The most interesting news story tonight is a flying-pigs article out of Australia. You may remember the controversial proposed Islamic school in Camden which, which we reported on a while back. Now a coalition of churches, including Anglicans (!) and Presbyterians, has come out in opposition to the school, saying that it represents values that are “incompatible with the Australian way of life”.In other news, 36 illegal migrants were found inside a truck in Greece. The truck itself had been stolen.
Thanks to Barry Rubin, BP, C. Cantoni, Diana West, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, islam o’phobe, moderntemplar, Nilk, Paul Green, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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France-Spain: Kouchner, Relationship Not Clouded
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, APRIL 20 — There are no “dark clouds” overshadowing diplomatic relations between Paris and Madrid, despite the uproar raised by the statements made towards the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero, attributed to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. These were the words of the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, interviewed on the France Inter radio network. Kouchner spoke of an “excellent understanding” with the Spanish government and added, “we have agreed on policy with Zapatero and Miguel Moratinos [the Spanish Foreign Minister] for two years.” Kouchner further revealed that he had been able confirm good relations between the two countries last night, when he spoke to Moratinos on the telephone. ‘Liberation’, the left-wing newspaper, wrote on Thursday that during a lunch with cabinet ministers from various parties, Sarkozy is thought to have said: “Zapatero may not be very intelligent, but he won the elections twice.” The Elysee has “formally” denied the statements, alongside denials from others present at the lunch, including Socialist politicians. Sarkozy will be on an official visit to Madrid on April 27 and 28 with his wife, Carla Bruni. The Elysee contacted the Spanish cabinet office: “we explained to Zapatero’s staff what had happened. There is no problem,” the Elysee general secretary Claude Gueant told Le Parisien. By way of testifying to the excellent links between Paris and Madrid, the Elysee also drew attention to the fact that in November last year the French President did all he could to allow the Spanish Prime Minister to take part in the first G20 summit on the international financial crisis in Washington. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Two Managers Held by Workers
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, APRIL 21 — Two managers from the car accessories company Molex in Villemur-sur-Tarn, in south-west France were kidnapped in the factory yesterday evening by workers protesting over a firing plan announced by the administration. This is the most recent in a spate of kidnappings of company managers in France in the last several weeks. The prefecture proposed negotiation with the two sides which should meet today, but one of the two bosses, reached by phone by journalists, said “you don’t negotiate in these conditions”. In 2008 the company announced its intention to fire most of its 283 employees by the middle of 2009. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Global Bank Losses Likely to Reach $4.1 Trillion, Says IMF
21 Apr 2009: In its first study of the effect on financial institutions since the credit crunch began, the IMF estimate massive writedowns, with the US losing $2.7 trillion
The global financial sector faces write-downs of $4.1tn (£2.8tn) from the toxic assets that have crashed in value since the start of the credit crunch 20 months ago, the International Monetary Fund said today .
In its first comprehensive study of the impact of the crisis on banks and other financial institutions, the Fund said that it had increased its estimate of the potential losses in the US from $2.2tn to $2.7tn as a result of the deepening economic slump over the past three months. Europe and Japan between them account for $1.3tn of the write-downs, with UK banks facing losses of $316bn (£216bn).
The Fund warned that the damage to the balance sheets of institutions would take years to fix and would lead to a credit famine in Britain, the US and Europe.
In addition, it said the open-ended taxpayer bailouts provided to the crippled financial sector in recent months risked adding to the debt burdens of western countries already facing a demographic time bomb.
“The global financial system remains under severe stress as the crisis broadens to include households, corporations, and the banking sectors in both advanced and emerging market countries”, the IMF said in its half-yearly Financial Stability Report. It called for the redesign of the global financial system to provide a “more stable and resilient platform for sustained economic growth.”
Although the Fund said government support packages were helping to stabilise the financial system, it added that further decisive, effective and internationally co-ordinated actions would be needed to sustain the improvement.
“Shrinking economic activity has put further pressure on banks’ balance sheets as asset values continue to downgrade, threatening their capital adequacy and further discouraging fresh lending,” the report said. “Thus, credit growth is slowing, and even turning negative, adding even more downward pressure on economic activity.”
It added that even if policy actions were swift and worked as planned, recovery for the financial sector would be long and painful and economic recovery would be protracted. “The accompanying de-leveraging and economic contraction are estimated to cause credit growth in the US, the United Kingdom, and euro area to contract and even turn negative in the near term and only recover after a number of years.”
The IMF said the key challenge was to break the “downward spiral” between a weakened financial system and the global economy. It set out a detailed programme of reforms — including curbs on credit growth during booms, tougher regulation of a limited number of institutions considered “too big to fail” and better cross-border supervision.
Lending between banks came to a halt in August 2007 when the financial markets first became aware of the impact of losses in the US sub-prime mortgage market, but the IMF said there had been some signs of improvement in the interbank markets since the intervention of governments to prevent a global financial meltdown last October.
It added, however, that funding strains had persisted and banks, despite being bailed out by the taxpayer, were still short of capital. “As a result, many corporations are unable to obtain bank-supplied working capital and some are having difficulty raising longer-term debt, except at much more elevated yields.”
In its breakdown of the losses on toxic assets, the IMF said two-thirds of the writedowns affected banks. But the FSR warned that pension funds and insurance companies had also been hit hard by the crisis. Pension funds had seen the value of their assets tumble and life insurance companies had suffered losses on equity and corporate bond holdings, in some cases depleting their regulatory capital surpluses.
“While perhaps most of these institutions managed their risks prudently, some took on more risk without fully appreciating that potential stressful episodes may lie ahead.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan: UNRWA Workers Stage Strike Asking Higher Pay
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, APRIL 20 — Around 7,000 workers at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA staged today a one day strike demanding a pay hike and answer to loss of millions in the organizations’s retirement fund. Nearly 170 schools and 20 health clinics across the kingdom’s 13 refugee camps closed their doors to thousands of students and patients and sanitation workers stopped picking garbage during the day, said activists familiar with the strike. This is the second strike by the teachers, who say worsening economic condition and refusal of the agency to provide them with a raise prompted the strike. “We held several talks with representatives of the organization. They promised us to look into our demands but so far nothing happened,” a member of the committee overlooking affairs of UNRWA workers, who preferred to be anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue told ANSA. According to officials from Department of Palestinian Affairs (DPA), which manages affairs of 1.8 million Palestinian refugees, UNRWA needs urgent financial assistance to enable the agency to implement its programmes and increase the allocation for its budget in Jordan. UNRWA saving fund suffered a 20% deficit due to the global economic crisis, a figure employees say was too high for them to bare considering their already difficult economic conditions. Most of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes after the 1948 and 1967 moved to Jordan and settled in a number of refugee camps, where they continue to receive aid from UNRWA, a body created by the UN after the war to help displaced Palestinians. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Federal Judge Closes Somali Pirate Hearing to Public Because He May be Juvenile
NEW YORK — The sole surviving Somali pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain faced charges in federal court Tuesday — but a judge closed the hearing to the public because he may be a juvenile.
Abduhl Wali-i-Musi was handcuffed and had a chain wrapped around his waist when he arrived in New York City a day earlier, smiling for a gaggle of cameras and reporters.
His left hand was heavily bandaged from the wound he suffered during the skirmish on the ship two weeks ago.
The grinning teenager seemed poised as he entered a federal building in a rainstorm Monday, but he didn’t say anything in response to reporters’ shouted questions about whether he had any comment about the pirate episode.
Wali-i-Musi is the first person to be tried in the United States on piracy charges in more than a century. He was flown from Africa to a New York airport and taken into custody ahead of a court hearing Tuesday.
The age and real name of the young pirate remained unclear. The mother said he is only 16 years old and is named Abdi Wali Abdulqadir Muse. The law enforcement official says he is at least 18, meaning prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to put him on trial in a U.S. court.
A law enforcement official familiar with the case said that the teenager was being charged under two obscure federal laws that deal with piracy and hostage-taking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.
The teenager’s arrival came on the same day that his mother appealed to President Barack Obama for his release. She says her son was coaxed into piracy by “gangsters with money.”
“I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager; I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,” Adar Abdirahman Hassan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Galka’yo town in Somalia.
The suspect was taken aboard a U.S. Navy ship shortly before Navy SEAL snipers killed three of his colleagues who had held Capt. Richard Phillips hostage.
The U.S. officials said the teenager was brought to New York to face trial in part because the FBI office here has a history of handling cases in Africa involving major crimes against Americans, such as the al-Qaida bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Ron Kuby, a New York-based civil rights lawyer, said he has been in discussions about forming a legal team to represent the Somalian.
“I think in this particular case, there’s a grave question as to whether America was in violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas,” said Kuby. “This man seemed to come onto the Bainbridge under a flag of truce to negotiate. He was then captured. There is a question whether he is lawfully in American custody and serious questions as to whether he can be prosecuted because of his age.”
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Won’t Meet With Netanyahu?
Now, the speculation is that Obama doesn’t want to be seen with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu at the upcoming AIPAC conference in Washington. On Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported:
Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday canceled his plans to attend the upcoming AIPAC summit, after it became clear that US President Barack Obama would not meet him during the conference.
Netanyahu announced that while he will not attend the conference in person, he will send a video-taped message to Washington.
A watershed disgrace if true. Certainly, this notion has been cycling around Israel circles for a while. Last week, the Jerusalem Post reported:
There has been speculation in parts of the Israeli press that Obama himself wanted Netanyahu to hold off on his visit to avoid photo ops with the Israeli leader, but US observers dismissed this idea out of hand.
“Obama is looking forward to Bibi coming in early May,” said former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk of the reports, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Signs Service Bill, Says Volunteers Needed
WASHINGTON — Calling on Americans to volunteer, President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill Tuesday that triples the size of the AmeriCorps service program over the next eight years and expands ways for students to earn money for college.
“We need your service, right now, in this moment in history. … I’m asking you to stand up and play your part,” said Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago. “I’m asking you to help change history’s course.”
Joining Obama was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who has been battling brain cancer. Kennedy championed the legislation with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and the bill was named in honor of the Massachusetts Democrat.
Kennedy told the audience that included former President Bill Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former first lady Rosalyn Carter that Obama’s efforts echoed that of his late brother, former President John F. Kennedy.
“Today, another young president has challenged another generation to give back to their nation,” Kennedy said, citing his brother’s advocacy of the Peace Corps.
The service law expands ways for students and seniors to earn money for college through their volunteer work. It aims to foster and fulfill people’s desire to make a difference, such as by mentoring children, cleaning up parks or buildings and weatherizing homes for the poor.
Bolstering voluntary public service programs has been a priority of Obama, who credits his work as a community organizer in his early 20s for giving him direction in life. The president cited his work in Chicago as an example of how one person can make a difference.
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Why Does Obama Smile at Dictators?
The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.
The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez’s government engages in “arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity.”
In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There’s something wrong with that picture.
Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president’s people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam, said, “It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles.”
Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal, but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.
WATCHING ALL THIS, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the president of the United States? Yes, I get it. We have to speak to our enemies, and America has to push “reset” on its relationship with many of these countries. We should try and change them through charm. But who said the president himself, rather than a lower-level diplomat, must do so?
And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies? It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to see the American president backslapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions.
In Turkey, Obama boldly declared that “the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.” But the person who was at war with Islam, Saddam Hussein, the man who killed nearly one million Muslims, was removed by a country which has already paid with the lives of 4,500 of its servicemen and women. The same is true of the Taliban, another group whom the Obama administration is considering talking to, who beat Muslim women in the streets of Afghanistan. Yet the president seems reluctant to publicly identify these real enemies of Islam.
LIKE MANY AMERICANS, I have been awed by our president’s capacity to draw those who hate us near. He is a man of considerable charm and grace. But I have to admit that I am increasingly troubled by his seeming inability to call out rogue dictators.
While he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised, “As president I will recognize the Armenian genocide.” But in a press conference in Ankara with President Abdullah Gul, he refused to use the word “genocide” when challenged by a reporter on the issue. Yet, it was Obama’s early foreign policy adviser Samantha Power of Harvard who wrote A Problem from Hell, the definitive book on the American non-intervention in repeated 20th-century genocides, beginning with the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks which killed 1.5 million between the years of 1915 and 1923. When I read the book it changed my life.
As a Jew who does not want the world to forget the Holocaust, I can only imagine the pain of the Armenian community as it struggles to have modern Turkey acknowledge the crime. And why should modern Turkey not oblige? No one is blaming it for something that happened 90 years ago. It is not today’s generation which is at fault. But nations must come to terms with their own history. Could any of us imagine what kind of country the US would be if it denied that it was ever responsible for the abomination of African-American slavery and segregation?
ALL THIS LEADS to one important question. Suppose Obama succeeds in building friendships with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad and the Taliban. What then? Does America still get to feel that it stands for something? Will we still be the beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world, or will we have sold out in the name of political expediency? And do any of us seriously believe that presidential friendship is going to get a megalomaniac like Hugo Chavez to ease up on the levers of power, or are we just feeding his ego by showing him he can be a tyrant and still have a beer with the president of the United States? Will the Iranians really stop enriching uranium through diplomacy rather than economic sanctions?
I know that the Bush administration made many mistakes, and I am a fan of President Obama precisely because of his sunny optimism. But Bush was not, as Chavez once called him, the devil, and it could just be that his emphasis on America being the great champion of democracy and freedom, a mantle that was most eloquently articulated by president Kennedy in his inaugural address, is a legacy that ought to belong to Obama as much as it did to his predecessor.
| — Hat tip: moderntemplar | [Return to headlines] |
Durban 2: Frattini, EU Unable to Speak With a Common Voice
(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 20 — The lack of an agreement on a common position by the EU on the UN summit on racism is “a very serious error” that “shows the incapability, despite the amount of talking that has gone on, of finding at least a common denominator on a basic problem like racism”, said Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in an interview with Il Giornale. Demoralized by the lack of an agreement within the EU, “one of the greatest disappointments in my international experience”, Frattini said that “once again Europe has demonstrated that it is not capable of speaking with a common voice” and because of this “each country is left with the freedom to act on their own”. Furthermore, Frattini said, “for coherence among the 27 countries of the EU, they should have all acted like Italy” who did not participate in the summit. In fact, “those who are attending the conference like the English,” he said, “have accepted a compromise”, while the draft document, although it has been changed, still has “unacceptable phrases that equate Israel to a racist nation”. As for the situation with the Pinar, Frattini said that “common regulations have also been ignored regarding immigration issues”. However, the minister concluded that “we will continue to fight to obtain a radical reform” regarding the UN.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rent-Controlled Palatine Villa
Former superintendent La Regina says it is his right. Junior heritage minister Giro calls for him to leave
ROME — The setting is the Palatine Hill, its ancient past peopled with the mysterious ghosts of emperors and conspirators among remains left by Fabullus the painter and Rabirius the architect. English-speaking tourists mutter in amazement as guides explain that this is where the word “palace” was born. Then at 6.15 in the evening, the last visitors trudge downhill from the recently re-opened Domus Augusti and Romulus’ Hut as the attendants close the Antiquarium, leaving only the second-floor lights over the museum to burn on. That is where Rome’s former archaeological superintendent, Professor Adriano La Regina, lives with his wife Olga.
They have one bedroom, a living room, corridor, kitchen and bathroom for a total floor area of 130 hilltop, rent-controlled, square metres but recently the apartment has turned into something of a bed of nails for the academic, who retired in 2005. The location is stunning, up there on ancient Rome’s great, proud hill, and the accommodation is a privilege which, in the current debate over the crisis faced by Italy’s artistic heritage, has been openly questioned by junior heritage minister, Francesco Giro. “La Regina? Before he says anything, he should vacate the apartment he is occupying without title”, commented Mr Giro. It was the signal for a dispute with the archaeologist nicknamed “Signor No”, an implacable critic of contentious initiatives by the administration, who was replaced by the new superintendent, Angelo Bottini, in 2005. Professor La Regina was piqued at the rebuke: “See? They’re resorting to insults to silence me”, he responded…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
MEP’s Expenses Probed
Politics, like comedy, is all in the timing.
It feels a bit like arriving back at school a day before everyone else: the Strasbourg parliament isn’t exactly deserted, but fewer than usual tread its vast cavernous halls of glass and tropical creepers. Strasbourg parliament — empty staircase
MEPs had Monday off for Orthodox Easter, but I am here to do some interviews in advance of TV pieces and to knock off a few “explainers” for our coverage of the European elections.
One of the pieces I am making goes under the working title “MEPs: are they worth it?” And the latest instalment in the saga about expenses has been written today by the Crown Prosecution Service. They have advised the police to charge one-time UKIP MEP Tom Wise and his former researcher Lindsay Jenkins with one count each of false accounting contrary to the Theft Act 1968 and one count each of money laundering contrary to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
Derek Frame, reviewing lawyer, CPS Special Crime Division, said: “Following the publication of a news article in October 2005 relating to Mr Wise and Ms Jenkins, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) began an investigation into Mr Wise’s use of allowances. OLAF subsequently passed the investigation to Bedfordshire Police Economic Crime Unit for investigation”.Tom Wise MEP
Mr Wise, who says he will stand in the June elections as an independent, denies the charges and his solicitor says it’s “scandalous” that he has been charged: he’s put this statement on Youtube.
UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage told me he acted quickly and expelled Mr Wise from the party when the allegations first surfaced some years ago. “I had no hesitation in getting rid of him. Contrast what we’ve done to other parties: there’s an MEP here from one of the two big parties who’s been asked to repay half a million pounds and yet that party keeps him here. When we have problems we deal with them very harshly indeed.”
But he’s hinting there are political dirty tricks behind the timing of the charges. “It’s extraordinary. This has been going on for three years and yet 38 days before the European election he is going to appear in the magistrates court. I would have to be politically naive if I didn’t think there was a certain political element to this.”
So could he spell out what he thought was going on? “You’ll have to ask that question to the CPS, but the timing is pretty extraordinary. You know he has been bailed and re-bailed, it could have come to court six months ago.”
I have asked the CPS and will let you know what they say when they come back to me.
UPDATE (1650): The Crown Prosecution Service say: “We are an independent prosecution authority and once we have made a decision we are obliged to inform those concerned at the earliest opportunity”.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Caravan of Love From Madrid to Zamora
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 17 — A ‘caravan of love’ will leave Madrid tomorrow to head for a village in the Zamora province: 45 Madrilenian women, most of Southamerican origin, will go to San Cristobal di Entreviñas, a rural district with 1,600 inhabitants, to get to know some 30 local bachelors looking for a wife. The initiative was taken by the Asocamu association to contribute to “rural repopulation” offering the future wives an attractive alternative in these times of crisis with few jobs in the big cities. “In poor villages like ours people live partly from the animals they breed and the fruit and vegetables they grow,” Clara Lera, one of the organisers of the operation, told ANSAmed. The initiative was taken by Manuel Gonzalo, 52 years old and responsible for hundreds of weddings after organising 44 ‘caravans of love’. He actually met his Puerto Rican wife Venecia during the third expedition. “The first time” Gonzalo remembers “I organised the initiative in my town, Fuentesauco di Fuentidueña, in 1995, after finding 35 women who wanted to come. I found them in the hairdresser’s salons where most South American women go, it was a big success”. In this new expedition an all-women coach will leave Madrid at 10am. It is expected to arrive at around 2pm in San Cristobal where they will be welcomed by the mayor. Then there will be lunch and dinner in the restaurant ‘Il giardino’, managed by Clara Lera and, in the afternoon, “a dance where everyone who wants to participate is welcome,” Lera revealed. The price for the trip is 20 euro for the women, between 50 and 100 euro for the men. “Lunch will be lamb with Zamora wine and soup, our typical local products,” said Lera. “They will have a whole day to get to know each other, to walk in the fields and dance and who knows what it may lead to”. Clara confesses that “it all started with a bet last year here in a bar. They challenged me to organise the caravan and I contacted Asocamu. Wéve covered the walls of the village and nearby villages with posters, wéve announced the event on local radio, but in the end word-of-mouth advertising did its work and tomorrow around thirty aspiring husbands will be waiting anxiously”. The youngest of them is 42, the oldest 69: they are single, divorced or widowers who need a partner for life and work. What can they offer to their future wives: “Tranquility and a good quality of life,” explains Clara Lera, who after 11 years of working in Madrid has decided to return to San Cristobal. “I hope they will get used to living here, we don’t have much to offer except for the tranquillity but that’s quite something in these times. The closest film theatre is 60km away”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Racist Attack on Maghreb Family, 15-Year Sentence
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 17 — 15 youths have been sentenced to spend up to 15 years in jail in Barcelona because of their racist attack on a family from Maghreb and their attempt to set fire to the family’s home. According to El Mundo’s website, which published the sentence, the episode dates back to June 2002 when, in Barcelona’s town of Sant Vicent de Castellet, a group of 15 Catalan youths assaulted the family’s home by night, chanting racist songs and insults before trying to set the house on fire. The three main defendants have been sentenced to spend from 12 to 15 years in jail after being charged with multiple attempted homicide and arson. Four of the defendants have been acquitted, while the others were sentenced to spend from 8 months to 6 years in jail. All defendants have been prohibited from coming into contact with the victims of the assault. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Thought Police Muscle Up in Britain
BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”
A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya “Paki” and “bin Laden” during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: “Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don’t bother to prosecute. This is nonsense.”
Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.
Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children’s television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.
A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to “celebrate diversity”, the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.
There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.
Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. “What would Nelson have said?” is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together — and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day — they add up to a pretty clear picture.
| — Hat tip: BP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Faith Schools ‘Lead to Greater Segregation of Children’
An increase in the number of faith schools is likely to lead to greater segregation of pupils, according to a study published today.
The research, presented to the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference, reveals areas with the largest number of faith schools have a much higher degree of segregation of pupils by ability groups. In particular, they tend to cream off the brightest pupils.
However, the research by London University’s Institute of Education shows there is no improvement in academic standards in those areas that have a larger number of faith schools.
There is still a relatively high demand from parents for faith school places. Just under 6 per cent of the population count themselves as regular churchgoers but 15 per cent of all pupils attend faith schools.
The research was based on a study of GCSE results from 390 schools across the country.
The areas with the highest proportion of pupils in faith schools were Westminster, with 65 per cent, and Kensington and Chelsea, with 59 per cent. In third place was Liverpool with 47 per cent.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hamas Leader’s Invitation to Address MPs Provokes Fury
Foreign Office warns video link to Parliament will boost Islamic extremists
The former Labour minister Clare Short has been embroiled in a row after inviting senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshal to address MPs in Parliament.
Ms Short faced strong criticism from both the British and Israeli governments for her part in organising tonight’s question-and-answer session between Mr Meshal and a backbench committee of MPs.
Mr Meshal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, is based in Damascus and is considered by many to be the No 1 decision maker in the Islamic fundamentalist organisation. He was the target of a bungled Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997.
He is set to speak to the committee via a video link. The session was arranged when Ms Short and a group of MPs met the senior Palestinian hardliner during a visit to the Syrian capital..
British and French parliamentarians have held meetings with Hamas representatives in the Middle East, but the European Union adheres to the rules of the international Quartet for Middle East peace — which groups the US, the EU, Russia and the UN — and does not speak to the Palestinian faction on the grounds that it remains committed to the destruction of Israel.
A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: “We do not believe in talking to Hamas as things stand, as we do not think that anything positive would result from it. Indeed it will undermine the position of those Palestinians who are working towards a peaceful solution to the crisis. It is, however, up to individual MPs to make decisions about the organisation and people like Mr Meshal.”
Ms Short, who resigned as Tony Blair’s secretary for international development in 2003 over the war in Iraq, has voiced support for boycotting Israel and compared Israel’s actions in the occupied territories to those of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The Israeli government claimed yesterday that the invitation to Mr Meshal could provide legitimacy to Hamas. “We are talking about the head of a terrorist movement. This is absurd,” said Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman. “It is clear that a person who would never get a visa to enter Britain should not be addressing MPs.”
Mr Palmor added that Ms Short “is well known for her anti-Israel positions”. Of the other MPs who are said to have played a part in organising the session, he said: “They are the usual suspects. They are crossing line after line and now they’ve crossed another one. But I don’t think the British public at large find it logical to have this well-known terrorist promoting his views in Parliament.”
Israeli media reports said the country’s embassy in London tried unsuccessfully to get the link-up cancelled through the intervention of pro-Israel MPs.
Hamas, which espouses Islamic rule in all of historic Palestine but has also conditionally backed the idea of a long-term ceasefire with Israel, won Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. The British Government and much of the international community have set three conditions for dealing with it, none of which have been met thus far: renouncing violence, recognising Israel and accepting previous agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel. Hamas forcibly seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June 2007. It withstood a devastating Israeli military onslaught in January this year which Israel said was prompted by rocket fire by the group.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Labour General Secretary Calls for All-Ethnic Minority Shortlists
Ray Collins says law should be examined to allow for greater ethnic minority representation in House of Commons
Labour’s general secretary today called for a review of the law to consider whether the party could be allowed to select candidates from shortlists made up entirely of black and ethnic minority candidates.
Ray Collins said evidence showed that all-women shortlists had worked to increase the number of female Labour MPs in parliament.
He suggested that the law should be examined in an attempt to achieve a similar boost in the number of ethnic minority MPs.
“The evidence has accrued that specific actions, like shortlists and defining shortlists and restricting shortlists, have worked,” he said.
“My view, and the party’s view, is the law ought to be examined to allow for greater representation from ethnic minorities.
“I think there are issues about that, but … I definitely want to see that that debate should continue because we need to make much more progress. Progress has been too slow.”
Collins was giving evidence to a special House of Commons committee examining diversity in parliament.
In the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama’s election as the US president, Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that although the British public may be happy to vote for a black head of state, “institutional racism” within the Labour party machine would block that candidate.
At the time, Labour activists were angered by Phillips’ remarks, saying the party had led the way in increasing the numbers of black and ethnic minority MPs.
Labour has 13 black or ethnic minority MPs, while there are two in the Conservative party.
Phillips said the way in which candidates and party leaders were chosen by the Labour party made it harder for those outside the political establishment to break through.
However, he said he opposed the introduction of all-black shortlists, instead calling for parties to take “positive action”.
The health secretary, Alan Johnson, has become the most senior member of the government to back Phillips.
While Johnson stopped short of accepting that the party was “institutionally racist”, he said Labour did have to look at its “structures”.
New rules already being implemented by the party will mean any ethnic minority candidate applying for a Labour seat will go on the selection shortlist.
Last year, research by the Fabian Society predicted that the total number of black and Asian MPs in parliament could increase from 15 to 25, out of a total of 646, after the next election.
The body found that 10% of Labour’s new parliamentary candidates were from ethnic minorities, rising to 15% in Labour-held seats.
Four percent of new Tory candidates were from ethnic minorities, rising to 9% in Tory-held seats.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslims and Jews to be Allowed to Have Different Post-Mortems
Muslims and Jews will be able to stop traditional post-mortem examinations being carried out on the bodies of dead relatives under Government plans.
Followers of the religions object to current standard inquest procedures as they involve corpses being cut open, and can take place several days after death.
Both Islam and Judaism teach that bodies should be buried as soon as possible after death, and must not be defiled.
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In an attempt to accommodate their beliefs, the Government is to allow the devout to opt for alternative examinations of their loved ones by pathologists, which will not delay burial or involve invasive procedures.
Following the success of pilot projects in Salford and Bolton, those who object to post-mortems on religious grounds will be allowed to ask for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan of the bodies to be carried out instead.
However coroners will be able to overrule their request if they believe the cause of death could not be ascertained through an MRI scan, commonly used to look for cancerous tumours in patients.
Currently families who ask for these scans, carried out out-of-hours by hospital radiographers, must pay £500 for them but funding has not been decided for the nationwide scheme, which will be open to people of all faiths.
The proposals are included in the Coroners and Justice Bill, which will also aim to ensure that coroners can be contacted around the clock so Muslims and Jews can bury their dead as soon as possible, especially at weekends and Bank Holidays.
The Justice Minister, Bridget Prentice, visited Rochdale Infirmary, whose MRI scanner is used to carry out non-invasive post-mortems by the Bolton coroner.
She said: “The loss of a loved one is extremely difficult for any family to deal with. For some individuals and members of faith groups, the thought of an invasive post-mortem can compound the grief and distress, particularly when the procedure is against the tenets of the individual’s faith.
“We have listened carefully to bereaved families and are pleased to propose these reforms which will allow coroners to consider the wishes of the family and faith issues and where possible conduct an MRI scan in place of an invasive post-mortem.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “We are pleased that our concerns, particularly in relation to expediting the death certification process and non-invasive post-mortem examinations, have been taken into account.”
Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the former general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain who has advised the Government on Islamic burial requirements, said: “This announcement will certainly be welcomed in the Muslim community. It has always been an issue of some concern.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican Planned to Move to Portugal if Nazis Captured Wartime Pope
Secret plans were drawn up by the Vatican to elect a new Pope and flee to a friendly country should Hitler have carried out his threat to kidnap the wartime Pontiff, it was claimed yesterday.
Pope Pius XII told senior bishops that should he be arrested by the Nazis, his resignation would become effective immediately, paving the way for a successor, according to documents in the Vatican’s Secret Archives.
The bishops would then be expected to flee to a safe country — probably neutral Portugal — where they would re-establish the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and appoint a new Pontiff.
That Hitler considered kidnapping the Pope has been documented before, but this is the first time that details have emerged of the Vatican’s strategy should the Nazis carry out the plan.
“Pius said ‘if they want to arrest me they will have to drag me from the Vatican’,” said Peter Gumpel, the German Jesuit priest who is in charge of researching whether Pius should be made a saint, and therefore has access to secret Vatican archives.
Pius, who was Pope throughout the war, told his advisers “the person who would leave the under these conditions would not be Pius XII but Eugenio Pacelli” — his name before he was elected Pontiff — thus giving permission for a new Pope to be elected.
“It would have been disastrous if the Church had been left without an authoritative leader,” said Father Gumpel.
“Pius wouldn’t leave voluntarily. He had been invited repeatedly to go to Portugal or Spain or the United States but he felt he could not leave his diocese under these severe and tragic circumstances.” Vatican documents, which still remain secret, are believed to show that Pius was aware of a plan formulated by Hitler in July 1943 to occupy the Vatican and arrest him and his senior cardinals.
On 6 September 1943 — days after Italy signed the September 3 armistice with the Allies and German troops occupied Rome — Pius told key aides that he believed his arrest was imminent.
General Karl Otto Wolff, an SS general, was told to “occupy as soon as possible the Vatican, secure the archives and art treasures and transfer the Pope, together with the Curia so that they cannot fall into the hands of the Allies and exert a political influence.”
Hitler ordered the kidnapping, according to historians, because he feared that Pius would further criticise the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews.
He was also afraid that the Pontiff’s opposition could inspire resistance to the Germans in Italy and other Catholic countries.
Some historians have claimed that General Wolff tipped off the Vatican about the kidnap plans and that he also managed to talk the Fuhrer out of the plot because he believed it would alienate Catholics worldwide.
The latest revelations will be seen by some observers as a further attempt by the Vatican to bolster the case for Pius XII being declared a saint.
Pius has been accused of being anti-Semitic and of harbouring sympathies for the Nazi regime, most notably in the 1999 book Hitler’s Pope, by British author John Cornwell.
But other Catholic and Jewish historians contend that in fact Pius was loathed by the Nazis for speaking out about the Holocaust and for behind-the-scenes efforts to save Italian Jews who otherwise would have been sent to death camps.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders’ Ideas Enjoy 40% Support
Some 40% of the Dutch population agree with many of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilder’s statements, according to research by TNS Nipo for magazine Vrij Nederland.
According to opinion polls, Wilders would take about 18% of the vote if there was an election tomorrow. But this research shows support for his ideas is much wider, Vrij Nederland says.
Some 42% of those polled agreed with the statement that Wilders says ‘what ordinary people believe and want’. Some 35% do not think Wilders goes too far in his comments about Islam and Muslims and 38% agree with Wilders’ statement that Muslims have come to the Netherlands ‘to take things over’.
A large majority — 61% — agree with Wilders’ call for ‘street terrorists’ to be deported. Wilders used the phrase to describe gangs of youths, mainly of Moroccan origin.
Although support for Wilders among people with a university education has increased slightly, his main support is still found among ‘the ordinary man who does not feel that the established parties take him seriously,’ said researcher Peter Kanne.
| — Hat tip: moderntemplar | [Return to headlines] |
Croatia: Alleged Plot to Kill Bolivian Leader Rattles Govt
Zagreb, 20 April (AKI) — The Croatian government has expressed concern over the alleged involvement of two Bolivian Croats in a plot to assassinate Bolivian president Evo Morales. It has ordered Croatia’s ambassador to Bolivia Vesna Terzic to closely follow developments after a shoot-out last week between police and a suspected gang of foreign mercenaries, allegedly hired to murder Morales.
Zagreb daily Vjesnik said on Monday there were no signs that Croat immigrants in Bolivia were being victimised after the arrest of one of the suspected mercenaries, a Bolivian of Croat descent, Mario Francisco Tadic, or the fatal shooting of a second man, Eduardo Rosza Flores, in last week’s gunfight in the eastern city of Santa Cruz.
An Irishman Dwyer Michael Martin and a Romanian Arpad Magyarosi were also shot dead in the gunfight after which police arrested a Hungarian, Elot Toaso, besides Tadic.
Morales (photo) said the five men were members of a gang of foreign mercenaries who were planning an attack on him and several other officials.
Flores, known as ‘Chico’, and Tadic both fought in Croatia’s 1991-95 war of secession from the former Yugoslavia. There is a sizeable Croat immigrant community in Bolivia and local media reports had linked the alleged conspirers to a Bolivian opposition leader, Branko Marinkovic, also of Croatian origin.
Bolivian media reports had described Croat immigrants as “extremists and fascists” in the wake of the alleged assassination plot against Morales, reportedly stoking feelings of heightened insecurity among that community.
“For now there are no indications of increased pressure on the Croatian community in Bolivia,” said Croatia’s foreign ministry spokesman Mario Dragun.
“If it should occur, ambassador Terzic will be called to the ministry for further consultations,” he said.
Tadic and Toaso were moved to a high security jail in Chonchocoro on Sunday. Bolivian media reported that there was no jail in the capital, La Paz, secure enough to prevent the “two trained terrorists” from attempting an escape.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Energy: South Stream Agreements to be Signed on End of April
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, APRIL 15 — At the energy summit in Sofia on April 24 and 25, the agreements will be signed on the main road South Stream gas pipeline construction, with the attendance of the presidents and prime ministers of the countries interested in the project, Serbian Minister of Energy and Mining Petar Skundric stated, reports Tanjug news agency. At the summit in Sofia individual agreements between Gazprom Neft and national companies will be signed with, as expected, the attendance of about one hundred delegations interested in the pipeline construction, Skundric told the reporters. Skundric said that Serbia should complete the feasibility study for the pipeline by September this year, and for the whole of South Stream project by June 2010. “According to evaluations, the South Stream pipeline route through Serbia is considered the most realistic, optimal and economical,” Skundric pointed out, adding that the mining works on the part of the pipeline from Nis to Dimitrovgrad have begun. The Russian experts engaged by the Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu are clearing up the field from the leftover bombs from the NATO bombing in 1999.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Med: Sixth 5+5 Western Mediterranean Meetings in Cordoba
(ANSAmed) — CORDOBA, APRIL 20 — The sixth summit in eight years opened today in Cordoba in Andalusia, for the foreign ministries of the ‘5+5’ initiative, which consists of ten countries from both shores of the western Mediterranean. The conference in Cordoba, which is taking place with an informal agenda, will deal with issues like the impact of the global economic crisis on the Mediterranean economies, illegal immigration, the Union for the Mediterranean created last year during the French presidency of the EU, and relations between Europe and the Maghreb. The conference is being led jointly by the Foreign Ministers of Spain and Morocco, Miguel Angel Moratinos and Taib Fassi Fihri. France, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya are all participating in the diplomatic conference. The Italian government is being represented by Foreign Undersecretary Stefania Craxi. The meeting will open today with a working dinner in Alcazar with the ministers. Tomorrow’s meetings will take place in a palace across from the Cathedral-Mosque of Cordoba, a Unesco World Heritage Site, in the heart of the Spanish city that was once the seat of the Caliphate, when Andalusia was a Muslim territory and was called El Andalus. Madrid, according to the Spanish press, will propose to expand the ‘5+5’ to include Defence, Transport, and Tourism Ministers. EU Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero Waldner and Secretary General of the Arab Maghreb Union, Habib Ben Yahia will also take part in the meetings. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Violence Against Women: EU to Hold Conference in Tunis
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, APRIL 20 — The Eu funded regional programme ‘Enhancing equality between men and women in the EuroMed Region’ is organising a regional meeting in Tunis as of today to 23 April, on ‘Gender-based violence (GBV) research: Concepts, data, methodology and tools’. The meeting would bring together participants representing producers and users of data on GBV and programme implementers, as well as international and regional stakeholders, representatives of ministries and national women’s machineries, civil society organisations and the media. The event is organised in collaboration with the Belgian-based multidisciplinary consulting firm, Transtec and the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR). The meeting was inaugurated by Sarra Kanoun Jarraya, Minister of women, family, childhood and elderly Affairs. The event aims at assessing methods used in GBV research, and suggesting technical assistance to build consensus on a common definition and coherent conceptual framework to be tested in three pilot surveys in the Euromed region. It also aims at drafting recommendations for combating the causes of GBV. The EU Programme, launched in May 2008, seeks to achieve gender equality, combat violence against women, improve women’s image in the media, and pursue the Istanbul process by consolidating women’s role in society.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: Netanyahu, Unconditional Negotiations With PNA
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM — The Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Neyanyahu (Likud), is ready to begin peace negotiations with the Palestinians without preliminary conditions. However, a statement from the Prime Minister’s office stated that during negotiations, the Palestinians would have to “recognise Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. This is a matter of principle,” the statement reads, “which is widely held in Israel and in the world, and without this it is not possible to go ahead with negotiations towards a peace agreement.” Netanyahu released the statement after doubts that local press might have misunderstood his political standpoint. Meanwhile the head Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat said he regretted that the new Israeli government had yet to “express a sincere commitment to a two-state solution, to suspending the spread of Israeli settlements and on other matters that previous governments were committed to.” Local press is reporting the first signs of divergence in the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu (Likud), and the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak (Labour), as the latter believes that Israel should inspect the Arab peace initiative closely. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Abraham Lincoln Was Born a Muslim, Says Film Maker
ATLANTA, April 20 /PRNewswire/ — Barack Hussein Obama is not alone. The 16th President of The United States, Abraham Lincoln, was born a Muslim, says Faruq Masudi, producer and director of the new Islamic movie, Quran Contemporary Connections.
In a casting coup, Abraham Lincoln shares equal footage with luminaries of Islamic history like Saladin, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and the former President of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed. What do they have in common?
Faruq Masudi said, “According to the Quran, everybody is born a Muslim. It is only by his own free will that a man chooses a different course for himself. In that Abraham Lincoln was not only a born Muslim but he chose to live by Islamic edicts like abolishing organized slavery; establishing equality of all human beings, democracy and accountability to God and Man; core Islamic concepts as propounded in the Holy Quran.”
According to the filmmaker, Quran is compatible with American values and is not alien to them. Americans don’t have to be afraid of the Quran as it is already playing out daily in their lives. And Muslims don’t have to eye Americans with suspicion. According to Masudi, “there is quite a bit of Islam in the West without the Quran and there is little Islam in the East, despite the Quran.”
Quran Contemporary Connections places the Quranic themes in modern setting and context. In a deliberate departure from the extremist interpretations, the narrative in the film runs “Allah is not a Muslim specific God; Muslim do not have a monopoly on Him. He is not a Christian God. Christians do not have a monopoly on Him. And He is not a Jewish God either; Jews do not have a monopoly on Him.” Masudi says further, “Muslims alone do not have a copyright on the Quran.”
If you thought you knew about Islam, better think afresh, claims the official website of the film www.quranconnections.com.
In spite of the fact that the film aspires to promote better understanding between the Three Abrahamic Faiths, it has been met with stiff resistance from the mainstream American distributors. Obama’s call to make friends with Islam has not augured well with this community. The film has been consequently released online and is available from premium stores like Amazon.com in the U.S.
Quran Contemporary Connections is a Hoo Productions presentation, a company that has been producing television shows for South Asia and the Middle East for the last two decades.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Ahmadinejad’s Wager, the World’s Peril
by Barry Rubin
Why did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the full backing of Iran’s regime, behave as he did at the Durban-2 conference? One reason, of course, is that he believed every word he said, and much of the Iranian Islamist regime thinks the same way. This factor should always be remembered, lest people think this was only some cynical ploy.
As the Iranian Islamist regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, once said, the revolution was not just about lowering the price of watermelons. That is, this was not merely a movement for materialist reasons but one that believes it was executing God’s will on earth. Ideology was central.
To explain this properly, permit me to digress a moment. People often ask: why did Jews under Nazi rule in Eastern Europe flee or do more to escape the Shoah (Holocaust). After extensive research and interviewing, it is clear to me that while there were a number of factors but foremost was the disbelief that the Germans would murder them all.
Remember that these Jews were forced into slave labor. They produced goods, farmed crops, and repaired roads. In effect, they were helping the German war effort. These laborers were paid nothing and fed barely enough to stay alive. Why, then, would the Germans destroy, so to speak, a goose that was laying eggs if not necessarily golden ones, possibly losing the war in the process?
The answer is: because they believed in their own ideology they would not act pragmatically but rather make their own defeat-and own deaths-more likely.
The second factor that should be remembered is that of miscalculation. A leader, particularly if reckless and overconfident, will take an action he thinks is in his interest but turns out to be a disaster. The best internal Middle East examples are those of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser provoking the crisis that led to the 1967 war and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Arab World Applauds Ahmadinejad’s Speech Amid Catcalls for US
THE Iranian President’s inflammatory speech to a United Nations conference in Geneva attracted largely positive reaction across the Arab world.
Al-Quds, the Palestinian Arabic newspaper published in Jerusalem, led yesterday’s issue with its coverage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech.
“European and Western countries withdrew from the session during the speech of Iranian President as soon as he mentioned Palestine and criticised the establishment of the state of Israel,” it said.
Al-Ayyam, published in the large West Bank city of Ramallah, devoted its front page to the walk-out staged by several European nations.
It cast the Ahmadinejad speech as criticism of the way Israel treated Palestinians.
A leading Arabic newspaper published in London and widely read across the Palestinian territories, al-Quds al-Arabi, said the Iranian President had only spoken the truth.
Mr Ahmadinejad “succeeded in exposing the Western double standards and in highlighting the Palestinian just cause when he affirmed in his speech at the opening session of Durban Review Conference Against Racism on the racism of Israel and on how the West solved the Jewish problem at the expense of the Palestinians”, the editorial said.
“The European delegations that withdrew from the conference in protest against the speech of Ahmadinejad revealed in the clearest form their support to the Israeli racism and showed that they support the massacres committed against the Palestinian people, the latest of which was the recent aggression on Gaza Strip.”
The paper said while the US had described Mr Ahmadinejad’s statements as disgraceful and hateful, it “didn’t utter a single word against the ugly Zionist measures against the Palestinian people”.
These included the settlement policies, the “apartheid wall” and the arbitrary arrests and the treatment that more than 1 million Arabs carrying Israeli citizenship received, it said.
In the Arab News, a newspaper published in Saudi Arabia and circulated widely across the Middle East, the columnist Iman Kurdi asked: “Why has [Mr Ahmadinejad] been given a starring role once again?”
“Surely it is wrong to let people like Ahmadinejad define such an important agenda, just as it is wrong to let Israel’s priorities dominate US policy,” Kurdi wrote. But she added that while the election of a black man as president appeared to indicate the world’s most powerful country was committed to fighting racism and intolerance, its refusal to attend the UN summit showed otherwise.
“Quite simply, the United States is profoundly committed to end racism and racial discrimination so long as this does not interfere with Israel’s ongoing racism and racial discrimination against non-Jews or Palestinians, to call them by their right name.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Durban 2: Netanyahu; Ahmadinejad Racist, Boycott Welcomed
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, APRIL 20 — Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has today called the Iranian President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad a “racist” and a Holocaust “denier”, condemning his invitation to the UN’s ‘Durban 2’ Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Netanyahu said that the event was a “festival” of anti-Israeli “hatred” organised to coincide with the Shoah memorial, which takes place today and this evening. The Israeli prime minister went on to praise the countries who had boycotted the conference. “As we come closer to commemorating the (six million) victims of the Shoah, a conference which pretends to fight racism welcomes a racist and a Holocaust denier (Ahmadinejad) who does not hide his intention to wipe Israel off the world map”, said Netanyahu during a government meeting. The words were echoed in the actions taken by Netanyahu and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who have decided to recall the Israeli ambassador to Berne (Switzerland) as a sign of protest against the welcome afforded to Ahmadinejad by the Swiss head of state, Hans Rudolf Merz. On the other hand, Netanyahu has “congratulated the countries” which decided not to attend ‘Durban 2’ and “boycott this festival of hate”. The group of countries refusing to attend the conference has grown since ‘Durban 1’, which alongside Israel, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, now includes Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Durban 2: Ahmadinejad Welcomed as Hero in Iran
(ANSAmed) — TEHRAN, APRIL 21 — The president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, was given a hero’s welcome upon his return in Tehran, after his attack on Israel in his speech to the UN Durban 2 conference currently underway in Geneva. The Iranian president said that the Western countries “have not accepted even one part of the words of one of their opponents”. The EU Czech presidency has said that the Union strongly opposes the words of the Iranian president. The EU countries which had chosen to participate in the conference — 22 out of 27 — have decided to stay. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Emirates: Here Comes the New Federal Capital
(by Alessandra Antonelli) (ANSAmed) — DUBAI, APRIL 20 — A celebration of the federal identity of the United Arab Emirates (UAE): this is how the Capital City District, the new citadel which is set to be built just a few kilometres from the current capital has been proposed, and which, once it has been finished, will be the new pulsing heart of the country. It will be the political, diplomatic, economic and academic heart given that all government offices, institutions, universities and embassies that are currently in Abu Dhabi will be moved to the triangular area with a 45 km perimeter that will stretch from Zayed City to the international airport. Further details and a three-dimensionality have now been given to the project for the new capital, which was initially announced exactly one year ago. These new aspects, which teams of town planners, architects and engineers have worked on, were presented on the occasion of the Cityscape Abu Dhabi exhibition (April 19-22). “It is the single most important project in the UAE,” commented Falah Al Ahbabi, the director general of the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, pointing out that it will be 25 years before it is completed. Divided into six thematic districts, Capital City will be organised around the central Federal Precinct, where it will be home to the parliament, and sectioned into seven large boulevards, to represent the seven emirates which make up the UAE Federation: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Ras al-Khaime, Umm al Qwaim and Fujairah. One of the districts will be dedicated to sporting activities and will host the national stadium with 65,000 seats, whilst another district will be assigned to business affairs, with 2.8 million square metres of office space. The new city will also be home to three universities (Zayed, Khalifa and Abu Dhabi Universities), two hospitals and several cultural centres. Apart from the seven main boulevards, a network of roads is to built, along which structures are planned which will aim to provide shade from the searing summer heat, allowing and encouraging movement around the area on foot. An integrated system of public transport, with 131 km of metro system with high speed trains, will allow quick transfers, whilst underground car parks will also be built. Work on the citadel, which will have an estimated population of 370,000 residents, will officially begin in 2012 even though the area around the planned Capital City area is already being built on. Nearby is the city of Masdar, the only city in the world which is self-sustaining in terms of energy and with zero pollution, as well as vast residential complexes. Despite the economic crisis which has hit global markets and which has also had repercussions on the economy of the UAE, Abu Dhabi has announced ten large building projects with a value of 208 billion dollars which will go ahead as expected because, as it was pointed out at Cityscape, “the Emirate’s building policy has until now looked at medium- and long-term investments and it will continue to do so”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: Beqaa Valley, Army Against Clans and Drugs
(by Ziad Tahouk) (ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, APRIL 17 — A fertile land for the cultivation of hashish and a stronghold of armed clans and Hezbollah guerrilla fighters, the western Beqaa Valley is back in the spotlight this week, a violent puzzle for Beirut’s military authorities to try and solve. The army has been carrying on a manhunt for days, looking for those responsible for the killing of four soldiers on Monday in the centre of the valley, an area as vast as it is complex given its tangle of political and religious affiliations. At the same time, the army command started talks with representatives from local clans to facilitate the capture of the assailants and prevent a chain-reaction of vendetta killings. “We have come to express our solidarity with the army”, said clan leaders in a statement issued yesterday after a visit by army commander Jean Qahwaji. Solidarity in sharp contrast to the volley of automatic weapons’ fire sent into the air by members of the Jaafar clan to celebrate the news of the attack against the army last Monday. On March 27 the army killed Ali Jaafar, with 172 arrest warrants hanging over him, during a campaign to stem the growing criminality in the valley. Criminal gangs are traditionally protected by their respective armed clans, with whom the Shiite Hezbollah movement has strained relations. “Hezbollah cannot align with the clans or protect their activities, especially in view of the parliamentary elections next June 7”, ANSA was told by an anonymous source close the Shiite movement. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah disappointed some local families with last week’s nomination of his candidates from the Beqaa district but stated that his choices were made “outside any clan considerations”. Various Shiite and Christian Lebanese families in the Beqaa Valley got rich from drug trafficking during the chaotic years of the civil war (1975-1990). The proceeds were also used to provide basic services to local populations, often neglected by the authorities in Beirut. After the war and the ‘Pax Syriana’, the police started a campaign to uproot the hashish crops in the entire Beqaa Valley, referred to as Rome’s granary during the Roman Empire. The limitations of the campaign quickly became apparent; programmes to encourage alternative crops failed and the clans’ arsenals are more than a match for the army’s. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Petrochemical: Turkey and Iran to Establish a Joint Factory
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 20 — A Turkish petrochemical company will establish a factory with an Iranian firm, the Turkish company said today, Anatolia news agency reports. The Turkish Petrochemical Holding Corp. (Petkim) signed a preliminary contract with the Iranian NPC International Limited (NPCI) to establish a methanol and polyethylene facilities, a statement of Petkim said. The polyethylene facility will have a capacity of 300,000 tons a year, while the methanol plant will have a capacity of 1,650,000 tons. Petkim was established in 1965. Privatization tender of 51% of the public shares of Petkim through block sale method, handed over to Socar&Turcas Petrochemical with USD 2.040.000.000 payment in June 2008. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Pledges 100 Million USD in Aid to Pakistan
(ANSAmed) — TOKYO/ANKARA, APRIL 17 — Turkey pledged 100 million USD assistance to Pakistan on Friday during Pakistan meeting held in Tokyo, Anatolia agency reports. Turkey’s State Minister Mehmet Aydin represents Turkey in the “Pakistan Donors Conference and Friends of Democratic Pakistan Group Ministerial Meeting” in the Japanese capital of Tokyo. The participants decided to hold the second meeting in Turkey. Date of the meeting has not been decided yet. Addressing the meeting, Aydin underlined friendship ties between Turkey and Pakistan rooted in history. International donors, led by the United States and Japan, pledged more than 5 billion USD on Friday. The aid will be used in health, education, management and restoration of democracy. Participants underlined stability in Pakistan to prevent spread of terrorism in the region. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Adds Berkeley ‘Animal Rights Extremist’ to ‘Most Wanted’ Terrorist List
An “animal rights extremist” from Berkeley, Calif., was added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list of terror suspects, federal agents said Tuesday.
Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist, has been on the run since 2003 and is wanted in two bombings that year of corporate offices in California, said Michael J. Heimbach, an assistant director of the FBI’s counterrorism division.
“He is a known animal rights extremist,” Heimbach told reporters Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., news conference.
He added that San Diego set an improvised explosive device in the bombings that caused “extensive property damage and economic hardship.”
“The investigation revealed that metal nails were used in the construction of the device to create a more forceful effect,” Heimbach said..
It’s the first time an accused domestic terrorist has been put on the “Most Wanted List,” which includes Usama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Adam Gadahn, among others. San Diego is the 24th person on the list.
San Diego has a tattoo that proclaims, “It only takes a spark,” according to authorities.
The move to add a domestic, left-wing terrorist to the list comes only days after the Obama administration was criticized for internal reports suggesting some military veterans could be susceptible to right-wing extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence.
That prompted angry reactions from some lawmakers and veterans groups.
An arrest warrant was issued for San Diego after the 2003 bombings in northern California of the corporate offices of Chiron Corp., a biotechnology firm, and at Shaklee Corp., a nutrition and cosmetics company.
The explosions caused minor damage and no injuries.
A group calling itself “Revolutionary Cells” took responsibility for the blasts, telling followers in a series of e-mails that Chiron and Shaklee had been targeted for their ties to a research company that conducted drug and chemical experiments on animals.
Officials have offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to his capture, five times the reward amounts offered for other so-called eco-terrorists wanted in the U.S.
In February, the FBI announced San Diego may be living in Costa Rica, possibly working with Americans or people who speak English in the Central American country.
Law enforcement officials describe San Diego as a strict vegan who possesses a 9mm handgun. On his abdomen, he has images of burning and collapsing buildings.
The FBI’s “Most Wanted” terrorist list is distinct from the much longer-running “Ten Most Wanted” list. Al Qaeda chief bin Laden is on both.
There is another American already on the list, but he is wanted for his work overseas for Al Qaeda. Adam Yahiye Gadahn grew up in California but moved to Pakistan and works as a translator and consultant to Al Qaeda.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Only Sharia in Swat Valley, Then All of Pakistan, Says Taliban Leader
Sufi Muhammad says there is “no room for democracy” in Islam, a Western “system of infidels.” Taliban kill a couple accused of adultery. Activists and political leaders accuse the government of handing over the valley to extremists. Afghanistan is concerned of “dire consequences” for the whole region.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) — Sufi Muhammad, head of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), said in a speech in Mingora, the Swat Valley’s main city, that Sharia is the only law for the valley and will be implemented in the rest of Pakistan.
“There is no room for democracy in Islam,” the Islamist leader also said. Western democracy was a “system of infidels” and has divided the country thanks to the support of the Supreme Court and the high courts.
Hence all judges in the Malakand division should be withdrawn “within four days”; if these demands are not met, there will be “consequences”.
The decision to implement Sharia in the Swat Valley was agreed by the government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the TNSM in order to bring to an end years of violent conflict in the area. Sharia came into effect last 16 February, a decision that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed into law on 13 April after it received unanimous support in the National Assembly.
What the Talibanisation of the Swat Valley means has become rapidly apparent. Yesterday a couple accused of having a relation outside of marriage was publicly executed by a group of Islamists in Hangu District near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Dawn News broadcast the images.
This came a few days after a 17-year-old woman, Chand Bibi, was publicly flogged after she was seen in public with a man who was not her husband. The execution of the sentence was taped on videophone.
At the same times though, Taliban brutality has provoked a wave of indignation that has swept Pakistan. Community leaders and human rights advocates have unanimously slammed Taliban actions.
By contrast, the central government and local officials in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) insist that the introduction of Sharia in the Swat Valley is the will of the people, and the best solution to end years of warfare.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said that a majority of Pakistanis have endorsed the Swat peace agreement which will promote stability in the area.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) disagrees. In a statement signed by its chairperson, Asma Jahangir, the HRCP said that 13 April was a day of “ignominious capitulation,” a day that will be remembered for the state’s humiliating submission to blind force.
What is more, the agreement makes no reference to abuses inflicted upon women, children and minorities as a result of the implementation of Sharia.
Other voices have joined the chorus against the agreement.
Former Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman wonders who will protect women’s rights since Taliban “justice” is a serious threat to the population and only the state can guarantee the rule of law in the country.
Such fears seem even more justified after TNSM Chief Sufi Muhammad said that “women will have full protection and rights under Sharia” and “live a better life, but behind the veil.”
Once a famous tourist resort area, the Swat Valley is now abandoned; its 130 hotels empty. Local women are not allowed to leave home whilst men are forced to grow a bear. Schools have been attacked and girls have been denied the right to take part in sports.
The only party that opposed the agreement, unsuccessfully, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), is also weary about pledges of peace.
“Those who support this deal have actually betrayed their voters,” party Chairman Farooq Sattar said.
Alarm bells have also gone off in neighbouring Afghanistan where many see developments in Pakistan as having possible “dire consequences” for the region as a whole.
“We do not interfere in Pakistan’s internal affairs,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said, but there are concerns that “dealing with terrorists’ by “handing over parts of one country” to them “could have dire consequences in the long term.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China: Jia Qinglin Says “Foreign Infiltration” Through Religion Must be Stopped
These are the guidelines given to officials in ministries and provincial administrations by the president of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The directive: strict implementation of the decisions made at the central level, and guarantees that everyone be dedicated to the socialist cause.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Promoting religious exchange with the rest of the world, and combating by every means possible those foreigners who use religion to infiltrate the country. These are the guidelines given by Jia Qinglin, president of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), to the officials of ministries and provincial administrations during a seminar dedicated to religious initiatives.
“The Party and the government have always attached great importance to religious work,” says Jia (in the photo), and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has made “a series of major decisions and arrangements as well as new achievements in religious work, while the country’s religious sector has maintained a united and stable situation.”
The seminar was organized by the Organizational Department and the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, together with the State Administration of Religious Affairs, and the National School of Administration.
The president of the CPPCC reminded officials of the need to implement strictly the decisions and provisions that are made at the central level. Jia also called upon all to do as much as possible to keep the population united, both believers and nonbelievers, and to encourage everyone to dedication to the socialist cause according to the unique characteristics of China.
The Chinese government has long been watching the dizzying resurgence of religion in the country, unable to contain it. In order to stop the advance of religion, the Party and the Patriotic Associations are engaged in controlling “foreign influences” on the Christian religions (Protestant and Catholic, considered “foreign”) and in promoting Buddhism and Confucianism as “national” spiritual paths.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Churches Oppose Islamic School
CAMDEN’S Christian leaders have united to condemn the Quranic Society, which wants to build an Islamic school in Camden, for espousing views which are “incompatible with the Australian way of life”.
The leaders of the St John’s Anglican, Camden Presbyterian and Camden Baptist churches and the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary signed a letter to Camden Council arguing that the proposal was not in the public interest.
“Camden is increasingly becoming a multicultural community, but when one part of the community seeks to dominate the public space, as we have seen in Auburn, Bankstown, Lakemba and more recently Liverpool, the social impact is unacceptable,” says the letter, which was read at the Quranic Society’s appeal to the Land and Environment Court yesterday.
“Our concern is the Quranic Society inevitably advocates a political ideological position that is incompatible with the Australian way of life. This includes promoting Quranic law as being superior to national laws and regarding followers of any rival religion as inevitably at enmity with it.”
The school proposal has split the Camden community.
The council voted unanimously to reject the original application for a 1200-pupil school “on planning grounds alone” last May.
After reducing its proposal to a school catering for 900 students, the Quranic Society took its case to the Land and Environment Court.
Commissioner Graham Brown, who will decide the school’s fate, visited the site yesterday morning, along with lawyers, council officials and residents. It is on a rural block on the corner of Cawdor and Burragarong roads.
The hearing continued at Camden Civic Centre in the afternoon, attended by about 150 residents.
The hearing continues today.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Barrot Thanks Italy, EU Will Do More
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS — EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Jacques Barrot thanked Italy today for the assistance given to the immigrants on the Pinar cargo ship: “I thank Italy for accepting the immigrants and helping those who were in need,” said the Commissioner, asking the EU to become more involved. The commissioner, speaking to the press in Brussels, explained that “the problem is still unresolved. We found a solution for the Pinar, but other incidents risk occurring in the future”. Barrot has called for EU involvement: “the EU must provide more concrete and efficient assistance, therefore I will resume discussions on the immigration emergency during the next cabinet meeting”. The migrants from the cargo ship Pinar finally arrived this morning at Porto Empedocle on board a naval vessel to witch thay had been transfered during the night. The non-EU citizens will be transferred to the immigrant centre in Pian del Lago in Caltanissetta.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
French Swoop on Calais Migrants
French police have detained 190 people in an operation against undocumented migrants near the port of Calais, officials say.
More than 300 officers were involved in the operation on Tuesday morning, regional state authorities said.
The port has become a magnet for migrants trying to enter the UK illegally across the English Channel.
There are estimated to be about 1,000 migrants living in makeshift camps around Calais.
Police cordoned off a migrant squatter camp known as “the jungle” and detained 150 people in an early morning raid. Forty other migrants were detained at two other locations along the coast, officials said.
Police said they had planned the operation for some time and all the arrests were made peacefully.
Official visit
The police operation came two days before Immigration Minister Eric Besson was due to visit Calais for talks on the migrant situation, a state spokeswoman said.
“It is an attempt to dismantle people-trafficking networks,” she said. “It is an operation to destabilise the networks and try to find the smugglers.”
She added that many of the those arrested said they were from Afghanistan. They were taken into custody in Calais, Boulogne and Lille.
The French and British governments are currently discussing the creation of a new immigrant holding centre within the British-controlled zone of the Calais docks.
The BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby, in Paris, says this would allow London and Paris to break through the quagmire of asylum law and to send illegal immigrants home more easily.
A refugee centre at Sangatte, near Calais, was closed in 2002 and bulldozed, under pressure from Britain.
Migrants who have since set up squatter camps around the port receive no help from French authorities, but charities have stepped in with donations of food and clothing.
Another BBC correspondent, Andrew Bomford, who recently visited the camps, said migrants had alleged that the hard-line French riot police, the CRS, had thrown tear gas into their camps, and frequently arrested and harassed them.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: 36 Illegal Migrants Found in Truck
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 21 — Thirty-six illegal immigrants have been found in a truck by Greek police on the Florina-Castoria road, in the northern part of the country. The driver of the vehicle — who is not Greek — has been arrested. The police say that the truck was stolen in the Attica region of Greece, whilst press agency ANA-MPA reports that the immigrants will go in front of the Kozani Public Prosecutor, who will decide their fate. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Offers Safe Haven to Refugee Ship — Malta Accused
Pinar heads for Sicily. “Only because of the humanitarian emergency”. Day of tension with La Valletta. Berlusconi exchanges phone calls with Barroso and Maltese premier.
ROME — The Pinar’s 140 refugees have been authorised to enter Italy. The Italian government’s decision came yesterday evening. It means that the migrants rescued in the Sicily Canal by a Turkish cargo vessel can be transferred off Lampedusa to the Italian corvette Danaide “for humanitarian reasons”. They will disembark at Porto Empedocle this morning. Meanwhile the Pinar has resumed its voyage to Sfax in Tunisia.
The breakthrough came after a phone call by the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi to the president of the European commission José Manuela Barroso, and a subsequent telephone conversation between Mr Berlusconi and the Maltese prime minister Lawrence Gonzi. Mr Berlusconi received assurances that Europe will immediately tackle the issue of the rules for rescuing migrants at sea. Since despite Mr Barroso’s appeals, the Maltese government remained adamant in its refusal to take responsibility for the Pinar, the Italian premier decided to give the refugees humanitarian assistance. The solution found by the Italian authorities was praised by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as “the humanitarian situation was no longer sustainable”. Twenty refugees with high temperatures and infectious diseases, as well as one pregnant woman, were taken to Lampedusa late yesterday afternoon. The decomposing body of another pregnant woman was also removed…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Immigrants Land in Sicily After Rejection by Malta
Rome, 20 April (AKI) — Italy has allowed a Turkish cargo vessel containing about 140 illegal immigrants to land on the southern island of Sicily on humanitarian grounds after Malta refused to accept them. Thirty of the illegal migrants aboard the merchant vessel Pinar arrived at Porto Emepedocle early Monday, and the others were expected to follow.
Italy’s foreign ministry said on Sunday it had decided to accept the illegal migrants after negotiations collapsed with Malta over the immigrants’ fate.
The migrants had been kept waiting in international waters, about 40 kilometers southwest of the Italian island of Lampedusa, for three days before the decision was made to accept them.
The situation became even more dramatic on Sunday, after a series of telephone calls between Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and leaders from Malta and the European Union.
The immigrants were picked up by the Turkish cargo ship Pinar on Thursday, after the two boats they were travelling on started sinking.
Major Clinton O’Neill, spokesman for the Maltese army rescue co-ordination centre, said that the Pinar was diverted to intervene and rescue the immigrants after it was identified as the nearest vessel.
“We then instructed the ship to proceed to the nearest safe haven. It was Lampedusa,” he said.
Italy had insisted that the Pinar was in Malta’s search and rescue area, arguing that Malta should have accepted the migrants.
“I’ve asked and continue to ask Malta to accept its responsibilities which it undertook according to international treaties,” Roberto Maroni, the Italian interior minister, said last Friday.
Malta has argued that under international conventions, the nearest port of call, Lampedusa, should be obliged to accept the rescued migrants.
Each year, tens of thousands of migrants pay people smugglers to try to reach Italy. Many aim for the Italian island of Lampedusa, a tiny island that is closer to the African continent than Europe, but their boats often capsize and many drown. Others die of thirst, hunger and heatstroke.
The number of illegal migrants arriving in Italy by boat rose by 75 per cent in 2008, reaching 36,900 people. The government said 30,000 landed on the Sicilian coast.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Maroni Challenges EU, Must Lead Agreements
(ANSAmed) — ROME — The bilateral agreements which until now allowed Italy and other European countries on the shores of the Mediterranean to deal with the impact of clandestine immigration “could no longer be sufficient”. Consequently a “new strategy” is needed, one that needs the EU to act as leader. It is no longer the time for individual countries to set up agreements with migrant and transit countries, now it is all of Europe that must speak with a single voice. On the same day that he quarrelled with Malta over the fate of the Pinar merchant ship carrying 154 migrants, Italy’s minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni is also challenging the European Union and asking for greater involvement in the fight against illegal aliens. The minister stated that “Bilateral agreements are fundamental and are the basic path to managing immigration, so much so that Italy signed 30 such agreements, with positive results. But this strategy must be left behind and improved” because “there is the risk that it will no longer suffice”. “Bilateral agreements must be replaced by agreements ‘led by the European Commission”. Also because, says the minister, “criminal organisations are familiar with these agreements and they send immigrants to countries that don’t have them”. Maroni knows that Europe is divided on this topic, with Mediterranean countries being isolated from the rest of the continent. That is why both on occasion of the G8 meeting on ministers of the Interior that will be held in Rome at the end of May, and on occasion of the conference of Mediterranean countries that will be held in Italy at the end of 2009, he will try to gain a greater commitment on this issue. The minister is also banking on the agreement with Libya that will finally become operational on May 15, when Libyan military forces (who will begin training in Italy as of next week) will receive the patrol boats handed over by Italy. “We have great confidence that this is the adequate measure to counter, decrease and possibly eliminate landings”. However Maroni must also deal with government problems after the rejection of the measure that extended stay in identification and expulsion centres by 6 months. The problem remains despite last week’s outburst. Maroni says that “This is a very serious and very negative fact that we are trying to fix by any means possible. But there is little time and if we don’t find a solution we will have to free more than a thousand illegal immigrants”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pinar: Barroso to Speak With Maltese Premier
(ANSAmed) — VALLETTA, (MALTA) APRIL 20 — President of the EU Commission José Manuel Barroso will speak on the phone this evening with Maltese Premier Lawrence Gonzi about the situation regarding the Pinar cargo ship, which rescued 140 illegal immigrants, which Malta refused to accept. The Pinar docked in Porto Empedocle in Sicily after a dispute between Italy and Malta. Diplomatic sources said that Barroso will speak with Gonzi to put a definitive end to the phone conversations yesterday with Premier Silvio Berlusconi, which resulted in the resolution of the situation. In the meanwhile, at 6:30PM, Lawrence Gonzi will report the details of last night’s conversations with Berlusconi to Parliament, and will explain the details of the matter and the stance taken by the government to turn away the Pinar. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pinar: Ronchi, Europe Has Failed
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 20 — “We do not like this type of Europe, this Europe has failed. Faced with a ship full of desperate passengers, with women, children, and individuals who have been exploited, the European Union was not capable of saying anything,” said Minister for European Policy Andrea Ronchi, today in Madrid, praising the decision made by the Italian government to accept 140 immigrants after a dispute with Malta over Turkish cargo ship Pinar, in the Sicilian Channel. “We accepted them for humanitarian reasons, but the immigration emergency should not be dealt with in this way. The image of a dead pregnant woman is emblematic of the political and cultural failure of the EU,” added Ronchi speaking at a seminar of the FAES Foundation, headed by Spanish ex-Premier José Maria Aznar. From the economic crisis to the gas emergency, from the UN conference on racism to immigration, the EU “has not been able to speak with a unified voice,” and it was not able to in this case, concluded the minister. “The EU was static, an immobile giant, a clay giant made of self-referential euro-bureaucracy”. “The immigration problem is a European issue, a challenge that cannot be won by individual states. There must be clear regulations, Europe must sanction countries that are indifferent,” added Ronchi in a meeting with the press at the end of the conference with Aznar. “With what conscience, with what heart,” asked the Italian minister, “was the government of that country — whether small or large — able to leave those poor people for hours and hours in that state?”. To combat illegal immigration, “a policy of repression alone will not be sufficient,” underlined the head of European policy, “bilateral agreements are needed, and they must work and be respected. This worked with Albania, is presently working with Tunisia, and will work with Libya.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UNHCR and Refugee Council, Allow Landing
(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 17 — The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has made an appeal to Italy and Malta to allow 154 immigrants who are onboard the merchant vessel Pinar, stopped 45 miles south of Lampedusa in Maltese waters, and at the centre of a dispute between Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni and his Maltese counterpart Mifsud Bonnici on who is responsible for the vessel, to land in one of the two countries. “The situation onboard is problematic and conditions at sea are worsening,” said UNHCR spokesperson for Italy Laura Boldrini, “and therefore we are making our appeal on a humanitarian basis to the Italian and Maltese authorities to allow 154 migrants to land.” ‘As in the past and ignoring the legal aspects that can be verified later,” continued Boldrini, “the situation must be resolved in order to allow them to land, so medical and humanitarian assistance can be provided” to the survivors. The Italian Council for Refugees (CIR) appealed to the Italian and European authorities to find a solution. “These people cannot wait for the Italian and Maltese government and the European courts to resolve a dispute regarding who is responsible,” said Savino Pezzotta, CIR President. “We are aware that Italy is already doing a great deal to save human lives in the Mediterranean and we are also in agreement that the European Union cannot let our country face this situation alone. But Italy must not pull back now”. The CIR has also asked European institutions for regulations that will unequivocally determine what the “closest safe port” will be in sea rescue situations and to institute a mechanism of equal distribution of the responsibilities and burdens among the member states. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
On Nation and Nationalism
In response to Razib Khan’s recent post, it should be noted the traditional notion of a nation is prior to the state. As the Latin nasci suggests, the word ‘nation’ implies link by blood. Members of a traditional nation believe they are ancestrally related.
Discussing the traditional conception of the nation, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote some years ago:
“To be a nation, a people must believe they are a nation and that they share a common ancestry, history, and destiny.”
In recent years, however, this definition has become blurred. People now use ‘nation’ where the word ‘state’ would be more apt. (A state can consist of various nations.) Adding to this confusion is the notion of nationalism. Although a creation of the 19th century, nationalism is related to the ancient concept of the natio, but has taken on an ideological connotation. In essence, there are two visions of nationalism:
(1) A traditional understanding of nationalism as it relates to the ancient concept of the natio — the respect and admiration of one’s own nation, but the realization that it cannot, because it is ancestrally limited, be imposed upon others.
And its modern perversion:
(2) Ideological nationalism, the worship of the abstract state, and the drive to impose this ideology upon others.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
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