the silicone in these implants is not of medical grade.
‘The Government must make sure that women who have these implants are not caught in the middle of an argument over who’s going to pay for their removal.
Nigel Mercer, a former president of BAAPS, said: ‘It would be sensible for the Government to say, “Take them out” and then sort out the funding later.’
In France, between 5 per cent and 10 per cent have ruptured and the state is to fund removal from 30,000 women.
Last night, French health minister Xavier Bertrand ordered a full investigation into the ‘truly contaminated’ implants.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Race Rant Accused Emma West to Face Trial
A woman charged over an alleged racist rant on a tram that was captured on video and seen online 11 million times is set to face trial at a Crown Court. Emma West, 34, of New Addington, has been charged with two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She gave Croydon Magistrates’ Court no indication of her plea and said she wanted to face a Crown Court trial. Ms West was given bail and will appear at Croydon Crown Court on 17 February.
Magistrate Ian Hornby granted Ms West bail on the condition that she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps at her home address and does not comment on the case. Ms West was arrested after footage, filmed on a Croydon-to-Wimbledon tram, allegedly showing her racially abusing fellow passengers was posted on YouTube. She was charged with intent to cause fear or provocation of violence after a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, said she hit her left shoulder with a “closed fist”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Stopping the Spread of Sharia Should be Central to British Foreign Policy
In the days following Christmas the Christian church has traditionally remembered the visit of the wise men to Jesus. The word magi is in fact a Persian loan word indicating their origin in either what is now Iran or western Afghanistan. The whole story reminds us that Christianity far from being a western religion in fact came to birth in the Middle Eastern world and that there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and the Persian speaking world whose churches predate much of western Christianity. Matthew’s Gospel records that after the visit of the magi the Roman puppet king Herod ordered the massacre of all children under two years old in Bethlehem. The tyrant it seems, as many tyrants are, felt threatened by even the hint of a possible alternative to his brutal rule.
As the Christian church remembers the visit of the magi, now is also a good time to reflect on the suffering of Christians in the region where Christianity originally emerged. The Middle East is unfortunately full of tyrants prepared to imprison, torture and even massacre anyone they think just might threaten their power. Think Qadaffi, think the Assad regime in Syria, think the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Yet even before these regimes began to fall a shadow had begun to rise — the empowerment of Islamists who want to enforce sharia (Islamic law) on the entire population of their countries, including on non Muslims. In parallel with this, and in many cases not unrelated to it, has been a significant increase in acts of intimidation including kidnapping and terrorist acts targeted specifically at Christians and churches, who form the largest non Muslim minority in most Islamic countries. These acts have generally aimed at securing the implementation of sharia enforcement on Muslims and non Muslim alike and in some cases have also additionally aimed at what is now being termed ‘religious cleansing’ — the attempt to create a ‘pure’ Islamic state by the eradication of non Muslim minorities.
In saying this it should be obvious that we are talking about sharia in the sense of a legal code that is enforced, rather than in the secondary sense of a codification of Islamic principles of daily life that individual Muslims may choose to live by — as Islamist apologists have sometimes disingenuously tried to claim. If individual Muslims choose to live a certain way they should, within the limits of British values, be free to do so.However, the enforcement of sharia rules on those who do not chose to follow them, including Christian minorities in the Islamic world is another issue altogether.
Whilst there are four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam which predominate in different geographical regions and a separate Shi’a form of sharia, the variations between them are largely a matter of detail in relation to the issues that I will discuss below. Let us just for a moment look at what has been happening in terms of moves towards the spread of sharia enforcement in the last year, including the gaining of power by Islamist parties aiming at the eventual enforcement of sharia:
The advance of sharia enforcement in 2011
In Tunisia where the ‘Arab Spring’ began the Islamist Party Ennhada, which aims to create an Islamic state governed by sharia was legalised in March. Ennhada subsequently gained 40% of the seats in the National Constituent Assembly, making it the largest overall party. The new sense of empowerment felt by Islamists was clearly evident when on 16th September a group entered a Christian church in the town of Kef and attempted to turn it into a mosque.
In Libya the head of the Transitional National Council, Abdel Jalilil stated on 22nd October that laws of the new constitution will be based on Islam i.e. sharia, and any laws opposed to sharia would be abolished. He also called for the banking system to be Islamicised i.e. become regulated by sharia.
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan al Muslimun) and the radical Salafist Jama’a al-Islamiyya formed a political alliance to fight October’s parliamentary elections. Islamist parties are currently estimated to have gained 70% after the second round of elections — a proportion that is not expected to change significantly in the third round due to take place on the 3rd/4th January. They will therefore dominate the 498 seats of Lower House which is charged with setting up a 100 member committee to draft a new constitution. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’a al-Islamiyya have stated that sharia should be enforced in Egypt. However, the Muslim Botherhood’s spokesman Dr Kamal el-Helbawy went even further and in an apparent allusion to recreating the early Islamic caliphate called for the borders between Arab states to be dismantled.
The Muslim Brotherhood has long been known to have infiltrated the Egyptian army, which since the fall of Mubarak has essentially run the country. It is therefore particularly disturbing that hundreds of Christian protesters were brutally attacked by the army on Sunday 9th October while they were protesting about the earlier torching of St George’s church in Aswan on 30th September. In the Army’s response to this peaceful protest 25 Christians were killed and hundreds injured as armoured vehicles drove straight at protesters, while generals from the ruling supreme council of the armed forces subsequently blamed Egyptian Christians for the violence. This was by no means the first such attack this year on Egypt’s Christian minority of 10 million who make up around 13% of the population. Attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority have in fact significantly increased since the fall of Mubarak. For example, on 25th June 200 extremists burned 8 houses belonging to Christians in the upper Egypt village of Awlad Khalaf — after rumours spread that a house one resident was building would be used as a church — new church buildings being forbidden by sharia. While on 30th June thousands of extremists looted and torched Christian homes and businesses in Kolosna in Minya province. Despite calls for help, the army and military police took three hours to arrive and even then took no action when properties were attacked. The violence erupted after a Christian husband tried to defend his wife from sexual harassment at a bus terminal. There has also been a big increase in the number of Christian women and girls who have been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam, with any subsequent renunciation of Islam treated as apostasy which is punishable by death under the Maliki school of sharia which is dominant in Egypt. This is a growing problem for Christian minorities in a number of Islamic countries, including for example, Pakistan. However, in Egypt it has significantly increased since the start of the Egyptian revolution this year.
In Syria there is very real fear among the Christian minority that the Assad regime will be replaced by a radical Islamist government. These fears have been fuelled by pressure put on them and threats made by Islamists to take part in the uprising. For example, Adnan al-Noor a leading Syrian sheikh issued a warning, which many Syrian Christians understood to be directed at them, that all opponents of the revolution will be “torn apart, chopped up and fed to the dogs”. Syria has a Christian population of around 2 million making up approximately 10% of the population, although that number has been significantly increased recently by an estimated 350,000 Iraqi Christian refugees who have fled what is now effectively religious cleansing in central and southern Iraq.
In Morocco an Islamist party won the largest share of vote in elections conceded by King Mohamed in an attempt to avert an Arab spring revolution similar to Tunisia and Egypt’s. However, although there will now be an Islamist prime minister the King of Morocco will still have the final say on government policy relating to defence and religion.
In Iraq where the rule of the secular Ba’ath party has been replaced by a fragmenting coalition of religious parties, the past year has seen ever increasing attacks on Iraqi Christians and churches particularly in the central region. The specific targeting of Christians appears to be designed as a form of ‘religious cleansing’ to eradicate non Muslims from Iraq and has resulted in approximately two thirds of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christian population fleeing as refugees to neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan. This religious cleansing is a rare case where some Islamist understandings of sharia differ significantly from those of the classical schools of sharia. The latter base their understanding of sharia on medieval interpretations of the Qur’an which grant Christians dhimmi status (i.e. second class citizens who must pay the jizya tax), while Islamists base their understanding of sharia on their own interpretations of the Qur’an.
In Sudan the Sudanese civil war was essentially about the predominantly Arab and Islamic North trying to impose sharia on the mainly Christian and Animist South. On 9th July, in a rare sign of hope in the struggle against the imposition of sharia, South Sudan became independent as the world’s newest country. However, its long term security will always be an issue as sharia dictates that once an area has at any point in history once been subjected to Islamic law and government it becomes an act of ‘defensive’ jihad to fight to reimpose Islamic government and the enforcement of sharia. Meanwhile in North Sudan on 12th October President Bashir announced government plans to adopt a completely Islamic constitution with sharia as the main source of national law. Already, some Christian pastors in the North have been warned not to hold services on pain of death. While women, including Christian mothers with young babies have been put in prison for not following sharia requirements such as being fully veiled and having a male escort when in public, a situation horribly reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban when many widows with no male family left alive were arrested and imprisoned as they begged for food on streets. There has also been an increasing issue of religious cleansing taking place in North Sudan with President Bashir having announced prior to the separation that he intends North Sudan to be 100% Muslim (it is currently 98% Muslim). There are reports of daily air strikes, arbitrary arrests and executions aimed at non Muslims living in the border region of North Sudan, with Christian leaders being particularly singled out and tortured.
In Iran the enforcement of sharia has continued to become even stricter. In 2011 supreme court upheld the death penalty imposed on Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani because he had converted to Christianity from Islam. Although in recent years there have been a number of informal executions of converts from Islam, some of which appear to have been orchestrated by the government, apostasy from Islam is not against Iran’s penal code. However, the supreme court’s decision reflects the fact that judges are allowed to draw on fatwas (legal opinions of sharia judges) and Islamic sources where national law is silent and have done so in this case to formalise the death penalty for apostasy from Islam (i.e. leaving Islam for another faith).
In Pakistan 2011 saw the assassination of two liberal politicians who had voiced support for reform of the Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws under which, amongst others, Christian wife and mother of 5 Aasia Bibi who has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Muhammud. The assassinations of Salman Taseer, a liberal Muslim who was governor of Punjab Province and Shabaz Bhatti a Pakistani Christian who was minister for religious minorities were welcomed by leading Islamic scholars in Pakistan who viewed them as having committed the sharia offence of blasphemy and therefore deserving of the death penalty because they had advocated the abolition of part of sharia I.e. the blasphemy law.
In the Maldives a revision of the constitution in 2008 just before the dictator Abdul Gayoom departed had already left non Muslim Maldivians in a potentially stateless limbo by restricting the acquisition of citizenship to Muslims. However, Islamists have seen the new democratic process as a road to even stricter enforcement of sharia. In 2009, not long after the first democratic elections in 30 years, the Maldivian parliament almost unanimously passed a bill making the construction of non Muslim buildings illegal and criminalising the public practice of non Muslim worship, something that would put it in the same league of repressive sharia enforcement as Saudi Arabia. Throughout 2011 those concerned for human rights in the Maldives have been waiting to see if this bill will be formally passed into law by the President. It has been reported that the President, Mohamed Nasheed was elected to office in 2008 in the newly democratic country with help from the UK Conservative Party. That is an influence that one may hope foreign office ministers have been seeking to capitalise on to prevent the further encroachment of human rights that this bill represents.
In Uganda which is 85% Christian and only 12% Muslim a similar attempt is being made to introduce sharia. A Muslim Personal Law bill would empower Islamic sharia courts to act on matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance. This is not a benign cultural accommodation. It is precisely in these areas of family law that both women and non Muslims in a family with a Muslim father are significantly discriminated against by sharia. For example, in divorce a mother is automatically denied child custody of any child over 7 years old and of any younger child when they reach 7 years old. Sharia inheritance rules also discriminate against women, with daughters only being allowed to inherit half the share of an estate that sons do. The situation in Uganda is particularly pertinent for the UK as in 2006 an Islamic group regarded as ‘moderate’ by the then government made a similar request for the family law aspects of sharia to become part of UK law.
In Nigeria Christmas day 2011 saw a series of attacks by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram including two targeting churches where at least 30 people were killed. These attacks were directly linked to the enforcement of sharia in Nigeria. Sharia enforcement has been steadily implemented since 2000 by state governments in Nigeria’s 12 northern states in defiance of the country’s secular federal constitution. It is estimated that 63% of the population of these states are Muslims, with the remainder being Christians and adherents of African Traditional Religions. The effective appeasement of these unconstitutional acts by a lack of effective action from the federal government has empowered radical Islamists such as the terrorist group Boko Haram whose declared aim is to make Nigeria a fully Islamic state with sharia enforced across all states . Boko Haram is seeking to extend sharia to the 7 states of Nigeria’s middle belt (roughly 55% Christian, 30% Muslim and 15% African traditional religions). Once that has been achieved a majority of states then will have implemented sharia enforcement. Islamists have indicated that they then plan to challenge Nigeria’s secular status and declare a fully Islamic state and with sharia also enforced in the 17 southern states (75% Christian, 20% African Traditional Religions and only 5% Muslim). These attacks by Boko Haram have been increasing over the last two years, but increased very significantly after the election of Christian president in April 2011 (sharia dictates that only Muslims are allowed to be head of state and only Muslims may be part of the government). The Christmas day attacks on churches were not the first this year. For example, two churches were bombed in Sileja in Niger state in the North Nigeria on 10th and 11th July with 3 Christians being killed. The targeting of churches is significant as sharia also dictates that new church buildings cannot be built.
In this highly combustible situation this year the Muslim governor of the Central bank of Nigeria published plans for the introduction of sharia banking. Sharia finance is a very recent newcomer on the financial scene even being avoided by the majority of banks in Saudi Arabia as recently as 2005. Other Islamic countries such as Oman still resist legalising it as they recognise it as part of the Islamist agenda to subject increasing areas of society to the Islamic clerics who act as sharia judges. The latter is unfortunately a lesson Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Prime Minister failed to heed when he naively legalised sharia finance in the UK.
In Senegal in June 2011 eight churches were looted and burnt to the ground in the capital Dhaka as extremists issued a ‘declaration of war’ against “new churches” being built in the city, sharia as we noted forbids the building of church buildings.
In Indonesia in September a suicide bomber blew himself up as a congregation were leaving a church service in Solo, Central Java. Islamists have been waging a violent campaign in Indonesia to eradicate Christianity from Indonesia and enforce sharia on the entire country.
These brief examples do not include many countries such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen where sharia is already enforced. These are simply a snapshot of some of the countries where the Islamist agenda of sharia enforcement has advanced in the last 12 months. The list is by no means comprehensive — in the past year Islamists have also for example launched violent attacks on churches and Christians in Ethiopia (69 churches and a Bible college burnt down, 3 Christians killed and an estimated 10,000 made homeless); In Somalia where a Christian was beheaded by the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabab- beheading being a sharia punishment favoured by Islamists, similarly a Christian was also beheaded in Afghanistan by Islamist terrorists; In Kenya Islamists are targeting Christians in the predominantly Muslim North, with al-Shabab launching a grenade attack on a church, one could go on…
The ideology of sharia
What is happening is not a random unconnected series of events. They have historical precedent in the medieval interpretations of Islam that are termed classical Islam, which envisions the enforcement of Islamic government and sharia, if necessary by means of force, on Muslim and non Muslim alike. However, it is now being primarily driven forward by Islamist ideology. For the last thousand or more years churches in the Middle East have been subject to dhimmi status, a type of second class citizenship accorded Christians and Jews who are termed ‘people of the book’ (Ahl-i-Kitab) in the Qur’an. They have lesser legal rights than Muslims, they are excluded from holding political and judicial office though they may be civil servants, and are required to pay an additional form of taxation for non Muslims termed jizya. They are forbidden from building new churches and any adult male Muslim who embraces another faith faces the death penalty. The most serious offence in sharia is to denigrate the prophet Muhammad — which could of course include denying that one believes he is a prophet — this carries a compulsory death penalty. The testimony in court of a Muslim is given twice the weight of a non Muslim, similarly a woman’s testimony is only equal to half that of a man’s. These lead to appalling instances of injustice where sharia is enforced. For example, accusations of blasphemy are used to settle scores against both Muslims and Christians in countries such as Pakistan, although Christians are particularly vulnerable as the testimony of any Muslim accusing them is given greater weight than their word simply because they are non Muslims. Women who are victims of rape are particularly vulnerable as sharia requires them to produce 4 witnesses and if they cannot do so they risk being imprisoned for making a ‘false accusation’ — even if they are pregnant.
The idea that Muslims should govern non Muslims, which is central to both sharia and its concept of dhimmitude is something that is taught in Classical Islam — the interpretations of the Qur’an taught in madrassas that were fixed in medieval times. That is why, for example, dhimmitude — including the jizya tax was part and parcel of the life of Christians in Turkey in the nineteenth century Ottoman empire. This is certainly not the view of many ordinary Muslims, particularly in Britain. Whilst some do have rather romantic notions about sharia, relatively few appear to have any real understanding of what it actually involves in practice and would probably be shocked to read some of the details in this article. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the enforcement of sharia and Islamic government around the world is the primary aim of all forms of Islamism. I write the above having personally witnessed what it means to live under a radical Islamist government where sharia is enforced on the entire population.
Government action
In February 2011 just as the Arab Spring was getting going I observed that the trend over the last 30 years in Islamic countries was for greater Islamisation, rather than for greater liberalisation. Regrettably that now appears to be the case with the Arab Spring as well. The recommendations I made then for British foreign policy in the Islamic world I believe are now more important than ever:
| 1. | Prioritises long term aims over short term gains such as developing trade deals with North Sudan. | |
| 2. | Focused on developing a functioning civil society so as to allow alternatives to Islamism to develop. This is a point that must be forcibly made to western leaning autocratic governments that are rightly afraid of growing Islamist movements in their own countries. | |
| 3. | Focused on the promotion of basic human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion etc. | |
| 4. | Prioritises the promotion of these basic human rights over the promotion of ‘democracy’, which many Islamists see simply as a route to achieve their own ends. | |
| 5. | Recognises that the medium term trend in most Islamic countries is towards greater Islamisation, rather than towards greater liberalisation. As such it must be realistic about the strategies being adopted by Islamist groups. |
Crucial to achieving these will be combatting the spread of sharia enforcement across the world. It is in Britain’s national interest that this becomes a central feature of British foreign policy:
The enforcement of sharia and Islamic government around the world is the central aim of Islamists — including violent Islamists. As I have demonstrated before, the aims of Islamists who use the ballot box differ only in their method, not their long term aims from those of violent Islamists, as can be seen where Islamists in countries affected by the Arab Spring have used democracy as a route to power. Although how long those countries remain democratic once Islamists gain power remains to be seen. Once sharia is enforced lobbying by western governments is largely ineffective as it becomes almost impossible to dislodge it, as can be seen from this year’s assassination of two liberal Pakistani politicians who called for reform of the country’s blasphemy laws. Equally, where sharia is enforced it does not assuage the demands of Islamists as some on the liberal-left seem to assume. Rather, it gives them bridgehead from which to seek to expand sharia enforcement further afield, as can be seen from what is happening in Nigeria. Further, once Islamists control an area, it is much easier for Islamist terrorist groups to train others for attacks on the West from there, as can be seen in the safe havens provided to al Qaeda by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamists in Sudan. Or, take again the example of Nigeria, if sharia enforcement continues to spread, how long will it be before Boko Haram is training Nigerian extremists and sending them to Britain to engage in global jihad against us?
Some practical steps that could be taken
1. Make stopping the spread of sharia a key aim of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The FCO’s aims currently include:
- pursuing an active and activist foreign policy, working with other countries and strengthening the rules-based international system in support of British values to:
- safeguard Britain’s national security by countering terrorism and weapons proliferation, and working to reduce conflict;
To that list needs to be added “and working to stop the spread of sharia enforcement around the world.”
2. Annually report on the spread of sharia enforcement across the world and steps being taken by the FCO to prevent further spread.
3. Ensure that the UK asylum system takes full account of the persecution that minority groups face in countries where sharia is enforced so that victims of sharia receive a fair hearing of their case.
4. Sponsoring a UN resolution aimed at stopping the spread of sharia enforcement. Of course it would be opposed, but it would also push the issue up the international agenda and send a signal to countries toying with it that western democracies regard it as an unacceptable system that abuses human rights.
In writing this I am very aware that simply raising the issue of sharia will stir up considerable controversy. However, that is a controversy that needs to be aired, the enforcement of sharia is a central aim of Islamists — whether violent or non violent their aims are the same. It is therefore a nettle that needs to be grasped in terms British foreign policy if we are to be both safe as a country and promote our values abroad.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders: Dutch Government Should Apologize for ‘Passive’ Attitude to WWII Deportation of Jews
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is calling on the government to apologize for the country’s “passive” response to the mass deportations of Jews by Nazi occupiers during World War II.
The move is likely to re-ignite debate about Dutch attitudes to the wartime persecution of the country’s Jewish population.
Wilders wrote to Prime Minister Mark Rutte Wednesday asking if he would apologize based on comments by two former government ministers in a recently published book about postwar reparations to Jews.
| [Return to headlines] |
Algerian Police Raid ‘Made in Israel’ Merchants
Algerian police are systematically raiding merchants selling clothing bearing a “Made in Israel” label on the items.
According to a report published Wednesday in Algeria’s El-Khabardaily newspaper, the sting was carried out the day after New Year’s Day at a shopping center in the Al-Wadi district of the nation’s capital.
Police allegedly were tipped off by an informant who told them which vendors were selling women’sclothing bearing labels that said “Made in Israel.”
The Attorney General instructed the officers to confiscate the clothing and interrogate the vendors, who denied knowledge of the origins of the products, according to the report.
“We cannot rule out the possibility that an international ring smuggled the Israeliclothes into the country and that its operatives are being assisted by Algerian vendors based in several districts,” said a source quoted by El-Khabar.
The vendors allegedly told police the salesman who had sold them the clothing was a resident of Algiers. He was later arrested, the newspaper reported.
The daughter of former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, who until now has been living in Algeria, is allegedly seeking political asylum in Israel, according to a report on the Intelligence Online website.
Algeria was one of the last North African countries to express support for the National Transitional Council (NTC) that emerged from the rebels who toppled Qaddafi’s 42-year regime.
| — Hat tip: J-PD | [Return to headlines] |
Requiem for the Third See of Christendom
by Robert Spencer
Egypt today is the site of a persecution of the Church on a scale unseen in Western Europe since the darkest days of the French Revolution; the Coptic Church is fighting for its life under vicious and escalating attacks from Muslims. A Muslim Brotherhood government is coming to power that promises to be more hostile. Yet in these dark days the Copts enjoy little support from Catholics who often only dimly understand the great debt we owe to the Church of Alexandria.
It was not ever thus. The Patriarch of Alexandria was once the third most-powerful prelate in the Church, after those of Rome and Constantinople; he was so designated by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Lateran Council, moreover, was merely restating and ratifying — quite belatedly, for a variety of reasons — a canon of the fourth ecumenical council, the Council of Chalcedon, which was held over seven and a half centuries before it, in 451.
The Fathers of Chalcedon, for their part, were actually demoting the See of Alexandria from the second position that it had enjoyed before the Roman Emperors moved their capital to the new city of Constantinople, which accordingly became a great metropolis and a patriarchal see.
Constantinople, as a relative newcomer, initially drew upon the theological and liturgical traditions of two older patriarchal sees, Alexandria and Antioch. In theological investigation, Alexandria was unrivaled. The Church of Alexandria was the home of the Church’s first great theological school, where students could learn from pioneering teachers of Christian theology such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. No other Christian center, not even Rome, rivaled Alexandria’s theological sophistication and depth, although certainly Alexandrine Fathers — most notably Origen himself — did not always maintain their speculations within the confines of Christian orthodoxy. At the same time, Alexandria was the cradle of Christian monasticism — although in that case, it was more a matter of saints such as Anthony the Great leaving the great city than learning anything in it.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Hamas Leader’s Next Visit
in Tunis on Thursday
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JANUARY 03 — Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement, will be in Tunis on Thursday on a two-day working visit. The announcement of the visit has been made by the press office of the Ennahdha Party, the Islamist party that won a conditional majority in the October 23 elections.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lovers’ Pipe Dreams Emerge From Jerusalem Excavation
An archaeological excavation in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem has uncovered a centuries-old clay pipe inscribed with the phrase “Love is the language for lovers.” Literally translated, the inscription reads “Heart is language for the lover.” And, not surprisingly, it was most likely a gift to a lover, according to Shahar Puni, of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
“Clay pipes of this kind were very common in the Ottoman period, were mostly used for smoking tobacco, and some were even used to smoke hashish,” Puni said in a statement. Hashish comes from the cannabis plant, like marijuana.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Police Confiscate Speakers From Jaffa Mosque
Yassam, Border Guard and police forces raid house after foreign minister’s mother’s neighbor complains about noise coming from Muezzin calls
Large Yassam, Border Guard and police forces on Tuesday raided the complex of the Abu Sayaf family in Jaffa and confiscated speakers that were used to play Muezzin calls in a mosque situated on the premises. Around 9:20 am, dozens of Yassam and Border Guard officers arrived at the scene and raided the complex. Several minutes later they left with the speakers. An article published in Yedioth Tel Aviv last week revealed that the Abu Sayaf family set up a loudspeaker system in the mosque, and played the Muezzin call to prayer five times a day. Many residents in the surrounding streets complained about the loud volume, calling it a nuisance. As it turns out, the person who eventually came to their help was no other than Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu), whose mother Esther Lieberman lives in a nearby street. However it was the mother’s neighbor, Ludmila Cherkov, who turned to the minister for help.
“I’ve known Avigdor for many years. He comes every week to visit his mother. He’s always here. I decided to turn to him during one of his visits and raise the problem we have been facing. We have been suffering day and night because of this new Muezzin call and for me Lieberman was the last resort,” Cherkov noted. The Abu Sayaf family claimed the move came on the heels of a recent bill, dubbed the “Muezzin bill,” which proposes to restrict the Muslim call for prayer. “We’ve been praying in this mosque for years, and a few months ago we set up some speakers to call people over for prayer. The neighbors didn’t complain, and we received no warning before the search warrant,” claimed Ali Abu Sayaf. “Suddenly, dozens of cops came in and dismantled the speakers. We maintain coexistence; if they would have asked us to play the prayers more quietly, we would have invited them for a cup of coffee and lowered the volume,” he added.
The chairman of the adjacent Ajami neighborhood committee Kamal Agbaria said in response: “The cops acted as if they were carrying out a military operation for all intents and purposes. This is a house of prayer that serves as a mosque. This move is part of the state’s attempt to legislate the ‘Muezzin bill.’ It is an infringement on the freedom of worship. The calls are not terrorizing, but rather a soothing call to prayer, which can be enjoyed. Next Friday we will hold a mass prayer in protest,” he said. Agbaria added that “the atmosphere of a radical rightist wave that is sweeping over the country has reached the courts. We have also seen this with the Grunis Law that was passed in the Knesset. “Democracy is trampling over the minority and is pushing for an unnecessary war of religion,” he said.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Taliban Opening Qatar Office, And Maybe Door to Talks
KABUL, Afghanistan — Giving a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced Tuesday that they had struck a deal to open a political office in Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations over the endgame in the Afghan war. The step was a reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that they were involved in, or even willing to consider, talks related to their insurgency, and it had the potential to revive a reconciliation effort that stalled in September, with the assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. It was unclear, however, whether the Taliban were interested in working toward a comprehensive peace settlement or mainly in ensuring that NATO ends its operations in Afghanistan as scheduled in 2014, which would remove a major obstacle to the Taliban’s return to power in all or part of the country.
In a statement, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said that along with a preliminary deal to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be released. Mr. Mujahid did not say when the Qatar office would be opened, or give specifics about the prisoners the Taliban wanted freed. “We are at the moment, besides our powerful presence inside the country, ready to establish a political office outside the country to come to an understanding with other nations,” the statement said. American officials have said in recent months that the opening of a Taliban mission would be the single biggest step forward for peace efforts that have been plagued by false starts. The most embarrassing came in November 2010, when it emerged that an impostor had fooled Western officials into thinking he represented the Taliban and then had disappeared with hundreds of thousands of dollars used to woo him. The official killed in September, Burhanuddin Rabbani, had been greeting a supposed Taliban negotiator when the man detonated a bomb in his turban.
The opening of an office in Qatar is meant to give Afghan and Western peace negotiators an “address” where they can openly contact legitimate Taliban intermediaries. That would open the way for confidence-building measures that Washington hopes to press forward in the coming months. Chief among them, American officials said, is the possibility of transferring a number of “high-risk” detainees — including some with ties to Al Qaeda — to Afghan custody from Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners would then presumably be freed later. American officials said they would consider transferring only those prisoners the Afghan authorities requested. Among the names being discussed are Muhammad Fazl, the former Taliban deputy defense minister; two former provincial governors, Khairullah Khairkhwa of Herat and Noorullah Nori of Balkh; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official; and one of the Taliban’s top financiers, Muhammad Nabi. Mr. Fazl is accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shiite Muslims, who are a minority in Afghanistan, while the Taliban ruled the country.
The American officials said that another idea under consideration was the establishment of cease-fire zones within Afghanistan, although that prospect was more uncertain and distant. The officials asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the talks. Some analysts are skeptical of the prospect for meaningful peace negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are viewed as unlikely to cede significant ground at a time when NATO has begun to withdraw troops and intends to end combat operations here in less than three years. Another uncertainty is the role of Pakistan, which provides safe haven to Taliban leaders and has undermined past efforts at reconciliation talks that it sees as jeopardizing its interests. But American officials have said for years that the war in Afghanistan would ultimately require a political solution. The “surge” of additional troops at the end of 2009 has largely been aimed at getting the Taliban to the negotiating table.
On Tuesday, the White House affirmed the necessity of a negotiated solution. Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in an e-mail that such “Afghan-led peace initiatives” were central to the American strategy of “denying Al Qaeda a safe haven, reversing the Taliban’s momentum, and strengthening the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government.” Western officials stressed that a peace process was closer to the beginning than the end. “Publicly, I don’t think we could have asked for a stronger endorsement of the peace process from the other side,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who asked not to be identified, in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “But this isn’t even close to having a done deal. That’s going to take years, if it even happens.”
There was no immediate comment from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who has been cool to the idea of NATO’s conducting its own talks with the Taliban, fearing a deal that would undermine his control. When word that Qatar had agreed to host a Taliban office first surfaced in December, the Karzai government rejected the notion and recalled its ambassador from the Persian Gulf state. Afghan officials complained at the time that they had not been formally notified by the Qataris, and that they preferred that any such mission be in Saudi Arabia or Turkey. But a week ago, Mr. Karzai grudgingly agreed to Qatar as the site. Still, Mr. Karzai is likely to remain insistent that any talks be limited to reducing tensions rather than achieving a comprehensive solution to the war. Even so, Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, appointed by Mr. Karzai, welcomed the Taliban move. Arsala Rahmani, a top negotiator on the council, called it “a gesture of good faith,” Reuters reported.
Three suicide bombings on Tuesday in the southern city of Kandahar provided a bloody reminder of the violence that continues to plague Afghanistan. Thirteen people, including a child and four police officers, were killed, Faisal Ahmad, a spokesman for the government of Kandahar Province, told The Associated Press. Since the debacle with the impostor, the United States and its allies have focused on establishing a trustworthy channel for pursuing a peace deal with the Taliban. The push began early last year when American and German negotiators managed to make contact with a man they believed to be a legitimate representative of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive leader. The Western diplomat said Tuesday that the Taliban announcement was a product of 10 months of on-again, off-again talks with the man, Tayeb Agha, a former secretary to Mullah Omar. The talks were shrouded in secrecy in large part to protect Mr. Agha and other Taliban intermediaries. The biggest concern was that Pakistan, where most of the Taliban’s leadership is believed to reside, would obstruct any talks in which it did not play a direct role. Afghan and American officials have long feared that Pakistan aimed to use the peace process, which it says it supports, as a way to solidify a dominant position in Afghanistan. The Qatar office is seen as a way of lessening Pakistani influence over the talks.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Five Yemeni Soldiers Killed in Clashes With Qaeda
ADEN: Five Yemeni soldiers and a girl were killed on Tuesday in clashes with alleged al Qaeda gunmen on the outskirts of the restive southern city of Zinjibar, military and local officials said. The five soldiers, including an officer, were killed in fighting with members of the al Qaeda-linked Partisans of Sharia, the military source said. A local official claimed that nine members of the extremist group were killed on Tuesday in bombing by the army that targeted a house in which they were hiding, in the suburbs of Zinjibar. AFP could not verify the toll with medical sources. The local official said, a girl, 16, was killed in the bombing. Zinjibar is the capital of the southern Abyan province, a stronghold of al Qaeda, and has been the scene of frequent fighting between troops and militants since May. afp
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italian General Named Top UN Commander in Lebanon
Paolo Serra moves on from role as ISAF commander in Afghanistan
(ANSA) — Rome, January 3 — An Italian general has been named the top commander of the United Nations mission in Lebanon, the Italian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon chose General Paolo Serra to lead the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), where over 1,000 Italian service members currently serve. Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and Defense Minister Giampaolo di Paola expressed “great satisfaction” over the announcement. Before taking over in Lebanon from Major General Alberto Asarta Cuevas, Serra served in Afghanistan as head of the Italian contingent and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Region Command West commander. He also served previously in the international force in Kosovo.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey’s Trade With Iran to Continue, Minister Says
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, JANUARY 4 — Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said Wednesday that the Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corporation’s (TUPRAS) trade with Iran would continue until a new development took place. Speaking to reporters in Ankara, as Anatolia news agency reports today, Yildiz said that Iran was one of the countries from which Turkey imported crude oil and that they had not yet received any information about widening the scope of international sanctions against Iran. Yildiz’s comments came after a journalist asked a question on the United States and sanctions to be applied against Iran. “TURPAS purchases a great amount of oil from Iran.
As of today, trade with Iran continues. This commercial relation will continue until a new development takes place,” Yildiz stressed.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UAE: Auschwitz in Gym Advertisement, Removed
Criticised for insensitivity, UK managers apologise
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, JANUARY 4 — The ad campaign of a Dubai gym using a black and white photo of the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp on a poster under the slogan “say goodbye to your calories” had a brief life. The campaign, posted on the Facebook page of The Circuit Factory gym, was bombarded with criticism over the ad’s bad taste and lack of sensitivity. A few hours later the flyer was removed. “It was only a provocation but if it was badly received then I apologise,” said Phil Parkins, the administrator of the social network page, saying that the Auschwitz poster as a symbol of weight loss and physical labour had been chosen since “the programme that the gym offers, in terms of calories, is like a concentration camp”. Three other posters were removed by the campaign after being judged too vulgar in terms of their images or words by those frequenting its facilities and its online forums on Facebook and Twitter, even in comparison with Dubai itself.
“If Auschwitz had not been among the photos there would never have been such an uproar,” said Ahmed, a Palestinian, adding that “I think, however, that no human tragedy should be used for commercial ends.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: US Supports Taliban Negotiations
BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) — The US will support an Afghan-led effort to reach a negotiated end to the war with the Taliban. That’s according to the US State Department, which also said it would back the potential establishment of a Taliban political office in the Gulf state of Qatar. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said:”We are not aware of any formal decision or any formal announcement but we are ready to support a process that the Afghans support, and with regard to any office, again it would be a question for the host country, the Afghans, and the Taliban to agree on.” (Source: CNTV.cn)
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: The Taliban’s Peace Offering
‘Taliban’ and ‘peace mission’ — the words sure don’t fit very well together. But they’re the words that you’ll see in tomorrow’s papers, given that the Taliban have today revealed their intention to open a peace mission in Qatar. The idea is that foreign diplomats can stop by, share a cup of tea and some Ferrero Rocher, and talk about ending the insurgency in Afghanistan. The news ought to treated with caution for now. After all, the Taliban haven’t given a date for when their Qatar office will be open, and they’re making noises about prisoners being released from Guantanamo Bay in return. But it’s a still a significant moment, whatever happens. For the first time in public, the Taliban appear to be broaching the possibility of peace talks. What has for years been resisted and refuted now seems to be an open and active goal. The idea of talking to the Taliban may seem, in itself, like a admission of defeat by the West. It certainly wasn’t the mission plan in 2001, and it could yet have horrible consequences. But there are plenty of policymakers who now see it as the best, and only, way to proceed. Not only might it spare Afghanistan from decades of internal conflict — the thinking goes — but, played right, it could also limit Pakistan’s influence in the country after 2015, and therefore the Taliban’s too. Why so? As Ahmed Rashid explained in the Spectator in 2010, the head of Pakistan’s army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has been supporting the Taliban for years — and in the hope of brokering any eventual peace talks, and steering a heavily-Taliban, pro-Pakistan government into power in Kabul. If the West splays itself across any talks in Qatar, then that outcome may yet be avoided. If not, then it may just be conceding to Kayani’s dangerous agenda.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Italian Soldier Slightly Wounded by Bomb
Marine’s jeep hit by IED
(ANSA) — Rome, January 4 — An Italian soldier was slightly wounded by a bomb in Afghanistan Wednesday, miliary sources said.
The private, from the marine San Marco regiment, was hurt when an IED (roadside bomb) went off as his convoy went past in the western Afghan district of Gulistan, where Italian troops are stationed.
The soldier’s Lince armoured vehicle withstood the blast well, minimizing the impact of the IED.
The marine was helicoptered to a field hospital at Herat, the Italian HQ, where he phoned his family and told them he was not seriously hurt.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Separate Graveyard for Honor Killing Victims
There is a separate graveyard for those killed under the pretext of karo-kari (honour killing) called ‘karan jo qabrustan’ (graveyard for the dishonoured) near Daharki. At this graveyard, built by the Shar clan, people are buried without last rites and men guard the graves so nobody can visit them and offer Fateha. Even in death, the punishment continues.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China: Ningxia: Muslims Against Police Over Mosque Demolition
Hui Muslims living in the north-central and semi-desert province have traditionally been friendly to the government. More than a thousand police clash with residents in Taoshan. About 50 people are injured and 100 arrested, some sources say.
Hexi (AsiaNews) — More than a thousand police agents in anti-riot gear clashed with residents in Taoshan village, near the city of Hexi, in Ningxia, a semi-desert province in north-central China inhabited by ethnic Hui Muslims. The issue was the demolition of a local mosque. Unlike Uyghurs, Hui Muslims have traditionally been friendly to the government.
Local public officials confirmed the place of worship was demolished because it was deemed “illegal”. Sources cited by the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ICHRD) said that 50 people were injured and more than 100 detained last Saturday. Still more information is coming from the remote and sparsely populated province.
Hui Muslims are the area’s largest minority and have traditionally been friendly to the authorities. Unlike Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, Hui Islam is not anti-regime. The fact that on this occasion they openly challenged the regime is an indication that the government’s anti-religious crackdown is intensifying.
Hui religious practice is based on Qur’anic teachings that focus on mosque prayers. Hui Muslims have traditionally shied away from politics or open criticism of the government’s religious policies. In fact, they have usually praised them for their openness, at least, until now.
In the past few years, China has become increasingly concerned that fundamentalism is growing among the hitherto “quiet” Hui and that it could fuel social tensions.
Once known for their liberal Islam, more and more people in Hui areas attend mosque prayers, more and more women are wearing the veil, and an increasing number of young people want to study Arabic and the Qur’an.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China’s Tomb Raiders Laying Waste to Thousands of Years of History
Bulldozers and dynamite used to strip priceless artefacts from remote sites, with booty sold on to wealthy collectors
China’s extraordinary historical treasures are under threat from increasingly aggressive and sophisticated tomb raiders, who destroy precious archaeological evidence as they swipe irreplaceable relics. The thieves use dynamite and even bulldozers to break into the deepest chambers — and night vision goggles and oxygen canisters to search them. The artefacts they take are often sold on within days to international dealers.
Police have already stepped up their campaign against the criminals and the government is devoting extra resources to protecting sites and tracing offenders. This year it set up a national information centre to tackle such crimes. Tomb theft is a global problem that has gone on for centuries. But the sheer scope of China’s heritage — with thousands of sites, many of them in remote locations — poses a particular challenge.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Australia Has Boom in Babies
AUSTRALIA is in the grip of a mini birthing boom with a record 300,000 babies born in the past 12 months.
The birthing explosion will eclipse the 250,000 births recorded at the peak of the original baby boom in 1961.
Social demographers attribute the increase to our growing population, which is expected to reach 23 million sometime in July.
Despite the record number of births to date, Australia’s fertility rate still remains low, signalling only an echo of the post-war baby boom — or mini baby boom.
The fertility rate at the height of the boom in 1961 peaked at 3.5 babies per woman, compared to just 1.89 in 2010.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Nigeria Ends Fuel Subsidies in Face of Protest Threats
by John Daly
In a nasty New Year’s Day present to his fellow Nigerians, President Goodluck Jonathan directed his administration to end fuel subsidies, effective immediately.
Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency issued a statement noting, “By this announcement, the downstream sub-sector of the petroleum industry is hereby deregulated for (gasoline). Service providers in the sector are now to procure products and sell same in accordance with the indicative benchmark price to be published fortnightly and posted on the PPPRA website.” The government urged people not to panic-buy or hoard fuel, stating, “Consumers are assured of adequate supply of quality products at prices that are competitive and non-exploitative.”
While the government for weeks had been floating the idea of ending the subsidy, the public received no prior warning that it would occur on 1 January. The cost of a liter of gasoline immediately jumped by 116 percent to 141 naira, or 86¢, from 65 naira (40¢) and reportedly even tripled in black market sales in some rural and urban areas.
Sure to stoke public outrage, on 30 December a Senate Joint Committee investigating the management of fuel subsidies during public hearings stated that more than 100 companies, including construction companies during January-August 2011 sharing $8.77 billion in fuel subsidies, with the amount paid since 2006 totaling and astounding $22.5 billion.
According to the committee, the oil, industrial and financial companies that benefited from the sharing of the subsidy include Oando Nigerian Plc., Enak Oil & Gas, Bovas & Co. Nig. Ltd, Obat, AP, Folawiyo Oil, IPMAN Investment Limited, ACON, Atio Oil, AMP, Honeywell, Emac Oil, D.Jones Oil, Capital Oil, AZ Oil, Eternal Oil, Dozil Oil and Fort Oil.
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Suicide Attacks in Nigeria: Islamist Terror Network Gains Strength in Africa
On Christmas Day, the extremist Muslim sect Boko Haram carried out a suicide attack on a church in Nigeria that killed dozens. By allying itself with groups such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, it has been gaining in strength and is threatening to spark a religious war in Nigeria.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Britain’s Soft Touch Border Policy Exposed
BRITAIN is an easy target for asylum seekers — with the vast majority never being turned away. More than 90% are not even considered for deportation, according to figures seen by the Mirror. Under EU rules UK officials can return asylum seekers to the first European country they set foot in.
Most enter Europe through Greece, then travel to Britain via other “safe” countries such as France and Italy. But in 2010, just 1,600 out of 18,000, around 9%, were considered for removal. That’s 2% down on 2009 — making a mockery of David Cameron’s vow to tighten our borders.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mexico Deports Nearly 50,000 Central Americans
A total of 46,716 Central Americans were deported from Mexico between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2011, said the National Migration Institute (INM). The majority of the migrants — 41,215 — were men and nearly half, some 23,560, were from Guatemala, the INM said in a statement. All of the migrants were deported in an “easy, orderly, dignified and safe” manner, the INM said.
The Central Americans who were returned to their countries accounted for 74 percent of the foreigners processed at Mexican immigration facilities. The remaining foreigners were either given asylum, granted humanitarian visas or sent home using different repatriation systems, the INM said. An estimated 300,000 Central Americans undertake the hazardous journey across Mexico each year on their way to the United States.
The trek is a dangerous one, with criminals and corrupt Mexican officials preying on the migrants. Gangs kidnap, exploit and murder migrants, who are often targeted in extortion schemes, Mexican officials said. Central American migrants follow a long route that first takes them into Chiapas state, which is on the border with Guatemala, walking part of the way or riding aboard freight trains, buses and cargo trucks.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Forget Tactics; The “Clash of Civilizations” Is Spiritual, Not Intellectual
The words “The Clash of Ideas” are splashed across the cover of the special anniversary issue of Foreign Affairs this month. This is of course a play on the “clash of civilizations” narrative that we’ve heard countless times since 9/11, and a nod to the notion that this clash — between radical Islam and the West, or liberal democracy — is fundamentally a “war of ideas.” I have come to believe that this diagnosis is not only wrong, but a large part of the reason why we, who believe in freedom and the rights of the individual, appear to be losing ground. (For example, we are seeing more sharia in the West, despite us knowing that full sharia demands the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and discrimination against religious minorities. And we are seeing our right to free speech eroded, especially across Europe.)
The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple. Deploying ideas like soldiers in which the generals do not believe, the “Counter-Jihad” and anti-Islamist pundits have reduced themselves to Sunday intellectuals. A speech by any “Counter-Jihad” spokesperson or anti-Islamist media pundit is liable to denounce the increasing liberalism and “Cultural Marxism” of the West as a symptom of the rot, and to suggest that they are fighting for a more conservative Christian West, before going on to tell us that we are also fighting for liberal ideas, such as women’s rights and gay rights. Such speeches will only ever appeal to the converted — “sensible people” who are able to shut out one half of the message to find support for their gut instincts. Contrast this with the radical imam, who calls for full sharia in the West, and who speaks with passion and conviction, regardless of what anyone thinks. The imam knows what the West does not, i.e., that it is about the fire in the belly and in the eyes. It is first and foremost about integrity, conviction, and spirit. [JP emphasis]
If one wants an example of the ravages of strategy, put above values and integrity, one need look no further than Britain’s main three political parties. With the exception of Brighton — a student city — which elected a member of the Green Party to Parliament in 2010, over the last few decades the members of the British public have ignored those parties that best expresses their values on the grounds that they “won’t get in.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Taking the Soft Option
Just one in five pupils were entered for GCSE exams in traditional academic subjects during Labour’s last year in Government, new figures have revealed today.
In some areas, just three per cent of children were given the chance to study the core academic subjects of English, maths, two sciences, a language or history or geography.
The official figures reveal the extent to which hundreds of thousands of children were encouraged to drop academic subjects in favour of so-called softer options.
They show that in 13 years under Labour, the number of pupils entering these academic core exams fell dramatically from 50 per cent in 1997 to 22per cent in 2010.
Of those who were took these subjects, only 16.5 per cent in England achieved good grades of A* to C.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Antarctic Hydrothermal Vents Like No Other on Earth
Hydrothermal vents deep in Antarctic waters are unlike vents elsewhere. Many typical vent animals like tube worms are missing, perhaps because they can’t reach the vents through the cold polar waters. Instead the vents are home to huge colonies of yeti crabs like the one above. Researchers led by Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford sent a remotely operated vehicle to explore the East Scotia Ridge, deep beneath the Southern Ocean. There hydrothermal vents pump hot, mineral-rich water up from beneath the seabed.
Such vents are often home to communities of bizarre animals, but the ecosystem on the East Scotia Ridge was particularly weird. “Many animals such as tube worms, vent mussels, vent crabs, and vent shrimps, found in hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, simply weren’t there,” Rogers says. As well as the yeti crabs, the vents were rich in stalked barnacles, limpets, sea anemones and a predatory sea star with seven legs. There was also an as-yet-unidentified pale octopus.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Antarctic Hot Springs Yields Ghostly New Species
A “Yeti” crab, seven-legged seastar and a pale octopus discovered around the vent are reshaping theories on marine life.
The discovery of new deep-sea hot springs off Antarctica may rewrite theories of how marine creatures populate the world’s oceans. Scientists say the underwater plumes — located between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula — are chock-full of new species, including a pale, ghostly-looking octopus, a predatory seven-legged sea star and a hairy-chested “yeti” crab.
Experts say the strangest thing is what they didn’t find — tube worms, shrimp and mussels that have been found at the world’s other deep-sea hydrothermal vent communities.
“It wasn’t just one creature, virtually everything we saw was new to science,” said Alex Rogers, professor of zoology at the University of Oxford and lead author of the new report. “It was a remarkable experience. You’re not quite sure if these things are mineral or biological structures. That’s a very unusual feeling to see all this stuff for the first time and saying I don’t understand what’s going on here.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Bacteria Survive in Cold, Dry, Mars-Like Conditions by Living Off Iron
To eke out even the barest subsistence on Mars, a living thing would have to adapt to a formidable set of environmental challenges: an arid, often extremely cold landscape with miniscule amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and no organic matter to eat. During a recent foray into a similarly inhospitable part of our own planet, scientists have discovered several species of bacteria that hint at what life on Mars, if it exists, might look like. These microbes survive on minerals in the surrounding rocks-minerals also found in the Martian surface.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Kepler’s Surprise: The Sounds of the Stars
Data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope have revolutionized the search for planets outside the Solar System — and are now doing the same for asteroseismology.
Most astronomers gaze at the heavens and see stars. William Chaplin hears an orchestra — a celestial symphony in which the smallest stars are flutes, the medium-sized ones are trombones and the giants are reverberating tubas.
The sounds are internal vibrations that reveal themselves as a subtle, rhythmic brightening and dimming of a star, explains Chaplin, an astrophysicist at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a specialist in asteroseismology. These waves provide information that astronomers can’t get in any other way: triggered by the turbulent rise and fall of hot gases on the star’s surface, the vibrations penetrate deep into the stellar interior and become resonating tones that reveal the star’s size, composition and mass (see ‘Celestial music’). So by watching for the characteristic fluctuations in brightness, says Chaplin, “we can literally build up a picture of what the inside of a star looks like”.
Better still, he adds, asteroseismologists are now hauling in the data wholesale. After years of being hampered by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, which obscures the view of the Universe and has limited asteroseismology to about 20 of the brightest nearby stars, researchers have been astonished by the trove of information coming from a new generation of space observatories. Thanks to the French-led Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits (COROT) space telescope, launched in 2006, and NASA’s Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, they can now listen in on hundreds of stars at a time.
“We are in a golden age for the study of stellar structure and evolution,” says Hans Kjeldsen, an astronomer at Aarhus University in Denmark.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
On Saturn Moon Titan, Weather Report Brings Chance of Methane Rain
Scientists have used models to help predict Earth’s weather for years, but now astronomers are using similar simulations to forecast rain at a more distant locale: Saturn’s biggest moon Titan. The study may help explain features such as rivers, lakes and clouds of methane on Titan, and could predict future changes, researchers said.
On Earth, water flows in a cycle, raining down from the sky, running in rivers and streams to oceans and lakes, and evaporating under sunlight into mist, forming clouds that eventually rain down. Probes sent to Titan have revealed that methane flows in a cycle there in much the same way. To better understand the weather and climate of Titan, scientists created 3D atmospheric simulations of its methane cycle based on circulation models originally designed for Earth.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive Interview
What discovery would do most to revolutionise our understanding of the universe?
The discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known fundamental particles, perhaps at the Large Hadron Collider. This would be strong evidence in favour of M-theory.
NS: The search for supersymmetric particles is a major goal of the LHC at CERN. The standard model of particle physics would be completed by finding the Higgs boson, but has a number of problems that would be solved if all known elementary particles had a heavier “superpartner”. Evidence of supersymmetry would support M-theory, the 11-dimensional version of string theory that is the best stab so far at a “theory of everything”, uniting gravity with the other forces of nature.
If you were a young physicist just starting out today, what would you study?
I would have a new idea that would open up a new field.
What do you think most about during the day?
Women. They are a complete mystery.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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