The news from Britain continues to be appalling. Article after article about immigrants who incite hatred — and even commit violence — with impunity, while “persons of British background” face police charges if they voice the slightest criticism of Muslims.In other news, the city of Milan is planning to give Romany children a bath.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Gaia, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, TB, The Frozen North, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Dollar Crisis in the Making — Before the Stampede
These huge and dangerous distortions in the global financial order are due largely to US government policies regarding Treasuries and the shortsighted willingness of global investors to participate in pumping up that profoundly harmful bubble. If the US succeeds in selling its greatly increased supply of Treasuries, then such distortions in the global order will only become more profound, their negative repercussions (credit strangulation) will only become much more potent, and the feared second wave will be virtually assured. And so far, demand for Treasuries has remained high, thereby ensuring the dangerous persistence of the credit strangulation referred to here.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The darkest times in human history have all begun when someone decided “not to let a serious crisis go to waste”. In fact, it is in times of economic crisis that folks are most susceptible to the ideas of tyrants. We look for an answer, any port in a storm that will shield us from the unknown. And in our desire to be safe, we open ourselves up to things that we would never have dreamed of allowing in normal times.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wen Jiabao Worried About US Debt, Confident About China and Tibet
China’s premier reiterates Beijing’s point of view on everything: the economy, US-Sino relations, yuan revaluation, Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s so-called “separatism.” Any criticism is simply brushed aside.
Rome (AsiaNews) — Security and the economy dominated Premier Wen Jiabao’s press conference today which followed the end of the annual session of China’s National People’s Congress. The economy and stability remain at the top of the Communist Party’s agenda, with virtually no space left for political reform, autonomy and human rights.
The US debt threat
Wen Jiabao said he was “worried” about the US debt and China’s huge investments in the United States. Never the less, he also said that China’s economy would remain stable with an 8 per cent growth. Similarly, he insisted that the situation in Tibet was “peaceful and stable.”
Wen explained that China “lent a huge amount of money to the United States. [. . .] Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am a little bit worried. I request the US to maintain its good credit, to honour its promises and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets.”
The economies of the United States and China are intertwined. Much of China’s industrial output ends up in the United States; at the same time, Beijing is one Washington’s main money lenders. As of 31 December 2008 China held in fact US$ 696 billion in US treasuries, an increase of 46 per cent over the previous year.
The global economic crisis is testing this close relationship as Chinese exports drop following declining demand. The US government rescue package is also impacting on the value of the dollar. For this reason China must “fend off risks” by diversifying its US$ 1.95 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves to safeguard its own interests, Wen said.
Chinese experts note that only if China is certain that inflation will not take off in the United States will it continue to sink its money in US treasury bills. Should its investments run the risk of turning into waste paper, it will have to reconsider.
Stable Yuan
In the last few weeks US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has called for the appreciation of the Yuan to reduce the US-China trade imbalance, accusing China of “manipulating” the exchange rate.
However, our “goal” said Wen today, “is to maintain a basically stable yuan at a balanced and reasonable level. [. … .] At the end of the day, it is our own decision and any other countries can’t press us to depreciate or appreciate our currency.”
Still the United States is not alone in complaining about the exchange rate. Many other countries have said that the current rate unduly favours Chinese exports.
Right now Beijing is concerned about the drastic drop in exports, down 25 per cent over last year, which is having a sobering impact on the real economy as plant close, workers get laid off and social tensions rise.
Last year, so-called “mass incidents” (strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, clashes with police, wounded and killed) as a result of labour problems topped 87,000. And as the crisis gets worse many in Beijing are concerned that things might get out of control. Hence in his press conference Wen tried to reassure everyone on that score.
In light of present trends in the world economy, many analysts and international economic agencies expect China to grow at best by 6.7 per cent this year. But Wen promised that China’s growth will be in the order of 8 per cent, an average seen as essential to ensure full employment and reduce social tensions.
“I believe that there is indeed some difficulty in reaching this goal. But with effort it is possible,” he said.
“Ammunitions” for the stimulus
In order to face the economic crisis which has already left 20 million workers unemployed, the Chinese government has already prepared a set of measures worth 4 trillion yuan (US$ 585 billion). What is more, at “any time, we can introduce a new stimulus,” Wen said, adding that we “have reserved adequate ammunition”.
In addition to the 4 trillion yuan China’s government is committed to investing 1,180 billion yuan. Beijing plans to move on the tax front (cuts worth 600 billion yuan), increase pensions, teacher salaries, and farm incomes so that farmers can increase their demand for domestic industrial goods. Also the government is planning to spend 850 billion yuan to reform the health care system.
But not everyone is convinced. Doubts have surfaced with regards to the measures’ feasibility given the widespread corruption in the party. Scandals and misappropriations of public funds are daily occurrences.
Bao Tong, an well-known dissidents under house arrest, and Yan Yiming, a activist lawyer in Shanghai, have called on the government to make public the stimulus plan showing how this mass of money will be spent. So far their request has fallen on deaf ears.
During the press conference Wen tried to allay any fears with regards to the situation in China and the world.
“Only when we have confidence can we have courage and strength, and only when we have courage and strength can we overcome difficulties,” he said.
For the premier China is ready to face the world’s long and hard financial crisis, having giving itself a wide leeway for action and the right policies. “I expect that next year both China and the world will be better off,” he said.
A “peaceful and stable” Tibet
Dismissing criticism, complaints and eyewitness accounts, Wen said that the situation in Tibet was generally “peaceful and stable.”
Last 10 March, the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that was drowned in blood, the Dalai Lama said that Chinese rule in Tibet had turned his homeland into a “hell on earth”.
In his denunciation he slammed large scale Chinese investments as an instrument of Tibet’s “Sinisation”, a process that is marginalising indigenous Tibetans.
By contrast, Wen claimed that over “the past few years, the government” speeded up “the pace of economic development and worked to improve the living standards of the Tibetan farmers and herdsmen.” Tibet continued progress has “proven that the policies we have adopted are correct.”
During the National People’s Congress, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Tibet uprising, the region was placed under martial law. Towns and cities were patrolled by soldiers; the movement of people was made more difficult by checkpoints; the internet was blacked out and many people were arrested.
In order to put a stop to what he calls the “cultural and religious genocide” of Tibet, the Dalai Lamas has demanded “cultural autonomy” for his people, leaving the country under Chinese sovereignty. Yet China still accuses him of seeking “independence.” Even Wen Jiabao repeated the accusation.
For the premier talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives can continue only if he abandons his “separatist stance.”
On the same issue Mr Wen pressed France to clarify its position on Tibet, saying this was necessary to improve relations.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama in December last year in Gdansk (Poland). For this reason in his recent tour of European capitals Wen refused to visit Paris.
“The problems that have arisen between China and France arose mainly because the French leader met the Dalai Lama in a prominent way, and this not only involved the core interests of China, it also seriously harmed the feelings of the Chinese people,” Mr Wen said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
An Arab Fusion of Art, Music, Theatre and Fashion in Washington
The Caracalla Dance Theatre from Lebanon consists of 800 performers from across the Arab world
An ambitious Arab art festival in Washington hoped to change the all too familiar perception of the Arab world as a place of terror, religious extremism and constant struggle by offering a glimpse into the region’s rich artistic heritage in a fusion that defies cultural stereotypes.
Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World, the $10 million, three-week festival of art and culture representing at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. that wrapped up Saturday was the largest Arab arts festival ever held in he U.S.
With 22 Arab countries represented including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Sudan and 800 Arab performers and artists, the festival may have been about arts but the timing was political…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-US Envoy Bolton: Obama ‘Bad News for Israel’
The Obama government’s thinking that Arab-Israeli peace is the key to Mideast stability “is bad news for Israel — and for America,” former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote in the New York Post on Friday
Bolton said that President Barack Obama and his advisors have adopted the theory that the “overwhelming bulk of other Middle Eastern grievances, wholly or partly, stem from Israel’s founding and continued existence.”
He based his argument on the appointment of George C. Mitchell as the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East and statements by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the “two-state solution” should be put into place “sooner rather than later.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Is Liberalism Anti-Intellectual?
When the conversation shifted to the political philosophy of liberalism, George Will said something I thought was both simple and profound — Liberalism is wrong because it doesn’t work. As the subject moved to the dismal state of Wall Street, the American economy, rising unemployment and mega-corporations like AIG, Citigroup, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, GM, Ford and Chrysler on the verge of bankruptcy, George Will said, If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lawmakers Trash the Constitution
It appears that the lawmakers who assemble in Washington have no idea what the Constitution says, or worse, they simply don’t care. The Fourth Amendment says quite clearly:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. …”
Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro has introduced the “Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2009 (H.R. 875). Her bill will create a new Food Safety Administration and give its administrator the authority to “conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products or the environment” on every family farm, ranch, vineyard and fishing hole in the country. Moreover, the administrator can visit and inspect the property and demand that the owner present “papers and effects,” and all records relating to food production.
[…]
Scenarios that use food safety and potential cost of a disease outbreak are smoke screens to distract attention away from the fact that for nearly 80 years there has been no major disease outbreak because existing systems make American food the safest in the world. The system proposed by the NAIS and H.R. 875 would not improve food safety, but would give the federal government absolute control over the food supply of every individual and would bring the United States into compliance with the requirements of United Nations agencies that administer global governance.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
My Socialist Past
Unnumbered lives were sacrificed on the ungodly altar of communism in the last century, not only in my temporary abode of Yugoslavia but throughout eastern Europe, Russia, and much of Asia, Africa, and South America, and now the American Left wishes to revive this monstrous ideology on our own shores. Every totalitarian regime begins with the same heartfelt promises of justice and equality, just those promises of fairness that Barack Obama has made the fixation of his political career. What tyrant, one might ask, has not risen to power on promises of benevolent change?
Soon, however, those who come to power, even with good intentions, discover that for all men to be made equal, some men must be made poor, and most men will not agree to be made poor in the absence of force. So force must be applied, assets must be seized, censorship must be imposed, dissidents must be jailed, enemies must be destroyed. Men must be made equal by any means necessary, and soon enough those means include intimidation, imprisonment, and execution.
Again and again, the handsome smile of the reformer is twisted into the callous sneer of the tyrant. Those who present themselves as saviors are always the most dangerous, for unlike the one true savior, who rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, they must work their will on the things of this world, and one cannot remake the world without the application of force.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: I’ll Forge New Ties With Muslims
In phone conversations with the leaders of Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines on Friday, US President Barack Obama discussed his commitment to forging a new relationship with Islamic countries, among other issues. US President Barack Obama.
The White House said Obama discussed the importance of improving US relations with Islamic countries with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Obama noted that he and Yudhoyono would attend the Group of 20 nations summit next month in London.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Energy Policy Will Increase Dependence on Foreign Oil
President Obama’s biofuel and oil policy is on a collision course to a national catastrophe. Yet, the alarms are not sounding and the red lights are not flashing…
President Obama’s energy policy is to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil imports by eliminating oil and replacing oil with alternative renewable “clean” biofuel. That sounds good in speeches. It is quite impressive to all those who know little about oil or biofuels, which includes the majority of the public. The devil, of course, is in the details which no one seems to have investigated.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Top Officials Urge Dialogue With Hamas
Nine former senior US officials and one current adviser are urging the Obama administration to talk with leaders of Hamas to determine whether the militant group can be persuaded to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian government, a major departure from current US policy.
The bipartisan group, which includes economic recovery adviser Paul A. Volcker and former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, made the recommendation in a letter handed to Obama days before he took office, according to Scowcroft.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Tenerife, Port Project Halted to Protect Marine Plant
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) — Madrid, FEBRUARY 27 — Environmentalists have won the first round of legal battles against the construction of the industrial port of Granadilla, on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The port would represent a threat for the Cymodocea nodosa (eelgrass), one of the island’s endemic plants and at the same time one of the most endangered in the world’s oceans. It is a higher plant of the phanerogams family which grows below the sea’s surface in temperate climes, forming underwater pastures, like Poseidonia mediterranea or Zoostera marina. The construction of the port, aimed at making the island of Tenerife a motorway bridge for container traffic between America, Europe and Africa, is expected to cost 380 million euros and in order to carry out the project, the government of the Canary Islands removed Cymodocea nodosa from its list of protected species. But the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, in a ruling quoted by Europa Press, has ordered the urgent and preventative suspension of work on the project, thus granting the appeal filed by the association Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Accion. The port authorities of Tenerife had no choice but to stop the work which had started ten days ago. The ruling, adopted as an emergency measure “of especial urgency”, will have to be ratified by the court, which today will hear the arguments of the regional government on one side and environmental groups on the other. The decision is only the first round in a long conflict which has been smouldering on the island for past years. Already back in 2004, over 20,000 inhabitants organised a demonstration against the industrial port, which will include a re-gasification plant and a more than 700-meter-long dam. The government of the Canary Islands — led by the nationalist party Coaliccion Canaria, has wanted the port to diversify the Tenerife economy and to make it less dependent on tourism. Part of the island’s inhabitants and environmental organizations are against the project, saying it is a useless duplicate of the port of Santa Cruz, 50km from Granadilla. In order to proceed with their project, the government of the Canary Islands removed the pastures of Cymodocea nodosa, which grow in the area where the new port should rise, from its list of protected species. After hearing about the government’s initiative on February 12, the environmentalists took legal steps, asking for “the urgent suspension of the project” due to the irreversible damage it could do to the marine environment. According to the ruling, “Cymodocea Nodosa has been removed from the list of protected species with the sole objective of starting the construction of the new port, urged by the Port Authorities”. Moreover, the project would lead to “an interruption of the deposit of material on the coast” causing irreversible damage to protected species, confirmed by a report of the Biodiversity Service of the councillor’s office for the Environment of the government of the Canary Islands and numerous experts. According to Alberto Brito, professor of Marine Biology at the University of La Laguna, “the Cymodocea pastures play an important role in the ecology: they stabilise beach sands, filter the water and form areas with high biodiversity where many interesting species of fish species breed”. According to the expert the eelgrass is already “receding”. The marine biologist added that the conservation of a habitat, in the case of the islands of the archipelago, cannot include or exclude single areas, because the pastures “play a crucial role on all islands where they are found”. Cymodocea Nodosa is safe for the moment, but the verdict has only been adjourned. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Far Right is on the March Again: the Rise of Fascism in Austria
In Austria’s recent general election, nearly 30 per cent of voters backed extremist right-wing parties. Live visits the birthplace of Hitler to investigate how Fascism is once again threatening to erupt across Europe.
Supporters of far right leader Heinz Christian Strache (pictured in the flyers held aloft by the man at the front) gather at a rally in Vienna
Beneath a leaden sky the solemn, black-clad crowd moves slowly towards a modest grey headstone. At one end of the grave, a flame casts light on the black lettering that is engraved on the marble. At the other end, an elderly soldier bends down to place flowers before standing to salute.
From all over Austria, people are here to pay their respects to their fallen hero. But the solemnity of the occasion is cut with tension. Beyond the crowd of about 300, armed police are in attendance. They keep a respectful distance but the rasping bark of Alsatians hidden in vans provides an eerie soundtrack as the crowd congregates in mist and light rain.
Weâ€(tm)ve been warned that despite a heavy police presence journalists have often been attacked at these meetings. If trouble does come then the mob look ready to fight. There are bull-necked stewards and young men who swagger aggressively.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Big Brother to Spy on Your Holidays as Security Database is Set Up to Log All Trips Abroad
All trips out of Britain are to be recorded on a massive new security database — along with personal details of every business traveller and holidaymaker.
People planning a journey abroad will have to submit their exact travel plans along with details of their passports, home addresses, email addresses, and even credit cards.
Civil liberties groups voiced alarm at the scale of the new system — called ‘e-borders’ — which is aimed at tightening Britain’s perimeters and countering terrorism.
Anyone who does not comply will face the risk of criminal prosecution and fines of up to £5,000.
The rules will apply to all journeys that involve leaving the UK, whether by air, sea or Channel Tunnel, regardless of how brief the trip.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: City Face Brussels Power Grab
Gordon Brown is under pressure to stand up to Brussels amid claims that his showcase G20 summit is heading for failure. The Tories called on the Prime Minister to veto a controversial proposal to give a new European super-regulator powers to intervene in the City. The row over the European Commission’s plan erupted after finance ministers failed to agree a plan for next month’s meeting.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Firebrand Risks Jail in Call for Jihad Cash
Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary has been caught on tape urging an audience to raise funds for the ‘mujaheddin’
OUTWARDLY he presents an innocuous image as a be-spectacled father of three trained in the law. But Anjem Choudary is now considered by many politicians and religious leaders as the most dangerous Islamist extremist in Britain.
He has previously made no secret of his demands that the country be placed under sharia — Islamic law. This would mean all women would have to wear veils, adulterers would be stoned to death and drunks whipped in public.
Last Tuesday Choudary and his small but obsessive group of followers turned their bile on British troops parading through Luton after their return from service in Iraq.
While his placard-waving “students” fomented a near-riot by branding the men and women of the Royal Anglian Regiment as “butchers” and “cowards”, Choudary, who was not present, did not shrink from fanning the flames of outrage.
Within hours of the ugly confrontation in Luton, he had posted a message on the Islam4UK website, calling the troops “pompous” and accusing them of murdering women and children in Iraq.
He later gave a glimpse of his vision of Britain in a newspaper interview, calling for the “black flag of Allah” to be raised over Downing Street.
In the absence of his former guru, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed — a firebrand preacher banned from Britain — and with Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric of Finsbury Park mosque, in jail, Choudary appears to have installed himself as the country’s most vocal Islamist.
He has always been at pains to keep his public proselytising within the boundaries of British law.
Now Choudary, 41, a founder member of the British wing of Al-Muhajiroun, an extremist group, has been caught on tape urging an audience to raise funds for the “mujaheddin” — a phrase usually associated with insurgents in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, it is an offence to “invite another to provide money or other property” for the purposes of terrorism. Offenders risk a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Last year Abu Izzadeen, another radical preacher, was one of several men jailed after their sermons at the Regent’s Park mosque in London were found to be inciting terrorism and calling for its funding.
Last night Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP, asked for a police investigation into Choudary’s activities.
“He is certainly subverting and suborning vulnerable youngsters with a view to turning them into mujaheddin,” said Mercer…
| — Hat tip: The Frozen North | [Return to headlines] |
UK: I Am Filled With Regret and Remorse: Lord Ahmed’s Shame at Jail Sentence for Texting While Driving
It is a scene that Lord Ahmed has replayed in his mind many times. He will do so, he suspects, for the rest of his life.
He is driving along a familiar stretch of the M1, five miles from his home in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It is a dark, winter evening and his wife and mother are with him, heading home after visiting relatives.
He recalls passing Junction 35 and the bottom of his gold Jaguar X-type being struck by a piece of debris. It is heavy, enough to shake him, and he grasps the steering wheel more tightly. And then it happens.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Minister Beaten After Clashing With Muslims on His TV Show
A Christian minister who has had heated arguments with Muslims on his TV Gospel show has been brutally attacked by three men who ripped off his cross and warned: ‘If you go back to the studio, we’ll break your legs.’
The Reverend Noble Samuel was driving to the studio when a car pulled over in front of him. A man got out and came over to ask him directions in Urdu.
Mr Samuel, based at Heston United Reformed Church, West London, said: ‘He put his hand into my window, which was half open, and grabbed my hair and opened the door.
He started slapping my face and punching my neck. He was trying to smash my head on the steering wheel.
Then he grabbed my cross and pulled it off and it fell on the floor. He was swearing. The other two men came from the car and took my laptop and Bible.’
The Metropolitan Police are treating it as a ‘faith hate’ assault and are hunting three Asian men.
In spite of the attack, Mr Samuel went ahead with his hour-long live Asian Gospel Show on the Venus satellite channel from studios in Wembley, North London. During the show the Muslim station owner Tahir Ali came on air to condemn the attack.
Pakistan-born Mr Samuel, 48, who was educated by Christian missionaries and moved to Britain 15 years ago, said that over the past few weeks he has received phone-in calls from people identifying themselves as Muslims who challenged his views.
‘They were having an argument with me,’ he said. ‘They were very aggressive in saying they did not agree with me. I said those are your views and these are my views.’
He said that he, his wife Louisa, 48, and his son Naveed, 19, now fear for their safety, and police have given them panic alarms. ‘I am frightened and depressed,’ he said. ‘My show is not confrontational.’
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: My Imam Father Came After Me With an Axe
Hannah Shah had been raped by her father and faced a forced marriage. She fled, became a Christian and now fears for her life
We are all too familiar with the persecution of Christians in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet sitting in front of me is a British woman whose life has been threatened in this country solely because she is a Christian. Indeed, so real is the threat that the book she has written about her experiences has had to appear under an assumed name.
The book is called The Imam’s Daughter because “Hannah Shah” is just that: the daughter of an imam in one of the tight-knit Deobandi Muslim Pakistani communities in the north of England. Her father emigrated to this country from rural Pakistan some time in the 1960s and is, apparently, a highly respected local figure.
He is also an incestuous child abuser, repeatedly raping his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan. A much, much greater affront to “honour” in her family’s eyes, however, was the fact that she then became a Christian — an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang — in the middle of a British city — to find and kill her.
Hannah Shah says her story is not unique — that there are many other girls in British Muslim families who are oppressed and married off against their will, or who have secretly become Christians but are too afraid to speak out. She wants their voices to be heard and for Britain, the land of her birth, to realise the hidden misery of these women.
Hannah’s own voice is quiet and emerges from a tiny frame. She is clearly nervous about talking to a journalist and the stress she has been under is betrayed by a bald patch on the left side of her head. Yet she has a lovely natural smile, especially when she reveals that she got married a year ago; her husband works in the Church of England, “though not as a vicar”.
I tell Hannah that the passages in her memoir about her sexual abuse are almost impossible to read — but I also found it hard to understand why, now that she is in her early thirties, independent and married, she has not reported her father’s horrific assaults on her to the police.
“What has stopped me is that if my dad went to prison, the shame that would be brought upon the rest of the family would be horrific. My mum would not be able to . . . I mean, it’s bad enough having a daughter who’s left, is not agreeing to her marriage and is now a Christian. Then to have my dad in prison would be the end for her.”
I tell Hannah, perhaps a little cruelly, that in her use of the word “shame” she is echoing the sort of arguments that her own family had used against her.
“I understand that, but what I’m saying is that if I do that, then there will never be a door open to me to have contact with my family ever again. I’m still hoping that there will be some opportunity for that.” Of course, by writing this book, albeit under an assumed name and with all the places and characters disguised, there is a chance that her family and community will identify themselves in it. What does she think they would do, then?
“To be honest, I don’t even want to think about that. Either they will decide between them that they are not going to say anything because it will bring shame on all the community, or they will decide that they want to take action. Then my life will become even more difficult, because they’ll all be looking for me.”
Hannah’s description in the book of the moment when her “community” discovered the “safe” home where she had fled after becoming an apostate is terrifying. A mob with her father at its head pounded and hammered at the door as she cowered upstairs hoping she could not be seen or heard. She heard her father shout through the letter box: “Filthy traitor! Betrayer of your faith! Cursed traitor! We’re going to rip your throat out! We’ll burn you alive!”
Does she still believe they would have killed her? “Yes, without a doubt. They had hammers and knives and axes.”
Why didn’t you call the police after-wards? “First, I didn’t think the police would believe me. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in this country — or that’s what they’d think. Second, I didn’t believe I would get help or protection from the authorities.”
Hannah had good reason for this doubt. When, at school, she had finally summoned the courage to tell a teacher that her father had been beating her (she couldn’t bring herself to reveal the sexual abuse), the social services sent out a social worker from her own community. He chose not to believe Hannah and, in effect, shopped her to her father, who gave her the most brutal beating of her life. When she later confronted the social worker, he said: “It’s not right to betray your community.”
Hannah blames what is sometimes called political correctness for this debacle: “My teachers had thought they were doing the right thing, they thought it showed ‘cultural sensitivity’ by bringing in someone from my own community to ‘help’, but it was the worst thing they could have done to me. This happens a lot.
“When I’ve been working with girls who were trying to get out of an arranged marriage, or want to convert to Christianity, and they have contacted social services as they need to get out of their homes, the reaction has been ‘we’ll send someone from your community to talk to your parents’. I know why they are doing this, they are trying to be understanding, but it’s the last thing that the authorities should do in such situations.”
This is the sort of cultural sensitivity displayed by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, last year when he suggested that problems within the British Muslim community such as financial or marital disputes could be dealt with under sharia, Islamic law, rather than British civil law. What did Hannah, now an Anglican, think on hearing these remarks?
“I was horrified.” If you could speak to him now, what would you say to the archbishop? “I would say: have you actually spoken to any ordinary Muslim women about the situation that they live in, in their communities? By putting in place these Muslim arbitration tribunals, where a woman’s witness is half that of a man, you are silencing women even more.”
She believes the British government is making exactly the same mistake as Rowan Williams: “It says it talks to the Muslim community, but it’s not speaking to the women. I mean, you are always hearing Muslim men speaking out, the representatives of the big federations, but the government is not listening to Muslim women. With the sharia law situation and the Muslim arbitration tribunals, have they thought about what effect these tribunals have on Muslim women? I don’t think so.”
It’s fair to say that Hannah Shah is an evangelical Christian, who clearly feels a duty to spread her new faith to Muslims— something with which the Church of England’s eternally emollient establishment is very uncomfortable and the government even more so. She points out that even within this notionally Christian country, people are “persecuted” for evangelism of even the mildest sort. She cites the recent cases of the nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for a patient and the foster parents who were struck off after a Muslim girl in their care converted to Christianity.
“Such people — I’m not talking about apostates like me — have been persecuted or ostracised in this country simply because they want to share their faith with others. People call this political correctness but I actually think it is based on a fear of Muslims, what they might do if provoked.”
Shah’s conversion seems to have its origins in the fact that the family who put her up after she ran away from the prospect of an arranged marriage in rural Pakistan were themselves regular church attenders. She began to go with them and, to put it at its most banal, she liked what she heard.
“It was the emphasis on love.
The Islam that I grew up knowing and reading about doesn’t offer me love. That’s the biggest thing that Christianity can and does offer. I sense that I belong and am accepted as I am — even when I do wrong there is forgiveness, a forgiveness which Islam does not offer.”
So does Hannah offer Christian forgiveness to the father who raped and abused her and who, by her own account, was even prepared to murder her?
“It’s taken a long time and it’s only in the past few years that I’ve got to that. It’s very hard to get there and it’s taken a lot of shouting and screaming behind closed doors, and praying, to get me to the point of being able to say: I forgive. I have to, partly because otherwise I would be a very bitter and angry person and I don’t want to livea life that’s full of anger.”
I can’t help asking how she would react if a future child of hers decided she wanted to abandon the Christian faith of the family home and become a Muslim. “It would be very hard for me, obviously.”
Would she try to discourage it? “No. I’d bring them up as Christians, take them to church, but I’d also want them to know about, well, my culture, about Islam. Because being Christian should be a choice, not what you’re born to. But yes, it would be hard if they chose Islam.”
Somehow, though, I think Hannah Shah would cope.
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UK: Other Side of Hate Preacher ‘Andy’ Choudary
The British live ‘like animals in a jungle’ with their alcohol, gambling, prostitution and pornography.
That is the stated view of Anjem Choudary, the preacher of hate who this week insulted the families of dead soldiers and branded their marching comrades as cowards.
The extremist wants Britain to be brought under Sharia law, with women forced to wear burkas and put to death for adultery.
Yet before he grew his beard and turned to fundamentalism, Choudary, 41, was very much the life and soul of the party at Southampton University.
[…]
After he qualified as a solicitor, however, he swiftly moved into ever more radical Islam.
Former acquaintances said this was possibly because he was angered by his failure to land a well-paid job with a big City law firm.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Profit of Hate
Ranting Muslim cleric who mocks our heroes rakes in thousands in benefits
A MUSLIM hate preacher who led a baying mob against homecoming British soldiers is raking in THOUSANDS in BENEFITS, the News of the World can reveal.
Foul-mouthed mullah Ishtiaq Alamgir—branded “the enemy within” for his loathsome rants against Britain—claims to be working as a teacher.
But we’ve discovered that what the lying 29-year-old crazed cleric REALLY claims is £220 a fortnight in unemployment handouts jointly with wife Musert Bashir, 30.
He gets £167 a week full housing benefit to keep him in his comfortable £200,000, three-bedroom home as he orchestrates campaigns against the country that feeds him. And he pocketed thousands of pounds in income support for months in 2006.
Scrounger Alamgir—who says he felt “elated” when he watched the 9/11 planes crash into the Twin Towers—was in the public eye last week leading a group of louts in Luton as they spat abuse at 200 Royal Anglian troops on their homecoming march.
He laughed and goaded police as protestors—holding ‘Butchers of Basra’ banners—clashed with soldiers’ families.
In a vile rant, Alamgir said: “They come here to Luton where Muslims live and expect to be greeted like heroes.”
They don’t expect to be treated like heroes, even though they are. But they DO pay their taxes—which is more than can be said for Alamgir.
He told reporters he was an English and Maths teacher. But in reality he quit his job as an accountant two years ago to become a Muslim extremist and follow in the footsteps of his hero—evil firebrand cleric Omar Bakri, now exiled in Lebanon.
Alamgir, who has two children, became leader of Luton’s now banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun when Bakri was booted out of Britain. Every week, instead of finding work, he hands out radical Islamic leaflets and spouts bile.
Along with his group of 20-strong followers, he strives to turn impressionable Muslim teenagers against Britain.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Whitehall Runs Up a £780,000 Flower Bill
Whitehall ministries have spent almost £780,000 on cut flowers and potted plants in the past four years. The Department of Children, Schools and Families ran up the largest bill of £174,600 followed by the Foreign Office which spent £106,053. The money went on floral arrangements for official dinners and social events and bouquets for visiting dignitaries such as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France’s first lady.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Fiat Punto’s Production to Begin, Minister Dinkic
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 12 — Serbian Minister for the Economy Mladjan Dinkic announced that the production of the FIAT Punto model will begin in the Kragujevac Zastava, in the joint factory of Italy’s FIAT and the Serbian government, and that deliveries will begin in April, reports BETA news agency. Speaking at a news conference, he said the vice-president of FIAT, Alfredo Altavilla, will arrive in Belgrade on March 16, to discuss investments, the expansion of capacity for the production of Punto and preparations for the production of two new models, with representatives of the Serbian government. Dinkic stressed that, in the past two weeks, the majority of consumer credits subsidized by the State were for the purchasing of the Punto model. Loans worth 3.5 million euro have been approved for this purpose, and about 500,000 worth has been approved in loans for purchasing other domestic goods. “Reservations have been made for 17,889 Puntos, of which 14,139 through the system for replacing the old car with a new one,” Dinkic said.(ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: EIB, Loan for First Medgaz Pipeline
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 13 — The European Investment Bank is promoting major new energy infrastructures in the Maghreb countries, starting with Algeria. Through Femip (Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership), the EIB undertook to grant a loan of up to 500 million euro to Medgaz, the first gas pipeline to directly connect Algeria to Europe, and more specifically Beni Saf to Spain. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Turkey Key Country in Caspian Area, EU Official Says
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 12 — A European Union energy official said today that Turkey was “a key country” in carrying oil and natural gas resources of the Caspian region to the western markets. “Turkey is one of the key countries in Euro-Caspian energy plans and we would like to see Turkey among us to increase the capacity in this region,” Jean Arnold Vinois, head of EU’s Energy Policy and Security of Supply Unit, told an international conference in Ankara on oil and natural gas. Vinois, as Anatolia agency reports, said the EU needed to diversify its energy routes and resources for a continued supply flow and security. “The EU is heavily dependant on Russia, which is very risky as we saw with the recent crisis in January. We need to diversify resources south of Russia, and we need direct accesses to gas in the Caspian and the Mediterranean,” Vinois said. “Both the EU and Turkey needs gas and we need to improve the southern energy corridor,” he said. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Environment: Mediterranean Projects in Search of Funds
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 13 — The first ‘auction-conference’ to be organised by Europaid (the EU’s external cooperation programme) was held in Brussels today and has attracted an array of ‘donor-hunting’ environmental projects: the creation of a system of protected areas in Libya, the protection of Lebanon’s forests from fire, or a way to tackle the problem of desertification in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The auction is being held in several rooms, with an auction-master and the project heads seated around tables in a kind of ‘speed-dating’ arrangement to hook up with potential donors. ‘It’s the first idea of this kind,” said Europaid’s General Director, Koos Rochelle, ‘and it could well be repeated in other sectors and with other Europaid financing lines”. All the projects have, in fact, been given the ‘seal’ of quality approval by the European Commission: “We certify the bona fides of the projects,” explained Europaid division head, Roberto Ridolfi, “which budget shortages have meant that we unfortunately cannot finance”. There are 86 proposals going under the hammer, with financing values of between 400,000 and 3 million euros apiece. Among the more expensive projects are those of Bari’s Agronomic Institute (Ciheam), which is in excess of 3 million euros and involves the countries on the Mediterranean shores in their management of their earth resources currently being eroded by desertification. “Some Italian regions have shown interest in the project,” said the Scientific Administrator at Ciheam, Mladen Todorovic, “but various financial backers will be needed to reach the required figure”. Another project in search of a funder is that of Lebanon’s Association for Forests, Development and Conservation. The country suffered a great fire in 2007,” says Director Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine, “and we are looking for funds for the management of a shared database for the recovery of the affected areas, which is more than just a matter of planting trees”. But there were words of scepticism about the initiative from Luigi Boitani, head of the Department of the Environment, Health and Safety, at Rome’s La Sapienza university: he only saw one donor turn up in his room. Boitani has already worked in Libya on a management plan for Acacus Park, in the south-west of the country, a UNESCO site. “Libya doesn’t have a network of parks as do other countries,” Boitani noted “and the government has asked us to work with them to set one up”. At stake are those desert ecosystems that are still intact, with animals such as the addax, the famous antelope of the Sahara. “We don’t expect all of the projects to find donors today,” is the concluding word of Europaid’s Ridolfi, “but some contacts could well bear fruit in the future”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: Benach, Catalonia Has Mediterranean Vocation
(ANSAmed) — GENOA, MARCH 13 — Barcelona and Catalonia have a “Mediterranean vocation”, and are “a meeting point, which enjoys a privileged context in north-south dialogue”: Ernest Benach is the president of the Parliament in Catalonia and is in Genoa for the inauguration of “Dialoghi nel Mediterraneo occidentale” (dialogue in the western Mediterranean) for his contribution in favour of dialogue, to overcome obstacles (the war in Gaza, above all) that are hindering the official birth of the Mediterranean Union general secretariat in Barcelona. The Catalonian city has already made the Pedralbas castle available to the Mediterranean Union, and Benach told ANSAmed that the place, “rather than being a symbolic space” must be characterised by its “symbolic use”. Then again, Benach acknowledges that the task that has been presented to the Mediterranean Union “is not easy” and that every possible energy must be made available to “fuel dialogue and peace”. This objective can be achieved through “cooperation and alliance”. The president of the Catalonian parliament does not deny that many of the current obstacles to dialogue derive from the global crisis, which calls for powerful incentives because otherwise it could become endemic. He told ANSAmed that the instruments must be the result of a form of processing that provides “global solutions and local commitments” and diversity, in this, must not represent a hurdle. Because, he adds, “the global world thrives on diversity” and he explained this concept by pointing out that even much of the workforce in Catalonia comes from the southern shores of the Mediterranean, and there still is reciprocity in investments between Catalonian businessmen and those in Maghreb countries. Catalonia is certainly not immune to the repercussions of the international economic crisis, but it is a general problem that, as emphasised by Benach, must be dealt with by using rationality and by taking into account the peculiarities of each single country or, as is the case for Catalonia, of each single local body. Benach says that “Today Europe must tackle two major problems, the energy problem (we depend on others) and the immigration problem. These are problems that set extremely clear constraints”. He continued saying that Catalonia, “with its history, culture and identity”, in the course of the past centuries, promoted the conditions for dialogue in order to turn the sea into a bridge towards other peoples, towards the peculiar wealth of all, in tune with a “permanent commitment” and a “regulated space between the peoples”. He concluded that “National and supranational realities need a common project”, and that “effective measures, only if they are rooted in contiguity and the respect of each territory”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: Search for Dialogue Gets Underway in Genoa
(by correspondent Diego Minuti) (ANSAmed) — GENOA, MARCH 13 — Searching for dialogue because you can’t do anything else, turning the Genoa-based event into something more than the (ever important) rituality of such forums: these are the two points that the first day of the ‘Dialogues in the Western Mediterranean” event, organised by the European Commission and the Liguria Region (Assembly and Council) is looking to bring to account and which, hope the participants, will constitute points of solidity in the often difficult, often disappointing talks between the two western shores of the Mediterranean. The event was created as something of a gamble — to make institutions and representative institutions talk to each other — but it could pay off if, as all participants have said, all realise that it is only through all-inclusive confrontations that the dream of a Mediterranean entity could take root again: a dream which has resulted in disappointment for the Barcelona Process, and for which the Mediterranean Union — Nicolas Sarkozy’s political creature — has provided fresh hope. And Genoa wants to be a part of this gamble, along with its biggest local institutional figures (the President of Liguria’s Legislative Assembly, Giacomo Ronzitti, and the Council President, Claudio Burlando). because it identifies itself as a city of the sea and of the Mediterranean and because it also has the ambition to strengthen this role, putting itself forward as the ‘capital” of that particular part of the dialogue involving who governs and who they feel that they are representing — just like organisations imbued with the so-called civil society’. The path, however, is long and difficult, because the real risk is falling trap to the same errors that put the brakes on the Barcelona Process which — as Undersecretary Enzo Scotti, who is connected with Genoa by teleconference has said — was hampered, even blocked, by the unresolved problem of relations between local political bodies and the State apparatus. But the leverage to resolve this problem is there, and each one of the speakers came forth with their own recipes for success, their own solutions. President Ronzitti proposed that the Genoa meeting “should become a shared and stable choice in time; that it could sit alongside the General Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean without impinging upon it”. Claudio Burlando echoed the words of the Ligurian president, noting that in terms of dialogue, crisis situations — like the one the whole world is experiencing — an error to be avoided is “non-inclusion” , closing oneself in one’s own country, and looking suspiciously at the others. The countries of the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the Arab-Maghreb regard dialogue, therefore, as the only tool today able to shorten, above all, cultural and social differences, which are both clear and lacerating. One of the “recipes for success” is of Catalan origin. It was proposed by the President of Barcelona’s Parliament, Ernest Benach, and Barcelona is also host to the General Secretariat of the Mediterranean Union. Benach said: We have been open to the sea for centuries: open to what it is, and open to what it shows us. We have never closed ourselves off and today, in our area, there live the largest communities of north Africans. He went on to add that: “National and supranational realities need a common project”, made up of ‘effective measures which take as their starting point the contiguity and respect of each territory”. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Samir Kassir’s Lesson
A lack of coherence among Western leaders, and the use of different standards in judging and then establishing relations with Arab countries on the basis of personal economic and geopolitical interests, has effectively weakened and delayed even more the emergence of an élite of really democratic Arab reformists. Compared to the past, Arab dissent appears to be more mature and ready to challenge regimes, no longer taking refuge in European capitals as happened in the past. Samir Kassir, as well as Tunisian Sihem Benzedrine and Egyptian Saad Eddine Ibrahim, are only few of the well-known Arab dissidents who have turned their backs on Western hypocrisy, to personally assume responsibility and run the risk of being tried in military courts and suffering detention without trial in order to pursue one ideal: freedom.
During a recent TV interview, former Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema pragmatically expressed the bitter need for Western countries to talk to some of the autocratic regimes in the Arab world, in the absence of a democratic alternative, also so as to avoid the risk of an emergence of new groups inspired by religious extremism. Better the autocratic but “moderate” (in the eyes of the West) Arab leaders than a confused scenario with the risk of fundamentalism, whether or not this is the result of free elections (as happened in Algeria after the elections held in the early Nineties).
It is a drastic and controversial interpretation, a thesis representing a first restraint on the development of dissent in the Arab world, far from religious manipulations or post-nationalist ideologies linked to a now declining pan-Arabism. Incoherence among Western leaders, especially the United States, and the use of different standards in judging and then establishing relations with Arab countries on the basis of personal economic and geopolitical interests, has effectively weakened and delayed even more the emergence of an élite of really democratic Arab reformists…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tourism: Turkey, Italian Costa Crociere to Boost Izmir Port
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 9 — A joint initiative of the Izmir Chamber of Commerce (IZTO) and Italian Costa crociere plans to build a modern port for cruise ships in Turkey’s biggest city in the Aegean region, Hurriyet Daily reported. The two parties have signed a booking note for the 75 million dollars investment according to which one of the most modern ports in Mediterranean will be built in Izmir at Uckuyular area. “Eight cruisers will anchor at the port side by side at the same time”, Ekrem Demirtas, president of IZTO ruling board, said, while Pierluigi Foschi, president and CEO of Costa, declared that the italian company will be able “to flood the shores of the Aegean with tourists”. Izmir has become one of the top three ports in Turkey, handling 320,000 passengers in the last five years and is expected to enter the top five in the Mediterranean with the new port. “We will push 400,000 tourists with constantly added ships”, Demirtas said, explaining why they needed the new port: “Our new target is having 1 million cruise passengers visiting every year to compete with cities like Barcelona which is visited by 2.1 million”. “Our target for now is building four or five ports in the Aegean”, Foschi declared. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: EIB, First Project in Line With Islamic Bank
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 13 — The European Investment Bank is to make its first loan scheme in line with an Islamic financial institution, for a project in Tunisia. As part of an overall financial investment plan, the European Investment Bank for the Mediterranean (FEMIP: Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership), has agreed a loan of 130 million euros for the Tunisian company Tunisian Indian Fertilizers, which is the first private company in Tunisia made up of Tunisian companies and foreign partners, for the construction of an industry. FEMIP therey completes a leasing deal which was set up by the Islamic Development Bank. The company which is to benefit from the loan, which has a life span of thirty years, joins two state companies and two Indian partners, with the intention of extracting phosphate rocks and transforming it into fertilisers destined for the Indian market. The project will create profits from exportation, and a high number of jobs in the country. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: 70 Mln Euro From EIB for Enfidha Airport
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 13 — The instrument of the European Investment Bank (EIB) for the Mediterranean, Femip (Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership), has signed an agreement on a 70 million euro loan for Turkey’s main airport operator Tav Havalimanlari Holding As. The holding will use to money to build a new airport in Enfidha, 110 km south of Tunis. The project is part of concession granted by the State to the private Turkish company: the first public-private partnership of this importance in Tunisia. The airport of Enfidha will be the first one owned by a private operator in the Maghreb region. The new airport is expected to receive 5 million passengers per year in the first phase, a threshold considered to be strategic for tourism in the country. Tourism is a priority sector for local authorities. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Japanese Loan of USD 10 Mln to Generate Solar Energy
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, March 12 — The Shura Council Industry and Energy Committee approved during a meeting on Thursday under Mohamed Fareed Khamis, the committee chairman, a Japanese loan worth 9 billion yen (about 10 million US dollars) to carry out a thermal solar energy station in Kuraymat, nearly 90km south of Cairo. The loan, which aims at diversifying renewable energy resources, will be repaid over 30 years at a 0.65 percent interest. Egyptian Minister of Electricity Hassan Younis described the loan agreement as a positive step on the way of harnessing fresh renewable energy resources. Minister Younis said the station, to be established next year, will be the fifth worldwide to produce solar energy. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Lieberman for Foreign Ministry, Opening From Rivals
(by Alessandro Logroscino) (ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, MARCH 12 — The agreement on cabinet appointments and on the programme of a future Israeli government made up only of the Right is still not there. The agreement between the principal players, Likud (right-wing nationalist) led by Prime minister designate Benyamin Netanyahu and Israel Beitenu (IB, right-wing radical secular) led by Russian-speaking Avigdor Lieberman hinges on one key point: the Foreign Minister’s job will go to the controversial Lieberman, according to the media, who report the opinions of diplomatic staff and former government men — including opponents of the right — who are ruling out dramatic about-turns for the sake of the country’s image. According to the press, agreement is on its way over the right-wing 6 party coalition government which Netanyahu is obliged to form. However there are still doubts over the demands of the two most extremist parties (the National Union and the National Home, both tied to the hard-line settler movement) to head the ministry for housing construction, which is fundamental for the thorny issue of the West Bank settlements, which has drawn criticism recently from the USA and the EU. There is also the problem of the LB’s platform over the laity and civil marriage, which are viewed negatively by the ultra-orthodox parties. Pacts over the main offices between Likud and IB appear to be clearer however: the IB will get the ministries for Justice, National security, Infrastructure, Tourism and the Foreign ministry. This last office was the focus of attention for newspaper ‘Yediot Ahronot’ today, which interviewed well-known personalities on the consequences of Lieberman getting the post: he is a pragmatist who was an immigrant from the former USSR, but he is also known for his oratory skills, his attacks on the Arab world, and his controversial request for an oath of loyalty on the part of Arab Israelis to the Zionist nature of the State. He is a personality who according to Labour MP Ophir Pines-Paz “will damage Israel’s image for years”, but according to other commentators he will be no less difficult for western politicians to swallow than when leaders like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon stepped into the diplomatic arena. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel, Hamas Step Up Talks on Prisoners’ Swap
Four members of the British parliament met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal late Saturday, urging their government to end its boycott of the Palestinian group “to achieve just peace” as Israel and Hamas stepped up talks on prisoners’ swap.
“We need to talk to Hamas to make progress (toward peace) because they represent a big proportion of the Palestinians,” Clare Short, an MP in the governing Labour Party, told reporters.
Britain, along with the European Union and the United States, has said there can be no dealing with Hamas until it recognizes Israel, renounces armed struggle and accepts interim peace accords.
Short said after meeting Meshaal in Damascus that opening up discussions with Hamas immediately would “move things forward in the hope that we in the end achieve just peace.”
First public meeting with Hamas
“ We need to talk to Hamas to make progress because they represent a big proportion of the Palestinians “
Clare ShortThe latest meeting with European politicians was publicized in contrast to several several meeting with Meshaal in the last few months away from the spotlight.
The delegation included a second Labour member of the House of Commons and two Liberal Democrat members of the upper chamber, the House of Lords. One Irish parliamentarian and one member of the Scottish parliament were also present.
Parliamentarians from Italy and Greece are expected to visit Damascus to meet Meshaal next week. Calls have increased in the West to deal with Hamas after the Israeli invasion of Gaza which was halted in January.
Meshaal had urged the West to lift its boycott of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The Islamist movement won a parliamentary election in 2006 and drove its Fatah rivals from Gaza by force in 2007. The two groups are currently holding talks on a Palestinian unity government under Egyptian auspices in Cairo.
Hamas is mainly backed by Syria and Iran, and Hamas’s exiled leadership lives in Syria, including Meshaal. The two countries also support Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Britain said this month it was open to hold talks with the political wing of Hezbollah after the Shiite group joined a unity government last year.
France, which played a role in halting the Gaza war, has indicated that it might be prepared to hold talks with Hamas even if Hamas did not recognize Israel.
Leaders of Hamas have said they are not prepared to recognize Israel but would accept establishment of a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war in return for a truce with the Jewish state lasting decades.
Prisoners’ swap
In other developments, two senior Israeli officials headed to Cairo on Saturday to pursue Egyptian-brokered talks with Hamas for the release of an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, the prime minister’s office said.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dispatched his special negotiator, Ofer Dekel, and the head of Israel’s internal security services, Yuval Diskin, to Cairo to continue “intensive negotiations,” his office said.
The two will return to Israel on Sunday evening ahead of a special cabinet meeting Olmert called for Monday to discuss the progress made in the protracted talks on the release of conscript Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June 2006.
Hamas wants the release of several hundred Palestinians held in Israeli jails in exchange for Shalit.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Pope: Dialogue Between Catholics and Jews “Necessary and Possible”
Benedict XVI has received a delegation from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which has resumed dialogue with the Catholic Church, after the “suspension” due to the Williamson case. On his trip to the Holy Land, the pope will pray that Jews, Christians, and Muslims may live in peace and harmony. The rabbis are asking that the Vatican condemn the Durban 2 statement on racism, as “profoundly anti-Semitic.”
Vatican City (AsiaNews) — Dialogue between the Catholic Church and Jews is “necessary and possible,” and the pope hopes that his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, expected to take place in May, can contribute to this, “so that Jews and Christians and also Muslims may live in peace and harmony in this Holy Land.” During his trip, “my intention is to pray especially for the precious gift of unity and peace both within the region and for the worldwide human family.” Benedict XVI made these remarks today at an audience with a delegation from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and from the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
To the Jewish rabbis received today, after “suspending” relations with the Catholic Church following the events involving the Holocaust denier bishop Williamson, which led to a two-week delay in the regular meeting with the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, the pope expressed his gratitude and desire to renew “my personal commitment to advancing the vision set out for coming generations in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate.” Also today, Benedict XVI expressed his gratitude to the Jews in a letter to the bishops of the whole world made public today, where he pointed out that “our Jewish friends” have understood better than many Catholics the meaning of the lifting of excommunication for the Lefebvrists.
“The Church,” says the pope, “recognizes that the beginnings of her faith are found in the historical divine intervention in the life of the Jewish people and that here our unique relationship has its foundation.” “Christians gladly acknowledge that their own roots are found in the same self-revelation of God, in which the religious experience of the Jewish people is nourished.” Referring to the progress made in recent years during the previous seven meetings between the Chief Rabbinate and the Vatican commission, the pope highlighted that “you have become increasingly aware of the common values which stand at the basis of our respective religious traditions. You have reflected on the sanctity of life, family values, social justice and ethical conduct, the importance of the word of God expressed in Holy Scriptures for society and education, the relationship between religious and civil authority and the freedom of religion and conscience.”
For the Rabbinate, today’s encounter with the pope “marks a positive change in the renewal of dialogue between us.” The statement was made by chief rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, stressing the “clear and unequivocal statements condemning denial of the Holocaust” made by the pope. The rabbi also expressed his “profound concern about the clearly anti-Semitic nature of the text proposed for the UN conference” on racism, Durban 2. The pope was asked for open criticism of the statement from the Vatican. “We appreciate,” he said, “the constructive role of the Vatican observer in the attempt to resist the distorted declaration, and we hope that the Holy See will make its voice heard in deploring this attack on the Jewish state.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Jewish Group Lauds Pope’s ‘Holocaust Row’ Letter
New York, 12 March (AKI) — A prominent Jewish group has praised a letter that Pope Benedict XVI sent to Catholic bishops in which he admitted to a mistake when he lifted the excommunication of Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson.
World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder praised the pope for sending a personal letter to Catholic bishops apparently explaining that insufficient checks on Williamson had been made before he was reinstated.
The letter reportedly accepts that better Internet checks would have highlighted the issues of concern. The Vatican has not yet released full details of the letter.
“The Pope has found clear and unequivocal words regarding Bishop Williamson’s Holocaust denial, and he deserves praise for admitting that mistakes were made within the Vatican in the handling of this affair,” Lauder said in a statement.
The Pope’s decision in January to reinstate Williamson caused a rift in Catholic-Jewish relations. The Vatican has asked Williamson to recant his claims denying the existence of World War II Nazi gas chambers but he has not done that.
“The Pope’s letter conveys the essential requirements for inter-religious dialogue: candour and the willingness to tackle difficult issues squarely.
“His expressed anguish at the events following the Holocaust-denying statements by Williamson reflects the similar emotional pain felt by Jews worldwide during this affair,” Lauder continued.
News of the Pope’s letter comes soon after the Vatican confirmed he will visit Israel in May.
Williamson has denied that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during World War II and instead claimed only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died.
Church leaders said they had not been aware when the Pope reinstated Williamson that he had voiced such views in an interview last November on a Swedish television programme.
Williamson returned to his native England last month after being sacked as the head of a seminary in Argentina.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Asia: a General Warning
Iran: A Russian general has issued a public warning about the dangers posed by the Islamist regime in Tehran. Is further confirmation needed to convince the West that the dithering United Nations isn’t the answer?
Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, speaking at a Russian press agency news conference Thursday, corroborated intelligence that Iran is developing a next-generation, long-range missile and has dangerous nuclear weapons ambitions.
Dvorkin, who heads Moscow’s Center for Strategic Nuclear Forces, said, “Iran has long abandoned outdated missile technologies and is capable of producing sophisticated missile systems.”
Dvorkin doesn’t believe Iran is capable — yet — of building an intercontinental ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead, “but they will most likely be able to threaten the whole of Europe.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dubai Authority Bans Dancing in Public: Report
Playing loud music, dancing, nudity, kissing and even holding hands in public is considered inappropriate behavior under new guidelines laid down by the authorities of Dubai, according to a press report on Saturdafy.
The Dubai Executive Council issued a list of public behaviors that requires Dubai residents and visitors to respect the customs of the Muslim country and avoid what the council considers inappropriate behavior, according to the Arabic-language daily Al Emarat al-Youm.
“ Pants and skirts have to be of appropriate length, and outside clothing should not expose body parts indecently and should not be transparent “
Dubai Executive Council The rules, which apply to all public places, include a ban on all forms of nudity, playing music loudly and dancing, exchange of kisses between men and women—and even on unmarried couples holding hands.
Any breach of the guidelines, by nationals or expatriates, carries a possible prison penalty, the paper wrote.
The order also requires all visitors of public places, such as government buildings, shopping malls, streets and restaurants to dress in “appropriate” clothing, otherwise they would be denied entrance to those areas.
“Pants and skirts have to be of appropriate length, and outside clothing should not expose body parts indecently and should not be transparent,” the guidelines stipulate under section “public behavior,” the paper wrote.
In addition, the council ordered that anyone caught under the influence of alcohol—even a small amount—outside designated drinking areas is liable to being fined or imprisoned.
Dubai, a member of the seven-emirate United Arab Emirates, has a diverse culture as it is home to a foreign population made up mainly of low-skilled workers from Asia and white-collar professionals.
Unlike most of its neighbors in the conservative Gulf region, the emirate tolerates a relatively relaxed dress code and hosts dozens of hotels that have bars and clubs, where alcohol is legally served.
However, a series of incidents, including crackdowns on cross dressers and the expulsion of two British expats found guilty of having sex on the beach, has thrown into the limelight the sometimes clashing local and foreign cultures.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Iranian TV Show Scrapped After Child Calls Toy Monkey Ahmadinejad Live on Air
When the presenter of Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), a programme watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV, asked the name of the toy [monkey] the boy had been given as a reward for behaving himself, the child replied: “Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Reconsiders Plan to Buy Water From Turkey
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 13 — Israel thinks about buying water from Turkey once again as an option to overcome water shortage, the worst in the country over the past ten years, Anatolia agency reports today from Tel Aviv. Officials of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), established to help alleviate the national water shortage, discussed whether or not water import from Turkey could be feasible. Turkey and Israel once agreed on water trade to ship fresh water from Turkey to Israel —via either a pipeline or tankers— but the project was put on ice as it was considered too costly and non-operable. The Fund is in talks with Turkish and Israeli governments, as well as Israeli companies, to revive the idea of carrying Turkish water to Israel, said Russel Robinson, an official from the JNF. Israeli officials believe that it is almost impossible to find investors for projects to desalinate sea water amid global financial downturn. JNF officials said water import would be a feasible alternative. Before recent rainfall since the beginning of March, analyst had said the country could face the worst water crisis in 80 years due to dry winter. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Passenger Train Service Between Turkey and Syria to Start
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 11 — A passenger train service between Turkey and Syria will begin tomorrow, Anatolia agency reports. The new train would travel between the Turkish city of Mersin and Syrian city of Aleppo, a Turkish State Railways Administration (TCDD) statement said. TCDD and Syrian Railways have decided to launch a new train service between the two cities in order to meet the increasing transportation demand. The train will leave Aleppo at 10:40 a.m. and reach the southern Turkish city of Adana at 6 p.m. and Mersin at 7 p.m. The Syrian people who travel on the train will be seen off from Mersin to Aleppo at 11 p.m. The Aleppo-Mersin train will depart from Aleppo at 9 p.m. every Monday and Thursday, and it will depart from Mersin at 11 p.m. every Friday. The train will make reciprocal voyages two days a week. It will take nine hours and 20 minutes to travel between the Turkish and Syrian cities. Consisting of five passenger cars and one dining car, the train can carry 260 passengers. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorism: Turkey; Obama’s Plan to Force PKK to Lay Down Arms
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 13 — The United States has made a plan which includes a number of political initiatives in order to make the terrorist organization PKK lay down arms, daily Sabah wrote. The plan was one of the issues on the agenda of a number of U.S. diplomats who visited Turkey before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Ankara. According to Sabah the diplomats discussed the plan with Kurdish politicians such as Esat Canan, Serafettin Elci and Orhan Miroglu, asking if a general amnesty might work to solve the problem. Turkey’s State-run broadcaster TRT-Ses in Kurdish was also on the agenda of the U.S. diplomats. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Iranians Are Coming!
Another woman, an Iraqi Assyrian Christian, refuses to partake in a business meeting organized for women, because she is afraid she will be seen.By AMIR ORAHA (Middle East Times) Published: March 13, 2009Iraqi women living in Iran hold flags of Iran and Iraq and cheer for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after his airplane arrives in Tehran on Jan. 3. Maliki was in Tehran to discuss bilateral relations in the wake of the expiration of the U.N. mandate for international security forces in Iraq. (UPI Photo)BAGHDAD — Looks can be deceiving, but they can also be revealing. Walking into a major hotel in Baghdad these days and one cannot help but notice a group of women dressed in a conservative Muslim fashion, covering not only their heads, but also wearing long matching overcoats — in the heat of Baghdad, where summer comes very early.Mistaking this gathering for an event connected with the nearby Iranian embassy, it is further astonishing to learn that this is in fact an event sponsored by the United Nations and the Iraqi government for International Women’s Day.To those familiar with Baghdad, such a sight is an anomaly in a city that prided itself for its cosmopolitan flare. And the irony is even more accentuated by the fact that this gathering is in celebration of women.”This is Baghdad,” laments one of the hotel staff, pointing despairingly at the women. “Do you see this? They all look like they are from Iran! What is our country coming to?” he wails.Reluctant at first, one of the women agrees to talk, but insists it be done away from the crowd.”Why is everyone dressed like this,” asks this reporter.”Please don’t misunderstand. We don’t dress like this normally. It is too hot and this is not our style, but if we do not, they threaten us,” she explains. A friend standing by her side nods in agreement.Another woman, a member of the election committee explained that they were told to dress that way and wear a coat, even in summer if they wanted to be on the committee.”Iran is taking over everything,” she laments.Another woman, an Iraqi Assyrian Christian, refuses to partake in a business meeting organized for women, because she is afraid she will be seen.By whom? Asks this reporter, insisting that this is inside the so-called Green Zone, protected by the U.S military.”I’m so sorry, but they will see me and it will be a problem for me” says the woman, a hint of trepidation clearly audible in her voice.Does this mean “they” are watching inside the Green Zone?The woman becomes very nervous: “They are from Iran,” she says. “They are everywhere. If I am seen they will cause trouble for me. They have hurt many.”Refusing to accept the notion that Iranians are operating right under the eyes of U.S. forces, this reporter decides to have a look for himself.Meeting with the Iraqi-American who is coordinating the event I relate the conversation just exchanged across the street.”I am afraid she may be right,” he says, almost in a whisper.”There are Iranians all over the place,” he adds.He goes on: “What is happening is that Iranians are coming, but they have Iraqi IDs. We keep telling the Americans that even though they may show up with Iraqi IDs they are in fact from Iran. They don’t want to hear about it. They are everywhere.”One woman who had removed her head to foot covering related the story of her ‘arrest’ and detention which lasted for six hours.”They are all Iranian and influenced by Iran. The only way they let me go was if I promised I would spy for them inside the Green Zone and with my contacts,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used.A constant fear from Iraqis these days is what will happen after the United States withdraws.”Please don’t let the Americans leave. Iran is taking over. We are afraid and we need help,” she said, echoing the feeling of many Iraqis, especially among minority groups, like the Assyrians.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Polemics After Transgender Activist’s Murder
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 13 — The killing of Ebru Soykan, 28, a prominent Turkish transgender human rights activist, on March 10, 2009, shows a continuing climate of violence based on gender identity that Turkey’s authorities should urgently take steps to combat, Human Rights Watch said today in a press release received by ANSA. News reports and members of a Turkish human rights group said that an assailant stabbed and slit Ebru’s throat in her home in the center of Istanbul. Members of Lambda Istanbul, which works for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and transsexual (LGBTT) people, told Human Rights Watch that in the last month Ebru had asked the Prosecutor’s Office for protection from the man who had beaten her on several occasions and threatened to kill her. Lambda Istanbul was told that a few weeks ago police detained the man but released him two hours later. The same man is under police custody as the murder suspect. “The Turkish police have a duty to respond to all credible threats of violence, whoever the victim,” said Juliana Cano Nieto, spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. This is the second killing of a member of Lambda Istanbul in the past year. In July 2008, an unknown person shot and killed 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz in Istanbul as he was leaving a café near the Bosporus. No one has been charged with this crime. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Boy Accuses Prime Minister, Scratched My Neck
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 13 — On an electoral visit to the city of Adana, in the southern region of the Aegean, the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, is thought to have grabbed the neck of young protestor, before leaving the unmistakable signs of deep finger nail scratches on his skin. The secular website ‘Flash Haber’ reports the news, which is part of the same group as Flash TV, and which published a profile shot of the boy, aged 13, whose initials M.S.O. were used to keep his identity secret, and who appears in the picture with his eyes blacked out. On his neck, below a typical Turkish student hair-style, red signs of long and deep nail-scratches are evident. Last Monday Erdogan was on a visit to Adana for the electoral campaign for the administrative consultations on March 29 when, as his vehicle moved through the streets in a convoy, the young boy crossed police barriers and shouted towards him, “God will punish you in the next elections.” “I was immediately stopped by the escorting officers,” the young boy recounted, who brought me before him. The prime minister put one hand on my neck and, pushing me roughly, scratched me with his nails asking me: ‘Why did you shout those things?’ I answered him, ‘My father lost his job recently because of the economic crisis.’ Then he let me go.” Flash Haber reports that the boy’s family has begun attempts to find a lawyer to charge the Prime Minister with mistreating a child: that is M.S.O.’s status in the secular laws of Turkey, even if, according to Islam, which is the at the basis of Erdogan’s AKP Justice and Development party, the boy should already be deemed to be a “father of a family” and therefore essentially a man.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: 11 Years Jail for Throwing Stones Against Police
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 12 — Two protesters were sentenced to 11 years in prison and another received a 10-year jail sentence for throwing stones at security forces during an illegal demonstration held last year in southeastern Diyarbakir province, daily Today’s Zaman wrote. The Diyarbakir 4th High Criminal Court sentenced suspects T.Y. and F.G. to 11 years and three months in prison on charges of “disseminating the propaganda of a terrorist organization” and “membership in a terrorist organization and committing a crime on behalf of it”. Another suspect, F.A., was sentenced to 10 years and five months in prison on the latter charge. Turkey has been put under harsh criticism from the international community for demanding lengthy prison terms for protesters who participate in illegal rallies. Anti-Terrorism Law includes a number of articles which stipulate that individuals with links to a terrorist organization be harshly punished. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Elektromed in Talks With Gazprom Over Ankara’s Gas Network
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 11 — Turkish company Elektromed A.S., the second-highest bidder in the privatization tender for Ankara’s state-owned natural gas network, Baskent Dogalgaz, is conducting talks with Russian natural gas giant Gazprom since it may undertake running Ankara’s natural gas grid because the winning bidder, the Global-Energaz consortium, seems to have failed to fulfill its responsibilities within the allotted time. Elektromed lost the tender after submitting a bid of $1.55 billion on March 14, 2008, while Global-Energaz offered $1.61 billion for one of the most valuable assets offered in the country’s privatization program, as Today’s Zaman reports. The gas network, which is still run by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, has assets valued at $570 million and serves 1.1 million customers. It was widely seen as an attractive business opportunity as Ankara’s annual natural gas consumption is over 3 billion cubic meters and is rising steadily. According to some estimates, Ankara’s demand for natural gas will double over the next decade. The operator of Ankara’s gas grid will not only be responsible for distributing natural gas but can also determine where to import gas stocks from. The grid is being privatized as part of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed privatization program that Turkey adopted after an economic crisis in 2001. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Philippines: Catholic Church Pushes for Anti-Child Porn Bill Passage
Manila, 13 March (AKI) — The Philippines powerful Catholic church has again put its weight behind the passage of an anti-child pornography bill, currently stuck in the house of representatives or lower chamber.
Father Conegundo Garganta, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Youth (CBCP) said that it is high time that the bill is passed into law.
“We’ve been pushing for this long time ago and it’s about time for lawmakers to take this issue so seriously,” he said in a statement published in the CBCP website on Friday.
Garganta also admitted the CBCP is “dismayed” because of the delayed passage of the bill.
“It seems to us that lawmakers don’t really care about this issue,” he added.
The Senate passed its version of the bill last November. However, it still needs to be approved by the house of representatives. As there is currently no date set for the debate, Garganta urged legislators to push ahead.
“We hope that they will not keep it longer because as days goes on we know that more innocent children fell as victims of this crime,” he said.
The CBCP new endorsement is set to boost the campaign carried out by the Anti-Child Pornography Alliance (ACPA), a group comprising non-government organisations, church members and congressmen, established in July 2007 to support the passing of the Bill.
The group declared September 28 as the “National Day of Awareness and Unity against Child Pornography.”
Child pornography is a massive problem in the archipelago-country that suffers from widespread poverty and a high birth-rate.
According to ‘Child Pornography in the Philippines,’ a UNICEF-sponsored book published in 2005 and authored by Arnie Trinidad, the abuse are often perpetrated by American and European tourists.
A major case reported in the book is that of the 595 children, aged between 7 and 17, abused by the so-called ‘sex tourists’ in Pagsanjan, Laguna, a rural community located South of the capital Manila.
The first documented cases of child pornography in the country date back to the 1970s and were produced by American soldiers stationed in Vietnam who went to different Southeast Asian countries for rest and recreation.
The Philippines ratified the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography in 2003. But Manila still lacks a law aimed specifically at preventing child pornography.
However, current law already criminalises the use of children in any aspect of the production or distribution of pornography, defining a “child” as younger than 18 years.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Africa: in TV Confessions, Curtain Lifted on a Narcostate
As the people of Guinea sit transfixed before their TV sets, top government officials one after another are confessing to their role in a lucrative international cocaine trade. Organized by a military junta that seized power three months ago, the confessions offer unprecedented insight into an exploding drug trade in West Africa, one that connects coca leaves grown in South American fields to cocaine in European discos.
The confessions paint a picture of an illicit trade conducted with total impunity, with the help of officials, members of the president’s family and security forces. They also show the large role Guinea and other West African countries are playing as drug hubs, and how vulnerable they are to the corrupting influence of drug dollars.
A recent United Nations report found that at least 46 tons of cocaine have been seized en route to Europe via West Africa since 2005, bringing profits that sometimes exceed the entire defense budgets of countries it passes through. Before that time, less than a ton a year was seized from the entire continent.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Japanese Warships Join Fight Against Pirates in Somalia
They are leaving today for the Gulf of Aden. The constitution permits only military actions of self-defense, but 61% of the country views the effort favorably.
Tokyo (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Two Japanese warships will begin their mission off the Somali coast, to combat piracy. The two ships set sail today, and will reach the Gulf of Aden in three weeks. But the decision of the defense ministry is controversial: according to its constitution, Japan may engage only in actions of self-defense. Critical voices are noting that this effort — in which the ships could use lethal force — risks constituting a precedent for the Japanese military forces.
Defense minister Yasukazu Hamada notes that “piracy off Somalia is a threat to Japan and the international community,” and that “it is an important duty for the self-defense forces to protect Japanese lives and assets.” A survey conducted by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun demonstrates that at least 61% of Japanese have a favorable view of the effort against piracy.
Yesterday evening, the government of Tokyo presented a draft law to expand the purposes for which military force could be used, permitting also the protection of foreign ships.
The Japanese ships are going to join others from the United States, the European Union, and China, which are trying to protect merchant vessels in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Every year, at least a thousand Japanese ships pass through the Suez Canal. So far, no Japanese ship has been attacked.
In 2008, there were 95 attacks in Somali waters, with 35 ships taken hostage. Of these, 17 are still in the hands of the pirates.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
1,500 Call for Immigration Reform in El Paso Rally
Moving lawmakers to adopt comprehensive immigration reform and starting a grassroots movement of Americans who need U.S. immigration law changed was the focus of an emotional community meeting Friday night attended by about 1,500.
The meeting was led by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Chicago, who stopped in El Paso in the latest of a 17-city tour of the United States aimed at hearing testimonials from immigrant families about how deportations and current U.S. immigration policy is breaking apart households.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barrot: More Cooperation With Libya
(ANSAmed) — LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO), MARCH 13 — “It is important to strengthen maritime checks and patrols and to this end there is the need of more cooperation with Libya. The Italian government is doing everything in its power to make sure Libya demonstrates more constructive behaviour; we, for our part are in favour of negotiations with Tripoli so that the number of arrivals goes down”. These were the words of the European Commissioner for Justice and Civil Liberties, Jacques Barrot, during a meeting with representatives from Lampedusa’s municipal administration. The commissioner stressed more than once that his role “is not to substitute that of the Italian authorities, but to ensure that Italian policy is not in contrast with European immigration precepts”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: 68% in Small Companies, 71% Fixed Job
(ANSAmed) — VENICE, MARCH 13 — Immigrants and small companies form a winning team in Italy: 71.2% of foreign workers have a secure job and 68% work in small companies, according to a survey carried out by the Leone Moressa Foundation on foreigners in Italy. Employment of immigrants in Italy is focused in SME: 68% of foreign employees work for a small company and 80,1% of them work in an enterprise with less than 50 employees. Most immigrants are employed (84.5%), 14.4% are self-employed and only 1.1% are temporary workers. Many immigrants have a permanent job: 71.2% of employed immigrants have a permanent contract, against a national average of 64.3%. 89.9% of employees are labourers, 7.3% are clerks and only 1.1% does more qualified work. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: School Eyes ‘Showers’ for Roma Gypsy Pupils
Rome, 11 March (AKI) — A school in the northern Italian city of Milan is considering making bathrooms and showers available to Roma-Gypsy children who attend local schools to allow them to wash before entering class.
The project, entitled ‘Water and Soap’, is an initiative by the Riccardo Massa public school, located in Milan’s western outskirts.
“I have always thought that this could be the best way of integration for these children inside the classroom,” said the school’s principal, Giovanna Foglia, quoted by Italian daily ‘Il Giornale’.
Foglia also said that Roma-Gypsy children come to school ‘unwashed’ making their classmates unwilling to sit next to them.
“Children from the (Roma) camp arrived at school very dirty: this made them feel embarrassed and the other pupils shared school desks with them reluctantly,” said Foglia.
She also claimed many Roma-Gypsy families “were in favour of the initiative.”
Asked about dirty Italian pupils at the school, Foglia said in her experience, they always come from socially inadequate families.
“In these cases, I speak to the families and if necessary, the social services are brought in,” she said. “It’s not a cultural issue.”
Meanwhile an online survey carried out by an Italian immigration website said that for most respondents, Italy represented bureaucracy and racism.
Around 34 percent of respondents said Italy was synonymous with ‘permit of stay’, and for 28.2 percent , ‘racism’.
Top European rights watchdog The Council of Europe has previously criticised Italy for the living conditions of Italy’s Roma and Sinti Gypsies and the “xenophobic” climate of discrimination they and other immigrants face.
There are an estimated 160,000 Roma Gypsies in Italy, nearly half of whom were born in Italy and have Italian citizenship.
Others come from European Union countries such as Romania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
The Italian government claims it wants to give those who are in Italy legally better access to schools, medical and social services.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Joint Patrols Malta-Italy
(ANSAmed) — VALLETTA (MALTA), MARCH 13 — The government of Malta has offered to team up with the Italian navy for joint patrols against illegal immigration in the Mediterranean, said the Foreign Minister of Malta, Tonio Borg, who had a meeting with his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini today. Borg, who is still in Rome, has joined the Maltese President, Edward Fenech Adami, in his official visit to Italy where he has met Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, as well as Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican. Meanwhile the organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has taken position against the Maltese government due to the “unacceptable” and “barbaric” conditions in which immigrants are living in the detention centres on the island-State. “Under the present conditions MSF cannot continue its humanitarian activities in the detention centres” said MSF coordinator Giuseppe De Mola to the press. De Mola announced that he will also report the issue to European Commissioner Jacques Barrot, in Malta after his visit to Lampedusa. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Science Without Limits
On Monday President Obama issued an executive order, removing the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) instituted by former-President Bush. ESCR has provoked great controversy because it necessarily involves the destruction of nascent human life. Two alternative methods of stem cell research have seen great success and are free from ethical controversy, but Obama chose to ignore both ethics and pragmatism in his misguided commitment to support embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer money.
[…]
President Obama paid no heed to a clear alternative to embryonic stem cell research which has arisen in the past two years. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are adult cells (often derived from skin or hair) which are “induced” by scientists to regress to a state akin to embryonic stem cells. This approach has seen particularly great success in the past year, leading Rudolf Jaenisch, an expert in transgenic science, to explain that “biologically there’s no difference” between iPSCs and Embryonic Stem Cells. In fact, iPSCs provide a work-around for the troublesome compatibility issues surrounding embryonic stem cells since they are derived from a patient’s own cells.
This new approach is so promising that some of the most prominent researchers in the field have abandoned embryonic stem cell research to focus on iPSCs. Sir Ian Wilmut, the scientist who produced Dolly the Sheep, announced in 2007 that he was abandoning his previous research to focus on iPSCs. James Thompson, the University of Wisconsin scientist who developed the first embryonic stem cells, has shifted the focus of two of his companies to iPSCs. If two of the biggest names in stem cell research chose to abandon embryonic stem cells for iPSCs, you would think everyone would take note. Instead, Democrats and “the scientific community” continue to insist that embryonic stem cells are crucial to a healthy future.
[…]
Despite the scientific community’s many promises of stem cell based cures, embryonic stem cell research has yet to provide one widely-available treatment after many years of research. In fact, the one well-known case of embryonic stem cell “therapy” involves a young boy in Israel who was injected with embryonic stem cells in an attempt to heal him from a fatal neuromuscular disease. Within four years, the doctors discovered tumors in his brain and spinal cord produced by the stem cells he had received. Despite this ghoulish result, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first limited clinical testing of an ESCR-based treatment in the United States.
[…]
What possible reason could underlie such absurd decisions? Dr. Irving Weissman, Director of The Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, provides us with a hint. In a recent interview with NPR, he said, “It’s not just stem cell research that’s the issue here. It’s the idea that you can impose a religious or a political or a moral ideology on the pursuit of what nature has.” (NPR Hourly Newscast Podcast for March 9th) Dr. Weissman’s comments point to the dark underbelly of the scientific community’s overwhelming support of embryonic stem cell research.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Chamber of Commerce for Gay Businesses
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 12 — A Chamber of Commerce especially for businesses run by gay men, lesbians, transexuals and bisexuals. The initiative, which was suggested by the LGTB collective, is aimed at giving greater visibility to a sector which makes up 6.5% of Spain’s population, with purchasing power of 72 billion euros per year, the equivalent of the combined GDP of the Balearic islands and Valencia. Economist José Vila, the new president of the Chamber announced the news. He explained that the initiative will enable businesspeople from the LGTB collective to concentrate on strengthening their businesses and establish links with LGTB-friendly enterprises, friendly heterosexual brands which respect the ‘values of diversity and inclusion”. Above all, in times of economic crisis, unity is strength. The Chamber also intends to establish contact with large companies, with ‘an authentic awareness of integration” to offer consultancy services and launch collaboration efforts. Vila cited the cases of ING Direct and IBM to illustrate the concept. The LGTB Chamber of Commerce also plans to organise seminars, conference cycles, public initiatives, and a website. It will have offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, as well as promoting an Economics and Business club. The gay community, which has come out of the closet in Spain thanks partly to the social revolution caused by the recognition of gay marriages by the Zapatero government, is gaining visibility in line with its winning of social rights. The community represents a real goose that lays the golden egg, and not just in the leisure industry. There are more GLBT shops (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transsexual), as have specialised offers from travel companies, tour operators, airlines and cruise companies, but companies like Visa, IBM and Google are also targeting the sector, which although very diverse not only spends more, but is trendsetting too. From the gay movement in Madrid in the 1980s, when Pedro Almodovar went around the bars and hetero-friendly rock clubs with his entourage of drag queens, it’s all water under the bridge now. >From bars which at the time were the exclusive domain of freedom, to art galleries, the Chueca district, the city’s gay area, which was taken over twenty years ago by the gay community and completely revamped, is now full of hotels, restaurants, spas and design and clothes shops, and even florists’ especially for gays. In the Gaixample district of Barcelona, as it has been renamed, Hotel Axel was opened in 2003, where GLBTs from all over the world are welcome, has been so successful that promotor Juan Julià has invested 13 million euros in opening a second hotel in Berlin, and has set up an investment fund for Axel in Buenos Aires, which is also dedicated to buying apartment properties. The same is happening in Sitges, Masplomas, Ibiza and the Canaries, the traditional summer destination for gays, where the taboo of directly marketing the gay community has broken down, where before the fear of losing their traditional clientele made them ignore the sector. The gay universe can now also count on a Chamber of Commerce just for them. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Myth of Relativism and the Cult of Tolerance
It has been twenty years since the late Allan Bloom shook the intellectual elite in this country with the opening line of The Closing of the American Mind: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student in America believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” In one sentence our dirty little secret — we believe in the truth that there is no truth — was out.
[…]
The second step in understanding the cult of tolerance is to see how it mimics Christianity by pretending to be non-judgmental. Christianity teaches that it is wrong to judge others. The cult of tolerance seems to teach the same thing. But the reasons each of them gives for not judging others are vastly different. Christianity teaches that there is one, and only one, way of living that is moral: the Christian life is the moral life. Christians acknowledge that a perfect Christian life is (depending upon the particular brand of Christianity) either very difficult or impossible (at least without God’s help).
The Christian is commanded not to judge her brother — not because there are no moral rules held by Christianity to be both universal and objective, there are plenty of them — she is commanded not to judge her brother because it is highly unlikely that either she or her brother have reached the point of perfection in their lives when either of them would be able to judge the other.
In other words, Christianity sees and acknowledges an important truth about moral judgments: objective and accurate moral judgments are hard to get right most of the time and impossible to get right all of the time. The Christian is told not to judge, not because there is nothing to judge, she is told not to judge because it is doubtful that she is qualified to judge. This is a vastly different moral position than those found in the cult of tolerance.
Roughly speaking, the cult of tolerance has two kinds of adherents (1) the multiculturalists and (2) the politically correct. Each of these sects within the cult of tolerance offers its own reasons for why we should not judge others. These reasons conflict, not only with the Christian reason, they conflict with each other.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
“Boycott Durban 2!”
Le point 05.03.2009 (France)
In his “bloc-notes”, Bernard-Henri Levy sounds the battle cry against the Durban Review Conference scheduled to take place in Geneva in April. It is the follow-up to the scandalous “UN World Conference against Racism” of 2001 in South Africa, which became a platform for hate-filled agitation against Israel and the Jews. “Everything we know about the organisation of this new conference, everything leaking out of the office of the Libyan-led “preparatory committee”, especially the preliminary draft of the ‘final declaration’ written with the help of the Pakistani, Cuban, and Iranian — ah, the great democrats! — vice-presidents, leads one to expect the worst. (…) In the interest of the struggle for the beauty and nobility of anti-racism, out of respect for all those, from Fanon to Mandela, who devoted themselves to its spirit, one must — rapidly, decisively, and without appeal — reject the farce of Durban II”.
(On Thursday at 11 am in Berlin’s Press and Information Office, there will be a press conference on the initiative “Boycott Durban 2!” with a variety of speakers. Perlentaucher’s Thierry Chervel will moderate.)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
7 comments:
I don't have time to read all the news articles today. But, responding to the articles regarding the U.K. one thing stands clear; that is that the U.K. gov't is supporting the violence and change of their culture through gov't spending on welfare benefits and changes to the law. It is now pretty clear that the worst agitators of U.K. culture are on the dole.
The most agregious of them in this volley of news is Andy Chodray. So, this person is living off the dole after having attained a law degree? What UK beaurocrat allowed that to happen? Hey Andy, work for minimum wage making copies in a local law firm and get yourself a second job at a taco stand to support your family. Then come to the gov't for subsidy...
This is the insanity of the political system in the UK where they allow people like Mr. Chodray to live off the backs of working brittons. I only wish my husband could go to the gov't and tell some faceless beaurocrat that he is unable to earn $100,000/year and therefore needs to be supported by the gov't (actually, I don't wish that but you see my point.)
This also seems the case for the protesters at the Lutton military parade that the majority of "Jihad protesters" are also on the dole...
A commenter on this site (or another as I am not entirely clear) indicated that the natives are now bordering on hate for the degredation of their culture. We are one short step from armed insurrection on this issue in the UK.
"They threw bacon on us..." HA! It is about time... I would have turned a fire hose of bacon fat on these ingrates.
If I were to judge by the news reports cited on this site I would say that things are now accelerating in the UK. The native population is reaching a breaking point in "public security" that does nothing more than restrict the freedom of law abiding UK citizens while allowing illegals and others hell bent on destroying their governmantal systems free reign. The powers that be have done everything they could possibly due, outside of murder, to trash the BNP. The next elections in the UK will be very interesting. I certainly hope that an organized effort will be made to turn back the insanity that the UK govt has become. If the Islamists can organize so successfully, why can't we?
Babs --
It's easy and the instructions are at the top of the full post's comment section, as well as being on the form I'm using right now.
So please don't paste long URLs into the comments; they make the post page too wide and mess up the appearance of the permalink page.
If you can't remember the above, please don't paste them at all, because I still will have to delete them.
----------------------
Babs said...
link
I'm sorry that I don't know how to make the URL into a reasonable format. If the Baron or his lovely wife would like to email me privately and give me lessons I would surely comply.
Meanwhile, for those not able to cut and paste, the jist of the story is that the leader of the Lutton Islamic protest is now under police protection while others in his neighborhood that have had crimes of property committed against them couldn't even get the police to come out...
re no police protection for the average Brit--
..including the CHRISTIAN minister who was brutally assaulted by the followers of the 'religion of peace'..
No protection for him either!
C-CS
A quick note from a British national. I saw the video, was appalled. However, there are certain facts to take into consideration regarding the civil war scenario.
First, is that the UK is very ghettoised in terms of Islamic large scale immigration. Therefore, certain inner city areas (ie. Luton) are very dominated by Muslims, while the majority of others are completely untouched.
In a civil war scenario, the Muslims would be at a huge disadvantage as they would be holed up in a few small areas, continually harried by indigenous Brits who formed up and moved
in from rural and semi-urban areas. In addition, although the Marxists and Muslims have massive influence in the police, local govt, media, etc., in the army they simply don't. I imagine the labour govt telling troops to fire on Christian vigilantes, and yet they arm them, as happened in Yugoslavia, and then overturn the corrupt anti-british local govt to finally deal with the Muslims in suitable fashion :)
Secondly, as you saw in the video, the Muslims are outnumbered and under police protection. If not, they would have been ripped limb from limb. This would happen on a larger scale nationally, if all hell were to break loose.
Of course, young muslim males arrogantly sit tight, comfortable that time is on their side as their birth rate eclipses the indigenous population. Perhaps they jumped the gun rather too soon, and are ready to commence a civil war they would lose very quickly...
Flame of the West, your's is the sort of "boots-on-the-ground" that so many of us here, and across the pond, need in terms of real reporting. Welcome to Gates of Vienna and please consider making regular contributions. Even if your comments are overly optomistic, they are still a refreshing departure from the MSM's usual ration of excrement.
More than anything, please consider providing links and cites for the important observations that you have to offer.
Speaking as half-English and half-Danish in my descent, I'd like nothing more that seeing Europe and America's Muslim colonists getting the boot back to their lovely Islamic paradises. They all deserve nothing less.
Batb said: "If the Islamists can organize so successfully, why can't we?"
The "secret" of how a gang of mostly uneducated primitives appear organized is that they are playing from the same rule book, (the Koran) and belief system. Even those among them who receive an actual education in medicine, for example, are still ruled by the 1400 year old ravings of an amoral war lord.
There is no equivalent unifier left across Western nations. There is no "umma" for westerners.
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