Muammar Qaddafi stormed out of the Arab Summit in a huff after insulting the king of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Saudi women are fighting to keep gyms from being closed to them.In other news, the number of Muslims in Latin America has increased dramatically, and five Christian missionaries were expelled from Morocco.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Holger Danske, Insubria, islam o’phobe, JD, The Observer, Tuan Jim, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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EU: Merkel is Ready to Greet, and Then Resist, Obama
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, an avowed friend of the United States and the leader of the European Union’s biggest economy, is diplomatic about the coming visit by President Obama. But she is clear that she is not about to give ground on new stimulus spending, stressing the need to maintain fiscal discipline even as she professes to want to work closely with the new American president.
[…]
During the hourlong interview, Mrs. Merkel made clear that she was not wavering in her response to the economic crisis, by loosening the German checkbook or encouraging the European Central Bank to follow the Federal Reserve in pumping money into the system. She also said she expected Mr. Obama to keep his word to gradually rein in imbalances that would cause American indebtedness to grow sharply as a result of his domestic stimulus plans.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
GM Boss Steps Down at White House’s Request
Fritz Henderson, GM president and chief operating officer, to take over
Time and time again, General Motors Corp.’s board of directors reaffirmed its support for Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, even as the company piled up billions of dollars in losses and begged for government loans to stay alive.
But Wagoner is now a high-profile casualty of government intervention, forced out as part of the Obama administration’s sweeping last-ditch effort to save the century-old auto giant.
Wagoner, 56, who spent 32 years with GM working all over the world, stepped down effective immediately, the company said in a statement early Monday. He was replaced as CEO by Fritz Henderson, the company’s vice chairman and chief operating officer.
[…]
Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of the automotive Web site Edmunds.com, called the move “political theater” to appease an increasingly bailout-weary public.
“American taxpayers are not happy,” Anwyl said. “But this way you’re able to point to Rick and say he’s gone, and that creates an environment where the loans become politically palatable.”
Interviewed Monday on NBC’s “Today” show, the governor of Michigan said Wagoner is a “sacrificial lamb.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Opposition Slams Cabinet’s Crisis Measures
The opposition has fiercely criticised the government’s package of crisis measures during a parliamentary debate. The conservative VVD says no hard choices have been made, and is accusing the cabinet of procrastinating. The Socialist Party says it foresees growing gaps in society. The Green Left party complains that the crisis plans fail to put a cap on mortgage interest tax deductions for the rich.
The democrat party D66 argues that the six billion euros the cabinet says it will invest in the economy is ‘old money’. D66 says the investments had for the most part already been approved, but are now being moved forward to revive the economy.
MPs from the coalition parties, the CDA (Christian Democrats), the Labour Party and the Christian Union, were satisfied with the cabinet’s plans, but want to take a serious look at the VVD’s plans to fight youth unemployment. The VVD is concerned about young people on temporary contracts who are at risk of being fired before their contracts have to become permanent.
Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party MPs demonstratively stormed out of the chamber after CDA Chair Pieter van Geel said there was only limited room for changes to the cabinet’s plans.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Nicolas Sarkozy’s Threat to Walk Out of Global Summit
President Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the London summit if France’s demands for tougher financial regulation are not met.
France will not accept a G20 that produces a “false success with language that sounds good but contains no commitments”, his advisers said.
Asked if this meant a possible walk-out, Xavier Musca, Mr Sarkozy’s deputy chief of staff for economic affairs, said: “A basic rule with nuclear deterrence is that you do not say at what point you will use the weapon.”
The French threat dramatically raised the temperature hours before President Obama arrives in London today. If carried through, it would ruin a summit for which Mr Brown and Mr Obama have high ambitions, believing it vital to international recovery.
Mr Sarkozy, who blames the “Anglo-Saxons” for causing the economic crisis, told his ministers last week that he would leave Mr Brown’s summit “if it does not work out”.
A deal to tighten regulation will be one of the key features of the G20 accord but France wants a global financial regulator, an idea fiercely opposed by the United States and Britain. Mr Brown has described the notion as ridiculous.
Germany and other nations are reported to be against a global regulator and sources said that President Sarkozy must know that the proposal would not make progress.
Instead, countries will agree that their national regulators should cooperate more. So-called colleges of supervisors are likely to be established to monitor the activities of companies that operate in several countries.
British officials said it looked as if Mr Sarkozy was picking a fight he could present as a victory back home.
Mr Sarkozy’s threat underlines the emerging splits between world leaders. Germany and France have led opposition to plans to coordinate public spending, championed by the Administration of President Obama.
The importance of action to ease the economic decline will be underlined today by a report from the OECD, the umbrella group for Western democracies. It now expects the economies of its 30 member nations to slump by 4.3 per cent this year, against the 0.4 per cent drop that it forecast last November.
The group also warns that unemployment will reach 10 per cent by next year in most developed nations.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Rep. Duncan Hunter: ‘Mr. President, Put the Checkbook Down’
Mr. Speaker, recently released documents from AIG accounts for some of the more than $180 billion in aid that AIG has received. And it’s revealed that over $58 billion of that $180 billion has gone to foreign banks around the world. And $58 billion have gone to French banks, German banks. French and German banks, respectively, pulled in $19 billion and $17 billion of American taxpayer money. I understand the outrage over bonuses, $166 million in bonuses, but that’s a pittance compared to the $58 billion that have gone to overseas banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient, at $11.9 billion. Deutsche Bank of Germany received $11.8 billion of taxpayer money. Barclays, based in England, got $8.5 billion. BNB Parabas, based in France, got $5 billion.
The House Oversight Committee also discovered a list of questionable foreign investments conducted by the largest recipients of TARP funds. Citigroup, JP Morgan and Bank of America each received $25 billion in TARP funds on October 26th of last year. Citigroup then loaned Dubai $8 billion of American taxpayer money. JP Morgan invested $1 billion of American taxpayer money in India. And Bank of America gave communist China $7 billion of the American people’s money.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The New Vigilantes and Their Unaccountable Enablers
If you think there are no consequences to hysterical, anti-corporate grandstanding in Washington, pay attention to what’s happening across the pond: “This is just the beginning.”
So warned a public letter signed this week by a vigilante group called “Bank Bosses are Criminals.” The thugs claimed responsibility for vandalizing a former financial executive’s home and car in Edinburgh, Scotland. The bank official, Sir Fred Goodwin, was excoriated by U.K. politicians for refusing to give up company pension benefits dubbed “obscene,” “grotesque,” “unjustifiable and unacceptable.” The vigilantes were stoked by a former newspaper editor, one Max Hastings, who wrote a diatribe exhorting citizens to violence:
“The time has come to address the entire robber banker culture. Investment banks have been run not for the benefit of society, customers or even shareholders, but exclusively for the advantage of the bankers themselves. … This is why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks through the windows until they do.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Speaking Truth to the Prime Minister
[Comments from JD: Daniel Hannan for Prime Minister!]
Editor’s note: Daniel Hannan’s fiery speech addressing Gordon Brown at the European Parliament electrified the Internet when it was broadcast on YouTube last week. Vox Day interviewed the iconoclastic Englishman about Brown, Britain, and the global economic crisis on March 26, 2009.
Vox: Your speech criticizing Gordon Brown’s incompetent stewardship of the UK economy was extraordinarily well received, not just in Britain, but around the world. Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition party, David Cameron, has been rather quiet on that front. Why has Mr. Cameron been so reluctant to say the things you said to Mr. Brown?
Daniel: Because in the British system, there’s this great thing about the loyal opposition. And when you get a crisis like this, that comes out of a clear blue sky, nobody wants to risk looking unpatriotic, so you have to be measured and tempered in how you respond, which is completely understandable. The result of it, unfortunately, is that a lot of people are left with saying, wait a minute, hang on, nobody is saying what I would like them to say. All the politicians seem to be in this together. A lot of people felt that a cartel of politicians and bankers were setting policy in defiance of public opinion. Those were the people I was trying to speak for.
[…]
Vox: The European Union is described as everything from a free-trade union to the EUSSR. How do you, as a European member of Parliament, see the EU today?
Daniel: The EU is a racket: a mechanism for taking money from the taxpayer and handing it to Eurocrats. … The EU’s equivalent of the Prague Spring was the “No” votes of 2004 and 2005. Nobody believes anymore that if only the question could be fairly put, then all the people would come around to it. They’ve lost whatever ideological impetus they had, but they understand that their position in society depends upon their maintaining the status quo. Since the “No” votes across the EU, Eurocrats have given up on the idea that their system will ever win approval. That’s what makes them so tetchy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Al Gore Ignores ‘Earth Hour’
Driveway to Nashville mansion flooded with electricity
Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” may have inspired many to participate in yesterday’s “Earth Hour” by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., but maybe the former vice president didn’t get the memo.
Drew Johnson, the president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, decided to drive by Gore’s mansion in Nashville at 8:48 p.m. and records that floodlights were on illuminating the driveway leading up to the main quarter.
[…]
The United Nations’ top climate official, Yvo de Boer, called the event a clear sign that the world wants negotiators seeking a climate change agreement to set an ambitious course to fight global warming.
The event was initiated with hopes of impacting talks in Bonn this week to craft a deal to control emissions of the heat-trapping gases supposedly responsible for “global warming.” The talks are due to culminate in Copenhagen this December.
“Earth Hour was probably the largest public demonstration on climate change ever,” de Boer told delegates from 175 nations. “Its aim was to tell every government representative to seal a deal in Copenhagen. The world’s concerned citizens have given the negotiations an additional and very clear mandate.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Coming Government Takeover of Food
In response to the soaring cost of food, more Americans are turning back to their roots — literally. Mail order seed giant Burpee Seeds reports record demand for garden vegetable seeds. Cable TV shows on home gardening are suddenly popular beyond the core of committed “grow your own” types. The healthy food movement has been lifted beyond its core of Agbiz rejectionists. Websites catering to those thirsting for basic knowledge on home gardening “how to” are flooded with new visitors.
The “recession garden” has arrived in your backyard (or one near you) echoing the “victory garden” of World War II.
Both big government and big business are alarmed — and both are working to control this phenomenon. What’s in the works threatens a government definition of what is “food” and proposes regulations amounting to a government takeover of the production, transportation and sale of food in this country for the benefit of Big Ag.
[…]
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., introduced HR 875 to establish a new Food Safety Administration to “protect the public health” and “ensure the safety of food.” Rep. DeLauro believes that the FDA is not effective enough with the current laws governing food safety, so HR 875 grants broad new powers to the new FSA. DeLauro is a former chief of staff to Sen. Chris Dodd. Her husband, Stan Greenberg, is a leftist consultant whose corporate clients include Monsanto.
This bill — if passed — would give FSA inspectors the right to enter, anywhere in the world, any premises of any food establishment to inspect and determine whether the product of that food establishment should be sold to American consumers.
[…]
Basically, don’t sell, or even give, the produce from your “recession garden” to anyone — or you’re in a heap of trouble.
HR 875 provides a $1 million fine for each infraction of the “rules” or “orders” of the FSA for each day that such infractions are deemed by the FSA to exist. SB 425 provides a fine of $100,000 for each violation of any order or regulation of the FSA and for each day that such violation occurs.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Expanded Americorps Has an Authoritarian Feel
With almost no public attention, both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community service job increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. Lurking behind the feel-good rhetoric spouted by the measure’s advocates is a bill that on closer inspection reveals multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism. The House passed the measure overwhelmingly, while only 14 senators had the sense and courage to vote against it on a key procedural motion. Every legislator who either voted for this bill or didn’t vote at all has some serious explaining to do.
Last summer, then-candidate Barack Obama threw civil liberties to the wind when he proposed “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the regular military. The expanded Americorps is not quite so disturbing, but a number of provisions in the bill raise serious concerns.
[…]
POSTED Mar 26, 2009 anonymous: “I spent four years with Americorps. It is already an extremely authoritarian group. Many of those serving with Americorps describe it as being in a cult. The program disguises itself as “voluntary” or “community” service, but as you can see from the editorial piece it is really neither.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Farrakhan Addresses Violence Problem
CHICAGO) (WLS) — Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan laid out his ideas Sunday for ending the violence that has killed so many young people in Chicago and the suburbs.
Farrakhan spoke after services at Greater Institutional AME church on South Indiana. A number of political, religious and community leaders joined him.
The minister said the solution to the problem is everyone working together to solve it. He said children need to see each other as brothers and sisters so they will not have a need for guns.
Farrakhan also talked about the insecurities that some young people feel.
Story continues belowAdvertisement”There’s a tendency to feed youth with the idea that weapons give you power,” he said.
Farrakhan also suggested there could be conflict resolution centers around the city to help people resolve disputes.
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: Lawfare & Obama’s Transnationalist
What is wrong with this picture? We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisors to President George W. Bush — including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The alleged crime? The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants.
Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called “transnational law” to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule of law in this country. It would criminalize internal U.S. policy-making deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty. If allowed to run its course, this prosecution would have a profoundly chilling effect on the willingness of subordinates to provide a president with advice, or perhaps even to serve in government.
One would hope that President Obama would recognize that this use of legal mechanisms as a form of warfare against the United States — increasingly known as “lawfare” — holds serious dangers not just for the country and those who ran it for the past eight years, but for his administration, as well. That would appear not to be the case, however, in light of his choice of Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top lawyer…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic Law’s Influence in America a Growing Concern
As America’s Muslim population grows, so too does the influence of Islamic law, or Shariah, in daily life in the U.S.
“Shariah Law is the totality of the Muslim’s obligation,” said Abdullahi An-Na’im, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. According to An-Na’im, Shariah is similar to Jewish Talmudic Law or Catholic Canon Law in that it guides an adherent’s moral conduct.
“As a citizen, I am a subject of the United States,” An-Na’im said. “I owe allegiance to the United States, to the Constitution of the United States. That is not inconsistent with observing a religious code in terms of my own personal behavior.”
While many view this as a testament to the “great American melting pot,” others see Islamic law’s growing influence as a threat. Shariah’s critics point to cases such as the airport in Minneapolis, where some Shariah-adherent taxi drivers made headlines in 2006 for refusing to pick up passengers they suspected of carrying liquor. The drivers’ aversion to alcohol stemmed from a verse in the Qur’an that describes “intoxicants and gambling” as “an abomination of Satan’s handiwork.”…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Join the Quiet Revolution
[Comments from JD: The acronym COPS stand for Community Oriented Policing Services]
Adhering to the successful SARA model, City inspectors began ticketing homeowners for violations of Local Agenda 21 land use regulations. Since Safe and Affordable Housing is a UN Human Right, all housing must be regularly inspected for code violations. Thousands of Seattle residents refused to invite the inspectors inside their homes. Unable to gain entrance to so many homes without a valid warrant, and thus unable to complete their interior safety inspections, the City planned other innovative ways to gain access to the insides of private dwellings. In a memo to Seattle neighborhood groups in 1998, SPD Chief Stamper called the 4th Amendment requirements for a legal search warrant “an identified barrier to the program.”
[…]
In June 2001, John (Jody) Kretzman was the guest speaker at Seattle’s Town Hall. He introduced local neighborhood group leaders to an alternative approach to mapping neighborhoods. His program was called ABCD (Asset Based Community Development). He said the focus had changed from identifying problems to identifying assets, which he assured the room was a much more positive approach to rebuilding community. His books included “Mapping and Mobilizing Community Capacity” which suggests an 11 page interview of all residents. Working with concerned neighborhood volunteers, the COPS could go door to door asking people to help save the community by answering all the questions about their skills and abilities. Of course during these interviews COPS and city employees are “trained” to look around for “any other life-threatening things” they might be able to see. The Seattle City Attorney’s office spent years on their “Top Ten” list, included were “unlocked dumptsters” and “messy kitchens.” All this data is then entered into COMPASS.
[…]
There is a lot of attention being paid to Fusion Centers now. A Missouri cop leaked Fusionst documents to someone on Alex Jones’ staff. The report has since been verified and admitted to by the Missouri State Police. The analysts’ report, based on COMPASS data, predicts the followers of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin have a potential for domestic terrorism. This revelation, along with the Child Safety Act, the proposed Gun Registration regulations, and Monsantos’ proposed Food Safety Act has many registered Independents, Libertarians, Republicans, Constitutionalists and even Democrats talking openly about an inveitable coming civil war against the feds.
[…]
“But there’s little evidence COPS has worked, and there’s some evidence it has actually encouraged police tactics completely at odds with the objectives of community policing. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the program may have contributed to a minor reduction in crime — a little more than 1 percent — but at a cost of $8 billion. A peer-reviewed study in the journal Criminology concluded that COPS “had little to no effect on crime.” “The main problem with federal block grants is that once they’re issued, Congress can’t monitor them to be sure they’re spent properly. And that’s certainly true of COPS. A 2000 report by the Madison Times, for example, found that COPS grants, along with a federal program through which local police departments obtain surplus military equipment from the Pentagon, led to a mass expansion of SWAT teams throughout Wisconsin in the 1990s. SWAT teams popped up in absurdly small communities like Forest County (population 9,950), Mukwonago (7,519), and Rice Lake (8,320). “And not just in Wisconsin. In a survey conducted by criminologist Peter Kraska, two-thirds of responding police chiefs said SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics “play an important role in community policing strategies.”
[…]
COPS, like every other program coming down via the UN Declaration at Rio, is based in the theory of communitarianism. Promoted as the sensible solution to the conflicts posed by too many individual rights and not enough community rights, Communitarians insist there must be a new effort to “shore up the moral, social and political environment.” They “balance” the rights of individuals against the health and safety of the community at large. Amitai Etzioni has told us numerous times that individual rights can only be protected by taking some away.
[…]
…I met several police in Seattle who told me they’re a “real cop” and not a “community cop.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NY Times Spiked Major Obama-ACORN Story Before Election
The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Fuzzy Math
In his press conference last Tuesday, Barack Obama said that America must reject the “borrow and spend” policies of the past in favor of a strategy of “save and invest.” Sounds good. So why is Obama proposing to borrow and spend more than any president in the history of the republic? Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending than Ronald Reagan did in eight years in office.
Then last week the Democrats’ own Congressional Budget Office found that the ten-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility.
Welcome to the Obama doctrine. It is built on the high stakes economic gamble that the public and the bond markets will tolerate trillions of dollars of borrowing to pay for massive expansions in government spending on popular income transfer programs. The corollary to this doctrine is that the left will create a political imperative to jack up tax rates to pay for higher spending commitments made today.
But the news on the red ink front is much worse than the president or even the CBO’s budget report suggests. If all of Obama’s “transformational” policy objectives—from global warming taxes to universal health care to doubling the Department of Energy’s budget—are enacted, the debt is likely to increase from about 40 percent of GDP today to close to 100 percent of GDP by 2018. The ten-year debt is likely to be at least $6 trillion higher—or more than one-half trillion of higher deficits a year from now until forever—than the Obama budget projects.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Judicial Nominee Says Prayers to Allah OK… But Not to Jesus
Judge David Hamilton ruled that prayers in Jesus Name at the Indiana House of Representatives was unconstitutional, but prayers to Allah were not.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Online Activists on the Right, Unite!
Eleven years later, “seminar callers” abound and call screeners are trained in the art of weeding them out. But the filtering does not always work.
“This is nothing more than the Internet version of Soviet disinformation,” Human Events editor Jed Babbin told me. “MoveOn.org and the little boys from ‘Lord of the Flies’ who run Media Matters want to make it appear that there’s huge dissension within conservative ranks on issues on which we’re most united.”
…The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes. The current political and media environment crafted by supposedly idealistic Mr. Obama resembles Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela more than John F. Kennedy’s America.
The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and other left-leaning sites benefit from the right’s belief that there are rules and decorum in political debate and civic engagement. Of course, every now and then, a curious right-winger will go in and engage in discussion at a left-wing site, but rarely under purely disingenuous and mass coordinated means.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Racial Harmony? Not Quite!
Attorney General Eric Holder got what he wanted this week in Oakland, Calif..: black and non-black people talking about race.
In mid-February, he called us “a nation of cowards,” unwilling to discuss race issues.
Well, race issues dominated Bay Area media since March 21, but I doubt the rhetoric that surfaced — and is still being heard on talk radio and news even as I write this — was what Holder had in mind.
He talked kumbaya about dialogue and discussion. What he got was ugly, semi-violent, vindictive, and dangerous — exposing the underbelly of an ugly aspect of race relations, unfortunately held by many blacks: They don’t like cops, and they especially don’t like non-black cops.
I also doubt the reason for the race talk was what Holder had in mind: It was the vicious, deliberate slaughter of four Oakland police officers by a career criminal, on parole, with a warrant for missing three meetings with his parole officer and, who was in possession of a gun.
This was a bad, bad man who did even worse because he was more than willing to use that weapon, and then another one, to deliberately kill police.
[…]
The black mayor of a predominantly black city, plagued with crime, a shortage of police and budget issues, clearly has some problems.
But so do many Oakland residents. Even before the crime situation was resolved, people gathered on street corners and derided police, cheering the criminal fugitive and the police deaths, calling them retribution for alleged “racist” police work.
For them, it’s clear race division and “whitey” is the bad guy. There were efforts during the week for rallies and demonstrations. The killer, 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon, was cheered as a hero. The rhetoric was hateful and divisive.
Many talk show callers spilled their anger, dragging out the usual cliches about slavery, discrimination, profiling and O.J. Simpson.
Too many, clearly, never will never change their conclusions that black is good and white is bad. Everything was responsible for the criminal activity except Mixon and his broken family. There were diatribes about not enough “understanding” for the criminal but almost nothing about the crimes, which got Mixon jailed in the first place.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sen. Gregg No Longer in Obama’s Corner
Last month, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg agreed to join President Barack Obama’s cabinet as Commerce Secretary, but then he abruptly withdrew his name, saying he and the president were “functioning from a different set of views on many different items of policy.”
Saturday, Gregg drove the point home when he warned that Obama is engineering an “extraordinary move of our government to the left.”
Gregg, one of the Senate’s leading voices on budget issues, charged in the GOP’s weekly radio and Internet address that Obama’s proposals would “dramatically grow the size and cost of government and move it to the left.”
[…]
That budget, said Gregg, “spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much.” Republicans have not presented a detailed alternative of their own but expect to in the coming days.
The GOP, Gregg said, believes “you create prosperity by having an affordable government that pursues its responsibilities without excessive costs, taxes or debt.”
In other words, he said, “it is the individual American who creates prosperity and good jobs, not the government.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Coming Nuclear Renaissance
Dozens of planned reactors were canceled. In the years since Three Mile Island, not a single nuclear plant has been ordered and built in the United States.
Yet far from being washed up, atomic power seems poised for a renaissance. Consider…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Media Sees No Evil
What do all Americans, starting with George Washington, and especially pro-life advocates, have in common according to such media luminaries as NBC’s Brian Williams, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the always quotable Rosie O’Donnell? They all could be considered terrorists, a word the media have begun to deploy against anyone they find particularly contemptible.
Except—too often, alas—actual terrorists.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Understanding Obama’s Fabian Socialism
How about a Marxist socialist? The difference between the Marxist and the Fabian is somewhat of an important difference, but from Marx’s point of view, socialism was going to be the answer to the capitalist economic system. And what Marx did was divide basically the human race into two groups, the proletariat and the bourgeois. And from a Marxist point of view, the bourgeois needed to be eliminated so that we could have peace on earth, and goodwill to all the socialists, I guess.
But the Fabian socialists came along with a different idea. They came along with the same socialist idea, but instead of dividing the world between the two groups, they decided that they were going to bring about socialism through a more peaceful process. In other words, the Bolsheviks were known as the party of slaughter, and we had to ultimately get rid of the bourgeois. And they did, by the way, Brannon. They killed tens of thousands. I think the numbers are probably closer to 100 and some million..
But the Fabians decided that they were not going to use the heavy hand. They were going to go slowly and surely, and that’s what they did.
The word Fabian comes from a Roman general by the name of Fabius who was — he was up against the Carthaginians and Hannibal, and he decided that he wasn’t going to face them head on, but he was going to — he was going to go through them, and he was going to go above them, and he was going to go below them. He was going to use a lot of different tactics to defeat them, so that’s what he did.
[…]
Did it really? No. The truth is, Brannon, than I have traced a direct link from the Fabian socialists right to our present day House of Representatives. And by the way, the House of Representatives is the key to the socialization of America, and I hope that all of our listeners are listening rather carefully here, because what I’m about to give you is in the article itself.
But there are four progressive, radical, socialistic what we would call organizations or caucuses in the United States House of Representatives. They are, and I will give these in order, and then I’ll come back on them and tell you who — how many members they have, just to show you what we’re talking about here.
The Progressive Democrats of America, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Democratic Socialists of America. These are all organizations that your listeners right now can go to their computer, go to Google, and type in each one of them, and they will find exactly what we’re talking about.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Personal Computers Could be Open to Government Access Under New Obama Copyright Plan
The Obama Administration is currently negotiating the ACTA Agreement with several international partners. The proposed agreement would empower security officials at airports and other international borders to conduct random ex officio searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or “ripped” music and movies.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Justice ‘Cannot be Veiled’
Permitting alleged victims or any witness to wear a veil while testifying would fundamentally change core principles in our justice system, an Ontario Superior Court judge was told yesterday.
“Justice must be seen to be done. It cannot be masked or veiled,” Jack Pinkofsky said. “The face of justice cannot be faceless,” the veteran defence lawyer added.
Superior Court Justice Frank Marrocco has been asked to decide whether an alleged victim in a sexual-assault case in Toronto will be permitted to testify while wearing her niqab. The Muslim veil covers all of her face except her eyes.
The provincial court judge presiding over the preliminary hearing of the two defendants ruled last fall that the woman’s religious beliefs were not that strong and ordered her to remove the veil. She refused and was granted the right to appeal the decision to the Superior Court.
While it may be harder to assess the demeanour of a witness in a niqab, the impact on the defence “is not that significant,” said the woman’s lawyer, David Butt. “If you have got the eyes, you have got the picture,” he suggested.
The Criminal Code permits witnesses such as alleged sexual-assault victims or children to testify by video or behind a one-way screen. In both situations, the defence lawyer and accused can see the witness. Mr. Butt explained that this would not be acceptable for his client because men could see her without the veil.
The legal issue for Judge Marrocco is not about the Charter of Rights and religious freedom, but a question of “natural justice,” said Mr. Pinkofsky, whose firm is representing one of the accused.
“The submissions I heard today suggested we should be glad that Pierre Elliott Trudeau crafted the Charter, because we never had anything before the Charter. That is not correct. This has been vested in the common law for centuries. It is the rule of law. We don’t search for the half-truth,” Mr. Pinkofsky said.
He spoke of the “right of confrontation” of an accused person to see his accuser, which dates back to Roman law and is enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. It is not enough to hear what a witness says to be able to properly assess credibility and receive a fair trial, Mr. Pinkofsky said.
“If you went to any man or woman on the street and suggested they would fully appreciate what someone is saying just by listening and not by seeing, they would guffaw,” Mr. Pinkofsky said. “Demeanour is part of the very fabric of what we call evidence, and it is not to be taken away from us without a terrible struggle.”
The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General is taking the position that the woman should be allowed to wear the niqab at the preliminary hearing, because the judge has limited legal powers to assess credibility when determining if the accused should go to trial. Crown attorney Laurie Gonet explained that the province has not taken an official position on the broader issue of whether this should be allowed in an trial.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
This Man Wants to Reinvent Canadian Multiculturalism
Caught in a rare moment inside his Parliament Hill office, Immigration and Multiculturalism minister Jason Kenney is finished his interview with Fox News to talk about American military deserters seeking refuge in Canada. And an interview with a B.C. television station to discuss the case of a Chinese grandmother needing a special permit to visit Canada to tend to an injured grandson. And a TV reporter wanting to talk about Croatian visa policy. At the same time, his communications staff was fielding calls from reporters about the government’s decision to ban British MP George Galloway from visiting Canada, as well as the latest turn in a public battle with the Canadian Arab Federation, and reports on abuses in Canada’s refugee system — after finally managing to put aside, for now, the media and political fallout from the minister’s comments days earlier about strengthening language proficiency requirements for new citizens.
For the past few weeks, and despite pressing matters in portfolios related to the economy, Mr. Kenney has arguably been the most public face of the federal Conservative government, daily stickhandling everything from tricky, politically charged issues, with accusations of racism and unethical political interference, to local-interest immigration sagas. It is, Mr. Kenney admits, an “emotionally draining … tough position.” But, for Mr. Kenney, a full-fledged Cabinet minister for not quite six months, the most challenging and politically perilous work planned for his portfolio — reshaping Canada’s approach to immigration and multiculturalism — has scarcely begun.
The higher profile matters — the Galloway issue, the scuffle with Arab groups, the language abilities of immigrants — form the early marks of a pattern of what is to come. Rejecting the CAF’s support for Islamic terrorists and arguably anti-Semitic messages, Mr. Galloway for financially supporting Hamas, calling for newcomers to better integrate: These are of a piece with efforts to fortify what the Conservatives would call The Canadian Identity. It is, Mr. Kenney makes clear, a vision for a country that stands up for its pluralism, but also for its core liberal traditions of tolerance, democracy and secularism. “We can’t afford to be complacent about the challenge of integration,” he says. “We want to avoid the kind of ethnic enclaves or parallel communities that exist in some European countries. So far, we’ve been pretty successful at that, but I think it’s going to require greater effort in the future to make sure that we have an approach to pluralism and immigration that leads to social cohesion rather than fracturing.”
For a country with the highest average per capita immigration rate on the planet — roughly 250,000 new residents arrive yearly from nearly every region and creed — maintaining such philosophical hygiene will take great energy, audacity and support from within Canada’s ethnic communities, where immigration reform is personal. It will take, also, someone able to absorb repeated accusations of racism or xenophobia, which are already flying Mr. Kenney’s way. When he advocated to the Calgary Herald recently a limited federal role in promoting multiculturalism — “I think it’s really neat that a fifth-generation Ukrainian Canadian can speak Ukrainian — but pay for it yourself,” he said — Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj complained the minister was jettisoning sacred tenets. “He’s the minister in charge and he fundamentally disagrees with the intent of the [Multiculturalism Act] legislation that supports his portfolio,” Mr. Wrzesnewskyj says. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis this week called Mr. Kenney “intolerant” for raising the issue of enhanced language requirements. The Arab Federation has painted him a Zionist lackey.
But there are those, many of them within Canada’s ethnic pockets, who support such a muscular approach.
“What is different with him is, with previous [Conservative] immigration ministers, both have been pussycats; this guy is a tiger,” says Tarek Fatah, an author, prominent Liberal supporter and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. “He’s standing up for Canadian values. I would like every politician to stand up for this country the way Jason Kenney has.”
Before being elevated to Cabinet last fall, Mr. Kenney spent two years shuttling between community halls, temples and church basements, building support networks in Sikh, Hindu, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish and Arab communities, as Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity. His mission: to break a near lock his Liberal opponents have had on ethnic support since Trudeaumania.
Come last October’s election, the payoff arrived: The Tories upset numerous Liberal strongholds surrounding Vancouver and Toronto by converting Asian, East Asian and Middle Eastern voters from red to blue. Mr. Kenney’s predecessors, including Diane Finley and Monte Solberg, were ministers of immigration. When Mr. Kenney got the job in October, the Prime Minister added the “and multiculturalism.”
Multicultural maven is a curious role for a pale, Reform party pioneer raised in Saskatchewan, educated by Jesuits, deeply socially conservative, who came to politics primarily with an agenda for fiscal restraint (Before becoming a Reform MP in 1997, he headed the Canadian Taxpayers Federation). But political opponents looking to brand him as too redneck for the sensitive immigration file find it hard to land a punch. In his diverse Calgary Southeast riding, families speak fondly of Mr. Kenney’s efforts, long before he became the minister in charge, in helping them sort out immigration issues; his key staffers, including a Tibetan, a Muslim and an Armenian, resemble the dessert lineup at the UN cafeteria. He spearheaded the government’s efforts to recognize the Ukrainian Holdomor, its apology to the East Indian community for the Komagata Maru incident, he has defended Chinese Uyghur Muslims and paid his respects at the Mumbai Jewish centre attacked by terrorists. On his office wall hang portraits of abolitionist heroes William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln. A few years ago, Mr. Kenney boarded an entire family newly arrived from India in his Calgary home while they settled into Canadian life. “It gave me, for the first time, a real view of the immigration experience from the eyes of a family that’s landed without any previous connections in Canada,” he says. “I benefited from it as much or more than they did.” Today, the kids call him Uncle Jason.
“The irony is that as a white, Catholic kid, he’s very cosmopolitan. Maybe the most cosmopolitan minister we’ve had,” says Mr. Solberg, now an advisor for government relations firm Fleishman-Hillard in Calgary.
If Mr. Kenney is to succeed in reshaping his sensitive file, he will likely need his solid ethnic-friendly credentials and deep community networks. It helps, too, that he has the confidence of his boss, Stephen Harper. Mr. Kenney has become a key member of the Prime Minister’s inner circle after years out of favour for his loyalty to Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day. Everything he does today comes clearly with the Prime Minister’s blessing, says Tom Flanagan, the University of Calgary political scientist who served as Mr. Harper’s chief of staff and strategist.
The minister is dealing now with “probably the most difficult issues,” Mr. Flanagan says. “Charges of racism are always just one syllable away.” And increasingly powerful statements denouncing anti-Semitism (“Peaceful and pluralistic Canada sees signs that this evil is newly resurgent,” Mr. Kenney recently told a European summit on the issue), criticizing Muslim-led attempts to censor blaspheming Canadian writers through human rights commissions, and slamming certain groups that would stoke ancient and modern Middle East enmities here, have led to accusations in Arab communities, and in some corners of the media, that the minister has abandoned an unprejudiced approach and made Canada a stooge for the so-called Israel lobby: The CAF called him a “professional whore;” the Toronto Star a “professional fool.” (The CAF announced this week it will take the government to court over its failure to renew the group’s immigration settlement contracts.)
For Mr. Kenney, these things, and more, are part of preserving the Canadian way. Immigrants, he says, should come prepared to accept our national standards, or stay out. “My job is in part to ensure that we successfully integrate newcomers into Canadian society and that our particular Canadian model of pluralism remains a success,” he says. “There’s always a danger that political correctness can dissuade us from making clear distinctions between what constitutes legitimate political debate, and on the other hand, extremism and the promotion of hatred and violence. We cannot allow political correctness to cloud our ability to make those basic distinctions.”
This is an approach that has taken hold more firmly elsewhere since Al Qaeda opened Western countries’ eyes to the risks of careless multicultural policies, but has not yet made progress here. It is, says Mr. Solberg, a trend toward a more “melting pot” approach, rather than the Liberal concept of a multicultural “mosaic” where immigrants are encouraged to retain their separateness. “I think Canada has really gone beyond that; I think the immigrant communities have gone beyond that, too. They’re more self-assured,” he says. “This old model of needing [government] to preserve their culture no longer exists.”
The Conservatives have been most influenced by reforms in Australia, a country with remarkably similar economic features that has reshaped its approach to both integration — better matching newcomers to the labour market’s needs, increasing their job-finding success rate by 38% — and cultural integration. Former Aussie prime minister John Howard famously announcing “we will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come,” would rename the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, declaring the shift from “altruism to pragmatism.” His successor, Kevin Rudd, though a political adversary, has stuck with the program.
Mr. Kenney said he believes it does immigrants no favour to bring them here seeking work in fields that do not need them, or with unrecognized credentials. It might even harm their loyalty. He was stunned, he says, recently sitting in an Immigration Canada interview with a thirty-something citizen arrived in Canada over a decade ago who was unable to understand questions in English or French.
Canada has not yet gone as far as Australia in enforcing a cultural and economic compatibility from its immigrants, but Mr. Kenney seems to be headed in a similar direction (He also acknowledges following recent British moves to delegitimize Arab and Muslim groups involved with radical elements, while the Netherlands, France and even Quebec have experimented with methods of preserving traditional standards).
“The idea that we are a happy mosaic and we can continue to let people do anything they want, short of breaking the law, is short-sighted,” says Martin Collacott, a former Canadian ambassador who studies immigration for the Fraser Institute; a country must select its immigrants carefully to ensure they are fit to become productive, dedicated citizens.
The Liberals, dependent on ethnic support, were politically unable to take such steps, Mr. Collacott points out. Liberal prime ministers, for instance, would not list the Tamil Tigers a terrorist group (even today, Liberal MPs are still routinely spotted at events supporting the Tigers), and they appointed Hezbollah and Hamas supporters to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Last year, Tory plans under then-immigration minister Finley to raise qualification levels for immigrants to work down an 800,000 application backlog had the Liberal opposition, roused by outraged ethnic groups, threatening to bring down the minority government.
Mr. Kenney, having built from the ground up his own simpatico Conservative base in Canada’s ethnic pockets, has a freer hand to move more aggressively. Since his appointment, the minister has yet to bring forward any legislation, though it’s true that the opportunity to do so has so far been limited. But he promises an “ambitious policy agenda” coming soon. When it does, it will almost certainly prove at least as divisive as anything Mr. Kenney has done in recent days, and will likely take all the political and ethnic goodwill he has spent years accumulating to succeed — presuming, by then, he has a sufficient stock of the stuff left.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Rep: Czech Govt Approves Compensation for Communist-Sacked Students
Prague — The Czech government today approved compensation for Czechs who were expelled from university in 1948-56 on political grounds, Education Minister Ondrej Liska (Greens) has told journalists.
The one-off compensation is to reach up to 100,000 crowns.
The proposal is yet to be passed by parliament.
“It is a big debt society owes to the people who were affected by totalitarian power,” Mirek Topolanek (Civic Democrats, ODS) said.
He added about 300 such persons are still alive.
Topolanek’s centre-right coalition government is in resignation. The Chamber of Deputies voted no confidence in it last Tuesday.
Politicians have long been in dispute over whether the measure should cover only students expelled from studies until the year 1956, or whether it should apply to the whole 40 years of the communist regime.
More than 10,000 students and academics had to leave schools between February 1948, when the communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia, and 1949 alone, on the basis of vettings before the Action Committee of the communist-led National Front.
Only a small part of them were rehabilitated during the Prague Spring reform movement in 1968, the others had to wait until after the collapse of the communist regime in late 1989.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Left Alliance and Sdp Accuse True Finns Leader Timo Soini of Playing Tricks Over European Parliament
True Finns MP Timo Soini’s announcement on Saturday that he has decided to run for the European Parliament in the next EU elections in June has met with criticism from the Left Alliance and the Social Democratic Party. Soini also made it known that he will leave the EU Parliament if he wins a seat in the Finnish Parliamentary elections in 2011.
Left Alliance Chairman Martti Korhonen commented on Soini’s plans at a meeting of the Party Council, saying that “it certainly sounds like he is playing tricks”. Korhonen was supported by SDP Party Secretary Ari Korhonen, who said that it takes new MEPs 18 months to get used to the Parliament procedures and it is not possible to look after the interests of Finland during a quick visit to Brussels.
“If a candidate declares already in advance that he is to leave his seat in the middle of a term, it is pure underestimation of people. A mandate from people is given for the entire five-year period; it must not be split as one pleases”, Ari Korhonen writes in his press release.
Timo Soini himself also commented on the matter to the Finnish News Agency (STT) last night, saying that he is only being honest with his voters. In Soini’s view, the Left Alliance are attacking him because they are afraid of losing their own seat on the European Parliament. The Left Alliance is seeking two seats in the next EU elections in June. At present they only have one. Before submitting its list of candidates for the upcoming EU Parliament elections, the True Finns Party Board is to name another three candidates as soon as possible.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Russian Politician Warns Finland Against NATO Membership
A Russian politician and international policy expert has warned Finland not to join the NATO alliance. Yuli Kvitsinsky, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs, says such a move would damage bilateral relations.
He added Finnish NATO membership would lead to Russian responses in the military, political and economic fields.
Speaking in an interview given to YLE, Kvitsinsky pointed out that from the Russian standpoint, NATO is above all else an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. For this reason, Finnish membership of the alliance would place the country in a standoff between superpowers, he said.
Russia’s reluctance to see NATO on its borders also extended to Finland, Kvitsinsky noted.
A similar warning was issued last spring by Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to NATO.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Former Latvian PM to Stand for Libertas
ANTI-LISBON Treaty group Libertas has signed up a former prime minister of Latvia to lead its European Parliament election campaign in the Baltic state.
Sitting MEP Guntars Krasts will head a list of eight Latvian candidates for Libertas. They will join other candidates battling for Latvia’s allocation of nine seats in the parliament. Mr Krasts has held several positions in the Latvian government, including prime minister between 1997 and 1998. He served as deputy prime minister and was the country’s minister for the economy from 1995 to 1997. He has been an MEP since 1994.
At the launch of Libertas’s Latvian campaign on Saturday, Mr Krasts spoke of the need for an “economic and political renaissance” in Europe. He is a member of the Union for Europe of Nations grouping in the European Parliament.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: From Mania to Mistrust
Europe’s Obama Euphoria Wanes
Europe was ecstatic when Barack Obama got elected, but the enthusiasm has dampened since he took office in January. On the eve of his first visit to Europe as president, some here are wondering how seriously he takes the Continent.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the new director of policy planning at the US State Department, was sitting on the stage at a conference on trans-Atlantic relations in Brussels. “Europe has a phone number,” she said, and there was a satisfied murmuring of approval among her mainly European audience. Everyone remembers the famous remark by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who complained in the 1970s that he didn’t know who to call when he wanted to talk to Europe.
But when the moderator asked Slaughter if she had that number on her, she was evidently caught off guard. “I have three,” she replied. The hall erupted into loud laughter.
Slaughter quickly corrected herself, explaining that Europe was simply organized differently, with an EU “troika” representing the bloc on foreign policy issues, but that the EU was still able to conduct an effective foreign policy. Nevertheless, the exchange reflected a degree of uncertainty in relations with Europe ahead of US President Barack Obama’s first major foreign trip.
When Obama arrives in London on Tuesday for the start of his one-week visit to Europe, he’ll come as a friend, but as one who is still in some ways a stranger. Europe backed his election campaign more enthusiastically than most other parts of the world. But the White House has been too preoccupied coping with domestic crises to devote much attention to this region in the first two months of Obama’s presidency…..
….Compounding the problem, say many, is that US ministries are understaffed as a result of the drawn-out process of appointing people to top positions — a shortcoming that has been especially noticeable in diplomatic appointments. The designated Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Phil Gordon, has yet to approved by the Senate, and important ambassador’s posts including the one in Berlin remain unfilled. “There’s a list of up to 12 people circulating but the decision will take time,” said a German diplomatic source.
“It’s unbelievable how few people there are to talk to on the American side,” said one high-ranking member of the German delegation who recently visited Washington to discuss the future of General motors subsidiary Opel.
The British too have been complaining that their calls aren’t getting returned because the Americans lack staff. One German diplomat said the dimensions of Germany’s economic stimulus package had to be explained in person to Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers because he lacked advisors on European affairs. He had apparently only read about the German measures in the media.
The White House counters by saying that it has put trans-Atlantic relations on a completely new footing in the last two months with the planned closure of Guantanamo, a clear distancing from torture, a fresh start on combating global warming and by moving towards European thinking on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.
Still, the Obama skeptics in Europe are having a field day. “The notion that Europe is going to rally around this administration is being exploded,” Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Post. Indeed, a feeling of skepticism regarding Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy and his proposals for solving the financial crisis has been making itself felt.
When it comes to the European people, though, Obama remains a beacon and he can expect a hero’s welcome when he arrives. “Obama can reach out to the European public to create a different dynamic, to create a political will to do more,” said Karen Donfried, executive vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “He has the ability to reach the public in a way George W Bush did not.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Cities Seek Powers to Block Poor Schools
The four large cities are seeking to expand their powers in order to prevent poorly performing schools from expanding. The news comes after an Islamic school announced its intention to open a new school in Utrecht. The Schools Inspectorate has rated the school’s existing branches in Almere, Lelystad and Hilversum as “poor” to “very poor”.
Utrecht’s Education Councilor Rinda den Besten wants to block the new school but lacks the authority to do so. The education councillors of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague are also seeking expanded powers. In addition to Islamic schools, antroposophic and rural schools often perform poorly.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Too Many East Europeans on the Dole
Per Olaf Lundteigen, MP from the government coalition party Agrarians (Senterpartiet), wants stricter Norwegian regulations for issuing welfare benefits to unemployed from Eastern Europe. In Lundteigen’s opinion it is unacceptable that workers from Eastern Europe should be able to obtain full NOrwegian unemployment benefits after only six months in this country.
In just one year the number of Eastern Europeans who receive unemployment benefits is five times higher than earlier.
Most of them are from Poland, and the National Labour Office (NAV) fear that the growth has just started.
At the same time the general unemployment in Norway has just doubled, Aftenposten writes.
Nearly 100,000 foreign workers now hold valid work permits for Norway.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Links Chrysler Aid to Fiat
Without alliance with Italians Detroit No. 3 will fail
(ANSA) — New York, March 30 — United States President Barack Obama on Monday made it clear that any aid to American automaker Chrysler would depend on it striking a partnership with Italy’s Fiat.
In outlining his government’s position on helping the crippled auto industry, Obama said “Chrysler needs a partner” to survive and “if they are able to reach a solid agreement which protects American consumers, we will consider lending them $6 billion”.
“If no such accord is reached and if no other viable partnership surfaces, we will not be able to justify the investment of further taxpayer money to keep Chrysler operating,” the American president said.
Fiat, Obama recalled, “is ready to transfer its cutting-edge technology to Chrysler and, after having worked closely with my team, has promised to build new, fuel-efficient cars and motors here in America”.
Fiat has linked any hypothesis of an accord with Chrysler to it obtaining a loan from Washington.
Looking at the US auto industry in general, Obama said we cannot, we must not and will not allow our automobile industry to just vanish. This sector, like no other, is an emblem of the American spirit”. The automobile industry, he added, “is a pillar of our economy. But we cannot go on like this”.
Chrysler was given 30 days to finalise an accord with Fiat, after which it will face bankruptcy.
General Motors, the biggest US automaker, was given an additional 60 days to revamp its restructurization plan which, like Chrysler’s, was found to be insufficient by the Obama administration.
Funds were guaranteed to both automakers to stay afloat during the extended deadline period.
Later on Monday Chrysler, Fiat and the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80% of the Detroit automaker, announced they had reached an agreement for a global alliance.
Chrysler said in a statement that the alliance with Fiat “reinforces our business model” and that it would “reinforce Chrysler’s ability to create and maintain jobs in the USA”.
Fiat in January signed a preliminary non-binding agreement with the struggling American carmaker to create a global partnership in the production and distribution of automobiles and other motor vehicles.
The non-cash accord calls for Fiat to take a 35% stake in the Number Three American carmaker in exchange for Fiat’s platforms for its fuel-efficient, small and medium-sized compact cars, which will fill a gap in Chrysler’s range of models.
The partnership is slated to be formalised sometime in April and would give Fiat access to Chrysler’s assembly plants as well as its sales and service networks.
These are all necessary for the Italian automaker’s goal of bringing Alfa Romeo back to the US market and introducing its popular new Fiat 500 city car there, both of which need to be produced in the US to be profitable.
Fiat is also reported to have an option to acquire a further 20% in Chrysler should the partnership prove successful.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
President Obama Heads to London for G-20, and Meet Queen Elizabeth II
Before getting down to business at the G-20 global summit in London later in the week, he’ll have a high-stakes meeting Wednesday with Queen Elizabeth II at which his etiquette and protocol will be under the microscope.
Obama caught grief in the United Kingdom for giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown what many deemed cringe-worthy goodies — a set of DVDs and toy models of Marine One — during their White House powwow earlier this month.
[…]
Obama will wrap up his trip with a stop in Turkey Sunday night, his first visit to a predominantly Muslim country. The importance of Obama’s diplomatic push into Muslim nations will be trumped only by his efforts to solve the international economic meltdown.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sharia Banking Conquers Europe
by Thomas Landen
All over Europe Islamic banks are establishing branches, Western banks are offering Sharia-compliant financial services, and European governments are trying to outcompete each other in welcoming them. Proponents of banking along the lines of Sharia (Islamic law) claim that the Islamic banking system is “more ethical” than the West’s capitalist system. This is not true. Unfortunately, however, in our age of crashing financial markets, many Westerners — not just the traditional anti-capitalist European left — seem very eager to buy that argument.
Early this month, even the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano voiced its approval of Sharia banking. “The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service,” the paper said in a downright stupid and “unethical” article published on March, 4.
The article, entitled “Islamic finance proposals and ideas for the West in crisis” [pdf] suggests that the basic rules of Islamic finance could relieve suffering markets and particularly international financial systems. It says that in the current atmosphere of crisis banks should take Muslims as an example and that the Islamic finance system may pave the way for the establishment of new rules in the Western world.
Islamic or Sharia banks differ from regular banks in two major ways. As commanded in the Koran, the charging of interest is prohibited in all monetary transactions. The other defining feature of Islamic banks is that they are supervised by a board of Islamic scholars and clerics whose job it is to ensure that the banks’ activities comply with Sharia law…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Rosengård: Integration in the Eye of the Storm
Malmö suburb Rosengård has come to symbolise Sweden’s struggles with integration. AFP’s Marc Preel examines a community grappling with its identity after a winter marred by rioting and clashes with the police.
Believers file quietly out of a mosque into the cold night in Rosengård, a neighbourhood at the centre of a heated debate over Sweden’s failure to integrate immigrants amid reports that radical Islamists now control the area.
“How does society expect us to integrate when we are so segregated?” asks Sami Touman, a 21-year-old mechanical engineer student whose family comes from Gaza.
Around 86 percent of the some 22,000 people who live in the towering, grey, 1960s concrete structures that make up the heart of this Malmö suburb in the south of Sweden are first or second generation immigrants.
Traditional Swedish names like Svensson, Larsson and Andersson have gradually disappeared from the metal buzzers, replaced to a large extent by the names of Muslim refugees who have fled conflicts in places like Iraq, Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
“When I first got here 15 years ago I had Swedish neighbours. Today, there isn’t a single one left,” says Anis, a 33-year-old of Bosnian origin who only gives his first name, as he eats a kebab at the large shopping centre that is Rosengård’s main meeting point.
The neighbourhood found itself in the midst of a media frenzy in December following days of violent clashes between immigrant youths and police, and again in January after a government-commissioned report claimed a small group of radical Islamists had a stranglehold on the area.
“Families who have just moved into the neighbourhood and who have never been particularly religious or traditional claim that they led freer lives in their home country than in Rosengård,” the report said.
Women who did not wear the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, in their home country were for example obliged to don it, according to the study.
The authors also singled out “cellar mosques” which had no link to official Islam and whose ultraradical members serve as a kind of “thought police.”
The report has been met with heavy criticism in Rosengård, where many residents say they do not recognise their neighbourhood in its description.
“No one has ever come up to me and asked: ‘Are you a Muslim? Do you pray five times a day?’,” Touman insists.
Kenneth, a 56-year-old unemployed truckdriver, agrees that Rosengård is basically just your average community.
“Rosengård is a fairly nice neighbourhood. You find everything here, except a Systembolaget,” the state-run liquor store, the ethnic Swede jokes as he sips coffee with a friend at a shopping centre cafe surrounded by oriental stores interspersed with Swedish supermarkets.
“It’s true that we are a minority here, but we don’t really think about it in those terms. We have so many immigrant friends,” he says.
Maxime Camara, who heads the Rosengård’s refugee welcome committee, however laments that increasingly influential Islamic groups have further isolated the already over-populated and under-employed neighbourhood.
While Sweden’s official unemployment rate stands at around seven percent, nearly 40 percent of Rosengård working age residents are jobless.
“A lot of young people here are out of work… Their parents don’t work, and they get their only social interaction in the Islamic milieu, which complicates integration,” says Camara, originally from Guinea.
“They spend their time speaking Arabic,” he says, adding that “at heart they don’t really want to be Swedish. They tell me so themselves.”
Even the imam (preacher) at Rosengård’s largest mosque complains that some immigrant communities here are not as open as they should be to Swedish society.
“That is a problem for us, for Europe, having some communities always looking to the past,” says Bejzat Becirov, who gives his sermons in Swedish.
“So here we are with an Islamic football club and table tennis team,” he adds.
The December riots were sparked by the closure of a Rosengård club belonging to the Islamic Cultural Association of Malmö.
Ammar Daoud, one of the group’s leaders, rejects the criticism against the organisation and maintains the Rosengård report was “unfounded, misleading and racist.”
The racism charges lobbed against the Swedish establishment after the report was published ballooned further following the release in early February of audio tapes of police comments during the December riots in which they referred to immigrant youths as “
ing primitive beasts.”
Media also revealed that during a training course in early 2008, instructors had told police to use the fictitious code names “Neger Niggersson” and “Oskar Neger” (Negro).
Daoud meanwhile insists his group does nothing to hamper integration and instead plays a positive role in Rosengård.
“Does helping children with their homework counter integration efforts?” he asks.
Pernilla Ouis, an expert on Islam in Sweden at Malmö University, however maintains that a heavy Islamic influence makes it more difficult for immigrants to fit in in Sweden.
“The Muslim communities say they want to help, and that’s fine, but their behaviour towards the non-Muslim society is not normal,” she says.
The unrest was therefore in fact a good thing, insists Ouis, a Swedish citizen who herself wore the Muslim headscarf for 18 years.
“What happened this winter has brought attention to the problem that we couldn’t talk about before without being accused of racism,” she says.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Democrats in Racism Row
Racism and hostility toward foreigners are common themes for the far-right Sweden Democrats, despite the party’s efforts to move into the political mainstream, according to a new investigation.
As part of an in-depth report, Sveriges Radio (SR) planted three journalists from the Kaliber investigative news programme with Sweden Democrat chapters in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and in Skåne in Sweden’s far south.
During one third of the party’s roughly 30 meetings attended by the undercover journalists, members of the Sweden Democrats made racist or anti-immigrant statements.
[Comment from Tuan Jim: And the two subjects are analogous how?]
Among other things, members of the Sweden Democrats who hold elected office said that immigrants aren’t loyal, don’t want to pay taxes, and would rather take black-market jobs.
“Those who come from these countries, they’re pretty raw and real savages… [laughter]…They are, it’s in their nature,” one elected official could be heard saying on SR’s tape.
At another meeting, immigrants are compared with dogs.
“Did you know that am immigrant who comes to Sweden from countries like Afghanistan and Africa sometimes come with 2,000 parasites in their body. Not ever our dogs have that many, and they have to sit in quarantine…,” said a Sweden Democrat representative, prompting several at the meeting to burst into laughter.
In other excerpts from the programme, party members claim that Muslims don’t eat pork because they have sex with pigs and that Muslim women where burqas to hide the fact that they are beaten by their husbands.
The head of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, doesn’t agree with the radio station’s contention that the party has one set of opinions it shares with the public and another which its members hold in private.
“I think it’s an odd conclusion to make from what was aired on the programme. We’re talking about a total of a few seconds, maybe a few minutes of rude, harsh, and in some cases completely unacceptable statements from peripheral members or, as they claim, representatives for the party,” Åkesson told the TT news agency.
He contends the statements aren’t representative of the party’s views.
“We have sound, anti-racist values and our principle programme is quite clear when it comes to human rights and the equal value of all people,” he said.
Åkesson said he doesn’t plan on taking action against those who made the racist comments, but added that the incident will be investigated further.
“It’s painful to hear, obviously, but it’s way too early to say what we’re going to do. We’ll have a discussion with these people and get an overall picture of what has happened,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Female Students Win Discrimination Case
In a closely watched affirmative action case, a Swedish court ruled on Monday that men should not have been offered spots in a veterinary school programme ahead of women with equivalent qualifications.
The case involves 44 women who were rejected from the veterinary medicine programme at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet — SLU) between 2006 and 2007.
Although the women had the exact same qualifications as the men with diplomas from Sweden’s folk high schools (folkhögskolebetyg), only men were accepted to the veterinary programme.
The men received additional weight in the selection process because men were seen as an “underrepresented gender” in the veterinary school programme.
But the District Court in Uppsala has ruled against SLU’s affirmative action strategy and ordered the state to pay the women 35,000 kronor ($4,200) each, which is significantly less than the 100,000 kronor they had sought.
The state must also pay for the costs of the trial.
The women were “disadvantaged by being treated worse than male applicants. The unfair treatment consisted of the male applicants, through a weighted lottery, received a significantly greater chance of being offered a spot in the programme,” wrote the court in its ruling.
The acceptance of the men over the women was seen as violating discrimination prohibitions in laws guaranteeing the equal treatment of candidates seeking higher education in Sweden, as well as a European Union (EU) directive on equal treatment.
“The point of the weighted lottery has been to benefit applicants of a certain gender and therefore disadvantage applicants of the other gender,” wrote the court.
Gunnar Strömmer, a lawyer with the Centre for Justice (Centrum för rättvisa) which represented the women in the case, expects the university to appeal the ruling.
The ruling may be significant for others who feel they’ve been discriminated against during their bid for acceptance to Sweden’s colleges and universities.
According to the Centre for Justice, approximately 8,000 college applicants were subjected to discrimination between 2006 and 2008.
Two thirds of Sweden’s institutes of higher education rely on acceptance criteria which discriminate on the basis of gender which adversely affect female applicants in nine out of ten cases.
[Comment from Tuan Jim: Does this make sense to anyone?…Sweden of all places — I would have thought it would be the other way around.]
The discrimination is most prevalent in popular programmes such as medicine psychology, and veterinary medicine, and usually affects applicants with degrees from Sweden’s folk high schools.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Two Charged for Prosecutor Bomb Attack
Two men have been charged for the bomb attack on the home of chief public prosecutor Barbro Jönsson in November 2007.
Arabzadeh Mohammad Abadi, 25, and Moayed Abedi, 24, were indicted on charges of aggravated public endangerment and aggravated threats and intimidation in connection with the bombing of Jönsson’s home in the south-western Swedish town of Trollhättan on November 20, 2007.
Jönsson, who had just left for work when the blast ripped off the front door of her house and shattered her hallway, “would have been in a life-threatening position” had she been inside, according to the charge sheet filed with the Vänersborg district court by prosecutor Urban Svenkvist.
The explosion also put “the lives and wellbeing of people outside the house in danger,” it added.
Jönsson had at the time of the attack been prosecuting a case against a violent criminal gang called the Wolfpack Brotherhood.
“The crime is considered aggravated because (the two) showed particular ruthlessness and because the attack was against (Joensson’s) private sphere and aimed to affect her in her work fighting organised crime,” the charge sheet said.
The bombing was one of the first overt attacks on a Swedish prosecutor and prompted calls to root out a growing problem with criminal gangs in the Scandinavian country.
Jönsson, who moved after the attack on her home and joined a police unit in Gothenburg working to fight gang crime, insisted in an interview with AFP last month that attacks on the judiciary needed to be promptly addressed.
“We risk having judges who don’t dare to judge, prosecutors who are afraid to prosecute and police who refrain from making arrests,” she said.
It remained unclear when the trial against the two defendants would begin.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Healthy’ Man, 25, Collapses and Dies Playing Wii Fit Game
A ‘fit and healthy’ 25-year-old man suddenly collapsed and died in front of his horrified girlfriend and best friend as he played a computer game.
Tim Eves was ‘jogging’ on a Wii Fit games console as Emma Tuck and Lewis Hickin looked on, when he slumped to the floor.
The tragedy happened just hours after Tim had flown home from celebrating his mother’s 50th birthday in Portugal.
Devastated Emma, 26, said last night: ‘Tim was the best boyfriend anyone could have and the best friend a girl could have.
‘I love him loads and will miss him so much.’
Paramedics dashed to the house and rushed Tim, who had been fit and well, to hospital but it was too late.
The family were told he could have been killed by Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
Also known as Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome, it is a disorder of the electrical system of the heart.
Those with the condition are vulnerable to an abnormal heart rhythm. During exercise the heart may stop pumping out blood, causing the brain to become deprived of blood and sudden death.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: British Archbishop Thanks Muslims for Bringing Religion Back to England
A year ago the Archbishop of Canterbury said that Islamic (Sharia) courts in Britain seemed “inevitable” and could aid “social cohesion” even though women have no rights under such a system. This weekend Archbishop Rowan Williams thanked Muslims for bringing religion back to Great Britain.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Couple Who Died in House Fire With Three-Year-Old Son as Police Held Back Neighbours Desperate to Help
This is the first picture of Mark and Michelle Colley who died alongside their three-year-old son in a house fire.
Angry neighbours have said that police held back would-be rescuers.
They said they could see heavily-pregnant Michelle at an upstairs window, screaming ‘please save my kids’.
But police said they had to wait for firemen to arrive.
By then, however, Mrs Colley, 25, her husband Mark, 29, and their three-year-old son Louis were dead.
Their daughter Sophie, five, is fighting for her life in hospital.
Family friend David Davis, 38, said: ‘It was the most harrowing thing I have ever seen.
‘Michelle was at the bedroom window and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near.
[…]
Another witness said some friends and neighbours ignored the police warnings and tried to reach the family with ladders and a hosepipe. But again the police intervened and stopped them.
Chris Richardson, 37, said: ‘It was shocking. I couldn’t believe the police were acting like that.
‘One woman climbed over the garden fence and went to the house but there was a policeman at the back who stopped her.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: China ‘Could Use BT Network to Launch Cyber Attack and Cripple Britain’
China could shut down Britain with a cyber attack using BT’s new £10billion network, ministers have been warned.
Parts of the system installed by a telecoms firm linked to China’s army could be used to halt supplies of power, water and food, the intelligence services say.
The components can also be manipulated to disrupt transport and financial systems, and to spy on anyone who uses the network, including MI5, MI6, government departments and the military.
A confidential document sent to Whitehall by the intelligence services warns that while BT has taken steps to reduce the risk of attacks by hackers or organised crime, ‘the mitigating measures are not effective against deliberate attack by China’.
[…]
However, ministers are concerned that replacing the Chinese components with British parts would go against their policy on competition and would be too expensive.
[Comments from JD: Is this smart? To leave holes in your security infrastructure in the name of “competition” and expense.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Free Our Police From the Tyranny of Targets
When the daughter of friends was assaulted at a dance club, they expected the culprit to be caught and prosecuted since the name of the alleged assailant was passed to the police. Yet no one has been brought to book for a crime that happened several months ago. The parents have now been told that it is unlikely anyone ever will be. The police were extremely solicitous for the welfare of the girl. But when it came to catching the attacker, who was another girl (this really is a tale for our times), they were hopeless.
The family is bewildered that a serious offence can result in nothing beyond a few phone calls and a letter saying the case is closed. After all, isn’t one of the reasons given for so few officers patrolling the streets because they are focusing on “serious crime”? Does not an unprovoked assault resulting in the hospitalisation of a teenage girl qualify as serious?
Earlier this month Bristol police despatched four officers to arrest Paul Saville, a 23-year-old student for writing a slogan on the pavement asking: “Are we free?” He used playground chalk so that it would be easy to remove. Yet he was arrested, locked in a cell for two hours, photographed and required to give DNA samples. He now faces trial on a charge of causing criminal damage to a pavement.
Last week, six boys aged 11 and 12 were arrested and questioned by police over the disappearance of another pupil’s school bag, a prank that was no doubt irksome but is commonplace. The boys were questioned, required to submit a DNA sample and bailed pending further inquiries. The police are increasingly being called to schools to deal with fights and other playground antics that headteachers used to sort out themselves.
These stories suggest a serious disjunction between the priorities most of us wish the police to pursue and those which they consider important. This theme runs through a report published today by the Centre for Social Justice think tank entitled, ironically in the circumstances, A Force to be Reckoned With. The study, carried out by a team chaired by Ray Mallon, the former Middlesbrough police commander nicknamed Robocop, found that one question kept popping up: “What do we want the police to do?” The report correctly concludes that before there is any more talk about structural reform, this basic question needs to be answered.
The report contains some startling statistics. Policing costs the country £17.5 billion a year, half the entire public order budget, which includes courts, prisons and fire. There has been a 16 per cent rise in police numbers since 2000, yet 85 per cent of the public thinks that there are not enough police on the street. Officers are spending less than a fifth of their time on patrol, which translates to every full-time officer patrolling for less than seven hours a week. At that rate, in order for a force to add one full-time officer to street patrol, five new officers need to be employed.
There are fewer police seen on the streets of Britain than in many other countries where crime is lower, suggesting a connection between patrolling and the maintenance of law and order. You would be astonished at the number of people in the criminal justice world who would argue that there is no measurable evidence that routine patrolling lowers crime…
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Failed Asylum Seekers ‘Not Entitled to Free NHS Care’
Failed asylum seekers are not automatically entitled to free treatment on the NHS, one of Britain’s most senior judges has ruled.
Individual hospitals have discretion to decide whether to treat penniless patients who are not residents of the UK, and should use it in the most urgent cases, the judge said.
In the case of a Palestinian man refused free treatment for a liver condition, Lord Justice Ward ruled that it was not right to say that a failed asylum seeker who had been in the country for more than a year had “lawfully resided” in the UK for that period, and thus qualified for NHS care. He noted that they “should never have come here in the first place.”
“One resides here lawfully when one has the right to do so. An indulgence is granted to a claimant for asylum, not a right. Being here by grace and favour does not create that necessary foundation,” he added.
“I fully appreciate that these conclusions preclude failed asylum seekers from seeking free medical help when many will need it.”
The ruling at the Appeal Court in London was made in a test case brought by a 35-year old with a deteriorating liver condition who was told he was not eligible for free treatment at West Middlesex University Hospital.
He was granted temporary admission to the UK, but has been refused leave to remain.
However, he cannot return to the Middle East because he has no travel documents, the Palestinian authorities cannot issue them, and Israel is against facilitating the return of Palestinians to the occupied territories.
The judge said the man was billed £9,000 for treatment, but was “destitute”.
As a result, he sought a judicial review of the Government’s guidance to hospitals on how to deal with failed asylum seekers who are unable to return home.
The Palestinian, identified in court only as YA, won a High Court ruling last year that the guidance on such situations was unlawful.
But the Appeal Court substantially allowed an appeal against the decision yesterday by the Secretary of State for Health.
However, Lord Justice Ward backed the man’s claim that hospitals retain a discretion under the guidance to give treatment to those who cannot not pay.
The judge added: “My conclusion is that it is implicit in the guidance that there is a discretion to withhold treatment but there is also discretion to allow treatment to be given when there is no prospect of paying for it.
“How that discretion is to be exercised may depend on how long the failed asylum seeker will remain at large. The plight of those who cannot return should be identified and clarified.”
Donna Covey, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council, said it was not right to deny life-saving treatment because asylum seekers were unable to pay for it, adding: “We hope that this ruling will offer extra protection to those who are very sick and vulnerable.
“However, we remain concerned that a charging regime for refused asylum seekers still exists at all. Almost all asylum seekers arrive in the UK with nothing, and a great many of those who are refused, but who can’t go home straight away, end up homeless and destitute.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Five Activists Arrested in G20 ‘Bomb Plot’ as London Goes Into Lockdown for World Leaders
Five people suspected of terrorist offences are being questioned by police today in connection with an alleged plot to target the G20 summit.
Three men and two women have been arrested under the Terrorism Act in Plymouth over the last three days after officers uncovered a cache of weapons and suspected extremist material during a house search.
They are being questioned over claims they planned to target the meeting of the world’s most powerful political leaders in London later this week.
The five were held after officers found weapons, imitation weapons, suspicious devices and ‘material relating to political ideology’ during a house search, a police spokesman said.
[…]
A massive security operation is also in progress to protect Mr Obama on his first visit to Britain as president.
An unprecented entourage numbering more than 500 people is to accompany the American leader when he arrives in London on Tuesday, to ensure his safety, and his ability to operate as head of state 3,000 miles from the White House.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Police Try to Stop Facebook Hunt for Rapist… in Case it ‘Victimises’ Attacker
Police have warned the fiancé of a rape victim to shut down a Facebook site he set up to catch the attacker in case it ‘victimises’ the criminal, it has been claimed.
The woman’s boyfriend posted CCTV images of the suspect after growing angry at what he thought was lack of progress by police after the rape in Sale, Manchester, last year.
In the first known case of the social networking site being used to hunt a criminal, more than 5,000 people have joined the group Find the Sale Rapist.
[…]
‘This evil and dangerous man is still out there but after all these months, the police seemed no closer to catching him.
‘Who logs on to a police website on the off-chance there might be someone wanted who they might recognise?
‘They could have given it greater publicity, with posters or more door-to-door knocks.
‘I have managed to get the picture out to more people who are likely to have been out that evening.
‘Now they have warned it may have to be taken down. I’m furious that his human rights seem to be prioritised when my fiancée is the one who has suffered.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Pensioner Booked for Speeding… in a 1923 Model T Ford That Doesn’t Even Have a Speedo
When Dave Stanisfield went for a relaxed Sunday drive in his beloved 86-year-old Model T Ford, he expected to hold up traffic as he crawled along at less than 30mph.
But the baffled pensioner was apparently caught speeding in the 1923 two-gear ‘Tin Lizzie’ — a model so dated it does not even have a speedometer.
Mr Stanisfield, 67, went to court to prove what he thought was the utter ridiculousness of the claim.
But without direct proof of the speed he was travelling he was forced to give up his fight and pay £138 in fines.
The semi-retired mechanic was driving home on September 21 last year from a vintage car show when a Worcestershire speed camera flashed him travelling at 35mph in a 30mph zone.
He said: ‘I didn’t think it could do 30mph. When it was new it could do 46mph but it’s nearly 90 years old now.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I got the letter through the post. I was shocked.’
Mr Stanisfield, from Coventry, was so stunned that he went to court in a bid to avoid a £60 fine and three points on his licence.
[…]
But, faced with spiralling court costs, Mr Stanisfield pleaded guilty to speeding at Worcestershire Magistrates’ Court last week.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tory Councillor Quizzed by Police After Making ‘Homophobic’ Joke About Transsexuals
He thought he was just making a humorous remark.
[…]
Today Mr Yardley, 48, said: ‘I find it ridiuclous you can get in trouble over an off the cuff remark with no malice intended. I didn’t even know there was a transgender person there.
‘There are much more important issues that the police should be spending their time on. These are the politically correct times we live in, you can¹t make jokes any more.’
At the meeting which landed him in hot water the public had been given handsets allowing them to electronically answer 36 questions that were being flashed up on screen as part of a presentation.
The first few questions, as is usual at the quarterly meetings in Wolverhampton chaired by Mr Yardley, the city council’s Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Community Safety, were intended to establish the demographic of the audience.
The audience was told by a police authority worker: ‘Let¹s start with an easy question to get us going: Press A if you’re male or B if you’re female’. The transgender person’s partner then asked: ‘What if you’re transgendered?’, and Mr Yardley said: ‘You could press A and B together.’
He says his remark raised a laugh and the meeting carried on. But afterwards it emerged the transgender person, who has not been named, was left feeling ‘uncomfortable’, prompting the police to give Mr Yardley a talking to.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: When a Bishop Has to Leave the Church of England to Stand Up for Christians, What Hope is Left for Britain?
The resignation of Michael Nazir-Ali as Bishop of Rochester is a terrible blow, not just for the Church of England but for Britain.
The bishop says he is resigning so that he can work for endangered or beleaguered Christian minorities both abroad and in the UK.
What a shocking rebuke to the church, that he has to leave his post of influence and authority as a bishop in order to carry out the church’s core duty to defend its own against attack.
Shocking — but hardly surprising. Across the world, in countries such as Nigeria and Sudan, millions of Christians are being persecuted at the hands of militant Islam, with forced conversions, the burning of churches and widespread violence.
Yet in the face of this global onslaught, the Church of England makes scarcely a peep of protest.
Worse still, when Dr Nazir-Ali warned last year that Islamic extremists had created ‘no-go areas’ across Britain where non-Muslims faced intimidation, he was disowned by his fellow churchmen who all but declared that he was a liar — even though he was telling the truth.
For this act of moral courage, he and his family had to be put under police protection, while his own church left him to swing in the wind of bigotry and intimidation.
Dr Nazir-Ali is one of the very few inside the church to make explicit the link between Christian and British values, and to warn publicly that they are being destroyed through the prevailing doctrine of multiculturalism.
That strong voice of protest has never been needed more than it is now. For Christianity in Britain is under attack from all sides.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Water Police Could Ban Power Showers… and Summer Bills May Soar in Purge on Waste
Every home should have a water meter, and power showers should be banned, an environmental watchdog will say today.
The call comes from the Government’s Environment Agency under a policy that amounts to ‘rationing by price’.
The introduction of smart meters could see families charged more for water in the summer months in order to stop them filling up paddling pools or washing their cars.
The agency argues that a drastic reduction in water use is needed to conserve supplies and save the planet.
It claims that universal meters would cut average household water use by as much as 15 per cent.
However, such a move would come with a huge bill for the public — estimated at more than £1billion.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Montenegro: Political ‘Godfather’ Tipped to Win General Election
Podgorica, 27 March (AKI) — Montenegro’s prime minister and political ‘godfather’ Milo Djukanovic was on Friday being seen as an sure victor in Sunday’s general election. Pollsters predict Djukanovic’s ruling Democratic Party of Socialists will win at least 51 percent of votes cast.
Sixteen parties are competing for 81 seats in the parliament .
According to a survey conducted by the Centre for democracy and human rights (CEDEM), the opposition vote will be split between several rival parties, with the Socialist People’s Party, which split from Djukanovic in 1998, expected to get 17 percent of votes.
A pro-Serbian group, the New Serbian Democracy is expected to get 12 per cent of Montenegro’s half a million voters.
The surveys predicted just six percent of voters would opt for the Movement for Changes, led by young economist Nebojsa Medojevic. Three years ago, the party was seen as a fresh challenge to Djukanovic.
The ex-communist Democratic Party of Socialists has been absolute ruler of Montenegro for the past 20 years and is running in coalition with three minor parties in the election.
A controversial figure, Djukanovic has already served four terms as prime minister and one term as president of the small Balkan state. But he withdrew from politics in 2006 to dedicate himself to his business interests.
Djukanovic has been investigated by Italian prosecutors for his alleged role in a multimillion dollar mob-run cigarette smuggling racket to Italy in the 1990s and for money laundering.
But the case was dropped after Djukanovic became prime minister again last February.
Montenegro’s opposition leaders have claimed Djukanovic accumulated millions of euros in investment and banking schemes between 2006 and 2008.
The election will be monitored by 100 domestic and more than 200 international observers.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Morocco Expels 5 Christian Missionaries
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Authorities have expelled five Christian missionaries from Morocco on the grounds that they were illegally inciting Muslims to convert, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.
The missionaries were caught Saturday during an assembly with Moroccan Muslims in Casablanca, the North African kingdom’s economic capital, and have been sent to Spain by boat, the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the official MAP news agency.
“Numerous pieces of evangelical propaganda material were also seized,” including video cassettes in Arabic that advocated conversion to Christianity, the statement said.
A senior Interior Ministry official said the missionaries were four Spaniards and a German woman. He insisted Morocco has nothing against the Christian faith, but that authorities felt the missionaries had gone too far. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with Interior Ministry rules, said the missionaries were expelled without being officially arrested or charged. He could not specify the Christian denomination to which they belonged.
Several Evangelical Christians have been charged or detained in recent months in neighboring Algeria, and authorities throughout North Africa have become increasingly wary of an apparent push by some Protestant churches in this overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim region.
Christianity and Judaism are freely practiced in dozens of churches, temples and synagogues throughout Morocco, but proselytizing to convert Muslims is considered illegal.
A tourism haven and a strong Western ally, Morocco has a reputation for tolerance. At the same time, the country’s King Mohammed VI is also “Amir al-Mouminine,” or commander of the believers and protector of the Muslim faith.
Morocco appears to have hardened its stance on moral issues in recent weeks. A Shiite Muslim school was closed earlier this month on suspicion it was trying to convert pupils, and Rabat severed its diplomatic relations with Iran, accusing the Shiite Islamic republic of trying to undermine Morocco’s Sunni unity.
The Interior Ministry also recently issued a statement asserting it would not hesitate to crack down on media or activists that threatened the country’s religious or moral values. The statement was viewed as targeting Shiites, as well as some newspapers that recently called for more rights for homosexuals.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Cinema and Theatre Contrary to Islam, Says Saudi Grand Mufti
Such activities distract people from their work and prevent them from achieving professional success. Saudi society is increasingly showing signs of strains between a very conservative religious leadership and youth who want greater openness and freedom. In eight days more than 25,000 Saudis attend screening of Saudi-made comedy.
Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Cinema and theatre are “against Sharia” because they distract people from work and weaken their efforts in achieving progress, said Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz Alu Al Sheikh during a conference on leisure, visual arts and literature attended by students at King Saud University.
“Theatrical performance, whether it is a cinema or a song, would generally make an impression that is against Sharia. People need only those (art forms) that are useful to them to change their way of life (in an Islamic manner),” he decreed.
Last year the Grand Mufti issued an edict, in which he slammed Turkish soap operas like ‘Nour’ and ‘The Last Years,’ the hottest shows on Arab TV, describing them as “so much evil” that “they destroy people’s ethics and are against our values.”
The mufti’s pronouncements are however a sign that Saudi society is increasingly split between a ruling establishment made up of very conservative clerics who espoused strict adherence to Islamic precepts and a broader group of more liberal-oriented young Saudis who want greater openness, more freedom for women and a greater range of entertainment.
Like young people across the Middle East young Saudis routinely go online which gives them access to US action movies, but they cannot go to the movies, an issue that is still taboo.
Yet the recent screening of a Saudi comedy, ‘Menahi’, in two movie theatres twice a day for eight days—with women dutifully seated in the balcony, and men in the stalls—was cheered by many Saudis.
“We put sound and visual equipment, we sold tickets for the first time in Saudi Arabia, and we even sold popcorn,” said Ayman Halawani, general manager of Rotana Studios, the production arm of a company owned by Waleed bin Talal, a financier and member of the royal family, who has become the target of ultra-conservatives for his liberal ideas and investments in the TV and show business.
Overall some 25,000 people actually saw the film.
Such desire for openness is in contrast with what the ruling class wants for Saudi society. For the old guard any overture to customs and traditions that are not strictly Islamic is a threat that must be opposed.
In his address to students at King Saud University, the grand mufti warned against playing chess because it “causes a man to lose his wealth and waste his time.”
Conversely “photography is one of the necessities of life” because it helps in “lectures, [. . .] religious activities [. . .] while maintaining public security.”
“Only the photography of sculptures and models is prohibited,” he said.
Remuneration for poets who attend festivals and cultural events is permissible if their words are good, faultless, without “abusive words or references.”
Finally, the mufti urged students to stay away from cigarettes and avoid reckless driving, especially at night or early morning.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Gaddafi Storms Out of Arab Summit and Labels Saudi King ‘a British Product’
He has a history of rubbing other Arab leaders up the wrong way.
And today Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi managed to renew hostilities with Saudi’s King Abdullah by loudly criticising him for his links with the West.
Gaddafi disrupted the opening Arab League session in Qatar by taking a microphone and criticizing the Saudi king, calling him a ‘British product and American ally.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gadhafi Storms Out of Arab Summit in Qatar
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi stormed out of an Arab summit on Monday after denouncing the Saudi king for his long ties to the West.
Gadhafi disrupted the opening Arab League session in Qatar by taking a microphone and criticizing Saudi’s King Abdullah, calling him a “British product and American ally.”
Gadhafi has harbored a grudge against Abdullah since exchanging harsh words during a summit in early 2003 shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq.
“Now after six years, it has proved that you were the liar,” Gadhafi said, adding that he now considered their “problem” over and was ready to reconcile.
But when the emir of Qatar tried to quiet Gadhafi, the Libyan leader insisted on speaking to the summit.
“I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level,” Gadhafi said before getting up and walking out of the hall.
A Libyan delegate said Gadhafi went to the Islamic museum in Doha for a tour.
The Libyan leaders is known for his unpredictable behavior and it’s not clear whether he will rejoin the two-day summit.
Gadhafi has angered other Arab leaders with his sharp remarks at past summits.
Last year, he poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders at a summit in Syria and warned that they might be overthrown like former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein.
He boycotted the 2007 summit in Saudi Arabia but gave a televised speech saying “Liza” — referring to former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — had dictated the gathering’s agenda.
In 2005, he told the summit in Algeria that Palestinians and Israelis are “stupid.” A year earlier, he sat smoking cigars on the conference floor of the Tunisia summit to show his contempt for the other leaders.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Women Fight to Stop Gym Closures
Dubai, 23 March (AKI) — A group of young Saudi women have begun a campaign to protest against a government decision to close all the country’s female gyms that are not linked to a hospital or health body. According to Arab TV network Al-Arabiya, the women have adopted the slogan, ‘Let them get fat’, while complaining about the high cost of sports centres linked to official health organisations.
They have also appealed to the minister and to the secretary in the municipality of the coastal city of Jeddah to review their decision.
The young women are particularly concerned since they do not have the means to go to ‘official’ gyms and believe this government decree will be bad for their health.
That view was endorsed by Maha, who enrolled at a gym six months ago and lost 21 kilogrammes. While she said she has several pieces of gym equipment at home, she prefers to go to a gym where she gains support and encouragement.
Another woman, Umm Abd al-Aziz said practising sport is a way of a “moment of relief” and going to a fitness club is the only way to release the tension accumulated at home.
“Where can we go now that the gyms are closing?” the woman asked.
Sara Abd al-Aziz asked why men are permitted to practise sport in gyms that do not depend on a health authority, while women cannot, although they have the same needs.
She said women actually have more need for sport than men since they experience different phases of their lives, such as pregnancy and birth, and also suffer from many pressures without finding any relief.
In response to the protests, the deputy-director of Jeddah’s public relations office, Ahmad al-Ghamidi, said the provincial secretary has the right to close female gyms which lack the appropriate licenses, and said a regulatory body is currently carrying out inspections to make sure they follow the rules.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: New Fund to Oversee Asset Investments
Abu Dhabi, 24 March (AKI) — Saudi Arabia is establishing a new stock market fund to oversee the investment of the assets of the oil-rich kingdom’s largest state-run pension fund.
The country’s ruler, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, on Monday approved the creation of the new fund, to be called the Hassana Investment Company which will also promote the development of real estate, commercial and other projects.
According to the London-based Financial Times, the kingdom, which boasts the Arab world’s largest economy, has traditionally given the responsibility for its reserves and investment portfolio to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (Sama).
But under a move announced by the Saudi cabinet, the general organisation for social insurance (Gosi) will establish a new fund to invest in local, regional, and international stock markets.
Gosi, which is responsible for private sector workers’ pension contributions, is estimated to have assets worth tens of billions of dollars.
According to the Financial Times, it already has stakes in nearly 50 projects, ranging from fisheries to hotels and manufacturing with a value of 19.2 billion riyals (or 5.1 billion dollars)
“The change is significant and important as the kingdom moves towards diversifying the institutions that manage the nation’s wealth,” John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank, told the Financial Times.
“It shows that in the midst of a financial crisis they are institutionalising elements of the investment arms of the state and that is important.”
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, has traditionally been conservative about its investments.
The Times article said that about 85 per cent of the kingdom’s foreign reserves of some 500 billion are estimated to be invested in dollar-dominated fixed income securities, and unlike other Gulf states it does not yet have an active sovereign wealth fund.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Erdogan Heads for a Vote: He Will Win, But He Will Lose Support
The economic crisis, accusations of corruption, and the failure to keep many promises made in the last elections are weighing against the Turkish prime minister, engaged in a campaign of rallies and inaugurations. Neither the governing party nor the opposition parties have presented any real plans to break the inertia.
Ankara (AsiaNews) — There are only a few days left before the administrative elections in Turkey. It is a crucial electoral appointment for the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 48 million voters have been called to renew the provincial councils and to elect mayors and advisers for the administrations of 2,941 municipalities. It will be a genuine test of the solidity of the AKP, which currently holds twelve out of the sixteen most important cities in the country, including Istanbul and Ankara.
Although there are nineteen parties on the list, only four are in serious competition. The AKP, the Justice and Development Party, is currently in power for the second consecutive time under the leadership of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The CHP, the Republican People’s Party, heir of the Kemalist tradition, is the main opposition party. Then there are the MHP, the right-wing nationalist party often equated with the Grey Wolves, and the DTP, the Democratic Society Party, which is especially strong in the southeast of the country and holds the administration of the city of Diyarbakir, the Kurdish stronghold.
Turkey is coming to these administrative elections with a disastrous economic situation, with accusations of corruption from all sides, with negotiations for entry into the European Union proceeding slowly, and with a series of unrealized promises for more democracy and development. In spite of these contentious issues, however, the electoral debates have been dominated by disputes between parties devoid of any real plans for breaking the inertia, and without any real future projects for reviving the country.
Prime minister Erdogan, who wants to win at all costs, has taken the field personally, with constant appearances on television and in the newspapers, in front of massive crowds and all sorts of inaugurations. Since the beginning of the electoral campaign, he has participated in 70 demonstrations and rallies, visiting 67 out of the 81 provinces, and has presided over inaugurations on an almost daily basis: hospitals, cultural and sporting centers, schools, the new rapid bus line connecting the European and Asian parts of Istanbul, and the mini-extension of the subway system in modern Constantinople.
Although recent surveys show that 46% of those who will vote miss the reformist Erdogan of the first term, and 48% accuse the AKP of abandoning its progressive ideas, this party of Islamic inspiration nonetheless has a base that, according to a survey conducted for CNN by the agency A&G, totals 39.8%, a proportion that has certainly fallen since the 2007 elections, when Erdogan won with 46.6% of the vote, but is still significant. If the AKP wins, it will not be due solely to the charisma of Recep Tayyip and his team, but above all to the lack of a true political alternative.
But the governing party must also come to terms with the many suspicions that have emerged against it. First among these are the accusations of corruption against some of its members, and even more so the scandal that months ago implicated Deniz Feneri, a Turkish charitable organization tried in Frankfurt for diverting funds raised from Turks living abroad to the AKP, instead of giving them to the poor. Then there was the controversy over the 50 million euros earmarked for “social assistance” and distributed by the government mainly in the southern part of the country, with a Kurdish majority population and one of the poorest areas in Turkey. Potential voters have been given “complimentary” brand new household appliances, like refrigerators, television sets, and air conditioners.
As if this were not enough, the DTP has denounced many irregularities in voter registration. According to this party, the government, which is aiming at winning the municipal administrations in the east, has encouraged the attribution of false addresses to 1,630 soldiers, 1,200 teachers, and 2,000 citizens in Adana, who are charged with having been given residency in a few Kurdish cities solely in order to allow them to vote in those areas. Other illegal voter registration practices have been revealed by the Dicle News Agency.
In addition to this, according to Fuat Keyman, a professor of international relations at Koc University in Istanbul, the credibility of the democratic process is being damaged by the sudden rise in registered voters, whose numbers have grown by 6 million. “If it is true that the elections demonstrate that there is democracy in Turkey,” Keyman continues, “this does not necessarily imply that it is a vital, healthy democracy.” And the party secretaries are well aware of this. In order to avoid electoral fraud, which has always been very widespread, they have organized a veritable army of observers to be sent to polling places to ensure a regular voting process. The AKP itself will place one representative and nine observers at every polling place, at an overall cost of about 1.3 million euros. The CHP will also use three observers at each polling place, while the MHP will count on its extensive popular support, and the DTP will provide one observer per polling place.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
India: New Delhi Looks at New Missile Deal With Israel
New Delhi, 26 March (AKI/Asian Age) — India is believed to have reached a 1.9 billion dollar deal with an Israeli company for the supply and joint development of medium-range surface-to-air missiles. The defence ministry is yet to officially confirm the deal, but sources in the department of defence research and development (DRDO) said it was likely to go ahead.
The joint development of the 70-kilometre MR-SAM missile project would be carried out by India’s DRDO and the Israeli Aircraft Industries.
The Israeli company also manufactures Barak missile systems and the DRDO is hoping that collaboration with the IAI will help it develop these missiles within four to five years.
Indian left-wing parties have raised objections to the proposed deal.
Two prominent Communist leaders Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan sent a letter to the prime minister in February alleging bribes were paid to clinch the Barak surface-to-air missile interceptor deal in 2000 and that there is evidence of remittances paid by Israel Aircraft Industries.
The left leaders alleged that the MR-SAM deal had been signed despite the fact that the DRDO already had the capacity to make advanced air defence missiles.
In 2007, defence minister A.K. Antony told parliament that India had made defence purchases worth more than 5 billion dollars from Israel from 2002 to 2007.
Indian naval sources said that Israeli Barak missiles, Derby missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare equipment are either already being used by the Indian navy or are in the process of being bought.
The Barak missiles are surface-to-air precision-guided missiles with a short range of about 10 kilometres and are very effective missile interceptors used as the last layer of defence to destroy an advancing missile.
The Indian military regards Israel as a reliable defence partner.
In August 2007 an Indian cabinet approved two arms deals worth 1.7 billion dollars with Israeli companies to upgrade the country’s missile defence systems.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nepal: UN Warns Peace Process at Risk
New York, 23 March (AKI) — The United Nations human rights chief has warned that Nepal’s peace process could be at risk unless justice is ensured for victims of past and ongoing abuses.
On her first official visit to Nepal, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, met several families whose loved ones were victims of serious rights violations, both during and after the decade-long civil war that claimed some 13,000 lives before it ended in 2006.
“Human rights were violated in these cases in Nepal, and under international law the state has a responsibility to ensure that the families obtain truth and justice,” she told a media conference in the capital, Kathmandu, on Sunday.
“The demands of victims’ families are not mere wishes they are supported by law,” she said.
“And until these demands for justice are fulfilled and accountability for past, and in particular ongoing, violations is ensured, a truly new Nepal will not emerge, and indeed, the peace process could be jeopardised.”
The civil conflict came to an end in 2006 with the signing of a peace accord between the government and Maoists, with the parties also agreeing to set up of a commission on disappearances and a truth and reconciliation commission.
In voicing her support for the establishment of a disappearance commission, Pillay emphasised that it must not be a “token body.”
Rather, victims should be consulted in the process of setting it up and it should be given all the protection and powers by parliament to make it meaningful.
The high commissioner also voiced her alarm at the detention and “arbitrary action” taken against many journalists in the South Asian nation.
She urged the government to take concrete steps to ensure the security of human rights defenders, including journalists, “who are the first line in defence of the human rights of all Nepalis.”
Nepal was the scene of widespread human rights violations during the 10-year conflict between the government and Maoist rebels.
Political disappearances, killings and torture were common during the war and there were victims on both sides of the conflict.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistani Army End Bloody Siege After Attack by Militants Which Left 19 Dead
[Comments from JD: WARNING: Graphic photos.]
Pakistani soldiers have overpowered militants who launched an attack on a police academy near Lahore, killing 19 people and taking around 35 hostages.
The attack began this morning as the militants — who disguised themselves in police uniforms — gained access to the training academy during a morning drill.
Armed with assault rifles and grenades the attackers then opened fire and picked off their targets in the ensuing shootout.
Up to 40 people have been killed in the attack, including 11 police officers.
Eight of the gunmen died, including two who blew themselves up.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Opens Route to Afghanistan Through Russia’s Backyard
American influence in former Soviet countries could make or break Obama administration’s new Afghan-Pakistan strategy
A soldier of patrols in the village of Madrassa near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty Images
The road passes a shimmering green mountain pasture, then dips steeply to a new US-built bridge. Across the languid Panj river is Afghanistan and the dusty northern town of Kunduz. On this side is Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s impoverished Central Asian neighbour.
It is here, at what used to be the far boundary of the Soviet empire, that the US and Nato are planning a new operation. Soon, Nato trucks loaded with non-military supplies will start rolling into Afghanistan along this northern route, avoiding Pakistan’s perilous tribal areas and the ambush-prone Khyber Pass.
This northern corridor is essential if Barack Obama’s Afghan-Pakistan strategy is to work. With convoys supplying US and Nato forces regularly attacked by the Taliban on the Pakistan route, the US is again courting the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Asia: Iranian Experts Helping North Korea With Missile Launch
A group of Iranian missile experts is in North Korea to help Pyongyang prepare for a rocket launch, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on Sunday.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
For Tibetans in Exile, the “End of Slavery” is Nothing But Propaganda
In Lhasa and Beijing, great celebrations and proclamations of the “liberation” brought by the Communist Party to Tibet. In Dharamsala, today is a day of protests and mourning. Beijing pressures India to block the “political activities of the Dalai Lama.”
Dharamsala (AsiaNews) — Today the Chinese authorities launched their annual Day of “freedom from slavery,” to commemorate the Chinese victory over a Tibetan revolt that, 50 years ago, sent the Dalai Lama into exile. But in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, today is being lived as a “day of mourning,” and Beijing is being accused of conducting “propaganda.”
In Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, about 10,000 pro-Chinese Tibetans gathered in front of the Potala, the former residence of the Dalai Lama, to celebrate the anniversary, red flags flying. Zhang Qingli, the local secretary of the Communist Party, asserted that the Chinese Communist Party has brought “democratic reforms unprecedented in human history to the Tibetan highland.”
Yesterday evening, at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the Panchen Lama selected by China, Gyaincain Norbu — who is viewed unfavorably by the Tibetans — thanked the Chinese Communist Party for giving him “clear eyes for judging what is true from what is false,” and praised Beijing’s policies on Tibet as “an historic leap in Tibet’s social system.”
There were also some testimonies from Tibetans who once had been servants in the monasteries and for the Tibetan nobility, and who received “liberation” with the Chinese invasion.
The Day of “liberation from slavery” was created by Beijing this year, after the revolts one year ago, which were repressed with violence and with thousands of arrests. Tibet has been under martial law for months in preparation for the Day.
For the Tibetans in exile, these 50 years have been “years of oppression,” during which Tibetans “continue to suffer unimaginable religious, political, and cultural repression.” For this reason, today in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, tens of thousands of exiles gathered for an entire day of protests, organized by the Tibetan Women’s Association, Students for a Free Tibet, and by the Tibetan Youth Association. “The day of ‘liberation from slavery’ sponsored by Beijing,” one of them says, “is a heavy-handed campaign of propaganda to convince the world that Tibetans are happy under Chinese rule. But no propaganda can hide the fact that these have been 50 years of servility.”
Recently the Dalai Lama himself recalled the “series of repressive and violent campaigns” conducted in Tibet by Beijing. “These,” he said, “have thrown Tibetans into the depths of suffering and hardship, making them live hell on earth. The first result of these campaigns has been the death of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.” Speaking in Dharamsala, on the anniversary of his flight, the Buddhist leader added: “Still today, Tibetans in Tibet live in constant terror . . . Their religion, culture, language, identity are close to extinction. The Tibetan people have been branded as criminals, who deserve only to be put to death.”
Yesterday, Zhang Yan, the Chinese ambassador to India, asked New Delhi at a press conference to “not permit the Dalai Lama to carry out political activities on Indian soil, in the best interests of bilateral relations between the two countries.”
For some time, China has been threatening economic consequences for all countries that host the Dalai Lama or let him speak.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Islamophobia is a Fabrication
by Paul Sheehan
I’ve been considering a request from a post-graduate student who wants to do a thesis on Islamophobia in Australia. She writes: “I am researching the topic Islamophobia, and I am trying to prove whether Islamophobia is based on religion fear or cultural fear of Islam.”
What about proving that Islamophobia exists at all? That would be the logical, ethical and scholarly starting point. But it appears the outcome has already been decided. This would fit the prevailing orthodoxy in academia that the default position for Muslims in Australia is victim. The jargon, “Islamophobia” is part of this ideological construct. Literally, it means fear of Muslims.
I reflected on all this while on holiday in Malaysia and the Maldives last week. This was my twelfth visit to Muslim societies because I do not “fear” Muslims and do not “fear” Islam. Yes, there is ample evidence that Australians have become uneasy about Muslims in general and hostile in specific cases, but this is about cause and effect.
Consider the series of blows to the image of Muslims in just the past three weeks, where the everyday decency of the majority have been collaterally damaged by the antics of the few.
On March 8, the night of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, police say a group of about 100 young Muslim men, allegedly members of a loose gang called MBM — Muslim Brotherhood Movement — moved through the centre of the city intimidating, harassing and beating bystanders.
On March 15, Abdul Darwiche was murdered, shot to death in a shopping centre in the latest hyper-violence involving two warring Lebanese Muslim clans. Police later arrested Darwiche’s brother, Michael, for driving around with a loaded pistol. A third brother, Adnan, appeared in the NSW Supreme Court three years ago to be sentenced for a double murder. He and his fellow accused, Nasaem El-Zeyat and Ramzi Aouad, laughed and joked, going out of their way to express their contempt for Australian law. After the three men were all given life sentences they shouted “God is great!” This was the same Adnan Darwiche who purchased rocket launchers stolen from the Australian Army, which have never been recovered.
Hundreds of mourners attended Abdul Darwiche’s funeral at the Lakemba Mosque, where, within days, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly was involved in yet another controversy. Channel Nine obtained a copy of a video surveillance tape which shows the former mufti of Australia kicking in a door, then returning soon after in the company of police. Apparently he called police over vandalism which he committed, blaming others who are engaged in a power struggle at the mosque. Sheik Hilaly has been embroiled repeatedly in controversy and provocation, making numerous inflammatory remarks about Australia and Australians.
A few days later, yet another rape sentence was handed down to one of the K brothers, three of whom, during their various trials for gang rape, claimed they were victims of an anti-Muslim conspiracy. Between them, four K brothers have been convicted of gang-raping five girls.
This sentencing followed closely on the conviction of seven Sydney schoolboys for the aggravated sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in a toilet block in Yagoona in 2007. According to police, the ring-leader was on his phone speaking in Arabic during the assaults and most or all of the boys are of Muslim background.
If this is so, these latest convictions produce a morbid tally of more than 30 young Muslim men involved in serious proven sexual assaults of non-Muslim girls in Sydney, involving the Skaf brothers, the K brothers, the E-M cousins, the Yagoona schoolboys and various others. Because sexual assault is the least reported crime (about 15 per cent of incidents are reported to police) this particular phenomenon was certainly much broader.
Finally, there has been fatal violence between bikie gangs, accompanied by news that there has been an infusion of young Muslim men into the bikie culture. There is now warring between new gangs and traditional Anglo criminal gangs for control of the drug and protection markets. Gang leaders named Mahmoud and Hassan and Ismail have been prominent. Gangs like MBM, Notorious and Asesinoz have flaunted their ethnicity. Overtly racist videos have been posted on YouTube, such as the message that “Asesinoz is now targeting Aussies”, with an image of a vandalised Australian flag…
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Unemployment Higher and May Rise
Muslim people already suffer twice the unemployment rate of other workers in Queensland and the global economic crisis is likely to make matters worse, research shows.
A study undertaken by Queensland University of Technology researcher Dr Hossein Adibi found there was a huge gap between the level of unemployment in the general population and Muslims, something that was likely to worsen in the declining economic climate.
“It is obvious that the current recession will have an enormous impact on the employment status of Muslims in Queensland, and the unemployment rate of Muslims will rise significantly,” Dr Adibi said.
The unemployment rates for some segments of the Muslim population, including women and young Muslims, may exceed 20 per cent, he said.
The jobless rate in Queensland for February was 4.5 per cent.
Dr Adibi found that Muslims were disadvantaged due to four main factors: racism, discrimination, media bias and the lack of Muslim representation in decision-making bodies.
Unemployment among Muslim women and young people was even worse than for men, he said.
Youth unemployment among Muslims contributed to a feeling that their aspirations for mainstream acceptance were being “thwarted”, Dr Adibi said.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
New Zealand: Togs Planned for Muslim Women
A group of refugee women have produced designs for Islamic bathing costumes to help Muslim women in New Zealand learn to swim.
The sewing group, NZ Somalian Inc, presented their idea at the Auckland Cultural Festival at Wesley War Memorial Park yesterday. “Many Muslim women don’t learn to swim because the strict rules of Islam forbid them from wearing the swimming costumes sold in New Zealand shops,” said Fadumo Ahmed, chairwoman of the group.
“We are surrounded by water in New Zealand, so it is important that they too learn how to swim and we think that having these bathing suits will just encourage more to do so.”
Most swimming pools ban swimmers from wearing track pants and long sleeved T-shirts, but the group says it will be consulting pool operators to ensure its swimsuit is permitted. The cover-all swimming costume drew its inspiration from the two piece “burkini”, which is popular in the Middle East and introduced to Australia two years ago.
The swimming costumes, like the recycled bags, will be sold as part of an effort to create an income-generating business for the refugee women, and lift them out of long-term benefits, Ms Ahmed said. “It gives the women a great sense of self worth and a huge amount of excitement to see something that they have created being sold,” said Susan Barter, who teaches the group sewing.
“The idea is to teach them a skill that can be income generating to transform their lives, and the swimming costume was something they felt the community needs.”
The group has already been turning recycled billboard materials into bags.
Ethnic Affairs Minister Pansy Wong said she supported the idea of having swimming costumes for Muslim women, and thought it was a “sensible” way to encourage them to learn swimming.
Mrs Wong said she was impressed by the attitude of refugee communities in New Zealand, many of whom will be represented at Sunday’s festival. “I am particularly impressed by the attitude shown by many refugees who don’t see their traumatic uprooting as an ending, but rather as a new beginning where they can rise above negative experiences and the mentality of being victims and work hard to contribute to their new community and new country on the whole,” Mrs Wong said. “They deserve our admiration and respect.”
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
New Zealand: Wage Packets Fatter From Tomorrow
[Comment from Tuan Jim: This is how you stimulate spending!]
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will get extra cash from tomorrow when the tax cuts come into effect — a package the Prime Minister says is “focused fairly and squarely on middle New Zealanders”.
The Government hopes people will either spend or pay off debt with the tax cuts. However, it has been criticised for giving greater benefit to those who earn more and are less likely to spend the money.
Yesterday, John Key said he believed the tax cuts were well designed to encourage spending by targeting middle New Zealand.
While the top rate of 39 per cent would drop to 38 per cent — a benefit to those on higher incomes — he said overall they were fair.
About 280,000 people earning between $50,000 and $70,000 would get just under $20 a week — and Mr Key said the “vast bulk” of people would notice the difference.
A further 630,000 workers on lower wages would get the new independent earner’s credit — costing about $235 million of the $1 billion cost of the tax cut package.
Recently, Mr Key called for those who did not want to spend their cuts and had low debt levels to instead donate it to charity to help them cope with a drop in corporate donations in the recession.
He was unable to confirm that the next two years of cuts would go ahead, repeating that it was his “preference” for that to happen but the Government had to ensure they were “affordable in light of the economic conditions we might face in 2010 and 2011”. Under the changes, the threshold before the 33 per cent rate begins rises from $40,000 to $48,000.
From tomorrow, workers can also choose to reduce their KiwiSaver contributions to 2 per cent.
Benefits, superannuation and student loans will also increase by 3.4 per cent, in line with the cost of living.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Queensland to Crack Down on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
POLICE in Queensland would be given the power to ban members of outlaw motorcycle gangs under new laws approved by the State Government.
Premier Anna Bligh on Monday announced the state would prepare tough laws like those put in place in South Australia nine months ago and soon to be introduced to NSW Parliament.
NSW made moves to introduce the laws after an outbreak in bikie violence, including the death of a man at Sydney Airport last week during a brawl between members of the Hells Angels and the rival bikie gang Comancheros.
Ms Bligh said Queensland had been watching the progress of SA’s laws with a view to introducing similar powers, but the recent surge in violence had increased the urgency.
“Like all Australians, the Queensland government has been watching recent events involving bikie gangs in NSW with some distress and horror,” she told reporters in Brisbane.
Ms Bligh said the new legislation “goes to the heart of the right of association”, and was not dissimilar to anti-terror legislation.
“An organisation can become a proscribed organisation and it then becomes an illegal activity to be a member of that organisation or to associate with it,” she said.
“These are very serious laws. They will require careful consideration.”
Ms Bligh said a national approach to the gangs would be preferable, but Queensland could not wait for the other states to act.
“I don’t want the sort of thing we’ve seen in NSW in the last couple of weeks to ever find a home in Queensland,” she said.
SA’s attorney-general is now considering the first application of its laws, which would outlaw the Finks motorcycle gang.
The NSW laws would require an application to the Supreme Court to outlaw a group, and Queensland will consider which of these two options to adopt.
The Government will also consider whether gangs proscribed in other states will automatically be outlawed in Queensland.
Police Minister Neil Roberts said Queensland had 14 known bikie gangs, with more than 800 members, mainly active on the Gold Coast.
The police service’s Task Force Hydra, targeting outlaw motorcycle gangs, has laid 931 charges including attempted murder, arson, extortion, robbery and drug trafficking since its inception in February 2007.
The Government will consult legal groups on the legislation, which could be in place by mid-year.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican: Bishop Claims AIDS Virus Can Penetrate Condoms
Orleans, 27 March (AKI) — A little over a week after Pope Benedict XVI said condoms worsen the problem of HIV/AIDS, a prominent French bishop told a French radio station on Friday that condoms gave ineffective protection against the deadly virus.
‘You know very well, and all the scientists know it: the AIDS virus is infinitely smaller than a sperm. This is proof that the condom is not a 100 per cent guarantee against AIDS,’ said the bishop of the central French city of Orleans, Andre Fort, in an interview with Radio France.
‘On a cigarette pack there is written ‘Danger’. We should be writing on a box of condoms: Reliability doubtful,’ Fort added.
On his first visit to Africa last week, Benedict said sexual abstinence was the best way to fight HIV/AIDS. He was on his way to Cameroon, where over half a million inhabitants are infected with the virus.
“The problem cannot be overcome with the distribution of condoms. This only aggravates the problem,” said Benedict.
Fort’s comments came the same day that the prominent British medical journal ‘The Lancet’ slammed Benedict’s comments about condoms. The editorial in the journal’s current edition accused the pontiff of ‘publicly distorting science’ and asked him to retract his comments.
“By saying that condoms exacerbate the problem of HIV/AIDS, the Pope has publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine on this issue,” said the editorial.
“Whether the Pope’s error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear.
“When any influential person, be it a religious or political leader, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record,” the editorial stated.
“Anything less from Pope Benedict would be an immense disservice to the public and health advocates, including many thousands of Catholics, who work tirelessly to try and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide.”
The Vatican has faced strong criticism over its opposition to the use of condoms despite findings by the United Nations’ World Health Organisation that “consistent and correct” condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 percent.
HIV/AIDS has killed more than 25 million people — mainly in sub-Saharan Africa — since it was discovered in the 1980’s.
Over 22 million people currently live with the HIV virus in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Catholic Church opposes any kind of contraception because it claims sex must only be for procreation
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Growth of Islam in Latin America
By Dr. Mozammel Haque
SOME three-four million Muslims live in Latin America and over 50,000 of them are Hispanic. Majority of Muslims there have roots from Middle Eastern countries like Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. There are large Muslim populations in Brazil, Venezuela and Columbia. Mosques and prayer houses can be found in all major cities.
Islam in Latin America began with Muslim journeys to the continent even before the arrival of Columbus. Evidence of this early contact is based on world maps produced by Muslims in the early 16th century. Later, during the voyages of Columbus to the New World, some Muslim Moors are believed to have accompanied him, fleeing persecution in the Iberian Peninsula. In Brazil, the importation of African slaves during the colonial period accounted for a substantial influx of Muslims into the continent. Little is known whether these early Muslims were able to maintain their faith.
The Islamic influence on regional architecture and culture between 1600-1800 CE is still visible today in cities such as Lima, Cholula and Guatemala City. Lima, the capital of Peru, is famous for its Tapadas Limenas or Covered Women in Lima. During the 18th Century, there was uprising of Muslim slaves (Brazil 1835).
Since late 19th century, Arabs first began to immigrate from the Middle East to Latin America. The descendants of these immigrants are still found today in significant numbers. Further, emigrants from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine increased during the mid 20th Century after Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its surrounding areas. These Muslims were largely merchants and became influential in local trade. Many have even held leading positions in government.
In the 1980s, many who had previously lost touch with their Islamic roots have been turning back to Islam. Over the last 25 years, increasing numbers of Catholics of Hispanic and Indian American origin have been accepting Islam. Local mestijo and indigenous people are embracing Islam in larger numbers.
In the 1990s, majority of Da’wah activities were spearheaded by reverts (converts) to Islam. Each year more students from Latin America complete their Islamic studies at institutions around the Muslim world.
Influential Arab Muslims did play an important role in setting up Islamic centres. But now the spread of Islam has been taken forward by Hispanic Muslims. Converts in Mexico run majority of activities.
Latin America is a fertile ground for inviting people to Islam. The people are simple, open, without much hostility towards Islam. There is a general positive attitude towards Islam and Muslims. The prophecy of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that Islam will reach all corners of the globe, is being witnessed in reality…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Minister Concerned Over Immigrant Youths
Minister of the Interior, Anne Holmlund is concerned about the position of immigrant youths in Finland. She says improved efforts at integration into Finnish society would improve national security.
Speaking at a police seminar on immigration affairs on Monday, Holmlund emphasized the vital role played by police in the integration of immigrants.
The Minister called on local authorities to take additional measures aimed at helping and guiding young immigrants. Noting that crimes committed by immigrant youths have increased, Holmlund feared their alienation could lead to tougher attitudes against ethnic minorities.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Asylum Seekers Buy Fake Adresses
Asylum seekers from Latin America are buying fake residential addresses from a network in Stockholm in order to secure temporary work permits, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) reports.
The c/o address allows the asylum seekers to avoid being placed in a detention centre and they can instead live in Stockholm and work with a temporary work permit.
Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) holds the adresses of all those applying for residency status in the country. SvD reports that the board has 187 Latin Americans living at four addresses in the Swedish capital.
At one of the addresses, a studio apartment, there are 50 people registered.
The newspaper writes that a fake c/o address can be bought for between 200 kronor ($25) and 600 kronor per month.
The newspaper reports that many of those selling the c/o addresses have also themselves once been in the same situation when arriving in Sweden.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Twin Crises: Immigration and Hospital Infrastructure
Every year, an estimated 400,000 to as high as 450,000 pregnant illegal alien women cross America’s borders. Some arrive legally with visas. They rush to the nearest hospital where they birth their ‘jackpot baby’ or more popularly known as an ‘anchor baby’. Once inside the hospital or ER, they receive unlimited ‘free’ care via U.S. taxpayers.
Their child, through a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution meant for children of slaves in the 1800s, becomes an instant citizen. Therefore, the mother enjoys immune status for being deported out of the United States. She becomes immediately eligible for assisted housing, food stamps, child care, medical care and more. Since most of them arrive illiterate and without job skills, they become immediate wards of the federal government and local municipalities.
At an average of $8,000.00 per healthy birth to as high as $500,000.00 for premature babies or one that suffers a congenital heart defect or Down’s Syndrome, etc., the costs annually run in excess of $3.2 billion. Later, taxpayers shell out $7,000 to $8,000.00 per year for educating those children K-12. Dan Stein of www.fairus.org estimates anchor babies and other immigrant children cost U.S. taxpayers $7.4 billion annually.
In the meantime, an estimated 20 million illegal aliens may visit any U.S. hospital or ER for ‘free’ service compliments of U.S. taxpayers. The costs run into the tens of billions of dollars annually. Passed in 1986, Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act: mandated by Congress, it allows any illegal alien that needs medical attention to enter any facility without paying and be provided with unlimited medical care. Some individuals have run up millions of dollars of care. In California, 60 hospitals and ERs bankrupted out existence because of EMTALA.
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Two More Landings in Sicily, 405 Immigrants
(ANSAmed) — ROME — Two boats carrying immigrants arrived at the coast of Sicily during the night. The first boat, with 156 people including 25 women and five children on board, was intercepted in Scoglitti (Ragusa) by a patrol boat of the Pozzallo coast guard. The non-European migrants, who say they are Congolese, were in a 20-metre long wooden boat which was led to port in Pozzallo. They are all in good health. A further 20-metre craft, carrying 249 migrants including 31 women, has reached the port at Portopalo di Capo Passero. The immigrants were escorted to dock by a seaborne unit of the Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s financial and tax police) and by a patrol boat from the port’s coast guard. These latter migrants, who claim to be from Somalia and Eritrea, were inspected and then moved to an initial immigrant holding centre. The boat was then confiscated and investigations to identify the people smugglers are ongoing. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: History Has Been ‘Feminised’ Says David Starkey as He Launches Henry Viii Series
Speaking shortly before the launch of a new Channel 4 series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch’s accession to the throne, Dr Starkey said he found it “bizarre” that so much historical effort was now focused on the monarch’s wives.
In an interview with the Radio Times, out today (TUES), Dr Starkey said: “One of the great problems has been that Henry, in a sense, has been absorbed by his wives. Which is bizarre.
“But it’s what you expect from feminised history, the fact that so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience. Unhappy marriages are big box office.”
He said that in his new series, Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, “we’re trying to say, ‘Hang on a minute, Henry is centre stage.’
“This is Henry — wives appear simply to explain or complicate the story of Henry. This is his development, his psychology and, above all, why he matters.”
Prominent female authors to write about Henry VIII and the Tudors include Lady Antonia Fraser, whose titles include the best-selling account The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Alison Weir, who wrote a book bearing the same title; and Jessie Childs, author of the prize-winning Henry VIII’s Last Victim.
Talking to The Daily Telegraph, Dr Starkey said that while writing about Henry VIII, “even I fell into the trap of subjugating the history of Henry … to that of his wives”.
He said he did so because “they are a gift to the writer — you end up with six stories for the price of one.”
But he warned that the “soap opera” of Henry’s personal life should come second to the political consequences of his rule, such as the Reformation and the break with Rome.
Dr Starkey went further, by saying that modern attempts to paint many women in history as “power players” was to falsify the facts.
He said: “If you are to do a proper history of Europe before the last five minutes, it is a history of white males because they were the power players, and to pretend anything else is to falsify.”
For example, while he considered Elizabeth I to be a great monarch, “the way she is presented as some sort of female icon is ludicrous”.
During Victorian times her conduct was regarded as “perfectly deplorable”, he added.
Dr Starkey insisted: “I’m not joining forces with Fathers for Justice, it is simply saying that our new world has its own set of prejudices, its set of distinctive lenses, and we need to be aware of them.”
He also stressed his comments were not a “value statement” about how he thought the world should be, but argued: “It is a great impertinence to impose our values on the past. It instantly reduces the people of the past from real people to mere straw men and women in our struggles.”
Earlier this month Dr Starkey said he believed Henry VIII’s handwriting showed he had an “emotionally incontinent” personality because he was brought up in a female-dominated household…
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Who Will Raise Kids: Mom, Dad or State?
Parental rights: 67 in Congress pushing to amend Constitution
Though efforts to pass a constitutional amendment protecting parental rights have failed in the past, two U.S. legislators are preparing to reintroduce the idea this week; and this time, they say, the effort is backed by more than 60 congressional members.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who introduced a parental rights amendment by himself last year, told the Agence France-Presse that he will be joined by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., on Tuesday as they renew the fight.
According to a statement released to AFP by Hoekstra’s office, the amendment “would clearly outline in the U.S. Constitution that parents, not government or any other organization, have a fundamental right to raise their children as they see fit.”
“At a time when government at every level seems to encroach upon the ability of parents to choose the best for their children,” Hoekstra writes on his website, “it is important to preserve parental rights into the Constitution..”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy
A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.
Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations “information note” on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an “effective framework” for dealing with global warming.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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