There are two articles about the Somali pirates tonight. In one of them, the USA is asking the UN’s permission to pursue the pirates onto land. In the other, the EU is assuming command from NATO of an anti-piracy flotilla off the Horn of Africa. Doesn’t that fill you with confidence, thinking about the EU in command of a naval operation?Thanks to Abu Elvis, Brutally Honest, C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, Paul Green, RRW, TB, VH, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Blagojevich: FBI Report Suggests Obama Knew of Governor’s Dealings
Barack Obama insists that he and his staff were not involved in the alleged schemes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cooked up to sell off the president-elect’s vacant Senate seat.
But the timeline of activity outlined in the FBI’s 76-page complaint against Blagojevich suggests Obama’s team was aware that his home-state governor was playing political hardball in the weeks before his arrest.
That’s because shortly after Blagojevich allegedly told his advisers, in an expletive-laced conference call, that he would not appoint Obama’s pick to the Senate absent huge favors in return, Obama’s apparent pick promptly dropped out of the running for the Senate and joined the new White House staff.
“Reading between the lines … clearly somebody from (Obama’s) operation did have a conversation with Blagojevich,” Democratic strategist Bob Beckel told FOX News. He added that Obama’s representative evidently wasn’t trying to cut a deal since Blagojevich indicated he was “getting nothing out of the Obama people.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Blagojevich: Tangled Web: Who’s Who of Illinois Politics
Criminals, congressmen and the Chicago Cubs have all been linked to the scandal surrounding Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, charged by the feds with hanging a “for sale” sign over Barack Obama’s Senate seat in a tangled web of corruption.
The cast of players in this drama read like a who’s-who of Illinois politics and federal crime investigators.
At the center sit Blagojevich and his right-hand man, chief of staff John Harris, arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. Federal investigators tapped Blagojevich’s phones and recorded conversations that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called evidence of a “political corruption crime spree.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Blagojevich: Obama, Blago and ‘the Chicago Way’
Since I lived and worked in Chicago for several years (1994-97), I understand the milieu of Chicagoland and am familiar with “The Chicago Way.” What is this phenomenon? Think a Midwest version of “Tammany Hall” — the legendary corrupt Democratic political machine in New York from the 1790s to 1960s.
The Chicago Way is any person, politician, businessman, children’s hospital or entity within the boundaries of the state of Illinois that wants to do business in Chicagoland. You’ve got to: 1) know the right people, and 2) pay the right people. Basically, that’s how business and politics are conducted in Chicago. If you don’t like it, then Chicago may not be the city you want to live in.
[…]
Furthermore, it seems like U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation was interrupted too soon, before a larger net could be cast to catch more Chicago/Washington, D.C., alley rats. Why was the trigger pulled so soon? Perhaps Obama and his minions saw the handwriting on the wall and as his coronation, I mean Inauguration Day approaches, wanted to stop the FBI’s investigation before it got too close to Obama the Messiah.
In a revealing Wall Street Journal article on the Blagojevich scandal, an interesting sequence of events took place Monday Nov. 10 in a marathon two-hour conference call between Blagojevich, his wife, his chief of staff, John Harris, an unnamed adviser, Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, his original pick to take over his Senate seat, and “various Washington, D.C.-based advisers.” Who were these mysterious people from D.C.? Was Obama in the loop? I believe he was.
I think it’s safe to say that, except for the most dedicated Obama Kool-Aid drinker, the bloom has left that rose. Obama knows that he is neck-deep into the Blagojevich seat-selling scheme; after all, it is Obama’s Senate seat that is for sale. Obama didn’t defeat the Clinton machine, the Republican Party and raise almost a billion dollars in private campaign contributions by being naive and not paying attention to every detail.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
China Hired for Homeland Defense
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about — what with the trillions in taxpayer bailouts of the failed banks, quasi-government mortgage lenders and automakers — listen to this tale of madness from Washington.
A company run by the son of Chinese Pesident Hu Jintao, who does business with Iran, Cuba and Venzuela, was hired a year ago for $1.9 million to X-ray cargo being loaded on to cruise ships in Los Angeles.
Now, maybe you say, “Farah, what’s wrong with that? These cruise ships are leaving from the U.S. They’re not cargo ships entering the U.S.?”
Maybe that’s what officials thought when the awarded the contract to low bidder Nuctech Inc. (Yes, that’s actually the name of the company.)
But were the motivations beyond securing the contract other than monetary?
That is the question being raised by U.S. and British competitors. They suggest Nuctech wanted the deal primarily to get its high-tech scanning machines into a major U.S. port. Or, maybe the company so closely tied to the Chinese government wanted to get hooked up to the Department of Homeland Security’s databases.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Constitution Rewrite Only 2 States Away
A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which “today’s corrupt politicians and judges” could formally change the U.S. Constitution’s “‘problematic’ provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society.”
“Don’t for one second doubt that delegates to a Con Con wouldn’t revise the First Amendment into a government-controlled privilege, replace the 2nd Amendment with a ‘collective’ right to self-defense, and abolish the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and the rest of the Bill of Rights,” said the warning from the American Policy Institute.
“Additions could include the non-existent separation of church and state, the ‘right’ to abortion and euthanasia, and much, much more,” the group said.
The warning comes at a time when Barack Obama, who is to be voted the next president by the Electoral College Monday, has expressed his belief the U.S. Constitution needs to be interpreted through the lens of current events.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Global Governance Here We Come!
If there ever were any doubt about President-elect Obama’s propensity toward global governance, it has been removed by his Cabinet choices. Hillary Clinton praised Walter Cronkite’s attainment of the World Federalist Association’s “Global Governance” award. As secretary of state, she will lead the U.S. into the global village under the U.N.’s governance.
U.N. Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, who worked with Strobe Talbot at the Brookings Institution, will be the point person to see that the U.S. supports the global governance agenda.
Paramount among the rules required to make global governance an enforceable reality is the power to control each nation’s use of energy. The Kyoto Protocol, promoted by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, was supposed to be that rule. To his credit, President Bush refused to subject the United Sates to this U..N. treaty. Obama has promised to change the U.S. position to one of submission to a new U.N. Climate-Change Treaty, now under construction in Poland.
Obama’s representative at the climate change negotiations in Poland is John Kerry, sent there to reassure the delegates from around the world that the new administration will fully support whatever energy limitations the U.N. decides to impose.
Make no mistake; the new climate change treaty will severely limit the supply of fossil fuel energy available in the United States by limiting the quantity of carbon emissions that can be released. The enforcement tool will be costly. Rep. James Sensenbrenner told an audience at the meeting in Poland that the new treaty could drive the price of gasoline to $10 per gallon. In addition, a global cap-and-trade system will arbitrarily limit the quantity of carbon emissions allowed by virtually all energy users, and releases beyond the limit will require a fee. Both the limit and the fee will be determined by the U.N., thereby giving the U.N. control over energy use in every nation.
The Kyoto Protocol already established the principle of “common but differentiated” responsibilities, which means developed nations must meet legally binding limitations — while more than 150 nations have no binding limitations. Through this mechanism, the U.N. can effectively redistribute the world’s wealth to ensure that all people share equally the benefits of the earth’s resources. This goal is expressed in a host of U.N. treaties and policy documents.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Oregon: Cop Dies in Bomb Blast
A bomb exploded inside a bank late Friday afternoon, killing a police officer who arrived to check on a suspicious object and seriously injuring two others.
A spokesman for the Oregon State Police, Lt. Gregg Hastings, said a Woodburn police officer died. He did not identify him.
He also said the blast seriously injured the Woodburn police chief and a bomb technician with the Oregon State Police.
The police chief, Scott Russell, was in surgery at a Portland hospital late Friday, said a hospital spokeswoman. Hastings said Russell was in stable condition.
Flying glass
Bank President and CEO Bob Sznewajs told The Associated Press that some bank employees might have been injured by flying glass but that none was seriously hurt.
Before the detonation, a Wells Fargo Bank branch nearby got a call that was “a potential bomb threat” but police searched and found nothing, Sznewajs told The AP.
He said his bank then got a call “from an unknown person saying that we should look for one as well. We called authorities, but they looked and found nothing.”
Sznewajs said one employee saw a device in the bushes near the bank and called the authorities. “We looked at it and evacuated the branch and sent people away,” he said.
Authorities decided to move the device inside the branch, apparently scanned it, and then it went off, he said.
| — Hat tip: Brutally Honest | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands Advise Electors to Check Eligibility: But One Who Teaches ‘Marxist Theory’ Ridicules Concerns
Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND, explained the significance of the letters to electors.
“If there is any doubt, electors have a sworn duty to find out. And, no matter what you hear from my colleagues in the press, elected officials who chose not to investigate this matter and not to insist that safeguards and checks were in place on a matter so urgent and fundamental, there is doubt — grave doubt.
“In fact, unless we’re going to live under an honor system in the future, one that relies solely on what a candidate says about his own eligibility, there is no reason to believe Obama is. There is simply no valid evidence to prove it, and there is plenty to raise doubts,” he wrote in a commentary on the program.
That “honor system” apparently is exactly what some electors want. One Colorado elector who told the Aspen Times she spends some of her time “teaching Marxist theory at a university,” Camilla Auger, said she was upset that anyone would raise concerns about Obama.
[…]
She ridiculed those with concerns about Obama’s eligibility.
“I took them seriously enough that I was concerned that there are that many nutty people in the country making depressing, absurd allegations,” she told the Denver Post. “There are so many problems in the country right now, we need to work together.”
The Post itself, in fact, claimed the “allegations have been repeatedly debunked by the Obama campaign and news outlets.”
The Times report said Auger has been a social sciences professor and vice president of an oil company, Tosco Corp.
“I think I was probably the only person in country to be executive vice president of an oil company and teaching Marxist theory at a university,” she told the Times.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Troops’ New Mission: America’s ‘Special Events’
Proposal would allow civilians to activate Army to prevent ‘environmental damage’
New rules published in the Federal Register would allow certain civilians to call American soldiers into action inside the U.S. to prevent environmental damage or respond to “special events” and “other domestic activities.”
The alarming warning is contained in proposed rules published last week for the Department of Defense’s “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” plan.
Under the U.S. Constitution, soldiers inside the country essentially are tasked with the responsibility of quelling “insurrections” and repelling invasions as well as making sure each state has access to the republican form of government.
But the new rules go far beyond that, essentially establishing a plan to activate the U.S. military inside the country to deal with social issues under provisions that appear to be devoid of any connection to the Constitution, according to an expert.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Enemies Warned Not to ‘Test’ Obama
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned the United States’ enemies on Saturday against trying to take advantage of the early months of the new Washington administration to test U.S. resolve.
Gates also said the United States would stay deeply involved in the Middle East and the Gulf under Barack Obama’s administration.
“I can assure you that a change in administration does not alter our fundamental interests, especially in the Middle East,” he told a regional security conference in Bahrain.
Many foreign policy experts, including vice-president elect Sen. Joe Biden, have suggested enemies of the United States will try to provoke a crisis early in Obama’s term while the new administration is still finding its feet.
Gates, who will stay on under Obama, said extensive planning had gone into preparing for the transition.
“Anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to test the new administration would be sorely mistaken,” he told the Manama Dialogue conference, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“President Obama and his national security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States from the moment he takes office on January 20th,” Gates said.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Why I Targeted CAIR at Its Annual Banquet
On Nov. 23, 2008, my researchers and I attended the annual banquet of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
During the event, several court summons were issued to CAIR executives for committing fraud against Muslim people and families they were supposed to help. I will also go on record saying CAIR supports Islamic jihadists and advocates their ideology. In addition, I encourage CAIR and/or their supporters to file a lawsuit against me for my comments. There has never been anything I have ever spoken or wrote that I would not swear under oath to in a U.S. court (not a Shariah court). Why? Because I only speak or write about issues of which I have first-hand evidence. Pure truth will always prevail.
Since the court summons was served to the CAIR executives in front of a thousand or so people and has now been viewed by several thousand more, the bloggers have been active in their opinions. One issue has been the concern of issuing the summons to CAIR at their annual banquet and embarrassing and disgracing them in public. Many bloggers have been positive and some have been critical. I respect both. Possibly in the near future, bloggers will not have the same rights to express their opinions in America.
I do believe I owe it to bloggers and others to explain why I, as the operational director of the research project, decided to serve the court summons at the banquet. The primary reason is nine of the 12 defendants were to be present at the banquet. We were able to serve six. In addition, we provided over 20 copies of the court summons to potential high-dollar donors. This leads to my secondary reason. The CAIR annual banquet is a top fundraising night. As mentioned previously, CAIR supports the Islamic jihadists’ ideology, and if I could prevent millions of dollars being donated to CAIR, this was reason enough for me to serve the summons at the banquet. This mission was accomplished (per the words of CAIR executives to my researchers). My third and final reason was to disgrace and embarrass people who have hurt the Muslim people they are organized as a nonprofit organization to help. CAIR receives U.S. tax exemptions based on their pledge to help the Muslim people.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Belgian Police ‘Thwart Imminent Al-Qaida Attack’
The arrival of EU leaders and intelligence that a terror attack was on the way triggered a massive police operation, involving 242 officers, in overnight house raids in Brussels and Liege.
Police have arrested 14 suspects, three of whom, including the suspected suicide bomber, had just returned from Afghanistan, where it is thought they had received orders from al-Qaeda commanders.
Police have been closely watching the suspected suicide bomber, one of four Belgian citizens in the group.
He returned from Afghanistan on Dec 4 and three days later police received information he was planning to send a video message to close relations.
Johan Delmulle, Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor, revealed that police had swooped because he had “received the green light to carry out an operation from which he was not expected to come back”.
“He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience,” he said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Belgian Police Have Charged Six Suspected Al Qaeda Terrorists — Including One Woman
Arrested on Suspicion of Being Part of a Plot to Kill Gordon Brown and Other European Leaders at the EU Summit.
A judge decided there was insufficient evidence to hold eight other suspects picked up in Thursday’s anti-terror sweep. The raids came hours before the start of a European Union summit of 27 government leaders in the Belgian capital. Spokesman Lieve Pellens of the federal prosecutor’s office said the six charged early today constituted the hard core of a terrorist group and included one militant who allegedly was plotting a suicide attack.
It was feared they were planning a suicide bombing as the Prime Minister and 26 other European premiers met in Brussels for a two-day summit. All suspects under arrest are Belgian, and include Moroccan-born Malika El Aroud, who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.
El Aroud was the only woman among those arrested. Most of the others are in their 20s or early 30s and only one of those was known from other terror investigations, Pellens said. El Aroud was caught in a pre-Christmas terror sweep last year but was released because of insufficient evidence.
She moved to Belgium from Morocco when she was very young, and began writing online after her first husband died in the suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, just before the September 11 attacks in 2001. The risk of an imminent attack rose after one of the suspects was given the ‘green light’ from his masterminds to strike, officials said. They believe the attack is linked to Al Qaeda and said they had found a ‘martyrdom video’ made by the suspect. […]
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Gets Off the Dole
Twelve years after U.S. welfare reform, the U.K. gets with the programme.
Both of Britain’s main political parties are now competing to be the most serious champion of welfare reform. Earlier this week, the U.K.’s secretary of state for welfare, James Purnell — the man who might well be the ruling Labour party’s next leader — set out the government’s action plan. Much of what he proposed has been imported from the United States. Purnell promises U.S.-style ‘work-fare’ schemes for every person in receipt of state benefits. The private sector will take charge of finding work for the long-term unemployed and all those on sickness benefits will be subject to robust medical assessments. Many of the ideas are stolen from the Conservative party’s spokesman, Chris Grayling, but in some areas Labour is proposing to be even tougher. They will require, for example, single parents with children of just 12 months old to get work or attend training courses — a provision Conservatives will oppose.
We can be sure that most of these reforms will be enacted. While Labour’s Left will resist many of the tougher proposals, the Conservatives are offering bipartisan support for the bulk of the Purnell program. Twelve years after U.S. president Bill Clinton signed the welfare reforms enacted by the Gingrich Congress, Britain will finally begin to catch up. The great difference, of course, is that the economic climate could not be more different. Requiring single parents to take jobs when vacancies were plentiful is a very different proposition from today’s, when Britain is facing the deepest recession of all the major economies.
The biggest differences between the Labour and Conservative reform platforms is not their work requirements, however, but their attitudes to the family, drug addiction, and education. Gordon Brown’s Labour party continues to oppose the obvious conclusion from mounting empirical evidence that a two parent family, bound together by marriage, is far more stable than the alternatives. Labour has crafted a benefits system where it is financially disadvantageous for poorer couples to live together. When David Cameron launched his bid for the Tory leadership in 2005, he promised to recognize the importance of marriage in the tax system. He has since promised to end Labour’s couple penalty. On drug and other poverty-creating addictions, while Labour remains committed to harm-reduction forms of treatment like methadone and needle exchanges, Conservatives want more funding to go to treatment programs that seek to free people from their addictions. On education, the Conservatives are proposing a voucher program in all but name.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Violence Escalates as Prime Minister Rebuffs Calls to Resign
ATHENS, Greece — Greek youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails and heavily armed Athens police responded with stun grenades and tear gas Friday, as deep discontent with the government and the global economic meltdown erupted on the country’s seventh straight day of riots.
Greece’s prime minister rejected calls to resign and hold early elections, insisting Friday that a steady hand was needed in times of financial crisis.
“There should be no confusion between the emotions felt by young students over the tragic death of a colleague … and this destructive mania,” Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said Friday.
Terrified workers in banks along Athens’ central Syntagma Square watched in fear as protesters shattered windows just replaced days ago after being damaged in the worst riots Greece has experienced in decades.
Protesters also smashed their way into the main branch of the National Bank of Greece, sending employees fleeing in panic. One protester walked up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament and threw a black-and-red anarchist flag at it. Petrol bombs left one policeman covered in flames.
Protesters briefly occupied a private Athens radio station and read a statement on the air and took over a municipal building in the northwestern city of Ioannina.
The riots broke out Saturday within hours of the police shooting death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, and have since expanded to encompass general anger over economic hardship. Hundreds of stores and dozens of cars have been destroyed or damaged in cities across the country.
“What started as an outburst of rage over Alexandros’ killing is now becoming a more organized form of protest,” said Petros Constantinou of the Socialist Workers Party.
The violence has hammered Karamanlis’ conservative government, which already faced vociferous opposition to economic and social reforms. Karamanlis, whose party has only a single seat majority in parliament, rejected calls for him to resign, saying Friday that Greece needed to focus instead on the global financial crisis.
“That is my concern and the concern and the priority of the government, and not scenarios about elections and successions,” Karamanlis said in Brussels, Belgium, where he was attending an European Union leaders meeting on climate change.
A spokesman for the opposition Socialists said the government was “refusing to face reality.”
Protesters who are occupying high schools and universities are demanding a reversal of public spending cuts, the resignation of the country’s interior minister and the release of arrested riot suspects.
About 200 people have been arrested during the riots and 70 injured.
As unrest spilled over into other European cities, concerns have been raised that the clashes could be a trigger for opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by the continent’s economic turmoil and soaring unemployment.
“Financial targets are being attacked — like banks — to prove a point of economic oppression … some people hardly have enough eat,” said Constantinos Sakkas, a 23-year-old protest organizer.
“We’re against the attacks on small stores,” he added. “The purpose of all this is for our demands to be heard. This just isn’t for us. It’s for everyone.”
Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy this week have smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks, while in France, cars were set ablaze outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux.
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Riots Spark Fear of Europe in Flames
The protests began over a police shooting but now some see in them a warning to governments to solve the economic slump fast
Seldom do Greek academics attain the heroic status that was bestowed last week on Christos Kittas, an eminent professor of pathology and rector of Athens University.
More comfortable in front of a whiteboard Kittas, a wiry figure with grey hair and a silver beard, found himself on the front line in what looked like a war zone.
From his palatial office on the first floor of the university, he organised a “human chain” of colleagues to defend the historic building from being ransacked in Greece’s worst street violence in decades.
“I’m terrified,” he confided on Friday as yet another column of demonstrators filed past the building, screaming abuse at police — “killers in uniform” — for having shot dead a teenager six days before.
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“I haven’t slept in days now,” he added, sitting beneath oil paintings of previous rectors going back to the 1830s.
Downstairs, other teachers had formed a line on the steps to prevent hardcore demonstrators from breaking into the building and using it, as they had done previously, as a base from which to hurl Molotov cocktails and stones at police.
A week of protests and rioting by students venting fury over the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos has thrown Greece into turmoil, causing hundreds of millions of pounds of damage and focusing attention on economic, political and social woes.
“It feels as though we are in Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Kittas, peering once more through the window. “I think I can hear them,” he said nervously. “I think they’ve broken in.”
It turned out to be a false alarm. However, Kittas, who has become the unlikely star of TV chat shows, has every reason to be jittery: a year ago, when protesters broke into his office, they took a knife to two of the portraits. “I’m worried that this time they’ll burn the place down,” he said.
The protests continued yesterday and more demonstrations are planned. Some see a foretaste of the next phase of the global financial crisis, sensing in the tear gas and chants a warning to European leaders of what may unfold elsewhere if they do not take into account the frustrations of their people.
Sympathy protests from Moscow to Madrid helped to fuel such concerns, as did Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who mentioned the Greek upheaval to justify his rejection of budget proposals that would have cushioned the wealthy from losses.
First in the line of fire, however, were Greece’s ruling elite, who had been bolstered in recent years by a bonanza of European Union and the eupho-ria surrounding the hosting of the Olympics in 2004.
Last week they faced a popular uprising by thousands of citizens over a host of grievances from corruption in the government to low salaries and unemployment among the young. The rhetoric was enough to send a shiver down the spine of world leaders meeting in Brussels to discuss a multi-billion-euro bailout.
“Athens must burn, especially the banks,” a teenager called Marios in a hooded sweat-shirt and jeans told me during a protest on Friday.
Nearby, rioters had smashed the display screens of cash dispensers and shattered dozens of shop windows, carting off mobile telephones, watches, clothes and computers. A few rioters dragged a drinks refrigerator on to the street, ripped off the back and filled their arms with bottles and cans. They drank a few and used the rest as projectiles.
Down the road, policemen watched from behind riot shields but did nothing: the government has ordered them not to use force in order to avoid further bloodshed. This has fuelled anger among shopkeepers who complained that Athens, after being rebuilt amid great fanfare for the Olympics, had been left to burn.
“People have a right to demonstrate,” said Katarini Halaounis, who lost thousands of pounds worth of stock when protesters looted her jewellery shop on Monday, “but not to destroy shops and businesses that have taken a lifetime to build. The government just doesn’t seem to be interested.”
A target of wrath was Costas Karamanlis, the conservative prime minister since 2004. Since narrowly winning reelection in 2007, he has been plagued by a series of embarrassing scandals in which several of his closest associates have been forced to resign.
Rumours swirled about the capital that he was suffering from severe depression, so inactive has he appeared during the sacking of Athens…
| [Return to headlines] |
‘Lisbon is Adopted’
EU leaders agree on ‘bribes’ to convince Irish voters to vote yes to Treaty at second referendum
Europe’s leaders have agreed on ‘assurances’ designed to persuade Irish voters to reverse their rejection of the EU constitution.
‘Lisbon is adopted,’ one EU diplomat said today. The deal was confirmed separately by two other diplomats at the meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
Irish voters will be encouraged to back the document in a second vote next year.
EU chiefs last night agreed in principle key concessions to Dublin at a Brussels summit in return for a re-run of the referendum. They hope the Irish will deliver the ‘right’ result when they vote again.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Leading Newspaper Involves Moroccans in Rejecting ‘Their’ Crime
THE HAGUE, 13/12/08 — De Telegraaf, the country’s biggest newspaper, continues to draw attention to the problem of Moroccan teen criminals. On Friday, the newspaper chose the angle of a Moroccan entrepreneur alleging that the government is too politically correct to act against his criminal countrymen.
Jamal Jaadan (33), a Dutch-Moroccan businessman in the Amsterdam suburb of Weesp, has sounded the alarm, De Telegraaf reported. “Thirty young Moroccan delinquents are terrorising Weesp, but the politicians from the flower-power generation think that these louts can be guided back to the straight and narrow with a little pressure. And that is rubbish! Judiciary, cabinet, police: protect society from these scum,” Jaadan says in the newspaper.
De Telegraaf has been hammering away for some months about the problems caused in the cities by Moroccan teenagers. The newspaper seemed to wish to make it clear on Friday that the passivity of the government, apparently to prevent the stigmatisation of the entire Moroccan community, is also criticised by Moroccans — at least some of them.
Jaadan’s snack bar has been burgled three times this year. In one case, his entire safe was removed from the premises via the roof. In another, the snack bar was totally demolished. “No action was taken,” said Jaadan. “The police claimed they had lost the videotape showing the perpetrators. When the safe was stolen, I knew exactly where they should look for the thieves. The Moroccan community is like a village in itself. I gave the detectives the names, addresses, everything”. But the police made no efforts at all.
“At a certain point, I put one of the suspects in my car and said, listen! Everyone knows you were involved. Tell the police about it now and your sentence will be reduced. I arrived at the police station with the boy and they told me they had no time for us! Later, a statement was taken after all. But the case was closed. Lack of evidence. What sort of signal do you give these louts with this weak attitude?”
Jaadan did stress in De Telegraaf that 90 percent of the Moroccans in Weesp do not cause him complaints. “It is not a question of nuisance; that is something many youngsters cause. It is these criminals and the influence they have on the younger children. They are the ones who treat all their Moroccan friends to kebab after committing a theft. It gives them status. All these flower power politicians should realise that ‘joining in’ is something these louts have no wish to do.”
“These problems must simply be named and tackled. I do not want my children to be called Moroccan with a negative intonation right up until the next century. We are Dutch and we too are fed up with these criminals.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Refugee Status Urged for Detainees
IRELAND SHOULD follow Portugal’s lead in agreeing to grant refugee status to exonerated Guantánamo detainees who cannot return home due to the risk of torture or other mistreatment, Amnesty International has said.
Amnesty’s Irish section was responding to Portuguese foreign minister Luis Amado’s commitment to accept for resettlement Guantánamo inmates cleared for release. Mr Amado outlined the move in a letter to his EU counterparts to mark this week’s 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Referring to US president-elect Barack Obama’s stated wish to close the detention centre, Mr Amado argued that the EU should “send a clear signal of our willingness to help the US government resolve this problem” by granting asylum to exonerated detainees who fear persecution if returned to their countries of origin.
Amnesty’s Irish section has been lobbying the Government to take in at least one detainee — Uzbek national Oybek Jamoldinivich Jabbarov. Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, however, has said the Government is not contemplating the resettlement of any Guantánamo inmates.
Welcoming Portugal’s decision, Colm O’Gorman, director of Amnesty International Ireland, said: “Ireland should follow Portugal’s lead and be part of the solution to end the human rights scandal of Guantánamo.
“The Irish Government has committed to lobbying the new US administration to ensure the closure of Guantánamo Bay. It cannot close if these innocent men have nowhere to go. It would be absolutely illogical for Ireland to refuse to offer resettlement.”
| — Hat tip: RRW | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Bitter Olives for Immigrants in Andalusia
(by Francesco Cerri) (ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 12 — In the fields of Andalusia, thousands of immigrants attracted to Spain with hopes of collecting the crumbs of the economic boom that has taken place over the past decade, have become entangled in the recession that has struck the Iberian country. At least 2,000 immigrants, mainly Africans, many without legal stay permits, have been roaming the countryside over the past days from one village to another in the Jaen region between Cordoba and Granada, hoping to participate as in past years in the olive harvest. But this year it is entirely different. The crisis, particularly the bursting real estate ‘bubble’ which until now had been the motor to the Spanish economy, has changed fortunes. Unemployment has skyrocketed, hitting 3 million people. And the Spanish, reports the press in Madrid, have returned to the fields, taking back the most humble jobs abandoned and left for immigrants in the past years. Among these is ‘l’Aceitunà, the olive harvest in Jaen, an area that produces one-third of the olive oil in the world. “With the crisis, the unemployed in the building sector have resumed working in the fields this year” confirmed the Mayor of Ubeda, in the heart of the olive groves of Jaen, Marcelino Sanchez, socialist, like most of the local politicians in Andalusia. This morning at 7.00 hundreds of immigrants were without work who came from all over Spain, invading the bus station in Ubeda. Not to travel, but with the tenuous hopes of finding work. There, the ‘capataces’, or master builders are here looking for supplemental income. But this year all the lists are already full, of Spanish people. The teams were already formed in October with a majority of local workers, confirmed the manager of the Union, the cooperative of Ubeda. More than 15,000 unemployed workers from Andalusia signed up to participate in the olive harvest. The small town, which normally welcomes 145 seasonal workers every year for the olive harvest, is no longer able to deal with the influx of over 500 desperate African workers. The mayor decided to allow the immigrants who have been travelling around Ubeda to sleep in the local sports arena. And the local aid structures for the poor are preparing 700 meals per evening. In other cities in the area the situation is the same. Ads published in El Pais over the past few weeks stating that the regions of Andalusia did not need temporary workers and that lists for the olive harvest were already full did not help the situation. In Ubeda and in the other cities, posters in French, Spanish, and Arabic explained that “this year no workers are needed” and free bus tickets were available “to go back to their normal residencies”. But the rain delayed work in the fields. And many remained with hopes of finding something sooner of later. In a few weeks the desperate caravan in Jaen will move to Huelva, on the border with Portugal, where in February the strawberry harvest will begin. But there they will probably be replaced by unemployed people from Spain. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Student Receives Damages for Headscarf Slight
A student at a Landskrona secondary school in southern Sweden has been awarded damages for being told not to wear an Islamic headscarf.
The Swedish Ombudsman against Discrimination (DO) has ruled that student was the subject of discrimination.
The three local councils that share the operation of the school have reached a compromise agreement with the ombudsman over a compensation payment amounting to 100,000 kronor ($7,400), according to local newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad.
The student attends a hotel and catering course and the course involves a period of work experience at a hotel. But the hotel refused to accept that the girl wore a headscarf.
Staff at the school tried to persuade the girl to remove her headscarf. According to the school they did this out of concern for the her well-being and that they wanted to explain to her about the hotel industry in Sweden.
The school’s management accepts that it has made a mistake. The hotel has since changed its regulations and now allows students on work experience to wear a head scarf or ‘slöja’, which in common parlance is often used to describe all sorts of female Islamic head coverings, including those that just cover the hair.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Farm Hit by Anthrax Outbreak
A farm in the vicinity of Varberg in western Sweden has been hit by an outbreak of anthrax. 13 cattle have so far died from the disease which has not been seen in Sweden since 1981 and is harmful to humans.
“This disease is not to be taken lightly,” said Bengt Larsson at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet) to news agency TT.
The alarm over the outbreak was sounded on Wednesday evening as suspicions emerged in connection with a veterinary visit at the farm. By then 13 animals had died over a 12 day period.
The National Veterinary Institute (SVA) confirmed on Friday evening that it was a case of anthrax.
“The disease is classified under epizootic legislation which shows just how serious it is and the department of agriculture (Jordbruksverket) can decide on the appropriate measures,” Bengt Larsson said.
One of the first measures was to place the farm, which is close to Varberg in western Sweden, in quarantine.
The farm houses a total of 70 animals and all trading from the farm has now been forbidden and no unauthorized people are admitted to the area.
Anthrax can be transmitted from animals to humans but it is an unusual occurrence. The bacteria can not however pass from human to human.
Larsson was asked whether there was a risk of human infection.
“I don’t think so as they have been treated with antibiotics. They are effective against the disease.”
Bengt Larsson stated that the disease is not as contagious as blue tongue disease or influenza.
Anthrax is a bacteria and its origin is as yet unknown, according to TV4 Halland. There is a theory that it comes from the soil.
“It could be that the animals have been grazing in areas which have been dug up and where traces of dead animals infected with the bacteria remain. The traces can remain in the soil for up to 50 years,” Larsson explained to TT.
“However we have not as yet been able to confirm any obvious source of infection.”
The last time Sweden was hit by an outbreak of anthrax was in 1981 in Uppland just north of Stockholm.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss People’s Party Back in Government
The patriotic Swiss People’s Party (SVP), known for its anti-EU and anti-immigration stance, has regained its place in the government of Switzerland as MPs elected Ueli Maurer to the cabinet. Mr Maurer was able to win his place in the cabinet in terms of Switzerland’s complicated ‘government by consensus’ procedure where the biggest parties are forced to co-operate in order to rule. The cabinet is directly elected by all MPs in the Swiss parliament.
Mr Maurer is a former president of the SVP, who led that party to its greatest ever poll performance in 2007 when it became Switzerland’s single largest bloc in parliament.
Mr Maurer won on a third round of voting, barely beating a fellow party member, Hansjörg Walter, 122 votes to 121. Mr Walter said he had no interest in the seat; his name was put forward by other parties disenchanted with the party leadership and trying to undermine the party’s choice for the seat.
The test will come when Mr Maurer is expected to support joint decisions of the cabinet on issues like treatment of immigrants or relations with the 27-member EU. The vote comes nearly a year after SVP leader Christoph Blocher was forced out of the cabinet after strongly opposing government policy.
The party’s opposition to immigrants captured worldwide attention when it produced posters showing a black sheep being kicked off a Swiss flag and dark hands grabbing at a pile of Swiss passports. As president of the SVP, Mr Maurer was a leading force behind the party’s aggressive and successful populist campaigns, signing off on cartoonish posters attacking leftists, foreigners and other undesirables. […]
Swiss citizens are set to vote in a February 8 referendum on whether EU nationals should have the right to live and work in Switzerland without a visa. Brussels officials have warned that a “No” vote would pose “a major problem” that could see the country quickly suspended from Schengen.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
The Betrayal of Charles Martel: Mosque Cornerstone Laid in Tours
The laying of a cornerstone of a new mosque in the French town of Tours is the final betrayal of the valiant efforts of Charles Martel and countless other Europeans who over the ages have fought to prevent the Islamification of Europe.
The laying of the first stone of the new Grand Mosque of Tours — near the site of the 732 AD battle which saw the Frankish leader Martel defeat an invading Muslim army, was attended by the Algerian Minister of Religion, the Socialist mayor of Tours, Jean Germain, and the archbishop of Tours, Monsignor Aubertin.
Tours will have its Grand Mosque when the €5 million necessary for its financing has been found — in three years, at the earliest. A quarter of the sum has already been collected.
The land was purchased by the Paris Mosque, subsidized by Algeria. On November 29, 2008, amidst great ceremony, the first stone was laid. (Above: Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, and below, a model of the new Mosque to be built in Tours.)
In 732, a Muslim army was defeated outside the city of Tours by Charles Martel and the Franks. The Battle of Tours was one of the most decisive battles in history since it stopped the Islamification of Europe — for at least 13 centuries.
The Algerian Minister of Religion, Bouabdallah Ghlamallah made a stopover in Tours to attend the laying of the first stone of the Grand Mosque of Tours, before taking off for Saudi Arabia — a land where the practice of Christianity is forbidden, as in Algeria where spreading it is punishable by heavy fines and prison sentences.
Algeria will contribute up to 490,000 euros towards financing the mosque. Bouabdallah Ghlamallah distinguished himself earlier in the year through his sense of inter-religious dialogue, so dear to the hearts of French bishops. He closed 10 Christian churches, justifying his actions by saying: “I associate evangelization with terrorism.”
On 24 June, 2004, Bouabdallah Ghlamallah denounced the evangelization of Kabyles (Berbers) in Algeria during a press conference in Algiers. He repeated that Islam was the “religion of the State and of all Algerians,” then warned that preaching Christianity would result inevitably in a confrontation: “There will be bloodshed.”
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
The Greek Riots Explained
In the period before that most often the country was governed by rightist governments which often acted in an authoritarian way, usually harassing, arresting and imprisoning their leftist political opponents. With the restoration and full establishment of a democracy in 1974 the forces of the left (represented by the Socialists, Communists and the Democratic Left) started to gain the upper hand in politics. The gains of the left were not limited only to the political arena. As in the rest of Europe, the left started to dominate the universities, the media and other cultural institutions. The history of the country went for a rewrite and the cultural norms took a shape and form according to the interests and ideology of the new leftist establishment.
Now institutions that were associated with the exercise of authority of the old rightist state, especially the police, became tainted and tame. Notions like that of law and order have lost legitimacy. These days if anyone utters the thought that the police must impose law and order is immediately accused of being a crypto-fascist.
On an almost daily basis Athens’s traffic is clogged by demonstrations of special interest groups. The universities are closed for long periods of time during the year because are often occupied by small groups of students who protest some government policy. High schools face the same problems as they loose many days during the year because students choose to protest any changes in educational policy no mater how trivial they are.
The culture of protest has been inculcated in the minds of young people as one of the highest expressions of civic virtue. As Alekos Alavanos said, the parliamentary leader of the Coalition of the Left, there are the couch potatoes and there are citizens who hit the pavement and revitalize the democracy. The tragedy of Greece is that there is no opposition to this kind of rhetoric. The nominally conservative party, New Democracy, is perpetually on the political and intellectual defensive by having accepted most of the ideological promises of the leftist establishment.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands UK Jobs at Risk as US Senate Rejects 9bn Car Firm Bailout
[Comments from JD: Countries around the world — wherever big 3 have factories — are panicking. Is it US taxpayer’s responsibility to prop up their economies through the big 3 bailout proposal? ]
Turmoil returned to the City today after the collapse of a bail-out plan for America’s near-bankrupt car industry.
The failure to agree a £9 billion rescue for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford sent share prices plunging around the world after weeks of relative calm and put thousands of British car jobs at risk.
It raised a specter of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month. Millions of jobs across the world could go as a result.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: BBC Under Fire Over Christmas Day Fairytale Horror
As a much-loved fairytale, a sumptuous new version of Hansel and Gretel might seem like perfect family viewing for Christmas Day.
But a new staging of the Brothers Grimm classic, featuring children’s corpses hanging in an abattoir-like larder, has proved so terrifying that the Royal Opera House recommends it is not suitable for children under the age of eight.
Which has left critics questioning why the BBC has chosen to screen the production at 3pm on Christmas Day — a prime-time family viewing slot.
Media watchdogs and the children’s charity Kidscape have called on BBC2 to pull the controversial opera from its Christmas schedule over fears it could traumatise children.
The two-hour fairytale features lust-crazed parents, a knife-wielding wicked witch who hangs children in her larder before baking them in a giant oven and a final scene of cannibalism in which children feast on her flesh.
It has been marketed by the Royal Opera House as ‘perfect family fare for everyone at holiday time’.
But opera critics have called it ‘profoundly unpleasant’ and said children in the audience on opening night were ‘genuinely terrified’.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Blame Whites for Islamist Terrorism, Says MI5 Report
The anti-white mania which pervades the establishment has been reflected in a leaked MI5 document which actually names “racism” as being one of the causes of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in this country. The shocking “blame whites” claim is made in a classified internal research document on radicalisation, called Understanding Radicalisation and Violent Extremism in the UK, which has been unveiled by the extremist leftist Guardian newspaper.
The key vulnerabilities identified by MI5 analysts that made those studied receptive to extremist ideology included the “experience of migrating to Britain and facing marginalisation and racism,” — in other words, the trauma of moving to Britain, and then being the subject of ‘white racism’ is what makes them terrorists!
It is the old game of the Lab/Con establishment — never look to the ethnic communities themselves for the cause of any problems, rather always blame whites, no matter what the problem actually is.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
UK: De Menezes Jury Damns Police ‘Cover-Up’
Officers’ claims of shouting warning before gunning down innocent Brazilian rejected
The jury at the inquest on the Brazilian electrician rejected their account of the shooting and sided with Tube passengers who said the officers failed to issue a warning before opening fire.
They returned an open verdict, which was the most strongly critical option available to them after the judge instructed them there was insufficient evidence to rule that de Menezes was unlawfully killed by police.
Jurors pointed to a catalogue of police failings in the run-up to the 27-year-old’s death.
Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell Underground Station in South London after police mistook him for bomber Hussain Osman.
He was killed on July 22, 2005, the day after Osman and three fellow terrorists had gone on the run after trying to bomb the Tube in a follow-up attack to the July 7 London bombings which killed 52 and injured 977.
The jury’s verdict has led to calls from the victim’s family for the marksmen involved to face a fresh investigation for alleged perjury. They called the hearing a ‘ whitewash’ and expressed their anger that coroner Sir Michael Wright ‘gagged’ the jury by failing to offer the option of an ‘unlawful killing’ verdict.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: De Menezes, Now We Need a Real Explanation of How Calamity Came About
With their open verdict, the jurors have come the closest they possibly could in the circumstances to expressing grave disquiet about the shooting.
This is because the coroner also told them that if they did not think that the police “honestly believed that 27-year-old Mr de Menezes represented an immediate mortal danger to them and the other people around them” and that the use of force was “reasonable in the circumstances”, then an open verdict would be more appropriate than lawful killing.
So the verdict is a criticism of the police action. Worse still, the jurors also said they did not believe the officers when they insisted that they had shouted an “armed police” warning before shooting de Menezes — hardly surprising, since every passenger in that tube carriage who gave evidence at the inquest denied that such a warning had been given, thus raising the possibility of police collusion to put forward a lie.
The verdict thus leaves the police under even greater pressure than before. And the multitudinous questions arising from this debacle remain unanswered. The evidence produced at the inquest underlined the fact that the police operation had been a shambles — for which, astoundingly, not one person has still been brought to book.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Father-of-Three Cancer Sufferer Beaten to Death as He Prepared to Spend His Last Christmas With Family
A cancer victim who had only months to live was beaten to death as he prepared to spend his last Christmas with his family.
Married father-of-three John Vry, 55, suffered serious head injuries in a suspected street attack after he went out to buy some chips and a packet of cigars.
He was set upon last week as he walked close to his home in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Police were called by members of the public to a report of an alleged assault and found Mr Vry lying unconscious in an alleyway.
(…)
James Killingback, 22, of Lowestoft, and a 16-year-old boy from the town who cannot be named for legal reasons have been charged with Mr Vry’s murder.
The pair appeared before Lowestoft magistrates last week and spoke only to confirm their names. They were remanded in custody to appear at Ipswich Crown Court next Thursday.
A 23-year-old man who was also arrested on suspicion of murder has been bailed to return to Lowestoft police station on January 19.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Headteachers Should ‘High-Five’ Pupils to Improve Exam Results
Trainee head teachers are being told to give pupils in tough areas high-fives in an effort to improve exam results. A Government-backed training scheme is urging would-be heads to give pupils the U.S-style welcome to help forge ‘positive relationships’.
Sir Iain Hall, training director for the scheme called Future Leaders, is passing on the advice at intensive residential courses after visiting schools in the U.S.
He is also recommending a technique which involves pupils gathering in a circle and applauding one of their number, with the head saying the pupils name and ‘we appreciate you’ and the children cheering that child.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Manchester Voters Give a Resounding No to Britain’s Biggest Congestion Charging Zone
The Government’s transport policy lay in tatters today after voters overwhelmingly rejected controversial plans to extend congestion charging.
In a major referendum the people of Greater Manchester delivered a resounding ‘No’ when asked to support the charge.
Four out of five people voted against the proposals delivering a massive body blow to plans to reel out charging across the UK.
The plans needed a majority in favour in at least seven local authority districts in Greater Manchester to get the go-ahead.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Neo-Nazi Who Waged Hate Campaign Against Mixed-Race Couple is Jailed for Seven Years
A neo-Nazi found with bomb-making materials at his home and who harassed a mixed-race couple has been jailed for more than seven years.
A jury at Grimsby Crown Court took just three-and-a-half hours to find Nathan Worrell, 35, guilty of possession of material for terrorist purposes and racially aggravated harassment.
He was described by anti-terror police today as a ‘dangerous individual’.
During the trial, the court heard how books and manuals containing ‘recipes’ to make bombs and detonators using household items such as weedkiller, lighter fluid and sugar were found by police at Worrell’s flat in Grimsby, north east Lincolnshire.
Officers also discovered two tubs of sodium chlorate weedkiller and three bottles of lighter fluid, as well as fireworks, some of which had been tampered with.
The jury was also shown a video by far-right group Combat 18 — showing how to prepare and make a bomb from household items — which was found in Worrell’s flat.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Innocent Looking Body Cream That Hides a Sinister Secret
It’s been financing anarchists
Packed tightly on the shelves of Lush beauty stores up and down Britain, the £9.74 ‘Charity Pot’ is always a popular choice at Christmas time.
A swift glance at the packaging suggests it’s the perfect gift: a tub of sweet-scented cocoa-butter hand-and-body lotion, with all the proceeds going to one of several ‘charities, good causes and hand-picked groups’.
Those who have already parted with their hard-earned cash in exchange for the innocuous looking cream might be rather taken aback then to hear of its role in the protest which brought Stansted Airport to a standstill on Monday.
Plane Stupid, the environmental campaign group which orchestrated the nightmarish scenes in protest against short-haul flights and airport expansion, is one of the so-called ‘good causes’ which benefit from sales of the Lush skin-softening Charity Pot.
[…] The Charity Pot has raised £250,000 over the past year for such groups. But around £2,000 of that has gone to Plane Stupid — easily enough to pay for the wirecutter, locks and chains used for the Stansted protest.
Allied to that sum, the Mail has established that Lush’s founder and majority shareholder, Mark Constantine, has also made personal donations to the activist group.
And so Lush customers — some of whom were not aware the store was funding the protest group — are faced with uncomfortable evidence that their money may well have helped fund the activists who cut their way in at 3.15am on Monday morning, forcing the airport to shut one of its runways.
Thousands of passengers were left stranded, and as more arrived, queues formed which snaked around the terminal building.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Croatia: New Law on Prevention Money Laundry
(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 12 — The Croatian Parliament has approved the new law on Money Laundry and Funding of Terrorism which will come into force on January 1, 2009. The Zagreb office of the Italian Trade Commission (Ice) reports that with the new law, Croatian citizens can cross the State border with 10,000 euros in cash without customs declaration. Moreover, from now on all transactions in cash in Croatia have a ceiling of 105,000 kuna (around 14,800 euros), and in operations with foreigners the maximum amount to pay in cash will be 15,000 euros for all individual and juridical persons who carry out registered activities in Croatia for which they are paid in cash. Payments for more than the indicated maximum have to be effectuated through bank accounts. These dispositions apply in case of selling of goods and services, property, loan contracts and the selling of securities. The new law is in line with EU regulations. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Banks: Intesa Will Look at System for Remittances to Morocco
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, DECEMBER 12 — A common system between French and Spanish banks and Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo to easily and openly channel remittances made by Moroccan immigrants, particularly in the three countries in question: this is one of the ideas being studied by a workgroup, alongside Intesa Sanpaolo and nine other players in the banking industry based in the Mediterranean. The following are all involved in the project: Moroccòs Al Amana, Attijariwafa Bank and Credit Immobilier et Hotelier; Egypt’s Bank of Alexandria (controlled by Intesa Sanpaolo); Tunisiàs Biat and Banque Tuniso-Koweitienne; Francés Groupe Caisse d’Epargne and the Confederacion Espanola de Cajas de Ahorros. The European Investment Bank (EIB) is taking part as an observer. Director of Intesa Sanpaolòs foreign network, Giuseppe Cuccurese, spoke of the project today in his speech at a round table in Milan entitled ‘Doing Business in the Mediterranean’. There are five areas of study for the group, he explained: other than immigrant remittances, there is savings products, retail activities, small and medium-sized enterprises, and infrastructure. The aim of the project is to analyse and compare the banking products of each country involved “in order to see if one can learn from the others”. “We are producing interesting ideas”, concluded the director, “which we will be able to present to the market as soon as January or February”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Banks: Intesa, Med Expansion Strategic Objective
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, DECEMBER 12 — Today, as for investment possibilities, “everything is stopped” now due to the market crisis which has frozen sales and acquisitions but Intesa Sanpaolo continues to have the expansion in the southern part of the Mediterranean and in the Gulf region as a “strategic objective”. Stating this was Giuseppe Cuccurese, manager of the foreign network of the Italian credit institute, present in Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and mainly in Egypt, where it has an 80pct share in the Bank of Alexandria, “an investment that was attentively studied — said Cuccurese — and which is giving good results”. Today there are 1.5 million clients and 190 branches that cover the country with 5,600 employees. Cuccurese does not rule out the possibility of other future investments in other countries in the area, “differentiated, naturally because every country has its specific details” and he underlined the activity carried out by the bank also on the front of sustaining trade. “Today — he said — we mediate about 30% of trade between Italy and the Mediterranean and 50% of trade to the Gulf region”. Italian businesses which aim at investing and growing in these markets “can be reassured”, concluded the executive, “because we are paying attention to these countries”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to be Awarded the Koyré Medal of History of Sciences
The Paris-based International Academy of History of Sciences awarded Alexandre Koyré Medal, a distinction award granted once every two years since 1968, to Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The Koyré medal is awarded to outstanding scholars for their innovative achievements in the evolution of studies in the history of science. The recipient of the medal is elected by vote by the members of the Academy.
Ihsanoglu is the first Turkish scholar to be awarded this medal, which he received in a ceremony to be held at the Academy in Paris, France, on 12 December 2008.
Professor Ihsanoglu is to receive the medal for his outstanding and innovative research and publications. He is the author of a fifteen-volume work on the history of science during the Ottoman period, which took 25 years to put together with a team of researchers under his direction.
Founded in 1927, the International Academy of History of Science grants the Alexandre Koyré medal, which honors the publication of a work in the history of science. The medal was granted for the first time to Derek Thomas Whiteside who compiled Isaac Newton’s works, while Guy Beaujouan was the last awardee.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Health: Ankara Hospital Becomes European Reference Center
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 10 — The Ibn-i Sina Hospital in Ankara has been acknowledged as a “Reference Center” in Europe after it began to apply “radionuclide” therapy to lessen cancer tumors in liver, Anadolu news agency reports today. The therapy was applied for the first time in Turkey at the Gulhane Military Medical Academy (Gata) in April 2008. Then, it was successfully applied at the Ibn-i Sina Hospital of the Ankara University School of Medicine. Professor Sadik Bilgic, chairman of Ankara University School of Medicine Department of Radiodiagnostic, declared they used radionuclide therapy for patients with liver cancer who did not respond to surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. “A delegation formed by Spanish, German and American physicians has chosen our hospital a reference center for radionuclide therapy. We have applied the therapy to more than 30 patients since our first trial in April. We became one of a few centers in Europe”, Bilgic added. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: Business Opportunities But ‘Chinese Danger’, Convention
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, DECEMBER 12 — Italy risks being left behind by other countries, such as China, who could ‘rob’ many potential investments in the Mediterranean region. The alarm was launched by many during a seminar entitled ‘Doing Business in the Mediterranean’, organised in Milan by the Fondazione Istud. The Asian country, emphasised Biagio Matranga, the board advisor to the UBAE bank, for example, “has already acquired the most important contract for the railway line which will connect the North to the South of Libya”. Libya, explained Matranga, “is aiming to turn itself into a goods hub and is a willing partner in joint ventures with Italian businesses in the fields of building infrastructure, services and tourism”. A further important sector, it emerged today, is the communications networks which ought to have double-figure growth rates in many countries in the region from now until 2011, said the Middle East vice president for Telecom Italia Sparkle, Leonardo Cerciello. “It is a strategic area of development”, he underlined, in which the telecoms company has invested 500 million dollars in the last six years. Essentially, the Mediterranean region presents a great opportunity for business, but it is important to “do it all together” and making a system, underlined Francesca Brigandi di Castelbarco, the president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the Mediterranean Countries which is proposing a 2009 round table to assure that the business of the region is conducted “by many, and not by the famous few”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Agriculture: Algeria, 70% of Cereal Requirement Imported
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, DECEMBER 1 — Algeria imports “70% of its cereal requirement”, that is around 74 million quintals of products and 20 million quintals of seeds each year. This was revealed, as reported by El Watan, by Professor Brahim Mouhouce from the Algiers institute of agronomy during a conference on cereal growing organised in Chlef. “Algeria has always been an arid and semiarid region”, explained Mouhouce, “but it managed to guarantee the self-sufficiency of the sector with a rainfall similar to the one we have today”. The researcher thinks that the cause of this serious dependency on abroad “is not only the lack of water”, but also other negative factors such as “the reduction of irrigated surfaces, the non-usage of systems to save water resources and the lack of rational and fair management of water”. Moreover, only “3.3% of the land that can be cultivated in the North African country”, he added, “is used for the cultivation of cereals”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: Oil Drilling Investments to Exceed USD 70 Mln
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, DECEMBER 8 — Investments in oil drilling in Morocco are expected to exceed MAD 618 million ($70 million) in 2008, including MAD 334 million ($38 million) provided by the partners of the Moroccan office of hydrocarbons (ONHYM), said ONHYM Director General, Amina Benkhadra, as reported by Map news agency. These investments increased by MAD 206 million ($23 million) in 2007-2008, said the Moroccan official, adding that the rise is in line with the national energy strategy aiming to step up gas and oil exploration. The state-run facility held negotiations with several foreign oil companies, which led to the signing of 6 exploration contracts and 9 oil agreements, underlined Benkhadra. enowned oil companies, such as Cabre, PEL and GBP, are involved in oil drilling operations in the Kingdom and intend to establish seven drillings in different sites between 2008-2009, ONHYM said. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Union School in Sfax Confers First Diplomas
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, 10 DIC — The first diplomas from the Hached school for union training in Sfax (Tunisia’s main industrial city) have been conferred by the secretary general of the Tunisian Labour Union (UGTT), Abdessalem Jerad. In his speech, Jerad pointed out that other than its important role in social life, the union is an extremely important force in the process of national development. Jerad also stressed the importance that the UGTT accords to union training, a fundamental point for its continued operation in full autonomy and transparency. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Arab Muslim Clerics: ‘Slaughter the Jews on the Land of Hevron!’
[Video at URL above]
(IsraelNN.com) The head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan called on Palestinian Authority Arabs to formally start a third intifada by carrying out suicide bombing attacks to “slaughter the Jews” in Israel.
The harangues by Arab Islamic clerics that aired on the Lebanese Hizbullah terrorist-linked Al-Manar and Palestinian Authority-run Al-Aqsa television networks from December 3-5, which were translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in a report published this week.
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Israel: PNA Furious With Livni, a ‘Misunderstanding’ She Replies
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 12 — A statement made by Israel’s Foreign Minister and leader of the Kadima Tzipi party, Livni, about the future of Arab-Israelis has caused outrage in Ramallah (West Bank). Livni today pointed out that her thoughts had been distorted. Speaking at a meeting with an Israeli schoolgirl yesterday, Livni said: “To ensure that any Israeli state remains manageable and democratic, it is necessary to create two nation states (Israel and Palestine, ed), with some sacrifices and with clear ‘red lines’. When this comes about we will be able to say to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, those we call ‘Arab-Israelis’, that for them the national solution is located elsewhere”. In Ramallah, her words were interpreted as an invitation to Arab-Israelis to leave Israel, physically and en-masse, once a Palestinian state has been constituted on the West Bank and in Gaza. Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesperson for President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), accused Livni of having placed a fresh obstacle in the path of peace. “It is a real shame that the Israeli election campaign is being exploited to raise tensions” was the comment. Livni returned to the subject today: “The claims to nationhood (of the Arab-Israelis, ed) have to find concrete expression elsewhere (and not in Israel, ed) in the context of a Palestinian state. But no-one is considering a mass transfer or their expulsion”. Over recent days, analysts note, Livni has nonetheless taken on a much more determined tone than in the past. She argued with Defence Minister Ehud Barak, dissatisfied with Israel’s reply to the continued firing of rockets from Gaza. And she also made it known to Hamas that Israel cannot pay any price to obtain the release of serviceman Ghilad Shalit, who has been held in Gaza for more than two years. “It is not always possible to get every Israeli soldier back home” she told the schoolgirl yesterday. Words which provoked a storm of protest in Israel. But today Ms Livni stood by them. (ANSAmed).
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Mideast: Gaza, Sporadic Rocket Launces. No Victims
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 12 — Sporadic rocket launches and mortar salvos from Gaza are reported today by some Israeli settlements in Neghev. One rocket exploded near the kibbutz of Beeri, another one near the kibbutz of Kerem Shalom. No victims have been reported. The armed wing of Hamas confirmed from Gaza that it fired mortar salvos today ‘‘to stop Israeli forces’’. Meanwhile the daily Maariv reports that several Israeli ministers demand a strong reaction against the continuous launching of rockets from Gaza. In the past days the worsening situation at the border between Israel and Gaza has been discussed by Premier Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Israeli armed forces are on the alert in the area with the approach of the December 19th, the expiration of the first six months of truce between Israel and Hamas signed with the help of Egypt. (ANSAmed).
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Black Iraqis Aim to Follow Obama’s Footsteps
Barack Obama’s election in the United States has already had an impact in Iraq, inspiring some black Iraqis to run in a forthcoming election in the hope of ending what they call centuries of discrimination. “Obama’s win gave us moral strength,” said Jalal Chijeel, secretary of the Free Iraqi Movement. He said the group would be the first to field black candidates in any Iraqi poll when it joins provincial elections scheduled for January 31.
President-elect Obama’s ascendancy in the United States has coincided with increased public support for their cause: “When he became a candidate, so did we,” Chijeel said. He argues Iraqis of African origin are not represented in top office, suffer disproportionately from poverty and illiteracy and are commonly referred to in derisive terms.
Other Iraqis see no discrimination against Iraqis of African-origin, whose number is unclear given a lack of statistics. Chijeel said there were some 300 000 in the southern city of Basra alone. This January’s provincial election will be the first to be organised by Iraq and held under Iraqi laws since the US-led invasion in 2003 overthrew Saddam Hussein, and will be followed by national elections later in 2009.
“There’s no discrimination,” said black shop worker Mohammed Nezal, sharing a view echoed mostly by older men, as they sat fingering worry-beads. “There’s so many blacks that have done well in Iraq. There’s respect.”
Chijeel argues that blacks in Iraq are subordinated, partly by a history of slavery. “To this day blacks are not given their rights,” he said. “We don’t see blacks in local councils, in parliament or cabinet or as ambassadors…we have educated people, doctors, graduates, but to our great regret we still have no importance.”
In Zubayr — dusty and poor, like most Basra neighbourhoods — Salim Hussein stood chatting in the street with friends: “The people here don’t treat us any differently. But look with your own eyes. Do you see a single black person with a decent job?” […]
For a brief period, long ago, blacks once controlled Iraq’s south: there was a revolt in 869 AD by East Africans brought by landowners in Basra to work as slaves, draining marshes in the hot and humid south. The rebels eventually took Basra and even parts of Iran. But by 883 AD the uprising was crushed, its leader’s head delivered to the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad.
“From that time till now, the black has had no senior role in society,” Chijeel said. “They suffered as slaves or servants, and worse. They did the most despised jobs.”
As is often the case, language is a core of the problem. The word “abd” is Arabic for slave, and even though slavery was abolished in Iraq in 1924, it persisted for many years and many people continue to use “abd” to describe a black person. […]
The Free Iraqi Movement wants the word “abd” to be banned.
The group also wants blacks to be a considered a minority, a status which gives some benefit to Iraq’s Christians, Turkmen, Yazidis and Shabaks, who by their similar physical appearance to the Iraqi majority are less obviously different than blacks. “Our fundamental demands are to be considered a minority, to have a paragraph in the constitution protecting black people and punish those who use the word ‘abd’ as defamation, and we want an apology for the crimes of the past,” Chijeel said.
Lighter-skinned Iraqis interviewed on Basra’s streets saw the Free Iraqi Movement and its demands as introducing discrimination into a colour-blind society. “The blacks are our friends and are Iraqis. There’s no difference between us. This movement is in fact racist,” said Farhan al-Hajaj, an engineer out shoppig. […]
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Economy: Turkey Hopes to Lure in Gulf Funds for Liquidity
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 12 — In an environment where global external financing conditions are getting tougher by the minute, Turkey will focus on investment funds in the Gulf countries, estimated to be worth USD 2.5 trillion, as daily Hurriyet reports today. A committee formed by Turkey’s top-level officials in search of luring in investment and liquidity is planning to tour the Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The committee will invite Saudi Arabiàs investment fund, which is considered to be the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, as well as other investment funds in the Gulf to invest in Turkey. Besides the giant investment fund Saudi Arabia is expected to set up, Turkey also aims to lure in an annual investment of at least USD 10 billion to USD 15 billion. Officials will highlight the fact that Turkey, a country that is implementing many structural reforms during its accession process to the European Union, is also a “corridor” in transporting energy sources to the West, reported Anatolia News Agency. The committee will also inform investment funds of the opportunities in Turkey and propose that Turkish firms, in collaboration with Gulf capital, can create new joint investment ventures in the area. Meanwhile, Gulf investment funds have shown interest in the energy, telecommunications, retail and logistics sectors in Turkey. Asset-backed securities are also an area of interest for Gulf investment funds seeking joint investment opportunities. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Slammed in Iran Over Stand on Hezbollah
A top Iranian cleric on Friday slammed U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s criticism of Hezbollah and defended the Islamic republic’s support of the Lebanese Shiite group.
“We are announcing it frankly, that we will defend the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance and its brave leader Hassan Nasrallah with pride,” the conservative cleric Ahmed Khatami told worshippers in Friday prayers broadcast on state radio
“They are not terrorists since they are defending their honor and independence,” he said.
“If Obama wants to decrease hatred, he has to stop making worthless comments. Most probably the Zionists have put down a banana skin for him,” Khatami said.
Shiite majority Iran is a staunch supporter of Hezbollah and maintains that it provides them with moral support and not arms as alleged by two of its arch-foes, Washington and Israel.
After the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran sent money and technical expertise for reconstruction and to compensate victims. Israel says the Shiite group is now three times stronger than during the war.
Tehran’s nukes
“ I want to say that these statements are made by a raw person, an upstart (in politics), who has just reached power and is travelling the world of thoughts and imagination. The policy of deception and fraud has been an instrument that has defamed all American presidents, “
Iranian cleric Ahmed KhatamiKhatami described President-elect Barack Obama as a novice who was adopting old U.S. tactics of “deception and fraud”, underscoring Iran’s skepticism about prospects for change in U.S. policy.
Some Iranian officials said Iran would “wait and see” before judging how Obama would act in office, but the president- elect’s call for Iran to stop part of its disputed nuclear work has drawn an uncompromising line from Iran.
Tehran says it will not suspend uranium enrichment, which Washington says has military aims, insisting it wants technology to make fuel for power plants not material for warheads. It says nuclear weapons have no role in Iran’s defense doctrine.
“He (Obama) recently opined that the development of nuclear arms in Iran would be unacceptable,” said Khatami, who is a member of Iran’s powerful oversight body, the Assembly of Experts.
“I want to say that these statements are made by a raw person, an upstart (in politics), who has just reached power and is travelling the world of thoughts and imagination. The policy of deception and fraud has been an instrument that has defamed all American presidents,” he said.
The cleric also said Obama was following the past “carrot and stick” policy, a reference to an offer by world powers of trade, nuclear and other incentives in return for halting its nuclear work. But they warn of more sanctions if Tehran refuses.
Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, said on Sunday he was ready to talk to Iran directly to give the Islamic Republic the “clear choice” to accept incentives or face tougher sanctions.
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Report: Group Attacks Saudi Airline Office in Iran to Protest Saudi Peace Plan
Iran’s state-run newspaper says a militant group has attacked the office of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned airline in Tehran over a Saudi-backed peace initiative with Israel.
Iran newspaper says the group — identified as Ikhwan al-Radwan, or Brothers of Heaven in Arabic — attacked the Saudi Arabian Airlines office with several Molotov cocktails Wednesday, causing minor damage to the building.
Saturday’s newspaper report quotes a statement by the group saying the reason for the attack was Saudi Arabia’s support for an Arab peace initiative.
The initiative offers Israel normal relations with all Arab countries if it withdraws from lands occupied in 1967 Arab-Israeli war and allows the creation of a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem
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Saudi Arabia: Melamine in Nestle Milk Made in China
The Saudi Food and Drug Authority reports “harmful” melamine concentrations in Nesvita milk powder.
Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Melamine has been found in “high concentrations harmful to health” in Nesvita milk powder produced by Swiss multinational Nestle, Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) said in a statement on its website.
The SFDA said the product in question was a 400-gramme pack of Nesvita pro-Bones produced on 6 May 2008 by a plant in China. It did not indicate how much melamine the product contained but warned that no one of any age should consume it.
Saudi Arabia’s food safety agency said it had also found melamine concentrations harmful to children in three other batches of the same brand made on 19 November 2007 and 25 February 2008. It also said that melamine was detected in a chocolate wafer cream it identified as ‘Apollo’ made by Malaysia-based ApolloFood Industries.
Melamine is an industrial compound used in manufacturing plastics but is toxic to humans. Because it has a molecule similar to proteins it has been used to make products appear richer in protein than they actually are.
In China high levels of the compound have been found in products made by important dairy companies.
After the scandal broke in September some 300,000 infants were found with kidney ailments and at least six have died after they consumed tainted milk.
Other products like milk chocolate and yoghurt were also found to be contaminated.
Nestle was not immediately available for comment, but in an 23 October statement it said that its products are safe and that it buys milk directly from farmers, checks at the farm to ensure its safety before containers are sealed and taken to its factory.
However, quality inspection authorities in Zhejiang Province found in May 2005 that a type of milk powder produced by Nestle contained too much iodine.
Beijing has said that it has instituted tighter controls and ordered contaminated brand products made before September 2008 pulled off the shelves.
The nation’s two dairies most affected by the scandal, Inner Mongolia Mengniu Dairy (Group) Co and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co, announced that they spent more than 100 million yuan (US$ 13 million) each to install equipment to detect melamine.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorists Gush Over CNN Coverage of Mecca Pilgrims
JERUSALEM — CNN’s extensive coverage this week of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a defeat for evangelical Christians and proves it is only a question of time before Islam will be “shining all over the world,” according to Muslim terrorists in Gaza speaking to WND.
[…]
CNN regularly provides coverage of festivals of other religions, including extensive Christmas reporting and occasional coverage of Jewish holidays.
The Hajj reporting was sure to draw accolades from the many Muslims among CNN’s national and international audience. Apparently this extends to some radical Muslims and terrorists in the Gaza Strip, who may have read a little too much into the coverage.
“Since CNN gives the Hajj so much coverage, it means there is no way that Islam is defeated. We bless CNN for this great gesture that can improve relations between the West and between Islam. They did it because they checked with audience and found they are so interested in knowing Islam,” said Abu Islam.
“I am calling all Americans to see how Islam is a religion of modesty where the richest person in there world and poorest person in the world can meet in Mecca and they have no differences. As long as we believe in Allah, then Allah says Islam will be winning, so Americans understand they cannot defeat Islam.”
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TLC: Turkey to Buy Iran Telecom Stakes
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 8 — A Turkish delegation is expected to visit Iran shortly to discuss the possible purchase of a stake in the Islamic Republic’s state-owned telecommunications firm (Tci), local press reported. Davoud Zareian, head of the public relations office of the Telecommunication Company of Iran, said delegations from Russia, China and Indonesia had already come to the country for talks about buying shares in the company. “It is predicted that in the near future a Turkish delegation will travel to Iran to examine the possibility of buying shares in the company”, Zareian declared. The size of the holding to be offered to strategic investors had not yet been fixed but that it was likely to be around 49%, Iranian sources revealed. The sale of Tci is part of a wider drive to speed up the sale of state-owned companies, though not in the upstream oil and gas industry, which will remain in government hands. (ANSAmed).
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Turkey-UE: 64,000 Turks Became EU Citizens in 2006, Eurostat
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 12 — According to data by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat), over 64,000 Turks became citizens of Eu countries in 2006, the Milliyet newspaper reports. The Turks hold the leader’s position, followed by Moroccans (48,000), Iraqis (23,000), Ecuadorians (21,000) and Serbs (20,000). Most of the Turks headed to Germany, Austria and Denmark. In 2006 over 33,000 Turks became citizens of Germany, 7,500 of Austria, over 6,000 of France, about 3,500 of Netherlands, over 3,000 of Belgium and about 3,000 of Sweden. (ANSAmed).
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U.D. Confirms Iran Bought SA-20 Missiles
“The Iranians are on contract for SA-20,” says a senior, U.S. government official. The U.S. and Israel now face a “huge set of challenges in the future that we’ve never had [before]. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security because our operations over the last 20 years involved complete air dominance and we’ve been free to operate in all domains,” he adds.
Other senior officials independently confirm that Iran will get the Russian SA-20 strategic SAM system, irrespective of Kremlin protestations to the contrary. Tehran’s deployment of such a system would mark a step-up in capability, and considerably improve the country’s ability to defend its controversial nuclear facilities where the West remains concerned that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability.
The proliferation of so-called double-digit surface-to-air missile systems — such as the Almaz Antey SA-20 (S-300PMU1/S-300PMU2) — poses an increasing threat to non-stealthy aircraft, and will force changes in tactics and operational planning. The SA-20 has an engagement envelope of up to 150 kilometers; and Iran may be signed up for the S-300PMU-2 variant of the system.
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UAE: World’s Richest Arabs Lost 25 Billion Dollars in 2008, Says Report
Dubai, 12 Dec. (AKI) — The world’s 50 richest Arabs have lost more than 25 billion dollars in 2008 due to the world financial crisis, according to an Arab magazine. In a preliminary report, the weekly magazine Arabian Business said the average fortune of the top 50 richest Arabs had dropped from 4.99 billion dollars to 3.99 billion dollars.
In total, the 50 richest have assets worth almost 200 billion dollars but their value has fallen by 12 percent compared to last year.
The magazine said the biggest reason for the decline was the collapse in the value of property and banking shares, considered the bedrock of Arab wealth.
The report to be published on Sunday will include a comprehensive analysis of the wealth of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, considered by Forbes to be the 20th richest man in the world.
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Yemen: Man Killed in Religious Hate Crime
Amran, 12 Dec. (AKI) — A gunman shot and killed a Yemeni Jew in the Raydah district in northern Yemen, security sources said on Friday. Thirty-nine year-old Mousa Yaish al-Nahari, a father of eight, was reportedly shot for no reason, said Yahya Mousa, a rabbi for Yemeni Jews in the capital Sanaa.
Arab media said the gunman was identified as Abdul-Aziz Yahya al-Abdi, a former air force pilot. He was arrested in Raydah in the Amran governorate.
Police are still investigating the motive of the crime, but witnesses say the gunman approached al-Nahari and told him “Jew, accept Islam’s message” and then shot him five times with an AK-47 assault rifle.
Al-Abdi is alleged to have murdered his wife two years ago but was not jailed because he agreed to pay compensation to the wife’s family, said Pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Ahmed al-Sarihi, a security official, told the daily that al-Abdi was a religious extremist that suffered from mental problems and that during interrogation he admitted killing al-Nahari and telling police that “these Jews must convert to Islam.”
Although Yemen is overwhelmingly Muslim, a small community of 300-400 Jews still live there.
Since 1949 about 50,000 members of the once-thriving Yemeni Jewish community are reported to have been secretly airlifted to Israel.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Jew Shot to Death by ‘Disturbed Extremist’
Suspect called out ‘Jew, accept Islam’s message’, then gunned down brother of prominent rabbi. Relative says victim and his wife planned to make aliyah but changed their minds
Moshe Yaish-Nahari, the brother of a prominent rabbi in Yemen was shot to death on Thursday in Rida, Yemen, located north of the capital Sana’a, the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported.
Local sources said the suspected killer, Abed el-Aziz el-Abadi, a former MiG-29 pilot in Yemen’s air force, has been apprehended and taken in for questioning.
Eyewitnesses told the newspaper that el-Abadi had confronted Nahari at the market in Rida, called out to him “Jew, accept the message of Islam” and then proceeded to open fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Nahari was struck by five bullets.
According to the security official, the suspect has admitted to killing Nahari, and told his interrogators that “these Jews must convert to Islam”.
Nahari is the brother of Rabbi Yehiya Yaish, one of the leaders of Yemen’s Jewish community.
Haviv Nahari, the victim’s brother-in-law who resides in Ashkelon told Ynet that the family was in “total shock” upon hearing of Yaish’s murder.
“We spoke to him just last Saturday and asked him how his family was doing,” Haviv told Ynet, adding “we knew there was anti-Semitism in Yemen, but I never imagined someone would take a rifle and murder a Jew on the street in broad daylight.”
According to Haviv, three years ago his sister and her husband decided to make aliyah after visiting Israel a few times.
“They sold their house and we prepared for their arrival, but at the last moment Moshe’s father changed his mind and convinced them to stay in Yemen,” he said. “My sister is now a widow with nine children.
“My sister took it very hard. She cried and passed out,” he said.
Haviv said Moshe (35) worked as a butcher in the local Jewish community, and in recent years had strengthened his ties to the Satmar Hasidic movement in Yemen.
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Indonesia: Muslim Separatists Jailed for Five Years
Jakarta, 12 Dec. (AKI/Jakarta Post) — Three out of 17 suspects tried for allegedly attempting to establish a separatist Indonesian Islamic State were found guilty of treason and each sentenced to five years in prison by the Bandung District Court in West Java on Friday.
Those convicted were local officials Suganda, 63, vice governor turned head of information for southern West Java; Dedi Mulyadi, regent for Cianjur-Sukabumi and Mugito district; and Dede Suparman, 37, regent for Garut-Sumedang district.
The three men are charged in violation of Articles 106, 107 and 110 of Indonesia’s Criminal Code on treason that carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The prosecutors accused Suganda and Dedi of recruiting new members and leading them to pledge separation from the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).
The prosecutors have also charged them with Article 154 and 156 for disgracing the image of the state and expressing hostility towards the government.
On April 20, the West Java Police arrested 35 alleged Muslim separatists in three different locations in the province. Of these, 17 were later named suspects.
In their indictment the prosecutors detailed how a Muslim separatist elite was running their “state”, recruiting new members and extorting money to fund their operations.
New recruits were often required to undergo a sin cleansing ritual and pledge to help establish an Islamic state.
Later they were obliged to pay a monthly contribution as a form of devotion to the group’s imam or highest leader.
Each member was required to contribute up to Rp 6 million (660 dollars) per month, the prosecutors said.
Earlier, Dede told police he had recruited over 200 members in the two years before the arrest. He said he routinely paid the money he collected to the group.
Police evidence previously obtained from Dede included the group’s organisational structure, its flag and its constitution.
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No Love Lost Over Copycat Version of Taj Mahal
The construction of an exact copy of the Taj Mahal has sparked a diplomatic fracas between India and Bangladesh — raising the vexing issue of whether or not it is possible to claim copyright on a building.
The row began after Ahsanullah Moni, a wealthy Bangladeshi film director, gave the first glimpse of his copy of the Taj Mahal this week.
The project has cost about £40 million and is being built about 20 miles northeast of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. But the Indians are upset. “You can’t just go and copy historical monuments,” an official at the Indian High Commission in Dhaka told a reporter this week.
“Someone will go out there and have a look. This [the original Taj Mahal] is a protected site we are talking about, so we need to find out if it really is the exact size.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Crackdown on Charity Continues
Islamabad, 12 Dec. (AKI) — In an ongoing crackdown, Pakistan has arrested scores of activists from a charity accused of being a front for militants linked to last month’s deadly Mumbai bombings. Police on Friday raided offices belonging to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and arrested 100 workers in North West Frontier Province alone, according to a Jamaat spokesman.
Jamaat activists were also detained in several cities in Punjab province and police sealed off two Jamaat offices in Islamabad, according to media reports.
Head of the Kashmiri separatist Jaish-e-Mohammed group, Maulana Masood Azhar, was also detained.
A powerful alliance of Kashmiri separatist groups, the Jihad Council, on Friday criticised the arrests of Jamaat leaders and members in a statement published by local papers in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
The statement demanded the immediate release of the detained Jamaat leader and members, calling the crackdown against the group ‘unwarranted’.
No Kashmiri separatist group was involved in the Mumbai attacks, the statement said.
Jaish-e-Mohammed together with Jamaat’s predecessor, the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Toiba, was blamed for the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament.
India also blames Lashkar-e-Toiba for the Mumbai attacks, which killed at least 170 people and injured close to 300.
Pakistan is under growing international pressure to bring the Mumbai conspirators to justice, and has said it will cooperate fully with India. It has also started its own probe into the attacks.
The government on Thursday issued orders to close down nine Jamaat offices and its accounts to be frozen across the country.
Also on Thursday, police raided three Jamaat-ud-Dawa offices in an eastern district of the southern port city of Karachi and arrested several people inside.
The same day, Jamaat chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed was placed under house arrest. Earlier in the day, he vowed to challenge in Pakistani and international courts the United Nations Security Council’s decision to place Jamaat-ud-Dawa on its list of terrorist organisations.
The UN Security Council said on Wednesday Jamaat was a front for banned militant Kashmiri separatist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi — described as the group’s chief of operations — have been placed on a list of people whose assets have been frozen and who may not travel.
Jamaat’s alleged finance chief, Muhammad Ashraf, and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq, described as a financier for the group, are also on the list.
Saeed quit Lashkar-e-Toiba’s leadership in 2001 shortly before it was outlawed and became head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, as the group renamed itself in 2002.
Jamaat has been operating as a legal charity in Pakistan, but many observers say it is the political wing of Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Pakistani security forces carried out raids on a Laskhar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistani-administered Kashmir last weekend and arrested some fifteen suspected militants.
Besides Lakhvi — the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks — security forces also arrested Zarrar Shah, another key suspect in the Mumbai plot, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
‘ANC is Like the Old National Party’
The behaviour of the African National Congress (ANC) towards the Congress of the People (COPE) draws a striking resemblance to the dark days of apartheid, according to the breakaway party’s chairperson, Mosiuoa Lekota.
He was referring to the disruption of several COPE gatherings around South Africa by ANC supporters, including a meeting near Durban that was cancelled on Thursday because of security concerns.
Addressing about 50 supporters in Chatsworth on Sunday, he said people who wanted to support COPE were being intimidated and he likened the country’s governance to a dictatorship. “There is great fear here. People are terrified, just as they were under apartheid, when the ANC was banned. During that time, if the National Party government discovered what was in our hearts and minds we were arrested, lost our jobs, and some even got killed,” he said.
Lekota said people rejoiced during the birth of democracy in 1994, but the fears they had dismissed had returned 14 years later. “Many people who wanted to be here have not come, after seeing what happened at the other meetings.”
“People think that if they come to these meetings the people in government will discover they were here. When people are afraid of a party, it means it no longer represents them,” he said.
Lekota said no one political party should be in power forever and he stressed the importance of change, even if Cope were elected to govern the country. “We will not be in power until Christ comes back. We will only be in power if the people are satisfied with us and then they can vote for us again. Otherwise we must go away and find jobs somewhere else,” he said.
Keeping a record of promises made by political parties and assessing these after a five-year term was of paramount importance, Lekota said. […]
“This new ANC is taking us back to violence. The leaders sing songs that advocate violence. When are we going to sings songs about housing, education and clean cities?” he said, referring to statements made by the party recently. Responding to ANC provincial secretary Senzo Mchunu’s claims that Lekota was “urinating on the ANC”, he said he was being lambasted for “exercising his democratic right”.
Chanting ANC supporters wearing T-shirts displaying the image of ANC President Jacob Zuma arrived at the venue in vans as Lekota’s bodyguard drove him away. Police monitored the scene, but were forced to intervene when screaming supporters crowded Cope secretary Philip Mhlongo’s vehicle as he tried to drive off.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Mugabe ‘Is Like Hitler’
Bishop of Pretoria’s damning statement on tyrant: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been likened to Hitler, on the same day he told a baffled world that the cholera crisis in his country “is over”.
It has also emerged that Mugabe’s troops have been engaged in a violent clampdown on illegal diamond miners. The clampdown is believed to have claimed scores of lives.
Joe Seoka, the Anglican bishop of Pretoria, yesterday said Mugabe “must be viewed as the 21st century Hitler” because of the deaths and suffering of Zimbabweans under his rule. Seoka’s comments came as the World Health Organisation put the number of people who have died of cholera in Zimbabwe at 788, with at least 16000 suffering from the water-borne disease.
Yet Mugabe made an astonishing claim in Harare yesterday during the funeral of a Zanu-PF veteran: “Now there is no cholera, there is no cause for war.” He had earlier claimed that the British government wanted to use the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe to stage a military attack on the country.
He said the outbreak “came from other countries”, but did not name them..
The 84-year-old also slammed opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for “looking for support” from other countries. “We don’t want that kind of prostitution,” Mugabe said.
With growing international pressure for Mugabe to step down, the Zanu-PF government is now faced with revelations that its army and police have been using brute force to clamp down on illegal diamond miners in Chiadzwa, near Marange in Manicaland.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia: U.S. Seeks Power to Pursue Pirates on Land
The United States is seeking international authorisation allowing foreign navies to pursue Somali pirates on land as well as at sea in an effort to curb the growing threat to international shipping lines.
A draft proposal granting nations that are combating piracy permission to “take all necessary measures ashore in Somalia” is being circulated among UN Security Council members before a key meeting on the crisis next week.
The US’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN said that the right of “hot pursuit” on to land was a logical extension of international maritime efforts to combat the pirate scourge. “We will leave no stone unturned in dealing with this issue,” Alejandro Wolff said. It remains far from clear, however, whether UN Security Council members would be prepared to give blanket approval to such aggressive interdiction, given its potential for misuse.
The anarchy and lawlessness pervading Somalia are largely to blame for incubating piracy there and while there is little appetite for intervention, most experts believe that stabilising the country is the only real solution to the problem.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia: EU to Begin Anti-Piracy Mission Next Week
BRUSSELS, Belgium: A European Union flotilla will begin anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia next week, the EU’s foreign policy chief said Wednesday.
The six warships and three maritime reconnaissance aircraft will replace a NATO naval force that has been patrolling the region and escorting cargo ships carrying relief aid to Somalia since the end of October.
Although the NATO ships have successfully delivered nearly 30,000 tons of humanitarian supplies to the impoverished nation, they have not been able to stem the upsurge in pirate attacks on foreign shipping in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.
Foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the EU warships will arrive Monday, and the hand-over with the NATO force will take place Dec. 15.
Officials said France, Greece, Germany and Britain will provide ships for the initial naval contingent, and France and Italy will provide patrol aircraft. The contingents will be rotated every three months, and at least four vessels will remain on station at all times.
The task force — codenamed Operation Atalanta — will be the EU’s first naval operation. It will have the same duties as the NATO mission, including escorting cargo vessels, protecting merchant ships and deterring pirate attacks.
“These tasks will be done with very robust rules of engagement,” Solana told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
The NATO ministers agreed on Monday to ask the U.N. Security Council to clarify the legal issues involved in the anti-piracy effort. Under the current U.N. mandate, the international fleet operating off the Horn of Africa has not been able to board ships seized by the pirates in order to free their hostages.
On Wednesday, ministers said they would also consider the possibility of deploying a follow-up anti-piracy mission to assist the EU ships.
“NATO stands ready to consider further requests for the use of alliance naval assets to combat piracy in the region,” the meeting’s communique said.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance’s military authorities are already discussing the possibility of a follow-up mission.
“No decisions have been taken, but in the long term there is much work to be done,” he told journalists at the conclusion of the two-day meeting.
On Tuesday, NATO reported that an Italian destroyer, Luigi Durand de la Penne, prevented the hijacking of five merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden. The destroyer positioned itself between the small pirate boats trying to board the cargo ships and used its helicopter to repel them.
Besides the NATO ships, 10 other warships from the United States, India, Russia and Malaysia are patrolling the region at present.
Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 of them since the NATO operation was launched on Oct. 24. About 50 cargo ships transit daily through the Gulf of Aden, a waterway that links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea.
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Blackbird: the World’s First African American Browser
[…] The natural instinct of writers on tech websites seems to be to slam Blackbird (http://www.blackbirdhome.com/index.html) for playing the race card. They scoff that it’s just Firefox and act mad, or at least uptight, that black people think they need a black people browser to do their black people things.
Who cares? The browser is free. It’s not anything amazing, but I would say it deserves to exist more than a lot of s***ty open source browsers.. At least it has a stated purpose and isn’t just the result of some dork’s computer science class.
Once you install it you can use it to do all of the same boring s**t you do with Firefox or Internet Explorer. Heck, I even used Blackbird to visit white supremacist website Stormfront.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Court Considers ACLU Demand for Bible Ban
A federal appeals court is considering a Missouri dispute in which the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a school district policy that treated the Bible the same as other books and demanded the authority to veto what would be handed out to students.
[…]
Staver said the Constitution simply doesn’t allow the Bible to be singled out, like contraband, for special penalties.
“How ironic that in America, until recent times, the Bible formed the basis of education, and now its mere presence is radioactive in the opinion of some judges,” he said. “The Founders never envisioned such open hostility toward the Christian religion as we see today in some venues. To single out the Bible alone for discriminatory treatment harkens back to the Dark Ages. America deserves better. Our Constitution should be respected, not disregarded.”
Staver told WND that a decision is not expected to be announced for about two months.
He said the lower court’s ban targets only the Bible.
“The Quran is OK, and other kinds of religious texts; just not the Bible. The Bible alone is impermissible in the public school,” he said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Point of Knives
Most fatal stabbings involve a weapon that is easy to obtain and sharp with it — a kitchen knife. Would stopping the sale of long blades with sharp points help save lives?
What would reduce the number of fatal stabbings? England and Wales’ Chief Inspector of Probation Andrew Bridges has warned against “spectacular innovations” and wants the debate to focus on “mundane truths”.
One idea, first proposed in 2005, is a response to a grisly mundane truth expressed by Met chief Ian Blair this week — that “the most common knife involved in these deaths is a knife from a kitchen”.
The proposal came from three emergency medicine specialists, and it’s a simple one: getting rid of the points on the ends of longer kitchen knives.
Drs Emma Hern, Will Glazebrook and Mike Beckett wrote an editorial in the British Medical Journal, suggesting that since “many assaults are impulsive”, government action could “drastically reduce the availability” of a “potentially lethal weapon”.
So what would the effect have been if, in 2003, the government had persuaded knife manufacturers to offer a greater range of styles, with the pointed-end, long-blade design no longer the default?
Dr Beckett puts it simply: if long pointed knives had become less available, we would have seen fewer deaths from knife injuries.
Of course, there would have been other effects. Other readers of the BMJ were quick to list dishes which need a pointed knife during preparation: butterflying a leg of lamb, carving a forerib of beef, and so on.
The self-styled maverick American chef Anthony Bourdain went further, saying that for chefs, knives “are extensions of our arms, and in many ways, our personalities”, adding “where there is no risk, there is no pleasure”.
Tools of trade
However, the idea of pointed knives disappearing completely is not a plausible one — still less the image of policemen requiring every law-abiding home cook to hand over their beloved kitchenware.
In their original article, the doctors argue that most preparation can be done using a combination of a “blunt, round nose” knife and another which, although sharp, is also short enough (under 5cm) to render it less likely to be lethal if used as a weapon.
TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson agrees, observing that in the Far East, pointed knives are used very rarely and that “for everyday cooking, a square-end or blunt-ended knife is OK”.
However, objections to the doctors’ proposal have not just been culinary.
A common response has been to point out that inflicting a knife injury is already illegal, and that government effort would be better expended on enforcing existing laws.
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Mideast: Lourdes; Shalit as Betancourt, World Campaign
(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 12 — From Lourdes comes an appeal that the whole world should mobilise itself for the release of the French-Israeli soldier Guilad Chalit, who has been held hostage for the past two and a half years on the Gaza Strip by a group of Hamas militants. The municipality of Lourdes wants to make of the Chalit affair one similar to that around Ingrid Betancourt, whose portrait before her liberation on July 22 was to be seen in symbolic sites of the world’s greatest cities (from Paris’s Hotel de Ville to Milan’s Palazzo Marino and Rome’s Capitol) as part of a global mobilisation for her release. Armed with more than 20,000 online signatures gathered on a site dedicated to him (www.guiladchalit.com), the municipality of Lourdes, which has for several years been involved in the front line of the promotion of inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue through its ‘Peace Days’, has decided to launch a large-scale campaign for the liberation of the Franco-Israeli soldier, kidnapped by Palestinian forces close to Hamas and held hostage on the Gaza Strip since 25 June 2006. “The objective — a communique reads — is that the whole world comes to hear of the suffering which young Guilad has been force through for two and a half years, as well as that of his family and their daily search for any news and to draw attention to the plight of their loved one”. A strong message, accurately addressed, from the municipality of Lourdes which, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has decided officially to call on all the world’s main institutions to make a symbolic gesture (that of exhibiting a photo of Guilad), just as happened for Betancourt. “The outrageous imprisonment of victims of terrorism across the world is an attack on the most sacred rights of Humanity — stressed Michel Azot, Deputy Mayor of Lourdes and founder to the University of Peacé -. The City of Lourdes wishes to show the way that leads to peace through dialogue between peoples. Which is why a demonstration with a portrait of Guilad Shalit and the words taken from Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘No-one may be arbitrarily arrested, held or exiled’ has been set up in Lourdes town hall. It is our hope that many other bodies across the world, including those greater than ours, will follow this example and remember Guilad”. This will be a first step on a great campaign of solidarity with hostages held across the whole of the world, which will culminate on May 15 2009, the day on which begin the three ‘Days of Peace’’ organised by the Lourdes town hall. There will be politicians, diplomats, religious figures and academics gathered at Lourdes Conference Centre, an opportunity to dialogue and together to find possible solutions to the conflicts that shake our present world. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Day the Earth Stood Stzzzzzz…
Film makes Al Gore’s PowerPoint look like a thriller.
You won’t realize how much you miss the Cold War until you watch the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
The original film, released in 1951, was a response to bickering post-World War II superpowers and their potential to destroy the planet with atomic power. In the new “Day,” humankind’s poor treatment of the environment is the parable, but the results are soulless and boring. This was supposed to be the winter season’s big special effects picture. So why does it make Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation look like “Spider-Man 2” by comparison?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Intelligence Officer Reveals Secret Story of Saddam Hussein’s Capture
WASHINGTON — He is the man who tracked down the Ace of Spades: Saddam Hussein, the top card in the U.S. military’s deck of cards, found crouching like a mole in a darkened spider hole under a trap door at the back of a farm in Tikrit.
For the first time since the Army’s 4th Infantry Division captured Saddam in a dramatic raid on Dec. 13, 2003, the U.S. intelligence officer who hunted him down has come forward with his story.
Speaking to FOX News, Staff Sgt. Eric Maddox, who still serves as an interrogator for the Department of Defense, described how he bucked what had been the strategy to find Saddam in the first months of the war — going after the big name players in the defeated government who were on the loose in the hopes that, if caught, they would reveal Saddam’s whereabouts.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
3 comments:
"China Hired by Homeland Defense"
The story is even sicker than that... China was given the contract for RFID readers in our ports and it seems they are able, via the internet, to send back to China their scans...
This issue first came upon the American people with the Dubai ports debacle. The American people overwhelmingly shouted that some contracts should stay in country as a matter of national security. Obviously, our politicians don't agree!
My husband does a lot of work in China because his company wants to save a buck over manufacturing in the U.S. or even Mexico. As it turns out, the supposed buck saved is oftentimes eaten up by inefficiency or extreme cost of having engineers travel to China to run herd on something that should be manufactured closer to home.
If we, the people of the United States, have six billion jillion dollars to bail out American industry, we certainly must have a buck an RFID reader to keep the production in the U.S. and not contract it out to China! This just makes me sick...
I would just like to add that only ten years ago all manufacturing at my husband's company was done in the U.S. All those good jobs for high school grads have been lost to Asia and, my husband who used to be home by 7 PM every night now spends four months a year in Asia...
Thank God my children are grown! Indian Guides, Scouts, Swim Team, school meetings, I don't think I could have possibly pulled it off if I was a partial widow when the children were young.
"Doesn’t that fill you with confidence, thinking about the EU in command of a naval operation?"
-Baron
Uhhh...No.
"The destroyer positioned itself between the small pirate boats trying to board the cargo ships and used its helicopter to repel them."
A machine gun would have worked better...cheaper, too.
(They DO still allow machine guns on Italian destroyers, don't they?).
Still "NO".
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