The News from Hither and Yon on July 21st 2008

Below are some of the news tips sent to Gates of Vienna today. I didn’t get to all of them. And I omitted the more overtly depressing items; a body can slog through just so much.

For example, China is stepping up executions in order to keep the populace in line for the Olympics. But you knew that, and I don’t want to report about it in any detail. As the horrors bleed past their firewalls, we’ll all be inundated soon enough.

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Italy: Immigrants urge arrest of Moroccan drink-drive suspect

Immigrants in the northern Italian city of Padua are urging the arrest of a Moroccan who allegedly fled to his native country after running down and killing a young Italian, Simone Bacchini, while drink-driving.

The group of immigrants, led by Moroccan journalist Muhammed Ahmed were to launch their appeal during a documentary to be aired on Italian television late on Monday.

Bacchini’s family was also due to read a message to Morocco’s Ambassador to Italy during the programme, asking him to pressure the Moroccan authorities to arrest Bacchini’s alleged killer…

The EU is supposed to get involved also. Good on those Italian immigrants, though. Gives me hope.


EGYPT: NGO DENOUNCES HIGHER INTER-RELIGIOUS TENSION

Simply put, that headline means the homegrown ngo, The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, is complaining out loud about:

• the worsening treatment of Copts;
  
• the court blocking of an award to Muslim poet Helmi Salem, because one of his works purportedly contained something offensive to Islam;
  
• the armed attack against Abu Fana Monastery in southern Egypt over a dispute on the ownership of land [this has been going on for years, and the monastery is forbidden to build a wall to protect itself. Christians can’t build walls];
  
• the decision by the League of Islamic Research to prevent the relatives of a Christian who has converted to Islam to inherit from that person.

And the beat goes on. But at least an Egyptian group is doing the complaining this time around.


An actual election piece here on GoV. This one is “The Op-Ed by McCain” that The Old Gray Doxy wouldn’t publish.

I guess not. The New York Times has already punched the Obama ticket. Frank Rich is positively drooling.

Nonetheless, McCain wrote a good essay here. It deserves a wider audience than it will get.
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San Francisco is a Refuge City for Felonious Illegal Immigrants

The man charged with killing a father and two sons on a San Francisco street last month was one of the youths who benefited from the city’s long-standing practice of shielding illegal immigrant juveniles who committed felonies from possible deportation…

This fine specimen of humanity had as one of his “juvenile” offenses the beating of a pregnant woman.

San Francisco is so easy to loathe. You can hate it just for the parking mess, never mind its willful harboring of criminals.


LEBANON: HEZBOLLAH DELIVERS 133 BODIES OF ARAB ‘MARTYRS’

The bodies of more than 130 fighters of Palestinian and other Arab nationalities, returned by Israel last week within the exchange of bodies and prisoners with Hezbollah, were delivered today by the Shiite movement to ten Palestinian factions in Lebanon.

According to today’s issue of pan-Arab daily al-Hayat out of the 197 bodies of “martyrs” returned by Israel last Wednesday, 64 were bodies of militants of the Party of God, while among the remaining 133 appeared 92 bodies of Palestinians coming from the refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, but also 41 of fighters of various Arab nationalities: 13 Lebanese, 11 Syrian, nine Tunisian, four Jordanian, two Libyan, an Iraqi and a Kuwaiti.

[…]

Moreover, Palestinian sources…affirmed that for 35 bodies (including the one of Dalal Mughrabi, mastermind in 1978 of an attack in Israel which claimed the lives of 36 people) “the identification operation will require more time than envisaged, as Israel did not provide any document or photograph”.

We all know how carefully and respectfully the poor Palis treat the bodies of Israelis. How thoughtless of the them not to reciprocate the kindness.


IRAQI OIL TO RESUME FLOW TO SYRIAN PORT SOON

Iraq will resume “soon” the oil export through the Syrian port of Banyas, on the Mediterranean coast, spokesman of Iraqi Oil Ministry, Assem Jihad, affirmed. “The ministry has negotiated with an international company (whose name and nationality has not been revealed) the restoration of the oil pipeline which links the refinery in Beiji (western Iraq) to the port of Banyas, out of service since the middle of the 1990s,” Jihad said…

The pipeline to Banyas has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day…

Iraq exports currently some 2 million barrels per day, mainly through its southern terminals in Al Basrah and Al Amara.

WHAT?? No oil for the evil American invaders?? We wuz tricked.


CATALONIA HAS A DOCTOR CRISIS

Due to the heavy shortage of doctors, Catalonia “will import” them from abroad and they will start working even before their certificates are harmonized by the Health Ministry.

… According to the Health Ministry estimates, the whole of Spain currently lacks 3,000 medics, mostly general practitioners…Spanish professionals show little interest in working in primary care.

According to the results of the internal medicine resident selection last year, 13% of the 1,859 jobs put on competition remained vacant. The brain drain of Spanish doctors abroad, in Portugal or in other EU states, in search of better paid job and major social prestige, is one of the main problems of the national health service and has led to an emergency situation in Catalonia.

And, yes, the specialists already ensconced in their practices are raising a ruckus about “imports”. It’s not the patients, stupid, it’s the power grab.


The New Media Journal is Amil Amani’s new website. New to me, at least, since the last time I saw it, he’d hadn’t updated for awhile. Now I see why. This space is dense with news you won’t get elsewhere.

At random:

A guy stops a car in the city of Shiraz in Iran and asks the driver to give him some gasoline, pretending that his car has run out of fuel. The total stranger siphons gas from his own car and gives it to him. Suddenly some other guys show up from their hiding places, tie the man to a tree, douse him with the gasoline he had generously given to a total stranger, set him on fire and speed away in the sham “out-of-gasoline” car. Why? The target of the torching was a non-Muslim, a Baha’i. The “sin” of not being a Muslim made him a deserving party for being burned alive. These thugs of Allah, the savage torchers, call themselves the Unknown Soldiers of the Lord of the Age, (Imam Zaman) the Shiite’s much revered and expected savior.

To make matters worse, all manner of “good Muslims” walked by and didn’t do a lick to help the man. Miraculously the man was able to put the fire out and call the police on his cell phone. It took the police over 30 minutes to respond and take the man to the station for questioning. Now that’s the Islam that is on the march. It has penetrated deeply and spread widely in Europe. It is changing Europe to its ways and holds every promise of doing the same to the United States…

Amani is an Iranian in exile. His site is excellent. A lot of work, a lot of news.