The most notable news tonight (aside from the conviction of the Ft. Dix terrorists) concerns the financial crisis and the bailouts. Greece, Spain, the UK, and other European countries are all experiencing their own versions of the financial meltdown. Spain is probably suffering the most.Thanks to Abu Elvis, Henrik, JD, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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5 Men Found Guilty of Plotting to Kill Fort Dix Soldiers
CAMDEN, N.J. — Five Muslim immigrants were convicted Monday of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in a case that tested the FBI’s post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist conspiracies in their earliest stages.
The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April.
The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of attempted murder, after prosecutors acknowledged the men were probably months away from an attack and did not necessarily have a specific plan. Four defendants were also convicted of weapons charges.
The federal jury deliberated for 38 hours over six days.
[…]
Convicted were: Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business. A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier.
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Bailed-Out Banks Give Billions in Salaries, Bonuses
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bush and Lawmakers Sneak a National DNA Database Into Existance
While most Americans were bombarded with news coverage regarding the presidential race without end, President George W. Bush almost silently signed a senate bill that would change America forever.
S.1858 allows the federal government to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the United States. According to the legislation, the new law must be implemented within 6 months of Bush’s bill signing in April 2008.
According to police experts, this infant DNA collection is now being carried out by individual states and sample DNA is being submitted to the feds. Congressman Ron Paul states that this bill is the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Probes Terrorism Links in U.S. Somali Enclaves
WASHINGTON — Federal agents are investigating whether young men from Somali immigrant enclaves in the U.S. are traveling back to their parents’ homeland to fight on the side of Islamist terror groups.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is following the trail of more than a dozen young men missing from Somali communities in several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, Boston and Columbus, Ohio, according to people familiar with the probe. Counterterrorism officials in Europe and Australia also are investigating similar reports in their countries.
Families of three teenagers earlier this month went public in Minneapolis, home to the largest Somali enclave in the U.S., saying their teenagers had disappeared in recent months and then turned up in Somalia. The families were spurred to action in part after twin October terror bombings in their homeland. One of them is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by an American, according to U.S. law-enforcement officials.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Guess Who Doesn’t Like the Press — and the Feeling May be Mutual.
Barack Obama has promised to run the most transparent White House in history. As he said throughout the campaign, this election was about us, not him. So it makes some sense that he would let us see what we will be doing. The president-elect has held a record number of press conferences, and quite naturally he has earned lavish public praise for the frequency of his appearances.
But take the time to look at what he has actually said in these engagements and you will be less impressed.
At his first press conference, three days after the election, he backed some kind of stimulus package and artfully dodged several tough questions. CNN’s Candy Crowley, for instance, noted that Obama had begun receiving intelligence briefings and asked whether he thought the intelligence agencies were doing a good job sharing information. “I have received intelligence briefings. And I will make just a general statement. Our intelligence process can always improve. I think it has gotten better. And, you know, beyond that, I don’t think I should comment on the nature of the intelligence briefings.”
Crowley also asked whether he’d learned anything in his briefings that gave him second thoughts about any of the policies he advocated during the campaign. “I’m going to skip that.” (Obama did talk at some length about buying a dog for his daughters.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Interview With Pollard: Charges US Gave Saddam WMD
In 1981, Israel, using information supplied by American intelligence, bombed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility without consulting the U.S. Pollard found out while working as an analyst for Naval Intelligence that the U.S. had an agreement with Israel that the two counties would share intelligence. But after the attack at Osirak, the U.S. started to secretly punish Israel by stopping the flow of intelligence.
Without knowing this, the Israelis approached American military intelligence regarding something going on in Samarra they thought was suspicious.
According to Pollard, he learned that Casper Weinberger, then-secretary of defense, had “assured them that nothing was going on.” When Pollard discovered, before he volunteered to spy for Israel, that there was, in fact, a chemical weapons plant under construction there, he asked his superiors at Naval Intelligence why the U.S. had not informed Israel. One of them quipped that “Jews are sensitive about gas.”
Pollard learned as well that Bechtel — the American construction giant for which Weinberger had served as general counsel and for which then-Secretary of State George Shultz had served as CEO — was facilitating the construction of the plant through a number of different companies. The firms were camouflaging it as a “dual-use facility that could be explained away as a fertilizer plant.”
“How much fertilizer does Iraq need?” Pollard speculates with irony.
According to Pollard, the plant cost “hundreds of millions of dollars to build” and required waivers from the Department of Defense and the State Department.
It was at this point that Pollard decided he had no choice but to spy for Israel. As a Jew, he was haunted by the Holocaust and concluded that what he had learned meant Israel was faced with an “existential threat” about which it knew nothing.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Local Fla. Teens Claim Pranks on County’s Speed Cams
As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county’s Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.
Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera “Pimping” game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.
Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that “mimic” those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.
Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Labor Pick Has Communist Ties
Radical Leaders Hail Solis as ‘Outstanding,’ ‘Terrific’
President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department has close ties to U.S. communist and socialist organizations and has sent representatives to functions organized by national parties for both ideologies.
The pick of Rep. Hilda L. Solis, D-Calif., a Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader considered to be one of the most reliably pro-union voices in the House, was hailed as a victory by communist and socialist leaders.
[…]
Solis herself has close ties to both socialist and communist organizations in the U.S.
Trever Loudon, a communist researcher based in New Zealand, found that in November 2005 Solis addressed the DSA National Convention in Los Angeles, entitled, “The New Capital of Progressive Politics?”
“By appointing the strongly pro-union Solis,” writes Loudon on his New Zeal blog, “president-elect Barack Obama has sent a clear signal to his far left support base that he has not abandoned his roots.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Has Lost the Stomach for a Fight
Last week Gordon Brown announced a date for Britain’s withdrawal from Iraq. Most troops will be back in time for a spring general election. The prime minister posed with soldiers and expressed his sorrow over yet more fatal casualties in Afghanistan. He did not dwell on Britain’s humiliation in Basra, nor mention that this is the most inglorious withdrawal since Sir Anthony Eden ordered the boys back from Suez.
The fundamental cause of the British failure was political. Tony Blair wanted to join the United States in its toppling of Saddam Hussein because if Britain does not back America it is hard to know what our role in the world is: certainly not a seat at the top table. But, for all his persuasiveness, Blair could not hold public opinion over the medium term and so he cut troop numbers fast and sought to avoid casualties. As a result, British forces lost control of Basra and left the population at the mercy of fundamentalist thugs and warring militias, in particular Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
The secondary cause of failure was a misplaced British disdain for America, shared by our politicians and senior military. In the early days in Iraq we bragged that our forces could deploy in berets and soft-sided vehicles while US forces roared through Baghdad in heavily armoured convoys. British leaders sneered at the Americans’ failure to win hearts and minds because of their lack of experience in counterinsurgency.
Pride has certainly come before a fall. British commanders underestimated both the enemy’s effectiveness and the Americans’ ability to adapt. Some apparently failed even to observe how much had changed. At a meeting in August 2007 an American described Major-General Jonathan Shaw, then British commander, as “insufferable”, lecturing everyone in the room about lessons learnt in Northern Ireland, which apparently set eyeballs rolling: “It would be okay if he was best in class, but now he’s worst in class.”
Around the same time Jack Keane, an American general, moaned that it was frustrating to see the “situation in Basra that was once working pretty well, now coming apart”. By then General David Petraeus had been appointed US commander, introducing intelligence and determination in equal measure.
If a fair-minded account of the Iraq war is written, credit should go to President Bush for rejecting two years ago the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that called for force reductions. He defied conventional wisdom and ordered a troop surge instead. It has been an extraordinary success and, unlike Britain, the Americans will not withdraw in defeat. During debates in Washington, British forces’ ignominious withdrawal to barracks was cited to argue that the United States could not contemplate being humbled in a similar way. In the end Bush was not a quitter. Blair “cut and ran”.
Britain’s shaming was completed in March 2008 when Iraqi forces, backed by the US, moved decisively against the Mahdi Army, inflicting huge casualties and removing them from Basra. Operation Charge of the Knights was supervised by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, exasperated that Iraq’s second city was controlled not by Britain but by an Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia.
Trust in the British had fallen so low that neither the Iraqi nor the US government was willing to give us much notice of the operation. General Mohammed Jawad Humeidi remarked that his forces battled for a week before receiving British support. He rubbed salt in the wound by noting that for five years the Mahdi Army had “ruled Basra without being punished or held to account”, and had during that time controlled ports, oil, electricity and government agencies, whose funds bought them weapons.
It cannot be a defence of British policy that the war was unpopular at home. Our mission was to provide security for the Iraqi people, and in that the US and Maliki’s government have recently had marked success and we have failed. The fault does not lie with our fighters. They have been extremely brave and as effective as their orders and their equipment would allow.
It raises questions about the stamina of our nation and the resolve of our political class. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that Britain, with nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and the latest generation of fighter-bombers, is incapable of securing a medium-size conurbation. Making Basra safe was an essential part of the overall strategy; having committed ourselves to our allies we let them down.
The extent of Britain’s fiasco has been masked by the media’s relief that we are at last leaving Iraq. Those who have been urging Britain to quit are not in a strong position to criticise the government’s lack of staying power. Reporting of Basra has mainly focused on British casualties and the prospect for withdrawal. The British media and public have shown scant regard for our failure to protect Iraqis, so the British nation, not just its government, has attracted distrust. We should reflect on what sort of country we have become. We may enjoy patronising Americans but they demonstrate a fibre that we now lack.
The United States will have drawn its conclusions about our reliability in future and British policy-makers, too, will need to recognise that we lack the troops, wealth and stomach for anything more than the briefest conflict. How long will we remain in Afghanistan? There, in contrast to our past two years in Basra, our forces engage the enemy robustly. But as a result the attrition rate is high. We look, rightly, for more help from Nato allies such as Germany, although humility should temper that criticism, given our own performance in Iraq……
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Brussels Invents Trick to Get Irish to Vote Again
Brussels has come up with a new trick aimed at getting Ireland to hold a second referendum on a failed EU treaty. It would like to make concessions to Dublin guaranteeing it the right to determine its own taxation, abortion laws and neutrality — and to codify those rights as part of Croatia’s membership deal.
The European Union appears to have a new trick up its sleeve for pulling itself out of its current political dilemma. This time around, it’s future membership candidate Croatia that could stand to profit. At the recent summit meeting in Brussels on Dec. 11 and 12, the heads of state and government for 26 EU member states made numerous overtures to Ireland in an effort to get Dublin to push through a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the document which replaces the failed draft EU constitution.
The Irish “no” during the first referendum in June has derailed the entire EU reform process because the treaty, which has been in the works for many years, can only go into effect if it is ratified by all member states. In exchange for a new referendum, other EU member states are pledging that if Irish voters accept the treaty, they will be given a long-term commissioner seat in Brussels and assurances that they will be able to determine their own legislation on issues like taxation, neutrality and abortion largely independent of the EU. But the Irish would also like to see these concessions written in a way that is legally binding. Problem is: That’s not an easy thing to do.
If the provisions were to be written into the Lisbon Treaty as a special clause, then the modified document would in all likelihood have to be re-ratified by all the EU member states. It’s a risk no one wants to take. But creative EU lawyers have come up with a trick: They want the legal provisions guaranteeing the concessions for Ireland to be written into the accession treaty with Croatia. All the member states must ratify that treaty, anyway. It’s unlikely, so the thinking goes, that any EU country — even the Euro-skeptical Eastern Europeans — would reject future membership for Croatia because of special rights bestowed to Ireland. It would also just about ensure that Croatia could get its hoped-for membership in the EU by 2010.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Christmas is for Church Members, Say German Politicians
People attending midnight mass at German churches may have to bring their tax returns with them in the future, if two politicians have their way: They’ve called for Christmas services to be confined to regular visitors who pay church tithes.
German politicians have said midnight mass on Christmas Eve should be reserved for people who have paid their church tax.
Thomas Volk, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the southern state of Baden-WÃ1/4rttemberg, said many regular churchgoers were angry that they can’t get a seat because of the onslaught on churches at Christmas.
He told Bild newspaper: “I’m in favor of having church services on December 24 open only for people who pay church tax.”
Germany’s Catholic and Protestant churches are still largely funded by tithes, which are collected by the federal tax office. Germans have the right to opt out of paying tithes — by leaving their church.
So it upsets some tithe-paying religious folk to find their normally underpopulated churches crowded with people at the holidays. The head of the business-friendly Free Democrats in the Berlin city assembly gave support to Volk’s proposal, telling Bild that members should be handed tickets to guarantee them a seat during a crowded service.
It remains unclear how such rules should be enforced — or whether people attending midnight mass should bring their tax returns with them.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Police Arrest Group for Organising Fake Marriages
Prague, Dec 19 (ÄŒTK) — The Czech organised crime police unit revealed a group that is suspected of mediating “fictitious” marriages to foreigners who seek Czech citizenship, the unit’s spokesman Pavel Hantak told ÄŒTK Friday.
The suspects have been taken into custody and they face up to ten years in prison if found guilty.
Eight members of the gang, including citizens of the former Yugoslavia, offered fictitious marriages to immigrants and searched for Czechs, mostly women, who would be willing to get formally married in exchange for 20,000-25,000 crowns.
The group is said to demand 80,000 to 260,000 crowns for such marriage. The foreigner who gains Czech permanent or temporary residence permit also becomes a family member of a EU citizen and has the right to freely move across the EU.
Hantak said most of the foreigners left the Czech Republic immediately after the fictitious marriage because they headed for another EU country.
One of the detained suspects is an employee of a district office where the marriages took place.
The detectives monitored the group’s activities for two years.
In many cases, individuals suspected of violent crime, people trafficking, drug dealing and trading in arms entered the EU, especially Kosovo Albanians, Hantak said.
The Czechs who are suspected of entering marriage with a foreigner only because they were paid for it will face prosecution.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Youth House Activists Convicted
Several young people have been sentenced to jail time in connection with the Ungdomshuset youth house riots of 2007 In the first convictions related to the March 2007 Ungdomshuset youth house riots in Copenhagen, 15 participants were found guilty Monday…
Of those convicted, 11 will serve a year and three months, while three others received one-year sentences. The remaining youth, who was under 16 at the time of the riots, was given a nine-month sentence.
Ungdomshuset was raided by special forces of the domestic intelligence agency 1 March last year, and numerous weapons including Molotov cocktails and other explosives were found at the site.
Most of those arrested did not speak during the trial, neither admitting to nor denying the charges.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Youth Protest Against Greek Government
Protesters marched along Helsinki’s Aleksanterinkatu Friday afternoon in a show of solidarity for ongoing demonstrations against the Greek government.
A group of about 40 mainly Finnish young protesters took to the streets from about 2.30 pm, near the Greek Embassy where they staged a small roadblock. From there they advanced along Aleksanterinkatu and Keskuskatu to Senate Square and the railway station. The demonstration ended around 5.00 pm, when the protesters split up.
Police Inspector Kirsi Ahava said that the event seemed to have been organised by private individuals. She added that the ongoing unrest in Greece had sparked similar demonstrations in Helsinki.
However, Ahava pointed out that the demonstrations had proceeded peacefully and only caused temporary traffic disruptions. On Unionkatu one intersection had been blocked, but police were tipped off about the incident via the Internet.
Greece was wracked by violent demonstrations last week, in which protesters called on the government to step down. The riots began just under two weeks ago, when a 15-year old boy was shot by police in during a clash.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Considers Taking in Guantanamo Prisoners
Germany said on Monday it would help the US close the Guantanamo prison camp by considering whether to offer asylum to foreign inmates provided other EU nations did the same……
…Germans have been particularly interested in the plight of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in Central Asia. Germany has a small Uighur community, many of whom live in Munich.
Hamburg’s Ahlhaus and fellow Christian Democrat Guenter Nooke, the government’s human rights envoy, are among the first high-ranking German politician to publicly call for Germany to consider taking in some of Guantanamo prisoners.
Even so, both politicians have been careful to say that Germany should not become a dumping ground for unwanted prisoners.
Ruprecht Polenz, chair of the foreign relations committee in the Bundestag, pointed out that just because a country wants to “get rid of someone” does not mean that person would automatically qualify for German asylum. Yet it could be enough if the Guantanamo prisoner had previously lived in Germany, Polenz said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Fighting: Eurozones’s Weakest Link Starts to Crack
[T]here is obviously a problem for countries like Greece that were let into emu [Economic and Monetary Union] for political reasons before their economies had been reformed enough to cope with the rigors of euro life?over the long run….
[…]
Greece’s euro membership has now led to a warped economy. The current account deficit is 15 percent of gdp, the eurozone’s highest by far. Indeed, the deficit ($53 billion) is the sixth-biggest in the world in absolute terms — quite a feat for a country of 11 million people.
[…]
I am a little surprised that the riot phase of this long politico-economic drama known as EMU has kicked off so soon, and that it has done so first in Greece where the post-bubble hangover has barely begun.
The crisis is much further advanced in Spain, which is a year or two ahead of Greece in the crisis cycle.
My old job as Europe correspondent based in Brussels led me to spend a lot of time in cities that struck me as powder kegs — and indeed became powder kegs in the case of Rotterdam following the murder of Pim Fortyn, and Antwerp following the Muslim street riots (both of which I covered as a journalist). Lille, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Amsterdam, Brussels, all seemed inherently unstable, and I do not get the impression that the big cities of Spain and Italy are taking kindly to new immigrants.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Luxembourg Inks Initial Deal on Kaupthing Arm Sale
LUXEMBOURG, Dec 20 (Reuters) — Luxembourg’s budget minister has signed a declaration of intent for the sale of the local arm of troubled Icelandic bank Kaupthing to a group of investors from Arab countries, the Luxembourg government said.
The accord would also need the agreement of the Belgian state and creditor banks, the government said in a statement on Saturday, adding the minister, Luc Frieden, had signed the pact the previous day in Paris.
The Luxembourg state, together with Belgium and the creditor banks, would provide credit to Kaupthing Luxembourg, enabling the unit to keep functioning and reimburse depositors, it said.
One stumbling block could be the collapse on Friday of the Belgian government, meaning Belgium is not immediately able to agree to the deal.
A decision on the takeover of Kaupthing Luxembourg had been postponed earlier this month, with the Belgian government citing technical reasons.
Belgian accounts are held by the Luxembourg arm of Kaupthing and their money was frozen in November by Luxembourg’s financial regulator after the Icelandic parent company was taken over by the Icelandic state.
Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme had said there was a serious candidate to buy Kaupthing Luxembourg, and that three or four other parties were also interested in taking over just Kaupthing’s Belgian customers.
Media had said online lender Keytrade Bank, a subsidiary of France’s Credit Agricole , was among the potential suitors for the Belgian customers. Other rumoured buyers included German bank Landesbank Nord and the Libyan Investment Autority fund, according to Luxembourg daily Tageblatt.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
More People Abuse Legal Stay in Czech Rep After Schengen Entry
Prague — The number of people who abuse the possibilities of legal stay in the Czech Republic has grown since the country joined the Schengen system on December 21, 2007, Czech foreigner police head Vladislav Husak told journalists today.
Immigrants get formally married and they officially state they are fathers of newborns.
Husak said Czech visas are also abused for the entry to other Schengen countries more often.
However, Husak said the fear that crime would steeply rise after the lifting of borders was not confirmed.
He said the Czech Republic is no longer only a transit country for migrants, but also a country in which they want to stay.
Hundreds of foreigners seek to legalise their stay in the country using unlawful ways. The number of immigrants whose stay is definitely legal is increasing as well.
The Czech foreigner police had to completely change their activities after the Schengen enlargement. It now focuses on checks of illegal immigrants and illegal labourers in towns and cities. The policemen control their documents and permits especially at train stations, hostels, bars and casinos.
The Schengen system within without border controls now comprises 24 countries.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Police Squash Violent Hamburg Protest
While police and demonstrators continued to battle on the streets of Athens over the weekend, German police broke up a large sympathy protest after it grew violent.
Scores of German riot police confronted an estimated 950 protesters in Hamburg over the weekend who were expressing their sympathy for student protesters in Greece by marching under the banner of “Solidarity is a weapon.”
Police reported that the protest actions — which allegedly included numerous members of the far-left anarchist scene — were broken up on Saturday after they escalated to rioting, with special police units and journalists being pelted with bottles, iron rods and fireworks. Four police officers were reported injured.
Protest actions, some violent, also continued to bring chaos to the streets of Athens over the weekend as police battled riots and lawlessness sparked by the Dec. 6 police killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
On Saturday, a memorial service to the slain boy turned violent and led to scattered groups of masked youths showering police with rocks and Molotov cocktails and igniting at least six police vehicles and numerous garbage containers. As black smoke lofted above the skyline of the vast city, heavily armed police broke up crowds of protesters with tear gas.
Other incidents Saturday included the fire-bombing and destruction of a credit-reporting agency and clashes around the 18-meter-high (60-foot) Christmas tree in Syntagma Square between police and protesters trying to hang trash bags from its branches. The original tree was burned down by protesters on Dec. 8, the third day of riots, and replaced soon thereafter.
Although the protests were initially meant as a response to perceived police violence, they have developed into a wider protests against political corruption and diminished job prospects triggered by the current economic crisis.
A Search for ‘Solidarity’
On Sunday, the protest actions in Athens also spread to include foreign institutions. An estimated 30 masked individuals attacked the French Institute in Athens’ upscale Kolonaki district, smashing windows and throwing a Molotov cocktail at guards stationed at its entrance, according to the Athens daily Kathimerini.
The paper speculated that the attacks might have been motivated by protesters’ hoping to forge links between student protesters in France and the unrest in Greece. In support of this theory, the paper cited graffiti found near the French Institute reading: “Spark in Athens. Fire in Paris. Insurrection is coming” and “France, Greece, uprising everywhere.”
Also on Sunday, more than 1,500 people gathered for a peaceful protest in support of a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the hand last Wednesday under mysterious circumstances, according to Kathimerini. While police statements had originally claimed that the boy had been hit by an air-gun pellet, recently released tests confirm that the boy was hit by a 38 millimeter gun from a distance.
Though the Greek government has expressed its hope that the demonstrations and violent outbursts would die down because of protest fatigue and the holiday season, labor leaders and student groups have pledged to continue their actions into the New Year.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Soini: True Finns Are Not Extremists
True Finns Party Chair Timo Soini refuted claims that his party is a right-wing extremist group. On YLE’s Saturday morning programme Ykkösaamu, former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen of the Social Democrat Party said Soini should be concerned about extremism in his party following the municipal elections.
Soini said that Lipponen’s words demonstrate that the True Finns are now viewed seriously as a political rival.
“I don’t really understand what he’s talking about. Elections are held so that voices are heard. The True Finns are not an extremist group. This party is neither left-wing nor right-wing,” Soini told YLE.
“This is a Finnish people’s movement that has nothing to do with extremism,” he added.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sub-Prime Crisis is the Edge of a Financial Hurricane
[Comments from JD: Article is from Aug 2007 but prescient. Author Bernard Connolly is a civil servant who authored The Rotten Heart of Europe, which exposed the evils of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the truth about the European Union.]
The EU quite deliberately created the most dangerous credit bubble of all: emu. And, whereas the mission of the Fed is to avoid a financial crisis, the mission of the ecb [European Central Bank] is to provoke one. The purpose of the crisis will be, as Prodi, then Commission president, said in 2002, to allow the EU to take more power for itself. The sacrificial victims will be, in the first instance, families and firms (and banks and investors) in countries such as Ireland and Club Med. Subsequently, German savers (or British taxpayers) will bear the burden of bailouts that a newly empowered “EU economic government” will ordain.
[…]
Eventually, when things have got bad enough, the German public will be forced to acquiesce in lowered interest rates and high German inflation. But by then the EU will have taken the opportunity to seize control of the financial system (cheerfully punishing the London financial “casino” in the process), dictate budgetary policies, extort bail-out transfers from countries such as Britain and impose exchange controls with the rest of the world (and even, as reportedly threatened in a 1998 meeting of the EU Employment Committee, impose exit taxes — expropriation of life savings — on people seeking to flee the EU). And it will seek to “democratise” this power grab by instituting an emergency “European government”.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tehran’s Wish is Law to Brussels
If the politicians who run the European Union were found to be acting repeatedly in gross breach of their own law, to appease one of the nastiest regimes in the world — and a senior British minister was found to have seriously misled Parliament in the same cause — might this not be thought worthy of some attention? Yet again last week, unreported here in Britain, the EU was reprimanded by its own courts for refusing to obey their ruling that it had acted illegally in outlawing Iran’s main democratic opposition movement, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI).
This ever murkier and more bizarre story began back in 2001 when the British Government — solely, as it later admitted, at the behest of the Tehran regime — put the PMOI on its list of proscribed terrorist groups. In 2002, Britain persuaded the EU to add the PMOI alongside al-Qaeda to its own list of outlawed organisations. In 2006, the EU’s Court of First Instance ruled this ban to be “unlawful”.
In 2007, Britain twice persuaded the EU Council of Ministers to defy their own court’s ruling. This year, after a long court battle waged by 35 MPs and peers — including several ex-ministers — the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, upheld a High Court ruling that the British Government had acted “perversely” in claiming that the PMOI was a terrorist organisation, for which it had brought no evidence. He ordered the Government to lift its ban.
Our Government reluctantly obeyed, but last July President Sarkozy, as EU president, moved that the EU’s ban should nevertheless remain. In October and again this month, the Court of First Instance ruled that the EU must stop acting illegally. Furthermore the judges stated that, following the British court ruling, the British Government had failed in its legal duty to veto Sarkozy’s move. They directed particularly trenchant criticism at the Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown for wrongly claiming to the House of Lords that Britain could not have voted against Sarkozy’s proposal because this would have meant the ban having to be lifted from all terrorist organisations.
Earlier this month, the EU court moved with unprecedented speed to publish its latest ruling, but Sarkozy asked for permission to delay in complying. This plea was strongly opposed in a letter to Sarkozy signed by 1,160 mayors from all over France. Last Wednesday, the court brusquely rejected the plea, stating that the EU must comply with the law without any further delay.
The same day, in the European Parliament, in the presence of Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (of which the PMOI forms a major part), a senior MEP, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, backed by 2,000 parliamentarians from all over Europe, warned the Council of Ministers that obstructing implementation of the court’s ruling would place it “at odds with the EU’s judicial system and the European Parliament” and could “lead to a constitutional crisis within the EU”. He sent a letter to President Sarkozy to warn him of “the dire consequences of France’s disobeying the rule of law in Europe”.
What makes this contempt for the law truly incomprehensible is that the EU’s confessed motive is to appease the one genuinely terrorist regime in the Middle East. Its agents, the Revolutionary Guards, have done more than anyone to destabilise the entire region, from Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan (including the supply of arms used to kill British troops). To this murderous theocratic dictatorship, the only real hope of a democratic secular alternative is Mrs Rajavi’s NCRI and the PMOI, the very body the EU seems prepared to stop at nothing to suppress. Just as baffling, however, is why we hear so little of this remarkable drama from our media.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Sends Extremist Rapper to Tour West Bank
Palestinian-German rapper Massive, know for his violent incitement against Israel and the West, invited by Goethe Institute to take part in concerts in territories.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
PA Forces Arrest ‘Dead’ Hamas Leader
(IsraelNN.com) Palestinian Authority forces announced Monday that they had arrested 36-year-old Rajab Ash-Sharif of Shechem, a senior Hamas terrorist. Ash-Sharif was reported dead in 2002 by fellow Hamas terrorists, who claimed he was killed by IDF soldiers.
Following the arrest, PA forces said they had been seeking Ash-Sharif for several years. His activities during his six years’ absence were not released for publication.
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Denies Selling Missile System to Iran
MOSCOW: Russia is not selling Iran an advanced air-defense system, Russia’s agency for monitoring international defense cooperation said in a statement on Monday, refuting claims by an Iranian official reported Sunday that the system was already being delivered.
“Military-technical cooperation with Iran is conducted on a planned basis corresponding with agreements signed earlier and in observance of all international obligations,” the agency, the Federal Military and Technical Cooperation Service, said in a statement posted on its Web site.
“Information that has appeared in several media outlets about deliveries of the S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran does not correspond to reality,” the statement said……
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Warns of Gas Supply Disruptions to Europe
MOSCOW (AFP) — Russia raised the spectre of gas cuts to Europe over the winter, warning on Monday that it did not rule out supply disruptions as a result of the dispute with Ukraine over non-payment of debts.
“It is not ruled out that the current position of the Ukrainian side and some of its actions could lead to disruptions in the stability of gas supplies to Europe,” First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said in a statement.
Russian energy giant Gazprom maintains that Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz owes it up to 2.4 billion dollars (1.8 billion euros) in debts and has warned of delivery cuts if the outstanding debt is not cleared.
Ukraine is a major transit country for Russian gas exports to the European Union and a dispute over gas prices led to a brief interruption of gas supplies in several EU countries in January 2006.
In a message sent to European governments, Zubkov laid the blame for the new dispute squarely at the door of Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders, who he said had taken an “unconstructive position.”
“I want to assure you that Gazprom will as always fulfil its contractual obligations before its European clients,” said Zubkov, who also chairs Gazprom’s board of directors.
“The responsibility for a worsening critical situation that could have an impact on European gas consumers lies fully with the Ukrainian side and the key to regulating the situation lies with them,” he added.
Last week, Ukraine repaid one billion dollars of debt to Gazprom for gas pumped in September and October, but Gazprom warned on Friday it had no legal obligation to supply gas to the country if the debts were not paid in full.
The complexity of negotiations is exacerbated by Gazprom’s desire to charge higher prices to Kiev under a new contract, something Ukraine is reluctant to agree amid the global financial crisis…..
….In Brussels, European Commission spokesman Ferran Tarradellas said any supply cuts would be less disruptive than three years ago, noting that there was no comparison between now and the extremely cold winter of 2005-06.
“The reservoirs of European gas are 90 percent full and the level of the Ukrainian reservoirs is also very high,” he said.
But an aide to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko vowed Kiev would not siphon off any Russian gas transiting through its territory even if Gazprom reduced deliveries.
“Ukraine will not steal gas from anyone,” said Olexander Shlapak, the deputy head of the presidential secretariat, quoted by the Interfax news agency.
He said that Ukraine currently had 16 billion cubic metres of gas stocked in underground reservoirs which would mean the country is well supplied even if a contract with Russia is not signed.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Forces OSCE to Start Georgia Pullout January 1
VIENNA (Reuters) — The OSCE said Monday it would start shutting down its mission in Georgia on January 1 after Russia blocked a proposal to extend it in a standoff over the status of the breakaway South Ossetia region.
Moscow wants to split up the international democracy and human rights group’s mission in Georgia to reflect Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia as an independent state after crushing Georgia’s bid to re-take the separatist territory.
The United States and European allies in the 56-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have not recognized the independence of pro-Russian South Ossetia, which enjoyed autonomy when Georgia was part of the old Soviet Union.
They sought a short-term “technical extension” of the OSCE’s Georgia mandate beyond December 31 to allow time for negotiations on a solution but Russia rejected the idea. The OSCE takes decisions by consensus only.
An OSCE meeting at its Vienna headquarters Monday failed to overcome the stalemate over Moscow’s bid to strip OSCE operations in Georgia of any mandate over South Ossetia.
“A consensus for a three-month technical extension was not possible today so it means we have to start withdrawing the mission, ceasing activities, on January 1,” Ambassador Antti Turunen of Finland, the current OSCE chairman, told reporters.
“We had one side defending the territorial integrity of Georgia and the other the ‘independence’ of South Ossetia. The sides are so far apart it made no sense trying to bridge the gap before December 31,” he said……
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Proponents of Islamic State Jailed
The Bandung District Court has convicted and sentenced 17 alleged members of the Islamic State of Indonesia (NII) to between two-and-a-half and three years in prison for treason.
On Friday, the panel of three judges, hearing 14 dossiers, said the defendants were guilty of violating Article 107, clause 1, of the Criminal Code on treason, and Article 55 on conspiring to commit treason.
Judges Yance Bombing, Joni Santosa and Abdul Moehan said the 17 defendants had caused public disturbance and threatened the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).
“They have deviated from the NKRI by acknowledging the NII as their state,” the judges said in their verdicts.
The sentences handed down were lighter than those demanded by prosecutors, who had sought prison terms of four to five years…..
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Porn Law Claims Yet More Victims
The association of tour guides at the Baturraden holiday resort in Banyumas, Central Java, has blamed the much-decried anti-pornography law for a slew of recent cancellations by Dutch tourists planning to visit the area.
Association chairman Tekad Santoso said Friday he had received several emails from Dutch would-be holidaymakers saying they were canceling their visits over fears they could fall foul of the law while enjoying Baturraden’s attractions.
“It’s true, they said they were afraid the police would arrest them for bathing in the local sulfur springs,” Te-kad said.
Baturraden, he went on, was a popular destination among Dutch tourists, with an average of two tour groups visiting the resort each week.
Tekad added that for most Dutch tourists, Baturraden held a sentimental attraction because of its rich Dutch colonial heritage.
“So when they come here, they feel they’re cherishing memories of their ancestors,” he said, adding he had shown Dutch tour groups around the area for more than 20 years.
He also said most of the tour guides in the area had built up a good rapport with the visitors.
One of the most popular activities here, Tekad went on, was to bathe in the natural hot springs and enjoy a sulfur wrap and massage, during which the men normally wore only shorts and the women bikinis.
“It seems they followed the news on the porn law in Indonesia and got the idea they could be jailed for bathing like that, just because of the law,” he said.
The controversial anti-pornography bill was passed recently by the House of Representatives and signed into law last week by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Djatmiko, chairman of the Baturraden tourism community association, concurred the resort had long built up good relations with Dutch tourists.
“The relations are so good, (the tourists) established the Tileng Foundation to help improve Baturraden’s education sector,” he said, citing a local elementary school that had received a donation of Rp 600 million (US$54,500) from the foundation.
Djatmiko said an average of 1,000 Dutch tourists visited Baturraden annually.
However, he also said at least three planned visits by Dutch tour groups had been canceled since the law was enacted.
“But I don’t think it’s just about the porn law; the global financial crisis could also be behind the cancellations,” he was quick to point out.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Singapore: Online Hunt for Mas Selamat?
THE hunt for Singapore’s most wanted criminals, such as escaped terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari, could soon move to some of the world’s most popular websites such as YouTube and Facebook.
A police spokesman has indicated that investigators here might take a page from the playbook of police from other countries, who have created social networking groups and posted Web videos featuring everyone from robbers to war criminals.
Already, police here have used websites like YouTube and online forums such as the one at technology portal HardwareZone to offer crime prevention tips…..
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Does S. Korea Really Want Unification?
Christopher Hill has taken charge of the U.S. State Department’s Korean Peninsula policy for four years. His predecessor was James Kelly.
The first U.S. chief envoy to the six-party talks, Kelly was a moderate. He commanded no less attention from the two Koreas than Hill has. But unlike the loquacious Hill, he has seldom expressed his views about South Korea. When I interviewed him in May last year, he only talked about the North.
But Kelly has now offered a critical analysis of the South in an article in the latest edition of National Interest, published by the Nixon Center.
Titled “Two For Now,” he criticizes the South’s harder line on North Korea because he believes it is even less likely to work.
As a major basis of his argument for maintaining the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, Kelly cited South Korean society’s attitude toward the North. “The irony is that South Korea’s great success has made South Korea comfortable enough to live at least with the status quo,” he writes. “While favoring unification in the abstract, South Koreans dread the potential cost of absorbing the North — its economic weakness and its people.”
“The result is great apathy and a tendency of South Korean governments across the political spectrum to seek to avoid tensions — and even to pay North Korea what amounts to ‘protection’ money.”
U.S. officials and Korean Peninsula experts are well aware that South Koreans are fed up with discussions about human rights in North Korea. They also pay attention to the fact even after a conservative government assumed power, the administration, surrendering to North Korean threats, is trying to prevent activists from floating anti-Communist leaflets to the North. “North Korean defectors find it much easier to meet the American president than the South Korean president,” some Korea experts say.
In the same vein, the Washington Post noted South Korea’s indifference to North Korea when it reported on Shin Dong-hyuk, who escaped from a North Korean concentration camp. “It’s horrifying… that only 500 people in South Korea, where Shin lives, have bought his book,” the newspaper said.
The problem is that such analysis by American experts on the Korean Peninsula and the press is not just embarrassing for us. South Korea’s indifference to North Korea and repeated surrender to North Korean threats are reflected in U.S. policies. When State and Defense Department policy makers discuss Korea policies, they may argue in favor of maintaining the status quo rather than unification, as Kelly says.
Since the illness of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has become known, the North Korea issue is rapidly becoming an acute problem rather than one that can be left for another day. Until South Korean society in general changes its attitude toward North Korea, Washington is right to view us with skepticism.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Walk-Away Option on N Korea
The negotiations intended to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear arms have all but collapsed and the finger-pointing to affix blame is under way….
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Rice Says Only an Idiot Would Trust North Korea
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview released on Friday only an “idiot” would trust North Korea, which is why the United States is insisting on a way to check its nuclear claims.
A 2005 multilateral deal under which Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear programs has become snagged on Pyongyang’s refusal to spell out a protocol on how to verify its disclosures about its nuclear programs.
The sticking point appears to be North Korea’s reluctance to allow inspectors to take samples to test a declaration of its atomic program that it submitted this year as part of the aid-for-disarmament agreement.
U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped an agreement on verification with North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, would have opened the way to dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear arms capacity.
Speaking to a group of foreign policy experts and students on Wednesday, Rice rejected criticism from U.S. conservatives who believe the Bush administration has been too trusting of Pyongyang in recent years.
“Nobody was trusting of the North Koreans. I mean, who trusts the North Koreans? You’d have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans,” she said in the appearance at the Council of Foreign Relations think tank, prompting laughter.
“That’s why we have a verification protocol that we are negotiating,” she added, according to a transcript released by the State Department on Friday.
Rice said the North had agreed to a verification protocol but had refused to write down some of its verbal assurances clarifying the document’s “ambiguities.”
Rice said there was still a chance to persuade Pyongyang to carry out the six-party accord struck in 2005 by the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. Continued…
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Bankrupt Mortgage Giants Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae Give Thousands to Homosexual Groups
WASHINGTON, Dec 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — As mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae hurtled to financial ruin, their charitable foundations continued to pour money into homosexual causes.
According to its records, the Freddie Mac Foundation gave over $125,000 to gay-activist groups since 2005. The Fannie Mae Foundation donated about $80,000 to these groups over the last decade.
Their largest one-time gifts came in the last year — just months before both companies collapsed and were taken over by the government.
Freddie Mac gave more than $20,000 to the 2008 fundraising gala of the Washington, D.C., chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG-DC). Fannie Mae gave between $10,000-$19,000 to the same event.
Both foundations gave money to PFLAG-DC for years.
| [Return to headlines] |
World Faces “Total” Financial Meltdown: Bank of Spain Chief
The governor of the Bank of Spain on Sunday issued a bleak assessment of the economic crisis, warning that the world faced a “total” financial meltdown unseen since the Great Depression.
“The lack of confidence is total,” Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez said in an interview with Spain’s El Pais daily.
“The inter-bank (lending) market is not functioning and this is generating vicious cycles: consumers are not consuming, businessmen are not taking on workers, investors are not investing and the banks are not lending.
“There is an almost total paralysis from which no-one is escaping,” he said, adding that any recovery — pencilled in by optimists for the end of 2009 and the start of 2010 — could be delayed if confidence is not restored.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
1 comments:
FNMA/FHLMC giving to agenda groups that are controversial always makes me wonder- how does such thinking come about? Political agenda financing in a GSE? Who said that's ok?
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