Austria Regrets Moody’s Rating Action
(VIENNA) — Austria said Tuesday it regretted Moody’s decision to downgrade the outlook on the country’s credit rating, saying the company had failed to take into account a massive austerity plan. The finance ministry said Moody’s action was based on the view that Austria’s public deficit would increase whereas its 26.7-billion-euro ($35.2-billion) austerity programme meant the deficit would actually fall from this year.
On Monday, Moody’s Investors Service cut its credit ratings on Italy, Spain and Portugal and put top Aaa rated France, Britain and Austria on warning that they could be downgraded too if the eurozone debt crisis deepens. It cited the region’s weak economic prospects as threatening “the implementation of domestic austerity programmes and the structural reforms that are needed to promote competitiveness.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austria: Strache Deplores Soaring Tax Pressure on Middle Class
Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Heinz-Christian Strache has harshly attacked the government over its savings package. The right-winger said during a platform discussion in Vienna, which was broadcast live by radio station Ö1, yesterday (Mon) that the various measures would increase the tax burden on labourers and the middle class. Strache underlined that Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the People’s Party (ÖVP) had stressed many times over the past months that it was their intention to lower the taxation on labour. He also claimed that Austria’s pensioners would have to face cuts too tough in the coming years because of the austerity course.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Says Ready to Help Solve EU Debt Crisis
(BEIJING) — China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said Tuesday his country was ready to increase its participation in efforts to resolve Europe’s debt crisis, after holding talks with EU leaders in Beijing. Wen also said China wanted to see Europe — its biggest trading partner — “maintain stability and prosperity”, a day after ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Italy, Spain and Portugal.
“China is ready to increase its participation in resolving the EU debt problems,” the Chinese premier told journalists after meeting EU president Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.
Wen did not elaborate on how China would participate, but earlier this month he said Beijing was considering offering help through the International Monetary Fund or bail-out funds. China has made clear its growing concerns over the crisis in Europe.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Democracy is Ending in the Land Where it Began
Greece’s plight has alerted the world to the way the EU extinguishes democracy.
It is peculiarly appropriate that the country that gave the world the words “democracy” and “tragedy” should now be the beacon which alerts the world to the fact that the EU is extinguishing democracy — part of a wider tragedy that will eventually lead to the extinction of the EU itself. But what of our own country’s part in this horrible drama?
It already seems an age since we were told, last June, that David Cameron had “won his fight” to prevent the EU extracting a loan of billions of pounds from Britain to help Greece pay off some of the colossal debt it has run up since it was so foolishly allowed to join the euro. The next move, we learned, was that we would have to lend the money anyway, not through the EU but through the IMF.
George Osborne still cannot promise that he will be able to resist this demand, even though he knows we are having to borrow an additional £2.5 billion every week just to pay for the ever-rising deficit on our own Government’s spending. Thus, in order to lend £17 billion through the IMF to Greece, which it will never be able to repay, we would have to borrow even more money than we are doing already.
The latest contribution to this tragi-farce, it seems, is Sir Mervyn King’s decision to roll the printing presses and conjure a further £50 billion of imaginary money out of thin air. As Fraser Nelson explained in Friday’s Daily Telegraph, this will keep interest rates on annuities at rock-bottom, and thus rob Britain’s pensioners of an estimated £74 billion.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
EU Concern Over Swedish Economic Imbalance
Sweden is among the countries set to be discussed in Tuesday’s expected report from the EU commission, which concerns 12 EU countries with a ‘cause for concern’ in terms of their economic development, according to a report in the Financial Times (FT). “Many have become accustomed to the fact that we have bad finances in Europe, so this does not come out of the blue. But now the finger is being put on certain countries that are so weak that they can be forced into some kind of a debt reconstruction,” said Robery Bergqvist, chief of economics of SEB.
The 12 countries that have been discussed have ranging economies. Some are in a crisis situation already, such as Spain, Italy and Belgium. But some, such as Sweden, France, Britain, Finland and Denmark are singled out for imbalances in different areas of the Commision’s scoreboard, according to FT.
Credit rating agency Moody’s lowered the rating for six EU countries on Tuesday and warned three others that the outlook was negative. Those whose rating was lowered were Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, and the warned countries were France, Britain and Austria. Representatives at Moody’s predicted that the market’s confidence in the Eurozone “probably remains fragile.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Officials Meet Chinese Leaders
Top EU officials Van Rompuy and Barroso will meet Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing at a regular summit on Tuesday. The EU is keen for China to invest in its bail-out funds and to stop buying Iranian oil in line with the upcoming EU embargo.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Europe Crisis Tops Agenda as China, EU Leaders Meet
(BEIJING) — Chinese and EU leaders met Tuesday for a major summit set to be dominated by Europe’s debt crisis, as an increasingly worried Beijing considers coming to the rescue of the embattled continent. The summit came a day after ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Italy, Spain and Portugal and warned that France, Britain and Austria were increasingly vulnerable to the crisis, which China said had reached a “critical” stage.
Beijing has made clear its growing concerns over the crisis in Europe, its biggest export market, repeatedly urging EU leaders to get a grip on the situation. EU president Herman Van Rompuy said the economic destinies of Europe and China were “interlinked”, as he and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso opened talks with China’s Premier Wen Jiabao.
“The times we are living in are challenging and it is of utmost importance the European Union and China advance our common agenda and address global problems,” Van Rumpuy told the Chinese premier. “We became so inter-dependent that change in the growth rate in one of the two strategic partners has a direct and palpable impact on the other one. Our economic destinies are interlinked.”
European leaders have already asked China, which holds the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, to invest in a bailout fund to rescue debt-stricken states. Beijing has made no firm commitment, but Wen said this month it was considering offering help through the International Monetary Fund or bailout funds, and there is speculation China will make its position clearer at the summit.
“Helping stability in the European market is actually helping ourselves… We have to keep import and export policies stable,” the Chinese premier said after talks with the visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On Tuesday, Wen said the two sides should work with “mutual understanding” towards their “common goals” in the talks, which are expected to touch on Syria, Iran and a controversial EU carbon charge on airlines, which China has banned its carriers from paying.
The issue of market access may also be on the agenda, as foreign firms complain China favours domestic companies and squeezes them out of some markets, including lucrative government procurement contracts.
EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht, who said last month he is drafting a law in response to Chinese protectionism in public markets, will take part in the summit.
De Gucht has been a fierce critic of China’s restrictions on rare earths exports, 17 elements crucial in the manufacturing of many high-tech products such iPods and flat-screen televisions.
The crisis in Syria is also likely to come up after China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the regime’s bloody crackdown on protests, as are concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But concerns over Europe’s economy and financial sector were expected to dominate.
The IMF warned last week that an escalation of the crisis could slash China’s economic growth in half this year, and foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Monday the debt issue was “at a critical juncture”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Finland to Sign Collateral Deal on Greek Bail-Out
Finnish finance chief Urpilainen said Monday she hoped Finland and Greece would be able to sign an agreement on loan guarantees within the next few days. Finland has demanded collateral from Athens as a prerequisite for taking part in the second bail-out worth €130 billion, to be agreed on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Greece Cannot be Ruled Against the Will of Its People’
Greece may now have passed the austerity measures demanded from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, but the country’s political system is showing signs of stress. Additional pressure from Europe isn’t helping. German commentators warn that political radicalization cannot be ruled out.
One can perhaps understand the European Union’s lack of trust when it comes to pledges emanating from Greece. Despite multiple promises of political reform and fiscal austerity, progress has been slow in some areas (privatization of government held assets, for example) and virtually non-existent in others (such as the collection of billions in back taxes).
Comments in parliament on Monday night by conservative New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras are unlikely to foster any trust in Brussels. “I am calling on you to vote for the new loan agreement because I want to avoid falling into the abyss, to restore stability, so that we can have the possibility tomorrow to negotiate and change the policy that is being imposed upon us today,” he said.
To the ears of European politicians growing weary of the seemingly insoluble Greek debt crisis, the message may sound familiar. Let’s promise to play along today so that tomorrow we can return to business as usual.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Merkel Rules Out Giving More Money to Greece
German chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday evening ruled out extending the EU-IMF bailout programme for Greece. Characterising the Greek parliament’s vote in favour of further austerity measures on Sunday as “important” she added: “But a change to the programme cannot and will not take place.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Cuts Ratings, Outlooks on Nine EU Countries
Moody’s on Monday chopped the debt ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal and put France, Britain and Austria on warning, saying they were increasingly vulnerable to the eurozone crisis. Casting doubt over whether Europe’s leaders were doing enough to reverse the downslide of the region’s economy and financial sector, Moody’s also cut its ratings for Slovenia, Slovakia and Malta.
The ratings agency cited the region’s weak economic prospects as threatening “the implementation of domestic austerity programs and the structural reforms that are needed to promote competitiveness.” Market confidence “is likely to remain fragile, with a high potential for further shocks to funding conditions for stressed sovereigns and banks,” it said.
Moody’s also questioned whether Europe was pulling together adequate resources to deal with the crisis. “To a varying degree, these factors are constraining the creditworthiness of all European sovereigns and exacerbating the susceptibility of a number of sovereigns to particular financial and macroeconomic exposures,” it noted.
Austria, France and Britain all retained the top AAA rating but were put on negative outlooks, a warning that if conditions worsen they could be hit with full downgrades.
Italy was cut one notch to A3 from A2; Spain two notches to A3 from A1, and Portugal one step to Ba3 from Ba2. Slovakia and Slovenia both went down one step to A2, while Malta moved one step to A3.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Warns U.K. on Outlook
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded six European nations and became the first ratings firm to warn the U.K.’s rating could be at risk, citing the area’s weakening ability to implement measures aimed at reducing debt.
Where Moody’s did deviate from recent actions by other ratings firms was in changing the outlook for the U.K. There had been no indication the U.K.’s outlook was necessarily in danger based on how other ratings firms view U.K.’s debt. Both S&P and Fitch have a stable outlook on their U.K. rating.
Moody’s said the main driver for placing the U.K. on negative outlook was the weaker macroeconomic environment, which it said will challenge the government’s efforts to place its debt burden on a downward trajectory over the coming years. “A combination of a rising medium-term debt trajectory and lower-than-expected trend economic growth would put into question the government’s ability to retain its AAA rating,” Moody’s said. “The U.K.’s outstanding debt places it amongst the most heavily indebted of its AAA-rated peers, alongside the United States and France whose AAA ratings also carry a negative outlook.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Delivers Damning Verdict on Euro Zone
The ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded six euro-zone members, including Italy, Spain and Portugal, and warned that France, Britain and Austria may lose their triple-A rating. The agency said its decision was based on the “growing risks” caused by Europe’s ongoing debt crisis.
In January, rival ratings agency Standard & Poor’s stripped France and Austria of their triple-A status, and also downgraded Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.
For Britain, which is not in the euro zone, being put on a negative outlook appears to have come as something of a shock. The British finance minister, Chancellor George Osborne, reacted by insisting that the UK remained committed to its austerity program aimed at slashing its budget deficit. “This is proof that, in the current global situation, Britain cannot waver from dealing with its debts,” Osborne said. “This is a reality check for anyone who thinks Britain can duck confronting its debts.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘New Poor’ Grows From Greek Middle Class
Aid workers and soup kitchens in Athens are struggling to provide for the city’s “new poor.” Since the economic crisis has taken hold, poverty has taken hold among Greece’s middle class. And suicide rates have nearly doubled.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“It’s Hard to See Racism When You’re White” Billboards Roil Duluth
New anti-racism billboards in Duluth have sparked a heated debate. The billboards, created by the Un-Fair Campaign, tell passersby that “It’s hard to see racism when you’re white,” but some white folks in the predominately caucasian community object to being singled out and argue the campaign contradicts itself by using racism to combat racism.
Phil Pierson, creator of an anti-Un-Fair Campaign Facebook page, told the Duluth News Tribune that he thinks “it’s a misguided and contradictory campaign.” “Duluth cannot afford this kind of hate,” he added.
While Pierson’s objections are civil and principled, others who are offended by the billboards have gotten downright threatening. The Star Tribune reports that Mayor Don Ness — a supporter of the Un-Fair Campaign — received a message telling him to “Die, scum, die.”
But proponents of the ads argue that the “it’s hard to see racism when you’re white” message is especially important in a relatively homogenous community like Duluth, which is 90 percent white.
?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
(Prince Talal’s) Fox News AWOL on (Prince Talal’s) Twitter Story
by Diana West
Have you heard about Hazma Kashgari, the Saudi blogger who tweeted an imaginary conversation with Mohammed, drew so many (tens of thousands) angry comments from his co-religionists and co-kingdomists that he deleted his tweets, fled the country and made for New Zealand to seek asylum but was arrested in Malaysia and extradited back to Saudi A where he now faces charges on the capital crime of “blasphemy”?
Not if you watch fair and balanced Fox News, you haven’t. I have searched the site but cannot find any stories about Kashgari. (You try.)
You don’t suppose the fact that Saudi dictatorship-family-member Talal bin Alwaleed owns the largest non-Murdoch stake in Fox News (7 percent) and a new stake in Twitter (almost 4 percent) has anything to do with that, do you?
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
American Moslem Bekka Center in Dearborn Vandalized
DEARBORN, Mich. — The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) is asking for community members to provide leads concerning the recent desecration of the American Moslem Bekka Center in Dearborn.
The mosque, which is located off of Chase Rd south of W. Warren Ave, had spray-painted on the front “Chaldean Mob” and on the side “MB.”
CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid said he had spoken with Dearborn police, who are investigating the vandalism of the center as well as other incidents involving Muslim-owned establishments in the city.
Anyone with information on the vandalism is asked to call Dearborn police at 313-943-3030.
| — Hat tip: RE | [Return to headlines] |
Business Groups Shut Down Anti-Muslim Bill in Virginia
Last month, a bill intended to combat the nearly non-existent problem of courts citing Sharia law was cruising to passage in the Virginia House of Delegates. For the moment, however, the bill appears to be dead after numerous business groups stepped forward to oppose it:
One bill, HB825 from Republican Del. Bob Marshall of Prince William County, would have prohibited judges and state administrators from using any legal code established outside the United States to make decisions. […] But when legislators started hearing from business groups concerned about how the proposal could affect their dealings abroad and foreign companies located here, they sent the bill back to committee. “I had some business concerns,” said Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, after making the motion Thursday to kick back the bill. “It’s just something that needs some work.”
It’s unfortunate, if far from unexpected, that similar protests from religious groups, both Islamic and otherwise, were not enough to kill the bill. Nevertheless, the emergence of business opposition to these sorts of bills is a very important development. The first wave of anti-Islamic bills introduced in state legislatures specifically named “Sharia” or Islamic law as off limits to state court judges. Such laws are unambiguously unconstitutional, as the First Amendment forbids any law that exists for the sole purpose of lashing out at a particular faith. Del. Marshall’s bill short circuits this constitutional limit because it does not expressly call out something unique to a particular faith. Instead, it paints with a broad brush by forbidding citations to any legal code that’s not established in the United States.
The problem with this tactic, however, is that there are all kinds of legitimate reasons why a judge may need to rely on foreign legal sources in order to render a decision. Most significantly, contracts between U.S. and foreign companies frequently require any disputes between them to be resolved under a foreign nation’s law. Needless to say, business don’t like it when lawmakers take away an important tool that they need to conduct international business just to push back against some baseless fantasy about judges lining up to replace the Constitution with Islamic law. So the punchline is that anti-Islamic lawmakers are now in a bind. They can either push a narrow law targeting Islam, and have that law be struck down in the courts, or they can broaden the law, and wind up pushing something with spillover effects that will greatly annoy powerful interest groups. Or, alternatively, they could simply abandon their anti-Islamic crusade altogether, and devote their attention solving problems that actually exist.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
DeKalb Mosque Faces Mounting Violations
DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. - Leaders of a DeKalb County mosque face legal trouble after mounting code enforcement violations landed them in front of a judge. Mosque leaders said they are being harassed. Neighbors said it’s not a story about religion, but about code enforcement and following the rules. A judge had already put the mosque and its leaders on probation, but that hasn’t stopped them from holding services. Attendees arrive by the dozens from around the metro area every Friday. Sometimes there are several hundred people, but their mosque doesn’t look like most. “They would park in my yard and park in a lot of the neighbors’ yards, and you couldn’t get out of your driveway,” said Tom Owens, who lives near the Attaqwa Mosque in Doraville. Owens said with 16 code enforcement violations, the mosque is not a good neighbor. “It makes my neighborhood look bad when people drive by. It just looks trashy,” he said.
Owens was referring to additions built behind the homes. Mosque leaders bought up eight different parcels and expanded. “They haven’t gotten the permits. They haven’t had their plans reviewed,” DeKalb County spokesman Burke Brennan told Channel 2 Action News. DeKalb County requires a standard in construction to make sure the buildings are safe for the occupants and visitors, including children at the mosque’s school advertised on the web. The mosque was found in violation of the standard and was cited. Code enforcement officers have visited at least eight different times. “We’re issuing the citations as we see the infractions being made. Then, they have to go be adjudicated in front of a judge,” Brennan said.
A judge put the mosque leaders on probation in November, ordering them to tear down the existing structures and not to hold assemblies or services until a new mosque is built. “They’ve had an assembly every day on Friday since that. They’ve been on probation by the court, and they’ve just ignored that court order,” Owens said. “We can’t re-cite them for those infractions that are already under probation. However, we did cite them for some new violations,” Burke told Channel 2 investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer. One new violation is for building a paved area without a permit. It happened after neighbors complained about illegal parking on their lawns. The mosque got rid of livestock they were keeping, but when Channel 2 Action News visited the property, the cages were still there.
Owens also had complaints about the noise from the mosque. “Just recently (they) started playing the horn at 7 o’clock in the morning. They should have to obey the law just like I have to obey the law,” he said. Channel 2 tried several times unsuccessfully to schedule an interview with the imam, or mosque leader. When Channel 2 showed up at the mosque, the imam said he felt Owens’ complaints to the county were harassment. “I don’t want to talk please, and we don’t need to. Someone is harassing us, and you’re helping him,” said Imam Mohammad Enamul Haque. Haque said he didn’t need to explain himself to Fleischer. “I don’t need to prove to you,” Haque said.
But he will need to prove himself to a judge. Last week, mosque leaders were back in court for two more citations, this time with an attorney. “People are free to assemble and pray peacefully, and that’s what they have been doing and they have no intention of changing their behavior,” said attorney M. Khurram Baig. Owens said it’s not about prayers, it’s about property. “Once they’re cited, they need to correct the problem. Just don’t pay the fine and continue to do it,” said Owens. The judge had given the mosque until last Wednesday to tear down the existing structures, but that has not happened. The judge has now scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning to decide whether to revoke the probation, and what sort of punishment they should face for violating her order.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Area, Hezbollah in the Tri-State Area
For years I have been blogging on Iran’s presence in Latin America, which includes Hezbollah’s influence in the tri-border area of Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina.
Most readers probably consider this an abstraction of sorts, things happening far away that have no bearing in their lives.
In fact, this is a matter of national security important to the USA. Mitchell Silber, director of intelligence analysis for the New York City Police Department, explains why in today’s Wall Street Journal,
The Iranian Threat to New York City
As the West’s conflict with Iran over its nuclear program heats up, New York City—with its large Jewish population—becomes an increasingly attractive target.
[…]
And, for what it’s worth, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi is wanted by Interpol for being behind the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires.
| — Hat tip: Fausta | [Return to headlines] |
Justice Breyer Robbed by Machete-Wielding Intruder at West Indies Vacation Home
Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed last week by a machete-wielding intruder at his vacation home in the West Indies, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Monday.
[…]
The last time a justice was the victim of a crime was in 2004, when a group of young men assaulted Justice David Souter as he jogged on the street in Washington.
In 1996, a man snatched Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s purse while she was out walking with her husband and daughter near their home in Washington. Ginsburg was not hurt.
[Note from Egghead: It’s good to know that the Keystone Cops guard our Supreme Court justices in addition to the Queen of England. Our American checks and balances are totally safe in this situation where anyone can walk right up to a Supreme Court justice and commit a violent crime. OMG!]
| — Hat tip: Egghead | [Return to headlines] |
NASA to Reshape Mars Exploration Strategy to Fit Budget
NASA is fundamentally overhauling its Mars exploration strategy, ditching multibillion-dollar “flagship” missions in favor of cheaper, more efficient projects for now, agency officials announced Monday (Feb. 13). The decision is a response to diminished funding for robotic exploration going forward. In his federal budget request for next year, which was revealed Monday, President Barack Obama allocated $1.2 billion to NASA’s planetary science programs — a 20 percent cut from the current allotment of $1.5 billion, with further reductions expected over the next several years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Our Sun May Have Been Bigger Long Ago
Standard models predict that our sun was much dimmer in its youth, but devising a way to keep the early Earth from freezing over has not been easy for climate modelers. An alternative solution — currently being reexamined by a group of researchers — is to assume our sun started out a bit heftier (and therefore brighter) than expected.
Most stars tend to increase in luminosity as they get older. This is due to their cores becoming denser and thus hotter over time. Assuming our sun has followed this same trend, one can estimate that it was 30 percent fainter 4.5 billion years ago.
“The faint young sun presents us with a paradox, because the predicted temperatures on Earth and Mars would have been too cold for liquid water,” said Steinn Sigurdsson of Penn State University. Too cold for liquid water? Not likely. Evidence in the oldest rocks suggests that Earth had liquid oceans as far back as 4.4 billion years ago. On Mars, scientists have built up a case that it too was warm and wetaround 4 billion years ago.
The young massive sun hypothesis doesn’t get a lot of attention these days. “I think it is a plausible hypothesis, which has not found great favor with the traditional climate science community,” said Renu Malhotra of the Lunar Planetary Lab at Arizona State University, who is not involved with the current project. She wonders if others see it as a bit too easy, like cutting the Gordian knot.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Samuel L. Jackson: I Voted for Obama Because He’s Black
Barack Obama’s politics meant nothing to Samuel L. Jackson because the “Pulp Fiction” star only voted for the president for one reason and one reason only … because he’s black. In an interview with Ebony magazine, Jackson explained, “I voted for Barack because he was black. ‘Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them … That’s American politics, pure and simple. (Obama’s) message didn’t mean (bleep) to me.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Bins Joint EU Project to Visit Mars
BRUSSELS — The US is scrapping a joint project with the EU to land a robot on Mars due to lack of money. Charles Bolden, the chief of US space agency Nasa, announced the move at a press conference in Washington on Monday (13 February) on how his agency plans to spend its 2013 budget.
He said: “Tough choices had to be made … This means we will not be moving forward with the planned 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions that we had been exploring with the European Space Agency (Esa).” He added the US is not giving up on Mars as such: “This administration remains committed to a vibrant and co-ordinated strategy of Mars exploration … Our goals include not only new path-breaking robotic missions to Mars, but also future human missions.”
President Barack Obama has said the US aims to land men on Mars in the mid-2030s. He plans to spend $17.7 billion on Nasa next year, a figure slightly down on 2012. But if Congress approves the draft budget, its planetary science programme will be cut by 20 percent from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion.
Esa could not be contacted for a comment on Tuesday morning. The Paris-based, €4-billion-a-year agency is funded by 19 EU countries. Its website says ExoMars was to land a robot vehicle which would “travel several kilometres searching for traces of past and present signs of life” and to install a stationary science facility to see if the planet is habitable.
Russia and China have a competing Mars programme. But they suffered a setback on 15 January when Russia’s so-called Phobos-Grunt probe, carrying a Chinese Mars-observation satellite, Yinghuo-1, fell into the sea. In an echo of the Cold-War-era space race, Russian news agency Ria Novosti at the time said Russian investigators ruled out “external or foreign influence” in the crash.
For their part, planetary scientists voiced dismay about the Nasa-Esa cutback. Ed Weiler, a former Nasa researcher who designed its Mars plans, told Science Magazine: “Two years ago, because of budget cuts in the Mars programme, I had to appeal to Europe to merge our programmes … That process took two long years of very delicate negotiations.”
He added: “So, you develop a capability nobody else has, the so-called EDL capability — entry, descent and landing — that took a long time, that took decades. If you let that die, you don’t just go out to K-Mart and hire new people to do it again.”
Bill Nye, the head of the Pasadena, California-based Planetary Society, said in a written statement: “How many government programmes can you think of that consistently fill people with pride, awe, and wonder? Nasa’s planetary exploration programme is one of the few, and so it seems particularly ironic and puzzling that it has been so specifically targeted for such drastic budget cuts.”
The next window for landings on Mars is from 2018 to 2020, when the two planets’ orbits bring them closer together.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US to Resume Building Nuclear Plants
For the first time since 1978, the United States has approved the construction of nuclear reactors. While the decision could herald a new dawn for nuclear power there, the major growth in the sector is likely to be elsewhere.
The nuclear industry had been expecting a renaissance in the next few years, until a major setback occurred — last year’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan. In the aftermath, Japan closed most of its reactors for safety tests, Germany announced it was abandoning nuclear and other countries elected to review their plans.
The situation may now be changing. On 9 February the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a licence for Southern Company, an energy utility based in Atlanta, Georgia, to build a pair of reactors at its Vogtle site. No new reactors have been built in the US since before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Young Men Report Increased Violence
While only four percent of Copenhageners say they experienced violence in 2011, almost one in ten men under age 25 say the were subject to assualt in the same period
Young men are more than twice as likely to be the subject to violence or assault in Copenhagen as the average resident, a new report from the City Council has shown. The report was based on interviews with residents about whether they had experienced violence or attempted violence in the last year and compared the results to responses from 2009.
Despite a small overall drop from four percent to 3.7 percent, an increased number of men under the age of 25 reported experiencing violence, from 7.1 percent to 9.1 percent. The report also revealed that women were only half as likely to have experienced violence as men — 2.6 percent for women compared to 5 percent for men — while belonging to a minority group significantly increased the risk of assault.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Looks at Scottish Breakaway Bid With Intrigue
(BRUSSELS) — When British Prime Minister David Cameron enters Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s lair this week, fellow EU leaders trying to prevent their own nations from splitting will look on with interest. Cameron is travelling to Edinburgh on Thursday in a bid to iron out the terms of a Scottish referendum on independence from the United Kingdom.
The pro-independence Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, wants the vote to take place in 2014 although polls show that he still faces a battle to persuade a majority of voters to back the break with London. Analysts in Brussels say Scottish independence could trigger a fundamental redrawing of the relationship between Britain and the European Union — something that could have profound implications for countries such as Belgium, Spain and Italy which have their own powerful separatist movements.
“Would the way the EU handles Scotland also apply if other states were to split, like Belgium or Spain?” asked Piotr Maciej Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies. “The impact on other countries, especially Spain and Belgium, could be enormous,” he said.
Analysts predict that some member states could target a multi-billion-euro rebate Britain gets from the EU budget, as well as “opt-outs” from the troubled euro and the Schengen open borders agreement.
These political analysts also tip rival European Union powers to seize on perceived weakness in London. “If you are angry with the current government of the UK, it might be a scenario you’d like,” Hans Martens, who heads the leading European Policy Centre in Brussels, told AFP.
Kaczynski agreed that there would “probably be some attempts by Continental politicians to convince the Scots to revoke the British opt-outs,” with the aim of weakening London’s position.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Facebook and France in Focus in Breivik Probe
Norwegian police have requested assistance from France and Facebook to cast light on the personality of the man who killed 77 people in twin attacks last July, the police prosecutor in charge of the probe said on Tuesday. Nearly seven months after 33-year-old right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik carried out the attacks on July 22nd, investigators have yet to interrogate the confessed killer’s father Jens Breivik, a retired diplomat living in southern France.
“We have sent a request for judicial assistance, and we hope we will be able to question him before the trial begins” on April 16th, Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby told AFP in a telephone interview. “He does not want to come to Norway, nor to go to the Norwegian embassy or consulate where we could interrogate him, and we have therefore asked French authorities to help us,” he said.
Norwegian police would like their French counterparts to question the retired diplomat, who is in his 70s, in their presence. “The father has not seen the suspect for years,” Hjort Kraby noted. “He has not lived with him since he was one year old, and he is therefore peripheral but still important for understanding (Behring Breivik’s) personality.”
In an interview with commercial broadcaster TV2 three days after the twin attacks, Jens Breivik said: “I think that ultimately he should have taken his own life rather than kill so many people.”
Norwegian investigators have also asked Facebook to provide them with information about accounts opened by Behring Breivik that have since been closed. “They are usually very restrictive when it comes to providing this kind of information and they only do so in rare cases. But we have received signals that they want to help us,” Hjort Kraby said. “In this case too, the aim is to map the contacts he has had, who he has talked with and who were his friends,” he added.
According to Hjort Kraby, Norwegian police are also eager to question a Belarusian woman living in the United States who apparently had a brief relationship with Behring Breivik. “This case is so huge, it touches so many people and it has shaken Norway so much that we must dig down and leave no stone unturned that can provide answers about the crimes but also about the reason they happened,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: New More Melodious Bells for Notre Dame
Old ones out of tune, change in 2013 for cathedral
(ANSAmed) — PARIS — Their chimes marked the novels of Victor Hugo and Francois Rabelais, their bronze was used to manufacture the guns of the revolutionaries, and they still mark the hours today, accompanying Republicans rites or religious holidays. The bells of Notre Dame in Paris are now old and out of tune and next year will be replaced by more melodious, powerful and tuneful models. The occasion is the 850th anniversary of the church, consecrated in 1163, the theatre of the history of France including coronations and funerals of kings and emperors, and visited by about 14 million tourists a year, a Mecca for French Roman Catholics.
The purpose of this renewal is to recreate the sound of the seventeenth century, that of 1686, which was lost with the French Revolution, when the brass of Notre Dame, like that of most of the churches of France, was seized and melted down. Four French bell manufacturers, the last in the country, participated in the contract, following the weights and diameters recorded on the original documents. The new bells will be manufactured as in the Middle Ages, using a bronze casting in clay. Only the four bells in the north tower will be replaced.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Le Pen Still at Risk of Not Being Able to Stand
Far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen is taking her battle over France’s election rules to the country’s highest court this week as she claimed still to be short of meeting requirements to stand in upcoming presidential elections. Le Pen is arguing that anonymity should be granted for the 500 signatures that any candidate for the presidency must obtain. Under current rules the signatories’ names are published.
Under a 1976 French law, a candidate needs 500 signatures from elected officials in at least 30 different administrative departments across the country of in France’s overseas territories. The Constitutional Court will consider the matter on Thursday and will give its judgement the following Wednesday. The judges have the power to change the rules so that signatories’ names can remain secret.
Le Pen herself said on Monday she had now received 400 signatures, although progress was slow. “The signatures are arriving too slowly for our taste, but they are coming all the same,” she said, reported Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday. “A certain number of mayors are aware that this situation is unacceptable and they need to be courageous,” she added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Sarkozy to Announce Re-Election Bid This Week
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to announce his bid for re-election this week, setting the stage for what he hopes will be a dramatic comeback against his poll-leading Socialist rival. With only 10 weeks before the first round of France’s presidential vote on April 22nd, right-wing Sarkozy is lagging in the polls, struggling with image problems and burdened with a moribund economy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Draft Law Aims to Ban Hijab for Child Minders
The controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf in France is making headlines again as the French National Assembly studies a draft law that will ban religious symbols in all facilities catering for children, including nannies and childcare assistants looking after children at home. The draft law was approved by the French Senate with a large majority on Jan. 17 and it was sent to the National Assembly to be ratified before being signed it into law by the president. “Unless otherwise specified in a contract with the individual employer, a childcare assistant is subject to an obligation of neutrality in religious matters in the course of childcare activity,” reads the text of the draft law introduced by Françoise Laborde, a senator from the Radical Party of the Left. “Parents have the right to want a nanny who is neutral from a religious perspective,” the left-wing senator was quoted as saying by ANSAmed news agency.
Critics of the draft law say Laborde is targeting Muslim nannies and childcare assistants. The senator said that she was “encouraged to act” after a private nursery, Baby Loup, fired an employee who refused to remove her Islamic headscarf. In Oct. 27, 2011, the appeals court in Versailles upheld the decision to expel the employee as lawful. “The recent ruling of the Court of Appeal of Versailles in favor of Baby Loup is in the right direction, and I hope that this case is translated into law,” Laborde said in December 20011. Djamila, a childcare assistant, told Rue89 French website it is “absolutely not her role” to speak of religion with kids. “We look after children of younger three years. Can you you tell me what can they understand at that age?”
An analyst in secularism, Jean Baubérot, wrote in a blog posted on the website Mediapart, that he was outraged by the brandishing of secularism in what he described was a law discriminatory against Muslims. He accused the ruling Union for Popular Movement and the interior minister Claude Guéant of having torn secularism’s principle of “religious freedom” by reviving links between religion and the state while at same time cracking down on individuals’ links with religion.
Al Arabiya, 13 February 2012
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
French Nuclear Anxieties Soar After Fukushima
by John Daly
France began developing a massive nuclear energy program with minimal public debate after the first oil crisis in 1974 and continued to support nuclear power even after the 1986 Soviet Chernobyl disaster.
French nuclear energy giant Areva SA, majority owned by the French state, operates the country’s 59 nuclear reactors, which generate 78.8 percent of France’s electricity, the highest percentage in the world.
Until Fukushima the French public felt largely secure in the safety of their country’s nuclear facilities.
No more.
In a report certain to spur political and public debate, France’s Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire (Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety, or IRSN) has just issued its 2012 Barometer IRSN Perception of Risks and Safety for the French. Which is a detailed report about the French public’s attitudes towards the country’s nuclear industry, and it makes for devastating reading.
Issued annually since 1988, the IRSN Barometer is designed to measure the changes in public opinion towards the nuclear and radiological risks to which the public are subjected. The 2012 edition of the IRSN Barometer shows the responses of 1,013 French respondents who were interviewed at home between 21 September and 5 October 2011.
(SEE MORE AT URL, ABOVE)
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Heart Struck by CERN Proton Beams for Valentine’s Day
Love may be all about chemistry, but that hasn’t stopped particle physicists from making their own special Valentines. This heart has been pierced not by Cupid’s arrow, but two proton beams smashing together within the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider.
Imperial College London researcher Tom Whyntie took data from one of the earliest collisions at the LHC and added simulated data that followed the path of a heart-shaped equation. He gave the picture to his girlfriend as a Valentine’s day card in 2010 — they are now happily married.
Whyntie isn’t the only one to mix particles with passion — Suzie Sheehy, a researcher at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK wrote a Valentine’s day poem inspired by a heart-shaped simulation of 629 protons torn apart by a particle accelerator.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
I Am François Desouche
Fdesouche.com is probably the best anti-Islam, anti-European Genocide blog in Europe. Although it focuses on France, it also covers similar stories from elsewhere on the continent. Many of the stories I post on this blog originate there.
In France, the website has become so popular that it has begun to have a marked effect on French politics. Marine Le Pen professed herself a fan. Multicultists, Muslims and the elite apologists for genocide who dominate Establishment culture in France as they do elsewhere in Europe, revile and regularly denounce this website.
They know that the simple collation of relevant materials has proved to be extraordinary powerful in undermining their worldview. It should come as no surprise, then, that Fdesouche.com is now under legal attack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Internet is a Powerful Catalyst for Jihad: Dutch Security Service
The internet has become a powerful catalyst for international violent jihad, according to a new report from the Dutch security service AIVD. The organisation says it expects online jihadism to become a ‘crucial factor’ in the threat to the Netherlands and to other Western countries over the next few years.
In particular, ‘core forums which form part of the so-called invisible web, a part of the world-wide web that cannot be found by readily accessible search engines’, are behind the spread of ideas, the report says. These sites are built and secured by fanatics without any formal affiliations to organisations such as Al-Qaeda.
‘Jihadist cyberspace offers them a virtual marketplace. This is where experienced explosives experts in, for example, Pakistan can get in touch with and support young enthusiastic jihadist wannabes living on the other side of the world, eager to take violent action,’ the AIVD says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Milan: City to Recognize a Dozen ‘Mini-Mosques’
After mapping the city’s Muslim community needs, the city of Milan has decided not to approve a grand mosque. Instead, the city will approve and recognize about a dozen existing small ‘garage’ mosques as neighborhood mosques.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Pressure Mounts on Prime Minister Over ‘Problem With Poles’ Website
Pressure is mounting on prime minister Mark Rutte to make a formal statement about a website set up by the government’s alliance partner, the anti-immigration PVV, which calls on people to report complaints about central and eastern Europeans.
On Tuesday, the premier again refused to comment about the site, telling MPs during prime minister’s questions it is a matter for the PVV only.
However, pressure is mounting within and outside the Netherlands for Rutte to distance himself from the site, which places newspaper headlines such as ‘Eastern Europeans, increasingly criminal’ alongside a complaints hotline.
The PVV says the aim of the site is to gain insight into ‘problems caused by central and eastern Europeans in terms of crime, alcoholism, drugs use, dumping household waste and prostitution’.
According to the Volkskrant on Tuesday, Martin Schulz, chairman of the European parliament, is to speak to PVV leader Geert Wilders about the website and the parliament is looking into its legality.
On Friday, European commissioner Viviane Reding described the site as an ‘open call to intolerance’, a statement which led Wilders to comment ‘Brussels can get stuffed’.
European MPs, including Hans van Baalen, leader of the Dutch VVD liberal grouping, have also called on Rutte to speak out. The site is ‘vulgar’ and ‘sick-making’, Van Baalen said. The ambassadors of 10 central and eastern European countries have written to the Dutch parliament, stating the website is ‘unacceptable’. Wilders described their letter as a ‘waste of paper’.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Sikhs to Sue Police Officials
Norway’s Sikh Gurduara Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji community warns of possible legal action against the Ministry of Justice following a current ban on turbans in the police.
Community spokesperson Jagroshan Singh, who himself aspired for a police career, told Dagsavisen, “several of our members have said they would like to undergo police education and training, but feel offended at being ostracised because turbans are not permitted if wishing to become an officer.”
Norway has about 5,000 Sikhs. Approximately 2,500 are members of Gurduara Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. According Mr Singh, the religious attire is neither discriminatory nor oppressive against women, as it is worn by both sexes.
“Wearing a turban is an important part of our identity. Both police uniform regulations and the ministry’s interpretation of these leads to our exclusion from participation in society on an equal footing with everyone else,” he declared.
The Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombudsman and its superior, the Equality Tribunal, have already concluded the veto breaches applicable legislation.
Last month, a government committee proposed allowing members of the police and judges to wear the Hijab following former Minister of Justice Knut Storberget’s 2009 ban for police officers.
Legal firm Hjort has now sent a letter to the Ministry of Justice on behalf of their client. They allege the practise contravenes the Discrimination Act legislation prohibiting prejudice on the grounds of religion.
Lawyer Lars Christiansen said, “I perceive the police as being open to others. An officer came forward last week regarding his homosexuality. Diversity and an inclusive culture in the force are commendable. Sikhs believe the time has come to use the headdress as part of police uniform on the grounds of cultural identity.”
A Ministry of Justice press spokesperson confirms, today, they have received the letter from Hjort, but tells The Foreigner the matter is still under discussion.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Moroccan Man Swallowed Kilo of Hash
A 34-year-old Moroccan man had more than a kilo’s worth of cannabis in his stomach when he was stopped on Saturday by customs officers at Stavanger Airport, south-western Norway. Police sniffer dog Benjy sought out the traveller as he passed through customs after landing on a flight from Malaga, the customs authority said in a statement.
At first the man tried to convince customs officers that he had come to Norway to seek work before eventually admitting that he had swallowed 102 capsules filled with hash. The customs officers alerted the police, who came and took the suspect to hospital for an X-ray examination.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Killer and Dutch MP in Fictional Meeting
A play depicting a fictional meeting between Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik and Dutch anti-Islam far-right leader Geert Wilders is to be staged in Amsterdam next month, organisers said on Tuesday. “This is a fictional encounter between Geert Wilders and Anders Behring Breivik,” Olivier Willemsen, spokesman for the cultural centre “Die Balie” told AFP. “Behring Breivik asks Wilders the big question: ‘How far are you willing to go for your ideas?’“ Willemsen said of the play, which will premiere on March 22nd and run twice on March 25th.
In the work by Dutch playwright Theodor Holman, Wilders and Behring Breivik have a chance encounter at Heathrow airport after the British screening of Wilders’ real-life anti-Islam film “Fitna” (“Discord” in Arabic). Released in 2008, “Fitna” showed shocking images of 9/11 and other terror attacks on Western targets interspersed with verses from the Koran.
The movie caused widespread outrage in Muslim countries, as well as opposition from the Dutch government, which feared it might spark a militant response similar to that which followed the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. On July 22nd, Behring Breivik, who has claimed to be on a crusade against multi-culturalism and the “Muslim invasion” of Europe, set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Gunman, Dutch Right-Wing MP in Fictional Meeting
A play depicting a fictional meeting between Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik and Dutch anti-Islam far-right leader Geert Wilders is to be staged in Amsterdam next month, organisers said Tuesday.
“This is a fictional encounter between Geert Wilders and Anders Behring Breivik,” Olivier Willemsen, spokesman for the cultural centre “Die Balie” told AFP.
“Behring Breivik asks Wilders the big question: ‘How far are you willing to go for your ideas?’“ Willemsen said of the play, which will premiere on March 22 and run twice on March 25.
In the work by Dutch playwright Theodor Holman, Wilders and Behring Breivik have a chance encounter at Heathrow airport after the British screening of Wilders’ real-life anti-Islam film “Fitna” (“Discord” in Arabic).
Released in 2008, “Fitna” showed shocking images of 9/11 and other terror attacks on Western targets interspersed with verses from the Koran.
The movie caused widespread outrage in Muslim countries, as well as opposition from the Dutch government, which feared it might spark a militant response similar to that which followed the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
On July 22, Behring Breivik, who has claimed to be on a crusade against multi-culturalism and the “Muslim invasion” of Europe, set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people.
He then went to Utoeya island, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Oslo, and, dressed as a police officer, spent more than an hour methodically shooting and killing another 69 people, mainly teens attending a summer camp hosted by the ruling Labour Party’s youth wing.
Wilders strongly condemned Behring Breivik’s attacks and said he was disgusted by the Norwegian’s mention of him in his 1,500-page manifesto that circulated on the Internet shortly beforehand.
The Dutch politician’s Freedom Party has 24 seats in the 150-seat parliament, where it lends its support to the coalition government of Dutch Premier Mark Rutte.
A theatre in Copenhagen sparked controversy in January by announcing it would produce a monologue based on Behring Breivik’s manifesto.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar Financing Wahhabi Islam in France, Italy, Ireland and Spain
by Soeren Kern
Qatar, the most fraudulent “moderate,” is “sparing no effort” to spread Wahhabi Islam across “the whole world,” discouraging integration, encouraging jihad.
The Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar says it plans to invest €50 million ($65 million) in French suburbs that are home to hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Muslim immigrants.
Qatar says its investment is intended to support small businesses in disadvantaged Muslim neighborhoods. But Qatar, like Saudi Arabia, subscribes to the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam, and critics say the emirate’s real objective is to peddle its religious ideology among Muslims in France and other parts of Europe.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist and modernizer, recently vowed to “spare no effort” to spread the fundamentalist teachings of Wahhabi Islam across “the whole world.”
The promotion of Islamic extremist ideologies — particularly Wahhabism, which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West, but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims — threatens to further radicalize Muslim immigrants in France, analysts say.
The Qatari investments are being targeted in blighted French suburban slums known in France as banlieues, where up to one million or more mostly unemployed Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East eke out an impoverished existence.
The banlieues are already being exploited by Islamist preachers from countries such as Morocco and Turkey, which are leveraging the social marginalization of Muslim immigrants in France to create “separate Islamic societies” ruled by Islamic Sharia law, according to a recent study which examines the rise of Islam in France.
The 2,200-page report, “Banlieue de la République” (Suburbs of the Republic) — commissioned by the influential French think tank L’Institut Montaigne, and directed by Gilles Kepel, a well-known specialist on the Muslim world — describes how Muslim immigrants are increasingly rejecting French values and identity in favor of Islam.
The report shows how Sharia law is rapidly displacing French civil law in many parts of suburban Paris and warns that France is on the brink of a major social explosion because of the failure of Muslims to integrate into French society.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
Record Year for French Wine and Spirits Exports
France set a record for its wine and spirits exports with more than €10 billion ($13 billion) in 2011, a 10.5 percent annual increase, the Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters said on Tuesday. With a surplus of €8.6 billion ($11.3 billion), wine and spirits were the second-largest contributor to France’s trade balance after the aerospace industry, the federation said.
Federation president Louis Fabrice Latour told a press conference the growth was due more to a 10.5 percent rise in prices than to a 2.4 percent volume increase. Emerging market exports continued to rise and in 2011 accounted for more than one billion euros, the federation said.
Europe remained the main market for French wine and spirits, at €4.1 billion, up three percent in 2011. Asia imported €2.5 billion worth, up 29 percent, and the Americas €2.1 billion worth, up nine percent.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Space Probe Spots Weird Microwave Haze in Our Galaxy
A European spacecraft has snapped new images of our Milky Way galaxy, confirming the puzzling presence of a shroud of microwave fog around the galactic core. The new images come from the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft, which showed the odd microwave haze during a survey that also turned up previously unseen patches of cold gas where new stars are forming.
The energy haze was hinted at by a previous NASA mission, but the Planck measurements confirmed its existence, researchers said. The Planck findings should help scientists construct a more-detailed blueprint of the cosmos, they added.
“The images reveal two exciting aspects of the galaxy in which we live,” Planck mission scientist Krzysztof Gorski, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Poland’s Warsaw University Observatory, said in a statement Monday (Feb. 13). “They show a haze around the center of the galaxy, and cold gas where we never saw it before.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The European Parliament Flies the Union Jack Upside Down
Earlier today Roger Helmer MEP tweeted that the Union Flag was flying upside down outside of the European Parliament. Here’s the proof: [photo] Mr Helmer has written to the President of the Parliament asking for the insult to be corrected: “Arriving at the parliament this morning around 7:00 a.m., I noticed that in the line of national flags, the flag of my country, the Union jack, was flying upside down (as it was when I first arrived at the Strasbourg parliament in 1999). May I ask if this is merely an oversight, or a deliberate snub? May I also ask what action you propose to take to ensure that this does not happen again?”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Mosque-Busters’ Leaflet Delievered by EDL Activist
THE man attempting to stir up fears over plans to build a mosque in Purley is a far-right activist and avid supporter of the woman accused of racially abusing people on a tram.
English Defence League member Frank Day proudly claims to have put leaflets through the doors of 600 homes in the area. His “Does Croydon need a mosque here?” leaflet contains information about a proposal to build an Islamic centre at 5 Russell Hill Place. It urges residents to fight the application in the belief it will cause traffic issues. But despite his apparent concerns over parking issues in Purley, Mr Day lives six miles away on the New Addington estate — and freely admits he would object to a mosque being built anywhere.
Resident and Purley and Woodcote Residents’ Association member Andrew Frazer was one of those to have received a letter. He said: “He (Mr Day) dropped a leaflet through the door and came back later after delivering some through other doors. He said, ‘we don’t agree with it, we are dead against it, we want as many people to complain to Croydon Council as possible’. He visited twice and when he came back after the first time he said ‘if you want to find out more go to Mosque Busters by typing it into Google’.”
We tracked Mr Day to his home in Arnhem Drive, which he shares with his 86-year-old mother. Here he told us that the information contained in his leaflets came directly from “Mosquebuster” Gavin Boby. Mr Boby is a professional planning consultant who has posted videos on the internet advising people how to defeat applications for Islamic places of worship. Mr Day, who was arrested at an EDL rally in November, told the Advertiser that “they” (Muslims) were “taking over” and that “one mosque is too many”. The 64-year-old added he had attended a court appearance of Emma West, who is accused of racially abusing people on a tram, to show his support.
Purley and Woodcote Residents’ Association chairman Tarsem Flora said: “People are not silly and can come to their own conclusions. But if they are at all concerned then of course they can contact us.” Purley councillor Badsha Quadir has said he believes the leaflets are ‘racially motivated’ and is seeking advice from police. He told the Advertiser: “My colleagues and I are concerned about this extremist leafleting. I understand residents are concerned. It is not for people to come from New Addington and say what should happen in Purley. I would not go to New Addington and comment on their amenities. The leaflet appears racially motivated and I will speak to the borough commander about this issue and see what he can do.”
Police advised anyone concerned by the leaflets or the manner in which they were being given out to contact their local safer neighbourhood team on 020 8721 2467. In December last year the Advertiser reported how members of Purley Islamic Community Centre revealed plans for a place of worship to double up as a community centre, with a formal planning application registered by the council last month.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Ali Dizaei Guilty of Corruption at Retrial
Britain’s most controversial police chief, Ali Dizaei, has been jailed for three years after being found guilty of corruption for a second time.
Scotland Yard commander Dizaei will never wear police uniform again after being convicted unanimously at his retrial of misconduct and perverting the course of justice. He was first convicted of framing Waad al-Baghdadi in a street row in 2010 — but he walked out of Leyhill open prison a year later after the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. Guilty verdicts for a second time mean there is now no way back for Dizaei, who created a web of lies to cover his tracks. His three-year sentence will be reduced by the 15 months he has already spent behind bars as part of the four-year jail term he received after being convicted of the same offences in February 2010. Despite new evidence about Iraqi Mr al-Baghdadi’s immigration status, jurors were not swayed by Dizaei’s denials. They found he attacked the young Iraqi businessman before arresting and attempting to frame him. The convictions spell the end of the Iranian officer’s career spanning three decades. He won his job back with the Metropolitan Police before the retrial but has been suspended on his full salary of £90,000. Dizaei previously emerged unscathed from a series of inquiries over the years, including a multimillion-pound undercover operation examining claims of corruption, fraud and dishonesty. But the attempt to frame a man who pestered him for payment over a website exposed him as a violent bully and liar who abused his position. Dizaei will remain a senior police officer until the bureaucratic formal process of throwing him out of the force can be completed. He will then be sacked for gross misconduct and could face losing all or part of his pension under further measures aimed at punishing corrupt officers.
The two men met by chance in the Persian Yas restaurant, run by Dizaei’s friend Sohrab Eshragi, in Hammersmith Road, west London, on July 18 2008. Mr al-Baghdadi approached Dizaei and asked for £600 he was owed for building a website showcasing his career, press interviews and speeches. This angered Dizaei, who had just eaten a meal with his wife after attending a ceremony at New Scotland Yard for new recruits. The officer confronted the younger man in a nearby sidestreet where a scuffle took place and Mr al-Baghdadi was roughly arrested and handcuffed. Dizaei told Mr al-Baghdadi he would “f*** up your life” and had “10 witnesses” who would back him up. In one of two 999 calls, Dizaei asked an operator for “urgent assistance” before starting to arrest Mr al-Baghdadi. When officers arrived, Dizaei handed them the metal mouthpiece of a shisha pipe, held on Mr al-Baghdadi’s key ring, and claimed he had been stabbed with it. But a doctor at Hammersmith police station concluded that two red marks on the officer’s torso were probably self-inflicted and did not match the pipe. Dizaei told colleagues he had been attacked, leaving Mr al-Baghdadi in custody for 24 hours and ultimately facing prosecution.
When Mr al-Baghdadi was told he would not face any charge, he complained about his treatment and Dizaei’s web of deceit slowly unravelled. The Crown said the officer was guilty of a “wholesale abuse of power” motivated by self-interest and pride. The jury also heard that Dizaei rarely paid for his meals and left his unmarked car on a double yellow line while at the restaurant. In a bid to get off the hook Iranian-born Dizaei, 49, from Acton, west London, said he suffered a “torrent of abuse” from Mr Al-Baghdadi and felt threatened. A 999 call Mr Al-Baghdadi made during the confrontation formed a central part of the case. Mr Al-Baghdadi was heard by the operator saying “No, no, no” before Dizaei said to him “I am arresting you”. Two police cars arrived at the restaurant within minutes before finding Dizaei in full uniform. He was described by officers as “calm”, while Mr Al-Baghdadi “looked similar but perhaps confused”, Mr Wright said. Jurors were told that Mr Al-Baghdadi had used false documents to enter Britain in 2003. He had wrongly stated that he was born in Baghdad in 1985 and was fleeing the country to avoid persecution, Mr Riordan added. Born in Tehran in 1962, Dizaei was brought up in a family steeped in policing with a father who headed the traffic police and an assistant commissioner grandfather. He said police work was his destiny and joined Thames Valley Police after attending boarding school and City University Law School. In 1999, Dizaei joined the Metropolitan Police and was promoted to superintendent, based in Kensington, south-west London.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Conservatives Should be the Party of Religious Freedom
by Peter Cuthbertson
As so often, Eric Pickles is onto something. As the High Court sided this week with the National Secular Society, it ruled in a moment of sheer petty nastiness that having a moment for entirely voluntary prayers as part of a council’s agenda was illegal. Pickles fired back that the “right to worship is a fundamental and hard fought British liberty” and promised that the general power of competence in his Localism Bill would overrule this. I hope the general public is listening, and I hope other Conservatives are taking heed. With each victory that militant secularism celebrates, Conservatives should feel obliged by our principles and electoral necessity to defend religious liberty.
It is scarcely necessary to enumerate the many examples of injustices recently inflicted on Christians and others by the courts or the liberal-left. But there are many. People have faced losing their jobs for wearing a cross around their neck or placing one on the dashboard of their van. Doctors have been disciplined for mentioning their faith at work. A couple stood trial for describing the burkha as “oppressive”. A teenager was tried for saying that Scientology is a “cult”. A Warwickshire Mayor was officially reprimanded and forced to apologise to the press last month for describing Halloween as a “pagan festival” — apparently as it might offend pagans. A Lancashire café owner was told by police he was breaking the law by showing a DVD that featured the text of the Bible, one verse after another.
It should be said immediately that one does not have to be a conservative to be opposed to much of the above. Many decent people on the left would oppose the lack of proportion. But at the heart of such measures is the growth of a militant secularism of the Richard Dawkins/Evan Harris variety. As this approach becomes the common sense of elites across the institutions, religious people are increasingly being pushed around. So often, this militant secularism wears the cloak of the ancient principles of religious tolerance and liberty, put so well by Elizabeth I when she expressed “no desire to make windows into men’s souls”. But the notion of the state protecting everyone’s right to pray to whomever and believe whatever they wish is a world away from much modern, extreme secularism. This attitude holds that public religious expression is suspect, that separation between church and state — including how taxpayers’ money is spent — must be absolute, and that the emanations of the state should constantly be monitoring religious people or institutions, ever ready to crack down upon the slightest departure from this stringent policy.
This is an approach inherently unconservative in its absolutism, its ahistoricism, its lack of pragmatism and its view of the relationship between the state and the subject or citizen.
The last of these points deserves particular elaboration. Every militant secularist sees faith schools as a bad thing, irrespective of how much better they so often perform than secular schools. It should come as no surprise that it is religious groups that have done so much to make academies work — and, one hopes, free schools in time. The justification is always phrased the same way: ‘the state should not be funding religious education’. The problem is that, as every conservative knows, the state has no money. Every penny government ministers spend comes from taxpayers. “How very dare taxpayers presume to second-guess how the state spends its hard-earned money?!” is just about consistent with old-school socialism, but it is not a principle to which any conservative should subscribe. Indeed, many church schools were in the education business long before the state took them over. What could be a clearer infringement of liberty than the state banning religion from church institutions having nationalised them?
Other secularists appeal to a sense of fairness, suggesting that militant secularism is a neutral position. But as a friend put it to me recently, arguing that this secularism is the state taking a neutral stance on religion is like claiming that mandating nudity is the state taking a neutral stance on clothing. The secularism of the National Secular Society bans not clothes but faith schools of every variety. It mandates that all welfare and all aid be delivered through secular institutions, however ineffectively. It bans government support for religious rehabilitation programmes in prison. It would dismantle the Coronation and, as David Jones MP has suggested, prevent prayers in Parliament. As we saw above, it also leads inevitably to a thousand acts of pettiness that inflict needless harm on so many who did nothing more than wear a cross or pray for a patient. Far from being a neutral stance on religion, militant secularism is a kind of aggregate of the intolerance of all religious bigots. Instead of leaving well alone all voluntary and harmless religious expression — my preferred model — modern secularism empowers the Christian bigot who supposedly “might be offended” if a Jewish school is founded in his borough, or the Muslim bigot who “might be offended” if his doctor wears a cross. Militant secularism gives enormous weight to these views and enforces this intolerance against everyone. Would that we could instead simply tell intolerant people to grow up.
Eric Pickles was right to speak out for another reason: pure politics. Militant secularism is the doctrine of a tiny metropolitan few. As one senior Liberal Democrat admitted to me, it proved electorally lethal even in Oxford West. Scrapping church schools especially would be obvious electoral suicide in constituencies across the country — not for nothing has as keen a secularist as Ed Miliband unambiguously rejected this policy. As a party, we run very few risks by opposing this new secularism fiercely. But there are a lot of Christians out there. 15% of the country continues to attend church at least monthly, with another 10% attending “occasionally”. Notably, the bias of church attendance is towards older and wealthier sections of society. These are categories of people with higher than average turnout, so as a percentage of people who actually vote it will be even higher than this 15% to 25%. There is also a strong bias towards women, among whom the party has done especially badly in recent years.
Standing up for religious liberty is right in itself, but it will also be attractive to this important section of the electorate. Protecting religious liberty could be as politically potent as defending the right of non-believers not to pray, were they forced. Few will vote on religious freedom alone. But we will do better with many of these voters the more that Conservatives take up the cause of religious freedom in a way the other parties have not. Having done this, we should not be above pointing out to churchgoers that Labour politician who had nothing to say when their local doctor was disciplined for wearing a cross, or that Liberal Democrat who wants the local church school closed — and reaping the substantial electoral rewards.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Cameron Idea to Repatriate EU Laws is ‘Complete Non-Starter’
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s aim to ‘repatriate’ some EU social laws has been deemed as “complete non-starter” by the European Commissioner in charge of the dossier. In a strongly worded address to a trade union audience in London on Monday (13 February), EU social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor also took Britain to task for promulgating stereotypes, its dislike of employment legislation and the assumption that it can cherrypick EU laws.
Andor noted that EU laws which have been agreed by governments and parliament — as social laws are — are binding on all member states. If Britain wanted to be exempt from social and employment laws, the treaty would have to be changed — itself requiring the agreement of all 27 countries.
“I therefore think it is clear that repatriating social policy competence is a non-starter — legally, socially and politically,” said the commissioner. His rebuke goes against the heart of a policy announced by Cameron in order to keep his eurosceptic backbenchers on board when it comes to London’s EU policy.
In return for not holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Cameron promised to repatriate social laws and a sovereignty bill was later passed promising a referendum if significant powers are handed over to the EU in future.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Faith Must Not be Driven From Britain’s Public Life
Baroness Warsi is right to challenge what she calls ‘militant secularism’.
Baroness Warsi, the chairman of the Conservative Party, today leads a heavyweight ministerial delegation to the Vatican to mark the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s decision to restore full diplomatic relations between our two states. She has used the opportunity to urge people to be far less timid about their faith and to challenge what she calls “militant secularisation”. It is unsurprising that it has taken a Muslim member of the Cabinet to speak out clearly and forcefully on the importance of faith in the life of the nation; followers of Islam tend to be less mealy-mouthed about their beliefs than many Christians. Lady Warsi argues that society will be healthier if people “feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds”. That means “individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages”. She makes an important point. Our history and culture are formed by the Christian faith. The way we are governed is linked directly to the schism in the Church almost half a millennium ago: in England, we have an Established Church of which the head of state is the Supreme Governor.
It is all too easy to forget this — largely because politically correct fawning by public bodies over the sensitivities of other faiths has left many Christians feeling inhibited about asserting and celebrating their own beliefs. It has also left many wondering exactly when it was that Britain stopped being a Christian country. Combine that with the aggressive intolerance of the militant secularists, and it is little wonder that the Church of England frequently feels beleaguered. Last week, we had the perfect illustration of this baleful process, when the National Secular Society succeeded in a High Court attempt to prevent Bideford Town Council doing something it had done for centuries — holding a short prayer service at the start of its meetings. The atheist former councillor who pressed the case argued that the council had no right to “impose” its religious views on him, conveniently ignoring the fact that no one had forced him to attend the prayers, and failing totally to see that it was he who was seeking to impose his views on others, not the other way round. Such instincts, Baroness Warsi notes, are “deeply intolerant”, and have historically been the hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Her warning that the removal of faith from the public sphere is dangerous is, therefore, both timely and right, and all credit to her for sounding it. It is high time that many of our religious leaders were similarly assertive, and stopped seeming so apologetic about their faith.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Foreign Office Minister to Visit Finsbury Park Mosque 9th February 2012
In a two hour meeting chaired by our local MP Mr Jeremy Corbyn MP, the Minister and the representatives of the local Somali community discussed the purpose of London Conference on Somalia on 23 February, and how to make the most of the opportunities it represents. The debate was wide ranging, covering political issues around the transition, security and humanitarian issues, and domestic concerns.
Following the visit, Mr Bellingham said: “We value the huge contribution made by the Somali diaspora in supporting the development of the homeland. It is telling that diaspora communities from around the world remit more money back home than the international community gives in aid. Those who migrated often left families behind, and have continued to work tirelessly in a voluntary capacity to improve the lives of their relatives back home. We are keen to work with them to help inform UK policy making and shape a better future for Somalia.”
Mr Mohammed Kozbar, the Chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque welcomed the audience and commented: “Finsbury Park Mosque is grateful to host such a meeting which was very important and not just for the local Somali community. Somalia is a global issue about which all the Muslims who worship here are concerned. Finsbury Park Mosque is serving the local Muslim community in Islington and surrounding Boroughs of North London, and working with everyone to promote dialogue and understanding in our multi-cultural society and to build bridges between the Muslim community and the wider community”.
For more details and pictures please visit the Foreign office website here
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslims Pass on Faith at Higher Rates Than Christians Says Cardiff University Study
Muslims in Wales and England practise and pass on their faith at much higher rates than any other religion, a Cardiff University study says. Researchers found 77% of adult Muslims actively practise the faith they were brought up in, compared with 29% of Christians and 65% of other religions. They also found 98% of Muslim children surveyed said they had the religion their parents were brought up in. They said the research suggested religion helps minority communities. The research found 62% of Christian children surveyed had the same religion of their parents, compared with 98% of Muslims and 89% of other religions. “There is more involvement of Muslim young people in religious organisations,” the study from Cardiff’s School of Social Sciences and Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK said. “It is well known that there is considerable supplementary education for Muslim children such as the formal learning of the Koran in Arabic. The apparently much higher rates of intergenerational transmission in Muslims and members of other non-Christian non-Muslim religions are certainly worthy of further exploration and may in fact pose a challenge to blanket judgements about the decline of British religion. These higher rates might suggest support for the theory that for minority ethnic populations, religion can be an important resource in bolstering a sense of cultural distinctiveness.”
Prof Jonathan Scourfield, one of the researchers who took part in the study, said the statistics pointed to the importance of religion for people in minority communities. “Muslim children tend to lead busy lives, often attending religious education classes outside school three or more times each week on top of any other commitments they have,” he said.
“They typically learn to read the Koran in Arabic. They also learn a great deal about their faith from parents and other family members. Religion can have an especially important role for minority communities in keeping together the bonds between families from the same ethnic background.” The team analysed data from the Home Office’s 2003 Citizenship Survey data, using 13,988 replies from adults and 1,278 from young people aged 11 to 15.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Jailed for Homophobic and Racist Graffiti in Shadwell Block of Flats
A man who sprayed homophobic graffiti 70 times in a block of flats in London’s East End has been given eight weeks’ jail.
Mashudur Rahman, 23, was sentenced at Thames Magistrates’ Court on nine charges of criminal damage at Gordon House in Glamis Road, Shadwell. He was given a custodial sentence in addition to being fined £2,000 in costs. Rahman, from Luke House in Shadwell, admitted the charges when he appeared before Stratford magistrates on February 3. He had been brought to justice after police worked with Tower Hamlets Council and Eastend Homes housing association to identify and prosecute him.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: PM Urged to Deport Qatada as He Hides in North London Safe House
David Cameron was under pressure today to defy European judges by ordering the deportation of extremist cleric Abu Qatada as he holed up in a London safe house.
Hours after the radical preacher was freed, senior Conservatives said the Prime Minister should ignore the European Court of Human Rights and put Qatada on a plane home. But government sources insisted a deal could still be struck with the Jordanian authorities which would allow Qatada to be returned in full compliance with the law. As Home Office minister James Brokenshire conducted negotiations in Jordan over Qatada’s fate, former Home Office minister David Mellor called on ministers to simply ignore the European ruling. “The ruling in Strasbourg is a gnat-bite that the British Government is totally free to ignore,” he said. “There is clearance up to the level of the Supreme Court here to deport him to Jordan, which is a friendly state with a civilised government. If the Home Secretary chose to put him on a plane this morning, she would have broken no laws.” Tory backbencher Dominic Raab added: “As a matter of public protection Britain should deport Qatada without delay.”
Qatada was freed yesterday from Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire after spending the past six and a half years in prison pending deportation to face terrorism charges in Jordan. He has been placed under a 22-hour curfew and given bail conditions which bar him from using telephones or the internet, attending a mosque or leaving a strictly defined area. The 51-year-old has also been banned from contacting 27 others including al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and jailed preacher Abu Hamza. Last night Ayman Odeh, the Jordanian legislative affairs minister, said that his country had passed an amendment to ban the use of evidence obtained through torture. He added that Britain would be given “assurances” about this legal change that it could present to the European Court of Human Rights which, if satisfied by the Jordanian pledge, could overturn its current bar on Qatada’s deportation when ministers submit their appeal.
That would overcome the crucial obstacle blocking Qatada’s deportation. It was ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights last month because of the risk that such evidence would form part of a prosecution case against him.
Qatada’s wife and five children moved out of the £1 million Acton home they were living in a month ago after the owner sold the property. The new owners said they had no idea who the previous occupant was when they purchased the four-bedroom semi-detached house. Mayor Boris Johnson, who has attacked the “lunacy” of Qatada’s release in London, has revealed that 60 Met officers a day will be required to monitor the preacher to protect the public and ensure that he can be returned to prison the instant he breaches any of his bail conditions. The bill to the taxpayer could be as much as £10,000 a day. Qatada was convicted in his absence in Jordan of involvement with terror attacks in 1998 and has featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the September 11 bombers.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Religious Toleration is About How Religions Tolerate
by Andrew Lilico
Religious toleration has been in the press again recently, with the Advertising Standards Authority banning the claim that “God heals”, the Cornish hoteliers losing their appeal against a fine for discrimination, and pre-council meeting prayers being banned. Many of these discussions seem to me to arise from an error so early and deep in the way people think about these matters that it is not even noticed: we have come to assume that religious toleration is about how religions are tolerated. If we start from this assumption, and then deploy standard British ideas about impartial treatment before the law, we get the following kind of result: if we are to act fairly, impartially and consistently, then whatever principle we apply to the toleration of, say, witch-doctor practices and beliefs must also be applied to Anglican practices and beliefs. So if we want to say that witch-doctors should be forbidden from claiming they can cure your cancer by reciting some incantation unless they have scientific evidence of the efficacy of their incantations, then Christians should be forbidden from claiming that God’s healing can come if you pray for it unless there is scientific evidence of that. Or, again, if we want to avoid having the start of council meetings being delayed by Wiccan spell-recitings or councillors deterred from attending meetings by being subjected to blood-curdling threats disguised as pseudo-Islamic prayers, we have to say that council meetings should not commence with prayers.
That’s just the wrong way to think about religious toleration. Here’s how it should (indeed does) work. We pick a religion as our approved religion. Then we establish some standards of toleration of other religions and practices. Then if a practice comes before us, the first question is whether this is a practice of the approved religion. If it is, then the question of toleration of this practice does not arise — if you belong to the approved religion, you are the tolerater, not the tolerated. If the practice does not belong to the approved religion, we consider whether it is a practice we, the secular representatives of the approved religion, want to tolerate or have previously established that we tolerate — bearing in mind, inter alia, the views of the ministers of the approved religion. (Matters could be slightly more complex than this, in that there might be a second rank of groups that are not parts of the approved religion, but have a special status — e.g. non-conformists in a Protestant Christian state, or Jews and Christians in a Muslim state — but let’s not over-complicate.) What happens when we assume that the issue of religious toleration is whether religions should be tolerated is that we make (or reflect having made) irreligion (atheism, agnosticism, nihilism) our state religion. When in the past we might have asked to what extent atheism should be tolerated, that question no longer appears to arise in Britain. It is simply assumed that atheism or other irreligion is acceptable; indeed, the question of whether atheism should be religiously tolerated by the law begins to sound rather odd. Irreligion is where we begin; Irreligion is what tolerates — it isn’t what is legally tolerated. We struggle even to imagine what the question would be if one were to ask whether to tolerate irreligion.
That, indeed, is what seems to me to be the problem with Anglicanism being Established. Not that there should not be an Established Church or that Christianity should not be our state religion — that would be a fine thing, were it so (or indeed still feasible). But it isn’t so — not merely not so practically a day-to-day basis, but not so legally in the sense that our law does not begin from the assumption that Anglican Christian practice must be legal and then ask what else should be tolerated. A number of legal judgements have stated quite explicitly that there is no principle in English law that the living out in practice of orthodox Christian belief is by definition legal. So Anglican Christianity is not our state religion. But this fact is obscured by Bishops being in the House of Lords and the Monarch being anointed and Crowned by an Anglican Archbishop. It’s hard to state precisely when we ceased to have Christianity as our state religion, because abandoning it as such was never announced and we never had any debate as to whether we really wanted to abandon it and what might best replace it. Why assume that irreligion is the correct replacement? Why not Judaism, or the Baha’i? (The numbers practicing is of no real relevance — virtually no-one is an atheist, yet that doesn’t seem to be a bar to atheism being the state religion.) Christians have drifted into accepting the idea that Christianity should have no privilege before the law — that somehow if it did that would be illiberal or intolerant. That’s just wrong. Liberalism is a specifically Protestant Christian political doctrine. And tolerating is something religions do, not by definition something done of religion. If Christianity is not to be the tolerating religion, we should have a proper public debate about what state religion we want instead.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Solve Home-Grown Terrorism With ‘Quit Smoking’ Methods, Says Queen Mary Study
A rising number of terrorist attacks by ‘home-grown’ radicals could be prevented-by using public health strategies such as campaigns to quit smoking.
That’s the view by researchers in London’s East End who are calling for a re-think on the current approach for tackling terrorism which they claim has failed. Using the criminal justice system may even have even increased membership of terrorist groups by alienating those most vulnerable to radicalisation, the study at Queen Mary University of London’s Whitechapel campus has found. Current counter-terrorism action has stigmatised and alienated Muslim groups by treating them as ‘under suspicion’-pushing many towards extremist groups, according to the research published today (Tues) in BMC Medicine. Instead, researchers suggest using a ‘public health’ approach to steer whole groups away from radicalisation-like campaigns to quit smoking and to stop youngsters carrying knives. “Home-grown terrorists are rare, so trying to identify them is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” warns Kam Bhui, Professor of Cultural Psychiatry at Queen Mary’s. “It means lots of innocent people have been marginalised. But using a public health approach means we can work with a large group to make radicalisation less likely. It doesn’t condone terrorism, but aims to understand how people become radicalised and provides new tactics for preventing terrorists attacks.” Youngsters are particularly vulnerable to radicalisation when going through times of change such as migration, switching schools, going to university or just going through adolescence-that’s when extremist groups offer a sense of belonging, the study suggests. Instead, these youngsters could be helped to integrate and take part in the mainstream political process.
[JP note: Yes, get your ‘Quit Islam’ packs on the NHS. Good thinking, Queen Mary University research team.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Muslim Leader Causes Outrage by Denying War Crimes
Sarajevo, 13 Feb. (AKI) — Bosnian Muslim spiritual leader Reiss Ul-Ulema Mustafa Ceric sparked outrage by calling for an Islamic awakening and denying that Muslim crimes against Serbs in 1992-1995 war ever occured. He also a Muslim awakening.
Preaching in a local mosque, Ceric protested the arrest of eight Muslims accused of torturing more than 600 Serbs in a detention camp “Silos” in the town of Hadzici near Sarajevo, 24 of who were killed.
“Wake up my people, and don’t wait until one by one is lead away and then we realize that we should have defended the rights of our brothers to preserve our own freedom and rights,” Ceric said.
“In democratic, European civilization of this century it is absolutely unacceptable that Muslim religious leader in Bosnia calls for mobilization of believers of Hadzici region to set free the suspects for crimes against Serbs in ‘Silos’,” said a Bosnian Serb leader Rajko Vasic.
“I think Ceric is the greatest evil that has happened to Bosniac (Muslim) people,” said Aleksandra Pandurovic, a Serbian MP in Bosnian parliament. “He’s torn by internal hatred,” she added.
Ceric demanded that eight suspects should be set free to defend themselves. “If there is a proof of crimes in the ‘Silos’, why is there so much nervousness and panic,” he asked.
The International Court of Justice has ruled that Bosnian Serb forces had committed genocide against majority Muslims in the war. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for war crimes and more than 60 have been sentenced to over 1,000 years in jail.
As the tribunal plans to close down by 2014, the remaining cases have been turned over to local courts. Serbian courts have over the past several years sentenced scores of former paramilitaries for war crimes.
But Bosnian Serbs, the second biggest ethnic group, have complained that local courts have been prosecuting only Serbs, while ignoring crimes committed by Muslims in the war that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Sarajevo Education Minister Resigns After Threats: “Abandon Allah and His Religion and the Hand of the Faithful Will Get You”
After Sarajevo canton’s education minister, Emir Suljagic, resigned last week citing repeated threats to his security, slogans in his support have appeared in the streets of the capital. Slogans declaring support for the former Education Minister of Sarajevo Canton, Emir Suljagic, appeared on February 13 on sites around the capital, reading, “We are all Emir S.”, “Dignity Rather Than a Chair” and “Watch Out, a Bullet”.
Suljagic resigned on Friday last week, citing death threats to his family from hardline Muslims opposed to educational reforms allegedly downplaying the importance of religion. On Wednesday, Suljagic received a death threat at his home in the form of a short letter and a 7.32 caliber bullet. “Abandon Allah and his religion and the hand of the faithful will get you,” the message read. Two days after, Suljagic sent the cantonal assembly his resignation letter.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Farmers Chuck Tomatoes to Fight EU-Morroco Deal
(MADRID) — About 100 Spanish farmers threw 200 kilogrammes (400 pounds) of tomatoes at the European parliament offices in Madrid Tuesday to fight against an EU-Morocco agricultural trade deal. Demonstrators called on the parliament to vote Thursday to reject the agreement, which replaces an earlier accord and gradually opens up the European Union and Moroccan markets to each other’s farm exports.
“EU, don’t betray our agriculture,” read a banner held by demonstrators who came from the southern province of Andalusia, heavily dependant on agricultural exports. “The European Commission’s agriculture policy deserves tomato-throwing, like an artist that performs badly,” said Andres Gongora of the Spanish farming body Coordinator of Farmers’ and Stockbreeders’ Organisations (COAG).
“The renewal of the accord will lead to the disappearance of thousands of jobs in production areas,” he said. Andalusia has highest jobless rate among Spain’s regions at 31.23 percent.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
20,000 Muslims Attempt to Kill Pastor and Torch Church in Egypt
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — A mob of nearly 20,000 radical Muslims, mainly Salafis, attempted this evening to break into and torch the Church of St. Mary and St. Abram in the village of Meet Bashar,in Zagazig, Sharqia province. They were demanding the death of Reverend Guirgis Gameel, pastor of the church, who has been unable to leave his home since yesterday. Nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Copts and torch the building. A home of a Copt living near the church and the home of the church’s porter were torched, as well as three cars.
The mob demanded the return Rania of Khalil Ibrahim, 15, to her father. She has been held with the Security Directorate since yesterday. Christian-born Rania had converted to Islam three months ago after her father, who had converted to Islam two years ago and took custody of her. She had disappeared from the village on Saturday, after claiming to go shopping. According to Reverend Guirgis Gameel, she had a disagreement with her father, who had arranged a marriage for her with a Muslim man.
Her father, Khalil Ibrahim, went to the police on Saturday and accused the priest of being behind her disappearance, and said she had gone to live with her Coptic mother.
Yesterday a Salafi mob of 2000 went to the priest’s home and destroyed his furniture and his car, surrounded the church and pelted it with stones. They demolished a large section of the church fence. In the evening security forces announced that they had found Rania in Cairo and that she was not abducted by Christians; she was brought to the police station in Meet Bashar.
“After hearing this news yesterday everyone was relieved,” said Coptic activist Waguih Jacob. “However, the Copts noticed that the Muslims did not completely disperse, but were hovering in all streets.” The few security forced who were stationed in front of the church were dismissed as the village seemed to return to peace.
But the mob became more angry this evening when they heard that Rania refused to go back to live with her father, and returned in much greater numbers.
Some Coptic eyewitnesses said that a number of Muslim villagers tried to prevent the Salafis from assaulting their Christian neighbors and some stood as human shields to protect the church, until security forces arrived.
Bishop Yuaness, Secretary to Pope Shenouda III, said this evening that they have been in contact since yesterday with authorities “at the highest levels.”
Ms. Marian Malak, a Coptic member of parliament, contacted the Egyptian prime minister El-Ganzoury, who ordered sending reinforcements to contain the crisis.
Bishop Tadros Sedra, of Minia el Kamh and Zagazig Coptic diocese, said this evening that military and police forces have arrived in great numbers and have dispersed Muslims from outside the church and the home of Reverend Guirgis Gameel. He confirmed that security will stay in the village for at least two weeks.
US-based Coptic Solidarity International, issued a press release today strongly urging the international community, through the United Nations Human Rights Council, to appoint a special rapporteur for the Copts in Egypt, particularly in light of the recent evictions, property confiscations and attacks against Copts (AINA 1-28-2012).
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
Animal Mummies Discovered at Ancient Egyptian Site
A wealth of new discoveries, from animal mummies linked to the jackal god and human remains to an enigmatic statue, are revealing the secrets of an ancient holy place in Egypt once known as the “Terrace of the Great God.”
The mysterious wooden statue may be a representation of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who ruled the land 3,500 years ago, the researchers say. She was typically portrayed as a man in statues, but this one, giving a nod to femininity, had a petite waist.
The discoveries were made during one field season this past summer by a team led by Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner, director of the excavation and a professor at the University of Toronto. The findings offer insight into Abydos, a site that was considered a holy place, Pouls Wegner said at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in Toronto, Canada.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Rashid Ghannouchi on Britain, Islam and Liberal Democracy
One of the leading ideologues of the modern Muslim world has a vision of a state where respect for Islam and other faiths exists within a secular system — and he points to the UK as a model. But can his words be taken at face value? Woodville Road in Ealing, West London, is not necessarily the first place you would expect a new future for political Islam to be forged. But it was partly here, in tree-lined English suburbia, that the softly-spoken Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi developed a unique set of ideas that are are gaining traction internationally, in the wake of the Arab Spring.
The green lawns of suburban London appear to have been more than just a base for Mr Ghannouchi. He once famously declared that Britain embodied the values of his ideal Islamic state more than most Muslim-majority nations — a shocking statement at a time when many Muslim ideologues saw the West as a mortal enemy. “We consider that a state is more Muslim, more Islamic, the more it has justice in it,” he says. “When people asked me why I came to Britain, I explained that I was going to a country ruled by a queen where people are not oppressed and where justice prevails.” More than 20 years ago, Mr Ghannouchi — then, as now, Tunisia’s leading Islamist ideologue — sought refuge in Britain. He used the time in exile to complete a series of writings arguing that Islam and modern, secular democracy are compatible. “His views have always been considered quite liberal,” says Maha Azzam of the Chatham House think tank in London. “He was able to return after over two decades in exile… and still win the hearts and minds of the young.”
In a dramatic sequence of events last year, Tunisia kick-started the Arab Spring by throwing off dictatorship, and then held elections, from which Mr Ghannouchi’s party, Ennahda, emerged as the biggest winner. Mr Ghannouchi’s writings, have already been required reading by Muslim parties competing in elections and they are now experiencing renewed popularity across large swathes of the Muslim world. He says he sells more books in Turkey than Tunisia. He is being read in Malaysia’s Islamic Party, and his writings are apparently attracting attention among younger members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they grow in power. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood recently followed in Ennahda’s footsteps, winning a third of the seats in parliamentary elections. Other Brotherhood-inspired parties hope to benefit if countries elsewhere in the region, such as Yemen and Syria, eventually move towards democracy.
In a detailed interview for the BBC’s ideas series, Analysis, Mr Ghannouchi was candid about his ideology and the challenges it now faces.
Tunisia is now drawing up a new constitution and one of the key questions it faces is the role of Islam in the government apparatus. Many want religion to be the basis of the country’s law, while others want to see a strict division between religion and state. “Tunisia’s elite is very closely connected to French secularism — the idea that society and state have to be secular and religion has very little role to play in that society,” says Maha Azzam of Chatham House. In pre-revolutionary Tunisia, even the hijab or female headscarf was largely banned.
Mr Ghannouchi argues that Britain’s version of secular democracy is more neutral and tolerant than the French, and therefore has some of the answers. “The type of state we want is one that doesn’t interfere in people’s private lives,” says Mr Ghannouchi. “The state should not have anything to do with imposing or telling people what to wear, what to eat and drink, what they believe in, what they should believe in.” He says he has no plans to ban bikinis on the beach or the sale of alcohol, for example. “I would prefer it if people didn’t do this, but it is up to them,” he says. “His vision for the model of an Islamic nation is built heavily on the idea of values,” explains Anas Altikriti, a British Islamist intellectual whose father led the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq.
Mr Ghannouchi goes back to the values of the Koran rather than a literal reading of it. He then argues that these values — such as justice, public consultation and human rights — are encapsulated in modern democratic states. But many secular-minded people simply do not trust Rashid Ghannouchi. “He’s just playing on words,” says Ibtisam, one of a group of Tunisian feminist law students. The danger is that yes, they say you can go to the beach in a bikini. But at the same time when women on the beach are attacked [by Islamists], they are doing nothing to protect them,” she says.
Others in both the Arab World and the West accuse Mr Ghannouchi of double-talk when it comes to Islam and democracy. While he encourages Islamists to work in a secular system he has also written that “secularism is turning the West into a place of selfish beasts”.
He says this was meant as a criticism of how religious and moral values were fading away. “This leads to threats to family values, to values of solidarity,” he explains. Doubts are also expressed by those who worry that Islamist leaders will turn on Israel. When questioned by the BBC about Israel’s right to exist, he didn’t answer directly — saying instead that Israel has a duty to make peace with the Palestinians.
So is this all tactical talk — using democracy as a way to impose theocratic states by the back door? No, says Maha Azzam. She argues that Tunisians and other Arabs have now lost their fear of tyrannical dictators, and so Islamic parties have no option but to remain democratic. “The struggle of those that came out on to the streets of Tunisia is for accountable government,” Ms Azzam says. “Within that context, they still want respect for Islamic values, but I don’t think that there is a desire for an Islamic system of government that throws away democracy.”
Anas Altikriti says Mr Ghannouchi’s theories are helping the Muslim Brotherhood to stop talking endlessly about ideology and instead address the tough questions — such as how to create jobs — that the electorate care about most. “For the past 30 years the Muslim Brotherhood has been raising the slogan, ‘Islam is the answer,’“ he says. “Well now they really need to answer many, many tough questions.”
You can listen to the full Analysis programme about Rachid Ghannouchi’s ideas on the BBC Radio 4 website, or on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 12 February 2012 at 21:30 GMT. You can also download the podcast.
[JP note: It is to Britian’s continuing detriment that it offered safe haven to dangerous ideologues such as Rashid Ghannouchi for so many years — we are yet to reap the benefits of his ill-fated stay.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Parliamentary Links
by Christopher O’Connor, British Ambassador to Tunisia
One of the most striking new features of Tunisian politics is the free and lively debate in the Constituent Assembly. The elected members are probing and questioning government policies and representing the views of their voters in ways which were unimaginable little more than a year ago. The biggest task ahead for the Assembly will be to draw up a new constitution. Their members have already begun to study the many and varied democratic models around the world and to form their views on what a successful future Tunisian model should look like. This has involved developing links with the UK Parliament in Westminster. We in the Embassy are working with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy to build these links and to give Tunisian parliamentarians the opportunity to hear the perspectives of their UK counterparts. The visiting British Members of Parliament have been consistently struck by the dynamism of the Assembly and the determination of its members to drive forward the changes they have been elected to deliver. Some of their challenges they face will be specific to Tunisia. But others will be common to Parliaments worldwide.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
PM: Crime Level in Arab Sector is ‘Unbearable’
The level of crime in the Arab sector has created an unbearable reality for Israel’s Arab citizens, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
“The [Arab] sector is living in an unbearable situation of crime, murder, and robbery,” Netanyahu said, adding that the situation is unacceptable and impossible.
Netanyahu’s comments came during a special Knesset committee meeting held to discuss violence in the Arab sector.
Netanyahu called for a two-pronged approach to “free the Arab public from the terror of crime,” saying that there must be greater work done to integrate Israeli Arabs into the country’s economy and workforce, as well as greater law enforcement in Arab towns and cities.
“Over 40 percent of the sector says they are worried that someone will harm them in their village or town, that’s almost every other person,” the prime minister continued. “This is the Wild West, the Wild East, the Wild North, Wild South. We must take action.”
Netanyahu also spoke of years past when Israeli organized crime was in its heyday, before police action was successful in changing the equation dramatically. That same success can be achieved fighting crime in the Arab sector, he added.
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said at the meeting that tackling the disproportionate level of violence in the Arab sector is a priority…
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
US Kosovo Policy — Bad for Israel
By Srdja Trifkovic
Israel’s position on Kosovo is a matter of vital national interest on which no government should ever compromise.
February 17 marks the fourth anniversary of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. The UDI has been recognized since by the United States and its key NATO partners, as well as 80-odd other countries. The majority of the world’s sovereign states have refused to do so, however, including two permanent Security Council powers (Russia and China), two budding giants (Brasil and India), five European Union members (including Spain) — and Israel.
Successive Israeli governments have come under pressure from Washington to change their mind, but on this issue the raison d’etat has wisely prevailed across the political spectrum. The similarities between Kosovo and Judea-Samaria are not obvious to the uninitiated, and Israeli diplomats prefer not to spell them out and risk needless tiffs with the Americans. On closer scrutiny those similarities turn out to be significant.
In both cases there’s a small piece of disputed real estate — rich in history, poor in everything else, and badly mismanaged by the local Muslim majority chronically hostile to its non-Muslim neighbors. In both cases that majority craves internationally-recognized statehood, and in both cases the demand is based on a bogus claim of distinct nationhood (“Kosovar” or “Palestinian”) that conceals the broader expansionist agenda — greater- Albanian and Palestinian Arab-Islamic, respectively.
The act of recognition by the major Western powers has opened, in Kosovo’s case, a Pandora’s Box of legal, geopolitical, moral and security issues. It has cemented an already flourishing black hole of lawlessness and endemic corruption and enhanced a potential base for jihad-terrorism deep inside Europe. A repeat scenario between the Jordan and the Green Line would be the last thing Israel needs as it contemplates strategies for containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, responding to the tectonic change in Egypt and to the crisis in Syria.
The US support for the Kosovo Albanians has adversely affected Israel’s interests in a number of significant ways. It sets the precedent that a solution to an intractable political and territorial quarrel can and should be imposed by force by outside countries, even if one of the parties — in this case Serbia — rejects the proposed solution as contrary to its vital national interests.
The question of how Israel should come to an accommodation with Arab aspirations remains open, but no sane Israeli would suggest that a solution imposed by outsiders, either under the UN or EUNATO aegis, would likely be in Israel’s interest. Washington’s claim that outside powers can award some part of a state’s sovereign territory to a violent ethnic or religious minority with a local plurality — as NATO powers did in Kosovo in 1999 — would put in question not only the future of Judea and Samaria but even southern Galilee and parts of the Negev, where non-Jews have, or may eventually acquire, significant local majorities.
Israel’s Muslim population is now above 20 percent, roughly the same as Serbia’s if Kosovo is included. If Albanian Muslims can demand separation of their majority-inhabited areas from Serbia today, citing alleged past mistreatment, it is an even bet that Israel’s Arabs will invoke that same precedent tomorrow. (Needless to say, Washington’s claims that Kosovo is a one-off issue, a special case, completely sui generis, etc. are not taken seriously by any would-be irredentist or separatist movement.) The readiness of the US administration to circumvent the Security Council, knowing it would block Kosovo’s UDI on international legal grounds, seeks to devalue Russia’s and China’s veto power as such. In light of how many times anti-Israel UNSC Resolutions have been thwarted by a US veto, diminishing the power of the veto per se may prove detrimental to Israel in the future…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Oliver Stone’s Son Converts to Islam in Iran
US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP.
“The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets,” he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony.
Sean Stone’s famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian.
The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted.
According to Iran’s Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become a Shiite and had chosen to be known by the Muslim first name Ali.
Sean/Ali Stone has acted in minor roles in several of his father’s films, and has directed a handful of documentaries.
| — Hat tip: RE | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar: International Conference on Women’s Rights in Doha
(ANSAmed) — DOHA, FEBRUARY 13 — The Third Ministerial Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement on the advancement of Women has started in Doha. More than 500 delegates from 80 different countries participate in three days of discussions on questions like gender equality, the elimination of all forms of discrimination, the promotion of access to resources, education and healthcare services, which could result tomorrow in the signing of the Declaration of Doha, a binding document for members of the movement. The draft of the declaration holds 80 clauses divided in 10 sections. It is the result of the work done by experts of the movement’s bureau in New York. The clauses include concrete commitments like increasing women participation in high decision making levels to 50 percent, particularly in politics, and assigning 0.7% of GDP to the development of economic policies towards women.
But it is becoming clear from the meeting that started yesterday in Doha that often the problem women have is not a lack of laws to protect them, but problems related to the cultural tradition of a country. “The government is not the problem, the problem is the people with their traditions and customs,” said Samha Saeed, who works for the Ministry for Social Affairs of Saudi Arabia. She is in Doha for the event as member of the Saudi delegation. Many Saudi fathers still force their daughters to marry at the age of 11, based on the Islam, Saudi Arabia’s official State religion. “Another problem is domestic violence against women. The king is doing all he can to ban this form of aggression, but these laws need time because the traditions are saying something different and deep down we are still tribes,” said Majda Ibrahim AlJaroudi, professor at the King Saud University and member of the Saudi delegation at the meeting in Doha. “The people are the problem,” she summarised. Both Saeed and AlJaroudi believe that Saudi Arabia has made progress in the protection of women’s rights, also through the appointment of a woman as Education Minister. The video of a woman who filmed herself while driving, still forbidden in the kingdom, is still available on YouTube.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Reprieve Unlikely for Saudi Writer After Cleric Backs Death Sentence
Top Muslim scholar says any one who insults Prophet should be killed
A senior Saudi Muslim cleric indicated on Monday that a local young man who offended Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and fled the Gulf kingdom would be executed after his repatriation from Malaysia. Sheikh Saleh bin Fowzan Al Fowzan, a member of the 7-man supreme committee of scholars in Saudi Arabia, said it has been established in Islam that any one who insults God or the Prophet should be killed.
“Repenting will not work…any man who insults God or our Prophet (PBUH) should be killed,” he said, quoted by Saudi newspapers. “But we should first verify that this man (Hamza Kashgari) did insult Prophet Mohammed in his article on Twitter…if verified, then he must be killed……many scholars and people are now demanding his execution.”
Kashgari, 23, fled Saudi Arabia to Malaysia last week after King Abdullah ordered him arrested and punished for writing an article on Twitter deemed by Saudi Moslem scholars as abusive of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
He was later reported arrested by Malaysian authorities at Kuala Lumpur airport and western news reports said on Sunday he would be repatriated. One Saudi daily said on Sunday Kashgari was heading for New Zealand to seek asylum before his arrest.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Thailand Blasts: ‘Iranian’ Bomber Injured in Bangkok
A man thought to be Iranian has had both legs blown off after attempting to throw a bomb at police in the Thai capital, Bangkok, officials said. Two other explosions were reported in the same busy commercial district of the city, injuring four other people. Police said one blast took place at the house the injured man rented with other Iranians. One of those men also threw a bomb at a taxi in the capital.
Last month the US embassy warned of possible attacks in Bangkok. The blasts come just a day after two bomb attacks targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. Israel has accused Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of orchestrating the attacks. Iran denied the allegations.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The World Community Must Act on Syria
Fear of a civil war is the main reason cited for the global community’s refusal to intervene in Syria. But the longer the West stands on the sidelines as Syrian ruler Bashar Assad wages a brutal campaign against his own people, the greater the chances are that one will ensue.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Gazprom’s Future Dependent on Arctic Energy Riches?
by Al Fin
The continued existence of Russia as a transcontinental power depends on its ability to leverage vast energy wealth into political stability and power. Without energy wealth, Russia begins to disintegrate. A giant new gas field north of the Arctic Circle provides some hope for Russia’s future.
Gazprom’s mammoth tax payments bolster the Russian economy, allowing the Kremlin to dole out subsidies and keep a lid on popular discontent.
At the same time, Gazprom faces challenges that threaten not just its dominance of the world’s natural gas market, but also the stability of Russia itself. As pressure rapidly decreases in Gazprom’s existing wells, the emergence of U.S. shale gas and the rise of liquefied natural gas super tankers are transforming the global gas market, providing alternatives to Russian supply. The company’s close association with the Kremlin, historically an asset and a hindrance, may invite greater scrutiny as domestic opposition to Putin’s rule grows. European clients and parliaments are contesting Gazprom’s continental influence with greater solidarity than ever before. A recent Morgan Stanley (MS) report determined that these tests may “leave Gazprom running a very different business,” diminished in scale and profitability and less favoured at home.
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Indonesia: West Java Muslims Won’t Allow Christian Church
Jakarta, 13 Feb. (AKI/Jakarta Post) — Indonesian home minister Gamawan Fauzi said he had done everything possible to convince Islamic groups that have rejected the presence of the Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) Yasmin in Bogor, West Java, including reminding them that there had been a Supreme Court ruling justifying the church’s presence.
“We have of course negotiated with the groups numerous times. I have even held special meetings with each group to lobby them,” Gamawan said on Monday.
When asked why he did not tell the hard-line groups to just let the congregation pray in the church, as it was every Indonesian citizen’s constitutional right, Gamawan said only that he had done that.
“We said that if there were legal issues surrounding this matter, then let legal processes take their course — but they insisted on their stance,” Gamawan added.
Gamawan said the Bogor municipal administration had prepared four alternative locations where the congregation could pray.
“The Bogor administration will procure the new location while GKI Yasmin will still be owned by the congregation. However, the place should not be used for prayer or Sunday services,” Gamawan said.
“I think everybody’s interest can be accommodated this way. In fact, the GKI Yasmin’s asset will be added free of charge,” he added.
When asked if churchgoers still insisted on praying in their old church, Gamawan said, “It’s up to them. If they insist, there has been a court ruling supporting them; then just go ahead.”
The Bogor administration has banned the congregation from using its church for religious services for more than two years due to questionable permit application issues.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Islamic Hardliners Run Out of Town by Activists
ISLAMIC Defenders Front (FPI) bullying is so rarely confronted that the spectacle of its officials being almost literally run out of town in Central Kalimantan last weekend grabbed national attention.
Civil society activists in the national capital, where the hard-liners wield their strongest influence, have tried to seize upon FPI’s momentary discomfiture to galvanise a “movement for an FPI-free Indonesia”. Four FPI officials flew into the Central Kalimantan capital, Palangkaraya, on Saturday planning to inaugurate a new office. But a mob of about 800 protesters, mainly Dayak people, invaded the airport preventing the officials even setting foot on the tarmac and eventually they were flown away to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan.
Lucas Tinke, a Dayak tribal spokesman, told reporters that local people feared FPI’s presence would destabilise the province, where the Muslim majority shares religious space with Christians, Hindus and native animists. “If Kalimantan can do it, Jakarta can also do it,” activist spokeswoman Tunggal Pawestri told the Jakarta Globe ahead of the movement’s inaugural public demonstration yesterday.
Since its foundation in August 1998, FPI in Java has mobbed and menaced targets as wide-ranging as the heterodox Ahmadiyya sect, nightclubs open during Ramadan, Christian congregations, the Liberal Islam Network and the US embassy. It claims to have more than two million members.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Behind Thailand Blasts, Claims Israel’s Ehud Barak
Israel has accused Iran over the three blasts in Bangkok that injured five people and blew off the legs of the alleged bomber — an Iranian national who was fleeing police when the grenade slipped through his hands and detonated next to him.
A second suspect was arrested at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport after authorities found explosive materials in a house apparently rented by the bomber and two others. A third suspect is still at large, according to Thai police.
The suspect has been identified as Saeid Moradi, an Iranian national who is thought to have entered Thailand from South Korea on 8 February at the southern resort town of Phuket. The second suspect has been named as Iranian national Mohammed Hazaei, 42, who was detained after trying to board a flight to Malaysia, according to local media.
The blasts started at about 2pm local time on Tuesday, when a bomb accidentally detonated inside the assailant’s house in Ekkamai, a bustling residential district in east Bangkok. The blast blew off part of the roof, causing two occupants to flee, police said, followed by a wounded and bloodied Moradi.
“He tried to wave down a taxi, but he was covered in blood, and the driver refused to take him,” police general Pansiri Prapawat told Associated Press. Moradi then threw a grenade at the taxi, injuring the driver and four others.
When police tried to stop the man, he threw another grenade at them, which local media reported as bouncing off a tree and detonating in front of him, blowing both of his legs off, one of which landed in the playground of a nearby school. Doctors at Chulalongkorn hospital, where the bomber is being treated, said the second leg had to be amputated above the knee.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia Defends Sending Twitter “Blasphemer” To Almost Certain Death in Saudi Arabia
The Malaysian government has defended its deportation of a Saudi journalist accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a tweet Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said the deportation to Saudi Arabia was legal and that Malaysia cannot be seen as a safe haven. Hamza Kashgari, 23, was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday.
Mr Kashgari’s controversial tweet last week sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and can be punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. He has since removed the tweet and apologised for his comments.
Mr Kashgari fled Saudi Arabia and was detained when he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. His lawyers claimed to have obtained a court injunction to keep him in Malaysia. But the government deported him, saying that they did not receive any court order.
“I will not allow Malaysia to be seen as a safe country for terrorists and those who are wanted by their countries of origin, and also be seen as a transit county,” Mr Hussein was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.
According to the BBC’s Jennifer Pak, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia do not have a formal extradition treaty. This is the reason why human rights activists say that Malaysia has violated international human rights.
Amnesty International has said that Mr Kashgari is a “prisoner of conscience”. “If he (Kashgari) faces execution back in Saudi Arabia, the Malaysian government will have blood on its hands,” said Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director of Human Rights Watch.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Thailand: Bangkok Grenade Attacks Wound ‘Iranian’ Suspect and Four Others
Thai police say male suspect, initially identified as Iranian, accidentally blew his own legs off in a series of blasts in the capital
An Iranian man has blown off his own legs and wounded at least four other people in grenade attacks in Bangkok, according to the police. It remains unclear what the man’s targets were, but the blasts come just a day after two bomb attacks aimed at Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. Israel on Monday blamed Iran for the bombings in India and Georgia, a claim denounced in Tehran as “sheer lies”.
Thai security forces found more explosives in the suspect’s rented house in the capital, said Police General Pansiri Prapawat. Police said the explosions happened on Soi Sukhumvit 71, a street running off a busy road that bisects the capital. A photo posted on Twitter showed a wounded man lying on a pavement outside a school, his legs apparently blown off by an explosion. The pavement was strewn with broken glass.
Several Thai television stations reported that the man had been carrying explosives. They said an identification card found in a nearby satchel indicated he may have been of Iranian descent. The Thai-Asean News network said police had identified the man as Sayed Murabi, an Iranian thought to have set off a bomb at his own house and then hailed a taxi. When the driver refused to pick him up, Murabi reportedly threw a grenade at the car. Police then pursued him before he tried to throw another grenade at them, but failed and blew off his own legs. The first explosion took place at about 2.20pm local time (7.20am GMT) at a house in the Ekamai area in central Bangkok, which three Iranians reportedly rented. Police fear there may be more bombs in the area and have closed the street to traffic. Doctors at Chulalongkorn hospital confirmed a man had been admitted as a patient but did not disclose his name or nationality. Doctors said the patient’s right leg had been blown off above the knee, and his left leg was so badly damaged it had had to be amputated above the knee. Local media reported the police as saying one of the bomber’s legs had been blown into a nearby school. Reports also said security was being boosted at the hospital, with police unsure whether or not to classify the man as a terrorist.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said there was not yet any sign that any targets in Bangkok were Israeli or Jewish. Israeli police have increased the state of alert in the country, with the emphasis on public places, foreign embassies and offices, as well as Ben-Gurion international airport.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Xi Jinping’s US Visit: China’s Next Leader Takes Center Stage
Xi Jinping, the future leader of China, will be in the international spotlight for the first time when he visits the White House on Tuesday. The West currently knows little about the man set to be the next president of the rising Asian superpower. But one thing is clear: Any hopes of a new, more conciliatory China are likely to be dashed.
His Washington hosts knew little about Beijing’s future strong man, other than he liked to dance and play table tennis. But the visitor himself was also insecure. For him, the event could already be considered a success if he managed to avoid making any diplomatic gaffes at the White House.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Nigeria: 2 Bombs Rock Kaduna on Valentine’s Day, Cop Killed
Two bomb blasts rocked Kaduna State, Northwest Nigeria this morning, killing a policeman. The first blast happened at Angwar Seriki area of Kaduna near Kano, a very busy area where fully armed soldiers were mounting survellance. While the first blast went without any loss of life, the second was devastating as a mobile policeman who moved to the Sheikh Mahommud Gumi Mosque, Kano, Kaduna with a bomb detector was blown up by the bomb. The level of the blast forced residents of the area to run for their dear lives. The andemonium continued up till the time of filing this report. Security operatives including soldiers, mobile and regular policemen have been drafted to the area to comb for more explosives which might have been planted in the vicinity. The security personnel have also cordoned off the Kano area. An helicopter was hovering around the scene of the blasts, also as part of security measures to curb further explosions in the vicinity. It is widely believed that the Islamist fundamentalists, the Boko Haram might have planted more bombs in the Kano area of Kaduna. Many residents are afraid tha there could be more explosions. Soldiers and other security personnel have advised people including journalists to leave the scene of the blasts in their own interest.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Argentina: Sean Penn’s Bizarre Anti-British Rant is Laughable Even by Hollywood Standards
Never one to shy away from a Left-wing cause, either at home or abroad, Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn has adopted the Falklands dispute as his latest liberal pet project. On a visit to Argentina to meet with Cristina Kirchner, Penn accused Britain of ‘colonialism’ over the Falklands, and urged UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Islands.
The Daily Telegraph reported Penn as saying:
“The world today is not going to tolerate any ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology,” he said during the meeting in Buenos Aires. “I know I came in a very sensitive moment in terms of diplomacy between Argentina and the UK over the Malvinas islands. And I hope that diplomats can establish true dialogue in order to solve the conflict as the world today cannot tolerate ridiculous demonstrations of colonialism. The way of dialogue is the only way to achieve a better solution for both nations,” he said, according to the Buenos Aires Herald.
Sean Penn has a long track record of cuddling up to Latin American tyrants, including Hugo Chavez and Fidel and Raul Castro. No doubt he sees in President Kirchner the same potential, as she leads her own country down the path of Venezuelan-style ruin, with her crackdown on the press, assault on private pensions funds, and interference with the judiciary. The actor has even called for journalists to be imprisoned for calling his hero Chavez a dictator, telling HBO’s Bill Maher show:
“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies. We are hypnotised by the media. Who do you know here who’s gone through 14 of the most transparent elections on the globe, and has been elected democratically, as Hugo Chávez?”
As someone who has long railed against American “imperialism”, it should come as no surprise that Penn is now targeting Great Britain too. And nothing could be a better advertisement for the foolish and futile Argentine campaign to retake the Falklands than the support of a delusional Hollywood Lefty like Sean Penn. Cristina Kicrhner must be pretty desperate to enlist the support of Mr Penn, who is now happily playing the role of Buenos Aires’ “useful idiot” over the Falklands. Who knows, she might even be able to sign up Oliver Stone and Danny Glover too.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Misuse of Integration Funds Sets Off Larger Debate
After discovering funds were used for visit to amusement park, the lack of oversight comes under fire
Muhammed Aslam, a City Councillor representing the third district, has come under fire for misusing funds intended for activities to integrate ethnic minorities.
Berlingske newspaper reported on Monday that Aslam (Socialdemokraterne), who is also the president of housing project Mjølnerparken’s residents’ association, was using state integration resources to hold birthday parties and take families on trips to the amusement park Bonbon Land.
Karen West, a board member for Socialdemokraterne (S) in the third district, told Berlingske that in no way does taking families on a bus trip to Bonbon Land, especially when the residents divide themselves ethnically on the bus, promote integration. “I don’t see Muhammad Aslam as a standard-bearer for integration,” West told the paper.
Not only has Aslam’s use of the integration funds caused him to fall out of favour with his own party, it has also sparked a debate over the effectiveness of integration projects in general.
According to Berlingske, projects aimed at promoting integration have very little oversight or criteria, and the Social Affairs and Integration Ministry doesn’t even a complete overview of the projects, as they are spread out under various ministries. Berlingske Research also carried out a study that showed that many local governments cannot account for the effectiveness of their integration projects.
Karen Hækkerup (S), the social affairs and integration minister, conceded that the system needs improving and said she is currently scrutinising integration projects.
The former immigration and integration minister, Søren Pind (Venstre), told Berlingske in an interview on Tuesday that while minister, he tried unsuccessfully to get an overview of how many integration projects were underway in Denmark and how much they cost.
“It was impossible to find out,” he said. “I was told that the bulk of the money for integration projects came from Satspuljen (money earmarked for social programs). But I never understood it.”
Pind called the integration projects “a huge waste of resources” and said he would have completely discontinued them had his party not been voted out of power last September. Fellow opposition party Dansk Folkeparti (DF) agreed with Pind’s criticism.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Bad News for Barack Obama — the Culture War is Back
It’s official: the culture war is back. The flap over Barack Obama’s attempt to force Catholic organisations to provide their employees with contraception coverage has reignited the decades old conflict between feckless libertines and fundamentalist Christians. Who will win this round, we cannot know. But the 2012 election could easily turn from a battle over dollars into a battle over souls. And that’s probably not good news for Obama.
It just so happens that this year is the twentieth anniversary of when the culture war was first declared — and it also just so happens that I’ve written a book about it, due out today. On August 17, 1992, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan gave a speech to the Republican National Convention in which he declared, “There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America.” He tore into Bill Clinton, who had just been nominated by the Democrats, and his agenda for America: “abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units. That’s change, all right. But that’s not the kind of change America needs. It’s not the kind of change America wants. And it’s not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God’s Country.” The culture war had been waging since the 1960s, but Buchanan was the first politician to put a name to it.
The conservative offensive was initially very popular and played a big part in the Republican sweep of the Congress in 1994. It peaked in an attempt to impeach Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in 1998. But over time, the offensive became … offensive — an obsessive, shrill war on people’s private lives. A series of religious scandals in 2005-2006 contributed to a Democratic midterm landslide. Men like Pastor Ted Haggard were reduced from political powerbrokers to national jokes in the time that it takes to buy meth from a gay prostitute (for those who are interested, Ted now defines himself as a bisexual onanist). Society changed and attitudes mellowed. It is surely significant that one 2010 study found that Republicans’ favourite TV show is Modern Family, which features a gay couple with an adopted Vietnamese baby.
But the 2012 primaries have heralded the unexpected return of the culture war. First there was the dramatic rise of Rick Santorum, a Catholic conservative who won the Iowa Republican presidential caucus. Most pundits thought this was a freak event, but his strong victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri last week confirmed that he has a base of support large enough to threaten Mitt Romney. And one poll now gives him a 15 point national lead.Santorum’s success might have something to do with Obama’s assault on the Catholic Church. Although the issue of contraception appears to be beyond the remit of the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement, in fact most Tea Partiers see it as an assault on freedom of religious conscience and thus an assault on liberty in general. Many of them also happen to be religious conservatives themselves — a fact disguised by their previous focus on economics. A slight improvement in the economy and Obama’s incompetence have awakened the Tea Party’s dormant social traditionalism.
But will the renewal of the culture war help the GOP? No, says Public Policy Polling. They claim that social attitudes are rather more liberal than they were twenty years ago. In 2012, “56% of voters generally support the birth control benefit [as originally mandated], while 37% are opposed. Independents strongly favor it, 55/36, and a lot more Republicans (36%) support it than Democrats (20%) oppose it. Women are for it by a 63/29 margin.” The polling firm warns that forty percent of the public are less likely to vote for someone who opposes mandated contraception coverage and only 23 percent consider that opposition a positive. In conclusion, “Republicans will win this fall if they can convince voters that the economy stinks and it’s Barack Obama’s fault and putting them in power will fix the problem. If they want to make it about social issues and making it easy and affordable for women to access birth control, Democrats win.”
Public Policy Polling is the hip pollster of 2012 because it was the outfit that predicted Santorum’s unpredictable rise. But in this instance its analysis is wrong on three counts. First, it presumes that the issue “belongs” to the social conservatives. It doesn’t. Obama picked a fight with the Catholic Church, not the other way around. Conservatives didn’t start this culture war: liberals did. The fact that Obama has offered the Church an inadequate compromise deal is a tacit acknowledgement that he landed the first punch. The public understands that and won’t forget it.
Second, PPP presumes that Republicans “want to make it about social issues” — as if they had any choice. But this isn’t a matter of real politick, it’s a matter of principle. The conservative base is reacting heatedly to Obama’s radical liberalism and its anger would be hard — if not impossible — to temper by the Republican leadership. The issue here isn’t that Obama asked the Catholic Church to provide contraception coverage. No, he tried to compel them to do it. It’s interesting that more evangelicals are offended by the policy than Catholics. Why? Because it’s an assault on First Amendment rights, and evangelicals are terrified that once Obama is done messing with the Catholic Church’s freedom to believe what it wants to believe, he’ll come for them next. Some powerful emotions have been stirred up.
Finally, PPP underestimates the power of the conservative base to swing an election. Not everyone who answers questions in an opinion poll actually goes out and votes. The vague tolerance for a policy by the majority of the population isn’t nearly as important as the antipathy of a motivated minority. Back in 1994, Bill Clinton thought that he had struck gold when he signed an assault weapons ban. Polls showed that a majority of the country backed his position. But the ban ended up costing him votes in that year’s midterm elections, because the gun lobby mobilised large numbers of conservatives to go to the polls and vote Republican. In short, the revival of the culture war is probably good news for Rick Santorum, bad news for “Massachusetts moderate” Mitt Romney, and even worse news for Obama. The fight is on and it’s going to get nasty. As Pat Buchanan would say, “Culture warriors, don’t wait for orders from headquarters! Mount up and ride to the sound of the guns!”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Doctors Can’t Opt Out of Abortion Duties: Ministry
All doctors must be prepared to refer patients to abortion clinics even if the termination of a pregnancy runs counter to their own beliefs, Norway’s health ministry has confirmed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Elusive Dark Matter Pervades Intergalactic Space
A group of Japanese physicists has revealed where dark matter is — though not what it is — for the first time. As it turns out, the mysterious substance is almost everywhere, drooping throughout intergalactic space to form an all-encompassing web of matter.
Dark matter is invisible: It doesn’t interact with light, so astronomers cannot actually see it. So far, it has only been observed indirectly by way of the gravitational force it exerts on ordinary, visible matter. On the basis of this gravitational interaction, physicists have inferred that dark matter constitutes 22 percent of the matter-energy content of the universe, while ordinary detectable matter constitutes just 4.5 percent.
Shogo Masaki at Nagoya University and colleagues at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe used computer simulations to model recent observational data of 24 million galaxies. By determining how light from the galaxies was bending slightly as it passed through space en route to Earth — an effect known as gravitational lensing — the researchers were able to work out the location of the dark matter that was bending it.
As detailed in a study published online Feb. 10 in The Astrophysical Journal, their model shows that dark matter extends from each galaxy far into intergalactic space, overlapping with the dark matter from adjacent galaxies to form a pervasive web that envelops the whole universe.
In fact, “intergalactic space” is a misnomer; the research shows that galaxies aren’t contained regions with well-defined edges that are separated from one another by millions of light-years. Instead, they are composed of a central clump of ordinary, visible matter surrounded by a web of dark matter that extends “in an organized way halfway to the neighboring galaxy, so that the universe is filled with the material associated with … galaxies,” the researchers wrote in a statement.
Furthermore, what we call “galaxies” are merely the peaks of this continuous matter distribution, the researchers explained. The group mapped the distribution of dark matter over a distance of 100 million light-years from the center of each galaxy. “Its distribution,” they noted, “is never random or uniform, but is well-organized.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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