A Bailout, Quick!
Cyprus Mail Nicosia
It’s been in the air for weeks — Nicosia is preparing to apply for €3bn to €4bn in emergency funding from the EU in order to recapitalise its struggling banks, highly exposed to Greek debt. But time is running out, writes the English-language Cyprus Mail.
Now that we are no longer in denial about the possibility of applying for an EU bailout, we should perhaps give some thought to the timing which could prove of critical importance. As we have accepted that we will take the plunge, the sooner the better, even if this goes against the government’s philosophy of leaving every important decision to the last minute.
Ideally, we should have applied at the same time as Spain, as we would have been treated in a similar way. We would still have had to take measures — probably be told to cut the public sector payroll — but at least everything would have been done in a controlled and measured way.
Having missed this opportunity, the government needed to apply before Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Greece, after which the euro-zone could be thrown into chaos, as a victory for the anti bailout leftists of SYRIZA would raise the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro and wreak havoc in the markets. It is a possibility nobody can rule out as opinion polls show the contest between SYRIZA and the pro-bailout New Democracy party to be too close to call.
Government bonds have junk status
So what is the government waiting for? Everyone knows that the Laiki Bank share issue which the government has under-written will not raise anywhere near the €1.8 billion needed for the bank’s re-capitalisation. We also know that the bonds the government issued are not considered acceptable by the ECB for re-capitalisation purposes (inevitable when a government’s bonds have junk status) which means the application for a bailout by the end of the month is a certainty…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Barroso Warns EU Parliament of Eurozone Breakup
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has called on the EU parliament to give up its national sovereignty posture in the face of the eurozone debt crisis, and tackle the problems together.
The European commission president is watching the clock. The EU is at a “decisive moment” of crisis management, he said. High unemployment is a “social emergency” requiring both immediate steps and long-term measures, he said.
Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Barroso spoke out strongly in favor of a fiscal and banking union among the countries using the common euro currency. But many governments are opposed to both. A fiscal union would mean that member states could no longer absorb new debt independently. Their sovereignty, therefore, would be highly constrained, a fact which has met with stiff resistance from the affected national parliaments.
A banking union would make pan-European deposit insurance possible. That’s something Germany rejects, because it wants to defend itself against even more liability for weak banks and governments. Barroso appealed to the conscience of the reluctant governments: “I’m not sure if the urgency of this issue is understood in all the capital cities,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus May Seek Up to €4bn Bailout
Cyprus may seek an up to €4bn bailout and is looking to China, Russia and the EU for the best terms, reports the Cyprus Mail. “We will seek the best possible terms for the economy,” said Central Bank Governor Panicos Demetriades Wednesday with an EU bailout coming with austerity strings.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Can’t Save Europe Alone, Merkel Says
“Germany is strong, Germany is an engine of economic growth and a stability anchor in Europe… but Germany’s powers are not unlimited,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said in the Bundestag ahead of a G20 meeting this weekend. Berlin is under increased pressure to make concessions on sharing debt in the eurozone.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Opens Door for Crisis Solution as Spain Downgraded
Moody’s on Wednesday (13 June) was the last ratings agency to strip Spain of its A status, making it harder for the government and banks to borrow money, despite recent bail-out plans.
The US-based agency downgraded Spain from A3 to Baa3 — one notch above so-called ‘junk status’ where investors are no longer guaranteed a safe repayment on the bonds. It also warned it may soon further downgrade the eurozone country.
Moody’s is the last of the three largest ratings agencies to slash Spain’s A status. The downgrade means that the government’s borrowing costs — already close to bail-out territory — will rise even higher.
Explaining the downgrade, Moody’s said eurozone’s €100bn rescue announced last weekend for the Spanish banking sector will only increase the government’s debt and make its budget-cutting measures even more difficult and lengthy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Bank Withdrawals Accelerate
Greeks cash withdrawals from banks are accelerating. Up to €900 million is being taken out daily in the run-up to elections on Sunday. “There has been a deterioration in the situation in the past few days,” a senior Greek banker told the Wall Street Journal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Growth Key to Stopping Contagion, Says Monti
This month’s European Council must produce ‘credible package’
(ANSA) — Rome, June 13 — Growth is the key to ending the eurozone debt crisis, saving the single currency and averting an economic calamity for Italy, Premier Mario Monti said on Wednesday.
Monti has been among the international figures leading calls for the European Union to put greater focus on economic growth to solve the crisis ahead of a crunch European Council summit in Brussels on June 28 and 29.
These calls have met resistance from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who says the way forward is more discipline with public finances, even though austerity packages have deepened economic difficulties in many parts of Europe, and greater fiscal integration.
Monti is also pushing through a series of structural economic reforms to boost growth in recession-hit Italy, after passing a tough package of tax hikes and spending cuts to put the public finances in order in December.
But Italy’s borrowing costs have continued to rise in recent weeks amid concern of contagion because of the difficulties Spain is encountering and fears that Greece may leave the euro.
“If there’s a credible package of measures for growth at the European Council of June 28, then the Italian spread (with respect to the yield on benchmark German bonds) will decline,” Monti told the House.
“What the financial markets and the ratings agencies are worried about is the scarce growth and that worries us too.
“If there’s growth, we’ll have a lower spread, the interest rates will come down, companies will find it easier to invest and this will shelter us from contagion”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Tax Increases Backfire as Monti Tightens Belts
Rome, 13 June (AKI/Bloomberg) — Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is facing signs that tax increases are beginning to backfire as his new levy on real estate goes into effect.
Value-added tax receipts have declined since Monti’s predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, raised the rate by 1 percentage point in September as the economy was slipping into recession, government data released June 5 showed. The amount collected fell in the 12 months ended April 30 to the lowest since 2006.
Finding the right deficit-reduction mix as Monti fights to meet budget targets is critical for Italy to avoid becoming the biggest victim yet of Europe’s financial crisis. A slump that is driving up welfare spending is adding urgency to Monti’s effort to make the economy more competitive amid a growing backlash across Europe against austerity.
“This government has raised taxes too much,” said Alberto Alesina, a professor of political economy at Harvard University. “It would be much, much better to lower spending.”
Monti testifies in Parliament today for the first time since Spain received a bailout for its banks, leaving Italy exposed as the next potential investor target. Italy is unlikely to need a bailout because its finances are in better shape than Spain’s, Fitch Ratings Managing Director Ed Parker said yesterday.
The decline in VAT revenue figures may bolster the government’s efforts to postpone a further increase in the rate after October by 2 percentage points to 23 percent. That would put Italy on par with Greece.
‘Strong Deterioration’
Monti planned to tap more than 4 billion euros of projected savings from a government spending review to put off the VAT increase, which his deputies acknowledge may deepen the recession.
“The economy shows signs of strong deterioration,” Finance Undersecretary Gianfranco Polillo told the Senate in Rome on June 6. “In light of the fall in domestic demand, betting on a further VAT increase would be incomprehensible and even wrong.”
Still, efforts to delay the increase may have been upended by deadly earthquakes in northern Italy last month that caused billions of euros of damage, as quake relief will also come from the spending review funds.
The $1.4 trillion Italian economy contracted 0.8 percent in the first quarter after slipping 0.7 percent in the last three months of 2011. Italy’s gross domestic product, the third- biggest among euro nations, will fall 1.4 percent this year, the European Commission estimates. That would be the deepest slide after Greece, Portugal and Spain among the 17 euro members.
Fostering Growth
Monti has advocated shifting to more growth-oriented policies and gained a potential ally with the May election of French President Francois Hollande, who defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy by campaigning against austerity.
Monti’s tax increases were forecast to bring Italy’s budget deficit within the European Union limit of 3 percent of GDP this year even with expectations of a 1.3 percent increase in public spending. The measures were praised by Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco, who in October succeeded European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, as an emergency stopgap that must be revisited and balanced with reduced expenses.
“This burden can be sustained only temporarily,” Visco said in a June 9 speech. “A stronger and more incisive fight against tax evasion and the implementation of spending cuts are the indispensable premises for the necessary reduction of tax rates.”
Tax Burden
Under Monti, Italy’s tax burden, the ratio of tax revenue to economic output, will rise to 45.1 percent this year from 42.5 percent in 2011, and won’t start falling until 2015.
Monti, a former university president and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) adviser, was brought to power in November to rein in bond yields and bring down debt. His 20 billion-euro austerity package raised retirement ages and was followed by measures to ease firing rules and promote competition. Increased rates on gasoline were enacted in December and on luxury goods earlier this year, while the first property tax payments are due next week.
“I don’t want to deny that we could have done more and better,” Monti said in a June 7 speech. Still, his reforms have produced results, he said.
Dodging Tax
The government had 99.8 billion euros in VAT receipts in the 12 months ended April 30 tied to internal trade, or transactions among domestic counterparties. That compares with 100 billion euro in the 12 months ended March 31 and 101.3 billion euros in the period ended April 30, 2011.
“VAT revenue does depend on growth in domestic consumption,” said Ian Roxan, director of the Tax Programme at London School of Economics and Political Science. “It is also not immune to evasion. It is certainly possible that in a time of austerity people become less willing to pay VAT.”
Italy loses more than 120 billion euros in unpaid taxes every year, according to the Equitalia tax-collection agency. The country retrieved 12.7 billion euros from the fight against evasion in 2011, up 15.5 percent from 2010.
Bond yields, which declined in the first three months of the year as Monti enacted his program, have surged since March as concerns about Spain’s finances and Greece’s future in the euro mounted. The yield on the country’s 10-year bond ended at 6.17 percent, the highest since January, and 4.7 percentage points more than that of Germany.
Above Average
The September increase in the VAT rate pushed Italy to 21 percent, which is 1 percentage point more the average among the 17 countries using the euro, according to a report last month from Eurostat, the statistics department of the European Union. VAT rates are as high as 18 percent in Spain, 19 percent in Germany and 19.6 percent in France.
Monti is showing signs of backing away from rigor even as Italians brace for the property tax, which reinstates levies on first homes. He pushed back Berlusconi’s timetable for a balanced budget by one year to 2014, and is actively trying to avoid a new VAT increase.
Total tax revenue fell 0.1 percent to 413.3 billion euros in the 12 months ended April 30, compared with 413.7 billion euros in the period ended on the same date a year earlier. Direct tax receipts, which include levies on personal and company income, fell 0.9 percent to 218.7 billion.
Total spending, including regional and local outlays, is set to rise in 2012 to 809 billion euros, or about 51 percent of GDP, according to Finance Ministry forecasts published in April. Central government spending is expected to decline by 0.4 percent as Monti cuts transfers to Italy’s regions.
The government must “reduce public expenditures drastically and quickly,” said Angelo Cremonese, an economics professor with specialization in taxes at Luiss University. “You don’t increase revenue by raising” tax rates, he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Milan Bourse Gains: Spread Falls Despite Alarming Auction
Yield on three-year Italian bonds jumped to 5.3%
(ANSA) — Rome, June 14 — The Milan stock exchange’s benchmark FTSE Mib index closed 1.47% up on Thursday and the Italian spread dropped despite the alarming outcome of a bond auction earlier in the day.
The yield on Italian three-year bonds jumped to 5.3% at a bond auction Thursday, its highest level since December.
The yield at the last three-year auction in May was 3.91% and the leap was seen as another sign of concern on the money markets that Italy could be getting dragged back to the centre of the eurozone debt crisis.
Nevertheless, the spread between 10-year Italian bonds and the German equivalent, an important indicator of investor confidence in Italy, dropped to 465 points with a yield of 6.11% after opening the day over 470 points.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Merkel: Madrid Must Ask for Aid as Soon as Possible
(ANSAmed) — BERLIN, JUNE 14 — The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called on Spain to request aid as soon as possible. “The sooner they do so, the better,” Merkel has told the Bundestag today. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Cuts Cyprus Debt Rating
Moody’s credit rating agency cut Cyprus’ sovereign debt rating on Wednesday by two notches to Ba1. Cyprus has close cultural and economic ties to Greece. The agency said the island nation will have to pump capital into its Greece-exposed banking system.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Cuts Spanish Debt to Just Above Junk Status
The ratings agency Moody’s has cut the Spanish government’s credit rating by three points, adding to Madrid’s borrowing woes. Cyprus meanwhile dropped down deeper into junk status.
Moody’s downgraded the Spanish government’s credit rating by three points, leaving it only just one level above junk-grade status.
The New York-based agency said in a statement that Spain’s growing borrowing problems as the primary reason for the downgrade from A3 to Baa3 late on Wednesday.
European leaders announced a 100-billion-euro ($125.64 billion) loan to Spain on Sunday, which Moody’s said would increase Madrid’s debt burden.
“While the details of the support package have yet to be announced, it is clear that the responsibility for supporting Spanish banks rests with the Spanish government,” Moody’s said in a note.
The agency said it expected Spain’s public debt ratio to rise to some 90 percent of its gross domestic product this year. This was predicted to keep increasing until the middle of the decade.
Greek fears weigh heavy on Cyprus
Minutes after downgrading Spain, Moody’s reduced its rating on Cyprus, one of the smaller economies in the euro zone, by two notches, sending it further into junk territory.
The agency downgraded the bond rating of the Cypriot government by two notches to Ba3 from Ba1, citing the threat that Greece might leave the eurozone as a factor.
Cypriot banks have a high level of exposure to Greek financial institutions. A Greek exit from the euro would mean that Cyprus would have to increase its support to Greece’s banks.
Within the euro zone, Moody’s rates government debt in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus as junk status. Ireland, Greece and Portugal have already received bailouts.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Phone Maker Nokia is to Cut 10,000 Jobs Globally
Finnish mobile phone producer Nokia says it is planning to axe up to 10,000 jobs by the end of next year. The company says the layoffs are urgently needed to ensure long-term profitability.
Nokia of Finland — one of the world’s biggest mobile phone makers — said on Thursday it will have to reduce its global workforce by around 10,000 by the end of 2013. Company bosses said in Helsinki that the measure was part of a massive cost-saving scheme.
“These reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia’s long-term competitive strength, Chief Executive Stephen Elop said in a statement.
The news from Helsinki will have a devastating impact on Nokia’s research and development center in Ulm, Germany, which will be shut down completely by the end of September this year, meaning a loss of 730 jobs.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Zara: Profits Up 30%, Global Leader Immune From Crisis
In 3 months 91 stores opened
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — Pablo Isla, the president and chief executive of Inditex, was understandably optimistic as he presented the first quarter results in Madrid today for the company that owns Zara, the retail chain apparently impervious to the financial crisis. “I have full confidence in the future of the Spanish economy and I firmly believe that the reforms being adopted will have visible effects in the coming quarters,” Isla said. Zara, the company founded by the Galician, Amancio Ortega, Spain’s richest man, registered record net profits of 432 million euros between March and May, an increase of 30% compared to the corresponding period of 2011. The result surpassed even the expectations of analysts. Inditex recorded turnover of 3.416 billion euros, 15% more than during last year’s corresponding quarter, with EBITDA up 27% to 754 million euros. The textile company underlined the “strict” control of operational spending, which has contributed to the results.
During the quarter, Inditex opened 91 new retail outlets in 26 different markets, taking its number of stores worldwide up to 5,618 as of April 30. Spain’s most solid brand is currently present in 85 countries, after recently opening shops in Georgia and Bosnia in April and in Ecuador in May. The group’s internationalisation also continues apace. While Spain accounted for 25% of the company’s business in 2011, Asia is already closing in during the first quarter of 2012 with a figure of 18%. After consolidating its position in Europe, the United States and Japan, Zara is also due to arrive in China in September. But Zara’s position as the world’s leading fashion distribution group, ahead of the Swedish brand H&M, has been clear since the start of the year. The assembly of ordinary shareholders, which meets on July 17, will approve a total dividend corresponding to the 2011 financial year of 1.80 euros per share, the equivalent of 1.122 billion euros.
The announcement of the results provoked a rally on the Spanish stock exchange, with Inditex shares leading the positive figures, surging up 8% at around 13:00 and boosting the company’s status of highest capitalisation on the Spanish market.
For Pablo Isla, the key to the company’s success remain the same. “High quality, good design and better prices for customers,” he explained, factors that enjoy the benefits of the online sales model, which is decisive for growth.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Alaska’s Endangered Salmon Paradise
Alaska’s Bristol Bay is a unique ecosystem, home of the world’s largest wild salmon fishery. The fish management is exemplary, but the people around the bay fear for their existence.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Anti-Muslim Activists Take Aim at Haslam Hire
Tea party and anti-Muslim activists are taking aim at a recent hire by the administration of Gov. Bill Haslam, targeting one of its top economic development officers based on her religion and past work experience. The Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., organization that has frequently attacked Muslims for perceived ties to Islamist groups, and the 8th District Tea Party Coalition, an umbrella organization of West Tennessee tea party groups, have urged their members to pressure Haslam and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty to dump Samar Ali, an attorney appointed last month as the department’s new international director. The groups depict Ali as an Islamic fundamentalist with close ties to President Barack Obama. The claims are spurious and ECD has no intention of firing Ali, said Clint Brewer, a department spokesman.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
CAIR Leader Dawud Walid Justifies Slaughter, Beheading of Jews
The Council of American Islamic Relations [CAIR] may tout itself as an “organization that challenges stereotypes of Islam and Muslims,” and as group that was formed “to challenge anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide.” But in fighting the good fight against hate, at least one of its regional leaders demonizes Jews as the source of Muslims’ problems.
“Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?” CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid asked in a May 25 sermon at the Islamic Organization of North America mosque in Warren, Mich. “They are the Jews, they are the Jews,” he answered himself in Arabic.
Aside from being one of CAIR’s most visible spokesmen, Walid appears frequently in the media and has traveled abroad at least twice on trips paid by the State Department. During a 2010 trip to Mali, for example, he criticized treatment of Muslim Americans after 9/11, saying they “have been subjected to increased discrimination from racial and religious profiling by law enforcement.” And he cast the 2009 shooting death of a Detroit imam as unjust, even though the imam refused orders to lay down his weapon and surrender, and then opened fire first after a police dog was sent in to subdue him.
If it isn’t the Jews incurring Allah’s wrath by disobeying him, the hands of the pro-Israel lobby are undermining American Muslims and Palestinians alike, Walid claimed in his sermon…
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Everything’s Coming Up Jihad
by Daniel Greenfield
June has been a banner month for Muslim lawsuits against the NYPD. First “Muslim Advocates” filed a lawsuit against the NYPD on behalf of some New Jersey Muslims attending mosques that the NYPD had assessed as a potential terrorism risk. The Muslim Advocates, like every other Muslim “civil rights” group, has a history of covering up and defending terrorism. The media is full of sympathetic interviews with Muslims, who are baffled as to why the NYPD might be surveiling mosques and Imams. Farhoud Khera, the head of Muslim Advocates, complains, “There was explicit reference to the fact that they weren’t targeting Syrian Jews or Iranian Jews or Egyptian Christians, but really, the focus was on Muslims.”
The extensive Coptic Christian and Persian Jewish terrorism sprees aside, the goal here is to get the NYPD to play the same “Three Blind Monkeys” game that Federal law enforcement has taken up. And the only answer is the TSAization of the NYPD, as the last remaining counterterrorism force will prove that it isn’t singling out Muslims, by surveiling Methodist churches and Chassidic synagogues for signs of terrorist sympathies.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Gene Map of Body’s Microbes is New Health Tool
Researchers said Wednesday they have produced the first comprehensive genetic map of the microbes that live in or on a healthy human body, laying the groundwork for possible new advances in research and in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
The accomplishment-the result of a five-year, $173 million initiative called the Human Microbiome Project funded by the National Institutes of Health-stems from an effort to better understand bacteria and other organisms that play a critical role in processes ranging from digestion to infection.
Scientists know the body harbors trillions of such microorganisms-indeed, they outnumber human cells 10 to 1. But until now, they didn’t know what the all bacteria were, where they were and how they might differ from person to person, or from site to site on a single body.
“This is really a new vista in biology,” said Phillip Tarr, director of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and one of the leaders of the project, which involved some 200 researchers at 80 institutions.
The new genetic map should bolster research into a number of diseases whose onset is associated with a combination of genetic predisposition and changes to the body’s roster of bacteria.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Good Times: Chicago Teachers Union Demands 30 Percent Pay Raise
Because working Americans are doing so well under the Obamaconomy.
It takes a lot of nerve to ask for a 30 percent pay raise. You’d better be sure you had a banner year. Yet in Chicago, where just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading (and just 56 percent of students graduate), the teachers union is set to strike if the district does not agree to a 30 percent increase in teachers’ salaries.
The average teacher in Chicago Public Schools—a district facing a $700 million deficit—makes $71,000 per year before benefits are included. If the district meets union demands and rewards teachers with the requested salary increase, education employees will receive compensation north of $92,000 per year.
According to the Illinois Policy Institute, the average annual income of a family in Chicago is $47,000 per year. If implemented, the 30 percent raise will mean that in nine months, a single teacher in the Chicago Public School system will take home nearly double what the average family in the city earns in a year.
According to the union, 91 percent of its members voted for the ability to strike. That vote gives the union the ability to walk out of public school classrooms as children return to school this fall… The union argues [that] the requested salary increase would compensate them for extending the school day from 5.5 hours—among the nation’s shortest school days—to 7.5 hours.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Aren’t Giving Up on Opening Islamic Center
Advocacy group is asking for a federal review after the vote, rhetoric in St. Anthony.
St. Anthony’s rejection of a proposed Islamic center marks the first time in seven years that a new Muslim house of worship has been blocked by a local government in Minnesota.
City leaders said the decision was solely a land-use issue, but Muslim leaders expressed fears that Minnesota may be joining the ranks of other states where proposed mosques and Islamic centers have been blocked by government amid anti-Islamic rhetoric and intense community resistance. “This is the first one [in Minnesota] where we’re seeing so much anti-Muslim hate involved,” said Lori Saroya, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Muslim advocacy group asked the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday to investigate allegations of anti-Muslim bias in the rejection of the proposed Abu-Huraira Islamic Center, planned for the basement of the former Medtronic headquarters.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Obama, Romney Face Off in Ohio for Dueling Economic Addresses
President Obama and Mitt Romney will face off on the economy Thursday, each delivering a major campaign address in Ohio in the closest they’ve come yet to a general election debate.
The two opponents will not be sharing the same stage. Obama will deliver what is described as a “framing” speech to a community college crowd in Cleveland. Romney will be at a manufacturing company in Cincinnati for a rally. They plan to speak at virtually the same time Thursday afternoon.
For Obama’s part, the president is trying to recover from a raft of bad economic news and campaign setbacks, and try to lift his campaign above the day-to-day controversies to outline the thematic differences between his vision and his opponent’s.
An Obama campaign official told Fox News that “this election offers the American people a chance to break the stalemate between two fundamentally different visions of how to grow the economy, create middle-class jobs and pay down the debt.”
Romney, the official said, stands for stripping regulations and cutting taxes in the hope that the market “will solve all our problems.” Obama, the official said, “believes the economy grows not from the top down, but from the middle class up, and he has an economic plan to do that.”
Yet even some Democrats have grown frustrated with Obama’s rhetorical approach, suggesting he’s spending too much time blaming the Bush administration and other factors for the country’s economic problems and not enough time explaining what he will do going forward to fix them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration Refuses to Say it Will Recognise Results of Falklands Referendum
by Nile Gardiner
Just ahead of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands, the Obama presidency is still appeasing Argentina. An extraordinary exchange took place yesterday between State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland and Associated Press correspondent Matthew Lee at a press conference held in Washington. Lee (and another journalist) pressed Nuland repeatedly on whether or not the Obama administration would respect the results of the forthcoming Falklands referendum. Nuland consistently reiterated the US position of “neutrality,” at no point acknowledging the right of self-determination of the Falkland Islanders. Nuland ended the briefing saying she would be “delighted to take the question” on the Falklands, but offered no further comment on it.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Real Terror at Oregon’s Largest Mosque
Life under the microscope is fun for no one. That seems especially true at Masjed As-Saber, Oregon’s largest mosque, situated in Portland and a draw for Muslims both foreign-born and converted here. Interest in the mosque by the Federal Bureau of Investigation stems from the arrests in 2001 of the “Portland Seven,” a group intending to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan whose members had attended mosque services. Then came the arrest of the mosque’s imam, Sheikh Mohamed Kariye, on Social Security fraud, just one year later.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Bruce Bawer: Jew-Hatred in Norway
On Wednesday, June 13, during an Internet search, I ran across a left-wing Norwegian blog with which I was previously unfamiliar. The posting I stumbled upon dated back to February and was concerned with what it described as my many lies about Norway. Chief among these lies, apparently, is my claim that “there is strong antisemitism in Norway’s ‘elite.’“ The blogger claimed to find this claim outrageous. “Does he not know the labour party [sic] has historical strong ties with Israel? That a recent prime minister was a devoted friend of Israel?”
Less than an hour later, I followed a link in my inbox to a just-posted Jerusalem Post article by Benjamin Weinthal headlined “Norwegian student in Oslo burns Jewish pupil.” The story, which was originally reported on June 12 by a Norwegian Jewish blog, Med Israel for Fred (With Israel for Peace) — MIFF for short — was straightforward enough: on June 11, at an Oslo secondary school barbecue, an ethnic Norwegian student had burned a Jewish classmate with a red-hot coin, leaving “a very visible burn on the boy’s neck.” In a letter to Norway’s Minister of Justice, Grete Faremo, the Simon Wiesenthal Center complained that “this child has been the subject of anti-Semitic bullying and violence for the past two years, reportedly, because his father is Israeli,” but that “there has been no reaction by the school, the police or governmental authorities.” The Wiesenthal Center complained that “the silence of the school, the police and your government is too reminiscent of another Norway, under the WWII Nazi collaborator, Quisling.”
Vebjørn Dysvik, Norway’s chargé d’affaires in Tel Aviv, told the Post in an e-mail that he knew nothing more about the case than what had already been reported and insisted that “the Norwegian government has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying in schools.” But Dysvik didn’t leave it at that. He also took the occasion to complain that the letter from the Simon Wiesenthal Center “contains several extreme statements that lack any foundation in reality. We take exception to the attempt of painting a picture of Norway and Norwegian society as being anti-Semitic. This is a gross distortion of facts for which the Center must bear responsibility.”
The very fact that Dysvik felt comfortable slapping back at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in this snotty manner reflects the Norwegian government’s exceedingly different way of responding to charges of anti-Semitism, which is a very real and escalating problem in Norway, and to charges of “Islamophobia,” that invention of the Muslim Brotherhood which, in Norway as elsewhere, is employed by the usual suspects to manipulate nervous multiculturalists. Clearly, while Norwegian officials like Dysvik are terrified of offending Muslims, they are not terribly worried about offending Jews…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Cagliari President Cellino Accused of Evading 400,000 Eur
(AGI) Cagliari — The Guardia di Finanza and the Customs Authorities confiscated a boat owned by Cagliari Club President Cellino. Having brought his boat (a 20 meter sloop) to Italy from the United States, he would have had to pay VAT and customs tarrifs for 400.000 Euros. Instead, from the findings of the investigators, he allegedly evaded these taxes which is why the President of the ‘rossoblu’ Football Culb is now accused of smuggling. Last April, the customs and excise officers had sealed off a Range Rover with a Miami licence plate owned by Cellino who, according to the charges, had evaded the payment of nearly 15,000 Euros in taxes.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Finnish MP Loses Committee Post After Racist Remarks on Muslims
Finnish lawmakers on Wednesday forced a member of the opposition Finns Party to resign from an influential parliamentary committee after he was fined for making racist remarks, the latest in a string of setbacks for the anti-euro party. Finns Party lawmaker Jussi Halla-aho was fined by the Supreme Court on Friday for comments posted on his personal blog in 2008 which linked Islam to paedophilia and Somalis with theft. Somalis are a major immigrant group in Finland. Members of all political parties other than the Finns Party agreed on Wednesday that Halla-aho should quit as chairman of a parliamentary committee dealing with immigration and state security. He resigned from the post, although he will stay in parliament. “Although I consider the attack against me as unreasonable … I don’t want to unnecessarily prolong the circus generated by others,” he said on his party’s website.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Police Target Salafite Suspects in Nationwide Raids
Berlin, 14 June (AKI) — Police on Thursday raided regional states across Germany as part of a crackdown on ultraconservative Salafite Muslims suspected of plotting against the state, the interior ministry said.
The raids were carried out on 70 locations including flats, mosques, schools and local associations, with the biggest operations taking place in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, the ministry said.
Premises were also raided in Hamburg and in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Bavaria.
Interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said he had banned one of the Salafite groups called the Millatu Ibrahim, telling reporters “it works against our constitutional order.”
The raids could unearth evidence leading to two other radical Muslim groups being banned, Friedrich said, without providing any further details.
Authorities estimate there are about 2,500 Salafists in Germany.
North Rhine-Westphalia interior minister Ralf Jaeger said Thursday’s police operation was a “decisive step by the security services in the fight against dangerous extremists.”
As part of the operation, a mosque was raided in the western town of Solingen, where in early May, German authorities opened a probe against 44 Salafites and 37 others after they clashed violently with police.
Salafites have handed out 25 million copies of the Koran in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in a recent campaign to convert non-Muslims, alarming authorities
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
German Police in Major Crackdown on Salafist Muslims
German police have launched nationwide raids targeting ultra-conservative Islamic Salafists, suspected of posing a threat to public order. Searches took place early on Thursday at Salafists’ homes and meeting places in seven states, including Bavaria, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia. A Salafist group called Millatu Ibrahim, based in the western city of Solingen, has been banned. The raids follow clashes between police and some Salafists. German authorities believe the Salafists want to create a Sunni Islamic caliphate opposed to Western democracy. In one of the raids police removed items from the home of Salafist preacher Ibrahim Abu Nagie in Cologne. The authorities have been monitoring Salafist campaigns to recruit supporters, including the distribution of free Korans. There are believed to be about 4,000 active Salafists in Germany, the state-owned broadcaster ARD reports.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Four Held as Cops Target Fascist Web Masters
Police arrested four people suspected of running an international far-right extremist website after early morning raids on 24 addresses in 11 of Germany’s 16 states — and one in Britain — on Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: ‘Explosive Vest’ Prompts Raids on Salafists
The discovery of an explosive vest at a property used by extremist Salafist Islamists in Germany prompted the ban and raids of around 70 addresses by more than 1,000 police officers, it emerged on Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Police Raid Scores of Radical Islamists’ Homes
BERLIN (Reuters) — About 1,000 police raided scores of buildings across Germany on Thursday in a clampdown on radical Salafist Islamists suspected of plotting against the state.
German officials fear the Salafists, who trace their roots to Saudi Arabia and want to establish Sharia (Islamic) law in Europe, are fuelling militancy among a small minority of socially alienated young Muslims in Germany.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Greece an EU Laggard in Competitiveness, Says WEF
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JUNE 11 — Greece ranks poorly among its 27 European Union peers, only ahead of Romania and Bulgaria, daily Kathimerini writes quoting the Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012 compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
While Greece gets good marks in several areas (it ranks sixth in its supply of scientists and engineers), the debt-hit state is a laggard in terms of smart growth and socially fair development.
Greece finds itself in last place in terms of business environment because of anemic competitiveness (26th place), the low rate of entrepreneurship (25th), its poor record in terms of cooperatives (26th) and, of course, the lack of liquidity (23rd). Greece also lags in technological progress. The WEF report highlights Greece’s digital shortcomings (25th place) and the disappointing infiltration (26th) of IT and communication technologies both on a personal as well as a professional level.
Social integration is limited because of market shortcomings and obstacles to the participation of women and youth. The survey says that although the European model offers better policies for enhancing social cohesion, it is weak in creating the requisite conditions to secure profitable employment for a big segment of the continent’s populations. The spread of the crisis means government efforts are mostly focused on dealing with the immediate repercussions instead of the long-term goal of creating a competitive, sustainable and socially fair Europe.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Samaras Bets on Europe and New Negotiations
Four days before vote race to withdraw cash goes on
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — Events in Europe in recent days, in Spain and France in particular, have given Greece “the chance to renegotiate fairly” the austerity plan imposed on the country by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, this is on the condition that the centre-right party New Democracy (ND) wins next Sunday’s elections.
This is the message from the ND leader Antonis Samaras today, four days ahead of Sunday’s elections in the country. Meanwhile, the Greeks continue to be wracked with fear and are withdrawing their savings from banks and emptying supermarket shelves.
In a message to his electorate during a press conference in Athens, Samaras repeated that his party’s priorities are “to form a stable government and to keep Greece in the eurozone”. The leader of ND pointed out that European leaders are open to the possibility of renegotiating the deal with which Greece obtained international aid. “I believe that we will have something to gain from the fact that Europe is changing, and in this climate of change Greece has the chance for fair negotiation”. Samaras also said that he backed the position of the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, who is in favour of a Europe-wide guarantee on bank deposits.
Samaras’ call to electors to form a united front against the potential victory of the radical-left wing coalition Syriza — which is seen as a serious risk for Greece’s stay in the eurozone — came as sources from the Greek banking sector produced an alarming revelation. The sources claim that the amount of money being withdrawn from their accounts by Greek savers lies between 500 and 800 million euros a day. Greeks fear that a victory for the left in the elections could cause the country to exit the eurozone and bring about a return to the drachma, the old Greek currency.
In the context of such fears, numerous sources have told ANSAmed that people are rushing to hoard items such as pasta, tinned food and other non perishable goods, a phenomenon that has been reported by managers of large supermarkets for days. Many people have started hoarding food for fear that, while talks are ongoing between parties to form a new government in the aftermath of Sunday’s election, greater political and economic instability and even social tensions could occur.
A contributing factor to the already great uncertainty over the near future is a report that has gained ground in Athens today, according to which Greece has only 2 billion euros remaining in its state coffers, a figure that would be enough to guarantee the payment of the wages and pensions of public sector workers only until July 20. The Kathimerini newspaper was the first to report the news, which has as yet been neither confirmed nor denied by the Ministry of Finance, which in a statement released this afternoon, said only that “July’s pensions are not in danger”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Mussolini’s Granddaughter Hands Out Signed Photos of ‘Duce’ In Parliament
Rome, 13 June (AKI) — Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini, was filmed signing photos of ‘Il Duce’ and giving them to another MP during a confidence vote in the lower house of parliament on Wednesday.
During the vote on a government anti-corruption bill, a paparazzi snappped Mussolini signing two black and white photos of her grandfather handed to her in an envelope by the Northern League lawmaker Carolina Lussana.
In the photos published on several Italian dailies’ websites, 49-year-old Mussolini can be seen scribbling a dedication on both photos of her grandfather and handing them back to Lussana.
In the first photo, the uniformed ‘Duce’ gives the fascist salute while in the second he strikes a characteristically belligerent pose astride a tank.
Mussolini, currently an MP for ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s convervative People of Freedom party, is the daughter of Romano Mussolini, fourth son of ‘Il Duce’ and Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, the filmstar Sophia Loren’s sister.
No stranger to controversy and a former glamour model and actress, Mussolini has never hidden her admiration for her grandfather. Responding to taunts by the transgender Italian MP candidate Vladimir Luxuria in 2006 that she was a fascist, she famously retorted: “Better to be a fascist than gay.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Disgraced Formula One Boss, ‘Billionaire’ Owner, Says He’s Quitting Italy
Rome, 12 June (AKI) — Disgraced Formula One boss and businessman Flavio Briatore said he will close his swanky Billionaire Club in Sardinia and pledged to stop investing in his native Italy.
“I’m sick of the bureaucracy of this country,” he said in an interview Italian celebrity weekly Chi. “I’ll invest abroad.
In 1998 Briatore opened his Billionaire Club in Sardinia’s Porto Cervo, a summer destination for the word’s super rich and famous.
Briatore, 62, has come under fire for cutting corners in Italy where he has been convicted of fraud and run into difficulties with tax authorities. In other difficulties, he was in 2009 forced to resign from the ING Renault Formula One team after being banned for race fixing at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix when he ordered his driver to crash the his car. He’s prohibited from working in Formula One until 2013.
“This government has set up a kind of social hate,” he said. “If you have a boat and you moor in a port you’re considered a bandit or a thief.
The Italian government has declared a war on tax invasion. In a high-profile campaign to stop tax cheats, police have run background checks on owners of luxury cars and yachts to see if their declared income and assets correspond.
Briatore is the owner of a 60-metre yacht. In 2010, under the prior government, he was accused of falsely registering the vessel as a charter boat as a way to avoid paying sales tax when anchoring in a European harbour.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Parliament Rules National Anthem be Taught in Schools
(AGI) Rome — Parliament’s Commission for Culture has ruled the national anthem should be taught in schools and has also created a “Day of national unity, the Constitution, the Anthem and the Flag” on March 17th each year. The legislative decree will now be passed to the Senate after a bipartisan vote in which only the Northern League voted nay, and is the result of the unification of proposals presented by Paola Frassinetti (PdL) and Maria Coscia (PD). This law, called “Provisions on learning about citizenship and the constitution and the teaching of the National Anthem in schools”, will be implemented in schools next year with the National Anthem taught in all classes and all schools in the country. This law also envisages that March 17th, the day on which the Unity of Italy was rocalimed in Turin in 1861, will become a “Day of national unity, the Constitution, the Anthem and the Flag” but will not become a Bank Holiday, although there will be moments of refection and in-depth analysis especially in schools.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Lombardy Hospitals: Health Offices ‘Raided for Bid Rigging’
Regional health boss among 30 under investigation
(ANSA) — Milan, June 14 — Police raided regional health offices and hospitals in the northern Lombardy region Thursday over alleged irregularities in awarding clinical-trials contracts. Lombardy Health Director-General Carlo Lucchina was among roughly 30 suspects under investigation, police said. Charges in the sweep include criminal conspiracy, bid rigging, disclosure of secrecy and embezzlement.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pro-Swiss Einstein Letter Sells for $180,000
A letter by Albert Einstein extolling the virtues of Switzerland written has fetched far more than expected at an auction in Lucerne. The letter, which came from the word-famous physicist’s private collection, was auctioned by the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne for 174,000 francs ($182,204), significantly more than the 25,000-35,000 francs predicted.
Handwritten in 1917 on both sides of a sheet of paper, the letter was sent to German Jewish industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau, who was assassinated by a right-wing extremist in 1922, a year after he had been made minister of foreign affairs, newspaper Tribune de Genève reported.
In the note, German-born Einstein, who became a Swiss national in 1901, hailed the benefits of small states and cited Switzerland as an example. He thought that only small self-contained states would be sustainable, but noted that Switzerland’s cantons were too small to afford all the essential functions of a state. He pointed instead to the German district of Brandenburg as having the ideal administrative size.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Salafist Organization Banned in Germany
Some 1,000 German police in seven states raided facilities belonging to ultra-conservative Salafist organizations on Thursday, as the Interior Ministry announced that one such group has been banned. Authorities are concerned about the growing numbers of violence-prone Salafists in the country.
For weeks, German officials have focused a significant amount of attention on the country’s Salafists, members of a fundamentalist strain of Islam who are suspected of having close ties to Islamist extremists. On Thursday, they made their move, raiding Salafist facilities in seven German states and banning one of the most important Salafist groups in the country, the Millatu Ibrahim.
“The organization acts in opposition to the idea of constitutional order and multicultural understanding,” German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on Thursday morning. He added that the group promotes violence in its “fight against existing constitutional order.”
In addition, Friedrich say that two other Salafist groups have now been placed under investigation in the hopes of finding enough evidence to be able to ban them as well. Some 1,000 police officers took part in the early morning raids.
Authorities estimate that some 4,000 people belong to Salafist groups in Germany, and that it is the fastest growing strain of Islam in the country. Salafists are considered by the German government to be particularly dangerous and prone to violence, primarily because of their single-minded goal of establishing Sharia in Germany and their rejection of Western values. Furthermore, authorities believe that Salafist groups have close ties to jihadist fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Soccer: Bare Chested Women ‘Reinforce’ Croatia at Euro 2012
Poznan, 14 June (AKI) — Croatia’s national football team will be “reinforced” in a decisive European Championship match against Italy in Poznan by two bare-breasted women fans who have already become a hit on Internet websites, the Croatian media reported on Thursday.
The Croatian women, Jelena and Viktorija Miksa, acquired “world fame” after rooting for their team in a match against Ireland last Saturday and walking bare-breasted through the streets of the Polish city of Poznan. The two Miksas are reportedly unrelated.
Croatia beat Ireland 3-1 and media speculated the scenes will be repeated today in the match against Italy, though no one dared to predict the result. That match due to be played again in Poznan.
The women’s “performance” enlightened Croatian and even Irish fans last Saturday, but shocked Croatia’s conservative public. Jelena Miksa is an employee of Croatia’s Ministry of Culture and its ethics committee was considering sanctions against her.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: External Airbags Could Save Pedestrian Lives
Thousands of pedestrians die each year in road accidents, but so far few carmakers have shown much interest in developing safety features to protect those outside the car. Now Swedish auto company Volvo has produced the first external airbag — and it could save lives.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Gang Member Held After Malmö Hit-and-Run Drama
A 20-year-old member of the Black Cobra criminal gang is under arrest in Malmö following a wild car chase through the city that left a 61-year-old cyclist dead and has raised questions about how police handled the incident.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Twitter Experiment Goes Awry With Jewish Comments
A project that gives ordinary people control of a Twitter account representing Sweden has erupted in controversy after this week’s curator let loose a stream of posts that could be seen as offensive to Jews. Sonja “Hitler” Abrahamsson, as she refers to herself, was put in charge of the @Sweden account on Monday in the latest stage of the Swedish Institute’s Curators of Sweden project.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Tourism Twitter Initiative Backfires
An initiative intended to promote tourism in Sweden has provoked controversy after a woman controlling its Twitter account posted inflammatory messages about Jews.
The Swedish government agency responsible for tourism, VisitSweden joined up with the Swedish Institute and advertising company Volontaire in developing a plan to promote the country on Twitter. The initiative describes itself as “a public agency that promotes interest and confidence in Sweden around the world.” In an innovative move, the @Sweden account is run by a different Swedish citizen every week. Patrick Kampmann, the creative director of Volontaire, explained the thinking behind the initiative when he said recently in an interview, “Sweden stands for certain values — being progressive, democratic, creative. We believed the best way to prove it was to handle the account in a progressive way and give control of it to ordinary Swedes.” The account, which has more than 40,000 followers, has to date been controlled by a diverse spread of the country’s population, including a female priest and a lesbian truck-driver.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Teen in Sweden Convicted of Child Rape
A 15-year-old boy in Norrköping, eastern Sweden, has been charged with child rape after allegedly forcing a 13-year-old girl to sex after contacting her and her younger friend on Facebook.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: A Prophet Yet an Outcast …
by Simon Heffer
When most people hear the words ‘Enoch Powell’ they think of the phrase ‘rivers of blood’. It was Powell’s misfortune — partly self-inflicted — that his monumental contribution to political ideas should still be eclipsed by a phrase that he never uttered, misquoted from the speech that still defines him. Powell was born 100 years ago this Saturday, in a terrace house by a railway line in a suburb of Birmingham, the only child of two teachers.
In time, he would become the most brilliant classical scholar of his generation at Cambridge, the youngest professor in the British Empire, the youngest Brigadier in the Army, an MP, a Cabinet Minister and, in his re-invention as a tribune of the people, one of the most loved and hated men in Britain.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Dramatic Twist in Gang Rape Trial
THE TRIAL of six Brierfield men accused of sexually exploiting and abusing a 14-year-old girl was dramatically halted yesterday. A Burnley Crown Court jury was discharged by the judge and the case was adjourned indefinitely. Mohammed Imran Amjad (25), of Halifax Road; Haroon Mahmood (21), of John Street; Mohammed Suleman Farooq (22), of Berry Street; Omar Mazafer (21), of Halifax Road; Mohammed Zeeshan Amjad (24), of Halifax Road and Shiraz Afzal (25), of Mansfield Crescent, all of Brierfield, are accused of various sex offences against the victim.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Edmund Burke, The Man
One of the great strengths of British conservatism is its fabulous cast of unlikely heroes and heroines. Examples include Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a Lincolnshire shopkeeper; Winston Churchill, the half-American and sometime-Liberal architect of the early welfare state; and Benjamin Disraeli, a Jewish and dandyish journalist with radical sympathies. But, perhaps, the most unlikely example of them all is Edmund Burke — born Éamon de Búrca — the unmistakably Irish Whig who spent his career railing against the stupidities of 18th century Toryism.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Radical Mega-Mosque Opposed by Muslims
by Irfan Al-Alawi
In 1996, British adherents of Tabligh i Jamaat [TJ], the Muslim preaching movement that reflects the fundamentalist Deobandi ideology of the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, purchased a large tract of land in an industrial area of West Ham, in the London Borough of Newham. The property was formerly a chemical factory, but TJ proposed to erect a “mega-mosque” there, serving tens of thousands of worshippers, with extensive visitors’ and conference centres, guest hostelries, a religious school, and parking space.
Little attention was paid to the “mega-mosque” project until Londoners, both Muslim and non-Muslim, were disturbed to learn that, if realized, the TJ complex would appear adjacent to the new Stadium built for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The successful bid for London to host this year’s Olympic Games came in 2005, almost a decade after TJ obtained the parcel on which it intended to place the “mega-mosque.” The Stadium opened last month. The Games will commence on 27 July. Opposition to the “mega-mosque” has left its future unresolved.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sutton Library Prayer Room Plans Stir Up Anger
A library could become the first in the country to open a prayer room. Sutton Council’s library service has received a request from several Muslims to open a prayer room in Sutton central library. It is now considering the proposals to open an inter-faith prayer room in its facility at Sutton Civic Centre. It is understood no other public libraries in the country have such a room. Birmingham City Council is due to open a contemplation and prayer room in a new library complex next year. Sutton considering the proposals has angered the National Secular Society (NSC), who said libraries should not be places of worship.
[…]
Census statistics from 2001 showed about 20 per cent of people in Sutton were not religious or did not state they had a religion. About 70 per cent said they were Christian, and 2.5 per cent Muslim.
[Reader comment by ColP404 on 14 june 2012 at 10:29 am.]
That was 2001. Probably 70 per cent Muslim now. And most of them are working for Sutton council. When will we learn?
[JP note: Probably easier in the long run to convert all libraries, everywhere and everywhen, into Islamic Centres.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The BBC’s Left-Wing Bias Isn’t in Its News Coverage; It’s in Everything Else That it Does
by Ed West
From time to time people in the conservative media allege that the BBC is not entirely fair in its news output. I think it would be fair to say that some time ago I became a registered bore on the subject (and you only have to read my stuff — imagine living with me). And yet a report just published by the New Culture Forum suggests that this is unfair — because BBC news and current affairs output is nothing like as biased as BBC drama, and this is far more insidious. Dennis Sewell, the author of A Question of Attitude: The BBC and Bias Beyond News, spent more than 22 years working for BBC News, but came to the conclusion that it was wider culture biases in “arts, drama, documentary and religious programmes” that really alienated what he calls “the 32 per cent”, the proportion of definite conservatives in the population.
[…]
Worst of all, perhaps was Geert Wilders — Europe’s Most Dangerous Man? (BBC Two — February 2011) which “seemed to break many of the rules that the BBC’s own news and current affairs journalists are taught to observe”.
Billed as a profile of the controversial Dutch politician, for much of the time it felt more like a character assassination. A relentless catalogue of smear, insinuation and innuendo, with a good deal of the testimony against Wilders coming out of the mouths of interviewees whose backgrounds, in some cases, do not stand up to even cursory scrutiny. What was worse, their true affiliations had been sanitized by the programme makers. Martin Smith, identified as an anti-fascist campaigner. What the BBC chose not to vouchsafe was that Smith had been, at the time the interview was conducted, the national organizer of the Socialist Workers Party. Had we been told that Smith was not just the common or garden variety of right-on do-gooder, but a Trotskyite entryist, involved in the political equivalent of a false-flag operation, we might have taken his criticisms of Wilders with a larger pinch of salt. Nor were we told that Smith had, as recently as September 2010, been convicted in the UK of assaulting a police officer — something that might have led the viewer to ponder whether Wilders (who has not been associated with any criminal violence) would even be a candidate for the most dangerous man in this film.
More than once in the film, emphasis was placed on Wilders’ supposed wish to have the Koran banned. At one point, he was accused of wanting to deny access to the text to ‘one and a half billion Muslims’. Wilders has many times explained and clarified his position on this — and indeed is briefly glimpsed in the film, trying to do so at a press conference. The truth of the matter is that, within the context of a discussion on banning the sale of Mein Kampf in Holland (a measure that was passed into law at the instigation of the Left), Wilders remarked that, if the Left were to be consistent, the logic of its arguments for banning Hitler’s book should lead it also to seek a ban on the Koran, which contains passages that it should find just as odious as the passages in Mein Kampf that were so objectionable.
The programme also included pro-Wilders contributions from extremists while omitting his many moderate supporters and sympathisers: “A fair analogy might be the BBC broadcasting a profile of Ed Miliband, slanted in a ‘Red Ed’ direction, where the only supportive content — beyond a few vox pops with Labour voters — would be a clip of a Socialist Workers Party activist addressing a ‘Stop the Cuts’ demo, and an interview with a former Baader-Meinhof terrorist. The cynical stratagem of seeking to promote guilt by association is no substitute for balance.”
Then there was the notorious Any Questions (BBC Radio 4 — 5 March 2010) broadcast from the East London Mosque, where only a month previously a speaker had called for women who use perfume to be flogged: “The BBC may have walked into an ambush with its eyes shut. The listener at home, however, might have drawn a different conclusion. The whooping, baying crowd in the hall evoked memories of the disgraceful BBC Question Time Special broadcast immediately after 9/11, during which the American ambassador, Philip Lader, struggled to hold back his tears in the face of a brutal Islamist-leftist rent-a-mob.”
Or Bonekickers (July 2008) which featured the beheading of a peaceable Muslim man at the hands of a group of Christian fanatics, which was an unusual re-imagining of a 2007 case where some Islamists in Birmingham had plotted to behead a British Muslim soldier. Almost as sick was the very first episode of BBC One’s MI5 drama Spooks in 2002, which featured pro-life terrorists, a theme that featured again in the 2009 cop drama Hunter, where anti-abortionists threatened to kill kidnapped children unless the BBC showed a video of a 24-week termination. Never mind that nothing like this has ever occurred in Britain, and even in the US, pro-life violence is exceptionally rare. Then there was Accused: Frankie’s Story, about British soldiers in Afghanistan, (BBC One — 22 November 2010). Colonel Tim Collins, horrified, said the BBC was stabbing in the back those soldiers serving in the front line, and Sewell says that many troops saw it as “defamatory and stemming from a culpable ignorance”.
[…]
[Reader comment by joestrummer on 13 June 2012 at 09:55 PM.]
The BBC, and not just its news outlets, is just the visual representation of loony Labour council policies up and down the land. Every -ism imaginable, especially the received truth of multiculturalism, are relentlessly propagated as normalised behaviour and anyone deviating from the lunacy is portrayed as a “right-wing extremist”. Anti-Americanism is rampant, except of course when the Yanks aren’t stupid anymore and they elect a Democrat President, witness the worshipping and genuflecting before the feet of both Clinton and Obama. Anti-Israel, anti-Ulster Unionism is another default position of the BBC. The organisation’s fetish for anything African is also absurd. Is there even one day when either its television or radio output doesn’t have one feature from that particular continent ?
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Right Honourable Mr. Burke
by Brian Doyle
Impassioned orator, eloquent statesman, esteemed writer-but who was Edmund Burke the man?
Everyone claims Edmund Burke as his patron saint, political forefather, lodestar and compass point, ancestral bulwark against the tide of whatever seething modern ill he despises. The right wing trumpets Burke, who excoriated the murderous rebellion in France; the left wing salutes Burke, who excoriated his imperial colleagues for their overweening and rapacious greed in India and America; Christians celebrate Burke, who considered religion a crucial and indispensable pillar of civic life; the Irish savor a native son who became, as Hazlitt noted, “the chief boast and ornament of the English House of Commons”; the English honor the writer and orator of “transcendant greatness,” as Coleridge wrote, with his usual casual attention to spelling.
But Edmund Burke the actual man is faded away-the man his wife called Ned, fond of vulgar puns and lewd jokes, an ample man, thin as a lad and then never again; the chatterbox “never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off,” as Samuel Johnson said (probably with a tinge of self-recognition); the man whose first schooling was in a ruined castle in rural Cork, because Catholics were forbidden education under imperial law; the man who lost one son early and the other too soon; the man who would launch into such furious and vituperative speech in Parliament that his friends would have to haul him down into his seat by his coattails; the man “quick to offend [but] ready to atone,” in his own words; the man whose one refuge from politics and creditors, friends and enemies, passions and plots, was a tiny “root-house,” as he called it, a mile from his heavily mortgaged estate house through the Buckinghamshire woods-a “tea-house,” as a young friend described the place, set amid “roots of trees, moss, and so forth, with a … little kitchen behind and an ice-house under it.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Ultraconservative Breakaway Fraternity Offered Reintegration
Vatican City, 14 June (AKI) — The Vatican said Thursday it had proposed making the hardline breakaway Society of Pius X a “personal prelature” of the Catholic Church in a bid to return it to the fold and end a 25-year-long schism.
The only group that currently has this status in canon law — equivalent to being a borderless diocese that carries out pastoral initiatives — is the conservative Opus Dei movement.
Thursday’s statement came a day after the fraternity’s superior, Bernard Fellay, met Vatican officials to hear the pope’s decision on whether conditions could be met to reintegrate the fundamentalist society.
Benedict XVI’s decree has not yet been made public and the Vatican has given Fellay “a reasonable amount of time” to consider the proposal and its demands that the group accept core doctrinal points.
“The ball is now in their court,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Thursday.
Fellay may take weeks to prepare the brotherhood’s response.
In January, 2009, Benedict provoked outrage from Jews and Catholics worldwide by lifting the excommunication of the fraternity’s four bishops, including Bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied the World War II Nazi Holocaust.
The society’s relations with the Vatican have been strained since its founder, controversial French bishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained four bishops, defying the orders of Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II.
John Paul II excommunicated Williamson and three other bishops in response.
Lefebvre founded the breakaway fraternity in 1970 to reject reforms passed by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.
The reforms included a declaration which ended a church doctrine under which the Jews were held responsible for killing Jesus Christ.
Benedict has striven to heal the rift with the ultraconservative brotherhood, which wants the traditional Latin mass restored, by issuing instructions to widen availability of the ancient rite.
The Society of Pius X claims about 150,000 followers across the world, mainly in France and Brazil.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Croatia: CEI Countries, Ratifications to Respect Timeframe
Final statement at Trieste Foreign Ministers summit
(ANSAmed) — TRIESTE, JUNE 13 — Foreign Ministers from the 18 countries belonging to the Central European Initiative (CEI) have today called for “the process of ratification by the Parliaments of the 27 EU member states to be completed as soon as possible, to allow Croatia to enter the European Union on July 1 2013”, according to the final statement from today’s summit in Trieste.
Ministers examined recent developments in the area, from the recent granting of candidate status to Serbia to progress made by Albania. They also “encouraged Bosnia Herzegovina to continue with its programme of reforms, expressed their hope that EU accession talks with Montenegro will be opened by the end of the Danish presidency of the Union, and welcomed efforts by Macedonia, which is looking to open accession talks, inviting all sides involved to resolve outstanding bilateral issues”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria-Morocco: Rapper to Urge Re-Opening of Border in New Album
Algiers, 14 June (AKI) — Algerian rapper Mohamed Lamin will release a new album of songs calling on his country to reopen the long-closed border with neighbouring Morocco, according to pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi..
Lamin,Tunisian and Moroccan rappers compiled the album in a bid to persuade Algeria’s authorities to reopen the 1,559- kilometre-long border with Morocco that was shut after a guerrilla attack in Marrakech in 1994, the daily said.
“This album aims to challenge Algerian politicians who refuse to re-open the border. I have never given up my struggle in this regard and intend to keep going,” said Lamin, who began work on the new album three years ago.
Despite repeated moves by Morocco and Tunisian mediation, Algeria remains opposed to re-opening the border. Algerian authorities closed it when Rabat imposed visas on Algerian travellers in the wake of a guerrilla attack on the Atlas Asni Hotel in Marrakech.
Morocco suspected Algeria of having a hand in the attack and thousands of Algerian residents and tourists were summarily expelled.
A song from Lamin’s new album, entitled ‘Fakhri’ includes a duet with Moroccan rapper Samid Ghilam del gruppo rapper ‘Ash Kein’ that has already been aired on Saudi radio station ‘Mbc’ and France’s ‘Rmm’.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s Highest Court Says Parliament Must Dissolve
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Islamist-led parliament must be immediately dissolved, while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists.
| [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Court Orders Entire Parliament Dissolved, Deems Election Unconstitutional
Egypt’s highest court on Thursday ordered the country’s Islamist-dominated parliament dissolved and ruled that the last prime minister to serve under Hosni Mubarak could stay in the presidential race, twin blows to the Muslim Brotherhood that could sweep away its political gains since Mubarak’s ouster 16 months ago.
The rulings by the Supreme Constitutional Court, whose judges are Mubarak appointees, escalated the power struggle between the Brotherhood and the military, which stepped in to rule after Mubarak’s fall. The decisions tip the contest dramatically in favor of the ruling generals, robbing the Brotherhood of its power base in parliament and boosting Ahmad Shafiq, the former Mubarak prime minister who many see as the military’s favorite in the presidential contest against the Brotherhood’s candidate.
Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and lawmaker Mohammed el-Beltagy said the rulings amounted to a “full-fledged coup.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Clashes: Government Accuses Fundamentalists and Anti-Islam
Gvt. tries to restore strong authority. One dies in Sousse
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, 13 JUNE — Even if they still do not have a name, those who stand behind the clashes fed by the Salafis that set Tunisia on fire, causing the death of one person (a young “barbous” student in Sousse) certainly have a face: the face of fundamentalism, of those abusing Faith and of those trying to profane the sacred. The statement made by the President of the Republic Moncef Marzouki, the Prime Minister Hamadi Djebali and the President of the Constituent Assembly Moustapha Ben Jafaar, while nearly the whole country is still on a curfew, sound like a perfect synthesis between the need to protect the national interest, the need to give an answer to a 90% of Tunisians who were shocked by the events and by the political interest in not causing a break with believers.
The joint declaration came after a long preparation stage; although the declaration was announced last night, while the noise of clashes still echoed on the streets and the smell of tear gas could be smelled in several areas of the country, it was released only this morning after a three-people summit which lasted for hours. Maybe, it wasn’t easy to conciliate the three different souls of the “trojka” which is currently leading the country. “The three Presidents” , as people call them were very hard on “the extremists who are trying to lead Tunisia on the brink of a precipice”, where a role is played by members of RCD, the Party of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who are still active because, after the fall of the dictator, there were no retaliations and purges. This is the reason why some had been fearing for a long time that the former members of the RCD would be back; as the Minister of Justice B’rihi said yesterday, this is happening now. However, the joint declaration also contains words against those who make a political instrument of religion and offend Islam by abusing the sacred, which is very important for post-dictatorship Tunisians. And, by making reference to the notion of respect for the sacred, a justification is provided for the reasons, not for the actions, of those Salafi who, deeming some of the works exhibited during a art exhibition as immoral, organised a breakthrough and destroyed them. The meaning is: you are right, but your actions were wrong. This position has already been censored by some observers and analysts, according to which by stating, even indirectly, that the Salafis are right, you underestimate respect for art and its diverse expressions and endanger personal freedoms.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Clashes Between Army and Al-Qaeda Kill 10 in South Yemen
(AGI) Aden — Official sources say 2 Yemeni soldiers and 8 Al-Qaeda militants have been killed in clashes over the city of Shuqra. The Yemeni army launched a huge offensive in Southern Yemen, geared to retaking Abyan Province, which has fallen into terrorist hands. The only cities still under Al-Qaeda control are Shuqra and Mahfad.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Gulf: Clampdown on Sorcerers and Witchcraft
More objects seized, S. Arabia creates police unit
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, JUNE 11 — In the shadow of the enormous skyscrapers in Dubai, symbols of modernity and innovation, old superstitions and black magic are still popular in the Emirate’s intricate multicultural social web. At least according to the amount of “material for witchcraft” impounded by the border police: 92 cases in one year. Witchcraft is punishable with imprisonment in the United Arab Emirates, but in other Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia, culprits can even get the death penalty. Yesterday two Asian men were arrested at the airport when some bizarre and illegal objects were found in their luggage: texts containing magic spells and rituals, talismans, animal hides and bones, containers holding blood and other liquids, strings and strange rings: 1200 objects, classifiable in 28 categories, in total. “Magic and witchcraft are dangerous practices that jeopardise society, manipulating the minds of people with problems,” commented Ali Al Maghawi, director of customs operations, underlining that people’s credulity is often used for fraud.
Women are often the easiest victims according to statistics. Islam explicitly forbids “learning, teaching and practicing magic” as well as consulting magicians, fortune-tellers, wizards and the likes because they go against the will of Allah, the only one to decide on the destiny of each individual, the Gran Mufti for Islamic Affairs, Ali Ahmad Masha’al, explains in newspaper Gulf News.
Saudi Arabia carried out two death sentence for witchcraft in 2011: a man from Sudan and an Arab woman were beheaded in a period of a few months. The year before, a Lebanese sorcerer, well-known from television, was arrested when entering the oil state. He was brought to trial and sentenced to death. The sentence was not carried out in the end because of strong international pressure.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar: Top 86-Year Old Sunni Cleric Qaradawi Marries for the Third Time
(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) — Top Egyptian octogenarian Sunni cleric and theologian, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has remarried for a third time. Al-Qaradawi, 86, married a Moroccan woman 37 years his junior in Qatar. According to Moroccan media the 49 year old women is a public employee in the capital city of Rabat. Sheikh Al-Qaradawi was born in a small village in Egypt’s Nile Delta in 1926. He studied Islamic theology at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he graduated in 1953. However, the Sunni cleric has lived and worked in the Persian Gulf littoral state of Qatar since 1961. In 1977, he founded the Faculty of Shari’ah and Islamic Studies in the University of Qatar and managed it until 1990. He has also been heading the Research Centre of Seerah and Sunna in the same university.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: New Petition to King for Women Drivers
A year after start of “I will drive my car” campaign
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT — A petition has been posted online by activists. The aim is to gather enough support to be presented to King Abdullah on June 17, the first anniversary of the launch of the campaign.
One of the signatories is Manal al-Sharif, who was arrested in May 2011 after posting a Youtube video of herself at the wheel of a car. The activist was freed a few days later while another woman, Sheima Jastaniah, who was sentenced to 10 lashes for defying the ban, was pardoned by the King in November last year.
Since then, their example has been followed by hundreds of Saudi women, dozens of whom have been arrested and freed only after being forced to sign a statement promising that they would not repeat their gesture of defiance.
The petition, which its promoters say has already gathered hundreds of signatures, asks the sovereign to support the “I will drive my car” campaign, saying that the right is recognised to women “by all religions and national and international laws”, but denied only on the basis of “customs and traditions that do not derive from God”.
As a first step, the petition asks for the right to drive to be applied to women who gained their licences in nearby countries, and for “driving schools for women” to be opened inside Saudi Arabia.
“We neither cooperate with any organisation or international body nor represent a political party or opposition and we do not want to begin a public protest,” the scheme’s promoters say. “We ask only that every woman needing to move around for her daily duties and who does not have a man to help her be allowed to help herself”.
Women in Saudi Arabia today who need to use a car must either do so with a driver or with a male relative driving for them.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Science and Islam
Theoretical physicist, Jim Al-Khalili hosts the BBC documentary series SCIENCE AND ISLAM. The series includes three episodes including “The Language Of Science” (June 13), “The Empire Of Reason” (June 20) and “The Power Of Doubt” (June 27). Al-Khalili travels through Syria, Iran, Tunisia and Spain to tell the story of the great leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries.
[…]
[JP note: More leftwing, multicultural nonsense from the BBC.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
British Grenadier Guards Soldier Killed in Afghanistan Grenade Blast
A British soldier from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards has been killed in a grenade blast in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said.
The soldier, who has not yet been named, was on a patrol to disrupt insurgent activity in the north of Nahr-e Saraj district in Helmand Province when he was caught in the blast from an enemy grenade yesterday. He died despite receiving immediate medical treatment, a spokesman said. His family have been informed. Spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Major Ian Lawrence, said: “Sadly I must inform you that a soldier from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards has been killed whilst on patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province. “The thoughts of all within Task Force Helmand are with his family and friends at this difficult time.” The soldier becomes the 418th member of UK forces to have died since operations in Afghanistan began in October 2001.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Uzbekistan: WikiLeaks: Karimov, Arabs and Money for New Mosques
Arab money were supposed to fund the construction of a “cultural-religious building” in place of a WWII memorial in the centre of Tashkent, but why did this project not work out?
The title of a cable sent by the then US ambassador to Uzbekistan, Richard Norland, to Washington on 7 July 2008 is “Uzbekistan: UAE To Build Cultural-Religious Center In Tashkent, Expand Investment”. The cable talks about an embassy contact’s meeting with a UAE consulate general economic specialist. The contact confirmed that Uzbekistan was planning to build a major “cultural-religious building” on the present site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the centre of Tashkent that commemorates soldiers who died in WWII. He said that the Dubai Properties Group, a UAE company, would build the building, but was not able to give more details. “Recent rumors suggested that the new building would be a very large mosque,” the cable said, adding that according to the contact, the new facility would be “more cultural than religious”.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
China: DHL Chooses Shanghai for Its New Hub
As its middle class grows, China is fast becoming the world’s largest logistics market. That’s why Deutsche Post DHL has built a new hub in Shanghai, which is set to open next month.
July is not the best time to travel to the Chinese metropolis Shanghai. Summers in the south of China are hot and humid, and the air is dense. Temperatures can rise to over 40°C (over 100°F).
Nevertheless, this is exactly the time of year that Deutsche Post DHL’s CEO Frank Appel has chosen to travel.
And he won’t be there just for a day or two — he and other managers from the German logistics company expect to spend a few weeks there.
“China has become extremely important for our business,” Appel told DW. “That’s why I want to understand how the country is developing — to see what exactly is happening there. My colleagues feel the same. We decided to go to China together and spend some time there.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Wal-Mart Faces New Food-Safety Complaints in China
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. faced new accusations of food-safety violations in China, as the retailer attempted to recover from a pork-labeling scandal that jolted its China operations last year. Beijing’s Food Safety Administration said Thursday that it accused Wal-Mart of violating food-safety standards in March by selling sesame oil exceeding standard amounts of benzopyrene and squid containing hazardous levels of cadmium. The agency’s website said the sesame oil and squid were produced by domestic companies. Both chemicals are hazardous to human consumption and can cause cancer, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Will China Lead the World in 2030?
Nobody can see into the future, but certain experts are daring to predict the state of the world in 2030. They see China ahead of other countries. Although it is almost impossible to predict how some of the developments underway in the world right now will end up, many economists are doing their best to make forecasts, which are as precise as possible.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mt Martha Primary School’s No Contact Policy Bans Tiggy and High Fives
UPDATE: A PRIMARY school principal has defended her “crazy” and “ridiculous” decision to ban kids from playing tiggy and giving each other high fives.
It comes after parents today stormed the offices of Mt Martha Primary School in protest after their horrified children told them about the bans.
The new no-contact policy also outlaws soccer, touching and hugging as well as basketball, football and chasey.
Principal Judy Beckworth said stood by her decision and said the ban would be in place for a week in a bid to cut back the number of injuries to students in the school yard.
“I don’t believe this is taking it too far and this is not an overreaction,” she said.
“When you have students badly injuring themselves, it would be unacceptable for me not to take action.
[…]
One student was reprimanded yesterday after putting his arm around his mate who was winded. The student had to walk the school ground with the yard duty teacher as punishment.
[…]
The mother of the young boy who was winded said her son felt bad for his mate, who was punished for coming to his aid.
“This is crazy and out of control,” she said.
“So is lunchtime and recess now for the kids to be sitting a metre apart from each other and not doing anything.”
Mt Martha has previously come under fire after it issued demands for parents to pay for toilet paper and soap and the use of the school oval.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Ghana: Return Stolen Regalia From Palace or …-Gbi Traditional Council Warns Muslims
The Gbi Traditional Council has warned Muslim youth to return stolen regalia from the palace or they will advice themselves. The council gave this ultimatum during a meeting with the GOC Southern Command, Brigadier General Martin Ahiaglo. The Commander has been meeting with feuding factions- Muslims and indigenes of Hohoe- in an attempt to calm nerves and to restore order following days of clashes which have left two people dead and properties destroyed. The two groups have been engaged in series of reprisal attack culminating in a dawn-to-dusk curfew being imposed on the Hohoe Municipality. Two houses were torched, Wednesday dawn despite the curfew; raising concerns the clashes are far from over. Moslems are said to be running away from the area for fear of being attacked.
Peace brokers including the National Chief Imam, Sheik Nuhu Sharabutu as well as Brigadier Gen. Ahiaglo have been meeting the factions to attempt a peaceful resolution of the matter. Joy News Volta Region correspondent Agbeko Ben Coffie who is part of the emissaries reported the Gbi Traditional Council is unhappy with the attack on their palace. Apart from the destruction on the Palace the Council is accusing the Muslim Youth of stealing regalia from the Palace. Tobgui Keh of Gbi Wegbe said the Muslim youth have until Friday to return the stolen regalia or the Council will advise themselves. He is also cautioning the police against what he said was the continuous attacks and harassment of the indigenes or they will be forced to defend themselves. Agbeko Ben Coffie reported of angry women clad in red and in firm support of the Council’s position.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Tanzania: Bakwata Backs Sheikhs on Census
THE Muslim Council of Tanzania (Bakwata) has backed sheikhs’ move to sensitize their followers to boycott the upcoming national census, in case the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) does not include a question on an individual’s religion in its questionnaires. In a statement issued on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam by Sheikh Mussa Yusufu Kundecha and signed by 30 other sheikhs, the leaders have insisted that the omission of the question on religion would lead to continuous use of the current data which are incorrect. “We already have various data on the internet, which are widely quoted in references to the country’s population versus their religious affiliations. These data are incorrect, it is better to come up with reliable ones,” he said. Sheikh Kundecha noted that the move by Muslim leaders comes after the government last Monday reaffirmed its decision not to include the component, after a consultative meeting with religious leaders in which Muslims emphasized their case.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Falklands 30 Year Anniversary: Argentina Renews Assault at UN
Argentina said Britain has “a duty” to negotiate the future of the Falkland Islands ahead of a UN meeting on the disputed territory on Thursday’s 30th anniversary of the end of war between the two countries.
President Cristina Kirchner will lead a delegation of more than 90 Argentine diplomats and officials at the UN decolonisation committee’s annual meeting on the Falklands and 15 other territories around the world. Two of the eight members of the Falklands legislative assembly will put the case that the 3,000 population want to remain under the British flag. Britain, whose troops ended a 74-day Argentine occupation of the South Atlantic islands on June 14, 1982, has always refused talks saying the population should decide their own future. It boycotts the committee meetings.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Hugo Chavez Announces Venezuela Making Drones and Kalashnikov Rifles
President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday that Venezuela has begun to assemble Kalashnikov assault rifles with assistance from Russia and started producing surveillance drones.
Venezuela has spent billions of dollars for Russian arms and military aircraft since 2005, including 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, dozens of attack helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. “We are a free and independent country,” Chavez said. Army Gen. Julio Cesar Morales Prieto, president of Venezuela’s state-run arms producer, said 3,000 AK-103 assault rifles have been assembled since Venezuela and Russia signed the 2005 agreement for the construction of a Kalashnikov assembly factory. The factory has begun production, but construction of the facility has not yet been completed, Morales Prieto said. The factory eventually will have the capacity to produce 25,000 rifles annually.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Pickles Flies Falklands Flag to Mark 30th Anniversary of Liberation
Many of us have never felt more proud to be British than we did 30 years ago. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles raised the Falklands flag at the Department for Communities and Local Government in Whitehall to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the islands. The Falklands flag is being flown alongside the United Kingdom’s Union flag, which is flown all year round.
It has been decided that flags from some of Britain’s 13 other Overseas Territories be flown at different times. They cover 600,000 square miles and are home to 260,000 people — more than Nottingham or Newcastle. The Falkland Islands are made up of over 700 islands with the two largest, West and East Falkland home to around 3,000 people.
Eric says:
“Today, we pay tribute to the bravery of our Armed Forces thirty years ago in liberating the Falklands from totalitarian aggression.
“British forces put their lives on the line to defend British sovereign territory, the British way of life and the rights of British people to determine their own future. This is was a victory both for freedom and the indefatigable spirit of the Islanders.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Trinidad Islamic Group Leader Faces Sedition Trial
The leader of an Islamic group that staged a deadly coup attempt 22 years ago in Trinidad went on trial Wednesday on charges of making seditious statements during a sermon at his mosque. Seventy-year-old Yasin Abu Bakr is accused of threatening affluent Muslims he believed were not paying an Islamic tithe for the poor, telling them during a 2005 sermon that “blood could flow.” His attorney said he was not threatening anyone and simply speaking freely. “Is it that only Abu Bakr is not equal before the law and does not have freedom of thought and expression?” defense attorney Wayne Sturge asked the judge Wednesday. Legal delays and an ankle injury Abu Bakr suffered delayed the trial for years. Prosecuting attorney Dana Seetahal said the case is based on a video from a local TV news crew that recorded the sermon.
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
MEPs Block Draft Laws to Protest Schengen Reform
The European parliament blocked talks with EU nations on five draft laws Thursday to protest being stripped of a say in the running of the visa-free Schengen area, its president Martin Schulz said.
Parliamentary groups across the political spectrum, with the exception of the far right, are angry at a decision by home affairs ministers last week to change the legal basis of the 26-nation Schengen area.
The change, which removes MEPs’ right to take part in decisions on monitoring Schengen borders, has set the 752-seat assembly on a collision course with the European Union’s member states.
Some MEPs have threatened to lodge an appeal with the European Court of Justice.
Schulz said the parliament would suspend negotiations on five draft laws “in response to a far-reaching decision” by the ministers.
“This is unprecedented in the 18 years since I was elected to parliament,” he said.
Conservative Joseph Daul, who heads the largest group in the parliament, said this week that his group would boycott Denmark, which as current rotating EU president was deemed responsible for the move.
“The Danish presidency has broken a bond of trust with this parliament,” he said.
In a landmark move the same day, the ministers also agreed to empower countries to temporarily restore frontier checks in the borderless travel zone in case of a surge of illegal migrants.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Switzerland: Tough Asylum Laws ‘Contrary to Tradition’
Switzerland’s left-wing parties and refugee support groups have reacted angrily to a raft of measures approved by the lower house on Wednesday that will place much tougher restrictions on asylum seekers.
The lower house of parliament, the National Council, voted to block asylum seekers’ right to welfare benefits, and to provide only the minimal emergency assistance.
Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga spoke out against the reduction in financial support, saying that that the changes are “contrary to the humanitarian tradition of which our country likes to boast,” newspaper Tages Anzieger reported.
She also criticized the fact that the measures would be like torture for people with no home or right to work, who were already traumatized by their ordeals, online new site Le Matin reported.
The more liberal proposals of the Greens and Social Democrats were rejected in favour of proposals to tighten asylum laws.
Beat Meiner, head of the Swiss Refugee Council said the left-wing parties who opposed the move would likely force a referendum if the upper house votes to approve the legislative changes in the autumn.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia-Switzerland Deal for Helping Youth
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JUNE 13 — Opening the way for emigration towards Switzerland, on the basis of an “agreed approach”. This is the first objective of a memorandum signed in Tunis by Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, and Simonetta Sommaruga, chief of the Swiss Justice and Police Federal Department.
The agreement foresees the formation of 150 young Tunisians, for a period of about 18 months, at the conclusion of which, thanks to the attainment of a Swiss diploma, the young men will be able to carry out an internship in a Swiss firm and integrate within the job market.
The memorandum also plans to help out with accommodation in Switzerland for some Tunisian labour categories (such as businessmen and doctors). The agreement also plans to hand out a large sum (ten thousand dinars, about five thousand euros) which will be given by Swiss authorities to every Tunisian in an irregular situation and who is to be returned to his country, voluntarily or by force. The repatriating process will be carried out in small groups (2-3 maximum), “in the respect of human dignity and respecting the Bill of Human Rights.” In 2011 the Swiss authorities received 2570 requests for political asylum from Tunisia, of which only two were accepted.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: Plague of Illegal Abortions, 600-800 Per Day
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, JUNE 13 — Illegal abortion in Morocco is “a real tragedy”, with between 600 and 800 cases every day, causing serious complications for women’s health, some of which can prove fatal, according to the president of the Moroccan association for the fight against illegal abortion (AMLAC), Chafik Chrabi, who has been speaking during the association’s second conference.
The reasons that move women to choose such a dangerous solution are to be found in the serious social repercussions that unwanted pregnancy could bring, including being kicked out of the family home, honour crimes and suicide. The current law on regulating abortion “is not compatible with social reality in Morocco,” Chrabi said. In light of these figures, it would be “preferable, in cases such as rape, incest and foetal deformation, to proceed in good medical conditions in order to limit the consequences of illegal abortion”.
Abdelali Alaoui Belghiti, the head of hospitals and clinics at the country’s Ministry of Health, says that “the problem of abortion in Morocco not only concerns the health sector, but is a social problem that concerns a number of interested parties”.
The member of parliament and former Minister for Social Development, Families and Solidarity, Nouzha Skalli, has drawn attention to the need rapidly to bring in a new law “as part of national consensus with the aim of avoiding the social ills deriving from unwanted pregnancy”, the MAP news agency says. Skalli called for courage in debating and finding solutions to the social problem.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Majority Against Abortion Ban, Poll
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, JUNE 11 — Most people in Turkey are against the ban on abortion proposed by nationalist Islamic Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to a survey published today by newspaper HaberTurk.
A majority of 55.5% of interviewees said no to the reform of the law, introduced in 1983, that allows abortion until the 10th week of pregnancy. By the end of May, Erdogan called abortion “murder” and announced that a new law would passed soon.
According to the Turkish press, this law will ban abortion completely or limit it to the first 4 weeks, when “life ignites” according to several Islamic thinkers. Another 44.5% agrees with the proposal. The premier’s AKP party obtained 50% of votes in the most recent parliamentary elections in June 2011. Erdogan’s counter-reform plans, which may include a ban on abortion for raped women as well according to several AKP members, has triggered sharp protests in the opposition and among women’s rights movements. According to the Islamic-nationalist premier, abortions and Caesarean births are part of a “conspiracy” aimed at slowing Turkey’s demographic growth, which he sees as necessary to keep the current economic boom going. Members of the EU and the European Council have criticised the plans of the Turkish government.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Islamic Society’s Event Sparks Controversy
YUSU has defended the invitation of Yusuf Chambers to speak at the University tonight amid controversy over the speaker’s views on homosexuality. The Islamic Society has invited Yusuf Chambers to speak at an event entitled ‘Patience, perseverance, and Final Exam’, and Tim Ellis, YUSU President, said in a blog post today that the event would go ahead.
The event has been criticised by Stand for Peace, one of Britain’s leading Jewish-Muslim interfaith organisations, who say that Chambers has in the past, “expressed the desire for homosexuals to be killed and has denied that homosexuality has any natural or genetic origins.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: More on Yusuf Chambers at York
At the top of the piece about this issue on Student Rights there has now been added a link to a statement from York’s LGBT Officer, Leon Morris. It opens:
Yusuf Chambers is a member of the Islamic Research and Education Academy (iERA). The iERA features Muslim fundamentalist preachers who advocate the criminalisation of homosexuality and even the death penalty for same-sex acts. They argue that it is necessary to execute gays to keep society pure. Indeed, Yusuf Chambers was one of the founders of this Academy and in addition to this, has been known to advocate the return of stoning adultress women and is openly against Jews. One of the biggest issues, however, that restricts any possibility of mine to stage a protest is that of free speech. I believe that the freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental rights that allows and permits us the capacity to be rational human beings and by the very nature of free speech, people will be offended some of the time. In developing a level of tolerance to others, we can manage those that which offend us.
I’m not at all sure about this — not being invited to speak at a university is not in itself an infringement of free speech, and neither need a protest necessarily shut down debate. What it can do is demonstrate that people find Chambers’ views repellent.
[…]
[Reader comment by Falming Fairy on 14 June 2012 at 7:59 am.]
So basically, it’s as I said — you cannot rely on university authorities or students themselves to defend LGBT students. That statement by the LGBT officer reminds me of a translation of a letter I saw once in which a German Jew was wondering how best to address his Nazified neighbours in order not to offend their new patriotism.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
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