There are disturbing news reports tonight of the growing violence in Greece. Of all the riots and unrest going on in Europe now, the Greek version is the worst.Good news: the “Voice of Hezbollah”, Ibrahim Moussawi, has been denied entry to the UK after extraordinary protests and pressure were mounted against the Government’s decision to admit him.
Also notable is the kidnapping of foreign doctors in Darfur. The kidnappers are demanding that the arrest warrant against president Omar al-Bashir be dropped.
Thanks to Abu Elvis, ACT for America, C. Cantoni, CSP, DK, Gaia, Holger Danske, Insubria, JD, Reinhard, Steen, TB, Tuan Jim, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Cinema: Oscar-Winning Spain Suffers Box-Office Blues
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 12 — Spain’s film industry has many fans across Europe and worldwide, as is vouched by the recent Oscar awarded to Penelope Cruz for her role in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but this success is not reflected in the official figures of Spain’s film market, which is showing signs of deepest crisis. There were 1.4 million fewer movie-goers in Spain’s movie theatres in 2008 compared to the previous year, a drop of 9.1%, as shown by figures published today on the webpage of the country’s Culture Ministry. This has led to a 6% fall in box-office takings, which totalled a meagre 81.6 million euros. The crisis is also marked by the closures of movie theatres, whose numbers shrank by 4.3%. In 2008, there were 868 cinemas in operation in Spain, or 39 fewer than in 2007. The Culture Ministry comments that the reduced figures for box-office takings last year comes as quite a surprise, given that last year saw an increase in the number of home-made films: there were 384 of them, compared to the 386 made in 2007. In total, there were 1,652 screenings of films in Spanish cinemas last year, compared to the 1,776 showings during the year before. Along with the drop in takings for nationally-made films, which brought in 5.1 million euros less than during 2007 (-6%), there was also a slighter drop in the turnover generated by foreign films shot in Spain, (-3,5%), which stood at 537.6 million euros in 2008 compared to the previous year’s 557 million euros. The biggest home-grown box-office hit was ‘The Oxford Murders’, with takings of 8.2 million euros; but it manages only fifteenth position in the league of the most-viewed films, with US productions taking the top spots, such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (3.5 million viewers), followed by Hancock, Kung Fu Panda, Mamma Mia!, Madagascar 2, The Mummy, The Dark Knight. Spanish-made films, such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, are down at 16th place the box-office big league. Even Spain’s big-name directors, such as Pedro Almodovar, whose latest film, Los Abrazos Rotos’ (Broken Embraces) gets its first screenings on March 18, don’t want any talk of crisis. Speaking in an interview with El Pais some days ago, the director of Volver’ promised that “the first figures for 2009 are very different to those for 2008. The trend in January and February show that box-office takings are growing”. And this is not because 2009 is the year for the premiers of his film and those of other famous Spanish directors such as Amenabar, Fernando Trueba or Isabel Coixet; but because, as Almodovar said, “the financial crisis is doing the cinema good,” given that “people aren’t going out to eat so much, but still want to go out and the cinema is an affordable form of entertainment for these times”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Crisis Serious But Can be Weathered, Berlusconi Says
(ANSAmed) — VIMERCATE, (MILAN), MARCH 9 — The global economic crisis is “particularly serious” but it can be weathered if businessmen and consumers remain confident, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday. Speaking at the inauguration of the new headquarters of the American networking and communications technology company Cisco Business Systems, Berlusconi said that although the crisis “appears to be particularly serious” its duration “depends on our reaction”. He reassured Italians, saying no one would face “poverty” because the government was ready to step in and “help more unfortunate citizens”. “Thank goodness, wére a country that tends to save. On the whole, most families have savings accounts and our banking system is the most solid in Europe”. The government has earmarked 150 million euros to help banking system, “but not a single bank has needed state funding,” he said. “On October 10, I told Italians that the government would not allowe the banks to go bankrupt and that’s exactly what happened”. Referring to consumer spending, Berlusconi said employees’ were earning more so their purchasing power has not been dented. “There’s no reason for consumers to change their spending habits,” he said. A drive by Civil Service Minister Renato Brunetta to increase the presence of staff in public offices has reaped results because absenteeism has plunged 40%, he said. “Civil service workers have received bonuses and the drop in gasoline prices has brought down retail prices,” said Berlusconi. The premier then gave businessmen a personal recipe to face the crisis, telling them that to stay upbeat they should stop reading the papers. He recalled meeting former British premier Margaret Thatcher at the Barbados and telling her he usually went to bed fuming after reading previews of the next day’s papers. “She told me that if yoùre governing it’s best not to read the papers and that she only looked at those that had positive things to say”. This bit of advice had prompted him to ask government spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti to show him only the ones worth reading, said the premier. “I ended up not seeing him for two months,” said Berlusconi, adding: “that’s why I believe businessmen should follow this recipe and boost their confidence. The papers — especially the headlines — are always saying that everything is crumbling to bits. Wéve always had crises but then they end. This crisis is very serious but it can be shortened depending on how we react to it”. On Friday, Berlusconi accused the media of exaggerating the consequences of the crisis which he said was “certainly severe but not tragic”. Speaking to the press to illustrate his government’s 17.8-billion-euro package to fund a major public works program, the premier said that “it’s harmful to everyone’s interest that the media presents the crisis as something tragic. This is an exaggeration because the crisis is severe but not tragic”. “There is no doubt that the crisis exists, but the media is making it much more dramatic than it really is. One need only look at the fact that the plunge on stock markets has been caused by (the performance of) only a handful of stocks,” Berlusconi observed. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Transport: Port Traffic Down in Egypt
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, MARCH 10 — Egypt’s Ministry of Transport said that traffic in the country’s ports dropped by 1.9 percent in 2008 due to the global economic slowdown. Ports are also expected to face a sharp downturn in 2009, the ministry said. The number of containers ports will handle is expected to drop to 4.5 million, down 20 percent from 2008. Egypt recently unveiled a plan to double its container traffic, targeting 8 million by 2010, putting the figure roughly in line with Dubai, New York and Rotterdam, the report said. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: It’s a Fabrication That Britain Doesn’t Make Things Any More
[Comment from Tuan Jim: this is similar to the situation in the US as well]
The idea that we need to ‘reindustrialise’ is based on a myth. Britain’s manufacturing output is still bigger than France’s
Nicolas Sarkozy stung us when he claimed last month that Britain, unlike France, “has no industry”. Since the implosion of the financial sector, it has become an article of faith that the British economy is paying for its excessive reliance on services. The UK, the story goes, has irresponsibly let its manufacturing sector go to rack and ruin. Our future prosperity, goes the argument, depends on rebalancing the economy away from services such as hairdressing and banking to metal bashing and making things.
With stories about factory closures appearing every day in newspapers, how seriously should we take the decline of British manufacturing? Superficially at least, it looks like an open and shut case. Manufacturing’s share of total economic output has been shrinking for years. The sector has lost more than a million jobs in the past decade alone. And the UK has consistently been posting one of the largest trade deficits in the developed world. None of these facts is disputed.
The trouble is that we cannot interpret them correctly unless we understand what is happening to manufacturing output and productivity. Consider first the long-term trend in manufacturing output. You might think, like President Sarkozy, that manufacturing output in the UK has been declining remorselessly for decades. If so, you would be wrong.
Until the global collapse in output triggered by the financial crisis in late 2008, manufacturing output in the UK was higher than it had ever been. In 2007 it was two and a half times higher in real terms than it was in 1950. And despite the surge in imports from China, production was 7.1 per cent higher in 2007 than it was in 1995.
People who believe that British manufacturing has gone to the dogs tend to pay more attention to factory closures in industries that are in long-term decline rather than they do to rising output in other parts of manufacturing. The UK may no longer be a big producer of textiles but it is still a big player in many high-end sectors. Rolls-Royce and BAe Systems, for example, are key actors in the aerospace industry. Two of the world’s largest pharmaceuticals groups are British (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca). And Cambridge is Europe’s leading cluster for biotechnology.
The UK even has an automotive industry — and not just in niches like Formula One, where it is a world leader. True, the demise of MG Rover in 2005 brought an end to mass car production by British companies. But thanks to companies such as Nissan (whose Sunderland plant is the most productive in the EU), the UK automotive sector produced more vehicles and engines in 2007 than ever before. Some people argue that output by foreign-owned companies in the UK should not be treated as British manufacturing. But on that logic, London is not an important financial centre.
If output has been rising, why has manufacturing’s share of GDP been declining? The answer, of course, is that output in the service sector has grown by more. What explains the rise in service sector output? Part of it is outsourcing: activities that manufacturers previously carried out in-house are now provided by service providers (think of catering). But the more important reason is that as countries become wealthier, they spend a growing share of their income on services (education, healthcare, holidays, meals out and so on).
The decline in the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP, it follows, is not a uniquely British phenomenon: it has taken place across the developed world. The process has admittedly gone farther in Britain than in Germany or Japan. But these two countries, where manufacturing still accounts for more than a fifth of GDP, are outliers. The UK is closer to the developed country norm. And President Sarkozy is wrong: manufacturing output accounts for a larger share of GDP in the UK (13 per cent) than it does in France (12 per cent) or the United States (12 per cent).
The public understandably frets about the decline of manufacturing jobs. But the widespread belief that this long-established trend is a symptom of UK firms’ inability to “compete” on global markets is largely mistaken. The main reason why employment has been falling is that productivity in the manufacturing sector has been growing faster than output. In other words, declining employment reflects the strength of efficiency gains in manufacturing. Productivity data refute the notion that manufacturing is the Achilles’ heel of the UK economy.
If productivity consistently grows faster in manufacturing than in services, are trade unionist and business leaders right to call for a programme of “reindustrialisation”? The answer is less obvious than you might think. Services, remember, now account for 75 per cent of GDP — nearly six times more than manufacturing. Productivity must therefore grow six times faster in manufacturing than in services to deliver a similar-sized increase in living standards. This is a stretch, to say the least: it has “only” grown twice as fast over the past decade.
The point is not that manufacturing is doing just fine or that it should be ignored by policymakers. Certain structural features of the British economy have unquestionably made life difficult for the sector: for years, too many science and engineering graduates have gone to design collateralised debt obligations in the City rather than machine tools in the Midlands. The manufacturing sector, moreover, has been hit particularly hard by the global financial crisis. In January output was 12.8 per cent lower than it had been a year earlier.
Notice, however, that a larger manufacturing sector would not have reduced Britain’s exposure to the current global economic downturn — as the spectacular collapse of output in industrial powerhouses such as Germany and Japan testifies. Besides, calls for Britain to “reindustrialise” are a distraction. The UK’s main challenge over the long term is not to raise productivity in a relatively efficient sector that makes up a small and declining share of GDP. It is to raise productivity in relatively inefficient sectors that make up a large and rising share of GDP.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Barbara Bush Leaves Hospital After Heart Surgery
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
[…]
Heart surgeon Dr. Gerald Lawrie, who led the surgical team, said Mrs. Bush will have to take it easy for at least another three weeks before resuming normal activities. He called her “a remarkable patient” and said her recovery went quickly for such a procedure…
[full story at URL]
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Caroline Glick: Intelligence and the Anti-Israel Lobby
Ill winds are blowing out of Washington these days. On Thursday, The Washington Post headline blared, “Intelligence Pick Blames ‘Israel Lobby’ for Withdrawal.”
The article, by Walter Pincus, described how former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles “Chas” Freeman is blaming Israel’s Jewish American supporters for his resignation Tuesday from his post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
In a diatribe published on Foreign Policy’s Web site on Wednesday, Freeman accused the alleged “Israel Lobby” of torpedoing his appointment. In his words, “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency… The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views… and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”
He continued, “I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the State of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.”
The Washington Post’s article quoted liberally from Freeman’s diatribe. It also identified the Jewish Americans who wrote against Freeman’s appointment, and insinuated that AIPAC — which took no stand on his appointment — actually worked behind the scenes to undermine it.
While it described in lurid detail how one anti-Freeman Jewish blogger quoted other anti-Freeman Jewish bloggers on his Web site, Pincus’s article failed to report what it was about Freeman that caused the Jewish cabal to criticize his appointment. Consequently, by default, Pincus effectively endorsed Freeman’s diatribe against the all-powerful “Israel Lobby.”…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
College of (Social) Change
Education: A new survey shows America’s professors downgrading the classics and elevating social activism as a teaching goal. There must be cheaper ways to train community organizers.
We should not be surprised, from what we know of the academic culture. But the latest round of “The American College Teacher,” a national survey done every three years by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, will nonetheless disappoint anyone who still thinks of a university as a place where young minds encounter the great minds of the past.
Based on responses by 22,562 professors at 372 colleges and universities during the 2007-08 academic year, the survey found that only 34.5% placed high value on teaching the classic works of Western civilization. Far more — 58.5% — said it was important to mold students into agents of social change; 55.5% made it a priority to “instill in students a commitment to community service.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Did Supreme Court Clerk Torpedo Eligibility Cases?
Taitz submits motion for rehearing in case challenging Obama’s citizenship
A California attorney whose emergency submission to the U.S. Supreme Court on President Obama’s eligibility was turned back without a hearing or comment now is submitting a motion for re-hearing, alleging some of her documentation may have been withheld from the justices by a court clerk.
The motion for reconsideration alleges a court clerk “of his own volition and on his own authority refused to file of record, docket, and forward to the Chief Justice and Associate Justices petitioners’ supplemental brief presented on January 15, 2009.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jihad, K—12
When it comes to Islamic Saudi Academy textbooks, forget trust — just verify.
By Nina Shea
For years, the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and various Washington Post journalists have been documenting the fact that the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in northern Virginia — a school founded, funded, and controlled by the Saudi embassy — was teaching religious hatred and violence. More precisely, the Saudi Academy used Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks that sanction what is known in the United States as murder against Jews, adulterers, homosexuals, and converts from Islam, and that encourage Muslims to break various other American laws. The Saudi Academy is now putting out the word that its textbooks have been “revised.” Should we declare victory and move on? Not so fast.
The Associated Press, which ran a story this week headlined “Saudi Academy in Virginia Revises Islamic History Books,” relies on quotes from three individuals who give the academys new textbooks a Good Housekeeping seal of approval: Academy director Abdulrahman Alghofaili, Brown University visiting fellow Eleanor Doumato, and University of North Carolina anthropology professor Gregory Starrett. As AP makes clear, all three were paid by the Islamic Saudi Academy to review the textbooks.
A fourth commentator quoted in the AP report, Ali Ahmed, who is the president of the Gulf Institute and who is not funded by the Saudis, gives a somewhat different assessment. As the AP reporter paraphrases, “The revised texts now being used at ISA make some small improvements in tone. But he said it’s clear from the books that the core ideology behind them — a puritanical strain of Islam known as Wahhabism that is dominant within Saudi Arabia — remains intact.”
Ever since September 11, 2001, there has been a highly funded publicity campaign by the Saudi embassy to persuade Americans that the Academy’s textbooks have been completely revised. Saudi ads in American political magazines, speeches by various Saudi ambassadors and foreign ministers before the Council on Foreign Relations, a national speaking tour by the Saudi ambassador — all have spoken along the lines one of those ambassadors, Turki al-Faisal, took when he told a Town Hall meeting in Los Angeles in 2006: “The Kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials, and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education. Not only have we eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system, we have implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan.” A number of prominent Americans — Charles Freeman, for example — have repeated such claims, despite our annual reports that show this is far from true.
At this point, forget trust; we must verify…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Official Placed on Leave After Technology Office Arrests
Authorities Say Staffer Not Suspected of Wrongdoing
The White House said this morning that President Obama’s chief information officer has been placed on leave out of “an abundance of caution,” even though federal authorities say the staffer is not being investigated in connection with an alleged bribery scam at the D.C. government office he headed until early this month.
Vivek Kundra, who was tapped as the White House technology czar March 5, oversaw technology projects and budgets for 86 D.C. government agencies as head of the District’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer.
Yesterday, a mid-level manager in that office was arrested, along with a business executive, on bribery charges involving city contracts that included “ghost” workers and kickbacks, federal authorities said.
Yusuf Acar, 40, who has worked in the technology office since 2004, was charged with bribery, conspiracy, money laundering and conflict of interest. Sushil Bansal, 41, president and chief executive of the contracting firm Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. (AITC), was charged with bribery and money laundering. Federal agents said Bansal’s company received more than $13 million in revenue from the D.C. government in the past five years.
FBI agents carted away boxes and envelopes from the Office of the Chief Technology Officer throughout the day.
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Obama Racks Up List of Broken Promises
Just 2 months into term, president abandons numerous commitments
After only two months in office, President Obama may have fallen short on a number of his campaign promises.
As a candidate, he promised to allow public comment before signing bills, eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, provide tax credits to businesses for hiring new employees, allow Americans to withdraw funds from 401(k) and retirement accounts without penalties, ban lobbyists from serving in his administration, reform earmarks, bring all combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months, sign the “Freedom of Choice Act,” give Americans $4,000 in credits for college and run a “transparent” administration.
However, after giving his word to the American people on so many issues, Obama has yet to fulfill many commitments.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Reverses Opposition to Mexican Trucks
White House reacts to diplomatic pressure with vow to retain program
One day after signing the $410 billion omnibus funding bill into law, along with provisions ending the Department of Transportation’s Mexican truck demonstration project, the Obama administration has announced intentions to restart the program as soon as possible.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth
It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama’s high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration…
Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.
M.E. CohenOverall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.
A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration’s policies and their impact on peoples’ lives.
[continued at URL]
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School Buses ‘Soft Targets’ for Possible Terrorist Attacks
By: AMANDA CREGAN The Intelligencer
Terrorism experts say homeland security begins at the school bus stop.
It’s a school security gap that most parents, police and school officials don’t always see, but terrorists do.
School buses can be vulnerable to a potential attacker, but are often overlooked in a school district’s security plan.
That’s why 75 police officers, detectives, emergency workers and school administrators from across Montgomery, Bucks and the rest of the Philadelphia region spent Monday learning how to shore up the gap in a course on “School Bus Safety in a Post 9/11 Era” held at the North Montco Technical Career Center in Towamencin and hosted by the Southeast Region Terrorism Taskforce.
Bus safety is an issue that presenter Curtis Lavarello says needs be to taken seriously.
“Based on the assumption by the FBI, there will be further terrorist attacks and school buses are soft targets,” said the 23-year law enforcement veteran from Florida. “It’s been found that children could be the next target for terrorists.”
Because school districts are so fragmented in Pennsylvania, districts each decide if they will contract out for transportation or operate their own bus system, which makes it harder to streamline bus security across the state, he said.
Police and school administrators need to better monitor their school bus yards and need to know if the buses are in a secure compound, who has access to the buses, are they monitored by guards and are the lots properly lit.
Recently, a police officer happened to drive by a dark, unsecured school bus lot in Florida and spotted someone cutting the buses’ brake lines, said Lavarello.
“It’s a very real threat to our children across the country in terms of homeland security,” he said.
But the first line of defense in school security can start with parents at the bus stop and the school bus drivers.
Parents need to be observant of individuals they’ve never seen before or strange vehicles in close proximity to their child’s bus stop.
A potential attacker would also notice if parents habitually chat at length with bus drivers, prolonging the bus’ stop and opening the site up to attack.
Bus drivers also need to be more aware of the emotional state of students on the bus, if they are crying or seem upset or depressed. Reporting disturbed students to school officials could be a way to stop them if they plan to carry out a violent school act.
“You have to realize that what happens in school, happens on the school bus. Everyone is focusing on the protection of schools, but the bus safety is really lacking,” said Sean Burke, president of School Safety Advocacy Council. “I think were sadly misinformed to think that people who plan to do our children harm don’t know this.”
| — Hat tip: ACT for America | [Return to headlines] |
Police Should Have Anti-Terror Powers When Needed: Ottawa
OTTAWA — Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who introduced legislation Thursday to revive lapsed anti-terrorism measures, said it is necessary to give police additional powers “if and when” they need them, even though they never have been used.
Mr. Nicholson defended his controversial bill as a hip-pocket type of law, so nobody can come back to the government in the event of a terror attack to ask why it didn’t do more to prevent the attack.
“We don’t plan for terrorist acts. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to have these tools on the books,”Mr. Nicholson said in an interview.
The legislation would restore two provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, passed quickly in December, 2001, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
A “sunset clause” was added, so the two most contentious provisions of the bill — investigative hearings and preventive arrests — would expire after five years unless they were specifically renewed by Parliament.
The extraordinary measures would give police the power to arrest suspects before an act of terrorism occurs, and hold them for up to three days before receiving a judicial hearing.
Authorities could also compel people to testify at closed-door investigative hearings to help police with terrorism probes.
The Criminal Code provisions lapsed in March, 2007, after the opposition parties at the time refused to support their continuance.
It was unclear Thursday whether the latest endeavour will pass in the minority Parliament.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, who condemned the provisions two years ago as an unnecessary intrusion on civil liberties, told reporters he would have to study the bill before commenting.
But his public safety critic, Mark Holland, said the legislation is needed in the event of “extraordinary circumstances.”
The NDP and the Bloc oppose the proposed legislation.
The bill is a slightly milder version of the one opposition parties voted down two years ago and virtually identical to one the government introduced in the Senate after the first bill failed.
That initiative, which had the support of the Liberal-dominated Senate, died when the federal election was called last fall.
The Senate version added the requirements that: police would have to convince a judge they had used every other option available to obtain the evidence they needed; and witnesses compelled to testify at secret hearings would be able to retain lawyers.
Police have never made preventive arrests. An investigative hearing, however, was held in Vancouver to try to force testimony from an Air India witness. The case went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in 2004 that the investigative hearings do not violate the Charter of Rights.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Quebec Judge Denies Adoption in Surrogacy Case
MONTREAL • The Quebec couple had tried everything to conceive a baby since marrying in 2002 — surgery, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization. When their attempts failed, they turned to the Internet and found a woman willing to serve as a surrogate mother in exchange for $20,000. The surrogate was artificially inseminated with the husband’s sperm, and last year she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
The baby was immediately turned over to the couple, with only the father’s name listed on the birth certificate. All that remained was to have his wife adopt the infant, and the couple would be legally recognized as her parents.
But in a decision that has come to light this week, a Quebec Court judge refused the woman’s request to become the baby’s adoptive mother. The “convoluted and carefully planned parental project” was an attempt to circumvent an article of the Quebec Civil Code that declares all such surrogate contracts illegal, Judge Michel DuBois ruled.
It is not the case, he concluded, that the interests of the child are always paramount. “This child does not have the right to a maternal relationship at any price,” he wrote. “To give effect to the father’s consent to his child’s adoption would be for the court, in these circumstances, a sign of willful blindness and confirmation that the end justifies the means.”
The couple, who are not named in the decision in order to protect the child, have declined to discuss their situation, as has their lawyer. They have not appealed Judge DuBois’ Jan. 6 ruling.
The decision offers a rare glimpse into a practice that experts say is more common than people might think. It is an offence under the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act to offer payment to a surrogate mother, but there have been no prosecutions since the law came into effect in 2004. A National Post investigation last month found Canadian women using the Internet to offer their services as surrogate mothers or egg donors.
Alain Roy, a professor of child and family law at the Université de Montréal, said Judge DuBois is the first judge in Quebec to come down forcefully against a practice to which others have turned a blind eye.
“Here for once there is a judge who said, ‘Wait a minute, adoption is one thing, the interest of the child is one thing, but I want to know the context. If the context in Quebec is considered contrary to public order, I do not want to indirectly sanction it,’ “ Mr. Roy said.
He added that in other Quebec adoption cases involving children from surrogate mothers, judges have chosen not to seek too many details. Faced with a fait accompli, they have ruled that the interests of the child require that the adoption be approved, he said.
The couple in the recent case told the court they researched potential surrogate candidates on the Internet to identify someone who was fertile, in good health and available. The woman they chose already had five children of her own and had been a surrogate mother before. The couple said they were satisfied that she had good “references” and agreed to pay $20,000 to cover the “expenses and drawbacks” of the pregnancy.
During the pregnancy, the wife kept in touch with the surrogate mother, staying informed of developments in the pregnancy. When she gave birth, the husband and wife were present in the hospital delivery room. Following the advice of their lawyer, they agreed to leave blank information about the biological mother on the baby’s birth certificate, clearing the way for the father to later consent to the child’s adoption by his wife.
Judge DuBois said the couple had counted on skirting the law by presenting the court with a fait accompli. “Thus, all the steps planned and taken in illegality would finally end in a legal result, thanks to the handy master-key criterion of the interest of the child. This criterion would purify whiter than white and erase everything that had been previously done,” he wrote.
As a result of the ruling, the child will have no legal mother. Mr. Roy said it puts her in an unusual but not unprecedented situation. He noted that since 2002, Quebec law has allowed lesbians to have children without a father being registered on the declaration of birth. Ultimately, he said, it is up to legislators to determine whether the prohibition on surrogate motherhood still corresponds to societal values.
“It is time in Quebec for all of family law be overhauled to adjust it to new realities,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Weapons and Narcotics Gang Busted
Twelve people from a criminal organization have been arrested in Kolding in Denmark over the past year in one of the largest-ever weapons and narcotics cases in Denmark.
After a 12-month secret investigation, the Southeastern Jutland Police has confiscated large amounts of narcotics and illegal weapons from a gang in the Kolding area.
Twelve people have been arrested, 10 of whom have been sentenced for illegal imports from Bosnia and Germany.
The case is one of the largest-ever in the country, involving some 8.6kgs of heroin, 8kgs. of amphetamines and large amounts of cocaine and ecstasy. The gang has also introduced two AK-47s and 16 other handguns into the country, Investigation Chief Klaus Arboe tells Ritzau.
“This is a group from the Kolding region. They know people in the biker environment, but are not members themselves,” Arboe tells Ritzau.
Boss held The case began a year ago when a 30-year-old, who is suspected of being the brains behind the gang, was detained in a closed-door hearing. Since then 11 others have been arrested, 10 of whom — nine men and one woman — have been sentenced to between eight months and six years in prison for handling narcotics and weapons.
The 30-year-old and another 58-year-old are to be sentenced in May.
Only half of the weapons Only half of the weapons have been confiscated by the police — one of the machine guns was found after a police raid on a Hells Angels club in Amager near Copenhagen.
Arboe says that Danish police cooperated with foreign police services in rounding up the gang. The narcotics came from Bosnia while the weapons came from Bosnia and Germany, he says. Large amounts of ammunition have also been confiscated.
Gang war The police spokesman said the operation has also had an effect on the ongoing gang war in Copenhagen.
“It is our clear impression that the weapons were meant for criminal groups — both bikers and anti-social youths. These sorts of weapons dealers are unscrupulous. They sell to both sides of a conflict without blinking an eyelid,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
EU-Israel: EP Green Lights Agreement on Airline Services
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 11 — The European Union and Israel are moving towards a common airline market. The European Parliament has today given the green light to an agreement on airline services which is to replace the current bilateral agreements signed by individual member states. The parliament emphasised the central role of Israel in the Middle East aviation market and its important strategic position. As it welcomed the reaching of an agreement, the Strasbourg-based assembly underlined its importance in the wider aim of increasing shared airspace. However, this ‘should in no way limit the level of access to the market, reached with existing bilateral agreements” and the market’s opening ought to be ‘gradual, reciprocal and sustainable”, reads the document approved by the European parliamentarians. The Parliament expressed its hope that the increase of shared airspace be preceded by a period of regulatory convergence in areas including safety, security, the environment, State aid, competition and workers’ rights. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Helsinki to Set Up Two New Refugee Reception Centres
Disused hotels to be leased by city
Helsinki has decided to open two new centres for the temporary housing of asylum seekers. The city’s Social Affairs Committee voted 7-3 on Thursday that the Marttahotelli hotel in the Punavuori neighbourhood and the Hotel Fenno in the Kallio district will be converted to serve the needs of asylum seekers. Each of the new facilities will have a capacity to house 200 asylum seekers. A proposal by a member of the True Finns Party, to reject the establishment of the centres, was voted down. Also voting against the centre were two representatives of the National Coalition Party. Voting in favour of the facility were the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Left Alliance, and the Swedish People’s Party.
“I see this as a human rights question. There is a crying need for reception centres”, said the board’s chairwoman Sirkku Ingervo (Green). The meeting proceeded in a constrictive spirit, although debate was heated at times. No alternative locations were put forward at Thursday’s meeting.
There has been strong opposition to a new refugee reception centre specifically among residents of Punavuori. The City of Helsinki notes that the number of asylum seekers needing shelter grew last year, and has remained high this year as well. In addition, the state has previously asked Helsinki to arrange more space for the would-be refugees. Helsinki currently has two refugee reception centres, one in Metsälä and one in Kyläsaari, which have a combined capacity for 300 asylum seekers. Officials are considering the future of the Kyläsaari centre, which is in poor physical condition.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Four Injured Children From War Zones in Rome for Treatment
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 11 — Four children from the war zones — two Palestinians, a Lebanese and an Iraqi — will soon arrive in Rome for treatment: the result of an agreement between the Umberto I clinic, which allocated four beds last year specifically for this reason, and the non-profit organisation ‘Angels’ (National Association of the Young Energies to Bring Solidarity) which apart from handling the organisational aspects, also takes care of travel expenses and accommodation for the parents while they are in Italy. “The first four children will arrive in Rome in a month, or a month and a half, but there are forty in Gaza who are in urgent need of treatment and whom we are very worried about”, explained spokeswoman for Angels, Benedetta Paravia, during a press conference. Paravia expressed her hopes for assistance from the Defence department in terms of military planes to carry out the tranfer of the children. Minister Ignazio La Russa who was at the conference confirmed that he would stand by ‘an association which has shown a real willingness to translate the deep desire to help those most in need, especially children for as long as necessary” .(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Sony Staff Free Hostage Bosses After Pay Row
Sacked workers at a French Sony factory have freed two executives they had been holding hostage in an attempt to win a better severance deal.
Sony France chief executive Serge Foucher and human resources boss Roland Bentz were held overnight by the workers at the Pontonx-sur-l’Adour plant in southwest France.
The workers are trying to force the Japanese electronics giant to give them a payout in line with other French Sony plants that have shut.
“I am happy to be free and to see the light of day again,” Mr Foucher said, before travelling with his former captors for a meeting with state and union representatives.
On Thursday the bosses had travelled to meet its 311 workers one last time before the closure of the factory on April 17.
But the workers, who say their payoff is less generous than that offered at other French Sony plants that have closed, decided to launch a strike.
They barricaded the entry to the site with tree trunks and stopped them leaving, then held them overnight in a meeting room.
CGT union official Patrick Hachaguer said worker had been asked to let Mr Foucher out of the factory earlier this morning to meet the regional state representative — but the workers initially refused, demanding instead that officials came to them.
Sony France announced in December the closure of the site, which has since 1984 specialised in manufacturing video tapes.
[ed: video tapes?? Definitely time to close]
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Germany: a Forum for Attacking Israel?
Germany Asked to Boycott UN Racism Conference
The US, Canada and Italy have said they will not attend the United Nations Conference on Racism out of fear that it will be used primarily for attacks on Israel. With states like Iran, Libya and Cuba dictating the agenda, calls are growing for Germany to join the boycott too.
It was one of the low points in the history of the United Nations. In September, 2001, the South African city of Durban was playing host to the UN World Conference against Racism. The aim had been to officially declare slavery and colonialism as crimes.
However, both in the conference room and outside it, one state repeatedly came in for diatribes: Israel, accused of being the spawn of racism and apartheid. It became clear that the attacks on Israel had been orchestrated by authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world. “The hate contingent has prevailed,” wrote German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau at the time. The memory of the meeting was soon eclipsed, however, by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, which took place just four days after the conference ended.
Now this sad spectacle may repeat itself. The UN will hold a follow-up conference to the Durban meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, between April 20 and 24. Not only Jewish organizations fear that states like Iran, Libya or Saudi Arabia might turn the event into an anti-Israeli forum — Canada, Italy and the United States have said that they will keep away from the event. The Obama administration has said the conference threatens, again, to unfairly single out Israel.
Now the German government is coming under pressure to pull out of the conference, too. The group “Boycott Durban II” — an alliance of non-profit organizations, journalists and former politicians — has gathered 1,300 signatures calling for a boycott, including those of well-known figures in Germany such as the writers Peter Schneider and Ralph Giordano, and the lawyer and women’s rights activist Seyran Ates. “A boycott should be a matter of course,” thinks Alex Feuerhardt, a Berlin journalist who helped set up the group. “One does not speak with anti-Semites,” he says.
The call for the boycott has been provoked by a draft of the conference’s closing statement. The current 60-page document condemns only one state explicitly: Israel. The paper focuses on one conflict, in the Middle East, and Israel appears as the only aggressor in that dispute. The draft accuses Israel of torture, apartheid and human rights crimes.
“This ties Durban II directly with Durban I,” Feuerhardt says.
The draft is “unbelievably one-sided,” says German parliamentarian Klaus Faber, a Social Democrat (SPD), who supports the boycott movement. He says it’s astounding that other trouble spots and specific human rights abuses aren’t on the conference’s agenda. “It is hard to believe. No word about the mass murders in Darfur, nothing about genital mutilation, stonings or racist terrorism,” he says.
One reason for the boycott movement is that the UN Human Rights Council is organizing the conference. The council emerged in 2006 from the ashes of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which had been accused of providing a platform for totalitarian states. The successor body doesn’t seem much better. Some states that sit on the council — there are 47 in all — have dubious human rights records, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Cuba and China.
The meetings of the new body have proved to be just as contentious. In June 2008, when the British human rights activist David Littman wanted to address the council, he was heckled by Egyptian and Pakistani representatives. The council president stepped in to rule that there could be no mention of Sharia law in the context of a debate about human rights. Meanwhile the council seems obsessed with Israel: “It was discussed 120 times there in 2007,” says Feuerhardt.
The impetus for the German boycott alliance was provided by the so-called preparatory committee for the April conference. The committee is made up of 20 states who work together to draft the final document. Libya currently chairs the committee, and it includes Iran, Pakistan and Cuba. “It is incomprehensible that Germany is still planning to take part in the conference,” says Faber of the SPD.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who received a protest letter from the Central Council of Jews in September 2008, is currently still slated to attend, but he may cancel the trip. “The draft at this point is by no means satisfactory,” a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry told SPIEGEL ONLINE, adding: “Our aim is to prevent the conference being misused.” That is why the draft is being “continuously examined,” she explained. Steinmeier has also pushed for the issue to be debated at the European Union’s General Affairs and External Relations Council next week. “It is important for us to reach a European consensus,” the spokeswoman said.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay cannot understand the uproar. Last Thursday she argued that fears about misuse of the conference by Israel’s enemies were unwarranted.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, work has begun on a new closing statement, which is due in the next few days. “We are in the midst of a negotiating process,” a spokeswoman for the Human Rights Council told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “We hope that common ground can be reached in the end.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Youths With Sledgehammers Smash Stores
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Dozens of youths carrying sledgehammers and iron bars have smashed cars, banks and storefronts in an upscale district of central Athens in the latest outbreak of violence in Greece.
Several dozen stores and cars were damaged in the daytime attack, which sent shoppers and bystanders in the city’s Kolonaki area fleeing in panic.
Leaflets scattered at the scene Friday identified the attackers as members of local anarchist groups.
A similar attack also occurred Friday in the northern city of Thessaloniki, leaving three banks damaged.
Violence involving anarchist youths has escalated following riots last December that were sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenage boy.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Attacks Multiply in Greece
Athens — When Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead by police in Athens, Greeks were stunned not only by the power of ensuing youth protests but also the authorities’ failure to stop a parallel wave of violence.
But a hundred days on from the 15-year-old’s death on December 6, which triggered a nationwide orgy of violence and looting, organised groups have picked up the baton with wide-ranging attacks police seem powerless to stop.
In recent weeks, militants burned down an Athens train, several prominent Greeks had their homes and offices targeted with firebombs and the country’s most dangerous extremists re-emerged after over a year of inactivity.
The Revolutionary Struggle on Thursday said it was behind two recent bomb strikes against US-based banking group Citibank, one of them aiming to blow up the bank’s Greek headquarters.
The far-left group has also twice ambushed police with assault weapons and nearly killed a young officer outside a ministry building since December 6.
Police re-strategise
The attacks have forced police back to the drawing board less than a decade after the dismantling of Greece’s deadliest far-left organisation November 17 ahead of the Athens 2004 Olympics.
“After the Olympics many experts were transferred to other departments and investigation was not conducted with the necessary seriousness,” says the former operational head of Greece’s anti-terror squad Thanassis Katerinopoulos.
Appearing in 2003, Revolutionary Struggle wounded a number of people in attacks while N17 killed 23 people in 25 years before its break-up in 2002.
But RS (Epanastatikos Agonas in Greek) appears less ideologically-driven and less predictable than Marxist-influenced N17, experts note.
“Revolutionary Struggle draws heavily from the autonomous anarchist camp,” says Dimitris Beladis, a lawyer specialising in urban guerrilla issues.
“This fits in with the emergence of a new anarchist movement that is more active and less ideological than their predecessors,” he told AFP.
Anti-establishment attacks in Greece where memories of the 1967-1974 army dictatorship still run strong are nothing new.
But the occasional torching of cash machines and state cars has been replaced by an almost weekly run of organised arson by new groups.
“There is an underlying activism in Greece that was awakened by the December troubles and nourished by the economic crisis,” says police spokesperson Panagiotis Stathis.
“Setting fire to a car is one thing, but here we are dealing with something more worrying — pre-planned operations by organised groups.”
Elite are targeted
The early March train arson which caused millions of euros of damage was claimed by the Gang of Conscience/Extremists of Perama to avenge a recent attack on a unionist who had protested over cleaners’ working conditions at the Athens rail company.
In early February a wave of minor arson attacks targeted the offices and homes of several members of the Greek political, cultural and judicial elite and was claimed by a far-left group calling itself “Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei”.
That same month, another previously unknown group calling itself Revolutionary Sect strafed a police station and a television station with automatic weapons.
None of the attacks have caused serious injury but observers say the wave of violence is unprecedented.
“There is always an emergence of illegal organisations after social troubles,” said Beladis.
“There is enormous discontent in Greece towards the sluggish state and its policies of unrestricted liberalism, and this has created a dynamic that seeks to express itself.”
Police do not rule out that the various names could mask a common group of militants.
Prominent criminologist Yiannis Panoussis says that little is known about the perpetrators, but notes that they “feel legitimised by the December crisis” and have “crossed a line into more stringent and blind violence.”
Panoussis, who makes no secret of his left-wing sympathies, was himself the target of two attacks last month — a makeshift bomb was left outside his university office in mid-February, and a few days later he was beaten up by a dozen youths as he delivered a speech on the Greek prison system.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Youths Smash Stores in Central Athens
A group of hooded youths armed with crowbars and sledgehammers on Friday vandalised shop fronts, banks and cars in the affluent Athens district of Kolonaki, police and witnesses said.
Midday shoppers were stunned to see around 50 youths smashing windows as they ran towards the bohemian district of Exarcheia, the centre of serious unrest in December over the fatal shooting of a teenage boy by police.
“It all happened very quickly,” a witness told private Flash radio.
“They told us to leave the area and started smashing windows with sledgehammers as they ran down the street,” he added.
“We thought it was a robbery at first,” a shop attendant said.
“All our windows are smashed. I was forced to duck for cover along with my customers,” she added.
Nobody was apparently injured but the youths smashed and damaged the windows of at least four banks, around 50 stores and cafes and 10 cars parked on at least two streets, AFP reporters said.
They left behind leaflets demanding the release of a young self-styled anarchist, the son of a leading leftist politician, who was arrested in a 2007 bank robbery and has been detained since.
The youths subsequently sought refuge in the nearby Athens law faculty which is covered by strict regulations that limit police entry into university buildings.
Attacks on property in Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki have multiplied following the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos in December, with experts noting a dangerous wave of radicalisation among a section of the country’s youth.
Several businesses in Kolonaki, one of Athens’ best-guarded areas and home to several embassies and the homes and offices of government officials, were also vandalised at the time.
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Greenland: Guardian: Ice Cap’s Tipping Point ‘Further Off Than Thought’
Previous studies have misjudged the so-called Greenland tipping point at which the ice sheet is certain to melt completely, a study finds.
The giant Greenland ice sheet may be more resistant to temperature rise than experts realised. The finding gives hope that the worst impacts of global warming, such as the devastating floods depicted in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, could yet be avoided.
Jonathan Bamber, an ice sheet expert at the University of Bristol, was reported by Britain’s the Guardian newspaper as having told the conference that previous studies had misjudged the so-called Greenland tipping point, at which the ice sheet is certain to melt completely. ‘We’re talking about the point at which it is 100% doomed. It seems quite an important number to get right.’ Such catastrophic melting would produce enough water to raise world sea levels by more than 6m.
‘We found that the threshold is about double what was previously published,’ Bamber told the Copenhagen Climate Congress, a special three-day summit aimed at updating the latest climate science ahead of global political negotiations in December over a successor to the Kyoto treaty. It would take an average global temperature rise of 6C to push Greenland into irreversible melting, the new study found.
Previous estimates, including those in the recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the critical threshold was about 3C — which many climate scientists expect to be reached in the coming decades.
‘The threshold temperature has been substantially underestimated in previous studies. Our results have profound implications for predictions of sea level rise from Greenland over the coming century,’ the scientists said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Living Will: Marino, Parliament Majority Against Bill
(AGI) — Rome, 26 Feb — 51pct of MPs are in favour of interruption of tube feeding; 49pct would prefer to live in a permanent vegetative state. There is a clear majority of deputies and senators however (97pct) who believe it is right to let every person indicate their health wishes in a living will. Among MPs 69pct state each person should have the right to make their own choices regarding tube feeding. This emerges from a poll carried out by Ecoradio in the Italian parliament on the question of the living will. Commenting on the poll to the microphone of Ecoradio, PD senator Ignazio Marino said: “This poll shows that a clear majority is against the government bill. It is evident that the same is true for the Italian population. It is important that our MPs vote in the same way they think. I suspect that many of my colleagues in parliament want to be kept in a vegetative state for decades, but I’ve never met a person who told me so. People are free to choose and if they want this type of assistance it should be guaranteed. At the same time we ask for the possibility to leave indications on the end of one’s life”. Regarding the ‘third way’ of Rutelli, Ignazio Marino said: “It is a return to the present state: the doctor decides. Today however people must make their own choices instead of leaving it to the doctor. The text introduced by the majority, instead of helping people at a time of suffering, is an ideological manifest without even a euro of assistance to whose who need it”. To the question if the senator thinks to organise a referendum if the government bill is passed Marino answered: “I’m a surgeon, as such I always have a backup plan. Plan A is in parliament, if it is refused by the centre-right I hope the constitutional court will take a look at it and tell us if it is constitutional or not. If this law is still standing a referendum would be needed.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy’s Passion for Vigilantes
Thousands of volunteers in left and right-leaning municipalities. Opposing extremisms at Massa as CARC vies with SSS
The night watchmen are on the beat during the day as well. At eleven in the morning, an Alfa Romeo 147, its flanks obscured by the group’s name, leaves the Marco Biagi statue to tour the area, passing memorials to Emilio Alessandrini, Giovanni Falcone and all the others until it is back at its starting point. Non-stop, perhaps to get through all the volunteers. When the vigilante groups were unveiled, one hundred and ten people in Ari answered the call and, according to the local registry office, this village perched atop Val di Foro, between the Maiella massif and the coast, has just 1,380 residents…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Khawaja: the Canadian Connection
Canadian software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja has been found guilty in a trial linked to a foiled fertiliser bomb plot in Britain.
Khawaja, 29, a co-conspirator of five men jailed for life in April 2007 for a UK bomb plot linked to al-Qaeda, received a sentence of 10 years and six months. How much is known about him?
Khawaja grew up in the suburbs of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and was a mild-mannered child who enjoyed hockey.
His father, Mahboob Khawaja, is a university professor based in Saudi Arabia, who has published several works on conflict resolution in which he calls for better understanding of Islamic fundamentalism.
A software developer, Khawaja worked in the technical support department of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and had a good knowledge of electronics.
Of Pakistani origin, he became fascinated by radical Islamist politics, and its focus on conflicts in the Muslim world. He kept up to date on events in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya through the internet.
According to evidence at the Old Bailey trial of seven British men accused of a plot to bomb the UK, two of whom have been found not guilty, Khawaja travelled to Pakistan in 2003 and met members of a loose network of jihadi sympathisers — men who believed that violence was legitimate.
Enthusiastic
The other jihadis are said to have found Mr Khawaja enthusiastic and useful and welcomed the £1,800 donation he brought with him.
The Old Bailey jury heard how arrangements were made for Khawaja to attend a military-style training camp in Pakistan, run by militants. It was at this camp that relationships were cemented, the Old Bailey heard…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Wilders Most Threatened Politician
Anti-immigration MP Geert Wilders has received more threats than any other politician and last year reported 292 threatening messages to the team which deals with threats to politicians.
This is around 75% of all the cases reported to the team (TBP) in 2008. Of the total 424 reported threats, 304 were passed on to the public prosecution office. Most of the thr4eeats were made by email or placed on websites.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Wilders Threatened Nearly 300 Times in 2008
THE HAGUE, 13/03/09 — The police corps in The Hague region received 428 reports from threatened politicians last year. Two-thirds came from Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders.
After investigation, the police concluded that 304 of the 424 reports indeed involved punishable threats. These were processed into official crime reports, on the basis of which the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) is authorised to take action.
Of the 304 reports, 170 were transferred to another police corps first for further investigation. The Hague corps itself processed the other 134. How many suspects were arrested and prosecuted is not known, newspaper Nederlands Dagblad reported yesterday based on OM figures.
The number of reports of politicians being threatened has risen enormously in recent years. The number had reached 264 by 2007. The 2008 figure shows a further sharp increase.
The Hague being the seat of parliament means the police corps of this region receives the bulk of reports from threatened politicians. The corps has for some time had a special Threatened Politicians Team (TBP).
Public Prosecutor Nicole Vogelenzang, with special responsibility for threats to politicians, partly explains the increase by a special regime set up for Wilders. He receives so many threats that it is impossible for him to keep making separate reports in each case.
Wilders is allowed to ‘save up’ his hate-mails and other threats and deliver them once a week to The Hague police as a package. Additionally, he and other threatened politicians do not have to go to a police station themselves, but can authorise somebody else to go on their behalf. In the Netherlands criminals can be prosecuted in general only if the victim files an official police report.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Violent Passengers to be Banned From Public Transport
Former police commissioner Leon Verver, who was recently appointed to coordinate efforts to fight violence in public transport, has proposed that repeat offenders be registered in a national database. A growing number of drivers in public transport are regularly confronted with threats and violence. Mr Verver wants to investigate the possibility of introducing a public transport ban for repeat offenders. He also wants more funds to be made available for public transport security.
On Wednesday, bus drivers in the town of Ede went on a wildcat strike in protest against the increase in passenger violence. The strike ended when their employer, bus company Veolia, pledged to install cameras on all buses and to have supervisors ride along.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Six Jewish Targets Attacked in Netherlands, No Arrests
THE HAGUE, 13/03/09 — During the Israeli attack on Gaza, at least six Jewish targets were attacked in the Netherlands. No suspects have to date been arrested. Nor is there any question of terrorism, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said in a letter to parliament yesterday.
The Party for Freedom (PVV) and small Christian party SGP had asked the minister what incidents occurred. According to Hirsch Ballin, the Israeli National Transport Bureau was “vandalised”. Also, a fire was set at a synagogue in Arnhem and two windows of a synagogue in Haaksbergen were broken. Further, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the front door of a former synagogue in Amsterdam, while a former synagogue in Oss had a number of windows broken on two occasions.
Additionally, two bullets hit a Jewish institution for psychiatric healthcare in Amsterdam. On this incident, the minister said “the possibility that the motives have a discriminatory background has prompted an expansion of the scale of the detective investigation and awarding it priority. But no indications were found of discriminatory, terrorist or other motives.”
In no case at all has a suspect been arrested, Hirsch Ballin added. He cannot confirm that the number of anti-Semitic incidents is growing. Figures will only be available in April, the Christian democratic (CDA) minister explained.
Hirsch Ballin is also not prepared to further strengthen or accelerate detection and prosecution of anti-Semitism. “Regarding all forms of discrimination, thus also anti-Semitism, an active detection and prosecution policy is already in place.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: March 11 Attacks Anniversary Amid Controversy
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — The 5th anniversary of the March 11 attacks in Madrid, which in 2004 killed 192 and injured 200, was observed today by the victims’ associations and institutions, amid controversy and accusations of neglect. This is the first anniversary without official ceremonies organised by the Spanish executive, although Spanish Premier, Jose’ Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, speaking today to the Congress of Deputies wished “to give, in the name of the government, our support and recognition of the victims and their families of that serious tragedy, result of a terrorist attack”. According to Pilar Manjon, the president of the Association of the Victims of Terrorism, which brings together 1,000 family members of the victims, in an interview with El PAis, said: “They have forgotten about us. After five years we are no longer important”. He underlined that some of the victims, who lost their job as a result of the attack, mostly immigrants, but also some Spanish nationals, “do not even have enough money to eat” and that the association gives them help “without specific funding”. Five years after the attack, political controversy continues between the People’s Party and the Socialist Party, to the point that none of the remembrance ceremonies for the victims were united. The first ceremony of the day, at 10:00 in the capital, organised by the regional government of Madrid, the regional group did not participate in a sign of protest to the premature closing of a regional investigation into alleged cases of corruption in the People’s Party, which was decided by the People’s Party majority in the regional council.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: One Year of Zapatero Gov’t, Half-Fulfilled Promises
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 9 — According to the results of a survey published today by El Pais, the first year of Zapatero’s government has been marked with more dark spots than light, and the cabinet has fulfilled less than half of its promises for structural reform which were planned to counteract the economic crisis. In August last year the President set the deadline for completion of the 24 announced reforms for the end of 2008. As the year came to an end, only eight had been carried out, if the three programmes to finance small and medium sized businesses and the guarantees offered by the Official Credit Institute for social housing projects are excluded. The projects which were carried out successfully are as follows: the new regulatory framework to promote the refurbishing of buildings and houses; the Renove plan to improve the hotels infrastructure; the law to encourage house rental and to promote energy efficient buildings; measures to encourage goods transport by rail; strategic measures to fight climate change; the rights of telecommunication services users; the beginning of the Rediris Nova installation: an advanced fibre-optics communication network for the scientific community. El Pais announces, on the other hand, that the following promises are amongst those which were left unfulfilled: the institution of an arbitration system to resolve tenancy disputes; a new airport management model; a new economic scheme for ports; a law on energy efficiency; the regulation of electricity provision; consultation on wave frequencies; the law on free access to services companies; the harmonisation of Spanish laws on services with those contained in the European directive to liberalise a sector which provides over 60% of Spain’s employment and GDP; the law for service professionals; the reduction of notaries’ tariffs; the reform of the judicial security model and the revision of the law on industrial regulation bodies. Before March 31, moreover, the government will need to present the draft law for the audiovisual sector and the creation of a national council for audiovisual media. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: At the Controls: First Picture of ‘Hunt Saboteur’ Charged With Murder of Hunt Supporter Decapitated by Gyrocopter
[Comments from JD: An anti-hunt protest in a gyrocopter buzzed the hunt supporters — end result — he killed someone.]
Trevor Morse died after he was hit by the aircraft at Long Marston airfield near Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, as he followed a hunt on Monday afternoon.
Mr Griffiths, 54, of Wiltshire Close, Bedworth, north Warwickshire, appeared in court today charged with his murder.
[…]
It emerged on Tuesday that members of the hunt had complained to the Civil Aviation Authority about a gyrocopter following them.
Warwickshire Hunt master Sam Butler said: ‘A gyrocopter had been following us for a couple of weeks and we had made a formal complaint to the Civil Aviation Authority 10 days ago.’
[…]
The helicopter-style aircraft is not allowed to fly lower than 500ft but was said to have been swooping aggressively over the hunt in the past few weeks..
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Celebration of the Birth of Mohammed ‘Held in Chapel of Birmingham Catholic College’
A priest has just rung me, furious. He’s heard that a celebration of the birth of Mohammed was apparently held today in the chapel of Newman University College, Birmingham — a Catholic foundation named in honour of Cardinal Newman.
I can’t reach the organisers, but the Facebook post above (hastily removed tonight) confirms that the college’s Islamic society planned an event in the chapel, not a meeting room. “I don’t know if the Blessed Sacrament was present, but in any case this is outrageous,” says the priest.
I’d never heard of this college before, but its website gives off an air of the grimmest political correctness. Newman describes itself, in this order, as:
(a) “… committed to promoting the broader understanding and awareness of Fairtrade, poverty and the developing world. As a University College we wish to broaden the global perspectives of the communities we work with, including its 400 partnership schools throughout the West Midlands. Achieving Fairtrade status reflects Newman’s mission which is based on respect for others, social justice and equity.”
(b) “… centred on the Catholic values of tolerance and inclusion. As a catholic University College Newman is proud to welcome staff and students of all religions and backgrounds.”
Bloody Fairtrade again. Note the lower-case “c” in the second “catholic” — not an accident, I should think. Is this really a Roman Catholic college? The chapel is certainly used for the celebration of Mass, so it would indeed be outrageous if it were also used for the celebration of the birth of a man whom Christianity does not recognise as a prophet. (Don’t get me started.) Can you imagine Muslims allowing a mosque or Muslim prayer room to be used for the celebration of the Eucharist?
We need to know more about this, don’t you think?
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Christophobia on the March?
Double-dealing at Wiley-Blackwell: the case of the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization.
Writing in these pages a few years ago, the philosopher Kenneth Minogue discussed the rise of “Christophobia,” that species of politically correct prejudice against Western civilization that focuses its animus on the doctrines and traditions of Christian civilization. Has Christophobia come to Wiley-Blackwell, the distinguished English academic publisher? Therein lies a still-unfolding tale…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
UK: DNA of One-Year-Old Baby Stored on National Database
The DNA of a one-year-old baby was recorded on the national database, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has admitted.
The information was stored before the Government announced plans to remove all records of young children from the DNA database (NDNAD).
The oldest person with a profile on the database was over 90, Miss Smith revealed in a Commons written answer.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Foreign Office Reveals Two-Tier Take on G20
Finance ministers of Australia, Russia and Canada arrive in Britain on Friday for talks on saving the global economy — presumably unaware that the Foreign Office has secretly relegated their countries to an unofficial G20 second division.
A confidential paper obtained by the Financial Times reveals how Britain’s G20 lobbying efforts ahead of next month’s summit have been targeted at “11 high-priority states” — an intriguing snapshot of how the Foreign Office sees the world.
The paper may not make pleasant reading for the “B-list” finance ministers whose countries have not merited “intensive diplomatic lobbying and engagement” ahead of the summit in London.
Those states consigned to “Tier 2” by the British government include Australia — a country that does not relish being patronised by “poms” — and Russia, which already enjoys strained relations with London.
The other G20 countries ranked by the Foreign Office in the second division are Argentina, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey.
The confidential document is a tender issued last December by the government’s Central Office of Information on behalf of the Foreign Office “for the supply of PR services for the London summit”.
PR agencies and lobbyists were invited to pitch for business, helping the Foreign Office to lobby G20 countries, launching media campaigns and even assisting in “moments of drama for the media” ahead of the summit.
“The central objective for the PR aspect of this is to raise the profile of the summit with the public and key opinion formers to facilitate positive decision-making,” it said.
Bidders were told that the tender document was “confidential and sensitive” and “may not be divulged to the general public or the media”.
The paper says the lobbying effort will be focused mainly on “11 high-priority states”, while those G20 countries in Tier 2 would receive less attention.
Those placed in the first division are the US, Japan, France and Germany, which are described as “key” G8 countries. Italy makes it on to this list by default on the basis that it is the “next G8 president”.
China and India are included, as is South Africa, South Korea (the next chair of the G20 after Britain), Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The European Commission, representing the EU as a G20 member, is also included.
In the end the lobbying contract, worth £300,000, was never awarded, to the anger of those companies which bid for the work.
One public relations executive said: “Presumably they thought it would look wrong for the taxpayer to be promoting Gordon Brown as the man to save the world.”
The Foreign Office insisted the list of “priority countries” for the lobbying initiative was “absolutely not a firm hierarchy of the most important states for our political relations”.
A spokesman said the countries had been targeted for lobbying because they had well-developed non-governmental organisations, media, civil society, academia and trade unions and “non-traditional actors like sovereign wealth funds”.
It was the last of those criteria which presumably raised Saudi Arabia above Australia on the Foreign Office list.
The document could cause embarrassment to Alistair Darling, chancellor, as he greets finance ministers from the world’s leading industrial and developing nations for talks.
William Hague, Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, said: “The downgrading of some participants before they have even set foot in London sends completely the wrong message.
“In particular it is wrong for Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada to be put into the so-called second tier. So too are some of the world’s developing countries whose people will potentially be among those hardest hit by the global crisis.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Luton Parade Protesters ‘Were Members of Extremist Group’
The anti-war protesters who sparked outrage by disrupting a homecoming parade of British troops have links to Muslim extremist groups, it has emerged
The demonstrators included members of a group called Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, whic is thought to have been formed by former members of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s radical Islamist organisation al-Muhajiroun.
One of them was Sayful Islam, a disciple of the inflammatory Bakri and a prominent hardline activist in Luton for more than five years.
The 31-year-old, who used to call himself the leader of the Luton branch of the al-Muhajiroun before it was banned, said of the troops: “They have killed, maimed and raped thousands of innocent people. They can’t come here and parade where there is such a Muslim community.”
The son of a British Rail engineer who came to this country from Pakistan, Sayful was born Mohammed Ishtiaq Alamgir and grew up in a moderate, middle-class Muslim family in Luton. He excelled at the local Denbigh High School and was selected to attend a science masterclass at Cambridge University. After going to university, he went on to marry, have two children and find work as an accountant for the Inland Revenue in Luton.
It was then that he met Bakri. Within two years, he had changed his name to Sayful Isman — which means Spirit of Islam — and had become a full-time activist, living off job seekers allowance.
After the September 11 attacks in America in 2001, he displayed posters around the town celebrating the “ Magnificent 19” hijackers. After the al-Muhajiroun group was banned and Bakri fled, he changed his name to Abu Saif. There was no answer at his home in central Luton yesterday.
The Daily Telegragh traced Abu Omar, 30, another of the protesters.
He said he was born in Luton and is believed to work with the NHS as a carer for the mentally ill. But he denied that he had ever been a member of the al-Muhajiroun.
When asked about the British soldiers from the Regiment who had died in Iraq, he told The Daily Telegraph: “They have lost men but while they were there many innocent Iraqis lost their lives.
“I am outraged that these soldiers paraded through the streets. They are nothing more than hired mercenaries, war criminals, terrorists.
“I was simply voicing my anger, in a lawful, peaceful way, against the Nazi British Army and the war. I do not regret that.”
Meanwhile a teenager who allegedly shouted racist abuse at the Muslim protesters has been charged with harassment.
Nathan Draper, 18, said that he was “maddened” at the actions of the Muslim demonstrators and praised the bravery of the soldiers and said they should be supported for risking their lives.
He has been charged with racially aggravated harassment and is due to appear at court next week.
| — Hat tip: Reinhard | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Ministers to Welcome the Voice of Hizbollah
The government is poised to allow Ibrahim Moussawi, media relations officer of Hizbollah, into the UK — despite the opposition of the cabinet minister responsible for social cohesion.
The JC has learned that the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, is fighting a lone battle within Whitehall to prevent Mr Moussawi’s admission to speak at a conference at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies on March 23.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is thought to be willing to admit the former head of political programming at the antisemitic Al Manar television station.
Last week, Ms Smith told the JC that antisemitism was a key factor in determining exclusions.
No other Cabinet minister has, the JC understands, sided with Ms Blears, and the Hizbollah propagandist is to be granted a visa.
Ms Blears is believed to have argued that allowing preachers of hate into the country does not promote good community relations and that allowing him to speak in Britain would directly contravene the resolutions of the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism, which she signed two weeks ago together with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and Ms Smith. Signatories to the declaration agreed to “speak out against antisemitism” and isolate those who “engage in hate against Jews”.
The Prime Minister has refused to back Ms Blears either in private or public. When the JC contacted 10 Downing Street for the Prime Minister’s view, it was told to “speak to the Home Office”.
The Home Office refused to comment on an individual case.
But the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), a think-tank, has said it will seek to have Mr Moussawi arrested when he enters Britain. Director Douglas Murray said the group is prepared to go to magistrates and apply for an arrest warrant. “There can be no better case than to arrest someone who is a member of a terrorist organisation and is a spokesman for a terrorist organisation,” he said.
Attempts to secure arrest warrants have been made against Israelis visiting Britain, including in 2005 when a London court requested the arrest of former IDF General Doron Almog after human rights lawyers alleged he had violated the Geneva Convention.
Labour MP John Mann, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism and one of the organisers of last month’s London Conference on Antisemitism, said Mr Moussawi’s “message of hate” and “messages of resistance” are inseparable.
“I fear for the impact he will have on community tensions and feel it would be unwise for the government to allow him to speak here in the UK.”
Mark Gardner, communications director of the Community Security Trust, at whose fundraising dinner the Home Secretary was guest of honour two weeks ago, said: “Hizbollah terrorism threatens Jews and Israelis around the world. Hizbollah propaganda could hardly be more antisemitic. If this man is permitted to enter the country it will make an absolute mockery of existing legislation and will send exactly the wrong message from government.”
Mr Moussawi has visited Britain on three previous occasions from his home in Beirut, having spoken at another SOAS conference and taken part in a Stop the War Coalition tour.
SOAS confirmed this week that it had not considered revoking Mr Moussawi’s invitation following his promotion to media relations officer.
Meanwhile a report this week from Policy Exchange, which is regarded as the think-tank closest to David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition, said that the Government should not fund Muslim groups that call for the destruction of Israel.
The report criticises the Government’s programme to combat extremism, arguing that it is too narrowly focussed on preventing violence while ignoring groups that promote militant ideas.
Instead, it calls for the government to set tougher conditions for engaging with Muslim groups, refusing support to those who, among other things, “call for or condone the destruction of UN states” or “support or condone terrorism anywhere in the world.” The report explains: “To be clear, it is not proposed that being pro-Israeli is a precondition for engaging with government… Too much latitude has been afforded by the British state to vitriolic Islamist groups who are hostile to the very existence of Israel.”
The authors of the report, called Choosing Our Friends Wisely, are Shiraz Maher, a former member of the radical Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir and now a fellow at Policy Exchange, and Martyn Frampton, a research fellow at Cambridge University. They argue that the Government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme — costing £90 million over the past three years — is not working because it has sometimes funded “Islamist-influenced” groups which advance radical agendas.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Moussawi of Hezbollah Denied Entry
Mr Moussawi was foreign news editor at Hezbollah’s television station
A Lebanese journalist with links to militant group Hezbollah has been barred from entering Britain.
Ibrahim Moussawi was due to speak at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, but the home secretary has ruled he should be denied a visa.
Mr Moussawi is editor of the Al-Intiqad newspaper, linked to Hezbollah, and a former head of the group’s TV station.
The Tories, who called for him to be banned, said he was a “known extremist” who had made anti-Semitic remarks.
The Home Office said it would not comment on individual cases.
| [Return to headlines] |
UK: My Son is Proud to be British, Claims Father of Muslim Protester Who Hurled Abuse at Homecoming Troops
The father of a Muslim extremist who waved hate-filled placards and shouted at soldiers during a homecoming march has insisted he is proud to be British.
Jalal Ahmed brandished a sign saying ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra’ at the welcome parade for the Royal Anglian Regiment in his home town of Luton earlier this week.
His part in the protest yesterday saw him lose his airside pass at Luton Airport, where he worked as a baggage handler on a part-time basis. His duties involve loading luggage onto conveyor belts into aircraft holds.
But his father, Helal, insisted today: ‘He has done nothing wrong. He was just exercising his right to protest. I wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to do something similar again.’
He told the Star: ‘He was born in this country in Newcastle and he is proud to be British. He’s a good boy. He doesn’t smoke, he’s done nothing violent and he just likes to pray five times a day at home.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Put These Toytown Talibandits on the First Flight Home
You couldn’t make it up. One of the Muslim headbangers screeching hatred at British troops this week turns out to be employed as a baggage handler at Luton Airport.
So let’s get this straight: a fanatical supporter of a global jihadist movement best known for blowing up planes and crashing them into buildings is considered a fit and proper person to be given an air-side pass, which could potentially afford him the chance to plant a bomb?
Jalal Ahmed’s job involves loading bags onto aircraft. I’m sure you find that reassuring as you plan your next sunshine break.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tightening Gun Controls is Pointless
After the Winnenden killings we must reassess our attitude to firearms
The horror of the school shooting in Winnenden will be followed by calls for Germany’s already restrictive gun laws to be tightened. But the hope that this will work is misplaced.
After the Erfurt school shooting in 2002, guns controls were supposedly strengthened and before that, in 1972, Germany introduced draconian gun laws to combat Baader-Meinhof terrorism. In the first three years after the legislation was passed, German military and police armouries “lost” 34 machine guns, 198 sub-machineguns, 363 automatic rifles and 1,142 pistols: with such firepower available from the organs of the State itself, the Federal Republic did not have enough terrorists to go round. As we in Britain now know, having seen the doubling of handgun crime within five years of our total ban on pistols, “gun control” is a perverse concept.
If the Germans are serious about stopping killers running amok in schools, they might consider the Israeli solution of arming teachers. It works there, as it has on occasion in America — the massacre in the “gun-free zone” of Virginia Tech can be contrasted with the assault by a former pupil on the neighbouring Appalachian Law School in 2002 that was halted by two armed students.
Neither we nor the Germans, of course, would be willing to adopt such a policy. We are more appalled now by the idea of an armed society. Yet an international study published in the Harvard Journal on Law & Public Policy in 2007 found that European nations with high gun ownership levels, such as Switzerland, Norway and Austria, had significantly lower murder rates than European countries with low levels of legal firearms possession.
In Britain we have come a long way from our forebears who believed that guns were a great deterrence: from the days of the Rev Brontë (father of the sisters), who used to fasten his watch and pocket his pistol every morning; or the Yorkshire hotel guests once encountered by Beatrix Potter, all but one of whom were routinely carrying revolvers.
But though we might wish guns had never been invented, our abhorrence of them comes at a price. “Gun controls” disarm only those willing to be disarmed; and the disarmed are then defenceless in the face of predators — criminals, killers, terrorists like the gunmen who shot 200 people dead in Mumbai or, worst of all, predatory states. The disarmament of the Jews from 1933 was the most effective example of gun control in Germany. “The most foolish mistake,” Hitler once remarked, “would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why Are Our State-Owned Banks Asking Customers About Their Politicial Affiliations?
by Fraser Nelson
Some tip-offs are so awful that you almost hope they are untrue. When I was told by Geoff Robbins, a computer consultant, that he had been asked about his political connections before opening an account with the state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland it sounded fantastical. Having the state owning the UK banking system is bad enough, but asking about party membership before you open an account? Not in Britain, I thought. And indeed, the RBS press office denied it outright. “We would not ask that question, nor dream of doing so,” said an RBS spokeswoman. So had Robbins concocted his story? I doubted it. So I called RBS Streamline myself and pretend to set up an account for credit card processing facility. I used the details of my mother-in-law’s real company and when they started to talk politics, I switched on the tape recorder. Here is the audio, the transcript is below…
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: EUFOR, House of Mladic Associate Searched
(ANSAmed) — SARAJEVO, MARCH 12 — Soldiers from EUFOR, the European peacekeeping force in Bosnia, have this morning searched the house of Dusko Todic in the Banja Luka area. Todic is a former Bosnian Serb officer and an associate of General Ratko Mladic, wanted by international law on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The search, which was aimed at discovering information and Todic’s connections with Mladic, was carried out on the order of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, said EUFOR. Computers, mobile phones, documents and other similar material were taken from Todic’s house, and the man himself is to be questioned by ICC investigators. According to Bosnian media, Todic was a former counter intelligence officer in the Bosnian Serb army. He was also part of the so-called “410th Centre of Military Intelligence”, which was disbanded several years ago on the insistence of international forces in Bosnia. It is thought that Mladic is hiding out in Serbia, and this search is part of a wider regional strategy to identify the financial and logistical network which is helping the war crimes fugitives. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: MP Takes Part in Big Brother Reality Show
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 11 — League of Vojvodina Social-Democrats (LSV) leader and MP Nenad Canak is on unpaid leave while he takes part in the Big Brother reality show, reports Serbian media. As Serbia’s parliament convened, Speaker Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic announced that Canak was justifiably absent. Canak, whose party supports the ruling coalition, is spending his justifiable absence in the Big Brother VIP house in Belgrade as of last weekend. Even with some ruling coalition lawmakers showing little enthusiasm for the move, and sending out messages that Canak “cannot count on his daily fees”, they are still convincing the public that this is not jeopardizing their fragile majority in parliament. One suggestion heard yesterday was for those in power in Serbia to “vote Canak out of the show”, so as to secure the parliamentary majority — but this was meant as a joke, explains MP Branko Ruzic, SPS. “We are not threatened that much when it comes to voting, so I wish him all the best,” said he. However, ruling United Serbia (JS) leader and MP Dragan Markovic, known as Palma, was not equally supportive. “I could not believe it when I saw it,” Markovic told reporters. “Canak is a very good politician, eloquent, smart, but all that he did as a politician in the last 20 years has been thrown out the window with this.” The opposition was even less enthusiastic: “I’m absolutely someone who would never enter the Big Brother house,” said MP and actress Lidija Vukicevic, SRS, but adding, “I don’t wish to insult all those who are inside.” “This is yet another in a series of proofs that the ruling majority, and Canak belongs to that majority, is disrespecting the People’s Assembly of the Republic of Serbia as the country’s most important institution,” said MP Dragan Sormaz, DSS. Nenad Canak is the first MP in the region to take part in a reality show.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Cooperation Accord to Protect Minority Rights Signed
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 10 — The presidents of the National Councils of the Bosniak, Bulgarian and Vlach ethnic minorities in Serbia signed a protocol on cooperation which envisages the setting up of coordination committees for cooperation that will enable a better protection of minority rights on the whole of Serbia, reports Tanjug news agency . Representative of the Bosniak National Council Esad Dzudzevic said, on the occasion of the protocol’s signing at the Tanjug International Press Centre, that the basic objective of that document was that the three national councils acted as unanimous when dealing with the bodies of the state and that the Serbian legislature be harmonized with the regulations of the European Union in the filed of minority rights protection. President of the National Council of the Vlach ethnic minority, Zivoslav Lazic, said that the signatories of the Protocol would take an active part in the drafting of a new electoral law and require a precise definition of the mechanism according to which minority representatives would be admitted into the Serbian Parliament. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Artisans: Lombardy Guest of Honour at Tunis Fair
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, MARCH 12 — Lombardy, represented by a full range handcraft enterprises, is to be the guest of honour at the twenty-sixth Artisan Innovation Fair, which opens its doors tomorrow in Tunis in the trade-fair zone of KRAM. The show, organised as in previous years by the national office for Tunisian artisans, brings together seventy-five different artisan activities, as well as giving special space to copper and majolica craft work. The programme at the fair, which is very popular with the public, includes a fashion parade, a conference on professional pricing in the artisan sector and talks dedicated to the partnership between universities and artisans as part of a European Union twinning programme. Events come to an end on March 22. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi Responds to MEMRI: “Yes, I Am an Antisemite”
If Not for the Arab Rulers, “We Would Devour [The Jews] With Our Teeth”; “We Are Your Enemies… Until The Day Jesus… Descends, Fighting You And Calling To Join Islam”
Recently, MEMRI TV released a clip of a speech by Sheikh Safwat Higazi that aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV on December 31,2008,in which he said: “Being killed… is what we desire and hope for. It is martyrdom, by Allah… I wish I could stand among the youth of the Al-Qassam Brigades, passing them one of their missiles, wiping from their faces the dust of a missile that was launched, or crying ‘Allah Akbar’ along with them… Dispatch those sons of apes and pigs to the Hellfire, on the wings of the Qassam rockets… Jihad is our path… The [Jews]… deserve to be killed. They deserve to die. Destroy… everything over there” (to view this clip, visit www.memritv.org/clip/en/1972.htm ).
According to the Lebanese Daily Star, Safwat Higazi is founder and secretary-general of Dar Al-Ansar for Islamic Affairs, [1] and in January 2008 headed a 21-vehicle relief convoy bound for Gaza with medical and food supplies and blankets but was stopped by Egyptian police. [2] On December 24, 2008, he issued a fatwa that anyone who denies the Sunna is an infidel and crazy, and must be killed. [3]
On January 4, 2009, Sheikh Higazi responded to MEMRI’s releases, on Al-Nas TV (to view this clip, visit www.memritv.org/clip/en/1983.htm ).
To view the MEMRI TV page for Sheikh Safwat Higazi, visit www.memritv.org/content/en/all_clips/0/0/0/0/456/index.htm …
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Enel OK to Capital Increase After Endesa Acquisition
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 12 — The 2009-2013 industrial plan for Italian energy group ENEL announces a capital increase worth 8 billion euros to be completed by the end of 2009. ENEL also expects to reduce its investments and to divest itself of certain non-strategic assets in order to reduce its debts, which have reached unacceptable levels following the acquisition of the Spanish group Endesa. The group expects that the board of directors “will agree on the increase in capital before the end of the first half-year period of 2009.” This is an operation which ENEL hopes will “maintain the group’s current rating level and leave sufficient margins of flexibility to complete the growth process and to consolidate its own strategic position” in line with the announced industrial plan. The treasury ministry, which holds 21.8% of capital in ENEL, has expressed interest in taking part in the capital increase. Libya is also thought to be interested in such a deal, according to the Libyan ambassador in Rome, Hafer Gaddur, in an interview with the Financial Times. “We will look into the situation. It could be interesting,” the diplomat commented, pointing out that Tripoli is looking into this option as part of its policy to find greater opportunities for growth in Italy. ENEL has announced the results of the 2008 trading period, which ended with a net profit of 5.29 billion euros, growth of 35.2% compared to the previous trading period, which was particularly dragged down by the acquisition of Endesa. Profits rose 40% to 61.18 billion euros, whereas operating profits rose 40.7% to 9.54 billion euros. In the 2009-2013 industrial plan, ENEL announced that it has reduced its own investment programme for the coming five years, “so as to take the new global economic situation into account.” Overall, investments are set to reach 33 billion euros by 2013, a reduction of almost 12 billion euros compared to the previous plan, which included the 100% acquisition of Endesa. The curbing of ENEL investments will also involve the Spanish energy group, which has announced that its expenditure plan up until 2013 is to be 13.5 billion euros, a reduction of the 24.4 billion euros which was announced in the previous 2008-2012 plan. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan-Egypt: Mubarak in Amman for Talks on Arab Rifts
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, MARCH 12 — Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak held talks TODAY with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the port city of Aqaba over recent developments in the reconciliation talks between FatAh and Hamas and preparations for the Arab summit in Doha next month, according to palace officials. Mubarak arrived in the southern city accompanied by his foreign minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit, head of the intelligence department Omar Suleiman and other officials, said a palace statement recieved by ANSA. “Talks are focusing on regional developments and efforts to achieve best interest of the Arab countries,” said the statement, without further elaboration. Palace sources said Abdullah and Mubarak discussed recent efforts to end the rift between Saudi Arabia and Syria in light of the war on Gaza, following the conclusion of President Bashar Assad visit to Riyad yesterday. Mubarak was present at the talks, amid increasing hopes of a breakthrough in tens relations between the moderate Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the Iran-backed Syria. In the meantime, Hamas and its arch rival, Fatah are currently holding reconciliation talks under Egyptian sponserhip, amid declining hopes of a breakthrough due to conditions of both sides. Earlier this week, Abdullah sent his foreign minister and royal court chief to Syria for a short visit to send a message to Assad on the same issue. The Arab summit in Doha is expected to be marred by pending political obstacles in light of the war on Gaza and the position of Arab states from the 22-day onslaught. Several Arab countries boycotted an Arab summit month in which Assad and Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi launched a scathing attack at Cairo and Riyadh over their stance on the war. The pro-west Jordan is considered a close ally to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and provides troubled Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas with political support amid uncertainty over his future after his presidency term ended in January. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
American Badly Hurt in Clash With Israeli Military
By AMY TEIBEL
An American demonstrator was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.
Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.
“He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson’s condition as “life-threatening.”
The protest took place in the West Bank town of Naalin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel. But Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.
The military says the area where the protests take place is a closed military zone off-limits to demonstrations.
About 400 protesters turned out in Naalin on Friday, the military said. Some of them hurled rocks at troops, who used riot gear to quell the unrest…
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Iraq: Judges Defend Sentence for Shoe Thrower
Baghdad, 12 March (AKI) — The Iraqi journalist Montazer al-Zaidi, who was jailed for three years on Thursday for throwing his shoes at former US president George W. Bush, received a fair trial, the Iraqi magistrates’ governing body told Adnkronos International (AKI).
“The sentence was passed by professional and independent Iraqi judges who were not subject in any way to political or government pressure,” the Supreme Council of the Iraqi Magistrature’s official spokesman Abd al-Sattar al-Birqadar said.
“The sentence is not final unless it is ratified by the Court of Cassation, which has a month to uphold or amend the verdict,” he said, referring to the three-year sentence handed to al-Zaidi.
Iraq’s Criminal High Court invoked article 223 of the Iraqi constitution in sentencing al-Zaidi. It sets a punishment of between three and 15 years in prison for assaulting a foreign leader on an official visit, al-Birqadar said.
Al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at Bush during a farewell media conference in Baghdad last December, calling Bush a “dog” and saying it was a “farewell kiss” from those who had been killed, orphaned and widowed in Iraq.
His actions were condemned by the Iraqi government as “shameful” although Bush — who managed to duck both shoes — shrugged off the incident.
But al-Zaidi’s gesture made international headlines and turned him into a hero in the Arab world with shoe-throwing becoming worldwide symbol of dissent and protest.
In the most high-profile ‘copycat’ attack, a German protester threw a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, during a speech at Cambridge University.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan Stops Pumping Water From Israel Due to Pollution
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, MARCH 12 — Water impoverished Jordan today suspended pumping from the kingdom’s main canal that supplies the capital and surrounding cities with fresh water due to oil contamination coming from Israel, officials said. In an official statement run by Petra news agency, ministry of water said pumping of water was stopped at king Abdullah canal in the Jordan Valley. “The ministry will not resume pumping water until it is declared clean and safe for people to use,” said minister of Water Raid Abu Saud in the statement. The statement indicated the pollution of oil is coming from the Israeli border. Officials from Amman water company confirmed to ANSAmed that the oil is coming from lake Tabrias in Israel, which provides the canal with water, considered part of Jordan’s share in the Yarmouk River. Jordan gets around 60 mcm of water every year from Israel under the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty. King Abdullah canal provides the capital with at least 35 percent of its water needs after it receives the water from the Israeli side. Officials did not say how they will make up for the shortfall of water supply to the capital, particularly that the kingdom’s water reserves are not sufficient. Figures show the kingdom’s dams are less than half full due to little rain this winter. Jordan is one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of water with the share of an individual less by ten times compared to counterparts in Europe, according to figures by the ministry of energy. Officials also say high birth rate adds further pressure on natural resources and limits the kingdom’s ability to adapt to scare resources of water and energy. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Rights Activists Face Torture and Repression, Says Amnesty
London, 11 March (AKI) — Human rights activists in the Middle East and North Africa still face the prospect of persecution, torture and repression for defending others, according to a new report by Amnesty International released on Wednesday. The report entitled ‘Challenging Repression’ looked at 20 countries on the region and said Iran, Syria and Egypt were among those that adopted a harsh response to human rights.
“Governments should be heralding the crucial role of human rights defenders in promoting and defending universal rights,” said Malcolm Smart, director of the Middle East and North Africa.
“Instead, too often, they brand them as subversives or trouble-makers and use oppressive means to impede their activities. People are languishing in jails across the region simply for peacefully exercising their right to expression, association or assembly.”
Amnesty said unfair trials that hand down severe punishments are carried out by courts in Syria and Egypt, which cite decades-long states of emergency, while online bloggers and Egyptian Coptic Christians are also subjected to harassment.
The report said any peaceful acts or expression deemed critical of Syrian authorities can be suppressed under a decree that penalises opposition to the socialist system or state.
“These offences can be punished by sentences ranging from imprisonment with hard labour to death,” said Amnesty.
In Iran vague offences such as “insult”, “slander”, “dissemination of false information”, and “anti-state propaganda” are routinely used to silence human rights activists, the report said.
Amnesty also said Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian and Bahai communities suffered discrimination “in law and practice”.
“A climate of fear and repression prevails in Iran,” said the report.
Rich Gulf countries were also singled-out for their arbitrary anti-terrorism laws such as the United Arab Emirates’ decree law on the fight against terrorist crimes, which penalises even non-violent attempts to “disrupt public order, undermine security, expose people to danger or wreak destruction of the environment”.
Bahrain and Qatar were praised by Amnesty for having established human rights organisations and committees, while Morocco was lauded for having the Arab world’s first “truth commission”, created to investigate four decades of human rights violations between 1956 and 1999.
However, Amnesty said Morocco continues to repress human rights defenders in the Western Sahara, which Morocco annexed in 1975, and Bahrain can use vague laws such as “encouraging hatred of the state” in order to prosecute human rights defenders.
The report attacked neighbouring Algeria for “continuing harassment and pressure from the authorities” against the human rights community, and said human rights defenders continued to face harassment in Tunisia.
Amnesty praised Israel for having outlawed the use of torture by Israeli forces in 1999 as a result of the many cases filed by Israeli and Palestinian human rights defenders.
However, it acknowledged a project by a non-governmental organisation that distributed dozens of cameras to Palestinian villagers to stand up to what it calls “grave abuses” committed by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians in the occupied territories.
It also said that legal proceedings in European countries against senior Israeli army officials for “grave human rights abuses” have sent a powerful message to army officials that the “era of impunity may be coming to an end”.
Amnesty said that several Israeli army officials have cancelled trips to Europe because of arrest warrants.
The Palestinian Authority was also criticised for being involved in silencing human rights defenders.
“Since June 2007 both the PA in the West Bank and the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza have frequently harassed and intimidated those who criticise them or campaign for human rights,” the report said.
In a region where governments persistently fail to respect human rights, the role of human rights activists such as lawyers, journalists, and trade union officials is all the more crucial, the report noted.
In order to continue their work, activists must be able to count on the support of the international community until their campaigns are acknowledged and their aspirations realised, Amnesty said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: “Martyrs’ Trilogy,” Memoirs of Bali Attackers Exalted as Heroes
The intelligence services are on high alert for the publication of a book containing the writings of Amrozi, Ali Gufron, and Imam Samudra. This could encourage young Indonesians to jihad. New extremist leaders are emerging in the country, praising the holy war against the West and Christians.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — The Indonesian Intelligence Agency is in a state of maximum alert for the publication of a book entitled “Martyrs’ Trilogy.” It contains writings and autobiographical notes by Amrozi, Ali Gufron, and Imam Samudra, killed by firing squad on November 9, 2008, because they were responsible for the massacre in Bali in 2002, in which more than 200 people died.
Sidney Jones, a terrorism expert and member of the International Crisis Group, warns that the book could constitute a serious threat to national security, because it is capable of influencing young Muslims to follow a “wrong” view of jihad, the holy war against the West and Christians.
The volume (see photo) is published by Ar Rammah Media, a small publishing house in Bekasi, a suburb 25 kilometers east of Jakarta. It is owned by Jibril Abdurrahman, son of Abu Jibril, an old exponent of Islamic extremism arrested in Malaysia for conspiracy aimed at creating “an Islamic state.” According to Abdurrahman, the book has been reprinted because of the many requests received, even though it is sold through a “secret” distribution network at the price of 75 Indonesian rupees (about 6.5 U.S. dollars).
The first volume of the trilogy contains the writings of Imam Samudra — the most radical of the three terrorists — in which he explains that the massacre in Bali was “morally justified” and “spiritually just.” The second part is dedicated to Amrozi, and is entitled “The Last Smile of the Mujadist.” It is based on autobiographical accounts written in Lamongan, the terrorist’s birthplace, in the province of East Java. The third and last part contains the memoirs of Amrozi’s older brother, Ali Gufron, and recounts “The Holy Dreams behind the Bars,” interpretations of his dreams according to his personal understanding of Islam.
Islamic extremism is on the rise in the country. One new up-and-coming figure is Aman Abdurrahman, also known as Abu Sulaiman, who constitutes a “possible challenge” because of his ability to recruit numerous followers. Recently Abdurrahman left Abu Bakar Baasyir, leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, and founded a new movement called Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid. Another important group is Darul Islam Akram. This has created an extensive network of relationships with Islamic extremist movements in southeast Asia.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Top Court Upholds Corruption Sentence
Jakarta, 12 March (AKI/Jakarta Post) — The Indonesian Supreme Court has overturned an appeal by former prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan and upheld a 20-year jail sentence in one of the country’s major corruption scandals.
A lower court had sentenced Urip to 20 years’ imprisonment and fined him 500 million Indonesian rupiahs (40,000 dollars) last year for accepting a cash bribe of 660,000 dollars from businesswoman Artalyta Suryani.
Supreme Court judges, presided over by judge Artidjo Alkotsar, ruled that the Anti-Corruption Court’s decision to hand down a record sentence to Urip last year was justified.
Urip was appointed by the attorney-general’s office to investigate the alleged misappropriation of Rp 144 trillion (12 billion dollars) in state bailout funds, which was injected into ailing banks at the height of the 1998 Asian financial crisis.
Most of the funds were never returned and several debtors fled the country, including tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim, owner of the now frozen Indonesian Bank of Commerce, or BDNI, and who is believed to be living in Singapore.
Urip was later approached by Artalyta, an associate of Nursalim, to drop the case. She paid Urip to end to investigations into a local loan scandal.
The Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) graft scandal implicated business tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim, a close relative of Artalyta.
Urip may have an additional eight month jail sentence added to his sentence if he fails to pay the fine.
“We found no legal flaws in the previous sentence,” Supreme Court judge Artidjo Alkostar told reporters in Jakarta on Wednesday.
Artidjo, who presided over Urip’s trial, said that in their appeal the accused had questioned Indonesia’s anticorruption law under which he was charged.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Buddhists Protest Against New Bar
Jakarta, 6 March (AKI) — The opening of a branch of the Buddha Bar in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, has provoked street protests and divided the Buddhist community in the country. About 200 Buddhist students on Thursday held a rally outside the local bar which is part of an international franchise, accusing it of defaming their religion.
Members of the Students Alliance to Reject Buddha Bar spent the day camped outside the bar and blocked the entrance.
Jakarta is the first city in Southeast Asia to host a Buddha Bar, a branch of the fashionable Paris-based bar and restaurant franchise. But many local Buddhists find the use of the word Buddha and some statues offensive.
However, Alim Sudio, secretary of the country’s main Buddhist organisation, Yayasan Pandita Sabha Buddha Dharma Indonesia, dismissed the Buddhist protests.
“Buddha has already been commercialised,” Alim Sudio told Adnkronos International (AKI). “Protesting in this way is not the right way.”
The restaurant bar is situated inside one of Jakarta’s historic buildings and reportedly houses a giant gold Buddha statue on the upper floor.
Avoiding alcohol and other intoxicants is the fifth of the main five precepts that form the basic moral code of Buddhism.
During Thursday’s protest some demonstrators held up banners saying “Strip off Buddhist symbols from Buddha Bar” and called for the bar to be closed.
The congested Indonesian capital of about 10 million people has seen an increasing number of new nightlife venues open in recent years.
Secular Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but also has sizeable Christian, Hindu and Buddhist communities. But according to official estimates, Buddhists make up around one percent of the country’s 240 million inhabitants.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Singapore: WSJ Editor Faces Contempt
THE Government is taking a senior editor of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to court, accusing her of being in contempt of court in three articles published last year. In the High Court on Friday, Justice Tay Yong Kwang granted an application by the Attorney-General to start proceedings against Ms Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the New York-based financial daily’s editorial page.
In court documents seen by The Straits Times, the AG’s Chambers (AGC) said it was initiating proceedings against her for ‘actions which resulted in the publication and distribution’ of the articles in WSJ’s sister paper, WSJ Asia.
It said these ‘contained passages that scandalise the Singapore judiciary’.
It added that Ms Kirkpatrick bears the ultimate editorial responsibility for the editorials and opinion section of WSJ Asia.
The AGC’s move comes three months after Dow Jones Publishing (Asia), which publishes the WSJ Asia, was found in contempt of court for the same articles, which ran in June and July 2008.
The first article was an editorial on Singapore’s democracy, arising out of a hearing in May last year to assess damages that Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan and others had to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew for libel.
The second was a letter from Dr Chee in reply to a rebuttal of that editorial by MM Lee’s press secretary.
The third article was another editorial, on the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute’s report on the Singapore judiciary.
Last November, Justice Tay found that they alleged bias and lack of independence on the part of the judiciary, among other things.
He fined Dow Jones Publishing (Asia) $25,000 — the highest meted out for such an offence here. Dow Jones was also ordered to pay costs of $30,000.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Thailand: 2 Soldiers Killed in Ambush
NARATHIWAT (Thailand) — SEPARATIST militants shot dead two soldiers in southern Thailand on Friday, a day afer the government announced a huge troop boost for the troubled Muslim-majority region, police said. The soldiers, both members of a team that protects teachers from insurgent attacks, were ambushed as they travelled by motorcycle to their barracks in restive Narathiwat province, they said.
Another two soldiers were wounded, said police.
The attack coincided with a one-day visit by army chief General Anupong Paojinda to neighbouring Yala province, which has also been badly affected by the five-year insurgency in the deep south.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Thursday approved the deployment of an extra 4,000 soldiers in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, saying they would help improve relations with the local population.
More than 3,600 people have been killed since unrest erupted in the south in January 2004, with militants employing increasingly brutal tactics including roadside bombings, shootings and beheadings.
They have targeted not only security forces but also civilians including teachers, government officials, Buddhist monks and anyone suspected of collaborating with Thai authorities.
Tensions have simmered in the region since predominantly Buddhist Thailand annexed the mainly Malay sultanate in 1902. — AFP
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Dissident Lawyer’s Family Flees China to US Asylum
By ALEXA OLESEN
Geng He said she put herself and her two children in the hands of human traffickers rather than stay in China, where her husband’s relentless activism had made them the targets of endless police harassment.
After a risky overland escape to Thailand, Geng and her children are in the United States. But her husband, lawyer Gao Zhisheng, has disappeared, presumably into Chinese police custody.
A self-trained lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Gao began drawing scrutiny after taking on several politically charged cases, including alleged persecution of members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. He later began to advocate constitutional reform of the authoritarian government.
For more than three years, his family has been under constant watch by plainclothes and uniformed police in Beijing. Last year authorities barred their 15-year-old daughter from going to school, leaving her depressed and suicidal, Geng said.
“The pressure we’ve been under for so long made her want to hurt herself, kill herself,” said Geng in a telephone interview from Phoenix, Arizona, where the family has resettled.
Geng, her daughter and 5-year-old son managed to leave Beijing for the southwestern border province of Yunnan on Jan. 9. She didn’t say goodbye to her husband, who wasn’t at their home in Beijing when she left. Instead she left him a note, apologizing.
“From a wife’s perspective, I really wish that I could stay and take care of him,” Geng said tearfully. “But I had no choice. For the children’s good, I had to take them away with me.”
[They] ended up in Thailand on Jan. 16… said Bob Fu,
…the director of the Texas-based Christian rights group China Aid Association. Geng and her children were “directly accepted by the U.S. as overseas refugees” instead of first applying to the U.N. for refugee status.
On Tuesday, Geng said she and her children flew to Los Angeles, then transited to Phoenix.
“My children asked me ‘Mom, can we talk here?’“ Geng said, describing her arrival in the U.S. “I’d been telling them all the time in Thailand not to speak, afraid someone would notice we were Chinese … Finally, I was able to say ‘Yes you can speak.’“
[…]
Gao disappeared early last month and is believed to be in police detention.
[…]
…Gao [has] detailed his and his family’s harsh treatment by security forces… he said he endured that involved severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and cigarettes held to his eyes.
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Australian Islands Contaminated by Oil
Islands off the coast of Queensland have been covered in an oil slick.
Moreton Island, Bribie Island and southern parts of the Sunshine Coast have been declared disaster zones by the Queensland government, after a massive spill caused by oil carrier, Pacific Adventurer.
Pacific Adventurer was damaged on Tuesday in rough seas whipped up by cyclone Hamish, causing it to drop oil over forty kilometres of Queensland beach.
Access has been restricted to the islands to allow pollution response teams to clean up.
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Cardinal Pell Believes West Now Scared of Criticising Islam
THE West has become scared to criticise Islam and accepts death threats by Muslim extremists as normal, Cardinal George Pell has suggested in a speech in England.
The outspoken Catholic Archbishop of Sydney said laws intended to promote tolerance were being used to stifle debate, which was “fermenting intolerance under the surface”.
In the March 6 speech at Oxford University, he also attacked a global campaign of “bullying and intimidation” by secular groups trying to drive Christians from public debate and stop churches providing schools, hospitals and welfare.
“Many in the West have grown used to practising self-censorship when it comes to Islam, just as we seem to accept that ex-Muslims who criticise Islam and extremism, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, require round-the-clock police protection,” he said.
“You can be persecuted for hate speech if you discuss violence in Islam, but there is little fear of a hate-speech prosecution for Muslim demonstrators with placards reading ‘Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas’.”
He said the expense and time of defending frivolous hate-speech allegations and the anxiety from “being enmeshed in a legal process straight out of Kafka” stifled robust discussion.
“No one in the West today would suggest that criticism of Christianity should be outlawed,” he said. “The secular and religious intolerance of our day needs to be confronted regularly and publicly.”
Some secularists wanted a one-way street, and sought to drive Christianity not only from the public square but from providing education, health care and welfare to the wider community. “Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies,” he said.
Cardinal Pell said a Californian referendum that rejected same-sex marriage had been a focus for demonstrations, violence, vandalism and intimidation of Christians.
He said “this prolonged campaign of payback and bullying” would have received much more attention if same-sex marriage supporters had been the victims.
It was strange how some of the most permissive groups easily became repressive despite their rhetoric about diversity and tolerance, he said.
“Opposition to same-sex marriage is a form of homophobia and therefore bad, but Christianophobic blacklisting and intimidation is passed over in silence,” he said.
Cardinal Pell said discrimination laws had been used to redefine marriage and the family. Children could now have three, four or five parents, relegating the idea of a child being brought up by his natural mother and father to nothing more than a majority preference.
He said last year’s Victorian law decriminalising abortion made a mockery of conscientious objection, which had been attacked as merely a way for doctors and nurses to impose their morality on their patients.
Cardinal Pell said Christians urgently needed to deepen public understanding about religious freedom.
| — Hat tip: DK | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) Leap to the Defence of Omar Al-Bashir
The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) has released a statement in support of the genocidal President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. According to the announcement: ‘The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) expresses its profound rejection of the ICC position, regarding its decision to level charges against the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, in issuing a warrant for his arrest; a step that reflects mismanagement on the part of the international order in dealing with the Darfur crisis and its repercussions.’
The MAB has often been referred to as the Muslim Brotherhood’s representative in the UK and, in what would surely add strength to such to such claims, the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood reported that ‘MB [Muslim Brotherhood] around the world condemned the decision of ICC to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.’ The same report also claimed that Mahdi Akef, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, ‘rejected…the decision to arrest the Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir, emphasizing that this exceeds law limits, justice and political decorum and is a part of an unending double standard series the new world order follows.’
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Somaliland Wants to Send Deportee Back to Finland
HS International Edition main information source on the case for Somaliland ministry
Somaliland, a state set up in the north of war-torn Somalia, has sharply condemned Finland for deporting a Somali-born man convicted of numerous crimes in Finland to Somaliland early last month. “Somaliland is no camping area”, said Mohamed Osman, Somaliland’s Minister of Return Migration and Reconstruction to Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday. “Finland should apologise to us and take the man back.”
Finnish police escorted the man to Dubai, where they placed him on a plane to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, on February 9th, along with a temporary alien’s passport. The ministry in Hargeisa learned about this action, and other deportation decisions made by Finland by reading the International Edition of Helsingin Sanomat on the Internet. Osman said that Finnish officials had not been in contact with Somaliland over the issue. “In our view, the man has been smuggled into Somaliland. We cannot accept this.” Osman says that his ministry has approached Finland, and many other countries, hoping to cooperate on issues of asylum and deportation. The country has already agreed on cooperation with Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and The Netherlands.
Osman says that Finland has not reacted to his government’s attempts at contact. “Finnish officials have not responded to us in any way. We interpret this as hostility toward us, and are very disappointed.” Officials of Somaliland allowed the deportee into the country, because he had no police escort, and he could not be sent back with them.
Osman says that the deportee made a mistake when he boarded a connecting flight in neighbouring Djibouti. He was ordered to leave Somaliland with his temporary passport, and go to Ethiopia, which has a Finnish Embassy. Osman says that the man was given a document by the ministry declaring that his presence in Somaliland was unlawful. The deportee’s lawyer has submitted the document to both Finnish officials and the media.
Officials at the Somaliland ministry were especially shocked at how Jorma Vuorio, the director-general of the Finnish Immigration Service, commented on the document given to the deportee. They read his comments to Helsingin Sanomat on the Internet. Vuorio voiced suspicions that the document was a forgery. “It is possible to get just about any forged document you care to name in Somaliland. Anyone can get hold of anything from there, even a passport if required”, he said. “The statement indicates a total lack of diplomacy, as well as ignorance of Somaliland. We would expect a person in such a high position not to make such statements”, the Somaliland minister said. In the news story, Vuorio did not believe that the man was in danger of being deported from Somaliland. “This person [Vuorio] supports chaos and anarchy. He violates the fundamental human rights of the deportee”, the minister told Helsingin Sanomat.
Officials at the ministry were surprised to hear that the deportee is still in Hargeisa. His alien’s passport is no longer in force, and the ministry assumed that he had stayed in Ethiopia. “We will put out a warrant for him. If the police find him, we will have to consider what to do. It might be possible to send him to Somalia, from where he could come by land to Somaliland, in which case he would be classified as a refugee.” “He is a criminal. If he continues this kind of behaviour, he is in danger of losing his life. We have lost 100,000 people in a civil war. Perhaps Finland has lived in peace for so long that people there do not understand what it is like to come from a war zone.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan: Foreign Aid Workers Abducted in Darfur
Rome, 12 March (AKI) — An Italian doctor is one of three international aid workers who have been kidnapped in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan. The aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirmed reports that three international staff members were abducted late Wednesday in Serif Umra, the Sudanese province of North Darfur.
Two Sudanese staff members were also abducted but were later released.
A Canadian nurse and a French coordinator were also kidnapped with the Italian doctor. All three were working for the Belgian section of MSF.
MSF did not identify the three victims but said their immediate relatives had been informed.
“MSF is currently working to get more information about the circumstances and the motives surrounding this abduction,” the organisation said in a statement.
“MSF is deeply concerned about their safety and is doing everything it can to determine their whereabouts and ensure their safe and swift return.”
Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini expressed his concern about the kidnappings and appealed to the media not to publish any information that could impact their safety.
He said the ministry was working closely with Sudanese authorities in a bid to secure the early release of the hostages.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan: Kidnappers Demand Bashir Arrest Warrant be Dropped
Khartoum, 13 March (AKI — The kidnappers of three workers from the international aid group Doctors without Borders (MSF) abducted in Sudan’s Darfur region have demanded the international arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir be withdrawn in exchange for the hostages’ release, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat’ reports, citing unnamed local sources.
The MSF workers’ kidnappers have also asked for a ransom and belong to an armed Arab tribe, according to al-Hayat.
The kidnappers made their their demands by phone via Sudanese mediators who are negotiating for the hostages’ release. The mediators include tribal leaders in Darfur, according to al-Hayat.
An Italian doctor, a Canadian nurse and a French co-ordinator with MSF were kidnapped in the area of Serif Umra, located in North Darfur late Wednesday.
“As a result of the abductions, all sections of MSF are withdrawing almost all international staff from projects in Darfur. Only an essential skeleton team will remain to follow the case of the abducted MSF colleagues. A number of Sudanese staff will also be relocated for now,” the aid group said in a statement on Thursday.
The Hague-based International Criminal Court last week issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur (photo), sparking outrage in Sudan and the Arab world.
Al-Bashir, the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the court, faces five counts of crimes against humanity, including responsibility for murder, rape and torture, and two counts of war crimes.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sudan: Foreign Doctors Kidnapped in Darfur
Three medical aid workers and a helper have been abducted in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
The kidnapping of two doctors, a nurse and a French coordinator from the Belgian branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres has caused the organisation to release a statement saying it will now withdraw all its staff from the region.
The kidnapping comes at a time when aid workers in Darfur have been under pressure from the Sudanese government to leave the country.
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3000 Migrants Deported From Italy in 2009
(ANSAmed) — ROME — Italy’s Interior minister, Roberto Maroni, has announced that over three thousand illegal migrants were deported from Italy in the first two months of 2009, whereas in 2008 a total of only 25 thousand individuals were expelled. Maroni went on to explain, “we want to increase our efforts in this area, because anyone who comes to Italy to work has all the same rights as an Italian, except the right to vote, but anyone who is not coming to work should be deported, and to this end we have strengthened our relations with countries in the Maghreb in order to facilitate the repatriation of all illegal immigrants.” He added, “the number of deportations will increase significantly in line with the law allowing individuals to be held in identification and expulsion centres for six months instead of the previous limit of two months.” As for the agreement signed with Libya to control illegal immigration from that country, Maroni said it is estimated that around two million individuals in Libya are ready to leave the country, headed for Italy. Maroni pointed out that, with Libya, “we have an agreement which we are laboriously enacting. A specialist Libyan delegation has travelled to Italy and is currently inspecting six motorboats which will be delivered to begin joint patrols of the coastal waters.” As soon as these patrols begin, he added, “the flows of people arriving from Libya will stop.” The minister revealed that the motorboats will carry out controls along the Libyan coasts to prevent boats from leaving. Last year, over thirty thousand people arrived in Italy from Libya. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Barrot in Lampedusa, Ex-Migrant Presents Film
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 12 — He is one of the few lucky people who, after surviving the inferno of the desert and the abuses suffered in Libya, managed to reach Italy and overcome the realities of life as an illegal immigrant, and then told his story in the film ‘Come un uomo sulla terra’ (‘Like a man on land’), co-directed by Andrea Segre. Tomorrow he will return to Lampedusa to present the film as part of European Commissioner Jacques Barrot’s visit to the island. Dagmawi Yimer, an Ethiopian refugee, who in 2005 gave up studying law in Addis Ababa due to the political repression in his country, and left Ethiopia. He arrived in Rome and learned Italian and the language of video-documentary with the Asinitas school non-profit organisation. His film — recently presented in Ouagodougou in Burkina Fasu at the Fespaco African Film Festival — will be presented tomorrow evening on the island. “We have also asked for a meeting between Dag and Barrot,” said Segre, who was promoting the event along with Asinitas and ZaLab, “in order to deliver a DVD of the film to the commission, the first 5,000 signatures of a petition against the practice of deportation to Libya, and against the Italy-Libya pact. It will be a chance to ask the European institutions to stop the episodes of violence, deportations, and indiscriminate arrests that thousands of men and women are suffering in Libya, with the complicity of the Italian government and Parliament. As we have said on the film’s website, he continued, we have witnessed that Italian and European patrols are stopping boats with migrants and handing them over the Libyan police, with complete indifference to the inhumane treatment of migrants, with deportations in containers, forced labour, torture, violence, and mass expulsions to the desert”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Would-be Illegal Immigrants Drown in Mediterranean
Cairo, 12 March (AKI), Egyptian coastguard have recovered the bodies of three would-be illegal immigrants who set sail five days ago for the southern Italian island of Lampedusa from northern Egypt, daily al-Masri al-Yom reported on Thursday.
Police have arrested two suspected people traffickers in the village of al-Madia who allegedly organised the crossing for 35 people aboard a boat that set sail from Abi Qir beach near the north African port city of Alexandria.
The daily named the two suspects as Muhammad Salah Muhammad and Mustafa Mutawali.
Police believe at least three other people aboard the people traffickers’ boat have drowned.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Emergency After More Landings on Lampedusa
(ANSAmed) — LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO) — A large boat with 332 migrants on board — including 23 women — managed to land in the Lampedusa port last night. The non-EU citizens from a number of ethnic groups are undergoing identification procedures and awaiting transfer to the two immigration centres located in Contrada Imbriacola and Capo Ponente, where there are already just under 600 people. Following the most recent landing, the island is facing another state of emergency. The immigration centre located in Contrada Imbriacola — partially destroyed by a fire last month set by a rebellious group of migrants — and the ex-Loran base in Capo Ponente, do not have sufficient space to hold the almost 900 migrants currently on Lampedusa waiting to be deported or transferred to other facilities. Most of the immigrants are being held at the identification and deportation centre, while asylum seekers, women and children have been sent to the other facility. Police headquarters in Agrigento are in constant contact with the Department of Immigration and the Interior Ministry, and are checking availability of space in the various other immigrant centres in Italy. Meanwhile, experts appointed by the Public Prosecutor of Agrigento conducting an inquiry into the February 18 fire (which damaged the island’s identification and deportation centre) have arrived on the island. Officials will have to inspect the facilities under investigation in order to establish if they are in compliance with health, building, and environmental regulations. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Minister Warns of Migrant Arrivals
Two million in Libya ready to set sail
(ANSA) — Rome, March 12 — Around two million Africans are ready to set sail from Libya to Italy, Rome’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Thursday.
Speaking during an interview on a radio show on state broadcaster Rai Radio 1, the minister warned that “flows of illegal immigrants” continued to cross from Libya, a popular departure point for African migrants heading for Europe.
But imminent Italian-Libyan coastal patrols would tackle the threat, Maroni said. The patrols are part of a bilateral friendship and cooperation agreement signed last August. On Thursday, Maroni said the agreement was “laboriously coming into force”. “A Libyan delegation is currently in Italy to inspect six motorboats to use in the joint patrols,” he said. “As soon as these patrols start, the flows from Libya will stop”. Italy’s location on the southern border of the European Union makes it a popular destination for thousands of African boat migrants seeking to enter the bloc each year. More than three hundred foreigners landed on Italian shores on Wednesday and according to the interior ministry, over 30,000 people arrived last year from Libya alone. Rome has repeatedly called for greater support from other EU member states, pointing out that Italy, along with Spain and Malta, is unfairly bearing the brunt of migrants trying to enter Europe. But Maroni said that pressure from Italy was finally producing results. He pointed to the departure of a charter flight on Wednesday, transporting 51 Nigerians expelled from six member states to Lagos.
The flight, which had 32 Nigerians from Italy on board, was organized by Rome in collaboration with the EU Border Agency Frontex. “This is the first concrete fruit of an Italian political initiative at a European level,” Maroni said. EU Justice and Security Commissioner Jacques Barrot is also set to travel to Italy on Friday.
The commissioner, who will visit Malta on Saturday, “will listen to the problems and requests of those coastal countries particularly affected by migrant landings,” his spokesperson Michele Cercone said. As well as meeting with authorities, Barrot will also visit migrant holding and expulsion centres in both Malta and on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, where the majority of foreigners arrive. “Here he will check the conditions in which immigrants and asylum seekers are being held,” said Cercone. The migrant centre on Lampedusa has made repeated domestic headlines over the years, with concerns raised about chronic overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and the lack of access to legal information and representation. The centre also drew international attention last month when protesting detainees set fire to the facility. The protest was partly linked to a decision to speed up the asylum application process by converting the complex from a temporary holding complex into a deportation centre, aggravating the overcrowding problem. Previously, foreigners arriving in Lampedusa were swiftly dispersed to other centres across Italy while their applications were processed. On Thursday, international human rights group Amnesty International urged Barrot to address the changes. “Italy’s decision to detain migrants and asylum seekers at Lampedusa for the duration of their application process instead of transferring them to the [Italian] mainland has had a severe impact on their human rights,” said Nicolas Beger of the group’s EU section. He urged Brussels to investigate whether the changes “constitute a violation of European legislation” and to “ensure that expulsion procedures fully respect the rights of asylum seekers and migrants”. The global charity Save The Children also expressed concern, warning that the speeded-up procedure was “insufficient to guarantee full protection for the rights of migrants”. The charity warned that without a full investigation of applications, there was a real risk that minors would not be identified and protected. According to the Italian interior ministry, around 37,000 people landed on Italian coasts in 2008 — a 75% increase on 2007.
This is over half the total number of migrants who arrived in Europe by sea last year, which totalled around 67,000.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Immigrant Families Suspected of State Benefit Fraud
The Dutch social benefits authority SVB is tightening controls on Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish families with children who live on their own in their country of origin.
Families of children aged between 12 and 17 in the Netherlands can claim nearly 280 euros a quarter in child benefit. If the child lives independently in another country, the parents may still be entitled to claim benefit. And providing their child is living abroad specifically to study and does not have earnings above a given threshold, the parents can claim double the amount of benefit to make up for their extra maintenance expenses. The regulations apply to EU countries, and also other countries that have signed a cooperation agreement with the Netherlands, which include Morocco and Turkey.
Random checks have shown that the claims of 54 percent of Moroccan families with children abroad were suspect, as were those of 31 percent of Turkish families. An SVB spokesperson told press agency Novum that the fraud includes families claiming a child lives independently in Turkey or Morocco, when in fact they live with family. SVB will now intensify its checks on families claiming benefit for children studying in Turkey or Morocco.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Raid on People Traffickers, 17 Arrests
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, MARCH 12 — The Italian police have issued seventeen custody warrant in Lombardy, Calabria and Campania, to individuals accused of being related to criminal associations aiding and abetting illegal immigration, human trafficking and the falsification of identity documents and official permits of stay. The provisional warrants were issued at the request of the National Public Prosecutor’s office in Milan. The operation also involves other European countries where some of the individuals involved, subject to European arrest warrants, have already been located. A “transnational group” is at the centre of the investigation, known to be adept at transporting illegal immigrants from Libya to the Italian shores, particularly to Lampedusa, and thereafter is responsible for exploiting these individuals in Italy. This morning’s operation is part of an investigation known as ‘Caronte’, which has been monitoring the movements of the group, which itself is made up of Egyptians, Moroccans and Libyans. It was announced that once the illegal immigrants had been brought into Italy, they were predominantly exploited as manual workers in companies in Lombardy, through temporary working agencies which were in league with the group and which accepted the ‘pseudo-legality’ of the workers who provided them with fake identity documents and certificates bearing testament to fictitious marriages with Italian women. The police in Milan stress that the operation is targeting all areas of the group’s dealings: from illegal immigration to the various means they employed to exploit their victims. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Residents of Slavic Origin Lose Rights in Iceland
A group of people from Latvia and Estonia of Slavic origin, who come from former Soviet Union member states, suddenly lost their rights as Icelandic residents after it was revealed that they had never been granted citizenship in their home countries and were consequently deported from Iceland.
The individuals were not granted citizenship in Latvia and Estonia because of their Slavic origin even though they’ve lived there for decades and are therefore not eligible to rights that EEA citizens have, Fréttabladid reports.
They are instead provided with so-called foreigners’ passports, which look very similar to the actual Latvian and Estonian passports, and in some cases Icelandic authorities and local employers didn’t realize the difference between these types of passports.
Ingibjörg Hafstad, who speaks Russian and works at Ahús, the Intercultural Center in Reykjavík, said a number of Latvians and Estonians of Slavic origin have sought assistance after having lost their jobs and residence permits after it was discovered that they carried foreigners’ passports.
“Some of them had children in schools, were employed and had settled in Iceland but then all of a sudden they have been to made leave the country,” Hafstad said. Around 40 Latvians and Estonians of Slavic origin reside in Iceland.
“I would say there were between five and ten such cases that we have handled in the past months,” said Haukur Gudmundsson, head of the Directorate of Immigration.
“But we haven’t punished employers for having hired people, although in the strictest sense of the word they were breaking laws. We find it more reasonable to consider that they made an excusable mistake rather than they had criminal intent,” Gudmundsson added.
Mördur Árnason, a deputy MP for the Social Democrats, has submitted an enquiry to the Minister of Justice Ragna Árnadóttir at the Althingi parliament regarding the legal status of this group of people in Iceland and in the European Union member states.
“I know that the cases of these people are treated less severely in the European Union member states and therefore it would be important to have a more detailed report on that matter to see whether we can handle it the same way,” Árnason said.
A great number of people of Slavic origin live in the Baltic countries. Lithuania has granted citizenship to all of its residents of Slavic origin, while they remain non-citizens in Latvia and Estonia.
According to Gudmundsson, matters are progressing the same way in Latvia but not in Estonia.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: 64 Immigrants Land in Tenerife
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 12 — The Europa Press agency is carrying a report from the Emergency and Security coordination centre that a boat carrying 64 immigrants, including 15 minors, reached Granadilla de Abona, on the coast of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Of the 64 immigrants who landed on the coast, all of whom were from Sub-Saharan Africa, one individual was admitted to hospital suffering from serious hypothermia, whereas others were offered treatment by the Red Cross and the Canary Islands emergency services, before being taken to temporary reception centres, awaiting repatriation. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Study: Italy Record Demands for Regularisation
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 12 — Out of 17 member states of the European Union who put regularisations for illegal immigrants into effect between 1996 and 2008, Italy registered a record number of requests. These are the results of the latest research by the International Centre for migration development (ILCMPD) at the request of the European Commission. Italy received just under 1.5 million requests in the last twelve months, followed by Spain, with 1.3 million, and Greece, with almost 1.2 million. These three countries alone registered 84% of requests in the framework of regularisation programmes. It emerges that even though the procedures put in place are considered exceptional in nature by all EU governments the majority of member States use or have used some formula for regularisation in the recent past. According to the ILCMPD study around 5 million illegal immigrants made a demand to change their status and become legal between 1996 and 2008. Some 3.5 million were granted legal status. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Migrants Queue Up to Reach ‘Promised Land’ UK
With Britain sliding into recession, an act of economic madness emerged from Europe last night. France said it was setting up a string of centres to help hundreds of migrants queuing up in Calais in the hope of reaching the UK. The French move represents a dramatic U-turn from their 2002 closure — at the request of the British Government — of the vast Red Cross shelter in Sangatte. It acted as a magnet for illegal migrants from all over the world. Amazingly the new centres, already being dubbed ‘mini-Sangattes’, will give migrants information on how to claim asylum in Britain as well as offering them food and washing facilities. In bitter cold, they queue patiently for the free sandwich and soup that could be the difference between life and death.
Men, women and, tragically, even three children, wait near the Calais waterfront for a chance to slip illegally across the 22 miles of Channel to England.
The numbers are huge: charity workers think 1,500 migrants are massing in France’s northern ports hoping for a new life in Britain.
With unemployment rising and black market jobs vanishing, illegals are steadily being pushed out of Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany toward what they call the ‘Promised Land’.
Aissa Zaibet, a charity worker in Calais, said: ‘It is the same story throughout the whole of Europe.
‘Each government pushes them further down the road, and at the end of that road is the United Kingdom.’
The situation has grown so critical in Calais that France has announced a plan to help the migrants survive.
Nearly 1,000 refugees from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and across Africa are sleeping rough in town-centre squats and woodland shanty camps.
Immigration minister Eric Besson said yesterday that a network of ‘light buildings’ will be erected in the town to provide them with food and showers.
Controversially, they will also receive information on how to claim asylum once they get to Britain. It is an astonishing U-turn.
In 2002, the French — at the request of the UK — closed the Red Cross centre housing refugees and economic migrants in Sangatte, a village on the hillside overlooking Calais.
The centre, from where the White Cliffs of Dover could be seen on a clear day, was believed to act as a magnet for illegal migrants from all over the world.
The new centres, dubbed ‘mini-Sangattes’, will be welcomed by the migrants themselves.
‘We live here for weeks and months in the cold and the dirt,’ Hemat, a 25-year-old Afghani, told the Mail yesterday. ‘We need the strength to make the journey to England. Of course, it is a good thing. How could it not be?’
Yet the new plan is bound to enrage the British Government, which is fighting a losing battle on illegal migration.
The numbers getting to Dover have doubled in the past year, according to figures released in the House of Commons earlier this month.
Mr Besson, a former socialist who joined President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in January, said: ‘With charity workers and elected officials, we are moving toward the setting up of light structures to help the migrant population around Calais.’
He explained that foreigners would get advice on ‘their rights’ as well as ‘sanitary facilities and food points’.
It’s a far cry from Mr Besson’s message a few months ago. Then he promised: ‘We did not shut down the original Sangatte, only to open it in another form, even a watered-down one.
‘This would only help the immigrants that are there already to remain there, or cross illegally to Britain. And it would become a powerful incentive for more to come there, causing an extra humanitarian problem’.
With a final flourish, he said the British authorities must step up checks at the ports ‘in the interests of their country and our own’.
The hardliner’s change-of-heart apparently comes after he watched a controversial film which opened in France this week.
Welcome tells the moving story of a teenage Kurdish refugee who attempts to swim across the Channel to Kent.
The film graphically depicts the squalid conditions for migrants in Calais, Dunkirk and Cherbourg.
When it opened in Calais this week, an audience of locals sat in stunned silence during the two-hour screening.
two-acre site for a covered centre, including a health clinic, shower block and legal advice centrehas already been earmarked for the first ‘mini-Sangatte’ in the town of Grande Synthe, near Calais.
News of the U-turn came as French officials in Paris blamed the 2012 Olympics for fuelling a massive increase in migrants hoping to get to Britain.
They said that word had got out among the illegals that foreigners are being hired in their hundreds at the huge site in East London.
Whatever the truth of this, yesterday I watched as a group of young Iraqis spent eight hours hiding on the corner of a road junction waiting for the chance to climb on a lorry heading for the UK. They threw stones at journalists and TV crews who tried to photograph them.
‘Go away, you must not see this,’ said one of them in poor English as he ran toward our car with a brick in his left hand.
At a petrol station nearby, Piotr, a trucker from Poland, said: ‘They are trying to climb aboard every hour from six in the morning until two the next night. Of course, some of our drivers need the money and will take a payment to hide them in the back.
‘Not every lorry is stopped and searched by the British. They want to try their luck, because some get through.’
The going rate for a ride to England is £450 in cash. The migrants have also found ways to avoid being seen by carbon dioxide detection machines established at the port by the authorities.
The machines can detect a human’s presence in a lorry’s cargo by the Co2 they breathe out.
‘We put a plastic bag over our heads,’ explained one 22-year-old Somalian waiting in the evening food queue back in Calais. ‘It means we may die of suffocation, but it is worth the risk.
‘The other day my friend, he got to your country. He had a carrier bag tied over his face for the few minutes it took for the lorry to drive past the machine.
‘He has sent me a text from Maidstone in Kent saying he is safe and is claiming asylum.’
Half a mile away, in what the migrants call the ‘jungle’ — a patch of woodland nudging the Calais suburbs — the smell of human excrement and acrid smoke is overwhelming.
Here there are 20 small makeshift camps, made of pieces cardboard, plastic sheeting and scrap metal.
Last year, a woman journalist who lived in Britain was raped in the jungle by a migrant, who is facing charges of sexual assault in the Calais courts.
In a tough policy, barely one in eight migrants who claim asylum in France is granted his wish.
The illegal migrants know that Britain is more sympathetic. When the Sangatte centre was up and running, more than 60,000 of them got across the Channel.
Last night a spokesman for the UK Border Agency, which has scores of officials in Calais trying to halt the diaspora of the desperate, said: ‘The British have repeated their opposition to any sort of centre which might act as a magnet for illegal immigrants and the people smugglers who help them. Our border security must start overseas.’
Hungary last night issued an official warning to its citizens not to move to Britain because the economic crisis meant the chances of finding a job were ‘down to zero’.
Would-be economic migrants were told Britain was ‘more sensitive to the effects of the economic crisis’ than other EU states.
‘The number of jobs is falling drastically and the unemployment rate is twice the EU average,’ the foreign ministry said, with some exaggeration.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Game for 6-Year-Olds Pushes Same-Sex Marriage
Online version of children’s classic features new twist
The online version of a popular board game from many Americans’ childhood includes an option for players to choose homosexual marriage and child-rearing as a way of life.
Through the Shockwave.com website, even children can download and play a free trial version of The Game of Life, the first game ever created by Mr. Milton Bradley in 1860.
[…]
“I went back to the web site and left a very respectful review of the game just stating that this kind of thing should be left out of kids’ games, and the Shockwave.com administrator removed my post, stating it was inappropriate,” the mother told WND. “I had no idea how insidious they were being with pushing the homosexual agenda.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s New ‘Council on Women’ Seen as Vehicle to Promote Feminist Agenda
President Barack Obama on Wednesday created a new bureaucracy to deal with women’s health, domestic violence and economic security. But some conservatives fear the new council will actively promote the feminist agenda in the government.
Obama signed an executive order establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls with the intent of coordinating policies across all major federal departments to help women across the nation meet unspecified “challenges.”
Although the president did not say exactly what issues the council would address, the group is likely to promote feminist causes such as expanded litigation and the abortion rights, said Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Primary Schools Give Sex Education to Children as Young as Five After the Alfie Patten Case
Schools have brought forward plans to teach five-year-olds about sex following the case of 13-year-old father Alfie Patten.
Education chiefs in one city responded to the news that Alfie had fathered a child with Chantelle Stedman, 15, by deciding to start the sex lessons early.
The compulsory sex education is due to be introduced in primary schools across the country from September next year.
[…]
But Patricia Morgan, an author on the issue of teenage pregnancy, said: ‘I fear all this will only result in more little Alfies.
‘A five-year-old is incapable of understanding sex. Teaching them about it amounts to grooming — suggesting to them that there is something exciting to do when they are older.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
OPEC Faces Tough Choice on Production Cut
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets in Vienna Sunday, where they could reduce daily production by up to half a million barrels, or do nothing.
[…]
This time, the ministers want to bolster prices. While prices are off their low of around $30 just a few weeks ago, a barrel of crude still fetches less than a third of what it did over the summer. That is well below the break-even point for producing nations, which could affect not only their national budgets, but oil production as well…
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1 comments:
The number of jobs is falling drastically and the unemployment rate is twice the EU average--
They aren't looking for work, they are looking for asylum and benefits.
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