Banking Union to Put 6,000 Banks Under ECB Supervision
The European Central Bank will have the “ultimate decision-making authority” on supervising 6,000 euro-area banks, with some day-to-day tasks delegated to national bodies, a commission spokesman has said.
“There is a clear need to cover all banks through a single supervisory mechanism, for all 6,000 banks of the euro-area,” Stefaan De Rynck, spokesman for financial issues said during a press conference on Friday (31 August).
The commission will table proposals on 12 September on granting the ECB sweeping supervisory powers to help early detection of troubled banks and force them to fix their balance sheets before having to ask for public money.
But Germany finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has poured cold water on the plan, saying it was a matter of “common sense” that one could not expect a single body to oversee 6,000 different banks. In his view, only big “systemic” banks should come under the direct supervision of the ECB, he wrote in the Financial Times.
German regional banks and savings banks in recent days have also voiced “great concern and irritation” at the EU commission’s plans, insisting that they should remain under national supervision. In Germany, banking supervision is shared by the Bundesbank and the Federal financial supervisory body (BaFin).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Barroso: EU Treaty ‘Needs to be Renewed’
European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has said EU institutions need more power over member states to fight the crisis.
Speaking on Saturday (1 September) in The Hague at a meeting of constitutional court judges organised by Yale University, he called for a “European renewal” and for a further “leap” of integration.
“We are experiencing a situation in which we need greater unity and coherence between our policies, as well as greater legislative harmonisation … We need greater institutional integration. We need to consolidate a transnational order that through shared sovereignty guarantees the protection of our citizens,” he said.
“The present crisis has shown the limits of individual action by nation states. Europe and the principles of the Treaty need to be renewed.”
Barroso noted that deeper political union must come with “appropriate mechanisms of accountability” for Brussels.
But he blamed the EU’s financial mess on profligacy by individual countries.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ECB Under Pressure on Bond-Buying
Pressure is mounting on the European Central Bank (ECB) ahead of a key meeting on Thursday (6 September), when it is expected to shed more light on a controversial bond-buying plan aimed at helping Spain and Italy.
“The ECB is the bazooka, the firepower, the muscle, the one that has the capacity to impress upon the markets,” said Angel Gurria, a Mexican economist chairing the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development — a club of the world’s most developed economies.
Asked by newswires whether the ECB should buy Italian and Spanish bonds in order to lower their borrowing costs, he said: “Yes, they should. If you ask when, the answer is the sooner the better.”
Burria spoke on the sidelines of a conference in Slovenia’s lakeside resort of Bled on Sunday.
“We have passed the question of moral hazard, these are performing countries (in terms of reforms), now it is the system that is at stake,” he added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Unemployment Hits Three Million Milestone
French Labour Minister Michel Sapin said on Sunday that the country’s unemployment had passed the symbolic number of three million registered job seekers and would keep rising.
French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government is struggling to tackle rising unemployment after he took office in May amid the debt crisis that is dragging down European economies.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Letters Reveal ECB Bailout Pressure on Dublin
The Irish Times Monday reported on ECB pressure on Ireland to apply for a bailout in November 2010. Three letters sent by then ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet warned that Dublin should apply for a bailout or risk the country’s banks being cut off from access to support.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Youth Unemployment Risks ‘Social Disaster’
The rise in youth unemployment in some member states could pose a “serious threat to social cohesion,” the European Commission warned Friday (31 August).
“EU institutions, governments and businesses and special partners of all levels need to do all they can to avoid a lost generation which will be an economic and social disaster,” EU employment commissioner Laszlo Andor said in a statement.
The warning came as the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, released figures indicating youth unemployment in the eurozone fell in ten member states but suffered major increases in Greece, Spain, and Cyprus.
Both Greece and Spain now have the highest number of unemployed youth with 53.8 percent and 52.9 percent respectively. German and Austria have the lowest at 8.0 percent and 8.9 percent.
The eurostat figures indicate that the number of young people in the eurozone increased by 204,000 in July compared to the same time last year. Some 22.5 percent of under 24s are now jobless as opposed to 21.3 percent in 2011.
Separately, Italy’s national institute of statistics on Friday indicated that just over 35 percent of youth aged 24 and under is jobless.
The Commission said around €3 billion from the European social fund (ESF) has been released to member states to tackle the problem.
Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain are recipients of the ESF funds in a pilot project launched earlier this year. Youth unemployment in each of these countries is over 30 percent.
The European Youth Forum (YFJ), a platform of youth organisation in Europe, claims the eight countries have not used the money to finance any new measures.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
30,000 Dead Registered to Vote in N.C.
A Raleigh-based group devoted to reducing the potential for voter fraud presented the N.C. Board of Elections on Friday with a list of nearly 30,000 names of dead people statewide who are still registered to vote.
The Voter Integrity Project compiled the list after obtaining death records from the state Department of Public Health from 2002 to March 31 and comparing them to the voter rolls.
“Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud],” said project director Jay DeLancy. “Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama to Paint Mitt Romney as a 1950s Throwback as Democrat Convention Opens
Barack Obama will this week paint Mitt Romney as a throwback to the 1950s who would “stick it to the middle class” with radical economic plans that he is keeping secret from the American people.
Mr Obama’s Democrats open their party convention in North Carolina tomorrow determined to reverse any momentum gathered by the Republicans’ own gathering last week, which appeared to have given Mr Romney only a moderate boost in opinion polls. Speaking in Iowa over the weekend, the president said the Republicans had offered no new ideas to revive the country. “It was a re-run — we’d seen it before,” he told thousands of supporters at a rally in Sioux City. “You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white television.”
Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic convention chairman, said yesterday that the Republican manifesto, with its zero-tolerance on abortion and gay rights, was “a platform from another century, maybe even two”. He told Fox News: “It looks like the platform of 1812.” Mr Obama, who is due to address voters in a 78,000-capacity stadium on Thursday night, sharply criticised his opponent for offering almost no details on the policies that he would implement to “restore America”…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Behold the Self-Hating White Person
by Robert Wargas
Since progressivism is largely a status game, in which people compete for social prestige by repeating a set of approved phrases and opinions to other status-seeking mandarins, it’s not surprising that some will go to sado-masochistic lengths to remain part of the alpha group. By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word “white” as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary. Here’s Geoffrey Dunn, doubtless partly aggrieved by his Anglo-Saxon name, writing about the Republican National Convention for
The Huffington Post: “Sources have confirmed that “Dirty Harry” himself, Clint Eastwood, is about to sweep into the Sunshine State to serve as the so-called “Mystery Speaker” tonight at the Republican Snooze Fest-better known as the Gathering of Pasty White People-in Tampa.”
“The Gathering of Pasty White People”: this is how Dunn prostitutes himself to the sociopaths and racists in his movement. As in the Soviet Union, one must continually prove oneself to be part of the correct crowd. Purity, you see, comes from ritual self-abasement, from flogging oneself in columns and blog posts and from swearing through gritted teeth that you love every minute of it. Dunn continues: “Eastwood, of course, has a political resumé of his own, having served a two-year term as mayor of the upscale and frighteningly white community of Carmel-with a population of 3,800, there were only eight African Americans recorded in the 2010 census-very close in size and demographics to Sarah Palin’s Wasilla, albeit without the meth labs and strip malls.”
Among progressives, low-rent snark like “frighteningly white” is required to prove you are part of the in-crowd. Imagine being part of a movement that not only requires regular self-immolation, but demands that you enjoy it and hector those who bristle at such cheap and pathetic bullying. Be glad you’re not a part of it, and be glad that, until now, you never heard of Geoffrey Dunn.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Companies Brace for an Exit From the Euro by Greece
Even as Greece desperately tries to avoid defaulting on its debt, American companies are preparing for what was once unthinkable: that Greece could soon be forced to leave the euro zone.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable. Ford has configured its computer systems so they will be able to immediately handle a new Greek currency.
No one knows just how broad the shock waves from a Greek exit would be, but big American banks and consulting firms have also been doing a brisk business advising their corporate clients on how to prepare for a splintering of the euro zone.
That is a striking contrast to the assurances from European politicians that the crisis is manageable and that the currency union can be held together. On Thursday, the European Central Bank will consider measures that would ease pressure on Europe’s cash-starved countries.
JPMorgan Chase, though, is taking no chances. It has already created new accounts for a handful of American giants that are reserved for a new drachma in Greece or whatever currency might succeed the euro in other countries.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Leftism & Ponerology — Studies of Human Evil in Political Spheres
Ponerology, from the Greek root poneros for “evil,” means the scientific study of evil as a disease, societal and political phenomenon. Andrzej M. Lobaczewski, a Polish psychiatrist, coined the term and wrote Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes) as a study of the topic. Writes Lobaczewski,
Experience has taught the author that evil is similar to disease in nature, although possibly more complex and elusive to our understanding. Its genesis reveals many factors, pathological, especially psychopathological, in character, whose essence medicine and psychology have already studied… A comprehension of the essence and genesis of evil generally makes use of data from [biology, medicine, and psychology]. Philosophical reflection alone is insufficient.
II. Causes of Evil
Lobaczewski describes several basic sources of evil in humans and society. The first is structural defects, disease or injury to the brain. The second is learned evil, by way of family or other influences.
[…]
Is it possible that the reason that socialism and Marxism tend to attract such deplorable leaders is that the ideas behind these movements are highly defective? What other explanation could there be for such monstrous and inept commanders? Karl Marx, the most dynamic and influential writer in the history of socialism, was also an extremely unrealistic, juvenile, petty and egotistical personality, according to Paul Johnson, in Intellectuals, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky. Lobaczewski claims Marx, with his sweeping unrealistic claims about how he would change the world, was schizoidal. Ultimately, the problem of socialism is it is built upon a lie—that a society can survive which treats the idea of private property as a joke.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Breivik’s Emails Published in New Book in Norway
A Norwegian publisher on Monday released a book of some of Anders Behring Breivik’s email correspondence that show how he prepared for his July 2011 attacks that left 77 people dead.
The correspondence supports an Oslo court verdict last month that presumed Breivik sane, the book’s author Kjetil Stormark said.
Stormark, a journalist who has already published a book on the attacks that shook the Scandinavian nation, has gone through more than 7,000 emails from four accounts used by the 33-year-old rightwing extremist before the massacre.
The book, entitled “The Private Emails of a Mass Killer”, is based on correspondence obtained by hackers who accessed Breivik’s accounts after the attacks and then gave them to Stormark so he would give them to police, which he did before writing his book.
Breivik’s lawyers had protested against the publication of the book, saying it was a violation of his right to privacy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
East Germany Needs €1 Trillion to Catch Up
Two decades of rebuilding East Germany has have paid off, but investment of another 1 trillion euro before 2030 will be needed for the eastern part to catch up with the rest of Germany, according to a new ‘2030 Strategy’ presented by the social democrat lead Thuringen government, Handelsblatt reports.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Minister: Former East Germany Needs a Trillion
Eastern Germany needs €1,000 billion in investment to bring it in line with the economic power of the west by 2030, the Thuringia state economy minister said on Monday.
Matthias Machnig of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is calling for that cash to invested over the next 18 years, as part of his proposed “Strategy 2030,” the business daily Handelsblatt reported.
“Two decades of reconstruction in the East have been worthwhile,” Machnig told the paper. “But it is nevertheless clear that the process of catching up has been exhausted to a certain degree.”
Machnig also called on the federal government to “rediscover” eastern Germany, basing his statements on the “Future East” report, issued by the international consultancy Roland Berger.
That report found that the former communist East Germany needed €1,000 billion in new investment to close the equity gap with the western part of the country by 2030.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
New Millions to Troubled Swedish Suburbs
The government has decided to award to 200 million kronor ($30 million) in performance based subsidies to boost fifteen of Sweden’s suburbs grappling with social exclusion.
“It’s unlikely that they all perform to the same level. Some districts will be receiving more and others less,” minister for integration, Erik Ullenhag, told daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).
Rinkeby and Tensta in Stockholm, as well as Herrgården and Hjällbo in Malmö are examples of the fifteen city districts chosen to receive the promised cash injection. The subsidy — which is performance based — will be awarded for three criteria: how the areas deal with education, employment, and social benefits.
According to the paper, all the districts will receive some financial help, but those that do best in combatting social exclusion will receive the highest subsidies.
Behind the scheme are the social challenges many city areas across Sweden are struggling with, according to Ullenhag.
“It isn’t necessarily that people from these areas are failing. But the districts have never been successful — those that get jobs generally move away,” he told SvD.
The districts will receive the cash injection at the end of 2013 at the earliest, after the results from the past year have been evaluated.
“If we can see why one district did well and another did less well, they can learn from each other’s mistakes,” Ullenhag told the paper.
The government is hoping that the financial boost will prove a watershed for the troubled suburbs.
“People should feel that they can stay in these areas. But then we need to deliver when it comes to education and unemployment,” Ullenhag told SvD.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Poland: Crematorium Planned Near Nazi Concentration Camp
Campaigners have called on the Polish authorities to halt construction work on a crematorium just minutes from the site of a Nazi concentration camp. Majdanek, located on the outskirts of Lublin, was one of six key Nazi camps and around 80,000 people were murdered there during the Holocaust. A Polish funeral company has applied to build a large commercial crematorium very near by — the second such application in recent years. The first proposal never went ahead but there are fears that this time it would. If so, it would stand only minutes away from the gas chambers of Madjanek…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Couple Arrested After Suspected Burglars Were Shot at Their Rural Home ‘Had Been Robbed Three or Four Times’
The couple arrested after two suspected burglars were shot during a midnight break-in at their remote rural home had been robbed three or four times already, it has been reported.
Police descended on the farm cottage in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire after receiving a 999 call from a man who said he had opened fire on four intruders.
[…]
The man who dialed 999 told officers he had fired his shotgun, which is licensed and legally held, and the intruders fled.
Minutes later, ambulance paramedics were called to treat a man with shotgun injuries. The 999 call was understood to have been made by one of the suspected burglars.
A second man was treated for shotgun injuries after he walked into Leicester Royal Infirmary, around ten miles from the cottage.
Neither of the men’s injuries were said to be serious.
The householder and his wife were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Don’t Ask Your Grandson How His Jaw Got Broken, Say Social Workers
An alarming story about a boy in foster care raises concern over ‘child protection’
A chilling recent episode exemplifies what, to an outsider, is yet another a shocking feature of our state “child protection” system. This is the ruthless way in which, when children are taken into care, social workers try to drive a wedge between their new charges and members of their families who have done them no harm and are closer to them than anyone else in the world.
Last month, an 11-year-old boy was taken to the seaside by his foster carer. There he was attacked on the beach by a gang of teenagers who left him to be taken to hospital with a broken nose and jaw. No one was more concerned to hear about this than his grandmother, into whose care he and his 16-year-old sister had been given when they were removed from her former daughter-in-law and her new partner for abuse and neglect. When the girl ran away from home after a verbal tiff, she was taken into care. Shortly afterwards, a Romanian social worker arrived at the boy’s school to remove him as well. Terrified, he tried to escape by scaling a 12ft fence, crying, “I want my nan!” She had given him the only real sense of loving security in his life. From then on, the grandmother was only allowed to see the boy at occasional contact sessions, closely watched by a social worker in a council contact centre…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: EDLers Love Breivik
Supporters of and apologists for the vile English Defence League have an unfortunate habit of turning up in the comments boxes every time we post about the EDL. But I want to note the disgusting reaction of some EDL members to the conviction and sentencing of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik
[…]
[Reader comment by Adrian Morgan on 2 September 2012 at 5:26 pm and 5:30 pm.]
Well waddya know? The original article (by Mark Townsend in the Guardian) quotes from Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate — a man who, as I have on more than one occasion pointed out here in BTL comments — has used either deliberately fraudulent links (claiming ex-members of the EDL are “current” members”) and in other instances has made howlers that should cast doubt upon his ability to present research (though Matthew Collins, one of his “researchers” may have been responsible for one particular howler).
Townsend (maybe quoting from Lowles) has quoted all of his research on Greger from Barthsnotes, who was the only blogger/news source to have broken that information. Townsend was keen to quote from the deeply flawed and factually inaccurate “Counter-Jihad Report” by Lowles’ HnH group, so I think I see a pattern emerging here. What happened to the good old days, when journalists used to do their own research, rather than act as mouthpieces for political agitators?
[Reader comment by Sarka on 2 September 2012 at 6:36 pm.]
I see no prospect, thank God, of Breivik being rehabilitated. He is a mass murderer who slaughtered a large number of innocent kids and a number of government functionaries with no influence over political decisions. There will always be a scummy fringe of extremists who find him attractive — well such people already find Hitler attractive, but the improbability of his rehabilitation is signalled well enough by the fact that none of the mainstream prophets of doom and gloom over the Muslim/Islamist threat or the weakness of Western liberalism in the face of this have the slightest sympathy for his actions. Spenser, Geller, Steyn, Philips, Yeor, and many many others with any respectability at all, far from applauding him, even covertly, clearly wish he had never existed. To be frank, that’s not a good start for a legend.
[Reader comment by Will Defens on 2 September 2012 at 8:06 pm.]
Lets see, the left is hanging out with a group who want a form of religious apartheid for Europe. This group see all Europeans as sub-human and would treat them as second class citizens. A lot of the values that the left say they oppose, Misogyny, Hatred and intolerance this group actually espouses. The left openly panders, excuses and apologises for this group. The left biggest crime, in a democracy, is the shouting down of anyone who tell the people of Europe what this group is up to. Sounds like treason to me. As for the left, do they think Muslim would trust a group who sold out there own people. I wouldn’t. Breivik, who cares. Look to Syria for our future.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hague is Wrong… We Must Own Up to Our Brutal Colonial Past
We associate the term ‘concentration camps’ with the Nazis. But it started with the British
Remember all that national soul-searching and self-flagellation over Empire and all the horrors committed in its name? No, me neither. But this is the fictional Britain that has been conjured up by our Foreign Secretary, William Hague. “We have to get out of this post-colonial guilt,” he declared in Friday’s Evening Standard. “Be confident in ourselves.” Here is an echo of Gordon Brown’s assertion in 2005 that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over”. It was a straw man argument, because there has never been an apology for British imperialism. The British Empire has been virtually erased by collective amnesia; like an embarrassing, sordid secret that should never be mentioned in polite company. A foreign country such as Turkey can rightly be berated for failing to come to terms with an atrocity like the Armenian genocide, but the darkest moments of our own history are intentionally forgotten…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Price of Land for High-Speed Rail Link Between Birmingham and London Slashed 90 Per Cent by the Government
The cost of land to be used for development of the high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham has been dramatically reduced by the Government.
Officials have cut the ‘landscape value’ of some of England’s finest countryside by as much as 90 per cent, it was reported.
The new figures were only discovered after campaigners against the 109-mile route going through the London green belt and the Chilterns — an Area of Outstanding Beauty (ANOB) — made a number of request under the Freedom of Information Act.
[…]
In the new assessment, almost all the London green belt and AONB land along HS2’s proposed route has been demoted, for valuation purposes, to the lowest category of ‘intensive farmland’ worth just £103 per hectare.
Hilary Wharf, of the HS2 Action Alliance, claimed that the move established a precedent that the ‘most precious green space can be devalued whenever the Government wants to build on it badly enough.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sit-Down Protest by We Are Waltham Forest Blocks Route of EDL March
A march by the English Defence League has been thwarted by anti-fascist protesters We Are Waltham Forest, who blocked the march by sitting in its path.
Many residents of the Walthamstow area banded together to confront the EDL, known for their extreme right wing views, using the #wearewalthamforest hashtag on Twitter to organise a mass sit-down. Gathering on Forest Road and Hoe Street, the protesters succeeded in disrupting the march, with cries of victory spilling onto the micro-blogging website.
Protester Holly Smith remarked: ‘Police aren’t going to let EDL march to the town hall. Stewards advising WAWF to sit down, might be some time…’ and another, Nick Lowles, added: ‘The EDL’s route is blocked. #allsitdown sit down next to me…’ In addition to a strong presence on social media, the counter demonstration was publicised with the help of local mosques…
[Reader comment by Roger Bates on 2 Spetember.]
This was the UAF bussed in from across the country, not residents of walthamstow. I am a resident of walthamstow and am disgusted by these anti protesters. If it wasn’t for their prescence the EDL march would’ve been and gone hours ago. I have also had to put up with gangs of aggresive muslims youths romaing side streets attacking locals cars.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Standing Ovations for Israel’s Batsheva Despite Disruptions
Protesters who disrupted the first of three performances by an acclaimed Israeli dance troupe were “sowing hatred”, said a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in the UK.
The Batsheva Dance Company performed “Hora” on Thursday evening as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. The production, like those of the Habima Theatre Company and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, has been beset by a campaign organised by anti-Israel activists. Despite the festival organisers standing firm on Batsheva’s inclusion, last night around 150 people gathered outside the venue to protest against its presence, brandishing signs that read “don’t dance with Israeli apartheid” and burning tickets…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Beautiful Nation of Croatia is Placing Its Head in the Brussels Noose
Croatia has escaped one doomed federal structure — only to shackle itself to another, reports Boris Johnson.
There comes a tragic moment at the end of every binge meal in the Mediterranean when the waiter produces the bill, and as you reach for your wallet you can be permitted an occasional pang of distress. Yes, it is forgivable to emit a low moan, inaudible to everyone else; and so I moaned the other day, in the course of a lightning family holiday. I let out an elegiac groan at the sight of those beautiful, innocent banknotes, still furled tightly in my wallet. And why did I sigh? There was nothing outrageous about the bill — far from it. Our two-hour feast was incredible value, considering we had just consumed several platters of sea creatures in delicate sauces, and loads of complex side dishes, all washed down with cool bottles of white Postup — possibly the most delicious white wine you have ever drunk. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the holiday. We had flown by Easyjet from Gatwick, and been attended by every comfort that Easyjet can provide. The landscape was peachy: the sea was turquoise; the air was scented with myrtles and thyme; and a series of amazing islands lay stretched before us like a school of green-backed whales…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Power Elite and the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 16
I ended Part 15 by indicating my belief that the MB ultimately will institute Sharia (Islamic) law throughout Egypt. In the spring of 2012, Morsi emphasized the MB’s motto, which states: “The Koran is our constitution. The Prophet Mohammed is our leader. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.” According to Reuters’ reporter Tom Perry in “Brotherhood man promises Islamic law in Egypt” (May 25, 2012), Morsi declared at one campaign rally: “It was for the sake of Islamic sharia that men were…thrown into prison. Their blood and existence rests on our shoulders now. We will work together to realize their dream of implementing sharia.” Being a pragmatic politician who needed support beyond the MB to be elected president, Morsi pledged to Gama’a al-Islamiya to work for the release of their spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (the blind sheikh imprisoned in New York for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center).
In December 2011, MB Supreme Guide and Leader Mohammed Badi declared there are 6 phases to their methodology,beginning with Sharia law on the individual level and ending with “mastership of the world.” Relevant to this, Ryan Mauro (radicalislam.org) on June 27, 2012 reported that a secret meeting of the MB’s leadership was held in mid-June resulting in the “Jazira Plan” to implement Sharia not only in Egypt, but across a Caliphate (MB affiliate Islah already dominates Yemen, and Qatar is subsidizing the MB). The plan reportedly was approved by Badi, and among its first steps was “replace the national anthem with the so-called anthem of the Islamic Caliphate.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar: Calls to Penalise Parking Lot Abuses in Mosques
Drivers using parking space reserved for worshippers
Manama: Qataris have called for stringent action by traffic and municipal authorities against drivers who abuse mosque parking lots to park their vehicles haphazardly and illegally.
Ahmad Al Shaib, a municipal councillor from the Um Salal called for urgent action to address the “negative phenomenon” but added that local people also had a role to play. ‘It is a shared responsibility,” he was quoted as saying by daily newspaper Al Sharq. “There are the concerned authorities, but there are also the staff working in the mosque, the imam and the common people who should really tackle it, each according to his capacity. For instance, there are those who come late to mosque, particularly on Friday when the parking is full, and park their cars anywhere without the slightest consideration for others. They should be reprimanded.” Al Shaib added that families should learn to come together to the mosque to reduce the number of vehicles…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Putin Sees Stalin’s Industrialization as Model
Russia needs a “leap forward” to rejuvenate its sprawling defense industry, President Vladimir Putin said, harkening back to the ambitious industrialization carried out by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the run-up to World War II.
“We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s,” Putin told his Security Council, without mentioning Stalin by name.
Stalin, who ruled the Soviet empire with an iron fist for 27 years, is blamed for the death of about 6 million people but also is praised by many Russians for winning the war and industrializing the country.
Putin made renewed industrialization a priority during his third term in the Kremlin, which started in May amid the largest protests of his 12-year rule. He conceded that the defense industry, once the heart of the Soviet economy, was in tatters.
“Unfortunately, many of our enterprises are technologically stuck in the previous century,” Putin said, complaining about poor discipline at plants working on state defense orders.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders transformed a rural country devastated by civil war into an industrial superpower, using terror and executions to impose strict discipline at new plants built across the vast country.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin posted on his Facebook page a copy of a 1940 letter from Stalin to gun factory managers and accompanied it with a sarcastic warning: “Such methods of improving discipline also exist.”
Stalin’s letter to the managers said: “I give you two or three days to launch mass production of machine gun cartridges … If production does not start on time, the government will take over control of the plant and shoot all the rascals there.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Armenia Furious After Azerbaijan Pardons Convicted Killer
Armenia broke off diplomatic ties with Hungary after an Azeri military officer sentenced to life in prison for killing an Armenian officer was sent back to his homeland and, despite assurances, immediately pardoned and freed.
Lieutenant Ramil Safarov was given a life sentence in 2006 by the Budapest City Court after he confessed to killing Lieutenant Gurgen Markarian of Armenia while both were in Hungary for a 2004 NATO language course.
In response to Safarov’s release, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said his country was “halting diplomatic relations and all official ties with Hungary.”
Protesters in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, threw tomatoes at the building housing Hungary’s honorary consulate and tore down the Hungarian flag Friday, while on Saturday about 150 demonstrators set a Hungarian flag ablaze.
While Armenians were livid over Safarov’s release, he is considered a hero by many in Azerbaijan for having killed an Armenian.
Hungary returned Safarov, 35, to Azerbaijan only after receiving assurances from the Azeri Justice Ministry that Safarov’s sentence, which included the possibility of parole after 25 years, would be enforced.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Armenia Cuts Ties With Hungary in Soldier Dispute
Armenia says it is cutting all ties with Hungary for allowing an Azerbaijani soldier who killed an Armenian officer to return home. On Friday, Hungary sent the soldier back to Azerbaijan, where he was immediately pardoned and freed by his country’s president. Azerbaijani Lieutenant Ramil Safarov was warmly welcomed in the capital, Baku, after arriving from Hungary, where he was imprisoned for murder.
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Hillary Clinton Under Pressure to Tackle Indonesia Over Rising Religious Violence
Hillary Clinton is facing calls to pressure the Indonesian government over the sharp increase in religious violence, on the eve of her arrival in the world’s most populous Muslim country.
Attacks against both Christians and minority Shiite Muslims by militant Islamic groups are on the rise in the archipelago nation, especially on the island of Java. Last month, dozens of Shiite homes were burnt down in east Java and two Shiite men killed. In February last year, a 1500-strong mob set churches alight in Temanggung in Java, while demanding that a Christian man be put to death for insulting Islam. Human rights groups say that the Indonesian government is failing to crack down on the perpetrators of religious violence and that punishments for the few people prosecuted have been too light. They claim also that despite the fact that Indonesia’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, minority groups face ongoing discrimination…
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Pakistan’s Government: Cowed by the Mob
Telegraph View: by bowing to religious extremists over the blasphemy laws, Pakistan’s leadership is betraying the ideals on which the country was founded.
The fate of Pakistani Christians in recent years has become increasingly grim. In 2011, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, and Shahbaz Bhatti, the Roman Catholic minorities minister, were assassinated. Both had called for reform of the country’s blasphemy law, which has been used disproportionately against non-Muslims, often as a form of personal vendetta. Infringement can mean the death penalty; even if this is commuted, mobs have killed those who have been charged. As a result, those accused are taken into pre-trial custody — for their own safety…
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Pakistan: Three Killed and Two Americans Wounded in Peshawar Suicide Attack
Two Americans working for the US consulate in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar were wounded in a bomb attack on Monday, which killed at least three other people and left a six-foot crater in a road close to United Nations offices.
A security source said a bomb inside a Suzuki car was detonated as a vehicle left the American consulate, injuring at least 19 people. TV footage showed a 4x4 at the site which had been reduced to a carcase of twisted, charred metal. Americans have frequently been targeted in the city which stands close to the Afghan border and on the edge of Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Ambassador Toria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the US Department of State said: “Two US personnel and two Pakistani staff of the consulate were injured and are receiving medical treatment. “No US Consulate personnel were killed, but we are seeking further information about other victims of this heinous act. We stand ready to work with Pakistani authorities on a full investigation so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.”
[…]
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US Suspends Afghan Militia Training After Attacks on NATO Forces
American special forces have suspended the training of Afghan village defence militias and will existing members for links with the Taliban, following a series of so-called green on blue incidents.
Stopping attacks by members of various branches of the Afghan security forces on Nato troops has become a priority for Nato commanders, with one in seven of all coalition deaths this year coming at the hands of Afghan colleagues. Poor vetting of police and soldiers has been partly blamed for the attacks, which have killed 45 and wounded at least 71 in 2012 alone. All 16,300 Afghan Local Police members will be re-examined for possible links to the insurgency, and about 1,000 new recruits will have their training put on hold…
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Hong Kong: Parents and Students Do Not Want “National Education”
An independent survey reveals: 75% considered the new subject useless and damaging, defined by Cardinal Zen a “brainwashing” operated by the Communists against young people in the former colony. Hunger strike by protesters camped at the Admiralty continues, and students ask Beijing to include in Tiananmen massacre in their the study material.
Hong Kong (AsiaNews) — The Territory’s civil society continues its staunch opposition to the introduction of “national education” classes imposed by the communist government on local schools. Ahead of the next big protest on September 2, organized by teachers’ unions and representatives of parents, a large scale survey shows that 75% of students and their families are against the introduction of these new courses.
It all stems from educational reform desired by the Chinese central government in 2002 and launched in 2004. It provides every school — from elementary school onwards — be prepared for non-defined “classes of National Education”, a topic that should be treated as a separate subject. From what has so far been said, the subject’s aim is to enhance China’s great economic scientific and popular achievements, but silence, for example, discusses the Tiananmen massacre.
The first to oppose this reform were Catholics, led by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who has repeatedly denounced this move as an attempt to “brainwash” young people orchestrated by Beijing. Now, the general public is mobilising behind the Church: According to a survey carried out by an Association of men’s and women’s clubs, 74% of the students and 77% of parents surveyed want the government to withdraw the subject from schools and resume consultations with all parties involved before resubmitting it.
According to the survey, the majority of students would ask the government (if they were able to) to introduce the Tiananmen massacre among the topics covered in these classes. Lam Wai-man, a member of the parents association, said: “ I worry whether it’s because the government has policies it wants to launch, but it wants to educate us first.” The subject will become mandatory, according to the time limits imposed by the central government in 2015.
Meanwhile, a hunger strike by 80 high school students continues. The young people are camped out in the government district of Admiralty. They greeted the visit by the head of the Executive Leung Chun-ying with scepticism and irony, as “a stunt” and stressed that the government “respects neither the parents nor the students and not even teachers. “
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
How China’s Leaders Steer a Massive Nation
There is no question that China is an authoritarian state. But Beijing’s efforts to include experts and experiments in the way it governs also help to keep power in check. Once the government supports a project, it normally carries it out — sometimes on a massive scale. Are there lessons to be taken from the Communist Party’s method of governance?
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Sun Myung Moon Dies at 92; Led Controversial Unification Church
South Korean immigrated to the U.S. and became the wealthy leader of an unorthodox religious movement that was labeled a cult and featured mass marriage ceremonies.
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed Messiah from South Korea who led the Unification Church, one of the most controversial religious movements to sweep America in the 1970s, has died. He was 92.
Moon, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia in August, died Monday at a hospital in Gapyeong, South Korea, church officials announced.
Although greeted as a Korean Billy Graham when he arrived in the United States four decades ago, Moon gradually emerged as a religious figure with quite different beliefs, whose movement was labeled a cult and whose followers were mocked as “Moonies.” At the height of his popularity, he claimed 5 million members worldwide, a figure that ex-members and other observers have called inflated. Those numbers are believed to have fallen into the thousands today.
Moon offered an unorthodox message that blended calls for world peace with an unusual interpretation of Christianity, strains of Confucianism and a strident anti-communism. He was famous for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies that highlighted Unification’s emphasis on traditional morality.
What also made Moon unusual was a multinational corporate vision that made him a millionaire many times over. He owned vast tracts of land in the U.S. and South America, as well as dozens of enterprises, including a ballet company, a university, a gun manufacturer, a seafood operation and several media organizations, most notably the conservative Washington Times newspaper. He also owned United Press International.
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Why Foreigners and Chinese Themselves Are Leaving China
United States’ New York Times Chinese Online Edition article, original title: Why do they want to leave China?
Not long ago, an Englishman who has lived in China for a long time, married a Chinese wife, and has had a very successful business in China named Mark Kitto published on English-language media an article titled “You’ll never be Chinese — Why I’m leaving the country I loved”. He says in his text that after having studied, worked, and lived nearly over 10 years, China’s changes have made him ultimately decide to leave China taking his entire family. There is more than just one Westerner like him who loves China yet wants to leave.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Racist Dog Whistles and the Men Who Hear Them
by Mark Steyn
American racism is starting to remind me of American alcoholism. At the founding of the republic, in the days when beer was thought of as “liquid bread” and a healthy nutritional breakfast, Americans drank about three-to-four times as much as they do now. Today the United States has a lower per capita rate of alcohol consumption than almost any other developed nation, but it has more alcoholism support groups than any other developed nation — around 164 groups per million people. France, which drinks about 50 percent more per capita than America, has one-twentieth the number of support groups. The French and Italians enjoy drinking, the English and Irish enjoy getting drunk, and Americans enjoy getting drunk on ever more absurd stigmatizatory excess. At Walmart they card you if you “appear to be under” — what is it up to now? 43? 57? And the citizenry take this as a compliment: Well-preserved grandmothers return from failed attempts to purchase a bottle of wine with gay cries of, “I was carded at Costco! They’ve made my weekend!”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Shock Mix of Sex and Faith at Venice Film Fest Entry
A lonely woman’s erotic obsession with Jesus Christ forms the provocative core of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Faith” presented at the Venice film festival on Friday.
Middle-aged Anna Maria eats alone, sleeps alone and sings alone. Her only company is a crucifix and the religious images on her otherwise bare walls.
She becomes obsessive in her faith, whipping herself in front of an image of Christ and in one particularly provocative scene masturbating with a crucifix.
One day, after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim in a wheelchair, comes home, and fighting between the two ensues.
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UK: A Cross to Bear
This week, four Christians will argue in court that they face discrimination in Britain because of their faith
Shirley Chaplin shrinks from the limelight. As she sits in a modest bungalow in Devon, she struggles to relax, her arms wrapped around herself protectively as she recalls her private anguish. On Tuesday, the spotlight will be inescapable. Mrs Chaplin, a nurse for more than 30 years, left the NHS at the age of 55. She did so because she felt forced to choose between nursing — the profession she loved — and her Christian faith. It is more than three years since she was stopped on the ward by a senior colleague and asked to remove “her jewellery” — the crucifix worn around her neck since confirmation at the age of 16. Her refusal, amid attempts to explain the importance of the religious token to her, saw the ward sister stripped of contact with patients and put on administrative duties. Attempts to persuade a industrial tribunal to let her return to nursing failed, with the Royal Devon and Exeter foundation trust insisting that although Mrs Chaplin had worn the silver symbol for more than three decades without complaint, the cross had now been deemed a “health and safety” risk…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Venice 2012: Ulrich Seidl on His Controversial “Paradise: Faith”
The competition entry Paradise: Faith by Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, who won the Grand Special Jury Prize for his film Dog Days in Venice in 2001 and whose film Import/Export was in Cannes competition five years ago, caused an uproar in the Italian media after it premiered at the Lido on Thursday. The film, which is the second part of a trilogy that started with Paradise: Love (which premiered in Cannes competition earlier this year and told the story of a female sex tourist in Africa), is an exploration of religion and oppression.
Austrian actress Maria Hofstätter plays obsessively devoted Catholic Anna-Maria who is unhappily married to a handicapped Muslim and, at one point, masturbates using a cross. Especially this scene caused Italian media to describe the film as “blasphemous,” but also “intelligently ironic,” “merciless” and “dark humored.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
We Speech Fascists Need to Keep Our Perspective
by Nigel Farndale
Just because Jean-Paul Sartre didn’t actually say ‘hell is other people’ doesn’t mean it isn’t true
The most famous thing that Jean-Paul Sartre never said was: hell is other people. Well, he did sort of say it, in one of his plays, but he didn’t mean it, and the translation from the French didn’t help matters. He was thinking more about the way we judge ourselves through the eyes of others. But just because he didn’t say it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, still less that its implication is not profound. If other people are hellish then we are hellish too, because we are all other people, to other people.
This may sound petty, but one of the things about other people that bugs me the most at the moment is the way they say “at all” at the end of a question, as in “Do you want milk with that, at all?” Or “Is there anything else I can help you with, at all”. And if the conversation is with a stranger on the phone who keeps addressing me by my first name, then my hell is complete. When it comes to the spoken word, we all have these private hells, it seems. My colleague Damian Thompson mentioned his in his Daily Telegraph column the other day — receptionists who say: “Can you just fill in this form for me” — and it has produced a number of letters on the subject.
Peter Horwood of East Sussex, for example, wrote that he had counted six “for me” edicts being issued by the teller at his bank. What is wrong with “please”? he asked. While Keith Baker of Worthing noted that many sales assistants greet customers by saying “Are you all right there?”, rather than “Can I help you?” But it was a letter from one Nobby Kerton from Yeovil in Somerset that made me think of the Jean-Paul Sartre quote. When he hears: “He is tied up at the moment” and “Bear with me”, he replies: “Please ask him to ring me back when you have untied him”, and “No, I am a happily married man”…
[JP note: When bears go down to the woods ….]
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