Islamic terrorists in Pakistan attacked a bus carrying a Sri Lankan cricket team, killing eight people and wounding some of the team members. Three news stories about the incident are below.Concerning the
Thanks to Amil Imani, C. Cantoni, CSP, DK, Fjordman, Gaia, Holger Danske, Insubria, JD, KGS, Paul Green, TB, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Crisis: 2,000 Unemployed Turks Blocked in Russia
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 23 — The global economic crisis has hit Turkish construction companies in Russia hard, where many building sites have been closed and 2,000 workers, due to lack of payment, cannot return to their country because they don’t have enough money for the airfare, reported the newspaper Today’s Zaman. According to the paper, the Turkish workers, fired by the construction companies, are experiencing a series of economic difficulties and are unable to meet their daily needs and above all don’t have the money to renew their stay permits. The newspaper also reported that the Turkish embassy in Moscow is in constant contact with the Turkish citizens to help them find a solution to their problems. According to the president of the Euro-Asian Council for Economic Affairs, Tugrul Erkin, “most of the Turkish construction companies in Russia are closing their building sites and have no alternative but to sack their employees. Their lack of payment is not the only problem for the workers as many of them work illegally, and are in serious difficulty trying to renew their stay permits. Many of the workers live in hotels or in residences on the building sites, while others wander the airport departure area waiting to get a flight home”, Erkin added. Last December a group of Turkish workers demonstrated to protest against the construction companies, accusing them of not paying salaries for months. The workers also protested against the decision made by the Turkish companies’ management to pay Russian workers and not Turkish ones. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: Galsi Methane Pipeline Put on EU Projects List
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, FEBRUARY 18 — The Galsi methane pipeline, which will bring Algerian gas to Italy, via Sardinia, has been added to the EU Commission’s list of projects to be undertaken in the energy sector, as part of a wider plan to deal with the economic crisis. The news was announced by EMPs Mario Mauro (Forza Italia), Gianni Pittella (PD — Democratic Party) and Gianluca Susta (also Democratic Party ), in a brief meeting with journalists during which they explained that they received notice of the decision from the EU Commission, but are waiting for official confirmation. According to the European Parliament members, a second Italian project has also been added to the EU’s list: the Enel CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage facilty) in Porto Tolle, the Veneto. The politicians commented that ‘the decision shows that our observations were well-founded” because ‘they concentrated on the fact that geographical balance was not respectedin the drawing up of the list of projects admissable to the Commission”.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘There Will be Blood!’
Top economist warns of civil violence, government overthrow
Before the crisis ends, there will be civil violence and governments will be toppled, noted Harvard economist and best-selling author Niall Ferguson said.
Disagreeing with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke’s testimony to Congress last week that the economic recovery could begin yet in 2009, Ferguson warned, “There will be blood.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
To Catch a Thief
Americans who are watching, learned this week that the American people were lied to back in September when George Bush told the people that the $700 billion bailout bill, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), just had to happen to save the banks and Wall Street. And when Americans learned that banks who received TARP money were paying CEO’s big bonuses, taking executives to lavish spas, ordering jets, vacationing in the Caribbean, and going on hunts in England after “taking” TARP money, they were understandably upset, hammering Congress with angry e-mails.
The first lie was that banks would go under if TARP didn’t pass; the second lie was the self-righteous anger of Congress when they learned that banks “taking” TARP funds were “spending extravagantly.”
Recently, snatches that point to the truth have come out. On February 18, 2009, an article appeared on the TwinCity.com website, entitled, “U..S. Bancorp CEO Davis rips TARP.” That article states, in part:
[…]
“We were told to take it so that we could help Darwin synthesize the weaker banks and acquire those and put them under different leadership,” he said. “We are not even allowed to mention that. … We were supposed to say the TARP money was used for lending.”
But Davis is talking about it now, he says, because he and others oppose current and future strings attached to the program. Davis didn’t detail those strings, but he said he and some peers intend to voice their opinions to Washington, D.C., soon.
“Now they’re punishing you for having the capital,” he said, adding that he refuses to stand by and let his company become “collateral damage” in an attempt to nationalize the banks.
Read that last sentence again: “Now they’re punishing you for having the capital,” he said, adding that he refuses to stand by and let his company become “collateral damage” in an attempt to nationalize the banks.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: the Choice is Clear on Defence Funding
Britain must either continue with interventionist foreign and defence policies and fund them properly, or retrench to a purely reactive position.
This Government has committed the country’s Armed Forces to more conflicts than any other in recent history, but without willing the means to fight them properly. Since the last Strategic Defence Review in 1998, Britain has been left with a cumulative defence deficit of up to £20 billion and a capital equipment spending gap of at least £15 billion. The Armed Forces are so severely under-funded and over-stretched that within five years, for the first time since the 1930s, they will no longer be in the front rank of military capability. Only the Foreign and Commonwealth Office among Whitehall departments has had a lower funding priority, according to a report from the UK National Defence Association (UKNDA). It tells us a lot about the way this Government behaves.
It does not have the courage to argue before the “court of public opinion”, as Harriet Harman called it, a case for reducing Britain’s overseas military and diplomatic commitments, because it knows what the reaction of voters will be. So it seeks to retain this country’s influence on the cheap, increasing the burden on our Armed Forces, while siphoning off money to unproductive corners of the public sector that continue to burgeon despite the recession. In order to fund its spending splurge, Labour needs to protect at all costs the financial services that provide a lot of the taxes.
This policy was apparently expressed, albeit in private, by one of the Government’s “more influential” economic advisers, whom the UKNDA reports as having said that “defence, aerospace, manufacturing and engineering have no value to us”. The unnamed adviser allegedly added that only high-quality professional and financial services had “any real value” and that the rest of the country could be “handed over to tourism”. Since this individual was speaking under Chatham House rules, the comment can be denied; but it sounds like an authentic, if flippant, exposition of government policy.
Gordon Brown is currently in America meeting Barack Obama in the White House for the first time. He wishes to be influential on American foreign policy and to be afforded access to the top table of international diplomacy. Yet, unless there is a significant increase in defence funding, he will have no right to sit there. As the UKNDA paper observes, the choice facing Britain is clear: either continue with interventionist foreign and defence policies and fund them properly, or retrench to a purely reactive position and accept the second-class global status that comes with doing so. What is not acceptable is to grandstand in public while in private making clear that it is all a sham.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
America Votes for Death
[Warning: Contains graphic descriptions.]
As I have written in the last two weeks, those who voted for Obama got change, all right. Socialism is change. Government takeover of health care is change. Criminalizing Christianity through “thought crime” legislation (HR 256 and HR 262) is change. And putting Christians out of business through the so-called “Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” or ENDA, is change.
But the attack on democracy and the attack on our freedoms is only the start. The attack on life is first on Obama’s list. It wasn’t on his desk yet, so he didn’t get to sign the radical Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, though he promised Planned Parenthood he would as his first act as president. So he decided to spend more of our hard-earned tax dollars and send more than $1 billion to promote abortion in countries where citizens want to protect their children. By reversing the Mexico City policy, Obama is pushing for child killing in countries like Guatemala where people don’t want it.
I received an e-mail from a woman in Guatemala who wrote:
“Your country’s president, Obama, is looking to fund abortions internationally, and I am very frightened they will want to make abortions legal in Guatemala. Guttmacher Institute has been working here for years, getting people together to convince legislators and public opinion that abortions are the way to help women. “
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
BHO’s ‘Dog-Whistle’ Politics
On matters of racial identity, many observers in the African-American community say [Obama] benefits from what’s known as ‘dog-whistle politics.’ His language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
More Military Officers Demand Eligibility Proof
Plaintiff: ‘In the worst case … it’s going to be revolution in the streets’
Military officers from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are working with California attorney Orly Taitz and her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, citing a legal right established in British common law nearly 800 years ago and recognized by the U.S. Founding Fathers to demand documentation that may prove — or disprove — Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.
Taitz told WND today she has mailed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a request that he “relate Quo Warranto on Barack Hussein Obama II to test his title to president before the Supreme Court.”
The lengthy legal phrase essentially means an explanation is being demanded for what authority Obama is using to act as president. An online constitutional resource says Quo Warranto “affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents.”
Requesting the action are Maj. Gen. Carroll Childers; Lt. Col. Dr. David Earl-Graef; police officer Clinton Grimes, formerly of the U.S. Navy; Lt. Scott Easterling, now serving on active duty in Iraq; New Hampshire state Rep. Timothy Comerford; Tennessee state Rep. Frank Nicely and others.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama ‘Ready to Drop Shield Plans for Russian Help on Iran’
Washington has told Moscow that Russian help in resolving Iran’s nuclear program would make its missile shield plans for Europe unnecessary, a Russian daily said on Monday, citing White House sources.
U.S. President Barack Obama made the proposal on Iran in a letter to his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, Kommersant said, referring to unidentified U.S. officials.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Plans for Gun Control
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama deliberately and repeatedly lied to America’s 90 million gun owners across the country when he insisted that he would not try to take away anyone’s firearms, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said during a press teleconference on Friday.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, reacting to Thursday’s remarks by Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder that the president will seek to reinstate the ban on semi-automatic firearms, said Obama “knew he was lying to the nation because his own web site touted his plan to revive the gun ban and make it permanent.”
“We warned America that Obama’s ‘support’ for the Second Amendment was empty rhetoric,” he stated, “and now Holder’s disclosure has confirmed it. Obama was lying, and now gun rights may be dying.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Penn’s Co-Star Says He’s an Imbecile on Politics
Maria Conchita Alonso, who co-starred with Sean Penn way back in 1988’s “Colors,” went off on Penn in a way we’ve rarely seen — basically saying he’s a moron when it comes to politics — especially his support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The Cuban born actress was raised in Venezuela and says Chavez is a “killer.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will Obama Revive the ICC Threat to the Military?
By Adm. James “Ace” Lyons (Ret.)
In one of his last official acts as President, Bill Clinton signed the so-called “Rome Statute” creating an International Criminal Court (ICC). A supposed instrument of “international justice” for perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the ICC is instead a massive power grab by an unaccountable pseudo-judicial body lacking the most elementary protections found in the U.S. Constitution.
President George W. Bush’s wise decision to withdraw the Clinton signature from the ICC prompted howls of protest from the usual quarters, notably proponents of world government and, not surprisingly, many Democrats in Congress. Unfortunately, with a Democrat now in the White House — and Mr. Clinton’s wife in charge at the State Department — there is a danger that President Obama will sign the Rome Statute and railroad it through the Senate.
The ICC’s kangaroo-court claim of power and jurisdiction is almost beyond belief. Defenders of the ICC say that it would have jurisdiction only when a given country’s judicial process — the U.S. court system, for example — has failed. But who decides when such a failure has occurred? That’s right, the ICC itself, in violation of American sovereignty and overruling the U.S. Constitution.
An American soldier hauled before the ICC would be subject to a “judicial process” featuring no right to a jury trial; retrials allowed for errors of fact (i.e., double jeopardy); admission of hearsay evidence; no right to a public trial (effectively providing for inquisition-like proceedings); and no right to a speedy trial or reasonable bail, amounting to unlimited detention. These features already are standardized in United Nations Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which advocates for the ICC point to as precedents…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
“You See? We Are Not Xenophobes or Isolationists”
Giancarlo Dillena (Corriere del Ticino) talks to Matteo Tacconi
Switzerland has said yes to the free movement of labour coming from countries who have recently joined the EU. This issue, which the Swiss were asked express an opinion on in a recent referendum, resulted in a lively debate both within and outside the Confederation. In fact, had the Swiss approved the position of the right — in favour of closing the frontiers to avoid social dumping — all bilateral agreements between Bern and Brussels would have become obsolete. These are agreements that in the course of the last few years have proved advantageous to both, as explains Giancarlo Dillena, editor of the Corriere del Ticino.
Hence the choice made by the Swiss is a positive one. There remain however a number of unsolved issues — says Dillena, in this interview with Resetdoc — and myths to be debunked. First, the referendum confirmed that security issues (not concerning the labour sector) are extremely important in the Ticino, which, due to a more unstable economic situation compared to the rest of the country, voted against the trend when compared to the great majority of the Confederation’s Cantons. Second, it is not true that Switzerland is a country periodically tending towards isolationism and xenophobia. More simply, it is a country in which these issues are identical to those experienced by other European countries such as Germany, Great Britain and even Italy. Generalisations should be avoided.
With the recent referendum, Switzerland has said yes to the free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in the country. Initially the result seemed uncertain. However, 59.6% is a significant percentage. What is your opinion on this referendum?…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Banks: Greece, Dividends to be Paid Only in Shares
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, February 20 — The Greek government will issue new and stricter norms for banks taking part in the 28 billion euro liquidity support plan, Finance and Economy Minister Yiannis Papathanassiou said. In an address to the Finance Committee of the Greek Parliament, the minister said he planned to introduce an amendment Friday under which banks won’t be allowed to pay cash dividends to their shareholders and will be able to pay dividends only in shares. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Brown Visit Unravels
Oh dear. Gordon Brown has landed in Washington to discover that there is to be no joint press conference with Barack Obama, no lunch, none of the treatment that Bush, Clinton and Bush routinely gave visiting British Prime Ministers. Just a 30-minute chat and a couple of questions probably sitting on some chairs. To the frustration of No10, it seems that the Obama White House has its own protocol. When doomed leaders come to visit, such as Taro Aso of Japan and Gordon Brown of Britain, all they will get is a quick photocall. So what does this mean? When Aso was given the low-key treatment (which seems identical to what Brown is being given) the Japan Times had this to say:
“Some analysts said the hidden message from Washington was that, while it recognizes the importance of maintaining the strong alliance with Japan to rebuild the global economy and deal with Afghanistan and North Korea, it is also fully aware that mounting pressures may force Aso out of power soon. The meeting “sent an implicit signal that Washington supports the Liberal Democratic Party, if not Prime Minister Taro Aso himself,” said Weston Konishi, a Japan-U.S. relations expert and adjunct fellow at the Mansfield Foundation.”
The dispatches from Ben Brogan and Toby Harnden give us, in real time, the unraveling of this visit. Hilariously, No10 is claiming the press conference was planned but was cancelled “because of snow” — as if Obama had made podiums out of snow in the rose garden, but visibility wasn’t so good. There is more comedy. Brogan observes that the gift that Brown has chosen for Obama is a relic from a ship that used to shell rebels in Sudan. Nice touch. No10 say they are “still negotiating” and still hope for a press conference. That’s what I call the audacity of hope.
UPDATE: No.10 is in a tiz. It says there will be a “media event” rather than a press conference, and adds it is still “in talks with the White House on the format” of said event. Why admit to the wrangling behind the scenes? Better to pretend it’s all going as planned. If the White House never offered the press conference, why allow journalists to think otherwise? Basic error of expectations management here, it sounds almost as if no one had the nerve to tell to Brown that he will not get the Blair treatment. Just half an hour, no more. It makes it all the worse that Obama’s diary includes a meeting with the Boy Scouts of America. If they hear a Scottish voice saying “Dib dib dib” then things will be getting really desperate.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
Bulgaria: Forced Conversions to Islam
Despite Bulgaria’s European Union membership, some regions of the country need a second liberation from Ottoman yoke, the Bulgarian Member of the Parliament (MP), Yane Yanev, stated, cited by the Bulgarian news agency, BGNES. Yanev, who is the leader of the opposition “Order, Law, Justice” Party (RZS) spoke Monday in Blagoevgrad as reported by the local BGNES correspondent. The leaders of RZS visited Monday several villages in Southern Bulgaria to meet with alarmed teachers and parents, who have presented concrete evidence of the imposed conversion to fundamentalist Islam in the region.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Town Moving Rent-Dodgers to Tin Containers for Years
Chomutov — The Chomutov Town Hall has been evicting notorious rent-dodgers from their municipal flats and moving them to special tin container-like flats on the outskirts of the town since 2005 year already, Mayor Ivana Rapkova (senior ruling Civic democrats, ODS) said today.
Rapkova told journalists that the re-settlement had been implemented within the Safety Belt action as a measure aimed against rent-defaulters and unadaptable citizens, mainly drug addicts and prostitutes.
At present, two of the four container houses are officially occupied but no one stays in them. Their previous tenants did not pay even a very low rent and later moved no one knows where and their container flats are vacant, Rapkova said.
Chomutov Town Hall spokesman Tomas Branda said the town authorities had also moved the first family who had failed to pay rent for a long time from their municipal flat.
The family owes 163,000 crowns in rent and in addition, it has been disturbing neighbours by its behaviour, Branda said.
Four years ago, the town bought four older container houses and a new one which serves as a sanitary room for all the tenants where toilets and showers, separate for men and women, have been installed.
The town has invested 965,000 crowns to repair the houses, connect them to the electricity grid and the water network.
Tenants pay a 400-crown monthly rent for one container flat plus the electricity and service charges.
The Chomutov Town Hall has recently started seizing part of welfare allowances from rent-defaulters via a distraint officer for which it has been sharply criticised.
However, Rapkova said the Town Hall could continue money distraints as well as the eviction of rent-dodgers from municipal flats as no other measures are effective.
She criticised Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities Minister Michael Kocab (for the junior government Greens, SZ) for his approach to the problem.
She said she expected Kocab to come up with a meaningful solution to the problem of unadaptable citizens till the end of March.
“And I don’t mean round table discussions. If he fails to propose a solution I will advocate among deputies and senators the closure of his ministry. The money the government would save could be given to town halls so that they face the problem and take radical measures to protect decent citizens,” Rapkova said.
She said that on Kocab’s request the Town Hall would provide two flats in the locality populated by unadaptable people where he wants to stay with his aides for one week.
Previously, Kocab criticised the seizure of debtors’ money immediately after they receive their social benefits as unlawful.
Ombudsman Otakar Motejl voiced a similarly negative stand.
Chomutov registers some 4000 debtors owing over 240 million crowns in total. Distraint proceedings have so far afflicted 46 defaulters receiving social allowances, and the town has 300 valid distraint decisions to be applied, Rapkova said today.
She said that apart from repressive measures the town is offering people who found themselves in a difficult situation housing in asylum centres, social flats and various training courses.
“The local social services centre teaches people how to stand up against money-lenders or how to live on social benefits,” she said.
($1=22.470 Czech crowns)
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Hells Angels: Immigrants Must Clean Up Their Act
The Hells Angels biker group says that the only ones who can stop the current gang war are immigrants themselves.
Shootings close library and sports hall (3. mar.) Minister calls for urgent anti-gang measures (2. mar.) The bloody conflict between immigrant gangs and bikers can only be stopped if responsible immigrants take responsibility and ‘clean up in their own ranks,” according to the Hells Angels biker group on its website.
The recipe for a solution to the ongoing gang warfare in Denmark comes in answer to a contribution on the Hells Angels website from an anonymous immigrant.
My home too
“I don’t understand why the Hells Angels has become a club dedicated to wiping out immigrants (Ed: see endnote) like me,” the contributor says, adding: “Wake up — it’s not all immigrants who don’t wish Denmark well. This is my home too.”
But the Hells Angels webmaster rejects the notion that the organization is trying to kindle racial hatred.
“HAMC Denmark doesn’t want to wipe out anyone. We have immigrants, as you nicely put it, (Ed: see endnote) in our own club. But just as so many other Danes and new Danes, we are tired of the mentality that some immigrants (Ed: see endnote) have,” the webmaster writes, calling on well-integrated immigrants to help solve the conflict.
“HAMC is made up of proud men with their honour intact, which is why we have the current situation. If what is going on is to be stopped, responsible immigrants and their descendants must clean up in their own ranks,” the webmaster says.
The gang warfare between immigrant and biker groups broke out in earnest in August 2008. Since then, Politiken has registered 53 shootings in Copenhagen of which most are thought to have a direct connection to the gang conflict.
Endnote: The word actually used in the texts was the Danish word for ‘pearl’ (perle) which has both a derogatory and a non-derogatory meaning in Danish.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Gang War Spills Over Into Malmö
A Danish gangster has been remanded into custody on suspicion of blackmail by a Malmö court as police fear that a Copenhagen gang war is spilling over onto the southern Swedish city’s streets.
A 22-year-old member of the Denmark-based immigrant motorcycle gang the Black Cobras was remanded into custody by Malmö district court on Tuesday on suspicion of trying to extort 200,000 kronor ($22,000) from a local car retailer.
Two other men are also in custody for the same offence.
Police in Malmö fear that a gang war in the Danish capital of Copenhagen has spilled over into the streets of the city and that the Black Cobras are busy establishing themselves on the Swedish side of the Öresund straight.
According to the car retailer, the three men approached him demanding the money or he would run into trouble. The men are reported to have displayed their Black Cobras logo in order to “shake up” the businessman.
The man refused to pay and instead contacted the police. A trap was set for the trio who, according to the prosecutor, were captured on police video threatening the retailer.
The Black Cobras are sworn enemies of the Hells Angels and are, according to a report in local newspaper Sydsvenskan, one of the largest criminal gangs in Denmark, after the Hells Angels and Bandidos.
A gang war has broken out between rival gangs in Copenhagen recently with arson attacks, shootings and several murders linked to the conflict.
The scale of the Black Cobras’ presence in Sweden is as yet unknown and police confirm that open conflict with the Hells Angels in Sweden has not yet occurred.
“This is in a early phase. We are collecting information on them,” a police source told the newspaper.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Gang Conflict Halts Meals on Wheels Service
Food deliveries to elderly people in the Nørrebro district of the city have been disrupted by threats from local gangs
The escalating conflict between the biker and immigrant gangs in the inner city has caused a Meals on Wheels company to stop delivering to elderly people in affected areas.
The Multi Trans food delivery company said yesterday that it had been threatened by local gang members not to visit the streets around the Nørrebro district.
Drivers for the company had already been accosted and threatened by youths carrying knives and guns last Thursday and Friday. After contacting the police, the company was advised to keep away from the area.
The City Council said that 19 elderly people had been affected by the withdrawal of the company and now the police are offering to help make sure the deliveries can go ahead.
‘If the gang elements in Nørrebro are trying to prevent food delivery companies from carrying out their work, then we will put a stop to it,’ said Per Larsen of the Copenhagen Police.
Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen also backed the police involvement in the case.
‘This case completely oversteps all the boundaries of decency and shows that we have to do something with these completely unscrupulous gang members who have no consideration for elderly people who need their food,’ said Mikkelsen to public broadcaster DR.
The council said the police had reassured them about the safety of other workers in the area such as home helpers and visiting nurses.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: British Travellers Warned of Nørrebro Violence
The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office has advised travellers to be cautious when visiting areas affected by recent gang violence
The open street gang violence in Nørrebro has been highlighted in the latest travel warning from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).
The update on the FCO website, dated January, maintains that British citizens should ‘exercise extra caution’ when in the Nørrebro area as a result of the gang conflict. The site also maintained that there continues to be a general terrorist threat level against Denmark, as there is in many European countries.
The FCO warned that the recent spate of violence between the Hells Angels and minority gangs included shootings, but said they were localised to the criminal elements involved. Since last summer there have been more than 60 street shootings in the Greater Copenhagen area, many of which have been linked to an on-going turf battle between the Hells Angels bikers and a number of different immigrant gangs.
The latest shooting occurred on Amager on Sunday evening when 30-year-old Anders Wehage was gunned down in Café Våren by two men of immigrant background. Three others were injured in the attack which was linked to the gang disputes, but it has emerged that neither the dead man nor the injured had any connections to the biker group.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark — Greenland: EU Will Vote Against Increased Whaling Quotas
The EU will begin negotiations to reach a unified stance for the upcoming negotiations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC)
Denmark will be voting against the EU official line on whaling, due to concerns over the effect of rejecting Greenland’s increased whale quota amendment.
However, the Danish government has made it clear that a block vote against whaling in general, let alone increased quota requests, will very probably be the outcome from other EU member states votes.
But as much as the European Commission is working towards a common EU policy on whaling and a continuation of the current EU ban on whaling for member states, the EU itself is not a member of the IWC, and therefore can not directly negotiate for EU countries. The IWC allow non-parties and intergovernmental organisations to attend its meetings and to be represented by observers, as well as non governmental organisations that maintain offices in more than three countries.
It is the IWC who ultimately decide how many whales and of what species, if any, may be hunted in Greenlandic waters.
Greenland currently has permission form the IWC to catch 212 minke whales, 19 fin whales and 2 bowhead whales annually under IWC indigenous whaling provisions.
Greenland had an amendment thrown out last year as well, when the IWC refused its request to allow hunting of humpback whales.
Amalie Jessen, the head of the department for hunting and fisheries spoke out against current political influence within the IWC.
‘There has been a change in the balance of power within the IWC which looks like it could remain until 2012. This means that Greenlandic interests have no chance of becoming a reality,’ said Jessen, adding that what this shows is that the organisation does not work in the way it should.
‘our quota requests for last year were upheld by a scientific committee yet denied by the IWC’ said Jessen
The fact that Greenland seems unable to make its voice heard within the IWC has led Finn Karlsen, minister for hunting and fisheries, to ask the foreign minister to look into the possibility of Greenland withdrawing its membership of the international whaling group.
Whaling is currently banned in all EU territorial waters, but over its border, in the waters of non EU countries Norway and Iceland, it has no legal authority and Whaling continues.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Shootings Close Library and Sports Hall
The library, culture centre and sports hall on Blågårdsgade street in Copenhagen are to close at night and weekends until further notice.
Employees of public institutions in the area of Copenhagen hardest hit by gangwar shootings are afraid of going to work and their facilities are to have new opening times.
“Due to the extensive use of firearms and insecurity of employees we will be closed from 6 p.m. on weekdays and all weekend,” says a sign on the doors of Blågårdens library and the sports hall 100 metres away. The Støberiet cultural centre is also to be closed at the same times.
“This was a difficult decision,” said Støberiet Leader Bent Erik Krøyer adding: “But we had to do it. We can’t take any chances and I have a responsibility to my employees who feel insecure going home at night.”
Krøyer says that a shooting episode on Saturday in particular brought about the decision.
“It is frightening that the victims were people who were going to a concert at Stengade 30. These could just as well have been people coming to a concert here,” he says.
Food for the elderly In other developments in the ongoing crisis in the Nørrebro district, elderly residents have had to have their council-prepared meals-on-wheels delivered secretly and with police security due to threats issued against the company responsible for deliveries.
The council decided to stop delivering meals-on-wheels on Monday night after a driver of the Multitrans company which delivers the food was warned out of the area by armed gang members who see the Nørrebro district as their exclusive turf.
According to reports, the reason for the gang’s action was that last week, police arrested a Multitrans driver. DR News says that the driver was a member of the Hells Angels support group AK81, was wearing a bullet-proof vest and had a gun in the cabin.
The current gang warfare in Copenhagen is between immigrant gangs and the Hells Angels and its support group AK81.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Explosive Growth for Swedish Arms Exports in 2008
Swedish arms exports jumped up 32 percent in 2008, with large purchases by five countries accounting for nearly 60 percent of total.
According to an annual report by the Swedish Inspectorate for Strategic Products (ISP) released on Tuesday, Swedish defence companies sold 12.7 billion kronor ($1.4 billion) worth of weapons in 2008.
The upswing in military sales last year more than wiped out a 7 percent decline in arms exports from 2007.
“As in previous years, several large deals had a real effect on statistics, like the sale of the JAS Gripen to South Africa and CV90 combat vehicles to the Netherlands and Denmark,” said ISP director general Andreas Ekman in a statement.
Other notable export deals included purchases by Greece and Pakistan of the Erieye airborne radar systems.
Swedish arms manufacturers sold goods totaling 1.9 billion kronor to South Africa in 2008, making it the single largest purchaser of Swedish defence equipment last year.
Exports to the Netherlands and Denmark each totaled 1.8 billion kronor, while sales to Greece came to 1.1 billion.
Pakistan meanwhile purchased 846.4 million kronor worth of Swedish military equipment, while Swedish arms exports to India totaled 506.2 million kronor in 2008.
The ISP reports that 59 percent of Sweden’s arms exports went to other countries in the European Union, Norway, and Switzerland, while 28 percent of sales were made to “established partners” such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Local Politician Charged With Inciting Racial Hatred
On Tuesday hearings opened at the Helsinki District Court in the case of Olavi Mäenpää, a Turku city council member, who faces charges of inciting racial hatred in a public election debate.
The prosecutor accuses Mäenpää of using slanderous and abusive language when speaking of African and Middle Eastern refugees and immigrants at YLE’s parliament election debate two years ago.
The prosecution maintains that in his remarks Mäenpää, a candidate for public office, vastly generalised the characteristics of people belonging to certain ethnic groups. Mäenpäää referred to members of specific ethnic groups as criminals, welfare system abusers and generally less worthy people.
The prosecutor asserts that Mäenpää believes it to be acceptable for people to take justice into their own hands when immigrants commit crimes.
Mäenpää: “Regular Election Debate”
Mäenpää, who denies the charges, chalks his election debate remarks up to normal political banter.
“This trial is absurd and preposterous. I voiced my personal opinions during the election debate, and I was not inciting hate agianst any specific group. You can’t be judged on your opinions,” told Mäenpää to YLE ahead of the hearing on Tuesday.
In 2007 Mäenpää stood for election on the ticket of the far-right Finnish People’s Blue-Whites.
Eight years ago the Turku District Court found him guilty of inciting racial hatred because of a web column he had authored. At the time the Turku District Court handed down a fine as punishment.
“The fine was converted into jail time. I served 41 days at the prison of south-western Finland,” said Mäenpää.
The Helsinki District Court will hand down a ruling in the case in two weeks.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Italy to Launch Campaign Against FGM
(ANSA) — Rome, February 4 — Italy plans to launch a campaign to focus attention on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a bid to stem its practice in the country, Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna said on Wednesday. Some 150 million women are victims of the practice world-wide, with an estimated 35-40 thousand cases in Italy by foreigners living in the country, said Carfagna who called FGM “torture, a barbaric action”. The government plans to run a series of ads on state-run television in a bid to convince parents to end the practice.It is also setting up a committee to deal with the problem, which Carfagna said is “an underestimated phenomenon”. “I plan to use my ministry’s funds to combat and prevent a practice which violates human rights,” she told a news conference. The government has already earmarked some 3.5 million euros and plans to add another four million to back 21 projects set up to deal with FGM. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announced last month that Italy is strongly committed to promoting a declaration by the United Nations which would ban the practice throughout the world. Addressing a conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Frattini said FMG was “one of the worst and most common violations of the Declaration”. Frattini said the commitment to ban the practice was one of the key issues addressed by the government’s foreign policies along with promoting UN moratoriums on capital punishment and against religious intolerance. FGM, which is also known as female circumcision, covers a number of different practices, usually involving either removing the clitoris or sewing up the vagina. The most severe form, infibulation, entails both, and accounts for around 15% of all procedures. An estimated 150 million women around the world have undergone genital mutilation, while some 6,000 girls are mutilated every day, according to the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International. It is practiced in at least 28 African countries, and is also common in some Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. Italy passed a law in January 2006 outlawing FGM. IT lays down jail terms of up to 12 years for those who carry out the procedure on adult women and up to 16 years if it is carried out on a minor or in exchange for money. Doctors caught carrying out FGM are banned from their profession for up to ten years. The law is applicable even if the woman is operated on abroad. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Fiat CEO Confident on Chrysler Deal
Marchionne to speak with US government officials
(ANSA) — Geneva, March 3 — Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said on Tuesday that he was confident the Turin automaker and Detroit Number Three Chrysler would be able to forge their alliance.
Speaking at the 79th Geneva International Motor Show, Marchionne said he would be in the United States this week for talks with American officials “to understand at what point the situation is”.
“It has always been our full intention to reassure the US government that loans given to Chrysler will stay with Chrysler,” Marchionne explained. “We have no intention of going to America to take their taxpayers money to help Fiat in Italy. What we want to do is to create something which has value in the medium-long term,” he added.
The American automaker is currently seeking a $5 billion government loan and has made its proposed alliance with Fiat a keystone of its recovery plan.
The loan is also considered pivotal for the Fiat-Chrysler alliance which is designed to help the American automaker develop fuel efficient cars and give the Italians a springboard to bring the Alfa Romeo marque and new Fiat 500 city car to the American market.
In regard to the loan, Marchionne said it was up to Chrysler “to come up with a solution to move forward. In our talks with US officials we will explain Fiat’s position and what we intend to do”.
Although Fiat is not getting any loans from the Italian government, it will benefit from new incentives to trade in older, less fuel efficient cars for new, low-emission ones.
According to Marchionne, the Italian incentives “are a structurally necessary measure to renew the national fleet of vehicles and it is my hope they will become permanent”.
The Fiat CEO criticised France for exclusively helping French automakers and spoke out against the hypothesis of the German government buying into Opel because both actions distorted competition on the market.
“Aid has to be made available to everyone or it should go to no one. The field is not level when one producer can count on three billion euros in aid while Fiat has to do everything on its own,” Marchionne said.
“Fiat is doing what it has to do without asking anyone for anything and is financing itself in an extremely difficult period. I hope the situation does not arise where everyone else has state aid and we don’t,” he added.
Turning his attention to Fiat’s strategy of forging alliances with other automakers, Marchionne explained that “we are talking to everyone because this is the moment to develop alliances. As I have said before, in the not-too-distant future our industry will have five or six producers with a minimum market of five million cars”.
Aside from Chrysler, Fiat is also currently engaged in talks with Germany’s BMW to develop common platforms and components for Alfa Romeo and Mini models. CHRYSLER SAYS ALLIANCE WITH FIAT WOULD BE “PEFECT”.
Also on hand at the Geneva car show was Chrysler President and Vice Chairman Jim Press who said that an alliance between the Detroit automaker and Fiat “would be prefect”.
“Fiat has a very strong line of products and great technology in regard to low emissions, as well as a full range of vehicles and a major distribution network in Europe,” Press observed.
Chrysler, on the other hand, “has a strong presence in North America and wants to reinforce its position on other markets,” he added.
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 US 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 accord 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 introduce the Fiat 500 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.
Insiders say the alliance between Fiat and Chrysler will initially involve the production of seven models for the North American market, four vehicles will be produced under the Chrysler marque and three as Fiat and Alfa Romeo cars.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lombardy Ready for ‘Bank for Poor’
Region wants to host offshoot of Yunus’ Grameen bank
(ANSA) — Milan, March 3 — Lombardy would be happy to host a “bank for the poor” proposed by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, the Regional President Roberto Formigoni said on Tuesday.
Speaking a day after Yunus unveiled his proposal to open an Italian offshoot of his Grameen Bank, which offers unguaranteed loans to the poor, Formigoni said Lombardy was keen to get involved in the initiative. “It’s just an invitation but I believe Yunus is already thinking about it,” said the regional president. “In many ways, Lombardy would be the ideal location. I have great respect for the Nobel laureate and Lombardy has always kept a close eye on initiatives such as these”. Yunus, who was jointly awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with the bank that he founded, revealed his plans during a visit to Italy on Monday. He said he hoped to get the project off the ground within the year, with assistance from Bologna University and Italian bank Unicredit, with the specific goal of helping Italian women unable to obtain loans by conventional means.
The focus on assisting women has played a crucial role in the development of the bank, which was founded in 1976 in Bangladesh, where women struggled to access the services of large commercial banks. According to the Grameen website, 97% of Grameen’s borrowers are women.
The Grameen initiative now operates in developing countries around the world, with 7.71 million borrowers and 2,541 branches.
The US and Australia are home to Grameen microfinance projects and the Italian offshoot will also function as a non-governmental organization, rather than seeking to operate as an official bank. The Grameen system works on a trust basis, lending money to those without collateral in order to help individuals start small businesses and raise themselves out of poverty. Although Yunus’s claim that the bank has a 98% repayment rate has been questioned, the positive impact of the Grameen model has been praised by many external bodies, including the World Bank. Yunus has also underscored the Grameen principle’s resilience in the face of the current financial crisis. “This has had no impact on us,” he said. “The crisis affects those financial systems that build castles from air. When we make a loan, it is for concrete reasons, like buying a cow”.
ITALIAN FILM DIRECTOR PLANS TO SHOOT BIOPIC ON YUNUS.
Meanwhile, award-winning Italian film director Marco Amenta has announced plans to start work on Yunus’s life story. “It is a story that touched me deeply,” explained Amenta, whose other films have focused on real life stories of the Italian mafia and justice system. “Yunus is a person who made a choice and refused to stand by and accept things as they were. It will be an epic film, recounting a universal story”.
The film, based on Yunus’s autobiography, Banker To The Poor, will be an international co-production shot in English. Filming is expected to start later this year.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Woman Receives Year in Jail for E-Mail Threats
A woman who sent the leader of the populist Freedom Party, Geert Wilders more than 100 threatening e-mails has been sentenced to a year in jail and conditional psychiatric treatment. She had previously been sentenced to a year in jail and unconditional treatment. Psychiatrists said she suffered from delusional disorders and locking her in an institution would be detrimental to her psychological well-being.
In January the woman (Selima I.), a librarian from Tilburg, was arrested at the computer from which she sent death threats. Three boys received 50 hours of community service in February for sending death threats to the anti-Muslim leader.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Rape: Eures, in 10 Years Cases Rise From 1500 to 4500
(AGI) — Rome, 16 Feb. — The president of EURES (Economic and Social research), Fabio Piacenti, has said “I believe that the situation in 2008 was the same as in 2007, whilst in 2009 we are seeing cases of ‘gang’ or ‘street’ rape by strangers, a new issue which must neither be overlooked or allowed to foster xenophobia.” Piacenti added that one case was enough to draw attention to the issue of ‘gang’ or ‘street’ rape by strangers: in ten years, from 1997 to 2007, reported cases of sexual violence on women tripled from 1582 to 4500 cases per year, and even in Lazio these incidents tripled, from 159 to 438 cases per year. Therefore, “rather than focusing on the numbers, I would look at the seriousness of the issue,” he said, “of cases of gang or street rape”. Whilst this new issue must absolutely not be overlooked, it remains within the context of the sad reality that ISTAT has shown us: of the 6 million and 743 thousand women aged between 16 and 70 who are victims of physical or sexual violence at some point during their lives, 69.7% of rapes are committed by partners, 17.4% by someone known by the victim whilst only 6.2% are perpetrated by strangers. “The family undoubtedly remains the most likely place where the overwhelming majority of cases of sexual violence occur”, Piacenti recognized. And he added, “cases of ‘gang’ or ‘street’ rape, perhaps because they are different, are what create strong feelings of fear and insecurity that institutional conflict, he warned, between the government and the opposition certainly does not diminish, rather it generates confusion amongst public opinion.” And the suggestions for ‘surgical or chemical castration’? “It is important to use these terms carefully and to distinguish between criminal acts perpetrated by repeat offenders who might need special medication as happens in countries in northern Europe, and violent acts carried out by troubled, marginalized figures, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Piacenti concluded, for whom it seems to me that a medical operation would be excessive: but these issues should be left to the experts and not improvised.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
‘Taxes Still Too High in Sweden’
Sweden’s government needs to continue lowering taxes if the country is to get to grips with excessive public spending and an eroding work ethic, argues Nima Sanandaji.
The Swedish government has implemented ambitious tax reforms. However, the average taxpayer still pays three out of five earned kronor in taxes. And the public is still unaware of the extent of taxation.
In a survey conducted a few years ago it was shown that the majority of Swedes vastly underestimate the amount of taxes they pay. Half of those questioned for the survey believed that they paid 36 percent or less in taxes. Many do not know that the so-called hidden taxes are approximately as high as the visible taxes.
In Denmark political parties to the left and the right have agreed on implementing a tax reform that means the highest marginal rate of tax on labour will be reduced to below 50 percent next year. The same tax rate is 57 percent in Sweden. If hidden taxes are also included, the total highest marginal tax rate on labour is a full 74 percent in Sweden.
But won’t tax cuts undermine the so-called Swedish model? It is important to remember that Sweden was a country with even distribution of income, relatively few social problems — such as crime — and high life expectancy back in 1950. At that time Sweden had a lower tax rate than the United States. Low taxes and ample opportunities for entrepreneurial activity brought about Sweden’s high standard of living.
It was when politics radicalized during the 1960s and onwards that Swedish taxes began to rise to the high levels we know today. When taxes reach a high enough level they tend to be spent on things other than crime reduction, qualitative health care and education. It is no coincidence that Sweden has several hundred public agencies that, among other things, are occupied with “supplying Swedish sailors with a meaningful cultural life”.
As taxes have risen, so has welfare dependency. In 1970, around 11 percent of the adult population of Sweden was living off various forms of public handouts rather than work. In the summer of 2006 this figure had doubled to 22-23 percent. It is of course important to have public safety nets, but the high dependency on handouts is draining public resources. This is why Sweden has higher taxes than other modern nations but cannot offer higher pensions.
In fact, a comparison with other industrialised countries shows that Swedish senior citizens receive an average level of pensions. The average pension income is 14,000 kronor ($1,500) per month in Sweden, compared to 18,500 kronor per month in Austria and 17,700 kronor per month in the Netherlands.
Another problem arising from high welfare dependency is that norms associated with work and responsibility have deteriorated in Sweden. It has today become socially acceptable for people to receive government sick leave payments despite being capable of working. And norms are deteriorating most among young people.
The number of Swedes on sick leave is astonishingly high in international comparisons. Swedes eat right, exercise and are amongst the healthiest people in the world. When we see people in their twenties going into early retirement it is part of a phenomenon whereby society attempts to hide true unemployment and many people don’t mind living off social benefits.
There are many reasons to cut Sweden’s taxes: to encourage entrepreneurship and work, to reduce welfare dependency and to create a system more focused on the core functions of the welfare state. The government has already reduced the tax burden, but the reforms must continue. The taxes should at least be cut to a level where the average income earner “only” pays 50 percent in taxes.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Betrayal of the Foster Parents: Social Workers Hid Teen’s ‘Sex Attacks’ From Carers… Then He Raped Their Son, Two
A foster couple took in a homeless teenager in the hope that he would be a ‘big brother’ to their two children.
But social workers failed to tell them that the 18-year-old had a history of alleged sex attacks on youngsters.
He went on to rape their two-year-old son and molest their daughter aged nine.
As the rapist, now 19, began an indefinite sentence last night, there were suspicions that the local authority might have used aspects of the Human Rights Act to prevent the couple from knowing about the teenager’s past.
Only last week it emerged that a couple who adopted a child with a high risk of HIV had not been told about the child’s potential condition to protect the rights of its natural mother.
MPs and children’s charities demanded an inquiry into the astonishing betrayal of the foster parents.
Cardiff Crown Court was told that the teenager:
- Faced a youth court for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 2008 while she was asleep.
- Was accused of exposing himself and touching another young boy sexually while living at a care hostel in 2005.
- Was forced out of a job in a bowling alley in 2007 after parents discovered he was trying to get young girls’ telephone numbers
- Faced allegations five years ago of ‘sexually inappropriate behaviour’ with a young boy.
The foster parents, from the Vale of Glamorgan, took in the teenager as an emergency case last year because he was homeless as part of a scheme called the Adult Placement Service.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Eric Hobsbawm, Useful Idiot of the Chattering Classes
The Marxist historian who’s crowing about the crash of capitalism and says Stalin was right to murder millions is demanding to see his MI5 files. Imagine how the KGB would have treated him! Eric Hobsbawm
The voice, though old and crackly, trembled with self-justification. ‘Globalisation, which is implicit in capitalism,’ it declared, ‘not only destroys the heritage and tradition but is incredibly unstable…’
Imagine the pomposity and satisfaction with which Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who lives in a large house in the fashionable North London suburb of Hampstead Heath, regurgitated his old argument to listeners of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme.
[…]
In recent times, starry-eyed admirers have been hanging on to his observations on a new topic: that ‘fundamentalist Islam isn’t a danger, if only because it can’t win any wars’. He has decided that fundamentalist bomb-throwers are ‘nothing’ compared to the IRA. Well, that is comforting.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders Now a Celebrity in US and Prime Minister in Poll
THE HAGUE, 03/03/09 — Controversial MP Geert Wilders has reacted with pleasure to a poll according to which his Party for Freedom (PVV) would be the Netherlands’ biggest party. “As far as I am concerned elections can be held tomorrow; then I will be the next premier.”
The PVV would according to prominent pollster Maurice de Hond win 27 seats in the 150-member Lower House if elections were held now. This is one more than the Christian democrats (CDA). This is the first time the PVV has emerged as the biggest party in a poll.
The PVV has risen in recent weeks thanks to apparent setbacks. First, the Amsterdam appeal court ruled that Wilders must be prosecuted for incitement to hatred and insulting of Muslims as a group. And subsequently, the UK refused him entry to the country.
In the US on the other hand, Wilders was greeted by neo-conservatives — as by a growing portion of the Dutch population — as a martyr for freedom of speech. The contrasts with Europe are great. A conservative philosopher said of his impact in the American media: “He is more than a hero. He is a celebrity”.
Wilders says his criticism of Islam is dealt with much less frenetically in America. “In the Netherlands, the elite consider that you may not speak as I do, but here (in the US) freedom is in the genes. (…) I notice that in this country, at least arguments are exchanged. The Netherlands and Europe could adopt this as an example.”
According to Wilders, the Pentagon shares his fears of a ‘Eurabia’. “I have spoken with Pentagon staff, and they fear for the stability of Europe if the influence of Islam grows further.”
Last week, the PVV leader showed Fitna, his short film against Islam, five times in the US, including in the Lyndon B. Johnson auditorium in the Capitol building at the invitation of Republican Senator Jon Kyl. “Can you imagine: in the Netherlands, you go to prison if you show the film, and here you are welcome in the parliament.” Fitna was also shown in the National Press Club.
Wilders predicted in the US that his PVV would one day become the biggest party in the Netherlands. According to De Hond, this would already happen now if there were elections, which did somewhat surprise Wilders. “Really? Are we the biggest? How happy I am about this! These are of course just polls, but it is an enormous sign of confidence from the Dutch voter. (…) As far as I am concerned, elections can be held tomorrow, then I am the next premier.”
After PVV and CDA, Labour (PvdA) comes third in De Hond’s new poll with 21 seats. Next come centre-left D66 with 19, the Socialist Party (SP) with 18 and the conservatives (VVD) with 17. Rita Verdonk’s Proud of the Netherlands (TON) wins only two seats. The government parties CDA, PvdA and small Christian party ChristenUnie together achieve only 52 seats, the lowest score since the government took office.
De Hond also polled how the supporters of Wilders are composed according to media preferences. Among readers of De Telegraaf newspaper, 37 percent would vote for him, while readers of NRC Handelsblad are least inclined to do so (7 percent). Among public broadcasters, TROS has the most members in the Wilders camp (42 percent) and VARA (7 percent) and EO (5 percent) the least. VARA incidentally is the broadcaster that makes the most opinion programmes of all broadcasters.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnian Serbs Sue UN, Holland Over Srebrenica
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnian Serbs have filed a lawsuit at The Hague claiming the United Nations and the Netherlands failed to protect them in the area around Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 war, an association said Monday.
The Srebrenica Historical Project and six Bosnian Serb families filed the lawsuit at The Hague District Court last week, the association’s director Stefan Karganovic told The Associated Press.
Dutch U.N. peacekeepers were deployed to guard the east Bosnian town of Srebrenica during the war. The lawsuit argues that the peacekeepers failed to prevent Muslim Bosniaks from attacking Serb villages around Srebrenica, Karganovic said.
Bosnian Serbs kept the eastern town of Srebrenica under siege for most of the war, shelling the eastern town and preventing food convoys from entering. In return, Bosniaks conducted overnight raids of Serb villages in search for food. Serbs says those raids claimed around 3,500 Serb lives.
Eventually, Serb forces stormed Srebrenica in 1995 and slaughtered around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Europe’s worst civilian massacre since World War II.
Bosniak survivors of the Srebrenica massacre have also filed a civil suit at The Hague District Court, seeking compensation from the U.N. and the Dutch state. The court began hearing the case in June 2008. Victims’ lawyers cited a figure of $4 billion as a starting point for compensation negotiations.
The Serbs filed their lawsuit at the same court, saying the same Dutch U.N. troops failed to prevent the attacks on the Serb villages around Srebrenica.
“All we want to achieve is that the Serb victims from around Srebrenica get the same attention as the Muslim victims in Srebrenica,” Karganovic said
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Organ Harvesting: More Than One Organ Snatching Location?
BELGRADE — In Albania, in addition to the “yellow house”, there could be at least three more similar locations.
They are suspected to be sites where vital organs were taken from kidnapped Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians.
A B92 TV investigative team traveled to Albania on the basis of new evidence and information revealing that in, in addition to the “yellow house” described in former Hague Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s book, there were at least three similar locations.
Hundreds of Kosovo’s Serbs went missing during and after the 1999 war in the province. The Serbian War Crimes Prosecution is investigating claims that Kosovo Albanian KLA had taken them to northern Albania in order to remove their vital organs, later sold in the black market.
A broadcast based on the team’s investigation airs tonight, containing exclusive footage taken in Albania and interviews with doctors from the transplant division at Mother Theresa University Hospital in Tirana, where 75 patients were transferred in 1999 due to failed kidneys.
Looking at Del Ponte’s claims, the investigative team attempted to verify information from the War Crimes Prosecution that just as NATO was attacking Serbia several kidney transplants were conducted for Kosovo patients, with organs taken out of the kidnapped Serbs.
The team spoke with doctors from the Skopje University Hospital in Macedonia, where 70 patients were transferred from Kosovo during the same period.
Officials in Skopje say transplants did not take place at that time.
Nevertheless, in contrast to his Albanian colleagues, a Skopje nephrologists who spoke with the team said he believes Del Ponte’s claims.
The Serbian prosecution is also investigating whether the Hague Tribunal had destroyed material evidence found in the Albanian town of Burrel during a probe conducted in 2004.
In an exclusive interview, one of UNMIK’s investigators in Burrel said he was “taken aback” by such information.
The investigator will discuss the importance of this evidence, found in 2004 in the “yellow house”.
In addition to exclusive interviews and footage from Albania, the show contains information about 11 people suspected of having been murdered in the vicinity of the “yellow house” in central Albania after being kidnapped.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia-Tunisia: Trade Cooperation to be Improved
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 2 — Politicians and business people from Serbia and Tunisia stated in the Serbian Chamber of Commerce that economic cooperation and trade must be increased between the two countries, reports BETA news agency. Tunisian Secretary for Foreign Trade Sokri Mamogli said at a business forum that trade between Serbia and Tunisia is not developed enough and that it is not on the same par as the political relations between the two countries. “Experience has shown that cooperation needs to begin with trade, which helps people get to know each other, after which investments ensue,” he said. Mamogli said that Tunisia has a free trade agreement with the European Union and all Arab countries, adding that exports from Tunisia last year reached USD22 million. He told journalists that currently, there are no talks of a free trade agreement with Serbia, but that Tunisia is working on improving trade. Tunisia has about 10 million residents and a gross domestic product of about USD 40 million per year, which is roughly USD 4,000 per resident, Mamogli said. Serbia imported products worth USD 6.6 million from Tunisia last year and exported USD 4.2 million, according to the Serbian Chamber of Commerce.(ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia-Spain: Constitutional Courts Agree on Cooperation
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, MARCH 2 — A delegation of the Constitutional Court of Spain, headed by Constitutional Court President Maria Emilia Casas Baamonde, and judges of Serbia’s Constitutional Court reached an agreement on regular cooperation, reports Tanjug news agency. A special agreement will be signed in this area, President of the Serbian Constitutional Court Bosa Nenadic told Tanjug news agency, adding that this is the first visit by her colleagues from Spain. According to Nenadic, they discussed the status of constitutional courts of the two countries, their competencies and outstanding issues they are faced with, and work experience on constitutional appeals was exchanged. “We agreed to cooperate regularly on all issues regarding protection of constitutionality and legality and human rights and freedoms,’ said Nenadic. Serbian President Boris Tadic also received the visitors from Spain. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Court Clears Former President of War Crimes
The Hague, 26 Feb. (AKI) — The United Nations war crimes crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Thursday acquitted former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic of crimes against humanity and other war crimes charges. The court ordered Milutinovic’s release from prison after five years of detention at The Hague.
However, the court found five former top Serbian officials guilty of some or all of the charges they faced in relation to Serbia’s 1998-1999 war in Kosovo against ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
Former Yugoslav vice-premier Nikola Sainovic, former Yugoslav army chief of staff, defence minister Dragoljub Ojdanic and three generals were sentenced to a total of 96 years in jail. The sentences ranged from 15 to 22 years.
Milutinovic, Sainovic, Ojdanic and fellow generals Nebojsa Pavkovic, Sreten Lukic and Vladimir Lazarevic were charged with “joint criminal undertaking: aimed at expelling majority ethnic Albanians from Kosovo” and at “changing the ethnic balance” and “establishing lasting Serbian control” over the province, which declared independence a year ago.
The charges included murder, persecution, forced resettlement, deportations and destruction of property allegedly committed by Serbian forces.
Up to 800,000 ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo amid the Serb ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign and NATO bombing in 1999, which drove out Serbian forces.
All six defendants, some of whom have spent up to seven years in detention at The Hague pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying they had only defended their country from ethnic Albanian insurgents.
Explaining the verdict, Ian Bonomy, who chaired the panel of judges, said the court could not prove beyond reasonable doubt Milutinovic’s guilt, because he did not have direct control over Serbian forces in Kosovo where they were under control of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic was charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide over alleged atrocities in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia during the 1990s Balkan wars. He died in his jail cell at The Hague in March 2006, just months before he was due to be sentenced.
In the biggest Hague trial since Milosevic’s death, the prosecutors presented 112 witnesses against Milutinovic and others, while the defence presented 120 witnesses.
In closing statements, the defence requested the acquittal of all six suspects, while prosecutors demanded sentences ranging from twenty years to life.
Bonomy said Sainovic had been Milosevic’s key man in Kosovo, who planned, directed and controlled operations there. He was sentenced to 22 years.
Former commander of Serbian military forces in Kosovo, Pavkovic, and Serb police commander, Lukic, each received terms of 22 years. Ojdanic, and Lazarevic, who commanded army units in western Kosovo, were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Bonomy said the degree of responsibility of the defendants varied, depending on their position, authority and ability to prevent the crimes that had occurred.
Prosecution witnesses testified that Serb forces shelled towns and villages during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, and murdered civilians and raped women as they were driven from their homes.
Explaining Milutinovic’s acquittal and lesser sentences for Ojdanic and Lazarevic, Bonomy said they did not participate knowingly in the “joint criminal undertaking” and had been powerless to influence events in Kosovo.
Although Milutinovic was indicted during the conflict, he served out his full five-year term as president until the end of 2002. The court found that the 66-year-old, who led Serbia from December 1997 to December 2002, had no direct control over the Yugoslav army.
It was only after he lost his immunity as president that he surrendered.
The Hague tribunal (photo) has indicted nine of the most senior Serb and Yugoslav officials for crimes alleged to have been carried out in Kosovo by Serb forces in 1999.
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Fishery: Mazara Del Vallo on a Mission in Lebanon
(ANSAmed) — MAZARA DEL VALLO (TRAPANI), FEBRUARY 19 — The president of the Pesca-Cosvap production district of Mazara del Vallo, Giovanni Tumbiolo, has participated in an exploratory mission in Lebanon organised by Sudgest Aid (a consortium of companies of the Link Campus University and of Formez). The mission took place on February 16-17 in the presence of a delegation of UN officials, and is part of a coordinated development programme of UN agency UNDP. The initiative aims to bring in a cooperation project together with the Palestinian-Lebanese fishing associations in the area of Al Bared, a refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The delegation has had several meetings in Beirut and Tripoli, thanks to the support of Italian ambassador to Lebanon Gabriele Checchia. President Tumbiolo delivered a letter from the president of the Sicily Region, Raffaele Lombardo, to Lebanese Agriculture Minister Elias Skaff, with an invitation to the next regional conference on fishery on March 28-29 in Sciacca (Agrigento). (ANSAmed).
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Italy-Libya: 5-Bln-Dollar Deal to Leave the Past Behind
(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 2 — Tomorrow an event to go down in history books will occur in Sirte: the Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation Treaty, which puts an end to the dispute over Italy’s past as colonial power in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, and paves the way for cooperation in the economic sector — especially in energy and infrastructure — as well as measures to stop illegal immigration, will finally become official. The agreement, signed on August 30 2008 in Bengasi, was approved by the Italian parliament at the beginning of February and will also be approved by the Libyan Congress tomorrow before a ceremony in Sirte in which the two countries’ leaders — premier Silvio Berlusconi and Colonel Gaddafi — will exchange ratifications. Italy will be putting up the funds for infrastructure projects on Libyan soil for a total of 5 billion dollars (about 4 billion euros) over a time span of 20 years. The works, which are to be decided on by a joint committee, will be entrusted to Italian enterprises. HIGHER TAXES (IRES) FOR ENI, AGREEMENT FINANCER — Eni, as main operator in the sector of the research and cultivation of liquid and gas hydrocarbons, will have to pay additional taxes on company revenue (IRES), amounting to 4% of before tax profits. This additional amount will be applied to the period from December 31 2008 to December 31 2028, thereby covering the twenty-year period of the 5-billion-dollar reimbursement. IMMIGRATION, ITALIAN SURVEILLANCE ALONG LIBYAN GROUND BORDERS — There will be 5 billion dollars set aside for investment in exchange for a renewed Libyan pledge to collaborate in the fight against terrorism, organised crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration — all goals set down in the 200 agreement, in force since December 22 2002. In order to fight illegal immigration, there is to be a surveillance system set up by Italy along Libyan ground borders. Italy will be footing half the bill for the operation, and the European Union the other half. ITALY TO BUILD 200 HOUSES AND HAND OVER ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS — Italy has pledged to carry out a number of special initiatives, including the construction of 200 homes, the granting of 100 scholarships for the undergraduate and postgraduate studies of Libyan students, care of mine victims in Libya at Italian healthcare facilities, the reinstatement of war pensions to Libyans with a right to them, and the restitution of manuscripts and archaeological finds transferred to Italy in colonial times. 150 MLN TO ITALIAN EXILES AND VISAS TO RETURN TO LIBYA — The Italians expelled from Libya in 1971 — when Colonel Gaddafi took power from King Idriss with a coup d’etat — will be able to go back with a tourist visa, or even one for work or other reasons. Those expelled from Libya will be paid an overall 150 million, 50 million per year from 2009 to 2011. JOINT MILITARY MANOEUVRES AND DEFENCE MINISTRY AGREEMENTS — Regulations to be brought in at a later date will decide on the timeline and ways in which joint manoeuvres will be carried out, as well as the exchange of experts and technicians. Collaboration in this sector also concerns military industries. In addition, Italy and Libya have pledged to work together for the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and disarmament. (ANSAmed).
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Algeria: RSF Concerned Over Sentencing of Journalists
(ANSAmed)- ALGIERS, FEBRUARY 19 — Reporter Sans Frontieres (RSF) have expressed their concerns over the recent sentencing to a year in prison of an Algerian journalist, Carrefour d’Algerie correspondent Layadi El Amine Yahia, on charges of libel. “For many years,” reads the statement released by RSF, “Algerian journalists have had to live with the permanent threat of imprisonment. Too often authorities multiply judicial proceedings in order to govern in a general climate of intimidation and self-censorship. They have not understood that jail is not an appropriate response to the crime of libel.” On February 11 the Mascara Court sentenced Layadi El Amine Yahia in absentia. The journalist allegedly libeled the city’s director of commerce in an article in which she spoke out against a number of cases of corruption. Initially acquitted, Layadi was then sentenced in the appeal but in a trial which she did not attend, since, as pointed out by RSF, she had not received a summons to appear. Also in Mascara, another trial is being held against a journalist of El Watan, charged with libelling an imam of a mosque in the area. Algeria is in 121st place out of a total of 173 countries in the world ranking of freedom of expression carried out every year by RSF. (ANSAmed).
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Egypt: Chinese Grant for Demining, Delevoping N. West Coast
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, FEBRUARY 17 — Egypt received the first Chinese grant of landmines detection and removal apparatus along with five Chinese experts to train Egyptian staff on using the equipment. The Chinese grant is meant to buttress the Egyptian national plan for removing mines and developing the northwestern coast and its hinterland which could accommodate up to 1.5 million people by 2022. The hinterland, which covers 22 percent of Egypt’s area, abounds with oil, natural gas and water resources. The Chinese assistance is also part of an agreement signed between the two countries in December 2008 on promoting bilateral cooperation. The International Cooperation Ministry seeks through enhancing ties with Egypt’s partners to secure needed demining equipment for the 60 billion EGP development projects enacted by the cabinet in 2005 to see the light of day. (ANSAmed)
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Egypt: Khan El Khalili the Day After the Attack in Cairo
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO — There are very few people in the lanes of Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili today, the most famous souk of the Middle East, and most of those few are undercover police. This is the scene in front of the Al Hussein mosque and the market streets the day after the attack in which a 17-year-old French girl, who had been part of a group of students on a field trip, was killed and other 14 were injured. The news of 24 injured has been confirmed, including four Egyptians, a German and three Saudi citizens. The bomb, stuffed with nails and other metallic objects, most likely exploded after being left under a stone bench in front of a much-frequented and crowed cafe’, and must have been very powerful. “There is nothing left where the bench once was, it’s just an empty space,” commented Jacques Goditiabois, a Belgian journalist on the scene, “and there are very few tourists around. In half an hour I have not seen more than about a dozen.” “We hesitated at length to come to the scene,” said an elderly couple on holiday. “Then we thought that it was very unlikely that there would be two attacks in the same place, one after the other, and so we decided to take the risk.” There has been no official report released yet by the authorities, who are questioning hundreds as witnesses, and the police are still holding two women and a man who were arrested on the scene immediately after the attack. “They are also witnesses,” said a security source, “we have no evidence against them, even though it seems they were likely to have been close to those who carried out the attack.” Egyptian authorities continue to express their utter condemnation of the incident — with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Sayyed Mohamed Tantaui, having spoken of the matter with the President of the Italian deputies Chambers, Gianfranco Fini, who is in Cairo on a visit — as do foreign authorities. Especially Saudi Arabia, which counts three of its citizens among the victims, and Syria and Iran. Teheran has said that “Iran condemns the act of terrorism”, calling it “a suspicious act, which only serves the interests of the Zionist regime.” (ANSAmed).
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Egypt: Cairo Bombs; Al Azhar, Not Muslim Acts
(ANSAmed) — ROME, FEBRUARY 23 — “These explosions are not a widespread phenomenon, and they are condemned by the entire Islamic world, since the people who carry out these kind of attacks cannot consider themselves true Muslims.” These were the words of the president of the Al Azhar University in Cairo, the highest theological authority for Sunni Islam, Ahmad Al Tayyeb, commenting on yesterday’s attacks in the Egyptian capital. Al Tayyeb was speaking at the end of a conference on churches in the Middle East, organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio. “In Egypt,” the president went on, “Muslims have no mentality of violence, and so you can only talk about an ‘Islamic jihad’ when there is a war and there are identified enemies.” (ANSAmed).
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Egypt: Fini, Terrorism Hits Those Who Want Peace
(AGI) — Cairo, 23 Feb. — “Terrorism hits those who want peace and it’s no coincidence that it has hit Egypt again” said Speaker of the House Gianfranco Fini during his visit to Cairo, regarding the bomb attack in Cairo. After his meeting with the president of the Egyptian parliament, Ahmed Fathi Sorour, Fini said: “Egypt is an important country for peace in the Middle East, it is trying to come to an agreement between Palestinian factions. In March there will be a conference in Sharm on the reconstruction of Gaza and a future without terrorism. The international community greatly appreciates these efforts”.
According to Fini “the battle against terrorism is won by creating wellbeing for the people and through politics of mutual respect and reason. The road to peace depends also from Israel. You can wage war on your own, but it always takes two to have peace”. Regarding his Egyptian interlocutors who called Israel’s acts in the recent Gaza war “criminal”, Fini said: “Anyone must respond for its own acts”. He invited people to wait “before assuming that the new Israeli government will give less attention to peace efforts.”
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Libya, Children and the Elderly, “All Inclusive” Care
(by Fausto Gasparroni) (ANSAmed) — MISURATA (LIBYA), FEBRUARY 23 — To provide total care for those with nothing, to care for those most in need and not make them feel like second rate citizens, to be both father and mother for children without parents; in Gaddafi’s Libya the State, through its social services network, is particularly generous to the most defenceless, whether they’re orphans, old people, or children on their own. The system is a real feather in the cap for Jamahiriya, whose health care facilities shower attention on the recipients, respect the individual, and have the funds needed to face every personal need. “Here it’s the government that thinks about those that don’t have any family, like children that have become orphans, or poor kids and the old people”, said Fathia El-Darrath, director general of social security agency for the Misurata district. In Misurata, 210 kilometres east of the capital, the third largest city in Libya after Tripoli and Bengasi with close to half a million inhabitants, the ‘Children’s Homé is an important facility and one of the country’s model orphanages. “The government looks out for the children from the day they’re born, during infancy and adolescence until the day they marry”, explains El-Darrath. Apart from housing and feeding, health care, clothing, support for studying, the government also furnishes each one with a personal allowance of 130 dinars a month that no one else can touch; the money is deposited in the bank and only the young person can use it as he thinks best”. Currently there are 158 children housed in the Misurata facility (the city where Gaddafi finished his higher education) ranging in age from a few days to twelve years old. Some of the children have been abandoned, others have lost their parents in car accidents. The children live in cosy surroundings, sparkling clean rooms boast teddy bears and stuffed animals, study areas and recreation areas that even include Playstations. There is no school in the orphanage, the children go to the city schools, “with all the other children, so they can integrate better into society”. Each newborn, and there is one just three days old, is cared for by a nurse who concentrates exclusively on that baby. The babies are at the centre of attention. “When the girls arrive here every day”, underlined El-Darrath , “we take their cell phones, so they don’t have distractions and only think about the baby”. There is also the House of the Elderly in Misurata, located in the countryside nestled in an olive grove, a structure that not a few Italian rest homes would envy. The old people pass their days in dignified conditions. Additionally, the structure, directed by Jamal, Fathia’s husband, also takes care of people with handicaps, the deaf, and people will muscular disabilities. “These people also receive a stipend of from 130 to 300 dinars a month, explained the head of the Misurata social welfare agency, “free housing or a contribution for it, and funding for their education. The elderly get an additional amount if they live at home. Health care of course is free, both at home and in the hospital”. The State also provides for the needs of those who are divorced. Posters of the “Leader of the Revolution” are on display everywhere in the structures but among the occupants there is a palpable sense of gratitude. However, among the managers, there is some worry about what will remain of the social security system if the “distribution of the oil riches” scheme goes ahead which includes the dismantling of part of the State administration. “We still don’t know whether or not the money will be there any more”, said El-Darrath, “because the proposal has been under discussion these days in the local people’s councils and we don’t know what will happen”. (ANSAmed).
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Libya: Gaddafi, Teleconferencing to Communicate With Youth
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, FEBRUARY 27 — Colonel Gaddafi turns ever more technological and from his tent he has chosen videoconferences with Universities all over the world as a safe and fast tool to reach out to young people and spread his message. On January 24 he held a videoconference with the Georgetown University and the day before yesterday one with the University of Niamey. “It’s up to you, University teachers and students, to champion a stronger Africa and its development”: this was the latest media appeal, launched on February 25, by the man who is now described every day by JANA as “the Leader of the Revolution and the Leader of African Unity, to those taking part in an international seminar underway at the “Abdu MùMani” University of Niamey, Niger, on “Africa: present and future prospects”. In his long speech, the Leader repeatedly called on the intellectual class, researchers and students to take upon themselves the task of overcoming the conflicts that “have split Africa into 53 States” and also referred to those “responsible” for the damages suffered by the continent: Europeans, Americans and Israelis. On January 24 Muammar Gaddafi addressed students of the Georgetown University of Washington in a videoconfefence from Tripoli and told them “America today is a diffrent America” hailing the election of Barack Obama and going as far as suggesting to start a “dialogue” with Osama Bin Laden. (ANSAmed).
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Tourism: Tunisia Pins Hopes on ‘Star Wars’ Old Set
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, FEBRUARY 17 — At Ong El Jemel, a forgotten post lost among the rocks and sand of the Tunisian Sahara, has over recent years become a hot destination for thousands of SUV-bourne tourists. The reason for stirring up all that sand? It is the place where the set was constructed for the legendary film ‘Star Wars’. And now officials of the governorate of Tozeur have decided to carry out a series of works in the area aimed both at preserving the balance of the local Saharan ecosystem which has been threatened by the sudden influx of so many vehicles, especially during the high season (October-March), but also to improve the spaces dedicated to traditional trading activities. And improvements have also been planned for the tracks connecting Ong El Jemel with Nefta and on to Tozeur, respectively 14 and 27 kilometres away. But another location at the gateway to the Sahara Desert is still popular for its ‘Star Wars’ associations: this is Matmata, a village of Barber origins, 600 metres up on a rocky hillside. It was here that director George Lucas built his set for most of the shooting of the fourth episode, and where Luke Skywalker’s home was located. And more than a few tourists (Matmata is easily accessed via a metalled road) soon realise why the director’s choice fell on this village of cave-dwellers. The traditional habitations are dug out of the rock itself, into the hillside, facing courtyards open to the sky above and dug around seven metres deep. This type of construction has the function, apart from gathering the increasingly rare rainfall, of regulating the temperatures in the burrow constructions, as local temperatures often soar to 45 degrees. But to get back to ‘Star Wars’, the production team bought several of these constructions for its uses (accommodation for actors and technicians, storage space) as well as for shooting locations. The whole structure has today been transformed into a single hotel, where you really do get the feeling that yoùre living in a science-fiction film. (ANSAmed).
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EU: Commission to Announce 436 Mln Euros in Gaza Aid
Brussels, 27 Feb. (AKI) — The European Commission is to announce 436 million euros in aid for the Palestinian people at a conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday. The EU is the largest donor to the Palestinians and the EU executive announced the donation on Friday.
The ‘Conference in support of the Palestinian economy for the Reconstruction of Gaza’ will be co-chaired by Egypt and Norway and representatives of all international donors to the Palestinians will attend it, the European Commission said.
Other members of the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators: United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg will also attend the donor meeting.
EU funds earmarked for the Palestinians in 2009 will be spent on humanitarian aid and the rapid reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, which was devastated by Israel’s three-week military offensive which ended on 18 January.
The commission says rubble and and unexploded ordinances urgently need to be removed from the coastal strip, while further assistance is needed for children left traumatised by the conflict.
More than 1,330 Palestinans died and 5,400 others were injured during the offensive, Operation Cast Lead.
The commission said the EU will also support a “cash for work” scheme, as well as small repairs of shelters that were damaged during the military attack.
It will also continue supporting the Palestinian Authority in implementing overall Palestinian Reform and Development Plan as well as programmes carried out by the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency.
“Our priority today is to adequately respond to the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza,” said EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
“By offering a substantial aid package we confirm our generosity and commitment towards the Palestinians.”
She stressed that the ending of Israel’s crippling blockade of the aid-dependent Gaza Strip was a major priority.
“In the aftermath of the crisis, a clear priority remains the immediate and unconditional reopening of all Gaza crossings on a regular and predictable basis, for the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods as well as people,”Ferrero-Waldner stated.
She said she would urge donors at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference to use the EU’s PEGASE financial mechanism to transfer aid rapidly to Palestinians in Gaza.
PEGASE is currently used to provide fuel for electricity generation, for the payment of social allowances to 24,000 vulnerable families and the salaries of over 28,000 civil servants and pensioners.
The mechanism has enabled aid worth 421 million euros from the EU and 130 million euros from other donors to reach the Palestinians since it was set up in January 2007.
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Gaza: Sharm Summit: 900 Mln USD in U.S. Aid, Only 300 to Gaza
(ANSAmed) — SHARM EL-SHEIKH — US State Department spokesman Robert Wood has said that of the 900 million dollars the United States pledged in aid to Palestinians — to be announced by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Donors Conference in Sharm El-Sheik — just 300 will be earmarked for the Gaza Strip, with the rest going into the hands of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). “We will be supporting the Palestinian National Authority and reconstruction in Gaza with a total of 900 million dollars at the Donors Conference,” reiterated Wood, who then went on to say that out of this figure 300 would be going towards meeting “urgent humanitarian needs” in the Gaza Strip under Hamas control by way of the UN and NGOs. An additional 200 will be donated to help out PNA finances under President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who has announced a shortfall of 1.5 billion dollars for the 2009 budget. The remaining 400 million dollars will then go towards bolstering the PNA’s economic programme in the West Bank, according to the US State department spokesman. The US decision has come after the PNA and Israel asked that aid not be given directly to Hamas. The Palestinian National Authority believes that it alone should receive all aid, and is supported in the matter by Israel, which urged a show of “caution” so as to prevent the donated funds from strengthening Hamas. The latter, on the other hand, has asked that Mahmoud Abbas and his PNA be excluded from the process since, in its words, it “does not represent the Palestinian populace”. (ANSAmed)
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Gaza: Sharm Summit; 4.5-5 Bln Dollars From Donors
(ANSAmed) — SHARM EL SHEIKH (EGYPT), MARCH 2 — The amount of money already promised by participants at today’s Donors Conference for the reconstruction of Gaza has reached 4.5 billion dollars. The figure could rise even further, to 5.2 billion, explained Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, thanks to further contributions which have not yet been confirmed, which we heard about during the Donors Conference for Gaza. The budget for reconstruction in the Gaza Strip and the relaunch of the economy is much higher than what Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Salam Fayyad asked for: he was hoping for 2.8 billion in aid, 1.3 to rebuild the Strip in 2009-2010 and 1.5 billion to make up the PNA’s budget deficit. Here are some of the amounts promised by the principal donors: — USA: US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton announced aid of 900 million dollars, conditional on the peace process and an answer from the Palestinians on the conditions set by the ‘Quartet’ (UN, EU, USA and Russia): renouncing violence, recognition of the State of Israel, respect for previous agreements with Israel. Of the 900 million announced, 300 will go towards “urgent humanitarian needs” in the Gaza Strip, 200 to the PNA’s budget and 400 to economic programmes in the West Bank. EUROPEAN COMMISSION: The European Commission has committed to giving 554 million dollars in 2009 (436 million euros). European Commissioner for External Affairs, Benita Ferrero Waldner made the announcement, pointing out that the European Commission’s commitment “has as a priority an appropriate response to the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza. But the crucial problem not connected to the funds and access, is the reopening of the crossings”. ITALY: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced to the Sharm el Sheikh conference that Italy’s contribution will be 100 million dollars, with around 25 million per year for four years (2008-2011). He said that one of the Italian Presidency of the G8’s priorities is a ‘Marshal Plan’ to revive the Palestinian economy, in particular the relaunch of tourism in the Holy Land. FRANCE AND GB: The two countries announced aid of 31.5 and 45 million dollars respectively. ARAB COUNTRIES: Saudi Arabia has promised one billion dollars. Qatar 260 million, Algeria 200 million and a further 100 million from a charitable foundation in Qatar. OTHER COUNTRIES: Morocco and South Korea will each donate 16 million dollars, Australia 12.9 million, and Ireland 2.6 million dollars. Russia also announced general food and medical aid, 50 transport vehicles and two civil helicopters for the Palestinian Authority. (ANSAmed).
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Hamas-Fatah Agree on Eve of Donors’ Conference
Palestinian factions agree to process that should lead to a national unity government. Thus aid for Gaza reconstruction should start flowing in. Israeli daily Haaretz writes that recent war benefited Hamas.
Cairo (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Hamas and Fatah as well as smaller Palestinian factions have agreed to form five committees to address security issues and the formation of an election commission. This should lead to the formation of a national unity government (negotiators pictured). The committees are set to begin work 10 March and complete their work at the end of the month.
As a first sign of reconciliation, on the eve of the talks both sides have agreed to free their respective prisoners.
In November of last year Egypt had originally tried to promote intra-Palestinian reconciliation but failed when Hamas withdrew at the last minute, accusing Fatah of arresting its members in the West Bank.
The breakthrough came ahead of an international donor conference in Egypt that hopes to raise money for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s 22-day war on the territory.
Western countries are among the donors but they have resisted helping Hamas, a movement deemed terrorist by the United States and Europe.
Hamas had however benefited from the war with Israel, this according to opinion polls in the territories reported by Israeli daily Haaretz. A probable exchange of abducted Israeli solider Gilad Shalit for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners should further boost its prestige.
In the Israeli army’s current review of its performance during the war, an encouraging picture is emerging in terms of its professionalism, control over units, aerial assistance to ground forces, quality of intelligence and logistics compared to war against Hizbollah.
However, at the diplomatic level the major damage Cast Lead did was in legitimising Hamas as the ruler of the Gaza Strip.
The paper notes that on the eve of a visit by the new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instead of “coming to talk to Israel about the Iranian threat,” she “will focus on the problems of the Palestinians in Gaza. That might be the greatest damage of all.”
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Hillary: U.S. Funds Won’t Reach Hamas
But aid slated for agency that openly employs terrorist group
ERUSALEM — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that a $900 million U.S. aid package for the Palestinians was meant to foster regional peace and would not fall into the hands of the Hamas terrorist organization.
But the aid is slated to be received both by a U.N. agency that openly employs Hamas as well as by the Palestinian Authority, which is in talks to create a unity government with Hamas.
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Israel Has Already Forfeited Jerusalem
Jews barred as U.S. helps Arabs fortify their presence in holy city
JERUSALEM — Sections of Jerusalem have essentially been forfeited on the ground to the Palestinian Authority, while Jews, including local landowners, are barred from entering parts of Israel’s capital, a WND investigation has found.
The probe further determined the U.S. has been aiding the Palestinians in developing infrastructure in Jerusalem.
Also, it has emerged, the Israeli government has failed to stop Arabs from illegally building thousands of housing projects on Jerusalem land purchased and owned by a U.S. Jewish group for the express purpose of Jewish settlement, culminating in an Arab majority in the neighborhoods.
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Israel: Labour Party Clashes With Barak, Split Possible
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, MARCH 2 — Last night’s meeting between premier-designate Benyamin Netanyahu (Likud) and Defence Minister Ehud Barak (Labour) has given rise to an air of foreboding in the upper levels of Israeli Labour party leaderships. At the end of the talks, the Labour leader announced that he would be meeting with Netanyahu again and — despite undergoing pressing questions by journalists — did not rule out his possible inclusion in the new Israeli government. “If Barak acts as defence minister in the Netanyahu government, the party may split in two,” warned Labour party secretary Eitan Cabel. Similar views were also expressed by some of the more leftist representatives of the Labour party. Barak has recently been the target of harsh criticism, after the party suffered a disappointment in the general elections and came in fourth for the first time in its history, behind Kadima, Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu. A few days ago, a meeting of the party’s upper echelons ended with a heated exchange between the Barak’s supporters and those of his predecessor Amir Peretz, who blame each other for the disastrous election results. (ANSAmed).
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Where’s the Next Ben Gurion?
Die Welt 14.02.2009
“Where’s the next Ben Gurion?” asks Israeli historian Benny Morris. The Israeli politicians of the first decades embodied the sort of Zionist ethos which you could never dream of seeing in today’s politicians. “Today’s bunch are made of a very different stuff: Olmert, Netanyahu and Barack spent years accumulating fortunes, aided of course by their contacts and years in office. (Livni is an exception here: she is known for her clean hands and modesty). But in general the wealthy self-serving politicians reflect the development and the character of Israeli society in the last two or three decades: The shift from the collective to individualism, from socialism to capitalism from the slimness of youth to the middle-aged spread. This seems to be the case for all national and nationalist-socialist revolutions, among which Zionism undoubtedly numbers (even if in certain countries — see Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe — the shift over generation is embodied in a single head of state.)”
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A “Fatwa” Against Yemeni Law Setting Minimum Age for Marriage
The norm sets the limit at the age of 17, but according to Islamic figures, this goes against Sharia, and therefore Parliament cannot legislate on the matter. Meanwhile, lawmakers have decided to delay by two years the political elections scheduled for April.
Sana’a (AsiaNews) — Some Yemeni religious figures have launched a “fatwa” against the law recently approved by Parliament that sets the minimum age for marriage at 17. The statement, signed by the rector of Al-Eman University, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, and by representatives of the party Islamic Islah, is aimed at eliminating the minimum age limit.
The question of the minimum age for marriage in Yemen was brought to the attention of world public opinion last April, following the case of Nojud Mohammed Ali, an 8-year-old girl who requested and obtained a divorce after being forced to marry a 30-year-old man.
News Yemen reports that the 17 signers of the “fatwa” claim that the law has no Islamic foundation and violates Sharia, the Islamic law, which the Constitution of the country affirms as the basis of all of its laws. “The marriage age,” says the assistant secretary general of the Islah party, Mohammad Assadi, “is an Islamic rule, and political parties cannot intervene in such affairs.”
But there are also some who are asking that the minimum age be raised to 18. One researcher on Islamic questions, AbdulAziz alAsali, also a member of Islah, maintains that girls need to be given time to complete high school, and that “at 18 years they are mentally and physically ready for marriage.”
For its part, the National Women’s Committee has asked Parliament not to respond to the lawmakers who are asking for the marriage age limit to be lowered to 12.
In any case, it is unlikely that the issue will be examined immediately. Yesterday, the Yemeni Parliament decided in practice to delay by two years the political elections scheduled for next April. Members of Parliament, in fact, approved a document initiating the procedures necessary to modify the articles of the Constitution establishing the duration of the parliamentary mandate. The decision was made to allow the introduction of the amendments necessary “for political and electoral development,” including the proportional system.
The decision was made following threats by the opposition to boycott the vote if the electoral law were not modified.
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International Churches Council in Jordan Declares Conspiracy Between the Vatican and Zionist State
Dr. Audeh Qawwas, Member of the Central Committee in the International Churches Council in Jordan, accused the Vatican for being directed by a Zionist Lobby, which succeeded in penetrating the highest Christian Authority.
The former Christian Member in the Jordanian Parliament said that the Pope is fully responsible regarding the political bargain between the Vatican and the Jews, concerning acquitting the Messenger’s murderers from blood of the Christ, after crucifying him (as mentioned in the Christianity). He pointed out that this is against the Christianity and the Bible.
Qawwas, Member of “The Messenger of God Unites Us” Campaign emphasized that international Zionism had penetrated into the decision making centers of the Vatican, with the result of establishing a group of the Zionist Christian. He did not know the reasons for this penetration. Qawwas rejected the idea which says that Jews are not guilty of crucifying the Christ, according to the Christianity belief.
He asked the Pope to cancel his visit to the Zionist State, because it is a Terrorist Entity which was responsible for killing the Christ and disregarding Palestine as a holy place for all Christian Groups. He encouraged the studying of the Talmud religion, and realizing its secrets, so as not to mistake this religion for the arrogance of the Zionists, and to discover the truth of considering Judaism as the religion of Ibrahim.
Regarding the final solution of Jerusalem, Qawwas said the Vatican has no right to interfere, as it is a Palestinian matter. Churches of Jerusalem are charged with cooperating with Muslims of the City. They are Islamic and Christian places; no one has the authority on them.
Qawwas declared these statements on FACT International Radio during the “Mukashafat” program, which is presented by Ziyad Al Ghuweri and Yousef Sulayman, as well as on the FACT website. A conference was held, convened by the FACT International Media Group that sponsors “The Messenger of God Unites Us” Campaign. The Israeli Television Channel 10 recently denigrated the Prophets of God, Muhammad Son of Abdullah, the Christ Son of Mary, accusing his pure Mother of being a teenager.
Dr. Qawwas blamed all Churches, Eastern and Western, for not doing their duties. He also criticised Presidents of these Churches, especially in the Middle East, where there are a lot of religious Christians.
He criticised the Christian World for not adopting procedures against the Zionist Channel that insulted the Christ and his pure Mother. There was only condemnation, which was issued by the Sacred Complex of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem. Patriarchs of Antioch (Orthodox and Catholic) and the Syrian met in Damascus and issued only a condemning statement. Presidents of the Churches in Homs sent a message to the Pope urging him to cancel his visit to the Zionist Entity.
Qawwas criticized the reaction against that insult. This is due to tough laws of the Church that do not grant Clergymen freedom. He expressed his concern about reacting to the coming events with only condemnation. He called for revolting against these fierce attacks, which targeted the Muslims and Christians.
Finally, he wondered, Could the Catholic Church or some of its Leaders be penetrated with faith that contradicts Christianity, meaning the Jewish Faith?
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Islam: GCC Criticises Israel for Offending Mohammed on TV
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, MARCH 2 — The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has harshly criticised offensive statements about Islamic prophet Mohammed made during a TV show broadcast on Israeli Channel 10. “These statements are a narrow-minded campaign launched by the Israeli state against Muslims,” said Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah, the Secretary of the GCC, pointing out that offensive remarks were also recently made regarding Christians. During a reality show, one of the protagonists offended Mohammed with remarks that were “offensive, and are part of a series of ferocious attacks perpetrated by Israeli television against the Muslim system of values and teachings”, confirmed the secretary of the GCC (the Council is made up of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Two weeks ago, Mary and Jesus were the target of comments in a satirical TV programme which provoked outrage from the Vatican and were followed by apologies from the TV station, and Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Navigation: Tuscany, Yacht Assistance Centre in UAE
(ANSAmed) — ABU DHABI, MARCH 2 — It is possible that in coming months the Region of Tuscany may present a plan to build an assistance centre and a post-sales boatyard in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, one of the areas in the world with the largest number of mega yachts. The plans were discussed by the president of the Region of Tuscany, Claudio Martini and the Counsellor for Productive Activities, Ambrogio Brenna, during a meeting with the UAE Economics Minister Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, during an official economic visit by the Tuscan authorities. Around 900 mega yachts are built worldwide each year, and around 450 of these are built in Italy: in turn around 60% of these are built in shipyards in Viareggio, Livorno and Massa Carrara. During the meeting at which the Italian Ambassador to Abu Dhabi, Paolo Dionisi, was also present, it became clear that the UAE were interested in forming economic relations with Tuscany, particularly in highly specialised industries such as nanotechnologies and their possible uses in medicine, creativity in small and medium sized businesses and in fashion. Martini and Brenna added that “they are interested in all the sectors in which Tuscany is at the forefront, with the exception of the wine sector”, including an assistance centre for extraction technologies as developed by many companies in the Nuovo Pignone network of inter-connected suppliers. “Martini added that “the Emirates may represent a great platform for trade in the entire gulf area, but also for India or Pakistan. The important thing is to be there and to make our presence felt.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Shiite Protest Over Video of Women in Medina
(ANSAmed) — ROME, FEBRUARY 25 — There has been a Shiite revolt in Saudi Arabia over footage which the Sunni religious police took of several Shiite women on a pilgrimage to Medina. Middle East Online reported the news today, quoting the accusation of an activist for Shiite human rights. According to Ibrahim Mugaiteeb of the Human Rights First Society, hundreds of people took part in two protest meetings yesterday evening in the city of Qatif in the eastern province. The cause of the protests was a violent clash between Shiite pilgrims and police on Monday in the holy city of Medina. A group of Shiites (the religious minority in the country) apparently exploded in anger over the fact that Sunni religious police had videoed several female Shiite pilgrims last week. Nine people were arrested during clashes at the Al-Baqi cemetery, next to the mosque of the Prophet, but there are no casualties, said the Ministry for the Interior. According to the Shiite activist, few Saudi Muslims of any persuasion would accept women being photographed or filmed without permission. His organisation has asked the government to launch an enquiry into the clashes in Medina and to find those responsible. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Trade: Tax Exemption for Turkish Trucks Entering Syria
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 18 — Syria will not take taxes from Turkish vehicles carrying goods, Turkey’s State Minister, Kursad Tuzmen, said. Tax exemption of Turkish vehicles carrying goods to Syria is the first positive outcome of Tuzmen’s visit to Syria. “This will reduce the negative effect of the global economic crisis on trade”, Tuzmen said during his meeting with Syrian Minister of Finance al-Husayn, adding that “this tax exemption would mean 25-30% reduction in transportation costs which was equal to about $250”. Tuzmen said vehicles carrying transit goods should also be tax-exempt, which would contribute to Turkey’s transportation to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. The current trade volume between Turkey and Syria stands at $1.7 billion. Since the beginning of the global financial crisis, Turkish exports to Syria increased by 50%, as Anatolia agency reports. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Number of Turkish Workers Going Abroad Down
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 16 — The number of Turkish workers sent abroad by Turkey’s Employment Agency (ISKUR) went down by 23.4% in 2008 when compared to the previous year and was recorded as 57,652. The number of Turkish workers sent abroad in January went down by 66.8% when compared to the same month last year and was recorded as 2,775. In 2008, the majority of Turkish workers went to Russia, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Since 1961, the number of Turkish workers going abroad for work is more than 2,200,000. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Weekly: Geert Wilders on Islam: Selections
FASCHISM [sic] and RACISM IN THE NETHERLANDS SELECTIONS:
According to a recent opinion poll, if the Dutch parliamentary elections were held today, the Freedom Party (PVV) headed by right-wing racist leader Geert Wilders would become the largest party in the Netherlands. It would win 27 seats in the 150-seat parliament, as opposed to the nine it currently has. The Christian Democrats — the largest party in the governing coalition — would win only 26 seats.
It is clearly understood that we should more concentrate on Mr. Wilders’ opinions on immigrants and Islam to understand the Ducth politics, because now nobody can claim that Mr. Wilders is a marginal man in the Netherlands politis. [sic]…
| — Hat tip: Holger Danske | [Return to headlines] |
Who Orchestrated Israel’s Surrender?
Find out in Q&A with author of new book that explains it
Editor’s note: WND asked Nicholas Butterfield to interview bests-selling author Mike Evans about his latest book, “Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos.”
Q: Is the jury really still out on Jimmy Carter, or was he the worst president in modern American history?
A: In my opinion, Jimmy Carter was the worst president in modern American history, contrary to what the polls currently say. Under Jimmy Carter’s watch, the most loyal U.S. ally in the Middle East was deposed; Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets; Iran was invaded by Iraq (the consequences of which are documented in an earlier chapter); an Islamic revolution seized Iran and sent it crashing backward, unleashing a societal collapse which still grips the country.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, fearing no U.S. involvement or intervention, targeted the northern Kurdish people in a horrific experiment to determine the effectiveness of his chemical weapons program. Carter signed the Algiers Accords assuring Iran that the U.S. would not intervene politically or militarily in its affairs. This provided an open door for Iran’s leaders to thumb their collective noses at its detractors and pursue paths that continue to endanger the rest of the world. It allowed Iran the freedom to fund terror activities that threaten the West.
[…]
Q: You describe how Jimmy Carter campaigned on the “human rights” platform. However, his foreign policy leadership seemed to only hurt the “human rights” cause. He plunged Iran into a new dark age, and allowed Afghanistan to be infiltrated by the USSR. Did he really do anything during his presidency to help “human rights”?
A: Mr. Carter’s term in office did, in my opinion, absolutely nothing to advance the cause of human rights. Perhaps the most telling quote in my book came from former Empress Farah Pahlavi: “What happened to those who cared so much for human rights? How come when the shah left, the Iranian people didn’t have any rights anymore? What happened to the women? … Flogging, stoning, amputations, insults, all the killing of not only women, children, workers, intellectuals, and whoever even comes outside to demonstrate peacefully for their salaries. … the head of the bus drivers, they took him and they cut his palms. … They took his family to jail, his wife and his children of three or four in the jail. There is oppression, which exists in the name of religion in Iran. What happened to those who cared?” What, indeed? Mr. Carter’s human rights policies left a bloody trail of innocent victims … from Iran to Nicaragua to Afghanistan, and beyond.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Ex-Pilot Fined for Jew’s Murder
Sanaa, 2 March (AKI) — A Yemeni court on Monday convicted a former pilot of killing a local Jewish man and ordered him to pay a 250,000 dollar fine to the victim’s family in blood money. But Abdul Aziz Yahya al-Abdi, a 39-nine-year-old Muslim Yemeni, escaped the death penalty after pleading he was “mentally unstable”.
Al-Abdi has been in custody since December, after admitting to shooting dead Masha Yaish al-Nahari in the town of Raida in the country’s Omran province.
Al-Nahari’s widow and father both said they will appeal the sentence and called for the death penalty.
Abdi, a former air force pilot, told the court during his trial that he murdered al-Nahari after warning Yemeni Jews that he would kill them unless they converted to Islam.
Late last year witnesses said the gunman approached al-Nahari and told him “Jew, accept Islam’s message” and then shot him five times with an AK-47 assault rifle.
Al-Abdi is alleged to have murdered his wife two years ago but was not jailed because he agreed to pay compensation to the wife’s family, said Pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, at the time of his arrest.
During the trial the prosecution had called for a death sentence to be imposed.
“We will appeal the ruling. Even if you give me the whole Sana’a (the capital city) in blood money, I would not accept,” Moshe’s father, Yaish al-Nahari, is reported to have told the judge who pronounced the verdict.
Prosecutors asked the court to sentence the defendant to death, but the court said medical tests concluded that he was “mentally unstable.”
The crime provoked widespread anger among the Jewish minority which numbers a few hundred in Yemen.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
“Islamic Peace” in the Swat is a Defeat for the Rule of Law
The end of conflict could mark new persecutions of religious minorities and women. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expresses “serious concern” and emphasizes that the agreement will have repercussions in the whole country.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) -The controversial peace agreement between the government of the North-West Frontier Province and the Taliban militia group Tahrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi could mark the end of the armed conflict, at the cost of new suffering and persecution. Those who will pay the consequences would especially be the women and religious minorities. This is what is feared by human rights activists, according to whom the introduction of sharia — Islamic law — in exchange for the ceasefire in the district of Malakan is a “defeat for democracy and the rule of law.”
The government has fought the Taliban in the area for two years, without success. Much of the valley has long been under the control of Islamic militias; it was once a popular tourist area, but in recent months has become the theater of hundreds of attacks on schools — above all on those for girls — and on video and DVD stores, because they are contrary to Islamic morality. In order to escape persecution, thousands of people have abandoned their homes. Now there is a superficial calm in Swat, but it is accompanied by renewed fears for the future of the valley.
Mehboob Sada, director of the Christian Studies Center in Rawalpindi, recalls the “persecution and threats” against Christians in various areas of the NWFP, and is afraid that the application of sharia “will make the situation even more difficult,” because the Taliban will govern “according to the principles of Islamic law.”
I. A. Rehman, a human rights activist, stresses in an article published in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that now the militias “have complete freedom of action in the area,” and accuses the signers of the agreement of being shortsighted, because they did not keep in mind “the long-term consequences.” “The fact that the signers,” he writes, “have condemned democracy and elections as un-Islamic implies that democratic institutions are at the mercy of the militias,” and predicts “a dark future for the population of the area.”
“Serious concern” is also being expressed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), which complains of “the lack of any kind of guarantee against possible violations of the constitution and citizens’ human rights.” “The introduction of sharia,” the activists explain, “without precise reassurances of impartiality on the part of the judges established to enforce respect of the law, could mark the condemnation of certain categories at risk, including women, non-Muslims, and Muslim minority sects.”
The HRCP recalls that it is in favor of dialogue, but that it is essential that “the other side also observe the principle of good faith, credibility, and the capacity to respect its commitments.” “It is the duty of the provincial government to protect democratic principles, the constitution, and human rights. Success or failure will determine the future not only of the Swat, but of all Pakistan.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Bangladesh: Dhaka, End of Mutiny by Border Guards
A government spokesman says that “the crisis is over.” This morning, tanks entered Dhaka, and there were fears of an escalation of the violence. Sources for AsiaNews speak of a situation of “discontent” among the troops of Bangladesh Rifle. Eyewitnesses say there was gunfire in the hospital of the capital.
Dhaka (AsiaNews) — The mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifle has ended. The border guard units that revolted — leading to an exchange of gunfire with the army in Dhaka — have given up, lain down their arms, and freed the hostages being held inside the general headquarters.
This afternoon, a government spokesman said that “the crisis is over,” but just a few hours earlier the situation of tension seemed about to erupt into a genuine civil war. Tanks had entered the capital; Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had promised to make whatever decision “necessary to put an end to the violence.”
The mutiny by the border guards, who were infuriated over the failure of an agreement on pay, claimed at least 10 victims, but the number of dead could be higher than 50. At the moment, it is not known whether there are victims among the hostages who had been held in the general headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifle, in the hands of the rebels for more than 24 hours. Yesterday, two corpses were found near a drainage ditch in the area.
Sources for AsiaNews in Bangladesh confirm the “situation of discontent” among the border guards, who “have often been used by the army and by officials as cannon fodder: they are assigned guerrilla maneuvers, or high risk operations. It is a problem that has been dragging on for more than 20 years.” Believed to be at the origin of the mutiny, in fact, is the “failure to give raises or benefits to the paramilitaries. The proposals advanced on the occasion of the holiday [celebrated last Tuesday, the day before the beginning of the mutiny] were not believed to be satisfactory.” The Bangladesh Rifle are “more numerous than the regular army,” but they are equipped “only with light weapons like rifles,” and this, according to the source, prevented the “further escalation of the conflict. The military has more substantial resources, like the tanks used today.”
AsiaNews has also gathered the testimony of a person trapped in a Bangladesh Medical College, one of the places involved in the gunfire between the army and the paramilitaries. “The battle,” the source says, “came into the hospital itself. I saw one person fall to the ground, hit by a bullet in the head. The ground floor was a genuine battleground. We tried to take refuge on the upper floors, but then an army patrol blocked us at the fourth and fifth floors, until the situation calmed down.” Witnesses talk about “deserted streets,” the area around the general headquarters of the border guards “is isolated” and “a widespread sense of fear remains.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Don’t Say a Word
A U.N. resolution seeks to criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith.
You see how the trick is pulled? In the same weeks that this resolution comes up for its annual renewal at the United Nations, its chief sponsor-government (Pakistan) makes an agreement with the local Taliban to close girls’ schools in the Swat Valley region (a mere 100 miles or so from the capital in Islamabad) and subject the inhabitants to Sharia law. This capitulation comes in direct response to a campaign of horrific violence and intimidation, including public beheadings. Yet the religion of those who carry out this campaign is not to be mentioned, lest it “associate” the faith with human rights violations or terrorism. In Paragraph 6, an obvious attempt is being made to confuse ethnicity with confessional allegiance. Indeed this insinuation (incidentally dismissing the faith-based criminality of 9/11 as merely “tragic”) is in fact essential to the entire scheme. If religion and race can be run together, then the condemnations that racism axiomatically attracts can be surreptitiously extended to religion, too. This is clumsy, but it works: The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success.
[…]
Rather than attempt to put its own house in order or to confront such other grave questions as the mass murder of Shiite Muslims by Sunni Muslims (and vice versa), or the desecration of Muslim holy sites by Muslim gangsters, or the discrimination against Ahmadi Muslims by other Muslims, the U.N. resolution seeks to extend the whole area of denial from its existing homeland in the Islamic world into the heartland of post-Enlightenment democracy where it is still individuals who have rights, not religions.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Bali Yoga Fest Goes Ahead
JAKARTA — AN EIGHT-DAY international yoga festival opened on Tuesday on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali despite a fatwa against the exercise from the country’s top Muslim body. Organisers said seminars and workshops would help introduce yoga to a wider audience and rejected the clerics’ concerns that some forms of the popular exercise were a threat to Islam.
‘The festival has a universal value. It doesn’t belong to any religious teachings,’ International Bali-India Yoga Festival spokeswoman Susi Andrini told AFP.
Yoga, an ancient Indian aid to meditation dating back thousands of years, is a popular form of physical exercise and stress relief in Indonesia.
But the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, the top religious body in the mainly Muslim country, issued a fatwa in January banning Indonesian Muslims from all forms of yoga that involve Hindu religious rituals such as chanting mantras.
It said performing yoga purely for the physical benefits was however acceptable.
The move raised the hackles of religious moderates and civil libertarian groups who accused the council of meddling in affairs over which it had no authority.
Religious edicts issued by the ulemas are not legally binding on Muslims but it is considered sinful to ignore them.
Andrini said organisers were not afraid to hold the festival at the Bajrasandi Bali Monument in Denpasar — the capital of the Hindu-majority island of Bali — despite the fatwa.
‘I’m a Muslim myself. Our kind of yoga, which is called Patanjali, involves movement and breathing. People may recite their own mantra or prayer according to their faith,’ she said.
‘We want to make Bali a place for spiritual tourism. Visitors will seek the spiritual aspect first rather than leisure.’ Andrini expected about 500 people from around the world, including the United States, Germany, Sweden, Japan and China, would participate in the festival. — AFP
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan Says Lahore Cricket Attack Copycat of Mumbai
LAHORE, Pakistan, March 3 (Reuters) — The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan on Tuesday bore the hallmarks of the same militants that carried out the attack on Mumbai in November, a senior Pakistan official said on Tuesday.
Around dozen heavily armed assailants attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus and a police escort as they drove to a stadium in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
He said the police had surrounded the area where the attackers were believed to be now holed up.
“I want to say it’s the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai,” Salman Taseer, governor of central Punjab province, told reporters at the site of the attack.
“They are trained criminals. They were not common people. The kind of weaponry they had, the kind of arms they had, the way they attacked … they were not common citizens, they were obviously trained.”
Ten gunmen killed 179 people in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai between Nov. 26-28 last year.
India has maintained the plot was hatched in Pakistan and backed by people with links to Pakistani intelligence agencies.
New Delhi has pressed for forceful action by Pakistani authorities against militants belonging to Laskhar-e-Taiba, a jihadi group it says was responsible. The group comes from Pakistan’s Punjab province, whose capital is Lahore.
| — Hat tip: DK | [Return to headlines] |
Police Dead, Players Shot in Sri Lankan Cricket Ambush
MASKED gunmen have opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, killing at least eight people and wounding six players.
Lahore police chief Habib-ur Rehman said 12 gunmen today attacked the convoy near Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium with rockets, hand grenades and automatic weapons and were involved in a 25-minute shootout with the security forces.
“They appeared to be well-trained terrorists. They came on rickshaws,” he said.
A police official said two civilians and six police officers who were guarding the players were killed in the attack which happened as the team was heading for the third day’s play in the second Test against Pakistan.
Television footage of several gunmen creeping through the trees, crouching to aim their Kalashnikovs then running onto the next target were aired by Pakistan’s private channel Geo.
Broken glass littered the road next to a gun cartridge and an empty rocket-propelled grenade launcher. A police motorbike was shown crashed sideways into the road at the Liberty Chowk (roundabout) in Lahore.
Bullet holes ripped through the windscreen of another vehicle and a white car was shown smashed headlong into the roundabout as nervous security officers guarded the site.
Sri Lankan authorities said six players were believed to have been wounded though earlier reports said eight had been injured.
Local police officer Mohammad Suhail said two players had bullet injuries but were “in a stable condition”.
| — Hat tip: DK | [Return to headlines] |
Terror at the Test Match: Seven Die as Sri Lankan Cricket Team is Attacked by Gunmen in Pakistan
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Masked terrorists staged a commando-style attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team today as they were being bussed to a Test match in Pakistan.
Seven players and a British coach were injured and six policemen killed when they were ambushed by 12 gunmen. A bus driver also died.
Another Briton, Chris Broad, the match referee and father of England player Stuart, was hailed a hero after lying on top of a critically injured Pakistani official to shield him.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Japan Would Shoot Rogue Rocket
TOKYO — JAPAN is ready to shoot down any North Korean rocket headed toward its territory, Japan’s defence minister warned on Tuesday, weeks after Pyongyang announced it would launch a satellite. North Korea has said it is ready to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite despite growing appeals from countries that suspect Pyongyang is planning a missile test to call off its plans.
The United States and its Asian allies see such a launch as a pretext to test the Taepodong-2 missile, which could theoretically reach Alaska.
‘If there’s a possibility that an object could lose control and drop on Japan, the object becomes our target, including a satellite,’ said Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada. ‘It’s only natural for us to deal with it.’
The Kyodo news agency, quoting an unnamed defence source, reported that Japan is considering deploying two Aegis-equipped destroyers carrying the Standard Missile-3 interceptor to the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
‘We would have no other choice but to intercept,’ a senior Maritime Self-Defence Force officer was quoted as saying, referring to a scenario in which a missile or a rocket was launched and believed headed for Japan.
Defence ministry spokesman Katashi Toyota declined to confirm the report.
‘I am aware of the reports. However I wouldn’t comment on the movement of the Self-Defence Forces in specific cases, particularly what action the forces will take or are taking, due to the nature of this issue,’ he said. — AFP
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Philippines: Top Communist Rebel Arrested
MANILA — A TOP communist rebel leader blamed for extorting ‘revolutionary taxes’ from businessmen in the Philippines has been arrested, the army said on Tuesday. Eduardo Sarmiento headed the regional party committee in the central Visayas region for the Communist Party of the Philippines New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and had standing arrest warrants for various crimes, the army said.
‘Mr Sarmiento was arrested alone and in possession of high explosives and fake identification cards,’ the army said in a statement.
It said that Sarmiento was arrested on February 24 following a tip off by former cadres.
It added that Sarmiento headed a ‘nationwide extortion syndicate’ operated by the CPP-NPA, which has been waging a Maoist rebellion since 1969 in one of Asia’s longest-running communist insurgencies.
‘We expect more arrests soon, in our unrelenting campaign to crush this criminal organisation,’ the army said.
The group frequently targets power and telecoms infrastructure owned by firms that refuse to pay illegal ‘revolutionary taxes’ demanded by the rebels. — AFP
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Toyota in Desperate Plea for $2 Billion in Emergency Loans
Before the slowdown, Toyota’s level of profitability in its US market arose chiefly from its relatively limited use of incentives to persuade Americans to buy Toyota vehicles. People liked the cars and bought them without needing excessive enticement by favorable financing terms that would otherwise eat into Toyota’s bottom line.
However, the Japanese carmaker is now forced to battle with its Detroit rivals to secure any customers at all, resulting in its financial unit needing more supplies of capital than it was previously used to.
The company’s once seemingly inexorable march into the American car market has been dealt a catastrophic blow by the downturn in consumer spending.
Last week, it emerged that Japanese exports — of which cars represent about 20 per cent — had plunged by nearly half in the month of January. It was the third consecutive month where the pace of export decline broke records last set in the 1970s.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Don’t Let Criminals Win, Says Warren Mundine
ALP powerbroker and Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine yesterday warned the Rudd Government to keep funding the Australian Crime Commission’s Alice Springs-based indigenous taskforce.
Mr Mundine begged the Government not to backtrack on the Northern Territory intervention following its refusal to commit to funding the ACC taskforce investigating indigenous child abuse, drug trafficking and alcohol crime.
“My message to the minister and the Prime Minister is you need to continue this drive forward and not let your resolve weaken in this battle. Too many lives depend on the Government to be strong,” he said.
Mr Mundine said the Government was being lobbied strongly by people who opposed the intervention.
“We’ve been sitting back because we thought things were going in the right direction, but the other side has been working very hard at turning this over, and letting the criminals and the dysfunctionality continue in Aboriginal Australia,” he said.
The warning from the former ALP national president followed Howard government indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough accusing Kevin Rudd of destroying the intervention he launched in July 2007 into 73 Territory communities.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said on Monday the Government would decide while framing the May budget whether it would fund beyond June the ACC’s National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Unit.
Mr Mundine said the entire operation was justified on the basis of stamping out child abuse, and it made no sense to downgrade that task.
“If you get back to the original reasons the intervention happened, it was about child abuse, so you would think if there is going to be a national response, that would be the first national response, investigations, the collection of data and dealing with these issues of criminality,” Mr Mundine said.
“That’s what the intervention is about, it’s the core of it.
“I think they seriously have to address the issue of breaking the cycle of child abuse … most abusers have been abused as a child.”
Mr Mundine, who has been a strong advocate for radical reforms to improve Aboriginal living standards, said the ACC taskforce was needed to track down perpetrators.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin defended the Government’s commitment to the intervention, citing the Prime Minister’s appointment of a co-ordinator-general to cut through red tape in remote communities as a clear example.
Ms Macklin denied the Government was phasing out the intervention, saying families in remote communities reported feeling safer because of the increased police presence, the reduction in alcohol consumption and additional night patrols and safe houses.
The AAC taskforce believes it is making breakthroughs and wants to continue its work.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
German Navy Detains 9 Pirate Suspects
In a dramatic deployment at the Horn of Africa, a German navy frigate has stopped a pirate attack and taken nine suspects into custody. The success marks the first time Germany has made arrests during pirate patrols off the coast of Somalia.
A German naval patrol detained nine suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday after successfully stopping an attack on a freighter ship operated by a company based in Germany.
Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, reported that the crew on board the Rheinland-Pfalz received an emergency call from the freighter MV Courier at 7:12 a.m, a ship flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. The ship’s crew reported the Courier had been shot at with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms.
The crew of the German naval vessel, which was located about 50 sea miles from the scene, quickly dispatched a helicopter and rushed to the freighter. Once it arrived at the Courier, military personnel reportedly fired warning shots and stopped the attack. The Bundeswehr reported that a US military helicopter, based on the USS Monterey, had also participated in the deployment.
A few hours later, the German navy vessel intercepted the pirates’ boat, secured evidence of the attack and took nine suspected pirates into custody on the Rheinland-Pfalz. Tuesday’s intervention marked the first arrests made by Germany’s Bundeswehr since it began its anti-piracy deployment in the Gulf of Aden as part of the European Union’s Atalanta mission on Dec. 25, 2008. The area off the coast of Somalia has been the site of numerous pirate attacks against commercial vessels in recent months.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Human Trafficking on the Rise
Italian interior minister’s warning at Interpol meeting
(ANSA) — Lyons, March 3 — Human trafficking is on the rise and one in five victims are children, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Tuesday. Addressing a meeting of Interpol chiefs in Lyons, the minister described human trafficking as “an odious crime and a violation of human rights”. “Unfortunately, statistics suggest it is a growing problem,” he added. “The most alarming figure is probably that almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children, a percentage that rises to 100% in certain parts of West Africa”. The minister said sexual exploitation underpinned the vast majority of human trafficking cases, around 75%. Slave labour was to blame in a further 20% of cases.
Maroni also underscored the highly organized nature of the human trafficking trade and the vast sums of money changing hands. “Trafficking is the third largest illegal business in the world, after drugs and arms smuggling, and generates several billions of dollars each year for the criminal networks involved,” he said. “The groups involved in trafficking are highly organized. They are genuine transnational enterprises that operate using flexible cells, often divided on the lines of ethnic groups,” he continued. “Furthermore, we know there is collaboration between Italian and foreign organized crime groups because they have divided up different segments of the market between them, for example focusing on prostitution or illegal labour or organized begging”.
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS PLAY KEY ROLE IN TACKLING PROBLEM.
The minister highlighted the crucial role played by international agreements that encourage cross-border cooperation in tackling the problem.
He gave the example of a pact signed a few days ago between Italy, Nigeria and Interpol, which will see Nigerian police officers deployed to Italy, where they will work with local border police to help identify potential problems. Maroni stressed that addressing human trafficking would be an important issue for Rome in its capacity as duty president of the Group of Eight (G8) this year.
Looking ahead to an end-of-May meeting of interior and justice ministers from the world’s eight richest nations, Maroni said human trafficking and how to bolster international cooperation on the issue would be discussed in depth.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Piracy: [S. Korea] Unit to Fight Somali Pirates Launched
South Korea’s Navy yesterday launched a 300-member task force to be deployed to the pirate-infested waters off Somalia.
The cabinet approved a plan to dispatch the 4,500-ton destroyer Great King Munmu and Navy sailors to the Gulf of Aden to protect Korean commercial ships. The National Assembly had approved the country’s first deployment of a naval combat unit for an overseas mission.
A launching ceremony of the Cheonghae Unit took place at a port in Busan. In addition to the destroyer, the unit includes a crew of 270, a helicopter and 30 special forces, the Navy said. The team will leave as early as mid-March.
In past years, Korean ships and crew have increasingly become the target of Somali pirates. About 460 Korean vessels use the route every year, the South Korean government said. In a recent incident, five Korean crewmen were freed last month after being held captive by Somali pirates for nearly three months.
Of the sailors to be deployed, five are female naval officers — petty officers second class Shim Hwa-yeong, Ahn Yeon-jin, Kim Hyeon-ji, Park A-yeong and Park Ji-yeon.
Kim, Ahn and Park A-yeong will work in the destroyer’s combat intelligence office where they will be responsible for detecting suspected pirate boats using radar. They will also support combat missions by providing target information.
Shim will operate the ship’s sonar detection system, and Park will be in charge of procurement.
The unit has completed a three-week training program, which started on Feb. 1.
A three-step education program to train the sailors on the rules of engagement, operational guidelines, team work checking and counter-terrorism missions was provided, the Navy said. Officers also received intense instruction on Islamic culture and psychological management skills in the battlefield, the Navy said.
Upon their arrival in Bahrain, the Korean sailors will work with the U.S. military stationed there to learn about inspection protocols, local culture and tips on collecting evidence.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
100,000 Foot Soldiers in Drug Cartels
Numbers rival Mexican army
The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico’s two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers — an army that rivals Mexico’s armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.
“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels’ “foot soldiers” are on a par with Mexico’s army of about 130,000.
The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died — more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.
The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.
The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the “Federation” or “Golden Triangle,” and its main rival, “Los Zetas” or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands.
The two cartels appear to be negotiating a truce or merger to defeat rivals and better withstand government pressure. U.S. officials say the consequences of such a pact would be grave.
“I think if they merge or decide to cooperate in a greater way, Mexico could potentially have a national security crisis,” the defense official said. He said the two have amassed so many people and weapons that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is “fighting for his life” and “for the life of Mexico right now.”
As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added…
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
A Salute to Champions of Liberty
Geert Wilders, an outspoken politician and chairman of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands who produced a 16 minute-long movie “FITNA,” has been accused of Islamophobia and refused entry to the UK by immigration authorities after arriving at Heathrow airport in London. UK Independence party peer, Lord Pearson, had invited him to show his controversial film “Fitna,” which links Quran to terrorism, at the House of Lords.
The 16-minute documentary which juxtaposes passages of the Quran with the mass murder of 9/11 and other acts by radical Muslims was released to the Internet on March 27, 2008. It immediately sparked Muslims’ condemnation. They argued he is twisting selected passages from the Quran to suit his argument in the same way that extremists do to promote terrorism. In his short film, he presented the following passages from the Quran. You be the judge:
Al-Anfal 8.60 “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.”
An-Nisa 4.56 “Those who have disbelieved our signs, we shall roast them in fire. Whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, we shall substitute new skins for them, that they may feel the punishment; Verily Allah is sublime and wise.”
Muhammad 47.4 “Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah, — He will never let their deeds be lost.”…
| — Hat tip: Amil Imani | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Police Clash With Illegal Immigrants in Greek Port
Patras. Clandestine immigrants protested in the Greek port of Patras after an Afghan man seriously injured himself trying to jump onto a lorry heading for Italy, police said Monday, AFP reported. Police dispelled hundreds of immigrants with tear gas as they demonstrated in the streets and set fire to garbage cans, causing traffic jams for several hours.
The man, who has not been named, tried to hide inside the vehicle as it boarded a ferry for the Italian peninsula, but fell and got trapped under the wheels.
He was later transferred to hospital in a serious condition. A large number of clandestine immigrants in Patras hail from Afghanistan and are aged between 15 and 25 years.
Many have lived in makeshift camps without proper water or hygiene facilities. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and several non-governmental organisations have described the situation as an “emergency” and called on Greece to improve its procedures for claiming asylum and upgrade immigrant reception centres.
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
2 comments:
Asians are very fond of their cricket and hero worship the players so maybe this will finally be considered beyond the pale even by ordinary Pakistanis.
OT . . .in a pot meet kettle moment:
"The damage they did (and are still doing, in some cases) to the center-right blogosphere was enormous; when some of the loudest voices are screaming gibberish, they drown out everyone else and tar the whole group by association." - CJ LGF
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