China Snubs Debt in European Spending Spree
(BEIJING) — Chinese companies and funds have ramped up investment in crisis-hit Europe, buying utilities, energy firms and even luxury yacht makers, but are steering clear of eurozone debt. Analysts say bargain-hunting — and not the secret hand of Beijing — is driving the recent wave of acquisitions as Chinese companies seek to expand overseas and the country’s sovereign wealth fund diversifies away from US bonds.
Chinese direct investment in Europe more than doubled to $6.7 billion in 2010 from the previous year, latest official figures show, and analysts expect the recent flurry of deals to continue as eurozone economies deteriorate. At a time of severe economic and financial stress in the eurozone there are inevitably some great buying opportunities for cash-rich Chinese firms,” said Alistair Thornton, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in Beijing.
Chinese firms have been targeting a range of sectors, including engineering, high-tech, energy, finance and utilities, as intense domestic competition forces them to look for new markets around the world. The investment has fuelled concerns in Europe that Beijing could gain too much influence over debt-stricken economies. But Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday China had neither the ability nor the intention to “buy Europe”.
China is “willing to cooperate with Europe to fight the current crisis. Some people say this means China wants to buy Europe”, Wen told a German-China business forum in the southern city of Guangzhou. “This a concern and doesn’t fit reality. China doesn’t have this intention and doesn’t have this ability.”
Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics in London, said the recent deals were fuelled by cheap credit offered by Chinese banks and the fact that China’s foreign asset managers were “stuffed to the gills with bonds”. “This isn’t China Inc ordering the overall strategy,” Williams told AFP. “Most of China’s recent purchases are exactly the sort of deals you’d expect any big investors to be doing.”
In the latest deal, China State Grid has agreed to pay 387 million euros ($508.2 million) for a 25 percent stake in the national electricity grid of debt-stricken Portugal, Treasury Secretary Maria Albuquerque said Thursday. Earlier this week, Chinese construction equipment giant Sany Heavy Industry agreed to acquire German family-owned engineering firm Putzmeister for an undisclosed sum.
That came hot on the heels of China Investment Corp, the country’s $400-billion sovereign wealth fund set up in 2007 to invest some of China’s huge foreign exchange stockpile, buying a stake in British utility Thames Water.
China Three Gorges in December beat competitors to a 21.35 percent stake in Energias de Portugal, paying 2.7 billion euros as Portugal sold assets to bolster state coffers. And Shandong Heavy Industry agreed last month to pay 374 million euros ($491 million) for a 75 percent stake in debt-laden Italian luxury yacht maker Ferretti Group.
But Jonathan Holslag of the Brussels Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies cautioned that total Chinese investment in Europe still lagged far behind that of other countries such as the United States and Japan.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Premier Insists on Need to Make Firing Workers Easier
Unions blast Monti’s comments as offensive
(ANSA) — Rome, February 3 — Premier Mario Monti made another controversial call for the law to be changed to make it easier for firms to fire workers on Friday after saying that having a steady job for life was “monotonous” earlier this week.
Monti’s administration is currently in talks with unions on labour-market reforms to make it easier for women and young people to find work.
It seems intent on revising the law that forbids companies with over 15 employees from firing people without just cause — Article 18 of the 1970 Workers Statue.
The unions are opposed to changing Article 18, arguing the government should be working on a big job-creation plan rather than making it easier to firms to put more people on the dole.
Monti, however, believes that Article 18 makes firms reluctant to offer new workers proper steady contracts as it is hard to get rid of them once they are hired.
According to many experts, this has contributed to the creation of a system in which older workers often have a high level of protection, while unemployment rates are extremely high among young Italians and those in work often have contracts that give them few rights and little job security.
“It’s necessary to give less protection to those who today have too much, and are virtually barricaded in their fortresses, and give more to those who have extremely low job security or are outside the labour market,” Monti said in a video forum on the website of Rome-based daily La Repubblica.
He also said that too much soft-heartedness by past governments had “left Italy in a bad state”.
The comments irked union officials.
“Speaking of too much protection for people who are barricaded in their fortresses is not just offensive, it’s not true and it is offensive to those workers as well,” said Fulvio Fammoni of the CGIL, Italy’s biggest and most left-wing union confederation. Former European commissioner Monti, who stepped in to lead an government of technocrats after the financial crisis forced Silvio Berlusconi to resign as premier in November, added that the way Article 18 was currently applied discouraged foreign investment in Italy. To compensate for greater flexibility over dismissals, the government wants to bring in new benefits to provide more support for people who have no job and it has talked about introducing a “minimum salary”. Labour Minister Elsa Fornero said this week that the government would try to reach an agreement with unions on labour-market reforms, while stressing that it would press ahead with new measures if this is not possible.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Talks on Greek Debt ‘Difficult’ But Moving Forward: France
(PARIS) — Talks on unlocking a new eurozone rescue deal for Greece are proving “difficult” but progress is being made, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said on Sunday. He added there was still time for negotiations to continue, saying that “in any case, the rendezvous is for February 13 at the latest.”
Athens has been in talks with the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank — known as the ‘troika’ — on further action needed to unlock a new eurozone rescue deal worth 130 billion euros ($171 billion).
Greece has warned that an accord must emerge Sunday for the country to avert a disorderly default in March. “We do not want to move away from the level Greek debt must move to in 2020, in other words around 120 percent (of gross domestic product),” Baroin told Europe 1 radio. “It is because we are not moving away from these objectives that the talks are difficult.”
“We are exchanging views every day. We are moving forward relatively well on the section involving private sector participation, which must be done on a voluntary basis,” he said. Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos summoned political allies to an emergency meeting on Sunday after hours of “superhuman” negotiations with EU-IMF bailout auditors failed to produce a rescue deal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Good News: Feds Warn That Using Basic Internet Privacy Tools May be a Sign That You’re a Terrorist
A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.
[…]
In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others” should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.
[…]
…Logging into an account associated with a residential internet service provider (such as Comcast or AOL), an activity that could simply indicate that you are on a trip, is also considered a suspicious activity. Viewing any content related to “military tactics” including manuals or “revolutionary literature” is also considered a potential indicator of terrorist activity. This would mean that viewing a number of websites, including the one you are on right now, could be construed by a hapless employee as an highly suspicious activity potentially linking you to terrorism.
| — Hat tip: Egghead | [Return to headlines] |
Sheriff’s Official: Missing Woman’s Husband, 2 Sons Killed in Explosion
(CNN) — Josh Powell and his two young sons — whose wife and mother, respectively, went missing more than two years ago — were killed early Sunday afternoon in an explosion at their home in Washington state, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ed Troyer said that a medical examiner has not definitively identified the bodies, but “we believe it is the three of them.”
“This was all on him,” Troyer said of Powell and the blast. “He set this up, he did it.”
A foster-care case worker had brought Powell’s two boys to the residence for a visit, said Troyer and Graham, Washington, Fire and Rescue Deputy Chief Gary Franz.
As the children got close to the door, Powell “dragged” them inside but prevented the case worker from getting in as well, according to Troyer.
The case worker reported smelling something similar to gas, said Franz. About two minutes later, as she was calling her supervisor, the house exploded.
“All the walls in the house were on fire, almost immediately,” neighbor Ryan Mickle told CNN affiliate KIRO, adding that the blast “shook my whole house.” “I didn’t hear anybody inside. It was quite a scene.”
Authorities first heard of the explosion in Puyallup around 12:15 p.m. (3:15 p.m. ET), according to Troyer.
By 4 p.m., the fire was still “burning hot,” smoke continued to rise from it, and the bodies had not been taken out of the house, he added.
The unstable condition of the gutted residence was hindering firefighters’ efforts, as there are concerns the house could collapse, Franz said.
“We do not believe there are any other victims,” he said, besides the three located thus far.
There were no other injuries and no other houses in the neighborhood in Puyallup, which is about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, appeared to be damaged, said Troyer. He added a chaplain is at the scene with the social worker, who he described as physically OK but emotionally devastated by the blast.
Troyer said the sheriff’s department has copies of an e-mail that reportedly says, “I am sorry, goodbye,” and that was sent to Jeffrey Bassett, a Washington lawyer who has been representing Powell, purportedly from Powell shortly before the explosion.
He said authorities haven’t confirmed the e-mail came from Powell, but “we have no reason to believe (the e-mail is) not from him.”
This week, a Washington court denied a motion from Powell to gain custody of his two children, Bassett told CNN. Troyer said a judge also ordered Powell to “go through different types of evaluations and counseling,” though supervised visits could continue.
Powell has said that he last saw his wife, Susan Powell-Cox, on a cold December night in 2009.
That night, he said that he and his two sons — then ages 2 and 4 — left after midnight to go camping in below-freezing weather in a desert area in Tooele County, Utah. Powell-Cox’s sister eventually reported the mother, who would now be 29 years old, as missing.
A month later, Powell and his children moved from Utah to the state of Washington.
While there have been no arrests or charges filed related to his wife’s appearance, Josh Powell has been identified as the lone “person of interest,” according to Sgt. Mike Powell — no relation to Josh or Susan Powell-Cox — with the West Valley City, Utah, police.
The woman has not been found.
Through their attorney Anne Bremner, Powell-Cox’s family issued a statement Sunday asking “for time, privacy and prayers after today’s horrific events.”…
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British Take Over Obama White House on St. Patrick’s Week — Irish Celebration Pushed Back to After St. Patrick’s Day
Begorrah, the Brits are stealing St. Patrick’s week 2012 at the White House from under us.
President Obama just announced an official visit and a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron and wife Samantha on March 13th and 14th on St. Patrick’s week this year.
This might explain how the annual Irish St Pat’s celebration at the White House got bumped to after St. Patrick’s day, on the 20th of March to be precise, when the green bunting has long been taken down.
We were told originally it was because St.Patrick’s Day was on a Saturday and the Congress would not be in session etc. so the event at the White House was moved to Tuesday with the American Ireland Fund Gala Washington dinner set for Monday the 19th.
We thought it was a little strange, but being the compliant Paddies we are, we accepted the somewhat strange arrangements at face value.
We all know it is stale beer celebrating St.Patrick’s Day after the fact, but we just went with the flow.
But this freshly arrived press release shows the Brits moved right in on our celebrated week.
“President Obama and the First Lady will welcome Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and his wife, Samantha Cameron, to the White House for an Official Visit with a State Dinner on March 13-14, 2012. The visit will highlight the fundamental importance of the U.S.-UK special relationship and the depth of the friendship between the American people and the people of the United Kingdom, as well as the strong personal bond that has developed between the two leaders and their families.
“It will also be an opportunity to recall the valor and sacrifice of the U.S. and British armed forces and their long tradition of standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside each other in defense of our liberties and shared values.
“The visit will underscore the strength of our economic links, which contribute to millions of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. The Prime Minister’s visit will reciprocate the gracious hospitality shown to the President and Mrs. Obama by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, and the British people during the State Visit that was hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011.”
A state visit no less and bumping the Irish from the White House St. Patrick’s Week — score one for Davy Cameron and the boys.
How many British voters are there in American elections again? Oh never mind — the 40 million Irish Americans know their place — and it is not at the top table on St. Patrick’s week at the White House when the Brits come calling.
Shuren, we know our place now indeed.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Europe Freeze Hits Transport Hubs
Freezing weather has hit transport hubs across Europe, closing airports, blocking roads and halting trains. Transport hubs in Central and Eastern Europe have been forced to close amid the biggest freeze in decades, which has claimed more than 200 lives. Dozens of flights were delayed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and London’s Heathrow cancelled 30% of flights.
Ukraine has been hardest hit, with at least 122 deaths over the past week, most of them homeless people. Hundreds of heated tents have been set up around the country to provide food, drink and shelter as the country suffered temperatures as low as -38C. Poland has lost at least 45 people in temperatures as low as -27C, while Romania’s death toll has reached 28.
The cold snap has also killed people in Bosnia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, France, Austria and Greece, the AFP news agency reports. The Italian capital Rome saw its heaviest snowfall in more than 25 years, which brought transport to a standstill and left some motorists stranded for hours. Some canals in Venice have begun to freeze over.
Bosnian officials have declared a state of emergency in the capital Sarajevo, where snow has paralysed the city. Fist fights between shoppers desperate to stock up on dwindling food supplies were reported. Heavy snowfall has cut off whole communities in Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia.
Russian gas supplier Gazprom has warned it is unable to meet Europe’s spike in demand as it battles its own problems with the cold weather. Supplies have been reduced “for a few days” before returning to normal levels, Reuters news agency reports.
As the freezing weather moves westwards, most of the UK was hit by snow overnight on Saturday. Up to 16cm (6in) of snow fell in some parts of the country, bring chaos to roads, rail lines and airports.
The Netherlands marked temperatures of -21.8C in the town of Lelystad on Saturday, the lowest recorded in the country for 27 years. Motorist associations reported hundreds of miles of traffic jams across Belgium and the Netherlands as the first snow fell on Friday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Arrest Over Debt in Excess of 130 Mln Euros
A 46-year-old woman was taken into custody by police on Friday in the northern Attica town of Kapandriti for large debts to the state. The unnamed woman is the legal representative of an electronics importing and retail company that is based in Cyprus and has an office in the Athenian suburb of Neo Iraklio. She allegedly owes the Greek state 133,235,658 euros in unpaid taxes and other obligations.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Teen Robbers Arrested
On Saturday police detained two Roma teenagers in connection with 52 robberies and break-ins committed in the Peloponnesian town of Sparta and various nearby villages. The pair, aged 15 and 17, were charged with allegedly removing valuables worth about 189,000 euros from residences and stores. Authorities are currently seeking a number of accomplices they believe cooperated with the Roma teenagers.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Youths Attack Papoulias’s House
A group of between 30 and 50 youngsters attacked the house of President Karolos Papoulias on Saturday evening. The result of the attack was some minor damage to the entrance of the house at Asklipiou Street in central Athens and to the car that Papoulias uses.
The hooded youngsters, who arrived by motorbike and on foot just after 8 p.m, hurled a Molotov cocktail, rocks and paint at the house but stopped short of attacking the two guards at the President’s house. Papoulias was inside at the time of the attack. Police is searching for those responsible for the unexpected attack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
NATO to Build Drone Base in Sicily
Surveillance plan worth 1.3 bln
(ANSA) — Brussels, February 3 — NATO defense ministers reached an accord Friday on a 1.3-billion-euro plan that involves building a base for surveillance drones in Sicily. “It’s good deal, big deal, done deal,” said Ivo Daalder, U.S. ambassador to NATO, on Twitter. The system, known as airborne ground surveillance (AGS), will be based at Naval Air Station Sigonella, a joint NATO and Italian Air Force base outside Catania. According to a NATO statement, the system “will enable the Alliance to perform persistent surveillance over wide areas from high-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned aerial platforms operating at considerable stand-off distances”. The system will have a wide range of uses, according to NATO, such as anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and preventing roadside-bomb attacks in Afghanistan.
Italy’s Galileo Avionica, a unit of defense company Finmeccanica, is involved in the project, while U.S. firm Northrop Grumman is the main contractor.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: 32% of Basques Strongly Behind Independence
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, FEBRUARY 3 — Some 58% of Basques have “little or no desire for independence”, while 32% have expressed “great desire” for sovereignty in the Basque Country. This is according to the latest six-monthly Euskobarometro survey, which was carried out in the region by the University of the Basque Country on a sample of 1,200 interviewees representative of the population. The proportion in favour of independence (32%) is down 4 points on the previous survey, while 82% of those who voted for the radical-left wing separatist coalition Amaiur have “great desire for independence”, as do 40% of those who voted for the PNV. On the other side of the divide, 58% of Basques say that they have little (27%) or no desire (31%) for independence, especially those who voted for non-separatist parties (77%).
According to 60% of those interviewed, Basque and Spanish identity are compatible, while one in three Basques exclusively defends Basque identity. The current model of heightened autonomy in the region continues to be the formula approved by a majority of citizens (36%), ahead of a potential federal model (28%).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Government to Treat Bullfighting as Cultural Asset
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, FEBRUARY 2 — The Spanish government is to “promote” bullfighting as a cultural asset and will play an active role in national and international schemes geared towards its recognition as “immaterial heritage”. This is according to the Minister for Education, Culture and Sport, Jos Ignacio Wert, who has today been illustrating the cultural action guidelines of Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party in Spain’s Congress.
Wert also announced the launch of a law on patronage for cultural schemes and the reform of the law on cinema, to combine direct aid to the sector with initiatives to promote a mixed financing model. The government will also provide a new status for Spain’s National Library, bringing it in line with the Prado and Reina Sofia museums.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK Elderly Are “Wasting Too Many Bedrooms”
London, England-In yet another outrageous piece of social engineering from our coalition government, pensioners will be encouraged to downsize to smaller properties allowing local councils to rent their homes out as council houses and manage the tenancy.
Local authorities will ‘help’ older people move from their homes into ‘more suitable accommodation’. Grant Schapps, the Housing Minister, who is a conservative member of parliament claims the scheme will solve a so-called ‘housing crisis’ as well as creating a system that will ‘permit access to various sources of wealth’ that are currently not being used to pay for care.
Read that as the elderly will have to raid their pension pots and hand over the equity in their homes — which they have spent a lifetime paying for — in order to put themselves into a care system which is notoriously unfit for purpose.
Despite having paid taxes all their lives, pensioners will be forced to run down their wealth while those that have squandered their money or lived off the state will get free care. The idea is to create more stocks of ‘affordable housing’ for younger families. This is a euphemism for subsidized houses for families that have deadbeat dads, single mothers with a battery of children from different fathers and other assorted welfare dependent cases that need ‘help’.
The thinking behind this initiative was provided from a report, ‘Hoarding of Housing’ undertaken by a newly created charity, The Intergenerational Foundation (IF), a left leaning, research-based think-tank which ‘promotes fairness between generations’ as they state on their website. The report makes for depressing reading as its clearly aggressive stance toward older people who they consider to be ‘rattling around in big houses’ while younger families are being squeezed into smaller flats and under-sized houses. IF claims it is not urging the government to ‘round on older generations and turf them out of their homes’ but they have busily calculated that 25 million bedrooms are standing empty and that 51.5% of those aged over 65 have two or more bedrooms that they don’t need. Says who? Are we getting to a stage where we need to justify how you use the rooms in your own house that you have bought and paid for?
Pensioners’ watchdog groups are outraged, and rightly so. This is a pernicious attack on law abiding, hard working people who are making personal choices as to where and how they want to live and have become the target of progressive idealists. In a bid to completely destroy the middle class, IF propose exempting the over 60’s on stamp duty (the tax we pay on purchases of assets) when they acquire a smaller property, or raise property taxes to ‘reflect the social cost of occupying housing’, in other words make it so expensive to run a house larger than one bedroom, that only the very rich would be able to remain in their own homes.
Leftist Minister Vince Cable proposing a property tax on houses over 1million
Interestingly just at this moment we have the leftist Minister Vince Cable proposing a property tax on houses over 1million. For many many Britons their homes represent their sole wealth.
This scheme would in effect displace those that have worked hard for what they have, into smaller and cheaper housing, while raising the living standard of welfare cases by moving them into homes that the previous owners worked hard to achieve. Other than the ber rich, all classes would be abolished — just as Marx intended.
The case of Mrs Saindi is one that sums up the howling insanity of our current welfare system. This single mother of seven, who fled Afghanistan several years ago, cost the local council 170,000 in benefits, of which 150,000 went to a private landlord so Mrs Saindi could live in a 7 bedroom house, worth about 1.2million. When this outrage broke in the press a few years ago, it was found that due to the vagaries of the Local Housing Allowance system that taxpayers were in fact paying too much for this property. To add insult to injury, it was alleged she had an undeclared bank account into which she received a secret income of around 16,000 per annum. When this story broke, the family allowed the press into their home, allowing the public sight of the trappings of a very comfortable lifestyle — an enormous plasma TV, Nintendo, Playstation 3, top of the range mobile phones and two laptops to name just a few items. Her 20-year-old son had no job and did not want to move from the house because it had a driveway for his car—the one he used to drive to the pub so he could shoot pool.
Since the public outcry following this case, the Local Housing allowance has been dropped to a maximum of 19,200 per annum that a council can pay to a private landlord. Then there are food and health benefits on top of this.
But the welfare state is nowhere near being tackled. Last week the House of Lords voted down (similar to the senate voting on a house bill) the government’s bill for a benefits cap of 26,000 per annum. This is the net equivalent of someone earning 35,000 per annum, significantly above the national average wage of 26000. It seems the House of Lords wants to pander to the likes of a young Asian single mother of two, who was paraded on the BBC asking- ‘why should I be asked to give up a good standard of living, to move to a smaller place where I don’t know anyone?’ Why indeed, when Benefits Britain will make sure your every need and heart’s desire is catered for. In fact why stop at housing and child benefits? Why not pay for a celebrity chef to conjure up tasty meals delivered straight to her door? Would that be going too far? Surely not! We are only about 1 trillion in debt; there must be more elasticity in the welfare honey pot.
If you want to malinger and live off the state, the UK is the place to do it
If you want to malinger and live off the state, the UK is the place to do it. In the past 8 years immigration has increased by 1.75 million, the legacy of the last Labour government’s social engineering immigration policy now appearing in the official figures. While there is not a hard correlation between immigrants and the 1.46 million people claiming unemployment benefit, but the figures do, however, suggest that a country can only afford a certain level of immigration before the welfare system starts to break down. On top of this we have the chaos of amnesty to asylum seekers. Last summer 161,000 failed asylum seekers were granted the right to stay and claim benefits in the UK. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Some 450,000 cases were found abandoned in boxes by the previous Labour government. It’s anyone’s guess how many are out in the black economy, operating outside the law and tax regime.
And unfortunately the chaos doesn’t stop there. The EU Human Rights Act forbids us to deport even convicted terrorists should it be claimed that they “may face torture” in the country we want to deport them to, as famously shown last month when Abu Qatada, Europe’s alleged right-hand man for Bin Laden, was granted stay in the UK by the High Court in order to escape torture in his native Jordan, where he has been convicted of bomb plots and terrorism. He has been detained in the UK since 2002, raking up huge costs for both his detention and his legal defence—all courtesy of the UK taxpayer.
The government today has announced plans to curb immigration from hundreds down to tens of thousands before the next election in three years time. We are being told only the brightest and the best will be allowed entry. The likes of ‘top range professionals, senior executives, entrepreneurs and exceptional scientific and artistic talent’ will be the only ones to grace our doorstep. Well phew—presumably they will be able to afford their own housing then so we can leave our older folks to decide where they want to live? I am not holding my breath on this one.
Governments are notoriously bad at managing any economic or administrative function. The mishandling of the Local Housing Allowance alone proves that. If they are so keen on more bedrooms, why not try to get their hands on the 900,000 plus empty houses with a further 300,000 flats over businesses that have different tax bands that means they don’t show up on empty house stats?
The answer is that councils already have the majority of them on the books due to another little failed socialist scheme call Pathfinder. The idea was for councils to forcibly acquire cramped flats and houses with front doors which open directly onto the street, and to gentrify them with front gardens and modernized accommodation. Billions was spent on emptying and demolishing housing, and in the typical inefficient fashion, only few new ones were built, the result being a large stock of council owned housing that fails the minimum legal standards for human habitation.
Socialism has been the greatest failure of modern Europe
These houses should be sold, developed privately either by individuals or developers who will figure out what ‘affordable’ means via the free market.
Socialism has been the greatest failure of modern Europe, the UK included. Post war prosperity has afforded an indulgence of thinking where perceived kindness has in fact fostered a dependence on the state that has undermined human dignity. Where is the dignity of a woman with seven children who takes money from hard working people so that her kids can have phones and game consoles while the able bodied 20-year-old son shoots pool?
Bureaucratic mentality is unable to find clear and sensible solutions to problems that it itself has created. They target homes built up by free choice and hard work to alleviate the pressures of a housing demand brought about by the breakdown of the family which the benefit system encourages and the growth in population fueled by immigration. In a time of deepening recession, can civil unrest be far away?
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim Cab Driver Refuses Guide Dog in Letchworth
A BLIND man says he was refused use of a taxi in Letchworth because the Muslim driver would not allow his guide dog in the car.
Stevenage resident Sean Dilley had been at Letchworth Sports and Tennis Club in Muddy Lane with his guide dog Chipp on Sunday evening for a blind tennis demonstration.
Friends had organised for a taxi driver to pick up the 29-year-old after the event and take him back to Letchworth rail station.
But when the driver arrived shortly after 7pm to pick him up, he refused to let Sean and Chipp in the car.
“The driver turned up and said you are more than welcome but I’m not taking your dog,” said Sean, who has been blind for 15 years.
“He said it was because he was a Muslim. I was horrified. This sort of thing happens all the time and it’s not acceptable.”
The debate between Sean and the driver was caught on camera by a friend.
It has been reported that some strands of Islam teach that dogs should be avoided because the animal’s saliva is considered to be impure.
Sean is a freelance broadcaster and parliamentary lobby correspondent for talkSPORT and last year made a film for the BBC’s Daily Politics show highlighting how many businesses and restaurants refused entry to guide dogs.
He called the taxi firm Gary’s Taxis to complain but was told the driver was within his rights.
But Sean believes that the driver was breaking disability discrimination law by refusing to take them and has reported the matter to North Herts Council, which licenses taxis in the district.
“I have a lot of energy and I know the law, and yet I find battling this sort of thing exhausting,” he said.
“There must be many elderly or vulnerable people who can’t do that and just put up with it.
“Often it’s difficult to prove what happened though but this time we’ve got video evidence of what happened.”
The Advertiser was unable to contact the taxi driver and Gary’s Taxis would only say “It’s a matter between the council and the driver.”
Cllr Bernard Lovewell, the council’s portfolio holder for housing and environmental health, said: “We are currently investigating a complaint regarding an alleged incident with a North Herts licensed hackney carriage driver and a customer with a guide dog.
“Until we have concluded the investigation we cannot comment further.
“We would like to reassure residents that council-licensed taxi drivers should not refuse a blind or partially sighted person from getting in to their taxi on the grounds that they wish an assistance dog to accompany them.”
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Islamists Win Election Again, Military Might Leave in May
Sources tell AsiaNews that Islamist parties won 80 per cent of the vote. Official results will be released in the next few days. The military announces the removal of a general, Ismail Etman, a former Mubarak crony, for involvement in anti-remonstration violence. He is the first SCAF leader to be dismissed.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — Islamist parties won again in the first round of Egypt’s upper house (Shura) elections. Official results will be released in the next few days, but sources told AsiaNews that the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brotherhood) and al-Nour (Salafists) obtained about 80 per cent of the vote. However, the turnout was very low in the 13 governatorates where the poll was held: Cairo, Alexandria, Monufiya, Daqahlia, Damietta, Fayum, Assiut, Qena, New Valley, Nord Sinai, South Sinai and Red Sea. Runoffs for the first round are set for 7 February. The second run will be held on 14-15 February with runoffs on 22 February.
The rise of Islamist parties from outlaws to the country’s main political parties is a frightening prospect for minority Copts and moderate Muslims. However, sources tell AsiaNews that many inside the Freedom and Justice Party are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s hard-line stance.
“The young people who founded the party are moving towards more moderate positions, which could lead to an Islam that is more compatible with the needs of the modern world. This would contain the Salafists.”
In order for the democratic process to be completed, the military must hand over power to civilians and respect the choice of the people, which wants justice for the more than a thousand dead killed by security forces during the Arab spring.
Meanwhile, in order to spruce up the military’s image, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Field Marshall Tantawi, replaced the head of Armed Forces media affairs, Major General Ismail Etman, 60, with Ahmed Abul Dahab. Etman was involved in anti-demonstration violence.
The change is the first in the military council since the generals took power from President Hosni Mubarak in last February’s popular uprising.
Similarly, following recent demonstrations in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, the SCAF said it would move up presidential elections by two months.
At present no date has been set, but sources close to the military are saying that they might be brought forward to 16 May with a runoff on 23 May.
The military also announced the rules to run in the presidential elections. Candidates must be Egyptian-born from Egyptian parents, not have dual citizenship or a foreign wife.
This would exclude some political leaders living abroad, including Mohamed Mustafa El Baradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 2005, who strongly backed of pro-democracy parties during the Jasmine Revolution.
In protest against the climate of terror and insecurity caused by the military, he announced a few weeks ago that he would not run for the presidency.
Parliament has appointed the presidents of parliamentary committees. The Muslim Brotherhood’s party will chair 12 out of 19, al Nour, four, including education and scientific research. Secularist parties will get tourism, culture and human rights. (S.C.)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Movie Star Given 3 Months for Insulting Islam
Cairo, 2 Feb. (AKI) — Egyptian movie star Adel Imam was sentenced to three months in prison for “the defamation of Islam” is some of the films in which he appeared, according to a local news report.
The comic actor was accused of offending Islamic symbols and mocking politicians and other authorities in films and plays, according to the website of newspaper Ahram.
Imam, 72, is one of Egypt’s most popular actors. He has a month to appeal the sentence.
The case was brought by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups.
Among the works Mansour cited in his case were the movie “Morgan Ahmed Morgan” and the play “Al-Zaeem” (“The Leader”).
The sentence comes on the heels of a national election victory by Islamist political groups that gave them a majority in Egypt’s parliament.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sinai: 25 Chinese Workers Kidnapped by Bedouin Released
The news was confirmed by the Chinese embassy in Cairo, but not by the Egyptian government. Employed in a cement plant owned by the military, the 25 workers were kidnapped on their way to work. Currently no details on the dynamics of release.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — 25 Chinese workers kidnapped by a group of Bedouins to Lehfen, in the northern Sinai have been released it was announced today, by the Chinese Embassy in Cairo. A statement read that the hostages are hospitalized at a military base near area were they were released. However, the Egyptian government has not yet confirmed the news or made public the dynamics that led the kidnappers to release the hostages.
Employed in a cement plant owned by the Egyptian army, the 25 were kidnapped by a group of armed Bedouins on their way to work. Shortly after the kidnapping, the group of issued a message calling for the release of 5 comrades arrested in 2004 for the bombing of the Taba resort on the Red Sea that claimed 31 victims.
With the fall of Mubarak leaders of the Bedouin tribes have stepped up their attacks on oil pipelines, gas pipelines and infrastructure built in the area by the regime. In recent months they have repeatedly sabotaged the pipeline between Egypt and Israel. This is causing a revision of the investment by foreign companies, especially Chinese who have no scruples in sending their workers to unstable regions. In recent days another group of 29 Chinese workers were kidnapped in Sudan.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Missing Jewish Teen Located in Arab Village
15-year-old Nofar Ben Hamou from Lod met an Arab man, decided to marry him, and ran away from home. She was located on Sunday.
A 15-year-old missing Jewish teen was found by police on Sunday in an Arab village located in the Triangle, an area west of Hadera populated mainly by Israeli Arabs, whose towns form a large triangle on the map.
The girl, Nofar Ben Hamou from Lod, went missing a few weeks ago after she met an Arab man. Her parents, Sigal and Shalom Ben Hamou, found out about their daughter’s relationship a year and a half ago. They tried to object but it had been too late.
In a recent interview with the Hebrew Besheva magazine Nofar’s parents recalled that one evening, their daughter came home and announced that she has converted to Islam and has decided to marry her boyfriend. The stunned parents tried to dissuade her but she was insistent and then packed her bags and left the house. She did not take a cell phone with her, so her parents were unable to contact her since that night and she disappeared without a trace. Her parents subsequently called the police.
During the past few weeks, many searches were carried out for Nofar, and intelligence information received by the police led them to find her on Sunday. MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) and the Lehava anti-assimilation organization were in constant contact with the family. Ben-Ari and representatives of Lehava came to the police station on Sunday evening and guided the family on how to treat their daughter now that she has been found.
The Lehava organization said on Sunday night, after Ben Hamou was located, “The organization will continue treating the young woman and help her return to the Jewish people. The organization welcomes the activities of the police and calls on the authorities to handle this phenomenon. We will continue to fight for the return of the daughters of Israel to the people of Israel.”
Lod is a mixed Jewish-Arab city and Sigal Ben Hamou said during the recent Besheva interview that there are many dangers for young Jewish girls in the city.
“Girls here are exposed to minorities daily, on the way to school and back,” she said. “It definitely can happen to anyone. My daughter was perfectly normal, full of joie de vivre, surrounded by friends. My daughter was a victim. We live next to Arabs who are always trying to attract and entice our innocent girls. They give the girls iPhones, expensive jeans, jewelry, gold watches and what not. That’s how they blind them. Unfortunately, there is no immunity to almost anyone. In my worst nightmares I never dreamed it would happen to us.”
The deputy mayor of the northern Israeli town of Afula recently said that a growing number of young Jewish girls are marrying Arabs.
In an interview with a local newspaper, Dr. Boris Yudis said, “The phenomenon of girls aged 12 and 13 who are in Arab villages breaks my heart, but unfortunately my hands are tied. Mothers come to me and cry that their 12 and 13 year olds have moved into minority villages, this is a painful thing that wounds my heart.”
Lehava chairman Bentzi Gopstein has said the Knesset must pass a law that prohibits seduction of a minor, in order to fight the phenomenon.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Ataturk and Andrew McCarthy’s “The Grand Jihad”
Encounter Books has just released a remarkably compendious 4-minute video [1] synopsis of Andrew McCarthy’s “The Grand Jihad [2]”, re-issued in a paperbound edition, which features captivating—and humorous—animation [1].
Please also see a very insightful review of “The Grand Jihad [2]” by Karen Lugo [3] recently published at The American Thinker, and a review [4] I had published when the original hardcover version of McCarthy’s indispensable book was produced.
The book and video narrative highlight Kemal Ataturk’s modernizing reforms in the emerging Turkish Republic. These yeoman efforts included abolition of Ottoman Turkey’s Sharia-based casuistic hodgepodge of a religio-political governing code, including the “Caliphate.” Predictably, the global Muslim umma’s reaction to Ataturk’s monumental heresy ever since then—epitomized by the popular, mainstreamMuslim Brotherhood’s Weltanschauung [5]—has been an intensifying campaign of violent and non-violent Islamic jihadism to revive both the Sharia and the Caliphate.
Below is an apropos observation by Ataturk from a (then) confidential memorandum dated March 17, 1933, written by US Ambassador to Turkey, Charles H. Sherrill about Ataturk’s attitudes toward religion, i.e., Islam:…
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Court Upholds Hanging for Church Attack
Baghdad, 2 Feb. (AKI) — An appeals court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for three men involved in an attack on a Syrian catholic church in Baghdad that left 52 dead and 75 wounded.
In August last year a court in central Iraq sentenced three Al-Qaeda militants to death by hanging for the 31 October 2010 attack on the Our Lady of Salvation church.
Islamic State of Iraq, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, claimed responsibility for the attack. Forty-four worshippers, seven members of the Iraqi security forces and two priests were killed.
“There are three convicted criminals. All are Iraqis and they were convicted based on the terrorism law,” said Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesman for the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council. “The sentence is final and it will be sent to the presidency to issue a decree to the Justice Ministry to execute it.”
Iraq’s constitution requires the presidential council — made up of the president and two vice presidents — to sign off on capital punishment cases before the death sentence is carried out.
The attack was the biggest on Christians since the American invasion in 2003. It stoked fears among minority Christians that Sunni Islamist insurgents aim to drive them out of their Iraq and rekindle sectarian warfare.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Paper Cutout of Khomeini Roams Tehran Amid Iranians’ Indignation
In commemoration of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a paper model of Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini was paraded in the streets of the capital Tehran amid sarcastic remarks by Iranians and indignation on the part of several officials. The “paper Khomeini,” as the model came to be called, first came down a plane to reenact the supreme leader’s return from exile in France after the toppling of the Shah.
Officers and clerics then took paper Khomeini to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran and where the late leader gave his first speech after coming back. Officials attending the ceremony played a recording of the speech then started talking to the paper model about current problems in Iran like the nuclear program, economic sanctions, oil exports and others.
The model then roamed the streets of Tehran accompanied by a group of officials while army helicopters started spraying rose water and throwing flowers at the procession. Creating a paper model of Ayatollah Khomeini was met with disdain on the part of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, especially on social networking websites. Many of the scoffing remarks focused on the idolatry aspect of the process and some even accused the regime of going back to pagan times.
Criticism of the issue was not confined to Iranian citizens, as many officials echoed the same sentiment. Former Iranian president and current Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani described the ceremony as “absurd.” “This kind of behavior tarnishes the image of the revolution and allows our enemies to make fun of us,” he said in a statement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Thirty-Five Christians Arrested, Beaten and Insulted for Praying in Saudi Arabia
A group of Ethiopians are arrested at the home of one of them. They are accused of “unlawful mingling” among unmarried people of the opposite sex. For Human Rights Watch, this is another violation of religious freedom.
Beirut (AsiaNews) — Thirty five Ethiopian Christians were arrested, beaten and subjected to all sorts of abuses after they were caught at a prayer meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch reported. Now they could be expelled.
The 6 men and 29 women were arrested in mid-December because they had met to pray during Advent. They were first taken to a police station, than to Buraiman prison, two women and one man, told Human Rights Watch. Whilst in custody, the women were forced to strip and undergo arbitrary body cavity searches; the men were beaten and insulted them as “unbelievers”.
The prisoners complained about inadequate medical care (one suffers from diabetes) and discrimination between Saudis and non-Saudis in terms of toilets.
Ten days after the arrest, some of the prisoners were taken to court, where they were forced to affix their fingerprints to a document without being allowed to read it.
Officials told the group that they were being charged with “unlawful mingling” of unmarried people of the opposite sex, which is banned in Saudi Arabia.
For Human Rights Watch, this is the latest example of religious intolerance.
In 2006, Saudi authorities did promise the United States that it would “guarantee and protect the right to private worship for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious practice,” and “ensure that members of the [religious police] do not detain or conduct investigations of suspects, implement punishment, [or] violate the sanctity of private homes.”
In Saudi Arabia, Islam is the only lawful religion and public worship of any religion other than Islam remains prohibited throughout the kingdom.
In October, Saudi Arabia set up the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue and funded by Saudi Arabia.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
The Rise of a Jerusalem Army
But when combined with a statement made by Haniyeh to the Sudanese government, it fairly leaps off the page. Arutz Sheva adds this note: “He also called for the establishment of a ‘Jerusalem Army,’ an army of Arab nations who will conquer Jerusalem from the Jews.
“Haniyeh’s remarks were reportedly made in a forum entitled ‘The Jerusalem Forum’ being held in Khartoum.”
It was reported that, “… during the discussions, Haniyeh’s men met with senior members of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood movement. According to the report, the purpose of the meetings was to look into the possibility of having Hamas join the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The “Arab Spring” of 2011, has become the Muslim Brotherhood Movement of 2012. It appear that in a short time, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and perhaps, Turkey will unite under the Brotherhood. Until now, these countries have been surprisingly disorganized. Far from unity, they displayed internecine strife.
| [Return to headlines] |
Homegrown Jihad
The campsite on the 50,000-hectare cattle station in the red dirt country at Louth was booked by phone in the name of Adam George.
Expecting a group of feral fox and pig hunters on safari to the back of Bourke, the property owner left directions in a mailbox and saw just one man, who simply called himself “Joe”.
The company Joe kept alarmed the locals. The seven men — led by Aimen Joud from Melbourne and Mohamed Ali Elomar from Sydney — got lost and had to ask for directions.
“They stood out to the local community when they were driving through … Some of them were wearing camouflage fatigues … Some of them are large gentlemen, so just their physical presence stands out,” NSW Police terrorism investigations squad head Detective Inspector David Gawel, says.
Of course, Adam George was a fake name that had been previously used to try to buy laboratory gear to manufacture chemicals to build a bomb.
The men were on a training and bonding exercise, armed with .308 and .22 rifles and components of an explosive device.
The Louth trip, said the Victorian Court of Appeal last June, was the most significant of several group exercises between two terrorist cells based in Sydney and Melbourne whose members pledged allegiance to Abdul Nacer Benbrika, an Algerian-born pensioner sheikh living in Melbourne.
Over two days in March 2005, the men pitched tents, lit campfires and shot at trees, leaving bullets in the trunks and spent shells on the ground.
They also left the burnt remains of a lantern battery attached to spark plugs, apparently a crude attempt to create an incendiary or sparking device. Other blunders included failing to take enough food and water, according to Gawel.
“The person that’s inclined to commit the politically motivated type offence is probably not the most practised criminal,” the NSW Police counter-terrorism and special tactics commander, Peter Dein, says.
“Therefore, you would probably not be surprised to see a lot of learning on the way as they’re building their particular capability.”
Victoria Police Detective Inspector Chris Murray, who investigated Benbrika, says the “Keystone cops” elements found in this group and another which plotted to stage a suicide attack on Sydney’s Holsworthy Army base do not detract from their serious implications to national security.
“Terrorist acts are by their nature simplistic and don’t need a lot of technology. They don’t need a lot of planning,” he says.
Twenty-one violent jihadists have been convicted and jailed over the past six years in a series of court cases which put the new home-grown brand of Australian terrorism on display after operations Pendennis and Neath, the two biggest joint ASIO-police investigations ever.
They culminated in December with 131/2-year prison sentences for the Neath targets, Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Saney Edow Aweys and Nayev El Sayed, over their Holsworthy plan.
Part of their motivation was anger over the jailing of the 18 men netted by Pendennis.
The 21 men and their accomplices changed Australia, but not with bombs or heavy artillery blasting a symbolic site as they had planned.
Instead, they have revolutionised counter-terrorism in this country.
“Terrorism is a crime type like there’s armed robbery and murder,” Gawel says.
“It’s a new crime type and it’s a new skill set. Pendennis was important for us because it taught us a lot of lessons which we can now use.
“We’d had some other inquiries before that. We had Brigitte. We had Lodhi. We had Ul-Haque, which got us on the path. And that was primary school and this was pretty much a secondary school where we started to refine our skills.”
The full scope of Pendennis could not be told during six years of trials because of court suppression orders on reporting links between the NSW and Victorian cells and the involvement of a Sydney man, Omar Baladjam. These have now been lifted and Pendennis can take its place as the largest counter-terrorism exercise in Australia, followed by the biggest series of criminal trials the nation has seen.
These have yielded a gigantic lode of material which gave counter-terrorism agencies insights they are now using to head off other plots. Police and ASIO investigators recorded 16,400 hours during the operation, using bugging devices and 98,000 phone intercepts.
In the Melbourne trials alone, which led to nine convictions, including Benbrika, 481 monitored conversations were entered in evidence, including at least 28 conversations in which violent jihad was discussed.
In hundreds of thousands of hours of surveillance, the spies followed the plotters’ reflections, plans, jokes, quarrels and fears. These have now been revealed in court documents and transcripts released to selected academics, which pieced together, tell many stories, among them one of building a bomb.
The Melbourne cell grabbed headlines over its plan to blow up the MCG, but the threat from the Sydney group’s bomb-making plans was far greater.
“They were very advanced into their planning and preparation to commit a terrorist attack … There is no doubt about it. If they continued with their plans, there is every expectation that they were going to put something together and attempt to detonate it,” Dein says.
The timing device
Khaled Sharrouf, a zealot carrying a Nokia mobile bearing an American flag, “9/11” and a picture of Osama bin Laden, was caught by security guards when he tried to smuggle six clocks and 140 batteries out of the Chullora Big W store in empty potato chips boxes.
He pleaded guilty to possessing goods in preparation for a terrorist act. Sentencing him, NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy said the clocks could have been modified to create an electric circuit to detonate a bomb.
Sharrouf, diagnosed as a chronic schizophrenic as a result of drug use, told one psychiatrist he heard voices and sometimes went outside his house holding a bat at night looking for the source.
The detonators
Items found in the home toolbox of Moustafa Cheikho, who trained in Pakistan, included battery leads, electrical wire cut-offs, a switch and small bulbs apparently cut from a string of decorative lights. His computer held a file about a bombing device triggered by a mobile phone.
When police raided tradesman Mazen Touma’s Sydney home, they found 165 railway detonators, pistol and rifle cartridges, nails, shotgun shells, lengths of copper pipe — some fused at one end, 13 rounds of ammunition cut in half with the gunpowder removed. Police also seized 15 boxes containing 7500 rounds of ammunition for semi-automatic weapons from his van.
In wiretapped conversations, he and a friend pretended they were talking about plastering a wall when they discussed making an explosive device.
He said in one bugged conversation that he loved being called Osama bin Laden by others and: “If they kill me I get martyrdom.”
Sentencing him after his guilty plea, Justice Whealy said he was “a rank amateur in the area of making explosives, but it does not rule out his use of other people, or the use by other people of the materials he assembled, for a terrorist purpose”.
The chemicals and lab gear
Sydney cell members Abdul Rakib Hasan, Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Ali Elomar visited Benbrika in Melbourne, where they discussed a long list of equipment and chemicals they planned to order from a secondary school laboratory supplier, Haines.
Hasan, a former butcher, was an associate of Faheem Lodhi, found guilty of terrorism offences in Sydney and Willie Brigitte, who was deported and convicted in France.
Elomar, now serving a minimum of 21 years in jail for his part in preparing for a terrorist act, was the Sydney cell leader, trained by Laksha e-Taiba in Pakistan. According to Justice Whealy, he “possessed the recipes for explosives”.
After much discussion, an order for 55 items was faxed to Haines from a Melbourne suburb. Police raided the home of Benbrika’s Melbourne lieutenant, Aimen Joud, and found the list in Elomar’s handwriting.
By late July, the Haines plan apparently ditched, Hasan bought $922.10 worth of laboratory equipment from wholesaler New Directions in Marrickville.
Meanwhile, other cell members collected acid to make explosives.
Omar Baladjam, 34, a Manly-born former spray painter and TV soapie actor, pleaded guilty to acquiring two loaded handguns, acid, 900 rounds of ammunition and a Nokia phone handset in the false name of Jeffrey Leydon, all used in preparation for a terrorist act.
Posing as a market researcher, he phoned a Kings Park car battery outlet and asked about its monthly consumption and supplier of sulphuric acid. Calling himself “Jeff from Pile Up Batteries”, he then called a chemical supplier and got a price, saying he used about 300 litres a month. Five litres of battery acid and five litres of hydrochloric acid were on his premises when he was raided.
In September, Hasan and Omar Jamal tried to buy sulphuric acid and water from Autoking. Hasan bought acetone from one hardware store and methylated spirits, acetone and sulphuric acid from another at Padstow.
On November 3, just before they were arrested, Elomar, Moustafa Cheikho, Sharrouf and Bosnian-born Mirsad Mulahalilovic bought storage containers, PVC pipes, end caps and other items at Bunnings and other stores.
The training
Shandon Harris-Hogan, a researcher with the global terrorism research centre at Monash University, given access to some transcripts of the convicted men’s bugged conversations, says Melburnians Joud, Fadl Sayadi and Ahmed Raad were envious of their Sydney brothers after the Louth trip.
“There was an awe at ‘Wow they’re organised, they’ve got tents, sleeping bags, compasses — they’re further down the road. I think it motivated these guys … Their thinking is: wow, we need to pull our fingers out and catch up,” Harris-Hogan says. The Melbourne cell had its own rather shambolic training exercise.
While scouting for a paramilitary training site in the western suburb of Laverton, they stumbled on a TV film crew. The producer gave them his business card. Quips heard by the wiretappers included “al-Qaeda comes to Paramount” and “al-Qaeda comes to Mount Thomas”, the fictional setting for the TV police series Blue Heelers.
Harris-Hogan, who has done a “social network analysis” of the cell, discovered two distinct cliques at loggerheads. Bugs recorded the squabbles one day when the men were trying to work out how to allocate each of the 12 cell members seats in three cars for a weekend road trip together.
The thinking
The NSW and Victorian cells had a “common library” of violent jihadist material. For the Sydney trials alone, authorities had to sift through 3.35 terabytes of this material from the offenders’ computers, according to Gawel. That is almost 900 million pages.
In a “hard, hard grind for up to 12 months”, detectives had to learn new computer skills to manage the sheer bulk, as they worked out which parts of the horrific graphic material could be put before a jury, he says.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has appeared among the police and prosecutors who watched many beheadings and other gory Western deaths to prepare the case, the Herald understands.
In Victoria, the Crown alleged the organisation’s structure was based on a model in a 1600-page publication, The Call for the Global Islamic Resistance — Your Guide … to the Way of Jihad, which Benbrika said was “a good and dangerous book”.
Benbrika was taped talking of “the instances that permit the killing of the protected kuffar [infidels]”.
Violence is better than sex, Benbrika deemed when Abdullah Merhi, a Melbourne cell member asked for advice about the carnal temptations he felt when watching salacious videos on his brother’s computer.
Benbrika advised him to buy his own computer. Merhi did so and downloaded 677 documents justifying violent jihad.
A common theme uniting violent jihadists is a belief that Islam and Muslims are under attack and they must come to the rescue, says Sam Mullins, research fellow at the University of Wollongong.
“One of the major differences between crime and terrorism is that terrorism is motivated by altruism. They see themselves as freedom fighters and protectors of the wider community. They are Robin Hoods, doing all this dirty work and sacrificing to help other people,” he says.
The money
In an Australian Institute of Criminology paper, three researchers led by Russell Smith remarked how little money was involved.
One Sydney cell member spent $2100 on 10,000 rounds of ammunition, while another bought chemicals for $200.
The Melbourne group raised an estimated $7000, supplementing this with a car rebirthing scam in which Ahmed Raad and his brother Ezzit stripped stolen vehicles for parts.
When Ezzit Raad was fined $1000 for possessing one of the cars, Benbrika approved a withdrawal from the cell’s moneybox to cover it.
Ahmed Raad said in an intercepted conversation that the car racket was “in Allah’s cause”.
The lessons
Australia’s anti-terrorism laws, framed to catch Islamists who had “radicalised” and had seriously violent intent toward others, required new thinking by police and courts, according to Dein and Gawel.
Police had to learn to pin down the details of crimes before they are committed, because of the danger to the community, Gawel says.
For the first time, he says, courts recognised the process of radicalisation that takes place when a disaffected individual’s mindset becomes the driving factor in their acquisition of weapons and explosives.
Pendennis marked the turning point when counter-terrorism agencies realised they had to switch from a “need-to-know” to a “need-to-share” mentality about information, Dein says.
Police now do a lot more work inside communities at risk and have evolved to see families with terrorist members as victims themselves, Lancaster says.
Family investigation liaison officers, traditionally assigned to the kin of victims, worked with the relatives of offenders in Operation Neath from the time the police got search warrants, he says.
“We didn’t just classify them as terrorists or bad people. They were victims as well and we provided them support as well,” he says.
Murray says he feels sorry for the families whose sons fell under Benbrika’s sway.
Academics combing through the transcripts of the Pendennis offenders’ words have discovered that their very domesticity; their lives as part-time terrorists with wives and children, rendered them less effective than they could have been.
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Not All Civilisations Equal, French Minister Says
PARIS — French Interior Minister Claude Gueant, who also holds the immigration portfolio, caused political uproar by claiming that not all civilisations are equal, with some more advanced than others.
“Contrary to what the left’s relativist ideology says, for us all civilisations are not of equal value,” Gueant on Saturday told a conference in the French parliament building, but closed to the media.
“Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not,” he argued in his speech at a meeting organised by a right-wing students group.
“Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred,” he went on his speech, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
He stressed the need to “protect our civilisation.”
The interior minister’s comments provoked a torrent of criticism from the opposition and on the Internet, less than three months a head of a French presidential election.
The left denounced his speech as an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy to woo the far-right National Front voters ahead of the presidential election.
The Young Socialist Movement condemned Gueant’s “xenophobic and racist” speech, while the minister’s entourage attempted to dismiss his comments as merely condemning those who practise repression and inequality.
On his Twitter account Harlem Desir, the number two in the French Socialist Party, slammed “the pitiful provocation from a minister reduced to a mouthpiece for the FN (far-right National Front party).”
The ruling UMP party is in “electoral and moral decline,” he added.
For her part, Cecile Duflot, national secretary of the French Green Party “Europe Ecologie les Verts,” wrote of a “return to three centuries ago. Contemptible.”
It is not the the first time Gueant has courted controversy.
Gueant has repeatedly linked immigration with crime in France and last month said the delinquency rate among immigrants was “two to three times higher” than the national average.
Last April, he declared that an increase in the number of Muslim faithful in France posed a “problem”.
He also said then that he wants to reduce the number of legal immigrants entering France, including those coming to work legally or join their families.
His latest controversial comments come as the anti-immigration National Front’s presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is credited with 20 percent support in the opinion polls, a figure which is sounding alarm bells throughout the French political establishment and beyond.
Incumbent Sarkozy is trailing in the opinion polls to Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
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