The United States abstained during the voting on a UN Security Council resolution requiring Israel to institute an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — no mention of the same for Hamas. So Condi Rice and George W. Bush effectively abandoned their ally to the tender mercies of the UN.Interestingly enough, both Israel and Hamas have refused to abide by the resolution. So Gaza 2009 is not (so far) a reprise of Lebanon 2006.
Thanks to AA, Abu Elvis, C. Cantoni, Gaia, Insubria, Islam in Action, JD, LdP, Tuan Jim, VH, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Buchanan Accuses Israel of ‘Blitzkrieg,’ Creating ‘Concentration Camp’
I like Pat Buchanan. I do. He’s wise, funny and charming. But every so often…
Like tonight. If Buchanan wants to criticize Israel’s conduct of the current war, and its treatment of the Palestinians, so be it. But in doing so, is it really necessary to employ terms associated with the Nazis? Appearing on “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Buchanan accused Israel of carrying out a “blitzkrieg” against Gaza and turning it into a “concentration camp.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Deficit Projection “Stuns” Congress
Red-ink forecast could make it a lot harder to craft an economic stimulus package.
Stunned at the prospect of a $1.2 trillion deficit this fiscal year, lawmakers in Congress are taking a harder look at how big a stimulus plan America can afford.
Until Wednesday’s release of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, the main topic on Capitol Hill was how big the recovery package needs to be to reverse the economy’s slide.
Now, there’s a second theme: Is there a tipping point between the stimulus needed to revive the economy and a level of borrowing and debt that’s too much for future generations to bear?
[…]
“We are going to have to approach this in the spirit of experimentation. We have to keep an eye on what works and get rid of what doesn’t work as fast as possible,” he added.
One commenter to this article says:
“Incompetence of Congress ‘stuns’ the American people.” That’s what the title should say.
Cut spending and cut taxes. It’s not that hard morons! But of course, then you can’t go ahead with your unconstitutional special agendas. We can’t have that, right? Get government out of our lives and stop taxing us into slavery!
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Democrat Responsibility for the Economic Crisis
On their road to domination of Congress and The White House, the Democrats clamorously and successfully, accused the Republicans of engineering the current economic crisis gripping the nation. Today Democrats control the country. Now what?
As dust settles on reality, the evidence of responsibility now points backwards in large degree to the Democrats. At least to a much greater degree than the MSM ever pretended. The following piece of video shows segments that cannot be repudiated. Democrats were the biggest beneficiaries of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac generosity, yet their leaders were at the frontlines of defense for those who were at the heart of the mortgage financing bubble. Democrats not only prevented oversight and restraint, they enthusiastically applauded the abuse.
One can put spin in the retelling of most events, however, the high culpability level of Democrats for the financial disaster that has been inflicted on the Nation is difficult to deny. For example, the words of the bombastic Barney Frank, the Harvard educated Democratic Attorney from Newton, Massachusetts, cannot be spun, twisted or camouflaged. As you watch the video on the following link, you might wonder why no one has asked Barney Frank or the Democrats to explain his unambiguously stated position. Don’t get too hung up on the fact that the video is from Fox News archives. They didn’t force Frank to fabricate the Democratic position.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Warns of Inauguration Terror Threat
WASHINGTON — The upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama is an attractive target for international and domestic terrorists, but U.S. intelligence officials have no information about specific threats to the Jan. 20 event.
An internal intelligence assessment, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, says the high visibility of the event, the presence of dignitaries and the significance of swearing in the country’s first black president make the inauguration vulnerable to attacks.
What concerns analysts most, the report says, is the potential use of improvised explosive devices, a hostage situation or suicide bombers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jihad Inside U.S. Cannot be Ruled Out
A private intelligence service that advises corporations and governments about political, economic and military developments around the world says it was surprised jihadists were not successful in an attack within the United States last year.
“Given the vulnerabilities that exist in an open society and the ease of attack, we cannot rule out an attack in 2009,” said today’s report from Stratfor, a leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence.
[…]
“If Pakistan continues to destabilize, it could very well turn into a failed country (albeit a failed country with a nuclear arsenal). Before Pakistan becomes a failed state, there are a number of precursor stages it probably will pass through. The most immediate stage would entail the fall of most of the North-West Frontier Province to the jihadists, something that could happen this year,” the report warned.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Man Steals ID, Takes Out $787,000 in Loans
PHOENIX — A Mesa man pleaded guilty Wednesday to taking out more than $787,000 in loans using someone else’s Social Security number, a spokesman from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said.
Adan Betanicio Guerrero, 37, used the victim’s Social Security number to purchase two cars on credit and take out thousands of dollars in loans, said Michael Anthony Scerbo from the county attorney’s office.
[…]
He told police they should be arresting real criminals and not a good family man at the time of arrest, Scerbo said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Miami: Kicking Cars and Punching Cops: Highlights From Gaza Protest Arrests
An 18 year-old from Coral Springs was busted for wielding brass knuckles and a pocket knife, a petite middle-aged woman shouted “baby killers!,” and a mob of protesters chucked rocks at a cop car. The Israeli-Palestinian protest Sunday on Biscayne Boulevard was a loud, colorful microcosm of hate — with Muslims waving red and green Palestinian flags on one side of the boulevard, and Jews holding hand-penned signs on the other. As the Herald reported yesterday, a dozen people were arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct.
What wasn’t mentioned: The most serious charge (a felony battery) came from a bright, well-respected Bonita Springs doctor and director of a non-profit named Riadh Atmani. The Miami police report notes that the 42 year-old — a bearded, six-foot-five, 220 pound bear of a man — grabbed a police officer “and his prisoner,” pulled them into a pack of protesters, “hit [the cop] in the face” and “broke the sergeant’s glasses.” Shortly afterwards, around 3:20 p.m., police described his demeanor as calm and soft spoken. Public records show Atmani runs Bonita Springs Islamic Center on Bonita Beach Road, about which little information is available. (He couldn’t be reached at several listed phone numbers for comment.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NYPD Eyes Disrupting Cell Phones in Event of Terrorist Attack
The New York Police Department is looking for ways to disrupt cell phone calls and other forms of electronic communication among terrorists in the event of another terror attack in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says.
The need to disrupt communications is one of several conclusions that the NYPD has drawn from studying the November attack in Mumbai, India, a three-day rampage by machine gun and grenade-wielding Islamic militants in which at least 165 people were killed and 304 were wounded.
Kelly is scheduled to discuss this and other “lessons learned” in testimony Thursday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. A draft copy of his statement was shared with FOX News in advance of his appearance.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: We Must Spend Our Way Out of Recession
‘Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy’
[Comments from JD: Get out of debt by spending more money!? This is a sure recipe for bankrupting America.]
Barack Obama declared yesterday that only unprecedented and urgent government spending could prevent the deepening recession stretching for years into the future.
Eleven days before taking office, the US President-elect said that he was entering his presidency ?in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime?.
The “day of reckoning” had arrived, he said, and the risks of “doing too little or nothing at all” were even greater than those of allowing a federal deficit — already projected to reach the record figure of $1.2 trillion — to spiral on into the years to come.
Mr Obama used his first major policy speech since his election to call on Congress to act quickly on his request to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the American economy. He said that figures to be released today would reveal that the United States lost more jobs last year than at any time since the Second World War.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Camp ‘Prepared to Talk to Hamas’
[Comments from JD: note the tone of the article.]
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s CIA Pick Reveals Radical Shift in Fighting Terrorism
Nominating Leon Panetta will be seen as a sign of weakness by America’s enemies.
When the far-left Human Rights Watch applauds the nomination, there is good reason to be gravely concerned about the change that is coming to America.
Earlier this week, President-elect Barack Obama picked Leon Panetta, a former California congressman and White House chief of staff under President Clinton, to be the cia’s next director. Those who endorse Panetta’s nomination are praising his sharp intellect, political evenhandedness and exceptional managerial skills. Critics, on the other hand, are howling over Panetta’s near-zero experience in collecting and analyzing intelligence.
The greatest cause for alarm, though, is the weak and naive strategy Barack Obama fully intends to implement in the war against terror.
For all the Bush policies Barack Obama intends to change, the ones he is most eager to rework first are those which arguably resulted in George W. Bush’s greatest achievement as a wartime president-the fact that America has not been hit by a major terrorist attack in more than seven years. No one predicted that in the wake of 9/11. Yet, thanks in large part to President Bush’s decisions to go on the offensive in the war against terror, to approve controversial interrogation methods and to legislate eavesdropping techniques in order to monitor terrorist communication networks, that is exactly what happened.
But all of that will soon change. What Panetta’s appointment tells us, Charles Krauthammer pointed out Tuesday on Fox News, is that “the Obama agenda will likely be to purge and perhaps even persecute anybody in the cia who had been engaged in those elements which actually saved us over the last seven years.” […]
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
US Senate Supports Israel’s Gaza Incursion
WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) — The U.S. Senate voiced strong support on Thursday for Israel’s battle against Hamas militants in Gaza, while urging a ceasefire that would prevent Hamas from launching any more rockets into Israel.
The chamber agreed on a voice vote to the non-binding resolution co-sponsored by Democratic and Republican party leaders in the chamber.
“When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before the vote.
Noting that Israel was bent on halting Hamas rocket fire into its southern towns, Reid said: “I ask any of my colleagues to imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada, into Buffalo New York. How would we as a country react?”
Co-sponsor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican said before the vote: “The Israelis … are responding exactly the same way we would.”
The House was expected to pass a similar resolution.
The Senate resolution encourages President George W. Bush “to work actively to support a durable, enforceable and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible that prevents Hamas from retaining or rebuilding the capability to launch rockets or mortars against Israel,” Reid said.
It also expresses an “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s welfare and recognizes its right to act in self defense to protect citizens against acts of terrorism, he said. “It allows for the long-term improvement of daily living conditions of the ordinary people of Gaza,” he said.
Palestinians faced even grimmer conditions in Gaza on Thursday after a U.N. aid agency halted work, saying its staff was at risk from Israeli forces after two drivers were killed.
The reported Palestinian death toll in the 13-day-old conflict topped 700. At least 11 Israelis have been killed, eight of them soldiers, including four hit by “friendly fire.”
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Canada: Group Rallies Against Hamas, Violence at Home
OTTAWA-Expressing sorrow for casualties on both sides but unequivocal in backing Israel’s right to self-defence, Ottawa Jews and supporters rallied last night against Hamas in the Middle East and protesters at home.
More than 400 people crammed into a meeting room last night at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, along with a noticeable police and security presence, for a show of support for the latest military offensive into Gaza.
The meeting was meant to lament the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives, said Shimon Fogel, the Ottawa-based CEO of the Canada-Israel Committee. But he told the crowd the conflict is part of a larger global struggle to protect democracy and pluralism, and railed against recent “hate-infested” anti-Israel rallies in Ottawa and across the world.
“We experience a sense of loneliness when we reflect on the alignment of forces in the world against Israel,” said Mr. Fogel, who called Hamas a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran Inc.,” determined to export a destructive brand of Islamic extremism.
The mention of Conservative, Liberal and Bloc Québécois support for the campaign earned sustained applause, while Mr. Fogel criticized the New Democratic Party’s call for an end to Israeli aerial bombing.
Transport Minister John Baird received a standing ovation after calling Hamas “cowards” who wanted to “instil a culture of fear” amongst Israelis and Jews.
“Security is very simple,” the Ottawa West-Nepean MP told a mostly subdued audience inside the hall. “It’s an unalienable human right.”
Mr. Baird also pointed to Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a desire for peaceful co-existence with Palestinians.
Israeli Ambassador Miriam Ziv also addressed the crowd, as did Marty Davis, a former Ottawa resident who talked via telephone from Ashkelon. The seaside city of 100,000 has endured countless Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza.
On Thursday, the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada issued a community-wide security alert and called “for heightened vigilance during this time of Middle East crisis as events abroad begin to reverberate here at home.”
The organization said there had been a “spike in incidents against Jews in Canada, including harassment and death threats. This comes amidst reports of violence abroad, notably the firebombing of a synagogue in Paris, and credible reports emerging that point to possible other global targets.”
“Warnings of possible hostile attacks against Jewish community targets demand your attention as a matter of top priority,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice-president, in a security alert that went out across the country to synagogues, communal institutions and Jewish individuals.
The organization advised all Jewish community institutions to ensure that proper security measures are in place at all times.
Meanwhile, another Parliament Hill rally and march against the Israeli attacks is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. About 700 people gathered last weekend for a similar protest.
“As a Jew, (I believe) this is not the act of a government informed with Jewish values at all,” said Diana Ralph of Independent Jewish Voices, one of the rally organizers.
More than 750 people have been reported dead in Gaza over the past two weeks, with another 3,000-plus wounded. The Israeli death toll is at least 14, including 11 soldiers.
Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian-Canadian active in organizing rallies against Israel’s military campaign, said her community was waiting for a stronger diplomatic effort — and a sympathetic word — from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.
Ms. Sabawi and her husband have family in and around Gaza City who ran out of drinking water Thursday. Many younger relatives are showing severe symptoms of trauma, with some trembling for days without sleeping or talking.
“We are losing loved ones, and we are watching them fade away, and there is nothing we can do,” she said Thursday. “This is really a dangerous point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I shudder to think what’s going to happen next.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Britain’s Muslims Should Condemn Hamas, Not Israel
As increasing numbers of commentators, politicians, activists and journalists speculate on the way forward, simple and indisputable facts are often surrendered to the worst kinds of moral relativism. The last few weeks alone have been testament to this. Just consider how Israel has been likened to Nazism, and the Gazans to refugees living in the Warsaw ghetto.
This should not however invert what is indisputable — that Israel is responding to a barrage of Hamas rockets which threaten its citizens who live in the south. Indeed, around 10 per cent of the Israeli population now lives within striking distance of katyusha rockets.
All this follows the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2005, after which Hamas swept to power and turned “the Strip” into its own paramilitary playground, using it as a springboard to launch a campaign of sustained and indiscriminate attacks into southern Israel.
I am a Muslim and spent a large part of my childhood in Saudi Arabia — something which, in the eyes of many Muslims, means I should automatically defend the “Palestinian struggle”. This is absurd and such support invariably means overlooking the vicious crimes being perpetrated by Hamas — against the Jews and, increasingly, its own population too.
Since the start of the conflict Hamas has carried out extra-judicial killings of — or, put bluntly, murdered — more than 30 of its citizens who it suspects of “colluding” with Israel.
And how has it responded to the death of Palestinian children? In a televised broadcast the Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, declared that Israel has “legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine. They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”
British Islamists have proved themselves only too willing to oblige. Reports this week suggest that some participants on Islamist chat forums have been drawing up “hit lists” of prominent British Jews.
One contributor writing on the discussion board of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) said, “lets hope that an unfortunate event happens and they end up being killed someway [sic]”. The group later removed those comments, but such views are indicative of the hatred that is out there.
Hamas will now pay a heavy price for its bloodlust and innocent civilians will tragically die as a result. Of course, it is in their name that those who have staged loud and noisy demonstrations in recent weeks claim to be acting. But what message are they sending exactly?
Demonstrators outside the Israeli embassy in London have fought with police and tried to storm the building on at least three separate occasions. Meanwhile banners have been waved in Trafalgar Square which boast, “We are Hamas”.
Such vociferous support from the streets of London will have come as great relief to Hamas leaders at a time when even Arab governments such as Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have blamed them for this latest outbreak of violence.
These self-righteous “friends of Palestine” obsess about Israel and the Jews, but turn a Nelsonian blind eye to everything Hamas does.
They undermine those who want to see an enduring peace in the region and, worse still, they bolster and galvanise Hamas by creating the moral imperatives for its terrorism.
Muslim leaders in Britain have so far — but cannot any longer — allow this to continue unabated. Those who claim to support and empathise with the Palestinians must recognise that it is the terrorists of Hamas who have so disastrously betrayed their own people.
At its core, this is the straightforward decision that British Muslims will have to make: between Hamas, a terrorist group committed to destroying a sovereign state and its people — and Israel, the region’s only democracy which is responding to that threat.
It really is that simple.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Communist Party Spokesman Resigns Over Anti-Semitism
Prague — Josef Tomas, Czech junior opposition Communist Party (KSCM) spokesman who was sentenced for anti-Semitism in the early 1990s, resigned from his post today, the Internet server Novinky.cz said.
As the reason, Tomas pointed to the publicity given to him after Czech newspapers wrote about his sentence in December.
According to the dailies Pravo and Lidove noviny, Tomas was given a suspended sentence for the defamation of nation, race and conviction over his anti-Semitic views in the 1990s.
“As this publicity harms not only me but also my close friends, their families and primarily the KSCM, I have decided to resign,” the server quotes Tomas as saying.
Lidove noviny and Pravo said that Tomas, 45, issued and headed the ultra-right anti-Semitic weekly Tydenik Politika (Weekly Politics) in the early 1990s in which he published a number of anti-Semitic articles, for instance, about the “Jewish conspiracy.”
Over the articles, he was given a seven-month suspended sentence with a two-year probation by the Prague City Court in November 1994. In addition, he was banned from publishing for two years.
Defending his views, Tomas issued a statement which he sent to the dailies and in which he said that “no articles that would nod to racial discrimination of the Jewish nation, which I, too, condemn, ever appeared in Tydenik Politika weekly.”
KSCM leader Vojtech Filip has defended Tomas who became the party’s spokesman in December and who has been involved in the KSCM campaigns since 2002.
“It was a conditional sentence. He never violated the probation rules,” Filip said, adding that in his view the matter should not be given such a publicity.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Defiance as Pound Crashes
Brits Own Up to Euro-Phobia
For the British, skiing in the Alps has suddenly become unaffordable and those summer vacations on the Costa Brava are under grave threat. The pound, formerly one of the world’s most expensive currencies, is only worth a bit more than the euro. Brits, however, are still insistent in their refusal to adopt Europe’s common currency.
Sterling-shock, pound zero, the one-pound euro. For weeks now, Britain’s tabloids have been painting a dark picture of an approaching national trauma. There were moments when it seemed like everything was over: The proud sterling, outflanked by the euro, was ridiculed as a “toilet paper currency.” In recent days, the wobbling pound has recovered slightly, but the P-word is still on everybody’s lips: Parity.
REUTERS
The pound: “Mamma mia! Has the financial crisis really made us poorer than the Italians?”
Reports trickled in of British tourists receiving less than one euro in exchange for the pound. The Sun even calculated that so-called “booze cruises” across the English Channel to buy beer and wine at once bargain prices were no longer worth it, since alcohol in France has become much more expensive. Even the left-leaning Guardian lamented: “Mamma mia! Has the financial crisis really made us poorer than the Italians?”
In the past year, the pound has lost around one-fourth of its value. At the start of this week, the currency’s precipitous fall was halted, for the time being, by markets expecting the European Central Bank to reduce interest rates and speculating against the euro. Still, with Britain especially hard hit by the financial crisis, the pound remains under pressure.
Weak Pound Gives Euro Advocates Hope
The weak pound has given British euro advocates hope for the island. For the first time in years, they’ve been given an opportunity to break through their countrymen’s deepset euro-phobia. A strong euro, they speculate, will make switching currencies more attractive. A well-timed report will be presented in London next week: “10 Years of the Euro — New Perspectives for Great Britain.” The general tone of the report, which features contributions from 30 politicians, professors and influential leaders, is that it’s time to embrace the euro.
In the past, the governing Labour Party consistently shied away from the euro. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has always been a resolute euro-opponent — even as chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair — because he considered Britain’s economic model to be superior. Despite the fact that the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism has been discredited, he wants to avoid the spread of dangerous rumors. When European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso recently rejoiced that important people within Britain’s government were considering adopting the euro, his statement was speedily refuted. The opposition Tories immediately suspected the rumor’s source as being Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, a former EU commissioner and well-known euro fan.
Brown has good reason to be cautious: Talk of the euro is fodder for the Conservatives and their supporters in the press. In a recent Sun article, the Tories’ shadow foreign minister, William Hague, accused people like Mandelson of being responsible for “talking down the sterling.”
71 Percent of Britons Oppose the Euro
The Tories are well aware that voters stand behind them on the issue. Nothing has changed in terms of the country’s widespread aversion to the euro. “Currency fluctuations do not affect the British love for the pound,” says Martin Boon, a pollster for ICM. Many consider their currency to be synonymous with national independence. In a poll conducted shortly before Christmas, Boon’s institute found that 71 percent of those surveyed were against Britain joining the euro-zone. Only 15 percent said they were open to adopting the euro because of the weakened status of the pound.
These results come as little surprise to pollsters. “The underlying hostility towards the euro runs deep,” says Graig Baker of the polling company Comres. The middle and lower classes, in particular, oppose adoption of the euro. National pride plays a role too, but conservative aversion to the new is an even greater determining factor. Also, those who don’t travel much haven’t had the positive experiences with the euro that have become a regular part of life for Europeans living on the Continent who can move from country to country without having to exchange their money.
Baker hasn’t give up hope, however, that, as the full brunt of the recession hits the United Kingdom in coming months, public opinion might shift in favor of the common currency. Nevertheless, he considers a total reversal as improbable.
“People don’t see the pound primarily in financial terms,” he says…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Schools Caught Up in Palestinian Conflict
A number of school administrators have come forth in recent days to confirm that they recommend Jewish children should not enrol at their schools.
According to school administrators, law enforcement officials and social workers, the on-going conflict in Gaza has led to heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs — particularly Palestinians — here in Denmark.
And although few headmasters of schools have faced the situation, most of those at schools with a high percentage of children of Arab descent say they try to prevent Jewish parents from enrolling their children there.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: More Church-Going Immigrants Than Mosque-Goers
New study shows that more people of immigrant background go to church than to mosque
Data collected by a leading researcher of religion suggests that more Christian newcomers to Denmark regularly take part in worship than those of other denominations.
According to the study’s figures, between 10,000 and 14,000 people attend mosques each week. Figures from the Christian Church’s Integration Service indicate that around 15,000 residents of non-Danish background go to church each week.
The study also showed that more than one congregation has been established every month over the past four years by newcomers to Denmark.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Criminals Unable to be Expelled
No time table for sending up to 300 Iraqis back to their homeland
Five Iraqis who have been convicted of serious crimes in Denmark and subsequently slotted for deportation are being refused by their native country, despite an agreement between the two countries, reports Politiken newspaper.
In May, Denmark and Iraq agreed that 13 criminals would be taken back by the Middle Eastern country. Eight were returned but five remain in Denmark. All have served their jail sentences and have had to be released by police because of the political stalemate over where to place them.
In addition to the criminals, another 300 or so Iraqi refugees are also caught in the political limbo with no agreement for their return in sight.
The Integration Ministry, Justice Ministry and National Police would not indicate precisely what Iraq’s government gave Denmark as its official reason for not taking back its own citizens.
Sweden was able to get a broad agreement signed with Iraq last year to send its Iraqi refugees home. Denmark has only been able to obtain a limited agreement, along with an earlier agreement with local authorities in northern Iraq that allowed for six criminals to be returned.
The Integration Ministry has indicated that no additional agreement over criminal deportations with the Iraqi central government seems likely in the near future.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
EU Enlargement
European Doors Kept Closed for Romanian and Bulgarian Workers
By Annemarie Kas
Romanians and Bulgarians are still not seen as full-fledged citizens of the European Union. Many member states continue to keep them out of their job markets, particularly now that their economies are falling into recession…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
European Union Rewrites History
The European Union is slowly trying to rewrite history to its own benefit. We have the President of the Parliament’s own little vanity project, the House of European History, which is causing controversy, and we have the Euro Clio project, with its slightly sinister subset Connecting Europe.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Germans Protest Against Merkel’s Support for Israel
The German chancellor supports Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas. A majority of Germans disagree.
So far, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been the only European head of state to pin the responsibility for violence in Gaza entirely on Hamas. In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on January 5, Merkel reiterated Germany’s support for Israel in this conflict and stressed that no ceasefire should be declared until Israeli security could be guaranteed.
Despite these words of support coming from Merkel, it seems the majority of Germans disagree with her pro-Israel stance.
In response to the ongoing military operation in Gaza, a wave of anti-Israel demonstrations has surged across Germany. Roughly 10,000 demonstrators marched in Frankfurt on January 3 carrying banners equating the current Israeli offensive with a second Holocaust. Sacha Stawski, the editor in chief of Honestly Concerned, a media watchdog outlet in Frankfurt monitoring anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, told the Jerusalem Post that he heard chants coming from this crowd of “Gas the Jews!” and “Merkel out!”
Similar protests were held in Berlin and Düsseldorf.
In addition to this outrage coming from the masses, several key political figures have also criticized Merkel’s support for Israel. Most of these critics have come from Merkel’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (spd), as well as from the Left Party and the Free Democratic Party (fdp). Left Party member of parliament and foreign policy adviser Wolfgang Gehrcke, who marched in a pro-Hezbollah demonstration in 2006, even went so far as to refuse to support a resolution criticizing Hamas. Instead, he demanded that both Merkel and spd Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier issue a public criticism against Israel. […]
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Cultivating Terror
The most frightening thing about the shooting of a young police officer by suspected members of an extreme-leftist terrorist group is how predictable the whole thing was. As 21-year-old Diamantis Mantzounis lies in critical condition in the Red Cross Hospital, wounded by bullets in Monday’s attack, Greeks are once again witness to the equivocations that have kept public debate tangled up in myths and nonsense for the past 30 years or so…
…Police and political analysts had been afraid that the emotions raised by the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos would lead to a renewal of the low-key urban guerrilla presence in Athens — because the outburst of public anger had appeared to support the traditional anti-establishment claim that violence against the state is justified. This is ostensibly a hangover from the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967-74, and whose downfall began after it crushed a student uprising at the Polytechnic, near the site of Monday’s shooting, in 1973. Since then, in the public discourse, left-wing violence has been seen as something more acceptable than right-wing or state violence.
One front-page headline in a major Athenian daily this week was typical of this woolly thinking: “Blind vengeance and a pogrom in Exarchia.” On the one hand, the attack on the officers is criticized for being “blind,” but it is still “vengeance” — in other words, a reaction to the fatal shooting of the teenager in Exarchia. The “pogrom” in the Athens district that is an anarchist stronghold refers not to the wholesale slaughter of members of some ethnic or religious minority but to an intensive search by police who arrested eight people on (probably unrelated) misdemeanor charges of illegal weapons possession. The fact that police have a duty to enforce the law — even in traditionally lawless Exarchia — is not mentioned. Instead, a police search after a terrorist attack is presented as an act of state brutality.
The situation would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous — and if a young policeman was not in danger of losing his life. Since 1974, and thanks largely to its membership in the European Union since 1981, Greece has been experiencing its longest uninterrupted period of peace and progress. Our democracy is still very sloppy and our public administration needs a lot of work, but the state is not run by foreign powers or some junta that needs overthrowing. Tolerance of anti-state violence is a farcical echo from a time when the state stood against the people. The longer this violence bubbles under the surface of public life, the longer our society will suffer.
As long as major political parties do not have the moral strength or good sense to make clear that the state and its employees — including police officers — are flesh of our flesh and not our enemies, then no one will take responsibility for fixing the state or for standing up for it. Monday’s attack was indeed an attack on democracy, as President Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis put it. But the stupidity of politicians and journalists who are not quite clear as to which part of the divide they stand on is a greater, longer-lasting danger to our democracy.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Illegal Immigrants Win Reprieve in Zurich
A special commission is to hear the case of perceived injustices against illegal immigrants in canton Zurich following a two-week protest.
Around 150 rejected asylum seekers occupied a church last month claiming that Zurich was more draconian than other cantons. The authorities have accepted the new advisory body but have given no sign that rules will be relaxed.
The compromise solution was hammered out on Monday during talks between representatives of the immigrants, the cantonal authorities and church leaders. A commission including various sections of the community will now hear claims of extreme hardship.
The protestors ended their unwelcome occupation of Zurich’s Prediger Church after receiving an invitation to move to another church on a temporary basis. But it was still unclear after the talks whether they would continue their standoff or disperse.
Stefan Schlegel, of the “Residency Rights for All” group that supports the illegal immigrants, gave a cautious response to the commission, calling it a “positive point”. He added that it was unclear when it would start and what powers it would have.
" It is safe to say that the commission must be able to act. I do not want this to be just a debating group. "
Hans Hollenstein, Zurich cantonal government No debating group
But canton Zurich cantonal government member Hans Hollenstein, responsible for security, promised that the new body would have teeth.
“It is safe to say that the commission must be able to act. I do not want this to be just a debating group,” he said.
Rejected asylum seekers who do not leave Switzerland are known as sans-papiers (without documents) and are not allowed to work. They are reliant on cantons for subsidies and to support applications for special “hardship” visas that allow them to find employment after five years.
It is estimated that there are 300,000 people residing illegally in Switzerland with around a tenth of that number in canton Zurich.
Residency Rights for All has criticised the canton for giving just SFr8.50 ($7.70) a day in the form of supermarket vouchers and for rejecting too many hardship visa applications. Zurich refused to forward any applications to the federal authorities last year and sent just four in 2007, compared with other smaller cantons that support dozens of cases each year.
The Zurich authorities also came under fire for demanding passports as a form of identification for visa applications when other forms of ID are acceptable by law.
Tough laws
Hollenstein responded by calling on the federal authorities to issue uniform regulations for all cantons to help solve the “delicate situation”. But he refused to cave into demands to change the procedures in canton Zurich.
One protestor, who goes by the name of Berhanu, said the blame does not lie with canton Zurich or even with Switzerland. The Ethiopian has been turned down twice for asylum during his eight-year stay in Switzerland.
“The asylum system in the whole of Europe is riddled with double standards,” he told swissinfo. “If there is a commercial or strategic interest in a country then there are no human rights abuses. They only exist if the West has no special interest there.”
Switzerland toughened its national asylum system in 2006 after a referendum (see box). The move was criticised by the United Nations and illegal immigrants in Zurich protested by occupying the city’s Grossmünster cathedral in December 2007.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Melanie Phillips: Violent Gaza Protests Reveal How Gentle Civilised Britain Has Changed Into Something Very Ugly Indeed
People who have been at the pro-and anti-Israel demonstrations in London have been producing some absolutely horrifying descriptions and images.
On Harry’s Place pictures (such as the one here from Indymedia) capture the violence and thuggery of the left/Islamist alliance. A reader on that thread adds his experience…
‘I was there last night — in fact me and my mate were one of the first to arrive. As we crossed from the station and walked towards the embassy, we were greeted by lunatics waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. In front of us walked a young man, wearing a kippah. He got out of his bag an Israeli flag and was immediately taken to the side by two police officers. After questioning him for about 10 minutes, he was issued a caution. After he was released we went up to talk to him — he showed us the police caution — and I kid you not — it stated that by getting out an Israeli flag he was causing provocation to the pro Palestinian demonstration’.
Another reader who was there wrote this…
‘It was genuinely scary afterwards with gangs of Middle Eastern thugs in keffiyehs, roaming Kensington High Street looking for Jews to beat up’.
Chas Newky-Burden writes of this week’s demonstrations…
‘Between High Street Kensington tube station and the embassy were numerous folk from the pro-Hamas rally. They shouted and screamed abuse at anyone they perceived as headed towards the Israel solidarity rally, including some elderly Jews. When I arrived at the rally area and was giving an interview to a television crew, two of the pro-Hamas bunch jumped in my way and screamed at me. I then joined the Israel Solidarity Rally. The hatred from the pro-Hamas side was intense. They hurled the most wicked abuse imaginable, and threw objects. Some of their number tried to break through the barrier. Thankfully the police had undertaken searches because some of the Hamas supporters had arrived at their demonstration with bricks and knives. One of their lot came over and spat at a young Jewish boy who had been minding his own business. Then some of them drove past our rally shouting abusive remarks and waving pro-terrorist flags. Meanwhile, the Israel rally stayed calm and dignified. We sang about peace, and also sang the Israeli and English national anthems’.
Here is what another reader tells me of his recent experiences as a British Jew, including what happened to him after he attended the pro-Israel counter demonstration…
‘It was shocking to hear on Radio 4 at about 7:15am a Muslim woman called Fatima supposedly representing some ‘moderate’ Muslim organisation who basically said that the threat of Muslim radicalisation should force Britain to shift its foreign policy direction in the Middle East. This was followed by a poor rabbi in Paris speaking about the awful situation with attacks on Jews and their property. What shocks me most is that the BBC is prepared to recognise that these things are happening in European cities but not right here at home! They report on their website about a synagogue in Toulouse being fire-bombed, but what about the similar incident that happened this week in Brondesbury? [The attempted fire-bombing of a London synagogue].
From my own experience as an identifiably Orthodox Jew, since the beginning of the operation in Gaza I have had things shouted at me like ‘death to the Jews’ and ‘Hamas should finish where Hitler left off’ along with the usual spitting and angry looks which I’ve become accustomed to. However, yesterday it went a bit further. I attended the demo in Kensington High Street. Walking back to Gloucester Rd tube as was suggested by the Community Security Trust and Metropolitan Police, there was visibly high security on the route.
‘I saw two friends to the tube station and decided I would walk to a friend’s house a mere three or four minute walk away since he had told me to stop by to say hello to him and his wife. As usual, I wasn’t holding any kind of political symbol, flag, banner or placard and was just wearing my yarmulka. As I was about to ring on the doorbell I was set upon by two Asian youths (one wearing a keffiya and one wearing a badge with the Palestinian flag on his jacket) who punched me in the head, threw me to the ground and continued to kick and punch me in the head and other parts of my body until I managed to shout loud enough causing them to flee. I bashed on the door of my friend’s house, sat on the kitchen floor with blood coming out of my head and badly bruised elsewhere.
‘Thank God, my injuries were not serious and the paramedics were happy for me to go and stay at a friend’s house until the morning so someone would be able to keep an eye on me. As for my friend who is living with his wife and 10-month old baby, the police have suggested that they go away for a couple of days since there are lots of ‘unknown’ people in the area who could make the place unsafe’.
This is what it is like to be Jewish in Britain today. The BBC wants to portray that it is only places like France or Belgium that have problems with crazy Muslims attacking Jews. In classic BBC myopia, they can’t see that London is no different.
Finally, Carol Gould writes about the anti-Israel hate-fest last week in Trafalgar Square…
‘I witnessed crowds of very angry white, middle-class, respectable Britons wearing keffiyahs and piling onto the Tube from the very start of the Northern Line in faraway Barnet. As my train approached Charing Cross station I realized that if I had identified myself as sympathetic to Israel’s plight I might have been attacked. In Trafalgar Square itself thousands of even angrier people milled about; young men in keffiyahs chanted epithets against Zionists, their fury accompanied by placards with Stars of David superimposed on swastikas and slogans denouncing genocidal, war criminal Israel.
‘One priceless poster said ‘Let Iran Have Nuclear Weapons.’ Next to me several young Muslims in green Hamas scarves wielding large sticks were booked by the police. Later a large crowd of some 5,000 infuriated protesters descended on the Israeli consulate, burned Israeli flags, and hurled missiles whilst another crowd threw hundreds of shoes at Downing Street’.
As Gould says, there’s now a positively medieval character to this frenzied hatred, which I have watched building up now for years in Britain as a direct result of two linked phenomena — the appeasement of militant Islamism and the toleration of its intimidatory and thuggish public displays; and the wicked lies, distortions and blood libels about Israel disseminated by broadcast and print media week in, week out.
What we are witnessing in these repeated hate-fests, including the onslaught outside the Israel embassy, is the jihad erupting on the streets of London — aided and abetted by a fifth column of non-Muslim leftists and Jew-haters.
The silence of the political class — with one or two honourable exceptions — in the face of all this is unacceptable. Worse still, some politicians have endorsed the hatred and added to the incitement — such as the LibDem MEP Chris Davies who came out with a hysterical stream of foul comments about Israel such as this:
‘The racism that goes to the heart of the Israeli Government’s approach is to assume that the Palestinians can be beaten and beaten until they are subdued and will then do what they are told. It fails to recognise that the Palestinians might respond to such treatment in exactly the same way as Israelis would — with defiance.’
Which seems to me to come pretty close to endorsing Hamas and its agenda of genocide against the Jews. But too many Labour and Conservative MPs are on the wrong side of this great issue too.
It’s not enough to deliver mealy-mouthed and meaningless platitudes about the need for both sides to pull back in Gaza. It is certainly not enough to tolerate ‘anti-extremist’ Muslim advisers who issue veiled threats of violence unless Britain stops supporting Israel. In view of the rising violence and intimidation on the streets in general and towards Jews in particular, senior politicians have a duty now to speak out in defence of Israel against the lies that are inciting this hatred and to deplore the incendiary and false media coverage.
They have a duty to tell the British Muslim community publicly and in terms they understand that they have swallowed decades of lies and libels about Israel and the Jewish people and that that sits at the very core of the extremism that has taken them over. They have a duty to say that while free speech is precious, intimidation and thuggery will not be tolerated. And mean it.
For silence is complicity, as once gentle, decent, civilised Britain changes before our horrified eyes into something very ugly indeed.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Protests Held for and Against Israeli Attack
In Rotterdam, a demonstration against the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip was held outside the town hall, attracting more than 200 protestors. Some of them held Friday prayers in a main city centre shopping street.
About 300 people have held a rally outside the parliament building in The Hague, to demonstrate solidarity with Israel. The demonstration was initiated by a number of organisations, including the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel and Christians for Israel.
They delivered a petition calling on MPs to stand up for Israel’s right to defend its citizens.
Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen is today in parliament, facing questions from MPs about the situation in Gaza. Central will be his proposal for a European Union peace mission to monitor the border separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
— Note: The brave Ben Kok, who recently waved a flag of Israël in front of the noses of the scum of the nation, called at the last minute to attend the Friday demonstration in The Hague. The demonstration he was planning this Saturday in Amsterdam was called off because of the high risks involved [due to the scum of the nation] and lack of security. Ben Kok couldn’t arrange such and the Amsterdam police didn’t really want to provide it. Therefore his last minute call to join the pro Israël demonstration that was organized by a number of Jewish organizations.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
New Research Shows EU Spending 2.4 Billion Euros a Year on Propaganda
Open Europe has published new research which shows that the European Union is spending billions of euros a year promoting itself and its central aim of ‘ever closer union’. In 2008 alone, it spent more than 2.4 billion euros. That is more than Coca Cola spends on advertising each year, worldwide.
As well as a sophisticated information and communication strategy designed to ‘sell’ the EU and its political message, the EU also spends billions of euros a year on efforts to engender a common European culture and citizenship, with the explicit aim of increasing people’s attachment to the EU project.
The EU pours hundreds of millions of euros a year into think-tanks and lobby groups which promote its policies and campaign for further EU integration, and many of its efforts are directed very deliberately at young people.
In the book, “The hard sell: EU communication policy and the campaign for hearts and minds”, Open Europe shows how EU information policy is geared not towards providing neutral, balanced information, but towards trying to convince people to support EU integration.
It reveals how even the most innocuous-sounding cultural projects funded by the EU are designed to promote European integration, and argues that, at best, all this is an enormous waste of time and money.
Please click here to read “The hard sell: EU communication policy and the campaign for hearts and minds”:
| — Hat tip: AA | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Torchlight Procession for Peace
[Comment from Tuan Jim: The bias here is practically palpable. Talk about disgusting.]
In Norway’s five largest cities, tens of thousands of people marched in torchlight processions Thursday evening in support of peace and in support and memory of the victims of the ME war. A pro-Israeli demonstration turned into a street fight.
In Oslo, the Youngstorget Square was filled with people when the procession began with appeals from among others TUC leader Roar Flaaten and Oslo Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme. Thousands were also gathered in the side streets leading to the square.
More than 80 organisations were represented. Humanitarian groups, churches, labour unions, and sports organisations and others participated in the appeal for peace.
Also in Bergen, Trondheim, Tromsoe and Stavanger thousands of people joined in the march which was also in support and memory of the many victims of the ME war.
In Oslo, the torchlight procession for peace was preceeded by a demonstration outside the Parliament buildings (Stortinget) in support of Israel.
Despite a large number of police, which erected barriers to protect the pro Israeli demonstrators, a large crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered, shouting slogans and also throwing rocks and bottles.
The police therefore used teargas in an effort at trying to disperse the attackers, but in the end they were forced to terminate the pro-Israeli demonstration as well.
Six people, five of them policemen, were injured in the street battle which is described by the police as the worst in Oslo i 30 years. More than 30 people were detained, 12 of them have been charged with violence against the police and grievous bodily harm.
The support committee for Gaza has condemned the use of violence in Thursday’s demonstration, critisising in particular the young Palestinians who took part in turning it into a street fight.
Member of the committe, Nor Obeid (25), is saddened by the outcome, and the fact that the police came under attack.
She says that the Paalestinian youth have to learn that they have to behave in order to achieve anything.
She says the Palestinian youth who used violence are harming the cause of Palestine and those who suffer in Gaza.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Norway/Civil Unrest: 1 000 Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Attack 500 Pro-Israeli
Six people were injured and 31 arrested on Thursday when 1 000 thousands pro-Palestinian militants attacked 500 pro-Israeli demonstrators in Oslo, gathered outside the norwegian parliament. According to Johan Fredriksen, a police officer “almost immediately there was a large degree of aggression from the counter-demonstrators.” Indeed they throw Molotov cocktails, rocks and eggs, and burned Israeli flags. Properties along Oslo’s main Karl Johan shopping street were also damaged, marking the worst clash in Oslo in more than 20 years.
“The in all 31 people who were arrested were brought in connection with the clashes and violence in central Oslo Thursday night,” said a police statement. Twelve people have been accused for attacking the police which arrested mainly pro-Palestinian militants aged between 16 and 20. “Police have so far registered that six people have been injured, five of whom are police officers,” added also the statement.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Rome Jews to Sue Leftist Union
Boycott of Israeli goods seen as instigating racial hatred
(ANSA) — Rome, January 9 — The Rome Jewish Community announced on Friday that it intended to sue a far left trade union over its call for a boycott of Israeli goods.
The president of the capital’s Jewish community, Renzo Pacifici, said the Flaica CUB union would be cited for violation of the so-called Mancino Law against instigation of racial hatred.
Pacifici made his announcement after a meeting with Piero Marrazzo, president of the region of Lazio of which Rome is capital; the head of the union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), Renzo Gattegna; and Rome’s chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni.
Marrazzo, a member of the center-left Democratic party, agreed that action should be taken against the union while Gattegna branded the boycott initiative as ‘‘a mad attempt at discrimination’’ and stressed that even Italy’s leading trade unions — CGIL, CISL and UIL — had condemned the move.
The leftist union, which represents workers in Rome’s retail services and food sector, has denied that it called for a boycott of Jewish retailers and claims that it’s initiative was only aimed at products made in Israel.
The union justified the boycott by saying it was a means to deny Israel funds to buy more weapons to be used against the Palestinians.
According to the union, it has become the target of a media lynching campaign in order to draw attention away from the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. The boycott has also been criticised by the daily of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), Avvenire, which wrote on Friday that ‘‘while one can be critical of a military action, one cannot penalise someone just because they adhere to a certain faith or community’’.
Defining the boycott as a protest against Israel, the bishops’ daily observed, ‘‘reflects a grave prejudice which is the basis of all anti-Semitic actions’’.
The proposed consumer boycott for the beginning sparked outrage among politicians on both the right and left in the Italian capital who saw it as targeting the city’s Jewish community.
The boycott proposal has already been firmly condemned by Rome’s right-wing Mayor Gianni Alemanno who said that ‘‘the people who came up with this horrible idea are not new to such initiatives, which are a throwback to similar ones in the mid-1930s which set the stage for (Fascist) Italy’s (anti-Jewish) racial laws’’. Alemanno underscored his backing for the Jewish community on Thursday when went with Pacifici to shop at Jewish stores in central Rome.
The mayor’s support of the city’s Jewish community sparked protests by elements on the far right which on Friday hung several makeshift banners in Rome which called the one-time neofascist youth leader as a ‘‘Zionist butcher’’.
The banners also attacked Pacifici and called for ‘‘victory for Hamas,’’ the Islamist movement Israel has mounted an offensive against in the Gaza Strip, which has now entered its third week.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘It’s Not Debatable,’ They Bawled
My chilling encounter with Britain’s jack-booted paramilitary police
This posting is about the horrible thing that has happened to our police, which I will get to in a moment, but first let me explain how I had the unpleasant experience I underwent last Saturday evening. First, let me explain what I was up to. I was absolutely not taking part in any street demonstration. Nothing could have induced me to join the march to protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza. This is not because I agree with the attack — as readers know all too well by now. It is because I am not prepared to demonstrate alongside militant Islamists, supporters of Hamas or people who carry ridiculous placards calling for a ‘Free Palestine’.
[…]
This is what had happened on Saturday. I couldn’t get through, so I went round by back streets to the other side of the (fairly small) protest. I began walking eastwards along Kensington Road. Suddenly, out of the gloom I saw more demonstrators approaching me, presumably stragglers from Trafalgar Square, come to shout at the Israelis. That didn’t bother me. They were quiet and peaceable.
What did bother me that, in front of the demonstration was a sort of skirmish line of black-clad, helmeted figures, each carrying a large round black shield and a big club. All were wearing clompy, macho boots and ( if my memory serves me right) leather trousers as well. They were both ridiculous and creepily frightening, and — to my eye — wholly unBritish.
I’ve seen riot squads lurking (and on some occasions turned loose) in Moscow, Prague, Paris and East Berlin. In such places, everyone knows that they are the fist of the strong state. But when I observed these formations, they were one of those interesting things about being abroad, rather than in Britain, where we had no need of such things. You knew never to approach them, make eye contact with them, get within range of them. They were dangerous, officious and all-powerful, and longing for trouble. Ask them the way or the time? They’d think you were mocking them and club you over the head for your pains.
I agree that things have been changing here for quite a while. But this lot were far more fearsome than anything I’d previously glimpsed in this country.
They were part-astronaut, part-samurai, all menace. They were also pointless. I couldn’t see any reason for this riot squad to be there. There was no trouble, before or behind or beside them. Later on, they might be needed, in which case I’d stay well away from them. But now, they were just there. So I behaved as if they were what they weren’t, normal constables. I carried on walking towards them, peaceably, on my lawful business. I’d already made a big diversion to avoid the main demonstration. If I had to go back the way I’d come, I’d need to go miles to get round. If there had been any obvious reason to do so, I’d have done it. But there wasn’t.
That was when they started bellowing at me. “Get back!” (or something like that). I looked round to see if I had accidentally got into the middle of a sudden melee, but the street was as peaceful as it had been before, and the marchers were still advancing quietly behind the black-garbed figures.
I held out my hands in a shrugging, mock-pleading gesture and began to ask why I couldn’t just walk on the pavement undisturbed. “I am”, I began to say “ a private person on his way to Paddington station”.
I didn’t finish. I couldn’t. The figures began bawling again, in a strange robotic chorus of Arthur-Mullard-like voices. And this is what they bawled :”It’s not debatable!” . Then they bawled it again “It’s not debatable!”. And then one more time, I think. I don’t think words like “debatable” come naturally to such people. I think this is what they had been trained to say in some riot-rehearsal long ago, to clear aside some imaginary band of quarrelsome troublemakers with fancy ( and outdated) ideas about their rights. Instead, they had to make do with me, the only man in London silly enough not to flee at the very sight of them. It even crossed my mind to think that they might have been longing to bawl “It’s not debatable!” ever since they had been trained to say it, and here was their chance.
It’s an interesting set of words, especially for police officers to use in a free country with free speech, where power is supposed to subject to the law and the police are supposed to be the servants of the people. It was clear that they thought I had no business even looking at them, let alone asking them ( as I believe I’m entitled to do) under what law they were acting. Until recently I’m quite sure they’d have had no legal right to order me about like that without explanation. Nor would they have tried. I’d have been allowed to pass, as it was quite reasonable for me to do. I know this as the veteran of many demonstrations in other days, and one who developed some respect even as a far left-winger for the restraint and level-headed, humorous good sense of the police ( as they then were) on such occasions.
But all that’s gone. Such persons are not, like old-fashioned coppers, servants of the law. They are servants of the state and you’d better believe it. Technically the law now supports them, but only because the whole purpose of the law has been subverted so that it doesn’t restrain the police at all in such circumstances. ‘Terrorism’ of course, has been the pretext for it. But most of us, most of the time, don’t see the ugly face of the thing we have created by letting this happen…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Brits to Hit the Streets in Anti-Sharia Protest!!
For years our British friends were kind and tried to accommodate the Islamic community. But it was never enough though, as Muslims there are pushing harder and harder to turn the UK into a sharia state. Many Islamic leaders have even come out and stated that they will force sharia law on the non-Muslims there if necessary, showing no concerns for the beliefs of the non-Muslims at all.
| — Hat tip: Islam in Action | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Child Killer Mary Bell Becomes a Grandmother at 51
But all I have left is grief, says victim’s mother
Child killer Mary Bell has become a grandmother, it emerged yesterday.
Bell became notorious at 11 after being convicted of strangling two small boys ‘solely for the pleasure and excitement’ of killing.
Now 51, the woman at the centre of one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century later won a court order giving her the right to anonymity for life.
The ruling is similar to those protecting the identities of Maxine Carr, girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley, and Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who killed two-year-old James Bulger in 1993.
[…]
Bell was convicted of manslaughter in December 1968 for suffocating Martin and Brian Howe, three, in Newcastle.
Martin, of Scotswood, Newcastle, was found dead in a derelict house, while Brian’s body was discovered on waste ground two months later with the letter M carved into his stomach with scissors.
[…]
But in 2003 the double child killer and her 18-year-old daughter were granted the right to live anonymously for the rest of their lives after a High Court ruling that outraged her victims’ families.
Mrs Richardson said: ‘It’s all about her and how she has to be protected. As victims we are not given the same rights as killers.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Forced Marriage Law ‘Being Used’
New powers to protect suspected forced marriage victims have been used six times since the law was introduced, the BBC Asian Network has found.
The law, which came into effect in November, means anyone found guilty of forcing someone into marriage against their will can be jailed or fined.
In one case NHS doctor Humayra Abedin claimed she was tricked into going to Bangladesh and made to marry.
Judges have ruled she cannot be removed from Britain again without her consent.
Injunctions were issued against Dr Abedin’s parents, a paternal uncle and the man she was allegedly forced to marry.
One charity said it had taken many more calls about forced marriage since the case made the news.
Jasvinder Sanghera, head of support group Karma Nirvana, said: “The law was announced on 25 November.
“Since then the number of calls we have been taking has tripled.”
Anne-Marie Hutchinson, Dr Abedin’s lawyer, said she had also noticed more activity.
“The past three months, in this area of the law, have seen an increase in cases.
“That may be connected to the fact that more young people feel able to come forward.”
Karma Nirvana said they had had a number of calls in the past week — including contact from five teenage girls who said they had not been allowed to return to school since the Christmas holidays.
They said they feared they were about to be flown to Asia and forced to marry imminently.
Shazia Qayum, from Karma Nirvana, said she was particularly concerned about one girl, who felt she was on the verge of being taken to Pakistan.
“Her parents lock up every single room and window before they go out of the house, so she’s got no way of leaving.
“She has four older brothers who believe if their sister brings any dishonour onto the family, they don’t want to repeat what they’ll do to her.”
Forced marriage is believed to be under-reported, with some victims finding it hard to inform the authorities about what their families want them to do.
Ms Hutchinson said she felt there were likely to be more applications made under the Forced Marriage Protection Act this year.
“I would hope we’ll see better implementation (of the law), and victims and potential victims being made to feel that they can come forward, and that they will come forward and seek access to justice.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Starved to Death in an NHS Hospital
Damning inquiry highlights case of patient left without food for 26 days
A vulnerable patient starved to death in an NHS hospital after 26 days without proper nourishment.
Martin Ryan, 43, had suffered a stroke which left him unable to swallow.
But a ‘total breakdown in communication’ meant he was never fitted with a feeding tube. It was one of a number of horrific cases where the NHS fatally failed patients with learning difficulties, a health watchdog is expected to rule later this month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Shame-Faced Gallery Bosses Discover New Artist is Just Two
Gallery bosses believed they had stumbled across a major new artistic talent in the rarefied world of abstract painting.
What they were not expecting was to discover their new protegee was just two-year-old.
Despite the furore, child prodigy Aelita Andre’s work will still be shown at Brunswick Street Gallery, in Melbourne, Australia, later this month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
EU-Serbia: Czech Presidency, on With SAA Ratification
(ANSAmed) — PRAGUE, JANUARY 8 — The Czech presidency of the EU believes that “we need to go ahead” with ratifying Serbia’s stabilisation and association agreement. Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said today that “a whole country cannot be penalised through one criminal. It is not a fair position, especially in view of Serbia’s willingness to cooperate with the International Criminal Court. Schwarzenberg repeated the Czech presidency’s willingness to go forward and reinforce membership with the countries of Eastern Europe. He stressed that Prague believes that the western Balkans must not remain a “black hole” in the map of European integration. He expressed his wish that negotiations for Croatia’s inclusion in the EU would be complete by 2009. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Woos Investors From UAE in Key Sectors
(ANSAmed) — ABU DHABI, JANUARY 8 — Egypt is wooing investors from the UAE in key sectors including agriculture, infrastructure, real estate and communications and information technology to shore up the domestic economy, the country’s Minister of Investment said yesterday as reported by Gulf News. “We are looking for greater Emirati investments in Egypt,” Mahmoud Mohieddin told reporters at a news conference. He said the UAE’s investments in Egypt have risen exponentially over the last four years. However, he declined to provide figures for the size of investments. “Between 1970 and 2008, 421 companies of UAE origin have started their operations in Egypt. Of these, 64 are construction companies, 44 are in financial services, 125 are in services, 40 are in agriculture, 38 in tourism, 87 in the industrial sector and 23 in communications and information technology,” said Mohieddin. He said of these 421 companies, 211 began operations in Egypt during the last four years, which indicates Egypt’s growing popularity among the UAE investors. During his current UAE stay, he met with General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. They discussed investment opportunities in Egypt and the current global economic crisis and the ways to deal with it. Mohieddin also said they talked about renewable energy and investments in human resources. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt — an Exercise in Antisemitism
The Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute
A Jewish religious pilgrimage in Egypt today, as described by a government-sponsored newspaper.
The following article, by Hassan Saadallah, was published by The Egyptian Gazette, a State-sponsored English-language newpaper designed for foreign readers and Egyptian students. Time and again, The Egyptian Gazette publishes similar rabidly anti-Jewish articles, apparently on government instruction. Antisemitism has been a constant feature in Egypt ever since the 1952 military coup which destroyed the pro-Western monarchy. Most of the so-called “Free Officers” who seized power then were former sympathizers of Nazi Germany…
| — Hat tip: LdP | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Journalist Expelled From Conference in Lilla Mosque
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JANUARY 8 — Lakhdar Belaid, a well-known Algerian journalist and writer, was yesterday expelled from a conference in the mosque of Lilla, a public meeting on the situation in Gaza with the intellectual Tariq Ramadan. The rector of the Amar Lasfar Mosque decided to remove the journalist who would cover the event for La voix du nord, after conceding him an interview some time ago and accusing him of “having written lies”. “I have a right to invite whoever I want, this is a private place” said Lasfar, president of the regional Muslim council. During the meeting, the daily Nord-Eclair reports, the rector warned that “any reporter who behaves like that will be told that our doors remain closed”. “If Amar Lasfar has anything to tell me he should explain me, he should tell me where I have lied. He has never sent me a letter of protest, to explain me his side of the story” replied Belaid, while the director of La voix du nord condemned this “attack on the freedom of information”. Lakhdar Belaid, journalist specialised in investigations and writer of a book on the Algerian war with the title “Mon pere, ce terroriste”, in which he tells the story of a “terrorist”, his father, one of the illegal leaders of the MNA, the National Algerian Movement fighting the National Liberation Front. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
“Day of Wrath” and High Risk of Anti-Semitic Attacks or Incidents on Friday
Renowned cleric Youssef al-Qaradaoui [the role model for the Dutch Labour politician Ahmed Marcouch], who happens to be a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood have called to turn Friday into a “day of wrath” and have asked that the traditional Friday prayer, the most important moment of the week for a pious Muslim, be followed by “large demonstrations” to express solidarity throughout the Muslim world.
“Days of wrath” that were ordered in the past — for instance for the Mohamed cartoons crisis of 2006 — have prompted large gatherings and serious troubles.
Throughout the world, including in Europe, Jewish communities will be specifically at risk, especially in the early afternoon. It is worth noting that several fatwas that call to “kill Jews” have been issued and passed on through online Arab media and jihadist websites. The latest comes from Algerian cleric Chamseddine Bourouba who wrote yesterday that “any Jew is a legitimate target that can be struck by Muslims.”
Interests of Western countries accused of “supporting Israel” could also be targeted throughout the Arab world.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Peres Says No Stopping Until Terror Ends
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 8 — “We do not want to make Gaza a satellite of Iran and we do not want a ceasefire, but an end to terror. Hamas must stop shooting,” said Israeli president Shimon Peres in an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica. The head of state criticizes those speaking of a disproportionate reaction by Israel. “It is an unprecedented situation,” he said, “we are faced with a terrorist group controlling a territory which it took over illegally, which does not try to save the lives of its children and women, and which bombs our schools. How are we supposed to calculate the ‘proportion’?”. Peres then spoke on the French-Egyptian initiative and called it “a general plan”, of which “the details” need to be discussed, and denies that Israel had shut down routes for humanitarian aid. “The embargo is against Iranian arms,” he said, “not against medicine. But I do not believe that all humanitarian needs can be met in a war. War is not a happy situation.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Bush, Israel Fighting for Democracy as We Did in Iraq
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY 8 — Israel has started a battle to institute democracy in Gaza. This is the opinion of American President George W. Bush who, two weeks before his goodbye to the White House, in an interview published today by El Mundo, he compares Israel’s attack in Gaza to the sending of American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and defends the progress made in these two countries as leading the way to the creation of a democratic State in Palestinian territory. According to Bush, “in time, the situation in Iraq has improved and democracy is starting to gain a foothold. I think that the same can happen in Gaza”. To the interviewer who pointed out that the Palestinians have had free elections voting for Hamas, Bush replied: “Yes, true, in a hard-won election. Remember that people were not voting for war or peace, but for those best equipped to guarantee healthcare and education. I believe the result of these elections is a refusal of the previous leadership of Al Fatah, a vote to say: ‘we are tired of corruption, of the lack of transparency and we expect better treatment’’. Regarding the crisis in Gaza, the outgoing president has no doubts: “The only way Israel can obtain the long-term security is needs” he said “is to have a democracy along its border. I recognise that what is happening there today makes it hard for people to imagine that it will lead to the creation of a State. But in the end, a democracy can be formed. In fact, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) were negotiating the definition of a State. What we are seeing is the use of violence to halt the advance of democracy”. Bush says he is hopeful that “in the end the Palestinian people will be able to take a clear decision: do they want a state of peace or do they want this kind of violence?”. According to the US president we are witnessing “another moment of truth to show the world and the Middle East the truth”, that is that “a minority uses violence to destroy the dreams of the majority”. For Bush “freedom is a gift of God: who wants it, in Iraq or Palestine, fights for it”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Rabbis and World Congress Imams Together in Strip
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JANUARY 8 — A procession of Imams, Rabbis, Christians and lay people, organised by the World Congress of Imams, and Rabbis for Peace, will take place in Gaza on January 18 to bring one thousand tonnes of basic necessities. It will start in Amman and will stop in Sderot, where there will be a demonstration of solidarity with the people of southern Israel. The Congress launched an appeal to finance the operation on the website www.imamsrabbis.org, and donations will be used to buy food, medicine, and hygiene products which will be distributed in Gaza by the Hommes de Parole Foundation, and the Caritas, UN and Palestinian Red Cross agencies. The Congress met in November at Unesco for the third time since its creation, to reflect on a series of actions for peace in the Middle East. No concrete decision was announced at the end of the meeting, but for the first time, leaders of the various religions, Muslim Imams and Jewish Rabbis, spoke to each other openly. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, Different Views on Conflict
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 8 — Israel’s attacks on Gaza have taken over the screens of the two main Arab news channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, but each with its own perspective on objectivity and the airing of disturbing footage, as Afp reports from Dubai. “Gaza Under Fire” is the title adopted by the Doha-based Al-Jazeera television for its round-the-clock coverage of Israel’s all-out offensive. To some, the Qatari-funded channel may seem pro-Palestinian in its coverage by describing the dead as “martyrs”. But its editor-in-chief, Ahmed al-Sheikh, has no apologies. “Instead of asking why we call the dead ‘martyrs,’ we say stop the killing so that there would no longer be any martyrs”, he said as reported by he story’s author Ali Khalil. “We broadcast images of bombing and victims, but we also give Israeli officials ample space to express their views… Our audience accuses us of collusion with Israel because of that,” he said. “We are not covering (the war) because we are Arabs or Muslims, but because we are journalists.” Sheikh argued that Al-Jazeera is the “master of objectivity,” adding that “international televisions and news agencies do not cover as much because they fear Israel’s reaction.” Al-Jazeera English, though, does not follow the policy of its Arabic-language sister, refraining from terms like “martyrs”. On the other hand, the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya has struck a markedly different tone in its continuous “Gaza Invasion” coverage. The Saudi-owned station refrains from using the term “martyrs” in news bulletins, referring to Palestinian fatalities as “killed” or “victims”, although its correspondents do tend to use the term “martyrs.” “It is not our job to give titles like ‘martyrs’ to the victims. We use professional terms, like slain or victims, for purely professional motives,”Al-Arabiya’s Director of News and Current Affairs Nakhle El-Hage said. “Sometimes, however, the correspondent on the ground has to use the term ‘martyrs’ due to the surrounding pressure,” he said. Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has slammed Arabic news channels that do not describe the dead in Gaza as “martyrs”. “Political parties have political aims and try to take over media… But our job is to provide a service to the audience,” El-Hage said. The two Arabic language channels also differ over their handling of gory footage, with Al-Jazeera insisting that bloodied corpses and casualties are an integral part of the fabric of war. “If you hide the ugliness of war, you would be contributing to its raging… Had we not aired these images, Israel’s attacks on Gaza would have been even more gruesome,” Sheikh argued. Al-Arabiya is clearly more restrained. “We do not air footage that may badly disturb viewers. It is our job as journalists to watch these images and describe them to the viewer, but we cannot force our audience to see the footage,” El-Hage said. Al-Jazeera has also mobilised its network of correspondents to cover anti-Israeli demonstrations that have broken out worldwide. On the Internet, Al-Jazeera Arabic website has launched an extensive Gaza campaign that goes beyond news coverage to opening venues for readers to talk in support of the Gazans. Angry verse bemoaning the fate of Gaza and the lack of Arab unity were posted on a forum titled “Poems for Gaza”, while fierce comments were posted on a forum filled with disturbing images of dead children and titled :”The Children of Gaza: What have they committed to be killed?” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Peres, Arab Leaders Telling US to End it With Hamas
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JANUARY — “Arab leaders are telling Israel privately: end it with Hamas”, said Israeli President Shimon Peres in an exclusive interview published today by La Vanguardia. The 85 year old head of state stated that “it is the first time in history that such an extreme, fanatical, and irresponsible group has taken possession of a region and transformed it into a base to shoot senselessly”. “No country in the world”, added Peres, “ could tolerate 90 missiles a day launched on its people and its citizens without reason. I would have liked it if those who criticise us were able to stop them”. In response to the question if Israel will except an international force between Gaza and Egypt similar to the one between Israel and Lebanon, Peres replied: “They are different situations because in Lebanon, at least the Lebanese army is present and the international force was implemented after having learned a lesson from the Second Lebanon War”. “Nasrallah”, continued the Israeli president, “said that if he had known Israel’s hard reaction, he would have thought twice about kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. They have learned a lesson. Now it is Hamas that has to learn: if they attack us, they will pay the consequences”. As for the possibility of opening a dialogue with Hamas, Peres left an open option: “We began to speak with the Plo”, he reminded, “when Arafat declared that he accepted the existence of an Israeli state. If Hamas follows this example, we do not exclude dialoguing with this organisation”. But, observed the head of the Israeli state, “we are fighting against a policy, a policy of terror, which opposes negotiations and the acceptance of Israel as a state. In the meantime we do not have to dialogue with anyone, it is like talking to a wall”. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Grass-Roots Media Deception in Gaza
Israeli Newspaper YNet reporter Ron Ben-Yishai was embedded with IDF troops in Gaza when they ran across an extended family the troops asked them to leave, the family refused. So the soldiers provided them with food and other provisions.
Just then the family notice the Cameras that were with Ben-Yishai. All of a sudden they changed their expressions and pretended that they were being starved by the Israeli Army:
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Israel Rejects United Nations Resolution to Stop the Fighting
Prime Minister Olmert has issued the following statement:
PM Olmert’s reaction to diplomatic developments & UNSC Resolution 1860
(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)
Following is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s reaction to diplomatic developments and UN Security Council Resolution #1860: “The State of Israel has never agreed that any outside body would determine its right to defend the security of its citizens. The IDF will continue operations in order to defend Israeli citizens and will carry out the missions with which it has been assigned in the operation. This morning’s rocket fire against residents of the south only proves that the UN Security Council Resolution #1860 is not practical and will not be honored in actual fact by the Palestinian murder organizations.”
One Jerusalem comment: It should be noted that the United Nations resolution does not mention that Hamas has terrorized Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets nor does it mention the kidnapping of Gilad Shalid.
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Mideast: UN Official Calls for ‘War Crimes’ Inquiry in Gaza
New York/Geneva, 9 Jan. (AKI) — The top United Nations human rights official has proposed a mission to assess violations and possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas in the Gaza conflict and reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire.
“The situation is intolerable. The ceasefire called for by the UN Security Council must be implemented immediately. The violence must stop,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told a special session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“The vicious cycle of provocation and retribution must be brought to an end,” she said, pointing out that the ongoing conflict had already killed hundreds of people since Israel began its military operation in a bid to end Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.
Pillay stressed unequivocally that international human rights law must be applied at all times.
She urged the parties to the conflict to fulfil their obligations under international humanitarian law to collect, care for and evacuate the wounded and to protect health workers, hospitals, medical units and ambulances.
“Accountability must be ensured for violations of international law,” she said, suggesting that the council should consider authorising a mission to assess violations committed by both sides in the conflict and ensure accountability.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Security Council Approves Truce Resolution; US Abstains
Is Gaza operation nearing its end? UN Security Council approves Gaza ceasefire resolution by 14-0 vote; US abstains but refrains from using its veto power. Israeli efforts to postpone vote by 24 hours fail
WASHINGTON — UN calls for end to fighting: The United Nations Security Council approved the Gaza Strip ceasefire resolution by a 14-0 margin; the United States abstained in the vote. Notably, the word “Hamas” is not mentioned in the document at all.
The US abstained from voting because it wanted to see the outcome of Egyptian mediation efforts first, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. Despite the abstention, Rice said the United States supported the contents of the resolution.
“The Security Council has provided a road map for a sustainable, durable peace in Gaza,” Rice added.
“The United States thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation efforts in order to see what this resolution might have been supporting,” she said. Earlier, Rice stressed that IDF soldier Gilad Shalit is still being held by Hamas and must be released.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UN Accuses Israel of Herding 110 Palestinians Into a House and Then Shelling it, Leaving 30 Dead
The United Nations has cited witnesses accusing Israel of killing 30 people inside a house filled with Palestinians who had been evacuated there by Israeli troops.
The witnesses told the UN that Israel had evacuated about 110 Palestinians into the house — then repeatedly shelled it 24 hours later, killing the civilians inside.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Abu Dhabi Aims to Diversify Economy Away From Oil, Report
(ANSAmed) — ABU DHABI, JANUARY 8 — The Abu Dhabi government has produced a blueprint for the future of the economy, with sweeping measures aimed at diversifying the economy away from oil, ensuring transparency and opening up new avenues for foreign investment. According to The National online, the programmes are set out in Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, a report developed by the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development in collaboration with the Department of Planning and Economy and the General Secretariat of the Executive Council. The report forecasts that the Abu Dhabi economy will grow at 7% a year for the next six years and then by 6%, defying gloom and recession in the rest of the world. Gross domestic product will increase more than five times over the next 21 years, with boosts for foreign investment levels and the introduction of a statistical base for measuring the country’s economic performance. The forecasts appear bullish at a time of global financial turmoil, and it is understood the Government accepts that there will be peaks and troughs during the period in question. However, it feels confident that even allowing for these fluctuations, the predicted average growth will be achieved. The report says the government will seek to encourage non-oil growth at a faster rate than that of the oil sector. The aim is for the non-oil section of the economy to reach 50 per cent of the total by 2028. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Fresh Violations by Turkish Jets
More Turkish fighter jets flew over the small Dodecanese islands of Agathonisi and Farmakonisi yesterday as Ankara too accused Greece of violating its air space.
Military sources said four Turkish F-16s and four F-4 Phantom jets flew over the Aegean islands at about 3.15 p.m. A few minutes later, four more warplanes entered Greek air space and flew some 700 feet above the islands.
This prompted an immediate response from Defense Minister Evangelos Meimarakis. “Turkey’s behavior is not cool-headed,” he said. “Greece believes that such behavior does not befit a country that wants to join the European Union and whose prime minister is taking on peace-building missions in the Middle East.”
However, shortly after Meimarakis’s statement, the Turkish armed forces posted on their website claims that Greek aircraft and vessels had repeatedly violated Turkish air space and waters between January 2 and 6.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
EU Gas Monitors Arrive in Ukraine
There are hopes that gas flows through Ukraine may soon be restored after the first EU monitors arrived to start checking pipelines from Russia.
Hundreds of thousands of homes in Europe remain without heating amid plunging temperatures, following a row over gas between Russia and Ukraine.
But Russia says shipments will resume when Russian, Ukrainian and EU monitors start work, possibly later in the day.
It may still take several days for gas to reach some areas, however.
“It will take at least three days,” to get the whole system functioning again, EU energy spokesman Ferran Terradellas said.
More than 15 countries have been hit by the shutdown of Russian supplies.
Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina are among the worst hit, as many homes there rely on communal heating stations that only run on gas.
Bulgaria, which gets nearly all its gas supplies from Russia via Ukraine, has imposed gas rationing and has closed schools.
The EU said the first of its monitors arrived in Kiev on Friday lunchtime. They were expected to start touring gas pumping stations later.
A major stumbling block was removed earlier when Ukraine agreed to accept Russian experts as part of the monitoring mission.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has also promised that EU monitors can go anywhere in Russia to verify gas flows, said Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who has assumed a mediating role for the EU.
The head of Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said he expected a formal monitoring deal to be signed on Friday.
“And immediately after that we will renew deliveries,” he said.
Price row remains
An estimated 100,000 people in Serbia were left without heating when Russian gas supplies to Europe were halted on Wednesday, the BBC’s Helen Fawkes in Belgrade said.
With sub-zero temperatures across the country, at least eight towns and cities were completely cut off.
Most of its gas-powered heating stations have switched to alternative energy but some can only operate on gas and have had to shut down completely, our correspondent adds.
It has also received emergency gas from Hungary and Germany.
In neighbouring Bosnia, some 72,000 homes were without heating in temperatures as low as -15C. Leaders warned its gas reserves would last only a few more days.
Angry Bulgarians protested in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Sofia on Thursday, holding placards accusing Russia and Ukraine of being “gas terrorists”, the Associated Press reports.
Other countries reporting a total halt in gas supplies included Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia and Austria.
The EU depends on Russia for about a quarter of its total gas supplies, some 80% of which are pumped via Ukraine.
Russia cut gas to Ukraine itself a week ago, in the wake of a row over unpaid bills and the expiry of a supply contract.
But although both countries guaranteed that transit supplies to Europe would be unaffected, they were soon cut off amid mutual accusations between Kiev and Moscow.
That acrimonious disagreement over gas prices remains, which leaves the crisis far from settled, the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse in Kiev says.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: a Landscape of Religious Diversity
Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world. Christians make up about 8 percent of Indonesia’s population of 230 million. It is a country with a long tradition of tolerance and coexistence among people of different faiths…
…Rev. Tong remains faithful to the Indonesian Constitution which guarantees the right to worship to the officially recognized religions in the country, notwithstanding past violence Islamic hardliners have committed on Christian churches.
On the evening of Dec. 5, thousands of Chinese-Indonesian Christians from different Chinese-language churches in Jakarta gathered to celebrate Christmas at the new cathedral…
…Although a recent report released by the Wahid Institute has pointed to a rise in violent incidents related to religious freedom, large-scale interreligious violence and terrorism carried out by fanatic religious groups has diminished under the current government.
That a celebration of such scale could be organized, and that Chinese Christians could freely congregate as a religious ethnic group, are both testaments to the changes that have taken place in post-Soeharto, democratizing Indonesia. Nevertheless, the Christmas service organizers were still very cautious: the event was announced quietly without public banners outside the church and security was tight…
…For people of different faiths to live together, they need mutual understanding and respect. Intrafaith dialogue such as those between the evangelicals and the charismatic, and those between the Catholics and the Protestants are just as important as inter-faith dialogue.
The call for unity should not only be within a certain faith or community, it should be an aspiration for all religions and all Indonesians. It is only through such unity that we can find a colossal strength in religious social capital to rebuild Indonesia.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Anti-Israel Demonstrators Seal Synagogue
Surabaya, E Java, (ANTARA News) — Anti-Israel demonstrators sealed the Beth Hashem synagogue in Surabaya, East Java, on Wednesday in protest against the atrocities committed by Israeli military on Palestinians.
The sealing of the synagogue was the follow-up of the demonstration held by activists of Islamic mass organizations in front of the Grahadi state building.
The action to seal the synagogue led by the general chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema of East Java, KH Abdusshomad Buchori, was initially marked by orations condemning Israeli attacks on Palestines in the Gaza Strip. Earlier the demonstrators burned the Israeli flag and raised the Palestinian flag in front the synagogue that had seldom been used by the Jewish people in Surabaya.
“If Israel would not stop its attacks on Palestine we will conduct a sweep on sympathizers, supporters and Israeli agents in East Java,” Abdusshomad said.
After making orations before the synagogue several demonstrators moved to Plaza Surabaya located several meters from the synagogue where they then conducted orations in front of the Mc Donald fastfood outlet asking Moslems to boycott all US products.
Leaders of Islamic mass organizations in East Java including the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, Fatayat, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), Lembaga Dakwah Islam Indonesia (LDII), Ansor Youth Movement, multi-purpose Ansor brigade, and Al Irsyad in turn made speeches in front of the Grahadi building.
In the speeches they urged the Indonesian government as a member of the UN Security Council to stop the Israeli atrocity in Palestine and to facilitate the sending of fighters to Palestine.
They also called on Muslims in East Java to conduct spiritual actions such as praying and raising funds for the Palestinians. Although it did not develop into anarchy the demonstration involving around 300 people was given extra police protection.(*)
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Israel Gaza Strip Conflict Demo
Protests against the Israel attacks in the Gaza Strip mirror those over the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A video of a recent Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) march through Jakarta over the Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip:
[video]
Some stories from this site about Indonesian reactions to the 2006 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon: [list]
By changing the dates, and some of the names — “Lebanon” to “Palestine” or “Gaza”, “Hezbollah” to “Hamas” or the “Palestinians” — , the stories then are essentially the same as those now, — stories of mass demonstrations, calls to send troops, (basically fake) efforts to recruit volunteers, official calls for calm and the sending of humanitarian aid only, fund-raising, condemnations, etc.
— Note: The video is of a demontration organised by the PKS (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera. “Presperous Justice Party”, see the logo in the video. This is an Islamic Dawa party and also has a USA chapter.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Sharia Police Aceh: Gestapo Tactics & Interrogation
Not much of 2008 left [this was written a few weeks ago], but even up through the year’s dying days, goat-bearded Islamonazis managed to bring their religion into further disrepute. This, my final rail before Hogmanay, refers to last week’s Jakarta Post report on the arrest of two teachers in Aceh — their “offence”? An invitation to some Muslim youngsters to share seasonal goodwill at a Christmas party!
In Meulaboh, West Aceh, two teachers were questioned by the sharia police for allegedly proselytizing their Muslim students by inviting them to a Christmas celebration at their homes. The teachers were later allowed to return to their hometowns in neighboring North Sumatra to celebrate Christmas with their families.
Please don’t exculpate the goons by telling me this “sinister” pair were let off with a serious talking to and then released — I’m sure Russians in the dark age between 1917 and 1989 who got taken to Lubianka and let off with a warning did not take many risks thereafter. Similarly if you were made to listen to a minatory sermon from the Gestapo in Germany between 1933 and 1945.
Such police state “interrogation only” tactics are likely to be just as effective a tool of oppression as an actual beating, especially in a benighted Islamist dump where beatings for trivial pursuits (and I suppose the death penalty for conscientious rejection of the offending faith?) are part of what passes for a legal system. Only the boldest guru will dare chance such ecumenical courtesy again.
Having from my earliest months in Indonesia admired Achenese determination to stand up against a bullying regime down south that denied their right to self-determination (this sympathy of mine being explained by my own ethnic origins, and given fictional form in my “Red-Handed in Aceh”) I had hoped that on attaining a measure of freedom in its ethnic sense, the provincial authorities might extend the concept to permit individual and in particular religious freedom within their scope of control.
Instead, the “sharia police” continue to stomp on both common sense and common decency. Cowardly masked bigots administer legal whippings on courting teenagers and card-playing working men for doing what they do in every non-demented country, and now there is even talk of segregating tourists on a bikini beach, lest the sight of bule navels provoke devout Muslims to frenzies of lust. Talk about lunatics running the asylum.
I had imagined that Jakarta’s adherence to such documents as the UN Charter, or more recently the impressive ASEAN declaration on democracy, might have had some actual meaning, other than for big-wigs to strut their stuff on the international stage. But evidently not.
To the oppressed people of Aceh, and to all readers, may the New Year bring something better than what they have at present.
P.S. I see various dedicated Islamists are volunteering to go to Palestine and fight the Israeli military — can we hope that the FPI, who proved their martial valour at the Battle of Monas, easily defeating outnumbered women and children, and that Islamic Solidarity Group, who heroically routed non-violent Ahmadiyah villagers, will go forth to do their bit. We’d soon see the elimination — bloodily — of much of Indonesia’s street thuggery problem.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Two Top Al-Qaeda Generals ‘Killed in Air Strike in Pakistan’
Two of al-Qaeda’s top generals have been killed in an air strike in Pakistan, America claimed today.
Both men were Kenyans and featured on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list.
One of them, Usama al-Kini, is believed by U.S. intelligence to be behind the last September’s bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed 55 people.
He was also alleged to have ordered an attack the October 2007 attack on a convoy carrying Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto was killed in a separate attack in late 2007.
The other man killed was Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. He is the reported head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Both were believed to have been involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Internet Pundit’s Arrest Creates Stir in S. Korea
[Comment from Tuan Jim: Contextually speaking, it’s important to remember that all this is becoming an issue after the spread of false mad-cow disease rumors and other incorrect information on television “news” shows and the blogosphere last year.]
The arrest of a popular South Korean Internet financial pundit sparked a heated debate Friday over how much freedom of speech should be tolerated in cyberspace.
State prosecutors arrested the commentator, identified only as Park, Thursday on charges of spreading “groundless” allegations that the country’s currency, the won, was imperilled.
Park, who uses the alias Minerva, has caused ructions over the past few months with more than 200 postings about the country’s financial woes and the global economic crisis.
Hong Jun-Pyo, parliamentary leader of the ruling Grand National Party, accused Minverva of “maliciously” distorting the facts while rights campaigners rallied behind the pundit.
“This is seriously infringing upon freedom of speech. The government should immediately stop its move to gag the people,” said the Council for Public Welfare and Democracy, a civil liberties group.
“This may be the first case of restricting freedom of expression in the name of banning groundless Internet rumours,” Koh Young-Chul, a Jeju National University professor, told Yonhap news agency.
“This is a typical case showing our democracy going backward,” opposition legislators said in a statement.
Minerva was rumoured to be a retired financial market worker with a foreign degree.
But prosecutors said he was in fact a jobless man whose knowledge of foreign exchange markets was acquired entirely through self-education after graduating from a two-year engineering course.
On Friday a court in Seoul was reviewing a request from prosecutors to bring charges against him.
Lee Jong-Gul, an opposition legislator who met Park Friday, told reporters the pundit rejected the charges.
“I have tried to spread correct information and opinions so that investors can avoid losses,” Park was quoted as saying.
Lee said Minerva used his personal computer at home in Seoul and had never been involved in stock trading.
Minerva drew a large Internet audience with postings that accurately predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, the won’s sharp depreciation and the local stock market crash.
His writings irritated authorities with their sharp criticism of the government’s economic policy and its intervention in the foreign exchange market.
On December 29, Minerva said the government had forced key financial institutions and exporters to stop buying dollars, in order to prop up the won. The government issued an angry denial.
South Korea has tightened regulations to punish Internet users who write false posts or are guilty of cyber defamation.
Those who spread false reports or stories on the Internet can be sentenced to five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won (37,594 dollars).
In November last year police arrested 11 people for spreading malicious rumours on the Internet in a crackdown sparked by the suicide of an actress who came under cyber-attack.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Korea: Police Tighten Security for Defectors Sending Anti-N.K. Leaflets
South Korea’s police beefed up security for North Korean defectors sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North amid warnings from the communist state and increasing personal threats, the defectors said Friday.
Despite government appeals, defectors organizations have been sending balloons attached with propaganda leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s economic mismanagement, lavish lifestyle and human rights abuses. In a fresh batch of the flyers set to be flown next month, North Korean bills will be inserted to lure North Korean citizens to pick them up…
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sirius Star Oil Tanker Released After £2m Ransom Paid
All of the crew members were said to be safe and the 1,090ft crude tanker was heading south-east towards international waters under the command of its captain once more.
“All of the gunmen disembarked the Sirius Star this afternoon and now it is free and moving away from Somali waters,” said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa. No-one has been harmed.”
An associate of the pirates said a ransom of £2 million was received late on Thursday, prompting the ship’s release this morning. The hijack gang had initially demanded more than £17 million to free the Korean-built vessel, which was launched in March last year.
A spokesman for the ship’s owners, Vela International Marine, a subsidiary of the Saudi state oil company, Saudi Aramco, refused to comment on the ship’s reported release or any ransom payments.
The MV Sirius Star was hijacked on November 15 more than 450 nautical miles off the coast of Kenya as it was en route from Saudi Arabia to the US via the Cape of Good Hope.
Its tanks were full with two million barrels of crude oil — more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily output — valued at more than £60 million.
The ship’s capture was by far the most audacious raid by increasingly bold modern-day buccaneers who have terrorised vessels plying one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden or past Somalia’s lawless coastline.
More than 100 vessels were seized in the last 12 months, netting the half-dozen leading pirate gangs an estimated GBP80 million.
Somalia has had no effective government for almost 18 years and is totally unable to police its coastline, the longest in Africa. International efforts to curb piracy have been increased dramatically in the past three months.
The navies of several nations including Britain are now patrolling Somalia’s territorial waters and the United Nations agreed last month to approve missions to hunt down pirates ashore as well as at sea.
It was unclear where the Sirius Star would now head. It is too large to dock in Mombasa, Mr Mwangura said, and could instead simply continue its intended journey to the US via South Africa.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
South Africa: Rewriting History to Suit the Politics…
A strange occurrence is taking place in South Africa — history is being rewritten to give credit to those who don’t deserve it and discredit those who built the country to what it was before 1994. Whereas I was aware of the situation, I never realised how far this re-writing of history had gone until I read General Jannie Geldenhuys’ comment in the Afrikaans paper Rapport. Geldenhuys served as the Chief of the South African Defence Force from 1985 to 1990.
Whatever faults the outside world ascribed to the old SADF, it was a proud, disciplined fighting machine that carried out its mission with pride and honour. Composed of Permanent Force (regulars) and National Service (conscripts) members (PF and NSM respectively), it never shirked from its mission, no matter how unpleasant or controversial. It was the NSM who made up the bulk of this once-proud defence force. As a young officer who commanded national servicemen at one time, I look back on those young men with immense pride. They never gave me any reason to doubt their loyalty to their army, their mission or their comrades. When they left after their 2-year service, they are the ones that built the dams, motorways, bridges, hospitals, schools and so on — vital infrastructure that has since been left to be eroded away due to neglect and lack of maintenance.
Of course, criticism can be levelled at some of the officers and NCO’s who once served, but they too did the best they could do under the difficult circumstances they found themselves in. In general, the leadership was true leadership. Young officers and NCOs (18 and 19year-olds) took their sections, platoons and companies to war and they never lost a battle or ran away. Instead, it was the politicians who ran and hid when they were required to stand up. Whereas the military strategy was sound and attainable, the SADF was betrayed by a wishy-washy grand strategy — a grand strategy that appears to have only made provision for the National Party politicians, the Broederbond and their fellow-travellers and, of course, their bail-out plans. Even then, they could show no honour — or shame.
Whether fighting a counter-insurgency war, a semi-conventional war, a guerrilla war or urban warfare, the SADF stood its ground and consistently attained its mission. There were casualties, something any commander regrets deeply, but in real terms, the casualties were kept to the minimum. Indeed, during planning, a guideline we always received was to keep casualties to the minimum. Over a 23-year period of combat, the SADF suffered 613 members killed in action. Cuba suffered more than 2 300 killed in action over a 12-year period. Angolan, SWAPO and ANC casualties have never been made known.. Yet, the ANC now wishes to claim that it defeated the SADF … but, perhaps they may have a point: they certainly destroyed it when they came to power.
Elite units, with the exception of Special Forces, comprised both PF and NSM. Many national servicemen extended their two-year compulsory conscription period and joined the Permanent Force. They became officers and NCOs of exceptional quality. The PF and NSM officers and NCOs led their men in units such as the parachute units, armour, mechanised infantry, artillery, engineers, signallers and so forth. After their national service, they became members of the Citizen Force — territorials — and often spent 3-months a year serving in the SADF.
Entry into the South African Special Forces was more than difficult. By 1988, more than 100 000 soldiers — both PF and NSM — had applied for Special Forces selection and training. Fewer than 480 qualified as operators. During operations beyond South Africa’s borders, more than 80 of these operators were killed in action. Indeed, Special Forces was the most highly decorated military unit in South Africa since the end of World War 2. (www.recce.co.za)
When South Africa became “democratic”, the SADF was sold out by the politicians — mainly from the Broederbond — who governed the country. Serving soldiers started losing their jobs under President de Klerk’s appeasement policy. Those that didn’t lose their jobs then soon lost them under a new government. This military expertise South Africa once had has become lost.. Many of these men are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We now have a new army — the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). This is a defence force that was unable to contain a small problem in Lesotho in September 1998. They have tarnished South Africa’s reputation with their despicable behaviour as “UN peacekeepers”. They have a trade union and can strike when they want to. Equipment has fallen into disrepair. Discipline is a rumour. The once world-class armaments industry (ARMSCOR) has been mismanaged into tatters.
Yet, history now needs to be re-written so that it would appear that the men of the new SANDF defeated the “old” SADF in battle. A new history needs to explain how they fought the SADF to a standstill, how they triumphed when the Russians, Cubans, Angolans and other failed.
The time has come for these “fighters” who now man the SANDF to list their victories. That might make for some very interesting but quick reading.
Maybe the next thing we will learn in “history” is that the ANC placed the first man on the moon…
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
South Africa: Fury About Gaza Spills on to SA Street
South Africa should cut ties with Israel and prosecute citizens who serve in the Israeli armed forces, say the leaders of Muslim groups who helped organise a protest march by about 15 000 people in central Cape Town on Thursday.
They also called on Israel to allow humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have been engaged in a ground offensive since Saturday night. A Cosatu official called for a boycott of Israeli products and businesses.
The calls came as two leading Jewish bodies appealed to South Africans to ensure the “conflict in the Middle East is not imported into South Africa and allowed to disrupt the excellent relationships” between Jewish and Muslim communities. The march was arranged by, among others, the Muslim Judicial Council, Qibla, Islamic Unity Convention, Building Women’s Activism, Anti-War Coalition, and Workers International Vanguard League and supported by a number of political parties and Cosatu.
“What is happening in Gaza is not a war — it is a full-scale military attack by an occupying power which has the fourth-most powerful army in the world, against an occupied people who — consistent with their right under international law — are resisting occupation with primitive weapons,” the organisations said in a memorandum handed to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sue van der Merwe. They demanded that the Israeli ambassador be expelled and South Africa’s recalled.
The government’s call for a cessation of hostilities was not enough, the organisers said. Van der Merwe said the protest was testimony to how serious South Africans were about the Gaza conflict. She undertook to give the memo to Foreign Affairs Minster Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
The ANC’s provincial secretary, Sipho Kroma, Cope’s Leonard Ramatlakane, Soraya Jawodien of Cosatu, and the ANC Women’s League representatives were among those who expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Jawodien called for a boycott of Israeli products, while Anti-War Coalition leader Shaheed Mohamed appealed for an international strike.
Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils said in the run-up to the election, people should question parties about their attitudes to the Palestinian crisis.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Sends Explosives Lab to Venezuela
The Islamic Republic tries to send a suspicious package containing “nothing important” to Latin America. The container was labeled “tractor parts.” But inside, Turkish customs officials found lab equipment for making explosives. The officials seized the shipment as it traveled through Turkey, en route from Iran to Venezuela. “Experts from Turkey’s Atomic Institute determined there were no traces of radioactive material, but said the equipment was enough to set up an explosives lab,” said Suleyman Tosun, a customs official at the Mediterranean port of Mersin.
The “tractor parts” also included barrels of chemicals labeled with “danger” signs. The exact chemicals are still unknown. An anonymous Iranian official told the Associated Press that the shipment contained “nothing important.”
Iran’s proxy Hezbollah is already heavily involved in Venezuela. It even receives support from the Venezuelan government, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. For Iran, Venezuela is an important base of operations, and it is just a stone’s throw away from the mainland United States.
Hezbollah also has links with Mexican drug-smuggling cartels. Hezbollah is in the drug business, but the even greater danger is that it could smuggle something much more catastrophically explosive into the U.S.
There is a grave danger growing in Latin America, one America’s leaders too often neglect. What was Venezuela planning to do with an explosives lab? More than likely, those explosives would have been used by Hezbollah in some kind of terror attack. And perhaps a more important question is: What has Iran shipped to Venezuela already that customs officials didn’t catch?
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration: Fortress Europe Says Deaths in Sicily Rising
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 8 — At least 1,502 migrants have died along European Union borders in 2008. The overall figure is 23% less than 2007, but in Sicily victims numbered 556 in 2007 but rose to 642 in 2008, in line with the clear increase in new arrivals: +80%. The figures were released from the observatory on migrants Fortress Europe, which says that over the past year 216 have died in the Gibraltar Strait, 136 in the Canary Islands and 181 in the Aegean between Turkey and Greece. In addition to the 1,235 who died in the Mediterranean, 267 died in the desert, under lorries, in ferries crossing the Adriatic, on Greek minefields or were shot by police. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration: Greece; 2008, Number Detained Migrants Doubles
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JANUARY 8 — In 2008 the Greek Coast Guard arrested twice as many illegal migrants as the year before. The number of people charged with human trafficking has risen significantly. According to a statement of Yenanp, (Ministry of Mercantile Marine) on a total of 907 cases of trafficking of illegal immigrants in 2008, the authorities arrested people, while in 2007 the number of arrests was 9,240. In the same period 243 traffickers were arrested against 196 in 2007. A total of 182 boats and 11 vehicles were confiscated. In 2008 the island of Samo was the most popular destination for human trafficking, followed by the islands of Lesvos, Leros, Patmos, Kos and Chios. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘Inhumane Britain Solely to Blame for Thousands of Immigrants in France,’ Blasts Senior French Politician
A senior French politician today launched a blistering attack on Britain’s “inhumane and illegal” immigration policies, blaming them for causing “utter misery” across the Channel.
Etienne Pinte, a former minister and veteran member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing UMP party, says the UK is “solely to blame” for the build-up of thousands of migrants in northern France.
[…]
Mr Pinte, who makes his comments in an open letter to immigration minister Brice Hortefeux, says Britain should, initially at least, accept all the northern France migrants.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Invaders Literally Killing Each Other to Get to Soft Touch Britain
Invaders queuing up in Calais to cross the English Channel are literally killing each other to get to the soft touch paradise that is Britain.. In a sterling example of the sort of person who is entering this country under the Tory/Labour created “asylum” swindle, a 30-year-old Afghan has been stabbed to death during a fight between rival gangs of invaders heading for Britain.
The murder took place in “The Jungle” slum camp in Calais where a journalism student from London was raped last summer. More than 30 invaders were involved in a fight among the cardboard shelters which make up the camp. “It was a battle among young men all trying to get aboard ferries heading for Dover,” a Calais ambulance service spokesman was quoted as saying in a newspaper.
“Numbers have increased dramatically in recent weeks, and there has been a great deal of tension as all try to use the same route into Britain. “Around 100 men claiming to be Afghans are living in the Jungle at the moment, and the victim was one of them. “Clubs, metal bars and knives were all used in the fight. The victim was stabbed a number of times and died at the scene. There was nothing we could do for him when we arrived.
“The fight was between different ethnic groups trying to get aboard slow-moving lorries as they approached the ferry port. Only a few migrants at a time can get past security checks, and that’s why there is so much rivalry.”
There are currently an estimated 2000 would-be invaders sleeping rough in the Calais area. Most are drawn by Britain’s generous welfare system after claiming asylum. According to French authorities, violence has been on the increase between difference groups. A Calais police spokesman said “There’s no doubt that violence is on the increase as numerous different groups come to Calais to try and get to Britain.”
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Migrationwatch UK Explains Why Present Policies Cannot Keep UK Population Under 70 Million
January 9, 2009 by BNP News
Current immigration policies will ensure that Britain’s population will rise to over 70 million within the next twenty years, Migrationwatch UK has warned.
In a briefing paper which explains why the government’s new “Points Based System” (PBS) cannot prevent this environmental and demographic disaster from overwhelming Britain, Migrationwatch Chairman Andrew Green said that the population of the UK today is already 61 million.
[graph]
“According to official projections, it will rise to 70 million by 2028. Seventy percent of this growth is thanks to immigration — now running at a net level of 237,000 a year. The official projection assumes that it will continue at 190,000 a year,” the paper says. “If the UK’s population is not to hit 70 million later in the century, there must be a reduction in net migration of the order of 75 percent from the present level to about 60,000 a year. […]
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Astronaut Jack Schmitt Joins Skeptics
American astronaut Dr. Jack Schmitt — the last living man to walk on the moon — is the latest scientist to be added to the roster of more than 70 skeptics who will confront the subject of global warming at the second annual International Conference on Climate Change in New York City March 8-10, 2009.
The conference expects to draw 1,000 attendees including private-sector business people, state and federal legislators and officials, policy analysts, media, and students.
Schmitt, who earned a PhD from Harvard in geology, resigned in November from the Planetary Society, an international non-profit organization devoted to inspiring “the people of Earth to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere.” He is the twelfth person to walk on the Moon; as of 2008, of the nine living moonwalkers, he and his crewmate Eugene Cernan were the last two to walk there.
“As a geologist, I love Earth observations,” Schmitt wrote, “But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a ‘consensus’ that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ‘Consensus,’ as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making…”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Homosexuals Immune to Mass. Budget Cuts
A pro-family advocate says budget cuts are coming for Massachusetts schools, but programs aimed at promoting homosexuality need not worry.
Many states across the U.S. are facing budget deficits, and Massachusetts is not immune. Governor Deval Patrick and state lawmakers have already slashed millions from the budget, but more cuts are on the way.
Brian Camenker of MassResistance says more than 1,000 state jobs as well as public school funding have been cut, while mental health facilities have also been closed. However, pro-homosexual programs in Massachusetts’ public schools have remained.
According to Camenker, the governor and the legislature are “very tight” with the homosexual lobby. “Very publicly, I might add, as anyone I’ve ever seen. The governor marches in the gay pride parades,” he points out. “Anything they want, they get.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Theater Shuts Down Criticism of Michael Moore
Maker of canceled film blames celebrity’s influence
An award-winning film that unveils the tactics documentary maker Michael Moore used to make “Sicko” and his other projects has been cancelled by a movie theater in Traverse City, Mich., Moore’s home state, and its maker is blaming Moore’s influence.
“It was listed, and now it’s not, and, obviously, the pressure got to them. Wow, amazing — that he (Moore) was able to move a national theater chain like that,” Kevin Leffler, maker of “Shooting Michael Moore,” told the Traverse City Record-Eagle newspaper.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: A Shakespearean Tragedy — ‘Macbeth’ Bares All
The Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Macbeth left one audience member outraged over some surprising content.
Laurie Higgins, the director of the division of school advocacy at the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), is a fan of Shakespeare and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. But while attending a recent production of Macbeth, she was shocked when the actress portraying Lady Macbeth performed scenes topless.
Higgins says she was not warned of the partial nudity when purchasing tickets. “We purchased our tickets for this in August. Subscribers could have purchased them a year ago, and they [didn’t] even know that there’s going to be this kind of content,” she points out. “I asked that question the evening we went, and they said they [didn’t] even know that there was going to be this kind of content until about a month before opening night.”
The play also included simulated sex scenes — with one of the actors fondling Lady Macbeth’s bare breasts — and one scene was set in a strip bar with scantily clad actresses in leather thongs. In addition, the theater features special performances of Macbeth for students. Higgins asked the theater if those performances would include the questionable scenes, to which the theater replied that there would be changes, although they did not elaborate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Duty to Care
[Comment from Tuan Jim: I don’t agree with the final conclusion, but there are some excellent points made along the way.]
Should states value the lives of their own citizens over those of other people? And if so, what are the limits to this preference?
In the light of Israel’s current military operations in Gaza, these questions have acquired special significance. Opponents of Israeli policy argue that the killing of hundreds of Palestinians is out of proportion to the handful of Israeli deaths caused by Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets. Israel’s supporters, in contrast, argue that a state’s primary responsibility is to protect its own citizens, and that the Israeli government had no option but to act as it did. Both sides oversimplify what is actually a complex moral equation.
Philosophers call the concept that a state owes more to its citizens than to non-citizens “compatriot preference.” With some important qualifications, two very eminent Israelis, Professor Asa Kasher and General Amos Yadlin, embodied the idea in a theory of the ethics of fighting terrorism written in 2005.
According to Kasher and Yadlin, states considering the use of force and questions of proportionality should give priority first to citizens who are not engaged in combat, second to non-combatants who are not citizens but are under the effective control of the state, third to citizen combatants, fourth to non-combatants who are not under the effective control of the state, and fifth to non-citizens who are engaged in combat. The distinction the authors make between non-citizens who are under state control and those who are not is important for reasons I will further elaborate on below.
Although the idea of compatriot preference is emotionally appealing, it is not immediately clear why it should be valid. Clearly the lives of all human beings, citizens and non-citizens, are of equal value. State leaders are humans too, and as such they have moral obligations to the whole of humanity. It seems odd that people should consider it acceptable to kill one innocent person in order to save another, simply because the latter is a co-citizen and the former is not.
Compatriot preference rests on two primary arguments: the first is utilitarian; the second relates to the nature of a state.
The utilitarian position is that if states had an equal responsibility for everybody everywhere on the planet, they would be unlikely to fulfill well their specific responsibilities toward those over whom they have direct authority. The failure of socialist economics plainly demonstrated that when property is owned by everybody, nobody feels much responsibility toward it. The result was neglect and decay.
Compatriot preference is also an essential part of what makes a state a state. Countries acquire the right to regulate the lives of their citizens only because they provide those citizens with something in return, such as security and public services. They have no such social contract with strangers outside their borders.
But from this it also follows that there are some things which states may do to citizens that they may not rightfully do to non-citizens who are not part of the contract. They may, for instance, conscript the former but not the latter for military service. In some instances, therefore, a principle of non-compatriot preference applies.
This is especially true in cases where the state exerts effective control over persons while denying them the equal rights of citizenship. In such cases some special obligations rest on the state vis-à-vis those persons in order to justify this unequal status.
Feminist philosopher Annette Baier has noted that most ethical systems assume chosen relationships between equals, whereas in reality many relationships are unchosen and unequal, those between parents and children being an example. In these cases, those who stand in a position of authority over those who have not chosen to be subordinate have a duty to exercise an “ethic of care” toward them.
In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, the relationship is certainly unequal and unchosen. Israel has exercised control over the occupied territories for 40 years, and under the terms of the 4th Geneva Convention, and in accordance with the findings of the Israeli Supreme Court, the International Court of Justice, and previous legal precedent, Israel legally remains the occupying power in Gaza. The Palestinians have never willingly accepted their subordination, and yet, not being Israeli citizens, they have no say in the decisions of the government which rules over them. Because of this, one may argue that the Israeli state has the obligation to adopt an “ethic of care” toward the Palestinians, and that compatriot preference does not apply.
This is in accord with the view expressed by Prof. Kasher and Gen. Yadlin that the lives of people who are not citizens but are under the effective control of the state and are not engaged in terrorist activity should take priority over the lives of citizens fighting in the armed forces of the state. In assessing whether to strike a target, this principle would dictate that the harm which may be done to Palestinian civilians should be considered more highly than the harm which may result for soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces if the target is left untouched.
But is this enough? Given the unequal and unchosen nature of the Israel-Palestinian relationship and the control which Israel has for decades exercised over the Palestinians, the argument for preferring Israeli non-combatant citizens over Palestinian non-combatant non-citizens is not as strong as is often supposed. The Israeli state has an important moral duty to protect its own citizens, but it also has a duty to care for others over whom it exercises control. The latter obligation may in fact be even stronger than the former precisely because these others are not citizens.
Rather than debating the permissible proportion of dead Palestinian civilians to dead Israeli civilians, both opponents and supporters of Israel’s actions need to take a closer look at Israel’s obligations toward those who have no voice in its government and the extent to which these are compatible with taking military action against them.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
1 comment:
Obama Camp ‘Prepared to Talk to Hamas’
Let's hope that Israel doesn't leave Obama with anyone to talk to. Negotiating with terrorists may well rate at the most perfect example ever of mental masturbation.
Gaza: Rabbis and World Congress Imams Together in Strip
I rest my case.
Two Top Al-Qaeda Generals ‘Killed in Air Strike in Pakistan’
It looks like somebody attended the Korbin Dallas School of Negotiating™.
Both were believed to have been involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.
Some long, long overdue payback.
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