The level of citizen surveillance in the UK has reached unprecedented levels. Even in wartime, ordinary Britons have never before been subject to such intense government scrutiny. The local councils are now known as the “Town Hall Stasi”.CCTV, thermal imaging, litter monitors, electronic eavesdropping of all kinds, being monitored at the railway stations and airports — Big Brother could only dream of this degree of state control.
Thanks to Abu Elvis, Aeneas, AMDG, C. Cantoni, CSP, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Henrik, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, islam o’phobe, Israel Matzav, JD, KGS, TB, The Frozen North, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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EU Presidency: US Stimulus is ‘the Road to Hell’
EU president calls Obama’s plans to spend his way out of recession ‘the road to hell’
The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama’s plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as “the road to hell” that EU governments must avoid. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek puts on headphones Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France.
The blunt comments by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Fed Begins Move That Could Sink Dollar
Economists warn government subsidizing purchase of its debt
The Federal Reserve began today to buy longer-term U.S. Treasury securities in a move some economists believe will end up “monetizing” the dollar, a process that could inflate the amount of money in circulation and cause serious devaluation of the currency on world markets.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Former Chinese Spy: Secret Service Trying to Clamp Down on Rights Activists
The Chinese secret service is “monitoring” dissidents, religious groups, and anyone who protests against injustice, and is repressing human rights. According to the former spy, it is important for Western governments to talk with Beijing not only about the economy, but also about human rights. It is the first instance of “treason” by a Chinese spy.
Washington (AsiaNews/Agencies) — The former Chinese spy Li Fengzhi, who has been in exile for years, is denouncing efforts underway by the Chinese secret service to suppress any form of dissent among the Chinese population, even abroad, and is calling on Western politicians to ask Beijing to respect human rights. Until now, no Chinese spy had ever publicly revealed himself.
Yesterday evening in Washington, a nervous Li said at a press conference that he worked for years for the Chinese state security ministry, but that he left this because his “work” was to spy on dissidents, spiritual groups, any citizen who protested over injustice, unemployment, poor farmers deprived of their land. He also resigned as a member of the Chinese Communist Party when the spiritual movement Falun Gong, which is persecuted by Beijing, asked all members to tear up their cards.
Li said that “China’s government not only uses lies and violence to suppress people seeking basic human rights, but also does all it can to hide the truth from the international community.” This led to direct criticism of Western politicians, including Hillary Clinton, who in their relationship with Beijing focus only “on temporary economic and political benefits but keep silent on human rights issues.”
Li is convinced that, in spite of rapid economic growth, the Chinese government is not stable, precisely because of the widespread violation and suppression of human rights. He is convinced that the communist government will be overthrown by the exasperated Chinese themselves, but calls on Western governments to do their part by urging Beijing to respect fundamental personal rights.
The former spy did not provide specific details about his work, which was conducted above all in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, fearing for the safety of his family, who live in China. He asked for political asylum, and clarified that only the central leaders know the full extent of the country’s spy network. He insisted that extensive resources are being employed to monitor Chinese citizens and suppress their rights, even abroad.
In 2005, Chen Yonglin, a diplomat in Sydney, asked for asylum and said there were more than a thousand Chinese agents in Australia, who even kidnap and repatriate Chinese citizens who have fled abroad for political reasons.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
G20 Summit: UN Calls for 1,000 Bln Dollar Aid Package
New York, 26 March (AKI) — United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has called on the Group of 20 leaders to back a 1,000 billion dollar aid package as part of a four-pronged strategy to prevent the onset of new catastrophes. Ban told reporters in New York on Wednesday that he would use next week’s summit in London to call for a substantial increase in overseas aid.
Without it, he warned the worsening crisis would promote political instability and social unrest.
Ban said that the financial turmoil cannot roll back gains made towards achieving the global anti-poverty targets with a 2015 deadline known as the Millennium Development Goals.
He was speaking to the media after meeting British prime minister Gordon Brown, ahead of the Group of 20 meeting in London.
“Social recovery will take much longer than economic recovery,” he said. “A child taken out of school today will bear the consequences for the rest of his or her life.”
The secretary-general said he outlined a four-point proposal for the G-20 nations — which he has also relayed in a letter to their leaders — during his talks with Brown.
In addition to their own stimulus packages, he said G-20 nations should commit to support a global stimulus plan, which must be “of a very substantial size” commensurate with the challenge.
Ban said the package must include assistance for the poorest and most vulnerable countries, long-term public lending from development banks and cash aid to both least-developed and middle-income developing countries.
He also stressed the need to firmly reject protectionism and revive the Doha round of trade liberalisation negotiations to allow real benefits to reach developing nations.
Ban is also committed to the ‘greening’ of the global economy, including in poorer countries, with G-20 leaders committing to conclude negotiations and reach agreement on an ambitious successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012, in Copenhagen this December.
He voiced hope that the upcoming G-20 “Summit for Stability, Growth and Jobs” can send a “signal of solidarity and hope to all peoples and countries of the world.”
The 2 April meeting in London will be part of an extensive trip that will also take Ban to Russia, Qatar, the Netherlands, France and Turkey.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Geithner ‘Open’ to China Proposal
Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is “open” to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China’s central bank, which was widely reported as being a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar, but which Geithner described as more modest and “evolutionary.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Leninist View of the American Media
Conservative exasperation with media bias is a tired refrain, a waste of energy. Complaints of bias start from the premise that press coverage ought to be fair and objective. But is this the premise on which today’s mainstream media is based?
It’s not. The premise that now guides the mainstream media is something we haven’t seen before in this country — thus the never-ending consternation of conservatives at the blatant bias of the media and the nonchalance of its practitioners when caught in the act. We have seen press behavior like this before, though — not here, but in China and the Soviet Union during their classical Leninist eras.
[…]
There are rules about how a Leninist press works — its operational code. When reading People’s Daily and Pravda with these rules in mind, the controlled press made perfect sense. What’s the point here? Troublingly, these same rules fit today’s American mainstream media — and the media’s relationship to the Democratic Party — nearly to a T.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama’s ‘Red’ Spiritual Adviser
…While all of this, of course, is relevant to an ardent free-market capitalist, what really frightens me is that Obama’s latest announced “spiritual adviser” has had connections with all these Marxist regimes. And who is the president’s latest adviser? The Rev. Jim Wallis.
Frontpage Magazine (March 17, 2009) reports, “The most notable of [Obama’s] spiritual advisers today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis.” Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have “been talking faith and politics for a long time.” He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year. Why should this alarm us?
[Comments from JD: See article for a list of Wallis’ connections to unsavory Communist organizations…Birds of a feather…]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Hussein Obama: Our Technology Dictator
Michael Friedenberg wrote in Computerworld that Obama has demonstrated, in certain key ways, that he understands the power of today’s information technology and is using it to good effect. The president has, as reported by Friedenberg, appointed a chief information officer (a post that sounds disturbingly similar to some form of propaganda ministry, in title if not in fact), allocated significant tax dollars in his stimulus package for establishing electronic health records (the dangers of which we have discussed in this column), and issued a memorandum on “Transparency and Open Government,” which presumably, in demanding that government be made “transparent, participatory and collaborative,” must of necessity make use of information technology to do so.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Eligibility Lawyer Says Homeland Security Shadowing Him
Reports incidents involving county, federal agents
A lawyer spearheading the effort in Washington state to bring light to the issue of Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president says he was shadowed all day today by officers with the federal Department of Homeland Security, the Snohomish County sheriff’s office and the Everitt city police department.
“There’s definitely observation,” attorney Stephen Pidgeon told WND. “Maybe observation in anticipation of making an arrest.”
[…]
He said he first became aware of the situation when his wife left their rural home early in the day and reported there were three law enforcement vehicles parked nearby, along with three black Suburban-style vehicles carrying camouflage-wearing agents, apparently from Homeland Security.
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“Any senator who would rely on snopes or factcheck to establish a judicial opinion whether or not this person has documented his eligibility is a fool,” Pidgeon said. And citing a federal judge who said the issue of Obama’s eligibility already had been “twittered,” he said that is “tantamount to malpractice.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Federal Criminal Complaint Contends Obama Ineligible
Ex-officer alleges prez used ‘contrivance, concealment, dissembling and deceit’
An ex-military officer has raised the stakes in the ongoing dispute over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, filing a criminal complaint against the “imposter” with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
Retired U.S. Navy officer Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, who has run a campaign for two decades to uncover and try to correct what he believes are criminal activities within the military, accused the president of “treason.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Florida Chaplain Barred From Saying “God”
A chaplain at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton has resigned, she says, over a ban on use of the words “God” or “Lord” in public settings. Chaplains still speak freely of the Almighty in private sessions with patients or families but, the Rev. Mirta Signorelli said: “I can’t do chaplain’s work if I can’t say ‘God’ — if I’m scripted.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Love That Hate!
“We must teach our children to hate,” Vladimir Lenin instructed his education commissars. The Bolshevik godfather declared that hatred was not only “the basis of communism” but “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”
Class envy has been a defining staple of the left for centuries, from the frenzied mobs leaping around the French guillotines to the Soviets to, well, the new masses circling AIG executives today. The difference is merely the degree of response — a question of socially acceptable force or violence.
Historically, this behavior is both foreign and antithetical to the American experience. Unfortunately, modern Americans don’t understand their founding and the nation’s core principles — our educational system doesn’t teach those things. Thus, they are now voting, and behaving, in kind. And we are now witnessing our own homegrown socialist movement in action, inspired by hate.
[…]
Alas, among the eager comrades joining this effort — and, predictably, not investigated by the liberal media camped outside AIG homes — are the ringleaders behind the packs of protestors across the country, including those carted around in “bus tours” of AIG executives’ homes.
These alleged unprompted uprisings of “the people” are, of course, hardly spontaneous. They are organized, particularly by the odious Service Employees International Union.
Personally, I knew where to follow the footsteps. I went to the website of People’s Weekly World, an organ of Communist Party USA. There, among the articles praising Obama’s “mandate for change,” praising the “Employee Free Choice Act,” and so forth, was an article titled, “Angry about AIG? Here’s how you can do something about it.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘Mandatory Youth Service’ Bill Advances
House version commissions panel to consider ‘volunteer’ requirement
Congress appears ready to pass an Obama administration plan that could create mandatory public service requirements for all American youth, fulfilling a campaign promise.
The bill, HR 1388: The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, otherwise known as the “GIVE Act,” has already passed the House by a vote of 321-105.
On Tuesday, the Senate voted closure on the motion to proceed by a margin of 74-14 in a move that makes its ultimate passage likely.
The bill, promoted by the Obama administration as a means of encouraging America’s youth to participate in voluntary community service, has received little scrutiny from Congress or the public.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Youth Brigade: Church Attendance Forbidden
By Jonas Clark
Is this the change you really voted for? President Obama has only been in office for two months. Now we have HR 1388. The Bill was sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) with 37 others. The Bill was introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives where both Republicans and Democrats voted 321-105 in favor. Next it goes to the Senate for a vote and then on to President Obama.
This bill’s title is called “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” (GIVE). It forms what some are calling “Obama’s Youth Brigade.” Obama’s plan is require anyone receiving school loans and others to serve at least three months as part of the brigade. His goal is one million youth! This has serious Nazi Germany overtones to it.
The Bill would forbid any student in the brigade to participate in “engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.” That means no church attendance or witnessing.
Again, is this what America voted for? Here is part of the HR1388 Bill’s wording:
SEC. 1304. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
Section 125 (42 U.S.C. 12575) is amended to read as follows:
SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:
(1) Attempting to influence legislation.
(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes. …
(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Solar Panels Will Take 110 Years to Pay for Themselves
Here’s something you won’t hear about from the Obamedia— The solar panels that Barack Obama and Joe Biden inspected before signing the Generational Theft Act in Denver, Colorado will take until 2118 to pay for themselves.
Those solar panels that Barack Obama bragged about in Denver will take 110 years to pay for themselves. They are expected to last 20-25 years.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s First Judicial Nominee Defines Judicial Activism
President Obama’s first judicial nominee, David Hamilton, nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal, is a clear example of what a judge should not be
Judge Hamilton was the infamous activist judge who in 2005 ordered the Speaker of the Indiana House to immediately stop the practice of “sectarian prayers” at the opening of the legislative session. Apparently the prayers were too Christian for Mr. Hamilton. “[T]hey should refrain from using Christ’s name or title,” he ordered.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where he is to serve if President Obama has his way, eventually overturned his foolish decision.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Simian Students Throw Feces at Conservative Speakers
On March 11, I joined a growing fraternity — conservatives who’ve been prevented from speaking on college campuses.
Student storm troopers have become the final arbiters of who may speak and what views may be expressed in academia — once dedicated to free inquiry and open discussion, now as intellectually open as a Stalinist gulag.
The academic archipelago? I was invited by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Republicans and Young America’s Foundation to speak on hate crimes laws as a threat to free speech and religious freedom.
That there is a national epidemic of hate crimes incited by hate speech — which drastic action is needed to curtail — is sacred dogma for the sensitivity goons.
[…]
Half of the audience of 300 came not to listen, question or debate, but to disrupt.
The mob scene was coordinated by the International Socialist Organization (a group found only on college campuses and in the Obama administration), the Pride Alliance, the Coalition Against Hate, and the Campus Anti-War Network. Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Committee for Justice for Sacco and Vanzetti were conspicuous by their absence.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Somali Muslims Changing Small Town
by Erick Stakelbeck
At first glance, Shelbyville, TN is your typical, sleepy southern town.
There’s Main St., the local sheriff, a movie theatre. It’s all very “Mayberry,” except for one big difference: the recent arrival of hundreds of Somali Muslims.
I traveled to Shelbyville recently to investigate the culture clashes the new arrivals have brought on. You can watch my report here… [see link]
Given the FBI’s current terrorism investigations of Somali American communities nationwide, I believe the piece is a timely one.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Outrage!… Protesters Rally in Support of Oakland Cop Killer
The protesters say Lavelle Mixon was a victim of state sponsored violence. He shot dead four police officers last weekend…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pro-God Message to Hit the Road in Calgary
Upset by atheist ads on public transit, a group of believers is ready to roll out a campaign of its own
CALGARY — Believers will be delighted to learn that a pro-God message will be spread around Calgary starting Monday — albeit on the sides of buses and trains — in response to the controversial atheist ads already making the rounds on the city’s public transit.
“God cares for everyone … even for those who say He doesn’t exist!” reads the banner advertisements to be placed on eight buses and two light-rail trains over the next four weeks.
Transit ads will also direct people to the website www.godexists.ca, where they can add their voice to the debate.
“Thank goodness for people with a God Sense,” Sharon Sivell posted on the site.
The holy-rolling rebuttal is the brainchild of Calgary Muslim leader Syed Soharwardy, who was so disturbed by the Freethought Association of Canada’s campaign — “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” — that he pledged to launch a counterattack.
“We want to tell our side of the story, that believers don’t worry and they have a good life too,” said Mr. Soharwardy, founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. “The atheist campaign sends a very negative message about believers.”
The pro-God campaign will cost $12,000, half of which has been donated by about a dozen people of faith, including Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, he said. The rest is coming out of Mr. Soharwardy’s pocket, but he is hoping more support pours in…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Czechs ‘Have Obligation’ to Pass Lisbon Treaty Despite Government’s Collapse
The Czech Republic has an “obligation” to ratify the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty despite the collapse of its government, the European Commission president has said.
José Manuel Barroso warned Czech politicians yesterday that the EU Treaty “should not be used as a weapon on domestic issues”.
“The Czech Republic has signed the treaty and so the Czech Republic has an obligation to ratify. I really hope that this domestic, political development is not used as a way to put in question the treaty,” he said.
“Rejection would only serve to damage other countries in the Union. All 27 member states have signed up to the treaty and this agreement has to be respected.”
Mr Barroso’s words are aimed at the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, a staunch opponent of the Lisbon Treaty and a key figure in Tuesday’s no confidence vote against the government led by the prime minister, Mirek Topolanek.
The fall of Mr Topolanek provides a political opportunity for President Klaus and means that Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty is now likely to come after Ireland’s second referendum.
Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister admitted that the political crisis could mean a bumpy ride for the EU Treaty.
“It will be a lot more difficult now to convince people to vote in favour,” he said. “The current developments complicate the situation. It is not going to be easy.”
Declan Ganley, leader of Libertas, a pan-European party campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty, said: “Mr Barroso, an unelected bureaucrat, is yet again attempting to bully another Member State into ratifying the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty. It is the next step in his campaign to pressure the Irish people to change their democratic will.”…
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: First Mediterranean Offshore Wind Park Off Sicily
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JULY 10 — Enel filed a project for one of the first off-shore wind farms in the Mediterranean Sea. The request for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was submitted by Enel to the Environment Ministry and to the Region of Sicily. Italy’s first wind farm in the sea envisages the installation of 115 big generators which will have a capacity of between 3 and 5 megawatt each in the waters of the Gulf of Gela at a minimum distance of three nautical miles off the coast, between the municipalities of Licata (Agrigento), Butera and Gela (Catalnisetta). The project — developed by a joint venture between Enel (57%) and Moncada Costruzioni (43%) — envisages a total installed capacity ranging from 345 MW to 575 MW. The maximum investment will be some 500 million euro. Once fully operational, the facility will generate electricity of 1,150 million kilowatt hours, enough to satisfy the demand of 390,000 households, avoiding emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere for some 815,000 tonnes per year. “This innovative project will double Enel’s installed capacity in the wind energy in Italy and is a virtuous example of collaboration between company, local institutions and environmental organisations,” Fulvio Conti said. Enel’s commitment in renewable energy is noticeable and is on a continuous strong growth: today Enel’s emission-free production accounts for some 30% of all. We believe in wind energy and we want to play a leading role in the development of this energy source in our country as well.” At the end of 2007 Enel’s installed wind energy capacity rose to 325 MW: the objective of the new 2008-2012 industrial plan is to increase the capacity fivefold to some 1,500 MW of wind energy installed in Italy by 2012. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
EU: French “Human Rights Advocates” Summon Wilders to Court
A French “human rights organization” is summoning the Dutch politician Geert Wilders to court. “Wilders made statements about French Muslims which incite to racial hatred,” says lawyer Yassine Bouzrou. The French complaint is based on a speech Wilders made in New York last September. The French courts will probably throw the case out because the event in question took place in New York, not in France.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
EU: France in NATO: Why it Matters
… pro-NATO skeptics…suspect that Sarkozy sees France’s full re-entry into NATO as the best way to increase French influence within the alliance in order to “Europeanize” it, while at the same time building an independent European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), a long-cherished ambition of many French elites. In other words, France will now be perfectly placed to destroy the Alliance from within, skeptics say.
[…]
But Sarkozy also has other motives for reaching out to NATO. Full membership of the Alliance will, for example, enhance French military interoperability with the United States and other NATO allies, thereby contributing to the badly needed modernization of French forces. Moreover, Sarkozy hopes that full NATO membership will provide the French defense industry with access to the mammoth US defense procurement market, which accounts for almost half of global defense expenditures.
To be sure, Sarkozy says that building an autonomous European defense capability remains an “absolute priority.” Indeed, he believes that if France fully rejoins NATO, he can boost ESDP by eliminating suspicions among NATO allies that his main motivation is to build a rival to NATO and thus undermine American influence in Europe. “Our position, outside the military command, sustains mistrust about the object of our European ambition,” Sarkozy said, but then adding: “A France taking its full place in NATO would be an alliance that would be giving a greater place to Europe.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Income: Berlusconi Not as Rich in 2007, Declared 14. 5 Mln
(AGI) — Rome, 23 March — Silvio Berlusconi’s income was reduced in 2007 to a tenth of what it was the year before: 14,532, 538 compared to the 139,245,570 euros in 2006. This is what is read in a declaration of income presented last year for the 2007 earnings of the Prime Minister. The Premier paid gross taxes of 6,242,161 euros, with a tax credit of 399,169 euros. Many were the goods and stakes in companies that the ‘Calvaliere’ declared. For the most part, the Premier’s real estate property is in Milan: two apartments used as homes, two enclosed parking spaces, three apartments and 50% of another apartment.
Moreover, he declared land holdings in Antigua. As far as other possessions, Berlusconi owns a 1992 Mercedes Sel and a 2006 Audi A6, as well as three boats: the San Maurizio from 1977, the Principessa Vai Via from 1965 and the Magnum 70 from 1990.
As for stakes in companies, Berlusconi possesses 5,174,000 shares in Dolcedrago (1 euro nominal value), 4,294,342 shares in Fininvest (1 euro nominal value), 2,548,000 shares in Holding Italiana Prima SpA, 2,199,600 shares in Holding Italiana Seconda SpA, 1,193,400 in Holding italiana Terza and 1,144,000 in Holding Italiana Ottava (all with 1 euro nominal value)to which must be added 200 shares in the Banca Popolare di Sviluppo (500 euro nominal value), a deposit administered by Banca di Sondrio of 896,000 shares and three deposits managed directly by banks which act autonomously in the purchasing and selling of shares, at the Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Banca Agricola Mantovana and the Banca Arner Italia SpA.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Chemical Castration May Enable Rapists to Stay Out of Jail
Pharmacological treatment can be reversible. Judges to decide timescale and conditions
ROME — Criminals convicted of sexual violence seeking house arrest or temporary release may have to agree to chemical castration. A Northern League amendment to the decree law on rape has unleashed a storm of controversy with the opposition. The Democratic Party (PD) has appealed to Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the Chamber of Deputies, to “declare these barbarous proposals inadmissible, otherwise”, said PD group leader on the Chamber’s justice committee, Donatella Ferranti, “it wouldn’t surprise me if the majority were to propose ‘eye for an eye’-type retribution”. The bill approved by the government, which includes citizens’ patrols and more severe penalties for those found guilty of stalking, has yet to be adopted by Parliament.
Yesterday, amendment proposals were presented and the Northern league opted for a hard line. Carolina Lussana, deputy chair of the justice committee, who drafted the bill, was uncompromising in her reply to the Centre-left: “It’s clear that Walter Veltroni is no longer in charge of the PD, otherwise Ms Ferranti wouldn’t have been able to call chemical castration barbaric. During the election campaign, her former leader did not rule it out, and neither did Mr Fini, to whom Ms Ferranti is now appealing”. The Northern League parliamentarian pointed out that “treatment is on a voluntary basis and obviously can be reversible. If the offender agrees to pharmacologically induced total androgenic block, he will be able to obtain benefits”…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
MEPs Move to Keep Jean-Marie Le Pen Out of Top Euro Seat
The prospect of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming the father of the European Parliament led MEPs yesterday to start a frantic attempt to change their own rules to stop the far-right French politician from presiding over the new chamber.
Under the Parliament’s rules its inaugural session must be overseen by its doyen — the oldest MEP — which will be Mr Le Pen, 81, if he is re-elected for the French National Front in the elections in June.
Members who have just realised this are making a last-minute effort to block him, perhaps to give the honour of running the inaugural session on July 14 to the youngest member of the new Parliament. The embarrassment felt by French MEPs opposed to Mr Le Pen is acute because July 14 is also Bastille Day, France’s national day.
Mr Le Pen, who has convictions in France and Germany for denying the Holocaust and for calling it a detail of history, poured petrol on the flames by repeating the same phrase in the European Parliament chamber in Strasbourg. Related Links
“I just said that the gas chambers were a detail of Second World War history, which is clear,” said Mr Le Pen, a long-standing critic of the European Union who also opposes immigration, abortion and gay rights.
Mr Le Pen stubbornly remains a prominent figure in European politics despite his far-right views, causing a shock in the 2002 French presidential elections in reaching the final run-off by knocking out Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate.
He was fined 1.2 million francs (£171,000) for making his remarks about the Holocaust in a radio interview in 1987. “That proved the state in which we find the freedom of speech in Europe and France,” he said yesterday, referring to the case.
Martin Schulz, the German head of the Socialists, said: “I am concerned by the fact that a Holocaust denier could preside over the opening session of the European Parliament.”
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
More Glass Found in Swedish Chicken
Discoveries by Swedish consumers of pieces of glass in packages of frozen chicken continued on Wednesday, despite poultry producer Lantmännen Kronfågel decision to recall thousands of packages of chicken in recent days.
A couple in the town of Tvååker in western Sweden discovered glass in a package of chicken thighs they purchased on Wednesday afternoon.
The first reports of glass in Kronfågel frozen chicken breasts occurred on March 20th, prompting an initial recall of packages with an expiration date of November 16, 2009.
On Monday, the company announced a further recall of chicken breast packages with expiry dates of November 9th and November 23rd, 2009, as well as 700 gramme packages of chicken thighs dates January 15th, 2010.
Altogether, the company recalled 10,000 packages, or around 107 tonnes of chicken.
But on Tuesday, Kronfågel received more reports of glass bits in its chicken, leading to a recall of all packages of Kronfågel split chicken breasts dated between March 24th and December 7th, 2009 and all packages chicken thighs with expiration dates between March 24th, 2009 and March 4th, 2010.
Police have also been called in to investigate whether or not the matter could be an act of sabotage.
“If you find glass in a setting where there glass is prohibited, there is reason to believe it may be the result of a criminal act,” said Henrik Sundling of the Katrineholm police in central Sweden to the TT news agency on Tuesday.
And Kronfågel isn’t the only poultry producer affected by the mysterious presence of glass in packaged chicken.
At the weekend, a customer from Hässelholm in southern Sweden ended up with bits of glass in his mouth after eating a fresh chicken sold under the Ica grocery store brand and produced by poultry producer Lagerbergs.
While no connection has been established between the Lagerbergs incident and the glass found in Kronfågel’s chicken packages, the continued discovery by Swedish consumers of glass in packages of chicken has many convinced it is the result of a deliberate act.
“It’s really unsettling. It has to be sabotage. There can’t suddenly be glass everywhere,” said Lars-Göran Karlsson, head of Knäreds Chicken, to the Aftonbladet newspaper.
The head of Sweden’s main poultry association, Svensk Fågel, is also concerned, saying that the industry has never before been the victim of such widespread sabotage.
Nevertheless, she said the organization plans to wait for the results of the ongoing police investigation before taking action.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Putin-Jugend in Helsinki
The Russian government-supported youth movement, Nashi, plans to hold demonstrations in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, on 23 March 2009 against a seminar organised by the Estonian Embassy in Helsinki. Johan Bäckman, leader of the self-declared “Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee” (Safka), said Estonia’s pro-Moscow Nightwatch (Nochnoy Dozor) organisation will also take part in the demonstrations. The organisers of the planned demonstration repeat Kremlin’s assertion that the seminar, Fear Behind the Wall, is “anti-Russian” and “pro-Nazi.”
The Estonian Embassy will organise the seminar in cooperation with the Latvian and Lithuanian embassies, Finnish book publisher WSOY, and Finland’s National Audiovisual Archive (KAVA). The seminar will mark 60 years since the March deportations in Estonia and 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Political scientist Iivi Anna Masso will interview authors Imbi Paju and Sofi Oksanen, editors of the article compilation, “Fear Behind Us All.”
Speaking on Russia’s state-run First Channel, Johan Bäckman claimed that “anti-Russian forces” have spread their activities from the Baltic States to Finland. He claimed prized Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Estonian-born political scientist Iivi Anna Masso were spreading “fascist, pro-Nazi propaganda” in Finland. Bäckman characterised the series of documentary films, “Fear Behind the Wall,” to be screened at the Finnish National Audiovisual Archive’s Orion cinema, as a series of “anti-Russian films”.
Bäckman has made numerous provocative statements against Estonia and in support of Kremlin policies. He has published books that are uncritically supportive of Russia’s official party line and denigrating Finnish critics of the regime in Moscow. Bäckman’s novel, “Saatana saapuu Helsinkiin,” smeared late journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya and Finnish critics of Putin’s rule; the book “Pronssisoturi” accompanied Moscow’s anti-Estonian campaign after the riots in Tallinn that followed the transfer of the Soviet war memorial, the “Bronze Soldier,” in spring 2007.
Bäckman has launched several blogs, which he uses to spread disinformation about politics in Russia, Finland, and the Baltic States. Many well-known critics of Russia’s current regime are constantly being targeted with verbal attacks in Bäckman’s various blogs. Those at the receiving end of Bäckman’s verbal abuse include, among others, Jarkko Tontti, vice-chairman of the Finnish branch of International PEN; Jukka Mallinen, former chairman of Finnish PEN; Finnish political scientist Iivi Anna Masso; Estonian journalist Imbi Paju; Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen; and Ville Ropponen, chairman of the Finnish association of progressive artists and writers, Kiila.
These absurd allegations are eerily reminiscent of Soviet disinformation campaigns and can be seen as a form of political pressure. Their intended purpose is clearly to intimidate critics and to impose a new form of self-censorship in Finnish public debate. Bäckman has adopted an aggressive tactic of accusing his opponents of defamation, thus deflecting attention from his own libelous allegations against a wide spectre of Finnish cultural and political figures. His latest venture, bringing Russian pro-regime street thugs onto the streets of Helsinki, takes his campaign to a whole new level.
Senior figures in the Russian presidential administration encouraged the creation of the Nashi movement, which by late 2007 had around 120,000 members. The Kremlin’s primary goal may have been to create a paramilitary force to harass and attack Putin’s critics and members of the democratic opposition. Nashists have also inflitrated opposition groups as the regime’s paid spies. Recently, Nashi members claimed responsibility for cyber attacks that crippled Estonia’s internet infrastructure amidst a diplomatic quarrel with Russia in spring 2007.
The demonstrations planned in Helsinki on 23 March 2009 may be part of an attempt by Johan Bäckman and his cohorts to spread Nashi’s venomous intimidation of critics of Russia’s ruling regime outside of Russia’s borders. Bäckman has actively propagated the same inverted logic of “anti-fascism” that Nashists adhere to. Recently, Bäckman launched an initiative to establish a “Russian People’s Party” in Finland. This, and previous ventures, are clearly an attempt to mobilise Finland’s Russian-speakers into supporting Moscow’s cynical, anti-integrationist policies in its “near abroad.”
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Royals Visit ‘Danish’ US
The Crown Prince couple visited Danish founded institutions on their recent visit to the US whilst still finding time to promote environmental issues
Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary were given a taste of the US ‘Danish style’ during their visit to the US Midwest, including visiting institutions founded by Danes in the 19th century.
The flight to Chicago was initially delayed due to a bomb hoax, but the couple were safely met in Chicago by Denmark’s ambassador to the US, Friis Arne Petersen and his wife, Birgitte Wilhelmsen.
The four later attended a special climate and energy conference, arranged by the City of Chicago and the Washington DC Danish embassy. At the conference, Frederik emphasised the need for green awareness and took the opportunity to promote the upcoming UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December.
Later, the royal couple visited The Danish Home in Chicago. The elderly care centre, established in 1891, was previously visited by Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik in 1976.
‘The Danish Home is one of the few communities in the United States to have been founded by Danish immigrants’ the Crown Prince told the residents. ‘To me, The Danish Home is but one example of a long lasting and profound affinity between the peoples of America and Denmark.’
Frederik — who was still hopping around on crutches from a sledding mishap — told the gatherers that the Danish Home offered a care deeply rooted in Danish traditions.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Police Smash Balkan Drugs Ring
Thirty-seven people have so far been held in custody as part of a crackdown on an international drugs ring with ties to the Balkan region, police in western Sweden revealed on Thursday.
‘Operation Adam’ has primarily targeted suspects involved in the smuggling and sale of narcotics.
In addition to millions of kronor and several firearms, police have also seized 6kg of heroin, 30kg of amphetamines and 12kg of cocaine over the course of the operation, which was launched in April 2008.
Four people have been expelled from Sweden and the national courts have already convicted a number of the people involved on drugs and weapons offences.
The operation, referred to internally as Adam, is being led by the Västra Götaland county police force in cooperation with Serbian, German and Dutch authorities, as well as Europol, Interpol, Nordic coordination officers and other regional Swedish police forces.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Terror Swede to Finish Jail Time in Sweden
A 21-year-old Swede convicted for terror offences in Bosnia will serve out the rest of his sentence in Sweden.
Mirsad Bektasevic was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison in 2007 following his conviction for terror offences, illegal weapons possession, and assaulting a public servant.
Last autumn Bektasevic requested to be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence in Sweden and on Wednesday his attorney Richard Backenroth received word from the government that the request had been granted, according to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.
“He has his family here, Sweden is his homeland, so its completely appropriate,” Backenroth said to SvD.
Swedish justice ministry legal advisor Annika Turndal confirmed the decision on Thursday.
“The Swedish agreement has decided that he can be transferred,” she told AFP.
“He is a Swedish citizen and is considered to have strong ties to the country, having spent most of his life here.”
Turndal added that Bektasevic ties to Sweden played a role in the decision.
“An important consideration in transfers like this is where the inmate is expected to get the best rehabilitation to be able to readjust to life in his home country,” she said.
However, the government in Bosnia-Hercegovina must still approve the transfer, she added.
Bektasevik was convicted in January 2007 along with Danish-born Turkish citizen Abdulkadir Cesur and Bosnian national Bajro Ikanovic.
Bosnian police captured the men in a raid on their homes along with two other people in the autumn 2005.
In the search, police found a suicide bomb belt, nearly 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of explosives, a fuse hidden in a toy, two walkie-talkies and a video on bomb-making.
A video in which two masked men explain that they plan to attack European countries with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq was also recovered.
After the arrests, Bosnia informed Danish and British authorities of the findings, which led to several arrests in Denmark.
Bektasevic confessed that the recording was made with a camera he had borrowed from his aunt, but he denied that it was his voice on the tape.
He was first sentenced to 15 years and four months in prison, but had the sentence reduced following an appeal.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
The AIDS Controversy
Bishops call for halt to mockery of Pope
ROME — “Mockery and vulgarity” have been directed at the Pope. The president of the Italian bishops’ conference (CEI), Angelo Bagnasco, defended Benedict XVI in the clash over AIDS and condoms, which “frankly had no reason to exist”, overshadowing “right from the start” Benedict XVI’s visit to Africa “in the attention of westerners”. The Osservatore Romano takes a similar line.
Regarding biological wills, the CEI president called for an “unequivocal legal instrument” to be approved “without delay or hesitation” to safeguard Italy against more Eluana Englaros. For the CEI, the Englaro case represents a rupture in Italy’s civil and judicial culture, as well as being “an operation intended to affirm a new, macabre right of freedom”, the “right to die”, in other words “to die and procure death in certain situations to be defined”. Currently, lay Catholics are being mobilised against this drift towards euthanasia in an initiative similar to the Family Day and Law 40 events.
According to Cardinal Bagnasco, the media have manipulated the Pope’s remarks on AIDS and served them up to anyone who, on the basis of the reports, has decreed “an ostracism that exceeds the canons of secularity” against the pontiff. Some of those responsible are identified: “the prejudicial insistence of international agencies” and “the statements by some politicians in Europe and in supranational bodies, the class which by role and responsibility should eschew superficiality in its analyses and haste in its judgements”. The reprimand is directed mainly at France, Germany and the European Commission, which are accused of overstepping “free dissent” and going as far as “ostracism that exceeds the canons of secularity”.
In this, as in other similar cases recently, “by reason of the devious forms it sometimes assumes, and also for the astonishing support it enjoys”, Cardinal Bagnasco continued, “lies one of the indications that lead us to identify the most marked feature of our time, which is secularism”…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Jews of Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922—1945
Edited by Joshua D. Zimmerman
Introduction
Joshua D. Zimmerman
The Jews represent the only population which has never assimilated in Italy because it is made up of racial elements which are not European, differing absolutely from the elements that make up the Italians.
— Manifesto of Racist Scientists
The [Gestapo] had our precise and up-to-date address, just as they had the address of every Jew, a gift from the “mild” Italian racial laws to the German allies.
— Aldo Zargani, For Solo Violin: A Jewish Childhood in Fascist Italy
Until recently, the subject of Italian Jewry under Fascist rule received little attention in English-language Holocaust historiography. A combination of factors, including the size of the community and the relatively small number of victims — about eight out of every ten Italian Jews survived the war — partly accounted for this neglect in the historical literature. With the third highest survival rate after Denmark and Bulgaria, a consensus emerged that Italian Fascist persecution of Jews was not only mild but that Mussolini, the Italian armed forces, Italian civilians, and many church officials consistently protected Jews throughout the war years. Many scholars do not dispute the fact that while Nazi Germany began its genocidal assault on European Jewry in June 1941, Fascist Italy, as long as it remained a sovereign state, became a haven of safety and security not only for Italian Jews but for thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in both the peninsula as well as the Italian-occupied zones of France, Greece, and Croatia.…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Councils Used Anti-Terrorism Powers 10,000 Times to Spy on Offences From Stealing Fairy Lights to Illegal Crab Selling
Councils have used surveillance powers designed to fight terrorism more than 10,000 times to spy on everything from fairy lights to illegal crab selling, figures reveal.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was originally meant for tackling serious crimes.
But details disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act show councils have used it to spy on a range of minor offences including littering and dog fouling.
The Liberal Democrats, who obtained the figures, claim Ripa is in danger of becoming a ‘snooper’s charter’ and is yet another erosion of civil liberties.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Nine in Ten of 10,000 Spied on by Councils Using Anti-Terrorism Powers Are Innocent
Nine out of ten people placed under surveillance by Town Hall ‘Stasi’ were found to be entirely innocent, it emerged yesterday.
The revelation intensified the controversy over local councils using anti-terror powers to spy on those suspected of ‘crimes’ such as putting their bins out on the wrong day.
The legislation, which allows secret filming and even the trailing of suspects by undercover officials, has been used by councils at least 10,333 times over the past five years.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Off With Their Heads! Public Bodies Blow £2 Million on Sculpture in a Town That Has 5,000 Out of Work
There are many things that £2 million could be spent on to help a town facing high unemployment.
But is this 60ft-high elongated concrete head on a slag heap one of them?
Many locals in St Helens, near Liverpool, don’t think so, calling it ‘bonkers’ to pay a Spanish sculptor to construct the ‘folly’ when unemployment locally is at 4.6 per cent — nearly a third higher than the national rate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Parents Booed Children at Inter-School Sports Day After Same Team Won for 20th Year Running
But the day descended into ‘chaos’ when Thomas A Beckett school were crowned champions once again in a close-run competition.
While the losing children maintained an air of dignified disappointment, their furious parents started booing the victorious pupils, hurling abuse and shouting ‘fix’.
[…]
One mother, whose daughter won a race for Thomas A Becket, branded the other parents’ behaviour a ‘disgrace’.
‘Our school is renowned for its sporting prowess. It’s won this competition for the past 20 years but this year the parents of other schools took issue with it,’ said the woman, who asked not to be identified.
‘It turned the adults into children. They were booing and hissing when it was announced that Thomas A Becket had won again and the children started crying.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Town Hall Stasi Must be Stripped of Surveillance Powers
Some 21 per cent (or 340) of these staff are below senior management grade, despite Ripa allowing the use of hidden cameras, undercover surveillance and even ‘covert human intelligence sources’.
The use of such draconian powers to track those suspected of the most minor of offences would be alarming even if they were found to be guilty.
But what is truly chilling is that, in more than nine out of ten cases, the person subjected to intrusive spy tactics was found to be entirely innocent — with only nine per cent of Ripa authorisations ending in a successful prosecution, caution or fixed-penalty notice.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
World Agenda: Sarkozy Turns His Back on De Gaulle With NATO Embrace
The spirits of two great French commanders — Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle — will be on hand in Paris tomorrow when President Sarkozy delivers a speech that is expected to confirm France’s return to full membership of the Nato alliance.
Speaking in the Invalides, the late Emperor’s military school and burial place, France’s most pro-American President will explain why he is braving unpopularity and ending the divorce that de Gaulle decreed 43 years ago between France and the Nato military command.
Public misgivings and resistance in his own camp explain why “Speedy Sarko” has been unusually slow with a pledge from his 2007 election campaign to end the semi-detachment that defined French political independence within the US-dominated western world.
He is expected to make the re-entry formal when Nato holds its 60th anniversary summit in the French city of Strasbourg on April 3.
Parliament has first to endorse the move next week. Mr Sarkozy is sure to win because he has headed off dissent in his majority by turning the vote into a confidence issue.
He will then be able to bask in the glow when, if expected, President Obama, travels to meet him on April 2 for a first, symbol-packed photo-opportunity near one of the Normandy beaches where US troops landed on D-Day 1944…
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Bulgarian Catastrophe
Der Tagesspiegel 25.02.2009
Middle-class culture, skilled craftsmanship, civil society — none of this exists in Bulgaria any more, not even some last scraps to build on after the collapse of Communism, writes Sibylle Levitcharoff in an interview about her novel “Apostoloff”: “Bulgaria was hardly damaged by the war. But everything that was beautiful there started to rot after 1945 under the emphatically Stalinist dictatorship and the decay continues today in the rawness of teething capitalism. But it’s not just about superficial beauty. The brutal and concrete monstrosities that went up everywhere are also in completely run-down inside, everything is covered in mould, stinking, hygienically catastrophic. Normal tourists and EU observers rarely get to see such things, but I have encountered them everywhere.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Few Weapons Delivered, Citizens Have 400,000
(ANSAmed) — PRISTINA, MARCH 23 — The number of unauthorised weapons handed over by Kosovo citizens is negligible, despite amnesties and campaigns set up by Kfor, Interior minister Zenun Pajaziti stated as much to Koha Ditore newspaper. The minister stated that “We are currently drafting a law on weapons which regulates the issue of holding on to them. Furthermore, we are also about to set up a public security department within Kosovo’s police forces. After adopting the law and consolidating the department, we will organise a promotional campaign that will also be accompanied by a period of amnesty”. According to UNDP figures, citizens still hold approximately 400,000 weapons that were in use at the time of the Kosovo war 10 years ago. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Macedonia: Observers Hail Peaceful Presidential Poll
Skopje, 23 March (AKI) — Observers praised peaceful presidential elections in Macedonia where the conservative candidate Djordje Ivanov from the ruling VMRO DPMNE party emerged as the frontrunner. The poll which took place on Sunday was seen as a successful test for the country’s NATO and EU bids.
“It seems that everything was in order,” said European Union envoy to Macedonia Erwan Fourere. “It was a calm and positive atmosphere.”
The election for Macedonia’s largely ceremonial presidency was monitored by 500 international and 7,000 domestic observers.
Unlike the parliamentary polls last year, when one person was killed and several injured in ethnic Albanian areas, Sunday’s vote took place without any major incidents, observers said.
“This is a great day for Macedonia, for European Macedonia which has shown that it is united,” Ivanov, a university professor and newcomer to politics, told Macedonian TV..
Macedonia is an official candidate to join NATO and the EU but the process has been stalled by neighbouring Greece which objects to the name Macedonia, saying it hides territorial pretensions to northern Greek province with the same name.
Prime minister and VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski (photo) said Sunday’s election was a “victory for citizens of the Republic of Macedonia because they deserved democracy to win on Sunday.”
Partial results showed Ivanov did not win enough votes to avoid a 5 April run-off with the candidate who took the second largest share of votes.
Based on 37 per cent of the vote counted, Ivanov won 37.4 percent, followed by opposition candidate Ljubomir Frckoski with 19.8 percent, the state electoral commission said.
An independent candidate, Ljube Boskovski, came third with 16.6 percent. Final results were expected later on Monday.
Frckoski, is backed by the Social Democratic SDSM party. Boskoski, a former interior minister, was acquitted last year by the UN’s Hague-based war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Among the four ethnic Albanian candidates, Imer Selmani of the New Democracy party, made the strongest showing with 13.2 per cent.
Ethnic Albanians make up over 25 percent of Macedonia’s two million population. Their candidates had virtually no chance of victory and ran in the polls to test their strength.
Ethnic Albanian candidates in western parts of Macedonia performed strongly in local polls held simultaneously on Sunday to elect mayors for 85 communities.
Gruevski said his candidates had won 23 mayoral races in the first round of voting on Sunday. The opposition Social Democratic Alliance claimed victory in five municipalities and said they were leading in another ten, with many races likely to result in a run-off.
Among ethnic Albanian parties, the Democratic Union for Integration said it had won in seven mayoral races in western Macedonia and was leading in another six.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Fishing: EU, Strong Action to Make Med Commission Effective
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 23 — Strong action is needed to give greater impetus to the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean: this was one of the proposals put to the European Union round table discussion at the annual meeting of the GFCM today in Tunis, which will end on Friday 27. Another objective for the EU during the meeting is to increase the sustainable management of fish resources in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the result of this is the introduction of controls, including the registration of fishing fleets, a monitoring system for boats over 15 metres, the collection of data, and a better selection of equipment for trawlers. The EU sees these as complementary measures to those which already exist for member countries, and which answer the recommendations by the Scientific Committee of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean. Taken together with European regulations, these international measures should make up a package of initiatives to protect the various species of fish in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, giving fishermen common rules, and providing administrators with a regulatory framework for managing fishing in relation to fishing opportunities. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Libya: Berlusconi, Gaddafi Discuss Outcome of EU Summit
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, MARCH 23 — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi discussed the outcome of last Friday’s European Union summit during a telephone call on Sunday, the Libyan news agency Jana reported on Monday. The talks were part of “recurrent consultations” between Gaddafi and Berlusconi, said Jana. Berlusconi also briefed the Libyan leader on the upcoming creation of the People of Freedom (PdL) party, which will merge his own Forza Italia party with the right-wing National Alliance (AN), which dissolved this weekend. The two also discussed Libya’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council this month, the agency said. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Kabylia Attack on Eve of Bouteflika’s Visit
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, MARCH 26 — Despite repeated sweep-up operations and the impressive security measures in place for tomorrow’s visit by Algerian president/candidate for upcoming elections Abdelaziz Bouteflika to Tizi Ouzou, armed Islamic groups continue to strike in Kabylia, the Berber region east of the capital. On Tuesday evening about thirty armed men attacked a police station in the centre of the town of Ouacifs, 30 kilometres from the Berber capital Tizi Ouzou. The extremist group with links to Al Qaida for the Islamic Maghreb, wrote the Algerian press, made a raid in the city and tried to attack the building with Kalashnikovs. Liberté reported that, after a half-hour shootout, the group had pulled back. According to a non-official tally, at least four police were injured. In the Boumerdes zone (50 kilometres east of Algiers) in Chaabet El Ameur, the army has been involved in a wide-ranging anti-terrorism operation for the past week. Yesterday a civilian was injured when a rudimentary bomb placed along a roadside went off, and six members of armed groups have been killed over the past few days. At least three soldiers, continued Liberté, died, while three were injured during the sweep-up. Official sources have confirmed the death of the militants but no information has been made available on any military losses. In preparation for Bouteflika’s election campaign visit, after his visit to Bejaia and Jijel yesterday, numerous checkpoints have been set up along the one hundred kilometres between Algiers and Tizi Ouzou. According to the press, 160,000 policemen have been mobilized for the election campaign, along with about a thousand gendarme and soldiers. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Annunciation: Christian-Muslim National Holiday
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, MARCH 24 — From tomorrow Lebanon will officially celebrate the feast of the Annunciation as a national Christian-Muslim festival, with the hope that the same initiative will be adopted next year by Italy and five other countries. Prime minister Fuad Siniora will sign a decree tomorrow to establish that March 25 will be a national holiday in honour of the Virgin Mary, who is also venerated in Islam, said Beirut daily paper L’Orient le Jour. A monument showing the Madonna’s face framed with a half moon will also be erected in the capital as a symbol of the national celebration. According to the newspaper the promoters of the initiative have already contacted Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Italy, Poland and France to celebrate March 25 in the same way. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: From Grain to Dates, Egypt Top Producer
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 24 — Grain, rice, vegetables, potatoes, fruit, grapes, olives, and dates are all the main crops of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, which are registering continued growth each year. Most are produced in Egypt, which in comparison with Algeria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, and Tunisia, is still by far the top producer. Irrigation systems have made the difference, making the country more efficient, since Morocco is the top country for the amount of cultivated land. The only exception is olive production, in which Syria leads the nine countries of the southern shore, which were the focus of a Eurostat study for various crops, based on data from 2000-2006. According to the study, vegetables, including potatoes, were the most important crops, with a production average of 38.9 million tonnes per year. The second most widespread crops for the southern shore were grain, amounting to 33% with 32 million tonnes produced per year. Fresh fruit came in third place, with 14% of the total production and 13.6 million tonnes harvested on average per year. 3.6 million tonnes of olives on average were produced per year, followed by grapes, with 3 million tonnes in 2006. Cultivated to be eaten fresh, grapes were also used in wine and juice production (38% in Tunisia and 36% in Israel). 1.8 million tonnes of dates, another typical Mediterranean crop, were harvested each year. The country with the most land under cultivation is Morocco, with 9 million hectares on average per year, followed by Algeria (8.3), Syria (5.5), and Tunisia (4.9). Between 2000 and 2006, the amount of cultivated land was basically the same, except for Egypt and Lebanon, which increased by about 10%. Among the nine countries of the southern shore, explained Eurostat, the presence of irrigation systems was a crucial factor with 77% of farmland served by irrigation systems (in the Nile Valley and Delta) in Egypt . This is a very different situation than in the other countries, starting with Lebanon, which only has 47% of its farmland irrigated, and Israel with 46%, followed by Jordan (6%) and Syria (25%). (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Violence Against Women: Hotline Opens in Tunisia
(ANSAmed) — TUNISIA, MARCH 23 — A toll free number — 1880 — is now available for Tunisian women who have been victims of violence. The initiative, which is the first of its kind not only in Arab countries, but in all Africa, was adopted by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Family, children, and the Elderly. The main objectives of the initiative include making women aware of their legal rights, guaranteeing them, and allowing their use. In Tunisia, almost daily reports in the newspapers show that domestic violence is as widespread as ever and often ends in murder. This is due to social and cultural factors, which place women beneath men despite their social or cultural position. Almost always, fear and shame cause the victims to not report the abuse that they suffer. Various justifications are made in these cases: to protect their children (if there are any); to not risk being alone if they are divorced or if the husband is put in jail; fear for their reputation; and the desire not to let others know about their degraded family situation. Interestingly, French-language newspaper Le Temps, which has always covered these problems, said in a long article on sexual violence: “Even worse, violence can assume even more serious forms within a couple including rape and sexual violence. Women who suffer from cervical cancer are specifically victims of this form of violence. Not able to understand their situation, the husbands of these women do not hesitate to resort to this type of violence. But it is rare to find complaints against them to the police, or within their own families. In reality, women are required to discreetly continue to live this demeaning experience”. To try to combat this phenomenon, in addition to a toll free number, Tunisian authorities and organisations are putting together a programme involving the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the National Office of Family Planning and Population (ONFP), which will also include cooperation from Spain. A targeted investigation to understand the true nature of the phenomenon will search for appropriate measures to reduce it. In the past days, the news that Tunisia has called for the contribution of Arab countries to condemn violence against Arab women and to express hope for a more human and serene future. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘Arab Jerusalem’, Islamic Movement Leader Stopped
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, MARCH 23 -Israeli police in East Jerusalem stopped Raed Sala for questioning today; the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel was with his security guard and three other people. Salah had gone to make a visit of support to those taking part in a demonstration to protest over the demolition of Arab houses in the Sheikh Jarrah district. The demonstrators have taken up a permanent position in a tent. According to the police, Salah and his supporters took advantage of the demonstration to express their support for demonstrations scheduled to declare Jerusalem the capital of Arab culture. Israel, which claims sovereignty over the entire city, has prohibited demonstrations intended to proclaime the East Jerusalem neighborhoods as Arab. Apparently those accompanying Salah resisted the officers attempt to stop the men and there was a scuffle between the demonstrators and the police. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
CBS News: IAF Hit Weapons Trucks in Sudan
CBS News is reporting that the IAF destroyed a convoy of 17 weapons trucks making their way from Sudan to the Gaza Strip via Egypt during the middle of Operation Cast Lead. The report is based on a report from a Sudanese web site. According to the report, 39 people were killed in the strike; according to Israel Radio, those killed including nationals of Ethiopia, Eriteria and Sudan. Both Israel and the United States have declined comment on the report…
| — Hat tip: Israel Matzav | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Failed Smuggling Attempt, 500 Sheep Auctioned
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 23 — Hundreds of sheep found being smuggled into the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border crossing will be sold at auction. According to Egyptian security forces, the 500 animals were sequestered last week. The sale is scheduled for today near the crossing. Also on the block are about fifty gas cylinders. The head of the security forces said that 500 kilograms of explosives were also recently discovered, as well as four tones of cement, despite Israel’s regular accusations that Egypt doesn’t do enough to fight weapons being smuggled in by armed Palestinian groups. The Rafah border crossing, the entry point for Gaza from Israel, has been permanently semi-closed since June 2006 and only opens for humanitarian aid to enter and for the sick and injured to leave. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: UN Rapporteur Wants War Crime Investigation
(ANSAmed) — GENEVA, MARCH 23 — United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights Richard Falk has proposed an investigation by experts to find out if it was possible for Israeli troops to distinguish between the civilian population and military targets during the Gaza offensive and to establish if war crimes were committed. If it was not possible to make this distinction, Falk’s report — which was discussed today in Geneva by the Human Rights Council — points out, “the attacks were illegal and seem to constitute a very serious war crime based on international law”. Based on “available preliminary evidence” he added “we have reason to come to this conclusion”. Today Tsahal commander Gaby Ashkenazi strongly rejected the accusations made in the Israeli press of unwarranted violence used in operation ‘Cast Lead’. “I don’t believe the troops of Tsahal hit Palestinian civilians in cold blood” said general Ashkenazi during the inspection of a recruitment base near Tel Aviv. “We are waiting for the results of an investigation into this issue. But in my opinion Tsahal troops behaved ethically and morally. If there were cases of improper behaviour” he pointed out “these must have been isolated incidents”. The issue was raised by the ‘Rabin Military Seminar ‘, which published statements made by troops after they returned from Gaza, where they would have seen serious excesses. Today the Israeli office of the organisation ‘Doctors for human rights’ published an alarming report in which it is stated that Tsahal has obstructed aid for injured Palestinians during ‘Cast Lead’ operations, opening fire on hospitals and medical teams. As a consequence 16 members of the medical staff were been killed, and 25 injured. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Tel Aviv Prepares to Celebrate 100th Anniversary
(by Orlando Piantadosi) (ANSAmed) — NAPLES, MARCH 24 — With an international conference dedicated to urban innovation, festivities for the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv-Jaffa — the first modern Jewish city founded on April 11 2009 — will begin on April 1, with an open-air festival, art exhibitions, sports events, historical exhibitions, and various community projects. From a settlement on the sand dunes of the beach just north of Jaffa, consisting of just a few dozen families, Tel Aviv expanded appreciably in the ‘20s and ‘30s, until becoming a city, which is considered by many to be the most creative, liberal, and tolerant in the country. The first centre of the city, Jaffa, became part of Tel Aviv in 1949. “100 years later the vision of the founders who overlooked the sand dunes and saw the potential for a lively city, has been realised,” said Mayor Ron Huldai. “Tel Aviv-Jaffa is a flourishing and cosmopolitan city of 400,000 residents who are proud to call the city their home.” In addition to the opening conference, which will also take place on April 2, among the events on the agenda is the opening ceremony in Rabin Square on April 4, an international marathon on April 24, the “Little Tel Aviv’s White Night” night-time festival on May 27, the “Blue Mediterranean Festival” in Jaffa on June 17, a concert by the Scala orchestra performing Verdi’s Requiem at Ganei Yehoshua-Yarkon Park on June 16, the Art Biennial from September 9 to October 9, and “Fashion Week” from October 19 to 22. The festivities for the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv will also take place outside of Israel and numerous events are scheduled to take place in New York, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Paris, with the reconstruction of the beaches of Tel Aviv in Central Park and along the Seine, the Danube, and the canals of Copenhagen. The 100th anniversary will also be celebrated with 15 important renewal projects that will change the city, including the reconstruction of the Port of Jaffa, with the addition of a new, larger park in the south, the restoration of the neighbourhood of the Templars, Sharona, which will become a cultural and entertainment area, the inauguration of a newly restructured railway station in Manshia on the outskirts of Jaffa, the seafront will be extended from Bat Yam to Herzliya, the Trumpeldor Street cemetery, where many of the city’s founders are buried has been restructured, and new wings will be opened at the Cinemateque and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Restructuring work has also begun for the historical Habima theatre. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UN Expert Questions Israeli Action in Gaza
Gaza City, 23 March (AKI) — The United Nations expert on the Palestinian territories has questioned Israel’s recent military action in the Gaza Strip but said there is no “reason” to conclude that its actions constituted a war crime.
In a report to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in the Swiss city of Geneva, Richard Falk said it was important to determine whether Israeli forces were able to differentiate between civilian and military targets.
“If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful, and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” Falk said
“On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion,” he said.
Falk’s report is the first to be made since Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza that ended in January.
He is reported to have concentrated on the legal issues arising from the war, as he had been unable to enter Gaza to assess the human rights situation personally.
Falk had sought entry into the Palestinian territories in December, but was detained by the Israelis in a facility close to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, before being expelled a day later.
“Such a refusal to cooperate with a United Nations representative, not to mention the somewhat humiliating treatment accorded has set an unfortunate precedent with respect to the treatment of a representative of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and more generally of the United Nations itself,” Falk said.
Falk has been highly critical of Israel in the past and his new report is no exception.
He is expected to call for an independent inquiry to examine possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas.
Falk also said suggested that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is in violation of the Geneva Conventions and must be lifted.
More than 1,330 Palestinians were killed and another 5,400 were injured during Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip known as Operation Cast Lead. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Milanese Killed in Turkey: 6th Hearing of Trial Today
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 26 — Today will be the sixth hearing of the trial before the Assizes Court of Kocaeli (about 100 kilometres east of Istanbul) against Murat Karatash, 38, the Turkish national who has confessed to killing Giuseppina Pasqualino (stage name Pippa Bacca) from Marineo, the 33-year-old Milanese artist raped and killed in Turkey in early April 2008. During the last hearing held on February 19, there was a dramatic turn of events when the accused retracted his previous statements and said that his confession had been extorted “under threat”, a claim strongly denied by the lawyer for the victim’s family, Mehmet Eke. Giuseppina Pasqualino had left from Milan with a friend — both of whom dressed in bridal attire -in March to begin a hitchhiking trip meant as a sort of performance art, to go from Italy to Israel passing through the Balkans and the Middle East. On March 31, having separated from her travel companion, Giuseppina disappeared after having accepted a ride from a man who later confessed to raping and strangling her. The young woman’s body was found on April 11, nude and hidden under a thin layer of earth and branches in an uninhabited area near the Istanbul-Ankara highway. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: State TV Bans Video Deemed Too Sexy
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, MARCH 23 — The video accompanying ‘Dum Tek Tek’, well-known Turkish singer Hadise’s latest hit, is “too sexy” and for this reason Turkish State television Trt — which has chosen the singer to represent Turkey in the 54th Eurovision song contest in Moscow on May 19 — has banned it. Private TV station Ntv made the announcement today on its website, saying that the heads of the State tv have asked the young blonde singer to make a more restrained video, more in keeping with the image of the country, which is secular, but which has been ruled for the past seven years by the Justice and Development party (Akp), which has Islamic roots. As soon as Ntv announced the news on the website there was a sudden surgein users clicking on the link to look for the banned video clip. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Church Leader Sparks Georgian Baby Boom
Two years after having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Georgia is enjoying something of a baby boom, following an intervention from the country’s most senior cleric.
At the end of 2007, in a move to reverse the Caucasian country’s dwindling birth figures, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, came up with an incentive. He promised to personally baptise any baby born to parents of more than two children.
There was only one catch: the baby had to be born after the initiative was launched.
The results are, in the words of the Georgian Orthodox Church, “a miracle”.
The country’s birth rate increased by nearly 20% during 2008 — a rate four times faster than the previous year.
[…]
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
130 Taliban Killed in Marine Raid
ROYAL Marines have smashed the most important Taliban stronghold yet in a ferocious three-day assault.
They killed 130 enemy in the daring raid on bases in the opium-swamped Marjah region of Helmand.
[link has video]
| — Hat tip: The Frozen North | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Italian Giant ENI to Boost Oil and Gas Output in Pakistan
Islamabad, 18 March (AKI) — Italian energy giant ENI is seeking to double its oil and natural gas production in Pakistan over the next five to six years, and to sink its first offshore oil well there in 2010, managing director Paolo Scaroni, told journalists on Wednesday during a conference call.
“The accord signed today will not only make ENI the primary operator in Pakistan, but also its privileged partner,” Scaroni (photo) said.
He was describing an agreement he had just signed in the capital Islamabad with Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari and prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani on a series of new projects in the energy sector.
ENI currently produces 56,000 barrels per day, mostly of gas, and intends to invest 50-70 million dollars annually in exploration and a further 50-70 million dollars to develop and maintain the fields,” said Scaroni.
He also said ENI wants to boost its offshore exploration.
“Offshore is a very promising activity in Pakistan, which no one else has carried out,” Scaroni said.
But he cautioned: “Pakistan is not a major oil producing country…it’s not an oil Mecca.”
The country currently produces 230,000 barrels of oil and 70,000 barrels of gas annually.
ENI has been operating in Pakistan since 2000.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
In Taliban-Controlled Swat Valley No More NGOs or Polio Vaccination for Children
The enforcement of Sharia has led to the closing down of NGO offices, the end of polio vaccination for children and left hundreds of lawyers out of a job. Extremist groups plan to demand the implementation of Islamic in every district of the province. Civil society groups and human rights activists are sounding the alarm.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) — Since Sharia came into effect on 16 February lawyers have lost their job, NGOs have not been allowed to operate, polio vaccination has been banned, Taliban in custody have been released, and demands that Islamic law be implemented in the other districts of the province have made. The agreement signed by the government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Tahrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) movement in a bid to end years of war and violence is bearing fruit. Under Sharia civil liberties and personal freedoms are being curtailed and what was once a famous destination for national and international tourism is being progressively “talibanised”.
On Sunday 14 more Taliban terrorists were released from jail, taking the total number freed so far to 48. At the same time TNSM chief Sufi Muhammad’s ban on district courts and lawyers’ presence in Qazi courts (Islamic courts) in Swat has left around 500 lawyers unemployed since Sharia only allows people filing cases and the accused to appear before the new “Islamic courts”.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Sunday also ordered all non-governmental organisations to immediately leave Swat. For the Islamist organisation “NGO is another name for ‘vulgarity and obscenity’,” because they hire women who work with men, in the field and in offices. “That is totally unislamic and unacceptable,” TTP spokesman Muslim Khan said.
The Taliban have decreed that there shall be no polio vaccination because “it causes infertility” and because the vaccine was imported, Khan said.
In Lower Dir, one of the NWFP’s 24 districts, Islamic fundamentalists have shut down a family planning centre, warning that it would be blown up if it was reopened it.
In the province religious parties and extremist movements are now demanding the application of Sharia in the other districts as well as the tribal areas along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Civil society groups and human rights activists have condemned the Swat Valley’s talibanisation, pointing out that some areas have become no-go areas where militants are enforcing the most rigid and fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Punjab Vice-Chairman Dr Mehdi Hasan warned that the militants will stop at nothing to achieve their purpose, that they will eliminate anything and anyone trying to stop them.. He urged the government to look into the matter and take control of the situation.
Women’s Action Forum (WAF) Convener Nighat Saeed Khan said that militants in the Malakand Division have used Western technical equipment—cellular phones, rockets and vehicles—even though they termed each one of them as “unislamic.”
She noted that the Taliban are creating their “own areas”, where they are likely to train terrorists, and will move to other districts if not stopped immediately.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistani Region Where the Brutal Taleban Have Taken Control
A man accused of burglary is questioned by a masked gunman who then casually lifts a revolver and pulls the trigger at point-blank range. The man staggers back but is shot again and falls to the ground. The gunman steps forward and fires three more bullets into his body and head. Nobody watching moves.
The Taleban are back in charge, and this time in Pakistan. In Mingora only 110 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital, these hooded enforcers are the law, patrolling the streets and meting out summary justice.
In front of large crowds they flog people who have broken edicts that the Taleban have set. Drug addicts and dealers are held down in the dust by heavily armed militants and flogged. They cry out in pain shouting for Allah. The punishment is brutal but has popular support.
This beautiful valley region in central northeast Pakistan — once a popular holiday destination and described by the Queen during a stay here as the “Switzerland” of the former Empire — is now a Taleban mini-state where Sharia is applied ruthlessly.
The Pakistani Army and its political masters have given up a two-year battle here and handed over control. It now looks and feels like Afghanistan in 2001. Taleban fighters in hooded masks with eye-holes guard the roads leading into Mingora. In the town black-turbaned outrunners wield wooden sticks to clear a path for a Taleban convoy of pick-up trucks…
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan Accuses India of ‘stealing’ Water
Pakistan has accused India of removing water from some of its important rivers, reducing them to a trickle and threatening the livelihood of its farmers.
Last summer, farmers in agricultural heartland of Pakistan began to notice the levels of both the river and groundwater starting to fall.
The waterways, which bisect the Punjab, meaning “five rivers”, are fed with glacial meltwaters from the Himalayas and for centuries has provided crucial irrigation for the region, the Independent reports.
Pakistan has blamed India, saying it is withholding millions of cubic feet of water upstream in Indian-administered Kashmir and storing it in the massive Baglihar dam in order to produce hydro-electricity.
Taking water out of the system is in breach of a 1960 treaty designed to administer water use in the region, Pakistan claims.
Talks to resolve the issue have been put on hold following the Mumbai terror attacks in Novmeber, when tensions between the two countriesincreased.
Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, said: “The water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India. Resolution could prevent an environmental catastrophe in South Asia, but failure to do so could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism.”
Earlier this month the UN warned the world may be close to its first water war. “Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” a report on the issue found. “Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity and conflict at various levels.”
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Local Militant Leader Threatens to Quash Swat Peace Deal
Mingora, 25 March (AKI/DAWN) — A local militant in northwest Pakistan’s troubled Swat district, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, has threatened to withdraw from the historic peace accord recently signed with the provincial government. Mohammad says he is unhappy at what he calls the slow pace of implementation of the accord.
Mohammad said late on Tuesday ‘un-Islamic’ laws were still in force in the Malakand division of Swat — covering one-third of the district, 38 days after the signing of the agreement in mid-February.
The accord marked the victory of the Taliban and peace in the Swat valley after two years.
Mohammad, who is the chief of the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi group, said he supported the agreement but was not satisfied with its implementation.
“Judges have been replaced with qazis (Islamic judges). They are reforming society, but are unable to issue orders or to get their decisions implemented,” he told journalists.
He said the TNSM and the North West Frontier Province government had signed the accord on 16 February to repeal all laws that offended Islam in the Malakand division and Kohistan district but some such laws were still being applied.
He said there would be no lasting peace if Islamic Sharia law was not implemented in the region.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people blocked the Mingora-Matta road for four hours in protest against the deployment of security forces in government-run educational institutions.
The protesters carried placards that read ‘We need schools, not checkposts’.
They said troops had been occupying schools in the area for two years. As a result, they said, thousands of students had been deprived of the opportunity to go to school.
They ended the roadblock after receiving assurances that troops would vacate schools within three days.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Taliban Demand $375,000 to Free Captive Canadian
Taliban insurgents active in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region have offered to free a Canadian woman held since November in return for a $375,000 (U.S.) ransom. The demand came in an interview near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with Qari, a man who preferred to identify himself only by his first name.
Qari says he’s a close aide of Gul Bahadur, the Taliban head in the volatile North Waziristan region who is alleged to be responsible for the kidnapping of Beverly Giesbrecht, a West Vancouver woman who was in the area working as a freelance journalist.
Ms. Giesbrecht, 52, also goes by the name, Khadija Abdul Qahaar, after converting to Islam in 2002. She is the publisher of a pro-Islamic website, Jihad Unspun.
| — Hat tip: AMDG | [Return to headlines] |
The Schools Where Pupils Prepare for Jihad
Residents referred to it simply as the school for “jihadi fighters”, speaking in awe of the expensive horses stabled within its high walls — and the extremists who rode them bareback in the dusty fields around it.
In classrooms nearby, teachers drilled boys as young as 8 in an uncompromising brand of Islam that called for holy war against enemies of the faith.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Dar-ul-uloom Madina school, they rocked back and forth as they recited sections of the Koran, Islam’s holy book.
Both facilities are run by an al Qaeda-linked terror network, Jaish-e-Mohammed, in the heart of Pakistan, hundreds of kilometres from the Afghan border that is the global focus of the fight against terrorism. Their existence raises questions about the Government’s pledge to crack down on terror groups accused of high-profile attacks in Pakistan and India, and ties to global terror plots.
Authorities say militant groups in Punjab are increasingly sending out fighters to Afghanistan and the border region.
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AdvertisementThe horse-riding facility, discovered by AP during a visit to this impoverished region where kilometres of dusty, wind-swept desert spread out in all directions, had never before been seen by journalists.
There, would-be jihadi fighters practise martial arts, archery and horse-riding skills and get religious instruction, according to a former member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, who spoke on condition of anonymity…
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Villagers Burn Girl Alive in ‘Honour Killing’
A TEENAGER was burned to death at her home in India in an “honour killing” by neighbours.
Four residents of her village in Ghaziabad, north India, allegedly set the 16-year-old Muslim girl alight after they suspected her of having a relationship with a boy.
Police claim residents kept a vigil on her house as they noticed the boy visited her frequently when her father was away. The four men then beat her, doused her with kerosene and set her on fire.
District police chief Akhil Kumar said: “The four men came to the girl’s house and demanded to know why the young man frequently visited her. The girl’s younger sister, who felt the visitors were getting violent, ran out of the house.
“Meanwhile, the accused beat up the girl and then set her on fire with kerosene oil.”
She gave a dying statement to the police saying the accused beat her and set her on fire.
Vijay Singh, station officer at Bhojpur police station in Ghaziabad, said: “The girl has succumbed to her injuries. We have been looking for the four men accused in this case. One of them has been caught and charged with murder
| — Hat tip: Aeneas | [Return to headlines] |
Man Survived Both Atomic Bombings
Japan has certified a man aged 93 as the only known survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both hit by atomic bombs towards the end of World War II.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.
He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.
He said he hoped his experience held a lesson of peace for future generations.
It was already recorded that Mr Yamaguchi had survived the Nagasaki bomb but on Tuesday officials recognised that he had been in Hiroshima as well.
Certification as a hibakusha or radiation survivor qualifies Japanese citizens for government compensation, including medical check-ups, and funeral costs.
His double dose of atomic bombs, however, does not mean Mr Yamaguchi’s compensation will increase, a Nagasaki city official said.
“My double radiation exposure is now an official government record,” Mr Yamaguchi told reporters.
“It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die.”
About 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.
Many survivors fell sick with radiation-related illnesses, including cancers, for years after the bombings.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Pyongyang Prepares to Set Up Rocket Launch Pad
South Korean sources say that “between March 28 and 30,” preparatory work will begin on the Musudan-ri launch pad. Seoul is ready to create a crisis team to confront the threat. The communist regime announces the closing of two air routes to clear the way for the rocket launch.
Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) — At the weekend, Pyongyang will begin the preparatory phase for the missile launch from the platform of Musudan-ri (in the photo), in the southern part of the province of North Hamgyong. The news comes from South Korean sources today, according to which it is “highly possible that the rocket will emerge between March 28-31.”
Seoul says that it will take “at least three days” to fuel the rocket, and is preparing to respond to the threat: “The moment North Korea sets up its rocket that appears to be a long-range missile, [South Korea] will begin operating a crisis management team, assuming the actual launch is imminent.”
North Korea has confirmed that it intends to launch a “communications satellite” between April 4 and 8, and insists that the experiment is legitimate; however, it violates the guidelines of the United Nations outlawing missile tests — military and civilian — by the Pyongyang regime, which has joined the space race but is indifferent to a population reduced to famine. The United States and South Korea claim that the country is preparing a test of a ballistic missile (Taepodong-2) capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
In recent days, the communist regime in the North has given notice that two air routes — used by South Korean and international civilian planes — will be closed from April 4-8, in order to permit the missile launch.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Uzbek Christians Face Persecution and Discrimination Even After Death
The police and town authorities oppose a funeral for a man because his wife and son are Christian. Later they allow it, but in practically concealed form. Christians sentenced to prison solely because they gather together and pray. Persecution expanded against those who do not adhere to the country’s official religion, Islam.
Tashkent (AsiaNews/F18) — The Uzbek National Security Service (NSS, the secret police) and the leaders of the mahalla (local governing body) in the city of Khodjeli (Karakalpakstan) opposed the burial of Zhumabai Smetullaev, a Muslim. Sources for the agency Forum 18 speak of genuine discrimination against the wife and son of the deceased man, both of whom are Christian.
Mahalla officials admit that there were obstacles to the funeral, without explaining why. Finally, a modest funeral was permitted, but without any procession, and just outside of the cemetery. But the sources for F18 say that the discrimination continues: the wife was warned by NSS officials not to organize the traditional ceremonies and commemorations at 40 and 100 days after burial, and that those who help her would be punished. A number of local inhabitants report threats from the police that those who convert to Christianity “will not be buried after death.”
In the tradition of central Asia, it is normal for the entire community to attend the funeral for the deceased. Failure to participate indicates that the dead person and his family are considered outside of the community, genuine pariahs. Local authorities deny that they opposed the funeral, and municipal official Khudoyor Kurbaniyazo says that “we have six cemeteries, and even one for Christians.” Smetullaev’s family had suffered persecution even before this. In February, the police searched their home without authorization, and without saying what they were looking for: they took a Bible away.
The Protestants in nearby Nukus also denounce similar problems in the burial of their loved ones, with a ban on the community participating in the funeral or providing any help.
In various areas of the country, systematic repression is underway against Christians and other non-Islamic faiths. At the beginning of March, the Protestants Mahmudjon Turdiev, Mahmudjon Boynazarov, and Ravshanjon Bahramov were sentenced to 15 days in jail, in Andijan, solely for having attended a meeting in a private home and talked about religious topics. In the capital of Tashkent, Roman Tsoi, a South Korean Baptist Christian, was sentenced to 10 days in jail for participating in a prayer meeting in a registered church: sometimes the authorities demand specific authorization for every religious activity, except for Mass on Sundays and feast days, even if this is not required by the law.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Bombing Targets Somali Minister
Somali Interior Minister Abdulkadir Ali Omar has been wounded in a deadly bomb attack in the capital Mogadishu.
The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the minister’s secretary was killed and a bodyguard also injured.
The minister was passing through the capital’s bustling Bakara market — a stronghold of the radical al-Shabab militia — when a landmine went off.
The new government can only work in parts of Mogadishu, as Islamists and militias run swathes of the country.
“We will do all we can to resolve the matter,” Mr Omar, wearing a white bandage on his leg, told journalists in Mogadishu, reported AP news agency.
“We will still pursue the peace process and we’ll manage to overcome the enemies of the people.”
Mr Omar is one of the relatively moderate Islamists who lead the new interim unity government, set up in recent months under a UN reconciliation process.
Correspondents say the fragile administration faces an uphill struggle trying to reach a peace deal with radical Islamists.
Mr Omar led an Islamist militia that fought alongside al-Shabab against the Ethiopian troops who invaded Somalia in late 2006 in an effort to prop up a wobbly UN-backed government.
The Ethiopians withdrew this January under the terms of the UN-brokered peace deal that led to the more moderate rebels laying down arms and entering government.
Radical insurgent groups like al-Shabab now control much of the country and areas of the capital itself.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
In the Face of Evil, Christians Cannot Remain Silent, Said the Pope in Africa
After arriving in Cameroon in his first trip to Africa, Benedict XVI talks about the Church’s message which does not offer “new forms of economic or political oppression, but the glorious freedom of the children of God.” He speaks out in defence of life and tackles the AIDS issue, a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money or “distributing condoms,” which “only increases the problem.”
Yaoundé (AsiaNews) — “In the face of suffering or violence, poverty or hunger, corruption or abuse of power, a Christian can never remain silent,” said Benedict XVI in a strongly-worded message for Africa and the rest of the world after he arrived this afternoon in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in the first leg of his first trip to Africa.
In a young country celebrating 50 years of independence, the Pope was welcomed by President Paul Biya, as well as other civilian and religious leaders, including non Catholics, and by a small but loud and festive crowd.
In his address the Pope said he brought the hope embodied by a young African, Josephine Bakhita, who was born a slave and became a saint. “Here in Africa, as in so many parts of the world, countless men and women long to hear a word of hope and comfort,” the Pontiff said.
“Regional conflicts leave thousands homeless or destitute, orphaned or widowed. In a continent which, in times past, saw so many of its people cruelly uprooted and traded overseas to work as slaves, today human trafficking, especially of defenceless women and children, has become a new form of slavery. At a time of global food shortages, financial turmoil, and disturbing patterns of climate change, Africa suffers disproportionately: more and more of her people are falling prey to hunger, poverty, and disease. They cry out for reconciliation, justice and peace, and that is what the Church offers them.”
The Church is not seeking “new forms of economic or political oppression, but the glorious freedom of the children of God (cf Rom, 8:21). Not the imposition of cultural models that ignore the rights of the unborn, but the pure healing water of the Gospel of life. Not bitter interethnic or inter-religious rivalry, but the righteousness, peace and joy of God’s kingdom, so aptly described by Pope Paul VI as the civilization of love (cf Regina Coeli Message, Pentecost Sunday, 1970).
During his flight from Rome the Pope touched upon some of the issues central to his visit like the lack of equity in economic exchange, exploitation and the defence of life, issues which are part of the Instrumentum laboris, the working paper destined for the Second Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of Africa, which he came to present to the continent.
In response to journalists the Holy Father mentioned how much the Catholic Church does for the fight against AIDS in Africa, a tragedy that in his view cannot be overcome by money or “distributing condoms. It only increases the problem.” Instead, what is necessary is morally correct human behaviour and great care for the sick, i.e. suffering with the suffering.
“It is particularly commendable,” he noted, “that Aids sufferers are able to receive treatment free of charge in this country,” whose government “speaks out in defence of the rights of the unborn.”
Indeed for the Pope a lack of ethics is responsible for the profound economic crisis that is disproportionately affecting the poor, in Africa and in the rest of the world. For him the current economic crisis is the result of an ethics gap.
The Holy Father announced that he would address this issue in his next encyclical. The original version was almost ready, but had to be put off, he said, because of the worldwide recession that forced him to rework it so as to offer humanity a message for our times.
Finally Benedict XVI addressed one last sensitive issue, praising Cameroon for welcoming “[t]housands of refugees from war-torn countries in the region [who] have received a welcome here. It is a land of life, with a Government that speaks out in defence of the rights of the unborn. It is a land of peace: by resolving through dialogue the dispute over the Bakassi peninsula, Cameroon and Nigeria have shown the world that patient diplomacy can indeed bear fruit.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pirates Seize Tankers Off Somalia
Pirates have seized two European-owned tankers off the coast of Somalia in the past day, officials have said.
The Greek-owned vessel Nipayia, with 19 crew on board, was seized on Wednesday, the Nato Shipping Centre said.
The Norwegian-owned tanker Bow Asir was captured by pirates on Thursday. It had a crew of 27 on board, the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association said.
Warships from more than a dozen nations currently patrol the region, following a spike in pirate attacks in 2008.
A European Union naval taskforce of seven warships reports some success in preventing other seizures, BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says.
But a spokesman for the taskforce stressed that patrolling more than a million square miles of ocean is a huge undertaking, our correspondent reports.
Some ships are taking successful counter-measures and outrunning the pirates, he says, while others are sailing in groups along sea corridors where they can be offered better protection.
Nato has said five extra warships will join international protection efforts in the coming days.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Kenneth Timmerman Speaks to Csp’s Michael Waller: Obama Curtails Successful Drug Interdiction Program in El Salvador
The State Department has turned down an offer by the government of El Salvador to renew a joint drug interdiction program that allows the U.S. Navy to base P-3 maritime search aircraft at Comalpa International airport in El Salvador.
The 10-year agreement, which went into force after the Salvadoran legislature approved it in 2000, is set to expire next year. The Office of National Drug Control Policy recently estimated that more than half of the drugs destined for the United States pass through the Pacific corridor patrolled by the P-3 aircraft based in El Salvador.
“El Salvador has been our staunchest anti-drug ally in the region, outside of Columbia,” said J. Michael Waller, a Latin America expert with the Center for Security Policy. “This program was very well established. The Salvadoran government wanted to extend it for 10 years, and the State Department said no. What kind of insanity is that?”
For many years, Salvador’s former rebel party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (known by its Spanish acronym, FMLN) has opposed U.S.-Salvadoran drug cooperation.
The FMLN won a closely fought general election March 15 and is set to take over the reins of government on June 1.
President Obama telephoned President-elect Mauricio Funes, a former CNN television correspondent, on Wednesday “to congratulate him on his historic victory,” the White House announced…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
‘White People Caused the Credit Crunch’
Brazil’s President, while meeting Gordon Brown, has said the global financial crisis was caused by “white people with blue eyes”.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the comments after talks with the Prime Minister to try to forge a global consensus on how to save the worldwide economy.
Sky News’ Joey Jones said it was an “uncomfortable” moment for Mr Brown.
“The President does not mind using fairly flamboyant language. He likes to give extensive answers to journalists.
“But some of it was rather awkward for the Prime Minister, who was standing there listening to the President.
“A few eyebrows will have gone up at what he said.”
Downing Street says the remarks were meant for “domestic consumption”.
Jones said: “People in Brazil are very frustrated and angry at what they feel is the injustice of the situation: a crisis that has essentially come from the banking sectors in places like the United States and the UK, but is affecting their country.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Female Migrants Drawn to Northeast
Venice, 25 March (AKI) — Italy’s northeastern industrial Veneto region attracts the biggest share of the country’s female immigrants. According to a monthly statistical report published by the region on Wednesday, women made up almost half or 48 percent of Veneto’s 457,000 immigrants last year.
Immigrants in Veneto make up 11.7 percent of the country’s immigrants nationwide and 9.3 percent of the region’s population, according to the bulletin.
Romanian women are the largest group (19.9 percent) followed by Moroccans (10.5 percent), Albanians (8.8 percent), Moldavians (6.5 percent) and Chinese women (5.2) percent.
One in five Italians or 20.2 percent in the Veneto region marry a foreigner and the rate is significantly higher than the national average of 14 percent. It also has the highest proportion of immigrant children in the country with 24 percent.
Foreign women have almost twice as many babies than Italian women in Veneto.
Local councillor for immigration Oscar De Bona said greater integration of immigrants in Italian schools and society is one of the region’s priorities.
Women and children form “a stable component of the immigrant population” and are key to the integration process, he said.
This needs to involve voluntary associations, immigrant groups, schools and public and private entities, according to De Bona.
There are now four million legal immigrants living in Italy and their numbers are increasing at an annual rate of at least 350,000 people a year, according to Catholic charities Caritas and Fondazione Migrantes.
Over half the country’s legal immigrants — or 56 percent — live in the industrial northern regions of Lombardy, Veneto, Piemonte and Emilia Romagna.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Libyan Government Newspaper Attacks Arab League
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, MARCH 23 — During the next Arab League summit on March 30 in Doha, it will be the Arab countries of the Maghreb on one side and the classic or eastern Arab countries on the other, according to the Libyan government daily Al Shames (The sun) which underlined that the first group is ‘discriminated against’ by the second. The article writes that “the eastern Arab countries are the most important members of the Arab League, which does not unite but which divides, while the Arab Maghreb countries are marginal members which are only invited to complete the quorum and to satisfy the meetings’ requirements”. Al Shames continues its attack, writing: “The countries of the Maghreb are invited as observers only, to complete the decoration of ceremony and Protocol”. The five north African countries which formed the Arab Maghreb Union in February 1989 with the Marrakech Treaty feel treated as second-class countries according to Al Shames. The daily suggests the Union participate to the Doha meeting as part of the block with the countries on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea called “Dialogue 5+5” . The 5+5 group (Italy, France, Spain, Malta and Portugal on one side and Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia on the other) was created in an attempt to promote cooperation on issues of common interest, from immigration to economic development. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Bad Choice: What’s the Matter With Kathleen Sebelius?
By nominating Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the Obama administration has chosen its first battle in the culture wars. Picking a pro-choice Catholic who has been barred from receiving communion by the Church would stir headlines at any time. But Sebelius’s pro-choice record is uniquely disturbing. She is a major beneficiary of the abortion industry’s financial largesse and a protector of its political status. Despite her efforts to guard abortion providers from prosecution, Sebelius’s confirmation hearings will probably occur at the same time that George Tiller, a notorious late-term abortionist and Sebelius patron, sits for the first post-Roe trial for breaking laws restricting abortion.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hate Crime Charges Filed in Anti-Gay Attack
Prosecutors have filed hate crime charges against an 18-year-old Seattle man accused of accosting another man on a Metro bus while yelling anti-gay slurs.
Abiazzizi I. Idris has been charged with second-degree attempted robbery and malicious harassment, the state’s hate crime statute, in the March 10 attack.
In court documents, police claim Idris was riding on a Metro coach near the 9000 block of Rainier Avenue South when he slapped the man in the back of the head. He then allegedly asked, using a slur, if he was homosexual.
The man disembarked the bus moments later, followed by Idris and an associate. Police say Idris again approached him, telling the man that homosexuality violates his religion.
Confronted by Idris, the man again said he was not gay. Idris then, police assert, “grabbed the victim around his neck and said ‘Give me $10 and your cell phone and I’ll let you go.’“
The owner of a nearby grocery store spotted the altercation and phoned 911. Police arrived and arrested Idris, who was later identified as the assailant, according to prosecutor’s statements.
Idris remains in King County Jail on $50,000 bail. He has not entered a plea in the case.
The victim’s sexual orientation is not noted in court documents. Under state law, malicious harassment occurs when a defendant threatens someone based on their perception of their sexual orientation or other factor.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
New York Teacher Invites Seventh-Graders to Same-Sex ‘Wedding’
More than 60 New York seventh-graders are expected to attend the April 4 same-sex “wedding” of their teacher, Chance Nalley, The New York Times reported.
The 32-year-old math teacher invited the entire seventh grade — 96 kids — at Columbia Secondary School and their families.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Humberto Fontova Reviews “United in Hate”
‘United in Hate’ a superb read
The author shows how radical Islam acts as a transnational form of Bolshevism. What communists do (or attempt) within nations, radical Islam attempts among nations, with the U.S. ( the Great Satan) in the role of the local successful businessmen, the kulak, the well-adjusted, the gregarious and happy. Both communism and radical Islam rationalize their adherents failures and frustrations, then license (and even reward) their destructive and bloody revenge. For many mentally unbalanced people, this is a hard act to beat.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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